The adventures of Jasper the time travelling cat (Volume 1. Episode 4)

Volume 1. Episode 4. Ahhh. How cute. Jasper meets Shakespeare...

We hadn?t heard anything for almost a week at Blather Paranormal Investigations Inc. Indeed, so bored were we that we had taken to chicken jokes and brewing our own absinthe. And then, from nowhere, out of the blue as it were, we got a signal. The wireless crackled into life, spluttered forth a stream of static and then a torrent of shrieking, mewling and miaowing. It was, indeed he. Jasper the Time Travelling cat.


It didn?t take us as long to lock the signal down (we?re getting better at it) and start downloading the data. It appeared he had now time-shifted to late 16th century England. London to be precise. It was difficult to pin-point his exact location, but it seems to have been a playhouse on the south bank of the Thames river, where he has been sharing quarters with a writer in residence. A quick bit of research indicated that this was called the Globe.


Some further digging turned up some interesting stuff. It appears that a growing movement of scholars, amateur enthusiasts and online maniacs have been arguing for some years now that the Globe theatres' most famous son, and friend of our Jasper (a certain William Shakespeare), never existed. It has been argued that his works are actually the labours of several men. This being a rather elegant solution to why he wrote so effortlessly in such differing genres (tragedy, history, comedy, poetry etc). One notable name that has been put forward is that of Christopher Marlowe. Another is Francis Bacon .


There have been a brace of books written about the subject, including this one whcih looks a touch more scholarly than the rest. Whilst all of this conjecture is quite interesting in it's own way and indeed may even have something in it, I can't help but feel that people are just too ready to accept this idea. Isn't it far more plausible that he did exist? That there was just one man? Beethoven needed no help. Nor did Mozart, Carravaggio or DaVinci...


Jaspers' previous adventures are here, here and here.