We join Shakespeare’s King Lear in the middle of texting his best friend the Earl of Kent, the back and forth going forthwith like this…
KING LEAR
No.
KENT
Yes.
KING LEAR
No, I say.
KENT
I say, yea.
KING LEAR
No, no, they would not.
KENT
Yes, they have.
KING LEAR
By Jupiter, I swear, no.
KENT
By Juno, I swear, ay.
KING LEAR
They durst not do ‘t;
Now check the play, Act 2 Scene 4. This is actually how they talk to each other. In what, the 16th century?
http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/html/Lr.html
So what does that say about Shakespeare? What does it say about social media?
Post-texting, what do you think will be the next big thing to come along? (Go Mindlink!)
Well, my friends, the world we’ve built for our children is too strange they may not even want to know when it gets here. Who knows, perhaps we’ll be speaking Elizabethan face to face.
Meanwhile, this bantering between the Earl and the King kinda make me think of Warren Zevon’s, Werewolves of London: “He’s the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent!”
http://genius.com/Warren-zevon-werewolves-of-london-lyrics
Folk Journalistical Historical Note: Mr. Zevon came to the San Francisco radio station where I worked in the late 1970s and left us a promotional version of the song: “Ah-ooo werewolves of KSAN!”