Status Updates From Contested Will: Who Wrote S...

Unfortunately, the conviction that Shakespeare was godlike had by now intensified to the point where his plays could casually be referred to as a “Bible of Humanity” and a “Bible of Genius,” and his words juxtaposed with those of Holy Writ to underscore their scriptural force in books such as J. B. Selkirk’s Bible Truths with Shakespearean Parallels.

By the end of the eighteenth century the idea of a divine Shakespeare had become commonplance. Still, it wasn't as if anyone was paying homage to his image in a house of worship. Another century would pass before that happened.

Yet referring to Shakespeare as divine had become so habitual that by 1728 a sharp-eared foreigner like Voltaire couldn't help but notice that Shakespeare "is rarely called anything but 'divine' in England" - to which Arthur Murphy proudly retorted, "With us islanders, Shakespeare is a kind of established religion in poetry."

Meant to finish this while in SF but ended up spending all my time exploring the town or being exhausted & sunburnt from exploring. So I'm just getting back into it!

I like how he totally calls out one of his fellow Shakespearean scholars for believing the plays are autobiographical.

Chapter about Miss Bacon, the gifted Puritan with theatrical/literary interests and a descendant of Isaac, most engaging. A break from the intensive and somewhat repetitive commentary re scholars' search for clues through documents, many apparently forged. The tale of the search has been intriguing, but got a little tedious. When Miss Bacon took the stage, I became more awake. Maybe because she's a woman!

I'm a little slow, not because the book isn't good--it's fantastic! Just a few issues conflicting with reading time. I took a sneak preview into a latter part of the book, where Mark Twain meets Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan. Twain was one of the popular disputers involved in the authorship controversy. The book reads not only like really interesting history, but like a detective story. Sheer wizardry!

it's Oxford's turn now!

z_z

Madonna mia, la lentezza.

Troppo sonno per andare oltre.

"Over the course of many years lecturing and reflecting on Shakespeare, Emerson had read nearly every important work of scholarship on him. Yet all that had done was reinforce for him, as it did for so many others, an insuperable divide between what he knew of the man and the works ... 'Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast'". Exactly!

Have been interested in the authorship question for so long. Was lucky enough to catch a lecture by a descendant of the Earl of Oxford (a major contender) when in the US. The "evidence" was compelling. Shapiro is a believer that Shakespeare (The Stratford man) wrote the plays though so I'm keen to see what he makes of the Oxford history. Still on Frances Bacon as a contender at present. Whoowee Shapiro can write ...

Wow -- a slow read! BUT so enlightening!

A massively important book; this is a work of scholarship that should be read by anyone with an interest in Shakespeare, and the (hopefully decreasing) number of nuts who seriously contend that he didn't write his own plays.

I just lost interest.

These Shakespeare doubters are like UFO-logists. With nary a scrap of evidence, they have concocted a gigantic web of maybe. The doubters are riddled with fakers, forgers, and lunatics. Why do they do it? I will read on.

Hmmm, interesting, yet somehow I am bogged down.

What do Sigmund Freud, Malcolm X, Orson Welles, Helen Keller, Mark Twain and Sir Derek Jacobi have in common? Apparently, all those buggers are among the skeptics that believe Shakespeare didn't write all his plays.

The introduction, his qualifications & how he came to write the book.