A Message to the Future

I've always been fascinated by the argument that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare; that someone else wrote the plays he's credited with.  It seems incomprehensible that we're not 100% sure who wrote some of the most influential works in the English language.  But I suppose it makes sense. Four hundred years is an awful long time. 

Though even in a time, when record-keeping wasn't paramount, it seems a bit sketchy that the greatest playwright who has ever lived, could stay so far off of the radar.  There is a total of seven years where there is absolutely NO mention of the man.  That is to say, we have no idea if he was living in London, Paris, or the moon for that matter, or if he was writing, acting or even working.  Is a disappearing act such as that even possible in today's world?

I think not. Some people may gripe about twitter, and facebook or blogs like this one ruining society by cutting into human contact, but the internet has a better chance of surviving the test of time than parchment did, don't you think?  And based on all of this information being sent into the Ethernet, what will scholars 400 years from now think about us?  Will daily status updates in 140 characters or less, provide an overall setting for our time?  Will blogs unlock the secrets of the holy grail?  Or will any of this information dump even matter in the long run? 

I recently read about Philip Henslowe, a theatre proprietor living in London during Shakespeare's lost years.  His diary still survives today and is fairly substantial because his records are so meticulous.  But even with this meticulous record keeping, his diary is full of things such as a "possible recipe for curing deafness, notes on casting spells and how to pasture a horse." (Bill Bryson)  I can only imagine the scholar who first opened this diary thinking he had the key to the age but found love potions instead.  How upsetting!

I'm sure that most of us fall into the Henslowe camp.  And because of that, I can start to see why it's so difficult to solve these little conundrums such as who wrote Shakespeare. But we're all living in the now just as the Elizabethans were living then.  If we only knew we were going to be awesome some day, I'm sure we'd all start to take better records so the future could learn how very awesome we were.   Hindsight is 20/20 afterall...