Waiting in line at the bank today, one woman spots somebody else she knows and they have a mini-reunion. I don’t catch the names but it’s not long before I hear #1 say to #2, “Are you still doing any theatre or music?”

My ears perk up.  Theatre?  I suppose they coud mean musical theatre.

#2 replies, among other things, “Right now I’m working with the Burlington Players…”

I pull out my phone and google the 2013-2014 for the Burlington Players to see if there’s any Shakespeare on the bill, giving me a wide open excuse to invite myself into the conversation (and look like a complete stalker).

Alas there is not.  39 Steps. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.  Although I do spot (later) that their teen program did something called “Reviving Ophelia.”

<shrug>  That’s the kind of geekery I do for you folks.  I smell even the hint of something Shakespeare to talk about and I’m all over it. 😉

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I’ve tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you’ve found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

I heard a great piece of advice once in an entrepreneurial podcast.  The host said, “If you think you have a good idea, it doesn’t matter if you can find a hundred people that tell you its a good idea.  Go out and find a hundred people who will give you money for your idea, and then you have something.”

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I’ve tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you’ve found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.

When I’m trolling around for blog post ideas I’ll often spot a topic I don’t often see discussed and then google “<that topic> Shakespeare” to see what comes up.  So on Reddit I saw a post about Rudyard Kipling.  Ok.  Google “kipling shakespeare” and one of the interesting things I’ve learned to watch out for is whether Google fills in “shakespeare” before I’m done typing it.  That means that other people are also googling for this.  Sure enough it completes the query.  Even better it completes it with “kipling shakespeare bible.”  Interesting!

And then I found this.  “Proofs of Holy Writ“, by Rudyard Kipling, starring William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Let’s jump to the end:

“Proofs of Holy Writ” was said to have arisen from a dinner table conversation between Kipling and John Buchan about the process by which the splendidly poetic language of the King James’ Authorised Version of the Bible miraculously emerged from a committee of 47 learned men. Might they, Buchan wondered, have consulted the great creative writers of the day, like Will Shakespeare or Ben Jonson ? ‘That’s an idea’, said Kipling, and he went away to turn it into a tale.

As most of us have no doubt heard there’s long been a theory (nay, conspiracy?) that Shakespeare helped to write the King James Bible.  A theory that goes so far as to suggest that Psalm 46 contains a hidden message — the 46th word in from the front is “shake” and the 46th word from the end is “spear”.   (Bardfilm deals with this topic elsewhere, if you are interested.)

So does that mean that we’re looking at the originator of the whole Shakespeare/Bible theory?

No matter how many times I see an article like “6 Myths You Still Believe About Shakespeare” I always click and skim to see whether there’s something new under the sun.  This one had all the usual — his birthday’s not necessarily on 4/23, he didn’t get all his money from writing, the plays weren’t “published” in his lifetime, and so on.

But this one was new to me:

The building in Southwark known as Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a reconstruction that opened in 1997 – almost 400 years after the original was built. The original was ruined by fire after an accident involving the firing of a cannon during a 1613 production of ‘Henry VIII.’ It was rebuilt the following year only to be demolished in the 1640’s under Puritan pressure.

Emphasis mine.  I knew about the burning of course, but I never realized that the Puritans had it burned less than a generation after Shakespeare was gone?  “A bunch of us are sailing to America.  Last one to leave England, don’t forget to burn the Globe.”

Has somebody out there got more timeline on this? What happened to Middleton and Fletcher and Jonson and all the others that were still alive after Shakespeare was gone?  For that matter what exactly was going on at the Globe after Shakespeare, who kept writing for them?

The Shakespeare Geek blog has been around since 2005, making it the oldest continually active Shakespeare blog today. Shakespeare is Universal represents our biggest fund-raising effort to date. For almost eight years and almost three thousand posts I’ve tried my best to make a place where everyone can talk about everything related to the subject of Shakespeare. If you’ve found my sites and products useful and interesting, I would greatly appreciate your support so that I can continue to do even more. Thank you.