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| And trouble it was. |
The Facts About Shakespeare,
by William Allan Neilson and Ashley Horace Thorndike, was a very generic
looking book. Navy blue cloth binding with the title only on the faded spine, it
fit in well with the other early century books I’ve received from the machine. First
published in 1913, this was the 1931 revised edition that clocked in at 266
pages.
When I first picked the book up, I was intrigued. The Facts About Shakespeare sounded like
a look into the mythos of the bard and I had high hopes for conspiracy theories,
scandalous revelations, dark secrets, and unabashed criticism all around. Why? Because
I cannot stand Shakespeare, or more precisely, the reverence that surround him
and his work. Blasphemy coming from a an English Literature major, I know, but
it’s not that I hate his work, I just think it’s greatly overrated and overanalyzed
to the point where scholars have imposed countless meaning onto the work that was
not there originally. If you dissect any piece of work enough you can argue any
point and I feel that his work has become more and more abstract over the years
as every university student shoehorns multiple levels of contrived significance
into stories that were entertaining at best. I simply believe that we are giving
the man, if it was really just one man, too much credit, which is why ‘Blackadder:Back & Forth’ is one of the most satisfying pieces of entertainment ever
created. (How do you top Mr. Bean punching Mr. Darcy in the face?).
That being said, my said high hopes were seemingly dashed the
moment I flipped the book open and saw that it was a study on the life and
times of Shakespeare. Thankfully, it wasn’t all about the bard’s work but
instead covered the world Shakespeare lived in.
The first section of The
Facts About Shakespeare focused on England at the time, specifically
London. Touching on the Protestant Reformation, it painted a picture of a
society in change engulfed by a radical storm of culture. Roving gangs of actors
and musicians filled the countryside spreading imagination in art drive-bys. Sleazy
thespians filled the cobblestone alleyways reciting immoral lines for a few
pence. Wordsmiths plied their wares under lanternlight as literature addicts scuttled
about frantically selling their possessions for another page of the latest hand-illuminated
manuscript. Or at least that’s how I first imagined it.
In actuality it turned out that it wasn’t far off with the
Englishmen of this period being an industrious crowd that spent half their time
bettering London’s infrastructure and the other half finding new ways of living
in decadence that floated down across all the social classes. Theatre just
happened to be one of these sources of entertainment. The book did stress,
though, that above all else this was a time where individuality was allowed to
bloom, which set the stage for Shakespeare to prosper.
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| Enough to get a few monuments. |
The second section of the book explored Shakespeare’s
history. In amazing detail. Right down to how his father, John Shakespeare, was
fined twelvepence for failing to remove a heap of filth in front of his door in
1552, twelve years before William was born. For those that didn’t already know,
he had a semi-privileged life growing up, being the son of a bailiff, and the
book painted a comfortable childhood. Outside of his family life, it also
detailed his rise in the theatre world at the time and the friends and enemies
he made. Interestingly enough, it spent a few pages dedicated to a Robert
Greene accusation of plagiarism that brought to light the nature of competition
at the time.
The Facts About Shakespeare
then moved onto his writing. The history of his work is well known already but
the book specifically looked into his documents and records. While the book was
mostly text, it did contain three photos – the frontispiece of the Shakespeare
Monument in the Stratford-on-Avon Parish Church, the cover of the first folio,
and three of his six known signatures. After looking at the signatures, his
literacy comes into question a bit more.
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| "Written" is used loosely. |
The third section delved into the literature of the time and
where Shakespeare potentially got his inspiration and drew his knowledge from.
Presenting a wide range of lesser known works, the book drew connections
between those and some of his plays. The conclusion was that if Shakespeare
wasn’t a scholar, he was at least an extremely well read man. Fair enough.
The following chapter attempted to piece together a
chronological development map of his works. While I had seen many write-ups trying
to explain when each piece was written, this book broke it down scientifically
into three tables that deconstructed every play and re-ordered them, counting basic
attributes like total number of lines to more advanced Rain Man-esque percentage
of blank verse with feminine endings. Just goes to show that one cannot hide
from math no matter where he runs.
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| Ruining my reason to go English Lit. |
The next parts of the book explained the nature of
Elizabethan drama and the Elizabethan theatre. Giving a rich history that was a
bit on the dry side, it contained a wealth of information but what really made
the book extraordinary was that in the section about the theatre, one of the
previous owners had cut out a map of 1601 London from some newspaper and
sandwiched it between two pages. Whatever acids on the clipping had also bled
out onto those two pages to create an interesting preservation effect.
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| Someone really loved this subject. |
The subject of Shakespeare’s texts came up again in the
following chapter where another investigation occurred to piece together when
he published his plays in written form. This drifted into the discussion of
later editors modifying his work and culminated into the subject I had been
waiting for – authenticity of his work. Breaking down different collections of
his plays, the authors ultimately agreed that many works that had been
attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by contemporary poets of 1612 –
the year when an anthology of his work was published. The Facts About Shakespeare also pointed out that a number of his
pieces were also written in collaboration with other writers with few actually
having traces of his hand.
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| A folio of lies! |
From here the subject matter became even more interesting as
the book talked about forgeries and questions about authorship. While it doesn’t
state anything concrete, the book did bring up many theories, including the
famed Bacon discussion. Of course, it was a lot of speculation but it was satisfying
nonetheless that there were other people with literary tinfoil hats besides
myself.
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| Mmmm...Bacon. |
All in all, The Facts
About Shakespeare was a fascinating read as it painted a rich image of
Shakespeare’s era, not just focusing on the writer alone. The fact that it
presented all the main theories on his authorship lent a great deal of
credibility to this unbiased view of his life. If more classes dug into this
darker side of his work then I probably wouldn’t have skipped out on so many
classes. Maybe.
Book rating: 8/10
(Bonus point for not actually dissecting any pieces)
Random quote: “Shakespeare’s
England was merry England. At least, it was probably as near to deserving that
adjective as at any time before or since.”
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