No, I am not the Earl of Oxford. Fuck you.

[julius-caeser]

BOYS NIGHT, 15th March, Senate! bring your own booze! remember what happens in the senate stays in the senate ;). BOYS NIGHT BOYS NIGHT BOYS NIGHT

[the-real-will-shakespeare]

Hmm.

[strelka]

excuse the fuck out of me. they stole this from my dear mutual’s blog title

[sjweminem]

Historical RPF is valid. My wife and I have had some of the best sex of our marriage as Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe

i just woke up

[listing-to-port]

People who might have written Shakespeare’s plays

The ale-pushing hand of Kit Marlowe’s ghost; metaqueen Elizabeth the zeroth; Prospero, of whom Shakespeare is the lightly fictionalised equivalent; a passing bear; they are a group effort and ongoing in-joke of the time travelling community; they are the work of trees trying to decipher human behaviour, each peer-reviewed by more than a dozen larches; Bacon (two slices of); Sir Thomas More; Sir Thomas More than that; Sir Thomas Most; Stonehenge but with fingers; Don Quixote; you (having the advantage that you may have read them first); the dark lady; a vague but pen-having sense of patriotism; in a stunning twist, it was the anthropomorphic personification of the authorship question itself; Shakespeare.

[moosearesocool]

good post! but you’re of course forgetting:

a bunch of vengeful Oxfordians; Tom Stoppard ; Hamlet (the younger); Hamnet (the only); the Western canon; the academy winning actress Anne Hathaway; a Catholic plot to overthrow her majesty the queen, the Bard (whoever that guy was); the vague sense of uneasiness and inherent snobbery; the concept of genius; the relative irrelevance of the authorship question; the ancient entity of Kenneth Branagh’s moustache 

[rollhistory]

Hot take: not only is the internet's oversexualisation of the Bard not funny, it actively detracts from the experience of playing as one

[rollhistory]

William Shakespeare WISHES he were constantly oversexualised on the internet

[rollhistory]

[listing-to-port]

People who might have written Shakespeare’s plays

The ale-pushing hand of Kit Marlowe’s ghost; metaqueen Elizabeth the zeroth; Prospero, of whom Shakespeare is the lightly fictionalised equivalent; a passing bear; they are a group effort and ongoing in-joke of the time travelling community; they are the work of trees trying to decipher human behaviour, each peer-reviewed by more than a dozen larches; Bacon (two slices of); Sir Thomas More; Sir Thomas More than that; Sir Thomas Most; Stonehenge but with fingers; Don Quixote; you (having the advantage that you may have read them first); the dark lady; a vague but pen-having sense of patriotism; in a stunning twist, it was the anthropomorphic personification of the authorship question itself; Shakespeare.

[copperbadge]

I personally like the time-travel community theory the best because it means every once in a while they can go back and add more, and we all just think “Holy shit, it’s impressive one man with a quill and parchment wrote 23 29 31 33 37 45 52 plays of such quality! “ because it keeps happening before any of us have been born. 

Like “Yeah Much Ado About Nothing is a classic of course but I personally think his version of Medusa is a more feminist play.”  “Oh, like how I appreciate Midsummer Night’s Dream but The Comedie Of Many Friends is just plain funnier.” 

(The Comedie Of Many Friends is really just four episodes of Friends rewritten to contain more dick jokes and is 100% not as funny as Midsummer but there’s no accounting for some peoples’ tastes.)

[listing-to-port]

People who might have written Shakespeare’s plays

The ale-pushing hand of Kit Marlowe’s ghost; metaqueen Elizabeth the zeroth; Prospero, of whom Shakespeare is the lightly fictionalised equivalent; a passing bear; they are a group effort and ongoing in-joke of the time travelling community; they are the work of trees trying to decipher human behaviour, each peer-reviewed by more than a dozen larches; Bacon (two slices of); Sir Thomas More; Sir Thomas More than that; Sir Thomas Most; Stonehenge but with fingers; Don Quixote; you (having the advantage that you may have read them first); the dark lady; a vague but pen-having sense of patriotism; in a stunning twist, it was the anthropomorphic personification of the authorship question itself; Shakespeare.

[conan-doyles-carnations]

Happy birthday Shakespeare. Thanks for your brilliant plays, massive contribution to the English language, and your bisexual sonnets which have been annoying homophobes for centuries.

[the-real-will-shakespeare]

If Shakespeare was alive in 2017:

Someone: POLITICS and ART should always be SEPARATE! There is NO REASON why ART should be POLITICAL!

William Shakespeare: *laughs. writes 3 more tiny hand jokes into his latest play, King Tiny Hands.*

[schmergo]

The plays of William Shakespeare were actually written by three badgers and a bee #alternativefacts

[onlyfangz]

i refuse to apologize for doing this, it’s amazing and fuck you

[goodticklebrain]

THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS, SIRRAH

[the-real-will-shakespeare]

Okay so I have a couple of questions regarding the whole Globe drama, because I’m very sad to see Emma Rice go but I also don’t have the whole picture. Needless to say no one on tumblr does, but if anyone has some pointers I’d be grateful. 

My main question is, I guess: In what way exactly has Emma Rice prevented the Globe from fulfilling its research function, its achievement of authentic space, etc. etc.? 

More specifically, the main thing that keeps coming up is that she had holes drilled through the stage which, I agree entirely, is highly problematic. (As an aside, this is usually phrased in such a way as to imply that she personally attacked the stage with a drill. I’m assuming she didn’t actually do that, but for all that the holes in the stage make me shudder, I do find the image somewhat amusing.) So, anyway, did she like, just make that decision on her own? Does being artistic director give her that kind of power or was it actually carried by other people who are now silently reneging on their own position? 

Relatedly, were there any other issues on that level or was there any indication she was going to make more decisions that actually physically impact on the space?

[skeleton-richard]

Unpopular opinion: Shakespeare actually wrote Shakespeare

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I haven’t heard any modern anti-Stratfordian arguments actually?

[shredsandpatches]

That really isn’t an unpopular opinion at all – there are no legitimate experts who believe anything else, and even in the mainstream press (where the assumption traditionally has been that this is an issue only academics would care about, so anyone who has an opinion must be an academic) Shakespeare doubters have lost the foothold they had even a decade ago. Twenty years ago, Harper’s published a special issue on the “controversy,” with articles arguing both sides; I can’t imagine something like that happening today.

What happened, ironically, is the movie Anonymous, which was meant to bring the theory that the real author of the plays was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, into the mainstream. Even setting aside the fact that Anonymous was a terrible movie that nobody saw, its release mobilized the field of Shakespeare studies, which traditionally has not dignified the authorship “question” with a response. Leading the charge have been the venerable Stanley Wells (now Sir) and Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who are legitimate experts with unassailable credentials so accusations from anti-Stratfordians of being shills for the Shakespeare-industrial conference have rightly failed to stick. James Shapiro’s book Contested Will, which traces the history of the “controversy,” has also helped to dispel the idea that there’s any serious doubt over the authorship of the plays (it takes as given Shakespeare’s authorship and explains the origins of the Baconian and Oxfordian theories in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively).

Finally, a major trend in Shakespeare studies in the 2010s is the focus on collaboration, and on instances in which Shakespeare actually did work with other authors – both on the plays traditionally attributed to him alone (the number that may have someone else’s hand in them is at most about ten of the canonical 37, and two of those are probably posthumous adaptations), and on plays outside of the “Shakespeare canon.” This work has given us both a stronger sense of what qualities are unique to Shakespeare stylistically, and a more complete picture of the early modern theatrical world, a context in which the writing was done by professional playwrights with career-level theatrical commitments, not titled nobs who spent most of their time attempting to get the rights to tin mines or Lord Chancellors who were busy inventing the scientific method in their spare time. Which means that Shakespeare studies has even more ammunition at a time when its guns are finally trained on the whole authorship thing. So I think the idea that there’s any real doubt is in the process of being laid to rest. There are certainly still true believers out there, but they’re way more insular than they used to be; I think it’s generally pretty widely accepted now that all that stuff is just a crackpot theory.

[skeleton-richard]

Thank you for that addition ^

As I said, I’ve never heard a modern argument for anti-Stratfordism. Because it’s garbage.

[dukeofbookingham-deactivated202]

The next person who finds out I did my MA in Shakespeare and immediately asks “So did he really write the plays?” like they’re so clever and funny and the first person to ever ask that is getting punched in the throat, no hesitation

[the-real-will-shakespeare]

Punch them hard and tell them you have my blessing.

[jpechacek]

Inktober #10. 🎶brush up your Shakespeare🎶

[the-real-will-shakespeare]

WDDD? (what did derek do?)

be an oxfordian

(every now and then i remember sir ian’s response to that and snigger)