Smart people (even geniuses) emerge from all classes and walks of life; always have. The Elizabethan era was a time of social change in which one of these remarkable people managed to thrive, especially in the permissive and very cosmopolitan capital London, host to a very large range of nationalities and “races” from Europe and further afield. A time ripe for an enterprising and talented person to thrive. A pathways unlikely to have been taken by an aristocrat.
In previous times theatre was played by itinerant players, whose best gigs were the great Homes. His Hamlet demonstrates and gives homage to that time.
Shakespeare had a good basic classical education at a time when books were more available than any previous time in history. After Thomas Caxton, the printing presses had been running hot for around 100 years by the time Shakey was born. Books were plentiful and had longevity.
The only thing that separated Shakespeare from an aristocrat was the need to make a living. I hardly see this as a disadvantage to him.
Theatre was always the realm of the lower classes and was disdained by the aristocracy as vulgar.
This is precisely the sort of bollocks that I find so offensive. The idea that no one but an noble could have written Shakespeare. In fact, his plays are full of knockabout raucus humour, steeped in the country ways of his native land. No effete, inbred, worthless aristocrat could have written anything like that, which is why hardly anyone remembers Marlowe, Bacon, Spencer and all the rest today.
Why would an aristo want to write plays? THe upper class though theatre was vulgar - the profession of itinerant vagabonds working vicariously for the pleasure of the common folk, or if lucky they would be offered a gig in a big house.
It ought to be obvious to anyone who had studied history that aristocracy breeds indolence and stupidity.
When given the opportunity brilliance emerges from the lowest class. In fact, the last century demonstrates how few people from the privileged classes manage to shine.
Bacon was for too busy in court avoiding the sorts of intrigue that was to land him in gaol. The things he did write, brilliant though they were do not give one scrap of hope to those who wish him to have been a playwright either in style, vocabulary, diction or content.
There is not one scrap of evidence for the panoply of different contenders that have emerged from the furtive minds of Shakespeare’s detractors. And is is bizarre that not one hint of this emerged until over 200 years after his death.
You are doing nothing but playing lip service to classist elitist snobbery.
It is a complete disgrace that 13 years after the close of the People’s Century we are having to defend against this ignorance.
Now here’s a comment I should find offensive, if I were easily offended. As it is, however, I find it amusing. Do you realise that “hardly anyone” is noble? As Heraclitus said, hoi polloi kakoi, oligoi d’agathoi—“the many are bad, few are good.” Aristocracy is the rule of the best and thereby oligarchy, rule of the few.
Precisely why De Vere needed a proxy. And why would anyone want to produce any art?
[size=95]“To the Greek the work of the artist falls just as much under the undignified conception of labour as any ignoble craft. But when the compelling force of the artistic impulse operates in him, then he must produce, and submit himself to that need of labour. And as a father admires the beauty and the gift of his child, but thinks of the act of procreation with shamefaced dislike, so it was with the Greek.” (Source: Nietzsche, “The Greek State”.)[/size]
I don’t think the poet of Shakespeare was Bacon. I do think Bacon was one of the great philosophical commanders and legislators who brought about the scientific revolution of the modern age, though.
Such men are the true aristoi.
The ignorance and disgrace are entirely yours.
[size=95]“The opposite ideal arises at just that historic moment in which the very notion of a morality different from that of the large majority appears as scandalous, as an immoral relic of brutal societies. At this historic moment, the turn to the rule of the philosophers of the future is reasonable.” (Source: Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 78.)[/size]
I know that in Greek, aristocracy means rule of the best. But this is so obviously a self-designation as to be hardly worth commenting on. What it actually means is rule by a hereditary, self-appointed clique.
I get it you have a will to power like everyone else and you don’t deny it, unlike everyone else. Is there anything more to Nietzsche than that?
Those passages remind me of a book I once read; Jokes, Jokery, and Comedy: An Essay on Humour and it’s Subtlties and Subtexts, It explores in depth and with remarkable clarity and proffesionalism all aspects of jokery. Is that some what the way NIetzsche speaks about art throughout his work? Such formulazation of art is impressive… but it is still written in prose, why not reduce art to simply a series of formulas? That would be really impressive, and of such use to the furthering of the understanding of art.
Yes, and some people discuss various issues related to morality in detail using relevant modern issues as examples, as opposed to over dramatisizing abstractions.
Blah, blah, blah.
You say De Vere, for which there is no evidence, others say Bacon, some say Marlowe, whilst yet again there are a panoply of other candidates, all are talking bollocks.
There is more evidence for The Bard writing his own stuff, with the acknowledged collaboration, that for ANY OTHER WRITER writing anything whatever in the same period.
You might as well challenge Hume for his philosophy, and Bacon for his with as much veracity.
And for each of the proposed 'real authors" there is nothing whatever to support the claim EXCEPT the idiotic idea that a claver grammar school boy would have been to stupid to write the cannon.
THis is inherently ridiculous.
If you really think that the then dying feudal system was somehow good at selecting playwrights then why had it not done so before? ANd how is it that the 20thC saw such a massive rise in geniuses from lowly backgrounds such as Einstein and Richard Feynman; and a list of authors and playwrights too numerous to list! The classist premise is nothing more than a Victorian bit of film-flam; resentful and stupid toffs trying to resist the tide of the class struggle, which was to sweep the ignorant and indolent aristocracy away with the dross of civilisation that they represented.
It’s rather quite sad that you sit here in support of it.
This question was around back in my school days. An educator asked my classmates and I an important question about, this. " which is more important, Shakespeare actually writing the work attributed to him or having the works to read and learn?"
We concluded the author is not nearly as important as the work done.
And why do you reckon this “clique” is able to rule, if not because they are the best, i.e. the most powerful? This, after all, is also why “the people” rule today: because together, they are the most powerful—they have the numbers.
But was he as remarkable in real life as he is in the accounts of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes—which are the only direct sources we have on him, and all three of whom were of noble birth—?
If the term “best”, in your opinion, simply means whoever happens to be doing it, then we cannot ever meaningfully talk about improvement. Since this is untrue, it indicates that the term “best” has other meanings too.
[size=95]“Consider with what degree of freedom Paul treats, indeed almost juggles with, the problem of the person of Jesus: someone who died, who was seen again after his death, who was delivered over to death by the Jews— A mere ‘motif’: he then wrote the music to it— A zero in the beginning.” (Source: Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 177; Kaufmann translation.)[/size]
It’s not untrue; we can never meaningfully talk about improvement. Still, the question is: is it a great majority which is more powerful than a small minority, or vice versa? As aristoi is plural, that small minority may still consist of more powerful individuals than that great majority even if the majority as a whole is more powerful than the minority.
I’m not really sure of the relevance of Jesus to Socrates, except, perhaps, that both underwent the two most famous trials in history, but I think you’ll find that most people, even if they don’t regard Jesus as a god, believe he was a very important figure.
Of course we can meaningfully talk about improvement, we do it all the time. We say things like, I don’t agree with the way the government is handling that issue, they should do it this way instead. Is that not talk of improvement?
Just like Paul treated the problem of the person of Jesus with a significant degree of freedom, so did Plato probably treat the problem of the person of Socrates: see Lampert’s How Philosophy Became Socratic.
And on what do most people base their picture of Jesus? A strong case can even be made for Jesus’ having being Caesar—who was indeed most noble.