'Life's but a walking shadow," and Shakespeare's left few traces
By MARIAH RAIN QUINN
Scene Writer
Of late, thanks to the film "Shakespeare In Love," the popular image of William Shakespeare is that of Will, a neurotic, lovesick poet with soul, who is burdened with all the problems of a modern man. He visits a psychiatrist, is relegated to second banana to the better loved playwright Christopher Marlowe and is saddled with writer's block.
To top it off, despite being married, Will is passionately in love with a beautiful woman who is far above his station in life.
The screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard were inspired to create this fanciful portrait of the Bard precisely because so little is known about the most famous playwright of all time. The lineage of such works as "West Side Story" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" can be traced back to Shakespeare, yet the man himself left behind no letters, no manuscripts — only much speculation.
Indeed, nearly 400 years after Shakespeare's death, a debate persists about the authorship of the plays, with a small but devoted group claiming that it was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who authored the world's most celebrated plays. Both sides have evidence to support their case, though popular and critical sentiment remains firmly in the man from Stratford's camp.
It is established that in 1582, at the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26 year old Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children, Susanna, the eldest, and the twins Judith and Hamnet.
Little else is known about their married life, but the couple was often separated because Shakespeare spent a good deal of his most active writing years in London. Perhaps tellingly, the one and only thing Shakespeare bequeathed to his wife was his "second best bed."
It is not known how Shakespeare died, but a diary entry by Stratford vicar and physician John Ward, written 50 years after Shakespeare's 1616 death, offers one possible explanation. Ward wrote that Shakespeare and fellow poets Michael Drayton and Ben Johnson "had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted."
His grave is marked with the rather crotchety epitaph, "Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear, / To dig the dust enclosed here: / Blest be the man that spares there stones, / And curst be he that moves my bones." Perhaps thanks to the inscription, Shakespeare's bones were not dug up and replaced by a fresher set, a practice immortalized in the graveyard scene of "Hamlet."
It is tempting, though perhaps not critically kosher, to attempt to draw a more complete portrait of Shakespeare based on information from his plays. An author is inextricably linked to his text, and Shakespeare's plays seemingly offer a wealth of information about him.
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" he described the poet's craft. "The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, / Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, / And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name."
In "The Tempest," which is thought to be the last play that he wrote unaccompanied, Shakespeare drew attention to the ephemeral nature of theatre. He wrote, "Our revels now are ended. These our actors, / As I foretold you, were all spirits, and / Are melted into air, into thin air."
In the epilogue of "The Tempest," the magician Prospero, having forsworn his "potent art" offers a beautifully poignant farewell to the world of magic and charms. It is not difficult to imagine that Shakespeare might have used Prospero as a vessel for his own sentiments.
The retired conjurer says, "Now my charms are all o'erthrown, / And what strength I have's mine own, / Which is most faint … But release me from your bands / With the help of your good hands / Gentle breath of yours my sails / Must fill, or else my project fails, / Which was to please. Now I want / Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; / And my ending is despair / Unless I be relieved by prayer, / Which pierces so, that it assaults / Mercy itself and frees all faults. / As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free."
That touch of wistful beauty closed out Shakespeare's magnificent career, but there would be countless curtain calls yet to come.
Contact Mariah Rain Quinn at mquinn2@nd.edu.
All Scene Stories for Monday, February 18, 2002
