Shakespeare's Will

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," said Juliet.

"I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it were called a thistle or a skunk cabbage!" said Anne (of Green Gables).

Shakspere the Actor

It was Will the actor who was of humble origin and who came from Stratford upon Avon. It is said that this man signed his name as 'William Shakspere'.

Shakspere's parents were illiterate. Shakspere's daughter, Judith, was unable to write.

The most famous role that Will Shakspere played on the stage was the Ghost in Hamlet. He also worked as a moneylender.

It is odd that Will Shakspere, who once sued a man for an unpaid loan of two shillings, was never compensated for his plays during his lifetime and never seemed to have complained about it.

It's also said that, unlike most artists, Will Shakspere enjoyed prosperity during his lifetime. The only surviving letter to Shakspere is a letter from a neighbour asking for a loan of thirty pounds.

In his last will and testament, Will mentions a "second best bed" and a "silver gilt bowl" but makes no mention of his valuable literary works or who is to benefit from them.

It is therefore surmised that the actor 'Will Shakspere' and the author 'William Shakespeare' were two different people.

What's in a Name?

Shakespeare or "Spear Shaker" is believed to be a reference to the spear shakers of mythology: Apollo, Athena and Hercules, the mortal who became a god.

Will Shakspere had never travelled and knew little Latin or Greek so many theorists believe that he would have been unable to produce literary works that required an indepth knowledge of law, Platonic philosophy, Rosicrucian symbolism, the culture of royal courts and several languages.

The authorship of Shakespeare's plays is usually attributed to men such as Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe or Edward De Vere.

Manly P. Hall writes: "A sentimental world, however, dislikes to give up a traditional hero, either to solve a controversy or to right a wrong."

However the real author of the plays must have had his or her reasons for keeping their identity a secret. Besides 'The Complete Works of Bacon' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

All the World's a Stage

Most people today still believe that the moneylending actor from Stratford upon Avon is the authentic author of the Elizabethan literary masterpieces.

So either Will Shakspere was truly one of the greatest writers of all time. Or he was one of the greatest actors, convincing the world at large during his lifetime and beyond his death, that he was a literary genius and the author of some of the most celebrated masterpieces in English literature.

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The Strange Deaths of Christopher Marlowe

John Dee and the Angels

In the book, Living with Angels, author Theolyn Cortens says that Christopher Marlowe based his play The Tragical History of Dr Faustus on the misadventures of Dr John Dee, the court astrologer of Elizabeth I.

Like Christopher Marlowe, Dr Dee was also said to be a Government spy. According to this site, John Dee was the original 007 and that was his coded signature for his secret correspondence with the Queen. The double zero ‘00’ stood for two eyes meaning that he was the secret eyes of Elizabeth I with Lucky number 7 guarding the two eyes.

John Dee was a brilliant scholar who was obsessed with the paranormal. He was not clairvoyant but he recruited a medium called Edward Kelley to assist him with his work.

Edward Kelley was able to contact what he referred to as ‘angels’. They communicated with him in an unknown language. Linguistic experts have verified that this language is authentic with its own grammar, number and alphabet system. They believe it was unlikely that Kelley was able to devise this language by himself.

In his lecture on The Origins of Evil, astro-theologian, Michael Tsarion referred to these entities as Macrobes.

In return for giving away alchemical secrets, these entities made many requests. One described as a child spirit (in some accounts referred to as the Archangel Uriel and in other accounts a spirit called Madimi) instructed that Kelley and Dee should share all things - including their wives.

Dee and Kelley complied with the wife-swapping demand “with much anguish”. And things spiralled downhill for Dee from then on.

Like Marlowe’s Faust, Dee paid a heavy price for attempting to use paranormal forces for material gain and ended up dying in poverty and social disgrace.

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The Strange Deaths of Christopher Marlowe

The Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe, is nowadays more famous for the manner in which he died. But there are a fair few versions of his death.

Version One: He was stabbed to death by a love rival in a drunken fight at a pub.

Version Two: He was stabbed to death by a jealous husband in a street brawl.

Version Three: Christopher Marlowe was gay and his death was the result of a homophobic attack.

Version Four: His death was a punishment for heresy. He was said to have authored documents which denied the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Version Five: An argument over a bill during a game of backgammon at a house in Deptford turned into a fight. Marlowe attacked one of the men who accidentally and mortally stabbed him above the right eye in self-defence. The man was pardoned.

Version Six: Marlowe was a government spy. The three men he’d spent his last day with (supposedly playing backgammon) were also spies. They assassinated him.

Version Seven: He wasn’t murdered at all. His death was faked after which he wrote several plays under the name “William Shakespeare”.


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The Lost Boys

“I suppose I always knew that I made Peter by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame. That is all Peter is – the spark I got from you.”

J. M. Barrie was inspired to create the Peter Pan story after befriending the five children of the Llewellyn Davies family: George, Michael, Jack, Peter and Nicholas.

When their parents died, J.M. Barrie became their guardian.



George died fighting in the First World War in 1915.

Michael, who was said to be Barrie’s favourite, drowned when he was 20 with his friend Rupert Buxton. As Michael could not swim, there was speculation that the two young men had formed a suicide pact.

While researching his family history, Peter, who had become a successful publisher, burnt many documents, including the 2000 letters between Barrie and Michael.

When he was 63, Peter threw himself under a train at Sloane Square station.

J. M. Barrie was reportedly not fond of explanation or analysis. To say he did not want to be written about or analysed, is to put it mildly: “May God blast anyone who writes a biography about me.”

I don't like to end on that note. But I can't think of anything else to write, so I shall.


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The god Pan

The Many Faces of Faust

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?
(Jesus) Mark 8:36

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold.
(Bob Marley)

The famous Faust story has had many an incarnation down the centuries. Each variation of the story involves a man who enters into a pact with the devil to get material success, wealth, fame, power etc. in exchange for his soul and becoming the devil's eternal servant once he dies.

The Real Dr Faust

The stories are based on Dr Johannes Faustus, a German alchemist and teacher who lived in the sixteenth century. Dr Faustus was believed to have been a conman, practical joker and a child molester.

According to Manly P. Hall, Dr Faustus experimented with conjuring up a number of elemental beings to work as his servant.

One morning he was found stabbed in the back. He is believed to have been killed by one of his own elemental creatures.

Faust in Fiction

One of the first versions of the Faust story is the play by Christopher Marlowe called The Tragical History of Dr Faustus.

Unlike succeeding versions of the tale, Marlowe's Faust is ripped apart by demons and dragged off to hell screeching and wailing.

Ironically like the original Dr Faustus, the playwright Christopher Marlowe met his end by being stabbed to death.

The most famous theatrical work on Faust is the play by Goethe which has a more upbeat ending, for, like Mr Punch, Faust eventually triumphs over the devil.

There is also an opera by Gounod called Faust as featured in the novel the Phantom of the Opera.

And there is a second opera composed by Arrigo Borito based on the story called Mefistofele which features in the 2005 film Batman Begins just before Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered.

Mister Mephistopheles

In the Faust legend, the Devil is called Mephistopheles.

This name for the Devil seems to have emerged during the Renaissance Period. In some legends, he is the Devil himself. In other legends, he is one of the Fallen Angels that joined Lucifer in his rebellion against God.

The Faustian pact storyline has continued to be a favourite formula in movies and theatre. Variations of the Faust plot can be found in the musical Damn Yankees and the film The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941).

A remake of The Devil and Daniel Webster – with Ghost Whisperer Jennifer Love Hewitt as the Devil (?!) – was made in 2001. The making of the film seemed to have been dogged by the Devil himself.

Directed by Alec Baldwin, its release was delayed until 2007. The director's name was removed from the directorial credit and the film was recut and renamed Shortcut to Happiness.

To end on a musical note, I don’t have any opera clips but I did find this.

[Cue cheesy musical moment]

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The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera, most famous nowadays as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, is based on the gothic horror novel Fantome de l'Opera by the French author Gaston Leroux. It was first published in the English language by Mills and Boon (?!) in 1911.

It has been an enduring tale which has spawned two musical plays and several movies.

In the Lloyd Webber theatrical version, the Phantom appears to have almost mysterious superhuman magical powers and the mystery of the story is not knowing whether he is real or is a ghost.

In other versions of the tale, the Phantom is less otherworldly. In the novel, he is called Erik. In the 2004 movie, he is presented as a tortured man with a physical deformity.

However in all versions, the Phantom has demonic connotations.

Like most characters which are suggestive of the Devil, the Phantom is an ambiguous figure – seductive, pitiful, scary, repulsive and attractive at the same time.

In the 2004 movie , the Phantom, as a boy, was nicknamed the Devil’s Child. The disfigured child is seen in a flashback in a cage, as one of the attractions in a travelling carnival, who is mocked and mistreated by onlookers until one day he kills a carnival worker in a rage.

He is rescued and grows up in hiding in the Paris Opera House where he is known as the Opera ghost.

Angel or Demon

“Henceforth, Satan became the enemy of man, appearing to him in the guise of an angel of light to seduce him (compare II Cor. xi. 14).” http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=758&letter=A

Like Lucifer "the lightbringer", the Phantom has angelic traits. In the novel , Christine's father used to tell her a fairy tale about the 'Angel of Music'. So years later, as a chorus girl, she assumes this shadowy music teacher is her guardian angel.

Under his tutelage, Christine Daae becomes a talented singer. She is almost seduced by her mentor until she sees the face behind the mask.

The Faust Connection

The reference to the opera Faust throughout the novel is another allusion to the Devil for Christine will be asked to pay a heavy price in exchange for her musical gift.

In Chapter 7 of the novel, entitled Faust and What Followed, the Phantom issues a series of threats as to what will happen if his protégée does not sing the part of Marguerite in their current production of Faust.

When his demands are not met, Erik causes the the leading lady Carlotta to lose her voice and the chandelier to fall from the ceiling, wounding several audience members and killing one “wretched woman who had come to the opera for the first time in her life”.

Another allusion to the devil, is at the beginning of the Lloyd Webber versions of the story when an auction is being held and the number of the ill-fated chandelier that is being auctioned is Lot 666.

Inside the Torture Chamber

In the novel, the Phantom has a torture chamber which is "a little six-cornered room, the sides of which were covered with mirrors from top to bottom." (Chapter 22)

As mentioned in the Mirror Mirror post, mirrors are allegedly used by mind control experts for sinister purposes such as inducing the victim to disassociate from their own identity so that their mind can be programmed to perform various (usually nefarious) deeds.

Origins of the Phantom Story

Some believe that Leroux's story was inspired by George Du Maurier's novel Trilby which features the evil hypnotist Svengali.

In Trilby, Svengali transforms a tone-deaf artist's model into a great opera singer who delivers great performances in a [Sarah Brightman-esque] mesmerised trance.

Others believe that Leroux based his story on true events, that the Swedish opera singer Christine Nilsson was the inspiration for the Swedish-born character of Christine Daae and that there really is an Opera Ghost wandering about the Paris Opera House.

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