{"id":4692,"date":"2015-06-16T07:03:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T11:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/?page_id=4692"},"modified":"2015-06-16T07:06:40","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T11:06:40","slug":"mrs-shakespeare-opening-scene","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/?page_id=4692","title":{"rendered":"Mrs. Shakespeare: Opening Scene."},"content":{"rendered":"

Mrs Shakespeare. \u00a0 William Shakespeare. \u00a0Act 1, Scene 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

This text is used in our interview with Irene Kelleher<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(A woman \u2013 Will \u2013 is writing in her diary with a quill.)<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

22nd<\/sup>\u00a0April.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

When I first revealed to other people that I was William Shakespeare reincarnated, they laughed. They\u2019d always come up with the same ridiculous comments:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019re a woman?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019d hardly come back\u00a0identical.\u00a0<\/i>If I return as a baldy little bloke with a goatee, that\u2019s not reincarnation \u2013 that\u2019s an encore.\u00a0Then again, how do we know I wasn\u2019t a woman in my first life?\u00a0Maybe I was a cross dressing transvestite, like Rosalind, Portia, Julia, Viola and just about every other woman in the Complete Works of Me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d\u00a0<\/i>they say next,\u00a0\u201cif you\u2019re Shakespeare, how come you don\u2019t write brilliant plays?\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

I tell them about the reincarnated Jesus who once asked:\u00a0what do you expect: miracles?<\/i>\u00a0And anyhow, I can remember getting slagged off in my first life as a young upstart crow. But then later generations saw things very differently. So it means\u00a0nothing<\/i>\u00a0that my masterpieces of this century are getting terrible reviews. \u00a0I know in a couple of hundred years my more recent history plays like:\u00a0Hitler the First\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Charles the Third (Not),<\/i>\u00a0will be seen as classics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My psychiatrist Henry, keeps asking me how I know I\u2019m a great playwright, when all the reviews of my work point to the contrary. He even quotes the newspapers to me:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

(Will\u00a0takes on the role of an Austrian\u00a0psychiatrist)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere was it now … Ah, yes … Hmmm\u2026\u00a0\u201cNever in my life have I sat through a farce quite so bad as The Merry Wives of Henry the Eighth. I laughed my head on..\u201d\u00a0<\/i>\u2026\u00a0(Henry chuckles<\/i>) … Gut ya. Gut …\u00a0Oh. Look. Here is another newspaper. What does this one say I wonder?\u00a0\u201c…The comedy: Titus Androgynous by a woman writer named William Shakespeare would appear to be a joke in every respect except that it is not\u00a0remotely funny\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet \u2013 as I tell Henry frequently \u2013 if I\u2019m not a reincarnated Shakespeare, how come I can remember every detail of my past life? Even Anne seducing me beside a brook in Arden, the bank on which we lay, a bed of wild thyme, oxlips and nodding violets. The dress she plucked off over her head was brown, and there was a wart on her knee.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrs Shakespeare. \u00a0 William Shakespeare. \u00a0Act 1, Scene 1 This text is used in our interview with Irene Kelleher. (A woman \u2013 Will \u2013 is writing in her diary with a quill.) 22nd\u00a0April. When I first revealed to other people that I was William Shakespeare reincarnated, they laughed. They\u2019d always come up with the same<\/p>\n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4692","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-line-bottom","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2Frfq-1dG","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4708,"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4692\/revisions\/4708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofshakespeare.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}