Gentles, tomorrow is my birthday! Or rather, the day on which 'tis most like I first saw daylight: for deepest scholarship knows it not, and I myself can scarce remember, considering of my extreme youth at the time.
I have years on my back four hundred and forty, and feel but young yet in experience.
Tomorrow, also, as ye may know, is my death-day. Unlike my birth, this is certain, and mayhap tradition has settled upon that same day for the pleasing symmetry thereof. As I did say in my Julius Caesar:
This day I breathed first. Time is come round,
And where I did begin there shall I end;
My life is run his compass.
Which, for a man who knew no magics, is a fair attempt at presaging, is it not? Also, the image of the compass is one I love: that a true circle with a fix'd centre will always end at just that point where it did first begin, an image of completion, recurrence and infinity. On this theme did Jack Donne say much, but chiefly this, of his soul and his love's:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
-- A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Is not that fine? Doth not Master Donne give to his beloved most excellent comfort at his going away? The compass-image speaketh of connection between the two lovers, of his debt to her constancy, and is at the same moment both scholarly and physical. Would that I might have writ so!
Thus far my thoughts upon mine own birthday: that, and (I confess me) much wonderment that it is given any remembrance at all, these many years on. I hoped, as all poets do, that some few of my lines might live after me: but I thought never to see such revelry both in Stratford and London. I do feel much mov'd withal, I tell ye.
In the New World, an thou wilt come and revel with me, thou mayst attend in Boston, Atlanta, Washington DC, Staunton, Virginia, Muir Beach, California, and Los Angeles, to name but a few. If I perchance have forgot thine own event, then be not slighted, but a Gods name, proclaim the link in a comment for all to see!
Or an thou wilt not, then only read upon this merry drawing. For upon this day I would have all merry and none sad, if it might be so.
Now, off to the Staggering Seraph (for those who would know, 'tis an inn on the borders of this world and the next, whither the best brewers of strong drink do repair on their death) to drown the years in sack and revel it till the morn. Kit and Ben stay for me there, and belike we shall even draw old Donne in for a glass or two this night, though he died a divine and no friend to players. Here's to thee, gentle reader: if I do live yet in this world, the thanks are thine. And I too thy most faithful servant,
Will Shakespeare
From the fair Emily, this, which made me like to split my sides with laughing:
omg, wtfucketh?!? How can Shakespeare write Iago out of the play like that? He doth so merely to spite his fans, the mad fool. Doth he not know that we are his customers, and the customer is always right?!?
Alas, 'tis too true. Ever when one completes a work, on the instant legions of citizens appear to speak of how it might have been better done. All this is part and parcel of the alchymy of story and how it works upon the mind. If it be true gold indeed, the spoken word, enter'd in at the ear of the hearer, doth within become the very thing it figures forth, as a king, a madman, or indeed that humour which makes kings mad, and madmen kings. As I did say once:
"Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i'th'receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings."
From thence 'tis but a short stride to the figuring forth of new kings in one's thought, or new adventures for old kings. Or belike, hot lusty tales of king-on-king action (alas that mine own The Scholars of Wittenberg: a tragickal Romance of Prince Hamlet and Doctor Faustus is among the lost!)
While I liv'd, there was no law to enclose the common land of the imagination into privy walled garden-plots; a story once told, and in especial once printed, was free for use by any. I was much gall'd by this when it work'd against me, and bastard copies of my works sold without a penny to me. Yet if I saw a piece of work that I could better, it was free for my use: Kyd's Hamlet, Legge's Ricardus Tertius, and scores of others were grist to my mill.
That fertile wit, Oscar Wilde, did speak much to the purpose:
'My dear Robbie, when I see a monstrous tulip with four petals in someone else's garden, I am impelled to grow a monstrous tulip with five wonderful petals, but that is no reason why someone should grow a tulip with only three petals'.
Which is as much as to say: if thou canst better the tale, have at it; but an thou canst not, take care lest it have at thee. A fig for Nahum Tate and all his ilk, say I.
This from a gentleman reader, Douglas by name:
Thou art wronged, Master Shakespeare, in that thy honey-tongued words have become beasts of commerce. Your belief may strain under the weight of my report, but by clever art the struttings and frettings of poor players are captured in a book known as film. By a flickering light, the players are released once more. Your wonderous play Othello was captured in this manner, and played once more under the title "O." Your most ingenious comedy of Petruccio and Katharine, The Taming of The Shrew, became what is now called a movie, "The 10 Things I Hate About You."
For thy care of my works, sir, I humbly thank thee. For by what means shall my tales yet live in this world, if not through the good will of such as thyself, who know them and love them well?
Yet thus much in thine ear: I was not the first to tell many of these tales. If thou seest any work of mine, 'tis most like to be merely old wares patch'd and sold as new: old Boccacio of Italy, honest Geoffrey Chaucer, Holinshed's histories all provided me with much matter. My Richard Third made many hearers to roar: soothly now, dost thou think the worse of it for that Sir Thomas More told all before me?
So if others choose to tell my tales anew, or to patch out their own inventions with matter from my plays, I think no harm: rather, I bid them joy. And if some of their workings speed well and others die the death, that indeed is the humour of it, even as it was when I did live.
For this new wonder, film, iwis I know it well: I have heard much of it from such players as Masters Richardson, Welles, Olivier and Gielgud, after they made their final bows upon the earthly stage and came where they might drink a bout with me. (Full many a merry hour have we spent since then, i'faith.)
And truly 'tis a marvel. I remember me at the old play-houses, we knew never whether Burbage would come reeling in half drunk, or whether Kempe would forsake his part and speak extempore, or whether those villainous squeaking boys had troubled to con their words at all. So to contain a cry of players within a box shot through with lights seems to me verily a playmaker's dream.
Yet for all this, there is an angelic awe to hearing a play spoken by living voices, in a theatre such as I wrote and play'd in. Breathing throats, beating hearts, sweating brows: my plays were made for these, and by these, and of these. Mortal men and women, human and flaw'd as we are, are ever my theme, and these same are my best players.
Players and makers of plays, though we personate kings and gods, we are but shadows all. Pray pardon, then, the ramblings of an insubstantial spirit, who saith he knows not what. Rest ye merry all, and give you good day.
This being All Fools’ Day, I have a mind to speak of my friend Robert Armin. A marvellous witty man and nonpareil of players, it was for him my best of fooling was writ. Feste, Touchstone, the Fool in King Lear, all were he. A goldsmith’s apprentice, he became a player not for need but for love: he saw Dick Tarleton, that merry man, and from that moment nothing would do but he too must wear motley. He ceased from keeping the touch for the Queen's coinage, and began to coin my words, which grew the more current for his stamp upon ‘em.
More than this, he was my Touchstone of the wits, and he kept me true gold. A sonnetteer and talesmith himself, he knew much of the playmaker’s art (as ye may see in his Two Maids of Mortlake.) It was Armin who first divided the world of fools into fools natural (such as Kempe excell’d at playing,) and fools artificiall-- they who
“...with their wits lay waite
To make themseives fooles, liking the disguise,
To please their own minde and the gazers’ eyes.” (Armin, Foole upon Foole)
Such a one was mine honest Armin. He and I shall drain a glass anon, to all ye fooles and jesters that yet walk in the world.
But first: I have committed a fault, and it must be amended. One good Master Hackett hath writ unto me:
“I seek work as a schoolteacher, but with all intent of using the entertainment of your works to dazzle my pupils and perhaps trick them into enjoying what they think dull, rather than bludgeon them into learning.”
Why sir, then I must most humbly cry you mercy of my harsh words last entry, concerning schoolmasters. If thou art, or seekest to be a schoolmaster who doth inspire and amaze, so that my words to the young shall seem as sack and sugar rather than sackcloth and ashes-- why then, thou art a very Phoenix of Araby, and to be treasur’d as such. Forward, sir, upon thy quest, and may the good will of all dead bards go with thee!
For myself, I was not so fortunate as, mayhap, thy students shall be: in all my works a man may be hard press’d to find a good word concerning schoolmasters, whereby it may be divin’d that mine own school days were passing dull. Old habits, sir, die hard: yet I know well that those of thy profession do much to keep me alive and footing the stage of the world, and for that do I uncover my poor deceas’d head to them.
Now, on to two most merry maidens:
"We give thee good day, Master Shakespeare. We are two humble sisters of the order of the Interfaith Nunnery, come to peruse thine epistles from the green world. Iris desireth to know whether it might please thee to enter the nunnery's broom closet, where thou two might disport thyselves."
O sweet sister, whose name doth well befit the bright messenger of Jove: alas that I no longer possess a body corporeal wherewith to do thee right! Else would I be full fain of thine offer, I promise thee. Also, I am on a sudden consumed with regret that I writ no play involving sportful nuns in a broom closet. A most pregnant matter, i'faith.
"Andrea, who oft has thought Silvia most ill-used in not winning the hand of fair Rosalind, is not so inclined to share the broom closet with thee. She would, however, gladly converse with thee on plays and players. Couldst tell us, good sir, about Isabella of Measure for Measure? We have been much disturbed by the Duke's o'erweening pride in assuming that the lady, having spent the course of the play protecting her maidenhead, would then desire the hand of a man only slightly greater in power than the man she so recently refused."
Marry, well said, mistress Andrea. 'Tis true, I grant ye, that the ending of Measure for Measure is but a patch'd affair. And the Duke, as thou say'st, is a prideful man: else why let all Vienna suffer to entrap one parasite, a man he knew to be corrupt? Yet one of the things on which he prides himself is justice.
For Isabella herself, in the play she speaks not of virginity but of chastity, and a wife may be as chaste as may a maid: the luckless Lucrece was one such. To be chaste may, if you will, mean for one's body to be at the disposal of one's mind. Isabella's chastity, then, may mean her power not only to refuse such as the lustful Angelo, but to choose where (and whether) to bestow her favour, should she find one deserving. Perchance I chop logic: 'tis true that she most earnestly desires to become a nun, with all that that entails.
As the the play endeth, Isabella saith no word of yea or nay. So, should Isabella refuse the Duke, I think he would be no such tyrant as Angelo, but take it in good part, and perchance even give a gift of gold to her order of St Clare. Or should she take his offer, then is she Duchess, and Vienna the better govern'd for it. Perchance it would be kinder to spare them marriage, since o' my conscience, none of the matches made at the ending of that play are like to speed well. The question is open, to be read or play'd as you will.
Now, my mistresses, have I done my utmost to content ye both, which is truly all a man may do, and I confess myself quite outworn by the sport (which ne'ertheless I would not have lost for kingdoms!) Rest ye merry both, and in your orisons be all my sins remember'd.
Now, away to the sign of the Staggering Seraph to burn a cup of sack with Armin, Kit and Ben, and good master Ustinov, newly come to us. Here's to thee!