The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [117]
OK. Let’s get into this. I don’t think the index card proves what you think. It doesn’t. I’ve looked at it a lot and that’s not how I read it. It could be notes of someone writing about the play, studying it, misremembering the line. Making a list of research questions? Something to take to the library instead of a 400 year old play? Don’t you think he’d be on a card numbered higher than 14 if he was already writing Act III? I also wouldn’t put it past you to forge the card!
Can I ask you a personal question? Have you thought about what you would do if this hits like we all think it could? You’re going to be well-off to say the least. Do you think you’ll still write? I’ve always been curious about what happens to ambition and ambitious artists when suddenly money becomes no problem at all.
Maybe this is cheap psychology on my part, but is some part of you possibly scared of that event? It would make sense. This is a big deal for everyone, but maybe we haven’t talked enough about the fact that it’s the biggest deal for you, of all of us. This is going to change your life more than anybody’s. If I were you, I think I’d be wondering if I’d still be a writer the morning I become a millionaire. Even Shakespeare retired when he made his bundle. And Dr. Johnson has a great line: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
But you want my opinion? I know you. You’re a writer and I think you’ll still be one after all this.
Please call me.
DATE: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:51:17 -0600
TO: “Hershey, Jennifer”
CC: Marly Rusoff
SUBJECT: Re: Mounting evidence
Jen, no. This isn’t about my psychology or money or fear. It is simple. I am pulling out of this, and I am taking the quarto. We’re done. I am really sorry, but it’s done.
43
IN HIS TIME, Shakespeare was one of many writers. He was admired, but not out of all sane proportion. Others were rated more highly. Opinions varied, as they should, outside of dictatorships. The poet Michael Drayton composed an ode to all the great authors of his day: Shakespeare was one of more than a dozen, just above Samuel Daniel, right in the middle, praised for comedy and “clear rages,” whatever that means. The playwright John Webster listed the men he admired around him: Shakespeare was buried in a long roll, recognized not for being the creator of the universe but for being prolific, of all things, like Joyce Carol Oates. William Shakespeare was, in other words, a man, a working writer, one of many. So why is he now forced on us as the single greatest? How did he pull this scam, and who abetted?
It isn’t an obvious answer, and for the newcomer to Shakespeare, or to those of you who stopped paying attention as soon as tenth-grade English was blessedly over, the idea of someone being unconvinced or even bothered by Shakespeare’s easy, royal afterlife may seem a bit odd.
But we have allowed this man to be inflated, to our disadvantage and his (and certainly to the disadvantage of all those other writers of his time whom we never study or read or perform because they’re cast as eternal also-rans). But this is a trick of perspective, a rolling boulder of PR, a general cowardliness in us, a desire for heroes and simple answers. Laziness: it’s easier to think one guy had it all.
(A) We judge him the best. (B) He has survived all this time. But, really, what if it’s the other way around? Is he who we’ve got because he’s good, or do we judge him good because he’s who we’ve got? We now find it hard to enjoy any of his contemporaries very