Kurt Kreiler
Anonymous SHAKE-SPEARE
The Man Behind
To the Reader
England will always be able to call Shaksper and Shakespeare her sons. One a successful manager, the other a successful dramatist. Two beautiful horses, so alike until they started running in different directions.
Will Shaksper removes his mask, takes a bow and takes his place behind the author. For four hundred years he has been walking in huge footprints without being cleansed from the bloodless ink of orthodoxy. May his ashes find eternal peace.
1. The Collapse of the Monument
...and if the people want to say that the moon’s made of green cheese; then I say ‘Let them’. There’ve always been idiots and there always will be.
Professor Stanley Wells, a pleasant elderly gentleman sits on a regency striped sofa in Stratford-upon-Avon and laughs about the gullibility of those who believe the theories that Master William Shaksper (1564 -1616), son of a glove maker, actor and theatre owner was not the author of the Shakespearian works.
“It’s a bit like saying, well perhaps that van Beethoven couldn’t have written Beethoven’s symphonies, because he was a man of the people.” The professor smiles and makes himself comfortable. “There is no reason to doubt that the plays were written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. So anybody questioning that is refusing to face facts and thinking up fancy conspiracy theories.”
With an air of finality he tugged at his shirt collar:
“Yes, my opinion is, to use an English colloquialism, that is all a lot of crap.”
The six signatures: Willm Shackp / William Shaksper / Wm Shakspe re [?] /
William Shackspere / Wllm. Shakspere / [by me William] Shakespe re [?]
Professor Wells has every reason to be indignant: As director of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, he is the guardian of the treasures that keep the memory of the man from Stratford alive. The many examples of handwriting, the letters (as you may already know there is the famous letter from Richard Quiney to mr wm Shackespre who “shall ffrende me muche in helpeing me out of all the debettes I owe in London I thancke god & muche quiet my mynde which wolde nott be indebeted”) and the rare books (so rare that not a single copy has been found). Be that as it may, Stratford is the undisputed owner of the house in which Shaksper was born (purchased by his father John Shaksper when William was eleven years old). Shaksper’s grave (which was discovered to be empty in1796) and the legendary bust of which Mark Twain said that it had the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder….
The Bust of Will Shaksper (1623)
Much to the chagrin of the professor, it has been said that William Shaksper was an unimportant personage who couldn’t possibly have written all those plays with their countless references to Latin, Italian, Spanish and French literature, simply because he never received the necessary education.
“The fact is that Shakespeare was born here in Stratford“, informs us the man on the sofa. “That his father was mayor or bailiff of Stratford, that gave Shakespeare the right to go to the grammar school here in Stratford. That school had pupils who were tutored by Oxford graduates, we know the name of the teachers, and that the
grammar school’s curriculum at Shakespeare’s time was a training in literature, it was a training in rhetoric and oratory. Pupils had to learn Latin, they had to listen to Latin, they had to speak Latin all the time while they were at school - and the books they studied were books like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Cicero’s writings, Quintilian, the Latin playwrights like Plautus and Terence.“
The King’s New School enjoyed, no doubt, a good reputation, even though the ten hour day must have been tedious and boring; as described in Bill Bryson’s entertaining and refreshing, though not particularly factual, biography of Shaksper.
The son of the glove maker learned how to make convincing speeches in Latin; assuming of course that he attended the school at all. Even the guardian of the grail, Professor Stanley Wells has to admit: “We have no lists of pupils, of any pupils who went to the grammar school in Shakespeare’s time. So there is no mystery that he is not listed as a pupil in the grammar school. Nobody else is, but it must have had pupils.“
Nobody is going to maintain, out of pure spite, that the immortal bard didn’t attend Stratford’s illustrious institution of higher education. But is it all that convincing?
There is an interesting quote to be read from William Beeston (born c.1605, died 1682), the son of Christopher Beeston, a colleague of Will Shaksper of Stratford from the days when both were members of the Lord Chamberlain’s acting company. He said of Shaksper that he was “the more to be admired, because he was not a company keeper, lived in Shoreditch, wouldn’t be debauched, and if invited to writ, he was in paine” (Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. 1898). -There is a kindred sentence set down by John Ward on becoming rector of the Stratford church in 1662. “I have heard,” Ward wrote, “that Mr. Shakespear was a natural wit, without any art at all” (Diary of the Rev. John Ward, extending from 1648 to 1679, London 1839).
It is not certain that Will Shaksper (or Shakspere), the actor was enrolled in the grammar school, nor is it certain, assuming such an enrolment took place, that he continued to attend the grammar school after his father’s removal from public office in 1576. However, the question that concerns us most is: Could the grammar school at Stratford have provided him with the education required to be fluent in Italian, French and Spanish at the age of fourteen?
The Author, to call him so, was well acquainted with the following Italian works which had not been translated into English during Shaksper’s lifetime.
Bernardo Accolti, La Virginia (All’Well That’s Ends Well)
Matteo Bandello, Le Novelle I.22 (Much Ado about Nothing, A Winter’s Tale)
Matteo Bandello, Le Novelle II.36 (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night)
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, III.3 (Measure for Measure)
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, II.9 (Cymbeline)
Giordano Bruno, Il Candelaio (Love’s Labours Lost)
Giraldi Cinthio, Gli Hecatommithi, III.7 (Othello)
Giraldi Cinthio, Gli Hecatommithi, V.8 (Twelfth Night)
Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Il Pecorone IV.1 (The Merchant of Venice)
Giovanni Francesco Straparola, Le piacevoli nocci (Taming of the Shrew)
Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori (A Winter’s Tale)
The Author had also read Dante and Petrarca, along with the French poets Salluste du Bartas and Pierre de Ronsard. He distilled “Hamlet” from a piece from François de Belleforest (ed. 1576) and he didn’t need to wait for John Florio to translate the essays of Michel de Montaigne. At the same time he was well acquainted with “Diana Enamorada” by Jorge de Montemayor and “Conde Lucanor” by Don Juan Manuel.
There are some indications that the poet was no stranger to the Greek language. In sonnets 153 and 154 we see the strong influence of the epigrams 626 and 627 from Marianus Scolasticus (6th century AD): Connected by a related theme, the two sonnets form a pair, as do the two epigrams. The sonnets imitate the pair-structure that we see in the epigrams. J.A.K. Thompson pointed out quotes from Sophocles’ “Ajax” and Euripides’ “Hekuba” in his book “Shakespeare and the Classics” (1952). Perhaps the learned writer studied the Greek works in the form of Latin translations - he most definitely read the works