by Jon E. Lewis
His views were echoed by Sergei Kolesnikov, a member of Russia’s Academy of Medicine, who asserted that the virus was a cocktail of mumps and measles. “We can only get that in a laboratory,” he added.
Tests by Dutch and US scientists confirmed that the disease could be man-made.
If SARS was man-made, who could be behind such a dastardly plot? In China, at least, the baddies were identified as the USA in liaison with Taiwan, with the virus having been manufactured in Fort Detrick or Plum Island as a biological weapon to kibosh its Sino rival. According to financial giant J. P. Morgan, SARS did more damage to the Pacific Rim economies than the Indian Ocean tsunami because of the disruption it caused. Theorists maintain that the virus was specifically tailored to the Chinese race, pointing out that of the SARS cases just twenty-seven occurred in the US (with no fatalities), while China had the most reported cases by far. In The Last Defense Line: Concerns About the Loss of Chinese Genes, a Chinese businessman by the name of Tong Zheng claimed to have witnesses to American researchers collecting mainland Chinese people’s blood and DNA in the 1990s from twenty-two provinces – the same twenty-two provinces mainly affected by SARS.
Then again, some point the finger of blame at China itself. A Chinese army doctor Jian Yanyong whistle-blew to the press that his unit had known about the disease since November 2002, and the authorities had suppressed the information. Although the scandal caused the heads of government ministers to roll, Yanyong himself was whisked away for “political re-education”. Inevitably, the proven desperation of the Chinese to hide knowledge about SARS fed the belief that they themselves had concocted the virus. WHO’s investigation was interesting in this respect: WHO concluded that the first cases of SARS were soldiers in Guangdong Province – the location of China’s main biowarfare establishment.
Officially, WHO considers SARS to be a coronavirus which has jumped species. As with Ebola, the animal host may well be the bat. Civets – which are commonly eaten in Guangdong – are also in the frame. The explanation for the non-incidence of SARS deaths in the USA is the superiority of Stateside medical services.
Further Reading
Angela McLean (ed.), SARS, 2005
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
It was not Shakespeare as many liked it.
In 2011, Hollywood director Roland Emmerich released Anonymous, a movie about the Bard, the author of England’s classic theatre pieces, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, The Tempest, etc. Controversy was Anonymous’s trailer, because Emmerich rehashed the theory that “William Shakespeare” of Stratford-upon-Avon was not author of said works but rather Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the man with the talented quill pen. Since writing plays was beneath an aristocratic personage, and politically dangerous in turbulent times (those associated with Richard II were all interrogated, because Elizabeth perceived it as a personal attack), de Vere allowed Shakespeare, a humble theatre producer to stage his masterpieces and take the credit.
Emmerich is not the first, neither will he be the last, to suggest that de Vere was Shakespeare. And de Vere is only one of seventy-seven contenders put forward for the title of “real” Shakespeare. Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Rutland and the Earl of Derby all have strong supporters
The evidence for Shakespeare of Stratford not being the author of the plays is, essentially, the lack of evidence that he was the author of the plays. Aside from a birth certificate, some legal documents, and a fleeting mention in contemporary chronicles next to nothing is known about Wm. Shakespeare, Esq. His death in 1616 was a non-event outside Stratford, to which he had returned after his career as a comic actor, friend of criminal lowlifes (the Elizabeth/Stuart state was excellent at recording wrongdoings) and manager of the Globe Theatre in London. His life – and this is the killer argument, for the Shakespeare conspiracists – is almost impossible to square with the literary brilliance and erudition of the Shakespeare plays, which are rich in allusions to classical literature, much of it actually only available in the Classical languages of Greek and Latin. The books are full of Cambridge University slang, show a deep knowledge of the law, display a knowledge of foreign countries (north Italy especially) and a ready familiarity with the mores and tropes of the aristocracy, down to the technical terminology of falconry. None of this makes sense if the plays were penned by William Shakespere, son of a glover from a backwater Midlands town, the staple trade of which was sheep-selling. This line of reasoning was first developed by J. Thomas Looney in “Shakespeare” Identified as far back as 1920 (see Document, p.479).
Edward de Vere, on the other hand, studied law at Cambridge, travelled much, was a first-rate poet and supported a theatre company. The sonnets attributed to Shakespeare are heavy ammunition on de Vere’s behalf, because they reference his life, and contain anagrams (the Elizabethans loved riddles) that identify him. The lines “That every word doth almost tell my name” from Sonnet 76 being the prime case; “every word” is almost exactly an anagram of “Edward Vere”.
One difficulty in establishing the identity of Shakespeare is that even orthodox scholars agree that not all the plays in the canon are his own work; Titus Andronicus is a reheat of another play. Hence Ben Johnson slyly referring to Shakespeare as “Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief ”.
Quite plausibly, William Shakespeare the Bard was not William Shakespeare of Stratford. The vocabulary in the plays is twice that of any writer in English, comprising as many as 29,000 words. The man who died in Stratford in 1616 did not, according to his extremely detailed will, leave a single book. Would the fertile, enquiring mind that conjured the Prince of Denmark, Henry V at Agincourt, the mischievous Puck not have possessed a single cowskin-covered tome at home?
Further reading:
H. N. Gibson, The Shakespeare Claimants, 2005
John Michell, Who wrote Shakespeare?, 1996
DOCUMENT: J. THOMAS LOONEY,
“SHAKESPEAR”’ IDENTIFIED IN EDWARD DE VERE, THE SEVENTEENTH EARL OF OXFORD, 1920 [EXTRACT]
It is hardly necessary to insist at the present day that Shakespeare has preserved for all time, in living human characters, much of what was best worth remembering and retaining in the social relationship of the Feudal order of the Middle Ages. Whatever conclusion we may have to come to about his religion, it is undeniable that, from the social and political point of view, Shakespeare is essentially a medievalist. The following sentence from Carlyle may be taken as representative of much that might be quoted from several writers bearing in the same direction: “As Dante the Italian man was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakespeare we may say embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had.”
When, therefore, we find that the great Shakespearean plays were written at a time when men were revelling in what they considered to be a newly-found liberation from Medievalism, it is evident that Shakespeare was one whose sympathies, and probably his antecedents, linked him on more closely to the old order than to the new: not the kind of man we should expect to rise from the lower middle-class population of the towns. Whether as a lord or a dependent we should expect to find him one who saw life habitually from the standpoint of Feudal relationships in which he had been born and bred: and in view of what has been said of his education it would, of course, be as lord rather than as a dependent that we should expect to meet him.
It might be, however, that he was only linked to Shakespearean Feudalism by cherished family traditions; a surviving Aristocrat, representative, maybe, of some decayed family. A close inspection of his work, however, reveals a more intimate personal connection with aristocracy than would be furnished by mere family tradition. Kings and queens, earls and countesses, knights and ladies move on and off his stage “as to the manner born”. They are no mere tinselled models representing
mechanically the class to which they belong, but living men and women. It is rather his ordinary “citizens” that are the automata walking woodenly on to the stage to speak for their class. His “lower-orders” never display that virile dignity and largeness of character which poets like Burns, who know the class from within, portray in their writings. Even Scott comes much nearer to truth in this matter than does Shakespeare. It is, therefore, not merely his power of representing royalty and the nobility in vital, passionate characters, but his failure to do the same in respect to other classes that marks Shakespeare as a member of the higher aristocracy. The defects of the playwriter become in this instance more illuminating and instructive than do his qualities. Genius may undoubtedly enable a man to represent with some fidelity classes to which he does not belong; it will hardly at the same time weaken his power of representing truly his own class. In a great dramatic artist we demand universality of power within his province; but he shows that catholicity, not by representing human society in all its forms and phases, but by depicting our common human nature in the entire range of its multiple and complex forces; and he does this best when he shows us that human nature at work in the classes with which he is most intimate. The suggestion of an aristocratic author for the plays is, therefore, the simple common sense of the situation, and is no more in opposition to modern democratic tendencies, as one writer loosely hints, than the belief that William Shakespeare was indebted to aristocratic patrons and participated in the enclosure of common lands.
An aristocratic outlook upon life marks the plays of other dramatists of the time besides Shakespeare. These were known, however, in most cases to have been university men, with a pronounced contempt for the particular class to which William Shakspere of Stratford belonged. It is a curious fact, however, that a writer like Creizenach, who seems never to doubt the Stratfordian view, nevertheless recognizes that “Shakespeare” was more purely and truly aristocratic in his outlook than were the others. In a word, the plays which are recognized as having the most distinct marks of aristocracy about them, are supposed to have been produced by the playwright furthest removed from aristocracy in his origin and antecedents.
We feel entitled, therefore, to claim for Shakespeare high social rank, and even a close proximity to royalty itself.
Assuming him to have been an Englishman of the Lancastrian higher aristocracy, we turn now to these parts of his writings that may be said to deal with his own phase of life, namely, his English historical plays, to seek for distinctive traces of position and personality. Putting aside the greater part of the plays Henry VI, Parts I and II, as not being from Shakespeare’s pen, and also the first acts of Henry VI, Part III, for the same reason, we may say that he deals mainly with the troubled period between the upheaval in the reign of Richard II and the ending of the Wars of the Roses by the downfall of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. The outstanding feature of this work is his pronounced sympathy with the Lancastrian cause.
Even the play of Richard II, which shows a measure of sympathy with the king whom the Lancastrians ousted, is full of Lancastrian partialities. “Shakespeare” had no sympathy with revolutionary movements and the overturning of established governments. Usurpation of sovereignty would, therefore, be repugnant to him, and his aversion is forcibly expressed in the play; but Henry of Lancaster is represented as merely concerned with claiming his rights, desiring to uphold the authority of the crown, but driven by the injustice and perversity of Richard into an antagonism he strove to avoid. Finally, it is the erratic wilfulness of the king, coupled with Henry’s belief that the king had voluntarily abdicated, that induces Bolingbroke to accept the throne. In a word, the play of Richard II is a kind of dramatic apologia for the Lancastrians. Then comes the glorification of Prince Hal, “Shakespeare’s” historic hero. Henry VI is the victim of misfortunes and machinations, and is handled with great tenderness and respect. The play of Richard III lays bare the internal discord of the Yorkist faction, the downfall and destruction of the Yorkist arch-villain, and the triumph of Henry of Richmond, the representative of the House of Lancaster, who had received the nomination and benediction of Henry VI. We might naturally expect, therefore, to find Shakespeare a member of some family with distinct Lancastrian leanings.
Having turned our attention to the different classes we are again faced with the question of his Italianism. Not only are we impressed by the large number of plays with an Italian setting or derived from Italian sources, but we feel that these plays carry us to Italy in a way that Hamlet never succeeds in carrying us to Denmark, nor his French plays in carrying us to France. Even in Hamlet he seems almost to go out of his way to drag in a reference to Italy. Those who know Italy and are familiar with The Merchant of Venice tell us that there are clear indications that Shakespeare knew Venice and Milan personally. However that may be, it is impossible for those who have had, at any time, an interest in nothing more than the language and literature of Italy, to resist the feeling that there is thrown about these plays an Italian atmosphere suggestive of one who knew and felt attracted towards the country. Everything bespeaks an Italian enthusiast.
Going still more closely into detail, it has often been observed that Shakespeare’s interest in animals is seldom that of the naturalist, almost invariably that of the sportsman; and some of the supporters of the Stratfordian tradition have sought to establish a connection between this fact and the poaching of William Shakspere. When, however, we look closely into the references we are struck with his easy familiarity with all the terms relating to the chase. Take Shakespeare’s entire sportsman’s vocabulary, find out the precise significance of each unusual term, and the reader will probably get a more distinct vision of the sporting pastimes of the aristocracy of that day than he would get in any other way. Add to this all the varied vocabulary relating to hawks and falconry, observe the insistence with which similes, metaphors and illustrations drawn from the chase and hawking appear throughout his work, and it becomes impossible to resist the belief that he was a man who had at one time found his recreation and delight in these aristocratic pastimes.
His keen susceptibility to the influence of music is another characteristic that frequently meets us; and most people will agree that the whole range of English literature may be searched in vain for passages that more accurately or more fittingly describe the charm and power of music than do certain lines in the pages of Shakespeare. The entire passage on music in the final act of The Merchant of Venice, beginning “Look how the floor of heaven,” right on to the closing words “Let no such man be trusted,” is itself music, and is probably as grand a paeon in honour of music as can be found in any language.
Nothing could well be clearer in itself, nor more at Money variance with what is known of the man than the dramatist’s attitude towards money. It is the man who lends money gratis, and so “pulls down the rate of usuance” in Venice, that is the hero of the play just mentioned. His friend is the incorrigible spendthrift and borrower Bassanio, who has “disabled his estate by showing a more swelling port than his faint means would grant continuance,” and who at last repairs his broken fortunes by marriage. Almost every reference to money and purses is of the loosest description, and, by implication, teach an improvidence that would soon involve any man’s financial affairs in complete chaos. It is the arch-villain, Iago, who urges “put money in thy purse,” and the contemptible politician, Polonius, who gives the careful advice “neither a borrower nor a lender be”; whilst the money-grabbing Shylock, hoist with his own petard, is the villain whose circumvention seems to fill the writer with an absolute joy.
It ought not to surprise us if the author himself turned out to be one who had felt the grip of the money-lender, rather than a man like the Stratford Shakspere, who, after he had himself become prosperous, prosecuted others for the recovery of petty sums.
Of the Stratford man, Pope asserts that “Gain not glory winged his roving flight.” And Sir Sidney Lee amplifies this by saying that “his
literary attainments and successes were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters”. Yet in one of his early plays (Henry IV, Part II) “Shakespeare” expresses himself thus:
How quickly nature falls into revolt
When gold becomes her object.
For this the foolish over-careful fathers
Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
Their bones with industry;
For this they have engrossed and piled up
The canker’d heaps of strange achieved gold.
From its setting the passage is evidently the expression of the writer’s own thought rather than an element of the dramatization.
Finally we have, again in an early play, his great hero of tragic love, Romeo, exclaiming:
There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world
Than these poor compounds.
In a word, the Stratfordian view requires us to write our great dramatist down as a hypocrite. The attitude of William Shakspere to money matters may have had about it all the “sobriety of personal aims and sanity of mental attitude” claimed for it. In which case, the more clearly he had represented his own attitude in his works the greater would have been their fidelity to objective fact. Money is a social institution, created by the genius of the human race to facilitate the conduct of life; and, under normal conditions, it is entitled to proper attention and respect. Under given conditions, however, it may so imperil the highest human interests, as to justify an intense reaction against it, and even to call for repudiation and contempt from those moral guides, amongst whom we include the great poets, who are concerned with the higher creations of man’s intellectual and moral nature. Such, we judge, was the dramatist’s attitude to money.
