James Shapiro, author of 'Contested Will'
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- Опубліковано 7 бер 2016
- Prof. James Shapiro of Columbia University discusses the question "who really wrote Shakespeare?" and the centuries-old “authorship” controversy surrounding the playwright, the subject of his new book, “Contested Will.”
Original tape date: June 14, 2010.
First aired: July 17, 2010. - Розваги
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski
I believe this quote fits many of the Straotfordians. The authorship of Shakespeare is a valid question. The more I read about Will from Stratford the more I disbelieve he wrote the works of Shakespeare.
Given how little there is known about him, how could you draw such conclusions? It suspect what you are reading is opinions about him.
@@supercriceto No sure who you are addressing, but I can give you a couple:
1. "He was illiterate". This is based on the fact that his signatures are illegible (they're not; they're just in an archaic script), his parents were illiterate (unlikely, but unproven), as were his children (provably false). He owned no books (no evidence one way or the other exists for this) and left behind no letters (true, but we have one sent TO him), and no manuscripts (not true).
This is a false conclusion based on a mixture of missing evidence and flat out lies.
2: "Nobody referred to him as a poet in his lifetime". Not just untrue but SPECTACULARLY untrue. He was lauded as a great poet on many occasions, by people who addressed him by name. To get around this, Anti-Stratfordians invented the "pen name" hypothesis, wherein those complimenting him were actually complimenting a pseudonym, though there isn't a documented case of this ever happening in that era. Some claim the real author used Shakespeare as a front man, others claim the name was a coincidence, despite Shakespeare being an actor in the company which exclusively performed Shakespeare's plays. But those who praised Shakespeare also mentioned that he was an actor, and carried the social rank of "gentleman". There was only one such William Shakespeare in England who fit either bill.
This is beyond an erroneous conclusion. It's a flat out lie accomplished by intentionally excluding solid evidence.
I could probably go on all day like this. Every Anti-Stratfordian claim is made-up in such ways.
@@supercriceto Thanks! And I think genius is, by its very nature, inexplicable. If you could explain Shakespeare's use of language, if you could predict it to the point that it no longer surprises you, then it wouldn't be special.
@@Jeffhowardmeade NOTE: 1. His parents signed their names with a X mark, in an existing document at a time in England with 15% literacy rate for men and 5% for for women. LIKELY and PROVEN..... The unopened letter addressed to Shaksper from Stratford was a request for a 30 pound loan. Hardly something to mention if one is to say he was a famous poet, when we only have proof of him being a money-lender, grain hoarder, and 10% investor in the Globe theatre. Oxford was 100% investor in Blackfriars, and had his own acting troupe #2 During his lifetime, people mentioned Shakespeare, but never said it was the Stratford Man. DO you have any explanation why Oxford's in-laws received the Dedication to the First Folio? Did you know that the 3rd Earl of Southampton was set to be married to Oxford's daughter... (explaining the "procreation sonnets", which a "gentleman" could not write to a royal without being arrested)....... Oxford went to every city in Italy that the plays were staged in, (excepting Rome for Julius Caesar)....... YOU SHOULD RETRACT your wildly inaccurate regurgitations of Stratfordian misinformation.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Genius cannot explain Will's use of idiomatic French only spoken by royals in an entire scene, Oxford spent time in the French Court, and spoke fluent French, Latin and Italian. Oxford had access to all of the rare books WS sourced. Oxford's maternal Uncle translated OVID, the source for the epic poems. His Uncle co-introduced the Shakespearean Sonnet into English. As you have such affection for the works, I think it wise for you to read up on the 17th Earl of Oxford. It's online. It's healthy to keep an open mind.
Shapiro referring to the authorship issue: "Somebody has to tackle this." Yes, "somebody" has to indeed. And writing bad faith polemics like this book is not engaging with the growing mountain of evidence against the merchant from Stratford. It really is remarkable how these Stratfordians - whose scholarly inquisitiveness is on par with your average MAGA voter - just refuse to bear down and respond to the actual evidence which supports the Oxfordian case.
"...actual evidence which supports the Oxfordian case."
If you ever present some actual evidence, I'm sure they will respond to it. Speculation based on bad Latin, concocted history and biography, hallucinated secret codes, and extreme interpretation of poetry is not "evidence" as the world understands the term.
@@Jeffhowardmeade You're not a serious person in saying you want "some actual evidence." You're an ignoramus.
@@ZZSmithReal Ooooh! You huwt my widdle feewings! You big meanie!
Dude, there's a reason everyone thinks you guys are crackpots.
@@ZZSmithReal I've watched like a dozen videos from Alexander Waugh and read dozens of articles/posts from Oxfordians and none of it is convincing. There just isn't any concrete evidence the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare - and a hell of a lot against it!
Read Elizabeth Winkler's new book "Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies." It exposes the un-seriousness of people like Shapiro.
Well, they ARE unserious about the long-discredited Shakespeare Authorship Discussion (SAD). It's an evidence-free waste of time, which is why you only get the attention of people like me with nothing better to do.
@@Jeffhowardmeade "Long-discredited"? LOL Keep drinking the Kool Aid. Maybe in your mind.
@@ZZSmithReal You couldn't make and headway hunting for biographical connections, and so you started looking for hidden codes and anagrams and making up stories about Freemasons burying evidence on Oak Island.
Ask yourself why your conferences always book he smallest room at the Howard Johnson and there is always extra space.
I'm certainly glad this man isn't a defense attorney
He wouldn't even need to present a case. The Anti-Stratfordians would present theirs and the case would be dismissed. They might even be held in contempt for making false claims.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I'm more interested in evidence proving he was. I feel the burden of proof lies on the Stratfodians first since the original claim is that he was the author.
One question that I haven't found the answer to is there any evidence of 'Shakspere ' himself claiming to be the author? I've not yet investigated the last information you gave me but intend to as soon as possible.
@@Jeffhowardmeade the problem I have with this author is that he seems to fill in the holes with guesses when he lacks facts. His education for example, there is no evidence I've seen that Shakspere ever attended any school. So any attempt to prove he was educated is only a guess. To be fair, that lack of evidence doesn't prove he didn't have an education either.
@@Jeffhowardmeade thank you
@@Bullittbl I can't say Contested Will (aside from the brilliant title) was well done. It certainly doesn't cover the bases as well as Ian Wilson did in Shakespeare: the Evidence. It's a mainstream book for Shakespeare novices, so don't expect too much of it.
As for Shakespeare's education, we don't have enrollment records. Enough people (Jonson, Beaumont, Ward, the unknown author of the play The Second Return From Parnassus) said Shakespeare wasn't an erudite university man, and the contents of his plays bear this out. Latin sources were taught in grammar schools, Greeks in university. While his better-educated peers peppered their works with allusions to Greek tragedy and myth, Shakespeare does very little of this, and only ever sources which had been translated. Claims of Shakespeare's amazing displays of linguistical, legal, nautical, medical, musical, geographical, political, and astronomical knowledge are total hokum. And yes, I can document that.
So that takes us back to grammar school. This was a hard-core classics education, taught in Latin, from sunup to sundown, six days a week, from ages seven to 14. No math, no science, no ENGLISH. Just Latin, and religion, and a bit of Greek rhetoric. It's precisely what one would expect from the writer of the works of Shakespeare, whoever he was.
The town of Stratford had just such a school, staffed by a series of Oxford-educated schoolmasters. While no enrollment records exist from before 1800, we can infer that Richard Field (him again) attended. He left Stratford in 1579 and became an apprentice to Huguenot printer Thomas Vautrollier in London. Vautrollier held the monopoly for printing Latin works in England, and also printed works in French, Spanish, and Italian. Richard could not have gotten this apprenticeship unless he had the sort of preparation one received from a grammar school.
Richard's father, a poor tanner, clearly sent his son to the free grammar school. Yet John Shakespeare was (by local standards) rich. He started the son of a tenant farmer and ended up a gentleman, alderman, one-time mayor, and justice of the peace. As an alderman, he was paying extra assessments toward town expenses, including the operation of the school.
I know it falls into the opinion category, but what would you say are the odds that a poor tanner would send his son to the local grammar school, and the town mayor would not?
This interview is disappointing. It's really not worth watching because the interviewers are not questioning the author of 'Contested Will' but supporting him and engaging in frivilous chatter and laughter. How can you dismiss the opinions of Freud, Mark Twain,
and others so lightly? I have myself written four verse plays, three of them based on 'Shakespeare''s plays. I know his plays display knowledge that could have only come from books and experience. Like Prospero, 'Shakespeare' read from early childhood. He was also a bigot, an anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and a racist, as some of his plays demonstrate. To point to genius is nonsense. Genius is not enough. Further, I cannot believe the plays are the work of one person.
I disagree with you on the anti-semitism and anti-Muslim charge. Those who read Merchant of Venice to include such sentiments, IMHO, wildly misread the play and its message.
Twain lived in an era when someone like him had no access to the rafts of documentary evidence we can easily see today. Freud was a nut who eventually decided that the works of Shakespeare were actually written by a Frenchman named Jacques-Pierre.
And Shakespeare got nearly everything wrong about places he probably never visited. This despite living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world with many expats he could have asked. If doesn't take deep knowledge of anything to know the basic nomenclature and concepts of a topic, which is usually all Shakespeare displays. His "genius" (look up that word to see what it really means) is in being able to adapt old stories into something new and presenting them in great language. His mastery of stagecraft he had to learn, just like anyone else would.
Somehow my reply to you got at the top of the list.@@Jeffhowardmeade
You write: a genius is one who creates. I agree. But he or she does not create something out of nothing. We are all geniuses in one way or other. But no one can make an egg omelette without breaking eggs.
You write: 'What I find ironic is that you think ...'. I did not say or think that at all. For instance, there was a lot of literary 'borrowing' in the ancient Near East
(e.g., the Flood story). 'Shakespeare' used stories and turned them into plays (e.g. Cinthio's Un Capitano Uno). Nothing wrong with that. I did the same thing
in my verse play, Atallah the Moor of Venice, making use of Othello and of Cinthio's story. But my play is not a tragedy, and Othello (Atallah) is a faithful Muslim, not a Christian.
I did click my mouse, as you suggested, and got to the Folger site. This is a site that has not made any good impression on me at all, from past excursions into it. But what makes you think that Alexander Waugh and Prof. Price are not aware of this 'mass of evidence' you mention??? And can you please spell out this documentary evidence so that we, the perplexed lot, will be elightened? I do not see any problem with the criterion Prof. Price created - it is legitimate and relevant. And that reminded me of Galileo, whom, no doubt, you would have stoned for creating his own criterion. And, incidentally, I happened yesterday to watch an interview of Arthur Conan Doyle, and he said that people in India and China and elsehwere have come to believe that Sherlock Holmes was a flesh and blood person.
I have written an essay on Genius earlier this year. It will be in a book of essays titled Essays and Prefaces, which I hope to publish end of the year or beginning of next year. I did publish a book of essays in 2010, a book which has been acquired by the Library of Congress, several university libraries, and some public libraries (Essays from Occupied Holy Land). In this book, to digress a bit, I called Netanyahu a criminal while his citizens were voting for him Prime Mininster for the tenth time. These days they go out in the streets with placards that read 'Crime Minister'.
I rarely engage in discussions on the web. You usually get nasty replies or irrelevant responses. One of the responses to my comment on Shakespeare claims that The Merchant of Venice has nothing to do with anti-Jewishness.
Sheer nonsense! Our 'Shakespeare' was a confirmed Christian bigot (look up my own play, Shylock of Venice).
@@victorsasson1911 Glad to hear that you actually want the evidence. That's a rarity in your camp, where bad Latin, made up history, extreme interpretation of poetry, and codes! are the norm.
The evidence falls into four categories, in my opinion. The first is the testaments of his friends and contemporaries. In addition to calling him by his name (which is usually sufficient to identify who someone is), at least 21 of them referred to him in ways which can only mean the actor and gentleman from Stratford. Many of these would tick Price's ten boxes had she not so aggressively nitpicked them in order to exclude them, which she didn't do to any other poet. Examples: Leonard Digges' inscription mentioning Shakespeare on the flyleaf of a book of poetry she excludes from her made-up category by claiming it was insufficient to establish a personal connection, despite Digges being a fellow poet and stepson to a friend of Shakespeare's. She excludes the plethora of eulogies to Shakespeare by setting an arbitrary time limit of one year. An honest historian would not create exclusive categories in an attempt to ignore evidence, as Price does.
The second category is the original documentary evidence. In this category we find such home runs as three pages of the manuscript play Sir Thomas More, which most paleographers say is in Shakespeare's handwriting. Even those few who claim there isn't enough in Shakespeare's handwriting to be used as a comparison don't exclude it as being his. Of course Price does. Any dispute (and in the vast world of Shakespeare scholarship somebody is always disputing something) is a chance for her to call a strike against Shakespeare. Also in this category we find in the ledger of Thomas Screvins, the steward to the Earl of Rutland, a payment made to "Mr. Shakespeare" and Richard Burbage for an impresa (a pasteboard shield emblazoned with a witty motto, usually accompanied by a song or poem of explanation). Because that might have been some other Mr. Shakespeare, despite there being no other Shakespeare in England entitled to be addressed as a gentleman, Price excludes this as "evidence of being paid to write". Also in this category we find attribution of plays performed at court being attributed to "Shaxberd" by a clerk in the royal household. All of the attributions of poetry and plays and public plaudits addressed to him fall under this banner. It's been a few years since I read Price's book. Why is it that she thinks addressing Shakespeare by NAME is insufficiently specific?
The third category is Shakespeare's close connections to the works which bear his name. William Shakespeare was unquestionably a member of the acting troupe with the exclusive right to perform the plays of William Shakespeare. He owned shares in the theaters where his plays were performed. The poetry he wrote specifically for publication was all printed by Richard Field, who grew up with Shakespeare in Stratford.
The last category in my version of inclusive and descriptive evidence is the poems and plays, themselves. They include details relating to Shakespeare's life and background which suggest the poet knew specific details about Warwickshire, and leather work, and rural life. This is, of course, entirely subjective. It might just be a coincidence that Shakespeare named the only schoolboy in his works Will, or two bickering characters in Henry V after two ne'erdowells in Stratford. It's possible that someone else might have heard of the drowning and coroner's inquest of the Stratford woman Katherine Hamlett in 1589 and exactly patterned Ophelia after her. It might be a total coincidence that Shakespeare's best friend in Stratford was named Hamnet (or as he wrote it in his own will, HAMLETT), and that he chose this same relatively rare name for his son.
As you can see, my version of evidence doesn't try to set a bar over which it must leap in order to be recognized. Evidence stands or falls on its own merits. Is Ben Jonson's fleeting mentions of his own education better evidence than his assessment of Shakespeare's? Debatable, but neither gets conveniently forgotten, as it does by Diana "Smoke and Mirrors" Price.
And don't start with Al Waugh. He just makes shit up as he goes along. None of his "decryptions" works without the context he provides, and he never cites his sources. If you ask him for them in a public forum he blocks you. He's a prestidigitator and a good one. He knows that his audience wants to be fooled, and won't bother to fact check him.
And you won't, will you?
Perhaps the reason that Shakespeare plays reflect the knowledge and experience that would take 5 or more lifetimes to accumulate is that 5 or more writers are involved. Henslowe's diary gives us the most honest look at how plays were written and rewritten for the London stage in that era, eg collaboratively. Stratfordians, desperate for evidence their man could write, point to "Hand D" as evidence but cling to their lone-penman theories and circular arguments. IOW they accept collaboration as the norm but persist in their born-with-it genius who learned about Italy in pubs nonsense.
Went just a little over the character count limit, so here's Part 1 of 2:
"Perhaps the reason that Shakespeare plays reflect the knowledge and experience that would take 5 or more lifetimes to accumulate is that 5 or more writers are involved."
Five or more writers were involved: George Peele, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Kyd, George Wilkins, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, and perhaps Christopher Marlowe on the _Henry VI_ plays. However, his co-authored plays are still a minority of his works, largely from the early and late periods of his life when he was either the tyro being paired with experienced playwrights or the experienced playwright who was paired with "younger strengths". His three collaborations with John Fletcher appear to have been a kind of on-the-job training for taking over the role as the house playwright.
However, Shakespeare's works do _not_ "reflect the knowledge and experience that would take 5 or more lifetimes". In fact, every single 16th, 17th, or 18th century contemporary or successor who commented on the subject of Shakespeare's learning asserted that he was an patently _unlearned_ writer.
For example, in _The Return from Parnassus, Part 2_ , Richard Burbage and Will Kempe are characters in the play, and Kempe says, "Few of the vniversity men pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer _Ouid_ , and that writer _Metamorphosis_ , and talke too much of _Proserpina_ & _Iuppiter_ . Why heres our fellow _Shakespeare_ puts them all downe, I and _Ben Ionson_ too. O that _Ben Ionson_ is a pestilent fellow, he brought vp _Horace_ giving the poets a pill, but our fellow _Shakespeare_ hath giuen him a purge that made him beray his credit."
So here we have a passage that establishes the writer understood Shakespeare to _not_ be a university-educated playwright, that his works are _not_ larded with the results of extensive reading among the Classics, but that he _was_ the fellow actor of Richard Burbage and Will Kempe, and a highly successful playwright who triumphed over all of his contemporaries, especially his competitor Ben Jonson (whose works were noted for their seriousness and fund of learning). In fact, they even show specific knowledge of the War of the Theatres, because the reference to Horace giving poets a pill is to Ben Jonson's own _Poetaster_ , where Horace (the Jonson stand-in) gives a purgative to Crispinus (who represented John Marston) that makes him vomit up his bombastic Latinate vocabulary.
Francis Beaumont wrote a verse that included the lines "...here I would let slippe | (If I had any in mee) schollershippe, | And from all Learning keepe
these lines as cleere | as Shakespeare's best are, which our heires shall heare | Preachers apte to their auditors to showe | how farre sometimes a mortall man may goe | by the dimme light of Nature...."
Beaumont was educated at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford) and studied at the Inner Temple, so he knew what academic learning was like.
In John Dryden's _Essay on Dramatick Poesy_ (1668), he wrote: "To begin then with _Shakespeare_ ; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there."
Nicholas Rowe, editor of the first ever complete edition of the works of Shakespeare (1709), appended a "Life of Shakespeare" to his complete works edition and said this: "It is without Controversie, that he had no knowledge of the Writings of the Antient Poets, not only from this Reason, but from his Works themselves, where we find no traces of any thing that looks like an Imitation of 'em; the Delicacy of his Taste, and the natural Bent of his own Great Genius, equal, if not superior to some of the best of theirs, would certainly have led him to Read and Study 'em with so much Pleasure, that some of their fine Images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mix'd with his own Writings; so that his not copying at least something from them, may be an Argument of his never having read 'em."
That may be slightly overstated, since he appears to have read at least his Ovid thoroughly, but since 90% of his classical allusions can be traced back to that source, it does appear as if he didn't bother reading nearly as widely in the classics as many of his more bookish contemporaries. Something like Ben Jonson's _Sejanus_ where he _footnotes_ his authorities for every plot point was not Shakespeare's manner at all.
"Henslowe's diary gives us the most honest look at how plays were written and rewritten for the London stage in that era, eg collaboratively."
First, you mean "i.e." And Henslowe's Diary also records instances of solo authorship. E.g. (this is how you use it), in 1599 Henslowe recorded a payment of £6 to Thomas Dekker for "the Whole History of Fortunatus", which is the extant play _Old Fortunatus_ . The same diary records another payment of £3 to Dekker for the play _The Shoemaker's Holiday_ . On neither occasion did he mention any co-author. Solo authorship is also accepted for the most part in the works of Christopher Marlowe (with the exception of the "B" text of _Doctor Faustus_ , which appears to be a later revision), Ben Jonson, John Webster's two great tragedies _The White Devil_ and _The Duchess of Malfi_ and his tragicomedy _The Devil's Law-Case_ (though there is more argument about _Appius and Virginia_ ), in the majority of Thomas Middleton's _oeuvre_ , in all of John Ford's Caroline-era plays with the exception of _The Fair Maid of the Inn_ , etc., etc., etc. Solo-authorship is _not_ the sole preserve of so-called "Stratfordian" belief.
"Stratfordians, desperate for evidence their man could write, point to 'Hand D' as evidence but cling to their lone-penman theories and circular arguments."
Actually, "Stratfordians" have always been the ones who have led the discussion on collaborative authorship. I cited Nicholas Rowe above, and he was the first to propose that _Pericles_ was co-auithored. Yes, all the way back in 1709. In the mid-19th century, when Shakespeare authorship denial was only just beginning, the identification of _Pericles_ co-author was made: George Wilkins. It was also demonstrated, using the same minute stylistic analysis that stylometry now automates, that _Henry VIII_ was a collaborative play written with John Fletcher. And once that demonstration was made, it necessarily drew attention to the fact that _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ had also been attributed to a Shakespeare-Fletcher collaboration on its 1634 title page and there was greater willingness to admit it as part of the canon. Since then, the discussion has shifted from whether Shakespeare collaborated, which was settled at least in the 19th century, to discovering the _extent_ of the collaboration. And that is where computer-aided stylometry has come in. Yet, the fact remains that the majority of Shakespeare's works appear to be his alone, because it is virtually impossible for different writers to write so smoothly in each other's unconscious stylistic preferences, word linkages, and vocabularies as to fool a computer analysis into concluding that they were one person. To do it consciously would require enormous effort, and there's no reason to believe that anyone consciously did, so to do by inadvertence would be a bloody miracle.
Meanwhile, it's the Shakespeare authorship deniers who have to run miles from the evidence of co-authorship, especially the Marlovians. Because if Marlowe's hand can be detected in a few plays that were all on the boards by 1592, a year before he died, but _nothing_ after that, then it follows that Marlowe really was _not_ the 'true Shakespeare'. Nor are hypotheses that picture some scribbling aristocrat giving the plays to his front man to stage any better off, because it doesn't explain how other playwrights' hands got incorporated into these plays. However, a model in which a working actor-playwright pens much of his own stuff because his position as a sharer in the company makes him economically secure enough to make solo authorship feasible, but who collaborates on early and late plays consistent with a kind of informal apprenticeship model, can encompass the current research being done.
Part 2 of 2:
"IOW they accept collaboration as the norm but persist in their born-with-it genius who learned about Italy in pubs nonsense."
A norm is not the same thing as a universal truth.
And as for Italy, Shakespeare knew it existed and that it had city-states. However, whenever he tried to name a leader of any of these city-states or define the relations between them, that's where it fell down. For example, in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ , Valentine and Proteus go to salute their "emperor" in Milan, who was the Duke of Milan. First, this implies that Verona was a vassal city-state of Milan, which it wasn't. It did owe allegiance to a city-state, but that state was the Venetian Republic. Moreover, when they went to seek the Duke of Milan, they mistakenly went to Milan. "But where else would he be?" you ask. He would be in Madrid, reigning as Felipe II. The control of Milan had passed to the Spanish Hapsburgs in 1535 following the death of Francesco II Sforza, the last of the Milanese dukes. This also means that in _The Tempest_ , when Prospero was deposed as the Duke of Milan, he would have also had to have been deposed as the Spanish king, which one would think would rankle more. Venice, famously a thousand-year republic (though 'only' about eight centuries old in Shakespeare's time) was given a Duke. Twice. Said Duke also appears to sit in on what we'd call a small claims court case, which is odd behavior for a nobleman but explicable from the perspective of a man who thought of a city-state as being like the market town he grew up in where his father was alderman, bailiff (equivalent to mayor), and magistrate in one..Shakespeare was so careless about being correct about Italy that he didn't even bother to remain consistent between his plays. He used Verona as a setting in a second play, _Romeo and Juliet_ , but this time it was now independent-how nice for Verona!-and a principality (it never was) whose prince was a speaking character in the play. But do go on about how Shakespeare's knowledge of Italy was such that he couldn't have possibly written his own plays, even though you have no evidence to suggest _any_ precisely defined limits on what Shakespeare could have known about Italy.
@@Nullifidian Sometimes a detailed, scholarly refutation is in order. Other times it's better to get to the point, like this:
@apollocobain8363 Just because you can't understand it doesn't make it highly learned.
Shapiro had made up his mind when he wrote his book which is not a scientific publication but his own view as a believer. If he hadn't been a teacher in English literature but a historian and researcher his words would have been stronger and more reliable in the eyes of the public. Talking about where Obama was born reveal the level of the participants. Giggling when quoting someone with another opinion is a sign in itself. I surely would not waste my time reading his publication.
You are talking nonsense.
So you're talking about a book you haven't read, and yet you accuse Shapiro of being the one who has his mind made up.
@@Nullifidian Take note: Shapiro says he knows virtually nothing about Edward DeVere, 17th Earl of Oxford, because he does not need to. If he is to be taken seriously, he would know virtually EVERYTHING about him. WHY? Because Shake-speare's works only had 3 dedications. Oxford had 3 daughters, Susan Vere was married to one of the two Herbert Brothers who received the dedication of the First Folio, while the other two daughters had marriages lined up with the 3rd Earl of Southampton, who received the epic poem dedications, and the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, the other Dedicatee of the First Folio. Imagine if Will had his daughter's husband receive the dedication to the First Folio!!!!!! There would be no "Authorship Question" at all. Imagine if, in spite of his crabbed signatures, he actually wrote letters, at least one of which survived. Imagine if anyone during his lifetime ever referred to the Stratford man as being a man of letters, even 1 single person. Again, the game would be over. Personally, I would consider it "Nonsense" to assume someone with at best an 8th grade education, who grew up in an illiterate household, would be anything other than a masque for the true author. Genius only goes so far, especially at a time of no public libraries, and not even an English Dictionary (1604)..... It's a ridiculous myth, only supported by the Stratford tourist trap, and entrenched academics who don't want to lose their jobs.
@@edwardboswell5675 Part 1 of 2:
Take note: I don't believe you about James Shapiro. If you're claiming that he says that in this interview, then you're simply lying about something that is easily checked. And if you want to claim that he makes this admission elsewhere, then how do you square that fact with his multiple citations to Alan Nelson's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography on Edward de Vere and to his full-length biography of de Vere, which is the _only_ scholarly documentary biography of the man in existence? It's almost certain that James Shapiro knows more than he would like to know de Vere. In fact, in this very interview he refers to facts of Edward de Vere's life. However, even if he had said this highly unlikely thing, he would have a point in that Edward de Vere becomes important _if and only if_ you can prove he wrote the plays and poems of Shakespeare. Otherwise, on the slender literary legacy he left us, he was merely a mediocre court poet-and that's a generous assessment.
You, on the other hand, claimed in a different thread that he had the best education in the country, when in fact his tutor left him at the age of 13 and the subjects he was tutored on were far fewer than those studied by Robert Cecil. He didn't learn astronomy, he didn't learn mathematics, he didn't learn Spanish, Italian, or Greek. He only learned a little bit of Latin, a little bit of French, mapmaking, dancing, penmanship, and drawing and writing. He didn't even spend a full half-hour on the writing because it was folded in with drawing. After his tutor left him, he was given specialized instruction in dancing and horsemanship but not another tutor. Thus he plainly didn't even have the best education in the Cecil household, as I told you then. If you want a model for Edward de Vere in the plays, stop looking at Hamlet and start looking at Sir Andrew Aguecheek from _Twelfth Night_ . Edward de Vere was exactly that kind of courtly ignoramus. You know sod-all about the _real_ Edward de Vere. You only know the Edward de Vere of the Oxfordian imagination, but he is a fictional character and fictional characters don't write plays.
"WHY? Because Shake-speare's works only had 3 dedications."
False. Since you mention the First Folio, this clearly counts as one of your "three dedications". However, as I already told you, the 1609 quarto of the sonnets bears a dedication to "Mr. W. H.", who is probably William Holme, a professional and personal acquaintance of Thomas Thorpe, the "T. T." who signed the dedication. So in fact there are _four_ dedications: in _Venus and Adonis_ , in _The Rape of Lucrece_ in the sonnets, and in the First Folio.
"Oxford had 3 daughters, Susan Vere was married to one of the two Herbert Brothers who received the dedication of the First Folio"
I'm just going to repeat what I said then with slight modifications:
"So what? It shows how much your mind is made up already that your first 'evidence' is a game of Six Degrees of Edward de Vere. Unless one has the preconceived idea that Edward de Vere was the author, the coincidence doesn't strike one as meaningful. A more pertinent fact for the purposes of attribution is that John Heminges and Henry Condell affirm in the dedicatory epistle that the author is their "Friend, & Fellow" whom they name as "SHAKESPEARE". Also, the Pembroke brothers had absolutely no role in the creation of the First Folio. Their only role was as the objects of the dedication. We know who funded the creation of the First Folio because the colophon on the last page tells us: it was the consortium of William Jaggard, Edward Blount, John Smethwick, and William Aspley. It was "printed at [their] charges" as a bit of venture capitalism: they hoped to make their money back from the sales, and sales were evidently so good that a second edition was published just nine years later. While the Oxfordians like to imagine that the First Folio was Susan's gift to her beloved father, in fact he ran out on all his daughters by dumping them on William Cecil and there's no evidence he ever saw them again. Furthermore, it's a bit late as a memorial, considering it was published fully 19 years after de Vere died in 1604. Of course, that's largely because Shakespeare kept on writing until about 1613 or 1614, which might be the point at which to abandon the hypothesis."
I would also point out that Susan de Vere's marriage to Philip Herbert didn't take place until _after_ de Vere's death, which further weakens the coincidence you want to make so much of. The English nobility of the 16th/17th century was a very small pool and de Vere was heir to one of the oldest earldoms in England. The only fit husband for any of his daughters was a fellow member of the nobility, but the peerage was also where writers sought their patrons, so these kinds of coincidences are going to crop up naturally.
"while the other two daughters had marriages lined up with the 3rd Earl of Southampton, who received the epic poem dedications, and the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, the other Dedicatee of the First Folio."
And you're again misrepresenting and shading the historical facts. I'll quote myself again:
"'Tentatively married' as in never came close to being married. 'Tentatively married' as in Henry Wriothesley preferred to pay a huge sum of money to William Cecil rather than stand next to Elizabeth de Vere while they said their 'I dos'. Note also to whom Wriothesley had to pay that money. De Vere wasn't involved in the marriage negotiations and he didn't want them to happen because his daughter's dowry was going to be carved out of what little remained of his estate that he hadn't wasted. The lawsuit on this is a matter of public record. So the Oxfordian idea that he wanted Wriothesley to marry his daughter and therefore penned the procreation sonnets is utterly vitiated both by his indifference to all his daughters and his positive abhorrence of the fact that the dowry for his daughters would be carved out of his (comparatively, for a nobleman who never learned to live within his means) slender resources."
Without redundancy, I can also add that much the same story applies to William Herbert. Bridget de Vere's wedding plans were scuppered by the breakdown in the marriage negotiations over when the £3000 annuity was to begin (immediately vs. after William Cecil's death). They didn't even progress to the point where Cecil had any kind of claim on Herbert the way he did on Wriothesley. So you have two failed marriage negotiations and one marriage that didn't happen until de Vere was six feet under, and therefore was entirely without his input. Nor do you have anything in the coincidence of Philip Herbert being married to Susan de Vere that links up with the _production_ of the First Folio because the Herberts had no role in that. Patronage wouldn't have been nearly as popular if it required the noble patrons to actually see the book through the press. The idea is ludicrous.
" Imagine if Will had his daughter's husband receive the dedication to the First Folio!!!!!! There would be no "Authorship Question" at all."
Of course not, because anti-Shakespeareans are inveterate snobs and typically it was the members of the nobility and royalty who received dedications. Therefore if Will's "daughter's husband" (you don't appear to be aware that there were two daughters _both_ with husbands) had the First Folio dedicated to him, he would have likely been a member of the nobility and therefore a 'fit person' to be related by marriage to the National Poet. Being a mere middle class doctor (Dr. John Hall) or a mere middle class vintner, tobacco factor, and public servant (Thomas Quiney) doesn't fit the agenda of people who want Shakespeare's plays and poems to have been written by an earl.
"Imagine if, in spite of his crabbed signatures, he actually wrote letters, at least one of which survived."
So let's say that there was a letter that survived, say, fifty years, maybe a hundred, and then was lost forever. So Shakespeare would have been an author for those hundred years, but after the letter was lost he would have ceased to be an author. Maybe he was Schrödinger's Author. I think this hypothetical makes it apparent why arguments like these cut no ice in authorship attribution studies. How many letters do you know of for Shakespeare's fellow playwrights in the public theatres on the Bankside?
Also, we get a glance at the "pretty handwriting makes a writer" school of authorship attribution too. By which standard Thomas Heywood, whose handwriting was far worse than Shakespeare's or any of the other Bankside playwrights, must not have written his plays either. Three of Shakespeare's signatures were made a month before his death on his fucking will. But sorry, Shakespeare, despite being on the verge of death,. your handwriting wasn't neat enough for 21st century morons who can't read secretary hand anyway, so we have to chuck you out from the literary canon.
Part 2 of 2:
"Imagine if anyone during his lifetime ever referred to the Stratford man as being a man of letters, even 1 single person. Again, the game would be over."
Then the game is over, because Shakespeare was referred to as a writer in _The Annales or a Generall Chronicle of England_ by John Stow. And we know it was "the Stratford man" because he was explicitly referred to by his rank as a gentleman.
"Our moderne,and present excellent Poets which worthely florish in their owne workes, and all of them in my owne knowledge liued togeather in this Queenes raigne, according to their priorities [i.e., according to their social rank] as nerre as I could, I haue orderly set downe (viz.) George Gascoigne Esquire, Thomas Church-yard Esquire, sir Edward Dyer knight, Edmond Spencer Esquire, sir Philip Sidney Knight, Sir Iohn Harrington Knight, Sir Thomas Challoner Knight, Sir Frauncis Bacon Knight, & Sir Iohn Dauie Knight, Master Iohn Lillie [Lyly] gentleman, Maister George Chapman gentleman, M. W. Warner gentleman, M. Willi. Shakespeare gentleman...."
William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was a second generation gentleman by virtue of his father's coat of arms. He was the only William Shakespeare in the country entitled to that appellation, and after his father's death in 1601 he became the only Shakespeare entitled to a coat of arms and the modes of address that went with it. Here is a 1615 list of writers, thus from Shakespeare's own lifetime, that places him right where he belonged: among the gentlemen but below the knights and esquires, the only William Shakespeare in the country entitled to be placed there at that time.
Another interesting fact is that William Camden defended the grant of the coat of arms to John Shakespeare, whom he described as a Stratford magistrate who married into the Arden family. One of John Shakespeare's civic functions was chief magistrate and William's mother was indeed Mary Arden. William Camden also praised William Shakespeare in his 1605 book _Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britain_ .
And there's also no reason why you would need to specify "his lifetime" unless you were trying to conceal the evidence that the First Folio offers. Wherein, as already noted, John Heminges and Henry Condell explicitly identified the author of the plays by name as their "Friend, & Fellow" "SHAKESPEARE". "Fellow" means "fellow actor" in this context, and there's abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was an actor and sharer in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men. William Shakespeare's name also heads the list of principal actors, even though there's no evidence that he took leading parts, and positive evidence that Richard Burbage (whose name comes second) did, so what would justify putting his name first except to honor him for his role as company playwright? Finally, two of the authors of the commendatory poems identify Shakespeare with his place of birth, one by referring to him as the "Swan of Avon" (Lord Hunsdon's livery included a swan insignia) and the other by referring to "thy Stratford monument". Ben Jonson, author of the "Swan of Avon" poem, knew Shakespeare personally. Shakespeare had acted in two of his plays, _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ . He further affirmed Shakespeare was an author in private communication with William Drummond of Hawthornden and in his posthumously published _Timber, or Discoveries_ . Leonard Digges, who worked in the reference to the Stratford monument, was the step-son of Thomas Russell, whom Shakespeare named in his will as one of his two executors. Digges also affirmed that Shakespeare was an author in a marginal note to James Mabbe's copy of Lope de Vega's _Rimas_ . In both cases, you have to explain why evidence of authorship is being left in such trivial places as in private conversations and marginal notes. And finally, speaking of that Stratford monument, it has a Latin inscription that, among other things, likens Shakespeare to Vergil ("arte Maronem"-Vergil's cognomen was Maro), refers to "all yt [that] he hath writt", and dresses him in the robes of a learned man with a hand sculpted in position to hold a quill pen.
John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage, three actors of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a famous acting company that included William Shakespeare, were given money by William Shakespeare of Stratford in his Last Will and Testament in 1616. Two of these actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were responsible for having 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in the First Folio in 1623.
The bequeathal to those three actors was written later between the lines of the original will. It's a later addition and proves nothing.
@@HarryWolf It's not the only interlineation. The famous bequest of the "second-best bed" was also an interlineation: was that "added later" to make it look like Shakespeare was married to his own wife? In fact, the whole section around this is an interlineation where several people were given bequests to buy mourning rings, including Shakespeare's friend Hamnet Sadler (spelled "Hamlett" in the will because the two spellings were interchangeable). He and his wife Judith were the godparents of Shakespeare's twin younger children, Hamnet and Judith. Again, was this interlineation added to make it appear that Shakespeare was acquainted with his own children's godparent?
Furthermore, like the cases of Shakespeare's wife and his children's godparents, there is _already_ extensive documentation that William Shakespeare knew John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage. For one thing, all _four_ of them (Shakespeare included) were named in the King's Men's actor Augustine Phillips' will, William Shakespeare's name appears with Burbage, Heminges, and Condell in two cast lists for Ben Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ in the 1616 folio _Works_ . All four of these names appear in the royal warrant to create the King's Men and on the Master of the Great Wardrobe's list as recipients of 4.5 yards of scarlet cloth so they could march in the coronation procession (much delayed by the plague) in the King's livery. Richard Burbage's name appears (along with Will Kempe's) with William Shakespeare's in the 1595 Pipe Office payment of £20 for two performances by the Lord Chamberlain's Men on St. Stephen's Day (Dec. 26th) and Holy Innocents' Day (Dec. 28th) during the previous Christmas season. John Heminges was named as one of the two trustees in the deal to acquire the Blackfriars gatehouse, which William Shakespeare purchased in 1613. Fulfilling his role as trustee, John Heminges later transferred the property after Shakespeare died to trustees representing Dr. John and Susanna Hall, who were Shakespeare's primary beneficiaries. And on and on and on.... So if the implication is that the interlineation was added to tie Richard Burbage, John Heminges, and Henry Condell to Shakespeare, then that was a moot point because there was already more than sufficient evidence to do that.
Plus, the interlineations had to be already present when the will was proven just months later at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury because the registered copy of the will that was on file there includes the bequests to Burbage, Heminges, and Condell. Nor, despite the numerous interlineations, is there any record that they were not accepted as legitimate by the court, so we have a _prima facie_ reason to believe that the bequests were genuine.
@@Nullifidian ua-cam.com/video/qQWOD9fUGSQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=EndoftheTownProductions
Good thing for Shapiro that he didn't go into a scientific discipline. His methodology would get him laughed out of conversations with actual scholars. Let's see; didn't Hemingway drive ambulances in WWI in Italy, go deep sea fishing off Cuba, live in Paris in the 1920s, go hunting for big game in Africa, and live in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War? I guess it's just a coincidence that he also wrote books set in all these places with characters doing all the things the author himself did.
What actual scholars do is to formulate hypotheses that can be falsified by contrary evidence. And it is very easy to falsify the Stratfordian Theory of Authorship. He was born too late to have been the author Shakespeare. We know that thanks to Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 1586 fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands. He left behind a monograph/essay entitled, 'In Defense of Poesie' in which he criticized, in highly specific terms, many of the scenes that appear in both 'The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth' and the play derived from that; 'Henry V'. And 'Shakespeare' (whoever he was) responded to those criticisms in the Greek Chorus of Henry V.
Will of Stratford was not born until 1564, he was married in Stratford in 1582, his first child was born in 1583, his twins Judith and Hamnet were born in 1585. That's not a time frame that allows him to have moved to London, gotten that job holding horses in front of a theater, becoming an actor and then a playwright before Sidney was dead. Further, in the Greek Chorus, Shakespeare makes a reference to the success of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond's 'broaching rebellion on the point of a sword'--capturing and beheading the Irish rebel, Earl of Desmond--in November 1583. Whoever wrote that, it wasn't Stratfordman.
I'd love to see these three people laugh their way out of that fact.
I'd love to see you justify anything you wrote as a "fact".
As usual, you are trying to redefine the evidence outside of the parameters for Shakespeare in order to avoid having to present any evidence for your boy (which you can't do).
@@Jeffhowardmeade Are you so ignorant as to deny that Hemingway was an ambulance driver in the Italian army during WWI (A Farewell to Arms), fished off Cuba, where he lived (The Old Man and the Sea), lived with his first wife, Hadley Richardson while working as a foreign correspondent in Paris (A Moveable Feast), hunted in Africa (The Snows of Kilimanjaro), and favored the Communists in the Spanish Civil War generally, and Gustavo Duran specifically (For Whom the Bell Tolls). Heck, I didn't even mention the bull fighting.
Oh, that's right! You don't think writing novels counts as 'creativity'.
@@patricksullivan4329 Where did I deny any of that? And what does that have to do with Shakespeare, who wrote about places he had never been and got nearly everything wrong about them?
@@Jeffhowardmeade I guess the logic is that if one literary writer in a entirely different era and cultural context wrote autobiographically, then _all_ literary writers who have ever lived must have written autobiographically. As they say on Wikipedia, "[citation needed]".
It's also hilarious that our erstwhile literary historian evidently didn't know that _A Moveable Feast_ is Hemingway's memoir of living in the Paris of the 20s and 30s. It will definitely turn Shakespeare studies upside-down to discover that memoirists base their writings on their own lives.
It having been years since I first read this book, I took another look at it. I had forgotten just how deliberately obtuse Shapiro is being in it. He admits, in the Prologue that there is a big change in Shakespearean output after Elizabeth died. From three to four new plays produced in a year to almost nothing under James's reign. Duh! He even quotes four lines from sonnet #107 (without realizing their implications for his authorship theory).
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
He explains that the meaning is clear; "all those anxious predictions that preceded the eclipse of Elizabeth--that 'mortal moon'--were misplaced; the crowning of the new king who promised himself as a peacemaker had put an end to those 'Incertainties'" Yes, he's right that is the obvious meaning of these four lines, and they had to have been written in 1603. What Shapiro does not quote is the next two lines:
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
The 'My love' refers to the Earl of Southampton who has just been released from The Tower of London, where he was 'Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom.' for his role in the 1601 Essex Rebellion. 'Death to me subscribes,'!!!!! Gee, what could that mean?
Oh, maybe there aren't going to be any more plays from the pen of Shakespeare? This guy teaches at an Ivy!
Error alert: The quotes from Shapiro are actually from his 2015 book 'The Year of Lear', not 'Contested Will'. Mr Sullivan regrets the mislabel.
Shakespeare becomes a member of The King's Men, and much wealthier because of it, and SURPRISE! he doesn't have to work as hard, and can take his time to produce better plays (which he did). This somehow surprises you?
But your guy DIES, and you think his output only fell by a third. It's telling that you can't see how moronic that is.
@@Jeffhowardmeade What's sad is that some municipality in California allowed you to even write overtime parking tickets, with your grasp of probability.
But, better plays than Hamlet!
@@Jeffhowardmeade "But your guy DIES, and you think his output only fell by a third. It's telling that you can't see how moronic that is."
Your guy dies in 1616, and 7 years later he's written twice as many plays (18) as were published in his lifetime. Moronic, thy name is (whatever handle you're going by now).
@@patricksullivan4329 And yet they did, and juries liked my investigations and sent a lot of dirtbags to prison, which is a far more ringing endorsement of my career than is the tiny cadre of asylum inmates who endorse your understanding of probability. You literally can't grasp the concept that garbage in ALWAYS equals garbage out. How can you possibly criticize anyone else's grasp of probability?
Sorry but this was a b.s. interview. Not worth watching…. Sad I did!
bull - where the questions ? sycophants - boring