What is BARDIS?

BARDIS is a blog dedicated to my two favorite forms of entertainment: Shakespeareana and science fiction. My goal is to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and science fiction in order to understand why these two genres have become entangled and what is produced from these entanglements. I do not come into this venture with any preconceived answers; instead with an open mind, I will use Shakespeare’s written texts, live and recorded performances of Shakespeare’s plays along with science fiction novels, graphic novels, movies, and television shows to explore the thematic, dramatic, artistic, and linguistic links between Shakespeare and science fiction. Because I am a PhD student in Renaissance literature, my approach will be academic but certainly not pretentious. With this blog, I am allowing myself to indulgently embrace the dork-side, to unapologetically geek-out on Shakespeare and science fiction, and to, hopefully, entice others to share in these nerdy intellectual pleasures.

The name BARDIS, as some of you may already have realized, is a combination of Bard and TARDIS, the time and space traveling device used by the Doctor in the BBC sci-fi program Doctor Who. The title was not idly chosen for wit’s sake. Instead, the TARDIS provides an apt metaphor for the amazing power contained in the seemingly small (albeit relatively large for a book) Collected Works of William Shakespeare. Upon first entering the TARDIS, all visitors are amazed by the immense size of the inside compared to the relatively small Police Box exterior. As Tom Baker explains in this clip, the TARDIS exists in two different dimensions simultaneously.



Accordingly, Shakespeare’s works live in two dimensions: the original time and space where the plays were written and the time and space the works have been read or performed since their initial creation. The TARDIS-like qualities of Shakespeare’s plays allows them to be redone and recapitulated to incorporate diverse settings of time and place. The constant reinterpretation of Shakespeare works shows their richness and universality.

Like the TARDIS, Shakespeare’s theatrical works not only exist within two dimensions but also manipulate the linearity of time. As curmudgeonly Ben Jonson regularly complained, Shakespeare did not abide by the Aristotelian unities of theatrical time and space; Shakespeare would shove decades into three short hours (All Is True, Antony and Cleopatra, and A Winter’s Tale are notable examples). Time and space are relative and manipulable because as Time himself tells us, “it is in my power to o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour to plant and o’verwhelm custom” (4.1.7-9) Time abides by its own laws, and the playwright, being in control of theatrical time, can “o’erthrow” linear time, and Shakespeare o’erthrows time—through anachronisms, flashbacks and flashforwards, and compression of time. However, Time asserts that he will be unchanged:

...Let me pass
The same I am, ere ancient'st order was
Or what is now received: I witness to
The times that brought them in; so shall I do
To the freshest things now reigning and make stale
The glistering of this present, as my tale
Now seems to it. ( Winter's Tale 4.1.9-15)

Shakespeare’s plays allow for a the staging of non-linear time while the linearity of the performance itself is uninterrupted. But despite Time’s assertion that he will never change, Shakespeare, much like the Doctor, continually manipulates time to create the ending he desires; thus, denying Time’s power over humanity and the world, as is especially apparent in the history plays. Perhaps, Shakespeare is a Time-Lord.

TARDIS, itself, is an acronym for Time and Relative Dimension is Space. BARDIS as well is an acronym that stands for Because Aliens Really Did Invent Shakespeare, a completely facetious statement that ultimately, I know, will always be funnier to me than it is to you, dear reader. However, the acronym does have its origins in a real-life scholastic quibble focusing on the question, “Who really wrote Shakespeare’s works?” The Shakespeare author debates have raged for years. Academics and Shakespeare naysayers have offered up several different options for the true author of Shakespeare’s works including Henry Neville, Francis Bacon, and Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford. Those that claim that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s works use Shakespeare’s lack of education and the possible existence of complicated codes that name the true author. In the midst of this discussion, authors have joking implied that perhaps, just perhaps, Shakespeare was an alien. This possibility is make reality in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where General Chang states, “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” Well, then, let us experience truly experience Shakespeare...



Well whether Shakespeare is from Kronos, Gallifrey, or Earth, he has a continued and profound impact the sci-fi culture; I look forward to exploring these connections.