The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1216 Wednesday, 14 June 2000.
[1] From: Carol Barton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 13 Jun 2000 08:46:54 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 11.1207 Re: Article of Interest
[2] From: Dom Saliani <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 13 Jun 2000 07:30:59 -0600
Subj: RE: SHK 11.1207 Re: Article of Interest
[3] From: Balz Engler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 14 Jun 2000 11:14:57 +0200
Subj: An article of interest
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Carol Barton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 13 Jun 2000 08:46:54 -0400
Subject: 11.1207 Re: Article of Interest
Comment: Re: SHK 11.1207 Re: Article of Interest
In response to William Sutton's "quick reply to Clifford's get the DNA
suggestion," which reads (in part), "Right on! I thought the same during
my attendance at the Shakespeare Institute. Surely with laser technology
you don't even need to exhume!
> The consensus (informal common room and pub talk) seems to be that the
> body isn't even there. We know it was buried 'full five fathoms deep' or
> deeper than normal.
What these gentlemen (who are clearly not biologists) seem to miss is
that getting the DNA of the body buried in Shakespeare's tomb would not
prove ANYTHING, other than that the body in Shakespeare's tomb was that
of a human being. We have no DNA from the author of the canon (WS or
otherwise) to match it to; nor has anyone ever questioned that, author
of the canon or not, the William Shakespeare lying in Shakespeare's
grave is Shakespeare (though we have no records of his DNA to match his
bones to, whether they have crumbled to dust or are still intact at this
point).
These are the sorts of suggestions that make this whole line of inquiry
trivial and silly, and prompt others to wonder what there is of value in
the authorship question: had the respondents thought their comments
through, they would have realised that what they were proposing was in
inappropriate use of modern technology to achieve . . . the use of
modern technology to prove what cannot be proven.
I think we have said enough on this issue. I have neither time or desire
to pursue such geese.
Carol Barton
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Dom Saliani <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 13 Jun 2000 07:30:59 -0600
Subject: 11.1207 Re: Article of Interest
Comment: RE: SHK 11.1207 Re: Article of Interest
"The "debate" is for entertainment purposes only--like psychic readings
and wrestling. Anyone who takes the anti-Stratfordian argument
seriously after a thorough evaluation of the evidence is to be more
pitied than condemned."
The problem with authorship threads, and I applaud Hardy for barring
such discussions on SHAKSPER, is that whenever the issue is raised,
there are certain individuals who use this as an opportunity to name
call and to cast ridicule on others who see things differently from
themselves.
Reedy provides one mild example of this tendency by suggesting that
"anyone" who is not orthodox in his/her thinking is to be pitied.
I am sorry but I cannot let this comment pass without comment.
Is it not odd that some of the most highly respected and admired people
who toil in the fields of Shakespeare's theatre have chosen to go public
in regards to their contention that the plays of Shakespeare were
written by Oxford?
According to Reedy, we should pity:
Sir John Gielgud
Leslie Howard
Sir Derek Jacobi
Mark Rylance - artistic director of the New Globe Theatre
Orson Welles
Michael York
While we are at it, perhaps we should also pity
Justice Harry A. Blackmun
Justice John Paul Stevens
These are chief justices who have since their sitting on the Authorship
trial in 1988, changed their verdicts and would now vote for Oxford as
the probable author of the canon.
Dom Saliani
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Balz Engler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 14 Jun 2000 11:14:57 +0200
Subject: An article of interest
I am surprised by how SHAKSPERians dismiss the question of authorship as
futile if not inappropriate. It certainly plays an important role in how
our culture has constructed Shakespeare. It is of interest, in this
context, when doubts about the glover's son as the author of
Shakespeare's plays were first expressed. This was at the end of the
eighteenth century (see John Michell's entertaining book *Who Wrote
Shakespeare?*, London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), and it was obviously to
do with Shakespeare's rise to the status of an universal genius. The
authorship question therefore deserves serious study, not so much
because we are looking for truth and authenticity, but because we want
to know about Shakespeare's reception/appropriation. Why did people come
to form such strong and diverse opinions about his origins? For the same
reason it may be of interest to find out why there have been, as far as
I can see, not only English, but also Irish, French, and Italian
candidates (but no German ones).
And another point, this time about authenticity. In a recent article
("Ist die Darmst
