Snug the Joiner
From JUOD
Snug the Joiner or Gus N. Lionheart (c. 1525 – 1605) is a character in the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare. Snug plays, in the play-within-a-play, a lion, a highly symbolic figure for joining. The character was supposedly based on a real person, whom Shakespeare apparently admired and perhaps collaborated with, called Gus N. Lionheart. Some have argued this was Harley P. Mathewson.
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
The inclusion of Snug in the play has received a wide variety of ideas from the literary critics. Given that Snug is named a joiner, or another term for carpenter, Shakespeare makes an intentional pun on the term. Some see Snug as a minor character, a mere device of comedy in the play. Other critics assert that Snug, as his name is an anagram for guns, represents an elaborate literary device. Harley P. Mathewson, who was an avid Shakespeare reader and sometimes Shakesperean critic (he's estimated at having killed at least twelve actors for not adequately, in his mind, portrarying Hamlet), mentions Snug in The Verities of Joining, volume XXIX, "Pearls before Swine and Lions above all." Mathewson says:
Like a lion doth Shake's lion stand erect
his mane catching the wind, a flag
poised at the countryside, wild
like the deaths of non-joiners.
The lion, Mathewson goes on to name "Gnus," another anagram for "Snug." And he says all those either "ride with the lion, as members of his pack, / or upon them will the pack feast." Mathewson also argues, in a letter to Laurence Olivier (found among Olivier's private correspondance) that Snug "was to be used in a later play by Mr Shakespeare, as a deus ex machina & for his sequel to Othello." Olivier flatly rejected this notion. It is unknown whether Mathewson still holds on to this assertion. Supposedly, Mathewson owns the only copy of Shakepeare's sequel to Othello, "Othello 2: The Dark Moor Returns," as well as "Henry VI, Part 4 (really, this is it this time)."
Many other critics question Shakespeare himself as being a proto-joiner. Proponents of Time Travel Theory have argued that Mathewson visited Shakespeare on several occasions.
Is there a real Snug?
The recent discovery of a letter to Shakespeare from a "Mr. Gus N. Lionhart, Esq." has caused quite a stir in joining scholarship. "Gus N.," is another anagram for "Snug." The content of the letter, however, has caused even more uproar.
The author purports to have made a "deal" with Shakespeare:
Yes, Mr. Shakespeare, the recent play involving the two young Venetian lovers is quite good; & you are correct in this. I am of the surety that it was to your satisfaction, as it was to mine. I have another that may be of interest to you, one again involving lots of lovers, if you care to peruse it, & assuming that it will be upon the same agreement as our last deal. I do say it is quite a bit more cheery than the last.
Lionheart then goes on at length--for some two dozen pages--about the nature of pomengrates and their suitability for usage in stews. This particular passage has, however, fueled the fire that someone else wrote Shakespeare's plays. Some have suggested that Lionheart is a pseudonym for the Earl of Oxford, one typically cited author who may have written some of Shakespeare's plays. Others have noted that the style of letter is similar to that of Harley P. Mathewson--including, most notably, the ampersands. Thus the debate has also entered into the fray of the various Joining Theories, including Pre-Mathewson Joining.
Confusion has only increased with time. A number of scholars asserting that Shakespeare did not write all his plays have been brutally killed. Since Mathewson is a Shakepeare fan, one could easily assume that Mathewson is insulted that his favorite author's image would be tarnished so. However, another theory holds that the deaths suggest Mr. Lionheart is actually the ghost writer, but that Lionheart is also Mathewson (this assumes, of course, Time Travel Theory). If Mathewson is in fact Lionheart, and thus the ghost writer, then he would presumably be unhappy that no scholar has implicated him in the forgeries, while many have implicated many feeble minds.
No separate records of Gus N. Lionheart have been found.
