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.