"Doctor?" Clara asked curiously. "Are there really any such thing as ghosts?"
"Of course there are….you just met two!"
"We just met a time traveler, and a whatever the other one was."
"Romeo's not a what, he's a he. At least, I think he is."
"Will you stop calling him Romeo? That mental image is ruining my favorite play for me!"
"Favorite play, eh? How many times have you seen it?"
"Oh, I've lost count. I've seen some really grand versions."
"Of course...London...The Royal Shakespeare Company."
"Mmmm, but really, some of my favorites have been Shakespeare in the park, or at the renaissance faire. There's just something about seeing those plays on a simple wooden stage, with natural light."
"Just about as close as you can come to seeing them in the Globe," he said approvingly.
"Did you ever see a play at the Globe?" Clara asked curiously. "I mean the original one?"
"Yes, I have. Even met the bard himself. Also saw command performances for Elizabeth the Tenth, Charles the Second, and of course, the Pan-Dimensional Shakespeare Festival."
"What's that?" Clara asked excitedly. "Is that somewhere we could go?"
"No, I'm afraid not. There was only ever the one festival, and it's been timelocked."
"What's that mean?"
"It means, Clara, that once my people were finished cleaning up the mess, the fixed it so that no one could ever go blundering in there again."
"Well, what happened?"
"Oh, all right," the Doctor sighed, taking a seat beside her. "It was right about the time that humans began to get a grasp on time travel…about the 45th century or so. An entrepreneur with rather more money than brains decided to put on a Shakespeare festival, with the ultimate dream cast for each play."
"That doesn't sound so bad."
"He didn't just want the best contemporary Shakespearean actors, he wanted the finest actors to have portrayed every role, ever."
"Oh, my stars…"
"Yes, I see you're beginning to grasp the situation."
"They must have been terrified," Clara said, imagining how time travel would seem to people who still believed in witchcraft.
"You're thinking of people like Ned Allyn and Nell Gwyn, and you're right. But they weren't all from the past, and they weren't all from Earth…at least one was an android. So it isn't too difficult to see why my people had to intervene."
"You actually got to see Ned Allyn perform?" Clara asked, fascinated.
"I did, indeed."
"It must have been wonderful," Clara said wistfully.
"Simply amazing," the Doctor agreed. "The thing about Shakespeare is how universal it is. Once most of the historical actors got over their initial upset and realized that they were just in another theatre to perform another play, they were fine…well, except for the ones who sort of dropped dead from shock on the spot," he added in a hurried mumble. "It's a pity no one remembers it."
"Why's that?"
"Well, it was necessary, you must see that. We couldn't just return antique humans to antique Earth with tales of time and space travel…at best they'd have been treated as deranged, at worst, depending upon their century -"
"They could have been burned as witches," Clara gasped in horror.
"Part of the reason why we most certainly did not want anyone else coming up with a similar idea. Despite the Time Lords policy of nonintervention, in this case a rather large exception was made, and all knowledge of time travel was removed from the minds of those who'd made it possible."
"That's horrible!" Clara exclaimed. "I mean, I can't imagine that all of them were in on the bad bits."
"No, they weren't, and yes, it was a pity to take away their hard earned knowledge, but your species just wasn't mature enough to handle it yet. Another few centuries passed, and eventually the theories and technology resurfaced, and you humans began mucking about in time."
"You actually saw Ned Allyn performing Shakespeare hundreds and hundreds of years in the future…and no one remembers it," Clara said glumly.
"I saw Ned Allyn performing Shakespeare with Dame Judi Dench, and no one remembers it," he clarified.
"You just made it worse, you know."
"Well, I could take you to see them performing Shakespeare….just not together," the Doctor offered, draping an arm around her shoulders.
"Doctor," Clara said suddenly, "you never answered my original question. Are there really ghosts, or is there some sort of proper scientific explanation for everything?"
"There really is a proper scientific explanation for most things," the Doctor replied, "but as for ghosts…well, let's just say, there are more things in heaven and Earth, Clara, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or mine, for that matter."
"So, in other words, you don't know."