21 June 1998 - Shakespeare: time traveler
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If Shakespeare wasn’t a space alien, he must have been a time traveler.
Every here and there a telltale anachronism sneaks in.
Remember when Hamlet is soliloquizing about whether to
“shuffle off this mortal coil”? He means DNA.
And remember the speech in Macbeth where
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/Creeps
in this petty pace from day to day/To the last
syllable of recorded time”?
You tell me, how could he know that if he wasn’t there?
clue:
A web search showed that I wasn’t the first to notice the true meaning
of “mortal coil”. People have known for years, and never
realized the plain implication.
give me a clue so sweet and true
copyright 1998, 2024 Jay J.P. Scott
<jay@satirist.org>