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Topic: Q for JB: Edward De Vere Post Reply | Post New Topic
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6059
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 11:34am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Facing the Authorship Question, I realized I grew up with a "Santa Claus"
version of Shakespeare in mind. Loving the plays, I imagined I loved the man.
Then I realized I knew nothing about him and, learning more, found the man
"Shackspeare" hard to like. I can't help wishing I liked the author and I realize I
bring that into my investigation of other potential authors.

So my question is, at this point in your own consideration of who wrote the
plays, do you find yourself liking Edward De Vere?
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

De Vere was a scoundrel. How much one likes him depends on one’s tolerance for murder and adultery!

(Tho it’s hard not to like a guy who broke wind in front of the Queen and banished himself from the Court for eight years!)

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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6059
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Egad!

It's funny how comfortable the Stratford camp seems to be with letting the
works fill in a comparatively dull man's life with intrigue and excitement. The
Oxford camp seems to have something of the opposite problem.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

If one reads an “authorized” biography of Shakespeare as the Stratford Man, one will note how it is peppered with words and phrases like “probably”, “most likely”, and “almost certainly”. It’s a curious phenomenon. The life of Will Shaksper is quite well documented, yet there is no trace there of an education, travel outside England, experience of the army or navy, or of the royal court, and nothing at all that speaks to him being a writer of any kind. Grain merchant? Check. Money lender? Check. Play broker? Check. Playwright? No.
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Michael Penn
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Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
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Posted: 23 April 2019 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I've never been convinced it's impossible that Shaksper was Shakespeare.

But for that not to have been improbable, he really would have to have been a super-genius!

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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

It transcends super-genius. It’s akin to Einstein coming up with Relativity after growing up alone on a desert island.
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Steven Brake
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Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 562
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Whoever wrote the plays:

1) Has Aristotle being quoted during the Trojan War, which is supposed to have taken place about 1,000 years before he was born.

2) Has Anthony & Cleopatra refer to billiards, a game not invented for another 1,500 odd years.

3) Thought Bohemia had a coastline.

4) Claimed that Delphi was an island, when it was a city.

5) Though Ancient Rome had clocks that struck the hour.

6) Has King John using cannons decades before their invention.

7) Doesn't understand the difference between Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, and heir to Richard II, and Edmund Mortimer, his uncle of the same name.

8) Has Richard of Gloucester boasting he'll outdo Machiavelli some thirty years before the latter was published and became a byword for amorality.

9) Had no great love for the nobility, who he routinely portrays as schemers in the English history plays.

10) Also has no great love for the common people, who are seen as feckless and easily manipulated.

11) Found little favour with English critics of the 18th century, who deplored his lack of classical unity (unlike Ben Jonson, who was proud of his learning, and scorned Shakespeare's lack of it in private conversation).

This isn't an exhaustive list, and doesn't necessarily prove it was the Stratford man, but it makes it impossible to believe that a member of the nobility, Oxford or otherwise, wrote the plays.

It's also worth noting that the suspicion of the nobility, and contempt for the common people, is much more consistent with middle class snobbery or ambition.
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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I wonder why Shakespeare alway treated common folk as clods?

Unfortunately for your case, your points collapse before one thing: a writer using history as his tool, not his master.

As to Bohemia, this:

• Act Three, Scene Three opens with Antigonous saying to a mariner, “Thou art perfect, then, our ship hath touched upon the deserts of Bohemia?” Although Ben Jonson and subsequent critics accused Shakespeare of being unaware that Bohemia was landlocked, Oxford spent several months in Venice and, eager to learn the history of the region, would have found out that in the thirteenth century the King of Bohemia had ruled territories stretching to the Adriatic Sea – making it possible, in fact, for someone to sail from Sicily to Bohemia.

LINK TO SOURCE

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Steven Brake
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Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 562
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

No, those are fundamental errors of learning which a classically trained writer, or one who had grounded himself in the classics, would never have made. Jonson, as the most obvious example, and as noted above, scorned Shakespeare for his lack of learning - his "small Latin, and less Greek".

Point 7 is particularly damning in trying to argue that the plays were the work of a member of the nobility. There's no way that a nobleman would make such a basic mistake; their whole position in society was dependant upon their lineage, which they knew impeccably (and that of their peers, of course).

There's a similar error in Richard III, in which Shakespeare, or "Shakespeare", if you'd prefer, makes one character three people because he doesn't understand, having read his Hall or Holinshed, that it's one person with three titles.

Edited by Steven Brake on 23 April 2019 at 4:22pm
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Steven Brake
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Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 562
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

@JB:

just saw your reply re Bohemia, which you must have added while I was typing my own reply!

There's a difference between a country, and its dominions or territories. Moreover, the extent of Bohemia's dominion, as I understand it, was for a brief period in the 13th century.
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6059
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Steven: No, those are fundamental errors of learning which a classically
trained writer, or one who had grounded himself in the classics, would never
have made.

**

How can you assert this in the face of JB's point? Being plays instead of
history lessons, the test in these cases is not whether the author knows better,
but whether the author believes his audience will know better.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 23 April 2019 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Or even if his audience will be more entertained by flights of fancy.

It’s a long and vigorously practiced tradition in theater.

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