Shakespeare
I am not a collector. Anything in my study, on my dresser, or even in the dresser drawers is there with great intention. I purge things regularly: the birthday cards, notes, even books. When we had our house painted inside almost three years ago, we collected boxes of books to bring to Half Price Books to sell back. We didn’t need the money; it is the only way the books, some brand new and read once, can be recirculated to other eager readers. All this to say, any book still in my possession has great meaning and a place of honor in the one book case in my study: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 1936. My brother gave this to me as a Christmas gift in 1972, the year I started college. His best friend, also a college student, told him I would need it in college. I never read it in college, and it has been packed in book boxes in every move since 1984 when I finally left home at age 30. I am reading it this year and finding it a comfort and joy.
This semester I studied British Literature with Dr. Laura Davenport and students at Northeast Lakeview College. Some were high school dual credit students, others completing degree requirements and British Literature, Anglo Saxon through Neoclassical, fulfilled any number of them. As the semester closed, we were assigned to read Twelfth Night, a comedy, and the themes of finding the missing twin, identity, and love are heartbreaking and hilarious, especially in the theater production. But what stopped me cold was Malvolio in the dungeon due to his madness all caused by a prank letter crying out: “Good fool, some ink, paper and light….” He makes this statement twice and finally gets paper, ink and light.
Individuals write letters in the play, but in a dungeon, pleading with the Fool, Festus, for light, paper and ink, reminded me of how writing is sometimes all we have to break out of our own dungeons of madness. Tell our story, as imperfectly as we can, with the hope we will make our own testament, and one person will read and understand. Malvolio, you spoke my words. Thank you.
