A Year of Shakespeare

Tomorrow is Shakespeare’s birthday and to honor it I will be posting throughout the day.

While wrapping up Henry IV, Part II, I encountered a bit of wicked treachery that reminded me of an article I had recently seen drawing comparisons between Shakespeare and the TV hit, House of Cards.

I don’t watch the show because I’m not, as a rule, attracted to treachery nor art depicting it. For similar reasons, I was unable to stick with Mad Men, another wildly popular and highly touted offering.

The dark side of humanity is not a place I desire to dwell unless to extract a necessary moral lesson. I can bear it in limited quantity, but I prefer to spend my time and what’s left of my senses exploring the virtue, goodness and possibilities rather than to surrender to the negative any more than need be.

I imagine that’s a rather odd confession in an age of anxiety. This is a time for the celebration of anti-heroes and ironic wit, detached critiques and dumbed-down avuncular stooges. It gets harder and harder to wear one’s heart nakedly on one’s sleeve.

But I do protest too much.

Henry IV will wrap tomorrow and I will share news of birthday celebrations from around the world as I find them.

This world was made a better place by Shakespeare’s birth. The day has finally arrived for everyone, everywhere to make hay of the occasion, and to let their appreciation for the Bard be known.

This entry was posted on 2014/04/22 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Celebrations, Shakespeareana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.