Retrieving my well-worn edition of Shakespeare’s complete dramatic works from the shelf on which it stood, I reseated myself at my desk and opened the heavy, leather-bound volume to the appropriate place. Within minutes, I was so entirely engrossed in this towering (if, perhaps, somewhat overly protracted) masterpiece that I grew entirely oblivious of my surroundings. By the time I arrived at the almost unbearable dénouement of the play, my eyes were moist—my bosom had begun to heave—and a thick mucosal lump, or globus hystericus, had risen into my throat The mental image of the anguished old man, cradling the corpse of his grievously wronged, yet ever-devoted, child proved more wrenching than my overtaxed emotions could tolerate (particularly since, within my mind’s eye, the lifeless figure draped in the howling king’s arms was that of my own deceased mother!). Laying the heavy book aside, I buried my face in my hands and wept.

Eventually my tears subsided. So intense—so utterly irresistible—was the spell cast by Shakespeare’s lofty genius that, reaching again for the book, I quickly became immersed in another of his plays—then another—and another. The single interruption occurred when Muddy appeared at my door to inform me that she and Sissy had returned from their expedition. We spent several minutes engaged in pleasant, if largely inconsequential, conversation before I returned to my reading. Thus the hours elapsed until—by the dimming of the daylight seeping in through my study window—I discerned that the afternoon was rapidly advancing and that Colonel Crockett’s arrival could not be far off.

It has frequently been observed that the entirety of human experience—all that can be known of nature, the world, and the “poor, bare, forked” beings who inhabit it—is contained within the compass of Shakespeare’s unsurpassed works. For this reason, the British poet Coleridge (whose opinions on literary matters, though rarely original, are asserted with a singular authority) deservedly describes the Bard as “our myriad-minded Shakespeare.” And indeed, should I ever find myself aboard an ocean-going vessel whose crew, after engaging in a violent mutiny, horribly butchers the officers and sets the surviving passengers adrift in a meagrely provisioned lifeboat; and should I then be washed ashore upon a tropical isle inhabited solely by savage cannibals, venomous serpents, and blood-thirsty predators—I think that I could still find contentment so long as I had, as my constant companion, my leather-bound volume of Shakespeare’s unexcelled oeuvre.

My examination of Lear and the other plays I perused that afternoon only confirmed this impression of the preternatural richness of the Bard’s inexhaustible imagination. Every aspect of existence seemed present in his work—every degree of baseness and nobility, of sacrifice and betrayal, of love and hatred, of soaring tragedy and coarse, uproarious comedy. Indeed, one thing only appeared to be missing from those pages.