I’ve been working on Shakespeare.

I might have said the same almost any of the past sixty years. I am always working on Shakespeare – not as scholar or performer but to be with him, in his presence, to feel his reflected glow. To few living persons have I felt so near and of none more awe. I need Shakespeare in my days, and when his presence fades, it must be refreshed. On a few other writers and composers I feel this dependency, but on none more than Will, as I call him, my Good Will.

Why? Our passions define us. Whom we love or hate is who we are. Yet we seldom recognize affection as self-definition. We tend to treat love and hate as choices, not our doom.

Shakespeare was my first love in the word-worker line. C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series were the first books I loved, but Shakespeare, whom I met initially on the stage, was something else. Raised in a family where discussion of one’s self was anathema, here were Shakespeare’s characters blurting how they felt without hesitation or apology in language whose mysterious music would not leave me be. My grandmother took me to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut for several years, just us two. We’d picnic by the Sound and attend the matinee.

Ninth grade year, my school’s “dramat” put on Hamlet. The principals were all twelfth-graders, of course, but I played Osric – and memorized all of the play’s words minus the cuts. If I quote Hamlet a lot it’s because those words are in my blood as much as The Book of Common Prayer.

In college, several summers I went to England’s Stratford, to soak in Shakespeare.

I wrote a book about Shakespeare, which is buried somewhere – and not very good – but it was a way for me to be with Shakespeare. I watched all of the BBC’s Shakespeare plays on DVD and listened to the plays and poems on CDs.

And he’s not done with me yet. At present, I’m immersed in his 156 Sonnets, responding (in writing) to each, searching out patterns and the man. It is often said of Shakespeare he’s the least known of great authors because he left few biographical traces. I take the opposite view. No author revealed himself more thoroughly, only he did it through his stage characters and the somewhat stagey Poet of the sonnets. He pleads – and bleeds – for us to know him as he is – in his core – but one must listen closely. I feel I know him almost better than myself.

I’ll share the result of my sonnet submersion if it passes muster – not as missives, but in addition, as a sort of busman’s holiday, for those who might enjoy the jaunt. Among the wonders of online missives is the ability to share what only a few might read without risking a “flop.” A profitability requirement constricts a book like a straitjacket. Much of the literature I treasure didn’t make a nickel in its moment.

I feel protective of Shakespeare as one might of a parent. I resent his misusage by exploiters of his celebrity. Some adaptations of his work pay splendid homage – West Side Story, for example; others borrow his tropes to attract a crowd. I dread the day when his language is deemed too difficult to teach except to specialists, dooming him to the obscurity of Homer and Virgil.

I love Shakespeare because he taught me how to live and how to write. And because he showed me with astonishing frankness who he was. I revere him as a teacher, savior, friend.