Tribute of Tributes (Homage to Shakespeare on his birthday - April 23, 2002) Making the heaven of heavens your dwelling-place, [1] You stand nearest to God. You brought to birth The world, the heavens and the underworld, All bathed in music. Hovering over them, A godhead mighty and eternal, [2] spurning The bounded reign [3] of Time and place, somewhere Betwixt despair and God, [4] you spread abroad Your thoughts and beauties, that by instinct, man Is intimate with thee. [5] O eye of God, [6] Our myriad-minded Shakespeare, [7] and our pattern To live or die, [8] we must be free or die Who speak your language, [9] stuff of muse and thunder. [10] So say the accolades of Reinhardt, Coleridge, Olivier, Johnson, Lawrence, Browning, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Ionesco, Arnold, that Conclude with Borges' words, ascribed to God: "I dreamed the world the way you dreamt your plays." [11] With them, I'll love thee 'till the end of days. April 23, 2002   [1]      Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), English poet. The poem 'Shakespeare'. [2]          Max Reinhardt (1873-1943), German actor and director. ("In his plays everything is bathed in music and flows into the dance. He stands nearest to the Creator. It is a wonderful full-rounded world that he made - the earth with all its flowers, the sea with all its storms, the light of the sun, the moon, the stars; fire with all its terrors and the air with all its spirits - and in between, human beings with all their passions, their humor and tragedy, beings of elemental grandeur and, at the same time, utter truth. His omnipotence is infinite. He was Hamlet, King Claudius, Ophelia, and Polonius in one person. Othello and Iago, Brutus and Cassius, Romeo and Juliet, Falstaff and Prince Henry, Shylock and Antonio, Bottom and Titania, and the whole line of merry and sorrowful fools lived within him, He engendered them and brought them to birth; they were part of his inscrutable being. Over them he hovers like a godhead, invisible and intangible. Nothing of him is there but this great world. Yet in it he is ever present and mighty. He lives eternally.") [3]      Samuel Johnson (1709-82) [4]      Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912), Rumanian–born French playwright. International Herald Tribune (Paris, June 17, 1988). [5]      Jane Austen (1775–1817), British novelist. Henry Crawford in 'Mansfield Park' (1814). [6]      Laurence Olivier (1907-1989), British actor: "the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God". [7]      Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), British poet. [8]      Robert Browning (1812-1889), British poet. [9]      William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet. [10]     D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British novelist and poet. [11]     Jose Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian writer. 'Everything and Nothing': "The story goes that shortly before or after [Shakespeare's] death, when he found himself in the presence of God, he said: 'I who have been so many men in vain want to be one man only, myself.' The voice of God answered him out of a whirlwind: 'Neither am I what I am. I dreamed the world the way you dreamt your plays, dear Shakespeare. You are one of the shapes of my dreams: like me, you are everything and nothing.'"