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August 13, 2007
Santa Cruz, California
Received by FAB
I am here, William Shakespeare.
My childhood was privileged because my parents had status in the
Stratford community where I grew up.
I thoroughly enjoyed and absorbed my childhood classroom training.
We were taught many things that were invaluable for my future career
in theater. I absorbed it eagerly, and I always retained a deep
gratitude for the way I was nurtured for my craft in that way.
When I was 13 years old, my preeminent father quit his responsibilities
in the borough council because of the religious question of the
time. My mother had connections to Catholicism, and he was secretly
sympathetic to the Catholic way of life. But there was a crackdown
on religious dissent (the dominant religion being the Church of
England), so he felt it would be prudent to withdraw. Here, Mr.
Ackroyd has guessed correctly.
This had a very profound effect on me. Again, Mr. Ackroyd's detective
work is true - I did resolve never to place myself in a similar
position of failure.
Let me address the story of my poaching deer as a teenager. It is
simply not true. There is no true basis for it.
My sister Anne died in 1579, when I was 15. This was my very first
close experience with death. It altered my whole life and my whole
way of thinking. When I was writing the famous "tomorrow, and
tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth, I was thinking
of my sister Anne, how she was cut off so early, at the age of eight.
This experience opened my eyes to life. It was my coming of age.
It burned into my soul, and I never forgot it.
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