How did Shakespeare come to know so much?

[MikeG]

Janadele.

Where did you get the idea that Elizabeth 1st wrote under the nom de plume William Shakespeare? Do you follow someone else's research on this matter, or is it something you worked out for yourself. If it is through reading someone else's works on the matter, do you mind citing it?

Mike

 

[pakeha]

Could you please explain it to me before I start digging through my years of research to debunk this thing?

Redtail, don't start digging til Janadele chooses to explain herself.

I have two ideas on the subject:
Either Janadele thinks she or another channels the ghostie of Queen Bess
or
Janadele is trolling us

 

[Helen]

True creative talent does not follow mob mentality. Nor does it need a set of rules, examples, or instructions from others.

But a true creative talent would not write a perfect sonnet, only to butcher it by printing it in couplets.

Redtail, don't start digging til Janadele chooses to explain herself.

I have two ideas on the subject:
Either Janadele thinks she or another channels the ghostie of Queen Bess
or
Janadele is trolling us

I think Janadele has mentioned memories of something before birth - perhaps she is an incarnation of Good Queen Bess?

 

[MikeG]

I think Janadele has mentioned memories of something before birth - perhaps she is an incarnation of Good Queen Bess?

I hesitate to reveal the content of PMs, but you may not be a million miles from her line of thinking.

Mike

 

[gumboot]

I have two ideas on the subject:
Either Janadele thinks she or another channels the ghostie of Queen Bess
or
Janadele is trolling us

They're the same thing, aren't they?

 

[bruto]

The twin ideas, that Queen Elizabeth hid her poetic prowess under a bushel, and that she eschewed traditional forms in doing so, would be a bit more convincing if we did not have reliable records that she wrote poetry herself. Of course, some people are not too wedded to historical record, are they?

 

[dafydd]

Much of the writings attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by Queen Elizabeth 1... such as:

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare is being discussed. Let us stick to reality, please.

 

[bruto]

I've kept my doggerel muzzled recently but sorry, could not resist....

It's surely odd to scan a classic sonnet
When blithely one neglects to learn its rules.
That ain't the way we do it here, doggone it.
Why any cats that sound like that are fools.

Next thing you know, you'll say it came in lines!
As if there were a reason, so to speak.
No thank you, sir, we'll speak in plain old Strine,
Not sound like some Elizabethan geek.

Once more, we'll call the musty scholar's bluff,
Eschew the dusty tomes and studies hard.
Twas Good Queen Bess who must have writ the stuff,
For surely we can't have a bourgeois Bard!

Sir Philip's stepping moone must surely weep
When abject ignorance such silly counsel keeps.

 

[Pup]

I've kept my doggerel muzzled recently but sorry, could not resist....

*Steps up to microphone.*

Ahem.

How can we know the words of good Queen Bess?
Perhaps she wrote while taking on a name
That gave to Will her own deservéd fame.
Must all her readers be required to guess?
Such mixing up of pen names is a mess
Can such diverse two people be the same?
So long ago, 'tis hard to place the blame
Nor ask that either of the two confess.

Yet now we see a way to solve our task.
We only need inquire of Liz today.
Is this an idle query or a lark?
Perhaps she does live on, for us to ask.
"Did you or Will write out the verse?" we say,
And ask it in the voice of good Petrarch.

 

[pakeha]

Redtail, don't start digging til Janadele chooses to explain herself.

I have two ideas on the subject:
Either Janadele thinks she or another channels the ghostie of Queen Bess
or
Janadele is trolling us

They're the same thing, aren't they?

Dunno.
I've known a number of channelers and they have always seemed to me to a spooky mix of attention-getting antics, dogmatic self-righteousness and passive-aggressive tactics.

Still, they could possibly double as trolls, now that I think of it.

 

[jenspen]

... I also absolutely hated his [Shakespeare's] poetry...but then I hate most poetry ...

Then what demon of perversity prompted you to take Eng. Lit.?

A poster asked "Am I the only weirdo who vastly prefers reading Shakespeare's plays to seeing them acted out? ...I'm more interested in the poetry and the wordplay than the actual stories a lot of time."

No, I'm the same sort of weirdo. Shakespeare is also the greatest poet in English. Some of his lines are heart-stoppingly rich and strange.

This has been a fascinating thread and the doggerel writers have amazed me.

 

[dafydd]

Then what demon of perversity prompted you to take Eng. Lit.?

It was compulsory when I was in school.

 

[bruto]

Then what demon of perversity prompted you to take Eng. Lit.?

A poster asked "Am I the only weirdo who vastly prefers reading Shakespeare's plays to seeing them acted out? ...I'm more interested in the poetry and the wordplay than the actual stories a lot of time."

No, I'm the same sort of weirdo. Shakespeare is also the greatest poet in English. Some of his lines are heart-stoppingly rich and strange.

This has been a fascinating thread and the doggerel writers have amazed me.

Unabashed "bardolater" here, I would add that one good reason for reading the plays instead of seeing them is that many of them (Hamlet, for instance) are so long that it's likely they were intended from the outset to be cut, the author leaving some discretion to the director, or that the published version is made up of multiple performing versions - much the same thing in the end. In any case, if you want the whole thing, you'll have to read it.

Of course there were some other very good English poets even in Shakespeare's time, including the Philip Sidney referenced in my verse above, but I must agree that, brilliant flashes aside, none kept such a high overall standard as Shakespeare.

I suppose Dafydd could say the same about my barely tenuous grasp of physics, but I pity the poor fellow who can't love poetry in general and Shakespeare in particular.

 

[NotJesus]

Unabashed "bardolater" here, I would add that one good reason for reading the plays instead of seeing them is that many of them (Hamlet, for instance) are so long that it's likely they were intended from the outset to be cut, the author leaving some discretion to the director, or that the published version is made up of multiple performing versions - much the same thing in the end.

Not many of the plays are anywhere near as long as Hamlet. I think Richard III is close, and maybe Antony and Cleopatra. I'm not sure that such length would have been a problem for an Elizabethan audience. And it's likely that performances went faster in Shakespeare's time.

In any case, if you want the whole thing, you'll have to read it.

Or see Branagh's movie.

 

[dudalb]

Queen Elizabeth was the "real" Shakespeare?


God,does this mean another Roland Emmerich film about Shakespeare?

 

[Tomtomkent]

I thought the truth was outted by Hugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson in a Secret Policemans Ball sketch "Bills editor."

"To be a hero, or not to be loved. That is the question of our times.…Its too long Bill. How about we lose some of this and punch it up a bit?"

 

[Fellow Traveler]

Please excuse if I repeat other posters here but some points I heard from Michael Wood's doc. on PBS: (by the way Wood is my favorite doc man).
1. Shakespeare lived in Elizabeth's anti-catholic regime and his family was catholic. Plenty of reason to be low key.
2. His father was Mayor of Stratford or whatever his town was but lost the job after the Cathpolic issue. & Shakespeare was tutored by a learned man named (Cotton?). Lived in a house with lots of classic lit. I DVD'ed Woods doc so I will watch it again and try to shore up my shaky description.

My own question: If you found out Roy Rogers the singing cowboy was actually Leonard Sly of Ohio would your opinion of him be diminished?

 

[bruto]

Please excuse if I repeat other posters here but some points I heard from Michael Wood's doc. on PBS: (by the way Wood is my favorite doc man).
1. Shakespeare lived in Elizabeth's anti-catholic regime and his family was catholic. Plenty of reason to be low key.
2. His father was Mayor of Stratford or whatever his town was but lost the job after the Cathpolic issue. & Shakespeare was tutored by a learned man named (Cotton?). Lived in a house with lots of classic lit. I DVD'ed Woods doc so I will watch it again and try to shore up my shaky description.

My own question: If you found out Roy Rogers the singing cowboy was actually Leonard Sly of Ohio would your opinion of him be diminished?

My opinion would not be diminished, but it would change and be reconsidered if the reason for his ruse had been political or, as might be the case in the usual Shakespeare theory, a confirmation that his genius could not have come from the middle class or evolved from the experiences of an actor. Shakespeare is an interesting enough cultural phenomenon, and his time interesting enough, that his identity has some interest apart from the appreciation of his work.

 

[RedIbis]

Unabashed "bardolater" here, I would add that one good reason for reading the plays instead of seeing them is that many of them (Hamlet, for instance) are so long that it's likely they were intended from the outset to be cut, the author leaving some discretion to the director, or that the published version is made up of multiple performing versions - much the same thing in the end. In any case, if you want the whole thing, you'll have to read it.

.

Actually, it's something of the opposite. Hamlet did not have scene or at breaks when Shakespeare wrote it. The play was written as a continuous whole. Breaks are put it in after the fact, primarily because it was logistically difficult to get actors on and off stage so rapidly. And then there's the problem of the actor having to deliver two very long soliloquies within five minutes of real time, Rogue and Peasant slave and Too be or not to be, so they're separated by a break.

Hamlet is twice as long as any other Shakes. play and takes almost five hours in it's entirety. And as we know, most of the audience stood for this.

 

[NotJesus]

Please excuse if I repeat other posters here but some points I heard from Michael Wood's doc. on PBS: (by the way Wood is my favorite doc man).
1. Shakespeare lived in Elizabeth's anti-catholic regime and his family was catholic. Plenty of reason to be low key.

They may have been Catholic, but it's not certain. If I recall correctly, at least some relatives on his mother's side were.