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Hmmm. Hard to know. I have to say, though, I do seem to keep gravitating back here to fight with the regulars. Maybe the role of commenters is underplayed in many blogs? ;-) Speaking personally, I still just don't *get* Twitter. FB I can handle, but I'm just not interested in being either a tweeter or a follower. Maybe I'm just an old grumpy Helio...

Helio


"Maybe I'm just an old grumpy Helio..."

No.


Oh look, I'm sitting down.

Now I'm standing up.

Goodness, now I'm watching TV.


P-lu-ease!!

I will regret this if you-know-who is reading...

I think the guy in the cartoon looks a lot more like Will than Frankie.

Parrhasios:

As you probably know, we have no notion what our Will of Stratford looked like. The Droeshout 'portrait' in the First Folio to which this cartoon alludes was done by someone who was 15 when Will died. In any case, it is a mask and a hoax. Everything is wrong about it. The head is out of proportion, being as big as the body and, if a true likeness, would suggest that the man was a dwarf. It also seems deliberately drawn in the shape of an egg. It has two right eyes (as Lord Brain pointed out many years ago), a deformed left ear, a misplaced nose, a bald head but with excessive hair over the ears, and the coat is composed of the front and back of the same left arm (as pointed out by the Tailor and Cutter magazine).

The question is not to be or not to be but to disguise or not to disguise: why was Martin Droeshout asked to engrave a mask (note the double line running from the left ear lobe to the chin) in which every feature is a deliberate caricature?

Well, indeed, we all mask our lack of identity. And we would rather honour a mask than admit we never knew the person. Shakespeare is quite dead, but the author never existed in any meaningful sense. So it is, perhaps, a fitting death mask that Dr McClinton describes. A composite of the meanings language imposes on Shakespeare.
No one can be certain about what they are certain that they know. And we often see conclusions in confusion that our words left long ago. So we fight to prove what we cannot know we know.

Deckard:

Hmm. If I was a detective I would say that 'deckard...' is a pseudonym for Donald Rumsfeld. Didn't he refer to known knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns, etc?

Or was it the real Descartes? On reflection, I think not.

I am very sorry - a friend has just e-mailed me to tell me that your full title is Rev Dr McClinton, and that you prefer this appellation.

I apologise for any offence that I may have unwittingly caused.

T Deckard

Deckard:

No offence taken. Call me what you like. I take it that Rev stands for ‘revved up’ (or is it reviled?). But the ‘T’ puzzles me. I thought it was ‘R’ for ‘Rick’. Or is ‘T’ a replicant of a replicant?

BTW: Ridley Scott has affirmed that Deckard is a replicant, so you would seem to be in denial about your own identity.

Of course, as a rationalist I would hopefully not confuse fact and fiction, or myth and truth. Deckard is a fictional character; the author(s) of Shakespeare existed because we have the published works. As a rationalist, I happen to believe that truth matters.

My friend has since indicated that he might have caught me in a giant elephant trap...shall I stick with "Brian" ?
Was Deckard a replicant? It's one way to read the film, and perhaps Scott's preferred way. But it is not mine.

"T" serves as an initial, in "T-om", or "T-homas".

Interesting comment Brian (#4), a quite uncanny description! One point you omitted though and it's one that interests me. Have you any opinion on whether or not William has "an usurp'd beard"?