If there are historical figures that The Doctor has interacted with more than the famous playwright William Shakespeare, I've been unable to find them. No fewer than six different incarnations of The Doctor have either met or had adventures with the Bard, including at least two trips in the Tardis. That's starting to edge into full-on companion territory. Today we're going to look at the history between our favorite time traveler and one of the greatest writers of all time.
From Shakespeare's point of view, the first time he met The Doctor must have happened in childhood, sometime between 1564 and 1572. In "City of Death," the Fourth Doctor remarks to a man who is holding a gun on him that "I once knew a boy like you, never said a word, very taciturn, there's no point in talking if you've got nothing to say..." Later in the episode, The Doctor reveals that he helped Shakespeare write Hamlet both physically and creatively. Countess Scarlioni obtains a manuscript of the folio in The Doctor's own handwriting, which he says exists because Shakespeare sprained his wrist. The Doctor also chided the writer about mixed metaphors.
Now, it should be pointed out that it's perhaps unlikely the Fourth Doctor was the incarnation that did the actual writing with Shakespeare, though it's very likely he did visit Shakespeare as a child. The Doctor almost certainly didn't identify himself, though, because the young boy Shakespeare doesn't recognize him in their next meeting.
In 1572, a young Shakespeare is pulled into a 21st century where an insane British prime minister is using a mirror-powered device to experiment with time travel. In the course of her experiments, she makes contact with a Dalek fleet trapped in a time vortex. The Daleks, needing rescue, offer to help the prime minister with her experiments. They pose as fans of Shakespeare's and entice the prime minister with plans to make her the sole repository of his plays by otherwise erasing him from time. Their real plan is to upset the web of time so much that they can rewrite Earth's history as a place where the Daleks have always ruled.
The young Will meets The Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard when they become embroiled in the plot. At first The Doctor is unaware of his identity (easily explained by the Eighth Doctor's terrible memory), but eventually works out who he is. After stopping the Daleks in the audio play "The Time of The Daleks," The Doctor returns the lad to his proper timeline.
The Doctor managed to stay out of Shakespeare's life for about twenty years Shakepeare's time and two incarnations his time. The Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler encounter the playwright in 1592 in the comic story "A Groatsworth of Wit." Once again he has to save the bard from a megalomaniac filled with alien energy.
In this adventure, Shakespeare once again doesn't recognize The Doctor, with The Doctor even remarking to Rose he's "known him for ages, just not yet." "The Time of the Daleks" was released three years before "Groatsworth of Wit," but the Big Finish audio stories had not yet been canonized by the television show. It's also possible that the way time and memory were being rewritten by the Daleks in Shakespeare's encounter with Eight and Charley, the timeline where Shakespeare was abducted as a boy no longer exists. In any case, The Doctor doesn't ever specifically introduce himself to Shakespeare despite being drafted as Richard III for a performance.
Sadly, the last line of the comic story is Rose ironically remarking that forgetting The Doctor was impossible.
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