Tomorrow is Shakespeare’s birthday. To mark the occasion here is one of his most heartfelt sonnets and, in contrast below, a light-hearted Caledonian perspective on his play Macbeth, from Duncan Ferguson.

WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE

              AND MEN’S EYES

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate;

~

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possest,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

~

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on Thee – and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

~

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

IN PRAISE OF SHAKESPEARE AND

    THAT SCOTTISH QUESTION

All hail that bard of Avon -

whose dramas flow on rhyming lines

comic and tragic in equal measure –

and his gripping plot in northern climes!

Where stands his Scottish play now

as the literary giant of our English tongue

reposes in eternal rest in Stratford

far from Forres of the murderous mormaer

(Macbeth’s scheming wife still hissing in the haunted hills)

far from Duncan of the house of Dunkeld

far from doom-laden Dunsinane

far from the walking woods of Birnam

free of the fearsome  Caledonian witches

whispering threats in Perthshire Gaelic

boiling cauldrons of false thanes and knaves

bubbling and babbling gleefully

‘Whaur’s Othello, Moor of Venice,

and yer Prince of Denmark noo?’?