PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
  Monday, 17 September 2007
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who wrote the plays...does it matter at all...

:?:
Since it will never be proven that DeVere, Bacon, Marlowe or anyone else other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays, it's pointless to extrapolate far-fetched assumptions that somehow make perfect sense in the minds of a minority of individuals. Apart from any hard evidence that Shakespeare was not the author (which hasn't been discovered and won't likely be), the Bard's authenticity won't be seriously challenged until a solid scientific body of evidence emerges to contradict current views. For me, the authorship debate is a tiring one and I'd much prefer spending my time delving into the plays themselves instead of what DeVere had for breakfast.
16 years ago
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#2068
Hear, hear! Let's talk poetry instead of far-fetched conspiracy.
16 years ago
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#2069
I assumed this section dealt with 'authorship' questions (of which there are many.)

Who said the true authors will never be proven? Do I detect a soothsayer here?

As to whether or not it matters who was behind the work: what really matters in relation to anything at all?

That some protest and complain because others get enjoyment out of solving puzzes never ceases to amaze me. What is it with these people? They would do better to try and answer many of the questions raised by 'Shakespeare' rather than waffle on about 'errors' and 'misprints' etc. The truth is, they have no answers.

Who was the so-called dark lady? who was the so-called other poet? What does MrWH mean? Why was the Sonnets Dedication page laid out the way it is? Why are the last two sonnets almost the same? What did the writers of the Sonnets mean by the mention of 'things hidden', 'a key' and 'treasure'?

Is it possible that a group of people wrote the Sonnets as part of a kind of game? One writing, others replying in kind? A kind of intellectual word play?

What does the phrase 'What? in a names' mean? Why not try figure it out instead of crying 'printing error'. Perhaps you aint got the intellectual clout.

If you want to discuss poetry, there's plenty in the relevant section.


regards
16 years ago
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#2070
Well, no, not really – especially as the reason the plays matter is the insight they give into our modern world and our present conditions:

“He was not of an age, but for all time!”


(As Mr. Jonson, who some would have us believe knew not the man, so eloquently put it.)

The texts reveal far more to us of common (whoops, should that be aristocratic?) humanity and its foibles than can be contained in a ‘brief hour or week’.

The instant you start to read, or better still, perform the text (and shake the stage), you transform what was into what is: Today replaces, ‘All our yesterdays’

So, no, the question of authorship is not of much real significance to the vast majority of the world, happy to know the boy from Stratford (sweet swan of Avon) made good – and the play’s the thing.

One problem though, created by the likes of Mr Looney, is the distraction and warping too much attention to the issue creates.

Look at the activity of these boards for example – recently far more attention has been given to this issue than serious consideration of the texts themselves. Whilst this might provide a comedy of errors (and I must admit to joining in with tongue firmly lodged) it can –does- falsify the meaning of the texts.

The plays are dissected (despite generations of scholars getting nowhere by doing so) for evidence in search of our author – and the ‘true filled lines’ dragged screaming across the page as advocates more concerned with ‘a case’ than truth, select and neglect.

The plays work by question raising, not by answering – they defy definition and carry the imagination of the lunatic and the lover into words of the poet.

It is a deliberate act on the part of the playwright to take every certainty and question it – to counter facts with truth. This could not be done so effectively anywhere other than in the distracted Globe.

Looney and his fringe totally fail to grasp what is the true measure of Shakespeare’s greatness –

“The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!”


his theatricality.

In the hands of the doubters the scripts are reduced to ‘words, words, words’.

But there is also a crafty malice in the work of some of the Looney fringe.

By casting doubt on the authorship, they seek to limit the truth: They promote an underlying deceit and darkness much like that claimed by the Puritan critics of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatricals who could not see a boy dressed in the clothes of Desdemona without thinking sodomy.

Shakespeare, the brandisher of a lance against Ignorance, becomes instead a deliberate Iago suggesting with ‘heavenly show’ deep sins.

No matter that Ben Jonson wrote of ‘my beloved, the author Mr William Shakespeare’ – it is a lie, a deliberate deceit – he didn’t know the man, Shakespeare never wrote (nor no man ever loved) ; no matter that in 1598, Francis Meres wrote, ‘so Shakespeare, among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage’ - a deceit and foul pestilential untruth; no matter that ‘Greenes Groatesworth of Wit’ accuses Johannes the Shakescene of thinking he can ‘bombast out a blank verse’ – there is no evidence of Shakespeare being connected with writing plays.

How then can we put any faith in the truth of the writings foistered on us with such vehemence and sinful deception?

A blank is all they have to offer in support, a negative, a black hole waiting to suck in all that fall within the gravitational pull of empty suspicion. Shakespeare, like Prospero, is in danger of having his Dukedom usurped.

It won’t matter, much; it is not going to change the productions we see, or the pleasure given by great acting in great works – but it is a handkerchief dropped.

Fortunately, for most people, Jonson’s urging of Britaine to Triumph is powerful enough, and evidence enough, of the essential light brought to the world by the life and works of William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon.

As Lord Clark, in his ground breaking programmes for the BBC, never stopped pointing out – Light is a key factor in all the great Civilisations – certitude, confidence and light.

“Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since they flight from hence, hath morn’d like night,
And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.”
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