the hegemony of Orthodoxy……

….because big words scare people and bigheads smirk. Tomorrow i’m off to the BSA. I intend and will shake-a-gogo enough to show you tangible results when I return.

I want discourse in the form of an interview.

A very short interview.

There is 1 question.

Do you believe that Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Shakespeare?

the 3 possible answers are:

Yes.
No.
Don’t care.

(my money is on the don’t cares as being the majority response).

I do this to raise the authorship question, which is currently riding on increasing publicity, thereby forcing the question into the realm of discussion. Bill Bryson has a new book about it and he’ll sell more than Greenblatt probably.

You will be asked, scholars, by your children who fed off an internet source and finally have something to use against you. Or Shakespeare lovers, your relatives, friends and that loud bloke will be poking fun at you in the pub. Kids in classrooms teachers, will leverage your patience with smartass replies. If they are not already.

The authorship question is out in the open. It came out of the closet and is staring its erudite, esoteric and possibly homoerotic face at you. Condemning you and your gullibility at swallowing the orthdox dross of biography, and offering alternatives of heightened enlightenment. They’re not all mad like Delia, you know. They can be quite intense though, as a rule.

I never set out to be an Orthodox Stratfordian. I just still haven’t met the evidence that shuts the Stratford boy out of the game. Whatever happened, however it happened, it included this man right at its heart. We can’t go around old egghead.

What a con if it would be true, though to what end? Where’s the payoff for the ‘real’ Shakespeare, if not in fame and money. Why would you remain anonymous and frustrated at your own penury, while some other guy runs with your successes and failures on stage and in print? And the man-in-the-middle is always, and will always be, Will.

So my answer to the question is unequivocally, uni-vocally,

Yes.

What’s yours?