In the order that they spoke in Part I, Gabriel Ready, Marianna Iannaccone and Bonner Miller Cutting all answer questions put to them by our host Michael Delahoyde.
Where did Florio want his library of books to go after he died? Unfortunately that critical destination is unintelligible in both audio and captions. Do we know why Herbert rejected Florio 's request?
Shakespeare was all about making money, that is the number one reason why Shakespeare was not a playwright, there wasn't any money to be made in writing plays. Robert Greene complained in his "upstart crow" missive about the disparity of pay between players and writers. Shakespeare's money trail is indicative of a shrewd business man, not an impoverished playwright. It is highly unlikely that all of his business dealings were legitimate. It sounds like the producers of the First Folio may have been of the Bacon, Florio and Jonson political mindset. What were Shakespeare's papers other than the pile of miscellaneous scripts which Burbage used for the Kings Men? Does it not seem likely that people who were alive at the time were responsible for the development of the pile of scripts into the First Folio? So maybe the reason that some previously published plays were so similar to the First Folio versions is because they were earlier revisions by Florio, kind of like a warm up round. Good show.
