How Shakespeare would say of Madonna

Madonna speaks at Super Bowl news conference: photo credit AP

Madonna has been around since “the beginning of the time”.  This “Material Girl” (born in 1958 at Bay City, Michigan, where we visited last year) will give a spirited performance at the Half Time Show (consider the greatest show on Earth nowadays) on the Super Bowl XLVI on February 5.

She said she was never “so scrupulous or freaked out”.  You may wonder what is the secret of her longevity in the performing life. As Stephen Marche said in his “How Shakespeare changed everything”, Shakespeare said of Madonna,

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety:

She keeps reinventing herself.  Shakespeare used these words to describe Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (Act 2 Scene 2—my favorite Act).  Enobarbus (Antony’s lieutenant) explained why Antony can never leave Cleopatra,

Never; he will not:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

(Modern translation)

He [Antony] will never leave her.  Age won’t wither her, and her charms are so varied that she’ll never be a bore.  You grow weary with other women once you’re with them too long.  Cleopatra, on the other hand, make you feel the more you have her, the more you want her.  Even her worst faults are charming, and holy priests bless her even when she acts bad.

  

Isn’t this the Madonna that Shakespeare was talking about? I bet A-Rods will be there watching the Half-Time Show.  By the way, she assures us that there will be no “wardrobe malfunction”.

Super Bowl, Super Model (Tom Brady's wife), Super Tramp