So there I was, sitting in my car at a traffic light and reading Shakespeare’s Richard III.

I can play psychic, you know, and I can just hear you groaning.  “What’s she trying to do, impress me with her literary acumen?”  (No, I’m not being snooty, that’s just another way to say cleverness or insight.)

But honestly, I was reading the book because I’d planned on seeing the play this summer. 

Oops, it’s already autumn (at least on my side of the world) and I missed the play.  Where did this year go?  But I needed to finish reading Richard III because I can’t leave a book (or a play) half read.

So picture this: there I am, waiting for the light to turn green, and it’s getting really good.  I know the battle is coming.  Richmond, the eventual victor, is talking with some friends and captains, and he says,

“My Lord of Oxford, you Sir William Brandon,
And you, Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me.
The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment.—
Good Captain Blount, bear my goodnight to him,
And by the second hour in the morning,
Desire the Earl to see me in my tent.”

The car behind me started honking; the light had turned green and I hadn’t noticed it.  When I looked in my rear view mirror, the balding man in the Volkswagen Beetle (that’s Beetle with two e’s, not Beatle with the ‘ea’) was mouthing something or other.  He was obviously not a lover of the illustrious Bard.

So onward I drove.  I kept thinking about what I’d just read while I journeyed home (I hit no more red lights in which to re-read the scene, darn), and something in that speech was playing with my subconscious.  So when I got home, I tore the house upside down looking for a piece of paper.  Not just any piece of paper.  My father’s mother’s mother’s application to the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Yup, I’m a descendant of somebody who fought in the Revolutionary War.  I’ve never joined the DAR myself, but I could if I wanted.  And I’m actually descended on both sides; somebody on my Mom’s side fought in the war, too.  I wonder if they met each other, fought by each other’s side against the British?  But then, they were Brits, too, and not too long off the boat!

But that’s beside the point.  I really, REALLY wanted to see my paternal great-grandmother’s application because of something she’d written on it.

Have I mentioned I’m obsessive-compulsive?  Well, I am.  To the nth degree.  I finally found the paper two days later and stared at it through red eyes blurry from lack of sleep.  And there it was, in the section where lineage is traced.

So here’s how it went, with only the relevant parent mentioned (there were two parents to each begetting, I promise).

Laura (my paternal great-grandmother).

            Beget by Josephine.

                 Beget by Samuel.

                         Beget by Amy.

                                 Beget by Thomas (I think this was the Rev.War dude).

                                         Beget by Richard.

                                                Beget by Thomas.

                                                       Beget by Walter.

                                                             Beget by Thomas.

                                                                    Beget by Philip.

Yes, that’s Philip with one l.  Although I’ve seen his name spelled with two l’s.

Now, stay with me here.

Philip was the 4^th Earl of Pembroke and 1^st Earl of Montgomery.  Philip’s great-great-grandfather was a 1^st Earl of Pembroke, who was on the battlefield with Richmond and was captured with his brother and beheaded on July 27^th, 1469.

Yes, THAT EARL OF PEMBROKE, the very one Richmond was talking about in Shakespeare’s play!!

I spent the next two weeks searching out the lineage on the internet.  I traced the Herbert line back 21 generations to Adam ap Herbert.  I’m not sure which year it was, because nothing was dated until Adam’s grandson’s time, and Guillem ap Jenken (Adam’s grandson) lived from 1330 until 1377.

Now, I don’t want to say anything bad about my forefathers, but honestly, you’d think they’d have wanted to use a little more ACUMEN in naming their offspring!  I counted something like 27 Williams and 14 Philips in the line.  And it’s not like any of them only had one or two kids.  N-o-o-o-o, they had to have ten or twenty!!  And some of those kids were definitely born on the wrong side of the bed, if you know what I mean (Philip’s great-grandfather was one of those).  Naughty men!  And the men usually married a bunch of times, too.  And on top of that, the Earldom of Pembroke has died out a few times and then started up again, so the 1^st and 2^nd Earls of one time period were followed a generation or two later by another 1^st and 2^nd Earl!  Very weird.

So anyway, Philip had 3 daughters and sons James, Henry, Charles, William, James (yes, another James), John and Philip.  That was with wife number 1.  He only had one son, William (yes, another William) with wife number 2.  And with wife number 3, he had 5 daughters and sons Philip (yes, another Philip) and Thomas (thankfully, only one Thomas).  Wait, maybe that was Philip’s son Philip who had the wives number 2 and 3!  I’m getting my Philips confused.  Like I said, there’s too many Williams and too many Philips in the line.

Anyway, if you look back at my chart, you can see that Philip beget Thomas and Thomas beget Walter.  Simple, right?  

Wrong.

You see, I can’t find Walter anywhere.  Everywhere I’ve searched, I’ve found that Thomas (Thomas ap Philip, I guess you could call him) married once and beget 5 boys and 2 girls.  None of them are named Walter.  Not even the girls.  Believe me, I checked.  Even Shakespeare had Richmond talking to a Sir Walter in the play, it’s a respectable family name back to the time of the original William-who-got-beheaded’s wife Anne, who’s father’s name was Walter.  But I can’t find my Walter in the tree anywhere.

And this is the only Thomas I could find that was beget by Philip!  So what’s the deal with Walter (Walter ap Thomas, so to speak)?  I feel like I’m doing a Where’s Waldo puzzle, but it’s a Where’s Walter puzzle and there’s no Walter in any of the pieces.

I’ll get to the bottom of this, one way or another.  My obsessive-compulsive nature demands the ferreting out of the truth.  Either that or I’ll be as bald as the man in the VW Beetle, because I’ll have torn out all my hair in exasperation.

But really, this is all beside the point.

Yes, I did have a point.  And I haven’t forgotten it.  You’re going to blow a gasket over this one.

Back to Richard III and the whole thing that got me writing to you.

William Shakespeare was a fanfic writer.

What’d I tell you?  Gasket blown, right?

But honestly, look at it and you’ll see that I’m right!  Shakespeare wrote mainly about historical figures.  He was a history fan, and a lot of his plays revolved around real people and real events.  The events in his historical plays happened to one degree or other, but the speeches, the movements, the gestures and the moment-to-moment was fabrication set around actual fact.

Fanfic is mainly written about real people and real events, with what might have happened interwoven into the reality of the times.  There are differences, especially in the alternate universe realm, but the main people and main events around which the fiction is written really happened.

The Beatles paid their dues working like dogs in Hamburg.  Who’s to say Paul didn’t meet and fall in love with Edna Villinbothem while he was in Germany?  It could have happened. 

The Beatles hired Brian Epstein as their manager.  Who’s to say that his secretary Alice Smythe didn’t have secret feelings for John and maybe they dated a few times?  Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t.

George Harrison came to America in 1963, before The Beatles were big here.  Who’s to say that he didn’t have a romance with a mid-western girl named Becky?  A story interwoven with the actual events could have happened.

Ringo Starr was in Boston to visit his daughter a few years back.  Who’s to say he didn’t stop by to get some cash out of an ATM and got trapped in there with a crazy lady who wore orange sweat pants and the machine started spitting out money?  It could have happened!  Of course, I wish it would have happened to me, but that’s beside the point.

And who’s to say that Paul McCartney wasn’t visited by George Harrison’s ghost on his wedding knight?  And maybe George really did go to a BeatleCon!  Heck, I’ve seen some pretty wild things at fests that I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t been there.  What’s so unbelievable about the idea of George having shown up at a fest in the past?  You never know, honestly!

So tell me, do you really think that Richmond told Captain Blount exactly what Shakespeare had him saying?  Do you think that Captain Blount was a real person?  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.  Maybe Captain Blount was a fictitious person written into the play to carry out certain deeds.  What about all the serving people and pages who announce people and run errands in the play?  What about the murderers that Richard hires?  He hired them, obviously, but did he say this and that to them, and did they reply as Shakespeare wrote?  Did Queen Elizabeth really say “but how long fairly shall her sweet life last?” when Richard was trying to bargain for her daughter as his wife (after already killing the young girl’s two brothers)?  Maybe the Queen replied as Shakespeare wrote and maybe she didn’t.  She might have said something a little less genteel, maybe even rude.  It’s hard to tell, but it’s certainly a possibility, maybe even a likelihood!

A lot of Shakespeare’s plays were written around actual events and around real people with ‘extras’ in the form of characters and conversation interwoven into the lives and times.

And a lot of fanfic is written around actual events and around real people with those same ‘extras’ interwoven into their lives and times.

Wow, that’s quite a concept, isn’t it?

I wonder....

If the Bard were to be reincarnated a few hundred years from now, when reality has turned to history, about which people and events would he be writing?

Cheryl Mortensen has been a Beatle fanatic since the 1960s, but somehow went on to other things in the late 1960s, only rediscovering her passion for "all things Beatle" in the late 1990s (and on into the new century).  She is a computer programmer and an avid photographer. (Concert photos of bands and performers is her favorite area -- ask her about her Ringo pictures!!)  Cheryl lives with her husband of many years (Mike), her German Shepherd (Sorsha), and a bunch of fish in the tank and the pond that they've never bothered to name.