Now for something completely different

It has been a few days since I've blogged and find I have little to say about what is going on in my life. Everything is fine. I want to talk about Shakespeare instead.

I have never cared for Shakespeare. I find reading his works quite tedious and watching them being performed is torturous for me. I also dislike Gilbert and Sullivan, and with the exception of Carmina Burana, can't stand opera.  I don't feel uncultured and have a great appreciation for most fine art, from ancient to modern.

It was with great joy that I came across these quotes about Shakespeare and want to share them.

1. Voltaire "This enormous dunghill."

2. Leo Tolstoy "Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless."

3. J. R. R. Tolkien "I went to King Edward's school and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek: but I also learned English literature--except Shakespeare, which I disliked cordially..."

4. George Bernard Shaw "There is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his . It would be positively a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him."

5.  Charles Darwin "I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."

As far as Gilbert and Sullivan go, I wish they would. I don't know which I care for less, the bumpity, bumpity tempo, the idiotic stories, the interminable length of the damn things or the audience who think it is ever so clever. The fact that one of my favorite writers, Robert Bencheley, adored it makes me want to like it but by the end of the first act, I have had enough, more, more than enough. A good friend is part of the local company but even for him, I can't attend.

So what do I like? New and thought provoking, old and well written. I love literature that is so tasty and attractive to read I want to eat it with a spoon. I like music with a melody and care more for DeBussey than Handel. I love good singers who don't shriek or make me flinch with their nasal sounding assaults. I love clear notes I can hear and would gladly miss everything played with distortion or a wah-wah pedal.

Both my daughters like Shakespeare. Quite a large part of the population does, too. But as for me and those quoted above, we'd rather not venerate his writing. There is one passage, though, that I've loved since sixth grade:


"This above all: to thine own self be true, 

And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

So there you have it... being true to myself, I won't pretend to you that I can stand the bard.