                      THE IMMORTAL BARD
                      =================
                       by Isaac Asimov

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Phineas Welch, "I can bring back the spirits of 
the illustrious dead."
He was a little drunk, or maybe he wouldn't have said it. Of course, 
it was perfectly all right to get a little drunk at the annual 
Christmas party.

Scott Robertson, the school's young English instructor, adjusted his 
glasses and looked to right and left to see if they were overheard. 
"Really, Dr. Welch."

"I mean it. And not just the spirits. I bring back the bodies, too."

"I wouldn't have said it were possible," said Robertson primly.

"Why not? A simple matter of temporal transference."

"You mean time travel? But that's quite-uh-unusual."

"Not if you know how."

"Well, how, Dr. Welch?"

"Think I'm going to tell you?" asked the physicist gravely. He looked 
vaguely about for another drink and didn't find any. He said, "I brought 
quite a few back. Archimedes, Newton, Galileo. Poor fellows."

"Didn't they like it here? I should think they'd have been fascinated 
by our modern science," said Robertson. He was beginning to enjoy the 
coversation.

"Oh, they were. They were. Especially Archimedes. I thought he'd go 
mad with joy at first after I explained a little of it in some Greek 
I'd boned up on, but no-no-"

"What was wrong?"

"Just a different culture. They couldn't get used to our way of life. 
They got terribly lonely and frightened. I had to send them back."

"That's too bad."

"Yes. Great minds, but not flexible minds. Not universal. So I tried 
Shakespeare."

"What?" yelled Robertson. This was getting closer to home.

"Don't yell, my boy," said Welch. "It's bad manners."

"Did you say you brought back Shakespeare?"

"I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people 
well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. 
Shakespeare was the man. I've got his signature. As a memento, you know."

"On you?" asked Robertson, eyes bugging.

"Right here." Welch fumbled in one vest pocket after another. 
"Ah, here it is."

A little piece of pasteboard was passed to the instructor. On one side 
it said: "L. Klein & Sons, Wholesale Hardware." On the other side, in 
straggly script, was written, "Willm Shakesper."

A wild surmise filled Robertson. "What did he look like?"

"Not like his pictures. Bald and an ugly mustache. He spoke in a thick 
brogue. Of course, I did my best to please him with our times. I told 
him we thought highly of his plays and still put them on the boards. 
In fact, I said we thought they were the greatest pieces of literature 
in the English language, maybe in any language."

"Good. Good," said Robertson breathlessly.

"I said people had written volumes of commentaries on his plays. Naturally 
he wanted to see one and I got one for him from the library."

"And?"

"Oh, he was fascinated. Of course, he had trouble with the current idioms 
and references to events since 1600, but I helped out. Poor fellow. I don't 
think he ever expected such treatment. He kept saying, 'God ha' mercy! What 
cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring, methinks, 
a flood from a damp clout!'"

"He wouldn't say that."

"Why not? He wrote his plays as quickly as he could. He said he had to 
on account of the deadlines. He wrote Hamlet in less than six months. 
The plot was an old one. He just polished it up."

"That's all they do to a telescope mirror. Just polish it up," said 
the English instructor indignantly.

The physicist disregarded him. He made out an untouched cocktail on the
bar some feet away and sidled toward it. "I told the immortal bard that 
we even gave college courses in Shakespeare."

"I give one."

"I know. I enrolled him in your evening extension course. I never saw 
a man so eager to find out what posterity thought of him as poor Bill 
was. He worked hard at it."

"You enrolled William Shakespeare in my course?" mumbled Robertson. 
Even as an alcholic fantasy, the thought staggered him. And was it 
an alcoholic fantasy? He was beginning to recall a bald man with 
a queer way of talking....

"Not under his real name, of course," said Dr. Welch. "Never mind 
what he went under. It was a mistake, that's all. A big mistake. 
Poor fellow." He had the cocktail now and shook his head at it.

"Why was it a mistake? What happened?"

"I had to send him back to 1600," roared Welch indignantly. "How 
much humiliation do you think a man can stand?"

"What humiliation are you talking about?"

Dr. Welch tossed off the cocktail. "Why, you poor simpleton, you 
flunked him."
