Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead;
And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many now is thine alone:
     Their images I loved, I view in thee,
     And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

Analysis

Sonnet 31 somewhat morbidly likens the subject to a mass grave and subsequent resurrection of all the speaker’s past loves, through which the speaker feels he has attained a new lease on life.

The lover possesses all the loves of people that Willy supposed dead. Instead, love reigns and lives large within the new love. He likens his lover to a grave where buried love is resurrected; the trophies of past love find new life in this subject. Among these images of past loves, Willy sees the parts of himself he gave so freely.

Will’s Wordplay

Capital L Love may refer to Cupid or Eros, the physical manifestation of love, literally reigning over a land within the poem’s subject.

Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, Manhattan

One of the most famous Central Park landmarks, an important location in everything from Angels in America to Gossip Girl to Doctor Who, is Bethesda Fountain. It is the central feature on the lower level of Bethesda Terrace, constructed in 1859-64.

The pool is centered by a fountain sculpture designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868 and unveiled in 1873.Stebbins was the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City. The bronze, eight-foot statue depicts a female winged angel touching down upon the top of the fountain, where water spouts and cascades into an upper basin and into the surrounding pool. It was the only statue in the park called for in the original design. Beneath her are four four-foot cherubs representing Temperance, Purity, Health, and Peace. Also called the Angel of the Waters, the statue refers to the Gospel of John, Chapter 5 where there is a description of an angel blessing the Pool of Bethesda, giving it healing powers. In Central Park the referent is the Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842, providing the city for the first time with a dependable supply of pure water: thus the angel carries a lily in one hand, representing purity, and with the other hand she blesses the water below.[1]

The base of the fountain was designed by the architect of all the original built features of Central Park, Calvert Vaux, with sculptural details, as usual, by Jacob Wrey Mould. In Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1858 Greensward Plan, the terrace at the end of the Mall overlooking the naturalistic landscape of the Lake was simply called The Water Terrace, but after the unveiling of the angel, its name was changed to Bethesda Terrace. The panels of carving in the abstracted organic style propounded by Owen Jones, a mentor of the sculptor Jacob Wrey Mould are organized by an iconographical program of themes: the Seasons, the Times of Day, the Ages of Mankind.[2] Considerable latitude was offered the carvers executing the work, following Ruskinian principles.

Bethesda Terrace became a site for an outdoor luncheon restaurant at the end of the 1960s, then became a congregating spot for the Hair generation before devolving into a drug-trafficking venue in the 1970s. The fountain, which had been dry for decades, was restored in its initial campaign, 1980–81, by the Central Park Conservancy as the centerpiece of its plan to renovate the Park. The Terrace was restored in the following season, its stonework disassembled, cleaned, deteriorated surfaces removed, restored and patched and reset.

Resodding, and fifty new trees, 3,500 shrubs and 3,000 ground cover plants specified by Philip Winslow followed in 1986, most of which, having matured into dense blocks, were removed in 2008, to make way for plants native to the United States. The Minton encaustic tiles of the ceiling of the arcade between the flanking stairs, designed by Mould, were removed in 1987, cleaned, restored, completed with additional new tiles and reinstalled in 2007. Following an illustration in an 1891 book by the Superintendent of Planting in Central Park, Calvert Vaux’s assistant and partner, Samuel Parsons, today in summer, the lower basin once again has water lilies, lotus and papyrus, grown in removable pots.

References

1. http://www.nycgovparks.org/news/daily-plant?id=15031
2. Commissioners of the Central Park Reports (New-York Historical Society), noted in Murphy and Ottavino 1986:26.

ACTOR – Eleanor Handley

Eleanor Handley Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Eleanor moved to NYC after receiving a scholarship to complete her MFA at the New School for Drama. Since graduating she has performed extensively with the Hudson Valley and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festivals, most memorably as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, and Regan in King Lear. Also for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, she appeared as Maria in Twelfth Night, filmed for broadcast by PBS. Last fall she starred in Jericho at 59E59 (NY Times Critic’s Pick) and has also appeared on the New York Stage opposite Austin Pendleton and Dominic Chianese. Her television appearances include As the World Turns (CBS), Royal Pains (USA) and most recently she played ‘Sheila Evans’ in Unforgettable (CBS).

DIRECTOR – Ebrahim Ghaeini

Ebrahim Ghaeini is a young filmmaker located in Salt Lake City, UT. He graduated from the University of Utah with a BA in film studies. Throughout high school he was involved with the theater program and was involved in numerous shakespearean plays. His favorite role was Posthumus in Cymbeline, and Titus in Titus Andronicus. Since, he has formed a production company, Blooming Studios, and has worked on numerous projects across the nation. Personally having directed 2 full length features and a few short films he is very excited and honored to direct his first short film influenced by William Shakespeare in New York City.
link: www.bloomingstudios.org