Today I read The Immortal Bard, a short science fiction story by Isaac Asimov that can be found in a variety of anthologies and collections, including “Earth Is Room Enough” and “The Complete Stories, Volume 1”. The story is about a physicist, Dr. Phineas Welch, who, while drunk, tells an English instructor, Scott Robertson, that he can bring back the dead. At first, he claims, he tried bringing back Archimedes, Newton, and Galileo, but while they were intrigued by the many developments in science since their time, the cultures were too different and Welch had to send them back. As a result, he tried bringing back Shakespeare, thinking that Shakespeare would have a “universal mind” and be able to live with people centuries in the future. Welch explained to Shakespeare that Shakespeare’s plays were held highly in regard even in modern times and that there were college courses on Shakespeare. Shakespeare had been fascinated at the idea, so Welch enrolled Shakespeare in one of Robertson’s classes on Shakespeare. Robertson, remembering a bald man with a brogue like Welch had described, began to wonder if it was simply a fantasy of Welch’s, when Welch explained that he’d had to send Shakespeare back to the seventeenth century. After Robertson asked why, Welch explained that Robertson had flunked Shakespeare! I really enjoyed the story’s humorous ending, since the idea of someone being flunked on their own work was extremely amusing as I read it. The story suggests that the hidden meanings everyone attributes to Shakespeare aren’t there at all, which I thought was a pretty interesting idea. I recommend it to anyone who likes Asimov or wants to read a lighthearted, funny story and would rate it 9.7/10.
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