Who was Shakespeare’s Shakespeare?

Such a man lived, as we live now. His life was lived in the now. His personal past was known and his future unknown. Largely the same state as we individuals experience now.

His Culture’s past certainly was a lot less documented than the past we study him in now from our cultural perch. Greater access to documentation and historical reports being our advantage presumably.

‘Speak the speech I pray you, as I pronounced it you, trippingly on the tongue…’ sounds as though the author knew mellifluity when he heard it. Yet any conjecture on his motive or intentions whilst writing these words is mere conjecture.

But he must have had heroes. Who was his Shakespeare? Was it Ovid? Montaigne? Holinshed? Marlowe? Oxford? No-one can say how his mind worked. And no-one who knew, told us, so we could know. We are left only with interpretations of the artefacts surrounding his life and works.

‘O that record could with a backward look…show me…’ Sonnet 59