Off Someone Else's Shelf: Hamlet's Dresser

A few weeks ago, I followed up on a comment someone left at a cafe on the motherblog about a book they were reading and enjoying, a memoir called Hamlet's Dresser by Bob Smith.  After reading more about it, I decided to order up a used and inexpensive (large print no less) copy that was to come by slow boat from Amazon, and in the press of Christmas prep forgot I'd done so.  On the Saturday before Christmas it showed up in a box on my doorstep like a unexpected present dropped from Santa's sleigh.  Opening it since has brought me something good from someone else's shelf and life.  Something I wouldn't have read but for a chance encounter in a cafe with an unknown other.

In this excerpt, while he is sitting in the town library drying off after coming in soaked from a heavy downpour,  the gardenia-smelling librarian Miss Russell, has just put a small book by the elbow of Bob the author, when he is a fifth grade boy living in a difficult home situation in which he carries the primary responsibility for caring for his severely impaired younger sister:

"Stamped in gold on the dark blue cover was the same pudgy face as the window [a stained glass window in the library].  Along the side in bright gold letters, "William Shakespeare--The Merchant of Venice".  I opened it.  I could see right away that it was a play.  When I was ten I hated plays. Starting as a scratchy six-year-old crepe paper carrot on Holy Rosary's health day, I'd been making my reluctant, shy way through nerve-racking Christmas plays and Spring Festivals.

The Merchant of Venice

William Shakespeare

Actus Primus. Scene 1

Venice

Enter Antonio, Salarino, and Solanio

ANTONIO:  In sooth I know not why I am so sad...

  In sooth I know not why I am so sad...

  I read it again.   Ten simple monosyllabic words and of course I couldn't know what sooth meant, but it's hardly necessary.  It changes nothing in the simple declarative sentence that could not more perfectly describe the kid reading it.  Suddenly the little colored window seemed much more alive in the emerging late-afternoon sun.

   I think that the more confused you are inside, the more you need to trust a thing outside yourself. I was desperate to lean against something bigger than me, and it was clear that William Shakespeare understood what it's like to ache and not know why. 

   In our house silence was the code.  Like many people, we avoided talking about what most needed talking about. Shakespeare became my secret language, an ancient remote cuneiform speech that somehow made me more visible to myself.  I see it all the time now.  When a phrase ignites the room with some compelling truth I watch people thrill to the confirmation.  "Yes," they say, "that's it! That's exactly what I think. When did he write that?"  

  Of course my excitement about Shakespeare had nothing to do with his position at the zenith of English literature or even that he too was born in a town named Stratford.  I didn't know anything about him personally and I didn't care.  Shakespeare was like staring at the religious calendars or the Latin Mass.  Poetry became a beautiful place to hide from my life and from my parents, a place I knew they'd never follow me to."