Bonner Cutting - Connecting the Dots: How Shakspere Became Shakespeare

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How a Man Who Could Scarcely Write his Name Became Revered as the Greatest Writer in the English Language
Those of us who have examined the historical evidence know that only six scrawled signatures exist in the handwriting of William Shakspere, the glover’s son from Stratford-upon-Avon. There is not a shred of evidence that this historical individual ever went to school: no teacher that he might have had took note of him; no classmate recalls him. No one (so far as we know) ever received a letter from him. No literary person of the time (or anyone else) ever wrote him a letter with the exception of a Stratford neighbor who asked him for a loan of money. (But this letter was not sent). In spite of the many seditious topics and politically dangerous materials in the plays published under the moniker “William Shakespeare,” the government authorities were completely uninterested in making his acquaintance. When he died, no one noticed. But, as the centuries rolled on, this person became the inspiration for a multi-billion dollar/pound industry. In fact, he has been called “the greatest of all Englishmen.” Moreover, he has become the focal point for the cultural identity of the English people! How did this happen with no evidence to support it? Bonner Cutting explains how we got here.
This talk was presented at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference in Hartford, CT on October 20, 2019.
Bonner Miller Cutting is a frequent speaker at Shakespeare authorship conferences and gives introductory talks on the authorship question to community organizations, literary groups and book clubs. In her recently published book, Necessary Mischief: Exploring the Shakespeare
Question, Ms. Cutting reveals new information on ten authorship-related subjects including the Last Will and Testament of William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon, the £1,000 annuity that Queen Elizabeth I gave to Edward de Vere, and the naughty subject (to write about): did the Virgin Queen have a child? The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship has four of Ms. Cutting’s RU-vid presentations posted on its website, and she has made podcasts for the SOF “Don’t Quill the Messenger” series.
For more on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, visit shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org.

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4 фев 2020

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Комментарии : 40

@jonkalb2746 4 года назад

I'd like to correct a minor error in Ms Cutting's comments. (It doesn't in anyway undermine her thesis.) She refers to Robert Harley as having, in 1711, been made "the Earl of Oxford of the second creation." This will make sense to viewers interested in this subject because they know that the title "Earl of Oxford" (or, technically, "Earl of Oxenford") was held by the de Vere family until the death of Aubrey de Vere, the 20th Earl of Oxford, so starting over with the first Earl of Oxford (for Harley) would have to be a "new creation." The error is that the title of "the Earl of Oxford of the second creation" was given to Aubrey de Vere in 1141. You see, the original Earl of Oxford was Edgar Ætheling, who held the title for only two years. So the de Vere family were already the "second creation" of the Oxford Earldom. With the death of the 20th Earl of Oxford the earldom became "dormant," but not "extinct." The distinction of these terms is that "dormant" indicates that although there is no surviving earl, there are living family members that, theoretically, could claim the title. Because there are still surviving de Vere today, the Earldom is still dormant rather than extinct. Because the Earldom was not extinct in 1711, there was resistance to having a new (third) creation, so Harley's title was officially, Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. A related error creeps up with Oxfordians when they mention that Edward de Vere was the highest ranking aristocrat in England (true), with an Earldom that dates back until 1066 (false) and William the Conqueror. The de Vere's earldom (the second creation) only dates back until 1141. This doesn't undermine the point made by Oxfordians, but we should be as accurate as possible and leave factual errors to worshippers of the orthodox position. [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Oxford ] [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Oxford_and_Earl_Mortimer ]

@3dcpsolutions381 Год назад

The question “Why would so many nobles, priests and high ranking officials fabricate a lie around the man from Stratford” has been answer in this video. Very logical, believable and understandable. Thanks.

@Nightowl2548 11 месяцев назад

Maybe they didn't even know who wrote the plays anymore by the 18th century? Was there really that big of a motivation to create such a fraud over some depictions in the plays of long past events in Elizabeth's court? Was there ever really an intent in the folio to attribute the plays to Shakspur from Stratford on Avon or was the author in the folio intended to be an entirely fictional individual who was later identified as this person in Warwickshire?

@MrAbzu 7 месяцев назад

@@Nightowl2548 Hard to believe that tourism was big business back then, but it was. Following in the tradition of Saint Eustic's knuckle bones a Vicar with a gleam of cash in his eye invented the Stratford myth and was holding annual town parades starting the next year. So the genius of a Vicar is entirely responsible for creating the legend of Shakespeare based entirely on the coincidence of minimal theatre involvement which likely had more to do with extra curricular criminal activity typically associated with public playhouses of that time. I would suggest that the William Shakespeare attribution was a conflation of all of the scriptorium writers and the Lords who rode herd on them. No lone genius required, it would appear.

@heartofjesusdj 3 месяца назад

Another point, I’m not sure if she mentions this, Elizabethan England was basically a dictatorship. There was no freedom of speech, no real human rights etc.

@padraiggluck2980 6 месяцев назад

icymi, the Keir Cutler video is excellent.

@rosemaryoloughlin9642 4 года назад

Wonderful to have this synopsis out there for all to see what went on

@charlibeau 2 года назад

I really enjoy Bonners work and delivery

@alwilson3204 10 месяцев назад

Just a late comer here. I just wanted to comment what a fantastic job achieved by Bonner Cutting with this presentation. Thank you.

@annalisette5897 4 года назад

I am new to this subject bu have recently listened to many lectures and read many things. I think I am an Oxfordian. I can't believe the acrimony on such an interesting, well researched subject.

@purefoldnz3070 4 года назад

Even Mark Twain knew that Shakespeare didnt write the plays.

@fabiengerard8142 Год назад

…And he was far from being the only ‘author’ to do so!

@HarryWolf 10 месяцев назад

And coincidetally, Mark Twain was a pseudonym . . .

@fabiengerard8142 10 месяцев назад

@@HarryWolf 👌🏻👌🏽👌

@colinallan1962 5 месяцев назад

Mark Twain thought- not knew.

@johnsmith-eh3yc 4 месяца назад

Mark Twain didnt even know who wrote Harry Potter

@Nightowl2548 11 месяцев назад

The formation of the Stratford identity is one of the most intriguing aspects of this theory. In high school when they had us read Shakespeare I had assumed that William Shakespeare was a very well known public celebrity during his time. Someone actually present at the Elizabethan court similar to how celebrities would hang around the white house. Why else would most of the plays feature nobility unless Shakespeare socialized with nobles as a pet celebrity? Now it turns out that there was no celebrity at all going around London as the playwright and the Stratford lore is actually from the 18th century is quite a turn from how the whole subject is portrayed to the public.

@fabiengerard8142 10 месяцев назад

Quite similar to the whole narrative regarding the historical figure of the iconic playwright known as Molière (1622 - 1673) in France…

@yubantwo2086 5 месяцев назад

Your confusion strikes at the heart of this issue. Life 400 plus years ago was very different from life as you experience it in modern day. Assumptions and conjecture by modern historians are just that: assumptions and conjectures.

@MrAbzu 7 месяцев назад

Not so much for Oxford to write plays, but for Oxford to direct the production of plays through a scriptorium, hence the princely sum. Lords edited and revised plays and their playwriting was mostly found in the margins. We may be looking for Lordly hand writing in the wrong places.

@ronroffel1462 3 года назад

Another great talk by Bonner. I believe there is no other Oxfordian who has her way with a subject. Her delivery is lively, engaging, and full of humour. Those things are lacking in many lectures. It is interesting that the Third Folio's (9:42) second impression was published in 1664: adding the digits gives you 17. The same thing can be done with the great edition published by Nicholas Rowe in 1709 (12:43). Coincidence? I think not. Proof that someone was still concealing authorship information as late as that is found on the two page spread beginning on page 142 of the first volume of Rowe's massive edition. Like many pages in the First Folio, the page facing 142 is misnumbered as page 127. Adding the digits gives us 17 again. There is more: the number of letters in brackets on page 142 and the bottom section of page 127 - "Good Even, and twenty" also add to 17. Plus, the 27th line on page 127 has 34 characters which is 17 x 2: a doubling of de Vere's number. One of the sonnets says "my name is buried where my body lay", which suggests on the surface that his name had disappeared upon his death, but a closer look reveals that he was using "body" in a metaphorical sense. That is, he was telling us his name - or life story - was buried in his body of work, not where his physical body was. That is why there are so many allusions to his life in the plays: he put his life into them by stealth so that his story would someday be revealed. But by bit we are doing just that.

@rooruffneck 2 года назад

I'd like to know for sure that "body" was used in that way back then.

@63mckenzie Год назад

Kind of the same process that starts and grows religions.

@debbieteel9904 2 года назад

I have been watching many of the Oxfordian videos, including one pretty much verifying the Harley engraving portrait of Shakespeare to be the actual Earl of Oxford (Edward). If my summation is correct, this group of forgers made a grave mistake in "finding" a correct picture of Shakespeare. Is this right?

@johntaplin3126 10 месяцев назад

Regarding the part of this talk about the Rev. Francis Gastrell and the 'new' New Place, the ancestry of Gastrell has been known for some time. However, his association with the Stratford house that then occupied the site of Shakespeare's former home has more to do with his wife, Jane Aston's family. especially her sister, Elizabeth, who lived at Lichfield than Gastrell's. Elizabeth was a great friend of Samuel Johnson, whose work on Shakespeare and that his protégé, David Garrick, are well documented. The story is too long to relate here, but was included in my book Shakespeare's Country Families - A Documentary guide to Shakespeare's Country Society, 2011 & 2018.

@davidw.montague5376 3 года назад

Bonner Cutting is so smart and subtle that she could free masonry with her bare hands. Bonner Cutting rocks!

@wayneferris9022 4 года назад

more pieces are falling onto place...

@willshaw6405 4 года назад

I am an Oxfordian, but these connected dots, though interesting, are not, somehow, substantive and satisfying. The "what" is intriguing, the "why," less so. For example, the Polonius-Cecil connection was plain even to the pit, apparently, so why was the "problem solved" by creating the Shaxpere myth? Why would a commoner like Shaxpere have any reason to lampoon Cecil, and more to the point, why would he risk beheading or the Tower simply to create snickers among the knowing ? And if deVere were known to have produced plays for the Court, the connection to his Father-in-law would still be seen by the cognescenti as the most likely origin, regardless of what was purported in the Pope biography, seems to me....doesn't refute Ward's hearsay about "two plays a year" coming out of Stratford in any satisfying way, either. If you follow the implications of Whittemore's Monument, and the repercussions that the Tudor Rose theory (Southhampton as the bastard son of Oxford and Elizabeth) purports, you have a much stronger reason to suppress Oxford's true identity through the centuries...than a liitle poke at the in-laws.

@rstritmatter 4 года назад

"the Polonius-Cecil connection was plain even to the pit." Apparently not so, since it was not observed in print until 1861. Perhaps even more to the point, supposedly reputable Stratfordians still deny it. Go figure.

@sixeses 4 года назад

The Welbeck portrait is probably an accurate representation of the 17th earl. It's irritating that a portrait of the 10th earl of Ormonde is sometime also identified as Oxford, although it is obviously not him. Ormonde was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, who sometimes referred to him as her "black" husband.

@peterheiman8621 4 месяца назад

I am not a confirmed Stratfordian, but I think the arguments presented here are incredibly weak, vague dots connected by tenuous strands.

@rosezingleman5007 Год назад

“Stratfordism” is a new literary religion in a way….

@arealphoney 5 месяцев назад

All very interesting until you get onto thr Hollar engraving. No. There is nothing to suggest that themonument, or the bust were radically changed. It is clear that the Hollar engraving us based on a very rough sketch by Dugdale made in 1634. The word :"sketch" is often misused by writers who do not draw, to mean a drawing, or even engraving of ANY sort at all, and is cobsequently misused in places such as Wikipedia regularly and consistently. Let me say that Dugdale's image is a SKETCH, which roughlybindicates the shape and matter of the memorial. A badly-drawn figure is set into an arched structure which does not quite match the proportions. The figure leans on something..... which looks a bit like a sack or cushion. Thete are columns, and cherubs and a coat of arms. The monument is set against a wall, and is between two windows, which let in light, but DO NOT illuminate the monument. The monument is above Digdale's head... and he cannot draw in perspective. This sketch is given to Hollar. And Hollar does his best to.make sense of it. No 22st century person should presume the accuracy of the Hollar engraving and suggest that the a Later Bicar did anything more than have the memorial vleaned, repainted. And given a nrw quill. It was customaru at thatbtime for certsin objects such as quills. Swords, spears, hsrp strings, laurel wreaths etc to be added to works in stone or plaster. A famous instance is Donatello's St George whose hand is carved to hold a real sword, but never has, in living memory. Basically. Dugdale's sketch was very poor, and Hollar did the best he could.

@colinallan1962 5 месяцев назад

Shakespeare from Stratford was not pronounced Shaksper. We know this from the first folio where his name is listed first amongst the actors as WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. In addition we have the 1605 will of Augustine Phillips a fellow actor who wrote “ item. I give and bequeathe to my ffellowe WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE a thirty shillinges peece of gould…”. In Shakespeare’s dialect the name was pronounced with a long A. ( as in shaking in your shoes ) . Clearly this is how his name was pronounced by his fellow actors and you can’t have a better source than that. As written in his baptism and funeral entries in Warwickshire the name SHAKSPERE would have been pronounced Shake - spere. When it came to PUBLISHING his name it clearly had to include an extra e, otherwise the ignorant of London might have thought he was Shak- spere Although this was literally spelt out for the reader, Oxfordians are desperate to differentiate between what they say are two Shakespeares and so deliberately misprounce his name thus invalidating their whole argument.

@yubantwo2086 5 месяцев назад

What irritates me is that Oxfordians, who believe that they have the answers, deliver their thesises with condescension and snark. Turning wood into relics could have easily been done to the Statford Man's tree as well. Catholics claim to have thorns and wood from Christ's crucifixion and splinters from his cross amongst a host of other relics. I listen to both sides with the goal of approximating truths. I wish to come upon discourse which is respectful to their point view and that of the opposition without talking down to those who hold opposing thesises. Just present the facts as you understand & have researched them and leave room for the listener to make their conclusions. This is especially so because of the high levels of conjecture and speculation about events from hundreds of years ago.

@peterzoeftig2513 Год назад

Alexander Pope's villa at Twickenham en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope%27s_villa#/media/File:Alexander_Pope's_house_at_Twickenham.png The grotto has been restored and will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices of Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust