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Spiro
Police Constable
Username: Auspirograph
Post Number: 7
Registered: 9-2005
| | Posted on Friday, October 07, 2005 - 12:57 pm: | 
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Hi all,
News just in on further research into the true identity of William Shakespeare has created yet again a right royal tempest.
What are your thoughts on this continuing controversy on the mystery of the Bard's identity?
Francis Bacon has always intrigued me as a contender. His movements throughout the Royal Court and interests struck me as mirrored in the works of wordsmith William Shakespeare.
Regards
Spiro
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/06102005/325/real-shakespeare-claim-whips-tempest-anew.html
"Real" Shakespeare claim whips up tempest anew
Reuters Thursday October 6, 01:39 PM
LONDON (Reuters) - Something is rotten in the state of Shakespeare scholarship.
Two academics say they have discovered the "real" William Shakespeare, the never-before-identified Henry Neville, whipping up a tempest of debate among the Bard's followers who have had to defend him against a host of pretenders.
Academics Brenda James and Professor William Rubinstein have recorded their findings in a new book in which they make the case for Neville, a Tudor politician, diplomat and landowner whose life span matched that of Shakespeare almost exactly.
The authenticity of Shakespeare, author of dozens of sonnets and plays still performed today, has been argued over since the 19th century, with Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and even Queen Elizabeth I among proposed alternatives.
James, a Briton, says she stumbled upon the new contender Neville while decoding the Dedication to Shakespeare's Sonnets, which led her to identify Neville as the author of the plays.
She spent the next seven years gathering evidence to prove her point. When she asked Rubinstein, of the University of Wales, to check her facts, he was sufficiently convinced to agree to advise on and co-author the book.
"I was an agnostic when I started," American-born Rubinstein told Reuters. "I am certainly not now. A bolt from the blue, that's the way I describe it."
James said a notebook written by Neville while locked in the Tower of London around 1602 contained detailed notes which ended up in "Henry VIII" first performed several years later.
His experience in the tower, where he faced execution for his part in a plot to overthrow the queen, would also explain the shift in 1601 from histories and comedies to the great "Shakespearian" tragedies.
He was learnt, travelled around Europe and was a close friend of the Earl of Southampton to whom the Shakespeare sonnets are believed to be dedicated.
"I cannot see any point on which this theory falls down at the moment," James said.
OTHERS NOT SO SURE
Not all Shakespeare experts are so sure.
"Given the amount of documentation showing William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays one can only suppose that the conspiracy theorists are in it for the money they can make out of peddling their bizarre wares," said Roger Pringle, director of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
Ann Thompson, professor of English at King's College London and an editor on the Arden Shakespeare series, has not read the new book "The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare", but has her doubts.
One of the chief reasons given by James and Rubinstein for doubting Shakespeare's authorship is his lack of formal education and familiarity with the ways of the court.
"It is snobbery, basically," Thompson told Reuters. "People think you would have to have a university education at least to write as he does."
She also argued that someone of Neville's knowledge of Europe would not make the same basic geographical errors that appear in the Shakespeare canon.
The fact that Mark Rylance, artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe theatre, has written the forward to the new book published by Longman has added weight to its authenticity.
Yet for many lovers of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, the whole authorship debate is much ado about nothing.
"I'm of the view that it's not a question that is even worth asking. The plays are Shakespeare; it is they which are fascinating," said Michael Clamp, an editor on the Cambridge School Shakespeare series. |
Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 956
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, October 08, 2005 - 11:36 am: |
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Read the new biography of the bard by Peter Ackroyd, just out in hardback - or Michael Wood's book now out in paperback.
Ackroyd's book is brilliant - much more than a biography (as always with him) but both he and Wood find so much circumstantially that links Shakespeare to the detail of his plays and poems, that I don't think that there is any question of his authorship.
Ackroyd traces the Catholic leanings of Will's schoolmasters; a possible stay with Catholic gentry in Lancashire and references in wills; vivid references to Stratford neighbours; and show how the dates and subjects of the plays relate to Skahespeare's life and concerns. Wood backs much of this up with some different emphases.
Bacon - too gay and too clever to have written the extant plays; and too conceited not to have made sure posterity knew his authorship clearly. as for this Neville chappie - maybe he knew will and lent him his notes.
Besides - many of the plays show signs of co-authorship; Henry VIII is one as I recall.
Phil |
R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 727
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 12:53 pm: |
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""Given the amount of documentation showing William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays.."
I'm not saying that Shakespeare didn't write the plays, but this is a rather deceptive and coy little number by Mr. Pringle. The extant documentation of Shakespeare having written the plays is fairly minute, resting mainly on Ben Jonson's dedication in the First Folio, and a couple of obscure references here & there among contemporary London playwrights. The whole SHakespeare history and the biography of him worked up over the years on scant evidence is actually a pretty fascinating study in history and how it is written. The main plank of the anti-Stratfordians, as I understand it, is that all the credible extant documentation of Shakespeare shows him as a rather non-descript country gentleman with illiterate daughters and no library. This is by no means proof that he didn't write the plays, it only makes it annoying to them that this is somewhat suggestive that the Bard might have been a something of a Philistine, which they find incompatible with the man who wrote the plays. RP |
Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 967
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 3:12 pm: |
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Dylan thomas drank a lot!! But he wrote some great poetry. Unlikely people write masterpieces.
I have not read deeply in the historiography of the bard, RP, but from what I have read, in its context I personally find the references and the circumstantial background pretty convincing. It makes sense.... to me.
But perhaps the enigma is also attractive.
Phil |
Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 2487
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 4:10 pm: |
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Shakespeare IMHO,was one of those intuitive writers who seemed to have understood the world at a glance.
He seems to have no particular character or strong religious or political views which fits well with Keats"s description of the "chamelion" nature of the poet.Gittings in his biography of Keats expands on this belief of the poet in that he believed he had no self and in this Keats likened his own poetic nature with that of Shakespeare and with his "inate universality".
Bob Dylan-another wordsmith of genius seemed similar in a recent televised Scorsese programme.A no nonense type interpreting and articulating the Zeitgeist with a language and insight of awesome splendour while "on the Road".
None came from particularly educated backgrounds or privileged circumstances. |
Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 772
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 5:52 pm: |
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Natalie's point about genius, especially poetic genius, is quite apt and a denial of that is really what's at the root of the "anyone but Shakespeare" nonsense. Unless one is high-born, well educated, and so on then it would be "impossible" to produce the verbal melodies and masterly insights to the human condition found in the Bard's writings. Or so the argument goes of those whom genius has not gifted.
The arguments in favor of Will of Stratford being the only Shakespeare are many, but I'll pass on just one that, as far as I know, is mine alone. That is that those who favor Bacon, Earl of Oxford or any of the other well-born will argue that only someone of that class could have written so knowingly about the affairs of royal courts. In fact, Shakespeare did not depict those scenes that well and what he does write could have been picked up by someone in an acting company that often made command performances for royalty and nobility. That sort of knowledge can be gained in many ways.
On the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone not born and raised in the middle-class of a town like Stratford to have written "Merry Wives of Windsor." It is not a good play by any means (and if legend is true was written in haste at the behest of Elizabeth), but the author of that play grew up in the millieu depicted: you didn't learn middle-class mores back then from a book.
Indeed, if Shakespeare had been bade by Elizabeth to quickly produce a comedy about "Falstaff in love" then what easier way to fulfill a royal command than by drawing on a few anecdotes from one's own life? Maybe William Shakespeare did not write the plays ascribed to him, but whoever did write "Merry Wives of Windsor" grew up in a world very much like that of 16th Century Stratford-on-Avon.
Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 728
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 7:53 pm: |
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Alas, Alack, the "native genius" argument doesn't cut the mustard with the anti-Statfordians, because they don't ever argue the genius question. They argue the education question. Shakespeare has twice the classical references(and twice the vocabulary) of Milton. It doesn't matter how great a genius you are, you either did the reading or you didn't. Don't question my loyalty, Stratfordians, but I've seen the opposition, and their arguments are long and weighty. I stick with Ben Johnson, he's the only rational defence. RP |
Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 773
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 8:23 pm: |
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RJ,
Citation please for Shakespeare has twice the classical references(and twice the vocabulary) of Milton.
As it is, while we don't know that Shakespeare attended the school in Stratford he certainly was entitled to attend. The curriculum was Latin and later Greek and the reading list would make many a modern Classics major blush. For that matter, most of his classical allusions are to be found in Ovid, which was read early on in Stratford (and was readily available in translation if one's Latin was rusty).
I am familiar with much of the opposition and while "their arguments are long" on close examination they are as weighty and evanescent as the morning dew.
Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 729
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 9:07 pm: |
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Mr. Souden--Now, now, not to worry. I'm a Statfordian. I'm not saying that the pro-arguments for Bacon, Marlowe, Oxford, etc. are weighty; I'm saying the anti-Statfordian arguments are...well, at least sophisticated, and that the pro-Stratford arguments are nearly as dewy as those of the cranks you evidently despise. The biography of the Statford man is based almost entirely on tradition rather than on actual extant documentation. Your above argument is an excellent example. There is no evidence that Shakespeare ever attended the school, but if he did..." There's always those three annoying dots.
The anti-arguments, if they don't make one think, at least ought to make one blush. The plays celebrate the education of women, but the evidence suggests that the Statford man's own daughters were illiterate. The plays show enormous learning in the not only the classics, but law, medicine, etc. As I say, I'm a Stratfordian, I think the guy out in the sticks is always the genius, but the anti-Statfordians aren't exactly the cranks that the mainstreams makes them; the artistic director of the Globe theatre in Southwark has voiced considerable doubts about the Bard of Avon. The Milton comparison was made in the Mike Rubbos documentary "Much Ado About Shakespeare" and elsewhere, at great and tedious length in the main Oxfordian text of which at the moment I forget the title. Old age. I think Shakespeare's vocab was something like 28,000; and Milton's about half that, though Milton's English count is somewhat misleading because he wrote much in Latin. But I don't wish too get to worked up about this. RP
(Message edited by rjpalmer on October 10, 2005) |
R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 730
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 9:15 pm: |
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P.S. From an Oxfordian site:
"Most Stratfordians dismiss anti-Stratfordian arguments as so much “lunatic rubbish,”but over the years the list of anti-Stratfordians has included such noted lunatics as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Charlie Chaplin, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Sobran, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud and Kenneth Branagh."
What's startling about this list is that Branagh is easily the best Hamlet, and Gielgud easily the best Prospero. In my not very humble opinion, of course.
(Message edited by rjpalmer on October 10, 2005) |
Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 968
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 2:18 am: |
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On what basis do you compare great perormances? Branagh is modern and on film - Irving, and Garrick we can only read about and employed the style of other times. Olivier's Hamlet is on film - I prefer his interpretation to "our Ken's", but that could easily be a generational thing (I grew up thinking of Olivier as my acting "hero".
Gielgud's many Hamlets (verbally rather than characterfully significant) exist on radio, but cannot be recaptured. I would cite several better Prospero's than his (and he did several).
The point of picking this up?
Perhaps one's choice in the game of "who wrote Shakespeare" is equally subjective. Upper class intellectuals don't like the idea of a lower class, non-University type being our great dramatist - it's somehow not worthy. (There is a sort of snobbery - with which we on Casebook may be familiar, which is obsessed with degrees and certificates.)
As for Shakespeare's daughters being illiterate - he seems seldom to have been at home in their childood and maybe was not responsible for their education at home. If those who brought the girls up were illiterate (his wife and parents) and as no schools for girls wewre available - maybe there's no surprise in this.
Phil |
Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 775
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 3:50 pm: |
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Just a few more observations. Using Jonson in support of Will of Stratford is a buttress in more ways than one. That is, it is certainly suggestive that the whole "Anybody But Shakespeare" (ABS) argument is a relatively modern contention. Not only did Jonson seemingly accept that Shakespeare was Shakespeare (and can anyone imagine Ben being a party to any sort of conspiracy or cover up?), but so did all the Elizabethan theater crowd.
Indeed, in a precursor of more recent anti-Shakespeare arguments based on education, there are hints (the famous "upstart crow" line) that Will was mocked because he was not one of them by the dissolute crowd of "university wits" who produced much of the early stage fodder. In fact, not only his past but historical "present" and "future" is turned against Stratford Will.
That is, Shakespeare may have been a great artist but he was never an artiste in the imagined grand tradition. He may have been a genius, but he was at base a businessman and that may well be why some want to deny him that genius. Unlike the university wits living precariously on what their writing wit could bring (and it wasn't much) Shakespeare quickly saw the main chance lay not in writing but being a "sharer" (owning part of the theater company and its theaters). He made a comfortable living, took his earnings back to Stratford, invested them in malt tithings and made a lot more money.It is quite dismaying to the "educrats" of the world to accept that the genius who wrote the Shakespeare literary corpus could actually have been a fat (if we are to believe the grave effigy) and happy businessman at heart. He had to have been someone who fits the "profile" better.
As for his daughters being illiterate, this is an assumption advanced by the "ABS" crowd because there is no hard evidence either way -- nor should we expect there to be. There just isn't a whole lot of surviving correspondence from the Elizabethan era of provincial middle-class housewives, which is what Will's daughters were. Moreover, as with credentials or lack of same, illiteracy was often the result of lack of opportunity rather than evidence of lack of intelligence.
Still, a few inferences about the mental acuity of Judith and Susanna Shakespeare are possible. Judith may well have been a dullard (happens in the best of families), but Susanna is something else again. She married the well-educated and successful new doctor in Stratford and if her epitaph is any guide she may have been quite bright. It says that she was "witty above her sex" (wit then meaning only intelligence) and added that "there was something of Shakespeare in that," which seems to suggest that like her dad she was possessed of great mental agility.
Moreover, the epitaph states that Susanna was "wise to salvation" and that was a code phrase meaning she embraced Puritanism (her husband, Dr. Hart was an acknowledged Puritan). Since one tenet of Puritanism held that being able to read one's bible was important (studies show literacy was much more likely among Puritan women at the time than the general population), that is another suggestion Susanna had become literate at some time.
Of course, in the end we don't know very much at all about Shakespeare and likely never will. Still, for all the huffing and puffing by the ABS forces, I think it is a safe bet that a century from now William Shakespeare of Stratford will still be considered the author of "Hamlet" -- and to what greater honor could anyone aspire?
Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 2490
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 4:24 pm: |
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I so much agree with Phil here.
And maybe too our dear bard was no looker!Maybe not even much of a charmer!
After all,dear old Robbie Burns,a ploughman"s son and dirt poor, must therefore have raised quite a few eyebrows amongst the Edinburgh Literati and intelligentsia----but being blessed with exceptional looks as well as gifts he enjoyed the adoration of most of the women he met, from his wife,Jeanie,and his soul mate Highland Mary, from the air-heads as well as the blue stockings of Edinburgh high society , a huge and unwieldy gathering of smitten groupies from every walk of life ,running after him ,from morning till night----no question then about HIS true identity since it was apparently"known" by almost the entire female population of Scotland!
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Donald Souden
Chief Inspector
Username: Supe
Post Number: 776
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 4:49 pm: |
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Natalie,
How you would have pleased my paternal grandfather, for whom Burns was always THE poet. He even headed a drive that saw a statue of Burns erected in Quincy, Mass.
It is amazing what some of those Scots could do. According to the census, by age 12 (if not earlier) he was working in the Aberdeenshire quarries, emigrated to America at 17 and went into business, so I don't know how much formal education he got. I've seen letters he wrote (he died long before I was born), though, and they were models of grammar and spelling. Likewise, he kept all his own accounting books for years and had a good-sized library so he must have learned his Three R's somewhere.
I think we often lose sight of how easy we have it these days.
Don.
"He was so bad at foreign languages he needed subtitles to watch Marcel Marceau."
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 2491
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 4:49 pm: |
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Have just read your post Don-so very apt!I couldnt
agree more.
In fact a fair number of great artists seem to have been business like.Titian,a painter who towered over the renaissance like a Colossus ,was a keen business man from the start, with a very sharp eye on the main chance.And it wasnt at all fashionable for him to have been like that either from all accounts.
Another two giants of that time ,on the other hand,Michaelangelo and Donatello,were determined old bohemians to the last, would have thought it very naff I would guess!
Natalie
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 2492
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 5:02 pm: |
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How interesting Don,
[our last posts crossedby the way]
Burns was THE poet for my maternal grandmother
AND a favourite of my mother"s.We have stacks of their tatty old volumes that I can"t bear to throw away...
One I have just found-its in my left hand now!It is bound in tartan silk,measures about 5cm by 7cm with gilt edged paging and titled ,"Burns"s Songs".At the front is written "Miss E Roberts 1908"-my grandmother"s maiden name.My beautiful Grandmother!
Sorry folks to have strayed from the thread!
Cheers Don!
Natalie |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Chief Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 895
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 8:24 pm: |
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Hi Don,
I have been looking at this thread from time to time, and have little to really say about whether Will Shakespeare is who we were told, or was Bacon, a resurrected Marlowe, Southhampton, or whomever. I believe in simplicity - it is easier to believe that a singular genius was created once in the Elizabethan period, and still remains (in his plays and poetry) to fascinate and stimulate us.
It really is not totally unusual. On Sunday I watched a "Nova" episode on Channel 13 dealing with Leonardo Da Vinci, and they are still learning stuff from those notebooks of his. We only have between one one fifth and one seventh of his notebooks, but cardiologists are now begining to see some amazing work Leonardo did regarding a necessary tortion movement in the heart to keep it beating. Those far-out bat like airplanes may not fly with human power, but a design for a glider worked. Now nobody has suggested that Leonardo was the front man for a set of brilliant Italian Renaissance figures who each did one part of his massive work in science and art. Why is it easier to believe Leonardo did his work alone, but not easy to believe Will Shakespeare did his work alone? To just say it's a matter of documentation (there is more on Leonardo than on Shakespeare) is not enough - there are considerable gaps to this day in Leonardo's biography as there are in Shakespeare's.
That line about the "upstart crow" and the "Shakes-scene" always bothered me, considering that the fellow who wrote it, Richard Greene, is not revived as a writer or dramatist today - in fact he is best recalled because of that stupid comment about Shakespeare.
Best wishes,
Jeff |
R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 732
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - 7:32 pm: |
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I can't imagine Sir John Gielgud or Charlie Chaplin being snobs; I think it isn't so much snobbery as it is a question of aesthetics. I think they disliked the notion that the only extant documentation in Stratford showed that Shakespeare was a moneylender and a dealer in malt who evidently (according to his will, at least) owned no books and seemingly made no effort to collect his works. Here is Susanna Shakespeare's signature if anyone is interested, from one of those huffing and puffing anti-Statfordians.
http://www.shakespeare-authorship.com/resources/literacy.asp
(Message edited by rjpalmer on October 12, 2005) |
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