The Semi-Fictional/Historical Short Story About a Playwright who Once Upon a Time Wrote Semi-Fictional/Historical Plays in Which the Main Character Usually has a lot of Hubris Hanging Around
William Shakespeare, sitting on a barstool drinking a mug of ale and eavesdropping on the gossiping drunkards nearest him, forced himself to put down his pen. Normally he would have used the most exaggerated stories by the drunkest men in the tavern as the basis for his next play, and the one he had been listening to certainly met those standards, but he had a tickle in the back of his mind, an inkling of an idea that perhaps it was time to try something new. Experiment.
Laughter erupted from his throat. He rubbed a grimy hand across his well-polished head, the bald spot smooth and shiny enough to use as a mirror. Which was very useful, as most people didn't have mirrors in London. That was the best explanation he had ever gotten for the general public being as filthy as they were. If not for that, the rebellion and riots there would have been as bad as they were in France, people demanding better conditions from the nobles and royalty. Of course, their solution was almost as ingenious. Who would have thought that perfume would not stave off the smell of sweat and feces indefinitely?
Suddenly, a tweedy man with big eyes jumped into the doorway followed by a dark woman in a strange red outfit. “Excuse me! Not interrupting anything, am I? Mr. Shakespeare, isn't it?”
The room went silent. Finally, Will remembered what he had been wanting to say to anyone with a show on the SciFi channel, especially Dr. Who. “Your show sucks.”
The director, face hidden behind the camera and tucked well away from the stage, shouted “CUT! Hey, if you can't get the lines straight, then get out of here!”
“Fine. I quit!”
“Glad that's done with. Somebody find the backup Shakespeare! The sexy one with a full head of hair!”
After storming away from the Dr. Who production set, William punched a beggar at random in the face after pretending to reach into his pocket for spare change. It was a habit he had formed not long after leaving his wife; after all, you can't beat prostitutes.
He grabbed a bottle from another beggar and brown-bagged his way back to the Golden Globe, passing one woman repeatedly swinging a cat against a wall. Grand names like the "Golden Globe" were commonplace; when it came to taverns, for example, the more raucous and inebriated the customers, the lumpier the serving maids and dustier the floors, the more exuberant the title. But getting drunk was the only escape a man had from these tough times; his art wasn't well thought of by most in the city. With his luck, he would probably wind up having to take the Globe apart board by board and rebuild it outside London.
“Essentially, they took down the Globe and rebuilt it board by board,” the English teacher was explaining in a dry tone, though mildly conversational.
The students were barely attentive enough to be considered conscious. One was lazily writing in his notebook, “The Woes of First-Period English Class...”
