Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?

Satirical story by Marina Aristo Markovic 

* published in the Satirikon section of the Politika daily on December 11, 2021

 

 I recently read that William Shakespeare might have been a pseudonym for someone whose identity was eventually lost over time. And, to be honest, it really worried me.

Imagine this: Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?! If Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare, then whose works are attributed to him, if they aren’t his?

I admit, the fact that people who didn’t exist back then are now debating his non-existence, creates a great deal of confusion.

Although it’s true that for many, Shakespeare, who is now said not to have existed, never existed at all.

Here, take a walk down the street and ask people one simple question:

Have you heard of Shakespeare?

Some might answer, “Yes, I’ve heard of him, but I don’t know what he looked like.”

Others might say, “He never stopped by here.”

“I’m not from here,” would probably be the most common reply.

And maybe it’s for the best that so many still don’t even know who Shakespeare is, the one whose existence is in doubt

  Imagine what would happen if the civil servants find out that the one who “didn’t exist” actually existed. Picture him, in a circular cloak with oversized lapels, a white shirt, and tight pants with tiny slits arranged in rows, accidentally stumbling into one of our municipal offices, only for the clerk to ask:

"Excuse me, your name?"

"William Shakespeare,” he’d reply.

“Ah, that’s impossible. You don’t exist,” the confident and polite clerk would say.

“Oh, come on. Then who wrote all my works?!” he’d ask.

“Eh, who? The Earl of Oxford or Cambridge... Who knows anymore? It was so long ago,” she’d reply, moving on to the next case

 And it would be in vain for Shakespeare to shout Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, or Macbeth... The security would just toss him out. Even Hamlet wouldn’t help him.

Because that’s how our clerks are, confident when they know nothing and ignorant when they know everything .

That’s why, sometimes, it’s hard for a person here to be taken seriously, even when they do exist. Imagine what might happen to them after they die, well, that’s a story for another time.

But I think Shakespeare, at this point, couldn’t care less whether he existed or not.

 

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