So, aside from the new responsibilities at the job, another reason I hadn’t written anything for two months was because my shelves were not up. I ordered this lovely leaning bookcase from Crate and Barrel. “Some assembly required,” it said, but I am a master of Ikea, and so I feared not. Two months later, tired of stepping over the shelves every morning, I finally hunted down my super and begged him to assemble my shelves. He installed, I paid, he left, I gathered all my Shakespeare books, my Shakespeare action figure and arranged everything nicely on the new leaning shelves.

Or so I thought.

This morning I heard a soft noise in the hallway. My Shakespeare action figure had fallen to the floor, pushed over by a copy of “Richard III.” Worse, my Shakespeare action figure had lost his pen.

Having just regained my desire to write by the assembly of the shelves, I feared this portent did not augur well. Shakespeare had fallen and lost his pen! Or had he been pushed? Had the copy of "Richard III" shoved him off his perch, muttering, “And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die!”

“There is providence in the fall of a sparrow,” I told the Shakespeare action figure as I picked him up and put him on another shelf, far from Richard III. I could not think of another Shakespearean quote using the word “fall,” although, as all know, the word “fall,” “fallen” or “befall” occurs 494 times in his works.

Instead, I thought: how are the mighty fallen!

Running that down to its source, I found it in the King James Bible:

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.

I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

Jeez. Have the Republicans really read this book?

Labels: Shakespeare

posted by Elizabeth at 6:49 PM