THE REAL SHAKESPEARE
DICO
Cliquez
avec le bouton droit de la souris et choisissez "ouvrir dans une
nouvelle fenêtre".
The portrait of W.S.
Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? Some experts and scholars say that Shakespeare's works would not have been written by Shakespeare but by somebody else. Some even pretend that Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare's works. Other surprising theories have been expounded about Shakespeare's "real identity", with all kinds of arguments to support them. We know for sure that Shakespeare became a successful actor, and that he directed the Globe Theatre. But what we know about Shakespeare, the writer, amounts to almost nothing. Only his birth certificate, his marriage certificate and his will are available, and they contain but scant information about Shakespeare's career. Although his will mentions in detail all kinds of things that he bequeathed, nowhere does it mention the bequeathal of a single book. Surprising for a man who had not received a higher education and nevertheless wrote so many masterpieces. Where on earth did he find all the material for his plays?
The Sottish graphological approach
A Scottish scholar claimed that Racine, Corneille and Shakespeare could have been the same person because they had the same hand-writing!
New Globe Theatre
The Baconian theory.
Many have claimed Shakespeare was Francis Bacon, the Queen Chancellor. The Baconian theory was started in the mid-19th century,and is based on internal evidence that the great knowledge displayed and the vocabulary used in Shakespeare's plays cannot be from the pen of the son of a Warwickshire husbandman. Such external circunstances at the basis of the Baconian theory assume that Shakespeare was not educated enough to have written the works attributed to him. Holders of the theory have found cryptograms in support of their views in Love's Labour's Lost - 'honorificabilitudinitatibus' , rendered in latin as "These plays, Francis Bacon's offspring are preserved for the World." One of the main arguments supporting the theory is that Bacon could not reveal that he was Shakespeare because of his position as a chancellor. Ergo he concealed his identity. The truth is that in Shakespeare's time, actors and actresses were looked down upon, often refused burial, and if women attended the theatre, they would wear a mask to avoid recognition. Understandably, if Bacon actually wrote Shakespeare's masterpieces, he could not sign them with his own name because everything connected with the theatre had a bad reputation. More to support the Baconian theory is the hidden message which an American team discovered in The Sonnets. The message clearly says : "I, Francis Bacon am the author of Shakespeare's works". Even more surprising is the fact that this American team also found in one of the sonnets a coded message mentioning the existence of a document concerning the identity of Shakespeare in a nook in the wall of Bacon's bedroom. The niche was found and sounded, and although no document was found, one can only wonder at the correspondence between the message and the existence of the nook.
Old Globe Theatre
The Marlow theory
Marlowe was a great Elyzabethan playwright who also wrote great plays. Basing their opinion on similarities in style and writing technique, some philologists argue that Marlowe actually wrote scenes of Shakespeare's Richard III. But the strongest point in the Marlow theory is that Marlow's death was a mise en scène. Marlowe himself would have planned it in order to avoid being arrested for being a spy for the jesuits. Evidence of this is seen in the fact that some time later after his death , his tomb was open, and there was no coffin in it! After his supposed death (in 1593), Marlowe would have gone some hidden place and he would have continued writing. This would explain why, precisely after Marlowe's death , Shakespeare's works suddenly improved, and also why Shakespeare gave up writing three years before he died. Marlow's real death probably occured three years before that of Shakespeare, and during the three remaining years of his life, the Shakespeare who survived Marlowe could not publish anymore.
The group-of-writers theory
Shakespeare's works do not survive in manuscript, and the copy that printers used was apparently not his but reconstructions by actors and prompt books. Could Shakespeare have simply been a group of writers? This was not unusual at the time. The advantage of such a theory is that it reconciles every point of view. It has been held that Shakespeare wrote a number of plays in tandem with other people, for example Henry VIII, which Shakespeare wrote in tandem with J. Fletcher, and for which he would have been responsible for only half of the play. Marlowe and Bacon could have been part of the team, including Shakespeare himself who signed all the plays and also gave the final touch of the stage director. All the historical and geographical mistakes pervading Shakespeare's works then find a plausible explanation - mistakes are inevitable when several people work together, and Shakespeare would only correct what was wrong from a dramatic point of view, not the rest because he was not sufficiently educated for that.
