WAS JOAN SHAKESPEARE THE INSPIRATION FOR A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM?

(In this brief excerpt from a much-longer scene and chapter, Will has just recently found rooms in London and is back in Stratford for a few days. Here, he walks to market with his siblings. As you will see, Joan Shakespeare, although being uneducated, is bright, imaginative and the likely inspiration for A Midsummer Night's Dream.)

‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk roses and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.’

Will sniffed, “I miss the aroma of the country, working in the garden, going to market, the river, the wood, especially the Arden. My dreams still linger there, and I meet strange folk of the night who live happily in the forest.”

“Do they talk in your dreams, Will?” Joan asked. “People talk in mine. A fairy princess and a wise elf I call Puck keep coming back like swift shadows to see me in the pitchy forest.”

“Ay, they do, Joan, and say strange things which I write down when I wake up, or sometimes light the candle.” Puck, a perfect elf name, a merry wanderer. His scene-writing daydream expanded, and he said aloud, “What angel wakes me?”

“Which angel?”

“I was thinking of the princess of your dreams. Shall we call her Titania, the fairy queen from legends, Ovid?” Will stood and walked along singing with his arms outstretched, “And away flew Titania.” He stopped, and they gathered around on the bank, as the Avon gurgled and flowed below them.

“Yes, I shall call her name in the night. Then you made me play the witch, called me weird sister, and had me say strange things like, ‘Fire burn and cauldron bubble’ and pretend to put a frog’s tongue and a wolf’s tooth in the pot. Why are women always the witches? Why cannot men be?”

Gil said, “Will made me play the devil and come screaming out of the wood with a forked stick to scare you, it was midsummer madness.”

“Then Will appeared as a shining knight or a brave king, always the hero.”

“The advantage of being the oldest,” said Will with a smile.

“Let us go to the Arden,” Edmund said. “I will be the elf and jump on you from a tree branch.”

“Remember, we would go into the forest on Hallowmas and wait for the returning dead and run when we heard something peculiar?”

“We saw curious things, Gil, mostly in our imaginations. The breeze in the rustling branches often sounded as moans and cries.”

“And that little waterfall on the hill babbled like a baby.”

         ‘And this our life exempt from public haunt 

   Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

   Sermons in stones, and good in everything

   I would not change it.’

“We had the sauciest times near Christmas,” Joan said. “Do they have Twelfth Night in London, Will?”

(This vignette was excerpted from Discovering Will's Lost Years and the Marlowe-Shakespeare Lost Play: Uncovering 16th and 21st-Century Mystery. Treachery and Obsession.)

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