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/lit/ - Literature

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1157549 No.1157549 [Reply] [Original]

Where do you guys stand on the whole Shakespeare Authorship question?

The more I research it, the more logical it seems that Shakespeare was probably the pseudonym of Edward de Vere. de Vere passed away in 1604, the same year William Shakespeare's last plays are proven to be published.

Christopher Marlowe actually being the real Shakespeare is a load of bullshit.

I mean, *arguably* the world's greatest writer being the pseudonym of another person might seem like total bullshit to many, but...what do you guys think?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship

>> No.1157551
File: 29 KB, 390x511, Edward_de_Vere.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1157551

Portrait of Edward de Vere.

>> No.1157556 [DELETED] 

I watched a video of it on youtube once. Some actor reciting something by Mark Twain I believe. Even though I don't have any clue if the facts are right, it convinced me that no such man could have existed that wrote everything under the name "Shakespeare". But that's just me.

I can find the video if you want to see it.

>> No.1157560

I think the question has virtually nothing worthwhile to contribute to our discussion of literature

>> No.1157558

i hate it when someone like paul mccartney uses a pseudonym but makes it public to still sell.

isn't it better to just leave it as it is since the author chose to use the name anyway?

>> No.1157570

I'm not convinced Shakespeare was one guy.

>> No.1157576
File: 163 KB, 468x600, shakespear.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1157576

i troll u

>> No.1157587

I like to imagine there was just a guy who lived in England named William Shakespeare, and we was good at writing plays/poems.

But that's just me.

>> No.1157592
File: 203 KB, 635x800, homer.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1157592

>>1157570
Now you're just being silly.

>> No.1157594

>>1157556
Link it bro.
>>1157558
At that time, it would've been safer, given the fact that Shakespeare basically criticizes the Queen in some of his plays and also exposes the military.

>> No.1157601

>>1157592
>>1157570
It's quite possible Shakespeare was a group of players who wrote the plays and poems collectively.

>> No.1157611

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7kqj6vN9io

This is why I believe Shakespeare had to have been at least more than one person. There's a lot more than meets the eye and the dialogue Shakespeare uses was not familiar in Stratford or even parts of London, the only two places documented he ever was on this planet earth.

>> No.1157614

"A number of eminent British barristers and judges found Shakespeare's plays permeated with precise legal thought, and the author could only have been a veteran legal professional."

This, as well.

>> No.1157616

I don't really care who wrote it but about the pieces themselves.

>> No.1157626

Shakespeare: used approximately 21,000 words in his works.

The average Stratfordian citizen: knew about 400.

>> No.1157655

>>1157611

full vid: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7004942638729319523#

>> No.1157672

>>1157611
Oh man, I never looked at it like that.

Not to get too much off-topic, but what are the best collections of Shakespeare's works? I have a nice Penguin-edition of Hamlet, but I'd like to get everything into one or a few books.

>> No.1157686

>>1157672

Barnes and noble released a leatherbound complete edition, but it lacks page lines.

>> No.1157688

>>1157672
>>1157672
Pelican Shakspeare is excellent.

>> No.1157696

>>1157688
Just to be sure, did you mean this one?
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780141000589/The-Complete-Pelican-Shakespeare

>> No.1157699

>>1157686

I own that and wouldn't recommend it unless you're just looking to read Shakespeare casually. If you actually want to know a little about what you're reading and what some of those archaic words mean, get the Arden complete works.

>> No.1157705

>>1157696
Yeah, that's the one. It's the best. I own it myself and recommend it to anyone.

>> No.1157708

>>1157655
Fucking thank you.

>> No.1157711

>>1157626
>>1157626

Shakespeare also invented many words and saying we have today, such as "assassin" and "as cool as a cucumber"

i've done some research into this and the name Shakespeare itself conjures doubts, literally translated it means Many Pens, and if we look at the black eyed peas Will.I.Am it's not too hard to see the name meaning "well i am many pens"

Marlowe was definitely not Shakespeare, Shakespeare did a a lot of things differently in writing style though it is practically assured that Shakespeare attended Marlowe's plays and lifted ideas.

In the Jacobien era playwrights used to write together, like tv show writers do now, to have a play written by one author was incredibly rare and often found suspicious. It is pretty much confirmed that the whole "Bubble bubble toil and trouble" thing was written by Middleton as he had so many similar usages of language in his plays. Though whether the writers got together to create the greatest plays known to man and decided on the name Shakespeare is unknown it's going to puzzle many people for many years i think.

However if you study other writers and writing styles from the period it's not hard to imagine that Shakespeare either had A LOT of help from other writers, worked with them extensively, or is a pseudonym for a collection of writers of the time.
People think Shakespeare could have been either Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or Edward de Vere, though i personally rule Marlowe out, and do not know enough about the other two.

>> No.1157712

>>1157711
>>1157711

CONT:

When Shakespeare's plays were written the theatre was classified as an extremely dangerous place, a place where knowledge was passed to the groundlings and commoners for pretty much free. In fact the theatres themselves were shut down because of censorship. It's obvious that Macbeth is a warning to people about King James, a king who was fascinated with the supernatural and also was incredibly power hungry. Also Marlowe's Faustus is about rebellion, about sticking it to the man and trying to get the most of what you can. The crappy morality tale ending seems to have been added after pressure was put upon him to change the ending, making it less obvious that it was an anti-establishment piece of writing. Marlowe was killed in a bar fight a short time later, though it's generally agreed that he was killed because he was a spy, using the technique of a knife through the skull just above the eye, well known as an assassins technique. And the play itself was not performed until around 11 years after his death.

Hope all this makes sense, just come back from a BBQ and had a bit to drink.


i've written an essay on the politics of theatre at the time of these writers though can't find it atm, sorry if this is a ramble.

>> No.1157730

>>1157712
>>1157711
Holy fuck yes. I want to be your friend.

Question though:

The name "Shakespeare" can be interpreted as "many pens"? How so?

>> No.1157736

>>1157730
>>1157730

haha sup man, i have a book here somewhere giving a detailed translation on it, it's basically a combination of the words many and pens.

like football is a combination of foot and ball.
gonna try and find this source now

>> No.1157745

>>1157736
what age are you brownbear?

>> No.1157748

>>1157730
>>1157730

ahh i can't find it, but basically it's because Shakespeare was spelled so many different ways, with hyphens and without, as Shaksper etc, and after the printers finally decided on some form on consistent spelling with Shakespeare the old style spellings literally translated meant many quills or many pens.

still scouring google atm though

>> No.1157746

Or Shakespeare could be someone who shakes his spear, AKA masturbates a lot.

>> No.1157749

>>1157736
Awesome if you could.

Do you enjoy reading Shakespeare?

>> No.1157756

>>1157749
>>1157749

i do really enjoy reading Shakespeare tbh, i've also acted in a lot of his stuff, i find that i enjoy it more after reading it once, watching a film adaptation to kind of clear some of the language up and then re-reading, have you read any? or are you interested in starting?

>> No.1157771

>>1157756
I've read Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Henry IV Part 1, and all sonnets. And now I'm obsessed.

>> No.1157788

>>1157748

>Shakespeare the old style spellings literally translated meant many quills or many pens.

>still scouring google atm though

Good luck with that, because that's complete bullshit. Where did you pick that up? In one of the countless "BREAKING NEW BIOGRAPHY ON THE SECRET LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!!!"s?

>> No.1157808

>>1157788
>>1157788

i'm pretty sure it is actually true, though if you have evidence suggesting otherwise please go ahead and post it, contributing to the discussion like we are doing, not just posting arbitrary bullshit.

i read it in a textbook which was a guide to the life of Shakespeare and focused on his sonnets, and the theory that they might identify him as a homoesxual.

>> No.1157825

As to the sexuality of Shakespeare, I think that goes to say it's yet another piece of evidence that Shakespeare was a pseudonym written by a man who didn't want to make his own opinions public.

>> No.1157832

>>1157592
You do know that Homer might not've existed at all either right?

>> No.1157855

>>1157808
>the theory that they might identify him as a homoesxual.

Such a stupid theory. Yeah, he did address guys in his sonnets, but mainly because people wrote sonnets for other guys to use.

Also

>English: from Middle English schak(k)en ‘to brandish’ + speer ‘spear’, nickname for a belligerent person or perhaps a bawdy nickname for an exhibitionist or womanizer.
>Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4

It's not as if I can provide negative evidence for your claim, can I? I've looked through many resources and nothing touches on his name meaning... what... people just ignore the fact that his name is Many Pens? You think that would be a staple for every argument of his plurality, wouldn't you?

I enjoy the discussion but my god, why post trash like that? What is likely, since you can't even remember the textbook, is that you mistakenly read "many pens" somewhere throughout and somehow attached it with his name through your wacky imagination.

>> No.1157878

>>1157855
So, Shakespeare wrote sonnets about loving a young man so that other men could use it?

>> No.1157902

>>1157855
>>1157855

but they think the excessive gayness within the sonnets means he's a homosexual, though you could also argue that it's just very strong friendship.

honestly i remember explicitly reading that it means many quills/pens, i'm going to the library tomorrow to see if i can uncover more on the subject, and yes i may be mistake, and it may even be a non-literal translation. as in shake spear - shake pen - write pen - many pens kinda thing but i'll have to verify it anyway.

and when i was asking you to suggest evidence to the contrary i was asking you to post a verified translation for his name.

>>1157771
>>1157771
i'd definitely suggest Hamlet, The Tempest and Macbeth for you now then, also jump at the opportunity to see Shakespeare performed, it can be great if done correctly

>> No.1157911

>>1157902
>Implying the library is more helpful for research then the internet.

>> No.1157917

>>1157878
Seriously? There are countless journal articles and books on this debate, I'm not going to bother getting into it here with you.

You can either read homosexuality into it, or read it as it is.

>> No.1157925

>>1157911
>>1157911

i remember taking the origional textbook out of the library, and they keep a record of thing i've checked out, so i should be able to find it there.

>> No.1157927

>>1157902
Yeah I've gone through my universities online library, nothing comes up.
Though it makes sense that an author would have tried that approach which you just suggested.

All I'm saying is that you can't go around saying that as if it's fact.

>> No.1157954

Shakespear was the 17th centry's version of "Alan Smithee"
You'd be killed and tortured if you wrote a poem, so you did it anonymously with "Shakespear"

>> No.1157975

>>1157711
>>1157712

I'm sorry that I don't have time to explain, but you should know that almost everything you said in those posts is wrong. For a start, your readings of Macbeth and Faustus are facile.

>> No.1157978

>>1157954
>You'd be killed and tortured if you wrote a poem
no. no you would not be. there were tons of poets and playwrights at that time.

>> No.1157984

Holy shit, you people know fuck all about Shakespeare OR his London.

>> No.1157986

>>1157975
>>1157975

lolno

>> No.1157991

>>1157712
What? Macbeth was pretty much Shakespeare sucking up to James. Banquo was created as a supposed ancestor of James, and Banquo was a pretty awesome guy.

>> No.1158011

Well, if you guys bothered to even watch Shakespeare in Love you would realise he's not homosexual.....

>> No.1158012

>>1157978
And many were tortured and imprisoned for doing so.

>> No.1158026

You'd think on a literature board there would be some citations here and there for all these bullshit claims on both sides.

>> No.1158030

>>1158026
>internet

>> No.1158042

>>1158012
what? no. 0/10

really the simplest answer, with the most evidence to support it, was that william shakespeare was a really smart, talented guy that wrote a lot of plays, certainly with some input from the actors he was working with.

>> No.1158047

>>1157991
>>1157991

The play was given under the pretence of sucking up to James, but this story about a treacherous King who has experiences with the supernatural but is eventually killed after becoming too power hungry served as a dire warning to those not in power about what the King could do. Especially the scenes with the slaughter of the innocents.

>> No.1159396

It's even agreed upon among scholars that the man William Shakespeare was a homosexual.

>> No.1159434

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html#5

I think Mark Twain needed the internet.

>> No.1159460

>>1159434
the internet needs mark twain

>> No.1159472

>>1159460

If Twain was around now, he'd be writing a blog authored by "Lucifer".

It would be awesome.

>> No.1159494
File: 100 KB, 542x384, elizabeth-first-sir-john-dee.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1159494

shakespeare was a normal human guy but he had lots of rich nuts leaning on him-- like francis bacon, walter raleigh, ed de vere, and even the queen. maybe marlowe too. they used a fairly capable and connected theatre man to propagate their alchemical/magical plots derived from the angelic communication of john dee and ed kelley. hitler and george w bush worked the same way-- occultists gained political power and used a likely lackey to be the face of their plans.

also, shakespeare surely = masturbation (a magicians code for loosing the magic power into the world)

>> No.1159585

>>1159396

> It's even agreed upon among scholars that the man William Shakespeare was a homosexual.

No, it's agreed upon among scholars that 'homosexual' as a category does not make much sense in the early modern period because people just don't think about sexuality that way. Shakespeare probably had an appreciation for both men and women, as did many at the time (including James I).

>>1158047

James came smoothly to the thrown with a great deal of continuity of government with Elizabeth's administraiton. He was obsessed with witch-hunting, not with the occult exactly. And his big problems in government, at least the stuff he was criticised for, were as follows: a trashed economy and massive inflation, the ensuing corruption of the nobility, the partial transformation of nobility itself into a profit racket whereby merchants paid the government to elevate themselves, and undue doting/splash spending on favourite boy-lovers.

In what particulars does Macbeth resemble this man?

Also, in Shakespeare's sources, Banquo is a co-conspirator. Shakespeare changed that for a reason. it seems a bit of a reach to suggest this reason was simply to cover up for his anti-king message. Especially when other playwrights wrote much more explicitly satirical works about the court and the people that surrounded James.

>> No.1159587

(cont)


Start providing any fucking specificity (like dates) for your claims. You say earlier that "the theatres were shut down because of censorship." But the chief function of the Master of the Revels at that time was to organise hsi own plays, his own productions, the royal pageants and entertainments - he was in essence london's most powerful producer, not its knife-wielding censor. Generally the stuff that gets 'censored' is anything that specifically insults specific people on libellous grounds or things that go against the censor's friends. Playhouses were most frequently shut down because of plague, or because they ran out of money. The Globe's operation was uninterrupted until it burned down in 1613. An indoor theatre at Blackfriars was shut down in the 1580s for financial and legal reasons (disputed leases and suchlike), but started up again at the turn of the century and ran continuously until the civil war. Only THEN, under the new puritain regime, were all 'the playhouses' in plural closed down because of 'censorship'. Though 'censure' would be the better word; the worry, if I'm not mistaken, was about their bawdy licentiousness, and their heavy royalist associations, rather than their subversive political threat per se.

All the fuckers in this thread should read James Shapiro's 'Contested Will'.

>> No.1159640

Shakespeare authorship doubters are the literary equivalent of climate skeptics. The tradition comes from the English class system's inability to cope with the fact that an ordinary man wrote the best thing their culture ever came up with. Then Americans who believed in Atlantis got on board. Begin reading other playwrights of the era you will find they are remarkable as well. Shakespeare's contemporaries in the theater knew his worth. The plays are rife with allusions to his family and experience. He collaborated certainly and often openly so the plays have many voices at times. But the vast majority of people who know the era and the work also stand convinced William Shakespeare was William Shakespeare. In short, deal with it. The man was a writer, not a conspiracy, Lord or God. He worked his ass off and retired at a young age wealthy. He died soon after, however.

>> No.1159691

Just started The Tempest and all I can say is -- whether Shakespeare is one dude or several, he was or they were definitely getting ripped on some 16th century variant of LSD.

>> No.1159818

>>1159691
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XZ091CEgNU

>> No.1159928

>>1159640

>>The tradition comes from the English class system's inability to cope with the fact that an ordinary man wrote the best thing their culture ever came up with.

I don't think that class has anything to do with the doubters - Shakespeare did go to a grammar school, he wasn't a social leper.

>> No.1159937

>>1159928

Yeah, but I can see where that poster was coming from - the proposed 'true shakespeares' are almost always aristocrats like De Vere or Bacon. And there's a fine long tradition of claiming that Shakey couldn't have been Shakey because he wasn't educated enough.

>> No.1160940

Thread is fucking with my brain.

Nice to see we have gotten nowhere on this debate. That's exactly what it will stay forever. A debate.

Shakespeare is the closest thing humanity has to a God. We have no idea whether or not he is real and "his" ideas are present all through out culture from his writings, in the same sense of the bible.

If Shakespeare was a real man, he turned himself into a...God.

>> No.1161073

>>1160940
The same thing will happen to Shakerspeare as has happened with Homer. There will be just as many people who exist that debate whether Homer wrote both his epics, or whether they are just a combination of stories formatted into two texts. Meh. They're good regardless.

>> No.1161238

>>1161073
Who the fuck really knows anymore?

As long as we have the texts, they live through their readings, as they had to be formed from SOMEONE, so someones idea will live on for as long as humanity is in existence.

>> No.1162397

bumping worthwhile thread

>> No.1162412

>>1157711
He invented "assassinate". Assassin comes from the Hashashin, who were a group of trained Muslim killers noted for eating hashish.

The authorship question is usually proposed by snobs who can't believe that someone without a college education could have written Shakespeare. The fact is, Shakespeare's life is better documented (business and legal documents, contemporary references such as Greene's Groats-Worth of Witte) than any life in this thread will be in four centuries.

>> No.1162418
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1162418

I should also add that the people claiming Shakespeare to be some subversive rebel who filled his writings with politics show a clear desire to find politics in Shakespeare.

>> No.1162469

it's easier to think of one genius named William Shakespeare than several genuises able to write in the same voice. occam's razor: one writer named William Shakespeare

>> No.1162901

>>1157655

Did you idiots even fucking watch this?

>> No.1163647

There was no William Shakespeare. Just because your 9th grade english teacher told you there was doesn't mean there wasn't. Fact is it seems more logical that he was a group of players/writers.

Get the fuck over it.

>> No.1164375

>>1163647
agreed.

>> No.1164393

thread's tl:dr

did anyone mention Francis BACON

>> No.1164437

>>1164393
Yes, in two posts. The Baconian theory is the third strongest. So it's very fucking likely.

>> No.1164500

You're the same kind of people who believe 9/11 was an inside job

>> No.1164547

>>1164500

because an enourmous event that happened very recently in an era where media reports everything and essentially everything is recorded, analyzed and taken into consideration is TOTALLY comparable to wondering whether one person wrote a huge volume of work in an era where only the richest people could read/write and almost no history pertaining to authorship was written down

totally similar

>> No.1164650

>>1164547
Touche, good sir.

>> No.1164653

>>1164547
>in an era where only the richest people could read/write
this is not at all true

>> No.1164691

>>1164653
Yes... yes it is.

>> No.1165531
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1165531

>>1164691
Thank you for commenting on something you have clearly done no research on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabethan_era#Education

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school_%28United_Kingdom%29#Early_grammar_schools

From the Pelican edition of King Lear:
"As it happens, lucky male children of the middle class had access to better education than most aristocrats in Elizabethan England - and [Edward de Vere] was not particularly well educated . . . popular rival playwrights such as the very learned Ben Jonson and George Chapman, both of whom also lacked university training, achieved great artistic success, without being taken as Bacon or Oxford."

>> No.1165540

>Oxford is today most well known as the strongest alternative candidate proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays,[4] a claim that some historians and literary scholars reject but which is supported by a number of researchers and theatre practitioners.[5] For further information on this topic, see Oxfordian theory. In fact, the circumstantial evidence for De Vere as the author of the Shakespearean plays is very strong, while the evidence for the man from Stratford is essentially nil. If true, it would mean that the traditional view supporting "William Shakespeare" as the author of De Vere's plays is one of the great frauds ever perpetrated in history.

Oh, Wikipedia. You make me lol.

>> No.1165547

>>1165540

Oh wow.

>> No.1165553

>>1164547
You are of the same intellectual caliber as the 9/11 theorists. Considering the testimonies of Shakespeare's fellow actors, authors, and enemies and the overwhelming amount of business and legal records mentioning him, you must believe in some "Shakespiracy" perpetrated by dozens of individuals with the specific intent of fooling the modern world.

>> No.1165558

>>1165553
>with the specific intent of fooling the modern world
this part made me lol.

>> No.1165567

fucking POV in my wikipedia. I changed that shit.

>> No.1165594

>>1165567
You added a [citation needed]. You could instead have reverted this edit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford&diff=387240851
&oldid=385518202

>> No.1165610

The real Shakespeare Authorship question is who fucking cares?

>> No.1165743

I took several Shakespeare courses under Maurice Hunt (look him up, chances are you might've read some of his articles), and he had a very eloquent solution to this "problem."
Basically, he posited Shakespeare most likely had access to the library of the noble was in love with (mentioned along with his dark-skinned lady), and that accounts for his breadth of knowledge of then contemporary works without having access to a college learning. It's been several years since that class, and I can't really recall the name of the noble...but yeah, Shakespeare was into dudes and darkies.

>> No.1165820

>>1165743

>Basically, he posited Shakespeare most likely had access to the library of the noble was in love with (mentioned along with his dark-skinned lady), and that accounts for his breadth of knowledge of then contemporary works without having access to a college learning

By no means an extravagant claim. Patronage was the basic model of the literary world at that time, and library use is a persistent feature of many writers' careers. Even fifty years later, Andrew Marvell wrote many of his best poems with the aid of Thomas Fairfax's extensive library. The biggest and best libraries were always in the houses of lords, and the lords most likely to have big libraries were usually those who enjoyed giving patronage. Shakespeare was no stranger to this system and anyway probably had enough money to own a few books of his own, if not just borrow them/share them with other actors.

The "Shakespeare must have been a lawyer hurr" stuff is similar. In London at that time most trials were public*, and many of those who frequented the theatre were young law students with big libidos and disposable incomes. Legal knowledge was a common thing in the circles Bill moved in.

*most things in London were public, and the theatre was not the only 'theatre' - you could walk through the streets past a trial on one corner, a sermon on another, a public anatomy elsewhere...you could pick up a lot just by listening. Shakespeare's plays, like his London, are full of different voices and professional registers all competing and intermingling with each other.

>> No.1167015

>>1165553

i didnt say that he is several authors, i said that the comparison to 9/11 conspiracy theories is totally off

also, thread necromancy!

>> No.1167169

I believe in Willie Hughes.

>> No.1167173

I think William Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays. Could be wrong, but it won't really effect me at all when it comes to enjoying them now will it?

>> No.1167186

Read "Shakespeare: The World As A Stage." Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

>> No.1167201
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1167201