Happy Disputed Birthday, Willy S.

This post will definitely solidify my standing as a big fat nerd, as I am posting a Happy Birthday shoutout to a long deceased English playwright.  But, what can I say?  Well, my good friend, Sammy, puts it best:

"Shakespeare knew the human mind, and its most minute and intimate workings, and he never introduces a word, or a thought, in vain or out of place; if we do not understand him, it is our own fault."  -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 (This bobblehead was given to me by one of my students last year.  I love it with every fiber of my being.)

In honor of the man of the day, I give you my favorite sonnet.  If you've ever seen Sense and Sensibility, this is the sonnet Maryanne quotes as she laments the loss of her Willoughby.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.