In a continued effort to patch the holes in my (still incomplete) reading of Shakespeare, I've just finished All's Well That Ends Well, an odd comedy about deception, sexuality, and revenge. It wasn't my favorite of the plays I've read over the past couple of years (that's probably still Twelfth Night or The Merchant of Venice), but I did enjoy it, and found the experience of reading Shakespeare a refreshing one. For me, tackling his plays - especially in this age of noise and distraction - is a great pleasure: it requires the sort of attention to which we rarely commit ourselves. And yet, it's exactly that attention which allows us to be transported, both to another time (early modern England) and to another state (one of reading, one of true, uninterrupted reading). I thank Shakespeare for that gift: the gift of peering through the distraction - and of relishing in a work of art well approaching perfection.
No comments:
Post a Comment