[William Ray]

"Bohemia doesn't have a sea coast, that Macbeth ruled successfully for eighteen years, that Romans didn't wear nightcaps or have clocks, Cleopatra couldn't play billiards, stuff like that? And he never quotes stuff in Latin, whereas Marlowe does it all the time.

Not a particularly educated man then, rather someone who picks things up, in many ways self-educated. No university for him."

I consider authenticating the author of the Shakespeare canon a significant cultural question and have tried to inform myself on the subject. I would have to differ with Mr. Whitworth, based on what I have read in recent years. Bohemia for instance did have a seacoast in the 13th century, the time of A Winter's Tale (III, iii, 2 and elsewhere), and it was within memory in Italy in the 16th century, the approximate writing of the play. Briefly in the 16th century it was regained and lost again. The writing date is based in part on the price of wool in the play being what it was in 1584 in England. The Shakespeare author did not seem to scruple much about anachronisms, as they, more likely than not, helped engage the interest of the public audience. One would have had to be in Italy to know a detail like Bohemia however. This is quite problematic for our traditional attribution to the Stratford figure, about whom it is generally accepted he never left England or so far as we know the road from Stratford to London in England. Another detail indicating the author's personal knowledge of Italy was the direct reference to Romano's name and statuary in Mantua, the type of marble even, which was not native to Mantua. It was not known that Romano was a sculptor until centuries later with the publication in English of Vasari's study of Italian artists. That is, unless one had been to Mantua and knew from eyewitness investigation. It is quite true that Shakespeare did not impose his knowledge of Latin except rarely as in the joking reference by the gravedigger to se offendendo, a burlesque on the legal term se defendendo. But it is well established that Shakespeare referred over 200 times to Ovid's Metamorphoses in Golding's translation, each time improving on it as though a grown man were improving unerringly on his own earlier work. So the Shakespeare author was as fluent and at ease in Latin as though it were his original literary language--which Latin was to the educated elite. I would therefore have to differ with the idea that the Shakespeare author was uneducated and haphazard in his classical references, as self-educated writers sometimes are uneven in their familiarity with a language or subject. Bullough and Muir have established beyond doubt that there were over 200 foreign authors, classical and Continental alluded to in the Shakespeare canon, which clinches the transcendent education of the author, since most of them were still in their original languages and unavailable in English or the expensive original editions at the time of the canon authorship.

These are some results I have found in my personal study of the issue of who wrote Shakespeare. I do not think the subject can be dismissed with a quip and a snub. It mattered enough to Emerson that he said it was "the first of all literary questions". That this may discomfit the educational and political status quo does not change that importance. In addition, I endorse further study of Mary Sidney Herbert as a major, if not one of the two major, influences on the Shakespeare canon content and philosophy. Her son Philip was closely aligned with the Earl of Oxford by marriage to his youngest daughter. The elder son William Herbert almost married Mrs. Philip Herbert's sister, Bridget Vere. The Earl of Derby, who was known to have been highly active with the King's Men productions, married yet another Vere sister. Indeed the First Folio was dedicated to the two brothers in recognition of their sponsorship and financial support of the First Folio, the compendium of the Shakespeare play canon. There is much justification to learn more in this area and by doing so to re-evaluate an overlooked history of artistic truth versus political expediency in the still glorified and heroized model of that era. The victors make official history, but that does not mean we as individuals and citizens have to believe it just to be polite. Factuality is a good path to spiritual clarity and evolution.

[John Whitworth]

I realy don't think, I really don't think that references to authors means a writer has read them, in the original, or perhaps at all. And I just don't think that Elizabethan/Jacobean dramatists were scholarly.educated men. Unlike the poets they were writing, not for the applause of the few, but the money of the many. And they were writing quickly. Think Scott, Dickens, Balzac. Don't think Walter Pater, Flaubert, Mallarme.

Shakespeare is better than Webster, Kyd, Marlowe, but he is not essentially different. I don't think he cared whether Bohemia had a sea-coast, what kind of a king MacBeth actually was, when the game of Billiards was invented by the Romans, and neither did his audiences. If he was indeed thoroughly fluent in Latin, why did he use translations all the time? He made north better not by referring to Plutarch but simply because he was a better writer.

What Emerson thought is neither here nor there. What Ben Jonson thought is more to the point. He would have to have been privy to a very large-scale deception. He said Shakespeare wrote the plays. He would have to have been lying.

The few poems we have of Edward de Vere are poor stuff. This is not the man who wrote Hamlet.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Has anyone thought of doing it the other way about, listing all the things that Shakespeare didn't know, like that Bohemia doesn't have a sea coast, that Macbeth ruled successfully for eighteen years, that Romans didn't wear nightcaps or have clocks, Cleopatra couldn't play billiards, stuff like that? And he never quotes stuff in Latin, whereas Marlowe does it all the time.

Not a particularly educated man then, rather someone who picks things up, in many ways self-educated. No university for him.

John, just a thought with no claim to being a Shakespeare expert. Many of his bawdy jokes played to the audience's sense of humor, so might he not have joked to make the audience laugh--for instance the idea of Cleopatra playing billiards or Romans in nightcaps.

And my copy of The Yale Shakespeare (Cross and Brooke) which is so heavy I can hardly lift it these days, indicates that many typesetters, publishers, and others made corrections and made mistakes in the manuscript versions that have come down to us.

I am not a little in love with him, or rather with the portrait that hangs in the National Gallery, or rather with the fridge magnet of said portrait which adorns my refrigerator so I admit to being prejudiced against any and all ideas to chip away at his authorship. Somewhere there is a photo of the last meeting of Will and Jayne O. and myself which proves that he wrote it all, or at least that I am convinced that he did. The moony look on my face says it all.

[Shaun J. Russell]

As mentioned above, I believe the person who wrote all of Shakespeare's works is Shakespeare. Just because we don't know whether Shakespeare ever left England doesn't mean he didn't, nor does it establish that if he didn't, he couldn't have written plays set in Italy or elsewhere. Surely most of us have written about places we've never been...and surely we've simply read up on those places to get a solid idea about them.

Despite all of this, I wonder how much it truly matters. People seem to have no problem attributing The Iliad and The Odyssey to Homer, when most scholars agree that there is little possibility that both works are by the same person. What matters more than anything is the work, and if "Homer" is just a placeholder for some other anonymous orator, then so be it. The work is what matters. Likewise with Shakespeare. No matter who wrote the works (and again, there's little doubt in my mind that they were all written by a man named William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 RIP), their content is paramount.

[Chris O'Carroll]

William Ray also publishes as W.J. Ray. His further thoughts on Edward de Vere and other matters are available here:

http://www.wjray.net/

[Orwn Acra]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

(and again, there's little doubt in my mind that they were all written by a man named William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 RIP)

omg he died?

[John Whitworth]

Well, re Ray, that rather disposes of that, doesn't it?

Died? Certainly not. What gave you that idea?

Shaun, what do you think of the theory that The Odyssey was written by a woman? This is for you too, Mary. Samuel Butler and Robert Graves espouse it, an altogether higher class of person than Mr Looney et al. I am surprised to find the talented and witty Alexander Waugh among the Oxfordites, but I asssume he is mischief-making, like his father and grandfather before him.

[Kevin Rainbow]

I wrote her oft, but she is slack.
She never deigns to write me back.

[David Anthony]

I incline to the view that Shakespeare was the CEO and/or Creative Director of a highly successful writing corporation.
They had the occasional clunker, of course (eg Edward II and a few of the sonnets), but by and large the quality control was excellent.

[conny]

I think David is correct. The play's the thing.

Also, FWIW, the real heroes of the story are Heminges and Condell. The first folio
is a work beyond genius, not only in it's scope but also by the very fact of its
existence. i've recently done some research on Condell. if he turns out to
be related to the Croydon/Epsom Condells, i will eat my laptop.




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