He was Shakespeare all right. He had a talent for the words, an ear for the suggestive turn of phrase. He had an instinct for wordplay, a silver tongue that made the ladies swoon and a pen that could spin artless thoughts. But instead of resting on his laurels, what if he came to rest in Laurel? Laurel, Mississippi that is. Given his innate gifts, a fair education, and the company of a sizable population of equally intelligent people, would the bard flourish in a city known more for its chicken processing plants than its poetry? Shakespeare being Shakespeare, would his muse still grant him a Mississippi of inspiration? It's hard to see if Laurel would actually matter. After all, a success here, no matter how slight, could still vault him on the path to Broadway.
To think that all the world is a stage implies that there is an audience that will respond to our every posture and every word. But is an audience like a siren, always beckoning in the distance and luring one on like Odysseus in an endless quest, or is it the buffeting winds, waves, and currents of myriad present influences large and small? Indeed, for what we know of Shakespeare, the fulcrum point of his inspiration was not just a faceless audience, but the approval and favor of royalty, posterity, the Queen, fellow actors, lovers, and competing playrights. Inspiration is perhaps not the word, but rather the inspirations of a continual flux of incentives that entice and excite the mind. And Shakespeare had to meet many different incentives, forcing him to devise manners and poetry and plot devices that could keep them all in play like simultaneously spinning a dozen dishes on sticks. There are no formal rules to do this; hence he had to be creative.
The play's the thing, but the art to which the play aspires occurs because it brings forth enticements that are as ephermeral as dreams. The intoxication and mystery of creativity and creative acts lies in the motivation that spurs them, and a pattern of incentives that is as multifaceted and fragile as the reflections of light through a crystal vase. Moreover, our ability to discern and appreciate creative things is embodied in the facets of our own personal tastes that reflect these same demands. Thus because we expect many things from a Shakespeare, or potential Shakespeares, we get creations that match our expectations. So we can enjoy Hamlet for its plot, its violence, its poetry, its sexual tensions, or its wit, but we ultimately have such tales spun for us because we actively demand such things. Author and audience is a mutual embrace, and one defines and refines the other. And if all the world is more interested in chicken nuggets than nuggets of wisdom, then that is what they will get. In Shakespeare's London, a score of playwrights vied in a dozen stages in active competition for the favor of an audience that was universally engaged and demanding. In Shakespeare's Laurel, a dozen fast food restaurants vie for attention for an audience that's merely hungry, and you can be sure that a potential Shakespeare works in one of them, serving something up.
