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When you are ready, we start. But motives, I suspect. You suspect. I suspect you suspect my motives. O.K. that’s O.K. You should, of course you do, though I could wish you didnot. Or I could wish you need not That I had not done all this to make you need no suspicion of my motives. Or that despite all I had done, you would recall that I NEVER DID IT TO YOU, never sought your unearned confidence, or with your confidence filched a dime or a dime’s worth of prestige from anyone. So. Motives. The noise in this place shatters concentration. I cannt keep a straight line. When I left you, I went and laid down. Someone was banging on his bunk up a few levels shouting “MARRY ME! MARRY ME!” Fine. Motives. Obviously money. I will explain when I see you next. When can you come again? No, I will write. Money obviously. There is a lot of money in this. But not for me. None for me. Arthur. I do not need money, and I wiill not be around to spend. Money for you. Dana. Your mother. Finally. And honorably gained! At last. What else? A gift to you. Fame for you. Your own writing is grand and you are rightly praised for it. And your name is crucial to our task. But this is a different magnitude and success in this gambit accrues to you (and Shakespeare).

(There it is again.)

You will be toasted for this! The proximity of your name next to his! You introduce this for him, and he then introduces you to millions of readers. You do him this favor and he owes you and repays you right away in spades. He lights the way and you can do whatever you want after this. You said publishing was in trouble. He will save it. And you.

I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do. I didn’t understand what it mattered if this quarto was real or what it proved, considering someone had published the play before—we had the 1904 edition, and my grandfather had acted in it in 1915. I was no expert in any of this and didn’t keep up with the latest Shakespearean discoveries, but finding a copy of a play that everyone already knew about seemed pretty minor, though if it was a museum-quality relic, then I assumed it would be worth some thousands, perhaps. I may even have fantasized that it was worth $10,000 or $50,000. Still, why so excited, Dad? Perhaps that sounded like a million to 1987 ears.

I do not claim to be above idealism. Old men have privileges. We all get to say that everything is going to hell in a handbasket, but I get to do something about it. He deserves this, doesnth’e? The world will take pleasure in it. Think how many aggregate hours of joy you will bring the world. Add up everyone who reads this, who goes to see it. Theaters, classrooms, lecture halls, and bookclubs. Courtship moments in campus bars, letters to reluctant girls, boys quoting this play to make time. You will be responsible for all that. And say what you want, but your books are not good for that.

A touch, a palpable touch. I might also add now, considering my own semesters of unhappiness choking on dry bits of Shakespeare, that this aggregate of joy will not come without terrible cost to generations of schoolkids infinitely into the future.

You said you have no book in you right now. So the timing is swell. Publish this. Tell the world it is his and it is good. Get it onstage. Get a movie made in Hollywood. Movies! I could wish Olivier was alive. Is Branagh? Schools. Write about it. Write footnotes. Explain it in newspapers. Defend it. Get scholars onboard the ship. They have computers now that can count his words, prove he wrote it, what year, collaborators. Do all that. They will prove it is him and his. And you know it, don’t you, Arthur? Ask Dana. She knows. And when you know it, when you’re working hand in hand every day with me (and him)

(Sigh)

youwill feel it in every line. I envy you! You will be collaborating with him! Reading every line a hundred times. Those lost words, puns, allusions. Follow his creative path. Help everyone see how he worked his wonders. You will feel his presence.