March 13, 2019 • 60 mins
Playwright William Shakespeare is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential writers in the English language, and his plays have been read or performed millions of times around the world. He was also quite prolific: Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more. Yet for more than a century various researchers known collectively as anti-Stratfordians have argued that Shakespeare didn't actually write some -- or all -- of his work.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our
friend Noel is on some adventures. As we record today,
they call me Ben. We are joined with our guest
super producer Ramsey Ram Jams junt So say hello to
him when you get the chance. Most importantly, let's talk
about you. You are here. You are you that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. I really
(00:47):
thought he was talking about me that time, because he
looked right at me when he said it. The show,
the show would be nothing without you met as numerous
Apple Music or Apple podcast reviews have a short oh really, Well,
I don't know if that's true, but I agree with it. Well,
you know what, none of us would be who we
are today if we didn't have a certain playwright, a
(01:09):
man that we all call back to, that we all
imagine as perhaps the father of plays, the father of plays.
At least when I was growing up, I always imagine
him as like the one, the one from which all
other plays that I was reading, kind of sprung from,
or at least we're we're heavily influenced by. He's the
(01:31):
most well known. That's that's a fact. We are talking
a fellow conspiracy realists about Shakespeare, William Shakespeare from Stratford
on Avon. Do you did you ever act in Shakespearean production?
I was never in a full on production. I did
many a scene, yes, yes, what my favorite, I would
(01:52):
have to say, came from the Tempest and it included
just a line that has really influenced my whole life.
I think, what is it? I might paraphrase here, but
it is Hell is empty and all the devils are here,
or something to this effect, because all the devils here.
I don't remember exactly his language, but I know the
paraphrase the paraphrases enough to to convincingly take us to
(02:16):
that line. Yeah. I did some Shakespeare stuff as well
in high school and early college, I believe. But past
is a watercolor in the rain, you know, things blur.
I'm still pretty sure it happened today. Playwright William Shakespeare
is widely acknowledged as one of, if not the most
(02:37):
influential writers in the English language. His plays have been
read or performed whether in part or a whole, numerous points,
millions of times across the planet over centuries. Yeah, people
are reading this, they're performing parts of it, they're performing
entire productions. Here in Atlanta, where this podcast is based,
there's the Shakespeare Tavern, which we could convention a little
(03:01):
bit later. I just want to drop that seed here.
Shakespeare was also quite prolific between about fifteen ninety and
sixteen thirteen. Uh, he wrote at least thirty seven plays,
collaborated on several more. But who was this man? Who
was Willie Shakes? Really? No, we're just gonna go ahead
(03:23):
and push this little button. That's I don't know who
left this button here, but let's just let's press it
and see what happens. Hey, guys, I heard you were
asking who Shakespeare was, Jonathan, That's what the button was.
Yeah yeah, Strickland, Yeah yeah, marked out Quister because the
same Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I actually have the honor
(03:50):
Maybe honor is too strong a word to to be
playing William Shakespeare at the two thousand nineteen Georgia Renaissance Festival. So,
as you might imagine, I have done my fair share
of research into this subject. And there's a lot of
stuff I could tell you, but I feel like to
really get a grasp on why William Shakespeare is this
(04:10):
person we we still talk about four hundred years after
he last wrote anything. I want to recite to you
one of the most famous speeches from Shakespeare. And there's
tons right, there's to be or not to be. There's
two two solid flesh. Those are two speeches about suicide
for the same play. It's a famous Shakespeare's But no,
(04:32):
I'm going to recite to you one of my favorite
speeches in all of Shakespeare's from the History of Henry
the Five, and it's called the Crispin's Day speech. And
this is to set the scene. The English army is
in France. They are outnumbered five to one. They have
been spending the entire previous day marching, so they're exhausted,
(04:53):
whereas the French troops are fresh, and just as the
lords of England are are looking out and they're feeling
a sense of dread. They're talking with one another about
what is to come. And one of them, Westmoreland, says
that he wishes that just ten thousand more Englishmen, who
(05:13):
are otherwise laying in bed back in England, had joined them,
and the king happens to overhear him. And so this
is that's to set the scene. Here's the speech, Paul.
Could we uh, Paul Ramsay, could we get maybe a
nice sound design, some rousing music. Yeah, what's he that
wishes so my cousin, Westmorland. No, my fair cousin, if
(05:39):
we are mocked to die, we are enough to do
our country loss. And if to live the few of
the men the greater share of honor God's will, I
pray the wish not one man more. By jove, I
am not covetous for gold, nor care I who doth
(06:00):
feed upon my cost. It earns me not if men
my garments wear such outward things, dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honor, I
am the most offending soul alive. No faith, my cousin,
wish not a man from England God's peace. I would
(06:22):
not lose so great an honor as one man more, methinks,
would share for me for the best hope I have, Oh,
do not wish for one more. Rather proclaim West Millett,
through my host, that he which hath no stomach to
this fight, let him depart. His passport shall be made
(06:45):
and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would
not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship
to die with us. This day is called the feast
of Chrispian. He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
will stand a tiptoe when this day is named, and
(07:08):
rouse him at the name of Chrispian. He that shall
live this day and see old age, will yearly on
the vigil feast his neighbors and say tomorrow is Saint Chrispian.
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
and say, these wounds I had on Chrispian's day, old
(07:34):
men forget. Yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember
with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall
our names familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry
the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and
(07:54):
Gloucester be and their flowing cups freshly remembered this story
shall the good man teach his son and Crispin. Crispian
shall ne'er go by from this day to the ending
of the world, but we in it shall be remembered,
we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For
(08:21):
he today that sheds his blood with me shall be
my brother. Be he ne'er so vile this day shall
gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now a bed
shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold
their manhood's cheap. Whilst an he speaks that fought with
(08:41):
us upon Saint Crispin's day. Now, now here's the thing,
here's the thing that really really brings that back souse
all right, thank but that speech that I'm Shakespeare, not me,
(09:01):
that that that speech was all meant to try and
rouse the troops to fight. And in fact Westmoreland himself says,
he turns to Westmorelands as do you want to have
someone join us? Now? In Westmorelands is if it were
just me and you we could take them all. And
sure enough, as the story unfolds, the French lose thousands
(09:22):
and the English number they're dead at and this is
historically accurate. More or less. Yes, the Battle of Agan
Corps was a phenomenal battle in which the English faced
overwhelming odds against the French, but they used a lot
of interesting tactics, including using the longbow and uh and
(09:44):
hiding essentially kind of guerrilla warfare in the woods to
the sides of the battlefield to kind of uh shower
the French with arrows. Use it. Yeah, it turns out
that's a really useful tactic. But this speech I think
is one of those that to this day tends to
be one of the ones that in England is referred
(10:06):
to as a truly patriotic speech. This idea of that
that because there are so few of us, that actually
makes this even more of an honorable action. And for
those of you who do live, just imagine the stories
you're going to be telling your children and their children,
and how everyone from this point forward will remember that
(10:27):
you were here, Like that's an incredible thing. Yeah. And
at the time, let's see, so Henry Henry at fifth
was written around Yeah, it was. It was in the
second second Henry Ad, actually the Henry Ad, which was
the second four play series in his histories, and the
battle we're referring to occurred in fourteen fifteen, so this
(10:51):
is at the time the first time at stage this
is an historical work, you know what I mean. People
were regarding this in some ways, uh, similar to the
way modern audiences regard things like a World War two
film or maybe The Patriot with mel Gibson or Braveheart
(11:12):
with melch you know something, but not necessarily with mel Gibson. Well,
and the English history plays from Shakespeare that spans eight plays,
from Richard the Second to essentially, yeah, Richard the Third.
That's that's oddly enough, Richard the Second, Richard the Third
not backed back. There's a whole bunch of kings in between.
(11:33):
So the that story is actually the War of the Roses.
That that entire sequence of plays. And the interesting thing
to me is that Shakespeare wrote the four plays that
represent the end of that, Henry the Sixth, Parts one,
two and three, and Richard the Third. He wrote those
earlier in his career, and then he wrote the four
(11:54):
plays that represent the beginning of the War of the Roses,
Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth part one too, and
Henry the five Those he wrote later. So you could
think that kind of like Lucas, he went back and
wrote the prequels. And like Lucas, we also knew where
where the story had to end up. I mean, this
was history. Although he takes great liberties in his history place. Uh,
(12:16):
but it was this. This eight series of plays tells
you the full history of the Lancasters and the Yorks,
from the point where Richard the Second abdicates his throne
and gives Henry Bolingbrooke, who becomes Henry the Fourth, control
of England, all the way up to when Richard the
Third loses the crown and Henry Tutor, the father of
(12:37):
Henry the Eighth, who in turn was the father of
Queen Elizabeth, his monarch at the time. UM like that,
that was that full story. So this was a story
that a lot of the English knew very well. And
this this is an excellent um summation, or I would
say a slice of the pie Shakespeare wise. Again, we
(13:00):
have to thank you for that excellent recitation. We do
want to recommend if you happen to be in the area,
that you check out the Georgia Renaissance Festival. Jonathan, I
know that I give you a lot of guff off
air because it makes my day to do so I'm
not going to stop on weekends. And I put on
(13:22):
that I run around in Georgia weather. It's all right.
I admire that part. And and just by way of
a plug and very honest one. I took my my
son last year and he absolutely adored it. Yeah, it's
it's the sort of thing that I loved as a kid,
and honestly, it's the interactions with kids that I still enjoy. Yeah.
It runs mid April through the first weekend of June,
(13:45):
and if you do go, there will be open auditions
with William Shakespeare. I'll be auditioning parts, so if you
if you've ever wanted to stand up on a stage
and recite, I'll have lots of different speeches on hand
from all the different plays so that we can we
can cast all the I mean, I'm going to be
performing all the shows. I gotta cast every single part. Right. Uh, yeah,
(14:07):
I'll go, but I I can't wait to hear the
rest of this. So I'm waiting for you to tell
me that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare so I can lay
the smack down. That's I'm glad you said that, because
the originally we examined this this group of thoughts as
(14:27):
a video in our YouTube video series and it was
fascinating because off air, we've all worked together for years. Folks.
Off off air, there have been times where more than
once actually where you, Jonathan, I don't want to see
quite out of the blue, but you have come up
(14:47):
to me, who we weren't talking about anything in particular,
to tell me how much this idea has bothered you.
And it bothers a lot of people, the concept the
anti stratf Ardians and anyone who thinks that that someone
other than William Shakespeare must have written the plays. I
find it infuriating and perplexing at the same time. But
(15:11):
was there even a real William Shakespeare? Yes? So, well,
there are legal documents that have his name on them.
I've seen six, specifically, I was going to say I've
seen a few. So with that excellent introduction, let's dive
into the life of William Shakespeare. Let's also just Jonathan,
let's go ahead and kidnap you. You work on several
(15:33):
other shows, you work on tech stuff, you work on
the brink, you have you're a man of many hats. Yeah,
I'm wearing one of them right now. You are, you
are where it must have been tough to choose the one.
So they give me a porter. So we're going to
there's a story there, So we're going to We're going
to kidnap you all right, we've conscripted you to be
(15:55):
a guest along with Ramsey on the show today. Let's
explore William Shakespeare is born in as I believe you
had established earlier fifteen sixty four ish, right sometimes around there.
We don't have the actual record of his birth. We
have the record of his baptism, right, and that's a
relatively common thing at this point in the historical record.
He was brought up in Stratford upon Avon, and eventually
(16:19):
he was buried there. Of course, he made a couple
stops in London, right, and uh, he maintained his household
in Stratford for the duration of his career in London.
But other than that, the things we know for sure
about the individual, the human William Shakespeare, uh, they would
(16:40):
seem relatively scant by today's terms, especially for someone who
was so influential and did so many things in his life. Right,
we don't have as many details as we would want.
We do know that someone of pretty much the same name,
the same guy again, the person married and had children
(17:01):
in Stratford. Because there is, as you mentioned, that baptismal register. Right.
The one of the problems that we should establish from
The jump here is that you can find contemporary written
records with Shakespeare's name mentioning him, um, even even a
few with what is confirmed to be his own signature,
(17:23):
but the spelling varies. And so for people who have
an issue with something about Shakespeare, they'll say, well, why
does the marriage bond have shag Spear? And yeah, who's
the Shagspear character? Are they the same as shacks pair? Oh? Yeah,
that was another one, isn't it s h A X
(17:44):
P E R E shak spare? Yeah. I actually actually
have answers to these, but I don't know if you
want me to give them, not yet, right, but they're there,
but there are answers. So we do know that William
Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case. He signed some documents. Uh,
he went home to Stratford. Eventually he made a will
and around sixteen sixteen he died apparently possibly on the
(18:07):
same date that he was born on it based on
the baptism. Yeah, still still a guestimate, but well written,
just structurally in terms of beginnings. Yeah, no, if you're
going to if you're going to have a mysterious life
being born and dying on the same date, not the
(18:28):
same day, but the same date. Is it does add
to that era of mystery, does it not? Kind of
like Samuel Clemens A K. Twain'll bring me back out again. Yeah,
Shakespeare's Shakespeare's work in his career, Um, well, a lot
of it starts obviously in London. He becomes an actor
(18:49):
and then a shareholder in what was called the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, then the known later as the Kingsman. Matt
what were what were the Kingsmen? They were the playing
company that owned the Globe, right, Yeah, this is this
is the part where the Globe Theater, the world renowned
Globe Theater comes in. Um. Also the Blackfriars Theater that
(19:10):
would be later, but yeah, that was that was one
of the first indoor theaters in London. Yeah, Jonathan, tell
us a little bit about the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Sure. Yeah,
So you had theater companies that typically had a patron
that supported their work so that they could get the
upfront costs they would need to put on a performance,
(19:32):
and they would recapture those costs through whatever means like
ticket sales once you got to the theaters. Theaters in
London were brand new when Shakespeare got there. They had
only been around for maybe fifteen years. Before that. You
would typically see a play performed in the courtyard of
an in house or maybe in some real fancy persons
(19:53):
like waiting room that just happened to be as large
as a theater would be that kind of thing. But
this was this was a time where theaters as purpose
built structures were brand new in England. So Shakespeare is
a part owner with this theatrical group, which means he
gets a percentage of the box office. That's actually how
(20:13):
Shakespeare made all his money. You didn't make very much
money publishing a play because you didn't publish plays, you
performed them. Shakespeare in his lifetime never published any of
his plays. Some of them got published, but it wasn't
his decision. And so he was making money by helping
(20:33):
produce work that could be performed in this theater and
then getting proceeds from the ticket sales. And he was
making money off of his own work because I think
the Kingsman had the exclusive rights to produce his plays
right for a period of times, he was essentially essentially
he would write material for the theater that he had
(20:57):
ownership in, and he would also we think for form
in those shows he was often listed as one of
the actors that we don't know what parts he played. Uh,
do you think he ever did a one man I'm
going to do a production of Hamlet, except all the
characters are We do actually think that he may have
(21:18):
played Hamlet's father's ghost in Hamlet, but there's there's not
a lot of there's not not really any hard evidence
to back that up. So so you've got essentially a
guy who owns part of the theater and he's a
gifted writer, assuming that we're going with the story that
Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare he's a gifted writer who is supplying
(21:40):
his own theater with material to attract people. You also
have to remember that at the time, let me set
the scene here in London, you have Puritans who are
very powerful in the city. They do not allow theaters
to operate within the city limits of London, so all
the theaters are either north of the city or south
of the city on the across the Thames on the
south part. So if you want to go see a
(22:02):
show and you live in the city, you have to
find you have to pay a ferryman to get across
the river, or you have to travel all the way
to the London Bridge, which is not close to where
the theaters are, make your way to the theater, pay
your penny if you're a ground link, to stand and
watch the show, and then you have to hustle back
because the city gates of London were meant to be
locked at sunset. Makes sense because of the vampires exactly right.
(22:27):
You know, you don't invite them in, so you have
to rush back to London to get back inside in
time so that you could go to bed. Right. The
theater district was in the same district as all the brothels,
the bear baiting arenas, the gambling houses, and the ends
of ill repute. It was a sleazy um. It was
considered a sleazy profession, yeah, and a sleazy show to attend.
(22:51):
And in fact the sleazy profession is what lends some
people to suggest others who may have written for Shakespeare,
because they would want their own name attached to so
lowly a profession. Ah, there we go. Okay, so now
we've hit upon it. Uh. The other one other thing
we know about Shakespeare is that eventually, in after fift
(23:13):
he became a gentleman because his father was given a
coat of arms which Shakespeare paid for, yeah, which which
did have some money involved. And we can we can
talk for hours and hours and days and days about
probably each place specifically because there's such a depth and
(23:33):
wealth of um connection and I don't know, ripple effect
now in modern society. Yeah, And just to put this
out there talking about that ripple effect, my wife just
the other day went to the Plaza Theater where they
were showing a version of Romeo and Julia exactly and
still still today in twenty nineteen. The effects are seen
(23:56):
like in those ripples as they you know, as they
affected basis learnment, as they affected even my wife when
she watched it, and now all the other people who
are watching well, and then you have all the adaptations
like West Side Story, which is not it's it's essentially
Romeo and Juliet, but it's a musical and it's changed
the location, it's changed the two warring families to two gangs.
But you know, we we still we still see these
(24:19):
ripples going just as strong. In fact, I wouldn't even
say that they've weakened over time, that we might see
them in cycles. It's also interesting to see which plays
are are popular during different eras, because you'll find one
era where Hamlet is considered that the height of of
Shakespeare's genius, and then after say nineteen sixty or so,
(24:40):
it started to shift towards King Lear. And what it
really tells you is more about the society that is
currently enamored of that specific play than the play itself.
Right like how um that remake of adaptation of Titus
Andronicus police Academy for it's police, police Academy for It's true.
(25:07):
So this guy, this individual, this playwright is so prolific,
especially even even in a modern day setting. Writing thirty
seven plays that aren't garbage is a phenomenal feat. And
this guy did it without the access to the wealth
(25:28):
of instantaneous near instantaneous information we have today, without a
word processor, probably without probably without a lot of help,
or did he have help. It is a huge body
of work for one man, And it's not surprising that many,
many people from various walks of life disagree with what
(25:52):
we just gave you. We gave you the official narrative,
but what about the people who don't agree with it?
Will explore their side of the story after a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy, So, Matt.
(26:12):
Earlier Jonathan mentioned the rise of a group of people
called the Anti Stratfordians. Anti Stratfordians. There are many flavors
of them. There are there are positively like skittle level,
you know, uh so like that six or seven. Well,
let's so so, Matt. What what are these people? What's there?
(26:38):
What's their stick, what's their thing? Well, yeah, it's it's
groups of people who, over the centuries have come together
and agreed that they do not agree that William Shakespeare
wrote all of his plays. They are at least um,
some of them don't believe you wrote any of them.
Some believe that William Shakespeare wasn't even actually William Shakespeare
or a person necessary early and uh, it varies very
(27:03):
it varies widely, and some people disagree with their own disagreements,
you know what I mean. They're the anti Stratfordians are
not a monolithic group. The one thing they agree on
is they don't think that William Shakespeare did everything. And
they have some beef with each other within their community.
(27:23):
But you're you're absolutely right. There's the idea that someone
else wrote the place. There's the idea that Shakespeare's maybe
an umbrella term similar to the theory about banks E.
The street artists probably one of the best in the
world right now, there's the theory that, you know, that's
actually a collective rights operating under a singular identity exactly.
(27:45):
I tend to enjoy that idea. Yes, yeah, for Banksy.
But one thing is for sure, this particular genre of
conspiracy theory has massive staying power. This isn't like a
a jade helm thing where it comes up with an
expiration date or a world will end in twelve think.
You know, this concept has persisted for some time, but
(28:08):
not it's not as old as most people assume. I
would argue because, contrary to popular belief, the idea of
a Shakespeare a Shakespearean conspiracy or a question about the
authorship is historically speaking, somewhat recent. Yeah, there's some some
nineteenth century thinkers who were proposing this. You mentioned Samuel
(28:31):
Clemens earlier, Mark Twain. Mark Twain's one of the people
who suggested that perhaps Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare. But
that guy is such a troll as well. Well, I mean,
you know, Mark Twain was pretty much convinced that no
one was as clever as he was. So you know,
I used to I used to love that author, true story,
until a friend got me a copy of his woefully
(28:55):
unedited autobiography. It just goes on and on. I'm I've
I feel like I'm done with Mark Twain until about Well,
let's let's lay out why don't you, guys. I don't
mean to take over your show. I would love to
hear you guys sort of lay out some of the
usual suspects, the ones who are often uh proposed as
(29:16):
the possible people who actually wrote those Shakespearean for sure. Well,
the best way for us to get there is to
explore some of the history you mentioned nineteenth century thinkers
who first proposed these um alternative alternatives. That's a very
safe word. Yes, that's everybody. Yes, that's when Samuel Clemens
(29:38):
would be right. No one really seemed to doubt that
Shakespeare wrote these plays until around the eighteen fifties. The
first public anti strap forty and claim was written by
an American, Delia Bacon. She had an article in Putnam's
Magazine in eighteen fifty six called William Shakespeare and his
(29:59):
Plays and Inquiry concerning Them, which is I know, what
do we need to talk kind of kind of message?
But what what was in this What was the gist
of this article? Well, I mean it's it's an opinion
that is kind of valid in a couple of ways
and then just silly in others. So she thought the
plays were were more than stories, like historical stories that
(30:23):
are being retold. She thought they were um written deliberately
to spread ideas about about enlightenment, about modernity, about progress
of humanity. And uh. She thought the plays were essentially,
like I guess, a form of propaganda. Um. And it
(30:43):
was written by a secret committee essentially of people like
in a luminati of sorts. Um. I mean, it sounds
kind of silly, but at the same time, it's an
interesting thought experiment if we go into it. And she
criptically hinted that there was a different person that had
actually written the plays, or at least had had a
big hand in writing the plays, a certain Sir Francis Bacon,
(31:07):
no relation to Delia Bacon. Yeah. She she said that
there was a secret collective in the Bacon obviously was
the was the leader of the group. Uh. Delia Bacon
never found any any smoking gun evidence for her beliefs
or or anything beyond her belief vaguely circumstantial evidence. All right, now,
(31:32):
I know you've got some irons in the fire on
this way. Yeah, I'm gonna we want to know, we
want to know, we want to know, but we want
to get you set up in the right. So a
lot of people will, perhaps unfairly uh cast dispersion on
Delia Bacon because she had a painful private life as well.
(31:54):
She when she passed away, it wasn't an asylum, which
was a brutal place to be in in that time
and era. But just like Shakespeare, just like Shakespeare, she
had ripple ripples throughout history. This single article it lit
(32:15):
the fuse. It lit the fire for what would become
an explosively um controversial line of thinking, and one that
very much, even in the modern day, aims to be
considered a serious academic discipline, much to the massive irritation
of people who are right exactly. And I love academic beef.
(32:39):
I think it's I think it's so fascinating. But to
your question, a little bit of a circuitous way to
get there. But to your question, Jonathan, if it was
not William Shakespeare, Shakespeare was not the author, or if
it were a brand name for a bunch of people
working in secret, who would the actual author be. Candidates
include Francis Bacon. Christopher Marlow. That would have been a
(33:02):
tricky one. That would have been a tricky one because
he died in a bar fight while several plays were
still being written, although although there have been theories that
stated that the plays were already written, either the Place
had already been written and then we're published regularly or
performed rather because again they weren't published, they performed regularly
(33:24):
after Marlow's death, or the even crazier idea that Marlow
faked his death in a bar fight and secretly was
still writing the Place because he just couldn't give it up.
Oh my gosh, did he move to like Cuba, kind
of like Tupac. No, he just sort of moved to
(33:45):
Southampton and and you know, got some different clothes on,
a silly wig and a fake nose. Well, let's talk
about who Christopher Marlow is. Sure, Yeah, Marlow was another
writer in player of the sixteenth century England. Also was
a spy. He actually did work on behalf of of
(34:09):
Queen Elizabeth, which was not the safest of professions. I
don't think working for a royal family at that time
is ever going to be an inherently safe profession. Honestly,
Elizabethan England, any profession was an unsafe profession because if
you were a Catholic, you were all that was. That
was dangerous by itself, and Shakespeare's family, by the way, Catholic,
(34:31):
so that was But that's another Yeah. So so you've
got you've got Marlowe, who's uh, he wrote Faust so
famous play, he's he wrote a couple of others. Is
really well known for writing drama, was not known for
writing comedy, which is possibly why some people say maybe
(34:51):
he contributed some of the plays, but maybe not all
of them, because there just wasn't any evidence to suggest
that he could write comedy. I would argue that based
upon some of experienced comedies, there's not a whole lot
of evidence that he could do it either. But now
there's actually some very funny Shakespeare comedies, but there there's
a lot of the humors lost on us, the modern audience,
because we no longer have those puns, so they don't
(35:15):
really make sense to us anymore. But anyway, so marlow
uh is this very dangerous kind of individual who's also
prolific writer, also comes from a fairly humble background, which
later exactly so we'll get into that later. But but
he ends up trying to come to the defense of
a friend in a tavern and as a result of
(35:38):
the fracas that breaks out, he sustains a critical injury
and dies. And this is in the middle of Shakespeare's productivity.
So that that again, assuming that the death is legit
and it wasn't Marlow trying to fake his death so
that he could live out his golden years, which would
have been many. He was not that old old when
(36:00):
it happened, um, and he was. He was of an
age similar to Shakespeare. They were about the same age.
Assuming that that didn't happen, that he didn't fake his death,
it would have made it very tricky to continue writing.
Side note unrelated, this is just the fact I found,
and I think you guys would enjoy it if you
hadn't heard it before. I'm just reminded because of the
(36:23):
idea of literary buddies, peers, creative peers, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce,
um solid writers and being very fair solid writers, uh
notorious drunks. Do you know this story about apparently they
were known for getting into bar fights Joyce? Uh, editors,
(36:46):
I mean you just have to read Fitting Its Weight
to know that the guy runs on at the mouth bit.
But apparently he was somewhat of a nebbish character, somewhat
of a yeah, what's it, what's another word for an
nebbish milk toast? That's really good? Actually, uh, yeah it was.
It was a little bit more that didn't come across
as masculinity personified the way Hemmingway, so they would be
(37:10):
a bar fight. So allegedly James Joyce was famous for
running his mouth and then starting to fight and then
physically running to hide behind Ernest Hemingway while yelling like
take care of him, him away, crimson his face. That's perfect.
So that notice, ID just used that as cocktail trivia
at your next um James Joyce Ornest Hemingway themed sare
(37:36):
And you know, there is a conspiracy that the bar
fight that Christopher Marlow got into was actually or there's
a theory that it was a conspiracy to assassinate Marlow.
That's yeah, yeah, yeah, that there are a lot of
stories about that. I mean, that was free, which in
Shakespeare's timeline would be right at the very beginning of
(37:57):
of his rise. Uh, and those would still be the
plays produced in the early fifteen nineties were still considered
the sort of the juvenile works of Shakespeare, the ones
before he really found his voice right, right, And that's
that's like maybe just a year before uh, the exclusivity
agreement comes into effect. Other other candidates include the fifth
(38:19):
Earl of Rutland, who that's all you need to know
about them, actually, the sixth Earl of Derby, the seventeenth
Earl of Oxford. Note that there are a lot of
aristocrats being named. Oxford is one of the big ones
Oxfordians are. That's one of the larger camps of anti Strapfordians. Yes,
and then even Queen Elizabeth one has been proposed. That
(38:41):
seems a little out there, right, It turns out there
more than eighty potential real Shakespeare's and this this is weird.
Why do people believe this? In the case of Bacon Deally,
Bacon's original argument, Uh, you can say there's a little
bit of classism involved, because Shakespeare at at the time
(39:04):
in which Delia writes this article, Shakespeare is very much deified,
especially especially in his homeland. He's depicted as as a
person um being from a relatively uncultured town, right, a
rural neighborhood. Right, And people say has no formal education
(39:26):
because they'll say, there's not an exhaustive written record. Well,
he didn't attend university. He didn't attend university, but he
sure knew a whole lot about history. He wrote, he
wrote a lot about history as if he were correct.
(39:47):
Is the best way to say so. At the time. Though,
this this anti Stratfordian argument, is that based on what
what the plays have in terms of content, based on
the various historical literary illusions and the extensive vocabulary, they say, well,
there's not really a way a guy who didn't go
(40:09):
to college could do this, I mean, if we're being honest,
which yeah, that that is a very common argument, the
idea that how could someone from essentially the sticks, right,
And it's the effectively you're saying, some some hick from
the sticks son of a glovemaker and and and an
(40:31):
amateur actor who then turns pro how could that guy
end up creating what many people believe to be the
pinnacle of poetic language, particularly in play format, and another part,
you know, you know, you're you're thinking not just not
just that these are cracking, good stories, but these are
characters who seem to embody much deeper representations of human
(40:57):
nature than what you would see in contemporary works. Now
that's tricky to say, because there's not a lot of
contemporary works that actually survived that era, and a lot
in general. There's a couple of Shakespeare plays that that
may have existed that we don't have any more, Loves
Labors one of them, and the Cardenio, both of those
(41:18):
are lost plays. We don't know. We We've got a
an adaptation of the Cardinio that was done in the
nineteenth century, but that was a heavy rewrite, which was
not uncommon. You often had theaters rewriting Shakespeare to perform
it later on, especially as different values arose in society,
(41:40):
where certain things were considered taboo, they would rewrite Shakespeare's
plays to get rid of anything that would refer to that,
And so Shakespeare's plays went through a lot of transformation,
particularly in the nineteenth century, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I
love what you're pointing out, though about the way you
point out earlier the way theater is perceived at the time.
(42:02):
This plays into the views of anti stratford i in
um scholars or researchers or enthusiasts. Because at the time
which Delia Bacon is writing this, and at the time
in which Shakespeare was performing popular thought of regarding what
could be considered art and what could be considered a
(42:24):
higher form of art or a lower form of entertainment,
the popular thought drew a sharp distinction between various forms
of the written word. Poetry was a manifestation of high culture.
The best book was and always will be, the Bible,
and you will die if you don't like the version
(42:44):
we have, especially once James came along and presented his
version I know, which was so Kanye of him. But
but theater, on the other hand, was seen as like
vulgar entertainment. The groundlings that that phrase comes from the
mosh pit. You would stand in this in this space
(43:07):
that was right in front of the stage, and for
a penny you could stand there and watch the show.
And if you had sixpence I think it was, you
could sit in the galleries, so you would be in
a seated position further back with a full view of
the stage and Uh, but you know it also spoke
to the popularity of the theater, the fact that they
(43:28):
could get commoners who you know, even when you sit
there and say it was one penny for a show,
for some people, that was that was the equivalent of
two days pay. So they're paying, they're paying two days
worth of labor to watch a show. And these shows
are the the play they would perform would change every
(43:50):
single day because you don't do one show for a run,
because you all you have to constantly be filling up
that theater, because people would say, why would I spend
two days worth of pay to see the same thing again? Right,
And there's only two d fifty thousand people in London
and the theater fits. So you start doing the math
(44:12):
and you think, if you want to stay in business,
you've got to change that. That's why you had so
many plays being produced, not all of them being Shakespeare's. Uh,
it was absolutely imperative from a business standpoint. So let's
let's get back to that idea of the theater industry,
because for anti Stratfordians that tends to, paradoxically enough, be
(44:35):
a piece of evidence that they use against the argument
that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, because they would say, you know what,
theater is relatively low brow. So one thing we do
know about this William Shakespeare fellow is that he was
a professional actor, and that means that he was associated
(44:59):
with theatre others, which, by the way, it was right
next to the brothels gab There's no way someone from
the argument is from a rural part of the world,
in a very seedy profession and one of the sleaziest
neighborhoods of London. There's no way that guy could have
(45:19):
written such amazing poetry poetic prose. Uh No, it was
obviously the sixth Earl of Derby, Yes, who bestowed his
brilliant work down upon the act, but could not possibly
attach his name to the work, for it would sully
his otherwise spotless reputation. Yeah, and we are talking about
(45:39):
the sixth, not that, not that degenerate the seventh. So
it's it's true. They also questioned, we mentioned this before,
how Shakespeare, with no record of education or um cultured background,
how could he know all the things that the author
of these plays no vocabulary is calculated to be somewhere
(46:03):
north of seventeen thousand, five hundred words and the max
would be twenty nine thousand different words. There aren't any
signed manuscripts written by Shakespeare that are around today. We
don't have anything where, you know, you can't go to
the Smithsonian and see underglass the handwritten draft of Hamlet. Right,
(46:28):
and to be fair, London has gone up in flames
a couple of times. Shakespeare wrote so, and and again
also to be fair, not a lot of material from
that era survives period in general. Right, So, so singling
out Shakespeare's work is a little is a little disingenuous,
only because it's only in hindsight that we see how
(46:51):
valuable it was. Right, right, that's a great point, you know.
We see the classism involved again here with the anti
Stratford in our ument. So Shakespeare has six signatures that
have been authenticated. People who don't believe Shakespeare wrote this stuff,
who do believe he was a rube, They say that,
(47:12):
look at these signatures. Sure this may have been some
guy named William Shagg's pair or whatever. But but he
writes like he can't read. He writes, he writes in
a scrawl. This means that he was either illiterate or
functionally illiterate. Someone who can just you know, write their name,
(47:32):
maybe do some simple sums. But the spread of conspiracy
theories about Shakespeare has an international dimension to it, right
Like both Um, both Bacon, and another anti Stratfordian Heart
were Americans, and these different candidates for authorship continue to
find their supporters in the US. People in the US
(47:55):
love this story. The History Channel probably loves this story, right,
PBS love to the story. They produce documentaries about this
usually every five to ten years. I did not realize that,
Oh yeah, because I I've done quite a bit of research, which,
to be fair, first of all, I studied this in college,
but that was more than twenty years ago. Not that
(48:16):
Shakespeare's written much since then, but but it's been a
long time since I was actively studying it. But now
that I'm taking on the role, I want to be
able to answer people when they ask me certain questions
about Shakespeare as best I can. It is incredibly challenging
because Ben, as you have pointed out, we know so
very little about the man. Very little information exists about
(48:40):
Shakespeare's life. We piece it together from scant records and
uh and various things that were written about Shakespeare, typically
after he had already died, so it is hard to
piece it together. But the same is true for everyone
in the elizabeth An era, with the exception of Elizabeth. Yeah,
(49:04):
and maybe some other members of the royal court. But
it's it's true. This lack of this lack of knowledge
allows alternative views or arguments to proliferate. There's nothing wrong
with that, but we do have to look at the evidence.
So we have presented the broad strokes of the anti Stratfordian,
(49:24):
anti Shakespeare Shakespeare argument. What if any problems exist with
these theories? Will tell you after a word from our sponsor. Guys,
hold on a second here, I'm not fully convinced what
I think. Perhaps William Shakespeare was in fact a group
(49:48):
of some other people or one other person or other person,
just a whole bunch of that person who Yeah, in
some kind of multiverse. Uh, let's let's to really talk
about the reasons why Shakespeare probably was Shakespeare. Yeah. So
it's first off, it's fascinating. Of course we want to
(50:10):
be involved in such an intriguing historical Who done it?
You know? Imagine how such a revelation could change history.
The problem is something isn't true just because it's interesting
and that's the fact we all run into at some
point in our lives. The vast majority, by which we
mean virtually all um serious and accepted working Shakespeare scholars
(50:33):
think these claims are malarkey. They think they're nonsense, and
on their side, they have some pretty convincing arguments. One
of the first hinges on the timing. You see, if
Shakespeare didn't write this stuff, or if he who are
somehow a secret gang of people, then why didn't anybody
talk about it when this guy was alive? Why didn't
(50:54):
no one call him a plagiaris? Why did none of
his contemporaries, who who probably had some friendly rivalries, right,
Why sure Johnson definitely yeah? Why didn't they? Why didn't
they say, let's expose this guy? And immediately after his
death people who knew him while he was alive also
didn't say that, And no one came forward after he
(51:16):
died saying okay, so is me? Also the place stopped
after he died, no one, No one wrote other awesome,
amazing plays that are held in the same esteem as
Shakespeare's after he died, even just by inventing another name
like you, You would think, like what, what would motivate
someone to create this stuff in the first place. Because
(51:38):
keep in mind, again, this wasn't meant for publication, it
was meant for performance. You did not make money selling
your play to a to a theatrical company. Maybe made
five pounds, which was a significant sum, but you couldn't
live off of it perpetually. And considering the amount of
labor it takes to write a play versus the amount
of money you would get for selling the play, that
(51:58):
that's a losing proposition in so you're not doing it
to make money directly. That's why Shakespeare made his money
by being a part company owner, not through the selling
of his place. You're not making money through publication because
nobody until Johnson came along bothered to publish their place.
Another yeah, another point. We mentioned Johnson a couple of
times here. Um, yeah, who is this character? Well, well,
(52:21):
to that's that's that's a great question that because we
know he wrote stuff, but we don't know when or
where he was born. It is not especially unusual for
us to have very very little biographical information for people
existing at this time, from the bottom to the top
of the social sphere, not counting the royal family. Also
(52:41):
speaking of Shakespeare's peers, not only did they not say
he was a plagiarist, not only did they not say
he was a fraud, they at multiple times confirmed that
he wrote the stuff. They were like, oh, yeah, Hamlet,
I know that guy. And sometimes they dissed him for it. Yeah,
and sometimes they were like, oh yeah, much ado about nothing. Yeah.
(53:02):
Well you had Robert Greene who said this upstart crow,
you know it, has beautified himself with our feathers, saying
he never specifically says Shakespeare, but he drops every single
hint that it's got to be Shakespeare. So he's dissing
on Shakespeare's largely because he's got the same sort of
elitist view that this this bumpkin is suddenly getting a
(53:23):
whole lot of attention, and he's like, why are you
paying attention to this guy? You should pay attention to me.
I'm much more important. Of course, he also was dying
at the time he wrote it. Johnson wrote after Shakespeare's
death that uh that he was not known to blot
any lines, meaning he wasn't known for marking out a
line and changing it or editing it in some way.
(53:44):
And then he said, would that he blotted a thousand,
So essentially saying he sho he needed a better editor,
is what Johnson was saying. So you had you had
his contemporary's not only giving Shakespeare the credit for writing them,
but sometimes saying like he wasn't that good of a right.
And it wasn't until after Shakespeare's death that a couple
(54:04):
of his his colleagues got together and decided they wanted
to gather as many of the plays as they possibly
could and published them as a memorial to their friend.
So these two guys get together and they put together
was called the First Folio, which that's not even all
of the plays, but it's most of the surviving ones
(54:26):
that we know about. Um. And you also had some
plays in publication already, but not through Shakespeare's uh permission,
called quartos. Some of them were not great. They might
have been written down by someone in the audience who
was just trying that our best to remember the gist
of a play. Those are what we called the bad
quartos to be or not to uh something all over. Hey,
(54:58):
does that smell like plague? To you? So? Uh, this
this kind of stuff, This examination can continue for for
quite a while. At this point, we at this point
we are going to have to close the curtain on
today's episode. But we we thought on that night that
(55:20):
there was no better way to end than to point
out a quotation from David Thomas of Britain's National Archives. Yes,
I'm gonna just do a quick quote here for you
and try to kind of in a way, I guess,
audition for you right now, Shakespeare Afterwards. The documentation for
(55:47):
William Shakespeare is exactly what you would expect a person
of his position of that time. It seems like a
dirth only because we are so intensely interested in him.
Some days you exit pursued by the bar. Some days
bar exit's pursued by you. So that's I mean, that's
(56:07):
a great point though, because it's whole time, does Shakespeare
seemed more mysterious than the average person just because we're
looking I think it's largely also because the amount of
It's not so much the amount of work he produced,
because there were playwrights who wrote more than he did,
but it's the quality of the work that was produced.
(56:30):
Once you get past the early juvenile efforts of Shakespeare,
the Titus Andronicus, you know, the comedy of errors, that
kind of stuff, and you start getting into when he
was really coming into his own just play after play,
he was writing things that still resonate with us today
and something that special, I think is what really drives
(56:51):
our desire to know more. And it is so unsatisfying
to come up against just a darth of information about
this person. And at this point, with the information we have,
the understanding we have in twenty nineteen, it does seem
that the answer to this question is similar to that
(57:12):
old riddle about who's buried in Grant's tomb? So who
really wrote the plays of William Shakespeare? As far as
the evidence indicates, it was this guy named William Shakespeare,
and he was from a town called Strafford upon Avon.
He was born there. He went to London, he worked
in London, and then he went back home and he died.
And he was a filthy actor associator. Yes, he was
(57:36):
a known actor's sympathizer, unless that is there's still centuries
later something they whomever they are, don't want you to know,
and we want to hear from you. Are you still
convinced that there was more to the story. Do you
believe that there truly was someone behind the Shakespeare curtain.
(57:57):
If so, why, and if so, who was that person?
You can tell us about this on Instagram. You can
tell us about this on Facebook. You can tell us
about this on Twitter. You can swing by and talk
to your fellow listens on our community page here's where
it gets crazy. Or you can call us directly. If
you are anti stratford Ian and you are super offended
(58:18):
by this concept, then go ahead and leave us a voicemail. Yeah,
even make us soliloquy of it if you want to
whatever you want to do it. Yes, we are one
H three three st d w y t K. That's
stuff they don't want you to know. In acronym form.
It's also numbers you can dial in with your phone. Okay,
(58:40):
So if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you could you can always send us an email. But
before you do that, consider hitting up old Jonathan Strickland.
How do we find you? Jonathan? I find you? Or
you just go and check out my show Tech Stuff
and my other show of the Brink. Uh and uh.
(59:01):
We do lots of shows about technology and companies, some
of which tends to cross over into your territory. We
did an episode our Tech stuff to an episode not
long ago. Um about some more stuff with the N
s A, which is always such a fun, fun organization
to talk about. We might need to update. Yeah, we've
also both appeared on your show at some point in
(59:23):
the past. If you happen to be in the studio
with us and you want want to run into Jonathan,
you can just hit this button we discovered that says
Strickland on it call back. I made it so inconvenient.
I was being I was just getting the coffee machine
has been pouring coffee this whole time. And and our
guest super producer Ramsey Ram jams Young, thank you again
(59:47):
for saving the show. My friend. We have we have
impinged upon his time too too long. Now. I think
he's ready to go. And he dude, he leveled up
like four times while we were sitting here. I can
see it. I can see happening, leveled up as he
attained his final four. We've got to go to the
We got to get out of the studio to find out.
(01:00:09):
Thank you so much for checking out the show. We
do want to hear from you, and we hope that
you tune in for our next episodes. No spoilers, but
things are going to get curiouser and curiouser and curiouser.
And in the meantime, if you want to send us
that email, go ahead. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our
friend Noel is on some adventures. As we record today,
they call me Ben. We are joined with our guest
super producer Ramsey Ram Jams junt So say hello to
him when you get the chance. Most importantly, let's talk
about you. You are here. You are you that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. I really
(00:47):
thought he was talking about me that time, because he
looked right at me when he said it. The show,
the show would be nothing without you met as numerous
Apple Music or Apple podcast reviews have a short oh really, Well,
I don't know if that's true, but I agree with it. Well,
you know what, none of us would be who we
are today if we didn't have a certain playwright, a
(01:09):
man that we all call back to, that we all
imagine as perhaps the father of plays, the father of plays.
At least when I was growing up, I always imagine
him as like the one, the one from which all
other plays that I was reading, kind of sprung from,
or at least we're we're heavily influenced by. He's the
(01:31):
most well known. That's that's a fact. We are talking
a fellow conspiracy realists about Shakespeare, William Shakespeare from Stratford
on Avon. Do you did you ever act in Shakespearean production?
I was never in a full on production. I did
many a scene, yes, yes, what my favorite, I would
(01:52):
have to say, came from the Tempest and it included
just a line that has really influenced my whole life.
I think, what is it? I might paraphrase here, but
it is Hell is empty and all the devils are here,
or something to this effect, because all the devils here.
I don't remember exactly his language, but I know the
paraphrase the paraphrases enough to to convincingly take us to
(02:16):
that line. Yeah. I did some Shakespeare stuff as well
in high school and early college, I believe. But past
is a watercolor in the rain, you know, things blur.
I'm still pretty sure it happened today. Playwright William Shakespeare
is widely acknowledged as one of, if not the most
(02:37):
influential writers in the English language. His plays have been
read or performed whether in part or a whole, numerous points,
millions of times across the planet over centuries. Yeah, people
are reading this, they're performing parts of it, they're performing
entire productions. Here in Atlanta, where this podcast is based,
there's the Shakespeare Tavern, which we could convention a little
(03:01):
bit later. I just want to drop that seed here.
Shakespeare was also quite prolific between about fifteen ninety and
sixteen thirteen. Uh, he wrote at least thirty seven plays,
collaborated on several more. But who was this man? Who
was Willie Shakes? Really? No, we're just gonna go ahead
(03:23):
and push this little button. That's I don't know who
left this button here, but let's just let's press it
and see what happens. Hey, guys, I heard you were
asking who Shakespeare was, Jonathan, That's what the button was.
Yeah yeah, Strickland, Yeah yeah, marked out Quister because the
same Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I actually have the honor
(03:50):
Maybe honor is too strong a word to to be
playing William Shakespeare at the two thousand nineteen Georgia Renaissance Festival. So,
as you might imagine, I have done my fair share
of research into this subject. And there's a lot of
stuff I could tell you, but I feel like to
really get a grasp on why William Shakespeare is this
(04:10):
person we we still talk about four hundred years after
he last wrote anything. I want to recite to you
one of the most famous speeches from Shakespeare. And there's
tons right, there's to be or not to be. There's
two two solid flesh. Those are two speeches about suicide
for the same play. It's a famous Shakespeare's But no,
(04:32):
I'm going to recite to you one of my favorite
speeches in all of Shakespeare's from the History of Henry
the Five, and it's called the Crispin's Day speech. And
this is to set the scene. The English army is
in France. They are outnumbered five to one. They have
been spending the entire previous day marching, so they're exhausted,
(04:53):
whereas the French troops are fresh, and just as the
lords of England are are looking out and they're feeling
a sense of dread. They're talking with one another about
what is to come. And one of them, Westmoreland, says
that he wishes that just ten thousand more Englishmen, who
(05:13):
are otherwise laying in bed back in England, had joined them,
and the king happens to overhear him. And so this
is that's to set the scene. Here's the speech, Paul.
Could we uh, Paul Ramsay, could we get maybe a
nice sound design, some rousing music. Yeah, what's he that
wishes so my cousin, Westmorland. No, my fair cousin, if
(05:39):
we are mocked to die, we are enough to do
our country loss. And if to live the few of
the men the greater share of honor God's will, I
pray the wish not one man more. By jove, I
am not covetous for gold, nor care I who doth
(06:00):
feed upon my cost. It earns me not if men
my garments wear such outward things, dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honor, I
am the most offending soul alive. No faith, my cousin,
wish not a man from England God's peace. I would
(06:22):
not lose so great an honor as one man more, methinks,
would share for me for the best hope I have, Oh,
do not wish for one more. Rather proclaim West Millett,
through my host, that he which hath no stomach to
this fight, let him depart. His passport shall be made
(06:45):
and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would
not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship
to die with us. This day is called the feast
of Chrispian. He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
will stand a tiptoe when this day is named, and
(07:08):
rouse him at the name of Chrispian. He that shall
live this day and see old age, will yearly on
the vigil feast his neighbors and say tomorrow is Saint Chrispian.
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
and say, these wounds I had on Chrispian's day, old
(07:34):
men forget. Yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember
with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall
our names familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry
the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and
(07:54):
Gloucester be and their flowing cups freshly remembered this story
shall the good man teach his son and Crispin. Crispian
shall ne'er go by from this day to the ending
of the world, but we in it shall be remembered,
we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For
(08:21):
he today that sheds his blood with me shall be
my brother. Be he ne'er so vile this day shall
gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now a bed
shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold
their manhood's cheap. Whilst an he speaks that fought with
(08:41):
us upon Saint Crispin's day. Now, now here's the thing,
here's the thing that really really brings that back souse
all right, thank but that speech that I'm Shakespeare, not me,
(09:01):
that that that speech was all meant to try and
rouse the troops to fight. And in fact Westmoreland himself says,
he turns to Westmorelands as do you want to have
someone join us? Now? In Westmorelands is if it were
just me and you we could take them all. And
sure enough, as the story unfolds, the French lose thousands
(09:22):
and the English number they're dead at and this is
historically accurate. More or less. Yes, the Battle of Agan
Corps was a phenomenal battle in which the English faced
overwhelming odds against the French, but they used a lot
of interesting tactics, including using the longbow and uh and
(09:44):
hiding essentially kind of guerrilla warfare in the woods to
the sides of the battlefield to kind of uh shower
the French with arrows. Use it. Yeah, it turns out
that's a really useful tactic. But this speech I think
is one of those that to this day tends to
be one of the ones that in England is referred
(10:06):
to as a truly patriotic speech. This idea of that
that because there are so few of us, that actually
makes this even more of an honorable action. And for
those of you who do live, just imagine the stories
you're going to be telling your children and their children,
and how everyone from this point forward will remember that
(10:27):
you were here, Like that's an incredible thing. Yeah. And
at the time, let's see, so Henry Henry at fifth
was written around Yeah, it was. It was in the
second second Henry Ad, actually the Henry Ad, which was
the second four play series in his histories, and the
battle we're referring to occurred in fourteen fifteen, so this
(10:51):
is at the time the first time at stage this
is an historical work, you know what I mean. People
were regarding this in some ways, uh, similar to the
way modern audiences regard things like a World War two
film or maybe The Patriot with mel Gibson or Braveheart
(11:12):
with melch you know something, but not necessarily with mel Gibson. Well,
and the English history plays from Shakespeare that spans eight plays,
from Richard the Second to essentially, yeah, Richard the Third.
That's that's oddly enough, Richard the Second, Richard the Third
not backed back. There's a whole bunch of kings in between.
(11:33):
So the that story is actually the War of the Roses.
That that entire sequence of plays. And the interesting thing
to me is that Shakespeare wrote the four plays that
represent the end of that, Henry the Sixth, Parts one,
two and three, and Richard the Third. He wrote those
earlier in his career, and then he wrote the four
(11:54):
plays that represent the beginning of the War of the Roses,
Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth part one too, and
Henry the five Those he wrote later. So you could
think that kind of like Lucas, he went back and
wrote the prequels. And like Lucas, we also knew where
where the story had to end up. I mean, this
was history. Although he takes great liberties in his history place. Uh,
(12:16):
but it was this. This eight series of plays tells
you the full history of the Lancasters and the Yorks,
from the point where Richard the Second abdicates his throne
and gives Henry Bolingbrooke, who becomes Henry the Fourth, control
of England, all the way up to when Richard the
Third loses the crown and Henry Tutor, the father of
(12:37):
Henry the Eighth, who in turn was the father of
Queen Elizabeth, his monarch at the time. UM like that,
that was that full story. So this was a story
that a lot of the English knew very well. And
this this is an excellent um summation, or I would
say a slice of the pie Shakespeare wise. Again, we
(13:00):
have to thank you for that excellent recitation. We do
want to recommend if you happen to be in the area,
that you check out the Georgia Renaissance Festival. Jonathan, I
know that I give you a lot of guff off
air because it makes my day to do so I'm
not going to stop on weekends. And I put on
(13:22):
that I run around in Georgia weather. It's all right.
I admire that part. And and just by way of
a plug and very honest one. I took my my
son last year and he absolutely adored it. Yeah, it's
it's the sort of thing that I loved as a kid,
and honestly, it's the interactions with kids that I still enjoy. Yeah.
It runs mid April through the first weekend of June,
(13:45):
and if you do go, there will be open auditions
with William Shakespeare. I'll be auditioning parts, so if you
if you've ever wanted to stand up on a stage
and recite, I'll have lots of different speeches on hand
from all the different plays so that we can we
can cast all the I mean, I'm going to be
performing all the shows. I gotta cast every single part. Right. Uh, yeah,
(14:07):
I'll go, but I I can't wait to hear the
rest of this. So I'm waiting for you to tell
me that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare so I can lay
the smack down. That's I'm glad you said that, because
the originally we examined this this group of thoughts as
(14:27):
a video in our YouTube video series and it was
fascinating because off air, we've all worked together for years. Folks.
Off off air, there have been times where more than
once actually where you, Jonathan, I don't want to see
quite out of the blue, but you have come up
(14:47):
to me, who we weren't talking about anything in particular,
to tell me how much this idea has bothered you.
And it bothers a lot of people, the concept the
anti stratf Ardians and anyone who thinks that that someone
other than William Shakespeare must have written the plays. I
find it infuriating and perplexing at the same time. But
(15:11):
was there even a real William Shakespeare? Yes? So, well,
there are legal documents that have his name on them.
I've seen six, specifically, I was going to say I've
seen a few. So with that excellent introduction, let's dive
into the life of William Shakespeare. Let's also just Jonathan,
let's go ahead and kidnap you. You work on several
(15:33):
other shows, you work on tech stuff, you work on
the brink, you have you're a man of many hats. Yeah,
I'm wearing one of them right now. You are, you
are where it must have been tough to choose the one.
So they give me a porter. So we're going to
there's a story there, So we're going to We're going
to kidnap you all right, we've conscripted you to be
(15:55):
a guest along with Ramsey on the show today. Let's
explore William Shakespeare is born in as I believe you
had established earlier fifteen sixty four ish, right sometimes around there.
We don't have the actual record of his birth. We
have the record of his baptism, right, and that's a
relatively common thing at this point in the historical record.
He was brought up in Stratford upon Avon, and eventually
(16:19):
he was buried there. Of course, he made a couple
stops in London, right, and uh, he maintained his household
in Stratford for the duration of his career in London.
But other than that, the things we know for sure
about the individual, the human William Shakespeare, uh, they would
(16:40):
seem relatively scant by today's terms, especially for someone who
was so influential and did so many things in his life. Right,
we don't have as many details as we would want.
We do know that someone of pretty much the same name,
the same guy again, the person married and had children
(17:01):
in Stratford. Because there is, as you mentioned, that baptismal register. Right.
The one of the problems that we should establish from
The jump here is that you can find contemporary written
records with Shakespeare's name mentioning him, um, even even a
few with what is confirmed to be his own signature,
(17:23):
but the spelling varies. And so for people who have
an issue with something about Shakespeare, they'll say, well, why
does the marriage bond have shag Spear? And yeah, who's
the Shagspear character? Are they the same as shacks pair? Oh? Yeah,
that was another one, isn't it s h A X
(17:44):
P E R E shak spare? Yeah. I actually actually
have answers to these, but I don't know if you
want me to give them, not yet, right, but they're there,
but there are answers. So we do know that William
Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case. He signed some documents. Uh,
he went home to Stratford. Eventually he made a will
and around sixteen sixteen he died apparently possibly on the
(18:07):
same date that he was born on it based on
the baptism. Yeah, still still a guestimate, but well written,
just structurally in terms of beginnings. Yeah, no, if you're
going to if you're going to have a mysterious life
being born and dying on the same date, not the
(18:28):
same day, but the same date. Is it does add
to that era of mystery, does it not? Kind of
like Samuel Clemens A K. Twain'll bring me back out again. Yeah,
Shakespeare's Shakespeare's work in his career, Um, well, a lot
of it starts obviously in London. He becomes an actor
(18:49):
and then a shareholder in what was called the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, then the known later as the Kingsman. Matt
what were what were the Kingsmen? They were the playing
company that owned the Globe, right, Yeah, this is this
is the part where the Globe Theater, the world renowned
Globe Theater comes in. Um. Also the Blackfriars Theater that
(19:10):
would be later, but yeah, that was that was one
of the first indoor theaters in London. Yeah, Jonathan, tell
us a little bit about the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Sure. Yeah,
So you had theater companies that typically had a patron
that supported their work so that they could get the
upfront costs they would need to put on a performance,
(19:32):
and they would recapture those costs through whatever means like
ticket sales once you got to the theaters. Theaters in
London were brand new when Shakespeare got there. They had
only been around for maybe fifteen years. Before that. You
would typically see a play performed in the courtyard of
an in house or maybe in some real fancy persons
(19:53):
like waiting room that just happened to be as large
as a theater would be that kind of thing. But
this was this was a time where theaters as purpose
built structures were brand new in England. So Shakespeare is
a part owner with this theatrical group, which means he
gets a percentage of the box office. That's actually how
(20:13):
Shakespeare made all his money. You didn't make very much
money publishing a play because you didn't publish plays, you
performed them. Shakespeare in his lifetime never published any of
his plays. Some of them got published, but it wasn't
his decision. And so he was making money by helping
(20:33):
produce work that could be performed in this theater and
then getting proceeds from the ticket sales. And he was
making money off of his own work because I think
the Kingsman had the exclusive rights to produce his plays
right for a period of times, he was essentially essentially
he would write material for the theater that he had
(20:57):
ownership in, and he would also we think for form
in those shows he was often listed as one of
the actors that we don't know what parts he played. Uh,
do you think he ever did a one man I'm
going to do a production of Hamlet, except all the
characters are We do actually think that he may have
(21:18):
played Hamlet's father's ghost in Hamlet, but there's there's not
a lot of there's not not really any hard evidence
to back that up. So so you've got essentially a
guy who owns part of the theater and he's a
gifted writer, assuming that we're going with the story that
Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare he's a gifted writer who is supplying
(21:40):
his own theater with material to attract people. You also
have to remember that at the time, let me set
the scene here in London, you have Puritans who are
very powerful in the city. They do not allow theaters
to operate within the city limits of London, so all
the theaters are either north of the city or south
of the city on the across the Thames on the
south part. So if you want to go see a
(22:02):
show and you live in the city, you have to
find you have to pay a ferryman to get across
the river, or you have to travel all the way
to the London Bridge, which is not close to where
the theaters are, make your way to the theater, pay
your penny if you're a ground link, to stand and
watch the show, and then you have to hustle back
because the city gates of London were meant to be
locked at sunset. Makes sense because of the vampires exactly right.
(22:27):
You know, you don't invite them in, so you have
to rush back to London to get back inside in
time so that you could go to bed. Right. The
theater district was in the same district as all the brothels,
the bear baiting arenas, the gambling houses, and the ends
of ill repute. It was a sleazy um. It was
considered a sleazy profession, yeah, and a sleazy show to attend.
(22:51):
And in fact the sleazy profession is what lends some
people to suggest others who may have written for Shakespeare,
because they would want their own name attached to so
lowly a profession. Ah, there we go. Okay, so now
we've hit upon it. Uh. The other one other thing
we know about Shakespeare is that eventually, in after fift
(23:13):
he became a gentleman because his father was given a
coat of arms which Shakespeare paid for, yeah, which which
did have some money involved. And we can we can
talk for hours and hours and days and days about
probably each place specifically because there's such a depth and
(23:33):
wealth of um connection and I don't know, ripple effect
now in modern society. Yeah, And just to put this
out there talking about that ripple effect, my wife just
the other day went to the Plaza Theater where they
were showing a version of Romeo and Julia exactly and
still still today in twenty nineteen. The effects are seen
(23:56):
like in those ripples as they you know, as they
affected basis learnment, as they affected even my wife when
she watched it, and now all the other people who
are watching well, and then you have all the adaptations
like West Side Story, which is not it's it's essentially
Romeo and Juliet, but it's a musical and it's changed
the location, it's changed the two warring families to two gangs.
But you know, we we still we still see these
(24:19):
ripples going just as strong. In fact, I wouldn't even
say that they've weakened over time, that we might see
them in cycles. It's also interesting to see which plays
are are popular during different eras, because you'll find one
era where Hamlet is considered that the height of of
Shakespeare's genius, and then after say nineteen sixty or so,
(24:40):
it started to shift towards King Lear. And what it
really tells you is more about the society that is
currently enamored of that specific play than the play itself.
Right like how um that remake of adaptation of Titus
Andronicus police Academy for it's police, police Academy for It's true.
(25:07):
So this guy, this individual, this playwright is so prolific,
especially even even in a modern day setting. Writing thirty
seven plays that aren't garbage is a phenomenal feat. And
this guy did it without the access to the wealth
(25:28):
of instantaneous near instantaneous information we have today, without a
word processor, probably without probably without a lot of help,
or did he have help. It is a huge body
of work for one man, And it's not surprising that many,
many people from various walks of life disagree with what
(25:52):
we just gave you. We gave you the official narrative,
but what about the people who don't agree with it?
Will explore their side of the story after a word
from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy, So, Matt.
(26:12):
Earlier Jonathan mentioned the rise of a group of people
called the Anti Stratfordians. Anti Stratfordians. There are many flavors
of them. There are there are positively like skittle level,
you know, uh so like that six or seven. Well,
let's so so, Matt. What what are these people? What's there?
(26:38):
What's their stick, what's their thing? Well, yeah, it's it's
groups of people who, over the centuries have come together
and agreed that they do not agree that William Shakespeare
wrote all of his plays. They are at least um,
some of them don't believe you wrote any of them.
Some believe that William Shakespeare wasn't even actually William Shakespeare
or a person necessary early and uh, it varies very
(27:03):
it varies widely, and some people disagree with their own disagreements,
you know what I mean. They're the anti Stratfordians are
not a monolithic group. The one thing they agree on
is they don't think that William Shakespeare did everything. And
they have some beef with each other within their community.
(27:23):
But you're you're absolutely right. There's the idea that someone
else wrote the place. There's the idea that Shakespeare's maybe
an umbrella term similar to the theory about banks E.
The street artists probably one of the best in the
world right now, there's the theory that, you know, that's
actually a collective rights operating under a singular identity exactly.
(27:45):
I tend to enjoy that idea. Yes, yeah, for Banksy.
But one thing is for sure, this particular genre of
conspiracy theory has massive staying power. This isn't like a
a jade helm thing where it comes up with an
expiration date or a world will end in twelve think.
You know, this concept has persisted for some time, but
(28:08):
not it's not as old as most people assume. I
would argue because, contrary to popular belief, the idea of
a Shakespeare a Shakespearean conspiracy or a question about the
authorship is historically speaking, somewhat recent. Yeah, there's some some
nineteenth century thinkers who were proposing this. You mentioned Samuel
(28:31):
Clemens earlier, Mark Twain. Mark Twain's one of the people
who suggested that perhaps Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare. But
that guy is such a troll as well. Well, I mean,
you know, Mark Twain was pretty much convinced that no
one was as clever as he was. So you know,
I used to I used to love that author, true story,
until a friend got me a copy of his woefully
(28:55):
unedited autobiography. It just goes on and on. I'm I've
I feel like I'm done with Mark Twain until about Well,
let's let's lay out why don't you, guys. I don't
mean to take over your show. I would love to
hear you guys sort of lay out some of the
usual suspects, the ones who are often uh proposed as
(29:16):
the possible people who actually wrote those Shakespearean for sure. Well,
the best way for us to get there is to
explore some of the history you mentioned nineteenth century thinkers
who first proposed these um alternative alternatives. That's a very
safe word. Yes, that's everybody. Yes, that's when Samuel Clemens
(29:38):
would be right. No one really seemed to doubt that
Shakespeare wrote these plays until around the eighteen fifties. The
first public anti strap forty and claim was written by
an American, Delia Bacon. She had an article in Putnam's
Magazine in eighteen fifty six called William Shakespeare and his
(29:59):
Plays and Inquiry concerning Them, which is I know, what
do we need to talk kind of kind of message?
But what what was in this What was the gist
of this article? Well, I mean it's it's an opinion
that is kind of valid in a couple of ways
and then just silly in others. So she thought the
plays were were more than stories, like historical stories that
(30:23):
are being retold. She thought they were um written deliberately
to spread ideas about about enlightenment, about modernity, about progress
of humanity. And uh. She thought the plays were essentially,
like I guess, a form of propaganda. Um. And it
(30:43):
was written by a secret committee essentially of people like
in a luminati of sorts. Um. I mean, it sounds
kind of silly, but at the same time, it's an
interesting thought experiment if we go into it. And she
criptically hinted that there was a different person that had
actually written the plays, or at least had had a
big hand in writing the plays, a certain Sir Francis Bacon,
(31:07):
no relation to Delia Bacon. Yeah. She she said that
there was a secret collective in the Bacon obviously was
the was the leader of the group. Uh. Delia Bacon
never found any any smoking gun evidence for her beliefs
or or anything beyond her belief vaguely circumstantial evidence. All right, now,
(31:32):
I know you've got some irons in the fire on
this way. Yeah, I'm gonna we want to know, we
want to know, we want to know, but we want
to get you set up in the right. So a
lot of people will, perhaps unfairly uh cast dispersion on
Delia Bacon because she had a painful private life as well.
(31:54):
She when she passed away, it wasn't an asylum, which
was a brutal place to be in in that time
and era. But just like Shakespeare, just like Shakespeare, she
had ripple ripples throughout history. This single article it lit
(32:15):
the fuse. It lit the fire for what would become
an explosively um controversial line of thinking, and one that
very much, even in the modern day, aims to be
considered a serious academic discipline, much to the massive irritation
of people who are right exactly. And I love academic beef.
(32:39):
I think it's I think it's so fascinating. But to
your question, a little bit of a circuitous way to
get there. But to your question, Jonathan, if it was
not William Shakespeare, Shakespeare was not the author, or if
it were a brand name for a bunch of people
working in secret, who would the actual author be. Candidates
include Francis Bacon. Christopher Marlow. That would have been a
(33:02):
tricky one. That would have been a tricky one because
he died in a bar fight while several plays were
still being written, although although there have been theories that
stated that the plays were already written, either the Place
had already been written and then we're published regularly or
performed rather because again they weren't published, they performed regularly
(33:24):
after Marlow's death, or the even crazier idea that Marlow
faked his death in a bar fight and secretly was
still writing the Place because he just couldn't give it up.
Oh my gosh, did he move to like Cuba, kind
of like Tupac. No, he just sort of moved to
(33:45):
Southampton and and you know, got some different clothes on,
a silly wig and a fake nose. Well, let's talk
about who Christopher Marlow is. Sure, Yeah, Marlow was another
writer in player of the sixteenth century England. Also was
a spy. He actually did work on behalf of of
(34:09):
Queen Elizabeth, which was not the safest of professions. I
don't think working for a royal family at that time
is ever going to be an inherently safe profession. Honestly,
Elizabethan England, any profession was an unsafe profession because if
you were a Catholic, you were all that was. That
was dangerous by itself, and Shakespeare's family, by the way, Catholic,
(34:31):
so that was But that's another Yeah. So so you've
got you've got Marlowe, who's uh, he wrote Faust so
famous play, he's he wrote a couple of others. Is
really well known for writing drama, was not known for
writing comedy, which is possibly why some people say maybe
(34:51):
he contributed some of the plays, but maybe not all
of them, because there just wasn't any evidence to suggest
that he could write comedy. I would argue that based
upon some of experienced comedies, there's not a whole lot
of evidence that he could do it either. But now
there's actually some very funny Shakespeare comedies, but there there's
a lot of the humors lost on us, the modern audience,
because we no longer have those puns, so they don't
(35:15):
really make sense to us anymore. But anyway, so marlow
uh is this very dangerous kind of individual who's also
prolific writer, also comes from a fairly humble background, which
later exactly so we'll get into that later. But but
he ends up trying to come to the defense of
a friend in a tavern and as a result of
(35:38):
the fracas that breaks out, he sustains a critical injury
and dies. And this is in the middle of Shakespeare's productivity.
So that that again, assuming that the death is legit
and it wasn't Marlow trying to fake his death so
that he could live out his golden years, which would
have been many. He was not that old old when
(36:00):
it happened, um, and he was. He was of an
age similar to Shakespeare. They were about the same age.
Assuming that that didn't happen, that he didn't fake his death,
it would have made it very tricky to continue writing.
Side note unrelated, this is just the fact I found,
and I think you guys would enjoy it if you
hadn't heard it before. I'm just reminded because of the
(36:23):
idea of literary buddies, peers, creative peers, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce,
um solid writers and being very fair solid writers, uh
notorious drunks. Do you know this story about apparently they
were known for getting into bar fights Joyce? Uh, editors,
(36:46):
I mean you just have to read Fitting Its Weight
to know that the guy runs on at the mouth bit.
But apparently he was somewhat of a nebbish character, somewhat
of a yeah, what's it, what's another word for an
nebbish milk toast? That's really good? Actually, uh, yeah it was.
It was a little bit more that didn't come across
as masculinity personified the way Hemmingway, so they would be
(37:10):
a bar fight. So allegedly James Joyce was famous for
running his mouth and then starting to fight and then
physically running to hide behind Ernest Hemingway while yelling like
take care of him, him away, crimson his face. That's perfect.
So that notice, ID just used that as cocktail trivia
at your next um James Joyce Ornest Hemingway themed sare
(37:36):
And you know, there is a conspiracy that the bar
fight that Christopher Marlow got into was actually or there's
a theory that it was a conspiracy to assassinate Marlow.
That's yeah, yeah, yeah, that there are a lot of
stories about that. I mean, that was free, which in
Shakespeare's timeline would be right at the very beginning of
(37:57):
of his rise. Uh, and those would still be the
plays produced in the early fifteen nineties were still considered
the sort of the juvenile works of Shakespeare, the ones
before he really found his voice right, right, And that's
that's like maybe just a year before uh, the exclusivity
agreement comes into effect. Other other candidates include the fifth
(38:19):
Earl of Rutland, who that's all you need to know
about them, actually, the sixth Earl of Derby, the seventeenth
Earl of Oxford. Note that there are a lot of
aristocrats being named. Oxford is one of the big ones
Oxfordians are. That's one of the larger camps of anti Strapfordians. Yes,
and then even Queen Elizabeth one has been proposed. That
(38:41):
seems a little out there, right, It turns out there
more than eighty potential real Shakespeare's and this this is weird.
Why do people believe this? In the case of Bacon Deally,
Bacon's original argument, Uh, you can say there's a little
bit of classism involved, because Shakespeare at at the time
(39:04):
in which Delia writes this article, Shakespeare is very much deified,
especially especially in his homeland. He's depicted as as a
person um being from a relatively uncultured town, right, a
rural neighborhood. Right, And people say has no formal education
(39:26):
because they'll say, there's not an exhaustive written record. Well,
he didn't attend university. He didn't attend university, but he
sure knew a whole lot about history. He wrote, he
wrote a lot about history as if he were correct.
(39:47):
Is the best way to say so. At the time. Though,
this this anti Stratfordian argument, is that based on what
what the plays have in terms of content, based on
the various historical literary illusions and the extensive vocabulary, they say, well,
there's not really a way a guy who didn't go
(40:09):
to college could do this, I mean, if we're being honest,
which yeah, that that is a very common argument, the
idea that how could someone from essentially the sticks, right,
And it's the effectively you're saying, some some hick from
the sticks son of a glovemaker and and and an
(40:31):
amateur actor who then turns pro how could that guy
end up creating what many people believe to be the
pinnacle of poetic language, particularly in play format, and another part,
you know, you know, you're you're thinking not just not
just that these are cracking, good stories, but these are
characters who seem to embody much deeper representations of human
(40:57):
nature than what you would see in contemporary works. Now
that's tricky to say, because there's not a lot of
contemporary works that actually survived that era, and a lot
in general. There's a couple of Shakespeare plays that that
may have existed that we don't have any more, Loves
Labors one of them, and the Cardenio, both of those
(41:18):
are lost plays. We don't know. We We've got a
an adaptation of the Cardinio that was done in the
nineteenth century, but that was a heavy rewrite, which was
not uncommon. You often had theaters rewriting Shakespeare to perform
it later on, especially as different values arose in society,
(41:40):
where certain things were considered taboo, they would rewrite Shakespeare's
plays to get rid of anything that would refer to that,
And so Shakespeare's plays went through a lot of transformation,
particularly in the nineteenth century, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I
love what you're pointing out, though about the way you
point out earlier the way theater is perceived at the time.
(42:02):
This plays into the views of anti stratford i in
um scholars or researchers or enthusiasts. Because at the time
which Delia Bacon is writing this, and at the time
in which Shakespeare was performing popular thought of regarding what
could be considered art and what could be considered a
(42:24):
higher form of art or a lower form of entertainment,
the popular thought drew a sharp distinction between various forms
of the written word. Poetry was a manifestation of high culture.
The best book was and always will be, the Bible,
and you will die if you don't like the version
(42:44):
we have, especially once James came along and presented his
version I know, which was so Kanye of him. But
but theater, on the other hand, was seen as like
vulgar entertainment. The groundlings that that phrase comes from the
mosh pit. You would stand in this in this space
(43:07):
that was right in front of the stage, and for
a penny you could stand there and watch the show.
And if you had sixpence I think it was, you
could sit in the galleries, so you would be in
a seated position further back with a full view of
the stage and Uh, but you know it also spoke
to the popularity of the theater, the fact that they
(43:28):
could get commoners who you know, even when you sit
there and say it was one penny for a show,
for some people, that was that was the equivalent of
two days pay. So they're paying, they're paying two days
worth of labor to watch a show. And these shows
are the the play they would perform would change every
(43:50):
single day because you don't do one show for a run,
because you all you have to constantly be filling up
that theater, because people would say, why would I spend
two days worth of pay to see the same thing again? Right,
And there's only two d fifty thousand people in London
and the theater fits. So you start doing the math
(44:12):
and you think, if you want to stay in business,
you've got to change that. That's why you had so
many plays being produced, not all of them being Shakespeare's. Uh,
it was absolutely imperative from a business standpoint. So let's
let's get back to that idea of the theater industry,
because for anti Stratfordians that tends to, paradoxically enough, be
(44:35):
a piece of evidence that they use against the argument
that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, because they would say, you know what,
theater is relatively low brow. So one thing we do
know about this William Shakespeare fellow is that he was
a professional actor, and that means that he was associated
(44:59):
with theatre others, which, by the way, it was right
next to the brothels gab There's no way someone from
the argument is from a rural part of the world,
in a very seedy profession and one of the sleaziest
neighborhoods of London. There's no way that guy could have
(45:19):
written such amazing poetry poetic prose. Uh No, it was
obviously the sixth Earl of Derby, Yes, who bestowed his
brilliant work down upon the act, but could not possibly
attach his name to the work, for it would sully
his otherwise spotless reputation. Yeah, and we are talking about
(45:39):
the sixth, not that, not that degenerate the seventh. So
it's it's true. They also questioned, we mentioned this before,
how Shakespeare, with no record of education or um cultured background,
how could he know all the things that the author
of these plays no vocabulary is calculated to be somewhere
(46:03):
north of seventeen thousand, five hundred words and the max
would be twenty nine thousand different words. There aren't any
signed manuscripts written by Shakespeare that are around today. We
don't have anything where, you know, you can't go to
the Smithsonian and see underglass the handwritten draft of Hamlet. Right,
(46:28):
and to be fair, London has gone up in flames
a couple of times. Shakespeare wrote so, and and again
also to be fair, not a lot of material from
that era survives period in general. Right, So, so singling
out Shakespeare's work is a little is a little disingenuous,
only because it's only in hindsight that we see how
(46:51):
valuable it was. Right, right, that's a great point, you know.
We see the classism involved again here with the anti
Stratford in our ument. So Shakespeare has six signatures that
have been authenticated. People who don't believe Shakespeare wrote this stuff,
who do believe he was a rube, They say that,
(47:12):
look at these signatures. Sure this may have been some
guy named William Shagg's pair or whatever. But but he
writes like he can't read. He writes, he writes in
a scrawl. This means that he was either illiterate or
functionally illiterate. Someone who can just you know, write their name,
(47:32):
maybe do some simple sums. But the spread of conspiracy
theories about Shakespeare has an international dimension to it, right
Like both Um, both Bacon, and another anti Stratfordian Heart
were Americans, and these different candidates for authorship continue to
find their supporters in the US. People in the US
(47:55):
love this story. The History Channel probably loves this story, right,
PBS love to the story. They produce documentaries about this
usually every five to ten years. I did not realize that,
Oh yeah, because I I've done quite a bit of research, which,
to be fair, first of all, I studied this in college,
but that was more than twenty years ago. Not that
(48:16):
Shakespeare's written much since then, but but it's been a
long time since I was actively studying it. But now
that I'm taking on the role, I want to be
able to answer people when they ask me certain questions
about Shakespeare as best I can. It is incredibly challenging
because Ben, as you have pointed out, we know so
very little about the man. Very little information exists about
(48:40):
Shakespeare's life. We piece it together from scant records and
uh and various things that were written about Shakespeare, typically
after he had already died, so it is hard to
piece it together. But the same is true for everyone
in the elizabeth An era, with the exception of Elizabeth. Yeah,
(49:04):
and maybe some other members of the royal court. But
it's it's true. This lack of this lack of knowledge
allows alternative views or arguments to proliferate. There's nothing wrong
with that, but we do have to look at the evidence.
So we have presented the broad strokes of the anti Stratfordian,
(49:24):
anti Shakespeare Shakespeare argument. What if any problems exist with
these theories? Will tell you after a word from our sponsor. Guys,
hold on a second here, I'm not fully convinced what
I think. Perhaps William Shakespeare was in fact a group
(49:48):
of some other people or one other person or other person,
just a whole bunch of that person who Yeah, in
some kind of multiverse. Uh, let's let's to really talk
about the reasons why Shakespeare probably was Shakespeare. Yeah. So
it's first off, it's fascinating. Of course we want to
(50:10):
be involved in such an intriguing historical Who done it?
You know? Imagine how such a revelation could change history.
The problem is something isn't true just because it's interesting
and that's the fact we all run into at some
point in our lives. The vast majority, by which we
mean virtually all um serious and accepted working Shakespeare scholars
(50:33):
think these claims are malarkey. They think they're nonsense, and
on their side, they have some pretty convincing arguments. One
of the first hinges on the timing. You see, if
Shakespeare didn't write this stuff, or if he who are
somehow a secret gang of people, then why didn't anybody
talk about it when this guy was alive? Why didn't
(50:54):
no one call him a plagiaris? Why did none of
his contemporaries, who who probably had some friendly rivalries, right,
Why sure Johnson definitely yeah? Why didn't they? Why didn't
they say, let's expose this guy? And immediately after his
death people who knew him while he was alive also
didn't say that, And no one came forward after he
(51:16):
died saying okay, so is me? Also the place stopped
after he died, no one, No one wrote other awesome,
amazing plays that are held in the same esteem as
Shakespeare's after he died, even just by inventing another name
like you, You would think, like what, what would motivate
someone to create this stuff in the first place. Because
(51:38):
keep in mind, again, this wasn't meant for publication, it
was meant for performance. You did not make money selling
your play to a to a theatrical company. Maybe made
five pounds, which was a significant sum, but you couldn't
live off of it perpetually. And considering the amount of
labor it takes to write a play versus the amount
of money you would get for selling the play, that
(51:58):
that's a losing proposition in so you're not doing it
to make money directly. That's why Shakespeare made his money
by being a part company owner, not through the selling
of his place. You're not making money through publication because
nobody until Johnson came along bothered to publish their place.
Another yeah, another point. We mentioned Johnson a couple of
times here. Um, yeah, who is this character? Well, well,
(52:21):
to that's that's that's a great question that because we
know he wrote stuff, but we don't know when or
where he was born. It is not especially unusual for
us to have very very little biographical information for people
existing at this time, from the bottom to the top
of the social sphere, not counting the royal family. Also
(52:41):
speaking of Shakespeare's peers, not only did they not say
he was a plagiarist, not only did they not say
he was a fraud, they at multiple times confirmed that
he wrote the stuff. They were like, oh, yeah, Hamlet,
I know that guy. And sometimes they dissed him for it. Yeah,
and sometimes they were like, oh yeah, much ado about nothing. Yeah.
(53:02):
Well you had Robert Greene who said this upstart crow,
you know it, has beautified himself with our feathers, saying
he never specifically says Shakespeare, but he drops every single
hint that it's got to be Shakespeare. So he's dissing
on Shakespeare's largely because he's got the same sort of
elitist view that this this bumpkin is suddenly getting a
(53:23):
whole lot of attention, and he's like, why are you
paying attention to this guy? You should pay attention to me.
I'm much more important. Of course, he also was dying
at the time he wrote it. Johnson wrote after Shakespeare's
death that uh that he was not known to blot
any lines, meaning he wasn't known for marking out a
line and changing it or editing it in some way.
(53:44):
And then he said, would that he blotted a thousand,
So essentially saying he sho he needed a better editor,
is what Johnson was saying. So you had you had
his contemporary's not only giving Shakespeare the credit for writing them,
but sometimes saying like he wasn't that good of a right.
And it wasn't until after Shakespeare's death that a couple
(54:04):
of his his colleagues got together and decided they wanted
to gather as many of the plays as they possibly
could and published them as a memorial to their friend.
So these two guys get together and they put together
was called the First Folio, which that's not even all
of the plays, but it's most of the surviving ones
(54:26):
that we know about. Um. And you also had some
plays in publication already, but not through Shakespeare's uh permission,
called quartos. Some of them were not great. They might
have been written down by someone in the audience who
was just trying that our best to remember the gist
of a play. Those are what we called the bad
quartos to be or not to uh something all over. Hey,
(54:58):
does that smell like plague? To you? So? Uh, this
this kind of stuff, This examination can continue for for
quite a while. At this point, we at this point
we are going to have to close the curtain on
today's episode. But we we thought on that night that
(55:20):
there was no better way to end than to point
out a quotation from David Thomas of Britain's National Archives. Yes,
I'm gonna just do a quick quote here for you
and try to kind of in a way, I guess,
audition for you right now, Shakespeare Afterwards. The documentation for
(55:47):
William Shakespeare is exactly what you would expect a person
of his position of that time. It seems like a
dirth only because we are so intensely interested in him.
Some days you exit pursued by the bar. Some days
bar exit's pursued by you. So that's I mean, that's
(56:07):
a great point though, because it's whole time, does Shakespeare
seemed more mysterious than the average person just because we're
looking I think it's largely also because the amount of
It's not so much the amount of work he produced,
because there were playwrights who wrote more than he did,
but it's the quality of the work that was produced.
(56:30):
Once you get past the early juvenile efforts of Shakespeare,
the Titus Andronicus, you know, the comedy of errors, that
kind of stuff, and you start getting into when he
was really coming into his own just play after play,
he was writing things that still resonate with us today
and something that special, I think is what really drives
(56:51):
our desire to know more. And it is so unsatisfying
to come up against just a darth of information about
this person. And at this point, with the information we have,
the understanding we have in twenty nineteen, it does seem
that the answer to this question is similar to that
(57:12):
old riddle about who's buried in Grant's tomb? So who
really wrote the plays of William Shakespeare? As far as
the evidence indicates, it was this guy named William Shakespeare,
and he was from a town called Strafford upon Avon.
He was born there. He went to London, he worked
in London, and then he went back home and he died.
And he was a filthy actor associator. Yes, he was
(57:36):
a known actor's sympathizer, unless that is there's still centuries
later something they whomever they are, don't want you to know,
and we want to hear from you. Are you still
convinced that there was more to the story. Do you
believe that there truly was someone behind the Shakespeare curtain.
(57:57):
If so, why, and if so, who was that person?
You can tell us about this on Instagram. You can
tell us about this on Facebook. You can tell us
about this on Twitter. You can swing by and talk
to your fellow listens on our community page here's where
it gets crazy. Or you can call us directly. If
you are anti stratford Ian and you are super offended
(58:18):
by this concept, then go ahead and leave us a voicemail. Yeah,
even make us soliloquy of it if you want to
whatever you want to do it. Yes, we are one
H three three st d w y t K. That's
stuff they don't want you to know. In acronym form.
It's also numbers you can dial in with your phone. Okay,
(58:40):
So if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you could you can always send us an email. But
before you do that, consider hitting up old Jonathan Strickland.
How do we find you? Jonathan? I find you? Or
you just go and check out my show Tech Stuff
and my other show of the Brink. Uh and uh.
(59:01):
We do lots of shows about technology and companies, some
of which tends to cross over into your territory. We
did an episode our Tech stuff to an episode not
long ago. Um about some more stuff with the N
s A, which is always such a fun, fun organization
to talk about. We might need to update. Yeah, we've
also both appeared on your show at some point in
(59:23):
the past. If you happen to be in the studio
with us and you want want to run into Jonathan,
you can just hit this button we discovered that says
Strickland on it call back. I made it so inconvenient.
I was being I was just getting the coffee machine
has been pouring coffee this whole time. And and our
guest super producer Ramsey Ram jams Young, thank you again
(59:47):
for saving the show. My friend. We have we have
impinged upon his time too too long. Now. I think
he's ready to go. And he dude, he leveled up
like four times while we were sitting here. I can
see it. I can see happening, leveled up as he
attained his final four. We've got to go to the
We got to get out of the studio to find out.
(01:00:09):
Thank you so much for checking out the show. We
do want to hear from you, and we hope that
you tune in for our next episodes. No spoilers, but
things are going to get curiouser and curiouser and curiouser.
And in the meantime, if you want to send us
that email, go ahead. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com.
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