Let's go along with this post and see where it goes . . . .
As regulars readers will know, I am not an expert on anything, so to take on the argument as to whether William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays he is credited with writing, is a tall order for me but when has that put me off?
I have appeared in a few Shakespeare plays and been paid for it as well as doing one when I was at drama school. I must say that I liked it very much. I have a problem watching Shakespeare sometimes with some of the over playing and lack of realism but that's just me.
I remember Jonathan Miller in Beyond the Fringe speaking lines like an Olivier influenced Shakespearean actor which showed up just how ridiculous some of the Shakespearean acting really was; and still is I'm sorry to say.
I remember years ago, Enoch Powell pontificating about William Shakespeare and saying that Shakespeare couldn't have written all the plays – in fact he said he had written none of them and that it was some aristocrat writing them in secret. He said how could he have known all the workings of the court to be able to write in such detail about it?
Like everything else Enoch Powell said, I disagree with him. He was a very clever fella but like a lot of clever people who are nearing genius their brain only has so much it can take in. This is why the absent minded professor or genius mathematician can't do mundane things such as boil eggs.
There has always been a school of thought that agrees with Powell but I have to ask why, after 400 years, would they bother?
Their argument is that Shakespeare wouldn't know the workings of the court or that he wasn't educated enough. Wasn't educated enough????
He went to Stratford Grammar School!! Isn't that enough.
You see because he didn't go to university they don't like the idea that he could write so many plays.
For the record he wrote 38 plays.
Alan Ayckbourn, the modern equivalent of Shakespeare, has written 73 full length plays all professionally produced – and he didn't go to university either.
He came from the theatre where plays are produced, where you learn what is acceptable and what isn't – and if you are a genius, which is what Shakespeare was, it is easy peasy.
One of Shakespeare's contemporaries was Ben Johnson and, even though he went to a posh school, he didn't go to university either. In fact after Westminster School he was a brick layer.
But why do people always question genius? It seems that every now and then they change their minds as to who wrote Shakespeare's plays apart from the great man; it also seems as if they would accept anybody apart from Shakespeare himself!
At one time it was supposed to be Francis Bacon but that went out of fashion then Christopher Marlowe was supposedly the author of the bard's work; he was murdered mysteriously so the theory was that he didn't die at all but that he pretended to be dead – like Elvis, Martin Bormann and Jim Morrison – and Shakespeare was 'his front' and lately it is supposed to be Edwards de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
The theory with de Vere is that he had access to the court, he knew the goings on there and he must have written the 37 plays – all by himself.
Forget the fact that he died in 1604, 12 years before Shakespeare and 9 years before Shakespeare stopped writing.
Why did he stop writing they say. What does anybody stop doing anything?
People are judging Shakespeare by modern standards when writers retire and write their memoirs – did they do that then?
William Shakespeare died a few days short of his 52nd birthday; as we all get to find out that when you reach your mid forties something happens to the eyes; the rods and cones start to go haywire and you need glasses so maybe he couldn't see too good so for the last 3 years of his life he didn't write.
When Bob Dylan came on to the scene in the 60s people questioned whether he wrote all he was purported to have written – the same with The Beatles.
Anyway it is Shakespeare's birthday in a couple of weeks; he died on Saint George's Day – the patron saint of England – and in the next week there will be a lot of coverage on the BBC about Shakespeare; make a change from all the programmes on Charles Dickens and The Titanic!!
