Distant Days of Summer.

I’m back to basics with the book. Reading and writing notes. I much prefer fiction were I can simply let my mind wander and invent. Writing non-fiction is long and arduous, and a constant battle with facts. Time and again I have to crush what I am thinking because it doesn’t quite fit. Does anyone out there know a book that is both a biography and a part fictional story built on facts? I need to read it because I cannot work out how to do it without jolts to the reader. A loving or domestic scene one minute and explanations about what had actually happened that birthed the love/domestic scene. I wonder if separate chapters would be a solution. A chapter of fiction then a new chapter of cold facts and interpretations. Unfortunately, the jolt would still be there would it not. It’s almost as if I have to write two books covering the same people in the same period. Book ‘A’, the fictional but factual dramatic story; then Book ‘B’, the actual known events that have coalesced and created the fictional interpretation. I’m beginning to lose myself now.

I read a book recently that said that one of William (Stratford) Shakspere’s younger brothers called Edmund Shakspere went to London and became a player, that’s an actor I assume. He died in 16o7 aged 27 and is buried in or around Southwark Cathedral. That is quite close to The Globe and The Rose theatre’s as were. He was buried under the name ‘Shakespeare’. The only one of the family that was, all of the others, including William, stuck close to the real family name of ‘Shakspere’. If that about Edmund is true and documented then he has more connection to London’s Elizabethan theatre scene than his celebrated brother, and if he had not have died so young would have been a better contender to the authorship of the Shake-Speare canon. Why have I never ever heard of him before? I wonder if it is yet another piece of planted information done in the 1700s. I will be in London soon so will make a point of visiting the Cathederal and looking for his memorial. I do know there is one in there but it was put up years later after it was realised (?) he was Williams’ brother. This means that whatever the inscription on it says, has to be regarded as dubious.