The First Journal Entry

Editorial Notebook(NYtimes)
Portraying Shakespeare By VERLYN KLINKENBORG Published: March 10, 2009

Not knowing what to read, I browsed through the New York times to find some interesting articles and one word grasped my attention. " Shakespeare", I know he is super famous but, honestly, as a English major student I know little about him. Therefore I chose this article to be the subject of my first journal entry; however, what the article is writing is far beyond my expectation.

This article shows some opinion about a painting of a well-dressed Elizabethan man which was taken from the private collection of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, the Cobbes. This painting has drawn so much attention because many people think it is the portrayal of William Shakespear, the significant play-writer with little biographical information. However the author argues that the hunger for the more about Shakespeare's biography is not necessary. He thinks that Shakespear represents the force of the creative mind, but he also embodies the pastness of the past." Every claim to have found some relic of the original Shakespeare, the author says,is just another reminder that his work needs no biography at all."

In my opinion, I really agree with the author's opinion that a great person's achievement won't mean less to us even if we know little about personal information. Moreover, I even think that people's remarkable achievement in some specific area should be rewarded independently. We really don't need to care about what they are. Well, I admit that curiosity is the human nature but I think we shouldn't be so eager to find someone's privacy even if he or she is dead. I consider that it is always more adorable that some mystery remains unknown; after all, reality is usually cruel.