William Shakespeare: Conspiracy Theorist
While I take the mantle of conspiracy theorist with a pinch of salt, I also take it as a compliment. Why? Because I’m in good company, not just among my fellow ‘theorists’ but the father of conspiracies himself, William Shakespeare.
For a start, Shakespeare had a vocabulary of around 24,000 words, the most for any writer, ever. That’s about four times the average well-educated person today. He is also estimated to have contributed between 1,700-3,000 words to the English language. Over 135 phrases and idioms from his works entered the vernacular and we still use them today, most of us without knowing it.
How about pure as the wind driven snow, on a wild goose chase, break the ice, cruel to be kind, vanished into thin air, it’s Greek to me, tongue-tied, in a pickle, hoodwinked, had short shrift, cold comfort, too much of a good thing, he’s a tower of strength, seen better days, a fool’s paradise, love is blind, the long and the short of it, without rhyme or reason, one fell swoop, dead as a doornail - when you say those, you’re quoting Shakespeare.
What the fuck? is not one of them, but it should be. Read the complete list here.
There are 410 feature-length film and TV adaptations of his plays, and counting. Plus, he has a writing credit on 1,500 films.
His plays - all 39 of them - are filled with enough conspiracy theories to make the last two years pale by comparison, their characters busily scheming, trying to figure out who’s fooling who, mostly getting it wrong and either killing each other, committing suicide, or for the lucky few, getting married.
People come and go, viruses come and go, tyrants always end badly then disappear into history. What remains are stories which are made of words which are made of ideas which arise from imagination.
It’s the stories we tell each other that have the most power. Stories can change our ideas, can change our minds and so our actions. Just look around.
The self-appointed grand master of the ‘new normal’ global story, Klaus Schwab, has gone to great lengths to create a spellbinding tale for all of us, the Great Narrative. As a Shakespearean conspiracy theorist, I’m having none of it. It reeks of foul play.
It’s time for us to tell our own story, not this absurd totalitarian nightmare that has been thrust upon us, a cry for havoc to let slip the dogs of war. To corrupt politics left and right, a plague on both your houses. Good riddance! You are hoist on your own petard. All this hysteria is much ado about nothing. The game is up and truth will out.
The pen is truly mightier than the sword.
NE
Haha, how about we get meta-conspiratorial and entertain the theory that Shakespeare never existed?
It’s Greek to me, but in my heart of hearts, I believe truth will out.
I have not slept one wink, so to sleep, perchance to dream …
That the actor William Shaksper was the author William Shake-speare is itself one of the biggest conspiracies of history. When the playwright Beaumont died in 1615, King James proclaimed a period of mourning and Beaumont's plays were revived and staged. The following year, the actor Shaksper died. Crickets. "Shakespeare" was likely the 17th Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, Kit Marlowe or, as I suspect, all three plus a couple others (Nash, Greene) thrown into the mix, all under the same pseudonym. Thus the mammoth vocabulary, a vocabulary not of one man, but several.