Shakespeare Question

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 9:31pm

I'm helping out my sister....

She's writing a research paper proving (or claiming) that Shakespeare did not write all the works he is said to have written. I don't know if she agrees with it or not, but it's her topic. Do any of you know any good sites or juicy pieces of info that she could use in her paper?

Thanks in advance, guys.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 9:35pm

I just saw something on TV the other day about this. Some guy said that with the education Shakespeare received, he would barely be able to write his own name easily, let alone plays and sonnets. I'll try to find out the source.

[babygiraffeboots]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 9:37pm

it should be easy to find, not an uncommon topic, the globe even has information on it. Maybe try checking their website? My dad loves to bother me on the topic because he does things like that.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 9:41pm

Thanks guys! She waited until the last minute to do this, so I'm trying to make it easier!

[TVBoy]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 9:48pm

Munk... since it's last minute she may not be able to get her hands on a copy... but "Shakespeare for Dummies" tackles this issue in the first chapter. It lists all of the "theories," but reports that most are not believed to be true. It's interesting. (It also lists its source, but I forgot.)

[IMsooHyprToday]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 9:53pm

there is also an educational video at there called "The shakespeare conspiracy"
and a book....

go to the following wesbite... there is a linkthat might be helpfull


Conspiracy

[Plum]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 10:52pm

I'm pretty sure Shakespeare was enrolled in school- his dad was something like a tanner and glove-maker- a middle-class profession. He wasn't so badly off.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 10:56pm

He did go to a very good school. His father was bailiff-or, mayor, as it would be called today-of Stratford-on-Avon. But he left school at a young age and did not return, thus causing some scholars to doubt that he wrote several of his plays.

[Liz_Bennet]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 10:56pm

Website
World Shakespeare Bibliography Online
http://www.worldshakesbib.org/

Books
Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
Shakespeare by Another Name: A Biography of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare by Mark Andersen (probably the way to go if you want to say Will didn't do it)

Articles
"The Ghost of Shakespeare: Who, In Fact, Was the Bard?", Harper's, April 1999 (go to the library!)
There was also an article on this within the last few years in the Times Arts and Leisure section- go through LexisNexis and you'll probably find it. It was about the de Vere theory.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 10:58pm

"Will in the World" is an amazong book. Everybody should read it.

[Plum]

Posted: 4/12/05 at 11:05pm

Most of all, be careful when you're looking at these anti-Shakespeare theories. Check the logic and check the sources- history books can be tricky like that.

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 4/13/05 at 2:43am

My undergraduate field of study is English Drama from the Early-Modern period, so I've encountered this question in several classes.

There is no evidence whatsoever that "William Shakespeare" DIDN'T write his plays. All such theories are conjecture, based on the fact that, from what we know, the man from Stratford-Upon-Avon called William Shakespeare only had a grammar school education (the modern-day equivalent is a high school diploma).

Most playwrights of the time had a similar education, among them Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Thomas Kyd had a slightly better education, but not by much; still, he penned THE SPANISH TRAGEDY, one of the most influential and well-written plays of the period. Shakespeare was from a working-class family (his father was a glove-maker) -- again not that different from the background of many playwrights working during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.

Still, no one quite wrote with the sheer breadth of human understanding and linguistic complexity of Shakespeare. The only people who might rival his wordplay and grasp of blank verse are Christopher Marlowe, who he died young just as Shakespeare's career took off, and Ben Jonson, whose style and tone is distinctly different from Shakespeare's. Francis Bacon is a name that gets thrown around a lot, but there's little connecting Bacon to the kind of populist theatre that Shakespeare wrote.

Although we don't know as much about Shakespeare as we'd like, we still know more about his life than almost every other playwright of the period, except for perhaps Ben Jonson. He was certainly one of the wealthiest playwrights of the time, due to his financial investment in the Globe theatre. There is also a myth that he wasn't appreciated in his time; while it's true that theatre was considered a populist and worthless artform (much like television is today) that paled in comparison to poetry, Shakespeare was still only one of three playwrights to have his work published in folio form (posthumously), the others being Jonson and the writing team, Beaumont & Fletcher. The publication of a folio is indicative of the amount of respect Shakespeare garnered from his peers, that they should publish his collected plays in a binding typically reserved only for poetry and other great works.

The question of who "really" wrote Shakespeare's plays isn't really taken seriously by academics. My opinion is that there's little point to the question itself: we have the plays and sonnets, and we've collected them under the banner of "William Shakespeare." Whether the person who wrote these works actually lived under that name is unimportant; what's important is that the works exist for our study.

Updated On: 4/13/05 at 02:43 AM

[mikewood]

Posted: 4/13/05 at 9:36am

This is a helpful website.




Shakespeare Oxford Society Home Page

http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/

[Plum]

Posted: 4/13/05 at 9:39am

BlueWizard, very nice post.

[broadwaystar2b]

Posted: 4/13/05 at 9:51am

We studied a bit of the consiracy theory in English this year
I believe that Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe's names came up
Maybe she should do some research on them