Bohemian Storm in a teacup…

…reading James Shapiro’s book and the last chapter is his defence of Shakespeare of Stratford.

I’d like to say yet again the whole argument is beneath the amount of press it’s getting; irrelevant to enjoying and appreciating Shakespeare.

But serendipitously Shapiro supplies in the re-telling of this anecdote, the rebuttal to a commonly used (the last 10-15 years) Oxfordian ‘proof’ that Oxford could have written one of Shakespeare’s stylistically later plays.

They will tell you that it is possible Oxenforde wrote A WInter’s Tale replete with geographical mistake (ie Bohemia never had a coastline) because Bohemia did hold territory that bordered on the Sea at one point in its history .

Then why?

(And here i feel like Michael Palin in the Argument sketch asking,
‘Ahh! Then why are you still arguing?’).

Why did Ben Jonson remark to Drummond of Hawthornden on Bohemia’s lack of a coastline and Sh’s lack of knowledge that it didn’t?

Did Oxford/Bacon/Marlowe know that Drummond was collecting his plays and attributing them in his own hand to Schaksp.? Or Will. Sha.?

Did Ben walk all the way to Scotland from London just to tell him this misleading fact he knew about Shakspere? Knowing full well the goodly Earl, or sly Christopher had written the plays?

Surely he can have no axe to grind for Oxford, Marlowe or Bacon? Or Neville, or Greville? Nor Eliza, poor soul. Not the Pembroke’s neither; man nor woman.

His world is/was the literary/dramatic scene as seen from Scotland, not the world of Court and intrigue at the highest levels of English society. The same world Shakespeare inhabited in London, and that Ben had shared with him, and was now/then sharing with Drummond.

Drummond, like Shakespeare, a William.

Ask yourself, what reason would Drummond have for writing this bit of hearsay in his notes on his conversations with Ben?

Interestingly, Drummond also corresponded with Michael Drayton, Sh’s lifelong poet friend. The National Library of Scotland holds the autographed correspondence.

And he wrote sonnets!

The links in this post illuminate Drummond and his relationship to books and poetry in ever-increasing depth. And so we wash up on a similar literary shore as our Will.

Certainly with connection to Will. And that with two people he knew well, and called friend. (remember that ‘ grapple them to you with hoops of steel’ stuff)?

OK it’s not a proof, but it tones down the incestuous rhetoric a notch,
as to why would Drummond be ignorant of any conspiracy?

Bohemia or not. Existent or not.

Who cares when it doesn’t touch the matter?