Susanna's Honour
Roundtable
Some years after Will's death in 1616, Susannah Hall sued against a
man in Stratford, who spread the rumour that after having committed
“incontinence” with a man not her husband, Susanna now
suffered from a “running of the reins” (rheins –
kidneys), meaning she had committed adultery and had syphilis.
At that time everyone (even bachelors and spinsters) who had sex with
someone they were not married to was punished, as we all know. (If it
was reported, of course). So this accusation against Susanna (who as a
doctor’s wife had not only her own reputation to think of) was
even worse then than it would be now.
Perhaps the venomous man tried to get her into bed and did not
succeed, perhaps he was using Susanna to hurt Dr. Hall, presumably
however it was envy because she was the main heiress of
Shakespeare’s estate. Perhaps she had been cordial and friendly
to the other man she was supposed to have “done the deed”
with, perhaps she did not even know him by name...
Imagine what YOU would feel like if your wife, mother, married sister
or friend – (or yourself) had been accused of sleeping around
and thereby getting a sexually-transmitted disease, and this in a
village or small town where everyone knows you.
Pretty nasty.
Very hard to live down, too. There would be always those who say :
“Ah, where there’s smoke, there is fire!” and that
her money could have swung the judge, jury and courthouse in her
favour. Doubt would always remain.
Susanna sued, and the man was excommunicated, which was a common
punishment at the time.
Was that enough for her? Would that be enough for me?
It would make me become very sensitive with regard to RESPECT and
HONOUR.
In 1642 the Parliament, taking over from the Privy Council, closed the
theatres because of the Civil War :
”Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own
Blood and the distracted Estate of England, threatened with a Cloud of
Blood, by a Civill Warre, call for all possible meanes to appease and
avert the Wrath of God....and whereas publike Sports do not well agree
with publike Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes with the Seasons of
Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious solemnity and the
other being Spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing lacivious
Mirth and Levitie: It is therefore thought fit, and Ordeined by the
Lords and Commons in this Parliament Assembled, that while these sad
Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue, publike Stage-Playes
shall cease, and bee forborne.”
The theatres remained closed for 20 years, as far as I am informed.
During this time Susanna, mindful of the RESPECT she desired, and
since stage-plays and anything that had to do with stage-plays were
deemed IMPROPER at the time, would hardly have wanted mentioned on her
gravestone that her father was a player - or a playwright - or the
owner of a theatre!
In addition, since the monument to Shakespeare was already set up, I
believe, it was unnecessary to repeat all of Shakespeare’s
various activities on Susanna’s gravestone. It was enough to
mention Shakespeare’s name.
So they did.
Roundtable
Tad Davis
> Some years after Will's death in 1616, Susannah Hall sued against a
> man in Stratford....
This happened in 1613. The man she sued was John Lane "the younger." The man
she supposedly caught "the running of the reins" from was Rafe Smith.
--
Tad Davis
dav...@voicenet.com
Paul Crowley
> Some years after Will's death in 1616, Susannah Hall sued against a
> man in Stratford, who spread the rumour that after having committed
> “incontinence” with a man not her husband, Susanna now
> suffered from a “running of the reins” (rheins –
> kidneys), meaning she had committed adultery and had syphilis.
[..]
> Imagine what YOU would feel like if your wife, mother, married sister
> or friend – (or yourself) had been accused of sleeping around
> and thereby getting a sexually-transmitted disease, and this in a
> village or small town where everyone knows you.
> Pretty nasty.
> Very hard to live down, too. There would be always those who say :
> “Ah, where there’s smoke, there is fire!” and that
> her money could have swung the judge, jury and courthouse in her
> favour. Doubt would always remain.
In a small town like that, everybody pretty well knew what
everybody else was up to. Gossip about their neighbours
was about their only form of entertainment. Unless you've
lived in such a town (pre-TV and pre-newspapers) it's very
hard to grasp the essentially _public_ nature of almost
every aspect of your life -- and the extent of the pressure
to conform to _public_ expectations.
That is one reason why it is virtually impossible that a
great author could have come from such an environment.
As a youth, he'd have been obliged to behave in the same
way as all the other youths of his age. The reading of
abstruse works and the writing of poetry were not activities
in which they indulged, nor of which they approved.
But to come back to Susanna, either the story was true (or
had a substantial basis in fact) OR it wasn't; everybody
would have known the characters of the accuser and the
accused and either accepted the story or discounted it
completely. There would NOT have been much doubt
around.
> Susanna sued, and the man was excommunicated, which was a common
> punishment at the time.
> Was that enough for her? Would that be enough for me?
>
> It would make me become very sensitive with regard to RESPECT and
> HONOUR.
She was what she was; and all her neighbours and family
knew it.
> In 1642 the Parliament, taking over from the Privy Council, closed the
> theatres because of the Civil War :
They used the war as an excuse. The city authorities had
disliked the theatre since the time of Elizabeth, and they
closed it down as soon as the court could no longer
prevent them. In England class matters.
> ”Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own
> Blood and the distracted Estate of England, threatened with a Cloud of
> Blood, by a Civill Warre, call for all possible meanes to appease and
> avert the Wrath of God....and whereas publike Sports do not well agree
> with publike Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes with the Seasons of
> Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious solemnity and the
> other being Spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing lacivious
> Mirth and Levitie: It is therefore thought fit, and Ordeined by the
> Lords and Commons in this Parliament Assembled, that while these sad
> Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue, publike Stage-Playes
> shall cease, and bee forborne.”
>
> During this time Susanna, mindful of the RESPECT she desired, and
> since stage-plays and anything that had to do with stage-plays were
> deemed IMPROPER at the time, would hardly have wanted mentioned on her
> gravestone that her father was a player - or a playwright - or the
> owner of a theatre!
You are grasping at straws. Her father's supposed works
were on a different level from the cheap comedies, and
'lascivious Mirth and Levitie'. They had been seen by the
three previous monarchs . . all of whom were still highly
respected. King Charles had his own personal copy of
the Folio.
She would have wanted it mentioned that he was a famous
poet -- an achievement that continued to be held in high
regard. Milton was close to (or part of) the new government
-- and his attitude to Shakespeare was of the highest respect.
He had attached his own commendation to the 1632 edition
of the Folio. Susanna would have wanted all that brought to
the attention of her neighbours.
> In addition, since the monument to Shakespeare was already set up, I
> believe, it was unnecessary to repeat all of Shakespeare’s
> various activities on Susanna’s gravestone. It was enough to
> mention Shakespeare’s name.
What prevails is an astonishing _silence_ about her father
-- from her as much as anyone. That is what needs to be
explained. At no stage does she mention his name; she
takes no action to recover his 'stolen papers', nor protect
his reputation, nor boost her own. She never mentions poetry,
plays, nor any literary connections to her father -- nor does
anyone else. No one comes to the house out of interest,
or for momentoes, or to see or acquire HIS manuscripts --
as they do for her husband. When Dr Cooke publishes the
work of her husband, he 'forgets' to mention the connection
to the great national bard. And so on and on . . . .
Only rarely does some indication of the way she regarded
him emerge -- as on the tombstones. She knew he had
been wealthy, and she had inherited most of his money --
and THAT'S IT.
> In addition, since the monument to Shakespeare was already set up, I
> believe, it was unnecessary to repeat all of Shakespeare’s
> various activities on Susanna’s gravestone. It was enough to
> mention Shakespeare’s name.
Do you know many religious fanatics? They know what
they want to believe, and will allow no facts or arguments
to ever interfere with their beliefs. Stratfordians are identical.
Paul.
--
Email: pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)
Melanie Sands
> > Very hard to live down, too. There would be always those who say :
> > “Ah, where there’s smoke, there is fire!” and that
> > her money could have swung the judge, jury and courthouse in her
> > favour. Doubt would always remain.
>
> In a small town like that, everybody pretty well knew what
> everybody else was up to. Gossip about their neighbours
> was about their only form of entertainment. Unless you've
> lived in such a town (pre-TV and pre-newspapers) it's very
> hard to grasp the essentially _public_ nature of almost
> every aspect of your life -- and the extent of the pressure
> to conform to _public_ expectations.
That is absolute rubbish! RUBBISH!
I live in a town of 55'000 inhabitants.
From 1994 to 1997 I had a similar experience with a pesty young
Italian who rounded up all his friends to mob me in the most horrible
way - lies, anonymous phone calls up to 4 in the morning, verbal and
even physical abuse when I went dancing/had a coffee/walked in the
street and just wanted to be with my friends. First the Italian said I
slept with everyone, then that I didn't want to sleep with him because
I was afraid of getting pregnant, then that I was still a
virgin...this in spite of the fact that he knew I am living with the
father of my child ever since I met him when I was 16!!!
This went on for THREE YEARS. (The young Italian is 15 years younger
than me, by the way, a typical mamone - spoiled mama's boy).
It only got under control when I wrote a seven-page letter to the
police and he was called down to the station.
I know I cut all links to HLAS because I resented the "climate" but I
decided to look in from time to time - and what must I see now...this!
You haven't a clue, sir. NOT A CLUE!
And as far as FANATICS are concerned - you seem to be one!
I knew I was right in cutting the links to HLAS.
Melanie Sands
john_baker
So your point is that Shakespeare's daughter was ashamed of her
father.
Particularly of his plays.
I point out that the plays continued to be printed, Folio,after Folio,
Quarto after Quart oduring this entire time.
So it would seem the Bard's reputation was growing. I think the
closing of the theathers was a move against current plays and
not these older ones...at least we will have to take into account
their continued publication.
Moreover if she had been literate and well read, as was Frances
Wolfreston, who owned the only surviving copy of V&A, she could
have defected questions by pointing out that her Father was a POET.
But there is no evidence she knew this.
john
John Baker
Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
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"The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood.
He who will be proved right in the end appears to be
wrong and harmful before it."
_Darkness at Noon_, Arthur Koestler
john_baker
>"Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message > Pretty nasty.
>> > Very hard to live down, too. There would be always those who say :
>> > “Ah, where there’s smoke, there is fire!” and that
>> > her money could have swung the judge, jury and courthouse in her
>> > favour. Doubt would always remain.
>>
>> In a small town like that, everybody pretty well knew what
>> everybody else was up to. Gossip about their neighbours
>> was about their only form of entertainment. Unless you've
>> lived in such a town (pre-TV and pre-newspapers) it's very
>> hard to grasp the essentially _public_ nature of almost
>> every aspect of your life -- and the extent of the pressure
>> to conform to _public_ expectations.
>
>That is absolute rubbish! RUBBISH!
>
>I live in a town of 55'000 inhabitants.
That's a city, not a village...so what's your point? His point is
that in these small towns everyone knows your business...they still
do....TV or not...
>
>From 1994 to 1997 I had a similar experience with a pesty young
>Italian who rounded up all his friends to mob me in the most horrible
>way - lies, anonymous phone calls up to 4 in the morning, verbal and
>even physical abuse when I went dancing/had a coffee/walked in the
>street and just wanted to be with my friends. First the Italian said I
>slept with everyone, then that I didn't want to sleep with him because
>I was afraid of getting pregnant, then that I was still a
>virgin...this in spite of the fact that he knew I am living with the
>father of my child ever since I met him when I was 16!!!
>
>This went on for THREE YEARS. (The young Italian is 15 years younger
>than me, by the way, a typical mamone - spoiled mama's boy).
>It only got under control when I wrote a seven-page letter to the
>police and he was called down to the station.
>
>I know I cut all links to HLAS because I resented the "climate" but I
>decided to look in from time to time - and what must I see now...this!
>
>You haven't a clue, sir. NOT A CLUE!
>
>And as far as FANATICS are concerned - you seem to be one!
>
>I knew I was right in cutting the links to HLAS.
>
>Melanie Sands
Willful ignorance is a quality of many Stratfordians, Ms. Sands.
John Baker
Paul Crowley
> "Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)> wrote in message > Pretty nasty.
> > > Very hard to live down, too. There would be always those who say :
> > > “Ah, where there’s smoke, there is fire!” and that
> > > her money could have swung the judge, jury and courthouse in her
> > > favour. Doubt would always remain.
> >
> > In a small town like that, everybody pretty well knew what
> > everybody else was up to. Gossip about their neighbours
> > was about their only form of entertainment. Unless you've
> > lived in such a town (pre-TV and pre-newspapers) it's very
> > hard to grasp the essentially _public_ nature of almost
> > every aspect of your life -- and the extent of the pressure
> > to conform to _public_ expectations.
>
> That is absolute rubbish! RUBBISH!
>
> I live in a town of 55'000 inhabitants.
You mean 55,000? (Fifty-five thousand?) By
Elizabethan standards, that's a giant metropolis.
Only one city in Europe was bigger than that when
Shakespeare was born (in 1550); that was London
and it was only about three times that size.
Stratford-upon-Avon, by comparison, had AFAIR 217
houses. Susanna Hall (the Stratman's daughter)
would have known the man and the woman of every
single house. Although she might have lost track of
some of the children from time to time.
> From 1994 to 1997 I had a similar experience with a pesty young
> Italian who rounded up all his friends to mob me in the most horrible
> way - lies, anonymous phone calls up to 4 in the morning, verbal and
> even physical abuse when I went dancing/had a coffee/walked in the
> street and just wanted to be with my friends. First the Italian said I
> slept with everyone, then that I didn't want to sleep with him because
> I was afraid of getting pregnant, then that I was still a
> virgin...this in spite of the fact that he knew I am living with the
> father of my child ever since I met him when I was 16!!!
I'm sorry for your trouble, but I doubt if anything like that
could have happened in a small place like Stratford.
Firstly, there were no Italians, nor foreigners of any sort.
But mainly, that kind of 'stalking' relies on a high degree
of ignorance and uncertainty among your neighbours.
People _might_ believe the various things he said --
because they didn't know him; they didn't know his
family; they hadn't seen him grow up. People _might_
believe some of those things about you, because (as
you suggest) they just did not know the most basic of
facts about you. When you live in a city with 55,000
people, you are only going to know a small proportion
of the population.
It just can't happen in a small village, where everybody
knows pretty nearly everything about everybody. He'd be
laughed at the minute he opened his mouth. If he said
them twice, he'd get beaten up by his own family. Which
is not to say that there aren't many other unpleasant
things that can happen. It is important to try to grasp
the differences.
Roundtable
Having lived in a village with less than 10'000 inhabitants, I know
exactly what the gossip is like, and I disagree with you entirely.
Reading Susannas story I was reminded of a girl I know who had a
similar experience, which upset and hurt her very much, and made her
become extremely wary of her so-called friends.
No offence - but the way you write about villagers and village life -
and women for that matter- sounds rather presumtuous, and does not
ring true for me.
>Do you know many religious fanatics? They know what
>they want to believe, and will allow no facts or arguments
>to ever interfere with their beliefs. Stratfordians are identical.
Again - please do not be offended, but that is exactly the way I would
describe you.
It seems to me that you go out of your way to heap insults on
Stratfordians, and often you are really rather rude.
Why do you do that?
Wouldn't it be better to supply some evidence of your theories?
(All you do is say it could not have been WS. But as far as I can see
you have not posted a shred of proof that it WAS Oxford or whoever).
Roundtable
Roundtable
>knows pretty nearly everything about everybody. He'd be
>laughed at the minute he opened his mouth. If he said
>them twice, he'd get beaten up by his own family. Which
>is not to say that there aren't many other unpleasant
>things that can happen. It is important to try to grasp
>the differences.
So why did Susanna have to sue? Why?
Mr. Crowley, do you READ what you write?
Roundtable
Roundtable
Roundtable
Paul Crowley
> Having lived in a village with less than 10'000 inhabitants, I know
> exactly what the gossip is like, and I disagree with you entirely.
I can only say much the same as I said to Melanie.
10,000 would have been the population of a major
city under Elizabeth (such as Bristol, York, Portsmouth
Plymouth).
There are other major differences between such a
'city' and the 'village' of Stratford-upon-Avon, with its
population of about 1,400.
Firstly, it's unlikely that nearly everyone in modern
'city' was born there, with their ancestors having
lived there for the previous few hundred years -- so
that they not only knew all the individuals in that 'city',
but also knew their families and each family's history
and ancestry going back for centuries.
Secondly, the modern 'city' is plugged into the
outside world in many other ways. It has national
newspapers and magazines and TV. The interests
of the people are not (by necessity) largely restricted
to the activities of their neighbours.
Thirdly, the age-distribution of the population would
have been quite different; i.e. most of your 10,000
would be middle-aged and elderly adults, with things
to gossip about. Whereas the life-expectancy of
the 1,400 or so people of Stratford would have been
much shorter, with a lot of infants and children.
Bob Grumman
> houses. Susanna Hall (the Stratman's daughter)
> would have known the man and the woman of every
> single house. Although she might have lost track of
> some of the children from time to time.
Right, Paul. So Will Shakespeare would certainly have known
Richard Field, correct? I don't know whether you have ever
disputed this, but a lot of anti-Stratfordians have. However,
it is, of course, not necessarily so, because what you say about
small towns is not true. For instance, I lived for a while as
a child is a neighborhood that was on an island. I would guess
that there were about forty houses on the island. Their
occupants did NOT all know each other, much less know each
other intimately. Paul believes that all small-towners are
pretty much the same, but human beings are variable: some keep
to themselves, for instance. Susanna probably knew the names
of everyone in Stratford but that she knew all of them well or
none of them only slightly is something only a rigidnik
could believe.
--Bob G.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk88.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.117]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
MakBane
>> Stratford-upon-Avon, by comparison, had AFAIR 217
>> houses. Susanna Hall (the Stratman's daughter)
>> would have known the man and the woman of every
>> single house. Although she might have lost track of
>> some of the children from time to time.
Grumman:
>Right, Paul. So Will Shakespeare would certainly have known
>Richard Field, correct? I don't know whether you have ever
>disputed this, but a lot of anti-Stratfordians have. However,
>it is, of course, not necessarily so, because what you say about
>small towns is not true.
Bob, if you take Field away from Shakspere's circle of Stratford friends,
you're practically wiping out the whole of it. Kathman and Ross practically
have the two of them high-fiving in the streets of London.
>For instance, I lived for a while as
>a child is a neighborhood that was on an island. I would guess
>that there were about forty houses on the island. Their
>occupants did NOT all know each other, much less know each
>other intimately. Paul believes that all small-towners are
>pretty much the same, but human beings are variable: some keep
>to themselves, for instance.
I grew up in a small town about ten minutes north of President Bush's ranch.
The population then (the 1970s) was about a thousand, and the first of my
ancestors settled there in 1866. Believe me: everybody knew everybody else,
either directly or by reputation, however distorted. Go back to a far less
mobile time and place, without the escape hatches of automobiles and
telecommunications, and you're going to get an even more "intimate" knowledge
of your neighbors. This is why I find it absolutely incredible how few and poor
are the recollections of Shakspere's townsfolk. The fires and plagues don't
make a damn, either. If out-of-towners are rolling though there by the 1630s,
looking for the Bard, there is NO WAY the silence of the people who SHOULD have
known him can be accepted. It's just absurd. Stratfordians (the first ones)
would have been mightily impressed that the old glover's son had gone off and
played for Elizabeth and James and had made such a name for himself. How can
you people deny the curiosity of their indifference? It's just crap. Help me
with a list here. Who around there DID write or talk about him as a writer? I
can't think of anyone, except the exceptable Leonard Digges. And people like
Ward, who never knew him except from the FF, don't count.
>Susanna probably knew the names
>of everyone in Stratford but that she knew all of them well or
>none of them only slightly is something only a rigidnik
>could believe.
A big fish in a little pond gets remembered, Bob. You know that's so.
Toby Petzold
Insomniac American
Paul Crowley
> > Stratford-upon-Avon, by comparison, had AFAIR 217
> > houses. Susanna Hall (the Stratman's daughter)
> > would have known the man and the woman of every
> > single house. Although she might have lost track of
> > some of the children from time to time.
>
> Right, Paul. So Will Shakespeare would certainly have known
> Richard Field, correct?
Of course.
> I don't know whether you have ever
> disputed this, but a lot of anti-Stratfordians have. However,
> it is, of course, not necessarily so, because what you say about
> small towns is not true. For instance, I lived for a while as
> a child is a neighborhood that was on an island. I would guess
> that there were about forty houses on the island. Their
> occupants did NOT all know each other, much less know each
> other intimately.
Toby has answered this well enough, but it's such a
typical piece of Grummanian idiocy that I can't help
responding.
Suppose that island had been a bit like Pitcairn,
and you'd lived with those forty families ALL your
life -- gone to school with those of the same age,
grown up with them, played all your football games
with them, gone fishing, swimming, etc. Suppose
your parents had worked with them, and ONLY
them all their lives -- and that had been a pattern
for hundreds of years . . . and so on . . .
Then you might have a reasonable parallel for
Stratford-upon-Avon.
> Paul believes that all small-towners are
> pretty much the same, but human beings are variable: some keep
> to themselves, for instance.
Sure. And that's how some of the 'Bounty' crew
behaved when then landed on Pitcairn -- I don't
think.
> Susanna probably knew the names
> of everyone in Stratford but that she knew all of them well or
> none of them only slightly is something only a rigidnik
> could believe.
You've obviously never experienced life in a
small community. And hasn't 'reality television'
hit the USA yet?
Paul.
--
Email: pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)
Bob Grumman
> small community. And hasn't 'reality television'
> hit the USA yet? Paul
I HAVE experienced life in many small communities, but none of them,
as you pointed out, parallel Stratford-upon-Avon, circa 1600
(which you know all about although you never lived in it). What is
much more important, I have experienced human beings, and they are
variable. You cannot make the kind of sweeping generalities you
constantly make about any category of them. All members of the
lower classes do NOT act as you assume, all groundlings do not
act as you assume, all members of a community like Stratford do
NOT act as you suggest (to which I'd add that 1500 people--
the number of people in Stratford then, someone said) is a lot
of people, and I simply can't believe that there were not some
who knew just about nothing about others, as well as some about
whom little was known by the rest).
However, what if you're right, and each of these villagers knew
everything, more or less, about one another. You and Crowley, Junior
(Toby), want to know why they didn't mention that Shakespeare was a
playwright (so far as we know, which you neglect to add); counter-
qeustion: why did they not mention that he was NOT a playwright,
which would have been even more interesting, if true?
Rhetorical question there is no need to answer since we've been
through it all many times before.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk94.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.123]
MakBane
jack shit about the famous poet in their midst:
>However, what if you're right, and each of these villagers knew
>everything, more or less, about one another. You and Crowley, Junior
>(Toby), want to know why they didn't mention that Shakespeare was a
>playwright (so far as we know, which you neglect to add); counter-
>qeustion: why did they not mention that he was NOT a playwright,
>which would have been even more interesting, if true?
>
>Rhetorical question there is no need to answer since we've been
>through it all many times before.
What?! Bob, a rhetorical question should bear SOME semblance of a self-evident
answer. It is actually crazy of you to suggest that your "counter-question" is
of equal value as mine. Can you imagine any scenario in which, say, a clerk of
Stratford might have entered Shakspere's profession as "gentleman
NON-PLAYWRIGHT"? The problem, of course, is that you have become a fig leaf
trying to cover the turgidity of Shakspere's non-literary non-reputation in his
own hometown. I'd be amazed if you could admit that.
Toby Petzold
Non-Mexican
Bob Grumman
> answer. It is actually crazy of you to suggest that your "counter-question" is
> of equal value as mine. Can you imagine any scenario in which, say, a clerk of
> Stratford might have entered Shakspere's profession as "gentleman
> NON-PLAYWRIGHT"?
(Note: One of the more salient characteristics of the rigidnik is his
inability to imagine explanations that don't connect with his rigidniplex.)
Why would your clerk not have said, "gentleman malt-dealer" (assuming
he would assign any man a vocation at that time)? (He would as likely
have identified him as a non-playwright as a playwright.) Or, more
likely, why wouldn't whoever spread the last dinner, or the heavy
drinking, or the deer-poaching, or the butcher boy story, have
spread one about the monument to an alleged writer who was
semi-literate at best? Why wouldn't someone from Stratford
mention in a letter that his friend Will had the same name as a
famous actor/playwright? Or even that some mistook him for that
man? Or that, although his friend Will was active in London
theatrical circles, he was NOT the poet of the same name?
How about some grain-dealer or usurer in Stratford's leaving him
a ring in his will, calling him his "fellowe?"
Which makes me think: if Shakespeare, whom you will admit was
well-to-do, lived most of the time in Stratford, why didn't he
hold any political office, as his father had? Second biggest house
in town, and seeming to have friends of consequence, yet no
political office? And, according to Priceans, he was a standard
wheeling, dealing fast-laner. How would he not striven for,
and attained, some small town office?
> The problem, of course, is that you have become a fig leaf
> trying to cover the turgidity of Shakspere's non-literary
> non-reputation in his own hometown. I'd be amazed if you could
> admit that.
> Toby Petzold
> Non-Mexican
How many people of Canterbury left records concerning Marlowe's
writing? How many non-literary people of that time left records
of having known ANYONE as a writer?
--Bob G., who really does have better things
to do over this week-end
--
Posted from dunk83.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.112]
Okay Fine
>
> > What?! Bob, a rhetorical question should bear SOME semblance of a self-evident
> > answer. It is actually crazy of you to suggest that your "counter-question" is
> > of equal value as mine. Can you imagine any scenario in which, say, a clerk of
> > Stratford might have entered Shakspere's profession as "gentleman
> > NON-PLAYWRIGHT"?
>
> (Note: One of the more salient characteristics of the rigidnik is his
> inability to imagine explanations that don't connect with his rigidniplex.)
Yes, I thought of that when you and the I. S. Man couldn't figure out
which poem named 'Venus & Adonis' was attributed to Shakespeare after
Marlowe's death certificate. You guys lost that one in the sun!
OF.
MakBane
>> What?! Bob, a rhetorical question should bear SOME semblance of a
>self-evident
>> answer. It is actually crazy of you to suggest that your "counter-question"
>is
>> of equal value as mine. Can you imagine any scenario in which, say, a clerk
>of
>> Stratford might have entered Shakspere's profession as "gentleman
>> NON-PLAYWRIGHT"?
Grumman (a.k.a. Jack Klugman Freud):
>(Note: One of the more salient characteristics of the rigidnik is his
>inability to imagine explanations that don't connect with his rigidniplex.)
>
>Why would your clerk not have said, "gentleman malt-dealer" (assuming
>he would assign any man a vocation at that time)?
When the great Shakspere was buried, the register called him a gent; when his
somewhat less well-known son-in-law was buried, the register described him as a
most skillful physician. Does that help?
>(He would as likely
>have identified him as a non-playwright as a playwright.)
Did you laugh when you wrote that?
>Or, more
>likely, why wouldn't whoever spread the last dinner, or the heavy
>drinking, or the deer-poaching, or the butcher boy story, have
>spread one about the monument to an alleged writer who was
>semi-literate at best?
Half of the inscription is in Latin. The other half is as clearly about a
writer as a pitcher of mud.
>Why wouldn't someone from Stratford
>mention in a letter that his friend Will had the same name as a
>famous actor/playwright?
You expect such a letter to exist but not even one in his own hand about any
little thing at all? Sheer hosiery!
>Or even that some mistook him for that
>man?
The first time Shakspere of Stratford is explicitly associated with the
literary arts is seven years after he died. The FF tipped folks off. We DO know
that Shakspere of Stratford was a shareholder/sometime-actor and theater
manager of some kind (based on records in London), but that is a different
thing from being the Author.
>Or that, although his friend Will was active in London
>theatrical circles, he was NOT the poet of the same name?
What the hell are you doing looking for hypothetical and negative examples when
you can't even come up with any real and positive ones? I tell you, your
reasoning is bizarre!
>How about some grain-dealer or usurer in Stratford's leaving him
>a ring in his will, calling him his "fellowe?"
Yeah, fellowe actor. Have you read any plays lately by Condell or Heminge?
>Which makes me think: if Shakespeare, whom you will admit was
>well-to-do, lived most of the time in Stratford, why didn't he
>hold any political office, as his father had?
Maybe because he saw where it got his old man: nowhere. The thing about John
Shakspere is that his heyday had come and gone before Willy was out of short
pants, as it were. Will was in it for the money. Being responsible for rounding
up AWOLs from church would only have gotten in the way of making money.
>Second biggest house
>in town,
Here in Austin, Michael Dell has the biggest house in town and you'll never see
him run for dogcatcher or bailiff or whatever the hell John Shakspere was.
>and seeming to have friends of consequence,
"Seeming" is about right.
>yet no
>political office?
You got it. There hasn't been any money in politics since Tammany Hall.
>And, according to Priceans, he was a standard
>wheeling, dealing fast-laner. How would he not striven for,
>and attained, some small town office?
I think you think too much of political office.
>> The problem, of course, is that you have become a fig leaf
>> trying to cover the turgidity of Shakspere's non-literary
>> non-reputation in his own hometown. I'd be amazed if you could
>> admit that.
>
>How many people of Canterbury left records concerning Marlowe's
>writing?
I don't know anything about Marlowe in Canterbury. I thought he did all of his
atheistic homosexual agitating in London.
>How many non-literary people of that time left records
>of having known ANYONE as a writer?
Well, Dr. Hall called Michael Drayton an "excellent poet." If only he had done
the same for his father-in-law!
Toby Petzold
American
Dr Peter Groves
news:20011016190705...@mb-dd.aol.com...
> Petzold:
<snip>
>
> The first time Shakspere of Stratford is explicitly associated with the
> literary arts is seven years after he died. The FF tipped folks off. We DO
know
> that Shakspere of Stratford was a shareholder/sometime-actor and theater
> manager of some kind (based on records in London), but that is a different
> thing from being the Author.
>
> >Or that, although his friend Will was active in London
> >theatrical circles, he was NOT the poet of the same name?
>
> What the hell are you doing looking for hypothetical and negative examples
when
> you can't even come up with any real and positive ones? I tell you, your
> reasoning is bizarre!
>
> >How about some grain-dealer or usurer in Stratford's leaving him
> >a ring in his will, calling him his "fellowe?"
>
> Yeah, fellowe actor. Have you read any plays lately by Condell or Heminge?
>
Toby, I think I may be missing a step in the argument here, and this may all
be <crambe repetita> to you, so you may need to be patient with me. We know
that
(1) from 1595 on William Shakspere/Shakespeare/Shaxberd etc (as you know,
the spelling of English did not begin to be standardised before the late
C17) was an actor and possible shareholder in the Chamberlain's (later the
King's) Men.
(2) The William Shakespeare who died at Stratford-on-Avon in 1616 and was
buried there in the Church of the Holy Trinity left in his will money for
the purchase of memorial rings to John Heminge (or Heminges) and Henry
Condell, his "fellowe[s]" in the King's Men.
(3) from 1598 when <Loues labors lost> "By W. Shakespere" appeared, a number
of plays performed by the Chamberlain's (later the King's) Men were
published in his name, culminating in the great Folio of 1623 comprising
"Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies." This includes
a dedication signed by "Iohn Heminge" and "Henry Condell" and a preface
signed by by "Iohn Heminge" and "Henrie Condell"
(4) In the dedication Heminge and Condell declare that they "onely to keepe
the memory of so worthy a Friend, & and Fellow aliue, as was our
SHAKESPEARE"
(5) In a dedicatory poen Ben Jonson, who elsewhere stated that he "loved the
man", calls him "Sweet Swan of Avon" (admittedly there is more than one Avon
in England).
Now if all this doesn't add up to good testimonial evidence that WS the
actor for the King's Men, WS the playwright for the King's Men and the WS
who died at Stratford-on-Avon in 1616 are the same person, then I'm Cardinal
Bellarmine.
If you go on to say that Heminge, Condell, Jonson (and a great many besides)
were bribed or intimidated into concealing and actively misrepresenting the
identity of the Author by an improbable conspiracy that has left no evidence
behind it, then meaningful dicsussion of the topic must at an end. Such a
position is unfalsifiable, like Creationism: Stratfordian evidence and
Oxfordian non-evidence are both the predictable consequence of a cunningly
concealed and thus undemonstrable conspiracy.
Or perhaps I'm wrong: can you identify a hypothetical new piece of evidence
(document, inscription, marginalium) that would refute your contention that
Oxford <Hamlet>, <The Tempest> and the rest?
Peter Groves.
Dr Peter Groves
"your contention that Oxford wrote <Hamlet>, <The Tempest> and the rest?"
Peter Groves.
MakBane
><snip>
>>
>> The first time Shakspere of Stratford is explicitly associated with the
>> literary arts is seven years after he died. The FF tipped folks off. We DO
>know
>> that Shakspere of Stratford was a shareholder/sometime-actor and theater
>> manager of some kind (based on records in London), but that is a different
>> thing from being the Author.
>>
>> >Or that, although his friend Will was active in London
>> >theatrical circles, he was NOT the poet of the same name?
>>
>> What the hell are you doing looking for hypothetical and negative examples
>when
>> you can't even come up with any real and positive ones? I tell you, your
>> reasoning is bizarre!
>>
>> >How about some grain-dealer or usurer in Stratford's leaving him
>> >a ring in his will, calling him his "fellowe?"
>>
>> Yeah, fellowe actor. Have you read any plays lately by Condell or Heminge?
>>
Dr. Groves:
>Toby, I think I may be missing a step in the argument here, and this may all
>be <crambe repetita> to you, so you may need to be patient with me. We know
>that
>
>(1) from 1595 on William Shakspere/Shakespeare/Shaxberd etc (as you know,
>the spelling of English did not begin to be standardised before the late
>C17) was an actor and possible shareholder in the Chamberlain's (later the
>King's) Men.
I accept that, although I would be more certain of his relationship to the
Chamberlain's/King's Men.
>(2) The William Shakespeare who died at Stratford-on-Avon in 1616 and was
>buried there in the Church of the Holy Trinity left in his will money for
>the purchase of memorial rings to John Heminge (or Heminges) and Henry
>Condell, his "fellowe[s]" in the King's Men.
I've been assured by both sides that there is nothing fishy about that bequest
being interlineated, so I accept this, too.
>(3) from 1598 when <Loues labors lost> "By W. Shakespere" appeared, a number
>of plays performed by the Chamberlain's (later the King's) Men were
>published in his name, culminating in the great Folio of 1623 comprising
>"Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies." This includes
>a dedication signed by "Iohn Heminge" and "Henry Condell" and a preface
>signed by by "Iohn Heminge" and "Henrie Condell"
As an Oxfordian, I am obligated to believe that there was some inducement to
Condell and Heminge to allow their names to be used in the preface, even though
it is a good bet that Jonson was behind the whole thing. Besides those two
gentlemen's wills, I have not yet come across any other personal documents of
theirs, although I'm sure they must have written letters. (Does anyone know?)
>(4) In the dedication Heminge and Condell declare that they "onely to keepe
>the memory of so worthy a Friend, & and Fellow aliue, as was our
>SHAKESPEARE"
This is part of the conspiracy. After a long association with their friend and
seven years after his death, only then do they write of him? That degree of
belatedness and unprecedence is rather odd.
>(5) In a dedicatory poen Ben Jonson, who elsewhere stated that he "loved the
>man", calls him "Sweet Swan of Avon" (admittedly there is more than one Avon
>in England).
No, I am sure that it was intended that Shakspere of Stratford be given the
credit. The Ogburns' thing about how Oxford was intended by that epithet
because he owned property that sat on the Avon (closer to London?) has been
disposed of.
>Now if all this doesn't add up to good testimonial evidence that WS the
>actor for the King's Men, WS the playwright for the King's Men and the WS
>who died at Stratford-on-Avon in 1616 are the same person, then I'm Cardinal
>Bellarmine.
These items DO lend themselves to a coherent testimony of that belief, don't
they? The desired effect has certainly been achieved on you. But the key to all
of this (and the basis of all Anti-Stratfordian belief) is that Shakspere could
NOT have written the Canon. Once that has worked its way into a person's skull
(as it has mine), then it is impossible to take the old deer-poacher seriously.
Every queen becomes Elizabeth; every madman de Vere. I tell you, it's a FAR
more interesting way of seeing these plays. Besides, who wants to be stuck with
Shakspere and that vision of the self-satisfied pork butcher?
>If you go on to say that Heminge, Condell, Jonson (and a great many besides)
>were bribed or intimidated into concealing and actively misrepresenting the
>identity of the Author by an improbable conspiracy that has left no evidence
>behind it, then meaningful dicsussion of the topic must at an end.
You imagine some vast malevolent or corrupt conspiracy behind the Arrangement,
and I'm saying that's unnecessary. Why is it so hard to believe that the
Herberts controlled the manuscripts, paid for the great expense of the FF's
publication, and cemented the deal by importuning the rather self-aggrandizing
Ben Jonson to paint a picture (however obscurely) of this Shakspere fellow as
the Author? The man in the street knew the name and knew that that name was on
the plays and poems. And the art would survive, even if the name was not that
of the Author. Think of Twain and Orwell and Henry and Carroll: their
literature is world-renowned, even if people don't know their true identities.
"Shakespeare" belongs to that same tradition. The difference, in his case, is
that his heirs still lived in uncertain political times and had genuine reasons
to not reveal his identity.
>Such a
>position is unfalsifiable, like Creationism: Stratfordian evidence and
>Oxfordian non-evidence are both the predictable consequence of a cunningly
>concealed and thus undemonstrable conspiracy.
The demonstration of the Oxfordian revelation is a function of political and
cultural will as exercised by scholars and dilettantes of conscience and
imagination. Now, if you will excuse me, I must duck the rotten tomatoes.
>Or perhaps I'm wrong: can you identify a hypothetical new piece of evidence
>(document, inscription, marginalium) that would refute your contention that
>Oxford <Hamlet>, <The Tempest> and the rest?
I'm not sure what you're saying here but, suffice it to say, I'm no Donald
Foster. I'm not in possession of any new documentary evidence, except to say
that I was inordinately surprised while reading last night by the realization
that Jonson's FF poem is a response to Basse. I must have already known that,
but was startled at the sudden movement of that particular file drawer in my
head.
Toby Petzold
American
p.s. Apparently, Jonson did not think Shakespeare required a physical tomb. Why
on Earth not?
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>
>These items DO lend themselves to a coherent testimony of that belief, don't
>they? The desired effect has certainly been achieved on you. But the key to
>all
>of this (and the basis of all Anti-Stratfordian belief) is that Shakspere
>could
>NOT have written the Canon.
Why not? What is in the canon that a mostly self-educated man of his
time could not have written?
Jim
KQKnave
>As an Oxfordian, I am obligated to believe that there was some inducement to
>Condell and Heminge to allow their names to be used in the preface, even
>though
>it is a good bet that Jonson was behind the whole thing. Besides those two
>gentlemen's wills, I have not yet come across any other personal documents of
>theirs, although I'm sure they must have written letters. (Does anyone know?)
Nope, never seen any others. That makes sense, since they were
actors and business men, not writers.
>>(4) In the dedication Heminge and Condell declare that they "onely to keepe
>>the memory of so worthy a Friend, & and Fellow aliue, as was our
>>SHAKESPEARE"
>
>This is part of the conspiracy. After a long association with their friend
>and
>seven years after his death, only then do they write of him? That degree of
>belatedness and unprecedence is rather odd.
You just noted the absence of other writings by these men in your
statement above. Why would they write anything except for a special
occassion like the publication of Shakespeare's work?
Jim
Dr Peter Groves
Peter G.:
>
> >Such a
> >position is unfalsifiable, like Creationism: Stratfordian evidence and
> >Oxfordian non-evidence are both the predictable consequence of a
cunningly
> >concealed and thus undemonstrable conspiracy.
Toby:
>
> The demonstration of the Oxfordian revelation is a function of political
and
> cultural will as exercised by scholars and dilettantes of conscience and
> imagination. Now, if you will excuse me, I must duck the rotten tomatoes.
>
Peter G.:
> >Or perhaps I'm wrong: can you identify a hypothetical new piece of
evidence
> >(document, inscription, marginalium) that would refute your contention
that
> >Oxford [wrote] <Hamlet>, <The Tempest> and the rest?
Toby:
>
> I'm not sure what you're saying here but, suffice it to say, I'm no Donald
> Foster. I'm not in possession of any new documentary evidence, except to
say
> that I was inordinately surprised while reading last night by the
realization
> that Jonson's FF poem is a response to Basse. I must have already known
that,
> but was startled at the sudden movement of that particular file drawer in
my
> head.
>
> Toby Petzold
> American
>
Let me explain: a falsifiable theory is one that makes predictions that
might fail, so that one could conceive of some possible discovery of
evidence that would refute its claims. The theory of evolution (by natural
selection or any other means) is falsifiable in this sense: if we found
human skeletons embedded in Devonian rocks it would disprove the theory,
because the theory states that humans are descended from mammalian
precursors that had not yet developed in the Devonian. Its rival,
Creationism, however, is not falsifiable, because with God all things (and
all appearances) are possible: no conceivable piece of evidence could prove
that the universe wasn't made by God (or, for that matter, vomited up by a
cosmic serpent).
Thus non-falsifiable theories are really belief-systems, impervious to
disproof. Now Stratfordianism is clearly a falsifiable theory: it would
collapse overnight if someone found a relevant document of unimpeachable
authenticity, such as an account in the royal archives that said "To Mr Ben
IOHNSON, xxxiiij shillings per annum and a Tunne of good ayle so long as he
shal mayntayne yt ye Earle of Oxenfords plaies were wrytt by ye common
plaier Will. Shakesper". But Oxfordians seem to claim that whatever the
*apparent* evidence that can be found for Shakespeare as playwright, it is
simply an artefact of the effort to conceal Oxford's authorship (as, too, is
the lack of evidence for Oxford's authorship), which seems to make it an
unfalsifiable faith rather than a falsifiable theory.
So, what I was asking is whether you could imagine a hypothetical new piece
of evidence (unearthed in the British Museum, Holy Trinity Church, the
Folger library or wherever) that you would accept as refuting your
contention that Oxford was the Author?
Peter G.
Bob Grumman
> >he would assign any man a vocation at that time)?
>
> When the great Shakspere was buried, the register called him a gent; when his
> somewhat less well-known son-in-law was buried, the register described him as a
> most skillful physician. Does that help?
Okay, Toby, a point to you--occasionally a man's vocation was
indicated, but not often. Class-standing was MUCH more important
then.
> >(He would as likely
> >have identified him as a non-playwright as a playwright.)
>
> Did you laugh when you wrote that?
Can you find an instance of a clerk's describing a man as a
playwright in a vital statistic back then?
> >Or, more
> >likely, why wouldn't whoever spread the last dinner, or the heavy
> >drinking, or the deer-poaching, or the butcher boy story, have
> >spread one about the monument to an alleged writer who was
> >semi-literate at best?
>
> Half of the inscription is in Latin. The other half is as clearly about a
> writer as a pitcher of mud.
Ah, so we can ignore the Latin, and should take, "all that he hath writt/
leaves living art . . ." to be about, what, a grain dealer?
> >Why wouldn't someone from Stratford
> >mention in a letter that his friend Will had the same name as a
> >famous actor/playwright?
>
> You expect such a letter to exist but not even one in his own hand about any
> little thing at all? Sheer hosiery!
You really are too dense to argue with, Toby, but here goes another
try. What I would expect is what we have: a few random letters. I
would not expect any of them to say anything about the similarity
of names anymore than I would expect any of them to say anything
about Shakespeare's being a poet. However, if we should expect the
latter were Shakespeare really a poet, as you argue, then we should
expect the former were he not.
> >Or even that some mistook him for that man?
>
> The first time Shakspere of Stratford is explicitly associated with the
> literary arts is seven years after he died. The FF tipped folks off. We DO know
> that Shakspere of Stratford was a shareholder/sometime-actor and theater
> manager of some kind (based on records in London), but that is a different
> thing from being the Author.
Right, Richard. If you want to lie. However, the fact is that many
people identified someone named Will Shakespeare as a writer while
he was alive. That they neglected to state the man's address can NOT
be used by anyone but a liar to claim they didn't mean the Stratford
man, though it also cannot be used by anyone to claim they DID mean
him (without using evidence from after Shakespeare's death that makes
that certain beyond reasonable doubt for those not yet converted to
Pricean Reasoning).
> >Or that, although his friend Will was active in London
> >theatrical circles, he was NOT the poet of the same name?
>
> What the hell are you doing looking for hypothetical and negative examples when
> you can't even come up with any real and positive ones? I tell you, your
> reasoning is bizarre!
> >How about some grain-dealer or usurer in Stratford's leaving him
> >a ring in his will, calling him his "fellowe?"
>
> Yeah, fellowe actor. Have you read any plays lately by Condell or Heminge?
I don't know. I do know that I've read a few by a man named Will
Shakespeare who acted in the same troupe as Condell and Heminges
according to the First Folio and Ben Jonson's folio and Phillips's
bequest, to mention just the direct concrete evidence.
> >Which makes me think: if Shakespeare, whom you will admit was
> >well-to-do, lived most of the time in Stratford, why didn't he
> >hold any political office, as his father had?
>
> Maybe because he saw where it got his old man: nowhere. The thing about John
> Shakspere is that his heyday had come and gone before Willy was out of short
> pants, as it were. Will was in it for the money. Being responsible for rounding
> up AWOLs from church would only have gotten in the way of making money.
>
> >Second biggest house
> >in town,
>
> Here in Austin, Michael Dell has the biggest house in town and you'll never see
> him run for dogcatcher or bailiff or whatever the hell John Shakspere was.
>
> >and seeming to have friends of consequence,
>
> "Seeming" is about right.
>
> >yet no
> >political office?
>
> You got it. There hasn't been any money in politics since Tammany Hall.
There was status. The kind of two-bit merchant you wacks take
Shakespeare as strongly suggests he would have tried for and gotten
a few political offices.
> I think you think too much of political office.
I don't, but the people back then, and most people now, consider
office-holders above the herd.
> >> The problem, of course, is that you have become a fig leaf
> >> trying to cover the turgidity of Shakspere's non-literary
> >> non-reputation in his own hometown. I'd be amazed if you could
> >> admit that.
> >
> >How many people of Canterbury left records concerning Marlowe's
> >writing?
>
> I don't know anything about Marlowe in Canterbury. I thought he did all of his
> atheistic homosexual agitating in London.
Canterbury was where he was born just as Stratford was where
Shakespeare was born. My obvious point is that, so far as I
know, NO hometown of a distinguished writer back then made
any to-do about their native son--EXCEPT Stratford, when it
put up a monument to its native son poet.
> >How many non-literary people of that time left records
> >of having known ANYONE as a writer?
>
> Well, Dr. Hall called Michael Drayton an "excellent poet."
Good, you got one.
> If only he had done the same for his father-in-law!
No, if only he kept a personal journal and we had parts of it
from before his father-in-law died.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk45.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.74]
John W. Kennedy
sorites.
--
John W. Kennedy
(Working from my laptop)
Okay Fine
Your last question is an excellent one. I put it to the group before
you started contributing.
My answer still seems pretty good: to rule out Oxford, evidence that a
Shakespearean source postdates his death. It's just too much that the
author stopped reading in 1604, right when Oxford took his leave.
To rule out Marlowe: hmmm, I don't have a handle on that one yet.
To rule in Shakspere: evidence that his family was literate would go
far, or evidence that links author and actor convincingly.
Similarly, what kind of evidence would alter your thinking? I would
expect that the Oxfordian library with passages marked in correspondence
to Shakespeare's works might suade you. What do you say?
OF.
John W. Kennedy
> My answer still seems pretty good: to rule out Oxford, evidence that a
> Shakespearean source postdates his death. It's just too much that the
> author stopped reading in 1604, right when Oxford took his leave.
Yet another lie!
> To rule in Shakspere: evidence that his family was literate would go
> far, or evidence that links author and actor convincingly.
There's plenty. Stop lying.
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Okay Fine wrote:
<snip>
>
> Your last question is an excellent one. I put it to the group before
> you started contributing.
>
> My answer still seems pretty good: to rule out Oxford, evidence that a
> Shakespearean source postdates his death. It's just too much that the
> author stopped reading in 1604, right when Oxford took his leave.
From a post I made on 02/05/2001:
---- Start old post ----
It's pretty clear that Macbeth must have
been written sometime before April 20,
1611 because that's the date when Simon
Forman saw it at the Globe. The question
many will be interested in, is how much
earlier could it have been written. As it
happens, a number of topical references
allow us to be quite sure that Macbeth
was composed sometime after 1605.
Point #1.
Back in 1997, CMC wrote a post reviewing
Garry Wills findings in his book _Witches &
Jesuit: Shakespeare's Macbeth_. Dejanews no
longer goes back that far but fortunately,
CMC's post can still be seen at:
http://www.gunpowder-plot.org//news/1998_04/macbeth.htm
As CMC told us, Wills noted that at least
three other plays written not long after
the discovery of the plot contain
descriptions of attempted or completed
regicide, witches, a necromancy scene,
references to equivocation, and tests of
loyalty through deceptive language. None
of those themes appears to be a
commonplace. The combination is
therefore likely to be very significant.
In fact, if we knew nothing at all of
the author Shakespeare, the authorities
would still be using the fact that
Macbeth contains those same five
thematic elements related to the
Gunpowder Plot to date its composition
to around 1606-7.
There are a number of other interesting
topical references worth noting. (All of the
facts below may be found through reading
Henry Paul's _The Royal Play of Macbeth_.)
Point #2.
Shortly after the Gunpowder Plot was foiled,
a medal was struck to glorify the sagacity of
the king in detecting the plot. It shows a
serpent lurking among the flowers with the
inscription "DETECTUS QUI LATUIT S.C." Lady
Macbeth told her husband to "look like the
innocent flower, but be the serpent under
it."
Point #3.
In _The King's Book_, printed on Nov 5 1605,
some of the conspirators were said to have
been taken alive and sent to London because
people wanted to see them "as the rarest sort
of monsters; fools to laugh at them; women
and children to wonder, all the common people
to gaze."
Macbeth V, xiii: "Then yield thee coward And
live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole."
There are also some topical references
associated with King Christian of Denmark's
1606 visit to England.
Point #4.
In Holinshed's Macbeth, the Scots defeated
the Danes Shakespeare converted the losers to
Norweyans. This change seems most likely to
have been done to lessen the chance of
inadvertently offending King Christian.
Point #5.
As King James made his slow progress in the
spring of 1603 from Edinburgh to London, he
let it be known that Peace and Unity were his
cardinal political ideals." In his first
speech to Parliament he said, "I bring you
two gifts, one peace with foreign nations,
the other union with Scotland."
In 1606, Nixon, in his _The Black Year_,
enlarged the phrase to include the word
"love." ("Many think well of themselves in
making the Doctrine of love, peace, and
unity, the occasion of strife, contention,
and heresie.")
On July 17, 1606, Marston wrote a Latin
speech which was designed to glorify "Love,
Peace, and Unity," but the Latin word Marston
chose to substitute for "Love" was
"Concordia." (MS of speech is still extant.)
Stowe's chronicle published in 1615 describes
the incident also using the word "Concorde."
Macbeth IV,iii:
"Nay, had I power, I should Poure the sweet
Milke of Concord, into Hell, Uprore the
universall peace, confound All unity on
earth."
It is not to be found in Holinshed.
Surely, James who in 1603 spoke only
positively of "peace" and "union" was not
borrowing from Shakespeare. Since he did not
use the word "concord," it seems very
unlikely that Nixon borrowed from
Shakespeare. That means that either
Shakespeare borrowed the word "concord" from
Marston or Marston borrowed from
Shakespeare. Either way, it's a data point
telling us that Macbeth was composed sometime
after the early part of 1606.
The argument could be extended to include
a few more facts, but I'm running out of
time, so I'll end it here. In any event,
several of the points I've noted, appear
to be pretty strong, even if taken just by
themselves. Taken together, there is very
little room left for doubt. Macbeth *was*
written sometime after the end of 1605.
I understand that Oxfordians will not
find that conclusion the least bit
desirable. Oh well.
---- End of old post ----
Two more points extracted from Henry Paul's book:
Point #6.
"In the last two acts we distinctly trace the influence of the
Profanity Statute, which went into effect May 27, 1606." (pg 37.)
(I've never verified this but if it's true, it seems to date
Macbeth quite precisely.)
Point #7.
On the occasion of his visit, King Christian gave 10,000 dollars
to King James. In _Macbeth_ we see the words "Ten thousand
dollars to our general use." In Holinshed, the equivalent
phrase is "for a great summe of gold." Dollars were silver
coins. (According to H. Paul, the English generally didn't
know much about the dollar.)
Rob
Okay Fine
OF.
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Bob Grumman wrote:
> > >Why would your clerk not have said, "gentleman malt-dealer" (assuming
> > >he would assign any man a vocation at that time)?
> >
> > When the great Shakspere was buried, the register called him a gent; when his
> > somewhat less well-known son-in-law was buried, the register described him as a
> > most skillful physician. Does that help?
>
> Okay, Toby, a point to you--occasionally a man's vocation was
> indicated, but not often. Class-standing was MUCH more important
> then.
>
> > >(He would as likely
> > >have identified him as a non-playwright as a playwright.)
> >
> > Did you laugh when you wrote that?
>
> Can you find an instance of a clerk's describing a man as a
> playwright in a vital statistic back then?
This isn't exactly what you were asking for but...
IIRC, in her book Diana tells us that Thomas Heywood was described as
"poet" in a burial register.
Rob
KQKnave
>To rule out Marlowe: hmmm, I don't have a handle on that one yet.
Marlowe died in 1593, so he couldn't possibly have written
The Tempest, Macbeth or the Funeral Elegy.
Jim
KQKnave
>My answer still seems pretty good: to rule out Oxford, evidence that a
>Shakespearean source postdates his death. It's just too much that the
>author stopped reading in 1604, right when Oxford took his leave.
>
??
Numerous sources postdate Oxenforde's death:
Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (Coriolanus)
Strachey "True Repertory of the Wrack...etc" 1610 (Tempest)
Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of
the Colony in Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
Jim
Okay Fine
(You neglected to mention your personal example of evidence that would
alter your opinion on The Question.)
In general, Macbeth is probably not your best case. Without consulting
any references, I'm pretty confident that Thomas Middleton's hand is
rather heavily on the text as we have it. There are some mild
inconsistencies in the plot that indicate an incomplete work or some
careless alteration. (The Riverside suggests that it could be
"abridged.") Whole scenes are added in the second half. I'm somewhat
surprised that you didn't mention these very important facts.
Perhaps you would like to mention the leading objections to your
points. I think some are obvious. I have my own, but if I mention them
first they'll appear partisan.
OF.
You mean V, viii.
Bob Grumman
> > playwright in a vital statistic back then?
>
> This isn't exactly what you were asking for but...
>
> IIRC, in her book Diana tells us that Thomas Heywood was described as
> "poet" in a burial register.
Gee, I'm really getting pummelled on this. Fortunately for our side,
Price has shown that posthumous data doesn't count, so I can just
rephrase my question to "Can you find an instance of a clerk's
describing a man as a playwright in an unposthumous vital
statistic back then?"
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk98.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.127]
Bob Grumman
news:20011017132045...@nso-fh.aol.com...
It is also plausible (as I've pointed out before) that a playwright
could, by the age of forty, have stored enough material for future
plays to no longer need source material--which, of course, would
not mean that he'd stopped reading.
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Okay Fine wrote:
> Thanks, Rob. This is exactly the kind of response I was hoping for.
> (You neglected to mention your personal example of evidence that would
> alter your opinion on The Question.)
I'm not particularly interested in whatif's, but
generally speaking, I'd like to see some sort of
easily evaluated connection. (Something like an
account written sometime between 1580 and 1680
where it was directly alleged that the Earl of Oxford
had secretly written a number of the plays performed
by the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men.)
> In general, Macbeth is probably not your best case. Without
> consulting any references, I'm pretty confident that Thomas
> Middleton's hand is rather heavily on the text as we have it.
There is some reason to say that Middleton may have
written parts or all of the Hecate scenes, but that's
really quite disputable, and in any case, none of my
points rely upon what's found in those two scenes.
If you have reasons to be confident that Middleton wrote
any other parts of the play, by all means, share them.
> There are some mild
> inconsistencies in the plot that indicate an incomplete work or some
> careless alteration. (The Riverside suggests that it could be
> "abridged.")
Are we to suppose that abridgements or careless
alterations could have made plot elements in
Macbeth resemble plot elements in the other
post-gunpowder plot plays mentioned by CMC?
> Whole scenes are added in the second half.
Unless this is a further reference to the two
Hecate scenes some suppose Middleton to have
a hand in, I have no idea what you might be
referring to.
> I'm somewhat
> surprised that you didn't mention these very important facts.
What important facts? Even if we suppose that Middleton
wrote all two of the Hecate scenes, it doesn't make any
difference.
Supposing that some scenes were abridged is the same
thing as supposing that lines were cut. Some small
changes might be made to bridge the cutd but that
is *not* at all the same thing as supposing that
contemporary allusions were inserted here and there
by someone other than Shakespeare.
Given the circumstances under which we received the plays,
any of the lines in a Shakespeare play might *conceivably*
be someone else's, but for each line in a Shakespeare play,
the default position has to be that he composed it. If you
want to say that Shakespeare didn't write any line in
particular, the burden of proof falls upon your shoulders
to show that that is likely so.
> Perhaps you would like to mention the leading objections to your
> points. I think some are obvious. I have my own, but if I mention them
> first they'll appear partisan.
I have no idea what objections you are talking about.
What's this concern you have with appearing partisan?
Surely, you don't think anyone sees you otherwise?
Rob
Okay Fine
Marlowe appears to have died, but perhaps his death was faked to avoid
capital punishment.
OF.
Okay Fine
We've been over this before. Perhaps you can show your mastery of the
topic by a quick mention of the basis for skeptical doubt for each of
the above. Please mention only the strongest reasons.
Thanks!
OF.
Okay Fine
mind.
OF.
Okay Fine
You know of no objections whatever? That boggles my mind. You're
utterly ignorant of any reason whatever to doubt your position? I would
think that you'd seek out objections to be sure that this very important
list of evidence is probative.
To give you an obvious example, Macbeth's apparent allusions to other
works might be allusions to Macbeth instead. And since the play has
been tampered with, you can hardly expect that the cryptic allusions to
the Gunpowder Plot could not have been inserted by Middleton as well.
That we can detect Middleton's hand in some places virtually guarantees
his hand is also present elsewhere.
Macbeth seems to fit the profile of a work in progress left behind at
the death of the author.
OF.
Okay Fine
True, you've said it. It was ridiculous then and it's ridiculous now.
OF.
KQKnave
>KQKnave wrote:
>>
>> In article <3BCD96EB...@qwest.net>, Okay Fine <ein...@qwest.net>
>writes:
>>
>> >My answer still seems pretty good: to rule out Oxford, evidence that a
>> >Shakespearean source postdates his death. It's just too much that the
>> >author stopped reading in 1604, right when Oxford took his leave.
>> >
>>
>> ??
>> Numerous sources postdate Oxenforde's death:
>>
>> Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
>> Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (Coriolanus)
>> Strachey "True Repertory of the Wrack...etc" 1610 (Tempest)
>> Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
>> Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of
>> the Colony in Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
>> Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
>> Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
>>
>> Jim
>
>We've been over this before.
We have? Funny, I don't recall. Was this under one
of your other pseudonyms?
>Perhaps you can show your mastery of the
>topic by a quick mention of the basis for skeptical doubt for each of
>the above.
Perhaps we should begin with the complete lack of evidence
for Oxenforde's authorship? It is possible to doubt all of
the sources for Shakespeare, since anyone can argue that
he just coincidentally wrote something similar to his sources.
I don't argue that way because I live in the real world.
>Please mention only the strongest reasons.
No, asshole, why don't you mention some of the reasons?
After all, it's up to you to prove your insane theories are correct,
despite the complete lack of evidence for Oxenforde and
the huge amount of evidence for Shakespeare.
>Thanks!
Fuck you, moron.
Jim
Rob Zigler
on 10/17/01 5:51 PM:
I admit that I was presuming you were referring to reasonable
objections and that I didn't know of any. (I can't say
that that's changed; I still don't know of any.)
> That boggles my mind. You're
> utterly ignorant of any reason whatever to doubt your position? I would
> think that you'd seek out objections to be sure that this very important
> list of evidence is probative.
>
> To give you an obvious example, Macbeth's apparent allusions to other
> works might be allusions to Macbeth instead.
It certainly sometimes quite difficult to tell who was alluding to who.
However, I have to wonder if you bothered to think for even a minute
about what I wrote, most of which didn't have anything to do with
a written source. For instance, was King Christian of Denmark's
visit to England an allusion to Shakespeare's changing Holinshed's
Danes to Norweyans? While Shakespeare could easily have alluded to
Christian giving James ten thousand dollars, the idea that Christian was
alluding to Macbeth is completely ridiculous. The idea that a newly
arrived Scottish James would have known enough about an English Macbeth to
borrow part of a theme is not at all likely and if he was going to borrow
the themes of Peace and Unity, it seems fairly likely he'd have grabbed the
Concord bit too. The James to Nixon to Marston to Shakepeare evolution
appears to make perfect sense. You'd have it go how? Shakespeare to
James. Shakespeare to Nixon, and Shakespeare to Marston? The frequent
apparent replacing of the word 'God' by the word 'Heaven' in the last two
acts(presumably due to the 1606 Act of Abuses) is an allusion to what?
> And since the play has
> been tampered with,
That's not a fact! Some cuts *may* have been made, which isn't
even relevant to your argument. Whether or not Middleton
had any hand in it is completely disputable.
> you can hardly expect that the cryptic allusions to
> the Gunpowder Plot could not have been inserted by Middleton as well.
As I said, the most reasonable default position on any line in
a Shakespeare play is that it was written by Shakespeare. You
may wish to skip shouldering the burden of proof, but logic
dictates otherwise.
Do you need me to explain the meaning of the term "burden
of proof?" Or is it that you didn't read my previous post
carefully enough to see that those words were in there? Or
is it that you think it entirely obvious that the most reasonable
default position on any line in a Shakespeare play is *not*
that it was was written by Shakespeare.
> That we can detect Middleton's hand in some places virtually guarantees
> his hand is also present elsewhere.
Faith based presumption. (FWIW, when Middleton is said to have
written part of the play, his part is generally given to be
the less than 40 lines in III.v and a dozen or so lines in
IV.i.)
> Macbeth seems to fit the profile of a work in progress left behind at
> the death of the author.
At the very least, that would rule out any allusions to it until it
was finished and that would mean that each and every violation of Oxfordian
theory must be excused by an appeal to an intervention by Middleton (or
whoever else someone might want to put in Shakespeare's place for a line
or two or three).
Here's your argumemt stripped to its bones:
#1 Some have said that someone other than Shakespeare had a hand in part
of the play.
#2. Therefore, any lines anywhere in the play referring to events or works
postdating Oxford may have been written by someone other than
Shakespeare.
I have to note here that there can't be many(if any) Shakespeare plays where
some scholars haven't supposed that someone other than Shakespeare wrote
some of the lines, which leads us directly to back to Peter's point which is
that your argument is non-falsifiable. If someone points out a source
postdating Oxford, you'll either say that it was alluding to Shakespeare or
you'll say that someone altered the play after Oxford's death.
I wonder if our occasional Sidneyite visitor claims that Holinshed et al.
were all borrowing from Shakespeare.
Rob
Richard Kennedy
first folio had never been in print before. Why not? If the
printers and the publishers had them, why not publish them?
How Othello escaped to be published nobody knows. I don't
think Shakespeare >ever< collaborated, but that the other
hands found in his accepted plays are the additions and
amendments of other writers. Or, like the "Bad Quarto"
of Hamlet, 1603 ("To be or not to be, aye, that's the point"),
misremembered, taken from shorthand scribblings, or
edited as the time called for a political message, as in
reference to the Gunpowder plot in Othello.
KQKnave
<stai...@teleport.com> writes:
>The peculiar thing is that half of the plays published in the
>first folio had never been in print before. Why not? If the
>printers and the publishers had them, why not publish them?
>How Othello escaped to be published nobody knows.
What's mysterious about it? I would guess that the ones that
were published were 1) the most popular ones, and 2) the ones
that had been superseded by a revised edition, so the theatre
company allowed their printing.
Jim
Rob Zigler
in article 3BCEC5EB...@teleport.com, Richard Kennedy at
stai...@teleport.com wrote on 10/18/01 8:07 AM:
> The peculiar thing is that half of the plays published in the
> first folio had never been in print before. Why not?
Look at Fletcher. Arguably, he was about as popular
as Shakespeare was. Nine of his sixty-nine plays
were printed during his lifetime. Is that peculiar?
What about Shirley? He was able to get most or all
of the plays he wrote for Queen Henrietta's company
published(admittedly mostly after he left their
service), but none of the plays he wrote for the
King's Men were published during his lifetime.
Speaking of "peculiar"... Heywood wrote that
the reason some of his plays hadn't appeared in
print in a grand volume like Jonson's _Workes_
was that they were "retained in the hands of some
actors, who think it against their PECULIAR profit
to have them come into print." [My emphasis.]
MakBane
>> >Why would your clerk not have said, "gentleman malt-dealer" (assuming
>> >he would assign any man a vocation at that time)?
>>
>> When the great Shakspere was buried, the register called him a gent; when
>his
>> somewhat less well-known son-in-law was buried, the register described him
>as a
>> most skillful physician. Does that help?
>
>Okay, Toby, a point to you--occasionally a man's vocation was
>indicated, but not often. Class-standing was MUCH more important
>then.
Does anyone know how to bronze a newsgroup posting?
>> >(He would as likely
>> >have identified him as a non-playwright as a playwright.)
>>
>> Did you laugh when you wrote that?
>
>Can you find an instance of a clerk's describing a man as a
>playwright in a vital statistic back then?
>
>> >Or, more
>> >likely, why wouldn't whoever spread the last dinner, or the heavy
>> >drinking, or the deer-poaching, or the butcher boy story, have
>> >spread one about the monument to an alleged writer who was
>> >semi-literate at best?
>>
>> Half of the inscription is in Latin. The other half is as clearly about a
>> writer as a pitcher of mud.
>
>Ah, so we can ignore the Latin, and should take, "all that he hath writt/
>leaves living art . . ." to be about, what, a grain dealer?
On second thought, I think you're right. "All that he hath writt" is certainly
more resounding an endorsement of his playwriting than that love poem to the
sextons on the slab over his grave.
>> >Why wouldn't someone from Stratford
>> >mention in a letter that his friend Will had the same name as a
>> >famous actor/playwright?
>>
>> You expect such a letter to exist but not even one in his own hand about
>any
>> little thing at all? Sheer hosiery!
>
>You really are too dense to argue with, Toby, but here goes another
>try. What I would expect is what we have: a few random letters.
What random letters are you talking about? The undelivered Quiney letter? The
missing S in Foster's Sonnets theory? Are you trying to pull a slow one on me?
>I
>would not expect any of them to say anything about the similarity
>of names anymore than I would expect any of them to say anything
>about Shakespeare's being a poet.
Bob, I hate to break the news to you, but these letters are figments of your
imagination. But at least you've come off of these "expectations" of what these
hypothetical letters should hypothetically contain. That is to say, what the
hell are you talking about?
>However, if we should expect the
>latter were Shakespeare really a poet, as you argue, then we should
>expect the former were he not.
For Jesus' sake, forbear!
>> >Or even that some mistook him for that man?
>>
>> The first time Shakspere of Stratford is explicitly associated with the
>> literary arts is seven years after he died. The FF tipped folks off. We DO
>know
>> that Shakspere of Stratford was a shareholder/sometime-actor and theater
>> manager of some kind (based on records in London), but that is a different
>> thing from being the Author.
>
>Right, Richard. If you want to lie. However, the fact is that many
>people identified someone named Will Shakespeare as a writer while
>he was alive. That they neglected to state the man's address can NOT
>be used by anyone but a liar to claim they didn't mean the Stratford
>man, though it also cannot be used by anyone to claim they DID mean
>him (without using evidence from after Shakespeare's death that makes
>that certain beyond reasonable doubt for those not yet converted to
>Pricean Reasoning).
That reminds me: do we know when Davies wrote his poem?
>> >Or that, although his friend Will was active in London
>> >theatrical circles, he was NOT the poet of the same name?
>>
>> What the hell are you doing looking for hypothetical and negative examples
>when
>> you can't even come up with any real and positive ones? I tell you, your
>> reasoning is bizarre!
>
>
>> >How about some grain-dealer or usurer in Stratford's leaving him
>> >a ring in his will, calling him his "fellowe?"
>>
>> Yeah, fellowe actor. Have you read any plays lately by Condell or Heminge?
>
>I don't know. I do know that I've read a few by a man named Will
>Shakespeare who acted in the same troupe as Condell and Heminges
>according to the First Folio and Ben Jonson's folio and Phillips's
>bequest, to mention just the direct concrete evidence.
Yeah, you're right. Jonson's my Achilles' heel. I have GOT to find a way to get
rid of him!
>> >Which makes me think: if Shakespeare, whom you will admit was
>> >well-to-do, lived most of the time in Stratford, why didn't he
>> >hold any political office, as his father had?
>>
>> Maybe because he saw where it got his old man: nowhere. The thing about
>John
>> Shakspere is that his heyday had come and gone before Willy was out of
>short
>> pants, as it were. Will was in it for the money. Being responsible for
>rounding
>> up AWOLs from church would only have gotten in the way of making money.
>>
>> >Second biggest house
>> >in town,
>>
>> Here in Austin, Michael Dell has the biggest house in town and you'll never
>see
>> him run for dogcatcher or bailiff or whatever the hell John Shakspere was.
>>
>> >and seeming to have friends of consequence,
>>
>> "Seeming" is about right.
>>
>> >yet no
>> >political office?
>>
>> You got it. There hasn't been any money in politics since Tammany Hall.
>
>There was status. The kind of two-bit merchant you wacks take
>Shakespeare as strongly suggests he would have tried for and gotten
>a few political offices.
His wealth was political office enough, don't you think? The Welcombe
enclosures suggest his civic-mindedness.
>> I think you think too much of political office.
>
>I don't, but the people back then, and most people now, consider
>office-holders above the herd.
>
>
>> >> The problem, of course, is that you have become a fig leaf
>> >> trying to cover the turgidity of Shakspere's non-literary
>> >> non-reputation in his own hometown. I'd be amazed if you could
>> >> admit that.
>> >
>> >How many people of Canterbury left records concerning Marlowe's
>> >writing?
>>
>> I don't know anything about Marlowe in Canterbury. I thought he did all of
>his
>> atheistic homosexual agitating in London.
>
>Canterbury was where he was born just as Stratford was where
>Shakespeare was born. My obvious point is that, so far as I
>know, NO hometown of a distinguished writer back then made
>any to-do about their native son--EXCEPT Stratford, when it
>put up a monument to its native son poet.
>
>> >How many non-literary people of that time left records
>> >of having known ANYONE as a writer?
>>
>> Well, Dr. Hall called Michael Drayton an "excellent poet."
>
>Good, you got one.
>
>> If only he had done the same for his father-in-law!
>
>No, if only he kept a personal journal and we had parts of it
>from before his father-in-law died.
Oh, great! Another missing manuscript!
Toby Petzold
American
Bob Grumman
Jim
Among the other considerations are that more plays would be sold
to printers when the actors were experiencing hard times and needed
money, and more plays would be stolen, if any were, before the
acting company had clout.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk93.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.122]
Bob Grumman
> >try. What I would expect is what we have: a few random letters.
>
> What random letters are you talking about? The undelivered Quiney letter? The
> missing S in Foster's Sonnets theory? Are you trying to pull a slow one on me?
I'm talking about the random letters that refer to Shakespeare--the
ones left behind by Richard Quiney, getting to us (randomly) only
because he happened to die while in political office and his personal
correspondence, some of it, got preserved along with official Stratford
documents.
> That reminds me: do we know when Davies wrote his poem?
I think someone does. Definitely while Shakespeare was alive.
> >I don't know. I do know that I've read a few by a man named Will
> >Shakespeare who acted in the same troupe as Condell and Heminges
> >according to the First Folio and Ben Jonson's folio and Phillips's
> >bequest, to mention just the direct concrete evidence.
>
> Yeah, you're right. Jonson's my Achilles' heel. I have GOT to find a way to get
> rid of him!
Actually, Phillips should worry you more. And he's nothing compared
to the monument.
> His wealth was political office enough, don't you think? The Welcombe
> enclosures suggest his civic-mindedness.
Ha ha. But your side usually goes on at length about how
hard Shakspyr worked to get a coat of arms. Political office
would seem to be the same kind of thing.
> >Good, you got one.
> >
> >> If only he had done the same for his father-in-law!
> >
> >No, if only he kept a personal journal and we had parts of it
> >from before his father-in-law died.
>
> Oh, great! Another missing manuscript!
There were many more missing manuscripts than preserved manuscripts
from the time, Toby. But I was merely pointing out that since Hall's
manuscript was about his medical patients and dated from after
Shakespeare's death, it is absurd to expect he would have mentioned
his father-in-law in it. Even if, as a Puritan, he was proud of
his father's accomplishments as a playwright.
MakBane
>> >You really are too dense to argue with, Toby, but here goes another
>> >try. What I would expect is what we have: a few random letters.
>>
>> What random letters are you talking about? The undelivered Quiney letter?
>The
>> missing S in Foster's Sonnets theory? Are you trying to pull a slow one on
>me?
>
>I'm talking about the random letters that refer to Shakespeare--the
>ones left behind by Richard Quiney, getting to us (randomly) only
>because he happened to die while in political office and his personal
>correspondence, some of it, got preserved along with official Stratford
>documents.
I thought there was only one such Quiney letter. And its contents are only
suggestive of Shakspere as a usurer, which is undisputed.
>> That reminds me: do we know when Davies wrote his poem?
>
>I think someone does. Definitely while Shakespeare was alive.
It was registered with the SR in 1610, but that wasn't the poem I meant to ask
about (I realized after posting). I'm drawing a blank: it's the one from the
guy who gives the month and year of "Shakespeare's" death at the end of the
poem. I was wanting to know when that was written.
>> >I don't know. I do know that I've read a few by a man named Will
>> >Shakespeare who acted in the same troupe as Condell and Heminges
>> >according to the First Folio and Ben Jonson's folio and Phillips's
>> >bequest, to mention just the direct concrete evidence.
>>
>> Yeah, you're right. Jonson's my Achilles' heel. I have GOT to find a way to
>get
>> rid of him!
>
>Actually, Phillips should worry you more. And he's nothing compared
>to the monument.
No way about Phillips. He's easy to dispense with. Jonson's the bete noire.
>> His wealth was political office enough, don't you think? The Welcombe
>> enclosures suggest his civic-mindedness.
>
>Ha ha. But your side usually goes on at length about how
>hard Shakspyr worked to get a coat of arms. Political office
>would seem to be the same kind of thing.
This secret ambition for the alderman's pinkie ring you insist on attributing
to Shakspere is really strange, Bob. He wouldn't have given a rat's ass about
occupying the offices his dad did because he probably knew too well what a pain
they were. The guy is making major bank and you think he cares about having a
front-row pew at church? It's almost as strange as him writing that impresa for
44 shillings: why would he have bothered?
>> >Good, you got one.
>> >
>> >> If only he had done the same for his father-in-law!
>> >
>> >No, if only he kept a personal journal and we had parts of it
>> >from before his father-in-law died.
>>
>> Oh, great! Another missing manuscript!
>
>There were many more missing manuscripts than preserved manuscripts
>from the time, Toby.
Doubtlessly.
>But I was merely pointing out that since Hall's
>manuscript was about his medical patients and dated from after
>Shakespeare's death, it is absurd to expect he would have mentioned
>his father-in-law in it. Even if, as a Puritan, he was proud of
>his father's accomplishments as a playwright.
You mean father-in-law, but that isn't the issue. It's the fact that, in this
doctor's somewhat literate household, there is no evidence at all that
Shakespeare the Playwright was remembered. To fail to be amazed at that is
nothing but partisan rationalization.
Toby Petzold
American
MakBane
>What is in the canon that a mostly self-educated man of his
>time could not have written?
Shakspere could not have taught himself what is inculcated through experience:
the pervasive attitude of classist superiority. Is there any Shakespearean play
in which the protagonists are not preoccupied with the rights and privileges of
high birth? That's one of those circumstantial reasons why I believe the Canon
MUST have been the work of a nobleman such as de Vere. If, as you believe,
Shakespeare wrote his plays as commercial ventures, I can't imagine what the
popular appeal would have been to the groundlings to be so persistently
dismissed and degraded for their low birth.
As for this autodidactism of Shakspere's, I still say it would have left some
evidence of itself. No man is an island, not even reclusive intellectuals. He
SHOULD be mentioned in explicitly literary and/or intellectual terms by SOMEONE
in the learned crowd of the time. If Shakspere was a recluse of the sort you
imagine, he sure picked a strange career path in being part of the public
theater scene.
Toby Petzold
American
Okay Fine
What are you talking about? We're having a discussion of sources. Does
your mind wander? If it frustrates you to discuss things one at a time,
let's just drop it. You don't know what the objections are to your
position: okay, I understand.
> >Please mention only the strongest reasons.
>
> No, asshole, why don't you mention some of the reasons?
> After all, it's up to you to prove your insane theories are correct,
> despite the complete lack of evidence for Oxenforde and
> the huge amount of evidence for Shakespeare.
>
> >Thanks!
>
> Fuck you, moron.
>
> Jim
Jim, what a charming window on your character! Name-calling is a
leading indicator of a poor case or diminished capacity. Was there lead
in your coffee?
So here are the important objections you should already know if you want
to be anything other than a partisan:
> >> Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
Riverside Shakespeare (RS) mentions it as only a possible source.
> >> Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (Coriolanus)
RS: unmentioned.
> >> Strachey "True Repertory of the Wrack...etc" 1610 (Tempest)
Yes, your best case. Although the connections are tenuous, it can't be
ignored. For a first class example of Stratfordian smoke and mirrors,
try http://shakespeareauthorship.com/tempest.html. KathRoss insist the
verbal parallels between Strachey and Shakespeare are numerous and
important. In fact, their best example of a verbal parallel involving
unusual words is this:
"Strachey writes of the "great strokes of thunder, lightning and raine
in the extremity of violence" (15). Trinculo says of Caliban, "I took
him to be kill'd with a thunder-stroke" (2.2.108); and earlier Antonio
says, "They dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke" (2.1.204). (These are
Shakespeare's only two uses of the word "thunder-stroke"; he
usually--seven times--used "thunderbolt.")"
Okay, guys, but Strachey doesn't use the word 'thunder-stroke'. So what
kind of verbal parallel is that? And this is your best...? No wonder
they have to beef up the argument with stuff like this:
"Strachey describes the newly rebuilt ship "when her Masts, Sayles, and
all her Trimme should be about her" (39); in the play the boatswain, in
exactly the same context (Ariel has just magically rebuilt the ship),
tells how "we, in all our trim, freshly beheld / Our royal, good, and
gallant ship" (5.236-37)."
So let me get this straight: a rebuilt ship is described and two writers
use the word 'trim'? I don't think that's any proof they've been
reading each other's mail, unless of course Shakespeare got the word
from Strachey. Well, no, it's in A Comedy of Errors, too, which can
safely be dated before The Tempest.
Additionally, it is striking that The Tempest does not mention that the
Bermudas are not a place of devils and witchcraft but a lovely place
with really nice natives. Shakespeare should have learned that from the
Strachey letter. Why didn't he?
> >> Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
> >> Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
I have never seen a convincing account of how these two are connected.
This depends on one's assessment of the Strachey letter.
> >> Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
RS: "probable source."
> >> Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
You have to be kidding! Fletcher's name is on the title-page, of
course.
Please don't respond. You didn't know the obvious objections, you need
my help to understand this, and I don't want to deal with your kind of
foul-mouthed ignorance.
OF.
Okay Fine
>
> in article 3BCDFC98...@qwest.net, Okay Fine at ein...@qwest.net wrote
> on 10/17/01 5:51 PM:
>
> > Xr...@pXcr8.pXcr.com wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Okay Fine wrote:
> >>
Your stance seems to depend on there being no alteration of the play
after Shakespeare. Is that accurate?
Me:
> > To give you an obvious example, Macbeth's apparent allusions to other
> > works might be allusions to Macbeth instead.
>
Rob:
> It certainly sometimes quite difficult to tell who was alluding to who.
> However, I have to wonder if you bothered to think for even a minute
> about what I wrote, most of which didn't have anything to do with
> a written source. For instance, was King Christian of Denmark's
> visit to England an allusion to Shakespeare's changing Holinshed's
> Danes to Norweyans? While Shakespeare could easily have alluded to
> Christian giving James ten thousand dollars, the idea that Christian was
> alluding to Macbeth is completely ridiculous. The idea that a newly
> arrived Scottish James would have known enough about an English Macbeth to
> borrow part of a theme is not at all likely and if he was going to borrow
> the themes of Peace and Unity, it seems fairly likely he'd have grabbed the
> Concord bit too. The James to Nixon to Marston to Shakepeare evolution
> appears to make perfect sense. You'd have it go how? Shakespeare to
> James. Shakespeare to Nixon, and Shakespeare to Marston? The frequent
> apparent replacing of the word 'God' by the word 'Heaven' in the last two
> acts(presumably due to the 1606 Act of Abuses) is an allusion to what?
>
> > And since the play has
> > been tampered with,
>
> That's not a fact! Some cuts *may* have been made, which isn't
> even relevant to your argument. Whether or not Middleton
> had any hand in it is completely disputable.
No, it's not disputable (and I'll judge what's relevant to my argument,
thank you). I've never read a different opinion. Could you cite three
or offer a good reason to think so?
> > you can hardly expect that the cryptic allusions to
> > the Gunpowder Plot could not have been inserted by Middleton as well.
>
> As I said, the most reasonable default position on any line in
> a Shakespeare play is that it was written by Shakespeare. You
> may wish to skip shouldering the burden of proof, but logic
> dictates otherwise.
>
> Do you need me to explain the meaning of the term "burden
> of proof?" Or is it that you didn't read my previous post
> carefully enough to see that those words were in there? Or
> is it that you think it entirely obvious that the most reasonable
> default position on any line in a Shakespeare play is *not*
> that it was was written by Shakespeare.
You're getting hysterical because your arguments are shot down.
Sorry...
> > That we can detect Middleton's hand in some places virtually guarantees
> > his hand is also present elsewhere.
>
> Faith based presumption. (FWIW, when Middleton is said to have
> written part of the play, his part is generally given to be
> the less than 40 lines in III.v and a dozen or so lines in
> IV.i.)
No, it's entirely logical. If Middleton quotes himself in some places,
and the work shows multiple signs of alteration (even to the plot!),
then it's a fair assumption that the work was also altered in ways that
are not equally obvious. Unless you think it
> > Macbeth seems to fit the profile of a work in progress left behind at
> > the death of the author.
>
> At the very least, that would rule out any allusions to it until it
> was finished and that would mean that each and every violation of Oxfordian
> theory must be excused by an appeal to an intervention by Middleton (or
> whoever else someone might want to put in Shakespeare's place for a line
> or two or three).
Well, yeah, if Middleton did the work and the play was first performed
after he finished it, that sounds like an accurate description of that
possibility. And Middleton might have thought it apt to fashion the
play to include a few recent events as Shakespeare was inclined to do.
That would be completely unremarkable if Oxford left behind a work like
Macbeth.
> Here's your argumemt stripped to its bones:
>
> #1 Some have said that someone other than Shakespeare had a hand in part
> of the play.
This is a really strange way to put it, Rob. I guess your partisanship
is already out of control. It is obvious to anyone who thinks about it
that the play is altered. If you don't know that, you don't know what
you're talking about.
> #2. Therefore, any lines anywhere in the play referring to events or works
> postdating Oxford may have been written by someone other than
> Shakespeare.
That's a fair summary and I don't see a problem with it. One standard
of assessment: if an unequivocal attribution of Macbeth to Oxford
surfaced, by what current evidence would you judge it a forgery? I
don't think you've got a thing. Instead, my view would gain
credibility.
As I already stated, Macbeth is not your best case. It's obviously
tampered with, and the tampering we don't know of is of an undetermined
size.
Middleton surely had his own ego. If, indeed, he was working from an
incomplete manuscript for performance before the king, it seems right in
line with an authorial sensibility for him to make additions to suit
James's tastes and to compliment his guests. It seems Shakespeare did
the same from time to time; why would the company give that up on the
his death?
> I have to note here that there can't be many(if any) Shakespeare plays where
> some scholars haven't supposed that someone other than Shakespeare wrote
> some of the lines,
Oh really? This looks like wishful thinking on your part. How very
strange that you would mention that in this context, where the additions
are obvious.
> which leads us directly to back to Peter's point which is
> that your argument is non-falsifiable. If someone points out a source
> postdating Oxford, you'll either say that it was alluding to Shakespeare or
> you'll say that someone altered the play after Oxford's death.
No, I am sure it's falsifiable. I was once a Stratfordian.
Perhaps the shoe is on the other foot with that: it's telling that you
chose for your best example (I assume) a work that has been so much
altered in such transparently obvious ways. You should know yourself
that it's a bad case, but you persist in presenting it as if there's no
problem. Additionally, you seem to think it strengthens your argument
to deny there are reasonable objections to your view. That's not very
smart.
Have to go...
OF.
Bob Grumman
study his posts and our responses to them. You'd learn a lot since
you are mostly repeating his letters. (For a while, I thought you
might be he.
> >I'm talking about the random letters that REFER to Shakespeare--the
> >ones left behind by Richard Quiney, getting to us (randomly) only
> >because he happened to die while in political office and his personal
> >correspondence, some of it, got preserved along with official Stratford
> >documents.
>
> I thought there was only one such Quiney letter.
One undelivered letter of Quiney's to Shakespeare that suggests
Quiney needed money and thought Shakespeare could help.
William Basse, to answer you next question, wrote a poem to
Shakespeare between 1616 and 1623 (according to all who believe,
as you said you did, that Jonson was answering him, but that
Volker and others do not, for reasons you can find out by
doing an HLAS search for "Basse," I'm sure). There are quite
a few manuscript copies of it extant, some of which have the date
of death, but it wasn't published, with date of death, till 1632 or
1633. No problem since it indicates that Shakespeare died after
Beaumont, who died in 1616.
> >Actually, Phillips should worry you more. And he's nothing compared
> >to the monument.
>
> No way about Phillips. He's easy to dispense with.
> Jonson's the bete noire.
Phillips on his deathbed, with no reasonable reason to be lying, calls
Shakespeare his fellow (actor) AND alive long after Oxford was dead.
Of course, you can assume that the First Folio Shakespeare the Author
was different from the First Folio Shakespeare the Actor, and that
no one bothered to distinguish the two, but you need to be a pretty
impervious rigidnik to do that.
> >> His wealth was political office enough, don't you think? The Welcombe
> >> enclosures suggest his civic-mindedness.
> >
> >Ha ha. But your side usually goes on at length about how
> >hard Shakspyr worked to get a coat of arms. Political office
> >would seem to be the same kind of thing.
>
> This secret ambition for the alderman's pinkie ring you insist on attributing
> to Shakspere is really strange, Bob. He wouldn't have given a rat's ass about
> occupying the offices his dad did because he probably knew too well what a pain
> they were. The guy is making major bank and you think he cares about having a
> front-row pew at church? It's almost as strange as him writing that impresa for
> 44 shillings: why would he have bothered?
Why do you ignore the reasons I gave for his wanting high office
in his hometown--if he were only a wheeler-dealer? All this crap
about how important being a gent was to him, but he would not have
wanted to be an alderman?
As for the impresa, I listed several reasons he might make one.
Pocket change, favor to a friend, an interesting fun little artistic
challenge, a desire not to offend a noble . . .
SNIP
> You mean father-in-law, but that isn't the issue. It's the fact that, in this
> doctor's somewhat literate household, there is no evidence at all that
> Shakespeare the Playwright was remembered. To fail to be amazed at that is
> nothing but partisan rationalization.
No, Toby, to be amazed at it is to be guilty of a rigidnikal inability
to accept easily-explained gaps in our knowledge. How many documents
do we have, for instance, from Marlowe's parents and sisters that
mention Marlowe, much less mention his vocation? Why is it so hard
for you to accept that we have very few unofficial letters from the
time AND that Shakespeare may not have been a prophet in his own
country, etc.?
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk107.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.136]
Tom Reedy
Can anybody point out any substantive answer he gave Rob? He doesn't deal in
them.
And no, I'm not mad; I'm highly amused.
TR
"Okay Fine" <ein...@qwest.net> wrote in message
news:3BCF2A53...@qwest.net...
MakBane
>I'm serious, Toby: you should do a search on Richie at HLAS, and
>study his posts and our responses to them. You'd learn a lot since
>you are mostly repeating his letters. (For a while, I thought you
>might be he.
Bob, you tell me that so often that I think you're trying to send me subliminal
messages. What would I with a quisling?
>> >I'm talking about the random letters that REFER to Shakespeare--the
>> >ones left behind by Richard Quiney, getting to us (randomly) only
>> >because he happened to die while in political office and his personal
>> >correspondence, some of it, got preserved along with official Stratford
>> >documents.
>>
>> I thought there was only one such Quiney letter.
>
>One undelivered letter of Quiney's to Shakespeare that suggests
>Quiney needed money and thought Shakespeare could help.
I don't think that's evidence that Shakspere was a writer.
>William Basse, to answer you next question, wrote a poem to
>Shakespeare between 1616 and 1623 (according to all who believe,
>as you said you did, that Jonson was answering him, but that
>Volker and others do not, for reasons you can find out by
>doing an HLAS search for "Basse," I'm sure).
I had no idea that there was any other way to see it.
>There are quite
>a few manuscript copies of it extant, some of which have the date
>of death, but it wasn't published, with date of death, till 1632 or
>1633. No problem since it indicates that Shakespeare died after
>Beaumont, who died in 1616.
How does Shakspere dying after Beaumont keep the poem from being written as
late as 1623? Did Basse only circulate it in manuscript form?
(I'm going to see if I can find out when the misattributed plays were published
as being by Shakespeare. My understanding of the Stratfordian view is that the
Author's career petered out about 1613 when he is thought to have moved home
permanently. Did people try to capitalize on the name in the interim?)
>> >Actually, Phillips should worry you more. And he's nothing compared
>> >to the monument.
>>
>> No way about Phillips. He's easy to dispense with.
>> Jonson's the bete noire.
>
>Phillips on his deathbed, with no reasonable reason to be lying, calls
>Shakespeare his fellow (actor) AND alive long after Oxford was dead.
>Of course, you can assume that the First Folio Shakespeare the Author
>was different from the First Folio Shakespeare the Actor, and that
>no one bothered to distinguish the two, but you need to be a pretty
>impervious rigidnik to do that.
Impervious Rex! That's me.
>> >> His wealth was political office enough, don't you think? The Welcombe
>> >> enclosures suggest his civic-mindedness.
>> >
>> >Ha ha. But your side usually goes on at length about how
>> >hard Shakspyr worked to get a coat of arms. Political office
>> >would seem to be the same kind of thing.
>>
>> This secret ambition for the alderman's pinkie ring you insist on
>attributing
>> to Shakspere is really strange, Bob. He wouldn't have given a rat's ass
>about
>> occupying the offices his dad did because he probably knew too well what a
>pain
>> they were. The guy is making major bank and you think he cares about having
>a
>> front-row pew at church? It's almost as strange as him writing that impresa
>for
>> 44 shillings: why would he have bothered?
>
>Why do you ignore the reasons I gave for his wanting high office
>in his hometown--if he were only a wheeler-dealer? All this crap
>about how important being a gent was to him, but he would not have
>wanted to be an alderman?
I don't think he would. But it's a moot point.
>As for the impresa, I listed several reasons he might make one.
>Pocket change, favor to a friend, an interesting fun little artistic
>challenge, a desire not to offend a noble . . .
Mmmm....
>SNIP
>
>> You mean father-in-law, but that isn't the issue. It's the fact that, in
>this
>> doctor's somewhat literate household, there is no evidence at all that
>> Shakespeare the Playwright was remembered. To fail to be amazed at that is
>> nothing but partisan rationalization.
>
>No, Toby, to be amazed at it is to be guilty of a rigidnikal inability
>to accept easily-explained gaps in our knowledge. How many documents
>do we have, for instance, from Marlowe's parents and sisters that
>mention Marlowe, much less mention his vocation? Why is it so hard
>for you to accept that we have very few unofficial letters from the
>time AND that Shakespeare may not have been a prophet in his own
>country, etc.?
Marlowe, schmarlowe. That guy gets entirely too much play around here. But,
isn't it strange that, as little as we know of him, we still have a sense of
him as being something credibly connectible to the idea of being a writer? El
Kyd sold him down the river to the cops, but at least we got a picture of him.
Toby Petzold
American/Non-Doppelganger
MakBane
>
>>As an Oxfordian, I am obligated to believe that there was some inducement to
>>Condell and Heminge to allow their names to be used in the preface, even
>>though
>>it is a good bet that Jonson was behind the whole thing. Besides those two
>>gentlemen's wills, I have not yet come across any other personal documents
>of
>>theirs, although I'm sure they must have written letters. (Does anyone
>know?)
Jim:
>Nope, never seen any others. That makes sense, since they were
>actors and business men, not writers.
So, in their middle ages, Condell and Heminge bust out with the one and only
letter of their entire lives. I refuse to believe that. But what's this about
their being actors and businessmen as a reason why they should never have
otherwise written anything? Wasn't Shakspere the same as them?
>>>(4) In the dedication Heminge and Condell declare that they "onely to keepe
>>>the memory of so worthy a Friend, & and Fellow aliue, as was our
>>>SHAKESPEARE"
>>
>>This is part of the conspiracy. After a long association with their friend
>>and
>>seven years after his death, only then do they write of him? That degree of
>>belatedness and unprecedence is rather odd.
>
>You just noted the absence of other writings by these men in your
>statement above. Why would they write anything except for a special
>occassion like the publication of Shakespeare's work?
I didn't know that they had never written anything else ---and still don't. Do
you think they were literary cicadas who only came out once or twice to write
on a "special occasion"?
Toby Petzold
American
KQKnave
No, but yours apparently does.
> If it frustrates you to discuss things one at a time,
>let's just drop it. You don't know what the objections are to your
>position: okay, I understand.
I'll spell it out for you: you say there is "skeptical doubt" for the
sources. I say there is "skeptical doubt", in fact there is proof,
that Oxford did not write the plays of Shakespeare and that
William Shakespeare of Stratford did. Try rereading the paragraph
I wrote above. Perhaps you'll be able to piece together its meaning
with some forthright application on your part.
>
>> >Please mention only the strongest reasons.
>>
>> No, asshole, why don't you mention some of the reasons?
>> After all, it's up to you to prove your insane theories are correct,
>> despite the complete lack of evidence for Oxenforde and
>> the huge amount of evidence for Shakespeare.
>>
>> >Thanks!
>>
>> Fuck you, moron.
>>
>> Jim
>
>Jim, what a charming window on your character! Name-calling is a
>leading indicator of a poor case or diminished capacity. Was there lead
>in your coffee?
No, I'm just tired of arguing with a moron who claims that Oxford
wrote the works of Shakespeare, then asks me to refute the evidence
against that position, rather than do it himself, since the onus is on him.
>So here are the important objections you should already know if you want
>to be anything other than a partisan:
Here is an important objection to Oxford's authorship: he died in 1604,
so he couldn't have written the Tempest or the Funeral Elegy.
>
>> >> Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
>Riverside Shakespeare (RS) mentions it as only a possible source.
All sources are "possible" sources, unless you have a videotape of
Shakespeare writing King Lear with Marston's play open by his side.
*You* were the one who brought up the issue of sources, so don't
dismiss them because they are "possible". And the Riverside
Shakespeare is not the final arbiter, in any case.
>> >> Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (Coriolanus)
>RS: unmentioned.
My edition (1974) lists this as a source for Coriolanus, but it's
a mistake: it's a source for King Lear.
>> >> Strachey "True Repertory of the Wrack...etc" 1610 (Tempest)
>Yes, your best case. Although the connections are tenuous, it can't be
>ignored. For a first class example of Stratfordian smoke and mirrors,
>try http://shakespeareauthorship.com/tempest.html. KathRoss insist the
>verbal parallels between Strachey and Shakespeare are numerous and
>important. In fact, their best example of a verbal parallel involving
>unusual words is this:
Oh please. There are about 50 parallels on that page, many are better
than the one you give here, and the issue depends on both the number
and quality of the parallels. Here is one:
"Strachey has a description of St. Elmo's fire that corresponds in many
particulars to Ariel's description of his magical
boarding of the King's ship. Strachey: "Sir George Somers . . . had an
apparition of a little round light, like a faint Starre,
trembling, and streaming along with a sparkeling blaze, halfe the
height upon the Maine Mast, and shooting sometimes
from Shroud to Shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the foure
Shrouds . . . running sometimes along the
Maine-yard to the very end, and then returning . . . but upon a sodaine,
towards the morning watch, they lost the sight of
it, and knew not which way it made . . . Could it have served us now
miraculously to have taken our height by, it might
have strucken amazement" (11-12). Ariel:
I boarded the King's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement. Sometimes I'ld divide,
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and boresprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join. Jove's lightning, the precursors
O' th' dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not; (1.2.196-203)"
>
>"Strachey writes of the "great strokes of thunder, lightning and raine
>in the extremity of violence" (15). Trinculo says of Caliban, "I took
>him to be kill'd with a thunder-stroke" (2.2.108); and earlier Antonio
>says, "They dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke" (2.1.204). (These are
>Shakespeare's only two uses of the word "thunder-stroke"; he
>usually--seven times--used "thunderbolt.")"
>
>Okay, guys, but Strachey doesn't use the word 'thunder-stroke'. So what
>kind of verbal parallel is that? And this is your best...?
Who said it was the best? You, and who else?
>No wonder
>they have to beef up the argument with stuff like this:
>
>"Strachey describes the newly rebuilt ship "when her Masts, Sayles, and
>all her Trimme should be about her" (39); in the play the boatswain, in
>exactly the same context (Ariel has just magically rebuilt the ship),
>tells how "we, in all our trim, freshly beheld / Our royal, good, and
>gallant ship" (5.236-37)."
>
>So let me get this straight: a rebuilt ship is described and two writers
>use the word 'trim'? I don't think that's any proof they've been
>reading each other's mail, unless of course Shakespeare got the word
>from Strachey. Well, no, it's in A Comedy of Errors, too, which can
>safely be dated before The Tempest.
>
>Additionally, it is striking that The Tempest does not mention that the
>Bermudas are not a place of devils and witchcraft but a lovely place
>with really nice natives. Shakespeare should have learned that from the
>Strachey letter. Why didn't he?
What are you talking about? In the Tempest, Ariel refers to the
"still vex'd Bermoothes" (i.e., the stormy Bermudas). He has
hidden the ship with it's sailors there in a nook and cast
a spell over them. Sounds like witchcraft to me. Here is more from the
Shakespeare authorship page:
"Strachey writes about how it had been thought that the Bermudas
were "given over to Devils and wicked Spirits" (14);
Jourdain calls it "the Ile of Divels" (title page) and "a most prodigious
and enchanted place" (8); A True Declaration
says that "these Islands of the Bermudos, have ever beene accounted
as an enchaunted pile of rockes, and a desert
inhabitation for Divels; but all the Fairies of the rocks were but flocks of
birds, and all the Divels that haunted the woods,
were but heards of swine" (10-11). Such references certainly could
have been the germ which suggested to Shakespeare
the magic elements of the play; note that Ariel at 1.2.214-15 quotes
Ferdinand as saying, "Hell is empty, / And all the
devils are here," and that "devils" are mentioned a dozen times
altogether in the play."
>
>> >> Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
>> >> Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in
>Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
>I have never seen a convincing account of how these two are connected.
>This depends on one's assessment of the Strachey letter.
How are they connected? Well, they both contain descriptions of the same
events. How's that?
>> >> Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
>RS: "probable source."
All sources are "probable sources".
>> >> Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
>You have to be kidding! Fletcher's name is on the title-page, of
>course.
William Shakespeare's hand in this play is well known.
>Please don't respond. You didn't know the obvious objections, you need
>my help to understand this, and I don't want to deal with your kind of
>foul-mouthed ignorance.
I don't need your help for anything, moron. You need a psychiatrist.
Jim
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>>(MakBane) writes:
>>
>>>As an Oxfordian, I am obligated to believe that there was some inducement
>to
>>>Condell and Heminge to allow their names to be used in the preface, even
>>>though
>>>it is a good bet that Jonson was behind the whole thing. Besides those two
>>>gentlemen's wills, I have not yet come across any other personal documents
>>of
>>>theirs, although I'm sure they must have written letters. (Does anyone
>>know?)
>
>Jim:
>
>>Nope, never seen any others. That makes sense, since they were
>>actors and business men, not writers.
>
>So, in their middle ages, Condell and Heminge bust out with the one and only
>letter of their entire lives. I refuse to believe that. But what's this about
>their being actors and businessmen as a reason why they should never have
>otherwise written anything? Wasn't Shakspere the same as them?
They bust out with the one and only public writing that we know of. What
is hard to believe about it? Some people never write a public thing in
their life until it's time to write the obituary for a loved one.
>
>>>>(4) In the dedication Heminge and Condell declare that they "onely to
>keepe
>>>>the memory of so worthy a Friend, & and Fellow aliue, as was our
>>>>SHAKESPEARE"
>>>
>>>This is part of the conspiracy. After a long association with their friend
>>>and
>>>seven years after his death, only then do they write of him? That degree of
>>>belatedness and unprecedence is rather odd.
>>
>>You just noted the absence of other writings by these men in your
>>statement above. Why would they write anything except for a special
>>occassion like the publication of Shakespeare's work?
>
>I didn't know that they had never written anything else ---and still don't.
What is your point? Please spell it out, because you have lost me here
completely.
>Do
>you think they were literary cicadas who only came out once or twice to write
>on a "special occasion"?
Why not? We don't have any other writing by them.
Jim
Okay Fine
your views to match the evidence.
OF.
Okay Fine
Shakespearean source that postdates Oxford would contradict
Oxfordianism. You offered a couple sources that you believed fit the
bill.
Now you turn around and claim that your sources don't have to be
convincing because Oxford didn't write Shakespeare's works anyway.
But that's what you're trying to demonstrate!
So you see, Jim, you really can't rescue yourself from my objections by
claiming that they contradict the conclusion. You haven't gotten there
yet.
Aquinas made the same mistake when he was after the cosmological
argument.
OF.
MakBane
>Let me explain: a falsifiable theory is one that makes predictions that
>might fail, so that one could conceive of some possible discovery of
>evidence that would refute its claims. The theory of evolution (by natural
>selection or any other means) is falsifiable in this sense: if we found
>human skeletons embedded in Devonian rocks it would disprove the theory,
>because the theory states that humans are descended from mammalian
>precursors that had not yet developed in the Devonian. Its rival,
>Creationism, however, is not falsifiable, because with God all things (and
>all appearances) are possible: no conceivable piece of evidence could prove
>that the universe wasn't made by God (or, for that matter, vomited up by a
>cosmic serpent).
>
>Thus non-falsifiable theories are really belief-systems, impervious to
>disproof. Now Stratfordianism is clearly a falsifiable theory: it would
>collapse overnight if someone found a relevant document of unimpeachable
>authenticity, such as an account in the royal archives that said "To Mr Ben
>IOHNSON, xxxiiij shillings per annum and a Tunne of good ayle so long as he
>shal mayntayne yt ye Earle of Oxenfords plaies were wrytt by ye common
>plaier Will. Shakesper".
You conceded that Stratfordianism is a belief system when you termed it a
theory, falsifiable or not. It is an "ism" that competes. And its practitioners
would, in the event of the discovery you hypothesized, NEVER permit the
collapse of their belief system. They would change into their enemies and
denounce the document as a hoax. Therefore, it is a political struggle between
Stratfordianism and Oxfordianism thats only purpose is to give us helter
skelter and a giant chew-toy.
>But Oxfordians seem to claim that whatever the
>*apparent* evidence that can be found for Shakespeare as playwright, it is
>simply an artefact of the effort to conceal Oxford's authorship (as, too, is
>the lack of evidence for Oxford's authorship), which seems to make it an
>unfalsifiable faith rather than a falsifiable theory.
The Question is sui generis. Shakespeare's true identity is perceived as
dubious because the apparent evidence in favor of Shakspere, which is strictly
documentary, cannot rationally be reconciled to the voice of the Canon. I know
that's an amorphous objection to accepting Willy of Nazareth as my lord and
savior, but see it my way: nobody's ever going to find a Homo sapiens fossil in
a Devonian context. At some point, implausibilities become impossibilities.
Virtuality turns to absoluteness. Stratfordianism is unable to explain some
very great discrepancies, and I would be wrong to ever believe in its version
of the truth.
>So, what I was asking is whether you could imagine a hypothetical new piece
>of evidence (unearthed in the British Museum, Holy Trinity Church, the
>Folger library or wherever) that you would accept as refuting your
>contention that Oxford was the Author?
Only if it disproved Shakspere, too.
Toby Petzold
American (Non-Transitional Form)
Okay Fine
No, the onus is on you. To review: you said that you could meet my
challenge and offer sources of Shakespeare that postdate Oxford. If you
can't do it, you don't contradict the proposition Oxford = Shakespeare.
If you can, you score an Oxfordian. Obviously, you don't meet the
challenge by reclaiming that I was already wrong before I made the
challenge. We already know you think that. You have to actually
produce the goods: a source that persuasively postdates Oxford.
> >So here are the important objections you should already know if you want
> >to be anything other than a partisan:
>
> Here is an important objection to Oxford's authorship: he died in 1604,
> so he couldn't have written the Tempest or the Funeral Elegy.
My heavens but you're dense.
> >
> >> >> Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
> >Riverside Shakespeare (RS) mentions it as only a possible source.
>
> All sources are "possible" sources, unless you have a videotape of
> Shakespeare writing King Lear with Marston's play open by his side.
That's stupid. Cut the stupid stuff before you click SEND. I mean it,
I'm sick of reading your ill-considered nonsense.
> *You* were the one who brought up the issue of sources, so don't
> dismiss them because they are "possible". And the Riverside
> Shakespeare is not the final arbiter, in any case.
No, it's a mainstream Stratfordian publication, so you can't argue with
it easily.
> >> >> Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (Coriolanus)
> >RS: unmentioned.
>
> My edition (1974) lists this as a source for Coriolanus, but it's
> a mistake: it's a source for King Lear.
Which passage in Lear?
There really are no verbal parallels here. Both mention "amazement" but
that's hardly surprising.
Strachey: trembling, streaming, sparkling, blaze, shooting, shroud,
tempting, main-yard, main mast.
Shakespeare: flam'd, burn, flame, Jove's lightning, sight-outrunning,
yards, beak.
Where did Shakespeare borrow from Strachey in this passage? And I take
it this is your best example. You chose it yourself. There is nothing
there.
> >"Strachey writes of the "great strokes of thunder, lightning and raine
> >in the extremity of violence" (15). Trinculo says of Caliban, "I took
> >him to be kill'd with a thunder-stroke" (2.2.108); and earlier Antonio
> >says, "They dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke" (2.1.204). (These are
> >Shakespeare's only two uses of the word "thunder-stroke"; he
> >usually--seven times--used "thunderbolt.")"
> >
> >Okay, guys, but Strachey doesn't use the word 'thunder-stroke'. So what
> >kind of verbal parallel is that? And this is your best...?
>
> Who said it was the best? You, and who else?
I believe 'thunder-stroke' is the rarest word in Shakespeare that
Kathman claims comes from Strachey. Common words don't get you anything
(and many of the 50 you mention are very common words). The
correlations that matter are rare words that Shakespeare introduced in
the Tempest that also appear in Strachey.
Okay, I'll repeat: the revelation of the Bermudas that came from the
voyage Strachey documents is that it was not merely a place of devils
and witchcraft as previously believed. No, those who lived with its
natives nine months found the place lovely and the natives friendly.
NOT devils, and NOT witches. The question again: why didn't Shakespeare
learn that from reading Strachey's letter?
> >> >> Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
> >> >> Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in
> >Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
> >I have never seen a convincing account of how these two are connected.
> >This depends on one's assessment of the Strachey letter.
>
> How are they connected? Well, they both contain descriptions of the same
> events. How's that?
>
> >> >> Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
> >RS: "probable source."
>
> All sources are "probable sources".
That's stupid. Do you think you're fooling someone? You can see for
yourself that RS lists some works as "Sources", some as "Probable
Sources", and some as "Possible Sources." So what kind of lame point
are you trying to make? Are you trying to fool someone by misstating
what it says in RS? Why would you do that? Aren't you interested in the
truth? Afraid you'll lose the argument if you don't make stuff up? Or
are you trying to fool yourself?
Russell said that people are more interested in certainty than the
truth. You make him look pretty smart.
> >> >> Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
> >You have to be kidding! Fletcher's name is on the title-page, of
> >course.
>
> William Shakespeare's hand in this play is well known.
And? Or do you mean to say that you're too dim to see the implication
to your claim when Fletcher's name is there as co-author? Hello, Jim!
Fletcher might have read it! Damn, I'm amazed I have to point these
things out to you.
OF.
Bob Grumman
> >study his posts and our responses to them. You'd learn a lot since
> >you are mostly repeating his letters. (For a while, I thought you
> >might be he.
>
> Bob, you tell me that so often that I think you're trying to send me subliminal
> messages. What would I with a quisling?
>
to repeat things to you that I said to Richie; (2) test yourself
against Richie--that is, see if you really have a stronger case than
he.
> >One undelivered letter of Quiney's to Shakespeare that suggests
> >Quiney needed money and thought Shakespeare could help.
> I don't think that's evidence that Shakspere was a writer.
That wasn't the point under discussion; the point under discussion
was what kind of letters survived the centuries.
> >William Basse, to answer you next question, wrote a poem to
> >Shakespeare between 1616 and 1623 (according to all who believe,
> >as you said you did, that Jonson was answering him, but that
> >Volker and others do not, for reasons you can find out by
> >doing an HLAS search for "Basse," I'm sure).
>
> I had no idea that there was any other way to see it.
>
> >There are quite
> >a few manuscript copies of it extant, some of which have the date
> >of death, but it wasn't published, with date of death, till 1632 or
> >1633. No problem since it indicates that Shakespeare died after
> >Beaumont, who died in 1616.
>
> How does Shakspere dying after Beaumont keep the poem from being written as
> late as 1623? Did Basse only circulate it in manuscript form?
Wake up, Toby. That Shakespeare died after Beaumont, according to
Basse, is evidence that Shakespeare was not Oxford, who died before
Beaumont. The Basse poem could have been written as late as 1623; we
don't know--at least, as far as I know--what Basse did about
circulating the poem. He could have written one copy that others
copied and circulated; he could have actively sought to get it into
a book, or others could have decided without his knowledge to put it
into a book.
He's just an easy example. So tell me of some other playwright of the
time whose family mentions him as a writer? Other than Jonson's
mother's memoir.
> But, isn't it strange that, as little as we know of him, we still have a sense of
> him as being something credibly connectible to the idea of being a writer? El
> Kyd sold him down the river to the cops, but at least we got a picture of him.
No, it's not strange; Marlowe was part of a group of university wits,
and prominent in LITERARY circles; Shakespeare was not a member of such
a group, and prominent in THEATRICAL circles.
Bob Grumman
--
Posted from dunk74.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.103]
Tom Reedy
semantic tricks can unwrite history. You've given us all sorts of evidence
for that. The fact that I don't intend to get sucked into your swamp of
specious non-logic does not mean that you're getting away with anything.
Unless you decide to accept reality, you will die knowing that you've wasted
your best efforts on a fringe belief that will never be taken seriously by
more than a few nut cases. Does that make you feel clever?
Have a happy time making assholes for hobby horses.
TR
"Okay Fine" <ein...@qwest.net> wrote in message
news:3BCFC4CF...@qwest.net...
Okay Fine
OF.
John W. Kennedy
> Jim:
> >What is in the canon that a mostly self-educated man of his
> >time could not have written?
> Shakspere could not have taught himself what is inculcated through experience:
> the pervasive attitude of classist superiority.
You really have no idea of how a stratified society actually works, do
you? I suppose in your mind, Sam Weller keeps the complete works of
Thomas Payne under his mattress.
> Is there any Shakespearean play
> in which the protagonists are not preoccupied with the rights and privileges of
> high birth?
A good many of them -- most notably, of course, "The Merry Wives of
Windsor". But even if it were so, how would you explain "The Lord of
the Rings", or 90% of Sir Walter Scott's oeuvre -- all written by the
Earl of Burma and the Prince Regent, I suppose?
For a more extreme example, explain how Dorothy L. Sayers ever managed
to write "The Man Born to be King" -- or even the Lord Peter Wimsey
mysteries, for that matter.
> That's one of those circumstantial reasons why I believe the Canon
> MUST have been the work of a nobleman such as de Vere.
Another place where you fall down is that most of the important
high-born characters in Shakespeare are, in fact, royal, which Oxenford
was not.
> If, as you believe,
> Shakespeare wrote his plays as commercial ventures, I can't imagine what the
> popular appeal would have been to the groundlings to be so persistently
> dismissed and degraded for their low birth.
And the same argument over again to that. Have you never heard of
"Dallas"? or "Dynasty"? People have been fascinated by the doings of
their betters since time began.
> As for this autodidactism of Shakspere's, I still say it would have left some
> evidence of itself.
Plenty. His half-assed notions of astronomy. His belief that the minor
nobility lived like the middle class (e.g., Capulet's relations with his
servants). His wholesale ignorance of Greek literature unmediated
through Latin or English. His general ignorance of court protocol.
> No man is an island, not even reclusive intellectuals. He
> SHOULD be mentioned in explicitly literary and/or intellectual terms by SOMEONE
> in the learned crowd of the time. If Shakspere was a recluse of the sort you
> imagine, he sure picked a strange career path in being part of the public
> theater scene.
No, he wasn't a recluse. But he was a theater man, divorced from the
intellectual establishment. How many professors today write books about
Neil Simon or J. Michael Straczynski? And we are a far more
introspective age than was his -- better, how many papers at Oxford or
Cambridge were written in the 50's about Spike Milligan and "The Goon
Show"?
--
John W. Kennedy
(Working from my laptop)
MakBane
>>>
>>>>As an Oxfordian, I am obligated to believe that there was some inducement
>>to
>>>>Condell and Heminge to allow their names to be used in the preface, even
>>>>though
>>>>it is a good bet that Jonson was behind the whole thing. Besides those two
>>>>gentlemen's wills, I have not yet come across any other personal documents
>>>of
>>>>theirs, although I'm sure they must have written letters. (Does anyone
>>>know?)
>>
>>Jim:
>>
>>>Nope, never seen any others. That makes sense, since they were
>>>actors and business men, not writers.
>>
>>So, in their middle ages, Condell and Heminge bust out with the one and only
>>letter of their entire lives. I refuse to believe that. But what's this
>about
>>their being actors and businessmen as a reason why they should never have
>>otherwise written anything? Wasn't Shakspere the same as them?
Jim:
>They bust out with the one and only public writing that we know of.
You've shifted from "personal documents" to "public writing." I guess it's two
more cases of people whom we might expect to have written something becoming
victims of the Non-Survivability of Manuscripts syndrome.
>What
>is hard to believe about it? Some people never write a public thing in
>their life until it's time to write the obituary for a loved one.
Either they could and did write (and all other such examples have been lost to
time) or they could not write (and Jonson put their names on the epistle).
Neither one is very satisfactory.
>>>>>(4) In the dedication Heminge and Condell declare that they "onely to
>>keepe
>>>>>the memory of so worthy a Friend, & and Fellow aliue, as was our
>>>>>SHAKESPEARE"
>>>>
>>>>This is part of the conspiracy. After a long association with their friend
>>>>and
>>>>seven years after his death, only then do they write of him? That degree
>of
>>>>belatedness and unprecedence is rather odd.
>>>
>>>You just noted the absence of other writings by these men in your
>>>statement above. Why would they write anything except for a special
>>>occassion like the publication of Shakespeare's work?
>>
>>I didn't know that they had never written anything else ---and still don't.
>
>What is your point? Please spell it out, because you have lost me here
>completely.
There's no point. Just another episode of curiosity.
>>Do
>>you think they were literary cicadas who only came out once or twice to
>write
>>on a "special occasion"?
>
>Why not? We don't have any other writing by them.
Do you think it's possible that Jonson wrote their epistle for them?
Toby Petzold
American
KQKnave
>The beginning of this discussion was my post allowing that a
>Shakespearean source that postdates Oxford would contradict
>Oxfordianism. You offered a couple sources that you believed fit the
>bill.
Actually, I offered seven, and there are probably more if anyone
wanted to look hard enough.
>Now you turn around and claim that your sources don't have to be
>convincing because Oxford didn't write Shakespeare's works anyway.
So you're a liar as well. I said no such thing. Please quote the
text where I said such a thing.
You asked for sources of Shakespeare later than 1604. I provided
them. Then you dismissed some of them because the Riverside
Shakespeare said that they were only "probable". I said
that you brought up the issue of sources, and that all sources
are "probable", so if you don't want to believe the sources you
are given because they are only "probable", you shouldn't
rely on sources at all.
>But that's what you're trying to demonstrate!
>
>So you see, Jim, you really can't rescue yourself from my objections by
>claiming that they contradict the conclusion. You haven't gotten there
>yet.
>
>Aquinas made the same mistake when he was after the cosmological
>argument.
You are a moron. Do you really think you are fooling anyone?
Jim
KQKnave
>No, the onus is on you. To review: you said that you could meet my
>challenge and offer sources of Shakespeare that postdate Oxford. If you
>can't do it, you don't contradict the proposition Oxford = Shakespeare.
>If you can, you score an Oxfordian. Obviously, you don't meet the
>challenge by reclaiming that I was already wrong before I made the
>challenge.
I did no such thing. *You* dismissed some of the sources as
only *probable*, and I said all sources are only probable, so
don't bring up sources if you are going to dismiss them as only
probable. In addition, you originally asked for *evidence* that
Shakespearean sources postdate Oxford's death. Here is
what you said:
"My answer still seems pretty good: to rule out Oxford, evidence that a
Shakespearean source postdates his death. It's just too much that the
author stopped reading in 1604, right when Oxford took his leave."
I've provided the evidence. If you want *proof*, you won't find
it by using sources, because as I said, nobody videotaped
Shakespeare writing something with one of the sources open
by his side.
>We already know you think that. You have to actually
>produce the goods: a source that persuasively postdates Oxford.
Persuasive to whom? The sources I provided are persuasive to the
majority of scholars. Please note that there is more than one
source (seven, to be exact) Please demonstrate
beyond a shadow of a doubt that *all* of the sources below are not
sources for Shakespeare, otherwise I'm afraid you'll have
to drop the case entirely.
Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (King Lear)
Strachey "True Repertory of the Wrack...etc" 1610 (Tempest)
Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of
the Colony in Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
>> >So here are the important objections you should already know if you want
>> >to be anything other than a partisan:
>>
>> Here is an important objection to Oxford's authorship: he died in 1604,
>> so he couldn't have written the Tempest or the Funeral Elegy.
>
>My heavens but you're dense.
No, you're dense. You want to dismiss sources on trivial grounds
but you ignore the major impossibilities involved with the idea
that Oxford wrote the canon.
>> >> >> Marston's "Malcontent" 1604 (King Lear)
>> >Riverside Shakespeare (RS) mentions it as only a possible source.
>>
>> All sources are "possible" sources, unless you have a videotape of
>> Shakespeare writing King Lear with Marston's play open by his side.
>
>That's stupid. Cut the stupid stuff before you click SEND. I mean it,
>I'm sick of reading your ill-considered nonsense.
Why is it stupid? You are the one dismissing sources because the
Riverside Shakespeare only considers them to be *probable*. *That's*
stupid!
>
>> *You* were the one who brought up the issue of sources, so don't
>> dismiss them because they are "possible". And the Riverside
>> Shakespeare is not the final arbiter, in any case.
>
>No, it's a mainstream Stratfordian publication, so you can't argue with
>it easily.
Oh, I see. But *you* can argue with it, I take it?
>
>> >> >> Camden "Remains...Concerning Britain" 1605 (Coriolanus)
>> >RS: unmentioned.
>>
>> My edition (1974) lists this as a source for Coriolanus, but it's
>> a mistake: it's a source for King Lear.
>
>Which passage in Lear?
Here is a passage from Camden:
"Ina King of West-Saxons, had three daughters, of whom upon a time
he demanded whether they did love him, and so would do during their
lives, above all others; the two elder sware deeply they would;
the yougest, but the wisest, told her father without flattery: That
albeit she did love, honour and reverence him, and so would whilst
she lived, as much as nature and daughterly duty at the uttermost
could expect: Yet she did thinke that one day it would come to
passe, that she should affect another more fervently, meaning her
husband, when she were married: Who being made one flesh with
her, as God by commandement had told, and nature had taught
her, she was to cleave fast to, forsaking father and mother, kiffe
and kin. (Anonymous) One referreth this to the daughters of
King Leir."
The point of most of these parallels is that similar words are used
in the same context. In this particular case, the mention of St. Elmo's
fire is the most important thing, along with the description of jumping
from place to place on the ship. Can you point to any other descriptions
of St. Elmo's fire plus or minus 20 years from 1610?
>
>Strachey: trembling, streaming, sparkling, blaze, shooting, shroud,
>tempting, main-yard, main mast.
>Shakespeare: flam'd, burn, flame, Jove's lightning, sight-outrunning,
>yards, beak.
>
>Where did Shakespeare borrow from Strachey in this passage? And I take
>it this is your best example. You chose it yourself. There is nothing
>there.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. There are many good examples,
I don't choose which one is "best" because they must all be considered
together.
>
>> >"Strachey writes of the "great strokes of thunder, lightning and raine
>> >in the extremity of violence" (15). Trinculo says of Caliban, "I took
>> >him to be kill'd with a thunder-stroke" (2.2.108); and earlier Antonio
>> >says, "They dropp'd, as by a thunder-stroke" (2.1.204). (These are
>> >Shakespeare's only two uses of the word "thunder-stroke"; he
>> >usually--seven times--used "thunderbolt.")"
>> >
>> >Okay, guys, but Strachey doesn't use the word 'thunder-stroke'. So what
>> >kind of verbal parallel is that? And this is your best...?
>>
>> Who said it was the best? You, and who else?
>
>I believe 'thunder-stroke' is the rarest word in Shakespeare that
>Kathman claims comes from Strachey. Common words don't get you anything
>(and many of the 50 you mention are very common words). The
>correlations that matter are rare words that Shakespeare introduced in
>the Tempest that also appear in Strachey.
Rare words are not the issue: one issue is the use of the *same or
similar words in the same or similar context.*
Gee, I dunno. Maybe because he wanted to write a story about an
enchanted isle? "Such references certainly could have been the
GERM which suggested to Shakespeare the magic elements of
the play." Get it? The point is that Strachey, Jourdain and the
Virginia company stories *suggested* the idea for the story. They
were not something that Shakespeare copied literally in every
instance. This is obvious to all but idiots.
>> >> >> Jourdain "A Discovery of the Bermudas" 1610 (Tempest)
>> >> >> Virginia Council "True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in
>> >Virginia" 1610 (Tempest)
>> >I have never seen a convincing account of how these two are connected.
>> >This depends on one's assessment of the Strachey letter.
>>
>> How are they connected? Well, they both contain descriptions of the same
>> events. How's that?
>>
>> >> >> Rowley "When You See Me You Know Me" 1604 (H8)
>> >RS: "probable source."
>>
>> All sources are "probable sources".
>
>That's stupid. Do you think you're fooling someone? You can see for
>yourself that RS lists some works as "Sources", some as "Probable
>Sources", and some as "Possible Sources." So what kind of lame point
>are you trying to make? Are you trying to fool someone by misstating
>what it says in RS? Why would you do that? Aren't you interested in the
>truth? Afraid you'll lose the argument if you don't make stuff up? Or
>are you trying to fool yourself?
Who made the Riverside edition the final arbiter? Most of the information
in the Riverside comes from Bullough's books on Shakespeare's sources.
I'll repeat: *ALL* sources are *probable* sources, so you can't dismiss
some just because one book says that the source is *probable*. If you
do, you dismiss all of the sources, and you shouldn't bring the subject
up at all.
>
>Russell said that people are more interested in certainty than the
>truth. You make him look pretty smart.
>
>> >> >> Beaumont "Inner Temple and Gray's Inn Mask" 1613 (TNK)
>> >You have to be kidding! Fletcher's name is on the title-page, of
>> >course.
>>
>> William Shakespeare's hand in this play is well known.
>
>And? Or do you mean to say that you're too dim to see the implication
>to your claim when Fletcher's name is there as co-author? Hello, Jim!
>Fletcher might have read it! Damn, I'm amazed I have to point these
>things out to you.
He might have, or Shakespeare might have read it. Please demonstrate
that Fletcher and not Shakespeare was influenced by that source if
you want to dismiss it.
Jim
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>Either they could and did write (and all other such examples have been lost
>to
>time) or they could not write (and Jonson put their names on the epistle).
>Neither one is very satisfactory.
>
Why? Either one seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don't expect
every document to survive after 400 years. It's certainly possible
that Jonson wrote the epistles. Whoever wrote them seems
to have used some of Jonson's other prefaces as models,
which didn't seem clear to me the first time I compared them.
I don't see why Heminges and/or Condell couldn't have used
them as models.
Jim
MakBane
>> >I'm serious, Toby: you should do a search on Richie at HLAS, and
>> >study his posts and our responses to them. You'd learn a lot since
>> >you are mostly repeating his letters. (For a while, I thought you
>> >might be he.
>>
>> Bob, you tell me that so often that I think you're trying to send me
>subliminal
>> messages. What would I with a quisling?
>>
>(1) demonstrate that you are considerate enough to save me from having
>to repeat things to you that I said to Richie;
Hoo! What, are you getting paid by the Trust to respond to me? You have no
obligations here.
>(2) test yourself
>against Richie--that is, see if you really have a stronger case than
>he.
What's with this "he" business?
>> >One undelivered letter of Quiney's to Shakespeare that suggests
>> >Quiney needed money and thought Shakespeare could help.
>
>> I don't think that's evidence that Shakspere was a writer.
>
>That wasn't the point under discussion; the point under discussion
>was what kind of letters survived the centuries.
Was it? The point is that you think that a single, undelivered letter
constitutes proof (or evidence even) that Shakspere was a writer.
>> >William Basse, to answer you next question, wrote a poem to
>> >Shakespeare between 1616 and 1623 (according to all who believe,
>> >as you said you did, that Jonson was answering him, but that
>> >Volker and others do not, for reasons you can find out by
>> >doing an HLAS search for "Basse," I'm sure).
>>
>> I had no idea that there was any other way to see it.
>>
>> >There are quite
>> >a few manuscript copies of it extant, some of which have the date
>> >of death, but it wasn't published, with date of death, till 1632 or
>> >1633. No problem since it indicates that Shakespeare died after
>> >Beaumont, who died in 1616.
>>
>> How does Shakspere dying after Beaumont keep the poem from being written as
>> late as 1623? Did Basse only circulate it in manuscript form?
>
>Wake up, Toby. That Shakespeare died after Beaumont, according to
>Basse, is evidence that Shakespeare was not Oxford, who died before
>Beaumont.
Bob, this is the age of Neo-Oxfordianism: Shakspere was made to appear to be
the playwright. The general public knew that a real guy called Shakspere helped
run the Chamberlain's/King's Men. They played a lot of Shakespeare's plays. To
anyone who actually knew that those plays were credited to Shakespeare, they
would naturally assume that they were the work of Shakspere. (Here, I get to
invoke the principle of the irregularity of English spelling of the time). They
would have no reason to think otherwise. Shakspere, as we hear, was not a mixer
and did not run around with any crowd (the evidence of that being the complete
lack of any meaningful contemporary account of him as a living, breathing
writer). There are evidentiary echoes of Shakespeare being a cobbler or mender
or plagiarist of older plays. He is simply the guy who "supplied" plays to the
stage. Just how suspicious would an unsuspecting public have been of the
perception that these plays were the work of Shakspere?
<snip>
Petzold:
>> Marlowe, schmarlowe. That guy gets entirely too much play around here.
Grumman:
>He's just an easy example. So tell me of some other playwright of the
>time whose family mentions him as a writer? Other than Jonson's
>mother's memoir.
That's great! I didn't know that about Honest Ben's mom. Ha, ha.
>> But, isn't it strange that, as little as we know of [Marlowe], we still have
a
>sense of
>> him as being something credibly connectible to the idea of being a writer?
>El
>> Kyd sold him down the river to the cops, but at least we got a picture of
>him.
>
>No, it's not strange; Marlowe was part of a group of university wits,
>and prominent in LITERARY circles; Shakespeare was not a member of such
>a group, and prominent in THEATRICAL circles.
This mutual exclusivity you presume is just a vestige of the idea that
poets/literary men were segregated from playwrights. I still can't buy that.
Toby Petzold
American
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Okay Fine wrote:
> Rob Zigler wrote:
> >
> > in article 3BCDFC98...@qwest.net, Okay Fine at ein...@qwest.net wrote
> > on 10/17/01 5:51 PM:
> >
> > > Xr...@pXcr8.pXcr.com wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Okay Fine wrote:
> > >>
> snip
>
> Your stance seems to depend on there being no alteration of the play
> after Shakespeare. Is that accurate?
Obviously not. It is impossible to know for certain that
*any* play hasn't been altered after Shakespeare. The
fundamental point beneath all my argument(which I thought
I'd made clear), is that it isn't logically permissable
to assume without evidence that a particular line in
Shakespeare play isn't Shakespeare's.
It's one thing to question a line in a scene where
Shakespeare's authorship is generally thought, with
some reason, to be a bit dubious. It's quite another
matter to question a good number of lines in widely
separated scenes all generally regarded to be by
Shakespeare, simply because fifty highly localized
lines in the play are frequently thought to be
non-Shakespearian.
Well, no. We'll all judge what's relevant to
your argument. That's what usenet is all about.
You, of course, have your own understanding, but
I dare say that nearly anyone else who thinks
about it will conclude that cuts aren't
additions. FWIW (I'm not a theater professional),
I'd be surprised if many plays by any author
survive a first season's production without
suffering some cuts.
> I've never read a different opinion. Could you cite three
> or offer a good reason to think so?
The evidence for Middleton's hand primarily consists of
a few words in two stage directions("Black spirits" and
"Come away, Come away", IIRC) apparently referring to
two songs found in full in a manuscript copy
(Ralph Crane's hand; written sometime between 1619
and 1627) of Middleton's _The Witch_(circa 1616.)
All of the rest of the evidence that(I know of) is
subjective. I have not been the least bit persuaded
by the subjective matter and I don't regard the stage
directions as conclusive. For instance, who can say
for sure that the songs are Middleton's? And is it really
valid to consider altered stage directions as evidence
of an interpolation?
Here's a web page which mentions some of the subjective
arguments *for* Hecate being Shakespeare's:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/klein/_disc2/00000035.htm
> > > you can hardly expect that the cryptic allusions to
> > > the Gunpowder Plot could not have been inserted by Middleton as well.
> >
> > As I said, the most reasonable default position on any line in
> > a Shakespeare play is that it was written by Shakespeare. You
> > may wish to skip shouldering the burden of proof, but logic
> > dictates otherwise.
> >
> > Do you need me to explain the meaning of the term "burden
> > of proof?" Or is it that you didn't read my previous post
> > carefully enough to see that those words were in there? Or
> > is it that you think it entirely obvious that the most reasonable
> > default position on any line in a Shakespeare play is *not*
> > that it was was written by Shakespeare.
>
> You're getting hysterical because your arguments are shot down.
> Sorry...
Let's see. You didn't answer the question the first time.
When I gave you a second chance, you became abusive,
proclaimed yourself victorious, and then as if you were
sorry for "beating" me so badly, apologized. Interesting
debating technique. Does it often work?
Here's a third chance.
Do you agree that the most reasonable default position
on any line in a Shakespeare play is that it was was
written by Shakespeare?
> > > That we can detect Middleton's hand in some places virtually guarantees
> > > his hand is also present elsewhere.
> >
> > Faith based presumption. (FWIW, when Middleton is said to have
> > written part of the play, his part is generally given to be
> > the less than 40 lines in III.v and a dozen or so lines in
> > IV.i.)
>
> No, it's entirely logical. If Middleton quotes himself in some places,
> and the work shows multiple signs of alteration (even to the plot!),
What multiple signs of alteration? What quotes
from Middleton? Are you talking about the two stage
directions? Maybe I've missed something and you
could explain to me how the plot was changed.
> then it's a fair assumption that the work was also altered in ways that
> are not equally obvious.
Not exactly. It's true that obvious interpolations
will likely be spotted quickly. It's also true that
less obvious interpolations might never be spotted
at all. Unfortunately, there's not a logical connection
from that to the assumption that any hidden interpolations
exist whatsoever.
> Unless you think it
Unless you think it what?
> > > Macbeth seems to fit the profile of a work in progress left behind at
> > > the death of the author.
> >
> > At the very least, that would rule out any allusions to it until it
> > was finished and that would mean that each and every violation of Oxfordian
> > theory must be excused by an appeal to an intervention by Middleton (or
> > whoever else someone might want to put in Shakespeare's place for a line
> > or two or three).
>
> Well, yeah, if Middleton did the work and the play was first performed
> after he finished it, that sounds like an accurate description of that
> possibility. And Middleton might have thought it apt to fashion the
> play to include a few recent events as Shakespeare was inclined to do.
It's not clear to me that Shakespeare was regularly much
inclined to mention topical events.
Apparently you think Middleton was working for the
King's Men in 1606, when King Christian visited James.
I'd be interested to know why you think that's so.
I've seen some evidence that he worked for the King's
Men about ten years later and I've seen plenty of
evidence that he was working for the Children of
Paul's company up to around the middle of 1606.
I'd like to see anything which would place him
as working for the King's Men in 1606 during
King Christian's visit. If you don't know of
anything, I'd not a bit surprised. The closest
I could find is the unattributed _The Revenger's
Tragedy_ published in 1608, which was apparently
performed by the King's Men and *possibly*
written by Middleton.
However unlikely, it is without a doubt, possible
that the King's Men *could* have hired Middleton
to work for them in 1606. To completely rule out
an early alteration by Middleton, we need a little
bit more. For that, I took a look at the composition
date for Middleton's _The Witch_, which is supposedly
the source for the songs "interpolated" into the
_Macbeth_ stage directions.
If *anyone* dates Middleton's _The Witch_ to
before 1609, I can't find a reference saying so.
Just about everyone appears to date it quite a
bit later. (Internet sources appear to favor
either 1613 or 1616.) This would imply that if
Middleton did borrow two songs from his _The
Witch_, he did so long after other dramatists
had finished inserting gunpowder plot
references into their plays. I trust
the inference is obvious. Middleton, if he
did work on _Macbeth_ was not likely the source
of any allusions to King Christian's visit
or to the Gunpowder plot. (I'm hoping you
won't try to claim that late alterations to a
Shakespeare play by one author make early
alterations to the play by another author
more likely. That'd be just too ridiculus.)
> That would be completely unremarkable if Oxford left behind a work like
> Macbeth.
>
>
> > Here's your argumemt stripped to its bones:
> >
> > #1 Some have said that someone other than Shakespeare had a hand in part
> > of the play.
>
> This is a really strange way to put it, Rob. I guess your partisanship
> is already out of control.
Have you ever noticed how in politics, those who
are most likely to accuse others of partisanship
are also those who are the most partisan?
> It is obvious to anyone who thinks about it
> that the play is altered. If you don't know that, you don't know what
> you're talking about.
It's not even obvious to me that you know
what the evidence is. My guess, and I'll admit
that I've not bothered to conduct a survey, is
that most of the scholars who have thought about
it do not state the proposed interpolations as
a certainty.
> > #2. Therefore, any lines anywhere in the play referring to events or works
> > postdating Oxford may have been written by someone other than
> > Shakespeare.
>
> That's a fair summary and I don't see a problem with it. One standard
> of assessment: if an unequivocal attribution of Macbeth to Oxford
> surfaced, by what current evidence would you judge it a forgery?
I have no idea what you are saying here but I'm
not quick to judge any Elizabethan document a forgery.
I leave that to the experts. (Any forgery I can
detect on my own won't have fooled many experts.)
> I
> don't think you've got a thing. Instead, my view would gain
> credibility.
I don't know what you're saying here either.
Without a doubt, if an *unequivocal* attribution
of Macbeth to Oxford was discovered, most
Stratfordians, including myself, would be
pulling up to the table for a large helping
of boiled crow.
> As I already stated, Macbeth is not your best case.
One can certainly argue that it isn't the "best"
case, but that hardly matters. It's quite good enough.
> It's obviously
> tampered with, and the tampering we don't know of is of an undetermined
> size.
It's not obvious and the size of the questionable parts
appear to be quite small and localized: Specifically,
the last scene in act III(only 38 lines) and part of the
first scene in act IV(about 12 lines, I believe).
> Middleton surely had his own ego. If, indeed, he was working from an
> incomplete manuscript for performance before the king, it seems right in
> line with an authorial sensibility for him to make additions to suit
> James's tastes and to compliment his guests.
No doubt. However, that doesn't give us a reason to
suppose that he *was* working from an incomplete
manuscript for performance before the king.
> It seems Shakespeare did
> the same from time to time; why would the company give that up on the
> his death?
Was all this supposed to be addressing one of my points?
Which one, I wonder?
> > I have to note here that there can't be many(if any) Shakespeare plays where
> > some scholars haven't supposed that someone other than Shakespeare wrote
> > some of the lines,
>
> Oh really? This looks like wishful thinking on your part.
Have you ever heard of the "disintegrators?"
> How very
> strange that you would mention that in this context, where the additions
> are obvious.
Compared to most of the disintegrator beliefs
concerning interpolations, the idea that
Middleton wrote the lines spoken by Hecate is
no doubt quite reasonable. Nevertheless, I don't
imagine that the majority of scholars have ever
seen it as a sure thing and it looks like those
scholars who do see it as likely, generally
believe the presumed Middleton interpolation
took place more than ten years after Oxford
would have been dead. That's simply too late
to suppose that someone would still have wanted
to insert references to the Gunpowder plot(1605)
or to King Christian(1606).
> > which leads us directly to back to Peter's point which is
> > that your argument is non-falsifiable. If someone points out a source
> > postdating Oxford, you'll either say that it was alluding to Shakespeare or
> > you'll say that someone altered the play after Oxford's death.
>
> No, I am sure it's falsifiable.
I'm quite sure you're wrong. There is no logical way
to prove beyond a doubt that any Shakespeare play
first appearing in the FF wasn't altered after his death.
> I was once a Stratfordian.
That appears to be a non sequitor. Your former beliefs
have nothing to do with whether or not your current beliefs
are falsifiable.
Perhaps, it's worth noting that at some early point in
the lives of each and every UFO enthusiast, they didn't
yet believe in UFOs. Should we regard them as open
minded folk? Admittedly, they must have "opened" their
minds at least once.
> Perhaps the shoe is on the other foot with that: it's telling that you
> chose for your best example (I assume)
I chose it because when I put it up last winter, I got no
Oxfordian response to speak of. (Just a non-response post
from Paul Crowley and a short "The play was altered after
Oxford's death" response from Dom Saliani.) So when it
came to mind, I threw it out there again in the hopes that
I'd see a substantive response.
> a work that has been so much
> altered in such transparently obvious ways.
Let's hear about those transparently obvious altered ways.
Some details please.
> You should know yourself
> that it's a bad case, but you persist in presenting it as if there's no
> problem. Additionally, you seem to think it strengthens your argument
> to deny there are reasonable objections to your view. That's not very
> smart.
If you *had* presented one reasonable objection, it wouldn't
be smart. But all you've done so far is to characterize
the possible Hecate insertions as significant changes to
the play. (As far as I can tell, they aren't.) And say that
that means that we have reason to suspect the authorship
of *any* part of _Macbeth_ which might be in conflict with
the Oxfordian assumption. (Unless one had good evidence
that the play was rife with interpolation, that doesn't
follow logically.)
<snip>
Rob
Bob Grumman
responding to any of Toby's latest crap except his response to my:
> >No, it's not strange; Marlowe was part of a group of university wits,
> >and prominent in LITERARY circles; Shakespeare was not a member of such
> >a group, and prominent in THEATRICAL circles.
>
> This mutual exclusivity you presume is just a vestige of the idea that
> poets/literary men were segregated from playwrights. I still can't buy that.
Stop thinking I'm the kind of rigidnik you are, Toby. I am not saying
literateurs were segregated from dramatists; I am suggesting that
Shakespeare ran in a wholly different crowd from Marlowe's but--
because he was a normal human being, which I stupidly assumed you
would assume--he wouldn't have run with his own crowd ALL the time.
I suspect he knew almost all the London poets of his time; it's just
that they were secondary to him, and he to them.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk158.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.187]
Hermione Winterstale
Melanie Sands wrote:
>
> I live in a town of 55'000 inhabitants.
>
> From 1994 to 1997 I had a similar experience with a pesty young
> Italian who rounded up all his friends to mob me in the most horrible
> way - lies, anonymous phone calls up to 4 in the morning, verbal and
> even physical abuse when I went dancing/had a coffee/walked in the
> street and just wanted to be with my friends. First the Italian said I
> slept with everyone, then that I didn't want to sleep with him because
> I was afraid of getting pregnant, then that I was still a
> virgin...this in spite of the fact that he knew I am living with the
> father of my child ever since I met him when I was 16!!!
>
> This went on for THREE YEARS. (The young Italian is 15 years younger
> than me, by the way, a typical mamone - spoiled mama's boy).
> It only got under control when I wrote a seven-page letter to the
> police and he was called down to the station.
>
> I know I cut all links to HLAS because I resented the "climate" but I
> decided to look in from time to time - and what must I see now...this!
> <snipped>
> I knew I was right in cutting the links to HLAS.
> Melanie Sands
Weather report: The climate remains unchanged. HLAS readers STILL
do not wish to learn the sordid details of your sad life. Please stay
away (unless, of course, you wish to explore with us the topic we
are here to explore).
MakBane
>Since I'm not obligated to repeat arguments, I won't bother
>responding to any of Toby's latest crap except his response to my:
>
>> >No, it's not strange; Marlowe was part of a group of university wits,
>> >and prominent in LITERARY circles; Shakespeare was not a member of such
>> >a group, and prominent in THEATRICAL circles.
Petzold:
>> This mutual exclusivity you presume is just a vestige of the idea that
>> poets/literary men were segregated from playwrights. I still can't buy
>that.
>
>Stop thinking I'm the kind of rigidnik you are, Toby. I am not saying
>literateurs were segregated from dramatists; I am suggesting that
>Shakespeare ran in a wholly different crowd from Marlowe's but--
>because he was a normal human being, which I stupidly assumed you
>would assume--he wouldn't have run with his own crowd ALL the time.
>I suspect he knew almost all the London poets of his time; it's just
>that they were secondary to him, and he to them.
You are in no position to say what crowd Shakspere did or did not run with
because there is no (delivered) correspondence between him and anyone else.
Austin Phillips left him some money in his will, but that may have been nothing
more than debt repayment. Shakspere left his "fellowes" Condell and Heminge
some money for rings, and that's as close as we get to any sense of who was in
his circle. Otherwise, he lived for a time with a Huguenot family of wigmakers,
was named in a peace bond with some shiftless nobodies, and supposedly got over
on one of Richard Burbage's groupies. Missing from all of this is any
connection to any man of wit or wealth or to any poet or playwright, except for
the posthumous accounting of Ben Jonson, whose agenda in that may be suspected.
You have Shakspere down as an isolated autodidact, though you "suspect he knew
almost all the London poets or his time." What gives you that idea?
Toby Petzold
American
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
On 20 Oct 2001, MakBane wrote:
> Grumman:
>
> >Since I'm not obligated to repeat arguments, I won't bother
> >responding to any of Toby's latest crap except his response to my:
> >
> >> >No, it's not strange; Marlowe was part of a group of university wits,
> >> >and prominent in LITERARY circles; Shakespeare was not a member of such
> >> >a group, and prominent in THEATRICAL circles.
>
> Petzold:
>
> >> This mutual exclusivity you presume is just a vestige of the idea that
> >> poets/literary men were segregated from playwrights. I still can't buy
> >that.
> >
> >Stop thinking I'm the kind of rigidnik you are, Toby. I am not saying
> >literateurs were segregated from dramatists; I am suggesting that
> >Shakespeare ran in a wholly different crowd from Marlowe's but--
> >because he was a normal human being, which I stupidly assumed you
> >would assume--he wouldn't have run with his own crowd ALL the time.
> >I suspect he knew almost all the London poets of his time; it's just
> >that they were secondary to him, and he to them.
>
> You are in no position to say what crowd Shakspere did or did not run with
> because there is no (delivered) correspondence between him and anyone else.
> Austin[sic] Phillips left him some money in his will, but that may have
> been nothing more than debt repayment.
I understand that most Elizabethans in their wills repaid
their debts with a phrase like "I geve and bequeathe
to my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings
peece in gould." It's interesting that Augustine
also owed thirty shilling debts to Henry Condell and
his "Servaunt Christopher Beeston." (He only owed
twenty shilling debts to Armin, Cowley, Cook, and
Tooley.)
> Shakspere left his "fellowes" Condell and Heminge
> some money for rings, and that's as close as we get to any sense of who was in
> his circle. Otherwise, he lived for a time with a Huguenot family of wigmakers,
> was named in a peace bond with some shiftless nobodies,
For the record, one of the nobodies owned a theater.
> and supposedly got over
> on one of Richard Burbage's groupies. Missing from all of this is any
> connection to any man of wit or wealth or to any poet or playwright, except for
> the posthumous accounting of Ben Jonson, whose agenda in that may be suspected.
Even if we disregard the fact that there is no good
reason to suspect Jonson's agenda, that's still not
quite correct.
Greene apparently knew him well enough to insult him.
Chettle apparently knew him well enough to know that
he needed to apologize. Heywood appears to have known
him well enough to say that he knew Shakespeare was
"much offended with M. Jaggard." His cousin Thomas
Greene, who lived in his house in Stratford for a
time, was a published poet. John Davies of Hereford
appears to have known him, though I suppose one
could argue that he may have known him only by
reputation and from the perspective of a spectator
at the Globe. It's safe to say that virtually every
dramatist who wrote for the Lord Chamberlain/King's
Men knew him. The connections between Leonard Digges
and William Shakespeare of Stratford have been noted
here on HLAS often enough, that perhaps I don't need
to lay out the details. Suffice it to say that a
connection there too is quite probable. William
Davenant claimed some sort of connection, though it
certainly wouldn't have been during his own writing
career.
> You have Shakspere down as an isolated autodidact, though you "suspect he knew
> almost all the London poets or his time." What gives you that idea?
I think Bob may go too far here, but I suspect he's
banking on the idea that any two writers who lived
for a long time in London over the same time period,
would eventually have a personal encounter. (Not that
they would necessarily become friends)
Personally, I'm not sure how often people like Donne
hung out with common low-life playwrights, however
the odds seem pretty good that Shakespeare at least
knew a good number of his fellow dramatists. (That's
not to say that he counted them as his intimates.)
Rob
MakBane
>>
>> >Since I'm not obligated to repeat arguments, I won't bother
>> >responding to any of Toby's latest crap except his response to my:
>> >
>> >> >No, it's not strange; Marlowe was part of a group of university wits,
>> >> >and prominent in LITERARY circles; Shakespeare was not a member of such
>> >> >a group, and prominent in THEATRICAL circles.
>>
>> Petzold:
>>
>> >> This mutual exclusivity you presume is just a vestige of the idea that
>> >> poets/literary men were segregated from playwrights. I still can't buy
>> >that.
>> >
>> >Stop thinking I'm the kind of rigidnik you are, Toby. I am not saying
>> >literateurs were segregated from dramatists; I am suggesting that
>> >Shakespeare ran in a wholly different crowd from Marlowe's but--
>> >because he was a normal human being, which I stupidly assumed you
>> >would assume--he wouldn't have run with his own crowd ALL the time.
>> >I suspect he knew almost all the London poets of his time; it's just
>> >that they were secondary to him, and he to them.
>>
>> You are in no position to say what crowd Shakspere did or did not run with
>> because there is no (delivered) correspondence between him and anyone else.
>> Austin[sic] Phillips left him some money in his will, but that may have
>> been nothing more than debt repayment.
Rob:
>I understand that most Elizabethans in their wills repaid
>their debts with a phrase like "I geve and bequeathe
>to my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings
>peece in gould."
I stand corrected.
>It's interesting that Augustine
>also owed thirty shilling debts to Henry Condell and
>his "Servaunt Christopher Beeston." (He only owed
>twenty shilling debts to Armin, Cowley, Cook, and
>Tooley.)
Alright already! Thanks for the comeuppance.
>> Shakspere left his "fellowes" Condell and Heminge
>> some money for rings, and that's as close as we get to any sense of who was
>in
>> his circle. Otherwise, he lived for a time with a Huguenot family of
>wigmakers,
>> was named in a peace bond with some shiftless nobodies,
>
>For the record, one of the nobodies owned a theater.
Jack Ruby was a nobody titty-bar owner until he shot Oswald (to save Mrs.
Kennedy the pain of having to testify in court). This has nothing to do with
anything, but I'm in a good mood this afternoon.
>> and supposedly got over
>> on one of Richard Burbage's groupies. Missing from all of this is any
>> connection to any man of wit or wealth or to any poet or playwright, except
>for
>> the posthumous accounting of Ben Jonson, whose agenda in that may be
>suspected.
>
>Even if we disregard the fact that there is no good
>reason to suspect Jonson's agenda, that's still not
>quite correct.
My guess is that Jonson wrote the dedicatory stuff in the FF for the purpose of
advertising it on the strength of his own reputation. I also think the Herberts
paid him to do it. People who write for pay are given to following others'
agendas.
>Greene apparently knew him well enough to insult him.
If Greene was, in fact, the author of GGW, he may very well have insulted
Shakspere as an actor or a theatrical meddler of some sort, but NOT as a
writer.
>Chettle apparently knew him well enough to know that
>he needed to apologize.
I'm still trying to figure out why Chettle would have apologized to anyone.
>Heywood appears to have known
>him well enough to say that he knew Shakespeare was
>"much offended with M. Jaggard."
That's certainly open to interpretation.
>His cousin Thomas
>Greene, who lived in his house in Stratford for a
>time, was a published poet.
That's a new one on me. Thanks for the information. Did he use his cousin as
any kind of a model, either in style or by allusion? Did he play Frank Stallone
to William's Sylvester?
>John Davies of Hereford
>appears to have known him, though I suppose one
>could argue that he may have known him only by
>reputation and from the perspective of a spectator
>at the Globe.
Indeed.
>It's safe to say that virtually every
>dramatist who wrote for the Lord Chamberlain/King's
>Men knew him.
But with very little evidence. Maybe they knew him as a financer, manager,
sometime-actor, and a "supplier" of plays.
>The connections between Leonard Digges
>and William Shakespeare of Stratford have been noted
>here on HLAS often enough, that perhaps I don't need
>to lay out the details.
It's like playing Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
>Suffice it to say that a
>connection there too is quite probable. William
>Davenant claimed some sort of connection, though it
>certainly wouldn't have been during his own writing
>career.
Davenant was an excessively imaginative person.
>> You have Shakspere down as an isolated autodidact, though you "suspect he
>knew
>> almost all the London poets or his time." What gives you that idea?
>
>I think Bob may go too far here, but I suspect he's
>banking on the idea that any two writers who lived
>for a long time in London over the same time period,
>would eventually have a personal encounter. (Not that
>they would necessarily become friends)
I just wish that at least one Stratfordian would express some curiosity about
the lack of real and indisputable testimony from any of these writers about
Shakspere as a fellow writer, instead of saying that all the letters and notes
simply disappeared, as "we should expect."
>Personally, I'm not sure how often people like Donne
>hung out with common low-life playwrights, however
>the odds seem pretty good that Shakespeare at least
>knew a good number of his fellow dramatists. (That's
>not to say that he counted them as his intimates.)
I just can't buy that playwrights were of such a low caste. After all, wasn't
there SOME prestige for a playwright who gave the Chamberlain's/King's Men
their plays? Did playwriting keep Jonson from his fame and honor? Did it keep
Beaumont and the others from their memorials in Westminster Abbey?
Anyhow, thanks for the information.
Toby Petzold
American
Bob Grumman
> because there is no (delivered) correspondence between him and anyone else.
> Austin Phillips left him some money in his will, but that may have been nothing
> more than debt repayment.
Augustine Phillips left him money for a ring, and called him his fellow.
I'm pretty sure Phillips left similar amounts to others in the company.
Phillips was not payning back a debt.
> Shakspere left his "fellowes" Condell and Heminge
and Burbage
> some money for rings, and that's as close as we get to any sense of who was in
> his circle.
Stop being such an ignoramus, Richie: Shakespeare is in three lists of
actors, in legal documents with other actors. He was clearly an
actor and therefore would have known other actors and, one would
think, playwrights--and we know Jonson and Heywood knew him. One might
be forgiven for thinking he knew some or all of the other writers
involved with Thomas More, which Shakepsere MAY have contributed to.
Davies, a poet, seems to have known him. Chettle (probably) met him
and said divers men of worship vouched for him (i.e., knew him). Dave
Kathman has written of Shakespeare's Stratford circle, which included
seemingly intelligent people. He almost certainly knew Richard Field,
who was in a literate field; it seems plausible that he would have met a
few writers through Field. It is probable that his neighbor, Thomas
Coombe, wrote a book published by Field shortly after Field published
Venus and Adonis (though, technically, it could have been some other
Thomas Coombe). Anecdotal evidence (which is not necessarily wholly
worthless) connects him to Drayton.
> Otherwise, he lived for a time with a Huguenot family of wigmakers,
> was named in a peace bond with some shiftless nobodies, and supposedly got over
> on one of Richard Burbage's groupies. Missing from all of this is any
> connection to any man of wit or wealth or to any poet or playwright, except for
> the posthumous accounting of Ben Jonson, whose agenda in that may be suspected.
> You have Shakspere down as an isolated autodidact, though you "suspect he knew
> almost all the London poets or his time." What gives you that idea?
I don't have him down as an isolated autodidact. I suspect he knew
almost all the London poets of his time because so many of them
wrote plays, and because it would seem natural for him to have
bumped into a few of them, from time to time, Literary London not
being huge.
Now you give me the evidence against his having cultured friends--
such as testimony from someone who knew him that he never went
out, or spent all his time in a Stratford tavern with true rustics,
etc.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk18.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.47]
Okay Fine
It's well known that Jonson wrote them.
OF.
Okay Fine
>
> In article <3BCFC6F0...@qwest.net>, Okay Fine <ein...@qwest.net> writes:
>
> >The beginning of this discussion was my post allowing that a
> >Shakespearean source that postdates Oxford would contradict
> >Oxfordianism. You offered a couple sources that you believed fit the
> >bill.
>
> Actually, I offered seven, and there are probably more if anyone
> wanted to look hard enough.
>
> >Now you turn around and claim that your sources don't have to be
> >convincing because Oxford didn't write Shakespeare's works anyway.
>
> So you're a liar as well. I said no such thing. Please quote the
> text where I said such a thing.
>
1. I said I'd change my view if there were a Shakespearean source that
postdated Oxford.
2. You offered 7 candidates.
3. I asked you if there was any reason that you knew of to doubt your
opinion.
4. You responded:
"You say there is "skeptical doubt" for the
sources. I say there is "skeptical doubt", in fact there is proof,
that Oxford did not write the plays of Shakespeare and that
William Shakespeare of Stratford did."
There are not two ways to read this, Jim. You are saying that you do
not have to demonstrate that your assertions about the sources are
correct because Shakspere = Shakespeare. But you are trying to
demonstrate the falsity of my proposition (i.e. Shakspere = Shakespeare
is false). You cannot demonstrate that not-P is false with an appeal to
P.
So I'm not a liar. I got it right. I want an apology.
OF.
KQKnave
>
>So I'm not a liar. I got it right. I want an apology.
>
Fuck you. You're a liar and a moron.
Jim
MakBane
wrong.
Toby Petzold
American
Bob Grumman
> >him well enough to say that he knew Shakespeare was
> >"much offended with M. Jaggard."
>
> That's certainly open to interpretation.
How? For anyone who knows how to read, that is. You have a very
slight case that Greene's Groatsworth was not about Shakespeare as
a playwright but none that Heywood did not say he knew Shakespeare
was offended by Jaggard's action.
Note: Price and agent never made any attempt to show where I erred
in characterizing her interpretation of the Heywood preface as
ridiculously wrong-headed.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk93.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.122]
Okay Fine
OF.
Okay Fine
>
> > >Heywood appears to have known
> > >him well enough to say that he knew Shakespeare was
> > >"much offended with M. Jaggard."
> >
> > That's certainly open to interpretation.
>
> How? For anyone who knows how to read, that is. You have a very
> slight case that Greene's Groatsworth was not about Shakespeare as
> a playwright
Bob, we discussed this before. GGW is probative of nothing and when you
faced real arguments about it you gave up in frustration. Kind of a
rigidnikal thing to do, but there you have it.
OF.
MakBane
>>Either they could and did write (and all other such examples have been lost
>>to
>>time) or they could not write (and Jonson put their names on the epistle).
>>Neither one is very satisfactory.
>Why? Either one seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don't expect
>every document to survive after 400 years. It's certainly possible
>that Jonson wrote the epistles.
I find it very interesting that you concede this possibility because, by doing
so, you are effectively allowing the Trojan Horse of pseudonymity into the last
bastion of Stratfordian certainty. Even there, where so much depends on the
testimony of Ben Jonson, the attribution of an epistle from Shakspere's
fellowes is cast in doubt? An amazing concession, Jim!
>Whoever wrote them seems
>to have used some of Jonson's other prefaces as models,
>which didn't seem clear to me the first time I compared them.
Nor to me until I got the memo.
>I don't see why Heminges and/or Condell couldn't have used
>them as models.
Nor, apparently, do you see any prohibition against their epistle having been
ghostwritten. Fantastic news.
Toby Petzold
American
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>
>Nor, apparently, do you see any prohibition against their epistle having been
>ghostwritten. Fantastic news.
>
I'm sure it is, to insane conspiracy theorists!
Jim
AllenGaryK
>Personally, I'm not sure how often people like Donne
>hung out with common low-life playwrights, however
>the odds seem pretty good that Shakespeare at least
>knew a good number of his fellow dramatists.
Even Donne may have sat among the topers in his time. Schoenbaum, on page 295
of "Shakespeare's Lives" says:
"We know from a contemporary Latin poem of unknown authorship that convivial
philosophers, including Donne and Inigo Jones but not Jonson, met in some
unspecified year, perhaps 1611, at the Mitre in Cheapside or Fleet Street."
Other playwrights whose plays were performed by Shakespeare's company during
his tenure (1594-1613) include Jonson, Heywood, Dekker, Chapman, Middleton,
Wilkins, Barnes, Beaumont, Fletcher, Daborne, Niccols, Tourneur, and various
"anons" which possibly included Lodge, Smith and Webster. Since Shakespeare
was the only playwright among the principals of the company, he would probably
be the first to take in hand a new play script submitted to them.
Gary
Bob Grumman
Many of us agree that Jonson or someone other than Heminges and Condell
could have written the prefaces; I, myself, would not agree that whoever
wrote them did so without input from the two actors, nor that the two
actors signed it as, IN EFFECT, by them. My own hunch is that the two
actors wrote a version and Jonson edited it. Or the two actors and
Jonson or some other writer sat around a table and wrote it together.
I find it unlikely, though--thinking about it--that Heminges and
Condell, who ran a successful theatrical enterprise, would not have been
deft at p.r. and able to write texts like the prefaces. So I guess my
first inclination would be that they wrote them.
--Bob G.
--Bob G.
--
Posted from dunk171.nut-n-but.net [205.161.239.200]
Elizabeth Weir
> Petzold to Jim, on Condell and Heminge's FF dedication:
>
> >>Either they could and did write (and all other such examples have been lost
> >>to
> >>time) or they could not write (and Jonson put their names on the epistle).
> >>Neither one is very satisfactory.
The FF preface is a parody. The Heminges and Condell contribution is
a parody of an advertisement. The Cambridge cryptographer Hugh
Holland--the greatest of the Elizabethan era--was given the honor of
contributing the first poem. I doubt Hollland wrote it.
> >Why? Either one seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don't expect
> >every document to survive after 400 years. It's certainly possible
> >that Jonson wrote the epistles.
Jonson definitely wrote the epistles. Jonson was a *professional
parodist.* That's how he made his living. And he despised the actor
Shakespeare.
> I find it very interesting that you concede this possibility because, by doing
> so, you are effectively allowing the Trojan Horse of pseudonymity into the last
> bastion of Stratfordian certainty. Even there, where so much depends on the
> testimony of Ben Jonson, the attribution of an epistle from Shakspere's
> fellowes is cast in doubt? An amazing concession, Jim!
The Jonson eulogy is a mock encomium. A parody of an encomium.
> >Whoever wrote them seems
> >to have used some of Jonson's other prefaces as models,
> >which didn't seem clear to me the first time I compared them.
Jonson is doing a self-parody in the spirit of the project.
>
> Nor to me until I got the memo.
>
> >I don't see why Heminges and/or Condell couldn't have used
> >them as models.
It's a parody. Heminges and Condell were not parodists.
> Nor, apparently, do you see any prohibition against their epistle having been
> ghostwritten. Fantastic news.
>
> Toby Petzold
> American
This doesn't help you, Petzold.
Jonson was employed by Lord Bacon at the time Jonson edited the FF.
And by 'edited' I mean in the sense of 'Hand B' because nobody doubts
thatTthe Author wrote the scenes and additional lines that don't
appear in the quartos.
Here's your problem, Petzold: The FF is double the size of the
quartos, i.e., the FF has twice as many pages.
That means that you have to explain how a dead guy wrote the best
plays, added new scenes to older plays, added thousands of new lines
and tens of thousands of emendations to the FF.
The greatest Renaissance genius--Francis Bacon--was the only one
living and still in the power of his genius when the quartos were
rewritten and edited for the FF.
Rob Zigler
mak...@aol.com wrote on 10/20/01 2:46 PM:
Happy to oblige.
>
>>> Shakspere left his "fellowes" Condell and Heminge
>>> some money for rings, and that's as close as we get to any sense of who was
>> in
>>> his circle. Otherwise, he lived for a time with a Huguenot family of
>> wigmakers,
>>> was named in a peace bond with some shiftless nobodies,
>>
>> For the record, one of the nobodies owned a theater.
>
> Jack Ruby was a nobody titty-bar owner until he shot Oswald (to save Mrs.
> Kennedy the pain of having to testify in court). This has nothing to do with
> anything, but I'm in a good mood this afternoon.
>
>>> and supposedly got over
>>> on one of Richard Burbage's groupies. Missing from all of this is any
>>> connection to any man of wit or wealth or to any poet or playwright, except
>> for
>>> the posthumous accounting of Ben Jonson, whose agenda in that may be
>> suspected.
>>
>> Even if we disregard the fact that there is no good
>> reason to suspect Jonson's agenda, that's still not
>> quite correct.
>
> My guess is that Jonson wrote the dedicatory stuff in the FF for the purpose
> of
> advertising it on the strength of his own reputation. I also think the
> Herberts
> paid him to do it.
Doesn't the lack of evidence saying that that was so
give you any pause?
> People who write for pay are given to following others'
> agendas.
Quite right! Surely, it is always correct to suspect
the motives of writers who write for money. In all, a
very wicked race.
Jonson's greatest compliment for a fellow human appears
to have been to call him (or her) 'honest'. Isn't it
a somewhat tragic state of affairs when a man who valued
honesty so highly, has his own honesty questioned daily.
(Admittedly, he was sometimes physically violent, so
perhaps the timing of the questions is all for the best.)
That those who frequently certify him as a liar, always
fail to justify the accusation with anything I can term
evidence is something I have always personally found
appalling. (I can not count the fact that Jonson's
*being* a liar makes some favored anti-Stratfordian
theory more believable to be a real justifiation.)
Oh well. There is little doubt that he is past
concerning himself with such matters and most
certainly, his slanderers need not now fear his bite.
The most amazing thing of all, is that I'm sure that
some anti-Stratfordians would agree with me on a
general principle; that barring solid evidence to
the contrary, the dead are entitled to the reputations
they earned in life. Nevertheless, they find themselves
dismissing Jonson as a liar. If they even think about
it, they must be telling themselves, "Well I'm surely right
about the rest of it and so that means that Jonson *must*
have been a liar." Unfortunately, it doesn't end with
Jonson. They still have to dispose of the reputations
of Digges, Heminges, Condell, Basse, and a few others,
some of whose names are unknown, so I suppose they
can't really be included in the body count.
Ok. I went a bit over the top and now I'm done.
I could have said something dispassionate like "Because
I find the logic behind the attacks on Jonson defective,
I see the attacks as unfair to his memory.", but what the
hell. What anti-Stratfordians do to Jonson has always
bothered me and now I feel better for having bothered
them.
>> Greene apparently knew him well enough to insult him.
>
> If Greene was, in fact, the author of GGW, he may very well have insulted
> Shakspere as an actor or a theatrical meddler of some sort, but NOT as a
> writer.
Well, he did imply that the upstart crow only *thought* he
could write as well as Nash, et al.
>> Chettle apparently knew him well enough to know that
>> he needed to apologize.
>
> I'm still trying to figure out why Chettle would have apologized to anyone.
Second thoughts about the rightness of what he had published?
Of course, he did say something about *gentlemen* paying him
a visit.
>> Heywood appears to have known
>> him well enough to say that he knew Shakespeare was
>> "much offended with M. Jaggard."
>
> That's certainly open to interpretation.
Like, I don't know you at all, but if I said
something obnoxious enough, I might easily hope
and believe that you were "much offended?"
>> His cousin Thomas
>> Greene, who lived in his house in Stratford for a
>> time, was a published poet.
>
> That's a new one on me. Thanks for the information. Did he use his cousin as
> any kind of a model, either in style or by allusion? Did he play Frank
> Stallone
> to William's Sylvester?
Dave Kathman has posted two poems by him, but I can't
say that I noticed any similarities to Shakespeare.
>> John Davies of Hereford
>> appears to have known him, though I suppose one
>> could argue that he may have known him only by
>> reputation and from the perspective of a spectator
>> at the Globe.
>
> Indeed.
>
>> It's safe to say that virtually every
>> dramatist who wrote for the Lord Chamberlain/King's
>> Men knew him.
>
> But with very little evidence. Maybe they knew him as a financer, manager,
> sometime-actor, and a "supplier" of plays.
You're perfectly willing to believe that because most of
them said very little about him as a playwright he wasn't
a playwright, but none of them are apparently recorded
as saying anything at all about how the man thought to
be Shakespeare was actually just a financer, manager,
and a "supplier" of plays.
What's more likely to excite comment: a strange
circumstance or an ordinary circumstance?
Which is a more strange circumstance: a very very
good dramatist or a very very good dramatist who
has a front?
>> The connections between Leonard Digges
>> and William Shakespeare of Stratford have been noted
>> here on HLAS often enough, that perhaps I don't need
>> to lay out the details.
>
> It's like playing Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
I've never played the game. (I'm quite sure
I'd be lousy at it.) Digges's step-father
was a friend of Shakespeare. Is that one degree
or two? Does it count extra if you can find multiple
short paths?
>> Suffice it to say that a
>> connection there too is quite probable. William
>> Davenant claimed some sort of connection, though it
>> certainly wouldn't have been during his own writing
>> career.
>
> Davenant was an excessively imaginative person.
So was his Reverend brother Robert, I guess. Both a
couple of fools, no doubt. Interestingly, William's
foolishness didn't keep him from following Jonson as
Poet Laureate, serving as a leutenant-general in the
Royalist army and being knighted by King Charles at
the siege of Gloucester. Nor did it keep him from
being named to succeed Lord Baltimore as
Leutenant-Govenor of Maryland. (He was captured by
Cromwell's forces before he got there.)
Davenant lead a pretty interesting life.
He was a servant(Aubrey says page) to Fulke
Greville(Lord Brooke) from 1624 to 1628.
Sir Fulke was very much a court insider(a
favorite of Elizabeth's) and he held the
position of Stratford recorder from 1606 to
1628(as had his father before him). Owned
Warwick Castle just a hop and a skip down
the road from Stratford. Obviously, Greville
had the opportunity and given his own
interest in poetry, probably some motivation
to learn something about his Stratford
neighbor. It seems reasonable to
believe that Davenant, who is *known* to
have been a very great fan of Shakespeare's
would have at least wanted to make some
visits to Stratford. And whenever he was
in Warwick with Greville, it would have been
extremely easy to do so. When and if he made
the trip, he could have met many of the people
who knew Shakespeare in Stratford. Of course,
if he'd done so, I suppose he'd have figured
out that the Shaksperes were a bunch of
semi-literate rustics, so perhaps,
beyond all reason, he didn't really care
to visit the hometown of his hero.
Davenant's close friend Endymion Porter
(died 1649) was also a very close friend of
Thomas Russell(died 1632), one of the overseers
in Shakespeare's will. Porter was a favorite
of both Elizabeth and James, so he'd have
been a long time insider and likely to have
known all about any but the tightest kept
secrets concerning Shakespeare. Another
avenue for Davenant to find out something
about the man he so much admired. Too
bad he left it unexplored. Or maybe he
was just pretending to an interest in
Shakespeare.
Davenant's dramatic career overlapped those
of a lot of men who would have known Shakepeare.
For instance, Davenant wrote several plays
for the King's Men in the late 1620s, at a
time Heminges, Condell, Lowin and Taylor(all
men listed in the FF as among the principal
actors) were still with the company.
Hmmm. Now we've got a Davenant with what
is quite apparently a very large interest in
William Shakespeare working closely with
people who would have literally spent thousands
of hours with their partner named William Shakespeare.
I suppose *they* could all have been idiots...
Of course there always is the chance that
Sir William knowing everything, was *paid*
to make a claim of a connection to the fraud.
After all, he is known to have written for
money and we know what that means.
>>> You have Shakspere down as an isolated autodidact, though you "suspect he
>> knew
>>> almost all the London poets or his time." What gives you that idea?
>>
>> I think Bob may go too far here, but I suspect he's
>> banking on the idea that any two writers who lived
>> for a long time in London over the same time period,
>> would eventually have a personal encounter. (Not that
>> they would necessarily become friends)
>
> I just wish that at least one Stratfordian would express some curiosity about
> the lack of real and indisputable testimony from any of these writers about
> Shakspere as a fellow writer, instead of saying that all the letters and notes
> simply disappeared, as "we should expect."
I don't follow. If there's a pretty good list of Elizabethan
dramatists who are not discussed as fellow writers in extant
letters and notes, why should we be particlarly curious about
a similar lack for Shakespeare?
>> Personally, I'm not sure how often people like Donne
>> hung out with common low-life playwrights, however
>> the odds seem pretty good that Shakespeare at least
>> knew a good number of his fellow dramatists. (That's
>> not to say that he counted them as his intimates.)
>
> I just can't buy that playwrights were of such a low caste. After all, wasn't
> there SOME prestige for a playwright who gave the Chamberlain's/King's Men
> their plays?
He was, no doubt, valued somewhere above the lowest of
the other Royal servants and somewhere considerably
below the highest. Plays were viewed as trivial
entertainments. James and Henrietta were apt to spend
many hundreds of pounds on a masque. The going rate for
a Royal play performance appears to have been ten
pounds.
Prestige among the actors, surely. Respect, it seems,
from his fellow dramatists. Probably, some considerable
appreciation from theater enthusiasts, some of whom were
nobles. Beyond that, I'd have to think about it.
> Did playwriting keep Jonson from his fame and honor?
Certainly not. I should also say that I'm not sure that
his plays brought him much in the way of fame and honor.
> Did it keep
> Beaumont and the others from their memorials in Westminster Abbey?
Spenser is easy to explain. Everyone thought he was
as good as Chaucer. Beaumont is a bit more of a puzzle.
His contemporary reputation as a poet was much higher
than it is today, but I haven't seen anything which would
suggest that he was ever ranked in the top two or three
poets. Unfortunately, I don't think we have any contemporary
explanations of how Beaumont got interred in Westminster.
Perhaps the fact that he was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont
and the brother of Sir John Beaumont and a very great friend
of the then influential Ben Jonson had something to do with
it.
As it happens, Sir William Davenant is also buried in
Westminster Abbey.
> Anyhow, thanks for the information.
You're quite welcome. Sorry about the preaching.
Rob
Okay Fine
>
> in article 20011020144638...@mb-dd.aol.com, MakBane at
> mak...@aol.com wrote on 10/20/01 2:46 PM:
>
> >>> Grumman:
> > My guess is that Jonson wrote the dedicatory stuff in the FF for the purpose
> > of
> > advertising it on the strength of his own reputation. I also think the
> > Herberts
> > paid him to do it.
>
> Doesn't the lack of evidence saying that that was so
> give you any pause?
The Herberts are mentioned prominently in FF.
> > People who write for pay are given to following others'
> > agendas.
>
> Quite right! Surely, it is always correct to suspect
> the motives of writers who write for money. In all, a
> very wicked race.
Marketers rightly inspire skepticism.
> Jonson's greatest compliment for a fellow human appears
> to have been to call him (or her) 'honest'. Isn't it
> a somewhat tragic state of affairs when a man who valued
> honesty so highly, has his own honesty questioned daily.
> (Admittedly, he was sometimes physically violent, so
> perhaps the timing of the questions is all for the best.)
> That those who frequently certify him as a liar, always
> fail to justify the accusation with anything I can term
> evidence is something I have always personally found
> appalling.
But Jonson's not accused of lying. He's accused of writing a document
that tells the truth in a misleading way. He's accused of being a
skillful rhetorician, which is consistent with his reputation, is it
not?
snip
> What's more likely to excite comment: a strange
> circumstance or an ordinary circumstance?
Most of the comments we have are of ordinary circumstances, as it
happens.
> Which is a more strange circumstance: a very very
> good dramatist or a very very good dramatist who
> has a front?
Which is more strange: a brilliant writer whose parents and children are
not literate or a brilliant writer who overcomes cultural restrictions
on his creativity to see his drama distributed widely?
OF.
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Okay Fine wrote:
> Rob Zigler wrote:
> >
> > in article 20011020144638...@mb-dd.aol.com, MakBane at
> > mak...@aol.com wrote on 10/20/01 2:46 PM:
> >
> > >>> Grumman:
>
> > > My guess is that Jonson wrote the dedicatory stuff in the FF for the purpose
> > > of
> > > advertising it on the strength of his own reputation. I also think the
> > > Herberts
> > > paid him to do it.
> >
> > Doesn't the lack of evidence saying that that was so
> > give you any pause?
>
> The Herberts are mentioned prominently in FF.
No where in the FF does it say that the Herberts paid
Jonson to write any dedicatory stuff.
> > > People who write for pay are given to following others'
> > > agendas.
> >
> > Quite right! Surely, it is always correct to suspect
> > the motives of writers who write for money. In all, a
> > very wicked race.
>
> Marketers rightly inspire skepticism.
Calling Jonson a marketer rightly invites skepticism.
> > Jonson's greatest compliment for a fellow human appears
> > to have been to call him (or her) 'honest'. Isn't it
> > a somewhat tragic state of affairs when a man who valued
> > honesty so highly, has his own honesty questioned daily.
> > (Admittedly, he was sometimes physically violent, so
> > perhaps the timing of the questions is all for the best.)
> > That those who frequently certify him as a liar, always
> > fail to justify the accusation with anything I can term
> > evidence is something I have always personally found
> > appalling.
>
> But Jonson's not accused of lying.
> He's accused of writing a document
> that tells the truth in a misleading way.
One of the definitions of the word "lie" is
"Something meant to deceive or give the wrong
impression."
> He's accused of being a
> skillful rhetorician, which is consistent with his reputation, is it
> not?
The term "skillful rhetorician" is in no way synomous with
the word "liar."
Plenty of other anti-Stratfordians just out right say that
Jonson was a liar. Perhaps, you're different. Let's see.
I suspect you believe Oxford was quite a learned man.
When Jonson was talking about the English poets and
happened to mention that he thought that "Shaksperr
wanted Arte," was that a lie?
In the FF, Jonson called the author "Mr. William
Shakespeare." Was the author an ordinary gentleman?
Oxford's Bilton estates were leased out in 1574.
He sold them by 1580 and he's not known to have
ever visited them. It's not reasonable to suppose
without any evidence of anyone else connecting
him with the river Avon that he was ever called
the Swan of Avon.
Nevertheless, Jonson called the author "the
Swan of Avon" and he obviously knew very well that
the actor's birth place, the town where his
family lived, the town he retired to, was on the
Avon. Was that a lie?
What about what's found in Jonson's own _Workes_?
There, he says that _Sejanus_ was first acted in
the year 1603 by the Kings Men. He says that one
of the principle actors was "Will. Shake-Speare."
Do you think that Oxford was a member of the
King's Men, or do you think that "Will. Shake-Speare"
wasn't the writer or do you think that Jonson lied?
Since you believe that Jonson wrote H&C's preface,
how do you explain Shakespeare being called
the servant of Pembroke and Montgomery? Was Oxford
socially inferior to Pembroke and Montgomery?
When the preface refers to Shakesperae as the
"Friend and Fellowe" of the actors, everyone reading
it woud understand it as a reference to their partner
in the acting company. ("Fellow" being the word they
used to describe their business partners. See Augustine
Phillips will for an example.) Was that a lie or
not?
> snip
> > What's more likely to excite comment: a strange
> > circumstance or an ordinary circumstance?
>
> Most of the comments we have are of ordinary circumstances, as it
> happens.
Right. However, extraordinary circumstances clearly
occasion far more than their proportional share of comments.
Furthermore, I dare say that remarks concerning extraordinary
happenings are far more likely to be of interest to succeeding
generations and are so far more likely to survive hundreds
of years.
> > Which is a more strange circumstance: a very very
> > good dramatist or a very very good dramatist who
> > has a front?
>
> Which is more strange: a brilliant writer whose parents and children are
> not literate or a brilliant writer who overcomes cultural restrictions
> on his creativity to see his drama distributed widely?
From the 15th century through to the middle of the 17th, the literacy
level of the English improved dramatically. The dynamics of the
change means that lots of literate people had parents who possessed
little or no ability to read and write. (Generally, the ability to
read appears to have been more common than the ability to write.)
The social structure of the society was such that daughters of
the middleclass were generally not given any kind of academic
education. Many of the grammar schools refused them altogether.
(I know of a surviving school charter where they are explicitly
forbidden for any longer than it took them to learn to read.
Since reading was taught first, the girls from that school would
have finished their formal education able to read but not write.)
Therefore, in Elizabethan eyes(and since we are talking about the
lack of Elizabethan commentary concerning strange or ordinary
circumstances, that's all that matters), the first man would not
have been seen as particularly strange. If the second man was
a semi-literate rustic simply pretending to be the writer
Shakespeare, that would have definitely been seen as quite worthy
of comment. If he was fronting for a man who was an Earl,
anyone who knew about it would likely have considered it the oddest
thing in all of England.
Rob
MakBane
>You have a very
>slight case that Greene's Groatsworth was not about Shakespeare as
>a playwright but none that Heywood did not say he knew Shakespeare
>was offended by Jaggard's action.
[Greene] WAS referring to Shakspere as an actor. Actors "bombast" more than
writers, right? They speak others' lines and wear others' plumage. Where do you
find Shakspere the Playwright in all of that?
And the Anti-Stratfordian reading of Heywood's account of who got offended by
whom and for what is STILL legitimate. His stuff makes no sense.
>Note: Price and agent never made any attempt to show where I erred
>in characterizing her interpretation of the Heywood preface as
>ridiculously wrong-headed.
Maybe Dooley can come back and help a brotha out.
Toby Petzold
American
p.s. Why doesn't this Stritmatter character ever come around? If he's published
a book, he can't have anything to hide.
MakBane
>>>>> Stop thinking I'm the kind of rigidnik you are, Toby. I am not saying
>>>>> literateurs were segregated from dramatists; I am suggesting that
>>>>> Shakespeare ran in a wholly different crowd from Marlowe's but--
>>>>> because he was a normal human being, which I stupidly assumed you
>>>>> would assume--he wouldn't have run with his own crowd ALL the time.
>>>>> I suspect he knew almost all the London poets of his time; it's just
>>>>> that they were secondary to him, and he to them.
>>>>
>>>> You are in no position to say what crowd Shakspere did or did not run
>with
>>>> because there is no (delivered) correspondence between him and anyone
>else.
>>>> Austin Phillips left him some money in his will, but that may have
>>>> been nothing more than debt repayment.
>>
>> Zigler:
>>
>>> I understand that most Elizabethans in their wills repaid
>>> their debts with a phrase like "I geve and bequeathe
>>> to my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings
>>> peece in gould."
>>
>> I stand corrected.
>>
>>> It's interesting that Augustine
>>> also owed thirty shilling debts to Henry Condell and
>>> his "Servaunt Christopher Beeston." (He only owed
>>> twenty shilling debts to Armin, Cowley, Cook, and
>>> Tooley.)
>>
>> Alright already! Thanks for the comeuppance.
>
>Happy to oblige.
Have you found out yet whether Phillips' nickname was Austin?
Petzold:
Oxfordianism is not alone in being based on suppositions, Rob.
>> People who write for pay are given to following others'
>> agendas.
>
>Quite right! Surely, it is always correct to suspect
>the motives of writers who write for money. In all, a
>very wicked race.
That's true. You don't know what you're getting when you buy another man's
words.
>Jonson's greatest compliment for a fellow human appears
>to have been to call him (or her) 'honest'. Isn't it
>a somewhat tragic state of affairs when a man who valued
>honesty so highly, has his own honesty questioned daily.
Jonson beat a murder rap because he claimed benefit of clergy. And what do you
think he had to do get off for his role in The Isle of Dogs? Who cares how
honest you are if you're a violent and self-aggrandizing tortured artist?
>(Admittedly, he was sometimes physically violent, so
>perhaps the timing of the questions is all for the best.)
>That those who frequently certify him as a liar, always
>fail to justify the accusation with anything I can term
>evidence is something I have always personally found
>appalling. (I can not count the fact that Jonson's
>*being* a liar makes some favored anti-Stratfordian
>theory more believable to be a real justifiation.)
>Oh well. There is little doubt that he is past
>concerning himself with such matters and most
>certainly, his slanderers need not now fear his bite.
>
>The most amazing thing of all, is that I'm sure that
>some anti-Stratfordians would agree with me on a
>general principle; that barring solid evidence to
>the contrary, the dead are entitled to the reputations
>they earned in life. Nevertheless, they find themselves
>dismissing Jonson as a liar. If they even think about
>it, they must be telling themselves, "Well I'm surely right
>about the rest of it and so that means that Jonson *must*
>have been a liar."
What, are you with the Ben Jonson Anti-Defamation League?
>Unfortunately, it doesn't end with
>Jonson. They still have to dispose of the reputations
>of Digges, Heminges, Condell, Basse, and a few others,
>some of whose names are unknown, so I suppose they
>can't really be included in the body count.
Whatever it takes.
>Ok. I went a bit over the top and now I'm done.
>I could have said something dispassionate like "Because
>I find the logic behind the attacks on Jonson defective,
>I see the attacks as unfair to his memory.", but what the
>hell. What anti-Stratfordians do to Jonson has always
>bothered me and now I feel better for having bothered
>them.
>
>>> Greene apparently knew him well enough to insult him.
>>
>> If Greene was, in fact, the author of GGW, he may very well have insulted
>> Shakspere as an actor or a theatrical meddler of some sort, but NOT as a
>> writer.
>
>Well, he did imply that the upstart crow only *thought* he
>could write as well as Nash, et al.
Are you really saying that you see GGW as a slam against a playwright? It is a
WARNING TO playwrights! [Greene] is saying to watch out for this
bullshit-artist Shakspere.
>>> Chettle apparently knew him well enough to know that
>>> he needed to apologize.
>>
>> I'm still trying to figure out why Chettle would have apologized to anyone.
>
>Second thoughts about the rightness of what he had published?
>
>Of course, he did say something about *gentlemen* paying him
>a visit.
I guess you can't trust what extortionees say, either.
>>> Heywood appears to have known
>>> him well enough to say that he knew Shakespeare was
>>> "much offended with M. Jaggard."
>>
>> That's certainly open to interpretation.
>
>Like, I don't know you at all, but if I said
>something obnoxious enough, I might easily hope
>and believe that you were "much offended?"
Eh?
We don't need "them" to "say" anything. The records speak for themselves.
>What's more likely to excite comment: a strange
>circumstance or an ordinary circumstance?
What're the likeliest comments you'll ever hear? Talk about the weather or a
sports team or the economy. Very ordinary and always excites comment.
>Which is a more strange circumstance: a very very
>good dramatist or a very very good dramatist who
>has a front?
A "front" in this context would fly below the radar of remarkable circumstance.
That's its whole point.
>>> The connections between Leonard Digges
>>> and William Shakespeare of Stratford have been noted
>>> here on HLAS often enough, that perhaps I don't need
>>> to lay out the details.
>>
>> It's like playing Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
>
>I've never played the game. (I'm quite sure
>I'd be lousy at it.) Digges's step-father
>was a friend of Shakespeare. Is that one degree
>or two?
Considering the evidence, at LEAST two.
>Does it count extra if you can find multiple
>short paths?
CAN you?
When do you get to the part where Davenant was a crazy bastard who actively
promoted the idea that he was Shakspere's biological son?
Because such a list would be either very short or full of bottom-shelf talents.
Nada. Thanks for your thoughts.
Toby Petzold
American
Erik Nielsen
MakBane wrote:
>
> Grumman:
>
> >You have a very
> >slight case that Greene's Groatsworth was not about Shakespeare as
> >a playwright but none that Heywood did not say he knew Shakespeare
> >was offended by Jaggard's action.
>
> [Greene] WAS referring to Shakspere as an actor. Actors "bombast" more than
> writers, right?
No... "bombast" refers to the padding of lines to fit meter, as would be
done by a bad poet, but not by a bad actor -- why would he be padding
the lines when they came to him pre-padded? The modern usage of
"bombast" developed from this usage, which in turn developed from the
noun "bombast" (referring to the stuff used to stuff pillows and such)
but I'm not even sure whether it existed at this point. It certainly
wasn't the primary meaning. Yet again, fools prate where a simple trip
to the OED would have exposed their folly.
> They speak others' lines and wear others' plumage.
What does the passage mean if he's referring, not to a writer, but an
actor? Why would a writer (Greene) be offended by an actor's (the
Crow's) claim that he could act as well as a writer could? An actor has
no pretensions to acting; it's what he does. A writer has no
pretensions to acting; it's NOT what he does. I can't see Greene
debating with the "Crow" over acting ability, even if the lines didn't
specifically refer to writing.
> Where do you
> find Shakspere the Playwright in all of that?
You find me another person who fits the following credentials:
-- was an actor-turned-playwright in the early 1590's
-- fits the pun "shake-scene"
-- wrote the HENRY VI plays
...hm, I can't think of one either.