BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 29 Oct 05 - 06:04 AM

But Neville would have been in a better position to write Tudor propaganda (which is basically what Richard III and the Henry plays are). Personally, I've never either liked nor believed in Shakespeare.... I reckon it was an infinite number of monkeys.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 29 Oct 05 - 04:16 PM

I'm perfectly willing to get into the spirit of the thing, visit Stratford on Avon, etc.-( which I've heard is actually dishearteningly commercialized--is this true?----but check pretty carefully how many of the statements presented as fact there are actually supported by evidence. And I sure intend to buy the Neville book when it comes out, and find out if the authors' approach has a tighter case.

At this point, I'm definitely not convinced by either case.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Oct 05 - 07:45 PM

But Neville would have been in a better position to write Tudor propaganda

Why? All the necessary facts and rumours were in readily accessible printed books in any case. Nobody would suggest that in order to write a play about Churchill, for example, a contemporary playwright would have to be a member of some high-powered political family.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Lady Hillary
Date: 29 Oct 05 - 07:56 PM

I find it curious that in many threads [tho not this one], there seem to be problems with spelling...even here in the ultracorrect cat. How can we hold an earlier generation, when paper was dear bought, to a higher standard than we follow, when electrons are essentially free?

Spelling may be an indication but it is not a definite answer.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Oct 05 - 09:32 PM

the thing is your ladyship, we're all getting on a bit on this site and we've realised we don't give a stuff about spelling.

when I was a young man, a young lady wrote me a love poem and she spelled separate wrongly - she spelled it seperate. and me being an arrant snob and hoping for preferrment from hoity toity folks like yourself, I dismissed her declaration of love out of hand.

this proved to be a mistake. and anyway I ended up as lowly folksinger, singing songs by buggers most of whom probably couldn't spell for toffee.

let this be a lesson. do not blight your own life by concentrating on how stuff is spelled rather than the message itself, and its sincerity.

all the best

al

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 30 Oct 05 - 05:09 PM

Tudor propaganda - Actually the facts about Richard III were already well known, but it didn't do to broadcast them or it resulted in a permanent cure for headaches. Once the Tudors were gone, it was safe to publish the truth.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 05 - 05:21 PM

there seem to be problems with spelling.

You mean, people who see it a problem when there's a mispelling in someone else's post?

"The truth about Richard III"? No one knows that or ever will, or ever can. Rather like "the truth about Shakespeare", however he spelt his name, in that respect.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 01:43 AM

Good folks, we can't even agree on the relatively recent facts around the assassination of John Kennedy. How the hell will this ever be decided one way or the other--.

Henry Neville has about as much chance of being unequivcally proven to be the author of things gnerally called Shakespearean as do ideas about Intelligent Design being worthy of respectability and included on the same level as the many scientifically proven aspects of Evolution.   Indeed, lets put the theory that storks bring babies right into every Sex Education class.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: GUEST,Janine
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 03:50 AM

Brenda James's reasoning is a bit shaky to say the least; you can prove anything by such methods. Neville, apparently, was a relative of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, 'The Kingmaker'. In S's Henry V, the King speaks to the Earl of Warwick, addressing him as Neville although at that time the Earl was Richard Beauchamp (lots of spellings!) the Neville earl's father-in-law. Surely his decendent would not have made such an elementary mistake. QED? Of course not but just about as strong as Brenda James's reasoning.

Janine

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:22 AM

The obsession with "correct" spelling has been around for only 150 years or so. Before that, writers spelt as they pleased, many not even bothering to be consistent. (And maybe the obsession has run its course - texting etc will lead us back to anarchy.)

BE2, you've clutched at a host of vestigial theories as someone would who was making a case for ghosts or poltergeists. They amount to nothing individually, and adding them all together still leaves you with nothing. And some of your assertions just don't stack up. For instance it is ridiculous to say Shakespeare was not credited with authorship by his peers. He is mentioned often, by fellow troupers such as Ben Johnson on the one hand, by the Cambridge set on the other. Johnson in fact was quite a close friend and made numerous references to Shakespeare as player and author. And Beaumont discussed Shakespeare's writing in correspondence with Johnson.

Of course, there was no controversy whatsoever about Shakespeare's authorship for 200 years or so. In other words all those who had been around at the time, and their descendents, accepted without question that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. And just to enlarge on a point someone made about stagecraft, it is noteworthy that no actor of any worth has ever doubted Shakespeare wrote the plays. Plots, court intrigue and locations Shakespeare could cull from the acknowledged sources - and whoever wrote the plays plainly did so, whether an intellectual, a country gentleman as Shakespeare was, or an unschooled peasant. But the understanding of stagecraft was not in any of the sources. That depended on an intimate working knowledge of the theatre.

The fact that in the past 200 years the conspiracy theorists have had to advance one candidate after another is surely a measure of how feeble their case is. Face it - the idea that someone else wrote Shakespeare is an urban legend that got out of hand.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:54 AM

I ahve worked in theatre for 40 years. When you read Shakespeare, it is difficult to credit the amount of genius that can make someone write so much so beautifully. But in these theories that someone else wrote them, we are generally being asked to believe that someone with no knowledge of theatre caould have come up with this prodigious output of stunning plays. And that, as McGrath and others have pointed out, stretches the imaginaton just a bit too far. I can believe someone who knew theatre could have been wonderfully talentd enough to write these plays; I think it is beyond the realms of possibility that some aristocratic amateur could have been both that practical and that poetic.
    So for me, it's got to be either Shakespeare, or another contemporary theatre practitioner, in London, also called William Shakespeare(sp?).

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 06:28 PM

Well, it may shed some light on the issue if we take into account that Edward (de Vere) actually ran two theater companies and, after various adventures in the military and touring Europe, was (it is recorded) very involved in managing a theatrical troupe ("The London Boys") on a day to day basis.   

It has been observed by many that the gentry in Elizabethan England often published non-fiction works in their own name. But (according to many), not if you were a courtier to the Monach (de Vere was) and not if your plays and verses were politically incorrect (Shakespeare's works were often very much so).    And when Edward became a courtier, his writing abruptly stopped.   By coincidence, this was when Bill picked up his pen, and started writing for the very first time in his late 20's.

So, on the one hand we have a guy who got a law degree shortly after his 15th birthday, had extemely intimate knowledge of latin, the science of the day including Astronomy and the Natural Sciences, had extensive details of the workings of the court and with first hand knowledge of the aristocracy.   It is also reported that he had first hand experience on the battlefield.   And to boot, not your sitting-idly-in-manor-day-dreaming of stuff and things sort of Earl, but a guy who earned his bread as a working theatrical manager.   (After he left court, he went bankrupt and Queen Elizabeth granted him a $1000 a year grant to keep his estate intact).

All of the above are relevant when looking at the depth and breadth of knowledge of our mystery author - who had all this knowledge to wrap his literary genius around.   

On the other, we have our Bill, who has no history or provenance of any of the above.   Just sheer brain power to fill in all the gaps with exactly the right amount of invention.   Including, amazingly, a slew of knowledge about Edward's very private affairs.

Edward De Vere had a personal coat of arms which had as its main motiv a lion shaking a spear.   When he died, the court marked his passing by presenting several of the works ascribed to "Shake-Spear" in the second folio.

When Bill died, no one took a jot of notice.   Nothing was said nor done.   Nothing!   Even though King Jim had made it clear that the plays were so good, they would be performed to mark the passing of Edward.   But only Edward, mind you.   They didn't go putting on plays to mark the passing of aristocrats who had no connection with the theater. Possibly, people had forgotten our Bill - after all, he wrote nothing after Edward died.

It was a couple of decades later that the works ascribed to "Shake-spear" were accredited to Guilliam Shackspeare.   To make it easier for the connection to stick, Guilliam's name was reworked to "Shakespeare", a name that he had never used himself in his life, and was not even the way he pronounced his own name.   

After the Puritans were removed from power, the move began in earnest to link Bill, Bard of Avon, to the plays and sonnets.   Four generations of Stratford upon Avon people had ignored that they lived in the hometown to a literary genius.   Thereafter, they prided themselves constantly on their historic connection to young Bill.   They even changed a sack of corn on his memorial to one of paper and quill - he would have wanted it that way.

A number of historians say that the reason no one really took note of the authorship issue prior to the Puritan period of rule, was because everybody knew "Shake-Spear" referred to de Vere.   Many sonnets were dedicated to members of his family (if it was Bill what wrote them, what on earth was he thinking of?).   Some clearly advise Southampton on how to deal with a marriage arranged for him by his widowed mother so as to deal with the penury they faced.   And everyone knew why Edward hadn't signed his name on them - his stuff was very incorrect for the day.   

Much is made of Edward's rather unpleasant personality - he almost certainly was guilty of the murder of a manservant, was reputed to have affairs with men and women outside of his marriage (one consort was said to be Southampton), and so on.   Bill's many failings are considered by his supporters to be mere trifles - but Edward's as categorical proof that he could not, indeed should not, be treated as a great author.

Shortly after he died, Edward was declared to be England's greatest ever poet and author, even though the works bearing his name (that exist today) are largely infantile doodlings.   To have got this accolade, one must assume that he had written some other works - works that people of the day thought were of the very highest order.

If they existed (and surely those works must have existed for Edward to have attracted so much praise) I wonder what happened to them?   Perhaps they have been accidently ascribed to someone who never penned a word in his life.   

That would explain where they had all gone...

There exists an ever decreasing band of "Shakespearean Academics" who hold that Bill was the true author, and to think otherwise is heresy.   However, the evidence keeps mounting that it wasn't him - it was someone else called Shake-Spear.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:22 PM

Of course this circular argument goes both ways.

One way you start with the assumption that Shakespeare didn't have whatever expertise was involved to enable him to write the plays, and therefore he couldn't have written the plays.

Going the other way you start with the assumption - consistent with contemporary testimony - that he wrote the plays, from which follows the conclusion that he must have had whatever expertise was involved to enable him to write them.

In fact, even it it were demonstrated that a high degree of formal academic education would have been required, which is questionable, there is no particular difficulty in putting together scenarios in which he could well have acquired this, and which also suggest why he might have wished to keep a low profile in some respects. "viz)

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 09:36 PM

Yeah, I see that.

Our Bill got himself a secret education, kept his writings secret, and wrote like a proper toff too boot.   In which case, he must be very vexed that we saw through it all and gave him credit anyway.   :-)

(er ... an awful lot of people, including most Shakespearean Academics, concede that the author had a high degree of formal education.   There's masses and masses of theories which explain how our Bill got educated, and why he and his educators kept it very hush hush).

I still have a raised eye-brow over why our Bill dedicated some of his sonnets to de Vere's boyfriend.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 04:32 AM

It is a very common assumption, particularly among educated but stupid people, that formal education is required to make people know things. I agree that in certain specialist areas this may be true(you're unlikely to become a quantum physicist by getting books out of the local libarary), but in most branches of learning a clever person can easily educate themselves. Oxford, Cambridge, and Catholic hotbeds of insurrectionary learning in France, did not have any monopoly of learning.
    McGrath seems totally rigth(as usual), you need to look at the arguments backwards sometimes. It is suggested that no ignorant person could possibly have written those plays, therefore the author must have had a proper rigorous formal classical education. But you can take a different angle on the facts. The author of these plays is obviously an intellectual giant; therefore he didn't need to have had a formal education, he could have learnt it all for himself. Two precisely opposite conclusions from the same piece of data...a rather simple piece of data at that: that there's a lot of clever stuff in the plays of William Shakespeare( or whoever).

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 10:13 AM

If it is possible to become an intellectual giant without any formal education, shouldn't we have more than one instance of it happening?

As far as I can ascertain, of the 100,000 or so of intellectual giants that have lived, all but one had lots and lots and lots of education to help them get where they got.   The one exception is our Bill. If you can cite a second one, that would be useful

Otherwise, I have to rely on the proverb "It is the exception that proves the rule".   That would fix it.

Oh, wait, wait.   That proverb is based on the original meaning of "prove", that is "to test".    Dragnaggit - back to the drawing board.

But, just for the sake of discussion, let us assume that a giant brain can gain all the knowledge it ever needs by reading.   And to make it simpler, when a person has never spelt is name in a particular way, nor pronounced it in that way, this has no relevance whatsoever to our debate.   

Now all we have to do is eliminate all the other elements to eliminate Edward.

Anyone want to discuss why our Bill, at the age of 40,, packed the whole lot in and went back to Stratford to spend the last year's of his life as a grain merchant?   His original memorial depicted a grain sack - it was what he was famed for.   (A 60 years later the grain sack was changed to look like paper and quill pen - that is what he had become famed for).   

Despite more than two centuries of research, there isn't a scrap of documentation that Shakspere, the Warwickshire merchant, ever wrote anything in his life. There are no manuscripts, poems, letters, diaries, or records in his own hand. His will, dictated to a lawyer, makes no mention of a literary legacy and who should inherit it.

Consider the chronology: a gifted and prolific writer (Edward) stops writing when he is appointed to be a courtier, and Bill springs out of left field and immediately begins writing like a champion.   The previously gifted and prolific writer dies, and shortly thereafter Bill is hit with a total and permanent writer's block.   

I think we really need to get rid of these two coincidences to be able to put Bill safely back on his pedestal.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 12:00 PM

Well, it's perfectly true that we havent got a Shakespeare manuscript of Hamlet or Othello or whatever. But then, it's equally true we havent got anybody else's manuscripts of them either. So that particular absence of evidence doesnt seem to count against Shakespeare, as far as I can see.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 12:04 PM

I think the reason he went back to Stratford and stopped writing was someone shouting "Judas" during the first night of "A Winter's Tale", followed by a (possibly faked) motorbike accident.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 02:39 PM

I think I get the point, Greg.

It's a variation of the "Everyone knows Elvis is dead, and anyone who says he is still alive is a raving nut-case" argument, isn't it?

The refined version becomes:

"Everyone knows Bill wrote all those plays and sonnets.   Anyone who says otherwise must by a raving nut-case."

Got it.

Against such powerful and overwhelming rhetoric, I am forced to concede defeat.    Ah well, such is life.   It must have been Bill after all.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 02:41 PM

Don't you dare give in, Mr Eagle. This is all very interesting indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 03:15 PM

I just took a straw poll at our local high school.

57 schoolboys all said our Bill was obviously the author of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.

2 said words to the effect of "Who is he?"

Not very scientific, I admit, but I think that we can safely assume that every schoolboy who knows who Bill Shakespear is, also knows that it was him who wrote the plays.   

So - there you have it.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 03:25 PM

I'm not sure what Bald Eagle actually means by "intellectual giant".

When it comes to great playwrights, great novelists or great artists, who didn't go to university, there's no shortage. Sean O'Casey, Charles Dickens, William Blake, just for a start. Or of course all those women from the days before formal education was open to them - Jane Austin, the Brontes and many more.

And it's worth noting that Shakespeare's contemporary and friend, who was very much under the impression that William wrote all those plays, never went to university, but worked at the same trade as his stepfather, bricklaying, until he got the acting and playwriting bug, after a spell in the army.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 03:27 PM

That was Ben Jonson I was referring to in that last paragraph.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 03:55 PM

People get very obsessed with the importance of formal education. Mozart managed to compose music without a degree in composition. I dont think Tolstoy ever went near a creative writing course. i really couldn't care less about formal qualifications, except possibly in a surgeon about to operate on me.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 04:27 PM

Yes, i admit I have fallen into the circularity of the pro-Bill faction who say, among many things, just because the author had an amazing range of knowledge, it does not prove that the author could not be Bill.

By being an intellectual giant, Bill could have picked up all his knowledge of everything by reading.

I did not confer the title "intellectual giant" upon the author, but fell into the trap of lazy thinking, letting myself believe that if the pro-Bill faction were defending him as an intellectual giant, it must be something worth defending.

Having said that, I am willing to concede that the plays could have been written by anybody without a shred of knowledge about anything, if it will move the debate forward.

Now, didn't Jonson ascribe the works to Bill following the line taken by Sir William Cecil (aka Lord Burghley, a guy who had many, many reasons to hate De Vere)?   I have no exemplar proof that Johson had no personal contact himself with our Bill - it is others who say they never met and Ben simply passed on what he had heard from that source.   

Could it be that the importance of Sir William's words may have been given too much weight, by the sheer repetition of them by lots of people who also had also never met our Bill?

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 04:50 PM

Einstein's academic career was limited to a diploma for teaching physics and mathematics.

Here's a link to a Wikipedia index of "autodidacts". Including such intellectual pigmies as Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln and George Bernard Shaw.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 05:06 PM

All Einstein's work was in physics and mathematics.   If he had conceived of a definitive method of translating Greek into Hottentot, for example, then I would have been staggered.   Absolutely gob smacked.

But I have already conceded that the works attributed to our Bill could have been written by a person who did not have a shred of knowledge about anything.

Can we move on?

Did you know that the room that Shakespeare was born in was not identified until the mid-18th Century, in the booming infancy of the Stratford tourist industry?   Is the provenance of that room good enough to convince you that it was the actual room he was born in?   If not, why not?   And yet it would seem that the provenance for our Bill himself, equally shaky, is good enough to be accepted by every schoolboy in the land.   Come on - do explain the difference between the two.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 06:14 PM

Can we move on?

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 06:40 PM

Assuming that Shakespeare went to school (a reasonable assumption given his father's status) then he would have learnt to read and would also have learnt Latin. Add to that the fact that outstanding source material was available, and the logical assumption that whoever wrote the plays was a genius of Mozart's stature (with an exceptional ear for idiom etc), and it becomes perfectly reasonable that Shakespeare actually wrote his own plays, as was so widely assumed at the time.

Bald Eagle 2 keeps implying that Shakespeare's name was barely known to his contemporaries. He was in fact a close friend of Ben Johnson's as is plainly evident from the many references in Johnson's writings. Beaumont referred to Shakespeare as writing "by the dim light of nature" - ie writing without th benefit of university education, and "Venus and Adnnis" published in 1593 carried a dedication from "William Shakespeare" as did the Rape of Lucrece published soon afterwards. Robert Greene, one of the Cambridge writers, in his parody A Groat'sworth of Wit complained about the player Shakespeare trespassing on to the territory of the writers.

Even many of those who are desperate to believe in conspiracy theories have had to reject de Vere's candidacy on account of the irksome detail that he died in 1604, before some of the plays had been written. Of course, those who really cannot let go of the Oxfordian theory come up with all kinds of contrived explanations to for how the plays could in fact have been written sooner. But the plain fact is that Macbeth is a Gunpowder Plot play. It is not a play which has had plot references bolted on later; the plot (uncovered in 1605 in case anyone has not noticed the looming 400th anniversary) runs through it like "Blackpool" through a stick of rock.

Another point. Plays like Cymbeline were written and constructed for an indoor theatre. But then maybe de Vere wrote Cymbeline anticipating that four years after his death the King's Players would move to the indoor theatre at Blackfriars? I am tempted to think that those who want to believe are capable of believing just about anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 06:51 PM

Sure.

Where to?

Some different aspect of this discussion, a topic on which you feel less uncertain of your ground, perhaps?

Be my guest, lead on ....

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 07:13 PM

And damned be him...

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 07:26 PM

Let us consolidate our common ground.   Shakespeare went to school until he was 12, and returned home to be his father's apprentice.

We enter the age of "the lost years".   One common theme of those days has him poaching venison and being chased off to London by an irate Lord.   Whatever. I think everyone agrees that he didn't go to sea, didn't travel around Europe and had no contact with Queen's court.

Whether the works of Shakespeare actually needed legal, medical and fine arts education is a moot point and is conceded as not being at the heart of our discussion.   Likewise, that his given name was Shagspere is deemed irrelevant (even though it was the name he used to get married).

He arrives in London, immediately and without fanfare writes stunning work, and packs it all in at the age of 40 to do more important stuff like trading corn.   His epithet (the only piece every given full credit to him, is such doggerel, it is dismissed as being some sort of joke).

When he dies, not one person notices that England has lost such a great author.   

Now on to the discourse!

Pete has given us another fine example of carefully picking the points to support a particular view point. For example, MacBeth is surely Guy Fawkes for heaven's sake.   And then quietly ignore that Hamlet is a biography of De Vere (Perhaps you just have to keep saying "It isn't, it isn't" until it stops bothering the thought processes.)

And he seems to accept the big one: hook, line and sinker.   

You see, the theory that William Shakespear wrote the plays and sonnets is, in itself, no more than a conspiracy theory.   A very special type, I grant you, but this theory does have almost nothing but circumstance to support it.   However, it was the first theory on the scene, was able to grab the center ground, is able to dismiss all challengers as being mere SCTF's and never has to actually prove a thing.   

You would be amazed at the mental contortions the Stratfordians get into to protect their boy Bill.   Well, they have to, don't they?   They are the ones who have got it right.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 07:30 PM

frickin hell !!!

wheres all this iconoclasm gonna end up ??

next

some of you blasphemers will even go as far as claiming

The Archies

never wrote, or played on, any of their greatest hits !!!!???

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 08:03 PM

Gee, and here I thought that Hamlet was a rework of an earlier play.

As to his being a cryptoCatholic, why not a cryptoJew whose family had fled the Spanish Inquisition? It was dangerous to be Jewish and out in that period also, especially if one was not in the community or, as we now call it an MOT [member of the tribe].

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 08:24 PM

You are quite correct, EB, Hamlet was based on a much earlier play that was stripped to its bones, rewritten to a 4000 liner, and then re-edited to the standard 2,500 or so lines of the day.   It is contended (by others, not I) that the rework added in all the salient features of De Vere's life.

And what is this about a cryptoCatholic - you haven't got Henry Neville back into this discussion, have you?

Drabnaggit! All the effort I went to, to get him put to one side, and you bring him up again.   What are you doing?   (Some sorts of Stupid Conspiracy Theory Fanatic thingy-wotsit, I'll be bound ...)

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 12:10 AM

Greg Stevens--

"Educated but stupid" (1 Nov 2005 4:32 AM) is a bit harsh.

Skeptics of whether Shakespeare wrote the "Shakespeare canon" include Freud, Justice Harry Blackmun, Mark Twain-- (yes, Rapaire, I know you've already "claimed" him. But on this, it looks like he played both sides of the street)---, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Dickens, and David McCullough.

Do all qualify?

Take care around glass houses.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 12:17 AM

re: Catholicism, see McGrath's link on his 8:22 PM entry on 10/31.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 10:06 AM

Ron Davies: I absolutely did not use the phrase "educated but stupid" to refer to people who thought that Shakespeare was not the author. I am well aware that many educated and very clever people have doubts about the authorship, and make a very telling case. I only used the phrase to describe people who, because they are educated themselves, fondly believe that formal education is required before you can achieve any intellectual accomplishment. That is a kind of totally unjustified arrogance which I would certainly call "stupid": most of us know that many immensely clever and talented achievers educated themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 08:43 PM

So, Bald Eagle 2, are you seriously trying to argue that all the plays were written before de Vere died in 1604, or do you perhaps prefer the theory that de Vere wrote some of them posthumously?

Re Hamlet you said "[...] Hamlet is a biography of De Vere (Perhaps you just have to keep saying "It isn't, it isn't" until it stops bothering the thought processes.)"

A post or two later you said: "It is contended (by others, not I) that the rework [of Hamlet] added in all the salient features of De Vere's life.

Just exactly where do you yourself stand on this?

Ron Davies, presumably all those great minds thought alike, notwithstanding that it was a subject on which one or two of them could have known very little. But I'd be a bit surprised if their agreed candidate was Henry Neville.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 11:43 PM

Peter--you recall perhaps that I said I do not believe the assertion Neville was Shakespeare is a "slam dunk". I said in fact that at this point I am convinced neither by the Stratfordian argument nor the Neville one--but I'm interested to read the Neville book. I'm fascinated to read the Oxfordian evidence also--and there's a lot.

It's interesting that some are already condemning the Neville book--has anybody here read it? I didn't know it was even available yet.

What's clear to me at this point is that the comfortable assumption that the Stratford man wrote the Shakespeare canon is itself shaky.

Greg--

Thanks for clarifying what you meant by your "educated but stupid" remark.   It was, however, a reasonable interpretation that the phrase was aimed at Shakespeare skeptics, since was in this context that it was made. Thanks also for your characterization of such skeptics' views as "a very telling case".

Now we can go on.

I would point out that Mozart is not a good pro-Shakespeare example. His genius was evident at a very early age. All sides in our discussion, I believe, agree that the writer of the "Shakespeare canon" was also a genius. Yet there is absolutely no evidence before he was-- what, 28?--, of that colossal talent, which, it is asserted, needed little schooling.   Autodidacticism is all well and good but in a genius it seems reasonable to see some results before age 28.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 03 Nov 05 - 10:46 AM

MacBeth is Guy Fawkes.   Wow.

How is the connection made?    (Bear with me, it is a little convoluted)

For our American and other colleagues: It is alleged that Guy Fawkes and his Catholic co-conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament (at a time the King's supporters were desperate for the Catholics to do something like this, in order to shore up the waning support for the Episcopalian church).   But let us assume current doubts about the validity of the plot actually happening had no bearing on Bill, because he wouldn't know about our current doubts.

When one of the co-conspirators (Francis Tesham) was captured, we was in possession of a book called "A Treatise of Equivocation".    This treatise was a primer which was used to teach Catholics how to avoid prosecution under English Law.

Evocation can be described using deliberately misleading statements based on true events and accepted definitions.   (cf Bill Clinton explaining his relationships with lady friends).

Now, in Act two, scene three, of Macbeth, after the discovery of Duncan's death, the porter says:

PORTER: "Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator"
               
Translation: This is a direct reference to Father Garnet, one of the conspirators involved in the Gunpowder Plot.   The Porter is saying (in easily broken code) that Garnet equivocated by saying that the Gunpowder Plot was justified because it would have liberated the Catholics living in England.   

And there you have it.

Furthermore, there are several other direct references to equivocation in this play!   Several!

Case proven, you will no doubt agree.

Once you see that, it then becomes clear that the three witches are really closet Jesuits reveling in the coming destruction of King James and his court (which would also explain why the author may have been a tad nervous of sticking his name on the work until the heat died down).

Every schoolboy knows, there could never, ever be a reason that the author would have used evocation several times in a play, unless it was because he wanted to refer the Gunpowder Plot.

And since DeVere died before the Gunpowder Plot took place .... well, you get the drift.   Against such superb rhetoric, I am once again reduced to being just another Stupid Conspiracy-Theory Fanatic.

Oh - wait a minute.   I might have a loop-hole.   The use of evocation to justify bad deeds was known to Aristotle and others of his day ... perhaps ... perhaps ....    No.   No - that's just clutching at straws.   I am hosed. Pure toast.

(exits stage left, head bowed, a broken man)

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 03 Nov 05 - 11:09 AM

Ron, it's a matter of context. If you arrive in a situation which allows you to flower at age X, then you will flower at age X. It's all a matter of fertilizer. Until the manure is applied and the seed is water'd t'won't grow.

Part of our reality is that unless we come up with contemporary documentation or invent a time machine we will never know the truth.

As a middle class youth, WS almost certainly went to school. A recent email reinforced for me that the nature of basic education has changed. If a country boy went to school, he would have had a good grounding for learning more. If he went to one of the colleges, he would have been exposed to much of the material he would have needed as background for his work.

Consider that, as an artifact, we have a lot of material from the reign of "Good Queen Bess" and others of that era. If we had the same level of retention from the classical Greek period, there would be a similar thread going about whether or not Plate or Euclid wrote their philosophical treatises...or did someone else do it in their names.

What we do know is that someone of genius wrote S's plays, etc. Are we all on the same page about that?

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 03 Nov 05 - 11:47 AM

Dear Conspiracy-Theory Fanatics

I shall be absent from this forum for a week or more.

The ensuing (possibly welcome) silence from my quarter is not really an admission of total defeat in this discussion: I shall be away because of circumstance beyond my control.   I would hate you to think that I had thrown in the towel and was hiding in disgrace.   :-)

And for those of you who celebrate the event, do have a safe Guy Fawke's bonfire on November 5th.

Regards

BE2

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Nov 05 - 12:05 PM

It's the bit like that James Thurber story The Macbeth Murder Mystery. so if Guy Fawkes was the fall guy for Duncan, who was it Inspector?

who do you suspect.....everybody!

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Nov 05 - 04:37 PM

Equivocation just means that in a tight situation you can misdirect a questioner without actually lying, by saying something that is ambiguous. The idea is that the questioner take the obvious meaning rather but that the take one meaning and not the other.

A very useful technique at times.

It would have been something of a vogue word around the time, and as such would have been a word likely to get used a few times by a man writing a play in a hurry. (In the same way that someone writing a political pay in the UK today would be very likely to use an expressoon such as "spin").

Macbeth is a play open to a number of ways of understanding it, and I don't think there's any way you can get much of a clue as to how the author would have seen the Gunpowder Plot.

After all, it ends up with an anointed King being killed by a subject, in the course of a rebellion carried out with the assistance of a foreign country. The same basic plot as Richard III, giving the impression that the author had few problems with the concept of justified rebellion against an unjust ruler.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 03 Nov 05 - 10:12 PM

E Barnacle--

I did say that all sides in our discussion agree, I believe--( I certainly do--) that the person who wrote the Shakespeare canon was a genius. Our only point of dispute is who that person was.

As to whether the successful actor, impresario, and landowner of Stratford was also the person in question, there are many problems.

We're asked to assume:

1) Shakespeare taught himself virtually all he knew on a huge array of subjects.
2) He however had no need for books on a permanent basis--had none to bequeath (nor plays, of course)
3) His genius was totally hidden until he burst on the scene at about age 28.
4) When he died, although he was a genius and had written many popular plays, no literary figure took any notice for several years (7 years?) (including Ben Jonson, alleged to be a good friend.)

etc.

After a while the assumptions just become too great.

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Nov 05 - 05:17 AM

Many years ago I hitched a lift with the playwright Terence Frisby. Naturally as I was an English Lit student, we started talking about plays and how someone became successful as a playwright.

He explained to me that if you want to write plays, you've got to act. theres no other way. you tread the boards , you see what actors are capable of, what works, what doesn't work, you do it for years - everything else you can fake. You can write about kings , emperors, miners, gangsters, anything - but you have to have a firm grasp of what keeps the audience from dropping off to sleep.

could be you are underestimating how long Shakespeare had to work at his craft - and overestimating how much he had to know about history, poetry etc

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Nov 05 - 05:42 AM

Wee Little Drummer: that's a very interesting theory, but I'm not sure if it totally stands up. I'm absolutely sure that Shakespeare knew the theatre backwards, from the way his plays work. But I think it's perfectly possible for a playwright to produce a great play, even with no personal acting experience. For a start, any intelligent writer that goes to the theatre as a punter will start getting some ideas of how it ticks. Take "The Importance of Being Ernest", for example. That is an unbelievably well-made play that acts perfectly on the stage. Oscar Wilde wasn't an actor, though, as far as I know(except all the time, in his life!).

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: alanabit
Date: 04 Nov 05 - 05:50 AM

A telling last line there Greg, which actually leads to the opposite conclusion, to the one I believe you wanted to make when you began your post. It may be that formal theatre - or at least just being an actor - was not the only way to acquire that knowledge and skill.
I am thinking back to what I read of Brecht's early career. He had already gathered some experience of singing his (offensive) ballads in pubs (and getting slung out for his pains) before he produced his first play, "Baal". He certainly knew a bit about theatre and he had plenty of in yer face performing experience.
Would you agree that busking, for instance, is a good cure for wimpy, introvert songwriters?

Subject: RE: BS: Shakespeare: Henry Neville?
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Nov 05 - 06:02 AM

Alanabit:I have argued elsewhere in this thread that formal education is no prerequisite to be a genius. I certainly dont see anything in Shakespeare's plays that lead me to suppose he must have been to Ozbridge or whatever. But I do see technical things in the plays that make me believe that he knew the acting trade, bu that is quite a separate thing. There are plenty of crap plays written by actors who know the theatre backwards, too!
    No: busking is not a cure for being a wimpy introvert songwriter: there are loads of wimpy introvert songwriters polluting our streets. Busking does teach you a lot about projection and performance, though. If you are wimpy and introverted, when you've busked a bit you are going to look really really really wimpy and introverted.