A Jocund Day

It was my second Shakespeare tragedy this month. The actress playing Juliet stood out in an excellent cast because she intoned the lines just as an American fourteen-year old would today. This must be around the thirtieth play I've seen at the Lantern Theater over the years, and I've never been disappointed.

But it still makes me pause and think: the guy died almost 400 years ago, and I see teams of bright professional people on both sides of the Atlantic, performing two different plays by him, twice in one month with another (The Tempest) planned for April. Never mind how much I enjoy the stuff. I'm not even particularly obsessed with Shakespeare. It just seems natural to me to take in his plays whenever I can, because they're so damned good. And everybody feels the same way --they always will.

It's very special, I tell speakers of other languages, for me to drink the lines in without translation, and also to be alive in perhaps the last century when we'll be following the lines unaltered. When I hear or read the following lines, I tear up and make a little giggle. It just comes over me.

JULIET
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO
It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.