Re: The Shakespeare Enigma conspiracy theories
I watched ‘The Shakespeare Enigma’ and it was easy to be drawn into the conjecture that Marlowe’s death was a stunt and that he went to live in Italy, wrote plays that he sent to the talentless Shakespeare who had them staged under his own name. No evidence beyond a botched coroner’s report and an apparent lack of knowledge of anything about Shakespeare’s whereabouts from 1578-82 and again from 1585-92 after which his plays began to appear. Marlowe is supposed to have lived out his life in Italy hence the knowledge and accuracy of the Italian plays. No evidence of course. Why couldn’t Shakespeare have traveled extensively in Europe during the 13 lost years and gained his knowledge that way? It’s how Edward de Vere acquired his knowledge, why not Shakespeare? I ended up baffled that a complete lack of evidence to support one theory was seen as an acceptable rebuttal of a complete lack of evidence for another. All these dead people (Marlowe over 20 years before Shakespeare and De Vere 12 years) getting the credit for work history tells us was done by a true theatre man who was actually living at the time and credited with the work. If the conspiracy theory has any ‘legs’ surely one of Marlowe’s other friends would have known and been unhappy that Marlowe wasn’t getting the credit. No evidence again. It’s bizarre.
Re: Shakespeare not mentioning his plays in his will.
Royalties weren’t paid in those days. Maybe he saw his plays as having no current value. Maybe he was just a sick man who’d left his London life behind. Maybe Anne Hathaway had taken him back on the understanding that he never spoke of London again. Perhaps, as Paul Moon posits, he was unable to name 18 of his own plays, describe their plots and argue their contemporary relevance. I’ve written 40 + plays and I doubt I could name or describe half of them. Shakespeare was the Roger Hall of his day, a populist playwright. There were no scripts, you couldn’t pop down to the University Bookshop and buy a ‘Pericles’ so there was no money in it unless you owned a theatre or were a member of a company. So, what’s to leave?
Re: Looking at lines in isolation
Paul says: ‘A critic recently expounded on the artistic ingenuity at the beginning of Hamlet, which starts with the words “Who’s there?” This was described as … part of the opening scene’s “stunning poetry articulating brilliant psychology”. You can believe that sort of psycho-babble if you choose, or you can accept that on the balance of probability, Shakespeare’s character – Bernardo – is simply asking … well … “Who’s there?” The point of that first line is that it begins a journey that takes us to ‘To be or not to be’, ‘now is the very witching hour of night’, ‘o what a piece of work is a man’ and ends with ‘goodnight, sweet prince’, each truck stops in a narrative as profound today as it was when it was written. You’d think an historian might get that, eh. Having said that, there are critics who should be shot – and babbling academics, too. Maybe I am one of them 😄
Re: Credibility?
Yep, and, while viewing the plays from an inter and multidisciplinary perspective is valuable I would question the credibility of a highly qualified and expert engineer entering the debate from a point of view of a generalist who has perhaps seen one play once. In discussing this exact issue last week with a newly qualified PhD I asked whether his research had made him more qualified to speak about his topic than I am to speak – and be seen as credible – about ‘Hamlet’. He clearly thought his credibility superior to mine because he’d had to analyse, think critically, make assumptions and reach conclusions. I, probably arrogantly, said I’d had to do the same when I rehearsed the role of Claudius for Raymond Hawthorne, a role I then performed almost daily in two different productions for two years. I’ve since played Hamlet himself and directed the play twice, once indoors and once outdoors. I’ve read as much as it’s possible to read about the play and what others think of it, read hundreds of reviews, watched other productions and countless films and can I have my PhD please. His response was fascinating: ‘ you haven’t been peer reviewed though or had your work tested’ this being important for the conferring of a PhD. He had been quizzed, he said, for two hours by his examiners. At this point I gave up. He’d not spent weeks with Hawthorne being ‘tested’ again and again, had hours of notes and criticism, been reviewed hundreds of times and been ‘examined’ at every performance by thousands of audience members. But I let that go. He has his parchment and I have ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ and I know which I value the most. Being there, living those lines, breathing that narrative and ‘playing’ those roles is what gives life it’s meaning. There may be no degree conferred but there is no comparison neither.
dykiegirl 