Nevada principal finds nothing foul about being a Shakespeare

TONOPAH – Almost everywhere he goes, at least once a week, some stranger will make a joke about Scott Shakespeare.

He’ll take out his driver’s license to confirm the identity on his credit card, and some merchant will look twice at the name.

Shakespeare knows what’s coming:

“Are you, like, related to the real Shakespeare?” they’ll ask.

In fact, he is.

The 58-year-old is a distant descendant – a nephew 30 generations removed – of William Shakespeare, the poet, playwright and actor who gave us characters such as Macbeth, Falstaff and Hamlet and whose peerless precision with words remains revered worldwide.

Scott Shakespeare traces his family roots to Edmund Shakespeare, born in 1580 as the youngest of Mary and John Shakespeare’s eight children. Sixteen years younger than his famous brother, he, too, became an actor. Edmund died in 1607 from the plague but not before fathering a son.

Scott Shakespeare was born nearly four centuries later, in 1961, the eldest son of two Mormon teachers, and grew up in Cedar City, Utah. Today, he’s the principal of Tonopah schools.

But here’s the thing about sharing a bloodline with one of history’s greatest names: You don’t always follow in their footsteps, not right off, anyway.

“Early on,” Shakespeare admits, “I was kind of a party boy.”

His high school classmates knew him as “Shakey,” a kid with long blonde hair, who played three sports. He memorized The Bard’s famous sonnets in English class as did all his fellow students, but on weekends he was drinking up at the water tower – after crossing the state line into Arizona to buy stronger beer which was illegal in Utah.

Still, he got teased with lines such as “Are you gonna name your kid William?” He was even elected student body president on the slogan “Shake it with Shakespeare,” which might not have played so well at London’s Globe Theater, where The Bard staged his plays.

Scott Shakespeare’s family emigrated from England to America in the 1800s and, after converting to the LDS church, settled in Tropic, Utah, home to numerous families with that last name.

In the 1940s, his grandfather, Grover Shakespeare, hired a researcher in England to confirm that his branch did indeed belong to the Shakespeare family tree. His father, Stanley, was later active in the annual Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah.

Eventually, Scott Shakespeare married a woman named Melissa, whose maiden name is James and though she wasn’t related to the famous gunslinger, her father was named Jesse and her uncle Frank bore the name of the outlaw’s brother. She, too, had been the butt of jokes.

The couple eventually embraced Scott Shakespeare’s literary namesake, opening the Shakespeare motel, a small lodge in Ely, explaining to curious guests their legitimate connection. They eventually sold the motel in 2001 when Shakespeare landed his first job as a school administrator in Sanders, Arizona.

The Tonopah Shakespeares have a clan of their own. Melissa Shakespeare has a son by a previous marriage, and the couple went on to adopt four more boys. As Mormon foster parents, they have had 90 children living in their home during different periods of time.

Adopted son Jamikal, who is 19 and African-American, has heard a new generation of Shakespeare jokes. “People will say, ‘Oh, so you’re a Shakespeare? You must look like your mom.’ ”

Another son, Jacob, 27, who studies creative writing at Dixie State University in Utah, wants to be a poet but knows that his last name comes with big shoes to fill. “If I ever do pursue this, I might not use my real last name so there aren’t those expectations,” he said. “But truth be told, I’d really like to become the next Shakespeare.”

That’d be just fine for his father, who promotes his own brand of the family name. Friends now know him as “Shakes,” and many still ask, “Hey, ya got a good quote for us today?”

His favorite Shakespeare play is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “It’s not so dense that you can’t understand it,” he said.

And he’s also a fan of his relative’s famous insults, including “Were I like thee I’d throw away myself” and “His face is the worst thing about him.”

Years ago, he confirmed his family’s famous connection through the heritage website Ancestry.com. More recently, he showed off his family roots. “Here’s my boys, here’s me and here’s my grandpa,” he said, scrolling down a considerable length. “And that’s the Bard, right there.”

So, Scott Shakespeare will be ready next time somebody asks of his famous lineage, when they pose the modern version of a question made famous by The Bard himself:

“To be or not to be?”

John M. Glionna, a former Los Angeles Times staff writer, may be reached at john.glionna@gmail.com.