WEBVTT - Selects: Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff? 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:03.560 Hey guys, it's me Josh, and for this week's select, 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:07.680 I've chosen our twenty twenty two episode on Shakespeare and 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:10.360 whether he actually wrote all that stuff or if there 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:15.120 even was a Shakespeare. This episode is actually possibly my 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.880 favorite episode of all time because I knew nothing about 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:20.720 this and I learned a bunch of stuff, and I 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.240 found it really interesting and it was fun, really fun 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:26.920 to kind of turn around and explain. 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:27.120 It to all of you. 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:29.480 So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:33.880 I always have every time I hear it about Shakespeare. 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:48.879 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.160 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.600 on the line. Jerry's here too, and we're about to 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.960 get jiggy with it about Shakespeare. 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.400 Can I have this out of the gate? I guess. 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:04.800 So. 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.480 The more we dug into this, you know, I was 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:09.679 an English major. We talked very briefly when I was 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.400 in college about Shakespeare's authorship, right, and I thought, Hey, 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:18.640 this would be a fun, little, semi easy episode. And 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.520 the more we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded. 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:30.360 It's onion, this bloomin Onion Unfolded Layer by Crispy Delicious Layer. 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.360 For all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:35.399 you guys eat every night every night. 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:39.360 To the point where I was almost like, you know, 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:42.160 is this a two parters I mean, you could probably 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:43.560 do a ten part episode on this. 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:45.399 Oh yeah, it's so dense. 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.640 So I just want to caveat this for people that 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.160 know a lot about shakespeare authorship and saying this is 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:55.840 a pretty broad overview of the high points of his 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.760 authorship being questioned, because it is dense. 0:01:58.960 --> 0:01:59.360 Baby. 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:03.960 It's the kind of thing that like extremely intelligent people 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.320 take on as their like lifelong hobby. 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:08.440 It's like that we're. 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:09.760 Like, we'll just bust it out in a few days, 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:10.440 it'll be fine. 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:13.200 Yeah, you know, like how some people are, like they 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:18.080 research World War II submarine warfare and know everything about it. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.880 It's along the same lines, but it's even bigger. There's 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.480 so many people involved, and each side is like, you're 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.400 so naive to the other. And yes, it's true, like 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.040 we could turn this into a ten part series, but 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:31.880 I think we've got a handle on it enough to 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.600 present it. I feel in okay about it. And then 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:36.560 the other thing that sticks out for me, Chuck, is 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:38.639 this is one of the few things I've ever come 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.359 across like this that I am like truly agnostic about. 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.760 I do not have an opinion one way or the other. 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:47.880 I don't know if I do either. 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.760 Actually, Like, it's not like I don't care, that's not 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.680 what I'm saying. Like, I genuinely can see both sides. 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.200 And the other thing about it is, the more you 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.840 dig into it, the more you realize, oh, neither side 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.639 actually has really good evidence to support their claim. It's 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.120 all just they have to get so granular that it 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:10.480 really quickly goes into the world of conspiracy theories pretty quickly. 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:11.160 Yeah. 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:16.400 I saw this video of a guy, this wonderful gentleman 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:18.359 who knows a lot about it, that said like, and 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:21.399 here's the golden bullet, which proves once and for all, 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.280 and he made his case, and I was like, no, No, 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:25.519 that didn't really prove it once and for all in 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:26.440 my opinion. 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.240 Yeah, for sure, because both sides do things like they 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:32.120 get into biographical readings where they're trying to find clues 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:35.960 within the text or you know, parallels to his life 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.560 for that kind of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay, 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:43.480 you guys, you've just completely left the world of objectivity. 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:44.760 Yeah. 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.000 So what we're talking about, if you haven't guessed by now, 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:52.640 is this idea that has been around since at least 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:57.120 the mid eighteen hundreds, maybe before, about the question of 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.680 whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole author of 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:02.520 all of his works. 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:04.960 And this is Shakespeare. 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:08.000 From Stratford on the Avon, like that gentleman that we know, 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:12.680 became an actor and you know, writer, whether or not 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.520 he was the sole author, whether or not he was 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.320 affront for some other authors for some of the works. 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:20.920 Some people say he didn't write any of them. Some 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:25.000 people said it was various women who weren't allowed to 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:31.200 write things at the time. I saw sixty six candidates 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:32.920 over the years have been put forward. 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:34.000 I saw eighty. 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.000 Oh really, so there you have it, somewhere between sixty 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.200 six and eighty something of I know, we haven't. 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.120 Been accused of writing any of Shakespeare's work. 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.919 Don't think so. I didn't come across that in my research. 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:51.359 But it's an interesting literary I don't even know if 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.200 I want to call it a mystery, because some people 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:56.760 just say, like, no, I mean of course you wrote it, 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:01.160 and he was these outsized personal the most famous of 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:05.080 the famous are conspiracies are drawn to them. Elvis is 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:09.520 still alive, Marilyn Monroe was murdered. Like that happens when 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:11.960 you are, you know, one of the biggest icons in 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:15.440 your field quite often. So some people say this just 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:16.520 that's all that it is. 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:24.119 In addition to that, there's a lack of biographical documentation 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.960 that he actually did write those plays. And I think 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:31.960 that that's also what allows for people to say, you know, 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:33.440 well do we really. 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:35.840 Know or that he didn't write them, Like there's just 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:38.800 it was a time, you know, in the fifteen hundreds 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.760 where there were in sixteen hundreds where there just wasn't 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.719 a ton of great preserved information. 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:46.400 And we're going to talk about a lot of that. 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.560 So we do know that William Shakespeare did live. He 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.400 was from, like you said, Stratford on Avon. It was 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.359 at the time, about a two to three day journey 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:59.440 from London, about one hundred something miles I think. And 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.039 he definitely did live. He definitely did exist. That's not 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.400 a question because we do have documentary evidence that this 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:11.479 person live from fifteen sixty four to sixteen sixteen, about 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.320 fifty two years and depending on when you place his birthday, 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.560 maybe fifty two years on the nose, so we know 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.480 he existed. Again, what's that issue. What's being questioned whether 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:25.200 that man William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:27.000 on to become an actor, who went on to become 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.799 a producer, who worked with in the Globe theater, whether 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.400 he was the author of the plays we consider written 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:36.800 by Shakespeare. That's what's that question. 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.640 Yeah, So, like you said, he was a real dude. 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:43.640 He came from a family that was I mean I 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:45.680 kind of read it as a little bit middle class. 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.760 They certainly were not like upper class nobility types. 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.960 His father was a glover. He wore well, I guess 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:55.679 he wore gloves too, but he made gloves. 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:57.880 Allow me to demonstrate, it'd be. 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.240 Pretty weird if he didn't. That guy won't even wear 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.839 his own gloves. But he produced these very very fine 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:06.599 gloves for well to do people. 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:08.800 But he did achieve some. 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:12.960 I guess, worked his way up the social chain a 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:16.640 little bit because eventually he would serve as sort of 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:21.240 like a mayor in Stratford. And again, while not nobility 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.360 like they were fairly well regarded as people. 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:29.200 Right, So we don't know for certain, but there's a 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.880 pretty good there's a much better chance than not that 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:37.440 because of his father's position in town, because they had 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:39.480 some money, Like you said, they were middle class, he 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:42.679 almost certainly would have been educated at the grammar school 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.520 at Stratford. So what most people think is that William 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:50.600 Shakespeare was educated until about the age of thirteen, and 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.120 he would have learned things like Latin, he would have 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.360 learned history, he would have learned some classic literature. He 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.880 definitely would have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:06.080 Shakespeare's plays would go on to expound on. So he 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.280 definitely was I can't say that. That's the thing, Like, 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:11.560 you really have to be careful what you say about this. 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:13.560 I know I was about to say, so he definitely 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:15.560 was educated. We don't know that he was. This is 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.640 all just a supposition, but it's a pretty good bat. 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:21.160 It's a good supposition that he actually was educated. 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:22.840 Yeah, and all this, you know. 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:24.920 The reason that's important is all of this kind of 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:29.680 comes back later, as some people say proof that he 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:31.720 may not have written this stuff, because like, how could 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:34.840 One of the main arguments used many times is how 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:38.200 could a kid who came from here have known about 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:43.559 these military exploits and the Elizabethan Court and all these 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.559 different languages and all this hyphalutin stuff that he wrote about. 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:50.520 So it's important to, you know, talk about his education. 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.920 And it seems like he was likely educated pretty well 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:56.719 until thirteen, which you know, I'm not even sure if 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.400 that's earlier or late as far as the time period 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:01.480 goes that. Do you know if that was like kind 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.959 of generally it for kids. 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.880 It was it was in the middle because he could 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:08.640 have just as easily not. 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.319 Been educated at all, right, of course, but he. 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.000 Also didn't go on to Cambridge or Oxford to extend 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:16.960 his studies, so he was in there in the middle. 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.320 They think he was probably educated, not highly educated, but 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.439 also not you know, uneducated. 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:23.560 That's that's the. 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.840 Key, and that if there was evidence he had not 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:31.000 gone to school, I think that the anti Shakespeare people 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:33.840 would have a real like mark in their favor. But 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.440 he has just enough education that you can make the 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.240 case like, no, like this guy, this guy learned about 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:42.360 this stuff already, and he could have known about it. 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.200 And you know, when you add imagination and natural talent 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:47.439 you come up with Shakespeare conceivably. 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:53.480 Yeah, he got married to Anne Hathaway. You know, go 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:57.120 ahead and insert an Hathaway joke there. You know she's 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:58.840 a real actor, right, sure. 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:03.120 Yeah, devil Waar's pro Princess Diaries. Yeah, big, I think 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:09.480 she was in Inception? No? No, was she Interstellar? Yes, 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:11.880 she did a stellar job in Interstellar. 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:12.719 Come on. 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.800 They got married when he was quite a bit younger. 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.640 She was twenty six, he was eighteen. She was pregnant, 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.440 which is probably a little unusual for the time. They 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:27.400 had a daughter named Susannah, and then had twins, a 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.800 boy and a girl twin, and the boy named Hamnet, 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:33.160 not Hamlet but Hamnett. 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:35.840 Yeah, which apparently they've never turned up another use of 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.080 that name in at the time. 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:44.560 Proof he was eleven years old when he died, And 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.000 that kind of comes into play later on as well. 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.559 And then there's about a you know, from fifteen eighty 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.720 five to about fifteen ninety two, there's about a seven 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.120 year gap where we don't know a lot about what 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.760 was going on with Shakespeare, and then he pops up, 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.560 which a lot can happen in seven years. Again, not 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.360 trying to sway people, one way or the other. But 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.600 you can certainly learn a lot in seven years if 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.200 you have some big life experiences. But he pops up 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:15.880 in London in fifteen ninety two, again as far as 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.080 the record go goes, and you know, keep in mind, 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:23.000 a lot of this record before he was known in 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.960 his lifetime as an author, was you know, just kind 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.319 of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:33.920 like various little lawsuits and mortgages and sort of banking 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:35.439 records and stuff like that, right. 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:39.120 Yeah, yeah, And also I mean, like that's about as 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.880 much documentation as you would be able to come up 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.000 with on most people. And you can make a case 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.679 that there's more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.640 who weren't nobility right of his era. That's because there's 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.520 been so much scholarship and study and research into his 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:01.319 life that they've turned up as much as they can. 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.240 But what they've turned up only amounts to about five 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:09.199 hundred different pieces of documentation of one form or another. 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:09.800 Right. 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:15.520 So one of those pieces of documentation in early on 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:20.080 in London is a pamphlet written by generally believed to 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:21.880 be written by this guy named Robert Green. There were 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:24.520 some other people that could have possibly written it. But 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.840 it's called Green's groatsworth of wit. And there's a line 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:33.720 where he references Shakespeare in it in a contemporaneous fashion. 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:34.720 Is that right. 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:40.200 Where he kind of takes a shot out of him. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.480 He says it talks about Shakespeare, says there's an upstart 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:48.080 crow in his own conceit the only shake scene in 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.880 a country, which kind of translates into he kind of 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:55.400 thinks he's the only Shakespeare like he thinks he's all that, 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.120 and it should be noted also as far as the 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:03.240 thievery that in Aesop's Fables, crows I would steal the 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:07.120 feathers of others. So the people in the I don't 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:08.840 want to say anti Shakespeare, but the people say that 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:11.560 he might not have written these things. Says this is 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.400 a big clue and saying that he might have stolen 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:16.640 some of these things. That's why he's referred to as 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:17.800 a crow by this other guy. 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:24.360 Yeah, but in that that quote, he says, the upstart 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:27.920 crow is beautified with our feathers, and he's a playwright. 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.760 So the pro Shakespeare people, you call them the pro 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:36.839 Stratford group, they suggest that what he's what Green is 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:39.800 talking about, is he's he's poking fun at a common 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.960 actor who is deigning to even attempt to write plays, 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:48.160 which you know, among playwrights is far more important than acting. 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.880 Anybody can act, but it really takes something to write 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.000 a play, at least that's what they thought at the time, 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:56.160 and that he's taking a shot at him for that. 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.240 Yeah, and we should point out that being an actor 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:01.000 back then and being a part of the theater was 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:02.040 not like it is today. 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.160 It wasn't some revered position. 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.840 It was sort of you know, body plays and common 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:11.920 people were into this kind of thing, so it wasn't 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:14.480 when he says he was just an actor. 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:16.400 That's a pretty big diss right. 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:18.959 So the last thing that we have, I guess the 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:22.040 last documentation, although there's other stuff that's been turned up. 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:27.840 They did archaeological expeditions on his house. I think his 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:32.280 house has been under ownership of a public trust since 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:38.760 like the nineteenth century, and they've carried out archaeological examinations 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:40.760 of it, and they found that he went back and 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:45.680 forth between London and Stratford, so they know stuff about 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.040 him like that. But as far as like documentation goes, 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:52.160 the last piece of documentation we have comes in sixteen sixteen, 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:55.760 which is his will that he wrote, and then a 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:59.280 few months later he died, and I guess the last 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.120 last piece of doc documentation is his tombstone, which in 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.200 and of itself is curious because his tombstone contains a 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.080 curse on it, but not his name. 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:12.320 Yeah, is that the one with the quote. 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.200 Yeah, it's a curse. He's saying like, don't dig me 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:16.520 up or you're gonna be cursed. 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.760 Yeah, it's his good friend for Jesus sake, forbear to 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:22.320 dig the dust and closed here. Blessed be the man 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.520 who spares these stones, and cursed be he who moves 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:30.120 my bones. Some people point to that as a poor 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:33.240 writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was a great writer, would 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.480 have written this kind of shabby curse, And other people say, like, 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:39.920 who said Shakespeare even wrote that? 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:41.760 Necessarily this is. 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.240 A good instructive example of like kind of the back 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:47.280 and forth between those people, Right, this is terrible writing. 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.440 Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And then the anti Shakespeare 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.080 crew says, well, of course he wrote it, because who 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.120 else would just not think to put his name on 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:58.960 his own tombstone? And the other ones just put their 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.760 head in their hands, just start crying, and it just 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.200 goes downhill from there. But that's a really good example 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:08.160 of like the just kind of like people will jump 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.480 on any single thing that they possibly can and often 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.040 interpret it one way or the other. So one thing, 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:16.880 one single thing, provides evidence for both sides. 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:17.640 It's that kind of thing. 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:19.040 Yeah, yeah, totally. 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:23.560 Another thing that people point to is the fact that 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:26.840 of you know, we don't have a lot of like 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:31.400 letters and papers and things like that because his family 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:36.359 line ended in sixteen seventy. I think he had a granddaughter, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:41.440 Elizabeth Barnard, that died without that bearing children, so most 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.440 of his stuff basically lost as far as family possessions 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.840 and things like that. People do point to the will 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.160 at times and say, well, in his will, you know, 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.600 he leaves certain things, but like there's never any mention 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:59.280 of any manuscripts. And again this is all like it's 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:01.880 a little weird, maybe, but none of this is proof. 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.160 And you know, through the personal records that we do 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.199 have in those five hundred references, like none of them 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:13.240 really reference him like manuscripts in him writing things. 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.960 Right, That's what's most compelling to me is that when 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:21.480 you put together the documentation about his life that we know. 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:24.520 It's clear he's involved in the theater, he's an actor. 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:26.800 We get that. That's that comes through loud and clear. 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:30.640 What doesn't come through isn't documented at all is him 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.960 as a writer. And that that thing about the will, 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.399 the fact that if you look at the wills and 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:42.639 bequeathments of other writers of the time, you can find 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:43.560 evidence that. 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:44.440 They were writers. 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:48.800 They like leave books to other people that there they 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:53.720 leave unfinished manuscripts that stay in the family for generations, 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.920 and it is very curious. His will is very curious. 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:02.280 But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.679 to history because his granddaughter was the end of the 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:09.400 family line, that actually holds up because other great authors 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.160 of say the same major of any age. A lot 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.120 of the reason that their personal effects and papers are 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:20.400 still around is because their family home was passed down 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.960 from generation to generation to generation, and there was a 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.320 long enough period of time for the importance of that 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:31.000 writer to become clear. And so other people came in 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.840 and said, can we have your great great great grandfather's 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:37.680 personal effects. We want to put them in this museum. 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.360 There's enough time. There wasn't enough time. There was only 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.040 seventy years between the death of Shakespeare and the end 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.200 of his family line, and he didn't become widely popular 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.679 until the I think middle of the eighteenth century, so 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.160 he was kind of a victim of that. And both 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.960 of those to me provide really good evidence for why 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.640 there is a documentation of his writing. 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.520 Yeah, absolutely in the will. 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:05.840 And by the way, The Atlantic has a great, great, 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.480 pretty deep dive article as they do on this, which 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.080 provided a lot of the supplementary information that we got 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:14.920 by Elizabeth Winkler. 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:17.440 Yeah, betweenty nineteen great read. 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:20.920 One of the things that Winkler points out and other 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.159 people to point out on the will as well, is 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:27.840 like Shakespeare wrote a lot about music, and I think 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.439 there were three hundred musical terms, and all of his 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.760 plays mentioned of twenty six musical instruments. And like in 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:37.160 his will he didn't he didn't even have a loot 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.280 to pass down to anybody, and like you said, didn't 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.280 have books even like a library that he wanted to give. 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.080 And you know, again this is not proof necessary necessarily 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:50.000 of anything, but it's all of this stuff has added 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.640 up over the years too enough for people to arise 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.040 to like get suspicious about it. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.480 I think exactly, you want to take a break, a breather. 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:00.679 I guess you could call. 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.240 It, Yeah, let's take a let's take a breather, let's 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:36.160 take five. One thing that Ed who helped us put 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:38.680 this together mentions that I wanted to get your take 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.000 on it. I didn't really think it had a whole 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:43.440 lot to do with it. One way or the other 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:47.240 was all of the various misspellings of Shakespeare's name over 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.760 the years. He would sign it in different ways, he 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.840 would abbreviate it in different ways. There are documents with 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:58.920 I mean, it looks like fifteen different ways of spelling Shakespeare, 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:03.879 everything from shacks with an ex peer to spears and 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.880 something you would jab somebody with. It's misspelled all over 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:10.040 the place. And I just kind of took that, as 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:12.400 you know, people misspelled things a. 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:12.879 Lot back then. 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:15.560 There weren't you know, there weren't necessarily records that you 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:17.960 could go look at very easily, so you might just 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.480 take a guess at how to spell a name, and 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:22.760 then it was on the record. And so I didn't 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:24.960 really think that factored in much, did you. 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:26.479 I didn't. 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.040 And the impression I have is that all the different 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.239 spellings are easily explained away from just the era, like 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.000 you just said, and that the people who clamp onto 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.480 that are actually looking into them just to find like hidden. 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:40.360 Writing and codes too. 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:42.639 Right, So I think like the different spellings of the 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.560 names is it's about Yeah, it's about as big a 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:48.200 boondoggle as you're gonna find in the in the Shakespeare 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:49.720 authorship argument, I think. 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:51.520 All right, so we'll cast that aside. 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:53.360 Well, hold on, before we do, I want to point 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:55.479 out my favorite abbreviation. 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.840 Which one I think I let me look, I bet 0:21:57.880 --> 0:21:58.800 you I know which one, But. 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.320 Go, okay, put it, put it back in the deck. 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:02.440 Yeah, it's back in the deck. 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.480 Okay, it is Wilm shack p. 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:06.800 Yeah, that's a lot. 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:07.760 That's the one. 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:10.680 It stands out pretty blatantly. Sahakp. 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:11.960 I love it. 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.320 Sheck, Hello, Wilm sheck. 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:17.960 It's not a really good hotel check in name, but 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:19.240 it's still worth mentioning. 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:20.600 I think that's pretty good. 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:23.440 So, like we mentioned, sort of what's at the root 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:27.399 of a lot of these theories is what ed I 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:32.200 think rightly calls elitism, which is, how could this guy 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:36.639 even you know, educated up to thirteen, how could he 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:39.199 have known about all this stuff? How could he have 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:42.120 known about military exploits? And you know, if you read 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:45.320 Shakespeare's plays, which if you're an English major, you have 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:48.600 to read a lot of them, there's a lot going 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:51.639 on in these plays about a lot of different stuff. 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:53.640 He didn't write about just kind of one kind of thing. 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:57.840 So it implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge 0:22:57.840 --> 0:22:59.400 about a lot of things. 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.560 And not just different things as it relates to England, 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:06.000 different things, as it relates to entirely different lands. Like 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.560 think about where a lot of his stuff takes places 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:13.040 in Italy, and as far as anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.840 go to Italy. Although remember there's that lost year eight 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:18.760 year period they call him the Lost Years. It's entirely 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.560 possible he went to Italy during that time. It's also 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:24.040 just as possible that he didn't go to Italy during 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:26.399 that time. We just don't know. But that is something 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:30.080 that really stands out. And yes, there is a tremendous 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:34.760 amount of elitism and classicism among some of the anti 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:38.560 Shakespeare group, but I think that that is I think 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:41.040 that dismisses a lot of their points out of hand. 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:43.840 And they do have some really good points. They're not 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:47.160 just cranks and crack pots, Like they have some pretty 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:49.879 good evidence. You can make a case at least as 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:55.399 good to evidence that as the pro Shakespeare people. But 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:58.480 the upshot of it is really kind of a compliment. 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:02.480 They're saying, these plays are so good. Yeah, that Shakespeare's 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:07.120 arguably the greatest writer who ever lived. He has such 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:09.840 a crazy imagination, he's so funny, he has such an 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:13.760 extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of the human condition. 0:24:14.240 --> 0:24:18.040 Could it really all have been written by this man 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:21.320 from at the time the country, who was educated up 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:24.280 to thirteen, who came from the middle class, who may 0:24:24.400 --> 0:24:27.000 or may not have ever traveled out of England? How 0:24:27.119 --> 0:24:31.040 is that even possible? Are people born that gifted? That's 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:33.399 ultimately if you want to go beyond the classicism in 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:36.840 the elite totally. That's really what their argument boils down to. 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:39.639 Yeah, I agree, And if you don't know a lot 0:24:39.680 --> 0:24:42.520 of Shakespeare, have never really read a lot yourself, and 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:45.399 you think like you're sort of in that camp, like 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:49.520 I mean, this is kind of overrated, like this guy, No, 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:54.400 these plays are brilliant and there's a reason why they 0:24:54.520 --> 0:25:00.520 still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or inspired 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:05.080 by Shakespeare's plays. It's because they were all genuinely brilliant. 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:08.240 It was great, great stuff. And what you need is 0:25:08.240 --> 0:25:11.080 a really good teacher to kind of walk you through 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:13.399 it because it's it's tough to read. And we had 0:25:14.200 --> 0:25:16.240 we had some good ones at Georgia, at University of Georgia. 0:25:16.280 --> 0:25:16.640 I had one. 0:25:16.680 --> 0:25:19.080 I can't remember his name. God, I can picture him 0:25:19.080 --> 0:25:24.320 in my head. He was so great. Probably yeah someone No, 0:25:24.440 --> 0:25:29.160 it was Wilmi shack Be shack Bee. 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:30.800 Oh, I wish I could remember his name. 0:25:30.800 --> 0:25:33.600 I bet you someone will write in in the mid 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:35.720 nineties through the great play Harpsichord. 0:25:37.119 --> 0:25:40.720 Oh well, no, I had a classics professor who played 0:25:40.720 --> 0:25:41.440 a harpsichord. 0:25:41.520 --> 0:25:44.200 Yeah, this was you know, you had to take Shakespeare 0:25:44.240 --> 0:25:46.800 one and two. Those were the only required English classes 0:25:46.840 --> 0:25:49.280 as a as an English major, so that kind of 0:25:49.280 --> 0:25:52.320 shows the importance. But what he did was he saddus 0:25:52.440 --> 0:25:55.959 down and we read the plays out loud in class, 0:25:56.000 --> 0:26:00.159 and after every you know, short bit, he would say, well, 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:01.760 here's what's going on, and here's what he's saying. 0:26:01.920 --> 0:26:03.720 Yes, man, you were very lucky. 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:06.040 Yeah, and once once you hear that and you're like, oh, 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:09.480 these are very contemporary stories, and that's why they still 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:13.280 carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories, 0:26:13.320 --> 0:26:16.280 but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not 0:26:16.359 --> 0:26:18.919 high falutin stuff, it's just it was written at a 0:26:18.920 --> 0:26:19.960 time where it seems that way. 0:26:20.440 --> 0:26:23.719 Yeah, yeah, exactly, because we don't really speak in you know, 0:26:23.880 --> 0:26:26.600 Renaissance English anymore, so it seems it might as well 0:26:26.640 --> 0:26:31.119 be Greek to us. But yeah, it was intended for 0:26:31.240 --> 0:26:34.600 common audiences, like the average person would laugh or cry 0:26:34.680 --> 0:26:37.439 at those at those plays. And I think also it 0:26:37.560 --> 0:26:40.119 like really kind of supports your point that four hundred 0:26:40.200 --> 0:26:44.040 years later, those plays can still make people today laugh 0:26:44.359 --> 0:26:46.960 and cry like they still hold up. I guess what 0:26:47.000 --> 0:26:51.399 you're saying. And have you ever heard of Sister Wendy. No, 0:26:52.200 --> 0:26:55.160 she is, she's a nun. I don't believe she's still 0:26:55.200 --> 0:26:57.240 with us. And I think in the nineties she made 0:26:57.280 --> 0:26:59.639 this series of videos where she just went around to 0:26:59.720 --> 0:27:04.080 music around the world and explained paintings to you in 0:27:04.560 --> 0:27:06.800 a way that I would love to find a sister 0:27:06.880 --> 0:27:09.800 Wendy of Shakespeare. I'm sure there's somebody out there, but 0:27:09.960 --> 0:27:12.879 you could do a lot worse of killing several hours 0:27:12.920 --> 0:27:16.200 watching Sister Wendy explain paintings because she was she had 0:27:16.440 --> 0:27:19.639 like a natural gift at just not only understanding what 0:27:19.720 --> 0:27:23.440 she was looking at, but explaining it really understandably. 0:27:23.840 --> 0:27:26.000 I love that, and I think in Sister Wendy's case 0:27:26.040 --> 0:27:29.720 and my professor Shackby, it's it. 0:27:30.040 --> 0:27:31.359 It comes from a place of. 0:27:33.480 --> 0:27:36.320 They have such great admiration and they want us, They 0:27:36.400 --> 0:27:39.680 really want people to understand this stuff. You might ordinarily 0:27:39.680 --> 0:27:40.960 go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get 0:27:40.960 --> 0:27:42.480 paintings like this, or I don't get plays like this. 0:27:42.720 --> 0:27:43.400 I art. 0:27:45.040 --> 0:27:46.680 So should we get in speaking of art? 0:27:47.200 --> 0:27:51.320 Great segue, should we get into this mess of the 0:27:51.720 --> 0:27:52.880 bust of Shakespeare? 0:27:53.480 --> 0:27:53.680 Yeah? 0:27:53.720 --> 0:27:56.199 I mean it's another It's very much like his tombstone, 0:27:56.200 --> 0:27:58.479 where people are like it means this, No, it means that, 0:27:58.880 --> 0:27:59.119 you know. 0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:00.320 Yeah. 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:04.520 So there's a bust an effigy of Shakespeare inside the 0:28:04.600 --> 0:28:08.720 church there in Stratford. And there's been a lot of 0:28:08.760 --> 0:28:11.760 controversy over this thing because part of it is not 0:28:11.800 --> 0:28:14.960 necessarily like was he the author, although it does play 0:28:15.000 --> 0:28:17.800 into that, but sort of like what did he look like? 0:28:17.880 --> 0:28:19.520 And how do we know that's what he looked like? 0:28:19.520 --> 0:28:22.919 Like we've all seen the picture and there's like this 0:28:22.960 --> 0:28:25.600 one painting and this one bust, and that's kind of 0:28:25.600 --> 0:28:28.760 where everything comes from. And some people say this was 0:28:28.800 --> 0:28:31.680 done after he was dead, like, we really don't know 0:28:31.800 --> 0:28:35.080 that that's what he looked like. I think just a 0:28:35.119 --> 0:28:39.800 couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a 0:28:39.800 --> 0:28:44.040 pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt that it 0:28:44.080 --> 0:28:46.480 was actually done. I think she said it was highly likely. 0:28:47.480 --> 0:28:50.920 Professor Orlan said it's highly likely that it was done 0:28:51.000 --> 0:28:54.440 while he was alive, and that he commissioned it because 0:28:54.960 --> 0:28:57.040 she thinks she knows who did the bust, and that 0:28:57.040 --> 0:29:01.280 that person lived near him and was irregular at the 0:29:01.280 --> 0:29:01.960 globe and. 0:29:02.120 --> 0:29:03.560 Kind of put all these clues together. 0:29:04.160 --> 0:29:06.120 But other people, some people say it was his dad 0:29:06.880 --> 0:29:10.560 and not him because of this whole sack of grain argument. 0:29:11.760 --> 0:29:15.760 Yeah, so there there was an etching that was made 0:29:15.920 --> 0:29:19.240 of the bust within some period of time after the 0:29:19.280 --> 0:29:22.240 bust was erected, but before it was altered. So the 0:29:22.240 --> 0:29:25.680 bus has definitely been altered. And it looks like one 0:29:25.720 --> 0:29:28.720 way you can interpret this, this thing at the bottom, 0:29:28.720 --> 0:29:32.400 this puffy things that's at the hands of the bust, 0:29:32.560 --> 0:29:36.200 the effigy as a sack of grain. I don't know 0:29:36.280 --> 0:29:38.520 if it were a sack of green, why anyone would 0:29:38.520 --> 0:29:40.440 ever present it in that position. 0:29:41.720 --> 0:29:42.880 It doesn't make any sense. 0:29:43.000 --> 0:29:47.160 And so right, so what the anti Shakespeare, anti Stratford 0:29:47.160 --> 0:29:49.040 people are saying is like, yeah, it's his dad, it's 0:29:49.160 --> 0:29:53.040 it's not him, or if it is Shakespeare, he was 0:29:53.120 --> 0:29:56.240 known for his grain carrying skills, not his writing skills. 0:29:57.560 --> 0:30:00.000 And the pro strap for people are like, don't be ridiculou. 0:30:00.040 --> 0:30:03.400 This is obviously a pillow, and at some point somebody 0:30:03.440 --> 0:30:07.479 did revise the bus, so it is unequivocally a pillow, 0:30:07.560 --> 0:30:10.120 like there's just no way to mistake it. And it's 0:30:10.160 --> 0:30:11.480 not so much a pillow as it is like a 0:30:11.520 --> 0:30:13.640 handrest for him to write on, because he's got a 0:30:13.640 --> 0:30:15.600 piece of paper on it and a quill in his 0:30:15.680 --> 0:30:19.720 other hand. But the anti Shakespeare people jump on that 0:30:19.840 --> 0:30:22.920 and say, like, see it was altered to fit this 0:30:23.560 --> 0:30:26.000 to cover up this conspiracy later. 0:30:25.800 --> 0:30:29.560 On, Yeah, exactly, And that quill has been stolen and 0:30:29.600 --> 0:30:31.640 replaced I think so many times over the years that 0:30:32.480 --> 0:30:35.240 now I don't know if it currently has the quill 0:30:36.080 --> 0:30:38.440 or if it has the quill, and it's now behind glass. 0:30:38.680 --> 0:30:40.760 Oh, that could that's a good way to get around 0:30:40.760 --> 0:30:41.080 as sure. 0:30:41.240 --> 0:30:44.160 I'm not really sure, but you know, that became a 0:30:44.280 --> 0:30:47.200 you know, obviously it's something you could just snatch of 0:30:47.320 --> 0:30:50.320 his hand, and you've got Shakespeare's quill on your on 0:30:50.360 --> 0:30:50.800 your door. 0:30:51.640 --> 0:30:54.240 Speaking of being snatched. 0:30:54.720 --> 0:30:57.320 Apparently that curse on his tombston didn't work because they 0:30:57.320 --> 0:30:59.840 did a scan of it on the four hundred thing 0:31:00.120 --> 0:31:02.480 versary of his death and found that at least his 0:31:02.560 --> 0:31:05.600 skull was missing, if not all of his remains. Oh 0:31:05.680 --> 0:31:09.320 really yeah, and that interesting. So somebody out there has 0:31:09.440 --> 0:31:11.720 Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection. 0:31:12.200 --> 0:31:17.280 It's probably Rosenkrantz or Guildenstern. I like, great Shakespeare joke. 0:31:17.560 --> 0:31:18.080 That's good. 0:31:20.720 --> 0:31:22.800 There's some people out there that were, like, nailed it. 0:31:23.640 --> 0:31:23.920 Good. 0:31:24.680 --> 0:31:28.040 Another thing, as far as evidence goes, is the first folio, 0:31:28.120 --> 0:31:32.400 which is I think it was the first collection that 0:31:32.440 --> 0:31:35.840 they put in print of all of Shakespeare's plays, including 0:31:37.000 --> 0:31:39.000 eighteen that had never been in print before. 0:31:40.000 --> 0:31:42.680 And there was a I guess was it? 0:31:42.720 --> 0:31:45.800 A forward written by a guy named Ben Johnson who 0:31:45.920 --> 0:31:49.040 was a rival of Shakespeare's. He was kind of known 0:31:49.120 --> 0:31:54.600 as a jealous, sort of argumentative guy. But he calls 0:31:55.080 --> 0:31:58.880 Shakespeare the Swan of Avon and is sort of very 0:31:59.000 --> 0:32:02.120 laudatory in this forward, but I think you found stuff 0:32:02.720 --> 0:32:06.200 later on where he was kind of like, m I 0:32:06.240 --> 0:32:07.640 had my fingers cross the whole. 0:32:07.480 --> 0:32:09.080 Time kind of yeah. 0:32:09.120 --> 0:32:13.560 So the pro Stratford people who believe Shakespeare or Shakespeare say, look, man, 0:32:13.720 --> 0:32:17.040 this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival, 0:32:17.040 --> 0:32:21.800 but a real rival, really critical, like, had biting criticism 0:32:21.840 --> 0:32:25.040 and sense of humor, and also was not one to 0:32:25.080 --> 0:32:25.640 just be like. 0:32:27.320 --> 0:32:32.040 To just bow to nobility or privilege or wealth or status. 0:32:32.120 --> 0:32:36.080 Right, So if this guy is saying that Shakespeare the 0:32:36.080 --> 0:32:39.400 Swan of Avon, which places this man at Stratford on Avon, 0:32:39.600 --> 0:32:43.160 because Ben Johnson is calling him that, that proves that 0:32:43.200 --> 0:32:48.200 Shakespeare was Shakespeare. The anti Shakespeare camp says, like you said, 0:32:48.200 --> 0:32:50.560 Ben Johnson at his fingers crossed the whole time, and 0:32:50.600 --> 0:32:53.960 that really what he was doing was providing cover for 0:32:54.040 --> 0:32:59.600 this larger, essentially conspiracy of people who actually were Shakespeare, 0:33:00.120 --> 0:33:02.960 was blending his renown to it. 0:33:05.280 --> 0:33:06.920 Neither one really makes sense. 0:33:07.000 --> 0:33:09.840 I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a complete change 0:33:09.840 --> 0:33:13.640 of heart, it just doesn't quite add up. But then 0:33:13.680 --> 0:33:17.800 also the idea that he would provide that cover for 0:33:17.840 --> 0:33:22.000 a group of noble people and seems unlikely as well too. 0:33:22.400 --> 0:33:23.440 Yeah, I agree. 0:33:24.200 --> 0:33:28.480 One of the first public doubters in the eighteen hundreds 0:33:28.640 --> 0:33:33.840 was a woman named Delia Bacon, no relation to Francis Bacon, 0:33:35.080 --> 0:33:39.560 although you may think so, because one person that Delia 0:33:39.600 --> 0:33:44.120 Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. 0:33:44.960 --> 0:33:50.000 Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a 0:33:50.120 --> 0:33:53.560 sort of a long life before she got into kind 0:33:53.560 --> 0:33:57.400 of hating Shakespeare, Yeah, hating him, like really didn't like 0:33:57.440 --> 0:34:00.200 Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was not 0:34:00.360 --> 0:34:06.240 the author. And her idea was that it was Francis Bacon, 0:34:06.960 --> 0:34:10.520 Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some other people too, 0:34:10.600 --> 0:34:14.279 who were these very well regarded people of you know, 0:34:14.360 --> 0:34:18.080 philosophy and politics and science, who would not have been 0:34:18.120 --> 0:34:21.640 allowed to put forth these plays. And what these plays, 0:34:21.760 --> 0:34:24.480 what they really were, were not even meant for entertainment 0:34:24.560 --> 0:34:27.040 or for the stage. They were meant to be sort 0:34:27.040 --> 0:34:31.880 of biting criticisms of all kinds of various things that 0:34:31.920 --> 0:34:33.600 these gentlemen could not put their name on. 0:34:34.280 --> 0:34:36.759 Yeah, so there's yeah, either they couldn't put their name 0:34:36.840 --> 0:34:39.440 on it because they would be executed as basically treason 0:34:39.520 --> 0:34:42.480 as to the crown, because they were, you know, putting 0:34:42.520 --> 0:34:46.760 forth the idea of social reform and you know, women's 0:34:46.840 --> 0:34:50.480 rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots at the nobility. 0:34:51.600 --> 0:34:55.040 Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that 0:34:55.160 --> 0:34:57.480 was introduced in I think the eighteen seventies, and that 0:34:57.680 --> 0:35:04.799 was that they just just out of noble nobility nobless, 0:35:04.840 --> 0:35:08.440 I guess they wouldn't deign to have their stuff published. 0:35:09.320 --> 0:35:13.440 It would erode their social reputation, even accepting the idea 0:35:13.480 --> 0:35:16.200 that they would be beheaded for treason. So there are 0:35:16.200 --> 0:35:20.560 a couple of reasons that somebody like Francis Bacon would 0:35:20.600 --> 0:35:24.319 have to cover up his identity if he were actually Shakespeare. 0:35:24.480 --> 0:35:29.720 And that same stigma of print and political cover argument 0:35:29.880 --> 0:35:32.120 gets extended to other people beyond Bacon too. 0:35:32.600 --> 0:35:34.960 Yeah, and that, you know, it makes a little bit 0:35:35.000 --> 0:35:38.840 of sense. As far as Delia Bacon, she was able 0:35:38.840 --> 0:35:42.600 to talk Ralph Waldo Emerson into basically kind of buying 0:35:42.600 --> 0:35:47.920 her story and he arranged for her sponsorship basically to 0:35:48.000 --> 0:35:51.000 go to England to kind of research this. Apparently in 0:35:51.040 --> 0:35:54.319 England she was kind of on record saying that she 0:35:54.400 --> 0:35:58.520 didn't research history books or records and things like that. 0:35:58.840 --> 0:36:01.719 She believed that the the proof was sort of in 0:36:01.760 --> 0:36:05.680 the plays themselves, yeah, and in the in the text basically, 0:36:05.840 --> 0:36:08.680 like with these clues. Apparently, she used to go to 0:36:08.719 --> 0:36:12.279 Shakespeare's tomb a lot and and kind of just you know, 0:36:12.480 --> 0:36:15.040 hang out there and like try to convince the I 0:36:15.040 --> 0:36:17.319 guess the tomb keeper or whoever you know takes care 0:36:17.360 --> 0:36:18.920 of the cemetery, the crypt keeper. 0:36:19.000 --> 0:36:19.880 Yeah, the crypt keeper. 0:36:20.040 --> 0:36:22.160 I didn't want to say it to be let in, 0:36:22.840 --> 0:36:25.960 and like almost got in at one point apparently, but 0:36:26.040 --> 0:36:28.640 I think she got sick and couldn't. And but she 0:36:28.760 --> 0:36:31.239 thought that the you know, the deep secret was within 0:36:31.320 --> 0:36:31.800 that tomb. 0:36:32.239 --> 0:36:39.000 Yeah, she kind of kicked off the nuttier camp of 0:36:39.160 --> 0:36:44.080 the questioning of of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off 0:36:44.120 --> 0:36:46.120 the whole thing. She she put like kind of a 0:36:46.200 --> 0:36:48.600 nutty sheen to it, like the idea that you could 0:36:48.600 --> 0:36:51.480 get your answers just from reading the plays, right, the 0:36:51.560 --> 0:36:54.080 clues were in there. The thing is is Francis Bacon 0:36:54.239 --> 0:36:58.120 was known to amuse himself by including you know, hidden 0:36:58.239 --> 0:37:02.319 codes and messages in his writings. So if it was 0:37:02.400 --> 0:37:05.200 Francis Bacon, that's not that much of a stretch, and 0:37:05.239 --> 0:37:09.680 supposedly Mark Twain and some friends did actually turn up. 0:37:09.800 --> 0:37:13.200 If you read the first folio, there is I guess 0:37:13.280 --> 0:37:17.959 some series of lines that spell out Francisco BACONO. 0:37:20.760 --> 0:37:21.520 It's pretty good. 0:37:21.560 --> 0:37:24.840 I mean, here's the thing, though, Francis Bacon wrote a 0:37:24.920 --> 0:37:27.560 lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot 0:37:27.600 --> 0:37:32.760 of fiction and pros or didn't he write no evidence 0:37:32.800 --> 0:37:35.239 that he ever wrote any kind of plays, did he? 0:37:35.840 --> 0:37:36.000 Right? 0:37:36.920 --> 0:37:39.160 There was this other thing that kind of came along. 0:37:39.239 --> 0:37:42.279 So Delia Bacon is widely regarded as the person who 0:37:42.360 --> 0:37:47.680 kicked off that it was Shakespeare Shakespeare idea, But supposedly 0:37:47.719 --> 0:37:50.800 there was a person who came before her, James Wilmot, 0:37:50.880 --> 0:37:54.040 who in seventeen eighty one sat down to write a 0:37:54.080 --> 0:37:58.880 biography of Shakespeare and did all the research in London 0:37:58.920 --> 0:38:04.600 and Stratford, on ava on and was astonished by the 0:38:04.800 --> 0:38:08.880 lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays and 0:38:08.920 --> 0:38:11.319 started to suspect it and that he kicked it off. 0:38:11.400 --> 0:38:13.120 The thing is, the. 0:38:14.640 --> 0:38:20.000 Anti Shakespeare side has been accused of making those documents up, 0:38:20.040 --> 0:38:24.600 of forging those documents to support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory. 0:38:24.960 --> 0:38:29.080 Oh interesting, Yeah, so they weren't discovered until nineteen thirty one, 0:38:29.120 --> 0:38:32.359 which is pretty convenient, and it's entirely possible that they 0:38:32.719 --> 0:38:33.680 were just forged. 0:38:34.440 --> 0:38:37.600 All right, should we take another break here? Yeah's all right, 0:38:37.640 --> 0:38:39.960 we'll take another break. We'll talk a little bit more 0:38:40.320 --> 0:38:42.000 about whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff. 0:39:11.719 --> 0:39:13.960 So one more thing about Delia Bacon before we wrap 0:39:14.040 --> 0:39:16.680 it up. Like you said, she was a good writer, 0:39:17.800 --> 0:39:23.280 and her exhaustive examination of the texts of Shakespeare's plays 0:39:23.320 --> 0:39:26.839 resulted in a six hundred and twenty page book, The 0:39:26.840 --> 0:39:32.480 Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, and she's often 0:39:32.520 --> 0:39:36.800 credited with basically prefiguring, if not kicking off, the idea 0:39:36.800 --> 0:39:40.360 of literary criticism of close readings of stuff to find 0:39:40.400 --> 0:39:43.640 other meanings. And she was doing it to expose noble 0:39:43.680 --> 0:39:45.480 people as Shakespeare. 0:39:45.480 --> 0:39:47.320 But she was really good at. 0:39:47.200 --> 0:39:49.400 It, and people said, well, hey, maybe we should do 0:39:49.440 --> 0:39:50.359 this for other stuff too. 0:39:50.840 --> 0:39:55.040 Yeah, and like ironically, because she kind of I mean, 0:39:55.080 --> 0:39:57.640 you know, the various tawdry accounts say she was driven 0:39:57.640 --> 0:40:02.560 to madness. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but 0:40:02.600 --> 0:40:05.480 it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in 0:40:05.560 --> 0:40:07.800 the latter stages of her life and that her family 0:40:07.880 --> 0:40:09.600 was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that. 0:40:09.880 --> 0:40:14.279 Right, So Francis Bacon was not the only person put 0:40:14.320 --> 0:40:18.880 forth and there's probably, as far as like believers go, 0:40:19.440 --> 0:40:22.160 somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him, and 0:40:22.200 --> 0:40:26.200 that would be the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de 0:40:26.280 --> 0:40:26.839 Vere Right. 0:40:27.800 --> 0:40:32.520 Yeah, I mean there's a whole there's a whole camp 0:40:32.920 --> 0:40:35.719 and a whole other and you know, we can't get 0:40:35.719 --> 0:40:39.480 into this too too much in detail, but there's a 0:40:39.520 --> 0:40:43.120 whole movement that says out of the eighty people like 0:40:43.239 --> 0:40:45.920 we really think it was the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. 0:40:46.200 --> 0:40:51.040 Yeah, it's called the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship, and 0:40:51.239 --> 0:40:52.239 there is, you. 0:40:52.160 --> 0:40:54.000 Know, some stuff to it. 0:40:54.040 --> 0:40:57.840 He was a poet, which Ed points out that's so 0:40:57.960 --> 0:41:02.799 much for the stigma of print, and that also you 0:41:02.840 --> 0:41:06.680 can compare his poetry and in like some specific works 0:41:06.680 --> 0:41:10.680 of poetry to some of Shakespeare's poetry and see some 0:41:10.760 --> 0:41:14.880 real comparisons. But as far as I can tell that 0:41:15.680 --> 0:41:21.800 the questions are the similarities and there, if I'm not mistaken, 0:41:21.880 --> 0:41:25.040 like and that to me, it was the sixth Earl 0:41:25.080 --> 0:41:28.839 of Derby who has a little more, a little more 0:41:28.880 --> 0:41:29.400 to offer. 0:41:30.000 --> 0:41:33.080 Oh really, Oh no, it was about Derby. 0:41:33.239 --> 0:41:35.479 There was one other thing. So Derby has his own group, 0:41:35.560 --> 0:41:36.399 the Derbyites. 0:41:36.520 --> 0:41:39.799 Right, this is what I mean. It's an onion. It's 0:41:39.800 --> 0:41:40.520 a bloomin onion. 0:41:40.800 --> 0:41:42.840 So there was one other thing about Devere that is 0:41:42.880 --> 0:41:47.799 pretty suspicious. There were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated 0:41:48.160 --> 0:41:51.480 to a man who was raised in the same household 0:41:51.840 --> 0:41:55.440 as Devere. And from what anybody could tell, there's no 0:41:55.520 --> 0:41:58.680 reason Shakespeare would know this person, and why would Shakespeare 0:41:58.680 --> 0:42:00.000 dedicate to poems. 0:42:00.120 --> 0:42:00.880 So this this. 0:42:01.120 --> 0:42:05.840 Nobleman he didn't know, but Devere certainly knew him. He 0:42:05.880 --> 0:42:08.320 was he was basically raised alongside him like a brother. 0:42:08.960 --> 0:42:12.240 So that, along with the biographical reading, the close reading 0:42:12.320 --> 0:42:16.879 looking for parallels between Devere's life and Shakespeare's plays, are 0:42:16.920 --> 0:42:19.640 what kind of back up the Oxfordian. 0:42:19.080 --> 0:42:23.719 Theories interesting because Christopher Marlowe is another one who was 0:42:23.760 --> 0:42:28.239 a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's, and they collaborated and 0:42:28.280 --> 0:42:33.560 they influenced one another, and this the details around Marlowe's 0:42:33.560 --> 0:42:38.000 death are hinky enough to where some people thought or 0:42:38.000 --> 0:42:40.920 at least that you know, the conspiracy is that is 0:42:41.000 --> 0:42:44.840 that he faked his death because he was going to 0:42:45.000 --> 0:42:48.520 going to be executed by the crown and continued to 0:42:48.560 --> 0:42:53.040 write and then used his friend Billy Shakespeare as affront 0:42:53.520 --> 0:42:57.960 to continue to get those plays out. I'm not really 0:42:58.120 --> 0:43:01.520 sure about this because I don't know that's that's just 0:43:01.520 --> 0:43:02.320 a little far fetched. 0:43:02.320 --> 0:43:04.640 If you ask me, well, yeah, if and if you're 0:43:04.719 --> 0:43:07.719 if you're supposing that Marlow faked his death in order 0:43:07.800 --> 0:43:12.240 to continue writing, you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped 0:43:12.239 --> 0:43:13.440 in a conspiracy theory. 0:43:14.040 --> 0:43:14.800 Yeah, maybe that's what. 0:43:15.520 --> 0:43:17.759 Yeah, but it's interesting because you know, Marlow is a 0:43:17.760 --> 0:43:20.759 pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly he may have been 0:43:20.800 --> 0:43:22.760 a secret agent for the crown. 0:43:23.960 --> 0:43:24.560 He was an. 0:43:24.440 --> 0:43:28.920 Atheist, he was his own playwright. People loved him as 0:43:28.920 --> 0:43:32.319 a playwright at the time, but he was no Shakespeare. 0:43:32.880 --> 0:43:37.000 Like literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you could attribute 0:43:38.000 --> 0:43:42.320 Shakespeare's writings to because Marlow was gloomy and super atheist 0:43:42.440 --> 0:43:47.239 and he was. His plays just didn't have that same 0:43:47.320 --> 0:43:53.040 kind of humanism and funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. And also, 0:43:53.160 --> 0:43:55.920 why wouldn't Marlow just write these plays under his own name? 0:43:56.000 --> 0:43:58.640 He had no reason to write these plays under different names. 0:43:58.960 --> 0:43:59.680 Yeah, agreed. 0:44:00.960 --> 0:44:03.600 There have been people that put forth the idea that 0:44:04.200 --> 0:44:07.560 there were several different women that might have been the 0:44:07.600 --> 0:44:11.120 real authors, because women were not allowed to write plays 0:44:11.120 --> 0:44:14.959 at the time. Eighty percent of the plays written during 0:44:15.000 --> 0:44:18.400 this time were anonymous and no author was listed, and 0:44:18.440 --> 0:44:20.319 a lot of people said, hey, a lot of these 0:44:20.400 --> 0:44:22.480 were written by women and they just couldn't put their 0:44:22.560 --> 0:44:26.279 name on it. Many of Shakespeare's plays and ideas are 0:44:26.360 --> 0:44:34.239 very progressive. It's kind of a kind of a I 0:44:34.239 --> 0:44:37.000 don't know about flimsy, but it kind of demeans Shakespeare 0:44:37.000 --> 0:44:38.920 a bit to say that, like, well, it had to 0:44:38.920 --> 0:44:42.000 be a woman because they were so progressive about women 0:44:42.160 --> 0:44:46.560 like taking a stand, when in fact Shakespeare seemingly very 0:44:46.600 --> 0:44:48.880 much thought that way himself, right, Like, how. 0:44:48.719 --> 0:44:50.400 Could a man write women like this? 0:44:50.600 --> 0:44:54.880 Come on, Yeah, there's a woman named Mary Sidmund Herbert 0:44:55.120 --> 0:44:57.640 who has a whole foundation that's trying to prove that 0:44:57.680 --> 0:45:01.440 she wrote. Kind of the word of the Internet happened 0:45:02.000 --> 0:45:05.359 about seven years ago. When you get these memes that 0:45:05.400 --> 0:45:09.480 are just full of false stuff and then everyone starts 0:45:09.480 --> 0:45:12.160 spreading them around. Oh yeah, there was a meme in 0:45:12.200 --> 0:45:15.319 twenty fifteen went all over social media that just had 0:45:15.360 --> 0:45:17.799 the picture of this black woman and said, this is 0:45:17.880 --> 0:45:22.480 Amelia Bassano. She really wrote Shakespeare's stuff. She was not 0:45:22.600 --> 0:45:25.759 allowed to be a published author because she was a 0:45:25.760 --> 0:45:28.239 black woman at a time where she was suppressed and 0:45:28.280 --> 0:45:32.560 all this stuff. None of this stuff was true. First 0:45:32.640 --> 0:45:36.040 of all, she was maybe Moroccan. She was definitely not 0:45:36.200 --> 0:45:37.280 of African descent. 0:45:37.640 --> 0:45:39.400 Oh. I saw she was Venetian. 0:45:40.400 --> 0:45:43.080 I saw that she was Moroccan and had some Italian 0:45:43.080 --> 0:45:45.080 in her, so that okay, yeah, it makes a little sense. 0:45:45.120 --> 0:45:49.680 But she was definitely not of African descent. She was 0:45:49.719 --> 0:45:52.919 a published author, so the whole notion that she wasn't 0:45:52.920 --> 0:45:55.719 allowed to publish things wasn't right. She was kind of 0:45:55.760 --> 0:45:57.719 a well known poet. 0:45:57.440 --> 0:45:58.280 I think at the time. 0:45:59.040 --> 0:46:01.040 So this kind of I think gets passed along the 0:46:01.040 --> 0:46:03.120 internet and then you know, half the people that see 0:46:03.120 --> 0:46:05.719 had to say, oh, well, look at that Shakespeare was 0:46:06.719 --> 0:46:08.120 all written by this lady back then. 0:46:09.600 --> 0:46:12.000 Yeah, problem solved, And that's just not how it works. 0:46:12.280 --> 0:46:14.440 One of the other things I saw that, and I 0:46:14.480 --> 0:46:17.240 think the people who are like Shakespeare is a woman 0:46:17.719 --> 0:46:20.920 are like, well, okay, if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship, 0:46:20.960 --> 0:46:24.040 we can't ignore this whole group of people who had 0:46:24.160 --> 0:46:27.960 every reason to hide their identity as authors of these 0:46:28.000 --> 0:46:30.080 plays because they were women and they weren't for sure 0:46:30.080 --> 0:46:33.680 to do this kind of stuff. So there was a 0:46:33.719 --> 0:46:37.200 critic who in fifteen ninety three wrote of a who 0:46:37.280 --> 0:46:40.840 praised a gentle woman who was writing some amazing plays 0:46:40.880 --> 0:46:44.360 and sonnets. And this was the year after Shakespeare pops 0:46:44.400 --> 0:46:48.279 back up after his lost years and when he was 0:46:48.320 --> 0:46:51.319 starting to write. But that the critics said he didn't 0:46:51.320 --> 0:46:53.080 want to reveal who it was because he didn't want 0:46:53.120 --> 0:46:55.520 to basically get her in trouble. So that's what some 0:46:55.560 --> 0:46:58.759 other people kind of look at and say, See, Shakespeare. 0:46:58.320 --> 0:46:58.760 Was a woman. 0:46:59.320 --> 0:47:01.600 Well, I mean, I think think, I think this theory 0:47:01.800 --> 0:47:03.560 makes a lot more sense than a lot of the others. 0:47:05.080 --> 0:47:07.680 You know, just by this year fact that women would 0:47:07.719 --> 0:47:11.600 not have been allowed to So maybe Shakespeare was progressive 0:47:11.600 --> 0:47:14.640 and decided to be affront for these great works. 0:47:14.880 --> 0:47:20.600 But it reveals a point about being an anti Shakespeare 0:47:20.640 --> 0:47:25.200 anti I guess Stratford person is you have to part 0:47:25.200 --> 0:47:27.959 of is you have to explain why somebody would want 0:47:28.000 --> 0:47:31.640 to fake authorship, would want to hide behind Shakespeare's name. 0:47:31.920 --> 0:47:34.800 Yeah, what do you call that a motive. 0:47:36.000 --> 0:47:39.960 Yeah, you got means, motive, and opportunity. You put those 0:47:39.960 --> 0:47:41.799 three together, you got your Shakespeare. 0:47:42.600 --> 0:47:45.759 Well that's what I mean about the maybe women wrote them. 0:47:45.760 --> 0:47:47.160 I mean there was definite motive. 0:47:46.920 --> 0:47:51.000 There, right exactly. So there was one other thing that happened. 0:47:51.160 --> 0:47:52.919 I mean a lot of stuff happened over the course 0:47:52.960 --> 0:47:56.760 of this hundred almost two hundred years now of questioning 0:47:56.840 --> 0:48:01.480 Shakespeare's authorship. Back in nineteen eighty seven, Ox forty and 0:48:02.360 --> 0:48:07.360 Charlton Augburn got the at least three sitting Supreme Court 0:48:07.480 --> 0:48:10.960 justices John Paul Stevens, William Brennan and Harry Blackman to 0:48:11.080 --> 0:48:14.960 hold a mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was 0:48:15.000 --> 0:48:18.720 the author of Shakespeare's plays, and they did on Sea Span. 0:48:18.760 --> 0:48:21.600 They had they held like a trial and heard the evidence, 0:48:21.640 --> 0:48:24.640 and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him, and 0:48:25.800 --> 0:48:30.440 it was pretty interesting. But they it went two to one, 0:48:30.600 --> 0:48:34.440 I think, in favor of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author. 0:48:34.760 --> 0:48:37.400 But they did like real research and stuff. It wasn't 0:48:37.440 --> 0:48:40.120 just like a you know, yeah stunt. 0:48:40.440 --> 0:48:43.400 No, so the Supreme Court justices were kind of taking 0:48:43.440 --> 0:48:46.160 its tongue in cheek. But I got the impression that 0:48:46.239 --> 0:48:49.239 Charlton Augburn was like, yes, finally going to prove it 0:48:49.239 --> 0:48:52.399 definitively one way or another, and it didn't even fall 0:48:52.440 --> 0:48:56.440 in his favor. Interesting, Yeah, it is interesting what people 0:48:56.440 --> 0:48:57.840 did in the eighties on Sea Span. 0:49:00.160 --> 0:49:02.120 I got a few more little things here from that 0:49:02.160 --> 0:49:07.440 Atlantic article that point to his authorship as being genuine. 0:49:08.280 --> 0:49:10.600 One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus 0:49:10.600 --> 0:49:13.480 and Adonis that was a very popular poem at the 0:49:13.520 --> 0:49:17.160 time that was put in print, and it was printed 0:49:17.160 --> 0:49:20.520 by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went to 0:49:20.560 --> 0:49:22.080 school with him at Stratford. 0:49:22.880 --> 0:49:24.720 So that's a pretty good little hint. 0:49:26.120 --> 0:49:28.759 He was written about at the time, so it's not 0:49:28.840 --> 0:49:31.920 like he was never known until his death and then 0:49:31.960 --> 0:49:35.120 all of a sudden became super popular, Like he died 0:49:35.160 --> 0:49:39.719 a rich man and was written about by literary critics 0:49:40.719 --> 0:49:44.520 at the time and entertainment and play critics. So there 0:49:44.520 --> 0:49:49.320 were contemporaneous criticisms of his writing while he was still living, 0:49:50.000 --> 0:49:52.920 which is a pretty, you know, pretty big clue that 0:49:53.000 --> 0:49:55.759 he probably wrote this stuff, although it is not proof. 0:49:55.880 --> 0:49:59.120 No, because those people could be they went and saw 0:49:59.160 --> 0:50:01.600 a play by Shakes, They doesn't mean that they met 0:50:01.640 --> 0:50:05.200 Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the place. 0:50:05.040 --> 0:50:08.520 And leaned over his shoulder while he wrote it proof. 0:50:09.640 --> 0:50:11.640 The other last thing that I saw in that Atlantic 0:50:11.719 --> 0:50:13.279 article this is the one or actually this. 0:50:13.239 --> 0:50:17.080 Was a this was the golden bullet from that video? 0:50:17.320 --> 0:50:17.839 Was it okay? 0:50:18.880 --> 0:50:18.960 Was? 0:50:19.160 --> 0:50:24.759 Shakespeare was apparently concerned that his dad's reputation sort of 0:50:24.800 --> 0:50:27.880 in the family's reputation, suffered later in life because of 0:50:27.920 --> 0:50:31.080 financial problems that his dad had, and he really wanted 0:50:31.120 --> 0:50:33.560 to kind of restore their name and get a coat 0:50:33.600 --> 0:50:36.760 of arms made, which is you could you know, it's 0:50:36.800 --> 0:50:38.440 like you could be a true gentleman if you had 0:50:38.440 --> 0:50:41.280 a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really long process. 0:50:41.280 --> 0:50:42.919 They don't just hand him out to anybody. You got 0:50:42.920 --> 0:50:45.319 to have a certain level of achievement to get a 0:50:45.360 --> 0:50:48.319 coat of arms. So he went through this big, long 0:50:48.360 --> 0:50:51.399 process and had he went on Barry Linden on there, 0:50:52.000 --> 0:50:55.000 Oh man, what a movie. He had a couple of 0:50:55.040 --> 0:50:59.600 different men in the Harold's office who defended Shakespeare's right 0:50:59.680 --> 0:51:01.720 to have a coat of arms because other people were saying, 0:51:02.200 --> 0:51:04.239 who is this guy? Even like he came from not 0:51:04.440 --> 0:51:06.960 much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms. And 0:51:07.120 --> 0:51:09.040 one of the guys who defended him was a man 0:51:09.120 --> 0:51:13.000 named William Camden, who this guy in the video referred 0:51:13.000 --> 0:51:13.520 to as. 0:51:13.360 --> 0:51:15.600 One of the most learned men in all of England. 0:51:15.920 --> 0:51:16.359 Oh wow. 0:51:17.040 --> 0:51:21.399 He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster and apparently just knew 0:51:21.400 --> 0:51:25.719 everything happening on the literary scene inside and out. And 0:51:25.800 --> 0:51:29.680 in one of his books he was called the Remains 0:51:29.680 --> 0:51:31.560 of a Greater History. He talks about all the great 0:51:31.560 --> 0:51:35.680 writers of the time and he lists William Shakespeare of 0:51:35.760 --> 0:51:37.760 Avon in that book. 0:51:37.880 --> 0:51:42.839 So he said, that's the golden bullet again. If it's 0:51:42.920 --> 0:51:45.640 just a front, it's still no real proof of authorship. 0:51:46.760 --> 0:51:48.440 No it's not. I mean like this guy could just 0:51:48.480 --> 0:51:49.719 be playing along, lending his. 0:51:50.680 --> 0:51:51.839 Or didn't notable weight. 0:51:52.040 --> 0:51:53.399 Yeah, that's another one too. 0:51:53.520 --> 0:51:59.120 Like that's the thing, like the anti Stratfordians have caused 0:51:59.160 --> 0:52:03.120 the pros at Fordian's to actually defend their position, and 0:52:03.160 --> 0:52:05.880 in doing so it's kind of revealed that both of 0:52:05.920 --> 0:52:09.160 them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost just 0:52:09.239 --> 0:52:11.279 a matter of belief. Do you want to believe that 0:52:11.440 --> 0:52:15.320 one man was that brilliant and that talented and gifted, 0:52:16.160 --> 0:52:18.520 or do you can. You just not believe that. It 0:52:18.600 --> 0:52:20.520 just doesn't make any sense to you. So it was 0:52:20.719 --> 0:52:24.320 a cabal of noble people who were trying to advance 0:52:24.400 --> 0:52:28.200 political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare, paying them off 0:52:28.239 --> 0:52:33.560 with maybe family crests and money and fame right to 0:52:34.320 --> 0:52:36.920 let them use his name as their you know, the playwright. 0:52:37.440 --> 0:52:40.640 Yeah. They also say, like where he was from. There 0:52:40.680 --> 0:52:43.319 was some regional slang that was very specific to where 0:52:43.320 --> 0:52:46.680 he was from that was used. There was in Taming 0:52:46.719 --> 0:52:50.239 of the Shrew he mentions these Latin phrases that are 0:52:50.280 --> 0:52:56.080 in specifically from a Latin book that apparently was known 0:52:56.120 --> 0:52:58.240 to have been used at his school, at his grammar 0:52:58.280 --> 0:53:01.880 school in Stratford. So again there's all these little hints 0:53:01.880 --> 0:53:06.479 and clues. All of it kind of gave me a headache, right, 0:53:06.840 --> 0:53:08.920 and I was like, can we just like love these plays? 0:53:09.520 --> 0:53:09.680 Right? 0:53:09.800 --> 0:53:13.520 Exactly? That's exactly right. It's the ultimate point. Let's just 0:53:13.680 --> 0:53:14.320 love the plays. 0:53:15.440 --> 0:53:19.000 People take it serious about this though, Yeah, they definitely do. 0:53:19.080 --> 0:53:20.799 I mean it's pretty interesting and I mean I get 0:53:20.800 --> 0:53:24.440 it kind of fun to watch from the outside too. Yeah, 0:53:24.480 --> 0:53:25.279 you got anything else? 0:53:25.960 --> 0:53:28.879 No, we could go on all day, but totally we'd 0:53:28.920 --> 0:53:29.680 never get anywhere. 0:53:29.760 --> 0:53:31.799 There's like ten things I'm leaving on the table, so 0:53:31.840 --> 0:53:33.920 we just got to keep moving on, right, all right, 0:53:34.040 --> 0:53:36.759 Let's keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to 0:53:36.800 --> 0:53:39.840 know more about Shakespeare and authorship, there is a giant, 0:53:40.040 --> 0:53:43.040 gaping rabbit hole. You can jump down on the internet 0:53:43.440 --> 0:53:45.239 and say cionara to. 0:53:45.320 --> 0:53:46.560 All of your other pursuits. 0:53:46.840 --> 0:53:49.600 And since I said cyonara, it's time for listener mail. 0:53:52.080 --> 0:53:54.120 I'm gonna call this just came in over the wire. 0:53:54.120 --> 0:53:57.280 I thought it was kind of funny from our friends. 0:53:57.320 --> 0:54:02.840 Steven in Kagoshima, Japan, in about eating about eating squid, 0:54:03.520 --> 0:54:06.319 says love the show fellas reason not to be so 0:54:06.480 --> 0:54:11.760 touchy though about eating squid, they are child murdering sea vermin, 0:54:13.160 --> 0:54:16.319 he said. The reason squid die after they mate is 0:54:16.320 --> 0:54:19.719 a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the 0:54:19.800 --> 0:54:24.600 eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid 0:54:24.680 --> 0:54:31.759 in the spawning areas. Squidly diddley is an infanticidal maniac 0:54:31.960 --> 0:54:36.440 and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably, of course. 0:54:37.960 --> 0:54:39.480 So that's the argument, is that. 0:54:39.320 --> 0:54:41.960 These squids deserve to be eaten because they would be 0:54:41.960 --> 0:54:46.879 eating themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says, 0:54:46.920 --> 0:54:48.920 tell Josh not to eat uncooked squid. 0:54:49.560 --> 0:54:50.440 That is not great. 0:54:50.760 --> 0:54:54.960 All right, and kind regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan, 0:54:55.080 --> 0:54:58.799 a squid haven and a squid ink pasta destination. 0:54:59.320 --> 0:55:03.080 Stephen, that was a really great eye opening email. I 0:55:03.160 --> 0:55:05.200 may have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll 0:55:05.239 --> 0:55:10.960 have to get back to you. Okay, okay, thank you 0:55:11.000 --> 0:55:13.719 for responding to that, Stephen. Sure, if you want to 0:55:13.760 --> 0:55:15.759 be like Steven and get in touch with us and 0:55:15.880 --> 0:55:19.160 send us a potentially eye opening email, you. 0:55:19.280 --> 0:55:19.759 Can do that. 0:55:20.000 --> 0:55:25.280 Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. 0:55:26.400 --> 0:55:29.279 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For 0:55:29.400 --> 0:55:33.560 more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:55:33.680 --> 0:55:35.520 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.