Chapter 11 of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt
discusses the Warwickshire connections to Shake-Speare, the author.
There are mentioned the Richard Quiney
letters. Quiney was a businessman like William. From Quiney’s many surviving
letters we learn that his son could write some Latin. Also, Quiney was
invited by Sir Fulke Greville to Christmas at Beauchamp’s Court. And
this helps to show that William had a close friend who was important and that
had court connections. However, Quiney had served in several town offices:
Principal Burgess, Chamberlain, Alderman, Bailiff, and Capital or Head
Alderman. And Sir Fulke Greville had been High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1572
so it’s likely he had known Quiney since then. So it would be natural for
Quiney to have this connection, just as he would with another wealthy
businessman like William from his town. The evidence doesn’t show that William
himself was a friend of Greville.
Quiney also had correspondence with an unnamed Privy
Counselor but then again that was part of his job in behalf of the town of
Stratford-upon-Avon, not as some kind of intimate friend of anyone on the
Council. There’s still no evidence that William had any friends or connections
with the Privy Council or sponsors at court or that were highly educated and
cultured.
Another friend of William was Thomas Greene.
The evidence around Greene shows that he surely should have known whether or
not his friend William was the poet/playwright Shakespeare. And there’s a
great deal of Greene’s surviving writings and he even mentions William
regarding business or legal matters. Unfortunately for the Stratfordian
argument, Greene is one of ten expert witnesses indicating that William was
NOT the poet/playwright Shakespeare since he gives nowhere the slightest
thought of there being such a connection.
There is also mentioned Thomas Russell, one
of the overseers of William’s final Will. From this it’s implied that the two
were close friends. Are all businessmen and the lawyers executing their Wills
close friends? In either case, one would think that a friendly lawyer, like
Russell supposedly was to William, would have helped William, if he was the
poet/playwright Shakespeare, to use his Will to properly dispose of his
intellectual and cultural property like everyone else did, by leaving particular
books, bookcases, musical instruments, theater shares, art, maps, etc., to
various individuals along with any charitable gifts to schools. But there was
no such thing. His Will is thoroughly dissected in the Doubter book Shakespeare
Beyond Doubt? In that analysis of Shakspere’s Will we find that it is
nothing like anyone else’s who was literary, cultured, and a well-connected
intellectual. In fact, it gives the exact opposite impression.
And the evidence that Ben Jonson was a close
friend and promoter of William of Stratford’s plays takes a particular beating
in the doubter SBD? book. There are several chapters showing how odd and
very ambiguous are the First Folio prefatory pages as well as the
Stratford bust. And the most skilled person around in the use of ambiguity was
Ben Jonson himself. These chapters will especially be eye-openers for anyone
who has never questioned their own beliefs about the traditional Shakespeare
authorship.
Regarding Warwickshire references, some of
these have already been explained as not unique to that area. This was
discussed in the review by Tom Regnier that I linked in the last post. In
addition, the Baconian Nigel Cockburn mentioned what he thought were a few
legitimate Warwickshire references. But they don’t amount to much. For one, in 1
Henry IV, Act 4 there is mentioned Falstaff’s intended travel from London
to Shrewsbury in Wales. But, oddly, he goes much out of the way up to
Sutton Coldfield, 20 miles North West of Coventry where he meets Prince Hal.
Did not Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon know his way through his own
Warwickshire? Cockburn explains how Bacon would have been more likely to make
this traveling mistake. But also Bacon himself had some knowledge of
Warwickshire since his grandfather Sir Anthony Cooke and his close friend Sir
Fulke Greville (this is the son of the one metioned as a friend of Quiney) held large estates there.
Shake-Speare actually seems to have been
much more familiar with, say, Irish culture than that in Warwickshire.
So much so that that there is some thought that maybe he was Irish himself. The
Irish references in the Shakespeare works aren’t obvious, as they might have
been by someone with only a superficial knowledge of the country. As with other
Shakespeare knowledge area experts in their observations, the Irish references
are subtle such that you almost need to be Irish to notice them. Most of these
discovered Irish connections came from Sir D. Plunket Baron, an Irish High
Court judge who wrote Links between Ireland and Shakespeare, 1919. He
found various Irish words, phrases, grammar, pronunciation, poetry, mythology,
music, and history in Shakespeare. With this contrast, even the asserted links
to Warwickshire will come across as insignificant.
See the Irish references at this site
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