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As They Don't Like It

As They Don’t Like It

I have to laugh at the “critics” who feel it incumbent upon their academic greatness to have an opinion on one or another of the Shakespeare plays as to its “value.” One of the plays that has the critics confused in this way is As You Like It, about which Wikipedia pontificates: “Historically, critical response has varied, with some critics finding the play a work of great merit and some finding…

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Works cited from my upcoming book Shakespeare and the Public Stage

Akrigg, G.P.V. Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968. A.B.G., Rev., ed. “The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell.” Towneley MS. 490.c.13 or G.1401. British Library, London. Adams, Barry B., ed. John Bale’s King Johan. Princeton, NJ: Huntington Library, 1969. Alexander, Mark Andre. “Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Law: A Journey through the History of the…

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Thereby hangs a tale

For centuries English play-goers and readers had been contented with the claim that someone named William Shakespeare was responsible for the plays performed and published under that name. Despite the fact that the name was, and still is, a pun that rather obviously describes what he did––give actors pretending to be soldiers reasons for shaking their prop spears––few scholars had openly…

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Cast of characters

In fitting the characters in the Shakespeare plays to the life of the Earl of Earl of Oxford, one thing must be kept in mind, namely how very small were the communities involved. England is part of an island, roughly two-thirds the size of California. Much of it then was still wooded or otherwise inhabitable. Rivers were the major means of transport, roads being poorly maintained and dangerous.…

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The King’s “Great matter”

The King’s “Great Matter” was the euphemism used by those surrounding Henry VIII for his interminable effort to get a legal divorce from his original Queen so he could marry someone who could provide him with a legal heir. For us today the term might be better used for the real reason why he was so desperate to rid himself of Katherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. This, which had…

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Who was Falstaff?

As we go through Oxford’s life, matching the stages from youth to old age with Shakespeare’s protagonists, from Romeo to Hal to Hamlet to Feste to Lear, Falstaff stands out, not only as his most popular comic character, possibly even rivalling Hamlet for overall popularity, but also as the least like Oxford himself. Falstaff fails to resemble Oxford for the very good reason that unlike…

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Why is it taking so long?

Why is it taking so long for the Academy to deal with the Authorship Question?

It’s so obvious that a man from William of Stratford’s background, that of an uneducated sixteenth-century wool dealer’s son from a town three days ride by horseback from England’s only theatrical city, simply could NOT have written the works of Shakespeare. So why does the Academy lie about that? Why have they…

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Why has it taken so long? A lecture given at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference in October 2019 at the Mark Twain House in Hartford CT.

DNB bio of Sir Thomas North

In a Facebook discussion of Sir Thomas North, the supposed translator of Plutarch’s Lives, I tried to send a pdf of his DNB biography, which did not work. So I’ll try to send it here.

There always been a suspicion that North himself did not translate the first thing he’s been credited with, the Dial of Princes. The evidence for that can be found in his DNB bio. Of course all evidence related…

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For the record

For those whose interest goes deeper than the surface, here’s a list of the proxies (standins, pen names) used by Oxford, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, or the Earls of Pembroke, to get his works published over the years. If there’s an interest I can explain who these individuals were, those who were real, in Oxford’s life.

1562- Arthur Brooke: narrative poem – Romeus and Juliet

1563- L.…

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Prove me right or prove me wrong

Among the great spear-shakers of history, Shakespeare inhabits a realm shared by few others, where the loss of his human identity has left him floating in a void, seemingly divorced from our pantheon of cultural heroes and even from the cultish level achieved by his plays, up there in the charmed circle, the champagne and chandelier-lit halls where people pay a fortune to be seen watching the…

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Dating the plays by Oxford's biography

Dating the plays by Oxford’s biography

Now that we know something of Oxford’s personal timeline we can begin to locate the moment when it’s most likely he was inspired (or driven) to write the first version of a particular play. This is complicated by the fact that all but one or two of his greatest plays are the result of his own revisions over the years (not to mention changes made by the editors of the First Folio) and by the fact…

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Oxford's lady loves

Oxford’s lady loves

As John Vyvyan has demonstrated in his three books about Shakespeare, the Bard was all about love, all kinds of love, romantic, friendship, tender, kind, obsessive, explosive. Shakespeare speaks of a feeling so intense that he compares it to the fevers and chills of malaria, how it made him freeze then fry (a hint that he himself had the disease, as did many in his time). One of his female loves…

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Blog on, blog on, O state of play

Although politicworm is not what it once was, having been thrown into disarray a year ago (or was it two?) by the shifting of priorities within wordpress.com, which for years has allowed me to reach my faithful readers without it costing me or them anything, it seems the blog continues to survive, however changed in appearance and accessibility. Although nothing on the Internet stays the same,…

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Shakespeare's epidemics

Shakespeare’s epidemics

In this time of a worldwide threat to human health, we may wonder whether such threats may have occurred in Oxford’s time. The truth is, yes, they occurred all the time. In the ages before modern sanitation, the microscope and medical science, humans were beleaguered by any number of diseases: some that came in waves, striking with a vicious ferocity that left hundreds dead in their wake; some…

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A new look at Olivier's Hamlet

A new look at Olivier’s Hamlet

Day before yesterday, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) showed Laurence Olivier’s Hamletfrom 1948. I still think it’s the best film version of it ever done, maybe the best film version of any Shakespeare play. It was the first Shakespeare I ever saw, in fact, it was my introduction (I was eleven years old), and I was gobsmacked! I’d already seen a lot of movies by then, parents tended to take their…

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Long story short

At the very peak of the Protestant Reformation campaign to trash the great classics of antiquity as works of heretical paganism deadly to the fragile Christian soul, comes this 12-year-old aristocrat, his mind stuffed by his tutor with the works of the ancient Greek and Roman poets and playwrights. Finding himself sidelined as a living relic of what had once been his nation’s ruling class, the…

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