“The words with which we seek to do him homage are his. We look for new celebration and find echo. Shakespeare has his mastering grip on the marrow of our speech. The shapes of life which he created give voice to our inward needs. We catch ourselves crooning desire like street-corner Romeos; we fall to jealousy in the cadence of Othello; we make Hamlets of our enigmas; old men rage and dodder like Lear. Shakespeare is the common house of our feelings. He has seen so exactly, so variously for us; he has struck the note of consciousness over so wide a range of human experience; he found for what he saw and felt such authority of statement–making his words not only a mirror of truth, but its vital, inexhaustible form–that we meet his voice around every corner of our sensibility. Even our cry and our laughter are only partly ours; we find them where he left them, and they bear his stamp.”
May 7, 2009...3:06 pm
Steiner on Shakespeare
Jump to Comments
