Shakespeare news
‘As any fule no’ [the classic Molesworth quote – from the legendary spoof books first written in 1953 by Geoffrey Willans, illustrated by Ronald Searle] 23rd April this year was widely marked as the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. While some may seek to argue as to whether the Bard is the greatest creative and dramatic writer of all time, surely it is impossible to gainsay the proposition that no author in history has ever had a wider and more universal influence upon the civilised world.
For over two hundred years now there have been numerous openly-declared doubters as to whether an averagely-educated hick from Stratford-upon-Avon who married an older woman (and later bequeathed her his ‘second best bed’) and at some point travelled to London as a jobbing actor, actor-manager and writer actually had the scholarship, brain power and simple worldly experience to be able to write such a body of work as Shakespeare left behind.
From Mark Twain, who once famously said “So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life”, through Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles even to one of the finest modern actors Mark Rylance, the list of doubters is distinguished and the list of candidates produced by conspiracy theorists as to who might have actually written Shakespeare’s canon is long – let’s start with Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere (the 17th Earl of Oxford), Christopher Marlowe and William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby).
In that context – and purely because the development will attract the interest of all those who love classic theatre and the varied work regarded as Shakespeare’s – I have no hesitation in recommending to Rust readers this report by Dalya Alberge on the news that a group of distinguished Shakespearian scholars are attributing co-authorship of Shakespeare’s three Henry VI plays to Christopher Marlowe, which appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN
