The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0172  Friday, 12 April 2013

 

[1] From:        Harry Berger Jr <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 11, 2013 1:31:28 PM EDT

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Shakespeare Businessman 

 

[2] From:        Michael Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 11, 2013 9:01:00 PM EDT

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Shakespeare Businessman 

 

[3] From:        Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 11, 2013 10:31:03 PM EDT

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Shakespeare Businessman 

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Harry Berger Jr <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 11, 2013 1:31:28 PM EDT

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Shakespeare Businessman

 

“great works would never have endured if built on lies, hypocrisy, and guilt.”

 

Ditto John Drakakis. How silly can we get? You’re turning the site into a Chinese opera.

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Michael Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 11, 2013 9:01:00 PM EDT

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Shakespeare Businessman

 

John Drakakis compares Shakespeare to a sleazy politician and calls artistic sincerity “romantic claptrap.” Shakespeare is all lies and manipulation like the war criminal Tony Blair. I cite at random Sonnets 116 and 129. Thus I refute him.

 

Drakakis also thinks “romantic claptrap” is the reason Shakespeare biographies are unsatisfactory.  Actually, it’s because there’s almost nothing in the record—no letters to and from, not a single reliable anecdote, no memoirs, gossip, not one record of anyone having met him, no indication of how he acquired his vast learning, no record of his travels to Italy and Scotland, not even the certain identity of Mr W.H. or the Dark Lady. In fact, almost the only docs we have concern his ruthless profiteering.

 

Jim Webber blames poor Ann Hathaway for his criminal and immoral behavior and cites Germaine Greer’s “almost certainly” “best guess” and other vague speculations as evidence. There is not one hard fact for any of this. Nor are we talking about just a little domestic malting. The Shakespeares hoarded food until the starving were forced to pay them outrageous sums, then they pursued in the courts those who owed them money. Will himself was prosecuted for avoiding taxes, and identified as a ruthless profiteer who indulged in money lending and usury, like Shylock, sued his debtors (those poor who couldn’t pay his outrageous prices) and ended up one of the wealthiest men in town. 

 

Larry Weiss wonders whether the difference between Shakespeare’s words and his actions give support to the idea that his works were really written by someone else.

 

La, Sir, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

Michael Egan

 

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 11, 2013 10:31:03 PM EDT

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Shakespeare Businessman

 

The first sentence of the following post should have been in quotes, as I was quoting Michael Egan’s last submission:

 

>You can claim he was just faking it, but sincerity is the soul of 

>art. These great works would never have endured if built on lies,

>hypocrisy, and guilt.

 

Is Michael Egan saying that the distance between Shakespeare’s business practices and the words in the plays attributed to him is so wide that they couldn’t be the same bloke?

 

[Editor’s Note: Apologies. Sometimes my workflow strips quotation indicators and I neglect to put them back. I will be more viligant. –Hardy]

 

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