Thanks to the readers of this blog…

…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.