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GUEST,litchick BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville? (139* d) RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville? 27 Oct 05


Mark Rylance, former (by the way) artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, putting his name to such a publication by no means adds to it's credence since he is not a scholar of literature or history.

Books such as this can be interesting, if well written, often as background to the period in which the plays were written and produced, but since it would be all but impossible to conclusively prove the authorship one way or another, the argument seems to be rather pointless. The majority of academics agree that the most convincing evidence suggests that William Shakespeare did write most of the work attributed to him, and unfortunately these alternative theories, even the entertaining ones, often turn out to be nothing more than flimsy hypotheses written by academics in order to generate media attention and sales.

Assertions that a person of Shakespeare's social position would be incapable of the "spectacular command of the language" the works demonstrate, are similarly difficult to prove. If Shakespeare was educated, and it is perfectly possible that he was, he would have studied a great deal of classical literature featuring complicated poetic structures and imagery as a matter of course. One must remember that Shakespeare (or whoever) did not write 'highbrow' or 'difficult' texts, he wrote populist material that was enjoyed by many facets of the population at the time, if he were alive today he would probably be writing for Hollywood!


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