On Ideas

Those who know me well know of my great love for the writings of William Shakespeare. While I don't know better than anyone else what it is that makes his writing so persistently powerful, but I know that I aspire to write with even a measure of his skill. I have certainly always wanted to write a play in verse, whether iambic pentameter. Like many amateur dramatists, I also feel a strong draw toward the tragic, there is just something mesmerizing about a poetic sadness, something engrossing in the scale of compacted human sorrow. And when I think about trying to write like Shakespeare, I often think of writing tragedies.

Lately, a number of these ideas have been blossoming, and I am not sure yet what to do with them, because I don't yet think I am equal to task of compressing these stories into dramatic form, but I still can't stop the ideas--ideas like a play about the decline of King Saul (think the Scottish play meets Richard II), like the tragedy of Absolom (something like Henry IV part 1 with some King Lear and Titus Andronicus to give it that tragic flavour), or like the story of Robert E. Lee during the Civil War (this could be considered a history, but if you know much about Lee's life, there is plenty of tragedy to go around). I guess all I can do for now is let the ideas simmer.