The Blame, Dear Friends, Lies Not in Our Stars… But in Shakespeare — IMRAN®

The Blame, Dear Friends, Lies Not in Our Stars… But in Shakespeare — IMRAN®

A lovely friend on Facebook shared a beautiful meme, and like any good spark, it set my mind ablaze. So here I stand, eternal digital quill in mere mortal hand, compelled to creatively confess.

I grew up steeped in Shakespeare before I even knew what "steeped" meant—studying his plays at age 9 or 10 during Cambridge University O' Levels prep at St. Paul's School in Karachi, Pakistan. What began as a steep learning curve soon revealed my natural bent; a turn of phrase was, quite literally, my cup of (steeped) tea.

(Oops… I did it again.)

By the last two years of high school, we were diving so deep into Romeo & Juliet that even the Bard himself might have surfaced, gasped, and declared, "Alright lads, that's quite enough."

And we were guided by no ordinary teacher. Sir Edward L'Steve—an Irish Shakespearean stage actor from the London theatres—had somehow washed ashore in Pakistan and remained there until the final curtain of his life. He taught us not merely the lines, but the breath between them; not just the words, but the worlds they opened.

Since then, I've never stopped indulging in wordplay, double and triple entendres, and puns so dreadful they could make Hamlet drop the skull and walk offstage.

If my verbal and written antics sometimes seem like mischief, madness, or mere linguistic mayhem…

Well, as the Bard might say: "The fault, dear reader, is not in ourselves, but in our Shakespeare."

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