Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6901
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| Posted: 21 May 2025 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | 1
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Evan: I suppose he couldn’t have talked to someone who read the book?
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So here you are making a relatively reasonable and common attempt at solving the conundrum of how one guy working off his father’s debts in the middle of Warwickshire wool farm, miles outside of Stratford could intimately know the details of this 30 year old Spanish book.
But the suggestion is to imagine he has a bilingual friend on the same Warwickshire wool farm with his own copy of the old and rare book, speaking both Spanish or French as well as English. This friend, we suppose, told the story of the book so well that young Shaksper decided to have a go at adapting it for the stage.
Circumstantial evidence works as a web of facts that closes off options of likelihood. Your suggestion arises because evidence shows the likelihood that young Will could possibly have read the book himself is basically zero.
I would ask what evidence do we see for this hypothetical friend? It seems like the product of circular reasoning: Shaksper wrote the play and the writer read the Spanish book, so a translator must have existed to read him the book.
A simpler explanation that fits the facts is to suppose a man from Stratford didn’t write the plays.
No one in his lifetime ever said that he did. Not until years and years after he died did anyone anywhere suggest the writer was a man from Stratford.
Edited by Mark Haslett on 21 May 2025 at 11:54pm
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