Greetings to Shakespeare devotees all over the world. This blog will be used primarily to explore and promote the world's greatest writer, William Shakespeare. It will be open to all who wish to explore new and old avenues.And although I am one who is convinced that Shakespeare wrote the plays, I am open to any theory a submitter wishes to explore. Over the next few months I will be sharing selections from my book soon to be published (Old Myths and New Discoveries: Conversations on Shakespeare) and seeking your reactions.
I should warn you here, some of my findings are rather bold and adventuresome. However, I think you will find them at least entertaining! Welcome aboard! Hold on to your hats!
I will be posting my chapters with summaries over the next few weeks. I have some very controversial material I wish to run by my readership. For example, I confront the two major spokesmen for Edward De Vere and Francis Bacon and question somewhat lightheartedly some of their scholarship. They are tongue-in-cheek admonitions designed to get their followers to take a closer look at them. More to follow.
ReplyDeleteMy first chapter takes a long somewhat critical look at Shakespeare scholarship over the past four hundred years. Entitled 'Shakespeare Hide 'n Seek'. it pulls together for the first time I believe some of the mysterious 'comings' and 'goings' regarding Shakespeare and offers some new theories as to why. I notice or example that 'will inventories,' not just Shakespeare's, seem almost non-existent in the Golden Age of Elizabeth, and royal wills as well, not to mention a vast number of aristocratic wills and inventories. Why? And the same is true under James I! Theories anyone?
ReplyDeleteMy second chapter covers in light-hearted fashion two of the major spokesmen for other claimants for authorship---Mark Twain defending Francis Bacon and J Thomas Looney 'Looney's Tunes'. Basically, both are lightly taken to task for shabby scholarship. Twain is faulted for a number of assumptions he chooses to palm off as facts, whereas Looney is caught red-handed double-talking and 'sleight-of-handing' Shakespeare's will---either deliberately or incompetently. These early chapters are 'starters' for the main course. Brief descriptions of the main course will follow shortly
ReplyDeleteI find it somewhat bold and even ridiculous that you dare challenge Twain and Looney. After all they are established scholars of some repute and who are you?
ReplyDeleteLooks like I am going to have to argue with myself
ReplyDeleteChapter III addresses the 'stolen kingdom' theme in the poems and plays. Beginning with 'Lucrece' and 'Ironside', the analysis moves for the most part chronologically throughout his work, noting with Hamlet, his quest to 'correct the time.'
ReplyDeleteIt explores Macbeth and Othello among many others, and concludes with 'The Tempest' and 'Cardenio'. The chapter takes the point of view that Shakespeare will continue to be misunderstood until this foundational theme is put in place as central to Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic quest.It includes a detailed analysis of Shakespeare's effective dismantling of the 'execution theater' by the presentation of 'Titus Andronicus.'
Chapter IV presents a new Shakespeare discovery: a poem written about Anne Hathaway. Discovered by me in the Smith Library in Chautauqua over two decades ago tucked away in a 19th century collection of miscellanies,then carefully buried by Sidney Lee, and surreptitiously given, palmed off, to Charles Dibdin, a thorough analysis of the poem (actually a song lyric)has convinced me that Shakespeare wrote it and only he could have. Dibdin was a writer of sea shanties who possessed no skills as a poet. Carefully buried because it confirms Shakespeare as the poet and playwright undeniably, it has been tucked away. After my discovery, it has 'magically' appeared on the Internet. To date, no one but myself has bothered to take it seriously and subject it to careful scrutiny; it renders giving the plays to DeVere or anyone else impossible. Hence its banishment journey in obscurity to the present.Main stream will continue to deny its authenticity, but my analysis successfully scuttles that once and for all.
ReplyDeleteChapter V contains another important discovery also in denial by mainstream scholarship---who have again here chosen to not take a careful look at it, since it answers some questions on his appearance and identity. It seems the game of Hide 'n Seek is a careful construct to 'keep the mystery,' to Shakespeare's detriment. As it happens here, the discovery is a painting and again, careful consideration and analysis confirms it as authentically Shakespeare. Now I love a good mystery as much as the next guy, but this is unethical and just plain wrong as well as wrong-headed. Denying him a self and taking away his work to give it to an aristocrat---or to just hype up interest is Polonius-meddling. It amounts to a centuries old attempt at identity theft. There is mystery enough regarding Shakespeare without trumping up these chicaneries and skull-duggeries.
ReplyDeleteChapter VI will either explore one or another of two very controversial subject matters. One of the two under consideration is 'Was Shakespeare Murdered?' Evidence I have gathered including the Scottish royal family tradition for vengeance and careful analysis of provocations structured into Shakespeare's plays, including his frontal attack on 'divine right' along with certain mysteries surrounding the events of his final days, including his epitaphs and his will, have led me to believe that he was.
ReplyDeleteThe other subject matter under consideration has to do with ignored aspects of Shakespeare's will, most notably provocative my assertion posed by the question: 'Did Anne ever Get the Second Best Bed,' where I prove that she did not! At this point I can't decide how outrageously incendiary to be.
Volume II commences with a daring chapter on 'How Shakespeare Worked,' both as an actor and as a playwright. My study finds him much more involved in both major and minor roles as a comic and as a serious actor in his plays. Without being exhaustive, I attempt to highlight key roles he played with evidence to justify and the varying roles he has other actors play in the interest of keeping character and play subject matter fresh and relevant to his varying audiences of royalty, aristocrat and groundling. Circumstances also required almost continuous re-writing and re-casting.I cite evidence born of having acted in various plays and playing various roles.My theory of his putting the plays together differs from all other approaches with the possible exception of Clare Asquith in 'Shadow play.'
ReplyDeleteHaving spent over thirty years with Shakespeare's last will and testament and remaining still baffled and astonished by its genius.I concur: No wonder scholars have chosen to just ignore it. It is too densely packed with subtlety and wisdom and most apparently have just given up in despair. I know I have been tempted to do the same.I hope my analysis can do it justice. It is bottomless!
ReplyDeleteI wish to welcome and thank my lone follower for logging into my blog. I will endeavor to make it interesting, informative, provocative and challenging and welcome any and all questions on Shakespeare.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great omissions that has successfully distorted Shakespeare's biography has to do with the assumption that he only went to Grammar School in Stratford. This assumption effectively enables a denial of his great achievement. More logical is the possibility that he was apprenticed to a gifted playwright and honed his craft in those early years. There is no doubt that he appears on the scene as a gifted actor and playwright, so the Stratford Grammar School assumption is wholly without merit. Much more credible is they possibility that he traveled with another young gifted poet, Robert Southwell, to Italy with Edmund Campion, a gifted playwright (this fact being hidden from view because he was Catholic and he was executed for being one.) This would also account also for some of Clare Asquith's findings in her brilliant work Shadowplay. Playwrighting is such a difficult art that there is no way one could accomplish it, even being as empathic as Shakespeare apparently was unless he was actively in the theater and actively being taught a playmaker's skills. Campion, when he moved on to Prague, presented a six hour drama (Saul) now lost, and it is safe to say he must have created many more. So it's time to dismiss this myth---that young Shakespeare was educated at the Grammar School in Stratford. He couldn't have been. Education was being denied bright young Catholic boys by this time in England. Shakespeare and other gifted young Catholic boys were taken first to Houghton's school at Douai, then Rome, then Prague where Catholic boys could be educated. It's easy to see why it was buried for 400 years. By the way, John Foxe (The Book of Martyrs)Thomas Lucy's tutor was also a playwright and lived with the recusant persecutor Lucy for a time in Charlcote. Why has this little fact and the fact that Lucy kept a troupe of players been hidden from view as well? Thee is only one other possibility to account for Shakespeare's skills and achievement. More on this later.
ReplyDeleteAnother foundational myth regarding Shakespeare that needs correction has been the effective denial of any intelligence at work in his last will and testament. I address this in two main ways: One is the chapter in Volume II entitled 'Did Anne Ever Get the Second Best Bed'? My analysis proves that unless special circumstances allowed the executors the release the legacy to Anne, she did not. The analysis is too complex to delve deeply into here,but legacy locations and manner of presentation including the full context of the 'bed' legacy, once honestly explored will convince the most skeptical reader that she does not. The real question answered by the will is 'WHY?' My other exploration has to do with the complex full body of the will, focusing to a significant degree on Judith's cryptic fate in the will. Again, the question "WHY!' is carefully hidden but fully answered. Regrettably, and to their shame and discredit, scholars and critics over the centuries have managed to convince everyone that it (the will) is 'ordinary, unremarkable---a pork butcher's will.' Once carefully studied, however, with an open mind, one can't help but come to the realization that it is perhaps the most complex two and one half pages ever written and contains in magnificent ambiguity the story of his life and death! And that is not all! Other equally profound dimensions of the will having to do with 'sons lawfullie iyussuinge' is even more profound! Finally, the will 'hides/reveals' the most profound central tragedy of his life and makes clear the motivation behind his quest!
ReplyDeleterequest an exhumation for better reasons than smoking pot
ReplyDelete