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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 6:28am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Nobody needs to have been “hoodwinked”. All we need is Elizabethan business as usual.

This is what so many fail to take into account: life in that time and place was very different from today. It was a deeply repressive and conspiratorial society. Open secrets were common—and heaven help those who betrayed them.

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 6:39am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Heminges and Condell spent years trying to find copies of the plays that would form the first Folio. At the very least, mustn't they have believed that William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon - a man they remembered, and whose memory they wanted to preserve - and the author were one and the same? If they didn't, then why did they go to such measures to create, or protect, the myth of Will's authorship? What threat, or promises, were made to them, by whom, and for what purpose?

Jonson was a notoriously truculent and abrasive man. Would be really be capable of keeping such a secret? His commendatory poem praises Shakespeare, while his private comments to Drummund sneers at him, but he never seems to doubt his authorship.


Edited by Steven Brake on 17 January 2021 at 6:50am
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John Byrne
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 7:10am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Let's assume for a moment that the works were, in fact, produced by a peer of the realm. Someone who did not want his name associated with them once they found their way out into the world beyond the courtly audiences for which they were written.

Since that peer, Edward De Vere, was the ward and son-in-law of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the most powerful man in Elizabeth's court, and someone who would himself have been embarrassed to have De Vere's name connected to the public theater, no one would have been in any kind of rush to "out" De Vere.

But the Works were proving very popular, and theater producers and publishers needed a "brand" to identify this profitable commodity. (The Works were first publlshed anonymously.) The concept of someone serving as a "front" was known in Elizabethan times, as it is today. And there was this minor theatrical person, from Stratford, who could easily be persuaded to lend his name to publication. De Vere would never protest, of course, and the theaters and printers could continue to make money off the Works.

When the name is first used, it becomes "Shake-speare", a not uncommon variant, given the wide range of spelling of even the most common words in those days. Theatrical tradition of the time had the hyphen followed by a lower case letter (as opposed to "Smith-Jones" for instance) indicating a false name. Just a coincidence, perhaps, or perhaps something to cue the literate readers of the time that the name was, as suggested, merely a "brand".

Note, no conspiracies needed. Just people trying to make money while keeping out of trouble.

Heminge and Condell have a slightly shaky connection to the Stratford Man. He leaves them commemorative rings in his will, but the bequest is written between the lines, and in a different hand. A "ret-con" perhaps, to shore up their claim to be the representatives of the Author?

And why does the First Folio contain a dedication that refers to the Author as if he's dead, seven years before Straford Will shuffled off this mortal coil?

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 9:38am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

De Vere was commended as a playwright by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia, and, as far as I'm aware, suffered no disgrace as a result. Palladis Tamia also commends William Shakespeare, making it clear that they were different people.

The First Folio was published seven years after Will's death. And once he, De Vere and Burghley were dead, what was the point in maintaining the facade that Will of Stratford, rather than De Vere was the author? We're either back to Heminges and Condell as having been hoodwinked, or that they decided to keep the myth going - for what purpose? I'm not aware that they received any inexplicable rewards - a knighthood, say, or a substantial property - that indicates gratitude for keeping the supposedly explosive secret under wraps.

Why did Jonson, also years after the fact privately sneer at the man he'd once publicly praised, but never, as far as we're aware, doubted that he had written the plays?

And this brings me back to the question I asked before - what is the alternative authorship position?

Is it that De Vere used the pseudonym Shake-speare, and that, by unfortunate accident, it was mistakenly understood to be Will of Stratford?

Or is it that Will was deliberately set up as a frontman?

Or is it that that Will just stole the credit outright?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 10:02am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Meres would have faced a quandary. If De Vere was the author, but wished it kept an open secret, Meres would have had to decide to leave Oxford off the list, and draw attention to the absence of a widely praised author, or list both. (A still later list, praising the authors who created the Elizabethan Golden Age includes De Vere, but not Shakespeare.)

I must admit a brain slip, for the dedication. It was with the published Sonnets, in 1609, not the First Folio.

If we assume Jonson was in on the scheme, there would be little to be gained by admitting to it—especially if, as noted, it was an “open secret”.

Will as a front man seems most likely, tho on the question of him stealing credit, we must remember the “upstart crow”.

It’s telling. I think, to note that Mark Twain—himself very familiar with pen names and open secrets—was an anti-Stratfordian.

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Philippe Negrin
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I am not decided on this big question but open to conjectures. It is quite telling I think that writers as famous and important as Ben Jonson or Thomas Nashe faced official arrests and were threatened of imprisonment because their plays had offended Queen Elizabeth or someone at her court. I do believe a public figure or a courtier would not dare to admit authorship on possibly subsersive writing or drama at the times. Or take a pen-name.
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Petter Myhr Ness
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Posted: 18 January 2021 at 10:00am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I'm not an expert on Shakespeare, just a regular reader, but I found Price's book very convincing. Because her arguments were all rooted in evidence, or lack of thereof, instead of the usual conjecture you often see from those who want the facts to fit the theory. Which, I have to add, I've seen from plenty of Stratfordians. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 January 2021 at 10:37am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

One of the earliest pro-Oxford books I read pointed out that orthodox “biographies” of Shakespeare, the Author, are loaded with phrases like “could have”, “should have”, “most likely”, “probably” and the like.

Many conventional biographies contain heaping helpings of speculation and guesswork, but when it comes to the Shakespeare, that’s practically all there is!

Consider Will Shaksper’s education. Since his father had been a single-term alderman in Stratford, young Will would have been entitled to attend the grammar school there. There is no evidence that he did, but Stratfordians not only assume he did, but invest the school with a syllabus that rivaled and even bested the finest universities in the land. Also without supporting evidence.

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 18 January 2021 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

It's true we can't prove that young Will went to the King's New School, although, as you say, he would have been entitled to. And it was pretty nearby to his childhood home (about a mile, or slightly less). And it's also true that we don't know what was taught there. Or how well.

But it's untrue to say that Stratfordians say that the syllabus would have to rival, or better contemporary universities. It's probably true that any grounding in the classics the young Will received - if he did go to King's - would equal or rival many modern universities.

Ben Jonson jibed at Shakespeare's "small Latin and less Greek" in his commendatory verse, and scorned his lack of education in his private conversation with Drummond. And the plays are riddled with errors of geography and history that make it improbable that they were written by someone who'd received the outstanding education that alternative authorship theorists claim must have been necessary.

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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 1:33am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Steven: And the plays are riddled with errors of geography and history that make it improbable that they were written by someone who'd received the outstanding education that alternative authorship theorists claim must have been necessary.

***

The argument here maneuvers into "Shakespeare wasn't all that educated afterall," territory when it seems convenient -- however one can't have it both ways.

An actual reading of the works, filled with detailed references to legal cases from 40 years before Shakespeare's birth and 12 paragraph descriptions of paintings which no one outside of Italy has seen, for example, rule out the possibility that the plays were written by someone with anything below an outstanding education -- where ever it may have come from.

Fight for Stratford if you must, but do it honestly. The Author's education is not demonstrated by his errors, but by the incalculable number of instances where he demonstrates true mastery.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 6:42am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Well said, Mark!
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 6:43am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Mark:

"The Author's education is not demonstrated by his errors, but by the incalculable number of instances where he demonstrates true mastery" untrue. Mistakes and errors - fundamental mistakes and errors in history, politics, geography, classical theory - can't just be dismissed with a shrug. 

Orwell once described Dickens as "an intellectual sprawl", and, to an extent, the same is true of Shakespeare (or "the plays", if you'd prefer!). They don't stick the rules of drama that one would expect from a classically educated author. Indeed, English critics in the early 18th century much preferred Jonson to Shakespeare as the former adhered to classical dramatic structures that the latter eschewed. 

The argument that Shakespeare lacked education, or art, was made during his life and not long after it ended by Greene, in his Groats-worth Of Wit, and Jonson, in his commendatory poem, then his jibes in conversation with Drummond. The argument from foe and friend (or frenemy) is that Shakespeare is presuming to write upon subjects that he knows little about, or not sufficiently enough about, in any event.

Shakespeare - or "the author", if you'd prefer! - thought that ancient Rome had chiming clocks. He thought Bohemia had a coastline. He has Richard III quote Machiavelli decades before the latter was published (and even before he was born). He has Ulysses quoting Aristotle centuries before the latter was born. He didn't understand that Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of Rutland and heir presumptive to Richard II and Edmund Mortimer, his uncle, who fought against Owain Glyndwr then allied with him against Henry IV, were two different people - this may seem an understandable mistake to us, and it would be to anyone not of noble blood, who would have had a thorough understanding of their family history, and that of the other noble families too. This may not be taken as proof that the low-born Will of Stratford wrote them, of course, but it's difficult to see how Oxford could have made such an error.

What do you mean by the paintings and legal cases? I'm not denying this, incidentally - I'm unaware of either and curious about both!


Edited by Steven Brake on 19 January 2021 at 6:55am
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