Shakespeare and Shooting Stars

It happened late one night while I was driving home from work listening to David McCullough's John Adams on audiobook. McCullough was describing how John Adams and Thomas Jefferson once took a trip through the English countryside for a week--just the two of them--to explore the manicured gardens and estates of the British upperclass. On the trip, they visited Stratford-upon-Avon: the venerated home of William Shakespeare. Upon arriving at such a momentous landmark, Jefferson reportedly bent down and kissed the ground of Shakespeare's birthplace.

I was listening to this, and thinking what a grand and perfect gesture for Jefferson to perform, and how I'd like to do the same if I ever travel there...when a glowing ball of light danced across the sky directly outside my windshield. At first, I thought perhaps it was a rogue Disneyland firework, but it made no noise, it was alone, and it fell brilliantly through the sky in the way only a magnificent shooting star can do. And then I thought--remembering the ancient myths in which great people die and become stars, taking their place in the heavens to illuminate the earth--that, perhaps, I saw Shakespeare himself--flashing through the firmament on warm summer night in California.