Happy Hour! Having some drinks with Will Shakespeare. Ask us anything.

[Aristus]

Cheers to you all!

[Liberalynn]

1. How quickly can we send the Pukes to Mars

now that we found some water there?

[Aristus]

3. Regardless of when we start, it'll take months of space travel just to get the

advance party there.

They won't last long there, with no one to do the work for them. If all one can do is lounge around, yelling for another martini, you aren't going to last long.

If you are a "Hitchhiker's Guide" fan, just think of the repukes as the Golgafrinchan Ark B.

[Liberalynn]

29. Those are good points

plus they would just stand around arguing all day about who was going to be the leader.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Happy Hour to you and Will, my dear Aristus!

Does Will have any favorite toasts?

Cheers to you both!

[Aristus]

4. Will says:

"Pegeen, lass! Oceans of love, angel mine! Let me embrace thee!

Sack and sherry and a kiss of the hand to you and yours, divine mistress of the magical Spanish Isle of California!"

Sheesh! I wish I could think up toasts like that!...

[livetohike]

5. Raising a glass of Riesling to you and Will and

Wondering if Will has a favorite in the 49ers and Rams game tonight and

[Aristus]

7. Will says:

"Sweet mistress" - (no, no, it doesn't mean the same thing today as it did in Will's time...) - "when they do throw the football, and carry it, and run with it in their hands, why then should they call it 'football'? Curious..."

[livetohike]

9. Good question

[Ptah]

6. Has Will ever gone fishing?

[Aristus]

8. All the time, when he was a kid, he tells me.

The Avon is good for fishing, and as long as you're not fishing from a bankside located on a nobleman's property, you can keep what you catch and not get pilloried or sued for poaching.

[Ptah]

20. What bait or lure did he find to be the most successful?

[Aristus]

21. "Can't remember, laddie. Not in me pate no more.

The years..."

[Denninmi]

10. I got nothin'

Just wanted to say hi.

[Aristus]

11. Who cares?

Just glad to have you here!

Will wants to buy you a drink.

No, no, just go with it; I think he's going to insist...

"DENNY, LAD! God bless and keep you, son of my heart, sun in splendour, and son of all! God save thee, a drink against the chill night air, eh?"

He's so much better with words than I am...

[Denninmi]

12. Hey, hit the spot.

Thanks, Will!

[Aristus]

13. "Ah, dearest lad! Friend to my friend Sweet Robin, or Robert.

Bobby, then. Still, my friend. You are his, he is yours. I am yours, and you are mine. So cheers and good even' time to you all!"

[crim son]

14. Is this the place to be?

I'm having that wine I wanted last night.

Wait, does this still work? Yes it does!

[Aristus]

15. It IS!

I don't think you've ever joined us for an evening with Will Shakespeare! I just know he'll like you!

[crim son]

16. I hope so. I have a question for him:

How tall is Jude Law?

[Aristus]

17. Just a shade under six feet.

I only know this because Will exclaimed: "By the rood! He's two roods in height!"

[crim son]

18. Heh. I knew you'd know.

Not a fun question perhaps, but do you have a favorite sonnet?

[Aristus]

19. Sonnet 116.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

[crim son]

22. Sigh.

A lovely choice and it says something about you. Mine, which I've posted on FB, is #73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

[Aristus]

23. Will was writing as an older man, to a younger, beautiful man.

It speaks of the fear of aging and of decay.

Scholars think Will was urging his patron (popularly believed to be Henry Wriothsley) to get married, beget a son, and perpetuate his earthly beauty, which, like everything else mortal, must decay.

"Come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth's a stuff will not endure."

[crim son]

24. Some have claimed Will

loved both men and women, as I'm sure you've read. Love is love, and he illuminated every bit of it in his writings.

[Aristus]

25. Very much so.

Sounds like you know why I love WS so much...

I'm a peace-and-love, campfire, kum-bah-yah kind of guy, and don't care who knows it...

[crim son]

27. Everybody knows it, Aristus!

That's why we luv you!

[valerief]

26. Does Willie wish he'd written Breaking Bad? nt

[Aristus]

28. No.

He went back to Stratford because he was tired of the grind.

Writing plays definitely isn't like writing poetry.

He got dragged back into the London theater scene very reluctantly, and only because The King's Men didn't have a lot of confidence in John Fletcher's writing...