If I had a TARDIS... & random Shakespeare fanwankery...

[capri0mni]

In a recent post, snowgrouse asked me, meme-ishly:

"If you had a TARDIS, where and when would you go first?"

And this is how I answered:

I'd probably zip around, and gather all my online friends (Both [Doctor] Who fans, and Mudcatters, many of [whom among] the latter sing and play music for real) and have a real life pro-fun hoedown (pot luck). Then, I'd love to zip to England, 1600's, and have a chat with Shakespeare's oldest daughter, Susanna... I read a snippet from one of his contemporaries that had met her that said she was more intelligent than was natural for a woman -- I'd love to sit down and pick her brain.

Really. You know those Mary-sueish day dreams you have, where you escape into a fantasy, where you are at the center of a grand adventure? Well, when I'm not fantasizing about traveling around with a certain renegade Time Lord (who is almost, but not exactly, like the fictionalized version we see on TV), I'm fantasizing about a rift in the fabric of space-time that pulls a certain Elizabethan playwright and poet into the early 21st Century...

When I first started playing around with that daydream, in the late 20th Century, it was so I could meet William, himself. But I've since decided that I already have access to the best thoughts he's ever had, and if I were to keep the disruption to history to a minimum, he'd have to come through after he'd already decided to retire. So, instead, I began to imagine that he'd come through as a sort of bellwether: someone that could be recognized as the William Shakespeare (perhaps if he'd popped into the middle of an English professors' conference), and, a little bit later, Susanna would pop through, and he would just be there to verify who she was. It would be much easier, then, to move onto exploring the potential of "Shakespeare's nearly forgotten daughter" than if she had popped through alone, and she'd have to spend all her energy convincing people she was not insane...

And, I think, if I were in charge of Doctor Who, I'd have Susanna Shakespeare as a companion for the Doctor, in much the same way that Jamie McCrimmon was: a specific (but anonymous enough) person from a critical turning point in history, whom the Doctor could rescue and help develop her full potential, by taking her to times and places where she'd have more freedom than as a woman in Elizabethan and Jacobian England.

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(eta: thanks for the tips in the comments!)

The other day, I heard an interview with Peter O'Toole on the radio, prompted by upcoming release of the movie Venus. And he said that he thought Shakespeare was over-rated as a playwright -- that only about a dozen of his 36 plays were true masterpieces; but that every one of his 154 sonnets were absolute gems, and that he had memorized every single one of them by heart.*

My reactionary thoughts: 1) Yeah, but if, in the course of 20 years or so, you could write a dozen masterpieces for the stage, you've done well and probably deserve the title "Genius", and should be allowed a few that are merely good, and even some that are stinkers, and 2) And yes! Absolutely agree about the sonnets....

The thing about his sonnets is that most scholars** believe them to be autobiographical, written over the course of a few years, and each one is about specific moments of reflection in his life, whereas the plays were written to please the monarchy and the crowds. This is yet more evidence of that old writers' chesnut that if you want to create a work of art that speaks to all humankind, get very, very specific and personal.

*The interviewer than challenged him to recite one of his favorite sonnets, extemporaneously: and he chose one of my faves: #130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

(O'Toole faltered in remembering that last couplet, but came up with it, after a bit of hemming and hawing)

**(the ones who believe that Shakespeare is really Shakespeare, and not a nom de plume for the Earl of Oxford, that is)

Comments

[blinovitch.livejournal.com]

Horizontal rule. Open bracket HR close bracket.

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[capriuni.livejournal.com]

cool. And I suppose you could change the color with the addition of "color=" inside the brackets?

(tries it)

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[capriuni.livejournal.com]

nope. no redness...

[blinovitch.livejournal.com]

You could do it with a style tag, or go whole hog if you're working with a CSS sheet for a website and make it an attribute of the HR element.

Anyway, let's see:

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[blinovitch.livejournal.com]

Mmm, nope. You can do it by increasing the height of the HR and making it "background-color: red," but it looks crappy.

I wonder how LJ is making their HRs be blue, then.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but I bet there's a whole bunch of details preprogrammed into various lj styles -- like the fact that bars in polls are always dark red.

[blinovitch.livejournal.com]

I had at look what seems to be the basic style sheet, and couldn't, at first glance, discern any statements to do with HRs. It's obviously in there, just expressed in some way I don't know about.

[scarfman]

Someone on my flist asked this week, "If you had a time machine, what would you change?" I said:

"The time-traveller characters in my fiction keep saying that true history is that which is formed by the free will of those living it, and an ethical time-traveller will preserve that just as anyone else would remove a banana peel from a heavily-trafficked pathway.

"I wouldn't change a thing. I'd go back for video of the plays I did in high school."

I think the bar is an nr tag. Let's see. Maybe not.

[scarfman]

I was close! I checked out the code in an entry of someone on my flist who uses it all the time.

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It's an hr tag.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

The time-traveller characters in my fiction keep saying that true history is that which is formed by the free will of those living it, and an ethical time-traveller will preserve that just as anyone else would remove a banana peel from a heavily-trafficked pathway.

Interesting. Of course, free wills of different persons are often in conflict... what if someone had dropped that peel there on purpose, to harm an enemy?

[scarfman]

Unless the person who dropped the banana peel was a time traveler, it's still the free will of the people living the history. That's just like the Doctor refusing to help Barbara change the history of the Aztecs.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Right. I getcha now...

[uncacreamy.livejournal.com]

I am deeply in love with Peter O'Toole. He is ancient, and when he dies, I will beat my breast, fling myself on his casket, and weep.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I remember watching him in Lawrence of Arabia (Film C.S., at PDS) -- his first breakout role that turned him into a major movie star...

...ooh! Those eyes. That golden hair, and wicked smile! That movie was the starting fuel for about half-a-dozen teenage fantasies, that summer.... (fans self).

He wasn't always ancient...

[uncacreamy.livejournal.com]

Lawrence of Arabia, oh my, oh my.

I know. I think he's still sexy, even when he's ancient.

*sighs happily *

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sexiness has more to do with inner spirit, rather than outward looks, no matter what the fashion industry tries to sell us. To go back to those sonnets, again, this one is number 22:

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.

[pedanther]

So, instead, I began to imagine that he'd come through as a sort of bellwether: someone that could be recognized as the William Shakespeare (perhaps if he'd popped into the middle of an English professors' conference)

There's a short-short story by Isaac Asimov, called "The Immortal Bard", which you should read some time if you haven't already.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Drat! Don't tell me -- the story's already been done?

(and yes. I will look for it! Thanks for the tip)

[pedanther]

Not to be worrying. "The Immortal Bard" is a story in which Shakespeare appears in the twentieth century, and has an interesting take on the question of being recognised as the William Shakespeare, but it is not your story.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

yeah... the question above was posed with my tongue wedged firmly in my cheek.

I forgot to ask, though: as it is a short-short, I'm assuming I'd likely find it in an anthology. Do you have an anthology title for me to look for?

[pedanther]

The web site I generally rely on for such information says that it is in Earth is Room Enough, The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov, and Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, volume 1.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

... like a cipher,
Yet standing in rich place, I multiply
With one 'We thank you' many thousands moe
That go before it. -- "Winter's Tale"