Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our twenty twenty two episode on Shakespeare and
Speaker 1: whether he actually wrote all that stuff or if there
Speaker 1: even was a Shakespeare. This episode is actually possibly my
Speaker 1: favorite episode of all time because I knew nothing about
Speaker 1: this and I learned a bunch of stuff, and I
Speaker 1: found it really interesting and it was fun, really fun
Speaker 1: to kind of turn around and explain.
Speaker 2: It to all of you.
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as
Speaker 1: I always have every time I hear it about Shakespeare.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
Speaker 1: on the line. Jerry's here too, and we're about to
Speaker 1: get jiggy with it about Shakespeare.
Speaker 4: Can I have this out of the gate? I guess.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: The more we dug into this, you know, I was
Speaker 3: an English major. We talked very briefly when I was
Speaker 3: in college about Shakespeare's authorship, right, and I thought, Hey,
Speaker 3: this would be a fun, little, semi easy episode. And
Speaker 3: the more we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded.
Speaker 3: It's onion, this bloomin Onion Unfolded Layer by Crispy Delicious Layer.
Speaker 1: For all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think
Speaker 1: you guys eat every night every night.
Speaker 3: To the point where I was almost like, you know,
Speaker 3: is this a two parters I mean, you could probably
Speaker 3: do a ten part episode on this.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's so dense.
Speaker 3: So I just want to caveat this for people that
Speaker 3: know a lot about shakespeare authorship and saying this is
Speaker 3: a pretty broad overview of the high points of his
Speaker 3: authorship being questioned, because it is dense.
Speaker 4: Baby.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing that like extremely intelligent people
Speaker 1: take on as their like lifelong hobby.
Speaker 2: It's like that we're.
Speaker 4: Like, we'll just bust it out in a few days,
Speaker 4: it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, like how some people are, like they
Speaker 1: research World War II submarine warfare and know everything about it.
Speaker 1: It's along the same lines, but it's even bigger. There's
Speaker 1: so many people involved, and each side is like, you're
Speaker 1: so naive to the other. And yes, it's true, like
Speaker 1: we could turn this into a ten part series, but
Speaker 1: I think we've got a handle on it enough to
Speaker 1: present it. I feel in okay about it. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing that sticks out for me, Chuck, is
Speaker 1: this is one of the few things I've ever come
Speaker 1: across like this that I am like truly agnostic about.
Speaker 1: I do not have an opinion one way or the other.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I do either.
Speaker 1: Actually, Like, it's not like I don't care, that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like, I genuinely can see both sides.
Speaker 1: And the other thing about it is, the more you
Speaker 1: dig into it, the more you realize, oh, neither side
Speaker 1: actually has really good evidence to support their claim. It's
Speaker 1: all just they have to get so granular that it
Speaker 1: really quickly goes into the world of conspiracy theories pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I saw this video of a guy, this wonderful gentleman
Speaker 3: who knows a lot about it, that said like, and
Speaker 3: here's the golden bullet, which proves once and for all,
Speaker 3: and he made his case, and I was like, no, No,
Speaker 3: that didn't really prove it once and for all in
Speaker 3: my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, because both sides do things like they
Speaker 1: get into biographical readings where they're trying to find clues
Speaker 1: within the text or you know, parallels to his life
Speaker 1: for that kind of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you guys, you've just completely left the world of objectivity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So what we're talking about, if you haven't guessed by now,
Speaker 3: is this idea that has been around since at least
Speaker 3: the mid eighteen hundreds, maybe before, about the question of
Speaker 3: whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole author of
Speaker 3: all of his works.
Speaker 4: And this is Shakespeare.
Speaker 3: From Stratford on the Avon, like that gentleman that we know,
Speaker 3: became an actor and you know, writer, whether or not
Speaker 3: he was the sole author, whether or not he was
Speaker 3: affront for some other authors for some of the works.
Speaker 3: Some people say he didn't write any of them. Some
Speaker 3: people said it was various women who weren't allowed to
Speaker 3: write things at the time. I saw sixty six candidates
Speaker 3: over the years have been put forward.
Speaker 2: I saw eighty.
Speaker 3: Oh really, so there you have it, somewhere between sixty
Speaker 3: six and eighty something of I know, we haven't.
Speaker 4: Been accused of writing any of Shakespeare's work.
Speaker 1: Don't think so. I didn't come across that in my research.
Speaker 3: But it's an interesting literary I don't even know if
Speaker 3: I want to call it a mystery, because some people
Speaker 3: just say, like, no, I mean of course you wrote it,
Speaker 3: and he was these outsized personal the most famous of
Speaker 3: the famous are conspiracies are drawn to them. Elvis is
Speaker 3: still alive, Marilyn Monroe was murdered. Like that happens when
Speaker 3: you are, you know, one of the biggest icons in
Speaker 3: your field quite often. So some people say this just
Speaker 3: that's all that it is.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, there's a lack of biographical documentation
Speaker 1: that he actually did write those plays. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's also what allows for people to say, you know,
Speaker 1: well do we really.
Speaker 3: Know or that he didn't write them, Like there's just
Speaker 3: it was a time, you know, in the fifteen hundreds
Speaker 3: where there were in sixteen hundreds where there just wasn't
Speaker 3: a ton of great preserved information.
Speaker 4: And we're going to talk about a lot of that.
Speaker 1: So we do know that William Shakespeare did live. He
Speaker 1: was from, like you said, Stratford on Avon. It was
Speaker 1: at the time, about a two to three day journey
Speaker 1: from London, about one hundred something miles I think. And
Speaker 1: he definitely did live. He definitely did exist. That's not
Speaker 1: a question because we do have documentary evidence that this
Speaker 1: person live from fifteen sixty four to sixteen sixteen, about
Speaker 1: fifty two years and depending on when you place his birthday,
Speaker 1: maybe fifty two years on the nose, so we know
Speaker 1: he existed. Again, what's that issue. What's being questioned whether
Speaker 1: that man William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went
Speaker 1: on to become an actor, who went on to become
Speaker 1: a producer, who worked with in the Globe theater, whether
Speaker 1: he was the author of the plays we consider written
Speaker 1: by Shakespeare. That's what's that question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like you said, he was a real dude.
Speaker 3: He came from a family that was I mean I
Speaker 3: kind of read it as a little bit middle class.
Speaker 3: They certainly were not like upper class nobility types.
Speaker 4: His father was a glover. He wore well, I guess
Speaker 4: he wore gloves too, but he made gloves.
Speaker 2: Allow me to demonstrate, it'd be.
Speaker 3: Pretty weird if he didn't. That guy won't even wear
Speaker 3: his own gloves. But he produced these very very fine
Speaker 3: gloves for well to do people.
Speaker 4: But he did achieve some.
Speaker 3: I guess, worked his way up the social chain a
Speaker 3: little bit because eventually he would serve as sort of
Speaker 3: like a mayor in Stratford. And again, while not nobility
Speaker 3: like they were fairly well regarded as people.
Speaker 1: Right, So we don't know for certain, but there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good there's a much better chance than not that
Speaker 1: because of his father's position in town, because they had
Speaker 1: some money, Like you said, they were middle class, he
Speaker 1: almost certainly would have been educated at the grammar school
Speaker 1: at Stratford. So what most people think is that William
Speaker 1: Shakespeare was educated until about the age of thirteen, and
Speaker 1: he would have learned things like Latin, he would have
Speaker 1: learned history, he would have learned some classic literature. He
Speaker 1: definitely would have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's plays would go on to expound on. So he
Speaker 1: definitely was I can't say that. That's the thing, Like,
Speaker 1: you really have to be careful what you say about this.
Speaker 1: I know I was about to say, so he definitely
Speaker 1: was educated. We don't know that he was. This is
Speaker 1: all just a supposition, but it's a pretty good bat.
Speaker 1: It's a good supposition that he actually was educated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and all this, you know.
Speaker 3: The reason that's important is all of this kind of
Speaker 3: comes back later, as some people say proof that he
Speaker 3: may not have written this stuff, because like, how could
Speaker 3: One of the main arguments used many times is how
Speaker 3: could a kid who came from here have known about
Speaker 3: these military exploits and the Elizabethan Court and all these
Speaker 3: different languages and all this hyphalutin stuff that he wrote about.
Speaker 3: So it's important to, you know, talk about his education.
Speaker 3: And it seems like he was likely educated pretty well
Speaker 3: until thirteen, which you know, I'm not even sure if
Speaker 3: that's earlier or late as far as the time period
Speaker 3: goes that. Do you know if that was like kind
Speaker 3: of generally it for kids.
Speaker 1: It was it was in the middle because he could
Speaker 1: have just as easily not.
Speaker 2: Been educated at all, right, of course, but he.
Speaker 1: Also didn't go on to Cambridge or Oxford to extend
Speaker 1: his studies, so he was in there in the middle.
Speaker 1: They think he was probably educated, not highly educated, but
Speaker 1: also not you know, uneducated.
Speaker 2: That's that's the.
Speaker 1: Key, and that if there was evidence he had not
Speaker 1: gone to school, I think that the anti Shakespeare people
Speaker 1: would have a real like mark in their favor. But
Speaker 1: he has just enough education that you can make the
Speaker 1: case like, no, like this guy, this guy learned about
Speaker 1: this stuff already, and he could have known about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you add imagination and natural talent
Speaker 1: you come up with Shakespeare conceivably.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got married to Anne Hathaway. You know, go
Speaker 3: ahead and insert an Hathaway joke there. You know she's
Speaker 3: a real actor, right, sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, devil Waar's pro Princess Diaries. Yeah, big, I think
Speaker 1: she was in Inception? No? No, was she Interstellar? Yes,
Speaker 1: she did a stellar job in Interstellar.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 3: They got married when he was quite a bit younger.
Speaker 3: She was twenty six, he was eighteen. She was pregnant,
Speaker 3: which is probably a little unusual for the time. They
Speaker 3: had a daughter named Susannah, and then had twins, a
Speaker 3: boy and a girl twin, and the boy named Hamnet,
Speaker 3: not Hamlet but Hamnett.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which apparently they've never turned up another use of
Speaker 1: that name in at the time.
Speaker 3: Proof he was eleven years old when he died, And
Speaker 3: that kind of comes into play later on as well.
Speaker 3: And then there's about a you know, from fifteen eighty
Speaker 3: five to about fifteen ninety two, there's about a seven
Speaker 3: year gap where we don't know a lot about what
Speaker 3: was going on with Shakespeare, and then he pops up,
Speaker 3: which a lot can happen in seven years. Again, not
Speaker 3: trying to sway people, one way or the other. But
Speaker 3: you can certainly learn a lot in seven years if
Speaker 3: you have some big life experiences. But he pops up
Speaker 3: in London in fifteen ninety two, again as far as
Speaker 3: the record go goes, and you know, keep in mind,
Speaker 3: a lot of this record before he was known in
Speaker 3: his lifetime as an author, was you know, just kind
Speaker 3: of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: like various little lawsuits and mortgages and sort of banking
Speaker 3: records and stuff like that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And also I mean, like that's about as
Speaker 1: much documentation as you would be able to come up
Speaker 1: with on most people. And you can make a case
Speaker 1: that there's more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people
Speaker 1: who weren't nobility right of his era. That's because there's
Speaker 1: been so much scholarship and study and research into his
Speaker 1: life that they've turned up as much as they can.
Speaker 1: But what they've turned up only amounts to about five
Speaker 1: hundred different pieces of documentation of one form or another.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So one of those pieces of documentation in early on
Speaker 3: in London is a pamphlet written by generally believed to
Speaker 3: be written by this guy named Robert Green. There were
Speaker 3: some other people that could have possibly written it. But
Speaker 3: it's called Green's groatsworth of wit. And there's a line
Speaker 3: where he references Shakespeare in it in a contemporaneous fashion.
Speaker 2: Is that right.
Speaker 4: Where he kind of takes a shot out of him.
Speaker 3: He says it talks about Shakespeare, says there's an upstart
Speaker 3: crow in his own conceit the only shake scene in
Speaker 3: a country, which kind of translates into he kind of
Speaker 3: thinks he's the only Shakespeare like he thinks he's all that,
Speaker 3: and it should be noted also as far as the
Speaker 3: thievery that in Aesop's Fables, crows I would steal the
Speaker 3: feathers of others. So the people in the I don't
Speaker 3: want to say anti Shakespeare, but the people say that
Speaker 3: he might not have written these things. Says this is
Speaker 3: a big clue and saying that he might have stolen
Speaker 3: some of these things. That's why he's referred to as
Speaker 3: a crow by this other guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in that that quote, he says, the upstart
Speaker 1: crow is beautified with our feathers, and he's a playwright.
Speaker 1: So the pro Shakespeare people, you call them the pro
Speaker 1: Stratford group, they suggest that what he's what Green is
Speaker 1: talking about, is he's he's poking fun at a common
Speaker 1: actor who is deigning to even attempt to write plays,
Speaker 1: which you know, among playwrights is far more important than acting.
Speaker 1: Anybody can act, but it really takes something to write
Speaker 1: a play, at least that's what they thought at the time,
Speaker 1: and that he's taking a shot at him for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we should point out that being an actor
Speaker 3: back then and being a part of the theater was
Speaker 3: not like it is today.
Speaker 4: It wasn't some revered position.
Speaker 3: It was sort of you know, body plays and common
Speaker 3: people were into this kind of thing, so it wasn't
Speaker 3: when he says he was just an actor.
Speaker 4: That's a pretty big diss right.
Speaker 1: So the last thing that we have, I guess the
Speaker 1: last documentation, although there's other stuff that's been turned up.
Speaker 1: They did archaeological expeditions on his house. I think his
Speaker 1: house has been under ownership of a public trust since
Speaker 1: like the nineteenth century, and they've carried out archaeological examinations
Speaker 1: of it, and they found that he went back and
Speaker 1: forth between London and Stratford, so they know stuff about
Speaker 1: him like that. But as far as like documentation goes,
Speaker 1: the last piece of documentation we have comes in sixteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: which is his will that he wrote, and then a
Speaker 1: few months later he died, and I guess the last
Speaker 1: last piece of doc documentation is his tombstone, which in
Speaker 1: and of itself is curious because his tombstone contains a
Speaker 1: curse on it, but not his name.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is that the one with the quote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a curse. He's saying like, don't dig me
Speaker 1: up or you're gonna be cursed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's his good friend for Jesus sake, forbear to
Speaker 3: dig the dust and closed here. Blessed be the man
Speaker 3: who spares these stones, and cursed be he who moves
Speaker 3: my bones. Some people point to that as a poor
Speaker 3: writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was a great writer, would
Speaker 3: have written this kind of shabby curse, And other people say, like,
Speaker 3: who said Shakespeare even wrote that?
Speaker 4: Necessarily this is.
Speaker 1: A good instructive example of like kind of the back
Speaker 1: and forth between those people, Right, this is terrible writing.
Speaker 1: Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And then the anti Shakespeare
Speaker 1: crew says, well, of course he wrote it, because who
Speaker 1: else would just not think to put his name on
Speaker 1: his own tombstone? And the other ones just put their
Speaker 1: head in their hands, just start crying, and it just
Speaker 1: goes downhill from there. But that's a really good example
Speaker 1: of like the just kind of like people will jump
Speaker 1: on any single thing that they possibly can and often
Speaker 1: interpret it one way or the other. So one thing,
Speaker 1: one single thing, provides evidence for both sides.
Speaker 2: It's that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: Another thing that people point to is the fact that
Speaker 3: of you know, we don't have a lot of like
Speaker 3: letters and papers and things like that because his family
Speaker 3: line ended in sixteen seventy. I think he had a granddaughter,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Barnard, that died without that bearing children, so most
Speaker 3: of his stuff basically lost as far as family possessions
Speaker 3: and things like that. People do point to the will
Speaker 3: at times and say, well, in his will, you know,
Speaker 3: he leaves certain things, but like there's never any mention
Speaker 3: of any manuscripts. And again this is all like it's
Speaker 3: a little weird, maybe, but none of this is proof.
Speaker 3: And you know, through the personal records that we do
Speaker 3: have in those five hundred references, like none of them
Speaker 3: really reference him like manuscripts in him writing things.
Speaker 1: Right, That's what's most compelling to me is that when
Speaker 1: you put together the documentation about his life that we know.
Speaker 1: It's clear he's involved in the theater, he's an actor.
Speaker 1: We get that. That's that comes through loud and clear.
Speaker 1: What doesn't come through isn't documented at all is him
Speaker 1: as a writer. And that that thing about the will,
Speaker 1: the fact that if you look at the wills and
Speaker 1: bequeathments of other writers of the time, you can find
Speaker 1: evidence that.
Speaker 2: They were writers.
Speaker 1: They like leave books to other people that there they
Speaker 1: leave unfinished manuscripts that stay in the family for generations,
Speaker 1: and it is very curious. His will is very curious.
Speaker 1: But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost
Speaker 1: to history because his granddaughter was the end of the
Speaker 1: family line, that actually holds up because other great authors
Speaker 1: of say the same major of any age. A lot
Speaker 1: of the reason that their personal effects and papers are
Speaker 1: still around is because their family home was passed down
Speaker 1: from generation to generation to generation, and there was a
Speaker 1: long enough period of time for the importance of that
Speaker 1: writer to become clear. And so other people came in
Speaker 1: and said, can we have your great great great grandfather's
Speaker 1: personal effects. We want to put them in this museum.
Speaker 1: There's enough time. There wasn't enough time. There was only
Speaker 1: seventy years between the death of Shakespeare and the end
Speaker 1: of his family line, and he didn't become widely popular
Speaker 1: until the I think middle of the eighteenth century, so
Speaker 1: he was kind of a victim of that. And both
Speaker 1: of those to me provide really good evidence for why
Speaker 1: there is a documentation of his writing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely in the will.
Speaker 3: And by the way, The Atlantic has a great, great,
Speaker 3: pretty deep dive article as they do on this, which
Speaker 3: provided a lot of the supplementary information that we got
Speaker 3: by Elizabeth Winkler.
Speaker 4: Yeah, betweenty nineteen great read.
Speaker 3: One of the things that Winkler points out and other
Speaker 3: people to point out on the will as well, is
Speaker 3: like Shakespeare wrote a lot about music, and I think
Speaker 3: there were three hundred musical terms, and all of his
Speaker 3: plays mentioned of twenty six musical instruments. And like in
Speaker 3: his will he didn't he didn't even have a loot
Speaker 3: to pass down to anybody, and like you said, didn't
Speaker 3: have books even like a library that he wanted to give.
Speaker 3: And you know, again this is not proof necessary necessarily
Speaker 3: of anything, but it's all of this stuff has added
Speaker 3: up over the years too enough for people to arise
Speaker 3: to like get suspicious about it.
Speaker 1: I think exactly, you want to take a break, a breather.
Speaker 2: I guess you could call.
Speaker 3: It, Yeah, let's take a let's take a breather, let's
Speaker 3: take five. One thing that Ed who helped us put
Speaker 3: this together mentions that I wanted to get your take
Speaker 3: on it. I didn't really think it had a whole
Speaker 3: lot to do with it. One way or the other
Speaker 3: was all of the various misspellings of Shakespeare's name over
Speaker 3: the years. He would sign it in different ways, he
Speaker 3: would abbreviate it in different ways. There are documents with
Speaker 3: I mean, it looks like fifteen different ways of spelling Shakespeare,
Speaker 3: everything from shacks with an ex peer to spears and
Speaker 3: something you would jab somebody with. It's misspelled all over
Speaker 3: the place. And I just kind of took that, as
Speaker 3: you know, people misspelled things a.
Speaker 4: Lot back then.
Speaker 3: There weren't you know, there weren't necessarily records that you
Speaker 3: could go look at very easily, so you might just
Speaker 3: take a guess at how to spell a name, and
Speaker 3: then it was on the record. And so I didn't
Speaker 3: really think that factored in much, did you.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: And the impression I have is that all the different
Speaker 1: spellings are easily explained away from just the era, like
Speaker 1: you just said, and that the people who clamp onto
Speaker 1: that are actually looking into them just to find like hidden.
Speaker 2: Writing and codes too.
Speaker 1: Right, So I think like the different spellings of the
Speaker 1: names is it's about Yeah, it's about as big a
Speaker 1: boondoggle as you're gonna find in the in the Shakespeare
Speaker 1: authorship argument, I think.
Speaker 4: All right, so we'll cast that aside.
Speaker 1: Well, hold on, before we do, I want to point
Speaker 1: out my favorite abbreviation.
Speaker 3: Which one I think I let me look, I bet
Speaker 3: you I know which one, But.
Speaker 2: Go, okay, put it, put it back in the deck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's back in the deck.
Speaker 2: Okay, it is Wilm shack p.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 2: That's the one.
Speaker 4: It stands out pretty blatantly. Sahakp.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: Sheck, Hello, Wilm sheck.
Speaker 1: It's not a really good hotel check in name, but
Speaker 1: it's still worth mentioning.
Speaker 4: I think that's pretty good.
Speaker 3: So, like we mentioned, sort of what's at the root
Speaker 3: of a lot of these theories is what ed I
Speaker 3: think rightly calls elitism, which is, how could this guy
Speaker 3: even you know, educated up to thirteen, how could he
Speaker 3: have known about all this stuff? How could he have
Speaker 3: known about military exploits? And you know, if you read
Speaker 3: Shakespeare's plays, which if you're an English major, you have
Speaker 3: to read a lot of them, there's a lot going
Speaker 3: on in these plays about a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 3: He didn't write about just kind of one kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So it implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge
Speaker 3: about a lot of things.
Speaker 1: And not just different things as it relates to England,
Speaker 1: different things, as it relates to entirely different lands. Like
Speaker 1: think about where a lot of his stuff takes places
Speaker 1: in Italy, and as far as anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't
Speaker 1: go to Italy. Although remember there's that lost year eight
Speaker 1: year period they call him the Lost Years. It's entirely
Speaker 1: possible he went to Italy during that time. It's also
Speaker 1: just as possible that he didn't go to Italy during
Speaker 1: that time. We just don't know. But that is something
Speaker 1: that really stands out. And yes, there is a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of elitism and classicism among some of the anti
Speaker 1: Shakespeare group, but I think that that is I think
Speaker 1: that dismisses a lot of their points out of hand.
Speaker 1: And they do have some really good points. They're not
Speaker 1: just cranks and crack pots, Like they have some pretty
Speaker 1: good evidence. You can make a case at least as
Speaker 1: good to evidence that as the pro Shakespeare people. But
Speaker 1: the upshot of it is really kind of a compliment.
Speaker 1: They're saying, these plays are so good. Yeah, that Shakespeare's
Speaker 1: arguably the greatest writer who ever lived. He has such
Speaker 1: a crazy imagination, he's so funny, he has such an
Speaker 1: extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of the human condition.
Speaker 1: Could it really all have been written by this man
Speaker 1: from at the time the country, who was educated up
Speaker 1: to thirteen, who came from the middle class, who may
Speaker 1: or may not have ever traveled out of England? How
Speaker 1: is that even possible? Are people born that gifted? That's
Speaker 1: ultimately if you want to go beyond the classicism in
Speaker 1: the elite totally. That's really what their argument boils down to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And if you don't know a lot
Speaker 3: of Shakespeare, have never really read a lot yourself, and
Speaker 3: you think like you're sort of in that camp, like
Speaker 3: I mean, this is kind of overrated, like this guy, No,
Speaker 3: these plays are brilliant and there's a reason why they
Speaker 3: still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or inspired
Speaker 3: by Shakespeare's plays. It's because they were all genuinely brilliant.
Speaker 3: It was great, great stuff. And what you need is
Speaker 3: a really good teacher to kind of walk you through
Speaker 3: it because it's it's tough to read. And we had
Speaker 3: we had some good ones at Georgia, at University of Georgia.
Speaker 4: I had one.
Speaker 3: I can't remember his name. God, I can picture him
Speaker 3: in my head. He was so great. Probably yeah someone No,
Speaker 3: it was Wilmi shack Be shack Bee.
Speaker 4: Oh, I wish I could remember his name.
Speaker 3: I bet you someone will write in in the mid
Speaker 3: nineties through the great play Harpsichord.
Speaker 1: Oh well, no, I had a classics professor who played
Speaker 1: a harpsichord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was you know, you had to take Shakespeare
Speaker 3: one and two. Those were the only required English classes
Speaker 3: as a as an English major, so that kind of
Speaker 3: shows the importance. But what he did was he saddus
Speaker 3: down and we read the plays out loud in class,
Speaker 3: and after every you know, short bit, he would say, well,
Speaker 3: here's what's going on, and here's what he's saying.
Speaker 2: Yes, man, you were very lucky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and once once you hear that and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: these are very contemporary stories, and that's why they still
Speaker 3: carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories,
Speaker 3: but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not
Speaker 3: high falutin stuff, it's just it was written at a
Speaker 3: time where it seems that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, because we don't really speak in you know,
Speaker 1: Renaissance English anymore, so it seems it might as well
Speaker 1: be Greek to us. But yeah, it was intended for
Speaker 1: common audiences, like the average person would laugh or cry
Speaker 1: at those at those plays. And I think also it
Speaker 1: like really kind of supports your point that four hundred
Speaker 1: years later, those plays can still make people today laugh
Speaker 1: and cry like they still hold up. I guess what
Speaker 1: you're saying. And have you ever heard of Sister Wendy. No,
Speaker 1: she is, she's a nun. I don't believe she's still
Speaker 1: with us. And I think in the nineties she made
Speaker 1: this series of videos where she just went around to
Speaker 1: music around the world and explained paintings to you in
Speaker 1: a way that I would love to find a sister
Speaker 1: Wendy of Shakespeare. I'm sure there's somebody out there, but
Speaker 1: you could do a lot worse of killing several hours
Speaker 1: watching Sister Wendy explain paintings because she was she had
Speaker 1: like a natural gift at just not only understanding what
Speaker 1: she was looking at, but explaining it really understandably.
Speaker 3: I love that, and I think in Sister Wendy's case
Speaker 3: and my professor Shackby, it's it.
Speaker 4: It comes from a place of.
Speaker 3: They have such great admiration and they want us, They
Speaker 3: really want people to understand this stuff. You might ordinarily
Speaker 3: go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get
Speaker 3: paintings like this, or I don't get plays like this.
Speaker 2: I art.
Speaker 4: So should we get in speaking of art?
Speaker 3: Great segue, should we get into this mess of the
Speaker 3: bust of Shakespeare?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it's another It's very much like his tombstone,
Speaker 1: where people are like it means this, No, it means that,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there's a bust an effigy of Shakespeare inside the
Speaker 3: church there in Stratford. And there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: controversy over this thing because part of it is not
Speaker 3: necessarily like was he the author, although it does play
Speaker 3: into that, but sort of like what did he look like?
Speaker 3: And how do we know that's what he looked like?
Speaker 3: Like we've all seen the picture and there's like this
Speaker 3: one painting and this one bust, and that's kind of
Speaker 3: where everything comes from. And some people say this was
Speaker 3: done after he was dead, like, we really don't know
Speaker 3: that that's what he looked like. I think just a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a
Speaker 3: pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt that it
Speaker 3: was actually done. I think she said it was highly likely.
Speaker 3: Professor Orlan said it's highly likely that it was done
Speaker 3: while he was alive, and that he commissioned it because
Speaker 3: she thinks she knows who did the bust, and that
Speaker 3: that person lived near him and was irregular at the
Speaker 3: globe and.
Speaker 4: Kind of put all these clues together.
Speaker 3: But other people, some people say it was his dad
Speaker 3: and not him because of this whole sack of grain argument.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there there was an etching that was made
Speaker 1: of the bust within some period of time after the
Speaker 1: bust was erected, but before it was altered. So the
Speaker 1: bus has definitely been altered. And it looks like one
Speaker 1: way you can interpret this, this thing at the bottom,
Speaker 1: this puffy things that's at the hands of the bust,
Speaker 1: the effigy as a sack of grain. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it were a sack of green, why anyone would
Speaker 1: ever present it in that position.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: And so right, so what the anti Shakespeare, anti Stratford
Speaker 1: people are saying is like, yeah, it's his dad, it's
Speaker 1: it's not him, or if it is Shakespeare, he was
Speaker 1: known for his grain carrying skills, not his writing skills.
Speaker 1: And the pro strap for people are like, don't be ridiculou.
Speaker 1: This is obviously a pillow, and at some point somebody
Speaker 1: did revise the bus, so it is unequivocally a pillow,
Speaker 1: like there's just no way to mistake it. And it's
Speaker 1: not so much a pillow as it is like a
Speaker 1: handrest for him to write on, because he's got a
Speaker 1: piece of paper on it and a quill in his
Speaker 1: other hand. But the anti Shakespeare people jump on that
Speaker 1: and say, like, see it was altered to fit this
Speaker 1: to cover up this conspiracy later.
Speaker 3: On, Yeah, exactly, And that quill has been stolen and
Speaker 3: replaced I think so many times over the years that
Speaker 3: now I don't know if it currently has the quill
Speaker 3: or if it has the quill, and it's now behind glass.
Speaker 2: Oh, that could that's a good way to get around
Speaker 2: as sure.
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure, but you know, that became a
Speaker 3: you know, obviously it's something you could just snatch of
Speaker 3: his hand, and you've got Shakespeare's quill on your on
Speaker 3: your door.
Speaker 2: Speaking of being snatched.
Speaker 1: Apparently that curse on his tombston didn't work because they
Speaker 1: did a scan of it on the four hundred thing
Speaker 1: versary of his death and found that at least his
Speaker 1: skull was missing, if not all of his remains. Oh
Speaker 1: really yeah, and that interesting. So somebody out there has
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection.
Speaker 3: It's probably Rosenkrantz or Guildenstern. I like, great Shakespeare joke.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 4: There's some people out there that were, like, nailed it.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 3: Another thing, as far as evidence goes, is the first folio,
Speaker 3: which is I think it was the first collection that
Speaker 3: they put in print of all of Shakespeare's plays, including
Speaker 3: eighteen that had never been in print before.
Speaker 4: And there was a I guess was it?
Speaker 3: A forward written by a guy named Ben Johnson who
Speaker 3: was a rival of Shakespeare's. He was kind of known
Speaker 3: as a jealous, sort of argumentative guy. But he calls
Speaker 3: Shakespeare the Swan of Avon and is sort of very
Speaker 3: laudatory in this forward, but I think you found stuff
Speaker 3: later on where he was kind of like, m I
Speaker 3: had my fingers cross the whole.
Speaker 2: Time kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: So the pro Stratford people who believe Shakespeare or Shakespeare say, look, man,
Speaker 1: this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival,
Speaker 1: but a real rival, really critical, like, had biting criticism
Speaker 1: and sense of humor, and also was not one to
Speaker 1: just be like.
Speaker 2: To just bow to nobility or privilege or wealth or status.
Speaker 1: Right, So if this guy is saying that Shakespeare the
Speaker 1: Swan of Avon, which places this man at Stratford on Avon,
Speaker 1: because Ben Johnson is calling him that, that proves that
Speaker 1: Shakespeare was Shakespeare. The anti Shakespeare camp says, like you said,
Speaker 1: Ben Johnson at his fingers crossed the whole time, and
Speaker 1: that really what he was doing was providing cover for
Speaker 1: this larger, essentially conspiracy of people who actually were Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: was blending his renown to it.
Speaker 2: Neither one really makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a complete change
Speaker 1: of heart, it just doesn't quite add up. But then
Speaker 1: also the idea that he would provide that cover for
Speaker 1: a group of noble people and seems unlikely as well too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: One of the first public doubters in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 3: was a woman named Delia Bacon, no relation to Francis Bacon,
Speaker 3: although you may think so, because one person that Delia
Speaker 3: Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon.
Speaker 3: Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a
Speaker 3: sort of a long life before she got into kind
Speaker 3: of hating Shakespeare, Yeah, hating him, like really didn't like
Speaker 3: Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was not
Speaker 3: the author. And her idea was that it was Francis Bacon,
Speaker 3: Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some other people too,
Speaker 3: who were these very well regarded people of you know,
Speaker 3: philosophy and politics and science, who would not have been
Speaker 3: allowed to put forth these plays. And what these plays,
Speaker 3: what they really were, were not even meant for entertainment
Speaker 3: or for the stage. They were meant to be sort
Speaker 3: of biting criticisms of all kinds of various things that
Speaker 3: these gentlemen could not put their name on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's yeah, either they couldn't put their name
Speaker 1: on it because they would be executed as basically treason
Speaker 1: as to the crown, because they were, you know, putting
Speaker 1: forth the idea of social reform and you know, women's
Speaker 1: rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots at the nobility.
Speaker 1: Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that
Speaker 1: was introduced in I think the eighteen seventies, and that
Speaker 1: was that they just just out of noble nobility nobless,
Speaker 1: I guess they wouldn't deign to have their stuff published.
Speaker 1: It would erode their social reputation, even accepting the idea
Speaker 1: that they would be beheaded for treason. So there are
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons that somebody like Francis Bacon would
Speaker 1: have to cover up his identity if he were actually Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: And that same stigma of print and political cover argument
Speaker 1: gets extended to other people beyond Bacon too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that, you know, it makes a little bit
Speaker 3: of sense. As far as Delia Bacon, she was able
Speaker 3: to talk Ralph Waldo Emerson into basically kind of buying
Speaker 3: her story and he arranged for her sponsorship basically to
Speaker 3: go to England to kind of research this. Apparently in
Speaker 3: England she was kind of on record saying that she
Speaker 3: didn't research history books or records and things like that.
Speaker 3: She believed that the the proof was sort of in
Speaker 3: the plays themselves, yeah, and in the in the text basically,
Speaker 3: like with these clues. Apparently, she used to go to
Speaker 3: Shakespeare's tomb a lot and and kind of just you know,
Speaker 3: hang out there and like try to convince the I
Speaker 3: guess the tomb keeper or whoever you know takes care
Speaker 3: of the cemetery, the crypt keeper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the crypt keeper.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to say it to be let in,
Speaker 3: and like almost got in at one point apparently, but
Speaker 3: I think she got sick and couldn't. And but she
Speaker 3: thought that the you know, the deep secret was within
Speaker 3: that tomb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she kind of kicked off the nuttier camp of
Speaker 1: the questioning of of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off
Speaker 1: the whole thing. She she put like kind of a
Speaker 1: nutty sheen to it, like the idea that you could
Speaker 1: get your answers just from reading the plays, right, the
Speaker 1: clues were in there. The thing is is Francis Bacon
Speaker 1: was known to amuse himself by including you know, hidden
Speaker 1: codes and messages in his writings. So if it was
Speaker 1: Francis Bacon, that's not that much of a stretch, and
Speaker 1: supposedly Mark Twain and some friends did actually turn up.
Speaker 1: If you read the first folio, there is I guess
Speaker 1: some series of lines that spell out Francisco BACONO.
Speaker 4: It's pretty good.
Speaker 3: I mean, here's the thing, though, Francis Bacon wrote a
Speaker 3: lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot
Speaker 3: of fiction and pros or didn't he write no evidence
Speaker 3: that he ever wrote any kind of plays, did he?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: There was this other thing that kind of came along.
Speaker 1: So Delia Bacon is widely regarded as the person who
Speaker 1: kicked off that it was Shakespeare Shakespeare idea, But supposedly
Speaker 1: there was a person who came before her, James Wilmot,
Speaker 1: who in seventeen eighty one sat down to write a
Speaker 1: biography of Shakespeare and did all the research in London
Speaker 1: and Stratford, on ava on and was astonished by the
Speaker 1: lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays and
Speaker 1: started to suspect it and that he kicked it off.
Speaker 2: The thing is, the.
Speaker 1: Anti Shakespeare side has been accused of making those documents up,
Speaker 1: of forging those documents to support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, so they weren't discovered until nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: which is pretty convenient, and it's entirely possible that they
Speaker 1: were just forged.
Speaker 3: All right, should we take another break here? Yeah's all right,
Speaker 3: we'll take another break. We'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 3: about whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff.
Speaker 1: So one more thing about Delia Bacon before we wrap
Speaker 1: it up. Like you said, she was a good writer,
Speaker 1: and her exhaustive examination of the texts of Shakespeare's plays
Speaker 1: resulted in a six hundred and twenty page book, The
Speaker 1: Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, and she's often
Speaker 1: credited with basically prefiguring, if not kicking off, the idea
Speaker 1: of literary criticism of close readings of stuff to find
Speaker 1: other meanings. And she was doing it to expose noble
Speaker 1: people as Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: But she was really good at.
Speaker 1: It, and people said, well, hey, maybe we should do
Speaker 1: this for other stuff too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like ironically, because she kind of I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, the various tawdry accounts say she was driven
Speaker 3: to madness. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but
Speaker 3: it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in
Speaker 3: the latter stages of her life and that her family
Speaker 3: was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Right, So Francis Bacon was not the only person put
Speaker 1: forth and there's probably, as far as like believers go,
Speaker 1: somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him, and
Speaker 1: that would be the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de
Speaker 1: Vere Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's a whole there's a whole camp
Speaker 3: and a whole other and you know, we can't get
Speaker 3: into this too too much in detail, but there's a
Speaker 3: whole movement that says out of the eighty people like
Speaker 3: we really think it was the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship, and
Speaker 1: there is, you.
Speaker 2: Know, some stuff to it.
Speaker 1: He was a poet, which Ed points out that's so
Speaker 1: much for the stigma of print, and that also you
Speaker 1: can compare his poetry and in like some specific works
Speaker 1: of poetry to some of Shakespeare's poetry and see some
Speaker 1: real comparisons. But as far as I can tell that
Speaker 1: the questions are the similarities and there, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: like and that to me, it was the sixth Earl
Speaker 1: of Derby who has a little more, a little more
Speaker 1: to offer.
Speaker 4: Oh really, Oh no, it was about Derby.
Speaker 2: There was one other thing. So Derby has his own group,
Speaker 2: the Derbyites.
Speaker 4: Right, this is what I mean. It's an onion. It's
Speaker 4: a bloomin onion.
Speaker 1: So there was one other thing about Devere that is
Speaker 1: pretty suspicious. There were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated
Speaker 1: to a man who was raised in the same household
Speaker 1: as Devere. And from what anybody could tell, there's no
Speaker 1: reason Shakespeare would know this person, and why would Shakespeare
Speaker 1: dedicate to poems.
Speaker 2: So this this.
Speaker 1: Nobleman he didn't know, but Devere certainly knew him. He
Speaker 1: was he was basically raised alongside him like a brother.
Speaker 1: So that, along with the biographical reading, the close reading
Speaker 1: looking for parallels between Devere's life and Shakespeare's plays, are
Speaker 1: what kind of back up the Oxfordian.
Speaker 3: Theories interesting because Christopher Marlowe is another one who was
Speaker 3: a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's, and they collaborated and
Speaker 3: they influenced one another, and this the details around Marlowe's
Speaker 3: death are hinky enough to where some people thought or
Speaker 3: at least that you know, the conspiracy is that is
Speaker 3: that he faked his death because he was going to
Speaker 3: going to be executed by the crown and continued to
Speaker 3: write and then used his friend Billy Shakespeare as affront
Speaker 3: to continue to get those plays out. I'm not really
Speaker 3: sure about this because I don't know that's that's just
Speaker 3: a little far fetched.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, well, yeah, if and if you're
Speaker 1: if you're supposing that Marlow faked his death in order
Speaker 1: to continue writing, you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped
Speaker 1: in a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe that's what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's interesting because you know, Marlow is a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly he may have been
Speaker 1: a secret agent for the crown.
Speaker 2: He was an.
Speaker 1: Atheist, he was his own playwright. People loved him as
Speaker 1: a playwright at the time, but he was no Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Like literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you could attribute
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's writings to because Marlow was gloomy and super atheist
Speaker 1: and he was. His plays just didn't have that same
Speaker 1: kind of humanism and funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. And also,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't Marlow just write these plays under his own name?
Speaker 1: He had no reason to write these plays under different names.
Speaker 4: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 3: There have been people that put forth the idea that
Speaker 3: there were several different women that might have been the
Speaker 3: real authors, because women were not allowed to write plays
Speaker 3: at the time. Eighty percent of the plays written during
Speaker 3: this time were anonymous and no author was listed, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people said, hey, a lot of these
Speaker 3: were written by women and they just couldn't put their
Speaker 3: name on it. Many of Shakespeare's plays and ideas are
Speaker 3: very progressive. It's kind of a kind of a I
Speaker 3: don't know about flimsy, but it kind of demeans Shakespeare
Speaker 3: a bit to say that, like, well, it had to
Speaker 3: be a woman because they were so progressive about women
Speaker 3: like taking a stand, when in fact Shakespeare seemingly very
Speaker 3: much thought that way himself, right, Like, how.
Speaker 2: Could a man write women like this?
Speaker 3: Come on, Yeah, there's a woman named Mary Sidmund Herbert
Speaker 3: who has a whole foundation that's trying to prove that
Speaker 3: she wrote. Kind of the word of the Internet happened
Speaker 3: about seven years ago. When you get these memes that
Speaker 3: are just full of false stuff and then everyone starts
Speaker 3: spreading them around. Oh yeah, there was a meme in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen went all over social media that just had
Speaker 3: the picture of this black woman and said, this is
Speaker 3: Amelia Bassano. She really wrote Shakespeare's stuff. She was not
Speaker 3: allowed to be a published author because she was a
Speaker 3: black woman at a time where she was suppressed and
Speaker 3: all this stuff. None of this stuff was true. First
Speaker 3: of all, she was maybe Moroccan. She was definitely not
Speaker 3: of African descent.
Speaker 2: Oh. I saw she was Venetian.
Speaker 3: I saw that she was Moroccan and had some Italian
Speaker 3: in her, so that okay, yeah, it makes a little sense.
Speaker 3: But she was definitely not of African descent. She was
Speaker 3: a published author, so the whole notion that she wasn't
Speaker 3: allowed to publish things wasn't right. She was kind of
Speaker 3: a well known poet.
Speaker 4: I think at the time.
Speaker 3: So this kind of I think gets passed along the
Speaker 3: internet and then you know, half the people that see
Speaker 3: had to say, oh, well, look at that Shakespeare was
Speaker 3: all written by this lady back then.
Speaker 4: Yeah, problem solved, And that's just not how it works.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I saw that, and I
Speaker 1: think the people who are like Shakespeare is a woman
Speaker 1: are like, well, okay, if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship,
Speaker 1: we can't ignore this whole group of people who had
Speaker 1: every reason to hide their identity as authors of these
Speaker 1: plays because they were women and they weren't for sure
Speaker 1: to do this kind of stuff. So there was a
Speaker 1: critic who in fifteen ninety three wrote of a who
Speaker 1: praised a gentle woman who was writing some amazing plays
Speaker 1: and sonnets. And this was the year after Shakespeare pops
Speaker 1: back up after his lost years and when he was
Speaker 1: starting to write. But that the critics said he didn't
Speaker 1: want to reveal who it was because he didn't want
Speaker 1: to basically get her in trouble. So that's what some
Speaker 1: other people kind of look at and say, See, Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: Was a woman.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think think, I think this theory
Speaker 3: makes a lot more sense than a lot of the others.
Speaker 3: You know, just by this year fact that women would
Speaker 3: not have been allowed to So maybe Shakespeare was progressive
Speaker 3: and decided to be affront for these great works.
Speaker 1: But it reveals a point about being an anti Shakespeare
Speaker 1: anti I guess Stratford person is you have to part
Speaker 1: of is you have to explain why somebody would want
Speaker 1: to fake authorship, would want to hide behind Shakespeare's name.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what do you call that a motive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got means, motive, and opportunity. You put those
Speaker 1: three together, you got your Shakespeare.
Speaker 4: Well that's what I mean about the maybe women wrote them.
Speaker 4: I mean there was definite motive.
Speaker 1: There, right exactly. So there was one other thing that happened.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of stuff happened over the course
Speaker 1: of this hundred almost two hundred years now of questioning
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's authorship. Back in nineteen eighty seven, Ox forty and
Speaker 1: Charlton Augburn got the at least three sitting Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justices John Paul Stevens, William Brennan and Harry Blackman to
Speaker 1: hold a mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was
Speaker 1: the author of Shakespeare's plays, and they did on Sea Span.
Speaker 1: They had they held like a trial and heard the evidence,
Speaker 1: and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him, and
Speaker 1: it was pretty interesting. But they it went two to one,
Speaker 1: I think, in favor of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author.
Speaker 3: But they did like real research and stuff. It wasn't
Speaker 3: just like a you know, yeah stunt.
Speaker 1: No, so the Supreme Court justices were kind of taking
Speaker 1: its tongue in cheek. But I got the impression that
Speaker 1: Charlton Augburn was like, yes, finally going to prove it
Speaker 1: definitively one way or another, and it didn't even fall
Speaker 1: in his favor. Interesting, Yeah, it is interesting what people
Speaker 1: did in the eighties on Sea Span.
Speaker 3: I got a few more little things here from that
Speaker 3: Atlantic article that point to his authorship as being genuine.
Speaker 3: One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus
Speaker 3: and Adonis that was a very popular poem at the
Speaker 3: time that was put in print, and it was printed
Speaker 3: by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went to
Speaker 3: school with him at Stratford.
Speaker 4: So that's a pretty good little hint.
Speaker 3: He was written about at the time, so it's not
Speaker 3: like he was never known until his death and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden became super popular, Like he died
Speaker 3: a rich man and was written about by literary critics
Speaker 3: at the time and entertainment and play critics. So there
Speaker 3: were contemporaneous criticisms of his writing while he was still living,
Speaker 3: which is a pretty, you know, pretty big clue that
Speaker 3: he probably wrote this stuff, although it is not proof.
Speaker 1: No, because those people could be they went and saw
Speaker 1: a play by Shakes, They doesn't mean that they met
Speaker 1: Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the place.
Speaker 4: And leaned over his shoulder while he wrote it proof.
Speaker 3: The other last thing that I saw in that Atlantic
Speaker 3: article this is the one or actually this.
Speaker 4: Was a this was the golden bullet from that video?
Speaker 4: Was it okay?
Speaker 1: Was?
Speaker 3: Shakespeare was apparently concerned that his dad's reputation sort of
Speaker 3: in the family's reputation, suffered later in life because of
Speaker 3: financial problems that his dad had, and he really wanted
Speaker 3: to kind of restore their name and get a coat
Speaker 3: of arms made, which is you could you know, it's
Speaker 3: like you could be a true gentleman if you had
Speaker 3: a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really long process.
Speaker 3: They don't just hand him out to anybody. You got
Speaker 3: to have a certain level of achievement to get a
Speaker 3: coat of arms. So he went through this big, long
Speaker 3: process and had he went on Barry Linden on there,
Speaker 3: Oh man, what a movie. He had a couple of
Speaker 3: different men in the Harold's office who defended Shakespeare's right
Speaker 3: to have a coat of arms because other people were saying,
Speaker 3: who is this guy? Even like he came from not
Speaker 3: much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms. And
Speaker 3: one of the guys who defended him was a man
Speaker 3: named William Camden, who this guy in the video referred
Speaker 3: to as.
Speaker 4: One of the most learned men in all of England.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster and apparently just knew
Speaker 3: everything happening on the literary scene inside and out. And
Speaker 3: in one of his books he was called the Remains
Speaker 3: of a Greater History. He talks about all the great
Speaker 3: writers of the time and he lists William Shakespeare of
Speaker 3: Avon in that book.
Speaker 4: So he said, that's the golden bullet again. If it's
Speaker 4: just a front, it's still no real proof of authorship.
Speaker 2: No it's not. I mean like this guy could just
Speaker 2: be playing along, lending his.
Speaker 4: Or didn't notable weight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another one too.
Speaker 1: Like that's the thing, like the anti Stratfordians have caused
Speaker 1: the pros at Fordian's to actually defend their position, and
Speaker 1: in doing so it's kind of revealed that both of
Speaker 1: them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost just
Speaker 1: a matter of belief. Do you want to believe that
Speaker 1: one man was that brilliant and that talented and gifted,
Speaker 1: or do you can. You just not believe that. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't make any sense to you. So it was
Speaker 1: a cabal of noble people who were trying to advance
Speaker 1: political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare, paying them off
Speaker 1: with maybe family crests and money and fame right to
Speaker 1: let them use his name as their you know, the playwright.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They also say, like where he was from. There
Speaker 3: was some regional slang that was very specific to where
Speaker 3: he was from that was used. There was in Taming
Speaker 3: of the Shrew he mentions these Latin phrases that are
Speaker 3: in specifically from a Latin book that apparently was known
Speaker 3: to have been used at his school, at his grammar
Speaker 3: school in Stratford. So again there's all these little hints
Speaker 3: and clues. All of it kind of gave me a headache, right,
Speaker 3: and I was like, can we just like love these plays?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Exactly? That's exactly right. It's the ultimate point. Let's just
Speaker 1: love the plays.
Speaker 4: People take it serious about this though, Yeah, they definitely do.
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty interesting and I mean I get
Speaker 1: it kind of fun to watch from the outside too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got anything else?
Speaker 4: No, we could go on all day, but totally we'd
Speaker 4: never get anywhere.
Speaker 1: There's like ten things I'm leaving on the table, so
Speaker 1: we just got to keep moving on, right, all right,
Speaker 1: Let's keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about Shakespeare and authorship, there is a giant,
Speaker 1: gaping rabbit hole. You can jump down on the internet
Speaker 1: and say cionara to.
Speaker 2: All of your other pursuits.
Speaker 1: And since I said cyonara, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna call this just came in over the wire.
Speaker 3: I thought it was kind of funny from our friends.
Speaker 3: Steven in Kagoshima, Japan, in about eating about eating squid,
Speaker 3: says love the show fellas reason not to be so
Speaker 3: touchy though about eating squid, they are child murdering sea vermin,
Speaker 3: he said. The reason squid die after they mate is
Speaker 3: a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the
Speaker 3: eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid
Speaker 3: in the spawning areas. Squidly diddley is an infanticidal maniac
Speaker 3: and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably, of course.
Speaker 4: So that's the argument, is that.
Speaker 3: These squids deserve to be eaten because they would be
Speaker 3: eating themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says,
Speaker 3: tell Josh not to eat uncooked squid.
Speaker 4: That is not great.
Speaker 3: All right, and kind regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan,
Speaker 3: a squid haven and a squid ink pasta destination.
Speaker 1: Stephen, that was a really great eye opening email. I
Speaker 1: may have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll
Speaker 1: have to get back to you. Okay, okay, thank you
Speaker 1: for responding to that, Stephen. Sure, if you want to
Speaker 1: be like Steven and get in touch with us and
Speaker 1: send us a potentially eye opening email, you.
Speaker 2: Can do that.
Speaker 1: Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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