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Hey Spaceetc,
Are you spacing out? You seem to suggest you know more than we do. Show us ocular for the aural proof, I say. Show it, don”t suggest it.
I know of no trusted prompter or two we can pinpoint as having committed this deed. These willing stooges who assist in your conspiracy. Who dey? Conveniently, namelessly, lost in the mists of time and bad bibliography.
BTW who do you think served and prepared meals for the priviliged? Packed their bags? Looked after their hawks and falcons?
The distance you project belies the need for interaction between the classes. You suppose some feudal idyll where a peasant doffs his cap, and an Earl ruthlessly ignores them or snubs them to the ground.
One day Oxford the 17th earl of that name, after embarassingly farting in front of the queen, (his mother) travels to Europe, where he documents his travels and dallyings with choir boys and hookers. Even brought the boy back to England with him. And no they would never show Shakesqueer in Anonymous. The story ends when queenie reminds him she”d forgotten the fartte.
You cited Rowe as a source for a comment above. So I see your Rowe and raise you an Aubrey. I’ll link those two tidbits.
Home alone cruising Anonymous comment threads. Obsessive compulsive behaviour at best. Who am I? Some Shakespearean superhero come to right the wrongs being said about his name?
Put down that blessed name or you shall perish!
Honour as Falstaff says is for idiots. And Kickass.
There is a small group of vigilantes doing the rounds on Shakespeare related materials on the web. Maybe I ‘m playing Sheriff. ‘Fug the judge and jury, if he looks guilty, shoot im’.
No I’m not playing sheriff.
Who cares? Or rather why should I care?
Professional scholars have to care. They hate this authorship question because it means distraction away from the real investigation. And that is NOT determinng who the author really was. Let’s say we all agree. Oxford wow. I see now.
THEN WHAT?!
Then how much more WHAT do the plays and poems become than what they already are?
I know this thread is 3 months old. And I’m talking to empty cyberspace. But is cyberspace ever too full? It’s infinite right? Does text age on the internet? (we might).
My problem is I’m addicted to comment threads. And the tug of war with gnarly Orksfordians and their disdain for me, and others as incredulous, as an opponent. We have to see the light. Or we have seen illumination and are too ashamed, scared, embarassed to admit it. Delicious!
Luckily I got some great wingmen that pile in when the going gets tough. Not that this is co-ordinated and agreed upon. One of them Bobby G has a whole theory to describe them. Rigidniks he calls them. Bloody slippery I call them.
Just when you pin down one argument they involve six others involving required reading. Usually a pdf or blog post. Sometimes an expensive vanity press purchase. And the same logic has gone into their books, and plausible they are; for a sentence or two, before you’re swallowing fiction, as often as they say the Orthodoxians do in their biogs. What’s good for the goose, I guess.
Anonymous has still to come out here in Amsterdam. Can”t wait! The Orthodoxians have set fire to the Emmerich camp and decisively dampened the jubilation with this bucket of cold water. Love the 5 biogs: anonymous review at blogshakespeare.
For those that are dealing with Authorship questions, one can”t just tell them to read the standard works or biographies. That too was their starting point, which they consciously rejected in favour of a fantasy of who they’d prefer it to be.
I feel like Harry Potter in the Order of the Phoenix, (some actors from Anonymous). The best defence is to give a patronum for yourself mentally before you begin. They can read your thoughts, like you know who). Then just null and void them with the
‘it makes no difference to the appreciation of the works who wrote them’ argument.
Follow with a cold shoulder.
NB This could lead to a whole other argument on whether biography is necessary to understanding the genesis of an author”s work.
But psychology and philosophy do have their place in understanding the author. And without any more enlightening evidence than what we have fantasy takes hold. And evidence is easy to find for the obvious fit.
For THEM, their first tactic is to take every biographical point of Sh”s life and family and subject it to scorn and derision. Possibilities become impossibilities. For us.
For THEM imagination land is the limit.Plausibility turns to fiction. But they”ll turn again tell you that”s what you do as a Stratfordian. You are a robot buying into the scholars orthodoxy.
Ad hominem slanders must flow off you like water from a lotus leaf. It”s a give and take exercise. Mud slinging always becomes a mud fight, where both contestants end up indistinguishable from the other.
Your intelligence and breadth of reading will be questioned.
How is it possible? Some rube conquered the London stage? From nothing to Shakespeare? It wasn”t. It”s obvious he”s a stooge. Well the good news for us is this stooge had friends, who liked him. And loved what he did.
And yes I wish one of them had recorded one single solitary conversation with him and copied it down. But they didn”t. Sir Aston Cockaine (not a friend per se and yes funny name) threatened he could have done it. In reality, ie the historical record we have. They seemed certain of who they were and recorded instead the plays and poems we”d expect them to leave.
Btw reading early modern manuscripts is a skill set. Not everyone can. So a little knowledge of what and how people read is required. Another point.
Your opponent in a comment thread may have a good knowledge of the period. Oxford”s conspiracy extends much further than the stooge Shakespeare. Deep into esoteric circles if you wish.
Much printed, much bought Shakespeare? They”ll explain that to you too. In fact every story you try to use to convince them they will twist, distort, or deny by noblesse oblige. A first and textbook fallen Earl, peer of the realm, secretly ekeing out a life in the theatre and poetry scenes of the 1570”s and 1580”s. That much is true.
Then in the 1580”s and 90”s lots of writers dedicated works to him. But of course they did. Patronage though empty-coffered, still has influence.
Evidence and proof for Orthodox biography is for the authorship question limited to the years that Sh lived for some bizarre methodological reason. And of course the printing of the First Folio is 20 years after Oxford”s death but orchestrated by those who still revered him.
Oxford”s death in 1604 is a huge setback to the Oxfordians. They counter by saying Shakespeare didn’t publish after that, demolishing the orthodox dates on the late plays, as well as tying themselves into knots pre-dating those same plays. Or their Jacobean influence!
15-20 years after his death, all the plays not yet in print, are put into the First Foilio. The monument in Stratford too is a botched attempt to big up the Shakespare boy. Put people on the wrong track about the true genius who wrote the works.
Again 20 years after his death. Who was this Oxford? A ninja immortal.
The cgi of London is worth the entry ticket for me.
A quick question though, and I know the declaration of RD, how many scientists have ever declared it to be someone else? How many Nobel prize winners? Only the ones for literature then? Did Samuel Beckett doubt? Did Pablo Neruda? Did Van Gogh?
As I type this post this comment was posted by Jeff Rowe over on the dispositio site.
Jeff Rowe says:
14/10/2011 at 11:21 am
Waste of time. Big picture still stands: Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare is still obvious. Its obviousness still convinced Twain, Whitman, John Adams, Orson Welles…the list is endless of minds far superior to all of yours and mine. I’ll stand behind them. I’m publishing my ebook, called AS YOU DON’T LIKE IT, wherein I reveal the author himself illuminating the penname prank, within the play As You Like It. I’ve dedicated it to Stratfordians and mostly Stratfordian professors. It will stand as my response. You’ll pay 99cents to read it, the day the movie comes out or you’ll be the last to get the prank that the greatest genius in the history of mankind (he beats Einstein to the theory of relativity in the play As You Like It) used the name William to COVER his FOREST. The play takes place in the Forest of ARDEN, the only play in all of Shakespeare, where we meet a character named William, with no last name. Thus, the only chance the author has to identify the prank. Go read the play from an Oxfordian point of view and see if you can decipher it for yourself. It’s very simple. All you do is switch the names to their alternate or original meanings and the final four acts of the play reveal this very discussion. Good luck. I have given Dr. Syme my email address. When you get stuck, get in touch with me and my book will help you.
Not my 99 cents! Back to the famous name argument:
All artists I love and don’t give a damn about the details of their lives. But their works!
Biography is interesting after the fact of having seen heard read the author. But before?!
Oxford as a candidate is the perfect artist nobleman bad guy smack in the middle of the theatre scene in the 1570’s + 80’s. Private theatre of the kind that has always played through history. Then the theatre world changed.
And stress this, a different kind of theatre was born in 1576. Public theatre grew out of the need for less bloody spectacles than torn up bulls and dogs and bears and monkeys. Though in the beginning blood and thunder decked the public stage.
The stories are what made it. For them a whole new generation of writers appeared to join the Nobility already busy penning their way into anonymous immortality.
Have we ever conjectured the nature of a thriving private theatre? i.e. the noblemen entertaining family and friends. What did the Herberts do of an evening, when they weren’t penning Elizabethan plays into literature. Writing plays that only they will appreciate. Oxford was Best at Comedy right, well he ain’t so funny now.
All well and good but an audience cannot just consist of your friends. It has to be unknown, untempered with knowledge of who you are. So you can play the character. You decipher your actor self from the equation. You’re there to make sure you hit your marks and pick up your cues. And don’t bump into the furniture. Unless required.
But then 2 very famous actors know this and yet, let me not think on’t, my gall doth rise at the thought. Their pulses keep as temporally as ours. If you tickle them surely they will laugh.
An artist needs to move something in his audience. That essence is what theatre-practioners are seeking. The dead silence of a packed house,
If this whole debate were considered a chemistry experiment. You wouldn’t get past, ‘Yes we have the evidence and proof we would like to hold up to the light’. Stage one.
Stage one for ANonymous is the film. This pdf is being sent to educators all over America. Un be frikkin believalable!
…Oh anonymous, how much curiosity you cause. You and your half-friend, pseudonym shadow the walls of history. Who was who? Must know who deep throat is!
You know there”s even a dictionary for you anon and pseudonomyni?
But what’s in a name?
WIki book on William Shakespeare.
The wiki entries for Sh are well balanced and informative on all fronts. It doesn’t deny the Oxfordians, or other authorship theories their wiki page or place.
It does contradict their stating that we have no evidence about Shakespeare.
No alias necessary. The Stratford guy fits the bill. Har har!
I only need him to have been the one referred to in connection with dealings in the theatrical, writing, and printing business. And such is the evidence we have.
They tell us that Sh not our Sh was a genius afraid to soil his name with the stage.
Since plays required a theatre company and shareholders and a market for the viewing, hearing and buying the words.
And since plays automatically became the property of the theatrical company who paid for them, we must look to his poems.
Poems were a different discipline than plays. More refined, more up-market. Billy from Stratford knew that desire. His dad was all that and the son too showed the same life long commitment to self-betterment. Whether in his life or his art.
His long story quasi-erotic poems are about the closest thing we have to Shakespeare the author in direct influence of the dissemination of his own words.
Both of them are prefaced by a letter to his patron. So much for the no letters from Sh argument.
‘ TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE
HENRY WRIOTHESLY,EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON,
AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.
RIGHT HONORABLE,
I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden: only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.
But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest.
I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart’s content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world’s hopeful expectation.
Your honour’s in all duty,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
And that of the Rape of Lucrece:
THE RAPE OF LUCRECE TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TITCHFIELD.
THE love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety.
The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance.
What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.
Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.
Your Lordship’s in all duty,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
But then again all evidence termed orthodox is suspect, and continually denied by Oxfordians, before you even begin to argue, so what”s the point?
After all they started somewhere and this is what we”ve got. Ergo they swallowed it and then choked on its inconsistencies. But how can you simply deny evidence and get away with it?
It sucks because the historical record is hard enough to establish on almost every point of Sh’s biography from birth date to death date. You almost want someone to topple him from his throne. So far no one has without using specious and unfulfilling argument.
Deny the poet and you deny the world. Deny Falstaff and you deny Will. Yet he is denied.
Henry V H5 II.chorus.27
Confirmed conspiracy with fearful France;
Julius Caesar JC II.i.77
They are the faction. O conspiracy, Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free?
Julius Caesar JC II.i.81
O then, by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability:
Julius Caesar JC II.iii.7
There is
JC II.iii.5
but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee!
King Edward III E3 I.i.107
Bear’st thou a part in this conspiracy?
(He draws his sword)
King Lear KL I.ii.55
Hum! conspiracy! ‘ Sleep till I waked him,
Richard II R2 V.ii.96
Thou fond, mad woman,
Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy?
Richard II R2 V.iii.58
O, heinous, strong, and bold conspiracy!
The Merry Wives of Windsor MW IV.ii.112
O you panderly rascals! There’s a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy against me. Now shall the devil be shamed.
The Tempest Tem II.i.306
While you here do snoring lie,
Open-eyed conspiracy
His time doth take.
If of life you keep a care,
Shake off slumber, and beware.
Awake, awake!
Yes. That last.
in the red corner Billy CG S.
We did a blog on Oxfordian Howard S. one time,
so now it’s Billy Ray’s turn.
If you want the full transcripts you must click here for the Time Out comment thread. And here for the Screenrant comment thread.
The blue corner belongs to the Oxfordians. The red is our own bloodied but unbowed champion.
The trench warfare in comment threads about Sh’s wounded name is divided and divisive. It is also highly entertaining despite being frustrating. You have not want to win.
I was joined a day or two ago by Mark Johnson. His arguments for our man are very difficult to counter, being historical fact. Point by point he takes Billy R to task.
Just to prove the point, here again is actual physical evidence that Mr. Ray summarily dismisses and simply claims doesn’t even qualify as evidence [judges across the land would find such a statement to be completely unfounded]:
(1.) 1599 (From The Returne from Parnassus, Part I; MS in Bodleian Library): “Mr. Shakspeare” [more than once]
(2.) 1600 (Stationer’s Register entry for Henry the Fourth, Part Two and Much Ado About Nothing; August 23): “master Shakespere”
(3.) 1607 (Stationer’s Register entry for King Lear; November 26): “Master William Shakespeare”
(4.)1608 (Q1 of King Lear): “M. William Shak-speare” (title page) “M William Shak-speare” (head title)
(5.) 1610 (From The Scourge of Folly by John Davies of Hereford; registered October 8): “Mr. Will: Shake-speare”
(6.) 1612 (From “Epistle” to The White Devil by John Webster): “M. Shake-speare”
(7.) 1614 (From Runne and a Great Cast by Thomas Freeman): “Master W. Shakespeare”
(8.) 1615 (From continuation to 1614 in ed. 5 of John Stow’s Annales, by Edmund Howes): “M. Willi. Shakespeare gentleman”
(9.) 1616 (Q6 Lucrece): “Mr. William Shakespeare” (title page)
(10.) 1619 (Title page, Q3 (Pavier quarto) of Henry VI Parts 2 & 3): “William Shakespeare, Gent.”
(11.) 1619 (Title page, Q2 of King Lear, falsely dated 1608): “M. William Shake-speare”
(12.) 1619 (Head title of Q2 of King Lear): “M. William Shake-speare”
(13.) 1622 (Catalogus Universalis pro Nundinis Francofurtensibus; Frankfort book fair list of books to be published in England between April and October 1622): “M. William Shakespeare”
(14.) 1623 (Stationer’s Register entry for First Folio; November 8): “Mr. William Shakspeer”
Here are some of the other references to WS of Stratford as “Mr.” Shakespeare, gent.
(1.) 1601 (Deed transfering the Globe and other Southwark properties from Nicholas Brend to Sir Matthew Brown and John Collett as security for a 2500-pound debt; October 7): “Richard Burbadge and William Shackspeare gent.”
(2.) 1601 (Updated deed for the above transaction; October 10): “Richard Burbage and William Shakspeare gentlemen”
(3.) 1608 (Deed transferring the Globe and other properties from John Collett to John Bodley; November 11): “Richard Burbadge & William Shakespeare gent”
Does this deter Billy J Ray? Not a whit. He invents his own version of augury. He truly deserves the name Orksfordian.
So we pick up after he suggests the following book:
Oh yes, Alistair Fowler great book, great theory. Stratfordian isn’t he?
In sonnets 135 + 136 Will refers to all of the meanings of Will. It isn’t just confined to the two you suggest. It’s future tense, it’s determination, it’s his penis, it’s desire, it’s a testament AND it’s his name. It’s also not serious. It’s a game set amongst some home truths. Serio ludere (serious playing) was commonplace in the time.
Also this paternalist myth with its doctrinal conformity you accuse we stratfordians as blindly accepting is some blinkered criticism.
I hope I am as free thinking and capable of making up my own mind as my intelligence and understanding allow me.
I’ve scratched the surface and returned to the idea that at least the boring version is the way real evidence is collected.
And if it seems like there is energy being expended. It’s because there is.
I”m passionate about Shakespeare as a whole. You seem fixed on proving x is a moron and y is a genius.
And that to the exclusion of how that pragmatically alters my perception of the whole.
Is my reading of Shakespeare more enlightened or enriched by knowing the circumstances of the writer’s biography?
LOTR is a great read and I love the idea he sent it to his son piecemeal whilst he was away in the War. But not knowing that doesn’t spoil or enrich my reading of the story.
Take Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, or let’s go for a famous one, Richard 3rd. Why do I need to tie them to Sh’s biography to appreciate these plays fully? What is missing or added if I know X, Y, or Z wrote them?
I ass-u-me that Sh did his due diligence when researching a play. We don”t know 100% for sure Sh didn”t travel to Europe.
There”s enough evidence of English players on the continent.
The Vatican has papers that are suggestive, but they are a mere footnote on Orthodox scholarship.
Catholic Shakespeare is also a conspiracy, according to Paul and Stanley. I was shocked, but not shocked. On the C/catholic question my boat is certainly out. Robert Bearman bugs out on the Catholics. Brilliant speaker as well as scholar btw.
That was my question on the sixty minutes launch online. Great way to do a conference. Looking forward to more.
But the evidence: his parents both Catholic, not too far removed relatives on his mother’s side burnt at the stake and otherwise executed and persecuted. Catholic school teachers. Abbesses, priests and friars in his plays. The Catholic question was unavoidable in his time. There were the Al Qaeda of the period.
Back to Billy Ray:
I am moved by Shakespeare no less than you. (You know the speech here alluded) from MOV. Sh. is not just words. Silences and pauses in Shakespeare are masterful. And built into the verse.
I love all of it William. From sports writers heading articles with a passing Sh. quote to political writers choosing another angle, to the hip-hop po-mo behind bars reality of it.
As well as the classically trained aficionados and professionals drowning in his words. There in the actor’s holy of holies, the theatre. If actors were no better than whores and drunkards, how fitting then that they played the Kings and Queens. If they kept their wits about them.
The upper and lower classes intermingled constantly. It was not hard to divine how they behaved or talked with one another. Servant master relationships were daily fodder. But the Elizabethan period was about free men who chose their destinies. And these men came from all levels of Society.
The missing ingredient in the Oxfordian theory is wit. Not that Oxfordians aren”t witty. That would be stupid.
Their theory lacks wit.
It’s so serious and earth shattering and history twisting. It’s all very comfy leather armchairs and brandies or single malts and cigars. And let’s go hunt some peasants!
Sorry Freudian slip, I meant pheasants.
All those dumbass low and middle classes and those petrified and paranoid upper class Elizabethans. The fear, the secrets, the threats, the coersions. A Stalinist grip some Oxfordians call it. Thank heaven Jimmi took over.
For all the learning that Oxford had both natural and esoteric, he didn”t display much wisdom of it. His life is a series of blunders leading to disgrace and poverty. He was much hated in his lifetime.
Our guy on the other hand was much loved in his. For his wit and his gentle nature mostly; as regards his disposition. His works are regarded as the work of a natural, and to the life, and simple, and earthy, on one hand; and encyclopaedic, and scientific, and esoteric, on the other hand.
His insight into the psychology of human behaviour, his ability to spin all philosophies into one seamless whole without stating yea or nay politically where he stands with certainty.
His handling of the scale of human emotion.
You want revenge? You got it. You want murder? You got it. You want womance and woses? You got em. Sh is not just words on a page or a screen. You have to sound him to make him live. Breathe life into his verse by speaking it.
Shakespeare was a showman, knew his audience. Listeners and lookers both. He knew his players. He knew his sources. He twisted their stories, adding a sub plot here, or another pair of lovers.
He dealt in the currency of the theatre of his time. And that is the single biggest metaphor he uses too. it doesn”t take a genius to figure it out. All the world”s a stage. So are you playing or are you being played?
Shakespeare is a huge business and has always been from his generation to now. Blaming the establishment of today is pointless. His brand is as strong, if not stronger than Queen Elizabeth’s whole reign.
Oxford must have hated how this upstart crow could produce such plays. Oxford the Salieri, to his Mozart. Deep down Eddie knew he was a lousy poet. (Cue peals of laughter from WJR).
Remember John Lennon and his ‘we’re bigger than Jesus’. Shakespeare in publishing terms is bigger than the Bible. Look at any book of English quotations Sh. outnumbers everyone in entries.
Shakespeare as a concept is a juggernaut that every generation is subjected to as a measure for genius. But what exactly is his genius?
Being a mensch and not a schmuck? A deeply esoteric philosopher or a dumbo fraud?
An addendum:
Mark Johnson thoroughly trashed the supposed scholarship of Billy J Ray without resorting to ad hominem attacks. Something I could learn from. But then I love winding them up!
The debate continues with several Early Modern Scholars against the big guns of Authorship in the Times Educational Supplement here. Janet Baker demolishes the Looney book that started Oxfordianism.
…Thanks to the readers of this blog, to you all, my thanks. All over the world the majority of bloggers are grateful for their regular readers. Blog interests are thesaurical and astronomical. And to follow all blogs or read all books is impossible.
So thank you for reading my gabblings on Shakespeare. Despite the coming film, Anonymous I will still believe in the Stratty bwah. For the simple reason genius of whatever kind exists to those with a passion to develop it.
So the WIll Shakespeare of Anonymous, having seen the few scenes that I have. How do you write that sucking in air through your clenched teeth noise anyway? As if you just watched someone get road rash. Yes that noise.
In the film Ben Jonson is the divot who hooks up de Vere with Shakspere of Stratford. He’s the smart and savvy one and Will is just ambitious innit?The cast list gives you an overview of who is important to the telling of their story. What I find important is what the real historical story is about these fictions.
I particularly like the credit ‘angry man in the theatre’. I wonder what he’s angry about? That some snob on a stool on the stage is blocking his view of a fiction Shakespeare/Oxford wrote?
Because it is all by definition a fiction. A film script, as abusive a term now, as play was to reputable literary and learned types of the period in question.
Because again they will have researched their script. But it remains a script, a cinematic story to be told in 130 minutes. And are all involved convinced? Any dissenters among the cast?
Dekker and Nashe are in there, so the timing has to be early 1590’s. Jonson gets his big break in 1597. About the same time WIlliam Shakespeare starts getting a mention on title pages. Though he has been named as author on the title pages of his two poems since 1593.
More about Ben later.
A Javanese Nobleman makes an appearance for some reason? What were Elizabeth’s ties to Java? At this point in history both Oxford and Elizabeth are within a decade of their deaths. Him aged 54 in 1604. She in 1603 aged 70.
Will Shakespeare in this film seems to be a bit of a piss-head and whinging actor of a luvvie type that surely did, or did not exist at that time? Never someone screams?
In another scene, Shakespeare slams Ben Jonson into a pillar!
” He chose me, Ben. He chose me.’ Rafe/Will triumphantly cries. As if it’s a benediction, and not the curse it’s been since Delia first picked up shovel.
Will/Rafe knowing as he stares Ben down that he’s squids in and set for life. If not for wrongfully acknowledged literary eternity.
Looks good onscreen and will in its context perhaps sound reasonable, but is it anywhere near a real and palpable truth? What about the other cast members watching this scene? Who chose him? What’s he on about?
Ben Jonson was a brickie pretty much born and bred. And a war veteran, he served as a volunteer under Francis Vere in the United Provinces. Killed a man in single combat he bragged. Francis Vere was Edward’s cousin. A proper soldier and famous for it.
Of course Eddie, despite being a prodigal son and long lost child in one, is now having to regain anonymously the title he gave away in the early 1590’s to some schmuck from Stratford!!!
Edward de Vere in this film is a rampant badass genius and premiere Lord of the realm. And a spinning wheel of tortured creativity. And not be denied. And definitely to be feared. And admired, as well as pitied.
‘A mind like a creamy pumpkin’.
Thank you Rhys for that one.
Look up the wiki page for Oxford and see how much Oxford is acknowledged for his patronage and knowledge of the arts. Praised for being the best at comedies by Meres and Puttenham. A comedy is a play right?
So WHY is there this stigma of contagion in the film? As pumpkin pie points out ‘People like me don’t write plays. People like you do.’
Well Oxford you were outed a bunch of times in your own time so why not acknowledge the plays that really rocked? If you wrote them why not take credit for them?
But Oxford did play several instruments and spoke 7 languages and had his own theatre group and kept a Salon for writers called Fisher’s Folly. He had also grown up close to Elizabeth.
But don”t forget you have to accept she was probably his mum and he was sleeping with her and impregnating her as a teenager. That gave them a son and made her a mother and grandmother all in one. He was the daddy son of course. So you see secrecy is in the family genes.
He also had another wife or two, and children. He sounds too much like Batman. This secret identity thing doesn”t work for me. People are basically stupid. Yet incredibly perceptive.
This perceptivity has nothing to do with native intelligence, which can be used by the more perceptive to their advantage. To control subconscious impulses say.
Perceptions can be manipulated, which is to say hands do work before the perceiving happens. See brandwashed for the proof. Is this film an Oxfordian brandwashing experiment?
As if that one is new. Any European market invites the truth there. And markets have been around since?
Shakespeare”s dad had the main stall on Stratford Town market selling gloves. Talk about a place that was a microcosm of the values of Elizabethan Society. And his dad with an upmarket item like gloves. Which the Earl of Oxford loved btw.
Not many know that Oxford”s Men visited Stratford in 1587. Bit late for our Will though. He’ d ‘ve been in London working at the Theatre with the Burbages. Wonder how they enter into this movie Anonymous?
Coz he”s the weakest link really isn”t he? Richard Burbage, the one who acted the roles his mate WIll was writing. He’d have known wouldn”t he? Bet ya we won”t see him much in Anonymous. He”s low down on the cast list anyway. He was non-existent except as a bragaddocioed prat in Sh in Love too.
Maybe Oxford introduces Ben Jonson to Inigo Jones at Court? No Inigo doesn’t get a credit. Or is it Bill and Ben the flowerpot men against the world? I”m gonna LOL at this film and really annoy people with my spontaneous reactions. Can”t wait!
But Ben wrote this eulogy to his dead 7 year old called ‘On my first sonne’ in 1616.
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy;
Seven yeeres tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I loose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envie?
To have so soon scap’d worlds and fleshes rage,
And, if no other miserie, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lye
Ben. Johnson his best piece of poetrie.
For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
This same year 1616 his possible friend, colleague, and/or climbing the ladder of success tool died.
How about his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden 3 years later? These didn’t even surface until 150 years after his, shakespeare’s, and oxford’s deaths. Here visit this link to the earliest recollections of Ben Jonson history has to offer us.
Here follows a list of people Jonson talked shit about with Drummond. Notice Oxford is nowhere and Shakespear is mentioned briefly and kindly.
INDEX OF PERSONS OK AUTHORS
MENTIONED IN JONSON’S CONVERSATIONS.
Aiton, Sir Robert, 11
Alexander, Sir William, (afterwards
Earl of Stirling), 11
Ariosto, 3
Arlotte, Mother of William the Con-queror, 34
Arthur, King, 10
Aubigny, Lord d’, 19
Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Chancellor,22,25
Bartas, Sieur Du, 2, 4
Beaumont, Francis, 10, 14, 17
Bedford, Countess of, 7, 27
Bonefonius, 5, 26
Boiilstred, Mrs., 7, 38
Bowes, Sir Hierosme, 34
Buchanan, George, 34
Butlar, 30
Calvin, John, 9
Camden, William, 18, 20, 26, 36
Campion, Thomas, 1
Cardan, 34
Casaubon, Isaac, 34
Chapman, George, 3, 4, 8, 12,17, 20
Charles, Prince of Wales, 30,35
Coriate, Thomas, 38
Cotton, Sir Robert, 20
Daniel, Samuel, 1, 2, 10, 14
Davies, or Davy, Sir John, 15, 26, 37
Day, John, 4, 12
Dekker, Thomas, 4
Democritus, 30
Devereux, Mr., brother of the Earl of Essex, 35
Dod, John, 33
Donne, Dr. John, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9,15, 29,37
Drayton, Michael, 2, 10, 11,15
Drummond, William, of Hawthorn-den, passim
Du Bartas, see Bartas
Dyer, Sir Edward, 17
Elizabeth, Queen, 15, 19,23, 35
Essex, Robert, Earl of, 12,25,28,35
Fairfax, Edward, 2,3
Field, Nathan, 11
Fletcher, John, 4,12,17
France, Abraham, 4
Guarini, 4, 36
Hall, Joseph, 36
Harrington, Sir John, 3
Henry the Eighth of England, 18
Henry the Fourth of France, 29
Henry, Prince of Wales, 7,8, 32
Herbert, Sir Edward, 6, 8
Hey ward, Sir John?, 36
Heywood, John, 15, 35
Homer, 3. 8,17
Hooker, Richard, 10
Horace, 2, 5, 6, 10,11,29
James the First, King, 3, 19, 20, 22, 26, 34, 35
Jones, Inigo, 22, 30, 31
Jonson, Ben, passim, his Father and Grandfather, 18; his Mother, 18, 20; his Wife, 19; his Son, 20
Juvenal, 2, 12
Leicester, Robert, Earl of, 23, 24;
his Sister, 23; his Lady, 24
Lisle, Lord, 17,24; his daughter, 24
Lucan, 4, 37
Marcellinus, 37
Markham, Gervase, 11
Marphorius, 29
Marston, John, 11, 16, 20, 21; his Father-iu-law, 16
Martial, 2, 7, 10, 11, 36
Mary, Queen of England, 18, 35
Mary, Queen of Scots, 12
Middleton, John, 12
Minshew, 4
Murray, Sir James, 20
Musaeus, 17
Northampton, Earl of, 22
Northumberland, Earl of; his Bro-ther, 30
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 12,16,27
Owen, John, 17
Pasquil, 29
Pembroke, Earl of, 22, 25
Pembroke, Countess of, 15, 25, 27
Perron, Cardinal Du, 5
Persius, 10
Petrarch, 4
Petronius Arbiler,5 , 9
Phaer, Thomas, 3
Philip the Second of Spain, 23
Piercy, Sir Geslaine, 34
Pindar, 10
*’lautus, 29
Plinius Secundus, 2, 9, 29, 37
Plymouth, Mayor of, 34
Quintilian, 2, 9
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 2, 12, 15, 21;
his Lady, 21; his Son, 21
Roe, Sir John, 10, 11, 12
Ronsard, 5
Rutland, Countess of, 16,17, 24,27
Salisbury, Earl of, 22, 24
Saville, Sir Henry, 25, 36
Scaliger, Joseph, 33
Scullor, The, 26
Selden, John, 10, 20, 36
Shakespeare, 3, 16, 39
Sharpham, Edward, 4
Silvester, Josuah, 2
Sidney, Sir Philip, 2, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18,23,26,36; his Mother, 23
Somerset, Earl of, 27
Southwell, Robert, 13
Spencer, Gabriel, 19
Spenser, Edmond, 2, 9, 12
Stow, John, 36
Suffolk, Lord, 10
Suffolk, Lady, 27
Tacitus, 2, 9, 10,25,36
Tasso, 3
Taylor, John, the Water-Poet, 26, 36
Twynne, Thomas, 3
Virgil, 3
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 35
Warner, William, 3
William the Conqueror, 34
Worcester, Earl of, 17
Wotton, Sir Henry, 8, 32
Wroth, Lady Mary, 24,27
Wroth, Sir Robert, 24
All this is verifiable in a downloadable pdf form from the above link to Hawthornden.
This is like a who’s who overview of who was who in the Elizabethan and Jacobean literary world. Ben had been a pupil of SIr WIlliam Camden. He ended up corresponding with another interesting writer of the time that followed his, James Howell.
Lastly Ben was 10 years younger than WIll and 24 years younger than Eddie Pumpkin. Sorry Pupkin. Oxford in Anonymous will once again be the King of Comedy.
ADDENDUM:
As I was writing it a review of it was posted to our FB group page. You can join up above but don’t forget to turn off your mail to the group or you’ll be swamped with links SHakespeareana style.
Here’s the review of Anonymous by someone who actually saw the film. And it’s excellent and confirms my own suspicion outlined here.
…or to start the post with Canadian Content, the OPP, the Ontario Provinical Police, which as a teenager we used to call the Ontario Party Poopers.
Canadian Content is a standard on Canadian radio and TV and our YLuvSh FB group. I believe 30 percent of played content has to be Canadian. So there’s a lot of re-runs of the same artists. Good for the Anne Murrays and Corey Harts of the world.
Anyways Original Pronunciation has entered my world en masse this last week. If you are curious about OP then start by pressing here: which leads you to Paul Meier’s excellent free e-book. A book that talks to you and brings you that much closer to a Shakespearean accent.
Granted there are some phonetic symbols to be learnt, but I’ve always thought that skill to be part of an actor’s palette.
Especially if you’re interested in accents. Of which OP should just be another in your arsenal, alongside Received Pronunciation and General American. The link above takes you to the phonetic symbols at www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html. All aspiring or established actors take note.
But that’s not the only reason. There is a levelling of the accentual playing field happening with OP. The hegemony of RP as the accent of Shakespeare is being challenged. Shakespeare’s English sounded nothing like Sir John Gielgud and Sir Larry.
Take a trip to David Crystal’s newest website called Original Pronunciation dot com.
There we find our Ben regaling us with tales of hunch back Kings for the British Library’s OP collection.
There is also a rather brilliant talk with John Barton on Youtube at 4 minutes 20 secs on this link. And here we should talk about why RP and not OP has been the standard. The Brits have for good reason been the standard bearers of Shakespeare’s language.
The accent notwithstanding Shakespeare demands a clarity and facility of speech. The practitioners we all look up to from the early 20thC were working with a shared vocal tradition passed on from the Restoration of the theatres in 1660.
Speaking of the Interregnum (between Kings) and Restoration, I never realised what an effect that had on all those British colonies and conquests of that period. e.g. Jamaica, Barbados and the Original United States.
This material covering the intersection of music and language is in Book 3: Shakespeare’s voice and speech, Book 4 Shakespeare’s Music, and Book 5 Embodying Shakespeare of Voicing Shakespeare by Paul Meier.
The single most important chapter in my ears being chapter 4. The musical dynamics of Shakespeare as Meier rightly reminds us:
We live at a time when the most powerful expression of our language is now, sadly, written rather than oral. In the spoken word sense and sound have been disconnected from one another. Meaning and music are thought to serve different masters……we have forgotten that the synergy of tone, tempo, stress, intonation, phrasing and rhythm actually creates meaning when a written text is voiced.
Nuff said. Except for some testimonials for Paul Meier. Check the names: from Ang Lee to Samuel West.
Ok enough time has past since Don put out his book
‘Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets’.
Don’s insights into Sonnet writing are invaluable to anyone discovering the form. Today’s post will delve into the world of Shakespeare’s Donnet form.
Disclaimer first:
I, like Don, take these poems as poetry first and biography last. Though seperating the two is nigh on impossible.
Like Don, I too discovered these sonnets when drunk, tired, bored, enervated, buzzin, etc. I find no fault with this methodology.
The numerological clues as to ordering the poems belong within the forms and pressures of the time and are not exclusive to Shakes. Nor do I think they are of grave importance.
Unlike Don, I’m not a poet, lecturer, (lecherer maybe), nor a musician. I appreciate and bow to his knowledge on these levels.
Lastly Don, I don’t mind the quirky po-mo analogies and popular references and trashing the contents. I do disagree with some of his conclusions about good and bad sonnets. But hey, i like this song, you like that. Even if it is cliche ridden.
Let’s move on to what Don says:
Poetry is an interactive pursuit.
Reading a Sh sonnet is an act of authorship.
Reading conventions have changed a lot.
People like poetry that sounds like poetry.
The poem is an unstable sign: it forces itself into an original expression, to say what can’t be said. It demands interpretation.
What Don thinks of sonnet 47: This poem is so thin you want to wrap it up and feed it soup.
Clear enough so far. Interpretation then being inevitable. However there has been a cultural shift from Humoral to scientific philosophy resulting in a…
Change in Cultural Metaphors.
We no longer think in terms of symbols as token, message, contagion, substance, shadow, oaths, vows, breakers of etc.
The lens Elizabethan lovers were obliged to observe their own behaviour.
Shakespeare shows a Barthesian keenness of insight into love’s effects, even if we remain ignorant of their cause.
Offers the same solace and camaraderie. i.e. My situation may have seemed to me insane and exceptional to me. But now I see others have suffered in an identical fashion.
Obviously these aren’t quotes per se. But bits selected to illustrate broad outlines. Let’s move on to the set of Renaissance conventions Sh had at his disposal…
Petrarch’s themes: wooing, exhortation, outcry, praise, blame, self examining, repentance, farewell to love, love at first sight, love sickness, frustration, feudal service, Lady as ideally beautiful, virtuous, miraculous, beloved in heaven, destined to early death.
Cupid with his arrows, fire, whips and chains.
War within self: love as virtue, idolatry, sensuality. Hope, fear, joy, sorrow, conceits, wit, urbanity, precision, allegory, personification.
Naturally we could give each of these a sonnet number and show where Sh went anti-conventional in interpreting them. Here are some of Don’s findings in themes…
* Sonnets 1-17
We want lovely things to carry on.
i.e. You’re too beautiful to deny the world replicas.
* Time is less a dimension than a farce.
* Immortality through procreation to
immortality through deathless verse.
* Love as a can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think about anything else stuff.
* The depth of silent love: if too strong – it ties the tongue.
* The trick of claiming incompetence in the most competent way. i.e. my poems are rubbish, here’s a pretty good one.
* Whenever I feel awful i think of you and then I feel better.
* The torment of memory, i.e. we never really get over it if we can bring it to mind.
* How can I lack inspiration while you’re still alive.
* Stolen jewels conceit. Rare pleasures are more acute. i.e. way of dealing with absence.
*
Substance and shadow
Form and reflection
Image and idea
* The difficulty of outwardly expressing what is in the heart.
* How much more beautiful is beauty when it is accompanied by truth and integrity.
* Distillation of fragrance from roses. Therefore second life. Works with hair too, for wigs.
* Immortality promised to the lover becomes the poet’s through the vehicle of the poems.
* Power of poetry to survive in the human mind regardless.
* The addiction of love: what happens when the drugs wear off? Dopamine kicks in early and is released, which works in anticipation of a reward, not the reward itself. Add will he won’t he to the mix.
* Uncertain conclusion leads to exciting and thrilling circumstances.
* Love is not an appetite like lust and hunger. It doesn’t answer a physical need.
* We are dealing with works whose truth value lies as much in their style as their logic.
* Love as a voluntary hell.
* You are everything and everything is you.
So now a little Don the professor on the mechanics of sonnets….
Metre the magnet of speech.
Prosody = agree or disagree between stress, metre and speech rhythm.
3 kinds of stress:
received stress = baNana not banaNa
sense stress = emphasis for meaning
expressive stress = emphasis for emotion
The 3 components of stress:
Volume
Pitch
Rhythmic displacement
And a little bit about metonymy and metaphor, tenor and vehicle…
Metonymy is a trope of relation.
Metaphor is a trope of correspondence:
intra-domain operates within
inter-domain operates across
A domain = anything you think of being more or less one thing. Conceptually made up of lots of attributes, aspects, connotations and relations.
Metaphor has 2 parts:
Tenor or the real subject
Vehicle or the imaginary thing to which the tenor is compared or claimed to be.
All things distinguished as ‘things’ have attributes central to their definition.
A metaphor finds overlap between the sets of attributes called the GROUND i.e. the same.
The opposite of the ground is the TENSION i.e. difference.
Finally we’ll see some numerology inherent in the sequence of sonnets as we have them and as Elizabethans liked to play with them…
There was an Ancient belief that the body alters its constitution.
7 = a climacteric number.
8 = octave
12 = hours of the clock
13 – the first declaration of love happens in l.13 of sonnet 13. is it doomed?
26 = envoi to the first 25. 100 more to go.
Climacteric numbered sonnets 49 63 81 = death and finality at their heart.
154 poems = multiple of 7 and 11
i.e. 22 x 7, 11 x 14.
1-126 = 7 x 18. Also 2 x 63
127-152 = 7 x 4 (+2)
If the whole sequence is one giant sonnet the turn is between 88 and 89. A fibonacci number that relates to the golden section.
As Don says about numerology: It’s all rubbish, but still.
….or mind your p’s and q’s.
In literature, a quibble is a common plot device, used to fulfill the exact verbal conditions of an agreement in order to avoid the intended meaning. Its most common uses are in legal bargains and, in fantasy, magically enforced ones.
Source wiki
A quillet is a word that means both ‘a small piece of land’and also ‘a verbal quibble’. Source: Sh’s Legal Language a dictionary. B.J. Sokol and Mary Sokol.
e.g.
Hamlet Ham V.i.97
Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
Henry VI Part 1 1H6 II.iv.17
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Henry VI Part 2 2H6 III.i.261
And do not stand on quillets how to slay him;
Love’s Labour’s Lost LLL IV.iii.286
Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil!
Othello Oth III.i.23
Prithee keep up thy quillets – there’s a poor piece
Timon of Athens Tim IV.iii.156
Nor sound his quillets shrilly. Hoar the flamen,
Source: Shakespeare’s Words website.
As the porter says in Makkers about drink making an equivocator:
Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery; it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him, makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep and giving him the lie, leaves him.
Quarrels give us more room for scope and number 103 references over 31 plays, including Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward 3.
Whilst watching Romeo and Juliet at the Embankment Gardens, it struck me that Juliet quibbles with Paris when she is on her way to Friar Lawrence.
PARIS: Come you to make confession to this father?
JULIET: To answer that, I should confess to you.
PARIS: Do not deny to him that you love me.
JULIET: I will confess to you that I love him.
PARIS: So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.
JULIET: If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.
PARIS: Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears.
JULIET: The tears have got small victory by that,
For it was bad enough before their spite.
PARIS: Thou wrongest it more than tears with that report.
JULIET: That is no slander, sir, which is a truth.
And what I spake, I spake it to my face.
PARIS: Thy face is mine, and thou hast slandered it.
JULIET: It may be so, for it is not mine own. –
Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you at evening mass?
R+J Act 4: Sc. 1.
To be continued with the likes of AYLI and LLL etc etc etc
… A comment extended and never sent to Dear Mark,
I love reading your blog and have your book from your visit to Amsterdam’s Theatre Institute.
(Such is the web we weave, i trust he’ll see, hear or ignore it).
I am a Stratfordian and taught by the ‘blinkered’ at the Sh Institute. I already had survived Charlton Ogburn’s onslaught of pedestal shaking at that point. I was looking to find out more on the background of the era. As well as indulge my Sh passion 24/7.
What I found was a middle of Britain market town culturally run by the uber-scholarly and infested with RSC. The townies were a different socio-economic bunch. The houses are quaint and feintingly historical.
The Shakespeare industry is however still no more dominant than the agricultural and brewing industries that have always existed there.
So this backwater town idea you all keep projecting doesn’t soar. Fulke Greville for heaven’s sake. Lived in Stratters, wasn’t a backwater hick noble. He was a friend of Sidney though wasn’t he?
A veritable man o letters on SH’s doorstep. So where’s his recognition of Shakespeare is the logical question? I too would love to know. The Fulke Greville as author theory doesn’t thrill me. But he cannot be excluded from Shaggy’s history. Which was a Stratford and London history.
Did he travel to Europe? Sure Oxford did his grand tour as many a noble did. He hits all the right esoteric spots and people. Alan H. does hit the monstrous adversary on the nose.
Can it be that Eddy V single-handedly shapes the Renaissance power elite from within through words? Or are we all being played?
The Teletubbies may have come and gone from Stratford but Will remains. And of course Garrick’s disastrous Jubilee sparked it off. Shakespeare was then and is now a tourist industry as well as a cultural marker. The Disneyfication of the world is proof of how unreal that is.
Cold hard historical facts are scarce. Speculation based on alternative cold hard facts is abundant.
I run a blog as you may know wherein I’m not exactly flattering to the alternative Shakespeares. I have known artists and actors and write from my perspective and opinion.
But I am definitely not ignoring any lead on providing the true identity of all our quests, Shakespeare. If I can read the sources I will. My German is functionally OK when spoken, and lyrically perfectionist when sung to Schubert or Mozart’s lieder.
I disagree with the Alternative seekers way of presenting history and/or History. It goes against established methodologies, which as we know change with time. Re: theory and criticism have provided their own mind numbing take on Shakespeare despite who wrote it.
I’m all for questioning authority and thinking outside the box. And I salute genius and sublimity. Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi rock as interpreters of Sh. But they are few among the many who can and do. few of whom agree with you or them.
Your historical method is always personal and psychological towards Oxford. Events are tied together by threads and strands quite disparate. And then knotted together as a final argument in support.
When we both know a little questioning on your conclusions within any given argument and we’re into dunno, could never know land. In that I am as guilty. By this admission.
However the historical record for a fleshed out Shakespeare as the man from Stratford has never been achieved either. The man is simply a mirror into all our souls.
So the dichotomy often thrown out upon observing the reflection: is he low-born or noble. Hence the snobbery label, if you choose the latter. And if you’re an Oxfordian how could not be a little class oriented?
But to deny the lower classes any humanity, except that of willing dupe. Curses man, you offend his friends. In your world neither Shakespeare had true friends except their own genius. The one for fobbing off and the other for being fobbed.
My father was a gamekeeper on a few estates and I observed him doffing the hat as a child. The absolutism of power and privilige stayed with me as an impression.
And at the same time because of Oxenforde’s position, rather station. It must be he. Where was he during the theatre world of the 1570’s and 1580’s on into the 90’s?
He had his own group of boys we know. He wrote comedies and juvenile poetry we know. We have his letters covering 40 years of his life. How come we haven’t recognised his right to the title of Bard through them?
Instead conspiratorial Inner circle aristocracy that was heavily played by his guardian and monarch. Power none, lands confiscated for the crown revenues, until coming of age. A fortune squandered as an adult. Shunned for the post he wanted during the Armada.
These things all make him likeable as a bastard freak aristocratic artist busting Elizabethan cojones. Revenge in the form of plays splaying the principals of that time’s history for the cognoscenti on the public stage. It’s almost New Historicist.
The impact of Authorship studies as a meme is taking shape. But that doesn’t make it true. If a meme can be said to have a true/false dichotomy.
I appreciate the amount of reading and study that you and others like you are expending defending your 1 of a hundred choice of candidate. You turn up evidence of the EME as much as any university researcher. And in fact your name is becoming a footnote to many a young PhD’s essay. At the appropriate academic institutions.
Both Oxford and Shakespear are important to the study of Early Modern Theatre history. Neither is capable of upending accepted Elizabethan history. Especially with the TP2 theory. Which I enjoy watching you all take positions on.
Talk about a revolution that ain’t gonna happen. Nevertheless keep fleshing out your guy and working on those cool apps (the Google map rocks)!
TP2 theory is the Tudor Prince 2 theory that Elizabeth squired Oxford then with him squired the Earl of Southampton. Kooky and kinky!
The previous post on Joshua Foer’s attempt to convince us of the usefulness of a memory system failed. It’s incredibly clever that you can memorise decks of cards or places of Pi. But to what end?
His book neither proved nor disproved any value attainable through the acquiring of a larger conscious memory. I say ‘conscious’, meaning the mnemonist has some control over it, i.e. instant recall translated into purposeful action.
The only conclusion Josh’s book arrives at is that some people really enjoy memorising not only the collective knowledge of mankind but also useless information of little consequence. That it is worthy to develop your memory in and of itself is another question.
He still forgets his car, keys, and the myriad of things we slap ourselves on our heads for and say oh shit! Seven, plus or minus two is the span of our memories. And knowledge multiplies with each new technology. External memory is the future, whether we like it or not.
The truth is more that humans are rarely conscious and often hold contradictory opinions, which they assert as personal truth.
Scientific truth is seen as the light, which reason and intellect must acknowledge. But science, reason and intellect have often bowed to religion, dogma and temporal power.
And God? Whose memory is omniscient and instant throughout the creation of space, time, and all universal actions? God is responsible for the human inability to remember!
Why would a loving, caring God block us from gaining knowledge? Even if it is contradictory to knowing the Godhead itself?
I’m no theologian (just a questioning human) and revealed scriptures and texts throw up more questions of faith, which in turn become obstacles to any kind of unified theory of what on earth this whole life is about.
Because that is our problem here. Geocentric and anthropocentric viewpoints consume our lives. Materialist and consumer driven societies enforce the belief that we are living the right kind of life, showering us with more and more information.
Information is knowledge, knowledge is power, is the credo. What a load of bollocks! Power, as every tyrant and dictator knows, is power to manipulate, co-erce, and stop people who don’t follow the rules. However arbitrary or unscientific those rules may be.
We humans like to think that learning is rule based. That sickness and health are rule based. That the heavens and stars are rule based. And scientific observation leads us to the truth that this is actually so.
However the rules are arbitrary until accepted as rules by all humankind. And what are the chances of that? Given our Western centric knowledge system?
Slowly the geo-political wheel is turning as it always has. Do we learn from it? What is our memory of it? Our memories are culturally stimulated and therefore as dogmatic as the prevailing power elites will have it.
Yet there will always be free thinkers and mystics and poets and artists who don’t accept only temporal power. Which returns us to the theological questions.
The war between religion and science isn’t over yet. And some creationists on the planet would love to silence any idea that life and human error isn’t all a 10,000 year meta-meme of salvation.
For that meta-meme we supposedly end up in heaven with these same blindfolded thinkers for eternity. These words 450 years ago would have got me burned at a stake. Like they did Giordano Bruno. Or like they silenced Galileo.
We now accept the idea that the earth and moon move around each other and the sun. Comets are no longer portents of evil doings or plagues or dearths.
here is some knowledge of how we got here from a scientific viewpoint. The story isn’t finished and probably never will be:
A history of the warfare between Science and religion
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
1. The Visible Universe.
* Ancient and medieval views regarding the manner of creation
2. Theological Teachings Regarding the Animals and Man.
* Ancient and medieval representations of the creation of man
3. Theological and Scientific Theories of an Evolution in Animated Nature.
* Development of these ideas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries
* Contributions to the theory of evolution at the close of the eighteenth century
* Development of the theory up to the middle of the nineteenth century
4. The Final Effort of Theology.
* Attacks on Darwin and his theories in England
* Formation of sacro-scientific organizations to combat the theory of evolution
CHAPTER II. GEOGRAPHY
1. The Form of the Earth.
2. The Delineation of the Earth.
3. The Inhabitants of the Earth.
4. The Size of the Earth.
5. The Character of the Earth’s Surface.
CHAPTER III. ASTRONOMY.
1. The Old Sacred Theory of the Universe.
2. The Heliocentric Theory.
3. The War upon Galileo.
4. Victory of the Church over Galileo
5. Results of the Victory over Galileo.
6. The Retreat of the Church after its Victory over Galileo.
CHAPTER IV. FROM “SIGNS AND WONDERS” TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS.
1. The Theological View.
2. Theological Efforts to Crush the Scientific View.
3. The Invasion of Scepticism.
4. Theological Efforts at Compromise. — The Final Victory of Science.
CHAPTER V. FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.
1. Growth of Theological Explanations.
2. Efforts to Suppress the Scientific View.
3. The First Great Effort of Compromise, based on the Flood of Noah.
4. Final Efforts at Compromise — The Victory of Science Complete.
CHAPTER VI. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, EGYPTOLOGY, AND ASSYRIOLOGY.
1. The Sacred Chronology.
2. The New Chronology.
CHAPTER VII. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY.
1. The Thunder-stones.
2. The Flint Weapons and Implements.
CHAPTER VIII. THE “FALL OF MAN” AND ANTHROPOLOGY.
CHAPTER IX. THE “FALL OF MAN” AND ETHNOLOGY.
CHAPTER X. THE “FALL OF MAN” AND HISTORY.
CHAPTER XI. FROM “THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR” TO METEOROLOGY.
1. Growth of a Theological Theory.
2. Diabolical Agency in Storms.
3. The Agency of Witches.
4. Franklin’s Lightning-Rod.
CHAPTER XII. FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
1. The Supremacy of Magic.
2. The Triumph of Chemistry and Physics.
CHAPTER XIII. FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
1. THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.
2. GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING. — THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
3. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRACLES OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE.
4. THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE. — “PASTORAL MEDICINE” CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT.
5. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.
6. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
7. THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.
8. FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM. — THE ROYAL TOUCH.
9. THE SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE FOR ANATOMY.
10. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION, VACCINATION, AND THE USE OF ANÆSTHETICS.
11. FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY IN MEDICINE.
CHAPTER XIV. FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
1. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.
2. GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.
3. THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY SCIENCE.
4. THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.
CHAPTER XV. FROM “DEMONIACAL POSSESSION” TO INSANITY.
1. THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.
2. BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
3. THE FINAL STRUGGLE AND VICTORY OF SCIENCE. — PINEL AND TUKE.
CHAPTER XVI. FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA.
1. THE EPIDEMICS OF “POSSESSION.”
2. BEGINNINGS OF HELPFUL SCEPTICISM.
3. THEOLOGICAL “RESTATEMENTS.” — FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW AND METHODS.
CHAPTER XVII. FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
1. THE SACRED THEORY IN ITS FIRST FORM.
* Difference of the history of Comparative Philology from that of other sciences as regards the attitude of theologians
* Curiosity of early man regarding the origin, the primitive form, and the diversity of language
* The Hebrew answer to these questions
* The legend of the Tower of Babel
* The real reason for the building of towers by the Chaldeans and the causes of their ruin
* Other legends of a confusion of tongues
* Influence upon Christendom of the Hebrew legends
* Lucretius’s theory of the origin of language
* The teachings of the Church fathers on this subject
* The controversy as to the divine origin of the Hebrew vowel points
* Attitude of the reformers toward this question
* Of Catholic scholars. — Marini
* Capellus and his adversaries
* The treatise of Danzius
2. THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.
3. BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
* Reason for the Church’s ready acceptance of the conclusions of comparative philology
* Beginnings of a scientific theory of language
* Hottinger
* Leibnitz
* The collections of Catharine the Great, of Hervas, and of Adelung
* Chaotic period in philology between Leibnitz and the beginning of the study of Sanskrit
* Illustration from the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
4. TRIUMPH OF THE NEW SCIENCE.
* Effect of the discovery of Sanskrit on the old theory
* Attempts to discredit the new learning
* General acceptance of the new theory
* Destruction of the belief that all created things were first named by Adam
* Of the belief in the divine origin of letters
* Attempts in England to support the old theory of language
* Progress of philological science in France
* In Germany
* In Great Britain
* Recent absurd attempts to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue
5. SUMMARY.
* Gradual disappearance of the old theories regarding the origin of speech and writing
* Full acceptance of the new theories by all Christian scholars
* The result to religion, and to the Bible
CHAPTER XVIII. FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY.
1. THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.
* Growth of myths to account for remarkable appearances in Nature — mountains. rocks, curiously marked stones, fossils, products of volcanicaction
* Myths of the transformation of living beings into natural objects
* Development of the science of Comparative Mythology
2. MEDIÆVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.
* Description of the Dead Sea
* Impression made by its peculiar features on the early dwellers in Palestine
* Reasons for selecting the Dead Sea myths for study
* Naturalness of the growth of legend regarding the salt region of Usdum
* Universal belief in these legends
* Concurrent testimony of early and mediaeval writers, Jewish and Christian, respecting the existence of Lot’s wife as a “pillar of salt,” and of the other wonders of the Dead Sea
* Discrepancies in the various accounts and theological explanations of them
* Theological arguments respecting the statue of Lot’s wife
* Growth of the legend in the sixteenth century
3. POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS. — BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
4. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE. — TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
2. RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.
CHAPTER XX. FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
1. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
2. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
3. THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
4. THE CLOSING STRUGGLE.
5. VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS.
6. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.
…Subtitled: the art and science of remembering everything by Joshua Foer. Or how a young journalist for the Rolling Stone won the US Memory Championship in a year.
Currently on international bestseller lists the cover tells us. Obviously I had to have it. Remembering and forgetting being a favourite pastime.
Josh’s quest is to discover whether we’ve sold our birthright for a bowl of potage. ie our internal memories for an external.
His due diligence in this task leads his book down two paths. First the search for memory techniques and their gradual extinction. Secondly his year long assisted training and accomplishment in winning.
The undisputed guru of modern day memory techniques is Tony Buzan. And the book could almost be sub-subtitled the interview I never got but really wanted from Tony Buzan.
Instead Josh settles on mop haired cane toting mnemomist Ed Cooke, who becomes his guide and mentor. The bible of mnemonists (do you pronounce the initial m as Buzan does)? is Rhetorica Ad Herennium. For those who wish to browse the memory section scroll to number 20.
But the father of memory techniques has to be Simonides and a rather singular event, which happened at a disastrous banquet he attended.
The story:
Simonides was celebrating the same victory with Scopas and his relatives at a banquet when he received word that two young men were waiting outside to see him. When he got outside, however, he discovered firstly that the two young men were nowhere to be found and, secondly, that the dining hall was collapsing behind him. Scopas and a number of his relatives were killed.
During the excavation of the rubble of Scopas’ dining hall, Simonides was called upon to identify each guest killed. Their bodies had been crushed beyond recognition but he completed the gruesome task by correlating their identities to their positions (loci in Latin) at the table before his departure. He later drew on this experience to develop the ‘memory theatre’ or ‘memory palace’,
Taken from wiki here
The memory palace arrives in the fifth chapter of Josh’s book. Before that we’ve encountered how difficult it is to find a smart man, the man who remembered too much, the expert on experts and the most forgetful man in the world.
The two basic components of a memory palace are images or that which is to be remembered and places or where it is to be remembered. The person remembering places their image in a certain spot, and animates the image outrageously, so next time he/she walks past the image the remembering happens.
The palace is unique to the person doing the remembering. It can be a structure or a familiar path. As Ed instructs Josh in his first lesson,
‘The thing to understand Josh, is that humans are very, very good at learning spaces’.
as he instructs him on a rock in Central Park on a freezing winter’s day. It’s a very Yoda young Skywalker relationship these two build.
Chapter six should have been my epiphany moment, How to memorize a poem. (he’s a yank. he does zed’s when we all know they should be s’s).
This chapter should be worth the price of the book. I mean 154 sonnets by rote coz i could never figure out how to use Buzan’s method must have some easier way. Right?!
Wrong. As the anonymous writer of ad herennium wrote 2,000 years ago: memorizing poetry and prose is extraordinarily difficult. Well thanks, I knew that. As does Josh, but he follows it with one of my 2 favourite quotes from the book.
“I believe that they who wish to do easy things without trouble and toil must previously have been trained in difficult things.”
The 2nd quote will have to wait as I have a 2nd birthday party of my boy to attend at Tun Fun.
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Look and Listen to Others
Online Works of Shakespeare
Play School
Renaissance School
Scholarly Renaissance-related blogs
Shakespeare Blogs
Shakespeare Institutions
Shakespeare or SOMEONE ELSE?
Sonnet School
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