Shakespeare Birthday Celebration 2015

Dear Will,

A friend once admonished my grumpiness on my birthday (when I passed a certain decade figure, not to be mentioned) by saying she was glad I’d been born.  Well, I’m glad you were born, Will.  And I thank you.

Thank you for being an actor.
Thank you for being a writer.
Thank you for being an actor’s writer.
Thank you for writing plays for yourself and your friends to act.
Thank you for writing for your own time.
Thank you for writing those simple truths that know no century or country and make your plays speak to generation after generation.
Thank you for the histories, which taught me enough to understand Wolf Hall.
Thank you for the comedies and the love and the laughter.
Thank you for the tragedies that challenge every actor to be worthy of them.

Thank you for Beatrice, Helena, Luciana, Olivia and Viola, Portia, Hermione, Kate, Bianca, for Goneril and Regan, Cordelia and Hero, Isabella and Lady Anne, for Cleopatra and Calpurnia, for Celia and Rosalind, Helena and Hermia, for the Countess, the Courtesan, Imogen and Marina, Dionyza and Lady MacB, not to mention Lady MacDuff, too many to list, even though there were so few women in each play.

Thanks for Hamlet and Richard II, Henry VI and Falstaff, Petruchio, Edmund, Edgar…Osric... and all the rest.

And although you didn’t write it, you clearly inspired it, so thanks, too, for “Something Rotten.”  Happy Birthday, Will.  Many, many joyous returns of the day.

~ Molly Matera, logging off to watch “Playing Shakespeare,” or Branagh’s “Much Ado,” or maybe Orson’s version of the Scottish play, or David Tennant’s "Hamlet,” or , or, or…..