I've never understood the heated authorship fights around Shakespeare either. Whoever wrote the plays, that was Shakespeare; what more do you need to know?
Couldn't have said it better myself, SB.
No, "the bard" is the guy who wrote the stuff. "The Bard" is Shakespeare - it's like his superhero name.
All that aside, how many people actually care who wrote Shakespeare's plays at this point? They're damn good plays. I understand Shakes himself was a bit of an ass, so even if he did write them I'm not too attached to the man. If it turns out "Parsifal" was written by a very clever monkey, it doesn't mean there aren't some neat tunes in there.
I thought SB's comment sounded familiar.
So I'm not going crazy.
Whoever wrote the plays, that was Shakespeare
Well, no. There definitely was a resident of Stratford-on-Avon who moved to London, became an actor, had children, married and died and signed his name "William Shakspear". Either it was him, or it was someone else.
Homer is different; absolutely nothing is known about him except that he wrote the Iliad and Odyssey.
"The Bard" is short for "The Bard of Avon", and so Shakespeare. Unless it's short for "The Bard of Avon Calling." Then all bets are off.
Ok, if it's short for something that refers specifically to the guy from Avon, Brian's sentence makes sense.
d2, in Bridgeplate's defense, I should point out that he was making a point by parroting my comment here. I wouldn't actually want to defend that sentence.
how many people actually care who wrote Shakespeare's plays at this point?
I think the motivation for your argument is this: Shakespeare didn't do anything particularly interesting besides write plays, so if the author turns out to be some other schlub, what's the difference?
I can understand that. But several of the author candidates were intriguing figures in their own right. If one of them turns out to be the real author I think it would be interesting, both in terms of how we view the author and in terms of how we view the plays. For instance, if it turned out to be Marlowe, that'd mean that the author of Romeo and Juliet was gay. That would be worth writing some new forewords over, right?
The most interesting speculation in Will in the World was that Shakespeare Bard-o-Avon Shakespeare may have been secretly Catholic, which would fill the plays with all sorts of interesting political readings.
that'd mean that the author of Romeo and Juliet was gay.
A bunch of Shakespeare's sonnets are already written to a guy, so this is hardly earthshattering news.
That would be worth writing some new forewords over, right?
Some new forwards, and that's about it. If Shakespeare and Neville were alive today and bickering over who wrote Hamlet, there would at least be royalties to fight over. As it is, whoever wrote "the works of Shakespeare" has been dead for centuries, and isn't likely to be bothered one way or another how the debate appears to be swinging.
So will the meaning or appreciation of his works be significantly changed on the basis of who wrote the plays? Not really, no. These are works that've been picked over and analyzed for decades, typically on the basis of their content and not on the basis of the life of the man who wrote them. If one were to have concrete proof (presumably obtained via time machine) that King Lear were written by Dead White Guy X instead of Dead White Guy Y, one would have acquired some nifty trivia but probably wouldn't come away with anything new to say about the play itself.
"Who wrote Shakespeare?" is a nice little question to scratch your head over from time to time, but other than academics working to enlarge their reputations and the obsessively nit-picky, I can't imagine anyone really cares about this all that much.
A little link-following and Googling reveals that a leading earlier anti-Stratfordian (school of de Vere) was named John Thomas Looney. Full name given for our UK readers.
Oops. However, "John Thomas Looney" is even more Mineshaft-appropriate.
Marlowe wasn't gay. He was just persistently troubled by gay men sucking his cock.
Thank you.
These are works that've been picked over and analyzed for decades, typically on the basis of their content and not on the basis of the life of the man who wrote them.
But surely this is in part because what we know of William Shakespeare's life is completely mundane. I don't know much about the merits of the other candidate authors, but I know the Marlowe proponents think he may have drawn inspiration from the European courts he visited while supposedly writing the plays. Lines of inquiry like that might turn up some interesting details.
I'm not saying that this would be more important than purely literary examination of the plays. But I'm sure you can see how studying the life of, for example, a spy who faked his own death might produce more interesting results than we've gotten by poring over the handful of real estate and marriage records that currently seem to form the brunt of our extratextual knowledge of Shakespeare.
The distinction should be made between whether a different [b]ard would change the meaning of the plays and whether it would change the meaning of the phenomenon of Shakespeare. To the former: not in the slightest. To the latter: pretty fucking likely. Shakespeare isn't just understood, he's taught, and a fundamental shift in his biography would send enormous quakes through the establishment that, season by season, teaches young people why Shakespeare ought to be read in the first place.
Whether there's any change in Shakespeare's biography that would result in a revolution in the way he's taught to students depends on our times, our context, not any flagged peculiarities that could arise.
if it turned out that he was black I would imagine that a few heads might turn. Or indeed, a woman.
What is it turned out that Ophelia's suicide is underdetermined?
Oooops. That should be: "What IF it turned out that Ophelia's suicide is underdetermined?" I knew I should have gone to bed last night.
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