Pluc, my ever faithful and faithless companion, has been working

on his thesis that Shakespeare was a barber andthat his place in this
profession helps solve one of the critical mysteries about the Bard:how
did this stupid country bumpkin acquire theknowledge and experience
he must have had to write his complex, world encompassingplays?
Well, Pluc says, warming up to answer his own question: with his
barberchair as his mighty classroom, and his patrons as his professors,
one can easily see how he came to know about not only medicine,
metaphysics, law and science; and not only could he then learn the
details of how to grow crops, what flowers populated distant meadows,
how to brew ale and dress a horse, how to butcher cattle and swing an
anvil; he not only would hear vivid descriptions about places such as
Venice, Florence, Bohemia, Barbados and Egypt; but standing behind
his chair he would hearmost learned arguments about morality and
justice, about royalty and privilege, he would be treated to the latest
news from castle and brothel; he would come to know intimately about
cheating wives, power hungry lords, unscrupulous statesmen, bisexual

messengers and the like. But most importantly, Pluc says with lifted
brow, that the author of As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Winters Tale
should be so concerned about appearances, deception and reality, why
that quality alone argues razors and scissors that he could have been
nothing but a barber.
But what actual evidence do you have for this hair raising, beardscratching claim? I ask, perfect straightman that I am. Before I begin,
Pluc begins, lets review older claims that have been printed and
pondered of Wills early occupations, such as Bardthe butcher, who
would preside over his blood letting feats with a cry and a spectacle.
Or that he was a schoolmaster, a soldier,a legal clerk, even a horse
valet. In fact, nothing else has been offered. Does the idea then of Will
as a barber strike one as any less plausible?It is of coursecritical to
consider that the barbers profession in the later 16th Century was an
ancient and honorable one, the learned barber being counted on to not
only raze beards and tame hair but to perform the duties of a surgeon,
bleeding customers, sawing off arm or leg, or extracting a terrible
molar. And considering furtherthat Wills father was a wool comber,
just where do those apples fall?
I remind Pluc not to put so much affect into his performance, that
he seems to be mocking his own mockery. He continues: Indeed that
the Bard was familiar with these very activities of hair and tooth is

more than evident from his plays. Take Julius Caesar and This is the
most unkindest cut of all . And more specific to our discussion the
following from Much Ado About Nothing: I have a toothache, draw it.
His plays are so filled with description and allusion to his barbery, his
barberic profession, so chock full of knowledge of hair and whisker,
wehave to believethat the Sweet Swan of Avalon in fact learned to
sing as he shaved. And it was undoubtedly in his shop where he came
to know and perhaps envy the royalty that he could have imagined
himself one day to be as when he wrote:It is no English treason to cut
French crowns, and tomorrow the king himself will be a clipper.
I knew my role. Many of the authorship fanatics have twisted the
Bards plays to meet their theses, I challenged, what direct evidence
do you have? The most remarkable evidence of Shakespeares
profession comes to us from none other than the historical spellings of
his name, Pluc spouts without hesitation. Time and again we come
across his name written as Shaxbeard or Shagbeard or Shakbeard.
This points directly to the barbershop in the same way Smith points
to the fire andanvil. But Will was not ashamed of his beginnings and in
fact he left us with some poignant reminders in his most dignified and
complex works. Listen to the King in Hamlet: You must not think/that
we are made of stuff so flat and dull/ That we can let our beard be
shook. And again, listen carefully to this line from King Lear: If you
did wear a beard upon your chin/Id shake it upon this quarrel These

transparent cryptograms, requiring no codifications, no dark and secret

tricks, show that Shakes-beard was the secret master.
But I seem to recall not a single barber appearing among the
throngs on Shakespeares stage? I yawn. True, Pluc says, but there is
no lack of reference and allusion to his profession. Did I not pluck
thee by the nose? says Lucio. Petruchio says Heres snip and nip and
cut and slit and slash. Antonio of the Tempest longs for the day when
newborn chins be rough and razorable. And how about
whenAntipholus says to Dromio what every barber wants to hear:
"There's many a man hath more hair than wit." Only the most skilled
barber would give Henry V the line: A black beard will turn white, and
a curled pate will grow bald. I must to the barber-shop says the ass
faced Bottom, for me thinks I am marvelously hairy about the face.
Marc Anthony was a dandy for a close shave, being barbered ten
times oer prior to smooching his Cleopatra.
Like the cascades of Rapunzels tresses, my Plucs examples are
seemingly endless. He continues his continuation: Beatrice in Much
Ado About Nothing: "Lord I could not endure a man with a beard on his
face; I would rather lie in woolen." Feste to Viola: "Now Jove in his next
commodity of hair, send thee a beard!" Beatrice to Leonato: "He that
hath a beard is more than youth; he that hath no beard is less a man."
Bottom's utterance of practicality: "If my hair do but tickle me, I must

scratch." And finally Francis Flutes' infamous cry: "Nay, let me not play
a woman, I hath a beard coming."
And of course, the practice of the time of setting fire to ones hair
to foster growth is mentioned by Hamlet when he speaks of singing
his pate, while elsewhere Lear exclaims: Singe my white head. So
many of Shakesbeards characters were so well groomed that we
actually remember best the ones who had an aversion to razors and
shears. It is but another example of the Bards ingenious skill to bring
focus to marginal characters through such simple devices. Yet it is
clear that Shakesbeard had no love lost for the ungroomed, perhaps
his own attitudes finding voice through Petruchio when he calls his
servants joltheads or says You logger headed and unpolished
grooms. For when does our hair look worse than when we are jolted
awake and who is truly worse groomed than a logger!
And here I realize that Pluc is not simply having fun, his now
breathless lecture indicates to me that he sinisterly believes his own
stylistic concoction. I have to interrupt. While your arguments have
mhairet, I say, I do find them lacking in creheadability. I would rather
believe Shakespeare was a maker of baskets or green soup, than a
man who strapped a razor the way he flung his sentences, trimmed
locks the way he tightened his scenes, or plucked out pussy splinters
that way he killed off the deserving villains in his plays. Even if you

could lather a whisker of sense to all this, I fear you have taken
Shakespeare scholargossip to its final blowdry and curl, clipped the
deadends and brushed away the flakes, but the root of the problem is
that we dont want to believe the creator of Hamlet or Lear or Prospero
was anything but a writer. We cant believe he was a simpleton from a
simple town, that he was of common stock and even commoner
talents. We refuse to believe that he could have risen from such
humble beginnings, why would we ever believe that a Shakespeare
would ever arise like some idiot savant from here, from this town
your town?
With this and his sudden silence, I realized I had done something
wrong. Terribly wrong.
I have my own theory, I tell Pluc to move past my state of
sudden embarrassment, my theory is that the Bard was a smart man, a
decent man, a good husband, maybe not a great lover but who of us
can claim that; he was astute, sober enough to make it through life
without complications, a good enough business man to put away a few
sterling so that he could live a more gentlemanly life, he was a product
of his time, not our time, he was an anomaly of his culture not ours, he
stayed out of fights, he stayed out of prison, he had a good, strong
family, he gave away his wealth not as he wished but as he was forced
to do, but he made sure his wife at least got a second best bed when

others would have given her nothing. He was a genius, like many
geniuses that come from spoiled and rotten stock, he was driven by
forces that we all understand yet understand so little, yet what made
him great was that he maintained himself, he kept his pride, he did not
seek to create a spectacle of himself, he did not strive for fame or
immortality, he followed a path, his path, along the way entertaining
all those who cared to listen. You Pluc wish he were Marlow, because
you believe that to be great you must be rebellious. Somewhere you
bought into the idea that to be a genius means to be different, to be at
odds with demons and mores. You can have the Keseys and the
Ginsbergs and the Dylans and the Gasss and all the others. Sure they
are geniuses, but they are not standards by which we need to measure
any other man, nor do they represent a condition of mankind that we
must consider when looking five hundred years into the past.
WS was not perfect: he had a mistress, he convorted with a
prostitute, he may have had syphilis, he may have indeed grown
bloated from drink, whatever the cause when he returned to Stratford
his handwriting grew shaky, his memory faded so that he could not
even remember the name of a relative he wanted to include in his will,
leaving the name blank next to the description. He died as miserable
as anyone, as far as we know. He died like a rotted piece of fruit, a
bloated and chancre racked loss of human genius. Like his
contemporaries he was abandoned in their last days, left to be sucked

white by lice, left to have no last word with no one. Perhaps his wife
saw him through his final days, although we have no reason to believe
she would have been so inclined. She had forged a living without him,
created a life without him. Raised children, had affairs, steered children
through the plagues, managed the family business despite the
attempts of men to disown her.
These theories and conspiracies and games are all an incredible
waste of time, I said with a tone that mimicked the stamping of my
gouty flannel slippered feet. So are the efforts to dissect the Bards
words and stretch it out stereotactically based on assumed
relationships denied by mathematics, science, psychology and magic.
Artists make lousy critics, but critics who are not artists will always
miss something, will always be a bit colorblind. Us artists, Pluc, even
us poorer ones, us artists who are not worth the salt in our sweat, we
know that inspiration creates incredible coincidences. We find rhythms
where none should exit, we fashion a depth to our work that none of us
intended, we are ignorant of our powers and yet believe that practice
will give us control. It is a laugh Pluc. I suppose there are genius bards
who never pick up a pen in practice and write stunning pieces of work.
At the same time, I know there are many, many more other geniuses
who need hours and months and years to create their masterpiece.
Pluc has that smile that says: yes we have talked about this

before, yes many times before in fact, and so I cut him off at the pass: I
am sure you could Pluc, if you wanted to, you could create a mirror
image of me right now as I speak and perfectly mouth the words I am
saying, talking in complete synch since you know exactly what I am
going to say.
But I will say it again: I dont think the Bard had time to construct
his work to the rigors and demand that others seem to find. He was a
playwright, but he was also an actor, he was a theater manager, in
addition he had a business or two, not large ones, on the side, he had
other obligations, to his sponsors to write lost benedictions and others
royal drivel, he had marketing and publicity to do, he had costumes to
buy, repairs to be made, and casts to be cast, for in fact he had as
many as six different plays a week to put on. How would we expect
this man to create perfection out of disorder. No, he found order by
the power of his art, not the power of his analytical guides. He may
have had a multitude of talents but it is fairer to believe he had no
time for interfering contrivances of sentence structure and meaning to
deal with rather than creating a meaningful play that resonated with
him and entertained his audience.
Most amazing about Will, Pluc, is that if we knew one that thing
about him and we may not but that one thing we did would be that he
did not care. Again, he was a product of his world not ours. He did not

own his plays, he probably was not even sure if they were his plays
anymore after a few years and numerous other writers added their
endings and stories to his. He was not paid for the works that were
printed and sold. Authorship was a different breed back then, it was a
work between many, a collection of minds, a confluence of styles, of
ideas, some sober, some drunk, some brilliant, others mere marketers.
But in the end, he had no real concept that he might or deserved to be
immortalizes. Yet he was. Shakespeare has become a deity, his works
a Bible.
You have now succeeded in sucking all the fun out of
Shakespeare, Pluc says to me, by making him a mere man, a mere
man with a mere beard and mere wife and mere hands with mere
fingers that wrote on mere paper with a mere pen. You are right, he is
a god, but you are wrong, he is not a man. And so not a man, he
becomes like all gods become, what we want him to be.
Well, then I will not disappoint you then dear Pluc, for I have my
own theory about the Bard, one that I have kept to myself for fear I
would be branded a lunatic if I set it zigzagging like a lost dog through
our community.
A new theory? You? It must be brilliant! Tell me, tell me! my little
Pluc pants like a puppy.
I am tired of being reasonable, I tell Pluc, my view of old age is
10

that this is my time to be exactly as others expect me to be: a bitter

old man without an ounce of sense left. And that is the sentiment that
drives my theory. And so let me be blunt. The one aspect of the
Stratford debate that never seems to surface (and Pluc is now poking
his fingers in his ears as his way of saying that he knows whats
coming and he simply refuses to acknowledge this conversation in
anyway) is what was the Bards true color? To me this is the key to
understanding many of these many mysteries. Some paintings and
sculptures of the Bard, although not created during his lifetime, are
peculiarly olive in complexion, some downright Moorish.
Blackamor, Pluc blurts out, pulling out his fingers to use his
favorite derogatory phrase.
Yes, indeed, I agree. The argument for his being an Arab is not in
the paint of these distant representations. What about his characters
his famous Moors? They were so out of touch with the then current
characterization of Moors during this time. Shakespeare displayed an
unusual compassion, insight and humanness to these men and this
race he otherwise seemingly knew nothing about. This reaches its
ultimate expression in the most famous Moor of all, the most famous
Arabic characters in the Arab lands, the powerfully good yet terribly
tragic Othello. Here was a black Arab married to a lily white plainann,
who loved, who commanded, who respected his new religions, who

11

was strong, compassionate, passionate, feeling and intelligent. He was

not dark and dangerous, he was caring and civilized, so much more so
than the white, cunning Iago. What could have pushed Will to draw out
such a character unless that character was inside him in a way we
never before have credited.
And is there a better way to account for WSs obsession with
cuckoldry, betrayal, rejection all attributes that seem to be found in
the Moor? And how better to account for WSs apparent lack of
affiliation for any particular religion than to admit that he was a Muslim
who was forced to convert and then convert again and then so see that
this white mans religion which changes upon Kings and Queens and
has the consequences of death and torture for those caught in the
mere confusion of this all was the religious color of the period, and so
why not simply keep Allah as a silent prayer?
And how better to account for the fact that WS acted as if he
were a strange man in a strange country and why he kept his profile
so low, why he never got into trouble.
And how better to explain his penchant for lending money, his
knowledge of rituals and religions of interest, than to admit that he was
closest with the Moors and Jews.
It is Pluc who goes the step I am not willing to take: we now have
to add the real meat to this argument, take it all the way to its natural
12

albeit disturbing conclusion, and add in the evidence or are they

merely questions of how did WS know so much about Italy, why did he
choose Italy for so many of his plays, but to speculate that perhaps WS
had indeed been in Italy. Just like a man named Miguel de Cervantes.
And perhaps like Cervantes WS had spent some time in Spain, maybe
even in Morocco?
Perhaps it would not be so absurd, I of course agree as it is my
theory, as to put down the facts that these two men, both playwrights,
both poets, both obsessed with betrayal, with flowers, with the order of
things, with history, with the disconnection between the present and
the past, with attempts whether through madness or magic to bring a
connection to all things and heal the world albeit only in the mind and
only for moment.
Taking all this would be it be absurd to suppose that given that
we know nothing of WS and next to nothing of MDC, that we do not
even know when or where MDC was born, that they both have lost
years, that they both are assumed to have gone off to war, that MDC
was put in jail again and again, and had every reason to leave his
Spain.
That Shakespeare was a man who can be believed to have a
large and prominent penis, for any man who has a small penis makes
sure to mention that fact in his books somehow, at some time. But not

13

WS, his men swing and thrust their spears and daggers and lances,
show off cod pieces the size of melons. And it is common (pseudo)
knowledge that penises of such girth and length were not common of
the English stock, but belonged to the Arab class, the donkey dicked
Moors.
Perhaps the inspiration for this warm drinking song
Beware all ye of the black-a-mor
Beware of the ol black-a-mor
Whose middle member was stiffly a-feared
Wenches from the front, blokes from the-rear
Run and bolt the door ma-dear
for ya ride his Shakes-a- spear
A white lilly no more, no more
A little white lilly no mo

And why else would WS have cared so little about his

immortality? Such an attitude was unknown to the Catholics or
Protestants of this time, completely out of synch with his peers. But
completely understandable if he felt that immortality was to be found

14

after death and not in what remind after his life here on earth. Not if
he was truly a Muslim or perhaps even a Jew.
Pluc, my dear Pluc, he may be my champion, but he cares not a
nit for my immortality or his. We are all of the same dust, he says, the
dust where it all began, the dust where it will all end. And who said
time was real? maybe it is but a form of currency that we use to pay
our way through life, no meaning to anyone else but us. I am passively
waiting for the end, Pluc has said, while he has already reached the
end, a thousand, a million times.
Then what is the purpose, I say feeling like an adolescent all of a
sudden, what is the reason to do anything, what is the point of having
these two holes through which I see the rest of the world as if it were
centered around me, what is the point of having this I, this point of
view, this body filled with pains and ill working organs, what is the
point of having memories, of feeling regret, of believing I will be
vindicated? Pluc just looks at me, says nothing. I can see there is
something working behind his eyes, something moving to be said. I
can feel it, I know it. I can focus on it and there it is, and then I cannot
focus on it, but can come back to it and there it is again, if I try to focus
on it too hard it will slip from out of my focus, and then I have to fight
to get it back. I can get it back, for a moment or two, but then it slips
away again, it comes back, but it slowly slips away, it cannot be held

15

forever, it cannot be contained, but I am never in doubt, I know it is

there always even though I am not always there.
Pluc, you are my Fletcher, my JF, you are the young and
uninhibited balance to my rigid and moral bardishness, the yang to my
structured and floundering bardosity, and in that pitiable flail and weep
of struggle, sometimes I find it sometimes I dont, on rare occasions it
is revealed, appears there a pattern out of mud, a sign from a cloud,
music from noise, but my time is running out while yours is still in the
static flow that time is when of youth.
Like JF you will barely recognize me when I am gone.
No, Pluc, you are my Pancho of the second book of MC, the wise
Pancho, the one who has finally seen through the haze of the old mans
insanity, who suddenly gains a wisdom and maturity of his own, who
while he still loves his master, is forced now to deceive and betray him,
and so he will and does as what does life come down to but some kind
of betrayal, Pluc, some ultimate fuck-you-very-much, some not
unreasonable deceit, it is the way with life, for one life cannot truly
start until the last life is snuffed out, ground underfoot, cast aside. You
will have to do that too, Pluc, eventually, no need for tears, it has all
happened before, endless times before.
Pluc, Pluc, I say, my dear Pluc.

16

Finally Pluc shakes his head and says to me, you are right, he
says, I am wrong. You are right about living on after we are dead, of
course, how could I be so wrong, the only ones who live forever are the
ones who stay with us forever, whose thoughts we revisit, whose ideas
makes us think, whose arguments force us to argue back, these are the
people who allow us to live, not let us live, they are the substrate o
four life and lie our bodies turning to mulch our ideas, if we are one of
them, will feed others, be a part of others. I understand it all now. I
finally understand what you have been trying to say. That is what
disturbs me about WS, that he is not someone, that he is a nobody in
particular, that there is no he behind him.
We do not live off words, we live off other brains, he said quietly,
other thoughts, and those thoughts and ideas come from a person, not
a book. Thats it, he said preparing to leave. You are right, that is the
key.

17