Yesterday would have been William Shakespeare’s and Anne Hathaway’s 426th anniversary. Whew.
Per yesterday’s Today in Literature newsletter, which I’ve just got around to reading, we have this excerpt from Chapter 3 of Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works, “Richard Nye’s fictional send-up of their marriage”:
When Mr William Shakespeare asked me that idle question as to whether I desired him to compare me to a summer’s day, and I said thank you no, we were standing together on the bank by London Bridge. I say together because together is worth remark in a marriage like ours was.
Himself had been picking his nose for at least five minutes, dreaming. As for me, I was counting the heads of the traitors up there on the poles. It was cold, I might tell you….
“Winter,” my husband said suddenly.
He swept off his hat with a flourish, as if he had just discovered some important new truth. I thought he’d read my mind about the day not knowing what season it belonged to. Then, from the green spark in his eyes, I knew there was worse to come.
“Winter what?” I demanded.
“Winter you,” Mr Shakespeare said. “Anne Hathawinterway with her,” he went on, grinning. “You’re more like a day in December,” my husband concluded.
I hit him.
Well, what would you have done?
What a great exercise: inventing dialogue — a whole life — for a famous person whose biography is documented poorly, or not at all.
Oh, if I get started with stuff like this…
In college I wrote a paper about Nabokov’s Lolita. I quoted scenes from the novel and then created dialog between H. & L. arguing about what really happened. That semester I was so bored with regular papers, I just decided to do something absurd and hope the prof would go along with it. Luckily for me, he did.
hahahaha.
happy thanksgiving (a couple days late)!
marta: Inventing biography for famous fictional characters sounds like even more fun than doing it for famous real ones. Not at all surprised the guy “went along with it”; it’s hard to imagine he didn’t almost swoon with excitement that someone had taken the assignment that seriously and that creatively. :)
moonie: Oh, that’s right — stuff about Will does tend to draw you out of the woodwork, doesn’t it? (And did you know that his family had immigrated to England from China? :)