Gaiman – Kipling

Queen Tragedy restor’d: a dramatick entertainment

Mrs. Hoper
London: Printed for W. Owen, 1749

A member of “Shakespeare’s Ladies,” a literary club founded in 1736 to promote performances of his works, Mrs. Hoper penned her own theatre piece in which Queen Tragedy (played by Mrs. Hoper herself) languishes and cannot be revived until the ghost of Shakespeare rises to speak in the epilogue. Shakespeare’s Ladies Club supported good theatre, but, by all accounts of its two-day run, Mrs. Hoper’s play did nothing to further the cause. —VH

1700's Gaiman - Kipling Shakespeare's Spirit

The Seen and Unseen at Stratford-On-Avon: A Fantasy

William Dean Howells
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1914

The scarcity of the information on Shakespeare’s life offers a license for fictional authors to reconstruct his personality. This ‘Fantasy’ takes the form of a travelogue in which an American tourist is following the Shakespeare trail, attending the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon. On his travels, the narrator happens to ‘wonder at the cinematic apparition’ of William Shakespeare. Luckily Shakespeare’s phantom is a friendly and genial fellow who insists on taking the narrator on a personal tour of his birthplace. This romanticized narrative covers all disputed aspects of Shakespeare’s life. The narrator can directly converse with Shakespeare on issues such as his relationship with his wife and the authorship debate. It also includes a very appealing characterization of Francis Bacon, as the narrator gets to meet with the ghost of Bacon, an extremely unsavory and grumpy man. –VL

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1900's Gaiman - Kipling Shakespeare's Spirit

Serenissma

Erica Jong
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987

The modern-day actress Jessica Pruit is in Venice filming a modern-day version of The Merchant of Venice when she falls ill and is somehow transported back to the sixteenth-century. Also in Venice at that time is Shakespeare, who is there to avoid a plague outbreak in England. In Jessica, he finds inspiration in a steamy and chronologically uninhibited romance. Shakespeare is romantic, impetuous, bi-sexual, and prone to quote himself. Also published in 2003 as Shylock’s Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice. —VH

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1900's Gaiman - Kipling Shakespeare in Love

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author William Shakespeare

Ben Jonson
In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, histories & tragedies, published according to the true originall copies.
London: printed by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623

Ben Jonson wrote this elegy for his friend and sometime rival to stand at the front of the first collected works of Shakespeare. The poem is a tour de force for the genre, offering both heartfelt and hyperbolic praise of the departed poet, whom he places among the stars to guide future writers. We include it in this exhibit because Jonson addresses Shakespeare directly as a “character” in several places, as here:

Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

It is this poem that gives us so many apt epithets for Shakespeare including: “Soul of the age!”; “the wonder of our stage!”; “Sweet Swan of Avon!”; and “He was not of an age but for all time!”

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1600's Gaiman - Kipling Rare Talent

To the Reader

Ben Jonson
In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, histories & tragedies, published according to the true originall copies.
London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot, and are to be fold [sic] at the signe of the Blacke Beare in Pauls Church-yard, 1632

Ben Jonson introduced the famous likeness with this poem and first described his friend as “Gentle.” Jonson warns us, however, not to rely on inferior fictions, but to look for the real Shakespeare “not on his picture, but his Booke.”

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1600's Gaiman - Kipling Gentle Shakespeare

The Coiner

Rudyard Kipling
First published in Limits and Renewals
London: Macmillan, 1932

After a visit to Bermuda in 1894, Kipling developed a theory that Shakespeare may have gotten the idea for The Tempest from stories of castaways told by sailors in London pubs. In this poem, Shakespeare, the playwright on the lookout for a good yarn, gives food and drink to a band of seamen in return for their wild stories, which become the inspiration for his play (The Tempest, we presume). He bids them farewell, telling them he is a “coiner” who will “turn your lead pieces to metal as rare / As shall fill him this globe, and leave something to spare.” —VH

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1900's Gaiman - Kipling Upon the Boards

Proofs of Holy Writ

Rudyard Kipling
First published in Strand Magazine, April 1934

A fanciful scene in which Kipling imagines Shakespeare consulted by the translators of the magisterial King James Bible. Set in 1610 or 1611, it opens with Shakespeare sitting with his old friend Ben Jonson in his garden at Stratford-upon-Avon. When a messenger delivers proof pages of chapter 60 of Isaiah for Shakespeare’s review, the two argue about the best way to express the sense of the text, line by line, with Jonson exhibiting his learning and Shakespeare showing his humanity. Jonson ultimately admits defeat—but only when he is sure Shakespeare has dozed off. The title comes from Othello, III.3. —VH

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1900's Gaiman - Kipling Gentle Shakespeare