and where they had learned that joke was from christopher marlo. because marlo's jewish anti-hero who poisons people, a doctor who poisons people, he's always making jokes of this kind. i love you with a burning zeal, enough to burn your house down, he says. as an aside. soar someone says how much is it going to cost you? oh, just your life, he says. planning to kill someone. that kind of joker. so i love you as much as i love jesus christ is a marlo joke and i think shakespeare was in the crowd watching this execution. i think he heard that laughter, and i think he had two different kinds of responses to the laughter that abraded together in a play that he wrote that was in effect a response to the jew of malta and it was the merchant of venice. the two responses are on the one hand, this is man who makes his profession making people laugh. he's interested in crowd laughter and excited by the mass response. there's lots of laughter in the merchant of venice. people are always talking about laughing. when will we laugh again, how can i make you laug

and one the ways that he both survived and became so good was that unlike, say, christopher marlo or van johnson who couldn't keep the author out of it, couldn't keep the edorial out of their play, shakespeare hid the editorial in dialogue. and the truth lies like something out of the da vinci code. somewhere in betwn two characters. and and the play happen there is mysteriously but with clarity anwith great power and his ability to dramatize the split-- whher it's the split between being a country boy in stratford or... and the court in london, whether it's the split between catholic or protestant, whether it's the split, as i say, between the age of faith and the age of rationalism and mechanicalism, whether it's the split between the anglo-saxon and the latin of language power. he set them up, gets them talking to each other and he never judges either side. if there's a judge-- because if he did people would know what his editorial was and they could silence him. the editorial if it there's is so wrapped up in the nature of his writing that it becomes good art. and that it's indiv