Shakespeare Uncovered

[HejiraHenry]

Maybe I missed it, but it doesn't seem like this has been mentioned hereabouts.

Six-part PBS series – wake up, damn it! – that breezes through very personal, one-hour takes on the chosen material.

Hamlet - Ethan Hawke
As You Like It and Twelfth Night _ Joely Richardson
Richard II - Derek Jacobi
Henry IV/Henry V - Jeremy Irons
Hamlet - David Tennant
The Tempest – director Trevor Nunn

Taken as a whole, a threat of Shakespeare's life runs through all of them. Jacobi even suggests that he doesn't think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays, but that's pretty quickly brushed aside.

I highly recommend this.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

Shakespeare wrote the plays, for God's sake.
The half-baked theory he did not has been thoroughly discredited.
Never mind his name is on the works attributed to him, an effect of superstar status.
During a period when authorship was not attached to plays while the playwright was still living.

 

[ColdCat]

I often sense some elitism in the anti-Shakespeare theory. The argument goes that since most of his contemporary writers were Oxford and Cambridge men who were part of court, the University Wits, how could some backwoods son of a glove-maker who never finished elementary school be better than them.

'Cuz he was that damn good, that's why.

 

[HejiraHenry]

The digression by Jacobi took up maybe 5 minutes in 6 total hours of program, which seems like a good proportion.

Generally, the biography of Shakespeare was dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

Take what Derek Jacobi said with a grain of salt. This PBS special was filmed just as Jacobi was coming off the filming of the movie Anonymous which revolves around the idea that the Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere, actually wrote the plays and that Shakespeare was a buffoon. Jacobi could be just promoting the film (which was actually pretty good).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521197/

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

I saw Jacobi in the Wynn casino about five years ago.
He looked like a cool cat, the kind of guy you'd like to drink with.
But this is a strangely persistent myth - it wasn't even fresh stuff 10 or 15 years ago.

 

[da man]

I happened to see these on the PBS website last week and they caught my attention because my kids are very much into Shakespeare. I watched the one on the comedies last night -- I started with that one because the kids were in a production of As You Like It last summer. It was pretty well done. The best part was Joely Richardson interviewing her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) about playing Rosalind with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the '60s.

 

[dreunc1542]

I just went to the Shakespeare Uncovered site. Not only do they have the hour long episodes, they also have some of the full-length recent versions of plays like Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, etc. I've seen individual scenes of Tennant in Hamlet and loved it so I think I might have to watch the whole thing. Thanks for the heads up on this, HH.

 

[Buck]

I don't think it's elitism. It's a common-sense argument of the where-there's-smoke ilk.

A lot of people wanted to believe that Barry Bonds became a better hitter at an age when everyone else's skills diminish. It went against common sense, but many clung to the belief that he was different.
Turned out he was doping.

Common sense indicates that a person of Shakespeare's background is not likely to produce the work attributed to him.

Anyway, I don't believe that. There's no real evidence to back it up, but I get the common sense of the argument. It's not elitism.

 

[waterytart]

I DVRed Derek Jarman's idiosyncratic take on The Tempest when it was on TCM a few months ago, but still haven't watched it. Maybe I'll combine it with this.

 

[Buck]

'The Tempest' was the inpsiration for Shelley's wonderful 'To Jane, with a Guitar':

Take
This slave of music for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony,
In which thou can’st, & only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
’Till joy denies itself again
And too intense is turned to pain;

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

There is a whiff of elitism when a commoner's work is being attributed to the comparatively well-born, including members of the peerage.

 

[Buck]

There is a whiff of elitism when a commoner's work is being attributed to the comparatively well-born, including members of the peerage.

That's a very current perspective. I understand, but I don't think it accounts for the time and circumstances of when the work was produced.

A person of limited education or training today creating a work of art is easier to assume, that's why you think the other argument is elitist.
However, that person today has easy access to previous works of art from which to draw. More importantly, a person today can produce something that was derivative of simple pop culture - TV, movies, etc. - and have it proclaimed art.

Shakespeare's plays exist within the longer history of Western literature. They make reference to and allude to Western literary traditions. That alone makes the question of authorship real, because it is so unlikely that a person of limited education could draw on that tradition to such an extent. Such a person couldn't go to the municipal library and check out a paperback copy of Sophocles from Penguin Classics, let alone look up Sophocles on the Internet.

It strains credibility. Facing that realistically is not being elitist.

On the opposite side, there should be some evidence other than lack of probability.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

I don't see it as a current perspective - status was way more binding to them than us.
Marlowe was born to a shoemaker. Who questions his body of work?
The question of Shakespearean authorship is fun and fanciful.
That does not mean it bears any serious scrutiny.
Like whether the lunar landing was real or not.

 

[Buck]

Marlowe also received a scholarship to King's School and a scholarship to Corpus Christi, receiving a master's degree. That's one of the reasons his body of work isn't questioned.
He had the education necessary to produce work that demonstrates an expertise in the Western canon of literature.

I freely admit there is a lack of evidence to indicate other authorship of Shakespeare's work. I am saying that the question itself is not elitist.

It's not an issue of talent. It's an issue of demonstrated expertise within a field for which he had no formal education. The probability is exceptionally low.

A person can have exceptional talent in any endeavor - writing, math, music, athletics. But how does one have exceptional talent in a field of learned knowledge. You cannot intuit a knowledge of history through force intellect, nor can you intuit a knowledge of previous written works simply because you are a talented writer.

 

[Buck]

Are you referring to the portion about Shakespeare not being afforded the same level of artistic regard in his own time that he is now? If so, I think it's an apt point.

Again, though, I'm not arguing that Shakespeare didn't write the place attributed to him. I don't think there's evidence to make that claim; however, it's not elitist to question that a man of limited education could create the works he did. It's a common-sense question, and it's based on education rather than class. The two are closely entwined during his time but stil inextricable. As you mention, Marlowe a prime example because he's from the same class. The difference is, despite his class, Marlowe spent six years at Corpus Christi.

 

[HejiraHenry]

it's not elitist to question that a man of limited education could create the works he did.

A segment of the PBS show visits once of the schools Shakespeare attended as a youngster and they were conjugating Latin at what appeared to be age 12 or so, and it was suggested this was the vets sort of lesson young William would have gone through back in the day.

Their notion of a "limited education" and what might pass for that today in Detroit or Arkansas are two vastly different things.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

Buck-
We know less of Shakespeare's education than Marlowe's.
But his career we know as well as any Elizabethan playwright.
Comparatively, Chaucer's career is extraordinarily well-documented.
That Shakespeare of Stratford wrote great plays is not a matter of faith to me.
But I can admit a few discrepancies are bothersome - such as no surviving record of his funeral or burial.