From time to time I amuse myself by wondering what people from the past would think of the way we live now, if they suddenly time-travelled forward from their own era. This pondering began at a time when I was doing a lot of family history – for example, I wondered how my great-great grandfather (who was born in 1816, sailed back and forth several times to Australia and New Zealand between the 1850s and the 1880s, and presented himself as a gentleman inventor and businessman) would feel about finding himself suddenly sitting beside me in the passenger seat of an MX-5 as I zoomed around the countryside? Or, how would the four-times-great grandfather who fought at Waterloo, and spent several weeks afterwards in a hell-hole military hospital in Brussels, react to finding himself standing with me on the Waterloo memorial mound, trying to make the landscape in front of us fit the story of the battle, or sitting with me over a beer in one of the cafés around the Grand-Place in Brussels, watching the modern world go by?
These days I don’t have time for family history research, and my relationship with my dead forebears is less intimate than it was a decade ago, but the same kind of thought still occurs to me from time to time. In this case: what would William Shakespeare think if he suddenly materialised in the Bancroft Gardens in Stratford, and saw himself depicted in cartoon form on the side of a barge, advertising ice cream? Would he even recognise that the manic pink face was supposed to be his? If he did, as a former actor, would he simply shrug and think, well, it’s just business, and we all have to make a living? Or – more likely, I think – would he be offended that his image was being made use of like this, in the town where he and his family held a position of respect? Of course, worse things have happened to his legacy – I can only imagine how livid he’d be about his mansion, New Place, the ultimate symbol of his success, having been razed to the ground out of spite by a later owner (though he’d probably approve of the fact that the guy was then essentially drummed out of town) – but still, it’s all a bit infra dig.
R: L2, C1, D20.
