Shakespeare

[OscarWildebeest]

I was wondering: Has there ever been a discussion regarding whether William Shakespeare has written all the plays attributed to him? If so, kindly point me to there as I would like to contribute my two cents worth. Otherwise I would love to start world war 3 on behalf of the nay sayers.

[Calidore]

I know it's come up before, but I don't think there's been an active discussion in a while. IIRC, the most adamant arguer was a former member who was also an all-purpose conspiracy guy. His main cause was proving that Mozart, Beethoven, and other great composers never actually composed anything themselves, but were fronting for anonymous backers. He also had threads arguing moon landing conspiracies, fluoridation conspiracies, and maybe others I've forgotten. I'm pretty sure Shakespeare came up as well.

Anyway, my point is that you're much better off starting your own thread than referring to one of his.

[Emil Miller]

I was wondering: Has there ever been a discussion regarding whether William Shakespeare has written all the plays attributed to him? If so, kindly point me to there as I would like to contribute my two cents worth. Otherwise I would love to start world war 3 on behalf of the nay sayers.

Here is the thread that you are looking for; don't forget your steel helmet.


http://www.online-literature.com/for...rite+the+plays

[OscarWildebeest]

I have read the first 20 replies to Emile's thread: Loads of emotion, hardly any substance. Thus- I am of the opinion that the probability of Shakespeare having written those plays is negligible, perhaps agreeing with Mark Twain: "He was a country bumpkin who could not have written those plays." Coming from someone who attended school only up to grade 4!

I base my opinion on, amongst others, the following:
1. The average person today uses approximately 5 000 different words. In Shakespeare's day one would expect this average being not much higher than 3000. Yet, depending on whom one believes, Shakespeare used between 14 and 19 000 different words.

2. We have absolutely NO proof that Shakespeare ever received formal schooling, never mind attending university. What we do know is that his dad was semi-literate, his mom illiterate, his one sister never went to school, and most of the local town council were illiterate. A great many of the plays were mere translations of other plays from Italian, Greek and Latin. Hardly an endeavour for someone unschooled.

3. A last will, in those days, was a very precise, a very exact document, with even a teaspoon listed, and a book was deemed more valuable than a firearm. Yet, in Shakespeare's last will not a single book is mentioned.

4. All the FACTS regarding Shakespeare fit on less than a single A4 page. All else IS speculation. Yet thousands upon thousands of books were written about him, with many to appear in the future.

5. What we do know (for a fact) is that he was a stage manager for a well known group of actors. One of the MOST important tasks he would have been saddled with was to write down the actors' ideas and espousements regarding plays, and to wright any alterations they wished.

Of interest is the fact that in those days a company had about 5 different plays going at any time, and most were performed in the open. To test the mettle of an actor one should see a shakespearian play performed sans any props.

[The Atheist]

I base my opinion on, amongst others, the following:
1. The average person today uses approximately 5 000 different words. In Shakespeare's day one would expect this average being not much higher than 3000. Yet, depending on whom one believes, Shakespeare used between 14 and 19 000 different words.

I think you're out by a large factor. Studies show the average English vocabulary of a non-tertiary educated speaker is somewhere in the 20,000-word range, and as a bloke involved with plays - even as a stage manager, you would expect Shakespeare to have far more than the average of the day.

2. We have absolutely NO proof that Shakespeare ever received formal schooling, never mind attending university. What we do know is that his dad was semi-literate, his mom illiterate, his one sister never went to school, and most of the local town council were illiterate. A great many of the plays were mere translations of other plays from Italian, Greek and Latin. Hardly an endeavour for someone unschooled.

Yet you agree that we know he was a stage manager. He was obviously literate, and as I trust the examples of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have taught us very recently, formal education is no barrier to success.

3. A last will, in those days, was a very precise, a very exact document, with even a teaspoon listed, and a book was deemed more valuable than a firearm. Yet, in Shakespeare's last will not a single book is mentioned.

Since they'd all been published, why would he? Maybe he didn't own any personal copies.

4. All the FACTS regarding Shakespeare fit on less than a single A4 page. All else IS speculation. Yet thousands upon thousands of books were written about him, with many to appear in the future.

About the same as Julius Caesar, then. Pretty sure Caesar did rule the known world for a while, though.

5. What we do know (for a fact) is that he was a stage manager for a well known group of actors. One of the MOST important tasks he would have been saddled with was to write down the actors' ideas and espousements regarding plays, and to wright any alterations they wished.

That would tend to go with my own theory that he was the greatest plagiarist of all time, but doesn't actually help your theory at all.

Do you have anything other than mild speculation?

For instance, are you able to propose someone else who did write the plays?

[JBI]

He grew to maturity as an actor in a vibrant climate. Ben Jonson was just as uneducated, but there is no doubt on his authenticity.

The main argument seems to be that Shakespeare could not have written such things, or some nonsense. My personal suspicion is that such arguments ignore the fact that Shakespeare was quite heavily a collage of his time period's achievements, and his real strength rests in his final growth with the poetic language he mastered as a young dramatist. IF we were to merely to read his early works, we would have quite little difficulty attributing them to the young up and coming semi-educated dramatist. But since we are mostly reading his middle-to-late period works as the great masterpieces, we could make the simple case that as some people mature in their writing throughout their career, such is true with Shakespeare, who though not in the classroom, undoubtedly could have learned literature by listening to plays, and by engaging with the society of London.

The arguments against could be employed against almost any author, and usually were applied toward early African-American authors, especially slave narrators, who were thought "unable" to figure out the skills of reading and writing.

What is more interesting is what happened to Shakespeare between his early education and his penning of early masterpieces. The general approach now is to show how he learned by copying someone like Marlowe.

[OscarWildebeest]

I have stated that the average person of today utilizes a vocabulary of 5000 words. Nowhere do I state that that is the extent of the quantity of words known to them. Then you go on to impose the same norms and values of 400 years ago on the present. Also, someone, supposedly the greatest author of all times, did not own a copy of any book, any manuscript, including any he so profusely plagiarized from? Please, there is enough speculation as it is, and I really do NOT have time for your frivolous nit picking.

And you, JBI, insinuating that Shakespeare's detractors apparently speaks nonsense, then apparently continue to impose modern day values and norms on the society of then is ridiculous. Also, Marlowe: He died at a young age, and thus, should Shakespeare have copied his works it could only have been during Shakespeare's earlier years (assuming he did, of course.)

Please, can we have FACTS that William Shakespeare did write those plays? P

[The Atheist]

Please, can we have FACTS that William Shakespeare did write those plays? P

I have a better idea - you give some FACTS as to why he didn't. You don't like the answers you were given, that is obvious, but then all you've offered yourself is second-hand speculation backed by no FACTS at all. (An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)

The irony in you crying about speculative answers is quite deep in view of your purely speculative suggestions.

You do realise that questions about old Bill's authenticity are neither new nor original? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakesp...rship_question

Are you able to come up with something more interesting than regurgitation of old charges?

[OscarWildebeest]

Old Shakespeare had your number in one: "Mindless stones, full of sound and fury."

[Hawkman]

What a Boer... Don't forget to laager your wagons when camping on the LitNet velt! Anyway, everyone knows Shakespeare was a Kilngon - it must be true because Christopher Plummer said so, and he should know because he's a Thesbian of the Shakespearean persuasion

[Scheherazade]

Oh, please...

I have a bet running that this thread wouldn't be closed before page 3 so could you discuss some more before indulging in some manly hair-pulling, cheek-hooking and eye-poking?

PS: This is your official warning, by the way.

[prendrelemick]

I believe Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon wrote the plays mainly because his contemporaries believed it too. The only way nay sayers can get round this is by inventing marvellous conspiracies.

There are other reasons too - the way he mucked about with the language in an uneducated and uncouth way.
His use of common Warwickshire idioms.
No real proof AT ALL, not one single shred of evidence that he didn't.

[The Atheist]

Oh, please...

I have a bet running that this thread wouldn't be closed before page 3 so could you discuss some more before indulging in some manly hair-pulling, cheek-hooking and eye-poking?

Going by the abusive comment in Afrikaans already removed from it, I'll have a dollar on that!

His use of common Warwickshire idioms.

Yes indeed. An educated man wouldn't have tried to cut his wood with a harnsaw.

[HSPS]

Herman Melville was an autodidact, and he wrote what is considered by many to be one of the greatest, and one of the most difficult, English-language novels: Moby-Dick. This idea that those who lack formal education, and those who have modest backgrounds, are somehow barred from doing great things is snobbish and illogical at best. Moreover, formal education far from guarantees great success, as there have been (and will always be) innumerable PhDs who were not only not widely known in their lifetimes, but who were also mostly forgotten soon after they died.

Shakespeare's life is fuzzy, but that doesn't mean we should start making such assumptions as the anti-Stratfordians make.

This website has an in-depth debunking of the anti-Stratfordian claims: http://shakespeareauthorship.com/.

[AuntShecky]

(An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)

One could use that line to defend against atheism. Oh, I kid, I kid!

Seriously though, I think that those who disbelieve that Shakespeare wrote those 37 plays are somewhat elitist in their arguments. You have to take every charge of "elitism" with a grain of salt, especially these days when officials in underperforming schools use the term to deride their critics when the educators try to defend themselves by stating that schools, that "poor" or (codeword) "urban" kids can't learn, etc. along with other lame excuses. But the term "elitism" is appropriate for those who state that Shakespeare was not educated enough to write those 37 plays.

First, the little biographical information we have about Shakespeare, such as that of the prefatory material in G.B. Harrison's edition, affirms that Shakespeare's father often entertained highly-educated and worldly visitors in the family home, and that young Will undoubtedly absorbed these stimulating conversations, on a wide range of topics.

Secondly, experts in the Elizabethan Era often note the fascination with which all strata of society held for the language which at that time in history had been undergoing rapid evolutionary changes, notably in the realm of vocabulary. Not only that, bouts of wit and displays of word play formed a popular pastime, like the obsession with Twitter and Facebook which folks have today. There's no reason to believe that Shakespeare separated himself from the fad but rather fully immersed himself in it.

Additionally, the so-called controversy over Shakespearean authorship has been around for at least two centuries. Several scholars have compiled concordances which lead to the conclusion that the same person wrote Shakespeare's plays. The speculation that Sir Francis Bacon, for instance, might have written the plays, has been put the rest by a scrupulous comparison between the two writing styles.

And let's not overlook the most glaring evidence of all: the unprecedented talent.