Most conspiracy theories make me smile, but that web link really cracked me up. Even by the usual standards of the tin-foil hat brigade, that's really scraping the bottom of the barrel.Originally Posted by mike thomas
Most conspiracy theories make me smile, but that web link really cracked me up. Even by the usual standards of the tin-foil hat brigade, that's really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
Oh dear!This is really very silly.
As you are probably aware, the authenticity of Shakespeare's works periodically come up for discussion on this forum and makes for interesting reading. However, you must also be aware that in doubting the existence of Shakespeare, you are inviting the opprobrium of those who believe in the man and his works as a Moslem believes in Mohammed.
See what I mean? Prepare yourself for more of the same.
Last edited by Emil Miller; 12-11-2010 at 08:02 PM.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Hi Brian Bean:
I don't think there's any problem, in itself, in questioning the existence of Shakespeare based on some evidence, and I'm not a Shakespearean scholar, but I do think the claims on that website are rather silly and based on rather tenous grounds. I'm wondering if you looked at that website yourself.
Yes I did look at the site and don't attach any credence to it, but mike thomas (sic) doesn't yea or nay it one way or the other. Also, I don't buy into the fact that the inscription 'Anne wife of William Shakespeare' is relevant because, presumably, she would have taken her husband's name and it wasn't necessary emphasise it by using 'Shakespeare' twice.
As I have mentioned before on the forum, I think that Shakespeare did write the works ascribed to him but there is obviously a question mark hanging over their authenticity and to refuse to acknowledge it is the sign of a closed mind.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Of course he did.
The source of any bad writing is the desire to be something more than a person of sense--the straining to be thought a genius. If people would say what they have to say in plain terms, how much eloquent they would be.
-S.T COLERIDGE
It's not the lack of the name Shakespeare, but her maiden name. Only once is Hathwey mentioned, and that is in connection with a legal bond. There is no document to say she married anyone. There is documentation which indicates another woman named as the wife to be.
Names mixed up from the start, and one not even written on a gravestone, then we read Juliet going on about names (in fact the whole play is really about names), surely this hints at something a bit fishy.
I notice no argument as to Droeshout meaning "devil wood" in Dutch.
Most conspiracy theories make me smile, but that web link really cracked me up. Even by the usual standards of the tin-foil hat brigade, that's really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
"since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show."
My parents' accountant is called Philip Devilwood. It's not exactly a common surname, but it is knocking about. In fact, the name Devilwood (or presumably its Dutch equivalent) is only thing that isn't certifiably insane about the webpage.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
Silly maybe, but tenuous grounds? why tenuous? As for evidence, if you had really understood what it is that your eyes are seeing, the evidence is quite apparent, in my opinion at least. Show another such example anywhere in English literature of such a grotesque image purporting to be the author. There is no other example. Can anyone explain why it is that the big collar shown in the famous image was used by captains in the army, so how come a playwright called "gentle Shakespeare" is shown in the attire of a warrior.
Silly? I'll tell you what is silly: scholars trying to bend the Sonnets to their way of thinking. Take that word in line 14, sonnet 69: SOLYE, how they have tried to make it into something which they can understand. Solve, soil, no can do, so it must be yet another 'error'.
Maybe it means the 3rd and 4th letters L and Y are transposed, thus we read SOYLE. (The sum of the numerical values of L and Y is 34). The two letters sound like LIE, which is exectly what the so-called execution of Essex was, one big lie.
The sonnets 68 and 69 give the answer: (Yes, they are written in pairs)
The numerical value of the name ESSEX is 68, Robert was his name, Herb Robert, or Death-come-quickly, or Stinking Robert are three old names of the same plant.
Sonnet 68 line 7 : To liue a second life on second head,
Line 12 begins Robbing
Sonnet 69 informs:
To thy faire flower ad the rancke smell of weeds,
But why thy odor matcheth not thy show,
The solye is this, that thou doest common grow.
Herb Robert: a common weed which smells a bit.
Silly maybe, but why not argue the case if you have the intellect?
Your parents' accountant so-called portrait is not engraved on the opening page of shakespeares 'first folio', where, as I have demonstrated, between two inverted Greek crosses is the image of a beast - a goat.
I explained that the letter T was 19th in the old alphabet, and those two letters are the 19th counted left and right, over the head of the 'portrait'. How random is that?
Your parents' accountant is Philip, not Martin, therefore you have not really understood the point: MARTIN: RAM IN T, get it? a ram, and T?
This, together with the name devil wood, I think is not repeatable anywhere else. If you have any knowledge of literature of that period, you might consider a play in which a devil in a wood in the form of a ram is portrayed.
As for being certifiably insane, it is written clearly in the Sonnets to look in a glass, and another face appeares. A face which can 'unbless some mother" explain if you can.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it sea.
According to Wikipedia, there were in fact two engravers in London at the time named Martin Droeshout (a father and son, as it happens). Although we don't know which of the two did this engraving, they are both established historical figures, and we have other works surving by them.
As for the 'hidden' drawing of the ram, I really don't think it's there. Ben Jonson, in his introductory poem to the First Folio, says that the portrait is a very good likeness of Shakespeare - any percieved hidden image is likely just a coincidence. Whenever you take a small sample of an image and refelct it on itself, you're going to have odd things appear.
As for 'T' being the 19th letter of the alphabet at that time, that is simply nonsense. I assume you're thinking of the time before the letters 'j' and 'u' were introduced, but after the archaic letters (eths, thorns, ashes etc.) had been dropped. Well, 'j' and 'u' were introduced into the alphabet around the middle of the 16th century, almost 100 years before the publication of the First Folio. By the time that engraving was made, 't' was most definitely not the 19th letter of the English alphabet. By the early 17th century, the alphabet was exactly what we have now.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
You say "they are both established historical figures", and that "we have
other works surving by them" but that's not the case. Yes, two Droeshouts: an uncle and (it is said) a nephew. Many scholars agree it must have been the younger, a fifteen year old, and not the uncle who carried out the work,
because it seems to be of such a poor quality. It is believed that the
younger's father was an engraver like the uncle, so that makes three Droeshout' engravers. But as nothing is known of the younger, other than the name and the suspicion (because of the poor quality of the work) that he was the engraver, there is not a jot of evidence to show that such a person ever lived. The portrait is in truth the labour of a highly skilled artist. Get a magnification of any part you like: the detail is astonishing. No young
apprentice ever laid a hand on the thing, it took a master.
The Folio image is not the result of an engraved wood block, rather it is the
result of a copper engraving. The facing text "To the reader" gives the game
away in the line "As well in brass" where the name brass meant not just the
alloy we now call brass, but also pure copper. The so-called 'signature' in the bottom left corner of the work is a skillful bit of engraving, which a reasonable magnifying glass will verify.
You don't see any hidden ram in the portrait, that's fair enough. Then you say that the fact of the letter count of 19 coinciding with the same letter value is "simply nonesense" then you go on to state when the J and U were inserted into the alphabet, and by doing so (if your facts were correct) cancel the letter count of 19, because T would then be 20th in the "modern" abc. Previous to that, you mention Ben Jonson's words as to likeness, but I notice you use J in his name rather than I, which is how it is printed at the foot of his dedication, Ben: Ionson, is what is printed there, not Ben: Jonson. If, as you claim, the letters J and U were already added to the alphabet, then how come all the printers involved didn't use the new J and U? Why do we see IVLIETand not JULIET in the First Folio title? And what about IVLIVS CAESAR?
You cite Ionson, and I must assume you are referring to his text which has the title "To the memory of my beloued, The AVTHOR, MR. VVILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: AND what he hath left vs." A dedicatory text which is written as if there was neither J nor U as yet in the alphabet. It is a fact that Jonson (modernized) mentions alphabets in his own works, moreover, as letters were his building bricks, I would imagine that he would be quite happy to use the more modern abc.
You say the two letters j and u "were introduced into the alphabet around the middle of the 16th century, almost 100 years before the publication of the First Folio. "Perhaps you might mention where you found this useful
information. As far as I am aware, the criss-cross row alphabet, and therefore school abc primers, called horn-books, lacked those two letters until at least after 1623. I mention these names because they are used in 'Shakespeare',
When I read the great texts, I cannot help feeling there's an underlying
strata of hints and faint clues, all of which seem to cry out, dig deeper.
As an example, consider the dedicatory text mentioned above signed by Ben
Ionson:-
Line 1 mentions the name Shakespeare, enclosing it in brackets.
"To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name"
This line has a total of 8 words.
The whole dedicatory text has altogether a total of 80 lines.
Divide 80 by the 8 from line 1, and we have 10.
Line 10, first two words are : "The truth"
Line 8 says: "Which, when it sounds at best, but echo's right".
Line 2 mentions "thy Booke", and this echoes the first text of the Folio, where the last line also mentions "his Booke". What book does this mean? There was only one book which had the name Shakespeare on the front, and that's the Sonnets.
We are told famously in line 31 that Shakespeare had "small Latine" and lesse
Greeke" If we put sounds (line 8) with small Latin, we derive sone which is a small part of Latin for sound: sonere.
Now add the Greek word stenos, meaning narrow, which in English, can mean
sound (the kind of sea-water sound between two land masses *), We have
therefore obtained sone and stennos. But we need only part of this Greek word, but before we cut it up, we reverse it to reveal SONETS.
Now cut off SO, making it less Greek: NETS and add to the small Latin SON, and we have a SON and some NETS (it's all in the New Testament, boats, fishermen 153 fishes, etc. but except to point out that there are in fact 153 sonnets, and not 154, I won't bother)
Having got the word Sonnets, and having realized the number 80, we read some of the sonnet which bears that number: Sonnet 80
O how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth vse your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me toung-tide speaking of your fame.
I think this is exactly what Jonson was doing in his dedicatory wasn't he?
We note Jonson's "echo's right" because where we are heading has it's very own echo: The back of the Sonnets is 'A Lover's complaint', which tells us in the first line:
From off a hill whose concave womb reworded
A plainfull story from a sistring vale
My spirits t'attend this double voice accorded
Plainly an echo is implied.
And finally, it was line 8 which got us here, sound-wise, we might
remember that in the alphabet the letter H is the 8th, and H is the initial
letter of a famous monarch who, it is believed, wrote a sad song about a woman in sleeves coloured green: here's a few lines from Sonnet 8 (H)
Musick to heare, why hear’st thou musick sadly,
Sweets with sweets warre not, ioy delights in ioy:
Why lou’st thou that which thou receaust not gladly,
Or else receau’st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well tuned sounds,
(No J's or V's do I note.)
* Note, the rest of sonnet 80 has a definite seamanship air:
But since your worth (wide as the Ocean is)
The humble as the proudest saile doth beare,
My sawsie barke (inferior farre to his)
On your broad maine doth wilfully appeare.
Your shallowest helpe will hold me vp a floate,
Whilst he vpon your soundlesse deepe doth ride, **
Or (being wrackt) I am a worthlesse bote,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride. ***
Then if he thriue and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my loue was my decay.
** soundlesse deepe: ref Ben's sounds and echos etc.
*** He of tall building: Ben was a bricklayer (so it is written)
A parting thought:
The cutting off of the letters SO from SONETS leaves us with a question: what about the two letters SO?
Sonnet 52 begins with the word SO, and the first two lines tell us:
So am I as the rich whose blessed key,
Can bring him to his sweet vp-locked treasure,
It mentions a key. It is the only key in the sonnets. Where is it? It is not just a key, its a "blessed key", therefore, unless we are into the land of the Pharoh, it implies Christianity.
The word RICH ios an anagram of CHI R. The letters CHI spell the Greek name of the letter X. The letter R is Latin. It's equivilent in Greek is called 'rho'.
Therefore, RICH is chi rho, or, in letters XP, a blessed key, one of which is
held by St. Peter.
Another question might be: what is "his sweet vp-locked treasure" and the
answer is avilable to anyone who looks.
This is so ridiculous it doesn't even warrant a response.
Basically.
Of course Shakespeare existed. Whether the works credited to him are actually his can be argued, sure. His existence, however, can't. Think about the historical figures who knew him personally.
And that conspiracy theory with the ram was probably made up by somebody with way, way too much time on their hands.
There was a William Shakespeare (in whatever spelling was preferred by himself or others) born in Stratford and died there, there was a William Shakespeare in the London theater world. There was a William Shakespeare on printed poems, sonnets and plays.
In order to seperate the name that his contemporates attached to the plays/sonnets/poems most of those championing another writer (usually a courtier hiding) they need to come up with elaborate cover-ups and conspiracies, when you have turned to that you see a conspiracy in everything attached to the name Shakespeare.
The different ways of writing his name is proof that....
Overlooking that the earl of Oxford wrote his name (De Vere) in different ways as well, not mentioning that he refered to himself as Oxenford.
His knowledge of foreign countries is proof that...
Overlooking his obvious mistakes, Milan has a port?? Waiting for the tide in the Mediterranean??
He knows too much of the law....
Overlooking that his contemporates wrote about the law as well ... I remember reading somewhere that Shakespeare used twice as many legal terms as Marlowe, yet we have 37 of Shakespeare and only 6 plays of Marlowe....
Whoever was supposed tohave written Shakespeare must have had intimate knowledge of X so not a 'glover's son'
Shakespeare is said to have intimate knowledge of most everything that could have been known in that time, and not just passing knowledge but as a scholar..
Now that means that there was a man walking around who was such a genius in all fields that he would put Leonardo, Einstein, Bacon et all to shame but nobody knew.... or the man read/heard a lot and wrote about it.
Do I think William Shakespeare wrote the plays/poems/sonnets attributed to him, yes.
Does that make me closed-minded, only to those that think that if you do not agree with them you must be.
If I were to ignore any statements as silly without reading it, but I read them and think about them, see what others think and make up my mind, sofar no Baconian, Oxfordian, Marlowian idea has bee able to convince me.
Mostly because there are these questions that never get a sufficient answer for me:
- Why NOT the son of a glover (the glover who was elected in town council and to mayor)
- Why would any of the ghost writers chose a name of a real person and a rather rare one at that and not a more generic and therefor more hidden name.
- Why would any of the courtiers named as candidates leave such obvious hints on who wrote the plays if they wished to remain anonymous,if it was Marlowe (after his 'death') how did he get the info on court gossip if he was in hiding
Mostly my questions are logistic in nature, HOW did they pull of a conspiracy with nobody ever pulling the plug (not even after the deaths of all the parties) and WHY would they go through that trouble if a more simple solution was available....
And don't start me on the cyphering nonsense of the Baconians.... take the last letter of the first word on each line of X but not line Y, substitute letters A and B with D and G and scramble it all around to find!!!!! In that logic I have to confess, I am the timetraveller that took the printed Shakespeare volumes and fed it to the illiterate hack that had the right name, there are plenty clues about me in the plays/sonnets and poems...
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