All I can say is that every crappy thing about him I concluded from watching his early movies is on full display in the latest interview in Esquire. The macho posturing (I'm always amused by macho men who made their living putting on costumes and makeup and playing let's pretend), the sense of white male privilege, racism, pooh-poohing the importance of the experience of women and people who aren't white, privileged males. I do find it hilarious that he is worried about listening to a woman's voice for four years as he declares he's going to vote for Trump. who everyone knows has such a rich, pleasing, well used voice. Then there is his oh, so, unconvincing self-criticism over his senile ranting at an empty chair THAT IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. I suppose it has occurred to Clint that that was a bit too revealing of how he obviously resents a black man being president. I'm surprised he didn't pretend-blow him away with his giant magnum, it would have been along the same lines. Only, he'd have met some real law men when the Secret Service came to talk to him.
What an prick. I've known dozens of jerks like him only they didn't have money and they weren't in the movies and they didn't get written up by movie reviewers in big New York publications so that the kind of people who get every idea they ever spout from those could pretend he was some admirable cultural figure.
So, who's going to be the first big figure in the scribbling class to say it, he's essentially always been what he is in that interview and his movies show it, especially the paranoia concerning women which is so telling in his fear of Hillary Clinton's voice. I mean, Play Misty For Me? The Beguiled? He's afraid of girls.
Update: My, my. 24 hours since I posted this and Clint's biggest fan hasn't come to his defense, it's a record. Clint, that means you're officially not cool anymore with the kewl kids.
"When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist."--Clint Eastwood
ReplyDeletePretty much tells you all you need to know, especially as, in context, he's no clearer about what "things" he means, than you can tell from that quote alone.
When Eastwood grew up there was no Civil Rights Act (the first one was in '57) at all, no Voting Rights Act, and lots of Jim Crow laws. Nobody called it "racist" because everybody accepted racism as normal. Just because he grew up with it, doesn't mean it was right.
I grew up in segregated schools that didn't integrate until the '70's. Doesn't mean those segregated schools weren't racist, even though nobody I knew considered them racist.
We were wrong, though.
Oh, but he made that movie about Bird! I'm sure someone reading this will say that. Yeah, right, as if that makes up for his diminution of Barack Obama to an empty chair that he ranted at like Dirty Harry while drunk.
ReplyDeleteI think Clint Eastwood's movies are a good display of how, at bottom, every posturing macho man is an angry little boy with a sense of entitlement and a mixture of deep fears and resentments. Some of his movies are downright displays of pathology. But I'm sure someone will come up with some good movie reviews by the celebrities of that annex of the movie industry to counter that with. I remember, way, way back when Siskel and Ebert were still on PBS that I realized you'd be lucky if sitting through as many movies as they did, didn't end up damaging your mind. And that's nothing as compared to making lots of them in which you get to play out your paranoid fantasies as Eastwood has. To his fans, he's a monumental phallic symbol, to me he's just a creepy old prick.
Even "Unforgiven" was crap. "Violence is bad; but it's still good, if the right people use it."
DeleteThere isn't a thug in the world who wouldn't defend their violence using that argument.
DeleteEastwood's had a long, varied career as a director. With an a la carte menu like that, you can easily find any number of pictures he's been involved in and say, "See, this proves he hates [blank]!" Maybe he is terrified of women, but I didn't get that from 'Million Dollar Baby' or 'A Perfect World.'
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I found a lot of nonsense in the interview: Reagan didn't "give up dough" to be a politician? Please. And he's out of his gourd if he thinks Trump isn't planning on using the office as a cash machine. Though he is absolutely right about us being a generation of pussies. Today, Bird would have sued Jo Jones for embarrassing him on the bandstand and probably been pitied into mediocrity.
Clint Eastwood is afraid of strong women who are in a position to exercise power, greater than his. His interview as well as his movie career shows that. His misogyny is displayed in his choice of words used to express contempt.
DeleteHe is a man whose military career largely consisted of him being a photogenic lifeguard on the United States Pacific coast and who went from that to being a pretty boy in the movies PLAYING various roles. He did that while holding the neurotic macho-tough guy view of the desirable male role, making lots of money at, essentially, a soft-handed, soft-life occupation. My neighbor who picks up garbage for a living, stuck with one wife through a life time of illness, bringing up four children and participating in local politics NOT MOTIVATED BY THE PERSONAL GAIN THAT GOT CLINT INTO IT was a better and more manly man than Clint Eastwood the movie star, and he never, once, got into a fist fight with anyone or made absurd, posturing intimidating moves against anyone.
What Charlie Parker would have done today, I don't know. I certainly hope he would have gotten into treatment and off of the drugs that killed him. I hated the movie, I thought it was largely irrelevant and unconvincing as being about Charlie Parker who I don't think anyone can or will ever really know. I doubt that the people closest to him in life ever really knew him, the only real and, therefore, the best route into Charlie Parker is his music that he left. I don't think if a movie was to be made that Clint Eastwood was, in any way, the person to make it. Eastwood is a cartoonist who presents stereotypes, which is why his movies have been popular. If they had any real creative invention in them they would not have achieved anything like the level of profit they have. Hollywood and the movie reviewing industry - which are mostly impressed with money and popularity - present that as some kind of artistic or cultural achievement but his movies are more of a series of symptoms into what men like Eastwood would like the world to be like and the sickness of the society and world that would pay to see it. I have thought there was something basically revealing in the men who see his movies and want to be Clint Eastwood of their own neurotically denied sexual attraction to pretty men who pretend to not be trading in their looks to their paying audience. I think, in other words, that it's really evidence of how screwed up people are.
I should add that I think it's notable that most of the people, today, who I hear and read who go on about "Bird" don't mention Forest Whitaker or Samuel E. Wright, they talk about Eastwood. I also think that it's a rare movie reviewer who cares a. about biographical integrity, b. music other than movie music, c. jazz. d. the lives of black people - most reviewers like most movie executives, producers and directors, being white. The movies on the topic of musicians and music mostly don't begin to get it and neither do the reviwers.
DeleteI don't think many "artists" today would react to being embarrassed on stage by woodshedding until they were better than anyone on earth. They'd take to twitter and ask for pity and a good lawyer. Of course I have no way of knowing that, but it's funny to imagine. And that is where I agree with Clint - we complain, a lot. Too much probably.
ReplyDeleteMovies, biopics certainly, are not interested in capturing anything resembling the reality they feign presenting. You have two hours, often not even that much, to present the life of an artist whose genius cannot be summed up and appreciated in ten times that amount, so they cut corners and fudge and fib in the defense of "telling a good story."
Funny enough, the only "biopic" I can name off the top of my head I actually enjoy is 'Shakespeare In Love,' and that happily makes the point of being an inaccurate historical representation. If I want a bio of the Bard I'll stick with Schoenbaum thank you very much.
Clint Eastwood doesn't get to tell black people, women, Latinos, LGBT people, etc. what they get to LEGITIMATELY object to, especially when said by a white, straight, rich, man who has never been subjected to the kind of discrimination, bigotry and hate talk that so many others experience as part of their daily life from their earliest childhood.
DeleteEither something is biographical or it is fiction, if it is fiction it isn't about anything to do with the person whose name or identity is appropriated by the writer of fiction. By his own admission, Tom Stoppard said that everything in Shakespeare in Love is fiction, it is not biography and the movie of it is not a "bio-pic" anymore than a movie about an entirely made up character is.
If you want a biography that is based on the fact that is available concerning Wm. Shakspere of Stratford, Diane Price's Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, does that. Schoenbaum has more in common with Stoppard than he does the available documentary record. That is if actual fact instead of making up stuff is important. I prefer fact when it comes to dealing with real people in real history.
Perhaps it is just semantics, but I think of “complaints” as being trivial expressions of dissatisfaction that do little more than elicit pity and patronizing. There are serious problems the aforementioned groups are quite vocal about that are matters of human rights, not any individual group. Rights they certainly deserve as much as any other. There are also easily solved issues created by ignorance, or, worse, not even “problems” at all, that become much larger than they need be. That’s how I took his comment. If you think him a white guy wondering why everyone isn’t like him, well, I don’t see it, but it’s your blog, I just want it for the record that’s not what I meant.
ReplyDeleteNote I used the “marks” around biopic. There are some bits of history in the play (Shakespeare wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Elizabeth was the queen of England, Marlowe was killed at a tavern in Deptford, etc.) and the rest is of course invention, but it’s a funny, amusing story, but certainly not “historical.” Frankly, I’ve never met anyone who thought otherwise, but I’ve been told I do need to get out more.
Sorry, but I dipped my toes in anti-Stratfordianism in college, then I had a course where the prof turned all my smart-ass questions into dust. It doesn’t take much to make me red but I was crimson that day. While I can understand the reaction to people like Stephen Greenblatt writing endless speculation on non-biographical texts because of his special doctoral powers, I’ve never seen the slightest sliver of data indicating Shakespeare was a front. Nor have I heard a reasonable breakdown of how the process worked. I’m happy with the little info we have, because we do have the plays and poems, and that interests me more anyway.
Well, I've encountered college graduates who believe Shakespeare in Love is biographical, I got into an argument with a number of them online who, even when I pointed out Stoppard, the author said that the whole thing was fiction, wouldn't back away from it. It's like people who denied that Dumbledore was gay when hi creator said he was.
DeleteRead Diane Price. There is literally not a single shred of evidence from the man's lifetime that indicates he ever wrote a word other than, possibly, his name. She went through the literary artifacts of 25 of his contemporary authors, from the best known to the most obscure of named authors and she established that, after the greatest paper chase in history, William Shakspere of Stratford is unique in being the only one of them for whom not a single document affirming he was a writer appeared during his lifetime. And it wasn't because there were no records of Shakspere's life or business dealings, there are about 70 records dealing with the man but not a single one of them refers to anything other than him being a broker in various things, from real estate to grain. Price pointed out in a lecture she gave last April that by the time she got to the 10th name on her list of authors he was down to the real 3rd rung or below. I've looked at Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, which was rather popular, it is pretty bad, but he left a literary paper trail.
She also pointed out that there is considerable evidence that his contemporaries wrote about Shakspere being a thief of other mens' work, including that of other people and plays that no one, today, thinks have anything to do with the authentic plays and works. Her research is quite a bit more impressive than the repititions of fables that constitute most of the "biography" of Shakespeare, something that was known to be largely made up well over a century ago. My first doubts about his authorship came from reading Mark Twain's famous essay on the topic, and he didn't have Price's research to come to that conclusion.
I did not read Price’s book, but based on your suggestion I did listen to a lecture she gave about the tome, and it appears to be the same wine I’ve encountered in a different bottle. Her standards of a “paper trail” are far too narrowed, and history, real history as done by historians, is the process of examining the relevant information and considering it in toto. Price is either a poor researcher or deliberating excluding data that will undermine her case. Example, she notes that Shakespeare was compared to the Roman playwright Terence, known to be a front for other writers, and wonders if the comment was a remark about Bill’s own practice of taking credit for others’ works? Trouble is, not only did Terence write his own plays, but Shakespeare was also compared (during his lifetime) to Ovid and Plautus, so were they also saying he would die in exile from the major cosmopolitan center of his country and not much would be known about his early life?
DeleteWe have numerous references to Shakespeare as a writer by his contemporaries, people like William Covell, who praised him for ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ in 1595. Richard Barnfield mentions him in his ‘A Remembrance of Some English Poets.’ John Weever wrote about Shakespeare the writer in 1599. And these don’t consider Ben Jonson’s posthumous comments about the man whose memory he did honor on this side idolatry. I could go on but there is ample evidence that Shakespeare was thought of by his contemporaries as a writer, and as I don’t subscribe to the intelligent design theory of history, whereby books and papers aren’t lost to fire, mold, bookworms, mice, clutter, misplacement, etc. but deliberately eliminated to obfuscate the past, I’m going to need some direct evidence of a conspiracy. She provided none.
To repeat, I am content with the limited information we have about Shakespeare the man, and find the wild extrapolations either way offer little to nothing towards my enjoyment of his works. On the contrary, they distract, and seem projection and vanity from the author. He left us his work. The rest is quiet.
I think it's noteworthy that even some of the arch Stratfordians have had to admit there is not one single piece of direct, contemporary attribution to Wm. Shakspere of Stratford on Avon during his lifetime that links him to the guy whose name started appearing on folios and publications of poems and plays, many of which no one, today, thinks William Shakspere of Stratford wrote. The arch Stratfordian Stanley Wells admitted there was no such document available.
Delete"What would settle this question for good? “I would love to find a contemporary document that said William Shakespeare was the dramatist of Stratford-upon-Avon written during his lifetime,” says Wells. “There’s lots and lots of unexamined legal records rotting away in the national archives; it is just possible something will one day turn up. That would shut the buggers up!”
Newsweek, Dec. 26, 2014
There are also direct accusations pointing to those attributions as being thefts and a number of allusions to someone using that name being a fraud and a crook. I will go into those when I have more time than I do right now.
As to the standards applied by Diana Price in her study, those are the modern standards of biography that are widely practiced in order to avoid some of the more glaring shortcomings of alleged biography and even some actual attempts at writing biographies. She said in an response to Stanley Wells:
"Since I am concerned with the professional literary activities and interests of William Shakspere, I revisit all his paper trails to ask yet another question: does the evidence support the statement that Shakspere was a writer or does it have any bearing on his literary activities or development? If one is attempting to construct a ‘literary’ biography, then I submit that identifying ‘literary’ paper trails is an essential step. In my book and more fully on here my website ( “Criteria”), I cite more scholars who illustrate or enumerate various criteria and problems of reliability, including H.B. George, Richard D. Altick & John J. Fenstermaker, Harold Love, S.P. Cerasano, Harold Jenkins, Arthur Freeman, D. Nichol Smith, John Huntington, and William Ringler, among others . I doubt that Prof. Wells would describe these scholars as irrational."
In the same response she pointed out that, though Wells claimed we knew little about Christopher Marlowe, Price is, correctly, able to point out we, actually do know something AND WHAT WE KNOW FORM HIS LIFE TIME IS THAT HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.
Wells asserts that we know more about Christopher Marlowe than we do about Shakespeare. I would disagree, and it is relevant to point out why I disagree, since it involves the distinction between a general paper trail and a literary paper trail. Only a few parts of Marlowe’s biography are documented, including his sensational murder. But in general, his life is not particularly well-documented, and few of the paper trails he left behind are literary.
"Marlowe left over twenty records of his presence at Cambridge University, largely recorded in the so-called buttery books (Boas, 13), but also in academic testimony (Ide, 58-59). The recommendation for his degree taking includes an inconclusive reference to state service, whatever that was (Boas, 22-23). So Marlowe is man of recorded education. We can make no comparable statement for Shakspere."
Continued:
Delete"The circumstances of, and factional politics surrounding Marlowe’s death have been debated (by e.g., Charles Nicholl and Paul E. J. Hammer). Yet his murder sheds no light on his writing career, although the poet George Peele wrote a tribute to him (“unhappy in thy end / Marley the Muses darling, for thy verse”) a few weeks after the murder (Nicholl, 51-52). Even Marlowe’s arrest along with Thomas Watson, presumably the poet, is not evidence of his literary activities. One has to consider Robert Sidney’s letter to Lord Burghley, reporting Marlowe’s apprehension for counterfeiting, and Thomas Kyd’s undated letters to the Lord Keeper protesting that Marlowe’s manuscripts were “shuffled with some of mine … by some occasion or writing in one chamber two years since” to make decisions about those reports (with respect to Kyd’s letters, see especially J.A. Downie, whose analyses raise questions about the dates of composition of the two letters). But even accepting those records, Marlowe is one of the least documented of the alleged writers from the time period – in terms of literary paper trails."
"Ironically, we know more about Shakspere’s professional activities than we do about Marlowe’s. The evidence that Shakspere left behind tells us that he was a theatrical shareholder, actor, money-lender, commodity trader, real estate investor, and so on. Regrettably, none of the evidence for Shakspere’s professional activities can be used to support the statement that he wrote for a living. And he is a man of no recorded education."
http://www.shakespeare-authorship.com/?page=wellsreview
I think that, at every turn, Price and the more scholarly of the anti-Stratfordians make a better case than the Stratfordian establishment does. The blatant lie put out last Spring that the "D" hand section of the pastiche-play Thomas More was in the hand of William Shakspere of Stratford on Avon when every single argument made for that attribution can be used to come up with far more supportable attributions to the likes of Henry Neville without the special pleading and violations of scholastic standards and even scientific standards that the Stratfordians rely on makes me all the more certain that they can't come up with what they need to make the fables and legends-based Stratfordian orthodoxy hold water.
I think it's interesting in the same way some of the other matters I've dealt with are, it shows how willing even academics are to violate the most basic requirements of their professions in order to assert what is, essentially, an ideological or commercial line of nonsense. I find that extremely interesting.
Continued:
Delete"The circumstances of, and factional politics surrounding Marlowe’s death have been debated (by e.g., Charles Nicholl and Paul E. J. Hammer). Yet his murder sheds no light on his writing career, although the poet George Peele wrote a tribute to him (“unhappy in thy end / Marley the Muses darling, for thy verse”) a few weeks after the murder (Nicholl, 51-52). Even Marlowe’s arrest along with Thomas Watson, presumably the poet, is not evidence of his literary activities. One has to consider Robert Sidney’s letter to Lord Burghley, reporting Marlowe’s apprehension for counterfeiting, and Thomas Kyd’s undated letters to the Lord Keeper protesting that Marlowe’s manuscripts were “shuffled with some of mine … by some occasion or writing in one chamber two years since” to make decisions about those reports (with respect to Kyd’s letters, see especially J.A. Downie, whose analyses raise questions about the dates of composition of the two letters). But even accepting those records, Marlowe is one of the least documented of the alleged writers from the time period – in terms of literary paper trails."
"Ironically, we know more about Shakspere’s professional activities than we do about Marlowe’s. The evidence that Shakspere left behind tells us that he was a theatrical shareholder, actor, money-lender, commodity trader, real estate investor, and so on. Regrettably, none of the evidence for Shakspere’s professional activities can be used to support the statement that he wrote for a living. And he is a man of no recorded education."
http://www.shakespeare-authorship.com/?page=wellsreview
I think that, at every turn, Price and the more scholarly of the anti-Stratfordians make a better case than the Stratfordian establishment does. The blatant lie put out last Spring that the "D" hand section of the pastiche-play Thomas More was in the hand of William Shakspere of Stratford on Avon when every single argument made for that attribution can be used to come up with far more supportable attributions to the likes of Henry Neville without the special pleading and violations of scholastic standards and even scientific standards that the Stratfordians rely on makes me all the more certain that they can't come up with what they need to make the fables and legends-based Stratfordian orthodoxy hold water.
I think it's interesting in the same way some of the other matters I've dealt with are, it shows how willing even academics are to violate the most basic requirements of their professions in order to assert what is, essentially, an ideological or commercial line of nonsense. I find that extremely interesting.
I think it's noteworthy that even some of the arch Stratfordians have had to admit there is not one single piece of direct, contemporary attribution to Wm. Shakspere of Stratford on Avon during his lifetime that links him to the guy whose name started appearing on folios and publications of poems and plays, many of which no one, today, thinks William Shakspere of Stratford wrote. The arch Stratfordian Stanley Wells admitted there was no such document available.
Delete"What would settle this question for good? “I would love to find a contemporary document that said William Shakespeare was the dramatist of Stratford-upon-Avon written during his lifetime,” says Wells. “There’s lots and lots of unexamined legal records rotting away in the national archives; it is just possible something will one day turn up. That would shut the buggers up!”
Newsweek, Dec. 26, 2014
There are also direct accusations pointing to those attributions as being thefts and a number of allusions to someone using that name being a fraud and a crook. I will go into those when I have more time than I do right now.
As to the standards applied by Diana Price in her study, those are the modern standards of biography that are widely practiced in order to avoid some of the more glaring shortcomings of alleged biography and even some actual attempts at writing biographies. She said in an response to Stanley Wells:
"Since I am concerned with the professional literary activities and interests of William Shakspere, I revisit all his paper trails to ask yet another question: does the evidence support the statement that Shakspere was a writer or does it have any bearing on his literary activities or development? If one is attempting to construct a ‘literary’ biography, then I submit that identifying ‘literary’ paper trails is an essential step. In my book and more fully on here my website ( “Criteria”), I cite more scholars who illustrate or enumerate various criteria and problems of reliability, including H.B. George, Richard D. Altick & John J. Fenstermaker, Harold Love, S.P. Cerasano, Harold Jenkins, Arthur Freeman, D. Nichol Smith, John Huntington, and William Ringler, among others . I doubt that Prof. Wells would describe these scholars as irrational."
In the same response she pointed out that, though Wells claimed we knew little about Christopher Marlowe, Price is, correctly, able to point out we, actually do know something AND WHAT WE KNOW FORM HIS LIFE TIME IS THAT HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.
Wells asserts that we know more about Christopher Marlowe than we do about Shakespeare. I would disagree, and it is relevant to point out why I disagree, since it involves the distinction between a general paper trail and a literary paper trail. Only a few parts of Marlowe’s biography are documented, including his sensational murder. But in general, his life is not particularly well-documented, and few of the paper trails he left behind are literary.
"Marlowe left over twenty records of his presence at Cambridge University, largely recorded in the so-called buttery books (Boas, 13), but also in academic testimony (Ide, 58-59). The recommendation for his degree taking includes an inconclusive reference to state service, whatever that was (Boas, 22-23). So Marlowe is man of recorded education. We can make no comparable statement for Shakspere."
I’m afraid the issue for me isn’t what is presented, it’s the vast amount of information Price & Co. are ignoring. Hundreds of copies of Shakespeare’s plays published during his lifetime under his name. We have numerous references to him as a writer during and after his career. In his preface to ‘Lucrece,’ he directly addresses his patron, the Earl of Southampton. Jonson wrote both a dedicatory poem to him in the first ‘Folio’ and his comments in ‘Timber,’ posthumous, offer nothing to indicate he wasn’t the author Jonson paid homage to.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, we have exactly zero documents that demonstrate Shakespeare was a front for some anonymous noblemen and even less evidence to suggest so. Playing companies of the era were small groups of actors, and the playwrights had to present material for that unit. The idea of some nobleman writing from an estate for a playing company without spending time at rehearsals or performances? Without knowing that they had a young prodigy able to play large female parts like Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth? That’s about as sane a claim as insisting Leonard Bernstein wrote for Ellington’s orchestra with no one ever being the wiser. A claim like that wouldn’t be impossible, but if paper trails are required for her to accept such claims, there’s not much of one for Price there.
Stratford. And many of the plays and some editions of the poems were not attributed to him during his lifetime in those publications. As Stanley Wells had to admit, there is not a single document from before the First Folio, years after his death, that makes a connection between the Stratford man and any of the works. His own will certainly doesn't, his son-in-law, a very literate doctor who was known to appreciate literature never associated him with the works. No one in Stratford ever associated him with the works during his lifetime. The effigy of him is certainly ambiguous in the extreme and likely meant to be ambiguous when there was absolutely no reason for anyone to have not associated him with those specific plays and poems which were coming to be considered the greatest body of works in the language.
DeleteI don't know why anyone would expect to find documents of an arrangement between someone who wanted to remain anonymous and their front. I would imagine any kind of payment for that would have been in the anonymity of cash payments or payment in kind. If a nobleman or a person of status didn't want to be known as the author, any documentation to that effect would be unwise and very likely a venue for blackmail. If, as in Richard II, the author was writing dangerous material that could get him arrested, tortured and possibly killed, as so many playwrights were in Elizabethan and Jacobian England, the best idea would have been to use a known non-writer of limited literacy as a front. From all of the evidence, including his scrawled, variably spelled signatures, Shakspere of Stratford would have been an idea person to use, especially if a pseudonym similar to his own name was already in use.
There is no evidence that Shakespeare was involved in the theater until he was an adult man, well past the age when he would have been playing female roles.
The more this issue is gone into, the more unlikely it appears that the Stratford man was the author. The case for his authorship is so problematical and, as Price documents, so unfounded in exactly the kind of evidence you would need to make such a case, I think that barring a document that the centuries long search for any piece of paper having anything to do with William Shakespeare, the Stratford legend will be discredited.
I think your attempted analogy using Leonard Bernstein and Duke Ellington is rather bad. The careers of both are pretty well exhaustively documented, especially in contracts and eye-witness testimony. If Bernstein ever did compose for one of the greatest composers alive during his lifetime, he'd never have been able to keep it a secret, he'd have shouted it as loudly as he could in any venue he could have. The educations and creative careers of both are voluminously documented, with enormous hoards of manuscripts unmistakably in their hands are available. Their personal libraries of music by other people is documented, and in virutally every artistic category that would be common between them and the Stratford man only points out that they have in huge amounts what he lacks, an artistic paper grail. I think that the business paper trail left by the Stratford man is, in fact, a rather good argument to make that the reason the artistic paper trail is missing is because there never was one to get lost. Just as the absence of an educational paper trail is most reasonably made through an assumption that he never had an education. Price is more charitable than I am about that, I think his incompetent signatures, in which he didn't even spell his own name, consistently, is best explained by assuming that was the most he was capable of doing with a pen and that, like every other member of his family, parents, siblings, wife, children, grandchild, he was functionally illiterate.
I don't know how this got cut off but this preceeds the word "Stratford" in the above.
DeleteNo, what you have are plays and poems published under a name, William Shakespeare, which is not how the Stratford man wrote his name in even one of the six signatures attributed to him, many of which no one, today attributes to the man from
I don't know how this got cut off but this preceeds the word "Stratford" in the above.
DeleteNo, what you have are plays and poems published under a name, William Shakespeare, which is not how the Stratford man wrote his name in even one of the six signatures attributed to him, many of which no one, today attributes to the man from
The spelling issue is a non-starter. Spelling wasn’t the strict exercise in precision you probably had to practice in grammar school. Look at the ‘Thomas More’ document – the erratic spelling was the norm for the era. Heck, you even quote George Peele’s tribute to Marlowe, which calls him “Marley!”
ReplyDeleteWhy would the will mention his works? He didn’t own the plays. Copyright laws and residuals were things writers of the time only dreamed about. As per his son-in-law, was he ever directly asked about Shakespeare’s writing career, and were the people of Stratford truly interested in the workings of the London Theater? Their take on the matter would be nice to have, but I don’t think, considering how little documentation we possess, to not find that data doesn’t surprise or create suspicion for me.
I’m sorry but your theory for a front has too many holes. Elizabethan Englishmen were clearly willing to arrest and torture those connected to persons of interest. Thomas Kyd was subject to aggressive interrogation for information about Christopher Marlowe, and died young after being treated to such intense British hospitality.
The idea that a nobleman would not only not publish a play anonymously (as many were, few would likely have noticed) but instead give the authorities a well known figure in the theatrical community to target? I’m sorry, that just doesn’t make any sense at all. Unless Shakespeare was a masochist whom Lord X knew was looking forward to some time on the rack.
Not only that, there is no consistency to how the myriad spelled pseudonyms (for the sake of argument) were applied. I’ve never encountered even and unreasonable explanation for how it operated. And if you wish to argue something did happen because it could have happened, the onus is on you to provide the how and why.
I do think you’re missing the substance of my Bernstein/Ellington analogy: the idea that Bernstein could write parts for the unique members of Ellington’s orchestra without being familiar with their abilities is downright laughable.
It doesn’t matter how much of a genius the anonymous nobleman you believe wrote the plays was – he would and could not have written the aforementioned female roles unless he knew that a young actor was available to perform it. This would require a familiarity with the playing company that no record we possess indicates existed. If Bernstein was constantly sitting in on rehearsals with the Blanton-Webster band, someone would have noticed and mentioned it. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect an upper classman doing the same with a group of actors would have not remained unknown for long. That no one, even posthumously, ever took credit for the plays, nor did anyone from the era ever mention it is as telling as Jonson’s tributes to the Bard.
To repeat: I think Shakespeare wrote the plays based on the sheer totality of data present. It doesn’t tie everything up in a package with a ribbon, but much of life remains vague and exceptional to even the most in-depth historical study. That Price is willing to cite quote about Shakespeare comparing him to Terence but ignore equally contemporary references to him being a British Ovid or Plautus? It’s special pleading run amok. That she attacks Shakespeare’s character (He was cheap! And overly litigious!) is especially desperate. I wonder how she imagines someone like Caravaggio painted ‘St Jerome Writing.’
The six attributed signatures of Wm. Shakspere of Stratford aren't just random words they are his, personal signature on legal documents. I can't believe that a man who would have had to have written many more than the 900,000 + words of the Shakespeare corpus would have a. had such bad handwriting, b. wouldn't have standardized the spelling of his own name.
DeleteIf you are going to discount the lack of spelling uniformity in his signature then the argument that he wrote the "hand D" section of Thomas More is seriously damaged by citing spelling peculiarities - a good part of the Stratfordian case depends on the most amazingly attenuated arguments based on the spelling contained in that document, arguments which, if they were valid, would comprise far stronger evidence that Henry Neville actually wrote it.
A large percentage of the plays in the First Folio were unpublished at the time of the Stratford man's death. Presumably, if he was the author, those would have been in manuscript, it is rather odd that such potentially valuable things were not mentioned by Shakspere anywhere. Not to mention any other manuscripts, unpublished works, etc. That he also didn't mention so much as a book when books were far more valuable than many of the items mentioned in the will, as well as not a single volume that can be tied to Wm. Shakspere have never been found - not even the spurious alleged 7th signature did that. I do think you minimize the value of the plays and poems, not to mention that it is supremely odd that, there being no impediment due to his social position, he would, in no document ever found, have claimed authorship of any of them. It is clear from the texts of a number of them that the author valued the work, highly. The speech about the importance of drama that Hamlet made shows that.
Your explanation of your Bernstein-Ellington argument leaves me more puzzled to its relevance, not least of all because no such thing ever happened and if it had Bernstein would have been the first person in the world to have announced it.
If the author were still alive at the time and he hadn't wanted his name on the works it's entirely possible to explain why he didn't claim them. If his relations would have found it objectionable, they're even less likely to have wanted to be associated with them. As I mentioned, Shakspere and his family had nothing in their social standing that would have prevented them from trumpeting their association with the works, especially in the period after the publication of the First Folio made the works increasingly famous. However even Dr. Hall, Shakspere's son-in-law and the only member of his family whose education and literacy are definite facts, didn't mention that fact-though he wrote about his aquaintance with other, far inferior writers. No one who presumably knew Shakspere in Stratford, London or elsewhere, ever seemed to have thought it was worth noting that he was the author during his lifetime, any definite association having to wait for the front material of the First Folio, Jonson's bizarre poem, full of ambiguous statements that could be read as denying that the guy pictured was the author or elsewise, or a few others - none of whom are definitely known to have ever laid eyes on the man.
cont. I will add that it is a fact that as Jonson was involved with the publication of the First Folio (he'd shortly before published his own works in folio) he was living with Francis Bacon, aiding him with translating his English work into Latin and helping him publish his own work in anticipation of his death. I will also add something which several others have noted, Ben Jonson was one of the most sarcastic authors of the time. I wouldn't claim authorship for Francis Bacon, though he certainly had the knowledge to have written them which can't be accounted for in Shakspere.
DeleteThe charge that Shakspere was cheap is one of the few facts about him, as his business records show. From his willingness to sue people over small sums he could have easily absorbed (that he was rich, for his time and position is also known), added to facts such as his refusal to pay back money his wife had had to borrow as he dallied in London for years on end. He was a cheapskate which is known through his record of litigation. That record also makes his lack of interest in his rights to the plays and poems especially noteworthy. Unpublished, unproduced plays, including several of his best works, were certainly worth more than the sums he sued over or the items he noted so particularly in his will.
I don't think you'll be convinced, I've been over these things over and over again. As I said before, the more evidence I've looked at the less likely I think it is that he wrote the work in question. That case is far, far stronger than it was when Mark Twain wrote his essay which was the first thing that gave me doubts.
On the contrary, I will happily be convinced otherwise if some evidence were presented that made the case. But to be clear, I mean firm documentation, and not a al carte scholarship buttressed by super special pleading.
DeleteOK, imagine some anonymous Boston Brahmin composer with a degree from Julliard (of course!) was embarrassed to be composing jazz, so he used Ellington as a front. But, so they argue, he simply composed the pieces in his apartment and passed them onto the Duke, with no record showing he ever heard or even met with the musicians he was writing for. That would be absurd on its face for many reasons.
Continuing with that, you appear to be suggesting that some anonymous nobleman wrote the plays out, without meeting with or rehearsing with the actors, but just instinctively “knew,” I guess, that they’d be able to handle whatever was given in the same way the Julliard grad knew how to write for Cootie Williams, Jimmy Blanton and Ben Webster. Because education. John Rice, a famous prodigy of the Jacobean stage, is the agreed-upon candidate to have played Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra. To argue that this Duke or Earl, sitting in his estate, would write a female role that prominent without having worked with and determined a young actor could manage it? No. Just, no.
Now, were there some evidence a nobleman was taking particular interest in the company? Then you could start to build a case. But in this instance, it appears you are insisting that the lack of proof is further proof of a conspiracy.
And that’s all I want. Proof, evidence, documentation, references, asides or correspondence. Something anything that shows another person wrote these plays. Not abstract theories explaining how only a nobleman could write the assassination scene in ‘Richard II,’ or how only someone who had been to Italy could pen ‘Hamlet’ or no one but a devoted falconer could possibly imagine ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
Pepys and Aubrey (to cite two examples) both wrote gossipy volumes on the era, and there is no mention, none whatsoever, of this scandal of scandals regarding the most popular and increasingly venerated author in the nation’s history.
Considering that Aubrey writes of Francis Bacon as being a “pederast” who accepted bribes, I don’t see why calling him a great playwright was crossing the line.
I believed I’ve explained that I’m comfortable with the incomplete picture we possess based on the fragmented nature of the documents that remain.
Sure, I would love to read his take on his father-in-law’s corpus, but c’est la vie. My friend, an historian, has reminded me over and over in our discussions to the point I actually learned it, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything.” But, note that you never ask why his doctor-in-law even mentioned the fraud that existed, in which his bride’s dad was thought to be THE William Shakespeare? Ha ha ha.
His family didn't seem to care (at least as can be proven, not that they did NOT care). But you could reasonably ask why would they? The money for the works had already been received and utilized. And considering that we are working with an incomplete picture (for which zero evidence exists for a conspiracy) you can’t claim they NEVER brought the subject up. But there was a monument to William, the poet laureate of the nation praised him, and as no one breathed or wrote about any sort of conspiracy in a manner that can be proven, why would they feel the need to bang on that drum all day?
Don’t forget Jefferson, who wrote his own memorial, doesn’t mention being president. Thomas Aquinas left his ‘Summa Theologica’ unfinished because he felt it was “so much straw.” Who is to stay what the Shakespeare family prided itself upon more than others?
DeleteThis is from a previous post: “William Covell, who praised him for ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ in 1595. Richard Barnfield mentions him in his ‘A Remembrance of Some English Poets.’ John Weever wrote about Shakespeare the writer in 1599.” I can’t argue if you continue to insist they don’t count but offer no reason to doubt them. Same with Jonson. He wrote a dedicatory poem and in his posthumous collection praised Shakespeare. Here:
"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. “Sufflaminandus erat,” as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him: “Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.” He replied: “Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."
I read that and don't think, "Ah, clearly he was saying someone else wrote the plays!" "Sarcasm" doesn't explain it, for me anyway.
I, somehow, have a feeling that Thomas Jefferson didn't think people were going to forget he'd been president. And that doesn't get past the fact that Wm. Shakspere of Stratford was, obviously, interested in his legacy as he left money for memorial rings to be made to give to certain people so they wouldn't forget him. Yet, if he thought he had any right to them, he didn't see fit to make provisions in his will that his unpublished literary legacy should be published under his name, preserving it far better than some cheap rings would. I'll go back to Hamlet's comments on the players and their importance to anyone who wanted to be remembered well.
DeleteLikewise, I don't think Aquinas thought anyone would forget he had written his works. His comment comparing them to hay was a result of an intense mystical experience which he found more impressive than all of his reasoning. It is irrelevant to the argument we're having.
They praised someone who was using the name "William Shakespeare" in publishing the plays. There is no evidence that any of them associated them with the Stratford man that I can recall. And there is contemporary testimony attributing the poems to other people, Francis Bacon among them.
The ambiguity in Jonson's preface, and there are some who believe he write most of it, even that attributed to the actors, can as easily be read as an admission that the man who is pictured was not the real author but a false front covering the man who had. Jonson is rather definite about knowing the author - in fact, if the Baconians are right, he was likely staying with and working for him as he was writing the First Folio stuff - and that he esteemed him highly. Though that didn't keep him from, later, writing some rather scathing commentary on the works. Ben Jonson was not above writing stuff that had more than one meaning, depending on the knowledge of those in the know but which would mean something else to those who weren't.
I don't see the point of the rest of this comment.
" OK, imagine some anonymous Boston Brahmin composer with a degree from Julliard (of course!) was embarrassed to be composing jazz, so he used Ellington as a front. "
DeleteOK, first, if you're going to play that game you can make up anything you want to because there is no, actual, documentary record of these made up characters, one of whom you're calling "Duke Ellington". The real Duke Ellington was a real person with a massively large and fully documented history of one of the greatest of living composers during his lifetime, who had no need for someone from Julliard to write stuff for him - when he stole he stole from other great musicians, such as his great sax soloist Johnny Hodges.
And there would have been no taboo on such a musician being involved with jazz during Ellington's life. I'm unaware of any such reticent jazz composer, whereas there are numerous aristocratic writers who didn't want their work published under their names during the Elizabethan-Jacobian period. You can't transport the mores of that age onto the 20th century.
As Price is at pains to note, there is all the difference in the world between personal testimony of people known to have known someone during their lifetime and the commentary of people who didn't know someone decades after their death, or even seven years after their death. You simply can't make impersonal gossip or legend into biography, though that has never stopped even the most academic of the Stratfordians from doing that.
Sir,
ReplyDeleteAs we have no documents regarding much of Will's life, it seems you’re asking for a reply to questions that cannot be answered certainly, and feel that discounts the things we can deduce. Shakespeare’s personal life is a vague thing, and I don’t understand why his actions, left elliptical by our lack of documentation, should be left up to Stratfordians to explain, as if human behavior were as predictable as the tides, and if not, the default position must be that there is another author. Verdi listed his occupation for years as “farmer,” including during his time as a composer. Kafka asked that most of his works be destroyed upon his death. Point being, not all artists view their work and reputation with the same focus or care.
We know of Aquinas’ mystical experience that led him to lay down his quill, but imagine that document were lost to history, we’d probably have shelves of supposition asking “why?” Continuing, if Jefferson was happy with his memorial, I see no reason to think Shakespeare wasn’t pleased with his rings. I wouldn’t be, but I didn’t write ‘Hamlet,’ nor was I the president.
The documents I mention refer to Shakespeare as being the author of the plays. The title page of his epic poetry contains his name and lists it as being the author. Now, you offer, “And there is contemporary testimony attributing the poems to other people, Francis Bacon among them,” may I have these references? Per Jonson’s poem, where does he say what you claim? I’ve read it, and when you combine with his comments in ‘Timber,’ I’m not sure where you see fit to insist he’s declaring Shakespeare a fraud.
Regarding Bacon, no one is saying he wasn’t an especially learned scholar, but that doesn’t mean he’d make a great playwright anymore than Harold Bloom is a superb prose stylist because education.
Perhaps I’m not explaining my Ellington analogy properly: Ellington was an active bandleader. He worked with and developed the talents of his players. In some cases, as you note, he adopted their ideas as his own. But the absurdity of the suggestion is not the social standings of jazz in the 20th century nor that Ellington wasn’t know and documented as being a musician – it’s that someone without his knowledge of his players could write for them just because they went to school. Whoever wrote Shakespeare’s knew the theater, knew the actors, knew how to present the plays. Education is not the same thing as ability or experience, and barring evidence to the contrary, there is not argument to be found in, “Lord X wrote the plays because he went to Oxford or Cambridge.”
Verdi may have listed his occupation as "farmer" but he was in no doubt that he was famous for his compositions. There is no doubt that he composed the music, he left massive evidence that he had a career as a composer.
DeleteThe same for Kafka.
Aquinas was one of the most famous theologians of his time, he had no reason to doubt that the Summa and his other work would be known and attributed to him, there is massive evidence, including contemporary testimony and documentation that he was a writer.
I am less certain what your point of bringing up Duke Ellington is. The fact that he was familiar with those particular players and that it had an influence on WHAT HE WROTE makes my point. Ellington wrote WHAT he wrote based on his known education and history. Someone without a means of acquiring the knowledge contained in the works attributed to Shakespeare could not have written WHAT WHOEVER WROTE THEM WROTE. Someone without a formal education can write things but they can't write things about what they don't know. And that is especially true of someone who lived at the time the plays and poems were written. Hamlin Garland could sit and read in the Boston Public Library and gain the knowledge he needed to write his early work. He wouldn't have been able to master both the substance of the law and the obvious experience of a lawyer to have written so convincingly of the law that it impressed some of the most accomplished lawyers and judges in Britain, the United States and elsewhere. He could not have come up with the detailed knowledge of other topics in the play and poems by merely borrowing books from the local pedant because they would almost certainly not have had the works necessary. Many of the works needed to have been read were in Latin, unless he had a means of obtaining Latin literacy, those works would be closed to him. Whoever wrote THOSE SPECIFIC WORKS would have had to have an extensive education which would have had to have left documentation which, after the greatest paper chase in history has never been found. I think it is improbable in the highest degree that such a person would have both come from a family of uniform illiterates and to have left daughters and a wife who were illiterate. Just as a comparison, Francis Bacon's mother was an accomplished scholar in her own right who could read ancient and modern languages, including Italian and who was a good enough scholar that she translated highly technical scholarly work into English. His father was one of the great lawyers of his time. He grew up among the royals of the kind written about in the plays and he lived in France with the English ambassador for a stretch of time as a young adult. I read a paper and listened to a lecture documenting how the play Loves Labours Lost, which is incomprehensible unless you know the insider background of two courts in France, would have had to have been written by someone who had that experience as part of his education. There is absolutely nothing in the Stratford man's known history that would have given him any of those things. There is nothing but the inexplicable genius of Duke Ellington contained in his work that can't be explained by his known education and experience, there is everything in the plays and poems that can't be explained by the known education and experience of the Stratford merchant William Shakspere. Just claiming he was a genius doesn't put the needed knowledge n him.
You mention, “there are numerous aristocratic writers who didn't want their work published under their names during the Elizabethan-Jacobian period,” while it’s not impossible, there are too many questions I’ve never seen any anti-Stratfordian even approach answering. Why the pseudonym, at all, if many works were published without the author’s name? Why pick an active member of the theatrical community, who could be easily found and gently questioned should a “subversive” work be published? Why the inconsistency is the spelling and labeling of the plays? If you want to muddy the waters, why not change the author’s name entirely, and not just variations? I’m asking seeking explanation, but most I’ve spoken with on this topic insist these points irrelevant, and only respond by asking questions about the second-best bed.
ReplyDeleteAnd if I may, you do seem to be conflating the taffy pull exposition you find in literary biographies of Shakespeare with the known facts of his career. I don’t claim any esoteric knowledge of the former, but the number of references to him as the author both during and after his life leaves me unconvinced otherwise, no matter how incongruous his background seems (to some) with the works. I think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, and that’s all I think. Not that "Hand D" is definitely Will. Not that Shakespeare went to Italy. Not that he was a gay/royalist/Catholic/misogynist or any other claims made by super reading the plays. Evidence convinced me, and evidence will change my mind. You have offered questions, but no data.
We don't know who put the names on the things published with the name "Shakespeare" during his lifetime. One of the problems of using that as evidence that the Stratford guy wrote them is that the name appears on works definitely known to not have been written by whoever wrote "Shakespeare's" works. Diana Price suggests that if the Stratford man was a play broker as she makes a case for, he may have put his name to works of other people so people would think he wrote them. Which would explain Ben Jonson's references to "Shakescene" who stole other men's work. I think it's notable that the play Richard II was first published with no attribution, then after a play about Richard II figured in the Essex rebellion and the author of works such as that were in hot water it was published with the attribution to Shakespeare. I think that's likely an indication that they chose a name which, if anyone pointed to the Stratford man he had a clear alibi in that he wasn't a writer. I think the facts would indicate either a playbroker trying to steal credit for the work of other writers or an attempt at confusing the authorities, though there isn't any reason to believe that those or other scenarios are mutually exclusive. Different people could have different motives at different times. The problem is, as it is with the Stratfordian case from the start, the facts of the Stratford man's life can't be made to fit with the most obvious fact of the works, he wouldn't have had the knowledge to have written them and there is nothing in the known biography of the man to account for how he could have come by it. Everything about the "education of Shakespeare" which the Stratfordians peddle is speculation, conjecture, story-spinning and, at times, a ridiculous series of claims turned into a biography of his young years. Compared to that coming up with reasons that fit the things attributed to William Shakespeare which the author of the great works didn't and did write is somewhat more straight forward.
DeleteAs the will is one of the few things going into great detail about the man, what he listed as owning at the time of his death, his valuable assets, it's rather important to see what he listed and what is missing. That along with the not inconsiderable number of legal documents dealing with petty commercial activities and money making constitute what is actually documented about his professional life. None of which has anything to do with being a writer. It is not a mere coincidence that of all of the more than two-dozen writers of his time, the Stratford man, the greatest of all of them is the only one who lacks even a single definite link between the Stratfordian and a career as a writer. As I noted even Stanley Wells had to admit that.
Cont.
DeleteThere is absolutely nothing about the "hand D" section of Thomas More which indicates that the work is in the hand of the man who made the six signatures that meets anything near accepted standards of evidence. All of the arguments made in favor of that being the same hand who made the signature are far better evidence that Henrey Neville wrote it and that's far from a definitive case. There is even less evidence that the hand who wrote the "hand D" section was the author of the work, there are indications in the manuscript that indicate they were writing copy from another copy of it, we don't have any reason to believe that whatever they were copying was in the hand of the author.
I'm willing to answer for things I've claimed, I'm not willing to answer for things other people have claimed that I haven't accepted.
I'm not interested in changing your mind, I'm interested in presenting evidence and the standards of honest, rigorous scholarship. I'm willing to open the door, you've got to go through it yourself. Though I really would suggest reading Diana Price whose scholarship is far above that of the Stratfordians in this matter and above quite a number of the anti-Stratfordians. That is especially true in the second edition, from what I can gather and in her papers.
I will answer your other comment later, I'm having a rather busy period and am not getting much sleep.
"The problem is, as it is with the Stratfordian case from the start, the facts of the Stratford man's life can't be made to fit with the most obvious fact of the works, he wouldn't have had the knowledge to have written them and there is nothing in the known biography of the man to account for how he could have come by it."
ReplyDeleteThree problems:
1. We don't have a lot of facts about Shakespeare's life, but we have any number of references to him as a writer during his lifetime and after. Doesn't it strike you as suspicious that every single one of them must be dismissed via special pleading? One, maybe two? No, every damned one of them.
2. To claim he "wouldn't have had the knowledge" is specious. You concede that there is absence in his "known biography" but fail to consider just how small that is in relation to his life and how much documentation from the era we don't possess. Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything. Consider the grammar school in Stratford: We have no direct evidence he attended. But we have no direct evidence ANYONE attended that school during the era. Does that mean it is reasonable to assume no one went there? Of course not.
3. You have provided zero, zero evidence for anyone else having he exposure and experience with playing companies to pen these works. Yes, Francis Bacon's mother could read Virgil, but how does that assist him in writing for Will Kempe or John Rice? That's the thorn in your argument.
With all due respect, Price’s scholarship is rigorous in the way a zealot’s sincerity is. To quote her directly on her motives: “This was a writer who was a compulsive creative artist. Whoever wrote them was not writing them to get five pounds. This person was writing them because they, like any creative artist, were going to do it whether they get paid or not, whether it's okay or not.” She insists she just GETS a “sense of self.” That is exactly the type of projection bias that anti-Stratfordians accuse the conventional scholars on the topic of having. She’s far more concerned with the idea that a man with worldly aspirations and an interest in monetary pursuits could ever write ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Lear.’
Clearly, also, vast is her ignorance on the history of art and its convoluted relationship with commerce. Myriad artists were paid very well for their efforts, and some indulged in the creative process as a means of financing their lifestyles. This does not prohibit genius or ability or diligence.
I understand you've been occupied with your dog's passing (Requiescat in pace) and the election coverage (whoa, does it stink [the coverage, not your comments, which are black Irish funny]) but I am interested in any direct references to other authors. I've simply never encountered one that didn't require a decoder ring to explain, and all I've ever found is they tell me to remember to drink my Ovaltine.
There is no document during his lifetime or until seven years after his death which identifies William Shakspere with the William Shakespeare whose name appeared on a number of publications as the author of some of the plays and poems attributed to him AND ALSO ON A NOT INCONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF WORKS WHICH NO ONE BELIEVES TO BE BY THE SAME AUTHOR. There is no one who is known to have known Shakspere of Stratford who makes that connection, not his family, not his neighbors, not even himself. So I reject that point.
DeleteWe do, actually, have a considerable number of documents telling us about the Stratford man including many business records, none of which identifies him as an author. There are many more records for the Stratford man than for many of the others in Diana Price's study. I think Diana Price made a good case that his work as a broker in various things could explain his name appearing on plays and poems, both those legitimately considered in the "Shakespeare" canon and those which aren't, he was a play broker who tried to pass off the work of actual authors for his own. That is consistent with both the references to a "Shake Scene" and "Poet Ape" from during his lifetime, which are highly suggestive of such a person becoming quite infamous in literary and dramatic circle. If the Stratford man was known as such a fraud it would account for why he didn't make legal claim to ownership of plays and poems, including the many canonical works which had not been published or, likely, produced during his lifetime but which were not known until the publication of the First Folio - Which I don't want to go over again.
You haven't refuted anything that Diana Price has said, nor have her Stratfordian critics. You can't argue away the records attesting to the literary careers during their lifetimes of the two-dozen authors she established have that kind of documentation nor produce one for the Stratford man who is unique among those authors in having not a single one. She is hardly a zealot, she's a scholar who made an important and fascinating discovery by doing rigorous study and she can defend what she's said against the detractors who haven't been able to refute what she said. She also has made quite modest speculations as compared to the fantasies of the conventional Stratfordians and she doesn't misrepresent her speculations as biography or history, another difference between her and the Stratfordians.
You can look to see if the works of some of the other authors Price has looked into are online. I never read Thomas Dekker until I found his Shoemaker's Holiday online (it's a pretty mediocre play) I'd never read any of Jonson's plays, either. He's definitely better than Dekker but as a dramatist he's no "Shakespeare" or even a Marlowe.
The point about Francis Bacon's mother's scholarship not preparing Francis Bacon to write for Will Kemp is true. However, unlike the Stratford man, Bacon's recorded involvement with dramatic production during his lifetime is quite extensive and officially documented. He even wrote about his ideas about producing dramatic productions, to the extent he recommends colors that work better on stage than others. I haven't done it but going through his essay on Masques and Triumphs and comparing what he said with what is said about drama in the plays would be fun. Though masques are hardly developed drama and were for light entertainment. It is probable that a man involved with producing official light entertainment for the Royal Court and other highly placed people might have had occasion to work with one of the premier comedians of his time working in the same city.
I.
ReplyDelete“There is no document during his lifetime or until seven years after his death which identifies William Shakspere with the William Shakespeare whose name appeared on a number of publications as the author of some of the plays and poems attributed to him AND ALSO ON A NOT INCONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF WORKS WHICH NO ONE BELIEVES TO BE BY THE SAME AUTHOR.”
No document that survives you mean. And there are plenty of them, but you discount them because reasons. As per the not inconsiderable number of works, do you possess any proof that these were published with Shakespeare’s cooperation? If not, is it not just as reasonable to infer that perhaps unscrupulous publishers tried to capitalize on his popularity? Or that the clearly commerce-driven artist sold his name freely for a few guineas? Come now, unless you can provide documentation that he was a play broker, this is all Stephen Greenblatt inspired “Let us imagine…” faux-scholarship.
“There is no one who is known to have known Shakspere of Stratford who makes that connection, not his family, not his neighbors, not even himself. So I reject that point.”
But you accept, cleanly and eagerly, comments made by the likes of Robert Greene but not Covell, Barnfield, Weaver, et al? You ignore Ben Jonson’s definite and unambiguous praise of Shakespeare the author in his ‘Timber’ but insist his “Poet Ape” poem, which mentions NO ONE by name, is demonstrably about Shakespeare? You and Ms. Price’s case would be far more convincing if you paid even lip service to consistency.
"We do, actually, have a considerable number of documents telling us about the Stratford man including many business records, none of which identifies him as an author."
Yes, indeed. He had no rights to the plays, as they had been written and sold. It’s like insisting I didn’t own my first car because I don’t talk about it, don’t possess a copy of the title, and won’t be including it in my last will and testament or my inventory. This was long before modern copyright laws and ideas like intellectual property. So why WOULD he keep them is the question?
"There are many more records for the Stratford man than for many of the others in Diana Price's study. I think Diana Price made a good case that his work as a broker in various things could explain his name appearing on plays and poems, both those legitimately considered in the "Shakespeare" canon and those which aren't, he was a play broker who tried to pass off the work of actual authors for his own."
Two problems – not a single solitary document exists which demonstrate he was a broker, and two, you admit yourself – he never mentions himself as a writer! Not in his will or epitaph or in any of his later documents. If he tried to pass them off, why did he not take credit when it’s obvious no one else was stepping forward to claim them. If you’re going to argue the “stigma of print,” then that would give him every reason to mark them as his own. This is why I don’t buy the conspiracy nonsense – the more I think about the less sense it makes.
"That is consistent with both the references to a 'Shake Scene' and 'Poet Ape' from during his lifetime,"
There are a lot more references to Shakespeare as an author during his lifetime which eschew ambiguity and poetic language.
I may get back to this because I don't see anything in your argument that we haven't been over before. I will make a few points.
Deletea. "No document that survives you mean. And there are plenty of them, but you discount them because reasons. As per the not inconsiderable number of works, do you possess any proof that these were published with Shakespeare’s cooperation?"
You can only base scholarship on what has survived or at least has left a definite trace of its having existed. Which is the basis of my rejection of the conventional Stratfordian myth making. As even the most eminent among contemporary elite scholar of the Stratfordians, Stanley Wells, admitted there is not a single document from his lifetime which makes the connection between the "William Shakespeare" whose name appeared on works, cannonical and not and the commodity trader, land speculator and frequent litigator, Wm Shaksper(e). It is a speculation that, in the absence of any legal or theatrical records tying the Stratford man to the plays, he had a hand in seeing them published, such a record doesn't exist. Of course if the works didn't, actually, belong to him then paper establishing that connection and the reason his name appeared on them would not be expected to exist, neither if he was acting as a front for other people. At least that is an explanation for the absence of such records, considering how many records concerning his business, records and HIS OWN failure to account his connection to them in his attested to will, (as well as the failure of his family, his neighbors, his KNOWN AND ESTABLISHED ACQUAINTANCES FAILURE TO NOTE HIS CONNECTION) it's at least an attempt to find a rational reason for someone of his knowable legal and financial habits to have failed to establish it. I think the most rational explanation of his failure is that he knew too many people were aware of his lack of any right to them.
Good heavens, his business records that do exist show he was a broker in grain and other commodities. That is one of the positive facts about him THAT IS KNOWN. What he listed as his possessions in his will are a proof of what in the world he believed he could lay claim to and pass on to his heirs. The absence of the unpublished work in that or so much as a single book or manuscript is the ultimate dog that didn't bark in the night.
I don't think you could possibly have read Diana Price's book, her articles or papers, her answers to her critics and still accuse her of what you have.
There are attributions of works on plays and poems to a William Shakespeare, there are people who appear to not have known the man - whoever he was - who use the name in praising the works, there are also people who, obviously, were familiar with the publications who attributed them to others, famously - if my memory serves - at least one of the two early poems to Francis Bacon. I would look it up to see if we know the guy who made that attribution to Bacon is known to have known Bacon. There are other attributions by people who were familiar with published works - not a single one of them clearly referring to the Stratford man.
Any "conspiracies" are speculations, as Diana Price has clearly and unambiguously said her speculation that the Stratford man had engaged in literary borkerage is. It's been my experience of reading this literature that the anti-Stratfordians are ready to identify their speculations as speculations the Stratfordians claim them as everything from biographical fact to established history, few of the Stratfordian speculations have not passed into the academic common currency as a tradeable "fact" to be reissued and peddled and made into an ersatz career in scholarship or in authoritative wisdom pushing. There is no contest about it, the anti-Stratfordians have been entirely more honest about what they're up to.
II.
ReplyDelete“If the Stratford man was known as such a fraud it would account for why he didn't make legal claim to ownership of plays and poems, including the many canonical works which had not been published or, likely, produced during his lifetime but which were not known until the publication of the First Folio”
But no direct declarations of his being a fraud. You’re offering one of many means to interpret those references, and ignoring unobscured praise of his abilities. As per why he didn’t claim ownership of them, again, again and again, he SOLD them, he could not claim ownership of them anymore than I can my old car.
"You haven't refuted anything that Diana Price has said, nor have her Stratfordian critics."
Unnecessary. The onus is on her to present a consistent case that considers the data as a whole, and that she cannot do – she picks and chooses, dismisses via special pleading anything that disagrees with her thesis, and commits scholarly sins of omission.
"You can't argue away the records attesting to the literary careers during their lifetimes of the two-dozen authors she established have that kind of documentation nor produce one for the Stratford man who is unique among those authors in having not a single one."
Again, not necessary. We have numerous documents that attest to Shakespeare as a writer. Price’s decision to create her own standards doesn’t mean every genuine scholar must follow her lead.
“She is hardly a zealot, she's a scholar who made an important and fascinating discovery by doing rigorous study and she can defend what she's said against the detractors who haven't been able to refute what she said. She also has made quite modest speculations as compared to the fantasies of the conventional Stratfordians and she doesn't misrepresent her speculations as biography or history, another difference between her and the Stratfordians."
“Modest speculations?” To quote Price, directly: “This was a writer who was a compulsive creative artist. Whoever wrote them was not writing them to get five pounds. This person was writing them because they, like any creative artist, were going to do it whether they get paid or not, whether it's okay or not.”
There is no modesty there.
"However, unlike the Stratford man, Bacon's recorded involvement with dramatic production during his lifetime is quite extensive and officially documented."
There is amble documentation Shakespeare was involved in dramatic productions during his lifetime.
"It is probable that a man involved with producing official light entertainment for the Royal Court and other highly placed people might have had occasion to work with one of the premier comedians of his time working in the same city."
“Might have had occasion to work” does not explain the intimate knowledge of playing companies to write for the actors of playing companies. You insist our lack of documentation for Shakespeare's education is vital, but Bacon not being an active member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men is irrelevant because he might have possibly met them socially when producing his own dramatic works? Again, I can and will be convinced with evidence. Consistent, documented evidence. I don't buy Stratfordian speculation either, for what it's worth.
b. "Unnecessary. The onus is on her to present a consistent case that considers the data as a whole, and that she cannot do – she picks and chooses, dismisses via special pleading anything that disagrees with her thesis, and commits scholarly sins of omission."
DeleteNow that is just plain false. She documents everything she claims as a positive fact about the Stratford man and all of the other authors she included in her study, she documented everything because I am sure that at every step of the way she knew the Stratfordian industry would be laying for her.
I think it's obvious that the writer of the plays and poems was a compulsive creative artist, that would be true if it was Bacon or Oxford or any of the other candidates (of which I have not chosen one DUE TO LACK OF DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE) or even the Stratford man. That is as obvious as the fact that only a near compulsive scholar could possibly have mastered the material necessary to have written what was and that he had an excellent ear for the music of language.
I don't know why you should expect Diana Price to be modest in making the case that only a compulsive writer could possibly have put the incredible effort into writing, not only the minor masterpieces in the canon but the many incredible masterworks, Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest, the incredibly extreme Macbeth, as well as the comic works that, unlike Shoemaker's Holiday and the other comedy of its period, still can make people smile if not laugh.
There is ample documentation that the Stratford man had investments in two theater companies, there is no more to it than that his name is listed as having shares in those along with other, named people. There is nothing in the records nearest to the point, not in contracts, not in financial listings or anything else, things that list the direct participation of many other writers as writers for the theater which includes the man from Stratford. That absence is so glaring that even some Stratfordians have discussed it and puzzled over it. Of course, none of them have stated the most obvious reason for that absence, his not having been a writer. There is no claim that others who are listed along with him but who, as well, have left no record of having been a writer were writers.
Bacon was named in documents as having been involved in theatrical productions including as a writer - considering how much he definitely wrote during his lifetime the idea he would not have written some stuff for the theatrical productions he was involved in mounting would have been odd. Again, I will not go looking for the reference but he is known to have been engaged in researching Henry VIII - requesting information from the Royal Court - in association with theatrical productions. Which, as speculation, could account for why such a work on that subject got included in the canon when there is little evidence that the work really belongs there. I wish I knew how as bad a piece of crap as Pericles got in. Beside that Titus Andronicus is a masterpiece.
I don't understand how you could claim to not buy Stratfordian speculation because without it there is nothing to make much of any claim on. But maybe we don't mean the same thing.
I'm sorry I can't give this more time right now, I'm working on something under a deadline of tomorrow.
"I don't know why you should expect Diana Price to be modest in making the case that only a compulsive writer could possibly have put the incredible effort into writing, not only the minor masterpieces in the canon but the many incredible masterworks, Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest, the incredibly extreme Macbeth, as well as the comic works that, unlike Shoemaker's Holiday and the other comedy of its period, still can make people smile if not laugh."
ReplyDeleteOK, you're avoiding my point - Price is projecting onto Shakespeare traits that she cannot possibly know, "he wrote whether or not he was paid five pounds." There are any number of great artists in history who did it for the money, and in some cases altered their style, works, etc. for the sake of a paycheck. She has no basis to claim that she understands his motivations. That is not the same thing as saying the author was a compulsive creator. Furthermore, she claims to know what parts of the plays are autobiographical, because, you know, her husband and her both reacted the same way! No, I'm not making that up, she claimed that.
I don't buy speculation, I buy the numerous, unambiguous references to Shakespeare as a writer from the era. I buy Ben Jonson's comments from 'Timber.' I buy that there is exactly zero documentation citing Shakespeare as a playbroker or anyone else as the author. What Shakespeare believed, thought, imagined, etc. are nothing I claim access is. I can't tell you what parts of the plays are his voice and which are his characters.
Ms. Price on the other hand, oh, she knows, she knows, because she's special like that.
It's a fact that a large portion of the "Shakespeare" cannon was not published during the life time of the Stratford man, possibly during the actual author's lifetime - depending on which candidate you choose if you choose one - some of it quite great work obviously none of that writing would seem to have been done for five pounds. If the Stratford man is the actual writer, most of what is considered to be in the canon would seem to have been done without pay because there is no evidence he was ever paid a penny to write a word, never mind the more than 900,000 in the plays and poems.
DeleteIt more than strains credulity to suggest that someone who wrote on that level, so many great works would not have felt compelled to write and with, again, the complete absence of any document saying that any of them was written with a monetary incentive, that he did so for pay. In making her claim she is not making any kind of extraordinary and bold assertion, she is interpreting the evidence of the writing that was done and the total absence of business records of payment. There is nothing at all about that which is even bold, it is an entirely reasonable claim to make that the greatest writer in the history of, not only the English language but among the greatest writers in all of history would have felt an artistic compulsion to write what he did.
Any speculations she has made she has identified as speculations, she's been very careful to do that. And her speculations are few in number as compared to that of the Stratfordians.
You are buying a speculation, one based on no evidence until after the man was seven years dead that identifies the Stratford man "Shaksper(e)" who could barely sign his name to even his own will and the writer who in some but hardly all of the oldest sources for the plays and poems is called (in variable spellings even wilder than the Shaksper(e) man wrote his name) "William Shakespeare". That is a speculation which, as Stanley Wells has to admit, has no support until the man was safely dead. it is an identification which would appear to have been unknown to his one family and neighbors and, indeed, anyone who is known to have known the Stratford man during his lifetime. That, alone, speaks to the size of the speculation. I'd say that unless you found a document by John Hall identifying his father-in-law with the guy who wrote the plays and poems, rejecting that identification is not making a baseless speculation, it is coming to a logical conclusion on the evidence, one of the most notable dogs in the night to have not barked.
Your characterization of Diana Price's work is a distortion of it. She is far more careful than just about any of the Stratfordians, from most renowned on down to the idiots who think Stoppard's play is biography.
It's a fact that a large portion of the "Shakespeare" cannon was not published during the life time of the Stratford man, possibly during the actual author's lifetime - depending on which candidate you choose if you choose one - some of it quite great work obviously none of that writing would seem to have been done for five pounds. If the Stratford man is the actual writer, most of what is considered to be in the canon would seem to have been done without pay because there is no evidence he was ever paid a penny to write a word, never mind the more than 900,000 in the plays and poems.
DeleteIt more than strains credulity to suggest that someone who wrote on that level, so many great works would not have felt compelled to write and with, again, the complete absence of any document saying that any of them was written with a monetary incentive, that he did so for pay. In making her claim she is not making any kind of extraordinary and bold assertion, she is interpreting the evidence of the writing that was done and the total absence of business records of payment. There is nothing at all about that which is even bold, it is an entirely reasonable claim to make that the greatest writer in the history of, not only the English language but among the greatest writers in all of history would have felt an artistic compulsion to write what he did.
Any speculations she has made she has identified as speculations, she's been very careful to do that. And her speculations are few in number as compared to that of the Stratfordians.
You are buying a speculation, one based on no evidence until after the man was seven years dead that identifies the Stratford man "Shaksper(e)" who could barely sign his name to even his own will and the writer who in some but hardly all of the oldest sources for the plays and poems is called (in variable spellings even wilder than the Shaksper(e) man wrote his name) "William Shakespeare". That is a speculation which, as Stanley Wells has to admit, has no support until the man was safely dead. it is an identification which would appear to have been unknown to his one family and neighbors and, indeed, anyone who is known to have known the Stratford man during his lifetime. That, alone, speaks to the size of the speculation. I'd say that unless you found a document by John Hall identifying his father-in-law with the guy who wrote the plays and poems, rejecting that identification is not making a baseless speculation, it is coming to a logical conclusion on the evidence, one of the most notable dogs in the night to have not barked.
Your characterization of Diana Price's work is a distortion of it. She is far more careful than just about any of the Stratfordians, from most renowned on down to the idiots who think Stoppard's play is biography.