Welcome to my fourth blog post ever. Isn’t it all just so exciting? My teenage son left his English Lit 101 books lying around the living room and now, after having a good, hypocritical screaming fit about people throwing their stuff around the house anywhere they damn well please, l’m in a literary mood.
I’d like to launch right into today’s topic on Something Literary. I’ve been trying to come up with that something for the past two hours, but I got involved instead in eating cookies and looking at clothing catalogs, and then I took a nap. At this point I’m trying to find something to write about without having to get up from my chair or navigate away from the screen, which doesn’t leave a lot of options. Really, it leaves only one option, which is to sift through the my previous posts on the off chance that something in there would make a suitable topic for today’s discussion. In other words, you’ll be getting “blog leftovers.”
Looking back at my introductory blog about starting a blog, I wondered how anybody could get through even a few sentences of such ghastly, mindless drivel. I nearly gave up on finding Something Literary until I got to an embarrassingly bad take-off on a line from a Hamlet soliloquy in the second paragraph, so I thought why not go all out and write about the most literary subject of them all – The Bard himself.
There is no bigger fish the in sea of literature than old Bill Shakespeare. As Shakespeare is one whale of a topic, I’m going to cut out all the blubber and avoid any discussion of his plays and poems, as that would require me to look up a lot of quotes and things. Instead, I’d like to take a look at Shakespeare The Man. He lived so long ago and few personal records of his life exist, so this area is wide open to speculation and I can just make stuff up.
In considering Shakespeare the man, I’m sure the first question that comes to your mind is the same one that came to mine. It’s the same question I ask myself whenever I consider any person I might encounter, which is: Is he or she going to be really annoying? Naturally, in this case, we must rephrase the question in the past tense, giving us our blog topic for today: Shakespeare the Man: Was He Annoying?
It is a question one could ponder throughout the ages. Yet I came up with an answer very quickly and it’s Yes. I think Shakespeare probably was very annoying. While I lack any personal experience of what it was like to be around old Bill on a daily basis, I think I can still conclude he was annoying, simply because most people are annoying in one way or another.
I know it may seem unappreciative of Shakespeare’s greatness as a historical figure to imagine he could possibly be annoying, but the generally held opinion that The Bard was a genius and the greatest playwright that ever lived in no way precludes his being annoying – quite the opposite. His genius implies that he may have been, as many geniuses are, a totally neurotic, self-absorbed, insecure, whiny pain in the butt who drove his friends crazy by talking incessantly about himself and his stupid plays and asking them for the hundredth time “Art thou sure the whole balcony scene doth not seem too cliché and over the top? Thinkst thou I should cut it?”
Seeing as how he churned out over 30 plays, as well as a bunch of sonnets, I believe that Shakespeare was consumed with his work. Being so devoted to his little theater productions, he very likely paid no attention to other things, like personal grooming. This would have been annoyingly repulsive when you consider how revoltingly smelly even those individuals who made some attempt at whatever passed for hygiene were back in Shakespeare’s day, given the lack of plumbing and dental floss. Shakespeare may also have had a number of disgusting habits, like picking his teeth or cleaning his toenails in public, which would have been excessively annoying to his friends and family.
Also, unlike today’s movie stars, people in the theater have always believed themselves to be artists and artists believe in starving for their art – unless, of course someone else is footing the bill for their meals. Therefore, The Bard may have been quite a cheapskate – the type of guy who goes to dinner with his friends, orders the most expensive frothy brown drink on the alehouse menu and then runs off and sticks them with the check.
In light of these implications, I think we can be rather confident in theorizing that Shakespeare, at some time in his life, was considered to be annoying– probably by more than one person – maybe by a whole lot of people who, if they were alive today, wouldn’t go see any of his rotten plays, just on principle, because he annoyed them so much.
Still, perhaps we shouldn’t (as Sherlock Holmes would caution) theorize in advance of the facts. Let’s see if we can discover any facts to support our theory that Shakespeare was annoying. We can accomplish this by examining whatever information we have from common knowledge, gathered from hearsay, movies and television about William Shakespeare the man.
For starters, we know that his name was William Shakespeare and that he was a man and he wrote plays and poetry. Although, some people believe that it’s entirely possible that his real name wasn’t William Shakespeare, or that he wasn’t a man at all but a woman in disguise who had to hide her identity because it was all so sexist back then and women weren’t even allowed to perform in plays (as depicted in the film Shakespeare in Love), let alone write them. Others believe that he (or she) didn’t even write those plays and poems himself (or herself) but stole them from someone else. The fact that we cannot say conclusively that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, that he was a he, or that he wrote the plays and poetry himself (or herself) is really very annoying, which provides us with our first bit of supporting evidence that Shakespeare was annoying. But what else do we know about this man or woman who may or may not have been William Shakespeare and may or may not have written any plays?
One thing many people probably know (perhaps from visits to England or just leafing through travel brochures) is that William Shakespeare was married to someone called Anne Hathaway, though not the same Anne Hathaway who was in the movie The Devil Wears Prada with Meryl Streep. From this, we can then deduce that Shakespeare never met Meryl Streep at a film premiere or a cast party because the Anne Hathaway who would have attended these events, and could have introduced them to each other, is the wrong Anne Hathaway. This is a shame because Shakespeare surely would have wanted to cast Meryl in one of his plays, although Meryl probably would have had to pretend to be a man to be in the play if Shakespeare really did write the play (a fact we still aren’t completely certain about). This leads us to an important question: If Shakespeare was really a woman pretending to be a man in order to write plays and Meryl Streep also pretended to be a man in order to be cast by Shakespeare in a play, what sort of crazy mix-ups, zany situations, and hilarious high-jinks would have taken place backstage in that Globe Theater dressing room? Certainly some of those incidents could have been the inspiration for an entirely new Shakespeare play. Since this didn’t happen, we are left with one less Shakespearian comedy than we would have had if it did happen, which is annoying – and further evidence that our theory that Shakespeare was annoying is correct.
Still more evidence of The Bard’s annoyingness can be found in the many fictitious movies and PBS dramas set in the Elizabethan Age, the period in which Shakespeare is supposed to have lived. Some of the more popular things from this period which you may have seen portrayed on TV or in films are: Sir Walter Raleigh, the Spanish Armada, the bubonic plague, and alehouses. Let’s examine each in turn:
- Sir Walter Raleigh was a swashbuckling soldier, explorer, statesman, philosopher, etc. (in other words, a Big Show-off). He was also one of Queen Liz’s faves until he secretly married one of her Ladies-in-Waiting without asking permission and got sent off to the Tower. He also wrote some poetry, which wasn’t nearly as good as Shakespeare’s. Given what huge ego Walt probably had as a fave of the Queen, he wouldn’t have taken kindly to someone being a better poet than he was and undoubtedly would have found Shakespeare annoying. In fact, he probably started that old rumor that he really wrote Shakespeare’s plays.
- The defeat of the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships sent by King Philip of Spain to conquer England, was a huge event in English history and one of Queen Liz’s great triumphs. Phil and the other Spaniards were probably pretty miffed about the whole thing, which means they must have continued to be annoyed by anything or anyone English for quite some time, which would have included Shakespeare, so we can safely assume that King Philip of Spain would have found Shakespeare exceptionally annoying.
- The bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death (in retrospect, the above description “popular thing from this period” probably isn’t quite right here) was a dreaded disease spread by fleas, rats and other delightful creatures. It resulted in the closure of the Globe Theater and killed a lot of people, including reportedly some of Shakespeare’s relatives. It’s pretty obvious that theatergoers with tickets to a Shakespeare premiere at the Globe when it was shut down would have been annoyed when he failed to refund their money. His relatives also would have been posthumously annoyed that they, rather than Shakespeare, were struck down by the Black Death.
- Going to pubs and alehouses in Shakespeare’s time was like going to a fast food joint today, and only marginally less disgusting. Alehouses were where people spent the very little free time they had, so everyone was always going down to the alehouse. Just try and find some movie about the time in which Shakespeare lived that doesn’t have an alehouse scene in it. We all have to eat , so we can therefore confidently leap to the conclusion that Shakespeare would have spent plenty of time wolfing down mystery meat pies in an alehouse, topped it off with mugs of foamy brown liquid. The picture of Shakespeare greedily stuffing his face with a crusty, drippy, meat-filled slab of dough is no doubt offensively annoying to vegetarians (despite it’s occurrence in a pre-factory farming era), and is additional proof of his potential to a register a Ten on the annoy-o-meter.
Our last piece of proof, and something I know with a fair amount of certainty about William Shakespeare, is that we probably know less about William Shakespeare than we would know if I had bothered to look William Shakespeare up on Wikipedia or some other unreliable source. And, we would probably know less about William Shakespeare if I looked William Shakespeare up on Wikipedia than we would if I looked William Shakespeare up on some reputable, accredited university site. The very thought of having to go on a dreary, bothersome hunt for information on any internet site at all is nothing if not annoying, giving us our final piece of evidence and absolute, incontrovertible proof that Shakespeare the man was, and still is annoying.
In conclusion, without doing any real research whatsoever, we have amassed a wealth of evidence to support the idea that Shakespeare the man was annoying. To sum up:
- He might not have really been William Shakespeare at all; annoyingly fraudulent.
- He might have been a woman masquerading as a man; annoyingly confusing.
- He might not have written any plays or poems at all, despite taking credit for them; annoyingly sneaky.
- He might have been a neurotic nut who generally ignored his own personal hygiene, got his friends to pay for all his pub grub, and possibly engaged in a number of other unseemly personal habits and behaviors in public; annoyingly gross.
- He lacked the necessary connections and lifespan to meet Meryl Streep at a celebrity gala, causing a possible play inspired by comedic dressing room antics to never have been written; annoyingly disappointing.
- He may have been gotten on the nerves of number of individuals of his time including Sir Walter Raleigh, Philip of Spain, and his own dead relatives for being too good a poet, being English, and being alive, as well as disliked by future generations of vegetarians for probably having eaten lard-infused pies washed down with foamy beverages; annoying existing.
- He could be looked up, if I felt so motivated (which I don’t) on either unreliable or reliable internet sites, which would require extra work; annoyingly draining to even think about.
I don’t know about you, but I’m dizzy from the sudden accumulation of knowledge. I feel like I could run right out and teach a course about Shakespeare if I was inclined to run anywhere. Deep discussions about classic literary figures tire me out, so I’ll have to stop writing now and take another nap. You may be one of those people who has the opposite response – wide awake, energized, pulse racing, and brain reeling. This makes you nearly as annoying as Shakespeare. Feel free to continue reflecting, dissecting and discussing (with other people, on your own, away from here) everything you’ve learned here today about Shakespeare the man. There are limitless possibilities for other totally speculative follow-up discussions of Shakespeare’s life and personality which you can conduct without involving me. For example:
- Shakespeare with his actors: Constructive Critic or Abusive Bastard – Talking points could include such things as: If Shakespeare had lived to see it, what would he have said about Sir Lawrence Olivier’s performance in the film version of Hamlet? Would he have cried out “Sir Lawrence, thou hast moved me to tears when you spoke of Poor Yorick. You are indeed the definitive Hamlet for all time.” Or, would he have said, “Ham it up a little more there, why don’t you Larry? And what the hell do you think you’re doing in that bedroom scene? I hope to God that wasn’t your tongue I saw. She’s supposed to be your Mother, for Chrissake!”
Until…whenever
Late and Lazy