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OK, then if you don't think that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare, then like many others, you may agree that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the real writer of the Bard's works. After all, this aristocrat (1550-1604) lived at the right time (more or less), was a well-travelled and well-educated gentleman and was known to have written literary pieces for the Elizabethan court.
He was born in Essex and educated at Cambridge and by the time he was 27 he'd been admitted to Gray's Inn to study law. He was also such a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I that when he asked for permission to serve in the army in Flanders, she refused. However he did see action in 1570 when, under the Earl of Sussex he fought in a campaign against the Scottish Catholic nobles.
When he sneaked abroad to Flanders in 1574 without the queen's permission, he was brought home ignominiously by her agents. In the following year he was given leave of absence from the court and travelled to France and Italy where he visited Venice, Padua, Florence and Sicily. He was so impressed by what he saw in Italy that he readily adapted many Italian ways and fashions. Is it a surprise then to read that Italy features in about one third of Shakespeare's plays?
Next time I will continue with his biography and show how the Oxfordians - those who claim that the Earl of Oxford wrote the Bard's plays - were also supported by several important people. One of these was Sigmund Freud.
For comments, please write to: dlwhy08@gmail.com
In my last blog I promised to tell you how in an article in the Chicage Tribune, 1916, we could read that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare. Unfortunately, when it came for me to read the text, I was unable to as it was too small and indecipherable.
Therefore we will just have to rely on the noisy headline: Aha! Sherlock is outdone! The Great Shakespeare Mystery is no longer a mystery. It has been solved right here in Chicago, and the spirit of Lord Bacon says,"I am content with my 1916 glory."
However, in my final blog on this topic, I wish to show you how Durning-Lawrence, the author of Bacon is Shakespeare used the illustration below from Cryptomenytices et Cryptographie by Gustavi Selenito (Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg 1579-1666) to prove his point.
From "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" by John Michell
If you look carefully at the panel at the bottom, according to Durning-Lawrence, the seated man is Bacon, while the standing man next to him, raising the hat is Shakespeare happily claiming the glory of writing Bacon's plays.
In the left hand panel, the old and shaking Shakespeare look-alike holding a spear is receiving a book (of WS plays?) from Bacon, while in the right-hand panel you can see a Baconian hatted horseman galloping away to herald the fame of Shake-spur.
Finally, at the top of the page, the many lighted beacons really stand for Sir Francis Bacon. According to Durning-Lawrence, the word 'Bacon' was pronounced'beacon' in the 16th century.
So did Bacon write Shakespeare? I'll leave you to decide (and send me your comments to wsdavidyoung@gmail.com). If you are still undecided, wait for my next blog when we'll see if the real writer of WS was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.
Unless a writer or an artist tells us explicitly why he or she wrote or painted something, we can only make educated guesses why they produced what they did. Shakespeare never told us why he wrote "Macbeth" and so the following two reasons come under the category of 'educated guesswork.'
Macbeth being crowned King of Scotland. Holinshed's "Chronicles" 1587.
We know that he was one of the principal shareholders in the Globe theatre and therefore had vested interests in writing "a hit, a palpable hit." But why write one about a long-dead Scottish king and his super-ambitious wife? The reason may be found in the date of the play. According to the experts, it was probably written in 1605-06 (WS never dated his plays) when King James I of England (a.k.a. James VI of Scotland) had already been reigning for two or three years. We know James loved the theatre and that he considered himself a direct descendant of Banquo and the eight kings whose apparitions appear at the end of the terrific Witches' scene - the one where they are busy making soup and proclaiming:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
"Women in straunge & ferly apparell, resembling creatures of an elder world"
From Holinshed's "Chronicles," 1587.
Therefore, Shakespeare, as a leading member of the King's Men theatre company, had vested interests in stroking the royal ego and keeping the company's chief patron happy.
Another reason may also be connected with this king. This play - the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies - deals with witches, and this topic was very popular at the time. Three popular contemporary plays based on witches included, The Witch of Edmonton, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch by Shakespeare's contemporary playwright (and maybe writing partner), Thomas Middleton. In 1597, some nine years before WS wrote "Macbeth," King James himself wrote his academic treatise on witchcraft, Demonologie. This was the result of his becoming obsessed with the topic following the North Berwick witch trials of 1590-91.
Therefore, for Shakespeare to have written a play about witches was not only fashionable, it also flattered the king by reflecting his interest in the topic, especially as the play stressed James' Scottish background. Not only was the Bard a great dramatist, he obviously believed in good PR.
Incidentally, the scene featuring the moving wood "from Great Birnham Wood to high Dunsinane Hill" is not our William's original. This idea had been used before in several works such as, Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil some two hundred years earlier. And of course, the idea of using trees to camouflage the size of your army appears in the Old Testament when David does this to fool the Philistines.
Finally, what were Shakespeare's sources for this play? He himself probably used Holinshed's Chronicles which appeared in 1577 and again in 1586-87. Holinshed may have based his histories on Stewart's Cronikle of 1535 and Bellenden's Croniklis of 1533. This last work was a free translation of Boece's Scotorium Historiae, 1526-27 which followed Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil. The earliest history we have about Macbeth appeared in John of Fordun's Chronica sometime before 1385.
Next time I'll deal with the topic why it can be fatal to take part in this "Scottish play" or even to go and watch it at your local theatre.
For comments on the above, please write to: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com
Thank you.
