Did Shakespeare write the plays?

[Emil Miller]

More interviews with the director of a film brining this theory to light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WRTs...eature=related

Looking at your videos there are two things that come to mind. The first is that Shakespeare wasn't uneducated as is stated in the first video. He was educated to a standard that today would be considered a good education.
The second thing that strikes me is why would anyone trust a film made by a man whose previous efforts have been sci-fi nonsense aimed at the juvenile market? It is interesting to note that Mr Emmerich is a campaigner for lesbian and gay rights, which leads me to suspect that his motives for attacking an establishment sacred cow may be rooted in his own insecurities rather than in a genuine desire to show that the Earl of Oxford wrote the the plays.

[KCV16]

In response to the original post, it was indeed highly unlikely Shakespeare was the author of anything, and in fact the Earl was. Recent debates can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtqKf...eature=related

That clip makes for all the arguments that the movie is telling lies in order to explain the Essex rebellion....

the other clip oh my ...
Lies...
Fraud...
Dangerous to kids.... (why, a common man should not be able to rise to fame??)
Search for truth where truth cannot find a forum .... (and they call Stratfordians religous zealots...)

It still baffles me that the anti-strats are basing all their ideas on the simple starting point that a common man could not have written such stories... a common man could not have risen to that kind of fame....
If anybody should be honored for the plays that were published under the name William Sakespeare it must NOT be William Shakespeare of Stratford, son of a glover-who-became-mayor, NOT the actor/theater owner, but a nobleman of high stature, who had politics in mind in every sentence he wrote...

And they call the Stratfordians (who think a common man with enough books and imagination could do it) elitists....

The ultimate rags to richess story challenged for the sake of always suspect a conspiracy if the vast majority believes something to be true...

[Nigel Spencer]

Indeed, when you act and delve into the physicality of Shakespeare, you cannot miss the feeling of a single presence and genius. One thing is for sure, the plays could NOT have been written by a closet Italian! Scandinavian would have been closer, but even then...really!

[My2cents]

The evidence that a grammar school educated country boy couldn't possibly have written the incredibly complex and precision-knowledge-rich body of work, which are the plays, is very persuasive. I wouldn't rule it out.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Get ready for this conversation to explode with the release of the movie Anonymous.

[kasie]

The evidence that a grammar school educated country boy couldn't possibly have written the incredibly complex and precision-knowledge-rich body of work, which are the plays, is very persuasive. I wouldn't rule it out.

Why??? Nobody stays a callow teenager all their life (I hope!). Education is an on-going process - it's called Experience. And people do go on reading all their life beyond school, as well.

Oh dear, I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this ridiculous argument.

[Emil Miller]

The evidence that a grammar school educated country boy couldn't possibly have written the incredibly complex and precision-knowledge-rich body of work, which are the plays, is very persuasive. I wouldn't rule it out.

Ah but you shouldn't have doubts about what a majority have automatically accepted for centuries. Think Galileo.

[My2cents]

Why??? Nobody stays a callow teenager all their life (I hope!). Education is an on-going process - it's called Experience. And people do go on reading all their life beyond school, as well.

Oh dear, I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this ridiculous argument.

Illiteracy for commoners of Will's lot was the norm. His father, John was illiterate, as was Judith, Shakespeare's youngest daughter, and most deduce that Susanna, Will's favorite child, was illiterate as well. The thinking is, how likely is it that the children of the greatest English literary artist would be illiterate? But that's just scratching the surface. The plays abound with a knowledge of things that could not have been known with the precision the writer demonstrates with a mere grammar school education or rubbing shoulders with the aristocratic elite. Those things--such as falconry--had to be part of writer's life, i.e. he had to have lived and known them first hand to have described the process with such accuracy and precision.

[kasie]

Quite likely - girls were not on the whole formally educated in those days and Father was (probably) away in London for much of the time they were growing up. There are large areas of Shakespeare's life that are not known - how do you know he did not spend time in an aristocratic household? The activities going on could have been absorbed by a young man with a lively curiosity and an enquiring mind.

[My2cents]

Quite likely - girls were not on the whole formally educated in those days and Father was (probably) away in London for much of the time they were growing up. There are large areas of Shakespeare's life that are not known - how do you know he did not spend time in an aristocratic household? The activities going on could have been absorbed by a young man with a lively curiosity and an enquiring mind.

No one's disputing whether an intelligent and an enquiring mind could acquire an understanding of privileged, aristocratic pursuits. The point is that the understanding of those pursuits are so precisely and exquisitely expressed that the writer who wrote them couldn't have been a mere dabbler in those pursuits--pursuits which include astronomy, ornithology, botany, hunting, archery,horsemanship, and royal tennis, among others.

[wessexgirl]

No one's disputing whether an intelligent and an enquiring mind could acquire an understanding of privileged, aristocratic pursuits. The point is that the understanding of those pursuits are so precisely and exquisitely expressed that the writer who wrote them couldn't have been a mere dabbler in those pursuits--pursuits which include astronomy, ornithology, botany, hunting, archery,horsemanship, and royal tennis, among others.

This is nonsense. Like Kasie I thought I wouldn't engage anymore with this but it makes me so mad that such utter rubbish is allowed to pass for truth. So Shakespeare is supposed to be an expert in all those things? Did Marlowe have to sell his soul to the devil in order to know what he was writing about in Dr Faustus? Where's the room for the creative imagination? And as for only having a mere grammar school education, that shows a real misunderstanding of what such an education involved at that time.

Is it really possible that anyone could hide a conspiracy of such great magnitude that all this nonsense would need in order to succeed? It's a ridiculous theory, and is fanned by snobbery pure and simple. No-one questioned Shakespeare's authorship at the time, Ben Jonson amongst others knew him well, and it's only those who wish to make a name for themselves that would consider giving it any credence, for instance the director of Anonymous. If I see one more person connected to the film parroting these ridiculous notions, I will spontaneously combust. I know they have to plug their film, but really, they do themselves no favours at all, and risk alienating many viewers like myself who will most certainly not be going to see this, or anything else they get involved in in the future if they don't make it clear that it's basically nonsense, and NOT TRUE!

[My2cents]

So Shakespeare is supposed to be an expert in all those things? Did Marlowe have to sell his soul to the devil in order to know what he was writing about in Dr Faustus? Where's the room for the creative imagination? And as for only having a mere grammar school education, that shows a real misunderstanding of what such an education involved at that time.
[/B]

There's an entire book devoted to birds that Shakespeare mentions in his works; namely James Edmund Harting's The Birds of Shakespeare. That should tell you that Shakespeare's knowledge of birds was formidable, that it wasn't something any one just could just pick up by osmosis or by exercising one's imagination. It was firmly rooted in knowledge of the highest order, the accumulated knowledge of painstakingly observed and recorded science.

Of botany, there's

for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows,
[yet] youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears

and

On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' th' bottom of a cowslip.

which I've personally found extraordinary. Which is to say that they are specific, science based knowledge applied to create drama of incomparable artistry.

You should keep an open mind. It's not either/or. A compelling argument can be made for either case and the chances are we'll never know.

[kasie]

Birds? Flowers? He was a country lad! Two hops and a skip and you're out of Stratford and into the Warwickshire countryside. Even I know a cowslip has dark red spots inside the flower and that's from peering into the flowers growing on a bank at the bottom of my grandfather's garden, grangpa who loved the flowers may even have pointed them out to me, but I haven't the talent/inspiration/sheer genius to use that knowledge to paint a word picture of a skin blemish.

[My2cents]

Birds? Flowers? He was a country lad! Two hops and a skip and you're out of Stratford and into the Warwickshire countryside. Even I know a cowslip has dark red spots inside the flower and that's from peering into the flowers growing on a bank at the bottom of my grandfather's garden, grangpa who loved the flowers may even have pointed them out to me, but I haven't the talent/inspiration/sheer genius to use that knowledge to paint a word picture of a skin blemish.

I'm no country lad, much less a botanist, so that image/knowledge is utterly new to me and startingly extraordinary. There a bunch of images I could've quoted that (probably) neither of us would know offhand, highly specialized language and terminology dealing with horsemanship, falconry, astronomy, royal tennis, etc. But what would be the point? Pass them off as my superior knowledge on the subject when all I've really done is read up a little on the subject? But going back to the flower images, I made a point of quoting them to show that when Shakespeare writes about the things of the world, there's nothing fanciful or made-up about them. They're firmly rooted in observed facts or science. But what the heck, here's another image or two which show that Shakespeare, whoever he was, knew about things, that no commoner would have such a easy, expert understanding of.

Boyet: Full merrily/ Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.
Berowne: Lo! he is tilting straight.

On second thought, just one for now.

[kasie]

I can't see why a boy from a country market town should not have known about horsemanship, falconry or jousting. Stratford is not far from Kenilworth or Warwick: during Shakespeare's boyhood, the Queen was entertained with 'princely pursuits' at both castles. Why should he not have listened in to eye-witness accounts, got into conversations with falconers, grooms, attendants who described the Royal entertainments? His father was Mayor of Stratford, the family would have had contacts with all sorts of people from the surrounding towns and establishments. As you say, one should keep an open mind, not least putting the man into the context of his time and place, not assume that it was then as it is now or as nineteenth century readers assumed it was.