As You Lie, Kit
DaveMore
<<On Saturday morning, we begin a new month, a new play, not like we nailed
AYLI or anything.>>
Today is my birthday, so I'd like to take a swing. Of course, I will be
blindfolded and my hammer made of wool.
It is well-known that *As You Like It* was based on Thomas Lodge’s tale
*Rosalynde*. However, the characters of Touchstone, William, Audrey and Jaques
are the author’s own creations and, as such, might be expected to provide
special insight into the mind of the author. This would be especially true if
the author were concealed due to legal problems, and writing "between the
lines" was virtually his only means of communicating to the world he left
behind.
In his Shakespeare Opinion Survey, Ray (Laertes) writes:
<<24 h) There is method in [Shakespeare's] madness. The words of lunatics and
fools don’t have to make sense within the context of the plot, so it was easy
for
Shakespeare to embed hidden meanings in those words.>>
With this in mind, I nominate Touchstone Fool of the Month from this month's
Play of the Month, *As You Like It*. Called "a material fool," Touchstone has
a scene with Audrey, and later, one with her and William.
Act V, Scene 1 Touchstone, Audrey and William
TOUCHSTONE: We shall find a time, Audrey. Patience, Gentle Audrey.
AUDREY: Faith, the priest was good enough, for all the old gentleman’s saying.
TOUCHSTONE: A most wicked Sir Oliver, Audrey, a most vile Mar-text. But,
Audrey, there is a youth here in the forest lays claim to you.
AUDREY: Aye, I know who ‘tis. He hath no interest in me in the world. Here
comes the man you mean.
TOUCHSTONE: It is meat and drink to me to see a clown. By my troth, we that
have good wits have much to answer for — we shall be flouting (i.e. mocking),
we cannot hold.
ENTER WILLIAM
WILLIAM: Good even, Audrey.
AUDREY: God ye good even, William.
WILLIAM: And good even to you, sir.
TOUCHSTONE: Good even, gentle friend. Cover thy head, cover thy head, nay,
prithee be covered. How old are you, friend?
WILLIAM: Five and twenty, sir.
TOUCHSTONE: A ripe age. Is thy name William?
WILLIAM: William, sir.
TOUCHSTONE: A fair name. Wast born i’ the forest here?
WILLIAM: Aye, sir, I thank God.
TOUCHSTONE: "Thank God," a good answer. Art rich?
WILLIAM: Faith, sir, soso.
TOUCHSTONE: "Soso" is good, very good, very excellent good. And yet it is not,
it is but soso. Art thou wise?
WILLIAM: Aye, sir, I have a pretty wit.
TOUCHSTONE: Why, thou sayest well. I do now remember a saying, "The fool doth
think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." The heathen
philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a grape, would open his lips when he
put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to
open. You do love this maid?
WILLIAM: I do, sire.
TOUCHSTONE: Give me your hand. Art thou learned?
WILLIAM: No, sir.
TOUCHSTONE: Then learn this of me: To have is to have; for it is a figure in
rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one
doth empty the other, for all your writers do consent that ipse is he. Now you
are not ipse, for I am he.
WILLIAM: Which he, sir?
TOUCHSTONE: He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown,
abandon—which is in the vulgar leave,--the society – which in the boorish is
company -- of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better
understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy
life into death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee, or
in bastinado, or in steel, I will bandy with thee in faction, I will o’er run
thee with policy, I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble,
and depart.
AUDREY: Do, good William.
WILLIAM: God rest you merry sir.
***
CAUTION: EVIDENCE & SPECULATION
Anyone familiar with a basic biography of Christopher Marlowe is struck by the
use of the name Audrey, the name of the wife of Sir Thomas Walsingham,
Marlowe's friend and patron, whose man Ingram took a light rap for killing the
poet in 1593. In later years, Marlowe's murderer of record was devoted to
Audrey's interests and Audrey was well-received at court for awhile. It was
reported that she had had an affair with Robert Cecil. Audrey is treated
insultingly by Touchstone in their scene alone. A year before *As You Like It*
was written, Francis Meres wrote that Marlowe was killed by *a bawdy serving
man* a rival of his in *lewd love.* (To use the logic of terry ross, if you
accept Meres' list of plays as factual, then you must accept his statement
about lewd love.)
Registered in 1600, *As You Like It* was the only play of Shakespeare's that
was successfully *stayed* from publication, not appearing in print until 1623.
In the scene above, the banished courtly fool Touchstone (an authorial "voice"
some say, though I can hear the Williamists cry "No!") -- Touchstone has a
gripe with a young country man named William. He takes William’s hand in his
and says: <<it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup
into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other, for all your writers do
consent that *ipse* is he. Now you are not *ipse*, for I am he.>>
A handy Latin dictionary says <ipse> when used as a pronoun means <he himself;
master; host>. So Touchstone is saying to William: You ain't the man, I am.
And then Touchstone tells William to get the hell away before he kills him.
Touchstone "nails" both Audrey and William in their scenes together. Audrey is
depicted as an unpoetical slut; William as a simple rustic. If Touchstone is
the author's voice, then we must ask why does the author "have it in" for these
two characters, who were specially added to Lodge's original story. I SPECULATE
that it was because Marlowe had been nailing Audrey before his "fell arrest."
It's my birthday, I can speculate. In the early years, he was counting on her
(and others undoubtedly) to make an effort to get his harsh sentence repealed.
I'm 52. She let him down by embracing the actor William Shakespeare in 1598,
the year the PLAYWRIGHT was born into print, in quarto and in Meres.
IF Marlowe HAD been banished (to-death, as I prefer to put it) then you could
reasonably expect him to desire to be UNbanished, especially in 1595-1597
(later, too, but in a different way, altered by time). Prior to 1598 the name
William Shakespeare was best known as the author of two "best-selling"
narrative poems. His reputation resting mainly on *The Rape of Lucrece*,
printed written in 1594, which was was "all praiseworthy" appealing, according
to G. Harvey "to the wiser sort." *Romeo and Juliet* and *Richard II*, both of
which prominently feature banishment in their plots, came out shortly after,
both anonymously at first.
1598 was a watershed year in Marlowe's banishment (if indeed, such was his
fate): *Hero and Leander* came out with future "Shakespeare" publisher Edward
Blount's "dedicatory epistle" to Thomas Walsingham affirming the poet's death
(don't take my word for it, ask terry ross). The same year was published George
Chapman's continuation of H&L, with a dedicatory epistle to Audrey Walsingham,
Tom's wife. Chapman complains of his "obscure estate" and "painful dumbness."
1598 was the year the coffin was nailed shut on Marlowe. Up until then, it
might have been possible to make a comeback, following the great success of
*Lucrece*. But the publication of *Hero and Leander* with Blount's preface
("him dead" etc.), dashed his hopes. In bitter defeat he pounds in a nail into
his own coffin when he refers to himself as a dead shepherd in 1599. He commits
"literary suicide." Is this what "Those Pronouns Refer To"? <You> to Audrey
Walsingham and <It> to his "dead" state? Support for this view comes from the
pronunciation of the title itself: As You Lie, Kit, and in Touchstone's
oft-quoted observation: "If a man's wit can not be understood ..., it strikes a
man more dead, than a great reckoning in a little room."
The author is bitter about his fate, the banished court "fool" Touchstone says
to Audrey:
<<I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid,
was among the Goths.>>
We know that Marlowe's translation of Ovid's *Amores* was burned along with
other banned satires in June 1599, and that the play speaks of "the little wit
that fool's have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes good
show."
Wiser, or at least more expansive, than Touchstone, Rosalind comments on the
the deadly effects of love (such as William might have experienced if he stuck
around, and such as Marlowe MAY have had for Audrey, in this my birthday
speculation) when she (Rosalind) replies to:
ORLANDO
Then in mine own person I die.
ROSALIND
No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old
(allusion to Baines note against Marlowe) and in all this time there was not
any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love cause. Troilus had his
brains disahed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he could to die before,
and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair
year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midummer night;
for, good youth, he went buty forth to wash him in the Hellespont and being
taken with the cramp was drowned. And the foolish chroniclers of that age found
it was "Hero of Sestos." But these are all lies. Men have died from time to
time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
Rosalind is "giving the lie" to Mere's claim (the foolish chronicler of the
previous year) that the poet perished in a fight over "lewd love."
Celia, in her own way, does the same "the beginning," she says, "that was dead
and buried."
Celia also says "...the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a
tapster; they are both the confirmer of false reckonings."
As Peter Farey blandly put it in his kickoff posting to this months POTM, *As
You Like It* is the Shakespeare play that is most "aware" of Marlowe. Indeed,
as Rosalind says in the epilogue:
ROSALIND'S EPILOGUE
It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue, ... What a case am I in
then, than am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the
behalf of a good play. I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will
not become me. My way is to conjure you....
Which was Marlowe's way, as well.
*As You Like It* was the only play successfully "stayed’ from publication by
Shakespeare (or by the Grand Possessors, if you will) -- for 23 years until its
publication in the First Folio, very possibly because of the clues contained as
to the authorship of the play, or the blatant insult to Audrey, and exposure of
William. There's even a character named "Mar-text."
Well, there you have it, and if I didn't hit the nail on the head, "at least I
tried", as a favorite fictional character of mine once said.
Fuck you if you ain't among the Goths. :)
David More
volker multhopp
> WILLIAM: Which he, sir?
> TOUCHSTONE: He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown,
> abandon—which is in the vulgar leave,--the society – which in the boorish is
> company -- of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better
> understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy
> life into death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee, or
> in bastinado, or in steel, I will bandy with thee in faction, I will o’er run
> thee with policy, I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble,
> and depart.
> In the scene above, the banished courtly fool Touchstone (an authorial "voice"
> some say, though I can hear the Williamists cry "No!") -- Touchstone has a
> gripe with a young country man named William. He takes William’s hand in his
> and says: ...
You're right about this. I brought this up in the beginning of the
month, and Strats wouldn't even touch the matter. They make a lot of
the "Will" in the Sonnets, but refuse to deal with this savage attack on
the common man "William" in *AYLI*.
--Volker
bobgrum...@my-dejanews.com
> DaveMore wrote:
>
> > WILLIAM: Which he, sir?
>
> > TOUCHSTONE: He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown,
> > abandon—which is in the vulgar leave,--the society – which in the boorish is
> > company -- of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better
> > understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy
> > life into death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee,
or
> > in bastinado, or in steel, I will bandy with thee in faction, I will o’er
run
> > thee with policy, I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore
tremble,
> > and depart.
>
>
> > In the scene above, the banished courtly fool Touchstone (an authorial
"voice"
> > some say, though I can hear the Williamists cry "No!") -- Touchstone has a
> > gripe with a young country man named William. He takes William’s hand in his
>
> You're right about this. I brought this up in the beginning of the
> month, and Strats wouldn't even touch the matter. They make a lot of
> the "Will" in the Sonnets, but refuse to deal with this savage attack on
> the common man "William" in *AYLI*.
>
Not wasting time on one of the many revisionist speculations is not
the same as REFUSING TO DEAL with it, moron. Calling arguments one
can't deal with "irrelevant" and the like, as you have many times in
the past, IS refusing to deal with it.
As for the "savage attack" on William, note, moron, that it is made
by a character in a play whereas the references to "Will" in the
sonnets are made in the first person.
Consider, moron, that perhaps the author of As You Like It is having
fun through self-satire. Or consider, moron, as I but apparently
no one else does, that the satire here is on Touchstone, who is
depicted as a superficial, very stupid, insensitive jerk--who ends
up with a woman not really worth much. Maybe the scene is based
on an event in the author's life--a tenth-rate female chose an
effete joker from the court over the rude countryman, Shakespeare, and
the rejected lover is now getting revenge on the effete joker.
In any event, moron, do keep on looking for evidence of your idiocy in
the plays rather than concern yourself with actual historical evidence.
It's much easier to keep a delusional system alive with speculative
interpretations of people you don't know and writings complex enough
to yield more than one interpretation.
--Bob G.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
DaveMore
<<He sounds like a country boy to me.>>
Touchstone the country boy, the John Denver of fools, whom Jim doubts would
engage
<< ... in some "savage attack" on William, the bumpkin. >>
What does Jim call it? "Humorously poking fun"? Touchstone spells it out to
William: leave before I kill you. This goes beyond the good natured joshing as
you suggest.
<<The entire scene is only 61 lines long (act 5 sc 1) and Touchstone
humourously
pokes fun at William because he is a rival for Audrey.>>
No, Touchstone specifically tells William, "abandon the society of this female
(which he translates into the VULGAR, BOORISH and COMMON for William: "leave
the company of this woman") or, clown, thou perishest, to make a better
understanding, diest, or to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy
life into death, thy liberty into bondage.... I will kill thee a hundred and
fifty ways. Therefore tremble and depart."
Pay attention to the many circumlocutions for "death" rattled off by the
banished courtly jester Touchstone ("to make [William's] better UNDERSTANDING,
... to wit). Touchstone has already told Audrey "when a man's verses cannot be
understood, and a man's good WIT not seconded with that forward child
UNDERSTANDING, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little
room."
Touchstone's wit and "matter" is admired by courtly characters in the play. His
command of rhetoric is sophisticated, not countrified.
Tremble and depart, good Jim. Life and nothin' but a funny funny riddle.
Dave
Here's the context.
Volker had written
>In article <372A272D...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
>writes:
>
>> You're right about this. I brought this up in the beginning of the
>>month, and Strats wouldn't even touch the matter. They make a lot of
>>the "Will" in the Sonnets, but refuse to deal with this savage attack on
>>the common man "William" in *AYLI*.
>>
>> --Volker
>>
>
>No one replied because it doesn't make any sense.
>
>Touchstone is a common man himself, a jester, and his frank sexuality
>in his conversations with Audrey show him to be no gentleman. Here
>is Touchstone talking in prose (remember Volker, you've said that only
>commoners speak prose) earlier in the play (act 2 sc 4):
>
>TOUCHSTONE. And I mine. I remember, when I was in love, I broke
>my sword upon a stone, and bid him take that for coming a-night to Jane
>Smile; and I remember the kissing of her batler, and the
>cow's dugs that her pretty chopt hands had milk'd; and I remember
>the wooing of peascod instead of her; from whom I took two cods,
>and giving her them again, said with weeping tears 'Wear these
>for my sake.' We that are true lovers run into strange capers;
>but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>---------------------
>
>He sounds like a country boy to me. And now you claim that he
>engaged in some "savage attack" on William, the bumpkin? The
>entire scene is only 61 lines long (act 5 sc 1) and Touchstone humourously
>pokes fun at William because he is a rival for Audrey.
>
>
>
>Jim
>
></PRE></HTML>
Greg Reynolds
EobardT30 wrote:
> I would now like to comment on the "Audrey connection" from an Oxford
> viewpoint. The real life Audrey was involved with a man named Cecil, which
> automatically links her to Lord Burghley, DeVere's number one enemy, who he
> turned into Polonius. Anyone being romantically involved with a Cecil
> automatically makes them horrible in DeVere's book.
Automatically, I like that. Any facts available or is that all written
Automatically?
I find "Eobard" to anagram into "deBoar." What do you make of it?
Looking forward to the deVere Bible study,
Greg Reynolds
EobardT30
Greg Reynolds
DaveMore wrote:
> In another thread, Greg Reynolds writes:
>
> <<On Saturday morning, we begin a new month, a new play, not like we nailed
> AYLI or anything.>>
>
> Today is my birthday, so I'd like to take a swing. Of course, I will be
> blindfolded and my hammer made of wool.
>
> It is well-known that *As You Like It* was based on Thomas Lodge’s tale
> *Rosalynde*. However, the characters of Touchstone, William, Audrey and Jaques
> are the author’s own creations and, as such, might be expected to provide
> special insight into the mind of the author.
The slippery slide! A big favorite at the hlas playground.
> This would be especially true if
> the author were concealed due to legal problems, and writing "between the
> lines" was virtually his only means of communicating to the world he left
> behind.
Hope I don't overcommit here, as did Volker, who said in an exchange with KQKnave:
+++++
> > You're right about this. I brought this up in the beginning of the
> >month, and Strats wouldn't even touch the matter. They make a lot of
> >the "Will" in the Sonnets, but refuse to deal with this savage attack on
> >the common man "William" in *AYLI*.
KQKnave:
> No one replied because it doesn't make any sense.
<>
> Touchstone is a common man himself, a jester, and his frank sexuality
> in his conversations with Audrey show him to be no gentleman. Here
> is Touchstone talking in prose (remember Volker, you've said that only
> commoners speak prose) [...]
<>
> He sounds like a country boy to me. And now you claim that he
> engaged in some "savage attack" on William, the bumpkin? The
> entire scene is only 61 lines long (act 5 sc 1) and Touchstone humourously
> pokes fun at William because he is a rival for Audrey.
Volker:
Yes, definitely. Here's the speech again:
WILLIAM. Which he, sir?
TOUCHSTONE. He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you
clown, abandon- which is in the vulgar leave- the society- which
in the boorish is company- of this female- which in the common is
woman- which together is: abandon the society of this female; or,
clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest;
or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into
death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee,
or in bastinado, or in steel; I will bandy with thee in faction;
will o'er-run thee with policy; I will kill thee a hundred and
fifty ways; therefore tremble and depart.
He humiliates William and threatens him with death. Why is WS doing
this to a character of his own name? He could have selected any name
for the character.
--Volker
+++++ (end exchange)
Replying to the obvious, that William the character is being humorously ridiculed
(the most sarcastic wording you could find in the canon I bet) by Touchstone,
Volker holds that he is humiliated and threatened. Now I haven't seen AYLI staged,
but anyone reading Touchstone's words and not sensing extreme, even orchestrated
hyperbole is missing out.
Further is the problem Volker creates for himself, that deVere the canonjockey
would purposefully besmirch the name William in a play. Was that not his bread and
butter, Volker? Being this William the writer himself? Humiliates? Threatens?
Volker posted Touchstone's words so there is likelihood he read them. How did he
miss the absolute hyperbole and call it a threat? It is a joke, is all, a bright
funny passage.
> abandon—which is in the vulgar leave,--the society ? which in the boorish is
> company -- of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better
> understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy
> life into death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee, or
> in bastinado, or in steel, I will bandy with thee in faction, I will o’er run
> thee with policy, I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble,
> and depart.
>
> AUDREY: Do, good William.
>
> WILLIAM: God rest you merry sir.
This is trademark banter of this play.
My nominee for Fool with a capital F is Touchstone.
My nominee for fool without a capital F is Jaques, who wishes to be a Fool.
> ***
> CAUTION: EVIDENCE & SPECULATION
>
> Anyone familiar with a basic biography of Christopher Marlowe is struck by the
> use of the name Audrey, the name of the wife of Sir Thomas Walsingham,
> Marlowe's friend and patron, whose man Ingram took a light rap for killing the
> poet in 1593.
Hedingham has an Aubrey to sell as well.
> In later years, Marlowe's murderer of record was devoted to
> Audrey's interests and Audrey was well-received at court for awhile. It was
> reported that she had had an affair with Robert Cecil. Audrey is treated
> insultingly by Touchstone in their scene alone. A year before *As You Like It*
> was written, Francis Meres wrote that Marlowe was killed by *a bawdy serving
> man* a rival of his in *lewd love.* (To use the logic of terry ross, if you
> accept Meres' list of plays as factual, then you must accept his statement
> about lewd love.)
>
> Registered in 1600, *As You Like It* was the only play of Shakespeare's that
> was successfully *stayed* from publication, not appearing in print until 1623.
This fits an even better model--the one with the name on the works, the one known
and acceptable to both Elizabeth and James. No conspiracies or guesswork, either.
> In the scene above, the banished courtly fool Touchstone (an authorial "voice"
> some say, though I can hear the Williamists cry "No!")
This group offered an array of AVs.
> -- Touchstone has a
> gripe with a young country man named William. He takes William’s hand in his
> and says: <<it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup
> into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other, for all your writers do
> consent that *ipse* is he. Now you are not *ipse*, for I am he.>>
>
> A handy Latin dictionary says <ipse> when used as a pronoun means <he himself;
> master; host>. So Touchstone is saying to William: You ain't the man, I am.
Its literally his message: "Beat it."
> And then Touchstone tells William to get the hell away before he kills him.
Please reread with a lighter heart--this is comedy and I think very funny.
> Touchstone "nails" both Audrey and William in their scenes together. Audrey is
> depicted as an unpoetical slut; William as a simple rustic. If Touchstone is
> the author's voice, then we must ask why does the author "have it in" for these
> two characters, who were specially added to Lodge's original story. I SPECULATE
> that it was because Marlowe had been nailing Audrey before his "fell arrest."
> It's my birthday, I can speculate. In the early years, he was counting on her
> (and others undoubtedly) to make an effort to get his harsh sentence repealed.
> I'm 52. She let him down by embracing the actor William Shakespeare in 1598,
> the year the PLAYWRIGHT was born into print, in quarto and in Meres.
Why is the character named William? Well, if Will is your front (Mars/Oxys) and
the hope of continuing your scam, why do you bring attention to it and why would
you slam it? Again, inside jokes need to be inside jokes, especially under the
extreme circumstances Mars/Oxys create for themselves to even survive in
contemporary Eliz culture. I'm to assume you get jokes that Eliz or james didn't?
Now, if the Stratwilliam named himself here on person, it may be to show his
misfortune in marriage and relationship. I think the character is so minor, its a
basic Hitchcockian cameo. (maybe it was Will's birthday.)
> IF Marlowe HAD been banished (to-death, as I prefer to put it) then you could
> reasonably expect him to desire to be UNbanished, especially in 1595-1597
> (later, too, but in a different way, altered by time). Prior to 1598 the name
> William Shakespeare was best known as the author of two "best-selling"
> narrative poems. His reputation resting mainly on *The Rape of Lucrece*,
> printed written in 1594, which was was "all praiseworthy" appealing, according
> to G. Harvey "to the wiser sort." *Romeo and Juliet* and *Richard II*, both of
> which prominently feature banishment in their plots, came out shortly after,
> both anonymously at first.
I do pay attention, I just don't need to believe it as you. I visualize a
conspiracy as untraceable--this would alert the entire theatre world. Where are
the reports of a dead author rematerializing? Can't get past the implausibility
that the era wouldn't know the author of 37 plays, most very public.
> 1598 was a watershed year in Marlowe's banishment (if indeed, such was his
> fate): *Hero and Leander* came out with future "Shakespeare" publisher Edward
> Blount's "dedicatory epistle" to Thomas Walsingham affirming the poet's death
> (don't take my word for it, ask terry ross). The same year was published George
> Chapman's continuation of H&L, with a dedicatory epistle to Audrey Walsingham,
> Tom's wife. Chapman complains of his "obscure estate" and "painful dumbness."
> 1598 was the year the coffin was nailed shut on Marlowe. Up until then, it
> might have been possible to make a comeback, following the great success of
> *Lucrece*. But the publication of *Hero and Leander* with Blount's preface
> ("him dead" etc.), dashed his hopes. In bitter defeat he pounds in a nail into
> his own coffin when he refers to himself as a dead shepherd in 1599. He commits
> "literary suicide." Is this what "Those Pronouns Refer To"? <You> to Audrey
> Walsingham and <It> to his "dead" state? Support for this view comes from the
> pronunciation of the title itself: As You Lie, Kit, and in Touchstone's
> oft-quoted observation: "If a man's wit can not be understood ..., it strikes a
> man more dead, than a great reckoning in a little room."
I like the connection, knowing Kit was not widely used as his name. But the
reckoning is a famous cliche interpretation, but just that. It happens to be about
a third party, not in the first person. And there's "dead" and this passage says
"more dead." Is not faked death "less dead" instead of more?
I think out of a million words, these are very scarce and very interpretable.
> The author is bitter about his fate, the banished court "fool" Touchstone says
> to Audrey:
>
> <<I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid,
> was among the Goths.>>
>
> We know that Marlowe's translation of Ovid's *Amores* was burned along with
> other banned satires in June 1599, and that the play speaks of "the little wit
> that fool's have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes good
> show."
There's evidence that Shakespeare wrote the work. There is great speculation
Marlowe and Shakespeare were familiar with each other's work.
So lets say Marlowe faked his death and was as bitter as you claim here and your
following passages, that is no connection to Marlowe and the works of Shakespeare.
Its as easy to say the Stratfordian Shakespeare was riding his friend Christopher
for the hilarious predicament of being perceived dead. He's rubbing it in.
> Wiser, or at least more expansive, than Touchstone, Rosalind comments on the
> the deadly effects of love (such as William might have experienced if he stuck
> around, and such as Marlowe MAY have had for Audrey, in this my birthday
> speculation) when she (Rosalind) replies to:
>
> ORLANDO
> Then in mine own person I die.
>
> ROSALIND
> No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old
> (allusion to Baines note against Marlowe) and in all this time there was not
> any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love cause. Troilus had his
> brains disahed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he could to die before,
> and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair
> year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midummer night;
> for, good youth, he went buty forth to wash him in the Hellespont and being
> taken with the cramp was drowned. And the foolish chroniclers of that age found
> it was "Hero of Sestos." But these are all lies. Men have died from time to
> time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
>
> Rosalind is "giving the lie" to Mere's claim (the foolish chronicler of the
> previous year) that the poet perished in a fight over "lewd love."
>
> Celia, in her own way, does the same "the beginning," she says, "that was dead
> and buried."
>
> Celia also says "...the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a
> tapster; they are both the confirmer of false reckonings."
I can only give it thought, I can't adapt any speculation as superior.
> As Peter Farey blandly put it in his kickoff posting to this months POTM, *As
> You Like It* is the Shakespeare play that is most "aware" of Marlowe. Indeed,
> as Rosalind says in the epilogue:
>
> ROSALIND'S EPILOGUE
> It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue, ... What a case am I in
> then, than am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the
> behalf of a good play. I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will
> not become me. My way is to conjure you....
>
> Which was Marlowe's way, as well.
Maybe he returned from Denmark with some surgery and was playing the Rosalind part
written for him by WS. Its as provable.
> *As You Like It* was the only play successfully "stayed’ from publication by
> Shakespeare (or by the Grand Possessors, if you will) -- for 23 years until its
> publication in the First Folio, very possibly because of the clues contained as
> to the authorship of the play, or the blatant insult to Audrey, and exposure of
> William. There's even a character named "Mar-text."
>
> Well, there you have it, and if I didn't hit the nail on the head, "at least I
> tried", as a favorite fictional character of mine once said.
It was a great post really, and I sure ain't in the business of ruling things out.
> Fuck you if you ain't among the Goths. :)
Nice trenchcoat yourself.
Greg Reynolds
KQKnave
<eve...@megsinet.net> writes:
>Further is the problem Volker creates for himself, that deVere the
>canonjockey
>would purposefully besmirch the name William in a play. Was that not his
>bread and
>butter, Volker? Being this William the writer himself? Humiliates? Threatens?
>Volker posted Touchstone's words so there is likelihood he read them. How did
>he
>miss the absolute hyperbole and call it a threat? It is a joke, is all, a
>bright
>funny passage.
>
Ah, but you're missing the obvious, Greg. The conspiracy to hide
the true identity of Shakespeare was the GREATEST CONSPIRACY
IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, with everyone associated with
the theatre world, including the aristocracy, conspiring to hide
Oxenforde's true occupation, while SIMULTANEOUSLY LEAVING
CLUES TO HIS IDENTITY! And it worked brilliantly! Posterity will
never be able to prove the conspiracy existed, because everyone
was in on it, but we know it was there because of all the clues they
left! Diabolical!
Encoded message:
nbsmpwjbojmmljdlzpvsbttbmmpwfsuijtofxthspvqxifojnhppe
boesfbez
Jim
Marlovian
>Ah, but you're missing the obvious, Greg. The conspiracy to hide
>the true identity of Shakespeare was the GREATEST CONSPIRACY
>IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, with everyone associated with
>the theatre world, including the aristocracy, conspiring to hide
>Oxenforde's true occupation, while SIMULTANEOUSLY LEAVING
>CLUES TO HIS IDENTITY! And it worked brilliantly! Posterity will
>never be able to prove the conspiracy existed, because everyone
>was in on it, but we know it was there because of all the clues they
>left! Diabolical!
Any "sane" person knows that Oxenforde is a fraud in the bard dept., Jim, but
where's your evidence that (as you have elsewhere claimed) the echoes of *Venus
and Adonis* in *Hero and Leander* were "commonplaces" in the poetry of the day?
After you asked me 3 or 4 times, I gave you more than 20 echoes from only two
poems. I haven't even given you the echoes in "The Rape of Lucrece" yet. This
is my third or fourth request to you to produce your evidence, or to qualify
your statement.
By the way, the Shakespeare hoax was NOT the greatest conspiracy in the history
of the world. The most SUCCESSFUL conspiracy hasn't been discovered yet.
Whatever it was, it appears to have been conceived in a winter wonderland.
David More
Greg Reynolds
Marlovian wrote:
> <>
>
> By the way, the Shakespeare hoax was NOT the greatest conspiracy in the history
> of the world. The most SUCCESSFUL conspiracy hasn't been discovered yet.
> Whatever it was, it appears to have been conceived in a winter wonderland.
Jar-el's house, green icicles, funny clothes...
Greg Reynolds
EobardT30 wrote:
> >Looking forward to the deVere Bible study,
> >Greg Reynolds
>
> There's a book coming out soon (if it's not out already) called "Prospero's
> Bible: The Shakespeare Mystery Resolved."
I wonder if a driven, envious deVere sat in church with a prayerbook and pen
trying to build a case that his archenemy William was plagiarizing the Word.
Just as provable as the idea that deVere highlighted passages he wanted to
plagiarize himself. [Take this thought lightly, please, I have no reason to
rule out that Ed and Will were the best of friends--nor a reason to support
it.]
Greg Reynolds
EobardT30
>history
>> of the world. The most SUCCESSFUL conspiracy hasn't been discovered yet.
>> Whatever it was, it appears to have been conceived in a winter wonderland.
By definition, a conspiracy has to be undiscovered to be successful. However,
the Shakespeare/Oxford conspiracy is a big one.
EobardT30
bobgrum...@my-dejanews.com
people at the right time.
Marlovian
Greg Reynolds wrote (May 5, 1999) in response to my speculation that *As You
Like It* was penned by Christopher Marlowe, who (I speculate from the evidence)
had been banished-to-death in 1593 and by 1599, when this play was written, had
just about given up hope of being UNbanished. Greg was not convinced, arguing
that the Stratfordian version is
<<...an even better model--the one with the name on the works, the one known
and acceptable to both Elizabeth and James. No conspiracies or guesswork,
either.>>
Better in what sense? Can it be better if it is not true? (I suppose that
depends on what you mean by better and true).
> In the scene above, the banished courtly fool Touchstone (an authorial
"voice"
> some say, though I can hear the Williamists cry "No!")
> -- has a
> gripe with a young country man named William. He takes William’s hand in his
> and says: <<it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup
> into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other, for all your writers
do
> consent that *ipse* is he. Now you are not *ipse*, for I am he.>>
>
> A handy Latin dictionary says <ipse> when used as a pronoun means <he
himself;
> master; host>. So Touchstone is saying to William: You ain't the man, I am.
Which Greg says is
<<... literally his message: "Beat it." >>
But Touchstone says "all your writers do consent." Touchstone is saying that
"all your writers" agree that "William" is "ipse", but that they are WRONG,
because he (William) is NOT ipse, for he (Touchstone, the courtly "material
fool", banished like Ovid) IS *ipse. As he is saying this he is figuratively
pouring "drink" from his own hand into the empty hand of William. The context
is literary.
He then tells William in no uncertain words that he will kill him if he
remains. He makes this very clear. What really is very funny, is William's
response. "Good rest ye, merry sir." The author is making fun of William,
that's for sure. But the character Touchstone is much harder on him.
> And then Touchstone tells William to get the hell away before he kills him.
Which Greg advises me to
<<Please reread with a lighter heart--this is comedy and I think very funny.>>
I did, but Touchstone's bitterness remains. May I suggest that you (Greg)
reread with a graver heart the speech where the material fool "rings the
changes" on circumlocutions for "death"?
> Touchstone "nails" both Audrey and William in their scenes together. Audrey
is
> depicted as an unpoetical slut; William as a simple rustic. If Touchstone is
> the author's voice, then we must ask why does the author "have it in" for
these
> two characters, who were specially added to Lodge's original story. I
SPECULATE
> that it was because Marlowe had been nailing Audrey before his "fell arrest."
> It's my birthday, I can speculate. In the early years, he was counting on her
> (and others undoubtedly) to make an effort to get his harsh sentence
repealed.
> I'm 52. She let him down by embracing the actor William Shakespeare in 1598,
> the year the PLAYWRIGHT was born into print, in quarto and in Meres.
Greg asks:
<<Why is the character named William? Well, if Will is your front (Mars/Oxys)
and
the hope of continuing your scam, why do you bring attention to it and why
would
you slam it? >>
The scam, as you call it, did not get full swing until 1598-99 with the first
mentions of William Shakespeare "the playwright" in print, and the actor
getting a small percentage of the Globe Theater action.
You rightly observe that
<<Again, inside jokes need to be inside jokes, especially under the
extreme circumstances Mars/Oxys create for themselves to even survive in
contemporary Eliz culture>>
I SPECULATE, based on available evidence, that unlike Edward Devere,
Christopher Marley had a legitimate reason for adopting a pen name: namely he
was banished in one of the following scenarios
1) by an off-the-books order of the Queen Elizabeth, in order to punish him for
his "sins" and appease Archbishop Whitgift, her enforcer of religion. (Robert
Poley, the "senior agent" at Marlowe's alleged murder was in the pay of
Elizabeth at the time he was in Deptford. Elizabeth herself (or someone acting
in her name) wrote a memo to her coroner to make sure that it was emphasized
that Ingram Frizer acted in self-defense)
2) by an off-the-books order of Lord Burghley, who had come to the poet's
rescue in the past. (this would be risky, to attempt to fool the queen, but he
had gone behind her back before. SOMEONE carefully corrected the copy of the
Baines note that was sent to her, crossing out "sudden and violent death" and
replacing it with "sudden and fearful end."
3) through the efforts of the Earl of Essex, whose man Skeres was a "witness"
to the event at Deptford, and whose protege Henry Wriothesley was dedicatee of
*Venus and Adonis*, and Francis Bacon, Essex's chief adviser, who may have
suggested the banishment punishment to Essex. Essex "may well have" asked her
majesty to impose banishment on the poet instead of the certain death he faced
from Archbishop Whitgift's Star Chamber.
4) some combination of all three
<< I'm to assume you get jokes that Eliz or james didn't?>>
Oh no, Elizabeth was a sharp lady. She would have gotten the jokes. There is no
record of performance of this play, however. According to G.B. Harrison, based
on external and internal evidence, it was written after June 1599 and before
August 4, 1600, when it was registered and "stayed" from publication. (The only
play of the author's to be successfully kept out of print in this manner).
<<Now, if the Stratwilliam named himself here on person, it may be to show his
misfortune in marriage and relationship. I think the character is so minor, its
a
basic Hitchcockian cameo. (maybe it was Will's birthday.) >>
Well, I'll give you this one as a gift for your own birthday. :)
> IF Marlowe HAD been banished (to-death, as I prefer to put it) then you could
> reasonably expect him to desire to be UNbanished, especially in 1595-1597
> (later, too, but in a different way, altered by time). Prior to 1598 the name
> William Shakespeare was best known as the author of two "best-selling"
> narrative poems. His reputation resting mainly on *The Rape of Lucrece*,
> printed written in 1594, which was was "all praiseworthy" appealing,
according
> to G. Harvey "to the wiser sort." *Romeo and Juliet* and *Richard II*, both
of
> which prominently feature banishment in their plots, came out shortly after,
> both anonymously at first.
<<I do pay attention, I just don't need to believe it as you. >>
Of course you pay attention, but do you pay dues?
<<I visualize a conspiracy as untraceable-->>
Not necessarily, though if I'm ever invited to join a conspiracy, I'll run it
past you.
<<this would alert the entire theatre world.>>
Not necessarily. This objection might have more validity if the play had been
published, but it wasn't, because it was successfully "stayed" from print.
We don't know what the circumstances of performance were. If it were performed
at court, I imagine that Elizabeth would be "in" on the joke. Certainly we can
imagine Lady Audrey Walsingham in attendance. Now THAT's the *Shakespeare in
Love* that I'd like to see.
<< Where are the reports of a dead author rematerializing? Can't get past the
implausibility that the era wouldn't know the author of 37 plays, most very
public.>>
You're jumping way ahead to 37 plays (20 of these didn't come out until 1623,
and by 1600 not all had been written). Stay focused in the year 1600 when *As
You Like It* was registered and "stayed." What else was "out there' in print
with the trademarked name "William Shakespeare" on the title page? Though high
quality, not much in the way of quantity.
What kind of published reports would you expect to find? Realistically?
Contemporary plays might contain some clues (and they DO), but what else?
> 1598 was a watershed year in Marlowe's banishment (if indeed, such was his
> fate): *Hero and Leander* came out with future "Shakespeare" publisher Edward
> Blount's "dedicatory epistle" to Thomas Walsingham affirming the poet's death
> (don't take my word for it, ask terry ross). The same year was published
George
> Chapman's continuation of H&L, with a dedicatory epistle to Audrey
Walsingham,
> Tom's wife. Chapman complains of his "obscure estate" and "painful dumbness."
> 1598 was the year the coffin was nailed shut on Marlowe. Up until then, it
> might have been possible to make a comeback, following the great success of
> *Lucrece*. But the publication of *Hero and Leander* with Blount's preface
> ("him dead" etc.), dashed his hopes. In bitter defeat he pounds in a nail
into
> his own coffin when he refers to himself as a dead shepherd in 1599. He
commits
> "literary suicide." Is this what "Those Pronouns Refer To"? <You> to Audrey
> Walsingham and <It> to his "dead" state? Support for this view comes from the
> pronunciation of the title itself: As You Lie, Kit, and in Touchstone's
> oft-quoted observation: "If a man's wit can not be understood ..., it strikes
a
> man more dead, than a great reckoning in a little room."
<<I like the connection, knowing Kit was not widely used as his name. But the
reckoning is a famous cliche interpretation, but just that.>>
Excuse me? It wasn't a cliche in 1600. It was inside information.
<< It happens to be about a third party, not in the first person. And there's
"dead" and this passage says "more dead." Is not faked death "less dead"
instead of more?
I think out of a million words, these are very scarce and very interpretable.>>
Let's see: the actual "great reckoning in the little room" (that resulted in
Marlowe's end) was a political-literary solution to a problem caused by
overzealous defenders of the faith, notably Archbishop of Canterbury John
Whitgift, who was responsible for a number of executions of religious
dissidents, and who wanted Marlowe's neck at the end of a noose, or worse. The
"great reckoning" (which refers not merely to *le recknynge* of the sum of
pence, but to the decision to banish him for life) left Marlowe "dead" to the
world. Failure to get his wit is even more deadly to him than that because it
kills his spirit.
> The author is bitter about his fate, the banished court "fool" Touchstone
says
> to Audrey:
>
> <<I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest
Ovid,
> was among the Goths.>>
>
> We know that Marlowe's translation of Ovid's *Amores* was burned along with
> other banned satires in June 1599, and that the play speaks of "the little
wit
> that fool's have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes
good
> show."
<<There's evidence that Shakespeare wrote the work. >>
It's included in the First Folio, which obviously points to the man-player as
the writer.
<<There is great speculation
Marlowe and Shakespeare were familiar with each other's work.>>
To be more accurate, there is much evidence.
<<So lets say Marlowe faked his death and was as bitter as you claim here and
your
following passages,>>
Marlowe did not fake his death. That was done for him (or to him) by others
(see above). His punishment for his religious heresy (as reported to the Queen
in her EDITED version of the Baines' note) was banishment. What was to be done?
Stand by and see a faithful agent and literary genius executed in a most
barbaric fashion? Or banish him? For life, if necessary.
<< that is no connection to Marlowe and the works of Shakespeare.
Its as easy to say the Stratfordian Shakespeare was riding his friend
Christopher
for the hilarious predicament of being perceived dead. He's rubbing it in.>>
No connection to Marlowe and the works of Shakespeare? To quote Dave K., what
on earth are you talking about? The works of Shakespeare contain many echoes of
Marlowe. Rubbing it in? Are you trying to *rubbish* it in?
Then there this exchange:
No, the whimsical suggestion that he had his sex surgically altered in Denmark
is not as provable. I merely offered internal and external evidence that
suggest that AYLI was written by the not-so-dead banished poet formerly known
as Marley, with Audrey Walsingham in mind.
Dave
There wasn't room for the entire context that preceded this exchange. It's
available on Deja News.
David More
Greg Reynolds
Marlovian wrote:
> Greg Reynolds wrote (May 5, 1999) in response to my speculation that *As You
> Like It* was penned by Christopher Marlowe, who (I speculate from the evidence)
> had been banished-to-death in 1593 and by 1599, when this play was written, had
> just about given up hope of being UNbanished. Greg was not convinced, arguing
> that the Stratfordian version is
>
> <<...an even better model--the one with the name on the works, the one known
> and acceptable to both Elizabeth and James. No conspiracies or guesswork,
> either.>>
>
> Better in what sense? Can it be better if it is not true? (I suppose that
> depends on what you mean by better and true).
Hi Marv.
I am an earnest reader of yours, but don't understand a lot of it, so maybe I am
too quick to comment, and I'll admit that. Your style is educational and you offer
reason as a rule, which is appreciated here. I am a fan of Marlowe as you know,
and want to concentrate on his work someday. I will read the Reckoning. So maybe I
won't go point for point here, but instead say that I believe Marlowe's talents
and his importance are better served by concentrating on his known canon.
There are people named Oxfordians who believe we are hypnotized as children to
believe an evil hoax that the goodly earl was never allowed to take credit for his
work and that bum stole the credit. They speak of being enlightened. They may
think I like fighting when I ask them for substance, but the truth is I am very
curious and liberal-minded enough to accept logic and even adapt it into my
thinking. Its not just arguing to argue (and I applaud Volker for his courage and
his ability to salvage a sense of sense in his thrust generally--I appreciate the
"creative" effort).
As a child, I was taught that 1 and 1 is 2.
As an adult, I learned in graphic design that 1 and 1 is 3, because if my client
wants a drawing of two boxes, I have to be conscience of three things, box-1,
box-2, and the relationship between them. So 1 and 1 is 3 makes perfect sense to
me and I can accept it. Anyone in my field is aware that it and must believe it to
produce the illustration of the two boxes.
This is another example of your having a very potent idea that I just don't fully
accept. It is truly worth the thought I will give it. When Touchstone says he will
kill him 150 times, there is nothing I can do but laugh. William is brought on
stage to be ridiculed severely. I just saw this play staged and considered him a
whipping boy, with zero purpose in the play. (If WS of Stratford played Adam in
the first scenes and that's widely speculated--he would also be available to step
on stage in this later scene for a real dressing down.
Dave, I don't think the answer is in the script as to what purpose Wm. serves, but
Touchstone is not evil, not a killer, and is known for his humour. This scene can
be nothing but.
Okay, excuse the personal input, but I was once in front of a few people and
unfortunately in a heated surprise argument with a person whom I detest and have
no involvement with. This was a surprise situation, and the wrong statement was
made to me by him, and I lost my temper and declared directly that "If you do,
I'll send you to two hospitals." It got laughs! I was so fortunate, as I am not a
toughie or a warmaker, just an injured party reacting too quickly, and I said the
wrong thing (a threat) which served to diffuse the situation because it was
interpretable. This reminds me of the William episode in that hyperbolic violence
is funny stuff.
>
>
> > Touchstone "nails" both Audrey and William in their scenes together. Audrey
> is
> > depicted as an unpoetical slut; William as a simple rustic. If Touchstone is
> > the author's voice, then we must ask why does the author "have it in" for
> these
> > two characters, who were specially added to Lodge's original story. I
> SPECULATE
> > that it was because Marlowe had been nailing Audrey before his "fell arrest."
> > It's my birthday, I can speculate. In the early years, he was counting on her
> > (and others undoubtedly) to make an effort to get his harsh sentence
> repealed.
> > I'm 52. She let him down by embracing the actor William Shakespeare in 1598,
> > the year the PLAYWRIGHT was born into print, in quarto and in Meres.
Symmetry--catch it. Dave, you're way ahead of me.
>
>
> Greg asks:
>
> <<Why is the character named William? Well, if Will is your front (Mars/Oxys)
> and
> the hope of continuing your scam, why do you bring attention to it and why
> would
> you slam it? >>
>
> The scam, as you call it, did not get full swing until 1598-99 with the first
> mentions of William Shakespeare "the playwright" in print, and the actor
> getting a small percentage of the Globe Theater action.
This must be explained in the Reckoning, right?
I hope its okay to call a faked death a "scam."
Timetable has a big hole in it, it seems to me.
> You rightly observe that
>
> <<Again, inside jokes need to be inside jokes, especially under the
> extreme circumstances Mars/Oxys create for themselves to even survive in
> contemporary Eliz culture>>
>
> I SPECULATE, based on available evidence, that unlike Edward Devere,
> Christopher Marley had a legitimate reason for adopting a pen name: namely he
> was banished in one of the following scenarios
>
> 1) by an off-the-books order of the Queen Elizabeth, in order to punish him for
> his "sins" and appease Archbishop Whitgift, her enforcer of religion. (Robert
> Poley, the "senior agent" at Marlowe's alleged murder was in the pay of
> Elizabeth at the time he was in Deptford. Elizabeth herself (or someone acting
> in her name) wrote a memo to her coroner to make sure that it was emphasized
> that Ingram Frizer acted in self-defense)
These are so interesting I will be looking into it. Not soon though.
> 2) by an off-the-books order of Lord Burghley, who had come to the poet's
> rescue in the past. (this would be risky, to attempt to fool the queen, but he
> had gone behind her back before. SOMEONE carefully corrected the copy of the
> Baines note that was sent to her, crossing out "sudden and violent death" and
> replacing it with "sudden and fearful end."
Again proving he escaped the death and the news of the escape is wholly separate
from then writing for the public stage and court.
> 3) through the efforts of the Earl of Essex, whose man Skeres was a "witness"
> to the event at Deptford, and whose protege Henry Wriothesley was dedicatee of
> *Venus and Adonis*, and Francis Bacon, Essex's chief adviser, who may have
> suggested the banishment punishment to Essex. Essex "may well have" asked her
> majesty to impose banishment on the poet instead of the certain death he faced
> from Archbishop Whitgift's Star Chamber.
>
> 4) some combination of all three
Good stuff and I am curious.
> << I'm to assume you get jokes that Eliz or james didn't?>>
>
> Oh no, Elizabeth was a sharp lady. She would have gotten the jokes. There is no
> record of performance of this play, however. According to G.B. Harrison, based
> on external and internal evidence, it was written after June 1599 and before
> August 4, 1600, when it was registered and "stayed" from publication. (The only
> play of the author's to be successfully kept out of print in this manner).
Eliz is only half the battle. You're gonna need James to continue Eliz'
overlooking of the truth. The largest problem I have with any Shakespearean
candidate in Jacobean England.
> <<Now, if the Stratwilliam named himself here on person, it may be to show his
> misfortune in marriage and relationship. I think the character is so minor, its
> a
> basic Hitchcockian cameo. (maybe it was Will's birthday.) >>
>
> Well, I'll give you this one as a gift for your own birthday. :)
>
> > IF Marlowe HAD been banished (to-death, as I prefer to put it) then you could
> > reasonably expect him to desire to be UNbanished, especially in 1595-1597
> > (later, too, but in a different way, altered by time). Prior to 1598 the name
> > William Shakespeare was best known as the author of two "best-selling"
> > narrative poems. His reputation resting mainly on *The Rape of Lucrece*,
> > printed written in 1594, which was was "all praiseworthy" appealing,
> according
> > to G. Harvey "to the wiser sort." *Romeo and Juliet* and *Richard II*, both
> of
> > which prominently feature banishment in their plots, came out shortly after,
> > both anonymously at first.
>
> <<I do pay attention, I just don't need to believe it as you. >>
>
> Of course you pay attention, but do you pay dues?
I get this canvas tote bag is all. (I am not a goon)
> <<I visualize a conspiracy as untraceable-->>
>
> Not necessarily, though if I'm ever invited to join a conspiracy, I'll run it
> past you.
That's what conspirators say, too.
> <<this would alert the entire theatre world.>>
>
> Not necessarily. This objection might have more validity if the play had been
> published, but it wasn't, because it was successfully "stayed" from print.
>
> We don't know what the circumstances of performance were. If it were performed
> at court, I imagine that Elizabeth would be "in" on the joke. Certainly we can
> imagine Lady Audrey Walsingham in attendance. Now THAT's the *Shakespeare in
> Love* that I'd like to see.
>
> << Where are the reports of a dead author rematerializing? Can't get past the
> implausibility that the era wouldn't know the author of 37 plays, most very
> public.>>
>
> You're jumping way ahead to 37 plays (20 of these didn't come out until 1623,
> and by 1600 not all had been written). Stay focused in the year 1600 when *As
> You Like It* was registered and "stayed." What else was "out there' in print
> with the trademarked name "William Shakespeare" on the title page? Though high
> quality, not much in the way of quantity.
God this is a long post, Dave. Do you have a staff? I don't.
Not adding up, I'm afraid. I blame me.
<regretfully snipping perfectly logical but untouchable (by me at present)
thoughts of David More>
Dave, I saw Celia here as decrying the Marlowe alibi. I regard Celia as superior
to Rosalind as a character and a thinker. And though Rosalind is the focus, Celia
is with her and inside the information throughout. And she makes Rosalind the
guinea pig of the love exercise and experimentation. However, at the end, Celia
(who speaks as a detractor of men and love in general) also falls in love and uses
all they learned together in the loving adventures of the middle acts.
> <<I can only give it thought, I can't adapt any speculation as superior.>>
>
> > As Peter Farey blandly put it in his kickoff posting to this months POTM, *As
> > You Like It* is the Shakespeare play that is most "aware" of Marlowe.
R and C are very interesting, and if this play is a huge Wm/Kit spoof or
treatment, Rosalind and Celia hold many of the cards. I say again, you put forth
many good ideas.
>
> Indeed,
> > as Rosalind says in the epilogue:
> >
> > ROSALIND'S EPILOGUE
> > It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue, ... What a case am I in
> > then, than am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the
> > behalf of a good play. I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg
> will
> > not become me. My way is to conjure you....
> >
> > Which was Marlowe's way, as well.
So is AYLI dissected in The Reckoning? Are Celia and Rosalind detailed? (You may
get me to read it quicker.)
> <<Maybe he returned from Denmark with some surgery and was playing the Rosalind
> part written for him by WS. Its as provable. >>
>
> No, the whimsical suggestion that he had his sex surgically altered in Denmark
> is not as provable.
I didn't say sex, that wouldn't work, I meant a change of appearance. I though
Denmark was close enough.
> I merely offered internal and external evidence that
> suggest that AYLI was written by the not-so-dead banished poet formerly known
> as Marley, with Audrey Walsingham in mind.
>
> Dave
>
> There wasn't room for the entire context that preceded this exchange. It's
> available on Deja News.
> David More
Oh, its plenty lengthy as is. Anyway, Dave, you have done your homework on this; I
have not. Thanks for the discussion. I'll let you know any progress I make in
understanding it all.
Greg Reynolds
john_baker
<eve...@megsinet.net> wrote:
Greg,
don't mean to but in. You and Dave are doing a good job. I
wanted to add a few facts.
Lord Burghley was Marlowe's "controller" the man who sent him
off on diplomatic missions and brought him back. We know it was
Burghley who signed the PC order to Cambrdige to lever Marlowe's MA.
Its the HIGHEST public accomindation paid to an intellegencer from the
period and proves they were grooming Marlowe for much higher
positions.
It proves it because it blows his cover. You don't identifiy an agent
you are going to use again.
After this Burghley assigned Marlowe as the tutor to Arbella Stuart.
Its a new three and a half year chapter to his life and I have proven
it in N&Q (spet. 1997).
In the Reckoning, Nicholl gives us another important link. Marlowe is
deported from Flanders by Sir Robert Sidney, then Governor. His
accused crimes are capital crimes: counterfieting and spying.
But Lord Burghley meets Marlowe at the dock and releases him.
Nicholl suggests he laced him out first...but this is just
speculation.
The fact is Burghley released him from capital crimes. This was in
1592.
Now we jump to May 1593. Burghley is sick and out of chambers on 18
May 1593. That's when the domestic junta moved against Marlowe and
issued his arrest orders.
Burghley was back in chambers on 20 May 1593 (a Sunday, I think) and
Reed reports in his sick liter. Guess what Marlowe is again released
without posting a bail on captial charges!
Now the next day, Burghley's son, Sir Robert Cecil, who Marlowe knew
from Cambridge and his father sent a letter between themselves hinting
of their next diplomatic mission...one to Scotland. That was 21 May
1593...the day Marlowe vanished.
Now this mission to Scotland opened up the communication link between
James and the Cecils which brought James VI of Scotland to the English
throne as James I of England. It adverted an English civil war over
succession. It was the most important diplomatic mission of the
period...bar none.
It was highly illegal. Eliz. had forbitten all talk about succession.
Raliegh went to the Tower for life and was killed there because of his
table talk over succession...he favored Arbella Stuart and not James.
James killed him, when he got around to it. Very ugly stuff.
Now both Nicholl and Haynes (Invissible Power and the Gunpowder Plot)
have gone on record that the Cecil were planning to sent Marlowe to
Scotland on the mission talked about in the letter dated 21 May
1593...
Kyd said so himself.
Now we know that the author of Hamlet went on this mission. We know
that the agent Le Dolux had in 1595 a file entitled "secret memories
of Scotland".
So the circle gets tighter and tigher.
baker
DaveMore
Charles Nicholl's *The Reckoning* which examines the circumstances surrounding
Christopher Marlowe's final days as an active member of his society (some said
he was dead).
In the thread <Re: As You Lie, Kit> Greg Reynolds asks:
<<So is AYLI dissected in The Reckoning? Are Celia and Rosalind detailed? (You
may get me to read it quicker.)>>
No. Nicholl has next to nothing to say about Shakespeare and very little on
Marlowe as a poet-dramatist. Moreover, he summarily dismisses the possibility
that the (to him) dead poet could have lived to become the writer we know as
"Shakespeare." This doesn't take away from the great value of his research into
the Elizabethan underworld of "spies and projectors," all of which leads him to
the conclusion (patently false upon examination) that the Earl of Essex was
responsible for the *murder* of the muses' darling. However, that same evidence
points just as clearly to the Earl's involvement in Marlowe's exile, as well.
You might call it a double-edged knife (or spear).
When *The Reckoning* came out in 1992, Marlowe biographer A.D. Wraight wrote a
"Riposte to Charles Nicholl (the murder of Marlowe's education)", which I've
posted at
http://members.aol.com:/marlovian/riposte.htm
David More