Shakespeare cannot write his best lines because he is at an airport in Chicago and the noise distracts him so. "How does one concentrate in such a state?" he wonders to himself, but he doesn't mean Illinois. Many people will later argue that he is criticizing the state of Illinois, but he was clearly using "state" to describe the state of chaos one finds at a modern airport. Shakespeare gives up on the writing and, packing his things into his bag, sets out in search of a bar.
Forty-five minutes later, sitting in a booth in a noisy, smokey airport bar, Shakespeare eyes with disdain the two remaining chicken tenders on the plate in front of him. They are cold and bland, and he hardly enjoyed them when they were warm and bland. The waitress never brought his dipping sauce, so he tried to eat them dry. His pens and paper are back out of his bag now and scattered on the table before him, beside his beer glass, too long empty. He finds no more inspiration in this strangling bar than he had back at the gate. He tries to write, but it is early evening and he is blinded by an opening in the curtains high above. It is the west. It is the sun. He thinks to himself that morning in the east is better than evening in the west. He jots a note.
On the plane Shakespeare sits beside an Italian merchant of some sort. To Shakespeare the man seems a storyteller, a liar. He likes to talk big. "Desdemona, my last lover," the man says morosely, slurring a little from gin, "scarred me so deeply I may never recover." "I'm sorry to hear that," Shakespeare says, though he doubts the man was really wounded at all.
Hello, friends. I hope this was as you like it. How are you?
Love.
