My daughter was slightly dyslexic in elementary school. When my son started to learn about Shakespeare when he was a about 11-12, she (9-10) would pick up the books & try to read them. Because the cadence is so different than it is now, she could read it. Every night she would read out loud, a few pages. We had a ritual of going to the bookstore every week & each got one book. The clerks always thought it funny that I would force my pre-teens to read Shakespeare when I usually got a detective or adventure novel. It was always their choice. Now nearly 20 years later, they are both incredibly well read. My son’s grade 8 teacher gave him a complete set of 100 year old leather bound plays because he thought he would be most appreciative - fabulous teacher. My son got a MA in Linguistics & a PhD in English literature. My new granddaughter is read a book in the morning & again night. My daughter has started the bookstore, then pizza ritual up again. Rarely do they miss a week. I think reading to them every night, was probably one of the best parenting things I did.
This post makes me so freaking happy. I teach and act for a Shakespeare Theatre Company is Sydney, Australia. I'm also a high school teacher. I really love hearing this about parents, who beautifully introduce Shakespeare works to young people. People who struggle with dyslexia can be so easily triggered and challenged by the work, but even if it's introduced in bite-size chunks it's so effective and so rewarding. Me for example, when I was a pre-teen I wasn't great at reading. So my Mum bought me Batman comics. Many moons later, I was reading Shakespeare and To Kill A Mockingbird. Now I work full time for a theatre company as an educator. Iris, thank you so much for sharing this story. You are clearly an amazing teacher and an gorgeous parents. Best of luck to you and your loved ones! xxx
I love Shakespeare also,my great uncle gave me leather bond series of all of Shakespeare 's books. I attend every summer Shakespeare in the park. I learned to be a reader also,I lose myself and how fast the day goes by. So wonderful the weekly bookstore and lunch.
The King James Bible is also in iambic pentameter. This is Shakespeare's rhythm. Psalms can be sung quite easily for some reason, unlike other places in the Bible where people are begat- ting or something. My story is that a teacher in 5th grade gave me dictionary terms every time I was caught reading in class or talking in class (notes or whispers) because my grades were awful. I was the only child in my family who did NOT have dyslexia nor dysgraphia. He also gave me a reading list on the college reading level because he thought I was reading one book a day, not 5, which I was. Wyatt McClenny, RIP.
Yes good for you. Most educated parents read to children. I still dislike reading aloud and being read to yet am recording my own first novel for those who enjoy listening. I remember some of those old children's books including Pickles the Fire Cat .
I am not British but I have always been fascinated by British history. I love these videos where history is presented in a more "personal" way. John Nettles is an excellent choice for a host in this video. (I just keep expecting DS Troy to show up.)
There are many mysteries about Shakespeare. One that has always intrigued me is in "A Midsummer night's dream" In the intro, the characters are inruduced. With Puck it says " Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow". It is never mentioned again until the very last line in the play, when, in the epilogue Puck says " if this offends, then Robin will make amends". Goodfellow is still a fairly common name in that part of England,. Who was he having fun with ? I wonder if someone today could go over the parish records of that era and find a clue.
Shakespeare did not invent the name "Robin Goodfellow". It was an alternate name for a mischievous sprite or fairy from mythology. He appeared regularly in plays and in print, including in a play by Anthony Munday play from 1584, a decade before Shakespeare summoned him.
I prefer to listen to Shakespeare in morse code. Ah the lovely beeps and stops... its beyond human words I tell you. But fools read in an old book, from the 1600's.
Interesting that so many of the comments below on this fine documentary are from people who wish to discredit Shakespeare's existence or that the wrote the plays. These people never explain their credentials or do more than make assertions. Whereas there is to my knowledge no serious academic interest in the authorship conspiracy theory in any major university worldwide. I myself am a theatre director with a deep experience of his work. It clearly is the work of one man, he develops but there is one voice. This s a Warwickshire voice that received a good but not deep education, and above al he was a manor the theatre who wrote in rehearsal or after rehearsal. His plays are utterly unlike Marlowe's (Marlowe had no sense of humour and hated writing women's roles). Francis Bacon did not write poetry let alone plays. The Earl of Oxford wrote some terrible plays. There is so much evidence for Shakespeare and none except bizarre embedded codes that suggest otherwise. No one doubted Shakespeare in his lifetime. Why bother now??
@@fgoindarkg 1) He could spell his own name. The existence of alternate spellings of his name written by other people is no more evidence that he couldn't spell his own name than the existence of alternate spellings of mine proves that I can't spell my own name. Seriously, reading my name on junk mail is one of the most amusing pastimes I know. I've collected 22 variant spellings of my name. 2) There is no evidence that he owned no books, but, _arguendo_ , even if he owned no books in *STRATFORD* , that would be irrelevant to his career as an author in *LONDON* . However, you'd need the inventory to show what property he owned when he died, and the inventory is missing. A will is not an inventory and cannot be assumed to comprehensively document all of the personal property the testator dies possessed of. 3) The only thing that anti-Shakespearians claim identifies him as a grain merchant is their subjective interpretation of a badly executed sketch, turned into an even worse engraving, in William Dugdale's _The Antiquities of Warwickshire_ . Lacking any historical knowledge of ancient funerary monuments, or what was said about this one (e.g., the object was correctly identified as a cushion by Gerard Langbain in _Account of the English Dramatic Poets_ (1691)), they eyeball the cushion in the image and assert that it's either a sack of grain or a sack of wool. In this, they show that they don't know anything about agriculture or sheep-shearing either, since these sacks were massively larger than the object depicted on the monument. Finally, they show themselves up as illiterate because they haven't even bothered to read what William Dugdale himself said about the monument and the person it honors. Dugdale himself said that, "One thing more, in reference to this antient Town [Stratford-upon-Avon] is observable, that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will. Shakespere, whose Mo∣nument I have inserted in my discourse of the Church." Their *OWN* source for the grain merchant claim explicitly says he was a poet, but anti-Shakespearians evidently prefer looking at pictures to reading.
My favourite theory about the missing 7 years is that Shakespeare went to Italy. Not so ridiculous as it sounds, once he had made his way to London, he could take ship with Venetian merchants who regularly visited London. His Italian plays are a clue: he stopped at Messina in Sicily (Much Ado about Nothing) sailed into Venice (The Merchant of Venice and Othello), travelled across the Po plain to Padua (Taming of the Shrew) and Verona (Two gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet). These plays have contemporary settings and are not historical or fantasy, as are his Greek settings, Timon of Athens and Midsummer Nights Dream.
Had he actually been there, he would know that there are no tides in the Mediterranean, that Verona and Milan are nowhere near the sea, and Venice was a republic, with no Duke.
@@Jeffhowardmeade exactly. Yet another sign that the “authorship” bs is nonsense. Shakespeare’s specific knowledge of foreign geography is very sketch - he was not a nobleman who traveled extensively. But his Elizabethan “grammar school” education, brilliant sense of the stage and stage language, prominent father (in the town - likely a recusant Catholic), etc all support his identity. Not to mention his many friends…
He would have needed permission to travel abroad, which he didn’t have. In the late 16th century you could travel to Milan from Venice by boat via the canal system, but you know that, don’t you.
@@enheduannapax7988 An earl needed permission to travel. A normal person did not. And please describe how a person rushing to catch the tide to get from Verona to Milan would get there by using a canal, in the Mediterranean where there are no tides. Even if it were possible, why someone would do that when they could hop a horse and make the trip in a day?
I watched this a long time ago, but it’s well worth the second watching! Excellent! I note, in my opinion, Shakespeare studied Job? He was the first dramatist! Many of those sayings are Job’s? Excellent! Thankyou
what history are you referring to? check out what is actually known about shakspear of Stratford - I would suggest around 90% of this documentary is made up. they don't even know if he went too grammar school !
I’ve been watching most of Waldemar ‘s brilliant programmes on tv for many years, so I’m glad to have discovered this ‘Perspective’ series here. As for Shakespeare and Stradford, now, it’s definitely wonderful to have preserved that 16th century very house as a piece of history that helps us all to better dive into the daily life at the time, etc. Except that I happen to have been introduced to the famous ‘authorship controversy’ at school, around age 15, in the late Sixties… Therefore, at least in my eyes, there’s a quite reasonable doubt about the Bard’s actual identity (as there’s one in France as well, by the way, regarding the authorship of Molière’s plays). Whatever - only one absolute evidence in all this: the man was a true genius!
No there isn’t any doubt. To me as a medievalist (though I also specialize in Renaissance literature) there is ample evidence to support the identity of the Bard. I don’t even want to argue the point because it is laughably absurd to anyone who actually works on early literature (you think no “evidence” exists for such a “famous” writer? Don’t even ask me about every anonymous great medieval poet whose poetry was known well-enough to be quoted by others yet their specific identity is entirely unknown). Just stop it with the horrifically arrogant, classist, pointless, and inaccurate “controversy” nonsense. It started in the nineteenth century and is rooted in classist arrogance.
The “birth place” is a 19th century reconstruction. Almost nothing in Stratford is original. It is not known where Shaksper was born - the Henley Street mansion was purchased later in his life. The authorship debate is real and valid. The reluctance of academics to recognize that fact speaks to the propensity for higher education to beat critical thinking out of most people’s minds. Falsified old fossils will never admit the evidence supporting Shaksper of Stratford is unbelievably weak.
@@4Mr.Crowley2 Just look at the six signatures. The man couldn't write. It has nothing to do with arrogance or classism. There's not a drop of evidence that he ever wrote a thing. Christopher Marlowe came from the same class as Shakspere. Marlowe excelled, went to university, studied and became a great writer. Shakspere never went to university, probably never went to grammar school. Parents were illiterate, his children were illiterate, he left no money to educate his grandchildren. He didn't value education because he was illiterate too.
@@4Mr.Crowley2 Agree. As Shakespeare biographies, e.g., the instant video, point out, the public Stratford Grammar School for boys that Shakespeare attended early rigorously, "university level" trained them in the classical "Trivium" of Latin (and now English) grammar, rhetoric (all its schematic structural devices that Shakespeare as a poet later deployed) and history. Shakespeare's maternal great uncle Sir Henry Alexander Webb had been a trusted counselor of Queen Catherine Paar, who mentions him in a document. During the great pendulum swings of the earlier Tudor Catholic versus Protestant religious reversals that shook and permanently altered the country, Shakespeare's family (having some Catholic holdouts) had to keep up with every latest new law governing English citizens, upon pain of execution. And after school Shakespeare seems (like later Charles Dickens) to have clerked in a law office, and so become proficient in legal doings (e.g., chicanery [hence, his later witty satire, "first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"] as well as processes and court proceedings). As this video narrates, he viewed in Stratford royal theatre troupe tour performances of prior plays of Henry V, Richard III, Romeo and [Ethel, Rosalind, or whomever]. And from near books he absorbed Hollinshed's Chronicles of English history and Plutarch's Lives of notable ancient Roman Imperialists. A quick and retentive study, by age 18 he was ready (fully equipped by education, and natural imaginative, dramatic and wordsmith endowment) to shake the theatrical scene in London, as he did by his poetic improvements of said above plays and others. A mere seven years after his 1616 death, his contemporary poet dramatist rival Ben Jonson wrote a great tribute poem to him (conceding that "my Shakespeare," "Sweet Swan of Avon" had, compared to university M.A. Ben, "little Latin and less Greek", yet rating Shakespeare's poems and plays as "out-topping knowledge") in Ben's preface to the 1623 First Folio publication of Shakespeare's plays, collected by his two actor colleagues from the King's Men, Heminges and Condyll. These two actors had personally known and worked with Shakespeare in London from the early 1590s. So the historicity of William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon and then London; and his authorship of nearly all his plays, but for possible collaboration (based on inconsistent style evidence) in one or more early plays, as in the Henry VI trilogy and in Henry VIII, and an unfinished drama of Sir Thomas More, is beyond dispute.
And (in Othello, I believe) mythopoetically he coined "green-eyed monster" for "jealousy." And in King Lear, "marble-hearted fiend" for "ingratitude"; and the adage "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, to have an ungrateful child."
Years ago I attended a performance at the Globe while visiting London. I don't remember which one it was but I do remember how unbearably uncomfortable the wooden stadium seating was and how long it seemed to go on. The space between the seating was so tight that knees intruded into the backs of those seated in front o fyou. Of course, no seat cushion or back rests. Toward the end, I became jealous of those standing or seated on the ground in front of the stage. The attendees back in the day were shorter and sturdier than me that's for certain. Loved the Shakespeare history lesson. Thanks.
Thumbnail picture makes him look like he works the door at a Northern, shady, run-down nightclub. "Hey Shakesy, wanna throw this trouble maker out?" "No problem boss."
Shakespeare is still so genius to help anyone discovering the beauty of the human language, using stories in order to manage situations instead of building up wars for keeping under control the same boundless frustration...from here to Kiev UKRAINE to China and back friends, it's so cute listening lnspector Barnaby talking about Shakespeare as a suspect of a crime, in fact he is the bigger murderer of human ignorance, a huge outrageous criminal indeed. I was watching last night a great movie, The Accountant, a shocking gorgeous Ben Affleck, we still have to deal with this huge trend of autism disorder, of this intollerance to a hostile evil kind of society, most Shakespeare stories are based on this lack of comunication creating the most tragic disasters among people
Your refreshing commentary and striding knowledge is thoroughly engaging and enlightening Waldemar. Bravo! (A snide comment on your French pronunciation ... emphasize the second syllable of the Impressionists MoNet, DeGas, et GauGuin, s'il vous plait mon ami :-).
Used to visit there, from Seattle, every year for quite a while 80s to 90s when my son was young! he used to go with his class mates from Garfield as well! was the high point of our summers! not sure what it would be like to live there!
@@Tmanaz480 Actuality, nobody is making money selling Anti-Stratfordianism. 99% of their books are self-published. The only one making any money from it is the Howard Johnson where they hold their annual meeting in one of the smaller conference rooms.
Professionals in evidence and logic based occupations- scientists, judges and attorneys, historians, physicians - tend to be authorship doubters. The artsy, subjective, soft disciplines fall in line with the orthodoxy and careerism.
John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage, three actors of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a famous acting company that included William Shakespeare, were given money by William Shakespeare of Stratford in his Last Will and Testament in 1616. Two of these actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were responsible for having 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in the First Folio in 1623.
06:39 "...He was always known as a glovemaker stroke [slash] whittawer. Now, a whittawer is a tanner; a tanner but who's producing really fine white leather. And that ties in with the sort of gloves John Shakespeare was making. These are fashionable, high quality gloves made for the well-to-do." Made an effort to websearch the term he was using (which sounded a lot like "widower") -- to see how it was spelled: "whittawer". "White" plus "tawer". ..."Tawing" or "white tawing" is a process a tanner uses by treating animal skins with alum or lime in order to make "whitleather".
I got that from...Swedish! I figured the spelling was "wittare." Witt = vit = white; are = are = one who makes things _____; and together _one who makes things white_ , so he made the materials for the gloves white. There's a though going round that English is a Scandinavian language. I've only recently heard this, but the more I think about it, the more I think it could be true. Germanic, yes, but once upon a time mutually intelligible with the other Scandinavian languages.
You have the wrong Shaksper. The real Skakes-Speare was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. The Stratford man has NO connection with the royal cour, zlord Burley, or Italy. Edward was a favourite of Elizabeth I, he was the adopted son of Burley, and spent three years in Italy. RE
Shakespeare of Stratford was a member of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became The King's Men. He was literally a servant of the Queen's closest advisor and then the king, himself. He didn't have any documented association with Burghley, but then neither do the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare got so many things wrong about Italy that if it WAS De Vere, he was a moron.
Even calcified academics agree the character Polonius in Hamlet is based on Burghley. Why do you show up on these threads spreading debunked garbage ad nauseam.
@@enheduannapax7988 Please direct us to some of these "calcified academics". Polonius was a stock character, nothing more. This is the consensus of academia. If any contemporary had thought Polonius was Burghley, Hamlet would never have seen the light of day.
One of the commentators in this wonderful documentary mentions that Shakespeare's father was, at one time, a nail taster. What was a nail taster? I've googled around some, including medieval history and lists of old-time occupational sites and can't find anything. Anyone know? Thanks.
@@emilieraphael4431 He WAS an ale taster.That was a real job. He later worked his way up to High Bailiff (kind of Mayor), but if it was me, I'd have stuck with the ale tasting. Many seem unaware that Shakespeare's origins weren't really humble. His dad was an alderman, who (before financess went sour) owned several houses and a farm.
You are quite right. The plays were clearly written by an aristocrat who was the son of the Virgin Queen who went on to have sex with his mother, who was busting a gut to write plays for the unwashed apprentices of Lodon, and just HAPPENED to choose the same name for his pseudonym as a living, breathing human being who was an actor in the plays of Ben Jonson, and received payment for court performances. Now when you say that to people, they don't believe you.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Where are the proofs that Shakespeare could write? Signatures? Handwritten manuscripts of his plays? Where was his personal library? When did he travel abroad? How did he know about Royal intrigues?
@@romanclay1913 There are three play manuscript pages in his handwriting, which is more than we have for most of his contemporaries. His family line died out in 1670. His houses and theaters were all destroyed by 1700. Where would this library be housed? He gets so many things wrong about the Continent that it's obvious he never traveled. The only accurate palace intrigue in his works comes straight from history books. In Love's Labors Lost he names as one of Navarre's companions a Catholic who was in real life Navarre's mortal enemy. He gives Vienna and Venice dukes they never had. He puts Padua in the wrong country. He gives landlocked Bohemia a coastline. He makes the Duke of Milan a client to the King of Naples. He has a character rushing from a landlocked city to catch the tide, IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. If he HAD wanted to know about court intrigues, well, he WAS a groom of the chamber to King James.
@@romanclay1913 Read the whole thing. You haven't actually done that, have you? The poet is saying his verse hasn't kept up with the times because his style is his signature. If EVERy time any poet used the word EVER, nEVER, EVERy, VERy, etc. it was a reference to De Vere, then he must have written EVERything written by EVERy poet EVER. I'll see your misunderstanding of Sonnet 76 and raise you Sonnet 136. "Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov’st me, for my name is Will."
Lots of speculation about Shakespeare here. He created a world in which women rivaled men in wisdom and presence of power. He keenly knew the role of men in a family and so he went off to London to spend the year only returning to his family at Christmas time to raise a daughter who probably never learned to write. It's curious that he never went into other areas of human thought like science and philosophy with such a great mind. For these reasons it was Francis Bacon, who was one of two illegitimate children of Elizabeth I who wrote the plays and paid handsomely for William Shakespeare to play the part of the playwright. "The Shakespeare Code"
Exactly - the speculation becomes complete fantasy with these 'Life of Shakespeare' documentaries. Most interesting, and perplexing, is the Northumberland Manuscript - which along with Sir Francis Bacon’s name on the cover, is also the name 'William Shakespeare', both written several times, though seemingly unconnected....? Why is Bacon writing William Shakespeare's name unless he is using it?? There are many theories related to the 'Shakespeare Authorship Question' and they all have fascinating aspects to me... as Ben Jonson wrote in the preface of the First Folio "Reader, looke Not on his picture, but his Booke." and in a poem dedicated to Shakespeare, he is “not of an age, but for all time”... says it all.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Says who - you? Almost everyone agrees that the folder and its contents were originally compiled in or around 1596 and ’97 by Sir Francis Bacon or one of his secretaries, as his name appears in a number of places on the cover along with a list of titles, of which six of the nine manuscripts inside the cover are copies of his works, most of them pointing to this time period. Of most importance to the Shakespeare Authorship Question is the fact that it’s the only Elizabethan document that contains the names of both William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon (“ffrauncis Bacon”) on a single page. Either Bacon himself or his secretaries may have used the space on the cover, perhaps to practise their penmanship, practice signatures or to make sure their pen was properly inked... Sir Francis Bacon was a chameleon in many ways, and heavily into secrecy, that he probably had a number of different writing styles for different purposes. His name is jotted in different forms in what seems to be an exercise to arrive at the proper means of identifying himself on the title page of his essays, when he got around to publishing them.
@@mondomacabromajor5731 You've never read a source that wasn't Anti-Stratfordian. How would you know what actual scholars say on the matter? Actual scholars think it was Adam Dyrmonth. There is no indication for whom he was worked.
I don't think that is true. They were a quite rich family in that area around Stratford. Shakespeare himself did very well financialy. He was a part owner of the Globe.
According to "Shakespeare, A Biographical Handbook" (Gerald Eades Bentley, Yale University Press, 1961), Shakespeare's father was part of the municipal administration of Stratford and, the year after William was born, he was in charge of repairing the school master's house and, later, was active in the selection of a new schoolmaster. Although school records have long since been lost, it is likely William was educated at that school.
@@professorsogol5824 I just find it very odd for such a great writer their is no documentary evidence that he went to school and that none of his manuscripts of all his work survive where other great writers in history have numerous works on display
@@robinfereday6562 Since there's no evidence anyone went to the school before 1800, yet they kept paying the schoolmaster, certainly somebody was attending. Why not the mayor's sons? And there are three play manuscript pages in his handwriting, which is more than we have for most poets of the age, including Ben Jonson, who lived 20 years longer than Shakespeare and was more famous in his own time.
22:00 Capitalize and understand the new mediums. 25:00 תעביר את הכתוב לmedium שלך 38:00 האם יודעים איך שייקספיר היה נראה מה החשיבות השפתית של שייקספיר? האם לשייקספיר היו חיי אהבה האם לשייקספיר הייתה משפחה. איך שייקספיר עברה להיות מחזאי? 41:00 על מי שייקספיר השפיעה
Few years ago I saw a show about the doubt if Shakespeare actually did write all these stories. And even club for or against it. But how sure are we today- because I think it’s fair to say there is some doubt. But perhaps a subject for another show!
That depends on who "we" are. If "we" is the community of scholars of early modern theatre, literature, history, etc. then "we" were never in doubt that William Shakespeare wrote the works because he's only one - barring co-authorship credits for John Fletcher for _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ and _The History of Cardenio_ , but these also credit Shakespeare - whose authorship of the plays and poems is supported by documentary evidence from the 16th/17th century and contemporary testimony. Literally, every title page that credits an author credits William Shakespeare (and in one case also John Fletcher), every single Stationer's Register entry (again, but in one case also John Fletcher) and every single Revels Account entry that names the author of the canonical plays and poems identifies Shakespeare as an author, and every single contemporary who bothered to speak on the subject said that Shakespeare was an author. All the evidence exists for Shakespeare and none exists for any rival "candidate" (if you can use the term for people who never sought to be identified with Shakespeare's works when they were alive). If "we" is the general public, then more than 99.99% of us accept that Shakespeare was the author. Anti-Shakespeareanism is a vanishingly tiny fringe group of people. If "we" is the community of anti-Shakespearians themselves, then they're always full of doubts because they have to ignore the evidence that can settle the matter, since it never goes their way.
@@bastianconrad2550 Since this video is about Shakeapeare, it would seem rather obvious that's who "him" is. Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, and the anonymous author of The Second Return From Parnassus were all referring to the poet. Vicar John Ward was referring to the poet AND the man from Stratford.
Alexander Waugh is worth following if you feel a bit suspish about the whole thing 😉 I am writing this as I have pressed play...I may be cockily pre-empting what is said (apologies) X
I had a little run-in with Waugh a few years back. He claimed that before the 19th century American Shakespeare scholar John Payne Collier regularized the spelling, the name of Portia had always been spelled Portio in previous editions of _The Merchant of Venice_ because he wanted to link it with the lost play _Portio and Demorantes_ , which the Oxfordian Eva Turner Clark claimed was an early version of _The Merchant of Venice_ . This was a lie, of course, and it was a stupid lie because even if he could have proven his contention, _Portio and Demorantes_ was a Lord Chamberlain's Men's play from a previous incarnation of the company, thus vastly increasing the possibility that Shakespeare could have seen it in manuscript, even if were never printed. It would simply become another play that Shakespeare had used as a source, just as he used _The Troublesome Raigne of King John_ , _The Famous Victories of Henry V_ , and _The True Chronicle History of King Leir_ . But, unfortunately for Waugh, he chose the wrong person to lie to, because I've read the entire First Folio front to back (and to celebrate its 400th anniversary I'm doing it again this year, currently having finished all of the Folio comedies and histories, and now up to the 12 tragedies). I knew that it was "Portia" in the Folio and a quick glance online showed it was also "Portia" in the 1600 first quarto. So that's Alexander Waugh for you: he's a liar who doesn't even have the wit to see when a lie won't help him.
Yes. I've also read Edward de Vere, which is something that most of the people advocating for him as Shakespeare haven't done. And there is a vast gulf of poetic talent between even Shakespeare's earliest work and Edward de Vere's acknowledged writings.
Jonson didn't refer to Stratford. He mentioned Avon. Leonard Digges referred to Shakespeare's "Stratford Monument". Digges' stepfather was the executor of Shakespeare's will.
@@OddawallWood Because Shakespeare's plays were performed for Queen Elizabeth I there. Avon is the ancient Welsh word for "river", many places in Britain could be misconstrued as "Avon". In fact, "Hampton" is a corruption of the word Avondunum, which means "fort on the river", AKA Hampton Court. It was a fortified palace on the banks of the Thames.
1:29 Shakespeare wrote on a pillow 5:15 is that the reconstructed version of the house? 11:10 Third graders were doing college level lit in a foreign language 16:40 they speculate wildly and without basis Shakpere's life is only "mysterious" if you try to make him into a prolific author. No explanation for how he could have obtained the medical, legal and Italian travel knowledge that is fond in the works. No explanation for the trite verse on his grave marker or the rambling unpunctuated Last Will with three different versions of his signature.
Which act, which scene, which line, demonstrates knowledge of medicine? He made HOWLING errors in his Italian plays, and didn't realise that Bohemia didn't have a sea coast. A study has shown that his legal knowledge was about average among playwrights. If you want to make extravagant claims like that you HAVE TO back it up with evidence if you want to be taken serously.
@@thoutube9522 Whenever I've seen any Shakespeare authorship denier try to argue the subject of Shakespeare's alleged medical knowledge, it happens to be because he knew the symptoms and stages of syphilis. How the actor William Shakespeare could have come by that knowledge in Southwark, in a theatre situated in the liberties and thus surrounded by brothels, alehouses, and bear-baiting pits, is otherwise a complete mystery, of course. He had to have studied medicine!
This video was originally published as "Shakespeare: The Legacy" by Film Media Group n 2016 and has been posted by others on RU-vid. There is a good chance you have seen it before.
Very good decision fans, let's hang on with genius minds to give us further inspirations because they make life worth living, Shakespeare is helping us to love words that become more powerful than bullets or bombs if well used. Web connection is the best prove, using a language, comunication is everything friends, let's be straight about it. Thanks God humankind evolve, makes me smile recalling the Past, watching such documentaries, how ages were then, the best reason to learn to improve ourselves together, using web connection for...saving the power of comunication friends
Does it really matter who wrote the works? They still exist, they still teach us about life,love,greed,war and the nature of Man. Whether it was the son of a glove maker or an unknown aristocrat. The works still exist!
Yes it matters. We don't do it to Chaucer, or Wordsworth, or Dickens or, indeed, Shakespeare's contemporaries like Ben Johnson or Marlow or Kyd. In fact the more I find out about how theatre worked in that era, the collaborations and the relationships, the more convinced I am that the various theories that he didn't write his plays are utter nonsense.
@@joannemoore3976We do it for William Shake-Speare because the evidence William Shaksper of Stratford-upon-Avon writing them comes down to essentially myths regarding his life not backed by contemporary evidence. What we do know about his life doesn’t line up with him writing anything at all, let alone court poetry.
@@byzantinegold but that simply isn't true. We have plenty of evidence for William Shakespeare as the author. To say otherwise is misrepresentation and spin to be honest. What you don't have is any evidence for the other so called contenders.
@@byzantinegold and what do you mean, court poetry? He wrote poems yes but predominantly he was a playwright. It was popular entertainment that the court also patronised and enjoyed. Stop looking at Shakespeare as some remote poet sitting in isolation with his muse and see him as he was, an actor, a writer, a shareholder, a collaborator, a working man of the theatre who also happened to be a genius. Everything else will then fall into place quite easily you'll find..for example, some early publications of the plays have accidentally retained the writer using the actor's rather than the character's name in the script..is that more likely to be the actor playwright working with his fellows every day or an Earl delivering his secret manuscripts via some stooge. It's just not sensible.
@@joannemoore3976 I understand we are arguing in the comments section of a youtube video, but I think its only fair to expect respectful discussion. I hope we could agree on that, at least. In my opinion, there has been no convincing evidence during his lifetime to prove the man William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works written under the name William Shakespeare. That's all I am saying. I understand that may enrage the contingent of Shakespeare scholars who disagree. I do agree there is a some evidence, primarily the traditional story that we have been given, that some scholars think proves he wrote them, but many reasonable and credible people have taken issue with that evidence. Furthermore, they have made other discoveries that point to other candidates, most notable Edward de Vere. The point is there is a reasonable doubt regarding the traditional narrative, and that's something you too cannot deny in good faith. What should be done, if you truly believe in the ideals of truth and fairness, is to engage in objective study of the information we have available to us to form conclusions. From that basis, you're welcome to your conclusions as am I. However, to deny it is even conceivable to question the Shakespeare doctrine in any scholarly way is simply dogma, and it is WRONG to do so.
@@chrisgamble4939 Since when is relying on documentary evidence having your "brain removed"? Believing in conspiracy theories is generally regarded as the brainless move.
Don't need to Kill to have it:-- just stretch out for it, as you would for the farthest star, and you shall find BY HEAVEN, METHOUGHT IT WAS AN EASY LEAP.
There is so much evidence that Shakespeare was an aristocrat. Deep understanding of how the world works and how leaders behaved. The use of cryptic clues in his books points to someone who travelled on state business This Stratford version is purely commercial...a huge tourist income which cannot be challenged.
Such deep understanding that he erroneously has Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later to be Richard III) address one person as three people. He speaks to "Lord Rivers... Lord Woodville, and Lord Scales" in Act II, sc. 1, but they're all the same person. The 2nd Earl Rivers was Anthony Woodville, and one of the subsidiary styles of the earls Rivers was Lord Scales. If Shakespeare was an aristocrat, he would know out of his experience that the family name very often doesn't match the noble title and that the noble title can carry other subsidiary styles. He wouldn't have made such a careless error regarding the modes of address of these historical figures.
I have a book about this coming out, "The Precious Gem of Hidden Literature: Francis Bacon 1576-1655" if you search for that you'll find the PDF version for free.
@@ryanmurtha2392 Then why is there no record of him being involved? It's not as if a very public figure in the Court of King James would have needed to keep his involvement a secret.
@@Jeffhowardmeade You're looking at it from a modern point of view. Today the risks of authorship are minimal and the potential rewards are great, it was just the opposite in Shakespeare's time. Then there is the question of Bacon's parentage, which I discuss in the introduction, if Bacon's parents were really Elizabeth and Dudley he would have very good reason to be quiet as possible. Elizabeth died just before Hamlet was first published, so there is some reason to believe she was the model for Gertrude, as Otto Rank has suggested. People were arrested for saying Elizabeth was pregnant at the time, so it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Bacon considered as his primary mission the reform of natural philosophy or what we now call science, some writers say poets and playwrights were not taken seriously in Elizabethan times and this may also have prompted the use of a pseudonym. At least Burghley seems to have thought the activity unworthy of a statesman, maybe something like Nero fiddling as Rome burned. To be fair there is a surprising lack of evidence for anyone's involvement, the massive manuscript materials required for the First Folio have all vanished without a scrap surviving. That was by accident or intent, and it seems strange that people should have thought the plays worth preserving after Shakespeare's death, for seven years, then just thrown them all in the bin once the Folio was published. These would have included the only hard copies of Macbeth, As You Like It, The Tempest, right? Julius Caesar too? In the introduction I mention a recently discovered or recently disclosed pamphlet from 1599 which claims Bacon was writing anonymously for the government. He'd only published a small book of ten essays and some religious meditations at that point, so this is a bit strange as well. In the book you will find the story of Coriolanus, Timon and others in the parallelisms I've compiled, I think you will like it.
Literally NOBODY says that. Apart from you, obviously. Some think that Marlowe's death was faked, and he was exiled and wrote the plays in Italy It's a wonderful theory, with one small flaw. It's bollocks. The story goes that an inquest jury was shown the body of a hanged man. While it's possible to fake the knife-would in the eye that actually killed Marlowe, it's difficult to hide the obvious marks left by hanging. Also, Marlowe's style is nothing like Shakespeare's.
@@Jeffhowardmeade If he was the real deal, and so famous, why wasn't he given an elaborate state funeral? He was buried quietly just like ordinary folk.
@@keepitsimple4629 Please give me an example of any other poet who was given one. Can you think of any modern writer who was thusly honored? Spenser and Beaumont were the only two to have managed a Westminster burial by the time Shakespeare died, and both died in London, with Beaumont dying just a month before Shakespeare. At the time, anyone could be buried in Westminster provided they had the money to do so. Ben Jonson, who was much more famous in his lifetime, was buried standing upright. Soon after Shakespeare died, poet William Basse actually wrote a poem arguing he should have been buried in Westminster between Beaumont and Spenser. The simple fact is that Shakespeare was a mere theater poet who hadn't had a hit in several years by the time he died. Most public plaudits for his poetry were for Venus and Adonis, which he published 24 years earlier. He didn't become the "Immortal Bard" until 150 years later.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I can see you have studied this at length. This is a bit over my paygrade. However, even in his time, there were those who thought others were the real playwright behind the pseudonym. Let's throw out the names of Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere. Is it so hard to imagine that a long lived narrative could be wrong? William Shakspur had no education or experience to draw from. He probably never travelled more than 25 miles from his home.
what a load of nonsense - please explain why there is no mention of him being a writer or actor in Stratford? why is there zero reference to him being a playwright at any point in his life by anyone anywhere? All his contemporary writers are well documented in thgeri lives - everyone - he has nothing until 7 years after he died. There is no documented at all that the Shakespeare of Stratford is the playwright of London. This is a sad excuse of a documentary and sheds no light on one of the great mysteries of our time - who really was shakespear (the earl of oxford of course).
"what a load of nonsense - please explain why there is no mention of him being a writer or actor in Stratford?" There is. It's on his funerary monument, which likens him to a "Virgil for art" ("arte Maronem"-Virgil's name was Publius Vergilius Maro) and refers in English to "all yt [that] he hath writ | Leaves living art but page to serve his wit", punning on the page as in a sheet of paper and page as in the subordinate gofer, because he's so far above everyone else as a writer that all the living writers can aspire to is being the great man's page. "why is there zero reference to him being a playwright at any point in his life by anyone anywhere?" There is. Quartos of his plays with his name on them began to be published in 1598 (Q1 of _Love's Labour's Lost_ and Q2 of _Richard III_ and _Richard II_ . Moreover, the contemporary references to him as a playwright go back to 1592. However, I'll just stick with 1598 because in that year _Palladis Tamia; or Wit's Treasury_ was published by Francis Meres. In it, he likens Shakespeare as a playwright to both Plautus and Seneca (for excellence in comedy and tragedy together) and lists _thirteen_ plays by way of demonstrating what an excellent writer Shakespeare was (he also confirms his authorship of _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_ and gives the first printed reference to Shakespeare's sonnets, which he said were circulating among his private friends). It's unlikely he ever saw any published edition of Shakespeare's plays with his name on it before writing this passage because it took them about a year to publish books of the size of _Palladis Tamia_ , but even if he had seen the 1598 editions of _Love's Labour's_ , _Richard III_ and _Richard II_ , it still wouldn't explain the correct attribution of at least nine other plays (one play he mentioned, _Love's Labour's Won_ , is the subject of argument. We don't know if it's a lost play or an alternative title for a play like _Much Ado About Nothing_ ). "All his contemporary writers are well documented in thgeri lives - everyone - he has nothing until 7 years after he died." Utterly false, as I've just shown. You have to ignore all the title pages, all the Stationer's Register entries, the Master of the Revels accounts entries, and every piece of testimony dating from Shakespeare's lifetime. But if you're prepared to ignore all the evidence, then there's no evidence _anyone_ has ever achieved _anything_ . "There is no documented at all that the Shakespeare of Stratford is the playwright of London." Except for the fact that he was identified as the playwright by people who knew him personally and/or professionally and who also knew the man from Stratford like Leonard Digges, John Heminges, Henry Condell, etc., or by people who knew the roster of the King's Men (Ben Jonson-who almost certainly also knew he was from Stratford-and John Webster), when the actor William Shakespeare had been independently identified with the second-generation gentleman from Stratford-upon-Avon whose father was mentioned as having married "the daughter and heir of Arden" and had been given a coat of arms thanks to his civic functions in Stratford-upon-Avon. Many of these references to Shakespeare as an author refer to his status as a gentleman or use the honorifics Master/Mr/M that were reserved for gentlemen (e.g., Edmund Howes' additions to John Stow's _Annals_ listing "our modern and present excellent Poets" listed "as near to their priorities [social rank]" as the author could discover, and "M. Willi. Shakespeare, gentleman" being listed among the others of that rank. Any time you see that rank, it's an indication that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is the man being referred to because no other man was entitled by virtue of a grant of a coat of arms to style himself a gentleman in this era. "This is a sad excuse of a documentary and sheds no light on one of the great mysteries of our time - who really was shakespear (the earl of oxford of course)." Of course, because there's _so much_ documentary evidence for _that_ proposition. Like, uh... and erm.... Let me know when you have even a tithe of the documentary evidence for de Vere as the "real author" that we do for Shakespeare and then I'll listen.
@@Nullifidian nope - non of this proves Shakespeare was shakspear of Stratford - the moment was altered (you know this - it used to be a grain merchant) - nooooo mention in Stratford he was a poet or playwright (you know this as well) no writing left, no books, he couldtn even write his own name (six signatures all different). utter nonsense. no proof for Oxford - but what a greta mystery. A lot of people get rich off the BS around Shakespeare - build reputations around pretending to know about him (or her) but they know nothing. This documentary is purple and patronising. xx
@jamesburton2341 I don't know that the monument used to honor a grain merchant, because it didn't. Six competent eyewitnesses testified to the monument's existence in the 17th century and they were *ALL* united in accepting it as that of a famous poet. The first person through Stratford was John Weever, working on a book called Ancient Funeral Monuments, and he copied down the inscriptions on the monument and on the gravestone. So we know that even as early as 1619, soon after the monument was installed, the monument praised Shakespeare as a "Virgil in art" ( _arte Maronem_ - Virgil's cognomen was Maro) and said in English that "all yt [that] he hath writ | Leaves living art but page to serve his wit". In the margin, Weever noted that the monument honored "William Shakespeare the famous poet". The next reference comes in William Basse's elegy "On Mr. William Shakespeare He Dyed Aprill 1616" (to give it the title of one of the manuscript copies by which it is now known). In it, he called Shakespeare a "rare tragedian" and advocated his body being interred at Westminster Abbey with Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, and Francis Beaumont (and is incidentally the earliest mention we have recording the 1616 death of Beaumont, which puts into perspective the claims that there should have been an outpouring of comment immediately upon Shakespeare's death). In the same passage that Basse calls Shakespeare "rare tragedian", he refers to "this carved marble of thine own" . Since Ben Jonson refers to Basse's image of Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont moving to make room for Shakespeare, it has to predate the First Folio and have had time to be widely distributed, since Jonson wouldn't have made the reference unless he was sure a large number of readers would catch it. The third reference is in Leonard Digges' First Folio (1623) poem, "To the Memorie of the Deceased Authour, Master W. Shakespeare", where he refers explicitly to "thy Stratford moniment". Digges was a fellow Warwickshire man whose stepfather, Thomas Russell, was named as one of Shakespeare's two executors (or overseers) of his will. The fourth reference comes from Lieutenant Hammond, who came through Stratford-upon-Avon with his company in the 1630s and took note of the things to be seen in the church, including "A neat Monument of that famous English Poet, Mr Wm Shakespeere; who was borne heere". It is only the chronologically *FIFTH* reference to Shakespeare's funeral monument that anti-Shakespearians claim honored a grain merchant. This is done purely by eyeballing Wenceslaus Hollar's engraving of a sketch William Dugdale made of the monument for his book _The Antiquities of Warwickshire_ , and *ASSUMING* that the cushion depicted is actually a sack of grain. None of these people know what the size of sacks of grain were in this era. They do not look at the inscriptions copied down by Dugdale, which are the same as those copied by Weever, which are the same as can be seen today and which clearly honor a writer. They don't explain why this grain merchant is wearing a scholar's subfusc over the slashed doublet in both Dugdale's sketch and the Hollar engraving. Nor do they mention what Dugdale *HIMSELF* said about this monument: "One thing more, in reference to this antient Town is observable, that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet _Will. Shakespere_ , whose Mo∣nument I have inserted in my discourse of the Church." So here is Dugdale himself, the source for the anti-Shakespearians' "grain merchant" lie, stating explicitly that the honoree was a famous poet. I know anti-Shakespearians prefer looking at pictures to reading, but there really is no excuse for this kind of sloppy scholarship. Finally, the last of the 17th century figures to mention the monument is Gerald Langbain, who specifically says that the alleged "grain sack" is a cushion, that William Shakespeare was an actor in addition to a poet, he concurs with Dugdale and Hammond that he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, and he _also_ copied the inscriptions on the monument, and they're identical to Weever and Dugdale. Aside from confirming the facts, Langbain's comments are useful because they were made in 1691, approximately fifty years before the repairs to the monument, because the anti-Shakespearians claim that it was during these repairs that the monument was altered to its present state. However, the monument is carved from a single solid block of limestone. It would not be possible to resculpt the half-effigy without leaving clear traces of the alteration in the existing monument. So that is just another denialist chimera that vanishes the instant you apply any common sense and evidence. And if there was no mention in Stratford that William Shakespeare was a poet, then how did every person who left a testimony to the existence of the monument know that its honoree was a poet and playwright? It is also making a claim unsupported by the evidence to say that he left no books or writings. We can't say one way or the other because the inventory of the estate has not survived, and it is in the *INVENTORY* , not the will, where you would have to look to see if someone had specific possessions when they died. It's a stupid act to treat one's will as an inventory because you have to constantly redraft your will the instant you get or lose any piece of property. This is not even the way that wills are drafted today, so Shakespeare authorship deniers have to pretend ignorance of the way the world works *NOW* , much less the way it worked 400 years ago, to make their arguments. My mother had 3,000 books in her own private library when she died. Guess how many got mentioned in her will? Guess how many of my books are mentioned in mine? Zero. We have the wills or summaries of 15 playwrights who worked in the theatre between 1558 - 1642 and of them only *THREE* mentioned books and *NONE* mentioned any manuscripts (c.f. _Playhouse Wills: 1558 - 1642_ by E. A. J. Honigmann and Susan Brock). Furthermore, even if Shakespeare didn't have any books or writings to bequeath at his death, that would not be evidence that he was not a writer. For one thing, he was primarily a theatrical writer, and we know from parallel instances supported by contemporary testimony, as well as the creation of the First Folio, that the unpublished manuscripts of Shakespear'es plays were in possession of Shakespeare's theatrical colleagues, *NOT* his own possession in Stratford. Secondly, as soon as any printed edition of the works was created, the manuscripts became redundant waste paper. There was no cult of the author and manuscripts had no economic value beyond the cost of the paper itself, which could be defrayed by selling it to the rag-and-bone man to be recycled. Or it could be used around the house for everything from making firelighters to stopping mustard pots to making bags to lining baking trays. So even if he had his manuscripts of his poetry returned to him from the printer, although they may not have been, the manuscripts were probably long gone, having been used for some other purpose or sold. It's certainly doubtful that Shakespeare thought it worth his while to take his manuscripts from London all the way back to Stratford. Likewise the same thing holds true for most of his books. His professional career was in London. Stratford is about 100 miles away, and you couldn't just rent a U-Haul truck, load it up, and drive the distance. 100 miles was a significant amount of road to travel at any time, especially cumbered with hundreds of pounds of dead weight like books. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Shakespeare sold or gave most or even all of his books away prior for leaving for Stratford. As for Shakespeare's signatures, their differences are due to the fact that he *ABBREVIATED* his name differently using recognized scriveners' conventions. For his first name, he had the recognized abbreviations of "Willm." and "Wm." (and indeed "Wm." is still with us as an abbreviation for William) and for his surname, there was no standardized abbreviation but there were standardized ways of indicating omitted letters, like drawing a macron (a horizontal line) over the last written vowel (an e, in Shakespeare's case) or by a slash through the downstroke of the p. The use of a macron to indicate omitted letters is in frequent use throughout the printed works of the time, including in the First Folio itself, which I've been rereading this year in celebration of its 400th anniversary, so I've seen *LOTS* of examples. When you pay attention to the thing that counts-letter formation-the letters are all well-formed and consistent. Barring one instance of spray on the last page of the will, when Shakespeare's hand lost its strength making the downstroke on the h, his signatures show someone used to working with a quill pen without any of the hesitation that would mark a less literate individual. Furthermore, we know that Shakespeare had to be literate because we know that actors learned their lines from cue scripts (also called "sides" in theatrical parlance). Plus, the stupidity of advancing an illiterate man as a front man for a real author and expecting the deception not to be penetrated shows that Shakespeare authorship deniers have given up engaging in sensible historical investigation, because they ignore both known facts and common sense. And in fact we know more about Shakespeare than almost any other man of his era and class, provided of course that you accept the documentary evidence, which the Shakespeare deniers do not. They ignore all of the evidence at the outset and then pretend the hole they've manufactured is the starting point for us all. But none of us are obliged to play the same games that deniers do with the evidence, and if we did then it would be impossible to establish that *ANYONE* ever lived in the early modern period, much less wrote anything at that time.