Catholic Strat Man in the Queen's Men
PWDBard
The pompous Wood in segment two was honest about the gross misfit between
his hard core Catholic Stratford man in the mid-1580s seeking out a job with
the premier acting company and propaganda vehicle...the Queen's Men...of what
Wood repeatedly reminds us was a ruthlessly anti-Catholic Tudor Police State
...the Queen's Men. In Wood's own words, "some of you might wonder, why did he
do it?" Well, Wood tells us the guy need had to feed his wife and children.
So he jumped at that job opening with the Queen's Men.
He also must have been quite nimble in escaping in late 1593 the fate of
his secret Catholic patron and buddy...Thomas Hesketh who was executed for
trying to lure Fernando Stanley (the patron of Derby's Men, the Bard's
company)....into a plot to overthrow the Queen. We see in segment three the
same pattern again with the Essex' Rebellion...which Wood slides around.
Well, Wood tells us the actors simply were not held accountable...let off the
hook...unlike Essex and Southampton.
Thus the mysterious secret Catholic Bard slips away into the night...with
enough money to feed his family and to pursue lawsuits against others in his
hometown. This is all rubbish...but at least it exposes the lengths to which
one Stratordian goes to plug all the huge holes in the historical record. But
he has used a poor mortar mix and the mortar is much too soft to hold the
bricks in this pathetic patch-work job. It is no surprise why orthodox
(meaning here anti-Catholic Bard) Stratfordians such as Stanley Wells just hope
that Wood and his book/film will blow over quickly, be just a flash in the pan.
See my review of Wood's book and film in the February 16 issue of The Weekly
Standard and my longer essay, "Bardgate: Was Shakespeare a Secret Catholic?"
in the 2003 issue (volume six) of The Oxfordian, the annual journal of the
Shakespeare Oxford Society.
Enjoy, Buckeye
Tom Veal
Weekly Standard article, though I would not want to discourage anyone
from reading the rest of the issue. For what little they're worth, my
reactions are posted at http://stromata.tripod.com/id459.htm
pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote in message news:<20040220002625...@mb-m13.aol.com>...
PWDBard
If Veal had any integirty with hs diatibe he would honestly address the
clear facts that several Stratfordians...as cited in my essay in The Weekly
Review...such as Stanley Wells, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Sir Frank
Kermode...are upset with Wood's pushing the Catholic Connection...an opposition
which quite is consistent with the historically if not viscerally anti-Catholic
bias of the Shakespeare Establishment, certainly in Britain where as the
standard narrative goes or went for for a long time...the Catholics were the
guys with the Black hats. Wood over and over through his film gives us a
Catholic-flavored Bard an outsider "as a victim" of the ruthless Tudor Police
state... to appeal (?) to the politically correct crowd? Problably....though I
think Wood as a historian with a residue of honesty is also simply following
the facts like Gary Taylor and Honigman and a host of others...where those
facts lead him...to the Catholic Connection Big Time. Even Wells and Wood
would not deny my characterization of a profound Stratfordian schism over the
Catholic Question...because their own remarks at the back-to-back lectures at
the Smithsonian in late October were open admissions of this split over the
evidence. Each side thinks they are right and the other guy wrong. That is a
schism. Veal and Kathman in earlier remarks represent species of Stratfordians
who want to deny that there is this schism because they know that the
anti-Strats and Oxfordians can capitalize on it to add to show how it widens
not closes the huge gap between the Strat man and the literary works. I am
working on a typology of reations to Wood's film across the board..pro and con.
One thing is clear the Catholic Bard movement in on a big roll and it will
press its case against the Wells-led orthodox scholars aggressively as we can
see in these two new anthologies of pro-Catholic Bard essays just published by
Fordham and Manchester Universities. All this is in my essay in The Weekly
Standard for which I have received much praise...for its objectivity and
balance.
Buckeye Pete
Tom Veal
and the other guy wrong", then I don't deny the existence of a
"schism" among mainstream Shakespearean scholars. I simply don't
believe, for the reasons set forth in my comments on Mr. Dickson's
essay, that the disagreement over Shakespeare's religion has any
bearing on the authorship "question".
BTW, the last sentence of my first paragraph is garbled. It should
read: "The ground for his confidence is 'the possible, probable . . .
nay, certain crypto-Roman Catholicism' of Shakespeare of Stratford,
'who emerged from and never broke free of the network of Warwickshire
families known for their Catholicism' and whose mentalité was thus
irreconcilable with that of the dramatist." A correction will be
posted later tonight, but the opera takes precedence over the
Internet.
I will not pay "Buckeye Pete" the compliment of questioning his
"integirty". He shows no signs of being clever enough to lie.
pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote in message news:<20040220104400...@mb-m13.aol.com>...