So you’re saying Prospero talks in a North Warwickshire dialect?
I suggest it’s much, much, much, much more plausible that the above-referenced example from Macbeth is just an example of poor writing. After all, there’s no indication that ‘babe’ and ‘slab’ are supposed to rhyme, given the overall rhyming pattern of that bit of speech. Plus, I am sure that people in 16th century North Warwickshire didn’t speak in iambic pentameter.
However, many aristocrats did write poetry in iambic pentameter. And Marlowe (the man I think wrote the Shakespeare plays) made it famous. I think your argument here is tenuous at best.
All of Shakespeare’s characters talk in a North Warwickshire dialect, because that’s the dialect he wrote in. It’s not just my theory either, but is actually quite well known. I was merely citing a single example.
To suggest that the writer of the plays must have been an aristocrat is pure snobbery. Furthermore, the plays display precious little knowledge of how royal courts and government actually function, which an aristocrat of the time would have. Rather, they display exactly what someone who was unacquainted with them would imagine went on.
Cite an example of Prospero talking in Warwickshire dialect.
The theory that Shakespeare didn’t write those plays is very well known. Something being well known is no measure of its truth.
I’m not saying he had to be an aristocrat, and the unrealistic portrayal of the Royal courts is entirely in keeping with the real reason I believe was behind the production of the plays, i.e. to promote the aristocracy and in particular the Tudor-Stuart monarchical succession. A realistic portrayal would have shown them as a bunch of inbred, narcissistic sociopaths who liked to have sex with their horses and their sisters.
I am not overly familiar with the Tempest so shall have to pass on that one.
Established Shakespeare scholars have known about Shakespeare’s use of dialect for a very long time, so all I can suggest is that you do a little research. He even mentions the Forest of Arden (in North Warwickshire) by name in one of his plays, Twelfth Night, I think.
It would be pretty clever for whoever wrote the plays to prefigure the Stuart succession by 20 odd years, so if that’s the theory, it doesn’t seem very sound. Furthermore, sex with horses and sisters was actually far less common among royalty than you clearly appear to think.
How convenient. Tell me, aside from the above example which isn’t remotely convincing, do you have any other examples?
I mean, one minor witch character in Macbeth appearing to say one word that you claim is North Warwickshire but is equally Scottish, and the character is from Scotland, is hardly a justification for your claim that ‘All of Shakespeare’s characters talk in a North Warwickshire dialect’.
You mean As You Like It is set in the ‘forest of Arden’? Given that the play is set in France, not England, it is likely a reference to the Ardennes rather than the forest in Warwickshire. Though how an illiterate tax-dodger from Stratford would know about the Ardennes is anyone’s guess.
It was widely known within elite circles that Elizabeth I was leaving no heir, hence that there would be a change-of-house succession.
How would you know that? Were you there, observing the lack of sex with horses?
Were you there, observing it? Can you cite contemporary accounts of sex with horses by members of the royal family?
Arden / Ardennes both come from the same word, and in fact it was a typical Shakespeare pun. He spelt it “Arden”. Bear in mind that his mother was Mary Arden.
How do you come to the conclusion that Shakespeare was illiterate? His father was Mayor of Stratford at one point, they were not peasants. They were what we today would call middle class.
No, I was being silly and insulting the aristocracy. As a fervent Marxist you should hardly be objecting.
A typical Shakespeare pun, or just a different forest? Give me some other similar examples of Shakespeare’s puns.
His father was illiterate, his children were illiterate. There are no letters or manuscripts in the hand of Shakspeare. The handful of signatures supposedly written by Shakspeare are a mess, spelling his name differently and according to some handwriting analysts were not written by the same person.
Now, that doesn’t conclusively prove he was illiterate but it is extremely unconvincing that the world’s greatest ever playwright, who wrote plays on a huge range of topics displaying knowledge of great swathes of history, geography and society, would come from a family of illiterates. Even if we accept that the Bill Shakespeare in Stratford was educated at a school that has no records from the period and therefore no record of him being there, they would not have taught him the knowledge necessary for such diverse works.
Thank you, SIATD—though I disagree that not adhering strictly to a rhyme scheme is an example of poor writing and precludes genius; I think that, on a certain height, that may actually be superior to strictly adhering to it.
Yeah, well, that was the weaker part of my argument. My objections to Shakespeare being claimed as a genius are mostly motivated by the tedium of being forced to study them in an extremely doting and dull way through several years of schooling. It’s more a thumbing of my nose to the English literary establishment than a seriously-maintained position.
He wrote the rhyme that’s inscribed onto his tomb.
STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST?
READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST
WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.
I have an unbounded respect for Mark Rylance, having seen his latest interpretation of Richard III, and his performance in Jerusalem. I also love Derek Jacobi, especially for his Claudius.
However, I do not rate them as Intellectual Historians.
The claim that the plays had to be written by an aristocrat is just plug stupid.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who say that there’s no dispute about the official version of 9/11, that doesn’t make it true.
Just tell me where the contemporary, handwritten copies of Shakespeare’s plays are and I’ll concede this entire argument. You can’t say fairer than that.
Just show me where Marlowe’s handwritten copies are and you will have made your point.
Just tell me why it is that no one has this figured out. And why no one suspected anything for 200 years.
Well, being a Nietzschean, I’m naturally an aristocratic radicalist. As Nietzsche—who actually thought the poet of Shakespeare was Francis Bacon, by the way—said,
[size=85]“When I search for my highest formula for Shakespeare, then I always find only this, that he has conceived the type of Caesar. Suchlike one does not guess,—one is it or one is not.” (Source: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever”, section 4; my translation.)[/size]
The noble calm of the poet of Shakespeare is something inaccessible to non-nobles.—
