Billy-Boy

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, (sonnet 104)
To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, 
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, 
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, 
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd, 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand, 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, 
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd: 
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: 
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead. 

Mina kunskaper om dagens jubilar, och hans verk, är minimala — men jag gillar honom, utan att egentligen veta varför. Kanske fick jag upp ögonen för honom när vår klass spelade "En midsommarnattsdröm" i åttan, och jag plötsligt förstod sådant jag inte förstått tidigare. Dessförinnan hade jag nog varit mest fascinerad av hur barn i brittiska böcker alltid citerade Shakespeare, och spelade hans pjäser, både i skolan och för familj och vänner på sommarloven.  

Jag minns så väl första gången jag slog upp ett shakespearcitat, det var när jag läste Gwendoline Courtneys bok Teaterbitna (Stepmother), då var jag i yngre tonåren. 

First Witch 

    When shall we three meet again? 

    In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch 

    When the hurlyburly's done, 

    When the battle's lost and won.

Third Witch 

    That will be ere the set of sun.

First Witch 

    Where the place?

Second Witch 

     Upon the heath.

Third Witch 

    There to meet with Macbeth.

First Witch 

    I come, Graymalkin!

Det var då jag blev medveten om hans existens, en av nöjesläsningens fantastiska biverkningar.

Möter jag ett okänt citat, brukar jag först se efter om det härstammar från Billy-Boy eller Bibeln, jag skulle tro att de två är de största källorna till uttryck och citat.

I dag har jag roat mig med att se vad Gutenberg har att bjuda i shakespearväg, och det var inte lite. Det roar mig att se den mängd av olika aspekter på Shakespears skrivande, som författare genom tiderna har gett sig i kast med. Hans liv, naturligtvis, men även hans syn på växter, fåglar, mat och läkekonst, för att nämna några få ämnen. Somliga låter Shakespears namn markera vilken tidsepok de skrev om, andra i vilken del av England deras böcker utspelar sig. I sanning intressant. Det kommer att ta lång tid innan jag har tittat på de böckerna som intresserar mig mest — här markerade med en illskär asterisk.

Jag inser att om jag vill skriva, om det jag tänkte skriva om den gode William, så får jag återkomma en annan dag.

 The Mentor: Shakespeare's Country, Vol. 4, Num. 8, Serial No. 108, June 1, 1916, by William Winter

Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

What Is Man? And Other Stories, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

A Life of William Shakespeare, 1898, by Sidney Lee

The Poetical Works of John Milton, by John Milton

ON SHAKESPEAR. 1630

Tolstoy on Shakespeare, by Leo Tolstoy

Representative Men, by Ralph Waldo Emerson #3 in our series by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, by William Hazlitt

Shakespearean Playhouses, by Joseph Quincy Adams

The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 8 (of 12), by Robert G. Ingersoll

The plant-lore and garden-craft of Shakespeare, by  Henry Nicholson Ellacombe  *

Is Shakespeare Dead?, by Mark Twain

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, by  Walter Horatio Pater

Entire PG Edition of William Dean Howells, by William Dean Howells

Oxford Lectures on Poetry, by Andrew Cecil Bradley

Dark Lady of the Sonnets, by George Bernard Shaw

Voices from the Past, by Paul Alexander Bartlett

English Critical Essays, by Various

Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies, by Samuel Johnson

Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14, by Elbert Hubbard

Of All Things, by Robert C. Benchley

Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare by D. Nichol Smith

Visions and Revisions, by John Cowper Powys

The Art of Letters, by Robert Lynd

Famous Reviews, by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

Elizabethan Demonology, by Thomas Alfred Spalding

Amenities of Literature, by Isaac Disraeli

 Dish Of Orts, by George MacDonald

Shakespeare and Music, by Edward W. Naylor

William Shakespeare, by Georg Brandes

Adventures in Criticism, by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

How Shakspere Came to Write the Tempest, by  Rudyard Kipling and Ashley H. Thorndike

The Man Shakespeare, by Frank Harris

Lectures on the English Poets, by William Hazlitt, Edited by Alfred Rayney Waller and Ernest Rhys

The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Delia Salter Bacon

A Critic in Pall Mall, by Oscar Wilde, Edited by E. V. Lucas

Confessions of a Caricaturist, by Oliver Herford

The Facts About Shakespeare, by  William Allan Nielson and Ashley Horace Thorndike

Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709), by Nicholas Rowe

The Age of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne

A Century of Science and Other Essays, by John Fiske

The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth, by John Awdeley and Thomas Harman

Shakespeare's Family, by Mrs. C. C. Stopes  *

 The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc., ed. by William Andrews  *

Shakespeare Jest-Books;, by Unknown  *

Tragedy, by Ashley H. Thorndike

Folk-lore of Shakespeare, by  Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer  *

Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher by S. T. Coleridge

Journeys to Bagdad, by Charles S. Brooks, Illustrated by Allen Lewis

Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592, by Arthur Acheson

A Day with William Shakespeare, by Maurice Clare  *

Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I., by H. N. Hudson

Plays of Near & Far, by Lord Dunsany

Shakespeare's Bones, by C. M. Ingleby

 Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies, by Samuel Johnson #9 in our series by Samuel Johnson

Books and Characters, by Lytton Strachey

A Book of Burlesque, by Willam Davenport Adams

Shakespeare's England, by William Winter  *

Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) by Lewis Theobald

Shakespeare in the Theatre, by William Poel

The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, by  J. J. Jusserand  *

A Study of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edited by Edmund Gosse

Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown, by Andrew Lang

The Critical Game, by John Albert Macy

Bacon is Shake-Speare, by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

A Warwickshire Lad, by George Madden Martin  *

Characteristics of Women, by Anna Jameson  *

Henry VIII and His Court, by Herbert Tree

Shakespeare and the Modern Stage, by Sir Sidney Lee

Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by  Edmund William Gosse

The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 2, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Shakespeare and Music, by Christopher Wilson  *

Master Skylark, by John Bennett, Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch

Pieces of Hate, by Heywood Broun

Among My Books, by James Russell Lowell

Montaigne and Shakspere, by John M. Robertson

The Rising of the Court, by Henry Lawson

The Mystery of Francis Bacon, by William T. Smedley

The Ornithology of Shakespeare, by James Edmund Harting  *

The Shakespeare-Expositor: An Aid to the Perfect Understanding of Shakespeare's Plays, by Thomas Keightley

Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers, by Henry Green

Shakspere & Typography, by William Blades  *

Aspects of Literature, by J. Middleton Murry

Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm  *

The Unpublishable Memoirs, by A. S. W. Rosenbach  *

Thomas de Quincey #8 in our series by Thomas de Quincey

Bacon and Shakespeare, by Albert F. Calvert

My Literary Passions, by William Dean Howells

An Introduction to Shakespeare, by  H. N. MacCracken and F. E. Pierce and W. H. Durham

The Shakespearean Myth, by Appleton Morgan

England and the War, by Walter Raleigh

A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen, by William Spalding

Shakespeare and Precious Stones, by George Frederick Kunz  *

The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's, by David Masson

Time in the Play of Hamlet, by Edward P. Vining

Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll

A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare, by Frederick Gard Fleay

Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies, by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories, by Andrew Lang

By-ways in Book-land, by William Davenport Adams  *

Summer Days in Shakespeare Land, by Charles G. Harper

Bacon And Shakspere  Author: William Henry Burr

Shakspere And Montaigne, by Jacob Feis  *

Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost, by Gregory Thornton  *

A Hero and Some Other Folks, by William A. Quayle

What was the Religion of Shakespeare?, by M. M. Mangasarian

A Midnight Fantasy, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, by Richard G. Moulton

William Shakespeare, His Homes and Haunts, by Samuel Levy Bensusan  *

A Maid of Many Moods, by Virna Sheard

More Pages from a Journal, by Mark Rutherford

Views and Reviews, by William Ernest Henley

An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway, by Martin Brown Ruud

Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess by Anna Benneson McMahan

Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof, by Franklin H. Head

The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote by Charles Dudley Warner

Will Shakespeare, by Clemence Dane

The Shakespeare Myth, by Edwin Durning-Lawrence

Warwickshire, The Land of Shakespeareby Clive Holland  *

William Shakespere, of Stratford-on-Avon, by Scott Surtees

William Shakespeare, by John Masefield

The Critics Versus Shakspere, by Francis A. Smith

Shakspere, Personal Recollections, by John A. Joyce  *

Judith Shakespeare, Her love affairs and other adventures, by William Black

Tieck's Essay on the Boydell Shakspere Gallery, by George Henry Danton

Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems, by Jesse Johnson

Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare, by Walter Savage Landor

Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music  by Shakespeare