A Tangled Web

THE TROUBLE WITH SHAKESPEARE....



This little Q&A makes my point that the Bard was NOT "the Stratford man"...does it make you wonder, I wonder?



After 250 years of the most intensive research by numerous scholars nothing has been discovered which unambiguously links William of Stratford-on-Avon with the plays that bear his name. All we know of him for certain are business or personal details such as baptism, marriage or death. No manuscripts or other documents of a literary nature by him or about him have emerged.



Q. Apart from six signatures, what other examples of documents are there which demonstrate literate activity? He is thought to have lived in London for some years while conducting a business, and maintaining a family, in Stratford. Apart from one letter addressed to him but apparently never sent, what letters from or to him, or other personal papers, have been discovered?

A. One business letter, apparently never sent.





Q. What references to him as the playwright appear in others' correspondence or diaries, or other contemporary documents?

A. None.



Q. The playwright was obviously a person of great education. What documentary evidence is there that Shakspere of Stratford had any education at any level?

A. None. The records from Stratford Grammar School for the period are lost. He did not attend Oxford or Cambridge or the Inns of Court.



Q. Many of the plays' sources were not published in English during his lifetime. Do we know that he was able to read them in the original languages?

A. There is no evidence that he could.



Q. Did he own copies of Ovid, North, Plutarch and the more than 100 other books recognized as sources for his plays?

A. There are no records that he had a private library, nor that he had access to anyone else's. He left no books in his will.



Q. If not, where did he see them? There were no public libraries, and books were very expensive and consequently precious. Even a genius has to acquire knowledge and skills.

A. We do not know. There are no records of his living in a wealthy household where books would have been available, or having a personal relationship with anybody who owned a library



Q. Where did he get the intimate knowledge of, for example, Court life and behaviour, aristocratic sports and pastimes, or Italian geography and customs which are all exhibited in the plays? Is there any record that he was ever at Court, or travelled to Italy, for example?

A. No.



Q. We usually expect to find parallels between an author's life in his or her works. Where are the personal biographical allusions to Will Shakspere in the plays? How intimate or convincing are they?

A. There are very few which can be identified, despite diligent searches by Stratfordian scholars, and many of those could be coincidences.



Q. Who paid him for writing the plays?

A. There are no records of anybody doing so but he is said to have retired a wealthy man, after his supposed career as a playwright.



Q. Do the inscriptions on the Monument in Stratford church actually name him as a playwright or poet?

A. No.



Q. What convincing documentary evidence is there to support the dates commonly assigned to the composition of any of the plays, assuming him to have written them?

A. None. There are no records of the dates of composition, or even of first performance, of any of the plays. The conventional dating is based on a number of assumptions, for example, that the plays were produced at the rate of 2 a year, without interruption. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is no evidence that anybody wrote the plays, except that they exist.



How very....odd.