”Once inside the field, it is easy to become obsessed. Shakespeare scholars speak ruefully of addiction (another word coined by Shakespeare) and waste”Once inside the field, it is easy to become obsessed. Shakespeare scholars speak ruefully of addiction (another word coined by Shakespeare) and wasted years. Waylaid by the Shakespeare Siren, they dare not go forward but cannot go back. The field is full of men and women with damaged reputations and impaired sanity. Among Shakespearean researchers (very, very broadly defined), more than one perished in prison. There are serious whispers of a Shakespeare Curse.”
When I was at university, there was a lot of speculation about the true identity of William Shakespeare. Everyone who cared about his body of work had their own working theories. I was not surprised to find that Stuart Kells found the same splintering of belief when he attended Monash University for his doctorate. There were even more theories of who Shakespeare really was by the time he was attending school. There are the Stratfordians, who believe that Shakespeare was really Shakespeare. There are the anti-Stratfordians: Baconians, Marlovians, Derbyites, Oxfordians, Rutlanders, Nevillians, and Groupists.
To be fair, I’ve never given a lot of time to investigating the basis for most of these speculative, conspiracy theories for, really, if Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, then a conspiracy was certainly necessary. So I maneuvered the English department as a stout Stratfordian. It wasn’t very trendy to believe that Shakespeare was really Shakespeare, but to convince me that the grammar school boy from Stratford was merely a front for a member of the aristocracy, someone was going to have to move heaven and earth with documentary proof that is simply irrefutable.
Their criticism sometimes reeks of elitism. How dare a commoner with no real education become the most famous English wordsmith of all time? It is simply impossible, right?
”The idea that ‘William Shakespeare’ was the pen name of an Elizabethan aristocrat is ultimately less fanciful than ascribing to an alleged grammar school dropout the most exquisite dramatic literature in the English language.” ---Diana Price
Price is a Nevillian; in other words, she believes that Sir Henry Neville was the real Shakespeare. The information about Shakespeare’s early school days is sketchy because the records of the school burned. So how she knows he was a dropout is unsupportable, but it does reveal her lack of objectivity regarding Shakespeare, although there is a part of me that does think that it is quite possible that Shakespeare was too cool for school.
There is this concept that Shakespeare, the genius version, created his plays out of whole cloth. We do know that his plays were built upon the backs of existing plays. ”He acquired, adapted, appropriated, converted, revised, synthesised, improved, borrowed, copied, co-opted, re-used, re-worked, re-packaged, stole. Let us again remember he worked at a time when authorship, plagiarism and copyright were differently conceived.” To further confound the idea of Shakespeare as genius, it is very possible, of course, that other writers honed his plays into the masterpieces we enjoy today.
The thing is, when the plays were collected in the Folio editions, there was no outcry of stealing most foul by his fellow writers.
I do admit it is odd how a man so famous, who actually became reasonably wealthy as a playwright in London, could have left so little of himself behind for researchers to sift through. We have his plays and sonnets ard very little else. Where are his letters? Where are his research books? When I think about the enormous piles of correspondence I’ve written in my lifetime of letters, emails, business transactions, and book reviews, it would be enormously difficult to eliminate every trace of me from the universe. Although I do have a few enemies who would probably love to know how to do that. It is almost as if William Shakespeare has been systematically, deliberately removed from the public forum.
To add to the problem, as Stuart Kells, discovers as he searches for Shakespeare’s library is that there have been generations of conmen, forgers, collectors, researchers, writers, and outright thieves who have all had their grubby fingers on what little is known about the man or the books he may have owned.
As Kells reveals what he finds, I gain this more practical view of Shakespeare. He may have been brilliant, the upstart crow, but he was much more conscious of writing plays designed with a frothy mix of highbrow and lowbrow to appeal to the educated as well as the grubby commoners in the theatre pit. I do believe that his fellow writers didn’t think that much of him. He wasn’t, after all, trying to write elevated plays that would be applauded and admired by scriveners and men of higher education and be simultaneously booed off the boards by the hoards below.
Kells does include several wonderful book porn passages. ”(Earl Spencer’s) library at Althrop, Northamptonshire, contained tens of thousands of volumes; some estimates put the number above a hundred thousand. The library occupied five large rooms. The height of bookish discernment, it was rich in desirable books, many of them handsomely bound in leather featuring Spencer’s coat of arms. The library...was probably the best private library in the western world.”
It is impossible to search for Shakespeare’s library without searching for the man as well. Kells takes on quite a task, not only searching for new clues but also unraveling the rather sketchy research of those who have explored and sometimes altered the story to fit their own theories.
This book worked for me on so many levels. The researcher in me was stimulated, the collector in me was titillated, the reader in me was captivated, and the worshipper of Shakespeare in me was presented with a more realistic view of the practicalities of a man who left us with greatness while trying to merely entertain the masses.
”He is a Brontosaur: nine bones and six-hundred barrels of plaster of paris.” ---Mark Twain
I want to thank Counterpoint Press and Alisha Gorder for sending a copy in exchange for an honest review.
”Why would anyone, he asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indif”Why would anyone, he asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why, in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness, or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers? Why do otherwise proud and self-respecting people submit to the sheer effrontery of the tyrant, his sense that he can get away with saying and doing anything he likes, his spectacular indecency?”
I have never really thought about before how many times William Shakespeare warned us about the dangerousness of tyrants. Macbeth, Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Henry VI parts one through three, King Lear, and, of course the play involving the most notorious hunchback in history, Richard III all are explorations of the darkness of power that leads to evil deeds, madness, and malicious intentions. Once power is gained, by hook or by crook, then begins the game played mostly in the mind of the tyrant of paranoia, fear, and political intrigue that eventually, if things work as they should, leads to his destruction.
Stephen Greenblatt, by writing this book, is using Shakespeare to remind us of our duties not to let tyranny go unchecked. It is not as if tyrants are crafty individuals, hiding their true natures, for they see nothing wrong with their persona or their naked ambitions. In fact, with Coriolanus specifically, it is because his disdain for the public is so high that he is incapable of hiding his true intentions. This, fortunately, eventually brings about his downfall. This is what happens most of the time, but sometimes the public, bafflingly, embraces the exposed tyrant, even if to bring him to power is voting against their own best interests. ”They know that he is a pathological liar and they see perfectly well that he has done this or that ghastly thing, but they have a strange penchant for forgetting, as if it were hard work to remember just how awful he is. They are drawn irresistibly to normalize what is not normal.”
These tyrants have no loyalty to country, and if they are ousted from power, they are quick to turn on their country, even embracing the nation’s enemies to punish those who would not let them be the dictator they dreamed to be. Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard III brilliantly illustrates how tyrants view the world. “He is pathologically narcissistic and supremely arrogant. He has a grotesque sense of entitlement, never doubting that he can do whatever he chooses. He expects absolute loyalty, but he is incapable of gratitude. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. He has no natural grace, no sense of humanity, no decency.
He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt.”
The tyrant is utterly obsessed with winning, and any losses he may experience are always going to be blamed on those around him. He is too childish to accept his own missteps; therefore, valuable lessons are not learned that would help him to become a better leader. He never has to feel personal regret.
We have a current leader who frequently uses the term…”he hears things.” They are not based on any concrete facts, but really are just gut reactions that also happen to dovetail or support, in lieu of facts, the narrative he wishes to share with the public. Any criticism of his actions are labelled as “fake news,” or they are all part of a witch hunt conspired by his enemies to destroy him. Leontes, from The Winter’s Tale, has a dream that embraces all of his fears. ”If the tyrant dreams that there is fraud, or betrayal, or treason, then there is fraud, or betrayal, or treason.”
I’ve always found that, when people start believing falsehoods about the intentions of the people they disagree with, some of that is rooted in what they would be willing to do to help the cause of their party. If I would do it, of course they ARE doing it. It reminds me of all the voter fraud accusations that have been cast about without evidence in recent elections towards one party when the only voter fraud that has come to light has been perpetrated by the party that has cried foul.
We are living in a age where, no matter how grotesquely improbable the charge of indecency may be, we believe it about our opponents from the other party.
*Sigh*
Greenblatt is using Shakespeare very effectively to warn us about the dangers of complacency. We shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders at the latest outrageous Tweet or policy change or creation of chaos or even consider sacrificing upholding our laws because we believe a strong economy (keep in mind, leaders can have some influence on economic matters, but they do not control the economy) is more important than reining in tyranny. We should not embrace fascism because we fear liberal socialist policies. The extremes of the hard right or the hard left are too dangerous to play with. Our greatest assets have been our laws and our institutions, though flawed, that allow us to conduct ourselves with civility and with a certain amount of safe expectations.
The sound of a buzzing phone.
Hello. Is this really POTUS?
Now why would you ever think this book and review have anything to do with you?
”To understand who Shakespeare was, it is important to follow the verbal traces he left behind back into the life he lived and into the world to which”To understand who Shakespeare was, it is important to follow the verbal traces he left behind back into the life he lived and into the world to which he was so open. And to understand how Shakespeare used his imagination to transform his life into his art, it is important to use our own imagination.”
There is no doubt he is an enigma, a man who quite possibly has had the greatest influence on the English language, and yet, strangely enough left very little personal correspondence behind. It does seem like a man so gifted with words would have left behind mounds of letters, diaries, and journals. If they did exist, they are long gone, burned, or buried, or wrapped around a fish for a servant girl, or used to make bindings for books. It is interesting to think of a Shakespeare letter bound up in a book that is valued at a fraction of what his handwriting, hidden in the binding, would be worth.
It is as if Shakespeare erased himself, leaving only his monumental plays behind.
He married young, too young, to a much older woman. It was not a happy marriage from what we know. Much has been made of him leaving her the second best bed in his will. He had three children: Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. The later two were twins. Hamnet died at eleven. Hamnet = Hamlet, quite possibly that play is the greatest ode ever written to a lost son. Like all of the various aspects of life that Shakespeare observed or experienced, even the untimely and devastating death of his son, all of it, every scrap of it, contributed and influenced the stories the bard decided to tell.
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Would Hamnet have grown up to be as tortured as Hamlet?
”He heard things in the sounds of words that others did not hear; he made connections that others did not make; and he was flooded with a pleasure all his own.”
I can only imagine the frustration that he must have felt being trapped in a marriage with a woman who could not even read the words he wrote. He left his family in Stratford while he went to London to be an actor. Some things can not be denied, and words must have been bubbling up in him like an overheated cauldron. Christopher Marlowe was born in the same year as Shakespeare. He was college educated, though his degree seems to have been obtained with some help from Sir Francis Walsingham. He had everything that Shakespeare wanted, an education, debonair good looks, and a genius for playwriting.
As it turned out, Shakespeare had the most important one of the three.
Marlowe’s influence on Shakespeare was profound. ”Marlowe was the only one of the university wits whose talent Shakespeare might have seriously envied, whose aesthetic judgment he might have feared, whose admiration he might have earnestly wanted to win, and whose achievements he certainly attempted to equal and outdo.”
I do wonder what would have happened if Marlowe had lived another ten to twenty years. Would Shakespeare have become Shakespeare? Would he have conceded the field to Marlowe? Would the competition have made him an even better playwright? I have to believe it was lucky for Shakespeare that Marlowe exited life at the tender age of 29. I certainly wouldn’t like to take a chance with an alternative history.
Robert Greene, a fellow scribbler, called Shakespeare the ”upstart crow” which gives us an idea of an ambitious young man shouldering his way to the top. He took off like a bolt of lightning writing plays that had his competitors dumbfounded, and had his audiences awestruck.
Stephen Greenblatt did not directly talk about the speculation that has swirled around Shakespeare for several hundred years, but the entire book could be considered an attempt to refutiate any thoughts that Shakespeare was merely a beard for someone else. Societies to support one or another claimant have been created by people who are positive that Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford were the true authors of Shakespeare’s plays.
Marlowe was a trickster, a spy, a counterfeiter, but it would still be quite the clever prank to become Shakespeare with a dagger protruding from his eye. All three of the leading candidates to be “the true Shakespeare” are brilliant, fascinating men in their own right. They are famous without being Shakespeare. The odor lingering in the air like the dog fart smell that comes from that fat, slobbering pug at Grandmother’s house is the most foul stench of people who can’t believe that an undereducated lad from Stratford could write these plays. He has been weighed, and measured, and found wanting.
They are of course forgetting about one thing.
Exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. synonyms: brilliance, intelligence, intellect, ability, cleverness, brains, erudition,wisdom, fine mind; artistry, flair "the world knew of his genius" talent, gift, flair, aptitude, facility, knack, bent, ability, expertise,capacity, faculty; strength, forte, brilliance, skill, artistry
Okay, I’m going to name the white elephant in the room. HE WAS A GENIUS. Maybe he didn’t have the most perfect credentials to become SHAKESPEARE, but he had the right brain. He remembered everything he saw and heard and he was able to bring it all together and use it to make his stories more than what anyone had ever experienced before. They were authentic, personal, and incorporated new concepts that made the audience feel like they knew the characters in the same way they knew the pretty girl next door or their own grandfather or the smiling butcher down the street. He placed his audience in the plays.He changed the world and with every new generation he continues to influence, teach, and elevate.
He left his family because “there was something important within him”. What a tragedy it would have been if he had stayed in Stratford due to familial obligations. He might have been a glover like his father. He might have lived on the verge of bankruptcy his whole life like his father. He might have strangled his wife and hanged. :-) He would have been a miserable, unfulfilled man nagged by a voice, a muse unused, who would whisper words of encouragement until the bitter end.
Unlike his generation of writers he was frugal with his money in London and invested wisely in real estate. I too dabble in real estate so I always find it fascinating to read about his purchases and the sometimes convoluted ways the mortgage notes are written. He bought his dream home in Stratford, a house called New Place with room for an expansive garden and a guest cottage. He died in 1616 only a few years after retiring completely from the stage. It was as if he’d strayed too far from what had always sustained him.
Though there is too little known about Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt has written a very readable evaluation that examines what we know about the man, and what we know about the times. Greenblatt convinced me that the clues to knowing Shakespeare are all there to be found coming from the lips of his greatest characters.
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