A New Series!!

So I've decided to begin a new series here on my blog, though in all likelihood I may never get around to posting a follow-up. We will call it...

Why Shakespeare is UberFab :)

This semester, I'm in a Shakespeare class that, at the pace of about a play a week, examines just how cool this cat really is. Today, I will discuss King Lear...because that's the play we're at right now. There are a couple of things that really stood out to me when I read it through the first time that I basically just want to post on here so that I can see if I have any pro-Shakespeare readers. Because I think he's wonderful, and you should too.

The King of France's speech in the play's first scene, praising his wife-to-be, just after she is banished and disinherited by her father for not flattering him:

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful, I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflam'd respect--
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unpriz'd precious maid of me--
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.

Reading stuff like this reminds me why I generally kill my 6.2% feminist.

My other Shakespearian shout-out comes from Act IV, Scene III--nothing personally moving perhaps, but just a beautiful image of fighting back tears.

Ay, sir; she took them, read them in my presence;
And now and then an ample tear trill'd down
Her delicate cheek: it seem'd she was a queen
Over her passion; who, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o'er her.

And this has been the Cliff's Notes fabulousness of Shakespeare, brought to you by yours truly.