Shakespeare's Editor

Today, I have completed the research that will ensure my fame down the ages. I have roamed the earth in search of the final pieces of the jigsaw. I spent four long years drudging in the Douglas, Isle of Man, public library seeking the clue to the final resting place of the document I sought for so long. Today, in the unlikely setting of the Jackson Township Public Library (No Cleats), I finally discovered it. Literature's Holy Grail. The original diaries of Shakespeare's editor.

I have long suspected that Shakespeare, only a playwright after all, could not have produced these magnificent works that are a testament to the skills of a good editor. Notably, I feel sure, to the skills of that fine editor ancestor of mine Romeo Greenhow , who also needed a nom de editorial pencil and was known as Chesyl. His editorial style may also have created inadvertently, the confusion and doubts over the authorship of the plays for it is well known within the family that Romeo could only work on a bacon sandwich. Strange how history repeats itself and that so many generations later there has come another of such talent and who has chosen, by complete coincidence, virtually the same alter ego. But I digress.

Today, I can give you a sneak preview of The Unexpurgated Diaries of Shakespeare's Editor, a work set to take the publishing world by storm and I am expecting the film offers to come pouring in. I think it only right that I play the lead, my fine Roman nose mirroring, as it does so closely, Romeo's own nose.

'Twenty Fourth day of April in the year of our Lord MDCI

Willy Shakespeare came to see me today. He was accompanied, as usual, by his wife, the former Mistress Hathaway. She has grand publishing ideas of her own, but I persuaded her that I am no publisher of poetics and that she should gain advice from Donne. I think Will should keep her in her place, women should not publish poetry and consume themselves instead with the management of the household. E'en here, the woman has odd ideas though she tells me that painting the outside of property black and white is popular in Stratford. She surpriseth me not, for the place is full of cheap merchants and oriental inns.

He said he was suffering from the vapors but I know it was the anniversary of his birth yesterday and from the scarlet of his eyes, I suspect over consumption of wine, under the tutelage, no doubt, of the former Mistress Hathaway.

He has a new play. Where he gets the ideas from I dare not consider, it pays to be cautious of bearded men. I still suffer from the night sweats of what would have happened if I had not managed to persuade him that George and Mildred, a story of star crossed lovers set in Skegness would not appeal to the literati of London and that Romeo and Juliet set in Verona would have far more cachet. I am honor-bound to say that after much discussion it was finally Will that paid me the compliment of determining that my own name would prove finest. But, I digress.

This one is to be about Julius Caesar, at least I don't have to find a new name for that character. Willy wants to call the play The Ideas of March. I tried extravagantly to persuade him that it was Ides not Ideas but to no avail. I did manage to persuade him that Julius Caesar was a finer title for people will know instantly what the play will be about (I would not wager my ten percent on that, the masses are so ignorant) and I will manage to drop the a in Idea on publication and blame the printer.

One of the high points is to be the funeral oratory of Marc Antony. It will need my hand to make sense of the rubbish Willy has penned so far

Plebians, Senators, gutterswill, put a sock in it!

As so many of the audience will be gutterswill themselves, they need no reminder. Plebians will fly above the heads of most and nobody now uses the term Senator beyond crooked politicians.

I am generally in favor of vernacular but in this instance, in view of the sockless state of many, I think we need something that will convey the same but more grandly and so I have recast the line so:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I am here for Julius's funeral not to tell you what a really good pro-consul he was.

I craved to differ with Will that Antony would have had such an informal relationship with Caesar and also that any of the illiterate would know what a pro-consul was.

I have recast:

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Bad things can carry on even after you become deceased,

Such abuse of the English language, Will should really have joined those on the Mayflower if he wanted to speak in such a fashion.

The evil that men do lives after them

(by the way is this a cremation or a burial?)

I grant myself the satisfaction of having managed to convince young Willy that Antony would have known the nature of the disposal of great Caesar's remains ahead of the event and would not have required advice as he spoke.

(OK), the good is oft interred with their bones.

So let Jule's bones be interred with the good. The arch-villain Brutus

Tis inexplicable that from such a tortured mind comes such wondrous ideas.

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Told you that Caesar wanted further career advancement
If we could for a single minute believe Brutus, then it would have been a disgustingly upwardly mobile attribute
And the old chap would have gotten his just rewards.

Sometimes, I believe that Will is a talent long before his time. From where do such thoughts emanate? I think I have managed to keep the sense though:

Hath told you that Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Casar answer'd it.

I can do no more this night for exhaustion consumes me.

Chesyl

 

I feel it appropriate to mention that in being slightly disparaging about Mistress Hathaway, I was simply teasing a friend of mine. A fine poet with the last name of Hathaway, whose poetry may be found by clicking here