humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Feb 27, 7:24=A0am, "Paul Crowley"
wrote:
> "Elizabeth" wrote in message
>
> news:c240c211-c4f8-4fcc-928a-4acc52059673@x30g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > And you know the Sonnets were written
> > > after 1600?
>
> > They are positively dated by internal
> > and external evidence between 1599
> > and 1603.
>
> Pure invention. =A0Not one 'authority'
> on the Sonnets (insofar as there
> could be said to be any authorities
> on the Sonnets) has ever said this.

Post less, read more, Crowley.

The Strats, despite the fact that they
have the wrong author, are wonderful
critics, the body of Shakespeare criticism
is a monument to Western culture
(I'm quoting myself), Shakespeare
criticism holds up, you can go back
to Boas (a truly brilliant Irishman,
there's something about that Irish
brain) and find astonishing stylomentrics,
in fact Malone got the chronology
of the plays mostly right. There are
many outstanding Shakespeare critics
including Lee, crabby but one of the
best.

We have good Strat critics posting
in HLAS. I'm using Reedy's edition
of A True Repertory, so perfected it's
used by the State of Virginia's official
Jamestown site. I read all of Kathman's
many articles for the DNB which I have
to say are superior in style and content
to much of what the DNB published this
time around. I've read Groves paper
on metre which is, in my opinion, a
breakthrough paper but I sense that
the establishment is entrenched.


> > That has nothing to do with
> > Oxford, who by his letters, was going
> > into his last illness.
>
> More invention. =A0

By his letters, Oxford died of the official
royal Tudor Court Disease, syphilis.
Pembroke died of it. I don't know if the
dwarf he married, Mary Talbot, died of
it, perhaps they didn't have sex, they
produced no heirs.

I don't doubt Bacon died of it. I could
speculate that Oxford himself brought it
back from Italy and infected the Court
but it really looks like there's some
congenital syphilis in the Tudor line (since
sylphilis originates in the Caribbean it may
have traveled by Spanish ambassadors
to the Henrican Court, I'm speculating).
Many scholars have speculated that
that Edward VI had congenital syphilis,
Elizabeth had some of the symptoms,
thin hair, pale, bad teeth, she would
go into rages that lasted for weeks.

I think this might explain Oxford's very
small stature and emotional lability.

Judging from his engraving, unstable
behavior and premature death, it may
have affected Oxford's son, the 18th earl.
He died so young, the average Elizabethan
lived to 74 if they survived the terrible
infant mortality rate (fetid water supply).

Stop idealizing these people Crowley,
they were human beings just coming
out of the feudal age, they were ill-
mannered, superstitious, and crafty but
they ruled a backward kingdom that
prevailed over Spain.

It dishonors them to idealize them, it
wasn't magic that defeated Spain, it
was the particular mindset of England
at that time in its history. Capable of
provoking fear in its enemies. Philip III
immediately built a bigger and better
Armada and then backed off.

> Complaints of
> being lame (or other indisposition)
> do not amount to 'last illness'. =A0If
> so, =A0Burghley's lasted some forty
> years.

Burghley was married all that
time to one wife or another and
conservative to the point of immobility.
Anyway, I don't want to think about
Burghley having sex.

As the highest earl, so much

Sex On Demand

was available to Oxford he was likely a
virtual reservoir of pestilence in the era
before penicillin (the method of discovery
of which Pasteur credits to Bacon).

I think it likely that Bacon was infected but he
was so bashful and so sexually repressed by
his fanatical Puritan mother I doubt he had much
sex. There's an account of a betting pool by
the maids of honor to see which one could get
a particular shy courtier into bed, that tends
to describe Bacon.

Dom Diego Barbarossa gets his post-
graduate law degree while Pembroke
gets Lady Mary Wroth.