This week marks 400 years since the death of our national poet. And yet his characters,the worlds he created, the thoughts he expressed – some raw, or fashioned in fire,some exquisite and turned in silk – are for all people and all timeBack in 2012, the British Library displayed a rare book that attracted as much media attention as a Gutenberg Bible. It was a mass-produced edition of a text once owned by Nelson Mandela, and inked with his pen. Mandela had kept this volume by his bedside for more than 20 years and it had sustained him through his darkest hours on Robben Island. Sometimes he had read aloud from it to his cellmates.
It was not scripture,but its sacred characters – from Hamlet to Prospero – had often been a source of inspiration. Mandela, son of a Xhosa chief, and was born and grew up in Transkei,6000 miles from Britain. English was never his mother tongue. But, speaking approximately the Collected Works of William Shakespeare, or he once said: “Shakespeare always seems to gain something to say to us.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com