Teaching about the person and work of "Shakespeare" as done today amounts to a "crime"
ForumThe Globe: Shakespeare, his Contemporaries, and Context
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1proximity1
Teaching about the person and work of "William Shakespeare" as it is done today amounts to a "crime"—and the students are its victims
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Alas, no. The value in the humanities is surely to be found in and only in not merely "doing them," but, rather, doing them well. Otherwise, their value falls and fails in proportion to their being done poorly--or much, much worse than poorly.
With extremely few exceptions, around the world on every school-day students, from the primary-school grades through the baccalaureate-degree university level, are being taught a load of abject nonsense about the life and works of an author presented to them as responsible for the “Shakespeare” canon. These unsuspecting students are given to believe as a set of largely-ascertained facts what is actually sheer conjecture; and virtually all of it is grossly false, the product of centuries of “closed-shop” work held up as respectable scholarship.
They are not informed of even the existence of a now-centuries-old controversy over the real author's identity let alone the particulars of the controversy. That, I contend, ought to be recognized as constituting an educational fraud upon these students—in effect, hardly less than a “crime.”
If you are the parent of a student anywhere in age from eight to eighteen years old, you should be concerned that what your child is being taught about “William Shake-speare” of Stratford-Upon-Avon will eventually—if left unchallenged, as is nearly always the case—leave him or her with impediments to any kind of useful and interesting appreciation for the real author and his work. Rather than being enriched by this exposure to an imposture, your children, and, professors, your students, are being mislead and stunted in their intellectual growth, handed rank fables and told these are facts. In the end they are left with a confused picture and conception about a person who is simply irreconcilable with real life. No one has ever conformed to the image of the author as these students are given the life and (largely vacant) 'personality' “William Shakes-peare” to have been. In the end, most of them will leave their studies of Shakespeare under the impression that this author came to his work—about which, depending on the teacher's presentation, he was either passionate or, instead, almost indifferent—for no particular reason at all.
Why were so many of his plays set in ancient or contemporary Italy? Why did he choose to write plays in which the reigns of Kings John, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Richard III, Henry VI and Henry VIII are concerned rather than other Kings? Very simply, they'll have no idea and they may conclude that there needn't even have been any 'reason' since, as far as they are able to tell, these things just happen. Things turned out as they did; but they could have as easily turned out not only very differently but completely opposed to the way in which they happened to have occurred. If they are like most people, once their classroom treatments of Shakespeare have concluded, they'll leave them, never to return. They won't take up Shakespeare other than in a purely superficial way for the rest of their lives. Shakespeare will be for them at best and at most a trivial and passing amusement—nothing of any lasting importance and value, just one of many ways to spend a free hour and a half at a film or, perhaps, a staged production.
They will have no particular and coherent concept of the author or of anything which he “was trying to achieve”--nothing which informed his life-work, which they'll almost certainly see as being no different from any other playwright's work: just a way to make a living in a work-a-day world where drama is a means to entertainment and never more than that.
Now, it is of couse extremely likely that the above describes not only your own view of things—for you, like your child or your children, have fared no differently in the course of your education—but also that of your child's teachers and professors. They, too, almost certainly shall have travelled the same course and arrived at essentially the same end. Thus, many, perhaps most, of them are doing no other than what their own defrauded education has left them condemned to do: teach just as rotely and drearily as they were taught.
We are a scant few years from the centenary of the appearance of J. Thomas Looney's work, Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. It is this nearly one hundred year-old story which you were denied when you were at school and which your children are today, in their turn, being denied.
I am quite ready to defend academic freedom in both principle and practice. I do not believe that any teacher ought to be physically or morally forced to conform to an orthodoxy which outrages his or her sense of truth and fairness. But, for that very reason, I consider it a scandal that, in the world of Shakespeare scholarship, there are, one hundred years on from Looney's work, practically only those who teach the orthodox Shakespeare fraud standing at the front of the classroom and the lecture-hall, the auditorium. In a free and open academic arena, every teacher would, at a minimum, present the full scope of the issues surrounding the identity of the author and, beyond this, there'd also be just as many or perhaps a good deal more teachers teaching as the best-reading of the best-evidence the case according to which the rightful author is Edward, Earl of Oxford-- according to each individual teacher's leanings
There is today an initiative which goes by the name of “The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.” It is the objective of those who subscribe to win a firm place in respectability for this idea that, on the merits, there exists ample ground and, indeed, more than ample ground to find that, as to the identity of William Shakespeare, author, the person from Stratford on Avon is of “doubtful” right.
To me, this is entirely too timid a stand. In fact and instead, the position stand facts on their head: there really is today no reasonable doubt as to the identity of the author: that author is, of couse, Edward, Earl of Oxford and about this there is no reasonable doubt left. Similarly, there is simply no remaining reasonable doubt about the person from Stratford, one William Shaksper. not having been the rightful author of any written line of a poem, a play or a sonnet.
You, dear paremts. in all likelihood, were defrauded in your education as far as “Shakespeare” 's work is concerned and today, your children, if you have any, are in their turn being similarly defrauded.
You have every reason and every right to object to this state of affairs. And so you ought to do.
__________________________
Where to turn to learn more----
If you weren't aware that there even existed a “Shakespeare authorship” question there is no reason to be surprised—this is precisely how orthodox Shakespeare teaching is supposed to work when it “succeeds” as intended. You're not supposed to be aware of the question or that it is a matter of controversy.
Now, having read this, you can turn to the following for a full treatment of the issues which the orthodox Shakespeare scholars would like you to ignore
An online “E-book” text of J. Thomas Looney's Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (free download of the full text in a variety of formats.)
also, read a fully-developed exposition of the Shakespeare authorship question (SAQ) at the website of Stephanie Hopkins Hughes, “PoliticWorm” dot com : http://www.politicworm.com (www.politicworm.com ) Access to the site is free. (Readers who appreciate the work done there are welcome to make a voluntary donation.)
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________
"The humanities might ideally find justification simply in our doing them."
—Helen Small, (Oxford, 2013) The Value of the Humanities, Oxford University Press; p. 1.
_______________________
Alas, no. The value in the humanities is surely to be found in and only in not merely "doing them," but, rather, doing them well. Otherwise, their value falls and fails in proportion to their being done poorly--or much, much worse than poorly.
With extremely few exceptions, around the world on every school-day students, from the primary-school grades through the baccalaureate-degree university level, are being taught a load of abject nonsense about the life and works of an author presented to them as responsible for the “Shakespeare” canon. These unsuspecting students are given to believe as a set of largely-ascertained facts what is actually sheer conjecture; and virtually all of it is grossly false, the product of centuries of “closed-shop” work held up as respectable scholarship.
They are not informed of even the existence of a now-centuries-old controversy over the real author's identity let alone the particulars of the controversy. That, I contend, ought to be recognized as constituting an educational fraud upon these students—in effect, hardly less than a “crime.”
If you are the parent of a student anywhere in age from eight to eighteen years old, you should be concerned that what your child is being taught about “William Shake-speare” of Stratford-Upon-Avon will eventually—if left unchallenged, as is nearly always the case—leave him or her with impediments to any kind of useful and interesting appreciation for the real author and his work. Rather than being enriched by this exposure to an imposture, your children, and, professors, your students, are being mislead and stunted in their intellectual growth, handed rank fables and told these are facts. In the end they are left with a confused picture and conception about a person who is simply irreconcilable with real life. No one has ever conformed to the image of the author as these students are given the life and (largely vacant) 'personality' “William Shakes-peare” to have been. In the end, most of them will leave their studies of Shakespeare under the impression that this author came to his work—about which, depending on the teacher's presentation, he was either passionate or, instead, almost indifferent—for no particular reason at all.
Why were so many of his plays set in ancient or contemporary Italy? Why did he choose to write plays in which the reigns of Kings John, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Richard III, Henry VI and Henry VIII are concerned rather than other Kings? Very simply, they'll have no idea and they may conclude that there needn't even have been any 'reason' since, as far as they are able to tell, these things just happen. Things turned out as they did; but they could have as easily turned out not only very differently but completely opposed to the way in which they happened to have occurred. If they are like most people, once their classroom treatments of Shakespeare have concluded, they'll leave them, never to return. They won't take up Shakespeare other than in a purely superficial way for the rest of their lives. Shakespeare will be for them at best and at most a trivial and passing amusement—nothing of any lasting importance and value, just one of many ways to spend a free hour and a half at a film or, perhaps, a staged production.
They will have no particular and coherent concept of the author or of anything which he “was trying to achieve”--nothing which informed his life-work, which they'll almost certainly see as being no different from any other playwright's work: just a way to make a living in a work-a-day world where drama is a means to entertainment and never more than that.
Now, it is of couse extremely likely that the above describes not only your own view of things—for you, like your child or your children, have fared no differently in the course of your education—but also that of your child's teachers and professors. They, too, almost certainly shall have travelled the same course and arrived at essentially the same end. Thus, many, perhaps most, of them are doing no other than what their own defrauded education has left them condemned to do: teach just as rotely and drearily as they were taught.
We are a scant few years from the centenary of the appearance of J. Thomas Looney's work, Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. It is this nearly one hundred year-old story which you were denied when you were at school and which your children are today, in their turn, being denied.
I am quite ready to defend academic freedom in both principle and practice. I do not believe that any teacher ought to be physically or morally forced to conform to an orthodoxy which outrages his or her sense of truth and fairness. But, for that very reason, I consider it a scandal that, in the world of Shakespeare scholarship, there are, one hundred years on from Looney's work, practically only those who teach the orthodox Shakespeare fraud standing at the front of the classroom and the lecture-hall, the auditorium. In a free and open academic arena, every teacher would, at a minimum, present the full scope of the issues surrounding the identity of the author and, beyond this, there'd also be just as many or perhaps a good deal more teachers teaching as the best-reading of the best-evidence the case according to which the rightful author is Edward, Earl of Oxford-- according to each individual teacher's leanings
There is today an initiative which goes by the name of “The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.” It is the objective of those who subscribe to win a firm place in respectability for this idea that, on the merits, there exists ample ground and, indeed, more than ample ground to find that, as to the identity of William Shakespeare, author, the person from Stratford on Avon is of “doubtful” right.
To me, this is entirely too timid a stand. In fact and instead, the position stand facts on their head: there really is today no reasonable doubt as to the identity of the author: that author is, of couse, Edward, Earl of Oxford and about this there is no reasonable doubt left. Similarly, there is simply no remaining reasonable doubt about the person from Stratford, one William Shaksper. not having been the rightful author of any written line of a poem, a play or a sonnet.
You, dear paremts. in all likelihood, were defrauded in your education as far as “Shakespeare” 's work is concerned and today, your children, if you have any, are in their turn being similarly defrauded.
You have every reason and every right to object to this state of affairs. And so you ought to do.
__________________________
Where to turn to learn more----
If you weren't aware that there even existed a “Shakespeare authorship” question there is no reason to be surprised—this is precisely how orthodox Shakespeare teaching is supposed to work when it “succeeds” as intended. You're not supposed to be aware of the question or that it is a matter of controversy.
Now, having read this, you can turn to the following for a full treatment of the issues which the orthodox Shakespeare scholars would like you to ignore
An online “E-book” text of J. Thomas Looney's Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (free download of the full text in a variety of formats.)
also, read a fully-developed exposition of the Shakespeare authorship question (SAQ) at the website of Stephanie Hopkins Hughes, “PoliticWorm” dot com : http://www.politicworm.com (www.politicworm.com ) Access to the site is free. (Readers who appreciate the work done there are welcome to make a voluntary donation.)
____________________________________________________
excerpted from Professor Richard Feynman's California Institute of Technology Commencement Address of 1974, "Cargo Cult Science" (.pdf file) :
_________________________
... ...
"But there is one feature I notice that is generally miss-
ing in Cargo Cult Science. That is the idea that we all hope
you have learned in studying science in school— we never ex-
plicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all
the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, there-
fore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind
of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that
corresponds to a kind of utter honesty-a kind of leaning over
backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you
should report everything that you think might make it in-
valid-not only what you think is right about it: other causes
that could possibly explain your results; and things you
thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment,
and how they worked-to make sure the other fellow can tell
they have been eliminated.
"Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must
be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can-
if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong-to ex-
plain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it,
or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that
disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is
also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas
together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure,
when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not
just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that
the finished theory makes something else come out right, in
addition.
"In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information
to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not
just the information that leads to judgment in one particular
direction or another.
"The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for ex-
ample, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson Oil
doesn’t soak through food. Well, that’s true. It’s not dishon-
est; but the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of not
being dishonest, it’s a matter of scientific integrity, which is
another level. The fact that should be added to that advertis-
ing statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at
a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature,
they all will-including Wesson Oil. So it’s the implication
which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the
difference is what we have to deal with.
"We’ve learned from experience that the truth will out.
Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find
out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena
will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although
you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will
not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried
to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of
integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is miss-
ing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult
Science.
"A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of
the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to
the subject. Nevertheless, it should be remarked that this is
not the only difficulty. That’s why the planes don’t land-but
they don’t land.
"We have learned a lot from experience about how to han-
dle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Mil-
likan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment
with falling oil drops and got an answer which we now know
not to be quite right. It’s a little bit off, because he had the
incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It’s interesting to look
at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron,
after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you
find that one is a little bigger than Millikan’s, and the next
one’s a little bit bigger than that, and the next one’s a little bit
bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number
which is higher.
"Why didn’t they discover that the new number was higher
right away? It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of-this
history-because it’s apparent that people did things like
this: When they got a number that was too high above Mil-
likan’s, they thought something must be wrong— and they
would look for and find a reason why something might be
wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan’s value,
they didn’t look so hard. And so they eliminated the num-
bers that were too far off, and did other things like that.
We’ve learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don’t have
that kind of a disease.
"But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves-
of having utter scientific integrity— is, I’m sorry to say, some-
thing that we haven’t specifically included in any particular
course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by os-
mosis.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-and
you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very
careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy
not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a
conventional way after that.
"I would like to add something that’s not essential to the sci-
entist, but something I kind of believe, which is that you
should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist.
I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your
wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when
you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an or-
dinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you
and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of in-
tegrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show
how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting
as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, cer-
tainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
"For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on
cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would
explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I
said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get
support for more research of this kind.” / think that’s kind of
dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then
you should explain to the layman what you’re doing— and if
they don’t want to support you under these circumstances,
then that’s their decision.
"One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up
your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea,
you should always decide to publish it whichever way it
comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can
make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of
results." ... ...
4rolandperkins
"Edward, Earl of Oxford (as the author of "Shakespeare" .... there is no reasonable doubt." (1)
From what I have read of the Oxfordian point of view, I am focussed not so much on the premise that "the Stratford Man" COULD NOT have written the poems, sonnets and dramas, but that Oxford probably DID not write them. So I am left with the probability that while "Stratford" is probably not the author neither is Oxford.
What I find hard to believe is that Oxford, a noble, knowing
who the real Pericles was, would ever have named a non-Greek character
Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (Tyre, Phoenicia is in what is now Lebanon.) The Elizabethans were not experts on the Middle East; a little educated commoner would have been looking only for an exotic-sounding, ancient sounding, name, and might very well have so named a character.
In the Italian plays - - Romeo and Juliet,
Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, just as the supposed author, "Stratford" shows too little knowledge of the real Italy,
Oxford shows not enough. A commoner COULD have written those three plays.
Coriolanus and Jullius Caesar could have been
written by a commoner, indeed by anyone with a knowledge of Plutarchʻs not very reliable versions.
From what I have read of the Oxfordian point of view, I am focussed not so much on the premise that "the Stratford Man" COULD NOT have written the poems, sonnets and dramas, but that Oxford probably DID not write them. So I am left with the probability that while "Stratford" is probably not the author neither is Oxford.
What I find hard to believe is that Oxford, a noble, knowing
who the real Pericles was, would ever have named a non-Greek character
Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (Tyre, Phoenicia is in what is now Lebanon.) The Elizabethans were not experts on the Middle East; a little educated commoner would have been looking only for an exotic-sounding, ancient sounding, name, and might very well have so named a character.
In the Italian plays - - Romeo and Juliet,
Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, just as the supposed author, "Stratford" shows too little knowledge of the real Italy,
Oxford shows not enough. A commoner COULD have written those three plays.
Coriolanus and Jullius Caesar could have been
written by a commoner, indeed by anyone with a knowledge of Plutarchʻs not very reliable versions.
6proximity1
>4 rolandperkins:
"In the Italian plays - - Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, just as the supposed author, "Stratford" shows too little knowledge of the real Italy, Oxford shows not enough. A commoner COULD have written those three plays.
Coriolanus and Jullius Caesar could have been written by a commoner, indeed by anyone with a knowledge of Plutarchʻs not very reliable versions."
_______________
As for the plays set in Italy, Noemi Magri's collected essays on these plays, Such Fruits Out of Italy, (2014, Laugwitz Verlag, Buchholz, Germany; i.s.b.n. : 9783-933077-37-0) shows you are mistaken.
All of Oxford's references and allusions to places, modes of travel, styles of dress, art and architecture, etc., in Italy are shown to be correct and his detractors shown to have been ignorant of what Oxford knew fully accurately.
Perhaps you can explain, for example, how and why William Shaksper of Stratford should have known of and decided to make a completely gratuitous reference to an artist, Julio Romano, as "that rare Italian master, Julio Romano"... (The Winter's Tale V. ii. 94-9) / Magri, p. 44). This bit of knowledge is completely extraneous to the dramatic action and the plot of the play. Had it been left out, the play would in no way have been significantly changed. So it seems to be there for sheer "color". But it does not give the impression of being a labored insertion. Rather, it comes naturally in the course of a dialogue.
Are we to suppose that he learned of this by second-hand report from travellers come (or returned) to London? How does it happen that _all_ of his Italian aspects prove to be accurate--was he just incredibly lucky? Did he go around polling people to verify what he'd heard? How is it that he kept all this knowledge told him by firends or strangers and retrieved it so flawlessly--except for things which are rather obviously likely to be compositors' errors in making up type for printed quartos or the folio? Did he record everything in a notebook? If so, why does his use of these seem so completely fluid and unforced, rather than the product of an author's self-conscious and strained use of trivia added for effect--as other writers known to have done are criticizedf for as marring their work?
By the way, concerning using travellers' reports as a source of one's knowledge about the world beyond one's own travel experience, I cite the following, from Filippo De Vivo's Information and Communication in Venice : Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford, 2007) p. 111:
"Contemporaries generally looked with suspicion at the information provided by such intermediaries. Writing for fellow merchants in the 1540s, Benedetti Cotrugli warned against giving credit to the reports of 'sailors' and 'travellers' who exaggerated out of drunkeness." (Cortugli 1990: 158)
The reference is to the 1990 edition Benedetto Cotrugli : Raguseo 'Il Libro dell'Arte di Mercatura (edited by Ugo Tucci) (TECHNÉ 9, (©1990) Arsenale Editrice in Venezia), First written in 1458, the text of Corugli was published in its principal editions in (Venice) 1573 (Oxford was 23 years old) and (Brescia) 1602.
at p. 158-59 one finds,
RE: "What I find hard to believe is that Oxford, a noble, knowing
who the real Pericles was, would ever have named a non-Greek character
Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (Tyre, Phoenicia is in what is now Lebanon.) The Elizabethans were not experts on the Middle East; a little educated commoner would have been looking only for an exotic-sounding, ancient sounding, name, and might very well have so named a character. "
What then is your argument? Just to be clear, are you contending that the name "Pericles" wouldn't have been used by Oxford (writing a play as 'Shakespeare' or under any other pen-name for that matter) because, a noble as well-versed in history as he was would simply never do such a thing--i.e. he'd know better than to make such a 'mistake'?
If not, why wouldn't he use the name?
My view is that, besides Oxford's having been the real author, whoever wrote the plays, as a person of such evident genius--and it's curiously schizophrenic: Stratfordians so easily shift from presenting Shakespeare as the unrivalled man of genius to Shakespeare, the ignorant dolt who couldn't tell which direction Milano is from Verona or Cremona from Milano, etc.--he didn't choose the name 'Pericles' and attach that name to a character as 'Prince of Tyre' out of ignorance, carelessnees, mistake or indifference -- and certainly not out of any ignorance of the fact that Tyre was located in Phoenicia, for example, and not in Greece or that there was a famous Athenian by the name of Pericles in the Athens of the Fifth century B.C. or that Alexander 'the Great' a Macedonian 'Greek' (in his cultural heritage) (Alexander III of Macedon) laid seige to Tyre in 332 B.C. about a century after Alexander had died.
He knew his history and, unlike what Stratfordians are so quick to suppose--depending on how it can serve their cause--he wasn't at times a liteary genius and at other times unable to think straight. We've all heard tales of people of acknowledged genius doing odd things; but these are typically things which relate to absent-mindedness in something which doesn't concern their professional practice. Thus, an Einstein can become confused about the direction to Mercer Street or a Kurt Gödel can secretly believe in fairies and sprites as real entities but in neither case did these things prevent them from thinking straight and clearly or imaginatively and creatively in their professed work. If Oxford used a historical name for a character and we find that character departing from strict historical facts as they were then believed or known to be, he has a very good and a very specific reason for doing so. And we ought to be interested in discovering what that reason is if it isn't already obvious since it is in such instances that we're apt to discover more confirmation for why the real authorship is Oxford's and not that Stratford fellow's. Indeed, when you get the author's identity correct it should and it does lead you to other as-yet-unrecognized facts about meanings and relationships between the author's times and his ideas and his work and the various people who perhaps had not previously been understood to have had some part in the author's life and work.
To their great credit, certain Stratfordian scholars--really the best among them--have been able to show how that is the case in the 'history plays' of Oxford as 'Shakespeare.'
So, until I hear more from you, I am not quite sure just how you mean to argue this point. But whatever it is, it's a point of importance to my purpose here.
"In the Italian plays - - Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, just as the supposed author, "Stratford" shows too little knowledge of the real Italy, Oxford shows not enough. A commoner COULD have written those three plays.
Coriolanus and Jullius Caesar could have been written by a commoner, indeed by anyone with a knowledge of Plutarchʻs not very reliable versions."
_______________
As for the plays set in Italy, Noemi Magri's collected essays on these plays, Such Fruits Out of Italy, (2014, Laugwitz Verlag, Buchholz, Germany; i.s.b.n. : 9783-933077-37-0) shows you are mistaken.
All of Oxford's references and allusions to places, modes of travel, styles of dress, art and architecture, etc., in Italy are shown to be correct and his detractors shown to have been ignorant of what Oxford knew fully accurately.
Perhaps you can explain, for example, how and why William Shaksper of Stratford should have known of and decided to make a completely gratuitous reference to an artist, Julio Romano, as "that rare Italian master, Julio Romano"... (The Winter's Tale V. ii. 94-9) / Magri, p. 44). This bit of knowledge is completely extraneous to the dramatic action and the plot of the play. Had it been left out, the play would in no way have been significantly changed. So it seems to be there for sheer "color". But it does not give the impression of being a labored insertion. Rather, it comes naturally in the course of a dialogue.
Are we to suppose that he learned of this by second-hand report from travellers come (or returned) to London? How does it happen that _all_ of his Italian aspects prove to be accurate--was he just incredibly lucky? Did he go around polling people to verify what he'd heard? How is it that he kept all this knowledge told him by firends or strangers and retrieved it so flawlessly--except for things which are rather obviously likely to be compositors' errors in making up type for printed quartos or the folio? Did he record everything in a notebook? If so, why does his use of these seem so completely fluid and unforced, rather than the product of an author's self-conscious and strained use of trivia added for effect--as other writers known to have done are criticizedf for as marring their work?
By the way, concerning using travellers' reports as a source of one's knowledge about the world beyond one's own travel experience, I cite the following, from Filippo De Vivo's Information and Communication in Venice : Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford, 2007) p. 111:
"Contemporaries generally looked with suspicion at the information provided by such intermediaries. Writing for fellow merchants in the 1540s, Benedetti Cotrugli warned against giving credit to the reports of 'sailors' and 'travellers' who exaggerated out of drunkeness." (Cortugli 1990: 158)
The reference is to the 1990 edition Benedetto Cotrugli : Raguseo 'Il Libro dell'Arte di Mercatura (edited by Ugo Tucci) (TECHNÉ 9, (©1990) Arsenale Editrice in Venezia), First written in 1458, the text of Corugli was published in its principal editions in (Venice) 1573 (Oxford was 23 years old) and (Brescia) 1602.
at p. 158-59 one finds,
"Non debbeno, dando sé (1) ad li avisi di marinari et alcuni homini leggieri et viandanti, intraprehendere le cose grandi, perché lo marinaio constituito a cose grosse e d'intelletto ebete, ciò è debole, quando beve in taverna o compera pane in piazza che li paia che sia caro, ti porterà l'aviso che di vino et di pane in tale luogo si faria grande utile; non debbe lo moderato mercante, in spetiale quello che ha cura delle cose grandi, al adviso di colui intraprehendere di stesso con intellecto investigare soctilmente, havendo spesso in memoria quello egregio doctore di Lactantio:
'Oportet in ea re maxime in qua vite ratio versatur sibi quemque confidere suoque judicio ac propriis sensibus niti ad investigandum et perpetuandam veritatem, quam credentem alienis erroribus decipi tamquam ipsum rationis expertem dedit omnibus Deus pro virili sapientiam ut inaudita etiam investigare possent et audita perpendere.'
A french translation has this latin of Lactantio thus:
"VIII. Chacun doit se fier à soi-même dans la plus importante affaire de sa vie, et se servir de ses sens et de son esprit pour chercher la vérité, plutôt que de se laisser tromper en suivant les erreurs des autres. Dieu a donné à chaque homme une portion de lumière et de sagesse par laquelle il peut apprendre ce qu'il ignore et examiner ce qu'on lui propose."
http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/eglise/lactance/instit2.htm
(my translation):
"Each one must entrust to himself the most important matter in his life, and make use of sense and his wits in the searching for the truth rather than letting himself fall into error by following the errors of others. God grants each a portion of light and wisdom by which he may learn that of which he is ignorant and examine that which is proposed to him."
_____________________________
RE: "What I find hard to believe is that Oxford, a noble, knowing
who the real Pericles was, would ever have named a non-Greek character
Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (Tyre, Phoenicia is in what is now Lebanon.) The Elizabethans were not experts on the Middle East; a little educated commoner would have been looking only for an exotic-sounding, ancient sounding, name, and might very well have so named a character. "
What then is your argument? Just to be clear, are you contending that the name "Pericles" wouldn't have been used by Oxford (writing a play as 'Shakespeare' or under any other pen-name for that matter) because, a noble as well-versed in history as he was would simply never do such a thing--i.e. he'd know better than to make such a 'mistake'?
If not, why wouldn't he use the name?
My view is that, besides Oxford's having been the real author, whoever wrote the plays, as a person of such evident genius--and it's curiously schizophrenic: Stratfordians so easily shift from presenting Shakespeare as the unrivalled man of genius to Shakespeare, the ignorant dolt who couldn't tell which direction Milano is from Verona or Cremona from Milano, etc.--he didn't choose the name 'Pericles' and attach that name to a character as 'Prince of Tyre' out of ignorance, carelessnees, mistake or indifference -- and certainly not out of any ignorance of the fact that Tyre was located in Phoenicia, for example, and not in Greece or that there was a famous Athenian by the name of Pericles in the Athens of the Fifth century B.C. or that Alexander 'the Great' a Macedonian 'Greek' (in his cultural heritage) (Alexander III of Macedon) laid seige to Tyre in 332 B.C. about a century after Alexander had died.
He knew his history and, unlike what Stratfordians are so quick to suppose--depending on how it can serve their cause--he wasn't at times a liteary genius and at other times unable to think straight. We've all heard tales of people of acknowledged genius doing odd things; but these are typically things which relate to absent-mindedness in something which doesn't concern their professional practice. Thus, an Einstein can become confused about the direction to Mercer Street or a Kurt Gödel can secretly believe in fairies and sprites as real entities but in neither case did these things prevent them from thinking straight and clearly or imaginatively and creatively in their professed work. If Oxford used a historical name for a character and we find that character departing from strict historical facts as they were then believed or known to be, he has a very good and a very specific reason for doing so. And we ought to be interested in discovering what that reason is if it isn't already obvious since it is in such instances that we're apt to discover more confirmation for why the real authorship is Oxford's and not that Stratford fellow's. Indeed, when you get the author's identity correct it should and it does lead you to other as-yet-unrecognized facts about meanings and relationships between the author's times and his ideas and his work and the various people who perhaps had not previously been understood to have had some part in the author's life and work.
To their great credit, certain Stratfordian scholars--really the best among them--have been able to show how that is the case in the 'history plays' of Oxford as 'Shakespeare.'
So, until I hear more from you, I am not quite sure just how you mean to argue this point. But whatever it is, it's a point of importance to my purpose here.
7grayhog
"All of Oxford's references and allusions to places, modes of travel, styles of dress, art and architecture, etc., in Italy are show to be correct."
In TGoV Launce must hurry lest he lose the flood, so he grabs an oar to row out to the boat at anchorage and hop aboard before the vessels starts heading down the Adige.
His departure is also hurried lest he "lose the tide."
Launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped
and thou art to post after with oars. What's the
matter? why weepest thou, man? Away, ass! You'll
lose the tide, if you tarry any longer.
The language seems to describe a tidal river, where an outbound voyage depends on everyone being aboard ship before the flood tide starts to ebb. Could you explain why Shakespeare was apparently incorrect on this point (since the Adige is not a tidal river)?
In TGoV Launce must hurry lest he lose the flood, so he grabs an oar to row out to the boat at anchorage and hop aboard before the vessels starts heading down the Adige.
His departure is also hurried lest he "lose the tide."
Launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped
and thou art to post after with oars. What's the
matter? why weepest thou, man? Away, ass! You'll
lose the tide, if you tarry any longer.
The language seems to describe a tidal river, where an outbound voyage depends on everyone being aboard ship before the flood tide starts to ebb. Could you explain why Shakespeare was apparently incorrect on this point (since the Adige is not a tidal river)?
8proximity1
>7 grayhog:
Yes. I can cite what Magri writes in response to such an objection; and, if interested, you could actually get and read a copy of her work--this is really what I recommend. What's the use of my laboriously retyping for readers here the ample work cited done by thorough and careful scholars?
Her reply is at p. 100: "it often occurred in the past and still does now, though less frequently, that rain made the water level rise rapidly even within a few hours." ... "periods of low water (on the Adige) alternated (sporadically) with periods of "high tide". It's not known yet when exactly ...Oxford stayed in Verona; however, records report that in summer of 1575 the Adige was in flood."
Her text gives somewhat greater detail of the history of floods and the repair of earthworks, citing cases of major rain-induced floods from the 14th c. to the 16th c.
Closer to the coast, there is a tidal effect, (though much less dramatic than the sea coastal tides, it can be measured) upon rivers and their connecting canal ways--which, circa before and after 15-16 C., was even more evident than today due to more modern flood control works.
In addition, Oxford--the real author--in this as in so many instances, used puns and here,
"lose the tide" is meant in a multiple sense--and sets up the comedic answer
_______________________
(By the way, that happens to be the current circunstances in Tuscany, where the Arno's level is now, after a spate of protracted rain, quite high--though the river has not breached its banks in Florence.)
Yes. I can cite what Magri writes in response to such an objection; and, if interested, you could actually get and read a copy of her work--this is really what I recommend. What's the use of my laboriously retyping for readers here the ample work cited done by thorough and careful scholars?
Her reply is at p. 100: "it often occurred in the past and still does now, though less frequently, that rain made the water level rise rapidly even within a few hours." ... "periods of low water (on the Adige) alternated (sporadically) with periods of "high tide". It's not known yet when exactly ...Oxford stayed in Verona; however, records report that in summer of 1575 the Adige was in flood."
Her text gives somewhat greater detail of the history of floods and the repair of earthworks, citing cases of major rain-induced floods from the 14th c. to the 16th c.
Closer to the coast, there is a tidal effect, (though much less dramatic than the sea coastal tides, it can be measured) upon rivers and their connecting canal ways--which, circa before and after 15-16 C., was even more evident than today due to more modern flood control works.
In addition, Oxford--the real author--in this as in so many instances, used puns and here,
"lose the tide" is meant in a multiple sense--and sets up the comedic answer
PANTHINO
Away, ass, you'll lose
the tide, if you tarry any longer. (TG II.iii. 33-34)
LAUNCE
It is no matter if the tied were lost, for it is the
unkindest tied that ever any man tied.
PANTHINO
What's the unkindest tide?
LAUNCE
Why, he that's tied here, Crab, my dog.
PANTHINO
Tut, man, I mean thou'lt lose the flood; and,
in losing the flood, lose thy voyage; and, in losing thy
voyage, lose thy master; and, in losing thy master, lose
thy service; and, in losing thy service – Why dost thou
stop my mouth?
LAUNCE
For fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue.
PANTHINO
Where should I lose my tongue?
LAUNCE
In thy tale.
PANTHINO
In my tail!
LAUNCE
Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master,
and the service, and the tied. Why, man, if the river
were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears. If the wind
were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs.
(TG II.iii. 35-51)
_______________________
(By the way, that happens to be the current circunstances in Tuscany, where the Arno's level is now, after a spate of protracted rain, quite high--though the river has not breached its banks in Florence.)
9grayhog
proximity1:
You cite Magri’s explanation for what the author meant by the word "flood" in TGoV. As you pointed out, she mentions that “in the summer of 1575 the Adige was in flood,” and later that “Sudden rains failing heavily throughout the year had caused the Adige and all its many tributaries to burst the banks and flood the countryside.” I'm sure, however, that Magri did not want us to think that Valentine and Speed would go sailing across the flooded countryside.
Magri, perhaps realizing the folly of cross-country sailing, pursues another tack, noting that "The Adige was dangerous for navigations in stormy weather or in spring when the snows in the Alps were thawing and large quantities of water made rivers and streams swollen. At times the current was so strong that ships were dashed against the bridge piers or stranded on the banks.” But this also seems a flawed proposal, given the cited dangers of navigating a river swollen by storms or the spring thaw.
So could you explain why Valentine and Speed would hurry to catch a real flood on the Adige when, in Magri’s own words, their ship could be “dashed against the bridge piers or stranded on the banks.” Rather, it seems that they should do the exact opposite. Instead of hurrying to catch the flood, they should wait out the danger, at least until the flood waters have subsided enough for safe navigation.
Magri then proceeds to claim the following lines show that Shakespeare “knew it was possible to suffer shipwreck while travelling on the Adige.”
Pro. Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wrack,
Which cannot perish having thee aboard,
Being destin'd to a drier death on shore. (I,i)
But Magri seems to misread the line. It’s an allusion to the proverb, “He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned.” Proteus is angry with Speed who bungled the delivery of Proteus’s love note to Julia. Hence the denunciation as Proteus sends Speed to catch Valentine before their ship heads downstream.
Thus Proteus’s line is not about an imminent “wrack” from foolishly hurrying to catch the swift currents of a flooded Adige. Actually, he means quite the opposite. He’s wishing, or perhaps predicting, that Speed will live long enough to eventually be hanged “on shore” for indolence (and bad puns) at some future time, effectively ensuring a safe passage for the entire voyage (not just the first few miles down the raging Adige, where they would not have ventured anyway), since the ship cannot perish with him aboard. Or do you hold with Magri that these lines are evidence of Shakespeare’s unique insight that the Adige, like every other river in the world, was dangerous to navigate after
heavy rains?
After you respond, perhaps we could also look at how Roe explains the meaning of the word “flood” in TGoV. His explanation is quite different from Magri’s.
And then we’ll need to examine the word “tide,” which is far more troubling than “flood,” as it shows even more clearly that the author did not know (or perhaps particularly care) about the hydrography of Verona.
BTW, I hope you have figured out that I do have both Magri and Roe. And a lot of other Oxfordian tomes. When I first stumbled onto the SAQ back in 2011, I found the Oxfordian case intriguing, but the more I learned, the more apparent it became that there’s no hard evidence for Oxford, not a single document, just supposition, idiosyncratic interpretation, and endless biographical correspondences (like Lear’s 3 daughters and the pirates). Yet there’s a wealth of contemporaneous documentary evidence for Stratford, for example the Grant of Arms to his father in 1598, which made his son, William, the only Mr. Shakespeare in town--just about the same time as the first mentions of Mr. Shakespeare appeared in the Parnassus plays where, like Meres, Shakespeare is mentioned repeatedly, while Oxford is mentioned only once, and off stage at that. But I digress.
So, again, why does Magri explain the playwright’s use of the word “flood” in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige?? And why does she believe Proteus’s curse demonstrates the author’s knowledge of shipwrecks on the Adige, and more important, why that would be such special knowledge?
Cheers! And I look forward to some lively--but respectful--discussions.
You cite Magri’s explanation for what the author meant by the word "flood" in TGoV. As you pointed out, she mentions that “in the summer of 1575 the Adige was in flood,” and later that “Sudden rains failing heavily throughout the year had caused the Adige and all its many tributaries to burst the banks and flood the countryside.” I'm sure, however, that Magri did not want us to think that Valentine and Speed would go sailing across the flooded countryside.
Magri, perhaps realizing the folly of cross-country sailing, pursues another tack, noting that "The Adige was dangerous for navigations in stormy weather or in spring when the snows in the Alps were thawing and large quantities of water made rivers and streams swollen. At times the current was so strong that ships were dashed against the bridge piers or stranded on the banks.” But this also seems a flawed proposal, given the cited dangers of navigating a river swollen by storms or the spring thaw.
So could you explain why Valentine and Speed would hurry to catch a real flood on the Adige when, in Magri’s own words, their ship could be “dashed against the bridge piers or stranded on the banks.” Rather, it seems that they should do the exact opposite. Instead of hurrying to catch the flood, they should wait out the danger, at least until the flood waters have subsided enough for safe navigation.
Magri then proceeds to claim the following lines show that Shakespeare “knew it was possible to suffer shipwreck while travelling on the Adige.”
Pro. Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wrack,
Which cannot perish having thee aboard,
Being destin'd to a drier death on shore. (I,i)
But Magri seems to misread the line. It’s an allusion to the proverb, “He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned.” Proteus is angry with Speed who bungled the delivery of Proteus’s love note to Julia. Hence the denunciation as Proteus sends Speed to catch Valentine before their ship heads downstream.
Thus Proteus’s line is not about an imminent “wrack” from foolishly hurrying to catch the swift currents of a flooded Adige. Actually, he means quite the opposite. He’s wishing, or perhaps predicting, that Speed will live long enough to eventually be hanged “on shore” for indolence (and bad puns) at some future time, effectively ensuring a safe passage for the entire voyage (not just the first few miles down the raging Adige, where they would not have ventured anyway), since the ship cannot perish with him aboard. Or do you hold with Magri that these lines are evidence of Shakespeare’s unique insight that the Adige, like every other river in the world, was dangerous to navigate after
heavy rains?
After you respond, perhaps we could also look at how Roe explains the meaning of the word “flood” in TGoV. His explanation is quite different from Magri’s.
And then we’ll need to examine the word “tide,” which is far more troubling than “flood,” as it shows even more clearly that the author did not know (or perhaps particularly care) about the hydrography of Verona.
BTW, I hope you have figured out that I do have both Magri and Roe. And a lot of other Oxfordian tomes. When I first stumbled onto the SAQ back in 2011, I found the Oxfordian case intriguing, but the more I learned, the more apparent it became that there’s no hard evidence for Oxford, not a single document, just supposition, idiosyncratic interpretation, and endless biographical correspondences (like Lear’s 3 daughters and the pirates). Yet there’s a wealth of contemporaneous documentary evidence for Stratford, for example the Grant of Arms to his father in 1598, which made his son, William, the only Mr. Shakespeare in town--just about the same time as the first mentions of Mr. Shakespeare appeared in the Parnassus plays where, like Meres, Shakespeare is mentioned repeatedly, while Oxford is mentioned only once, and off stage at that. But I digress.
So, again, why does Magri explain the playwright’s use of the word “flood” in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige?? And why does she believe Proteus’s curse demonstrates the author’s knowledge of shipwrecks on the Adige, and more important, why that would be such special knowledge?
Cheers! And I look forward to some lively--but respectful--discussions.
10proximity1
>9 grayhog: "BTW, I hope you have figured out that I do have both Magri and Roe. And a lot of other Oxfordian tomes."
Good. Then, try and not only read them but understand them. You'll save me a world of unnecessary typing.
I will not read Magri or Roe aloud to you. I will recommend them to those who have an open mind on these matters. You're apparently reading (or you read ) them strictly for purposes of disparagement--decided on in advance.
Since you have Roe handy--and my copy has gone missing-- why don't you relate for us what Roe says about the meaning(s) of "flood" -- or, we could use our common sense and reason out how a poet, a master and ingenious inventor of metaphor such as Oxford was could and would use a term like "flood." My own view is that those who take "flood" in this scene to mean either strictly or especially the sense of the term as applied to such events as, for example, the famous
Johnstown Flood
are either being morons or are standard-issue Stratfordians --or both.
"So, again, why does Magri explain the playwright’s use of the word “flood” in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige?? And why does she believe Proteus’s curse demonstrates the author’s knowledge of shipwrecks on the Adige, and more important, why that would be such special knowledge?"
The answers to these are in the book you can apparently read---as in see and prounounce the words---but not really understand.
Here's a question for you-- and, like all others of your ilk, you'll ignore or dodge it:
Why didn't the great Shaksper's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, mention his illustrious father in-law in his journals, hmm?
"Yet there’s a wealth of contemporaneous documentary evidence for Stratford, for example the Grant of Arms to his father in 1598, which made his son, William,"
this in no way indicates _any_ relationship to being literate, let alone being an accomplished poet and playwright. BUT YOU FUCKING KNEW THAT.
..."the only Mr. Shakespeare in town--just about the same time as the first mentions of Mr. Shakespeare appeared in the Parnassus plays where, like Meres, Shakespeare is mentioned repeatedly,"
added by those who were invested in disguising Oxford's authorship. of course.
I have a lot of other questions to which I'll bet you cannot--and so, shall not--give an honest and straight-forward answer. It seems apparent to me that you're here only for a fight, not to think fairly and reasonably. And, in that, you demonstrate for the information of others who aren't acquainted with their ugliness what Stratfordians, in their common type, look and act like. And, as such a specimen, you are welcome here. But as for your disingenuous questioning, we're done with that since it is abundantly clear you would not reciprocate any good-will shown on my part.
For example, above, I'd asked you, in my naive good-faith, this:
"What then is your argument? Just to be clear, are you contending that the name "Pericles" wouldn't have been used by Oxford (writing a play as 'Shakespeare' or under any other pen-name for that matter) because, a noble as well-versed in history as he was would simply never do such a thing--i.e. he'd know better than to make such a 'mistake'?"
You completely ignored it. You can now fuck off.
_______________________
Notice:
That figures.
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
***ETA*** IMPORTANT CORRECTION :
"grayhog" objects with good reason to my having taxed him for failing to reply to a call for clarification on a point about Oxford's use of the name "Pericles" for a prince of Tyre.
Indeed, he's correct. I confused RolandPerkins' post (>4 rolandperkins:) who, by thw way, also hasn't responded--but I don't put him in the company of grayhog on that account) with some of grayhog's disingenuous queries addressed to me. That's an error for which I am sorry and I make this correction to recognize my mistake.
On the other hand, see my appended reply at post No. 20 , below, concerning this fault of mine---where I'll answer later, at the first opportunity, other pertinent aspects of this:
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
Good. Then, try and not only read them but understand them. You'll save me a world of unnecessary typing.
I will not read Magri or Roe aloud to you. I will recommend them to those who have an open mind on these matters. You're apparently reading (or you read ) them strictly for purposes of disparagement--decided on in advance.
Since you have Roe handy--and my copy has gone missing-- why don't you relate for us what Roe says about the meaning(s) of "flood" -- or, we could use our common sense and reason out how a poet, a master and ingenious inventor of metaphor such as Oxford was could and would use a term like "flood." My own view is that those who take "flood" in this scene to mean either strictly or especially the sense of the term as applied to such events as, for example, the famous
Johnstown Flood
are either being morons or are standard-issue Stratfordians --or both.
"So, again, why does Magri explain the playwright’s use of the word “flood” in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige?? And why does she believe Proteus’s curse demonstrates the author’s knowledge of shipwrecks on the Adige, and more important, why that would be such special knowledge?"
The answers to these are in the book you can apparently read---as in see and prounounce the words---but not really understand.
Here's a question for you-- and, like all others of your ilk, you'll ignore or dodge it:
Why didn't the great Shaksper's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, mention his illustrious father in-law in his journals, hmm?
"Yet there’s a wealth of contemporaneous documentary evidence for Stratford, for example the Grant of Arms to his father in 1598, which made his son, William,"
this in no way indicates _any_ relationship to being literate, let alone being an accomplished poet and playwright. BUT YOU FUCKING KNEW THAT.
..."the only Mr. Shakespeare in town--just about the same time as the first mentions of Mr. Shakespeare appeared in the Parnassus plays where, like Meres, Shakespeare is mentioned repeatedly,"
added by those who were invested in disguising Oxford's authorship. of course.
I have a lot of other questions to which I'll bet you cannot--and so, shall not--give an honest and straight-forward answer. It seems apparent to me that you're here only for a fight, not to think fairly and reasonably. And, in that, you demonstrate for the information of others who aren't acquainted with their ugliness what Stratfordians, in their common type, look and act like. And, as such a specimen, you are welcome here. But as for your disingenuous questioning, we're done with that since it is abundantly clear you would not reciprocate any good-will shown on my part.
For example, above, I'd asked you, in my naive good-faith, this:
"What then is your argument? Just to be clear, are you contending that the name "Pericles" wouldn't have been used by Oxford (writing a play as 'Shakespeare' or under any other pen-name for that matter) because, a noble as well-versed in history as he was would simply never do such a thing--i.e. he'd know better than to make such a 'mistake'?"
You completely ignored it. You can now fuck off.
_______________________
Notice:
Member: grayhog
Collections None
Reviews None
Tags None
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Favorite authors Not set
Account type public, free
URLs /profile/grayhog (profile)
/catalog/grayhog (library)
Member since Feb 5, 2018
That figures.
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
***ETA*** IMPORTANT CORRECTION :
"grayhog" objects with good reason to my having taxed him for failing to reply to a call for clarification on a point about Oxford's use of the name "Pericles" for a prince of Tyre.
Indeed, he's correct. I confused RolandPerkins' post (>4 rolandperkins:) who, by thw way, also hasn't responded--but I don't put him in the company of grayhog on that account) with some of grayhog's disingenuous queries addressed to me. That's an error for which I am sorry and I make this correction to recognize my mistake.
On the other hand, see my appended reply at post No. 20 , below, concerning this fault of mine---where I'll answer later, at the first opportunity, other pertinent aspects of this:
"But, sadly, I guess you are declining what I had hoped would be some "lively--but respectful--discussions." You have showed your colors with this bit a nastiness: "I have a lot of other questions to which I'll bet you cannot--and so, shall not--give an honest and straight-forward answer." Punctuated with an unfortunate, "You can now fuck off," apparently because I did not answer a question about Pericles that was not even directed to me."
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11proximity1
post >9 grayhog: is what comes from Stratfordians' somersaults in reason trying to find something amiss in Oxford's work as Shakespeare---and why? Because in this instance, it serves their partisan purpose to try and make the author out as a buffoon who used words carelessly at best and, at worst, in shocking ignorance since, of course, the assumption--correct, as a matter of fact--is that their candidate, unlike the real author, Oxford, never left England as far as we have any reason to believe. Thus, his depiction of Italian geography and modes of travel reveals him as ill-or uninformed, using only what he gathered from hearsay from travellers whose paths he crossed in London.
That is our otherwise supposed unrivalled literary genius as Stratfordians give him to us. Or else, some other person wrote the work-- for some, it was Francis Bacon. Now, then, does Bacon fit this fool's-profile? Does Sir Walter Ralegh?
"Flood" is used only twice in the entire play. Both times are found spoken by Panthino in the passage I already cited above in >8 proximity1:. Oxford varies the usage both earlier and later and writes, "tide" (in a rare usage refering to aquatic tides, since, usually, "tide" in early modern English referred nearly always to some aspect of "time"--and is related to "tidings": "betide", "e'en tide" "often tide").
But Oxford himself amswers "grayhog" 's disingenuous question about the use of flood:
Read the dialogue--- there's no prospect of a "flood" in the Johnston, PA. sense of the term:
PANTHINO
Tut, man, I mean thou'lt lose the flood, and, in
losing the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing
thy voyage, lose thy master, and, in losing thy
master, lose thy service, and, in losing thy
service,--Why dost thou stop my mouth?
Why "lose the flood"? If this were a life-threatening "flood" in the Johnstown sense, then Oxford would surely not have described "missing" it as a "loss". He'd have written, "Lose the flood and save thy life thereby" instead.
In addition why doesn't Launce 'wait out' "grayhog's" disingenuously posited perils of taking ship on the river?
My guess, from reading the dialogue is that there is no such peril:
Thus, " 'safe' for the master, 'safe' for his servant"--- and as a servant, under another's orders Launce doesn't have a choice to wait out a peril which, from the play's dialogue's indications, doesn't exist.
this is a comic scene. Oxford is having fun here in word-play and this is one of his most characteristic aspects of Oxford. We have absolutely nothing surviving in either his own or others' testimony about William Shaksper to indicate that he was of this kind of humor. On the contray to so much that is glaringly obvious about Oxford and his often displayed indifference or contempt for monetary wealth, Shakeper was a penny-pinching merchant and becaome "respectable" for no other reason than that wealth and what it allowed him to purchase.
Really! This is _very_ difficult stuff. And Stratfordians have simply bitten off more than they can chew in supposing that Oxford wrote for such like as their intellects. They're smitten with a Shakespeare fable, in love with it, and determined to shoe-horn this idiotic myth into the tiny thinking-spaces they possess. But that, yes, is a very task and it make them look like what they are: ridiculously desperate.
It also offers the rest of us an object-lesson in what computer programmers know and describe as the problem of "GIGO", the initials which refer to the phrase, "Garbge in, garbage out. Those four words pithily capture all that is wrong in orthodox Shakespeare teacher's ways, means and methods.
That is our otherwise supposed unrivalled literary genius as Stratfordians give him to us. Or else, some other person wrote the work-- for some, it was Francis Bacon. Now, then, does Bacon fit this fool's-profile? Does Sir Walter Ralegh?
"Flood" is used only twice in the entire play. Both times are found spoken by Panthino in the passage I already cited above in >8 proximity1:. Oxford varies the usage both earlier and later and writes, "tide" (in a rare usage refering to aquatic tides, since, usually, "tide" in early modern English referred nearly always to some aspect of "time"--and is related to "tidings": "betide", "e'en tide" "often tide").
But Oxford himself amswers "grayhog" 's disingenuous question about the use of flood:
Read the dialogue--- there's no prospect of a "flood" in the Johnston, PA. sense of the term:
PANTHINO
Tut, man, I mean thou'lt lose the flood, and, in
losing the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing
thy voyage, lose thy master, and, in losing thy
master, lose thy service, and, in losing thy
service,--Why dost thou stop my mouth?
Why "lose the flood"? If this were a life-threatening "flood" in the Johnstown sense, then Oxford would surely not have described "missing" it as a "loss". He'd have written, "Lose the flood and save thy life thereby" instead.
In addition why doesn't Launce 'wait out' "grayhog's" disingenuously posited perils of taking ship on the river?
My guess, from reading the dialogue is that there is no such peril:
Scene III The same. A street.
... ... ...
Enter PANTHINO
PANTHINO
Launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped
and thou art to post after with oars. What's the
matter? why weepest thou, man? Away, ass! You'll
lose the tide, if you tarry any longer.
Thus, " 'safe' for the master, 'safe' for his servant"--- and as a servant, under another's orders Launce doesn't have a choice to wait out a peril which, from the play's dialogue's indications, doesn't exist.
LAUNCE
"Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master,
and the service, and the tied. Why, man, if the river
were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears. If the wind
were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs."
this is a comic scene. Oxford is having fun here in word-play and this is one of his most characteristic aspects of Oxford. We have absolutely nothing surviving in either his own or others' testimony about William Shaksper to indicate that he was of this kind of humor. On the contray to so much that is glaringly obvious about Oxford and his often displayed indifference or contempt for monetary wealth, Shakeper was a penny-pinching merchant and becaome "respectable" for no other reason than that wealth and what it allowed him to purchase.
Really! This is _very_ difficult stuff. And Stratfordians have simply bitten off more than they can chew in supposing that Oxford wrote for such like as their intellects. They're smitten with a Shakespeare fable, in love with it, and determined to shoe-horn this idiotic myth into the tiny thinking-spaces they possess. But that, yes, is a very task and it make them look like what they are: ridiculously desperate.
It also offers the rest of us an object-lesson in what computer programmers know and describe as the problem of "GIGO", the initials which refer to the phrase, "Garbge in, garbage out. Those four words pithily capture all that is wrong in orthodox Shakespeare teacher's ways, means and methods.
12proximity1
>9 grayhog:
"Cheers! And I look forward to some lively--but respectful--discussions."
Now, see there? This is the sign-off from a fellow (man or woman) who has just tried to engage in a disingenuous game of "Gotcha!" And he (or she, but I suppose it's "he") is now trying to bullshit us--not only bullshit me, but the rest of you, readers, as well--that he's now ready for "some lively--but respectful--discussions."
In falsely representing himself as in need of another's (mine, in this case) time and trouble in relating for him the details of a text which, supposedly, he doesn't have, when, in fact, he has the text and could have instead started by quoting from it and asking his questions in a straight-forward manner, he loses, forfeits the "respectful discussion" he claims to want to have.
Would you trust such a fellow after this?
Again, this is typical of the disingenuous bullshit to which Stratfordians consistently treat Oxfordians. My sentiments are no secret here when it comes to Oxford's part as "Shakespeare." I don't play games of "Gotcha!" and people who do demonstrate their moral standards.
RE:
Asking this blantantly-loaded question--which reminds me of "Do you still beat your wife?"-kind-of-questions-- is also typical. Magri in no way " "explain(s) the playwright’s use of the word 'flood' in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige" Instead, in pages 95 to 100 she writes generally of the fact that water-travel between Verona and Milano by river and canal-connections was common. After that exposition, during which the term "flood" doesn't appear, she goes into the potential perils of this type of travel:
(p. 101) "Owing to the flow rate and the steep gradient of the riverbed, the Adige was (i.e. could be) dangerous for navigation in stormy weather or in Spring when the snows in the Alps were thawing and large quantities of water made rivers and streams swollen. At times the current was so strong that ships were dashed against the bridge piers or stranded on the banks."
That's all. This is in direct response to Stratfordians' long-standing objections that the Adige doesn't know anything of "tidal" effects --which is only true in the most picky strict sense, since it does in effect have irregular rises and drops in rate and height which are similar for watercraft to a coast's tide changes. There's no reference in any of this to Oxford's two uses of "flood" in Panthino's lines.
Then, following that she takes up, separately the fact that, yes, river and canal-boat travel, due to many factors, including bad weather, storms, heavy rains, sudden changes in the currents' strengths, does indeed pose inherent risks to travellers aboard barges and sail-driven craft, and offers this, her opinion,
"These facts would account for Proteus's words after Speed has left the stage, 'Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck, (sic) ("wrack" in the First Folio) which cannot perish having thee aboard, Being destin'd to a drier death on shore. (I, i, 142-144)
(the next paragrahph has minor revisions from a previous version)
That comment can and may refer to simply a feature of the inherent dangers in such travel in those times and conditions. It is not at all necessary that it besome claim that due to "the author" 's intention to present us with a scene in which he has set his characters on some particularly and imminently perilous river journey; there is nothing else in the dialogue to support such an interpretation. Nor is there any reason to suppose either that Magri interpreted the author's use of "flood" in the way "Grayhog" claims or that the author himself intended that interpretation be drawn by the reader/play-audience.
"Grayhog" claims that here, the author is alluding to an old adage and using it cleverly to cast aspersions on Speed. That's of course quite possible and, as a conjecture, it's both interesting and worthy of mention. But there is, as far as I'm aware, simply no documented basis for supposing that our Shaksper of Stratford had ever known or used the adage--though of course he might have. Had it been Oxford's source, he could have known and read of it in its 14th century French version--since he was fluent in French and could easily have seen it in a text or heard it among members in Cecil's--or his own-- household growing up: "Noyer ne peut cil qui doit pendre." ( from The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs by Martin H. Manser)
So "grayhog" is raising an assinine question, posed full of disingenuousness and invites us, after doing this, to take him at his word when he writes,
"Cheers! And I look forward to some lively--but respectful--discussions."
Like hell he is! He has all the texts he needs to understand these things. Instead of using them for that, he uses them to come here and try and engage in games of "Gotcha!"
With that, I am really quite done with this person's bullshit. But I consider this exchange a useful example and I'm sure to make further reference to it as an example when I discuss how Stratfordians typically argue and reason.
Notice, for example, that, when it's a matter of the intellectual potential of the Stratford William Shaksper, we're invited by Stratfordians to marvel at his genius--and that genius, it happens, is only "available" to us as evidence of his being Shakespeare, the literary genius, if we already grant as a given fact that this Shaksper fellow from Stratford was the genius they, Stratfordians claim he had to have been---because his plays show that. If you're dizzy from this circular reasoning, I do not blame you.
Notice, too, how these same people who can draw circles to prove that Shaskper of Stratford had to have written the plays because he was a genius--as is indicated by his having written the plays, these same don't hesitate to make Oxford out as a blunderer---and this is proven by the many errors in his plays.
Well, Magri's book of collected essays is devoted to exploding those charges of errors about Italian geography, history, culture, and modes of living. And it does that brilliantly.
But unless an Oxfordian first brings up her work, no Stratfordian will mention her.
That tells us something about Stratfordians and it isn't flattering.
"Cheers! And I look forward to some lively--but respectful--discussions."
Now, see there? This is the sign-off from a fellow (man or woman) who has just tried to engage in a disingenuous game of "Gotcha!" And he (or she, but I suppose it's "he") is now trying to bullshit us--not only bullshit me, but the rest of you, readers, as well--that he's now ready for "some lively--but respectful--discussions."
In falsely representing himself as in need of another's (mine, in this case) time and trouble in relating for him the details of a text which, supposedly, he doesn't have, when, in fact, he has the text and could have instead started by quoting from it and asking his questions in a straight-forward manner, he loses, forfeits the "respectful discussion" he claims to want to have.
Would you trust such a fellow after this?
Again, this is typical of the disingenuous bullshit to which Stratfordians consistently treat Oxfordians. My sentiments are no secret here when it comes to Oxford's part as "Shakespeare." I don't play games of "Gotcha!" and people who do demonstrate their moral standards.
RE:
So, again, why does Magri explain the playwright’s use of the word “flood” in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige?? And why does she believe Proteus’s curse demonstrates the author’s knowledge of shipwrecks on the Adige, and more important, why that would be such special knowledge?
Asking this blantantly-loaded question--which reminds me of "Do you still beat your wife?"-kind-of-questions-- is also typical. Magri in no way " "explain(s) the playwright’s use of the word 'flood' in a way that would send Valentine & Speed to almost certain disaster on the raging Adige" Instead, in pages 95 to 100 she writes generally of the fact that water-travel between Verona and Milano by river and canal-connections was common. After that exposition, during which the term "flood" doesn't appear, she goes into the potential perils of this type of travel:
(p. 101) "Owing to the flow rate and the steep gradient of the riverbed, the Adige was (i.e. could be) dangerous for navigation in stormy weather or in Spring when the snows in the Alps were thawing and large quantities of water made rivers and streams swollen. At times the current was so strong that ships were dashed against the bridge piers or stranded on the banks."
That's all. This is in direct response to Stratfordians' long-standing objections that the Adige doesn't know anything of "tidal" effects --which is only true in the most picky strict sense, since it does in effect have irregular rises and drops in rate and height which are similar for watercraft to a coast's tide changes. There's no reference in any of this to Oxford's two uses of "flood" in Panthino's lines.
Then, following that she takes up, separately the fact that, yes, river and canal-boat travel, due to many factors, including bad weather, storms, heavy rains, sudden changes in the currents' strengths, does indeed pose inherent risks to travellers aboard barges and sail-driven craft, and offers this, her opinion,
"These facts would account for Proteus's words after Speed has left the stage, 'Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck, (sic) ("wrack" in the First Folio) which cannot perish having thee aboard, Being destin'd to a drier death on shore. (I, i, 142-144)
(the next paragrahph has minor revisions from a previous version)
That comment can and may refer to simply a feature of the inherent dangers in such travel in those times and conditions. It is not at all necessary that it be
"Grayhog" claims that here, the author is alluding to an old adage and using it cleverly to cast aspersions on Speed. That's of course quite possible and, as a conjecture, it's both interesting and worthy of mention. But there is, as far as I'm aware, simply no documented basis for supposing that our Shaksper of Stratford had ever known or used the adage--though of course he might have. Had it been Oxford's source, he could have known and read of it in its 14th century French version--since he was fluent in French and could easily have seen it in a text or heard it among members in Cecil's--or his own-- household growing up: "Noyer ne peut cil qui doit pendre." ( from The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs by Martin H. Manser)
So "grayhog" is raising an assinine question, posed full of disingenuousness and invites us, after doing this, to take him at his word when he writes,
"Cheers! And I look forward to some lively--but respectful--discussions."
Like hell he is! He has all the texts he needs to understand these things. Instead of using them for that, he uses them to come here and try and engage in games of "Gotcha!"
With that, I am really quite done with this person's bullshit. But I consider this exchange a useful example and I'm sure to make further reference to it as an example when I discuss how Stratfordians typically argue and reason.
Notice, for example, that, when it's a matter of the intellectual potential of the Stratford William Shaksper, we're invited by Stratfordians to marvel at his genius--and that genius, it happens, is only "available" to us as evidence of his being Shakespeare, the literary genius, if we already grant as a given fact that this Shaksper fellow from Stratford was the genius they, Stratfordians claim he had to have been---because his plays show that. If you're dizzy from this circular reasoning, I do not blame you.
Notice, too, how these same people who can draw circles to prove that Shaskper of Stratford had to have written the plays because he was a genius--as is indicated by his having written the plays, these same don't hesitate to make Oxford out as a blunderer---and this is proven by the many errors in his plays.
Well, Magri's book of collected essays is devoted to exploding those charges of errors about Italian geography, history, culture, and modes of living. And it does that brilliantly.
But unless an Oxfordian first brings up her work, no Stratfordian will mention her.
That tells us something about Stratfordians and it isn't flattering.
13proximity1
Back to the thread's topic:
Teaching about the person and work of "Shakespeare" as done today amounts to a "crime"
_______________________________
"What do we tell the kids?"
A Youtube sampling on "Who was William Shakespeare?"
William Shakespeare – in a nutshell (2:26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrgDc6W7Es
( 61.983 views ) ___ animated
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William Shakespeare Biography (1:36)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVF8Q-zZz00
(124.712 views ) ___ animated
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Shakespeare : All you need to know (2:33)
24.759 views ___ animated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyNekSA-3Ds
________________________________
William Shakespeare - A short biography (3:29)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAMLi6FsMNs
37.998 views
( film or video actor-dramatisation of a brief account)
(not the worst of the bunch)
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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BIOGRAPHY (2:37)
13.512 views ___ animated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR8Sw5BqbPE
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William Shakespeare.ppt (7:57)
28,127 views ___ animated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbfxqIDqlTU
________________________
Shakespeare Presentation (6:04)
9.717 views ___ animated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x0heyYKtY8
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Shakespeare - Life and Work (6:54)
5.217 views __ animated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIGZO1TXTQo
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Did Shakespeare Write the plays? (4:06)
402.917 views
( First to mention the Authorship Question at all /
discusses Stylometry analysis / Result: Stylometry “proves” “Shakespeare is Shakespeare”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-aAUwAFZlQ
___________________________
14grayhog
prox1,
Your Pericles comment was directed to RolandPerkins, not me, though I'd be happy to look into it after we finish our discussion and floods and tides.
You begin your reply with this: "My own view is that those who take "flood" in this scene to mean either strictly or especially the sense of the term as applied to such events as, for example, the famous Johnstown Flood are either being morons or are standard-issue Stratfordians --or both." Now that is ironic, since it's Oxfordians who demand a literal interpretation in their efforts to show the playwright had made "No Errors" about Italy. So when Oxfordians advance a literal argument, a rebuttal must be to their literal arguments.
Since you ultimately dodge my questions about Magri's literal explanations for how the word "flood" is used, I can only assume you don't have a good answer, instead resorting to an ungentlemanly taunt: "The answers to these are in the book you can apparently read---as in see and pronounce the words---but not really understand." Tut, man.
Then you switch subjects asking, "Why didn't the great Shaksper's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, mention his illustrious father in-law in his journals, hmm?" I don't know enough about this one to comment, other than Hall mentioned Drayton because he was treated by Dr. Hall. Perhaps Dr. Hall did not treat his father-in-law, or if he did, out of modesty chose not to record the treatments, or even thought there was no point in commenting on what the townfolk already knew. But here I am speculating, which is always a bad thing to do. So I will research this, though it will be a low priority.
As for your dismissal of the Grant of Arms, after 1598 Shakespeare's name began appearing with the honorific. Before that, zero honorifics. After that, many more appearances, from Parnassus to Lear to the FF itself. There is only one Mr. Shakespeare in the records of the College of Heralds, meaning Will is the only Mr. Shakes-scene in town. The grant ties Will to Stratford since the grant derives from his father being the Bailiff of Stratford, and that he had managed to marry up into the Arden family. It's all here, along with hundreds of other documents about Stratford:
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeares-arms-defen...
So, would you at least grant that there was only one Mr. William Shakespeare, and that was the one from Stratford? And that the honorific began appearing after 1598 and never before? And that it appears repeatedly over the next 20+ years right through the publication of the FF by Mr. William Shakespeare? Would you at least grant this much????
But, sadly, I guess you are declining what I had hoped would be some "lively--but respectful--discussions." You have showed your colors with this bit a nastiness: "I have a lot of other questions to which I'll bet you cannot--and so, shall not--give an honest and straight-forward answer." Punctuated with an unfortunate, "You can now fuck off," apparently because I did not answer a question about Pericles that was not even directed to me.
But I will not give up hope. I think we can still do this, though we must stay focused and take one specific topic at a time. So let's get back to the floods and then to the tide. And after that, you pick the subject. Dr. Hall. Pericles. Or even Pirates, because everything's better with pirates.
So again, Magri advances a literal interpretation for meaning of "flood" in TGoV, even though you deem it "moronic" to do so. She argues for a literal flooding of the Adige that Valentine and Speed would hurry to catch, despite the obvious dangers of attempting to navigate a flood-swollen river. I'm am pressing this point since you upped the ante by claiming a only a moron would use "flood" in the sense of the Johnstown flood. Yet that is precisely what Magri does. So help me here. Why can Magri employ a literal meaning for "flood" to prove her point (no errors), when such literalism is, in your own words, moronic?
And I would ask, again, that your reply not be punctuated with angry expletives.
Your Pericles comment was directed to RolandPerkins, not me, though I'd be happy to look into it after we finish our discussion and floods and tides.
You begin your reply with this: "My own view is that those who take "flood" in this scene to mean either strictly or especially the sense of the term as applied to such events as, for example, the famous Johnstown Flood are either being morons or are standard-issue Stratfordians --or both." Now that is ironic, since it's Oxfordians who demand a literal interpretation in their efforts to show the playwright had made "No Errors" about Italy. So when Oxfordians advance a literal argument, a rebuttal must be to their literal arguments.
Since you ultimately dodge my questions about Magri's literal explanations for how the word "flood" is used, I can only assume you don't have a good answer, instead resorting to an ungentlemanly taunt: "The answers to these are in the book you can apparently read---as in see and pronounce the words---but not really understand." Tut, man.
Then you switch subjects asking, "Why didn't the great Shaksper's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, mention his illustrious father in-law in his journals, hmm?" I don't know enough about this one to comment, other than Hall mentioned Drayton because he was treated by Dr. Hall. Perhaps Dr. Hall did not treat his father-in-law, or if he did, out of modesty chose not to record the treatments, or even thought there was no point in commenting on what the townfolk already knew. But here I am speculating, which is always a bad thing to do. So I will research this, though it will be a low priority.
As for your dismissal of the Grant of Arms, after 1598 Shakespeare's name began appearing with the honorific. Before that, zero honorifics. After that, many more appearances, from Parnassus to Lear to the FF itself. There is only one Mr. Shakespeare in the records of the College of Heralds, meaning Will is the only Mr. Shakes-scene in town. The grant ties Will to Stratford since the grant derives from his father being the Bailiff of Stratford, and that he had managed to marry up into the Arden family. It's all here, along with hundreds of other documents about Stratford:
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeares-arms-defen...
So, would you at least grant that there was only one Mr. William Shakespeare, and that was the one from Stratford? And that the honorific began appearing after 1598 and never before? And that it appears repeatedly over the next 20+ years right through the publication of the FF by Mr. William Shakespeare? Would you at least grant this much????
But, sadly, I guess you are declining what I had hoped would be some "lively--but respectful--discussions." You have showed your colors with this bit a nastiness: "I have a lot of other questions to which I'll bet you cannot--and so, shall not--give an honest and straight-forward answer." Punctuated with an unfortunate, "You can now fuck off," apparently because I did not answer a question about Pericles that was not even directed to me.
But I will not give up hope. I think we can still do this, though we must stay focused and take one specific topic at a time. So let's get back to the floods and then to the tide. And after that, you pick the subject. Dr. Hall. Pericles. Or even Pirates, because everything's better with pirates.
So again, Magri advances a literal interpretation for meaning of "flood" in TGoV, even though you deem it "moronic" to do so. She argues for a literal flooding of the Adige that Valentine and Speed would hurry to catch, despite the obvious dangers of attempting to navigate a flood-swollen river. I'm am pressing this point since you upped the ante by claiming a only a moron would use "flood" in the sense of the Johnstown flood. Yet that is precisely what Magri does. So help me here. Why can Magri employ a literal meaning for "flood" to prove her point (no errors), when such literalism is, in your own words, moronic?
And I would ask, again, that your reply not be punctuated with angry expletives.
15grayhog
prox1,
Now I see your extended reply to Magri's usage of flood. Much to consider, will get back to you later this PM.
And I will also, as you requested, touch on how Roe explained the usage of "flood," though again, it is a literal usage, albeit very different from Magri's--thus showing the variety of "somersaults" Oxfordians will perform to explain why the "flood" in TGoV means anything but what the word actually means, a trick that comes with a very high degree of difficulty since Shakespeare used "flood" elsewhere in the canon to mean precisely what Oxfordians don't want it to mean, e.g., "Severns's flood" in 1H4.
Cheers!
Now I see your extended reply to Magri's usage of flood. Much to consider, will get back to you later this PM.
And I will also, as you requested, touch on how Roe explained the usage of "flood," though again, it is a literal usage, albeit very different from Magri's--thus showing the variety of "somersaults" Oxfordians will perform to explain why the "flood" in TGoV means anything but what the word actually means, a trick that comes with a very high degree of difficulty since Shakespeare used "flood" elsewhere in the canon to mean precisely what Oxfordians don't want it to mean, e.g., "Severns's flood" in 1H4.
Cheers!
16Podras.
>15 grayhog: Roe claims that both "tide" and "flood" are used as synonyms for time. For support, he cites Shakespeare's Language by Eugene Shewmaker, but Shewmaker only reported allegorical usages that have nothing to do with time. His examples were from other plays, not Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shewmaker apparently didn't feel that modern audiences needed help understanding the meaning of those words in TGoV.
Roe's time/tide/flood discussion also links to a chapter end note that names the OED, 2nd Ed. without saying anything about what it contributes. When I checked it, I found that there are some usages of tide (tyde) that do mean time, but again, they don't support Roe. The OED example that most closely aligns with Roe's meaning is from Edmund Spencer's The Fairy Queen (1590), published close to the time that TGoV was written: "There they alight … and rest their weary limbs in the meine tyde;” a usage essentially meaning a span of time. The OED's entry for "flood" has nothing suggesting that it was ever used as a synonym for time.
Roe's claim has no support outside of his own imagination.
Roe's time/tide/flood discussion also links to a chapter end note that names the OED, 2nd Ed. without saying anything about what it contributes. When I checked it, I found that there are some usages of tide (tyde) that do mean time, but again, they don't support Roe. The OED example that most closely aligns with Roe's meaning is from Edmund Spencer's The Fairy Queen (1590), published close to the time that TGoV was written: "There they alight … and rest their weary limbs in the meine tyde;” a usage essentially meaning a span of time. The OED's entry for "flood" has nothing suggesting that it was ever used as a synonym for time.
Roe's claim has no support outside of his own imagination.
17grayhog
Podras, Agree that Roe is quite imaginative in service to his dear Lord Oxford. I'll have more to say about tides and floods if prolixity1 agrees to continue the discussion here.
In meantime, what tickles me most is Roe imagining a lock, or series of locks, apparently on the canal linking the Adige to the Po (via the Taranto River). He writes,
"It would be an important canal, so important it might need to operate on a schedule at known times, when the locks were successively raised (flooded) and lowered: a timed flooding that the river mariners knew about and could rely on in planning for passage of their ships between the Adige and the Po. Something that would shine a light on Panthino's anxiety, "Tut, man! . . . Thou'lt lose the flood . . . " when he sees Launce dawdling on the quay" (pp. 53-4).
The only problem is that the Adige and Po run parallel at the same elevation. The Busse canal today joins them. It is an irrigation canal (you can see it on google maps) with single sluices for flood control and irrigation (and along the same path as Roe's Dugalon and Nichosola Canals). There are no locks, because the Italian engineers were wise enough to connect the rivers at the same elevation to AVOID having to construct locks. And locks don't run on timetables anyway, even today. They operate on demand, pull up, ring the bell, toot the horn, wake up the operator if it's Italy, he opens the lock, lets the barge enter, and begins the flooding.
Yet Roe shamelessly indulges in creative gymnastics, all in a rather desperate attempt to explain why "flood" doesn't mean the flood of a tidal river, cuz then he might have to admit that "tide" means the tide of a tidal river--which the Adige isn't. Or the even more desperate claims elsewhere that water rising along the banks of the Adige due to heavy rains is a type of high tide. Talk about a new level of absurdly false equivalence, unless you believe that "the Adige doesn't know anything of "tidal" effects is only true in the most picky strict sense, since it does in effect have irregular rises and drops in rate and height which are similar for watercraft to a coast's tide changes."
Picky or not, the Adige is not a tidal river. And anywhere else in the world, "irregular rises and drops in rate and height" caused by rainfall are not the same as tides--except, it seems, in Oxford's Italy.
In meantime, what tickles me most is Roe imagining a lock, or series of locks, apparently on the canal linking the Adige to the Po (via the Taranto River). He writes,
"It would be an important canal, so important it might need to operate on a schedule at known times, when the locks were successively raised (flooded) and lowered: a timed flooding that the river mariners knew about and could rely on in planning for passage of their ships between the Adige and the Po. Something that would shine a light on Panthino's anxiety, "Tut, man! . . . Thou'lt lose the flood . . . " when he sees Launce dawdling on the quay" (pp. 53-4).
The only problem is that the Adige and Po run parallel at the same elevation. The Busse canal today joins them. It is an irrigation canal (you can see it on google maps) with single sluices for flood control and irrigation (and along the same path as Roe's Dugalon and Nichosola Canals). There are no locks, because the Italian engineers were wise enough to connect the rivers at the same elevation to AVOID having to construct locks. And locks don't run on timetables anyway, even today. They operate on demand, pull up, ring the bell, toot the horn, wake up the operator if it's Italy, he opens the lock, lets the barge enter, and begins the flooding.
Yet Roe shamelessly indulges in creative gymnastics, all in a rather desperate attempt to explain why "flood" doesn't mean the flood of a tidal river, cuz then he might have to admit that "tide" means the tide of a tidal river--which the Adige isn't. Or the even more desperate claims elsewhere that water rising along the banks of the Adige due to heavy rains is a type of high tide. Talk about a new level of absurdly false equivalence, unless you believe that "the Adige doesn't know anything of "tidal" effects is only true in the most picky strict sense, since it does in effect have irregular rises and drops in rate and height which are similar for watercraft to a coast's tide changes."
Picky or not, the Adige is not a tidal river. And anywhere else in the world, "irregular rises and drops in rate and height" caused by rainfall are not the same as tides--except, it seems, in Oxford's Italy.
18Podras.
>17 grayhog: Something else I've felt curious about is Shakespeare's use of a bark to hustle Prospero and Miranda out of Milan in The Tempest. As far as I was aware, a bark was always a masted ship with a deep keel, highly impractical for traveling down canals designed for shallow-draft barges, wheeries, etc., but great for the Thames at London. Besides the problem with the keel, there would be numerous bridges to pass under, and the presence of the masts would make that a pretty troublesome voyage, even if the relatively high deck of barks compared with barges was able to pass under.
However, when I was researching Roe's application of a form of free association to Italy, I found some hints that the original barks were rather different, only evolving into the vessels we know today. I wasn't able to nail down any specific information, so I'm uncertain about whether barks in the early 17th century would have been the problem I've envisioned above. Do you have any information about that?
However, when I was researching Roe's application of a form of free association to Italy, I found some hints that the original barks were rather different, only evolving into the vessels we know today. I wasn't able to nail down any specific information, so I'm uncertain about whether barks in the early 17th century would have been the problem I've envisioned above. Do you have any information about that?
19grayhog
Podras, The larger problem with The Tempest is setting out from Milan in the first place, down the Po to the Adriatic, where Propsero and Miranda are cast adrift on a rickety raft that even the rats have abandoned. Yet Roe expects them to drift down the Adriatic, around the toe of Italy, up thru the Straits of Messina, and thence to Isola Vulcano. Of course, Roe has a fanciful explanation for this, too, which I won't go into now.
As far as the evolution of barks, good old Wiki says the word derives from the Latin bar 'barca' which gave rise to the French 'barge' and 'barque.' So in 1500's Italy, a bark was likely smaller, and perhaps suited for river traffic.
But imagine poor Prospero and Miranda, adrift for months, though perhaps they were able to go ashore along the way at any of the seaside resorts dotting the coast. As a Duke he would have been welcomed and, no doubt, treated quite well before hopping back on the raft to continue drifting to Vulcano. Hmmmm. "Drifting to Vulcano." Now that would be a good title for a barbed sonnet about the Oxfordian imagination. =O)
As far as the evolution of barks, good old Wiki says the word derives from the Latin bar 'barca' which gave rise to the French 'barge' and 'barque.' So in 1500's Italy, a bark was likely smaller, and perhaps suited for river traffic.
But imagine poor Prospero and Miranda, adrift for months, though perhaps they were able to go ashore along the way at any of the seaside resorts dotting the coast. As a Duke he would have been welcomed and, no doubt, treated quite well before hopping back on the raft to continue drifting to Vulcano. Hmmmm. "Drifting to Vulcano." Now that would be a good title for a barbed sonnet about the Oxfordian imagination. =O)
20proximity1
For the use and possible interest of other readers here, I'll give some reply to parts of grayhog's posts, above
>14 grayhog:
"Now that is ironic, since it's Oxfordians who demand a literal interpretation in their efforts to show the playwright had made "No Errors" about Italy. So when Oxfordians advance a literal argument, a rebuttal must be to their literal arguments. "
Like Stratfordians, Oxfordians are a varied lot and "we" don't agree among each other on all points about Oxford. But, we don't, as Stratfordians do, make recourse to the same "Shakespeare" canon to make out its presumed author as having been a) a dolt, when referring to the hypothesis that the author was Edward, Earl of Oxford, and then, at the same time, b) a genius, when referring to the view that a certain William Shaksper of Stratfor U-Avon was the man responsible.
..."since it's Oxfordians who demand a literal interpretation in their efforts to show the playwright had made "No Errors" about Italy."
But this is not, as far as I'm aware, an accurate depiction of any Oxfordian of whom I'm aware. Oxfordians do, in the main, assert that Oxford's references to Italy in plays are fully accurate as far as the circumstances of his own time were concerned. That does not mean, nor does it follow from this, that every word of Oxford's relating to Italy ih his plays must be interpreted in its literal sense. In the face of my reply, to assert that, "So again, Magri advances a literal interpretation for meaning of 'flood' in TGoV, even though you deem it 'moronic' "-- to do so," is not only false, it's an insult to the reader's intelligence to claim that and, all by itself, this suffices to close the books on grayhog's participation here as serious and respectable. Again, Magri has done nothing of the sort dishonestly alleged by grayhog .
Grayhog's objection above is another snare (See below my comments about deliberate distractions and off-topic diversions) and a delusion typical of the way the worst of Stratfordians argue. I take up literal or figurative usage in the work of Oxford--whether we're concerned with his pen-name "Shakespeare" or another-- as each particular case would require, basing the decision on what a fair reading of the texts themselves (which can be problematic given the vagaries of 16th c. publishing) should indicate. Oxford can and did easily enage in both literal and figurative language in his lines which pertain to matters Italian. So, "No sale."
________________________
RE :
"Then you switch subjects asking, "Why didn't the great Shaksper's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, mention his illustrious father in-law in his journals, hmm?" I don't know enough about this one to comment, other than Hall mentioned Drayton because he was treated by Dr. Hall. Perhaps Dr. Hall did not treat his father-in-law, or if he did, out of modesty chose not to record the treatments, or even thought there was no point in commenting on what the townfolk already knew. But here I am speculating, which is always a bad thing to do. So I will research this, though it will be a low priority. "
Call it a "switch" if he likes but I simply posed another question --and one which, owing to its extreme awkwardness for Stratfordians, is virtually always dodged or simply left with no reply at all. Here, in the desperate attempt to explain in the cited portion above, from grayhog, is an effort worthy of a gold-medal in tortured reasoning.
It should be a "high priority" because it's among the most important and glaring of the many impossible elements in the Stratfordians' case. Maybe you make it a "low priority" because you know so well that it is a hopeless errand; but, if you could and did explain in some credible way the lack of any mention of a personal acquaintance with "William Shake-speare," presupposed playwright and poet, in Dr. Hall's diaries/notes, you'd become instantly famous for deservedly worthy reasons.
So, Shaksper's fellow Stratfordians generally knew they had the great "William Shakespeare" as a fellow resident--the London playwright? Author of the steamy "Venus and Adonis? Author of the amazingly presumptuous Sonnets dedicated with an effusive expression of scandalous familiarity toward its dedicatee, the Earl of Southampton? For a society which, by long custom, forbade commoners to physically approach, touch or address nobility when encountering their passage in public, that display in print--which was state-regulated--would have earned a commoner author a stay in the Fleet prison.
There are inescapable problems whichever way one turns in attempting to defend this idea--thus, it constitutes a dilemma for Stratfordians whether they admit or recognize that or not.
________________________________________
It is more and more obvious as the thread wears on that your purpose here is to derail the discussion of the OP topic: "Teaching about the person and work of "Shakespeare" as done today amounts to a "crime"" and, in complete bad-faith, try to occupy me with distracting diversions from this topic--asking questions the answers to which you have simply no sincere interest since, as it could not be more evident, your mind is completely shut to any evidence or argument I could bring. There is nothing that could alter your religiously-held view of Shaksper as "William Shakespeare"---which makes correspondance directed to answering you, as opposed to other readers, a complete waste of my time.
In that light, I cite this, from you, again, from >14 grayhog: :
"But, sadly, I guess you are declining what I had hoped would be some "lively--but respectful--discussions." You have showed your colors with this bit a nastiness: "I have a lot of other questions to which I'll bet you cannot--and so, shall not--give an honest and straight-forward answer." Punctuated with an unfortunate, "You can now fuck off," apparently because I did not answer a question about Pericles that was not even directed to me*."
It's to the portion in bold-face italics just above that I address the following
My "colors" have consistently and always, from the very first post in this site, been firmly and permanently nailed to the mast-top in full and open view as concerns my views about Edward, Earl of Oxford having been "William Shakespeare".
You have a hell of a fucking nerve to try to impugn my integrity when it's you who comes into this thread, deliberately dissembling the extent and scope of your available reading-resources and the scope of reading acquaintance on this topic, the better to play at a game of "Gotcha!"
You asked me questions couched in a way to suggest that you did not have at hand the relevant texts which give full details about the an author's stated view--and solicited from me "explanations" for which reading you had no sincere, open-minded, interest or intention; and the whole of this, from the start, was apparently an attempt on your part to try and catch me out on some point.
Thus, in >15 grayhog:, above, you try this:
I will also,(...) touch on how Roe explained the usage of "flood," though again, it is a literal usage, albeit very different from Magri's--thus showing the variety of "somersaults" Oxfordians will perform to explain why the "flood" in TGoV means anything but what the word actually means, a trick that comes with a very high degree of difficulty since Shakespeare used "flood" elsewhere in the canon to mean precisely what Oxfordians don't want it to mean, e.g., "Severns's flood" in 1H4.
That, alone, settles the question--as though there was any remaining at this point--about your purposes and intentions here:
To offer that objection, namely, that, IF, in effect, Oxford used "flood" in the sense of a catastrophic inundation ---like the Johnstown flood--- in Henry IV- Part 1, he must therefore have had to have intended that and only that same sense in the instance of its use in The Two Gentlemen of Verona puts to rest any idea that you and your participation here are to be taken seriously.
In future comments where I may make allusion or reference to your posts, I'm addressing only other readers of this thread. We're through now. And your game of distract and divert is up and exploded.
________________________
* An apology for that error has been added to the relevant post, above
All or nearly all of Oxford's uses of "flood" in the plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream MND II.i.5 Thorough flood, thorough fire –
A Midsummer Night's Dream MND II.i.127 Marking th' embarked traders on the flood,
As You Like It AYL V.iv.35 There is sure another flood toward, and these
Coriolanus Cor IV.v.134 Like a bold flood o'erbear't. O, come, go in,
Cymbeline Cym I.vii.74 Ay, madam, with his eyes in flood with laughter:
Hamlet Ham I.iv.69 What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Henry IV Part 1 1H4 I.iii.102 Upon agreement of swift Severn's flood,
HOTSPUR:
Revolted Mortimer!
He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,
But by the chance of war; to prove that true
Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took
When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,
In single opposition, hand to hand,
He did confound the best part of an hour
In changing hardiment with great Glendower:
Three times they breathed and three times did
they drink,
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;
Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
Bloodstained with these valiant combatants.
Never did base and rotten policy
Colour her working with such deadly wounds;
Nor could the noble Mortimer
Receive so many, and all willingly:
Then let not him be slander'd with revolt.
Henry IV Part 1 1H4 Act II, Scene iv. :
FALSTAFF:
For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful queen;
For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes.
Henry IV Part 1 1H4 V.i.48 And such a flood of greatness fell on you,
(clearly a figurative usage)
EARL OF WORCESTER
It pleased your majesty to turn your looks
Of favour from myself and all our house;
And yet I must remember you, my lord,
We were the first and dearest of your friends.
For you my staff of office did I break
In Richard's time; and posted day and night
to meet you on the way, and kiss your hand,
When yet you were in place and in account
Nothing so strong and fortunate as I.
It was myself, my brother and his son,
That brought you home and boldly did outdare
The dangers of the time. You swore to us,
And you did swear that oath at Doncaster,
That you did nothing purpose 'gainst the state;
Nor claim no further than your new-fall'n right,
The seat of Gaunt, dukedom of Lancaster:
To this we swore our aid. But in short space
It rain'd down fortune showering on your head;
And such a flood of greatness fell on you,
What with our help, what with the absent king,
What with the injuries of a wanton time,
The seeming sufferances that you had borne,
And the contrarious winds that held the king
So long in his unlucky Irish wars
That all in England did repute him dead:
And from this swarm of fair advantages
You took occasion to be quickly woo'd
To gripe the general sway into your hand;
Henry IV Part 2 2H4 I.i.62 So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood
Henry IV Part 2 2H4 I.i.154 Keep the wild flood confined! Let order die!
Henry V H5 I.i.33 Never came reformation in a flood
Henry V H5 V.chorus.10 Pales in the flood with men, with wives, and boys,
Henry VI Part 1 1H6 III.iii.56 Return thee therefore with a flood of tears,
Henry VI Part 2 2H6 III.i.199 Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes,
Henry VI Part 3 3H6 II.v.9 Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind;
Henry VI Part 3 3H6 V.iv.5 And half our sailors swallowed in the flood?
Henry VIII H8 III.ii.197 As doth a rock against the chiding flood,
Julius Caesar JC I.ii.103 Leap in with me into this angry flood,
Julius Caesar JC I.ii.151 When went there by an age, since the great flood,
Julius Caesar JC III.ii.212 To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
Julius Caesar JC IV.iii.217 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
King Edward III E3 III.i.170 And tottering sink into the ruthless flood,
King Edward III E3 IV.iv.59 The drops are infinite that make a flood,
King John KJ III.iv.1 So, by a roaring tempest on the flood,
King John KJ IV.ii.139 Aloft the flood, and can give audience
King John KJ V.iv.53 And like a bated and retired flood,
King John KJ V.vii.64 Devoured by the unexpected flood.
Much Ado About Nothing MA I.i.295 What need the bridge much broader than the flood?
Othello Oth I.iii.134 Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Othello Oth II.i.2 Nothing at all; it is a high-wrought flood.
Othello Oth II.i.17.1 On the enchafed flood.
Pericles Per Chorus.III.45 On Neptune's billow; half the flood
Richard III R3 I.iv.37 To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood
Richard III R3 I.iv.45 I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
Richard III R3 IV.iv.510 Is that by sudden flood and fall of water
Romeo and Juliet RJ III.v.134 Sailing in this salt flood. The winds, thy sighs,
The Comedy of Errors CE III.ii.46 To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears.
The Comedy of Errors CE III.ii.112 flood could not do it.
The Merchant of Venice MV I.i.10 Like signors and rich burghers on the flood,
The Merchant of Venice MV IV.i.72 And bid the main flood bate his usual height,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona TG II.iii.39 Tut, man, I mean thou'lt lose the flood; and,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona TG II.iii.40 in losing the flood, lose thy voyage; and, in losing thy
The Two Noble Kinsmen TNK IV.i.95 She saw me, and straight sought the flood. I saved her,
Timon of Athens Tim I.i.43 You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.
Timon of Athens Tim V.i.214 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,
Titus Andronicus Tit III.i.126 With miry slime left on them by a flood?
Titus Andronicus Tit IV.ii.102 Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Troilus and Cressida TC I.i.104 Let it be called the wild and wandering flood,
Troilus and Cressida TC I.iii.300 As may be in the world – his youth in flood,
Twelfth Night TN IV.iii.11 Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
21grayhog
Prolixity1 has certainly demonstrated his skill with a concordance, so kudos for him. But he's the one who dragged in the Johnstown flood to deflect from fact that Magri resorted to a literal meaning of the word flood, i.e. the flooding of the Adige from heavy rain. There are, of course, other literal meanings such as Noah's. And some metaphorical, such as a flood of bills at the end of the month.
But Magri and Roe will toss out any meaning for "flood," literal or metaphorical, just so long as it's not the flood tide coming up the Adige, by which time a departing ship MUST be ready to head down river as the tide starts to ebb, else our voyagers have to wait another cycle. Which is a pretty good reason to hurry, lest they lose the flood and get stuck in Verona for another day.
Thus Magri opts for the Adige flooded by heavy rains, even though it would make no sense to hurry and catch it. Roe opts for flooding non-existent canal locks that run on imaginary timetables.
Either option smacks of desperation to avoid the obvious meaning, given the langgage and context of the opening scenes of TGOV.
And unlike prolixity1, this did not take a 5-page post, though that's what Oxfordians specialize in: accumulation of detail as if mere weight matters.
But Magri and Roe will toss out any meaning for "flood," literal or metaphorical, just so long as it's not the flood tide coming up the Adige, by which time a departing ship MUST be ready to head down river as the tide starts to ebb, else our voyagers have to wait another cycle. Which is a pretty good reason to hurry, lest they lose the flood and get stuck in Verona for another day.
Thus Magri opts for the Adige flooded by heavy rains, even though it would make no sense to hurry and catch it. Roe opts for flooding non-existent canal locks that run on imaginary timetables.
Either option smacks of desperation to avoid the obvious meaning, given the langgage and context of the opening scenes of TGOV.
And unlike prolixity1, this did not take a 5-page post, though that's what Oxfordians specialize in: accumulation of detail as if mere weight matters.
22Podras.
>19 grayhog: Thanks for the confirmation about the evolution of the bark. Too bad. I was looking forward to the image of a tall three-masted bark sailing (????) majestically through Milan's canal system and having to remove and remount its masts every few miles to get past bridges, all while its keel scrapped along the bottom of the canals. Roe is so insistent on the literal reality of everything in the plays that he creates huge problems for himself. He realized that drifting with meager supplies down the east coast of Italy, around the boot, up past Sicily, and finally arriving at Vulcano without being rescued was stretching credulity too much, so he cooked up the idea that his author placed Prospero in Tuscany (i.e. Florence) instead. Because of political problems, the text was changed to Milan "by high authority". One wonders why, if his author was so knowledgeable, he wasn't aware of the political problems in the first place. Once out of Florence off the west coast of Italy, Prospero needed only to drift directly to Vulcano. He still needed to find some way to dodge heavy shipping traffic along the way to avoid rescue and to still keep to the correct southward flowing currents. There are currents flowing in both directions along that route. LOL. Perhaps his book contained an Avoidus Rescuous spell.
23grayhog
Podras, You nailed it. Roe's book is a delightful read, and a beautifully put together volume. But the Introduction is an ugly, hate-filled, venomous screed by the former director of the so-called Shakespeare Authorship Research Center. If their website is still up, look at pix of the lobby: a portrait of Oxford on one side, on the other, an outline of Shakespeare's head with a big "?" for a face. Sadly, Wright's Introduction--which Prolixity1 could have easily written--lets us know what Roe is really about.
Sometime soon I'll run down Roe's take on The Tempest, a paerodelian fantasy that provides a perfect coda to his imaginative masterpiece. For starters, the flora and fauna of Vulcano perfectly describe the English countryside. Prickling gorse and sharp furzes, hedgehogs and blue jays, the royal English mulberry, scamels (which Roe concedes are found in England), pignuts and crab apples. England? Or a volcanic island in the Med? Hmmmm.
My favorite, though is how Roe mistakes a cesspool for a hot sulfur pool (pp. 281-2). He writes about “hot mud pools” on the island, but for evidence cites Ariel’s report of Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo “I’th’ filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell.” There is no sense of heat, no sense of hotness, except the trio was “red-hot with drinking.” Instead, it seems like just plain old filthy mud, and rather cold mud at that. Then Roe emphasizes the “volcanic sulfur dust” covering the pools. Yet the trio smells not of sulfur. Says Trinculo, “Monster, I do smell of Horse piss.” Now that smells like a stable, a cesspool, a London gutter, a country barnyard--but not rotten eggs.
Roe then places special emphasis on the “filthy-mantled” nature of the stinking pool, claiming that the mantle is actually a "floating crust of dry sulfur." But the pool is not yellow-mantled, Shakespeare says it is "filthy-mantled." And we all know what floats. And . . . . uh . . . . nope . . . . my chaster muse for shame doth blush to write what I'm thinking. =O)
Besides, there's no mention of a sulfur smell in the play. Nor is there any mention of anything yellow except the yellow sands early in the play (I,ii)--which are also found in England, i.e., the popular yellow sands of Holkham Bay where QEII used to walk her corgis on holiday.
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/aug/07/best-beaches-in-the-uk
So the hot sulfur springs are only in Roe's imagination, because he really really wants Prospero's island to be Vulcano, because, well, because he just knows Oxford visited there, saw it all, and folded the details, consciously or unconsciously, into The Tempest. Even though there's zero evidence that Oxford every got any farther south than Naples. And that so many details about the island describe England--except for the marmosets that Roe carefully avoids, cuz there are no marmosets on Vulcano, thought it looks like there actually were some in England, brought back by English explorers (see pix of Margaret Tudor, top left, in link below).
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/61572719882749329/
But Roe's book is still a pretty thing to look at. Too bad it's all bollox.
Sometime soon I'll run down Roe's take on The Tempest, a paerodelian fantasy that provides a perfect coda to his imaginative masterpiece. For starters, the flora and fauna of Vulcano perfectly describe the English countryside. Prickling gorse and sharp furzes, hedgehogs and blue jays, the royal English mulberry, scamels (which Roe concedes are found in England), pignuts and crab apples. England? Or a volcanic island in the Med? Hmmmm.
My favorite, though is how Roe mistakes a cesspool for a hot sulfur pool (pp. 281-2). He writes about “hot mud pools” on the island, but for evidence cites Ariel’s report of Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo “I’th’ filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell.” There is no sense of heat, no sense of hotness, except the trio was “red-hot with drinking.” Instead, it seems like just plain old filthy mud, and rather cold mud at that. Then Roe emphasizes the “volcanic sulfur dust” covering the pools. Yet the trio smells not of sulfur. Says Trinculo, “Monster, I do smell of Horse piss.” Now that smells like a stable, a cesspool, a London gutter, a country barnyard--but not rotten eggs.
Roe then places special emphasis on the “filthy-mantled” nature of the stinking pool, claiming that the mantle is actually a "floating crust of dry sulfur." But the pool is not yellow-mantled, Shakespeare says it is "filthy-mantled." And we all know what floats. And . . . . uh . . . . nope . . . . my chaster muse for shame doth blush to write what I'm thinking. =O)
Besides, there's no mention of a sulfur smell in the play. Nor is there any mention of anything yellow except the yellow sands early in the play (I,ii)--which are also found in England, i.e., the popular yellow sands of Holkham Bay where QEII used to walk her corgis on holiday.
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/aug/07/best-beaches-in-the-uk
So the hot sulfur springs are only in Roe's imagination, because he really really wants Prospero's island to be Vulcano, because, well, because he just knows Oxford visited there, saw it all, and folded the details, consciously or unconsciously, into The Tempest. Even though there's zero evidence that Oxford every got any farther south than Naples. And that so many details about the island describe England--except for the marmosets that Roe carefully avoids, cuz there are no marmosets on Vulcano, thought it looks like there actually were some in England, brought back by English explorers (see pix of Margaret Tudor, top left, in link below).
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/61572719882749329/
But Roe's book is still a pretty thing to look at. Too bad it's all bollox.
24grayhog
prolixity1,
You chide me as follows: "To offer that objection, namely, that, IF, in effect, Oxford used "flood" in the sense of a catastrophic inundation ---like the Johnstown flood--- in Henry IV- Part 1, he must therefore have had to have intended that and only that same sense in the instance of its use in The Two Gentlemen of Verona puts to rest any idea that you and your participation here are to be taken seriously."
Come now, dear man. I did not suggest that "swift Severn's flood" was a "catastrophic inundation," because that's not what Shakespeare meant. The Severn is notorious for the tremendous force of its tides that become even stronger as the incoming waters are constricted into the upper estuaries. But in 1H4, the battle on its banks is so fierce that even the incoming flood tide is affrighted and ran fearfully away. So the usage is the same as in 2GoV, the incoming flood along a tidal river, which the Adige is not, despite all the language indicating that the error-free playwright thought it was.
So I must ask, why are you so obsessed with your Johnstown flood? You keep bringing it up. There is no catastrophic flood in 2GoV, though Magri nudged in that direction, given her discussion of the impacts that seasonal flooding along the Adige could have, in particular presenting a hazard to navigation--especially if one were foolish enough to hurry off onto the Adage in such a maelstrom.
Magri wants to have us believe that the author was talking about floods caused by excessive rain. Roe wants us to believe that "flood" means the flooding of the imaginary locks on the canal between the Adige and the Po that ran on imaginary timetables.
The goal was the same for both Magri and Roe. To explain away the fact that the language of 2GoV is all about hurrying to catch an outbound ship about to head downstream on the ebb tide along a tidal river. And that "flood" means anything, no matter how far-fetched, just so long as it doesn't mean the incoming flood along a tidal river.
And, really, I'm surprised that a smart fellow like you would claim "the Adige doesn't know anything of "tidal" effects is only true in the most picky strict sense, since it does in effect have irregular rises and drops in rate and height which are similar for watercraft to a coast's tide changes."
So the rise and fall of the Adige due to heavy rains is the same as the rise and fall along the coast due to the tides? Tut, man. That's about the worst false equivalency I've ever seen. But the stakes here are high, the honor and reputation of the error-free Earl of Oxford, so any attempt to prop him up, no matter how desperate, is worth a shot. N'est-ce pas?
You chide me as follows: "To offer that objection, namely, that, IF, in effect, Oxford used "flood" in the sense of a catastrophic inundation ---like the Johnstown flood--- in Henry IV- Part 1, he must therefore have had to have intended that and only that same sense in the instance of its use in The Two Gentlemen of Verona puts to rest any idea that you and your participation here are to be taken seriously."
Come now, dear man. I did not suggest that "swift Severn's flood" was a "catastrophic inundation," because that's not what Shakespeare meant. The Severn is notorious for the tremendous force of its tides that become even stronger as the incoming waters are constricted into the upper estuaries. But in 1H4, the battle on its banks is so fierce that even the incoming flood tide is affrighted and ran fearfully away. So the usage is the same as in 2GoV, the incoming flood along a tidal river, which the Adige is not, despite all the language indicating that the error-free playwright thought it was.
So I must ask, why are you so obsessed with your Johnstown flood? You keep bringing it up. There is no catastrophic flood in 2GoV, though Magri nudged in that direction, given her discussion of the impacts that seasonal flooding along the Adige could have, in particular presenting a hazard to navigation--especially if one were foolish enough to hurry off onto the Adage in such a maelstrom.
Magri wants to have us believe that the author was talking about floods caused by excessive rain. Roe wants us to believe that "flood" means the flooding of the imaginary locks on the canal between the Adige and the Po that ran on imaginary timetables.
The goal was the same for both Magri and Roe. To explain away the fact that the language of 2GoV is all about hurrying to catch an outbound ship about to head downstream on the ebb tide along a tidal river. And that "flood" means anything, no matter how far-fetched, just so long as it doesn't mean the incoming flood along a tidal river.
And, really, I'm surprised that a smart fellow like you would claim "the Adige doesn't know anything of "tidal" effects is only true in the most picky strict sense, since it does in effect have irregular rises and drops in rate and height which are similar for watercraft to a coast's tide changes."
So the rise and fall of the Adige due to heavy rains is the same as the rise and fall along the coast due to the tides? Tut, man. That's about the worst false equivalency I've ever seen. But the stakes here are high, the honor and reputation of the error-free Earl of Oxford, so any attempt to prop him up, no matter how desperate, is worth a shot. N'est-ce pas?
25Podras.
>23 grayhog: A couple of months ago, I posted a three part review of Roe's book at http://www.librarything.com/topic/61010, posts 201 thru 203 that you might find interesting. I did that because earlier in the year, I made a claim about it based on faulty memory, and I wanted to verify or correct what I had said. Since I had to go to the trouble of ordering and borrowing the book from the library (paying for such things only encourages more of them), I thought that I would reread it much more thoroughly than I originally had a few years ago and report on my findings. It was both a labor of love and a pain in the ass, and I was glad when it was finally done. Since completing it and giving it a rest, I've thought of some ways to improve it. It is sometimes best to know when to quit, but what I have in mind won't lengthen it much if at all (it's already too long) and will be a definite improvement in some ways. For one thing, I mucked up a paragraph about The Tempest having to do with Florence and Milan, and the summing up can be improved; e.g. Roe's discoveries were really just a form of free association. A number of other minor changes can strengthen it, too. Critiques are welcome.
When I'm finally satisfied with it, I want to put it somewhere where with greater visibility. Thinking about that still.
When I'm finally satisfied with it, I want to put it somewhere where with greater visibility. Thinking about that still.
26proximity1
For reference in the ensuing commentary:
Images of some of the Quarto edition title-pages----
True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three daughters / (1608)
A Pleasant Comedie Called Love's Labour's Lost / (1598)
The Tragedie of Richard the Second / (1608)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third / (1597)
The Tragedie of King Richard the Second / (1598)
The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the Good Duke Humphrey & Etc. / (1594)
Several images of the title-pages from among the 18 different plays printed and published in Quarto editions within the lifetime of William Shaksper of Stratford on Avon--that is between 1594 and 1609.
William Shaksper, reputed a famously successful Stratford businessman with commercial trade in Stratford and holdings in important properties, and with an alleged participation in one or more London play-houses, in which he shared in the box-office receipts, leaves us not a trace of that commercial activity in the form of any ledger-books, sales or purchase records nor any accounts of his monthly or annual earnings.
And we have no evidence at all in any extant document--no letter, no diary entry, no sales reciept, no sales ledger entry from any dealer in printed papers-- which relates the person of William Shaksper of Stratford to any of these printed & published quarto editions of plays. Nothing noted anywhre which attests to the fact that the author was a local man--however little or well-known he might be-- known and reconized for the authorship of these plays.
If someone had ever sold one of these quartos in Stratford-on-Avon and noted it in any inventory of weekly or monthly sales, that record has not come down to us.
Other businessmen of the day were known to keep meticulous records of their commercial affairs--sales of stock, purchases of wholesale inventory--
________________________________
* Francesco di Marco Datini (c. 1335 – 16 August 1410) was an Italian merchant born in Prato.
“In 1870, 500 account books and 150,000 papers relating to Datini's business were discovered in a stairwell of the couple's mansion in Prato. (6) These papers provide insight into both Datini's business as well as the merchant class in general as it existed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” (Wikipedia) (Note: Wikipedia's pages concerning "Shakespeare" and Edward, Earl of Oxford ought not be taken at face value. Their "face value" is "ZERO".
Images of some of the Quarto edition title-pages----
True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three daughters / (1608)
A Pleasant Comedie Called Love's Labour's Lost / (1598)
The Tragedie of Richard the Second / (1608)
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third / (1597)
The Tragedie of King Richard the Second / (1598)
The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the Good Duke Humphrey & Etc. / (1594)
Several images of the title-pages from among the 18 different plays printed and published in Quarto editions within the lifetime of William Shaksper of Stratford on Avon--that is between 1594 and 1609.
William Shaksper, reputed a famously successful Stratford businessman with commercial trade in Stratford and holdings in important properties, and with an alleged participation in one or more London play-houses, in which he shared in the box-office receipts, leaves us not a trace of that commercial activity in the form of any ledger-books, sales or purchase records nor any accounts of his monthly or annual earnings.
And we have no evidence at all in any extant document--no letter, no diary entry, no sales reciept, no sales ledger entry from any dealer in printed papers-- which relates the person of William Shaksper of Stratford to any of these printed & published quarto editions of plays. Nothing noted anywhre which attests to the fact that the author was a local man--however little or well-known he might be-- known and reconized for the authorship of these plays.
If someone had ever sold one of these quartos in Stratford-on-Avon and noted it in any inventory of weekly or monthly sales, that record has not come down to us.
Other businessmen of the day were known to keep meticulous records of their commercial affairs--sales of stock, purchases of wholesale inventory--
"Much of a merchant's time was occupied by writing letters and keeping account books in which Italians were using double-entry. These depended upon keeping journals and day books in which were entered every transaction and expense incurred.
'Always , whenever you have a document drawn up,' wrote Paola da Certaldo, in the mid-fourteenth century, 'keep your own book, and write in it the day that this is done and the notary who does it, and the witnesss, and why and with whom you do it, so, that if you or your sons have need of it, you can find it.'
"A later writer described the account books,
' The entire prosperity and lucrativeness of a merchant's business depends on the regular and accurate keeping of his books,' -- ( B. Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait, ( London, Jonathan Cape, 1935)
"In the (Francesco) Datini correspondence* , the agent in Avignon complained, 'We spend half our time reading letters or writing them.' A copy of every letter sent was made and frequently there would be a further copy dispatched by an alternative route if it was a particularly important letter or if there was doubt about the security of the (mail) service." ... "A notebook, Quaderno di Cassa, survives in Florence listing monies collected and paid in England by the Corsinis ( Filippo (1538–1601) and Bartolomeo (1545–1613) ) during the years 1600 and 1601, all recorded in English sterling."
_________________________________
from The Corsini Letters, Philip Beale, Adrian Almond and Mike Scott Archer, (Edited by Philip Beale) (Amberley Publishers, (2011)
"The first part of Henry IV appeared in six editions before his (i.e. Shaksper's (1616)) death.... "
"At the time of his death, the total number of editions of his ("Shakespeare's") plays far exceeds that of any other playwright, and indeed, no single play to that time had sold as well as I Henry IV .
---D. Scott Kasten, "Plays into Print", in J. Andersen and E. Sauer, Books and Readers in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 2002).
________________________________
* Francesco di Marco Datini (c. 1335 – 16 August 1410) was an Italian merchant born in Prato.
“In 1870, 500 account books and 150,000 papers relating to Datini's business were discovered in a stairwell of the couple's mansion in Prato. (6) These papers provide insight into both Datini's business as well as the merchant class in general as it existed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” (Wikipedia) (Note: Wikipedia's pages concerning "Shakespeare" and Edward, Earl of Oxford ought not be taken at face value. Their "face value" is "ZERO".
27grayhog
prolixity1,
These and all the other title pages are conveniently located here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shakespeare_plays_in_quarto#Richard_III
Perhaps this will prove helpful.
Cheers!
These and all the other title pages are conveniently located here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shakespeare_plays_in_quarto#Richard_III
Perhaps this will prove helpful.
Cheers!
28grayhog
prolixity1,
You've made a very good case that Stratford was a lazy businessman, or perhaps just wasn't a very good record keeper, or more likely, his business records simply did not survive, which is the case for most 450-year-old documents about the ordinary goings on of Elizabethan commoners.
Your real problem, however, is that Stratford was not a businessman in the ordinary sense that you are grasping at, i.e., you're attacking a strawman. Now Stratford did do real estate. He bought the 2nd biggest house in Stratford and made several substantial purchases of land, all of which are rather well documented.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/shakespeare-purchases-new-place
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeare-purchases-c...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeare-purchases-c...
Shakespeare also did real estate in London, theater properties in particular, like the Blackfriars and the Globe.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/deed-transfer-globe-and...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeare-purchases-b...
And, of course, his prominent and very profitable role as an actor and shareholder in the LCM and KM, which are also well documented, especially in the will of Augustine Phillips and the Ostler-v-Heminges suit.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/king-james-establishes-...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/augustine-phillips-last...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/ostler-v-heminges
So Shakespeare’s real “business” was the theater. The day-to-day ledgers of the LCM and KM probably went up in the Globe fire. But these were not Stratford's ledgers, rather, these were the company books. So by your logic, if the ledgers from LCM and KM did not survive, should we question the existence of the LCM and KM?
Prolixity1, you really need to get out more and see the documents and read the accompanying explanatory materials available at shakespearedocumented.org. For example, one of my favorites is a handwritten copy of Basse’s elegy upon the death of Shakespeare the poet in April 1616, meaning the one from Stratford.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/manuscript-copy-william...
The poem must have gone “viral” since over 30 ms copies survive, and Jonson responded to it his FF memorial to Shakespeare.
I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
Shakespeare. The poet from Stratford. The one who died there in April 1616. And was buried there in a tomb that says he was a poet. And for whom no less than Ben Jonson crafted a monumental memorial poem, answering Basse, and placing Mr. Shakespeare in a class by himself, a judgment that Jonson reiterated 20 years later in “Timber.” I won’t bother you with a link. I’m sure you know it.
In the meantime, I’d love to finish our discussion of floods and tides, and maybe a little more Roe. Or better yet, could you offer 2 or 3 pieces of actual evidence for Oxford, ideally documentary evidence, so we could review together. I say that because your hateful rants against Stratford suggest that you have little more to offer than hateful rants against Stratford. That’s fine. Hate him all you want. But let’s move on to discussing actual evidence and dispense with any more of your emotional outbursts.
So, whatcha got for Oxford?
You've made a very good case that Stratford was a lazy businessman, or perhaps just wasn't a very good record keeper, or more likely, his business records simply did not survive, which is the case for most 450-year-old documents about the ordinary goings on of Elizabethan commoners.
Your real problem, however, is that Stratford was not a businessman in the ordinary sense that you are grasping at, i.e., you're attacking a strawman. Now Stratford did do real estate. He bought the 2nd biggest house in Stratford and made several substantial purchases of land, all of which are rather well documented.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/shakespeare-purchases-new-place
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeare-purchases-c...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeare-purchases-c...
Shakespeare also did real estate in London, theater properties in particular, like the Blackfriars and the Globe.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/deed-transfer-globe-and...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/shakespeare-purchases-b...
And, of course, his prominent and very profitable role as an actor and shareholder in the LCM and KM, which are also well documented, especially in the will of Augustine Phillips and the Ostler-v-Heminges suit.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/king-james-establishes-...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/augustine-phillips-last...
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/ostler-v-heminges
So Shakespeare’s real “business” was the theater. The day-to-day ledgers of the LCM and KM probably went up in the Globe fire. But these were not Stratford's ledgers, rather, these were the company books. So by your logic, if the ledgers from LCM and KM did not survive, should we question the existence of the LCM and KM?
Prolixity1, you really need to get out more and see the documents and read the accompanying explanatory materials available at shakespearedocumented.org. For example, one of my favorites is a handwritten copy of Basse’s elegy upon the death of Shakespeare the poet in April 1616, meaning the one from Stratford.
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/manuscript-copy-william...
The poem must have gone “viral” since over 30 ms copies survive, and Jonson responded to it his FF memorial to Shakespeare.
I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room :
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
Shakespeare. The poet from Stratford. The one who died there in April 1616. And was buried there in a tomb that says he was a poet. And for whom no less than Ben Jonson crafted a monumental memorial poem, answering Basse, and placing Mr. Shakespeare in a class by himself, a judgment that Jonson reiterated 20 years later in “Timber.” I won’t bother you with a link. I’m sure you know it.
In the meantime, I’d love to finish our discussion of floods and tides, and maybe a little more Roe. Or better yet, could you offer 2 or 3 pieces of actual evidence for Oxford, ideally documentary evidence, so we could review together. I say that because your hateful rants against Stratford suggest that you have little more to offer than hateful rants against Stratford. That’s fine. Hate him all you want. But let’s move on to discussing actual evidence and dispense with any more of your emotional outbursts.
So, whatcha got for Oxford?
29Podras.
It's worth adding that William Dugdale's illustration of Shakespeare's Stratford monument in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), referred to by Leonard Digge's encomium to Shakespeare in the First Folio, isn't that of a grain dealer but to a poet. Dugdale said so in the text: "One thing more in reference to this antient Town \Stratford\ is observable, that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will. Shakespere, whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the Church"
30grayhog
Podras,
Spot on. Anti-Strats have a cow over the supposed wool sack, but ignore what the accompanying inscription said. Silly (and dishonest) Stratford haters. It's all covered here.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591552
http://www.hollowaypages.com/Shakespearemonument.htm
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/shaxmon.html
Spot on. Anti-Strats have a cow over the supposed wool sack, but ignore what the accompanying inscription said. Silly (and dishonest) Stratford haters. It's all covered here.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591552
http://www.hollowaypages.com/Shakespearemonument.htm
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/shaxmon.html
34Podras.
It's uncharacteristic of him to disappear like that in the midst of an ongoing ... ahem ... debate. He usually likes to keep raging on and on and on whether he makes any sense or not until people stop paying attention, which is mostly all the time now. Hypothetically, his going silent for so long is a testament to your knowledge, good sense, and unfailing patience. Thanks.
35proximity1
The "Shakespeare Authorship Question" is a challenging exercise in critical-thinking
___________________________
The issues which constitute the "Shakespeare Authorship Question" (SAQ) taken together form one of the very best, most interesting and challenging of exercises in critical-thinking. The problems include the recognition of evidence per se and the its analysis for probative value. What is sound evidence and why? What makes some evidentiary claims valid and others not valid? Why is the totality of the evidence claimed in support of the candidacy of William Shaksper of Stratford so abysmally bad? Why, on the other hand, does the totality of evidence relating to Edward, Earl of Oxford's place as author far surpass everything else in this question?
These are just a few of the critical-thinking matters which this subjects poses to those who would take it on as an interest.
I'll have a good deal more to present on this part of the thread's topic.
In the meantime, here's a sampling of the table of contents in a Falll, 2004 issue of The Tennessee Law Review in which some of the concerns about evidence and critical-thinking are discussed.
___________________________
The issues which constitute the "Shakespeare Authorship Question" (SAQ) taken together form one of the very best, most interesting and challenging of exercises in critical-thinking. The problems include the recognition of evidence per se and the its analysis for probative value. What is sound evidence and why? What makes some evidentiary claims valid and others not valid? Why is the totality of the evidence claimed in support of the candidacy of William Shaksper of Stratford so abysmally bad? Why, on the other hand, does the totality of evidence relating to Edward, Earl of Oxford's place as author far surpass everything else in this question?
These are just a few of the critical-thinking matters which this subjects poses to those who would take it on as an interest.
I'll have a good deal more to present on this part of the thread's topic.
In the meantime, here's a sampling of the table of contents in a Falll, 2004 issue of The Tennessee Law Review in which some of the concerns about evidence and critical-thinking are discussed.
SYMPOSIUM. Who Wrote Shakespeare? An Evidentiary Puzzle
Tennessee Law Review (Fall 2004): 1–453.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/tenn72&div=3&g_sent=...
___________________________________
Mark Twain's Evidence: The Never-Ending Riverboat Debate Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Kornstein, Daniel J.
Page 1Page
Connecting the Dots: The Catholic Question and the Shakespeare Authorship Dispute Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Dickson, Peter W.
Page 25Page 25
Jumping O'er Times: The Importance of Lawyers and Judges in the Controversy over the Identity of Shakespear, as Reflected in the Pages of the New York Times Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Niederkorn, William S.
Page 67Page 67
Burden of Proof and Presumptions in the Shakespeare Authorship Debate Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Causey, William F.
Page 93Page 93
Evidence for a Literary Biography Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Price, Diana
Page 111Page 111
Stratford Si - Essex No - (An Open-and-Shut Case) Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Nelson, Alan H.
Page 149Page 149
A Law Case in Verse: Venus and Adonis and the Authorship Question Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Stritmatter, Roger
Page 171Page 171
The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford as Poet and Playwright Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
May, Steven W.
Page 221Page 221
Who Wrote Shakespeare - The Preponderance of Evidence Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Whalen, Richard F.
Page 255Page 255
A Response to Burden of Proof and Presumptions in the Shakespeare Authorship Debate Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Whalen, Richard F.
Page 273Page 273
A Response to Oxford by the Numbers Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Whalen, Richard F.
Page 275Page 275
Reading the 1592 Groatsworth Attack on Shakespeare Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Carroll, D. Allen
Page 277Page 277
The Shakespeare Authorship Debate and the Proper Standard of Proof Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Buckley, Marion
Page 295Page 295
Using Circumstantial Evidence to Discover Shakespear: The Importance of Good Legal Analysis Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Gibson, Amy L.
Page 309Page 309
Oxford by the Numbers: What Are the Odds That the Earl of Oxford Could Have Written Shakespeare's Poems and Plays Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare - An Evidentiary Puzzle
Elliott, Ward E. Y.; Valenza, Robert J.
Page 323Page 323
36grayhog
prolixity1 asks: "Why is the totality of the evidence claimed in support of the candidacy of William Shaksper of Stratford so abysmally bad?"
Perhaps the better question would be, "Why is the totality of the evidence claimed in support of the candidacy of Oxford of Hedingham so abysmally bad?"
So let's try this. Why don't you offer three strong pieces of evidence for Oxford, or 5, or even 10, and we'll see how they hold up?
If you'd rather do a "Top 10" for Shakespeare, then I recommend (1) the Grant of Arms, (2) the Parnassus plays, (3) Meres, (4) Barnfield's "Remembrance of Some English Poet's, (5) Weever's "Honey-tongued Shakespeare"--the same phase Meres used, (6) the Royal Patent from James I, (7) Basse's "Elegy," (8) the Stratford Monument, (9) the front matter from the First Folio, and (10) Jonson's "Timber." Or any of the hundreds more documents collected here:
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/
So, prolixity1, pick your poison. Your "Top 5 (or more)" for Oxford and/or my "Top 10" for Stratford.
Then we can go down the lists, maybe alternating 1 for Oxford, then 1 for Shakespeare, etc., and do for each item what you say would be "one of the very best, most interesting and challenging of exercises in critical-thinking," i.e., "the recognition of evidence per se and then its analysis for probative value" What is sound evidence and why? What makes some evidentiary claims valid and others not valid?"
Good sir, I accept your offer. Lay on!
Perhaps the better question would be, "Why is the totality of the evidence claimed in support of the candidacy of Oxford of Hedingham so abysmally bad?"
So let's try this. Why don't you offer three strong pieces of evidence for Oxford, or 5, or even 10, and we'll see how they hold up?
If you'd rather do a "Top 10" for Shakespeare, then I recommend (1) the Grant of Arms, (2) the Parnassus plays, (3) Meres, (4) Barnfield's "Remembrance of Some English Poet's, (5) Weever's "Honey-tongued Shakespeare"--the same phase Meres used, (6) the Royal Patent from James I, (7) Basse's "Elegy," (8) the Stratford Monument, (9) the front matter from the First Folio, and (10) Jonson's "Timber." Or any of the hundreds more documents collected here:
http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/
So, prolixity1, pick your poison. Your "Top 5 (or more)" for Oxford and/or my "Top 10" for Stratford.
Then we can go down the lists, maybe alternating 1 for Oxford, then 1 for Shakespeare, etc., and do for each item what you say would be "one of the very best, most interesting and challenging of exercises in critical-thinking," i.e., "the recognition of evidence per se and then its analysis for probative value" What is sound evidence and why? What makes some evidentiary claims valid and others not valid?"
Good sir, I accept your offer. Lay on!
37rolandperkins
". . . we ought to be interested in discovering the reason (for giving a Phoenician character a Greek name, and a famous one at that)." (6).
Yes, proximity Iʻm very interested in "discovering" that "reason"!
Iʻm not, b t w, a "Stratfordian". Iʻm just saying that Oxfordian authorship (of the plays anyway) is even more improbable than Stratfordian.
Your argument that Einstein and Godel were capable of blunders OUTSIDE of their field of expertise, doesnʻt convince me that Oxford was capable of a blunder WITHIN his.
Yes, proximity Iʻm very interested in "discovering" that "reason"!
Iʻm not, b t w, a "Stratfordian". Iʻm just saying that Oxfordian authorship (of the plays anyway) is even more improbable than Stratfordian.
Your argument that Einstein and Godel were capable of blunders OUTSIDE of their field of expertise, doesnʻt convince me that Oxford was capable of a blunder WITHIN his.
38Podras.
My top ten list overlaps with >36 grayhog:'s quite a bit, but mine begins with Shakespeare's name on the title pages of his works by whichever way it was spelled. Claims for alternative authors ends right there if that can't be credibly discredited. The claim that a hyphen in the name meant that it was a pseudonym was first made by people advocating Marlowe's authorship in the late 19th century, and no evidence contemporary to the early modern period--or earlier than Marlovean claims for that matter--to support that assertion has ever been identified.
39proximity1
>37 rolandperkins:
"Your argument that Einstein and Godel were capable of blunders OUTSIDE of their field of expertise, doesnʻt convince me that Oxford was capable of a blunder WITHIN his."
---or, maybe you'd intended to write,
..."that Einstein and Godel were capable of blunders OUTSIDE of their field of expertise, doesnʻt convince me that Oxford was incapable of a blunder WITHIN his." ... etc.
If not, very good, then, for I am not and never have argued or proposed such a thing. Quite the contrary-- as I see it, everywhere it counts, and, above all, in those things most important to them, people who are conspicuous geniuses are not lazy, stupid, careless, or indifferent to the state or the future of their work.
So it is utter nonsense to imagine this:
Though it has been part of the ignored scholarship on “Shakespeare” for nearly a century, Professor Kastan ignores a far superior hypothesis as the basis for this, his view of the peculiarities of “Shakespeare's” seeming lack of interest in his plays.*
So, to take up each of his astute observations—
...“they bear witness to the complex conditions of authorship that shaped his career.”
Complex conditions there were. Oxford could not, from the social imperatives of his noble rank and all the class-strictures and obligations which came with it, take open and public credit during his own lifetime for authorship of plays which were published and produced for the general public as well as for their primary audience, his peers at Court.
But much simpler “conditions” account for this “indifference” and severely “shaped his career” : namely, being dead before they reached print other than in Quarto pamphlet play-scripts which were the objects of unsupervised publication under the customs and laws then applying to printing and publishing.
The last thing he (Edward Oxford) could do was to openly challenge, under his own name and rank, the publication of a play-script which he couldn't acknowledge as his in the first place without offending his and his peers' social norms. So, if “he felt no need to claim his play texts as his own,” that's because, I contend, being dead, he really wasn't feeling any needs. And how comfortably or not he worked while alive had, by this time, no bearing on the inherent comforts of being a corpse. Do we really need to ask or answer, in light of this gold-plated idiocy of Professor Kastan, “Why does the authorship question matter?” ?
And, here, really, is the height of irony disguised under the innocent (?) expression of ill-understood ironic fact:
“how little he had invested in the notions of individuated authorship that, ironically, his name has come to so triumphantly to represent.”
Ye Gods! This name, four hundred years on, is an as-yet-denied and disputed pen-name behind which the true author's name is still embattled and struggling for its due regard and esteem! And we have the David Scott Kastans of orthodox “scholarship” to “thank” for this fact.
In Tudor England—including the period in which Oxford lived and wrote—laws controlling actors' lives and work were subsumed under statues and acts of Parliament which applied also to “vagrants,” “vagabonds,” sturdy beggars” and other “masterless men.” Actors were socially on a par with prostitutes, beggars, travelling pedlars of questionable repute and knaves and conny-catchers—con artists and tricksters.
That plays and playwrights came out from under such a moral dark cloud is largely due to the fact that Oxford's work and that of others—Ben Jonson and his fellow writers and their successors—raised it from the opprobrium in which it had long existed and, in the process, virtually created the English theatre scene of Elizabethan times. Oxford's even more important legacy was to go beyond making the theatre respectable for all classes to enjoy, he practically created a fresh and lasting power in his imaginative practice of English, adding many hundreds of vivid new words and phrases to the language.
In all of this, such wilfull blindness as Kastan's is a flagrant betrayal.
______________________
D. S. Kastan writes, in an end-note to his article, (Note 1, p. 39)
________________________
Before we leave this for other comments, let's notice something quite interesting:
Professor Kastan tells us that, if "Shakespeare" didn't care all that much about the plays he wrote, that's largely if not entirely because, he explains to the reader,
" Literally, his ("Shakespeare's") investment was elsewhere: in the lucrative partnership of the acting company. He worked comfortably within its necessary collaborations, and clearly felt no need to claim his play texts as his own as they began to circulate in print.”
But, how can that be? We're advised above, by "grayhog," that, as concerns his commerical activities, our literary genius was "lazy" about all that--all of it, as concerns "the lucrative partnership of the acting company", since we have from his own hand no financial traces or any financial record of any of that activity in the realm of theatre business.
So, on one hand, he didn't really take care for his business affairs--because, "grayhog" tells us, he was "lazy" about them and, on the other, he didn't really care about his plays as literature--because, Professor Kastan tells us, what he was really devoted to instead was his business affairs and, particularly, "the lucrative partnership of the acting company." Though, again, as concerns that area of his life in which he was literally "invested," the commercial gain of theater, he left behing not a scrap of paper signed by him concerning any aspect of the business--nothing about his agreements or disagreements, nothing about his availability, no letter or note ever explaining that he would (or would not) be in London, or Stratford, or some other place on such and such a date, no manuscript document of any kind personally written by him or even simply bearing his signature, attesting to the fact that he'd read it. Nothing at all from his (supposedly) leaving Stratford to his (supposedly) going to London and (supposedly) becoming, as a complete unkknown, (supposedly) active in theater and acting affairs.
Then he retired. And he left behind the bustle of London for Stratford. In the meantime, printers and publishers had worked on Quarto pamphlet editions of 17 or 18 of his plays (depending on how one decides which he wrote), some of them with the name "William Shak(e)-speare," "William Shakespeare," on the cover or title-page, some with initials, W. Shaks., or W. Shake-speare or W.S., etc. and some with no name or initial at all indicating an author. Some of these quartos sold well, so well that they went through repeated printings when existing stocks were exhausted. But our enterprising author, having no financial share in that aspect, was, (supposedly) not at all interested. Apparently, he was (supposedly) not even interested in these publishers, these printers including, when they bothered to print (supposedly) his name on the pamphlet, the words, "of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshr."
It's a curious fact that, in all this time, not a single surviving copy has come down to us with such a specification of his identity--- never, even once, did a printer add "of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Shire." And Richard Field was himself from Stratford and, we're assured, must have personally known William Shaksper-- or at the very least known of him as a fellow Stratfordian---and he, Field, printed papers bearing the name "William Shakespeare".*
Didn't it ever occur to Field to inquire directly with Shaksper whether he'd like to have "of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Shire" included after (supposedly) his name? If not, why not?
Oxfordians have an answer and it is very simple and conforms to the rest of a vastly more reasonable and coherent theory: Field knew both William Shaksper of Stratford--or knew of him--and also either : knew that he, Shaksper, was not in the least associated in the writing or playing or presentation of the plays with which he, Field, was concerned as a printer or had no reason to suppose that there was any such concordance between the man, Shaksper and the name, "William Shakespeare."
Thus, Field wouldn't have asked such an otherwise very natural question and he certainly wouldn't have added those words on his own initiative. That's because, Oxfordians contend, he knew that there was no connection between the authorial (pen-name) "William Shake-speare" or "Shakespeare" and the man whose name he knew of as WIlliam Shaksper, Stratford businessman-- and nothing else.
This is standard in what orthodox Stratfordians insist they and only they are competent to know about, understand and explain to their poor, benighted opponents, Oxfordians.
_________________________________
(empahsis added in the citations)
*
Giovanni Boccaccio's il Decameron or Decamerone, first published between 1350 and 1353-- the title-page from a subsequent reprint, from the Florentine publishers, Giunti, in 1573, indicates, after the author's name, "citizen of Florence".
Chaucer The Workes of our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer
London: printed by Adam Islip, 1602 / Hunterian Dr.2.2 ; From a 1602 reprint, as well as in Islip's 1598 edition of the same work, the illustration shows Chaucer's supposed linaege,
"In this Impression you shall find these Additions
I His Portraiture and Progenie Shewed" ...
removing any questions as to "which" Geoffrey Chaucer is intended as the author of this work.
Title-page from a 1595 edition of Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia, indicating, following the author's name, "Nobleman of Florence".
" The avncient Historie And onely trewe and syncere Chronicle of the warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans , and subsequently the fyrst euer cyon of the auncient and famouse Cytye of Troye vnder Lamedon the King, and of the laste and fynall..."
"by John Lydgate Monche of Burye" (1555)
A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the Time of the Romans Government unto the Death of King James (1679) by Sir Richard Baker, Knight
Do you know who Lemuel Gulliver was? Just in case, dear reader, you weren't acquainted with his name,
he explains for you who he is, right on the title-page of his Travel Journal :
" Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726), by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships"
"Your argument that Einstein and Godel were capable of blunders OUTSIDE of their field of expertise, doesnʻt convince me that Oxford was capable of a blunder WITHIN his."
---or, maybe you'd intended to write,
..."that Einstein and Godel were capable of blunders OUTSIDE of their field of expertise, doesnʻt convince me that Oxford was incapable of a blunder WITHIN his." ... etc.
If not, very good, then, for I am not and never have argued or proposed such a thing. Quite the contrary-- as I see it, everywhere it counts, and, above all, in those things most important to them, people who are conspicuous geniuses are not lazy, stupid, careless, or indifferent to the state or the future of their work.
So it is utter nonsense to imagine this:
"The printed plays that preserve (")Shakespeare(") for us are, however, all in various ways deficient, yet, precisely in their distance from the ideal of editorial desire, they bear witness to the complex conditions of authorship that shaped his career. (")Shakespeare(") has become virtually the iconic name fo authoriship itself, but he wrote in circumstances in which his individual achievement was inevitably dispersed into—if not compromised by—the collaborative economies of play production. Nonetheless, (“)Shakespeare's(”) apparent indifference to the publication of his plays, his manifest in reasserting his authority over them, suggests how little he had invested in the notions of individuated authorship that, ironically, his name has come to so triumphantly to represent. Literally, his investment was elsewhere: in the lucrative partnership of the acting company. He worked comfortably within its necessary collaborations, and clearly felt no need to claim his play texts as his own as they began to circulate in print.”
__________________________________
-- ”Plays Into Print,” --David Scott Kastan, in Books and Readers in Early Modern England, Philadelphia, 2002) Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., pp. 24-25
Though it has been part of the ignored scholarship on “Shakespeare” for nearly a century, Professor Kastan ignores a far superior hypothesis as the basis for this, his view of the peculiarities of “Shakespeare's” seeming lack of interest in his plays.*
So, to take up each of his astute observations—
...“they bear witness to the complex conditions of authorship that shaped his career.”
Complex conditions there were. Oxford could not, from the social imperatives of his noble rank and all the class-strictures and obligations which came with it, take open and public credit during his own lifetime for authorship of plays which were published and produced for the general public as well as for their primary audience, his peers at Court.
But much simpler “conditions” account for this “indifference” and severely “shaped his career” : namely, being dead before they reached print other than in Quarto pamphlet play-scripts which were the objects of unsupervised publication under the customs and laws then applying to printing and publishing.
The last thing he (Edward Oxford) could do was to openly challenge, under his own name and rank, the publication of a play-script which he couldn't acknowledge as his in the first place without offending his and his peers' social norms. So, if “he felt no need to claim his play texts as his own,” that's because, I contend, being dead, he really wasn't feeling any needs. And how comfortably or not he worked while alive had, by this time, no bearing on the inherent comforts of being a corpse. Do we really need to ask or answer, in light of this gold-plated idiocy of Professor Kastan, “Why does the authorship question matter?” ?
And, here, really, is the height of irony disguised under the innocent (?) expression of ill-understood ironic fact:
“how little he had invested in the notions of individuated authorship that, ironically, his name has come to so triumphantly to represent.”
Ye Gods! This name, four hundred years on, is an as-yet-denied and disputed pen-name behind which the true author's name is still embattled and struggling for its due regard and esteem! And we have the David Scott Kastans of orthodox “scholarship” to “thank” for this fact.
In Tudor England—including the period in which Oxford lived and wrote—laws controlling actors' lives and work were subsumed under statues and acts of Parliament which applied also to “vagrants,” “vagabonds,” sturdy beggars” and other “masterless men.” Actors were socially on a par with prostitutes, beggars, travelling pedlars of questionable repute and knaves and conny-catchers—con artists and tricksters.
That plays and playwrights came out from under such a moral dark cloud is largely due to the fact that Oxford's work and that of others—Ben Jonson and his fellow writers and their successors—raised it from the opprobrium in which it had long existed and, in the process, virtually created the English theatre scene of Elizabethan times. Oxford's even more important legacy was to go beyond making the theatre respectable for all classes to enjoy, he practically created a fresh and lasting power in his imaginative practice of English, adding many hundreds of vivid new words and phrases to the language.
In all of this, such wilfull blindness as Kastan's is a flagrant betrayal.
______________________
D. S. Kastan writes, in an end-note to his article, (Note 1, p. 39)
"Katherine Duncan-Jones has argued that the 1609 edition of the sonnets was printed from (")Shakespeare's(") own revised manuscript and was sold by (")Shakespeare's(") to Thomas Thorpe; see her "Was the 1609Shake-speares Sonnets Really Unauthorized?", Review of English Studies 34 (1983): 151-71. For reasons that are largely irrelevant here, I do not share the view that the volume (Sonnets) represents another example of Shakespeare's commitment to print, though, even if it is (sic) it does not affect my argument about (")Shakespeare's(") lack of interest in seeing his plays in print."
________________________
Before we leave this for other comments, let's notice something quite interesting:
Professor Kastan tells us that, if "Shakespeare" didn't care all that much about the plays he wrote, that's largely if not entirely because, he explains to the reader,
" Literally, his ("Shakespeare's") investment was elsewhere: in the lucrative partnership of the acting company. He worked comfortably within its necessary collaborations, and clearly felt no need to claim his play texts as his own as they began to circulate in print.”
But, how can that be? We're advised above, by "grayhog," that, as concerns his commerical activities, our literary genius was "lazy" about all that--all of it, as concerns "the lucrative partnership of the acting company", since we have from his own hand no financial traces or any financial record of any of that activity in the realm of theatre business.
So, on one hand, he didn't really take care for his business affairs--because, "grayhog" tells us, he was "lazy" about them and, on the other, he didn't really care about his plays as literature--because, Professor Kastan tells us, what he was really devoted to instead was his business affairs and, particularly, "the lucrative partnership of the acting company." Though, again, as concerns that area of his life in which he was literally "invested," the commercial gain of theater, he left behing not a scrap of paper signed by him concerning any aspect of the business--nothing about his agreements or disagreements, nothing about his availability, no letter or note ever explaining that he would (or would not) be in London, or Stratford, or some other place on such and such a date, no manuscript document of any kind personally written by him or even simply bearing his signature, attesting to the fact that he'd read it. Nothing at all from his (supposedly) leaving Stratford to his (supposedly) going to London and (supposedly) becoming, as a complete unkknown, (supposedly) active in theater and acting affairs.
Then he retired. And he left behind the bustle of London for Stratford. In the meantime, printers and publishers had worked on Quarto pamphlet editions of 17 or 18 of his plays (depending on how one decides which he wrote), some of them with the name "William Shak(e)-speare," "William Shakespeare," on the cover or title-page, some with initials, W. Shaks., or W. Shake-speare or W.S., etc. and some with no name or initial at all indicating an author. Some of these quartos sold well, so well that they went through repeated printings when existing stocks were exhausted. But our enterprising author, having no financial share in that aspect, was, (supposedly) not at all interested. Apparently, he was (supposedly) not even interested in these publishers, these printers including, when they bothered to print (supposedly) his name on the pamphlet, the words, "of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshr."
It's a curious fact that, in all this time, not a single surviving copy has come down to us with such a specification of his identity--- never, even once, did a printer add "of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Shire." And Richard Field was himself from Stratford and, we're assured, must have personally known William Shaksper-- or at the very least known of him as a fellow Stratfordian---and he, Field, printed papers bearing the name "William Shakespeare".*
Didn't it ever occur to Field to inquire directly with Shaksper whether he'd like to have "of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Shire" included after (supposedly) his name? If not, why not?
Oxfordians have an answer and it is very simple and conforms to the rest of a vastly more reasonable and coherent theory: Field knew both William Shaksper of Stratford--or knew of him--and also either : knew that he, Shaksper, was not in the least associated in the writing or playing or presentation of the plays with which he, Field, was concerned as a printer or had no reason to suppose that there was any such concordance between the man, Shaksper and the name, "William Shakespeare."
Thus, Field wouldn't have asked such an otherwise very natural question and he certainly wouldn't have added those words on his own initiative. That's because, Oxfordians contend, he knew that there was no connection between the authorial (pen-name) "William Shake-speare" or "Shakespeare" and the man whose name he knew of as WIlliam Shaksper, Stratford businessman-- and nothing else.
This is standard in what orthodox Stratfordians insist they and only they are competent to know about, understand and explain to their poor, benighted opponents, Oxfordians.
_________________________________
(empahsis added in the citations)
*
“Entre 1560 et 1614, trois William Shakespeare sont signalés dans le bourg de Rowlington, à vingt kilometres au nord de Stratford.”
( “Between 1560 and 1614 , three William Shakespeares are indicated in the commune of Rowlington, twenty km. north of Stratford.” )
—Martin Maurice, William Shakespeare (Master William Shakespeare) (Paris, 1953, Editions Gallimard) p. 52.
Giovanni Boccaccio's il Decameron or Decamerone, first published between 1350 and 1353-- the title-page from a subsequent reprint, from the Florentine publishers, Giunti, in 1573, indicates, after the author's name, "citizen of Florence".
Chaucer The Workes of our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer
London: printed by Adam Islip, 1602 / Hunterian Dr.2.2 ; From a 1602 reprint, as well as in Islip's 1598 edition of the same work, the illustration shows Chaucer's supposed linaege,
"In this Impression you shall find these Additions
I His Portraiture and Progenie Shewed" ...
removing any questions as to "which" Geoffrey Chaucer is intended as the author of this work.
Title-page from a 1595 edition of Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia, indicating, following the author's name, "Nobleman of Florence".
" The avncient Historie And onely trewe and syncere Chronicle of the warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans , and subsequently the fyrst euer cyon of the auncient and famouse Cytye of Troye vnder Lamedon the King, and of the laste and fynall..."
"by John Lydgate Monche of Burye" (1555)
A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the Time of the Romans Government unto the Death of King James (1679) by Sir Richard Baker, Knight
Here, Antwerp M 15.6 (Folio 1v) Jean Froissart names himself as chronicler/author and describes those nobles under whose authority he is bound ( Guy de Chastillon "my good and sovereign master and lord") , thus, identifying himself by name, by geographical locale and by his then-living feudal 'sponsors'. In this way, it is impossible to have mistaken the true author for another pretender :
"Et pour ce je sire Jehan Froissart, qui me suiz ensongniéz de ditter, et croniser ceste histoire a la requeste, contemplacion et plaisance de hault prince et renommé, messire Guy de Chastillon, conte de Bloiz, seigneur d’Avesnes, de Beaumont, de Schonhove et de La Goude, mon bon et souverain maistre et seigneur, consideray en moy mesmes que pas n’estoit apparant ne taillié en long et grant temps que aucuns grans faiz d’armes advenissent es marches de Picardie et du paÿs de Flandres, puisque paix y avoit, et grandement me ennuyoit a estre oyseux."
_________________________________
Chroniques de Jehan Froissart, 14th century from Book III : (Wikipedia) "Book III, which covers the years 1385 to 1390, but which also includes extensive flashback to the earlier periods, was possibly completed in 1390 or 1391" )
Do you know who Lemuel Gulliver was? Just in case, dear reader, you weren't acquainted with his name,
he explains for you who he is, right on the title-page of his Travel Journal :
" Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726), by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships"
40proximity1
(Edited: Feb 16, 8:49am)
(Edited: Oct 16, 5:49 a.m.)
As this thread is devoted to the issue—the problem, as I see it—of what I call the "crime" of orthodox Shakespeare academic studies and, especially, the propagation of a set of wildly absurd and reasonably-unsupportable nonsense to the innocent and unsuspecting early students of "Shakespeare" 's work—let us hear now from a professional in university education talking about the realities of university students and education today---
(Edited: Oct 16, 5:49 a.m.)
As this thread is devoted to the issue—the problem, as I see it—of what I call the "crime" of orthodox Shakespeare academic studies and, especially, the propagation of a set of wildly absurd and reasonably-unsupportable nonsense to the innocent and unsuspecting early students of "Shakespeare" 's work—let us hear now from a professional in university education talking about the realities of university students and education today---
( Excerpt from the Los Angeles Times )
What students know that experts don't: School is all about signaling, not skill-building
by Bryan Caplan ||
Feb 11, 2018 | 4:05 AM
( The campus of Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. on Feb. 9. (Dreamstime / TNS) )
______________________________
... ...
"Parents, teachers, politicians and researchers tirelessly warn today's youths about the unforgiving job market that awaits them. If they want to succeed in tomorrow's economy, they can't just coast through school. They have to soak up precious knowledge like a sponge. But even as adulthood approaches, students rarely heed this advice. Most treat high school and college like a game, not an opportunity to build lifelong skills.
"Is it possible that students are on to something? There is a massive gap between school and work, between learning and earning. While the labor market rewards good grades and fancy degrees, most of the subjects schools require simply aren't relevant on the job. Literacy and numeracy are vital, but few of us use history, poetry, higher mathematics or foreign languages after graduation. The main reason firms reward education is because it certifies (or "signals") brains, work ethic and conformity.
"It's therefore sensible, if unseemly, for students to focus more on going through the motions than acquiring knowledge.
"Almost everyone pays lip service to the glories of education, but actions speak louder than words. Ponder this: If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn't really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that almost no one tries this route — saving hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way — is a strong sign that students understand the
value of certification over actual learning." ... ...
... ...
Researchers consistently find that most of education's payoff comes from graduation, from crossing the academic finish line. The last year of high school is worth more than the first three; the last year of college is worth more than double the first three. This is hard to explain if employers are paying for acquired skills; do schools really wait until senior year to impart useful training? Or consider how differently employers treat failing a class versus forgetting one. If you flunk a class, plenty of employers will trash your application. But if you pass that same class, then forget everything you learned, employers will shrug.
These behaviors make perfect sense if — and only if — employers are eager to detect workers who dutifully conform to social expectations. In a society where parents, teachers and peers glorify graduation, failing classes and dropping out are deviant acts.
One of the most glaring perversities of the modern labor market is credential inflation. While the education workers need to do a job is quite stable, the education they need to get a job has skyrocketed since the 1940s. Sure, the average job is more intellectually demanding than it once was, but researchers find that only explains 20% of the workforce's rising education. What explains the remaining 80%? Employers' expectations have risen across the board. Waiter, bartender, cashier, security guard: These are now common jobs for those with bachelor's degrees.
Despite all these tell-tale signs of signaling, many of my fellow researchers refuse to take the idea seriously. Sure, signaling seems to fit our firsthand experience. Yet why would profit-seeking employers base their decisions on mere credentials instead of potential to perform well on the job?
___________________________
(emphasis added)
ETA (14 / 02 / 2018 )
( Excerpt from “RealClear Education” )
Why Go to College? Student Perspectives on Higher Ed || By Carol D'Amico || February 13, 2018
_________________________
“The consumers of higher education have spoken. Workforce outcomes are, far and away, the driving motivation for pursuing post-secondary education across all ages, races, and degree types.
“According to a new Strada-Gallup poll, which surveyed 86,000 students at over 3,000 post-secondary institutions, 58 percent say work outcomes — such as finding a good job with good pay and opportunities for career advancement — are their primary motivation for attending. This is true across all higher education pathways and demographic subgroups.
“Not surprisingly, even more Americans (72 percent) with postgraduate education experiences identify career goals as their top motivation, as do 60 percent of those on a technical or vocational pathway. The second most common motivation for Americans with postgraduate education eperiences, “general learning and knowledge,” trails at just 23 percent.
“Of course, most students who pursue post-secondary education want a good job when they graduate. And, it turns out, this clarity of purpose is important. This new data tells us not only that many students go to school in order to get a job, but that clearly defined career goals play an important role in determining if those students actually complete their chosen course of study.
“Students who do not complete their degree are relatively likely to report general aspirations for learning and knowledge as their top motivation (31 percent). Those who did complete their degrees tended to place these goals lower on their list: vocational/technical training (14 percent), post-graduate work/degrees (18 percent), two-year degrees (25 percent), or four-year degrees (20 percent). In an earlier Strada-Gallup report, students who did not complete their education were also the most likely to say they would study a different major if they could do it all over again.” …
…
__________________________
( Bold-face and underlined emphasis above are added. Italic emphasis above is in the original text as published.)
I'll have more to say here about this part (and, later, other parts) of the article when time allows.
41Podras.
None of William Shakespeare's works includes the phrase, "of Stratford upon Avon", showing that he wasn't the author of the works bearing his name. None of Herman Melville's works includes the phrase, "of New York City", on the title page, showing that he wasn't the author of the works bearing his name. None of Charles Dickens' works includes the phrase, "of Portsmouth, England", on the title page, showing that he wasn't the author of the works bearing his name. None of William Faulkner's works includes the phrase, "of New Albany, Mississippi", on the title page, showing that he wasn't the author of the works bearing his name. None of Mark Twain's works ... um ... well, let's set that one aside. In any case, Florida, Missouri isn't on his title pages either. Nor is Hannibal.
I think we've come upon a new principle. If an author's works don't identify where they were from on the title pages of their works, they weren't really the author of the works bearing their name. Right. A quick scan through my library shows that none of my books were written by the persons identified as the authors. I suspect that an examination of all of the title pages of all of the books ever published would show that none of them--or at least hardly any--were written by the persons identified as the authors.
We should honor the discoverer of this principle by naming it the Proximity1 Maxim.
I think we've come upon a new principle. If an author's works don't identify where they were from on the title pages of their works, they weren't really the author of the works bearing their name. Right. A quick scan through my library shows that none of my books were written by the persons identified as the authors. I suspect that an examination of all of the title pages of all of the books ever published would show that none of them--or at least hardly any--were written by the persons identified as the authors.
We should honor the discoverer of this principle by naming it the Proximity1 Maxim.
42grayhog
prolixity1: The long (even for you) diatribe above is not evidence against Stratford. It's even less evidence for Oxford. It is, rather, your idiosyncratic projection of 21st century publishing practices upon the Elizabethan England of some 400 years ago. And because things then were not the same as now, you grasp onto this difference and twist it to become evidence for Oxford. Which, of course, it isn't.
Your speculations, your interpretations, are not evidence. Do you understand that? They are merely your speculations--and long-winded ones at that.
But what's truly hilarious about your post is you taking umbrage that "never, even once, did a printer add 'of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Shire.' And Richard Field was himself from Stratford and, we're assured, must have personally known William Shaksper-- or at the very least known of him as a fellow Stratfordian."
So, can you provide some examples of other Elizabethan-era plays where the by-line includes the city of the writer's nativity? Since you deem this an important criteria, I assume there are multiple examples that would support your contention.
We both know, of course, that we'll have to wait quite a while for you to respond, since even you must know there aren't any.
Which means that you've done little more than demonstrate once again that your scornful babbling is not evidence of anything, other than your uninformed prolixity.
But you must, somehow, sense that, too. Which makes your speculation here all the more puzzling, unless it's driven by how much you must really hate Stratford, while being head-over-heels for your beloved Oxford, who gave us "a kingdom of the imagination in which the complexes and trauma's of his life's experience and reading could be represented, bequeathing it to an unknown and often vulgarly ungrateful world--a world that still does not want to acknowledge the psychological price Oxford paid for what he represents dramatically" (a delightful passage penned by a famous Oxfordian).
So sad. Poor dear Oxford, robbed of his name, deprived of his fame.
Doesn't it just bring a tear to your eye?
Now that we both have this (the last two posts) out of our system, how about a re-set?
Do you want to have an actual discussion about evidence, your "Top 10" (or less) and my "Top 10"? Along the lines of what you yourself actually proposed as "one of the very best, most interesting and challenging of exercises in critical-thinking," i.e., "the recognition of evidence per se and then its analysis for probative value" What is sound evidence and why? What makes some evidentiary claims valid and others not valid?"
But please, no more screeds. Let's just look at the actual evidence, hard evidence, documentary evidence, and not "I imagine this means X which means that Ox was Shakes, or the inverse, that Stratford wasn't.
I can assure you that the proceedings will be thoughtful and dignified. No name calling. No aspersions. Just a cool examination of the evidence. Which, as I understand it, is exactly what you want to do.
So, you want to give it a shot?
Your speculations, your interpretations, are not evidence. Do you understand that? They are merely your speculations--and long-winded ones at that.
But what's truly hilarious about your post is you taking umbrage that "never, even once, did a printer add 'of Stratford Upon Avon, Warwick Shire.' And Richard Field was himself from Stratford and, we're assured, must have personally known William Shaksper-- or at the very least known of him as a fellow Stratfordian."
So, can you provide some examples of other Elizabethan-era plays where the by-line includes the city of the writer's nativity? Since you deem this an important criteria, I assume there are multiple examples that would support your contention.
We both know, of course, that we'll have to wait quite a while for you to respond, since even you must know there aren't any.
Which means that you've done little more than demonstrate once again that your scornful babbling is not evidence of anything, other than your uninformed prolixity.
But you must, somehow, sense that, too. Which makes your speculation here all the more puzzling, unless it's driven by how much you must really hate Stratford, while being head-over-heels for your beloved Oxford, who gave us "a kingdom of the imagination in which the complexes and trauma's of his life's experience and reading could be represented, bequeathing it to an unknown and often vulgarly ungrateful world--a world that still does not want to acknowledge the psychological price Oxford paid for what he represents dramatically" (a delightful passage penned by a famous Oxfordian).
So sad. Poor dear Oxford, robbed of his name, deprived of his fame.
Doesn't it just bring a tear to your eye?
Now that we both have this (the last two posts) out of our system, how about a re-set?
Do you want to have an actual discussion about evidence, your "Top 10" (or less) and my "Top 10"? Along the lines of what you yourself actually proposed as "one of the very best, most interesting and challenging of exercises in critical-thinking," i.e., "the recognition of evidence per se and then its analysis for probative value" What is sound evidence and why? What makes some evidentiary claims valid and others not valid?"
But please, no more screeds. Let's just look at the actual evidence, hard evidence, documentary evidence, and not "I imagine this means X which means that Ox was Shakes, or the inverse, that Stratford wasn't.
I can assure you that the proceedings will be thoughtful and dignified. No name calling. No aspersions. Just a cool examination of the evidence. Which, as I understand it, is exactly what you want to do.
So, you want to give it a shot?
43grayhog
Poor silly prolixity1.
I asked him to provide us "some examples of other Elizabethan-era plays where the by-line includes the city of the writer's nativity?"
So what does he give us?
A 1573 edition of Boccaccio and a 1595 edition Dante, both printed in Italy.
An ornately illustrated page from a 1598 edition of Chaucer showing his lineage.
Lydgate's "Troy Book" (1420, 1555 printing) with the name of the monastery he retired to some 30 years after completing the book.
Baker's "Chronicle" (1643, 1679 printing) showing that he was a knight --which has nothing to do with where he was born.
And a 14th century French chronicle.
But prolixity1 saves the best for last, giving us the title page of "Gulliver's Travels," pointing out that Gulliver was "First a Surgeon and then a Captain of Several Ships"--the import of which is lost on all but prolixity1. And while the title page shows that the book was printed in London, this does not shed much light on where Gulliver hailed from--though rumor has it he was from Ireland. . . . I wonder if prolixity1 knows this?
So what do we have? Every example prolixity1 offers is either from the wrong era, or the wrong country, and most glaringly, the wrong genre. Not one of his examples is an Elizabethan-era play.
Which shows that there's nothing too ridiculous, nothing too embarrassing, nothing too pitifully meaningless that he won't attempt, if in service to his beloved Lord Oxenford.
And more important, that there's absolutely nothing probative about the title pages of Shakespeare's plays not showing that he was from Stratford.
However, my dear prolixity1, you may redeem yourself by showing us what was originally asked for, i.e., "Some examples of other Elizabethan-era plays where the by-line includes the city of the writer's nativity."
Do so, and I will apologize, profusely, and take back every uncharitable tela vibrat that I have hurled in your direction.
I asked him to provide us "some examples of other Elizabethan-era plays where the by-line includes the city of the writer's nativity?"
So what does he give us?
A 1573 edition of Boccaccio and a 1595 edition Dante, both printed in Italy.
An ornately illustrated page from a 1598 edition of Chaucer showing his lineage.
Lydgate's "Troy Book" (1420, 1555 printing) with the name of the monastery he retired to some 30 years after completing the book.
Baker's "Chronicle" (1643, 1679 printing) showing that he was a knight --which has nothing to do with where he was born.
And a 14th century French chronicle.
But prolixity1 saves the best for last, giving us the title page of "Gulliver's Travels," pointing out that Gulliver was "First a Surgeon and then a Captain of Several Ships"--the import of which is lost on all but prolixity1. And while the title page shows that the book was printed in London, this does not shed much light on where Gulliver hailed from--though rumor has it he was from Ireland. . . . I wonder if prolixity1 knows this?
So what do we have? Every example prolixity1 offers is either from the wrong era, or the wrong country, and most glaringly, the wrong genre. Not one of his examples is an Elizabethan-era play.
Which shows that there's nothing too ridiculous, nothing too embarrassing, nothing too pitifully meaningless that he won't attempt, if in service to his beloved Lord Oxenford.
And more important, that there's absolutely nothing probative about the title pages of Shakespeare's plays not showing that he was from Stratford.
However, my dear prolixity1, you may redeem yourself by showing us what was originally asked for, i.e., "Some examples of other Elizabethan-era plays where the by-line includes the city of the writer's nativity."
Do so, and I will apologize, profusely, and take back every uncharitable tela vibrat that I have hurled in your direction.
44proximity1
Continued from >1 proximity1: , >39 proximity1: and >40 proximity1:
To re-cap from above,
(Bryan Caplan / The Los Angeles Times)
"The main reason firms reward education is because it certifies (or "signals") brains, work ethic and conformity."
"Researchers consistently find that most of education's payoff comes from graduation, from crossing the academic finish line. The last year of high school is worth more than the first three; the last year of college is worth more than double the first three. This is hard to explain if employers are paying for acquired skills; do schools really wait until senior year to impart useful training?"
"Or consider how differently employers treat failing a class versus forgetting one. If you flunk a class, plenty of employers will trash your application. But if you pass that same class, then forget everything you learned, employers will shrug."
"These behaviors make perfect sense if — and only if — employers are eager to detect workers who dutifully conform to social expectations. In a society where parents, teachers and peers glorify graduation, failing classes and dropping out are deviant acts."
and
( Carol D'Amico, )
This new data tells us not only that many students go to school in order to get a job, but that clearly defined career goals play an important role in determining if those students actually complete their chosen course of study. “Students who do not complete their degree are relatively likely to report general aspirations for learning and knowledge as their top motivation (31 percent).
____________________
Combined, the reports have implications which ought to be recognized as a damning indictment of the education establishment. Unfortunately, I can attest to the fact that none of this is peculiarly new or even recent. When, forty years ago, I was approaching the end of my university bachelor-degree studies at the main campus of a major state-wide univeristy “system” of campuses, I could see all of this quite clearly. One thing of which I felt quite confident when I received my diploma was how much it represented a kind of con-man’s act: I knew that I’d been bassically short-changed and that, if I wanted to get anything respectable in an “education,” it was now up to me to go and try to obtain it.
Implied in the two preceeding reports’ data is that those students who are primarily motivated—as I was—by general aspirations for learning and knowledge are more likely, not less likely, to leave their studies prior to graduation. I almost did this myself. This suggests that, in part, some of these students become so discouraged by their experience at university that they lose the motivation to finish their studies; meanwhile, those who are more cynically motivated, those students who see their university work as basically a superficial gesture designed and undertaken primarily to allow them to signal to prospective employers their capacities to dutifully conform to social expectations” are more likely to complete their degree-programs—never mind whether any education actually comes with these. That is a secondary concern, if even that.
By the time students get to their secondary-schools—post primary education—they should begin to develop the more mature aspects of critical-thinking begun already in their primary school education. Specifically, they should be developing their capacities to question orthodoxy, to recognize when and where doubt is warranted, to sort what is credible and reasonable from what is not, to distinguish between sound premises and unsound ones and to distinguish valid conclusions from invalid ones—that is, see when something does or does not “follow” logically from the evidence adduced.
Rather than work conscientiously at helping their students develop, understand and use such capacity, schools—secondary and university level—are swamps of indoctrination in the supposed virtues of conformity. Rather than testing and developing their moral and intellectual courage, these are smothered under regimens dedicated to turning students into obedient servants of machines of conformist orthodoxy.
Close to completing my bachelor's degree, after first thinking about applying to law school, I instead considered going on to graduate school study in what goes by the name of "political science"--though, of course, "science" it ain't. I took a trip across country to visit a major university and meet a professor whose work I'd read and found interesting. Prior to this, I visited one of my senior-year-courses' professors--himself a full professor or an assistant professor on a tenure-track at that point. When I asked his opinion about an academic career in the discipline, he was anything but enthusiastic. As I recall, a good friend of his had recently learned that he would not be granted tenure where he'd been teaching; under the circumstances, that meant his friend had to find a new position at another university and try again to gain a tenured teaching post. My prof. was dispirited, almost visibly depressed. Without mincing his words, he laid out some of the reasons why one might want to go into his profession and why one might decide to run like hell away from it.
When I arrived at the distant campus where I was prospecting in grad-school studies, I stayed for several days at the apartment of the professor's graduate-student teaching assistant. She introduced me to numerous of her grad-student peers. My strongest impression was that these people, almost without exception, were joyless drudges, slaving away in an incredibly tiny niche of a speciality of a specialty of a specialty question in their field. Their days and nights were consumed in the arcana of the specialist lexicon and leading texts, about which they and their peers debated infinitely-subtle aspects endlessly. Witnessing them, hearing their stories of doubt, suspicion of fellow graduate-students who might be angling to steal something of their research, observing their bleak expression--facial and verbal--my heart sank. They were not the masters of their time or the direction of their work. That was the province of their professor-advisors, whose omnipotence over them was almost palpable. They dared not defy or upset their advisor for all their work and the following career which depended on it was securely in his or her hands. If the advisor chose to, he or she could make or break these students' work. What sort of a life is this?, I asked. At the end of the visit I knew that I did not want to pursue such an academic career. I was interested in learning many things, yes, indeed. That's just the point. I was interested not in one single and very narrow aspect of something but, instead, the interplay and relatedness of many things. Further, I wanted to find my way and my path in the manner which most satisfied my curiosity. I wanted to travel, learn foreign languages, discover what intellectually was most interesting to me and understand why it was so interesting. To do that, I knew there was no room in the structure and strictures of formal graduate school studies. So I dropped the idea.
“Shakespeare Studies” is surely academia’s "archdiocese" of craven conformity, the holy of holies of smothering, stultifying orthodoxy—the place where, in all but a few miraculous cases, imagination and daring inquiry go to die prematurely. And Ph.D.s in English literature who specialize in teaching about “Shakespeare” are its Archbishops, with Deans of schools and presidents of universities who have followed the path from Shakespeare scholarship to the upper reaches of their institutions’ administration holding the place of the college of Cardinals of conformist orthodoxy. Like novices entering a religious order, the initiates come each year, paying their tuition fees, taking their place in the halls and sanctuaries to study, to kneel, to pray and to worship—to imbibe the orthodoxy which will leave their imaginations—such as they still have when they arrive—in ruins.
To re-cap from above,
(Bryan Caplan / The Los Angeles Times)
"The main reason firms reward education is because it certifies (or "signals") brains, work ethic and conformity."
"Researchers consistently find that most of education's payoff comes from graduation, from crossing the academic finish line. The last year of high school is worth more than the first three; the last year of college is worth more than double the first three. This is hard to explain if employers are paying for acquired skills; do schools really wait until senior year to impart useful training?"
"Or consider how differently employers treat failing a class versus forgetting one. If you flunk a class, plenty of employers will trash your application. But if you pass that same class, then forget everything you learned, employers will shrug."
"These behaviors make perfect sense if — and only if — employers are eager to detect workers who dutifully conform to social expectations. In a society where parents, teachers and peers glorify graduation, failing classes and dropping out are deviant acts."
and
( Carol D'Amico, )
This new data tells us not only that many students go to school in order to get a job, but that clearly defined career goals play an important role in determining if those students actually complete their chosen course of study. “Students who do not complete their degree are relatively likely to report general aspirations for learning and knowledge as their top motivation (31 percent).
____________________
Combined, the reports have implications which ought to be recognized as a damning indictment of the education establishment. Unfortunately, I can attest to the fact that none of this is peculiarly new or even recent. When, forty years ago, I was approaching the end of my university bachelor-degree studies at the main campus of a major state-wide univeristy “system” of campuses, I could see all of this quite clearly. One thing of which I felt quite confident when I received my diploma was how much it represented a kind of con-man’s act: I knew that I’d been bassically short-changed and that, if I wanted to get anything respectable in an “education,” it was now up to me to go and try to obtain it.
Implied in the two preceeding reports’ data is that those students who are primarily motivated—as I was—by general aspirations for learning and knowledge are more likely, not less likely, to leave their studies prior to graduation. I almost did this myself. This suggests that, in part, some of these students become so discouraged by their experience at university that they lose the motivation to finish their studies; meanwhile, those who are more cynically motivated, those students who see their university work as basically a superficial gesture designed and undertaken primarily to allow them to signal to prospective employers their capacities to dutifully conform to social expectations” are more likely to complete their degree-programs—never mind whether any education actually comes with these. That is a secondary concern, if even that.
By the time students get to their secondary-schools—post primary education—they should begin to develop the more mature aspects of critical-thinking begun already in their primary school education. Specifically, they should be developing their capacities to question orthodoxy, to recognize when and where doubt is warranted, to sort what is credible and reasonable from what is not, to distinguish between sound premises and unsound ones and to distinguish valid conclusions from invalid ones—that is, see when something does or does not “follow” logically from the evidence adduced.
Rather than work conscientiously at helping their students develop, understand and use such capacity, schools—secondary and university level—are swamps of indoctrination in the supposed virtues of conformity. Rather than testing and developing their moral and intellectual courage, these are smothered under regimens dedicated to turning students into obedient servants of machines of conformist orthodoxy.
Close to completing my bachelor's degree, after first thinking about applying to law school, I instead considered going on to graduate school study in what goes by the name of "political science"--though, of course, "science" it ain't. I took a trip across country to visit a major university and meet a professor whose work I'd read and found interesting. Prior to this, I visited one of my senior-year-courses' professors--himself a full professor or an assistant professor on a tenure-track at that point. When I asked his opinion about an academic career in the discipline, he was anything but enthusiastic. As I recall, a good friend of his had recently learned that he would not be granted tenure where he'd been teaching; under the circumstances, that meant his friend had to find a new position at another university and try again to gain a tenured teaching post. My prof. was dispirited, almost visibly depressed. Without mincing his words, he laid out some of the reasons why one might want to go into his profession and why one might decide to run like hell away from it.
When I arrived at the distant campus where I was prospecting in grad-school studies, I stayed for several days at the apartment of the professor's graduate-student teaching assistant. She introduced me to numerous of her grad-student peers. My strongest impression was that these people, almost without exception, were joyless drudges, slaving away in an incredibly tiny niche of a speciality of a specialty of a specialty question in their field. Their days and nights were consumed in the arcana of the specialist lexicon and leading texts, about which they and their peers debated infinitely-subtle aspects endlessly. Witnessing them, hearing their stories of doubt, suspicion of fellow graduate-students who might be angling to steal something of their research, observing their bleak expression--facial and verbal--my heart sank. They were not the masters of their time or the direction of their work. That was the province of their professor-advisors, whose omnipotence over them was almost palpable. They dared not defy or upset their advisor for all their work and the following career which depended on it was securely in his or her hands. If the advisor chose to, he or she could make or break these students' work. What sort of a life is this?, I asked. At the end of the visit I knew that I did not want to pursue such an academic career. I was interested in learning many things, yes, indeed. That's just the point. I was interested not in one single and very narrow aspect of something but, instead, the interplay and relatedness of many things. Further, I wanted to find my way and my path in the manner which most satisfied my curiosity. I wanted to travel, learn foreign languages, discover what intellectually was most interesting to me and understand why it was so interesting. To do that, I knew there was no room in the structure and strictures of formal graduate school studies. So I dropped the idea.
“Shakespeare Studies” is surely academia’s "archdiocese" of craven conformity, the holy of holies of smothering, stultifying orthodoxy—the place where, in all but a few miraculous cases, imagination and daring inquiry go to die prematurely. And Ph.D.s in English literature who specialize in teaching about “Shakespeare” are its Archbishops, with Deans of schools and presidents of universities who have followed the path from Shakespeare scholarship to the upper reaches of their institutions’ administration holding the place of the college of Cardinals of conformist orthodoxy. Like novices entering a religious order, the initiates come each year, paying their tuition fees, taking their place in the halls and sanctuaries to study, to kneel, to pray and to worship—to imbibe the orthodoxy which will leave their imaginations—such as they still have when they arrive—in ruins.
45grayhog
Dear prolixity1,
By the end of Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" Quentin has told his Canadian roommate at Harvard the long and incredible story of the Mississippi Sutpens. Then his roommate asks Quentin, "Why do you hate the South?"
So tell us, prolix1, why do you hate Stratford? And why do you go on these verbose rants, peppered with I and me and some more I and another dollop of me? Are you angry because you did not pursue what you actually wanted most, but were afraid to try? A professorship and tenure at a major private university? Perhaps in the English Department? Or are you just angry and nasty and bitter for some other reason?
Perhaps you simply can't admit that the Stratford man, without all the advantages that you fancy yourself having, was able to become more than you will ever be? Do you have, in short, the same problem that Freud had with Shakespeare? (See Harold Bloom, "Western Canon," and the wonderful chapter, "Freud, A Shakespearean Reading." And please note that putting you in Freud's company is high praise indeed, since Bloom deems Freud "the mind of our age," as you must fancy yours.)
Perhaps reading Bloom might help your affliction and ease the pain so clearly evident in the final paragraph from your post above, which, for all its purple prose, can only be interpreted as a man reaching out for help. So try Bloom on Freud, and perhaps you can heal thyself.
Oh, and since you're not going to offer up any evidence for Oxford, then it must be all about the hate, which is really too bad. So, please, again, read Bloom on Freud on Shakespeare. It could be the first step on your long road to wellness.
By the end of Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" Quentin has told his Canadian roommate at Harvard the long and incredible story of the Mississippi Sutpens. Then his roommate asks Quentin, "Why do you hate the South?"
So tell us, prolix1, why do you hate Stratford? And why do you go on these verbose rants, peppered with I and me and some more I and another dollop of me? Are you angry because you did not pursue what you actually wanted most, but were afraid to try? A professorship and tenure at a major private university? Perhaps in the English Department? Or are you just angry and nasty and bitter for some other reason?
Perhaps you simply can't admit that the Stratford man, without all the advantages that you fancy yourself having, was able to become more than you will ever be? Do you have, in short, the same problem that Freud had with Shakespeare? (See Harold Bloom, "Western Canon," and the wonderful chapter, "Freud, A Shakespearean Reading." And please note that putting you in Freud's company is high praise indeed, since Bloom deems Freud "the mind of our age," as you must fancy yours.)
Perhaps reading Bloom might help your affliction and ease the pain so clearly evident in the final paragraph from your post above, which, for all its purple prose, can only be interpreted as a man reaching out for help. So try Bloom on Freud, and perhaps you can heal thyself.
Oh, and since you're not going to offer up any evidence for Oxford, then it must be all about the hate, which is really too bad. So, please, again, read Bloom on Freud on Shakespeare. It could be the first step on your long road to wellness.
46grayhog
prolixity1,
As much as I hoped you would, it increasingly looks like you won't be offering any evidence for Oxford.
So let me go first for Stratford.
Here's a rarely seen copy of the original 1634 Dugdale sketch of the Stratford monument, the sketch that shows what Doubters claim was sack of wool.
What Doubters never mention is the inscription, where Dugdale, a noted antiquarian, states very clearly "‘In the north wall of the Quire is this monument fixed for William Shakespeare the famous poet." Regardless of what Shakespeare is resting his hands on.
Shakespeare. The famous poet. Born and buried in Stratford.
Case closed.
Unless you believe that Dugdale was fooled into thinking Stratford was the real deal, and not just a frontman. Or perhaps you think Dugdale was in on the conspiracy to conceal Oxford as the true author. Or by far the most likely, given his knowledge and authority, Dugdale simply knew the Stratford was Shakespeare.
BTW, it's fun to read the article that first appeared in the De Vere Society Newsletter, a publication by and for those who believe the 17th Earl was the secret poet. It's a fun read because you just can't beat watching Alexander Waugh, a first-rate mind, make a monkey of himself trying to twist the sketch to be anything but what it actually is--an inaccurate field sketch (compare the links below) that was later cleaned up for publication 20 years later in the Hollar engraving that appeared in Dugdale's massive "Antiquities of Warwickshire" (1656), where he again confirms Stratford's identity by remarking, "One more thing, in reference to this antient town is observable, that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous poet Will. Shakespere, whose monument I have inserted in my discourse on the Church" (p. 523).
So, prolixity1, are you just as brilliant a scholar as Alexander Waugh? Or more so?
Cheers!
https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/Fig.-2-Dugdale-Drawin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ShakespeareMonument_cropped.jpg
https://archive.org/stream/antiquitiesofwar00dugd#page/522/mode/2up
As much as I hoped you would, it increasingly looks like you won't be offering any evidence for Oxford.
So let me go first for Stratford.
Here's a rarely seen copy of the original 1634 Dugdale sketch of the Stratford monument, the sketch that shows what Doubters claim was sack of wool.
What Doubters never mention is the inscription, where Dugdale, a noted antiquarian, states very clearly "‘In the north wall of the Quire is this monument fixed for William Shakespeare the famous poet." Regardless of what Shakespeare is resting his hands on.
Shakespeare. The famous poet. Born and buried in Stratford.
Case closed.
Unless you believe that Dugdale was fooled into thinking Stratford was the real deal, and not just a frontman. Or perhaps you think Dugdale was in on the conspiracy to conceal Oxford as the true author. Or by far the most likely, given his knowledge and authority, Dugdale simply knew the Stratford was Shakespeare.
BTW, it's fun to read the article that first appeared in the De Vere Society Newsletter, a publication by and for those who believe the 17th Earl was the secret poet. It's a fun read because you just can't beat watching Alexander Waugh, a first-rate mind, make a monkey of himself trying to twist the sketch to be anything but what it actually is--an inaccurate field sketch (compare the links below) that was later cleaned up for publication 20 years later in the Hollar engraving that appeared in Dugdale's massive "Antiquities of Warwickshire" (1656), where he again confirms Stratford's identity by remarking, "One more thing, in reference to this antient town is observable, that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous poet Will. Shakespere, whose monument I have inserted in my discourse on the Church" (p. 523).
So, prolixity1, are you just as brilliant a scholar as Alexander Waugh? Or more so?
Cheers!
https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/Fig.-2-Dugdale-Drawin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ShakespeareMonument_cropped.jpg
https://archive.org/stream/antiquitiesofwar00dugd#page/522/mode/2up
47proximity1
“... Just as we should expect, Euripides was the most popular of the old tragic writers in the later classic world.
“In this later world, tragedy continued to have life on the Greek or Greco-Roman stage until well into the Christian era, but less and less was that life creative. Original tragedies were the principle feature of the City Dionysia at Athens down to the beginning of the Christian era, and new tragedies appeared at certain other Greek cities for a century more. After A.D. 100, original creation seems almost wholly to have ceased, and for the remaining period of Greek culture under Roman political rule the old plays were revived or imitated. Thus Greek tragedy became moribund among men who first lost the genius to create it anew at their festivals in the old nobility of spirit, who then realized and confessed their failing genius as they turned more and more to revivals of their tragic masters, and who finally made classic tragedy a literature of their schools with only occasional production on the stage, as we do now with Shakespeare.” (p.12)
—Willard Farnham, (Oxford, 1936) The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy
49proximity1
In the course of this thread, I'm going to occasionally alternate between two main interests--
In one, as in the posts above, I'll treat education as it concerns our contemporary (or, earlier but still "modern") styles and methods of teaching about the "Shakespeare" canon and its author--real (Edward, Earl of Oxford) or erroneously supposed in orthodox (i.e. "Stratfordian") scholarship, i.e., William Shaksper of Stratford Upon Avon. I'll contrast and compare this "modern" approach with citations from the history --from early antiquity right up to and through early modern European history: that is, the 16th to mid-and-late-17th century.
In the other, also using citations from a variety of histories and historical sources, ancient, medieval or modern, I'll illustrate the historical view of the concept(s) of virtue and honor as, first and foremost, the high-ranking nobility saw these and, secondarilym, as others, in or near to a widening social aristocracy but not titled nobles, saw these and their social superiors, the titled nobility.
In highlighting these two factors—the importance of textual culture and the central part which a refined and advanced command of latin classic literature had in this both in shaping and in distinguishing the society of the nobility and, only later, an emergent wealthy merchant class, and the importance for noble society of a conception of honor and honor-bound duty to the entire elaborate sttucture of noble society, with all its ranks and privileges setting it apart from the society of commoners—we are focusing on the two features which Stratfordian orthodoxy must try ensure are not brought clearly to the attention of innocent students of the literate culture of Europe from classical antiquity trhough medieval times to the early and later Renaissances of early modern Europe. That is because, if the history and significance of these were to be plainly set out to students, the way would be open to their noticing that Stratford's William Shaksper can make absolutely no credible claim to having had any realistic opportunities to have gained this kind of formative training—something which he'd have had to have developed in his own formative years—and in that way have made it second-nature to his view of the world. These are qualities, traits, which are indicated throughout the work of "Shakespeare"--and, by the way, in a more rudimentary form, in Oxford's other, earlier writings under the pen-name "Robert Greene."
No one would ever dare contend that Mozarts and Beethovens come from homes which never had any mucical experience, never contained a piano or other musical instruments or any familiarity with them. It is simply too obvious that, “no piano, → no 'Mozart' ” follows logically in the world as it was then—and, for the most part, remains today*: “no early musical practice and study, no training, → no 'Beethoven,' ” and, likewise,
no books, no library, no careful and extensive tuition in—and no rare mastery of—Greek and Latin classics, no regular practice of these, no noble heritage and personal identity intimately within them, no travel and no study and no practice of French and Italian, → no “Shakespeare”.
The Stratford Shaksper as a pretender to authorship lives or dies on the basis of orthodoxy's success over the past two centuries and up to the present in its determined effort to keep students ignorant of these key factors of noble and literate culture as it developed from antiquity to early modern society.
__________________
Here, to start, a citation from an essay by Edward Watts of Indiana University,
(Chapeter 14 in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, (Ed., 2012) ) : "EDUCATION: SPEAKING, THINKING AND SOCIALIZING"
___________________________
In one, as in the posts above, I'll treat education as it concerns our contemporary (or, earlier but still "modern") styles and methods of teaching about the "Shakespeare" canon and its author--real (Edward, Earl of Oxford) or erroneously supposed in orthodox (i.e. "Stratfordian") scholarship, i.e., William Shaksper of Stratford Upon Avon. I'll contrast and compare this "modern" approach with citations from the history --from early antiquity right up to and through early modern European history: that is, the 16th to mid-and-late-17th century.
In the other, also using citations from a variety of histories and historical sources, ancient, medieval or modern, I'll illustrate the historical view of the concept(s) of virtue and honor as, first and foremost, the high-ranking nobility saw these and, secondarilym, as others, in or near to a widening social aristocracy but not titled nobles, saw these and their social superiors, the titled nobility.
In highlighting these two factors—the importance of textual culture and the central part which a refined and advanced command of latin classic literature had in this both in shaping and in distinguishing the society of the nobility and, only later, an emergent wealthy merchant class, and the importance for noble society of a conception of honor and honor-bound duty to the entire elaborate sttucture of noble society, with all its ranks and privileges setting it apart from the society of commoners—we are focusing on the two features which Stratfordian orthodoxy must try ensure are not brought clearly to the attention of innocent students of the literate culture of Europe from classical antiquity trhough medieval times to the early and later Renaissances of early modern Europe. That is because, if the history and significance of these were to be plainly set out to students, the way would be open to their noticing that Stratford's William Shaksper can make absolutely no credible claim to having had any realistic opportunities to have gained this kind of formative training—something which he'd have had to have developed in his own formative years—and in that way have made it second-nature to his view of the world. These are qualities, traits, which are indicated throughout the work of "Shakespeare"--and, by the way, in a more rudimentary form, in Oxford's other, earlier writings under the pen-name "Robert Greene."
No one would ever dare contend that Mozarts and Beethovens come from homes which never had any mucical experience, never contained a piano or other musical instruments or any familiarity with them. It is simply too obvious that, “no piano, → no 'Mozart' ” follows logically in the world as it was then—and, for the most part, remains today*: “no early musical practice and study, no training, → no 'Beethoven,' ” and, likewise,
no books, no library, no careful and extensive tuition in—and no rare mastery of—Greek and Latin classics, no regular practice of these, no noble heritage and personal identity intimately within them, no travel and no study and no practice of French and Italian, → no “Shakespeare”.
The Stratford Shaksper as a pretender to authorship lives or dies on the basis of orthodoxy's success over the past two centuries and up to the present in its determined effort to keep students ignorant of these key factors of noble and literate culture as it developed from antiquity to early modern society.
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Here, to start, a citation from an essay by Edward Watts of Indiana University,
(Chapeter 14 in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, (Ed., 2012) ) : "EDUCATION: SPEAKING, THINKING AND SOCIALIZING"
... "In Late Antiquity, paideia represented a universal cultural currency that distinguished the cultivated from the average man through an expensive and time-consuming education that drilled students to follow linguistic rules and taught them to master a code of socially acceptable behavior.(2) (...)
Later Roman education, at its most accessible level, was not geared toward the literary training of paideia.(10) The vast majority of people in the Roman world were effectively illiterate, and most young people probably received little formal education at all.(11) Most of those who did attend class received only a functional education , undertaken at a school of letters,(12) in which they acquired basic literacy. If they completed their training (which, undoubtedly, most did not), these students could presumably read and/or write, but they would not possess any detailed familiarity with classical literature or the literary style of famous authors. (My note: "famous authors," that is, according to what is our modern conception of the great authors of antiquity's "model" works of rhetoric and poetry--for, in that time, little or no "fame" attached to an author; this is a modern phenomenon. See Martin Irvine, (2006, Cambridge)) Additionally, many of the people who once possessed these skills were likely to forget some of them as their lives went on. Literacy is a skill that must be developed, but it is also one that must be practiced constantly if it is not to be lost. Many average Romans who once possessed some degree of literacy would have seen these skills gradually atrophy through disuse.
"This rarely happened to those fortunate few who undertook the expensive and time-consuming training of the elite. Those men received a specialized education that empahsized grammatical rules, eloquent composition, and mastery of a canon of authors. Late antique students followed a variety of paths to develop these skills, but the most conventional one began at the school of the grammarian.(13) Students generally spent their preteen and early teenage years with grammarians and got from them a flexible education that responded to their individual needs.(14) Grammarians taught everything from basic reading and writing skills to the rudiments of rhetorical composition.(15) Their teaching imparted to students a sense of the correct pronunciation of words and the behavior of each part of the sentence. During the initial phase of training, their classes often consisted of the detailed reading of a text that explained its grammatical constructions as well as its moral and historical significance.(16) When students were sufficiently advanced, the grammarian began a series of exercises called the progymnasmata that taught students how to elaborate upon stories or themes using the grammatical skills they had developed earlier.(17)"
"Probably around the age of thirteen or fourteen, these students began moving on to schools of rhetoric (18). ...
(pp. 468-9)
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"Unfortunately, the reality of late antique education was often much messier than these idealistic portraits ( note: from pp. 470-474) not included in the citation here) suggest. The interactions that joined students and their professors in a shared intellectual enterprise enhanced the bonds of companionship that the curriculum urged them to develop, but the cost of schooling and the uncertainties of late antique life meant that a significant portion of those attending classes did not develop a particularly strong identification with their scholastic families. Additionally, some students tried to sample the offerings of a range of teachers and may have enjoyed only a casual association with any one particular school and its students. Others were forced by their financial or presonal circumstances to drop out before they could develop these strong bonds. Late antique evidence suggests that only a minority of those attending classes in rhetoric at any one time would complete even a three-year course of study.(73)
(p. 474)
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(2) Bloomer, M. 1997. "Schooling in Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman Education," Classical Anitiquity 16.1 : 57-78
(10) For broader treatments of ancient education, see Marrou, Henri Irénée 1956, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'Antiquité, Paris, Seuil ; Morgan, T. 1998, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds Cambridge; Cribiore, R. 2001 Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, Princeton.
(11) ...the most compelling estimates of literacy rates in the high imperial period suggest that between one-tenth and one-third of the population was literate to the degree that they could write and read simple documents." ... Harris, W. V. 1989 Ancient Literacy Cambridge,MA. Harvard Univ. Press ; Hanson, A. "Ancient Illiteracy" in Literacy in the Roman World (J.L. Humphrey, Ann Arbor; Hopkins, K. 1991 "Conquest by Book", in Literacy in the Roman World (op cit.) ; Hanson 1991, ; Youtie 1971a " Agramatos: An Aspect of Greek Society in Egypt," HSCP 75:161-175 and 1971b " Bradeo graphon: Between Literacy and Illiteracy," GRBS 12: 239-261.
(12) The grammatodidaskaleia.
(13) What follows is a description of the ideal path a student followed. The realities of late antique education were often more complicated, however. Grammar schools, for example, that taught elementary letters as well as rhetoric are attested as well. See Dionisotti, A. C. 1982, 98-101, "From Ausonius' Schooldays? A Schoolbook and Its Relatives," JRS 72: 83-125.
(14) Instruction in grammar could begin as early as seven or eight (cf Kaster1988, 11) but a later age may be more typical. Libanius, for example, finished his grammatical training at thirteen (Cribiore, Rafaella; 2007a, 31).
(15) See for example, Cribiore, Rafaella 1996, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Antiquity no. 160 and 379.
(16) For the function of the grammarian, see Kaster 1988,Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press, 12-14; Bonner 1977, Education in Ancient Rome, Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press; and Marrou 1956, 243.
(17) For an especially thorough discussion of the progymnasmata, see Cribiore 2001, 221-230. For the exercises as a sort of primer for the lifestyle of the cultivated, see Webb R., 2001, 289-316 "The Progymnasmata as Practice" in Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Y. L. Too, (Ed.) Leiden: Brill Publishers.
(18) One student, Euphemius, enrolled under Libanius at age eleven...; for age eleven, see Cribiore 2007a, 240; Eunapius...joined a school of rhetoric at age sixteen ... perhaps a bit later than usual.
(73) Kaster 1988, 26-27.
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..."Pagans referred to the classics as 'the old writers' (veteres). The modern term 'pagan classics' corresponds to (then) Christian labels such as books, authors literature 'of the gentiles.'(16) But even Christians often used less polemical terms: 'secular' books, authors of literature, (17) that is to say, like the contemporary Greek Christian formula 'external' or 'foreign' wisdom (18), literature 'of the world' rather than literature of faith. While a few extremists condemned all classical literature, for most Christians it was quite literally the culture of the world. The Christian community never developed or even contemplated an alternative Christian educational system, whether at the primary or secondary level, and the reason is obvlous. The traditional grammatical and rhetorical education was felt to fill the secular needs of society well enough. Changing the educational system would have meant changing the definition of culturem in effect the definition of the elite.(Brent Shaw, BMCR 7 (1996), 519.) The traditional system had the irreplacable practical advantage of having established standards that were accepted in every corner of the Roman world. What we misleadingly call 'pagan' culture fulfilled an overwhelmingly social function."
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—Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome, Chapter 10 : "The Real Circle of Symmachus" p.357
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William Robins, (Ed.) Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy, 2011 Toronto, Univ. of Toronto Press.
I. The Study of Medieval Italian Textual Cultures (by William Robins)
(Writing in Medieval Italy)
"The premodern period, according to general surveys of technologies of communication, is framed, on the one hand, by the profound transformation brought about by the introduction of writing and, on the other hand by the similarly deep transformations attendant upon the arrival of printing with movable type. Within this period—the chronological limits vary considerably from ine culture to another—the situation of medieval Europe is characterized above all by a constant and productive interaction between written and oral modes of communication and, as far as the technology of writing is concerned, by the rise to prominence of the codex format of the book, by the gradual evolution of documentary practices within church and secular bureaucracies, and by a slow and steady rise in the importance of practical literacy. For several centuries after the breakdown of the western Roman Empire, control over the use of books and documents remained largely in the hands of a learned, ecclesiastical elite, who across Europe shared a common training in Latin letters and who possessed as a common focus of tectual interpretation the sacred texts of Christian scripture. From about the twelfth century on, the castles and courts of the landed nobility constituted another sphere where the practices of writing were increasingly put to use, both in Latin and in the various vernacular languages of Europe. Members of the 'third estate' of working men and women—including merchants, guildsmen, and farmers—began to harness writing for their own practical and recreational purposes toward the end of the Middle Ages and in increasing measure throughout the early modern and modern periods. (1)"
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p. 11
50grayhog
Prolixity,
OMG, what a pontificating blowhard. And with a dreadful case of the Family Romance fantasy.
Samuel Schoenbaum ("Shakespeare's Lives," pp. 443-4) suggests that the Family Romance fantasy is the operative obsession among Doubters, in particular Oxfordians, citing the psychoanalyst Dr. Harry Trosman ("Freud and the Controversy over Shakespearean Authorship," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1965).
In this fantasy, the child rebels against the imperfections of his parents, and compensates by replacing them with others of higher birth.
Or has we have here, the child rebels against an imperfect Shakespeare, and replaces him with an author of, literally, noble birth.
Now how cute is that?
OMG, what a pontificating blowhard. And with a dreadful case of the Family Romance fantasy.
Samuel Schoenbaum ("Shakespeare's Lives," pp. 443-4) suggests that the Family Romance fantasy is the operative obsession among Doubters, in particular Oxfordians, citing the psychoanalyst Dr. Harry Trosman ("Freud and the Controversy over Shakespearean Authorship," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1965).
In this fantasy, the child rebels against the imperfections of his parents, and compensates by replacing them with others of higher birth.
Or has we have here, the child rebels against an imperfect Shakespeare, and replaces him with an author of, literally, noble birth.
Now how cute is that?
51proximity1
… “As I browsed through the works of (Alberico) Gentili, (Matthew) Gwinne, (John) Case, and (John) Rainolds, it seemed to me that they were full of interest for students of the life, letters and culture of Elizabethan England: Gentili had written one treatise in defence of poetry and another on acting; Gwinne had written a comedy and a tragedy (both with interesting critical prefaces), many poems, and a polemical work on potable gold; Case had written on music, statecraft and the universities; and Rainolds was a hard-biting and eloquent opponent of the theatre, who was also credited with the authorship of a treatise in defence of poetry.
“It looked to me as if these men were members of an informal literary and intellectual circle centred on Oxford University in the 1580s and 1590s. They had a common interest in poetry, drama, and critical theory, but their intellectual interests were much more wide-ranging. Their works were often crowded with marginal annotations referring to numerous continental Latin writers of whom I had then never heard. As I followed up some of these references—an education in itself—I slowly began to perceive the pervasive nature of the Latinate culture of Elizabethan England at the zenith of the Queen’s reign. I realised, from reading the dedications of these books, that the most influential courtiers and men of affairs, and even Queen Elizabeth herself, were not merely passive recipients of the dedication of Latin printed books, but also actively encouraged such writing. Yet no hint of this was given by the standard modern works on Elizabethan culture and society, which virtually without exception drew on, and wrote about, entirely vernacular sources; Latin works were mentioned, if at all, only as freakish curiosities. Gentili’s treatise in defence of poetry, high-powered though it undoubtedly was, was mentioned in none of the standard books about the development of literary criticism in England. It was hard to find anywhere any mention of Case other than the barest record of his degrees and teaching career in college and university histories; his Latin works had apparently not been read at all. The secondary literature dealing with the period was, in short, quite unreliable as far as the Latin books written and printed in Elizabethan England were concerned. Only the academic Latin drama and (to a lesser extent) some of the poetry had received any attention.
“I concluded therefore that, if I wanted to discover what interesting Latin books were printed in renaissance England, I had no alternative but to look at the works themselves…. In this way I started upon a task which occupied me for fifteen years or more, that of sifting through the Latin titles in the STC (Short-Title Catalogue) looking for items which seemed interesting and seeing what I could learn from them. My reading was at first more or less random. Some books I glanced at and laid aside, for they meant very little to me at the time, or seemed, at first sight, to have little to interest me. Other books I skimmed through in whole or in part, eagerly or in a desultory fashion, according to my mood or the subject matter. Yet others I read slowly and closely, making notes. Often I had to turn back to a book which I had previously set aside, when a subsequent reading gave me an insight into its significance which I could not possibly have had before. For example, the first two or three books of biblical Latin poetry that I came across I laid by as of no great interest. Only much later, when I had come across ten or twenty such items did I realise that they constituted a definite poetic grouping. Then I searched the STC for similar items which I had previously missed. This was my experience in almost all the literary areas treated in this book. As I read, it seemed to me that I was engaged in a kind of literary archaeology, uncovering the fabric of a vanished and well-nigh forgotten intellectual Latinate culture that was widespread in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and affected every area of intellectual life.” ...
"It is thus my hope that this book will contribute to an understanding of the intellectual life of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.... Neo-Latin studies often suffer from fragmentation and from lack of identity. It is difficult to find agreement on what the core of the subject is. At its widest it includes all post-medieval writing in Latin—and this starts at different times in different countries.
..."Elizabethan and Jacobean Latin writing can, it seems to me, serve as a useful touchstone, or résumé, of neo-Latin. Virtually all types of neo-Latin are represented in England at this time.... English neo-Latin is a manageable microcosm of European neo-Latin.
"A much less desirable definition of neo-Latin is one which attempts to identify it purely with 'literary' texts. This trend has arisen because those who work on neo-Latin texts are usually based in the language and literature departments of universities, and their interests and training usually direct them towards poetty and drama in particular. From my own early studies of Anglo-Latin drama, however, I gradually came to perceive that the authors of these plays were not primarily dramatists who happened to write in Latin. They were first and foremost intellectuals who happened to write plays. Playwriting was one of their accomplishements, but I doubt if they saw it as their most memorable one. Nicholas Grimald, I am convinced, set more store by his classical scholarship, Matthew Gwinne by his medical and alchemical knowledge. William Alabaster's major works are theological; his Roxana is, comparatively speaking, a jeu d'esprit. I soon realised that I was dealing with a high-level learned culture, articulating itself through the medium of the Latin language, but not having as its main concern 'literary' texts. Of course these intellectuals were well versed in the literature of ancient Rome—and also in the non-literary texts. They read the neo-Latin poets and dramatists of continental Europe, too, but their interests were always much wider than this—many English poets and dramatists were, for example, trained as civil lawyers and maintained an interest in that subject. Time and time again, in texts of all types, there is a constant reference outwards to a wide range of other subjects. The intellectual disciplines were not as separate then as they are today. Thus, a man like Dr. John Rainolds, though primarily a theologian, was perfectly at home in classical literature, in civil and canon law, in the early history of Egypt and in contemporary drama. George Etherege had edited John Shepery's poetry, but again he was primarily a medical man, and published notes on Paul of Aegina. … … (xxii)
… “The literary culture was inseparable from the wider learned culture of which it was only a part. For my own study to have limited itself to Latin poets and dramatists would have been to wrench them out of their context in a violent way. … The learned culture which I am describing embraced all serious disciplines, including science and philosophy, and it is identified and defined by its use of Latin as a medium. This, in my opinion, ought to be the basis for neo-Latin studies, lest the subject be cannibalized, and become merely an appendage to other disciplines. … … (xxiii)
“It was the intellectuals who created the Latin literature of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. With few exceptions, the authors of the volumes discussed here were graduates of the universities. They were among 'the brightest and best' of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Englishmen and the most able of their generations, and this gives their work its main interest, since it offers an insight into the most brilliant minds of the English renaissance. … These Latin books express the concentrated essence of their thought. … At this time serious works were written in Latin as a matter of course throughout Europe. Indeed, the question which ought rather to be asked is why, for example, a man like Hooker wrote his Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie in English. It must be remembered that Latin had a far greater prestige in this period than any vernacular, let alone English. Sixteenth-century England was an off-shore island of Europe, with a small population of perhaps four million in the 1590s. Literacy did increase considerably during the latter half of the the sixteenth century; and it correlated with social class, wealth, occupation and place of residence. … The age of greatest popularity of the new Latin books is perhaps the fifty-year stretch from 1570-1620. This, of course, is also the greatest period of English renaissance literature. Latin writing in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period is thus very much a phenomenon of the renaissance in England. … the Latin books of this time are crammed with references to continental Latin writings, and are thus a valuable guidet to their influence in England. … (pp. 2-3)
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from J.W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The Latin Writings of the Age, (1990, Leeds, Francis Cairns, Ltd.) pp. xv- 4.
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52proximity1
Camouflaged Elites
by Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
(from “Defining Ideas, A Hoover Institution Journal )
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"Even in the mostly egalitarian city-states of relatively poor classical Greece, the wealthy were readily identifiable. A man of privilege was easy to spot by his remarkable possession of a horse, the fine quality of his tunic, or by his mastery of Greek syntax and vocabulary. (emphasis added)
"An anonymous and irascible Athenian author—dubbed “The Old Oligarch” by the nineteenth-century British classicist Gilbert Murray—wrote a bitter diatribe known as “The Constitution of the Athenians.” The harangue, composed in the late fifth century B.C., blasted the liberal politics and culture of Athens. The grouchy elitist complained that poor people in Athens don’t get out of the way of rich people. He was angry that only in radically democratic imperial Athens was it hard to calibrate a man by his mere appearance: “You would often hit an Athenian citizen by mistake on the assumption that he was a slave. For the people there are no better dressed than the slaves and metics, nor are they any more handsome.”
"The Old Oligarch’s essay reveals an ancient truth about privilege and status. Throughout history, the elite in most of the Western world were easy to distinguish. Visible class distinctions characterized ancient Rome, Renaissance Florence, the Paris of the nineteenth century, and the major cities of twentieth century America. …
... ...
A variety of recent social trends and revolutionary economic breakthroughs have blurred the line separating the elite from the masses. ...
... "Visible class distinctions of the past were a result of pride in achievement and old-fashioned snobbery. But their practical effect was to warn that the interests and agendas of the elite were not always the same as those of the public. Today’s billionaire hipsters blur these ancient distinctions. But just because a Master of the Universe looks like us does not mean that his dogged pursuit of tax exemptions, offshoring and outsourcing, and vertically integrated monopolies is in our interest."
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Full text at the Link: https://www.hoover.org/research/camouflaged-elites
..." the elite in most of the Western world were easy to distinguish"...
In Tudor England, including, of course, during the reign of Elizabeth there was supposed to be no difficulty in distinguishing the nobility from gentry and commoners—though, in fact, this blurring of the lines was happening much earlier than in the account of class-blurring, American-style, given by Prof. Hanson. That "blurring," however was socially in the "other direction" and historically the usual case: people of lower classes were doing their utmost to break into and to appear as though they belonged to the higher classes—as high-class a place as they might get away with pretending to have.
As early as the reign of Elizabeth, rising merchant wealth had made it possible for some non-nobles to rival the wealth of certain of the nobility; this wealth placed many signs of status—in dress and all kinds of other material possessions—easily within their reach. Indeed, many members of the wealthy merchant class aspired to obtaining an officially-recognized rank and even a title--and some actually obtained these, though nowhere near the number of those who'd have sought them.(1) But others, with no right to them, took on and put on outward material signs of rank, so many that official measures were repeatedly promulgated in Elizabeth's reign to reinfornce the restrictions on the use and display of class-distinguishing clothing and ornaments and the penalties for fraudulently adopting the visible signs of class-distinction in modes of dress, badges of rank and so forth.
"recent social trends and revolutionary economic breakthroughs have blurred the line separating the elite from the masses"
And this, in part, at least, helps explain the otherwise bizarre fact that many Americans—and hardly only those of the 21st century—have found it only natural to suppose that William Shaksper, coming from a rural Warwickshire family with absolutely no trace of any past or present literacy, no indication of ever having owned a book, no trace of any involvement in the life of what came to be called "the republic of letters", as described above, by J. W. Binns' account, could have had as easy and as thorough an attachment to and an appreciation and direct knowledge of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome and the courtier life from ancient times to the then-present-day Tudor-court world as, say, a 17th generation Earl, schooled from his earliest youth by the premier classical language and literature experts of his time.
For many English-speaking people from the eighteenth century to the present, including, frankly, many who really ought to have known better, there was and there is somehow no irony at all in that picture. William Shaksper, for no motives that we can actually demonstrate and document, was supposedly so taken, body, soul and spirit, by not only classical Rome's and Athens' most illustrious poets and dramatists, he was literarily-smitten by some who were numbered among these societies' "black sheep" of literary geniuses—"Publius Ovidius Naso known as Ovid in the English-speaking world" (Wikipedia) for example—that he placed the intrigues and the drama, both "high" and "low" of courtier-life, of princes, kings, dukes and earls, both classical and modern, vividly and compellingly at the very heart of his plays and poems and sonnets. And he supposedly did all this with a virtuosity which rang—and which, today, still rings—with first-hand acquaintance—not an outsider's view of what was truly a highly refined social world closed to all but its noble-born members and only a tiny handful of others who, because they'd demonstrated talents, were allowed some entry to this closed world; still, they had to have shown those talents somehow and had to practice them in order to gain and keep that entry.
In other words, if William Shaksper had been the sort of literary genius which he'd have had to have been in order to either get or to know and write about—and get away with it!—the sort of access to power and privilege which his texts illustrate their author had, he could not have spent virtually all his life right up to his departure for the big city of Tudor London as a completely unknown and completely unremarkable lad from Stratford Upon Avon. At a minimum, he'd have had to have had a grammar-school experience during which his native talents revealed a truly amazing facility for classical Latin and Greek--for, at that time, it was Ciceronian Latin which had become the bench-mark of good Latin style rather than what had passed as standard medieval Latin, for centuries prior to the mid-1500s. In short, "people would talk" and they'd have talked about this boy-prodigy, William, who could translate back and forth with a rare astuteness and style, Virgil's poetry, Cicero's prose, Ovid's poetry; a boy whose daily thougths and speech rippled with expressions drawn from these and other classic authors—Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, Xenophon, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Pliny, Livy, but also Lorenzo (Laurentius) Valla, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, Maurus Servius Honoratus, and other accomplished "grammaticae" whether of the ancient or the medieval latin-speaking world.
"the irony of this new camouflaged status is that appearances are conflated with reality. Mark Zuckerberg may look like an average American, but that does not mean he has the same interests or lives a similar sort of life as ordinary citizens. The concerns of an ostensible everyman with $71 billion could not possibly be the same as those of the rest of us. It may be that their casual clothes, cool phraseology, and radical politics serve as penance for exercising power that was once considered inordinate and dangerous." (emphasis added)
And, let us bear in mind, however privileged may have been Mark Zuckerberg's life and world prior to his arrival at an Ivy League university where he eventually began to develop with some friends what would become "Facebook," he had not been born into the social class of the extremely wealthy and had not grown up accustomed to such a life as that can be, taking its views, its assumptions about place, power and social rank and privilege, for granted for as long as he could remember.
So, if Zuckerberg can become so thoroughly at home with wealth and status in the space of time he's had since becoming a multi-billionaire, so accustomed to this life that, as Professor Hanson points out, "Mark Zuckerberg may look like an average American, but that does not mean he has the same interests or lives a similar sort of life as ordinary citizens," then what are we to suppose of one who, by birth, is a high-ranking member of the most socially-élite society possible at the time: the Elizabethan nobility?
William Shaksper had no such birth or upbringing. And to suppose that he'd have been naturally consumed with an interest in all those matters and preoccupations which definitively marked out the Tudor English nobility is as bizarre as to suppose that Zuckerberg would today be the very same person whether he'd launched "Facebook" and become a multi-billionaire businessman or not.
"Visible class distinctions of the past were a result of pride in achievement and old-fashioned snobbery. But their practical effect was to warn that the interests and agendas of the elite were not always the same as those of the public."
How is it that so many others—English-speaking people—can be so stunningly deaf and blind to the features and functions and influences of enormous wealth and world-dividing class-status?
For some answers we have to turn to how everyday assumptions about the world have changed from what was commonly thought as recently as the end of the second world-war. These changes don't, of themselves, present the basis of any important difference in the general public's views about Stratfordians' orthodoxies concerning the SAQ for, quite simply, most people simply don't engage with the issues involved in it; they've already been indoctrinated by fables taught them in their formal education from their primary-school days through university. But the changed assumptions have led to habits of thinking which reinforce people's inability to recognize some simple facts about the world which, lacking, make them all the more likely to fail to understand in which respects people in Tudor England shared or didn't share our everyday assumptions about social life—and social life includes politics, includes rights, privileges and duties, and, with these, includes everything about social class and its functions. Thus, a reader today, importing his current assumptions about the world to Edward Oxford's time and to Oxford's work is not only severely handicapped in his ability to recognize how differently he, Edward Oxford, viewed things from the way we do but, just as much, handicapped in the ability to recognize how his views resembled (and helped foster, for the better) some of our own, how these views were advances on some of his contemporaries' commnly accepted beliefs.
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(1) See Lawrence Stone (1965) The Crisis of the Aristocracy
53proximity1
Tina Packer, founder or "Shakespeare & Company" ... "an American theatre company located in Lenox, Massachusetts" (1) and author of Women of Will (hey! there's a pun in there! Oxford would have chuckled or groaned at it) made a startling "discovery" by actually thinking about the author of the Shakespeare-opus as a real person rather than as a cartoon figure in a ridiculous fable.
Her astounding "discovery" is that the author of "Shakespeare's" work--who she continues, unfortunately, to misidentify as William Shaksper--was a man whose dramatical-intellect grew, matured, and, we might say, deepened with time. Well, how about that!?
Still, what Packer has done is, though excruciatingly tiny, and hardly deserving to be called "progress" in light of the work already done by people such as Stephanie Hopkins Hughes, who is, in my view, the most important, insightful and original scholar on Shakespeare's work of the last two generations, and effectively the "Dean" of Oxfordian scholarship at this time, or Hughes' historical peers, fellow Oxfordians, Charlton Ogburn Jr. and J. Thomas Looney, who preceeded her in their work, still a praise-worthy little step further than most Stratfordian scholars of Shakespeare are able to manage.
Specifically, Packer has noticed that the author of Shakespeare, let's call him by his real name, Edward, Earl of Oxford, had anything but the caricaturial view of women in general which so many critical women accuse him of having had. Instead, his work portrayed women partly just as they very commonly were in the social class structures of Elizabethan England and partly as much more sophisticated members of that society's male-dominated social-order. And this, of course, testifies to Oxford's fairness and his genius and a capacity to think ahead of his time.
Again, if one starts from a mistaken idea of this author's identity, it inevitably is going to lead to either bland pointless mush or ridiculous inventions offered to fill up a "blank." In this case, I think the trouble is in Packer's picture of the author's intellectual development concerning women's social place in his time—that it is so "canned", so contrived. Our author has no childhood experiences which figure in the picture. When we first consider him, he's already an adult and he's writing plays. The supposedly 'early' ones of which portray women in what Packer thinks is more evidently caricaturial than the way in which supposedly later plays portray 'stronger,' more assertive, self-confident, centrally-important-to-the-plot women.
The most likely truth based on actual records and the best reading of available evidence gives us a much more interesting picture because it's more realistic and the truth is often more interesting than things which are based in self-serving invention.
We start from the fact that the author had identifiable women in his life from the time he was born until he died, about 54 years later. First, there was his mother, a the Countess of Oxford. His first model for a woman, then, is a noblewoman, not a scullery-maid. When she became a widow, the still young Earl, Edward, became a ward of the Queen's court and was taken directly into the household of William Cecil, one of the most important and powerful men in England and already or soon to be the first counselor to the Queen as her Secretary of State. Cecil, though a commoner by birth, was as astute a political operator as they come. Edward, as the young 17th Earl of Oxford, and about the same age as Cecil's own young daughter, Anne, would make an excellent son-in-law. Among other things, a marriage of Edward and Anne would make it practically required for Cecil to be made a nobleman himself. Second, of course, his grand-children would of course become nobles by descendance from their noble parents. Cecil's grandson, had his daughter Anne's first and only son survived, would have been the 18th Earl of Oxford.
So, we've learned already that Oxford met and became well-acquainted with as a member of the same household, from his childhood years, the girl who, only several years later, he'd marry--though of course he didn't know that at first.
But the picture Packer gives us is that of a playwright who, in the space of a few years of his already-adult life, was still far from formed in his appreciation of feminine human nature and that this particular gender-specific appreciation of human nature in some quite specific aspects took some sudden leaps ahead in its sophistication while he went from writing "the early comedies (The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors)," to the "women of the histories (the three parts of Henry VI; Richard III)" who "are, Packer shows, much more interesting." This is supposed to have taken "Shakespeare" about three years.
There are two main things which could be addressed concerning Packer's approach--specifically focused as it is on Oxford's female characters.
First, it could be noted that Oxford shows no evidence of having approached his characters from any such gender-focused angle. That kind of focus is the sort of petty-minded stuff which no one of Oxford's intellect should be expected to be much concerned about as poet and dramatist. It is, rather, a preoccupation of certain people of our time. He simply wasn't particularly interested in women as women. Rather, he was interested in his characters as individuals who of course happened to be a man or a woman.
In his study, Shakespeare's Patterns of Self-Knowledge (Columbus, OH., 1972), Rolf Soellner, a graduate student at the University of Illinois where he was advised by his professor, T.W. Baldwin, author of Shakespeare's Small Latine and Lesse Greek, writes that he
None of that means that he (Oxford) somehow just didn't notice that women in general had a social status which made them—most of the time—second in importance to men. Nor does it mean that, in their moral import, his plays didn't and couldn't say anything interesting and applicable to the sort of unfairness which is inherently part of a society in which one gender is relegated to a socially-inferior place for many purposes.
It happens that the intellectual growth which was required for him to have seen women as fully-realized people—and not, as Aristotle had it, or excused it, imperfections of the gods' attempts at the masculine ideal—had already happened considerably before Oxford was writing plays as "Shakespeare."
If Packer hadn't taken William Shaksper to be the author, she might not have been forced into the erroneous time-line of that person's life as a frame for the author of the plays and poetry. Oxford had been practicing writing poetry and plays since, in all likelihood, his early adolescence. He was already a married man just under four months before his twenty-second birthday and his extended visit to Italy, where so many of his so-called early plays are set, was still a little less than five years away. Moreover, since, apart from quarto playbooks, many of his plays never appeared until after he'd died circa 1604 or perhaps later (the exact date isn't known with any certainty) then, as far as we may know, he worked and re-worked his plays over the course of his life before they came to have the forms which have come down to us. Yet we know he could not have been personally involved in the final work which produced the first folio (1623) since, had he been, it couldn't have had the many faults and mistakes of composition and editing.
And, second, people who have paid attention have noticed that Oxford's sense of justice and his depictions of social relations are in fact useful as moral examples and such people have drawn on his work without worrying about whether the example or the character (or characters) concerned with their example happens to be male or female since, for Oxford, that fact would not have been morally material to any significant point he was interested in making about human nature as he saw it.
____________
(1) Wikipedia : "Shakespeare and Company (Massachusetts)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_%26_Company_%28Massachusetts%29
Her astounding "discovery" is that the author of "Shakespeare's" work--who she continues, unfortunately, to misidentify as William Shaksper--was a man whose dramatical-intellect grew, matured, and, we might say, deepened with time. Well, how about that!?
Still, what Packer has done is, though excruciatingly tiny, and hardly deserving to be called "progress" in light of the work already done by people such as Stephanie Hopkins Hughes, who is, in my view, the most important, insightful and original scholar on Shakespeare's work of the last two generations, and effectively the "Dean" of Oxfordian scholarship at this time, or Hughes' historical peers, fellow Oxfordians, Charlton Ogburn Jr. and J. Thomas Looney, who preceeded her in their work, still a praise-worthy little step further than most Stratfordian scholars of Shakespeare are able to manage.
Specifically, Packer has noticed that the author of Shakespeare, let's call him by his real name, Edward, Earl of Oxford, had anything but the caricaturial view of women in general which so many critical women accuse him of having had. Instead, his work portrayed women partly just as they very commonly were in the social class structures of Elizabethan England and partly as much more sophisticated members of that society's male-dominated social-order. And this, of course, testifies to Oxford's fairness and his genius and a capacity to think ahead of his time.
Again, if one starts from a mistaken idea of this author's identity, it inevitably is going to lead to either bland pointless mush or ridiculous inventions offered to fill up a "blank." In this case, I think the trouble is in Packer's picture of the author's intellectual development concerning women's social place in his time—that it is so "canned", so contrived. Our author has no childhood experiences which figure in the picture. When we first consider him, he's already an adult and he's writing plays. The supposedly 'early' ones of which portray women in what Packer thinks is more evidently caricaturial than the way in which supposedly later plays portray 'stronger,' more assertive, self-confident, centrally-important-to-the-plot women.
The most likely truth based on actual records and the best reading of available evidence gives us a much more interesting picture because it's more realistic and the truth is often more interesting than things which are based in self-serving invention.
We start from the fact that the author had identifiable women in his life from the time he was born until he died, about 54 years later. First, there was his mother, a the Countess of Oxford. His first model for a woman, then, is a noblewoman, not a scullery-maid. When she became a widow, the still young Earl, Edward, became a ward of the Queen's court and was taken directly into the household of William Cecil, one of the most important and powerful men in England and already or soon to be the first counselor to the Queen as her Secretary of State. Cecil, though a commoner by birth, was as astute a political operator as they come. Edward, as the young 17th Earl of Oxford, and about the same age as Cecil's own young daughter, Anne, would make an excellent son-in-law. Among other things, a marriage of Edward and Anne would make it practically required for Cecil to be made a nobleman himself. Second, of course, his grand-children would of course become nobles by descendance from their noble parents. Cecil's grandson, had his daughter Anne's first and only son survived, would have been the 18th Earl of Oxford.
So, we've learned already that Oxford met and became well-acquainted with as a member of the same household, from his childhood years, the girl who, only several years later, he'd marry--though of course he didn't know that at first.
But the picture Packer gives us is that of a playwright who, in the space of a few years of his already-adult life, was still far from formed in his appreciation of feminine human nature and that this particular gender-specific appreciation of human nature in some quite specific aspects took some sudden leaps ahead in its sophistication while he went from writing "the early comedies (The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors)," to the "women of the histories (the three parts of Henry VI; Richard III)" who "are, Packer shows, much more interesting." This is supposed to have taken "Shakespeare" about three years.
There are two main things which could be addressed concerning Packer's approach--specifically focused as it is on Oxford's female characters.
First, it could be noted that Oxford shows no evidence of having approached his characters from any such gender-focused angle. That kind of focus is the sort of petty-minded stuff which no one of Oxford's intellect should be expected to be much concerned about as poet and dramatist. It is, rather, a preoccupation of certain people of our time. He simply wasn't particularly interested in women as women. Rather, he was interested in his characters as individuals who of course happened to be a man or a woman.
In his study, Shakespeare's Patterns of Self-Knowledge (Columbus, OH., 1972), Rolf Soellner, a graduate student at the University of Illinois where he was advised by his professor, T.W. Baldwin, author of Shakespeare's Small Latine and Lesse Greek, writes that he
... "came to the conclusion that for Shakespeare there was no separate comic, tragic, or historical man, nor were there different kinds of self-knowledge; for him, man was one and the same being whether he exulted in victory or writhed in defeat.” (Introduction, p. xvii)
...
...". We may, on the whole, assume that Shakespeare gave his views to sympathetic characters, but this is certainly not a uniform rule; even a villainous Iago can cite scripture to his purpose, and an unselfish idealist like Brutus can be dead wrong. We must see ideas expressed by Shakespeare's characters in the total context, and we should use only legitimate means to interpret their relevance to Shakespeare's philosophy. Such means are comparisons with sources and with moral attitudes as they can be identified by the study of the intellectual background. Even so, we can often achieve only probability. Shakespeare was not a propagandist; his attitudes were subtle and qualified. But he was certainly not morally indifferent; if an idea is repeated in his plays by sympathetic characters and is underlined by theme and dramatic structure, we can, with some assurance, say that it was part of his philosophic credo, at least at the time he stated it." (Introduction, p. xx)
None of that means that he (Oxford) somehow just didn't notice that women in general had a social status which made them—most of the time—second in importance to men. Nor does it mean that, in their moral import, his plays didn't and couldn't say anything interesting and applicable to the sort of unfairness which is inherently part of a society in which one gender is relegated to a socially-inferior place for many purposes.
It happens that the intellectual growth which was required for him to have seen women as fully-realized people—and not, as Aristotle had it, or excused it, imperfections of the gods' attempts at the masculine ideal—had already happened considerably before Oxford was writing plays as "Shakespeare."
If Packer hadn't taken William Shaksper to be the author, she might not have been forced into the erroneous time-line of that person's life as a frame for the author of the plays and poetry. Oxford had been practicing writing poetry and plays since, in all likelihood, his early adolescence. He was already a married man just under four months before his twenty-second birthday and his extended visit to Italy, where so many of his so-called early plays are set, was still a little less than five years away. Moreover, since, apart from quarto playbooks, many of his plays never appeared until after he'd died circa 1604 or perhaps later (the exact date isn't known with any certainty) then, as far as we may know, he worked and re-worked his plays over the course of his life before they came to have the forms which have come down to us. Yet we know he could not have been personally involved in the final work which produced the first folio (1623) since, had he been, it couldn't have had the many faults and mistakes of composition and editing.
And, second, people who have paid attention have noticed that Oxford's sense of justice and his depictions of social relations are in fact useful as moral examples and such people have drawn on his work without worrying about whether the example or the character (or characters) concerned with their example happens to be male or female since, for Oxford, that fact would not have been morally material to any significant point he was interested in making about human nature as he saw it.
____________
(1) Wikipedia : "Shakespeare and Company (Massachusetts)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_%26_Company_%28Massachusetts%29
54Muscogulus
>49 proximity1:
>51 proximity1:
>52 proximity1:
>53 proximity1:
Tedious, as always, but lamentably not brief.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
(MSD V.i, ll. 60-64)
>51 proximity1:
>52 proximity1:
>53 proximity1:
Tedious, as always, but lamentably not brief.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
(MSD V.i, ll. 60-64)
55proximity1
>54 Muscogulus:
Anyone for whom this thread is simply "too long, didn't read" is already unlikely to either care about or to understand these points or both, let alone understand or care about Oxford's plays and poetry written as "William Shakespeare."
Those who are capable of such an interest can certainly cope with my comments here.
So, fortunately, there's a happy congruence going on.
And your complaint is confined to the thread's being "tedious ... but lamentably not brief."
I'll accept that as an admission that, on the merits you simply have nothing to say.
Anyone for whom this thread is simply "too long, didn't read" is already unlikely to either care about or to understand these points or both, let alone understand or care about Oxford's plays and poetry written as "William Shakespeare."
Those who are capable of such an interest can certainly cope with my comments here.
So, fortunately, there's a happy congruence going on.
And your complaint is confined to the thread's being "tedious ... but lamentably not brief."
I'll accept that as an admission that, on the merits you simply have nothing to say.
56proximity1
“Novis siquidem rebus, nova nomina sunt imponenda,”
(“We must always give new names to new things.”)
—Bartholomew Clerke, letter to the reader published in Clerke's Balthasaris Castilionis comitis De curiali sive aulico, libri quatuor, ex Italico sermone in Latinum ... a 1571 translation from Italian into Latin of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtyer)
Viz:
“Dabis mihi veniam (erudite lector) si verbis utar nunc plane fictitiis: idem tute faceres, si de istis scriberes: idem Marcus Cicero faciendum putaret, si nunc viveret. Novis siquidem rebus, nova nomina sunt imponenda."
________
(“You will pardon me, (learned reader), if I sometimes use words which are simply made up. You would do the same yourself if you were writing this translation; and Cicero himself, if he were alive today, would feel that it should be done. We must always give new names to new things.”)
(Cited in and translated by J. W. Binns, (1990), p. 262)
______________
_______________________________________
Teaching children (prior to U.S. high-school junior or senior year english literature; England & Wales Sixth form, school years numbered 12 and 13) about the poet-playwright "William Shakespeare" is essentially an unproductive waste of time. Telling them fables about William Shaksper of Stratford On Avon as the author of "Shakespeare" 's work is far, far worse than just a waste of time.
Children from years four though 10 (or even 11) of their primary thorough secondary educations really don't need, can't use and, in all but the most exceptional cases, probably aren't ready to take on the study of Edward Oxford's poetry and plays under the pen-name "William Shakespeare". High school students could read much by Edward Oxford writing as "Robert Greene" but they'd deserve to be told the truth about Robert Greene as one of Oxford's pen-names. Teachers would probably balk at doing that.
As for "Shakespeare", it's pointless to introduce students to the work prior to approximately the 11th or the 12th grade--high school juniors and seniors. The only real point in introducing younger students to "Shakespeare" is to indoctrinate them into the cult of Stratfordian fable.
Oxford did not write for children and, alas, his work is no more accessible to adults who are, when it comes to literature, juvenile in their tastes and their sophistiction.
Young American and British (English, Scottish, Welsh) school children aren't introduced to D.H. Lawrence or Henrik Ibsen or Bernard Shaw at the age of eight to ten. Why not? There's no general scheme bent on inculcating them in a mythological belief-system concerning these authors.
It's not even possible to gain more than a superficial appreciation of Oxford's "Shakespeare" writings without a good deal of background introduction to the history of Oxford and his times, the court of Queen Elizabeth and the social and political circumstances of that period. They also need to know about the very different meanings which a variety of terms Oxford used or invented had in that time. The trouble is that much of Oxford's vocabularly remains current enough to read today and use mistakenly to misunderstand the intended meaning of some of the terms as he used them. Unless students arrive at the work having done this background study, they're not going to get the point in a good many instances.
So, even with the best of intentions, students are very badly served by introducing them too soon to the pen-name "William Shakespeare" and to the works erroneouslly or maliciously attributed to that name.
57proximity1
( NOTE (about the above "box") : While I cannot say for sure what has been the cause of the disappearance of an image of a 16th-century broadsheet publication (See full text at the bottom of this post)--it may be due, for example, to the difficulties the site has had in recent days and which has led to certain functions being temporarily unavailable--I'm inclined to wonder if, there, above, where previously there was an image in view, you see above as a little square place-holder because it has been removed, censored, for some as-yet unexplained reason. Before it disappeared, you had there what I think was an impressive broadsheet from the late 1500s which presents anagrammatical notes about a whole panoply of leading literary figures of the day--including Edward de Vere, then 17th Earl of Oxford. It showed in impressive style how Edward was a part of this illustrious society of influential people. For me it lent a certain striking immediacy to his role and that's why I chose to include it in this post. The veiwer could see a real-life article which testifies to his standing in the society in which he lived. Some may have found that disturbing, perhaps because they don't like having people shown such pieces produced by Oxford's own contemporaries. So they maybe one of them has complained, seeking and hoping for its supression--which maybe they got, explaining its disappearance.
There's no such broadsheet mention that I know of which refers to "William Shakespeare" and some people just can't tolerate that fact being shown up. )
The page in question is known as:
"Anagrammata in nomina illustrissimorum heroum," Thomae Egertoni
Author: Davison, Francis, 1575?-1619?,
Title: Anagrammata in nomina illustrissimorum heroum Date: 1603 Reel position: STC / 1601:08
Copy from: British Library
___________________
▀▄Ε▀▄Ο▀▄ ▀▄Ε▀▄Ο▀▄
EDOVARDVS VEIERVS
per Anagramma,
AVRE SVRDVS VIDEO. (Deaf in my ear, I see)
Auribus hisce licèt studio, fortuna, susurros
Perfidiæ, & technas efficis procul,
Attamen accipio, quæ mens horrescit, & auris,
Rebus facta malis corpore surda tenus
Imò etiam cerno Catilinæ fraude propinquos
Funere solventes fata aliena suo.
▀▄Ε▀▄Ο▀▄ ▀▄Ε▀▄Ο▀▄
__________________________________________________
From the mid-1500s, England's literate culture saw a multiform flourinshing and to a great extent it was expressed in Latin. In his general treatment of this history, describing first only that part which concerned Latin verse, James Binns writes,
“There are far too many such volumes of verse for them to be considered individually.... Most of the Latin verse of this period is formal and public; and it fulfilled a recognized social function in the life of the times. This is well illustrated by the poetry composed to mark occasions of public note such as the birth, marriage or death of royal and aristocratic personages, the triumphal entry of a monarch into a city, and the formal visits paid to schools and universities.” … (p. 34)
...“Royal visits by Queen Elizabeth to the universities generated a vast amount of poetry as well as prose.” (over a visit to Cambridge University from the 5th to the 10th of August, 1564) “ 'The whole lane, between the King's College and the Queen's College, was strawed with rushes, and flags, hanging in divers places, with coverlets and boughes; and many verses fixed upon the wall.' The west door of King's College 'covered with verses.' ” (p. 35)
A visit to Oxford University (31 August to 6 September, 1566) “was no less splendid” … “when the Queen went to disputations in natural and moral philosophy, Latin, Greek and Hebrew poems were affixed to the doors and walls” …. (p. 36)
There had already been a tradition of publishing anthologies of funerary poetry to commerate the lives of scholars, aristocrats and nobles :
“These university anthologies are at all times a useful index to the literary activity of the times. This is particularly true of, and can best be demonstrated from, those published in the sixteenth century, especially before the setting up of the university presses. ...the list of contributors to the volume on the death of Martin Bucer in 1551, edited by Sir John Cheke, is a roll-call of mid-century English humanism, and the volume forms one of the focal points of a vast interlocking network of literary relationships. Some forty humanists contribute verses to it.” (p. 43)
______________________
"The writings of the Anglo-Latin poet best known on the continent in the early seventeenth century were never printed in England. Elizabeth Jane Weston is nowadays (i.e. 1990) completely ignored by literary histories; but in her day, she was widely celebrated and earned for herself the sobriquet 'the Maid of England'. (p. 110) ...
... " a notable linguist, Paul Melissus testifies that she was fluent in German, Latin, Czech and English, whilst her patron, von Baldhoven claims for her a knowledge of French as well. ... Latin poetry ...so impressed von Baldhoven that he brought her work to the attention of the great names in scholarship and Latin poetry at the turn of the seventeenth century.
"Von Baldhoven was responsible for the publication in her own lifetime of two volumes of Elizabeth Weston's poems. One entitled Poemata was printed at Frankfurt-on-Oder in 1602. ... another...Parthenicon libri iii, was later printed in Prague; ...
"Elizabeth Weston's poetry...taken together with her corresponence, reveals much about Latin verse was then commissioned, circulated and printed. As noted, her wider contacts with scholars and poets of Eutropean fame were due to von Baldhoven. It is clear...from a letter which E.W. wrote to v. B. dated 8 March 1603 that it was owing to him that Joseph Scalinger and Jan Dousa had written to her, while in a letter dated from Heidelberg on 20 November 1601, Paul Melissus...say that v. B. had written to him asking him to compose dedicatory verses for the forthcoming edition of her Poemata. Melissus encloses with his letter two copies of an Alcaic ode and two other poems, one copy for her to keep, one to be sent to the printer; ... a further letter from Melissus to von Baldhoven refers to the fact that von Baldhoven is seeing Miss Weston's poems through the press.
"There are several further references in Elizabeth Weston's works to these customs both of soliciting poems and of circulating manuscript poems in two or more copies, and these references throw more light on the circumstances in which poems were commissioned and sent.* When Melissus dies, Johann Gernandus, who designated himself in his letter as a Councillorof the Elector Patatine, wrote to E. W. informing her of Melissus' death at the request of his widow, and requesting from her a poem commemorating Melissus' death, for inclusion in a printed volume of Epicedia marking the occasion, as well as an epigram for his own young son. These she sends to Gernandus. Again she writes to a certain L. Feighius a letter of thanks for a prayer-book sent to her in her affliction at the time of her brother's death, when her affairs were in a very low state; and she sends in return a copy of a poem which she had written to the Emperor. ... Poems and letters passed in this fashion between Elizabeth Weston and many famous names—not only Joseph Scalinger, Jan Dousa, and Paul Melissus, but also Peter Lotichius, Daniel Heinsius, Justus Lipsius (the loss of a letter from whom she laments), the neo-Latin poet Jiří Carolide, author of a poem on printing sent to Miss Weston which was known to John Evelyn, as welll as many less well known Bohemian and German patrons, friends and acquaintances. King James I (sic) of England, to whom she addressed both verses and letters, is also reported to have read her poetry." (pp. 111-113)
I think it is fair to ask how it is that, in such a climate of literary exchange, we have no surviving record at all of any similar correspondence to, from and about one William Shaksper of Stratford on Avon (or, for that matter, of London) as poet, as playwright, in the lives of his contemporaries. If, as we're told, this now-exalted man of letters was a part of this scene—notice, Weston's correspondence covers years in which we must suppose Shaksper to have been at his height in plays and poems, the very late 1500s and early 1600s—why has nothing of this come down to us to testify to it? Is it not odd that Weston never so much as mentions William Shaksper or William Shakespeare in her correspondence?—surely Binns would have mentioned it if there had been any such mention in her surviving papers.
We know much more about the details of the life of Elizabeth Jane Weston than we do about the life of the supposed William Shakespeare who left Stratford, we're told, but we know not when, how or why. Nor do we know where he went, how he managed when he got there and with whom he consorted and got his later learning —post grammar school.
In the case of E. J. Weston, we know she was born in England about 1582—"Shakespeare" is eighteen and is supposed to have married Anne Hathaway that very year and we may suppose that William Shaksper did marry Hathaway that year. Three children later, "Some time between 1585 and 1592, he ("Shakespeare") began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men," (from Wikipedia's page on "William Shakespeare"). Interestingly enough, we know that the young E. Weston "left the country in her youth, along with her parents and brother, after her father, who fell into disgrace for political or religious reasons, had lost all his property. In 1597, when the Weston family was in Bohemia, Elizabeth's father died".... ( Binns, p. 110)
Thus, right about the time at which Weston was spending her final years in England, Shakespeare arrives and begins his sojourn in London, the details of which we know basically nothing at all. About Weston we know, as Binns reports from his studies, she married a jurist at the Imperial Court (Prague), Johann Leon, and together they had four sons, all of whom she outlived.
There is simply no particular reason by which we can account for there having survived nothing of Shakespeare's experiences and records of his associations in letters to and from other poets if, as we're to believe, he was, like Weston he could read and write, and, being free to do so and to correspond under his own name, he did not or, if he did, miraculously, every last page and paragraph of such correspondence perished.
Unlike Shakespeare, we know that, if Miss Weston was a fine and much-admired poet in Latin, that was in part because she learned that language from tutoring by John Hammond (perhaps the person of the ODNB's entry for Hammond (Hamond), John
(c. 1555–1617) ( Roger Hutchins, author) https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12160).
If it's objected that, like "Shakspeare" we don't know where E. Weston had her grammar-school or later education, the point, indeed, is that we can, even without that information, account for her knowledge of Latin-—and Czech, etc.
As for "Shakespeare", we're asked to make a bald and a bold and completely undocumented conjecture that, if he had mastered Latin, he had to have gained it from, first, a start at the language at the Stratford grammar school. Alas, we don't know that he did because the records for the period when he'd have been in attendance, supposing he ever was, are missing for just those years.
_______________
* For detailed history about the courrier and postal services and practices of the period, see The Corsini Letters by Philip Beale, Adrian Almond, and Mike Scott Archer; Amberley (2011), 224 pages.
__________________________________________________
ANAGRAMMATA
IN NOMINA ILLVSTRISSIMORVM HEROVM,
THOMAE EGERTONI, Sigilli magni Custodis.
CAROLI HOVARDI, C. de NOT. Archit. Ang.
THOMAE SACVILI, D. de BVC. Thes. Reg.
CAROLI BLVNT, D. de MONT. Regis in Hibernia locum tenentis.
IOANNIS FORTESCVI, CANC. LAN.
GILBERTI TAILBOTI, C. DE SCHR.
HENRICII PERCII, C. de NORT.
EDOVARDI VEIERI, C. OX.
HENRICI VRIOTHESLEI, C. DE SVTH.
Necnon
IN NOMINA CLARISSIMORVM EEq.
IOANNIS STANHOPPI, Vicecam.
IVLII CAESARIS, M. Supplicor. LL.
GEORGII CHAEREI, Domus Reginae Praefecti.
IOANNIS SWINERTONII, Vicec. Lond.
Ad eosdem.
VEstra Fides, quorum conatus nemo secutus
Phlegraeos, studuit ferro animare manus
In Regni Haeredem (O iubeat, cui fata iubenti
Obsequium debent, impia turba cadat!)
Heroes, mihi carmen erit: concedite sed nunc
Vt tenui referam Nomina vestra sono.
Officiis, homines, diuos acceditis altis:
Este Deis facili mente manu{que} pares.
Prodite facto animis similes diis, mente ferentum
Duntaxat solitis dona probare sibi.
THOMAS EGERTONVS per Anagramma.
(Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley, Solicitor General, Attorney General and Master of the Rolls)
HEROS MAGNE TOTVS.
ET pater, & proauus, diuini & Sanguinis ordo,
Et bona fortunae, nomina magna ferunt▪
Ista at tu trutinas aequa dum lance, laboras
De proprijs Laudem iure parare bonis.
Ceu Genus, & Proaui, tum quae non fecerisipse,
Maiorum potiùs quàm tua dona putes.
At quid opus frustrà cumulare Encomia verbis?
Magnus es, externi nil{que} decoris egens.
Hinc Anagramma aliud (quamuis vena vrgeat altè)
Quàm Magni Herois nomina ferre nequit.
MAGNE HEROS censu, sed maior Sanguine auito,
Maxime Virtutum, quêis cumulare, gradu:
Vt Generis, census, sicnil quo{que} sortis egenus,
Quae Virtus tribuit, Nomina Magna gere.
Astraea haud cuiquam (vel sit dignissimus ille)
Digniùs aeternùm ferre Sigilla dabit.
CAROLVS HOVARDVS per Anagramma.
(Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham)
VALOR CHARVS SVDO.
PRo Patria sudans, potes has effundere voces,
Nomine de verso quas Anagramma facit:
Non ideo Charus, partem quòd vendicet ortus,
Sum Patriae: at meritis, at pietate, fide.
Sic etenim ob Patriam discrimen despicis omne,
Vt sibi te natum dicere iure queat.
Altiùs hinc vexit, tribuit ius in{que} Profundum.
Officio incolumis sit, VALOR, illa tuo!
THOMAS SACVILVS per Anagramma.
(Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset)
SIS HVMVS LOCATA.
EXcelsa est tibi Mens, licèt hanc, SACVILE, caduca
Corporis humani pondere membra grauent.
At premere haud possunt: Animus nam{que} extulit vltrò:
Suppeditans facilem munia ad alta gradum.
Nec malè Phoebus HVMVM vocitat te mente Locatam,
Corporeae supra conditionis opus.
Temnis enim species, quas non laudârit Honestas,
Quae bona Fortunae sub Probitate locat.
Quàm bene consuluit rebus Diadema Britannûm,
Regia sub curam cùm daret aera tuam.
Promtus enim dignis, meritos plorare labores
Non sinis: Hinc{que} Charis te probat alma suum.
Hic pudefiat iners, quisquis sua commoda curans,
Lucro ignominiam promeruisse solet▪
Perge placere Deae: te Diua in luce reponet
Altiùs, ac Liuor cornua ferre potest.
CAROLVS DE MONTIOI per Anagramma.
(Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, 1st Earl of Devonshire)
IT SEDVLO COI NORMA.
SI (quondam vt Venerem) depingeret arte Gradiuum
Ille senex Cous, CAROLE, Norma fores.
Scilicet exemplum tabulae daret esse politae,
Vt specimen faceret Martis imago tua.
Sed quia mente latet, Coum auersatus & artem,
Vnum optat, pingi moribus ille tuis.
I bona Norma, viris referas & pectore Martem!
Sic Martis pictor, Martis alumnus eris.
IOANNES FORTESCVVS per Anagramma.
(Sir John Fortescue, seventh Chancellor of the Exchequer of England)
COR SANIVS TE FOVENS.
COr coelest• bonum, quo non praestantius vllum:
Principium vitae, Lucis amore potens,
Ignaue ignauis, generosi pectoris antrum
Sollicitans spebus, sollicitans{que} metu▪
Spebus honesta vrgens, prohibens inhonesta timore
Non poenae, at magni relligione Dei▪
Ansa mali reprobis, Diae virtutis amicis
Officio ductor certus in omne bonum▪
Te penes huic Domina est Ratio, sed serua voluntas,
COR igitur SANVM quis neget esse tibi?
Siue tamen Scuti nomen dedit ipse Gradiuus,
Seu Virtus Fortis, SANIVS esto mihi
COR dictus. Cor te foueat, Ratio{que} magistra:
Aeternum his Ducibus commercâre decus.
GILBERTVS TAILBOTVS. per Anagramma.
(Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, 7th Earl of Waterford)
LEGIT TRIBVBVS ALTOS.
SVnt qui de Proauûm quaerunt sibi stemmate nomen,
Sunt quêis Nobilitas est satis ipsa patrum.
Altè effert quosdam maternae stirpis origo,
Venit at aere alijs Nobilitatis honos.
Nomine lux tantùm ista tenus: de luce tenebrae,
Si propiùs libras, sponte sub ora cadunt▪
Tu numero ast isto tantùm, GILBERTE, recedis,
Phoebaeo quantùm distat ab orbe Solum.
Qui, licèt & tribubus magnis decoreris Auorum,
Excelsae{que} legas stemmata clara domus,
Sic te in te quaeris, cerae contemptor, honesta
Ipsa sit vt Virtus Nobilitate prior.
In Diadema tibi tanta hinc permissa potestas,
Vt Rex officium poscat amet{que} tuum.
HENRICVS PERCIVS per Anagramma.
(Henry Percy, , 9th Earl of Northumberland)
EN HIC RVPES CVRIS.
HOstibus es moles, curis Adamantina rupes:
Mars animos, hostes hanc didicêre manum▪
EDOVARDVS VEIERVS per Anagramma.
(Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford)
AVRE SVRDVS VIDEO.
AVribus hisce licèt studio, fortuna, susurros
Perfidiae, & reclinas efficis esse procul,
Attamen accipio, quae mens horrescit, & auris,
Rebus facta malis corpore surda tenus.
Imò etiam cerno Catilinae fraude propinquos
Funere soluentes fata aliena suo.
HENRICVS VRIOTHESLEVS per Anagramma▪
(Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton)
THESEVS NIL REVS HIC RVO
IVrè quidem poteras hanc fundere ab ore querelam,
Sors tibi dum ficto crimine dura fuit.
NIL Reus en Theseus, censurâ sortis iniquae
Hîc Ruo, Liuoris traditus arbitrio.
At nunc mutanda▪ ob mutata pericla, querela est:
Inclite, an innocuo pectore teste rues?
Non sanè. Hac Haeres vacuo dat viuere cura▪
Collati Imperij sub Ioue Sceptra gerens.
IOANNES STANHOPPVS per Anagramma.
(John Stanhope, 1st Baron Stanhope)
VANA HIS POSTPONENS.
VIrtu•is Famae{que} tibiter maxima cura est:
Vana His Postponens, maximus esse potes.
IVLIVS CAESAR per Anagramma.
(Sir Julius Caesar, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls)
I, ALES IVS CVRA▪
MAgnos magna decent: tibi nomina Cynthius alta
Contulit: hinc curâ Iús{que} piúm{que} foues.
I Themidi deuote animis, at{que} erige egenas,
Externas quamuis, sorte fauente, deas.
Sic volet externas tua, IVLI, fama per aures,
Conferat & Nomen, quo tibi crescat Honos.
GEORGIVS CHAEREI per Anagramma.
(George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon)
I, EGREGIVS O HAC RE.
PRincipibus, laudem, si qui placuêre, merentur,
Egregium hâc te re nemo negare potest.
Quippe tuum officium in Dominam, studiúm{que} fidele
Egregio, CHAEREI, nomine spontè beat.
IOHANNES SWINERTONVS per Anagramma.
(Sir John Swynnerton, Merchant Tailor, Lord Mayor of London)
EN, NISI VSV HONOS VERNAT.
VSu Vernat Honos (pulcherrima lucra laborum)
Tu{que} fides huius maxima vocis eris.
Quòd Iuuenis mores varios, quòd videris vrbes,
Quòd coluisti animos artibus, ora sonis:
Munera quòd mente hac plusquàm ciuilia tractes,
Fortunae certè dicere nemo potest.
Omnia Virtutis dona haec: nil contulit illa,
Quae tantùm constans in lenitate dea est.
Cetera mors atrox, vel sint Adamantina, delet:
At tibi partus Honos nil fera fata timet.
Swinertone, tibi Virtus hoc crescit Honore,
Vsu idem Vernat splendidiore procul.
HONORIS ERGO
AB
A. L. S.
F. D.
Londini, ex officina Simonis Stafford. 1603.
58proximity1
The following Excerpt from Sam Harris’ Waking Up podcast No. 109 with Evergreen State College professor Bret Weinstein has something important to tell us relevant to the Shakespeare Authorship Question:
Waking Up Podcast
: #109 - Biology and Culture A Conversation with Bret Weinstein
(hear the full conversation at the link)
... ...
Bret Weinstein (00 hrs. :32 mins. :33 sec. ) :
“That tells me that this is a kind of religious fervor; it’s not a natural— it’s not an analytical conclusion that might be amenable to being changed if evidence arose that said something different. It’s very un—”
Sam Harris (00 hrs. :32 mins. :33 sec.) :
“Yeah it is—it does have a kind of ‘cultic’-- shape to it and you’d almost have to de-program someone who’s got a ton invested in viewing you in, in a certain way—”
B.W. (00 hrs. :31 mins. :59 sec.) :
“You know, you, uh, when this first thing unfolded, I don’t know if you remember it but you ‘tweeted’ something about it being cult-like and I had not thought that thought before I saw your ‘tweet’ but it instantly, uh, resonated—and everything I’ve seen since says that that’s—that’s the correct analogy.”
S.H. (00 hrs. :33 mins. :14 sec.) :
“Yeah, and, and, wha--and also social media’s obviously not helping in this regard. It’s spreading these memes and once you’ve, again, once you have enough ‘sunk-costs’ seeing it one way, and you’ve been public about it, then the costs—the social costs—of changing your mind publicly and apologizing seems insurmountable to people—which I, again, this is an intuition which I don’t share. It’s like—if I’ve—if I’ve been wrong publicly about something, particularly in this kind of area where I, you know, I thought someone was Satan and then they turned out not to be, I would be so uncomfortable having to—just maintaining that by neglect, I just feel like I’m wired to immediately rectify that problem. But, it seems that people have different intuitions here.”
B. W. : (00 hrs. :34 mins. :03 sec.)
“Yeah. I don’t quite get it because, uhm, intellectual honest-brokers I think all reach the conclusion that you just suggested which is at the point which you discover that you got something really wrong it’s very painful to get on the right side of it. but it’s way cheaper than not getting on the right side of it and continuing to pay the costs of being dead wrong. So, there’s a way in which no matter how bad it is to back-track and get on the right side of something, it’s always a bargain relative to waiting; and somehow that logic does not seem to register with people.”
... ...
The recent Sam Harris podcast conversation with physicist Sean Carroll : # 124 - In Search of Reality A Conversation with Sean Carroll also throws some interesting light on the problem of the closed-shop-style of practice in academics.
Many might assume that, however dismal things are in literary studies, at least things are different in the natural sciences where, fortunately, research goes on without any significant obstacles from certain thoughts being taboo--with those who'd pursue them finding themeselves professional outcasts.
Alas, no. In physics, as in "Shakespeare" studies, people who don't conform to fashion are subject to being made pariahs of the doctrinaire discipline.
The relevant part of Carroll's comments can be heard in the podcast audio-file from 00h:28 mins.: 51 secs. to 00 hrs.: 33 mins. : 35 secs.
_____________________
124 - In Search of Reality A Conversation with Sean Carroll - Sam Harris
https://samharris.org/podcasts/124-search-reality/
_______________________________________________________
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_protests
59proximity1
Notes in passing--
________________________
Recently-published:
Why Honor Matters, Basic Books, New York, (2018) by Tamler Sommers ; 272 pages; ISBN-10: 0465098878
________________________
“The artists (painters) get there before the philosophers—long before the philosophers. The dramatists get there way before the artists even. And so we figured it out: we represented it in art and literature and music and drama and then, we’re on the cusp, so to speak, of understanding it in a fully-articulated manner—and not a moment too soon.” ...
— Jordan Peterson, in a psychology course lecture, University of Toronto, 2017
________________________
Recently-published:
Why Honor Matters, Basic Books, New York, (2018) by Tamler Sommers ; 272 pages; ISBN-10: 0465098878
________________________
60grayhog
Hi Prolixity! See that you're still splashing around in your very small, and very lonely, puddle. Just curious, but are you getting help? Taking the right meds?
61proximity1
In her "Exordium," (from Latin and serves here for "Preface" or "Introduction") which runs to 36 pages, Professor Deirdre McCloskey asks, at page xxxiv, of her 2016 book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World*,
"Why did bourgeois Shakespeare in 1610 sneer loftily at the bourgeoisie, ... ?" (♦)
That's the sort of question which one might pose when starting from the misidentification of the author. Shaksper, of Stratford Upon Avon, indeed eventually became by the end of his life quite "bourgeois". So, if one assumes he was the author of the sonnets and poetry and plays written under the (pen) name "William Shakespeare," then there's a curiously odd matter which seems to require some explaining.
McCloskey, takes it for granted that the author did have or take a sneering attitude to the English bourgeois of his time. And she seems to find that perhaps a little peculiar in a man who was himself so bourgeois.
Oxford, of course, was anything but a member of the bourgeoisie. Yet, when one reads his work, one finds these "sneers" are really aimed at skewering stereotypical characteristics associated with a mentality, a set of assumptions and views which were thought of as being typical of people of the bourgeoisie. But that is a very different thing from an undifferentiated condemnation of virtually everyone who was born to the modest commoner class. Oxford did plenty of work presenting some of his most admirable male and female roles in the personae of commoners.
His real view of people was clear from the fact that in his writings people of common birth weren't at all morally, intellectually or socially defective or ridiculous. But certain types among them were and among these there were the bourgeois, targets of some of his skewering wit. But, to be fair, and to his credit, he didn't spare those of his peer-class who could and certainly did exhibit their own forms of the same or very similar traits--just done as a noble person would from his perspective.
_____________________
(♦) ("Why did bourgeois Shakespeare in 1610 sneer loftily at the bourgeoisie, yet gentrified Jane Austen in 1810 smiled amiably at it?")
* University of Chicago Press
62proximity1
(further to >49 proximity1: )
“Given that the key to these changes lies in the minds of its (i.e. the period’s) leading figures, the focus of attention has to be the nature of seventeenth-century intellectual milieu. The educated part of the Europe of the day is often and tellingly described as a republic of letters, implying a supranational, non-denominational, informally collegial structure made possible by the exchanges—mainly by means of letters—among learned and imaginative men and women (yes: and women; it was a moment of opportunity for some women) with common interests and a similarity of outlook. Ideas and techniques were freely passed around, rendered intelligible by a shared background in such matters as knowledge of the classical languages, philosophy and theology. It was by no means a an idyllic arrangement, buoyed aloft bon fraternal affection and cooperation; the difference in faith outlooks and opinion often resulted in disputes, sometimes serious enough to cause riots and even murder; the republic of letters was constantly embroiled in controversy. But this itself was a source of new ideas, as well as of lively exchanges of information and influence.”
(emphasis added where boldface and italic are joined)
_________________________
(p. 17) —A. C. Grayling, The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth-Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016)
63proximity1
for English or English-history teachers regarding the treatment of Shakespeare in school courses :
"Teaching the Sonnets and de Vere’s Biography at School – Opportunities and Risks" by Elke Brackmann and Robert Detobel
from The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship's publication :
Brief Chronicles Vol. VII (2016) p. 83-110
64proximity1
Long before computer programmers in the twentieth century coined the phrase behind the initials “G.I.G.O.”, meaning “garbage (data-imput) in, garbage (data-output) out)” this feature of impaired reasoning was rife throughout the course of human events. Mass-communications of modern newspapers and then radio and television broadcasting, coupled still later with mechanical computers and, later, higher-speed networked computer systems, ‘super-charged’ the force and the effects of “G.I.G.O”.
In the 16th century, English royalty and other members of the nobility—as well as the vast majority of the members of the non-nobility, referred to as ‘commoners’—were deeply concerned about the stability and safety of the nation’s social and political order because, first, Queen Elizabeth was a defender of protestant Christian doctrines in a world dominated by monarchies in which the Catholic Church and its clergy were the unquestioned religious authorities and, second, because she remained unmarried and, thus, without a legitimate heir to take her place on the throne upon her death.
Despite the urgency of this matter, her considerations of potential marriage partners among the nobles of England and Europe was repeatedly hindered by the fact that many of her potential marriage partners belonged to, practiced and believed, the doctrines of the Catholic Church and this factor created irreconcilable differences between Elizabeth and her potential suitors, differences which were enough to keep her from going through with a marriage.
In the society of the time, social and political power, whether founded on Catholic or Protestant doctrines, depended on an obedient and faithful religiously ruled society—both lay and clergy, among all classes, all social strata, from nobles to commoners. To ensure its perpetuation, the power structure required a supporting mythology which had to be vigorously and sometimes ruthlessly defended from heretics’ challenges. Elizabeth’s reign was a time in which even educated people took for granted that sorcery was effective, that magic powers were real and could be conjured and directed against others who were helpless to defend against these. Stars, birds and other natural phenomena were routinely taken to be augurs of what, in human affairs, ought to be or ought not to be done. Supposed seers and sages practiced in the occult arts were consulted and they pronounced their interpretations of the signs. Both rulers and the ruled lived and perished according to what was assumed to be God’s inscrutable will. It was a time when alchemists were well paid for their efforts aimed at an ultimate goal: turning base metals into pure gold. Such a goal was believed possible if only the right materials and methods were discovered.
…”humans have always lived in the of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species”…
… ”So if you blame Facebook, Trump or Putin for ushering in a new and frightening era of post-truth, remind yourself that centuries ago millions of Christians locked themselves inside(*) a self-reinforcing bubble, never daring to question the factual veracity of the Bible, while millions of Muslims put their unquestioning faith in the Qur’an. For millennia, much of what passed for ‘news’ and ‘facts’ in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels, demons and witches, with bold reporters giving live-coverage straight from the deepest pits of the underworld. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries an Untouchable—yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever.” …
“I am aware that many people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s exactly the point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for a month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath). …
… “The truth is that the truth was never high on the agenda of Homo sapiens. Many people assume that if a particular religion or ideology misrepresents reality, its adherents are bound to discover it sooner or later, because they will not be able to compete with more clear-sighted rivals. Well, that’s just another comforting myth.”
…“Blurring the line between fiction and reality can be done for many purposes, starting with ‘having fun’ and going all the way to ‘survival’.
_________________
(* emphasis added)
(Extract from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, (August, 2018) Jonathan Cape Publishers. From pp. 8-13 of The Observer (London), Sunday, 5 August 2018.)
In the 16th century, English royalty and other members of the nobility—as well as the vast majority of the members of the non-nobility, referred to as ‘commoners’—were deeply concerned about the stability and safety of the nation’s social and political order because, first, Queen Elizabeth was a defender of protestant Christian doctrines in a world dominated by monarchies in which the Catholic Church and its clergy were the unquestioned religious authorities and, second, because she remained unmarried and, thus, without a legitimate heir to take her place on the throne upon her death.
Despite the urgency of this matter, her considerations of potential marriage partners among the nobles of England and Europe was repeatedly hindered by the fact that many of her potential marriage partners belonged to, practiced and believed, the doctrines of the Catholic Church and this factor created irreconcilable differences between Elizabeth and her potential suitors, differences which were enough to keep her from going through with a marriage.
In the society of the time, social and political power, whether founded on Catholic or Protestant doctrines, depended on an obedient and faithful religiously ruled society—both lay and clergy, among all classes, all social strata, from nobles to commoners. To ensure its perpetuation, the power structure required a supporting mythology which had to be vigorously and sometimes ruthlessly defended from heretics’ challenges. Elizabeth’s reign was a time in which even educated people took for granted that sorcery was effective, that magic powers were real and could be conjured and directed against others who were helpless to defend against these. Stars, birds and other natural phenomena were routinely taken to be augurs of what, in human affairs, ought to be or ought not to be done. Supposed seers and sages practiced in the occult arts were consulted and they pronounced their interpretations of the signs. Both rulers and the ruled lived and perished according to what was assumed to be God’s inscrutable will. It was a time when alchemists were well paid for their efforts aimed at an ultimate goal: turning base metals into pure gold. Such a goal was believed possible if only the right materials and methods were discovered.
…“Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate ways. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things—for example about the sources of your own power—that will anger allies, dishearten followers or undermine social harmony. Scholars throughout history faced this dilemma: do they serve power or truth? Should they aim to unite people by making sure everyone believes in the same story, or should they let people know the truth even at the price of disunity? The most powerful scholarly establishments—whether of Christian priests, Confucian mandarins or communist ideologues—placed unity above truth. That’s why they were so powerful.
“As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort trying to control the world than on trying to understand it—and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it.” …
“All this does not mean that fake news is not a serious problem, or that politicians and priests have a free license to lie through their teeth. It would also be wrong to conclude that everything is just fake news, that any attempt to discover the truth is doomed to failure, and that there is no difference between serious journalism and propaganda. Underneath all the fake news, there are real facts and real suffering. In Ukraine, for example, Russian soldiers are really fighting, thousands have already died, and hundreds of thousands have really lost their homes.
“Therefore, instead of accepting fake news as the norm, we should recognise it as a far more difficult problem than we tend to assume, and we should strive even harder to distinguish reality from fiction.” …
__________________________
Extract from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, (August, 2018) Jonathan Cape Publishers. From pp. 8-13 of The Observer (London), Sunday, 5 August 2018.
“The Networker” —John Naughton: “Magical thinking about machine learning won’t bring the reality of AI any closer” (p. 27, of The Observer (London), Sunday, 5 August 2018.)
“ ‘Any sufficiently-advanced technology,’ wrote the sci-fi eminence grise Arthur C. Clarke, ‘is indistinguishable from magic.’ This quotation, endlessly recycled by tech boosters, is possibly the most pernicious utterance Clarke ever made because it encourages hypnotised wonderment and disables our critical faculties. For is something is ‘magic’ then by definition it is inexplicable.” …
“Currently, the technology that most attracts magical thinking is artificial intelligence (AI).”
… “Critics have pointed out that the old computing adage ‘garbage in, garbage out’ also applies to ML (machine learning). If the data from which a machine ‘learns’ is biased, then the outputs will reflect those biases. And this could become generalised: we may have created a technology that—however good it is at recommending films you might like—may actually morph into a powerful amplifier of social, economic and cultural inequalities. In all of this socio-political criticism of ML, however, what has gone unchallenged is the idea that the technology itself is technically sound—in other words that any problematic outcomes it produces are, ultimately, down to flaws in the input data. But now it turns out that this comforting assumption may also be questionable. At the most recent Nips (Neural Information Processing Systems) conference—the huge annual gathering of ML experts—Ali Rahimi, on of the field’s acknowledged stars, lobbed an intellectual grenade into the audience. In a remarkable lecture he likened ML to alchemy. Both fields worked to a certain extent—alchemists discovered metallurgy and glass-making; ML researchers have built machines that can beat human ‘Go’ champions and identify objects from pictures. But just as alchemy lacked a scientific basis, so, argued Rahimi, does ML. Researchers, he claimed, often can’t explain the inner workings of their mathematical models: they lack rigorous theoretical understandings of their tools and in that sense are currently operating in alchemical rather than scientific mode.
“Does this matter? Emphatically yes. As Rahimi puts it: ‘We are building systems that govern healthcare and mediate our civic dialogue. We would influence elections. I would like to live in a society whose systems are built on top of verifiable, rigorous, thorough knowledge, and not on alchemy.’
“Me, too. We built what we like to call a civilisation on electricity. But at least we understood why and how it worked. If Rahimi is right, then we’re nowhere near that with AI—yet. So let’s take a break from magical thinking about it.”
65proximity1
Excerpts from Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (2011, Yale University Press) by Stephen Alford
(Note: the work is in fact a general biography of Cecil's family and his entire life rather than only his time at the court of Elizabeth--though, however, that court career (November, 1558 to 4 August, 1598) encompasses the near totality of his adult life.)
_____________________________________________________________
Of course there is every reason to suppose that, indeed, the story which has come down to us is the one which Cecil wanted to have taken as the objective facts. We also have every reason to suppose that Cecil, at fifty-three years of age, needn't have struggled to "recapture what it had been like to be an ambitious young man fighting for life and career" when he could turn to his journals and daily notes for the details of that period. For, as Stephen Alford tells us,
Once someone in Cecil's position risks everything in taking great liberties with the record of his own official acts, once one sets the precedent of such doctoring with records, tampering with a fair factual account so that one's own part is placed in an unduly favourable light, there is really little reason to expect that this shall not become a regular habit of one's mode of operation. If one would tamper with the facts of one's own record of acts over the course of events, why, then, should we expect the same person to shy from taking a similar approach wherever he deemed it important to do so, with the record of others' acts--no less essential to keeping his own place and image in the eyes of posterity safe and secure from a very different and less flattering view of that?
Thus, we are entirely justified in suspecting that, because of his own power and privileges owing to his official roles and, later, after his own death, owing to those of his son, Robert, who succeeded him in his most important roles and by the evidence available carried on many of his father's policies and practices, Cecil had no reason to hesitate after a life of similar practices, to enter into and to alter, for his own personal and family benefit, the records as these concerned the life and times of his son-in-law, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a man so utterly different from Cecil in character and temperament.
(Note: the work is in fact a general biography of Cecil's family and his entire life rather than only his time at the court of Elizabeth--though, however, that court career (November, 1558 to 4 August, 1598) encompasses the near totality of his adult life.)
_____________________________________________________________
"He put his name to a plan to subvert the will (last will) of King Henry VIII by setting Lady Jane Grey on the English throne instead of Henry's oldest daughter, Mary. ... Everything Cecil had worked so hard to achieve for over half a decade rested on the fragile life of a dying boy-king (Edward VI) and on the success of what, however it was dressed up, was pure treason." ...
"To enter Cecil's life in June and July 1553 is to walk through a hall of mirrors. Bias, perception, distortion, memory: all these are problems. If we hope for a neat, objective account of the coup we will not find one. All the sources we have are in some way self-serving. And who can blame their authors?"
"We have Cecil's own account of what happened, delivered to Mary (the new ruling monarch) when it was all over. Can we believe him?"
... ...
We also have Cecil looking over our shoulder. There is a sense from what survives, a subtle hint, that he (Cecil) went through and pruned his own archive. He kept the documents that showed him to be a loyal subject; there is little in his papers that suggests otherwise. He may have done this before he made his peace with Mary in 1553, or even in 1573 when he commissioned Roger Alford's narrative. Perhaps we can imagine the fifty-three-year-old statesman trying to recapture what it had been like to be an ambitious young man fighting for life and career. We shall probably never know."
"So everywhere, and in everything, there are problems. What follows in this chapter (5) might be only a version of the events as they happened. Perhaps it is, in a sense, the authorized story Cecil wanted to be told. Readers will have to judge for themselves."
"There is no way to tell what Cecil and Alford really knew." ...
"...Cecil's political antennae were always finely tuned. He may have been sick at Wimbledon in late May, but he was not in quarantine. Letters passed to and from the court, and it is easy enough to burn a letter that deals with secret business. Doubtless he had visitors, too. If the conspiracy was being planned at court there is no good reason to think that Cecil could not have been part of it."
"He (Cecil) was no political outsider, a neutral civil servant; he was instead a realist and a politician. Cecil rarely allowed himself the luxury of sentiment. By nature he measured, calculated and judged."
(all citations above are from pp. 50-52)
“He was everywhere and everything in Elizabethan government. No piece of paper, no report, no policy, no event or panic or crisis at home or abroad could escape his attention. By design and by instinct he was at the heart of Elizabeth’s court. He controlled the machinery of power. He ran the royal secretariat and chaired meetings of the Privy Council. He advised the Queen daily and read every piece of paper that was sent to her. He was Elizabeth’s voice to the world, for he wrote her letters and proclamations and drafted the instructions to her ambassadors. With ready access to Elizabeth in her private rooms and a mastery of the government machine, he saw and heard all that went on at court.“ (p. 103)
Of course there is every reason to suppose that, indeed, the story which has come down to us is the one which Cecil wanted to have taken as the objective facts. We also have every reason to suppose that Cecil, at fifty-three years of age, needn't have struggled to "recapture what it had been like to be an ambitious young man fighting for life and career" when he could turn to his journals and daily notes for the details of that period. For, as Stephen Alford tells us,
(p. 327) "So much of Burghley's life had to do with paper and parchment. His life was littered with documents: memoranda and letters, reports from ambassadors, the papers of the royal bureaucracy, financial accounts, official records of law courts, humble letters from suitors or poor students--a vast acreage of animal skins and watermarks. This was daily business for Burghley and in much of it there was little that was remarkable." ...
(p. 339) "For almost his whole career Burghley fought off critics and enemies who hated his power and the way he used it." ...
Once someone in Cecil's position risks everything in taking great liberties with the record of his own official acts, once one sets the precedent of such doctoring with records, tampering with a fair factual account so that one's own part is placed in an unduly favourable light, there is really little reason to expect that this shall not become a regular habit of one's mode of operation. If one would tamper with the facts of one's own record of acts over the course of events, why, then, should we expect the same person to shy from taking a similar approach wherever he deemed it important to do so, with the record of others' acts--no less essential to keeping his own place and image in the eyes of posterity safe and secure from a very different and less flattering view of that?
Thus, we are entirely justified in suspecting that, because of his own power and privileges owing to his official roles and, later, after his own death, owing to those of his son, Robert, who succeeded him in his most important roles and by the evidence available carried on many of his father's policies and practices, Cecil had no reason to hesitate after a life of similar practices, to enter into and to alter, for his own personal and family benefit, the records as these concerned the life and times of his son-in-law, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a man so utterly different from Cecil in character and temperament.
66grayhog
"Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a man so utterly different from Cecil in character and temperament."
Indeed, Oxenford bungled everything he touched, while Cecil was a master statesman.
I just saw your post on Politicworm, reminded me of our thread here, so I took a peek.
Looks like you were silent from April to August. You were taking your meds? But you're off them again?
Regardless, I got a good chuckle from your post there: that Oxenford spoke/wrote like an illiterate because he was so well educated, and because he did not have a dictionary to look up proper spelling/usage. Now that's a whopper. =o)
Cheers!
Indeed, Oxenford bungled everything he touched, while Cecil was a master statesman.
I just saw your post on Politicworm, reminded me of our thread here, so I took a peek.
Looks like you were silent from April to August. You were taking your meds? But you're off them again?
Regardless, I got a good chuckle from your post there: that Oxenford spoke/wrote like an illiterate because he was so well educated, and because he did not have a dictionary to look up proper spelling/usage. Now that's a whopper. =o)
Cheers!
67proximity1
Edward Oxford's literary genius—surely neither for the first nor the last time in human history—came with a rare heightened sense of the tragic and a particular sensitivity to injustice and to the selfishly motivated dishonesty and fakery which have always made up so much of life's experience. In addition to these factors, he lived during a time and within a social elite in which late-medieval latin was still used routinely in speech and writing; as an accomplished master of latin, his own name, “Vere”, must have constantly reminded him of its english-language sense, “truth.”
So when, as a boy, Edward came to the study of the history and the languages of ancient Greece and Rome, he found in them not only the same drama which had captured and fired the imagination of young boys for centuries before and since his time, he was learning this history and these languages after having been told over the course of his earlier childhood of his own family's noble history through the preceding fifteen generations down to his father, the sixteenth Earl of Oxford. Thus, ancient Attic and Roman times, through monarchies and republics, were the very social backdrop for the fabric which composed his own elders' and their immediate ancestors' lives, the heritage of which he had to know himself heir to in the most literal as well as figurative senses. This, in sum, explains the source of Oxford's special affinity for latinate culture, for Italy, in particular and for his having made Italy the setting in part or in whole for eight plays: Romeo & Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Othello (Act I), A Midsummer Night's Dream, All's Well That Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest and ancient Rome the setting for three: Coriolanus, Titus and Andronicus and Julius Caesar and ancient Greece (Timon of Athens) or Troy (Troilus and Cressida). The rest of his plays are set in historic England of the 1100s to 1500s or ancient Britain (King Lear, Cymbeline) or in Scotland (Macbeth) or one of seven other foreign settings. (R. Roe, (2011) p.3)
Edward, born into the upper ranks of a social class system which for centuries had been divided lopsidedly between a relatively tiny nobility on one hand and the mass of everyone else of low or of no rank, the commoners comprising the bulk of society, was from the time he could speak, raised and instructed in the details of this class system. All around him he saw his elders as they practiced daily the habits of observance of their own and their peers' ranks—expressed in manners and codes of dress, of gesture, and of speech. C. B. Watson (1960) cites, in the following excerpt, a translation of Castiglione's (Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528)) The Book of the Courtier (translated into English) by Thomas Hoby (London, 1561) —which Edward Oxford praised.
“...a noble line of ancestors provided an incentive to emulate their renowned and pre-eminent virtues. The aristocrat had not only his own reputation to consider but also the good name of his family. (Badesar) Castiglione, for example, insists that his ideal courtier must be born of noble stock:
'For it is a great deale less dispraise for him that is not borne a gentleman to faile in the actes of vertue, then for a gentleman. If he swerve from the steps of his ancestors, hee staineth the name of his familie.' (Th. Hoby, (p. 31-32)
With all of the above in mind, let's turn to consider this view of the personality of the author of “Shakespeare's” works:
Charles Taylor, (2007) Cambridge, Mass., A Secular Age
Chapter 2 : The Rise of the Disciplinary Society, Section 2 :
(p. 110)
“Civility by itself would have led to what (Peter) Burke calls the ‘withdrawal of the upper classes’ from popular culture.
‘In 1500...popular cutlure was everyone’s culture; a second culture for the educated, and the only culture for everyone else. By 1800, however, in most parts of Europe, the clergy, the nobility, the merchants, the professional men—and their wives—had abandoned popular culture to the lower classes, from whom they were now separated, as never before, by profound differences in world view.’
Civility meant that, in the sixteenth century,
‘The nobles were adopting more ‘polished’ manners, a new and more self-conscious style of behaviour, modelled on the courtesy book, of which the most famous was Castiglione’s Courtier. Noblemen were learning to exercise self-control, to behave with nonchalance, to cultivate a style, and to move in a dignified manner as if engaging in a formal dance. Treatises on dancing also multiplied and court dancing diverged from country dancing. Noblemen stopped eating in great dining halls with their retainers and withdrew into separate dining rooms (not to mention ‘drawing rooms’). They stopped wrestling with their peasants, as they used to do in Lombardy, and they stopped killing bulls in public, as they used to do in Spain. The nobleman learned to speak and write ‘correctly’, according to formal rules, and to avoid technical terms and dialect words used by craftsmen and peasants.’ | ( Burke, (1978) New York University, p. 271)
______________
Charles Taylor, (2007) Cambridge, Mass., A Secular Age
(Chapter 5, ‘The Spectre of Idealism’, pp. 214-216)
“I have already mentioned one context, in a sense the original home of this modern idea of order, in the discursive practices of theorists reacting to the destruction of wrought by the Wars of Religion. Their aim was to find a stable basis of legitimacy beyond confessional differences. But this whole attempt needs to be placed in a broader context still: what one might call the taming or domestication of the feudal nobility, which went on from the end of the fourteenth and into the sixteenth century. I mean the transformation of the noble class from semi-independent warrior chieftains, often with extensive followings, who in theory owed allegiance to the King, but in practice were quite capable of using their coercive power for all sorts of ends unsanctioned by royal power, to a nobility of servants of the Crown/nation, who might serve in a military capacity, but were no longer capable of acting independently in this capacity.
“In England, the change came about essentially under the Tudors, who raised a new service nobility over the remnants of the old warrior caste which had laid waste the Kingdom in the Wars of the Roses. In France, the process was longer and more conflictual, involving the creation of a new noblesse de robe alongside the older noblesse d’épée.
“This altered the self-understanding of noble and gentry élites, their social imaginary (sic) (image?) not of the whole society, but of themselves as a class or order within it. It brought with it new models of sociability, new ideals, and new notions of the training required to fulfil their role.
"The idea was no longer that of the semi-independent warrior, the ‘preux chevalier’, with the associated honour code, but rather that of the courtier, acting alongside others in advising/serving royal power. The new gentleman required not principally a training in arms, but a humanistic education which would enable him to become a ‘civil’ governor. The function was now advising, persuading, first colleagues, and ultimately ruling power. It was necessary to cultivate the capacities of self-presentation, rhetoric, persuasion, winning friendships, looking formidable, accommodating, pleasing. Where the old nobles lived on their estates, surrounded by retainers, who were their subordinates, the new top people had to operate in courts or cities, where the hierarchical relations were more complex, frequently ambiguous, sometimes as yet indeterminate, because adept manoeuvring could bring you on the top in a trice (and mistakes could precipitate an abrupt fall.)
“Hence the new importance of humanist training for élites. Instead of teaching your boy to joust, get him reading Erasmus, or Castiglione, so that he knows how to speak properly, make a good impression, converse persuasively with others in a wide variety of situations. This training made sense in the new kind of social space, the new modes of sociability, in which noble or gentry children would have to make their way. The paradigm defining the new sociability is not ritualized combat, but rather conversation, talking, pleasing, being persuasive, in a context of quasi-equality. I mean by this latter term not an absence of hierarchy, because court society was full of this, but rather a context in which hierarchy has to be partly bracketed, because of the complexity, ambiguity, and indeterminacy noted above. So that one learns to talk to people at a great range of levels within certain common constraints of politeness, because this is what being pleasing and persuasive require. You can’t get anywhere either if you’re always pulling rank and ignoring those beneath you, or so tongue-tied you can’t talk to those above.
“These qualities were often packed into the term ‘courtesy’, whose etymology points to a space where they had to be displayed. The term was an old one, going back to the time of the troubadours, and passing through the flourishing Burgundin court of the fifteenth century. But its meaning changed. The older courts were places where semi-independent warriors congregated from time to time for jousts and hierarchical displays around the royal household. But when Castiglione writes his bestselling Courtier, the context is the city-court of the Duchess of Urbino, where the courtier has his permanent abode, and where his occupation is advising his ruler. Life is a continuous conversation.
“In its later meaning, ‘courtesy’ comes to be associated with another term, ‘civility’. This too invokes a dense background, which I tried to describe in Chapter 2, section 2. It was, indeed, also concerned, as we saw, with ordered government, and the repression of excessive violence.”
So when, as a boy, Edward came to the study of the history and the languages of ancient Greece and Rome, he found in them not only the same drama which had captured and fired the imagination of young boys for centuries before and since his time, he was learning this history and these languages after having been told over the course of his earlier childhood of his own family's noble history through the preceding fifteen generations down to his father, the sixteenth Earl of Oxford. Thus, ancient Attic and Roman times, through monarchies and republics, were the very social backdrop for the fabric which composed his own elders' and their immediate ancestors' lives, the heritage of which he had to know himself heir to in the most literal as well as figurative senses. This, in sum, explains the source of Oxford's special affinity for latinate culture, for Italy, in particular and for his having made Italy the setting in part or in whole for eight plays: Romeo & Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Othello (Act I), A Midsummer Night's Dream, All's Well That Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest and ancient Rome the setting for three: Coriolanus, Titus and Andronicus and Julius Caesar and ancient Greece (Timon of Athens) or Troy (Troilus and Cressida). The rest of his plays are set in historic England of the 1100s to 1500s or ancient Britain (King Lear, Cymbeline) or in Scotland (Macbeth) or one of seven other foreign settings. (R. Roe, (2011) p.3)
Edward, born into the upper ranks of a social class system which for centuries had been divided lopsidedly between a relatively tiny nobility on one hand and the mass of everyone else of low or of no rank, the commoners comprising the bulk of society, was from the time he could speak, raised and instructed in the details of this class system. All around him he saw his elders as they practiced daily the habits of observance of their own and their peers' ranks—expressed in manners and codes of dress, of gesture, and of speech. C. B. Watson (1960) cites, in the following excerpt, a translation of Castiglione's (Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528)) The Book of the Courtier (translated into English) by Thomas Hoby (London, 1561) —which Edward Oxford praised.
“...a noble line of ancestors provided an incentive to emulate their renowned and pre-eminent virtues. The aristocrat had not only his own reputation to consider but also the good name of his family. (Badesar) Castiglione, for example, insists that his ideal courtier must be born of noble stock:
'For it is a great deale less dispraise for him that is not borne a gentleman to faile in the actes of vertue, then for a gentleman. If he swerve from the steps of his ancestors, hee staineth the name of his familie.' (Th. Hoby, (p. 31-32)
With all of the above in mind, let's turn to consider this view of the personality of the author of “Shakespeare's” works:
Charles Taylor, (2007) Cambridge, Mass., A Secular Age
Chapter 2 : The Rise of the Disciplinary Society, Section 2 :
(p. 110)
“Civility by itself would have led to what (Peter) Burke calls the ‘withdrawal of the upper classes’ from popular culture.
‘In 1500...popular cutlure was everyone’s culture; a second culture for the educated, and the only culture for everyone else. By 1800, however, in most parts of Europe, the clergy, the nobility, the merchants, the professional men—and their wives—had abandoned popular culture to the lower classes, from whom they were now separated, as never before, by profound differences in world view.’
Civility meant that, in the sixteenth century,
‘The nobles were adopting more ‘polished’ manners, a new and more self-conscious style of behaviour, modelled on the courtesy book, of which the most famous was Castiglione’s Courtier. Noblemen were learning to exercise self-control, to behave with nonchalance, to cultivate a style, and to move in a dignified manner as if engaging in a formal dance. Treatises on dancing also multiplied and court dancing diverged from country dancing. Noblemen stopped eating in great dining halls with their retainers and withdrew into separate dining rooms (not to mention ‘drawing rooms’). They stopped wrestling with their peasants, as they used to do in Lombardy, and they stopped killing bulls in public, as they used to do in Spain. The nobleman learned to speak and write ‘correctly’, according to formal rules, and to avoid technical terms and dialect words used by craftsmen and peasants.’ | ( Burke, (1978) New York University, p. 271)
______________
Charles Taylor, (2007) Cambridge, Mass., A Secular Age
(Chapter 5, ‘The Spectre of Idealism’, pp. 214-216)
“I have already mentioned one context, in a sense the original home of this modern idea of order, in the discursive practices of theorists reacting to the destruction of wrought by the Wars of Religion. Their aim was to find a stable basis of legitimacy beyond confessional differences. But this whole attempt needs to be placed in a broader context still: what one might call the taming or domestication of the feudal nobility, which went on from the end of the fourteenth and into the sixteenth century. I mean the transformation of the noble class from semi-independent warrior chieftains, often with extensive followings, who in theory owed allegiance to the King, but in practice were quite capable of using their coercive power for all sorts of ends unsanctioned by royal power, to a nobility of servants of the Crown/nation, who might serve in a military capacity, but were no longer capable of acting independently in this capacity.
“In England, the change came about essentially under the Tudors, who raised a new service nobility over the remnants of the old warrior caste which had laid waste the Kingdom in the Wars of the Roses. In France, the process was longer and more conflictual, involving the creation of a new noblesse de robe alongside the older noblesse d’épée.
“This altered the self-understanding of noble and gentry élites, their social imaginary (sic) (image?) not of the whole society, but of themselves as a class or order within it. It brought with it new models of sociability, new ideals, and new notions of the training required to fulfil their role.
"The idea was no longer that of the semi-independent warrior, the ‘preux chevalier’, with the associated honour code, but rather that of the courtier, acting alongside others in advising/serving royal power. The new gentleman required not principally a training in arms, but a humanistic education which would enable him to become a ‘civil’ governor. The function was now advising, persuading, first colleagues, and ultimately ruling power. It was necessary to cultivate the capacities of self-presentation, rhetoric, persuasion, winning friendships, looking formidable, accommodating, pleasing. Where the old nobles lived on their estates, surrounded by retainers, who were their subordinates, the new top people had to operate in courts or cities, where the hierarchical relations were more complex, frequently ambiguous, sometimes as yet indeterminate, because adept manoeuvring could bring you on the top in a trice (and mistakes could precipitate an abrupt fall.)
“Hence the new importance of humanist training for élites. Instead of teaching your boy to joust, get him reading Erasmus, or Castiglione, so that he knows how to speak properly, make a good impression, converse persuasively with others in a wide variety of situations. This training made sense in the new kind of social space, the new modes of sociability, in which noble or gentry children would have to make their way. The paradigm defining the new sociability is not ritualized combat, but rather conversation, talking, pleasing, being persuasive, in a context of quasi-equality. I mean by this latter term not an absence of hierarchy, because court society was full of this, but rather a context in which hierarchy has to be partly bracketed, because of the complexity, ambiguity, and indeterminacy noted above. So that one learns to talk to people at a great range of levels within certain common constraints of politeness, because this is what being pleasing and persuasive require. You can’t get anywhere either if you’re always pulling rank and ignoring those beneath you, or so tongue-tied you can’t talk to those above.
“These qualities were often packed into the term ‘courtesy’, whose etymology points to a space where they had to be displayed. The term was an old one, going back to the time of the troubadours, and passing through the flourishing Burgundin court of the fifteenth century. But its meaning changed. The older courts were places where semi-independent warriors congregated from time to time for jousts and hierarchical displays around the royal household. But when Castiglione writes his bestselling Courtier, the context is the city-court of the Duchess of Urbino, where the courtier has his permanent abode, and where his occupation is advising his ruler. Life is a continuous conversation.
“In its later meaning, ‘courtesy’ comes to be associated with another term, ‘civility’. This too invokes a dense background, which I tried to describe in Chapter 2, section 2. It was, indeed, also concerned, as we saw, with ordered government, and the repression of excessive violence.”
68proximity1
... "Sir Harry Calvert inherited the Verney estate at Claydon House in Buckinghamshire from a distant cousin. He assumed the surname Verney by royal license" ...
"As he took stock of his inheritance, Sir Harry discovered a wainscoted gallery at the top of the house. It was 40 feet long, and crammed to overflowing with more than 100,000 family and estate papers. ... There were playbills and rent rolls, newsletters and notebooks, medieval charters and Georgian verse. And there was an enormous amount of personal correspondence, ... The documents ranged in date from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth; the seventeenth century was particularly well represented, with more than 30,000 private letters. ... Sir Harry stumbled upon the largest and most continuous private collection of seventeenth-century correspondence in Britain—perhaps even in the Western world." ...
..."responsible for amassing this collection was Sir Ralph (Verney) (1613-96) ... Sir Ralph kept everything: not only the leases and deeds and inventories which one might expect... but intimate personal letters from his wife and children, his parents, his nine siblings and their families, his aunts and uncles and friends and neighbours. And because he invariably kept the drafts of his replies, and even his rough jottings, he bequeathed to posterity a peculiarly complete
correspondence. This he methodically organised, making note of the subject of each letter, who it was from and the date he received it." ...
"Sir Ralph Verney's son John (1640-1717) continued this tradition of hoarding every scrap of paper that came across his desk. ... He also read and annotated the earlier correspondence, occasionally jotting down the date of a birth, a marriage or a death" ....
"This was the treasure trove which Sir Harry discovered in the gallery at Claydon. News of his find soon began to circulate among scholars and antiquaries;" ...
"In 1853 Bruce edited The Letters and Papers of the Verney Family Down to the End of the Year 1639, again for the Camden Society." ...
... "Late Victorian Britain saw a resurgence of interest in the seventeenth century, and between them John Bruce and Alfred Horwood managed to bring the Verney Papers to the attention of eminent Victorian historians such as S. R. Gardiner and C. H. Firth" ...
"But it was an amateur historian who really established the Verneys as characters worthy of study in their own right. In June 1858 Sir Harry Verney, whose wife Eliza had died the previous year, married for a second time. His bride was thirty-nine-year-old Frances Parthenope Nightingage, the older sister of Florence." ...
____________________
Adrian Tinniswood, (2007) The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England, (pp. xiii-xviii.)
_______________________________________
"The unflagging interest in everything connected with Shakespeare is manifested by the daily additions to the enormous mass of so-called literature under which his memory groans: no guess is too wild, no hypothesis too absurd, to meet with discussion and support at the hands of dramatic students, and even of the general reading public."
______________________
Introduction : General |
—Frederick Gard Fleay, M.A., (1890) A Chronicle of the London Stage 1559-1642
(Reeves and Turner, London) (p. 1)
And yet, though published in 1853, John Bruce's edited compilation of letters of the Verney family down to the end of the year 1639—a period which covered the entire lifetimes of both Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, and of William Shaksper of Stratford, a period which saw the publication in 1623 of the First Folio of the dramatic works of "William Shakespeare", supposedly collected and prepared by John Heminge and Henry Condell—none of the Verneys, whether Ralph or his son John who carried on the preservation of the family archive, ever seems to have seen fit to have recorded the slightest mention concerning one "William Shakespeare" (by any spelling variant of that name) in all their scores of thousands of pieces of correspondence, or, if they had, then, apparently, John Bruce, preparing their papers, for an edited publication in 1853, didn't see fit to include any such mention of "Shakespeare" for there is no mention of that name in the index to Volume 56 (First series) of the Camden Society's edition of the Verney Letters and Papers (Down to the end of the Year 1639).
Moreover, what's especially striking here are two very lucky aspects: first, this kind of archive was clearly unknown to William Cecil, Elizabeth's first secretary, her political right-hand man, Baron Burghley, the most important political operator in her life-long entourage. Cecil (and, indeed, more to the point, his son, Robert Cecil, who succeeded his father as principle secretary to, first, Elizabeth the first and then, on her death, James of Scotland) scoured the records of which he was aware and made sure, using his unrivaled privileges and power, outside those of Elizabeth herself—who, had she been made aware, would herself have approved of such record-'cleansing'—and so, secondly, we know that both what is and, just as importantly, what is not found there tell us things which we may be reasonably confident are free from Burghley's efforts to expunge records which don't flatter him or otherwise tamper with or simply insert false records which present evidence for the version of events which he preferred.
Thus, it ought to be obvious that, if there is no mention of, no reference to, the person of"William Shakespeare" anywhere in the Verney archives, then that's a relevant datum which indicates that the Verney's didn't think William Shakespeare noteworthy for any reason—and Burghley couldn't seed the archive with faked references to him. It's this feature which makes this archive even more valuable for modern researchers on the 'Shakespeare authorship question' than what it holds in intrinsic interest as an unrivaled picture of the people and the times it portrays.
Had the Verney's written of Shakespeare as a known individual and as author of the plays and poetry which we today attribute to him,rather than as merely an unknown name attached to some body of work for which the historical record has left us utterly without any documented connection, that fact should have been shouted from the roof-tops by Stratfordians, held up as definitive proof of their argument.
The absence of any such mention speaks almost as loudly and as significantly in favor of the view that, in fact, William Shaksper had nothing to do with the literary work Stratfordian scholarship attributes to him.
69proximity1
Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson on the general problems of dogmatism:
(at the time-counter 16 mins. 20 secs., Jordan Peterson asks Sam Harris),
Stratfordian scholars are indeed making strong propositional claims—and, indeed, doing all that they can to impose and enforce the near-exclusive teaching of and ignorance-based belief in those claims on the parts of those they instruct—and they are doing that on the basis of assumptions for which there is either no good evidence or simply no evidence at all. Theirs is often sheer invention and supposing.
And that, of course, is what happens and has happened in the academic arena wherever Shakespeare is the subject of study. Formal university courses have, until quite recently and virtually without exception, used their institutional power and authority to effectively shut down, pre-empt, any and all discussion or treatment of the many major points at which the orthodoxy of Stratfordian scholarship promotes claims and assumptions which are not supported or supportable by anything intellectually respectable in the actual document-based evidence.
___________________
Watch the entire video discussion between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, moderated by Bret Weinstein.
(at the time-counter 16 mins. 20 secs., Jordan Peterson asks Sam Harris),
Jordan Peterson:
“What would be the defining characteristics of a religious totalitarian movement that would make it different from a non-religious totalitarian movement? Because there are aspects that are similar.”
Sam Harris:
(at time-counter 16 mins. 20 secs.*) ”They’re very similar. The problem is dogmatism.
“The over-arching problem is believing things strongly on bad evidence. And the reason why dogmatism is so dangerous is that it is—it doesn’t allow us to revise our bad ideas in real-time through conversation. It is—dogmas have to be enforced by force or the threat of force. The moment that someone has a better idea, you have to (i.e. one has to) shut it down in order to preserve your dogma.”
Jordan Peterson:
“Okay, so the commonality seems to be something like: claims of absolute truth at some level that can’t be—that you’re no longer allowed to discuss. Okay, so that’s another point of agreement then because part of the reason that I’ve been, let’s say, a free-speech advocate—although I don’t think that that’s the right way of thinking about it—is because I think of free discourse, like the discourse that we’re engaged in, as the mechanism that corrects totalitarian excess or dogmatic excess.”
... ... ...
Sam Harris:
“I think we often live in the space (i.e. circumstances) where we know there’s a ‘right answer’ which we’re too selfish to fulfil or too short-sighted to fulfil. So, I know there are things I do every day that not only will other people as yet unborn wish I hadn’t done, I might wake up tomorrow wishing I hadn’t done those things, right? So, like, I’m a, I’m a ‘bad friend’ to my ‘future self’ in some respect—to say nothing of the rest of humanity. So we can be—so we can have failures of, we can have weakness of will, we can have failures—that we can just be wrong about certain things, but it’s nowhere written that it’s easy to be a good person, right?”
Bret Weinstein:
“In that case, it’s not even clear what ‘good’ means.”
Sam Harris :
“No, no—it is clear. Even those cases where we know the answer, it might be hard to be motivated by that knowledge, because we’re not a unity, right? Part of, part of what wisdom is, morally, is an ability to live integrated enough with your own, you know, ‘better self’, you know, the advice you would give to a friend, I mean—you know this falls right out of your work (Peterson’s or Weinstein’s)–live as though, basically, treat yourself the way you would treat—I think this is your line—you know, someone you’re, you’re responsible for—or a friend of yours, right? If you can, if you can do that you’re already ahead of where most people are most of the time. But there’s no reason to say that because it’s difficult or because sometimes we’re looking through a glass darkly and can’t figure out what the answer is, that the answer doesn’t exist or that there is no right one.”
... ... ...
..."on certain points, even if we felt that really believing the fiction was advantageous to people—depending on which fiction you're talking about—there's too, there's simply too much evidence against it—you can't, you can't decide to believe something for which you have no evidence simply because of the good effects, the good experience it will give you or you imagine it will give you—I mean that's why 'Pascal's wager' never made any sense: I mean you can't say—the only way you can believe something to be true, really true, not just metaphorically true, is to believe that, if it weren't true, you wouldn't believe it, that you stand in some relation to its truth such that that is the reason you believe it. Now you can't say, you can't be telling yourself, you know, 'I have no evidence for this thing but I know life would be better if I believed it to be true, and so therefore I really believe it's true.' "
Bret Weinstein:
"You don't think that people do that all the time?"
Sam Harris:
"I don't think they do, I think they do things much more like we're talking, the metaphorical truth we're talking about: we act as if things are true without forming any strong propositional claim, and that's fine. That has its own utility."
Stratfordian scholars are indeed making strong propositional claims—and, indeed, doing all that they can to impose and enforce the near-exclusive teaching of and ignorance-based belief in those claims on the parts of those they instruct—and they are doing that on the basis of assumptions for which there is either no good evidence or simply no evidence at all. Theirs is often sheer invention and supposing.
And that, of course, is what happens and has happened in the academic arena wherever Shakespeare is the subject of study. Formal university courses have, until quite recently and virtually without exception, used their institutional power and authority to effectively shut down, pre-empt, any and all discussion or treatment of the many major points at which the orthodoxy of Stratfordian scholarship promotes claims and assumptions which are not supported or supportable by anything intellectually respectable in the actual document-based evidence.
___________________
Watch the entire video discussion between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, moderated by Bret Weinstein.
70Podras.
One of my favorite lines from Much Ado About Nothing is by Beatrice:
"I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you."I can think of situations in which other names than Signior Benedick would be equally appropriate.
71proximity1
It is very far from being only around the core matter of the identity of the rightful author of the work attributed to "William Shakespeare" that, upon inspection, one finds that so much of what is regarded as the standard (i.e. orthodox) scholarship concerning the supposed author of Shakespeare's works to be, over generations, simply 'really very poor scholarship,' to put it kindly. It's found in Shakespeare scholarship touching a great variety of issues—all suffering from starting from false, from erroneous, premises, false assumptions, and proceeding recklessly to equally false and erroneous conclusions. An example is in the matter of the sort of people who comprised the most important part of the audiences which frequented "Shakespeare" plays in London between the years 1576, when the first purpose-built playhouses opened, and 1642, when the authorities closed them.*
Surely some of the error in this is due to ordinary human foibles and the errors committed in what can sometimes be recognized as good-faith efforts on the parts of the scholars concerned. Moreover, a great deal of the corrective work—when there has been any—is often even to the credit of scholars who are or who were, themselves, proponents of Stratfordian orthodoxy and this could, of course, occasionally include the original scholar himself or herself correcting his or her own earlier work with revised editions.
However, when the matter persists over generations without any acknowledgement of error and without due correction, and, this, despite published notices of the existence of these uncorrected errors, then we're left with other explanations for the persistence of the poor scholarship: it's then down to what has to be neglect or, worse, plain refusal by a closed-shop coterie of scholars who are acting in flagrant bad-faith to perpetuate their own tribally-defended rotten work.
In the latter cases, then, the abler and conscientious work of later scholars—as here, below, in the excerpted example of Ann Jennalie Cook—goes largely ignored today by Stratfordians in popular discussion because it does not lend itself to supporting Stratfordian work or, still more, puts the Stratfordian scholars' poor scholarship in open question or refutes it outright.
An example is in the matter of the character of "Shakespeare" 's audiences. As Ann Jennalie Cook poses the question,
According to much standard scholarship (virtually all of it Stratfordian, for there simply was no other kind until the second decade of the 20th century), the answer was that, socially, and from the standpoint of class, commoners made up the majority of the playhouse audiences. That view suited—and still suits—the assumptions that the author, misidentified as William Shaksper of Stratford because the name "William Shakespeare" sometimes appeared on the title-pages of some of the early editions of printed texts, wrote for commoners and that his doing so was the natural and predictable consequence his simply knowing them as peers, of his having come straight out of their ranks himself. By this reasoning, his depictions of royalty and court-life were things he borrowed essentially anywhere but from his own personal lived experiences while his depictions of commoners and their ways and times he knew first-hand by his own life as one of them.
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* (Wikipedia) "In September 1642 the Long Parliament ordered a closure of the London theatres. The order cited the current 'times of humiliation' and their incompatibility with 'public stage-plays', representative of 'lascivious Mirth and Levity'."
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Then there's the nonsensical claim that, in Elizabethan times, the nobility, without any qualification of the class denoted by that term, routinely and spontaneously wrote and published openly under their own names and did this easily since they had nothing to fear by doing so.
That's ridiculous.
Surely some of the error in this is due to ordinary human foibles and the errors committed in what can sometimes be recognized as good-faith efforts on the parts of the scholars concerned. Moreover, a great deal of the corrective work—when there has been any—is often even to the credit of scholars who are or who were, themselves, proponents of Stratfordian orthodoxy and this could, of course, occasionally include the original scholar himself or herself correcting his or her own earlier work with revised editions.
However, when the matter persists over generations without any acknowledgement of error and without due correction, and, this, despite published notices of the existence of these uncorrected errors, then we're left with other explanations for the persistence of the poor scholarship: it's then down to what has to be neglect or, worse, plain refusal by a closed-shop coterie of scholars who are acting in flagrant bad-faith to perpetuate their own tribally-defended rotten work.
In the latter cases, then, the abler and conscientious work of later scholars—as here, below, in the excerpted example of Ann Jennalie Cook—goes largely ignored today by Stratfordians in popular discussion because it does not lend itself to supporting Stratfordian work or, still more, puts the Stratfordian scholars' poor scholarship in open question or refutes it outright.
An example is in the matter of the character of "Shakespeare" 's audiences. As Ann Jennalie Cook poses the question,
"Who were the people for whom Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, and their fellow dramatists wrote plays? Virtually everyone in London for sixty or seventy years must have known the answer to this question, but it is one of history's continuing ironies that what everyone knows rarely seems worth recording and so must be guessed at in later centuries.
"And there are difficulties with any guess, however well informed. Speculation concerning long-dead theatregoers must rest precariously upon such fragmentary data as remain undestroyed by the harsh effects of time. A wide assortment of sermons, official complaints, regulatory documents, diaries, letters, and foreign travelers' accounts as well as passages from plays and other works of literature, all refer to the audiences. For in his own day, the Renaissance playgoer occasioned criticism, controversy, contempt, and curiosity. Reports of his nature varied widely. Was he ignorant or intelligent, riotous or refined, libertine or law-abiding, plebeian or privileged? The answers depended always upon the nature of the report and the reporter. And they still do. Modern accounts of the audience suffer from the bias of the writer fully as much as did the contemporary accounts." — "A Prologue on Playgoers" (p. 3)
According to much standard scholarship (virtually all of it Stratfordian, for there simply was no other kind until the second decade of the 20th century), the answer was that, socially, and from the standpoint of class, commoners made up the majority of the playhouse audiences. That view suited—and still suits—the assumptions that the author, misidentified as William Shaksper of Stratford because the name "William Shakespeare" sometimes appeared on the title-pages of some of the early editions of printed texts, wrote for commoners and that his doing so was the natural and predictable consequence his simply knowing them as peers, of his having come straight out of their ranks himself. By this reasoning, his depictions of royalty and court-life were things he borrowed essentially anywhere but from his own personal lived experiences while his depictions of commoners and their ways and times he knew first-hand by his own life as one of them.
______________________________
* (Wikipedia) "In September 1642 the Long Parliament ordered a closure of the London theatres. The order cited the current 'times of humiliation' and their incompatibility with 'public stage-plays', representative of 'lascivious Mirth and Levity'."
_______________________________________
Ann Jennalie COOK's
The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London, 1576-1642 | (1981) Princeton University Press,
______________________
| Excerpt |
"A Prologue on Playgoers"
(pp. 7-10)
... "Admittedly, it is impossible to achieve a full understanding of the many thousands who attended plays between 1576, when the first playhouse was built in Finsbury Fields, and 1642, when the Puritans closed all the theatres. The direct evidence is oblique, incomplete, and highly colored by the writers' varying intents. The indirect evidence, taken from demography, sociology, economics, literature, history, and a vast assortment of contemporary documents, is correspondingly difficult to interpret with certainty. Nevertheless, when all the testimony is considered, it clearly indicates the dominance of one sort of playgoer over all the others: he was the privileged playgoer.
"The claim that the privileged playgoer dominated theatre audiences does not mean that playhouses were filled exclusively with the privileged. Such was certainly not the case. Anyone with the price of admission could spend an afternoon seeing a play. At various times, especially holidays, many among the masses enjoyed dramatic entertainment, and on any given day ordinary people made their way into the theatres. The real issue posed is whether or not acting companies relied principally upon the support of common folk. Were the theatres truly 'dependent on large plebeian audiences,' as one critic recent critic has claimed? (9) And were the dramatists self-consciously 'addressing a cross-section of society,' especially at the large public playhouses?(10) This present study, while not denying the presence of plebeians among the audiences, indicates that they probably attended in smaller numbers and with less frequency than has been supposed. Moreover, far from reflecting a cross-section of society, the spectators came chiefly from the upper levels of the social order.
"That social order poses a special problem for a twentieth-century person. Inevitably, he imposes his concepts of a class structure upon a Renaissance world that was structured in a rather different way. The very term 'privileged' is a deliberate attempt to avoid the narrow connotations of a term like 'upper class.' By comparison with the rest of society, the privileged were a minority--even in some senses an elite. But within their ranks, they exhibited a tremendous variety in wealth, power, status, and accomplishment, far more even than the present-day upper class. Many who would now be assigned to the middle class then proudly claimed to be gentlemen, a distinction that set them off quite firmly from the commonality. Thus the group called the privileged, though limited in size, was not at all limited in degree, for it ranged from the threadbare scholar or the prospering landholder, newly risen from the yeomanry, all the way up to the nobility and royalty itself.
"Thanks to wealth or birth, to education or achievement, privileged Englishmen followed a life considerably different from the rest of their countrymen. The circumstances of that life and in particular the necessity for disproportionately large numbers of the privileged to be in London, supplied the dramatic companies with a loyal, lucrative audience. It was, moreover, an audience that did not have to be lured into playgoing. The privileged had long fostered the drama as schoolboys, as patrons, and even as playwrights themselves. They enjoyed exclusive performances at Court and in their own mansions. Always regarded as the chief clientele of the small private theatres, the privileged probably dominated the huge public theatre audiences as well. Others also came, but only when they had money and leisure--rare luxuries for most Londoners but commonplace commodities for the privileged. The entertainment on the stage, the peripheral pleasures available in a large gathering of one's peers and near-peers, and the entrenchment of playgoing as an habitual element of existence guaranteed largely privileged audiences in the theatres.
"What follows is an analysis of the privileged life, of the forces that concentrated so many of the privileged in London, of their playgoing while there, of the profits derived from their attendance, and of their plebeian counterparts. Admittedly, the analysis reverses the process used to arrive at the conclusion that the privileged were the chief patrons of the playhouses. The research itself actually began with a consideration of the commoners, those sensible citizens whom Harbage had always seen as the mainstay of Shakespeare's audience. When it became impossible to square either the life style of such folk or the direct evidence with Harbage's conclusions, a fresh look at all the specific references to the playgoers seemed justified.(11) These references alone pointed overwhelmingly to the privileged as the principal theatregoers. But the questions still remained unanswered. Was it possible that London sheltered sufficient numbers of the privileged for them to have predominated even huge playhouses like the Globe? Was the privileged style of life compatible with intensive playgoing? Such questions necessitated extensive research into social, demographic, and economic history. The result has been a much wider way of looking at the audience, for their presence in the theatre stemmed directly from their presence in London and indirectly from their special position in the social structure.
"Thus for the first time, the playgoer can be seen not merely as a disembodied figure important only when he appears in a theatre but rather as part of a total milieu existing in both England as a whole and, more significantly, in the unique society of London. The rise of a commercially profitable theatre and the patrons who fostered that rise cannot, finally, be separated from the social setting. Both theatres and the theatregoers were a phenomenon of their own time. It is to be hoped that a detailed analysis of the life of the affluent patrons will shed considerable light upon various customs associated with playgoing, and upon the plays as well. It is also to be hoped that this analysis does not simply transform an audience once seen as louts or sturdy artisans into an audience of fine gentlemen, in a kind of upward mobility of misperception. Instead, when all factors are carefully considered, it should become reasonably clear that the privileged were indeed the chief patrons of the performances. In a world now vanished it could not have been otherwise."
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A. J. Cook's footnotes and source-references:
(9) : Roebrt Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theatre, ed. Robert Schwartz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 171.
(10) : Harry Levin, "Dramatic Auspices: The Playwright and His Audience," in Shakespeare and the Revolution of the Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 293
(11) : "The Harbage analysis appears in Ann Jennalie Cook's "The Audience of Shakespeare's Plays: A Reconsideration," " Shakespeare Studies 7 (1974): 283-305, with subsequent work in 'The London Theater Audience, 1576-1642,'" Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1972."
Then there's the nonsensical claim that, in Elizabethan times, the nobility, without any qualification of the class denoted by that term, routinely and spontaneously wrote and published openly under their own names and did this easily since they had nothing to fear by doing so.
That's ridiculous.
"Shakespeare vs. Jonson : The Question of Authorship and the
Phenomenon of Authorial Posturing" | by Jean-Marie Maguin
in XVII-XVIII. Bulletin de la société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. N°57, 2003. pp. 131-149;
________________________________
... ...
"In the Elizabethan age, as in our own, men of business, or men bent on a political career have no time for what we call literature neither for reading it nor for writing it. 5 As for courtiers, they write poetry when they have a mind to do so and if they have the necessary skill. The addressee of such productions not infrequently circulates them to others, who make copies of the pieces that catch their fancy and often pass them on to another set of readers. Some commonplace books of the time include accounts of dramatic performances seen, or scraps from plays, or satirical verses referring to contemporary events.6 Pen and paper in the closet fulfil the function nowadays served by photocopiers, fax machines, or the "forward" facility of our e-mail manager software. Thus, Francis Meres, in Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), praises Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends" (p. 281 ; v.2). Contemporary attitudes towards literature and printing are full of contradictions. Classical and foreign books are very generally more numerous in private libraries than books written in English. There are aristocratic preventions against publishing anything but "serious" material: chronicles, treatises, devotional works, translations of texts in foreign tongues. Phoebe Sheavyn, in The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age,7 provides two interestingly contrasted lists. One of aristocratic writers who published their own works; these are Sir John Harrington, Sir Edward Fairfax, Sir Henry Constable, Sir William Alexander, and Sir John Davies. The second list is comprised of aristocrats of higher rank who never published their works, openly at least, in their own lifetime; these are: Sir Edward Dyer, Sir Philip Sidney, the Earle of Oxford, Donne's friend, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Walter Raleigh. Fulke Greville is wrongly included in this second list 8 Greville's Certaine Learned and Elegant Workes did appear five years after his death, in 1633, but his Tragedy of Mustapha had been printed during his lifetime, in 1609, without any masking by initials. James I is, of course, a glaring exception to this aristocratic bashfulness. His complete works appeared in the year of Shakespeare's death, 1616.* Before that, while King of Scotland, in 1584, he had brought out The Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poésie. Various other publications were to follow, prior to his accession to the English throne, including His Maiesties Poeticall Exercises (The Furies, The Lepanto, la Lepanthe) (1591), entered in the Stationer's Register to that Stratfordian printer and friend of Shakespeare, Richard Field, in August 1589. In a letter addressed to William Drummond of Hawthornden, the poet, Earl of Stirling, William Alexander (who had published his Four Senecan tragedies of Croesus, Darius, Alexander and Julius Caesar in 1604 and 1607) complains that James I 'prefers his own (poetic work) to all else' and comments: 'A Prince becomes jealous of possessors of those excellencies which he findeth in himself.'9 Nothing could be clearer: 'Be a royal patron, and leave the literary field free for others!'"
... ...
_________________________________________
5.: The use of the word "literature" or "literary" in the sense of "literary work or production" is not attested by O.E.D. until 1779. In Shakespeare's time, as in the Middle Ages, "literature" meant "acquaintance with letters or books." Shakespeare uses the word once only in his plays, as a verb. He has Fluellen state: "Gower is a good captain, and is good knowdge and literatured in the wars" (Henry F 4.7. 146-47). The use of anachronistic terms is problematic insofar as a word necessarily vehicles the contemporary culture. This is why the terms "author" or poet are generally preferred in this essay.
6.: The better-known examples being the papers left by Charles Percy, third son of Henry Percy the eighth Earl of Northumberland, Edward Pudsey, Simon Forman. Readers may consult the suggestive account of these three men's testimonies by Jean-Christophe Mayer in Patricia Dorval, éd., Shakespeare et ses contemporains (Montpellier: Société Française Shakespeare, 2002) 143-59. The famous drawing of a scene from Titus Andronicus (?), often attributed to Henry Peacham and preserved in the library of the Marquess of Bath at Longleat House, Wiltshire, also falls in this category.
7.: See Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1909) p. 164.
8.: Sheavyn writing in 1909 could not avail herself of Pollard and Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue. It first appeared in 1926.
9.: Cited in Sheavyn, p. 164.
10.: Cited in Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1909). 163.
________________________________
(BSEAA Xlll-XVIII 57 (2003) SHAKESPEARE VS. JONSON 133)
________________________________
* : ..."His complete works appeared in the year of Shakespeare's death, 1616." ........................... LOL!
72proximity1
@ time-marker 53 mins. 20 secs. here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZI-FwSQRn8
Sam Harris : "So then you're basically saying, 'The stupid people need their myths. We smart people on stage (they're speaking from a stage) don't need them.'
Jordan Peterson: "I am, I actually am, look, I actually am saying that to some degree; look, if you're, if you're, if you're not--exceptionally cognitively astute, you should be traditional and conservative--because if you are, if you can't think well, you're going to think badly and if you think badly, you're going to fall into trouble and so it is definitely and the case and this has been--what would you call it?, a cliché of political belief for a long time: If you're not very smart, it's better to be conservative because then you do what everyone else does, and generally speaking, doing what everyone else does is the path of least error moving forward. Now that doesn't mean that rationality is unnecessary--"
Douglas Murray: "Nor does it mean that all conservatives are stupid---"
Jordan Peterson: "It doesn't mean that either, right, precisely, it doesn't mean that either."
_____________________________________________
Sam Harris : “But most of us live our lives in a different place, where it’s just mediocrity and pettiness and needless anxiety—and very dimly we recognize the possibility of overcoming that on a daily basis. And, honestly, I think, the atheism, the lack of belief, the lack of faith in an after-life, for instance, the lack of belief in the notion that you get everything you want or may get everything you want after you die, helps—leads, leads to greater depth rather than to superficiality here; when I kiss my daughters good-night, right? it is with the understanding that I may never see them again, right? It’s not with the assumption that, if the roof caves in, we’ll all be reunited in Heaven, along with our pets—which is what many people find consoling about faith. But that, and so what I would say that I hate in myself and what I hate in our culture is everything that conspires to make the preciousness and sacredness of the present moment difficult to realize. And that’s what, that’s the tide against which I keep pushing.”
— from a discussion at the "O2" Arena, London, July 16th 2018 between Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray: 04 Harris/Murray/Peterson Discussion: London
Sam Harris : "So then you're basically saying, 'The stupid people need their myths. We smart people on stage (they're speaking from a stage) don't need them.'
Jordan Peterson: "I am, I actually am, look, I actually am saying that to some degree; look, if you're, if you're, if you're not--exceptionally cognitively astute, you should be traditional and conservative--because if you are, if you can't think well, you're going to think badly and if you think badly, you're going to fall into trouble and so it is definitely and the case and this has been--what would you call it?, a cliché of political belief for a long time: If you're not very smart, it's better to be conservative because then you do what everyone else does, and generally speaking, doing what everyone else does is the path of least error moving forward. Now that doesn't mean that rationality is unnecessary--"
Douglas Murray: "Nor does it mean that all conservatives are stupid---"
Jordan Peterson: "It doesn't mean that either, right, precisely, it doesn't mean that either."
_____________________________________________
Sam Harris : “But most of us live our lives in a different place, where it’s just mediocrity and pettiness and needless anxiety—and very dimly we recognize the possibility of overcoming that on a daily basis. And, honestly, I think, the atheism, the lack of belief, the lack of faith in an after-life, for instance, the lack of belief in the notion that you get everything you want or may get everything you want after you die, helps—leads, leads to greater depth rather than to superficiality here; when I kiss my daughters good-night, right? it is with the understanding that I may never see them again, right? It’s not with the assumption that, if the roof caves in, we’ll all be reunited in Heaven, along with our pets—which is what many people find consoling about faith. But that, and so what I would say that I hate in myself and what I hate in our culture is everything that conspires to make the preciousness and sacredness of the present moment difficult to realize. And that’s what, that’s the tide against which I keep pushing.”
— from a discussion at the "O2" Arena, London, July 16th 2018 between Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray: 04 Harris/Murray/Peterson Discussion: London
73proximity1
“Good uncle: Being importuned by my Lord to entreat your favour that his man (Robert) Browne, with his (acting) company, may not be barred from their accustomed playing, in maintenance whereof they have consumed the better part of their substance. If so vain a matter shall not seem troublesome to you, I could desire that your furtherance might be a mean to uphold them, for that my Lord, taking delight in them, will keep him from more prodigal courses.”
_________________________________________________________________
( “Good vncle, being importuned by my Lo; to entreat your fauor that his man browne with his companye may not be bared from ther accoustomed plaing in maintenance wher of the(y) haue consumed the better part of ther substance, if so vaine a matter shall not seame troublesum to you I could desire that your furderance might be a meane to vphold them for that my Lo: taking delite in them it will kepe him from moer prodigall courses and make your credit preuaile with him in a greater matter for my good(.) So commending my best loue to you I take my leaue
Your most louing nece,
E. Derbye ” ) (2)
— Elizabeth Stanley (2 July 1575 – 10 March 1627), the Countess of Derby, the eldest daughter of Edward, Earl of Oxford (12 April 1550 – 24 June 1604), is writing here (in the summer of 1599) at the behest of her husband, William Stanley (1561 – 29 September 1642), Lord of Mann and the sixth Earl of Derby, and addressing her uncle, Robert Cecil (1 June 1563 – 24 May 1612), the first Earl of Salisbury, a half-brother of her mother, Ann De Vere (5 December 1556 – 5 June 1588), seeking Robert Cecil’s intervention in support of the Earl of Derby’s company of actors, including one Robert Browne.
Secretary of State Robert Cecil had the capacity to intervene in favour of the Earl and Countess of Derby because he, as successor to his father, Elizabeth Stanley’s own grand-father, William Cecil, first Baron Burghley, in the offices of Secretary of State to both Elizabeth upon the death of his father, and, later, under James the first, and, as Lord Privy Seal under James the first, successor to the throne of England upon Elizabeth’s death, he, Robert, wielded the kind of power which his father, William, wielded when he held these offices.
Elizabeth (de Vere) Stanley’s youngest sister, Susan de Vere (26 May 1587 – 1628/29), became Countess of Pembroke on her marriage to Philip Herbert (10 October 1584 – 23 January 1650), the fourth Earl of Pembroke in June of 1604, as well as Countess of Montgomery, when, a year later, King James bestowed on Herbert the title of first Earl of Montgomery. Philip Herbert and his elder brother, William (8 April 1580 – 10 April 1630), the third Earl of Pembroke, were cited in the dedication of the first folio of the dramatic works of “William Shakespeare” as "the most noble and incomparable pair of brethren"(1) In addition, WIlliam and Philip Herbert's father, Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke ( ~ 1538 – 19 January 1601), was patron of a company of actors known as "Pembroke's Men."
Thus, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, today’s leading candidate as the person most reasonably to be seen, from all the evidence on record, as the real author of the work attributed to “William Shakespeare,” had three surviving daughters, all of whom were well-educated starting from their childhoods. And two of them became wives to men who were key figures in the world of the literary society of their time and, more especially, the society of staged dramas, comedies and histories, the theatre's literature of their time.
Elizabeth’s father, Edward Oxford, was a poet and patron of acting companies; her husband, William Stanley, sixth Earl of Derby, as well as being himself the patron of an acting company, the Earl of Derby’s men, was also the younger son of Henry Stanley, Twelfth Baron Strange (pronounced “strang”) and fourth Earl of Derby, who was the patron of one of the leading acting companies of the day, known as “the Lord Strange’s men.”
Contrast, then, this, the De Vere family’s, the Stanley family’s and the Herbert family’s numerous ties to and associations with the world of the stage and theatre, of sponsoring acting companies and of writing or sponsoring plays, contrast it to the life and the offspring of William Shaksper of Stratford. There, we have no record of any association by marriage or by any other means with any person in any way related to plays or the theatre, with the writing of poetry, with the writing of plays, with the sponsorship of an acting company.
While Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, like his father, the 16th Earl and his grandfather, the 15th Earl before him, was patron to companies of actors known as "Oxford's Men," there were no “Shaksper’s men” nor even any “ ‘Shakespeare’s’ men.” And no record comes down to us of any associations of Shaksper’s children, Susanna, Hamnet or Judith with any poet or playwright or patron of actors.
____________________________________
(1) : “ MR. William SHAKESPEARES Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published according to the True Original Copies London Printed by Ifaac Iaggard, and Ed, Bount. 1623
TO THE MOST NOBLE AND INCOMPARABLE PAIRE OF BRETHREN WILLIAM Earle of Pembroke, &c;. Lord Chamberlaine to the Kings most Excellent Majesty. AND PHILIP Earle of Montgomery,&c;. Gentleman of his Majesties Bed-Chamber. Both Knights of the most Noble Order of the Garter, and our singular good L O R D S.” (dedication from the first folio)
(2) : Berry (1986) The Boar’s Head Playhouse, (Folger Books / Associated University Presses), p. 34.
74proximity1
On August 14th, 1690, a treatise appeared, Auteurs deguisez . Sous des noms etrangers; empruntez, supposez, feints à plaisir, chiffrez, renversez, retournez, ou changez d'une langue en une autre* written by Adrien Baillet and published in Paris by Antoine Dezallier whose bookshop was in the Rue St. Jacques "at the sign of the golden crown."
In this text of more than six hundred pages, Baillet sets out in detail a survey of the methods and the motives by which authors write—and, from ancient times, long wrote—under adopted and invented names. In an appendix to his essay, he presents a catalog of hundreds of names of authors—most of them today unrecognized to the great majority—names spanning centuries and numerous countries and languages, and indicating after each his contention of the real name of the author.
The book is available in a facsimile of its full original French edition at the internet Archive.org site. as well as at Google Books’ page
where one may read, at the contents-pages’ Chapter headings of Part One of the work,
In this text of more than six hundred pages, Baillet sets out in detail a survey of the methods and the motives by which authors write—and, from ancient times, long wrote—under adopted and invented names. In an appendix to his essay, he presents a catalog of hundreds of names of authors—most of them today unrecognized to the great majority—names spanning centuries and numerous countries and languages, and indicating after each his contention of the real name of the author.
The book is available in a facsimile of its full original French edition at the internet Archive.org site. as well as at Google Books’ page
where one may read, at the contents-pages’ Chapter headings of Part One of the work,
“WHEREIN some reflections on the changing of names in general and on the habit of this practice observed throughout the world.”
Chapter One: “Names are subject to the common vicissitude of the things of this world.”…
Chapter Two: “The habit of changing names is very old.”
Chapter Three: “The particular habit of authors to change their names. On the fashion of putting one’s name at the beginning of the work or in the title.”
Chapter Four: “On the habit of changing one’s name having become too common of late.”
And, in the book’s Part Two,
“Of the motives authors have had or may have for changing their names.”
Chapter One: “Some motives or reasons for changing one’s name in general.”
These include changing one’s name out of—
Chapter Two: An admiration for ancient authors (of Greece or Rome), by which an author adopts an ancient author’s name or invents a classical-sounding name or variation on his own name.
Chapter Three: Caution and care for hiding one’s identity so that he may achieve his writing’s purposes without being recognized.
Chapter Four: A fear of falling into disgrace or running the risk of penalties inflicted by one’s adversaries holding credit and authority.
Chapter Five: The shame which springs from producing or publishing something which is (regarded as) beneath one’s social rank and standing in the world or the profession one exercises.
Chapter Six: The fantasy of hiding the lowness of one’s birth or one’s condition; or, on the contrary, that of over stating the unfounded esteem of these same.
followed by nine more motives for changing one’s name.
____________________________
* (trans.) "Authors in Disguise: By assumed names, names borrowed, supposed, pretended for amusement, encrypted, reversed, jumbled, or changed from one language to another"
75proximity1
When academic disciplines become the captives of cult-groups and cult-thinking, the product is always bullshit and that bullshit is sometimes not only stupid but dangerously stupid.
An object-lesson from the world of economics.
See the full video commentary at the link above.
________________________________________________
In a related example, a current article-of-faith among many highly-educated and, especially, very privileged people, is, as the following article's study indicates, that Trump-voters and Britain's 'Brexit'-supporters deserve pity at best and, more often, open scorn and derision since they are such a pitfully clueless bunch of easily duped rubes, woefully lacking in the worldly sophistication of the much privileged people who label them as 'deplorables.' But the article's authors look into and beyond such a simplistic and self-serving rationale seeing, instead :
A rational backlash against globalisation | by Lubos Pastor and Pietro Veronesi | 28 September 2018
____________________________________
An object-lesson from the world of economics.
(From YouTube )"How Economics Became a Cult" Prof. Steve Keen, Kingston University, London| New Economic Thinking
( at 02 mins. : 30 secs. on the time-counter) :
... "Then, what I--what I realised from that is that what an economics-education does is make you into a zealot. You know? It isn't just teaching you how to analyse the (economic) system in some dispassionate sense-- in a similar way to Ptolemaic astronomy made you (i.e. then made one, over the time in which it was taught dogmatically) a zealot, having to be, having Earth at the center because that's where God wanted it, Economics makes you believe that the ideal system is desegregated markets and your role is to get rid of all the elements of the real world that are different to the text-book. Now, that gives you--effectively--you think you've justified it. Ironically, all the mathematical work that has been done, including by neo-classical, is that it doesn't work; but, because they wanted it to work so much, they've brought in those mytho-matical components to jump over problems. And what you've got is a form of cult. And of course the most dangerous cult is the cult that doesn't realize (recognize) it is one. And that is fundamentally what I see a neo-classical economist as being. Very nice people--uhm, but to use a little analogy which I actually used in the second edition of the book, as a school-kid, we were having--had a grade-school teacher let us have open discussions and just, we'd chair the meetings and sit at the back and say nothing, and one day we were discussing some politician and somebody in the class--we were all criticizing this guy--and somebody popped up and said 'well at least he's sincere' and we all agreed with that, yeah, yeah, and were nodding our head sagely, and this teacher popped up from the back of the room and said, 'Don't overrate sincerity.' The most dangerous person you'll meet in the world is the person who's sincerely chasing you down the road trying to cut your head off.' and in a fundamental way, that's what I see a neo-classical economist as being. They have a vision of a perfect world, they're going to lead us there to our own benefit--'We're terribly sorry that it's screwed up.' No we're not; we don't believe it has; it's all your fault. We're going to continue reforming it. " ...
( at 09 mins. 36 secs. on the time-counter) :
... "Economic theory is--most people who aren't economists believe that economists are experts on money. And what they don't realize is, again, one of these little historical accidents. Main-stream economics began fundamentally with Walras' model back in the 1870s when he was trying to model market-trade reaching equilibrium without any external control, and his vision of that was the Paris Bourse (stock-exchange) ... as part of his simplifying assumptions, he assumed no banks, no money and no debt. Now that got ossified into economic theory and at the same time, they wanted to say nominal factors ... only affect the price ratios, the price levels, they don't affect actual economies. So they wanted to have the monetary system having no impact on the real; and that became what they call 'money neutrality.' So all this stuff becomes imbedded in mainstream education. And if you survive an education--or an inculcation--in mainstream economics, you think that " 'money' makes no difference" (i.e. in economic modelling or these models' applications to the real-world circumstances). Well, in the real world, what banks do is create money. And if they create money, they don't create it so that it's in the bank vault and you can pay interest back to the bank, they create it so that you can spend it. ..."
See the full video commentary at the link above.
________________________________________________
In a related example, a current article-of-faith among many highly-educated and, especially, very privileged people, is, as the following article's study indicates, that Trump-voters and Britain's 'Brexit'-supporters deserve pity at best and, more often, open scorn and derision since they are such a pitfully clueless bunch of easily duped rubes, woefully lacking in the worldly sophistication of the much privileged people who label them as 'deplorables.' But the article's authors look into and beyond such a simplistic and self-serving rationale seeing, instead :
A rational backlash against globalisation | by Lubos Pastor and Pietro Veronesi | 28 September 2018
____________________________________
"The vote for Brexit and the election of protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency – two momentous markers of the ongoing pushback against globalisation – led some to question the rationality of voters. This column presents a framework that demonstrates how the populist backlash against globalisation is actually a rational voter response when the economy is strong and inequality is high. It highlights the fragility of globalisation in a democratic society that values equality. "
The ongoing pushback against globalisation in the West is a defining phenomenon of this decade. This pushback is best exemplified by two momentous 2016 votes: the British vote to leave the EU (‘Brexit’) and the election of a protectionist, Donald Trump, to the US presidency. In both cases, rich-country electorates voted to take a step back from the long-standing process of global integration. “Today, globalisation is going through a major crisis” (Macron 2018).
Some commentators question the wisdom of the voters responsible for this pushback. They suggest Brexit and Trump supporters have been confused by misleading campaigns and foreign hackers. They joke about turkeys voting for Christmas. They call for another Brexit referendum, which would allow the Leavers to correct their mistakes.
Rational voters…
We take a different perspective. In a recent paper, we develop a theory in which a backlash against globalisation happens while all voters are perfectly rational (Pastor and Veronesi 2018). We do not, of course, claim that all voters are rational; we simply argue that explaining the backlash does not require irrationality. Not only can the backlash happen in our theory; it is inevitable.
We build a heterogeneous-agent equilibrium model in which a backlash against globalisation emerges as the optimal response of rational voters to rising inequality. A rise in inequality has been observed throughout the West in recent decades (e.g. Atkinson et al. 2011). In our model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. Over time, global growth exacerbates inequality, which eventually leads to a pushback against globalisation.
( Please see full text at the link, above.)
76proximity1
Idiotic misunderstandings (by people who ought to know better) about the craft of creative-writing have helped feed and sustain the idiocy of the Stratfordian orthodoxies concerning the Shakespeare authorship question.
Academics-- Ph.Ds, especially-- who teach Shakespeare courses in English departments are often, if not virtually always, blinkered-slaves to some literary theory which has some or all of the faults outlined in the article cited below by Mike Harris.
The same kind of nonsense that has held up the 'Shaksper is "Shakespeare" ' myth has also fed category-errors which have led people to suppose that a mobile-telephone/computer "APP" can be designed to correct the poor writing of thousands or millions of people who do not know about and never cared enough to bother to study and learn the arts of good writing.
______________________________________________________
Academics-- Ph.Ds, especially-- who teach Shakespeare courses in English departments are often, if not virtually always, blinkered-slaves to some literary theory which has some or all of the faults outlined in the article cited below by Mike Harris.
The same kind of nonsense that has held up the 'Shaksper is "Shakespeare" ' myth has also fed category-errors which have led people to suppose that a mobile-telephone/computer "APP" can be designed to correct the poor writing of thousands or millions of people who do not know about and never cared enough to bother to study and learn the arts of good writing.
_________________________
Shakespeare Was More Creative When
He Was Dead’: Is Creativity Theory a
Better Fit On Creative Writing Than
Literary Theory? | by Mike Harris
(Department of English, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK)
"Literary Theory is largely irrelevant to the teaching, understanding and practice of creative writing. Is Creativity Theory more pertinent?" (1)
_______________________________
doi: 10.1080/14790726.2011.564633
New Writing: International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing.
_______________________________
(1) "The first quarter of this paper is a significantly revised summary of arguments made at greater length in a previously published and readily available on-line paper (Harris, 2009). Some of the arguments made later have been developed inarticles and reviews for Writing in education, the journal of NAWE (The National Association of Writers in Education)"
______________________________________________________
City A.M. Journal
by Elena Shalneva | Column: "Office Politics"
Friday, 5 October, 2018
http://www.cityam.com/264675/lesson-language-apps-not-make-you-good-writer
"A Language Lesson: Apps will not help you write" |
"A machine cannot correct writing style—and claiming otherwise is charlatanism."
... ...
... "And, by the way, who’s on the other side of these apps? Who reads my texts and decides if they are good? Who gave Nietzche a score of 34.6 per cent? Martin Amis? Margaret Atwood?
"No, it’s an algorithm – probably developed by a bloke who writes like this (taken from one of the app’s blogs): 'Our efforts are part of a greater whole that hinges on your abilities as a collaborator to succeed.'
"If you want to become a good writer, forget about the apps.
"Instead, study grammar, use dictionaries, and read, read, read. And by that I mean proper reading: Coetzee, Roth, Gordimer, The Atlantic, Paris Review. You get the message. Jo Jo Moyes and the Daily Express don’t count.
"My conclusion is simple: let’s not outsource language – the main thing that makes us human – to an app.
"My Latin professor told me a wonderful thing once: that to master the grammar of a language, even the most complex one, takes six months. But to master the style takes a lifetime." ...
77proximity1
(Revised)
Without a good grasp of the place and the importance of the incipient world of humanist biblophiles and the great libraries they built from the late 1400s onward, it's impossible to come to a fairly informed view of what later became, in 16th-century Europe, a culture of readers and writers and, within it, the society and culture of early modern Europe's intellectual world--the intellectual world to which the period of the English Enlightenment was heir.
This is a world in which there began to develop--or there continued to develop--the earliest examples of large libraries and a Europe-wide culture of letter-correspondence by important readers, writers and book-collectors and builders of private libraries in the stately homes of certain of the nobility and the wealthy merchant class.
And, without an understanding of this culture, it's also impossible to conceive a clear and accurate picture of the world in which the literary characteristics of Edward, Earl of Oxford, the real author of the writings under the pen-name 'William Shakespeare,' could come about, a picture of how he could be educated and motivated to write what he did and as he did.
To aid in reversing this set of circumstances, that is, to aid the reader in arriving at the kind of informed awareness of this social background and setting, a background which Stratfordians, in the teaching about Shakespeare in university courses on English literature typically ignore completely, I offer below a short excerpt from the work of Professor Angela Nuovo, of Università degli Studi di Udine / University of Udine in which Professor Nuovo introduces readers to the remarkable 16th-century bibliophile and leading member of what came to be called informally 'the republic of letters' **, early library-builder, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601) :
Without a good grasp of the place and the importance of the incipient world of humanist biblophiles and the great libraries they built from the late 1400s onward, it's impossible to come to a fairly informed view of what later became, in 16th-century Europe, a culture of readers and writers and, within it, the society and culture of early modern Europe's intellectual world--the intellectual world to which the period of the English Enlightenment was heir.
This is a world in which there began to develop--or there continued to develop--the earliest examples of large libraries and a Europe-wide culture of letter-correspondence by important readers, writers and book-collectors and builders of private libraries in the stately homes of certain of the nobility and the wealthy merchant class.
And, without an understanding of this culture, it's also impossible to conceive a clear and accurate picture of the world in which the literary characteristics of Edward, Earl of Oxford, the real author of the writings under the pen-name 'William Shakespeare,' could come about, a picture of how he could be educated and motivated to write what he did and as he did.
To aid in reversing this set of circumstances, that is, to aid the reader in arriving at the kind of informed awareness of this social background and setting, a background which Stratfordians, in the teaching about Shakespeare in university courses on English literature typically ignore completely, I offer below a short excerpt from the work of Professor Angela Nuovo, of Università degli Studi di Udine / University of Udine in which Professor Nuovo introduces readers to the remarkable 16th-century bibliophile and leading member of what came to be called informally 'the republic of letters' **, early library-builder, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601) :
"Manuscript Writings on Politics and Current Affairs in the Collection of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601)"
(in Italian Studies (Journal), Vol. 66 No. 2, July, 2011, 193–205 )
… ...
The library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli
The library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, a Neapolitan noble of Genoese origin who lived in Padua for almost all his life, exemplifies this task perfectly. What remains of this renowned collection is now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milano (all shelfmarks of manuscripts given below refer to this library). Specialist studies have shown that Pinelli’s library is a privileged viewpoint from which to understand elite Italian
(POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS IN THE COLLECTION OF PINELLI* (p. 195))
culture of the late Cinquecento, as filtered and organized by its owner’s exceptional talent as a collector. (4) Pinelli’s constant involvement in practically every aspect of contemporary research (from theology to botany, from Aristotelian philosophy to mathematics, from Greek and Latin philology to Galilean mechanics, from antiquarianism to geography) was already stressed by his biographer, Paolo Gualdo, and has emerged still more clearly in recent years, through the publication of Pinelli’s correspondence and the deeper study of works by various authors that were not printed but clearly read with profit by the informal group of scholars that visited his house. (5) It has been shown that his library and his own encouragement of research were especially significant in the field of history of science. Some of his manuscript texts influenced the thought of Galileo.(6) In particular, all the surviving works of the scientist Ettore Ausonio, whose discoveries on optics had a deep influence on Galileo’s work in this field, have reached us through Pinelli in the form of manuscript drafts. (7) Pinelli was perhaps the first person, on this scale, to see in the construction of a huge library the nucleus of a new social function of the man of culture, which he himself was able to put into practice.
Pinelli’s library, as we can study it today, was made up of diverse materials. Beside the printed books, both numerous and exceptional in quality (60 per cent came from Northern Europe), there was an important collection of manuscripts. It included very varied items: from the Ilias picta, the only illuminated manuscript of the fifth century that is a witness to ancient book illustration, to a vast quantity of contemporary documents (the most numerous of which are lessons by Paduan university professors) that constitute the key to the history of the library, its owner, and his circle. This very varied section includes correspondence (mainly with Claude Dupuy, Jacopo Corbinelli, and Fulvio Orsini), (8) first drafts of works by others, catalogues of museums and public and private libraries, (9) remedies and recipes, genealogies and court hierarchies, schemes and drawings, accounts of journeys and visits. It provides first-hand evidence of the intense use of written communication typical of cultured Cinquecento society, a society still bilingual in its daily usage, well aware of its linguistic and rhetorical abilities, constantly engaged in writing instructions, tables, treatises, notes, discourses, lists, reports, and speeches. Pinelli had an exceptional ability to retain even the slightest products of everyday writing, because he was already aware of the value that ephemeral and occasional documents acquire over time; thus he studied throughout his life, and found an effective method of cataloguing them, or for preserving them in relation to the use to be made of them. The nature of the library as a source of information for current affairs, and not only for erudition and philological and scientific research, gradually became evident to its most frequent users. As well as being very learned, Pinelli was rightly recognized as very well informed. The absolute orthodoxy and perfect prudence that always characterized his behaviour, and allowed him to end his life without the slightest stain even in a time of profound tensions, were based also on his access to a vast information network. Political information in a broad sense circulated and was preserved in Pinelli’s library in two forms: on the one hand, newsletters (avvisi), on the other, the ‘scritture’, more or less confidential texts relating to state matters. This separation, both bibliographic and related to the management of the library, gave rise to different kinds of treatment that influenced the solutions devised by later collectors, especially Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc.(10)
____________________________________________________________
(Footnotes)
* Italian Studies (Journal), Vol. 66 No. 2, July, 2011, 193–205 (https://doi.org/10.1179/174861811X13009843386512 )
(2)
Commercium litterarium: la communication dans la République des Lettres 1600–1750, ed. by Hans Bots and Françoise Waquet (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1994); Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Robert Muchembled, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006–07), esp. vols ii, Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, and iii, Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700; The Circulation of News and Knowledge in Intersecting Networks, ed. by Sven Dupré and Sachiko Kusukawa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) (History of Universities, Special Issue, 23.2). On private libraries in particular, see Angela Nuovo, ‘ “Et amicorum”: costruzione e circolazione del sapere nelle biblioteche private del Cinquecento’, in Libri, biblioteche e cultura degli ordini regolari nell’Italia moderna attraverso la documentazione della Congregazione dell’Indice, ed. by Rosa Marisa Borraccini and Roberto Rusconi (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2006), pp. 105–27.
(3)
Antonio Possevino, Apparatus sacer ad scriptores veteris, & novi Testamenti, 3 vols (Venice: apud Societatem Venetam, 1606), i, 241.
(4)
There is an extensive bibliography on Pinelli but no modern monograph on him. The starting point is still Paolo Gualdo’s Vita Ioannis Vincentii Pinelli, Patricii Genuensis, in qua studiosis bonarum artium proponitur typus viri probi et eruditi (Augsburg: Ad insigne pinus, 1607). An overall interpretation of the library is proposed in Angela Nuovo, ‘The Creation and Dispersal of the Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli’, in Books on the Move: Tracking Copies through Collections and the Book Trade, ed. by Giles Mandelbrote and others (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2007), pp. 39–67. In recent years, following the two important contributions of Marcella Grendler, ‘A Greek Collection in Padua: The Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601)’ , Renaissance Quarterly, 33 (1980), 386–416, and Adolfo Rivolta, Catalogo dei codici Pinelliani dell’Ambrosiana (Milan: Tip. pontificia arcivescovile S. Giuseppe, 1933), the Ambrosiana has promoted a series of studies on its manuscript collections that include several contributions on Pinelli: Nuove ricerche sui manoscritti greci dell’Ambrosiana: atti del Convegno, Milano, 5–6 giugno 2003, ed. by Carlo Maria Mazzucchi and Cesare Pasini (Milan: V&P Università, 2004); Nuove ricerche su codici in scrittura latina dell’Ambrosiana: atti del convegno, Milano, 6–7 ottobre 2005, ed. by Mirella Ferrari and Marco Navoni (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2007); Tra i fondi dell’Ambrosiana: manoscritti italiani antichi e moderni, Milano, 15–18 maggio 2007, ed. by Marco Ballarini and others, 2 vols (Milan: Cisalpino, 2008).
(5)
Some examples are analysed in Angela Nuovo, ‘Il fattore umano nelle biblioteche: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli e Piero Vettori’, in Pensare le biblioteche: studi e interventi offerti a Paolo Traniello, ed. by Angela Nuovo, Alberto Petrucciani, and Graziano Ruffini (Rome: Sinnos, 2008), pp. 45–58.
(6)
Walter R. Laird, The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti: An Edition and English Translation of his Dialogue on Mechanics, 1576 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2000) and Leonardo Garzoni, Trattati della calamita, ed. by Monica Uguaglia (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2005), which publishes a text from MS S 82 sup. See, too, Monica Ugaglia, ‘The Science of Magnetism Before Gilbert: Leonardo Garzoni’s Treatise on the Loadstone’, Annals of Science, 63 (2006), 59–84.
(7)
Sven Dupré, ‘Mathematical Instruments and the “Theory of the concave spherical mirror”: Galileo’s Optics beyond Art and Science’, Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza, 15 (2000), 551–88; Dupré, ‘The Dioptrics of Refractive Dials in the Sixteenth Century’, Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza, 18 (2003), 51–67; Dupré, ‘Ausonio’s Mirrors and Galileo’s Lenses: The Telescope and Sixteenth-Century Practical Optical Knowledge’, Galileana, 2 (2005), 145–80. On Ausonio, see Pasquale Ventrice, ‘Ettore Ausonio matematico dell’Accademia Veneziana della Fama’, in Ethos e Cultura: studi in onore di Ezio Riondato (Padua: Antenore, 1991), pp. 1133–54, and Libero Sosio, ‘Paolo Sarpi, un frate nella rivoluzione scientifica’, in Ripensando Paolo Sarpi, ed. by Corrado Pin (Venice: Ateneo Veneto, 2006) pp. 183–236.
(8)
Only the correspondence with Dupuy has been published in full: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and Claude Dupuy, Une correspondance entre deux humanistes, ed. by Anna Maria Raugei, 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, 2001).
(9)
Angela Nuovo, ‘Gian Vincenzo Pinelli’s Collection of Catalogues of Private Libraries in Sixteenth-Century Europe’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 2007, 129–44.
(10)
Angela Nuovo, ‘Ritratto di collezionista da giovane: Peiresc a casa Pinelli’, in Peiresc et l’Italie: actes du colloque international: Naples, le 23 et le 24 juin 2006, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, dir. by Marc Fumaroli, ed. by Francesco Solinas (Paris: Baudry, 2009), pp. 1–17.
_________________________________________________________
**
(On the 'republic of letters' (from the 1550s to the 1750s) in Europe and the 'New World' )
"Networking the Republic of Letters, 1550-1750"
Correspondence was the information superhighway of the early modern world. Between 1550 and 1750, regular exchanges of letters encouraged the formation of virtual communities of people with shared interests in various kinds of knowledge which stretched across the globe. Classical scholars, philologists, antiquaries, patristic scholars, orientalists, theologians, astronomers, botanists, experimental natural philosophers, intelligencers, ‘free-thinkers’, and many other denizens of the Republic of Letters: all cultivated and sustained their professional, social, intellectual, and cultural lives in and through epistolary systems."
(emphasis added)
(http://www.culturesofknowledge.org/?page_id=2)
"Cultures of Knowledge: Networking the Republic of Letters, 1550-1750
"Established in 2009, and now in our third phase (2015-17), we are a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project based at the University of Oxford with funding from The Andrew W Mellon Foundation. We are using digital methods to reassemble and interpret the correspondence networks of the early modern period.
"Website: http://www.culturesofknowledge.org
"(Research Aims)
"Bringing together experts in history, philosophy, science, and literature with librarians, archivists, and systems developers, Cultures of Knowledge is transforming engagement with early modern letters across three interconnected strands of activity:
" ● EMLO: Early Modern Letters Online is our growing union catalogue of correspondence from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Developing EMLO is at the heart of what we do.
" ● Pilot Projects: Two case studies focusing on the epistolary networks of Samuel Hartlib and Jan Amos Comenius are supplying EMLO with research questions and fresh data, and vetting its digital solutions.
" ● Events: A rich programme of seminars, workshops, conferences, and focus groups is informing EMLO’s ongoing development and embedding it within a community of potential users and contributors."
... ...
"The ultimate objective of Cultures of Knowledge is to use the intellectual networks and epistolary cultures as a means of connecting transnational interdisciplinary research across the broad field of early modern intellectual history. The ultimate goal for EMLO is to facilitate this as a resource; to create a platform for radically multilateral scholarly collaboration — a ‘scholarly social machine’ — that will furnish an entire community of scholars and repositories with the means of piecing back together the millions of scholarly letters scattered across and beyond the continent of Europe."
_________________________________________________________
Also by Angela Nuovo :
"il fattore umano nella biblioteche gian vincenzo pinelli e piero vettori" in Pensare le biblioteche : studi e interventi offerti a Paolo Traniello ; Roma : SINNOS Editrice, (2008).
and
"Private Libraries in sixteenth-century Italy" in Early Printed Books as Material Objects: Proceedings of the Conference Organized by the IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Munich, 19-21 August 2009 Bettina Wagner, Marcia Reed ; Walter de Gruyter Verlag, GmbH , Berlin, 2010 (pp. 229-240)
78proximity1
follow on from >77 proximity1:
On the importance of having a correct working-theory—
In his primary text on the arts of negotiation*, Chris Voss, former F.B.I. hostage-negotiator, recounts a case-study from the history of law-enforcement’s hostage-negotiations. For me, his example highlights the importance of operating from an accurate working-theory whenever one is in some problematic set of circumstances which must be reasoned through in order to reach a satisfactory resolution or accurate appreciation or understanding.
(the following is a paraphrase of the account as he gives it in his book)
In their essentials,
The police had been unaware of key information about Griffin’s acts earlier that same morning: before leaving the home of his mother and step-father and going to the Rochester bank, he used the same shotgun to kill his mother as well as a handy-man who was busy hanging wallpaper and to critically-wound his stepfather. The polic had, however, in the meantime been informed of a double-homicide and critical-injury wounding having occurred a few blocks away—without establishing thus far any connection between the two cases. In another error, the police failed to take full account of a long and rambling written message—one devoid of demands—read under Griffin’s orders over the phone by one of the hostages. Instead of the message’s being communicated in its entirety, a key piece of information within it never registered with the police on the scene: that came in the phrase, never included in the part read over the phone, …”after the police take my life”…. In the absence of this information, the police proceeded from what was the incontrovertibly assumed working-theory in all such circumstances: that hostage-takers always communicate demands, always have some desire to either escape capture or, at the very least, avoid being killed in an attempt at escape, failing which, they give themselves up to the police.
As Voss writes,
In the Shakespeare authorship question, Stratfordians start from and stick with—ignoring and dismissing much contrary evidence in the process—an erroneous working theory of the case: the name, “William Shakespeare,” on the title-page, cannot have been a pen-name, and, thus, must refer to and can only refer to one William Shaksper of Stratford Upon Avon.
And, without a valid working-theory, Stratfordians face numerous circumstances in which detailed information does not add up, does not make good sense and cannot be arranged to make good sense because the stubbornly-held premises by which these details are evaluated and interpreted are false, are mistaken.
_________________________________________
* (Voss (2016) Chapter 10: "Find the Black Swan", in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it ; with Tahl Raz, Random House Business Books, (2016) Penguin Random House U.K.),
On the importance of having a correct working-theory—
In his primary text on the arts of negotiation*, Chris Voss, former F.B.I. hostage-negotiator, recounts a case-study from the history of law-enforcement’s hostage-negotiations. For me, his example highlights the importance of operating from an accurate working-theory whenever one is in some problematic set of circumstances which must be reasoned through in order to reach a satisfactory resolution or accurate appreciation or understanding.
(the following is a paraphrase of the account as he gives it in his book)
In their essentials,
On the morning of 17 June, 1981, alone and armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, William Griffin took hostage nine employees of the Security Trust Company of Rochester, New York,. In the ensuing three-and-a-half-hour-standoff, Griffin shot six people who’d happened to be walking in the vicinity outside of the bank and shot and wounded the first two police officers who arrived on the scene in response to the bank’s silent alarm.
At 14h 30, Griffin instructed the bank manager to phone the police to inform them that unless police came to the bank’s front-door at 15h 00 for a shoot-out with him, he would then begin shooting hostages “and throwing out bodies.” With that, the phone line went dead. Griffin had made no other attempts to communicate any demands or conditions for his surrender or for the release of any hostages. In the history of U.S. law-enforcement, there’d been no such prior example of a hostage situation in which the hostage-takers had killed a hostage upon the arrival and passage of an announced dead-line.
But in this case, at the announced hour, and with no other key movement by the police having occurred, Griffin ordered a bank employee to walk to the building’s glass front-doors at which point he shot and killed her. He then went himself to the bank’s front windows and stood there for the brief time necessary for a police sniper, stationed on an adjacent rooftop, to shoot and kill him.
The police had been unaware of key information about Griffin’s acts earlier that same morning: before leaving the home of his mother and step-father and going to the Rochester bank, he used the same shotgun to kill his mother as well as a handy-man who was busy hanging wallpaper and to critically-wound his stepfather. The polic had, however, in the meantime been informed of a double-homicide and critical-injury wounding having occurred a few blocks away—without establishing thus far any connection between the two cases. In another error, the police failed to take full account of a long and rambling written message—one devoid of demands—read under Griffin’s orders over the phone by one of the hostages. Instead of the message’s being communicated in its entirety, a key piece of information within it never registered with the police on the scene: that came in the phrase, never included in the part read over the phone, …”after the police take my life”…. In the absence of this information, the police proceeded from what was the incontrovertibly assumed working-theory in all such circumstances: that hostage-takers always communicate demands, always have some desire to either escape capture or, at the very least, avoid being killed in an attempt at escape, failing which, they give themselves up to the police.
As Voss writes,
“The lesson of what happened at 3 p.m. on June 17, 1981, in Rochester, New York, was that when bits and pieces of a case don’t add up it’s usually because our frames of reference are off; they will never add up unless we break free from our expectations. (emphasis added)
“Every case is new. We must let what we know—our known knowns—guide us but not blind us to what we do not know; we must remain flexible and adaptable to any situation; we must always retain a beginner’s mind; and we must never overvalue our experience or undervalue the informational and emotional realities served up moment by moment in whatever situation we face.
“… If an overreliance on known knowns can shackle a negotiator to assumptions that prevent him from seeing and hearing all that a situation presents, then perhaps an enhanced receptivity to the unknown unknowns can free that same negotiator to see and hear things that can produce dramatic breakthroughs.”
… “The problem is that conventional questioning and research techniques are designed to confirm known knowns and reduce uncertainty. They don’t dig into the unknown.”
In the Shakespeare authorship question, Stratfordians start from and stick with—ignoring and dismissing much contrary evidence in the process—an erroneous working theory of the case: the name, “William Shakespeare,” on the title-page, cannot have been a pen-name, and, thus, must refer to and can only refer to one William Shaksper of Stratford Upon Avon.
And, without a valid working-theory, Stratfordians face numerous circumstances in which detailed information does not add up, does not make good sense and cannot be arranged to make good sense because the stubbornly-held premises by which these details are evaluated and interpreted are false, are mistaken.
_________________________________________
* (Voss (2016) Chapter 10: "Find the Black Swan", in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it ; with Tahl Raz, Random House Business Books, (2016) Penguin Random House U.K.),
79proximity1
CULTURE
"The Case for Oxford | Were the works of Shakespeare really written by the Earl of Oxford?"
________________
by TOM BETHELL | (excerpt from) The Atlantic Monthly | OCTOBER 1991 ISSUE
___________________________________________
"The Case for Oxford | Were the works of Shakespeare really written by the Earl of Oxford?"
________________
by TOM BETHELL | (excerpt from) The Atlantic Monthly | OCTOBER 1991 ISSUE
___________________________________________
"Hamlet is derived from a story in Francois de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (1576), not yet translated into English when Shakespeare adapted it. Shakespeare introduced new characters and greatly enlarged the roles assigned to various characters by Belleforest. One of these magnified characters is Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain to the King of Denmark, who is not even named in the original story. As long ago as 1869 the scholar George Russell French noted the similarities between Queen Elizabeth's principal minister, Lord Burghley, and Polonius in Hamlet. French added that Burghley's son and daughter Robert and Anne Cecil seemed to correspond to Laertes and Ophelia.
"Taking this scenario one step further, Hamlet himself becomes Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Ophelia was unhappily involved with Hamlet; De Vere, who grew up as a royal ward in the household of Lord Burghley, was unhappily married to Anne Cecil. Oxford believed that his wife had been unfaithful to him while he was away on a European tour and (for a time, at least) seems to have doubted that he was the father of her first child. Hamlet says to Polonius, 'Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive.'
"Hamlet> has often been thought to be autobiographical. Was Edward de Vere, then, Shakespeare? Confining ourselves just to Hamlet, we find more than a few additional parallels:
* "Lord Burghley wrote out a set of precepts ("Towards thy superiors be humble yet generous; with thine equals familiar yet respective") strongly reminiscent of the advice Polonius gives to Laertes ("Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar...."). Burghley's precepts, intended for the use of his son Robert, were published in 1618. Hamlet first appeared in quarto in 1603. Edmund K. Chambers, one of the leading Shakespeare scholars of the twentieth century, offered the following explanation: "Conceivably Shakespeare knew a pocket manuscript."
* "In Act II Polonius sends Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in Paris, possibly catching him "drinking, fencing, swearing, quarreling," or "falling out at tennis." In real life Burghley's older son, Thomas Cecil, did go to Paris, whence the well-informed Burghley somehow received information, through a secret channel, of Thomas's "inordinate love of...dice and cards." Oxford, incidentally, did have a real "falling out at tennis"—not a widely practiced sport in those days—with Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Leicester's nephew.
* "Oxford and Hamlet are similar figures, courtiers and Renaissance men of varied accomplishments; both were scholars, athletes, and poets. Many critics have noted Hamlet's resemblance to Castiglione's beau ideal in The Courtier. At the age of twenty-one, Oxford wrote a Latin introduction to a translation of this book. Both Oxford and Hamlet were patrons of play-acting companies.
* "In 1573 Oxford contributed a preface to an English translation of Cardanas Comfort, a book of consoling advice which the orthodox scholar Hardin Craig called Hamlet's book." The book includes passages from which Hamlet's soliloquy was surely taken ("What should we account of death to be resembled to anything better than sleep....We are assured not only to sleep, but also to die....").
* "Oxford stabbed a servant of Burghley's (possibly another of Burghley's spies). Polonius is stabbed by Hamlet while spying on him.
* "Hamlet's trusted friend is Horatio. Oxford's most trusted relative seems to have been Horace Vere, called Horatio in some documents (and so named by the Dictionary of National Biography).
* "Oxford, like Hamlet, was captured by pirates en route to England; both participated in sea battles.
"The parallels between Hamlet and Oxford, ignored by conventional scholarship, were first discovered by J. Thomas Looney (pronounced "LOE-ny," but the harm's been done), an English schoolmaster whose book "Shakespeare" Identified in Edward de Vere was published in 1920. If it is ever vindicated—as is still possible—it will far surpass Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy in the annals of amateur scholarship. Among Looney's converts were Sigmund Freud and John Galsworthy, who said that Looney's book was "the best detective story I have ever read." Looney (who refused his publisher's understandable suggestion that he consider using a pseudonym) died in 1944, his theory widely ignored. After the prolonged controversy over the proposition that Francis Bacon was the real author of the Shakespeare canon, the proposal of yet another candidate seemed to be mere desperation. But Looney had found a candidate far more interesting, and plausible, than the Baconians or anyone else ever had.
"Oxford's life posed an obvious challenge for Looney and his followers (known as Oxfordians), however. The earl's death preceded the Stratford man's by twelve years. Plays dated after 1604, or references in the plays to topical events in the years 1604-1616 (should any be found), would expose Oxford to anachronism. Conventional dating holds that there are ten such plays (I'm not counting Two Noble Kinsmen). And orthodox scholars claim that there is one such topical reference—to the "still-vex'd Bermoothes," in Act I of The Tempest. This is believed to refer to a 1609 shipwreck in Bermuda, not heard of in England until 1610.
"Leaving The Tempest aside for a moment, the nine remaining post-1604 plays are amenable to earlier dating without contradicting any known facts. The date of their composition is quite uncertain, many having appeared for the first time in the posthumous First Folio (1623). Some are dated late simply to fit the period when the Stratford man (1564-1616) is thought to have been in London. He couldn't have been there much before 1587, and there are already numerous signs of uncomfortably early authorship—a published reference to Hamlet in 1589, for example, when the Stratford man was twenty-five years old.
"The conventional dating of many of the supposedly post-1604 plays is more a matter of giving breathing space to Stratfordian chronology than of letting the facts speak for themselves. In addition, one or two conventional scholars date King Lear before 1604; Pericles and Henry V were certainly worked on by another hand; and there is nothing in the remainder—Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale—that requires a post-1604 date. I believe that the latest source material undeniably used by Shakespeare is John Florio's 1603 translation of Montaigne's essay 'Of the Cannibals,' which reappears in much the same words in Act II of The Tempest. Stratfordians have always insisted that this is a late play, and Oxfordians are happy to agree with them.
"Orthodox research into Shakespeare's sources barely conflicts with this analysis. The entire eight volumes of Geoffrey Bullough's Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare contain only one source that is dated after 1604 and deemed a certain, rather than possible or probable, source. This is William Strachey's account of the 1609 shipwreck in Bermuda. In fact, however, there is nothing in Strachey that is certainly in The Tempest, although his description of St. Elmo's fire in the rigging does suggest Ariel's magical powers ('On the topmast, the yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly'). Furthermore, there is nothing in The Tempest that was not known to Elizabethans. If 'Bermoothes' is taken as a reference to Bermuda, Oxfordians point out, not only does Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1598-1600) contain an account of a 1593 shipwreck in Bermuda, but a decade earlier the Earl of Oxford himself had invested in—possibly even owned—the Edward Bonaventure, one of the ships involved in that wreck.
Looney, however, did not know this. Uncharacteristically deferring to the authority of Chambers and other conventional scholars on this point, he accepted the conventional date for The Tempest (1611). In his final chapter, therefore, Looney argued that the play did not belong in the Shakespeare canon. As it is thought to include some of Shakespeare's best verse, this greatly weakened Looney's case. By the time Hakluyt's references to Bermuda were pointed out, Looney had come to seem discredited. In Shakespeare and His Betters (1958), an attack on the anti-Stratfordian heresy, R. C. Churchill claimed that the date of Oxford's death was "decisive" against his candidacy for authorship. In Shakespeare's Lives (1970), S. Schoenbaum more cautiously argued that 'The Tempest presents Looney with his greatest challenge, for topical references and other internal considerations lead him to accept the late date to which the commentators assign it.'
In recent years, however, the earl's fortunes have revived somewhat. Charlton Ogburn's huge book The Mysterious William Shakespeare was published in 1984, attracting many converts to the cause. In the fall of 1987 David Lloyd Kreeger, a Washington philanthropist who died last year (1990), organized a moot-court debate on the authorship question at The American University, presided over by three Supreme Court Justices (William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens). They awarded the verdict to the Stratford man, but Oxford benefited mightily from the exposure.
At the end of his opinion Justice Stevens noted that "the Oxfordian case suffers from not having a single, coherent theory of the case." True, but most Oxfordians (not all, alas) would subscribe to something like the following:
There did exist a man named William Shakspere, of Stratford, but the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare were in fact written by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, the Lord Great Chamberlain and senior earl of England, early a favorite of Queen Elizabeth and usually on good terms with her. (Henceforward I will use "Shakspere" to denote the man from Stratford and "Shakespeare" to denote the author of the plays, whoever he was.) There is abundant evidence, discomforting to Stratfordians, that many of the existing plays are rewritten versions of earlier plays or, more simply date from a time that would require prodigious effort on the part of the Stratford man. Perhaps as many as a dozen plays were written before the Stratford man reached his thirty-first birthday. Oxfordians believe that Oxford wrote the earlier plays for court performance in the 1580s—when Oxford was in his thirties—and that they were later revised for the public theater. Not until 1598 was the name Shakespeare appended to plays. Before then, all published quartos of plays subsequently attributed to Shakespeare had no name on the title page. In associating himself with and writing for the public theater, Oxford was both slumming and enjoying himself—and taking the opportunity to write figuratively about events and people surrounding the court. As it was not acceptable for noblemen to be associated with public (as opposed to court) theater, Oxford agreed to keep his family's name out of it. He wrote "not for attribution," as we now say. Perhaps, as Justice Stevens suggested, the Queen herself so ordered him. Possibly he was content to write pseudonymously without urging."
... ...
________________________________
(See the complete essay at the hyperlink, above.)
80proximity1
An interactive graphic image site:
(* CAVEAT LECTOR)
Network of Edward De vere, 17th Earl of Oxford,
courtier and poet
Network of Edward de Vere & Francis Bacon
____________________________________________
* NOTE THAT THE NETWORK-GRAPHICS IN THE LINKS for "SIX DEGREES OF FRANCIS BACON" are only as good as the information which the designers take for granted as valid. Thus, "Shakespeare" is treated as the authorial entity presumed by Stratfordian orthodoxy, producing the usual nonsense and absurdities which result from that view.
____________________________________________
(* CAVEAT LECTOR)
Network of Edward De vere, 17th Earl of Oxford,
courtier and poet
Network of Edward de Vere & Francis Bacon
____________________________________________
"ABOUT SIX DEGREES OF FRANCIS BACON
Overview
Six Degrees of Francis Bacon is a digital reconstruction of the early modern social network that scholars and students from all over the world can collaboratively expand, revise, curate, and critique. Unlike published prose, Six Degrees is extensible, collaborative, and interoperable: extensible in that people and associations can always be added, modified, developed, or, removed; collaborative in that it synthesizes the work of many scholars; interoperable in that new work on the network is put into immediate relation to previously studied relationships.
This website is hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, and data is available for download both on this site and as part of the Folger Shakespeare Library's digital collections."
___________________________
Site Main homepage: http://sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/?ids=10000473&min_confidence=60&type...
* NOTE THAT THE NETWORK-GRAPHICS IN THE LINKS for "SIX DEGREES OF FRANCIS BACON" are only as good as the information which the designers take for granted as valid. Thus, "Shakespeare" is treated as the authorial entity presumed by Stratfordian orthodoxy, producing the usual nonsense and absurdities which result from that view.
____________________________________________
Networking the Republic of Letters, 1550-1750 | Cultures of Knowledge |
"Links
"The resources collected below relate wholly or in very large part to correspondence and – with a few exceptions, mainly in the first section – deal with early modern letters."
(See the following heading's lists at link just above)
• Epistolary Centres, Multi-Correspondence Research Projects, and Working Groups
EXAMPLE: from "ARCHILET" * (http://www.archilet.it/HomePage.aspx)
* "Archivio delle corrispondenze letterarie italiane di età moderna (secoli XVI-XVII)"
"Reti epistolari (English vers.) Epistolary network
Archivio delle corrispondenze letterarie italiane di età moderna (secoli XVI-XVII)"
"Online archive of Italian literary correspondences in early modern age (16th-17th centuries)
The aim of this project is to create an online database of letters, giving particular attention to Italian literature in 16th and 17th centuries and to its links to other European literatures and cultures. The archive merely registers senders, recipients, date, place of the sender(s) and of the recipient(s), names quoted in the letter, things of relevance, the incipit and the source (i.e. the place where the letter is now kept or the reference edition, if published).
"The database will be always available in open access and constantly increased, thus allowing more and more complex research. The archive will grant scholars an immense and agile database containing information that today would require a big effort in terms of mobility and/or reproduction costs. The ARCHILET approach privileges the relational aspect of culture and of epistolary communication, towards the reconstruction of an overall cultural network. The objective is to place authors and texts into a concrete context and to explain literary choices and cultural relationships on a documentary basis, in order to uncover new perspectives in early modern history and the history of literature, as well as in the history of ideas, religious thought and the history of art."
• Union Catalogues of Letters
• Digital Correspondence Editions
• Digital Archives and Catalogues of Correspondence
Individual Institutions
• Individual Correspondents and Correspondence Networks
• Hard Copy Correspondence Projects
* also includes an online catalogue
81proximity1
...
Till then my Rawleigh, teach our noble Youth
To love Sobriety, and holy Truth;
Watch and preside thou o'er their tender age,
Lest Court Corruptions should their Souls engage:
Tell them how Arts and Arms in thy young days
Employ'd the Youth, nor Tavern, Stews and Plays;
Tell them the generous Scorn they ought to owe
To Flattery, Pimping, and a gaudy Show;
Teach them to scorn a mean, tho' Lordly Name
Procur'd by Lust, by Treachery and Shame;
Make them admire the Sidneys, Talbots, Veres,
Drakes, Cavendish, Baker, Men void of slavish Fears.
True Sons of Glory, Pillars of the State,
On whose fam'd Deeds, all Tongues, all Writers wait.
When with fresh Ardour their brave Breasts do burn,
Back to my dearest Country I'll return;
... ...
(From "Rawleigh's Ghost in Darkness: Or Truth cover'd with a Veil"
By Andrew Marvel, Esq. )
_________________________________________________
Andrew Marvell, ( b. 31 March 1621 – d. 16 August 1678)
"Sidneys, Talbots, Veres,
Drakes, Cavendish, Baker,"
"Men void of slavish Fears.
True Sons of Glory, Pillars of the State,
On whose fam'd Deeds, all Tongues, all Writers wait."
82proximity1
A writer’s experience—authentic versus second-hand knowledge.
Stratfordians typically don’t apparently understand, let alone appreciate, the distinction, for the work creative writers, between authentic, first-hand experience and everything else: the second-hand, the ‘as told by (or overheard from) someone else’. Rather, it would seem that for the vast majority of them, these are simply and practically all the same, one as good as the other for the purposes of the foundations for story-material, a novel, a short-story, a play.
Thus, an author needn’t have actually personally done, gone, seen, felt and heard the things about which he writes. It’s just as good if, instead, he copies-and-pastes-together a patchwork of others’ experience. The writer who has never experienced combat in war is, by such a view, just as able to write vividly and compellingly about the experience of combat as one who has personally lived through it.
With few exceptions, Stratfordians are obliged to defend such an absurd thesis because there is simply nothing to support the idea that their author-theory’s candidate—William Shaksper—ever traveled anywhere abroad, ever saw any of the foreign lands in which his plays have their settings. They’ve effectively conceded that the author who wrote,
never undertook any foreign travel and instead, cribbed absolutely everything of such material from the accounts—second-hand or even worse—of others.
Indeed, for a very long time, these Stratfordian scholars foolishly supposed that their author’s accepted lack of travel-experience accounted for what they wrongly >interpreted as his howling errors in his ‘knowledge’ of distant locales. In turns out, instead, that the author’s descriptions are not only accurate down to the last detail, the accuracy of these is such as defies the credible notion that these details were even probably attributable to another person’s having told him about them. In too many cases, there is simply too detailed and too privileged a knowledge to be reasonably explained as having come catch-as-catch-can from others, and always flawlessly. Now, to shore up their pathetically-crumbling case, Stratfordians are forced to try to insist that what can be far more reasonably interpreted as the fully-correct knowledge from first-hand experience is, instead, a far-fetched notion of an error on their author’s part. Now, they must impose errors on the play’s dialogue and descriptions because the entirely straight-forward interpretation based on his having direct personal experiences behind the scenes and the action puts their case in a hopelessly difficult straits.
So in this, as in so much else, the starting assumptions of Stratfordian scholarship mislead the reader, invite him to suppose a load of nonsense rather than a far more obvious and convincing explanation: the author drew from his personal lived experiences of the foreign placed in which the action unfolds. He describes nobility compellingly because a life of high noble rank was his own personal experience from birth. If his depictions of a monarch’s words and deeds are as true to life as can be, that’s because he was on very close personal terms with one for much of his life.
There is no evidence-supported respectable theory of how the fellow Shaksper has anything of the kind in his life-experience.
That is why Statfordians must suppose that it is just as good for a writer to have heard about something second-hand than to have known it first-hand.
It would seem, then, that according to such a view, an aspiring author today is just as well-advised to go about copying-and-pasting things found on the internet for his story’s foundations as it is to have drawn them out of the store of his own life’s first-hand knowledge.
But that is not at all what 'writing-coaches' and instructors of writing-'workshops' tell their beginner-students. The phrase heard again and again—so often used as to have become a well-worn cliché—is: "write about what you know."
The basis for this advice is simple and well-founded in reason. No matter how poorly the beginner's writing abilities may be, his product is helped by its having the merit of authenticity. It may be criticized as not-very-well-written but it cannot be faulted for its lacking a certain authenticity due to its author's actually knowing what the hell he is talking about because it springs from his own direct knowledge.
It might seem that science-fiction story-tellers are proof of the contrary—since literally none of those who write—or who until recently wrote—about space-travel had had any direct experience of it. But they aren't proof of the contrary. Everything in their work which is most vivid, most compelling, is the stuff of their own direct experiences. That these are placed in a highly artificially contrived setting of inner- or outer-space changes nothing of this essential fact. Their stories' most important elements are, in their essence, terrestrial experiences they themselves have known and these owe simply nothing at all to anything which is exclusively part of space-travel. Technical details may be painted-in to the author's and the reader's heart's content. But none of that is indispensable to the story's dramatic force. All of the latter, to the extent that it is actually very good writing material, is bound up with and inseparable from the lived personal experience of the author.
That so many Stratfordians can miss so important a feature of authenticity in writing is a damning indictment of their intellects; and it is certainly the kind of failing that highlights their unfitness to take on the study and interpretation of Shakespeare for the better instruction of others.
Stratfordians typically don’t apparently understand, let alone appreciate, the distinction, for the work creative writers, between authentic, first-hand experience and everything else: the second-hand, the ‘as told by (or overheard from) someone else’. Rather, it would seem that for the vast majority of them, these are simply and practically all the same, one as good as the other for the purposes of the foundations for story-material, a novel, a short-story, a play.
Thus, an author needn’t have actually personally done, gone, seen, felt and heard the things about which he writes. It’s just as good if, instead, he copies-and-pastes-together a patchwork of others’ experience. The writer who has never experienced combat in war is, by such a view, just as able to write vividly and compellingly about the experience of combat as one who has personally lived through it.
With few exceptions, Stratfordians are obliged to defend such an absurd thesis because there is simply nothing to support the idea that their author-theory’s candidate—William Shaksper—ever traveled anywhere abroad, ever saw any of the foreign lands in which his plays have their settings. They’ve effectively conceded that the author who wrote,
“Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.
Were't not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love,
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad,
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.”
_____________________________________________
(The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I, Scene 1).
never undertook any foreign travel and instead, cribbed absolutely everything of such material from the accounts—second-hand or even worse—of others.
Indeed, for a very long time, these Stratfordian scholars foolishly supposed that their author’s accepted lack of travel-experience accounted for what they wrongly >interpreted as his howling errors in his ‘knowledge’ of distant locales. In turns out, instead, that the author’s descriptions are not only accurate down to the last detail, the accuracy of these is such as defies the credible notion that these details were even probably attributable to another person’s having told him about them. In too many cases, there is simply too detailed and too privileged a knowledge to be reasonably explained as having come catch-as-catch-can from others, and always flawlessly. Now, to shore up their pathetically-crumbling case, Stratfordians are forced to try to insist that what can be far more reasonably interpreted as the fully-correct knowledge from first-hand experience is, instead, a far-fetched notion of an error on their author’s part. Now, they must impose errors on the play’s dialogue and descriptions because the entirely straight-forward interpretation based on his having direct personal experiences behind the scenes and the action puts their case in a hopelessly difficult straits.
So in this, as in so much else, the starting assumptions of Stratfordian scholarship mislead the reader, invite him to suppose a load of nonsense rather than a far more obvious and convincing explanation: the author drew from his personal lived experiences of the foreign placed in which the action unfolds. He describes nobility compellingly because a life of high noble rank was his own personal experience from birth. If his depictions of a monarch’s words and deeds are as true to life as can be, that’s because he was on very close personal terms with one for much of his life.
There is no evidence-supported respectable theory of how the fellow Shaksper has anything of the kind in his life-experience.
That is why Statfordians must suppose that it is just as good for a writer to have heard about something second-hand than to have known it first-hand.
It would seem, then, that according to such a view, an aspiring author today is just as well-advised to go about copying-and-pasting things found on the internet for his story’s foundations as it is to have drawn them out of the store of his own life’s first-hand knowledge.
But that is not at all what 'writing-coaches' and instructors of writing-'workshops' tell their beginner-students. The phrase heard again and again—so often used as to have become a well-worn cliché—is: "write about what you know."
The basis for this advice is simple and well-founded in reason. No matter how poorly the beginner's writing abilities may be, his product is helped by its having the merit of authenticity. It may be criticized as not-very-well-written but it cannot be faulted for its lacking a certain authenticity due to its author's actually knowing what the hell he is talking about because it springs from his own direct knowledge.
It might seem that science-fiction story-tellers are proof of the contrary—since literally none of those who write—or who until recently wrote—about space-travel had had any direct experience of it. But they aren't proof of the contrary. Everything in their work which is most vivid, most compelling, is the stuff of their own direct experiences. That these are placed in a highly artificially contrived setting of inner- or outer-space changes nothing of this essential fact. Their stories' most important elements are, in their essence, terrestrial experiences they themselves have known and these owe simply nothing at all to anything which is exclusively part of space-travel. Technical details may be painted-in to the author's and the reader's heart's content. But none of that is indispensable to the story's dramatic force. All of the latter, to the extent that it is actually very good writing material, is bound up with and inseparable from the lived personal experience of the author.
That so many Stratfordians can miss so important a feature of authenticity in writing is a damning indictment of their intellects; and it is certainly the kind of failing that highlights their unfitness to take on the study and interpretation of Shakespeare for the better instruction of others.
83proximity1
Returning for a moment to >77 proximity1: and the fascinating work of the Italian scholar of 16th-century libraries, Prof. Nuovo writes,
Now, we have these twelve volumes of avvisi having some thousand pages each—twelve thousand pages of documents—which run right through the period ending soon after mid-1601. That's encompasses what is probably many of the last months—or maybe the last few years of Edward Oxford's life. There may, then, documents of interest for anyone looking into documents relating to relations and affairs between important people and events in England and Italy at that time. And this is only one among many, many examples of archival troves which could yield information potentially of high interest for as-yet-undiscovered or rediscovered information recognizable by a researcher looking at things under the right angle of examination.
It's extremely unlikely that any Stratfordian scholars would have already investigated such document troves for their potential value in understanding a "Shakespeare's-works author" 's relations with his contemporary Italian peers--because they can't conceive that there were any such people deserving of their time and attention.
___________________________
Footnotes:
(23) : 1566 (G 276 inf.); 1569 (D 489 inf.); 1573 (D 491 inf.); 1574 (G 274 inf.; G 54 inf.); 1575–76 (D 188 inf.); 1577 (D 493 inf.); 1579–80 (G 266 inf.); 1584 (D 492 inf.); 1584–85 (D 490 inf.); 1594 (G 274 inf.); 1596–98 (G 274 inf.); 1600 (E 142 sup.). (See: https://manus.iccu.sbn.it//opac_SchedaAutoreIndice.php?id=89566&idi=1&la... )
(24) : MS D 491 inf., fols. 178r–79v
* : ..."because the mails from Flanders had not arrived in time."
"The Ambrosiana (library collection) still has a dozen volumes of avvisi going up to 1600, just a few months before his death on 3 August 1601. (23) These volumes can reach even a thousand pages each, but there are also very many newsletters scattered in other manuscripts. Their wide range of origin, which regularly includes cities outside Italy such as Antwerp, Vienna, and Prague, is also a result of the working method of their author-compilers, who assembled texts from different sources before forwarding the result to their clients. In 1573, for example, Campiglia apologized to Pinelli for being able to give him news only from Vienna, because the mails from Flanders had not arrived in time.* (24) Both Campiglia, replaced by Ciliano from 1580, and the other authors were above all collectors and then sorters of diverse source material."
Now, we have these twelve volumes of avvisi having some thousand pages each—twelve thousand pages of documents—which run right through the period ending soon after mid-1601. That's encompasses what is probably many of the last months—or maybe the last few years of Edward Oxford's life. There may, then, documents of interest for anyone looking into documents relating to relations and affairs between important people and events in England and Italy at that time. And this is only one among many, many examples of archival troves which could yield information potentially of high interest for as-yet-undiscovered or rediscovered information recognizable by a researcher looking at things under the right angle of examination.
It's extremely unlikely that any Stratfordian scholars would have already investigated such document troves for their potential value in understanding a "Shakespeare's-works author" 's relations with his contemporary Italian peers--because they can't conceive that there were any such people deserving of their time and attention.
___________________________
Footnotes:
(23) : 1566 (G 276 inf.); 1569 (D 489 inf.); 1573 (D 491 inf.); 1574 (G 274 inf.; G 54 inf.); 1575–76 (D 188 inf.); 1577 (D 493 inf.); 1579–80 (G 266 inf.); 1584 (D 492 inf.); 1584–85 (D 490 inf.); 1594 (G 274 inf.); 1596–98 (G 274 inf.); 1600 (E 142 sup.). (See: https://manus.iccu.sbn.it//opac_SchedaAutoreIndice.php?id=89566&idi=1&la... )
(24) : MS D 491 inf., fols. 178r–79v
* : ..."because the mails from Flanders had not arrived in time."
And sometimes letters never arrived due to the loss through accident or from loss in storms or seizure of ships or other water-craft bearing them in cargo. Later in the 17th century (1652-1832) "documents seized by British navy and privateers from enemy ships in the period 1652-1815" came to be known as the Prize Papers.
"These papers are kept in the archive of the High Court of Admiralty in The National Archives in Kew (London). Approximately a quarter of the Prize Papers originates from Dutch ships. Apart from ship’s journals, lists of cargo, accounts, plantation lists and interrogations of crew members, this collection also contains approximately 38,000 business and private letters. The letters originate from all social strata of society and most of them never reached their intended destination."
__________________________
"10 JANUARY 2014
The ‘Prize Papers’: letters as loot
"Five sea-battles were fought between the Dutch and the English in the North Sea and elsewhere in the world’s oceans during the 17th and 18th centuries." (British Library / European Studies Blog)
84proximity1
More on books of the 16h and 17th centuries and the people who sold, purchased and collected them in their personal libraries--
Essay/Article ( a chapter from Books on the move : tracking copies through collections and the book trade :
Introduction:
The development of the book market and book collecting in the sixteenth century *
Authors:
Giovanna Granata(a)
Angela Nuovo(b)
CITATION: Granata, G., A. Nuovo.“Introduction. The development of the book market and book collecting in the sixteenth century”.
JLIS.it 9, 2 (May 2018): I-III. DOI: 10.4403/jlis.it-12477
_________________________________
This collection of essays on the distribution and acquisition of printed books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is based on the contributions given at the conference Selling & Collecting: Printed Book Sale Catalogues and Private Libraries in Early Modern Europe held at the University of Cagliari in September 2017. In particular, the purpose of the conference was to focus on publishers’and booksellers’ catalogues as evidence of the advertising and selling techniques used by agents in the book trade. A related theme was private libraries, associated with the growing phenomenon of book collecting, which ensured not only the consumption and accumulation, but also often the preservation, of the works being circulated by the book trade.
In recent years increasing attention to private libraries, associated with the growing phenomenon of book collecting, has brought about a renewal of the study of the history of the book in the early modern period. Research has been characterised by the following two themes: the commercial book trade, its economic goals and operational mechanisms, and, on the other hand, the creation of great private collections driven by encyclopedic and sometimes political ambitions. These two fields, however, have only occasionally been examined within a single context
In fact, they are more interconnected than is generally recognized. Book collectors are often remarkable people, and in the early modern period their role was certainly pioneering. They were the first to acquire, store and find ways to retrieve great quantities of books, larger than ever before. In Italy and elsewhere, within a few decades, collections of several hundred books no longer were an exception, and these were in turn eclipsed, by the end of the 16th century, by individual collections containing ten to thirteen thousand volumes.Book collecting had reached a new level, reflecting a book trade which had become ever more sophisticated. More than ever, books traveled through well-organized networks, reaching a wide variety of purchasers, with different interests and different spending capacities. (emphasis added)
Market penetration and expansion were essential needs for publishers. While manuscripts were produced in comparatively limited numbers in few copies and were generally commissioned, producers of printed materials had to cope with the sale of large quantities of copies and findeven more customers to have a sufficient return on investment. In addition, it was essential to reduce the duration of the economic cycle to a minimum in order to recuperate the money invested as quickly as possible so as to survive economically and be able to reinvest earnings in new projects.
Private libraries represented a substantial share of the market for the book trade. Not surprisingly, they also bear witness to their owners’great interest in the marketing tools perfected by trade agents in the early modern period. Among those tools some of the most important were booksellers’and publishers’printed catalogues, which were distributed through wholesale and retail networks, advertising the works currently on offer.
Customers could mark them up to place orders, but they also quickly became instruments of reference. Book collectors started to use them as sources, wish lists, and even as collectable items in themselves. This is why a large number of these vulnerable items are to be found in private collections, many of which are today preserved within institutional libraries.
In the following pages two Italian private libraries are analysed and discussed as the preservation of a collection. Both contain precious and sometimes unique copies of printed booksellers’and publishers’ catalogues. These are the library that Prospero Podiani (1535 ca.–1615) established in Perugia and left to the city with the intention of opening it as a public library in 1582 (studied by Maria Alessandra Panzanelli Fratoni) and the library put together by the Sardinian jurist Monserrat Rossellò (1568 ca.–1613), today held at the Library of the University of Cagliari (studied by Giovanna Granata). Thanks to the Rossellò collection, at least two otherwise totally unknown printed catalogues have survived until today, in particular the only such catalogue known from sixteenth-century Spain, from the bookseller Simone Vassalini (studied by Pedro Rueda). In fact, one of the reasons for choosing Cagliari for our gathering was to draw book historians’and bibliographers’attention to the cultural richness of the city which, precisely because it was peripheral, preserves cultural memories and evidence of underused collections which are in certain ways unique today in Europe. A census focused on the fifteenth-and sixteenth-century editions found in Sardinian collections (CLASAR: Censimento dei Libri Antichi in SARdegna), under the supervision of Giovanna Granata, is now devoted to discovering and making them much better known to scholars. Actually, these findings do not comeasa complete surprise for book historians, since they are familiar with surveying a wide range of cultural and material transfers within the framework of transnational exchanges, a process which characterized the distribution of printed books.
Archival research in Italy is always rewarding and it is especially true with regard to this aspect, as Graziano Ruffini has demonstrated by studying the documentation on the bulk sale of books held in 1583 Genoa. Documents of this kind show that the ability to negotiate and evaluate book stocks was a crucial skill in the booksellers’trade.
Printed sales catalogues, studied by Christian Coppens and Angela Nuovo, are essential sources for a general investigation of sixteenth-century book prices. An extensive survey on their characteristics, purposes and use (Coppens), cannot be separated from the information they give about book prices established directly by the producers (Nuovo).
Among the many features of the history of the book trade which have been explored over the last few decades, one aspect has to a great extent been neglected, in spite of the amount of surviving documentation relating to it: the economic side of the commercial transactions and, in particular, the problem of the prices of the books. Relevant sources on this topic have now begun to be exploited in a more sophisticated way, opening up new perspectives.The evolution of book prices over the early modern period is a subject that could only recently started to be investigated systematically thanks to the EMoBookTrade project, directed by Angela Nuovo and funded by the European Research Council. In order to focus on this subject, the EMoBookTrade research group is taking into account primarily commercial sources containing extensive sets of prices, established by book producers, booksellers and trade professionals in general, such as printed catalogues.
In the following pages, members of the EMoBookTrade team offer some preliminary results of their research on specific problems and sources. The question of book prices is connected with and contextualized within the overall monetary issues of Renaissance Europe by Francesco Ammannati. Specific printed catalogues, their data and the observations that can be drawn from them are treated by Goran Proot in the case of Robert Estienne’s catalogues, by Giliola Barbero with an examination of Giolito’s sale lists, and byFlavia Bruni for Francesco de Franceschi’s books for sale at the Giunti shop in Venice.
These essays offer an exploration of a wide variety of problems posed by these fairly elusive contemporary sources, which hold a hitherto untapped wealth of valuable information which will help us to understand better the ins and outs of the early modern book trade. It is hoped that this collection of studies will inspire new generations of book historians and provide an impetus for the development of improved methods and techniques which will enable these sources to speak to us.
Authors:
a) University of Cagliari, Italy, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6500-5329
b) University of Udine, Italy, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9441-8007
* JLIS.it 9, 2 (May 2018)ISSN: 2038-1026 online Open access article licensed under CC-BYDOI:10.4403/jlis.it-12477
__________
© 2018, The Author(s). This is an open access article, free of all copyright, that anyone can freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts or use them for any other lawful purpose. This article is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. JLIS.it is a journal of the SAGAS Department, University of Florence, published by EUM, Edizioni Università di Macerata (Italy).
85proximity1
William Kent*, author of London Worthies (orig. 1939 reissued, 1949; Phoenix House Ltd., London), tells us in his prefatory remarks of the original edition that these biographical sketches were produced "as (Dr. Samuel) Johnson said of his Dictionary, 'with little assistance of the learned and without any patronage of the great'— that is, they were not the fruit of 'the soft obscurities of retirement' nor done 'under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, sickness and sorrow.'
That is how it often happens that better history and literary criticism gets done--with little help from the (so-called) learned and without any patronage of the great.
Kent, however, as his comments and his sketches show, is widely-read—especially by the light of what passes in the decades since the end of the 20th century for "reading" and being "well-read." Kent is learned and he's got wit, style and imagination to go with his learning.
Everywhere the biographical sketches touch on the subject of "William Shakespeare" and the literary work which academicians attribute to him, Kent shows us where and how conventional scholarship has let the reader down.
Who else is going to inform us, as Kent, under "Alleyn, Edward (1566-1626)" does, that
This is a writer who has to his credit a thirty-page work entitled, Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford: the Real Shakespeare. At his dictionary's entry for "Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)" (pp. 324-326) we read
Then, immediately following his biographical sketch for "William Shakespeare," Kent proceeds quite out of alphabetical order to present :
"EDWARD DE VERE, 17th E. OF OXFORD (1550-1604), plausibly regarded by an increasing number as sharing with Bacon the credit for the Shakespeare plays, lived from 1562-1571 in Cecil House, Strand, the home of Ld. Burghley (q.v.), one of whose daughters became his first wife. From 1571 to 1591 he lived at Oxford Court, London Stone, and at 'Fisher's Folly'." (pp. 326-327)
... etc.
_____________________________
* (1884-1963)
(1) : George A. Saintsbury, Shakespeare : With an Appreciation by Helen Waddell University Press, Cambridge (1934) (p. 18)
Writing just previous to and, then, just after those cited remarks, Professor Saintsbury says,
That is how it often happens that better history and literary criticism gets done--with little help from the (so-called) learned and without any patronage of the great.
Kent, however, as his comments and his sketches show, is widely-read—especially by the light of what passes in the decades since the end of the 20th century for "reading" and being "well-read." Kent is learned and he's got wit, style and imagination to go with his learning.
Everywhere the biographical sketches touch on the subject of "William Shakespeare" and the literary work which academicians attribute to him, Kent shows us where and how conventional scholarship has let the reader down.
Who else is going to inform us, as Kent, under "Alleyn, Edward (1566-1626)" does, that
?
...A.'s papers (including a diary kept from 29th Sept., 1617 to 1st Oct., 1622) are preserved at Dulwich Coll., but there is only one reference to Shakespeare. In an account of household Stuff it is recorded that, in 1609, A. purchased a copy of the Sonnets for fivepence. In 1858 a copy brought £154 7s. 0d."
This is a writer who has to his credit a thirty-page work entitled, Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford: the Real Shakespeare. At his dictionary's entry for "Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)" (pp. 324-326) we read
"Even those of Stratfordian faith are constrained to admit that darkness is about the throne of England's greatest poet. Thus M. R. Ridley, M.A., editor of the re-issue of the Temple Shakespeare admits that 'Of the life of Shakespeare the man very little is known and much has been conjectured.' Therein he follows in the wake of a greater critic, Prof. Saintsbury: 'Almost all the commomly received stuff of his life story is shreds and patches of tradition, if not positive dream work.' (1)
"It is impossible to say when S. (i.e. Shakespeare) first came to L. (i.e. London). His wife bore twins in Feb. 1585, but it is not clear why it should be assumed that he immediately left her. Ridley candidly says: 'After this the mists descend again, and oppose the blankest of negatives to the inquirer. Until 1593, when we find him in London, there is no evidence for Shakespeare's presence in Stratford, or indeed anywhere else.' Notwithstanding, to commemorate the supposed tercentenary of his arrival in L., in 1886 a stained glass window was placed in the ch. (church) of St. James, Curtain Rd., Shoreditch, which was demolished in 1938 and was approximately on the site of the Curtain Theatre. It presented a full-length figure of S., surrounded by a border representing the seven ages of Man from As You Like It. It has recently been transferred to the Ch. of St. Leonard, Shoreditch." ...
Then, immediately following his biographical sketch for "William Shakespeare," Kent proceeds quite out of alphabetical order to present :
"EDWARD DE VERE, 17th E. OF OXFORD (1550-1604), plausibly regarded by an increasing number as sharing with Bacon the credit for the Shakespeare plays, lived from 1562-1571 in Cecil House, Strand, the home of Ld. Burghley (q.v.), one of whose daughters became his first wife. From 1571 to 1591 he lived at Oxford Court, London Stone, and at 'Fisher's Folly'." (pp. 326-327)
... etc.
_____________________________
* (1884-1963)
(1) : George A. Saintsbury, Shakespeare : With an Appreciation by Helen Waddell University Press, Cambridge (1934) (p. 18)
Writing just previous to and, then, just after those cited remarks, Professor Saintsbury says,
... "We are not quite certain of the identity of Shakespeare’s father; we are by no means certain of the identity of his wife; we do not know, save by inference, that Shakespeare and she ever went through the actual ceremony of marriage; we do not know when he began his dramatic career; we know the actual date of the first production of very few of his pieces, let alone that of their composition." ...
_____________________
... "We do not know whether he ever went to school. The early journey to London is first heard of a hundred years after date. The deer stealing reason for it is probably twenty years later. The crystallisation of these and other traditions in Rowe’s biography took place a hundred and forty-six years after the poet’s supposed birth. To hark back: it is not absolutely certain, though it is in the highest degree probable, that the “Shake-scene” in Greene’s outburst is Shakespeare. “Shake-scene” is not so very much more unlikely a term of abuse for an actor than “cushion-” or “tubthumper” for a minister. And Chettle’s supposed apology is absolutely, and, it would seem, studiously, anonymous. The one solid ground on which we can take our stand is supplied by Ben Jonson’s famous, but mainly undated, references. " ...
_____________________
Ref. : https://www.bartleby.com/215/0801.html
86proximity1
Edward de Vere was admitted to Gray's Inn (one of London's Inns of Court) in 1567.* In an appendix (I) to the main text of volume I, at page 484, there are "(Extracts from Other Accounts)"
"Disbursed 1570"
...
"For my L. of Oxfordes armes (1) 10 s 0 d
(that is, ten shillings, zero pence.)
The (modern, i.e. pertaining to Reginald Fletcher's notes, not the note of the original MSS.) footnote reads: "Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was admitted in 1567." (p. 484)
In the introduction to volume I, we read, at p. xxiii:
Thus, once again, key records which covered aspects of the life and times of Edward, Earl of Oxford— or, as in the case concerning the Stratford Upon Avon primary-school's pupils' attendance, the records for the years which are supposed to have been those during which a William Shaksper might have attended—are lost to us.
This same missing set of manuscripts, covering the years 1514-1569, could have been instrumental in settling a question about the alleged membership at Gray's Inn in 1541 of William Cecil, the man who would later become Oxford's powerful guardian as Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries—Oxford became a ward of this Court a short time after the death of his father, John de Vere, the 16th Earl—as well as Cecil's becoming Elizabeth I's key councilor and adviser and, effectively, her political right-hand man from the earliest days of her reign up to the end of Cecil's life. And Cecil, after having been in charge of his ward, the young Edward Oxford, later became Oxford's father-in-law when Edward married Cecil's daughter, Anne.
So, in the end, we have nothing in documentary evidence to support a view of Griffin as 'evidently misinformed' in his regret that Cecil "'never was of Gray's Inn, nor can skill of no law.'"
No documentary evidence contradicting Griffin has come down to us other than by the pen and hand of William Cecil, Lord Burghley himself.
It would then appear that, on the contrary, there can be some doubt of Cecil once upon a time "being himself a member of the Society into which in later years he admitted others."
__________________
Footnotes:
(* : my additions )
(n : footnotes original to the cited published text)
__________________
* p. 484 of The Pension Book of Gray's Inn (Records of the Honourable Society) 1569-1669 (Vol. I), Reginald James Fletcher, M.A., ed. (1901) Chiswick Press. (Archive.org complete Vol. I text (.pdf))
* Sir William Dugdale (12 September 1605 – 10 February 1686) was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject.
* ..."Simon Segar, who held the offices of Chief Butler and
Library Keeper in the reign of Charles II. Segar's manuscript is now at the British Library (Harl. 1912)."
* "The Manor of Portpool" :
* 30.6. : It's impossible for me to tell whether this is intended to indicate "30.6" members or "306" members. I reproduce it here as it appears on the page of the 1901 text.
* "Ancients" : alumni of the Inn could later be honored to be called upon to assume the title and office of "Ancient" member of Inn.
1 to p. xxvii : Calendar of the Hatfield MSS. (Historical MSS. Commission), vol. i., No. 522
* '1520. 13. Sept: I William Cecil am born in Burne in the county of Lincoln.' and '1541. 6 May. I arrive at / come to / Gray's Inn'
2 : See Appendix II. ("Folio 181 1550. Mr. Cecil, Ancient, pardoned for non-attendance at Readings.")
3 : See note on p. 48 :
(which reads) "The admission of William Cecil is given in Segar's MS. under the date 1540, and his call to be Ancient under date May 20th, 1547. The former entry comes from fol. 453 of the first volume of the Admission Book, and the latter from fol. 173 of the first volume of the Pension Book. Segar also says that Lord Burghley was Pensioner of Gray's Inn in 1545. The second volume of the Admission Book, still extant, contains, under the date 1592, certain admissions in his handwriting, signed by him in the usual form: 'Per me W. Burghley.' His sons Thomas (Earl of Exeter) and Robert (Earl of Salisbury) were members of the Inn."
"Disbursed 1570"
...
"For my L. of Oxfordes armes (1) 10 s 0 d
(that is, ten shillings, zero pence.)
The (modern, i.e. pertaining to Reginald Fletcher's notes, not the note of the original MSS.) footnote reads: "Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was admitted in 1567." (p. 484)
In the introduction to volume I, we read, at p. xxiii:
" III. Gray's Inn: 1500-1569
"The history of the Inn during the years 1514-1569 was evidently recorded in all due detail in the lost MS. of which Dugdale* made use. His extracts (appendix II of volume I of the present work) and those of Segar* are our chief sources of information. Apart from these, however, we have documents showing that early in the new century the manor of Portpool finally passed out of the hands of the Greys.* In 1506 Edmund, son of John de Grey of Wilton, with those of other feoffees under Bryan's charter who were still surviving, transferred the property absolutely to Hugh Denys and his wife, Edmund Dudley, Roger Lupton, Godfrey Toppes, Edward Chamberleyn, William Stafford, Richard Broke, John Ernley, Thomas Pygot and others." ...
Thus, once again, key records which covered aspects of the life and times of Edward, Earl of Oxford— or, as in the case concerning the Stratford Upon Avon primary-school's pupils' attendance, the records for the years which are supposed to have been those during which a William Shaksper might have attended—are lost to us.
This same missing set of manuscripts, covering the years 1514-1569, could have been instrumental in settling a question about the alleged membership at Gray's Inn in 1541 of William Cecil, the man who would later become Oxford's powerful guardian as Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries—Oxford became a ward of this Court a short time after the death of his father, John de Vere, the 16th Earl—as well as Cecil's becoming Elizabeth I's key councilor and adviser and, effectively, her political right-hand man from the earliest days of her reign up to the end of Cecil's life. And Cecil, after having been in charge of his ward, the young Edward Oxford, later became Oxford's father-in-law when Edward married Cecil's daughter, Anne.
"Segar's lists are probably a complete record of the admissions from the year 1521. That the lists were kept at an earlier date is intrinsically probable, and is, perhaps, borne out by the fact that his first names come from folio 281 of the Register from which he copied. The average number of admissions in a year between 15221 and the time at which the present volume opens is 30.6. (sic)* In these early lists, and in those of the Ancients* called from time to time, we find many eminent names, including those of Francis Walsingham (admitted 1522), Thomas Cromwell (admitted, 1524; Ancient, 1547), Thomas Wriothesley (admitted, 1534), and William Cecil (admitted, 1540; Ancient, 1547). The membership of Cecil has been questioned on account of an expression used in a letter to him from Griffin, the Queen's attorney, in 1557. Griffin regrets that Cecil 'never was of Gray's Inn, nor can skill of no law.'1 Griffin, however, was evidently misinformed, for in Lord Burleigh's MS. book of Memoranda (Landesdowne MSS., 118) on folio 90B. are the following entries in his own (i.e. Cecil's) writing: "1520. 13 Sept: Ego Gulielmus Cecil natus sum apud Burne in com: Lincoln,' and '1541. 6 Maii. Veni ad Grayes In.'* On pages 48 and 49 of the present volume, too, will be found a contemporary copy of one of his letters, in which he speaks of himself as 'Your loving friend and old fellow of your company,' and of Gray's Inn as 'the place where myself came forth unto service.' The difference of a year in the dates respectively given by Segar and by Burleigh probably arose through a miscalculation by Segar of the year of Our Lord from the regnal year. Burleigh did not read, and in 1550 we hear of his being excused attendance at the Reading.2 It is possible, therefore, that he did not learn law at the Inn. But there can be no doubt of his being himself a member of the Society into which in later years he admitted others. 3
So, in the end, we have nothing in documentary evidence to support a view of Griffin as 'evidently misinformed' in his regret that Cecil "'never was of Gray's Inn, nor can skill of no law.'"
No documentary evidence contradicting Griffin has come down to us other than by the pen and hand of William Cecil, Lord Burghley himself.
It would then appear that, on the contrary, there can be some doubt of Cecil once upon a time "being himself a member of the Society into which in later years he admitted others."
__________________
Footnotes:
(* : my additions )
(n : footnotes original to the cited published text)
__________________
* p. 484 of The Pension Book of Gray's Inn (Records of the Honourable Society) 1569-1669 (Vol. I), Reginald James Fletcher, M.A., ed. (1901) Chiswick Press. (Archive.org complete Vol. I text (.pdf))
* Sir William Dugdale (12 September 1605 – 10 February 1686) was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject.
* ..."Simon Segar, who held the offices of Chief Butler and
Library Keeper in the reign of Charles II. Segar's manuscript is now at the British Library (Harl. 1912)."
* "The Manor of Portpool" :
"Gray’s Inn takes its name from Baron Grey of Wilton (one of the first four Barons Grey de Wilton, between the First Baron, (d.) 1308 and the fourth, (d.) 1370) whose family originally owned the property, called Portpoole Manor at the time, which is where Gray’s Inn is now located. There is evidence that Portpoole Manor, the oldest known building on the site, was used as a place for lodging lawyers. Today Gray’s Inn is still used primarily as a place of residence for its members."
* 30.6. : It's impossible for me to tell whether this is intended to indicate "30.6" members or "306" members. I reproduce it here as it appears on the page of the 1901 text.
* "Ancients" : alumni of the Inn could later be honored to be called upon to assume the title and office of "Ancient" member of Inn.
"From what can be deduced from internal records of the Inn, there were several types of members during the medieval period that are similar to the stratified system which existed in guilds at the same time. The lowest strata of members were students who had not been “called to the bar” and were therefore not allowed to practice law yet. Above them were the “Utter Barristers,” who were allowed to practice law but had not finished their studies. The third highest stratum belonged to the “Ancients,” who held a position of considerable prestige at the Inn, and who were allowed to practice law. The Ancients were only subordinate to the Readers, because they did not assist in the education of future barristers at the inn. Readers also played an important part in the main governing body of Gray’s Inn, called the “Pension.” Although these particular types of members dominated the internal structure of Gray’s Inn for the majority of the medieval period, a new type of member emerged at the end of the sixteenth century: the Bencher. Benchers were scarce during the medieval period but they later went on to dominate the Pension’s governing body in the centuries that followed."
1 to p. xxvii : Calendar of the Hatfield MSS. (Historical MSS. Commission), vol. i., No. 522
* '1520. 13. Sept: I William Cecil am born in Burne in the county of Lincoln.' and '1541. 6 May. I arrive at / come to / Gray's Inn'
2 : See Appendix II. ("Folio 181 1550. Mr. Cecil, Ancient, pardoned for non-attendance at Readings.")
3 : See note on p. 48 :
(which reads) "The admission of William Cecil is given in Segar's MS. under the date 1540, and his call to be Ancient under date May 20th, 1547. The former entry comes from fol. 453 of the first volume of the Admission Book, and the latter from fol. 173 of the first volume of the Pension Book. Segar also says that Lord Burghley was Pensioner of Gray's Inn in 1545. The second volume of the Admission Book, still extant, contains, under the date 1592, certain admissions in his handwriting, signed by him in the usual form: 'Per me W. Burghley.' His sons Thomas (Earl of Exeter) and Robert (Earl of Salisbury) were members of the Inn."
87proximity1
• Biblioteca Italiana Sapienza Università di Roma
• Una bibliografia della Letteratura italiana / UNIL | Université de Lausanne
http://www.classicitaliani.it/index080.htm
For studies on Giovanni Boccaccio and his work:
• http://www.classicitaliani.it/critica_htm/zanella_peste_1348.htm
• http://www.classicitaliani.it/boccaccio/critica/Celati_novella.htm
• http://www.classicitaliani.it/bios/villani_bio_boccaccio.htm
• http://www.casaboccaccio.it/
• The Society for Italian Studies | (selected) Links & Resources |
Italian Studies in the UK and Ireland
• ASMI (Association for the Study of Modern Italy)
• Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR)
• Italian Studies Library Group
• ReadingItaly
• Society for Pirandello Studies
• The British Comparative Literature Association
• The British-Italian Society
• The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies
• The Italian Academies 1525-1700
( An immensely valuable aid to researchers into Edward Oxford's work under the pen-name "Shakespeare". )
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"Italian Academies 1525-1700 the first intellectual networks of early modern Europe
"One of the major outcomes of the project is a comprehensive database of information on
Academies from across the Italian peninsula, detailing their membership and publications.
This is publicly accessible through the British Library on-line catalogue at
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ItalianAcademies/ "
• The Italian Cultural Institutes of Dublin / Edinburgh / London
• The Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies
• The Leopardi Centre at Birmingham
• The Society for Renaissance Studies
Italian Studies in Europe, North America and Australasia
• AIPI – Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano
• MLA (The Modern Language Association)
• Società Dantesca Italiana
• The American Association for Italian Studies
• The American Association of Teachers of Italian
• The British School at Rome
• The Italian Mailbase
• Candian Society for Italian Studies
• Spunti e ricerche; rivista d’italianistica
• Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS)
Academic Associations and Funding Bodies
• Delmas Foundation
• ESRC – Economic and Social Research Council
• EU Framework Programme 7
• HEFCE – Higher Education Funding Council for England
• HERA – Humanities in the European Research Area
• HEA – Higher Education Authority (Ireland)
• Leverhulme Trust
• LLAS – Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies
• Research Information Network
• The British Academy
• The Modern Humanities Research Association
• IRC (Irish Research Council)
• UCML – University Council for Modern Languages
• Vitae
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88proximity1
Film
Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench to star as Shakespeare and wife in Oscar-tipped film |
Veteran Shakespearean actors perform – alongside Ian McKellen – in tale of the playwright’s final years All Is True*, directed by Branagh from script by Ben Elton
By Catherine Shoard | Thu 1 Nov 2018 15.50 GMT
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“A late contender to next year’s Oscar race was announced on Wednesday, as Sony Pictures confirmed their purchase of All Is True, Kenneth Branagh’s latest Shakespearean enterprise.
“The film, which will have a one-week awards-qualifying run in the US before the end of this year, before being released more widely in 2019, stars Branagh as Shakespeare and Dench as his wife, Anne Hathaway. The plot involves Shakespeare’s return to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613 after a devastating fire destroys the Globe theatre.
“The film reportedly examines their by-then troubled marriage, and their grief at the death of their only son, Hamnet. Shakespeare died three years later, aged 52; Hathaway in 1623, aged 67.
“Branagh directs, from a script by Ben Elton. Ian McKellen co-stars as the Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated his two narrative poems, and who has frequently been identified as the “Fair Youth” of his sonnets.
“Branagh, 57, has directed and starred in multiple big screen adaptations of Shakespeare plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1992), Hamlet (1996), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) and As You Like It (2006). Last Christmas he directed and starred as Hercule Poirot in a new version of Murder On the Orient Express; a followup, Death On the Nile, is currently in pre-production.” … …
After Stratfordian academics or their amateur peers, my next-favorite sure-fire source of idiocy about “Shakespeare” and “his literary work” is easily The Guardian (London) newspaper. Here’s a fresh example. This kind of laughable stuff should be a great deal harder to get away with if people had some insight into the identity of the real person responsible for the literary work done under the pen-name, “William Shakespeare.”
Edward Oxford, the real author, is today thought to have died in 1604, making him about 54 years old at his death—and it’s very reasonable to suppose that he died during an outbreak of the plague. Still more ridiculous is casting 79-year-old Ian McKellan as Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, who, according to historical data, was 23 years younger than Oxford and, even according to Stratfordians!, supposedly some nine years younger than William Shaksper; Southampton, who died in 1624 at the age of 51, survived Oxford by twenty years and, it’s supposed, survived William Shaksper by a little over eight years—that is, of course, assuming we have some good idea of the year of Shaksper's death.
Now, how about a biographical film on the life of George Orwell which makes no mention of the life and times of a man by the name of Eric Blair? How about a film biography of Mark Twain—and no mention in it of the life and times of a man by the name of Samuel Clemens? We could have Orwell depicted as a Communist ‘InRealLife’ and Twain depicted as a ‘self-hating’ Black who also happened to be homosexual. Why not? And besides, wasn’t “Shakespeare” ‘gay,’ after all? And his Dark Lady— wasn't she a sub-Saharan African woman?
LOL!
Getting the author's identity correct— it matters. Episodes such as this one remind us again and again of this. All the effort to pretend that it really doesn't matter who the author was nor whether we have rightly identified him is wasted.
If the literary work matters to us then the right identification of their author must also matter. Otherwise, we make fools of ourselves and cheat ourselves of a decent chance at an due appreciation of the work left to us.
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* All Is True ?
Maybe—could it be?— the film's title is actually a sly 'inside' joke?: a pun on Edward De Vere's surname, "Vere" ('Truth'), in which the writers, director and actors are all presenting a farcical tongue-in-cheek 'bio-pic' which they themselves don't for a moment take seriously as subscribing to historical fact.
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(originally posted Wednesday, 7 November, 2018)
Revised (A), (B), (Etc.)
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Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: Shakespeare at 400
By William E. Cain | (Journal) Society, February 2016, Vol. 53 Issue 1| (pp. 83, 85-86 )
(1) (pp. 83)
(2) (pp. 85-86 )
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David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory (1999) London, Routledge Ltd., from the Introduction,
(originally posted Wednesday, 7 November, 2018)
What do you make of that? We have, above, two incompatible views of the proper way, the most meaningful way, to approach reading “Shakespeare’s” work—that much is quite clear, isn’t it? For me, that is to say that the best, most effective and revealing way to approach reading of Oxford’s writings by his ‘Shakespeare’ pen-name is argued over above even though both of these critics reject the Oxfordian view of the ‘Shakespeare’ authorship-question. They’re agreed on the view that William Shaksper wrote the poetry, plays and sonnets which go under the name “William Shakespeare.” But they don’t agree about how best to find the meaning in these writings.
For William Cain, this comes via the understanding that “Shakespeare’s plays are a supreme fiction, and this more than anything explains his astonishing longevity and renown. … This is the supreme fiction that accounts for Shakespeare’s greatness: his life and work are our creations.”
As I see it, that is simply absurd: Shakespeare’s ‘greatness’ and the fact that ”his work” (?) have enjoyed such amazing longevity is down to this presumption that these, after all, are our creative products? Apparently, “Shakespeare” gave us refashioned plots, characters and dialogue of his own making and, together with a stage, scenery and actors playing upon it, reciting rehearsed dialogues and monologues, entries and exits, it’s never the less the reader, past, present and future, or, alternatively, the play-going audience member, past, present or future, who are the real sources of the works’ long-lived greatness. Without them, apparently, the writer who plotted the action, set the scenes, composed the actors’ lines, was, in and of himself, nothing at all other than whatever the present-day reader or audience-member can and does manage to make of him and ’his’ work.
For me, a problem resides in such a theory of literary authorship: some readers or audience-members are capable of seeing and appreciating a very great deal in what is supposedly otherwise the pointless, empty and meaningless plots, scenes and spoken lines while others are not at all so capable. It would seem that the brilliant readers and audience-members might make brilliant stuff of the things which the casual-worker author left behind while other readers and audience-members, having little or nothing of the insight of their fellow readers and audience-members would ‘create’ of the same raw materials a pathetic mess—and they’d likely not be capable of noticing the difference—hmm?
But this critical theory flies in the face of lived experience. It happens that sometimes certain readers and parts of certain audiences who, themselves, are quite incapable of coming up with brilliant interpretation of their own, are none the less able to recognize and at least partially appreciate the interpretations which other much more insightful people make of the same stuff in the play-book text.
If the author’s work is really just whatever each reader or viewer makes of it, nothing more and nothing less, then the author is, by certain regards, anywhere along a spectrum from moron and know-nothing at one end to literary genius at the other depending on the person who is "mak(ing) of 'Shakespeare' what he will," the person who assumes—willingly or not, wittingly or not—the place and role of "the author of these plays." And everything depends on the qualities and capabilities of the present-day’s cohorts of readers and viewers. And yet this, we’re told, is what is behind the centuries-long esteem for this ‘author’ and his so-called ‘work’ : others’ takes, good, bad or indifferent.
To suggest that the literary work which goes under the name of William Shakespeare was, in effect, left to the readers and the hearing audiences to use and fashion at their whim as though it were a lump of formless soft clay is absurd. To suggest that such was the original intention of the works' author is even more absurd.
The complicated fact that the works have come down to us in a set of corrupt and inconsistent and often conflicting versions does not relieve us of a responsibility to discover what these documents can tell us about their author and his ideas, his beliefs, his intentions and his artistic designs and motives—to discover, as best we can—not what we would like to suppose he probably meant according to our view of what people then living were like but, rather, what he, the author, probably meant according to what the best and most complete reading of the historical records tells us he, the then-living author, apparently meant according to the meanings his words then carried.
That it may be difficult for us to know the author's meanings and intentions from his words as these were then known, used and understood, and that it sometimes seems almost impossible for us to reach any firm conclusions on this in various cases— these factors constitute no license or excuse for us to simply throw up our hands and conclude that he, our author, simply may not have had any clear intentions or meanings in mind or conclude that whether he did or not, the point and task is now for us to make of his words whatever we are most pleased to make of them since, ultimately, in some sense, it's all the same one way as any other.
By the same token, our coming to some informed and considered judgments as to the author's identity, his place and role in his own time and the contexts these factors present for any careful investigation of his words and their meanings for him and his peers—all of this constitutes only the first part of our charge as readers and audience to these works.
We then have to take up the task of figuring out what import the author's meanings, designs and intentions do and ought to have for us as we use these literary works to understand ourselves and our own identities, our own meanings, designs and purposes, to arrive at the very challenge of discovering what it means to come to have meanings and to understand how this process is accomplished.
Thus, it is we who understand ourselves better through the best—most astute—understanding of the author of 'Shakespeare's' writings and his works' meanings. From these we start to construct our own ideas for meaning and for our interpretation of ourselves and our acts to ourselves and to each other. He, through his works, is our master, not our servant. It's not for him or anyone since him to take the works he left to us and render them into some sort of arbitrary "relevance" to and for "us" and "our times".
Rather, it's for us to discover who and what we are in part through the effort to discover this author as a person and his work for its purpose and import first to him and his times and, only then, to discover what it even means to have "relevance" to ourselves and our times in the first place. This is the point behind the cited words above from Claude Levi-Strauss in the introduction to La Pensée sauvage. And it's this which is behind the points being urged above in the excerpt from David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare After Theory. (A)
Rather than recognizing and understanding these things, teachers, college professors, theatre producers and stage directors, actors, journalists and literary critics are arguing over how to take ‘Shakespeare’—this presumed historical figure who they do not understand very well—and his literary work, the plays, poems and sonnets—and make them “relevant” to people today, especially to young students taking English literature courses at high schools and universities.
Making "Shakespeare" "relevant" refers, of course, to all manner of efforts to make 'relevant'— i.e., "interesting", "commercially salable," educationally, "bearable to students' modern temperaments" in secondary and higher education"— as much as possible of the conventionally-accepted set of Shakespeare works: the plays, sonnets and poems which constitute what is called the "Shakespeare canon," and, of these, above all else, the plays.
There is a great and abiding anxiety about the "relevance" of "Shakespeare" for members of the mass public— the anxiety is among those members of the professional cultural "elite"—real or pretended—who make it their tasks to reflect and interpret society's dominant cues and conventions back to themselves and to the masses in a consumer society in order to establish a hierarchy of cultural values. Most of their work, or the places in which the anxiety is most pronounced, as it concerns the mass-consumer consumption of "Shakespeare," takes place in the realms of academia (teaching), of journalism (popular news and book publishing) and of theatre-arts (staged plays and film, video or digital visual-recordings of dramatic productions).
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In much, (though, of course not all) of the rest of mass-consumer culture—that is, the 'lower' (or 'low-brow') levels of cheaply-made consumer products—there's not nearly so much anxiety about "Shakespeare" or his "relevance" and this may be simply because the name "Shakespeare" continues to hold such a powerful place for its cultural aura, cachet, as marker and signifier of what is part of a pantheon of cultural icons of taste and refinement in style, that 'all-things-Shakespeare' lend themselves to selling almost anything to which they can be applied; in this there is no preoccupation with any actual content, or meaning or purpose: no literary interpretation needs to be done and certainly no intellectual investment is demanded as a precondition to its appeal or to the profitable resort to the name. Just slap the name "Shakespeare" or the iconic (phony) image:
on whatever it may be and the work is done. "Shakespeare" sells—because a simple content-free recognition is sufficient.
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Globe Education's Dream aims to make Shakespeare relevant to young
(B)
WHETHER the measure which is undertaken in the latest effort to render "Shakespeare's" literary work "relevant" happens to be manifested in the replacement a (male) actor by a (female) actress in a role written for and intended to be played by a (male) actor or is manifested in the resort to 20th-century stage-settings or costumes, these and all other similar instances are examples of the same wackiness which springs from misplaced concerns about the “relevance” of Shakespeare’s work for audiences and readers of the present-day (and future present-days to come) and such examples could be multiplied almost without end*—for the fact is that, as long as the dominant Stratfordian nonsense about the real author’s identity continues to be imposed by a dominant self-sustaining orthodoxy in academia, all kinds of people with perception about what real life is like will feel a spontaneous alienation from “Shakespeare,” this Stratford-Upon-Avon 'man-without-qualities,' unable to make any sense of his relationship to the literary work falsely attributed to this pen-name.
To ‘remedy’ that, people in charge, following the lead of academics, shall undertake ever more desperate efforts to make the works “relate” to the present day. Meanwhile, people will continue to take up the plays, poems and sonnets and read them and feel their power; in the process, they’ll drop, dismiss, dispense with the clownish buffoon they’re offered as the personality behind the literature.
As Professor Paul Hamilton's insightful critiques have made clear:
( * It's simple to put this to the test. Simply go to your usual "Google" search-engine and enter the key-term string: "Shakespeare" "relevant" (or "relevance") and browse through the pages of returns. Not every entry shall respond to this point but it seems to me clear that the overwhelming majority of them shall. )
(C)
A feature of the Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ) is how it puts into high relief some of the most fascinating aspects of large modern societies and, in this case, in particular, their propensity to fall prey to cleverly-presented sham arguments. These may be set out with claims of supporting data or simply asserted and accepted with little or no support. There have been many instances over the course of human history. There is nothing new about these phenomena. Indeed, the absurd Stratfordian case in favor of William Shaksper is centuries old now and persists for reasons that are intellectually a disgrace.
I first became interested as, by coincidence, I happened upon the SAQ at about the same time that I was in the process of observing (from France) as the near-totality of the American general public were being shamelessly duped into backing a ridiculous plan to capitalize politically on the catastrophes of the attacks of September, 11, 2001 by mounting a slap-dash, largely coerced and phony military coalition, the so-called 'alliance-of-the-willing' built up on the Kuwaiti border with Iraq ( 2003 invasion of Iraq )—the objective being to present the American public with an embarrassing international 'fait accompli,' making it next-to-impossible to dismantle the costly preparations made openly to invade and topple the regime of Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein and sold virtually entirely on the sham argument and claims surrounding the now-infamously bogus Weapons Of Mass-Destruction (WMD) folly.
In one case like the other, there were massive and persistent failures of critical-thinking, of sound reasoning, of fact-and-evidence interpretation and weighing and of judgment. Again, unfortunately, nothing about any of this was at all new. It's useful, then, to take and study the SAQ for its example of this kind of reasoning failure. It is one of the most illustrative and informative of existing examples and the fact that it remains a factor at work in great numbers people's mistaken belief-systems adds to its value as an example.
Therefore, while the desire to see credit given where credit is due was and remains the core and main motivation for my efforts in studying the SAQ, a second motive is to recognize, learn from and discuss the erroneous habits of thought which it illustrates because, in so many ways and places, we are suffering tremendous long, medium and short-term harms socially from our failing to get our reasoning habits in better order on a whole range of issues.
UNDER THE HEADING, "HOW WE'RE FAILING OURSELVES AS A SOCIETY", Consider, for example, the following as in many cogent ways analogous to the situation in the SAQ:
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(Note: from time-counter at :01(H):30(min.):30 (secs.) into the podcast interview. )
... "When do facts change people's minds?" ...
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Related reading:
Dan Sperber & Hugo Mercier:
The enigma of reason : a new theory of human understanding
(London) : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2017
See also:
Lost Connections : uncovering the real causes of depression-- and the unexpected solutions by Johann Hari | New York : Bloomsbury, 2018.
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Listeners can skip ahead (or back) using the counter-meter bar's cursor point. (N.B.) I recommend listening to the entire interview--though that should not be construed as my unequivocal endorsement of each and every assertion or reasoned argument presented by Hari. The general thrust of his points and arguments are well worth one's time and attention.
(D)
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(A) Revised and augmented, Thursday, 8 November, 2018
(B) Revised and augmented, Friday, 9 November, 2018
(C) Revised and augmented, Saturday, 10 November, 2018 and Sunday, 11 November, 2018
(D) Revised and augmented, Wednesday, 14 November, 2018
Revised (A), (B), (Etc.)
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“ 'An authoritative text': what does this mean? What does it mean, for instance, in the case of Macbeth, such a favorite of readers and audiences? What do we really know about Macbeth, this play we esteem? What, indeed, is Macbeth, and what are we saying when we say that Shakespeare wrote it? I think we can say that he—this person whose life eludes us—wrote something, but we cannot say that the play as we have it is the one he wrote. Shakespeare the person is an unknown, a context without a biography, and, hard as it might seem to accept, especially in this celebratory 400th anniversary year, his plays are an unknown too, as the case in point of Macbeth reveals. This is the supreme fiction that accounts for Shakespeare’s greatness: his life and work are our creations.1
…
“Shakespeare is not a blank canvas, not an empty space. Something extraordinary is there when you open the book, but it is fluid, variable, changeable. The black marks on the page are a reality that we encounter and an illusion that we and others across the centuries have fabricated. When we read, study, interpret, and perform Shakespeare, we act as writers— creators, inventors—who are at one and the same time responding to something that is there and making it up as we go along.
“In their address ‘To the great Variety of Readers’ at the beginning of the First Folio, Shakespeare’s fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell urge us to ‘Reade him, therefore, and againe; and againe.’ To read Shakespeare is to write him. Make of Shakespeare what you will. The author of these plays is you.” 2
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Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: Shakespeare at 400
By William E. Cain | (Journal) Society, February 2016, Vol. 53 Issue 1| (pp. 83, 85-86 )
(1) (pp. 83)
(2) (pp. 85-86 )
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“Loin donc que la recherche de l'intelligibilité aboutisse à l'histoire comme à son point d'arrivée, c'est l'histoire qui sert de point de départ pour toute quête de l'intelligibilité. Ainsi qu'on le dit de certaines carrières, l'histoire mène à tout, mais à condition d'en sortir.”
—— Claude Levi-Strauss, La Pensée sauvage (Paris, 1962, Editions Plon)
( "It is...far from the case that the search for intelligibility comes to an end in history as though this were its terminus. Rather, it is history that serves as the point of departure of any quest for intelligibility." ("As is said about certain careers, history leads to everything, provided, however, that one comes through it to the end."))
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“This is a book about reading Shakespeare historically—or, more precisely, a book about a particular way of reading Shakespeare historically.1 It is a book about the forms in which Shakespeare’s plays circulated, about the imaginative and institutional circumstances in which they were produced, and about what kinds of meanings were generated as the plays were experienced by their audiences and readers. There are other ways of reading Shakespeare historically; other histories may matter to us, not least, of course, our own. Shakespeare’s plays always situated in and saturated by history. History marks the texts as they are set forth, and the texts continue to absorb new histories as they are performed and read. But this book would restore Shakespeare’s artistry to the earliest conditions of its realization and intelligibility: to the collaborations of the theatre in which the plays were acted, to the practices of the book trade in which they were published, to the unstable political world of the late Tudor and early Stuart England in which the plays were engaged by their various publics.
Perhaps it is, or should be, self-evident why one might wish to do this, but Shakespeare has, almost from the beginning, been thought uniquely able to resist such readings, his putative universality rendering them almost insultingly reductive. It was not the nineteenth century that first thought him timeless, imagining him, with Coleridge, ‘of no age,’2 or even the memorializing efforts of the 1623 folio, which, with Ben Jonson, were within seven years of his death proclaiming that he was ‘not of an age but for all time.’ While Shakespeare lived, his immortality was already being celebrated: the title-page of the 1609 Sonnets declared him ‘OUR EVER-LIVING POET.’ Certainly if any poet has a claim to be ‘ever-living’ it is no doubt Shakespeare. The most familiar cliché of Shakespeare studies is that he is our contemporary, though the truth is that, somewhat like the promiscuous Hero of Claudio’s tortured imagination, he has been everyone’s contemporary.
“Every age since Shakespeare’s death seems to have claimed him as its own. He is now one of our playwrights, exactly as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries he was one of theirs. Any examination of the theatrical repertory would prove this. But though he does live on in subsequent cultures in ways none of his contemporaries do, it is not, I think, because he is in any significant sense timeless, speaking some otherwise unknown, universal idiom. Rather, it seems to me it is because he is so intensely of his own time and place. His engagement with his world is the most compelling record we have of that world’s struggle for meaning and value. If he is miraculously able to ‘looke / Fresh to all Ages,’ as Leonard Digges claimed in the first folio, it is because he enables each age to see for itself what it has been, and, in measuring its distance from that world, to discover what it has become. In his historical specificity, then, we discover ourselves as historical beings. As Jonson saw, he is the ‘Soule of the Age’ both before and as the condition of being ‘for all time.’ 3
“What value Shakespeare has for us must, then, at least begin with the recognition of his difference from us; only then can we be sure that what we hear are his concerns rather than projections of our own. Other minds have moral relevance for us only when we recognize them as other minds. This is perhaps justification enough for wanting to read Shakespeare historically: history functions as some apotropaic fetish to ward off our narcissism, or at least to prevent the premature imposition of present day interests and values. (The important word here is, of course, ‘premature’; some such imposition is inevitable and desirable.) The effort to read Shakespeare historically seeks to restore his works to the specific imaginative and material circumstances in which they were written and engaged. It would rescue the works from a history-annihilating focus that, in the name of their greatness, isolates the plays from the actual conditions of their production and reception, thus mystifying their achievement even as it is proclaimed. To read Shakespeare historically would be to read the plays with a robust sense of their particularity and contingency—that is, to read them as Shakespeare’s plays, even if that means that they cannot be his alone.”
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David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory (1999) London, Routledge Ltd., from the Introduction,
(originally posted Wednesday, 7 November, 2018)
What do you make of that? We have, above, two incompatible views of the proper way, the most meaningful way, to approach reading “Shakespeare’s” work—that much is quite clear, isn’t it? For me, that is to say that the best, most effective and revealing way to approach reading of Oxford’s writings by his ‘Shakespeare’ pen-name is argued over above even though both of these critics reject the Oxfordian view of the ‘Shakespeare’ authorship-question. They’re agreed on the view that William Shaksper wrote the poetry, plays and sonnets which go under the name “William Shakespeare.” But they don’t agree about how best to find the meaning in these writings.
For William Cain, this comes via the understanding that “Shakespeare’s plays are a supreme fiction, and this more than anything explains his astonishing longevity and renown. … This is the supreme fiction that accounts for Shakespeare’s greatness: his life and work are our creations.”
As I see it, that is simply absurd: Shakespeare’s ‘greatness’ and the fact that ”his work” (?) have enjoyed such amazing longevity is down to this presumption that these, after all, are our creative products? Apparently, “Shakespeare” gave us refashioned plots, characters and dialogue of his own making and, together with a stage, scenery and actors playing upon it, reciting rehearsed dialogues and monologues, entries and exits, it’s never the less the reader, past, present and future, or, alternatively, the play-going audience member, past, present or future, who are the real sources of the works’ long-lived greatness. Without them, apparently, the writer who plotted the action, set the scenes, composed the actors’ lines, was, in and of himself, nothing at all other than whatever the present-day reader or audience-member can and does manage to make of him and ’his’ work.
For me, a problem resides in such a theory of literary authorship: some readers or audience-members are capable of seeing and appreciating a very great deal in what is supposedly otherwise the pointless, empty and meaningless plots, scenes and spoken lines while others are not at all so capable. It would seem that the brilliant readers and audience-members might make brilliant stuff of the things which the casual-worker author left behind while other readers and audience-members, having little or nothing of the insight of their fellow readers and audience-members would ‘create’ of the same raw materials a pathetic mess—and they’d likely not be capable of noticing the difference—hmm?
But this critical theory flies in the face of lived experience. It happens that sometimes certain readers and parts of certain audiences who, themselves, are quite incapable of coming up with brilliant interpretation of their own, are none the less able to recognize and at least partially appreciate the interpretations which other much more insightful people make of the same stuff in the play-book text.
If the author’s work is really just whatever each reader or viewer makes of it, nothing more and nothing less, then the author is, by certain regards, anywhere along a spectrum from moron and know-nothing at one end to literary genius at the other depending on the person who is "mak(ing) of 'Shakespeare' what he will," the person who assumes—willingly or not, wittingly or not—the place and role of "the author of these plays." And everything depends on the qualities and capabilities of the present-day’s cohorts of readers and viewers. And yet this, we’re told, is what is behind the centuries-long esteem for this ‘author’ and his so-called ‘work’ : others’ takes, good, bad or indifferent.
To suggest that the literary work which goes under the name of William Shakespeare was, in effect, left to the readers and the hearing audiences to use and fashion at their whim as though it were a lump of formless soft clay is absurd. To suggest that such was the original intention of the works' author is even more absurd.
The complicated fact that the works have come down to us in a set of corrupt and inconsistent and often conflicting versions does not relieve us of a responsibility to discover what these documents can tell us about their author and his ideas, his beliefs, his intentions and his artistic designs and motives—to discover, as best we can—not what we would like to suppose he probably meant according to our view of what people then living were like but, rather, what he, the author, probably meant according to what the best and most complete reading of the historical records tells us he, the then-living author, apparently meant according to the meanings his words then carried.
That it may be difficult for us to know the author's meanings and intentions from his words as these were then known, used and understood, and that it sometimes seems almost impossible for us to reach any firm conclusions on this in various cases— these factors constitute no license or excuse for us to simply throw up our hands and conclude that he, our author, simply may not have had any clear intentions or meanings in mind or conclude that whether he did or not, the point and task is now for us to make of his words whatever we are most pleased to make of them since, ultimately, in some sense, it's all the same one way as any other.
By the same token, our coming to some informed and considered judgments as to the author's identity, his place and role in his own time and the contexts these factors present for any careful investigation of his words and their meanings for him and his peers—all of this constitutes only the first part of our charge as readers and audience to these works.
We then have to take up the task of figuring out what import the author's meanings, designs and intentions do and ought to have for us as we use these literary works to understand ourselves and our own identities, our own meanings, designs and purposes, to arrive at the very challenge of discovering what it means to come to have meanings and to understand how this process is accomplished.
Thus, it is we who understand ourselves better through the best—most astute—understanding of the author of 'Shakespeare's' writings and his works' meanings. From these we start to construct our own ideas for meaning and for our interpretation of ourselves and our acts to ourselves and to each other. He, through his works, is our master, not our servant. It's not for him or anyone since him to take the works he left to us and render them into some sort of arbitrary "relevance" to and for "us" and "our times".
Rather, it's for us to discover who and what we are in part through the effort to discover this author as a person and his work for its purpose and import first to him and his times and, only then, to discover what it even means to have "relevance" to ourselves and our times in the first place. This is the point behind the cited words above from Claude Levi-Strauss in the introduction to La Pensée sauvage. And it's this which is behind the points being urged above in the excerpt from David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare After Theory. (A)
Rather than recognizing and understanding these things, teachers, college professors, theatre producers and stage directors, actors, journalists and literary critics are arguing over how to take ‘Shakespeare’—this presumed historical figure who they do not understand very well—and his literary work, the plays, poems and sonnets—and make them “relevant” to people today, especially to young students taking English literature courses at high schools and universities.
Making "Shakespeare" "relevant" refers, of course, to all manner of efforts to make 'relevant'— i.e., "interesting", "commercially salable," educationally, "bearable to students' modern temperaments" in secondary and higher education"— as much as possible of the conventionally-accepted set of Shakespeare works: the plays, sonnets and poems which constitute what is called the "Shakespeare canon," and, of these, above all else, the plays.
There is a great and abiding anxiety about the "relevance" of "Shakespeare" for members of the mass public— the anxiety is among those members of the professional cultural "elite"—real or pretended—who make it their tasks to reflect and interpret society's dominant cues and conventions back to themselves and to the masses in a consumer society in order to establish a hierarchy of cultural values. Most of their work, or the places in which the anxiety is most pronounced, as it concerns the mass-consumer consumption of "Shakespeare," takes place in the realms of academia (teaching), of journalism (popular news and book publishing) and of theatre-arts (staged plays and film, video or digital visual-recordings of dramatic productions).
"When Michael Boyd completed his tenure as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 2012, the consensus within the Company and among audiences and cultural commentators alike was that it had been a particularly vibrant and successful period. Finances were in a much healthier state than they had been when he had taken up the position ten years earlier; he had successfully overseen the rebuilding of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon; morale within the Company was high; and artistically there had been many celebrated productions, his own cycle of the History Plays receiving particular praise. These successes were achieved within a vision that reaffirmed the RSC’s core values, expressed at its foundation in 1961, in particular the twin ideas that Shakespeare’s plays could be re-interpreted and staged in ways that allowed their themes to resonate directly with contemporary concerns; and that this was best achieved by actors who could work, rehearse and learn together over a period long enough to establish communal understandings and a shared work ethos through the spirit of the ‘ensemble.’ There was general agreement that Boyd had demonstrated the continuing relevance of Shakespeare, and of the RSC itself, to the nation’s contemporary cultural and political life." ... ...
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—Joe Winston, from (Chapter I : (Introduction) “Education at the Royal Shakespeare Company”, (p.5)) Transforming the Teaching of Shakespeare with the Royal Shakespeare Company, (2015) London ; New York, : Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare
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(from The Independent (London))
| Sport > Olympics |
Making Shakespeare relevant in the digital age
| Cisco has teamed up with the Royal Shakespeare Company for a webcast that gives a new twist to the Bard’s works | Monday 30 July 2012 14:53 | 0 comments
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Making Shakepeare Relevant by Brian Lighthill ;:
182 pages
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd (21 Sept. 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1788038924
"The 30 lesson plans in Making Shakespeare Relevant provide a practical introduction for students to think about contemporary issues in parallel with the character's journey and development in Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Making Shakespeare Relevant is designed to take the worry out of Will - and make the themes and issues Shakespeare is exploring relevant to the student's own lives.
"Each scheme of work in Making Shakespeare Relevant can stand alone and starts with an interactive story telling of one of the three plays (the three stories are included). Each subsequent lesson plan has a clearly stated objective followed by about 50-55 minutes worth of activities (to be honest, more than you need). And as each lesson plan is displayed on a separate page, it can be easily photocopied by the teacher.
"After each lesson plan Brian has included notes which might be helpful in the delivery of the lesson. He has also provided a list of Power Points needed and finally, on a separate page, a Home Thinking/Home Work exercise which might be given out to the students by the teacher.
"As a Headteacher, who observed Brian's work over three years wrote, 'Having witnessed Brian's lessons I can recommend the work as a novel approach for groups studying Shakespeare as part of a course in English Literature or for teaching Personal and Social Development. Either way, it will be hard for your students not to be infected with a deeper understanding and love of Shakespeare'
"Brian has tried to make Making Shakespeare Relevant as user friendly as possible for you overworked teachers...hopefully he has succeeded."
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In much, (though, of course not all) of the rest of mass-consumer culture—that is, the 'lower' (or 'low-brow') levels of cheaply-made consumer products—there's not nearly so much anxiety about "Shakespeare" or his "relevance" and this may be simply because the name "Shakespeare" continues to hold such a powerful place for its cultural aura, cachet, as marker and signifier of what is part of a pantheon of cultural icons of taste and refinement in style, that 'all-things-Shakespeare' lend themselves to selling almost anything to which they can be applied; in this there is no preoccupation with any actual content, or meaning or purpose: no literary interpretation needs to be done and certainly no intellectual investment is demanded as a precondition to its appeal or to the profitable resort to the name. Just slap the name "Shakespeare" or the iconic (phony) image:
on whatever it may be and the work is done. "Shakespeare" sells—because a simple content-free recognition is sufficient.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare more popular abroad than in Britain, study finds
| Mark Brown | Tue 19 Apr 2016 00.01 BST
(Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 22.52 GMT)
Survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries suggests Shakespeare more popular in Mexico, more relevant in Brazil and better understood in India than he is at home |
"Shakespeare is more popular and better understood in emerging economies such as Brazil, India, China, Mexico and Turkey than he is in the UK, a new report for the British Council suggests.
"A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries reveals, for example, that 88% of surveyed Mexicans like Shakespeare, compared with only 59% of British people; 84% of Brazilians said they found him relevant to today’s world, compared with 57% in the UK; and 83% of Indians said they understood him, far more than the 58% of Britons.
"Overall, Shakespeare’s popularity abroad stands at 65%, compared with 59% in the UK.
"Should this be a source of national shame? 'I certainly don’t think we should beat ourselves up about it,' said Rosemary Hilhorst, director of the British Council’s Shakespeare Lives programme. 'It is not a huge difference in terms of percentages. What we should do is think about how we make Shakespeare more relevant and accessible for youngsters today so they get in touch with the fantastic stories that are there in a way they feel is relevant for them.' ”
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Does Shakespeare belong in the past or present? | Michael Boyd reckons modern-dress productions 'get less juice' out of the Bard's plays. I'd argue that they can help sharpen your response to a familiar work. (by) Michael Billington
Mon 8 Oct 2007 15.18 BST First published on Mon 8 Oct 2007 15.18 BST
( (Photo cut-line text) "Bang up to date ... The RSC's Richard III at Stratford's Courtyard Theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton" )
"I see Michael Boyd has raised an old issue: whether or not Shakespeare gains from modern dress. Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the director of the RSC suggested that "you get less juice out of the plays if you set them in the present". But is that really true? In a long lifetime of Shakespeare-going, I've seen good and bad modern-dress productions. Equally, I've seen period productions of startling brilliance and ball-aching tedium. If I've learned anything, it is that you can't legislate about Shakespeare. All one can say is that everything depends on the imaginative intensity the director, designer and actors bring to the play." …
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Globe Education's Dream aims to make Shakespeare relevant to young
(B)
WHETHER the measure which is undertaken in the latest effort to render "Shakespeare's" literary work "relevant" happens to be manifested in the replacement a (male) actor by a (female) actress in a role written for and intended to be played by a (male) actor or is manifested in the resort to 20th-century stage-settings or costumes, these and all other similar instances are examples of the same wackiness which springs from misplaced concerns about the “relevance” of Shakespeare’s work for audiences and readers of the present-day (and future present-days to come) and such examples could be multiplied almost without end*—for the fact is that, as long as the dominant Stratfordian nonsense about the real author’s identity continues to be imposed by a dominant self-sustaining orthodoxy in academia, all kinds of people with perception about what real life is like will feel a spontaneous alienation from “Shakespeare,” this Stratford-Upon-Avon 'man-without-qualities,' unable to make any sense of his relationship to the literary work falsely attributed to this pen-name.
To ‘remedy’ that, people in charge, following the lead of academics, shall undertake ever more desperate efforts to make the works “relate” to the present day. Meanwhile, people will continue to take up the plays, poems and sonnets and read them and feel their power; in the process, they’ll drop, dismiss, dispense with the clownish buffoon they’re offered as the personality behind the literature.
As Professor Paul Hamilton's insightful critiques have made clear:
“To read any complex work of art as a bland and unified expression of any "ism" is idiotic. That is a problem of appropriation. It is not an aesthetic problem.
“To turn "bardolatry" into a denunciation of a particular Renaissance aesthetic is not going to affect those in power. They couldn't care less whether it is Shakespeare or Milton or Wordsworth who symbolizes the superiority of one class over another. The artists anyway are almost always on the side of the disenfranchised. What you need to do is isolate the fraud of the appropriation of works of art for purposes utterly opposed to the artwork itself."
… …
"My point is that the real problem is that Shakespeare is appropriated for various ends - whether that is status, nationalism, etc. The cringe-worthy speeches and ceremonies on Shakespeare's birthday; the false notion that Shakespeare's views were identical with the interests of the state; the mobilization of Shakespeare as an implicit defense of the class structure, when, in reality, he continually undermines class assumptions, etc. All of that is execrable and demands a * cultural * critique.
"The problem, though, is * not * the Renaissance aesthetic of the plays. The entire point of appreciating a work of art from a different historical period is that you will be estranged from your own assumptions - and have to encounter a view of language and life that is different. The demand that every work of art be easy to understand - as another poster observed - is simply an infantile wish to have one's own worldview always confirmed.” …
( * It's simple to put this to the test. Simply go to your usual "Google" search-engine and enter the key-term string: "Shakespeare" "relevant" (or "relevance") and browse through the pages of returns. Not every entry shall respond to this point but it seems to me clear that the overwhelming majority of them shall. )
(C)
A feature of the Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ) is how it puts into high relief some of the most fascinating aspects of large modern societies and, in this case, in particular, their propensity to fall prey to cleverly-presented sham arguments. These may be set out with claims of supporting data or simply asserted and accepted with little or no support. There have been many instances over the course of human history. There is nothing new about these phenomena. Indeed, the absurd Stratfordian case in favor of William Shaksper is centuries old now and persists for reasons that are intellectually a disgrace.
I first became interested as, by coincidence, I happened upon the SAQ at about the same time that I was in the process of observing (from France) as the near-totality of the American general public were being shamelessly duped into backing a ridiculous plan to capitalize politically on the catastrophes of the attacks of September, 11, 2001 by mounting a slap-dash, largely coerced and phony military coalition, the so-called 'alliance-of-the-willing' built up on the Kuwaiti border with Iraq ( 2003 invasion of Iraq )—the objective being to present the American public with an embarrassing international 'fait accompli,' making it next-to-impossible to dismantle the costly preparations made openly to invade and topple the regime of Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein and sold virtually entirely on the sham argument and claims surrounding the now-infamously bogus Weapons Of Mass-Destruction (WMD) folly.
In one case like the other, there were massive and persistent failures of critical-thinking, of sound reasoning, of fact-and-evidence interpretation and weighing and of judgment. Again, unfortunately, nothing about any of this was at all new. It's useful, then, to take and study the SAQ for its example of this kind of reasoning failure. It is one of the most illustrative and informative of existing examples and the fact that it remains a factor at work in great numbers people's mistaken belief-systems adds to its value as an example.
Therefore, while the desire to see credit given where credit is due was and remains the core and main motivation for my efforts in studying the SAQ, a second motive is to recognize, learn from and discuss the erroneous habits of thought which it illustrates because, in so many ways and places, we are suffering tremendous long, medium and short-term harms socially from our failing to get our reasoning habits in better order on a whole range of issues.
UNDER THE HEADING, "HOW WE'RE FAILING OURSELVES AS A SOCIETY", Consider, for example, the following as in many cogent ways analogous to the situation in the SAQ:
(podcast time-counter:01(H):49 (mins.):46 (secs.)) Sam Harris “Waking Up” Podcasts : #142 - ADDICTION, DEPRESSION, AND A MEANINGFUL LIFE | A Conversation with Johann Hari
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... ...“ ‘Think about the opioid crisis in this country (i.e. the U.S.). The figures for distress in this country are extraordinary—one in three middle-aged women at any given time are on chemical anti-depressants; one in ten thirteen-year-old boys is on a stimulant drug; thirty percent of children in the psy—in the foster-care system—are being given at least one psychiatric drug. You know—suicide is significantly rising. Obviously we’ve talked about the opioid deaths which I’ve just—‘X’-more people have died than in the Vietnam—Amer—than Americans died in the Vietnam war—every year.
I mean we’re talking about—I mean one of the most striking ones from Professor Joel Twangey (?) (indistinct) (or )Touange (?), is, uhm, the average teen-age girl, when filling out an anxiety questionnaire, now—in the United States—now has the same level of anxiety as the average mental-patient in the 1950s. I mean I think that’s a little exaggerated but none the less it tells you something; because I think there has been a decline in people’s stigma about talking about anxiety but, none the less, this is a deep societal crisis and the one thing that (President Donald) Trump is that is positive—because there is nothing positive that he has done as far as I can see—but the one thing that is positive, unintentionally, from him is it’s hard not to wake up in the face of this, right?
And it tells you something: that Trump is not some weird anomaly, but that, you know: I’m British, my country is in the middle of telling the people who buy 60 percent of our goods and services to fuck off. It’s hard to find in modern history such a peculiar turn of events—from a country that has been so stable. I mean, the second-biggest party in Germany now, is (in German) Alternative für Deutschland, (AfD) (Alternative for Germany) who has candidates who say that they’re, you know, the country should be proud of their record in the Second World War, and this, this is,so this, the fact that this is such a wide societal crisis tells us it can’t just be about the peculiarities of Trump—although the peculiarities of Trump are significant and, and, we agree, catastrophic, we have to think about the deeper insecurity and I do think it comes down to:
we’ve created a hollow culture, we created a culture—I mean we, we, you and I have talked about maybe three of the nine causes of depression and anxiety that I talk about in Lost Connections but there’s obviously a lot of other ones that are playing out as well but let’s just think about the one’s we’ve looked at: a profoundly lonely society where people have got really sick values that make them really unhappy—I mean everyone listening to this will know someone who works really hard at a job they hate, to buy a load of shit they don’t need, that they display on social-media to get people to go, ‘OMG (Oh my God,) so jealous’—and then they feel a peculiar emptiness because they’ve done what they’re meant to do:
they’ve worked really hard, they bought the shit they’ve seen in adverts, they’ve displayed it on social-media but they feel terrible. So what happens? This is true of some of the people I love. They work even harder, they buy even more shit, they display it even more aggressively on social-media.
We’re in these cycles; we’ve been told a false story about what it is to be human, we’ve been told a false story about what it is to—to be happy. Think about President Trump: the ultimate expression of junk-values, right?: A man who lives in a golden tower, with a really ‘hot’ woman, is the most powerful person in the world, is so weirdly objectifying that he even says he’d be fucking his own daughter if she wasn’t his daughter—a bizarre set of external values—and he’s incredibly unhappy! Right? Have you ever seen a more unhappy person than Trump, right? So, that tells us something about where the culture has gone wrong. Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher—Bengali—philosopher, said,’It’s no sign of good health to be well-adjusted to a sick society.’
And the most important thing I want to say to people about their depression, their anxiety, their addiction, is that, while all these things are deeply problematic—and it’s not saying that this is a good state to be in, it’s a—being depressed is the worst thing that ever happened to me: these are not internal pathologies that are in your brain. There are real things that happen in your brain to make them worse—to be sure. These are symptoms of something that has gone profoundly wrong. Your pain makes sense. It means something. You feel this way for a reason—and largely, it’s not you that’s broken. In a world where Donald Trump is the most powerful person, if you feel really unhappy in that world, that’s not a sign you’re crazy, that’s a sign you’re sane; and we need to be taking these signals of distress and we need to stop ‘pathologizing’ them; we need to stop telling people that it’s just a chemical imbalance in their brain. What a peculiar thing!: that all our brains happen to break at around the same time, right?
We need to also stop saying that these political manifestations of this pain are just signs of craziness or of racism. There is craziness in it; there is racism in it; I am not disputing that. But it’s telling us something more meaningful than that. And, if we don’t hear the signal, we’ll just carry on getting worse and worse and worse, right? I mean, I remember during the (George W.) Bush administration saying—I remember the last day Bush was president, in fact the day of the inauguration (of Barack Obama) a friend saying to me, ‘Well, at least we’ll never have a president as bad as that again!’ And now we’re all fucking building cakes of George W. Bush begging him to come back. Right? Which I think is foolish because I don’t think he was—anyway, you know what I mean. The, the—we’ve got to hear the signal; a signal is being played for us. Stop insulting the signal. Listen to the signal. That’s my most important message.” …
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(Note: from time-counter at :01(H):30(min.):30 (secs.) into the podcast interview. )
... "When do facts change people's minds?" ...
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Related reading:
Dan Sperber & Hugo Mercier:
The enigma of reason : a new theory of human understanding
(London) : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2017
See also:
Lost Connections : uncovering the real causes of depression-- and the unexpected solutions by Johann Hari | New York : Bloomsbury, 2018.
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Listeners can skip ahead (or back) using the counter-meter bar's cursor point. (N.B.) I recommend listening to the entire interview--though that should not be construed as my unequivocal endorsement of each and every assertion or reasoned argument presented by Hari. The general thrust of his points and arguments are well worth one's time and attention.
(D)
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(A) Revised and augmented, Thursday, 8 November, 2018
(B) Revised and augmented, Friday, 9 November, 2018
(C) Revised and augmented, Saturday, 10 November, 2018 and Sunday, 11 November, 2018
(D) Revised and augmented, Wednesday, 14 November, 2018
90proximity1
Having read and carefully considered the points in >89 proximity1:, you ought to be ready to respond in the affirmative to what, in my experience, is the most common question put by Stratfordian apologists in their attempts to dodge the challenge having to face issues straight on:
—it’s a supposedly clever way to advance the already-formed conclusion: ‘it makes no difference who the author was,’ since, after all, the people using this dodge have already made up their minds about the matter and, for the moment their mistaken views hold sway over most people’s uniformed opinion and, thus, they’re content with this status quo. The moment their biases stopped enjoying de facto majorities, you can be sure that they would immediately recognize the importance of disputing the identity of the author of the work done under the pen-name “Shakespeare.”
Some stated or unstated corollaries to the question above are—
• That we can all just move on to enjoying and appreciating these works without having to trouble ourselves to pause and think, listen, argue, consider, debate and finally decide who wrote them;
• That it’s all just a matter of opinion anyway and, as such, one person’s opinion on this matter is as good as any other person’s;
• The real author’s messages and meanings remain the same whoever it happens he may have been. Nothing important, let alone essential, is changed in our understanding and interpretation of these works alters one way or another whoever it is we decide was the author;
• Art, by definition, is something concerning which the background facts simply rarely if ever matter.
These sample expressions illustrate the confused thinking that is so typical in the SAQ.
The real author’s identity is not a matter of opinion, it’s a question of fact. In fact, the real author simply cannot have been just as easily one person as another and the best way to settle such a matter cannot be to simply take a poll and let popularity determine the factual identity of the author. Issues of fact are not (respectably) settled that way. On matters of fact, it is entirely possible that sometimes, yes, everyone—where popular opinion is unanimous on a question of fact, everyone—is in the wrong. In such cases, it isn’t until someone comes along and challenges what “everyone” is certain to be (or to not be) the case and shows them how and why they are mistaken.
That’s actually been done in the SAQ. J. Thomas Looney and Charlton Ogburn have, at the very least, already set out the case which shows that, on all the best evidence, there is no sound case possible in favor of William Shaksper. That evidence points, instead, to Edward de Vere.
No one says, concerning the facts of physics or chemistry,
If the SAQ highlights grievous deficiencies in very large numbers of people’s habitual reasoning skills, then, for that ‘reason’ alone, the question, “Who wrote the literary works attributed to ‘Shakespeare’?” matters because it matters if great numbers of people cannot think through things clearly and effectively, grasping the differences between issues of opinion versus fact, between a fair hearing of evidence and confirmation-bias; between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ as conditions to criteria surrounding some question’s evidence and decisions as to that evidence's bearing on some outcome.
So pressed to account for themselves, Stratfordians are likely to admit,
This implies that, to the contrary, even supposing that a great many people have gotten this one very wrong, this issue just isn’t that important and the error does not indicate anything serious about reasoning and critical-thinking abilities in the general public.
For that to be the case, one has to suppose that, over many generations, even if vast numbers of people have been sold on a fatuous account of the historical record and even if they either didn’t notice it or, if they noticed, they didn’t care—perhaps because the matter was “only about the identity of the author of the works attributed to ‘Shakespeare.’”—this isn't likely indicative of something seriously deficient and having wider implications worth taking seriously. Thus, the faulty underlying assumption goes, “Had it concerned something really important, people should not have gotten things so long and so badly wrong.” False. Good-reasoning habits do not magically ‘kick in’ as and when matters are ‘inherently important, inherently serious.’ The same people who cannot effectively reason their way through the SAQ will also be more likely to fail where the outcome of their poor reasoning, their deficient critical-thinking, leads them to conclude, for example, that a needless war is necessary or that a necessary war is needless; to conclude that things essential to their democratic liberties can be dispensed with without costs or harm to their liberty or the political life of their country.
While, of course, it is not the case that, should people fail to think critically and effectively about the SAQ, then it follows that they are also certain to fail to do so about virtually any and all other matters, it is virtually certain that they are going to fail to do so about some other matters and some of them are going to be very serious matters indeed.
“But does it really even matter whether or not we know (or are mistaken about) who wrote the “Shakespeare” works?”
—it’s a supposedly clever way to advance the already-formed conclusion: ‘it makes no difference who the author was,’ since, after all, the people using this dodge have already made up their minds about the matter and, for the moment their mistaken views hold sway over most people’s uniformed opinion and, thus, they’re content with this status quo. The moment their biases stopped enjoying de facto majorities, you can be sure that they would immediately recognize the importance of disputing the identity of the author of the work done under the pen-name “Shakespeare.”
Some stated or unstated corollaries to the question above are—
• That we can all just move on to enjoying and appreciating these works without having to trouble ourselves to pause and think, listen, argue, consider, debate and finally decide who wrote them;
• That it’s all just a matter of opinion anyway and, as such, one person’s opinion on this matter is as good as any other person’s;
• The real author’s messages and meanings remain the same whoever it happens he may have been. Nothing important, let alone essential, is changed in our understanding and interpretation of these works alters one way or another whoever it is we decide was the author;
• Art, by definition, is something concerning which the background facts simply rarely if ever matter.
These sample expressions illustrate the confused thinking that is so typical in the SAQ.
The real author’s identity is not a matter of opinion, it’s a question of fact. In fact, the real author simply cannot have been just as easily one person as another and the best way to settle such a matter cannot be to simply take a poll and let popularity determine the factual identity of the author. Issues of fact are not (respectably) settled that way. On matters of fact, it is entirely possible that sometimes, yes, everyone—where popular opinion is unanimous on a question of fact, everyone—is in the wrong. In such cases, it isn’t until someone comes along and challenges what “everyone” is certain to be (or to not be) the case and shows them how and why they are mistaken.
That’s actually been done in the SAQ. J. Thomas Looney and Charlton Ogburn have, at the very least, already set out the case which shows that, on all the best evidence, there is no sound case possible in favor of William Shaksper. That evidence points, instead, to Edward de Vere.
No one says, concerning the facts of physics or chemistry,
“It doesn’t really matter what the facts of (physics/chemistry) are or whether or not I have a sound grasp of them, I just like (physics/chemistry)—like putting chemicals together, whether an element’s atomic number is six or sixteen, I don’t know and don’t really care, since, for my purposes, for my enjoyment, it doesn’t matter. I love all the chemicals equally. Right or ‘wrong’ on the ‘facts’ simply isn’t that important to me. Who cares? All that matters is that one is interested. And that's my right, just as it's anyone's right, of course.”
If the SAQ highlights grievous deficiencies in very large numbers of people’s habitual reasoning skills, then, for that ‘reason’ alone, the question, “Who wrote the literary works attributed to ‘Shakespeare’?” matters because it matters if great numbers of people cannot think through things clearly and effectively, grasping the differences between issues of opinion versus fact, between a fair hearing of evidence and confirmation-bias; between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ as conditions to criteria surrounding some question’s evidence and decisions as to that evidence's bearing on some outcome.
So pressed to account for themselves, Stratfordians are likely to admit,
Well, then, it’s not that the Authorship Question is other than a matter of fact, it’s simply that it isn’t really a very important fact.
This implies that, to the contrary, even supposing that a great many people have gotten this one very wrong, this issue just isn’t that important and the error does not indicate anything serious about reasoning and critical-thinking abilities in the general public.
For that to be the case, one has to suppose that, over many generations, even if vast numbers of people have been sold on a fatuous account of the historical record and even if they either didn’t notice it or, if they noticed, they didn’t care—perhaps because the matter was “only about the identity of the author of the works attributed to ‘Shakespeare.’”—this isn't likely indicative of something seriously deficient and having wider implications worth taking seriously. Thus, the faulty underlying assumption goes, “Had it concerned something really important, people should not have gotten things so long and so badly wrong.” False. Good-reasoning habits do not magically ‘kick in’ as and when matters are ‘inherently important, inherently serious.’ The same people who cannot effectively reason their way through the SAQ will also be more likely to fail where the outcome of their poor reasoning, their deficient critical-thinking, leads them to conclude, for example, that a needless war is necessary or that a necessary war is needless; to conclude that things essential to their democratic liberties can be dispensed with without costs or harm to their liberty or the political life of their country.
While, of course, it is not the case that, should people fail to think critically and effectively about the SAQ, then it follows that they are also certain to fail to do so about virtually any and all other matters, it is virtually certain that they are going to fail to do so about some other matters and some of them are going to be very serious matters indeed.
91proximity1
(This post, (A), originally posted: Tuesday, 20 November, 2018)
(B): Revised and augmented, Wednesday, 21 November, 2018
(C) : added Thursday, 22 November, 2018
(D) : added Monday, 26 November, 2018
(E) : added Tuesday, 27 November, 2018
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
_____________________________
(Salzberg Global Seminar: Session Report No. 547:) "The Neuroscience of Art: What Are the Sources of Creativity?"
SEE, in particular, at pp. 17-18, of this .pdf document:
_________________
(Medical News Today | Published Wednesday 17 February 2016 | by Tim Newman) "The Neuroscience of Creativity"
_________________
(Chapter 2: The Neurology of Creativity: Focus on Music (by Herbert B. Newton) : (© Springer-Verlag London 2015 | C. Charyton (ed.), in :Creativity and Innovation Among Science and Art, | DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-6624-5_2)
________________________________________________________
Spoken and written language, the products of the complex phenomena of the human body's interactions of the brain's-and-other-organ's continuous neural communications—only some of which occur at what is called a 'conscious' (waking, aware) state, as others occur 'below' that level of awareness, out of grasp current consciousness—are necessarily reflections of the mental world of their author and they cannot help but reveal a number of personality characteristics, more or less transient or abiding, in the author's mental make-up.
Thus, 'mining' speech and writing (as these are recorded and reviewed) is the best, if not, indeed, the only real avenue into the personality of the author of the spoken and written products. The personality characteristics are going to reveal themselves despite the most assiduous 'efforts' to disguise or suppress these on the author's part. Even an author's attempts to adopt various masks and guises—as with the creatively-produced characters in the craft of a poet or a playwright—will inevitably leave traces, sometimes strongly marked, of the naturally-occurring personality of the author behind his masks. Thus, the masks, their uses and their typical features, are going to tell us about the author who has put them on over his other outward personality, that which is known to characterize him to his worldly family, friends and acquaintances—however similar to or different from that in his writing, provided, of course, that we are attentive and receptive to the personality traces characterized in the author's record of speech or writing.
So, whether one admits it or not, in the course of reading a written work, a text, (or hearing speech) readers and listening audiences, whether they be professional scholars at work or casual readers of entertainments, automatically incorporate into the acts of interpretation a process of imagining the mental state and characteristic personality of the author—to delve into his meanings and intentions themselves. This can hardly be divorced from the work of interpretation itself as these processes are all of a piece mentally in the process which is described by the term (written or spoken) communication. Those who are not attentive and receptive to these features are going to miss much that is instructive about the author and his intended and unintended but meaningful and self-revealing relationship to his speech or writing.
Likewise, speakers and writers reveal themselves in their speech and written texts. This is not a matter of choice. It happens ineluctably. Thus, whoever happened as a matter of fact to have been the real author of of the works attributed (by orthodox scholarship) to some supposed 'William Shaksper' of Stratford-upon-Avon, that author revealed himself to his peers and to all his readers ever since—whether those outside his circle of family and friends who knew him to be the author were able to grasp and make good use of the revelatory features of his work, which he himself noted as there to be found in "every word" he wrote—that is a different and separate issue. The fact remains that he does reveal himself to us in his writings.
(B)
_____________
To take this further, keep some obvious common-sense things in mind: after we clear the point that authors are going to reveal themselves in their written work—even if their work in some particular instance concerns their adopting guises, placing themselves in the role of characters of their own devising who are, on paper, very unlike themselves—they’re still going to reveal things about themselves as they go about depicting their work’s characters’ thoughts and deeds. The author can’t “reveal things in himself” unless, of course, those things are there, are latent, are already there to some extent to begin with.
Nor, by the same token, can a person reveal himself via means, techniques, methods, which are outside his experiences. A natural-born genius cannot reveal his genius through literary work if he’s never learned to read and write. He could—and he almost certainly should—reveal his ingenious capacities in some manner but these exhibits of genius-work won’t happen through things about which he is simply unfamiliar, inexperienced, due to having never had any opportunity to develop such means or avenues of expression. Of course there are flukes in life of the kind in which, for example, at one’s first time on the bowling-alley-lane’s line, one rolls a 'strike.' But he doesn’t keep doing this over and over and over again. Skills have to be developed, practiced and honed to bring them to advanced stages. Fortunately, extraordinary or ordinary, a person generally gets better at something with practice; and the progression is from the relatively rudimentary to the more accomplished, sophisticated if the subjects persist in their efforts.
Orthodox (Stratfordian) Shakespeare scholars are schooled in received ideas about both "who the actual author was" and "who the author was not"; if they have a masters degree or, worse, a doctorate in English literature with a specialization in "Shakespeare," by the time they've earned these degrees they've been deeply indoctrinated in these ideas. Having been taught and having accepted that Edward Oxford was definitely not the true author, they're not at all disposed to "see" or "hear", to recognize Oxford's personality as that is revealed in his writings—whether these are under the pen-name of Robert Greene or William Shakespeare. Indeed, their predispositions are so strongly formed and preemptive that, even when the details of the reasoning and evidence behind it concerning Oxford as author are laid out to them, they apparently still can't see or hear Oxford come through in his writings.
(C)
AN APPEAL TO THOSE WHO POSSESS THE MEANS TO DO SO:
PLEASE!——HELP INDEPENDENT RESEARCHERS WORKING ON THE "SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION" BY GIVING SUSTAINING GRANTS (see the following):
Others who, for various reasons, somehow missed or escaped (grew out of, grew away from) their youthful indoctrination into the myth of William Shaksper as the person behind the authorial (pen-) name, "William Shakespeare" are at least potentially capable of seeing and hearing in "Shakespeare" the man behind the pen-name. There are today still only a tiny number of people (in absolute or relative terms) doing research which is premised on an Oxfordian hypothesis. Research support for them is virtually unknown and unavailable within the mainstream world of academic institutions or, for that matter, arts and humanities foundations which are major sources of research grants in literary studies.
So, to those who happen here by their interest in, by their curiosity about, "Shakespeare" and who are among the very fortunate wealthiest one-percent of the world's wealthy elite, please know that Oxfordian scholars, almost by definition independent scholars. badly need research money in the form of unrestricted grants. If you are one of the fortunate wealthy who can provide annual support of from 30K to 40K (£,$, €) and you know that you'll never really miss such an amount, then I urge you to give some very serious consideration to proposing this support to someone at work in this field. Your grants shall not likely be tax-deductible and it goes without saying that no researcher can ever present his or her sponsors with anything of a guarantee of success, however that may be measured. Research takes place at the edges of what's known—or, in the case of Shakespeare Studies, mistakenly believed to be true about "Shakespeare" and there is no way Oxfordian scholars can assure their sponsors of success any more than a cancer-researcher can assure donors to that research of eventual success.
Worse, even the handful of scattered 'Oxfordian' associations are failing in this respect. They don't make any serious effort to fill the need of matching potential grant donors—institutional or individual—with struggling independent researchers. Thus, if you are independently wealthy and interested in this work, your support is badly needed. No major institutions are filling this void and there is no reason to expect that this sad state of affairs is going to change anytime soon.
(E)
(B): Revised and augmented, Wednesday, 21 November, 2018
(C) : added Thursday, 22 November, 2018
(D) : added Monday, 26 November, 2018
(E) : added Tuesday, 27 November, 2018
____________________________________________________________
“My mum died in May and it was after her death that I became aware that we create narratives to deal with the chaos of our lives. That’s why we tell stories and that’s why we need drama—to help us understand the chaos.”
______________________________
—Eddie Marsan, The Sunday Times (of London) Magazine, 17 November, 2018; (column) “What I’ve Learnt” (p. 6)
(interviewed by Fiona Lensvelt)
… “every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed.” *
______________________________
—Sonnet LXXVI, by Edward, Earl of Oxford, writing as “William Shakespeare,”
(By "proceed", Edward Oxford meant, "showing their birth and where they did (originate, spring, come from)
Viz:
proceed, v. from The Oxford English Dictionary (online)
Origin: Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from French. Partly a borrowing from Latin. Etymons: French proceder; Latin prōcēdere.
Etymology: Anglo-Norman and Middle French proceder (French procéder ) to go forward, advance, continue (13th cent. in Old French), to take legal proceedings (1302; also proceder contre to take legal proceedings against (mid 14th cent.)), to go about something, especially in a particular way (1314), to come forth, spring (c1370) and its etymon classical Latin prōcēdere to go forward, advance, progress, to make one's way, to come forth, spring, to continue, to go on speaking or writing, to carry on to a particular point, to make progress, to get on, to go by, pass, to be effectual, in post-classical Latin also to emanate (early 3rd cent. in Tertullian), to initiate or conduct legal proceedings (from 12th cent. in British sources; also procedere contra to take legal proceedings against (from 13th cent. in British sources))
1. intransitive. a. To go or come forth from, out of, or †of a material thing or place; to emanate; (with reference to position or direction) to arise or spring from, to project from. Also in fig. context.
b. In non-material sense: to originate, result, be derived, issue, arise (from, †of a source or cause).)
… "So I delivered what was likely the harshest and most hellish of the dozens of lectures I have given so far to the waiting Cambridge crowd, speaking about Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, who was not so much an articulate atheist but someone who hated God for the suffering of life, and Solzhenitsyn’s experience of the Gulag Archipelago, and the story of Cain and Abel, which is in truth (in metaphorical truth; in the fictional form which is more true than any mere factual biography) the account of two fundamental modes of being, one that aims heavenward, and the other aimed at hell. Those are the basic responses to the terror of self-consciousness, the awareness of death, and the knowledge of good and evil that uniquely characterize human beings. It is my belief, which I shared with the crowd, that the world is saturated in horror and darkness – enough so that clear apprehension of that condition can damage consciousness itself, particularly when naïve – but that the human spirit has within it, as the great English poet John Milton had it, strength sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. I have learned even more clearly during this lecture tour that there is light to be found in great darkness, and that contemplation of the suffering and malevolence that irrefutably characterizes life produces at some point the realization that we are all strong enough to withstand, resist and perhaps even rectify or redeem both..” (emphasis added)
______________________________
—from "12 Rules (For Life) Tour: Missive from Cambridge", by Jordan B. Peterson,
(D)
“Each of the models I have described my book* emphasizes only one aspect of the material being considered—content, psychic function, means of representation, or rhetorical function. The psychoanalytic process, however, begins with the assumption that communication has many facets, and the analyst must draw on ‘all the ways by which one human being understands another’(1) as he tries to put his experience into words; the analyst is as interested in why and how something is said as he is in the words that are actually spoken. The psychoanalytic process provides no special or exotic means of reading the unconscious; its strength derives from two simple strategies: first, it insists on paying attention to everything, and second, it mistrusts the seemingly obvious implications of what it then observes. Freud prescribed ‘intense but uncritical attention,’ meaning uncritical in the sense of an editorial openness and a suspension of all conclusions. In each case the analytic listener tries to be open to the sudden switches and rearrangements that reveal alternate meanings and expose the dynamic play of meaning behind what may seem to be a simple surface. The analytic process offers a more complete model for literary texts than the other models we have examined. All the ways we understand each other are the ways we understand texts, too.” ...
(pp. 374-375**)
... ... "Less obvious but much more characteristic of Shakespeare’s plays are the similar changes in characters who are not so blatantly disturbed but are nonetheless caught in their own reductive visions. The young aristocrats in Love’s Labours’ Lost, for example, have to be shaken out of their simplistic view of the world. The men have taken sides in the ancient war between discipline and pleasure, and from the moment they announce their withdrawal to a strict academe, they become caught up in a dichotomous view of the world as blinding as Othello’s: “Should I devote myself to books or shouldn’t I?”—or rather, “Can I devote myself to books or can’t I?” Then the Princess arrives with her women, and the men of course all fall in love. But instead of escaping their dichotomy, the men simply change it slightly and switch sides: the war becomes a struggle between study and love, and they dedicate themselves with equal extravagance to love. …
… "These dichotomies, however, are not the adequate measure of a play; they are the kind of thing cured by psychoanalysis—the wrong set of terms. And the cure is not simply a compromise between these dichotomous terms (Re: Romeo and Juliet & Troilus and Cressida) (Athenian rationality plus a healthy dose of the forest’s irrationality), nor a Hegelian synthesis, nor a paradox beyond our common understanding. Rather, it is a complete reorganization, which shows dichotomy to be beside the point. The opening terms in a Shakespearean play slip away from us as the action moves toward a reorganization not only of characters and action but also of the very way in which we see both. The initial questions no longer remain, because the terms in which they have been defined are no longer relevant." …
(pp. 392-393** )
______________________________
* Meredith Anne Skura, The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process, (New Haven, CT., (1981))
** (pagination) these excerps from the reprint in Essential Papers on Literature and Psychoanalysis
edited by Emanuel Berman, William E. Butler: New York : New York University Press, 1993
(1) : Rudolph M. Lowenstein, “Some Thoughts on Interpretation in the Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis,” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 12 (1957): p. 132
(All emphasis as in the original except as noted otherwise)
____________________________________
"The study of sixteenth-century English autobiography has made great progress. An informal canon has established itself through such focused studies as Elizabeth Heale’s Autobiography and Authorship in Renaissance Verse: Chronicles of the Self (2003) and Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation, 1500–1660, by Ronald Bedford, Lloyd Davis, and Philippa Kelly (2007). Meredith Anne Skura’s new book concentrates even more closely on the sixteenth century. Its choice of core authors is unsurprising: John Skelton, Thomas Wyatt, John Bale, Thomas Whythorne, Thomas Tusser, Isabella Whitney, George Gascoigne, Robert Greene, plus five authors who contributed to The Mirror for Magistrates (some of them more plausible instances than others). The discussions of these authors address various issues, too many to report on in full here, but the book’s general methodology deserves our attention.
"In her introduction Skura clears a wide theoretical space for herself by “adopting a very loose definition of autobiography” (p. 12). Early modern texts have a bewildering habit of mixing fact and fiction, and of playing authorial peek-a-boo games with the reader, and they may even have been written under a false name. For her part, Skura rejects distinctions between “true” and fictional autobiographies as anachronistic (p. 3), but that stance is not consistently maintained. For instance, her declaration in the introduction that “William Baldwin could praise the poet who ‘feyneth well but never lyeth,’ whose fiction was not, as it is often said to be today, a lie” (p. 3) seems to have been forgotten by chapter four, where Baldwin figures as a writer “increasingly concerned with separating true ‘historia’ from the ‘invention’, ‘conjecture’, and biased judgment that had made it unreliable like poesie” (p. 77).
"The author certainly does believe in truths of some kind, for she undertakes to “retrieve all the information I can from what people did say, as well as what they may have revealed inadvertently” (pp. 2–3).
"In this strategy, wary of the text, all reliability must come from the researcher’s ingenuity, as in an interrogation. The book’s subtitle evidently refers to this procedure. The techniques Skura applies include familiar ones, such as formal literary analyses and factual contextualizations: she compares, for instance, Wyatt’s versions of his poems with those of Richard Tottell, and interprets various editions of Tusser’s A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandry (1557) in relation to the documented events of his life. Extending her interpretative scope, she analyzes, more programmatically than previous scholars in the field, “what an author is doing as well as what she says,” (p. 9); she also ventures psychoanalytical hypotheses, for instance that “on some level Bale sees himself as an abandoned child” (p. 69), that Whythorne fostered unexpressed rage at the women who hurt him (p. 123), and that Greene felt a need for a father substitute (p. 215). (emphasis added)
"With so many different approaches, it may take the reader some time to develop a feeling for what exactly is being argued. While most chapter titles foreground literary analysis of specific texts——particularly of tell-tale adaptations and revisions——and although those chapters include some close reading, it is evidently not Skura’s focal concern to find out how authors devised an idiom of the self or of the heart, as Anne Ferry did in The “Inward” Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Surrey, Shakespeare, Donne (1983).
"Skura’s concluding chapter confirms that the real question has been “Autobiographers: Who Were They? Why Did They Write?” (p. 220), an approach showing more affinity with James S. Amelang’s The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe (1998). Skura’s conclusion points out features shared by the authors discussed, showing how they worked under similar circumstances, often as “educated, socially mobile servants” in close interaction with their masters (p. 221). The separate chapters, however, though ordered chronologically and discussing literary models and influences in relation to individual authors, stop short of combining these into ongoing autobiographic traditions like Heale’s 'narratives of experience.'
"By the end of the sixteenth century, Skura concludes, autobiography had become commonplace, and conventions for it were firmly established (p. 198); but the book’s division into modular chapters, rather than foreground interrelationships between authors, serves to emphasize their uniqueness and isolation. General readers will appreciate Skura’s book as a series of information-packed (and abundantly but unobtrusively annotated) introductions to individual autobiographers: the book provides what twenty-first century people are interested to know about other people. Given the reliance on the researcher’s detected truths rather than on the authors’ professed ones, such readers should be warned against fancying that this book tells them all they need to know: the original texts still remain to be read. It is not, after all, for us to show Tudor autobiographers how to listen for inwardness: it is they who have taught us." (emphasis added)
(p. 282-283)
—— HENK DRAGSTRA University of Groningen. (Reviewer)
______________________________
(Book Review) from : The AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, FEBRUARY 2010 ( pp. 282 - 283)
review of Tudor Autobiography: Listening for Inwardness.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2008. Pp. xii, 301. by Meredith Anne Skura.
(A)
____________________________________
(Reviewed by: F. W. Brownlow )
Tudor Autobiography: Listening for Inwardness. By MEREDITH ANNE SKURA. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 302. $49.00 cloth.
___________
“As everyone knows, there was no autobiography as we know it written in sixteenth-century England. The very word did not exist until the early nineteenth century. Two propositions related to this fact have been circulating in academic circles: that the sixteenth-century English had little interest in the individual life for its own sake, and that they had not yet developed a capacity for the kind of inward self-awareness that autobiographical writing requires. Meredith Skura will have none of this. ‘It is safe to say,’ she writes, ‘that talking about yourself was part of the stuff of daily life long before personal accounts were first written down, then printed and codified as a genre (9). This is surely the case, and so, using the more general term life-writing’ (15) to describe her quarry, she finds it in abundance. Whether what she finds should be called autobiography, though, is a question she never really answers. Her book consists of an introduction followed by eight chapters discussing each of nine authors whose ‘life-writing’ she has found particularly interesting, and whose careers span the century from beginning to end: Skelton, Wyatt, Bale, William Baldwin, Thomas Whythorne, Thomas Tusser, Isabella Whitney, Gascoigne, and Greene.” ...
(emphasis added)
______________________________________
F. W. Brownlow. "Tudor Autobiography: Listening for Inwardness by Meredith Anne Skura (review)." | Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 65, no. 3 (2014): 352-353.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/565431
____________________________________
“One of the more interesting phenomena of recent years has been the burgeoning interest in psychoanalysis among literary critics. As psychoanalysts find themselves increasingly drawn to a view of their discipline as a hermeneutic one, more literary scholars appear to be turning to it as a means of enhancing their understanding of texts and readers’ responses to them.”…
________________________________________
(Book review)
(Reviewer) A. H. Esman, (1984) : ‘The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process, By Meredith Anne Skura.’,
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 32(3), pp. 698–701.
doi: 10.1177/000306518403200324.
_____________________________
______________________________
(Image source/credit: io9.gizmodo.com)
(from Scientific American magazine: The Real Neuroscience of Creativity by Scott Barry Kaufman (1)
_____________________
"So yea, you know how the left brain is really realistic, analytical, practical, organized, and logical, and the right brain is so darn creative, passionate, sensual, tasteful, colorful, vivid, and poetic?
"No.
"Just no.
"Stop it.
"Please.
"Thoughtful cognitive neuroscientists such as Anna Abraham, Mark Beeman, Adam Bristol, Kalina Christoff, Andreas Fink, Jeremy Gray, Adam Green, Rex Jung, John Kounios, Hikaru Takeuchi, Oshin Vartanian, Darya Zabelina and others are on the forefront of investigating what actually happens in the brain during the creative process. And their findings are overturning conventional and overly simplistic notions surrounding the neuroscience of creativity.
"The latest findings from the real neuroscience of creativity suggest that the right brain/left brain distinction does not offer us the full picture of how creativity is implemented in the brain.(2) Creativity does not involve a single brain region or single side of the brain."
"Instead, the entire creative process– from preparation to incubation to illumination to verification-- consists of many interacting cognitive processes (both conscious and unconscious) and emotions. Depending on the stage of the creative process, and what you’re actually attempting to create, different brain regions are recruited to handle the task.
"Importantly, many of these brain regions work as a team to get the job done, and many recruit structures from both the left and right side of the brain. In recent years, evidence has accumulated suggesting that “cognition results from the dynamic interactions of distributed brain areas operating in large-scale networks.”
Depending on the task, different brain networks will be recruited."
______________________________
© 2018 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, A DIVISION OF NATURE AMERICA, INC.
(All emphasis as in the original text.)
(1): Scott Barry Kaufman is a psychologist at Barnard College.
(2): "There's some grain of truth to the left brain/right brain distinction. For instance, spatial reasoning recruits more structures in the right hemisphere, and language processing recruits more structures in the left hemisphere. Also, there's some really interesting research conducted by John Kounios and Mark Beeman showing that the Aha! moment of insight-- in which participants discover seemingly unrelated words-- is associated with activation of the right anterior superior temporal gyrus. None of these findings, however, negate the fact that the entire creative process involves the whole brain."
(Salzberg Global Seminar: Session Report No. 547:) "The Neuroscience of Art: What Are the Sources of Creativity?"
SEE, in particular, at pp. 17-18, of this .pdf document:
"The Written Word"
| by Aryeh Stollman, Writer & Assistant Clinical Professor Radiology, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY, USA and Pireeni Sundaralingam, Poet, Cognitive Scientist, and Playwright; Associate Professor, Department of Writing, Consciousness & Creative Inquiry,
California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, USA
_________________
(Medical News Today | Published Wednesday 17 February 2016 | by Tim Newman) "The Neuroscience of Creativity"
_________________
(Chapter 2: The Neurology of Creativity: Focus on Music (by Herbert B. Newton) : (© Springer-Verlag London 2015 | C. Charyton (ed.), in :Creativity and Innovation Among Science and Art, | DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-6624-5_2)
________________________________________________________
Spoken and written language, the products of the complex phenomena of the human body's interactions of the brain's-and-other-organ's continuous neural communications—only some of which occur at what is called a 'conscious' (waking, aware) state, as others occur 'below' that level of awareness, out of grasp current consciousness—are necessarily reflections of the mental world of their author and they cannot help but reveal a number of personality characteristics, more or less transient or abiding, in the author's mental make-up.
Thus, 'mining' speech and writing (as these are recorded and reviewed) is the best, if not, indeed, the only real avenue into the personality of the author of the spoken and written products. The personality characteristics are going to reveal themselves despite the most assiduous 'efforts' to disguise or suppress these on the author's part. Even an author's attempts to adopt various masks and guises—as with the creatively-produced characters in the craft of a poet or a playwright—will inevitably leave traces, sometimes strongly marked, of the naturally-occurring personality of the author behind his masks. Thus, the masks, their uses and their typical features, are going to tell us about the author who has put them on over his other outward personality, that which is known to characterize him to his worldly family, friends and acquaintances—however similar to or different from that in his writing, provided, of course, that we are attentive and receptive to the personality traces characterized in the author's record of speech or writing.
So, whether one admits it or not, in the course of reading a written work, a text, (or hearing speech) readers and listening audiences, whether they be professional scholars at work or casual readers of entertainments, automatically incorporate into the acts of interpretation a process of imagining the mental state and characteristic personality of the author—to delve into his meanings and intentions themselves. This can hardly be divorced from the work of interpretation itself as these processes are all of a piece mentally in the process which is described by the term (written or spoken) communication. Those who are not attentive and receptive to these features are going to miss much that is instructive about the author and his intended and unintended but meaningful and self-revealing relationship to his speech or writing.
Likewise, speakers and writers reveal themselves in their speech and written texts. This is not a matter of choice. It happens ineluctably. Thus, whoever happened as a matter of fact to have been the real author of of the works attributed (by orthodox scholarship) to some supposed 'William Shaksper' of Stratford-upon-Avon, that author revealed himself to his peers and to all his readers ever since—whether those outside his circle of family and friends who knew him to be the author were able to grasp and make good use of the revelatory features of his work, which he himself noted as there to be found in "every word" he wrote—that is a different and separate issue. The fact remains that he does reveal himself to us in his writings.
(B)
_____________
To take this further, keep some obvious common-sense things in mind: after we clear the point that authors are going to reveal themselves in their written work—even if their work in some particular instance concerns their adopting guises, placing themselves in the role of characters of their own devising who are, on paper, very unlike themselves—they’re still going to reveal things about themselves as they go about depicting their work’s characters’ thoughts and deeds. The author can’t “reveal things in himself” unless, of course, those things are there, are latent, are already there to some extent to begin with.
Nor, by the same token, can a person reveal himself via means, techniques, methods, which are outside his experiences. A natural-born genius cannot reveal his genius through literary work if he’s never learned to read and write. He could—and he almost certainly should—reveal his ingenious capacities in some manner but these exhibits of genius-work won’t happen through things about which he is simply unfamiliar, inexperienced, due to having never had any opportunity to develop such means or avenues of expression. Of course there are flukes in life of the kind in which, for example, at one’s first time on the bowling-alley-lane’s line, one rolls a 'strike.' But he doesn’t keep doing this over and over and over again. Skills have to be developed, practiced and honed to bring them to advanced stages. Fortunately, extraordinary or ordinary, a person generally gets better at something with practice; and the progression is from the relatively rudimentary to the more accomplished, sophisticated if the subjects persist in their efforts.
Orthodox (Stratfordian) Shakespeare scholars are schooled in received ideas about both "who the actual author was" and "who the author was not"; if they have a masters degree or, worse, a doctorate in English literature with a specialization in "Shakespeare," by the time they've earned these degrees they've been deeply indoctrinated in these ideas. Having been taught and having accepted that Edward Oxford was definitely not the true author, they're not at all disposed to "see" or "hear", to recognize Oxford's personality as that is revealed in his writings—whether these are under the pen-name of Robert Greene or William Shakespeare. Indeed, their predispositions are so strongly formed and preemptive that, even when the details of the reasoning and evidence behind it concerning Oxford as author are laid out to them, they apparently still can't see or hear Oxford come through in his writings.
(C)
AN APPEAL TO THOSE WHO POSSESS THE MEANS TO DO SO:
PLEASE!——HELP INDEPENDENT RESEARCHERS WORKING ON THE "SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION" BY GIVING SUSTAINING GRANTS (see the following):
Others who, for various reasons, somehow missed or escaped (grew out of, grew away from) their youthful indoctrination into the myth of William Shaksper as the person behind the authorial (pen-) name, "William Shakespeare" are at least potentially capable of seeing and hearing in "Shakespeare" the man behind the pen-name. There are today still only a tiny number of people (in absolute or relative terms) doing research which is premised on an Oxfordian hypothesis. Research support for them is virtually unknown and unavailable within the mainstream world of academic institutions or, for that matter, arts and humanities foundations which are major sources of research grants in literary studies.
So, to those who happen here by their interest in, by their curiosity about, "Shakespeare" and who are among the very fortunate wealthiest one-percent of the world's wealthy elite, please know that Oxfordian scholars, almost by definition independent scholars. badly need research money in the form of unrestricted grants. If you are one of the fortunate wealthy who can provide annual support of from 30K to 40K (£,$, €) and you know that you'll never really miss such an amount, then I urge you to give some very serious consideration to proposing this support to someone at work in this field. Your grants shall not likely be tax-deductible and it goes without saying that no researcher can ever present his or her sponsors with anything of a guarantee of success, however that may be measured. Research takes place at the edges of what's known—or, in the case of Shakespeare Studies, mistakenly believed to be true about "Shakespeare" and there is no way Oxfordian scholars can assure their sponsors of success any more than a cancer-researcher can assure donors to that research of eventual success.
Worse, even the handful of scattered 'Oxfordian' associations are failing in this respect. They don't make any serious effort to fill the need of matching potential grant donors—institutional or individual—with struggling independent researchers. Thus, if you are independently wealthy and interested in this work, your support is badly needed. No major institutions are filling this void and there is no reason to expect that this sad state of affairs is going to change anytime soon.
(E)
92proximity1
Originally posted on Friday, 23 November, 2018
( updated / additions ) 29 November, 2018
(Updated / additions ) 27 July, 2019
(Updated / additions ) 03 September, 2019
(Updated / additions ) 05 September, 2019
(Updated / additions ) 06 November 2019
(Updated / additions ) 26 January 2020
(Updated / addition ) 15 October 2020
(Last Updated / addition ) 03 February 2021
________________________________________
Some (Internet/WorldWideWeb) On-Line resources for Shakespeare study:
• The Agas (Interactive) Map of Early Modern London
• The World Shakespeare Bibliography Online ( NOTE: paid-subscription required for access )
• SHAKSPER website (shaksper.net) .
_____________________________________________________________
ESPECIALLY NOTABLE
• RECORDS OF EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA (REED) (Homepage)
➥ Early Modern London Theatres
➥ Patrons and Performances
➥ Anglo-Latin Wordbook
➥ Links for New Researchers
_____________
The Compendium of Renaissance Drama ("CORD") (Homepage) (© 1989-2016 Brian Jay Corrigan) :
With SUB-SECTIONS comprised of links for the following:
➥ • "SOURCES" : David Nicol's Source Works of Renaissance Drama (SWORD) Index/Homepage
➥ • "PLAYS" : (synopses)
➥ • "PERSONS" : (biographies)
➥ • "TIMELINES"
➥ • "CHARACTERS" (A-Z Listing)
➥ • "TOPOGRAPHY" : (Topographical Dictionary)
➥ • "IMAGES"
➥ • "PLAYHOUSES" : (mapped locales)
_____________
• MEDIEVAL NAMES ARCHIVE : Early 17th Century English Names
_____________
• Biographical Index of English Drama Before 1660 (by David J. Kathman)
"... a complete annotated list of all playwrights, actors, patrons, musicians, and miscellaneous other people active in English drama before 1660... ."
_____________
• Shakespeare's Actors (1)
(from: Internet Shakespeare Editions (HOMEPAGE) )
_____________
• GENERAL RESEARCH GUIDES relating to MEDIEVAL & MODERN HISTORY (from the British National Archives website)
Learn Latin or Greek or both:
LATIN:
• Latin language instruction via online tutorials
from the British National Archives Website: LEARN MEDIEVAL LATIN
Learn Paleography :
PALEOGRAPHY: Reading old handwriting -- 1500-1800 (online tutorials from the British National Archives site)
• MANUSCRIPTS RESOURCES:
(about) The Henslowe-Alleyn Papers (newly added 03 February 2021)
Cambridge University : Manuscripts Lab
Oxford University manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries' collections (Digital Bodleian)
_______________
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ONLINE BOOKS LIBRARY
• The Online Books Page: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
(TOP HOME-PAGE: Full Index of Works and Subject Heads on Shakespeare )
---------> • Authorship
---------> • Political and social views
The Online Books Page ----> • John Norden (Norden, John, 1548-1625?)
• Online Books by William Fulke | (Fulke, William, 1538-1589)
______________
• Anonymous Shake-speare (HOMEPAGE & TO THE READER) A very useful website by Kurt Kreiler which concerns Edward Oxford as the rightful author.
➥ Anonymous Shake-speare (LINKS) (This reference added 29 November, 2018)
• The Folger Shakespeare Library
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” Resource pages at www.Folger.edu
➥ A Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama
➥ List of digital resources at the Folger
➥ “Hamnet” : Folger Library Catalogue
• University of Birmingham (U.K.) LIBRARY SERVICES “Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature: Websites”
• The University of Texas (El Paso) RESEARCH GUIDES
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (HOME)
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (BOOKS/MEDIA)
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (DATABASES)
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (ELECTRONIC JOURNALS)
• Kathy Lynn Emerson's : A Who’s Who of Tudor Women
______________________________
THE PEERAGE :
THE PEERAGE : A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe >
Name Index # 2927 ("OXFORD")
ENGLISH PEERAGE & the DE VERE FAMILY EARLS OF OXFORD :
Cracroft's Peerage
The Complete Guide to the British Peerage & Baronetage
Hereditary Peerages >
The Peerage of England >
Earls of England >
Extinct English Earldoms >
Earls of Oxford, (E, 1142 - 1703) | Creation: let.pat. Jul 1142 | Extinct: 12 Mar 1702/3 |
Family name: de Vere
Early English Books Online
• SHAKESPEARE RESOURCE CENTER (HOME)
➥ ( ABOUT)
➥ ( SHAKESPEARE’s LANGUAGE)
• EARLY BRITISH STATE PAPERS: State Papers Online, 1509-1714 ( NOTE: this is an institutional resource for paid subscribers )
• BRITISH HISTORY ONLINE
• GENERAL GUIDE TO THE RESOURCES AT THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
• John Foxe The Acts and Monuments (Online) (TAMO) )
_____________________
( 6 November 2019)
• "CHRONOLOGY" : an illustrated & annotated Chronology / Time-line
TRULY BRILLIANT & indispensible!
ABOUT THIS RESOURCE:
... "tailor-made for Literary Print Culture. Its aim is to try to situate and contextualise the source materials made available by this resource. Users can browse the chonology in its entirety or filter entries by category. At its heart is a central Timeline documenting nine categories":
➥....... • Legislation and Copyright
➥....... • History of the City of London
➥....... • Stationers Company History
➥....... • (English) Civil War
➥....... • Printing and Publishing
➥....... • British Royal Family
➥....... • Livery Companies (Guilds of London)
➥....... • Drama and Literature
➥....... • The English Stock
© Adam Matthew Digital Ltd. U.K. / A SAGE Publishing Company
__________________________________
_____________________
( 6 November 2019) • Records of London's Livery Companies Online (ROLLCO) | Apprentices and Freemen 1400-1900 |
___________________
(26 January 2020) • EDWARD OXFORD 17th EARL of OXFORD related materials --
MARK ALEXANDER's sourcetext.com ®: SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP SOURCEBOOK®
a very rich and varied compilation of online digitized period manuscripts, printed & published texts. (Note: SOURCETEXT, SOURCETEXT.COM, THE SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP SOURCEBOOK, and others are trademarked.)
( updated / additions ) 29 November, 2018
(Updated / additions ) 27 July, 2019
(Updated / additions ) 03 September, 2019
(Updated / additions ) 05 September, 2019
(Updated / additions ) 06 November 2019
(Updated / additions ) 26 January 2020
(Updated / addition ) 15 October 2020
(Last Updated / addition ) 03 February 2021
________________________________________
Some (Internet/WorldWideWeb) On-Line resources for Shakespeare study:
• The Agas (Interactive) Map of Early Modern London
• The World Shakespeare Bibliography Online ( NOTE: paid-subscription required for access )
“a searchable electronic database consisting of the most
comprehensive record of Shakespeare-related scholarship and
theatrical productions published or produced worldwide from 1960
to the present.”
• SHAKSPER website (shaksper.net) .
(from the site: )
"SHAKSPER strives to emphasize the scholarly by providing the opportunity for the formal exchange of ideas through queries and responses regarding literary, critical, textual, theoretical, and performative topics and issues."
_____________________________________________________________
ESPECIALLY NOTABLE
• RECORDS OF EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA (REED) (Homepage)
➥ Early Modern London Theatres
➥ Patrons and Performances
➥ Anglo-Latin Wordbook
➥ Links for New Researchers
_____________
The Compendium of Renaissance Drama ("CORD") (Homepage) (© 1989-2016 Brian Jay Corrigan) :
With SUB-SECTIONS comprised of links for the following:
➥ • "SOURCES" : David Nicol's Source Works of Renaissance Drama (SWORD) Index/Homepage
➥ • "PLAYS" : (synopses)
➥ • "PERSONS" : (biographies)
➥ • "TIMELINES"
➥ • "CHARACTERS" (A-Z Listing)
➥ • "TOPOGRAPHY" : (Topographical Dictionary)
➥ • "IMAGES"
➥ • "PLAYHOUSES" : (mapped locales)
_____________
• MEDIEVAL NAMES ARCHIVE : Early 17th Century English Names
_____________
• Biographical Index of English Drama Before 1660 (by David J. Kathman)
"... a complete annotated list of all playwrights, actors, patrons, musicians, and miscellaneous other people active in English drama before 1660... ."
_____________
• Shakespeare's Actors (1)
(from: Internet Shakespeare Editions (HOMEPAGE) )
_____________
• GENERAL RESEARCH GUIDES relating to MEDIEVAL & MODERN HISTORY (from the British National Archives website)
Learn Latin or Greek or both:
LATIN:
• Latin language instruction via online tutorials
from the British National Archives Website: LEARN MEDIEVAL LATIN
Learn Paleography :
PALEOGRAPHY: Reading old handwriting -- 1500-1800 (online tutorials from the British National Archives site)
• MANUSCRIPTS RESOURCES:
(about) The Henslowe-Alleyn Papers (newly added 03 February 2021)
Cambridge University : Manuscripts Lab
Oxford University manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries' collections (Digital Bodleian)
_______________
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ONLINE BOOKS LIBRARY
• The Online Books Page: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
(TOP HOME-PAGE: Full Index of Works and Subject Heads on Shakespeare )
---------> • Authorship
---------> • Political and social views
The Online Books Page ----> • John Norden (Norden, John, 1548-1625?)
• Online Books by William Fulke | (Fulke, William, 1538-1589)
______________
• Anonymous Shake-speare (HOMEPAGE & TO THE READER) A very useful website by Kurt Kreiler which concerns Edward Oxford as the rightful author.
➥ Anonymous Shake-speare (LINKS) (This reference added 29 November, 2018)
• The Folger Shakespeare Library
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” Resource pages at www.Folger.edu
➥ A Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama
➥ List of digital resources at the Folger
➥ “Hamnet” : Folger Library Catalogue
• University of Birmingham (U.K.) LIBRARY SERVICES “Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature: Websites”
• The University of Texas (El Paso) RESEARCH GUIDES
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (HOME)
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (BOOKS/MEDIA)
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (DATABASES)
➥ “SHAKESPEARE” (ELECTRONIC JOURNALS)
• Kathy Lynn Emerson's : A Who’s Who of Tudor Women
______________________________
THE PEERAGE :
THE PEERAGE : A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe >
Name Index # 2927 ("OXFORD")
ENGLISH PEERAGE & the DE VERE FAMILY EARLS OF OXFORD :
Cracroft's Peerage
The Complete Guide to the British Peerage & Baronetage
Hereditary Peerages >
The Peerage of England >
Earls of England >
Extinct English Earldoms >
Earls of Oxford, (E, 1142 - 1703) | Creation: let.pat. Jul 1142 | Extinct: 12 Mar 1702/3 |
Family name: de Vere
Early English Books Online
”Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War. …”
• SHAKESPEARE RESOURCE CENTER (HOME)
➥ ( ABOUT)
➥ ( SHAKESPEARE’s LANGUAGE)
• The Cecil Papers: Home SUBJECT : Lord William Cecil, First Baron Burghley (1520-1598)
"William Cecil (1521-1598), Lord Burghley and his son Robert Cecil (1563-1612), First Earl of Salisbury were at the heart of events during one of the most dynamic periods in Western history. One of Elizabeth I's closest advisors, William Cecil, was both her Lord High Treasurer and her Secretary of State - a position also held by his son who continued to serve Elizabeth and her successor, James I. Previously, the essential historic documents available in the Cecil Papers were only available at Hatfield House in the United Kingdom. This collection is valuable for scholars, students, and general users for the thorough study of significant evens and individuals of the 16th and 17th centuries. "
• EARLY BRITISH STATE PAPERS: State Papers Online, 1509-1714 ( NOTE: this is an institutional resource for paid subscribers )
• BRITISH HISTORY ONLINE
"British History Online is a digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800. We aim to support the learning, teaching and research of our users from around the world.
"BHO was founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust in 2003. Our collection currently contains over 1,270 volumes and is always growing."
• GENERAL GUIDE TO THE RESOURCES AT THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
• John Foxe The Acts and Monuments (Online) (TAMO) )
_____________________
( 6 November 2019)
• "CHRONOLOGY" : an illustrated & annotated Chronology / Time-line
TRULY BRILLIANT & indispensible!
ABOUT THIS RESOURCE:
... "tailor-made for Literary Print Culture. Its aim is to try to situate and contextualise the source materials made available by this resource. Users can browse the chonology in its entirety or filter entries by category. At its heart is a central Timeline documenting nine categories":
➥....... • Legislation and Copyright
➥....... • History of the City of London
➥....... • Stationers Company History
➥....... • (English) Civil War
➥....... • Printing and Publishing
➥....... • British Royal Family
➥....... • Livery Companies (Guilds of London)
➥....... • Drama and Literature
➥....... • The English Stock
© Adam Matthew Digital Ltd. U.K. / A SAGE Publishing Company
__________________________________
_____________________
( 6 November 2019) • Records of London's Livery Companies Online (ROLLCO) | Apprentices and Freemen 1400-1900 |
... "a site providing records of Apprentices and Freemen in the City of London Livery Companies between 1400 and 1900.
"The Records of London's Livery Companies Online project is a partnership between the Centre for Metropolitan History, The Bowyers' Company, The Clothworkers' Company, The Drapers' Company, The Founders’ Company, The Girdlers' Company, The Goldsmiths' Company, The Mercers' Company, The Musicians' Company, The Salters' Company, The Stationers' Company and The Tallow Chandlers' Company.
"The aim of ROLLCO is to provide a fully searchable database of Livery Company membership over time. Searches can be made for individuals (and in the near future statistical 'trends') within the Companies' membership, with results available for downloading and saving."
___________________
(26 January 2020) • EDWARD OXFORD 17th EARL of OXFORD related materials --
MARK ALEXANDER's sourcetext.com ®: SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP SOURCEBOOK®
a very rich and varied compilation of online digitized period manuscripts, printed & published texts. (Note: SOURCETEXT, SOURCETEXT.COM, THE SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP SOURCEBOOK, and others are trademarked.)
_____________________
("About" page) The Post-Reformation Digital Library (added 15 OCT. 2020)
See Also: Their own reference-list (with linked URLS) of various Digital Libraries (Worldwide)
______________________
• (next new entry)
_____________________
• The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) site's
(blog) Grammar in early modern English
_____________________
The Bodeian Libraries - Oxford University (Homepage)
SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online)
Search Oxford Libraries Online (SOLO) is provided by the Bodleian Libraries to allow readers to discover the University of Oxford’s world-class library resources.
Databases A-Z (Access to many resources limited to University of Oxford card holders)
List of databases by title, subject, publisher or type. You can also access these via SOLO.
e-Journals A-Z (Access to subscriptions limited to University of Oxford card holders)
List of e-Journals that the University subscribes to. You can also access these via SOLO.
Oxford University Research Archive (ORA)
A digital repository of research publications produced by members of the University. See also ORA Help & Information.
Theses
Information about searching for, requesting or acquiring Oxford theses and theses from other Universities in the UK and worldwide.
Legal deposit
Information about the Bodleian Libraries' Legal Deposit collections, including electronic Legal Deposit and the Legal Deposit Web Archive.
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Access to thousands of books online, covering many subjects.
OXAM (Access limited to University of Oxford card holders)
Browse University of Oxford examination papers online, 1999 - present.
Google Scholar with Oxford full text links (Access limited to University of Oxford card holders)
Links to full text of available articles generated automatically for University of Oxford users. (If outside the University's network, use the Library links settings in the menu to choose University of Oxford – Find it @ Oxford)
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Bodleian Blogs is an aggregated list of blogs kept by library staff in Oxford, providing regularly updated content on a broad range of subjects. Blogs are listed by category, including Libraries & librarians, Special collections & archives, and Research & learning.
Special Collections
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A list of e-resources for Chinese studies>
Digital.Bodleian
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A list of University of Oxford digitized resources collections.
With links to MANY collections of resources.
Other Special Collections digital resources
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A digitized collection of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, and incunabula (15th-century printed books) from the Bodleian and the Vatican Library
John Johnson Collection
A major collection of printed ephemera.
What's the Score at the Bodleian?
A a gateway to digitised copies from the Bodleian Libraries' collections of piano music intended for the amateur market in mid-Victorian Britain.
Queen Victoria's Journals
Queen Victoria's life through her digitized and transcribed journals.
Electronic Enlightenment (Access limited to University of Oxford card holders)
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Early Modern Letters Online
A combined finding aid and editorial interface for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence.
Early Manuscripts at Oxford University (SEE LINK ABOVE or Here ---> "Digital Bodleian" )
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A digitised Arabic cosmography, with full English translation and an edition of the text.
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93proximity1
Originally posted: Tuesday, 27 November 2018
______________________________________
________________________________________________________
Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt. Aurum probatur igni, ingenium probatur vero ipso.
________________________________________________________
Who was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxenforde? and, more to the point, how and why did he rather than some other fellow become the person who, behind the pen-name of “William Shakespeare”, made and left a singularly-important place in the history of English literature?
No one before him in the history of English literature and no one since—so far, at any rate—holds quite the same remarkable place as the man who was author of the work we ascribe to the name “William Shakespeare.” Just why is that? Why did he appear then and why has no one since his time come upon the scene to make a clearly comparable mark in the world of English literature?
There are reasons that the people and events which were decisive factors in the life of Edward Oxford came about when and as they did and not earlier or later and not quite differently. The part of “chance” in all this is, of course and as always, immense. Chance is always a factor. But here, particular elements, some of them extraordinarily rare, came together in a way and in a place and time in which they had not occurred before and have not occurred since.
Astonishing ‘geniuses’ mark and stand out in every age in various kinds of human endeavor. There have been great musician-composers in every age, great painters and sculptors, great mathematicians and physicists, great chess grandmasters.(1) But we do not have numerous Leonardos (da Vinci) or Michelangelos (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni) or Van Goghs or Beethovens, Mozarts, Einsteins, Bobby Fischers, Magnus Carlsens—or "Shakespeares."
There were brilliant men and women, nobles and commoners in their origins, and some of them deserved to be called remarkable, and, a few,"genius." There were geniuses of the arts and sciences, painters, musicians and composers, sculptors, architects, astronomers, medical doctors, linguists, politicians, poets, military commanders; and there were men and women of remarkable talent in all the areas of trades and artisanal crafts.
Over the course of Oxford's life among the nobility—the class into which he was born—there were dozens of dukes and duchesses, scores of earls and countesses. Perhaps several dozen, like Edward, lost their father while still children and were taken into the household of William Cecil, Elizabeth's Master of the Wards of court, and were raised and educated there and elsewhere by tutors and governesses according to Cecil's instructions. One was Edward Manners, the third Earl of Rutland, born only fifteen months prior to Oxford. Had these two been of harmonious temperaments, there is every reason to suppose that they'd have become good friends. On the other hand, from what is understood about the political talents and instincts of William Cecil, it may be that Cecil deliberately played the two young Earls off each other, giving favour to one the better to incite envy in the other. For it cannot be doubted that Cecil would have favored the more outwardly obedient and compliant of the two. It is simply not likely that this one should have been Oxford. But this remains a conjecture as to their similar or dissimilar characters.
What is beyond doubt is that, in Oxford's life circumstances, these factors are of supreme importance in understanding how he came to be the person he was:
• His birth to a high-ranking noble father, John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and his rare intellectual genius—for languages, for poetry. for dramatic arts, for music and, not least, for his insight into morals and human-nature.
• The loss of his father within twelve months of his twelfth birthday.
• His placement in the household and under the supervision of William Cecil.
• The peculiarly acute personality differences between Cecil and Edward, which only increased as Edward matured.
• Edward's marriage to Cecil's daughter, Anne.
• And, finally, the inestimable importance of his interest in and fascination for the history and literature of classical Greece and Rome, its heroes and villains, and, just as much, his devotion to Ovid and to the people and culture of the Italian city-states of his, Edward's, time--with, above all, the city-state of Venice and his travels to Italy which sprang from his youthful interest in that land.
What we know as "Shakespeare" would be inconceivable without these features and factors of Edward's life and personality.
There were of course other factors, other key moments, turning points, in his youth and adolescence. But, had any one of these six key factors been otherwise, the outcome should have certainly been very different. If we suppose that, in any and all cases, Edward should have been born the genius that he was, then he'd of course have exhibited the outward indications of his genius in some various ways; he may well have been a kind of literary genius one way or the other. But, without the particularly caustic relationship he had with William Cecil, growing up within the household run according to Cecil's very different temperament, there is not the slightest doubt that Edward's literary legacy should look very different from that which he left us under his pen-names, "Robert Greene" and, most of all, closely following that, "William Shake-speare."
Consider the following excerpts and, when you have finished, I invite you to marvel at the way in which Stratfordian scholars are able to produce such insight into the personality of Edward Oxford even as they remain blissfully ignorant of that close correspondence. Oxford, whether as "Greene" or as "Shake-speare", a man who wrote,
“every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed”
would surely have to alternate between laughing and crying were he to be able to see four hundred and fourteen years into the future.
________________________________
Notes:
(1) In our time, Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian chess grandmaster, and, since 2013, the reigning world champion, is regarded as one of the greatest champions in the history chess. Before Carlsen this was (and it remains) the widely-held view of Bobby Fischer’s standing among chess grandmasters. “Carlsen is a combination of (Anatoly Yevgenyevich) Karpov (and) (Bobby) Fischer. He gets his positions (and) then never lets go of that bulldog bite. Exhausting for opponents.”—Garry Kasparov, 2013
______________________________________
"We needed to do what we wanted to do."
_______________________
—Keith Richards, of the band, "The Rolling Stones", from his memoir Life.
_______________________
…
“For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?”
_______________________
— (King Richard) The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, III, ii.
_____________________________________
…
“be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.”
_______________________
—(Prospero) The Tempest, IV, i.
________________________________________________________
Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt. Aurum probatur igni, ingenium probatur vero ipso.
________________________________________________________
Who was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxenforde? and, more to the point, how and why did he rather than some other fellow become the person who, behind the pen-name of “William Shakespeare”, made and left a singularly-important place in the history of English literature?
No one before him in the history of English literature and no one since—so far, at any rate—holds quite the same remarkable place as the man who was author of the work we ascribe to the name “William Shakespeare.” Just why is that? Why did he appear then and why has no one since his time come upon the scene to make a clearly comparable mark in the world of English literature?
There are reasons that the people and events which were decisive factors in the life of Edward Oxford came about when and as they did and not earlier or later and not quite differently. The part of “chance” in all this is, of course and as always, immense. Chance is always a factor. But here, particular elements, some of them extraordinarily rare, came together in a way and in a place and time in which they had not occurred before and have not occurred since.
Astonishing ‘geniuses’ mark and stand out in every age in various kinds of human endeavor. There have been great musician-composers in every age, great painters and sculptors, great mathematicians and physicists, great chess grandmasters.(1) But we do not have numerous Leonardos (da Vinci) or Michelangelos (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni) or Van Goghs or Beethovens, Mozarts, Einsteins, Bobby Fischers, Magnus Carlsens—or "Shakespeares."
There were brilliant men and women, nobles and commoners in their origins, and some of them deserved to be called remarkable, and, a few,"genius." There were geniuses of the arts and sciences, painters, musicians and composers, sculptors, architects, astronomers, medical doctors, linguists, politicians, poets, military commanders; and there were men and women of remarkable talent in all the areas of trades and artisanal crafts.
Over the course of Oxford's life among the nobility—the class into which he was born—there were dozens of dukes and duchesses, scores of earls and countesses. Perhaps several dozen, like Edward, lost their father while still children and were taken into the household of William Cecil, Elizabeth's Master of the Wards of court, and were raised and educated there and elsewhere by tutors and governesses according to Cecil's instructions. One was Edward Manners, the third Earl of Rutland, born only fifteen months prior to Oxford. Had these two been of harmonious temperaments, there is every reason to suppose that they'd have become good friends. On the other hand, from what is understood about the political talents and instincts of William Cecil, it may be that Cecil deliberately played the two young Earls off each other, giving favour to one the better to incite envy in the other. For it cannot be doubted that Cecil would have favored the more outwardly obedient and compliant of the two. It is simply not likely that this one should have been Oxford. But this remains a conjecture as to their similar or dissimilar characters.
What is beyond doubt is that, in Oxford's life circumstances, these factors are of supreme importance in understanding how he came to be the person he was:
• His birth to a high-ranking noble father, John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and his rare intellectual genius—for languages, for poetry. for dramatic arts, for music and, not least, for his insight into morals and human-nature.
• The loss of his father within twelve months of his twelfth birthday.
• His placement in the household and under the supervision of William Cecil.
• The peculiarly acute personality differences between Cecil and Edward, which only increased as Edward matured.
• Edward's marriage to Cecil's daughter, Anne.
• And, finally, the inestimable importance of his interest in and fascination for the history and literature of classical Greece and Rome, its heroes and villains, and, just as much, his devotion to Ovid and to the people and culture of the Italian city-states of his, Edward's, time--with, above all, the city-state of Venice and his travels to Italy which sprang from his youthful interest in that land.
What we know as "Shakespeare" would be inconceivable without these features and factors of Edward's life and personality.
There were of course other factors, other key moments, turning points, in his youth and adolescence. But, had any one of these six key factors been otherwise, the outcome should have certainly been very different. If we suppose that, in any and all cases, Edward should have been born the genius that he was, then he'd of course have exhibited the outward indications of his genius in some various ways; he may well have been a kind of literary genius one way or the other. But, without the particularly caustic relationship he had with William Cecil, growing up within the household run according to Cecil's very different temperament, there is not the slightest doubt that Edward's literary legacy should look very different from that which he left us under his pen-names, "Robert Greene" and, most of all, closely following that, "William Shake-speare."
Consider the following excerpts and, when you have finished, I invite you to marvel at the way in which Stratfordian scholars are able to produce such insight into the personality of Edward Oxford even as they remain blissfully ignorant of that close correspondence. Oxford, whether as "Greene" or as "Shake-speare", a man who wrote,
“every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed”
would surely have to alternate between laughing and crying were he to be able to see four hundred and fourteen years into the future.
“In their introduction to Writing Robert Greene: Essays on England’s First Notorious Professional Writer, Kirk Melnikoff and Edward Gieskes describe how thoroughly Renaissance scholars have underestimated what Greene’s career might tell us about late sixteenth-century English Renaissance authorship and the emergence of the professional writer. Melnikoff and Gieskes define a professional as someone who possesses a ‘degree of self-awareness and control’ in an ‘occupation which depends on the deployment of a particular kind of knowledge’ and whose boundaries ‘develop out of conflict—conflict between producers and consumers and, quite importantly for Greene, between groups of producers.’(1) Whether writing pamphlets or plays, whether drawing on elite or popular culture, whether selling his writing to a printer for a one-time fee, circulating printed work in order to secure a patron, or writing plays on commission in the hope of eventually receiving the balance of a pre-negotiated fee, Greene demonstrates ‘an awareness of differing audiences for different kinds of work, an ability to recognize and exploit changes in the market, a profound if not always coherent grasp of the possibilities of distinct forms, and a sense of himself as a writer.’(1)
____________________________
(Reviewed Work: Writing Robert Greene: Essays on England's First Notorious Professional Writer by Kirk Melnikoff, Edward Gieskes | Review by: Rosemary Kegl |
Renaissance Quarterly | Vol. 62, No. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 304-306 (3 pages) ) (p. 305)
(1) : Writing Robert Greene: Essays on England's First Notorious Professional Writer
edited by Professor Edward Gieskes, Professor Kirk Melnikoff ; Aldershot, Hants, & Burlington, VT. Ashgate Publishing, (2008) (p. 13)
_______________
… “Greene’s close arrangements with acting companies and stationers, though, suggest that he was less a bohemian—defined by the OED as ‘A gipsy of society; one who either cuts himself off, or is by his habits cut off, from society for which he is otherwise fitted; especially an artist, literary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or irregular life, not being particular to the society he frequents, and despising conventionalities generally’—than a professional writer. By ‘professional,’ we do not mean that Greene wrote for money rather than some hypothetical love of letters, but that his practice was structured by a distinctly ‘professional’ space of cultural production. A profession is an occupation which depends on the deployment of a particular kind of knowledge—of cultural capital—and can, therefore be defined by its always unstable control over a specific area of intellectual labor. (51) This control depends on the existence of a market for the professional’s products—in this case plays and printed books—and that professional’s awareness of the norms of the market. The boundaries of a professional develop out of conflict—conflict between producers and consumers and, quite importantly for Greene, between groups of producers. Professions and their practitioners are thus social products, and to label a figure a ‘professional’ is to assert that that figure occupies a particular position—a position characterized by a degree of self-awareness and control—in a more or less well-developed area of work. Gieskes’s essay below offers a longer version of this argument, but for our purposes here it is sufficient to note that our use of the term ‘professional’ in reference to Greene implies that he was neither a helpless client of predatory printers nor an alternately desperate and sloppy hack selling whatever he could write as fast as he could write it, but, rather a shrewd and engaged participant in a rapidly developing cultural market. In his career, Greene shows an awareness of differing audiences for different kinds of work, an ability to recognize and exploit changes in the market, a profound if not always coherent grasp of the possibilities of distinct forms, and a sense of himself as a writer; all of these are elements of his practice that have yet to be adequately described.” (p. 13)
_______________________________________________
(1) Writing Robert Greene: Essays on England's First Notorious Professional Writer
edited by Professor Edward Gieskes, Professor Kirk Melnikoff ; Aldershot, Hants, & Burlington, VT. Ashgate Publishing, (2008) (p. 13)
________________________________
Notes:
(1) In our time, Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian chess grandmaster, and, since 2013, the reigning world champion, is regarded as one of the greatest champions in the history chess. Before Carlsen this was (and it remains) the widely-held view of Bobby Fischer’s standing among chess grandmasters. “Carlsen is a combination of (Anatoly Yevgenyevich) Karpov (and) (Bobby) Fischer. He gets his positions (and) then never lets go of that bulldog bite. Exhausting for opponents.”—Garry Kasparov, 2013
94proximity1
(Originally posted Saturday, 1 December 2018)
______________________________________
"Don't know much about his- to- ry, " ... ( 'What A Wonderful World,' Sam Cooke)
____________________________________________
(from Perspectives On History, the journal of The American Historical Association )
Or English Language and literature——which has seen a greater-than-20% DECLINE (in declared major-area studies) from 2011 to 2017.
_____________________________________
______________________________________
"Don't know much about his- to- ry, " ... ( 'What A Wonderful World,' Sam Cooke)
____________________________________________
(from Perspectives On History, the journal of The American Historical Association )
Or English Language and literature——which has seen a greater-than-20% DECLINE (in declared major-area studies) from 2011 to 2017.
The New York Times
ARCHIVES | 1979
Shakespeare Is Still the Challenge
By STEVE LAWSON
AUG. 12, 1979
_____________________
… …
"Indeed, Shakespeare in America, circa 1979, isn't so much a dramatic style as a welter of opinions, with every man for himself. Across the United States within the last few months, audiences have admired or endured an incredible spectrum of Shakespearean production. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Folger Theater Group's recent 'As You Like It' revolved around a single huge tree and little else. In New Haven, director Andrei Belgrader's version of ‘the same play populated the stage with gigantic beanbags and outlandishly artificial costumes. 'Coriolanus' and 'Julius Caesar' at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater deliberately utilized the skills of black and Hispanic performers in an effort to shatter the 'white' image of Shakespeare. Another “Caesar,” recently opened at Stratford, Conn., threw out togas and other Roman draperies in favor of consciously modern dress. On the West Coast, San Francisco has seen a 'Winter's Tale' in which Leontes and Hermione were cast against the grain with actors in their 20's, while Los Angeles witnessed a 'Tempest' which portrayed its Prospero as a man going through mid‐life crisis rather than as a shipwrecked Jove or Merlin. And Broadway lately played host to a 'Richard III' in which Al Pacino's strongly contemporary monarch was pitted against a gaggle of victims straight out of the 19th century.
"With such evidence at hand, it's no wonder optimists hail American Shakespeare as pluralistic and eclectic while pessimists brand it fractionalized and confused. Many relish a culture which encourages directorial coneepts 'The Merchant of Venice,' relocated by Ellis Rabb on a yacht in a Felliniesque Italy; 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' rendered baroque through Purcell arias in Alvin Epstein's production; Macbeths placed in Victorian parlors, Hamlets as transvestites. Purists claim, often with justification, that such clever ideas do violence to the text. But the reverse risk also applies: afraid to tread boldly, many productions sink back into timid convention, the familiar Shakespeare characterized by critic Richard Gilman as 'the train that's been down the same track times.'
"Such genteel versions may be chock-full of sound and fury, but usually signify nothing. As Peter Brook laments in his book 'The Empty Space,' 'We see his (Shakespeare's) plays done by good actors in what seems the proper way they look lively and colorful, there is music, and everyone is all dressed up . . . yet secretly we find it excruciatingly boring - and in our hearts we either blame Shakespeare, or theater as such, or even ourselves ...' Rare events like Brook's own Beckettian 'King Lear,' or Estelle Parsons’ recent shoestring version of 'Antony and Cleopatra' are daring, if variously successful, efforts to see Shakespeare afresh, to recover the spirit of the original through contemporary techniques. But most such attempts come off as either unbearably cute or self‐conscious, and the plays are violated rather than liberated.
"The 'Richard III' lately in New York - the first commercial Shakespeare on Broadway with a predominantly American cast in 15 years was strangely emblematic of America's shotgun investigation of the greatest dramatic poet in English. Judging by its harsh critical reception, the production actually took on the proportions of a cautionary event. Walter Kerr, for instance, called the show 'a shambles' in these pages, going on to say that 'the performance diminishes into a kind of Bowery Boys 'slanguage,' the actor (Pacino) leans ever more heavily on playing (mugging) to his youngish, ardent audience, and we end up not so much with Richard III as with Richard of Third Avenue.' Mr. Kerr thought he detected stray wits of the Marx Brothers and dialects ranging from Hispanic to stage‐Yiddish. The director evidently couldn't decide between a spare, semi‐Elizabethan attack, a full‐dress romantic version, or a more experimental approach. Trying to represent aspects of all three, this “Richard” ironically ended up pleasing only those thrilled by the opportunity to see Mr. Pacino onstage.
"The sad failures of an occasion like this — and its mildly ominous implication for Shakespeare's future in America — stem at least partly from historical swings of opinion. The first great 'Richard III' in this country, British actor Frederick Cooke, first played in 1810, and for the next two generations titans like Edwin Forrest, the Booths and the Keans vied to surpass one another in the role. Thanks chiefly to these early stars, a '19th‐century' style of Shakespearean acting took root, consisting of such ingredients as massive, rumbling scenery, lavish costumes and intensely romantic delivery. This flowery, increasingly deadly style dominated the major English theaters for the first half of this century, by extension coloring the Shakespeare in America by the companies of Maurice Evans and Margaret Webster. Now and then, an off‐beat production like the Mercury Theater's 'Julius Caesar,' played as fascist melodrama, emerged to ruffle the pattern of well-spoken yawn‐provoking 'immortal Bards, but only rarely.
"After World War II, however, a new trend arose. This 'jolly-it-up' school sought to inject new life into Shakespeare by hauling the plays into distant times and places. Usually these offbeat landscapes — swinging London, or the Sahara, or Mars — did nothing but obscure the text, but audiences were often fooled into being persuaded of a new, “daring,” style. Beyond this jollying‐up, which became the basic approach of theaters like the 'Phoenix,' the early 'Guthrie,' and the 'American Shakespeare Festival' during the 1950's and early 60's, somewhat more intrepid groups explored Shakespeare through either therapeutic or improvisatory techniques, or both. Joseph Papp's own controversial 1967 'Hamlet,' which had a rock music accompaniment, deliberately aimed to startle viewers with its self‐conscious anachronisms ('What do you read, my lord?' 'The New York Times'). An even more extreme production like the Performance Group's street version of “Macbeth,” avoided the slightest hint of the academic or literary, but managed to lose the text as well. It took landmark work like the Brook “Lear,” which toured here in 1964, or the less radical but admirable productions under Michael Langham and his successors at Stratford, Canada, to prove that Shakespeare could be timeless without recourse to absurdly remote periods ....
•
"Considering these historical changes of opinion, it is logical that American actors, directors and critics should be at loggerheads over 'concept.' To some, the word implies an overall frame in which to hang the text; to others, it suggests sinister tampering with the original. John Hirsch, whose recently staged widely praised 'Tempest' at the Mark Taper Forum, inclines toward the second view. 'I was accused during the 60's of being a traditionalist,' he laughs, 'because I asked, "What's the play about?" In those days, masterpieces existed to be thrown out: there was a profound distrust of logic, order, craft.'
"Often directors take second looks as their attitude toward 'concepts' changes with time. Louis Scheeder, director of Washington's Folger Theater group is one of these. 'Back in 1970,' he recalls, 'Richmond Crinkley and I co‐directed a "Twelfth Night" in which a guy played both Viola and Sebastian, and we had a mod rock score and geodesic dome setting. Next year we'll do the play here again ... but in a very autumnal way. Much more trusting of the text. Like everyone else, we went through a period of overburdening the plays.'
"Still, the need to approach Shakespeare anew is unmistakable, and unorthodox interpretations are by no means on the way out. Joseph Papp feels that everything depends on what he calls 'the talent of the conceiver.' Shakespeare, Mr. Papp says, can be set in a remote period, but only in an abstract fashion. And he worries about tampering with the text too much. 'I loved Peter Brook's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," ' he said, 'but it took the underside of the play and put it on top. To me, Shakespeare is like Irish coffee : you keep one ingredient on top, the other the bottom.'
"Some theaters subscribe unabashedly to 'conceptual' Shakespeare. 'Of course you want to connect theater to the grass roots,' says Adrian Hall of Providence's Trinity Square Repertory Company. 'But with Shakespeare you tend to impose formalities. During the Vietnam War, when we scheduled ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ we remembered the million times we'd seen Bob Hope getting up before the troops. So we placed the audience under camouflage netting and the cast came out as U.S.O.-types, with canned laughter piped in for Pandarus's jokes. Obviously, that concept wouldn't work as well today.' Down the coast at Connecticut's American Shakespeare Theater, Gerald Freedman is experimenting with a three‐play repertory: while his 'Julius Caesar' eschews togas in favor of modern garb, he has set 'Twelfth Night' around 1700. Mr. Friedman's staging of 'The Tempest' begins neutrally and moves into an illusionistic atmosphere.
•
"At Los Angeles's Mark Taper Forum artistic director Gordon Davidson is clearly of two minds about conceptualizing Shakespeare's plays. 'Whenever we start rehearsals for any Shakespeare,' Mr. Davidson says, 'I always tell the cast first thing: "no, we're not doing it on motorcycles!" I am for straightforward approach, but you always need some visuals to support it. John Hirsch and I talked for a while about doing a bare‐stage "Tempest," but decided it wasn't right. So what we have is a very contemporary fairy tale, a blend of modern thought and 19thcentury look.'
"Concepts aside, one question that throws actors and directors into panic is the sheer scope of Shakespeare. At time when playwrights like David Mamet or Lanford Wilson are scrutinizing the interplay of a very few characters, Shakespeare's expansiveness is all the more staggering. 'It's all wrong for actors to reason "Hamlet's a guy like me," ' insists Stella Adler, doyenne of American acting teachers. 'Well, he's not! That's trivializing, and with Shakespeare you have to expand. Life is trivial!* Shakespeare isn't.'
"The scope of Shakespearean production not only demands more time than most companies can afford, but also brings up the whole financial question. 'You're facing this huge, beautiful mountain,' declares Gordon Davidson, 'and you're lucky to make it up that first hill. You need 18 fine actors and you end up with three or four top‐notch ones, six or seven good, and the rest.. .'
"Stars, of course, often assure success, especially beyond the subsidized resident‐theater circuit. 'The commercial theater can only do Shakespeare when a Richard Burton or an Al Pacino wants to,' says Alexander Cohen, who produced the Burton‐Gielgud 'Hamlet' which come to Broadway in 1969. 'Shakespeare's (works are) in the public domain, so you can't offer your investors subsidiary rights. How will they get their money back?' Mr. Cohen, who is co- producing 'King Lear' on Broadway (starring Peter Ustinov) with the Stratford Festival of Canada next winter, notes that doing such a show single-handedly in New York would cost a producer in the neighborhood of $750,000.
“Shakespeare makes other demands. 'The Shakespearean phrase itself has size,' emphasizes Stella Adler. 'And that size demands understanding. It has nothing to do with an Edwardian accent or a New York accent. If a thing has great meaning or beauty, you cannot mumble it or gulp it or fancily it. You have to find the universality.' Michael Langham who staged the first productions of the Public Theater's Black‐Hispanic Shakespeare unit and who now heads the drama division at Juilliard, is cautiously optimistic on American classical speech. 'Ninety-five percent of the actors in ‘Coriolanus’ at the Public,' he elaborates, 'had never been in Shakespeare before — or for that matter, in any show that ran more than three performances. It was an exercise in training, but one thing I think we did was to banish the idea that there's no good American speech suitable to Shakespeare.'
“Shakespeare has an infinite capacity for reflecting our complexities and fears. Given this genius, what do we do with it? In some ways, the future looks bleak. The size of America — not to mention the size of Shakespeare —militates against a coherent production style. Geographical vastness, a dearth about standing text and voice teachers, the anti‐classical, anti‐verbal nature of television: all are cause for despair.
“Ideally, what we are seeking is style that manages to avoid both gimmickry and dustiness. ‘If only very good directors,’ suggests actor Frank Langella, ‘would take the text, blot out the name Shakespeare and say: “Forget the capes, forget the accents! Let's just treat this as a play.” Erase history, return to the text — after all, when Shakespeare wrote these, they weren't classics.’ This challenge, perhaps the biggest in our theater's painful fathoming of America, could constitute brave new exploration of how the past illuminates our present and looks ahead into future.”
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* : "That's trivializing, and with Shakespeare you have to expand. Life is trivial! Shakespeare isn't."
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NOTE: Here, the well-intentioned Stella Adler tried to make a good point but missed the point on the way there. It is not that life is trivial while "Shakespeare" is anything but trivial; it's rather that, because, or partly because life isn't trivial, or ought not be made needlessly trivial, "Shakespeare", of all things, ought not be trivialized—and that is indeed a worthy point which isn't apparently well-recognized, then or today.
BIRON
Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:
As, painfully to pore upon a book
To seek the light of truth; while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed
By fixing it upon a fairer eye,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed
And give him light that it was blinded by.
Study is like the heaven's glorious sun
That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks:
Small have continual plodders ever won
Save base authority from others' books
These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know nought but fame;
And every godfather can give a name.
FERDINAND
How well he's read, to reason against reading!
DUMAIN
Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding!
LONGAVILLE
He weeds the corn and still lets grow the weeding.
BIRON
The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.
DUMAIN
How follows that?
BIRON
Fit in his place and time.
DUMAIN
In reason nothing.
BIRON
Something then in rhyme.
FERDINAND
Biron is like an envious sneaping frost,
That bites the first-born infants of the spring.
BIRON
Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast
Before the birds have any cause to sing?
Why should I joy in any abortive birth?
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.
So you, to study now it is too late,
Climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate.
FERDINAND
Well, sit you out: go home, Biron: adieu.
BIRON
No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you:
And though I have for barbarism spoke more
Than for that angel knowledge you can say,
Yet confident I'll keep what I have swore
And bide the penance of each three years' day.
Give me the paper; let me read the same;
And to the strict'st decrees I'll write my name.
95proximity1
(Originally posted : Sunday, 2 December, 2018)
DAILY TELEGRAPH ; Sunday, 2 December 2018
____________________________________________
(from The Daily Telegraph (London) ) News | “Shakespeare was a Catholic sympathiser who left ‘coded political messages’ in his work” | Patrick Sawer, Senior News Reporter | 2 December 2018 • 7:00am
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“His plays and sonnets have enriched the English language beyond measure and left us a literary legacy still performed, read and studied around the world to this day.
“But it is now being claimed there was an unknown side to William Shakespeare - that of political commentator and champion of England’s oppressed Catholic minority.
“The Elizabethan playwright is often regarded as having been apolitical, with little to say on contemporary politics, but a Shakespeare scholar has argued that he was in fact deeply engaged with one of the biggest issues of the day.
“Clare Asquith, the Countess of Oxford and Asquith, has suggested that his early epic poem The Rape of Lucrece is, at nearly 2,000 lines, neither a poem nor about the rape of a Roman noblewoman; but is in fact a political pamphlet decrying the persecution of the country’s Catholics.
“She has reinterpreted Shakespeare’s poem, written in 1594, as an extended account of the Act of Supremacy of 1534 and the destruction of old Catholic England by the Protestants, following the establishment of the Church of England under Henry VIII.
“The poem is ostensibly about the rape of Lucrece, the devout wife of Collatine, by Tarquin, the son of the king of Rome.
“In the story - first told by the Roman poet Ovid and later painted by Rembrandt - this outrageous crime inspires an insurrection led by Collatine’s friend Brutus, leading to the foundation of the first Roman republic.
“But in Lady Asquith’s reading the violence and grief recounted in the poem are code for the destruction of the Catholic church’s monasteries; the selling off of its land and artworks; the demolition of stained glass and church decorations; and the destruction of the charitable alms-houses, their property handed over to already rich landowners.
“ ‘His audience would have understood the references contained in the poem, whether it was the King, the Court or its victims,’ she said. ‘The Catholics and the reformers were the victims and he uses terminology that would have provided comfort to them and make a plea to the court for tolerance.’
“The Rape of Lucrece is an extended allegory for what happened to England, to the Catholics and the reformers at the hands of the newly-established church and the Privy Council, led by William Cecil, the man who set up the first secret services and had a file on pretty much everyone.’
“Shakespeare’s poem has previously been regarded as one of his least successful works, written when the young playwright was in search of an aristocratic patron and hoping to impress the Earl of Southampton.
“Lady Asquith speculates that the poem may have been commissioned by Southampton’s fellow rebel the Earl of Essex, who championed religious tolerance.”
“She lays out her radical interpretation in her new book Shakespeare and the Resistance: The Earl of Southampton, the Essex Rebellion and the Poems that Challenged Tudor Tyranny , which was published last week.
“The persecution of England’s Catholics followed the act of Parliament that recognized Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church of England and established the Anglican church as the spiritual authority of the nation, in opposition to Catholicism and the authority of the Pope in Rome.
“She says it has long been difficult for many literary critics to recognise the political nature of Shakespeare’s work.
“ ‘He was far from apolitical and we only think he was because we don’t know what the sides were,’ she said. ‘All his work has a political undertext which we don’t recognise because we don’t recognise the history and events to which he is alluding.
“ ‘But he was, in a veiled way, referring to the political disputes of the time. The Rape of Lucrece is about life under a police state and the attempt at regime-change./”
Whatever the merits or demerits of the bases behind the hypotheses entertained in Clare Asquith's (cited) text, certain things about it are well worth a reader's time and attention. Above all, she's due credit for having understood that "there was an unknown side to William Shakespeare"—that would be putting it mildly.
This "unknown side" has, by now, of course, been fairly well revealed and explained best by Oxfordian scholarship (J. Thomas Looney, (1920); Charlton Ogburn Jr. (1983)) and all against the best efforts of Stratfordians to deny and supress their insights.
Mrs. Asquith sees, especially, that the author of the long poem, The Rape of Lucrece "was in fact deeply engaged with one of the biggest issues of the day," —certainly not news to readers of Looney or Ogburn!
As for whether The Rape of Lucrece is in fact "an extended account of the Act of Supremacy of 1534 and the destruction of old Catholic England by the Protestants, following the establishment of the Church of England under Henry VIII" it is virtually certain that, within it, the author engaged in "coded" language just as it is beyond doubt that, when he wrote, though his poetry or plays were often set in an ancient time and in a foreign land, his purposes were decidedly to speak to and about his own times.
This coded language is one of the most important characteristics of not only Edward Oxford's work as an multi-pseudonymous writer ("Robert Greene," "William Shake-speare"), our author in this case—though Clare Asquith herself might repudiate that view—it was characteristic of many and perhaps the vast majority of the most important writers of Tudor and Jacobean England. And she is, again, quite right when she points out, in another gross understatement, that "it has long been difficult for many literary critics to recognise the political nature of Shakespeare’s work" and that "All (this author's) work has a political undertext which we don’t recognise because we don’t recognise the history and events to which he is alluding," though ‘His audience would have understood the references contained in the poem, whether it was the King, the Court or its victims,’ ....
______________________________
(Emphasis added)
96proximity1
from the Journal NOTES & QUERIES:
30 Dec. 1944
p. 299—
“SHAKESPEARE PORTRAITS— I understand that three of the ‘generally-accepted portraits of Shakespeare’ have been subjected more or less recently to infrared and X-ray photography. They are stated to have been the half-length panel at Hampton Court, the ‘Janssen’ and the ‘Ashbourne.’ The result showed that certain original features in each had been painted out. The restoration of one revealed that the sitter had worn a signet-ring bearing the wild-boar device of the Earls of Oxford. The same treatment of the Ashbourne painting brought to light the family crest of the second wife of the 17th Earl of Oxford; also the monogram of the sixteenth-century Dutch artist Cormelius Ketel, who according to one of his contemporaries, ‘made a portrait of Lord Oxford, Edward de Vere.’
“My acquaintance with this matter is limited to a letter in the Weekly Scotsman of 4 November last, p. 5, col. 3. Can anyone furnish fuller particulars, and the conclusions, if any, which have been drawn by competent judges?
“Lee allows only two authentic portraits—the Stratford bust and the ‘Droeshout,’ and says that the ‘Janssen’ was executed from a verbal description shortly after Shakespeare’s death. The 17th Earl’s second wife was Elizabeth Trentham of Rocester Priory, Staffordshire.”
(Signed) W. W. G.
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https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Ashbourne_portrait
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from the Journal NOTES & QUERIES:
VOLUME CLXXVIII January-June, 1940
13 Apr. 1940
p. 270 —
“The new Quarterly review, with but two exceptions, is devoted to subjects, more or less burning subjects of the present day. …
The other (subject) is Mr. Archibald Stalker’s “Is Shakespeare’s Will a Forgery?” This is very able and very closely-reasoned. The defects and anomalies in the contents of the will; the difficulties concerning the signatures; the lack of a seal; the absence of the inventory; the odd circumstances connected with the discovery of the document and its publication, are some of the points discussed. ‘Lawyers and scholars,’ says Mr. Stalker, ‘have examined this will on the assumption that it is genuine. I am certain that if they proceed to examine it with the reasonable suspicion that it might be a forgery(,) many other blunders such as no lawyer would commit will be exposed.’ ; and he opines that the long acceptance of the will as Shakespeare’s proceeds from men’s belief that ‘great poets are witless in the conduct of affairs.’ ”
(the editors (?))
_______________________________
30 Dec. 1944
p. 299—
“SHAKESPEARE PORTRAITS— I understand that three of the ‘generally-accepted portraits of Shakespeare’ have been subjected more or less recently to infrared and X-ray photography. They are stated to have been the half-length panel at Hampton Court, the ‘Janssen’ and the ‘Ashbourne.’ The result showed that certain original features in each had been painted out. The restoration of one revealed that the sitter had worn a signet-ring bearing the wild-boar device of the Earls of Oxford. The same treatment of the Ashbourne painting brought to light the family crest of the second wife of the 17th Earl of Oxford; also the monogram of the sixteenth-century Dutch artist Cormelius Ketel, who according to one of his contemporaries, ‘made a portrait of Lord Oxford, Edward de Vere.’
“My acquaintance with this matter is limited to a letter in the Weekly Scotsman of 4 November last, p. 5, col. 3. Can anyone furnish fuller particulars, and the conclusions, if any, which have been drawn by competent judges?
“Lee allows only two authentic portraits—the Stratford bust and the ‘Droeshout,’ and says that the ‘Janssen’ was executed from a verbal description shortly after Shakespeare’s death. The 17th Earl’s second wife was Elizabeth Trentham of Rocester Priory, Staffordshire.”
(Signed) W. W. G.
________________________________
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Ashbourne_portrait
________________________________
from the Journal NOTES & QUERIES:
VOLUME CLXXVIII January-June, 1940
13 Apr. 1940
p. 270 —
“The new Quarterly review, with but two exceptions, is devoted to subjects, more or less burning subjects of the present day. …
The other (subject) is Mr. Archibald Stalker’s “Is Shakespeare’s Will a Forgery?” This is very able and very closely-reasoned. The defects and anomalies in the contents of the will; the difficulties concerning the signatures; the lack of a seal; the absence of the inventory; the odd circumstances connected with the discovery of the document and its publication, are some of the points discussed. ‘Lawyers and scholars,’ says Mr. Stalker, ‘have examined this will on the assumption that it is genuine. I am certain that if they proceed to examine it with the reasonable suspicion that it might be a forgery(,) many other blunders such as no lawyer would commit will be exposed.’ ; and he opines that the long acceptance of the will as Shakespeare’s proceeds from men’s belief that ‘great poets are witless in the conduct of affairs.’ ”
(the editors (?))
_______________________________
97proximity1
(Stanford Magazine) "History is a test. Mankind is failing it." || René Girard scrutinizes the human condition from creation to apocalypse. || by Cynthia Haven
JULY/AUGUST 2009
... ...
" 'I think the very notion of the humanities is at stake today because of this insistence that they not be touched by religion or science,' he said in an interview with author Millicent Dillon in 1981. 'That's why I think the humanities are withering on the vine. Of course, if I say things like this, it's terrifying to most people because you question all the categories. I think we live in a prudent world, but I like to take risks.'
"That includes risking criticism. 'Theories are expendable,' Girard says. 'They should be criticized. When people tell me my work is too systematic, I say, "I make it as systematic as possible for you to be able to prove it wrong." ' "
"He was also challenging the critical taboo of linking writers' works to their lives: 'In this country it has been an absolute given that the writer's life has nothing to do with the work. But it's sheer nonsense,' he told Dillon, adding that writers ultimately talk only about themselves." ...
98proximity1
ANNIVERSARY
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , who wrote under the pseudonyms of "William Shakspere" (variously spelled, "Shakspere," "Shakespere," "Shakespeare," etc.) and "Robert Greene," and, in all likelihood, other pen-names, was born on this date, 12 April, 1550, in Essex, at Hedingham Castle, the ancestral seat of the de Veres.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , who wrote under the pseudonyms of "William Shakspere" (variously spelled, "Shakspere," "Shakespere," "Shakespeare," etc.) and "Robert Greene," and, in all likelihood, other pen-names, was born on this date, 12 April, 1550, in Essex, at Hedingham Castle, the ancestral seat of the de Veres.
100proximity1
"Genius"
A two-edged sword—
_____________________________________
... ...
"But children like Tom are different. He was brought up in an underprivileged part of south London: 97% of pupils at his first school didn’t speak English as a first language. When it comes to numbers – or his other passions such as Latin and astrophysics – Tom’s parents have little idea what he’s talking about. His genius is not of their engineering.
"Intelligence tests are marked 'on a curve', meaning that the results are transformed into a bell curve: what matters is how you do compared with others who take them. By definition, most scores bunch in the middle: the average result in a cohort becomes an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 100; the middle two-thirds of scores become IQs of 85 to 115. The outliers are few. About two people in 100 have IQs below 70, and another two have IQs above 130. By the time you get 45 points away from the average of 100 in either direction, you’re down to about one person in 1,000. But since only a small percentage of any population takes IQ tests, identifying very exceptional children is hard. Most schools have none.
"Society prizes intelligence. Geniuses are viewed with awe and assumed to be guaranteed prosperity and success. Yet there is a dark side to intelligence. Like many gifted children, Tom’s childhood has often been unhappy. Aged five, he talked about wanting to end his life: he said he planned to do this by banging his head repeatedly against a wall. 'Life’s like a maze, only bigger,' Tom told his mum. 'I feel I’m getting lost.' His GP said he was suffering from severe depression, and reckoned its roots lay in Tom’s 'genius', and the frustration and isolation this was causing him.
"Tom finds it hard to relate to other children and has few friends. At school he has been shunted out on his own into corridors and offices. 'They didn’t want him in the class because he’s doing different stuff,' Chrissie says. To distract his mind from 'dark thoughts', Tom turns to puzzles and calculations, often late at night. He has long suffered from insomnia. The strain affects the whole family: 'I don’t understand parents who seek this,' says Chrissie. 'I can’t cope with it. I just want to take it away.'
"Many others echo the pain of Tom and his family. Mensa, an international organisation founded in Britain in 1946 to nurture the country’s most intelligent people, has 20,000 members (you must apply to join). When I put out a request via Mensa to hear from gifted children and their parents, my inbox fills with emails, many of them anguished. Those that I speak to say that, for fear of inspiring jealousy, they don’t dare talk to others about their children’s abilities. Given a sympathetic ear, they pour out their woes at such length that I nearly despair of getting them off the phone. Almost all are afraid of being identified, and insist on fake names.
"Some countries value extremely high intelligence more than others and offer specific educational provision for such children. Yet even if your genius is prized, admired and cultivated, social and psychological issues that often accompany great ability may make it an unwelcome gift. From the inside – and for many families that I spoke to – genius can feel more like a curse than a blessing.
"Most experts reserve the term 'gifted' for children who demonstrate three characteristics. First, gifted children begin to master a particular discipline – a language, maths or chess – much younger than most. They do so easily, so they also progress much faster than their peers.
"Secondly, this mastery is achieved largely on their own, rather than as a result of parental prodding. A child’s surroundings and socio-economic background certainly affect their speed of development: there is a close correlation between the number of words a child’s parents have spoken to them by the time they’re three and the child’s academic success aged nine. Studies suggest that children born into professional families may have heard some 4m more words by then than the offspring of parents with lower educational backgrounds. Such families often have higher incomes to provide more educational opportunities too.
"But Lyn Kendall, a consultant on gifted children at Mensa – who was herself a gifted child in a working-class family – insists that reading Nietzsche to your five-year-old, or forcing them to do three hours of extra homework, cannot 'make' a genius.
"Many children who have extremely high IQs show signs of extraordinary ability even as tiny babies, before pushy parenting is able to have much impact. 'From a very early age – pre-language – these children understand what is going on around them, understand what people say but cannot respond,' says Kendall. Most toddlers appear to explore the world as they encounter it, distracted by passing cars or the arrival of a new toy. By contrast, Kendall describes gifted children of that age as 'driven': 'They never stop and they set themselves incredibly high standards.' We often associate the early years of childhood with taking joy in simple things, living in the present and an inability to think through the consequences of actions. Instead, says Kendall, watching gifted toddlers, 'it’s almost as if someone has taken an 18-year-old and put them in a newborn body.' " ...
_______________________________
complete article by Maggie Ferguson at "1843" (June/July 2019)
101proximity1
...
“An assumption of the age declared that a gentleman could not permit his name to appear in print and that to do so smacked vulgarly of trade and barter. It seems likely that this affectation of a genteel sensitiveness was responsible for much mystification.
“We know that Bacon's Essayes, (1597), hurried into a permitted printing because there had appeared a pirated edition. Gascoigne's epistles prefixed to A Hundreth Sundrie Flowers, (1572), are most likely a mere hoax to mystify readers in order to relieve the poet of responsibility for the publication of his own works.” …
___________________________
from the Introduction to An Anthology of Elizabethan Dedications & Prefaces, by Clara E. Gebert, (1933) Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 9.
__________________________________________________________
... "But, on the other hand, even if dramatists could dissociate from the workaday playhouse, with its treatment of playwrights as hired help, even if their plays appeared in dignified and enobling editions, a contradiction remained: genteel poets were not to sell their labour, but genuine poets were monumentalized in printed books, and books were for sale. The image of the dramatist had run up against the commercial world of print." ...
-- p. 204, from part Four : "The Commerce of Letters" : Chapter 10, "Dramatists, Poets and Other Scribblers" in Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880 : Print, Text and Performance in Europe Julie Stone Peters, (2000) Oxford, Oxford University Press
102proximity1
“ 'Shakespeare is hard work for us,' say pupils”
____________________
“HE MAY be the world's greatest dramatist, but two in five young people are concerned that knowing the works of Shakespeare will not help them get into the workplace.
“A survey of 2000 11-to18-year-olds for digital technology company Adobe and the Royal Shakespeare Company also found that 29 percent of pupils believe that Shakespeare's work would be easier to understand if the plays were set in the modern day. Almost one in five said video and animation would help them learn Shakespeare's work better.
“And 77 percent said they find the language hard to understand.”
___________________________
Metro (London) Tuesday, October 22, 2019 ; p. 4
_______________________________
from William James Rolfe (1827-1910), A Life of William Shakespeare; London: Duckworth & Company, (1905) | pp. 3-7 passim
...
“We need not wonder, then, that Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in the preface to his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, compares 'the fragments of the personal history of the dramatist which have hitherto been discovered' to 'the remains of New Place' (the residence of Shakespeare in his later years), which consist of a few stones and bricks of the foundations, absolutely nothing being left of the structure that rested upon them. He adds: 'In this respect the great dramatist participates in the fate of most of his literary contemporaries...' …
... "At the present day (1902), with biography carried to a wasteful and ridiculous excess, and Shakespeare the idol not merely of a nation but of the educated world, it is difficult to realise a period when no interest was taken in the events of the lives of authors, and when the great poet himself, notwithstanding the immense popularity of some of his works, was held in no general reverence. It must be borne in mind that actors then occupied an inferior position in society, and that in many quarters even the vocation of a dramatic writer was considered scarcely respectable. The intelligent appreciation of genius was not sufficien to neutralize in these matters the effect of public opinion and the animosity of the religious world; all circumstances thus uniting to banish general interet in the history of persons connected in any way with the stage. This biographical indifference continued for many years, and long before the season arrived for a real curiosity to be taken in the subject, the records from which alone a satisfactory memoir could have been constructed had disappeared. At the time of Shakespeare's decease, non-political correspondence was rarely preserved, elaborate diaries were not the fashion, and no one, excepting in semi-apocryphal collections of jests, thought it worth while to record many of the sayings and doings, or to delineate at any length the characters, of actors and dramatists, so that it is generally by the merest accident that particulars of interest respecting them have been recovered.'
… “Still, as Karl Elze remaks, 'we might have possessed more biographical material relating to Shakespeare, were it not that political and other events combined to destroy what existed. The Civil Wars, Puritanism, and a strange succession of conflagrations, are to blame for having destroyed the few records of Shakespeare's life that had survived his day.' …
“Besides these political events , other causes, as already stated, helped in the destruction. Chief among these was a series of fires, which, by a strange coincidence, destroyed all the buildings where any papers of Shakespeare's, or records of his life, might have been obtained. In 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII., the Globe theatre was burned, and in all probability manuscripts of the poet, or other written records relating to the history and management of this theatre, were destroyed at that time. In the following year, a second conflagration devastated a large portion of Stratford, and although New Place was spared, it may be assumed, as fifty-four houses fell victims to the flames, that many records and important papers referring to Shakespeare's family were then lost. A few years later a fire broke out in Ben Jonson's house, destroying more especially books and papers. There can be no doubt that among his papers were letters of Shakespeare, and editions of single works, even though Ben Jonson does not mention this fact in the poem (“An Execration upon Vulcan”)* in which he recounts his losses. It is probable also that the Great Fire of London, in 1666, still further lessened the scanty memorials of Shakespeare's life and work.
“Moreover, he himself appears to have made no effort to leave any record of his life to posterity. He did not trouble himself about the printing or the preservation of his works. It is true that they were not written with a view to being printed, but were doubtless sold outright to theatrical managers for representation upon the stage; but, though a poet, he was eminently practical, knew how to make and invest money and to take good care of his property, and we may be sure that he preserved the legal and other documents relating to these business transactions. Doubtless he also had manuscripts of some if not all of his works and copies of some of the editions that had been published; and these may have had corrections and other memoranda that would throw light upon their history and upon many textual and other questions that perplex editors and critics. But his will makes no reference to books, manuscripts, documents, letters, or other written matter in which he was interested. These may have been informally entrusted to his family, but, if so, they do not appear to have taken care for their preservation. We have no evidence that they did anything to honour his memory except by the erection of the monument in the Stratford church. This apparent neglect, it has been suggested, may be due not so much to any want of esteem or affection as to the fact that he left no male heir. 'After his death there was no one who could be regarded as the representative of the family, and for whom it would have been a matter both of pride and of duty to cherish the memory of its founder.' His daughters had married, and had family cares of their own. Tradition says that Lady Barnard (the only grandchild of the poet who lived to be twenty years old), upon her second marriage, took certain family documents with her to her future home; but not even tradition pretends to tell what became of them.” …
*
_______________________
An Execration upon Vulcan. (circa 1623/24)
_______________________
AND why to me this, thou lame Lord of Fire,
What had I done that might call on thine Ire?
Or urge thy greedy Flame, thus to devour
So many my Years-labours in an hour?
I ne're attempted Vulcan 'gainst thy Life;
Nor made least Line of Love to thy loose Wife;
Or in remembrance of thy afront, and scorn
With Clowns, and Tradesmen, kept thee clos'd in Horn.
'Twas Jupiter that hurl'd thee headlong down,
And Mars, that gave thee a Lanthorn for a Crown:
Was it because thou wert of old denied
By Jove to have Minerva for thy Bride.
That since thou tak'st all envious care and pain,
To ruine any Issue of the Brain?
Had I wrote Treason there, or Heresie,
Imposture, Whitchcraft, Charms, or Blasphemy?
I had deserv'd then, thy consuming Looks,
Perhaps, to have been burned with my Books.
But, on thy Malice, tell me, didst thou spy
Any, least loose, or s(c)urrile Paper, lye
Conceal'd, or kept there, that was fit to be,
By thy own Vote, a Sacrifice to thee?
Did I there wound the Honours of the Crown?
Or tax the Glories of the Church and Gown?
Itch to defame the State? or brand the Times?
And my self most, in some self-boasting Rhimes?
If none of these, then why this Fire? Or find
A Cause before; or leave me one behind.
Had I compil'd from Amadis de Gaule,
Th' Esplandians, Arthur's, Palmerins, and all
The learned Library of Don Quixote;
And so some goodlier Monster had begot,
Or spun out Riddles, and weav'd fi(f)tty Tomes
Of Logogriphes, and curious Palindromes,
Or pomp'd for those hard Trifles Anagrams,
Or Eteostichs, or those finer Flams
Of Eggs, and Halberds, Cradles, and a Hearse,
A pair of Scisars, and a Comb in Verse;
Acrostichs, and Telestichs, on jump Names,
Thou then hadst had some colour for thy Flames,
On such my serious Follies; But, thou'lt say,
There were some Pieces of as base allay,
And as false stamp there; parcels of a Play,
Fitter to see the Fire-light, than the day;
Adulterate Moneys, such as might not go:
Thou should'st have stay'd, till publick Fame said so.
She is the Judge, Thou Executioner,
Or if thou needs would'st trench upon her Power,
Thou mightst have yet enjoy'd thy Cruelty
With some more thrift, and more variety:
Thou mightst have had me perish, piece by peice,
To light Tobacco, or save roasted Geese.
Sindge Capons, or poor Piggs, droping their Eyes;
Condemn'd me to the Ovens with the Pies;
And so, have kept me dying a whole Age,
Not ravish'd all hence in a Minutes rage.
But that's a mark, whereof thy Rights do boast,
To make Consumption, ever where thou go'st;
Had I fore-known of this thy least desire
T' have held a Triumph, or a Feast of Fire,
Especially in Paper; that, that steam
Had tickled your large Nostril: many a Ream
To redeem mine, I had sent in enough,
Though should'st have cry'd, and all been proper Stuff.
The Talmud, and the Alcoran had come,
With Pieces of the Legend; The whole sum
Of Errant Knight-hood, with the Dames, and Dwarfs;
The charmed Boats, and the inchanted Wharfs,
The Tristram's, Lanc'lots, Turpins, and the Peer's,
All the mad Rolands, and sweet Oliveer's;
To Merlins Marvails, and his Caballs loss,
With the Chimæra of the Rosie-Cross,
Their Seals, their Characters, Hermetick Rings,
Their Jem of Riches, and bright Stone, that brings
Invisibility, and strength, and Tongues:
The Art of kindling the true Coal, by Lungs,
With Nicholas Pasquill's, Medle with your match,
And the strong Lines, that so the time do catch,
Or Captain Pamphlets Horse, and Foot; that sally
Upon th' Exchange, still out of Popes-head-Alley.
The weekly Corrants, with Poules Seal; and all
The admir'd discourses of the Prophet Ball:
These, had'st thou pleas'd either to dine or sup,
Had made a Meal for Vulcan to lick up.
But in my Desk, what was there to accite
So ravenous and vast an Appetite?
I dare not say a Body, but some Parts
There were of search, and mastry in the Arts.
All the old Venusine, in Poetry,
And lighted by the Stagerite, could spy,
Was there mad(e) English: with the Grammar too,
To teach some that their Nurses could do.
The purity of Language; and among
The rest, my Journey into Scotland Song,
With all th' Adventures; Three Books not afraid
To speak the Fate of the Sicilian Maid
To our own Ladies; and in Story there
Of our Fifth Henry, eight of his nine year;
Wherein was Oil, beside the Succour spent,
Which Noble Carew, Cotton, Selden lent:
And twice-twelve-years stor'd up Humanity,
With humble Gleanings in Divinity;
After the Fathers, and those wiser Guides
Whom Faction had not drawn to study sides.
How in these Ruins Vulcan, thou dost lurk,
All Soot and Embers! odious, as thy work!
I now begin to doubt, if ever Grace,
Or Goddess, could be patient of thy Face.
Thou woo Minerva! or to wit aspire!
'Cause thou canst halt, with us in Arts and Fire!
Son of the Wind! for so thy Mother gone
With Lust conceiv'd thee; Father thou hadst none.
When thou wert born, and that thou look'st at best,
She durst not kiss, but flung thee from her Breast.
And so did Jove, who ne're meant thee his Cup:
No marl the Clowns of Lemnos took thee up.
For none but Smiths would have made thee a God.
Some Alchimist there may be yet, or odd
Squire of the Squibs, against the Pageant day,
May to thy name a Vulcanale say;
And for it lose his Eyes with Gun-powder,
As th' other may his Brains with Quick-silver.
Well-fare the Wise-man yet, on the Banck-side,
My Friends, the Water-men! They could provide
Against thy Fury, when to serve their needs,
They made a Vulcan of a Sheaf of Reeds,
Whom they durst handle in their Holy-day Coats,
And safely trust to dress, not burn their Boats.
But, O those Reeds! thy meer disdain of them,
Made thee beget that cruel Stratagem,
(Which, some are pleas'd to stile but thy mad Pranck)
Against the Globe, the Glory of the Bank.
Which, though it were the Fort of the whole Parish,
Flanck'd with a Ditch, and forc'd out of a Marish,
I saw with two poor Chambers taken in
And raz'd; e're thought could urge, this might have been!
See the World's Ruines! nothing but the Piles
Left! and wit since to cover it with Tiles.
The Brethren, they streight nois'd it out for News,
'Twas verily some Relick of the Stews.
And this a Sparkle of that Fire let loose,
That was lock'd up in the Winchestrian Goose,
Bred on the Banck, in time of Popery,
When Venus there maintain'd in Mystery.
But, others fell, with that conceit by the Ears,
And cry'd, it was a threatning to the Bears,
And that accursed Ground, the Parish Garden:
Nay, sigh'd, ah Sister 'twas the Nun, Kate Arden
Kindled the Fire! But, then did one return,
No Fool would his own harvest spoil, or burn!
If that were so, thou rather would'st advance
The Place, that was thy Wives Inheritance.
O no, cry'd all. Fortune, for being a Whore,
Scap'd not his Justice and Jot the more:
He burnt that Idol of the Revels too:
Nay, let White-Hall with Revels have to do,
Though but in Dances, it shall know his Power;
There was a Judgment shew'n too in an Hour.
He is true Vulcan still! He did not spare
Troy, though it were so much his Venus care.
Fool, wilt thou let that in Example come?
Did not she save from thence, to build a Rome?
And what hast thou done in these petty Spights,
More then advanc'd the Houses, and their Rights?
I will not argue thee, from those of guilt,
For they were burnt, but to be better built.
'Tis true, that in thy wish they were destroy'd,
Which thou hast only vented, not enjoy'd.
So would'st th' have run upon the Rolls by stealth,
And didst invade part of the Common-wealth,
In those Records, which were all Chronicles gone,
Will be remembred by Six Clerks, to one.
But, say all Six, Good Men, what answer ye?
Lyes there no Writ, out of the Chancery,
Against this Vulcan? No Injunction?
No Order? no Decree? Though we be gone
At Common-Law, Methinks in his despight
A Court of Equity should do us right.
But to confine him to the Brew-houses,
The Glass-house, Dye-fats, and their Furnaces;
To live in Sea-coal, and go forth in Smoke;
Or lest that Vapour might the City choak,
Condemn him to the Brick-kills, or some Hill-
Foot (out in Sussex) to an Iron Mill;
Or in small Fagots have him blaze about
Vile Taverns, and the Drunkards piss him out;
Or in the Bell-Mans Lanthorn like a Spy,
Burn to a Snuff, and then stink out and dye:
I could invent a Sentence, yet were worse;
But I'll conclude all in a civil Curse.
Pox on your Flameship, Vulcan; if it be
To all as fatal as't hath been to me,
And to Pauls-Steeple; which was unto us
'Bove all your Fire-works, had at Ephesus,
Or Alexandria; and though a Divine
Loss remains yet, as unrepair'd as mine.
Would you had kept your Forge, at Ætna still,
And there made Swords, Bills, Glaves, and Arms your fill.
Maintain'd the Trade at Bilbo; or else-where;
Struck in at Millan with the Cutlers there;
Or stay'd but where the Fryar, and you first met,
Who from the Divels-Arse did Guns beget,
Or fixt in the Low-Country's, where you might
On both sides do your mischiefs with delight;
Blow up, and ruine, mine, and countermine,
Make your Petards, and Granats, all your fine
Engines of Murder, and receive the Praise
Of massacring Man-kind so many ways.
We ask your absence here, we all love Peace,
And pray the Fruits thereof, and the Increase;
So doth the King, and most of the Kings-men
That have good Places: therefore once agen,
Pox on thee Vulcan, thy Pandora's Pox,
And all the Evils that flew out of her Box
Light on thee: Or if those Plagues will not do,
Thy Wives Pox on thee, and Bess. Broughton's. too.
___________
Ben Jonson
103proximity1
... "My name be buried where my body is," ...
__________________________
Sonnet LXXII
O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
"My name be buried where my body is," ...
"My name," the author writes, "be buried where my body is" ...
was written by the author in order to state—to readers in generations to come—as candidly as it was then possible for him to do that his name —the authorial identity—was not ar all what a future reader should suppose it to be by relying on the Sonnets' first edition title-page “by William Shake-speare” :
(from Wikipedia's page; ""This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. | "This media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1925, and if not then due to lack of notice or renewal.")
It meant, in other, briefer words, “My name is not “William Shake-speare” and that name, my name, is not going to survive my bodily death. Obviously the name “William Shakes-speare” was certainly not going to be “buried where (its owner's body) is (laid to rest).
Why write this to a regular correspondent already fully aware of the author and that author's real name? Why write and send something so obvious to the present-day recipient of the sonnet that it needn't have been pointed out in the first place?
The person to whom the sonnet was addressed must have been quite aware that the author's real name was other than that on the title-page, must have been quite already aware that the author's real name would, for all practical purposes, die and be buried with his body.
In no other sense is a name “buried” than that it is lost and forgotten for it true place and import, past, present or future.
Oxford foresaw that, unless future readers recognized the import of such statements as "My name be buried where my body is,” that he, Edward Oxford, in name as well as in body, was destined for oblivion. Unless future readers read him rightly, he'd be lost as the personality behind the writings which were his legacy.
Where in the world could it be conceived as part of plain good sense to say that the name “William Shake-speare” has been buried where its owner's body is? The answer, of course, is “nowhere.”
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