Irreverent Musings

* Shakespeare wrote fast.

Ben Jonson wrote

‘His mind and hand went together and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers’.

Ben also wrote

‘Ease and relaxation are profitable to all studies. The mind is like a bow, the stronger by being unbent. But the temper in spirits is all, when to command a man’s wit, when to favour it. I have known a man vehement on both sides; that knew no mean either to intermit his studies or call upon them again. When he hath set himself to writing, he would join night to day; press upon himself without release, not minding it till he fainted: and when he left off, resolve himself into all sports and looseness again; that it was almost despair to draw him to his book: but once he got to it, he grew stronger and more earnest by the ease’.
Some suppose Ben’s acquaintance to have been Shakespeare.

* Phonetics does make you wonder if voiceless bilabial plosives and fricatives are really the most satisfactory expression of emotional release.

*Aubrey’s anecdote on De Vere who on farting in front of Elizabeth was so embarassed he travelled the continent for seven years. When he returned Elizabeth said ‘ Welcome my Lord, I had forgott the farte!’

*Elizabeth loved to swear. ‘ S’wounds ‘ was her favourite. Swearing and poetry are similar. They are both highly charged and metaphorical ( you stupid plonker ), both are extreme with pointed effects created by alliteration ( fuckfuck fuckfuck FUCK), both play off different registers in the word-hoard ( you slimy pillock), and lastly both are dependent on rhythm, ( Don’t you slag me off, you plummy old pudding ).

*The use of the word ‘hours’ in the S. can be almost exclusively taken as bawdy with a play on whores. For more insults try the Shakespearean Insult Generator.

*The difference between Thou and you. Elizabeth once said to a forward courtier, Essex I think, ‘Don’t thou thou me, thou dog!’

* Patronage was linked to Espionage. Organized Crime was linked to the Theatres and Bull and Bear fighting places. The Acting Companies were emblems and conceits for the Noble patrons. But they outgrew their idealist masters to start their own practical ideal in the realm of entertainment.

*Numerology:
0 represents all and nothing. It too can be bawdy. The Circle.
1 poet
2 loves of comfort and despair.
3 years of truth, beauty and kindness versus lies, ugliness and cruelty. The Triangle.
4 seasons, humours, and elements. The Square.
5 senses and wits.
7 deadly sins and virtues.
9 muses.
10 percent and ten times profit.

* Sh. as a writer/director vs. the jack of all trades theatreman.

* Sh. was a doggerel spewing heretic and deer-hunter.

* Sh. was an uneducated misogynist hick with a ready wit, a huge talent for words and a smile that wouldn’t quit.

* He had a bad memory. Q23.

* He was a gimp. Q89.

* He was a bisexual. Q90.

* He was a homosexual. Q20.

* He was an adulterer. Q130.

* He was a jerk-off. Q62.

* He was a bad thinker. Q85.

* He had a lisp. Q116.

* He was a heterosexual. Q138.

* He was a drinker. Q43.

* He was a drug user. Q118.

* He was a blusher. Q128.

* His birth and death dates are the same.

* His dad married up-market.

* His marriage parallels his parents. Both father-in-laws died a year before the wedding took place.

* His dad loaned money to his future father in law, Richard Hathawey. Probably met his older, future wife Anne at this time. he would have been about 8 yrs.

*He likely sat around a fireside with Raphael Holinshed, who was steward of Packwood Manor some 15 miles from Stratford.

* Almost all his teachers were Jesuits i.e. first class knee benders to the Holy Church of Rome.

* He was distantly related to his young Patron Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

* His brother Gilbert was a haberdasher and for some reason credited with being a homosexual.

* His other brother Richard was a stay-at-homer reputed by some to have been in love with Anne Hathwey on the sly. Presumably he was in-loco-parentis while Will was in London. May have poisoned Sh. son Hamnet. This being the reason for Sh. Madness! Lol.

* His baby brother Edmund, probably much to Sh’s embarrassment, became an actor in London. Edmund died a year after his baby son in 1603. Edmund is buried in Southwark Cathedral under a gravestone bearing the family name Shakespeare. Note the spelling, done in the 19thC! William arranged the funeral no doubt and the Cathedral bells were rung at additional cost.

* Sh. dad was probably a Catholic. His father’s Borromeo-styled Last Will and Testament was found hidden in the attic roof of the Henley street residence a century after their deaths.

* Sir William Davenant, Poet Laureate, used to claim when he was drunk that he was the bastard son of Sh. Davenant was also Poet Laureate as well as an actor.

* No letters, diaries, notes, direct anecdotes or anything of a personal nature about the living breathing man Sh. are extant!