DOCSLIB.ORG

4. Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
4. Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593 54 4. Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593 Around the time of Marlowe’s apparent death, the name William Shakespeare appeared in print for the first time, attached to a new work, Venus and Adonis, described by its author as ‘the first heir of my invention’. The poem was registered anonymously on 18 April 1593, and though we do not know exactly when it was published, and it may have been available earlier, the first recorded sale was 12 June. Scholars have long noted significant similarities between this poem and Marlowe’s Hero and Leander; Katherine Duncan-Jones and H.R. Woudhuysen describe ‘compelling links between the two poems’ (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen, 2007: 21), though they admit it is difficult to know how Shakespeare would have seen Marlowe’s poem in manuscript, if it was, as is widely believed, being written at Thomas Walsingham’s Scadbury estate in Kent in the same month that Venus was registered in London. The poem is preceded by two lines from Ovid’s Amores, which at the time of publication was available only in Latin. The earliest surviving English translation was Marlowe’s, and it was not published much before 1599. Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen admit, ‘We don’t know how Shakespeare encountered Amores’ and again speculate that he could have seen Marlowe’s translations in manuscript. Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 55 Ovid’s poem is addressed Ad Invidos: ‘to those who hate him’. If the title of the epigram poem is relevant, it is more relevant to Marlowe than to Shakespeare: personal attacks on Marlowe in 1593 are legion, and include the allegations in Richard Baines’ ‘Note’ and Thomas Drury’s ‘Remembrances’, Kyd’s letters to Sir John Puckering, and allusions to Marlowe’s works in the Dutch Church Libel. The poem from which the epigram is taken closes (in Marlowe’s translation): Then thogh death rackes my bones in funerall fire, Ile liue, and as he puls me downe, mount higher. Celebrating the immortality of a poet through his verse, they may also be read – within the Marlovian authorship paradigm - as a more literal reference to the poet’s triumph over death. From the wording of the dedication to Southampton, it appears that the author expects the young earl to know who he is (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen, 2007: 27). Beyond the dedication, no link between William Shakespeare and Southampton, or his guardian Lord Burghley, has ever been established. Christopher Marlowe, however, was known to Lord Burghley as early as 1587 when the Privy Council intervened to ensure he was awarded his MA from Cambridge, and as late as 1592, when Sir Robert Sidney, Governor of Flushing in the Low Countries, sent Marlowe to Burghley under suspicion of coining (Wernham, 1976: 344-5). As Marlowe was not prosecuted for this potentially capital offence, it is not unreasonable to conclude, as Riggs and other scholars have done, that he was working for Burghley at the time. If Burghley conducted business from Cecil House, where Southampton lived as his ward, a possible means by which Marlowe might have met Southampton can be established. This is not to say that William Shakspere and the Earl of Southampton cannot have met, only that Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 56 the Marlovian paradigm offers corroborating external evidence when the orthodox paradigm offers none. The first recorded purchaser of Venus and Adonis, Richard Stonley, was, perhaps not coincidentally, an employee of Lord Burghley. His usual taste was for sermons and histories, and his uncharacteristic purchase of poetry might feasibly be explained by his employer’s potential interest in a book dedicated to his ward (Duncan- Jones and Woudhuysen, 2007: 30). Another early reader, the soldier William Reynolds, also had an interest in Burghley and wrote to give his personal interpretation of the poem to the Lord Treasurer in a letter dated 21 September. That another letter, dated five days earlier but intended to escape the eye of authority, may contain a more significant reaction to Venus and Adonis has not generally been considered. In Autumn 1593, Gabriel Harvey’s A nevv letter of notable contents With a straunge sonet, intituled Gorgon, or the wonderfull yeare was published. It comprises a twenty-six page letter dated 16 September 1593, addressed to the printer, John Wolfe, followed by three pages of poetry that scholars of Elizabethan literature find notoriously obscure. McKerrow writes: ‘it was doubtless intended to have some meaning, but … I have in vain attempted to discover what this may be’ (McKerrow, 1958a: V5, 102). A majority of scholars have agreed that this poetry contains allusions to Marlowe,56 but there is no consensus as to what Harvey is trying to communicate. More recently, the tendency of scholars to interpret literally the line ‘He and the Plague contended for the game’, and the unlikelihood that Harvey would be 56 Hale Moore summarises the scholarly reactions to Gorgon up to 1926, and offers a deeper exploration of the Marlowe allusions, in MOORE, H. (1926) Gabriel Harvey's References to Marlowe. Studies in Philology, 23, 337-357. Gorgon’s references to Marlowe are noted by BAKELESS, J. E. (1942) The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe., Cambridge, Harvard University Press. The Feaseys note Gorgon’s allusions to Marlowe and their similarities to a section of Harvey’s Pierces Supererogation (April 1593) which is also taken to be about Marlowe: FEASEY, L. & FEASEY, E. (1949) The Validity of the Baines Document. Notes and Queries. Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 57 misinformed as to the circumstances of the poet’s demise, as well as the fact that four months on, Marlowe’s death was surely no longer topical, prompted Charles Nicholl to suggest that Gorgon is not about Marlowe at all, but about the no-account braggart Peter Shakerley, with the poem using Marlowe ‘as a reference point’ (Nicholl, 2002: 149). J.A. Downie and Constance Brown Kuriyama have accepted this conclusion (Downie, 2007: 257, Kuriyama, 2002: 151), perhaps with an eye to mounting a defence against the non-Stratfordian theory shortly to be elucidated. But the Shakerley interpretation does not explain the remarkable similarities, noted by the Feaseys, between Harvey’s attacks on the subject of this poem and his previous attacks on Marlowe; plus it raises a number of new problems that Nicholl, Downie and Kuriyama have not addressed. One of these concerns timing. Harvey’s letter is dated two days before Shakerley was buried on 18 September. Nicholl suggests ‘he would have died a few days earlier: the grave-diggers were busy this plague summer’; yet plague victims were buried very quickly precisely to prevent a backlog building up, and if Shakerley died of the plague in London (as Nicholl concludes) he would have been buried very rapidly indeed. Vanessa Harding, in her paper Burial of the plague dead in Early Modern London, writes ‘It is true that plague victims were buried quickly, but the interval between death and burial was rarely longer than two or three days anyway’ (Harding, 1993). In other words, if Shakerley died of the plague and was buried on 18 September it is unlikely he was dead before the 16th when Harvey’s letter is dated. Even allowing a normal, non- plague burial interval of two to three days, the earliest date we might consider for Shakerley’s death is 15 September. and the news of his death would then need to travel the fifty-five miles from London to Saffron Walden. From figures produced by Alan Brayshay, a royal letter to a person of importance might be expected to cover such a Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 58 journey in around 14 hours (Brayshay et al., 1998).57 A letter between private citizens was not allowed to travel in the royal mail bag until the 1630s and could be expected to take considerably longer. As Alan Stewart and Heather Wolfe state in their study Letter Writing in Renaissance England, ‘“mailing” a letter in England was no simple matter… the likelihood of a letter arriving in a timely fashion was iffy at best’ (Stewart and Wolfe, 2004: 121). The timing is not impossible, but tight enough that Shakerley’s candidacy as the poem’s subject should be considered unlikely. Other problems with the Shakerley theory will be elucidated below, but it is not in any case necessary to formulate an alternative to Marlowe, since it is possible to interpret and contextualise the poem such that the two chief objections to Marlowe as the subject of Gorgon are eliminated. Firstly, as I will show below, there are indications in the poem itself that ‘the Plague’ was intended metaphorically rather than literally. Secondly, if we allow ourselves to contemplate the possibility that Gorgon encapsulates Harvey’s belief that Marlowe is the author of Venus and Adonis, and may still be alive – in other words, that Harvey is writing from within a Marlovian authorship paradigm - the poem is perfectly topical. Harvey refers to the Gorgon poem as ‘Newest Trifle’: ‘I terme it a Trifle for the manner: though the matter be in my conceit, superexcellent; in the opinion of the world, most admirable; for priuate consideration, very notable; for publique vse, passing memorable; for a point, or two, excee[d]ing monstrous.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Plutarch, Machiavelli and Shakespeare's Coriolanus Patrick
    The Changing Faces of Virtue: Plutarch, Machiavelli and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Patrick Ashby University of Bristol [email protected] Introduction: The hinges of virtue ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate’, says Caius Martius Coriolanus, shortly before the catastrophe of Shakespeare’s tragedy (Coriolanus, 5.3.26).1 In uttering these words, he articulates a moral hypothesis which is of central importance to Coriolanus: the supposition that steadfastness of principle is a fundamental good. This is a theory which the play puts to the test. The idea of ‘virtue’ — in a variety of guises — is a key focus of this essay, which identifies as crucial those moments at which definitions of virtue are unsettled, transformed, or confronted with a range of alternatives. Several commentators have connected Shakespeare’s Coriolanus with the political ideas of Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine theorist whose notoriety rests upon his recommendation of moral flexibility for political leaders. For Anne Barton, who reads the play in the context of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy’s history of early Rome, Coriolanus dramatises the futile persistence of obsolescent virtues (the valorisation of battlefield heroics) in an environment of subtler needs and growing political sophistication.2 In Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, Annabel Patterson hints at Shakespeare’s sympathy with the idea of popular political representation, proposing that ‘there is nothing in the play to challenge that famous interpretation of the tribunate which [. .] Machiavelli made a premise of Renaissance political theory’.3 John Plotz 1 William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt, Katherine Eisaman Maus, Jean E.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) HOW POWER CORRUPTS in SHAKESPEARE's MACBETH and CHRISTOPHER MARLO
    Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.3.Issue 4.2015 (Oct-Dec) http://www.rjelal.com RESEARCH ARTICLE HOW POWER CORRUPTS IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH AND CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S DOCTOR FAUSTUS: AN ANALYSIS RECEP ÇAĞDAŞ Department of English Language and Literature The Graduate Institute of Social Sciences Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey ABSTRACT From past to present, many leaders, politicians, scientists, or even common peoplehave experienced and tasted the absolute power. At the very beginning of this ownership, everything seemed usual and innocent. However; it has been observed that people who have absolute power fell into error thinking that corruption of power would never give rise to their end. The objective of this essay is to examine the reasons behind two literary protagonists of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus’ downfall.The major characters of these two books and other real life cases show that how the notion of having absolute power ends up with catastrophe and destruction. Macbeth and Doctor Faustus RECEP ÇAĞDAŞ illustrated different types of power: The first one is related to the political authority and the other one is connect to knowledge. The paper also highlights how these tragic downfalls stem from human weaknesses. We also examined how a common person could turn out to be a villain or how he could destroy the values of the society and himselffor the sake of obtaining absolute power. With the help of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, we would explore how power corrupted absolutely in case the absolute power was in the hands of wrong people.
    [Show full text]
  • Christopher Marlowe and the Golden Age of England
    The Marlowe Society Christopher Marlowe and the Research Journal - Volume 05 - 2008 Golden Age of England Online Research Journal Article Michael J. Kelly Christopher Marlowe and the Golden Age of England Poet, spy and playwright, Christopher Marlowe was the embodiment of the Elizabethan Golden Age. Marlowe’s work was the product of his ‘Erasmian,’ or Christian humanist, education, the state of affairs in England and his own ability and readiness to satirize the world around him. Marlowe and his fellow contemporaries were a testament to the development of English drama, its pinnacle at the end of the English Renaissance and its eventual decline and suppression at the outbreak of the English Civil War. Their work is historically important because it illustrates, in addition to the development of English theatre, the dramatic political and social events of the time through the public medium of the playhouse. Specifically, the development of the theatre helps explain key features of the English Renaissance such as the creation of English self-identity, adoption of humanistic ideal, the advancement of English over Latin, the role of religion, the intellectual development of a people and parliament and their gradual alienation from the monarchy, the ultimate assertion of parliamentary power, and Civil War. Furthermore, the development of commercial playwriting, acting, stage management and private investment in theatres, an aspect of life today taken for granted, began during this Golden Age in English drama. The history of English playwriting and performance stretches back to at least the ninth century trope ‘Alle Luia’ sung at Easter masses. However, post-classical Christian ritual performance itself probably developed from the ritualistic repetitions of the Empirical Roman Senate.1 This tradition, established in the Church at some point during the early formation of Roman successor states, likely spread to England from Spain, via Ireland, through missionaries.
    [Show full text]
  • “Mark This Show”: on Dramatic Attention in Christopher Marlowe’S and William Shakespeare’S Tragedies
    “MARK THIS SHOW”: ON DRAMATIC ATTENTION IN CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES by JAMIE PARIS B.A. (Honours), University of Winnipeg, 2005 M.A., University of Regina, 2008 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) AUGUST 2015 © Jamie Paris, 2015 ii Abstract This dissertation will argue that the early modern theatre and the early modern church were both concerned with keeping the attention of their audiences, and that one of the ways that dramatic interest in Christopher Marlowe's and William Shakespeare's plays was generated was by staging acts that can be read as ambiguous, interrupted, failed or parodic confessions, prayers, and sermons. In particular, I will argue that when the characters in Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s tragedies fail to find solace in acts that model reformed devotional practices, they eventually suffer the strange but dramatically engaging consequences of their tragic passions like despair, hatred, jealousy, fear, and rage. This dissertation, then, will bridge the turn to religion and affect studies as a means of arguing that early modern tragedy was consumed with attracting, and sustaining, the dramatic attention of the audience. While it is not possible to say, with any finality, why tragedies hook an audience's attention, it is possible to suggest how Marlowe's and Shakespeare's tragedies used the passions generated by the failure of model devotional acts as a means of capturing and sustaining the attention of the audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Grotesque Transformations and the Discourse of Conversion in Robert Greene's Works and Shakespeare's Falstaff
    Grotesque Transformations and the Discourse of Conversion in Robert Greene's Works and Shakespeare's Falstaff Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors DiRoberto, Kyle Louise Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 08:47:04 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/203437 GROTESQUE TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE DISCOURSE OF CONVERSION IN ROBERT GREENE'S WORK AND SHAKESPEARE'S FALSTAFF by Kyle DiRoberto _____________________ Copyright © Kyle DiRoberto A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2011 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Kyle DiRoberto entitled Grotesque Transformations and the Discourse of Conversion in Robert Greene's Work and Shakespeare's Falstaff. and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/8/11 Dr. Meg Lota Brown _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/8/11 Dr. Tenney Nathanson _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/8/11 Dr. Carlos Gallego Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.
    [Show full text]
  • The Printers of Shakespeare's Plays and Poems
    149 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s2-VII/26/149/943715 by guest on 27 September 2021 THE PRINTERS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS AND POEMS. HE men who, during Shakespeare's lifetime, printed his * Venus and Ado- nis,' * Lucrece,' and * Sonnets,' and the Quarto editions of his plays, can hardly be called Shakespeare's printers, since, with one exception, there is no evidence that he ever authorized the printing of any of his works, or ever revised those that were published. Even in the case of Richard Field, the evidence is presumptive and not direct. Yet Englishmen may be pardoned if they cling to the belief that Shakespeare employed Field to print for him and frequented the printing office in Blackfriars while the proof sheets of * Venus and Adonis' and ' Lucrece' were passing through the press. For Stratford-on-Avon claimed both the printer and the poet, and if it be a stretch of the imagination to look upon them as fellow scholars in the grammar school, and playmates in the fields, their distant Warwickshire birthplace offered a bond of sympathy which might well draw them to one another. It is some matter for congratulation that the first of Shakespeare's writings to be printed came from a press that had long been known for the excellence of its work. When Richard Field came to London in 1579, be entered the service of a bookseller, but 150 PRINTERS OF SHAKESPEARE'S within a year he was transferred, probably at his own desire, to the printing office of Thomas Vau- trollicr, the Huguenot printer in Blackfriars.
    [Show full text]
  • An Algorithmic Criticism of Audience Manipulation in Christopher Marlowe’S the Massacre at Paris
    An Algorithmic Criticism of Audience Manipulation in Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris Galen Cuthbertson Thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy (English) School of English and Creative Writing The University of Adelaide May 2017 Table of Contents Contents Abstractv Statement vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on the Text ix Introduction1 1 A Close Reading of Spectacle7 1.1 Structure..................................9 1.2 Roles..................................... 24 1.3 Audience Response............................. 28 2 An Algorithmic Criticism of Utterance 33 2.1 Fragmentation................................ 35 2.2 Valence & Affect.............................. 47 2.3 Dido, Queen of Carthage .......................... 55 2.4 Audience Response............................. 65 3 A Topography of Social Space 69 3.1 Character Interaction Networks...................... 70 3.2 Disruption & Coherence.......................... 82 3.3 Audience Response............................. 100 Conclusion 105 A Character Interaction Network Detection Methods 111 B A Model for Part-Doubling Possibilities 115 C Relative Popularity in the Shakespeare Canon 124 i Table of Contents D Figures 127 E Bibliography 156 ii List of Figures List of Figures 2.1 Raw Caesura Detection in The Massacre ................. 36 2.2 Raw Enjambment Detection in The Massacre .............. 37 2.3 Likely Verse Lines with both Caesurae and Enjambments........ 38 2.4 Rolling Mean of Caesurae in The Massacre ................. 41 2.5 Rolling Mean of Enjambments in The Massacre ............. 44 2.6 Raw Sentiment Valence in The Massacre ................. 49 2.7 Transformed Sentiment Valence in The Massacre; Low Pass Size = 3.. 51 2.8 Transformed Sentiment Valence in The Massacre; Low Pass Size = 15. 53 2.9 Speech Length (Words) in The Massacre ................. 57 2.10 Speech Length (Words) in Dido .....................
    [Show full text]
  • THE TRAGICAL HISTORY of DOCTOR FAUSTUS (The “A” (Short) Text)
    ElizabethanDrama.org presents the Annotated Popular Edition of THE TRAGICAL HISTORY of DOCTOR FAUSTUS (the “A” (short) text) by Christopher Marlowe Written c. 1589-1592 Earliest Extant Edition: 1604 Featuring complete and easy-to-read annotations. Annotations and notes © Copyright Peter Lukacs and ElizabethanDrama.org, 2020. This annotated play may be freely copied and distributed. THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS By Christopher Marlowe Written c. 1589-1592 From the Quarto of 1604 aka the 'A' (short) Text DRAMATIS PERSONAE. INTRODUCTION to the PLAY Faustus. Doctor Faustus is Christopher Marlowe's crowning Wagner, Servant to Faustus. achievement, and remains today the most popular and Valdes, Friend to Faustus. well-known play of the Elizabethan era outside of the Cornelius, Friend to Faustus. Shakespearean canon. The tale is of a theologian who sold his soul to the devil in return for the ability to perform The Pope. sorcery and gain knowledge of the workings of the universe; Cardinal of Lorraine. but God's mercy is infinite, and Faustus, who repeatedly regrets his decision, could have returned to the fold of God The Emperor of Germany. at anytime, but was too blinded by his own pride to realize Duke of Vanholt. it. Duchess of Vanholt. A Knight. OUR PLAY'S SOURCE Other Human Characters: Our text of Doctor Faustus (1604) is adopted primarily Clown. from Alexander Dyce's edition of Marlowe's plays, but Robin. with some of the spelling and wording from the 1604 quarto Rafe. reinstated. Vintner. Horse-Courser. NOTES ON THE ANNOTATIONS An Old Man. Scholars, Friars, and Attendants.
    [Show full text]
  • The Appearance of Blacks on the Early Modern Stage: Love's
    Early Theatre 17-2 (2014), 77–94 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12745/et.17.2.1206 matthieu a. chapman The Appearance of Blacks on the Early Modern Stage: Love’s Labour’s Lost’s African Connections to Court While scholarship is certain that white actors did appear in blackface on the Eliza- bethan stages, this paper argues for the additional possibility of actual moors and blacks appearing on stage in early modern London. Examining the positive social, political, and economic implications of using in performance these bodies per- ceived as exotic, I argue for the appearance of blacks in Love’s Labour’s Lost as a display of courtly power in its 1597–8 showing for Elizabeth I. Building on this precedent, Queen Anna’s staging of herself as black in the 1605 Masque of Black- ness, I argue, worked to assert the new Jacobean court’s power. In the year 1501, Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon arrived in England to marry Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII. The English greeted Catherine with much fanfare and were impressed with the pageantry of her entrance, which, as Sir Thomas More wrote, ‘thrilled the hearts of everyone’.1 In spite of the fanfare, not everything about Catherine’s entrance was entirely positive. The Spanish princess’s arrival brought not only a wife for the prince of Wales, but also attention to a confusion prevalent in English culture, the simultan- eous visibility and invisibility of blacks. Of the fifty-one members of Cath- erine of Aragon’s household to make the trip to England with her, two were black.2 Describing these individuals
    [Show full text]
  • SAC Declaration of Reasonable Doubt
    Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC) - www.DoubtAboutWill.org To Shakespeare lovers everywhere, as well as to those who are encountering him for the first time: know that a great mystery lies before you. How could William “Shakspere” of Stratford have been the author, William Shakespeare, and leave no definitive evidence of it that dates from his lifetime? And why is there an enormous gulf between the alleged author’s life and the contents of his works? In the annals of world literature, William Shakespeare is an icon of towering greatness. But who was he? past who have expressed doubt that Mr. “Shakspere” wrote the works of William Shakespeare: Mark Twain Orson Welles William James Paul H. Nitze Henry James 5ZSPOF(VUISJF Sigmund Freud Lord Palmerston Walt Whitman $IBSMJF$IBQMJO Clifton Fadiman William Y. Elliott 3BMQI8BMEP&NFSTPO 4JS+PIO(JFMHVE John Galsworthy Lewis F. Powell, Jr. 4JS(FPSHF(SFFOXPPE )VHI5SFWPS3PQFS Mortimer J. Adler Harry A. Blackmun Present-day doubters include many more prominent individuals, numerous leading Shakespearean actors, and growing numbers of English professors. Brunel University in West London, and Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, now offer degree programs in authorship studies. Yet orthodox scholars claim that there is no room for doubt that Mr. Shakspere wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him. Some say that it is not even an important question. We, the undersigned, hereby declare our view that there is room for reasonable doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare, and that it is an important question for anyone seeking to understand the works, the formative literary culture in which they were produced, or the nature of literary creativity and genius.
    [Show full text]
  • The Oxfordian Volume 21 October 2019 ISSN 1521-3641 the OXFORDIAN Volume 21 2019
    The Oxfordian Volume 21 October 2019 ISSN 1521-3641 The OXFORDIAN Volume 21 2019 The Oxfordian is the peer-reviewed journal of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, a non-profit educational organization that conducts research and publication on the Early Modern period, William Shakespeare and the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Founded in 1998, the journal offers research articles, essays and book reviews by academicians and independent scholars, and is published annually during the autumn. Writers interested in being published in The Oxfordian should review our publication guidelines at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship website: https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/the-oxfordian/ Our postal mailing address is: The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship PO Box 66083 Auburndale, MA 02466 USA Queries may be directed to the editor, Gary Goldstein, at [email protected] Back issues of The Oxfordian may be obtained by writing to: [email protected] 2 The OXFORDIAN Volume 21 2019 The OXFORDIAN Volume 21 2019 Acknowledgements Editorial Board Justin Borrow Ramon Jiménez Don Rubin James Boyd Vanessa Lops Richard Waugaman Charles Boynton Robert Meyers Bryan Wildenthal Lucinda S. Foulke Christopher Pannell Wally Hurst Tom Regnier Editor: Gary Goldstein Proofreading: James Boyd, Charles Boynton, Vanessa Lops, Alex McNeil and Tom Regnier. Graphics Design & Image Production: Lucinda S. Foulke Permission Acknowledgements Illustrations used in this issue are in the public domain, unless otherwise noted. The article by Gary Goldstein was first published by the online journal Critical Stages (critical-stages.org) as part of a special issue on the Shakespeare authorship question in Winter 2018 (CS 18), edited by Don Rubin. It is reprinted in The Oxfordian with the permission of Critical Stages Journal.
    [Show full text]
  • Cont Pp I-Iv Vol.21 2009 B.PUB
    “News on the Rialto”: Shakespeare’s Venice EUGENIE R. FREED Holofernes: I may speak of thee as the traveler doth of Venice: Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia. (Love’s Labour’s Lost 4.2.92-93)1 Shakespeare set thirteen of his plays in Italy. Since he probably never visited the country, he shows only the vaguest notion of the topography of most of his Italian settings. However, the two plays set in Venice are notable exceptions. The Merchant of Venice (composed around 1596- 1597), and Othello, the Moor of Venice (probably written between 1601 and 1603) are not only distinguished by authentic ‘local colour’, but also convey the playwright’s awareness of a certain image of Venice, both as it was presented by Italian historians, and as English visitors recorded their experiences of the city. David McPherson writes: [H]istorians have shown that certain aspects of the city’s reputation became so powerful that, in the aggregate, they may justifiably be called the Myth of Venice, and that England was the country in Northern Europe in which this Myth was most strongly felt.2 (13) I will argue in this paper that in these two plays Shakespeare deliberately foregrounds some of the “aspects of the city’s reputation” mentioned above – certain conventional assumptions shared by the English audiences for whom he wrote his plays concerning Venetians, their customs and their ways of life. Shakespeare goes on in both plays to create dramatic situations that conflict with and seriously question such perceptions. And, in support of this evident familiarity on Shakespeare’s part with the features of the so-called “myth of Venice”, I believe that the playwright had a sufficient grasp of the Italian language to give him access to relevant material published in Italian.
    [Show full text]