B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (85 page)

In one regard, this is all far less contradictory than it might seem. None of the stories (save for
The Chase
and
The Shakespeare Code
, in which Shakespeare twice receives inspiration to write
Hamlet
) bear different accounts of the same event. Indeed, none of the adventures even occur in the same year - the closest pairing (
The Kingmaker
and
The Shakespeare Code
) are set two years apart. Taking the general events in the five stories that directly involve Shakespeare, then, at face value is not very difficult.

Two impediments remain, however. One is that Shakespeare does not remotely look or act the same in some of his appearances. All things being equal, it’s hard to believe that Shakespeare as voiced by Michael Fenton-Stevens in
The Kingmaker
, as played by Dean Lennox Kelly in
The Shakespeare Code
, and as played by Hugh Walters in
The Chase
are all the same person. (Note that this problem isn’t limited to the different
Doctor Who
media, but occurs even in Shakespeare’s two appearances on television.) Shakespeare’s personality varies wildly between stories, even allowing that we’re witnessing different points of his life.

The other problem is that Shakespeare in his later appearances never acknowledges having met a stranger named “the Doctor” before. He is admittedly never seen to meet the same incarnation twice, but it’s implausible to think that he never makes a connection between the various men who keep appearing during turbulent and strange events, all of them named “Doctor”.
The Kingmaker
actually helps a little in this regard - the Doctor and Shakespeare are on very chummy terms, but Shakespeare dies on Bosworth Field, eliminating the need for Richard III to acknowledge having met the Doctor in
The Time of the Daleks
and “A Groatsworth of Wit”. Obviously, this doesn’t explain why Richard himself doesn’t acknowledge the Doctor in the next story in the line -
The Shakespeare Code
- or thereafter.

The Kingmaker
is a particular sticking point, as it has Richard III living out Shakespeare’s life from 1597 onward. This would mean that the “Shakespeare” that the tenth Doctor and Martha meet in
The Shakespeare Code
is actually a disguised Richard III installed by the fifth Doctor… but who is somehow driven to great depression by the death of the original Shakespeare’s son, who has acquired two perfectly functional arms and who doesn’t limp. It might be best to assume events in
The Kingmaker
happened, then the Time War or some other intervention (allowing for Shakespeare’s importance to history) reversed them. This would carry the double benefit of not having to rationalise the conflicting fates of Richard III’s nephews/nieces in
The Kingmaker
and
Sometime Never
.

[
531
]
City of Death.
This unseen encounter would have to be before 1590, when we know Shakespeare was writing, and must have involved one of the Doctor’s first four incarnations.

[
532
]
TW: Trace Memory
. Shakespeare and Fletcher are credited as writing the lost play
Cardenio
in a 1653 Stationers’ Register that otherwise makes false use of Shakespeare’s name. In the
Doctor Who
universe, it appears he and Fletcher did author the work.

[
533
] Dating “A Groatsworth of Wit” (
DWM
#363-364) - Greene’s death on 3rd September, 1592, is historical record. Greene is famous for dismissing Shakespeare both for plagiarism and because he was mainly - at that time - an actor, not a writer. When Rose asks if the Doctor knows Shakespeare, he says he’s “known him for ages. Just not yet”. This would suggest that the meeting mentioned in
Planet of Evil
didn’t involve too much familiarity.

[
534
] Dating
The Kingmaker
(BF #81) - The date is given. It’s believed that
Richard III
was written in 1592-93, and it was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 20th October, 1597 by bookseller Andrew Wise. The Doctor and Shakespeare go drinking at The White Rabbit - a London establishment mentioned in Big Finish projects such as
The Reaping
.

[
535
]
The Shakespeare Code
. Hamnet Shakespeare was buried on 11th August, 1596.

[
536
] Dating
The Shakespeare Code
(X3.2) - The date is given in a caption at the start, and confirmed by the Doctor. In real life, it’s thought that
Love’s Labour’s Lost
was performed in 1597;
Love’s Labour’s Won
is on a list of Shakespeare’s plays dating from 1598. Historically, the Globe Theatre opened in the autumn.

The tenth Doctor claims that he “hasn’t met” Queen Elizabeth I yet, but
Birthright
establishes that she’s been familiar with the seventh Doctor since at least 1588. It’s possible that the tenth Doctor means that he hasn’t yet met Elizabeth in his current incarnation (and is therefore surprised because she recognises him on sight), and that Elizabeth doesn’t realise that the different Doctors are the same being.

[
537
] The implication is that (among other things) the Doctor inspires Shakespeare to use the name Sycorax - not just the aliens from
The Christmas Invasion
, but also the name of Caliban’s mother in Shakespeare’s final play,
The Tempest
. (A moon of Uranus is named after the same character.)

[
538
]
The Chase.
Literary scholars disagree when
Hamlet
was written, but we know it was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1602. It was almost certainly written and performed around 1600.

[
539
]
Endgame
(EDA)

[
540
]
The Ultimate Treasure. The Merry Wives of Windsor
was written around 1597, but could have been a little later, so this is just possibly the same visit as the one where the Doctor helped with
Hamlet
.

[
541
]
City of Death.
Historically, Shakespeare was known as an actor by 1592, and tradition has it that he continued to act even when he was better known as a writer. This reference seems to contradict the one in
Planet of Evil
, and clearly represents a different, subsequent visit (or visits). We can therefore infer that it’s the fourth Doctor who helped with
Hamlet
, after
Planet of Evil
. The encounter is mentioned again in
Asylum
. One problem is that it’s also mentioned by the first Doctor in
Byzantium!
- if that needs explaining away, it’s possible the first Doctor has seen the manuscript, recognised his handwriting (we know from
The Trial of a Time Lord
that the Valeyard and sixth Doctor have the same handwriting, so presumably all the Doctors do) and so inferred a future meeting.

[
542
]
City of Death

[
543
]
The Gallifrey Chronicles
. Presumably on the same visit he helped write it, although the amnesiac eighth Doctor should have no memory of that.

[
544
]
The Time Meddler,
although there’s no evidence of any contact between the Monk and Shakespeare.

[
545
]
The Cabinet of Light. King Lear
appeared in the Stationers’ Register for November 1607, so this is another meeting.
Island of Death
implies it has to involve one of the Doctor’s first three incarnations.

[
546
]
Island of Death

[
547
] “Changes”. This play, unlike the ones Braxiatel acquires in
The Empire of Glass
, is completely unknown to Shakespearean scholarship.

[
548
]
The Suns of Caresh

[
549
]
Pier Pressure

[
550
]
Dead London

[
551
]
Grand Theft Cosmos

[
552
]
The Banquo Legacy
. In the real world, the
Necronomicon
was a fictional book of magic invented by H.P. Lovecraft.

[
553
]
Spare Parts

[
554
]
The Mind of Evil.
Raleigh lived 1552-1618, and was imprisoned 1603-1616.

[
555
] “Centuries” before
The Way Through the Woods
.

[
556
] Dating “The Devil of the Deep” (
DWM
#61) - It’s “the early seventeenth century” when Diego is rescued according to a caption. The Sea Devil revived “ten years” before rescuing Diego, who is rescued “twenty years” after being marooned.

[
557
] Dating “The Road to Hell” (
DWM
#278-282) - The Doctor asserts “I’m fairly sure I’ve set us down in the tenth century”, but quickly corrects this to “the early seventeenth century”.

[
558
] “The Glorious Dead”

[
559
]
Birthright.
It’s entirely possible that after this point, Jared Khan passes off the identity of “John Dee” to a successor who later starves to death while containing the Enochians (“Don’t Step on the Grass”).

[
560
] “Don’t Step on the Grass”. The head Enochian says its spaceship arrived on Earth “over five hundred years” prior to 2009 (so, concurrent with Dee’s lifetime), and the date is given as “sixteenth century Greenwich” in “Final Sacrifice”. Seemingly without any evidence, the Doctor also claims that the spaceship has been on Earth for “thousands of years”. Enochian is an occult/angelic language found in Dee’s journals in real life.

[
561
] “Final Sacrifice”

[
562
]
The Dying Days

[
563
] Dating
The Plotters
(MA #28) - The year is given (p23).

[
564
]
Endgame
(EDA)

[
565
] Before
Revenge of the Cybermen
. The signing of the Convention is the central event of
The Empire of Glass.

[
566
] “Don’t Step on the Grass”. In real life, it’s unknown if Dee died in 1608 or 1609, as both the parish registers and his gravestone are missing.

[
567
] Dating
The Empire of Glass
(MA #16) - The Doctor states that it “must be the year of our lord, 1609” (p30).

[
568
]
Managra.
Bathory lived 1560-1614; her trial commenced on 7th January, 1611, with her in absentia.

[
569
]
The Empire of Glass

[
570
] Three hundred years before
Year of the Pig.