So what? There's no record of anyone attending Stratford's grammar school until long after Shakespeare died. We don't have records of Ben Jonson's attendance at Westminster either, but that doesn't mean he didn't go.
I have seen her read an excerpt here on youtube and I have seen her well done video about Marlowe's death also here on youtube. Thanks for the plug though. Also, liked it when you threw it back to the academic and author who doubted the doubters.
Evidently we was wealthy enough (due to his father's status as a merchant and member of the town council) to attend school. Libraries were not public but private. Books were extant-where did the others (other students) get them--they were passed and copied.
It is not just his signature (in fact, I believe that only one of the alleged Shakespeare signatures is genuine: the third signature on his will, preceeded by the words "by me"), but the fact that not a single scrap of writing by the Stratford man exists anywhere. And it is not just that so many of the plays are set in Italy; they contain an intimate knowledge of Italian customs of the day that could only have been learned by someone who had lived in that country.
A fine point which i have considered in reading about and watching documentaries about Shakespeare. There is no record of Will at Stratford's infamous grammar school and no indication that Shakespeare was learned in anything but business. People may assume he knew how to read because he was an actor and therefore had to read scripts. Furthermore, he seemed to come from a family that valied the bottom line of business which explains Will's cut throat persona as a businessman.
There is no record of ANYONE at Stratford Grammar school at the time. But several Stratford men went on to Oxford. So according to your logic, these people (including Richard Field, Shakespeare's first publisher) were fakes, used as frontmen by aristocrats.
Whether it's touching, genuinely idolatrous, etc., is a matter of opinion. For me the eulogy reads as hollow and extravagant; it seems the equivalent of today's gushing blurbs printed on the backs of novels to hype the author and the work. Not a line of Johnson's poem humanizes Shakespeare, intimates some quality of his personality, or gives the slightest glimpse of his lifestyle.
People's handwriting didn't 'have to be better than today' because people would often employ a scribe or clerk to write for them. I'm not saying that Shakespeare employed a scribe but it's a bit ignorant to make that statement about handwriting.
Spelling back then didn't matter. People spelled their names in differernt ways: Shakspere, Marley, Decere, Jhonson. Shakespeare wrote for the same people for more than 20 years. They must have gotten very used to his handriting, even if it was bad. Shakespeare's spelling was unique, often called funny. Almost EVERY playwright set plays in Italy, fool!!!! Middleton, Webster, Johnson, and others all set plays in Italy. Italy was the fashion back then. No mystery here. Yes Marlowe was only a few months older than Shakespeare, but he started writing plays before Shakespere, who arrived in London in 1587. He and Kyd, and Lily were the first. Shakespeare no doubt copied from Marlowe, was an acolyte to the great master. Stipulating that Marlowe faked his death and went in exiile in Italy, there is no reason for him to write plays that he would never see, since he was also a poet. He did not need Shakespeare. Phillip Henslowe's Rose Theater had performed all of his plays: Tamburlaine, Jew of Malta, Faustus. All he h ad to do was send them to Henslowe and put a pen name on like Ernest Hemingway or J.K. Rowling. Or "Anonymous". Many plays with no author's name on them were performed. The notion that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare is pure idle speculation, with no foundation in fact, and actually illogical.
Either a troublesome spy was spared, and allowed to create a new life for himself, possibly in Italy, where he found a way of sending work back to London... and somehow knew exactly who was going to be in the cast ... ... or a boy from Stratford turned out to be good at poetry. Which is more likely?
I don't get the Marlowe theory but I don't think WM Shakspere businessman is the author either. Tale of Wondrous William ruclips.net/video/5Ns3rMMobIM/видео.html Mark Twain's "Is Shakespeare Dead? ruclips.net/video/cJ72Ew1ujlk/видео.html About 30-years ago the US SUpreme Court held a mock court on the topic of who wrote Shake-speare - you'll have to look for that video yourself.
Furthermore, it is not just that "Marlowe was more renowned as a writer than Shakespeare by age thirty." Shakespeare as a writer did not exist while Marlowe was alive; not a single line had been published under that name. Then, two weeks after Marlowe's supposed death, "Venus and Adonis" appears out of nowhere, with the name William Shake-Speare on the title page. The evidence pointing to Marlowe is circumstantial, but it is overwhelming.
In case, you're still curious. Tale of Wondrous William ruclips.net/video/5Ns3rMMobIM/видео.html Mark Twain's "Is Shakespeare Dead? ruclips.net/video/cJ72Ew1ujlk/видео.html About 30-years ago the US SUpreme Court held a mock court on the topic of who wrote Shake-speare - you'll have to look for that video yourself. Here is a lawyer's summary of the Grand Jury Indictment ruclips.net/video/95sGqeR_uOE/видео.html Reclaiming Oxfordian's Past - great orderly discussion of why not the business agent Wm Shakpere ruclips.net/video/9doWyFSeFKg/видео.html
One of Shakespeare's plays has a scene of a cheeky bright schoolboy called William in dialogue with his Welsh teacher making jokes based on Latin. There was a Welsh teacher at the Stratford Grammar School at the time when Shakespeare was of an age to be going there.
@defiantwon33 What we have are the plays. Compare M to S. A very differnt style. If the hypothosis is right-M faked his death and wrote the plays- I think that it is up to that camp to show the similarities as well as the evidence that M was not killed, that he escaped somehow, and continued to live and content to disappear. The 'I faked my death' is only as good as when we find the evidence that he did not die. Otherwise, he died. !
To me one of the most powerful agruments against the Stratford man's authorship is one I have never seen mentioned anywhere. Thomas Nashe, a man after my own heart, wrote extensively about his contemporaries, praising them, attacking them, defending them and mocking them. There is scarcely a figure in all of Elizabethan literature he doesn't have something to say about. So what does he say about William Shakespeare of Stratford? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a single word. This is remarkable.
So, basically, you think the absence of one piece of evidence cancels out the fact that every single piece of documentary evidence on the subject extant and every contemporary testimony on the subject credits William Shakespeare as an author. Why? I will never understand the idea that what we _don't_ have is more valuable evidence than what we do. In fact, what we don't have isn't evidence at all because we _don't have it_ .
Marlowe's death was May 30th 1593. According to The Shakespeare Birthday Trust, Venus and Adonis was "entered into the Stationers Register (the English government pre-publication registry) in April, 1593." Which seems to sit at odds with what is claimed in this video. This, of course, might be wrong. But I can't find a different date. But as I dug just a little deeper I found it was at that point unnamed. Make of that what you will.
MARLOWE LACKED THE WIDE, BROAD, but deeply dense EDUCATION REQUIRED OF THE PSEUDONYMOUS WM. SHAKE-SPEARE, whoever he was. I would argue he lacked the languages, & knowledge of law & medicine. He lacked the NOBILITY required of whoever claims the name Wm. Shake-speare b/c there were no libraries. I know he mastered Latin. He still needed Greek, French, Spanish, & Italian.
My main problem with the idea that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's plays, beyond all the evidence that points to the two being different men, is that the two bodies of work seem to show significantly different themes and philosophical outlooks on the part of their respective authors. Marlowe's works seems more skeptical, cynical, and subversive while Shakespeare is more optimistic.
My take is this: My evidence is the work. Why is it so hard to accept that a creative mind, immersed in a creative atmosphere, cannot be creative? Why a conspiracy? What to gain? And to hide for so many generations? have you ever met a playwrite? Even as a ghostwriter, you cannot keep that a secret. What conspiracy? Please change my mind-I would love to see the evidence, not the lack of evidence.
Again, I respectfully ask, (because we do not know as much about S as M(Who came frome the same class, who came from the same backround-should I be asking 'how'd he learn so much in a few years at University-to write that!' And who is hardly ever performed-comparatively- because he is so dense with references, so laden with scholarship-see Faust- that it is almost undecipherable what is the evidence that S did not, or was not capable?
It is not about belief. I can believe the world is flat. The evidence does not bear it out. Education in the grammer schools of Shakespeare included Latin and Greek and history. What, in the plays, singularly demand a 'special knowledge' that could not be gleaned from other sources as opposed to 'going there'? Did the writers of 'Dallas' have special knowlege of the inner workings of a rich, powerful, oil-rich family?
I can't see how the issue of Venus & Adonis being registered anonymously shortly before Marlowe's death, but published with Shakespeare's name shortly after, is significant at all. The example of Marlowe's Hero & Leander, registered on 28 September 1593 & published 1598, show that Elizabethans had no problem with posthuomus publication or registration. There would have been no reason to shy away from putting Marlowe's name on the published text if he had written.
It's not that simple, for Shakespeare and Marlowe are producing plays concurrently to each other for a time, and still show a marked differences in style and philosophy. Are we to assume that Marlowe was writing such discordantly different works in terms of quality and mindset, at the same time?
Who said he was "uneducated"? Do you have any idea how intense an education he would have received by modern standards at the Stratford school? 12 hours a day, six days a week for 8 years - you call that "uneducated"? And as for indicating nothing in his will, plays in his day belonged to the company, not the author - they weren't his to will to anyone.
Again, respectfully, it is you that have to produce the evidence that the man (S) did not write what folks say he wrote. "Oh, he could not have written that!" Well, why not? You say he was not educated. Well, he attended school. He could not have known about the court. Everyone did (like the other playwrites of the period.
Two comments ! Sweet! The salt is in the tasting-I am not familiar with the phrase. Could you enlighten me?
*....your first statement doesn't make any sense: if you believed the world was flat that means you are not privy to the evidence that disproves it. * Evidence is extant and provable that the earth is round. 'Belief' does not change that evidence.
It is not about belief. I can believe the world is flat. The evidence does not bear it out. Education in the grammer schools of Shakespeare included Latin and Greek and history. What, in the plays, singularly demand a 'special knowledge' that could not be gleaned from other sources as opposed to 'going there'?
Whoever wrote the plays simply had to be present at the theatre when they were being produced. That let's Marlowe out. Ditto Oxford and effectively Bacon too. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and he was a glover's son from Stratford. He was a hick and he did it anyway. Get over yourselves.
I ask again: reading the plays-what is the inference that this man did not write them? You mention Italy. His references are wrong. (Lions in the forestof Arden, for example) place names, yes. But nothing else. What is the anti-thought that an actor/playwrite could not have written these plays?
There is no evidence that Shakespeare ever attended ANY school. Furthermore, the fact that his father never hired an apprentice argues against his attending the Stratford grammar school. Young Will was probably helping his father in his trade.
Burroughs never went to Mars, HG Welles never went to the places he 'imagined". The burden of of proof is on you to provide that this individual had no imagination, no resources, no theatrical saavey to write.
Further,( if I may) It is, in a way, like asserting that Einstein could not have conceived his theory of relativity because he was a poor student and worked as a lower clerk for so many years.
Jonson doesn't even come across as ever having known Shakespeare. Instead, he almost seems to be writing about an abstraction - a mere name. No wonder then that a lot of people are not won over by it.
Again, an assumption. We dont know if Will went to a petty school or the Grammar school proper. You have to assume that he went to school. Assumptions arent evidence. Notice the way you craft your point is the same way Stratfordians make their case. "Well, we know this school existed and offered this type of latin grammar and classcial literature curricula" So the crust of history or other facts are used as a pie with no filling-meaning proof or verfiable facts. Doesnt seem delicious to me.
Or another cliche .... absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We don't have any evidence that he defecated, so we just have to assume he shat in the normal way. He was clearly literate, or how could he be an actor?
+Steve Bari That's not exactly the question. more like, are their valid doubts about Shakespeare and of the proposed hidden hands , how does Marlowe rank. See th full film, Steve.
No there are no valid doubts only wishful innuendos by people have a bone in their craw about Shakespeare. The thinking goes something like this: If your name is Shakespeare you are a criminal, if you are any other playwright you get a free pass. A double standard where one measuring stick is used to vilify Shakespeare and not used on any other contemporary playwright. Out of the proposed hands Marlowe is the worst as he was dead and his style doesn't even match Shakespeare. So no, Marlowe was not Shakespeare.
I believe that the Shakespeare plays were written by a Knight Templars centuries before his birth and "the Stratford man" was merely an upstart literary agent and mediocre actor. Prove me wrong! Nyah!
defiantwon33 - Actual scholarship has discovered that there was a book store in London during the time of Shakespeare's career that sold every single book which we can trace as source material for Shakespeare's plays. What is more, this book store was owned and operated by some one FROM Stratford-upon-Avon. This is for anyone claiming "there's no evidence Shakespeare had access to books" argument (as if such volumes btw were particularly hard to get)
Nobody is saying he had no access to books, David We are saying that he left no books in his worldy posaession via his will, not even first edtions of his own works which for someone who loved money , is weird........... Also, about 100 years later, a reverened scholar whose name I forget, puzzled by the above, seached the area around Stratfdord, convinced there must be a cache of the Bards books somewhere............. He found none and became one of the first doubters. it's fine and admirable, David MacDowell Blue, to support Ws, but dont cheat. Dont ignore the evidence on the other side, and in this case, see the full film, Much ado about Something
Michael Rubbo Lots of folks who we know had large libraries in that period didn't mention such in their wills (others did). First editions? Why would he have purchased copies of his own plays, especially when he was getting no money from them (copyright being nonexistent at the time)? He had no notion the folios and quartos would be priceless one day. How could he? More, Shakespeare's will also omitted mentioning all kinds of specifics we know he owned (his "first best bed" for example). This isn't even circumstantial evidence. It doesn't even count as a clue.
too dismissive, David, an American academic, whose name I forget, it's 10 years since I made the movie , decided to conclusively address your sort of argument. She created a grid which down one side, listed all the activities and attributes, things owned, that you would expect from a writer. For instance, books, letters written, conversations with other writers recorded, tributes on death.etc. She went to a lot of trouble to list all the clues that would stand the test of time, for of course so much is lost, but then it's lost for all the writers of the era................ Against the grid, she put the names of the 30 or so most prominent writers of the period, and then scored them according to the literary residue they left. Shakespeare's score was the lowest. if I think of the name of the book , I'll send it on.................. That's not conclusive proof. More a question of adding to the puzzle. The puzzle as to why his daughters were illiterate and his granddaughter too, and yet the author put such a stock on the education of women, even peasent women. The fact that his son-in-law,John Hall, a doctor an educated man who loved poetry, who you'd think would have been very proud and boastful about his father-in-law, never mentioned the great writer, and never received a copy of the first Folio. For John , Shakespeare did not appear to be a great playwright. And yet we know his plays had a lot of impact at the time. The incidence of parents calling their children by names of characters in the plays, for example. And on and on.
Michael Rubbo So someone came up with a list and Shakespeare scored low on that list. I'm not impressed because what you described can barely be described as evidence. More, you are taking a statistical view of verification, which is great when you're looking at groups and collectives. It is very nearly useless when trying to describe or predict individuals. Even assumptions based on social norms and contextual traditions can easily be shown to have constant exceptions. John Hall for example was a puritan, and they has a group strongly disapproved of theater in general--more, there is circumstantial evidence Shakespeare was associated with the Old Faith (i.e. the Catholic Church). This would be akin to a member of the Tea Party boasting their father-in-law was famous Muslim on welfare. That is an example of what I mean by social norms and expectations--which you didn't even seem to consider, frankly. And like practically everyone you forget there was another major decision maker when it came to the Shakespeare family--namely, his wife the former Anne Hathaway. I'm not claiming anything in particular about her opinions, but why is it no one thinks it might have been the other parent making day to day decisions for the children? Just as (sorry on a bit of rant here) almost everyone (not just the Anti-Stratfordians) pretty much ignore William Shakespeare's mother and her family the Ardens--and their story says a lot I think about the milieu in which W.S. grew up. You want to have any hope of understanding any human being you have to look at as much of the whole picture as you can--and use Occam's razor with a vengeance much of the time. Which is precisely what Anti-Stratfordians refuse to do with Shakespeare. Sorry, but I really do regard you as little better than a Truther, a Birther or a Creationist. Because I've seen one argument after another given much more weight than seems remotely merited, or (more often) is easily refuted. Like the above with John Hall and the illiteracy of Shakespeare's daughters. This is btw EXACTLY the kind of arguments I see from Creationists, from Truthers and from Birthers (as well as JFK Conspiracy Theorists and others).
***** I believe I'll look at what professional historians whose expertise is in the field rather than a brilliant novelist and notorious curmudgeon said over a century ago, never having had any access to modern scholarship on the question. But you might want to do a quick search on "logical fallacies" especially used in debate. This one is "appeal to authority".
I have read the sonnets, yes. Yes , questions abound! But my conundrum remains-why is it seemingly unacceptible that a man, an individual mind, create? Without 'secret knowledge', not knowing about the "inner workings" of the court--all of that---why is a conspiracy theory required? Can it not just be that the spark be (Like an Einstein-ian moment) just admired and awed at? The debate is fine-and should be encouraged-but it is tha work that matters.
I want to see this whole movie. I find Christopher Marlowe to be a fascinating figure and a great writer whether he wrote Shakespeare's works or not. I am a Stratfordian, because when in doubt, the simplest theory is the most likely one, i.e. Shakespeare was Shakespeare, and no one in Shakespeare's time seemed to be in any doubt that Shakespeare wrote his plays; no one came up with any of these theories until over 100 year later. However, the Marlovian theory is the most plausible and appealing.
I believe Marlow was one of the Knights of the Helmet, which was led by Sir Francis Bacon. See "Secrets of Americas Beginnings-The New Atlantis". Halfway into the film there is an excellent case that Bacon was the real Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Barlow and others contributed.
The "voice" is not to do with rhetoric. It's the kind of thing that let's you recognise a writer's work when you hear it even if you are not told who it is. Same with painters. They can be recognised by their style and techniques.
To read the plays of Christopher Marlowe is to know that this man could not have written the plays of William Shakespeare. He simply didn't have the talent. Marlowe's plays show little interest in plot or character. They usually involve one dominant central character (Tamburlaine, Faustus, The Jew of Malta) surrounded by a lot of cardboard cut outs. He was a good poet and did more than anyone else to establish the blank verse drama as the principal mode of dramatic expression in the late 1580s. In other words he set the stage for Shakespeare, an infinitely superior artist. Shakespeare was a well established playwright by the time Marlowe died. His first series of history plays (the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III) had been staged to great acclaim before the plague closed the theatres in September 1592 (eight months before Marlowe died). In terms of plot, character and verse, Richard III is better than anything Marlowe ever wrote and yet it is nowhere near Shakespeare's best work. The great quality of Shakespeare as a writer is that all his characters live, have their own integrity, while Shakespeare himself remains invisible in the work. These qualities are entirely lacking in Marlowe's plays. One thing we can be quite certain of is that Marlowe had a giant ego. Marlowe is Tamburlaine. Marlowe is Faustus. Marlowe is the Jew. Nobody else matters in his plays.
Marlowe was not Shakespeare. His written "voice" is not like Shakespeare's and Shakepeare's female characters show a great insight into the female psyche. Marlowe was gay and never showed that in his plays. Einstein and Karl Marx also had terrible handwriting so why not Shakespeare? Shakespeare was entitled to go to the Grammar school for free as an Alderman's son. We don't need the school register to have been preserved to prove it. Many historical records perished.
I agree, Helen. Even a cursory reading of Marlowe and Shakespeare side by side shows entirely different voices. I don't know if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, but just based on my own reading of both of them, I'm pretty convinced that Marlowe didn't write Shakespeare. A Marlovian friend of mine says that Shakespeare is "Marlowe's evolved voice", which I scoff at. The time between Marlowe's "death" and Shakespeare really taking off as a playwright is too short for any sort of artistic evolution, especially of the magnitude it would take to morph from Marlowe to Shakespeare. Stephen King doesn't suddenly start writing like Dean Koontz...
Such as "when I beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with bootless cries". The sonnets in particular are very emotional and highly charged and powerful. So much for optimistic Will!
Yes, but the END of that sonnet is: Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. Wonderful, life affirming, joyous.
Something called a "petty school" would have been attached to the grammar school, and it was there that very young children would have learned a "minimal foundation"; a graduate of an Elizabethan grammar school would have been more familiar with Roman literature than a present day holder of a degree in classics. It was within walking distance of Shakespeare's house, it would have been free to him by virtue of his father's office, there's no reason to think he didn't go.
Experts have said that Shakespeare's handwriting survives in a manuscript of a play about Sir Thomas Moore that he wrote jointly with Thomas Middleton. Van Gogh was not "trained" as painter by the way. He taught himself
Van Gogh spent two years in his teens working in a commercial art gallery dealing in Modern French art. So for those two years he was exposed to the works of 19th century French painters including the Impressionists. Hi first works are extremely amateurish. One could also say that his later and finest works were also amateurish, IF JUDGED AS IMPRESSIONISM. He showed an enormous and original talent in ONE SPECIFIC area of achievement. Shakespeare, on the other hand, demonstrated a vast knowledge of literary form, foreign languages, history, literature both ancient and modern, Classical mythology, medicine, the pursuits of the nobility, warfare, and countries abroad. Likening Shakespeare to van Gogh does not form a happy balance. One better could compare Shakespeare to Leonardo da Vinci, the bastard son of a Notary. Leonardo, like Shakespeare, but a hundred years earlier, demonstrated a vast and varied knowledge. But in the case of Leonardo, we know precisely where that knowledge came from, and also why he had certain shortcomings. Leonardo was reared by his mother until he was five, then taken into the house of his father and educated by his Grandfather and Uncle. He demonstrated considerable artistic talent and painted a terrifying Medusa (which is what one might expect of a clever teenager. So hi father moved to Florence and apprenticed him to the most prestigious art master in the city, where he came in contact with a group of slightly older and very important masters. We can trace when he would have come in contact with his first great oil painting, and been led to change his methods. We know where the thirty bodies that he dissected cme from. We have detailed drawings of all his experiments in the study ofn the movement of water, of birds in flight, of geological stratas, of botany, of horses and of warfare. We know that he DID NOT learn languages, but that he DID have the opportunity to learn mathematics from a great professor. We also know that his engineering skills did not come out of no-where, as h had access to all the sophisticated machinery invented by Brunellescchi. So when we look at a great Leonardo painting, such as the Virgin of the Rocks, we can trace the studies in anatomy, lighting, geology, draperies, and botany that went towards its creation. But with Shakespeare, we are told that he got it all at a little grammar school.
MandyJMaddison "Shakespeare, on the other hand, demonstrated a vast knowledge of literary form, foreign languages, history, literature both ancient and modern, classical mythology, medicine, the pursuits of nobility, warfare, and countries abroad." Actually, he did few of those things. I challenge you to show me anywhere in the canon where he did. Literary form: Shakespeare demonstrated no understanding whatever of Aristotelian poetics, which was highly prized by his university-educated peers. He was called out for his lack of classical learning by several of his peers. What he does demonstrate is an astounding comprehension of theater stagecraft. If by literary form, you mean he knee how to write a sonnet, well, so does any ninth grader. Foreign Languages: He could clearly read Latin, and probably French. Not German, maybe Spanish, and not Greek. His one play with French in it (other than occasional salutations) is Henry V. The scene is basically a litany of English words that sound dirty in French. He could have gotten any one of thousands of Frenchmen living in London to translate the rest. This was probably unnecessary, as his friend Richard Field, with nothing more than a grammar school education, got an apprenticeship with a French printer who held the monopoly on Latin texts. Languages were well within the grasp of someone from Shakespeare's background. History: Shakespeare's demonstrated knowledge of history comes from two primary sources. He copies whole swaths from Holingshed's Chronicles and The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York. His first Henriad he took whole from a prior play. Literature: (Ancient) Latin sources taught in grammar school, yes. Greek sources taught in university, no. (Modern) he was well read. He wrote for the theater and was always looking for material, sometimes from foreign language sources, but usually in English translations. None of this was unusual for someone from the middle class. Classical Mythology: not so much. Check out any of his contemporaries to see what "expert" in this subject looks like. Medicine: not really. His later works show a better understanding, but by then he had a son in law who was a doctor. The pursuits of nobility: His early patron, the Baron Hunsdon, was the Lord Chamberlain and the Queen's cousin. His later patron was the King, himself. Nuff said about that. Warfare: Shakespeare took most of his battle scenes from earlier sources and from popular histories. He lived in the capital of a nation constantly at war. Taverns, inns, even his theater would be regularly filled with soldiers and sailors. Countries abroad: Shakespeare makes so many mistakes about countries abroad that it's hard to imagine anyone thinking he had been there. He places Padua in Lombardy instead of Venice, because that's where Ortellius' atlas puts it. If you've been there, you don't need an atlas to tell you which kingdom rules which city. In short, estimates of Shakespeare's learning are always overestimated by people who A) haven't read Shakespeare, B) haven't read his contemporaries, and C) want to prove an upper-middle-class gentleman couldn't have written it.
MandyJMaddison And no, you are not told Shakespeare got it all at a little grammar school. That's the Anti-Stratfordian spin on the real history. So far as we know, his formal education ended at grammar school. I don't know about you, but my study didn't end when I graduated.
Okay, deniers of William Shakespeare, the Immortal Bard of Avon, what do these personages have in common? -- Henry Willobie, William Covell, Richard Barnfield, John Weever, Thomas Freeman, Anthony Scoloker, Henry Chettle, William Camden, William Barksted, Leonard Digges, and John Webster? Answer: Aside from being contemporaries of Shakespeare, and writers, poets, dramatists, they all acknowledge the authorship of William Shakespeare. And no one else, as the author of his plays. Question two: Who was rumored to be the anonymous author of Shakespeare's plays during his lifetime and for years afterward? Answer: No one. There was no reason to doubt Shakespeare as author of the plays. Question: When did Marlowe claim to have written Shakespeare's plays? Answer: Never. Question: What is the true motivation behind the Shakespeare Authorship "controversy"? Answer: Profit.
LaslosPlane, I have been convinced since reading Shakespeare in my teenage years, that the man from Stratford upon Avon, with his limited educational opportunities, would have had great difficulty writing the plays attributed to him MY fervent belief that it was someone else, and my frequent statement of that conviction has earned me considerable ridicule and NO FINANCIAL GAIN WHATSOEVER, yet I will continue to say it. In fact, exactly the opposite is true- the town of Stratford upon Avon, with all its tourism and hype, is a major financial drawcard for Britiain. The popular study of Shakespeare financially benefits a thousand conservative academics who don't want to rock the boat for fear of being laughed at. An actor who doubts might never play Shakespeare again. Profit has nothing to do with the controversy, and to say so indicates that your thinking is decidedly muddled!
MandyJMaddison So academy award winner Mark Rylance had had his career ruined by sharing your beliefs? SIR Derek Jacobi? His career has been ruined? If you look at the long history of English Literature, you will discover that, aside from Byron and his aristocratic circle, every poet and every writer of note was a product of the lower or middle classes. The undisputed master of Shakespeare's day, Ben Jonson, was the stepson of a bricklayer. He may have had a grammar school education, but that's no more certain than it is for Shakespeare. He did not attend a university. Yet his work was esteemed far more eriudite than was Shakespeare's. In a letter to Jonson, fellow poet Francis Beaumont expressed a wish...here, I'll let him explain it. "...I would let slip if I had any in me scholarship, and from all learning keep these lines as dear as Shakespeare's best are, as our heirs shall hear preachers apt to their auditors to show how far somtimes a mortal man may go by the dim light of nature." Everyone from Shakespeare's era who commented on his level of learning agreed, he was not highly educated. He "borrowed" his plots and his structure. He wrote popular plays for the public stage, not high poetry for the intelligentsia. His talent was in his wit and his wordplay. If you read the work of some of his contemporaries, you will see what I mean. Grammar schools focused on Latin classics, while universities were all about the Greeks. Among all of his contemporaries, who was the one who turned least often to Greek sources? That would be Shakespeare. His works demonstrate a strong dependence on the standard curriculum of the English Grammar school.
I eally have to laugh at your statement that Shakespeare did not write "High poetry for the intelligentsia"! Are we ignoring the sonnets, then? OK, if Shakespeare went to Grammar School, he would have learnt some Latin. and let us presume that he was prodigiously talented at learning language. So he just picked up Grek Italian, French, Spanish and German, along the way. He also, along with knowing about leather and tools, understood the Law well enough to be able to sustain a metaphor with a dozen legal expressions in a single sonnet. (But then we do know he was rather litigious). He also picked up a wealth of knowledge of courtly life- falconry, jousting, dancing, chamber music. He had a prodigious knowledge of warfare and tactics. He knew the Bible very well indeed. He understood the politics of courtly life as if he was a member of that inner circle. And his knowledge of Italian places is astounding to someone who has visited the Forum, Verona, Padua and Italy. He captures the essence of those locations, right out of his own vivid imagination, we are told, and without the advantages of Goggle Earth. When one looks at the history of England's greatest authors, the majority are, as you say, Middle Class. But they are Middle Class men educated at Westminster School, Winchester, and Shrewsbury Grammar. The same attended Oxford, Cambridge or Trinity. If we consider Milton Addison, Sir Philip Sidney etc, we find that they had been abroad on the Grand Tour. Even Ben Jonson, deprived as he was of a university education, travelled abroad to the Netherlands, and drew on his experiences as a soldier. If we compare Shakespeare with another genius, Leonardo da Vinci, then we know the disadvantage that the latter suffered from his lack of eligibility to university (he was illegitimate). Leonardo's training in a major art studio, and his exposure to Northern oil painting techniques, his systematic observation and recording of the world around him in hundeds of small drawings and notes, his brief study of maths at Bologna, his exposure to the mechanics of Brunelleschi, and the dissection of thirty three corpses provided the substance for the work that he produced. We have the evidence to support his studies. For Shakespeare there is simply no indication as to where his knowledge came from. NOTE: I am not convinced that Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare, but I AM convinved that the corn-merchant Shaksper of Stratford-upon-Avon was not the playwright, even if they WERE published under a variant of his name.
MandyJMaddison As I'm sure you will recall, Frances Meres said that Shakespeare's Sonnets were written to be circulated among his friends. If you would read them, you would discover that they are not densely packed with classic allusions, but are rather straightforward in their imagery. The Sonnets perfectly demonstrate what Shakespeare was and what he was not. He was a wordsmith, not a scholar. Which explains why, when he reached for the bookshelf, he usually chose English translations of classics, rather than the original languages. Though Ovid was taught in Latin in grammar schools, Shakespeare regularly used the Golding translation. Jonson said Shakespeare had "Small Latine", which may have been true in his later years, but grammar schools were conducted entirely in Latin, dawn to dusk, six days a week. French, Italian and Spanish are Latin-based languages, meaning a solid foundation in Latin makes them a breeze to learn. There is no evidence at all that Shakespeare ever consulted a text in Greek or German. Latin, yes. French and Italian, yes, but he preferred English translations. Spanish is still being debated. Shakespeare's knowledge of the law is also overstated by Anti-Strats. He uses legalisms as puns on many occasions, but almost never delves into legal philosophy. When he does, the concepts can be traced directly to Plowden's Commentaries on the Common Law, a popular book Ben Jonson also used. Perhaps his "deepest" legal analysis in the whole canon is the sextons debating whether Ophelia should have been buried in hallowed ground. This comes from two sources: Plowden's commentary on Hales v. Petit (see Wikipedia for a rundown) and the obscure death of a woman who drowned in the Stratford in 1579. The coroner had to decide whether or not it was a suicide. Her name was Kathetine Hamlett. Oh, and Shakespeare's father was a justice of the peace. You did know that, didn't you? As I pointed out before, Shakespeare's patrons were the Queen's cousin and the king himself. Of course, it's not like he would have needed to ask them about falconry (not that his works demonstrate any expertise in the subject), because hawking was the same thing with different birds, and enjoyed by the middle classes. A priest in Stratford was describes as being "unsound in religion" and not being able to preach well, but being good at healing sick birds "for which many do repair unto him". Jousting was something the nobility did and everyone else watched. Do you need to be a football player to know what a touchdown is? A baseball player to know about home runs? Dancing, music...you get that he was a professional entertainer, right? Ever gone to a play before? Did they play music and dance? Prodigious knowledge of warfare? What did he know that he didn't get from Holingshed or Hall? He lived and worked in a port city full of soldiers and sailors. He did know the bible passably well, though his copious religious metaphors tend to group near the beginnings of bible books, as if he started reading them more often than he finished them. In any case, you might expect anyone who lived in a society where church attendance was compulsory and sermons lasted several hours to pick a bit of bible learning up. About his understanding of courtly politics, he knew what was to be found in his source material. It's not as if the Danish court regularly (or ever) poisoned and stabbed each other to death. I challenge you to find a single event portrayed in Shakespeare's works which can be connected to an actual event in the English royal court (of which his patron was the boss). Shakespeare's knowledge of Italian places would be less astounding if you picked up a copy of Abraham Ortellius's 1591 atlas (the Google Earth of its day) or one of John Florio's books about Italy. I'll bet if you hadn't seen several versions of Romeo and Juliet which were filmed in Italy, you wouldn't be so astounded by how accurate the language seems. Change the location from a city in Italy to, say, Vienna, as Shakespeare did in Measure for Measure, and the play still works just fine. I'm reasonably certain that if you picked up any of the plays set in Italy which were written by Shakespeare's contemporaries who also never went there, you would see the same level of detail, and the same level or error. Do you suppose the details he does get right he could have picked up from all of his fellow actors (Will Kempe chiefly) who did travel to all of those places? Many of England's great poets and writers did attend universities, and many more did not. What sets a great writer apart from a mediocre one is not the university they attended, because "English Lit" was not something one could study at a university until the late 19th Century. You didn't learn to write poetry there, and Shakespeare didn't learn to write poetry in his grammar school. What sets him apart is not his great learning, because as I have already demonstrated, his contemporaries all said he had none. What set him apart was his wit, his ability in selecting which plots he would steal, and his uninhibited use of language. Even if one could be taught such things, they wouldn't be taught at a university. Here's my challenge: read any of Shakespeare's contemporaries and then explain to me that what made him a better poet was a superior education. For that matter, read Shakespeare and tell me where any of this learning is actually to be found. I know you're just getting it from a laundry list of educational accomplishments Shakespeare is said to have had, because everyone does that. I've not only inspected the evidence that says Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare (go to shakespearedocumented.org to see it all), but I've read his works and those of his peers. It's the language that sets Shakespeare apart. Nothing more.
So what? There's no record of anyone attending Stratford's grammar school until long after Shakespeare died. We don't have records of Ben Jonson's attendance at Westminster either, but that doesn't mean he didn't go.
I have seen her read an excerpt here on youtube and I have seen her well done video about Marlowe's death also here on youtube.
Thanks for the plug though.
Also, liked it when you threw it back to the academic and author who doubted the doubters.
Evidently we was wealthy enough (due to his father's status as a merchant and member of the town council) to attend school. Libraries were not public but private. Books were extant-where did the others (other students) get them--they were passed and copied.
It is not just his signature (in fact, I believe that only one of the alleged Shakespeare signatures is genuine: the third signature on his will, preceeded by the words "by me"), but the fact that not a single scrap of writing by the Stratford man exists anywhere. And it is not just that so many of the plays are set in Italy; they contain an intimate knowledge of Italian customs of the day that could only have been learned by someone who had lived in that country.
A fine point which i have considered in reading about and watching documentaries about Shakespeare.
There is no record of Will at Stratford's infamous grammar school and no indication that Shakespeare was learned in anything but business.
People may assume he knew how to read because he was an actor and therefore had to read scripts.
Furthermore, he seemed to come from a family that valied the bottom line of business which explains Will's cut throat persona as a businessman.
There is no record of ANYONE at Stratford Grammar school at the time. But several Stratford men went on to Oxford. So according to your logic, these people (including Richard Field, Shakespeare's first publisher) were fakes, used as frontmen by aristocrats.
Whether it's touching, genuinely idolatrous, etc., is a matter of opinion. For me the eulogy reads as hollow and extravagant; it seems the equivalent of today's gushing blurbs printed on the backs of novels to hype the author and the work. Not a line of Johnson's poem humanizes Shakespeare, intimates some quality of his personality, or gives the slightest glimpse of his lifestyle.
People's handwriting didn't 'have to be better than today' because people would often employ a scribe or clerk to write for them. I'm not saying that Shakespeare employed a scribe but it's a bit ignorant to make that statement about handwriting.
"Marlowe" was another of the masks of Francis and Anthony Bacon. Whatever.
Spelling back then didn't matter. People spelled their names in differernt ways: Shakspere, Marley, Decere, Jhonson. Shakespeare wrote for the same people for more than 20 years. They must have gotten very used to his handriting, even if it was bad. Shakespeare's spelling was unique, often called funny.
Almost EVERY playwright set plays in Italy, fool!!!! Middleton, Webster, Johnson, and others all set plays in Italy. Italy was the fashion back then. No mystery here.
Yes Marlowe was only a few months older than Shakespeare, but he started writing plays before Shakespere, who arrived in London in 1587. He and Kyd, and Lily were the first. Shakespeare no doubt copied from Marlowe, was an acolyte to the great master.
Stipulating that Marlowe faked his death and went in exiile in Italy, there is no reason for him to write plays that he would never see, since he was also a poet. He did not need Shakespeare. Phillip Henslowe's Rose Theater had performed all of his plays: Tamburlaine, Jew of Malta, Faustus. All he h ad to do was send them to Henslowe and put a pen name on like Ernest Hemingway or J.K. Rowling. Or "Anonymous". Many plays with no author's name on them were performed.
The notion that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare is pure idle speculation, with no foundation in fact, and actually illogical.
Either a troublesome spy was spared, and allowed to create a new life for himself, possibly in Italy, where he found a way of sending work back to London... and somehow knew exactly who was going to be in the cast ...
... or a boy from Stratford turned out to be good at poetry. Which is more likely?
I don't get the Marlowe theory but I don't think WM Shakspere businessman is the author either.
Tale of Wondrous William
ruclips.net/video/5Ns3rMMobIM/видео.html
Mark Twain's "Is Shakespeare Dead?
ruclips.net/video/cJ72Ew1ujlk/видео.html
About 30-years ago the US SUpreme Court held a mock court on the topic of who wrote Shake-speare - you'll have to look for that video yourself.
Even if Marlowe didn't he was still a great genius.
Furthermore, it is not just that "Marlowe was more renowned as a writer than Shakespeare by age thirty." Shakespeare as a writer did not exist while Marlowe was alive; not a single line had been published under that name. Then, two weeks after Marlowe's supposed death, "Venus and Adonis" appears out of nowhere, with the name William Shake-Speare on the title page. The evidence pointing to Marlowe is circumstantial, but it is overwhelming.
To ask again, what is the stuff-what is the 'secret knowledge' what is the info that S could not have access to?
In case, you're still curious.
Tale of Wondrous William
ruclips.net/video/5Ns3rMMobIM/видео.html
Mark Twain's "Is Shakespeare Dead?
ruclips.net/video/cJ72Ew1ujlk/видео.html
About 30-years ago the US SUpreme Court held a mock court on the topic of who wrote Shake-speare - you'll have to look for that video yourself.
Here is a lawyer's summary of the Grand Jury Indictment
ruclips.net/video/95sGqeR_uOE/видео.html
Reclaiming Oxfordian's Past - great orderly discussion of why not the business agent Wm Shakpere
ruclips.net/video/9doWyFSeFKg/видео.html
One of Shakespeare's plays has a scene of a cheeky bright schoolboy called William in dialogue with his Welsh teacher making jokes based on Latin. There was a Welsh teacher at the Stratford Grammar School at the time when Shakespeare was of an age to be going there.
@defiantwon33 What we have are the plays. Compare M to S. A very differnt style.
If the hypothosis is right-M faked his death and wrote the plays- I think that it is up to that camp to show the similarities as well as the evidence that M was not killed, that he escaped somehow, and continued to live and content to disappear. The 'I faked my death' is only as good as when we find the evidence that he did not die. Otherwise, he died. !
To me one of the most powerful agruments against the Stratford man's authorship is one I have never seen mentioned anywhere. Thomas Nashe, a man after my own heart, wrote extensively about his contemporaries, praising them, attacking them, defending them and mocking them. There is scarcely a figure in all of Elizabethan literature he doesn't have something to say about. So what does he say about William Shakespeare of Stratford? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a single word. This is remarkable.
Jonson (who wrote with Nash) DOES mention Shakespeare. As writer. And he wrote an elegy in the first folio.
So, basically, you think the absence of one piece of evidence cancels out the fact that every single piece of documentary evidence on the subject extant and every contemporary testimony on the subject credits William Shakespeare as an author. Why? I will never understand the idea that what we _don't_ have is more valuable evidence than what we do. In fact, what we don't have isn't evidence at all because we _don't have it_ .
Marlowe's death was May 30th 1593. According to The Shakespeare Birthday Trust, Venus and Adonis was "entered into the Stationers Register (the English government pre-publication registry) in April, 1593." Which seems to sit at odds with what is claimed in this video. This, of course, might be wrong. But I can't find a different date. But as I dug just a little deeper I found it was at that point unnamed. Make of that what you will.
MARLOWE LACKED THE WIDE, BROAD, but deeply dense EDUCATION REQUIRED OF THE PSEUDONYMOUS WM. SHAKE-SPEARE, whoever he was. I would argue he lacked the languages, & knowledge of law & medicine. He lacked the NOBILITY required of whoever claims the name Wm. Shake-speare b/c there were no libraries. I know he mastered Latin. He still needed Greek, French, Spanish, & Italian.
37 PLAYS PLUS HIS OWN ,ALL THOSE SONNETS... N DIED AT 29 . Rubbish! MW
My main problem with the idea that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's plays, beyond all the evidence that points to the two being different men, is that the two bodies of work seem to show significantly different themes and philosophical outlooks on the part of their respective authors. Marlowe's works seems more skeptical, cynical, and subversive while Shakespeare is more optimistic.
My take is this: My evidence is the work. Why is it so hard to accept that a creative mind, immersed in a creative atmosphere, cannot be creative? Why a conspiracy? What to gain? And to hide for so many generations? have you ever met a playwrite? Even as a ghostwriter, you cannot keep that a secret. What conspiracy? Please change my mind-I would love to see the evidence, not the lack of evidence.
Again, I respectfully ask, (because we do not know as much about S as M(Who came frome the same class, who came from the same backround-should I be asking 'how'd he learn so much in a few years at University-to write that!' And who is hardly ever performed-comparatively- because he is so dense with references, so laden with scholarship-see Faust- that it is almost undecipherable what is the evidence that S did not, or was not capable?
It is not about belief. I can believe the world is flat. The evidence does not bear it out. Education in the grammer schools of Shakespeare included Latin and Greek and history. What, in the plays, singularly demand a 'special knowledge' that could not be gleaned from other sources as opposed to 'going there'? Did the writers of 'Dallas' have special knowlege of the inner workings of a rich, powerful, oil-rich family?
I can't see how the issue of Venus & Adonis being registered anonymously shortly before Marlowe's death, but published with Shakespeare's name shortly after, is significant at all. The example of Marlowe's Hero & Leander, registered on 28 September 1593 & published 1598, show that Elizabethans had no problem with posthuomus publication or registration. There would have been no reason to shy away from putting Marlowe's name on the published text if he had written.
It's not that simple, for Shakespeare and Marlowe are producing plays concurrently to each other for a time, and still show a marked differences in style and philosophy. Are we to assume that Marlowe was writing such discordantly different works in terms of quality and mindset, at the same time?
Who said he was "uneducated"? Do you have any idea how intense an education he would have received by modern standards at the Stratford school? 12 hours a day, six days a week for 8 years - you call that "uneducated"? And as for indicating nothing in his will, plays in his day belonged to the company, not the author - they weren't his to will to anyone.
Again, respectfully, it is you that have to produce the evidence that the man (S) did not write what folks say he wrote. "Oh, he could not have written that!" Well, why not?
You say he was not educated. Well, he attended school. He could not have known about the court. Everyone did (like the other playwrites of the period.
Two comments ! Sweet! The salt is in the tasting-I am not familiar with the phrase. Could you enlighten me?
*....your first statement doesn't make any sense: if you believed the world was flat that means you are not privy to the evidence that disproves it. *
Evidence is extant and provable that the earth is round. 'Belief' does not change that evidence.
It is not about belief. I can believe the world is flat. The evidence does not bear it out. Education in the grammer schools of Shakespeare included Latin and Greek and history. What, in the plays, singularly demand a 'special knowledge' that could not be gleaned from other sources as opposed to 'going there'?
Whoever wrote the plays simply had to be present at the theatre when they were being produced. That let's Marlowe out. Ditto Oxford and effectively Bacon too. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and he was a glover's son from Stratford. He was a hick and he did it anyway. Get over yourselves.
I ask again: reading the plays-what is the inference that this man did not write them?
You mention Italy. His references are wrong. (Lions in the forestof Arden, for example) place names, yes. But nothing else. What is the anti-thought that an actor/playwrite could not have written these plays?
There is no evidence that Shakespeare ever attended ANY school. Furthermore, the fact that his father never hired an apprentice argues against his attending the Stratford grammar school. Young Will was probably helping his father in his trade.
Burroughs never went to Mars, HG Welles never went to the places he 'imagined". The burden of of proof is on you to provide that this individual had no imagination, no resources, no theatrical saavey to write.
Further,( if I may) It is, in a way, like asserting that Einstein could not have conceived his theory of relativity because he was a poor student and worked as a lower clerk for so many years.
Jonson doesn't even come across as ever having known Shakespeare. Instead, he almost seems to be writing about an abstraction - a mere name.
No wonder then that a lot of people are not won over by it.
flat schat. nothing to to with anything. What in the plays-are so exclusive-that it could only be written by someone other than the author stated
As a side note: Marlowe-for someone that popular, that acclaimed-why no sure portrait? Why no will? All the arguments can apply here.
I agree.Marlowe was a genius but Shakespeare has more warmth I think.
Again, an assumption.
We dont know if Will went to a petty school or the Grammar school proper.
You have to assume that he went to school.
Assumptions arent evidence.
Notice the way you craft your point is the same way Stratfordians make their case.
"Well, we know this school existed and offered this type of latin grammar and classcial literature curricula" So the crust of history or other facts are used as a pie with no filling-meaning proof or verfiable facts.
Doesnt seem delicious to me.
Or another cliche .... absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We don't have any evidence that he defecated, so we just have to assume he shat in the normal way. He was clearly literate, or how could he be an actor?
Was Marlowe Shakespeare? Nope.
+Steve Bari That's not exactly the question. more like, are their valid doubts about Shakespeare and of the proposed hidden hands , how does Marlowe rank. See th full film, Steve.
No there are no valid doubts only wishful innuendos by people have a bone in their craw about Shakespeare. The thinking goes something like this: If your name is Shakespeare you are a criminal, if you are any other playwright you get a free pass. A double standard where one measuring stick is used to vilify Shakespeare and not used on any other contemporary playwright. Out of the proposed hands Marlowe is the worst as he was dead and his style doesn't even match Shakespeare. So no, Marlowe was not Shakespeare.
+Steve Bari bacon was marlowe and shakespeare. case closed HA !! get angry now
I believe that the Shakespeare plays were written by a Knight Templars centuries before his birth and "the Stratford man" was merely an upstart literary agent and mediocre actor.
Prove me wrong! Nyah!
Including 'Henry VIII? Damned clever these templars.
as judith cook says....how could shakespeare have fooled his contemporaries for 25 years....
defiantwon33 - Actual scholarship has discovered that there was a book store in London during the time of Shakespeare's career that sold every single book which we can trace as source material for Shakespeare's plays. What is more, this book store was owned and operated by some one FROM Stratford-upon-Avon. This is for anyone claiming "there's no evidence Shakespeare had access to books" argument (as if such volumes btw were particularly hard to get)
Nobody is saying he had no access to books, David We are saying that he left no books in his worldy posaession via his will, not even first edtions of his own works which for someone who loved money , is weird........... Also, about 100 years later, a reverened scholar whose name I forget, puzzled by the above, seached the area around Stratfdord, convinced there must be a cache of the Bards books somewhere............. He found none and became one of the first doubters. it's fine and admirable, David MacDowell Blue, to support Ws, but dont cheat. Dont ignore the evidence on the other side, and in this case, see the full film, Much ado about Something
Michael Rubbo Lots of folks who we know had large libraries in that period didn't mention such in their wills (others did). First editions? Why would he have purchased copies of his own plays, especially when he was getting no money from them (copyright being nonexistent at the time)? He had no notion the folios and quartos would be priceless one day. How could he? More, Shakespeare's will also omitted mentioning all kinds of specifics we know he owned (his "first best bed" for example). This isn't even circumstantial evidence. It doesn't even count as a clue.
too dismissive, David, an American academic, whose name I forget, it's 10 years since I made the movie , decided to conclusively address your sort of argument. She created a grid which down one side, listed all the activities and attributes, things owned, that you would expect from a writer. For instance, books, letters written, conversations with other writers recorded, tributes on death.etc. She went to a lot of trouble to list all the clues that would stand the test of time, for of course so much is lost, but then it's lost for all the writers of the era................ Against the grid, she put the names of the 30 or so most prominent writers of the period, and then scored them according to the literary residue they left. Shakespeare's score was the lowest. if I think of the name of the book , I'll send it on.................. That's not conclusive proof. More a question of adding to the puzzle. The puzzle as to why his daughters were illiterate and his granddaughter too, and yet the author put such a stock on the education of women, even peasent women. The fact that his son-in-law,John Hall, a doctor an educated man who loved poetry, who you'd think would have been very proud and boastful about his father-in-law, never mentioned the great writer, and never received a copy of the first Folio. For John , Shakespeare did not appear to be a great playwright. And yet we know his plays had a lot of impact at the time. The incidence of parents calling their children by names of characters in the plays, for example. And on and on.
Michael Rubbo
So someone came up with a list and Shakespeare scored low on that list. I'm not impressed because what you described can barely be described as evidence. More, you are taking a statistical view of verification, which is great when you're looking at groups and collectives. It is very nearly useless when trying to describe or predict individuals. Even assumptions based on social norms and contextual traditions can easily be shown to have constant exceptions. John Hall for example was a puritan, and they has a group strongly disapproved of theater in general--more, there is circumstantial evidence Shakespeare was associated with the Old Faith (i.e. the Catholic Church). This would be akin to a member of the Tea Party boasting their father-in-law was famous Muslim on welfare. That is an example of what I mean by social norms and expectations--which you didn't even seem to consider, frankly. And like practically everyone you forget there was another major decision maker when it came to the Shakespeare family--namely, his wife the former Anne Hathaway. I'm not claiming anything in particular about her opinions, but why is it no one thinks it might have been the other parent making day to day decisions for the children? Just as (sorry on a bit of rant here) almost everyone (not just the Anti-Stratfordians) pretty much ignore William Shakespeare's mother and her family the Ardens--and their story says a lot I think about the milieu in which W.S. grew up. You want to have any hope of understanding any human being you have to look at as much of the whole picture as you can--and use Occam's razor with a vengeance much of the time. Which is precisely what Anti-Stratfordians refuse to do with Shakespeare. Sorry, but I really do regard you as little better than a Truther, a Birther or a Creationist. Because I've seen one argument after another given much more weight than seems remotely merited, or (more often) is easily refuted. Like the above with John Hall and the illiteracy of Shakespeare's daughters. This is btw EXACTLY the kind of arguments I see from Creationists, from Truthers and from Birthers (as well as JFK Conspiracy Theorists and others).
***** I believe I'll look at what professional historians whose expertise is in the field rather than a brilliant novelist and notorious curmudgeon said over a century ago, never having had any access to modern scholarship on the question. But you might want to do a quick search on "logical fallacies" especially used in debate. This one is "appeal to authority".
6:26 - 'the proud man's contumely'. Ish. Or, as we also say, PWNED.
I have read the sonnets, yes. Yes , questions abound! But my conundrum remains-why is it seemingly unacceptible that a man, an individual mind, create?
Without 'secret knowledge', not knowing about the "inner workings" of the court--all of that---why is a conspiracy theory required? Can it not just be that the spark be (Like an Einstein-ian moment) just admired and awed at? The debate is fine-and should be encouraged-but it is tha work that matters.
i have to write an essay on this documentary in school...
How was it received ?
I want to see this whole movie. I find Christopher Marlowe to be a fascinating figure and a great writer whether he wrote Shakespeare's works or not. I am a Stratfordian, because when in doubt, the simplest theory is the most likely one, i.e. Shakespeare was Shakespeare, and no one in Shakespeare's time seemed to be in any doubt that Shakespeare wrote his plays; no one came up with any of these theories until over 100 year later. However, the Marlovian theory is the most plausible and appealing.
I believe Marlow was one of the Knights of the Helmet, which was led by Sir Francis Bacon.
See "Secrets of Americas Beginnings-The New Atlantis". Halfway into the film there is an excellent case that Bacon was the real Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Barlow and others contributed.
The "voice" is not to do with rhetoric. It's the kind of thing that let's you recognise a writer's work when you hear it even if you are not told who it is. Same with painters. They can be recognised by their style and techniques.
@MikeRubbo Is 3 recorded loans in a lifetime enough to brand someone a money-lender?
To read the plays of Christopher Marlowe is to know that this man could not have written the plays of William Shakespeare. He simply didn't have the talent. Marlowe's plays show little interest in plot or character. They usually involve one dominant central character (Tamburlaine, Faustus, The Jew of Malta) surrounded by a lot of cardboard cut outs. He was a good poet and did more than anyone else to establish the blank verse drama as the principal mode of dramatic expression in the late 1580s. In other words he set the stage for Shakespeare, an infinitely superior artist.
Shakespeare was a well established playwright by the time Marlowe died. His first series of history plays (the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III) had been staged to great acclaim before the plague closed the theatres in September 1592 (eight months before Marlowe died). In terms of plot, character and verse, Richard III is better than anything Marlowe ever wrote and yet it is nowhere near Shakespeare's best work.
The great quality of Shakespeare as a writer is that all his characters live, have their own integrity, while Shakespeare himself remains invisible in the work. These qualities are entirely lacking in Marlowe's plays. One thing we can be quite certain of is that Marlowe had a giant ego. Marlowe is Tamburlaine. Marlowe is Faustus. Marlowe is the Jew. Nobody else matters in his plays.
Bingo!
***** I didn't say that Marlowe was without talent. What I said was that he didn't have the talent to write the plays of William Shakespeare.
I would say Marlowe was brilliant, but he was a fundamentally different dramatist than Shakespeare.
David MacDowell Blue So different that he couldn't possibly have written the works of Shakespeare.
There is no record of Richard III until much later. A performance of Henry VI is referred to, without any indication of who the author was.
Marlowe was not Shakespeare. His written "voice" is not like Shakespeare's and Shakepeare's female characters show a great insight into the female psyche. Marlowe was gay and never showed that in his plays. Einstein and Karl Marx also had terrible handwriting so why not Shakespeare? Shakespeare was entitled to go to the Grammar school for free as an Alderman's son. We don't need the school register to have been preserved to prove it. Many historical records perished.
I agree, Helen. Even a cursory reading of Marlowe and Shakespeare side by side shows entirely different voices. I don't know if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, but just based on my own reading of both of them, I'm pretty convinced that Marlowe didn't write Shakespeare. A Marlovian friend of mine says that Shakespeare is "Marlowe's evolved voice", which I scoff at. The time between Marlowe's "death" and Shakespeare really taking off as a playwright is too short for any sort of artistic evolution, especially of the magnitude it would take to morph from Marlowe to Shakespeare. Stephen King doesn't suddenly start writing like Dean Koontz...
I dont actually care who wrote the plays. It doesnt really matter.
Such as "when I beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with bootless cries". The sonnets in particular are very emotional and highly charged and powerful.
So much for optimistic Will!
Yes, but the END of that sonnet is:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Wonderful, life affirming, joyous.
Something called a "petty school" would have been attached to the grammar school, and it was there that very young children would have learned a "minimal foundation"; a graduate of an Elizabethan grammar school would have been more familiar with Roman literature than a present day holder of a degree in classics. It was within walking distance of Shakespeare's house, it would have been free to him by virtue of his father's office, there's no reason to think he didn't go.
...or that he did....
6:26 OWNED
Experts have said that Shakespeare's handwriting survives in a manuscript of a play about Sir Thomas Moore that he wrote jointly with Thomas Middleton. Van Gogh was not "trained" as painter by the way. He taught himself
Van Gogh spent two years in his teens working in a commercial art gallery dealing in Modern French art. So for those two years he was exposed to the works of 19th century French painters including the Impressionists. Hi first works are extremely amateurish. One could also say that his later and finest works were also amateurish, IF JUDGED AS IMPRESSIONISM. He showed an enormous and original talent in ONE SPECIFIC area of achievement.
Shakespeare, on the other hand, demonstrated a vast knowledge of literary form, foreign languages, history, literature both ancient and modern, Classical mythology, medicine, the pursuits of the nobility, warfare, and countries abroad.
Likening Shakespeare to van Gogh does not form a happy balance.
One better could compare Shakespeare to Leonardo da Vinci, the bastard son of a Notary. Leonardo, like Shakespeare, but a hundred years earlier, demonstrated a vast and varied knowledge. But in the case of Leonardo, we know precisely where that knowledge came from, and also why he had certain shortcomings.
Leonardo was reared by his mother until he was five, then taken into the house of his father and educated by his Grandfather and Uncle. He demonstrated considerable artistic talent and painted a terrifying Medusa (which is what one might expect of a clever teenager. So hi father moved to Florence and apprenticed him to the most prestigious art master in the city, where he came in contact with a group of slightly older and very important masters. We can trace when he would have come in contact with his first great oil painting, and been led to change his methods. We know where the thirty bodies that he dissected cme from. We have detailed drawings of all his experiments in the study ofn the movement of water, of birds in flight, of geological stratas, of botany, of horses and of warfare. We know that he DID NOT learn languages, but that he DID have the opportunity to learn mathematics from a great professor. We also know that his engineering skills did not come out of no-where, as h had access to all the sophisticated machinery invented by Brunellescchi. So when we look at a great Leonardo painting, such as the Virgin of the Rocks, we can trace the studies in anatomy, lighting, geology, draperies, and botany that went towards its creation. But with Shakespeare, we are told that he got it all at a little grammar school.
MandyJMaddison "Shakespeare, on the other hand, demonstrated a vast knowledge of literary form, foreign languages, history, literature both ancient and modern, classical mythology, medicine, the pursuits of nobility, warfare, and countries abroad."
Actually, he did few of those things. I challenge you to show me anywhere in the canon where he did.
Literary form: Shakespeare demonstrated no understanding whatever of Aristotelian poetics, which was highly prized by his university-educated peers. He was called out for his lack of classical learning by several of his peers. What he does demonstrate is an astounding comprehension of theater stagecraft. If by literary form, you mean he knee how to write a sonnet, well, so does any ninth grader.
Foreign Languages: He could clearly read Latin, and probably French. Not German, maybe Spanish, and not Greek. His one play with French in it (other than occasional salutations) is Henry V. The scene is basically a litany of English words that sound dirty in French. He could have gotten any one of thousands of Frenchmen living in London to translate the rest. This was probably unnecessary, as his friend Richard Field, with nothing more than a grammar school education, got an apprenticeship with a French printer who held the monopoly on Latin texts. Languages were well within the grasp of someone from Shakespeare's background.
History: Shakespeare's demonstrated knowledge of history comes from two primary sources. He copies whole swaths from Holingshed's Chronicles and The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York. His first Henriad he took whole from a prior play.
Literature: (Ancient) Latin sources taught in grammar school, yes. Greek sources taught in university, no. (Modern) he was well read. He wrote for the theater and was always looking for material, sometimes from foreign language sources, but usually in English translations. None of this was unusual for someone from the middle class.
Classical Mythology: not so much. Check out any of his contemporaries to see what "expert" in this subject looks like.
Medicine: not really. His later works show a better understanding, but by then he had a son in law who was a doctor.
The pursuits of nobility: His early patron, the Baron Hunsdon, was the Lord Chamberlain and the Queen's cousin. His later patron was the King, himself. Nuff said about that.
Warfare: Shakespeare took most of his battle scenes from earlier sources and from popular histories. He lived in the capital of a nation constantly at war. Taverns, inns, even his theater would be regularly filled with soldiers and sailors.
Countries abroad: Shakespeare makes so many mistakes about countries abroad that it's hard to imagine anyone thinking he had been there. He places Padua in Lombardy instead of Venice, because that's where Ortellius' atlas puts it. If you've been there, you don't need an atlas to tell you which kingdom rules which city.
In short, estimates of Shakespeare's learning are always overestimated by people who A) haven't read Shakespeare, B) haven't read his contemporaries, and C) want to prove an upper-middle-class gentleman couldn't have written it.
MandyJMaddison And no, you are not told Shakespeare got it all at a little grammar school. That's the Anti-Stratfordian spin on the real history. So far as we know, his formal education ended at grammar school. I don't know about you, but my study didn't end when I graduated.
Okay, deniers of William Shakespeare, the Immortal Bard of Avon, what do these personages have in common? -- Henry Willobie, William Covell, Richard Barnfield, John Weever, Thomas Freeman, Anthony Scoloker, Henry Chettle, William Camden, William Barksted, Leonard Digges, and John Webster?
Answer: Aside from being contemporaries of Shakespeare, and writers, poets, dramatists, they all acknowledge the authorship of William Shakespeare. And no one else, as the author of his plays.
Question two: Who was rumored to be the anonymous author of Shakespeare's plays during his lifetime and for years afterward?
Answer: No one. There was no reason to doubt Shakespeare as author of the plays.
Question: When did Marlowe claim to have written Shakespeare's plays?
Answer: Never.
Question: What is the true motivation behind the Shakespeare Authorship "controversy"?
Answer: Profit.
THANK YOU!
LaslosPlane, I have been convinced since reading Shakespeare in my teenage years, that the man from Stratford upon Avon, with his limited educational opportunities, would have had great difficulty writing the plays attributed to him
MY fervent belief that it was someone else, and my frequent statement of that conviction has earned me considerable ridicule and NO FINANCIAL GAIN WHATSOEVER, yet I will continue to say it.
In fact, exactly the opposite is true- the town of Stratford upon Avon, with all its tourism and hype, is a major financial drawcard for Britiain. The popular study of Shakespeare financially benefits a thousand conservative academics who don't want to rock the boat for fear of being laughed at. An actor who doubts might never play Shakespeare again. Profit has nothing to do with the controversy, and to say so indicates that your thinking is decidedly muddled!
MandyJMaddison So academy award winner Mark Rylance had had his career ruined by sharing your beliefs? SIR Derek Jacobi? His career has been ruined?
If you look at the long history of English Literature, you will discover that, aside from Byron and his aristocratic circle, every poet and every writer of note was a product of the lower or middle classes. The undisputed master of Shakespeare's day, Ben Jonson, was the stepson of a bricklayer. He may have had a grammar school education, but that's no more certain than it is for Shakespeare. He did not attend a university. Yet his work was esteemed far more eriudite than was Shakespeare's. In a letter to Jonson, fellow poet Francis Beaumont expressed a wish...here, I'll let him explain it.
"...I would let slip if I had any in me scholarship, and from all learning keep these lines as dear as Shakespeare's best are, as our heirs shall hear preachers apt to their auditors to show how far somtimes a mortal man may go
by the dim light of nature."
Everyone from Shakespeare's era who commented on his level of learning agreed, he was not highly educated. He "borrowed" his plots and his structure. He wrote popular plays for the public stage, not high poetry for the intelligentsia. His talent was in his wit and his wordplay. If you read the work of some of his contemporaries, you will see what I mean. Grammar schools focused on Latin classics, while universities were all about the Greeks. Among all of his contemporaries, who was the one who turned least often to Greek sources? That would be Shakespeare. His works demonstrate a strong dependence on the standard curriculum of the English Grammar school.
I eally have to laugh at your statement that Shakespeare did not write "High poetry for the intelligentsia"! Are we ignoring the sonnets, then?
OK, if Shakespeare went to Grammar School, he would have learnt some Latin. and let us presume that he was prodigiously talented at learning language. So he just picked up Grek Italian, French, Spanish and German, along the way.
He also, along with knowing about leather and tools, understood the Law well enough to be able to sustain a metaphor with a dozen legal expressions in a single sonnet. (But then we do know he was rather litigious). He also picked up a wealth of knowledge of courtly life- falconry, jousting, dancing, chamber music. He had a prodigious knowledge of warfare and tactics. He knew the Bible very well indeed. He understood the politics of courtly life as if he was a member of that inner circle. And his knowledge of Italian places is astounding to someone who has visited the Forum, Verona, Padua and Italy. He captures the essence of those locations, right out of his own vivid imagination, we are told, and without the advantages of Goggle Earth.
When one looks at the history of England's greatest authors, the majority are, as you say, Middle Class. But they are Middle Class men educated at Westminster School, Winchester, and Shrewsbury Grammar. The same attended Oxford, Cambridge or Trinity. If we consider Milton Addison, Sir Philip Sidney etc, we find that they had been abroad on the Grand Tour.
Even Ben Jonson, deprived as he was of a university education, travelled abroad to the Netherlands, and drew on his experiences as a soldier.
If we compare Shakespeare with another genius, Leonardo da Vinci, then we know the disadvantage that the latter suffered from his lack of eligibility to university (he was illegitimate). Leonardo's training in a major art studio, and his exposure to Northern oil painting techniques, his systematic observation and recording of the world around him in hundeds of small drawings and notes, his brief study of maths at Bologna, his exposure to the mechanics of Brunelleschi, and the dissection of thirty three corpses provided the substance for the work that he produced. We have the evidence to support his studies. For Shakespeare there is simply no indication as to where his knowledge came from.
NOTE: I am not convinced that Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare, but I AM convinved that the corn-merchant Shaksper of Stratford-upon-Avon was not the playwright, even if they WERE published under a variant of his name.
MandyJMaddison As I'm sure you will recall, Frances Meres said that Shakespeare's Sonnets were written to be circulated among his friends. If you would read them, you would discover that they are not densely packed with classic allusions, but are rather straightforward in their imagery. The Sonnets perfectly demonstrate what Shakespeare was and what he was not. He was a wordsmith, not a scholar.
Which explains why, when he reached for the bookshelf, he usually chose English translations of classics, rather than the original languages. Though Ovid was taught in Latin in grammar schools, Shakespeare regularly used the Golding translation. Jonson said Shakespeare had "Small Latine", which may have been true in his later years, but grammar schools were conducted entirely in Latin, dawn to dusk, six days a week. French, Italian and Spanish are Latin-based languages, meaning a solid foundation in Latin makes them a breeze to learn. There is no evidence at all that Shakespeare ever consulted a text in Greek or German. Latin, yes. French and Italian, yes, but he preferred English translations. Spanish is still being debated.
Shakespeare's knowledge of the law is also overstated by Anti-Strats. He uses legalisms as puns on many occasions, but almost never delves into legal philosophy. When he does, the concepts can be traced directly to Plowden's Commentaries on the Common Law, a popular book Ben Jonson also used. Perhaps his "deepest" legal analysis in the whole canon is the sextons debating whether Ophelia should have been buried in hallowed ground. This comes from two sources: Plowden's commentary on Hales v. Petit (see Wikipedia for a rundown) and the obscure death of a woman who drowned in the Stratford in 1579. The coroner had to decide whether or not it was a suicide. Her name was Kathetine Hamlett.
Oh, and Shakespeare's father was a justice of the peace. You did know that, didn't you?
As I pointed out before, Shakespeare's patrons were the Queen's cousin and the king himself. Of course, it's not like he would have needed to ask them about falconry (not that his works demonstrate any expertise in the subject), because hawking was the same thing with different birds, and enjoyed by the middle classes. A priest in Stratford was describes as being "unsound in religion" and not being able to preach well, but being good at healing sick birds "for which many do repair unto him".
Jousting was something the nobility did and everyone else watched. Do you need to be a football player to know what a touchdown is? A baseball player to know about home runs?
Dancing, music...you get that he was a professional entertainer, right? Ever gone to a play before? Did they play music and dance?
Prodigious knowledge of warfare? What did he know that he didn't get from Holingshed or Hall? He lived and worked in a port city full of soldiers and sailors.
He did know the bible passably well, though his copious religious metaphors tend to group near the beginnings of bible books, as if he started reading them more often than he finished them. In any case, you might expect anyone who lived in a society where church attendance was compulsory and sermons lasted several hours to pick a bit of bible learning up.
About his understanding of courtly politics, he knew what was to be found in his source material. It's not as if the Danish court regularly (or ever) poisoned and stabbed each other to death. I challenge you to find a single event portrayed in Shakespeare's works which can be connected to an actual event in the English royal court (of which his patron was the boss).
Shakespeare's knowledge of Italian places would be less astounding if you picked up a copy of Abraham Ortellius's 1591 atlas (the Google Earth of its day) or one of John Florio's books about Italy. I'll bet if you hadn't seen several versions of Romeo and Juliet which were filmed in Italy, you wouldn't be so astounded by how accurate the language seems. Change the location from a city in Italy to, say, Vienna, as Shakespeare did in Measure for Measure, and the play still works just fine. I'm reasonably certain that if you picked up any of the plays set in Italy which were written by Shakespeare's contemporaries who also never went there, you would see the same level of detail, and the same level or error. Do you suppose the details he does get right he could have picked up from all of his fellow actors (Will Kempe chiefly) who did travel to all of those places?
Many of England's great poets and writers did attend universities, and many more did not. What sets a great writer apart from a mediocre one is not the university they attended, because "English Lit" was not something one could study at a university until the late 19th Century. You didn't learn to write poetry there, and Shakespeare didn't learn to write poetry in his grammar school. What sets him apart is not his great learning, because as I have already demonstrated, his contemporaries all said he had none. What set him apart was his wit, his ability in selecting which plots he would steal, and his uninhibited use of language. Even if one could be taught such things, they wouldn't be taught at a university.
Here's my challenge: read any of Shakespeare's contemporaries and then explain to me that what made him a better poet was a superior education. For that matter, read Shakespeare and tell me where any of this learning is actually to be found. I know you're just getting it from a laundry list of educational accomplishments Shakespeare is said to have had, because everyone does that.
I've not only inspected the evidence that says Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare (go to shakespearedocumented.org to see it all), but I've read his works and those of his peers.
It's the language that sets Shakespeare apart. Nothing more.