A little over ten years ago, I posted on the wondrous works of the illustrious illustrator Wallace Trip, emphasizing the way he worked Shakespeare in to his collections of nursery rhymes, quotations, and poems (for which, q.v.).
More recently, I heard from Wallace Tripp's daughter Loren, who shook my foundations by telling me that the lamentably now departed Wallace Tripp wrote and illustrated a farcical biography of Shakespeare when he (Tripp) was in art school. The book remains unpublished, but it's available at the website Loren maintains.
I immediately dropped everything and devoured the book. I found it to be clever and hysterical in equal measure. It captures the tone of the abbreviated historical biographies of the era and mocks them in a dry, wry, tongue-in-cheek manner that is most pleasing.
For example, Tripp provides his own version of Shakespeare's coat of arms. Shakespeare's reads Non Sanz Droict (Latin for "not without right," asserting—though by way of litotes rather than directly—that Shakespeare had the right to be called a gentleman). Tripp's version says Sanz Non Droict (Pseudo-Latin for "Without No Right," implying that Tripp has no right to write a biography of Shakespeare).
Tripp also offers such subtleties as these:
. . . when he was eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, several years his senior, who five months later gave birth to a premature ten-pound girl.
[Queen Elizabeth I] was called "The Virgin Queen" probably because humor was so popular in those times.
[In Julius Caesar,] Caesar has too many men about him who are thin.
and
Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl at twenty-nine, which ended his literary career.
If you needed any more convincing, note that the book comes with a typically verbose and non-committal introduction by Sir Geoffrey Twinge, Earl of Shatwell.
With all that to recommend it, I wanted to have the world take note of it. I asked Loren Tripp if I could have permission to make a recording of the book and an accompanying video with illustrations from the book and elsewhere. She graciously consented, I accordingly recorded and compiled, and, with as much pomp and circumstance (or even just a little bit of pomp if we're fresh out of circumstance) that we can muster, I bring you a reading of Wm. Shakespeare, Gent. (by W. Tripp, Gent.). Enjoy (as if there were another option)!
Links: The Book at Pawprints Cards. Wallace Tripp cards and apparel.
Blog-native version of the video (in case the YouTube embedded above stops working for some reason):
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