By Tim Sanders

It is time once again to celebrate William Shakespeare’s birthday. No one is sure when the famous playwright was born, but most authorities believe his birth date was April 23, 1564. We do know that Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. We are sure of that date because hundreds of British schoolchildren gathered at his bedside and checked his pulse to make sure he was really gone. They feared that if he wrote just one more play for their teachers to inflict on them, they’d go mad.

We celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday several years ago in a column containing our answers to a series of frequently asked Shakespeare questions posed by Mr. Thurlow D. Swopes of Leesburg. Fortunately we were able to locate Mr. Swopes again, and he agreed to pose more Shakespeare questions. For his usual $5 fee.
 

Q: Why can’t you find somebody else to ask these questions?

A: Because it’s late, I really need material for a column this week, and I remembered where your mobile home was located. That’s why!

Q: Okay then, lemme see. Where was Shakespeare born?

A: He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Q: Why did they call it Stratford-upon-Avon?

A: Because the town of Stratford was located on the banks of the River Avon, and that’s the way the British named towns.

Q: Ain’t "Centre" a British name?

A: Yes, as a matter of fact it is.

Q: So why ain’t it Centre-upon-Coosa?

A: Let’s get back to Shakespeare, okay?

Q: Fine, it’s your five bucks. Did Shakespeare write anything other than plays?

A: He also wrote sonnets, mostly in iambic pentameter.

Q: I thought he wrote mostly in Stratford.

A: Iambic pentameter is ... well, it’s just down the road from Stratford.

Q: Did Shakespeare ever write any plays I might have heard of?

A: He wrote Hamlet, the play we talked about last time. And I'm sure you've heard of Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew.

Q: My Uncle Lester, he tamed a mole once. That thing follered him around and begged for earthworms and kibble and stood up on its little hind legs and acted just like a regular house pet until Larry he got jealous, snatched him up and chewed his head off. By which I mean the mole’s head, not Uncle Lester’s.

A: Uh ... am I to assume that Larry is your cousin?

Q: What’s wrong with you? Larry's Uncle Lester’s tomcat. Leastways he was ’til he fell into that wood chipper.

A: I’m not interested in moles, your uncle’s tomcat, or his wood chipper. We’re supposed to be discussing Shakespeare.

Q: You brung it up with all that stuff about taming shrews. Did he write anything about taming muskrats? I tried it once, but–

A: The shrew Shakespeare was talking about was not a rodent. She was a foul tempered Italian woman named Katherine. The play is about Katherine, her sister Bianca, and their suitors. There are characters like Gremio, Hortensio, Lucentio, Tranio, and Petruchio. You see, Lucentio pretends to be Cambio, Tranio pretends to be Lucentio, and Hortensio pretends to be Litio. Bianca can’t marry anybody until her older sister, Katherine, is married off. So while Petruchio agrees to marry Katherine, Lucentio, as Cambio, takes the job of Bianca’s schoolmaster, and Tranio, as Lucentio–

Q: YOU GOT TO STOP! If anybody was to sit through that whole mess, with all of them Italians with "O" on the end of their names pretending to be each other, they’d need a scorecard. I hope Shakespeare killed the whole stinking bunch off at the end, like he done in that Hamlet play you told me about last time. The one where he had that sol ... sol ... whatever it was, growing out of his bare bodkin.

A: You’re talking about Hamlet’s soliloquy, and it wasn’t a growth on his bodkin. More to the point, Hamlet is a tragedy. The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy.
 

Q: I don’t see how, if there weren’t no animals in the play. Now, you talk about your comedies, I seen a play once about a man name of Elrod somebody or other, who tamed this 6 ft. rabbit name of Harvey. Elrod he talked to Harvey all the time, but nobody else could see Harvey except for Elrod. It was very good, and very deep, and there wasn’t an Italian in the bunch. Maybe you seen it. I forget the name, but I think Shakespeare might of done that one, too.

A: No, he didn’t.

Q: Then he missed the boat.

A: Here, I wrote down some questions, in case you started down too many rabbit trails again. Just read this.

Q: All right ... uh, two gallons of 1% milk, a dozen eggs, a loaf of--

A: No, that’s a grocery list. Read the other side.

Q: Okay then, lessee. Uh ... what are some of the common, everyday phrases that Shakespeare first coined?

A: I’m glad you asked. Shakespeare gave us eaten out of house and home, full circle, neither rhyme nor reason, strange bedfellows–

Q: Speaking of strange bedfellows, did you ever see that movie–it was s’posed to be a Western–about them two sheepherders who–

A: I believe we’ve covered all the Shakespeare we need to this week.

Q: What about this other question you wrote down about if Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare, or was it somebody else with the same name? That don’t make no sense to me.

A: Me either.

Q: And how about this little note you scribbled at the bottom which says "F. Bacon"? Is that part of your grocery list?

A; Yeah. Exactly.