Americans may know Jacobi best as Brother Cadfael.
Posted on 01/07/2011 7:24:58 AM PST by marshmallow
Americans may know Jacobi best as Brother Cadfael.
Ping!
Or Claudius. A great actor.
Well...yes, but not "know" in the Biblical sense, of course.
Ok, I'll be good...
Personally, I think some of Shakespeare's plays were group efforts.
Jacobi was exceptional as Cadfael, but I most liked him as “Chorus” in Kenneth Brannagh’s “Henry V”.
Shakespeare was attacked, critically in his lifetime for several of his plays, which gives him considerable cache IMHO.
And, yes, there is very substantial evidence, both from his life and his plays, that he was a Catholic. He seems to have liked living on the edge.
Stephen Greenblatt, Will In The World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.
He’s a pooftah!
He sure quotes from the Geneva Bible a lot.
While I mentioned that, ´He seems to have liked living on the edge´, he does not appear to have been suicidal.
I remember him from I Claudius as well.
Sure hope his Lear is better than the version he offered on Frasier (”BLOW WIND AND CRACK YOUR CHEEKS!!!!”).
Shakespeare was a genius, and could, therefore, have written all attributed to him with the greatest of ease.
Personally, I think some of Shakespeare’s plays were group efforts.
You may be right some say he stold a lot of other peoples works.
Many authors get ideas from other peoples work. I would not be surprised if Bill took promising plot lines from others and made them blossom. I also would not be surprised if he did research on the mannerisms and attitudes of the nobility by talking to their servants and retainers.
“Personally, I think some of Shakespeare’s plays were group efforts.”
Quite possible. But the primary author was very likely Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
For some reason Professors of English tend to cling tenaciously to the idea that William Shagsper, the Stratford grain merchant and actor was the author of the plays. I can believe that a man could rise from humble origins to write great literature, but not that such a man could leave illiterate children behind him.
Shakespeare was definitely not an atheist. Else how could he possibly write:
“To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
De Vere had Catholic sympathies, but was above all loyal to his cousin the Protestant Queen.
However, Jacobi doesn't understand diddly about history. He is unable to see that artistry is not dependent upon education. He is yet another actor who has played intelligent characters and therefore thinks himself intelligent but he is really an empty vessel himself when it comes to great thinking. I'd love to see his Lear.
Thank you so very much for posting that, whoever the true author was.
Your screen name is making me smile.
Shakespeare also slipped his name into the King James version of the Bible. Although it was published after his a few years after his De Vere’s death, it is not unreasonable to think he was asked to work on that project. Look at Pslam 46. The first word is Shake, count 46 words, and the word is spear. Maybe a coincidence.
I do believe in the 17th Earl of Oxford theory. This man had the education, military experience, travel experience, and the extensive inner court knowledge, that no commoner at the time could have been exposed to. I believe the speech that Polonius gave to Hamlet, was similar to the speech his father in law (William Cecil).
Claw-Claw-Claudius.
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