SHAKESPEARE REDUX

  If Shakespeare were alive, how would he write
  today, possessing the same intellect
  and gift for words, and spiritual insight,
  and would he have the same profound effect?

  I am afraid he’d find no audience
  who’d tolerate the liberties he’d take
  in shaping language eloquent and dense
  that to our unschooled ears would sound opaque.

  And yet his classic plays are still revered,
  still studied in our schools and colleges,
  and over centuries they have endeared
  themselves to us—we know what Hamlet says!

       So long as it be trippingly performed,
       our minds will lighten and our hearts be warmed.

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