10 reasons

[neufer]

I'm completely open to the idea that Shakespeare's works could have been written by someone with a name other than Shakespeare. I only meant to criticize the way the arguments were presented. When you constantly refer to the person in question as an illiterate boob, it doesn't give you any credit.

It's important to remind people that the Shaksper of Stratford character was an illiterate boob much like Dogberry...for that's the way he was written. Nobody from Stratford remembered Shaksper because he was completely fictitious.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

• "Where [in the works] are the moving descriptions if rural life in Stratford, the trenchant portrayals of characters living there? Where do we find the theme of a young man trapped into marrying an older woman he has impregnated? What play gives us the emotions of a man impelled to abandon his wife and children? Where are the Dickensian adventures of a rustic young man newly come to make his living among the stews, thugs, and rascals of London? " - _The Players_ by Bertram Fields

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

.

I linked that "Don't be a dick" article for a reason... You could be completely right but if you carry yourself like a dick, no one will listen to you except the people who already agree with you, which just ends up a metaphorical circle jerk.

[Ann]

Is it ever possible to know without a doubt if a person by the name of William Shakespeare (or, perhaps, Will Shaksper) authored the works attributed to William Shakespeare? I think not. Is it possible to know without a doubt if a person by the name of Edward de Vere authored the works attributed to William Shakespeare? I think not.

Imagine you are out walking down the street with one of your friends. Imagine that he points at a man some distance away and says to you,

Look! That is...

...an actor from...(insert name of little-known TV show)

...a minor politician from... (insert name of state)

...a relative of mine on my mother's side...

...the son of the principal of the school I attended in first grade...

...a ghost!!! I swear I used to know that man and I know he's dead!!

Who is that man? How can you find out?

Well... you probably have a cell phone, and your cell phone probably has a camera. You can snap a picture of the unknown man. Then you can post the picture on Facebook or something, and you can ask a lot of people to help you identify the man. Chances are that someone will recognize him, and you can find out, more or less at least, who the man is.

But how could people in the 16th and 17th century know who William Shakespeare was?

Photography didn't exist in the days of William Shakespeare. Most poeple probably never had a portrait made of themselves. And if they had indeed had their portrait painted, who is to say that the portrait was sufficiently realistic for people who didn't know them to recognize them from their portrait?

How could the people of Elizabethan London know who their fellow Londoners were? They had to know them in person in order to recognize them, or at least, they had to have seen them in such a way that that the encounter made a real impression on them.

I'm reminded of something that one of the 18th century aristocratic Lennox sisters, Emily, wrote in a letter to one of her sisters. She wrote something like this:

They brought a dear little boy to see me. I didn't recognize him, but then they told me that the boy was the darling little Henry, one of my sons.

Can you imagine? This aristocratic 18th century woman didn't recognize her own son!

It is hard for us to imagine what it must have been like to live in a world without photographs. The fact that few people of Elizabethan London can have known what William Shakespeare looked like means that it is even more impossible for us to know what Shakespeare looked like. Indeed, we can know so very little about William Shakespeare. But just because we can know so little about William Shakespeare doesn't mean we can know that William Shakespeare was really a pen name for Edward de Vere.

Maybe William Shak(e)spe(a)r(e) authored the works of William Shakespeare. Maybe Edward de Vere wrote them. I don't see how we can know the truth.

Maybe it is, like bystander said, "Much Ado About Nothing".

Ann

[Beyond]

Maybe it is, like bystander said, "Much Ado About Nothing"

Hey, bystander got that straight from the horses mouth. Shakespeare himself. So stick with what comes out the -front end- of the horse, and leave what comes out the back end, alone

[neufer]

Maybe it is, like bystander said, "Much Ado About Nothing"

• Neufer: Nothing?
  .
  Ann: Nothing.
  .
  Neufer: Nothing will come of Nothing. Speak again.

[Beyond]

Nothing = quiet. Ahhhh......

[geckzilla]

Well, I can say this: Even if you did go through with your book it seems it would ultimately result in failure due to the fact that youtube videos don't work so well on paper. Is it going to be a flip book with a separate audio emitting device supplied? I guess the article quotations would be ok as long as you get the proper permission.

[neufer]

Well, I can say this: Even if you did go through with your book it seems it would ultimately result in failure due to the fact that youtube videos don't work so well on paper. Is it going to be a flip book with a separate audio emitting device supplied? I guess the article quotations would be ok as long as you get the proper permission.

I was thinking something more on the lines of a pop-up book about my Dickensian adventures among the stews, thugs, and rascals of the Starship Asterisk*.

[Ann]

I consider myself a fan of and a product of the Enlightenment.

Science (even though I have to have the math explained to me)! Observations! Experiments!

Rational arguments! I love it. It was the Enlightenment, and the ensuing industrial revolution, that propelled Europe to world dominance. And when Europe faltered, the United States of America, whose Constitution is very much built on the principles of Enlightenment, including the general principles of equality and human rights, took over as the dominant power of the world.

Today the Enlightenment is fraying at the seams, as people are asking for "equal time" for arguments that have nothing to do with rationality. Religion, superstition and all kinds of wishful thinking are taking over - it's no wonder that the Western world is losing its position as the top dog of the world.

So our time may mark the end of the era of the Enlightenment. But when did the Enlightenment start?

An important predecessor of the Enlightenment was the Renaissance, which started in Italy in the 15th century (or even slightly earlier) as Italy was "rediscovering" its great Roman heritage. The Renaissance celebrated the fantastic Roman Empire.

Isn't it interesting that a third of Shakespeare's plays are set in Italy, the center of the Renaissance?

One person who really helped getting the Enlightenment started is Isaac Newton. His mathematical descriptions of gravity turned the entire universe into something that could be grasped by the human mind. After Newton followed many great European and American scientists, whose discoveries paved the way for the dominance of the Western world.

We see no trace of great scientific discoveries in the works of William Shakespeare. Of course, Shakespeare died before Newton published Principia. Also Shakespeare never seems to have championed any kind of democracy in his works.

However, I like Shakespeare's clever solution to the conundrum that "the Birnam wood will come to Dunsinane" - that is, it is not the forest itself that is on the move, but an enemy army camouflaged with leaves and branches from the forest that attacks the fortress of Macbeth. What seems completely supernatural gets a perfectly natural explanation.




I have also always liked Portia, Shakespeare's heroine of logic, knowledge and rationality.

But another important prerequisite for the Enlightenment may have been the growth and the increasing influence of the middle class, the merchants and craftsmen, who had flocked to the big cities of Europe.

What was Shakespeare? He was the son of a glove maker, the son of a craftsman, who had moved from the small town of Stratford into the bustling city of London. He is the perfect example of the rising middle class, whose continued rise was probably necessary for the eventual triumph of the Enlightenment.

In being a member of the middle class and setting many of his plays in Italy, the "epicenter of the Renaissance", Shakespeare scored "two points out of three" as a champion of the budding Enlightenment. If, however, Shakespeare was only a pen name and the real author of his works was Edward de Vere, a nobleman, then he had much less to do with the emerging Enlightenment. After all, the nobility didn't pave the way for the reorganization of society in the name of the Enlightenment. If anything, the nobility tried to stop these changes.

But what if Edward de Vere actually wrote the works of Shakespeare, but everyone believed that they were the works of the son of a glove maker from Stratford? Then Shakespeare may still have served as an inspiration for the middle classes. If the author of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet was really a nobleman, but if he masqueraded as the son of a glove maker, then other people from the middle classes may still have regarded Shakespeare's success as a reason to try to succeed themselves.

So long live Shakespeare, the son of a glove maker, even if he was really a nobleman in disguise!

Ann

[neufer]

I consider myself a fan of and a product of the Enlightenment. Rational arguments! I love it. It was the Enlightenment, and the ensuing industrial revolution, that propelled Europe to world dominance.

Indeed, it was all part and parcel of Francis Bacon's Great Instauration:

<<More recent Baconian theory ... posits that his main motivation for concealment was the completion of his Great Instauration project. The argument runs that, in order to advance the project's scientific component, he intended to set up new institutes of experimentation to gather the DATA (his scientific "Histories") to which his inductive method could be applied. He needed to attain high office, however, to gain the requisite influence, and being known as a dramatist (a low-class profession) would have impeded his prospects. Realising that play-acting was used by the ancients "as a means of educating men's minds to virtue", and being "strongly addicted to the theatre" himself, he is claimed to have set out the otherwise-unpublished moral philosophical component of his Great Instauration project in the Shakespearean work (moral "Histories"). In this way, he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes "good" government (as in Prince Hal's relationship with the Chief Justice in Henry IV, Part 2).>>

• ........................................................
  ______ Hamlet (Folio, 1623) Act 4, Scene 3
  
  King: Follow him at foote,
  . Tempt him with speed aboord:
  .
  . (D)elay it not, Ile haue him hence to nig{H}T.
  . (A)W{A}y, fo{R} eue{R}y th{I}ng i{S} SEAL'D and DONE
  . (T)hat else leanes on th'Affaire, pray you make hast.
  . (A)nd, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught,-
  .......................................................
  The word (DATA) is the Latin plural of datum, neuter past
  participle of dare, "to give", hence (SOMETHING GIVEN).
  -------------------------------------------------------

What was Shakespeare? He was the son of a glove maker, the son of a craftsman, who had moved from the small town of Stratford into the bustling city of London. He is the perfect example of the rising middle class, whose continued rise was probably necessary for the eventual triumph of the Enlightenment.

In being a member of the middle class and setting many of his plays in Italy, the "epicenter of the Renaissance", Shakespeare scored "two points out of three" as a champion of the budding Enlightenment. If, however, Shakespeare was only a pen name and the real author of his works was Edward de Vere, a nobleman, then he much less to do with the emerging Enlightenment. After all, the nobility didn't pave the way for the reorganization of society in the name of the Enlightenment. If anything, the nobility tried to stop these changes.

But what if Edward de Vere actually wrote the works of Shakespeare, but everyone believed that they were the works of the son of a glove maker from Stratford? Then Shakespeare may still have served as an inspiration for the middle classes. If the author of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet was really a nobleman, but if he masqueraded as the son of a glove maker, then other people from the middle classes may still have regarded Shakespeare's success as a reason to try to succeed themselves.

So long live Shakespeare, the son of a glove maker, even if he was really a nobleman in disguise!

And particularly a homosexual Catholic nobleman like Edward de Vere:

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Grauer had a strife
with Nature, to out-DOO the life :
O, could he but haue drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face ; the Print would then surpasse
All, that vvas euer vvrit in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but HIS BOOKE.

.

• Cecil Papers 88/101 (bifolium, 232mm x 170mm),
  Oxford to [Robert] Cecil; 7 October 1601 (W337;F593).
  .
  My very good Brother, yf my helthe hadd beene to my mynde I wowlde have
  beene before this att the Coorte, aswell to haue giuen yow thankes for
  yowre presence, at the hearinge of my cause debated as to haue moued
  her Magestye for her resolutione. As for the matter, how muche I am
  behouldinge to yow I neede not repeate, but in all thankfulnes
  acknowlege, for yow haue beene the moover & onlye follower therofe for
  mee, & by yowre onlye meanes, I have hetherto passed the pykes of so
  many adversaries. Now my desyre ys, sythe them selues whoo have opposed
  to her Magestyes ryghte seeme satisfisde [=satisfied], that yow will
  make the ende ansuerable, to the rest of yowre moste friendlye
  procedinge, for I am aduised, that I may passe MY BOOKE from her
  Magestie, yf a warrant may be procured to my cosen BACON and Seriant
  [=Sergeant] HARRIS to perfet [=perfect] yt. Whiche beinge DOONE, I
  know to whome formallye to thanke, but reallye they shalbe, and are
  from me, and myne, to be SEALED vp in an aeternall remembrance to yowre
  selfe. And thus wishinge all happines to yow, and sume fortunat meanes
  to me, wherby I myght recognise soo diepe merites, I take my leaue this
  7th of October from my House at Hakney. 1601.
  .
  Yowre most assured and louinge Broother.
  .
  (signed) Edward Oxenford (ital.; 4+7)
  .
  Addressed (O): To the ryghte honorable & my very good Broother Sir
  Robert Cecill on [=one] of her Magestyes pryvie Councel and principall
  Secretarie giue thes at the Coorte. [seal]
  .
  Endorsed: 1601 7 October: Erle of Oxenford to my Master.

-----------------------------------------
______ Hamlet (Q2, 1604) IV, iii

King.: Follow him at foote,
. Tempt him with speede abord,

. (D)elay it not, Ile haVe him hence to nig{H}T.
. (A)W{A}y, fo{R} eue{R}y th{I}ng i{S} SEALD and DONE
. (T)hat els leanes on th'affayre, pray you make hast,
. (A)nd England, if my loVe thou hold'st at ought,
........................................................
(D)elay it not, Ile haue him hence to nig-

Code: Select all

.   {H} T A W 
.   {A} y f o
.   {R} e u e
.   {R} y t h
_.  {I} n g i
.   {S} SEAL'D and DONE

-------------------------------------------------------

[Ann]

Please, Art, your quotes are great, but sometimes I find it difficult to understand them. I couldn't be bothered to read that 16th century text that you quoted, but I could see that the text appeared to contain the code, "Harris - sealed and done".

Okay. So who was Harris? And once you've explained that, in what way was he sealed and done?

Ann

[neufer]

Please, Art, your quotes are great, but sometimes I find it difficult to understand them.

My goal (other than amusing myself) is to get others to think.

If I explained things (which often I can't if I wanted to) then you would not be forced to think for yourself (= the goal).

I couldn't be bothered to read that 16th century text that you quoted, but I could see that the text appeared to contain the code, "Harris - sealed and done".

Okay. So who was Harris? And once you've explained that, in what way was he sealed and done?

Unlike Oxford's cousin Francis Bacon, I'm not sure who Harris was.

Perhaps Harris = Horace = yet another cousin of Edward de Vere.

In any event, it was probably Oxford's "BOOKE" that was "perfected" (i.e., censored, edited, modified, improved?) so that it could be published (i.e., sealed & done) under the pseudonym "Shake-speare."

(One of the successes of Bacon's Great Instauration is that you & I are communicating in English.)

[Ann]

Art wrote:

My goal (other than amusing myself) is to get others to think.

Yeah, well. We have different preferences. My goal is to explain things to myself and to others by being as clear as I can.

Perhaps Harris = Horace = yet another cousin of Edward de Vere.

To a Swede, there is only one Horace. That's Horace Engdahl, ex-chairman of the Nobel Prize committee.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

(One of the successes of Bacon's Great Instauration is that you & I are communicating in English.)

Indeed, English is the "lingua franca" of today. It will be a while until the Chinese manage to get Mandarin to replace English as the language that people use to communicate with each other across borders and language barriers.

Ann

[neufer]

(One of the successes of Bacon's Great Instauration is that you & I are communicating in English.)

Indeed, English is the "lingua franca" of today. It will be a while until the Chinese manage to get Mandarin to replace English as the language that people use to communicate with each other across borders and language barriers.

Right!

I had a younger colleague at work whose daughter was in immersion Japanese at grade school not so long ago back when the Japanese economy was on steroids. It's a shame that she didn't spend the time on math & science instead.

[Ann]

I should leave this thread well alone by now, but I can't resist...

A.O. Scott of the New York Times, wrote in his October 27, 2011 review, How Could a Commoner Write Such Great Plays?:

This is a Roland Emmerich film. (At least I assume it is, though I guess, in the spirit of the enterprise, I should be open to other possibilities. Joe Swanberg? Brett Ratner? Zhang Yimou? It all seems eerily plausible, once you start to think about it.)

Ann

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Ann]

Tsk, Art. You really think Leslie Howard could have distracted German Nazis by talking about Shakespeare? An English poet and playwright? And do you really think the Nazis would have been the least bit interested to hear that Shakespeare was in fact Edward de Vere? An aristocratic English fop? At best they would have told this silly Professor that what Shakespeare wrote was the literary equivalent of Entartete Kunst!

Now if he had told them that Shakespeare was really Goethe, the Nazis might have been more interested.

Talk about a Faustian bargain, though!


Ann

[Ann]

Now that I'm at it... I can't resist this. We have heard Art argue that Edward de Vere authored the works of Shakespeare. I have sort of argued against it, but I am anything but a Shakespeare scholar, so I can't pretend that my opinion means much.

And honestly, I might sort of think that the Stratford son authored his own works, but I there's no way I can know that he did. Absolutely not.

But there are Shakespeare scholars who claim they know that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, so to speak. Or at the very least, they claim to know that Edward de Vere wasn't Shakespeare. So I thought we might listen to one of these supporters of the glover's son. His name is Stephen Marche, and he wrote a three-page riff in New York Times on October 21, 2011. The whole opinion piece is here. But in case you don't want to read the whole text, I thought I might quote parts of it.

Shakespeare is finally getting the Oliver Stone/“Da Vinci Code” treatment, with a lurid conspiratorial melodrama involving incest in royal bedchambers, a vapidly simplistic version of court intrigue, nifty costumes and historically inaccurate nonsense. First they came for the Kennedy scholars, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Kennedy scholar. Then they came for Opus Dei, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic scholar. Now they have come for me.

Professors of Shakespeare — and I was one once upon a time — are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives. Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious. “Anonymous” subscribes to the Oxfordian theory of authorship, the contention that Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Among Shakespeare scholars, the idea has roughly the same currency as the faked moon landing does among astronauts.

The good news is that “Anonymous” makes an extraordinarily poor case for the Oxfordian theory. I could nitpick the film all day. (In fact, I did on the day I saw it.) Mistakes are plentiful and glaring. In an early scene, Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe watches a new play, “Henry V,” which supposedly happens on the same day that Lord Essex departs for Ireland. But Marlowe died in 1593, while Essex left for Ireland in 1599.

The theatrical censor responds with shock to the idea that in Shakespeare’s version of “Richard III,” the king is portrayed as a hunchback. But Shakespeare did not invent that idea. In the influential “History of Richard III,” by Thomas More, written around 1516, Richard is “little of stature, ill featured of limbs, crook backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right."

The craziest idea in “Anonymous,” however, is that Edward de Vere wrote a version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” 40 years before its performance at court, putting the composition of the play somewhere around 1560. (That’s what the film implies, anyway: we see a scene from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” performed at court, and then the title “40 Years Earlier,” and then a kid who turns out to be the earl reciting Puck’s final speech.)

The idea that a kid wrote “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” isn’t even the crazy part.

To put the issue in a contemporary framework, it’s one thing to say that somebody other than Jay-Z wrote “The Blueprint”; it’s another to say that this clandestine Jay-Z wrote “The Blueprint” in 1961. You can’t write a hip-hop masterpiece before hip-hop has been invented. And you can’t write “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” until English secular comedy has come into existence.

“Let me offer you a different story, a darker story,” the prologue of “Anonymous” announces, and like an Oliver Stone movie, it is fiction that wants to confuse itself with fact. It’s the best of both worlds for Emmerich: he gets to question hundreds of years of legitimate scholarship without any need to be consistent with basic chronology, because, after all, it’s just a movie.

And I fear that the attraction of the Oxfordian theory, to people who don’t know any better, may be profound. Counternarratives have an inevitable appeal:

wouldn’t it be cool if there were yetis?

If the United States Army were keeping extraterrestrial remains in the Nevada desert?

If aliens with powers beyond our imagination built the pyramids?

If Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare but actually this, like, lord who had to keep his identity secret?

The errors in “Anonymous,” I should point out, do not require great expertise to identify. Any undergraduate who has taken a course in Early Modern Drama, and paid attention, should be able to spot at least 10. (That might make a good exam, come to think of it.)

And the fatal weakness of the Oxfordian theory is chronological, a weakness that “Anonymous” never addresses: the brute fact that Edward de Vere died in 1604, while Shakespeare continued to write, several times with partners, until 1613. “Macbeth” and “The Tempest” were inspired by events posthumous to the Earl of Oxford: the gunpowder plot in 1605 and George Somers’s misadventure to Bermuda in 1609. How can anyone be inspired by events that happened after his death?

So, enough. It is impossible that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare. Notice that I am not saying improbable; it is impossible.

Okay, those were some of the points made by Stephen Marche! I just thought I might post them here.

Ann

[Ann]

Oh, and... on October 16, James Shapiro wrote this in his Op-Ed column, Hollywood Dishonors the Bard about Roland Emmerich's movie:

England’s virgin Queen Elizabeth is turned into a wantonly promiscuous woman who is revealed to be both the lover and mother of de Vere.

Wowzers!!! Aren't we in the wrong play now? Is this Oedipus Rex? Where Oedipus beds his own mother? But hey, what about Oedipus'/de Vere's father? Oedipus supposedly killed him. And see here what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_ ... _of_Oxford wrote about Edward de Vere:

On 23 July 1567 the seventeen-year-old Oxford killed Thomas Brincknell, an under-cook in the Cecil household

Amazing, eh? We are apparently inside a 16th century version of Oedipus Rex, where Edward "Oedipus" de Vere beds his own mother, the Queen, and kills his own father, the under-cook in the Cecil household!!!

What a super-sensation!!!

Ann

[neufer]

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?
by michael posner
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Nov. 08, 2011 5:00PM EST

michael posner

<<Did William Shakespeare write Hamlet, Macbeth and Twelfth Night – or is that the most famous nom de plume in history? With Roland Emmerich's film Anonymous making the case for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, the question of the authorship of these enduring plays is once again in the spotlight.

“All great truths begin as blasphemies” – George Bernard Shaw

It is, of course, the literary mystery of all time: Who wrote the 37 transcendent histories, comedies and tragedies, and the 154 sonnets commonly attributed to William Shakespeare, son of an illiterate glove-maker from Stratford-upon-Avon? The evidence in his favour is anorexic, while the problems that beset his alleged authorship are profound.

The certifiable facts of Shakespeare’s life – thought to be the original spelling of the family name – could be stencilled on a small sack of flour. That, it happens, is precisely the image depicted on the monument that first overlooked his grave; the iconic pen and quill were added 130 years later.

To his mourners, the “soul of the age,” as Ben Jonson called him, was neither playwright nor actor. He was a prosperous grain merchant. His death entry in the parish register recorded him simply as “Gent.”

While he lived, not one painter committed his likeness to canvas. More tellingly, when he died, no one thought to draft a single eulogy or to issue a commemorative edition of his work.

For every other Elizabethan writer, we have written evidence in their own hand. For Shakespeare, we have exactly nothing – not a play, not a sonnet, not a note scribbled on a taproom napkin. And nothing, as we know, can come of nothing.

The plays reveal an author who read exhaustively in several languages – Latin, Greek, French, Italian, even Hebrew. Yet Shakespeare bequeathed no library, not one book that bears his signature, nor (despite two decades of travel between Stratford and London) any correspondence. Not a single letter.

Indeed, of the 70 extant documents linked indisputably to the so-called Bard, not one connects him to the world of the theatre. What they describe, instead, is a mercenary landlord who relished suing men for petty sums. This from the dramatist who ostensibly wrote: “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties.”

Many of Shakespeare's female characters – Rosalind, Viola, Beatrice, Katherine, Lady Macbeth and Portia – are strong, free-thinking, proto-feminists. Why, then, was he content to let his own daughters be raised as functional illiterates?

It is not simply a matter of the impoverished education (though it is hard to reconcile the plays’ scholarship with the six grades young Will is thought to have completed). It is that nothing in Shakespeare’s life as we know it accords with the encyclopedic scope of the plays – the displayed mastery of law, science, math, heraldry, astronomy, the court, the military, music and falconry.

I therefore vote with Henry James, who feared that “the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a patient world.”

Patient, we remain, alas, and still credulous.>>

[Ann]

Well, Art, you have argued pretty convincingly that the glover's son from Stratford didn't author the works of Shakespeare.

Stephen Marche and James Shapiro have argued pretty convincingly that the 17th Earl of Oxford didn't author the works of Shakespeare.

So what are we left with? Maybe Ben Johnson authored the works of Shakespeare. Maybe Francis Bacon wrote them. Maybe yet another one of the circa seventeen Shakespeare candidates wrote the works of Shakespeare.

Or else no one wrote the works of Shakespeare, and his works are just a figment of our collective imagination. Maybe his works are a manifestation of our deep-seated archetypes, which are so archetypically super-archetypic that they couldn't help making themselves corporeally real, drawing on our collective fantasies and combined vocabulary to transform our collective subconsciousness into words written down on paper and words rolling off the tongues of thespians.

Or else the works of Shakespeare were really written by Michael Delahoyde, our friendly visitor from Delta Horologium, which is why no Earthly 16th and 17th century author can be found for them.

Ann

[neufer]

James Shapiro wrote, on October 16, this in his Op-Ed column, Hollywood Dishonors the Bard about Roland Emmerich's movie:

On 23 July 1567 the seventeen-year-old Oxford killed Thomas Brincknell, an under-cook in the Cecil household

Amazing, eh? We are apparently inside a 16th century version of Oedipus Rex, where Edward "Oedipus" de Vere beds his own mother the Queen and kills his own father the under-cook in the Cecil household!!!

Sounds sorta familiar though :
------------------------------­--------------------------
_____________ Hamlet > Act IV, scene I

KING CLAUDIUS: What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
__ Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
__ Behind the arras hearing something stir,
__ Whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
__ And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
__ The unseen good old man.
----------------------------------------------------------
. Is Shakespeare Dead - Mark Twain ** ( CHAPTER III )
.
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.
.
Of good farmer-class parents who could not read,
could not write, could not sign their names.
.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day
was shabby & unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the
19 important men charged with the government of the town,
13 had to "make their mark" in attesting important documents,
because they could not write their names.
.
Of the first 18 years of his life NOTHING is known.
They are a blank.
.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare
took out a license to marry Anne WHATEley.
.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to
marry Anne Hathaway. She was eight years his senior.
------------------------------------------------------
<<There is an old English word *WHATE* ,
. meaning *FORTUNE, FATE, or DESTINY*,
. I think that in a desperate moment of inspiration,
. confused before the clerk, Shakespeare reached
. into his heart and came out with the name of that Anne
. who would have been his choice, his FATE, his DESTINY.>>
.
. - _The Late Mr. Shakespeare_ by Robert Nye
------------------------------------------------------
*WHATE-LEY* : the impost of fortune, *FATE, or DESTINY*

*FATA* : (Latin) *FATE, or DESTINY*
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The lines below the 1640 Marshall image of
William Shakespeare are as follows:

This Shadow is renowned Shakespear's? Soule of th' age
The applause? Delight? The wonder of the Stage.
Nature her selfe, was proud of his designs

{A}nd joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines,
{T}he learned will confess his works as such
{A}s neither man, nor Muse can praise to much
{F}or *EVER live thy FAME* , the world to tell,

Thy like, no age, shall *EVER* paralell

- John WeEVER's Epigrammes
in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion

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. [ON *POET-APE* ] EPIGRAMS by Ben Jonson
.
Poor *POET-APE* , that would be thought our chief,
____ Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,
{F}rom brokage is become so bold a thief,
____ As we, the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it.
{A}t first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
____ Buy the rEVERsion of old plays ; now grown
{T}o a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
____ He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own :
{A}nd, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
____ The sluggish gaping auditor devours ;
. He marks not whose 'twas first : and after-times
____ May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
________ Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece
________ From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece ?
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. Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1842) - Alfred Lord Tennyson

KIND HEARTS ARE MORE THAN CORONETS,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
.........................................................
(Earls wore *CORONETS* rather than CROWNS.)
.........................................................
QUEEN GERTRUDE: There, on the pendent boughs her *CORONET* weeds
. Clambring to hang, an *ENVIOU(s) SLIVER* broke...
.........................................................
______ *ENVIOU(s) SLIVER*
______ *NIL VE(r)O VERIUS* - Oxford Motto
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______ *NIL VERO-VERIU(s) POET*
______ *OUR EVER-LIVIN(g) POET* - Sonnets Dedication
------------------------------------------
http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/anagrams/text.html
____ *EDOUARUS V(e)IERUS*
_____ per anagramma
____ *AURE SUR(d)US VIDEO*
.
{A}uribus hisce licet studio, Fortuna, susurros
{PE}rfidiae et technas efficis esse procul,
. Attamen accipio (quae mens horrescit et auris)
. Rebus facta malis corpora surda tenus.
. Imo etiam cerno Catilinae¶ fraude propinquos
. Funere solventes *FATA* aliena suo.
.............................................
_______ *EDWARD VERE*
______ by an anagram
____ *DEAF IN MY EAR, I SEE*

Though by your zeal, FORTUNE, you keep perfidy's
murmurs & schemings at a distance, nonetheless I learn
(at which my mind & ear quake) that our bodies have
been deafened with respect to evil affairs. Indeed,
I perceive men who come close to Catiline* in deception,
freeing other men's *FATES* by their death.
.
¶ Catiline was the rabble-rouser suppressed by Cicero.
His name became a watchword for incendiary troublemakers.>>
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<<On the titlepage of the first edition
. of Venus & Adonis is the Ovidian phrase
.
. *Vilia miretur vulgus* ... "
.
or, "allow the public to admire that which is sordid.">>
. - Rowse, A.L. ed., The Annotated Shakespeare, 1984.
....................................................
. . P. Ovidius Naso, Amores
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.amor1.shtml
.
XV *Vilia miretur vulgus* ; mihi flavus Apollo+
. Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua,
. Sustineamque coma metuentem frigora myrtum,
. Atque a sollicito multus amante legar!
. Pascitur in vivis Livor; post *FATA* quiescit+,
. Cum suus ex merito quemque tuetur honos.
. Ergo etiam cum me supremus adederit ignis++,
. Vivam, parsque mei multa superstes erit.
.
. . Marlowe translation:
.
. Let base conceited wits admire vilde things,
. *FAIRE* Phoebus leade me to the Muses springs.
. About my head be QUIVERING Mirtle wound,
. And in sad lovers heads let me be found.
. The living, not the dead can ENVIE bite,
. For after death all men receive their right:
. Then though death rackes my bones in funerall fler,
. lie live, and as he puls me downe, mount higher
------------------------------------

[starstruck]

I'd just like to say, Ann hath a way with words!

[Beyond]

I'd just like to say, Ann hath a way with words!

And Jane hath a way with the Beverly Hill Billys.

[neufer]

I'd just like to say, Ann hath a way with words!

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*If others have their WILL Ann HATH a way* - James Joyce's *ULYSSES*
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• 'I HATE' from *HATE away* SHE threw,
  And sav'd my life, saying 'not you'
  .
  - Shake-speare's Sonnet 145 (final couplet)

<<If the puns are insisted upon, it is always possible that Shakespeare sent off this sonnet to his wife when he was writing the other ones, to assure her that all was well. The other sonnets were hardly such as to promote marital concord, and one wonders how she might have responded to their publication in 1609.>>

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• "That I do WASTE with others' love,
  *that HATH myself in HATE* "
  .
  - Edward de Vere poem: _Even as the wax doth melt_

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______ Romeo and Juliet Act II, scene II

ROMEO: By a name
__ I know not how to tell thee who I am:
__ My name, dear saint, is HATEful to myself,
--------------------------------------------------