Mumsy – As far as Ben Jonson is concerned, all of Jonson’s statements about Shakespeare were made long after he died in 1616, uncorroborated by any statements made while the author was alive. While Shakespeare was alive, this supposed friend never once mentioned him by name and had nothing to say about him when he died.

Indeed many of his writings on the subject were contradictory. He caricatured him as Sogliardo and “the “Poet-Ape” in one of his plays, he belittled Shakespeare’s small Latin and less Greek, then later testified that he was better than most of the ancient dramatists. He wrote that Shakespeare’s works contained no blots, then said that Shakespeare continuously reworked and revised.

As Diana Price points out in “Shakespeare’s Unauthorized Biography”, p.193, “The sheer number of misleading or contradictory statements in First Folio strongly suggests that traditional biographers have been following a false scent.”

As far as Shakespeare’s daughter is concerned, do you think it makes any sense that a man who created smart, powerful women in his plays would be content to have his daughter not be able to read or write? This is an issue of logic and common sense.

What books have you read on the subject? The evidence is out there. I would recommend “Shakespeare By Another Name” by Mark Anderson or “Shakespeare’s Unauthorized Biography” by Diana Price.

>>>Would the greatest writer in the English language have allowed his daughters to remain illiterate?

Well, he didn’t know he was going to be the greatest writer in the English language. Being a great writer doesn’t make you a good parent and educator. Didn’t Milton make his daughters read him Greek and Latin, but he wouldn’t teach them the languages?

I’m not unwilling to believe that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s plays, if someone, anywhere, would produce some shred of convincing evidence in favor of another author’s having written them. But I still haven’t seen anything like that. What I have seen is a lot of people arguing that the greatest writer in the English language wouldn’t do this and wouldn’t do that, because they don’t want to believe that the greatest writer in the English language would do this and that.

Of the 37 plays, 36 are laid in royal courts and the world of the nobility. The principal characters are almost all aristocrats with the exception perhaps of Shylock and Falstaff. From all we can tell, Shakespeare fully shared the outlook of his characters, identifying fully with the courtesies, chivalries, and generosity of aristocratic life. Lower class characters in Shakespeare are almost all introduced for comic effect and given little development. Their names are indicative of their worth: Snug, Stout, Starveling, Dogberry, Simple, Mouldy, Wart, Feeble, etc.

The history plays are concerned mostly with the consolidation and maintenance of royal power and are concerned with righting the wrongs that fall on people of high blood. His comedies are far removed from the practicalities of everyday life or the realistic need to make a living. Shakespeare’s vision is a deeply conservative, feudalistic and aristocratic one.

As far as reading a book is concerned, The truth is that Shakespeare must have been able to read in French, Italian, and Spanish in addition to Latin and Greek, since the followings literary sources had not yet been translated into English. Scholars agree that these works were primary sources for Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, Othello and Measure for Measure.

Francois de Belleforest Histories tragiques
Ser Giovanni Fioranetino’s Il Pecorone
Epitia and Hecatommithi
Luigi da Porto’s Romeus and Juliet (Italian)
Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana (Spanish)

I doubt if he picked this up at the local tavern. To be enamored and charmed by Shakespeare does not mean one must abandon common sense.

I love this kind of argument because of its assumption that no-one in Shakespeare’s time (oh, except for the upper classes, OF COURSE) ever read a book, listened to tavern chat, met anyone from a different country, or went to a play. I guess that settles it, then.

Many books that were used as source material for the plays were not translated into English in Shakespeare’s time. The fact that some works were published under the attribute of William Shakespeare does not identify the man behind the name. There is nothing in his handwriting ever discovered except for six almost illegible signatures. There are no letters, no correspondence, no manuscripts, no paper trail at all to identify the man behind the name, not a single word. Nobody claims to having ever met the man and there is no description of him recorded anywhere. When contemporaries refer to William Shakespeare, they are referring to the name on the title page and nothing else

The assumption behind the support for William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author has to be that he was no ordinary mortal because otherwise there is no accounting for the detailed knowledge of the law, foreign languages, Italy, the court and aristocratic society, and sports such as falconry, tennis, jousting, fencing, and coursing that appears in the plays. I do not have any doubt that genius can spring from the most unlikely of circumstances. The only problem here is that there is in this case no evidence to support it. Would the greatest writer in the English language have allowed his daughters to remain illiterate?

Sorry, I did mean Shakespeare: The World As Stage. I credited Bryson with the better, more memorable title.

I will be very interested to hear what you think of 1599. I liked Shapiro’s writing in Contested Will a lot, except very occasionally I thought it got too chatty (contractions and stuff. not a fan), and I thought his views on Shakespeare were pleasingly insightful.

PS: Thank you for your good apartment wishes! I saw one the other day that looked great, but the way my luck’s been running they’ll rent it to someone else. *sigh*