Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 428.  Wednesday, 14 July 1993.
 
(1)     From:   Peter David Seary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 13 Jul 1993 09:28:03 -0500 (EDT)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 4.0423  More Info on Reported *Cardenio* MS?
 
(2)     From:   John Mucci <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 13 Jul 93 07:36:38-0400
        Subj:   Hamilton & Cardenio
 
(3)     From:   Jon Callas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 13 Jul 93 11:00:45 PDT
        Subj:   Questions on apocryphal plays
 
(4)     From:   Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 13 Jul 93 21:24:05 EDT
        Subj:   Re: SHK 4.0424  Re: *Cardenio* MS
 
 
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Peter David Seary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 13 Jul 1993 09:28:03 -0500 (EDT)
Subject: 4.0423  More Info on Reported *Cardenio* MS?
Comment:        Re: SHK 4.0423  More Info on Reported *Cardenio* MS?
 
Concerning the penmanship of the lost manuscript of Cardenio and
Shakespeare's will--I know the signatures on the will are considered
authentic, but it is news to me the will is Shakespeare's holograph.
Where does this leave Charles Hamilton?  It is quite possible, I
suppose, that the person who wrote out Shakespeare's will might also
have transcribed Cardenio.
 
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           John Mucci <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 13 Jul 93 07:36:38-0400
Subject:        Hamilton & Cardenio
 
For those of you seeking a little more information on Charles
Hamilton, discoverer of _Cardenio,_ understand that he has been
around for many years as a handwriting expert.  He advertises in
every issue of the *NY Times Book Review* for his autograph and
manuscript business, and he was the celebrated authority who
deemed (and rightly so) that the "Hitler Diaries" were fakes a
number of years ago.  He is also an ardent Shakespeareophile, and
has written a book titled "In Search of Shakespeare, A
Reconnaissance into the Poet's Life and Handwriting," published
by HBJ in 1985. (Among his other works are "Scribblers and
Scoundrels," "The Robot that Helped to Made a President," and
"Great Forgers and Famous Fakes."  The catch is (and this is
related to the comments that _Cardenio_ is "inferior to the
Bard's other works") that in "In Search of Shakespeare" he tells
us that the will of Shaksper of Stratford-on-Avon was holographic
(and it changes appearance halfway through because its author
suffered a massive stroke while writing it--possibly because he
was poisoned, and that possibly through the agency of Richard
Quiney), and we have a great many examples of Shaksper's
handwriting, which includes marginalia in a 1587 edition of
Hollinshed (among other books), the previously suspected
fragments from _Thomas More,_ all the draft applications for the
coat of arms, the also previously-suspected scribbled coversheet
of the "Northumberland MS." and quite possibly the sketch of the
actors in _Titus_ appearing above the passage ascribed to the
penmanship of Henry Peacham. Although his chapters on penmanship,
the secretary hand, and some of the other Elizabethan's habits of
letter writing are fascinating and very entertaining reading, his
thesis is so embroidered with self-indulgent fantasy that it is
all but totally incredible.  An example of the last trait is
Hamilton's penchant for writing out famous Shakespearean
passages, using cutouts of individual letters from the will, and
stringing them together to make it appear as their author must
have originally written them. When he seriously puts forth that
the question now is, "Did Shakespeare write Bacon's Essays?" I
find it has gone off deeper than the deep end.
 
John Mucci
GTE VisNet, Stamford, CT
 
(3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jon Callas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 13 Jul 93 11:00:45 PDT
Subject:        Questions on apocryphal plays
 
I've been reading the missives about Cardenio with interest, and forwarding
them along to interested people. A number of us though, have questions about
the apocryphal plays, "Two Noble Kinsmen" and "Woodstock" being ones recently
mentioned. Would someone be good enough to tell us interested lay-people about
those two plays, and other apocyphal ones as well?
 
        Thanks,
        Jon Callas
 
(4)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 13 Jul 93 21:24:05 EDT
Subject: 4.0424  Re: *Cardenio* MS
Comment:        Re: SHK 4.0424  Re: *Cardenio* MS
 
Though Charles Hamilton's speculations get a little hairy IN SEARCH OF
SHAKESPEARE, I believe that I read in a summary of Don Foster's on-going work
on the "rare-word" vocabularies in the plays that the last will and testament
fits right into the complicated trajectories of Shakespeare's word uses (though
we'll have to wait a bit while Don's computer grinds through more text and he
gets into print with the details and the data).  -- ASIDE: my son works for an
agency that has a payroll computer so old, he says, that it's water-powered. --
Anyway, can anyone with magical bibliographical skills tell us all if there are
extant transcriptions or photocopies of this CARDENIO ms? Gary Taylor has been
sending out and getting readings of a quite nice invention of a CARDENIO: my
wife and I attended a reading of the script at the NY Shakespeare Festival
Public Theatre last year.  I guess it was composed on a video screen, but it
bears the marks of Taylor more than Shakespeare (or rather Taylor being
Shakespearean).

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