WEBVTT - Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff? 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.039 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.640 and Chuck's on the line. Jerry's here too, and we're 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:21.520 about to get jiggy with it. Shakespeare, Can I carve 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:26.520 out this out of the gate? I guess so. The 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.080 more we dug into this, you know, I was an 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.200 English major. We talked very briefly when I was in 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:35.320 college about Shakespeare's authorship, and I thought, hey, this would 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:42.120 be a fun, little, semi easy episode. And the more 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:47.879 we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded, This 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:52.239 bloom and onion unfolded, Layer by Crispy Delicious Layer. For 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.960 all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think you 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:59.200 guys eat every night, every night. Uh, to the point 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:01.760 where I was almost like, you know, is this a 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:03.959 two parters? I mean, you could probably do a ten 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.040 part episode on this. Oh yeah, it's so dense. So 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.600 I just want to caveat this for people that know 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.959 a lot about shakespeare authorship and saying this is a 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:17.959 pretty broad overview of the high points of his authorship 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.800 being questioned, because it is dense. Baby, It's the kind 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:26.000 of thing that like, um, extremely intelligent people take on 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.760 as their like lifelong hobby. It's like that, we're like, 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:31.440 we'll just bust it out in a few days, It'll 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:33.560 be fine. Yeah, you know, like how some people are 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:38.640 like they they research World War two submarine warfare and 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.600 know everything about It's along the same lines, but it's 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.280 even bigger. There's so many people involved, and each side 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.280 is like, you're so naive to the other. And yes, 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.680 it's true, like we could, we could turn this into 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:52.240 a teen part series, but I think we've got a 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.080 handle on it enough to present it. I feeling okay 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.200 about it. And then the other thing that sticks out 0:01:57.280 --> 0:01:59.280 for me, Chuck, is this is one of the few 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:01.800 things I've ever I'm across like this that I am 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.280 like truly agnostic about. I do not have an opinion 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.920 one way or the other. I don't know if I 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.839 do either. Actually, like it's not like I don't care, 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:14.440 That's not what I'm saying, Like, I genuinely can see 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.320 both sides. And the other thing about it is, the 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:19.639 more you dig into it, the more you realize, oh, 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.880 neither side actually has really good evidence to support their claim. 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.440 It's all just they have to get so granular that 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:30.560 it really quickly, um, goes into the world of conspiracy 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:36.360 theories pretty quickly. Yeah. I saw this video of a guy, uh, 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:38.919 this wonderful gentleman who knows a lot about it, that 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.360 said like, and here's the golden bullet, which proves once 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.280 and for all, and he made his case and I 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:46.480 was like, no, no no, no, that didn't really prove it 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:48.760 once and for all in my opinion, Yeah, for sure, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:51.840 because both sides do things like they get into biographical 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:54.600 readings where they're trying to find clues within the text 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:57.919 or you know, parallels to his life for that kind 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.640 of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay, you 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:06.280 guys are you've just completely left the world of objectivity. Yeah. Uh. 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.080 So what we're talking about, um, if you haven't guessed 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.720 by now, is this idea that has been around since 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:17.880 at least the mid eighteen hundreds maybe before, about the 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:22.520 question of whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.720 author of all of his works. And this is Shakespeare 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.200 from Stratford on the Avon, like that that gentleman that 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:33.639 we know became an actor, uh and you know writer, Uh, 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:35.680 whether or not he was the sole author whether or 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.960 not he was a front for some other authors for 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.680 some of the works. Some people say he didn't write 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.640 any of them. Some people said it was various women 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.440 who weren't allowed to write things at the time. Uh, 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:53.360 there are I saw sixty six candidates over the years 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:57.560 have been put forward. Oh really, so there there you 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.440 have it. Uh, somewhere between sixty six and eight something 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.480 of I know, we haven't been accused of writing any 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.160 of Shakespeare's work. I don't think so. I didn't come 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:12.120 across that in my research. But it's an interesting literary 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:13.480 I don't even know if I want to call it 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.800 a mystery, because some people just say, like, no, I mean, 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:21.840 of course he wrote it, and he was these outsized personalities, 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.760 the most famous of the famous are conspiracies are drawn 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.960 to them. Elvis is still alive, Marilyn Monroe was murdered. 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.159 Like that happens when you are, you know, one of 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.880 the biggest icons in your field quite often. So some 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.240 people say that's just that's all that it is. In 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:45.680 addition to that, there's a a lack of biographical documentation 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.440 that he actually did write those plays. And I think 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:53.880 that that's also what allows for people to say, you know, well, 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.800 do we really know or that he didn't write them, Like, 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.160 there's just it was a time, you know, in the 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.919 fift dreids where there in sixteen hundreds, whether it just 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.840 wasn't a ton of great preserved information and we're going 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:09.200 to talk about a lot of that. So we do 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.920 know that William Shakespeare did live. He was from, like 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.280 you said, Stratford on Avon. It was at the time 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.400 about a two to three day journey from London, about 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.200 a hundred something miles I think, and um, he definitely 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.799 did live. He definitely did exist. That's not a question 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:28.960 because we do have documentary evidence that this person live 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:33.320 from uh fifteen sixty four to sixteen sixteen, about fifty 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:35.799 two years and depending on when you placed his birthday, 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.000 maybe fifty two years on the nose, So we know 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.960 he existed. Again, what's an issue what's being questions whether 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.680 that man William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:48.480 on to become an actor, who went on to become 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.880 a producer, who worked with the in the Globe theater um, 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.200 whether he was the author of the plays we consider 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:59.719 written by Shakespeare. That's what's that question. Yeah, so like 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.560 he's said, he was a real dude. Uh. He came 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:05.400 from a family that was I mean I kind of 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.360 read it as a little bit in middle class. They 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.799 certainly were not like upper class nobility types. His father 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.200 was a was a glover. He wore h hell, I 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.719 guess he wore gloves too, but he made gloves. Allow 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:22.080 me to demonstrate, be pretty weird if he didn't. Uh, okay, 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.080 I won't even wear his own gloves, but he produces 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:29.000 very very fine gloves for well to do people. Um, 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:33.159 but he did achieve some Um, I guess it worked 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.159 his way up the social chain a little bit because 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.400 eventually he would serve as what's sort of like a 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:43.000 mayor uh in Stratford. And again, while not nobility like, 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:47.920 they were fairly well regarded as people. Right, So, um, 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.720 we don't know for certain, but there's a pretty good 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.920 there's a much better um chance than not that because 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.440 of his father's position in town, because they had some money. 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.160 Like you said, they middle class. He um almost certainly 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:04.880 would have been educated at the grammar school at Stratford. 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.680 So what most people think is that that William Shakespeare 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.160 was educated until about the age of thirteen, and he 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:16.280 would have learned things like Latin, he would have learned history. Um, 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.520 he would have learned some classic literature. He definitely would 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:24.480 have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.560 would would go on to expound on. Um. So he 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.760 definitely was I I can't say that. That's the thing, Like, 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.080 you really have to be careful what you say about this. 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:35.720 I was about to say, so he definitely was educated. 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:37.400 We don't know that he was. This is all just 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.360 a supposition, but it's a pretty good bat. It's a 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:44.000 good supposition that he actually was educated. Yeah, and all this, 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:46.040 you know, the reason that's important is all of this 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:50.120 kind of comes back later, as some people say, proof 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:52.760 that he may not have written this stuff because like 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.560 how could it? And one of the main arguments used 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:57.840 many times is how could a kid who came from 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:02.400 here have known about these military military exploits and the 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.360 Elizabethan Court and all these different languages and all this 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.680 high falutin stuff that he wrote about. So, uh, it's 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.320 important to, you know, talk about his education. And it 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:16.200 seems like he was likely educated pretty well until thirteen, 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.040 which you know, I'm not even sure if that's earlier 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:21.960 late as far as the time period goes, do you 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:24.760 know if that was like kind of generally it for kids, 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.360 it was it was in the middle because he could 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.600 have just as easily not been educated at all, right 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.280 of course, but he also didn't go on to Cambridge 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:37.440 or Oxford to um to extend his studies, so he 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:39.160 was in there in the middle. They you think he 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.920 was probably educated, not highly educated, but also not you know, uneducated. 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.000 That's that's the key, And that if if there was 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:49.719 evidence he had not gone to school, I think that 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.600 the anti Shakespeare UM people would have a real like 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.160 marking their favor. But he has just enough education that 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:00.400 you can make the case like, no, like this guy, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.080 this guy learned about this stuff already and he could 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:04.880 have known about it. And you know, when you had 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:10.360 imagination and natural talent, did you come up with Shakespeare conceivably? Yeah? Uh. 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:14.960 He got married to Anne Hathaway. Um, you know, go 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.600 ahead and insert Anne Hathaway joke there. You know she's 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.960 a real actor, right, sure, Yeah, Devil Wears Pradac and 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:30.959 Princess Diaries. He was in inception No, No, was she interstellar? Yes, 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.319 she did a stellar job. An interstellar Come on? Uh? 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:39.240 They got married, um, when he was quite a bit younger. 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:43.080 She was twenty six, he was eighteen. She was pregnant, 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:45.960 which is probably a little unusual for the time. They 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.120 had a daughter named Susannah, and then had twins, boy 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.439 and a girl twin. And the boy uh named him Net, 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.040 not Hamlet, but him Net Yeah, which apparently they've never 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.839 turned up another use of that name in and the 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.160 at the time proof mhm Uh. He was eleven years 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:06.719 old when he died, uh, And that kind of comes 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:10.960 into play later on as well. Um. And then there's 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:15.319 about a you know, from five to about fifty two, 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:18.200 there's about a seven year gap where we don't know 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.200 a lot about what was going on with Shakespeare. Uh. 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:24.319 And then he pops up, which a lot can happen 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.120 in seven years. Again not trying to sway people one 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.120 way or the other, but you can certainly learn a 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.920 lot in seven years if you have some big life experiences. 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.199 But he pops up in London, and again, as far 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.560 as the record go goes, and you know, keep in mind, 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:44.480 a lot of this record before he was known in 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.400 his lifetime as an author, was you know, just kind 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:50.760 of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:55.440 like various little lawsuits and mortgages and sort of banking 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:57.959 records and stuff like that, right, yeah, yeah, And and 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.800 also I mean, like that's that about as much documentation 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:03.680 as you would be able to come up with on 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.880 most people. And you could make a case that there's 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.640 more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people who weren't 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:15.640 nobility of his era. And that's that's because there's been 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.480 so much scholarship and study and research into his life 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.720 that they've turned up, you know, as much as they can. 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.719 But what they've turned up only amounts to about five 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:31.280 hundred different pieces of um documentation of one form or another. Right. 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:36.120 Uh So one of those pieces of documentation, uh in 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:40.719 Early On in London is a pamphlet written by Um 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.080 generally believed to be written by this guy named Robert Green. 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:45.840 There were some other people that could have possibly written it, 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.920 but it's called Green's Groatsworth of Wit. And there's a 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:53.720 line where he references Shakespeare in it, uh in a 0:11:53.760 --> 0:12:00.800 contemporaneous fashion that, right, doesn't matter where he kind of 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.640 takes a shot out of He says, talks about Shakespeare, 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.360 says there's an upstart crow. Uh in his own conceit 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.400 the only shake seine in a country, which kind of 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.560 translates into he kind of thinks he's the only Shakespeare right, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.840 like he thinks he's all that and um, it should 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.880 be noted also as far as the thievery that in 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:25.880 Asop's Fables, crows would steal the feathers of others. So 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:28.880 the people in the um, I don't want to say 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:30.840 anti Shakespeare, but the people say that he might not 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:33.720 have written these things. Says this is a big clue, 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:36.760 and saying that he might have stolen some of these things. 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:38.760 That's why he's referred to as a crow by this 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:44.720 other guy. Yeah. But in that that um, that uh quote, 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.400 he says, the upstart crow is beautified with our feathers, 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:52.360 and he's a playwright. So the pro Shakespeare people, you 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.920 call them the pro Stratford group. Um, they suggest that 0:12:56.960 --> 0:12:59.360 what what he's, what Green is talking about is he's 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.120 he's poking fun at a common actor who is deigning 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.800 to even attempt to write plays, which you know, among 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.520 playwrights is far more important than acting. Anybody can act, 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:12.800 but it really takes something to to write a play. 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.079 At least that's what they thought at the time, and 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:18.640 um that he's taking a shot at him for that. Yeah, 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.920 and we should point out that being an actor back 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:22.600 then and being a part of the theater was not 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:27.640 like it is today. It wasn't some uh revered position. 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.320 It was sort of you know, body plays and common 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.400 people were into this kind of thing, So it wasn't 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.240 when he says he was just an actor. That's a 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:40.000 pretty big disk, right. So the last thing that we have, 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.959 I guess, the last documentation, although there's other stuff that's 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:47.840 been turned up. They m they did archaeological expeditions on 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.360 his house. I think his house has been um under 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:55.000 ownership of a public trust since like the nineteenth century, 0:13:55.559 --> 0:14:00.240 and um they've they've carried out archaeological um examination since 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.200 of it. And they found that he went back and 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.600 forth between London and Stratford. Um. They so they know 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:08.360 stuff about him like that. But as far as like 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:12.440 documentation goes, the last piece of documentation we have comes 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.640 in sixteen sixteen, which is his will that he wrote 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.600 and then a few months later he died and the 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.240 last I guess, the last last piece of documentation is 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.560 his tombstone, which in and of itself is curious because 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:30.440 his tombstone contains a curse on it but not his name. Yeah, 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.880 is that the one uh with the quote, Yeah, it's 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.040 a curse. He's saying like, don't dig me up or 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.400 you're gonna be cursed. Yeah, it's his good friend for 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.560 jesus sake, forbear to dig the dust and closed here. 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:45.520 Blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.680 be he who moves my bones. Uh. Some people point 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.600 to that as poor writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:57.280 a great writer, would never written this kind of shabby curse, 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:01.400 and other people say, like, who said Shakespeare even wrote that? 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.000 Necessarily this This is a good instructive example of like 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.360 kind of the back and forth between the people, Right, 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.360 this is terrible writing. Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:13.720 then the anti Shakespeare crew says, well, of course he 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.480 wrote it, because who else would just not think to 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.560 put his name on his own tombstone? And the other 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:21.640 ones just put their head in their hands and just 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.560 start crying, and it just goes downhill from there. But 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.240 that's a really good example of like the the just 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.600 kind of like the people will jump on any single 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.720 thing that they possibly can and often interpret it one 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.520 way or the the other. So one thing, one single thing, 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:41.240 provides evidence for both sides. It's that kind of yeah, totally. UM. 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:45.080 Another thing that people point to is the fact that 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.160 of you know, we we don't have a lot of 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.400 like letters and papers and things like that because his 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.880 uh family line h ended in six seventy I think 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.160 uh he had a granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, that died without 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:04.600 bearing children, So most of his stuff basically lost as 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.200 far as family possessions and things like that. UM. People 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.480 do point to the will at times and say, well, 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.320 in his will, you know he leaves certain things, but 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.880 like there's never any mention of any manuscripts, um. And 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.880 and again this is all like it's a little weird maybe, 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.920 but none of this is proof um. And you know 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.280 through the personal records that we do have in those 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:32.680 five references, like none of them really reference him like 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:37.280 manuscripts and him writing things. Right. That's what's most compelling 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.640 to me is that when you put together the um 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.480 documentation about his life that we know, it's clear he's 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:46.640 involved in the theater, he's an actor. We get that. 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.360 That's that comes through loud and clear. What doesn't come 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:52.800 through isn't documented at all, is him as a writer. 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:56.120 And that that thing about the will, the fact that 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:59.960 if you look at the wills and um and bequeathments 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:04.119 of other writers of the time, um, you can find 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.320 evidence that they were writers. They like leave books to 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.280 other people that um there um they they leave unfinished 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.200 manuscripts that stay in the family uh for for generations, 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:20.400 and um it is very curious. His will is very curious. 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.760 But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.159 to history because his granddaughter was the end of the 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.359 family line, that actually holds up because other um great 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.439 authors of say the same major of any age. A 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.080 lot of the reason that their personal effects and papers 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:41.320 are still still around is because their family home was 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:45.160 passed down from generation to generation to generation, and there 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.320 was a long enough period of time for the importance 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.160 of that writer to become clear. And so other people 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.359 came in and said, can we have your great great 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.120 great grandfather's personal effects, um, because we want to put 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.400 them in this museum. There's enough time. There wasn't enough time. 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:04.200 There's only seventy years between the death of Shakespeare and 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:06.560 the end of his family line, and he didn't become 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:11.000 widely popular until the I think middle of the eighteenth century, 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.720 so he was kind of a victim of that and that. 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.760 But both of those to me provide really good evidence 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:22.720 for why there is a documentation of his writing. You know, yeah, absolutely, 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.560 UM and the will and by the way, we uh 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:29.000 The Atlantic has a great, great, pretty deep dive article 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.720 as they do on this, which provided a lot of 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:36.440 the supplementary information that we got, um, but by Elizabeth Winkler, 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.080 great read UM. One of the things that Winkler points out, 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:43.960 and other people who point out on the will as well, 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:49.000 it's like Shakespeare wrote a lot about um music and 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:51.720 I think there were three hundred musical terms, and all 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.480 of his plays mentioned of twenty six musical instruments. And 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.199 like in his will he didn't he didn't even have 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:01.040 a loot to pass down to anybody um and like 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.960 you said, didn't have books even like a library that 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:06.480 he wanted to give. And you know, again, this is 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:10.480 not proof necessarily necessarily of anything, but it's all of 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.560 this stuff has added up over the years to enough 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.520 for people to arise to like get suspicious about it. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.960 I think exactly, you want to take a break a breather, 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.199 I guess you could call it. Yeah, let's take a 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:55.840 let's take a breather, let's take five. Uh. One thing 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.800 that Ed who helped us put this together mentions that 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.000 I wanted to get your to on it. I didn't 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:04.199 really think it had a whole lot to do with it. 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.680 One way or the other was all of the various 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:10.919 misspellings of Shakespeare's name over the years. Uh. He would 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.119 sign it in different ways, he would abbreviate it in 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:17.680 different ways. There are documents with I mean, it looks 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:22.360 like fifteen different ways of spelling Shakespeare, everything from shacks 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.800 with an ex peer, uh, two spears and something you 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:29.800 would jab somebody with. Uh, It's misspelled all over the place. 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.280 And I just kind of took that as you know, 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:35.199 people misspelled things a lot back then. There weren't you know, 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.639 there weren't necessarily records that you could go look at 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.479 very easily, so you might just take a guess at 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.080 how to spell a name and then it was on 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:45.760 the record. And so I didn't really think that factored 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.960 in much, did you, I didn't. And the impression I 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:53.240 have is that all the different spellings are easily explained 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.959 away from just the era, Like you just said, and 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.679 that the people who clamp onto that are actually looking 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.639 into him just to find like hidden naming and codes 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:04.159 to So I think, like the different spellings of the 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:06.800 names is um, it's about a Yeah, it's about as 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:08.640 big a boon doggle as you're gonna find in the 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:11.800 in the Shakespeare authorship argument, I think. All right, so 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:14.199 we'll cast that aside. Well, hold on, before we do, 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:17.120 I want to point out my favorite abbreviation, which one 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:19.560 I think, Well, let me look, I bet you I 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.159 know which one. But go, okay, put it, put it 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:23.880 back in the deck. Yeah, it's back in the deck. 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:29.240 Okay it is WILLM shack P. Yeah, that's the one. 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.159 It stands out pretty blatantly s h A k P. 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:37.720 I love it. Check hello Willem. Check. It's not a 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:40.720 really good hotel check in name, but it's still worth mentioning. 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.800 I think that's pretty good. Um. So, like we mentioned 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:45.439 sort of what's at the root of a lot of 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:50.800 these theories is uh, what ed I think rightly calls elitism, 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:56.520 which is, how could this guy, even you know, educated 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.040 up to thirteen, how could he have known about all 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:02.560 this stuff? How could he have known about military exploits. 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:05.800 And you know, if you read Shakespeare's plays, which if 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:07.280 you're an English major you have to read a lot 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:11.000 of them, there there's a lot going on in these 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:13.640 plays about a lot of different stuff. He didn't write 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:16.080 about just kind of one kind of thing. So it 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.800 implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge about a 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:23.040 lot of things, and not just different things as it 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:25.880 relates to England, different things, as it relates to entirely 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:29.000 different lands, Like think about where a lot of his 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:32.760 stuff takes places in Italy. Um And, as far as 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:36.120 anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't go to Italy. Although remember there's 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:38.760 that lost year eight year period they call him the 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:41.680 Lost Years. It's entirely possible he went to Italy during 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:44.680 that time. It's also just as possible that he didn't 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:46.880 go to Italy during that time. We just don't know. 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:49.720 But that is something that really stands out. And yes, 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:54.320 there is a tremendous amount of elitism and classicism among 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:58.720 some of the um anti Shakespeare group, but I think 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.320 that that is I think that dismisses a lot of 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:03.520 their points out of hand, and they do have some 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:07.120 really good points. They're not just cranks and crackpots, like 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:10.359 they have some pretty good evidence. You can make a 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:13.760 case at least as good evidence that um as the 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:18.679 pro Shakespeare people um. But the upshot of it is 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:21.320 really kind of a compliment. They're saying, these plays are 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:27.400 so good, that Shakespeare's arguably the greatest writer who ever lived. 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:30.840 He has such a crazy imagination, he's so funny, he 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:34.280 has such an extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:37.920 the human condition. Could it really all have been written 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:42.000 by this man from at the time the country, who 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:44.880 was educated up to thirteen, who came from the middle class, 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:47.960 who may or may not have ever traveled out of England? 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:51.960 How is that even possible? Are people born that gifted? 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:54.840 That's ultimately if you want to go beyond the classicism 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:59.000 and the elite. That's really what their argument boils down to. Yeah, 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:00.960 I agree. And if you if you don't know a 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:03.280 lot of Shakespeare, have never really read a lot yourself, 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:06.280 and you think like you're sort of in that camp, 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:10.840 like I mean, this is kind of overrated, Like this guy, No, 0:24:11.200 --> 0:24:15.600 these plays are brilliant, and uh, there's a reason why 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:21.000 they still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or 0:24:21.400 --> 0:24:25.280 inspired by Shakespeare's plays. Uh, it's because they were all 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:29.320 genuinely brilliant. It was great, great stuff. And what you 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:32.280 need is a really good teacher to kind of walk 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:34.399 you through it because it's it's tough to read. And 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:36.879 we had, um, we had some good ones at Georgia 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:39.880 University of George. I had one. I can't remember his name. God, 0:24:39.920 --> 0:24:42.040 I can picture him in my head. He was so great. 0:24:43.000 --> 0:24:50.840 Probably someone know it was WILLM. Shack shack pe Um. 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:52.560 I wish I could remember his name. I bet you 0:24:52.640 --> 0:24:55.800 someone will write in in the uh mid nineties, who 0:24:55.800 --> 0:24:59.879 the great players harpsichord? Oh? Well no, I had a 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:04.439 classics professor who played the harpsichord. Yeah, this was you know, 0:25:04.480 --> 0:25:06.480 you had to take Shakespeare one in two. Those were 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:09.680 the only required English classes as a as an English major, 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:12.760 so that kind of shows the importance. But what he 0:25:12.800 --> 0:25:15.760 did was he sattised down and we read the plays 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:20.600 out loud in class, and after every you know, short bit, 0:25:20.880 --> 0:25:22.760 he would say, well, here's what's going on, and here's 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:25.720 what he's saying. Man, you were very lucky. Yeah. And 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:27.600 once you once you hear that and you're like, oh, 0:25:27.640 --> 0:25:31.000 these are very contemporary stories and that's why they still 0:25:31.760 --> 0:25:34.760 carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories, 0:25:34.800 --> 0:25:37.239 but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not 0:25:37.480 --> 0:25:40.200 it's not high falutin stuff. It's just it was written 0:25:40.200 --> 0:25:43.119 at a time where it seems that way. Yeah, yeah, exactly, 0:25:43.160 --> 0:25:46.800 because we don't really speak in you know, Renaissance English anymore, 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:50.240 so it seems it might as well be Greek to us. Um. 0:25:50.359 --> 0:25:53.879 But yeah, it was intended for common audiences. Like the 0:25:53.920 --> 0:25:57.760 average person would laugh or cry at those at those plays. 0:25:57.920 --> 0:26:00.119 And I think also, like really kind of support at 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:03.720 your point that four hundred years later, those plays can 0:26:03.760 --> 0:26:07.480 still make people today laugh and cry like they still 0:26:07.480 --> 0:26:09.960 hold up. I guess what you're saying. And um, have 0:26:10.040 --> 0:26:15.040 you ever heard of Sister Wendy. No, she is, she's 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:17.240 a nun. I don't believe she's still with us. And 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:19.359 I think in the nineties she made this series of 0:26:19.440 --> 0:26:22.199 videos where she just went around the museums around the 0:26:22.200 --> 0:26:26.600 world and explained paintings to you in a way that 0:26:26.720 --> 0:26:29.480 I would love to find a Sister Wendy of Shakespeare. 0:26:29.520 --> 0:26:31.879 I'm sure there's somebody out there, but you could do 0:26:31.920 --> 0:26:35.000 a lot worse to of killing several hours watching Sister 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:38.119 Wendy explained paintings because she was she had like a 0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:41.439 natural gift at just not only understanding what she was 0:26:41.440 --> 0:26:45.760 looking at, but explaining it really understandably. I love that, 0:26:45.800 --> 0:26:48.800 And I think in Sister Wendy's case and my professor 0:26:49.240 --> 0:26:54.920 shack By, it's it. It comes from a place of um. 0:26:54.960 --> 0:26:57.800 They have such great admiration and they want to They 0:26:57.880 --> 0:27:01.120 really want people to understand this stuff. Who might ordinarily 0:27:01.160 --> 0:27:02.439 go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get 0:27:02.440 --> 0:27:04.880 paintings like this, or I don't get places like this art. 0:27:06.119 --> 0:27:09.520 Uh So should we get in speaking of art? Great segue? 0:27:10.040 --> 0:27:13.119 Uh should we get into this mess of the The 0:27:13.200 --> 0:27:16.440 bust of Shakespeare? Yeah, I mean it's another It's very 0:27:16.520 --> 0:27:19.320 much like his tombstone, where people are like it means this, No, 0:27:19.400 --> 0:27:22.920 I means that, you know. Yeah. So there's a bust 0:27:22.960 --> 0:27:27.480 an effigy of Shakespeare inside the church there in Stratford. 0:27:28.200 --> 0:27:31.440 And there's been a lot of controversy over this thing 0:27:31.520 --> 0:27:35.159 because part of it is not necessarily like was he 0:27:35.240 --> 0:27:37.480 the author, although it does play into that, but sort 0:27:37.520 --> 0:27:39.600 of like what what did he look like? And how 0:27:39.600 --> 0:27:41.400 do we know that's what he looked like? Like? We've 0:27:41.400 --> 0:27:44.640 all seen the picture. Uh, and there's like this one 0:27:44.720 --> 0:27:47.280 painting and this one bust, and that's kind of where 0:27:47.280 --> 0:27:50.520 everything comes from. And some people say this was done 0:27:50.520 --> 0:27:53.480 after he was dead, like, we really don't know that 0:27:53.480 --> 0:27:56.560 that's what he looked like. Um, I think just a 0:27:56.560 --> 0:28:01.240 couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a 0:28:01.280 --> 0:28:05.480 pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt that it 0:28:05.560 --> 0:28:07.919 was actually done. I think she said it was highly likely. 0:28:08.920 --> 0:28:12.440 Professor Orlan said it's highly likely that it was done 0:28:12.440 --> 0:28:15.960 while he was alive, and that he commissioned it because 0:28:16.440 --> 0:28:18.520 she thinks she knows who did the bust and that 0:28:18.520 --> 0:28:22.639 that person lived near him and was a regular at 0:28:22.680 --> 0:28:25.040 the globe and kind of put all these clues together. 0:28:25.640 --> 0:28:27.560 But other people, some people say it was his dad, 0:28:28.160 --> 0:28:31.000 uh and not him because of this whole sack of 0:28:31.080 --> 0:28:35.840 grain argument. Yeah. This so there there was an etching 0:28:36.240 --> 0:28:40.040 that was made of the bust within some period of 0:28:40.080 --> 0:28:43.480 time after the bust was erected, but before it was altered. 0:28:43.520 --> 0:28:46.600 So the bus has definitely been altered. And it looks 0:28:46.680 --> 0:28:49.680 like one way you can interpret this. This thing at 0:28:49.680 --> 0:28:52.560 the bottom, this puffy thing that's that that's at the 0:28:52.600 --> 0:28:56.120 hands of the bust the effigy um as a sack 0:28:56.160 --> 0:28:58.520 of grain. I don't know if it were a sack 0:28:58.560 --> 0:29:01.920 of grain, why anyone would ever presented in that position. 0:29:03.160 --> 0:29:06.400 It doesn't make any sense. And so right, so what 0:29:06.440 --> 0:29:09.720 the the anti Shakespeare, anti Strapford people are saying is like, yeah, 0:29:09.760 --> 0:29:12.920 it's his dad, It's it's not him um, or if 0:29:12.960 --> 0:29:16.520 it is Shakespeare, he was known for his grain carrying skills, 0:29:16.520 --> 0:29:20.280 not his writing skills. And the pro strap For people 0:29:20.320 --> 0:29:22.880 are like, don't be ridiculous. This is obviously a pillow, 0:29:23.360 --> 0:29:26.080 and at some point somebody did revise the bus, so 0:29:26.200 --> 0:29:30.040 it is unequivocally a pillow, like there's just no way 0:29:30.080 --> 0:29:32.080 to to mistake it. And it's not so much a 0:29:32.080 --> 0:29:33.800 pillow as it is like a hand rest for him 0:29:33.840 --> 0:29:35.760 to write on, because he's got a piece of paper 0:29:35.760 --> 0:29:38.040 on it and a quill in his other hand. But 0:29:38.560 --> 0:29:41.920 the the anti Shakespeare people jump on and say, like, 0:29:42.120 --> 0:29:45.480 see it was altered to fit this um to cover 0:29:45.600 --> 0:29:49.240 up this conspiracy later on, yeah, exactly, and and that 0:29:49.320 --> 0:29:52.160 quill has been stolen and replaced I think so many 0:29:52.200 --> 0:29:55.479 times over the years that now I don't know if 0:29:55.480 --> 0:29:58.120 it currently has the quill or if it has the 0:29:58.160 --> 0:30:01.120 quill and it's now behind glass. Oh that could that's 0:30:01.120 --> 0:30:03.560 a good way to get around. And I'm not really sure, 0:30:03.600 --> 0:30:07.160 but you know, that became a you know, obviously it's 0:30:07.200 --> 0:30:10.040 something you could just snatch of his hand, and you've 0:30:10.080 --> 0:30:13.760 got Shakespeare's quill on your on your door. Speaking of 0:30:13.920 --> 0:30:18.240 Um being snatched, apparently that curse on his tombst didn't 0:30:18.240 --> 0:30:20.480 work because they did a scan of it UM on 0:30:20.560 --> 0:30:23.360 the four anniversary of his death and found that at 0:30:23.480 --> 0:30:26.440 least his skull was missing, if not all of his remains. 0:30:26.920 --> 0:30:29.920 Oh really yeah, and that interesting. So somebody out there 0:30:30.480 --> 0:30:36.880 has Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection. It's probably Rosenkrantzer Guildenstern. Uh, 0:30:37.800 --> 0:30:43.440 great Shakespeare joke. There's some people out there that were like, 0:30:43.760 --> 0:30:47.920 nailed it. Good. Another thing, as far as evidence goes, 0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:51.760 is UM the first folio, which is I think it 0:30:51.840 --> 0:30:54.840 was the first collection that they put in print of 0:30:54.920 --> 0:30:59.400 all of Shakespeare's plays, including UM eighteen that had never 0:30:59.480 --> 0:31:03.800 been in print before. And there was a I guess 0:31:03.840 --> 0:31:06.240 it was it a forward written by a guy named 0:31:06.280 --> 0:31:10.120 Ben Johnson, who was arrival of Shakespeare's He was kind 0:31:10.160 --> 0:31:14.120 of known as a jealous Um sort of argumentative guy, 0:31:15.120 --> 0:31:19.239 but he calls Shakespeare the Swan of Avon and as 0:31:19.360 --> 0:31:22.760 sort of very laudatory in this forward. But I think 0:31:22.800 --> 0:31:26.160 you found stuff later on where he was kind of 0:31:26.200 --> 0:31:30.440 like I had my fingers crossed the whole time kind of. Yeah. 0:31:30.560 --> 0:31:34.960 So the pro Stratford people who believe Shakespeare Shakespeare say, look, man, 0:31:35.200 --> 0:31:38.440 this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival, 0:31:38.520 --> 0:31:42.520 but a real rival, really critical, like had biting, biting 0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:46.200 criticism and sense of humor, and also was not one 0:31:46.320 --> 0:31:50.440 to just be like um to to just bow to 0:31:50.680 --> 0:31:53.880 no nobility, your privilege, your wealth or status. Right. So 0:31:54.920 --> 0:31:58.360 if this guy is saying that Shakespeare the Swan of Avon, 0:31:58.440 --> 0:32:01.479 which places this man at effort on Avon because Ben 0:32:01.560 --> 0:32:06.400 Johnson is calling him that, that proves that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. 0:32:06.800 --> 0:32:10.240 The anti Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson 0:32:10.320 --> 0:32:12.520 had his fingers crossed the whole time, and that really 0:32:12.560 --> 0:32:16.520 what he was doing was providing cover for this larger, 0:32:16.920 --> 0:32:21.520 essentially conspiracy of people who actually wore Shakespeare. He was 0:32:21.600 --> 0:32:27.520 blending his his renown to it. Um. Neither one really 0:32:27.640 --> 0:32:30.240 makes sense. I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a 0:32:30.440 --> 0:32:34.719 complete change of heart. Um, it just doesn't quite add up. 0:32:34.800 --> 0:32:38.520 But then also the idea that he he would provide 0:32:38.560 --> 0:32:42.000 that cover for a group of noble people, UM seems 0:32:42.200 --> 0:32:46.000 unlikely as well too. Yeah, I agree. One of the 0:32:46.080 --> 0:32:50.840 first public doubters UH in the eight hundreds was a 0:32:50.920 --> 0:32:56.400 woman named Delia Bacon no relation to Francis Bacon, um, 0:32:56.560 --> 0:33:01.040 although you may think so, because one person that Delia 0:33:01.080 --> 0:33:06.320 Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. Uh. 0:33:06.400 --> 0:33:11.280 Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a 0:33:11.600 --> 0:33:14.400 sort of a long life before she got into UM, 0:33:14.800 --> 0:33:18.720 kind of hating Shakespeare. Yeah, hating him, like really didn't 0:33:18.760 --> 0:33:21.440 like Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was 0:33:21.560 --> 0:33:26.120 not the author. And um, her idea was that it 0:33:26.280 --> 0:33:30.400 was Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some 0:33:30.560 --> 0:33:34.960 other people too, who were these very well regarded people 0:33:35.120 --> 0:33:39.000 of you know, philosophy and politics and science, who would 0:33:39.040 --> 0:33:42.320 not have been allowed to put forth these plays and 0:33:42.400 --> 0:33:44.880 what these plays, what they really were, were not even 0:33:44.960 --> 0:33:47.800 meant for entertainment or for the stage. They were meant 0:33:47.840 --> 0:33:52.240 to be sort of biting criticisms of all kinds of 0:33:52.320 --> 0:33:54.920 various things that these gentlemen could not put their name 0:33:55.000 --> 0:33:58.040 on Yeah, so there's Yeah, either they couldn't put their 0:33:58.120 --> 0:34:00.479 name on it because they would be executed, is basically 0:34:00.560 --> 0:34:03.920 treasonous to the crown because they were, you know, putting 0:34:03.960 --> 0:34:08.200 forth the idea of social reform and you know, women's 0:34:08.360 --> 0:34:12.640 rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots of the nobility. Um. 0:34:13.080 --> 0:34:16.480 Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that 0:34:16.640 --> 0:34:18.920 was introduced and I think the eighteen seventies, and that 0:34:19.160 --> 0:34:25.279 was that they just just out of um noble nobility 0:34:25.600 --> 0:34:28.920 no bless, I guess they wouldn't deign to have their 0:34:28.960 --> 0:34:32.560 stuff published. It would it would erode their social reputation, 0:34:33.560 --> 0:34:37.080 even accepting the idea that they would be beheaded for treason. 0:34:37.320 --> 0:34:39.800 So there are a couple of reasons that that somebody 0:34:39.920 --> 0:34:43.239 like um Francis Bacon would have to cover up his 0:34:43.360 --> 0:34:47.320 identity if he were actually Shakespeare. And that same stigma 0:34:47.360 --> 0:34:52.120 of print and um political cover argument gets extended to 0:34:52.200 --> 0:34:55.600 other people beyond Bacon too. Yeah, and that you know, 0:34:55.760 --> 0:34:57.839 it makes a little bit of sense. Um. As far 0:34:57.880 --> 0:35:01.880 as Delia Bacon, she was able to talk Ralph Waldo 0:35:01.960 --> 0:35:06.120 Emerson into basically kind of buying her story and he 0:35:06.400 --> 0:35:10.160 arranged for her sponsorship basically to go to England to 0:35:10.239 --> 0:35:14.360 kind of research this. Apparently in England she she was 0:35:14.440 --> 0:35:18.120 kind of on record saying that she didn't research history 0:35:18.160 --> 0:35:21.040 books or records and things like that. She believed that 0:35:21.320 --> 0:35:25.200 the the proof was sort of in the plays themselves, uh, 0:35:25.360 --> 0:35:29.640 and in the in the text basically like with these clues, um. Apparently, 0:35:29.680 --> 0:35:31.719 she used to go to Shakespeare's tom a lot and 0:35:32.200 --> 0:35:34.640 and kind of just you know, hang out there and 0:35:34.719 --> 0:35:37.600 like try to convince the I guess the tomb keeper 0:35:37.680 --> 0:35:40.680 whoever you know takes care of the cemetery, the keeper, Yeah, 0:35:40.680 --> 0:35:42.960 the crypt keeper. I didn't want to say it to 0:35:43.080 --> 0:35:46.480 be let In and like almost got in at one 0:35:46.520 --> 0:35:49.040 point apparently, but I think she got sick and couldn't. 0:35:49.200 --> 0:35:51.839 And but she thought that the you know, the deep 0:35:51.920 --> 0:35:55.160 secret was within that tomb. Yeah. She kind of kicked 0:35:55.239 --> 0:36:02.520 off the nuttier um can up of the um questioning 0:36:02.600 --> 0:36:06.080 of of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off the whole thing, 0:36:06.400 --> 0:36:08.520 she she put like kind of a nutty sheen to it, 0:36:08.640 --> 0:36:10.960 like the idea that you could get your answers just 0:36:11.080 --> 0:36:13.920 from reading the plays, that the clues were in there. 0:36:14.200 --> 0:36:16.640 The thing is is Francis Bacon was known to to 0:36:17.080 --> 0:36:21.200 amuse himself by including you know, hidden codes and messages 0:36:21.320 --> 0:36:24.799 in his writings. So if it was Francis Bacon, that's 0:36:24.840 --> 0:36:27.879 not that much of a stretch. And supposedly Mark Twain 0:36:28.000 --> 0:36:31.480 and some friends UM did actually turn up. If you 0:36:31.600 --> 0:36:35.400 read the first folio, there is I guess some series 0:36:35.480 --> 0:36:42.919 of lines that spell out Francisco Bacon. No, it's pretty good. 0:36:43.040 --> 0:36:46.320 I mean, here's the thing, though, Francis Bacon wrote a 0:36:46.400 --> 0:36:49.000 lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot 0:36:49.080 --> 0:36:54.200 of fiction and pros or didn't he write no evidence 0:36:54.280 --> 0:36:56.680 that he ever wrote any kind of plays. Did he 0:36:57.239 --> 0:36:59.920 write that there was this other thing that kind of 0:37:00.080 --> 0:37:03.279 came along. So Delia Bacon is widely regarded as the 0:37:03.320 --> 0:37:07.680 person who kicked off the was Shakespeare Shakespeare idea UM, 0:37:07.920 --> 0:37:11.000 But supposedly there was a person who came before her, 0:37:11.160 --> 0:37:15.400 James Wilmot, who in one sat down to UM write 0:37:15.440 --> 0:37:19.800 a biography of Shakespeare and did all the research in 0:37:19.920 --> 0:37:25.839 London and Stratford on Avon, and UM was astonished by 0:37:25.960 --> 0:37:30.200 the lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays 0:37:30.239 --> 0:37:32.719 and started to suspect it and that he kicked it off. 0:37:32.880 --> 0:37:39.160 The thing is, the anti Shakespeare side has been accused 0:37:39.360 --> 0:37:43.160 of making those documents up, of forging those documents to 0:37:43.320 --> 0:37:48.600 support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory. Interesting. Yeah, so they 0:37:48.640 --> 0:37:52.440 weren't discovered until one, which is pretty convenient, and it's 0:37:52.600 --> 0:37:56.480 entirely possible that they were just forged. All right, should 0:37:56.480 --> 0:37:59.239 we take another break here? Yeah, let's all right, we'll 0:37:59.280 --> 0:38:02.040 take another break. We'll talk a little bit more about 0:38:02.040 --> 0:38:34.239 whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff. So one more thing about 0:38:34.320 --> 0:38:36.359 Delia Baking before we wrap it up. Like you said, 0:38:36.400 --> 0:38:42.600 she was a good writer, um, and her exhaustive examination 0:38:42.800 --> 0:38:45.680 of the texts of Shakespeare's plays resulted in a six 0:38:45.960 --> 0:38:49.680 d and twenty page book, The Philosophy of the Plays 0:38:49.760 --> 0:38:54.800 of Shakespeare Unfolded. And Um, she's often credited with with 0:38:54.960 --> 0:38:58.320 basically pre figuring, if not kicking off, the idea of 0:38:58.680 --> 0:39:02.560 literary criticism close readings of stuff to find other meanings. 0:39:02.920 --> 0:39:06.920 And she was doing it to expose noble people as Shakespeare. 0:39:07.000 --> 0:39:10.279 But but she was really good at it, and people said, well, hey, 0:39:10.320 --> 0:39:12.520 maybe we should do this for other stuff too. Yeah, 0:39:13.200 --> 0:39:16.440 And like ironically, because she kind of um, I mean, 0:39:16.560 --> 0:39:19.080 you know, the various tawdry accounts say she was driven 0:39:19.120 --> 0:39:24.000 to madness. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but 0:39:24.080 --> 0:39:26.880 it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in 0:39:27.000 --> 0:39:29.240 the latter stages of her life, and that her family 0:39:29.320 --> 0:39:32.400 was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that. Right, So 0:39:32.640 --> 0:39:36.040 Francis Bacon was um not the only person put forth. 0:39:36.120 --> 0:39:40.320 And there's probably, as far as like um believers go, 0:39:40.920 --> 0:39:43.600 somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him, and 0:39:43.680 --> 0:39:47.120 that would be um, the the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 0:39:47.280 --> 0:39:51.640 Edward de Vere Right. Yeah, I mean there's a whole uh, 0:39:53.080 --> 0:39:56.320 there's a whole camp and a whole other and you know, 0:39:56.640 --> 0:40:00.279 we can't get into this too too much indeed, tale 0:40:00.320 --> 0:40:03.719 but there's a whole movement that says out of the 0:40:03.800 --> 0:40:06.560 eight people like we really think it was the seventeenth 0:40:06.600 --> 0:40:09.480 Earl of Oxford. Yeah, there's it's called the oxford Ian 0:40:09.640 --> 0:40:14.160 theory of Shakespearean authorship, and there is you know, um, 0:40:14.480 --> 0:40:17.479 some stuff to it. He was a poet, um, which 0:40:17.920 --> 0:40:21.719 points out that's so much for the stigma of print um, 0:40:22.360 --> 0:40:26.160 and that also, uh, you can compare his poetry and 0:40:26.360 --> 0:40:29.279 in like some specific works of poetry to some of 0:40:29.360 --> 0:40:34.640 Shakespeare's poetry um, and see some real comparisons. But um, 0:40:34.920 --> 0:40:38.400 as far as I can tell, the the questions are 0:40:38.480 --> 0:40:43.360 the similarities, and there um, if I'm not mistaken, like 0:40:43.840 --> 0:40:47.040 and that to me it was the sixth Earl of Derby, 0:40:47.200 --> 0:40:53.040 who has a little more, um, a little more to offer. Really, um, 0:40:53.600 --> 0:40:56.360 there was there was one other thing. So Derby has 0:40:56.400 --> 0:41:00.400 his own group, the Derbyites man. This is what I mean. 0:41:00.520 --> 0:41:02.719 It's an onion. It's a Bluemen onion. So there was 0:41:02.800 --> 0:41:05.399 one other thing about Dave that is pretty suspicious. There 0:41:05.440 --> 0:41:10.600 were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man 0:41:10.840 --> 0:41:14.719 who was raised in the same household as Davie. And 0:41:15.160 --> 0:41:18.040 from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would 0:41:18.040 --> 0:41:21.520 know this person, and why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems. 0:41:21.560 --> 0:41:25.120 So this this noble nobleman he didn't know, um, But 0:41:26.000 --> 0:41:28.560 Davie certainly knew him. He was he was basically raised 0:41:28.560 --> 0:41:31.480 alongside him like a brother. So that along with the 0:41:31.640 --> 0:41:36.080 biographical reading, the close reading looking for parallels between Davie's 0:41:36.160 --> 0:41:39.440 life and Shakespeare's plays are what kind of back up 0:41:39.480 --> 0:41:44.520 the Oxfordian theories. Interesting because that Christopher Marlowe is another 0:41:44.560 --> 0:41:48.600 one who was a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's and 0:41:48.640 --> 0:41:53.160 they collaborated and they influenced one another. And this the 0:41:53.280 --> 0:41:57.919 details around Marlowe's death are uh hinky enough to where 0:41:58.000 --> 0:42:00.400 some people thought or at least the you know, the 0:42:00.680 --> 0:42:05.840 conspiracy is that is that he faked his death because 0:42:05.880 --> 0:42:08.160 he was gonna going to be executed by the crown 0:42:08.920 --> 0:42:12.879 and continued to write and then used his friend Billy 0:42:12.960 --> 0:42:17.600 Shakespeare as a front to continue to get those plays out. Um, 0:42:18.640 --> 0:42:22.320 I'm not really sure about this because I don't know 0:42:22.400 --> 0:42:23.960 that's that it's just a little far fetched. If you 0:42:24.000 --> 0:42:26.560 asked me, well, yeah, if and if you're if you're 0:42:26.640 --> 0:42:31.040 supposing that Marlowe faked his death in order to continue writing, 0:42:31.320 --> 0:42:34.560 you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped in a conspiracy 0:42:34.640 --> 0:42:39.120 theory maybe. But it's interesting because you know, marlow is 0:42:39.160 --> 0:42:42.000 a pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly he may have 0:42:42.120 --> 0:42:45.680 been a secret agent for the crown. Um, he was 0:42:45.719 --> 0:42:50.200 an atheist, he was his own playwright. People loved him 0:42:50.239 --> 0:42:52.840 as a playwright at the time. Um, but he was 0:42:52.920 --> 0:42:57.640 no Shakespeare Like literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you 0:42:57.719 --> 0:43:02.080 could attribute um shakespeare writings too, because marlow was gloomy 0:43:02.560 --> 0:43:07.480 and super atheist and and um he was. His plays 0:43:07.560 --> 0:43:11.239 just didn't have that same kind of humanism and um 0:43:11.680 --> 0:43:15.480 funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. And also, why wouldn't Marlow 0:43:15.640 --> 0:43:17.719 just write these plays under his own name? He had 0:43:17.760 --> 0:43:22.160 no reason to write these plays under different names. Yeah, agreed. Uh, 0:43:22.400 --> 0:43:24.920 there have been people that put forth the idea that 0:43:25.680 --> 0:43:28.920 the there were several different women that might have been 0:43:28.960 --> 0:43:32.080 the real authors because uh, women were not allowed to 0:43:32.120 --> 0:43:35.040 write plays at the time. Um, eight percent of the 0:43:35.120 --> 0:43:39.240 plays written during this time were anonymous and no author 0:43:39.320 --> 0:43:41.279 was listed. And a lot of people said, hey, a 0:43:41.360 --> 0:43:43.160 lot of these were written by women and they just 0:43:43.320 --> 0:43:46.759 couldn't put their name on it. Um. Many of Shakespeare's 0:43:46.760 --> 0:43:52.440 plays and ideas are very progressive. Um, it's kind of 0:43:52.560 --> 0:43:56.759 a kind of a I don't know about flimsy, but 0:43:56.960 --> 0:43:59.360 it kind of demeans Shakespeare a bit to say that like, 0:43:59.719 --> 0:44:02.040 well had to be a woman because they were so 0:44:02.160 --> 0:44:05.879 progressive about women like taking a stand, when in fact, 0:44:05.920 --> 0:44:09.920 Shakespeare seemingly very much thought that way himself, right, Like 0:44:10.000 --> 0:44:13.719 how could a man write women like this? Come on? Yeah, Um, 0:44:14.000 --> 0:44:16.960 there's a woman named Mary Sidmund Herbert who has a 0:44:17.000 --> 0:44:20.480 whole foundation that's trying to prove that she wrote. Um. 0:44:20.719 --> 0:44:24.080 Kind of the worst of the Internet happened about seven 0:44:24.160 --> 0:44:27.120 years ago when you get these memes that are just 0:44:28.000 --> 0:44:31.760 full of false stuff and then everyone starts spreading them around. 0:44:32.760 --> 0:44:35.880 Uh there was a meme when all over social media 0:44:36.320 --> 0:44:38.680 that just had the picture of this black woman and 0:44:38.760 --> 0:44:43.040 said this is Amelia Bassano. H she really wrote Shakespeare stuff. 0:44:43.480 --> 0:44:46.879 She was not allowed to be a published author because 0:44:46.920 --> 0:44:48.960 she was a black woman at a time where she 0:44:49.080 --> 0:44:52.400 was suppressed and all this stuff. Um, none of this 0:44:52.600 --> 0:44:56.520 stuff was true. Um, first of all, she was maybe Moroccan. 0:44:56.680 --> 0:44:59.600 She was definitely not of African descent. Oh I thought 0:44:59.640 --> 0:45:03.600 she was some Venetian. I saw that she was Moroccan 0:45:03.680 --> 0:45:05.800 and had some Italian in her, so that, yeah, it 0:45:05.800 --> 0:45:08.120 makes a little sense. But she was definitely not of 0:45:08.160 --> 0:45:12.960 African descent. Um, she was a published author, So the 0:45:13.200 --> 0:45:15.799 whole notion that she wasn't allowed to publish things wasn't right. 0:45:15.920 --> 0:45:18.920 She was kind of a well known, uh poet I 0:45:19.000 --> 0:45:21.879 think at the time. So this kind of thing gets 0:45:21.880 --> 0:45:24.000 passed along the internet and then you know, half the 0:45:24.040 --> 0:45:25.719 people that see it just say, oh, we'll look at 0:45:25.760 --> 0:45:28.800 that Shakespeare was was It was all written by this 0:45:28.960 --> 0:45:32.320 lady back then. Problems. Yeah, problem solved. And that's just 0:45:32.719 --> 0:45:34.640 not how it works. One of the other things I 0:45:34.719 --> 0:45:37.440 saw that um, And I think the people who are 0:45:37.520 --> 0:45:40.000 like Shakespeare as a woman are like, well, okay, if 0:45:40.040 --> 0:45:42.719 we're if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship, we can't 0:45:42.760 --> 0:45:46.440 ignore this whole group of people who had every reason 0:45:46.600 --> 0:45:50.000 to hide their identity as authors of these plays because 0:45:50.080 --> 0:45:53.120 they were women and they weren't do this kind of stuff. Um. 0:45:53.360 --> 0:45:57.640 So there was a critic who in wrote of a 0:45:58.040 --> 0:46:01.560 um who praised a gentlewoman who was writing some amazing 0:46:01.880 --> 0:46:05.480 plays and sonnets. And this was the year after Shakespeare 0:46:05.520 --> 0:46:09.440 pops back up um, after his lost years, and when 0:46:09.480 --> 0:46:12.240 he was starting to write um. But that the critics 0:46:12.280 --> 0:46:13.959 said he didn't want to reveal who it was because 0:46:14.000 --> 0:46:16.239 he didn't want to basically get her in trouble. So 0:46:16.360 --> 0:46:18.640 that's what some other people kind of look at and say, see, 0:46:19.200 --> 0:46:22.279 Shakespeare was a woman. Well, I mean, I think I 0:46:22.360 --> 0:46:24.440 think this theory makes a lot more sense a lot 0:46:24.520 --> 0:46:28.239 of the others, you know, just by this year fact 0:46:28.360 --> 0:46:31.359 that women would not have been allowed to So uh, 0:46:31.600 --> 0:46:35.239 maybe Shakespeare was progressive and decided to be a front 0:46:35.280 --> 0:46:39.320 for these great works. But it reveals a point about 0:46:39.600 --> 0:46:43.760 UM being a anti Shakespeare, anti I guess Stratford person 0:46:44.480 --> 0:46:47.320 is you have to part of his You have to 0:46:47.440 --> 0:46:51.200 explain why somebody would want to fake authorship, would want 0:46:51.239 --> 0:46:54.200 to hide behind Shakespeare's name. Yeah, what do you call that? 0:46:54.360 --> 0:47:01.000 A motive? Yeah, you got means motive, an opportunity. You 0:47:01.080 --> 0:47:05.120 put those three together, you got your Shakespeare. Well that's 0:47:05.160 --> 0:47:07.400 what I mean about the maybe women wrote them. I mean, 0:47:07.440 --> 0:47:11.160 there was definite motive there, right exactly. So there was 0:47:11.239 --> 0:47:13.160 one other thing that happened. I mean a lot of 0:47:13.160 --> 0:47:15.640 stuff happened over the course of this hundred almost two 0:47:15.719 --> 0:47:19.800 hundred years now, UM of questioning Shakespeare's authorship Back in 0:47:20.640 --> 0:47:25.799 seven a UM OX forty and UM Charlton Augburn got 0:47:26.040 --> 0:47:29.600 the UM at least three sitting Supreme Court justices John 0:47:29.640 --> 0:47:32.840 Paul Stevens, William Brennan, and Harry Blackman to hold a 0:47:32.960 --> 0:47:37.040 mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was the author 0:47:37.080 --> 0:47:40.359 of Shakespeare's plays, and they did on c span they 0:47:40.400 --> 0:47:43.040 had They held like a trial and heard the evidence, 0:47:43.120 --> 0:47:46.040 and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him, and 0:47:46.280 --> 0:47:50.799 UM it was pretty interesting, but they they it went 0:47:50.920 --> 0:47:53.080 two to two to one, I think in favor of 0:47:53.440 --> 0:47:56.640 of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author. But they did 0:47:56.719 --> 0:47:59.200 like real research and stuff. It wasn't just like a 0:47:59.680 --> 0:48:04.000 you know, yeah stunt no, So the Supreme Court justices 0:48:04.080 --> 0:48:06.719 were kind of taking a tongue in cheek. But I 0:48:06.800 --> 0:48:09.920 got the impression that Charlton Augburn was like, yes, finally 0:48:09.960 --> 0:48:12.719 going to prove it definitively one way or another, and 0:48:12.880 --> 0:48:16.719 it didn't even fall in his favor. Interesting, Yeah, it 0:48:16.880 --> 0:48:19.320 is interesting what people did in the eighties on c SPAN. 0:48:21.480 --> 0:48:23.560 I got a few more little things here from that 0:48:23.640 --> 0:48:28.880 Atlantic article that point to his authorship is being genuine. 0:48:29.719 --> 0:48:32.040 One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus 0:48:32.080 --> 0:48:34.920 and Adonis that was a very popular poem at the 0:48:35.000 --> 0:48:38.160 time that was put in print. Uh and it was 0:48:38.239 --> 0:48:41.839 printed by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went 0:48:41.880 --> 0:48:45.040 to school with him at Stratford. So that's a that's 0:48:45.040 --> 0:48:49.120 a pretty good little hint um he was written about 0:48:49.200 --> 0:48:51.520 at the time, So it's not like he was never 0:48:51.640 --> 0:48:54.040 known until his death and then all of a sudden 0:48:54.080 --> 0:48:57.480 became super popular, Like he died a rich man and 0:48:58.120 --> 0:49:02.799 was written about with by literary critics UM at the time, 0:49:02.960 --> 0:49:07.040 and and entertainment and play critics, so they were contemporaneous 0:49:07.680 --> 0:49:10.760 UM criticisms of his writing while he was still living, 0:49:11.440 --> 0:49:14.120 which which is a pretty you know, pretty big clue 0:49:14.239 --> 0:49:17.320 that he probably wrote this stuff. That is not proof, no, 0:49:17.640 --> 0:49:20.560 because those people could be there. They went and saw 0:49:20.600 --> 0:49:23.000 a play by Shakespeare. They didn't mean that they met 0:49:23.080 --> 0:49:25.960 Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the 0:49:26.040 --> 0:49:29.520 place and leaned up his shoulder while he wrote it. Right. Proof. 0:49:31.120 --> 0:49:33.080 The other last thing that I saw in the Atlantic 0:49:33.200 --> 0:49:34.840 article this is the one, or actually this was in 0:49:34.920 --> 0:49:38.800 a this was the Golden bullet from that video was 0:49:40.600 --> 0:49:46.120 Shakespeare was apparently concerned that, um, his dad's reputation sort 0:49:46.160 --> 0:49:49.239 of in the family's reputation suffered later in life because 0:49:49.280 --> 0:49:52.160 of financial problems that his dad had, and he really 0:49:52.239 --> 0:49:54.759 wanted to kind of restore their name and get a 0:49:54.840 --> 0:49:57.840 coat of arms made, which is, uh, you could, you know, 0:49:57.960 --> 0:49:59.759 it's like you could be a true gentleman if you 0:49:59.800 --> 0:50:02.080 had a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really 0:50:02.160 --> 0:50:04.040 long process. They don't just hand him out to anybody. 0:50:04.080 --> 0:50:06.520 You've gotta like have a certain level of achievement to 0:50:06.560 --> 0:50:09.480 get a coat of arms. So he went through this big, 0:50:09.560 --> 0:50:12.879 long process and had he went all Barry Linden on there. 0:50:13.440 --> 0:50:16.319 Oh man, what a movie. Um. He had a couple 0:50:16.360 --> 0:50:20.879 of different men in the Herald's office who defended Shakespeare's 0:50:20.960 --> 0:50:22.719 right to have a coat of arms because other people 0:50:22.760 --> 0:50:25.200 were saying, who is this guy? Even like he came 0:50:25.280 --> 0:50:27.600 from not much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms. 0:50:28.239 --> 0:50:30.360 And one of the guys who defended him was a 0:50:30.400 --> 0:50:34.040 man named William Camden, who this guy in the video 0:50:34.120 --> 0:50:36.200 referred to as one of the most learned men in 0:50:36.280 --> 0:50:40.440 all of England. Uh. He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster 0:50:41.440 --> 0:50:45.040 and apparently just knew everything on happening on the literary 0:50:45.120 --> 0:50:48.360 scene inside and out. And in one of his books 0:50:49.040 --> 0:50:51.919 he uh it was called the Remains of a Greater History. 0:50:52.000 --> 0:50:53.879 He talks about all the great writers of the time 0:50:54.640 --> 0:50:59.240 and he lists William Shakespeare of Avon Uh in that book. 0:50:59.320 --> 0:51:04.080 So he said, that's the golden bullet. Uh again, if 0:51:04.120 --> 0:51:06.359 it's just a front, it's still in no real proof 0:51:06.400 --> 0:51:09.520 of authorship. No it's not. I mean like this guy 0:51:09.600 --> 0:51:14.080 could just be playing along lending his his Yeah, that's 0:51:14.080 --> 0:51:16.640 another one. Too. Like that's the thing, like the anti 0:51:17.080 --> 0:51:23.640 Stratfordians have caused the pro Stratfordians to actually defend their position, 0:51:24.480 --> 0:51:27.239 and in doing so, it's kind of revealed that both 0:51:27.280 --> 0:51:30.480 of them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost 0:51:30.560 --> 0:51:32.480 just a matter of belief. Do you want to believe 0:51:32.600 --> 0:51:36.240 that one man was that brilliant and and that talented 0:51:36.280 --> 0:51:38.960 and gifted um or do you can? Can you just 0:51:39.120 --> 0:51:41.360 not believe that? It just doesn't make any sense to you. 0:51:41.480 --> 0:51:44.480 So it was a cabal of noble people who were 0:51:45.000 --> 0:51:48.880 trying to advance political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare 0:51:48.880 --> 0:51:52.320 and paying him off with maybe um family crests and 0:51:52.440 --> 0:51:56.359 money and and fame to to let let them use 0:51:56.440 --> 0:52:00.239 his name as their you know, the playwright. Yeah, also 0:52:00.280 --> 0:52:02.760 say like where he was from. There was some regional 0:52:02.840 --> 0:52:05.239 slang that was very specific to where he was from 0:52:05.360 --> 0:52:08.320 that was used. Uh, there was in Taming of the 0:52:08.360 --> 0:52:13.319 Shrew he mentions these Latin phrases that are in specifically 0:52:13.480 --> 0:52:17.800 from a Latin book that apparently was known to have 0:52:17.960 --> 0:52:20.680 been used at his school, at his grammar school in Stratford. 0:52:21.480 --> 0:52:25.239 So again there's all these little hints and clues. All 0:52:25.320 --> 0:52:28.360 of it kind of gave me a headache, right, And 0:52:28.400 --> 0:52:31.719 I was like, can we just like love these plays? Right? Exactly? 0:52:31.960 --> 0:52:35.319 That's exactly right. It's the ultimate point. Let's just love 0:52:35.400 --> 0:52:39.880 the place. People get serious about this though, Yeah, they 0:52:39.960 --> 0:52:42.000 definitely do. I mean it's pretty interesting and I mean 0:52:42.040 --> 0:52:43.480 I get it kind of fun to watch from the 0:52:43.520 --> 0:52:48.120 outside too. Ya Are you got anything else? No, we 0:52:48.160 --> 0:52:51.080 could go on all day, but totally we'd never get anywhere. 0:52:51.239 --> 0:52:53.200 There's like ten things I'm leaving on the table. So 0:52:53.320 --> 0:52:55.359 we just got to keep moving on, right, all right, 0:52:55.520 --> 0:52:58.160 Let's keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to 0:52:58.239 --> 0:53:01.240 know more about Shakespeare and authorship, there is a giant, 0:53:01.480 --> 0:53:04.440 gaping rabbit hole you can jump down on the internet 0:53:04.920 --> 0:53:07.960 and uh say sionar to all of your other pursuits. 0:53:08.320 --> 0:53:11.040 And since I said Sianara, it's time for listener mail. 0:53:13.560 --> 0:53:15.560 I'm gonna call this just came in over the wire. 0:53:15.600 --> 0:53:18.400 I thought it was kind of funny, uh, from our 0:53:18.440 --> 0:53:24.200 friends Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan, about eating about eating squid, 0:53:24.960 --> 0:53:27.759 says love the show fellas reason not to be so 0:53:27.920 --> 0:53:33.240 touchy though about eating squid. They are child murdering sea vermin, 0:53:34.640 --> 0:53:37.759 he said. The reason squid die after they made is 0:53:37.800 --> 0:53:41.160 a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the 0:53:41.280 --> 0:53:46.040 eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid 0:53:46.120 --> 0:53:50.480 in the spawning areas. Uh, squidly did lee is an 0:53:51.680 --> 0:53:57.400 infanticidal maniac and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably, 0:53:57.480 --> 0:54:00.960 of course. Uh So that's the argument, is that these 0:54:01.000 --> 0:54:03.680 squids deserve to be eaten because they would be eating 0:54:03.719 --> 0:54:08.359 themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says 0:54:08.400 --> 0:54:11.880 telled Josh not to eat uncooked squid. That's not great, 0:54:12.239 --> 0:54:16.399 all right, and uh kind regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan, 0:54:16.520 --> 0:54:21.280 a squid haven and a squid inc pasta destination. Stephen, 0:54:21.360 --> 0:54:24.759 that was a really great eye opening email. I may 0:54:24.840 --> 0:54:26.759 have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll have 0:54:26.800 --> 0:54:32.520 to get back to you, Okay, okay, thank you for 0:54:32.640 --> 0:54:35.440 responding to that, Stephen. If you want to be like 0:54:35.600 --> 0:54:37.719 Stephen and get in touch with us and send us 0:54:37.760 --> 0:54:41.680 a potentially eye opening email, you can do that. Send 0:54:41.719 --> 0:54:44.520 it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. 0:54:47.920 --> 0:54:50.160 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. 0:54:50.719 --> 0:54:53.520 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio 0:54:53.600 --> 0:54:56.920 app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.