Anonymous

[vison]

I wonder why it is that people still, after all this time and all the scholarship that exists, like to put forward "theories" that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays.

Now there's a movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521197/

It is to laff. Shakespeare's contemporaries knew he wrote those plays. There was no doubt then - why is there any doubt now?

As for The Earl of Oxford? For the luvva pete.

[axordil]

Class snobbery. Period. My Shakespeare prof, back in the day, related a story to his students. He was visiting a member of the English nobility while doing research over there, and the noble in question had a hard time believing a glover's son could understand how the nobility thought so well.

Of course, the majority of poets and playwrights in Bess's time knew how the nobility thought. They were meal tickets. The ones who couldn't figure out how nobles thought starved.

I also wonder exactly how much of what we know think of as "how nobles act" is derived, in fact, from watching and reading Shakespeare...

[vison]

Most of the nobles in Shakespeare's day were not effete lollygagging aristocrats, they were out there hustling like everyone else. It was a tough world back then.

[axordil]

So are you saying modern nobles are effete lollygaggers or Shakespeare's?

I suspect, like most people, the noble in the story brought away from the plays much of what he took in with him.