From the Vault Of Art Shay: Shakespeare's Chicago

By Art Shay in News on Apr 25, 2012 6:00PM

The drained bottle refills the drained heart—but the soul is a robuster job.

Defending our city, the A-Bomb rockets protected us Daley.

The princeling sleeps. His mama wondering if Big Daddy will come through with the college tuition he promised, as he promised the mother of eight other princelings.

The joy in happenstance, as Algren, our Dostoevsky, pointed out : They\'re happy because something happened at last in their lives that caused them no pain. Not on Ashland by Paulina anyway.

Where political dreams have a way of sometimes spilling out before they are fulfilled and even the pie is an illusion. Here, here is a portrait of the American majority at the time. A harbinger all a-flutter: 35,575,420 to 26,033,066. Poor Adlai, convicted of being brainy.

Here was that old fort of circumstance, of time rolled back to square one when Roosevelt was re-elected and there were jobs and maintenance. And that Chevy was new.

And when He shuffled off this mortal coil, he migrated to a higher place \r\nwhere his music filled the hallways of Chicago\'s, er, Hispainic heart.

(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. In this week's look at his archives, Art channels the Bard.)

This helter-skelter city of broads' shoulders, of climate irregularly hot and cool, this gathering place of fools and geniuses, this birthroom of the new and graveyard of the useless, this broken nose of a city—beloved and hated both—this encrustation of towering steel and glass, and this vault of not-Milwaukee edifices built by kings of treasures uncounted. This Chicago celebrated "Talk Like Shakespeare Day" on Monday. Dead at 52, the Bard—still unrivaled, even unchallenged on page or stage—still abides with us and still speaks to us and for us.

But it's only been 500 years or so....

Life imprisoned and crying out for breath from a corpse just beginning to mellow... still floats along our waterfront tempest-tossed even on calm days. Curer of bodies, curer of souls, it makes little change in the jingling pocket of our self-regard..

Come with me on a walk through our daily comic-tragedy. See the Shakespearean sights I have seen...

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Nelson Algren's Chicago, is also available at Amazon.