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Alison, No, very honestly, I don't think I'm missing a point or two-- at least not the points you seem to be suggesting I am missing. briefly and firstly: Though he admired and loved him greatly, and wrote about him, Shakespeare was not Pessoa's True Master. Alberto Caeiro was-- as he was for Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis. Secndly: It matters a great deal to Pessoa, the mystery does, and this ambiguity was very much at the center of Pessoa's fascination with him, whoever, as you say, he was. For Pessoa, the works themselves were inseparable from this mystery, and he wrote of this. Pessoa thought Shakespeare was quite sick, actually, like himself, as he believed himself to be, and this excited him greatly. Thirdly: If it doesn't matter who the "Wright" is that is earning his or her "crust," then how to explain the endless insistence of the Toast of the Name from those who say it doesn't matter? There is a burning smell, and it's hidden by room deodorizer... Kent Gracious Kent. I am quite off-colour, psychically speaking, at the moment, and so showing my less agile selves: nevertheless, despite the appealing passion of your plea for the real, there's part of me thinking - aren't you missing a point or two? Shakespeare - Pessoa's self acknowledged Master - called himself Shakespeare, whoever he was in reality. His identity as author pales into insignificance beside the works themselves, which offer their own counter arguments to everything - but besides that, if you accept that Shakespare was Shakespeare, he was a professional writer earning a crust. A wright, as it were, rather than a writer, and so steeped in these modes of production and presentation which you so bewail as problems in themselves. I don't think it matters much. The author identity question, that is. It seems so secondary to me. The key to the Real - well, we're all looking - Best Alison _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com