To write or not to write....I just read a beautiful article about William Shakespeare

JW Frogen

Gold Member
May 10, 2009
6,220
1,243
155
I just read a beautiful article about William Shakespeare in the Guardian. It is a dispute about whether he wrote the plays but the author has no doubt he did.

Some times a human is so complex few believe they really exist as they do.

I suppose every last one of us has this problem at one time or another?

Every last one of us can be full of wonder a grace, but can we always convince the world at large?

Who really wrote Shakespeare? | Culture | The Observer

I love this quote.

"He is the greatest humanist who ever lived. No one understands forgiveness like Shakespeare."

Now that is a life well lived.
 
Last edited:
The article also makes the claim he was a big drinker.

Not that is a life lived, well, in a Tempest rather than a tea cup.
 
I just read a beautiful article about William Shakespeare in the Guardian. It is a dispute about whether he wrote the plays but the author has no doubt he did.

Some times a human is so complex few believe they really exist as they do.

I suppose every last one of us has this problem at one time or another?

Every last one of us can be full of wonder a grace, but can we always convince the world at large?

Who really wrote Shakespeare? | Culture | The Observer

I love this quote.

"He is the greatest humanist who ever lived. No one understands forgiveness like Shakespeare."

Now that is a life well lived.
James S. Shapiro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Who really wrote Shakespeare?

Surely not that 'upstart crow' from Stratford? As James Shapiro's new book rehearses the loony arguments about our greatest playwright, we ask some of today's finest Shakespearean actors and directors their thoughts on the authorship question
I love this kind of article. I am not really into Shakes as much as others I know. I've known a few teachers/pedants who lived and breathed Shakespeare. I tried, but...

One thing thing that always amused me was this so called debate about the identity of the man from Stratford. A debate usually involves two reasonable and rational sides.

Let the man below speak...

Trevor Nunn, who also directed the fortunes of the RSC for many years, similarly compares Shakespeare conspiracy theories to "bonkers" American speculations about the Apollo moonshot, CIA involvement in 9/11 and the landing of aliens at Roswell, Texas.

He launches into a passionate rebuttal, with reference to the First Folio of 1623, a volume compiled by actors who had actually performed with Shakespeare, containing a foreword by Ben Jonson.

"Who is Ben Jonson?" challenges Nunn. "He is Shakespeare's great rival and a real talent. Garrulous, argumentative, jealous, proud, and deeply committed to exposing hypocrisy and corruption. Not a man to kowtow to nobility or privilege. What does he do? It's Jonson who coins "the Swan of Avon" (ie the declaration that the author of the First Folio is from Stratford), and it's Jonson who declares that he is "for all time" and then claims him as "MY Shakespeare".

"Why on earth," Nunn continues, "would Jonson, who owes nothing to anyone, and who had competed with Shakespeare throughout his professional life, take part in a cover-up to help the Earl of Oxford from admitting that he had anything to do with the theatre?" This, says Nunn, is "game, set and match to Shakespeare".

Who really wrote Shakespeare? | Culture | The Observer
:lol:

thank you for this thread.
 
I've always heard it was a woman who was "Shakespeare" and of course back then, women weren't allowed to write, so the ghost writer WS "fronted" her.
 
that woman would have been his wife....ann hathway.....

i have often wondered if shakes is as great as we make him out to be...but then...when i read the plays....
 
The thing I love most about Shakespeare is he has no agenda, he can sympathise with every last one of his characters. Often he makes his “villains” the wittiest person in the play. (Richard III). This is a man who has played many parts, and lived them.

My view is that that the most beloved character in Shakespeare is Falstaff, because Falstaff was the closest character to Shakespeare. A drunk, womanizer, wit and adventurer; a man who was cynical of power and ambition.

Still as a womanizer he had known enough about women to play the fool in the Merry Wives of Winsor. They get the best of him. Well, as they should. He had lived that, he had to be that fool.

What man has not?

Yet Falstaff is the inebriated frontal lobe of the history plays. He is in those plays a drunk Socrates. Outside the political box, culture, herd.

But in Henry V Falstaff dies at second hand account, a pathetic death, babbling of green fields.

I suspect Shakespeare was warning himself. He will not eulougize himself, he wants to be true to his life.

Shakespeare may have been the most self aware human of all.
 
Last edited:
The thing I love most about Shakespeare is he has no agenda, he can sympathise with every last one of his characters. Often he makes his “villains” the wittiest person in the play. (Richard III). This is a man who has played many parts, and lived them.

My view is that that the most beloved character in Shakespeare is Falstaff, because Falstaff was the closest character to Shakespeare. A drunk, womanizer, wit and adventurer; a man who was cynical of power and ambition.

Still as a womanizer he had known enough about women to play the fool in the Merry Wives of Winsor. They get the best of him. Well, as they should. He had lived that, he had to be that fool.

What man has not?

Yet Falstaff is the inebriated frontal lobe of the history plays. He is in those plays a drunk Socrates. Outside the political box, culture, herd.

But in Henry V Falstaff dies at second hand account, a pathetic death, babbling of green fields.

I suspect Shakespeare was warning himself. He will not eulougize himself, he wants to be true to his life.

Shakespeare may have been the most self aware human of all.

hahaha, Shakes had a political agenda.

:lol:

The Crown and other elites were not happy, but the agenda was disguised as art.

:eusa_whistle:
 
While it is true Shakespeare had the power to mock power obliquely he could also praise and please power. For instance Henry V is almost a hymn to militaristic adventure for it's own sake and Queen Elizabeth loved Falstaff so she commissioned a play where he is a fooled and a fool in love.

There is no political agenda in Shakespeare that is not contricticted by Shakespeare.
 
Last edited:
"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
 
While it is true Shakespeare had the power to mock power obliquely he could also praise and please power. For instance Henry V is almost a hymn to militaristic adventure for it's own sake and Queen Elizabeth loved Falstaff so she commissioned a play where he is a fooled and a fool in love.

There is no political agenda in Shakespeare that is not contricticted by Shakespeare.

I understand your urge to romanticize Shakes, but most likely was a sycophant as well as a rebel. Looking at historical figures as one-dimensional is a fool's hobby.

When Shakes is looked at in the context of his times, it becomes more clear what he was about. At least that is this one man's opinion.

D
 
When your read (or more importantly view) Shakespeare’s plays you find out he was a sycophant and a rebel, a drunken wit and an furious King, lovers who will die for love and power hungry men who will never love, Shakespeare was both a Caliban and a Prospero.

The man tasted, imagined, and wrote in the blood all human experience.

As Ben Johnson said "He was not of an age, but for all time! "
 
When your read (or more importantly view) Shakespeare’s plays you find out he was a sycophant and a rebel, a drunken wit and an furious King, lovers who will die for love and power hungry men who will never love, Shakespeare was both a Caliban and a Prospero.

The man tasted, imagined, and wrote in the blood all human experience.

As Ben Johnson said "He was not of an age, but for all time! "

now I need another drink.

put Shakes on my tab.

:eusa_whistle:
 
My DTs can put an entire Pink Elephant heard through my crack.
 
I shall comment thus:

Any poster who talks about what Shakespeare 'most likely' was or was not is not worth the effort required to read.

Generally, whenever I see someone rant about something or someone and use phrases like 'probably', 'might have' etc I immediately judge that person as an ass.
 
"An ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull."
 
Now, where would Shakey have all of us go from here?
 
Last edited:

Forum List

Back
Top