Shakespeare's Hamlet. a character I've spent considerable time studying, was able to push a dart precisely toward the center of my existence. "What is a man," the Dane queried, "if the chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more." That, of late, is me. I am spoiled, I will confess - I'm young, with a house I own outright and a lifetime annuity, and thus I have no motivation to venture forth into humanity and suffer its slings and arrows. Further reason for this is a mild case of narcolepsy, which stunts my activity, and distances me from the rest of the world. My food gets delivered each day, and that brief discourse with drivers amounts to my daily human contact. What an improbability I dwell upon, that I might meet someone special in this manner. But man's hope is infinite, and I truly believe a woman of fair countenance will appear at my door some evening with a bag of sweet and sour pork stapled shut, and somehow divine our shared passion for great William. Oh, what folly hope errantly nurtures!

I had a lover once. We met in a neurologist's office. She had a mild seizure in the waiting room and somehow, I was able to move perforce and prevent her head from injury. She recovered so quickly, it surprised me, and I became her instant hero. We were a pretty piece of flesh together, I can say unabashedly. But she hated Shakespeare. And I loathed her passion for science fiction. Asimov, you might hope, would be our common ground. But he turned out to be a No-man's-land. Still, we withstood each other's disparities for almost two years.

"I really wish you'd read a Stephen K. Dick book one day. That would be your inroad to science fiction. You should try Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" She read in the nude in my living room, an Odalisque surrounded by pillows. She constructed a small fortress with her stacks of paperbacks, while I had everything Shakespeare had ever written compactly on my Kindle.

"I'd be happy if you'd watch Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet with me, just once. I have the Criterion blu-ray, it's quite sumptuous. Not my favorite play of his, but like you say, it's a good inroad." She could be quite a distraction sans garb - only the most brilliant iambic pentameter could keep my eyes from her. But we fought - over trifles, I now realize. And then we drifted apart. We were fools to let this happen, but happen it did.

A few years passed. I ate and I slept. A beast, no more. "Who alone suffers, suffers most in the mind. Leaving carefree things and happy shows behind." I was far too young to favor passages from King Lear, but that's where my soul veered. The path seemed hopeless, until one evening when a bright angel named Viola brought me a pepperoni pizza. I noticed her name on the delivery text and, of course, had to inquire.

"It's from Twelfth Night," she said. "Are you familiar with it?

"Good lady, I know every mote of it. Do you enjoy Master Shakespeare?"

"Oh, a great deal. I've read many of the plays, and plan to know them all in due time."

"Fair Viola, I desire you of more acquaintance." And so, as if Puck's magical flowers were crushed into both our pairs of eyes, we did fawn upon each other. She turned out to be a whimsical waif, not made for the rigors of this world, and was more than happy to live with me on the spoils of my silver-spooned advantage.

Suffice it to say that I am a beast no more.