Sweet seasoned showers

The floodwaters are rising. A plane has gone missing. Two planes in one year. Three, if you count the one that crashed, or rather, was shot down. Tragedy piles on tragedy. People reeling wondering if this is happening, if this is real, if the absurd, the tragic, the absurdly tragic that has you gasping in disbelief as you wail to test out your lungs, has crept into their quiet, well-regulated lives.

And I fend off the unknown by sticking to routines. Or rather creating new routines. Isn't that the straw we clutch when drowning? Routine? Something in our heads to hold on to when everything is falling apart? Especially our concept of self?

I'm still reading the secret confessions. The second day of reading and delicious "revelations". The blissful five-month affair with Kit Marlowe when Will deserted her the second time. The authorship of Richard 3 (with Kit), Richard 2, Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet (which, in this narrative, she wrote entirely by herself), working for Bess of Shrewsbury (around the time Will wrote the Taming of the Shrew), hints of an affair between Will and the pretty effeminate Earl of Southampton who was his patron.

But then through all that wandering, all that writing, and sewing and story-telling...the children play no part. And when both return to Stratford just in time to see Hamnet (their only son) dead, the pathos are terrible. And yet, Hamnet died and he died young. Where was Anne and Will during that time. Presumably the real Anne Hathaway was in Stratford with her son. And Will was in London still pursuing his dreams. Were there not letters exchanged that told him what was about to happen? I don't know.

But throughout, still, Shakespeare is portrayed as conceited and self-serving and willing to appropriate other people's work and put his name to it. The genius of Shakespeare, the legend that will live on, when all the rest are dead and forgotten. What if it was not one author? What if many people were responsible for the pantheon that emerged?

Soon, I will have to be done with this book and move on to his actual writing.

The Secret Confessions of Anne Hathaway

What an unconventional way to start a blog about Shakespeare. Of course, this is not a new blog, it is the one I was using for my year with Dickens...but well, Dickens's year has come and gone and I thought it would be less trouble to add to it. And after a year with Will, I might spend a year with Virginia, then a year with Tolstoy (it would probably take me a whole year to finish War and Peace after all) and then, who knows...A Year With David Foster Wallace? Or would that be pandering?

Anyway, since I am starting this blog because Anna gave me a book about Anne Shakespeare and some bardic stationery to write letters with, I thought it would be good to start this book like that. I mean, I don't have to stick to the cannon right? Only his writings? Forsooth!

I can play around, write about what has been written around him. And this book, well it was written by Arliss Ryan and although it is complete fiction, a sort of "what if", it is intriguing nonetheless. Here Anne claims co-authorship for some of, if not all his plays. I don't know. I haven't read that far yet. I'm at the part where she has run away to London to join Will, who abandoned her and his three children (yes, how come everyone seems to gloss over this fact when talking about the great bard? Why is it taken as a matter of course that he should abandon his wife because she was eight years older than him?)

Anyway, the tone is gently mocking. She does not see the great bard everyone sees. See them with their trousers off, they're never quite as grand.... She sees a petulant boy to begin with, intent on establishing his own importance, and then, someone who runs away to join a troupe of players in London, leaving his wife and children with his parents, never sending home any money. And when she runs away to London to find him and join him, she sees him as a person who cannot act to save his life... a poor player who has to settle for bit parts because he does not have the emotional depth for anything better...but who is so nice that the other players are careful to tiptoe around his feelings about it. And then, she sees him as the person she collaborates with to write sonnets and then plays. They get their first big break when Will is asked to repair Henry 6 which has been mauled and bandied about by the other playwrights, a mishmash of so many pens which have quite spoilt the broth.

I haven't read that far in but already, there is a tenderness developing between Anne and Kit Marlowe. Marlowe is handsome, he is young, he is on top of the world, and he is a genius. And Will, alas, Will is not quite there yet. I'll keep you posted as I go along.

Sketches by Boz

Here's the thing. I had intended to read the Christmas Stories first but they were too difficult to find online (OK, I guess I could have if I had really put my mind to it but I was lazy and there were too many other things to do close to Christmas and Chubby's wedding) and so Christmas came and went with the two Christmas books unread.

And now it's after Christmas I don't feel compelled to put those books first. Other than The Christmas Carol and Cricket on the Hearth, I didn't really care for most of the stories I have read. But nuff about that. I will get to it in its proper place when I finally pick up Books 1 and 2 and give them the required once over, stopping every so often to ponder.

Business? Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.

Three guesses for who said that and where it's from.

OK, OK, I'll start for real now.

I was reading a book about pilgrimage (the Camino, sort of, well a pilgrimage of sorts that terminates in Santiago de Compostela) and finding it hard going. It's a mixture of description of place and the inner journey. But I don't think the author (who is wrestling with lack of faith and a rejection of the church and finding herself amidst believers, breaking out in hives, losing front teeth and having panic attacks) is kind of jerky. In places, the prose sings, but more often than not, well, it doesn't and I was supposed to have been done with it by now and I would have if it was as well written as most of the memoir-type books that I love. But this one...I am not sure...it's sort of like a pebble in the shoe, minor irritation, doesn't quite come off.

Anyway, I abandoned the book for a while and opened up my Sketches by Boz on the iPad. Now, I had attempted to read this book before and not gotten past page 22. At the time, coming off Hard Times (I think it was Hard Times, it may have been something else) I couldn't appreciate the mastery that went into this book. Now, with the other book to contrast it to, I found the sketches, fluid, flowing, funny...(I seem to be on an alliterative kick here). I made it to page 30. And I only broke off because it was late and I was tired.

So I look forward to resuming the book (I skipped ahead to see how many pages this book has and, um, it's like 943, I mean to say, what?).

I need to finish it as I want to start on my Shakespeare/Woolf kick and I'll feel guilty if I start that without having finished this one first.

I am thinking of starting with Romeo and Juliet just because Mark's friend Andrew asked me if I knew the rest of the "Parting is such sweet sorrow" quote and I didn't. And he did. And he sells medical devices for a living. And I write. I mean to say, what?