The age-old Shakespearean authorship debate. After reading Neil's Sandman "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" stories, it really got me to thinking again about this issue.

Many scholars have probably spent their lives dealing with it. Now, if it hasn't already been done in a previous form, I bring this to the Board.

If you will excuse me ...

*Runs*

Question:
Do you think Shakespeare was the creator all the works attributed to him?

Choices:
Yes
No
Most of them
Unsure
Alas ... poor Meat

 

It's a fun thing to think about, but I think he actually wrote all of the plays that are attributed to him.

There's a neat subplot about that in Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, too.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.


Frankly I find the whole question of Shakespearian attribution to be the most POINTLESS mastabatory question in the whole of theatrical academia.

If it were found that the works attributed to Shakespeare were actually by Bacon, Oxford, Marlowe (And according to one lady, Queen Elizabeth, because their portraits looked similar), how many words of the plays would they change?

I'm happy that we have these fabulous works. The name above the title is a brand. RSC is a brand. Stratford-Upon-Avon is a brand. Let the brand stand. There are no royalties to pay, no foaming authors to placate, only audiences who have a received idea as to what Shakepseare should be. And let the American tourists still flock to the Stratford-Upon-Avon McDonalds. And be amazed that the prices, after conversion, are double the prices of the USA, and that for some reason, the UK does not accept dollar bills.

I have yet to see a conclusive piece of evidence that the entity known as Shakespeare, however he chose to spell it, was not the final author in a collective including previous works, biography and the actions of his theatre troop. I care not for his second best bed, or for the death of Marlowe as a spy. The plays remain and are a fine food for hungry theatricals. The examinations by computer programme, searching for vaguaries in linguistic style, are nonsensical. And we have bugger all recorded information about Shakespeare, we also have bugger all about his rivals and the other candidates for his works. The best work I ever read about the atttribution for his works was by Isaac Asimov, the worst have been by axe grinders, desperate to justify their tenure.

Let the plays remain as by William Shakespeare, and let us enjoy them and continually interpret them, to bring invigoration to them.

Long Live Billy!

Ditto. Even more so because we don't actually have the original plays anyway. We have cut and paste jobs of copies of copies of copies, of half- or misremembered lines reproduced by actors fairly long after they actually spoke the lines, educated guesses at what word this blotch of ink might stand for. With material that's this unstable to begin with, what's the point in trying to find out exactly who wrote it?

So why did people doubt the existence of Shakespeare in the first place? How did that happen?

quote:

Originally posted by Jocelyn:
It's a fun thing to think about, but I think he actually wrote all of the plays that are attributed to him.

There's a neat subplot about that in Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, too.

*nods* - I just read that too...just!

partially, because of the facts about the plays that Thirith mentioned above.

Seems from what i've heard that speculation began within two hundred years of his death.

These days, the speculation is based on a few questions.

1. 'Shake-speare' seems a very convenient name for a writer.
2. an ill travelled man wouldn't have been able to write all the plays.
3. shakespeare was only middle class, and wouldn't have been able to have read so widely
4. there is very little evidence for the man 'shakespeare'. no letters, no documents that mention his plays by him.

So there have been a number of theories.. that Marlow wrote em after faking his death, or the Earl of Oxford wrote them under a pseudonym, etc.

Not sure how widespread these opinions are.

Different reasons. Some claim that the historical William Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays (or at least not all of them) because he wouldn't have the necessary education to use the sort of references he uses. There's more here, though. All in all, I think it's also an example of the tall poppy syndrome, or perhaps a reaction to the exaggerated veneration of W.S. that makes some people overly eager to dismantle the 'Shakespeare myth'. (Perhaps Dan Brown should write a book about it... )


Edit: As always, I should check what else has been posted in the meantime before writing a reply.

Hehe! Maybe "William Shakespeare" was the universally understood pseudonym all the playwrights used who were too embarassed to confess their real names.

Imagine it!

The Elizabethan Alan Smithee!

Can I be a boring lit.crit.git and just add the comment that linguistically, the works attributed to William Shakespeare are fairly consistent. The style differs from that of other famous writers of the time. There are parts of the plays that were written by others or co-written, but on the whole the plays said to be written by Shakespeare feel like they've come from the same writer.

Perhaps all of those Elizabethan Alan Smithees simply had the same editor...

See! It was all those works that didn't fit to the popular style of the time! I bet they crashed spectacularly at the box offices and at the test screening the playwrights said "no no no! Just say it's by Will Shakespeare, okay?" and all the other playwrights grinned knowingly.

So then, by your own idea Babylon, Homer would have been the universally understood pseudonym of the Mycenaean era? No, it'd probably be even worse because we have even less "concrete evidence" that the blind poet even existed.

*Imagines an ancient Greek Alan Smithee ... and doesn't have imagine very long, or even very much *

What I can't believe is that we're all just blindly accepting the decision of the "experts" that Neil Gaiman wrote the Sandman series.

I mean, really, a former punk journalist from Portchester, with little to no education past Whitgift School (which is in South Croydon, of all places), produced a work of such staggering mythological significance. I scoff at you.

Clearly, the man currently posing as Neil Gaiman is little more than a coverup for the real writer: Harlan Ellison. Neil is little more than the Robin Masters to Ellison's far more reticent Higgins, if I may make the comparison.

(One guy wrote the plays. His name may not have been Shakespeare at birth, but he was probably only slightly less common than the people who would've paid to see Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter)

But there are countless sources that prove this Gaiman's existence. Not to mention legal documents that'll get your ass sued for ignoring copyright.

Whaddya say to that, huh?

My book has an introduction by Harold Bloom. So there.

I wonder how many of those records we'll have in four centuries.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Clearly, the man currently posing as Neil Gaiman is little more than a coverup for the real writer: Harlan Ellison. Neil is little more than the Robin Masters to Ellison's far more reticent Higgins, if I may make the comparison.

Hold on a sec. The Neil/Ellison connection I can buy. But are you trying to tell me Higgins and Robin Masters are the same person? No way. Higgins was the guardian of Master's estate while Master's was off writing. Just because we only saw Higgins and never saw actually saw Masters...oh. Oh.

OH!

quote:

Originally posted by The Scoundrel:

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Clearly, the man currently posing as Neil Gaiman is little more than a coverup for the real writer: Harlan Ellison. Neil is little more than the Robin Masters to Ellison's far more reticent Higgins, if I may make the comparison.

Hold on a sec. The Neil/Ellison connection I can buy. But are you trying to tell me Higgins and Robin Masters are the same person? No way. Higgins was the guardian of Master's estate while Master's was off writing. Just because we only saw Higgins and never saw actually saw Masters...oh. Oh.

OH!

Bless you! There's nothing like a Magnum reference to totally make my day.

I'm glad you brought up the narritive consistancy point, Thirith.

I think that the people who argue that someone other than Shakespeare wrote his plays suffer from some of the same problems as those that think the pyramids were built by aliens or refugees from Atlantis - their mental model of what the guy who wrote the plays should be like doesn't match what we know of the real William Shakespeare. Sort of like some people's idea of what the builders of the pyramids should be like didn't match the ancient egyptians.

Still, like I said, it's fun to think about. It makes for good stories. I think whoever wrote those plays (coughwilliamcough) would appreciate a good story.

quote:

Originally posted by Jocelyn:


There's a neat subplot about that in Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, too.

Those books KICK TOTAL ASS...

*ahem*

As you were...

quote:

Originally posted by Babylon the Bride:
Hehe! Maybe "William Shakespeare" was the universally understood pseudonym all the playwrights used who were too embarassed to confess their real names.

Imagine it!

The Elizabethan Alan Smithee!

Well... that would explain Titus Andronicus...

Seriously, I absolutely believe that it was Shakespeare who wrote all his work. Most of the theories saying otherwise, that I have read, have ultimately really been based around the fact that some people can't get over the idea that some of the greatest works of drama were not written by some great or larger than life member of the peerage or similar figure, but by a middle class, balding seemingly ordinary man. As a result they have to find out what really happened.

(Note: The Bacon theory is a notable exception to this rule. So far as I can tell, that theory comes from someone playing with a decoder ring).

(Note 2: This is excepting some obvious pieces like the Hecate scene in MacBeth, which everyone who has ever read that piece or any other Shakespeare knows perfectly well was not written by Bill).