Doubting fops and vassals will undoubtedly fall about laughing on reading this strange sonnet by odd bodkin Peter Simon .
In writing , an artistic Canadian woman living in Adelaide who also happens to be a respected pre life therapist informed me I was a promising young writer who mixed with William Shakespeare and his theatrical crowd , political activists , poets and rowdies , debating and quaffing ale late into the night. Due to my involvement in politics and polemical speeches that I made- plus the
action of “a traitor”- I became depressed and suicided. (Exeunt left .)
As this year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of my mate Will , thou couldst knocketh me over with a quill during a recent round of North Queensland garage sales in which I stumbled across a circa 1882 worn copy of Sir John Gilbert's illustrated Shakespeare , with 500 engravings by the Brothers Dalziel, in which was loosely inserted a faded, numbered view of a river, not the Bard's Avon as I remember it at Stratford where I went swimming in my codpiece during Pommie heatwaves .
Sir John's 1881 drawing of Shakespeare in the book , plus ye olde mystery photograph .
An artist and illustrator, Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897) did work for the London Illustrated News and Punch . Worn, the Routledge book , 675pp, insected , has a 1939 US patented Brodart fold on jacket cover .
While all you doubting Thomases are still guffawing over my close association with Shakespeare , let me tell you a story about a certain Dutch clairvoyant in Darwin afore Cyclone Tracy who told me to be careful of my legs in the future . What a load of old Dutch cobblers , thought I . Came the night of tempest soon after, the house started to blow apart and be bombarded from end to end ; a section of a flying roof exploded through the loungeroom , I was slashed under the knee , narrowly missing the artery , the cut later described by a doctor who stitched me up as looking as if it had been caused by a razor . Scar to show . So there .
Don't think it is worth mentioning that the clairvoyant had also told me to pose a secret question in my mind and she would give me an answer ... After a short spell of concentration , she gave me the vital information - YES . Still have not won the $100,000 Sydney Opera House Lottery ( no longer run, methinks ) , the subject of my query, and I am way past three score and ten years , at the final stage of the seven ages of man , looking increasingly like Bottom in the bathroom mirror , without the garlands , attractive to Curlews but not fairies , sounding like him at night in bed , oft heard braying in front of TV .
With all this current chatter in the media about Will's demise , I intend placing the exceedingly rare past life therapist's document on ebay and no doubt it will sell for squillions , enabling me to fly business class to London , where I will take up a suite in The Ritz and haunt antique shops , boot sales, junk shops , auctions , bookshops old and new , fairs .
Postcards galore will also be bought to send back to Australia as a food parcel from the Mother Country for Gary Davies on Magnetic Island who dreams about seductive postcards at night.
Naturally, I will call on the clownish Lord Mayor of London, Boris, who I recall made a nuisance of himself at The Globe in Shakespeare's day . I well recall Will shaking his head and time and time again uttering, in despair, the expression: "Alas, poor Boris, I knew him well , before he became a head case ."
When the subject of Shakespeare came up on yon Q&A last evening , passionate damsel Germaine Greer, apparently not overly keen on truck drivers , expressed her love and admiration for him , declaring his work keeps Britain sane , a brave statement indeed in these times of global madness and the outbreak of Panamanian Pox .
She also wrote Shakespeare's Wife.
Furthermore , because there were no cameras when Shakespeare trod the boards at The Globe , there is no certainty about various engraved and painted representations of him , such as the following one which was suggested could just be the real McCoy on the superb BBC Antiques Roadshow , which is how I remember him through bloodshot eyes after a week on penny gin.
YE CUTTING FOOTNOTE
Journalist Kim Lockwood liked the above folderol until he saw mention of Germaine Greer as she had once launched an attack on his father, Douglas , see previous post about Prince Philip and the dead crocodile , accusing him of being a misogynist over something written in his 1962 award winning book, I, The Aboriginal, about Phillip Roberts , of Darwin , which was made into a film.
(On the other hand, a review in the American Anthropologist , by Arnold R. Pilling , Wayne State University , praised the book . He declared the anthropological orientation of Lockwood and another Darwin reporter , Lionel Hogg , in their writing was outstanding ; he would place Lockwood's book in his special collection , likening his work to the early reports of journalist Charles F. Lummis on the American Southwest who founded the Southwest Museum . )
Kim's comment reminded me of the time back in the 1970s when I attended a packed meeting in the Sydney Town Hall where Germaine , greeted like a goddess, especially by female university students who had been campaigning along with some male students, unshaven faux wenches in skirts and floppy hats, to open men only tiled hotel bars to les girls , written up by me in the Sydney Morning Herald .
A concerned gent stood up and asked what could only be described as a saucy and leading question of Germaine . After stating that he had been subjected to the Judeo-Christian act of circumcision , he wondered if she , through experience , thought it made any difference in love making . The question caused a titter to run through the assembly, an expression rarely used nowadays.
Germaine assured him he had nothing to worry about because of his short back and sides...expert information which no doubt brought relief to many others in the hall.
