Shakespeare In A Nutshell Poem by gershon hepner

Hamlet found it hard to change the world,
Iago managed, for he was malign,
pre-senile Lear let himself be hurled,
and howling decrescendoed to a whine.
Falstaff taught a student prince to laugh;
the prince forgot, the way that princes do,
and thought it vulgar how he used to barf,
declaring: 'Old man, I do not know you.'
Though Cleopatra golden barges could afford,
she died when disappointed by a Roman,
betrayed like Julius Caesar who ignored
the Ides of March, despite a dreadful omen.
Brutus stabbed his leader in the back
and Richard murdered boys because ambitious,
while Bottom wrote and acted like a hack
though Queen Titania found him quite delicious
because the king of fairies on a long
midsummer night with love his lady teased;
she stole his Indian boy and done him wrong
and couldn't recognize an ass that sneezed.
First Beatrice found Benedict unsound
then, much ado of nothing, was his bride;
the second Richard sat upon the ground
and talked about the death of kings, then died.
Jacques found that life has seven stages,
one more than wives the eighth of Henrys had,
another Henry's soldiers were courageous,
and for a week Olivia was sad.
In Venice, merchants who would try to use
a pound of flesh to guarantee a loan
found out that Christians could be hard on Jews,
their lawyers pleading in a moral tone.
The Capulets and Montagues would feud
while lovers loved, and died because of error,
and Kate was kissed, obedient to her dude,
but nothing matches finally the terror
Macbeth felt looking at the dagger which
his Lady saw while walking in her sleep,
and realized that death makes no one rich
and life's a tale of nothing, hardly deep.
They're all the stuff that's made of Shakespeare's dreams
and rounded not by sleep but fantasy,
and with them our imagination teems
as to our mind they from his folios flee.

Harold Bloom, in his book 'Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, ' asserts that Shakespeare 'essentially invented human personality as we continue to know and value it.'


10/27/98