"The True Historie of Will Shaksper"

by Grant Carrington

New Look, June 15 1976

    Although William Shakespeare left many plays behind him, we know very little about his private life. He was apparently quite jealous of his privacy since, for a public figure, scant mention is made of him in the periodicals of the day. We know only minor events such as his return to his hometown of Stratford-on-Avon after an illustrious career, where he willed his "second-best bed" to his wife, the former Anne Hathaway. Of his life before joining the Globe Players, we know even less.
    Fortunately the use of modern cybernetic cross-reference analysis has allowed us to reconstruct 10/22/2000 Will Shakespeare's days at the Universitie of Stratforde, even though all records were lost when Tigerte Halle was burnt to the ground in 1626.
    For example, it has long been suspected that young Shakespeare belonged to a fraternitie. In later life, while talking about his college days, he reminisced, "For mine own part, it was Greek to me." [Julius Caesar]
    He was apparently quite a sports fan. "O, there be players that I have seen play--and heard others praise, and that highly," he once said [Hamlet], asking, "My lord, you played once i' the universitie, you say?" Nonetheless, it was a surprising and heretofore unsuspected discovery to learn that Shakespeare played quartrebacke for the Universitie of Stratford Alligators. His account of the game with the Avon Tigres is particularly enlightening: