Читать книгу Anonymous SHAKE-SPEARE - Kurt Kreiler - Страница 5

2. Invited to write, he was in pain

Contrary to Stratford-propaganda, the first point that must be made is that we know a lot less about the “author” William Shaksper, than we know about his literary contemporaries. Actually we don’t know anything about him whatsoever, because, as far as we know, he didn’t write anything.

The quick witted critic Bill Bryson says: “Huge gaps exist for nearly all figures from the period. Thomas Dekker was one of the leading playwrights of the day, but we know little of his life other than that he was born in London, wrote prolifically, and was often in debt.”

At least we know that Dekker was an author, we know the titles of twelve of his plays and many of his pamphlets, we know the names of authors with whom he worked (Jonson, Marston, Massinger, Middleton, Pickergill, Rowley and Webster), we know that Jonson ridiculed him in “Poetaster” and that Dekker returned the compliment by ridiculing Jonson in “Satiromastix. That is more than enough to join the inner circle of Elizabethan literary personages.

We can’t really be certain that Will Shaksper learned to read and write properly, he might have attended Grammar school up to the age of 12 and he might have learned a little Latin, but there is no indication of his having learned French and Italian and no indication that he travelled abroad or that he kept company with literary figures of his day. The only things in the realm of certainty are: He never called himself “Shakespeare”, even if others did so, be it ironically or erroneously, and he never laid claim to being the AUTHOR.

After Will Shaksper’s death he was “accused” of being the author of the Shakespearian works by Ben Jonson. If the matter had come to trial we would have to deliver the verdict of “Not guilty” on the grounds of “insufficient evidence”.

For example: In Shakespeare’s “Italian” plays- “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “Twelfth Night”, “Much Ado about Nothing”, The Taming of the Shrew”, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “Measure for Measure”, “Othello”, and “Romeo and Juliet” precise details of the geography of Italy are woven into the plays. The author knows how to travel from town to town, knows the names of side streets and piazzas, he knows where the courthouses are, he knows where the harbours are, he names churches where people get married, he’s familiar with the interior decoration of Italian houses, he uses colloquial Italian figures of speech and he can quote the inscription on Giulio Romanos grave.

Will Shaksper couldn’t possibly have visited Italy. If he had attempted such a journey without official permission, he would have been arrested at the border. Had he been given permission, for an official journey on government business, such permission would have been documented in full.

There are no indications that Will Shaksper, the actor, was also a poet and a playwright. Does any proof exist, indicating that Shaksper did not write the plays and sonnets?

SHAKSPER would have had to have been a dreadful toady, indeed a traitor to his own class, to have written with such scathing contempt about the rebel Jack Cade and his followers. Using Sir Stafford as his mouth piece, he calls them: “Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent” (2Henry VI, IV/2).

SHAKSPER, a man of the people, must have been an arrogant fool to write the story about the tinker in the induction to “The Taming of the Shrew”. A lord picks up a drunken tinker from the street in front of a tavern. („O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies!“). The tinker is bathed, dressed in fine clothes, treated with the courtesy befitting a lord and then, having been shown a performance of “The Taming of the Shrew”, dumped before the tavern again.

SHAKSPER, the ex pupil of Stratford Grammar School (assuming, of course that he went there) must have been a ridiculous braggart to have Portia say of Baron Falconbridge: “You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man’s picture; but alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? “

If indeed Will SHAKSPER were the author of “Venus and Adonis”; the fact that the introduction starts off as we would only expect from a courtier, with a passage taken from Ovid’s “Ars amatoria” would clearly indicate that he had lost his marbles: “Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo / Pocular Castalia plena ministret aqua.” -In English: “Let vile people admire vile things; may fair-haired Apollo serve me goblets filled with Castalian water.” Or, to cite Marlowe’s translation: “Let base conceited wits admire vile things,/ Fair Phoebus lead me to the muses’ springs.”

Is that what we expect from the “upstart Crow” -or the “blue Kestrel”?

“Venus and Adonis” was dedicated to a young lord. The dedication, however, was written in a manner that only a fellow aristocrat would employ. There was a strict law in those days that forbade all commoners from dressing in the same clothes as the aristocrats. It was forbidden, even dangerous, to act like an aristocrat or to talk like one. Will Shaksper, the actor would have to have been both raving mad and incomprehensibly conceited to have done such a thing. He begins with the words: „Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship ... only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account my self highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour.“

The author uses the term “unpolished lines” as a deliberate understatement. He knows that he is speaking of 199 verses of brilliant poetry. What follows, however, would have been the epitome of madness had it come from the pen of Will Shaksper: An actor scrapes a living learning lines, rehearsing, performing and travelling through the provinces. He then says that he is going to “take advantage of all idle hours”. Only an aristocrat would have written poems in his “idle hours” A free lance actor didn‘t have “idle hours”. All of his hours were spoken for. An aristocrat spent his working time dealing with the affairs of state, supervising his own estate and when necessary, fighting wars. If he then chose to write poetry he would do so in his “idle hours”.

By way of comparison, let’s look at Edmund Spenser’s dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh:

SIR, that you may see that I am not alwaies ydle as ye thinke, though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull, though not precisely officious, I make you present of this simple pastorall, unworthie of your higher conceit for the meanesse of the stile, but agreeing with the truth in circumstance and matter. The which I humbly beseech you to accept in part of paiment of the infinite debt in which I acknowledge my selfe bounden vnto you, for your singular favours and sundrie good turnes shewed to me at my late being in England, and with your good countenance protect against the malice of evill mouthes, which are alwaies wide open to carpe at and misconstrue my simple meaning. (Colin Clout’s Come Home Againe, 1591.)

Or Samuel Daniels dedication to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke:

„I desire onely to bee graced by the countenance of your protection: whome the fortune of our time hath made the happie and iudiciall Patronesse of the Muses” (Delia. Contayning certayne Sonnets, 1592.)

When we read William Shakespeare’s dedication we dont find a word about the „infinite debt and protection” of which Edmund Spenser mentions. What we do find is a dedication, far more personal and familiar in its tone: “What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours“ (Rape of Lucrece, Dedication). Or, more explicitly: What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; you being part in all I have, being devoted, yours.

We are reminded of the famous “begetter” in Thomas Thorpe’s dedication of sonnets “To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets – Mr. W.H. - all happinesse and that eternitie, promised by our ever-living [=defunct] poet“? (It would appear that the printer Thomas Thorpe is quoting from a dedication to W.H. - id est Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton- that was already in existence.)

These sonnets give us definite proof, that Will Shaksper was not William Shakespeare. That a commoner should write such sonnets and dedicate them to the young Earl of Southampton, is historically impossible.

And hardly anybody thinks that “Mr. W.H.” could possibly be anyone other than Henry Wriothesley.

1. The description of the youth in the sonnets and the description of Adonis in Shakespeare’s epic poem, “Venus and Adonis“ (1593) are identical. The two young men are both described as being enigmatic, fascinating and self-enamoured; the epitome of androgynous beauty, a mixture of Narcissus, Hermaphroditus and Adonis, who still doesn’t react to the allures of women. Just like the youth in the first seventeen sonnets, Adonis is advised to seek a mate and have children so that his beauty may defeat “devouring time”.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding

are the words directed at Wriothesley in Sonnet 1. - In “Venus and Adonis”, Venus, the goddess of love tenderly scolds Adonis with the words:

Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,

Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?

By law of nature thou art bound to breed,

That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;

And so in spite of death thou dost survive,

In that thy likeness still is left alive.

(Venus and Adonis, 169-174)

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573–1624)

2. Two years before “Venus and Adonis” was published, John Clapham wrote a Latin poem with the title “Narcissus” (1591) and dedicated it to Southampton. Clapham’s Narcissus is suddenly transferred from Greek mythology to a fairy-tale England, where Venus welcomes him with open arms and Amor teaches him the art of love. Narcissus is splashed with the waters of the river Lethe, causing him to forget everything he ever knew. He mounts a wild horse named “Lust” which carries him far away and throws him off by the fountain of self desire. Narcissus drinks from the fountain, falls in love with the reflection that he sees of himself in the water and drowns.

John Clapham wasn’t just an aspiring amateur; he was a member of Lord Burghley’s household and probably one of Southampton’s teachers. This means that the young man was not only given a poetical, but also a practical lesson in life, after his refusal to marry Elizabeth de Vere, against Lord Burghley’s advice.

3. In his preface to “The Unfortunate Traveller” (1594), the satirist Thomas Nashe, a literary contemporary made a bold comment on Southampton’s erotic magnetism:

“A dear lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though now and then I speak English.”

Nashe went a step further by dedicating a ribald poem by the name of “The Choosing of Valentines” to “Lord S.” In the dedication Nashe plays on the phonetic similarity between Wriothesley and ROSE-ly; with the words: “Pardon sweet flower of matchless poetry,/ And fairest bud the red rose did ever bare;/ Although my Muse, divorced from deeper care,/ present thee with a wanton Elegy.” The poem describes a sexual encounter in a brothel whereby the man is so excited that he is unable to “do his duty” and how the girl “helps herself”. - We don’t know if Nashe meant to amuse and entertain or if the poem was intended as a provocation.

In his book “Wriothesley’s Roses” (1993) Martin Green shows us how SHAKESPEARE never tired of making plays on Wriothesley’s name and its association with roses. The associations were programmatic right from the first sonnet of the cycle.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

Sonnet 54 compares the virtues of the youth with the sweet scent of a rose:

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.

In Sonnet 95 the poet chides the youth and speaks of “the beauty of thy budding name”:

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,

which like a canker in the fragrant rose,

Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!

O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!

Shakespeare copiously plays on the young man’s flowery name: “Why should poor beauty indirectly seek, / Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?” (67). – “More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, / But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee.” (99). – “For nothing this wide universe I call, / Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.” (109).

The class system of the sixteenth century forbade that a commoner should speak to an aristocrat in the second person singular (thou art etc.) and thereby write a poem that made reference to his penis (Nr. 20: “And for a woman wert thou first created, / Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting, / And by addition me of thee defeated, / By adding one thing to my purpose nothing”), that he publicly criticises Wriothesley’s deceitful behaviour when he had sex with another man’s girl-friend. (Nr. 40: “I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest, / But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest / By wilful taste of what thy self refusest. / I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief / Although thou steal thee all my poverty.” – Nr. 41: “Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, / And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth, / Who lead thee in their riot even there / Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:/ Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, / Thine by thy beauty being false to me.”)

It would have been unthinkable for an actor and his girl-friend to enter into a three-way relationship with an Earl. If the actor had then deliberately made the relationship public, he would have been guilty of a serious offence. (Nr. 133, to the Dark Lady: “Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan / For that deep wound it gives my friend and me; / Is’t not enough to torture me alone, /But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?/ Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken, / And my next self thou harder hast engrossed, / Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken, / A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed.”)

In order to come to the gigantic misconception that William Shaksper, the actor, could possibly have moved so freely in the house and in the company of Henry Wriothesly only to betray him with such verses; one must be totally ignorant of the political and social situation of the times.

The Stratfordians’ most desperate argument is that the “author” William Shaksper invented these most singular relationships: the man and the woman- the woman and the other man- the man and the man- as an imaginary trio in a hypothetical situation- devoid of any auto-biographical substance.

Are we really being asked to believe that the greatest, the most explicit author of all times should write so passionately and vehemently about three imaginary friends; that he lied to us and the youth in question! That he said “Me” without being “Me”?!

Any scholar who propagates such theories is better advised to consider a change of career.