Anti-Stratfordians are the people who think that William Shakespeare's plays were not written by a man named William Shakespeare from Statford-upon-Avon.
I don't like them. I don't like them, not one bit.
I can understand why some scholars might speculate that these brilliant pieces of literary genius could not have ever been written by some country boy who had only a junior high-equivalent education (well, by their standards - I don't know any junior high kids who have studied Latin and ancient Greek). Still, I think the theory is stupid because it misses the point. Even if you have years of rigorous academic training at Oxford or wherever that does not make you a talented writer or poet. It just makes you really, really studious.
Granted, I'm not saying Shakespeare wasn't intelligent. I think he was someone who was very smart and gifted but simply did not have the means to attend university. He seems to me like he was the self-study type. I also think he had a natural-born talent for writing and putting words together. Some would call it "God-given talent", but being that I'm an atheist, I'm going to simply say that he got two copies of the recessive AWESOME gene from the 'rents.
Still, what irks me about the whole thing is that the Anti-Stratforidans are incredibly arrogant. They think that just because the man didn't go to college or wasn't part of the aristocracy that he couldn't have written these works. They look down upon the man we know as William Shakespeare because he wasn't an upper class gentleman. You don't have to be in the upper class to be talented.
Le sigh. I know, this whole post is probably a little silly-sounding to most people. I was just working on my Shakespeare homework and it started to bother me again. I needed to let that out.
Bill Shakespeare's mah homeboy. Don't mess with him, or I'll mess with 'chu.
<3
Thursday, October 30, 2008
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4 comments:
Hi Janna!
I'm as big a Shakespeare geek as they come, and I hear where you're coming from. But just to play devil's advocate for a bit, it's not just about the "didn't go to college" thing. For instance, the man's will hasn't got a single reference to any of his work, any rights, things like that...or for that matter any books that he owned. While that is in no way proof that the guy didn't write the plays, it does make you sort of wonder what's up. (I like Bill Bryson's argument, who said that there's no mention of Shakespeare ever owning any pants, either, therefore we should assume he ran around bottomless wherever he went.)
I've just begun the new book "Will", about Shakespeare's last will and testament, and I'm hoping it sheds some light on these ideas (although it is admittedly a heavily fictionalized version of the events).
Duane
http://www.shakespearegeek.com
Just curious - what's your responses to the Earl of Oxford argument? Because there's more to that one than 'he was better educated' as many events in his life mirrored those in Shakespeare's plays and there's verses from Shakespeare's plays that were written as commentary in one of the earl's Bibles allegedly before that play became popular/was released to the public (I think it was a verse from one of the later folios that was published after Oxford's death).
Hey Janna, will you Marry me? I think we would get along, seeing as your hair is pink and mine is neon green not by my choice; it happened in an experiment i was doing for chemistry and something just went a little wrong. So my offer still stands, and oh and by the way the names Doug C. Pepperfine
I never heard of this before. I thought shakespear was common knowlege, ya know, a legend. I didn't know people doubted him.
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