Not many people know this…

…but there are within these ancient confines a couple of rather mysterious organisations dedicated to the propagating of the Word, the Shakespearian word.
I refer of course to the dark workings of The Shakespeare Trust & The Shakespeare Institute. Let’s have a look at the ST first.
Perhaps the best way to describe the Trust’s work would be to compare it with another powerful organisation whose headquarters are situated in good old S-on-A, the rather scary and inexplicable teletubbies. Against all odds the TT’S, (a figment of someone’s fertile imagination remember), have become an institution, as real as the Royal Family, as well known and just as rich (richer probably) . The teletubbies shop on one of Stratford’s main streets has become a shrine for visiting pilgrims and the creatures themselves fixed in the imagination as though they really existed. The kid who doesn’t know who Po, La-La and the er...other one are, will not go very far in this world mark my words. The same with Bill and the Shakespeare Trust.
Also bought into being by someone with an eye for a fast buck the ST is there to keep it (the Shakespeare Industry) going by any means necessary. Running every aspect of Bill’s bits and pieces the Trust keeps a close eye on Bill’s family houses, Bill’s bric-a-brac and anything deeply personal that Bill might have left behind (supposedly) before he shuffled off this mortal coil. From indecipherable documents (Bill’s bills), the equipment with which he wrote (Bill’s quills-sorry) to a piece of dried Elizabethan bread (Bill’s meals-I have no excuse). It’s all there, refrigerated and germ-free, in, as they say…the archives.
Run by a lot of men in suits and pointy beards the ST has always intrigued and fascinated me. And that one nagging question that will not go away? How do they survive, these faceless employees? Seeing as Bill no longer receives royalties for the plays, poems, sit-coms and soaps wot he wrote, where on earth does such a top-heavy organisation like the ST get its money from? The headquarters of the ST is sumptuous, well-placed and large enough to cope with the numerous members of staff. So who pays their wages?
Unless…unless…unless of course they have a hidden factory somewhere turning out thousand upon thousands of porcelain busts (that’s busts as in plaster heads of Shakespeare not what you were thinking). Mmm…the mind boggles.