with my magic!
Staring at the bust and this sullen slab I remember the words of Trinculo after he had encountered the ugly Caliban: “A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there would but give a piece of silver.”
2. Invited to write, he was in pain
Contrary to Stratford-propaganda, the first point that must be made is that we know a lot less about the “author” William Shaksper, than we know about his literary contemporaries. Actually we don’t know anything about him whatsoever, because, as far as we know, he didn’t write anything.
The quick witted critic Bill Bryson says: “Huge gaps exist for nearly all figures from the period. Thomas Dekker was one of the leading playwrights of the day, but we know little of his life other than that he was born in London, wrote prolifically, and was often in debt.”
At least we know that Dekker was an author, we know the titles of twelve of his plays and many of his pamphlets, we know the names of authors with whom he worked (Jonson, Marston, Massinger, Middleton, Pickergill, Rowley and Webster), we know that Jonson ridiculed him in “Poetaster” and that Dekker returned the compliment by ridiculing Jonson in “Satiromastix. That is more than enough to join the inner circle of Elizabethan literary personages.
We can’t really be certain that Will Shaksper learned to read and write properly, he might have attended Grammar school up to the age of 12 and he might have learned a little Latin, but there is no indication of his having learned French and Italian and no indication that he travelled abroad or that he kept company with literary figures of his day. The only things in the realm of certainty are: He never called himself “Shakespeare”, even if others did so, be it ironically or erroneously, and he never laid claim to being the AUTHOR.
After Will Shaksper’s death he was “accused” of being the author of the Shakespearian works by Ben Jonson. If the matter had come to trial we would have to deliver the verdict of “Not guilty” on the grounds of “insufficient evidence”.
For example: In Shakespeare’s “Italian” plays- “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “Twelfth Night”, “Much Ado about Nothing”, The Taming of the Shrew”, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “Measure for Measure”, “Othello”, and “Romeo and Juliet” precise details of the geography of Italy are woven into the plays. The author knows how to travel from town to town, knows the names of side streets and piazzas, he knows where the courthouses are, he knows where the harbours are, he names churches where people get married, he’s familiar with the interior decoration of Italian houses, he uses colloquial Italian figures of speech and he can quote the inscription on Giulio Romanos grave.
Will Shaksper couldn’t possibly have visited Italy. If he had attempted such a journey without official permission, he would have been arrested at the border. Had he been given permission, for an official journey on government business, such permission would have been documented in full.
There are no indications that Will Shaksper, the actor, was also a poet and a playwright. Does any proof exist, indicating that Shaksper did not write the plays and sonnets?
SHAKSPER would have had to have been a dreadful toady, indeed a traitor to his own class, to have written with such scathing contempt about the rebel Jack Cade and his followers. Using Sir Stafford as his mouth piece, he calls them: “Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent” (2Henry VI, IV/2).
SHAKSPER, a man of the people, must have been an arrogant fool to write the story about the tinker in the induction to “The Taming of the Shrew”. A lord picks up a drunken tinker from the street in front of a tavern. („O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies!“). The tinker is bathed, dressed in fine clothes, treated with the courtesy befitting a lord and then, having been shown a performance of “The Taming of the Shrew”, dumped before the tavern again.
SHAKSPER, the ex pupil of Stratford Grammar School (assuming, of course that he went there) must have been a ridiculous braggart to have Portia say of Baron Falconbridge: “You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man’s picture; but alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? “
If indeed Will SHAKSPER were the author of “Venus and Adonis”; the fact that the introduction starts off as we would only expect from a courtier, with a passage taken from Ovid’s “Ars amatoria” would clearly indicate that he had lost his marbles: “Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo / Pocular Castalia plena ministret aqua.” -In English: “Let vile people admire vile things; may fair-haired Apollo serve me goblets filled with Castalian water.” Or, to cite Marlowe’s translation: “Let base conceited wits admire vile things,/ Fair Phoebus lead me to the muses’ springs.”
Is that what we expect from the “upstart Crow” -or the “blue Kestrel”?
“Venus and Adonis” was dedicated to a young lord. The dedication, however, was written in a manner that only a fellow aristocrat would employ. There was a strict law in those days that forbade all commoners from dressing in the same clothes as the aristocrats. It was forbidden, even dangerous, to act like an aristocrat or to talk like one. Will Shaksper, the actor would have to have been both raving mad and incomprehensibly conceited to have done such a thing. He begins with the words: „Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship ... only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account my self highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.“
The author uses the term “unpolished lines” as a deliberate understatement. He knows that he is speaking of 199 verses of brilliant poetry. What follows, however, would have been the epitome of madness had it come from the pen of Will Shaksper: An actor scrapes a living learning lines, rehearsing, performing and travelling through the provinces. He then says that he is going to “take advantage of all idle hours”. Only an aristocrat would have written poems in his “idle hours” A free lance actor didn‘t have “idle hours”. All of his hours were spoken for. An aristocrat spent his working time dealing with the affairs of state, supervising his own estate and when necessary, fighting wars. If he then chose to write poetry he would do so in his “idle hours”.
By way of comparison, let’s look at Edmund Spenser’s dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh:
SIR, that you may see that I am not alwaies ydle as ye thinke, though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull, though not precisely officious, I make you present of this simple pastorall, unworthie of your higher conceit for the meanesse of the stile, but agreeing with the truth in circumstance and matter. The which I humbly beseech you to accept in part of paiment of the infinite debt in which I acknowledge my selfe bounden vnto you, for your singular favours and sundrie good turnes shewed to me at my late being in England, and with your good countenance protect against the malice of evill mouthes, which are alwaies wide open to carpe at and misconstrue my simple meaning. (Colin Clout’s Come Home Againe, 1591.)
Or Samuel Daniels dedication to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke:
„I desire onely to bee graced by the countenance of your protection: whome the fortune of our time hath made the happie and iudiciall Patronesse of the Muses” (Delia. Contayning certayne Sonnets, 1592.)
When we read William Shakespeare’s dedication we dont find a word about the „infinite debt and protection” of which Edmund Spenser mentions. What we do find is a dedication, far more personal and familiar in its tone: “What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours“ (Rape of Lucrece, Dedication). Or, more explicitly: What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; you being part in all I have, being devoted, yours.
