JOIN USI feel as old as William Shakespeare! On the 400th anniversary of his death, I remember his 400th birth anniversary, 52 years ago. In fact, my recollection takes me back even earlier, to a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon. Not yet 5, and indifferent to literary landmarks, I unwillingly accompanied my parents to Shakespearean sites.
By 1964 I had grown interested in Shakespeare. An ardent philatelist, I was keen to own the British postage stamps being issued on the Bard’s big birthday. Fortunately, our former landlady in the UK was a reliable correspondent. I eagerly awaited her letters because they came in emblazoned envelopes.
The commemorative stamps bore the words ‘Shakespeare Festival’. They depicted significant moments in the dramatist’s plays, as well as images of him and Queen Elizabeth II. That long-reigning monarch, born in April (like Shakespeare), is now almost 90 years old. When the stamps were released, she was only 38.
The first Shakespeare stamp to reach us portrayed a girl in pink on a balcony and a green-clad man below. By way of explanation, my father narrated a censored tale of star-crossed lovers. I realised later that he omitted details which he considered unsuitable for a child of 9. Among them was Romeo and Juliet’s ready renunciation of their families, in favour of their evolving relationship.
Truer to the text was my mother’s interpretation of the next stamp that arrived. Describing the quaint pair it featured, she told me that Puck was a mischievous spirit who changed Nick Bottom’s head into that of a donkey. Accurate enough, but she forbore to mention Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, and Titania and Oberon. Those dramatic personae might never have existed in their creator’s consciousness, let alone the recently discovered First Folio!
Believing that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was about an elf and an ass, I was certain that the Ghost was the star of Hamlet. Consequently, I looked for a supernatural figure on the third stamp we received. Instead, there sat the Prince on a tombstone, clutching a skull. Acquainted with that grave (pun intended!) highlight in Hamlet, I had incorporated it in a comical version of the tragedy, which my friends and I staged in our neighbourhood. It had gone down well with the audience who enjoyed our imaginative improvisation.
The Hamlet stamp was less colourful but worth more than the stamps of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It differed from them, for no likeness of the playwright appeared on it.
Perhaps, it was not part of the group to which the others belonged. That set of four included Feste, the clown of Twelfth Night, and the titular King of Henry V — two stamps I do not possess.
When I ungratefully wonder why my sender of 3 stamps did not forward 5, I hear Shakespeare say, “What’s in a stamp?” After all, his varied works, which I have read and relished these past few decades, are indelibly stamped on my memory.
Suryakumari Dennison