Well,
we are now approaching The Great (or A Great) Debate: Who wrote Shakespeare? Between Arch
Stratfordian Jonathan Bate and Arch non-Stratfordian Alexander Waugh, on Sept.
21.
I
wish that I could attend, but alas, it’s a long distance away!
So,
in anticipation of this enjoyable event, I’ve read Bate’s The Genius of Shakespeare, 1997, and made some notes and comments
on parts of it.
But
first, as a prelude, allow me to present some pertinent quotes from recent
online articles on totally unrelated topics:
“Monuments,
under this definition, are not history. Monuments are memory-makers,
celebratory edifices erected to hide History’s complexity, drown curiosity, and
feed the simple in the present and in the future.” “Their rhetoric of
Heritage is pure myth, a fabrication of a false past, creating memory where
none existed.”
‘History
is neither preordained truth, nor is it a prepackaged commodity. Its record
must grow out of debate, not professional hierarchies or easy compromises. While the art of
debate without acrimony seems out of reach in an age when opinion exchanges
escalate to ad hominem attacks within seconds, controversy
used to be the salt of social life during centuries past, restricted though it
would have been by social class, gender, race, and religion. Newspapers
specialized in polemics. Debating societies thrived. University students and
professors were required to exchange positions in the format of disputatio.
Why have we stopped now that the venues are open to all?”
‘…
at least some non-academics really do want to get the answer right, if for no
other reason than the intrinsic satisfaction of grounding their beliefs in the
best available evidence. As a result, we in the academy have an obligation
to promulgate the best evidence we have on a given subject.”
“Now,
presumably, we want the lay public to come along with us. We want to
convince them that we have considered all sides of the debate, weighed all of
the evidence, openly debated it, and arrived at a careful, empirically tested
consensus. How can we do that if the public sees us trying to shroud this
debate in secrecy? How can we hope to say, “Look, we shouldn’t talk about
this,” and then, in five or ten years, say, “Look, that topic we didn’t want to
talk about, well it turns out the debate is over”? They would rightly want
to challenge us; they would want to be read in to the evidence on file. Science
is a public endeavor. We are not a private clergy dispensing wisdom as we see
fit. If we want any hope of convincing well-meaning truth seekers, we have to
talk about this openly.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449388/race-iq-dont-obsess-over-it-do-discuss-it
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449388/race-iq-dont-obsess-over-it-do-discuss-it
------------------- -
And
now my thoughts on Bate’s The Genius of
Shakespeare.
--p.
45 “These facts … do show that
Elizabethan sonneteering makes uses of personal material as well as
rhetorical convention.”
--p.
47 he acknowledges the principle of Occam’s Razor: “for purposes of explanation
things not known to exist should not, unless it is absolutely necessary, be
postulated as existing.” -- Maybe he could remember this when he postulates
about the Stratford man’s schooling, self-education, connections to the
nobility, etc, etc. which many other candidates don’t need to have postulated.
--p.
67 “But a much more striking fact is that no major actor has ever been
attracted to non-Stratfordianism.” -- Big Oops. Maybe he should have taken a
poll first. At least two major Shakespearean actors, Mark Rylance and Derek
Jacobi are also major non-Stratfordians.
--p.
81 “The fact of collaboration is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that
the author of Shakespeare’s plays was, like the authors of all other public
plays of the period, a professional writer, not an aristocrat.” -- The degree of collaboration is postulated,
not proven. Still, I would venture that most of the major alternate contenders
have more proven connections to the sophisticated literati as well as
professional playwrights than does the Stratford man.
--p.
90 “It is absurd to suppose that any Elizabethan play might contain satiric
reference to particular aristocrats of the day. Polonius cannot be a satirical
portrait of Lord Burghley for the simple reason that if he were, the author of
the portrait would have found himself in prison before he could turn round.
Dramatists ran the risk of censorship when they portrayed even relatively
obscure long-dead aristocrats, like Sir John Oldcastle.” -- Pure speculation.
It’s more likely than non-aristocrat dramatists would have such risk. But
aristocrat dramatists that satirized other aristocrat’s dead relatives, or
possibly even other living aristocrats, as long as there was some plausible
deniability of the portrayal, and/or protection from Queen Elizabeth, whom
seemed to delight in this, could reasonably get away with it. And evidence of
the boldness of dramatists comes from the late Earl of Essex after his house arrest from returning
early from Ireland:
“The
prating tavern haunter speaks of me what he lists; the frantic libeler writes
of me what he lists; already they print me and make me speak to the world, and
shortly they will play me in what forms they list upon the stage. The least
of these is a thousand times worse than death.”
Four Centuries of English Letters, edited
by William Baptiste Scoones, 1893. P. 51.
--In
addition, Bates later refutes his own assertion. On page 219 he discusses
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,
where Bates discusses Shakespeare’s “characteristic wiliness”. “Chapman had
dedicated his translation to Essex; it carried a preface claiming that the Earl
was a reincarnation of Achilles. Essex’s hallmark was the chivalric code, the
cult of honour. Shakespeare’s Troilus and
Cressida tears that code to shreds and makes Achilles into a figure more
interested in sharing camp theatricals with his gay lover Patroclus than
performing heroically on the battlefield. This looks like quite a good way of
brushing off any association with the Essex who, at the probable date of Troilus’ composition, was languishing in
the Tower awaiting execution.” -- Then he further refutes his own principle
when he continues with “But in making this link I am indulging in
unsubstantiated speculation; looking for nudges and winks on Shakespeare’s
part.” -- Actually, I doubt that many readers were bothered by this indulgence.
He should at least then not complain when other writers on the authorship topic
indulge in reasoned speculation since a value in this is that it can provide
ideas for further research.
--p.
265 Bates here is discussing some of Freud’s analysis of Hamlet. “Freud has
seen that the play refuses to give its own answers. The phenomenon is similar
to that of the sonnets’ refusal to tell us to what extent they are
autobiographical and to what extent they are fictive.” -- This is another
instance where Bates acknowledges that the Shakespeare works have
autobiographical elements in them, but that they are often so subtly couched
that they cannot be verified with confidence.
--P.
274 On this page Bates points out in regards to a Macbeth scene that “Each of the weird sisters points with her right
hand. The index finger of each left (sinister) hand is raised to the
lips. Macbeth’s finger is in the same position – as was Lady
Macbeth’s in the painting of the night of the murder. The gesture
connotes the unspeakable, the deed without a name, the dark theme of
the drama….the power and the paradox, the fairness and the foulness, of the
weird sisters is that at one and the same time they answer Macbeth’s questions
and leave the question of his ending unanswered. It is only at the moment of
ending itself that he discovers the meaning of their riddles.” -- So, riddle me
this, why does the First Folio portrait of Shakespeare show him wearing a
doublet with both a left front and a left back to it? Could it not suggest
some unspeakable deed related to the man or the author?
--p.
316 At this point in his book Bates is admiring the work of William Empson who
found multiple meanings he believes Shakespeare regularly employed to show in
his works, like his Cleopatra, “infinite variety”. Bates then writes “It
enabled Empson to apply an ‘uncertainty principle’ to every aspect of
Shakespeare.” -- Logically, since to him Shakespeare “is the premise for
genius” this uncertainty principle would apply to his speculated identity.
Bates should actually welcome such discussion if he believes what he himself
writes.
--p.
326 Bates again points out that “Of course my readings of Shakespeare are
autobiographical.” -- Fair enough.
--p.
327 he writes “ ’Shakespeare’ may be thought of as a vast collection of
games.” -- And non-Stratfodians merely extend this thought to his identity.
--Also
p. 327 “The first law is that truth is not singular.” -- Indeed, we say
that Shakespeare, to Shakespeare, could simultaneously be a ‘rural fellow’ as
well as possibly an aristocrat or noble or spy or some other type of
personality.
--p.
328 In this page Bates describes visually this idea of multiple truths with his
use of a figure found in Gestalt psychology of the duck/rabbit drawing. I wrote
about this concept not long ago in a post here. If you look at the drawing you
may see a duck but not the rabbit, or vice versa. But you probably can’t seem
them both simultaneously. Yet, if you take the time and look ‘askance’ at the
drawing you then can see the ‘alternate’ character. With regards to the
Shakespeare Authorship question this change in perspective is happening on a
regular basis. The number of declared
non-Stratfordians marches forward. I estimate, that for this year, it’s
been averaging a rate of 2-4 Shakespeareans per week that we see abandoning the
old Stratfordian model and joining the non-Stratfordian perspective. Never that
I know of has there been a non-Stratfordian that has changed back over to the
Stratfordian theory.
----
Now
some additional thoughts after reading Anthony
and Cleopatra:
In
Act 5.2:
Caesar
suspects Cleopatra may commit suicide to evade his use of her in his upcoming
triumph back in Rome. She deceives him with her own theatrics. Here’s note from
the Oxfordian edition, 2015:
“Plutarch
hints that Caesar was “deceived,” and in North’s margin comment, “Cleopatra
finely deceived Octavius Caesar, as though she desired to live.” Goddard
explains, “What has happened is that a new Cleopatra is now using the old
Cleopatra as her instrument … The fact is that the new Cleopatra, with all the
histrionic devices of the old Cleopatra at her command, acts so consummately
in these last hours of her life that she
deceives not only Octavius Caesar but full half the readers of the play”.
Bloom adds, “You could argue that the Cleopatra of Act V is not only a
greater actress than she was before, but also that she becomes a playwright,
exercising a talent released in her by Antony’s death”. -- Also noted is that Cleopatra’s ladies,
Charmian and Iras, also played their parts in this deception. Ooh, another
Shakespeare conspiracy! So the author created a character that, within the
story of her own life, altered her life script as it was perceived by those who
imagined themselves as more wily that her. Perhaps, then, such a bold genius,
as is Bate’s Shakespeare, could likewise alter the imagined script of his own
theatrical life.
Also
interesting is the ‘rural fellow’ that brings in the basket of figs and the
asps. “What poor an instrument may do a noble deed!” - parallels the non-Stratfordian idea that
the Stratford man, considered as a poorly educated rural fellow, would well
serve as such an instrument for a higher educated and connected hidden
playwright.
Another
note for Act 5 from the Arden edition regarding Cleopatra’s line:
“Some
squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
O’th’
posture of a whore.”
The
Arden Note is: “Shakespeare shows extraordinary boldness in giving these
lines to a boy actor who must, presumably, have done justice to the role
of Cleopatra”.
These
observations of the playwright’s sophisticated meta-theatrical awareness and
‘boldness’ aligns with the non-Stratfordian theory of his outwitting, say, a
‘full half’ his readers over his own identity and the script of his own life.
----
And
finally, an ending quote from a non-Shakespeare source:
“Fifteen highly accomplished scholars who
teach at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard published a
letter Monday with advice for young people who are headed off to college:
Though it will require self-discipline and perhaps even courage, “Think for yourself.” “The “vice of
conformism” is a temptation for all faculty and students, they argue, due to a
climate rife with group think, where it is “all-too-easy to allow your views
and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion” on a campus or in academia
generally.” https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/ivy-league-scholars-urge-students-think-for-yourself/538317/
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