Shakespeare Is Timeless

Monday Ministerial Musings

By Rev. Mark William Ennis

2021 Blog Number 34

August 23, 2021

Vacation Blog #4

Pastor Mark is on vacation and is not writing blogs now. He pre-wrote and uploaded these vacation blogs before leaving on vacation. Because they are dated they may or may not reflect current event.

Shakespeare Is Timeless

The week before I left for vacation I spent a wonderful day down the Jersey Shore. Among other things I did that evening was go to a Shakespeare Festival at Bradley Beach. High quality performers from the Local Shakespeare Society were doing readings from various Shakespeare plays. In between readings were musical pieces from the Shakespeare era. It was wonderful harpsicord music. It was a most wonderful evening.

Fifty years ago, when I came to the beach I came with other interests. The thought of hearing Shakespeare at the beach would have been something that I would have laughed at, if I had even thought about it. Back then the shore for me was beach, sand, rides and Skee-ball. I still love the ocean, the sand and the smell of salt water but now I was able to appreciate Shakespeare in a way that I had never been able to before.

Hearing these excerpts, which I haven’t really heard since high school, reminded me that original sin, and the ways that that  sin presents itself, does not change. Crime stories and novels of our modern era have the same themes of Shakespeare. Themes of power, greed, betrayal, violence are in Shakespeare and our modern life. Since the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, humans have struggled with the conflict between being submissive to God and the desire to be self-centered. In our Holy Scriptures the lesson is simple: be submissive and obedient to God. Shakespeare plays are tragedies of the evil that comes from making ourselves the centers of our lives.

So, why is Shakespeare still popular? Because the themes of Shakespeare’s plays are the themes of our day. Perhaps we all need to read Shakespeare next to the Bible. Shakespeare can be the tragedy and the Bible can be the alternative.

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To read more of Pastor Mark’s writings, please order a copy of his book:https://deepriverbooks.com/books/the-circle-of-seven/