So they say, anyway. Im not too impressed with Shakespeare. Or any other “older” literary work we as students are supposed to dissect in today’s world. I always thought, if I wrote horribly my own novel – got no ones attention – in five hundred years students of the day might be dissecting my own work. The only obstacle for which me and Shakespeare are different is that in todays world I have a lot of competition. Any two year old can get published.

I could write with no depth whatsoever but someone, someday, of the professor-sort, will be grading their students on their interpretation of my depth, a depth I know today I didnt intend. There will be entire books devoted to scholarly discussions and essays about my work. I find it annoying, actually, that teachers could believe there is more depth than there might actually have been. Because there is no way to verify by asking good ol’ Will.

I have written short stories for classes, and classmates make all sorts of outrageous comments about subtle meaning and whatnot that I know full well I had no part in. My intended depth had in fact fallen on deaf ears. When youre as poetic and vague as Shakespeare, anyone with an imagination can put their own interpretive spin on anything.

Shakespeare uses a now-difficult vocabulary and prefers to express things in a contorted way; nothing to do with Ovid. If he wants to, he can write as clear as anybody even when dealing with classical subjects (consider Mark Antony’s funereal oration).