The Life of Shakespeare (in poem form)

 

http://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323/videos/william-shakespeare-mini-biography-12060739685

Shakespeare wast a quite a sir, 

One shrouded in mystery. 

Quietly that gent cameth, 

And just as quietly wenteth. 

T all started in 1564 

Born the third issue of eight

(I totally agree that children are issues)

Joan and Margaret cameth and hath passed ere that gent in quick succession

Gilbert hath stayed a little longer

(More like 40 some years longer)

Joan the second, hung around until 77

(Quite an impressive age for 1500. What's up with two girls named Joan? People back then.)

Anne hath lived up to 7

Richard to 39

Edmund got his share of the years at 27

The father was John Shakespeare

The mother Mary Arden

At 18 years,

Shakespeare (William of course) dabbled in marriage,

Settling for a 26 year old pregnant woman

(What a wonderful choice)

He had 3 children,

2 of whom managed to survive and see the perilous world called adulthood

Little is known about William's education,

(Literally nothing is known about Shakespeare)

For all we know,

The person so vigorously studied in our modern Universities

May have never gone to one himself.

Immensely popular in his time

He composed 37 plays and 154 sonnets

Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice

Just to name a few

He was a great man,

One who we will remember as the dread of our high school years

Never mind Shakespeare.

You are still the great playwright

And the man who controls the wildest of our dreams.

Picture This

As Jon Krakauer tries to figure out his implication in the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster, he tips precariously on the edge of a great void of grief and guilt. Krakauer is haunted by the loss of life that occurred and wants to find peace with himself through examining what about Everest makes people ignore caution and sanity to seek out the of their wildest dreams. In the not so great picture that I drew, a climber who I envision to be Krakauer, dangling from a slim ledge, about to fall into the Void of Guilt. Below him are the things that cause him grief; his implication in the disaster, the deaths of his friends, what he could have done to alleviate the damage done, etc. The mountain that he hangs on is Mt. Everest, but it symbolizes coping with the sorrow that came with the 1996 tragedy. At the end of Into Thin Air, Krakauer tells of his experiences in dealing with the blow, and the successes and failures of others to handle their mourning. He realizes that there were things that he could not prevent, and learns to deal with himself, yet recognizes that his presence as a journalist may have pressured expeditions to continue to the top even as conditions deteriorated.