Another Measure

One of the measures by which I weigh the value of a book is the number of other authors that book inspires me to read. Reading Moby Dick, and its many criticisms, inevitably leads me to Shakespeare.

Now that's a name I haven't considered in a long time. Years ago, in the far away land of Tacoma Washington, I was a young romantic. One day my English teacher tasked me to read Shakespeare. Like a lot of young romantic fools, I reached for Romeo and Juliet. Though I tried to learn, both my romanticism and my interest in Shakespeare evaporated.

Today, as I oscillate in the multifaceted and multicolored rainbow of meanings emanating from Moby Dick, I find a renewed interested in learning Melville's great influence.This time, being of brooding mind and always vested in black, I reach for Hamlet. The play starts out with a melancholy Hamlet. His father has died. His mother gently begs him to make peace with his father's death. Hamlet's reply attracts me in a peculiar way.

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solenm black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.