Was Shakespeare Fully Conscious of What He Was Doing?
Alkibiades
thread. The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
I'm not sure what the appropriate examples are here. Perhaps there is
Faust on the one hand and Mozart (as portrayed in the film Amadeus) on
the other.
Thoughts?
- Alk.
Alkibiades <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:4aidpt8qnru0j0mrv...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2001 21:07:06 +0100, "Paul Crowley"
> <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote:
>
> >Whereas many (or most?) Stratfordians today finally
> >realise (along with nearly all anti-Strats) that he must
> >have been fully conscious of what he was doing.
>
>
> You mean, like, he sat down with the blue print that Leonardo da Vinci
> drew him of what his 'humans' were to look like once 'in-vented',
> i.e., had 'blown' into them the 'breath of life'?
>
> Of course, that raises the question of whether his really would have
> known what he was doing. Executing the work and drawing the
> blueprints are two different actions.
I don't follow your analogy. But if you want to debate
the topic, please take it to another thread. It could be
a big one, and it's not specially relevant to Sonnet 62.
I was partly thinking of John Kerrigan's comment
(on page 30 of his edition of the sonnets):
"While the idea of Shakespeare as a nonchalant
genius, put about by critics like John Bayley, includes
a vital spark of truth, it is, once elaborated, very
romantic and very misleading. Shakespeare was
the most, not the least, self-conscious of great
artists . . . . "
I'd agree, after cutting out the ' . . includes a vital
spark of truth . . ".
Paul.
--
Email: pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)
grantco
geniuses. Playwriting was a craft and a way to make a living. Even in J.S.
Bach's day, Bach wasn't acknowledged as a genius, but rather a chruch
musician earning a living churning out music as needed. As far as I know the
concept of an artistic genius really came about more in the early 19th
century. We today consider many older artists to have been geniuses, but at
the time they did what they were good at and hoped to make a decent
living......
"Alkibiades" <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:qpfhptkgr24f5meeg...@4ax.com...
baker
<alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>I'm following Paul's polite suggestion to remove this to a separate
>thread. The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
>was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
>
>I'm not sure what the appropriate examples are here. Perhaps there is
>Faust on the one hand and Mozart (as portrayed in the film Amadeus) on
>the other.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>- Alk.
>
I think when we consider just the FF and its collection of precisely
36 plays, with one hidden...we must assume intention....
Intention is also reflected int he registration dates.
And, of course, in the huge underlying body of readings which has
gone into the works.
If Shakespeare was nonchalant genius we would expect his focus
to be on ordinary London and Stratfordian life...such a genius
could have done a good job with that material...but this isn't
what we see.
I've just cooked up a table that shows Sk's works follow Marlowe's
not only in theme but in location, so we have:
Marlowe Shakespeare
Dido Grecian/Aegean Grecian/Aegean TA and T&C
Timon, ms. Athens Athens Timon
Tamburlaine Asia Minor Asia Minor Julius Caesar
Edward II England/France/Scotland HVI and Macbeth
Dr Faustus Austro/Hungry/Rome Bohemia Winter's Tale
Jew of Malta Malta Malta Othello
Massacre at Paris Paris/France France/England Henry V, H6
Hero and Leander Aegean Venus and Adonis
Pharsalia Rome and Italy Italy and Rome 12 + Plays
So I don't see a rustic, but a scholar with a plan and with a focus
who stayed with it, until he had produced 36 plays...that could be
placed together in a canon similar to Plato's...
John Baker
Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur
Ed Fowler
plays convince you otherwise :)
Ed Fowler
"grantco" <gra...@greenbaynet.com> wrote in message
news:9nalbh$64j6r$1...@ID-19807.news.dfncis.de...
Bob Grumman
> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
(1) There is a huge range of other possibilities.
(2) Since we have no records of his working habits, no rough drafts,
no memoirs or artist's statements, it's a hard question to guess
an answer to.
(3) my intuition is that he was like most great artists: a combination
machine and improvisationist. He was way too sloppy to be the kind of
artist Baker envisions, even if he really could count up to 36, and
divide it into the three equal amounts of 14, 17 and 25.
--Bob G.
DerColin
>>was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
>>
>>I'm not sure what the appropriate examples are here. Perhaps there is
>>Faust on the one hand and Mozart (as portrayed in the film Amadeus) on
>>the other.
>>
>>Thoughts?
>>
>>- Alk.
>>
>
"As far as I know the
concept of an artistic genius really came about more in the early 19th
century."
Renaissance Italy, Leonardo and Michelangelo were so understood to be geniuses,
they were referred to by their first names. Certainly the Romantic period you
mention, embraced the idea of genius (and sometimes added madness into it.)
>I think when we consider just the FF and its collection of precisely
>36 plays, with one hidden...we must assume intention....
>
>Intention is also reflected int he registration dates.
>
>And, of course, in the huge underlying body of readings which has
>gone into the works.
>
>If Shakespeare was nonchalant genius we would expect his focus
>to be on ordinary London and Stratfordian life...such a genius
>could have done a good job with that material...but this isn't
>what we see.
>
comment on.) Furthermore my (entirely subjective) impression is, that the
writings show an extraordinary level of deliberation, in which even attempted
flippancy becomes entirely calculated. (As for the spellings, I like the
suggestion from Patrick Tucker et al, that the different spellings are made
particularly to inform the acting ) If he was so deliberate in his writing, it
would seem he would be deliberate in his choice of characters, place,
information -- not just writing down from what he overheard in some tavern, but
writing from careful knowledge -- and then, to a calculated effect, not merely
just for entertainment value (though he knew the value of entertainment!)
>I've just cooked up a table that shows Sk's works follow Marlowe's
>not only in theme but in location, so we have:
>
>
> Marlowe Shakespeare
>
>Dido Grecian/Aegean Grecian/Aegean TA and T&C
>Timon, ms. Athens Athens Timon
>Tamburlaine Asia Minor Asia Minor Julius Caesar
>Edward II England/France/Scotland HVI and Macbeth
>
>Dr Faustus Austro/Hungry/Rome Bohemia Winter's Tale
>Jew of Malta Malta Malta Othello
>Massacre at Paris Paris/France France/England Henry V, H6
>Hero and Leander Aegean Venus and Adonis
>Pharsalia Rome and Italy Italy and Rome 12 + Plays
>
Interesting, John.
paul streitz
> I'm following Paul's polite suggestion to remove this to a separate
> thread. The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
>
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is Oxford's introduction in Latin
to the Courtier translated by Bartholomew Clerke. Here Oxford is very
explict as to what he thinks the effect of literature to be, and that
is the instruction of the Prince. In addition, he gives other opinions
on the merits of literature. With Oxford as Shakespeare, there is very
definitely a method to what he is doing, a strong mental construct of
the function of art. With the man from Stratford as Shakespeare there
are no clues external to the work of what he thought he was doing.
The translation of Oxford's Latin is in BM Ward's biography of Oxford.
If you would like, I can post it, or send it to you email.
paul streitz
Alkibiades
wrote:
>> The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
>> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
>
>(1) There is a huge range of other possibilities.
Duh.*
>
>(2) Since we have no records of his working habits, no rough drafts,
>no memoirs or artist's statements, it's a hard question to guess
>an answer to.
Duh-er.**
>
>(3) my intuition is that he was like most great artists: a combination
>machine and improvisationist. He was way too sloppy to be the kind of
>artist Baker envisions, even if he really could count up to 36, and
>divide it into the three equal amounts of 14, 17 and 25.
Duh-est.***
>
> --Bob G.
- Alki
* Obviously.
** Even yet more obviously still.
*** Beyond the pale -- but if you can explain the math
I'll retract.
Alkibiades
wrote:
>Back in Shakespeare's time, I don't think many artists thought themselves
>geniuses. Playwriting was a craft and a way to make a living. Even in J.S.
>Bach's day, Bach wasn't acknowledged as a genius, but rather a chruch
>musician earning a living churning out music as needed. As far as I know the
>concept of an artistic genius really came about more in the early 19th
>century. We today consider many older artists to have been geniuses, but at
>the time they did what they were good at and hoped to make a decent
>living......
>
Grantco,
Nice to hear from you.
I wonder about this sometimes. What do you think about a guy like
Phidias, the sculptor, in ancient Athens? It's one thing if you're
making a statue for someone's backyard; it's another if you're making
it for the backyard of the wealthiest merchant in the city; and it's
even more different still if you're making it for the biggest symbol
of the religion of the regime.
Phidias worked on the Parthenon. Bach, if I'm not mistaken, wrote for
Princes and The Church. Surely they were recognized as great talents?
- Alki
Alkibiades
<efow...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Both Bach & Mozart were fully aware of what they were doing. Don't let any
>plays convince you otherwise :)
>
>Ed Fowler
Good one.
What do you think? What were Bach and Mozart doing? Probably the
same thing as Phidias, right? They had a craft, and they worked it.
Worked it real good. Got recognized. Outdid everyone else. Right?
But do you think Mozart knew Beethoven was coming? I'm not sure. I
think it's possible. He may have, and probably did know, known full
well what rules he was following, what breaking, what commenting on
ironically, where he was setting his own rules -- and he may have
known what that would lead to in those who would follow.
I don't know. I'm not a great artist. But it seems possible to me,
and maybe even likely, that a great artist would be aware of the
precedent he was setting. Sort of like when a judge hands down a
decision, she knows what her successors, if they are properly trained,
are likely to do with that precedent. Right?
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
Paul,
Thank you for the thoughtful and illuminating post. I would like a
copy, but please post it so that others may see as well. (They're
taking away my deja email account soon...)
- Alk.
Greg Reynolds
paul streitz wrote:
> Alkibiades <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:<qpfhptkgr24f5meeg...@4ax.com>...
> > I'm following Paul's polite suggestion to remove this to a separate
> > thread. The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
> > was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
> >
> One insight into Shakespeare's mind, considering Shakespeare to be
> Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is Oxford's introduction in Latin
> to the Courtier translated by Bartholomew Clerke. Here Oxford is very
> explict as to what he thinks the effect of literature to be, and that
> is the instruction of the Prince. In addition, he gives other opinions
> on the merits of literature. With Oxford as Shakespeare, there is very
> definitely a method to what he is doing, a strong mental construct of
> the function of art. With the man from Stratford as Shakespeare there
> are no clues external to the work of what he thought he was doing.
Paul, please answer this question:
Why does Oxford kiss up to Southampton in the dedications
of Lucrece and VA? Why does he go to great lengths to humble
himself to a lesser lord? Why would Oxford, a patron himself,
need patronage from Southampton?
This question alone defeats any rationale that Oxford was
Shakespeare, though I would enjoy hearing your hogwash
of an oxplanation.
I doubt you'll even try to answer this.
But if you dare, you will be making up silly nonsense.
Obviously, an honest Oxfordian would skulk off,
but a slimy prevaricator like you probably cannot resist.
Helping Streitz understand himself,
Greg Reynolds
Stephanie Caruana
It seems to me that the above is a far more interesting question than the
previous one.
I think the answer is "no," but I am certainly open to other opinions.
Stephanie
Okay Fine
Ha! :-)
bookburn
The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
One could quibble about what "fully conscious" means to us, to
him, but I assume no author pretends to create ab ovo or from the
brow of Jove, but is content to be relatively original in
conception and expression, and with working muses to inspire
fancy, imagination, etc. My understanding is everyone agrees
that Shakespeare's art is partly a product of the time and place,
and that he was riding the waves, as it were. For instance, the
large vocabulary of new words in the canon he is credited by some
with coining is recognized as a function of his existence in
London during the renaissance when strange languages and customs
were being assimilated.
It's hard to imagine a "nonchalant" genius, unless this squares
with the idea of renaissance wo/man as a noble courtier just able
to demonstrate superiority at all times. This seems to
distinguish between Shakespeare as a natural genius and Oxford as
a learned one.
bookburn
Bob Grumman
Suppose you spell it out for us dimbulbs, Stephanie. A nice numbered
list of what Shakespeare was doing that we traditionalists can't
fathom. I'll even give you a little help:
1. Invented Human Nature.
2. Invented the English Drama with no help from any other writer.
3. Wrote or Co-Wrote all the notable literature of his time.
4. Concealed his True Identity so well that even now the majority
of academics resist accepting it.
5. Revealed the Secret Workings of the English Court.
6. Extended the Teachings of Plato effectively enough to rank as
the greatest Philosopher of the last millennium.
(Note: I'm leaving out what he did as Chaucer and Cervantes.)
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
> >> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
> >
> >(1) There is a huge range of other possibilities.
>
> Duh.*
Ah, you understand this. Then why didn't you ask an intelligent
question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the moronic one
you did ask?
> >
> >(2) Since we have no records of his working habits, no rough drafts,
> >no memoirs or artist's statements, it's a hard question to guess
> >an answer to.
>
> Duh-er.**
Ah, you understand this. Then why didn't you ask an intelligent
question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the moronic one
you did ask?
> >(3) my intuition is that he was like most great artists: a combination
> >machine and improvisationist. He was way too sloppy to be the kind of
> >artist Baker envisions, even if he really could count up to 36, and
> >divide it into the three equal amounts of 14, 17 and 25.
>
> Duh-est.***
Ah, you understand this. Then why didn't you ask an intelligent
question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the moronic one
you did ask? (Note: the mathematics, which is undoubtedly beyond
you, is elementary Bakerian Arithdecryptation.)
--Bob G.
Symposium1
news:<9nbh0t$3c9$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>...
> It seems to me that the above is a far more interesting question than the
> previous one.
>
> I think the answer is "no," but I am certainly open to other opinions.
I'm not even fully conscious of what *I'm* doing, Stephanie. As for
Shakespeare, well, Sherman and Peabody haven't stopped by with the Wayback
Machine, so I guess I'll not soon know the details.
--Ann
paul streitz
Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England,
Viscount Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Badlesmere to the
Reader—Greeting.
A frequent and earnest consideration of the translation of
Castiglione’s Italian work, which had now for a long time been
undertaken and finally carried out by my friend Clerke, has caused me
to waver between two opinions: debating in my mind whether I should
preface it by some writing and letter of my own, or whether I should
do no more than study it with a mind full of gratitude. The first
course seemed to demand greater skill and art than I can lay claim to,
the second to be a work of no less good-will and application. To do
both, however, seemed to combine a task of delightful industry with an
indication of special good-will.
I have therefore undertaken the work, and I do so the more willingly,
in order that I may lay a laurel wreath of my own on the translation
in which I have studied this book, and also to ensure that neither my
good-will (which is very great) should remain unexpressed, nor that my
skill (which is small) should seem to fear to face the light and the
eyes of men.
It is no more than its due that praises of every kind should be
rendered to this descriptive of a Courtier. It is indeed in every way
right and one may say almost inevitable that with the highest and
greatest praises I should address both the author and translator, and
even more the great patroness of so great a work, whose name alone on
the title-page gives it a right majestic and honourable
introduction.21
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has
anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for
us the figure and model of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be
added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall
recognize as that of the highest and most perfect type of man. And so,
although nature herself had made nothing perfect in every detail, yet
the manners of men exceed in dignity that with which nature has
endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself,
and has even outdone nature which by no one has ever been surpassed.
Nay more, however elaborate the ceremonial, whatever the magnificence
of the Court, the splendour of the Courtiers, and the multitude of
spectators, he has been able to lay down principles for guidance of
the very Monarch himself.
Again, Castiglione has vividly depicted more and even greater things
than these. For who has spoken of Princes with greater gravity? Who
has discoursed of illustrious women with a more ample dignity? No one
has written of military affairs more eloquently, more aptly about
horseracing, and more clearly and admirably about encounters under
arms on the field of battle. I will say nothing of the fitness and the
excellence with which he has depicted the beauty of chivalry in the
noblest persons. Nor will I refer to his delineations in the case of
those persons who cannot be Courtiers, when he alludes to some notable
defect, or to some ridiculous character, or to some deformity of
appearance. Whatever is heard in the mouths of men in casual talk and
in society, whether apt and candid, or villainous and shameful, that
he has set down in so natural a manner that it seems to be acted
before our very eyes.
Again, to the credit of the translator of so great a work, a writer
too who is no mean orator, must be added a new glory of language. For
although Latin has come down to us from the ancient city of Rome, a
city in which the study of eloquence flourished exceedingly, it has
now given back its features for use in modern Courts as a polished
language of an excellent temper, fitted out with royal pomp, (and
possessing admirable dignity.) All this my good friend Clerke has
done, combining exceptional genius with wonderful eloquence. For he
has resuscitated that dormant quality of fluent discourse. He has
recalled those ornaments and lights which he had laid aside, for use
in connection with subjects most worthy of them. For this reason he
deserves all the more honour, because that to great subjects—and
they are indeed great—he has applied the greatest lights and
ornaments.
For who is clearer in his use of words? Or richer in the dignity of
his sentences? Or who can conform to the variety of circumstances with
greater art? If weighty matters are under consideration, he unfolds
his theme in a solemn and majestic rhythm; if the subject is familiar
and facetious, he makes use of words that are witty and amusing. When
therefore he writes with precise and well-chosen words, with
skillfully constructed and crystal clear sentences, and with every art
of dignified rhetoric, it cannot be but that some noble quality should
be felt to proceed from his work. To me indeed it seems, when I read
this courtly Latin, that I am listening to Crassus, Antonius, and
Hortensius, discoursing on this very theme.23
And, great as all these qualities are, our translator has wisely added
one single surpassing title of distinction to recommend his work. For
indeed what more effective action could he have taken to make his work
fruitful of good results than to dedicate his Courtier to our most
illustrious and noble Queen, in whom all courtly qualities are
personified, together with those diviner and truly celestial virtues?
For there is no pen so skilful or powerful, no kind of speech so
clear, that is not left behind by her own surpassing virtue. It was
therefore an excellent display of wisdom on the part of our translator
to seek out as a patroness of his work one who was of surpassing
virtue, of wisest mind, of soundest religion, and cultivated in the
highest degree in learning and in literary studies.
Lastly, if the noblest attributes of the wisest Princes, the safest
protection of a flourishing commonwealth, the greatest qualities of
the best citizens, by her own merit, and in the opinion of all,
continually encompass her around; surely to obtain the protection of
that authority, to strengthen it with gifts, and to mark it with the
superscription of her name, is a work which, while worthy of all
Monarchs, is most worthy of our own Queen, to whom alone is due all
the praise of all the Muses and all the glory of literature.
Given at the Royal Court on the 5th of January 1571.
paul streitz
> Why does Oxford kiss up to Southampton in the dedications
> of Lucrece and VA? Why does he go to great lengths to humble
> himself to a lesser lord? Why would Oxford, a patron himself,
> need patronage from Southampton?
>
> This question alone defeats any rationale that Oxford was
> Shakespeare, though I would enjoy hearing your hogwash
> of an oxplanation.
>
> I doubt you'll even try to answer this.
> But if you dare, you will be making up silly nonsense.
> Obviously, an honest Oxfordian would skulk off,
> but a slimy prevaricator like you probably cannot resist.
>
> Helping Streitz understand himself,
> Greg Reynolds
Your usual insulting tone is about the norm for Stratfordian
discourse, but for those who might be listening in, I will answer.
Further, I don't see how it is related to this thread, nevertheless...
The key to the whole Oxfordian dilemma is that they have not gone far
enough. The biographical road takes them to believe that Shakespeare
was an aristocrat and they stop with the noble earl. But continuing
down this road in a consistent manner, one would examine the works
more closely. From this autobiographical point of view, Shakespeare
in Hamlet is declaring himself to be the son of the Queen who has been
denied his right to the throne.
Is this true? The facts of the summer of 1548 and the raising of
Edward de Vere, more than show that he was in fact the son of the
Queen. (read my book to be out soon)
The further reason that Oxfordians don't want this explored, is that
Henry Wriothesly has been for years discussed as the son of Oxford and
the Queen. If both theories are true, then it is maternal incest,
something that few Oxfordian scholars want to discuss.
By the time 1588 or so rolled around, I believe that Oxford had given
up any thought of the throne. Therefore, he looked to the future, and
his son's future to be King. The only party who might bring this about
would be Robert Cecil, and therefore Cecil and Oxford tried to get
Wriothesley to marry Elizabeth Vere, Cecil's granddaughter. (as a side
twist, if both children were by Oxford then he would either be wanting
to marry half-brother and sister, or if Elizbeth were fathered by
Cecil, as some think, then it didn't matter.) Cecil was the only one
with any power and any interest in Wriothesley, if his daughter was
married to her, and the Cecil family would go from commoner to royalty
in two generations.
Remember that Oxford married Anne Cecil as an accomodation to have
Cecil make Oxford the legitimate heir to the throne. This was done, in
an act of Parliament in 1571, where the words "laufully begotten" were
dropped from the requirement to be heir to the throne, in a
complicated and convoluted legal document.
Southampton refused to marry Elizabeth Vere and Burghley lost interest
in supporting either Oxford or Southampton.
In 1593 Oxford was making a statement in VA both to his support in the
introduction where he treats Southampton as royalty and gives his
support to him. Also in the hidden text of VA, decoded so aptly by
Stratfordian Jonathan Bate, Oxford has changed the VA story from Ovid
to one of incest. (I have posted on this before.)
When Essex and Southampton were imprisoned after the Essex Rebellion,
by Robert Cecil (who I believe was a son of Elizabeth, carried while
she had smallpox, which accounts for his deformities), Essex was
immediately executed because he was of no use to Robert Cecil.
Historians frequently cite that Essex wanted to be King, but he had no
ostensible claim to the throne, but I think he did because he was the
son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley. Southampton was kept alive because
he served as a foil to keep Oxford at Bay. In return, for promises for
no claims to the throne by Southampton or Oxford, James I was
installed, and Southampton was released.
After the Queen was buried Oxford used his Edward VII signature once,
after the Queen was buried (the official end of the reign), he stopped
using the signature. He was no longer in line with the throne.
Also, I don't think Oxford died in 1604. I think he, like Prospero,
shipped out to an island where he took that which was more precious
than his kingdom, his books.
paul streitz
conrad josephs
and of poetry. The lines in the sonnets claiming immortality for his
sonnets are often dismissed as a conventional conceit of the day, but,
unlike others of the time, his metaphors leading to this conceit build
from the first line, or at least the first stanza, of the poem. Does this
sound like an "accidental genius" or a combination of "machine and
'improvisationist'"? I grant you some sloppiness in the plays, but they
were in all likelihood continuously "works in progress" being adapted for
audience, law, and actors as the situation demanded.
John W. Kennedy
> I'm following Paul's polite suggestion to remove this to a separate
> thread. The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
It is very hard not to believe that the man who wrote "Cymbeline" and
"The Tempest" was quite aware of his own facility.
--
John W. Kennedy
(Working from my laptop)
Alkibiades
That sounds like fun, Conrad Josephs. Thanks for the reply.
Those claims to immortality make one wonder, don't they, about whether
it was just empty boasting, or whether The Author hadn't grasped
something fundamental, something about the process of creativity and
recognition itself, something essential, and that armed with this he
stepped forth onto the field totally without fear, armed with the
shield of usage against the envy of time.
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
Grumman) wrote:
>> >> The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
>> >> was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
>> >
>> >(1) There is a huge range of other possibilities.
>>
>> Duh.*
>
>Ah, you understand this. Then why did you ask an intelligent
>question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the ironic one
>you did ask?
What would such a question be? I gotta work with what I got, you
know.
>
>> >
>> >(2) Since we have no records of his working habits, no rough drafts,
>> >no memoirs or artist's statements, it's a hard question to guess
>> >an answer to.
>>
>> Duh-er.**
>
>Ah, you understand this. Then why did you ask an intelligent
>question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the ironic one
>you did ask?
What would such a question be? I gotta work with what I got, you
know.
>
>> >(3) my intuition is that he was like most great artists: a combination
>> >machine and improvisationist. He was way too sloppy to be the kind of
>> >artist Baker envisions, even if he really could count up to 36, and
>> >divide it into the three equal amounts of 14, 17 and 25.
>>
>> Duh-est.***
>
>Ah, you understand this. Then why did you ask an intelligent
>question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the ironic one
>you did ask? (Note: the mathematics, which is undoubtedly beyond
>you, is elementary Bakerian Arithdecryptation.)
What would such a question be? I gotta work with what I got, you
know. (Note: a mathematics, which is, as it were, undoubtedly within
me, is, as it were, particularly expressed by you to be of the degree
of TWENTY. So, good Mr. Grumman, why did you choose, of all possible
numbers in the universe (and given your concern with the ol' "more and
less" it seems rather clear you understand a number of them) that
number to which to divert our attention?)
- Alkemy
Alkibiades
wrote:
>Also, I don't think Oxford died in 1604. I think he, like Prospero,
>shipped out to an island where he took that which was more precious
>than his kingdom, his books.
Paul,
Nicely done. But not in the spirit of Napoleon, right? Wonder if my
namesake had anything to read up in Thrakia...
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
>Here is Oxford. It might be more entitled Shakespeare on Shakespeare:
>
>Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England,
>Viscount Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Badlesmere to the
>Reader—Greeting.
>A frequent and earnest consideration of the translation of
>Castiglione’s Italian work, which had now for a long time been
>undertaken and finally carried out by my friend Clerke, has caused me
>to waver between two opinions: debating in my mind whether I should
>preface it by some writing and letter of my own, or whether I should
>do no more than study it with a mind full of gratitude. The first
>course seemed to demand greater skill and art than I can lay claim to,
>the second to be a work of no less good-will and application. To do
>both, however, seemed to combine a task of delightful industry with an
>indication of special good-will.
>I have therefore undertaken the work, and I do so the more willingly,
>in order that I may lay a laurel wreath of my own on the translation
>in which I have studied this book, and also to ensure that neither my
>good-will (which is very great) should remain unexpressed, nor that my
>skill (which is small) should seem to fear to face the light and the
>eyes of men.
Paul,
I've been reading this over and over again very, very closely -- and
mind you, I am no Oxfordian: but I am open to new evidence as it comes
to light (and I'd like it to be known that I'm just like Nicholas
Whyte in this sense) and wish to review it in a fit spirit and place
it in the scales only where it will be accorded its true weight -- and
the conclusion is drawn that if Oxford was indeed that person who put
the pen to paper and wrote the works of Shakespeare, then he had a
perfectly clear idea of what he was up to, no doubt about it at all.
Thanks again,
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
>
>
>paul streitz wrote:
>
>> Alkibiades <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:<qpfhptkgr24f5meeg...@4ax.com>...
>> > I'm following Paul's polite suggestion to remove this to a separate
>> > thread. The question is: was Shakespeare fully conscious of what he
>> > was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?
>> >
>> One insight into Shakespeare's mind, considering Shakespeare to be
>> Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is Oxford's introduction in Latin
>> to the Courtier translated by Bartholomew Clerke. Here Oxford is very
>> explict as to what he thinks the effect of literature to be, and that
>> is the instruction of the Prince. In addition, he gives other opinions
>> on the merits of literature. With Oxford as Shakespeare, there is very
>> definitely a method to what he is doing, a strong mental construct of
>> the function of art. With the man from Stratford as Shakespeare there
>> are no clues external to the work of what he thought he was doing.
>
>Paul, please answer this question:
>Why does Oxford kiss up to Southampton in the dedications
>of Lucrece and VA? Why does he go to great lengths to humble
>himself to a lesser lord? Why would Oxford, a patron himself,
>need patronage from Southampton?
What better cover? Ever heard of irony? Again, I'm no Oxfordian, but
your objection don't hold water, Greg.
>
>This question alone defeats any rationale that Oxford was
>Shakespeare, though I would enjoy hearing your hogwash
>of an oxplanation.
Nonsense.
>
>I doubt you'll even try to answer this.
>But if you dare, you will be making up silly nonsense.
>Obviously, an honest Oxfordian would skulk off,
>but a slimy prevaricator like you probably cannot resist.
>
>Helping Streitz understand himself,
>Greg Reynolds
Please do me the same favor,
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
bookburn,
Glad to hear from you on this important question. I tend to agree
with you in a lot of this. It is hard to imagine a nonchalant genius,
and you're pointing in a very good direction for further inquiry.
If you get a chance, have a look at the thread I just opened up on
Nabokov's courage. Was Nabokov trying to prove his superiority to
everyone? Nobody has argued this here, as far as I'm aware.
- Alkibiades
Bob Grumman
"There are many plays in which Shakespeare describes the art
of the theatre and of poetry. The lines in the sonnets
claiming immortality for his sonnets are often dismissed as
a conventional conceit of the day,
dismissed? I would say, "described."
but, unlike others of the
time, his metaphors leading to this conceit build from the
first line, or at least the first stanza, of the poem. Does
this sound like an 'accidental genius' or a combination of
'machine and improvisationist'?
His final couplets often seem tacked-on. Lines of his that
are more awkward than necessary are not rare, and he is sometimes
guilty of strained rhyming. nyway, "machine and improvisationist"
is a simplification. It seems to me, from my own experience
as a poet, my knowledge of friends who do creative work in
the arts, and my knowledge of famous culturateurs, that
Shakespeare started with some idea in mind that he put on
paper, improvising as he went along. As for his plays, I agree that
most of them may well have been works-in-progress--but none of them
seem as carefully worked-out-in-advance as Jonson's best--and, unlike
Jonson, Shakespeare usually had much of his plots waiting for him
ahead of time, which makes it seem like he was more adaptive
improviser than detailed planner.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk102.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.131]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Alkibiades
Good point, Stephanie. (I'm always game to change when someone says,
"Hey, you, you need to make a correction," and then explains to me
what that correction is and why it's preferable.)
Of course they're not fully conscious of what he was doing. They
think he sat down, smoked a pipe of hash, drank some coffee, tossed
back a six-pack of sack and then worked his imagination up into some
sort of Byronic fever and oozed greatness all over the page.
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
Attention All Planets In the Solar Federation!
This, as far as I am aware, is the first time a Stratfordian has
intimated, in so many words, quite clearly, that Strats, indeed, form
the inner, esoteric, circle of knowledge.
That's how Strats argue, isn't it? You've got to be <wink, wink> in
"the know" about Shakespeare. Pulling the wool over the eyes of the
masses of sheep and cows throughout the land, as it were.
Get real.
How many students out there are looking at the prefaces to their
collected works of Shakespeare and trying to make sense of the
Byzantine arguments about authorship and dating?
Why does it take knowledge of Byzantine theology in order to "know"
that a hempen-homespun wrote Shakespeare?
Get real.
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
>"Stephanie Caruana" <spear-...@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<9nbh0t$3c9$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>...
>> It seems to me that the above is a far more interesting question than the
>> previous one.
>>
>> I think the answer is "no," but I am certainly open to other opinions.
>>
>> Stephanie
>
>Suppose you spell it out for us dimbulbs, Stephanie. A nice numbered
>list of what Shakespeare was doing that we traditionalists can't
>fathom. I'll even give you a little help:
Bob,
The bulbs are dim because you're trying to keep light off of the
esoteric knowledge you're hoarding about how a hempen-homespun wrote
the world's greatest literature. What did you do, study with a
Straussian or something?
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
Hi Ann,
But you're not writing the world's greatest literature down there in
Florida, are you?
And why should you? I'm not either, but I can imagine that this guy
went through hell in cranking that stuff out.
- Alkibiades
Bob Grumman
was doing, or, was he a nonchalant genius?"
*(1) There is a huge range of other possibilities.
Duh.*
Ah, you understand this. Then why did you NOT ask an intelligent
question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the idiotic one
(whether ironic or not) that you did ask?
*What would such a question be? I gotta work with what
I got, you know.
Not so. You could admit that you haven't enough to work with
and give it up. An intelligent question might be: how conscious
a writer was Shakespeare? Or, how carefully did he plan his
works in advance?
"(2) Since we have no records of his working habits, no rough drafts,
no memoirs or artist's statements, it's a hard question to guess
an answer to."
Duh-er.**
*Ah, you understand this. Then why did you not ask an intelligent
question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the idiotic one
(whether ironic or not) you did ask?*
> What would such a question be? I gotta work with what I got, you
> know.
An intelligent question might be: how conscious a writer was
Shakespeare? Or, how carefully did he plan his works in advance?
Perhaps also, is there any way profitably to determine how
Shakespeare worked?
"(3) my intuition is that he was like most great artists: a combination
machine and improvisationist. He was way too sloppy to be the kind of
artist Baker envisions, even if he really could count up to 36, and
divide it into the three equal amounts of 14, 17 and 25."
Duh-est.***
*Ah, you understand this. Then why did you ask an intelligent
question about Shakespeare's creativity instead of the ironic one
you did ask? (Note: the mathematics, which is undoubtedly beyond
you, is elementary Bakerian Arithdecryptation.)
--What would such a question be?
Examples given.
(Note: a mathematics, which is, as it were, undoubtedly within
me, is, as it were, particularly expressed by you to be of the degree
of TWENTY. So, good Mr. Grumman, why did you choose, of all possible
numbers in the universe (and given your concern with the ol' "more and
less" it seems rather clear you understand a number of them) that
number to which to divert our attention?)
20 days is John Baker's mental age.
Greg Reynolds
Stephanie Caruana wrote:
Fully conscious, Stephanie?
Is anyine fully conscious?
What's a Straffordian, anywiy?
Here are some appropriate links, but they don't deal
with full consciousness:
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~cgl/ball/
http://www.straffordcountynh.com/
http://www.virtualvermont.com/towns/strafford.html
Maybe your spell-chicker needs consciousness raising, girl.
It's hard to believe anyine could be as negligent as baker.
Greg Reynolds
Stephanie Caruana
"Alkibiades" <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:sglkptgbdrac78ojh...@4ax.com...
Umm, I hate to break it to you, Alkibiades, but Eric Ingman is not a
Stratfordian. He is "one of us"....a non-believer in Stratfordian
Byzantiana masquerading as "the obvious."
Stephanie
Alan Jones
"Bob Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
news:379092c9a116ccd4438...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> .....As for his plays... none of them
> seem as carefully worked-out-in-advance as Jonson's best--and, unlike
> Jonson, Shakespeare usually had much of his plots waiting for him
> ahead of time, which makes it seem like he was more adaptive
> improviser than detailed planner.
Depends what you mean by "plot". He had raw material for the narrative,
though he modified it sometimes out of all recognition, but the working
up of the material into a coherent drama with interlocked sub-plots was
all his own work. I take "plot" to mean this complex of material, not
the idea or simply the "story". Try recounting the plot of "Twelfth
Night" without omitting anything or confusing the listener, and then see
a performance and admire the ease with which Shakespeare spins all the
narrative plates without letting any of them fall. Jonson seems to me
rather mechanical by comparison, in spite of his verve and ingenuity in
the two or three best comedies.
Even when the story is one that he couldn't readily change as it was too
well known ("Julius Caesar" in particular, but also the Wars of the
Roses plays) he is subtle and original in the way he shows how the
historical action grows out of the interplay of character: he makes us
feel that what happens *had" to happen, given these people in these
circumstances. None of that comes out of the bare bones of Plutarch or
Holinshed.
Alan Jones
Stephanie Caruana
"Alkibiades" <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:uclkpt4bpj96r3f3s...@4ax.com...
[Sigh] Very true. And then they get worked up into a frenzy of denial if
you mention some aspect of reality that renders that image absurd.
For instance, I have noticed that in many of the plays, the opening speech
or lines, or scene, seem to state very clearly just what the play is going
to be "about"...the theme. Then, the play goes on to explore this theme in
detail. If this is the case, then "Shakespeare" didn't just sit down and
write "whatever came into his head," by the blinding light of Natural Genius
and/or how drunk he was. He had something clearly in mind to start with.
Secondly: The play establishes a setting in time and place. This may be
trickier than it appears to be on the surface. Here is where the identity
of the author comes in. His creative life-span ought to permit the
establishment of a correct date (at least approximately) for the first
writing and presentation of the play. If Stratfordian chronology prevails,
but Oxford, let's say, was the true author, the play could have been written
perhaps 20 years earlier than it is supposed to have been by the Stratfordia
n establishment, and all of the editions, etc., that have followed from
this. A correct dating allows us to see the play in terms of the current
social and historical setting. If you get it right, you know "what the play
is REALLY about, in terms of current events, Court gossi[p, etc.
Also, if you know who the author was, and who his associates
were at the time, and his relationships to the current setting, you see
more clearly how the play fits in to its own time. Without this, you are
just floating around in a critical vacuum, which is then prone to be filled
up with totally ungrounded and specious theories and analyses, which has
happened over and over again with Shakespeare.
As Shakespeare said, in the mouth of King Theseus in MND,
"And gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."
This is why when people want to "tal about the plays, not the Authorship
question" on hlas, many of us would like to oblige, but we really can't
separate who the author was, from what the play is really about.
Two quick examples: Love's Labor's Lost, which I have just been reading.
The Theme, stated in the first scene, is love, and learning, and the
necessary interaction between the two. The usual dating is sometime before
1597, because that is the first time a performance is heard of. Hardin
Craig allows for the possibility that it was written in 1592, or even as far
back as 1588. Abel Lefranc's suggestion that the Earl f Derby was true
author of "Shake-speare" and that the play was written around 1578 is simply
dismissed out of hand, although the topical and historical references
support such a dating.
Richard II, probably written around 1582 by Oxford, as a dramatic warning to
Queen Elizabeth of the danger she was in from possible conspirators, would
have been accepted by her, and probably with thanks. But when Essex saw to
it that the "old play" was revived and presented at the Globe in
1601,[before an SRO audience of 3000 at the Globe] just before his attempted
coup, Queen Elizabeth saw the play, and the author, Oxford, in a different
light, altogether. Her deposition, only a threat in 1582, was a distinct
possibility in 1601. She had Essex executed, and Oxford was one of the 9
earls who was appointed to sit in judgment on him. A tough spot to be in!
Stephanie
"Know ye not that I am Richard?" she stormed.
Symposium1
<alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>Hi Ann,
>
>But you're not writing the world's greatest literature down there in
>Florida, are you?
>
>And why should you? I'm not either, but I can imagine that this guy
>went through hell in cranking that stuff out.
Alk.,
The question in this thread seems to have changed to "Are Straffordians [sic]
Fully Conscious of What Shakespeare Was Doing?", as opposed to the other thread
asking whether Shakespeare were fully conscious of what he was doing.
I don't think there's enough knowledge about Shakespeare to make anyone in the
present "fully conscious" of him. I was just joking about not being fully
conscious of what I'm doing, though today it feels like it's true.
--Ann
Bob Grumman
> > seem as carefully worked-out-in-advance as Jonson's best--and, unlike
> > Jonson, Shakespeare usually had much of his plots waiting for him
> > ahead of time, which makes it seem like he was more adaptive
> > improviser than detailed planner.
>
> Depends what you mean by "plot".
Right.
> He had raw material for the narrative,
> though he modified it sometimes out of all recognition, but the working
> up of the material into a coherent drama with interlocked sub-plots was
> all his own work. I take "plot" to mean this complex of material, not
> the idea or simply the "story".
This is all subjective. I agree that he was an active adapter, but I'm
not sure how coherent his plots were. As You Like It, for instance,
strikes me a pretty formless. And there's the post-ending last act
of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The two woven but not really merged
Henry IV plays (Yes, I know most critics consider the Falstaff
scenes Important for showing us pre-monarchial Hal, but that's not
enough to really merge the two parts for me.)
> Try recounting the plot of "Twelfth
> Night" without omitting anything or confusing the listener,
> and then see a performance and admire the ease with which
> Shakespeare spins all the narrative plates without letting
> any of them fall.
Well done, yes, but still not achieving what I'd call a full merge.
>Jonson seems to me rather mechanical by comparison, in spite of his verve and ingenuity in
> the two or three best comedies.
All I can say is that I disagree.
> Even when the story is one that he couldn't readily change as it was too
> well known ("Julius Caesar" in particular, but also the Wars of the
> Roses plays) he is subtle and original in the way he shows how the
> historical action grows out of the interplay of character: he makes us
> feel that what happens *had" to happen, given these people in these
> circumstances. None of that comes out of the bare bones of Plutarch or
> Holinshed.
Right (maybe). But my point is that he (seems to me to have) started
out with materials that he juggled into a kind of coherent whole, usually,
rather than with some idea for which he carefully sought out materials
to express, which suggests that he was more an improviser than a
planner as a playwright.
But it's all speculation.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk12.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.41]
MakBane
>Paul, please answer this question:
>Why does Oxford kiss up to Southampton in the dedications
>of Lucrece and VA?
Many orthodox scholars believe that they were gay lovers and that the long poem
dedications were something akin to pillow-talk.
>Why does he go to great lengths to humble
>himself to a lesser lord?
It's tops and bottoms, probably.
>Why would Oxford, a patron himself,
>need patronage from Southampton?
He wouldn't. They were just role-playing.
>This question alone defeats any rationale that Oxford was
>Shakespeare, though I would enjoy hearing your hogwash
>of an oxplanation.
Just that one question? If I had known disallowance was so easy, I would have
already retreated to the stronghold of Stratfordianism where questions of
qualification, experience, and associations never intrude or disturb.
>I doubt you'll even try to answer this.
Streitz, don't do it! It's a trap! He's usin' that reverse psychomasology on
ye!
>But if you dare, you will be making up silly nonsense.
Thus spake the prophet.
>Obviously, an honest Oxfordian would skulk off,
>but a slimy prevaricator like you probably cannot resist.
Man! Do you owe this guy money?
Toby Petzold
Bob Grumman
> > think he sat down, smoked a pipe of hash, drank some coffee, tossed
> > back a six-pack of sack and then worked his imagination up into some
> > sort of Byronic fever and oozed greatness all over the page.
> >
> > - Alkibiades
Cite ONE instance of an HLAS Stratfordian's suggesting anything like
that.
> [Sigh] Very true. And then they get worked up into a frenzy
> of denial if you mention some aspect of reality that renders
> that image absurd.
> For instance, I have noticed that in many of the plays, the opening speech
> or lines, or scene, seem to state very clearly just what the play is going
> to be "about"...the theme. Then, the play goes on to explore this theme in
> detail. If this is the case, then "Shakespeare" didn't just sit down and
> write "whatever came into his head," by the blinding light of Natural Genius
> and/or how drunk he was. He had something clearly in mind to start with.
Ah, Stephanie is slowly telling us what she and her anti-Stratfordian
friends know about Shakespeare's creativity that we poor stupid
Stratfordians don't know: he had something in his mind to start with
when he sat down to write a play!
> Secondly: The play establishes a setting in time and place. This may be
> trickier than it appears to be on the surface.
Only for those of us with out rigidniplexes to replace the play with
(yours, of course, being provided to you by Ogburn and the like since
you're too airheaded to have one of your own).
> Here is where the identity
> of the author comes in. His creative life-span ought to permit the
> establishment of a correct date (at least approximately) for the first
> writing and presentation of the play. If Stratfordian chronology prevails,
> but Oxford, let's say, was the true author, the play could have been written
> perhaps 20 years earlier than it is supposed to have been by the Stratfordia
> n establishment, and all of the editions, etc., that have followed from
> this. A correct dating allows us to see the play in terms of the current
> social and historical setting. If you get it right, you know "what the play
> is REALLY about, in terms of current events, Court gossi[p, etc.
Ah, now the second thing we Stratfordians are missing: Shakespeare was
a journalist, not a poet.
> Also, if you know who the author was, and who his associates
> were at the time, and his relationships to the current setting, you see
> more clearly how the play fits in to its own time. Without this, you are
> just floating around in a critical vacuum, which is then prone to be filled
> up with totally ungrounded and specious theories and analyses, which has
> happened over and over again with Shakespeare.
I find the last sentence much less intelligent than your discovery
of when the first book was printed in England, Stephanie. Quite a
vacuum that nonetheless provides silly Shakespearean critics with
enough material for whole books on his poetic imagery alone, or his
use of archetypes alone, or of metaphor alone, or of mistaken identity
as a plot device, etc., etc.--but no doubt mere poetry and story-telling
seem pretty empty compared with news flashes from the English court.
Snip
conrad josephs
> out with materials that he juggled into a kind of coherent whole, usually,
> rather than with some idea for which he carefully sought out materials
> to express, which suggests that he was more an improviser than a
> planner as a playwright.
>
> But it's all speculation. --Bob G.
>
> --
> Posted from dunk12.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.41]
> via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Surely you are imposing a maxim or a precept upon the creative process that is unreasonable.
Art is more than the story, the plan, or the idea. If an artist sets out to prove,
demonstrate, or disseminate an idea and then proceeds to develop a "work-of-art" to carry it,
the vehicle is often cumbersome and lacking any finesse that could insure the idea's
longevity beyond the fashion at the moment of its conception. Except for the essayist, who
must do just that which I have described, the literary artist must weave together as many
elements of life, letters, and manners as he can. In doing so he creates a whole that
surpasses the dictates of fashion and inspires people across hundreds of generations. Robert
Louis Stevenson suggested this just over a hundred years ago, and therefore I would suggest
that this appreciation of literature is well established.
Greg Reynolds
paul streitz wrote:
> > Paul, please answer this question:
> > Why does Oxford kiss up to Southampton in the dedications
> > of Lucrece and VA? Why does he go to great lengths to humble
> > himself to a lesser lord? Why would Oxford, a patron himself,
> > need patronage from Southampton?
> >
> > This question alone defeats any rationale that Oxford was
> > Shakespeare, though I would enjoy hearing your hogwash
> > of an oxplanation.
> >
> > I doubt you'll even try to answer this.
> > But if you dare, you will be making up silly nonsense.
> > Obviously, an honest Oxfordian would skulk off,
> > but a slimy prevaricator like you probably cannot resist.
> >
> > Helping Streitz understand himself,
> > Greg Reynolds
>
> Your usual insulting tone is about the norm for Stratfordian
> discourse, but for those who might be listening in, I will answer.
> Further, I don't see how it is related to this thread, nevertheless...
It is about being Fully Conscious
> The key to the whole Oxfordian dilemma is that they have not gone far
> enough. The biographical road takes them to believe that Shakespeare
> was an aristocrat and they stop with the noble earl. But continuing
> down this road in a consistent manner, one would examine the works
> more closely. From this autobiographical point of view, Shakespeare
> in Hamlet is declaring himself to be the son of the Queen who has been
> denied his right to the throne.
>
> Is this true? The facts of the summer of 1548 and the raising of
> Edward de Vere, more than show that he was in fact the son of the
> Queen. (read my book to be out soon)
NOW we're getting somewhere
> The further reason that Oxfordians don't want this explored, is that
> Henry Wriothesly has been for years discussed as the son of Oxford and
> the Queen. If both theories are true, then it is maternal incest,
> something that few Oxfordian scholars want to discuss.
I'd comment, but in my sensitive way I will wait 'til
Lord Burford dies until I speak my piece. I don't want
to hurt the innocent children.
> By the time 1588 or so rolled around, I believe that Oxford had given
> up any thought of the throne.
No, 1588 was the year he gave up valor.
Your hang dog lost his bark.
> Therefore, he looked to the future, and
> his son's future to be King. The only party who might bring this about
> would be Robert Cecil, and therefore Cecil and Oxford tried to get
> Wriothesley to marry Elizabeth Vere, Cecil's granddaughter.
This is better than a lot of soaps out there. And a lot of
little couch potatoes would enjoy picking up on history.
I wonder why you waste your time on HLAS when
FOX would pick this up in a second.
> (as a side twist, if both children were by Oxford then
> he would either be wanting to marry half-brother and
> sister, or if Elizbeth were fathered by Cecil, as some
> think, then it didn't matter.)
Keep that for the second season. That's good.
> Cecil was the only one
> with any power and any interest in Wriothesley, if his daughter was
> married to her, and the Cecil family would go from commoner to royalty
> in two generations.
So they are not Tudors, but Cecils.
> Remember that Oxford married Anne Cecil as an accomodation to have
> Cecil make Oxford the legitimate heir to the throne. This was done, in
> an act of Parliament in 1571, where the words "laufully begotten" were
> dropped from the requirement to be heir to the throne, in a
> complicated and convoluted legal document.
>
> Southampton refused to marry Elizabeth Vere and Burghley lost interest
> in supporting either Oxford or Southampton.
So you KNOW Oxford couldn't have dedicated VA and Lucrece to
Southampton! So why are you holding out and having symposiums?
> In 1593 Oxford was making a statement in VA both to his support in the
> introduction where he treats Southampton as royalty and gives his
> support to him. Also in the hidden text of VA, decoded so aptly by
> Stratfordian Jonathan Bate, Oxford has changed the VA story from Ovid
> to one of incest. (I have posted on this before.)
>
> When Essex and Southampton were imprisoned after the Essex Rebellion,
> by Robert Cecil (who I believe was a son of Elizabeth, carried while
> she had smallpox, which accounts for his deformities),
Walk this way
> Essex was
> immediately executed because he was of no use to Robert Cecil.
That was a crime?
> Historians frequently cite that Essex wanted to be King, but he had no
> ostensible claim to the throne, but I think he did because he was the
> son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley.
Why aren't you a MQS groupie?
> Southampton was kept alive because
> he served as a foil to keep Oxford at Bay. In return, for promises for
> no claims to the throne by Southampton or Oxford, James I was
> installed, and Southampton was released.
It killed Oxford.
> After the Queen was buried Oxford used his Edward VII signature once,
> after the Queen was buried (the official end of the reign), he stopped
> using the signature. He was no longer in line with the throne.
So he went in the bushes.
> Also, I don't think Oxford died in 1604. I think he, like Prospero,
> shipped out to an island where he took that which was more precious
> than his kingdom, his books.
>
> paul streitz
Paul, you've still GOT it!
Alkibiades
Ahh... I was deceived as to the object of that knowing smile and evil
laughter...
- Al
Alkibiades
wrote:
>In article <culkpt4nm3v67i9ag...@4ax.com>, Alkibiades
><alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>
>>Hi Ann,
>>
>>But you're not writing the world's greatest literature down there in
>>Florida, are you?
>>
>>And why should you? I'm not either, but I can imagine that this guy
>>went through hell in cranking that stuff out.
>
>Alk.,
>
>The question in this thread seems to have changed to "Are Straffordians [sic]
>Fully Conscious of What Shakespeare Was Doing?", as opposed to the other thread
>asking whether Shakespeare were fully conscious of what he was doing.
>
>I don't think there's enough knowledge about Shakespeare to make anyone in the
>paresent "fully conscious" of him. I was just joking about not being fully
>conscious of what I'm doing, though today it feels like it's true.
>
>--Ann
Hi Ann,
Good point.
I have a question for you:
Do believers in a hoax, believers who center their world view upon the
very grounds of the hoax, differ all that much from the hoax itself if
they are aware that something isn't quite right but try with all their
might to stifle the uneasiness?
- Alk.
Alkibiades
<spear-...@mindspring.com> wrote:
I couldn't agree with you more, and it's a credit to your longer than
sixty second attention span that you notice this. (Maybe if he were
writing today he'd have to send out subliminal messages every minute
to remind people why they're here and what they're supposed to be
doing.)
The same holds with a number of the closing speeches. They indicate a
plan, a goal, and that goal has over- and undertones beyond the
clapping of hands or the clinking of coins into the bucket.
This has to do with the way an author views literature. Consider
Nabokov and Webb for instance. They both view literature like they
view math. Nabokov's criticism of Dostojevski is a real howl. Know
what he criticizes him for? Pure technique. Descartes or Bacon could
have written that criticism. Brothers Karamazov? No mention of the
great psychological insight, no mention of the deep penetration, no
mention of the careful survey of the spiritual landscape -- rather,
the plots of second rate French novels are technically better.
Webb and Nabokov's lack of taste, their monotonous dealings concerning
'perfect arguments', the way they wallow in their desire for
mathematical harmony -- all this is difficult to admire. I do not
like this trick of theirs of claiming the moral high ground but then
fighting with the very techniques they descry.
- Alkibiades
Dr Peter Groves
news:20010908213116...@mb-cc.aol.com...
> Reynolds:
>
> >Paul, please answer this question:
> >Why does Oxford kiss up to Southampton in the dedications
> >of Lucrece and VA?
>
> Many orthodox scholars believe that they were gay lovers and that the long
poem
> dedications were something akin to pillow-talk.
>
> >Why does he go to great lengths to humble
> >himself to a lesser lord?
>
> It's tops and bottoms, probably.
>
> >Why would Oxford, a patron himself,
> >need patronage from Southampton?
>
> He wouldn't. They were just role-playing.
>
So he wasn't just a buggar and a paedophile: he was a masochist too. What
about animals -- was he into sheep (so to speak?).
Peter Groves
Alkibiades
<spear-...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Also, if you know who the author was, and who his associates
>were at the time, and his relationships to the current setting, you see
>more clearly how the play fits in to its own time. Without this, you are
>just floating around in a critical vacuum, which is then prone to be filled
>up with totally ungrounded and specious theories and analyses, which has
>happened over and over again with Shakespeare.
You're right on with this. Without knowing you wind up, like so many
critics of the second (and lower) rank(s), immersed in an entirely
lifeless element: dusky paths lead them away into a murky world of
cold reasoning abandoned by the spirit of Art.
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
<spear-...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[...]
Stephanie,
You're making some excellent points. The one to concentrate on is the
link between Art and Life. There are those of us who like their art
cold and remote, detached from all the cares of real life, an escape
into pure fantasy. This lets them think whatever they want to think,
without being as, David Webb writes, "vulnerable to some trenchant
criticism." (HLAS, 8 Sept. 2001, "Re: Will Hawking Be Ridiculed?",
Message-ID: <080920011348088075%David....@Dartmouth.edu>)
How can you be "vulnerable to some trenchant criticism" when you think
that Johnny Appleseed planted the great American forrests and Paul
Bunyan cleared the path through the Rockies? Or, for that matter,
that Merlin cleared the way for the Norman invasion?
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>Cite ONE instance
Bob,
Ask me a hard one next time.
Have a look at what Encyclopedia Britannica says:
"In lieu of external evidence, such extrapolations about Shakespeare's
life have often been made from the internal 'evidence' of his
writings. But this method is unsatisfactory: one cannot conclude, for
example, from his allusions to the law that Shakespeare was a lawyer;
for he was clearly a writer, who without difficulty could get whatever
knowledge he needed for the composition of his plays."
Where does that come from? This argument runs:
- Don't look at external biographical evidence.
- Because we're telling you not to.
- If you do:
- you're using an unsatisfactory method.
- Because we said so.
- Why?
- Because it is clear that Shakespeare was a writer, who without any
difficulty whatsoever could get whatever knowledge he needed (Greek,
Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, mathematics, theology, government,
diplomacy, physics, etc.) for the composition of his plays.
How could one possible do all this without the assistance of a
magical, Byronic -- scratch that, de Quincian -- creative fit?
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>> For instance, I have noticed that in many of the plays, the opening speech
>> or lines, or scene, seem to state very clearly just what the play is going
>> to be "about"...the theme. Then, the play goes on to explore this theme in
>> detail. If this is the case, then "Shakespeare" didn't just sit down and
>> write "whatever came into his head," by the blinding light of Natural Genius
>> and/or how drunk he was. He had something clearly in mind to start with.
>
>Ah, Stephanie is slowly telling us what she and her anti-Stratfordian
>friends know about Shakespeare's creativity that we poor stupid
>Stratfordians don't know: he had something in his mind to start with
>when he sat down to write a play!
Right, Bob. Something much more than clapper-clawing and clinking of
coins.
- Alk.
Stephanie Caruana
"Alkibiades" <alkibia...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:tetmptkl9lnufk828...@4ax.com...
> >In article <culkpt4nm3v67i9ag...@4ax.com>, Alkibiades
> ><alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
> >
>
> Hi Ann,
>
> I have a question for you:
>
> Do believers in a hoax, believers who center their world view upon the
> very grounds of the hoax, differ all that much from the hoax itself if
> they are aware that something isn't quite right but try with all their
> might to stifle the uneasiness?
>
> - Alk.
I am reposting this article, from Spear Shaker Review which I edited and
published in 1987-8, from a posting last year on hlas. I still think it is
one of the best, as well as most entertaining, statements on this topic that
I have seen.
The original article was accompanied by a copy of a David Hockney drawing,
showing Queen Elizabeth in full regalia (i.e., a real person) accompanied by
a cartoon figure "representing" Shakespeare.
I was reminded of the article by the recent threads (over 200 I believe, on
Shakespeare's clocks, and I don't know how many on "the seacoast of
Bohemia") focussing on possible errors by "Shakespeare", almost
obsessively, which substitute so often here for any discussion of the plays
themselves.
Any comments will be welcome.
Stephanie
Stephanie
****************************************************************************
******************
Shakespeare as Nobody: Thoughts on the Attraction of the Stratford Myth
--by Marilyn Clarke
(This article originally appeared in "Spear Shaker Review #2, Winter
1987")
My introduction to the controversy about the authorship of Shakespeare
was Charlton Ogburn's 1974 article in Harvard Magazine. It seemed to me that
he advanced a plausible, sensible, and convincing case for Edward de Vere,
the 17th Earl of Oxford, having written the works under the pseudonym
"William Shakespeare." Previously, I had an awareness that some people
thought Bacon wrote Shakespeare and I had vaguely wondered why there was any
question about the author's identity. I had become a skeptic of sorts
earlier, however, when at age ten I read about the verse on the Stratford
man's tombstone and decided for myself that it was not great poetry.
After becoming passionately interested in Shakespearean performance, I
began to study the plays and the sonnets. I also read biographies of the
Earl of Oxford by Ward and Ogburn, as well as Elizabethan history and
literature. I found that thinking of Oxford as the author of the
"Shakespeare" works illuminated many otherwise obscure passages, and added
another dimension to my understanding and enjoyment.
The more I read, the more I became aware of correspondences between
Oxford's life, and events and themes recurrent in the plays and sonnets.
The circumstantial evidence of Oxford's authorship seems to me to be
massive, in marked contrast to the claims of the Stratford man, which rest
solely on tradition.
Having accepted an hypothesis which seemed to me to fit the facts quite
economically; to be corroborated by various sources; and to be useful in
explicating Shakespeare's works, I was puzzled by the hostility with which
Oxfordian arguments are greeted by many. Of course, none of us likes to
hear that anything we have been taught as fact could be in error. But the
resistance to entertaining the possibility of Oxford's being the true author
seemed so great, and so emotionally charged, even among people without any
apparent vested interest, that I began to wonder about the purposes which
the Stratford myth serves.
THE WALTER MITTY ELEMENT
I think the major attraction is that the "Stratford man" story is the
greatest Walter Mitty fantasy of all time, comparable to winning every
imaginable lottery. It is WONDERFUL, although extremely far-fetched, to
believe that an ordinary man from a provincial Elizabethan town, with no
advantages of birth and, apparently, no education wrote the greatest works
of English literature! The sheer improbability of the story is its charm.
In the case of Shakespeare, all improbabilities are dismissed with the
assertion that he was a genius, and anything is possible for a genius
(another dream of Walter Mitty). Such a romantic view of genius equates
genius with being struck by lightning; i.e., *genius involves no effort,
only the lucky possession of an undefinable power.* This wishful view
totally discounts the tremendous dedication, effort, and study, as well as
social support, required to achieve superlative performance in any endeavor,
no matter how talented the performer. Actually, we know it only LOOKS easy.
We prefer to emphasize ease and individualism, even though we are aware that
abilities do not develop in a vacuum. The Stratford man, apparently such a
marvelous exception to this rule, thus becomes an icon representing
effortless achievement.
SHAKESPEARE AS IGNORAMUS
There is an opposite side to this comfortable image of the Stratford man
as invincible genius. Surprisingly, it is Shakespeare as ignoramus. The
country bumpkin Stratford man is described as naive, uneducated, careless,
and totally unconcerned with his products, as if he were incapable of
recognizing their worth; and also, oblivious to the social and political
events of his time. Given the manifold evidence in the works that none of
the preceding is true, this strange image seems to me to arise from the need
to denigrate the author, to put him down, and somehow reduce him to
manageable proportions. The author's erudition and achievements are so vast
that it hardly seems possible that one person could amass such experience in
a single lifetime. Thus, to patronize him as a "common man," or to catch
him in an "error," seems to provide a perverse satisfaction [as well as a
totally unwarranted feeling of superiority--ed.] An extreme example of this,
which I have encountered, is an analogue of Shakespeare's talent to that of
"the proverbial mathematical idiot-boy," (1) i.e., calling the author an
idiot savant with words. This is, of course, a contradiction in terms, but
certainly an ingenious way of circumventing the author's participation in
the meaningfulness of his works.
The "idiot savant" description is also an extreme statement of the
often-heard argument that it doesn't matter who wrote the works. Although I
concede that the plays and sonnets can be appreciated strictly in terms of
their meanings to modern audiences, I find few instances in which
contemporary critics are content to do just that. Usually some speculation
about Shakespeare's life and times is introduced.
In our ahistorical and avowedly egalitarian times, there is a wish to
claim Shakespeare's works for the common man, and to deny their obvious
connection with feudalism and the nobility. It is all too easy to project
our present values on Merry Old England: for example, by portraying
Elizabethan times as full of golden opportunities for upwardly mobile young
men, of which the Stratford man is a case in point. Certainly, the
Stratford man did better his circumstances, but he could hardly have joined
the nobility--not even in the backstairs ways some of his "biographers" have
devised. There were differences among the social castes which are difficult
for moderns to appreciate, since we tend to deny class differences and are,
whatever our social class or regional origins, increasingly homogenized by
mass culture.
I encountered a comic examples of such anachronistic projection in a
course I once took on Shakespeare's Comedies. When I made some remarks
concerning the Oxfordian implications of the prologue to the Taming of the
Shrew, my professor took offense and argued that the story of Christopher
Sly and the tricky nobleman indicates that Sly actually metamorphosed into
the nobility! His reasons were that Sly begins to speak in blank verse and
that he does not reappear in the play.
SHAKESPEARE AS BLANK SCREEN
Perhaps the most useful aspect of the Stratford man myth--at least to
the academic Stratfordian industry--is that it provides a blank screen on
which almost any fantasy can be projected. Only the barest outline is known
of the biography of the Stratford man, and the meager facts do not connect
with the works. Therefore, prodigious feats of imagination are required to
provide the necessary linkages. Acknowledging Oxford as the author would
necessarily limit the field of conjecture. It would also mean recognizing
Oxford's experiences as source materials for the works, thus depriving
scholars of the opportunity to conjecture so many lost plays as templates
for the existing ones.
All of the reasons I have enumerated as attractions of the Stratford
myth have in common the denial of limitations and context. The myth both
denigrates and hyper-inflates the author, making him a mere fantasy
projection--in fact, a nobody, rather than acknowledginig him as a real
person.
Of all the candidates for the authorship, only Oxford can be shown to
fit the reasonably expectable pattern of personal development as a writer:
~ predisposing family influences
~ requisite education
~ adolescent crystallization of life themes
~ apprenticeship in the craft
~ ongoing reworking of life themes in ever more powerful and original
forms.
In my opinion, the insights to be gained from the study of his life and
its transmutation in the works we know as Shakespeare's far outweigh the
wishful attractions of the Stratford myth. I much prefer the real person,
with all of its warts, limitations, and contradictions, as well as genius,
to the generic straw man of tradition.
(1) Rosalie L. Colie, "Shakespeare's Living Art," Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ 1974, p.29.
Alkibiades
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>> Secondly: The play establishes a setting in time and place. This may be
>> trickier than it appears to be on the surface.
>
>Only for those of us with out rigidniplexes to replace the play with
Bob,
Please post this sort of thing in one of the pornography groups, not
here.
- Alk.
Alkibiades
<spear-...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Perhaps the most useful aspect of the Stratford man myth--at least to
>the academic Stratfordian industry--is that it provides a blank screen on
>which almost any fantasy can be projected.
Yes, and thank you for reposting this informative article.
The Blank Screen. Funny, isn't it, that the guys with the most
powerful projectors are the ones that own the classrooms...
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>*What would such a question be? I gotta work with what
>I got, you know.
>
>Not so. You could admit that you haven't enough to work with
>and give it up. An intelligent question might be: how conscious
>a writer was Shakespeare? Or, how carefully did he plan his
>works in advance?
Bob,
I'm going to do you a favor given your untoward obsession with "more
and less." I am going to post something that I want you to read to
yourself before you go to bed every night until you get it:
"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the
subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike
in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts.
...We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with
such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in
speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with
premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In
the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received;
for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each
class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is
evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a
mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs."
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.3
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
wrote:
>Try recounting the plot of "Twelfth
>Night" without omitting anything or confusing the listener, and then see
>a performance and admire the ease with which Shakespeare spins all the
>narrative plates without letting any of them fall. Jonson seems to me
>rather mechanical by comparison, in spite of his verve and ingenuity in
>the two or three best comedies.
I can't even keep the different posters on this newsgroup straight,
ok?
- Alk.
KQKnave
<alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>Bob,
>
>I'm going to do you a favor given your untoward obsession with "more
>and less." I am going to post something that blah blah blah blah
Doesn't matter baker. Marlowe couldn't possibly have written the
works of Shakespeare because he died in 1593, long before
Macbeth, The Tempest and the funeral elegy were written.
Jim
Symposium1
<alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>I have a question for you:
>
>Do believers in a hoax, believers who center their world view upon the
>very grounds of the hoax, differ all that much from the hoax itself if
>they are aware that something isn't quite right but try with all their
>might to stifle the uneasiness?
I think that's a question impossible to answer without particulars.
World-view? If you're alluding to one of the Shakespeare authorship theories,
first of all I'd have trouble digesting that as a world-view. I hope the
ramifications of the identity of the playwright aren't that pervasive!
In any case, the difference between "the hoax" and a believer of "the hoax"
largely depends on how the "hoax" got started, and reached the believer. Was it
a malicious fraud? Then I wouldn't equate the hoax with the believer.
I think that doubt is part of almost every belief process. If said belief is
very central to one's being, exploring the doubt can be healthy. To me, if it's
something like "Did Shakespeare of Stratford write the canon?", it's not
something my life is shaped around, and it's not something I choose to get on a
soapbox and teach about. So I can comfortably say I'm a bit of an agnostic on
the subject and take an occasional interest.
You do pose some difficult ones, Alk. :) Your vagueness makes it very
difficult to answer.
--Ann
Alkibiades
Jim,
If you ever bother to read what Aristotle has to say about possibility
you might know that Marlovians are not talking about the possibility
that Kit wrote the works attributed to the hempen-homespun,
clapper-claw and clinking-coin craving Stratfordian.
Do you confuse the future with the past all the time, or only in this
newsgroup?
- Alk.
Bob Grumman
> > out with materials that he juggled into a kind of coherent whole, usually,
> > rather than with some idea for which he carefully sought out materials
> > to express, which suggests that he was more an improviser than a
> > planner as a playwright.
> >
> > But it's all speculation. --Bob G.
> Surely you are imposing a maxim or a precept upon the creative process
> that is unreasonable. Art is more than the story, the plan, or the
> idea.
Of course.
> If an artist sets out to prove,
> demonstrate, or disseminate an idea and then proceeds to
> develop a "work-of-art" to carry it, the vehicle is
> often cumbersome and lacking any finesse that could insure
> the idea's longevity beyond the fashion at the moment of
> its conception.
I'm using the word, "idea," loosely. I'm saying some artists have
ideas, then gather materials for the work (consciously and
unconsciously) that will serve those ideas; others start with
materials and plays with them till they get something they like
(which means, usually, till they discover an idea that unifies
the material they have). The first kind of artist seems a more
deliberating kind of artist than the second to me, and Shakespeare
seems of the second kind to me, most of the time. But, of course,
in any given artwork the process is complex and mixed.
> Except for the essayist, who
> must do just that which I have described, the
> literary artist must weave together as many
> elements of life, letters, and manners as he can.
Well, the more elements, the better, usually--but there is also
the possibility of fewer elements deeply considered, etc. But,
again, I'm talking about how the artist gathers and unifies
his materials: does he start with an idea that he brings to
life by weaving elements of life, letters, etc., together, or
does he weave together various things until they seem to him
to express or reveal some unifying idea.
> In doing so he creates a whole that surpasses the dictates of
> fashion and inspires people across hundreds of generations.
> Robert Louis Stevenson suggested this just over a hundred
> years ago, and therefore I would suggest that this appreciation
> of literature is well established.
I think you're getting a little carried away here.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk11.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.40]
Tad Davis
> Richard II, probably written around 1582 by Oxford, as a dramatic warning to
> Queen Elizabeth of the danger she was in from possible conspirators, would
> have been accepted by her, and probably with thanks.
Wouldn't it have been simpler just to send her a note?
--
Tad Davis
dav...@voicenet.com
Tad Davis
> Do believers in a hoax, believers who center their world view upon the
> very grounds of the hoax, differ all that much from the hoax itself if
> they are aware that something isn't quite right but try with all their
> might to stifle the uneasiness?
You tell us, pal. Antistratfordians have far more experience in trying with
all their might to stifle the uneasiness (not to mention gullible adherence
to a hoax).
--
Tad Davis
dav...@voicenet.com
Alkibiades
wrote:
>Stephanie Caruana wrote:
>
>> Richard II, probably written around 1582 by Oxford, as a dramatic warning to
>> Queen Elizabeth of the danger she was in from possible conspirators, would
>> have been accepted by her, and probably with thanks.
>
>Wouldn't it have been simpler just to send her a note?
Tad,
Didn't you read Edward II by Marlowe? You know, that scene with the
drafting of the note, the concern with interpretation and evidence?
- Alk.
Alkibiades
wrote:
>Alkibiades wrote:
I don't think they differ all that much, buddy. That's my answer, and
stick to it.
- Alki
KQKnave
<alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>
>Didn't you read Edward II by Marlowe? You know, that scene with the
>drafting of the note, the concern with interpretation and evidence?
>
It doesn't matter baker: Marlowe
couldn't possibly have written the works of Shakespeare because
he died in 1593, long before Macbeth, The Tempest, and the
KQKnave
<alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>If you ever bother to read what Aristotle has to say about possibility
>you might know that Marlovians are not talking about the possibility
>that Kit wrote the works attributed to the hempen-homespun,
>clapper-claw and clinking-coin craving Stratfordian.
That makes no sense baker, but in any case it doesn't matter: Marlowe
couldn't possibly have written the works of Shakespeare because
he died in 1593, long before Macbeth, The Tempest, and the
Bob Grumman
Our devious wack neglected to quote what I wanted one instance of,
so here it is:
> > Of course they're not fully conscious of what he was doing. They
> > think he sat down, smoked a pipe of hash, drank some coffee, tossed
> > back a six-pack of sack and then worked his imagination up into some
> > sort of Byronic fever and oozed greatness all over the page.
> >
> > - Alkibiades
Cite ONE instance of an HLAS Stratfordian's suggesting anything like
that.
> Bob,
>
> Ask me a hard one next time.
If you aren't Baker, are you one of his 300 illegitimate sons?
> Have a look at what Encyclopedia Britannica says:
Oddly enough, I for a while thought you could read, Alkibiades. But
you're with the other anti-Stratfordians in that department, I guess.
Unless Ms. Encyclopedia Britannica is an HLAS Stratfordian.
> "In lieu of external evidence, such extrapolations about Shakespeare's
> life have often been made from the internal 'evidence' of his
> writings. But this method is unsatisfactory: one cannot conclude, for
> example, from his allusions to the law that Shakespeare was a lawyer;
> for he was clearly a writer, who without difficulty could get whatever
> knowledge he needed for the composition of his plays."
How is this saying that Shakespeare "sat down, smoked a pipe of
hash, drank some coffee, tossed back a six-pack of sack and
then worked his imagination up into some sort of Byronic
fever and oozed greatness all over the page."
> Where does that come from? This argument runs:
>
> - Don't look at external biographical evidence.
No, moron. The argument runs, we lack enough data to be able
to say much about the details from the author's life that are
sunk here and there (inevitably) in the works.
> - Because we're telling you not to.
An outright lie.
> - If you do:
> - you're using an unsatisfactory method.
> - Because we said so.
> - Why?
> - Because it is clear that Shakespeare was a writer, who without any
> difficulty whatsoever could get whatever knowledge he needed (Greek,
> Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, mathematics, theology, government,
> diplomacy, physics, etc.) for the composition of his plays.
The Encyclopedia Britannica is an authority only for the ignorant,
but the gist of what the article you're discussing says is accurate:
the limited knowledge necessary for the composition of the unlearned
plays of Shakespeare, available to anyone who could read and get
out of the house from time to time was readily available to
Shakespeare.
> How could one possibly do all this without the assistance of a
> magical, Byronic -- scratch that, de Quincian -- creative fit?
Stated: read books, talk to people, use common sense. But he probably
also had help from time to time from his fellow actors.
MakBane
Groves:
>So he [Oxford] wasn't just a buggar and a paedophile: he was a masochist too.
What
>about animals -- was he into sheep (so to speak?).
Is buggar your slur against homosexual love? I would presume that homosexuals
are all for it and do not regard it pejoratively. Why do you? Do you think
being gay and being an artistic genius are mutually exclusive?
As for the charge of pedophilia, do you happen to know the ages of any of the
young men Oxford is charged with "buggaring"?
S&M does it for some. Maybe Oxford was one.
Sheep, of course, were strictly your horse-minder's bag.
Toby Petzold
p.s. Since you believe in Shakspere, maybe you can tell us whether you think he
was a bisexual or what. I realize that the eroticism of the Sonnets isn't
friendly territory for Stratfordians (since they are compelled to the lie that
the Sonnets are simply literary exercises without any autobiography in them),
but I'm sure you'll do well.
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>As for the charge of pedophilia, do you happen to know the ages of any of the
>young men Oxford is charged with "buggaring"?
>
>S&M does it for some. Maybe Oxford was one.
>
>Sheep, of course, were strictly your horse-minder's bag.
>
>Toby Petzold
>
>p.s. Since you believe in Shakspere, maybe you can tell us whether you think
>he
>was a bisexual or what. I realize that the eroticism of the Sonnets isn't
>friendly territory for Stratfordians (since they are compelled to the lie
>that
>the Sonnets are simply literary exercises without any autobiography in them),
>but I'm sure you'll do well.
>
>
The point is, of course, that it was ok to accuse Oxford of sexual
crimes but Oxfordians claim that it was not ok for the author of
the plays to be revealed, which is absurd.
Jim
Stephanie Caruana
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comspamslam> wrote in message
news:20010909183155...@nso-ca.aol.com...
> In article <20010909180746...@mb-cc.aol.com>, mak...@aol.com
> (MakBane) writes:
>
> >As for the charge of pedophilia, do you happen to know the ages of any of
the
> >young men Oxford is charged with "buggaring"?
> >
> >S&M does it for some. Maybe Oxford was one.
> >
> >Sheep, of course, were strictly your horse-minder's bag.
> >
> >Toby Petzold
> >
> >p.s. Since you believe in Shakspere, maybe you can tell us whether you
think
> >he
> >was a bisexual or what. I realize that the eroticism of the Sonnets isn't
> >friendly territory for Stratfordians (since they are compelled to the lie
> >that
> >the Sonnets are simply literary exercises without any autobiography in
them),
> >but I'm sure you'll do well.
> >
> >
>
> The point is, of course, that it was ok to accuse Oxford of sexual
> crimes
The men who accused Oxford of sexual crimes were Howard and Arundel, and he
had already accused them of treason (a far more serious crime.) This charge
(unproved) has been taken up and trumpeted around with considerable fanfare
by Dr. Alan Nelson, who apparently hopes to make his rep by giving Oxford a
thrashing and trashing based on his own hopelessly biased interpretations of
what he has culled from various [known] sources.
Bob Grumman
I'm going to do you a favor given your untoward obsession with "more
and less." I am going to post something that I want you to read to
yourself before you go to bed every night until you get it:
"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the
subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike
in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts.
...We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with
such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in
speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with
premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In
the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received;
for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each
class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is
evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a
mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs."
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.3
- Alkibiades
So, among your other deficiencies is a belief that any statement
more rigorous than your sloppy either/or floobs belongs to
mathematics. Oh, well, I did enjoy the Aristotle, although--believe
it or not--he didn't say anything I didn't already know.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk04.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.33]
KQKnave
were true is beside the point (but they were almost
certainly true). The point is that DURING HIS LIFETIME
Oxenforde was accused of having sex with his boy
servant and with murder, but, according to Oxfordians,
he was not allowed to take credit publicly for the
greatest plays ever written. That is absurd.
Jim
baker
<mar...@telusplanet.net> wrote:
>There are many plays in which Shakespeare describes the art of the theatre
>and of poetry. The lines in the sonnets claiming immortality for his
>sonnets are often dismissed as a conventional conceit of the day, but,
>unlike others of the time, his metaphors leading to this conceit build
>from the first line, or at least the first stanza, of the poem. Does this
>sound like an "accidental genius" or a combination of "machine and
>'improvisationist'"?
right you are
> I grant you some sloppiness in the plays, but they
>were in all likelihood continuously "works in progress" being adapted for
>audience, law, and actors as the situation demanded.
I agree, here. And would like your personal opinion on the often
quoted phrase that Shakespeare's mistakes are the kinds of mistakes
that only scholars or well educated individuals make....
You seem to agree, but I'd like to hear it in the clear...
So many of the Strats don't seem to understand the underlying
intellectual or philosophic context of the plays (and the poems) and
thus miss it...Alk has pointed out that this conversation, among
intellectuals, is carried on in a kind of shorthand.
You and I understand this shorthand and recognize the alluded to
context...but if you haven't mastered it or at least noticed it...it
slides right off your plate.
I use the example of finding a technological device in an ancient
cite. If it is authentic...the device means you have discovered far
more than a safety-pin....
And for scholars who know Shakespeare's context...just these kinds of
casual asides indicate to us or to them, if you don't want to include
me in that category, his wide readings and thus his supreme
consciousness.
>
John Baker
Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur
Okay Fine
(is that any better?)
Stephanie Caruana
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comspamslam> wrote in message
news:20010909205431...@nso-mh.aol.com...
> Stephanie still doesn't get it.
You must be talking about yourself, I guess. I know YOU don't get it.
Whether or not the charges
> were true is beside the point
Since you are basing your whole idea on them, how can their truth or
falsehood be beside the point?
(but they were almost
> certainly true).
The Queen didn't think so, and neither did the members of the Court who
imprisoned Arundel, Howard and Southwell, and caused them to ultimately run
for their lives to exile. Alan Nelson dug these old chestnuts up from the
dead fire, and since he pumped a little bit of juice into the old charges,
some Strats in desperation have jumped onto them like fleas onto a drowning
dog, but--gor nisht helfand, as my Mama used to say. Lord Henry Howard spent
time in the Tower, and under house arrest. Charles Arundel spent 2 years in
prison in the Tower, then went to France where he became a paid agent for
the King of Spain. As well as slandering Oxford, he apparently was the
author of "Leicester's Commonwealth," which slandered the Queen's favorite,
Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester.
There is no doubt that the charges against Oxford which Arundel, Henry
Howard, and Southwell made, ranged from the trivial to the serious. And
also, the the Queen was irritated and angered by what they said, and that
Oxford's reputation was tarnished. However, according to the senior
Ogburns, he appears to have gotten his own back, by charactrizing them in
"Much Ado About Nothing." Henry Howard is represented as the villain, Don
John, who slanders the chaste Hero. Charles Arundel appears in the
character of "Conrade" [C. Aronde anagram]. Francis Southwell is
"Borachio."
The point is that DURING HIS LIFETIME
> Oxenforde was accused of having sex with his boy
> servant and with murder,
And of a lot of other things, (including saying that the Queen was a lousy
singer), but it was the accusers themselves who suffered the worst
consequences. Although Oxford was tainted by the accusations, he defended
himself publicly in "Much Ado About O."
Get a grip, Jim; hasn't anyone ever told lies about you?
but, according to Oxfordians,
> he was not allowed to take credit publicly for the
> greatest plays ever written. That is absurd.
What is?
Stephanie
>
>
>
> Jim
>
KQKnave
>So many of the Strats don't seem to understand the underlying
>intellectual or philosophic context of the plays (and the poems) and
>thus miss it...Alk has pointed out that this conversation, among
>intellectuals, is carried on in a kind of shorthand blah blah blah blahb
It doesn't matter baker. Marlowe couldn't
Okay Fine
KQKnave wrote:
>
> Stephanie still doesn't get it. Whether or not the charges
> were true is beside the point (but they were almost
> certainly true).
If you have a reason for this remark I'd like to hear it.
> Jim
Peter Groves
>
> <snip>
>
> Groves:
>
> >So he [Oxford] wasn't just a buggar and a paedophile: he was a masochist too.
> What
> >about animals -- was he into sheep (so to speak?).
>
> Is buggar your slur against homosexual love? I would presume that homosexuals
> are all for it and do not regard it pejoratively. Why do you? Do you think
> being gay and being an artistic genius are mutually exclusive?
>
proportion of artists who have been gay. "Buggar" is just a technical
term for "one who engages in anal intercourse", which is a bit of a
mouthful (so to speak). I've got nothing against sodomy, provided (as
someone once said) people don't do it in the street and frighten the
horses.
> As for the charge of pedophilia, do you happen to know the ages of any of the
> young men Oxford is charged with "buggaring"?
>
You've got me there -- I plead guilty to relying on hearsay, like you
with "horse-minder", "butcher's boy" and so on.
> S&M does it for some. Maybe Oxford was one.
>
> Sheep, of course, were strictly your horse-minder's bag.
>
I'd always wondered what a "rascally sheep-biting knave" was.
> Toby Petzold
>
> p.s. Since you believe in Shakspere, maybe you can tell us whether you think he
> was a bisexual or what. I realize that the eroticism of the Sonnets isn't
> friendly territory for Stratfordians (since they are compelled to the lie that
> the Sonnets are simply literary exercises without any autobiography in them),
> but I'm sure you'll do well.
I think the category "gay" as we know it (or rather as we construct it)
didn't really exist in the Early Modern period: passionate attachments
between men (e.g. Sebastian and Antonio in <Twelfth Night>) seem to have
been OK whereas effeminacy wasn't -- hence all the jokes about tailors
-- and buggary, of course, was illegal. What I do think is that
Shakespeare, like all great literary artists, had some androgyny in his
psychological make-up. I don't understand why you suppose that
Stratfordians "are compelled to the lie that the Sonnets are simply
literary exercises without any autobiography in them": if they were
simply literary exercises there would presumably be a lot less obscurity
and a clearer narrative thread (a bit like Daniel's <Delia>). After
all, Shakespeare's biography (unlike Oxford's) is more or less a <tabula
rasa>. Sonnet 20 seems to exclude sodomy as an option ("since [Nature]
prick'd thee out for women's pleasure") but no-one could deny the strong
homoerotic overtones of many of the poems.
--
Peter Groves
"What men really want is not knowledge but certainty." (Bertrand
Russell)
Okay Fine
>
> > > .....As for his plays... none of them
> > > seem as carefully worked-out-in-advance as Jonson's best--and, unlike
> > > Jonson, Shakespeare usually had much of his plots waiting for him
> > > ahead of time, which makes it seem like he was more adaptive
> > > improviser than detailed planner.
> >
> > Depends what you mean by "plot".
>
> Right.
>
> > He had raw material for the narrative,
> > though he modified it sometimes out of all recognition, but the working
> > up of the material into a coherent drama with interlocked sub-plots was
> > all his own work. I take "plot" to mean this complex of material, not
> > the idea or simply the "story".
>
> This is all subjective. I agree that he was an active adapter, but I'm
> not sure how coherent his plots were. As You Like It, for instance,
> strikes me a pretty formless. And there's the post-ending last act
> of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Act V is essential for MND.
Shakespeare was a better poet than scenarist, though.
> The two woven but not really merged
> Henry IV plays (Yes, I know most critics consider the Falstaff
> scenes Important for showing us pre-monarchial Hal, but that's not
> enough to really merge the two parts for me.)
Possibly this apparent lack of unity that you perceive points to his
artistic objectives.
OF.
> > Try recounting the plot of "Twelfth
> > Night" without omitting anything or confusing the listener,
> > and then see a performance and admire the ease with which
> > Shakespeare spins all the narrative plates without letting
> > any of them fall.
>
> Well done, yes, but still not achieving what I'd call a full merge.
>
> >Jonson seems to me rather mechanical by comparison, in spite of his verve and ingenuity in
> > the two or three best comedies.
>
> All I can say is that I disagree.
>
> > Even when the story is one that he couldn't readily change as it was too
> > well known ("Julius Caesar" in particular, but also the Wars of the
> > Roses plays) he is subtle and original in the way he shows how the
> > historical action grows out of the interplay of character: he makes us
> > feel that what happens *had" to happen, given these people in these
> > circumstances. None of that comes out of the bare bones of Plutarch or
> > Holinshed.
>
> Right (maybe). But my point is that he (seems to me to have) started
> out with materials that he juggled into a kind of coherent whole, usually,
> rather than with some idea for which he carefully sought out materials
> to express, which suggests that he was more an improviser than a
> planner as a playwright.
>
> But it's all speculation.
>
> --Bob G.
>
> --
> Posted from dunk12.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.41]
Okay Fine
Jim, I'm curious why you mention only three works. Wouldn't the entire
Shakespearean corpus have to postdate Marlowe's untimely death? And
wouldn't the entire Marlovian corpus predate Shakespeare's, with no
overlap, almost as if -- well, never mind that part.
OF.
KQKnave
<Peter....@arts.monash.edu.au> writes:
>What I do think is that
>Shakespeare, like all great literary artists, had some androgyny in his
>psychological make-up.
?????
Jim
KQKnave
Which part of the above paragraph? If you're talking about
why the charges were almost certainly true, see
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/ITALY/Orazio.html
for the sexual charges against Oxenforde and
http://www.clas.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/oxposit.html
for a discussion of the murder.
Jim
KQKnave
>Jim, I'm curious why you mention only three works. Wouldn't the entire
>Shakespearean corpus have to postdate Marlowe's untimely death? And
>wouldn't the entire Marlovian corpus predate Shakespeare's, with no
>overlap, almost as if -- well, never mind that part.
>
Venus and Adonis - entered on Stationer's Register April 18, 1593
Greene parodies 3H6 before his death in Sep 1592.
1H6 performed March 3, 1592.
Richard III was probably composed immediately after 3H6.
I don't make a long list of plays because that would be too tedious.
Why don't you get yourself a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare and
spend a week or so reading the supplementary material so that I
don't have to keep posting information for you.
Jim
Okay Fine
That's really funny! Good humor goes far around here.
The Riverside dates four plays of Shakespeare during Marlowe's life, but
if you read carefully there is a good deal of guesswork involved in
those dates and the attribution to Shakespeare doesn't come until much
later.
That doesn't really contradict the position of a Marlovian. Sorry to
have to point this out!
Ah, well, perhaps you can think things through on your own next time so
that I don't have to keep pointing out your mistakes for you. :-)
OF.
>
> Jim
Okay Fine
Howard and Arundel are not reliable witnesses. I know it's complicated,
but people used to lie.
OF.
baker
<Peter....@arts.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>Sonnet 20 seems to exclude sodomy as an option ("since [Nature]
>prick'd thee out for women's pleasure") but no-one could deny the strong
>homoerotic overtones of many of the poems.
>
>--
>Peter Groves
>
>"What men really want is not knowledge but certainty." (Bertrand
>Russell)
Peter (or should I say in this context) Dr. Groves...
A homosexual does not regard the male member as an organ for female
pleasure. Or so
I would suppose.
Quite the reverse, since a female may give the same pleasure in three
of the four routes towards male orgasms, (oral, manual and anal) the
only thing she lacks for male pleasure is the male member, which is
why gays consider this an essential point of "gayness." Or so I would
suppose.
So I see in this line not as an expression of homosexuality, but a
statement of fact. The boy
was prick'd out for the pleasure of women and not men....
If the author was gay, he would perceive the male member as an object
of male pleasure.
Indeed in a purely physiological consideration of these matters
lesbians lack the member and thus can never deliver that pleasure to
their lovers, whereas males don't lack the member and can deliver that
pleasure to their lovers, along with the others,...so long as they
don't startle the horses...
KQKnave
>> >Jim, I'm curious why you mention only three works. Wouldn't the entire
>> >Shakespearean corpus have to postdate Marlowe's untimely death? And
>> >wouldn't the entire Marlovian corpus predate Shakespeare's, with no
>> >overlap, almost as if -- well, never mind that part.
>> >
>>
>> Venus and Adonis - entered on Stationer's Register April 18, 1593
>> Greene parodies 3H6 before his death in Sep 1592.
>> 1H6 performed March 3, 1592.
>> Richard III was probably composed immediately after 3H6.
>>
>> I don't make a long list of plays because that would be too tedious.
>>
>> Why don't you get yourself a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare and
>> spend a week or so reading the supplementary material so that I
>> don't have to keep posting information for you.
>
>That's really funny! Good humor goes far around here.
>
>The Riverside dates four plays of Shakespeare during Marlowe's life, but
>if you read carefully there is a good deal of guesswork involved in
>those dates and the attribution to Shakespeare doesn't come until much
>later.
What guesswork? Henslowe's diary records the performance of 1H6
on March 1, 1592. Are you saying that Shakespeare didn't write
1H6? Greene parodies a line from 3H6 and puns on the writer's
name with "Shake-scene". Venus and Adonis was entered on
the Stationer's register on the date I gave.
>
>That doesn't really contradict the position of a Marlovian. Sorry to
>have to point this out!
Sorry to have to point this out, but it contradicts your statement above,
to wit:
"Jim, I'm curious why you mention only three works. Wouldn't the entire
Shakespearean corpus have to postdate Marlowe's untimely death? And
wouldn't the entire Marlovian corpus predate Shakespeare's, with no
overlap, almost as if -- well, never mind that part."
Whether or not Marlovians need the above statements to be true
is irrelevant.
>Ah, well, perhaps you can think things through on your own next time so
>that I don't have to keep pointing out your mistakes for you. :-)
I think it's very amusing that you can't keep your own
arguments straight.
Jim
KQKnave
>> Which part of the above paragraph? If you're talking about
>> why the charges were almost certainly true, see
>>
>> http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/ITALY/Orazio.html
>>
>> for the sexual charges against Oxenforde and
>>
>> http://www.clas.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/oxposit.html
>>
>> for a discussion of the murder.
>>
>> Jim
>
>Howard and Arundel are not reliable witnesses. I know it's complicated,
>but people used to lie.
>
What is the evidence that they lied? Two person PUBLICLY
accused Oxford of serious crimes. Filing legal documents
is a good deal more serious than simply walking around
spreading rumors. And of course the point is not whether
the allegations were true, but that persons were ALLOWED
to make such statements in such a public manner about
Oxenforde, but supposedly Oxford could not publicly be
accused of writing the world's greatest plays, and that is
absurd.
Jim
John W. Kennedy
Maybe he just means Jung's animus/anima?
(It's actually rather difficult to disprove. I mean, I know there's no
androgyny in me, because I have an inside view, but I'm not a "great
literary artist", am I? Of course, we're getting a little off the
beam: some of the most genuinely macho men are gay, and the Greeks seem
to have suspected [just like every normal 8-year-old boy] that
heterosexuality made a man effeminate.)
--
John W. Kennedy
(Working from my laptop)
Okay Fine
>
> In article <3B9CCC74...@qwest.net>, Okay Fine <ein...@qwest.net> writes:
>
> >> >Jim, I'm curious why you mention only three works. Wouldn't the entire
> >> >Shakespearean corpus have to postdate Marlowe's untimely death? And
> >> >wouldn't the entire Marlovian corpus predate Shakespeare's, with no
> >> >overlap, almost as if -- well, never mind that part.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Venus and Adonis - entered on Stationer's Register April 18, 1593
> >> Greene parodies 3H6 before his death in Sep 1592.
> >> 1H6 performed March 3, 1592.
> >> Richard III was probably composed immediately after 3H6.
> >>
> >> I don't make a long list of plays because that would be too tedious.
> >>
> >> Why don't you get yourself a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare and
> >> spend a week or so reading the supplementary material so that I
> >> don't have to keep posting information for you.
> >
> >That's really funny! Good humor goes far around here.
> >
> >The Riverside dates four plays of Shakespeare during Marlowe's life, but
> >if you read carefully there is a good deal of guesswork involved in
> >those dates and the attribution to Shakespeare doesn't come until much
> >later.
>
> What guesswork? Henslowe's diary records the performance of 1H6
> on March 1, 1592. Are you saying that Shakespeare didn't write
> 1H6?
I'm not saying it, your authority The Riverside Shakespeare is saying
it; they place the attribution in some doubt, you know. Hey, I thought
you read that!
> Greene parodies a line from 3H6 and puns on the writer's
> name with "Shake-scene". Venus and Adonis was entered on
> the Stationer's register on the date I gave.
That date on V&A is bothersome to me, too. Maybe there's a Marlovian
out there who'll jump in with a suggestion.
OF.
Okay Fine
>
> In article <3B9CCD66...@qwest.net>, Okay Fine <ein...@qwest.net> writes:
>
> >> Which part of the above paragraph? If you're talking about
> >> why the charges were almost certainly true, see
> >>
> >> http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/ITALY/Orazio.html
> >>
> >> for the sexual charges against Oxenforde and
> >>
> >> http://www.clas.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/oxposit.html
> >>
> >> for a discussion of the murder.
> >>
> >> Jim
> >
> >Howard and Arundel are not reliable witnesses. I know it's complicated,
> >but people used to lie.
> >
>
> What is the evidence that they lied? Two person PUBLICLY
> accused Oxford of serious crimes. Filing legal documents
> is a good deal more serious than simply walking around
> spreading rumors.
People used to lie in legal docs, too.
And of course the point is not whether
> the allegations were true, but that persons were ALLOWED
> to make such statements in such a public manner about
> Oxenforde, but supposedly Oxford could not publicly be
> accused of writing the world's greatest plays, and that is
> absurd.
Howard and Arundel had motives. They accused him of a crime. They were
in trouble and trying to get out, if I recall the story correctly.
There's no motive to make a legal case that Oxford wrote Shakespeare.
Writing for the stage was not a crime, so it's not going to show up in a
stack of legal documents.
OF.
> Jim
AllenGaryK
>> As for the charge of pedophilia, do you happen to know the ages of any of
>the
>> young men Oxford is charged with "buggaring"?
>>
>You've got me there -- I plead guilty to relying on hearsay, like you
>with "horse-minder", "butcher's boy" and so on.
>
I see that KQKnave has already cited Nelson's web page on Orazio Cogno which
gives his age:
"He was then seventeen, which means that when Oxford picked him up in early
1576, he was fifteen or sixteen."
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/ITALY/Orazio.html
Gary
Alkibiades
>In article <g55nptcsukck7qeio...@4ax.com>, Alkibiades
><alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>
>>If you ever bother to read what Aristotle has to say about possibility
>>you might know that Marlovians are not talking about the possibility
>>that Kit wrote the works attributed to the hempen-homespun,
>>clapper-claw and clinking-coin craving Stratfordian.
>
>That makes no sense baker, but in any case it doesn't matter: Marlowe
>couldn't possibly have written the works of Shakespeare because
>he died in 1593, long before Macbeth, The Tempest, and the
>funeral elegy were written.
>
>
>Jim
Jim,
Regardless of whether or not what you believe about Shakespeare
dryring in 1593 is true, you simply can't ignore the mountains of
evidence -- both internal and external to the works - posted here and
published elsewhere everyday. But it seems you're out to demonstrate
that this is indeed possible.
- Alk.
Alkibiades
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>
> - Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.3
> - Alkibiades
>
>So, among your other deficiencies is a belief that any statement
>more rigorous than your sloppy either/or floobs belongs to
>mathematics. Oh, well, I did enjoy the Aristotle, although--believe
>it or not--he didn't say anything I didn't already know.
>
> --Bob G.
Bob,
You can get "nothin' but net" by missing the basket so badly that you
"swoosh" *underneath* the hoop, don't you know?
Wrong again, Bob. Do you really think the knowledge that Aristotle
transmitted across the generations made it past Bacon intact? Talk
about sloppy statements! How could you have already known what he
said? Were you raised by an anti-Baconian Amish sect in the hills of
Pennsylvania? Or maybe you think you knew how to read, speak, and
write English when you sprung from out of your grandmother's forehead?
But I bet you never even held a book written by Aristotle in your
hands, turned the pages, read the words. You probably picked up that
throw-away line from that great big faker, Winston Churchill. I've
held books by Plato and Aristotle in my own two hands, I've smelled
the pages, felt the rise of the ink across them, heard the crinkle and
crackle as the old, very old books deep in the stack of this Earth's
finest institutions opened themselves lovingly to my gentle but
persistent inquiries -- have you? I doubt, very seriously doubt it,
Bob.
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
Jim,
Dr. Groves seems to be saying that in order to put one's efforts into
an apolitical activity, such as consciously setting out to obtain
immortal fame through the construction of the world's greatest
dramatic cannon, the connections of "love" need to be severed, even
if only temporarily.
Aristophanes understood this, and Socrates cracks some pretty funny
jokes at his expense. It's ironic, because we don't normally think of
Aristophanes as the asexual sort of guy.
No one spends time today doubting that he wasn't up for a buggering or
two: but the question is whether there's any causal connection between
being "gay" and being a great artist. That's just silly if you ask
me. There are plenty of people who think because they engage in a
socially disapprobated activity they are somehow "artistic" or even
"sublime."
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
>:-D
>
>(is that any better?)
Probably, but what's beta decay got to do with it?
- Alk.
Alkibiades
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>> >Cite ONE instance
>
>Our devious wack neglected to quote what I wanted one instance of,
>so here it is:
[ellipses in conformity with proper Usenet etiquette]
>
>Cite ONE instance of an HLAS Stratfordian's suggesting anything like
>that.
>
>> Bob,
>>
>> Ask me a hard one next time.
>
>If you aren't Baker, are you one of his 300 illegitimate sons?
Enough with the Thermopolae jokes already. When's the last time you
guarded a pass, Grumman? And when's the last time you read what
Nabokov had to say about Rousseau on this very issues?
I can't read? You're the one, Grumman, who thinks that the authority
of the world's greatest Encyclopedia, the thing thousands of Frenchman
died for so that you can sit here and snipe at it, is questionable.
But enough of that. You've demonstrated to your own satisfaction that
I, and thousands of anti-Strats like me, all have the ability to write
the next world's greatest literary cannon. So I'm going to go out
into the street now, and start talking to people, using the new David
Webb memory chip implant I'm getting a patent on, and then I'm going
to go and turn the pages of a couple of books, then sit down and write
detailed diplomatic history, including details of the Papal intrigues
in all the major wars of the last hundred years, as well as all the
ins and outs of the major intelligence agencies of the world -- all of
this based on my conversations with the guy on the corner here in
Boston who goes around handing out pamphlets telling us how the CIA is
monitoring his brain using space satellites (he used to be a
mathematician at Bell Labs...).
I'll send you copy when I'm done tomorrow.
- Alkibiades
Alkibiades
>In article <487npt4bvbq7qboe9...@4ax.com>, Alkibiades
><alkibia...@my-deja.com> writes:
>
>>
>>Didn't you read Edward II by Marlowe? You know, that scene with the
>>drafting of the note, the concern with interpretation and evidence?
>>
>
>It doesn't matter baker: Marlowe
>couldn't possibly have written the works of Shakespeare because
>he died in 1593, long before Macbeth, The Tempest, and the
>funeral elegy were written.
>
>Jim
Listen, Webb, that cute little Nabokovian King, Queen, Knave allusion
in the handle doesn't fool me!
- Alk.
John W. Kennedy
> But enough of that. You've demonstrated to your own satisfaction that
> I, and thousands of anti-Strats like me, all have the ability to write
> the next world's greatest literary cannon.
It sounds more like a petard, to me.
--
John W. Kennedy
(Thank you, thank you! It's a gift!)