Brush up on your Shakespeare--it's Billy's birthday

By Dick Rossé
Special to the Coastal Point

I’m going to tell you about a very remarkable Friend of mine. But first I’m going to alert you to a stunning news item: The greatest poet and dramatist in history, William Shakespeare, was born 442 years ago, on April 23, 1564. How’s that for a bulletin to knock your socks off?

In the interest of accuracy in media, I must qualify a few points. We’re not sure that W. Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon actually wrote “Hamlet,” “Romeo and Juliet” and other classics that bear his name. There are entire societies, each with its own Web site, that claim their man — Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon or Edward deVere — was the actual author of the sonnets and plays we ascribe to Bill S. There’s even a question about the date of his birth. We know it was around April 23, 1564, but it could have been weeks earlier or later.

Some, including most American high school students for the past 200 years, would also dispute the suggestion that W.S. was the greatest poet and dramatist in history. They had to suffer through readings (often by incompetent teachers) of key speeches from “Hamlet,” “MacBeth,” et al.

When I was 13 and just beginning high school, our English teacher assigned us the task of memorizing big chunks of unfathomable Elizabethan poetry from “The Merchant of Venice,” which we studied, were tested on and eventually came to hate — along with its author and our teacher.

I have long maintained that the best way to guarantee that a celebrated author will never be read again is to make him required reading in high school. At the age of 13, I quickly developed a deep antipathy toward Shakespeare. A year later, I felt the same revulsion when we had to read, discuss and were tested on George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.”

OK, let’s fast-forward to the present and return to this estimable Friend of mine. Her name is really Friend — first name Esther — a Shakespeare fan par excellence who lives in Lewes.

Esther has had a life-long love affair with Stratford’s favorite son. Until her official retirement, she taught English and drama in and around Bucks County, Pa., and, for the past several years, she has conducted a program at the Possum Point Playhouse where Shakespeare fans meet, read and discuss the Bard’s comedies, histories and tragedies.

Esther is well known in area theatrical circles for having directed (and performed) a large number of plays at Possum Point, Second Street in Milford and the newly restored theater in Milton. Currently, she’s staging Oscar Wilde’s wonderful comedy, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” at Milton.

But her first love remains Shakespeare. So while she’s attending to the “Earnest” performance, she’s bringing together several of the area’s best known thespians for a birthday tribute to Shakespeare at 2 p.m. on April 23 in Milton.

Her enthusiasm for the Bard is boundless and never-flagging. And her passion for the entire Shakespeare oeuvre is infectious, thus putting the lie to all the talk about Old Bill being turgid, shopworn and incomprehensible.

Like other FOBs (Friends of the Bard), Esther isn’t bothered much by all those allegations about a Shakespeare contemporary being the real author of the Bard’s masterpieces. It’s interesting as a detective story, the FOBs will tell you, but in the final analysis, it’s the work, not the creator, that matters, and the words in the plays and sonnets ring with the same wisdom and beauty that they did half a millennium ago.

I worked with Esther a few years back when she directed “Morning’s At Seven” at Possum Point. There is a moment in the show when a character is supposed to grab a letter from another character and be chased around the stage with it. Esther watched with disappointment from her seat way back in the auditorium. She bounded down the aisle and leaped onto the stage to demonstrate the correct way to play the scene, dashing from one side of the stage to the other, tossing off suggestions as she ran.

Oh, did I mention that Esther Friend is 85?

Dick Rossé is a 36-year veteran of the Mutual and NBC radio networks, and for his final dozen years at NBC served as senior news correspondent in Washington, D.C. He currently resides in Dagsboro.