humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On 14 Mar, 15:41, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
snip of a few days...
>
> >Intriguing! "Mr. W.H." would then definitely have been her son William
> >Herbert. Next halt: would it then be possible, that a mother would
> >favour one of her sons with so many love sonnets while completely
> >ignoring the other, Philip, although they are both placed on a level
> >as the "Incomparable Pair" of the First Folio?
>
> >C(hris)
>
> I suspect you're ahead of me on how noble Elizabethan players
> navigated the field, so appreciate your pass of the ball as I look
> toward the goal of getting something said about MSH, who was not just
> a cheer leader. So far, there seems to be little opposition to my
> having a kick or two, although no doubt some could defend their end
> very well.
>
> Mothers are a mystery to me, as I suspect they are to Shakespeare:
> just look at how Coriolanus' mother, Volumnia, does him in with
> patriotic gore, Gertrude is too self-centered to see herself as Hamlet
> does, and R III's mother who used him for her own ends.
>
> Looking up about Shakespeare's mothers to see what more can be told
> about his treatment of mothers, possibly compared to MSH as a mother,
> I see the Freudian psychoanalytic community notices his absent and
> negative treatment of mothers, but positive treatment of fathers, and
> especially fathers' treatment of daughters.
>
> According to papers presented at a recent convention, reviewed athttp://pn=
.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/41/16/6,
> S's fleshed-out mothers are few, and those tend to be cruel,
> neglectful, and cold, although strong women are also limned. The
> attitude of psychiatry-oriented commentators is evidently that an
> author does represent experiences from his/her own biography.
>
> Just to whiff the depths of some jealous treatment of MSH, I suppose
> it could serve to report on the kind of stuff she is said to have been
> up to. After going this far down field, I may need to pass the ball
> and avoid a couple tacklers.
>
> 1. On her voyeurism, John Baker says at his Marlowe site,http://www2.loc=
alaccess.com/marlowe/sonnets.htm:
>
> (quote)
> Mary's reputation has not survived in tact, indeed her first
> biographer suggested that the father of her children was her own
> brother. It would seem more likely to have been one of his close
> friends or servants. Keep in mind that the theme of Venus and Adonis
> involves a younger boy who is "inducted" or "induced" or "seduced"
> into heterosexual matters by the lovely blond Venus, long known to
> have been patterned on Mary Sidney Herbert.
>
> As a matter of fact Venus and Mary share the salacious habit of
> finding sexual enjoyment in watching their horses mate. Indeed much
> of the poem caters to this perversion, as if it was devised by the
> poet to appeal to Mary's tastes in these private matters.
> (unquote)
>
> Even at the Mary Sidney Society sitehttp://www.marysidneysociety.org/marys=
idney.html
> the following is allowed mention, as if in proof of sorts.
>
> (quote)
> There has never been an explanation for why Ben Jonson (considered to
> have been a prot=E9g=E9 of Mary Sidney's and definitely a close friend of
> William Herbert's) mentions a bawd and a whore and a mature
> gentlewoman in the eulogy's introduction.
> (unquote)
>
> 2. About MSH as mother, the Mary Sidney Society also notes the
> following.
>
> (quote)
> This same son [Will Herbert] acted as bawd for the King, effectively
> changing the power structure at court by providing King James with a
> new lover, George Villiers (who eventually became the Duke of
> Buckingham), and thus procuring for himself the office of Lord
> Chamberlain. Mary's younger son, Philip Herbert, acted as whore to the
> King in exchange for an earldom, a rare honor for a second son.
> (unquote)
>
> I begin to wonder if these are the "Incomparable Pair" associated with
> publication of the FF and MSH an incomparable mother. The Oxfordian
> scheme of incest and bawdy almost seems pale by comparison, especially
> if, as they try to say, one of the Herberts was the result of an early
> laison between her and Marlowe, who went to live with her after his
> "death." Reminds me of Chaucer's Parson, "If gold rust, what shall
> iron do?" bb

All this is extremely interesting but hardly answers my question, but
on the contrary increase the doubts as to Mary's possible authorship
of Shakespeare, especially when you consider *Shakespeare's*
particular almost hostile standing to mothers, there being only three
mother characters in the whole canon and all three quite unmotherly.
To this idiosyncracy should be added the particular case of MacDuff,
one of *Shakespeare's* most clearcut heroic and honest characters,
"born of no mother". A mother could hardly have penned plays of so
very unmotherly mother characters, if you pardon my gibe.

C(hris)