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 The Shakespeare Controversies

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Triceratops
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PostSubject: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyThu 11 Oct 2012, 13:19

Was the Bard of Stratford the real deal or was someone else responsible for the assorted plays and sonnets ascribed to Will Shakespeare?

The Shakespeare Controversies 250px-Shakespeare

There are a number of alternate theories. The Earl of Oxford;
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/

Kit Marlowe;
http://marloweshakespeare.org/

Francis Bacon;
http://www.sirbacon.org/index.html

The Earl of Derby;
http://www.rahul.net/raithel/Derby/

even that they were the work of an Italian Jewess;
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/was-shakespeare-a-woman/article1207502/?page=all

or that he was Irish.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/79358

Is there any validity behind these claims or are they just a bunch of cranks and snobs unwilling to give Will his fair due?



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Vizzer
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyThu 11 Oct 2012, 19:58

Sigmund Freud certainly believed that Shakespeare was French and/or Jewish and that his real name was 'Jacquespierre'.

It's not clear whether that makes Freud a snob or a crank or a quack.
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyThu 11 Oct 2012, 21:43

I've never seen any evidence to show they are more than cranks and/or snobs, but generally I don't bother to give them my time. It's hard to know whether people just want to revise history for no good reason, or they genuinely think only an aristocrat would have the education and knowledge to write these, or they just want attention and money from book sales.

But it never seems to me to matter much who wrote them. I think that is because I was taught at a time when the works were all that were concentrated on, and the artists were just the medium. I've modified that opinion a fair bit, since people are very much influenced by the times they live in (and in the case of Shakespeare he uses historical themes and of course contemporary life in his plays and sonnets).

But whoever wrote them managed to produce things like Othello and King Lear and Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, so their authorship is not the most important thing at all.
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Temperance
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyMon 12 Nov 2012, 13:41

I'm just watching Anonymous on DVD.

I was quite bemused when I saw it at the cinema - it does make some outrageous claims (playing around with history and "facts" even more than Shakespeare did) - and I'm certainly not one of the Oxford fan club (although Rhys Ifans is very convincing).

But gosh, it is a brilliant film - and the Redgraves, mother and daughter, are superb as the young and the aged Elizabeth I.

For what it's worth, I think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

I really hope it wasn't Francis Bacon.
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyMon 12 Nov 2012, 18:46

I've yet to see anything that convinces me that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare. A lot of it is down to snobbery, I suspect. There were books available, travellers' tales (bear in mind that for many years he worked and presumably lived near the docks of one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities), contacts in the upper classes (they were some of the theatre's biggest patrons, after all) or even chatting to an off-duty servant down the pub! Plenty of sources, without having to directly experience them.

Or did Marlow have a demonic servant to help him write Doctor Faustus? Wink
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LadyinRetirement
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyThu 11 Jul 2019, 12:26

Looking through the forums for something else, it seems the topic of the authorship Shakespeare's plays was treated here back in 2012.
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PaulRyckier
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyFri 26 Jul 2019, 23:11

LadyinRetirement wrote:
Looking through the forums for something else, it seems the topic of the authorship Shakespeare's plays was treated here back in 2012.
Yes indeed Lady, I could have done the same as you Embarassed

Kind regards from Paul.
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LadyinRetirement
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptyFri 02 Aug 2019, 21:06

I'm putting this here for now though I'm not 100% sure this is the right thread.  With the reading I've done recently about Kaliningrad, Kanlingrad Oblast (formerly Koenigsberg, East Prussia) I learned (or was reminded) that Immanuel Kant was born in Koenigsberg and was the son of a harness maker.  Now, a harness maker would be a skilled craftsman, but Kant Junior's progress shows that someone of intellectual merit can come from a family where the parents worked in a more practical environment rather than an intellectual one.  I am annoyed by the blithe assumption by some folk that the son of a glove-maker (i.e. the son of someone with a practical skill) could not have written the plays of Shakespeare.
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PostSubject: Re: The Shakespeare Controversies   The Shakespeare Controversies EmptySat 25 Mar 2023, 15:17

On the question of Kaliningrad, I seem to remember that there was an attempt in the 1960s or 70s by the Soviet Union to claim that William Shakespeare was Russian owing to his 'soul'. From what I recall this used sketchy evidence similar to the 'Shakespeare-was-Irish' reasoning linked to in the opening post. Bizarrely, as recently as 2016 it was the British Council which claimed that Shakespeare was 'practically a Russian writer himself'. This was based on the huge influence he has had on the likes of Alexander Pushkin and Anton Chekhov etc and his enduring popularity in the country:

Why Shakespeare is an honorary Russian

It's interesting to note, though, that Leo Tolstoy was not a fan. And neither was Josef Stalin:

Stalin's Danish Mystery

I hadn't appreciated that the Danish island of Bornholm was actually occupied by Soviet forces from 1945-6.
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