I’m finally taking the Shakespeare Monologues class that my soul’s been yearning for. I found its existence three years ago after coming home from work one night, feeling utterly starved. Not for food but for words other than my own.

Over years of corporate life, I have led many creative presentations, collaborative meetings, and dynamic trainings – but none in iambic pentameter! And I found myself yearning to use language not from this world but from a world in which I could opine, curse, lament, grieve, plot, or plead in poetry.

My dog-eared copy of Riverside Shakespeare was too dense to easily find the characters that would best give me this release. Modern search tools yielded various Shakespeare monologues for women, and then – a class! One led by a renowned vocal coach and Shakespeare teacher that was, as it happened, being taught in the same studio where I took classes when I first came to NY. Kismet!

Mercifully not a Zoom class, you had to be there, so a delay ensued. I always had some travel during the two times it was offered each year. But I remained vigilant until the stars aligned, and here I am working on Titania, Queen of the Fairies, from Midsummer Night’s Dream. And it is a dream!

What could be better, in having a conflict with your husband, the King of the Fairies, than to be able to say things like:

“These are the forgeries of jealousy: And never, since the middle summer’s spring, Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, By paved fountain or by rushy brook, Or in the beached margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.” Pure heaven!

Now I admit to feeling guilty about doing something that has nothing to do with furthering any other goals in my life. It seemingly has no outcome associated with it other than my delight in speaking this language and feeling it coming out of my body.

I worried this might be a frivolity until a contemporary fairy queen appeared in the form of Elizabeth Gilbert on Audible, reading her book, Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear. This book brilliantly provides Gilbert’s philosophy of the magical ways creativity shows up. How being attuned to the creative force, independent of our professions, can allow us to live in a place of beauty and transcendence. How her friend Susan discovered this when she resumed figure skating for the first time since adolescence, how alive she felt. She wasn’t quitting her day job or trying out for any middle-aged figure skating competitions, but she was experiencing “an amplified life.”

So it is with me and Titania. Getting to inhabit a magical world, speaking in a language that shoots life into me with each syllable, amplifying my life. And I wish the same for you, wherever your creative life force takes you!