WI: No Shakespeare

Well instead of other countries having their Shakespeares, maybe you end up with Britain having its own Moliere.
 
Then there was Shakspeare... or Shakespear... or Shakspear... or Shaekspear... or Shakespere... or... :p
 
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It's totally a parody of standard renaissance romantic comedy. How it should go is the deception works and R doesn't kill himself and they are happily paired up. Both of them actually dying is a complete subversion because up to that point it hits all the points of renaissance comedy

Indeed.
Part of people's issues with Shakespeare outside the language thing is that they've often been given a distorted impression of what each play is about which then confuses them when they read the actual play
 
There are lots of unanswered questions about all of the authorship candidates, including Will Shaksper. We have no evidence of Shaksper ever receiving an education, and it's a complete mystery how he would have gained the kind of knowledge of court politics that Shakespeare (i.e. the author) had. Shakespeare wrote tons of plays, sonnets, etc., yet we can't find a single personal letter or manuscript written in Shaksper's own hand. There's also the curious detail that when Shaksper died, his funerary monument in the Stratford church depicted him holding a sack of grain. (This monument would be changed decades later to depict him holding a pen and paper.)

I'm agnostic on the issue actually. Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter to us whom the author is - "the play's the thing".

You know who else we don't know much about?

Christopher Marlowe.

And Thomas Kyd.

And Ben Johnson.

And John Webster.

And John Ford.

And Thomas Dekker.

And Robert Greene.

And pretty much every other Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Carolingian playwright. And yet, amazingly enough, nobody has thought to deny their authorship. No, it's only Will who has been forced to jump through hoops, to explain his whereabouts, his education, and produce manuscripts. And what makes it worse is that the so-called "mysteries" that prompt this inquiry aren't mysteries at all. They are idiotic games of smoke and mirrors, that require you to ignore actual history and the actual record--which includes a rather bothersome number of contemporaries crediting Will Shakespeare as sole author of the plays--and focus on silly little bits of marginalia. 'Ohhh! A woodcut of the Shakespeare monument before its restoration shows him "holding a bag of grain"! That PROVES it was changed, and he was just a grain merchant!' (Ignoring the painting of the monument made before the restoration that shows it having Will holding a pen on a sheet of paper. And the plaque that credits him as a writer.)

There are no real reasons to question Shakespeare's authorship--those that claim there are proceed from ignorance, and from a desire to satiate their own egos by belonging to an exalted brotherhood that has 'the true knowledge'. Just like every conspiracy theory.
 
You know who else we don't know much about?

Christopher Marlowe.

And Thomas Kyd.

And Ben Johnson.

And John Webster.

And John Ford.

And Thomas Dekker.

And Robert Greene.

And pretty much every other Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Carolingian playwright. And yet, amazingly enough, nobody has thought to deny their authorship. No, it's only Will who has been forced to jump through hoops, to explain his whereabouts, his education, and produce manuscripts. And what makes it worse is that the so-called "mysteries" that prompt this inquiry aren't mysteries at all. They are idiotic games of smoke and mirrors, that require you to ignore actual history and the actual record--which includes a rather bothersome number of contemporaries crediting Will Shakespeare as sole author of the plays--and focus on silly little bits of marginalia. 'Ohhh! A woodcut of the Shakespeare monument before its restoration shows him "holding a bag of grain"! That PROVES it was changed, and he was just a grain merchant!' (Ignoring the painting of the monument made before the restoration that shows it having Will holding a pen on a sheet of paper. And the plaque that credits him as a writer.)

There are no real reasons to question Shakespeare's authorship--those that claim there are proceed from ignorance, and from a desire to satiate their own egos by belonging to an exalted brotherhood that has 'the true knowledge'. Just like every conspiracy theory.

Most of these conspiracy theories in general rest on ignorance of just how thin our paper trail for the past is in general. Most documents were just not important enough to keep much longer than the lives of the people involved, and very few people generated enough of the kind of paperwork that survives well(deeds, patent rolls, lawsuits, public correspondence, governmental records in general-the things that would be in state archives) or church records to be comparable to the documentation we have today-and only a fraction of that would survive fires or other losses of state or parish archives. And the problem just gets worse the further we go back, once we get old enough that archives being cared for long enough to not be destroyed gets chancy and enough regime changes to have a notable effect on that.

I'm not even sure, for instance, that any of the state papers of the Roman Republic survived, and very few people were literate enough to transmit writings, important enough to be written about by others, or well-off enough to have a tombstone that survived to this day. In fact, as scant as Will Shakespeare's paper trail is I would speculate that it is better than that of 75% of the people in London in 1600-he had several property interests, was involved in some lawsuits, had regular dealings with the civil bureaucracy in general, and of course was extremely prominent in a major literary and literate circle.
 
I think that what really helps Shakespeare is that he was first and foremost an entertainer whose job was to put butts in the seats and then tries to work in deeper themes so it isn't just entertainment. I think that really works better than the division we often get in modern times between mindless popular entertainment and modern literary fiction that is so obsessed with symbolism and meaning that it doesn't even bother having a plot. Also all the sex jokes in Romeo and Juliet are freaking hilarious.

This is dead on. The dude wrote for the masses. It's only thought that he wrote for stuffy intellectuals because of all the time that has passed.

I mean, the guy was writing Yo Mama jokes. Think about that for a bit. ;)

As for 'best writer', I stay away from those debates because it really is unanswerable. But 'most influential'? Well I'd like to hear a contender who has been more influential than him. For the English language, of course.
 
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This is dead on. The dude wrote for the masses. It's only thought that he wrote for stuffy intellectuals because of all the time that has passed.

I mean, the guy was writing Yo Mama jokes. Think about that for a bit. ;)

Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother
 
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother

This reminds me of how the Song of Solomon, which is the dirtiest poem I have ever read, is in the Bible.

We're not taught the good parts of either, is what I'm trying to say. :D:eek:
 
So... should funnyhat be banned for promoting a conspiracy theory, then?

If I violated board policy, I apologize. I was being tongue-in-cheek about it "definitely" being Oxford - I don't really know, although I do think it's an interesting topic. For all we know, heck, maybe Shaksper knew the earl of Oxford personally and learned about Italy from him.


There are no real reasons to question Shakespeare's authorship--those that claim there are proceed from ignorance, and from a desire to satiate their own egos by belonging to an exalted brotherhood that has 'the true knowledge'. Just like every conspiracy theory.

I've never understood these kinds of visceral, almost personal reactions from people in this debate. Why does it affect you personally whom the author of some 400-year-old plays and sonnets was? Unless you work for the Stratford tourism bureau, I'm not quite sure why it should matter that much.
 
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This reminds me of how the Song of Solomon, which is the dirtiest poem I have ever read, is in the Bible.

We're not taught the good parts of either, is what I'm trying to say. :D:eek:

To be fair that's from Titus Andronicus and while the quote is great the play as a whole is...not one of Will's best.

To me what makes Shakespeare great is that once you get past the language, the plays themselves are timeless. My wife with zero literary background could sit down and watch Richard III (Kevin Spaceys production came through Singapore a couple of years back) and find it totally compelling once she got used to the language
 

Stolengood

Banned
If I violated board policy, I apologize. I was being tongue-in-cheek about it "definitely" being Oxford - I don't really know, although I do think it's an interesting topic. For all we know, heck, maybe Shaksper knew the earl of Oxford personally and learned about Italy from him.
Apparently, there was a source on Venetian laws Billy Shakespeare had access to. So that's one little quibble neatly solved.

I used to like to entertain the notion that Christopher Marlowe had faked his death and written Shakespeare's works in hiding in a foreign country... but it was just that; a romantic sort of notion. I never seriously believed it. The Oxfordian theory is even more cockamamie, which is why I was worrying.
 
To be fair that's from Titus Andronicus and while the quote is great the play as a whole is...not one of Will's best.

To me what makes Shakespeare great is that once you get past the language, the plays themselves are timeless. My wife with zero literary background could sit down and watch Richard III (Kevin Spaceys production came through Singapore a couple of years back) and find it totally compelling once she got used to the language

Still - teaching Shakespeare as the "The playwright who made yo momma jokes" would go a lot further than "the guy associated with nerds". And I say this as a nerd.

But yeah, even if his stories aren't necessarily original concepts, the way he told them was masterful. And the language - as in, how he uses English - is extremely expressive.

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;


The imagery this produces, well performed, stands on its own - little makeup or costume necessary.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
I won't believe that Shakespeare wasn't the socialist Muslim Earl of Oxford until I see his birth certificate.
 
I'm not even sure, for instance, that any of the state papers of the Roman Republic survived, and very few people were literate enough to transmit writings, important enough to be written about by others, or well-off enough to have a tombstone that survived to this day. In fact, as scant as Will Shakespeare's paper trail is I would speculate that it is better than that of 75% of the people in London in 1600-he had several property interests, was involved in some lawsuits, had regular dealings with the civil bureaucracy in general, and of course was extremely prominent in a major literary and literate circle.

You are correct, sir. Will's actually left a better paper trail than almost all the other fine gentlemen I mentioned--even Ben Jonson's is, on closer inspection, rather sketchy. (And Marlowe's is even worse--a good chunk of what we "know" about Marlowe comes from a deposition from Kyd wherein he accused the man of atheism, blasphemy, sodomy, and one is left with the impression, would have moved on to bestiality and witchcraft if his questioners had indicated that was wanted.) If Will's a man of mystery it's because all men of his station are men of mystery to us now, their lives largely hidden, forcing us to reconstruct them by guesswork.

It's also worth noting that the anti-Strafordians do what they can to ignore things like that pesky First Folio, which credits the plays to the late William Shakespeare, includes dedications and poems to the late William Shakespeare, all in a volume with a giant picture of Will towards the front. That is evidence--strong evidence--for the authorship, which in the topsy-turvy world of the conspiracy is ignored and hand-waved away to focus on things like word games in the text, and strange little details that generally aren't that strange when you look at them. Especially if you do so while actually knowing what you're looking at.

I've never understood these kinds of visceral, almost personal reactions from people in this debate. Why does it affect you personally whom the author of some 400-year-old plays and sonnets was? Unless you work for the Stratford tourism bureau, I'm not quite sure why it should matter that much.

Because it's a ridiculous and frankly malicious slander against a man who is, as you note, long dead, and thus can't defend himself. Further it's a slander against his friends and family, who in this absurd telling are guilty of a knowing and mammoth fraud perpetuated for reasons that are exceedingly tough to understand. The tendency of some anti-Strafordians to treat this blackening of reputations as a parlor game is not one of their more endearing traits.
 
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a good chunk of what we "know" about Marlowe comes from a deposition from Kyd wherein he accused the man of atheism, blasphemy, sodomy, and one is left with the impression, would have moved on to bestiality and witchcraft if his questioners had indicated that was wanted.

I like the guy already.
 
This reminds me of how the Song of Solomon, which is the dirtiest poem I have ever read, is in the Bible.

We're not taught the good parts of either, is what I'm trying to say. :D:eek:

Or not taught exactly how dirty they are-Gilgamesh of course, and nobody teaches the hymns to Inanna and Dumuzi in high school. Or at least I seriously doubt anyone did and lord knows we'd hear no end of it if they did.
 
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