Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon: Who Are Those Guys? at the Blue Boar Tavern 

This was a long time coming! As usual, the discussion was interesting, informative, and lively. Keep up the great work! As Tom said, it's like old home week. Tom's precis of why Shakspere didn't write the plays and poems is getting better all the time. His introduction to the authorship issue beginning at 2:48 is comprehensive and logical. What should be the most persuasive is the lack of a literary paper trail for the man (3:32 - 3:40). I have a problem with the Marlowe theory and it boils down to this: why would anyone take the trouble of faking his death, moving him to Europe (or wherever he was supposed to go), then transporting valuable manuscripts across hostile borders where there was a real chance they would be confiscated, burnt, or damaged beyond repair? His low "Price Score", that is the number of items in his literary paper trail - 4 - only means that his paper trail was shorter because his career was shorter. The official report of his death beginning at 14:59 sounds extremely plausible. There are small details in the document as relayed by Alex that could not have been easily invented such as where everyone was sitting, where Marlowe retrieved a dagger, and who did what. To me it seems authentic and told by a witness. I like Phoebe's summary of why Bacon was not responsible for the plays and poems. She gives us everything you need to know abut Bacon but were afraid to ask. His interests were in the sciences (aka natural philosophy), theology, and education reform which are topics notably lacking in the works. He was also a mean-spirited, vindictive, and duplicitous man who was not above framing Essex, then being the lead prosecutor against the earl. As Dorothea says near the end of the video (57:55), he had the heart of a scientist. The Spedding books about Bacon Bonner mentions (51:58) can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Even though there are alternate candidates, for my money, the most convincing evidence points to de Vere as the principal writer behind the name William Shakespeare. There are far more hints and clues in the First Folio and other documents leading to him than any other candidate. De Vere's "Price Score" is 8 out of 10, by the way.

Just don't spill the drinks, Tom! Just getting around to reading Sir George Greenwood's The Shakespeare Problem Restated. This may have been written over 100 years ago (pre Looney) but is is still a very eloquent and devastating destruction of the Stratfordian case. Heartily recommended. Greenwood was a top British barrister and his legal knowledge is very relevant. Easily demolishes the "legend" of Will Shakspere's deer-poaching episode, for example. Read it if you haven't already, Greenwood has a very infectious sense of humour. Some of this older material should not be overlooked when it is this easy to read...and it is available in relatively cheap paperback reprints.

IMO there was a whole group of authors and contributors with Bacon as the great fixer or coordinator as he had been with the production of the King James Bible and many other classic works of literature, history, law, culture, philosophy, and science. People may have had a greater work ethic in those days with fewer distractions than today but this was a massive undertaking and would have required teams of people working either alone or in closer collaboration. With the arrival of printing presses an entire new library of works translated into English was urgently required to help keep up with the French, Dutch, Italians, and Spanish. No time could be wasted or parts ignored. Bacon was the man charged with this task, and only Bacon had the required power, influence, regal permission, talent, motivation, persuasive abilities, knowledge, contacts, and legal clout to make it all happen.

Always enjoy your material

Not enough Dorothea and Bonner here but they shine as usual

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

7:39

In regards to Marlowe, although I'm a die-hard Oxfordian -- and have been since c. 1990 -- there is an author whom I greatly admire, named Joseph Atwill. He wrote a jarring re-think about the origins of Christianity titled "CAESAR'S MESSIAH" which I'm convinced is at least mostly right and perhaps entirely right. In brief, he makes the case that the Flavian emperors of Rome invented Christianity and typologically modeled the 3 & 1/2-year ministry of Jesus on the 3 & 1/2-year military campaign of Titus; both Jesus and Titus have exploits at the same locations in the same sequence, but set 40 years apart -- Jesus c. 30 CE and Titus c. 70 CE -- with the Jesus activities in each locale pre-echoing what happens one 'generation' later . . . to darkly comic effect. Atwill wrote a 2nd book, though, titled "SHAKESPEARE'S SECRET MESSIAH" in which he makes a case for Emilia Bassano Lanier having been Marlowe's lover and then -- after his decease -- having become 'Shakespeare'. I'm not convinced that she was 'Shakespeare', but Atwill's 'take' on Marlowe's "THE JEW OF MALTA" as well as on several Shakespeare plays (especially "TITUS ANDRONICUS" and "ROMEO AND JULIET") do seem to show that Marlowe and 'Shakespeare' both knew the same basic themes regarding the Flavian origins of Christianity that he went public with in his 2005 book "CAESAR'S MESSIAH." Atwill dismisses Oxford-as-'Shakespeare' in a mere 2 pages of his 2nd book, which I find grossly inadequate, of course. He sees the works of 'Shakespeare' as Jewish Revenge literature, Bassano being from a family of Jewish converts who went from Italy to England. The name 'Baptista' (or 'Battista', etc.) denoted someone -- most often a Jew -- who had been 'baptized' a Christian despite having been born a Jew, usually out of necessity in a time when Jews were regularly persecuted. We Oxfordians, in my opinion, ought to read Atwill's work -- "CAESAR'S MESSIAH" to get the full import of his Flavian creation of Christianity theme, and then "SHAKESPEARE'S SECRET MESSIAH" to see the evidence he presents showing that the former themes are present not only in Marlowe's "THE JEW OF MALTA" but also in several of the 'Shakespeare' plays. If the Bassano family had been secretly aware of the Flavian origins of Christianity, and if it was through them -- i.e. through Emilia Lanier in particular -- that Marlowe learned of it -- especially as his "atheism" might well be due to his having learned of the Titus/Jesus parallels -- then the subtle inclusion of such material in the 'Shakespeare' corpus has to be thought through. Atwill thinks Emilia was 'Shakespeare', but we Oxfordians don't; however, it is obvious that Oxford would have known her and her family, so IF IF IF the subtle Flavian themes came to him via her and her family, then that would account for how he knew enough to insert it into several of his plays. This might even supply some basis for his enemies' accusations against him regarding Religion. I urge all Oxfordians to read Atwill's two books. I don't believe -- as he does -- that Emilia Lanier Bassano was 'Shakespeare', but it's hard to maintain that the Flavian Themes he sees in several of the plays aren't really THERE. They ARE there, and in addition to all the multifarious reasons we have to believe that Oxford wrote the 'Shakespeare' canon, we have to explore how the Flavian Theme came to be a part of it. Waugh argues in one of his videos that Oxford came to detest Marlowe's 'atheism' . . . but perhaps that was only an initial detestation . . . followed by a soul-searing realization that neither the Catholicism of his ancestors nor the Anglican Protestantism touted by the State during his lifetime were 'true'. Might Oxford have had a crisis of Faith by the time he adopted the 'Shakespeare' guise, one he dare not EXPLICITLY admit to, yet which he might give voice to in cryptic, subtle ways in those plays which Atwill specifically explicates?