La Dulce Locura explained (sort of)

The entire stanza that the title comes from is:

"Bailo en este lienzo de dolor,
Funambulo sin mapa ni brujula;
La dulce locura, mi solo refuggio,
Nazco en la sombra del payaso."

or:

"I dance in this canvas of pain,
A tight-rope walker with neither map nor compass;
This sweet insanity, my only refuge,
I was born in the shadow of the clown."

The song is "Qui Dam," by Cirque du Soleil. Go to their performances; buy their 
CDs. They are really really cool. Trust me.

The translation is by Anne Cross, aka Dragonmage. Thank you, Anne-san!

Originally, the title of the poem was "Lienzo de Dolor," but I was listening to the 
song again and realized that "La Dulce Locura" was more appropriate.

Now, for the poem itself: this thing is the product of a semester of Shakespeare 
plus Troilus and Creseide (which means Shakespeare and Chaucer, among 
other authors). These two things simmered in my base-brain for several weeks 
(approximately 14, come to think of it...), and the result was that as I was 
procrastinating from writing my paper on Shakespeare's differing use of fools 
in comedies, tragedies, and pastorals, I overloaded, and the poem came out in 
almost its current form in about half an hour.

Well, actually, the first line ran around in my head for three hours before that, 
which was the impetus for throwing down my research and giving up on the 
paper for a while.

I've always been fascinated with the way there is a whole subset of 
characters in any writer's work (not just Shakespeare's) that don't get to do 
anything but support the main character. It's like they don't even exist for 
themselves. Sometimes I wonder if they don't get a little pissed about that. 
Iago calls it "The curse of service" in Othello, but I personally think it's an 
injustice (Oi! For you Gundam Wing fans, can you hear Wufei in the 
background- "Justice!").

It's no wonder some of them get bitter. Mercutio sure was when he died.

The last two lines, off course, hail back to my days in Critical Interp. Langston 
Hughes, anyone? If you don't know the poem I am refering to, you need to pick 
up an introductory book of poetry and read it. Heck, everybody should do that 
anyway, if only so when somebody says something like "A dream of love 
deferred," you can know to shiver, based on the things Langston Hughes says 
happens to any dream deferred. As Miles Vorkosigan says, "Three cheers for 
literacy! I feel sick."

Oh, and by the way, I *like* Iago.