The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 34.167 Sunday, 17 December 2023
From: Hardy Cook <
Date: December 17 at 5:34 AM EST
Subject: My Visit to the Folger
Yesterday, I attended my first live theatrical performance in years. The Folger Theater’s Twelfth Night. It was unusual to be in an enclosed space, masked with others for several hours, after having my closeted hermit-self come out forcefully during the pandemic. I may give more expansive notes on the show later for there is something else on my mind: Conspiracy theories, especially the Southern Lost Cause narrative and Anti-Stratfordians, particularly Oxfordians.
The Folger Library itself will not open until 2024, but the theater is open. The space of Elizabethan Theater is the same, but there are now elevators, very welcome since I don’t go outside without my cane. And there are gleaming gender-neutral restrooms and a shiny new handicap accessible entrance, apparently now the entrance for the entire building, where old Elizabethan Garden originally was.
As I approached the entrance, there was a pathetic de Vere adherent shouting to people about THE REAL SHAKESPEARE as they approached the stairs or wheel-chair accessible ramp into the building. I know that this is not the same but I was reminded of women going for an abortion and being verbally assaulted by so-called ProLife true believers. After being invited to learn about the real Shakespeare, I’m not proud, but I told him to perform an unnatural sex act with himself.
As I reflected later, I began to see parallels between Southern Lost Cause narrative and Anti-Stratfordians. They both are pathetic attempts at advancing a narrative of white supremacy. Oxfordians argue for de Vere because a backwater Queer person could not have written the so-called greatest works of Western literature. It must have been an I can do what I please because I am a wealthy, white, upper class aristo.
As editor/moderator, I banned discussions of Authorship on SHAKSPER in early 1990s. I am not offering an authorship posting per se. Rather, I would like to believe I am making a larger point about conspiracies and white supremacy.
I ask Stephanie’s indulgence in my elaborate attempt to justify to myself my unwholesome speech in telling person to F himself.