Don’t get us wrong — we understand obsession. There is something. . .time sucking about worrying a matter to death. It’s almost as if the entire human psyche was constructed to use obsession to avoid reality. It sure beats paying the bills.
For absolute proof of our theory, one needs look no further than the annual “Who was Shakespeare. Really.” round of articles. Just in time for the back to school crowd, scholars worry their pretty little heads about the man behind the plays and sonnets and whatnot. After all, the person who they think did the work couldn’t have done so. Therefore, it is incumbent us — the entire foundation of Western society depends upon this information — to find an answer to a question the ancients clearly didn’t anticipate.
We say clearly because had they known it would consume so many brain cells, they would have left a helpful vault of useful-but-ultimately-misleading evidence to occupy certain minds. For example, there is a helpful clue uncovered in the New York Times wrap-up of this year’s theories (the clue is pieced together from various randomish sentences; we know how to read coded writings):
In fact, there are real problems for the traditional arguments. For instance, how could a writer of such stature leave no evidence of his ever having made money for his work?. . .Yet, this was a man who, as Mr. Greenblatt notes, “hated to let even small sums of money slip through his fingers.”
. . .
Many of the plays languished unpublished until seven years after his death, finally to be assembled by others and published, but not for the profit of Shakespeare’s heirs.
And there you have it — our small contribution to the scholarly canon. We will rest easy until our findings are disproven.
