Constance on Grief

I can't cite chapter and verse of the Bible, but I know Shakespeare. Shakespeare lost a child - his son, Hamnet. He has really eloquent things to say about grief. Since last night Shakespeare quotes have been coming to me. It started with Juliet's imagined transformation of Romeo at her death (for those of you Shakespeare nerds out there, I know I'm simplifying the context, but give me some grace): "Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun." I also thought of MacDuff. There's so many others.

But Constance. I knew Constance from King John had things to say. So I went back and read them today. This is the last Shakespeare play I thought to find myself in, but here I am nevertheless. Constance has lost her son, Arthur, and in a room of Kings and Cardinals she expresses her grief:

[...]I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;
For being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver'd of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.

The men dismiss her and tell her she is too fond of her grief. She responds:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!

I think about how Shakespeare is used to deal difficult situations. That is, in fact, my job. I know it's my job to complicate the "universality" of Shakespeare. But now, in my own difficult situation, it doesn't seem so complicated. He just knew. He had a gift for capturing the complex emotions of human experience and 400 years later his words let me know I am not alone. I know I can't really say that in the confines of my dissertation, so instead I'll say it here.