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Good morning.

I’m a hopeful person. I know this because I’ve booked tickets for an open air production of Shakespeare’s ‘Much ado about nothing’. The organisers say the audience will be under cover but the Great British Summer could still have the last laugh with driving rain and plummeting temperatures.  We’re advised to bring a blanket to fend off the evening chill.

It reminds me of an outdoor production of a Shakespeare play I saw once. The deal was that if the play was rained off before the interval then the audience would get their money back. If, however, it started to rain heavily and drove the whole performance off the grass after the interval then the play would be abandoned without refunds. That’s what happened. Five minutes into the new Act the heavens opened, heavy rain drenched the performers and audience, and everything stopped.

Perhaps I could have responded to this unlucky event in true Shakespearean style if I had been quick thinking enough. It sounds so much better to declare, with Hamlet, that you are a victim of the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ rather than saying you’ve had some bad luck. Surely no individual other than Shakespeare has adorned the English language with so many quotable phrases.

Today we remember the anniversary of the playwright’s death. In ‘As you like it’, one character compares human life to the performance of an actor on a stage. We have exits and entrances. We play many parts. And, at the end of the seven ages of existence, we end our days in ‘mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’ Maybe, but as Shakespeare’s example shows us, our words can live on.

God, whose living Word is Jesus Christ, thank you for great words that speak to us deep truths across the centuries.

Amen