Article: Speaking of Evil, Bad Parenting, and Faust

[cantdog]

Just the sonnets alone did that.

 

[Belegon]

I am afraid that all I can think of when imagining a conversation between Marlowe and the Bard is how much I would have liked to have been hidden behind the bar taking notes...

 

[cantdog]

It's a great story. One of the best Sandman stories, and that's saying a lot. Gaiman is God.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I know my Shakespeare and I cannot imagine he would have said anything like that; he did not need to.

Perdita

It was speculative fiction. The point at that part of the story was that Shakespeare was a bad writer and that by making this statement in the presence of Dream of the Endless, he was given the power to write like well...the Bard.

Gaiman continued the thread in two more comic stories. One in which the faerie kingdom watched a hillside production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the final one in which Shakespeare is at the end of his life and wondering whether he had wasted it writing plays instead of being just a father and husband and Dream reassures him in a way and shares his angst of devoting one's life to something they can't shake off or pass to someone else.

I have great respect for Shakespeare as well, and he is unashamedly my main influence when I playwright.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

It's a great story. One of the best Sandman stories, and that's saying a lot. Gaiman is God.

I once had the privilege to work briefly as his escort and "meat shield" (to ward off autograph seekers) at a Comic Convention.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the riposte, Luc; that makes better sense to me now. I recommend to you Borges' "Everything and Nothing", a small piece on Shakespeare in a similar imaginative vein.

Perdita