Was William Shakespeare England’s greatest author or the world’s greatest imposter? And who was the real author of all those plays? You decide.
Modern audiences chow down on popcorn while they watch Leonardo di Caprio play Romeo, or Mel Gibson play Hamlet. But most viewers have no idea that literary historians battle over who wrote the “scripts” for these movies.
WILL’S WILL
Shakespeare’s last will and testament lists his every possession, from his silver gilt bowl to his second-best bed. But as Mark Twain wrote, “It was. . .conspicuously a businessman’s will, not a poet’s. It mentioned not a single book.” Books were a precious commodity in Elizabethan times, much more valuable than gilt bowls or beds. If Shakespeare had books to leave to his heirs, they would have been mentioned. And if he was the greatest writer in the English language, how come the guy didn’t own one book?
WHAT WE KNOW OF THE MAN
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, England, in 1564. It’s likely he went to the town’s free grammar school, but how much he learned there is in dispute. Traditional historians say that Will received an excellent education, but some scholars believe that the poor kid was barely literate. At 18, he hurriedly married a woman eight years older than himself, and she had a child within six months. The couple had three children by the time our hero headed up to London, leaving his family behind.
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
Once there, Will acted in plays, performed for Queen Elizabeth, and eventually became one of the shareholders of the Globe Theatre. That’s nearly all we know about his professional life, except that he became famous as the author of all those “Shakespearean” plays. He returned to Stratford a prosperous man, where until his death, he dealt in real estate and other money-making ventures. History portrays him as a tough businessman who never showed any particular love for poetry or drama.
During France’s yearlong Reign of Terror, 17,000 people were beheaded.
STAGE LEFT, THE EARL OF OXFORD
Since 1785, maverick scholars have been proposing candidates as the “true author” of the Shakespeare plays. The list of usual suspects has included Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, three famous literary contemporaries of the man known as “the Bard.” But, more recently, a 20th century skeptic, J. Thomas Looney (whose name doesn’t help his case very much), proposed that Shakespeare was really a man most people had never heard of: one Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford.
CLUES. . .
• The earl of Oxford established a literary reputation while still in his teens.
• He knew all about royalty and life at court, information that’s central to many of the plays.
• Some of Shakespeare’s plays were based on sources that hadn’t been translated into English. The earl could read in more than a few foreign languages. Shakespeare couldn’t.
• Oxford had traveled to some of the locations where the plays took place.
• His personal experiences dovetail neatly with events in the plays. For example, in Hamlet, Polonius is the bufoonish father of Ophelia. Literary scholars have long identified a certain real-life Lord Burghley as the model for Polonius, and Burghley’s daughter, Anne Cecil, as the model for Ophelia. In the play, Hamlet was unhappily involved with Ophelia. In real life, Oxford was unhappily married to Anne Cecil.
• Another connection with Hamlet lies in Oxford’s childhood. Hamlet mourned his father’s death and berated his mother for remarrying too quickly. The earl was 12 years old when his father died, and it’s believed that Oxford’s mother remarried within three months. Is Hamlet an autobiographical play?
• Oxford was known as a playwright, but not one of his plays has ever been found. And he stopped writing just about the time that William Shakespeare began producing his works.
• The earl would have written under a pseudonym because show business was a lowly profession, beneath his dignity as a noble. As a member of Queen Elizabeth’s court, Oxford might have literally lost his head if the queen felt an insider was publicly satirizing her monarchy.
• At court, Oxford was called “Spear shaker” because of his prowess with a sword. A poet of the time is quoted as saying that Oxford was a man whose “countenance shakes a spear.” Shakes-a-spear. Get it?
Apollo 13 was launched at 13:13, military time, and was aborted on Friday, April 13.
Did the earl use the actor William Shakespeare as either his front man or collaborator? Is that why William Shakespeare came into a great deal of money and returned to his hometown as a prosperous businessman?
THE LAST LAUGH
Traditional scholars leap to Shakespeare’s defense: a lot of Elizabethan playwrights were members of the middle class. Just like the writers of today, they, too, wrote about the rich and powerful. Okay, they admit, William from Stratford was not well traveled or university educated, but he was a genius who could have researched the information he needed. Besides, Will got a practical education through years of work in the theatre. His plays worked because he created great roles for the actors of his day, not because he was a literary scholar. And when he had enough money to retire from the business, he did. And so his backers rest their case.
How much, after all, does it matter? Both William from Stratford-on-Avon and the earl of Oxford would probably agree that “the play’s the thing.”
“The fool doth think himself wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
William Shakespeare
The first black person in space was Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez.
“VANDAL-IZED”
* * *
A “vandal” is someone who recklessly destroys property. The word originated in the Dark Ages, from the name of a tribe of barbarians that plundered and pillaged their way across the Roman Empire.
Not much is known about the origins of the Germanic tribe known as the Vandals. They’re believed to have originated in Denmark and later migrated to the valley of the Oder River on the Baltic Sea, about the fifth century B.C. In A.D. 406, the Huns (a tougher tribe) drove the Vandals from their home by the sea.
LOOK OUT, PIERRE!
The Vandals headed southwest, crossed the Rhine River and invaded Gaul (which is now France). For the next couple of years, they roamed all over Gaul killing, raping, and pillaging—which is just what you’d expect them to do.
Roman troops in Britain heard about what was going on and decided to act. Under their commander, Flavius Constantine, they traveled to Gaul and defeated the Vandals in battle.
LOOK OUT, JOSE!
The Vandals then fled to Spain, laying waste to everything and everyone in their path. The Romans made some attempts to evict them from Spain, but the Vandals defeated every army sent to destroy them. Just when they’d exhausted the riches of Spain, a power-hungry Roman warlord named Bonifatius invited them across the water to help in his campaign to take over North Africa.
LOOK OUT, AHMED, AND EVERYBODY ELSE!
In 428, the largest ever sea-borne movement of a barbarian people took place. About 80,000 Vandals landed near Tangier. They encountered very little opposition from the locals (as you might imagine), and within two years the Vandals controlled nearly all of North Africa. Carthage was next, and by 439, the Vandals controlled a major naval base, which they used to raid all of the cities of the western Mediterranean. In 455, they thoroughly and mercilessly sacked Rome.
Had Queen Mary had any children, England might still be a Catholic country.
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
In 533 Emperor Justinian sent a huge army to destroy the Vandals. Historians think the once-savage barbarians had gotten too soft to put up a decent fight (that they’d gotten kinda, y’know, laid back, enjoying that warm North African weather, dude). Whatever the reason, the emperor’s army captured Gelimer, the last king of the Vandals, and brought him back to Constantinople to be executed. The Vandal’s reign of terror finally came to an end. And none too soon for mo
st of the world.
UP WITH VANDALS!
And even though the Vandals left a trail of death and destruction in their wake, they did contribute a couple of nice things that deserve mention (we’re serious now, so pay attention): a plow that enabled farmers to plow deeper and straighter furrows, butter, rye, oats, and hops—the latter of which you beer drinkers should appreciate.
So when you’re hoisting the next one, don’t forget to toast the guys whose name is still synonymous with destruction—the Vandals.
FROM THE MOUTHS OF GENERALS
“We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.”
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
“It is well that war is so terrible—we would grow too fond of it.”
General Robert E. Lee
“We will either find a way or make one [a war, that is].”
General Hannibal
A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
“Mankind must put an end to war,
or war will put an end to mankind.”
U.S. President John F. Kennedy
Despite the Shakespearean play, Richard III was not a hunchback.
HERE LIES. . .
* * *
Funny how a turn of phrase like “Here lies” can catch on. Here lies a bunch of Uncle John’s favorite epitaphs.
All real, as far as we know.
Here lies the Body of Edward Hyde.
We laid him here because he died.
Here lies old Rastus Sominy
Died a-eating hominy
In 1859 anno domini.
Here lies I, Simon Frye,
Killed by a skyrocket
In my eyesocket.
Here lies a miser who lived for himself,
who cared for nothing but gathering wealth.
Now where he is and how he fares;
nobody knows and nobody cares.
Here lies the body
Of Margaret Bent
She kicked up her heels
And away she went.
Here lieth W.W.
Who never more will
Trouble you, trouble you.
Here lies
Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me
For not rising.
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana.
It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that made her go.
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.
Here lies
Lester Moore
four slugs
from a 44
No Less
no more.
Here Lies The Body Of A Man Who Died
Nobody Mourned—Nobody Cried
How He Lived—How He Fared
Nobody Knows—Nobody Cared
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good Die Young.
Here lie I, Master Elginbrod,
Have mercy on my soul, O God.
As I would have if I were God,
And thou were Master Elginbrod.
In 1813, a British doctor turned some of King Charles I’s vertebrae into a saltshaker.
THE STRANGE CONSTITUTION OF STONEWALL JACKSON
* * *
Confederate Civil War General Stonewall Jackson had a brilliant military mind—it was a pity about the rest of him. Read about the quirky personal habits of this hero and hopeless hypochondriac.
THE LEGEND IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE
Thomas Jonathan Jackson was Robert E. Lee’s most trusted lieutenant. A brilliant leader, he earned the nickname “Stonewall” during the first Battle of Bull Run. Jackson’s men faced overwhelming odds, but with their commander at their head, the small band of Confederates held their ground. General Barnard Bee looked across the battlefield and shouted to his men, “Look! There stands Jackson like a stone wall.” It was enough to rally the Confederate forces for a counterattack that ended in a rout of the Union forces.
Jackson may also be one of the only Americans to have different parts of his body buried and marked with gravestones in two different places. When the general was accidentally shot in the left arm by his own troops in the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, the arm had to be amputated. It was buried in a graveyard about a mile from the field hospital. Jackson died eight days later, and his body (minus the arm) was sent home to Lexington for burial. A strange turn of events for a man obsessed with his physical health. In fact, by most accounts, Jackson was a bit nutty.
NUT CASE IN POINT
Here are a few of his physical eccentricities:
• Believing his left arm to be heavier than the right, Jackson would often—even in the heat of battle—raise his left arm in the air to allow the blood to flow equally through his body and establish a state of equilibrium.
• He was terribly concerned about his self-diagnosed “dyspepsia,” or indigestion, so he maintained a diet that consisted almost completely of fruits and vegetables. Whenever his troops overran Union camps, the general grabbed up as much fresh produce as he could.
• Jackson convinced himself that he would perform at his peak only when his bodily organs were stacked properly—in other words, in a bolt upright position. His study in Lexington, Virginia, had no chairs at all. When he did sit down, he never allowed his body to rest against the back of the chair.
• From boyhood, he suffered from poor eyesight for which he devised his own unique “treatment.” He would dip his head into a basin of cold water with his eyes wide open, staying there till his breath gave out.
King John managed to lose the crown jewels while riding across an inlet in the North Sea.
BUT DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT
The man who was nicknamed “Stonewall” due to his steadfastness in the face of the enemy was remembered by President Ulysses Grant as a “fanatic” who was delusional and who “fancied that an evil spirit has taken possession of him.” Colleagues at the Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was a professor from 1851 until the outbreak of the war, remember him as a strange man who was constantly plagued by illnesses, real or imagined. Unfortunately, Jackson was not a success as an instructor. According to then-superintendent, Francis H. Smith, “He was no teacher and he lacked the required tact to get along with his classes.”
SICK, SICK, SICK
By the time Jackson entered the Civil War, his list of ailments included, but was not limited to: rheumatism, dyspepsia, chilblains, poor eyesight, cold feet, nervousness, neuralgia, bad hearing, tonsillitis, biliousness, and spinal distortion.
SO LITTLE TIME
Stonewall Jackson was only 39 when he died. To be killed by friendly fire is a tragedy, but in the general’s case it was more than ironic. If only he’d lived to old age: think of all the new ailments he might have contracted. One of them might even have been (gasp) real.
Had Edward VIII not abdicated, Elizabeth would not have become queen until 1972.
BURNING WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
* * *
Between 16th-century bonfires and the flames of a 20th-century war, records of the Mayan civilization were nearly lost for good.
The Mayan culture reached its height about A.D. 800. In the Yucatan, Mayans built towering pyramids and temples. They developed a calendar and an excellent numerical system. For about two thousand years, they kept records of their achievements using a system of written symbols called glyphs (see below). Our story starts in 1549 when a young Spanish missionary, Diego de Landa, arrived in the New World.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?
Landa found the Yucatec Mayan Indians suff
ering from starvation, disease, and mistreatment from his Spanish bosses. He came to love the Mayan people and wanted to help them. Horrified by the idea that their history had included human sacrifice, Landa figured that it would be a big help if the Mayans got rid of their pagan past. In Landa’s time, there were still many Mayan books stored in the ancient ruins of Mayan cities. He decided to burn them.
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES
Mayan books—called codices—were made of long strips of bark paper, folded like screens. They were written and illustrated in red and black ink with covers made of jaguar skin. The Mayans wrote thousands of codices in glyphs. The books contained prophecies, songs, rituals, genealogies, history, and science. Landa later explained to Spanish authorities that the codices “had nothing in which there was not superstition and lies of the devil”—a pretty nervy assumption, since he couldn’t read them. But he sure could destroy them. He told the authorities, “We burned them all.”
Well, almost all. To Landa’s surprise, he had to kill 157 Mayans who refused to get with the bonfire program. (Talk about human sacrifice!) Some Mayan priests tried to save their books by fleeing into the jungle with them. Although the materials didn’t hold up in the wet climate, a few books did survive.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 47
