Does reading Shakespeare make you a better blogger?

Here’s something funny: blogging makes me think about Shakespeare. Well, not exactly… but it does make me think about being a better writer.

When I first started blogging a year or so ago, I used to agonize over each post, even printing out drafts for a rigorous self-edit.

As you know, I’ve moved on, routinely blasting out posts after a quick scan or two (I don’t think I’ve printed anything in six months).

My hope of course is that the whole experience (writing included) is better this way — more natural, heartfelt and flowing (even with a typo or too).

This is the blogging way… The hours I once spent agonizing over meaningless edits, I now spend reading, scanning the web and hopefully, creating my own stories.

I also try to put more thought into each post, before I start writing (you seem surprised?). Which brings me back to Shakespeare…

Last week I started reading William Shakespeare Tragedies Volume 1 (how appropriate, a friend remarked), to reacquaint myself, if nothing else.

Guess what? I’m loving it.

I find the the content (Hamlet) very readable and very entertaining, far more so than when I was in college and all I could think about was girls, beer and skiing (in that order).

Let me demonstrate. Where else would you find something like this? (Ophelia to her brother Laertes, who has just warned her to be careful of Hamlet’s amorous advances):

“I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart, but, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede [does not heed his own advice].”

Like a puffed and reckless libertine… hah!

No doubt, blogging makes one more aware about how and what one communicates. Maybe that’s why I pulled out that dusty volume of Shakespeare (on permanent loan from my dad)?

Either way, I’m glad I did.