humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Feb 23, 6:17=A0pm, "Paul Crowley"
wrote:
> http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/books/08book.html?partner=3Drssn...=

>
> To posterity the balding man in the courtroom was the greatest
> writer in the English language. To the maidservant formerly
> employed at his lodgings, he was "one Mr Shakespeare that laye
> in the house." =A0 To the Court of Requests, taking depositions in
> a lawsuit in 1612, he was simply a witness who gave his statement,
> signed a hurried "Wm Shakspe" and then took his leave.
>
> This fleeting glimpse of Shakespeare as he appeared to others,
> grounded in a specific London setting, seized the imagination of
> Charles Nicholl, a British biographer and historian. He embarked
> on a painstaking investigation into the particulars of the lawsuit,
> the family that rented rooms to the middle-aged playwright and life
> on Silver Street, where Shakespeare "laye" (that is, resided) from
> about 1603 to 1605, a period when he wrote, among other plays,
> "Macbeth," "All's Well That Ends Well" and "Measure for
> Measure." =A0. . . .
>
> Stratfordians believe that -- after some ten
> years at the very top of his profession --
> the occupation and fame of the greatest
> entertainer of the age was quite unknown:
> (a) to the maidservant who had known him
> personally for all that time, and
> (b) to the officials at the Court of Requests.
>
> Makes =A0sense, huh?
>
> Paul.

Oxford's men forged all the documents in the case, trying to make it
look like Shakespeare could not have written the works attributed to
him, hoping that posterity would instead assign them to Oxford, and
save England the ignominy of having it thought her best poet was
an . . . uneducated commoner. The original record of the proceedings
actually referred to Shakespeare 75 times as Mr. William Shakespeare,
the Greatest Poet and Maker of Plays in the History of the World," and
when the maidservant referred to him, she swooned five times before
successfully referring to "Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ come
again in the guise of a Poet whose words would make a rabid dog weep
for joy, Mr. William Shakespeare." The proceedings were also three
times interrupted by the judge's impetuously leaving his place to
kneel before Shakespeare and ask his blessing.

--Bob G.