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Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and Chuck's on the line. Jerry's here too, and we're
0:15
Speaker 1: about to get jiggy with it. Shakespeare, Can I carve
0:21
Speaker 1: out this out of the gate? I guess so. The
0:26
Speaker 1: more we dug into this, you know, I was an
0:29
Speaker 1: English major. We talked very briefly when I was in
0:31
Speaker 1: college about Shakespeare's authorship, and I thought, hey, this would
0:35
Speaker 1: be a fun, little, semi easy episode. And the more
0:42
Speaker 1: we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded, This
0:47
Speaker 1: bloom and onion unfolded, Layer by Crispy Delicious Layer. For
0:52
Speaker 1: all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think you
0:54
Speaker 1: guys eat every night, every night. Uh, to the point
0:59
Speaker 1: where I was almost like, you know, is this a
1:01
Speaker 1: two parters? I mean, you could probably do a ten
1:04
Speaker 1: part episode on this. Oh yeah, it's so dense. So
1:07
Speaker 1: I just want to caveat this for people that know
1:09
Speaker 1: a lot about shakespeare authorship and saying this is a
1:13
Speaker 1: pretty broad overview of the high points of his authorship
1:18
Speaker 1: being questioned, because it is dense. Baby, It's the kind
1:21
Speaker 1: of thing that like, um, extremely intelligent people take on
1:26
Speaker 1: as their like lifelong hobby. It's like that, we're like,
1:29
Speaker 1: we'll just bust it out in a few days, It'll
1:31
Speaker 1: be fine. Yeah, you know, like how some people are
1:33
Speaker 1: like they they research World War two submarine warfare and
1:38
Speaker 1: know everything about It's along the same lines, but it's
1:41
Speaker 1: even bigger. There's so many people involved, and each side
1:45
Speaker 1: is like, you're so naive to the other. And yes,
1:48
Speaker 1: it's true, like we could, we could turn this into
1:50
Speaker 1: a teen part series, but I think we've got a
1:52
Speaker 1: handle on it enough to present it. I feeling okay
1:55
Speaker 1: about it. And then the other thing that sticks out
1:57
Speaker 1: for me, Chuck, is this is one of the few
1:59
Speaker 1: things I've ever I'm across like this that I am
2:01
Speaker 1: like truly agnostic about. I do not have an opinion
2:05
Speaker 1: one way or the other. I don't know if I
2:08
Speaker 1: do either. Actually, like it's not like I don't care,
2:12
Speaker 1: That's not what I'm saying, Like, I genuinely can see
2:14
Speaker 1: both sides. And the other thing about it is, the
2:17
Speaker 1: more you dig into it, the more you realize, oh,
2:19
Speaker 1: neither side actually has really good evidence to support their claim.
2:23
Speaker 1: It's all just they have to get so granular that
2:26
Speaker 1: it really quickly, um, goes into the world of conspiracy
2:30
Speaker 1: theories pretty quickly. Yeah. I saw this video of a guy, uh,
2:36
Speaker 1: this wonderful gentleman who knows a lot about it, that
2:39
Speaker 1: said like, and here's the golden bullet, which proves once
2:42
Speaker 1: and for all, and he made his case and I
2:44
Speaker 1: was like, no, no no, no, that didn't really prove it
2:46
Speaker 1: once and for all in my opinion, Yeah, for sure,
2:48
Speaker 1: because both sides do things like they get into biographical
2:51
Speaker 1: readings where they're trying to find clues within the text
2:54
Speaker 1: or you know, parallels to his life for that kind
2:57
Speaker 1: of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay, you
3:00
Speaker 1: guys are you've just completely left the world of objectivity. Yeah. Uh.
3:06
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about, um, if you haven't guessed
3:09
Speaker 1: by now, is this idea that has been around since
3:13
Speaker 1: at least the mid eighteen hundreds maybe before, about the
3:17
Speaker 1: question of whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole
3:22
Speaker 1: author of all of his works. And this is Shakespeare
3:25
Speaker 1: from Stratford on the Avon, like that that gentleman that
3:29
Speaker 1: we know became an actor, uh and you know writer, Uh,
3:33
Speaker 1: whether or not he was the sole author whether or
3:35
Speaker 1: not he was a front for some other authors for
3:39
Speaker 1: some of the works. Some people say he didn't write
3:41
Speaker 1: any of them. Some people said it was various women
3:45
Speaker 1: who weren't allowed to write things at the time. Uh,
3:48
Speaker 1: there are I saw sixty six candidates over the years
3:53
Speaker 1: have been put forward. Oh really, so there there you
3:57
Speaker 1: have it. Uh, somewhere between sixty six and eight something
4:01
Speaker 1: of I know, we haven't been accused of writing any
4:04
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's work. I don't think so. I didn't come
4:07
Speaker 1: across that in my research. But it's an interesting literary
4:12
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I want to call it
4:13
Speaker 1: a mystery, because some people just say, like, no, I mean,
4:17
Speaker 1: of course he wrote it, and he was these outsized personalities,
4:21
Speaker 1: the most famous of the famous are conspiracies are drawn
4:25
Speaker 1: to them. Elvis is still alive, Marilyn Monroe was murdered.
4:29
Speaker 1: Like that happens when you are, you know, one of
4:32
Speaker 1: the biggest icons in your field quite often. So some
4:35
Speaker 1: people say that's just that's all that it is. In
4:39
Speaker 1: addition to that, there's a a lack of biographical documentation
4:46
Speaker 1: that he actually did write those plays. And I think
4:49
Speaker 1: that that's also what allows for people to say, you know, well,
4:53
Speaker 1: do we really know or that he didn't write them, Like,
4:56
Speaker 1: there's just it was a time, you know, in the
4:59
Speaker 1: fift dreids where there in sixteen hundreds, whether it just
5:03
Speaker 1: wasn't a ton of great preserved information and we're going
5:06
Speaker 1: to talk about a lot of that. So we do
5:09
Speaker 1: know that William Shakespeare did live. He was from, like
5:12
Speaker 1: you said, Stratford on Avon. It was at the time
5:15
Speaker 1: about a two to three day journey from London, about
5:18
Speaker 1: a hundred something miles I think, and um, he definitely
5:22
Speaker 1: did live. He definitely did exist. That's not a question
5:25
Speaker 1: because we do have documentary evidence that this person live
5:29
Speaker 1: from uh fifteen sixty four to sixteen sixteen, about fifty
5:33
Speaker 1: two years and depending on when you placed his birthday,
5:35
Speaker 1: maybe fifty two years on the nose, So we know
5:39
Speaker 1: he existed. Again, what's an issue what's being questions whether
5:43
Speaker 1: that man William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went
5:46
Speaker 1: on to become an actor, who went on to become
5:48
Speaker 1: a producer, who worked with the in the Globe theater um,
5:52
Speaker 1: whether he was the author of the plays we consider
5:55
Speaker 1: written by Shakespeare. That's what's that question. Yeah, so like
5:59
Speaker 1: he's said, he was a real dude. Uh. He came
6:02
Speaker 1: from a family that was I mean I kind of
6:05
Speaker 1: read it as a little bit in middle class. They
6:07
Speaker 1: certainly were not like upper class nobility types. His father
6:12
Speaker 1: was a was a glover. He wore h hell, I
6:15
Speaker 1: guess he wore gloves too, but he made gloves. Allow
6:17
Speaker 1: me to demonstrate, be pretty weird if he didn't. Uh, okay,
6:22
Speaker 1: I won't even wear his own gloves, but he produces
6:25
Speaker 1: very very fine gloves for well to do people. Um,
6:29
Speaker 1: but he did achieve some Um, I guess it worked
6:33
Speaker 1: his way up the social chain a little bit because
6:35
Speaker 1: eventually he would serve as what's sort of like a
6:38
Speaker 1: mayor uh in Stratford. And again, while not nobility like,
6:43
Speaker 1: they were fairly well regarded as people. Right, So, um,
6:48
Speaker 1: we don't know for certain, but there's a pretty good
6:51
Speaker 1: there's a much better um chance than not that because
6:55
Speaker 1: of his father's position in town, because they had some money.
6:59
Speaker 1: Like you said, they middle class. He um almost certainly
7:02
Speaker 1: would have been educated at the grammar school at Stratford.
7:05
Speaker 1: So what most people think is that that William Shakespeare
7:09
Speaker 1: was educated until about the age of thirteen, and he
7:12
Speaker 1: would have learned things like Latin, he would have learned history. Um,
7:16
Speaker 1: he would have learned some classic literature. He definitely would
7:19
Speaker 1: have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays
7:24
Speaker 1: would would go on to expound on. Um. So he
7:27
Speaker 1: definitely was I I can't say that. That's the thing, Like,
7:30
Speaker 1: you really have to be careful what you say about this.
7:33
Speaker 1: I was about to say, so he definitely was educated.
7:35
Speaker 1: We don't know that he was. This is all just
7:37
Speaker 1: a supposition, but it's a pretty good bat. It's a
7:40
Speaker 1: good supposition that he actually was educated. Yeah, and all this,
7:44
Speaker 1: you know, the reason that's important is all of this
7:46
Speaker 1: kind of comes back later, as some people say, proof
7:50
Speaker 1: that he may not have written this stuff because like
7:52
Speaker 1: how could it? And one of the main arguments used
7:55
Speaker 1: many times is how could a kid who came from
7:57
Speaker 1: here have known about these military military exploits and the
8:02
Speaker 1: Elizabethan Court and all these different languages and all this
8:06
Speaker 1: high falutin stuff that he wrote about. So, uh, it's
8:09
Speaker 1: important to, you know, talk about his education. And it
8:12
Speaker 1: seems like he was likely educated pretty well until thirteen,
8:16
Speaker 1: which you know, I'm not even sure if that's earlier
8:19
Speaker 1: late as far as the time period goes, do you
8:21
Speaker 1: know if that was like kind of generally it for kids,
8:25
Speaker 1: it was it was in the middle because he could
8:28
Speaker 1: have just as easily not been educated at all, right
8:31
Speaker 1: of course, but he also didn't go on to Cambridge
8:34
Speaker 1: or Oxford to um to extend his studies, so he
8:37
Speaker 1: was in there in the middle. They you think he
8:39
Speaker 1: was probably educated, not highly educated, but also not you know, uneducated.
8:44
Speaker 1: That's that's the key, And that if if there was
8:47
Speaker 1: evidence he had not gone to school, I think that
8:49
Speaker 1: the anti Shakespeare UM people would have a real like
8:53
Speaker 1: marking their favor. But he has just enough education that
8:57
Speaker 1: you can make the case like, no, like this guy,
9:00
Speaker 1: this guy learned about this stuff already and he could
9:03
Speaker 1: have known about it. And you know, when you had
9:05
Speaker 1: imagination and natural talent, did you come up with Shakespeare conceivably? Yeah? Uh.
9:10
Speaker 1: He got married to Anne Hathaway. Um, you know, go
9:15
Speaker 1: ahead and insert Anne Hathaway joke there. You know she's
9:18
Speaker 1: a real actor, right, sure, Yeah, Devil Wears Pradac and
9:22
Speaker 1: Princess Diaries. He was in inception No, No, was she interstellar? Yes,
9:31
Speaker 1: she did a stellar job. An interstellar Come on? Uh?
9:35
Speaker 1: They got married, um, when he was quite a bit younger.
9:39
Speaker 1: She was twenty six, he was eighteen. She was pregnant,
9:43
Speaker 1: which is probably a little unusual for the time. They
9:45
Speaker 1: had a daughter named Susannah, and then had twins, boy
9:49
Speaker 1: and a girl twin. And the boy uh named him Net,
9:52
Speaker 1: not Hamlet, but him Net Yeah, which apparently they've never
9:56
Speaker 1: turned up another use of that name in and the
10:00
Speaker 1: at the time proof mhm Uh. He was eleven years
10:04
Speaker 1: old when he died, uh, And that kind of comes
10:06
Speaker 1: into play later on as well. Um. And then there's
10:11
Speaker 1: about a you know, from five to about fifty two,
10:15
Speaker 1: there's about a seven year gap where we don't know
10:18
Speaker 1: a lot about what was going on with Shakespeare. Uh.
10:22
Speaker 1: And then he pops up, which a lot can happen
10:24
Speaker 1: in seven years. Again not trying to sway people one
10:28
Speaker 1: way or the other, but you can certainly learn a
10:30
Speaker 1: lot in seven years if you have some big life experiences.
10:34
Speaker 1: But he pops up in London, and again, as far
10:37
Speaker 1: as the record go goes, and you know, keep in mind,
10:40
Speaker 1: a lot of this record before he was known in
10:44
Speaker 1: his lifetime as an author, was you know, just kind
10:48
Speaker 1: of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff
10:50
Speaker 1: like various little lawsuits and mortgages and sort of banking
10:55
Speaker 1: records and stuff like that, right, yeah, yeah, And and
10:58
Speaker 1: also I mean, like that's that about as much documentation
11:01
Speaker 1: as you would be able to come up with on
11:04
Speaker 1: most people. And you could make a case that there's
11:06
Speaker 1: more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people who weren't
11:10
Speaker 1: nobility of his era. And that's that's because there's been
11:15
Speaker 1: so much scholarship and study and research into his life
11:20
Speaker 1: that they've turned up, you know, as much as they can.
11:23
Speaker 1: But what they've turned up only amounts to about five
11:25
Speaker 1: hundred different pieces of um documentation of one form or another. Right.
11:31
Speaker 1: Uh So one of those pieces of documentation, uh in
11:36
Speaker 1: Early On in London is a pamphlet written by Um
11:40
Speaker 1: generally believed to be written by this guy named Robert Green.
11:43
Speaker 1: There were some other people that could have possibly written it,
11:45
Speaker 1: but it's called Green's Groatsworth of Wit. And there's a
11:50
Speaker 1: line where he references Shakespeare in it, uh in a
11:53
Speaker 1: contemporaneous fashion that, right, doesn't matter where he kind of
12:00
Speaker 1: takes a shot out of He says, talks about Shakespeare,
12:03
Speaker 1: says there's an upstart crow. Uh in his own conceit
12:07
Speaker 1: the only shake seine in a country, which kind of
12:11
Speaker 1: translates into he kind of thinks he's the only Shakespeare right,
12:15
Speaker 1: like he thinks he's all that and um, it should
12:18
Speaker 1: be noted also as far as the thievery that in
12:22
Speaker 1: Asop's Fables, crows would steal the feathers of others. So
12:26
Speaker 1: the people in the um, I don't want to say
12:28
Speaker 1: anti Shakespeare, but the people say that he might not
12:30
Speaker 1: have written these things. Says this is a big clue,
12:34
Speaker 1: and saying that he might have stolen some of these things.
12:37
Speaker 1: That's why he's referred to as a crow by this
12:38
Speaker 1: other guy. Yeah. But in that that um, that uh quote,
12:44
Speaker 1: he says, the upstart crow is beautified with our feathers,
12:48
Speaker 1: and he's a playwright. So the pro Shakespeare people, you
12:52
Speaker 1: call them the pro Stratford group. Um, they suggest that
12:56
Speaker 1: what what he's, what Green is talking about is he's
12:59
Speaker 1: he's poking fun at a common actor who is deigning
13:03
Speaker 1: to even attempt to write plays, which you know, among
13:06
Speaker 1: playwrights is far more important than acting. Anybody can act,
13:10
Speaker 1: but it really takes something to to write a play.
13:12
Speaker 1: At least that's what they thought at the time, and
13:15
Speaker 1: um that he's taking a shot at him for that. Yeah,
13:18
Speaker 1: and we should point out that being an actor back
13:20
Speaker 1: then and being a part of the theater was not
13:22
Speaker 1: like it is today. It wasn't some uh revered position.
13:27
Speaker 1: It was sort of you know, body plays and common
13:31
Speaker 1: people were into this kind of thing, So it wasn't
13:34
Speaker 1: when he says he was just an actor. That's a
13:36
Speaker 1: pretty big disk, right. So the last thing that we have,
13:40
Speaker 1: I guess, the last documentation, although there's other stuff that's
13:43
Speaker 1: been turned up. They m they did archaeological expeditions on
13:48
Speaker 1: his house. I think his house has been um under
13:51
Speaker 1: ownership of a public trust since like the nineteenth century,
13:55
Speaker 1: and um they've they've carried out archaeological um examination since
14:00
Speaker 1: of it. And they found that he went back and
14:02
Speaker 1: forth between London and Stratford. Um. They so they know
14:06
Speaker 1: stuff about him like that. But as far as like
14:08
Speaker 1: documentation goes, the last piece of documentation we have comes
14:12
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixteen, which is his will that he wrote
14:16
Speaker 1: and then a few months later he died and the
14:19
Speaker 1: last I guess, the last last piece of documentation is
14:22
Speaker 1: his tombstone, which in and of itself is curious because
14:25
Speaker 1: his tombstone contains a curse on it but not his name. Yeah,
14:30
Speaker 1: is that the one uh with the quote, Yeah, it's
14:34
Speaker 1: a curse. He's saying like, don't dig me up or
14:37
Speaker 1: you're gonna be cursed. Yeah, it's his good friend for
14:39
Speaker 1: jesus sake, forbear to dig the dust and closed here.
14:43
Speaker 1: Blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed
14:45
Speaker 1: be he who moves my bones. Uh. Some people point
14:49
Speaker 1: to that as poor writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was
14:53
Speaker 1: a great writer, would never written this kind of shabby curse,
14:57
Speaker 1: and other people say, like, who said Shakespeare even wrote that?
15:01
Speaker 1: Necessarily this This is a good instructive example of like
15:05
Speaker 1: kind of the back and forth between the people, Right,
15:07
Speaker 1: this is terrible writing. Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And
15:10
Speaker 1: then the anti Shakespeare crew says, well, of course he
15:13
Speaker 1: wrote it, because who else would just not think to
15:16
Speaker 1: put his name on his own tombstone? And the other
15:19
Speaker 1: ones just put their head in their hands and just
15:21
Speaker 1: start crying, and it just goes downhill from there. But
15:24
Speaker 1: that's a really good example of like the the just
15:27
Speaker 1: kind of like the people will jump on any single
15:30
Speaker 1: thing that they possibly can and often interpret it one
15:33
Speaker 1: way or the the other. So one thing, one single thing,
15:36
Speaker 1: provides evidence for both sides. It's that kind of yeah, totally. UM.
15:41
Speaker 1: Another thing that people point to is the fact that
15:45
Speaker 1: of you know, we we don't have a lot of
15:48
Speaker 1: like letters and papers and things like that because his
15:51
Speaker 1: uh family line h ended in six seventy I think
15:56
Speaker 1: uh he had a granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, that died without
16:00
Speaker 1: bearing children, So most of his stuff basically lost as
16:04
Speaker 1: far as family possessions and things like that. UM. People
16:08
Speaker 1: do point to the will at times and say, well,
16:11
Speaker 1: in his will, you know he leaves certain things, but
16:14
Speaker 1: like there's never any mention of any manuscripts, um. And
16:18
Speaker 1: and again this is all like it's a little weird maybe,
16:21
Speaker 1: but none of this is proof um. And you know
16:24
Speaker 1: through the personal records that we do have in those
16:28
Speaker 1: five references, like none of them really reference him like
16:32
Speaker 1: manuscripts and him writing things. Right. That's what's most compelling
16:37
Speaker 1: to me is that when you put together the um
16:40
Speaker 1: documentation about his life that we know, it's clear he's
16:44
Speaker 1: involved in the theater, he's an actor. We get that.
16:46
Speaker 1: That's that comes through loud and clear. What doesn't come
16:49
Speaker 1: through isn't documented at all, is him as a writer.
16:53
Speaker 1: And that that thing about the will, the fact that
16:56
Speaker 1: if you look at the wills and um and bequeathments
17:00
Speaker 1: of other writers of the time, um, you can find
17:04
Speaker 1: evidence that they were writers. They like leave books to
17:07
Speaker 1: other people that um there um they they leave unfinished
17:11
Speaker 1: manuscripts that stay in the family uh for for generations,
17:15
Speaker 1: and um it is very curious. His will is very curious.
17:20
Speaker 1: But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost
17:23
Speaker 1: to history because his granddaughter was the end of the
17:26
Speaker 1: family line, that actually holds up because other um great
17:30
Speaker 1: authors of say the same major of any age. A
17:33
Speaker 1: lot of the reason that their personal effects and papers
17:36
Speaker 1: are still still around is because their family home was
17:41
Speaker 1: passed down from generation to generation to generation, and there
17:45
Speaker 1: was a long enough period of time for the importance
17:48
Speaker 1: of that writer to become clear. And so other people
17:52
Speaker 1: came in and said, can we have your great great
17:54
Speaker 1: great grandfather's personal effects, um, because we want to put
17:58
Speaker 1: them in this museum. There's enough time. There wasn't enough time.
18:01
Speaker 1: There's only seventy years between the death of Shakespeare and
18:04
Speaker 1: the end of his family line, and he didn't become
18:06
Speaker 1: widely popular until the I think middle of the eighteenth century,
18:11
Speaker 1: so he was kind of a victim of that and that.
18:14
Speaker 1: But both of those to me provide really good evidence
18:17
Speaker 1: for why there is a documentation of his writing. You know, yeah, absolutely,
18:22
Speaker 1: UM and the will and by the way, we uh
18:25
Speaker 1: The Atlantic has a great, great, pretty deep dive article
18:29
Speaker 1: as they do on this, which provided a lot of
18:31
Speaker 1: the supplementary information that we got, um, but by Elizabeth Winkler,
18:38
Speaker 1: great read UM. One of the things that Winkler points out,
18:42
Speaker 1: and other people who point out on the will as well,
18:44
Speaker 1: it's like Shakespeare wrote a lot about um music and
18:49
Speaker 1: I think there were three hundred musical terms, and all
18:51
Speaker 1: of his plays mentioned of twenty six musical instruments. And
18:55
Speaker 1: like in his will he didn't he didn't even have
18:58
Speaker 1: a loot to pass down to anybody um and like
19:01
Speaker 1: you said, didn't have books even like a library that
19:04
Speaker 1: he wanted to give. And you know, again, this is
19:06
Speaker 1: not proof necessarily necessarily of anything, but it's all of
19:10
Speaker 1: this stuff has added up over the years to enough
19:13
Speaker 1: for people to arise to like get suspicious about it.
19:17
Speaker 1: I think exactly, you want to take a break a breather,
19:21
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it. Yeah, let's take a
19:23
Speaker 1: let's take a breather, let's take five. Uh. One thing
19:55
Speaker 1: that Ed who helped us put this together mentions that
19:59
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your to on it. I didn't
20:01
Speaker 1: really think it had a whole lot to do with it.
20:04
Speaker 1: One way or the other was all of the various
20:06
Speaker 1: misspellings of Shakespeare's name over the years. Uh. He would
20:11
Speaker 1: sign it in different ways, he would abbreviate it in
20:14
Speaker 1: different ways. There are documents with I mean, it looks
20:17
Speaker 1: like fifteen different ways of spelling Shakespeare, everything from shacks
20:22
Speaker 1: with an ex peer, uh, two spears and something you
20:25
Speaker 1: would jab somebody with. Uh, It's misspelled all over the place.
20:29
Speaker 1: And I just kind of took that as you know,
20:32
Speaker 1: people misspelled things a lot back then. There weren't you know,
20:35
Speaker 1: there weren't necessarily records that you could go look at
20:37
Speaker 1: very easily, so you might just take a guess at
20:40
Speaker 1: how to spell a name and then it was on
20:43
Speaker 1: the record. And so I didn't really think that factored
20:45
Speaker 1: in much, did you, I didn't. And the impression I
20:49
Speaker 1: have is that all the different spellings are easily explained
20:53
Speaker 1: away from just the era, Like you just said, and
20:56
Speaker 1: that the people who clamp onto that are actually looking
20:58
Speaker 1: into him just to find like hidden naming and codes
21:01
Speaker 1: to So I think, like the different spellings of the
21:04
Speaker 1: names is um, it's about a Yeah, it's about as
21:06
Speaker 1: big a boon doggle as you're gonna find in the
21:08
Speaker 1: in the Shakespeare authorship argument, I think. All right, so
21:11
Speaker 1: we'll cast that aside. Well, hold on, before we do,
21:14
Speaker 1: I want to point out my favorite abbreviation, which one
21:17
Speaker 1: I think, Well, let me look, I bet you I
21:19
Speaker 1: know which one. But go, okay, put it, put it
21:22
Speaker 1: back in the deck. Yeah, it's back in the deck.
21:24
Speaker 1: Okay it is WILLM shack P. Yeah, that's the one.
21:29
Speaker 1: It stands out pretty blatantly s h A k P.
21:32
Speaker 1: I love it. Check hello Willem. Check. It's not a
21:37
Speaker 1: really good hotel check in name, but it's still worth mentioning.
21:40
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty good. Um. So, like we mentioned
21:43
Speaker 1: sort of what's at the root of a lot of
21:45
Speaker 1: these theories is uh, what ed I think rightly calls elitism,
21:51
Speaker 1: which is, how could this guy, even you know, educated
21:56
Speaker 1: up to thirteen, how could he have known about all
21:59
Speaker 1: this stuff? How could he have known about military exploits.
22:02
Speaker 1: And you know, if you read Shakespeare's plays, which if
22:05
Speaker 1: you're an English major you have to read a lot
22:07
Speaker 1: of them, there there's a lot going on in these
22:11
Speaker 1: plays about a lot of different stuff. He didn't write
22:13
Speaker 1: about just kind of one kind of thing. So it
22:16
Speaker 1: implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge about a
22:19
Speaker 1: lot of things, and not just different things as it
22:23
Speaker 1: relates to England, different things, as it relates to entirely
22:25
Speaker 1: different lands, Like think about where a lot of his
22:29
Speaker 1: stuff takes places in Italy. Um And, as far as
22:32
Speaker 1: anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't go to Italy. Although remember there's
22:36
Speaker 1: that lost year eight year period they call him the
22:38
Speaker 1: Lost Years. It's entirely possible he went to Italy during
22:41
Speaker 1: that time. It's also just as possible that he didn't
22:44
Speaker 1: go to Italy during that time. We just don't know.
22:47
Speaker 1: But that is something that really stands out. And yes,
22:50
Speaker 1: there is a tremendous amount of elitism and classicism among
22:54
Speaker 1: some of the um anti Shakespeare group, but I think
22:58
Speaker 1: that that is I think that dismisses a lot of
23:01
Speaker 1: their points out of hand, and they do have some
23:03
Speaker 1: really good points. They're not just cranks and crackpots, like
23:07
Speaker 1: they have some pretty good evidence. You can make a
23:10
Speaker 1: case at least as good evidence that um as the
23:14
Speaker 1: pro Shakespeare people um. But the upshot of it is
23:18
Speaker 1: really kind of a compliment. They're saying, these plays are
23:21
Speaker 1: so good, that Shakespeare's arguably the greatest writer who ever lived.
23:27
Speaker 1: He has such a crazy imagination, he's so funny, he
23:30
Speaker 1: has such an extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of
23:34
Speaker 1: the human condition. Could it really all have been written
23:38
Speaker 1: by this man from at the time the country, who
23:42
Speaker 1: was educated up to thirteen, who came from the middle class,
23:45
Speaker 1: who may or may not have ever traveled out of England?
23:48
Speaker 1: How is that even possible? Are people born that gifted?
23:52
Speaker 1: That's ultimately if you want to go beyond the classicism
23:54
Speaker 1: and the elite. That's really what their argument boils down to. Yeah,
23:59
Speaker 1: I agree. And if you if you don't know a
24:01
Speaker 1: lot of Shakespeare, have never really read a lot yourself,
24:03
Speaker 1: and you think like you're sort of in that camp,
24:06
Speaker 1: like I mean, this is kind of overrated, Like this guy, No,
24:11
Speaker 1: these plays are brilliant, and uh, there's a reason why
24:15
Speaker 1: they still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or
24:21
Speaker 1: inspired by Shakespeare's plays. Uh, it's because they were all
24:25
Speaker 1: genuinely brilliant. It was great, great stuff. And what you
24:29
Speaker 1: need is a really good teacher to kind of walk
24:32
Speaker 1: you through it because it's it's tough to read. And
24:34
Speaker 1: we had, um, we had some good ones at Georgia
24:37
Speaker 1: University of George. I had one. I can't remember his name. God,
24:39
Speaker 1: I can picture him in my head. He was so great.
24:43
Speaker 1: Probably someone know it was WILLM. Shack shack pe Um.
24:51
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember his name. I bet you
24:52
Speaker 1: someone will write in in the uh mid nineties, who
24:55
Speaker 1: the great players harpsichord? Oh? Well no, I had a
25:00
Speaker 1: classics professor who played the harpsichord. Yeah, this was you know,
25:04
Speaker 1: you had to take Shakespeare one in two. Those were
25:06
Speaker 1: the only required English classes as a as an English major,
25:10
Speaker 1: so that kind of shows the importance. But what he
25:12
Speaker 1: did was he sattised down and we read the plays
25:16
Speaker 1: out loud in class, and after every you know, short bit,
25:20
Speaker 1: he would say, well, here's what's going on, and here's
25:22
Speaker 1: what he's saying. Man, you were very lucky. Yeah. And
25:25
Speaker 1: once you once you hear that and you're like, oh,
25:27
Speaker 1: these are very contemporary stories and that's why they still
25:31
Speaker 1: carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories,
25:34
Speaker 1: but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not
25:37
Speaker 1: it's not high falutin stuff. It's just it was written
25:40
Speaker 1: at a time where it seems that way. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
25:43
Speaker 1: because we don't really speak in you know, Renaissance English anymore,
25:46
Speaker 1: so it seems it might as well be Greek to us. Um.
25:50
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was intended for common audiences. Like the
25:53
Speaker 1: average person would laugh or cry at those at those plays.
25:57
Speaker 1: And I think also, like really kind of support at
26:00
Speaker 1: your point that four hundred years later, those plays can
26:03
Speaker 1: still make people today laugh and cry like they still
26:07
Speaker 1: hold up. I guess what you're saying. And um, have
26:10
Speaker 1: you ever heard of Sister Wendy. No, she is, she's
26:15
Speaker 1: a nun. I don't believe she's still with us. And
26:17
Speaker 1: I think in the nineties she made this series of
26:19
Speaker 1: videos where she just went around the museums around the
26:22
Speaker 1: world and explained paintings to you in a way that
26:26
Speaker 1: I would love to find a Sister Wendy of Shakespeare.
26:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's somebody out there, but you could do
26:31
Speaker 1: a lot worse to of killing several hours watching Sister
26:35
Speaker 1: Wendy explained paintings because she was she had like a
26:38
Speaker 1: natural gift at just not only understanding what she was
26:41
Speaker 1: looking at, but explaining it really understandably. I love that,
26:45
Speaker 1: And I think in Sister Wendy's case and my professor
26:49
Speaker 1: shack By, it's it. It comes from a place of um.
26:54
Speaker 1: They have such great admiration and they want to They
26:57
Speaker 1: really want people to understand this stuff. Who might ordinarily
27:01
Speaker 1: go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get
27:02
Speaker 1: paintings like this, or I don't get places like this art.
27:06
Speaker 1: Uh So should we get in speaking of art? Great segue?
27:10
Speaker 1: Uh should we get into this mess of the The
27:13
Speaker 1: bust of Shakespeare? Yeah, I mean it's another It's very
27:16
Speaker 1: much like his tombstone, where people are like it means this, No,
27:19
Speaker 1: I means that, you know. Yeah. So there's a bust
27:22
Speaker 1: an effigy of Shakespeare inside the church there in Stratford.
27:28
Speaker 1: And there's been a lot of controversy over this thing
27:31
Speaker 1: because part of it is not necessarily like was he
27:35
Speaker 1: the author, although it does play into that, but sort
27:37
Speaker 1: of like what what did he look like? And how
27:39
Speaker 1: do we know that's what he looked like? Like? We've
27:41
Speaker 1: all seen the picture. Uh, and there's like this one
27:44
Speaker 1: painting and this one bust, and that's kind of where
27:47
Speaker 1: everything comes from. And some people say this was done
27:50
Speaker 1: after he was dead, like, we really don't know that
27:53
Speaker 1: that's what he looked like. Um, I think just a
27:56
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a
28:01
Speaker 1: pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt that it
28:05
Speaker 1: was actually done. I think she said it was highly likely.
28:08
Speaker 1: Professor Orlan said it's highly likely that it was done
28:12
Speaker 1: while he was alive, and that he commissioned it because
28:16
Speaker 1: she thinks she knows who did the bust and that
28:18
Speaker 1: that person lived near him and was a regular at
28:22
Speaker 1: the globe and kind of put all these clues together.
28:25
Speaker 1: But other people, some people say it was his dad,
28:28
Speaker 1: uh and not him because of this whole sack of
28:31
Speaker 1: grain argument. Yeah. This so there there was an etching
28:36
Speaker 1: that was made of the bust within some period of
28:40
Speaker 1: time after the bust was erected, but before it was altered.
28:43
Speaker 1: So the bus has definitely been altered. And it looks
28:46
Speaker 1: like one way you can interpret this. This thing at
28:49
Speaker 1: the bottom, this puffy thing that's that that's at the
28:52
Speaker 1: hands of the bust the effigy um as a sack
28:56
Speaker 1: of grain. I don't know if it were a sack
28:58
Speaker 1: of grain, why anyone would ever presented in that position.
29:03
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. And so right, so what
29:06
Speaker 1: the the anti Shakespeare, anti Strapford people are saying is like, yeah,
29:09
Speaker 1: it's his dad, It's it's not him um, or if
29:12
Speaker 1: it is Shakespeare, he was known for his grain carrying skills,
29:16
Speaker 1: not his writing skills. And the pro strap For people
29:20
Speaker 1: are like, don't be ridiculous. This is obviously a pillow,
29:23
Speaker 1: and at some point somebody did revise the bus, so
29:26
Speaker 1: it is unequivocally a pillow, like there's just no way
29:30
Speaker 1: to to mistake it. And it's not so much a
29:32
Speaker 1: pillow as it is like a hand rest for him
29:33
Speaker 1: to write on, because he's got a piece of paper
29:35
Speaker 1: on it and a quill in his other hand. But
29:38
Speaker 1: the the anti Shakespeare people jump on and say, like,
29:42
Speaker 1: see it was altered to fit this um to cover
29:45
Speaker 1: up this conspiracy later on, yeah, exactly, and and that
29:49
Speaker 1: quill has been stolen and replaced I think so many
29:52
Speaker 1: times over the years that now I don't know if
29:55
Speaker 1: it currently has the quill or if it has the
29:58
Speaker 1: quill and it's now behind glass. Oh that could that's
30:01
Speaker 1: a good way to get around. And I'm not really sure,
30:03
Speaker 1: but you know, that became a you know, obviously it's
30:07
Speaker 1: something you could just snatch of his hand, and you've
30:10
Speaker 1: got Shakespeare's quill on your on your door. Speaking of
30:13
Speaker 1: Um being snatched, apparently that curse on his tombst didn't
30:18
Speaker 1: work because they did a scan of it UM on
30:20
Speaker 1: the four anniversary of his death and found that at
30:23
Speaker 1: least his skull was missing, if not all of his remains.
30:26
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, and that interesting. So somebody out there
30:30
Speaker 1: has Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection. It's probably Rosenkrantzer Guildenstern. Uh,
30:37
Speaker 1: great Shakespeare joke. There's some people out there that were like,
30:43
Speaker 1: nailed it. Good. Another thing, as far as evidence goes,
30:48
Speaker 1: is UM the first folio, which is I think it
30:51
Speaker 1: was the first collection that they put in print of
30:54
Speaker 1: all of Shakespeare's plays, including UM eighteen that had never
30:59
Speaker 1: been in print before. And there was a I guess
31:03
Speaker 1: it was it a forward written by a guy named
31:06
Speaker 1: Ben Johnson, who was arrival of Shakespeare's He was kind
31:10
Speaker 1: of known as a jealous Um sort of argumentative guy,
31:15
Speaker 1: but he calls Shakespeare the Swan of Avon and as
31:19
Speaker 1: sort of very laudatory in this forward. But I think
31:22
Speaker 1: you found stuff later on where he was kind of
31:26
Speaker 1: like I had my fingers crossed the whole time kind of. Yeah.
31:30
Speaker 1: So the pro Stratford people who believe Shakespeare Shakespeare say, look, man,
31:35
Speaker 1: this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival,
31:38
Speaker 1: but a real rival, really critical, like had biting, biting
31:42
Speaker 1: criticism and sense of humor, and also was not one
31:46
Speaker 1: to just be like um to to just bow to
31:50
Speaker 1: no nobility, your privilege, your wealth or status. Right. So
31:54
Speaker 1: if this guy is saying that Shakespeare the Swan of Avon,
31:58
Speaker 1: which places this man at effort on Avon because Ben
32:01
Speaker 1: Johnson is calling him that, that proves that Shakespeare was Shakespeare.
32:06
Speaker 1: The anti Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson
32:10
Speaker 1: had his fingers crossed the whole time, and that really
32:12
Speaker 1: what he was doing was providing cover for this larger,
32:16
Speaker 1: essentially conspiracy of people who actually wore Shakespeare. He was
32:21
Speaker 1: blending his his renown to it. Um. Neither one really
32:27
Speaker 1: makes sense. I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a
32:30
Speaker 1: complete change of heart. Um, it just doesn't quite add up.
32:34
Speaker 1: But then also the idea that he he would provide
32:38
Speaker 1: that cover for a group of noble people, UM seems
32:42
Speaker 1: unlikely as well too. Yeah, I agree. One of the
32:46
Speaker 1: first public doubters UH in the eight hundreds was a
32:50
Speaker 1: woman named Delia Bacon no relation to Francis Bacon, um,
32:56
Speaker 1: although you may think so, because one person that Delia
33:01
Speaker 1: Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. Uh.
33:06
Speaker 1: Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a
33:11
Speaker 1: sort of a long life before she got into UM,
33:14
Speaker 1: kind of hating Shakespeare. Yeah, hating him, like really didn't
33:18
Speaker 1: like Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was
33:21
Speaker 1: not the author. And um, her idea was that it
33:26
Speaker 1: was Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some
33:30
Speaker 1: other people too, who were these very well regarded people
33:35
Speaker 1: of you know, philosophy and politics and science, who would
33:39
Speaker 1: not have been allowed to put forth these plays and
33:42
Speaker 1: what these plays, what they really were, were not even
33:44
Speaker 1: meant for entertainment or for the stage. They were meant
33:47
Speaker 1: to be sort of biting criticisms of all kinds of
33:52
Speaker 1: various things that these gentlemen could not put their name
33:55
Speaker 1: on Yeah, so there's Yeah, either they couldn't put their
33:58
Speaker 1: name on it because they would be executed, is basically
34:00
Speaker 1: treasonous to the crown because they were, you know, putting
34:03
Speaker 1: forth the idea of social reform and you know, women's
34:08
Speaker 1: rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots of the nobility. Um.
34:13
Speaker 1: Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that
34:16
Speaker 1: was introduced and I think the eighteen seventies, and that
34:19
Speaker 1: was that they just just out of um noble nobility
34:25
Speaker 1: no bless, I guess they wouldn't deign to have their
34:28
Speaker 1: stuff published. It would it would erode their social reputation,
34:33
Speaker 1: even accepting the idea that they would be beheaded for treason.
34:37
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of reasons that that somebody
34:39
Speaker 1: like um Francis Bacon would have to cover up his
34:43
Speaker 1: identity if he were actually Shakespeare. And that same stigma
34:47
Speaker 1: of print and um political cover argument gets extended to
34:52
Speaker 1: other people beyond Bacon too. Yeah, and that you know,
34:55
Speaker 1: it makes a little bit of sense. Um. As far
34:57
Speaker 1: as Delia Bacon, she was able to talk Ralph Waldo
35:01
Speaker 1: Emerson into basically kind of buying her story and he
35:06
Speaker 1: arranged for her sponsorship basically to go to England to
35:10
Speaker 1: kind of research this. Apparently in England she she was
35:14
Speaker 1: kind of on record saying that she didn't research history
35:18
Speaker 1: books or records and things like that. She believed that
35:21
Speaker 1: the the proof was sort of in the plays themselves, uh,
35:25
Speaker 1: and in the in the text basically like with these clues, um. Apparently,
35:29
Speaker 1: she used to go to Shakespeare's tom a lot and
35:32
Speaker 1: and kind of just you know, hang out there and
35:34
Speaker 1: like try to convince the I guess the tomb keeper
35:37
Speaker 1: whoever you know takes care of the cemetery, the keeper, Yeah,
35:40
Speaker 1: the crypt keeper. I didn't want to say it to
35:43
Speaker 1: be let In and like almost got in at one
35:46
Speaker 1: point apparently, but I think she got sick and couldn't.
35:49
Speaker 1: And but she thought that the you know, the deep
35:51
Speaker 1: secret was within that tomb. Yeah. She kind of kicked
35:55
Speaker 1: off the nuttier um can up of the um questioning
36:02
Speaker 1: of of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off the whole thing,
36:06
Speaker 1: she she put like kind of a nutty sheen to it,
36:08
Speaker 1: like the idea that you could get your answers just
36:11
Speaker 1: from reading the plays, that the clues were in there.
36:14
Speaker 1: The thing is is Francis Bacon was known to to
36:17
Speaker 1: amuse himself by including you know, hidden codes and messages
36:21
Speaker 1: in his writings. So if it was Francis Bacon, that's
36:24
Speaker 1: not that much of a stretch. And supposedly Mark Twain
36:28
Speaker 1: and some friends UM did actually turn up. If you
36:31
Speaker 1: read the first folio, there is I guess some series
36:35
Speaker 1: of lines that spell out Francisco Bacon. No, it's pretty good.
36:43
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing, though, Francis Bacon wrote a
36:46
Speaker 1: lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot
36:49
Speaker 1: of fiction and pros or didn't he write no evidence
36:54
Speaker 1: that he ever wrote any kind of plays. Did he
36:57
Speaker 1: write that there was this other thing that kind of
37:00
Speaker 1: came along. So Delia Bacon is widely regarded as the
37:03
Speaker 1: person who kicked off the was Shakespeare Shakespeare idea UM,
37:07
Speaker 1: But supposedly there was a person who came before her,
37:11
Speaker 1: James Wilmot, who in one sat down to UM write
37:15
Speaker 1: a biography of Shakespeare and did all the research in
37:19
Speaker 1: London and Stratford on Avon, and UM was astonished by
37:25
Speaker 1: the lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays
37:30
Speaker 1: and started to suspect it and that he kicked it off.
37:32
Speaker 1: The thing is, the anti Shakespeare side has been accused
37:39
Speaker 1: of making those documents up, of forging those documents to
37:43
Speaker 1: support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory. Interesting. Yeah, so they
37:48
Speaker 1: weren't discovered until one, which is pretty convenient, and it's
37:52
Speaker 1: entirely possible that they were just forged. All right, should
37:56
Speaker 1: we take another break here? Yeah, let's all right, we'll
37:59
Speaker 1: take another break. We'll talk a little bit more about
38:02
Speaker 1: whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff. So one more thing about
38:34
Speaker 1: Delia Baking before we wrap it up. Like you said,
38:36
Speaker 1: she was a good writer, um, and her exhaustive examination
38:42
Speaker 1: of the texts of Shakespeare's plays resulted in a six
38:45
Speaker 1: d and twenty page book, The Philosophy of the Plays
38:49
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare Unfolded. And Um, she's often credited with with
38:54
Speaker 1: basically pre figuring, if not kicking off, the idea of
38:58
Speaker 1: literary criticism close readings of stuff to find other meanings.
39:02
Speaker 1: And she was doing it to expose noble people as Shakespeare.
39:07
Speaker 1: But but she was really good at it, and people said, well, hey,
39:10
Speaker 1: maybe we should do this for other stuff too. Yeah,
39:13
Speaker 1: And like ironically, because she kind of um, I mean,
39:16
Speaker 1: you know, the various tawdry accounts say she was driven
39:19
Speaker 1: to madness. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but
39:24
Speaker 1: it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in
39:27
Speaker 1: the latter stages of her life, and that her family
39:29
Speaker 1: was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that. Right, So
39:32
Speaker 1: Francis Bacon was um not the only person put forth.
39:36
Speaker 1: And there's probably, as far as like um believers go,
39:40
Speaker 1: somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him, and
39:43
Speaker 1: that would be um, the the seventeenth Earl of Oxford,
39:47
Speaker 1: Edward de Vere Right. Yeah, I mean there's a whole uh,
39:53
Speaker 1: there's a whole camp and a whole other and you know,
39:56
Speaker 1: we can't get into this too too much indeed, tale
40:00
Speaker 1: but there's a whole movement that says out of the
40:03
Speaker 1: eight people like we really think it was the seventeenth
40:06
Speaker 1: Earl of Oxford. Yeah, there's it's called the oxford Ian
40:09
Speaker 1: theory of Shakespearean authorship, and there is you know, um,
40:14
Speaker 1: some stuff to it. He was a poet, um, which
40:17
Speaker 1: points out that's so much for the stigma of print um,
40:22
Speaker 1: and that also, uh, you can compare his poetry and
40:26
Speaker 1: in like some specific works of poetry to some of
40:29
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's poetry um, and see some real comparisons. But um,
40:34
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, the the questions are
40:38
Speaker 1: the similarities, and there um, if I'm not mistaken, like
40:43
Speaker 1: and that to me it was the sixth Earl of Derby,
40:47
Speaker 1: who has a little more, um, a little more to offer. Really, um,
40:53
Speaker 1: there was there was one other thing. So Derby has
40:56
Speaker 1: his own group, the Derbyites man. This is what I mean.
41:00
Speaker 1: It's an onion. It's a Bluemen onion. So there was
41:02
Speaker 1: one other thing about Dave that is pretty suspicious. There
41:05
Speaker 1: were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man
41:10
Speaker 1: who was raised in the same household as Davie. And
41:15
Speaker 1: from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would
41:18
Speaker 1: know this person, and why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems.
41:21
Speaker 1: So this this noble nobleman he didn't know, um, But
41:26
Speaker 1: Davie certainly knew him. He was he was basically raised
41:28
Speaker 1: alongside him like a brother. So that along with the
41:31
Speaker 1: biographical reading, the close reading looking for parallels between Davie's
41:36
Speaker 1: life and Shakespeare's plays are what kind of back up
41:39
Speaker 1: the Oxfordian theories. Interesting because that Christopher Marlowe is another
41:44
Speaker 1: one who was a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's and
41:48
Speaker 1: they collaborated and they influenced one another. And this the
41:53
Speaker 1: details around Marlowe's death are uh hinky enough to where
41:58
Speaker 1: some people thought or at least the you know, the
42:00
Speaker 1: conspiracy is that is that he faked his death because
42:05
Speaker 1: he was gonna going to be executed by the crown
42:08
Speaker 1: and continued to write and then used his friend Billy
42:12
Speaker 1: Shakespeare as a front to continue to get those plays out. Um,
42:18
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure about this because I don't know
42:22
Speaker 1: that's that it's just a little far fetched. If you
42:24
Speaker 1: asked me, well, yeah, if and if you're if you're
42:26
Speaker 1: supposing that Marlowe faked his death in order to continue writing,
42:31
Speaker 1: you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped in a conspiracy
42:34
Speaker 1: theory maybe. But it's interesting because you know, marlow is
42:39
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly he may have
42:42
Speaker 1: been a secret agent for the crown. Um, he was
42:45
Speaker 1: an atheist, he was his own playwright. People loved him
42:50
Speaker 1: as a playwright at the time. Um, but he was
42:52
Speaker 1: no Shakespeare Like literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you
42:57
Speaker 1: could attribute um shakespeare writings too, because marlow was gloomy
43:02
Speaker 1: and super atheist and and um he was. His plays
43:07
Speaker 1: just didn't have that same kind of humanism and um
43:11
Speaker 1: funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. And also, why wouldn't Marlow
43:15
Speaker 1: just write these plays under his own name? He had
43:17
Speaker 1: no reason to write these plays under different names. Yeah, agreed. Uh,
43:22
Speaker 1: there have been people that put forth the idea that
43:25
Speaker 1: the there were several different women that might have been
43:28
Speaker 1: the real authors because uh, women were not allowed to
43:32
Speaker 1: write plays at the time. Um, eight percent of the
43:35
Speaker 1: plays written during this time were anonymous and no author
43:39
Speaker 1: was listed. And a lot of people said, hey, a
43:41
Speaker 1: lot of these were written by women and they just
43:43
Speaker 1: couldn't put their name on it. Um. Many of Shakespeare's
43:46
Speaker 1: plays and ideas are very progressive. Um, it's kind of
43:52
Speaker 1: a kind of a I don't know about flimsy, but
43:56
Speaker 1: it kind of demeans Shakespeare a bit to say that like,
43:59
Speaker 1: well had to be a woman because they were so
44:02
Speaker 1: progressive about women like taking a stand, when in fact,
44:05
Speaker 1: Shakespeare seemingly very much thought that way himself, right, Like
44:10
Speaker 1: how could a man write women like this? Come on? Yeah, Um,
44:14
Speaker 1: there's a woman named Mary Sidmund Herbert who has a
44:17
Speaker 1: whole foundation that's trying to prove that she wrote. Um.
44:20
Speaker 1: Kind of the worst of the Internet happened about seven
44:24
Speaker 1: years ago when you get these memes that are just
44:28
Speaker 1: full of false stuff and then everyone starts spreading them around.
44:32
Speaker 1: Uh there was a meme when all over social media
44:36
Speaker 1: that just had the picture of this black woman and
44:38
Speaker 1: said this is Amelia Bassano. H she really wrote Shakespeare stuff.
44:43
Speaker 1: She was not allowed to be a published author because
44:46
Speaker 1: she was a black woman at a time where she
44:49
Speaker 1: was suppressed and all this stuff. Um, none of this
44:52
Speaker 1: stuff was true. Um, first of all, she was maybe Moroccan.
44:56
Speaker 1: She was definitely not of African descent. Oh I thought
44:59
Speaker 1: she was some Venetian. I saw that she was Moroccan
45:03
Speaker 1: and had some Italian in her, so that, yeah, it
45:05
Speaker 1: makes a little sense. But she was definitely not of
45:08
Speaker 1: African descent. Um, she was a published author, So the
45:13
Speaker 1: whole notion that she wasn't allowed to publish things wasn't right.
45:15
Speaker 1: She was kind of a well known, uh poet I
45:19
Speaker 1: think at the time. So this kind of thing gets
45:21
Speaker 1: passed along the internet and then you know, half the
45:24
Speaker 1: people that see it just say, oh, we'll look at
45:25
Speaker 1: that Shakespeare was was It was all written by this
45:28
Speaker 1: lady back then. Problems. Yeah, problem solved. And that's just
45:32
Speaker 1: not how it works. One of the other things I
45:34
Speaker 1: saw that um, And I think the people who are
45:37
Speaker 1: like Shakespeare as a woman are like, well, okay, if
45:40
Speaker 1: we're if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship, we can't
45:42
Speaker 1: ignore this whole group of people who had every reason
45:46
Speaker 1: to hide their identity as authors of these plays because
45:50
Speaker 1: they were women and they weren't do this kind of stuff. Um.
45:53
Speaker 1: So there was a critic who in wrote of a
45:58
Speaker 1: um who praised a gentlewoman who was writing some amazing
46:01
Speaker 1: plays and sonnets. And this was the year after Shakespeare
46:05
Speaker 1: pops back up um, after his lost years, and when
46:09
Speaker 1: he was starting to write um. But that the critics
46:12
Speaker 1: said he didn't want to reveal who it was because
46:14
Speaker 1: he didn't want to basically get her in trouble. So
46:16
Speaker 1: that's what some other people kind of look at and say, see,
46:19
Speaker 1: Shakespeare was a woman. Well, I mean, I think I
46:22
Speaker 1: think this theory makes a lot more sense a lot
46:24
Speaker 1: of the others, you know, just by this year fact
46:28
Speaker 1: that women would not have been allowed to So uh,
46:31
Speaker 1: maybe Shakespeare was progressive and decided to be a front
46:35
Speaker 1: for these great works. But it reveals a point about
46:39
Speaker 1: UM being a anti Shakespeare, anti I guess Stratford person
46:44
Speaker 1: is you have to part of his You have to
46:47
Speaker 1: explain why somebody would want to fake authorship, would want
46:51
Speaker 1: to hide behind Shakespeare's name. Yeah, what do you call that?
46:54
Speaker 1: A motive? Yeah, you got means motive, an opportunity. You
47:01
Speaker 1: put those three together, you got your Shakespeare. Well that's
47:05
Speaker 1: what I mean about the maybe women wrote them. I mean,
47:07
Speaker 1: there was definite motive there, right exactly. So there was
47:11
Speaker 1: one other thing that happened. I mean a lot of
47:13
Speaker 1: stuff happened over the course of this hundred almost two
47:15
Speaker 1: hundred years now, UM of questioning Shakespeare's authorship Back in
47:20
Speaker 1: seven a UM OX forty and UM Charlton Augburn got
47:26
Speaker 1: the UM at least three sitting Supreme Court justices John
47:29
Speaker 1: Paul Stevens, William Brennan, and Harry Blackman to hold a
47:32
Speaker 1: mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was the author
47:37
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's plays, and they did on c span they
47:40
Speaker 1: had They held like a trial and heard the evidence,
47:43
Speaker 1: and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him, and
47:46
Speaker 1: UM it was pretty interesting, but they they it went
47:50
Speaker 1: two to two to one, I think in favor of
47:53
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author. But they did
47:56
Speaker 1: like real research and stuff. It wasn't just like a
47:59
Speaker 1: you know, yeah stunt no, So the Supreme Court justices
48:04
Speaker 1: were kind of taking a tongue in cheek. But I
48:06
Speaker 1: got the impression that Charlton Augburn was like, yes, finally
48:09
Speaker 1: going to prove it definitively one way or another, and
48:12
Speaker 1: it didn't even fall in his favor. Interesting, Yeah, it
48:16
Speaker 1: is interesting what people did in the eighties on c SPAN.
48:21
Speaker 1: I got a few more little things here from that
48:23
Speaker 1: Atlantic article that point to his authorship is being genuine.
48:29
Speaker 1: One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus
48:32
Speaker 1: and Adonis that was a very popular poem at the
48:35
Speaker 1: time that was put in print. Uh and it was
48:38
Speaker 1: printed by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went
48:41
Speaker 1: to school with him at Stratford. So that's a that's
48:45
Speaker 1: a pretty good little hint um he was written about
48:49
Speaker 1: at the time, So it's not like he was never
48:51
Speaker 1: known until his death and then all of a sudden
48:54
Speaker 1: became super popular, Like he died a rich man and
48:58
Speaker 1: was written about with by literary critics UM at the time,
49:02
Speaker 1: and and entertainment and play critics, so they were contemporaneous
49:07
Speaker 1: UM criticisms of his writing while he was still living,
49:11
Speaker 1: which which is a pretty you know, pretty big clue
49:14
Speaker 1: that he probably wrote this stuff. That is not proof, no,
49:17
Speaker 1: because those people could be there. They went and saw
49:20
Speaker 1: a play by Shakespeare. They didn't mean that they met
49:23
Speaker 1: Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the
49:26
Speaker 1: place and leaned up his shoulder while he wrote it. Right. Proof.
49:31
Speaker 1: The other last thing that I saw in the Atlantic
49:33
Speaker 1: article this is the one, or actually this was in
49:34
Speaker 1: a this was the Golden bullet from that video was
49:40
Speaker 1: Shakespeare was apparently concerned that, um, his dad's reputation sort
49:46
Speaker 1: of in the family's reputation suffered later in life because
49:49
Speaker 1: of financial problems that his dad had, and he really
49:52
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of restore their name and get a
49:54
Speaker 1: coat of arms made, which is, uh, you could, you know,
49:57
Speaker 1: it's like you could be a true gentleman if you
49:59
Speaker 1: had a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really
50:02
Speaker 1: long process. They don't just hand him out to anybody.
50:04
Speaker 1: You've gotta like have a certain level of achievement to
50:06
Speaker 1: get a coat of arms. So he went through this big,
50:09
Speaker 1: long process and had he went all Barry Linden on there.
50:13
Speaker 1: Oh man, what a movie. Um. He had a couple
50:16
Speaker 1: of different men in the Herald's office who defended Shakespeare's
50:20
Speaker 1: right to have a coat of arms because other people
50:22
Speaker 1: were saying, who is this guy? Even like he came
50:25
Speaker 1: from not much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms.
50:28
Speaker 1: And one of the guys who defended him was a
50:30
Speaker 1: man named William Camden, who this guy in the video
50:34
Speaker 1: referred to as one of the most learned men in
50:36
Speaker 1: all of England. Uh. He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster
50:41
Speaker 1: and apparently just knew everything on happening on the literary
50:45
Speaker 1: scene inside and out. And in one of his books
50:49
Speaker 1: he uh it was called the Remains of a Greater History.
50:52
Speaker 1: He talks about all the great writers of the time
50:54
Speaker 1: and he lists William Shakespeare of Avon Uh in that book.
50:59
Speaker 1: So he said, that's the golden bullet. Uh again, if
51:04
Speaker 1: it's just a front, it's still in no real proof
51:06
Speaker 1: of authorship. No it's not. I mean like this guy
51:09
Speaker 1: could just be playing along lending his his Yeah, that's
51:14
Speaker 1: another one. Too. Like that's the thing, like the anti
51:17
Speaker 1: Stratfordians have caused the pro Stratfordians to actually defend their position,
51:24
Speaker 1: and in doing so, it's kind of revealed that both
51:27
Speaker 1: of them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost
51:30
Speaker 1: just a matter of belief. Do you want to believe
51:32
Speaker 1: that one man was that brilliant and and that talented
51:36
Speaker 1: and gifted um or do you can? Can you just
51:39
Speaker 1: not believe that? It just doesn't make any sense to you.
51:41
Speaker 1: So it was a cabal of noble people who were
51:45
Speaker 1: trying to advance political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare
51:48
Speaker 1: and paying him off with maybe um family crests and
51:52
Speaker 1: money and and fame to to let let them use
51:56
Speaker 1: his name as their you know, the playwright. Yeah, also
52:00
Speaker 1: say like where he was from. There was some regional
52:02
Speaker 1: slang that was very specific to where he was from
52:05
Speaker 1: that was used. Uh, there was in Taming of the
52:08
Speaker 1: Shrew he mentions these Latin phrases that are in specifically
52:13
Speaker 1: from a Latin book that apparently was known to have
52:17
Speaker 1: been used at his school, at his grammar school in Stratford.
52:21
Speaker 1: So again there's all these little hints and clues. All
52:25
Speaker 1: of it kind of gave me a headache, right, And
52:28
Speaker 1: I was like, can we just like love these plays? Right? Exactly?
52:31
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. It's the ultimate point. Let's just love
52:35
Speaker 1: the place. People get serious about this though, Yeah, they
52:39
Speaker 1: definitely do. I mean it's pretty interesting and I mean
52:42
Speaker 1: I get it kind of fun to watch from the
52:43
Speaker 1: outside too. Ya Are you got anything else? No, we
52:48
Speaker 1: could go on all day, but totally we'd never get anywhere.
52:51
Speaker 1: There's like ten things I'm leaving on the table. So
52:53
Speaker 1: we just got to keep moving on, right, all right,
52:55
Speaker 1: Let's keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to
52:58
Speaker 1: know more about Shakespeare and authorship, there is a giant,
53:01
Speaker 1: gaping rabbit hole you can jump down on the internet
53:04
Speaker 1: and uh say sionar to all of your other pursuits.
53:08
Speaker 1: And since I said Sianara, it's time for listener mail.
53:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this just came in over the wire.
53:15
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of funny, uh, from our
53:18
Speaker 1: friends Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan, about eating about eating squid,
53:24
Speaker 1: says love the show fellas reason not to be so
53:27
Speaker 1: touchy though about eating squid. They are child murdering sea vermin,
53:34
Speaker 1: he said. The reason squid die after they made is
53:37
Speaker 1: a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the
53:41
Speaker 1: eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid
53:46
Speaker 1: in the spawning areas. Uh, squidly did lee is an
53:51
Speaker 1: infanticidal maniac and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably,
53:57
Speaker 1: of course. Uh So that's the argument, is that these
54:01
Speaker 1: squids deserve to be eaten because they would be eating
54:03
Speaker 1: themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says
54:08
Speaker 1: telled Josh not to eat uncooked squid. That's not great,
54:12
Speaker 1: all right, and uh kind regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan,
54:16
Speaker 1: a squid haven and a squid inc pasta destination. Stephen,
54:21
Speaker 1: that was a really great eye opening email. I may
54:24
Speaker 1: have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll have
54:26
Speaker 1: to get back to you, Okay, okay, thank you for
54:32
Speaker 1: responding to that, Stephen. If you want to be like
54:35
Speaker 1: Stephen and get in touch with us and send us
54:37
Speaker 1: a potentially eye opening email, you can do that. Send
54:41
Speaker 1: it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
54:47
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
54:50
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54:53
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