Okay, I realize I probably bored our reader[s] by this point, so I will add random pictures to this post to keep people interested. The above reflects what Chelsea truly thinks about my bow ties, and below is Chelsea at her local wand store.
Book 1: Shakespeare by Another Name by Mark Anderson. This book was great! It is a biography of Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, that highlights the similarities between events in De Vere's life and events in Shakespeare plays. For example, like Hamlet, De Vere was once abducted by pirates and left on the shore naked. The book also makes a very convincing argument that De Vere, unlike most folks in Elizabethan England, had access to particular books that Shakespeare plays are based on. Mark Anderson, the author, is one of the foremost Oxfordians --- the group of folks that think Edward De Vere wrote all of the plays attributed to Shakespeare --- and his book makes a very convincing case for Oxford.
Back to random pictures for my ADD audience . . .
These two fellows have agreed to perform any Shakespeare plays --- yes, on Segways --- that Chelsea and I can't find.
Book 2: Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. This author is a hard-core Stratfordian --- the group of people who think Will Shakespeare actually wrote all of the plays. This is a biography of William Shakespeare, also highlighting the similarities between Shakespeare's life and events in Shakespeare's plays. But it is far less convincing than the De Vere biography. The connections between the plays and the biography are far more tenuous, and he even admits you need to use your imagination to connect the dots.
Book 3: Contested Will by James Shapiro (Stratfordian). This book traces the history of the authorship question, and it argues that everyone went wrong by reading the plays biographically. So, it attempts to undermine both of the other books I read. This is a good, quick read, but it is not very persuasive. It is tough to believe that someone wrote 37 plays purely from their imagination, without writing from personal experience at all.
Conclusion: I think Oxfordians have the best arguments if you read the plays biographically, and to an extent, I think it is appropriate to read the plays biographically. But the Stratfordians still have a very strong argument: Shakespeare's name is on the plays, and historically, he was an actor and theatre investor in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. So, in the end, I need to read more. But not right now because Puppy Bowl VIII just started. GO MARBLES! AND Has anyone noticed Puppy of the Day at the bottom of this blog? Totally Shakespearean. That guy --- whoever he was --- loved puppies.
Speaking of puppies...
Brad
Brad, For more on this subject, may I suggest Diana Price's "Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography" for the best debunking of the Stratford theory? Also, George Greenwood's "Shakespeare Problem Restated" (the book that inspired Mark Twain's "Is Shakespeare Dead?"). Greenwood was a lawyer. Neither book puts forth its own candidate for authorship, but they both do a good job of taking the Stratford theory apart.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I'm on it.
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