1616. William’s sister Joan

This is story number 1616, and it is a significant number because it is the same number as the year William Shakespeare died. To honour this, an appropriate story is called for.

William Shakespeare had a reasonable number of brothers and sisters. His sisters included Joan, Anne, and Margaret. His brothers were Edmund, Gilbert, and Richard.

Professor Stanislaw Bartosz Grześkiewicz-Jones was an expert on Christopher Marlowe. He was absolutely convinced that Marlowe’s early death had been staged and he went on to write all the plays ascribed to William Shakespeare. So the professor was extremely distraught when he discovered a hitherto unknown handwritten manuscript deep in the dingy, dark, dank corridors of some obscure library.

He was distraught because it was a letter to William from his sister, Joan, that in summary said, Here is the manuscript of my latest play about the two ugly sisters Regan and Goneril and their silly father King Lear. As with my other plays, do with it what you will, Will.

Professor Stanislaw Bartosz Grześkiewicz-Jones had a book with his publisher due out in a month. It proved once and for all that Christopher Marlowe was the true author of Shakespeare’s works.

In the professor’s day one could smoke in a library. He took Joan Shakespeare’s handwritten letter and set fire to it with his pipe.