[Sherman Logan]

I’ve done a fair amount of reading on this issue.

What I’ve never seen adequately addressed is the issue of motivation.

Given the social prestige issues involved, in today’s world it is approximately as if Dick Cheney had been secretly writing General Hospital scripts for the last 10 years.

While this is possible, I’m unclear why Dick would want to do it.

There is very little evidence that contemporaries viewed Shakespeare’s plays as great art, or for that matter as tremendously better than the plays of his competitors.

Which just goes to show that sometimes contemporaries are idiots.

[zaphod3000]

Or Shakespeare had really good agents.

[RobbyS]

I agree. BTW, I think it instructive that the judge prefers an aristocrat over someone of lower birth. But as you say, his contemporaries did not fuss over him. Lawrence Olivier, whose origins were similar best captured Shakespeare and his millieu in his film, Henry V. The Globe was no more high brow than our local cinemax.

[stripes1776]

There is very little evidence that contemporaries viewed Shakespeare’s plays as great art, or for that matter as tremendously better than the plays of his competitors.
Which just goes to show that sometimes contemporaries are idiots.

You are exactly right, although he was very popular with the masses. Shakespeare became quite rich from his investment in the Globe theatre.

But he fell out of fashion quickly after his death. Classical forms of the theatre came into vogue. By those standards, Shakespeare was quite mediocre, even awful.

So Shakespeare was ignored for 200 years as an inferior playwright until the German Romantics rediscovered him in the early 1800s. The Germans taught the English to appreciate their greatest playwright. And then by 1830 the French caught the fever for Shakespeare as well. So Shakespeare's reputation as a the greatest playwright of all times is only 200 years old.

[tet68]

Given the social prestige issues involved, in today’s world it is approximately as if Dick Cheney had been secretly writing General Hospital scripts for the last 10 years.

While this is possible, I’m unclear why Dick would want to do it.

One word. HALIBURTON.

Keep in mind that while being an idiot, Dick is a very cunning individual, as seen by his use of the puppet Bush.
It's obvious now that subliminal Rovian messages were embroidered into the script of General Hospital to warp the minds of susceptible female viewers. /s

[Ditto]

Given the social prestige issues involved, in today’s world it is approximately as if Dick Cheney had been secretly writing General Hospital scripts for the last 10 years.

I could see Barney Frank writing them. ;~))

[allmendream]

LOL! I engaged in the same analogy, except I said “Laverne and Shirley” episodes.

The motivation question is central to this.

And the motivation of the educated elite English has been to deny that a lowlife commoner like William Shakespeare could have written the definitive works of the English language.