Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
     You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
     That all the world besides methinks y’are dead.

Analysis

Sonnet 112 sees the poet hiding from his reputation in the forgiving bosom of his lover.

Billy receives such sympathy from the youth that it conceals the badge of shame popular opinion has conferred on his brow. Nobody else’s opinion matters, since the youth covers Bill’s misdeeds. Bill knows he must learn to take the youth’s opinion as the only one worthwhile. All other opinions are consigned to oblivion. He is deaf to their praises and critiques alike. His rejection of all others’ opinions is so profound that the rest of the world may as well be dead.
 

Will’s Wordplay

Psalm 58 refers to a deaf adder as being immune to the words of the wicked:
“The wicked are estranged from the womb:
they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent
they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;
which will not hearken to the voice of charmers,
charming never so wisely.”

Andrew Haswell Green Memorial Bench, Central Park, Manhattan

The name Andrew Haswell Green (1820-1903) is unfamiliar to most New Yorkers, yet he was extremely important to the history of both Central Park and New York City. The Greens of “Green Hill” were among the most prominent families in Worcester, Massachusetts, tracing their ancestry back to Thomas Green, who came to America in 1651. Andrew Green moved to New York in 1835. He was admitted to the bar in 1844 and practiced law with his mentor, Samuel Tilden (1814-1886), who became Governor of New York in 1874 and the Democratic presidential candidate in 1876, losing to Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893).

Green spent most of his life in public office. He was a member of Central Park’s Board of Commissioners during its existence from 1857 to 1871, where he served as president and comptroller. He also served from 1855 for six years on the Board of Education (three as president); and in 1871 he was appointed New York City Comptroller during an emergency precipitated by a fiscal crisis.

During the years that Central Park was under construction (1857-1873), Green had serious disagreements with its designers, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), over fiscal and political matters concerning the Park. Nevertheless, it was Green who saw the brilliance of the Greensward Plan (Olmsted and Vaux’s name for their award-winning design for Central Park) when other commissioners were willing to dismiss it. It is because of Green’s support and protection of the Greensward Plan that so much of Central Park is true to its original design. In January 1858, he was the first commissioner to offer a resolution to extend the Park from 106th, its original northern boundary, to 110th Street.

Green also played an important role in the formation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Central Park Menagerie (the Zoo), and the New York Public Library. In 1868 he recommended that the many unincorporated areas and municipalities of southern Westchester (the Bronx), Kings, Queens, and Richmond (Staten Island) counties be consolidated with Manhattan to form the five boroughs of a greater New York City. After making repeated requests to the legislature, his vision was realized when, as president of the Consolidation Inquiry Committee, he helped draft the Consolidation Law in 1895, which was enacted in 1897 and took effect on January 1, 1898.

On November 13, 1903, Green was fatally shot while entering his house on Park Avenue and 40th Street by a man who mistook him for someone else. On May 11, 1929, a bench in Central Park was dedicated to Andrew Haswell Green, the “Father of New York City.” Five trees representing the five boroughs of New York were planted next to it. The bench was originally placed on the site of Mount St. Vincent’s Academy, on the East Drive at 104th Street. When the composting operation was created in the early 1980s, the bench was moved to the site of Fort Fish, at East 106th Street, a fortification during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, and now a knoll overlooking the woodland ravine in Central Park. [1]

References

1. http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/centralpark/monuments/638

ACTOR – Simon Kendall

BIO COMING SOON

FEATURING – Rachel Hip Flores

Rachael was born and raised in Piscataway, NJ and graduated with a BFA in Acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

She is best known for her role as Vivian McMillan on the webseries Anyone But Me. For her work on that show, Rachael received the IAWTV, Streamy and Indie Soap Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Dramatic Webseries. She has received additional Best Actress/Supporting Actress Nominations from the IAWTV, Streamys, Rome Web Awards, Indie Intertube, and Indie Series Awards for her work on the series Good People in Love and her current project, Producing Juliet. She has been seen on Gossip Girl as well as at the HBO New York International Latino Film Festival and the San Diego International Latino Film Festival as the titular character in the short film Lucrecia.

When not in front of the camera, Rachael is active in the NYC independent theater scene, most notably with the award-winning companies Flux Theatre Ensemble, where she is a Creative Partner, and the Judith Shakespeare Company.

Rachael is also a produced playwright, director, dramaturg, and teaching artist.

website: http://rachaelhipflores.com
fb: facebook.com/RachaelHipFloresOfficial
twiiter: @HipFlor

DIRECTOR – Fernando Cordero

Fernando Cordero is NY based designer & filmmaker. He is afraid of the internet, enjoys stories that involve unearthly oddities & collects 16th century Spanish rapiers. Some of his work can be seen on http://fernandocordero.com

DP – Smallbook Chang

SmallBook is a filmmaker with an old soul.
Some of her work can been seen on http://cargocollective.com/smallbookchang