“
Everything and Nothing*
There was no one inside him; behind his face
(which even in the bad paintings of the time
resembles no other) and his words (which were
multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated
turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a
dream someone had failed to dream. At first he
thought that everyone was like him, but the
surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance
to whom he began to describe that hollowness
showed him his error, and also let him know,
forever after, that an individual ought not to
differ from its species. He thought at one point
that books might hold some remedy for his
condition, and so he learned the "little Latin
and less Greek" that a contemporary would
later mention. Then he reflected that what he
was looking for might be found in the
performance of an elemental ritual of humanity,
and so he allowed himself to be initiated by
Anne Hathaway one long evening in June.
At twenty-something he went off to London.
Instinctively, he had already trained himself to
the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so
that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered.
In London he found the calling he had been
predestined to; he became an actor, that person
who stands upon a stage and plays at being
another person, for an audience of people who
play at taking him for that person. The work of
a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to
him—the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but
when the last line was delivered and the last
dead man applauded off the stage, the hated
taste of unreality would assail him. He would
cease being Ferrex or Tamerlane and return to
being nobody.
Haunted, hounded, he began imagining
other heroes, other tragic fables. Thus while his
body, in whorehouses and taverns around
London, lived its life as body, the soul that lived
inside it would be Cassar, who ignores the
admonition of the sibyl, and Juliet, who hates
the lark, and Macbeth, who speaks on the moor
with the witches who are also the Fates, the
Three Weird Sisters. No one was as many men
as that man—that man whose repertoire, like
that of the Egyptian Proteus, was all the
appearances of being. From time to time he
would leave a confession in one corner or
another of the work, certain that it would not be
deciphered; Richard says that inside himself, he
plays the part of many, and Iago says, with
curious words, I am not what I am. The
fundamental identity of living, dreaming, and
performing inspired him to famous passages.
For twenty years he inhabited that guided
and directed hallucination, but one morning he
was overwhelmed with the surfeit and horror of
being so many kings that die by the sword and
so many unrequited lovers who come together,
separate, and melodiously expire. That very
day, he decided to sell his theater. Within a
week he had returned to his birthplace, where
he recovered the trees and the river of his
childhood and did not associate them with
those others, fabled with mythological allusion
and Latin words, that his muse had celebrated.
He had to be somebody; he became a retired
businessman who'd made a fortune and had an
interest in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. It
was in that role that he dictated the arid last
will and testament that we know today, from
which he deliberately banished every trace of
sentiment or literature. Friends from London
would visit his re-treat, and he would once
again play the role of poet for them.
History adds that before or after he died, he
discovered himself standing before God, and
said to Him: I , who have been so many men in
vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God's voice
answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not
I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare,
dreamed your own work, and among the
forms of my dream are you, who like me, are
many, yet no one.
”
”