It's Shakespeare's birthday, which gives me license to remember the dysfunctional number of times I stood at the back of the stalls of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, when standing cost 70p a ticket, dizzy with excitement at seeing Eileen Atkins play Rosalind, or Ian Richardson/Richard Pasco play Richard the Second, almost fainting with the intensity of seeing my first Romeo and Juliet with Estelle Kohler and Timothy Dalton (even though the staging was such that we could only see their feet in the balcony scene), and just don't get me started on Alan Howard's Henry the Fifth...
Those were the days when I first glimpsed the alchemy of language, how words can transfigure thought and emotion into something mystical and oceanic. I felt more alive in the blackened back of the stalls than I ever did in my own life. The private magic of a great read still has that effect on me today. So does attacking the base metal of my own writing, searching for gold, searching for gold.
It's not just Shakespeare's birthday, it's World Book Night as well, so to mark the double celebration, take some time to think what books have meant in your own life. I handed out free copies of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife last year. This year, I'm going to follow Nicola Morgan's excellent suggestion and buy a book to give away - benefiting both the author and the recipient.
I wonder what Shakespeare would give away for World Book Night?
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