Was William Shakespeare a Real Person?
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
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A new one, I'll call it a Youtubian theory, if James Wilmot found no paper trail indicating Shakespeare's involvement in writing Shakespeare and the only evidence we have of James Wilmot is through a biography who's writer found little to no personal life of James Wilmot, was James Wilmot a real person? we need to be asking the right questions 💁♂️
Your videos were better before the beard.
I love you in genealogy nerd mode.
17:00 What on earth are you prattling on about? I have SEEN your personal vlog videos from 7 years ago that you've basically sanitized from the internet on one of the 50 channels you started over the last almost a decade. And i understand the cobbler's kids go shoeless but people who are actual fans are interested in that kind of mundane sht. Don't paint us with your brush of British self loathing, ya prick.
scientific method = obervable testable and able to repeat the test.
Abraham Lincoln had less than a year of formal education total. He was completely self educated, yet he wrote some of the most moving, thought provoking, and life changing speeches, executive orders, etc. Formal education is not a must, love of learning is.
Lincoln didn't write speeches about things that were out of his social capabilities. He didn't write about the king's courts or places he never would have been allowed to access. Shakespeare literally would not have been allowed to socialize with any of the people who knew about the finer things in life about which he wrote.
@@angieemm Hey, you know the thing that all humans have loved in the history of forever? Gossip. If you're interested and dedicated enough, you can learn a lot of random facts and gossip from places that you don't frequent yourself.
@@angieemm Most authors have never been inside many of the places they write about, never interacted with any people of the type/class/job they write about. That doesn't mean they can't write about those places and people, nor does it mean they can't learn how those places function and people act through other sources to use in their writing. Research, influence and inspiration can come from many sources outside of firsthand experience.
@@angieemm Two of Shakespeare's patron was the Lord Chamberlain (basically the monarch's chief of staff) and Kings James I they did plays for the court. In fact to fluff up his entourage for for visiting dignitaries King James had Shakespeare's company sit in at meetings much to their annoyances as they weren't paid that much for that performance.
I read somewhere that QE1 contracted Shakespeare for an impromptu written-on-the-spot play to include guests of her soiree.
If so, is it possible there might be a copy in the Royal Archives? Or possibly elsewhere?
The reason I ask is, as far as I know there are no known works written in his own hand. And if true was contracted by QE1, there would be parts for each guest, increasing the likelihood of an existing exemplar for my next question:
Has anyone used Forensic Linguistics to examine the corpora attributed to Shakespeare?
It could ascertain whether all is written by one or more persons.
But if we had a _known_ exemplar......
Someone ( I want to say Neil Gaiman) once said the whole "who REALLY wrote Shakespeare" movement was literary snobbery that a "regular" person could write those works.
It's very much like the "who REALLY built the pyramids" movement, isn't it?
Like all the best plays now are written by the Earl of Dorset...
A friend of mine at university thought it impossible as he wasn’t from London. She was a Londoner. Being from the West Midlands myself, I found this totally and utterly typical 😅
As I was watching this, this kinda came to my mind. It just seemed like people didn't believe that someone who wasn't a Duke or Earl or what not could write these masterpieces.
@@mistyyoung5587 Not at all - the reasons why so many of these candidates are aristocrats are that 1) the poet displays an extremely aristocratic world view (all the nobles are layered human beings while the commoners are clowns or caricatures who often can't speak properly), 2) the education shown in the plays is the standard education of an aristocrat, 3) he has deep inside knowledge of court life.
In my first week of university, I was taking a class on Shakespeare and honestly asked the professor what he thought about the authorship controversy; I was curious because I’d spent a huge chunk of my childhood and teen years acting in Shakespearean plays for the local youth theater group, and had just heard of this issue.
When my prof finished trying not to let out an exasperated sigh, he simply said “almost nobody questions people like Byron or Lovecraft’s authorship, despite the two of them having variable levels of education compared to their social status. So why do people question how someone with a very solid education, but who also happened to be working class, wrote such fascinating and profound works? Why do they question whether a regular person has the capacity to deeply understand love, grief, ambition, vengeance, longing, redemption? Why should only the rich and titled be allowed to express their experiences of those cornerstones of what it means to be human?”
I still feel that there is at least an aspect of the contemporary "writer's room" on this. One writer lays out an outline with a lot of scenes written. Other writers comment, fill in scenes, help edit lines, but the writer's credit goes to the one who wrote the original draft. However, a lot of words in the current English language are attributed to Shakespeare. How many are attributed to other people affiliated with The Globe at the time? Was this for the, I think, Galley and slang (the crap seats without cushions or backs), or witty at the time? Personally not that keen on Shakespeare.
Did a senior year parody project of Hamlet in 1990 where I shortened the play to 3 acts, the "But soft" line became "But soft what squishes beneath my foot. [Pause] Damnit why do those accursed wolfhounds get to roam the halls!", Ophelia realized pining was fucking stupid and lived, finally taking retribution by taking out Hamlet at the end (grrl power). Got extra credit for doing it myself [coordination was allowed, but I knew my vision would get lost], reciting/performing it myself with acting and getting my English teacher holding herself up at her desk trying to contain her giggles. A couple of drama kids looked like they chose the wrong team, etc. The teacher looked like she was loosing her shit laughing so hard, but I got my fair share of class chuckles as well. I felt sorry for the student teacher who was running the class that month, because it was HER idea to do the project and my jokes were falling flat on her. Her looking at her mentor in stitches and not getting it was priceless. I fully admit that my favorite was a group of black students who turned it into a Jamaican Cartel story. I lost that document for a long time, and a friend found a copy I gave her and sent it to me a few years ago. Maybe I'll do a podcast of it. For fun. I've a few friends that might be interested...
Your professor went off
@@bethnielsen1120 I agree with your assessment of the OP.'s anecdote. They do that, though. Should write an autobiography some day. Or memoir. professors can be fun when you're interested and you just run into them in an Irish pub, and they love an engaged audience. Even if it's an audience of one. History professors... I overheard them talking and was commenting on something from the next booth offhand about how crappy my history education was and they invited me over and we had a beer just talking about what they were talking about, and then I asked when we were well lubricated, "Explain why WW2 happened, because I know there are holes?" Two of them looked at the third, because that was his dissertation. The next hour and a half was one of the most fun SFW educational experiences of my life. The other two professors interjected occasionally. Different focuses, but I got more out of that, and was more entertained than any college class I ever had. Even my most entertaining small claims suit (I won, but it was the circus surrounding it that made it entertaining) was less entertaining than that night. At the end of it I recall saying, "I need to walk home, because I need to digest this for a bit, and I don't want to get my (then) wife worked up. But it's nice spending time with you guys when the History Channels throwing out shit like "Ancient Aliens'." The table of three history teachers applauded.
So he never answered your question. All he did is spew a bunch of questions back at you while never actually addressing the question. Sounds like he believed but had no way to prove it.
@@Damons-Old-Soul Doesn't sound like he did, does it? It could have been something he didn't know enough about to discuss comfortably. Some professors, usually the bad ones, hate to be wrong. The good ones will admit what they don't know, and the really good ones will say, "I'll check on that and get back to you."
My grandfather was the son of an illiterate sharecropper, who taught himself to read, and got himself through the academic jungle to the point where he studied for a PhD in Chemistry at Columbia University.
a bunch of the anti stratfordians had/have the same level of education as shakespeare
how do you know he was really your grandfather :) just messing with you
@@Admiralmeriweather it is an article of faith!
@@davidandrews7761 sounds like sloppy history if you ask me :)
Shakspere of Stratford may have done the same! However, there is absolutely no evidence that he _did,_ which is the main problem. We do actually know a lot about Shakspere of Stratford, that he was a successful businessman, that he was a shareholder at the Globe, that he was probably a bit of a thug, and that he was probably illiterate. The only thing to connect him to the plays is the name on the title pages, and posthumous commemoration. And by posthumous I mean: not a single soul ever suggested that the guy from Stratford was in any way connected to those masterpieces until 1623, seven years after his death.
"Not possible that a single man wrote all of those plays by himself?", laughed Stephen King.
King had the help of cigarettes and cocaine though
That arguments work for the alternative ancient history experts, so why can't it work here?
Just like it's not possible for Terry Pratchett to write all his books without even using an outline? It's like saying, "I'm not a genius, therefore nobody is, was or can be. Y'know, since I'm the greatest and nobody will publish my two crappy, derivative novels."
He would have to be some sort of literary genius to write all these plays.
Forty plays were not a lot for a playwright at the time. The theaters were repatory companies and had a huge apetite for new material. Ben Johnson wrote several times as many plays as Shakespear.
I like how one of the objections to Shakespeare as author was that he sometimes spelled his name differently, and in the ad read Simon explains how an ancestor just suddenly started spelling his surname differently for no apparent reason.
Ann Boleyn wrote her name several different ways. It was just how they wrote at that time.
I traced my family tree and the first use of my surname was a child registered with a different surname to the parents. An extra 'e' had been added to the surname in the 1600's. Because people had low literacy, they often could not even spell their own names and certainly would not spot any mistakes.
It wasn't uncommon for people of the time to spell their own name in different ways.
English operated a phonetic language at the time and so most words had multiple spellings. People were used to this and could read it just fine. Standardisation came later and so variant spellings of a name were normal for the 16th century. It's in no way proof of anything.
I recently found out that my maiden name was written very poorly on a document a long time ago, and what were supposed to be two r's and an n were misread as two l's and an m; and that's when my ancestors surname suddenly changed from French to English.
Simon recites Shakespeare, gets a scholarship.
Legend!
All these years I've thought Simon was posh for going to a school with a chapel on it and turns out he got on being a big old big brain.
What made me laugh was, "how could he have written so much in that timescale?" He wrote for a living. Have these people never heard of Barbara Cartland, Enid Blyton, Terry Pratchett, Agatha Christie, Piers Antony, Isaac Asimov... I could go on, but I think the point is made. If you write for a living, you tend to write a lot!!
*Laugh in George RR Martin*
Also the only one I heard about from list above is Asimov.
@@MelniaShadow oh honey you're missing out especially Pratchett and Christie
Also if you wanna talk volume of work - Stephen King. Dude writes like he's getting paid per word.
There’s a joke somewhere in there about comparing the reputation of those writers, to the titles of Enid Blyton’s books “The Secret Seven” and “The Famous Five”. I just can’t find it… Mainly because there’s only 6 names there not 5 or 7.
@@sdrake8355 I could have gone on to name thirty odd names without even having to go to Google, but I just got bored at six! And I didn't even think about screen writers and script writers. Or people like Spike Milligan, who wrote radio shows, films, novels, poetry etc. So, no joke, just a lack of patience, and a wish to keep the comment short! Lol
It's basically the same as asserting the ancient Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids without modern tools, because of course we in the modern era are so much smarter and more sophisticated that those primitives.
If I can't do it, no one can.
So…. Are you saying Shakespeare was actually aliens?
(I’m just kidding lol)
It's certainly comparable.
Ah no. When Edward de veres life matches the stories and William shaksper has nothing it’s not the same as your straw man argument.
People are probably smarter now, doesnt mean they couldnt have made the pyramids back then
THANK YOU!!!
I've never heard anyone else bring up the fact that these plays aren't just poetry, they're written for performances - not just masques for the court - for trying to make a living entertaining people in innyards, not just theaters.
They're written for actors - with lots of bantering and big juicy parts, not just poetry in the mouths of a few main characters.
Especially, great roles for women. No one else writes female characters even *remotely* like real people.
Who actually performed in a play? Shakespeare.
You can't just ask someone about pacing, banter and giving and taking focus. You need practice and feedback.
I just can't see that from anyone with a title putting an effort into entertaining the groundlings (in a way that doesn't insult the intelligence of a modern audience).
These plays aren't just poetry, they're groundbreaking theater - lightyears more naturalistic than anything else in history and fundamentally different from what everyone else was doing.
It makes no sense to me that the very people who acclaim these plays as works of genius, refuse to believe that the son of a wealthy pillar of his village who had to learn Latin and Greek, memorize *swaths* of the greatest plays in Latin, could possibly be enough of a genius to go on to be such a successful playwright.
The reason that these plays are performed, popular enough to still make money, and not just studied by lit majors like me, is that they were written by a man who knew how to act, entertain a mixed crowd, and give each different character their own voice and life.
Well said.
this to me is the point. The other writers of the period... their speeches are too long, their iambic pentameter is too clunky... their opinions of themselves are too elevated. They're great poetry but not great plays. And then along comes shakespeare like Quentin Tarrantino as if to say: if it doesn't play well it's not a goddamn play.
Beautifully written, fair play. That comment was beautiful. And exactly what I have been trying to say die years. Thankyou!
He wrote female roles well. Just a shame the theatre didn't allow women to perform on the stage. Other men and/or small boys had to perform the roles of women.
Really casts a spin on the idea of Romeo & Juliet if Juliet is a small boy in lady's clothing...
Yess! Your right!!❤
To me the theory that Shakespeare was someone else is on the same level as those Ancient Alien crackpots that just can’t believe people in the past could accomplish things
Yes, one person said it and then we (society at large, not us smart people who watch this content) act like it's just as valid as the history recorded at the time of the actual events. My favorite skeptic says events offered without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Exactly!
The whole ancient alien thing can be a bit much, but there's no way in hell the great pyramid was built in 20 years, with copper tools and simply as a tomb, check out the documentary "revelation of the pyramids" there's so much math incorporated into it, like the circumference of the earth, the metre, phi and the golden ratio, not to mention the casing stones left look the same as some walls in cusco and saccsayhuaman
Clearly there was a great worldwide civilisation that's been lost/hidden because it would mean rewriting of history and screws with the whole theory of evolution
Amen to that.
It springs from the same place too.
Considering most people aren't remembered at all, going down in history for insulting the Bard is something (apparently) worth being remembered for because he made an impact in some way.
True its always more fun to be informus rath than famous
mainly because shakespeare was the undisputed king of insults of his time
An evidence (from preserved documents!) that Shakespeare wrote his own plays: He had a son called Hamnet, and by Shakespeare himself spelled Hamlett in his will, who died 11 years old, 3 years before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Nobody had called the mythological character Amledo that before, and it was simply a homage to his son.
Shakespeare could easily have been born with a genius IQ. He could definitely have been an autodidact and he DID actually know A LOT of people and Actors who travelled, including his actor friend who travelled to Denmark where he visited and performed at the very Castle - Kronborg Castle in Helsingør (Elsinore) that became the setting for none other than Hamlet…. As an actor he would have mixed with multitudes of different people who told stories of travel to faraway lands which Shakespeare could’ve then used in his plays. His best friends who were left various moneys and gifts in his will - Richard Burbage (c.1571-1619) and Thomas Combe (1589 -1657) who came from very different backgrounds, Burbage was well-known to everyone from the monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, to the regular playgoers at the Globe. All London mourned when he died probably quite suddenly at the age of 50 and his death came at the same time as Queen Anne, completely overshadowing her. The Combe family were close friends of William Shakespeare, they were a wealthy family of landowners and lawyers. So here we see two best friends of Shakespeare who respectively, were well versed in the events and protocols at the Palace and Law courts at the time. To suggest that they didn’t tell stories of their lives to Shakespeare and even inspire some of his plays and the characters therein is ridiculous. He didn’t have to travel - he knew enough people who did and brought back stories and painted literary pictures for Shakespeare to reference in his works. We have geniuses born today, people who are polymaths (a person of wide knowledge or learning) and autodidacts (people who are completely self-taught), so why is it difficult to believe that Shakespeare could’ve been EXACTLY this type of person ???? In my humble opinion it’s all down to academic snobbery and jealousy that a middle class, lowly actor and playwright with many friends who were better travelled and far wealthier than he, became the world’s greatest playwright and wrote sonnets and plays that we’re still watching or reading today.
The paper reuse idea is very true. So was the workmanlike "git 'er done" attitude of writers (collaboration or taking over and finishing a work) was also very real. This was a money-making venture for the writer and not considered to be "high art" as we view it today. For instance, JS Bach, one of the greatest composers of all time in the Western world, wrote many works we have never found. Pieces were composed daily, for use by his patron or church. They were rarely repeated. New work justified the money of patronage, not the repetition of old "used" work. Some of Bach's pieces were discovered when someone found them being used as wrapping for fish or kitchen trash by the household cooking staff. So our tendency to save everything and set it aside for posterity would have been ridiculed by composers, playwrights, authors, or poets.
My great grandfather was a farmer, born in the late 1800’s. He had very little education, but he had a room in his house he called the library. I have a table from that room the family calls the library table. In that library were first edition novels and a leather bound full collection of the works of Shakespeare.
After doing family history genealogy research, that if I was able to trace an ancestor back to England that records were actually BETTER during this time period than they were from the mid-1800’s to early-1900’s. I’ve found detailed dates for both male and female ancestor lineages with well kept birth, baptism, marriage, death dates
Actually being remembered for throwing feces down a pipe 500 years later is probably more than most of us will be remembered.
honestly, so what? Once I'm dead, I don't care if I am remembered. I hope I will have made the world a little bit better once I am gone, but I don't need to be perpetuated as someone who did something extraordinary. Sociaty values psychopats.
None of us will ever be as famous in the future as the guy who sold shitty copper in ancient Mesopotamia.
11:37 Well, a little while after his son died he wrote HAMLET, so...that is a clue. There are a lot of parallels between what we know of Shakespeare's life and the content of his plays, including a set of twins who were a boy and a girl in TWLFTH NIGHT as well as his geography getting worse and worse the farther his plays got away from either London or Warwickshire. Likewise a lot of his plays show signs of deriving stuff from Ovid who was standard reading in the school in Stratford-Upon-Avon where he presumably learned to read (we know he was literate, because of legal documents bearing his signature and writing, including the request for an award of arms and his will).
14:16 The "Authorship Question" arose at the same time as the Eugenics Movement. No coincidence, since a major emotional argument made then and ever since is that no mere peasant could be the greatest poet of the English language. In this view, he needs to be of superior stock. Hence the current candidate being (of course) an Earl. From such excrement the whole "controversy" arises.
15:16 This is an example of some total nonsense. Shakespeare was an extremely minor figure in history until he achieved fame in London. Even then, people wrote about artists and poets a lot less than they did about soldiers, kings, bishops, and politicians. Of course, there has also been close to two more centuries of scholarship about all this since then, and the sources of Shakespeare's plays (nearly all are adaptations in one way or another) have been identified.
18:20 Shakespeare did indeed have collaborators. There's little doubt of that anymore. One of whom was Christopher Marlowe, but there were at least two others.
19:11 As noted, all of Shakespeare's sources have been identified. This argument depends upon two absurd premises: (1) That the school where Shakespeare almost certain attended resembled a modern elementary school at all, when in fact it focused on things like translating Latin, and (2) The information in the plays were not readily available to someone who could read and was willing to do the research. All his histories, for example, were based on the same series of popular history books. Just as every detail he gave about cities outside of England were to be found in travel books of the period.
19:46 How about Abraham Lincoln, who not only never attended law school never went to school at all?
20:51 These same folks have zero problem with other playwrights writing of periods and people they could not possibly have met. Or that Stephen Crane, author of the iconic Civil War novel THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, never served in the army and was a child during that conflict. This remind me of something I've encountered (so did G.B.Shaw and George R.R.Martin), namely being asked how I can write women character so well? Well, they're people aren't they? So was Julius Caesar, Shylock, Henry V and Oberon King of the Fairies.
21:26 There were no public libraries at this time, but there were plenty of small book shops. One such, in London at the time, carried every single book we know was used as a source for Shakespeare's plays. It was owned by a contemporary for Shakespeare's from Stratford-Upon-Avon. And--he lived in a major port city full of sailors and travelers! He could simply talk to them! I personally know an Anti-Stratfordian who insists Shakespeare could not possibly have talked to any sailors because we have no evidence he did. (We also have no direct evidence the man owned any clothes--his will certainly never mentions it).
21:45 There are no manuscripts of any plays from this period, at all. There are very few letters from playwrights or actors of this period. Very few diaries either (if indeed Shakespeare even kept one). By this evidence, there is no evidence that anyone wrote any plays in Tudor England.
22:11 And where is the documentary evidence to suggest this is the case? Lack of evidence is that--lack of evidence, not proof that someone else wrote the plays.
23:18 This is exactly the reasoning used to insist the HARRY POTTER books were written by a committee. Again, zero evidence is assumed to be proof.
26:00 This ignores that theatre was officially censored in that period. No plays that were overtly critical of the regime were allowed to be produced.
Thank you. I get so tired of people believing that our predecessors could not have done something because they didn't leave a detailed statement of having done it behind and the presumption that prior to the 20th century, people were stupid. Shakespeare went to school, and as all those posts about whether today's people could pass an 8th grade test from the late 19th century certainly show that the students were probably better educated than a lot of our high school students are today ... academic rigor! I firmly believe that Shakespeare is the author of the plays that are attributed to him. Collaborators? Fine. Suggestions made by others: Hey, this could be interesting. Sure. But by and large, the man wrote the works. So, thank you for your detailed analysis of the failings of people who can't get their heads around an educated "lower class" person of his time doing the great work that Shakespeare did. Oh, yeah, I forgot my "elitist" rant in here as well. Not you, the people denying the authorship of the plays.
The most telling thing, in my view, is that none of these theories stem directly from the sources, but rather stem from fairly rudimentary historical works more than two hundred years later - as far as I am aware, there is no indication that anyone in Elizabethan London was puzzling over who this playwrite was, in a city which was still small enough to be considered a "face-to-face" community, at least in terms of "society".
The whole "authorship question" smacks more of a treatise on "why Atlantis was real", a conspiracy theory, or an attempt to treat the historical record as puzzle to be solved, than actual historical scholarship.
@Gerald H Guess I'll just have to fall back on the MA in History, then.
History is about determining probability. Logical arguments, of the kind you see bandied about on the internet, very rarely apply.
@Gerald H This is exactly the same reason to think the fact there's no record of Shakespeare attending school means we cannot presume he did not. Especially since the records of students no longer exist. The fact that everyone in Shakespeare's time believed he wrote those plays (as far as we can tell) can be seen as evidence (albeit not proof) that Shakespeare those plays. The fact no one evidently considered the notion that Oxford might be the author is at least circumstantial evidence he was not.
You want to come up with some reason to believe Oxford was the author, you have to show actual evidence. Not innuendo nor sneering claims Shakespeare was a peasant.
@Gerald H The Eugenics Movement (not the name) arose in the 1860s. As you note, Bacon was first proposed as the "real" Shakespeare in 1856.
I can only presume you have never lost a loved one, to think three or four years after such a death is a long time after the event emotionally. I lost the woman I loved over fifteen years ago, and I still am coming to terms with it, in my heart. This is not odd. I still have to fight back tears several times each year. That he wrote HAMLET in the wake of his son Amlett's death seems like anything but a coincidence.
The evidence that Shakespeare had collaborators is pretty extensive at this point, not least language analysis in some of his early plays compared with the patterns of Marlowe.
The sources mentioned, according to you, do not support Oxford because you insist Shakespeare had access the same ones. Of course, there is the fact Shakespeare's geography does get measurably worse the further his works stray from London and Warwickshire. This is circumstantial evidence against Oxford.
The notion that William Shakespeare, who was beyond any possible doubt a member of the Lord Chamerlain's Men, could not have met the man seems tenuous at best. Is there any firm evidence he met any members of the company of whom he was the patron?
AS noted above, there is plenty of evidence that William Shakespeare was literate, apart from the fact he was known as a writer. There are documents in his hand. That fact he tried different spellings of his last name would not be considered odd now, much less in a period when there was zero standardized spelling. Again, the sneers at Shakespeare's social class comes out--the real reason for this nonsense, pure snobbery.
I refuse to waste my time on your bigotry and distortions. I only replied out of a concern for posterity. You will now engage in a few ad hominem attacks on me, coupled with more directed at William Shakespeare, and presumably the vast majority of scholars, historians, theatrical experts, even Surpreme Court Justices, who disagree with you.
Not my first rodeo.
I found out as an adult that the prolific Franklin W Dixon (author of the Hardy Boys books) was a pen name shared by multiple authors and never an actual person and it broke my childhood ☹️
While I had no idea about this, I guess the fact that there are 190 Hardy Boys books shouldn't make it a surprise that they weren't all written by one person.
Same with Nancy drew.
Loved it, well written Ilze.
I’d like to see a decoding the unknown about the imagery and secret messages in portraits and other paintings. The Tudor were famous for this, but others did it too. There is some really interesting stuff around the Tudor perception of how brains worked in relation to visual stimulation which is relevant. There’s a good podcast called Tudor neuroscience on RUclips, I think the channel was ‘on the Tudor trail’ which has a good introduction to this,
I think you can look at the work of Shakespeare, itself, and see that the writer was someone who came from Shakespeare's modest upbringings. A lot of argument is made that there are clues within the text that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare, but I find that there are a lot of jokes, puns, and ideas within his work that only make sense if Shakespeare was in fact Shakespeare. Three plays particularly stick out which I believe show support for Shakespeare as being Shakespeare, and those would be Henry IV, Henry V, and Merry Wives of Windsor. A very common theme shared among these plays is the common man, prior to Shakespeare the commoner class was not seen as something that could be elevated on the same level as aristocratic status, and it was viewed that if you wanted "high art" you need to depict "high characters" and if you wanted farse, parody, and comedy (in how we view that word today) you needed to show the low class and poke fun at them. These plays, and I think all of Shakespeare's work as a whole, can basically be surmised that really for the first time in art, the common man was elevated and put on equal terms with high society. These plays show an uptick in Shakespeare's popularity to some regard, I think, for the first time the common people who were watching the plays saw for the first time aspects of their life played on stage, real people. Overtime, I think Shakespeare became the "people's poet" so to speak because he demonstrated what it was to be human and portrayed in his works and stories that no matter which wrung of society you were born on, altogether, we all share the same human experiences.
That is a really interesting observation! I would like to disagree, respectfully of course - I honestly think Shakespeare's plays display exactly what you described: "if you wanted "high art" you need to depict "high characters" and if you wanted farse, parody, and comedy, you needed to show the low class and poke fun at them." The _Merry Wives of Windsor_ is often cited as evidence for a commoner author, but really it is an exception. Almost throughout the entire canon, commoners are comic relief figures, portrayed as being foolish, crude and uneducated. The mechanics from _Midsummer Night,_ Lancelet and Giobbe from _Merchant of Venice,_ Pistol and the gang from _Henry V,_ Stephano and Trinculo from _The Tempest,_ the Porter from _Macbeth,_ Christopher Sly from _Shrew,_ the list goes on. The author definitely has a certain amount of compassion for commoners and does occasionally consider their situation and viewpoint. But he is deeply convinced of aristocratic superiority and suspicious of any kind of upward mobility.
With that said, you are entirely right about you said last - that is why Shakespeare is so brilliant. The plays are full of profound humanity, raw emotion and pervaded by this deep sense of honesty. Which is why Shakespeare is a genius, the soul of the age.
Ray Bradbury’s formal education ended at high school. He read his way through a couple of public libraries.
It's frustrating that people think that you have to be high-bred to produce work-like Shakespeare-that no commoner could possibly be that intelligent when we that some of the wealthiest people in the world didn't finish school. It's ridiculous that people think that only rich well-bred people could come up with Shakespeare's plays and not someone with an appetite for reading and a flare for writing...even some commoner.
While I was raised in meeger circumstances, I sent myself to college, after military service. Unlike spindle windbag, mommy and dada didn't pay my way, so my take on Shakespeare's body of work is appreciated from a almost prolatariat perspective, yet being an unsofisticated Yank, I see his work as that of an artist, similar to those of today, he created that which was apropos to the given consumers and social mileu. Shakespeare was a talented writer, similar to Steinbeck of the early 20th century, able to portray sympathetic, relatable characters, themes and stories. So despite spindle windbag's hyper ethnocentric perspective, I believe there's more than enough evidence to say Shakespeare was able to produce such efforts, despite oligarchical rumor mongering to the contrary.
At that time only "high-bred" where literate. The commoners where not able to read and they certainly where not well read
@@douggaudiosi14 Agreed, yet his father's profession, politician, would've reinforced, and readily paid for, the need for his son, William, to be literate.
Also, large parts of Shakespeare's audience at the time were commoners. Theatre wasn't nearly as "posh" of a past time, back in the days, but entertainment for everyone, so it seems strange to expect that the writer must have been far above that - we don't expect comic book authors to be well educated noblemen, either.
@@juancana457 I am not a native speaker nor is my English very good. Still I have to say I love the way you express yourself. I wish my language skills were on your level.
Simon, you should do a video on the crystal skulls. I think it would be great to hear you and your writer's input on them.
Tangent Boi would have an absolute field day with the story of Anna Mitchell-Hedges...!
Francis Bacon wrote The Three Little Pigs oink.
@@duncancurtis1758 I wonder...
How many degrees of separation is he from Kevin?
@@willmfrank easy .. one.
Kevin bacon -
*Francis BACON* -
William Shakespeare
it's all about the bacon 🥓🤣
That would be hilarious!
As far as I know, most of Shakespeare's works are based off well known stories at the time (or even straight up adoptions thereof) - as was common at the time - so if we wanted to go the way of the conspiracies, one might just claim that they weren't even his adaptions but rather direct transcriptions of versions he heard from someone else.
There were certainly similar stories among his contemporaries. Irony of ironies, when I tried to prove he didn’t exist, Ben Jonson was one person I looked to but it turns out Jonson helped collect and publish Shakespeare’s plays. There are several rivals and friends who wrote of him. His education would have been in the classics including speaking Latin and learning Roman history. I’m sure some of his work was collaborative and as for a journal, his sonnets are deeply personal and reflective. On uneducated geniuses, let’s discuss Mozart sometime. Or Bill Gates. Education, I’ve found isn’t a good indicator of talent, intellect, or work ethic, insomuch as it is an indicator of those things. By what measure you judge a man… etc.
@@Zephaerie1 Jonson was a wonderful researcher and a wonderful poet. But he was too consumed with formalism to be as good a dramatist as shakespeare. too concerned with "what should be" instead of "what works"
@@Zephaerie1 Mozart had all the education you need. His father was a composer and performer. The only 'conspiracy' surrounding him that actually holds up is how much his father revised his earliest compositions.
But the problem with that is that we have many of the sources that he used extant, so we can tell how much Shakespeare modified these stories and improved them, even when following the plot outline fairly closely (as he did with, for example, _The Troublesome Raigne of King John_ ). And most of Shakespeare's sources are not plays, so it took extra effort on his part to cast them in dramatic form. They're based on histories like those of Holinshed, Hall, and Plutarch, or based on prose fictions (e.g., _Rosalynde, or Euphues' Golden Legacy_ by Thomas Lodge as the source of _As You Like It_ ) or narrative poems ( _The Tragically Historye of Romeus and Juliet_ by Arthur Brooke).
He wrote the verse, not the stories.
I think it's absolutely hilarious that the entire theory is that there's no evidence that Shakespeare wrote them, when there's also literally no evidence anyone else did.
And it's even more absurd given that there is nothing _but_ evidence that William Shakespeare wrote the works. Literally every piece of documentary evidence from the time that speaks to the authorship of the canonical works says he wrote them and every contemporary who bothered to comment on the subject said he wrote them. The group of contemporaries include Leonard Digges, whose stepfather Thomas Russell was one of Shakespeare's two "overseers" [executors]; Ben Jonson, in two of whose plays Shakespeare had acted; John Webster, another playwright of the time who had written the induction scene for John Marston's _The Malcontent_ when it was performed by Shakespeare's company the King's Men in 1604 and who would offer his second solo-authored tragedy _The Duchess of Malfi_ to the King's Men while Shakespeare was still active with the company; Francis Meres, who knew thirteen Shakespeare play titles (including titles of plays that wouldn't be published until the First Folio), his two narrative poems, and knew that Shakespeare was a sonnet writer whose sonnets were circulating among his friends in manuscript; and Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell, who compiled the First Folio and write the dedication where they identify the author of the plays as their "Friend, & Fellow" Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was identified by name, by his rank of gentleman (when the only man in England named William Shakespeare who had a coat of arms was the Stratford-upon-Avon William Shakespeare), by his profession of actor, and by his hometown of Stratford. That really should be enough evidence to get started with. But the Shakespeare authorship deniers start by excluding all of this evidence by fiat, then they spin their wheels uselessly because they've eliminated the only way to decide the matter since it doesn't support their contention.
@@Nullifidian Leonard Digges, a relatively unknown poet, wrote two eulogies to Shakespeare after his death, neither of whom identify "Shakespeare" as the man from Stratford.
Ben Jonson, also many years after the poet's death, wrote the famous eulogy in the First Folio, which is full of ambiguity.
John Webster, when speaking of Shakespeare, never identified him as a recognisable human being or indeed as the man from Stratford. The same goes for Francis Meres.
Heminges and Condell never identified William of Stratford as the author of the plays during his lifetime. Again, the attribution is posthumous.
William of Stratford, with his status as gentleman, his coat of arms and his profession as actor, was never ever connected to the plays during his lifetime. Attribution of the works to the man from Stratford began with the First Folio, seven years after his death. All evidence for his authorship is posthumous. There is no contemporary evidence at all.
@@thesardonicpig3835 "Leonard Digges, a relatively unknown poet, wrote two eulogies to Shakespeare after his death, neither of whom identify "Shakespeare" as the man from Stratford."
On the contrary, the poem in the First Folio explicitly refers to "thy Stratford monument" and the poem evidently intended for the Second Folio mentioned Shakespeare's professional association with the King's Men when the only William Shakespeare with a Stratford monument and the only one affiliated with the King's Men was the one from Stratford-upon-Avon. We can tell this not only by the numerous links between Shakespeare and the other actors of the King's Men, but also because in a writ of surety in the _Shakespeare v. Addenbrooke_ case, filed in the Borough of Stratford, William Shakespeare is described (in Latin) as being "lately of the court of the lord James, now king of England".
Also, Leonard Digges wrote a letter to a man named Will Baker on the flyleaf of James Mabbe's copy of _Rimas_ by Lope de Vega praising "our Will Shakespeare" (note the familiar "our Will") for his sonnets and saying that Shakespeare should be as famous in England for his as Lope de Vega was in Spain for his sonnets, and that if Baker didn't like Shakespeare's sonnets then he must never read Lope de Vega's. This comment was made c. 1613.
"Ben Jonson, also many years after the poet's death, wrote the famous eulogy in the First Folio, which is full of ambiguity."
It's only "full of ambiguity" to the people who _need_ it to be ambiguous in order to support their conspiracy theory and to the idiots who can't read early modern English with comprehension. (And these two groups overlap significantly: the conspiracy theorists find their 'justifications' in their inability to read early modern English correctly.) Furthermore, Ben Jonson also commented on Shakespeare bringing sailors to shipwreck off the coast of Bohemia, where there is no coast nearby for hundreds of miles - a clear comment on _The WInter's Tale_ - in private conversation with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Then in his commonplace book, which was posthumously published as _Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter_ , he explicitly said the following:
"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand,' which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. 'Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too! Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, 'Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied, 'Caesar did never wrong but with just cause;' and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."
So once again, we have Shakespeare being criticized for his _writing_ of a specific play, which could only be the case _if_ he were a playwright, a man known to his fellow players in the King's Men as a playwright, and yet concluding that his virtues as a playwright redeemed his vices.
"John Webster, when speaking of Shakespeare, never identified him as a recognisable human being or indeed as the man from Stratford."
You're just turning your brain off and engaging in mere gainsaying. I already made the case for why Webster would have known Shakespeare as a real person: he was involved in the London theatre for a decade by the point where he published _The White Devil_ , he had previously been on record as supplying a metatheatrical induction scene for John Marston's _The Malcontent_ for its King's Men's performance that showed his familiarity with the members of the company, and he gave his next solo-authored tragedy to the King's Men while Shakespeare was still penning his late collaborations with John Fletcher. The idea that Webster could have done all that and still had no personal knowledge of Shakespeare as a playwright is beyond the bounds of probability.
"The same goes for Francis Meres."
And you're ignoring the fact that Meres testified to the existence of thirteen Shakespeare plays, writing that passage when *NONE* had been published with Shakespeare's name on it (the plays published between 1594 and 1597 were all published anonymously) and that he was sufficiently close to Shakespeare to testify that his sonnets were in circulation in manuscript "among his private friends". Needless to say, a mere figment of the imagination can't have private friends.
"Heminges and Condell never identified William of Stratford as the author of the plays during his lifetime. Again, the attribution is posthumous."
So effing what? You think that John Heminges and Henry Condell could have acted for twenty years in a body of plays written for their theatrical company and suddenly, merely because Shakespeare had died, they forgot the real author's name and just randomly attributed it to him in their amnesic fog? Is *THAT* what you're running up the flagpole and expecting me to salute?!
"William of Stratford, with his status as gentleman, his coat of arms and his profession as actor, was never ever connected to the plays during his lifetime."
Of course he was. It was *HIS NAME* on the plays starting from 1598! It was *HIS COMPANY* that performed all the plays attributed to him in quarto. Only you lunatics think that an attribution by name isn't good enough and that a title page should also contain a coordinate reference to the author's house, a thorough genealogy back to the Norman Conquest, and a DNA fingerprint. Furthermore, I'm obliged to you pointing out that he was a gentleman, because on Q1 of _King Lear_ (1608) his name is prefaced with the honorific appertaining to a gentleman. He's also referred to with the honorific in certain Stationers' Register accounts, in the Q1 of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (1634), and in Edmund Howes' additions to John Stow's _Annals_ (1615). This identification of the author as a gentleman was made when William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the *ONLY* armigerous gentleman in England, by virtue of the coat of arms given to his father John Shakespeare for being a bailiff, JP, and magistrate.
"Attribution of the works to the man from Stratford began with the First Folio, seven years after his death. All evidence for his authorship is posthumous."
That is obviously untrue, and even if it were true it would be irrelevant. *ALL* of the credited plays of Christopher Marlowe were published after his death (the two parts of _Tamburlaine_ were published before, but anonymously), and yet we have no reason for doubting that Marlowe wrote them. (His poems and translations were all first published posthumously as well.) The only extant play we have by Henry Chettle (d. c. 1607) is the 1631 quarto of _The Tragedy of Hoffman_ , and yet no one doubts that Chettle wrote the play. Posthumous publication of playwrights' works was standard in Shakespeare's era and it doesn't impact the value of the evidence at all.
"There is no contemporary evidence at all."
False, false, and false. The contemporary evidence that William Shakespeare was a playwright/poet/author starts in 1592 and continued throughout his life and beyond. Which brings me to my second point: there is no distinction between posthumous evidence and contemporary evidence *PROVIDED* that the evidence comes from people who were contemporaries of Shakespeare. So John Heminges and Henry Condell's remarks in the First Folio are contemporary evidence. Ben Jonson's comments are contemporary evidence. Anyone who was around at the time and said that Shakespeare wrote his works, regardless of whether this occurred before Shakespeare's death or after it, provided contemporary evidence. The alternative is to assume that you forget everything about a person the instant that they die-or, more precisely, that you confabulate a false record of them as a playwright (which coincidentally happens to overlap with the evidence from the title pages, Stationers' Register, Revels Accounts, etc.) because you can't remember who wrote what the instant that they died. That's so self-evidently stupid that you should be ashamed to put forth so feeble and absurd an argument.
Genuinely enjoyed Simons memories, opinions, and general thoughts on Shakespeare & his theater. I usually tone out when Shakespeare comes up, because I've had to watch so many copy-paste documentaries about him in school. But, Simon's little nuances and expirences coming from a South English background were genuinely interesting and added a lot of uniqueness/perspective here.
I strongly recommend Michael Wood's "In Search Of William Shakespeare", he manages to fill in a lot of those missing years, as well as showing just how extensive his middle class education was (hint: modern day students wouldn't stand a chance)..
23:04 As to this particular point, I feel like you already managed to adequately refute it earlier: Ol' Bill wasn't writing in a vaccuum. He was in a highly competitive business, and it would be in his interest to see what others were producing, and adopt new techniques and styles as they proved effective. In short, he became inspired by others' work.
Sometimes he copied the sources almost word by word, but then turned pathetic history pamphlets into blood-veined poetry
Wow, TWO episodes in one day? Which one do I watch first!
I watched the other one. lol
@@CrudzMcKenzie Same here. Vampires are always more interesting than Shakespeare.
@@philbarrett3739 Hah! That's what you think! Shakespeare was a vampire! 😁
There's a funny story about Edward de Vere. It seems that one day, on arriving at court, he made a low bow to the queen and accidentally let out a massive fart. He was so embarrassed by this that he went traveling for 7 years until he felt he could face society again. On his return, Queen Elizabeth welcomed him with, "My lord, I had forgot the fart."
No man of such delicate sensibilities could have possibly come up with Dogberry.
That rant about the Globe - priceless. I have never felt so seen. Thanks Factboy.
Oh, a double feature. Nice! Have a good day Simon
Can you imagine finding a shakespear play?
Me: cha-ching! $$$
Lol I definitely played groundling at the Globe in the late 90s. But as a visiting class from the US, I only had to do it once. As a one time event, it was a treasure.
David Mitchell has written and starred in a comedy about Shakespeare, its called upstart crow, its so good, he blends modern day things like late or cancelled transport, with the horse and carriages from history, very clever, well worth a watch.
I went to a play where there were only two cast members who played all the roles. Often multiple characters at once. At the end, they were both drenched in sweat. They were amazing. (It was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe)
Please edit more like this video. The raw conversation, cutaway edits and cold hard facts. Probably my favourite video of yours to date
Simon, I thoroughly enjoy listening to you talk about things. You both make me laugh and provide a delightful background audio while I relax at the end of my day. Thank you for working so hard and putting out so much content for us to enjoy.
I enjoyed your Globe Theater story, and this entire episode. Thank you Simon.
You should do the Philadelphia Experiment for one of your future episodes!
Please let's stick to reality and not verified nonsense
@@matthewmillburg3933 verified nonsense like vampires? Lol
@@Rifter- the ridiculous Philadelphia experiment nonsense is an utter and absurd fabrication that no sentient person would waste one second on. Vampirism is light years more believable than the ridiculous so called P.E. How such drivel ever entered into the narrative is unfathomable
@@matthewmillburg3933 HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
ruclips.net/video/nQPmTHrlO24/видео.html
A good question is, why would his work be considered unflattering for the royals?
Why would there be a need for hiding the true identity?
Elvis wrote it. With ancient aliens after he time travelled using dinosaur hair. From the Loch Ness monster's beard.
hah. this was actually a serious problem at the time. People from noble families (e.g. Philip Sidney, Thomas Sackville, John Donne) did not publish their works, much less have them performed on public stages. And a lot of publications at the time were indeed anonymous. Ironically, Shakespeare himself is one of the few whose name appears consistently on his publications.
@@Admiralmeriweather But they were patrons of theater groups so the idea of being embarrassed at writing plays doesn't add up for me.
English society in the 16th-17th Century did not hold the theatre in high esteem like some societies do today. The theatre and its people were considered to be but a half step up from the alehouse or the brothel. So titled society, let alone royalty, wouldn't have anything to do with it for the most part.
@@dsnodgrass4843 I question that. Although I believe acting was considered just above a prostitution a lot of noble were patrons of theater groups.
@@SEAZNDragon They were patrons of fortune tellers and prostitutes too.
MORE SIMON PLEASE !!! Can you decode what makes "Florida man, Florida Man" ?
Not much to decode, it is what news agancies use when reporting on crime.
"Florida man caught robbing a store with an alligator"
Then the internet created a meme out out it as if it was a single person, like a superhero of stupidity
Simon continues to impress. A Shakespearean actor, on a scholarship no less. Also, 12fth Night is my favorite.
And they're both 44mins long, that's this afternoon's watching sorted
Double Decoding! Double dope!
Hi Simon! Thank you 🙏
I love it when Simon goes off on a tangent and tells people to Google it and watch a video on it cause he can't explain if then realises he's made a video on it half way through, go watch some one else smarter than me or even me explain it somewhere else
Well presented and educational, as ever Simon. Thanks.
One criticism: too many ads! I know and appreciate that the show can't go on without them, but there were a couple too many on this particular video.
That said, keep up the good work.
Gas prices are up and Simon said screw yall I need more money for my commute to work lmao takes alot of petro to walk to work 🙃
I know I know. But I love money.
yeah but records get lost don't they or they burn in a gigantic fire and considering that most of his activities were around London which has burned I'm guessing at least several times.. the records could have gotten destroyed or just lost
I think it was also common in the past to sometimes burn old letters, etc, after the person died, to preserve their privacy.
The school he probably went to don't have any records from around the time he went because why keep a bunch of records for students who are long dead.
AMAZING!!!!
WOW, such a great video.
Thank you for making it.
Questioning how Shakespeare wrote about so many different topics is legitimate, but is also easily explained away. Shakespeare hadn't needed to actually experience the things in which he wrote about first hand. Living where he did, he could have easily done some light local traveling going to pubs and ports talking to other notable people of the time, adventurers, politicians, soldiers etc. Add in some reading and it doesn't seem so outrageous that Shakespeare would have a broad global insight. Add in the fact that Shakespeare's plays were liked by the general public, that would suggest that they must have been somewhat privy to the happenings of the world as well in order to avoid being confused by the plays contents.
2:35 - Chapter 1 - The upstart crow
11:45 - Mid roll ads
14:10 - Chapter 2 - The question of authorship
18:10 - Chapter 3 - If not Shakespeare then who ?
23:30 - Chapter 4 - The suspects
36:35 - Chapter 5 - Other suspects
38:05 - Chapter 6 - So, who wrote shakespeare ?
19:19 Yes. It's a Greek word that means exactly that (someone who has studied a subject by his own). I'm not sure if that word is in common use in English language though!
I think it is relatively common in English, I didn’t even realise it was a Greek word.
Standard English just going around stealing stuff.
Back to back episodes? What the what?!?
Lost Shakespeare plays; "Lookest yonder Grommit, the Moon hast been created from many a varried Cheeses. As mine soul seekest truth, such a truth musteth leadest our gathering to come upon a creation of mechanical Wings, so we mayest set forward upon a travel towards Stilton, Wenslydale and Shropshire Blue". I somehow remember seeing that play.
What I like to ask (and I have studied Shakespeare; one does not get through high school English in my jurisdiction without it) is: at the end of the day, does it really matter who actually wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare? I think it's enough that the works were written and that they are still a sparkling jewel in the annals of English literature.
(If I'm absolutely put to the question, my personal suspicion is that Shakespeare was probably one of a syndicate of authors who wrote the plays working together.)
This is a terrible argument. Attribution is everything. It matters. It matters that Monet painted his water lilies, that Mark Twain (also a pseudonym) wrote Huckleberry Finn, that Beethoven wrote the 9th symphony, that Mozart wrote his 40th Symphony. People search endlessly for correct authorship and place immense value on surviving authenticated works.
Except for William Shakespeare. Then it’s “Oh, it doesn’t matter. There’s no evidence he could even read or write or knew foreign languages or travelled or studied law or medicine or was familiar with Court or Royalty…but he wrote the works. Who cares. Just enjoy them.”
For me, it’s a matter of giving the true author his due. To not acknowledge the real author is just not fair
Ole Bill Shakespeare was an alien!!! 🤣
One thing a lot of Shakespeare-deniers miss is that the works do *not* show an amazing knowledge of the world or of Latin and Greek. In fact, Shakespeare, like most writers, seems to have been unconcerned with accuracy. He, quite rightly, would mangle geography and history in the name of a good story. And he made all kinds of grammatical errors, even in English. The argument that only an exquisitely educated person could know so much and write so precisely falls apart when you consider this. He was a great *writer*, but not a great scholar.
I read the Douglas Adams book you're talking about. It's more like a quarter finished, and is basically a book he scrapped a bit before he died. It does indeed end on a really strong cliffhanger.
This is gonna be a treat to watch; I know how much Simon *LOVES* "Olde English!" 🤣
Shakespeare used Early Modern English.
@@angieemm Oh I know that, but anything before 1900, Simon would sarcastically call "Olde English," LOL 😆
@@angieemm ok dude
What if Shakespeare's wife wrote the plays?
I've heard a few theories about Willy Shakespeare. The most common one is that Shakespeare's books were written by multiple authors of the time.
The other was that he did legitimately exist but personally I think both are plausible.
I totally understand Simon's position. When I was running my computer service and sales business, I used my own computer at home far less, and basically stopped using it for entertainment until I changed careers after two years.
As my ex-mother-in-law used to say, "the shoe makers kids are barefoot". She was a maid...so...yeah...
Good video 👍
good profile pic Pug...!
Double upload? Sign me up!
"IF I HAD 5 POUNDS I'D BE SPENDING IT ON TUCK". Jesus, Simon, my primary school memories of tuck shop just came FLOODING back 🤣🤣🤣 I haven't heard anyone refer to it as tuck for years!!!
2 DTU's in one day...??? *AWESOME* ...!!!
But, we all know that Shakespeare is best in the original Klingon!
Or Russian ... I believe a certain Russian ensign claimed this.
Best line in Trek *ever*. But Hamlet spends all but the last scene finding reasons *not* to revenge his father. When you think about it, the Klingons would think was pretty weak.
Wanna see the very best version of _King Lear?_
Watch Akira Kurosawa's _Ran._
You will not be disappointed.
Promise.
@@michaelmoore7975 Similarly, Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" is a great adaptation of Macbeth. The advanced scholar should watch his film "The Hidden Fortress". It's Star Wars A New Hope without the force. All you have to do is add a couple of lines from "The Dam Busters" when the pilots estimate the number of guns defending their target and you've got the attack on the Death Star in medieval Japan.
@@paulrobinson3649 Oooohh yes, dammit...i forgot Throne of Blood. Brilliant film. Wel spotted.
And yes Hidden Fortress. A story as witnessed by two bumbling bystanders. Star Wars. A story as witnessed by two bumbling droids.
And of course Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.
Kurosawa borrowed from everyone and everyone borrowed from Kurosawa.
Always here to represent BrainBlaze!!
The stupidest thing is when people claim (on no evidence) that Shakespeare was illiterate... as though the "true" author would choose someone illiterate to be a front for their playwriting and just expect no-one to notice that he was illiterate...
All those theorists forget that pubs exist. He didn't have to know everything, be could have easily asked other people about languages, experiences, laws, countries.
I've been called a walking thesaurus (can't spell for shit though) on multiple occasions. I blame both my vocabulary and terrible spelling on my multilingualism. I know a ridiculous amount of root words in three languages plus I have introductory knowledge of two others, so from there, it's decently easy to not only know words, but be able to deduce the meaning of those I have yet to come across. I found for English, French and Spanish helps a lot. I do wish I took Latin though as I am certain that would be infinitely more valueable in this realm. It also helps that I find etemology simply fascinating so I am more likely to retain what I've learned... which when having suffered through two concussions and a disease that caused millions of tiny bloodclots in my brain, near killed me, and left me with the memory of a freaking guppy. They're smaller, so therefore I assumed more forgetfull colloquially than a goldfish.
Anyway, my point is, learn French, Spanish, German, and Latin, and that will help with the vocabulary far more than just reading will; especially when speaking those juicy new words you learn. I am pretty sure most people who misspronounce things do so because they read a lot and learned their vocab thusly, whereas when you learn it in a class, or through root word associations, you learn to say it too.
Hope any of this helps. I swear I'm not just bragging, I genuinely feel I can help. Have a great day to any one who read this, and thanks for taking time out of your day to do so! ♡♡
That's so interesting, thanks for sharing! I think you're right. I read a lot as a child but didn't really have any adults to talk to about the interesting things I was learning, so lots of writers' names I never knew how to pronounce. Same with places. I loved reading about different cultures, their histories and mythologies, but pronunciation of the names... oooo boy. I'm still not good at it. Also, you deserve to boast a bit, friend! That's an impressive scope of knowledge you have there.
@@RealElongatedMuskrat aw, thanks! ♡ I just know that when I realized I pronounced some English words wrong because I read a lot and it wasn't a lacking on my part, that I felt so much better about myself, so I like to share this knowledge ^-^
I think you are definitely onto something with that. Ever since I was a young child I have been constantly reading(currently have 3 different books on the go simply to go with whatever mood I am in) but can not pronounce things for shit lol. I am so sorry to hear about your illness! How are you doing now?? X
@@RealElongatedMuskrat I have a similar problem. I have no idea how to pronounce a new word properly until I hear someone else say it.
I can't recall ever having encountered someone so articulate who spells so poorly (this is a compliment). Never would I have thought to employ the phrase "colloquially forgetful"--that is just so beautifully precise and novel I can hardly stand it. 💕
Judging from Reddit, spelling is still pretty loosy-goosy today.
I like how the real Shakespeare was not posh enough to a playwright but all of the suspects are too posh to be associated with the theater.😂
You've put your finger on one of the many illogical premises of the anti-Shakespearians.
I watched the one about Vampires (before the video disappeared) and it was fantastic.
What an interesting topic!
Isaac Asimov wrote over 500 published novels while being an accomplished Doctorate of Chemistry. So I think Shakespeare was probably just a savant like Asimov.
I remember hearing something along the lines of William Shakespeare was a pen name used by a few different writers, poets, and playwrights. Don't remember where I picked it up or what supporting evidence was used to corroborate the statement.
I usually listen to the podcast, but came on here to watch when my Spotify got weird. For some reason it won't let me play this episode and your most recent one about vampires. Hopefully it will behave again soon. Great episode!
Apart from teaching one's self things, Shakespeare could also have met important people in his line of work and asked them to tell him in detail about things like court proceedings.
His supposed knowledge of matters at court is greatly exaggerated. But you are correct that he could have heard what little there is from people like Baron Hunsdon, who was both the Queen's cousin and closest advisor, and also Shakespeare's patron.
You've basically told us, you are a reciting parrot. If I remember nothing else you've told us, I remember that!
If I remember one thing I remember that Gators gonna Gate 🐊
I really enjoyed this one. Thank you.
9:45 Pretty the cushion surcharge was a thing back in the day when the bard was writing/ performing there, too!
Simon - half your videos are your thoughts and musings as it is and, omg look, we're all still here watching and loving it. The people do care!
Very good, I loved this, more historical stuff!
Lol 😆 The comment about spending 5 pounds on "tuck"... in the US Tucks are the #1 used ointment for hemorrhoids, so fitting to you discuss the cushions!
Enjoyed this video! I only recently heard of this Shakespeare conspiracy. I appreciate quality content!
The line about paper scripts being turned into that day's pastry paper reminded me of the film Hugo and how most of the old, pioneer filmmarker's movies got turned into the rubber for people's shoes and it broke his heart to the point he stopped making anything at all.
I remember reading about how in Shakespeare's time, spelling was kinda "however you felt like" and it is hard to accept now with standardized spelling but we call it that for a reason, don't we? Maybe you change it up because of where you are and they spell things that way, so why not just go with the flow. There are so many reasons to change up your spelling, if standardizing isn't a thing yet.
I'm a fan of the theory that shakespear retold many stories. In the way that his stories build on the verbal and written stories of the time, and he then polished then up, like inserting scenes and charecter interaction and made it better.
That's not a theory. Aside from a few plays (notably a Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest) Shakespeare rewrote older stories. We know exactly what they were and where they came from. His King John is scene-by-scene a rewrite of an earlier play. His Winter's Tale is from a book called Pandosto which was itself a rewrite of one of the Canturbury Tales.
We say there are no new ideas in Hollywood, but they're nothing compared to the English Renaissance.
The scientific method is the process of objectively establishing facts through testing and experimentation. The basic process involves making an observation, forming a hypothesis, making a prediction, conducting an experiment and finally analyzing the results.
Good listen!
Autodidact is the correct term for learning stuff on your own. Well done Simon 👍🏻
Where did you learn that? Did you look it up yourself?
Frederick Wilmot would have been completely baffled by Stevie Wonder. There's absolutely no written notes to examine how that man created what he created.
There has been a lot of research comparing sentence structures, literary devices, and grammar that Shakespeare's works exhibit with those of DeVere and Bacon' known poetry. No one comes close to Shakespeare' s variety of creation in this examination. I do have a theory that Shakespeare had a lot of assistance from his fellow players as they rehearsed the plays. For example Will Kemp, the comic, could have adjusted jokes and puns to relate to the physical comedy, and the leading man could well have advised how best to present the soliloquies. In fact, rehearsals may well have been conducted as a workshop to put it in modern terms.
I'm just starting the video, but YAY, good topic!
Sir Francis Bacon - "Yo, plebeian..." haha Ay yo!
Simon, you are indeed full of surprises.
Simon: My vocabulary is so bad.
Also Simon: Autodidact is someone who is self taught
He had to look it up.
I like your laid back attitude on this channel.
I remember you used to have a vlog channel. I remember how windy it was when you visited Cape Town