Shakesperger’s Syndrome…

….time to take stock.

I think when it comes to Shakespeare I may suffer from a mild fom of Aspergers syndrome.

All I seek is companionship in appreciating Will, but people get really weird when this subject arises. They either know too much. Or not enough. And I always intend to find out which.

My reaction is to treat them as an equal in knowledge, both trivial and weighty. That is when discussing Sh in social situations I tend to ignore others’ desperate attempts and true desire to escape, and/or run away scooping out their own eyeballs. (I’ll pluck thee out vile jellies)!

Where Sh is the subject, I lack empathy to allow them to bow out gracefully. Ignore their attempts to steer the conversation elsewhere. Once you get me started on Shakespeare. Ba da bing! Billy knows best.

And I want worthy opponents too. I don’t care if they’re bloggers, world famous actors or scholars. My take is as good as theirs. So what they have directed movies of his plays, or played the lead parts, or published the length of my arm.

I’ll sound the depths of yours and my ignorance. I love all the processes of Sh. So I hunt the sources down and question wherever I can. Like the barnyard dog, Brendan Behan described in Borstal Boy, ‘I’ll run a stretch of the road with anyone’.

That said i like to talk Sh with people who by their own admission, know nothing. To talk about the dangers of becoming too identified with the biography question first off. Trying to rely on a middle path, a ‘let’s keep it real’ quotient, when we’re dealing with authorship theories.

The Other candidates will live on as all conspiracies live on: shrouded in mysterious suggestion and that confused gut instinct that something really is rotten in the state of Denmark. (‘Back and to the left’ is stil unresolved for my taste).

But they will live on further, as mere conspiracies, not proofs. Theirs’ is yet to be proven. And likely never will be. And yes I’ll admit I’m wrong flat out, if it be so. The readiness is all. I’m ready, bring it on.

If you follow my scribblings you’ll know I also have ‘small Lacan and less Foucault’. That is I don’t like the other theories either, the scholarly ones. (the link takes you to Graham the Good’s ‘The Hegemony of Theory’ essay you must needs read).

I don’t deny them, or ignore them. Unfortunately you have to be versed in them, or you’d miss out on understanding many papers given at lecture, symposium, or colloquum. And you wouldn’t want that.

Mine is not a pretentious Bardolatry. It’s a blood, sweat and tears reality Shakespeare. That he cried is certain, how-when-where-why he cried is uncertain, and certainly unknowable.

I’m looking for a real person, despite the whole construct that is “Shakespeare” surrounding him. How do i know my construct is real and not mere fiction? I don’t, but it suits me fine.

The fine threads of life that flow through the verse and prose are purposely wrought to hide the author’s hand and emphasise th character’s needs. And that in Tragedy or Comedy.

Today’s post started whilst making a welcome message to new members on the FB blog group page.

That FB page is where I am every day like a little Shakespergeran mini-Reuters; passing on little tidbits about W. Sh. via alert, tweet, newspaper, radio, cinema, TV, or blog.

It deals with everything related to him from the early modern to the post modern. Some of it is real, some of it fake. All of it is open for discussion.

The next few weeks we will switch servers and consolidate the website, blog, and FB page into one whole, so you can navigate freely between them all.

The FB page serves as an outlet for the quotidian SH stuff. (We intend to database and categorise what we have until now too).

The blog remains the repository for my squelchings and squealings. (Heaven only knows why you would still be reading at this point).

The website focuses on the Sonnets. (both to read and to hear).

So we generate a wee shakespeare portal, doon which ye may go a-sliding and a-porting!

Welcome to all the new members. We’re now at 231 according to the mildly fluctuating FB counter.

I wanted then to add: Some of you I know, and love talking with on occasion one on one. Others I don’t know. No matter, welcome one and all.

The first 154 of you are officers of the blog and as such are required to record and upload your sonnet to the FB page at some point before you die.
The 15 or so who have done so have permission to die anytime they choose. But may I say I hope each of you outlive olive trees.

The people I know are real. We’ve kept in touch and visited and dined and wined and talked and hugged our hellos and goodbyes. And I love my friends because they are the first to tell me if I’m being a donk. (You can vary the vowel and consonant in the last word to form other words).

FB, or any of the plethora of alternatives, are great aggregator’s for companions past and present. Before that technology made young Zuckerberg a trazillionaire, we had i-chat and email, fax for funky drawings, telephone if needs be, carrier pigeon if absolutely necessary, postcard for wishing you were here, cassette tape with fave music for that one special love, telegram for weddings and obits, and morse code for that really secret thing we had at sea.

All these have allowed us to keep our friendships alive across continents in my lifetime. I have 250-ish friends on FB. We have one thing in common: we’re friends on FB. Paradoxically some of them are complete strangers in real life.

FB is the tool. We are the content. I met a dutch comic a month or so ago in Amsterdam and he commented, (what else)

‘We zijn FB matties.
We’re FB buddies.’

High five and that’s it.
Ja leuk. as the Dutch might say.

No film or scan or jpeg or appropriation of such in any of the media used in this medium can ever duplicate or replicate the original drawing, song, play, sonnet. And so it is with Shakespeare.

And his works work like an encyclopaedia of life because he causes the reader to reflect back on his or herself, so perpetuating his art by creating anew through you.

Shakespeare lived. The contents of his mind however it worked are in his works; and they deal with the extremes of emotions and passions and the executions of those.

The sick horror of real life execution by beheading for example, has until now in History remained a constant. Ergo personal fear at the thought or sight of beheading. Both now as in Sh’s time a real, unsubstantiated until it happens, human fear.

‘Take this (points to head) from this (points to body), if this be not so.’

Oppressed and imprisoned man lives today as in the past. Each has embraced Shakespeare: the one in post-colonial theory, the other in Prison drama programs.

And it’s all real yet unsubstantial thought kept in electronic numerical packages. One wicked electrical intergalactic storm and it’s game over internet. Extinguishing the voice primed by the medium.

The first Global community of minds in History, silenced by Nature. Is space nature btw?

Fake and genuine are relative terms here in cyberspace. The web is the mirror held up to the nature of man’s mind. As violent and sexual as the outside world has always been; an inner world has always nurtured it. Nature may well outlive it.

‘What a piece of work is a man?’

What I do love about the peeps that I know, is being able to pick up where we last left off, when we (big smile) meet again. Some people in life seem to function like plug-ins for your blog. Only for your personality then. Oh Lord, the moderator is gushing Shakespergerically.

He hasn’t noticed your blank stare, the fact that you clicked away, way before this foolish line. Hi my name is WIlliam and I’m a Shakespergeran…