An Argument in Favor of Naming the Other Authors on the Covers of Some of Shakespeare’s Plays, Vigorously Mocked and Contested
A Parody of Most of the Writers Published in The Checkout Staged in a Fictional Café in Kyiv’s Podil District
Writer 2: They can now figure out who wrote parts of plays earlier completely attributed to Shakespeare to a high degree of certainty, with most scholars agreeing, using a computer program that probes the plays for frequencies and patterns. Then wouldn’t it be reasonable for publishers to list the names of the other authors on the covers of those plays?
If the information is on the cover, that’s interesting. That tells me something I didn’t know. What didn’t I know? That more than one author wrote Shakespeare? All this time I thought it was only Shakespeare, but now I’m finding out it wasn’t. But these other authors aren’t listed on the covers, and that’s not right. Therefore, the authors who wrote Shakespeare’s plays should be listed on the covers in addition to Shakespeare. What’s so hard about that or understanding the reasons behind it? I’ll tell you – nothing. It should be done starting right now.
Funny how computers can tell who wrote what, but humans can’t. Well, so what? That’s an irony we’re just going to have to live with. What’s the threat of listing the names of the other authors? Would it put the scholars out of business? Gee, I’m awfully sorry for the scholars.
Writer 3: This is not sounding like creative material for The Checkout. It sounds like a blog with readers writing in, adding their points of view and comments. It sounds like just a bunch of stupid shit. Something like this can get way out of hand and off track real fast. If you can’t write something creative for The Checkout, then don’t write anything at all.
Writer 2: Not interested in your petty comments. List those other authors, set them free. Case closed.
Writer 3: Yes, but Shakespeare would be interested. What’s the matter – afraid to vie with the bard?
Writer 2: What the fuck are you talking about? This has nothing to do with competing with Shakespeare? On the contrary, it has everything to do with being fair to him and placing his work into perspective by framing it in the context of the scaffolding of the other writers who were just as responsible for his plays in some instances as he was. And it’s also being fair to the other writers.
Writer 3: They’re called playwrights, by the way. Did you even read the plays, parts of which are attributed to other authors? Because if you had, you’d notice that their quality proportionately goes down as the amount of the non-Shakespeare materials in them goes up.
Writer 2: Well, so then that’s all the more reason to list the other authors. If the plays are bad, then people will know it wasn’t Shakespeare’s fault as much as that of the other authors.
Writer 3: How do you know it wasn’t the other playwrights who had the good ideas and the good writing while it was Shakespeare who fucked up?
Writer 2: But that contradicts what you said before – at least it’s implied directly from your statements. That if other authors were involved, then the quality of the plays goes down the more involved they were. Hence, the less involved, the higher the quality. Therefore, the more the play belongs solely to Shakespeare, the better it is. You should think before making such asinine comments.
Writer 3: The only one who’s making asinine comments is you.
Writer 2: Shut the fuck up.
Writer 3: You shut the fuck up.
Writer 1 [or 4]: To thine own self be true.
Writer 3:
Scene: a cruddy café on a remote side street in Kyiv’s Podil district.
The Hunched Cornish sits off in a corner at the back of the place, alone. There is a salad and a piece of steak with the grilled blood run out of it on a plate next to a massive left forearm resting on the heavy wood table. The Hunched Cornish has eaten part of this meal but has pushed the remaining part off to the side and has decided to order a bottle of red wine, which he slowly pours into a big-bowled stem glass and drinks, also slowly. Before finishing the one bottle he orders another one. When the lanky waiter bobs over to him and grinning wide asks whether he’s finished with his meal and if he can remove the bowl and plate, The Hunched Cornish tells him in a barely audible rumble to leave everything just as it is and to mind his own damn business. The waiter is visibly shaken, as if the reply has somehow incapacitated him permanently, and trips awkwardly backward and moves away. It is not clear where the waiter actually disappears to, not even to the barman, who, if anyone, should know all the places in the joint where the waiter could go.
At the far end of the bar closest to the door sits The Half Guinea on a stool drinking a whisky and soda on the rocks out of a large heavy tumbler schmoozing with a black chick, who laughs and exclaims “Yeah, yeah,” enthusiastically every time The Half Guinea describes intimate details of the streets in New York City the chick is most familiar with.
The Hunched Cornish is in the joint at the instigation of The Half Guinea, who, it seems, knew the black chick would be there and for no reason that anyone would understand, not even he, managed to talk The Hunched Cornish into going with him there for the company.
It is highly probable that The Hunched Cornish knew The Half Guinea would end up at the bar while he would be left alone at the table, but oddly did not tell The Half Guinea to fuck off when the other was prodding him to come along, leering with those jagged front-pointing teeth at him out of his swarthy-greased Mediterranean complexion and going, “Come on, Hunchy, hey, Hunchy, Hunchy, Hunchy – haaa!!!”
Now The Hunched Cornish sits there, with his half-eaten meal at his side, drinking wine and looking past The Half Guinea with his black chick at the bar and out the door, which is open to let in the spring air, and through the big window next to the door. It’s a very simple place.
Behind and to the right of The Hunched Cornish is a very small wood platform meant as a stage for the two-bit acts that play the joint on weekends and the special nights when certain drinks could be got for free – all depending, of course, on the fulfillment of certain other conditions – which is being used by Steve Kowalski, who is reciting his latest cycle of a medieval sort of poetry. The Hunched Cornish doesn’t care much for Kowalski, who, like The Hunched Cornish, is also there thanks to The Half Guinea, but he doesn’t seem to mind Kowalski’s non-stop babble. The Hunched Cornish just slowly drinks his wine as he looks toward the door and out the window. Some part of his mind signals an appreciation for Kowalski’s recited rhythms, even though he’s paying no attention to the words, and he allows that part of his mind to take him back to Greece, to the amphitheater, the poets walking around kicking their sandals into the dust waiting for their turn in the competitions, some haughtily ignoring the others, the others trying to stare the first ones down – and as it went on like this, The Hunched Cornish would begin to find it funny.
“This Kowalski’s not so bad,” he thinks, remembering through the wine telling The Half Guinea – who is now leaning into the black girl and artfully priming her face and mouth for a kiss, manipulating her in a way she is clearly enjoying – “Just don’t bring that fucking dog!”
Drinking his wine and looking toward the door, it finally happens – almost as if The Hunched Cornish had been expecting it to; in slow motion, out of the blue sky and the sun. A confident swaggering figure wearing a black jacket framing a white shirt and thin black tie, and black corduroys struts in, clicking the heels of his black boots and stomping them hard and ostentatious against the floorboards, and he’s got his arm around the shoulder of another figure wearing a fedora and a dark-gray suit, straight-backed, serious, almost grim.
“John Smith!” Kowalski exclaims, so happy to unexpectedly see his colleague, whose shoulder is being embraced by the other figure, that he sends the pages of his poetry flying out of his hand and jumps off the stage to run up to greet him.
The Half Guinea and the black chick have disappeared.
The embracing man loses his cocky grin, not knowing Steve Kowalski, but knowing about him, and not particularly liking him even without meeting him.
But Manny Face also doesn’t know John Smith, whom he’s now embracing, except just barely, having in fact met him briefly only once in the street on Lev Tolstoy Square, and that as part of a scheme of blackmail and petty extortion hatched a while ago against Face by The Hunched Cornish; a ludicrous scheme, one can say, that largely and laughably failed.
The Hunched Cornish looks at John Smith, who looks back at The Hunched Cornish with recognition, but with no regret, shame or emotion, although without defiance either. The Hunched Cornish feels betrayed. He is devastated and weeping on the inside.
Ignoring Kowalski, who had begun to stretch his arm out to shake hands with Manny Face and introduce himself, Face lets go of Smith’s shoulder and walks up to The Hunched Cornish at his table.
He says: “You think drinking all that red wine is going to get your sperm count up?”
The remark hits The Hunched Cornish where it hurts him the most. He could have been just drinking wine, but his mind is unable to block the incontrovertible truth of the statement.
The Hunched Cornish is immensely more powerful than Manny Face. He is also quicker, something that Face doesn’t know and believes he has the advantage there.
But he doesn’t; that’s impossible.
Manny Face is ice – water in frozen form – and air.
The Hunched Cornish is fire and earth.
While it is true that water can put out fire, fire can put out water, and that’s much worse.
Fire is the first of the primary elements. It sculpted the Earth and entered it to become its core when the ball was formed.
Then the water divided from the earth and the air divided from the water.
All latter three are perishable, but fire never ends.
Writer 2 [or 4]: Not believable. Story is not credible. This would never happen.
Writer 3: Says you. Up yours.
Writer 1 [or 4]: Manny Face knows his limitations with respect to The Hunched Cornish and tries to avoid him. Right now he’s hiding from him; Face’s biggest mission is to save Tango Baby so that she has his kid. If it comes to it, Face is willing to sacrifice his life so that she and the child live. Yes, it’s true, before, Face was willing to harass The Cornish and can even be said to have gone out of his way to do it, but that all changed when he realized he had gotten Tango Baby pregnant.
Writer 3: Yeah, right. It’s a story. I write what I want to write, not what you want to read.
Continued in next frame, April 29, 2014