The Bard's plays, did he or did he not?

[skuthorp]

"EXTRAORDINARY historical evidence suggests Shakespeare's plays were not written by the bard, but by a Tudor politician descended from King Edward III.
British Shakespeare scholar and former university lecturer Brenda James and university historian William Rubinstein propose that the real Shakespeare was Sir Henry Neville, an English courtier and diplomat.
Their research is described as "pioneering" by the chairman of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust, Mark Rylance, artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London."

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

I heard a lecture on radio about this research the other day. A very interesting concept and seemingly with more credibility than the Marlowe theory.

[Ian McColgin]

Re: The Bard's plays, did he or did he not?

And in the three years since this turkey was thawed, it's yet to either fly away or get served, only half baked.

Why is it that some people so snobbily fancy that Shakespeare was just to dumb low-born to write the greatest English and explore the deepest of humanity?

[skuthorp]

Re: The Bard's plays, did he or did he not?

Just a non-political pot boiler Ian, unlikely to ever be resolved but always interesting. The great thing is that we have them at all.

[Tom Montgomery]

Re: The Bard's plays, did he or did he not?

I'm telling you, "William Shakespeare" was the pen name of Edward De Vere.

[htom]

Re: The Bard's plays, did he or did he not?

A friend who was a Shakespearean actress, as well as having a PhD in International Law, said that the primary reason it was hard to believe he wrote them was the correctness of some of the legal references -- but that if he'd had an intimate who was in the court who dealt with such, or whose parent did, all of that could be explained. She had a long list of possible "suspect" helpers.