Prologue - The Living Record (Sonnet 55)

What will survive of you after you die? Your memory, through those that knew you; but after them? Your name, carved in a gravestone? A lineage through your children and grandchildren? A building? A book?

If you were to go to Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, today; and if you were to walk up the leafy church-way to the large wooden door, and if you were to go inside, pay the fee, and navigate through the crowds all the way to the front, until a railing stops you from going further, you would see almost everything there is to see of what remains of one life from 400 years ago.

You would see a marble monument protruding from the wall above your head to your left, in front of the stained glass windows. Gold-crowned columns frame the marble bust of a man you might recognize from the cover of a book; a bald, fat, serious face with a ruffled collar holding a quill in one hand and paper in the other. You probably wouldn't recognize the family crest above his head: a falcon shaking a spear on a gold shield. If you look all the way up, you'd see the monument topped with a skull, which might bring to mind an image from Hamlet, whether or not you have ever seen the play.

There is an inscription on the monument, on a brass plate below the bust. The first part is in Latin, and even though the rest is in English it only makes you realize how much has changed with our language over time. The letter v is used in place of u; 'placed' is spelled plast and 'died' dide; there are odd Y's and hath's and doth's. If you were able to press a button and make the early modern English translate to our present-day language, it would read something like:

Stay, stranger, why are you going by so fast?
 Read, if you can, the man whom envious Death has placed within this monument:
 Shakespeare,
 with whom lively Nature died,
 whose name decks out this tomb far more than gold,
 since all that he has writ leaves living art, on the page, to show his wit.
 died April 23, 1616, age 53

Below the monument, on the ground, you see the actual grave. A well-swept large stone in the floor of the church, besmeared with the textures and stains of time. A recent sign marks it as Shakespeare's, and next to his, a stone marked as his wife's, Anne.

The gravestone is engraved with a little rhyme, in the same type of antiquated language, replicated on an easily visible sign. In present-day English, it says:

Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear
to dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
and cursed be he that moves my bones.

That's it. A stone and a monument. That's more than most people have 400 years after they die.

Of course, in the eyes of all posterity, Shakespeare is remembered for his writing. Shakespeare's words have a life of their own, and the life of words, it turns out, can be much much longer than the life of the person who wrote them.

The plays occupy the exalted state of the monument - ornate, gilded, looked up to, easy to see. The plays live on in the mouths of modern actors, and the characters continue to pace forth across the stage. The poems have survived in a less conspicuous manner; more like the grave stone that covers the bones in the floor.

If you were to open a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets and dig inside, it might be that you would find the remains of a person. The contents of these rhymes paint a portrait that shines more bright than any marble effigy or gilded monument. Incomplete, to be sure, but recognizably human. In the Sonnets, Shakespeare set out to write a work that would endure through time, to carry forth the memory of someone he loved. But who? To uncover the bones, you have to be willing to walk back through time, and understand the layers of dust that separate now from then.

Time opens a side door and lets you walk through a long dark hallway that stretches back hundreds of years. The fiery sword of Mars, God of War, lights a path back from our time to Shakespeare's: Burning buildings frame a tank in the Ukraine. Arab Spring protests lead to brawls that overturn governments. London subways bombed, concrete flying. A statue of Saddam torn down. Twin towers collapsing in flames. Statues of Lenin overturned. A thick stone wall in Berlin falls as a mob of people root out the work of masonry. Riots and brawls in Northern Ireland. World War II wates sixty million lives. London burned in a blitzkrieg of quick fire; stone churches reduced to rubble. World War I wastes sixteen million lives. Brawls as the Irish fight for and gain home rule. The centuries are a parade of battles: 140 British wars. The Boer Wars, the India Rebellions, The Crimean War, The War of 1812. The British burn the White House to the ground in America's new capital. British are victorious at Waterloo, and statues of Napoleon are overturned. French revolutionaries storm the masonry of the Bastille. American revolutionaries overturn statues of King George III. The Seven Years War establishes the British Empire. The Jacobites fight to restore a Catholic Stuart King to England's throne. Royalists fight to restore the English Monarchy. The English Civil War. Puritan Parliamentarians execute King Charles and abolish the Throne of England. Anti-Royalist rioters overturn marble tombs of princes and nobility. War with the Netherlands. War with Scotland. War with Ireland. War with France. War with Spain. War with Portugal. The destruction and waste continues, all the way back.

All the way back to a time before a United Kingdom or a Union Jack flag; before Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. Before England has adopted the modern-day calendar, standardized spelling, instituted tea time or copyright law. Back to a time when the world's only English Colony, Virginia, is merely two years old. The year is 1609. The legal year begins in March (not January) as it always has in England. King James I sits on the throne. Shakespeare is 45 years old, and quite famous. This is the year that Shakespeare's Sonnets are first published, and when the story of the Sonnets' printed life begins.

The Sonnets don't remember how they were made. They didn't have a close relationship with their father after they were born into print. It's quite remarkable they survived at all, considering the sheer number of pages lost to the Great Fire of London in 1666. Sometimes the Sonnets wonder if their father meant to have them exist this way, or if their birth was more of the accidental type. He treated his other poetic children much better, and the Sonnets experienced a somewhat neglected and orphaned childhood.

They came into their own starting at around 170 years of age; in the 1780's, the flowering of their glorious youth. How liberating it was to finally enter Universities, to have each line and punctuation mark engage in scholarly debate! And, oh, how they remember the feeling of sweet romantic love from their 200's! The tender caresses of Keats' fingertips. The way Melville's eyes lit up when he saw them. Oscar Wilde listening as his lover read them aloud.

Some called the Sonnets promiscuous, in that prim Victorian age. But the sonnets never thought of themselves that way. They grew up in a time before words like 'homosexual' or 'polyamorous' were even invented. Love has always been love to them, in any form it takes. They are glad to have lived long enough to see society finally coming round to a similar way of thinking.

Now past 400 years old, the Sonnets lead a quiet life in a secluded literary suburb. They don't come out much, and when they do, they feel their age showing more and more. They visit the internet now and again. They are on apps, and sites and social networks. But on lonely nights they wonder how much more time they really have.

They see how Time passes everything. How Time sluttishly gives her favor (fame and praise) to any momentary celebrity. They see how industry and rising population wear this world out. They see the unpredictability of geo-political forces, and wonder whether there will come an ending doom. They see the influence of TV, movies, and computer games on modern minds, and struggle to find room. The Sonnets dwell in the eyes that read them, and lately there are fewer and fewer of those eyes with each passing generation.

But each day the Sonnets endure, they steadfastly keep alive a reminder of the lives that created them. If it's true that everyone shall rise again on Judgement Day, their maker will return, and so will the one who inspired such praise from him. In the meantime, the Sonnets do their best to preserve the living memory (all the exists of that person now) against Death, against war, against fire, and against the oblivious enmity of Time.

Sonnet 55 - The Living Record of Your Memory

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme!
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
than in unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish Time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
and brawls root out the work of masonry,
not Mars' sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
the living record of your memory.

'Gainst Death and all oblivious enmity
shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room
even in the eyes of all posterity
that wear this world out, to the ending doom.

So till judgement day, when you yourself arise,
you live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.