Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Shakespeare’s Portrait is not Shakespeare’s !

The portrait found in Ireland, in the family collection of a gentleman, claimed to be a life-painting of the Bard, is now said it is not what it was. Hahaha! The portrait was painted in 1610 or around that time, of a 46 year-old man, the image now attributed to an aristocrat. Like it is a choice!

Well, I’d rather Shakespeare not be an aristocrat, anyhow. I enjoy Shakespeare, and aristocrats give me the creeps.

While stuffing ferrets down one’s trousers, as the fool in King Lear uttered, our present day haggling whether a portrait belongs to him or not would sound like the biggest joke to Shakespeare. I can just picture him in my mind’s eye, laughing doubled up at this--from the other side.

And even funnier is a recent theater blog in which the writer asks if Shakespeare’s jokes can be made funnier, since from being outdated, they do not sound funny anymore.

Just look here, fellas. There are funnier sounding things on this side of the ocean than any Shakespeare stuff or his dethroned portrait. We have AIG bonuses; since the renegotiation or confiscation of them is out of the question, they are now being discussed in the congress for passing a law against them, a law that taxes them 90%. I wonder what the Bard would say to that. Maybe something like: “It is no act of common passage, but a strain of rareness.” or “There’s a skirmish of wit between them. Much Ado about Nothing.”

Concerning all this AIG fiasco, among others, maybe my giggling can “put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes.” After all, this is life’s uncertain voyage, and we have seen better days.