COMMENT: At first we thought this news item came in from The Onion. But apparently not. So we are left to wonder how this “Shakespeare [of Stratford] ran a stable of playwrights including Ben Jonson” story had escaped everyone’s attention, until today. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the long-held Oxfordian view that Oxford presided over a salon of writers in the 1580s, right?
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Shakespeare and his stable of bards | Greatreporter
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Century-long speculation on the Shakespeare authorship may finally come to rest.
Typical for the early theatre, the plays stem from a collaborative effort involving the finest playwrights and poets, as well as the royal court.
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An independent review by Icons of Europe shows that William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a prolific theatrical entrepreneur who managed a stable of playwrights and poets, notably the renown Ben Jonson. The courts of Queen Elizabeth and especially King James participated in this collaboration, typical for the era, by commissioning plays for their own entertainment and providing material for the dramatic content. Several lines of Jonson’s prefatory verse opening Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623) appear to heap sarcasm – and not praise as often observed – at Shakespeare’s alleged authorship.
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Most recently, the movie Anonymous picked Vere as the true author. In response, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust launched a scholarly campaign to promote its own viewpoint that “Shakespeare was indeed the true author”.
However, some of the Trust scholars admit: “None of Shakespeare’s plays is the product of an isolated genius… Collaboration was arguably the default form of writing in the early theatre”. The same scholars also name specific playwrights in Shakespeare’s stable of writers.
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The full review is accessible at www.iconsofeurope.com/shakespeare.htm
Its sources of information include the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, and Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623.
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