Zowie Carbuncle Does William Shakespeare

Published July 12, 1992 in North Shore Sunday. Any similarities to present and former Boston columnists are purely intentional.

Stow that Carrr-go
Scrape those Barnacles
Fie dee fiddlie dee fum

– old pirate drinking song

You know me, people.  I can't rest as long as there are government fat cats and bureaucrats to pounce on.  So when I heard about this old hack broad whose whole family is on the public payroll, I checked it out. 

Now I'm not talking about someone making a few hundred bucks a week like I usually do day in and day out and on and on every minute for ever and ever and then some. I'm talking about big-time nepotism worth millions – billions, even, made off the backs of working stiffs like you and me.  Hey, I'm talking Pulitzer, here.

The hack's trail took me all the way to England.  I followed this clan of cronies around, but soon Scotland Yard got wise and wouldn't even let me near Di anymore, never mind the Queen.  Haven't those guys heard of freedom of the press?

So there I was on an expensive trip with nothing to write home about.  I roamed around awhile and ended up in a place called Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare.  I felt like nosing around, so I checked in at the Perchance to Dream motel.

Know what you find in every nook and granary of S-upon-A?  Tourists  –  generally lots of Perrier-types who go all weak-kneed and watery-eyed when they stop to worship at the Henley Street house where The Bard was born.  Mike Dukakis must feel that way every time he looks at the first tax dollar he ever scoffed up.

I came to the spot where Shakespeare once built a new home.  It didn't take a whole lot of creative genius to come up with the name for this new place.  It's called New Place, but a better name would be No Place because there's absolutely nothing there.

As I stood there looking out at empty space, trying to imagine that New Place was actually a Some Place and trying to get all weak-kneed and watery-eyed myself, I began thinking the unthinkable.  Something even worse than the time I was doing a number on all the fat cats with the cushy jobs who live out in Lincoln or someplace and then realized I was talking about me.  What if those plays we are all expected to love so much are like New Place  –  pretty flowers on a vacant lot where a building is supposed to be?  Really, people, what if...what if the plays of William Shakespeare are just pure garbaaahge?

Just thinking such heresy sent chills down my spine.  There are things you just don't do in this life.  You don't shove pennies up your nose.  You don't brag to your boss about your latest fling if your boss is Ross Perot.  You don't ever catch a DPW worker actually at work, and you never, ever  – as in Thou Shalt Not –  criticize Shakespeare. 

Not unless you're Zowie Carbuncle.

Look, people.  Nobody really likes Shakespeare.  Shakespeare is the castor oil of entertainment – you know it's supposed to be good for you, but it's still pretty hard to swallow.

Leaving out those brie-brained Harvard-types who couldn't tell you what day of the week it was, people look forward to a Shakespearian play like they do root canal work.  Does anyone really understand what Shakespeare's characters are talking about?  Come on  –  hey, saying Shakespeare is occasionally a little long-winded is like saying you occasionally find a police cruiser parked outside a Dunkin' Donuts.  If New Place had ever caught fire, it would have burned to the ground along with the entire town and half the surrounding forest before William Wordful explained to the fire brigade the exact nature of the problem.

And in what Elizabethan brothel did Shakespeare dream up those characters?  Was there ever a wimp like Hamlet?  A Yuppie couple to beat the Macbeths?  A loser like Othello?  Oversimplifications, you say?  Cheap shots?  Maybe, but like I always say  –  even half a truth is better than none.

And the next time you curl up in front of the fireplace with a volume of Shakespeare's love sonnets, keep in mind that over a hundred of them were written to a young man.  It seems old Billyboy was a bit of a codpiece-chaser.  Gives a whole new dimension to Ben Jonson's description of Shakespeare as "the Sweet Swan of Avon," doesn't it?

See ya later, Billy.  Next time  –  God.