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Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?

A recent episode of In Our Time discussed Plutarch's Parallel Lives and toward the end they talked about how several of the Lives were pretty clearly the main source for stories Shakespeare dramatised. It was fascinating as I'd never previously thought about how Shakespeare came to know the histories he wrote about.

(Link for those in regions with availability or good enough VPNs)
www.bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Plutarch's Parallel Lives

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential Greek biographer and his main work
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
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Jack by the hedge said:
A recent episode of In Our Time discussed Plutarch's Parallel Lives and toward the end they talked about how several of the Lives were pretty clearly the main source for stories Shakespeare dramatised. It was fascinating as I'd never previously thought about how Shakespeare came to know the histories he wrote about.

(Link for those in regions with availability or good enough VPNs)
www.bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Plutarch's Parallel Lives

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential Greek biographer and his main work
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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Except Shakespeare wrote Plutarch. And Kevin Bacon wrote Shakespeare. Therefore Plutarch's Bacon Number is 2.
 
WilliamAB said:
I love, and I mean LOVE, the works of Shakespeare. I don't know anything much about the person Shakespeare. Nobody does. I love the works, the pure beautiful language of Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the greatest poet in English.
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If you read Bill Bryson's book on Shakespeare (mentioned earlier), you'll find that we do know quite a lot about THE Shakespeare.

There are many historical records of elements of his life, far, far more mentions in history than a member of the general public.
 
I don't think his contemporaries ever doubted that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare (afaicr at least), which to me seems to speak in favour of Shakespeare actually being Shakespeare.,

Oh, and I agree about the Bill Bryson book. (Even if it turns out that Bill Bryson didn't actuaslly write it; a good book by any other author's name is still a good read.)
 
Helen said:
I don't think his contemporaries ever doubted that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare (afaicr at least), which to me seems to speak in favour of Shakespeare actually being Shakespeare.,

Oh, and I agree about the Bill Bryson book. (Even if it turns out that Bill Bryson didn't actuaslly write it; a good book by any other author's name is still a good read.)
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It was obviously written by Dame Judi Dench, no American would have the knowledge of Shakespeare to write such a book, indeed I don't think he's ever acted in a production of a Shakespeare's play.
 
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Puppycow said:
Really though?
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Yeah.
Puppycow said:
Personally I think there's some good reasons why he has such a reputation and stature in English Literature. It's the test of time. How many authors today (what percentage of them) will still be widely read four centuries from now? How many plays written this century will be as widely enacted by everyone from high school drama clubs to serious professional actors 400 years in the future?
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There's plenty of authors with at least as much longevity. Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, Wu Cheng'en, Murasaki Shikibu. Whoever wrote the Mahabarata and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Shakespeare's fine, but to a modern audience long, hard to read, quite boring, and ironically, since it was the source of so many clichés, superficially seems derivative of the clichés that it spawned. It's only lauded because it's always been lauded. Who remembers any of the plays from the same period by other authors?

That said, the best Shakespeare is The Tempest. I will fight you if you disagree.
 
arthwollipot said:
Yeah.

There's plenty of authors with at least as much longevity. Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, Wu Cheng'en, Murasaki Shikibu. Whoever wrote the Mahabarata and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Shakespeare's fine, but to a modern audience long, hard to read, quite boring, and ironically, since it was the source of so many clichés, superficially seems derivative of the clichés that it spawned. It's only lauded because it's always been lauded. Who remembers any of the plays from the same period by other authors?

That said, the best Shakespeare is The Tempest. I will fight you if you disagree.
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Problem with Shakespear being read is that they are not novels, they are plays, studying them as simply texts does them no justice.
 
Puppycow said:
Really though?

Personally I think there's some good reasons why he has such a reputation and stature in English Literature. It's the test of time. How many authors today (what percentage of them) will still be widely read four centuries from now? How many plays written this century will be as widely enacted by everyone from high school drama clubs to serious professional actors 400 years in the future?
Click to expand...
This reasoning is kind of a double-edged sword, isn't? Yes, Shakespeare has "stood the test of time"...and as a result it's rare for any other Elizabethan playwright to be read or performed at all, meaning that most of us have no basis for comparison. It's questionable that standing the test of time is necessarily a result of merit. Shakespeare largely owes his modern reputation to the Romantics, who had their own reasons for elevating his work.

It's also instructive to look at particular works here. Titus Andronicus, for example, was considered quite bad for several centuries--bad enough that its differences from the rest of Shakespeare's plays significantly motivated the authorship question. I think I'm correct in saying it wasn't staged at all for 300 years, and it's only been performed regularly since the 1990s. So that play, at least, didn't really stand the test of time, but it's been critically re-evaluated/revived in recent years...is that down to previously unappreciated artistic qualities, or did that happen because it's Shakespeare? It's hard to imagine that it would fare as well had it been written by Thomas Kyd, which gives us reason to suspect that there's a certain amount of circularity at work here--Shakespeare is great because his work is still performed, and his work is still performed because Shakespeare is great.

Which is not to say that Shakespeare isn't great, but it's almost impossible that he isn't overrated, given how often he's portrayed as head-and-shoulders above everything else in the English language canon, the greatest playwright of all time in any language.
 
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mumblethrax said:
It's also instructive to look at particular works here. Titus Andronicus, for example, was considered quite bad for several centuries--bad enough that its differences from the rest of Shakespeare's plays significantly motivated the authorship question.
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OK, but take Mozart. He was very prolific. He composed over 600 works. I'm pretty sure most of those don't get much attention anymore. But his best work is what we still know today. Nobody bats 1.000. We remember the hits, not the misses.
 
Darat said:
It was obviously written by Dame Judi Dench, no American would have the knowledge of Shakespeare to write such a book, indeed I don't think he's ever acted in a production of a Shakespeare's play.
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Ah, yes, Dame Judi Dench, the famous polymmath! I have read about her many and varying pursuits on this very forum, and her having written Bryson makes perfect sense! Maybe she wrote Shakespeare as well? I wouldn't be surprised, I have always suspected that Woolf's Orlando was based on her astonishing temporal fluidity.
 
Puppycow said:
OK, but take Mozart. He was very prolific. He composed over 600 works. I'm pretty sure most of those don't get much attention anymore. But his best work is what we still know today. Nobody bats 1.000. We remember the hits, not the misses.
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The point isn't that Shakespeare has some misses--everyone does. The point is that something that was considered a miss for three centuries (and still is, by most) is being performed again, and that's likely down to bardolatry. You're just not going to hear Mozart's worst stuff performed.
 
Darat said:
It was obviously written by Dame Judi Dench, no American would have the knowledge of Shakespeare to write such a book, indeed I don't think he's ever acted in a production of a Shakespeare's play.
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Oh.

Now you've got me.

I thought he was an Englishman that lived in America.

Edited to add:

Aha! He was born in the USA but spent most of his adult life in the UK.
 
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