The Earl of Oxford should be celebrated for what he did give us, which is the anecdote in Aubrey that he let off a particularly fruity one before the Queen and felt so humiliated that he left the country for seven years. Elizabeth greeted him upon his return with the gracious words “My Lord, I had forgot the fart.”
And how did Oxford fill his time during this exile? Could he perhaps have taken up writing plays during those seven long years of waiting for the odor to dissipate? What is the historical record on this point? Could this incident have inspired Claudius' soliloquy in the Elsinore chapel?
Have pity on me DBH for I have erred. I have tasted of the Oxfordian fruit. It was the videos of Alexander Waugh wot dun it, Guv'nor. Whatever you do, good people do not check them out for yourselves on youtube. Do not do as I have done. *jangling of chains*
James Shapiro's Contested Will is a great read for anyone interested in the history of Shakespeare authorship conspiracies, and the other funny things they believed. Twain believing that Queen Elizabeth died from a fever as a child, and was secretly replaced by her governess with a boy playmate of the princess who took her place is one of the better ones. Or some Oxfordians insisting that, naturally, Oxford was QE's secret lover, and she gave birth to the Earl of Southampton, and also Oxford was actually her son by way of her stepfather. Also QE had other kids like Mary Sidney.
And great piece above but I do have two vocabulary questions: What do ennosigaean and argikeraunic mean?
Ennosigaean means earthshaking, a common epithet of Poseidon. Argikeraunic is more difficult to translate with a single word, but should mean something like "of white (or bright) lighting". Lattimore translated it as "of the shinning bolt".
I love how at the bottom of every Shakespeare authorship conspiracy is a self-appointed aristocrat seething at the idea that Will Shakespeare the commoner could have written Hamlet.
I've noticed also that the people who are levelling this silliness on the poor pates of an illiterate age are completely unschooled in what details of Will Shakespeare we do know. For example, one of the big de Vere people on twitter claim that it is unlikely to have been Will Shakespeare because "he was actually illiterate". (Sigh.) And I think people usually go on to say how could he have written the French and the Latin, and why would he know mythology?! It must have been a rich guy.
— Basically not knowing anything and taking Ben Jonson's jibe too seriously, and also not recognizing that Jonson wouldn't have bothered to say that, if it were actually comprehensively true.
Like, you wouldn't say that some guy has "small Latin and less Greek" compared to your university education- -- unless that person's Latin, little Greek, and major English such as it is, was more than your match. This seems psychologically clear to me.
Now, if they had looked into it at all, they would have gotten that Shakespeare as a middle class son of a noted citizen would have attended the Stratford grammar school (Latin, Ovid) and that he lodged with the Mountjoys for years (French) and then they could get some understanding of how vast the resources at that time for a writer trawling the London manuscript-hawkers wares . etc.
Also that the things Shakespeare *doesn't* know (or rather doesn't care about -- geography and technological history for two) point AWAY from an academic courtly writer ...
God in Heaven, I'm glad you wrote this: I don't have the expertise to be able to say these things, but this mirrors (in the Asher Brown Durand "Kindred Spirits" sort of way) what I've always felt about this conspiracy. And several others. They're stupid, first, but mostly mean. That's all.
It seems right say there are two predominant responses to real genius. One is the sort of personalized ascetic mortification that finds blissful inspiration in the greats and wants to start following them immediately (mind, body, spirit) so that, like Good King Wenceslas's page, I might trod in even one of their many steps toward the infinite. The other response is the sort of petty jealousy that would rather kill off the artist, stopping them in their tracks, than admit fault or failure or incompetence. Happens in scholarship too. Sportscasters. Real political chance on the policy level as opposed to so much oligarchical bluster. Basically anything that comes to a head in the supremacy of genius. "For in dread of such falling and failing, the fallen angels fell / inverted in insolence scaling the hanging mountain of hell..."
I suppose we all, at one time or another, occupy either position. But anytime we find the latter in ourselves, we should be sobered quickly.
I do hope that I spend far more time mortifying myself, striving to emulate genius, and reading them as an ever-beginner, an eternal fresh... man, forever 19 years old in spirit (as Stephen King would have it), however daunting or humbling. It's far too much fun to spend one's days trying to paint fridge art that will never — ever — look like Rembrandt than to spend one's days killing off one's neighbors for their having kicked one out of art school.
Thanks for making this tiresome debate interesting - and hilarious! - You often bring to mind Harold Bloom.
Asked about the main fallacy in the Oxonian vs. the Shakespearean argument, Bloom replied:
"There isn't any argument. The Oxonians are simply crazy; it is a harmless lunacy, but it is a lunacy. There is no more reason for their claim than to say that Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare or anybody else you choose. The plays are still the plays." - !
"David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian... our best contemporary guide to early Christianity. He makes clear that those who first followed Jesus would be totally unacceptable to almost everyone alive today who desire to call themselves Christians."
- Bloom, "Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles" (2020), page 143.
My Jewish friend also reminded me that within Jasper Fforde's delightfully bizarrely british sci-fi/fantasy series Thursday Next (which has an excess of literature, time travel, and cheese smuggling), there's a great bit about the origin of Shakespeare's works. His works end up as part of a closed time loop such that nobody really wrote them:
No opinion, apart from a vague leaning toward believing there really were Yahwist and Priestly original documents, and probably Elohist as well (though on the last my conviction is weak).
I first encountered the Oxfordian theory as a 11 or 12-year-old child in Clifford D. Simak's The Goblin Reservation and even then it bothered me for some reason. Obviously, a child of that age is in no position to have an educated opinion about that matter, but I guess I felt certain sadness about an attempt to strip a man of his greatest achievements.
The Earl of Oxford should be celebrated for what he did give us, which is the anecdote in Aubrey that he let off a particularly fruity one before the Queen and felt so humiliated that he left the country for seven years. Elizabeth greeted him upon his return with the gracious words “My Lord, I had forgot the fart.”
And how did Oxford fill his time during this exile? Could he perhaps have taken up writing plays during those seven long years of waiting for the odor to dissipate? What is the historical record on this point? Could this incident have inspired Claudius' soliloquy in the Elsinore chapel?
"O my offense is rank: it smells to heaven."
Please don’t give the Oxfordians more arguments. Believe me, they’re not above fastening on that one too.
It’s just sad he departed under a cloud
Have pity on me DBH for I have erred. I have tasted of the Oxfordian fruit. It was the videos of Alexander Waugh wot dun it, Guv'nor. Whatever you do, good people do not check them out for yourselves on youtube. Do not do as I have done. *jangling of chains*
For the penitent, there is plenteous redemption.
James Shapiro's Contested Will is a great read for anyone interested in the history of Shakespeare authorship conspiracies, and the other funny things they believed. Twain believing that Queen Elizabeth died from a fever as a child, and was secretly replaced by her governess with a boy playmate of the princess who took her place is one of the better ones. Or some Oxfordians insisting that, naturally, Oxford was QE's secret lover, and she gave birth to the Earl of Southampton, and also Oxford was actually her son by way of her stepfather. Also QE had other kids like Mary Sidney.
And great piece above but I do have two vocabulary questions: What do ennosigaean and argikeraunic mean?
Ennosigaean means earthshaking, a common epithet of Poseidon. Argikeraunic is more difficult to translate with a single word, but should mean something like "of white (or bright) lighting". Lattimore translated it as "of the shinning bolt".
Aristocracy only very exceptionally produces genius, which must be infuriating to neo-paleo-monarchical types
I love how at the bottom of every Shakespeare authorship conspiracy is a self-appointed aristocrat seething at the idea that Will Shakespeare the commoner could have written Hamlet.
I've noticed also that the people who are levelling this silliness on the poor pates of an illiterate age are completely unschooled in what details of Will Shakespeare we do know. For example, one of the big de Vere people on twitter claim that it is unlikely to have been Will Shakespeare because "he was actually illiterate". (Sigh.) And I think people usually go on to say how could he have written the French and the Latin, and why would he know mythology?! It must have been a rich guy.
— Basically not knowing anything and taking Ben Jonson's jibe too seriously, and also not recognizing that Jonson wouldn't have bothered to say that, if it were actually comprehensively true.
Like, you wouldn't say that some guy has "small Latin and less Greek" compared to your university education- -- unless that person's Latin, little Greek, and major English such as it is, was more than your match. This seems psychologically clear to me.
Now, if they had looked into it at all, they would have gotten that Shakespeare as a middle class son of a noted citizen would have attended the Stratford grammar school (Latin, Ovid) and that he lodged with the Mountjoys for years (French) and then they could get some understanding of how vast the resources at that time for a writer trawling the London manuscript-hawkers wares . etc.
Also that the things Shakespeare *doesn't* know (or rather doesn't care about -- geography and technological history for two) point AWAY from an academic courtly writer ...
Of course. But you’re arguing with people who aren’t bright enough to know what they don’t know.
God in Heaven, I'm glad you wrote this: I don't have the expertise to be able to say these things, but this mirrors (in the Asher Brown Durand "Kindred Spirits" sort of way) what I've always felt about this conspiracy. And several others. They're stupid, first, but mostly mean. That's all.
It seems right say there are two predominant responses to real genius. One is the sort of personalized ascetic mortification that finds blissful inspiration in the greats and wants to start following them immediately (mind, body, spirit) so that, like Good King Wenceslas's page, I might trod in even one of their many steps toward the infinite. The other response is the sort of petty jealousy that would rather kill off the artist, stopping them in their tracks, than admit fault or failure or incompetence. Happens in scholarship too. Sportscasters. Real political chance on the policy level as opposed to so much oligarchical bluster. Basically anything that comes to a head in the supremacy of genius. "For in dread of such falling and failing, the fallen angels fell / inverted in insolence scaling the hanging mountain of hell..."
I suppose we all, at one time or another, occupy either position. But anytime we find the latter in ourselves, we should be sobered quickly.
I do hope that I spend far more time mortifying myself, striving to emulate genius, and reading them as an ever-beginner, an eternal fresh... man, forever 19 years old in spirit (as Stephen King would have it), however daunting or humbling. It's far too much fun to spend one's days trying to paint fridge art that will never — ever — look like Rembrandt than to spend one's days killing off one's neighbors for their having kicked one out of art school.
Thanks for making this tiresome debate interesting - and hilarious! - You often bring to mind Harold Bloom.
Asked about the main fallacy in the Oxonian vs. the Shakespearean argument, Bloom replied:
"There isn't any argument. The Oxonians are simply crazy; it is a harmless lunacy, but it is a lunacy. There is no more reason for their claim than to say that Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare or anybody else you choose. The plays are still the plays." - !
Said Harold Bloom about DBH:
"David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian... our best contemporary guide to early Christianity. He makes clear that those who first followed Jesus would be totally unacceptable to almost everyone alive today who desire to call themselves Christians."
- Bloom, "Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles" (2020), page 143.
I looked up Sobran because I'd never heard of him before and... well, as a connoisseur of human insanity, I have been missing out.
If it weren't for his politics...well, he still would have been a lunatic.
A delightful read that came, as if by providence, just in time for a needed lift of the spirit after a wearying evening.
My Jewish friend also reminded me that within Jasper Fforde's delightfully bizarrely british sci-fi/fantasy series Thursday Next (which has an excess of literature, time travel, and cheese smuggling), there's a great bit about the origin of Shakespeare's works. His works end up as part of a closed time loop such that nobody really wrote them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next
Just a fun riff exposing the true absurdity of all of this.
Dr. Hart,
What do you believe to be the best existing hypothesis (Documentary, Supplementary, etc.) for the writing/compilation of the Pentateuch?
No opinion, apart from a vague leaning toward believing there really were Yahwist and Priestly original documents, and probably Elohist as well (though on the last my conviction is weak).
I first encountered the Oxfordian theory as a 11 or 12-year-old child in Clifford D. Simak's The Goblin Reservation and even then it bothered me for some reason. Obviously, a child of that age is in no position to have an educated opinion about that matter, but I guess I felt certain sadness about an attempt to strip a man of his greatest achievements.
So it goes…
I firmly believe that Independence Day really is a masterwork in its genre.
Especially the patriotic euphoria following the president's heroic speech;).