Toe in the Water

Thinking of the Bard

Thinking of the Bard

It’s well known that males spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. And I admit quite freely that it’s true of me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think of other things too.

Only this morning, for instance, I caught myself thinking about William Shakespeare. I do this quite often because he’s interesting, mainly in considering how he worked. His day job was as an actor and, somehow, he found the time in between prancing about on stage, to write a serious number of plays and poetry too.

So his copious production would lead us to wonder just how much planning went into his writing. We know, as well, that he sometimes had to dash off a new play to keep the coffers of The Globe Theatre filled in the lean years. Which, in my book, means that he was probably a pantser.

Obviously, the likelihood is that I think that because I’m a pantser myself but, when you remember that he handicapped himself by writing most of his plays in iambic pentameter, I really can’t see how he had the time to do a lot of planning with all that already on his plate.

But this brings me to the conclusion I’m really driving at. Shakespeare was far less conscious in his writing than you would think we are, judging by the amount of rules and advice that float around in places like WdC. He didn’t have time to consider all the methods and essentials that we love to burden ourselves with. At any rate, none of these rules and regulations had been invented in his day so, if he used any of them, it would have been entirely unconscious and natural to the way he worked.

I bet you the one book he’d never have written would be an instruction manual on how to write. He just sat down and wrote. At incredible speed and with amazing insight into humanity.

Which leaves me with this thought: If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it ought to be good enough for us.


Word count: 346