Paschal moon: an infinite and endless liar

We don’t know exactly when William Shakespeare was born, in 1564, but he was baptized on 26 April, and baptisms were typically done back then within a couple of days of birth, in case the infant didn’t survive. So it’s possible that today is the 454^th anniversary of his birth. It is the 402^nd anniversary of his death. And since it’s not possible to get through National Poetry Month without something from the heavy artillery of English letters, today’s a good day for Will.

Technically billed as a comedy, All’s Well That Ends Well is…oh, I dunno. It’s a comedy inasmuch as the stage in Act V is not awash in blood and piled with corpses. But it’s a whole rigmarole of class differences, snobbery, conquests on the battlefield and in the bed, unrequited love, rampant testosterone, craven servants and a lot of stuff that even on my most disbelief-suspending days I still have trouble swallowing.

One of the things I have the most trouble with is the plot point around the notion that in the dark all cats are equally grey, that a man can’t tell one woman from another when he’s in bed. Amongst other things, am I meant to conclude that, in the rush of passion, men lose their sense of hearing? Or is it that virgins being ravished by coup-counting cads are universally silent?

Then there’s the whole idea that any woman with the gumption of Helena (in this case) would want to be married to a cad like Bertram, who can’t even be arsed to bed her because of her “low station” (which doesn’t seem to bother him in other instances, of which she is abundantly aware).

Any roads, that’s the basic plot, but one of the subplots revolves around a loudmouthed, arrogant servant called Parolles, who reminds me of most of the GOPigs, as described here in Act III, Scene vi, by various lords to Bertram:

Bertram:

Do you think I am so far deceived in him?

Second Lord:

Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge,

without any malice, but to speak of him as my

kinsman, he’s a most notable coward, an infinite and

endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner

of no one good quality worthy your lordship’s

entertainment.

See what I mean? I'm planning on working some of these into daily conversations.

If that’s not poetic enough for you, we’ll have one of the sonnets. This is one I find particularly comforting at the mo.

“XXX”

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

   But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

   All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.