“To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us.”

- Ben Jonson

(An 80-line elegy prefixed to the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works in 1623)

“Soul of the age!

The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!

My Shakespeare, rise;

. . . . . . . . .

Thou art a monument without a tomb,

And art alive still while thy book doth live,

And we have wits to read and praise to give.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sweet swan of Avon what a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

. . . . . . . . . .

But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere

Advanced and made a constellation there!

Shine forth, thou star of poets….”

And Milton - “On Shakespeare”, a sonnet written for the frontispiece of the second edition in 1631 -

“What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones

The labor of an age in piléd stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.”

And of course we know that Shakespeare understood what his monument would be -

Sonnet 18

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

. . . . . . . .

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

and Sonnet 55

“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this pow’rful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.”

Words addressed to his beloved but also to the written word that will outlive all “gilded monuments”. This was the truth that Shakespeare understood, as Ovid did before him and Keats after him.

But in this 400th anniversary year we celebrate an act of friendship on the part of Heminges and Condell inspired by “wonder and astonishment” for their fellow player and author of their plays, seven years after his death, in bringing the First Folio into being, his true monument.

This is a dramatic story of team effort, devotion and persistence in the face of obstacles that is set out in Emma Smith’s 2016 study, just republished, and Shakespeare’s Book by Chris Laoutaris, published this year.

It was the vision and dedication of all those involved in the creation of the First Folio that preserved 36 of the plays, 18 of which might have been lost forever - words that have been the basso continuo of “wonder and astonishment,” as well as wisdom and comfort, for countless generations of readers, playgoers, poets and writers.

It is that image from baroque music of the underlying, connecting theme that best describes for me the part that Shakespeare has played in the artistic lives of so many writers.

You might recall the moment when Melville, at age 29, first read Shakespeare - whom he called his “Divine William” - when he found an edition with large enough print for his poor eyes that were “as tender as young sparrows.”

Seven volumes that changed his life.

That was in February 1849. Three thousand miles away, on another continent, and 32 years earlier, in April 1817, the young John Keats set off for the Isle of Wight, intent on attempting to write an epic poem (Endymion). He carried with him a new purchase, “a copy of Shakespeare in seven small volumes.”

According to his biographer, Walter Jackson Bate, “the book was to serve almost as a talisman or charm,” and, as we know, a key to his development as a thinker and poet.

As he wrote to his friend, the artist Benjamin Haydon, at this, a time of great loneliness and spiritual trial, “I never quite despair and I read Shakespeare - indeed I shall I think never read any other Book much -”

And of course Keats himself became the lodestar for many poets who came after him, among them Gerard Manley Hopkins - Keats was a presence from his early childhood - and Amy Clampitt, whose biography “Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt” by Willard Spiegelman has just been published by Knopf.

In this delightful book, at once scholarly and highly readable, Willard Spiegelman beautifully links the poet to her poetic forebears - the basso continuo in her life.

At one point, describing Clampitt’s ability to enter into the world around her, to enjoy it in a Keatsian fashion, he quotes from a letter of Keats - “ – or if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the Gravel.” (pp. 108-109).

But now, in this 400th anniversary year, a celebration of the book if ever there was one, nearly one quarter a way through the 21st century, we find ourselves in a world where physical books are disappearing from the shelves of academic and other libraries and are being replaced with digital versions.

AI is suddenly a very present reality. Both are new phenomena for which we don’t have a map, while the resurgence of book banning brings history to our doorstep, with a map, if we care to read it. And, “while we have wits to read,” we will find, as people always have, truth in fiction, in stories.

A mirror is held up to this challenging new world in Joanna Scott’s short story collection, Excuse Me While I Disappear. Through startling feats of imagination, combining depths of perception and humanity with the lightest touch, these stories, like all the best stories, tell us about our world and about ourselves.

But now let us return to Shakespeare,”Soul of the Age!”, whose words are the basso continuo that still weaves our age together, and, for a coda, turn to Emily Dickinson, another poet of great importance to Amy Clampitt. This lyric of four quatrains, like all Emily Dickinson poems, has as many readings as readers, but for me it speaks of the “Sweet Swan of Avon” –

“This was a Poet –

It is That

Distills amazing sense

From Ordinary Meanings –

And Attar so immense

From the familiar species

That perished by the Door –“

(#446)

And with that, the Note for Your Calendar - On Sunday, May 14, Mother’s Day, at 5 p.m. at Stonington Free Library, Willard Spiegelman will discuss his biography of Amy Clampitt - a fascinating figure in the world of 20th century poetry - a much anticipated event and one not to be missed.

Belinda de Kay is director emeritus of Stonington Free Library.