In Saturday's post, I promised that I would write about how Shakespeare provides starting points for learning about the many areas of study related to the English language. Well, either I forgot or got sidetracked, because a few days have gone by and here I am following it up now. Sorry about that. But anyway, here we are now.

OK, let's start with the wide picture: the humanities. Wikipedia's article on academic disciplines breaks down the humanities into seven fields: history; languages and linguistics; literature; performing arts; philosophy; religion; visual arts. I think it's clear that reading Shakespeare can begin a student's interest in any or all of them. Even the least obvious of the group, the visual arts, critical as they are to performance through costume and set design, can have a seed planted by the study of Shakespeare. And then of course, there is Sonnet 24 with its delineation of what it is that painters actually do, and how their work is not at all different in nature with that of poets (as Leonardo da Vinci put it: "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."):

Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,

And perspective it is the painter's art.

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies;

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;

They draw but what they see, know not the heart.