Just because an opinion exists does not mean that the opinion is worthy of respect. Some people deserve to be marginalized and excluded. There are many questions in this world over which rational people can have sensible confrontations: whether lower taxes stimulate or stagnate growth; whether abortion is immoral; whether the ’60s were an achievement or a disaster; whether the universe is motivated by a force for benevolence; whether the Fonz jumping on water skis over a shark was cool or lame. Whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is not one of these questions.
Wouldn’t It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn’t Shakespeare? - NYTimes.com (via markcoatney)
I agree with the first two lines completely, and as I tend to consider other people’s opinions in this light, I also put my own opinions out there on both sides of the table. Everyone is welcome to their own opinions, but it should be assumed that some opinions are a great deal more well thought-out than others.
(via spytap)
Yes, yes, and yes.
However….
(You just knew there would be a however, right?)
What I’m seeing is a lot of knee-jerk dismissal and blinkered assumptions that because there is
a) a big Hollywood movie about the subject that is
b) directed by a guy who makes a lot of dumb movies where things blow up, that it must follow that
c) this is a stupid idea that the guy came up with on his own, or that
d) this is a stupid idea that low culture “Hollywood” came up with to trash something of high cultural value.
Except that the authorship question is centuries old. People who have professed doubts about the identity of the author have included Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, Orson Welles, and Walt-fricking-Whitman.
Now, just because some websites say some famous people said something doesn’t make it true, obviously. But there has been a lot of serious scholarship devoted to the question. Sure it could all be wrong, absolutely. But there are two things that give me pause:
1) The little bit that I’ve read on the authorship debate, the Oxfordians and the other advocates of alternate authors seem (I know, seem) to be trying to advance an argument based on evidence and logic. Whereas the overwhelming amount of Stratfordian argument I’ve seen have been comprised of ad-hominem attacks dripping with condescension and shot through with the assumption that things are true just because they’ve always been thought to be true and how dare we question the received wisdom. These are usually the rhetorical devices used when a logical argument can’t hold up anymore. It says much more about the rage and closed-mindedness of the people making the argument than it does about the subject being debated.
2) Does the identity of the author of the plays change the value of the plays? Not in the least. Does it rob someone of credit? Maybe, except the people involved have been dead for centuries and don’t really care anymore. What exactly would be lost if it was proven that Oxford or Bacon or somebody else wrote the plays? Nothing, as far as I can see. But the gains would be immeasurable.
At the end of the day, the authorship debate is a fantastic STORY. That’s what I love about Shakespeare - the stories. Which is why I find the debate fascinating and wish that everybody who cares more about mudslinging would just knock it off.
Let the researchers research. Let the storytellers tell stories.
Schedule depending, I’ll be at Anonymous opening night.
(via jaybushman)
Jay Bushman is smart. I’m glad to know and be friends with him.
(via spytap)
Okay, look. I really don’t want to get drawn into this. But I want to say just a few things.
People are not dismissing this debate because it was “thought up by Hollywood” or because they think it’s “low culture” or because they are clinging to the way things have always been. They are dismissing this debate because there IS NO DEBATE. I have studied with professors ranging from the most Ivy League/traditional/white male to the most liberal/willing to question academic tradition (including a professor who was denied tenure because he questioned so many traditional ways of teaching literature), and not one has ever suggested that it would be profitable to question Shakespeare’s authority. I could get into specifics here (there are absolutely “arguments” for Shakespeare’s identity that are not based on ad hominem attacks or illogical rage), but I don’t think this is really the forum for that.
I acknowledge that this is a somewhat hyperbolic comparison, but the Shakespeare authorship “debate” reminds me of the “debate” over global warming. In both cases, the experts in the field are in consensus on the issue, but people pop up here and there saying “it’s a conspiracy!” and “The experts are too liberal/traditional/elitist!” It’s not a conspiracy. There is no debate among people who know the most about this field.
We could ask “What if Dante wasn’t Dante?” We don’t have any photographs of him, right? No exact birthdate, no family tree, no exact date of his marriage, only “speculative” sources on many of the supposed details of his life. But we don’t ask that question. Why?
We don’t question the identity of people like Dante because he was enough among the upper class to have gotten involved in a political faction on behalf of which he was eventually sent to the Pope as a delegate. This brings me to my last problem with the Shakespeare “debate.” Shakespeare, of course, never met the Pope. He was born, married, and died in a town dedicated to slaughtering sheep. He did not go to a fancy school. Wikipedia (yes, even that bastion of false information largely dismisses the authorship question as baseless) notes that proponents of the “Shakespeare-wasn’t-Shakespeare” theory “often portray the town as a cultural backwater lacking the environment necessary to nurture a genius, and have depicted Shakespeare as ignorant and illiterate.”
At its heart, the authorship debate is inherently classist.
The works attributed to Shakespeare contain so much thought, so much understanding of human nature, so much vibrant language! No lower-class man could ever write them!
Needless to say, I have a problem with that.
None of this is to say that I hate the people who wrote the movie, or the people who are going to see the movie. Who cares! Go see it! I have no problem with enjoyment of entertainment as entertainment. I highly doubt the screenwriters or the director or the actors actually believe that someone besides Shakespeare wrote his works—they just see it as a fun story. And that’s great. I read The Guns of the South. I enjoyed it. I like imagining alternate histories. The only reason I felt compelled to respond at this much length is that it worries me when people take these enjoyable fictions as legitimate realities.
(via ewilcox)
MY TWO CENTS
I totally agree with Elizabeth on the classist nature of the Shakespeare authorship debate, and as far as I am concerned, for me personally there is no debate either. I simply do not care who wrote the plays.
However, I have listened with fascination to the arguments put forward by a number of Shakespearean doubters; for years I worked at the Globe under Mark Rylance, and he’s just one of the most eminent - and eloquent - doubters in the world (although I may be wrong but I thought he was a Baconian for a long time, and quite why he’s now jumping on the Oxfordian wagon I don’t know. I will ask.)
Moreover, I’m somebody who watches and writes about a lot of films, theatre, literature and fictions of all kinds. I’m totally willing and prepared to enjoy both big blockbusters and fantasies set in historical periods about which I happen to know quite a lot (Elizabeth is another example; do I need to say Shakespeare in Love? Even Welles’ masterful Chimes at Midnight is pretty silly when it comes to historical accuracy).
Having said all that, I’ve actually seen Anonymous, and I thought it was pretty bad, in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way. I laughed out loud a number of times, sometimes WITH it, but most of the time AT it. I bet you that in two years’ time, this film will be the one Early Modernists all over the globe play drinking games to.
PS. I should add that if you really want to learn something about Shakespeare in the cinema, Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus is the film you should watch. And I’m not just saying this because I’m a bit partial to the Fiennes who wasn’t Shakespeare.
