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All the News We Print: Pogo on Shakespeare

o you find yourself wondering, "what is the use of all this stuff about Edward de Vere?" In fact, I was once asked that question by a PhD who taught at Harvard.

"Where would I be," she asked, "if I 'accepted' that de Vere was Shakespeare?"

"You'd be in a state of cognitive disequilibrium," I says. So she thought about that for a couple of years, floundered around Campus wondering if authors are real or not, and eventually read Sarah Smith's new novel, Chasing Shakespeares. And do you kow what? Now she's cognitively disequilibrated. Can't look at a roadsign without wondering what's on the other side of it.

Seriously, though, folks, you wouldn't be the first person to come this same conclusion, try as Dave Kathman would have you to believe you would be. Posy Gould figured it out long before most people; and so did some others who equivocated right up there with the Bard his-self. The issue is not the orthography of the bard's name; its whether or not cultural history, and art itself, makes any damn sense, or whether its a thing of sound and fury, signifying nothing more than tenure.

On this page we're going to bring you some fun and ultimately very funny comments on Shakespeare by the immortal Walt Kelley, Bard of Okeefenokee. If you don't know who Walt Kelley is, try visiting one of these sites:

 

Gregory McNamee's super little biography of Walt Kelley.

Pogo.org The Project on Government Oversight. A site apparently inspired by Pogo's immortal dictum, "We have met the enemy....and he is us." Aims to bring Pogo's philosophy into the political arena, but has apparently not yet endorsed him for President.

Marilyn K. White's Shrine of Devotion to Pogo includes news about his 2004 candidacy for President and campaign buttons going back to 1968. The political message, in a country which just lost Senator Wellstone in a plane crash but has an Attorney General who places drapes over Greek statues, could never be more topical than in 2003. Quite a lovely site.

To buy Pogo, still in print, visit our friends at Amazon.

 

And now for the comix:

 

"Might is Right," originally published in Instant Pogo, begins with this exchange between Albert the Alligator and about "fraught" poetry.

 

Instant Pogo began with a scrip called "The entrance of the Comedians." Obviously, the comedians are still onstage in "Might is Write."
Finally we get Shakspere's "bosh". It rhymes but makes no sense. If you believe that Walt Kelley actually believed these lines make no sense, you are more gullible than his editors.

 

Stay tuned for more News from Pogo. All will be revealed...someday.

n.b. The Shakespeare Fellowship is a non-profit educational organization. These strips are reproduced in pursuance with provisions of fair use under U.S. copyright act. For further information, please visit Stanford University's Fair Use Site.

 

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