The REAL William Shakespeare

[Hardrock69]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/unmasked-the-real-shakespeare/2005/10/05/1128191785837.html

[Soul Reaper]

hmm....if this is true, it will certainly change a lot...

[Hardrock69]

It has been claimed for years that the actual author of Shakespeare's plays was the Earl Of Oxford. But this seems to actually put the finger on the real person behind old BIll.

[Nickdfresh]

It's bullshit. It's the typical, negative "Bill couldn't be the author because he's an 'ignorant butcher's son' from Stratford, England in the middle-class" argument. They never offer any real evidence that it was somebody else, just conjecture of who it could possible have been (by nature of their class and education). Show me a really good contemporary novelist that was born rich, or is highly educated (before they wrote their first novel). Some do go to prestigious writing workshops, but most are just well read "commoners."

It's largely bullshit, in fact, Shakespeare derived everything he wrote about from his very good education at the Stratford Grammar School (which is actually the equivalent of having a college degree today) and his reading of "Plutarch's Lives" and other history texts available to him. He was obviously smart, self-made man in commerce aside form his work at the Globe theater, but this book sounds like more waste of trees from pretentious, self-serving hack sleuths. I say fuck-off to them...

Here's an example of what crap the article, and the claim, are: Shakespeare's son was named Hamnet, he died shortly before the play of "Hamlet," which has little to do with either Denmark, nor Poland, as they are little more than a setting (it's actually far more about England). "Hamlet" is little more than a combination family tragedy, and revenge-play masked into political intrigue and requires no intricate knowledge of political matters other than what one can read in the papers or in historical biographies.

There was nobody behind Shakespeare, he did it mainly himself, though he borrowed from other authors like everyone else did. His main talent was his innate knowledge of human nature, and his giganic vocabulary. Neither would have been served via a universtiy education, nor foreign travel, in the 1600s.

[Hardrock69]

Well, since he is not alive now we can't ask him...