Shakey

[poliphilo]

We've been converting the back bedroom into a study for Ailz. She's got a TV in there so she can watch the Shakespeare plays she's studying. And yesterday we went to IKEA and bought her a flat-pack bookcase. I'm good with flat-packs. This one has its shelves supported on metal pegs. I opened the packet and one of the pegs leapt out,  bounced joyously and went down a gap in the floorbooards. Never mind. Ailz produced a magnet on an extending thing like a radio aerial and we had the little bugger out again in no time. 

This is going to be our year of Shakespeare. Already we go to bed and lie there talking about the Sonnets and how Shakey reportedly drank himself to death in the company of Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton and what silly wankers the Oxfordians are and other significant matters arising.

I'm reading the Lodger. It's about a law case Shakey got involved in while lodging with a Hugenot family in Cripplegate. It's like you're circumambulating him. There he is, sitting in his study bedroom with the MS of All's Well That Ends Well spread out on the table, and you can almost reach him but not quite. It's  frustrating how much we know about his world- like who his neighbours were and what they did for a living- and how little about the man himself. 

Comments

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Ole Uncle Will trivia: When I lived in London, I had a friend who was a tourism guide. He told me that Will Shakespeare was a friend and drinking buddy of the Bishop Winchester - Ye same Bishop responsible for directing the King James translation of the Bible. There is speculation but no proof that Will may have made a comment or three on the texts.
I've always wanted to believe this as I find it hard to believe that an ordinary mortal could have penned text as beautiful as Luke Chapter 2 or the 23rd Psalm which to me is as perfect a poem ever written.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's a story by Kipling- Proofs of Holy Writ- in which he imagines Shakespeare working on the King James Bible- more particularly polishing the prophecy in Isaiah which begins "Rise, shine, for thy light has come..."

And why not?

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

They were neighbors. Southwark Cathedral WAS Shakes church. It's nice to think it might be so.

Certainly a reason for avoiding this basterdised modern translation.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I always use the King James or- at a pinch- the RSV.