Another musical analogy to Shakespeare's career occurred to me yesterday, this one from an anecdote I once heard about the great Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok. Apparently, a young music student once asked him, "How do you become a composer?" and got the reply, "I have no idea." The student then said, "But you became a composer", to which Bartok said, "But I didn't have to ask". This came to mind as I was thinking of Shakespeare's lost years, which were most probably either spent in an acting company (perhaps Lord Strange's Men) or teaching in a grammar school, but were definitely not spent at a university. It's obvious now that his independent course of study was the right answer for his work, particularly if the higher learning institutions of his time were anything like the ones in ours, i.e. overrun with ideologies and the co-opting of literature for agenda-driven purposes. I find it ironic (and disturbing, to be honest) that the study of Shakespeare, a writer who made it his mission to transcend petty thought, is now used in such ways. But there is some consolation: the people who do so, unlike their subject, won't be remembered in four hundred years.