(Images by DWB)
If forced or requested to select my favorite character in all of Shakespeare other than wild and wily Shakespeare himself, it would probably have to be the Dark Lady (or at least today it would definitely be the Dark Lady).
She is Good Will’s Mary Magdalene.
Anyone who’s ever loved a brilliant, promiscuous, raven-haired Spanish woman with darkly olive-colored skin and a shady reputation (to say the very least) will understand the attraction.
Her musical and poetic and intellectual abilities, her independent spirit and the fact that she inspired all this (all these deathless sonnets by the Western world’s greatest writer other than those who wrote the Bible) are her greatest calling cards.
“I do believe her, though I know she lies,” is one of my all-time favorite lines of poetry.
There have been myriads of scattered interpretations about the shades of meaning contained in this line.
And I know just what it means.
It’s about, among other things, Shakespeare’s voyeuristic obsessions and jealousies; and mine.
Dale Barrigar Williams
Extra Note for Uncle Will’s Birthday Card
Happy Birthday dear Will
You certainly are a thrill
Large experience grows
In your poetry and prose
Happy Deathday departed Bard
We try not to take it too hard
We will remember to live and laugh
Just like dear friend Falstaff
Leila
Saragun Springs 
Your photos continue to dazzle. I like the one shot at a right angle and with a sign that says, appropriately, “Wrong Way.”
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Happy Birthday William. The church in Stratford will be an absolute picture this weekend when all the boys from KES walk through the streets carrying bunches of flowers, mostly daffodils but always including rosemary and the head boy replaces the bards quill in the bust that stares down on his surprising short grave before the altar. It’s a lovely church with a marvelous old graveyard in which is planted a tree supposedly from the garden of Gethsemane.
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