| This old story again (sigh) | |
| Posted by: MFeingold 06:18 pm EDT 10/31/17 | |
| In reply to: Waugh descendant picks Oxford as Bard - lordofspeech 03:20 pm EDT 10/31/17 | |
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| They've been at it for over two centuries, but they can't get past the irreversible key fact: No one who wasn't working for a theatre company would bother turning out that many plays and tailoring them so carefully to stage practice and audience taste. The aristocrats whom the doubters invariably pick as candidates were generally much too busy with their social obligations to bother about such things. The best book on how the anti-Shakespearean mythology started and grew is James Shapiro's CONTESTED WILL: WHO WROTE SHAKESPEARE?, which I reviewed when it came out in 2010. (Review linked below.) He traces the growth of the idea through the lives of its major advocates, from the days of Delia Bacon's hunt for ciphers down to the internet, Jacobi and Rylance. It's a fascinating and fun read - I was so allured by his narration of their lives that I ended up writing a one-act play about them, called TEXTUAL RELATIONS. The characters, besides Ms. Bacon, are Ireland the forger, and the retired schoolmaster who came up with the notion of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as the leading candidate - a man with the unfortunate name of John Thomas Looney. |
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| Link | 2010 VV review of James Shapiro's CONTESTED WILL |
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