[news.bbc.co.uk]

Darned baconians...

Perhaps we need to remember the comment made about 'Hamlet' and the critics by, I think, Mark Twain, who is reputed to have said: "Are the critics of Hamlet mad, or only pretending to be mad?' It may have been GBS - for errors of attribution and correct quoting I apologise.

I think it may have been GBS who said: If they were not written by William Shakespears then it may have been by somebody of the same name." Again, for errors of attribution I apologise. It been 40 odd years since I read these quotes.

It raises an interesting question. Issac Newton was born and raised on a farm. No family precedent of extreme philosophical insight. So was the Principia written by someone else? Also the matter of light being waves or particles? Can we rely on unsuvbstantiated material to accept these were the work of a single person?

Similarly with Archimedes, Galileo, Descartes with geometry, and any number of individuals over history who created/contrived something by their own efforts at which we now marvel.

What of Georg Telemann and JS Bach? Could they have produced their outputs alone? Surely they must have been part of teams?

Way back in the 1960/70s the Scientific American referred to Issac Asimov as being the figurehead and front man for a writing group, as surely no one could have produced the works he did over such a vast range of topics - five hundred odd (and not so odd) books I think.

We have Asimov's comments on himself, as well as comments from Arthur C Clarke and Fred Pohl about Asimov. Here is a single person with no family history of literature who produces all these books of fact and fiction. Must have been a committee.

Essentially all Asimov had was a logical mind, and extremely retentive memory and a capacity to work. I have never read of Shakespeare's capabilities in these areas,except work ethic.

As for evidence - what direct evidence do we have for Christ? The Romans and Jews each destroyed large quantities of records in efforts to spite the other group, so we have a 70 year gap in reliable written records from that period and locale. What is to say a similar, accidental, destruction of records took place and now there is no reliable written record?

I think it was aliens - perhaps 'Tickle Me Elmo' types - who did it just as a psychological experiment on the human race, in which homo sapiens finished last.

Shakespeare is Shakespeare whoever he was. If someone used it as a pen name it doesn't really matter, we still have the results and they lost out because no one will ever really know who the someone-not-Shakespeare was.
Anyway Brannagh done all of Hamlet and we've just watched all 4 hours and it's brilliant.

I thought we all knew Shakespeare was really Baldrick... All the evidence you need is there for all to see in The Taming of the Sausage, and Turnip Andronicus...

And what would Derek Jacobi know about Shakespeare, anyway?

Uh! That much?

My theory is that all of Shakespeare's works were in fact written by Bach in his spare time.

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing

Shakespeare here.

AKA Edward de Vere

AKA The Earl Of Oxford

The best evidence I've come across re: the 'identity problem' involves the Last Will and Testament (the document itself) signed by the person we all presume to be the bard: the fact that this person went by the name of William Shakespeare is, in itself, true by definition - it's his will. But did this person write all of those plays and poems?

The Will is signed in three places. The first signature is fairly neat, the second less so, and the third is a barely legible scrawl. Whoever this person called William Shakespeare was, he had one of the worst cases of writer's cramp (or RSI if you like) in medical history: he could manage the pain of two words but six were almost beyond him - the extreme symptoms one would expect from someone who had, indeed, spent their life writing millions of words in long hand.

He did have severe writers cramp - it was the death of him.

But is Derek Jacobi the person of that name or someone else?

>he had one of the worst cases of writer's cramp (or RSI if you like) in medical >history: he could manage the pain of two words but six were almost beyond him - the >extreme symptoms one would expect from someone who had, indeed, spent their life >writing millions of words in long hand.

Or typing. Because I happen to know for a fact that As You Like It was written on a Commodore 64

Ah yes, but wasn't it meant to be something else, like 'The Damnation of Faust' but the glitches in the system made it easier to correct the grammar errors than to maintain the sense of the original story?

Just think what would have been possible if a Sinclair ZX80 had been available!!!

Another thought - are people aware of a couple of Canadian comics of the 1950/60s by the names of Wayne and Schuster?

I consider them to be among the most literate comics of all time - up with the 'I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again'/Monty Python/The Goodies/Cambridge Circus levels.

i have been searching for some years now to find W&S's pieces on 'Julius Ceaser' and 'Baseball'.

The first is a classic - if you have never heard it bombard your local radio station/BBC/record shop (shows my age doesn't it?)/ contact the Gramaphone Magazine and get to hear a copy.

The 'Baseball' skit is a notice that in America/Canada the broadcasts with the greatest audience is baseball, and the highest level of linguistics in English is Shakespeare. So the skit unites the two to get culture to the masses. I don't know about Canada but it didn't seem to work in the US - improve the culture , that is. Or perhaps it did, and what we have now is better than what would have occurred without them.

How do you quantify a probable improvement?


Anyway, if anyone else knows of good humour and Shakespeare let us know. Who knows, there may yet be another play to be found. Possibly "Thursday on the disc meets the sprouts of John Wellington Wells."

It was a thought anyway, I'm off to sleep - it's 11.17am here and its been a long day. Nighty Night.

The CBC on-line shop had the Best of Wayne & Shuster on DVD for CAD$17.98 (about £8)...I think I have this on VHS already, but have a $5 coupon for the CBC shop:
[www.cbcshop.ca]

We used to watch it every Monday night after Guides (perhaps something to post in the nostalgia thread). I cannot hear "Goldfinger" without hearing their "Goaltender" theme and their "Question Time" sketch about trying to ignite public interest in the Canadian House of Commons by hiring a Las Vegas show designer...brilliant. There must be one, possibly two, generations of Canadians who saw this and cannot look at any Parliamentary proceedings without snickering.

The two sketches in question were "Rinse the Blood off my Toga" and "Shakespearean Baseball".

...and are available on-line here:

Shakespearean Baseball:
[www.canadianshakespeares.ca]

Rinse the Blood off my Toga
[www.canadianshakespeares.ca]

If you like literate comedy, find a video of "Aaargh! It's the Mr Hell Show"

Why the **** don't they index things properly.

I spent weeks trying to find Wayne and Schuster on the net and got no where. I've even been trying to contact relatives who lived in Canada years ago, both for family reasons but also to get copies of W&S.

Now, thanks to information received from a usually relaible source like, like spanners from heaven, I can get somewhere.

Thank you 'housein the woods' you have my everlasting gratitude. (And probably after a while a negative reaction from my wife who is a visual artist and doesn't think in words.)

Oooh I used to watch the Arrgh it's the Mr Hell Show!
Was unusual.... ^_^


"Hi, my names Josh........" hehe

... And I'd like to talk to you about reincar-(gurgle gurgle)

BK Are you drowning in condensed milk?

^_^

Condensed milk = sugar to me....

Do not get unsweetened condensed milk here.

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland