More actions
The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress, as it was later known, was the title of a diary apparently kept by Charlotte Elspeth Bollard which eventually came to be housed in the Library of Kar-Charrat. It suffered worm damage in the Great 2107 AD Cock Up, with the imperfect Elgin decorruption being the best available version of the text thereafter.
The diary consisted of Charley's recollections of her travels with the Eighth Doctor aboard the TARDIS, including the time they spent with the young William Shakespeare while trying to return him home. Charley wrote that the small talk between the three of them had been "small indeed" owing to the fact they had so little in common beyond having read all the plays Shakespeare had not yet written. However, towards the end of his stay the Doctor discovered a futuristic version of Lido called Peter Pan Pop-O-Matic Frustration which they all enjoyed playing, with Charley noting the Doctor usually won from behind "implausibly late" in the game and that she and Shakespeare loved him enough to turn a blind eye to this cheating.
One adventure in particular which Charley recorded in the diary involved them landing in the aftermath of the Trojan War, with the Doctor "as usual" rejocicing in "dropping straight into the middle of things without a moment's forethought". They later encountered Troilus and his wife who Charley thought to be "a sweet couple" and improvised some stories of their adventures on the high seas to back up their claims about being traders. After this, the Doctor took Charley to one side to explain that it was paramount for her to get Shakespeare so drunk during the feast that night that he would neither be able to speak nor remember his behaviour the next morning. She later reflected in her diary that she was "normally quite good at that kind of thing" and claimed it was not her fault Shakespeare was already a functioning alcoholic by the age of eight. Half-way through the meal the Doctor was attacked by the Trojans. Charley admitted in her writing that her recollections of the ensuing action was "somewhat hazy", having been trying to match Shakespeare on the drinking. She was told she briefly lost consciousness as well as her dignity after launching herself at the Doctor's attacker and missing. What she could remember made her "blush quite enough" for her to not wish to recall the full details but she said it was "quite possible" she told someone she loved them, and was later sick as well.
Following these events, the Doctor explained his actions and why he had been so intent for Shakespeare to get drunk. Charley thought the Doctor's concern about Shakespeare getting his inspiration for the play Troilus and Cressida by meeting Troilus and Cressida ridiculous as the boy had already read his own plays in the future, though the Doctor claimed it was hard to prove his responsibility in those events but that it would have been "a bit more serious" had he got any plot or characterisation directly through their adventures together. Shakespeare began laughing at this point, explaining that the Doctor's worries were misplaced as it was not him had invented the story of Troilus of Cressida, with he already knowing of it through Geoffrey Chaucer's writings.
Historiographic Speculator Anctloddoton cited excerpts from the Elgin decorruption of The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress in his essay A Suggestive Correlation of The Cressida Manuscripts with other Anomalous Texts of the Pre-Animarian Era as proposed for Collective Consideration. (PROSE: Apocrypha Bipedium [+]Loading...["Apocrypha Bipedium (short story)"])
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Although not directly stated within the story, it is clearly the Great 2107 AD Cock Up which is responsible for the numerous mispellings in Charley's sections of Apocrypha Bipedium [+]Loading...["Apocrypha Bipedium (short story)"]. These included Wilf and Wilt in place of Will, Dairy instead of Diary, Bollard instead of Pollard, Frinchs instead of Grinchs, Lido instead of Ludo, Trajan instead of Trojan and Bawd instead of Bard.