[lbo-talk] Shakespeare

[Carrol Cox]

Shakespeare is weird. I was just browsing in the current New Yorker and
came across the two lines below, quoted from Cymbeline. It's been 54
years since I read that play, and therefore the lines are without
context for me, just two lines hanging in midair:

Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift:
His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent.

These lines owe _nothing_ to any profundity of content; the content
would fit a small-town weekly's report on a church bazaar. Yet they
really are wonderful.

Like I say, Shakespeare is weird. These two lines reflect his difference
from other poets in English: even when his words aren't saying much they
somehow stick together so  perfectly.

Carrol