When you write about William Shakespeare, you use superlatives. The greatest of all writers of English. The greatest writer of anything. The largest vocabulary, the user of most words -- 25,000, 40 percent of which he made up himself. He lived in a period (1564-1616 -- 52 years) of linguistic ferment with splendid, creative writing in the air -- Marlowe, Ben Jonson, the King James translation of the Bible.

He wrote splendid drama and poetry. He created the Shakespearean sonnet.

The Shakespearean sonnet was a disciplined 14-line poem with three quatrains plus a two-line couplet. It was rhymed - AB, AB, CD, CD, EF, EF, GG. Each line was iambic pentameter, which meant it had 10 beats, DAH, DAH, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah.

There were later sonnets by great poets, Wordsworth, Milton for example. They each had 14 lines but marched to the beat of a different drummer.

Shakespeare wrote 154 of his sonnets. I have written one. Mine appeared in print in 1939. Here’s one of Shakespeare’s, picked at random. Number #116.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds.

Or bends with the remover to remove,

O no, it is an ever fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering barque,

Whose worth is unknown, although his height be taken,

Love’s not times’ fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickles’ compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom,

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Here’s one of mine, the only one I ever wrote, also picked at random you might say, Number #1. It requires some explanation that Shakespeare’s don’t. I wrote it while a student at the university. The “Lawn” in the first line is the central section of the university’s grounds. “Beta” in the last line was the name of the mongrel beagle who was the school’s unofficial mascot with a large harem of stray females he mated with in the spring.

SPRING at the University of Virginia.

Green grass will soon be carpeting the Lawn,

The leaves will burst to life on ev’ry tree,

And birds will wake you up at crack of dawn

With madd’ning dissonant cacophony.

Raise up the windows -- open wide each door,

For lo, the sun’s passed over Aries’ line;

“Old Overholt” and “White Horse” are no more;

It’s time for mint; bock beer replaces wine.

To thee, Oh Spring, so vernal, fresh and kind,

The student looks with pleasure -- yes, and dread;

Your dances and your sports relax the mind;

“Exams will last from nine to two,” he said.

You move us all -- from honor man to clod;

And what you do to Beta -- Oh, my God!!

As he did with his own last name, Shakespeare took great liberties with his sonnet form. He and others spelled his last name seven or more different ways. When he needed to get rid of a syllable he just squeezed or dropped one from a word and compressed it. Otherwise his iambic pentameter line would not scan properly. He’d created this particular sonnet form. It was his. He could damned well do what he pleased with it. Even in less-formal writing he wrote poetically even when he didn’t bother to rhyme at all. That’s been described as playing tennis without a net.

I just hope you’re laughing with me at my pretentious, parochial and provincial comparison of a sonnet of mine with one by Shakespeare, but, as Shelley wrote, poetry challenges the best and happiest minds and this was a happy exercise.

Here are a few samplings of sonnet startups:

Milton, “When I consider how my light is spent”

Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us; late and soon

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be”

“That you were once unkind befriends me now”

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.”

“Alas, ‘tis true, I have gone here and there”

Shaxpere - Shagspere - Shakspere - Shaxpeare - Shakespeare - Shackpere - Shackspere - William Schackspere

You dear reader, sit down and write a poem. Do it now, this instant.

A.C.

Attorney Austin Cunningham has been the president of five business companies and in 1988 was named Outstanding Elder Citizen of the Year for South Carolina.

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