Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I hope everyone has had as lovely a day as possible, be it with friends or significant others…or pets! My kitty is my Valentine (aw shucks!).
And how fitting was it that on this Hallmark Holiday I finished up the very un-romantic Shakespearean play, Othello, where the main character is driven insane with jealousy planted in his head by the evil Iago and therefore decides to murder the innocent Desdemona. Not a very feminist play, eh? Especially seeing as how Othello thinks he did absolutely nothing wrong by committing that horrid act of domestic violence UNTIL he finds out that his wife was in fact true and faithful the whole time. Because otherwise it’s perfectly acceptable to go around killing your wife! Strumpets all of them! But my full review is to come later. I promise.
But, since I don’t want to seem totally unromantic, I will leave you with a beautiful Shakespearean sonnet to lighten the mood. I’m sure many of you know it already. It’s one of his most famous:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
-William Shakespeare
