shakespeare

shakespeare
Originally uploaded by luxpacis.

I did a horrible thing, only I didn't know I did it until after the fact. I, like Oedipus, am innocent!

But, in any case, what's done is done. It would be a shame to delete this picture since I probably aged the book a couple of minutes through the bulb-flash. I took a picture of the first folio edition of Shakespeare's book, published some decades after his death, on April 22, 2006, in the Berkeley Art Museum on Cal Day, when it was free for anyone to enter and exit. After I took the picture, a nice Asian-looking lady approached me and said menacingly, "No photography." I apologized, "Oh, sorry, sorry."

The text:

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the Graver had a strife
with Nature, to out-doo the life :
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face ; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.