…Sunday I went to see Will’s Will by the Amsterdam Chamber Theatre. My thoughts were to review it but then the fact-fiction of it all got in the way. And once again I’ll review that with the necessary pinch o salt added.
Yep when you look at Sh of Stratford’s life as recorded and the Sh the writer’s work as written it looks strangely void of connection. Unless you look at the practice of the time with a series of Occam’s Razor suppositions.
Sh of Stratford’s biography raises many unanswerable questions.
Such as:
Where was Richard Burbage at Sh’s death? His family through his father James is conjectured to have relatives in Stratford. James had met John Shakespeare as leader of the Earl of Leicester’s Men when John Sh was Chief Alderman. Fathers and sons Will and Richard were fathers in turn. Family ties run deepest they say.
Where are the references to Sh’s brother Gilbert the haberdasher? Hardly ever mentioned in biographies orthodox or conspiracist. Even so his other brother Richard, the one, one orthodox biographer suggested as schtuppin Anne Hathaway/Shakespeare when Will was in London.
Sh’s grave lies next to his wife’s, his daughters’, his son-in-law’s as monument to their civic prominence, remembrance of Sh’s fame and achievement in Stratford. But how to tie this in with a life in Theatre and Writing in London? Sh must have lead a double-life, or not been he?
Conjecture is rife about a bag of corn ‘stead of a pillow on his bust; replaced the Orksfordians claim. But then the lapidary comparison of Will to certain Roman wise-acres makes no sense. And surely the one is simultaneous with the other?
One man does not define the time. And so with Shakespeare. His fame was limited, whether he willed it or no. He could have willed to tell all, and leave his manuscripts catalogued and ready for posterity. But orthodox or conspiracist, he didn’t. What other Jacobethan scribbler did?
I’m not talking of conscious publications of whole oeuvres, revised and recopied such as Ben Jonson’s Folio, or that of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor our Will’s Folio collected by his friends and fellows. But did they do so to Will driven by compassionate or ulterior motives?
Sh of Stratford had the time available to write the plays he wrote. Conservatively he’s a 2 play a year man. A collaborator at his earliest and latest stages of his career as Playwright and Player. Examples abound in his time of those that were both. He was also a Poet. Or not?
Sh the Conspiracist Nobleman had duties to fulfill and honour. Their time was not their own. Naturally they would have had free time in which they could indulge their hobbies and passions.
Sh of Stratford stood and went where he pleased, save when he was under contract to play at Court or Public Theatre. Noblemen and women were the elite of poetry up until the 1580’s when writers for the Public Theatre invaded their territory with a Tamburlaine thrust. The upstart dirty shepherd presumed as lyrical as muse-fed intellectuals. The battle carried on for the next 3 decades.
Sh of Stratford, we all agree, was not an intellectual. Neither was the Sh of the plays and poems. An intellect sure. Bacon was an intellectual. Marlowe too. I think Ben wanted to be. Oxenforde in the conspiracists’ view was a genius, and intellectual was part of that package. But that’s not true.
Mozart was a genius and apparently a little shit too. Oxenforde the same, but we can excuse his faults for he did draw the time across the board. His influence extended to writing his tutors’ masterpieces for them. Precocious little sot.
Of course Sh of Stratford sat shrouded in ignorance, pleased that the profits of pretending to write plays for a wishing-to-remain-anonymous nobleman or woman. This allowed him to play big burgher back in Stratford.
Easier to set Fulke Greville on Sh’s throne as he and presumably his library were close by our Will. Though a conversation with the right person can reveal a thousand-fold more than hours poring over sources and books.
Sh of Stratford was a man of words, whether orthodox or conspiracist. He told the truth or he lied. Either equivocation needs scanning for what is left unsaid. Telling the truth means he wrote the works, lying means he did not. Seeing as no-one can predict the future, he cannot have known his career path before it happened. This goes for anything he did or did not create.
Sh of Straford is tied to Stratford and London, the printing and theatre businesses, the poetry and patrons and court circuit, a historical theatrical move move from the outdoor to indoor presentations of works he did or did not write.
Also collaboration with 3 generations of playwrights over fashion-shifting genres of playwriting, the death of a female monarch, ignored by Sh whether orthodox or conspiracist, the introduction of a new (possibly gay) male monarch, both of whom held his acting company in high esteem.
Sh of Stratford’s fame in London in the highest and lowest circles of society was stellar it seems. Yet no-one mentioned him except for the handful of testimonies of those who saw his plays. Describing the stories they’d seen, not their author’s identity. Such was the fashion of the time.
Sh of Straford outside these rarefied and public circles was a man among thousands. A time of paranoid collective individuality and shifting social strata was divided by duelling religious sentiments in England and on the Continent.
Throughout Sh’s time the Tudor hegemony and balance of power held sway as State and Religion were merged into one under Henry 8th and his short-lived heir Edward, then torn apart under Mary and definitively settled through Elizabeth’s long reign.
The queen was OLD when Sh hit his stride. Thus hyperbolic praise must have seemed the more false, though politic nonetheless. The Court was a grand-guignol soap-opera of vying nobles and penniless second and third sons. Impossible not to have been noticed by those serving on them.
Sh of Stratford had all his time to study and comment on his time in the form of whatever genre of play was popular. His biography puts him in the right place at the right time. He is the only person who fits the meagre record we have.
The explosion of knowledge going on around him must have been invigorating for any self-made man. Shift the focus from him onto his age. In every field changes were happening.
Sh of Straford needed his fellow players, playwrights, printers, booksellers, patrons. They assisted, aided and abetted him in creating his art. Sh of Conspiracy needed to have all of the above in his pocket. And few of the candidates for conspiracy had such deep pockets.
Sh of Straford filled his purse, whilst they emptied theirs. Sometime a paradox but now made truth when we remember his legacy: his words.
Therefore as a reader go forth and read him again and again as his friends and fellows suggested.
