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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chapter 2: What is the historical context of Shakespeare's authorship debate?
Marilyn Monroe was murdered. Like... That happens when you are one of the biggest icons in your field quite often. So some people say that's all that it is.
In addition to that, there's a... A lack of biographical documentation that he actually did write those plays. And I think that that's also what allows for people to say, you know, well, do we really know?
Right. Or that he didn't write them. It was a time, you know, in the 1500s and 1600s where there just wasn't a ton of great preserved information. And we'll kind of talk about a lot of that.
So we do know that William Shakespeare did live. He was from, like you said, Stratford-on-Avon. It was at the time about a two- to three-day journey from London, about 100-something miles, I think. And he definitely did live. He definitely did exist. That's not a question because we do have documentary evidence that this person lived from 1564 to 1616, about 52 years.
And depending on when you place his birth date, maybe 52 years on the nose. So we know he existed. Again, what's at issue, what's being questioned is whether that man, William Shakespeare from Stratford-on-Avon, who went on to become an actor, who went on to become a producer, who worked in the Globe Theater, whether he was the author of the plays we consider written by Shakespeare.
That's what's at question.
Yeah, so like you said, he was a real dude. He came from a family that was, I mean, I kind of read it as a little bit middle class. They certainly were not like upper class nobility types. His father was a glover. He wore... Well, I guess he wore gloves too, but he made gloves.
Allow me to demonstrate.
It'd be pretty weird if he didn't. That guy won't even wear his own gloves. But he produced these very, very fine gloves for well-to-do people. But he did achieve some... I guess worked his way up the social chain a little bit because eventually he would serve as what's sort of like a mayor in Stratford. And again, while not nobility, like they were fairly well regarded as people. Right.
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Chapter 3: What are the major theories regarding Shakespeare's true identity?
So the last thing that we have, I guess the last documentation, although there's other stuff that's been turned up, they ā did archaeological expeditions on his house. I think his house has been under ownership of a public trust since like the 19th century. And they've carried out archaeological examinations of it. And they found that he went back and forth between London and Stratford.
So they know stuff about him like that. But as far as like documentation goes, the last piece of documentation we have comes in 1616, which is his... will that he wrote and then a few months later he died and the last I guess the last last piece of documentation is his tombstone which in and of itself is curious because his tombstone contains a curse on it but not his name
Yeah, is that the one with the quote?
Yeah, it's a curse. He's saying, like, don't dig me up or you're going to be cursed.
Yeah, it says, Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed be he who moves my bones. Some people point to that as poor writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was a great writer, wouldn't have written this kind of, shabby curse, and other people say, like, who said Shakespeare even wrote that necessarily?
This is a good instructive example of, like, kind of the back and forth between these people, right? This is terrible writing. Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And then the anti-Shakespeare crew says, well, of course he wrote it, because who else would just not think to put his name on his own tombstone?
And the other ones just put their head in their hands and just start crying, and it just goes downhill from there. But that's a really good example of, like, the It's just kind of like people will jump on any single thing that they possibly can and often interpret it one way or the other. So one thing, one single thing provides evidence for both sides. It's that kind of thing.
Yeah, totally. Another thing that people point to is the fact that of ā We don't have a lot of letters and papers and things like that because his family line ended in 1670. I think he had a granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, that died without bearing children. So most of his stuff basically lost as far as family possessions and things like that.
Um, people do point to the will at times and say, well, in his will, you know, he leaves certain things, but like, there's never any mention of any manuscripts. Um, and, and again, this is all like, it's a little weird maybe, but none of this is proof.
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Chapter 4: How did Shakespeare's education influence his writing?
Yeah, I mean, it's another, it's very much like his tombstone, where people are like, it means this. No, it means that, you know?
Yeah, so there's a bust, an effigy of Shakespeare inside the church there in Stratford. And there's been a lot of controversy over this thing because part of it is not necessarily like, was he the author? Although it does play into that, but sort of like, what did he look like? And how do we know that's what he looked like? Like, we've all seen the picture.
And there's like this one painting and this one bust. And that's kind of where everything comes from. And some people say this was done after he was dead. Like we really don't know that that's what he looked like. I think just a couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt that it was actually done.
I think she said it was highly likely done. Professor Orlin said it's highly likely that it was done while he was alive and that he commissioned it because she thinks she knows who did the bust and that that person lived near him and was a regular at the Globe and kind of put all these clues together. But some people say it was his dad and not him because of this whole sack of grain argument.
Yeah.
Yeah, so there was an etching that was made of the bust within some period of time after the bust was erected, but before it was altered. So the bust has definitely been altered.
Yeah.
And it looks like one way you can interpret this thing at the bottom, this puffy thing that's at the hands of the bust, the effigy, as a sack of grain. I don't know if it were a sack of grain why anyone would ever present it in that position. Right. It doesn't make any sense. It's a little weird looking. Right.
So what the anti-Shakespeare, anti-Stratford people are saying is like, yeah, it's his dad. It's not him. Or if it is Shakespeare, he was known for his grain carrying skills, not his writing skills. And the prostrat for people are like, don't be ridiculous. This is obviously a pillow. And at some point, somebody did revise the bust so it is unequivocally a pillow.
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Chapter 5: What evidence exists for Shakespeare's authorship of the plays?
Another thing, as far as evidence goes, is the first folio, which is ā I think it was the first collection ā that they put in print of all of Shakespeare's plays, including 18 that had never been in print before. And there was a, I guess, was it a foreword? Written by a guy named Ben Johnson, who was a rival of Shakespeare's. He was kind of known as a jealous... sort of argumentative guy.
But he calls Shakespeare the swan of Avon and is sort of very laudatory in this foreword. But I think you found stuff later on where he was kind of like, I had my fingers crossed the whole time.
Kind of, yeah. So the pro-Stratford people who believe Shakespeare is Shakespeare say, look, man, this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival, but a real rival, really critical, like had a biting criticism and sense of humor, and also was not one to just be like ā To just bow to nobility or privilege or wealth or status, right?
So if this guy is saying that Shakespeare, the Swan of Avon, which places this man at Stratford-on-Avon, because Ben Johnson is calling him that, that proves that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. The anti-Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson had his fingers crossed the whole time, and that really what he was doing was providing cover for this...
essentially conspiracy of people who actually were Shakespeare. He was lending his renown to it. Neither one really makes sense. I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a complete change of heart, it just doesn't quite add up. But then also the idea that he would provide that cover for a group of noble people seems unlikely as well, too.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. One of the first public doubters in the 1800s was a woman named Delia Bacon, no relation to Francis Bacon, although you may think so because one person that Delia Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. Mm-hmm. Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had sort of a long life before she got into kind of hating Shakespeare. Yeah, hating him.
Like really didn't like Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was not the author. And ā Her idea was that it was Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some other people too, who were these very well-regarded people of philosophy and politics and science who would not have been allowed to put forth these plays.
And what these plays, what they really were, were not even meant for entertainment or for the stage. They were meant to be sort of biting criticisms of of all kinds of various things that these gentlemen could not put their name on.
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Chapter 6: Who are the prominent alternative candidates for authorship?
I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in the latter stages of her life and that her family was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that.
Right. So Francis Bacon was, um, not the only person put forth and there's probably as far as like, um, uh, believers go somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him. And that would be, um, the, the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, right?
Yeah. I mean, there's a whole, uh, there's a whole camp and a whole other, and you know, we can't get into this too, uh, too much in detail, but there's a whole movement that says out of the 80 people, like we really think it was the 17th Earl of Oxford.
Yeah, it's called the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship. And there is, you know, some stuff to it. He was a poet, which Ed points out that's so much for the stigma of print. And that also you can compare his poetry and like some specific works of poetry to some of Shakespeare's poetry and see some real comparisons there.
But as far as I can tell, the questions or the similarities end there, if I'm not mistaken. And to me, it was the sixth Earl of Derby who has a little more to offer. Oh, really? I didn't see much about Derby. There was one other thing. So Derby has his own group, the Derbyites. Right. Of course they do, man. This is what I mean. It's an onion. It's a blooming onion.
So there was one other thing about De Vere that is pretty suspicious. There were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man who was raised in the same household as De Vere. And from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would know this person. And why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems to this nobleman he didn't know? But De Vere certainly knew him.
He was basically raised alongside him like a brother. So that, along with the biographical reading, the close reading, looking for parallels between De Vere's life and Shakespeare's plays are what kind of back up the Oxfordian theories.
Interesting, because Christopher Marlowe is another one who is a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's, and they collaborated and they influenced one another. And the details around Marlowe's death are hinky enough to where some people thought, or at least the conspiracy is that
is that he faked his death because he was going to be executed by the crown and continued to write and then used his friend Billy Shakespeare as a front to continue to get those plays out. I'm not really sure about this because, I don't know, it's just a little far-fetched if you ask me.
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