Uncle Bill Shakespeare...Alive and Well!

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When I was a third year student in law school, I wrote a jurisprudence seminar essay on this play entitled "Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice ~ A Comedy of Judicial Errors". In it, I pointed out many legal flaws in the story and how they violated Jewish, Christian, and Equity laws. A Jewish law professor said it was the greatest writing he ever read on the subject and my professor in that class graded it an A.
 
Time Waits For ..








Shakespeare's sonnets to her were rather sexual such as in #15 where he says,



everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment ...

in which he then "engrafts" her



Shakey's intent is a bit more explicit here:


SONNET 135​

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea all water, yet receives rain still
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.



Yes, Shakey was not shy about imposing his willie on her.
 

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The above is the only authentic portrait of the Bard of Avon, holding converse with his next-door neighbor, Master William Busby. He is obviously reading him that sonnet - "There was a young lady of Stratford".
 
One of the most fascinating American history episodes deals with the infamous Astor Place Riots:


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Long story short: some American doodle-berries took it upon themselves to declare Shakespeare an American. Therefore, only American actors could play the principle characters. One day a theater operator dared to hire an English actor to portray a leading character. He ignored warnings to hire an American. Humongous riot broke out, many died, and there was extensive property damage.

Over a hundred years later I walked along Astor Place near the Cooper Union. I could almost swear that I could feel some residual energy emanating from those streets.
 
"The Merchant of Menace".
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William Valentine "Bill" Shakespeare (September 27, 1912 – January 17, 1974) was an American football player. He played at the halfback position, and also handled punting, for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football teams from 1933 to 1935. He gained his greatest acclaim for throwing the winning touchdown pass as time ran off the clock in Notre Dame's 1935 victory over Ohio State, a game that was voted the best game in the first 100 years of college football. Shakespeare was selected as a consensus first-team All-American in 1935 and was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983. Sharing the same name as "The Bard of Avon", Shakespeare earned nicknames including "The Bard of Staten Island", "The Bard of South Bend", and "The Merchant of Menace".
 
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Q: What was Lincoln's favorite Shakespeare play?

A: William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", was Abraham Lincoln's favorite play. Shakespeare was also Lincoln's favorite playwright, as he was intrigued by the depth of Shakespeare's insight into human motivation, the cleverness of his wit. Many of William Shakespeare's classic plays, where power and politics are the central theme, and the central figure is usually a king, whose court is a place of tension and intrigue, and who spends much of his time hearing requests for favors; such as: King Lear, Hamlet, Henry VI, Richard II, Merry Wives of Windsor, Othello, were favorites too, of Lincoln's.
 
Men of Letters: Shakespeare's Influence on Abraham Lincoln
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"Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was known for many things. Freeing the slaves. Winning the Civil War. Holding the Union together. But he was also one of our most literary presidents. Of the three books that sat on his White House desk, one of them was the works of Shakespeare—a writer Lincoln cherished throughout his life. He enjoyed going to the theater, too, which in his day often meant Shakespeare".
 
Top 10 Shakespearean drinks (2016)

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"Four hundred years after the Bard hung up his pen for the last time and drained his final glass, we look back at the drinks mentioned in his plays, and what he and his contemporaries would have been using to toast their dramatic success".

"The past, they say, is a different country – they do things differently there. That’s certainly true of drinks. Many names have changed, fashions have evolved, and even if the names remain, the styles have developed into very different things".

"Each of Shakespeare’s 38 plays has at least one mention of alcoholic drinks, so they’re deeply embedded in his writings. A character’s choice of drinks will often be an indicator of their social position or character, and also of the fashions and practices of the age".

"Tea and coffee were yet to arrive in Britain, and water was a health risk, so alcoholic drinks were ubiquitous". (Read More)


 
throwing the winning touchdown pass as time ran off the clock in Notre Dame's 1935 victory


I remember reading that this was called something like the Holy Trinity play as the QB was Catholic, Shakespeare was Protestant, and the receiver of the TD was Jewish.

While his pro career was short (maybe one year) folks in NYC still spoke of him up to the 1960s. His family members were well respected pillars of the community.
 

Speech: “The raven himself is hoarse”​

By William Shakespeare

(from Macbeth, spoken by Lady Macbeth)

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!"

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("The notion that the ‘Raven’, a harbinger of death has croaked himself hoarse suggests that Duncan’s death is foretold. The word ‘croak’ itself is also euphemism for death – therefore Duncan is going to be doubly dead…")
 
Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, “Titus Andronicus”
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"Roman general Titus Andronicus returns victorious from 10 years of war, his archnemesis Tamora Queen of the Goths in tow and in chains. But when Rome’s rash and impetuous new Emperor decides not only to free her, but to marry her and make her his queen, she embarks upon a remorseless course of revenge. As she and Titus engage in an escalating cycle of violence and vengeance, the body count rises, and Rome threatens to fall".
 

Shakespeare The Time Traveler

"What would Shakespeare make of our modern world? If he were suddenly to appear in London as a time traveler to the future he would find himself in the middle of a street crowd. The London of his time had a population of about twenty thousand but here he would see that number of people in one street. And in all sorts of ways they would look different".
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"He would wonder what this was, but being Shakespeare, and knowing he was in the future, he would soon work out that it was a building. But nevertheless, it would stretch his imagination as to its use". (Read More)
 

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