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They may have been discussing Delia Bacon's thesis that "Shakespeare" was a convenient name for a number of writers (her cast list included Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh and the ever-popular Francis Bacon) to write under, the actual Will Shakespeare (who never actually signed his name "Shakespeare", conspiracy fans) being an actor rather than a writer.
More credible is the suggestion that the plays of Shakespeare were written by a single man, who happened not to be William Shakespeare
Possibly they were talking about plays that Shakespeare appeared to have co-written or been involved in the wrtiting of, but that were published under his name. Or, alternatively, plays not included in the first folio of 1623 (?) but subsequently attributed to him, such as Sir John Oldcastle or Edward III. "The Shakespearean Corpus", although not abso-*lutely* nailed down, does appear to be largely the work of a single writer. That writer being, as we all know, Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Oxford, with Christopher Marlowe (who faked his death) helping out with the tragic bits.
There's rather a fun mock trial between the claims of Stratford and Oxford here.
On a similar topic, how about Homer? Again, the issue is hotly debated, but comparatively few people would argue that the entirety of the Odyssey and the Iliad were written by a single hand from whole cloth. If we take the analytical view, we see "Homer" as the product of a number of different writers, and yet the Iliad is arguably the first work of true genius in the Western canon (unless you believe that it was written in the 2nd Century AD, of course). Is this a possible refutation of the very romantic idea of genius being a thing peculiar to an individual? Can genius inhere corporately in a group of us? Like, you know, Spenser, Raleigh and Bacon. |
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