Welcome

We'll see if this goes anywhere.

My secret LibraryThing compulsion:

At least once a week I search through Groups in search of anything even remotely alluding to Shakespeare Doubters, Anti-Stratfordians or Vere-ers from Orthodoxy.

Requesting permission to come aboard, Sir!

Welcome Gentlemen. There are no rules or expectations here. I only hope we can chat up the Authorship question, and maybe suck a few neophytes into the chasm...
e

Hurrah!

We now have 3 fellows in our group which equals the number in that other new group, Exotic Male Dancers Who LibraryThing!

They are listed as having a total of "3 members"...whatever that might mean.

Perhaps now that we have critical mass, we can invite some other LT Oxfordians, and choose an opening Thread to discuss. I was thinking about something like "If Shakespeare was E.O., then who was the Stratford Man"...left's have some fun....

I envy biblioarchy's collection, but am pleased to join a conversation that will probably touch on all those nuts that keep a fictitional personage in such high reverence. I'm certainly ok with honoring the body of work, but would like to see some real people get credit for it.

LordNigelKnickKnack: nice touch - *Vere-ers from Orthodoxy.*

Hey, folks. If you're interested in some evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford did, in fact, write the works of William Shakespeare, and that Edward de Vere did not, check out my Shakespeare Authorship web page at http://www.shakespeareauthorship.com. I've been arguing online against antistratfordians for about 15 years now, and while I don't really have the time or inclination to do much of that these days, I may drop in here from time to time, as I told biblioarchy. I have a "shakespeare authorship" tag through which you can check out my library holdings on the subject.

Hey, Mr. Kathman. I am indeed interested in evidence.

You can start with this article from my web page:

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html

And then go on to the other articles on the page, the link to which is above. A bunch of them specifically address Oxfordian claims, including these among many others:

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/ox12.html
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/rep.html (written by my friend Terry Ross)
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/paral.html
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/whynot.html
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/sobran.html

>7 dkathman:, 8, 9

I am sorry if my all-too-brief response provided any false encouragement to a man who had neither the time nor the inclination to do much of this these days, but in the magnanimous spirit of full(er) disclosure I will confess that I had surveyed your very effective marshaling of the facts -for your side- on several previous occasions and, in fact, I have even re-viewed your industrious amalgamations yet again on the occasion of your gracious contribution to our little group. I shall even go so far as to opine that Oxford's righteous case and rightful place would be in far better standing had it only a few hundred proponents as unflagging and obstinate as yourself.

I did not intend to trifle with a man whose efforts would be more effectively employed elsewhere and please, Mr. Kathman, try to derive some consolation from the realization that we are not ignorant nor ignoring.

OK, whatever. I only came here because biblioarchy invited me to join the group, and I wanted to see what you were up to. I thought I would post the URL of my website in case any of you weren't familiar with it, in order to raise the level of discussion and make sure you were all familiar with the arguments you're likely to encounter once you venture out of Oxfordian circles and into the real world. If I'm not welcome here, and you'd prefer to just have a closed circle of true believers, then that's perfectly fine with me.

We are attempting to form an Oxfordian circle, not to close one. Our circle is very much open -in membership and in mindedness. As for true believers or true sceptics, well, who is to say? The "real world"? Yes, a real concern.

You are very welcome.

All right. It's hard to figure out exactly what you're trying to say through all the verbiage. I may drop in here from time to time, and I may contribute occasional comments, if I can do so concisely. I assume you're aware of the various online Oxfordian communities that already exist, such as the Shakespeare-Oxford Society (http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/) and the slightly less Oxford-centric Shakespeare Fellowship (http://shakespearefellowship.org/), and of Dan Wright's annual pseudo-academic Shakespeare authorship conference at Concordia University (http://www.authorshipstudies.org/conference/index.cfm). There's not a lot at these sites that's of any intellectual or scholarly value, but if you're into the whole Oxfordian idea you'll probably like them.

poor-ious, are you serious? David Icke? The guy who thinks that a race of reptilian humanoids, whose numbers include George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth, are ruling the world? Is that who you really want to be making your arguments for you?

Well, you referred to him as "the warwickshire lout", which is the kind of language I've only ever heard from anti-stratfordians. And while I hadn't heard of Brian Desborough or Nick de Vere before, when I look them up I see that they're nutjob conspiracy mongers like David Icke, claiming that the Illuminati and/or other superhuman races have controlled all of human history from behind the scenes. If you insist that you're "on the side of the glover's son from Stratford", I'll believe you, but I've never seen another defender of Shakespeare take such antihistorical silliness seriously.

first off, i am an ignorant book dealer with too many books and too little time to read them. I am fascinated by the Oxford case, but have no formal letters to back up my piscean intuition.

second, thanks dk for your posts. i think it is very health for a embryonic Oxford circle here should know the (well thought out and adamant) oppositional points. You are welcome here, and as we begin to discuss minuter points, i'm sure your input will be appreciated.

As for the conspiracy minded other devere referenced, i came across him a year or so ago, was intrigues for a few minutes, but forgot soon after. It seemed like icke meets looney, but then again, a guy like that may know more than we think.

anyone want to propose a thread....I'm just finishing reading Shakespeare's fingerprints, whicj was a joy, in that the reading over and over of quatrains and couplets does ones sould good, on a blizzardy day when the pipes are frozen.

welcome again and may we all achieve truth or at least have fun trying.

e

poor-ious, I'm well aware of irony, and I have absolutely no desire to silence anybody, being a longtime free speech advocate and amateur scholar of First Amendment law. You seem to be confusing criticism with a desire to silence. Since I don't know you except through your library and your brief posts here, I can't easily recognize when you're being ironic and when you're being serious. If you had put "warwickshire lout" in scare quotes it would have made it clear that you were being ironic, but in any case I'm glad to get the clarification. I never called Robert Anton Wilson or anybody else an idiot, but I will stand by my statement that David Icke, Brian Desborough, and Nicholas de Vere are nutjobs who don't deserve to be taken seriously.

Whoever wrote the works of Shakespeare, had Ovid as an inspiration, but could anyone have anticipated the Metamorphosis that we see here? -From "Warwickshire Lout" to "Avon's Swan"! Shakespeare's Lives, indeed!

Maybe that Stratford fellow had a different persona for each way that he spelled his name.

Christmas Cheer to you, Mr. Poor-ious!

Here's a question for the more literary type critters here. I recently purchased a sweet little copy of 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' bu Mark Twain, another name faker. Anyway, the book in question was from the library of the great H.L. Mencken. I wonder if he ever expressed and outright theories on the Authorship question? Having an anti-strat book, of course, means nothing, but i am curious nonetheless.
I also have a copy of Looney from the library of Edward Hugh Sothern, the younger, a great Shakespearean actor. The same question come to mind....

best

e

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

Should anyone use sticks to beat on Poor-ious
We must condemn this practice as deplorious.
But if we speak a bit too late,
He just might meet a fatal fate
If sticks of certain heft and weight
Connect on unprotected pate.
What sort of scene would that create?
This: later as he lies in state
He shall be celebrated In Memorious
And lionized as one who spoke up roarious.

ok sonnet 94. nice one poorboy.

lets play a game while we're slinging sonnets on xmas night

see if we can discuss this sonnet, without googling it, and lets see who thinks it has bardish qualities.

the first in a series of seven.....

IN haste, post haste, when first my wandering mind
Beheld the glistring Court with gazing eye,
Such deep delights I seemed therein to find,
As might beguile a graver guest than I.
The stately pomp of Princes and their peers
Did seem to swim in floods of beaten gold;
The wanton world of young delightful year
Was not unlike a heaven for to behold,
Wherein did swarm (for every saint) a Dame
So fair of hue, so fresh of their attire,
As might excel Dame Cynthia for Fame,
Or conquer Cupid with his own desire.
These and such like baits that blazed still
Before mine eye, to feed my greedy will.

happy jesusbirthday to you all.

e

You can bet I'll google this later, but here's my take on this:

This seems familiar but I cannot precisely identify it. If this is a freestanding piece or even an insertion into another larger literary work, then I am stumped. If it is part of a "series of seven" sonnets, then I think it could be something from Sundry Flowers or some other miscellany.

Unlike the sonnets attributed to Shakespeare, this one sonnet does not stand very well on its own. It tells an incomplete story and I am sure that if this tale in verse actually continued for another 84 lines as biblioarchy seemed to imply it does, then no good could come to our reminiscing author. -Or no good should come to him.

The first person narrator of this piece hearkens back to his youth when he first espied the resplendent parade of his social betters and how he reacted not with the due respect and humble awe that was expected of his station, but with an inappropriate mixture of ambition and lust. He wants to be these men so he can be with these women.
Perhaps some character in a Shakespeare play might admit to such unseemly strivings, but it is totally out of character for the writer of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Stylistically this sonnet is inferior to even the weakest verse by Shakespeare. There are a couple of awkward lines, a couple of clumsy classical allusions and none of the rich coupling of contrasts or irony that is to be found in nearly all of sonnets that are called Shakespeare's.

If the author of this mystery sonnet was anything like the speaker in this poem, he was not himself highborn, nor highly educated, nor fated for any position higher than a low level courtier. The main character in this piece will (unless this "series" of sonnets takes some unforeseen comedic turn) wind up exiled, imprisoned or castrated. I do wonder how the sonnet's author fared.

Thanks for the lovely deconstruction nicknack and good poor.
The sonnet is form George Gascoigne.
They can be found here.
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/gasco01.html

Even before reading Shakespeare's Fingerprints, I was intrigued by this guy. According to Michael Brame, Gascoigne was one of the earlier living pen names adopted by our sultry Earl. It makes some sense, if we agree that The writer of Shakespeare's works should have left behind some lesser juvinalia or early examples of his developing style. Romeus by Arthur Brooke would be a good example, as would some of that sexy Ovid his Uncle Golding so uncharacteristicly translated.

But who was this soldier fellow Gascoigne? The Privy Council describes him thus ..."a notorious ruffian....an atheist and godless person." Sound a bit like the other characters in Ned's life. I do think that The Adventures of Master F.J. seems to reflect De Vere's life, and as an early attempt at the English Novel, is a good primer to Euphues.

I produced an obscure play of John Lyly's last year called Loves' Metamorphosis. I am still struck often by the echoes of libes from that play that resound when reading the works of SHakespeare.

Happy Boxing Day then, and perhaps we should start a real Thread now....?

I'll have to look into Brame, Gascoigne and the "Master F. J." stuff.

This "notorious ruffian...atheist and godless person" characterization does sound very like a description of Marlowe by his contemporaries. There must have been a few of them back then. I suppose that it was safer than being a Catholic.

Strangely enough, Lyly did come to my mind whilst reading this mystery sonnet, but was immediately dismissed because the language was not sufficiently contrived. Lyly tended to gild every lily he encountered.

Since someone has seen fit to mention Golding's Ovid: there are some rabid Oxfordians out there who opine that Earl Edward was more than merely acquainted with his mentor's translations. They suggest that Golding's star pupil could have actually assisted or collaborated with his tutor!

IF Golding was Ned's Tutor,
and
IF his Latin homework at age 11 was translating some Ovid

Then

Perhaps.
I understand the style of the Ovid was very odd for Golding, who was quite the inhibited sort in his Calvinist translations.

> 27 the great H.L. Mencken. I wonder if he ever expressed and outright theories on the Authorship question?

See Dreiser-Mencken Letters, Vol. 2, p. 379f. Dreiser writes, asking for his critique of the work of John Milo Maxwell, who had given Dreiser a break at the Chicago Daily Globe early in his career. Maxwell's study, favoring Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, was never published, according to the notes there.

Mencken replies:

I never could pump up any interest in this Cecil-Bacon business. Who gives a damn who wrote the Shakespeare plays? The evidence is massive that Shakespeare lived, and that all his friends thought he wrote them. Personally, I believe that they were all written by Beethoven. (snippet)

>4 LordNigelKnickKnack: "We now have 3 fellows in our group ..."
>5 biblioarchy: "Perhaps now that we have critical mass ..."

In the chemistry of the atom (from which that term originally derives) it usually requires an element whose atomic nuclear structure contains upwards of 230 classical subatomic particles (viz. protons and neutrons) before the concept of accumulating a minimum "critical mass" of that element (containing sufficient quantities of it to support a continuous fissionable chain reaction once started) even applies. Consequently, I would suggest that the size of this group, with only 3 members when those comments were originally made, would at that time have been more accurately described as being merely "tritium" (the more usual name for the isotope of hydrogen containing a single proton and two neutrons that is alternatively called hydrogen-3) since back then this group's size was far from approaching anything to which the metaphor "critical mass" could be reasonably applied!

Even after my own recent joining of this group a few minutes ago, which has boosted its membership to a dizzying count of 6, we are probably still more accurately described by the atomic metaphor "hydrogen-6" or, since that isotope is particularly unstable, perhaps "lithium-6" might be a better implied comparison. Whichever term you prefer, guys, please recognize that in comparison to the highly dense mass of an LT group such as the Green Dragon the size of this group is little more than that of an alpha particle. Hopefully, this group can be as equally fleet and penetrating.

But not so short-lived ... :)

>19 biblioarchy: "... but have no formal letters to back up my piscean intuition."
>20 Porius: "... William, son of John and Mary will remain our Elusive Willy."

Come on guys, please keep it clean!

>23 LordNigelKnickKnack: "Maybe that Stratford fellow had a different persona for each way that he spelled his name."

Yes, Yes, my dear Lord Nigel, since the LTMB did not exist in Shake-speare's day, that is indeed most likely the case. However, if Shake-speare was writing today, and more specifically, was posting on the LTMB as an "LT author", I would rather suspect that each different spelling of that Stratford fellow's name was, in fact, an unique sock-puppet, each one having been created so that he could all the more easily silence his critics by single-handedly red-flagging their dissidence into oblivion. :)

>26 oakes: "... how could both Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier be wrong?"

Or even the great Sir Derek Jacobi! Yes, I fear I must agree with you, Mr. Spalding. After all, isn't it a widely accepted fact that thespian types can do no wrong? To justify that claim, I will simply refer the reader to the impeccable decision-making record of that prodigious modern-day thespian and suck-egg placenta-eater, Tom Cruise.

>27 biblioarchy: "After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare"

Ahhh, but Shakespeare's real genius was in his inherent ability to string all those old, well-known quotations together in exactly the right order without any spelling mistakes or other typographical errors. (Please take good note, mr poor-ious.)

>32 Porius: "you've exposed me for the poseur i doubtless am. much to shallow and dim to trade wits with you. poorboy"

Aha, at last I get to read someone on the LTMB that does not have a totally inflated opinion of himself! mr poor-ious, poseur, you have my sympathy re your poor-eyes, poor sir.

>34 Porius: "... these celestial travellers do not throb and vibrate for me with divine reassurances."

OMG, you too! I also do not experience enough throbbing and vibration comensurate with the effort I expend in indulging my own earthbound proclivities! Maybe we both need to take a break from reading the LTMB, poor-ious? :(

>3 biblioarchy: " ... and maybe suck a few neophytes into the chasm..."

Mmmmmm, I must confess here that I also like to occasionally suck a neophyte or two ... I particularly enjoy the Shake-spearmint flavored neophytes!

Oh, why not?! In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say! So I thought I might as well go for four in a row and thus get to snipe the post number of my LT handle. (What do you mean, this isn't an eBay message board?).

Oho! More like "in for a pounding, but in for free"!

Welcome truly, unruly one. Yes, the great Sir Derek Jacobi is helping to spearhead the "Doubt About Will" campaign and he has a recent recruit in the not-so-great Sir Michael York. I am sure that no one in this group believes that actors have some stranglehold on the truth in all matters, but the two gentlemen that Mr. Spalding saw fit to mention were each extremely intelligent men, exceptional actors, esteemed directors, and completely familiar with the works attributed to Shakespeare. So, yes, I would give their opinions on the Authorship Question a bit more weight than I would to your average Hollywood chucklehead. If your point was simply that not all actors have the requisite gray matter to apply to all matters they consider, then consider your point taken. No argument there -even though Mr. Cruise's being labelled "an actor" is arguable.

I really don't see how Tom Cruise's proclivities have any bearing on this matter, particularly since he has evinced no partisanship with any faction on this subject. If he does jump off the sofa and into the fray, it is my sincerest wish that he lands in the Stratfordian camp.

>43 LordNigelKnickKnack: "... he has a recent recruit in the not-so-great Sir Michael York."

Oh dearie me, Lord Nigel, I think Sir Michael might well resemble that remark. IMHO Sir Derek and Sir Michael are both dead good British Shakespearean stage actors, while Sir Lawrence and that plain citizen Mr Welles are now just good dead British Shakespearean stage actors (except, of course, for the latter one, who was mostly American and merely directed movies when not creating formidable national panics by running space invasion hoaxes on the radio).

But recruiting the not-so-great Sir Michael York into our camp is definitely a good move IMO. Because having Austin Powers' controller, Basil Exposition, on our side can only lend significant weight and credence to our cause. Not only that, some of his clever gadgets may also come in very handy should our intellectual opposition later resort to playing "dirty tricks"! Plus there is also the added benefit that Sir Michael is still very much alive ... it always being much harder to argue one's case when your only supporting high-profile advocates are corpses. The NRA has been similarly learning this harsh lesson during the last few months since the unfortunate demise of its primary high-profile advocate.

"... even though Mr. Cruise's being labelled 'an actor' is arguable."

Oh no, Mr. Bill ... yet another LT member falls victim to Unruly42's inconspicuous but deadly poisonous Black Bryony plant! :( * Makes a note to self: 'Must remember to always use the LT irony font!' *

Let me see here, my dear Lord ... I'm afraid the only argument I can come up with to justify the application of the classification "actor" to the aforementioned Mr. Cruise is that he managed to successfully play the role of that dead calm actress Nicole Kidman's husband for ten years without even her noticing that it wasn't for real. In the now famous words of the Master Thespian, John Lovitz, "That's acting!"

Mr. Fortitude:

Please allow me to state quite plainly and without irony for the benefit of those random lurkers who might dropping eaves on our conversation:

True, Olivier and Welles are both dead.

True, Olivier acted Shakespeare on the stage and Welles did not.

But Welles, like Olivier, acted and directed Shakespeare on film.

The great Sir Derek Jacobi is still living.

The not-so-great Sir Michael York is still living also.
-And, yes, despite his not-so-great-ness, can still be of inestimable value to our cause simply by virtue of his still-living-ness. Who knows what lies in the future? York may prove to be such use to the Oxford contingent that he might some day be called "the great Sir Michael York" or, at the very least, "the not-so-not-so-great Michael York". I will send prayers for the success of his mission.

And, on a fresh note, the ranks of stalwart doubters have been reinforced by the enlistment of the great (but still unknighted) Mr. Jeremy Irons! Now that's an actor of some stature! He stands at 6'2" to 6'3". Kindly (or unkindly) compare that to Tom Cruise's estimated height of 5'3" to 5'4" (without his lifts).

-Which brings me to the unfathomable mystery that was the Cruise-Kidman misalliance. Maybe she found it easier to overlook his deficiencies. Maybe she couldn't look down on him without feeling like she was looking down on him. Maybe I'd better end this right now before the all the Hobbit lovers come after me.

>45 LordNigelKnickKnack: "... or, at the very least, 'the not-so-not-so-great Michael York'."

Yes, yes, quite so. I most certainly agree, my good lord. The very thought of having the not-so-not-so-great Michael York in our camp has firmly quashed all my prior concerns and has now quite cheered me up. Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this not-so York.

"Please allow me to state quite plainly and without irony ..." and "... the ranks of stalwart doubters have been reinforced by the enlistment of the great (but still unknighted) Mr. Jeremy Irons!"

Aha, it looks to me like you tried to sneak quite a large chunk of irony in there after all - since Jerems Irony, as you so rightly claim, m'Lord, stands between 6'2" to 6'3"! But it certainly can't do us any harm to have the combined talents of John the Baptist and Judas Iscariot on our side as well. I'm now wondering if we might not also be able to recruit David, Earl of Essex, over to our cause, too? Then we'd have God himself on our side! That'll be the day, eh? Rock on!

As the Bard himself once wrote ...

I have lawns, I have bowers
I have fruits, I have flowers
And the lark is my morning alarmer
So all farmers now
Here's Godspell the plough
Long life and success to the farmer

As for "sneak(ing) quite a large chunk of irony":

I swear that this was done completely unawares, which, I suppose, made my words less ironic, my saying them more ironic and myself more moronic.

Thus gentlemen of brave mettle
Are beaten into ploughshares...

>47 LordNigelKnickKnack:

"... which, I suppose, made my words less ironic, my saying them more ironic and myself more moronic."

Actually, my good lord, without wanting to sound overly dramatic and histrionic, I find the concept of someone moronic being ironic to be quite oxymoronic. After all, an ability to recognize and appreciate irony is what distinguishes LTers that so arrange their habits thus to enable a bout of only good reading from those that are too unable thus only good for reading about Hobbits. :)

* Rule42 picks up a bunch of leatherbound Scientology prayer sheets and lobs them at Lord Nigel. *

Hmmm, wasn't it Nostradamus who predicted that the end of the world would finally come about as a result of a great conflagration started by an unprovoked Cruise missal attack coming from the east? Or have I been watching too much of that Citizen Kane chappie? Maybe I'm wrong and the end of the world is not caused by ICBMs falling from the sky - perhaps it's just the end of western civilization as we know it rather than the total extinction of mankind, and afterwards we all just muddle on through significantly increased levels of misery, squalor, oppression and disease in our lives. OMG, does my predicted dystopia sound too Orsonwellean?

Dyspepsia would be more Orsonwellean.

>49 LordNigelKnickKnack: "Dyspepsia would be more Orsonwellean."

Personally, I live on the Coke side of Life. *Whistles: Deedum deedum dee dumty dumty dum.* After all, it's the real thing and things go better with Coke. You can't beat the feeling. Coke adds life. Life tastes good. As it should be.

* Picks up another promiscuous mass of massive missals and miscellaneous mass books and throws them at Lord Nigel. *

I hope my latest missive finds you as it leaves me because I simply hate it when my mishmash of missals and mass miscellany miss the mark (or even the matthew, luke or john for that matter).

Big news in today's Wall Street Journal: "Justice Stevens Renders an Opinion On Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays." Stevens favors Edward De Vere. Fun article.

Yes, but you really have to take what the members of the Supreme Court say with a large grain of salt. I mean to say, back in 2001 a bunch of them actually claimed that George Bush was really the President of the U.S.A. for Christ's sake!

>54 oakes:

"... mainstream Bard of Avoners (or whatever you want to call them) ..."

Let's just agree to call them sacred bardsters. That's because they do indeed consider themselves to be sacred. IMO Mark Twain summed up these folk admirably when he wrote, or at least published, back in April 1909 (exactly 100 years ago this month - you know, we really ought to organize some sort of centenary celebration in honor of Mr. Clements for what he penned back then) ...

I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at him, scoff at him: whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at them. "What others?" "Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the Without-a-Shadow-of-a-Doubters, the We-are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable facts and built upon it a Conjectural Satan thirty miles high."

What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were themselves sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any respectable house, even by the back door.

How curious and interesting is the parallel - as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned - between Satan and Shakespeare. It is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and how over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme - the two Great Unknowns, the Two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best-known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.

Mark Twain
from Is Shakespeare Dead?, 1909

So does anyone have any information / recommendations regarding the Park Honan and Gary O'Connor (Stratfordian) biographies of the Bard? I very much enjoyed my recent dalliance with Looney's excellent 1920 analysis of the "Shakespeare Problem" as well as Joseph Sobran's more contemporary exegesis, and I similarly hold a lot of regard for Mark Anderson's very thorough neoteric biography of De Vere. However, I would now like to return to reading some further orthodox biographies of Shake-speare to counterbalance these fascinating excursions into heterodoxy.

I've read the established Halliday, Rowse and Schoenbaum Stratfordian bios as well as the much later outings by Wood and Greenblatt, and I've dipped significantly into both of Peter Levi's and Anthony Burgess' fine efforts, as well as the much more recent one by Charles Nicholl's (although his is not a full life bio but more of an analysis of a very specific portion of the Bard's life in London). Currently, I intend to read the Sydney Lee biography next since I already own it, but I suspect I might find it a bit redundant after the other ones I've already mentioned since almost all of them heavily reference it.

I would personally rather be reading Shake-speare than reading a whole bunch of "crackpot speculations" about him. And yes, I consider many of the numerous Stratfordian bios, including most of the ones I just cited above, to be as much prone to "crackpot speculation" as any of the Baconian, Marlovian and Oxfordian ones. All my life I've been an agnostic WRT to the various Shake-speare religions - which is, in effect, what any of these four (plus many other) positions amount to if you hold on to any one of them with a totally closed mind towards any of the alternative theories - and neither Looney's nor Anderson's books have converted me into being a passionate Oxfordian.

However, Anderson's handling of the subject matter was quite persuasive if only because his approach to explaining the possible creative influences behind the Shake-speare canon was from a perspective of reading him with literacy rather than just reading him literally. This, of course, is key to understanding any author but it is particularly important when the only tangible facts you have to go on about the life of the real person behind the works can be counted on the digits of one hand.

As far as I can make out that "literacy versus literally" divide goes to the heart of what separates Anderson's approach from, say, the approach of the authors of the Shakespeare Authorship web site, Terry Ross and David Kathman. I find many of their arguments in defense of the Stratfordian position to be tautologically circular and therefore worthless. What is particularly annoying in reading that web site is that the authors don't appear to appreciate that 90% of the Stratfordian "established body of facts" that they are defending are just as speculative in their origins as any of the newer Oxfordian speculations that they derisively dismiss.

The viewpoint that they effectively argue is that the "official" image of Shakespeare that has been built up over the years from "nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris" by the "orthodox Shakespearean academics" is hard facts, while any alternative arrangement of those same "nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris" by Oxfordians is mere worthless speculation. IMO that's quite a double standard. Just because a speculation is older and more widely established and emotionally entrenched in academia doesn't make it, at the end of the day, any less of a speculation than an alternative one that has been more recently posited to also consistently explain the same few core facts that are actually known.

Well squire, my real name may be spelt that way, but it's actually pronounced 'Pslartibartfast'. The 'P' is silent - unless, of course, you are using a night commode (pronounced 'close stool') with a pewter pot. IMO, one can always spot an American who was "hooked on phonics" as a small child ... they are always the ones that never quite know exactly how many syllables to use when referring to that brown sauce that originated in Worcester. Sometimes I can't help thinking that a bit more Enid Blyton in your early reading would have done y'all (pronounced like the truck rental company) a world of good. IOW, Pollocks to you, Mr. Shags-poor! :)

I've got to admit I haven't pursued those two bios with any particular vigor, but that's mostly because I don't often see references to them in the other Shakespeare bios. The reason for that, of course, is that most of the ones I've read or dipped into all chronologically precede them. It's the references to other books on topics that have intrigued me in the one I'm currently reading that make me prioritize what I pursue next, so that's mainly the reason I've not gone after them. OTOH, since they are both over ten years old I would have expected decent copies of them to have popped up in my local used book stores by now. Because, like lost kittens, most of the books I own have usually found me rather than vice versa.

Having said all that, I have to admit that Greenblatt describes the bio by Honan the Bardarian (I'm assuming it rhymes with Sobran the Contrarian) as "the most thorough, informative, and steadily thoughtful" of the most recent bios and admits that he "frequently consulted it" in writing his own book. I'm not too sure what to make of that "steadily thoughtful" comment; to my ears it sounds like a bit of a backhanded compliment, quietly implying that he considers all the other recent Stratfordian bios to have been written by pretty unsteady thinkers in comparison!

Most of the reviews I've read of the bio by Des O'Connor describe it as being "not for everyone" ... meaning that many find O'Connor's views to be "too speculative" (as if their own Stratfordian theories about the Bard were completely "speculation-free"! *smiles*). In fact, I believe that in his book O'Connor refers to the Oxfordians as "cranks" (presumably because their speculations don't match his own). And therein lies the problem with this whole debate ... every Stratfordian pot is intent on accusing every kettle that holds an opinion that differs from his own (even if it is also Stratfordian) as being black. To my mind that's the equivalent of the adherents of one religion accusing the adherents of another religion as being "too metaphysical"!

So instead of saying that the Honan and O'Connor bios are hard to track down I probably should haves said that copies of them have not conveniently fallen into my lap yet. The books that really are hard to track down (and which particularly intrigue me both because you recommended them and because they are some of the few titles that approach this debate from the standpoint of the agnostic) are the ones by Greenwood.

Honan one of those murrikans who say werthisheresauce was born 17 Sept. in Utica, NY. He's written a thing on Marlowe, Matthew Arnold, and Jane Austen among others things literary, including literary essays. We know how much a Manchester tough such as yourself reveres Miss Austen. Having lapped up all there is to know about that novelist we will pass her by.
Honan's biography as any other, including the 'speculative' O'Connor will not trouble us for very long because of the paucity of facts concerning the Poet's life. How can they be said to be 'steadily thoughtful' or steadily anything else? Schoenbaum said there is more known about WS than any other Elizabethan or Jacobean. So did Alfred Leslie Rowse. They were both full of baloney.
As to GGG, he is a pleasure to read. Mainly because he is an adult
and has no real axe to grind. He is after legal proof. This is a much more rigorous quest. No might-have-beens, no he probablys, no he almost certainly wases. At my age I don't really care who wrote Shakespeare. I am simply on the lookout for those who play fair. GGG is one of the few.

Honan of course is the mixtre as before. O'Connor is more interesting. Here's from his Introduction:
What I have attempted to achieve in the pages that follow, is a popular, imaginatively told life of Shakespeare. My belief is that no such work, with its potential wide appeal exists, yet Sh: influence and fame are greater now . . .
Many attempts have been made to deliver the whole man, in spite of the meagre historical record. I depict him as he has not been shown before, in a biography that is based on and rooted in the conception that SH: is a contemporary figure - belong as much to our age as to his own. Therefor we, as an epoch which began in the early 1960's at Stratford Upon Avon, his birthplace, with the productions of THE WARS OF THE ROSES and with KING LEAR with Paul Scofield in the title role in Peter Brook's production (and with the earlier publication of SHAKESPEARE OUR CONTEMPORARY by the Czech critic Jan Kott), hold in our hearts as many clues as to what the playwright was like, if not more, as can be found in history, or in the works themselves.
In researching this book therefore, first of all I have consulted and interviewed a selection of the best Sh: minds and interpreters of our own age. Most of those who have been deeply involved in making Shakespeare's plays live have formed insights, if only in their private thoughts, into what he was really like. In interviewing this whole range of people I have included the views and ideas of others such as doctors, philosophers, writers, etc. who have had contact with Shakespeare's works, and I have drawn on their thoughts and feelings, however speculative. My aim has been to give Sh: a life, not only as a historical figure who can be brought to life, but the dimension of one who is still living. To do this I have dropped the usual tentative approach of scholars' (the "mights", the "could have's", and "may have's). Above all I have gone to the plays and poems to attempt to uncover the secret Shakespeare. By these various means I have attempted to bride, in the words of that most reliable Sh: scholar, Samuel Schoenbaum, the "vertiginous expanse between the sublimity of the subject and the mundane inconsequence of the documentary record.

Once again from Garry O'Connor's WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A Popular Life.

>67 Porius: & 68

If you are going to refer to Greenwood as GGG then perhaps we should also refer to Gary O'Connor as GOC? OMG! That almost spells GOD! There surely must be some hidden significance to that? :)

Well, I now see the problem with GOC's contribution to this topic. He honestly admits more than once in the first couple of paragraphs of his book's introduction that his work is actually "speculative". What an idiot! He needs to learn to play the game like Schoenbaum, Rowse and all the others. There is really no room for such blatant honesty in the Shakespeare bio genre, where merely having the wrong alma mater is sufficient reason to have your book summarily dismissed and your ideas lambasted and scorned. No wonder the critics attacked him. In my mind's eye I can just see the typical reviewer sitting down to read GOC's book on a Saturday morning so that he can complete his review in time to meet his Monday morning deadline. After reading GOC's introduction he puts the book down and mutters, "Oh my, this one's easy-peasy; I can take the rest of the weekend off and go fishing!" He then starts to write his review ... "I found GOC's book to be far too speculative"!

I very much enjoyed Samuel Schoenbaum's 'A Compact Documentary Life' (ACDL). His work is a solid summary and review of all (or much) that came before him. He is quite judicious in both his praise for the best efforts of the likes of Sydney Lee, Anthony Burgess and A.L. Rowse, as well as pointing out all the silly flaws and errors in their respective Shakespeare bios, not to mention those of much lesser literary luminaries that have written on the topic of Shakespeare's life. Nevertheless, SS's solid Stratfordian edifice is still built on the same shifting sands as all the other Stratfordian bios written both before and after his own ... which is that the number of hard facts we know about the Bard can be counted on the digits of two hands at best.

You are absolutely right in calling SS's and ALR's claim that there is more known about Will Shakespeare than any other Elizabethan or Jacobean as being a bunch of baloney. What they should have said is that there are more filtered down stories, unsubstantiated reports, folklore, tradition, second hand gossip (such as that recorded by the antiquary John Aubrey, who is a major source for much of the nonsense written about the Bard over the last three centuries and which many people today still regard and quote as hard facts about the lad from Stratford), legend, and general mythos associated with WS than any other Elizabethan or Jacobean.

From "Chapter 8 : The Lost Years" in SS's ACDL (re the legend of WS as a deer poacher - usually the reputed cause for his flight to London, requiring the total abandonment of his home and family life in Stratford, in order to avoid vindictive prosecution by Sir Thomas Lucy, the local power in Warwickshire):

"But Charlecote (Lucy's estate) has had to compete with another setting for this melodramatic episode. Late in the eighteenth century, custodians of the mythos, aware that Sir Thomas kept no park at Charlecote, shifted the scene across the river to Fulbrook, two miles north, and midway between Stratford and Warwick. ... In 1828 a visitor to Charlecote was told by a descendent of its builder that Shakespeare had stolen his deer from Fulbrook. 'The tradition went', Sir Walter Scott noted in his journal for 8 April, 'that they hid the buck in a barn, part of which was standing a few years ago but is now totally decayd.' Today a few nineteenth century dwellings near the site of Daisy Hill commemorate the tradition by still bearing the name of Deer Barn Cottages. The transfer does not, however, accomplish very satisfactorily the purpose for which it was designed. ..."

Observe the use of words such as "mythos", "tradition" and "legend" (note: I just edited that last one out to keep the above quote more concise) in that ACDL quote. As I stated above, SS does a good job of debunking and exposing much of the fictional folklore and tradition that has been attributed to WS over the intervening three to four centuries - and set down for posterity by gossips and diarists such as Aubrey or writers of fiction such as Scott! - and that has ultimately accumulated into his "official bio". Take away all the documented gossip, legend, tradition, folklore, and general mythos - not to mention all the anally detailed literary speculation built on top of it in order to sell 400+ page bios of the Bard (I suspect WS is the most biographied person in western history other than Christ) - and you are left with not enough facts to adequately fill a two page pamphlet!

However, not to drop the ball in this racket genre (presumably to keep well in with all the other card-carrying members of the Bard bios writers union), SS introduces into his book almost as much unfounded speculation of his own invention as he debunks and exposes in the older mythic bios. From the end of the very same Chapter 8:

"We do not know precisely when they (the Queen's Men troupe of actors) played at Stratford in 1587: the Chamberlains' account, 'from Christmas Anno 1586, Anno xxix Elizabethe Regine for one whole year', tells us only that the corporation rewarded the performers with the munificent sum of twenty shillings (the highest amount they had ever paid) and afterwards laid out sixteen pence to repair a bench, broken, one suspects, because of the press of spectators. If these players came after 13 June, (when leading Queen's Men actor William Knell was killed in a brawl with fellow actor John Towne) they lacked one man. Before leaving Stratford, had they enlisted Shakespeare, then aged twenty-three, as their latest recruit?"

Is the text in bold speculation? Of course not, because it was written by SS, a world renown and acknowledged authority on the Shakespeare mythos. OTOH, if an Oxfordian scholar had written that, even numbskulls who cannot correctly spell "Shakespeare" would have reamed him for writing such unsupportable and unsubstantiated speculation. Is that a double standard? Apparently not. Furthermore, anyone who believes that's a double standard only does so, not because he is well-read and open-minded, but simply because he wears a tin-foil hat and is a conspiracy theorist! :)

When I typed in GGG I meant Greenwood, sorry if I wasn't clear.