Today is Shakespeare’s birthday and, as it happens the 400th anniversary of his death. Some beautiful commemorative stamps have been issued in his honour and I just had to have a complete set of them.
Beautiful commemorative stamps
On Monday we start our journey to America for a family visit and then a road trip from Atlanta through the Appalachian Mountains along the Blue Ridge Parkway into the Shenandoah Valley and then on to Washington. Am I excited? Oh yes! You can travel along with us through my blog if you would like to though I doubt I will be posting every day. So, today we had to go to the sea as we won’t be seeing the sea for three weeks.
I used to tell my dubious teenagers that love at first sight, or love at first sonnet as here, is really possible. It happened to us across a crowded room in October 1966 and we have been together ever since. I love how Romeo and Juliet begin to intertwine their words as their first love engulfs them.
| ROMEO | [To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand | |
| This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: | ||
| My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand | ||
| To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. | ||
| JULIET | Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, | |
| Which mannerly devotion shows in this; | ||
| For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, | ||
| And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss. | ||
| ROMEO | Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? | |
| JULIET | Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. | |
| ROMEO | O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; | |
| They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. | ||
| JULIET | Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake. | |
| ROMEO | Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take. |
My Sister-in-law sent me Shakespeare’s Obituary which was in The New York Times today. It is very entertaining. Thanks V.