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Controversy!

Controversy!. Who really wrote the plays of William Shakespeare?. The notion that Shakespeare's plays and poems were not actually written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon has been the subject of scores of books and is regarded by many as at least an interesting possibility.

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Controversy!

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  1. Controversy! Who really wrote the plays of William Shakespeare?

  2. The notion that Shakespeare's plays and poems were not actually written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon has been the subject of scores of books and is regarded by many as at least an interesting possibility.

  3. There are two primary sources of confusion over the authorship of the plays: the number of texts he wrote in his lifetime (37 plays, 154 sonnets and several longer poems in roughly 20 years), and the disparity between the greatness of his literary achievement and his humble origins, inadequate education and obscurity in life.

  4. In other words, the arguments against Shakespeare being Shakespeare are essentially appeals to snobbery – how could a simple guy write that much that well?

  5. In Shakespeare's plays we can find a familiarity with languages, literature, law, history, politics, geography, courtly speech – all of which seems unlikely in a common actor, the son of a small provincial tradesman. It has been argued that this knowledge could only be found in a man of extensive education, familiar with royal and noble persons.

  6. That his greatness was not widely proclaimed and that none of his manuscripts has survived have been taken as evidence that the latter were destroyed to conceal the identity of the author.

  7. So, if Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare . . . Who was?

  8. Though one or two earlier writers had expressed skepticism about Shakespeare, the first identification of the author as Francis Bacon appears to have been made about 1785 by Rev. James Wilmot, rector of Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire.

  9. A letter from Sir Toby Matther to Bacon mentions writing "of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another," and was regarded as proof of Bacon's pseudonymous writing.Bacon and Shakespeare made similar references to the Bible, the law and the classics, which some saw as further proof.

  10. The first published account of the Bacon theory was by W.H. Smith ("Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays?") in 1856. He claims to have found in Shakespeare's plays references to Bacon's works that were not published during Shakespeare's lifetime, and which he therefore could not have seen.

  11. Other scholars, like I. Donnelly ("The Great Cryptogram" 1887) and Sir E. Durning-Lawrence ("Bacon Is Shakespeare" 1910) went to extreme lengths to prove the Bacon connection. Durning-Lawrence discovered in Love's Labour's Lost the word "honorificabilitudinitatibus," which forms the anagram "Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi" ("These plays, the offspring of F. Bacon, are preserved for the world.”)

  12. Some sleuths went even further, but W.F. and E.S. Friedman, professional cryptologists, examined all the Baconian ciphers and rejected them as invalid.

  13. The appropriately named J.T. Looney "discovered" that Shakespeare was actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1920). Looney claimed that Shakespeare's early work was similar to Oxford's own poetry, and the Oxford bore a striking resemblance to Hamlet.

  14. Additionally, Oxford's poems stopped appearing just before Shakespeare's writing began. Looney claimed that Oxford remained anonymous to spare his family the "stigma" of the stage.

  15. Another candidate was William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who conveniently had the initials W.S.

  16. An intriguing but unfortunately completely unsupported theory was that the plays of William Shakespeare were actually written by Queen Elizabeth I, who apparently felt that she needed a masculine identity to be a writer, but not to rule a growing empire.

  17. Probably the best (or most interesting) argument was launched by C. Hoffman in The Murder of the Man Who Was "Shakespeare" (1955) in which he claims Shakespeare was actually Christopher Marlowe.

  18. Marlowe's influence on Shakespeare's early work has long been recognized, and it has even been suggested that the two collaborated on some plays; Hoffman goes further and sees consistent stylistic and linguistic similarities throughout the plays.

  19. Hoffman also noticed that Shakespeare emerged from obscurity with the publication of Venus and Adonis in Sept. 1593, only four months after it is generally accepted that Marlowe was stabbed to death.

  20. Because Marlowe's avowed atheism and probable homosexuality brought him disapproval, Hoffman asserts that Marlowe and a friend evolved an elaborate plan for escape, after which we wrote in exile and paid Shakespeare to claim it.

  21. This theory claimed that the original manuscripts were buried with Marlowe's co-conspirator, Sir Thomas Walsingham -- but when the tomb was opened in 1956, they weren't there.

  22. Need More Controversy? How about Shakespeare as plagiarist? To begin, a definition is in order. The word “plagiarize” comes from Latin words for “abduct” and “steal.” It is a relatively modern concept (200 years old as a chargeable offense). Its definition, essentially, is to pass off another’s creation as one’s own.

  23. It is commonly accepted that Shakespeare read many sources in preparing his plays, relying significantly on three texts: Ovid’s Metamorphoses (for Greek/Roman myth), Plutarch’s Lives (for Roman history), and Holinshed’s Chronicles (for English and Northern European history).

  24. In addition to these sources, Shakespeare also reworked earlier texts – the early Italian play “Romeo e Giulietta” is a classic example of a weak, forgettable drama made immortal through its reincarnation as Shakespeare’s apprentice tragedy.

  25. So let’s get this straight.Did Shakespeare rely on sources to inform his plays? Well, yeah.Did Shakespeare take earlier texts and rework them in a manner that pleased audiences in his day and for centuries after? Sure did.

  26. So, Shakespeare was a plagiarist, right? Umm . . . No.

  27. Well, why not? Several reasons, really, but here are the three best: • Plagiarism as we know it is a concept that didn’t exist in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Ideas weren’t owned. It’s that simple. • Reading history in order to write about historical figures (or reading myth to write about mythical figures) is necessary, not stealthy. • But the best reason to absolve Bill of plagiarism charges remains the classic (and still current) defense of improvement or artful superiority.

  28. In other words, yes, he borrowed from historians and mythologists; and yes, he took weak plays and made them strong.But he did it so well!In the words of T.S. Eliot: “Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal.”

  29. A final (non-snarky) note: Please note that plagiarism is primarily an academic construct: one must cite all sources of words, ideas or data in academic writing. Further, one must refrain from presenting the exact words of others as one’s own in non-academic writing. Shakespeare violated neither of these rules, even though he was under no obligation to observe them.

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