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Brian Floyd
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 11:46am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I may have to see if my local library can do an inter-library loan on Price's book. They don't seem to have a copy of it here, and I do not want to buy something I would probably only read once and rarely refer to. (Plus I don't know what section it would be under at the used book store I frequent, anyway.)


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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Steven: 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.

**
Dramatic effect? These errors, in and of themselves, do not declare that the Author believed they were factual. They merely indicate these details (a chiming clock, for instance) was useful to his story and his audience would either not know enough or care enough to cry foul. Hardly strong evidence that the author who gets so many other things right was getting all his knowledge of Italy second-hand.


Steven: 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!

**

"Shakespeare's" Rape of Lucrece takes narrative inspiration from and goes on in great detail about a painting later identified as the work of Romano Giulio- a painting which is actually on the walls and ceiling of a grand apartment called "Sala di Troia" in Mantua, Italy.

The grave-digger's speech in Hamlet makes specific satiric reference to a 1562 law case called "Hales v. Pettit" which only law-educated noblemen would recognize, but is otherwise obscure, difficult to read, and not even written in English. This is quite a long distance to go for a joke if, as is claimed, the author had an education equal to even an excellent undergraduate University degree today.

That is just one of an apparently infinite number of legal-thinking references in Shakespeare. His writing, his metaphors, his speeches reflect an extensive education in law of the day. None of this would have come from the kind of school Shaxper allegedly attended.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Mark: These errors, in and of themselves, do not declare that the Author believed they were factual. 
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Shakespeare (or the author, if you prefer) was scorned and offered a backhanded compliment then a direct insult from Greene and then Jonson respectively for his lack of understanding.

Chiming clocks in Ancient Rome? Billiards being played in Ancient Egypt? Machiavelli being cited before he'd been born? Ditto Aristotle? Bohemian coastlines? 

What's more likely - that De Vere (for example) deliberately made these mistakes, and more, to cleverly mislead people that the author of the plays actually wasn't highly educated, or that they're genuine mistakes that indicate a lack of understanding?

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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

The chance that any candidate for "Shakespeare" actually thought there were chiming clocks in ancient Rome is around zero.

But this kind of non-argument is where we end up on this question when we begin with things like intentionally misreading Ben Jonson.

"And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,     
From thence, to honour thee, I would not seek     
For names; but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus,     
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,     "

In context, Jonson's clearly not saying "although you barely learned Latin or Greek..." He is saying "its too bad these old masters of Latin and Greek weren't around to honor your work here on your death".

I don't know Greene, but he is apart from Jonson in believing Shakespeare was written by someone with little education.
       
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John Byrne
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Jonson's use of "though" has long been a sticking point. It can be read as "even though", as Stratfordian's prefer, but it can also be read as "even if", in the sense that Shakespeare (this invented commodity) could have written great plays even if he lack classical languages--which Jonson is noting he did not.

Stratfordians have a curious habit of accepting a much debased version of their man--uneducated, a plagiarist, a family-abandoner, etc--as long as he still comes out as the only candidate.

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Although Jonson seems to have changed his mind slightly between his public commendatory verse in the First Folio and his private, slighting opinions in discussion with Drummond, the opinion is the same - Shakespeare wasn't well-educated, or not in the view of Jonson, who was very proud of his erudition.

The First Folio is clearly saying that while Shakespeare didn't have much Latin and less Greek, he was nevertheless, in Jonson's view, as good as, if not better, writers from antiquity (and lots of others, who Jonson goes on to name).

In private discussion with Drummond, Jonson was more scathing, noting the several, and, to Jonson, laughably comic errors, that Shakespeare made in his plays.

And, in his posthumously published De Shakespeare Nostrat, Jonson tilts back towards praise, if of a backhanded kind, remarking that while actors who knew Shakespeare said that he never blotted a line, Jonson wished "Would he had blotted a thousand", and scorning Shakespeare's original line in Julius Caesar "Caesar never did wrong but with just cause" as "ridiculous", and ending by noting that "But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned".

The picture is of a man who wrote fluently, if, in Jonson's view, perhaps a bit too fluently, and without always fully understanding what he was writing about. Jonson may be ambiguous about Shakespeare's genius, but there's no sense of doubt that he had it; there's nothing to suggest that he's a front, or a stooge, or a thief, for another author's writing. And note that the table talk with Drummond and De Shakespeare Nostrat were discussed, or published, after Shakespeare's death - I think Drummond's chat with Jonson was also published after Jonson died, like De Shakespeare Nostrat? - in which there would have been no point in maintaining a facade.



Edited by Steven Brake on 19 January 2021 at 3:17pm
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Steven: The First Folio is clearly saying that while Shakespeare didn't have much Latin and less Greek, he was nevertheless, in Jonson's view, as good as, if not better, writers from antiquity (and lots of others, who Jonson goes on to name).

**

You clearly believe it to be so, but that is not an argument for why you think it is "clear." If it were Jonson's opinion that the Author deserved censure for his lack of education, this would be a piddling and weird place to make a piddling and weird case for it.

And even if we found a 200 page book by Jonson entitled, "Shakespeare was an uneducated simp and here's why" it would not render the works less full of obvious evidence of education.

How did that painting end up in the Rape of Lucrece? How did the grave-digger's speech come to reference such an obscure legal case with ease and wit? The Author, you would have it, barely could understand the notion that recent inventions didn't already exist a thousand years earlier.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Mark: That's the general opinion, and I can't see why it isn't the correct interpretation - particularly given the further remarks Jonson went on to make with regards to Shakespeare's erudition. To Jonson, who prided himself on his erudition, Shakespeare - a man he knew - wasn't particularly well educated. We can argue over whether Jonson was correct to think this, but it's unarguable that he did.

Greene, of course, was even more antagonistic towards Shakespeare.

Sir George Buck, as Master Of The Revels, was responsible for supervising and censoring plays. He also knew Shakespeare, and gave no indication that he was a charlatan, or a front.

Heminges and Condell arranged for the collection of the plays that became the First Folio to honour the memory of the man they had known.

All these men, who knew, worked with, loved and hated Shakespeare never, as far as we know, expressed any doubts that he was the author. Were they all fools? Was Shakespeare, if not a great writer, so consummate an actor?  

With regards to the painting, what is the argument that The Rape Of Lucrece refers to it? Again, I'm not doubting you, but I'd like to read more about it. And isn't it possible that any perceived similarities are simply because both are meditations on the same story?

The gravedigger's speech certainly seems to allude to the case of Hales v Pettit, but why could only someone of noble birth have been aware of it?

And it's not as I would have it - the plays repeatedly have errors that are inconsistent with great learning, rather than a display of it.


Edited by Steven Brake on 19 January 2021 at 3:56pm
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 19 January 2021 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Steven: And it's not as I would have it - the plays repeatedly have errors that are inconsistent with great learning, rather than a display of it.

***

That's like saying the Rocky Mountains are made of water because there are rivers among them.

The whole works must be considered, not just a few errors.

Doesn't it strike you as a weird tactic to try to diminish the entire body of work to fit the Stratford man's biography rather than admit that something as obscure and difficult to know of as Hales v. Pettit indicates a certain, unusual level of education?
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 1:54am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Mark: The whole works must be considered, not just a few errors.
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When JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter, she mixed up Euston Square with King's Cross when describing the 9 3/4 Express. It was a simple mistake that she's acknowledged, explaining it as being because she was living in Manchester at the time, and no-one's ever suggested that it means that she didn't really write Harry Potter.

When the whole works are considered, there aren't just a "few errors". This was the complaint made by Greene and Jonson - Shakespeare was presumptuous in writing about subjects that he didn't know enough about, and his lack of education showed.

Acknowledging the errors in the plays in no way diminishes them. The chiming clocks and doublets of Julius Caesar are historically inaccurate. The play is also a masterpiece. The Henry IV plays don't understand the difference between Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of Rutland, and his uncle, also Edmund Mortimer. They (particularly the former) are also masterpieces. 


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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 2:40am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Steven,

Just to be totally clear here:

You are claiming that the errors in the plays are incontrovertible evidence that the Author could not have had extensive education beyond Grammar School.

Is that correct?
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 6:30am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Mark: No, I'm noting that they are strong indicators that they weren't written by someone with an extensive classical education.

And this isn't "my" claim - it's the position taken by the majority of Shakespeare scholars, and, as I've noted above, by Shakespearean contemporaries such as Greene and Jonson.
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