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aunt_zelda Ok, I'm having a problem here.
See, the Authorship Question ... well, nobody is right. I don't want to throw myself into any of the camps, not even the 'doubtaboutwill.org' people, because let's face it, their site sucks. If you have to answer "are you snobs?" in your FAQs, you have a problem. (Also, doubtaboutwill.org people, using gratuitous Latin doesn't impress anybody; it makes you sound pretentious.)
So Marlowe died way too early (and just wasn't a funny author, so he couldn't have written the comedies), Bacon was too busy and too stuck-up (he thought theater was frivolous, why would he have written the plays?) and Oxford died a little too early and was busy shagging everybody and their sons from England to Italy and being a disgraced asshole to write the greatest plays in English literature. At least, that's what I think. Plus, in my opinion, the Author never went to Italy. He moved mountains, coastlines, and made no mention of Venice's canals. His Italian wasn't anything he couldn't have picked up from immigrants in London. He never went to Italy: suck it up and face it.
I will admit that there are some nasty coincidences with Oxford's life and the plays. I will admit that it certainly sounds like he wrote the Sonnets. In fact, I would be willing to entertain the idea that he wrote the Sonnets. Not the plays, but maybe the Sonnets.
And yes, there is that weird time around 1604 when people seem to have been alluding to the fact that the Author was already dead, and the fact that nobody really mourned Shakespeare in 1616. Yes, that's very weird. Very, very weird. But saying that the Author died in 1604 would mean completely re-dating all of the plays, which have been placed in time by scholarly consensus for decades. You will never convince me that The Tempest wasn't written in 1610-11. You will never convince me that Oxford wrote all of the later plays in a rush during the last years of his life.
But we have to face facts here. We're never going to know for sure, short of uncovering a cache of documents buried in someone's tomb that spells it out in plain Elizabethan English for us. All this name-calling and sticking-fingers-into-ears-and-going-'La-la-la!' is getting us nowhere. I am sick and tired of these books and websites and this gorram research paper and having to change my thesis statement over and over and over again because with each book I am convinced "oh it was Shakespeare/oh those are some weird coincidences with Oxford/no it's probably Shakespeare but we can't know for certain/would you STOP already with calling him 'Shakspere' it makes you sound pretentious and annoys my spellchecker!"
Personally, I like to believe that it was the man from Stratford. Until 1604, there's no concrete reason to doubt that he wrote them ... no reason not based entirely upon pure snobbery, anyways. I cannot in good conscience throw my lot in with a bunch of snobs, but I do have to admit that there's a lot we don't know, a lot we will never know, and some really weird coincidences.
I find it very strange that nearly all of the people involved in the Authorship Debate are men, and that anti-Stratfordians frequently trot out celebrities instead of scholars to accentuate their points. It's snobbery and elitism in the worst way; they simply can't wrap their heads around the idea of someone who never went to college writing some of the best/most popular plays in history.
I see no reason why Oxford as the Author would change my enjoyment of the plays. In fact, it would make me severely uncomfortable to know that a murdering adulterous nobleman publicly known for his fits of rage, who borrowed and spent money hand-over-fist and couldn't even provide dowries for or even be bothered to raise his own daughters, who refused to see his wife and daughter for years after he heard a rumor that the kid wasn't his, and who was at one point accused of raping the young male servants in his household, wrote my favorite dramatic works. Why are people advocating for this man again? Oh, right, because he went to Italy, wrote some poetry, and hung out at court. And Shakespeare was a hick who couldn't possibly have written the plays because of reasons that are totally not motivated by class snobbery. Right. And one of these days pigs are going to go soaring past my window on hang-gliders.
Tl;dr: better a hick like me than a murdering a-hole like Oxford.
P.S. This research paper is kicking my ass. I need to stop researching tomorrow and just get down to writing, hopefully then things will stop making my brain hurt.
P.P.S. Have you seen the trailer for The Borgias? OH MY GOD! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! The ... the costumes and the intrigue and the STABBING AND THE POISONING AND THE CARDINALS AND THE RENAISSANCE AND THE JEREMY IRONS OH DEAR GOD THAT MAN TERRIFIES ME I AM SPENDING THE NIGHT HIDING UNDER MY BED BUT THE SHOW LOOKS SO DAMN AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean, there's an assassin who looks hot in that kicked-puppy kind of way, loads of sexy sex, lots of stabbing, and Jeremy Freaking Irons as an Evil Pope (the part he's always been meant to play.) Life is GOOD, people, life is GOOD!
Now, when will I find the time to watch this ...?
See, the Authorship Question ... well, nobody is right. I don't want to throw myself into any of the camps, not even the 'doubtaboutwill.org' people, because let's face it, their site sucks. If you have to answer "are you snobs?" in your FAQs, you have a problem. (Also, doubtaboutwill.org people, using gratuitous Latin doesn't impress anybody; it makes you sound pretentious.)
So Marlowe died way too early (and just wasn't a funny author, so he couldn't have written the comedies), Bacon was too busy and too stuck-up (he thought theater was frivolous, why would he have written the plays?) and Oxford died a little too early and was busy shagging everybody and their sons from England to Italy and being a disgraced asshole to write the greatest plays in English literature. At least, that's what I think. Plus, in my opinion, the Author never went to Italy. He moved mountains, coastlines, and made no mention of Venice's canals. His Italian wasn't anything he couldn't have picked up from immigrants in London. He never went to Italy: suck it up and face it.
I will admit that there are some nasty coincidences with Oxford's life and the plays. I will admit that it certainly sounds like he wrote the Sonnets. In fact, I would be willing to entertain the idea that he wrote the Sonnets. Not the plays, but maybe the Sonnets.
And yes, there is that weird time around 1604 when people seem to have been alluding to the fact that the Author was already dead, and the fact that nobody really mourned Shakespeare in 1616. Yes, that's very weird. Very, very weird. But saying that the Author died in 1604 would mean completely re-dating all of the plays, which have been placed in time by scholarly consensus for decades. You will never convince me that The Tempest wasn't written in 1610-11. You will never convince me that Oxford wrote all of the later plays in a rush during the last years of his life.
But we have to face facts here. We're never going to know for sure, short of uncovering a cache of documents buried in someone's tomb that spells it out in plain Elizabethan English for us. All this name-calling and sticking-fingers-into-ears-and-going-'La-la-la!' is getting us nowhere. I am sick and tired of these books and websites and this gorram research paper and having to change my thesis statement over and over and over again because with each book I am convinced "oh it was Shakespeare/oh those are some weird coincidences with Oxford/no it's probably Shakespeare but we can't know for certain/would you STOP already with calling him 'Shakspere' it makes you sound pretentious and annoys my spellchecker!"
Personally, I like to believe that it was the man from Stratford. Until 1604, there's no concrete reason to doubt that he wrote them ... no reason not based entirely upon pure snobbery, anyways. I cannot in good conscience throw my lot in with a bunch of snobs, but I do have to admit that there's a lot we don't know, a lot we will never know, and some really weird coincidences.
I find it very strange that nearly all of the people involved in the Authorship Debate are men, and that anti-Stratfordians frequently trot out celebrities instead of scholars to accentuate their points. It's snobbery and elitism in the worst way; they simply can't wrap their heads around the idea of someone who never went to college writing some of the best/most popular plays in history.
I see no reason why Oxford as the Author would change my enjoyment of the plays. In fact, it would make me severely uncomfortable to know that a murdering adulterous nobleman publicly known for his fits of rage, who borrowed and spent money hand-over-fist and couldn't even provide dowries for or even be bothered to raise his own daughters, who refused to see his wife and daughter for years after he heard a rumor that the kid wasn't his, and who was at one point accused of raping the young male servants in his household, wrote my favorite dramatic works. Why are people advocating for this man again? Oh, right, because he went to Italy, wrote some poetry, and hung out at court. And Shakespeare was a hick who couldn't possibly have written the plays because of reasons that are totally not motivated by class snobbery. Right. And one of these days pigs are going to go soaring past my window on hang-gliders.
Tl;dr: better a hick like me than a murdering a-hole like Oxford.
P.S. This research paper is kicking my ass. I need to stop researching tomorrow and just get down to writing, hopefully then things will stop making my brain hurt.
P.P.S. Have you seen the trailer for The Borgias? OH MY GOD! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! The ... the costumes and the intrigue and the STABBING AND THE POISONING AND THE CARDINALS AND THE RENAISSANCE AND THE JEREMY IRONS OH DEAR GOD THAT MAN TERRIFIES ME I AM SPENDING THE NIGHT HIDING UNDER MY BED BUT THE SHOW LOOKS SO DAMN AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean, there's an assassin who looks hot in that kicked-puppy kind of way, loads of sexy sex, lots of stabbing, and Jeremy Freaking Irons as an Evil Pope (the part he's always been meant to play.) Life is GOOD, people, life is GOOD!
