Trevor Nunn On The Identity Of William Shakespeare

Trevor Nunn describes how one of the favorite arguments why William Shakespeare couldn’t have produced his plays misses the point. 

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[MrMjolnir]

Typical predictable wrong headed grasp by this fella. Bummer. Could've been of use.

[ContextShakespeare]

More and more is being found out about the sources that Shakespeare used for his plays. During Elizabethan times drama was changing from the religious plays performed when England was a catholic country to reflect a more secular culture. Stories from ancient Greek and Latin were being translated and used as the inspiration in Plays. There is evidence that Shakespeare used a wide range of sources that were being translated or were yet to be translated at the time he wrote his plays and sonnets. He must have read hundreds of books in various languages that were only available in private libraries. There is also evidence that the writer knew about court life and gossip of England, France and Italy. He also had an intimate knowledge of places in Italy. For a man of his times there is quite a lot known about the man from Stratford who went to London to earn his fortune and died a very wealthy man. In the historical record there is no evidence at all that link him to being a writer. These so called snobs referred to in the interview accept that Ben Johnson was a writer and Christopher Marlow was a writer, both of whom had the same if not lowlier backgrounds than William Shaksper of Stratford, because there is evidence from their lifetime to say they were writers. Ask the questions how did he gain access to all these books held in the private libraries of the aristocrats? how did he get to know the court gossip of France and Italy? How did he get away with writing what he did about the Elizabethan court and making fun of the most powerful people in the land without landing himself in prison or getting his hand chopped off? How did he know so much about Italy without ever being there? There are hundreds of questions we could ask about the writer of the plays. Orthodox scholars are now finding it so difficult to link the man with the works that they are saying that he had help and there was a lot of collaboration.
Anyone living in London at the time especially around theatre land would know about the seedier side of town and London being much smaller than today was surrounded by countryside. Anyone whatever their background could know about life in the country and life in the seedier parts of London, and could write about it. Being involved in court life and writing about it is more difficult without leaving some record of being there. Finally the reference to the do we know that had the boar as their family emblem?

[alecmisra]

Snobbery is just a red herring. Interesting that the grammar school records for shakespeares time there just happen to be missing. Indeed his whole biography seems to be missing whereas the plays and poems follow the autobiography of the earl of oxford with uncanny precision. Perhaps shakespeare was just obsessed with the good earl, even to the extent of imagining himself to be the courtier portrayed in the Sonnets? Who knows! I'm sure that must be it, because snobbery and that.