10 Caption: “…. born of a Catholic family, in his
writing he often took an
oppositional stance between both sides.” [The Bard’s stance is not
in question;
this statement has been made about Shaksper; there is no record of his
ever having
written anything other than scribbling his name on his will.]
11
“Such questions are relevant to the greatest poet of all
time….”
13
[Of
John Shakespeare (sic)] “…. his poet son would write…”
and “…. as his son
would put it, between ‘things dying and things newborn’….”
[The “sic” refers
to the fact that the family name was usually spelled “Shakspere” at
it’s best, but
also “Shaxsper” or “Shagsper”. The boy named William, who Wood
wants us to
believe wrote the poems and plays, was officially baptized, married, and
buried as
“Shakspere”. After the famous pen name, adopted in 1592 by the 17th
Earl of
Oxford as “William Shake-speare”, became bandied about it was natural
that the
gentleman-to-be from Stratford-on-Avon would be sometimes labeled
as
“Shakespeare”. Throughout this dissection, since the names tend to
blur for the
reader, he will be called “Shaksper”; for the other guy:
“Shake-speare” or “Shake-
speare-Oxford” where required for emphasis. Of course in the quotes
where Wood
has commandeered the dis-hyphenated name, it has to be allowed.]
17
[As a Warwickshire resident] “Unlike
the works of most of his contemporaries,
Shakespeare’s plays are full of images of flowers, trees and animals”
and “….
but in his plays…. would still constantly betray his origins…. Joan
blowing
her nails…. Long into his fame he still used idiosyncratic phonetic
spellings….
which perplexed his London printers”.
18
“…. when describing the Egyptian queen’s flight from the
battle of Actium in
Antony and Cleopatra….” and “Iago’s ‘speak within
doore’ for speak
softly….”.
19
[Of Holinshed’s connection to some “probable” kinsmen] - “Shakespeare
would
later use his Chronicles (1577) as the main source of his history
plays”
20
“…. the Ardens, the poet’s mother’s kin…..”
21
“…. the early sixteenth century society of Arden into which
Shakespeare’s parents were born, and out of which his view of England,
and
its history, emerged.”
27
“…. painted cloths of the kind Shakespeare would later
describe in his
works…. Falstaff…. ‘frightened by a painted cloth’” and
“…. in the Rape of
Lucrece the poet maintains….”
and “….
skillets, iron crows, pails, mattocks,
cauldrons, augers, querns, handsaws, joint stools, cupboards, benches,
bolsters, pillows and diapers - words that all appear in is plays…”
29
“….a word Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Old Hamlet’s
ghost….” and
“…. period of cultural revolution spanned most of Shakespeare’s
lifetime and
is crucial to an understanding of his mind and thought.”
34
“…. as Shakespeare later wrote in Timon of Athens….“
35
“…. few details of the poet’s early life….”
36
“…. recalling the old Friar in Romeo and Juliet….”
37
“…. would have a foot in both worlds; and as a writer he
too….” and “….
as is
borne out by…. references…. in William’s plays….”
39
“In his plays he uses unusual glowing metaphors….” and
“…. the act of killing,
a running metaphor in his plays….”
42
“…. a cluster of Cotswold references that crops up in
Shakespeare’s play
Henry IV Part 2….” and “…. a view that Shakespeare
mentions in Richard II”.
43
“…. in The Winter’s Tale Shakespeare has the
shepherd’s son….” and “As a
mature writer he would….”.
44
“All the lower-class characters in Shakespeare’s plays speak
authentically….
Autolycus from Winter’s Tale…. Doll Tearsheet from Henry IV Part
2….
Mistress Quickly…. in Henry IV Part 2....”
48
“Titus Andronicus, possibly Shakespeare’s earliest
play….” and “The
poet’s
mother….” and “In
his plays Shakespeare alludes to tales…. “
49 “Shakespeare would put…. Arden…. As You like It”....”
and “.... tales heard in
his childhood…. A Midsummer Night’s Dream…. Shakespeare was
old-
fashioned in his love of fairyland…. in his greatest plays he
chooses…. fairy
tales.” [By now the reader will have observed a dearth of pronouns.
With few
exceptions these “circularities” are nailed down with
“Shakespeare” or often the
full name. As mythology approaches religion, such statements of the
received
dogma require this taxonomic reinforcement – a species of litany. Has
this been
so that innocent professors can quote this book to their sheltered
students with
intellectual impunity?]
50
“The quotes in Shakespeare’s plays show…. Lyly’s Latin
Grammar which he
sends up in The Merry Wives of Windsor....” and “Late
in his career, in The
Tempest…. “
51
“Later in his plays, Shakespeare paints a picture….”
52 “….but in As You Like It he talks of the
schoolboy….” and “…. in The Merry
Wives of Windsor he sends up a Latin class….” and
“….sentiments….
expressed in the plays…. time and time again….”.
56
“…. comedies of Plautus, which inspired…. The Comedy of
Errors and
Twelfth Night.”
57 “Shakespeare
never forgot this….” and “Shakespeare’s first youthful
tragedy, Titus Andronicus….” and “Roman comedy
and tragedy were part of
Shakespeare’s diet at school…. and he made ample use of
them….”
60
“In the popular Hundred Merry Tales (a book that
Shakespeare knew)….” and
“…. it was a lesson that Shakespeare never forgot.”
61 “(Hamlet famously complains about)
a ham actor…. suggests that
young
William had seen….”
62
“This long poem on the Greek myths was probably Shakespeare’s
best-loved
book. He had other favorites…. among vernacular poets he loved
Chaucer and
had a soft spot for old John Gower…. but to Ovid he went back
time and time
again.” [Are you beginning to get it? This is a classic case. Wood rattles off
Jason
and Medea; Pyramus and Thisbe; Troy with its heroes and villains;
and invokes
The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry
Potter to stir his
witches’ brew of unsupported inference. True, Shake-speare-Oxford
was familiar
with most of this stuff (except
Harry Potter), but there is no record anywhere,
ever, of Shaksper of Stratford owning a book, or reading a book, or
reading
anything at all.]
63
“As a professional (sic) writer in London he used Golding….
Shakespeare
grew to know the Metamorphoses extremely well….” and
“In his last play….
The Tempest, he transmits….” and
“Shakespeare’s reading of Ovid came
down simply….”
64
“The whole of Shakespeare’s writing career shows….” and
“His
childhood reading experiences matched his experience of the outer
world....”
70
“.... as a scrivener in a local lawyer’s office.... there is no
evidence for this
beyond his very good working knowledge of legal terminology....”
76
“.... let alone the father of the national bard....”
78 “’Susanna Shakespeare’, the poet’s
daughter....”
86
“.... in 1609, now a famous writer in London, published....” [Shaksper returned
to Stratford after Shake-speare-Oxford’s death in 1604. Records
of any further
London
activity are sparse.]
87
“.... the teenager had obviously read Thomas Watson’s Hecatompathia
or The
Passionate Century of Love....” and
“.... Young Shakespeare was already
ambitious to be a versifier.... He would write better.... about
others.... both
men and women...” and
“Years later, those words stood when he published the
poem.” [There is no record of Shaksper publishing anything.]
97
“.... between his marriage in 1582 and his first definite mention
in the London
theatre in 1592....” [The
mention was of “William Shake-speare”] and
“Twins....
are special children, and Shakespeare would put twins in his
plays....”
101
“.... rather like Shakespeare’s Iago....” and
“Shakespeare’s fellow dramatists
Christopher Marlowe....” and
“Sara William’s.... testimony.... published....
and....would
be carefully studied by Shakespeare when writing King Lear....”
102
“.... the kind of people.... Shakespeare would draw on....”
103
“At some point.... he had decided he wanted to be a poet.... the
(sic)
marriage
sonnet (page 87, above) was a halting beginning....”
106
“Six or seven of his plays are closely related to the plots of
the Queen’s Men.”
[Shake-speare-Oxford had already
written these earlier plays. Wood needs this to
cover for the fact that the chronological age of Shaksper makes it
impossible for
him to have written much of the Canon. There is convincing
contemporary
evidence that Oxford did write them; none that would support
Shaksper’s
“genius”.]
107
“So how did Shakespeare come to.... have an unusual and sustained
knowledge
of their plays....” [See page 106, above]
108
“.... but for a young writer with ambition....”
109
“.... and perhaps the poet’s godfather....” and
“.... at the end of the 1580’s he
began to make his name in London as a writer....” [There
is no record of
anything or anyone bearing any version of the name of
“Shakespeare” before
1592.]
113
“.... at Gray’s Inn (where Shakespeare would play his Comedy
of Errors)....”
[Shake-speare-Oxford attended,
acted, and wrote in Gray’s Inn (a law school,
as
was the Middle Temple).]
114
“Yet it was a place of tremendous opportunity, especially to a
promising young
playwright....”
118
“Like all his class, Shakespeare wore a sword....” [Wood
has again mixed them
up; Shakespeare-Oxford wore and used a sword. He was a champion in
the lists
both in
joisting and the affray. There is no record of Shaksper being
allowed
to
wear or use a sword!]
120 “Marlowe was the same age as Shakespeare, and from the same
class. But
unlike Shakespeare, he had been to university.” [But
Kit was fourteen years
younger than Shake-speare-Oxford, his employer. Marlowe, along with
Anthony
Munday
and John Lyly were at various times secretaries to the earl.]
124
“The year after he left Bishopsgate, Shakespeare wrote a play
about Jews.”
127
“This low-life culture Shakespeare would later bring to life in
the tavern
scenes in Cheapside in his Henry IV plays: Falstaff’s
robbery....” [Sir Michael
has forgotten that Prince Hal participated as well. Oxford and his
cronies are
on
record as having pulled off this very scenario at Gad’s Hill before it
ever
got
on to the boards. He was something else.]
130
[An entire page dealing with
Bishopsgate and Shoreditch as venue for
Shaksper’s
theatrical activity. Evidence exists for his presence – but not for
his
writing
any poems or plays. Shake-speare-Oxford lived for a time in nearby
Hackney
and was certainly able to haunt the same spaces.]
131
“.... later, in his sonnets, Shakespeare appears to look
back....” [The sonnets
stop with Shake-speare-Oxford’s death in 1604.]
138
“His Henry VI plays began a brilliant sequence for which
he quarried the
Tudor chroniclers.... instinctive feel for the complexities of
history....”
140
“From the start he knew what his patrons liked, and as he said
later through
the mouthpiece of his Prospero....“
141
“William Shakespeare’s work was rapidly broadening out to
include the richly
comic and romantic pieces....” and
“The Taming of the Shrew represented his
first foray into.... the battle of the sexes.”
142
“In his reworking of an older comedy (Shrew), he
questioned some of the
patriarchal assumptions of Tudor society.... and would.... write
great women’s
parts....“ and “He was obsessed with justice, aggression, the violence of
the
state, the battle of conscience and power.... threads that would
run through his
plays until the end.” [A great
circle indeed!]
144-6
“Thomas Nashe.... about the great popular success of....Talbot in
Henry IV....
Shakespeare’s first rave review....“ [The
page deals with one of the least
understood events in the life of the Bard, if indeed it has to do
with him. Wood
swallows the traditional literary bolus prescribed to bring this
otherwise interesting
account in to resonance with the Stratfordian illusion. Ogburn,
Looney, and other
Oxfordians offer a rational (and more functional) interpretation.]
147
“’Our Willy’ was now well known and moving....“ [There
is nothing to connect
Shaksper with any of this; the plays were the proper protagonists
here;
“anonymity” for Shake-speare-Oxford was essential.] and
“The Earl of
Southampton
was literary, beautiful, bisexual and from a Catholic dynasty...."
[The Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and sonnet dedications (“WH”
= Henry
Wriothesley)
are certainly connections between Southampton and Shake-speare;
nothing has ever shown up for Shaksper. But this young Earl’s
connection with
Shake-speare-Oxford
is extremely complicated. The fact that they enjoyed a father-
son
relationship (or at least in loco parentis) dissolves the need to
explain a much-
touted
(and by some - much-needed) diagnosis of Elizabethan homosexuality.
The
facts support the first seventeen sonnets as part of a campaign to
get Henry
married to Shake-speare-Oxford’s daughter. If the most interesting
scenario is
true, it would have
improved Southampton’s employment options. Read all about
it in
Elizabeth Sear’s Shakespeare and the Tudor Rose (Meadow Geese
Press).]
148
“Shakespeare dedicated his first published poem, Venus and
Adonis -“ [The
next pages deal in typically corrupt fashion with this remarkable
work, which
experts now believe had been written earlier. It is enough to say
that Venus was
fashioned out of Oxford’s feelings for his true Queen (Elizabeth
I); and that he was
Adonis. Many Oxfordians believe that on Southampton’s seventeenth
birthday he
was given the poem as a way of revealing to his now mature mind
this aspect of his
royal heritage. There is just enough peripheral evidence to justify
the loyalty some
Oxfordians display to what is known as the Tudor Heir theory - and
to explain why
Elizabeth in her own cranky way tried to protect both her lover
(Oxford) and son
(Southampton) throughout her life.]
151
[See page 148, above] and
[The Southwell - Southampton references can not stand
without involving Shake-speare-Oxford - see Oxblocs]
152
“.... and which Shakespeare used in Macbeth.”
153
“He clearly admired his cousin’s (sic)
talent....“ [Again Wood has to find ways
to remove the Earl of Oxford from this deceptive gloss to avoid
infecting his myth
with truth. See page 151]
154
“They (the initials) are W.S.”
[If anyone of that time understood the need for
Oxford’s anonymity, it would have been his one-time
“co-conspirator”, Southwell.]
156
“Some years later, in As You Like It, Shakespeare put....
into the mouth of
Touchstone.... a great reckoning in a little room....“
[Thank you, Michael Wood,
for dragging this splendid interchange into your argument. Both
Stratfordians and
their Oxfordian tormentors agree that Touchstone is one of the many
voices of the
Bard. Here he is preparing for Act V in which he bests William for
the love of
Audrey. The allegory (one of many in the Canon) casts William as
simple
Shaksper,
Audrey as the plays, and Touchstone as Himself. William’s
understanding (and perhaps Wood’s) is suitably described by “
the little room”.]
and “Marlowe had been Shakespeare’s first great
inspiration.” [See page 120,
above] and “The Comedy of Errors.... a treat
with.... two sets of twins.... the
father of twins himself....“ and
“Christian allegory that we can no longer
decipher.” [Ted Hughes, a closet
Stratfordian, did a fine job of this in his
Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (Farrar,
Straus & Geroux).
157
“.... might be paid no more than L10 by his patron for a
poem....“ [There is no
record of any such payments from any patron; this has all been
fabricated to make
Shaksper credible. If the thousand pound payment mentioned was in
fact made, it
came at a time when hush money was being provided by the widow,
Lady Oxford.
“To my dumb man”. This elusive Warwickshire “gentleman”
seemed to be getting
money from somewhere.]
159
Caption: “The list
of actors in the 1623 Folio.”
[Scholarship on the First Folio has
found that its dedication and much of the peripheral material needs
to be read as
part of a continuing cover-up of the authorship. Inclusion of
Shakespeare’s name at
the top of the list was an editorial decision. Wood, perhaps on the
advice of his
truth squad, avoids the mindless identification of
“Shakespeare’s players” common
to almost all other historians. At the time there was no group
called “Shakespeare’s
players”.]
160
“It proves that he was now a leading member of Hunsdon’s
company....“ [It
does no such thing; there are several alternative explanations.
Lord Hunsdon was in
identified. But Oxford was hereditary “Great Lord Chamberlain”
and he worked
with this group. Given the maelstrom of authorship, the pen-name
would have been
used for routine purposes regardless of whether Shaksper was
involved in any way:
(holding horses, selling tickets, part owner?)]
and “Just
turned thirty,
Shakespeare was on a creative high.” and “In this second phase of his career
we begin to see his .... Hamlet.... Richard II.... and.... Henry
IV.... Expressing
himself in wonderful lyric poetry, Shakespeare was now presenting
politics.”
[Next slide, please.]
161
“.... the critic Francis Meres declared that Shakespeare among
the English is
among the most excellent.… for Tragedy.” [Meres
was writing about the Earl of
Oxford.] and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream was
played, perhaps before the
Queen at court in Greenwich, for a wedding....“ [She
was there all right; the
bride was Shake-speare-Oxford’s daughter; the Queen her
godmother. Many of this
play’s timeless lines are fired directly at Her Royal Highness
through the one
medium left to our poet. No law has been found that prevented the
nobility from
hob-nobbing with Wood’s mechanicals and lower-class people. If
there was,
Shake-speare-Oxford had not heard of it. His father-in-law,
Burghley complained
bitterly about his friends, earning him, among other roles, a spot
as Polonius in
Hamlet.]
162
“Shakespeare had struck gold.”
163
“This is the kind of thing Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar.”
164
“Shakespeare certainly read Southwell. In Macbeth he
echoes.... surreal
imagery....“
and “Living his double life
between London and Stratford, he
went
his own way as a playwright for the public theaters, secular and
humanistic
(sic).”
165
“By the summer of 1596 Shakespeare was already the greatest poet
in the
English
language - well-liked and discrete....”
166
“Shakespeare’s company was on tour in Kent....“ [We
can allow one or two such
lapses - see page 159, above.]
169
Caption: “....
where Shakespeare and his company....“ [Oops! Another one.]
170
“.... in Twelfth Night, written in 1599....”
172
Caption:
“.... mentioned in the plays Shakespeare wrote when he lived
there....“
174
“Bears like Sackerson (as Shakespeare’s Falstaff
mentions)....“
175
“Shakespeare’s best tavern scenes.... were written while he
lived here.”
176
“Hastily Shakespeare began to put together - The Merry Wives
of Windsor....“
177
“It is often said that we can’t find out from his works what
Shakespeare
believed....
but his poems were different because.... he was free to say what he
wanted....”
[Both the plays and poems are quite clear once you understand who
he
was.
But matching up the standard Stratford android to the great tapestry of
the
Canon invokes another image. Current television entertainment
requires the
unwashed
to watch as willing participants fall from balloons into tanks of
giant
turtles,
eat spiny spiders, or wallow in unbelievable filth. Try not to go there
again,
Mr.
Wood; do believe that free of any obligation to Stratford’s millions,
you can
once
again trust in the greatness of Shakespeare. Aside from the irregularities
of
acquisition
and publication, the sonnets become a fantastic hologram that can
connect
us directly with the man, his loved ones, and their times.]
178
“Not surprisingly, Shakespeare was angry....“ and
“.... seems to have thought
about
responding....“ and “.... were written by the mature Shakespeare.... a
man
in is mid-thirties.... soon to be ‘lined by forty winters’.... a sense
of social
inferiority....“
[For this page and the next first see pages 148 and 177. The sonnet
in
question says “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow....“, saying
in effect (to
Southampton); “when you are as old as I am....” While the Bard
was not usually
didactic
in his works, this was a family matter. The lengths that Wood and
others
have
to go to get these sonnets in the hands of others require plots equal to
anything
worked up by the Bard himself.]
179
“.... his initials are H.W., not W.H.; and there is no evidence
for a relationship
with
Shakespeare later in his life.” [There
sure isn’t; but researchers continue to
find
anagrammatic constructions throughout the literature of the time; “W.H.”
would
be a typical ploy. The connections between Shake-speare-Oxford and
wards
under the supervision of Burghley (Polonius, remember?). Oxford served
on
the
council that oversaw the trials of Southampton and Essex. After Oxford’s
death,
Southampton remained close to his (other) son, Henry de Vere as
well as Oxford’s
son-in-law, the Earl of Montgomery and his brother, William Herbert
(Earl
Pembroke),
who published the First Folio. See Oxblox for the implications of
this
myopia.]
181
“.... he was the leading lyric and dramatic poet of the day,
author of the great
theatrical successes of the moment....“
184
[In light of over-riding facts of authorship, these pages highlight
the imaginations of
Wood and his predecessors. Nothing here establishes
Shaksper as author; all is
dreadfully circular. Even so, there is much to
be learned for those so inclined. At
Henry’s birth, his royal mother
inserted him into another dynasty along with a crew
of Tudor retainers.
Shake-speare-Oxford had nothing to say about it except “he was
but one
hour mine”. In Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania (or Diana, one
of the
sobriquets for Elizabeth I) fights with Oberon over their
“changeling child”. First
prize goes to the person that can show how
anyone with Shaksper’s job description
could get away with writing and
producing this without being drawn and quartered.]
188
“It might be thought inevitable that a man who lived apart
from his wife for ten
years would have affairs.” [Some people may
benefit from Dr. Wood’s sex lecture; it
would save time for readers to
read of the real event; a tempestuous affair with Lady
Anne Vavasor - a
Howard cousin, lady-in-waiting, and reasonably fertile. Although
Elizabeth
was busy being courted by France’s Duc d’Alencon for political
reasons, she
was unable to forgive this couple (both of whom she
“owned”) after the ladies’quarters
resounded with the obligatory
whack and scream. They both went to the Tower until
she cooled down. The
Dark Lady went on to have other husbands, to some of whom
she was married.
Their son grew up as a “fighting Vere” to serve with Oxford’s other
sons and his cousins.]
191
“.... affair with the Dark Lady troubled Shakespeare
deeply....“ and “Themes
such
as the corrupting power of lust on the soul, guilt and infidelity
run
through
the later sonnets.... all the more explicable if Shakespeare’s
upbringing
was Catholic.”
195
“This world of ‘bravery and vanities’, one imagines, was
precisely the world of
Shakespeare’s
proud mistress.” [Shake-speare’s
Pandarus (Troilus and Cressida)
would
be envious of Michael Wood’s dedicated efforts to find a credible lover
for
his
country bumpkin. Emilia Lanier must have been a hot item, and deserves her
own place in Elizabethan history. But this perversion of history
just doesn’t cut it.
And since we know who the poet was and can read all about his
dalliances, she is
entirely
unnecessary. That may also be the reason there are no records of her
ever
sharing
a bed with either Shaksper or Shake-speare-Oxford. One might feel
sorry
for
the Warwickshire lad; if indeed he did provide his Queen with deniability
he
certainly
deserved someone like Emilia.]
200
“.... and that autumn Shakespeare would mention it in....The
Merchant of Venice.”
203
“Shakespeare maintained a deep interest in Italian culture....“
[Shake-speare
(Oxford)
lived for a while in Venice - he returned with the Commedia del Arte
along
with much of the Renaissance to an England just emerging from the
Dark
Ages.]
and “.... he seems
to tell us that he has a venereal disease....“ [Mais
bien
sur,
Michael, “honi soit qui mal y pense!”]
207
“.... having written The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare
was also finishing
Henry
IV Part 2.... on English
history.... very close to his heart.”
209
“.... with the typical economy of a professional writer....
Shakespeare
expanded....“
210
“Shakespeare does the same sort of thing at the end of The
Tempest... speaks
directly
to the audience about their relationship. The audience, remember,
knew
him as both actor and author.”
216
“.... he had a modest breakthrough.... Romeo and Juliet, A
Midsummer Night’s
Dream
and the Falstaff plays had cemented his status.... and his name began
to
appear
on play quartos....“ [The issue of
attributions of and on plays is a tangled
web
of scholarly struggle. There is neither consistency nor reason involved
– but
Shaksper’s name has not appeared on any play as of this writing.]
217
“Shakespeare.... at the midpoint of his career.... recognized by
his peers as the
best
at both comedy and tragedy....“ and
“Shakespeare would prove himself a
master
of all forms....“
220
“Shakespeare, according to a late but plausible story, saw his (Jonson’s)
talent....“
221
“Shakespeare’s use of classical sources changed and
broadened....“
223
“In Hamlet the graveyard scene and the closet scene,
neither of which has a
parallel in the source texts....“
[Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish
historian includes
a very satisfactory closet scene in what is THE source for the
play. His Latin text
was
not translated into English until long after Hamlet had been written. Wood
may
have
been thinking of a fictional play (The Ur-Hamlet) needed to help
keep
Shaksper
busy at work copying it. No one has ever seen this play (1585-2005)]
224
“In short, Shakespeare, like a top scriptwriter today, was a
professional
through
and through....“
227
“Throughout this time Ben Jonson had been working for
Shakespeare’s
company....“
[There he goes again! The company is
Shakespeare’s? That
designation
was a creation of historians one hundred or more years after Shaksper’s
death.
Theater groups were all identified by the royal or nobleman in
charge,
including
Oxford. This earl was known to have the theater on a looser tether.
His
plays
were performed much at Court, and by several companies, especially by
the
children’s
groups, which he initiated and sponsored.]
231
“Shakespeare was no longer afraid of being mocked for his
‘small Latin’....“
[This
is an outrageous statement. The “small Latin” was cited by Jonson in
the First
Shake-speare-Oxford
died. Its ambiguity has been penetrated: “though” is
understood
to mean that “even if” Shake-speare had small Latin (which
did
forget
it.]
238
“Shakespeare was now moving into Jonson’s territory, ancient
Greece.” and
“....
always kept ahead of his rivals.... “
241
“Shakespeare could have been excused for thinking, as his John of
Gaunt had
said....“
[Just who’s John of Gaunt, please?]
243
“In 1602 Shakespeare was at the peak of his career, the foremost
dramatist of
late
Tudor London....“
246
“The poet remembered....“
250
“Shakespeare took the basic story from Cinthio’s popular Hundred
Stories,
one
of his staple source books....“
254
“Shakespeare’s commitment to Othello is shown by its
wonderful quality, and
by
the care with which he subsequently revised it....“ [Shake-speare-Oxford
spent
his last years at King’s Place in Hackney turning rough scripts into
literature.
Many of the plays which showed up in the First Folio (1623) had
never been played or
published.]
261
“Were’t aught to me that I bore the canopy....“ [Refers
to Shake-Speare-
Oxford’s
carrying the canopy for HRH Elizabeth during the Armada celebration
ceremony.
Only nobles carry canopies.]
263
“.... and he would soon mock the novelty of ‘pyramids’ again
in an extended
joke
in Antony and Cleopatra....“
264
“.... don’t these sonnets show us the same personality....“
266
“Shakespeare the writer.... as opposed to the courtier-player....
was now in a
phenomenally
creative period....“ [With the death of Shake-speare-Oxford in
1604,
one year after the accession of James I,
Shaksper is recorded as being back
in Stratford-on-Avon acquiring property. Accounts of his being in
London are
spotty. The plays and sonnets had all been written, but not
published; the final
documentable.]
271
“.... but there are echoes in his plays....“ and
“as he tells us in Sonnet 48....“
282
“.... a tale that flickers through his career.... a sure sign
that the play really
mattered
to him....“
289
“Whatever Shakespeare’s private sympathies, it is hard to
imagine that the
person
who wrote this....” [Right on!]
295
“But it still exhibits that quality seen throughout his writing
career; the
constant
capacity for self-renewal....“
298
“This same metaphor, with its arms and members, Shakespeare would
use,
memorably,
in the opening scene of Coriolanus ....”
306
“Who else would have inserted his youthful sonnet to Anne
between
the strongly religious 144 and 146, with their visions of heaven
and hell?”
[One
helluva good subject for a doctoral thesis.]
334
“From his last plays we can see that Shakespeare remained
interested and
engaged
in the ideas of his day....“
