An interesting (if still speculative in places) look at a bit of Shakespeare biography unearthed in some legal records, indicating that the life of someone starting at the bottom in London's theater world likely got involved in some unsavory activities.
What's almost as interesting is watching the comments on the entry degenerate almost immediately into the hoary yet vehement debate over whether Shakespeare was the writer of Shakespeare, or if his plays were written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. #ddtb
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William Shakespeare, Gangster | Past Imperfect
Could the gentle Bard have been a thug? A scholar's discovery in the British Archives adds a different stroke to the portrait of one of the most admired but least-known men in English letters
But of course. In the days when USENET was a greater part of the online dialogue, there were three eternal wars I knew about:
* Fudds vs Bunnies (alt.devilbunnies)
* New Yorkers and Chicagoans insisting to the rest of that world that nobody else (including Neopolitans) could possibly make "real" pizza (any given restaurant/food group, regardless of topicality)
* The food fight that is alt. humanities. lit. shakespeare
Heh. Yeah, it's just been a while since I ran across that stream of contention; it's like every religious/political/social Internet argument rolled into one … with ruffled collars.
I went to see Anonymous, wishing that the late Elizabeth Wrigley, Director of the Francis Bacon Foundation and Library, were with me. I think she would have enjoyed the movie, and then could dissect it with me afterwards. Funny, no Sir Francis Bacon in that film….however, the Earl of Essex being the “true author” is one of the leading theories, along with the committee approach: either Essex or Bacon leading a “society of good pens” trying to educate the massess about England’s heritage.
Interesting to me was that while Vanessa Redgrave played the older Elizabeth, her younger daughter, Joely Richardson, played the younger. One detail about the movie that irritated the hell out of me was that fakey “Tudor Rose” bush. There was and is no real, growing, rose that resembles the heraldic Tudor Rose. Might as well have had blue and black roses alongside of it.