I Have Lots Of Things That Aren't

Poems Are Difficult To Silence.

Now A Protestant Confronting A Catholic Ghost Is Exactly Shakespeare's Way Of Grappling With What Was Not Simply A General Social Problem But One Lived Out In His Own Life.

A Comparably Capacious Embrace Of Beauty And Pleasure - An Embrace That Somehow Extends To Death As Well As Life, To Dissolution As Well As Creation - Characterizes Montaigne's Restless Reflections On Matter In Motion, Cervantes's Chronicle Of His Mad Knight, Michelangelo's Depiction Of Flayed Skin, Leonardo's Sketches Of Whirlpools, Caravaggio's Loving Attention To The Dirty Soles Of Christ's Feet.

Literate Households In The 17th Century Would Have Had The Bible, John Bunyan's "the Pilgrim's Progress," And A Couple Of Other Books. Shakespeare Plays Were Cheap, So You Could Buy Those, But A Folio Cost A Pound, Which Was An Incredible Amount Of Money Then.

Art Always Penetrates The Particular Fissures In One's Psychic Life.