In the closet!

I just finished reading The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, by James Shapiro, and was struck by a term I had forgotten existed: “closet drama.”

Stop that snickering. I swear I will turn this blogpost around and…

Okay, with that out of the way, here’s why “closet drama” struck me: the term was a label for those works — mostly plays — written by nobles (usually) with no intention to publish. There would have been multiple reasons for not wanting the work to be public; either the aristocrat didn’t want the stigma of being thought of as anything so lowly as a playwright, or the work in question might have caused issues with the authorities due to its subject matter (a concern in Elizabethan/Jacobean England).

(It is this mindset that allows some of us to believe that an earl or summat must have secretly written those plays most of us attribute to That Stratford Man.)

It occurred to me that the concept could be useful to Lichtenbergians everywhere. Think about it: If you don’t have to worry about getting a work published, or pleasing an editor, or worse, the general public, how freeing would that be? You could just write and write to your heart’s content without the fear of ABANDONMENT in all its terrible forms.

That’s what Margaret Mitchell did in her pokey little apartment in downtown Atlanta a hundred years ago. She just wrote and wrote her little romance about Pansy O’Hara, sharing with a few select friends but without sticking her neck out by submitting it to a publisher.

(Of course, one of those friends betrayed her to a publisher, and in a fit of exasperation she handed over her manuscript to Macmillan. The rest etc., etc.)

Or consider Emily Dickinson, who wrote and wrote her neurotic little heart out in Amherst but published only a handful of the hundreds of poems she left behind. You could do worse than follow her example.

Sure, wouldn’t it be nice to have a blockbuster like GWTW to pad your bank account, or leave a legacy as one of America’s greatest (if elliptical) poets? But remember: The New York Times bestseller list is not your AUDIENCE. Your task is not to write a bestseller; your job is to write, period.

So here’s to your closet drama — make your THING THAT IS NOT in secret if that’s helpful… but do make it.