BF2S Forums Was Shakespeare a Fraud?

Does the question even matter anymore? Whoever is directly affected is long dead, and the plays as they stand are immortal pieces of work.

usmarine2007 wrote:

confused wrote:

I've not seen Patton.  Is it good?

Aye

See Patton, noob.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2007-03-01 14:37:11)

coke wrote:

But what reason is there for him not to be...
What reason would there be to to say he wrote them when if in fact it wasn't him...

The Oxford claim is that he was not educated enough...

and... that the details found in the writings often mirror the life of the Earl of Oxford together with a vague similarity of literary style.

and... that "William Shake-speare" is a pen-name - not the (actor) William Shakespeare of Stratford on the Avon.

The claims have always been the same - very circumstantial - basically conjecture. Also there is nothing at stake - the body of works still remains - and "Shakespeare" by any another name - is still a literary rose.

Last edited by topal63 (2007-03-01 15:00:57)

This coming from a country (Argentina) where 93% of the population believe The Bible was written by God.  But seriously, there's more evidnece that Shakespeare smoked weed than there is for this bogus theory.

"Personally, I have no investment in who wrote Shakespeare. I believe, along with T.S. Eliot, that "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." These days that may be a minority opinion. Regardless, finding the "real" author of the plays and poems of Shakespeare would have a major effect, from a literary point of view, only on those who judge the artist and not the art, as an alleged Rembrandt that has been debunked loses its value. The conspiracy theorists sometimes accuse the "Stratfordians" of conspiring against their candidate. That few Shakespeare scholars and readers care one way or the other seems a more likely explanation of the case. And, applying Occam's Razor to this situation, the best answer to the question seems to be the Stratford candidate. The positive evidence is not entirely compelling, hence the controversy, but there is some good evidence as well as 400 years of tradition behind that answer. The evidence for another candidate, as anyone who reads John Mitchell's Who Wrote Shakespeare? will discover, all seems very persuasive when presented the right way, until the next candidate's evidence is presented. Part of the problem is, no one can offer conclusive proof, and those arguing against the Stratford candidate are often of dubious authority. Until someone with authority can offer conclusive proof for another candidate, the safest answer seems to be the the traditional answer. Perhaps the largest unanswered Shakespeare question is why anyone would bother arguing about this at all."

From: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbivens/shakespeare/

Well I don't know if he was a genius or a fraud, and I'm probably one of the least qualified people to argue the point on this.

But I think whether he wrote his own stuff or not, you can't (at least now that everyone from his time is long gone) take anything away from him. A lot of today's acclaimed entertainers, writers, cinematographers, etc don't do the work they're credited for. They have a team of people that work for them to do the work. And as the leader of the group they take credit for it. That's fair enough because all the people that worked for them and did a good job can put it on their resume and get a good reference and further their career. I work in a field that produces novel ideas but as a "not so senior team member" I'd don't expect to get a Nobel prize for what we do (even if it was worthy); the project leader is entitled to the accolades (EDIT: even if s/he is only there to put their name to the final report.

But plagiarism is not the same thing.... I just think that the idea of a 'company' in Shakespeare's time was restricted to players, not writers.

Last edited by cospengle (2007-03-02 04:21:32)

sergeriver wrote:

Watching a documentary about Shakespeare, they came up with this theory.  There is a theory about Shakespeare not being the author of all the famous plays signed by him.  There are many doubters out there because of the simple lack of evidence and original documents that can prove that Shakespeare could even complete a sentence, all we have are his signature on a couple of surviving legal documents.
Was the work of William Shakespeare the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced in the history of the world?
Was Shakespeare a real genius or a plagiarist who patched plays together from other writers' works?

Wasn`t unusual for that era to have a more famous writer to sign the work of another writer and then split the royalties ...... it`s suspected to be more common than we think, and if i remember correct there is a German student doing some research on the matter for his degree !