Welcome back to part two of William Shakespeare. In the last episode, we learned why Anne Hathaway received the second best bed in the will. We also learned about Shakespeare's strategy for recycling plays from history to stay out of trouble with the current Monarchs. And we talked about the incredible amount of competition he faced to keep the audience looking his direction instead of at the bear fighting the dog next door.
In the next episode, he's going to tell us what happened during the Lost Years. He's going to tell us about the Dark Lady. And then he'll answer the question about whether or not he was a spy for the Queen. Let me ask you about your fortune for a minute. There's something that confuses me about how good you are at making money because, I mean, would you say that you are savvy at business? Oh, absolutely. Very savvy. Very savvy. The art of making plays is making a living at making plays.
And that's what I was able to accomplish. . And so that that raises the question. , I've known a lot of people that were artistic in their lives. And I think there's a history of people being good at something creative, but then they're terrible at business. They can make beautiful things, paintings, and none of it makes any money until they've died. And yet it seems that you are really good at both. You have a mind for business.
You had mentioned that you had 10 percent of the globe, or you'd invested in the globe before that burned down and. , I think you actually have a very nice house now, from my understanding. I do. I , I own the largest house in Stratford. New place. So this is the question that raises for me , it seems like those things don't go together very well. They're there, it's just a different way of thinking where one is not usually good at the other. And in our time, there's some controversy that.
There are a lot of people say that you did not write your own plays. Somebody else wrote them Who says that? well, I mean, I don't know. I didn't get all their names, but send them to disabuse them of that myth. so you absolutely wrote all of your own work. That's outrageous. Of course I wrote my own work. Who else would do it? Why would you write a play and then put my name on it? Why would That's what I always wondered.
Okay. I could not create the great roles I created without such a great company of players to bring them to life. Richard Burbage, how could one create Hamlet or indeed Romeo or King Lear without that great lion of the stage Richard Burbage , to bring him to life? was very fortunate to create these works, but , this, this aspect of, of artists not being good businessmen, I suppose that's true. , but if so, in my case, again, I was very fortunate because I was a populist.
I wanted to write stories that attracted lots of people. What is the point of writing of a play that only five people want to come and see? If I want to communicate To the masses, the, the larger, the mass, , the better, correct. most definitely. Yeah. ? You had mentioned Richard Burbidge. When you were writing a play, , were you fiddling with the words and getting them the way you want? Or are you thinking, oh, this is what Richard Burbidge would say. Are you writing it for the actor?
I did both. I, fiddled with, as you say, with the language to make it poetic and real, but I also knew the kinds of things my players could accomplish, for instance, Burbage was a great titan, , a man of great power, but I knew he always needed a break because the amount of energy that he , expended performing these roles always required that I , give his characters a long time off stage in act four, , where he could Take a breath, grab some ale before his final scenes Silence. Silence.
Silence. I could just say. All right, Will, you do your Okay. Okay. Okay. in that play, talk so much about the way actors should deliver the lines as they have been So I'm going to go ahead and show you a little bit of the process of creating a transcript for the uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, played all my my clown roles but he soon You Okay. Okay. thinking of the Feste in Twelfth Night or the Fool in King Lear. , okay, so you obviously liked Richard Burbidge and, and this Kemp.
What would happen if somebody was on the stage and you, you know exactly how you want them to say the words and they are just doing a terrible job delivering your words? What would you do while it's happening live? Okay. Well, what could I do? I would have to, the play is the thing, as I believe I wrote once more than once probably. , sometimes it happens because things happen. It's not as if, We perform the same play every night for weeks at a time.
These players have multiple plays in their head and are able to call upon the right lines for the right play with sometimes just a morning's notice for a performance that afternoon. As a former player myself, if they were to change the lines repeatedly, then we would have to have a conversation and I suspect they would not long be with our company. then you'd have to let them know , who was writing and who was acting. Yes, exactly. Yes, we, must learn our place and our roles within the company.
That said, all the players were very eager to speak my words. That was never really this, this issue that you raised was never a real one for me. . Do people in your time, do they speak the way that you write? Is that how everybody talks or is that, is that embellished? Oh, it's absolutely embellished. I said, I was a poet and, and a dramatic poet in the sense that I use my poetry. In the service of a dramatic narrative or a comedic narrative? , but this is not the way we speak.
, this is what we call heightened language. , for the same reason one wouldn't , put a play between the pages of a book. One wouldn't stand up on stage and say. Just any sort of prosaic language. If an audience is coming to the theater, you must give them something greater than what they can get out in the streets of London, you know? So, so this is, no, this is, do not be confused. This is not what, the language of my plays is not the way we actually speak.
, this is spoken poetry , is what I'm hearing. Well said. Thank you. Would you say that. If, if somebody was to describe you and said, Will is a, is he a poet? Is he a writer? Is he a businessman? What, what are you? Oh, I, I would say poet first and foremost. Yes. , all the other things that you mentioned come as a result of my skill as a poet. Yeah. . That makes a lot of sense. So let's talk about the globe for a minute. So I've been to the globe theater, the rebuilt one. Oh, they rebuilt it.
Bravo. that's right. In your time, it doesn't exist anymore because it burned down a couple of years ago. Yes. They've rebuilt it again. I'm so happy. Delighted to hear it. They just keep building it over and over. No matter how many times it burns down, they're not gonna let that go. Not because of you. down again? I don't think so. I mean, maybe. But I'm not, I know when I was there, it wasn't on fire. I know that.
very But my, my question about the globe is, is that you moved it at one point, didn't you? Didn't you like just take the boards down? I mean, what does that look like? When I read that, I'm thinking, I don't even understand how that happens. We didn't move, we didn't move the globe. What we did was we were performing in a playhouse called The Theatre.
It was on the north side of the Thames , it sat on Land the Burbidges leased Puritan named Giles Allen, and they were trying to renew the lease, but Allen insisted that he would only renew the lease if they stopped performing plays. Well, obviously that was never going to work. So, one Christmas Eve, when Giles Allen was out of London for the holiday, in observation of the holiday, he was in his, at his country estate, we stole into the theater and took it apart.
the verbiages did not own the land, but they owned the building. So we Where we rebuilt the theater playhouse, and that's the one that we named The Globe. Much better name from the theater Yeah, to the globe. ha, yes, , we agree. So then what caused it to burn down? An accident, , I still don't know precisely who to blame. But, , , I wrote a play Okay. Henry VIII. Which is In retrospect, perhaps not a play I should have written, because it was skating rather close to thin ice.
Henry VIII, of course, was the father of Queen Elizabeth, who had recently died. , it was one of the last plays I of the, of the globe on fire. And it was, it was well on its way to burning the roof of the theater before anyone noticed that it was happening. Why nobody noticed it was happening is still something I was never , able to solve. But yes, it was, it was a performance of Henry VIII that brought down the globe. , and that is just one of many reasons why I regret writing that play.
So now we've got tying bears to stakes. We've got. People staring at naked people. And the list goes on and on and all the things that we can do. And now we're shooting cannons indoors, but still no women on the stage. the Globe was an outdoor theater so we weren't firing off a cannon indoors. So, indeed, it was a signal to all of London that a play was on board at the Globe at that particular moment. So, yes, but I take your point. There were no women on stage.
, it's not something I was ever in favor of. There are many, many great women of my association in London, many of whom convincingly play women. Were there any women writers in your time? Oh, of course. Yes, there were, there was Amelia Bassano. She was a great poet, also a wealthy widow. She was another noble lady who was able to create her art The need to worry about making a living. She was a great poet. And I, will say in all confidence, a rather close, intimate of mine.
Ah, I wonder if you had started out a little wealthier. With a father that didn't drink as much and a whole bunch of money, if you would have had that fire in your belly, so to speak, to go and do all the work that you did, I mean, are you just a writer and you have to write or did you need to do it? And that's what caused it. That is a fantastic question. I don't think I would have been as good of a writer.
I might have had the fire, but I don't think I would have had the knowledge or the awareness of all the different classes of society. if I'm able to accurately judge my own work, I think one of the strengths of my place is that I was able to create characters from all levels of society from royalty to the nobility, to , the working classes, to the mechanicals to tavern owners, brothel workers. I was able to write about them all. So everyone in England was able to see themselves in my plays.
Let's go back did you have your daughters before or after who was, who was born first? Susanna was born first, right? Susanna followed, followed by the twins. And in a medical miracle, Susanna was born less than nine months after Anne and I were married. That is a miracle. You know, that sort of thing seems to happen frequently. So. happens in your day, It, it definitely does. There's a lot of people that get married and the timing of that nine months seems to to fall very well.
So, with by the way, what happened? What would've happened if you would've had a child or she would've been pregnant? Before you were married, which we of course know didn't happen. Well, well, of course , it would've brought great shame upon both of our families, the Ardents and the Shakespeares, and that, that would never do. Plus I loved Anne. , the fact of her being with child merely sped up the inevitable. . So then after Susanna is born, then you have your twins, Hamnet and Judith.
And then in our time, there's a period after that, they call it Shakespeare's lost years Hmm 1585 and 1592. And then after that, it just appears that you just come out with all this work. ha, What was happening during that time? I have to say, , I'm relieved to know that some of my life is shrouded in mystery. , the fact that you know the contents of my will is disconcerting. To be honest. So I'm glad to know this. I was doing what any young man does.
I was scrambling to find a way to support my family. I did some teaching throughout the country. I toured as a young actor. It's how I first discovered the glory of players and play acting, touring actors from London , would travel the countryside and perform for us in Stratford. And because my father was a bailiff of Stratford, a high ranking official, I was able to sit in on not just the Okay. but some of the rehearsals as a boy. So, and I was captivated. By all of this.
So I traveled as a younger man looking to support my family. I toured as a traveling player. I was a boy who played some of the women. I did some teaching in different rural communities. I learned all about how. Plays are made and how the business of theater operates the how we get paid where we stay and perform in the different towns that we come upon how the props and costumes are built and maintained. I think it's important for.
Anyone involved in this business to understand how it works on a fundamental level, not just on the artistic side, but on the business side. So during these lost years you're speaking of, I'm learning how to become , the man of parts that I became. , and that's why people wouldn't know about it, because there's nothing exciting about learning that base of knowledge that you're going to be using for the rest of your life. Indeed, I didn't go off to Cambridge or Oxford to learn what they wanted.
Me to learn. I traveled the countryside, learning what I wanted to learn. I read once , that you might have been a soldier during that time, which, could that have happened? It did happen for a very short time, a very short time. Both the army and me were able to , figure out quite quickly that I am not , meant to be a man of arms. You came to an agreement on that very quickly, huh? We did indeed. , to use another expression that I'm not sure you're aware of play to my strengths.
Is this another of your phrases? It could well be. Okay. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. And you talk about these words that I supposedly invented. I'm not sure I invented any of these words. I used words that were common. of them were just common usage. It's just that I might have been the first one to write them down. , I'm very great. I'm not sure I'm as great as all that. I mean, there are, I think of these words, you know, and in the Taming of the Shrew, there was break the ice.
I mean, this is something that's used all the time. And so maybe you were the first one to write, wear your heart on your sleeve in Othello. Wild goose chase in Romeo and Juliet. I mean, these are things that are all said today. Well, I'm glad to know that. , I managed to live on. you know, it's funny that, that we're having this conversation.
Well, it's a, it's miraculous that we're having this conversation, but , I wrote in many of my sonnets about power of words, how the words will outlive us. And it, it seems that I was right. . , speaking of the sonnets , This is something I don't know a lot about and, but I do know that in the sonnets that there is some the doomsday book. Don't sell yourself short, sir. There is much you don't know about. you're, you're exactly right. You're exactly right.
, there is a reference you make to the dark lady and the fair youth. What is the dark lady? I just want to, as soon as I saw that, I wanted to know who this was. So Well, I, I made mention of Emilia Bassano earlier and I spoke of our intimacy. She was very, very important to me, Emilia, but I dared not put her name down. . So I refer to her as the Dark Lady, which in fact she was. She was darkly complected.
And, I was so fond of the image, I confess, I used the phrase the Dark Lady to refer to more than one person. Person as a, sort of a metaphor or stand in, if you will. what about the fair youth? Okay. We have Q and A. I'll be back in a minute. All right. and sometimes by older nobility who wanted me to praise their son and encourage him to get married and have children , and prolong the family name. I confess I became with some of these young men as uh, their lady
friends and . was able to express in my writing some feelings that I might not necessarily act upon in my life. Did you have romantic relationships with men in your time? I did, and I'm only saying that because I know nobody from my own time is listening, I did, it was a sort of a hard thing to, pardon the pun, it was a difficult thing to avoid and there was never, thankfully, never the worry of a pregnancy Going to result from an assignation with some of the young men of my acquaintance.
. Well, that actually makes sense too. , as they say, , what happens in the theater stays in the theater, right? Ha! Do they say that? It's, it's well said. And I, and I totally agree. Okay. So what you, you, this is something that come up a couple of times too. And we talked a little bit about Elizabeth not having an heir and and we talked about King Lear Hmm. trying to pass his his kingdom on to his daughters and that not going very well. Well, you, you're unfortunately, your heir has passed.
Young Hamnet died when he was young, and I'm guessing that you probably have some strong feelings about that. , how are you dealing with that? What does that look like in your life? Well, , it was unfortunate and , I have regrets that I was not able to be there. He was taken away so quickly. I was not able to get up to Stratford to say goodbye to him before we lost him. I do have regrets about that. , I tried to memorialize him.
I guess in many plays I was going to say Hamlet, but I, I hope I memorialized him , in all my young men characters trying to do right by his father. that said, , there's a reason I wrote King Lear as having only daughters and it's not just because the legend of Lear , and the pre existing versions of the King Lear story were what remained to me.
And , when I wrote those plays of regret, they were very much about being away from them as much as I was, So these feelings of not having an error are not as strong as the feelings of you being away from your family as much because you were in the theater business. Is that what you're saying? I guess , I guess to answer your question, this very conversation is proof that it's true.
My heirs are my plays, and I'm less concerned about continuing the Shakespeare name through a line of descendants like Banquo's descendants, who became, ultimately became the King of England, more impressed and delighted through this conversation to know that my plays have survived down to your time.
. I wonder In your time, since you don't have a direct air to pass your property to these, these things that obviously don't end up mattering at the end, are you able to pass these through your wife and your daughter? I mean, I know she gets the best bed. We've well established that, but what about the other stuff? What about the rest of the house? What about money? Can you pass that to your daughters? majority of my wealth goes to Susanna, because she's married to Dr. John Hall.
They will assume ownership of New Place, and, I have provided for my wife, Anne, , to live with them, to live by their graciousness. I've tried to take care of all of them insofar as I'm able. . Okay. I want to ask you something else and I want to ask you about King James, but before we do that, coming back to this fact that there were no women on stage, I'm really confused about that because you're almost your entire life was ruled by monarch who was a female.
Like you got a queen on the throne. Why is she not demanding that women have right on stage? Well, , that's a most excellent question. And I wish she were around we could ask her. It could well be she wanted to be seen as the only powerful woman in her day. And did not want other women. On stage to seem as powerful. It perhaps it diminished her power to see other actual women on the stage. , that could well be, , there could well have been a feeling that.
Women are just not able to as convincingly play women as boys were, which doesn't make any sense to me. I am surrounded by strong, able women in my life. You asked about my business sense part of that is yes, I'm, fairly and opportunistic, but I was also very lucky in that and Was also a very knowledgeable, smart, tough businesswoman who ran our household. Well, I was in London. I did not need to worry about how things were going in Stratford because I knew that Anne was in charge there.
I didn't know that and played a role in running , your empire, your business. Oh, absolutely she did. , speaking of ale, , we made ale in our house and Anne supervised all of that. She supervised the grain. . And in fact, I sort of cornered the market on grain at one point in my time, because it was such a valuable commodity. I , was not. Ashamed of doing what I needed to do in business. in fact, I sued some people. I was the subject of lawsuits.
It was it was a tough world, the world , of business equally as tough as making plays. when we were talking about Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, was she a paranoid queen? I think she was rightly concerned about threats to herself and her throne. Silence. Silence. So, I had read once that you might have been a spy for her, is that correct? A spy for Mary Stewart? Perish the No, no, no, a spy for Queen Elizabeth. Oh, good. Good lord, you you startled me.
I I, How to put it, did some light spying, but like my time in the military, it was determined by one and all that I was not fit for it. It was a job better left to my colleague and brief rival Christopher Marlowe. Kit Marlowe, Tell me who he was. he was a great, he was one of the giants of our time. He was a great literary man. He was a great playwright, a great poet. Oxford educated at Cambridge. And he always liked to flaunt his education in all of his plays.
His plays are filled with allusions to the classics. it made many of us go, kid, we get it. You're an educated man. Relax. Just tell us a story, would you? He was killed in a brawl in a tavern in Deptford. And the official story that went out was that he was killed over a reckoning of the bill. I suspect he was a spy, and that his personal behavior was becoming an embarrassment to the Queen. And, that it was, it was decided that he should meet a fatal accident.
That's my guess as to what happened to Kit. Maybe you got out of the spy business in time. Oh, I, yes. I . I am a much more cautious and conservative writer and man than Kit was. So when we look at your plays, we've got the older shows that you've written. , from the Kings and the Queens that we've discussed. And then of course, you know, we've got Romeo and Juliet, which we talked about a little bit that, that very sad story. And then out of the blue, it appears comes a Midsummer Night's Dream.
You've got all these mystical creatures and, and, I mean, where does that come from? , the playhouse was a jealous, demanding mistress, and needed to be fed constantly with new material. I'm Glad that you know of Midsummer Night's Dream. It's one of the few of my plays that was created completely extempore of my own wits. I made up the plot. I made up the characters. I did incorporate the well known love story of Pyramus and Thisbe, but only to make sport of Actors and players and performers.
It was great fun. There's nothing more fun to watch my players making fun of themselves under my tutelage, saying my words and it's, it's well known that many players are asses. So why not turn one of them into an actual ass? Who, was the ass in that? Was that Puck? No, no, no, Puck was the fairy, the fairy that turned Bottom into an ass. That's right. Who was the ass? I can't remember who the ass was. Bottom. The, the character's name was Bottom, and he's turned into an ass.
It's a delightful play on words. So when you, when you, when you talk about Puck the fairy there weren't, there weren't witches in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Like there were in I think there were in the Tempest. Is that right? . There are witches in Macbeth. There is Yes. Ariel is, is, is also a spirit whose mother was a witch. And there are members of the fairy kingdom in Midsummer Night's Dream who are just as real as witches. In fact, I, I say this.
The horrible, tempestuous weather we sometimes is a direct result of arguing and fighting amongst the squabbling gods and fairies. So the Titania and Oberon, , the queen and king of the fairies their great tempestuous romance results in the great and tempestuous weather we sometimes experience. Are there fairies and witches for real in your time? course there are, are there not in yours? Well, we don't know. I and I, I guess I was wondering how real they were to you.
I don't, I don't know if I've ever seen a witch. Well, , they were very real to us. Very real to us. I, I mean, how to explain some of the great wonders of the age that , we cannot explain in any other way, except that it must have been a witch or it must have been a fairy. There are, there are no other explanation exists in my time, but more importantly.
than that, is that witches and fairies, ghosts, other half human creatures like Caliban from The Tempest, these are all great theatrical devices, ways in which we can explore what it means to be human by looking at characters that are not human. The human condition fascinates you, doesn't it? It's all we have. What about King James? Is King James fascinated by witches? He wrote a book about witches, King James. Yes, he was definitely fascinated.
isn't he responsible for also translating the King James Bible? he did. He did. In many ways, he was as much of a patron of the written word as Queen Elizabeth was a patron of the spoken word. Yes, his translation of the Bible into English was a monumental achievement. And that's the real purpose of great published works like folios. To immortalize the Lord's word within the covers of a book, not the, the mere scribblings of a mere word, right?
Like myself, That seems, for him to write a book on witches and him to commission the Bible translated, are there witches in the Bible? I confess, I know not. I know that there are many fantastical elements in the Bible, that One can't explain, except through the word of God, So tell me what happens next in your life. The theater has burned down recently. Are you gonna write some more plays? , you're in Stratford now, aren't you? I am. Yes. So what does the rest of your life look like?
, certainly you have many, many years left. What, what do you plan to do with them? . Well, the theater is a young man's game. And I confess that the burning down of the globe rather took the wind out of my sails. It was one of the reasons I wanted to return to Stratford. I'm not quite sure I had the energy for a regular life in the theater as much as I did when I was young, as I said, I'm an old man now of 51. and I'll be 52 tomorrow.
It's time to spend that time at home with my wife, who I've neglected for many years and deserves better. I will occasionally collaborate. I have, I have dabbled in plays. I mean, The Tempest was the play that I, the last play that I wrote By myself. But I, I collaborated. That's another reason why I didn't care for Henry VIII. That was a collaboration.
But I also wrote the great play Cardinio, which was a lovely collaboration, sort of loosely inspired by Miguel de Cervantes Spanish story of, of Don Quixote. Plus I collaborated on a play called the two noble kinsmen, which feels like a perfect bookend to my first play, which was the two gentlemen of Verona. So to begin a career writing about two men and to finish a career writing about two different men, I admire the, perfect structure of that.
Well, I am so thankful for all of this time that you have given me and I, I've enjoyed this conversation so much. as have I master Antonio. This has been wonderful I guess there's just a few last questions and I think these are just stories that none of these are probably true, but I'm curious if any of these are. So if you could correct me on these or confirm them, whichever it is, was there a time where you got in trouble for poaching deer Oh! Ha ha!
That, that was a misunderst You know about that? Good he or it gets around, you start poaching somebody's deer. I mean, that stuff passes through the ages. It was a it was a misunderstanding and a youthful indiscretion. But yes, it happened. , did you have a matchmaking business? . Matchmaking business. No, I, that, that, that seems like a rumor that has been started in your day. At the Globe Theater, I think this is one of the first times that this ever happened.
Was there a trap door in the floor? Of course there was. Yes. The trap door is, is the way by which much magic is created. We were able to have characters disappear suddenly. We were able to create devices whereby a table filled with food could magically appear. As if by coming up through the trap in the floor. That was one of the many technical marvels that the playhouses were capable of. We had traps.
In the floor, we had the heavens above a roof over a part of the stage where we would bring sailors up from the docks who were good with pulleys and ropes and they were able to fly in characters, magical creatures like the goddess As You Like It was able to fly in. From, from the heavens, literally the heavens. So that's what we called it, the heavens. It was, it was the way by which we accomplished much stage magic. was that something that you created or was that commonplace?
I yard, for instance, in the countryside somewhere. But when we had the full resources of not just the globe, but then Blackfriars theater, which was an indoor theater lit. By candlelight. This was a marvelous invention. This is where Macbeth was first staged indoors. So we were able to create an atmosphere of, on the ease and superstition and darkness. A world in which which is Could naturally thrive.
And Another aspect of the business side of what we do, we were able to find investors who would give us money to build the black friars theater. In fact, we used some of the same investors that we're investing in the colonies in the Americas. Is it. Is that where you're from, by the way? am yes from the Americas. Are you from the Virginia Colony? well, Virginia Colony got bigger. That it? Good heavens. Well, yes.
of those same, investors funded the, the voyages to the new world, as we called it built our theaters. fact, I was inspired to write The Tempest because one of those ships that was sailing to the New World, that was funded by the men I knew who funded Blackfriars Theatre, one of their ships sunk in a huge tempest, which gave me the inspiration for the beginning of my play.
What would happen if you were in the middle of a play at the Globe Theatre and it was, because it's open air, I think, and it starts raining? Many, many people would get wet. But the play, but the show continues. Oh, yes, the play would go on, of course. The I mean, after all, you're not going to, I not made this clear? The play's the thing! and it's not like you're going to give them their money back. God, no. That would be insane. I think that's a perfect place to end this. If you.
We're going to say anything else to all these aspiring artists, all these writers that would be listening to this and, , they would maybe want to emulate what you're doing or, do something fantastic that people would remember. Is there anything that you'd like to say to them? Well, I'd be flattered if any young artists were to emulate me. God knows I emulated the artists ahead of me, I stole their plot lines. I stole actual lines of dialogue.
I stole some characters, but importantly, I transformed them and made them my own. I think this is how young artists find their own voice is by copying the voices. of the artists they admire. So, I would be enormously flattered to be an inspiration to but I would give them the same advice that Polonius gives to Laertes, which is, to thine own self. Will, thank you again for all of your time and all of your great work, and I wish you a long, long, happy life with your wife and your daughters.
Master Antonio, I receive that with gratitude, and to quote myself, I can no other answer make, but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks. While preparing for this conversation, I ran into several articles that suggested that Shakespeare didn't love his wife. I don't think that's true. I think that he loved his wife dearly, but I also think that he loved the other women that he was with, and the men. I think that he loved his actors.
I know that he loved his words, and I think that he loved more than anything seeing those words pass over the lips of a skilled actor. in exactly the way that he had written them, in the hopes that they would move the audience to feel something. I think he loved giving people an escape from the death and the political strife that was everywhere. I think Shakespeare loved everything, mostly life.
Once his young son Hamlet died, it appears that Shakespeare may have done some of his best work, knowing that his heir would no longer be able to pass on his name. Is it possible that he worked harder by rebuilding the Globe Theatre, writing Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth? Did these plays that centered around loss and grief come from Shakespeare's need to leave a legacy, even if it could only be a literary legacy?
Whatever caused all of this magnificent work to reach the stage, Shakespeare knew when to play it. Fast and loose. He knew to never wear out his welcome and he knew that the play was the thing. Thanks for listening, and don't forget that when you tell a friend about the Calling History podcast, A UFO Lands takes one. Look around and decides, eh, not today. I'm Tony Dean, and until next time, I'm history.