Uh.....oh.......
"Which is more believable? 1) Shakespeare's plays were written by a commoner who (so far as I know - feel free to correct me) never left England but was able to weave all these elaborate plays - many of them dealing with the ins and outs of Italian politics - without offending any powerful people who would chop off his head in a very volatile political climate, or 2) The plays were written by a powerful person with clout enough to protect himself and the means to travel to all the exotic locales many of the plays were set in?
I'm sure that movie that's coming out will probably be a pile of Hollywood dreck, with all kinds of ridiculous silaciousness thrown in to reel in modern audiences. However, that does mean that the Oxfordian theory is necessarily false. As I'm sure you know, lots of respectable theater people buy into it - are they all nutjob conspiracy theorists? Or are they simply interpreting the available evidence differently than you are?"
OK...
Here we go, with Obi-Shakespearean Nerd Correction Mode fully engaged...
1. Shakespeare was NOT a "commoner," or, to be more accurate, he was not a poor serf groundling-type. His fatehr was a reasonably-well off carpenter as far as carpenters went, and the Shakespeares wer probably about akin to what we can consider today the "middle class."
And HOW many great writers have come from the middle class over the years? Too many to name, and I have other points, and I think that point is pretty evident and farly made, so, moving on...
2. LIVING as Shakespeare did DOES make more sense for his plays BECAUSE of the use of poetic tone and especially COUNTRY IMAGERY. Shakespeare would have lived in far more rural environment than ANY of the alternate Shakespearean candidates--Marlowe (which is pretty ridiculous, he was killed at 29 in a bar fight, and this is while Shakespeare/his plays were getting STARTED, so...?), the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bancon, the Earl of Derby, etc.--and so would have had a far more intimate knowledge of the countryside.
Why is this significant?
What is one of the most alluded to figures, in many forms, time and again, in all Shakespeare?
HIS BIRDS.
And by birds I mean literally DOZENS, there are whole books and websites devoted *just* to studying Shakespeare's birds and the literally dozens and nearly hundreds of bird references he makes, with many of those being rather descriptive and/or specific, implying--as most scholars agree--that the writer had a rich first-hand history of birds.
Shakespeare lived in Statford AND London, so he grew up with the countryside birds and then came to know those more local to the cities...
NONE of the other candidates can fit that description as well as Shakespeare can, and this is jsut ONE example of why it makes SENSE for it to be Shakespeare. Another?
3. Shakespeare can be SLOPPY with his history. A well-educated figure like Bacon or De Vere would likely have known their Roman history--and, since you put it up, their Italian politics--better than Shakespeare did. His Roman plays contain plenty of anachronisms that make sense for someone who didn't have an Oxford-level knowledge of the subject...
And that's just one instance of Shakespeare's mistakes/anachronisms that a college-educated person would EASILY have spotted in that time and known was incorrect, and yet many of these anachronisms make little difference to the actual plots of the plays, so really, there's no need to "fake" these misunderstandings--so it makes little sense to say the Earl of Oxford knew about these historical facts, cited them as a small aside, and cited them incorrectly.
4. "never left England but was able to weave all these elaborate plays - many of them dealing with the ins and outs of Italian politics"
Chaucer writes of Asia and other foreign lands...he never went there.
Homer writes of Persia and North Africa and Turkey and areas...he never went there.
Marlowe took "Doctor Faustus" from Germany...he never went there.
Virgil ALSO writes of Carthage and...HE never went there.
And so on and so forth, I can keep going for a good while here--even if I confine myself to just pre-Shakespeare authors with this analogy--but I think the point is made:
You can write and write effectively about a locale--or at least it is possible and there is plenty of precedent for it--WITHOUT having gone there yourself or having first-hand, intimate knowledge of the area (case in point, I'm PRETTY SURE Chaucer didn't have a CLUE about what was really in Asia to any great extent...and his stories seem to still be attributed to him, no one says "Oh, it couldn't have been Chaucer!")
NOW.
The SECOND part of that, the Italian politics, is answerable by the fact that Italy was sort of "in the vogue" at the time of Shakespeare's writings...remember who gets the Renaissance first--ITALY.
ITALY was where science, art, philosophy, and re-examining the old texts take off again FIRST.
ITALY was where many great figures of the Renaissance had already lived by the Bard's time.
ITALY was where THEATRE had been reborn FIRST in the form of Commedia d'ell arte...
Which is essentially improvisation mixed with Roman comedy...
Which often feature star-crossed lovers and cuckolded husbands and tricksters...
Sound familiar?
There's a REASON it's "In fair Verona where we lay our scene" for R+J...that's where this sort of story was really coming fromk most recently (albeit in a comedic, happy-ending format, as Commedia's comedy.)
There's a REASON why many Commedia archetypes are found in Shakespearean comedies.
There's a REASON why Roman comedic playwrights--chiefly Terence and Plautus--are cited and borrowed from in Shakespeare, and that entire plots (ie, a work of Plautus') was ripped off, reworked, and became one of Shakespeare's very-very first plays...
The Comedy of Errors, featuring a plot with two twins who are mistaken for one another...taking almost it's entire plot from Plautus' play where ONE set of twins are mistaken for one another, and for doing pretty much the exact same things.
There's a REASON why "The Merchant of Venice," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Much Ado About Nothing," and other such comedies are set in ITALY and have ITALIAN NAMES (or at least Italian-sounding names, again, Shakespeare often got these wrong/mixed them up...not something you'd likely do if you were Oxford educated, but FAR more likely to do if you were just a farmboy telling a fun yarn.)
And so on.
ITALY was the place to be, largely, even as Paris was starting to really gain prominence (and besides, it's ENGLAND...traditionally, Italy's come off better with them than the FRENCH of all nations...) ;)
So THIS is how and why we have so much Italy and Italian politics in Shakespeare:
It was considered a hip, vogue place to be.
It was where all this started.
AND it was also far off from England somewhat, so you could get away with more, leading me to...
5. " many of them dealing with the ins and outs of Italian politics - without offending any powerful people who would chop off his head in a very volatile political climate"
FIRST...as I've said...
Commedia ALREADY did just that--mocked the upper-class with comedies, and all of that, so this WAS done, and, to be clear, again...
Commedia=STREET Theatre=COMMOM PEOPLE DOING THIS.
And these are folks more common/low than Shakespeare...and once again...this came from ITALY, a huge source of inspiration for Shakespeare.
So it's not like this idea is unheard of, quite the contrary on the continent, and this is just starting to wind its way into England.
NOW.
Remember what I said earlier about Shakespeare making up names?
And how he was a propogandist and essentially made up some things in his Histories?
Same thing with his "knowledge" of Italian politics.
What he knew, he knew from his status, which is a huge proof in itself I'll get to in a moment, as well as from Italian culture's widespread influence and popularity at the time, and the rest...he made up.
WHY could he do this?
IT WAS ITALY...IT WAS SAFE! :)
Italy was far, far away from England, again, relatively speaking at the time, sort of the same way I might say New York City or London or Paris or Rome are "far away" from right here in Los Angeles county.
I'm "only" a few thousand miles away from the nearest of those, but that's still enough to make New York City somewhat "mythic" or, to put it a better way, it makes it easier for a more stylized, common-place, mainstream-conception of NYC to be present than it would be if I lived in NYC itself.
Same with London, Paris, and Rome--I've never been, so like most who've never been, I hear and read what's been said about the place, and from this form an idea of the place, and to an extent, it's stylized, as I've no substance from experience to put in its place on that account.
And THAT'S with the prospect that, if I had the resources, I could hop on a plane and be at ANY of those in just a DAY.
Italy is still MONTHS away from England at this time.
With few people going fro just luxury reasons.
What's the point of all this?
Simple--if Shakespeare needed a place where he could set something and NOT have it be controversial...
He'd almost INBARIABLY choose Italy, because, again:
-It was in the vogue
-Few could or would call him on it if he made up the politics (which in large part he did)
-It's far enough away that it can be seen as "removed" and "idealized"...
Almost Disneyland-ish, or Coney Island-ish, for the time...
Examples?
What play features both "Hath not a Jew eyes?" AND "The quality of mercy is not strained?"
The Merchant of Venice...set in Venice, ITALY.
What play features Shakespeare's ONLY fully-black (excluding Egyptian Cleopatra) hero and lead character?
Othello...set in VENICE (in part, at least, part of the fuller title is "Othello, the Moor of Venice"), ITALY.
Shakespeare's bloodiest play?
Titus Andronicus...set in Ancient Rome, which would have been equated with ITALY and their Renaissance and Rome in Italy itself.
Julius Caesar--many scholars see the defense of the emperorship as another propogada plug, ie, "Don't shake things up and depose Elizabeth...see what turmoil unfolded in Rome when they got rid of Caesar?"
Set in ROME, ITALY.
Shakespeare's interracial kisses and love affairs?
Titus again--Tamora and Aaron--and "Antony and Cleopatra"...set in Egypt and ROME, ITALY.
Many of Shakespeare's bawdier comedies? ITALY.
And Shakespeare's famous for having his WOMEN win so often in the comedies...where is this most prevalent, what setting?
ITALY.
And so on, I could keep going, but I think that point has been established--
You could get away with setting things in Italy--both politically and for stretching believability--that you could NEVER get in setting it in England or even France, with the latter being closer and having more folks know of it in fuller detail and go there.
This leads me to my last point, for now ...I have more if needed, but I think this is a fair opener, and hopefully one you'll see the wisdom MOST English scholars have agreed with (I'm not making this up, I'm going with the VAST, VAST majority of English scholars here...this is sort of like Shakespeare=Darwin and Oxford Theory=Intelligent Design for English people...the vast, vast majority of us KNOW it's Shakespeare, or at least know there's a strong enough case for him as anyone else, so why swtich the credit, so having to debate against ludicrous theories is irritating...poor professors EMETRIUS, Roland Emmerich just kept saying, "OH I hope you don't teach your kids zis way!"...anyway:)
6. SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS WERE WRITTEN BY AN ACTOR, WHICH IN ANY VERSION OF HISTORY, OXFORD OR OTHERWISE, *SHAKESEPARE* WAS AND *DE VERE* WAS NOT
Shakespeare's plays are written using what we all learned over and over by English teachers and professors who ramemd this into our heads...
Blank verse and iambic pentameter.
BOTH are rhyming devices...and BOTH were used by Elizabethan actors and playwrights to remember lines.
(They needed the help, plays were like movies back then, only they had to come out with new ones much quicker, sometimes a few a year being fully written, directed, acted, and so on...WHILE remember your previous lines from OTHER plays, in case Elizabeth or whoever called up on the spot and said "Hey, Bill, I'm having a party tomorrow and want to see an in-court production of Henry IV Part 1, so you and the Boys come down and perform that tommorow, alright? Cool!")
What's more, Shakespeare NEVER had his plays all on one master sheet...and if he DID, it was his personal master sheet, and for no one else (we call these potential partial-sheets and other scraps today Shakespeare's "Foul Papers," ie, not finished or incomplete drafts and so on...so yeah, that's another thing--when Roland Emmerich says "Oh, they don't know what Shakespeare's handwriting looked like!"...
YES.
THEY.
DID!)
Anywho.
So Shakespeare and Marlowe and most playwrights of the era would generally write all the lines for one part on one script and give it to that actor, all the lines for another, and so on, so...
Obi is playing Hamlet, I get all of Hamlet's lines, and MAYBE a couple of Claudius' or Polonius' that come right before my lines as cues to say my line...but MOST of the play is NOT in my hands as an actor.
Draugnar is playing Claudius, and so he gets all Claudius lines, maybe a couple from Hamlet and a couple of Gertrude's, but no more.
mapleleaf is playing Ophelia--hey, I gotta have fun with this somehow--and so gets all his, er, her lines, and maybe a few lines where Obi...er, Hamlet slaps him/her around...but that's it.
NO complete scripts.
This would likely include Shakespeare at a point, since he disdained having his plays in print in his time, as that was a stigma...it was seen as lower-class, and also a bit of a sign that you "needed" to be in print for people to know your name and words...
It's FAR more impressive to have your words known all over England and people know your name without having the text nicely printed with footnotes by snobby scholars and line numbers and all that. :)
So.
THIS is how the plays were written and produced.
Shakespeare was an actor in his own plays--so if you've ever wondered whether that was true from "Shakespeare In Love," yes, true...but he wouldn't have gotten it on with Gwyneth Paltrow.
;)
The structure of the lines, the way they are written, AND the areas in which there are and are NOT blocking or stage direction IMPLY that someone who was 1. An actor and 2. Working intimately and directly on the stage with these actors, directing and acting with them, was the architect, as the language, the meter, the blank verse, iambic pentameter, the absence of stage directions where most plays today would have them, area where there are directions that imply this direction was passed down from an actor's copy of their portion of the text and NOT a full, master text...
And so on, I could keep going, but I've been typing for the better part of an hour, so I'll end it there.
For now.
If THAT doesn't convince you that at the very least it's AS likely that Shakespeare wrote the plays as De Vere--and it should be at least that, really, I think, and if it is that, why change the name after 400 years? And, again, the vast, VAST majority of scholars debunk this theory--then I have more.
And if THAT fails...
I can always CITE those scholars and THEIR great points on the matter, which debunk this with more precision, detail, and eloquence than I possibly can at this time.
I may be a Shakespeare Nerd...
But compared to THOSE guys...I'm but a poor player, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage, until I'm read no more.
But the Oxfordian Theory, the Marlovian Theory, the Baconian Theory, the Derbyshire Theory...all for different and similar reasons...
Are tales told by IDIOTS (see: Emmerich)
Full of sound and fury (See: conjecture which can be easily matched even by an amateur)
SINGIFYING NOTHING!
The rest--FINALLY!--is silence.
I take my leave of you (as you would all likely enjoy it at this time.) :)
On the Proper Usage of Fleets
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