Attend the fate of KKK,
A flittering moth who’s had her day,
Who felled, betimes, the goodly Rees,
And thought the Great Game just a breeze,
Who whimpers now, at power’s end,
Without a teddy-bear, or friend,
‘I did things right, I praised the Lord,
I asked my fellow-Yank, Walt Secord,
How best to corn-hole Joe and Eddie
While seeming hot, and calm, and steady;
And Walt said, ‘Kristina, iron your hair,
Conceal your brain, it isn’t there.
‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,
Claim you stand for honesty,
Go forth, look cute in a miner’s hat,
You do the tapdance whilst I grow fat.’
She cooed, she danced, she hit the spot,
And old men grunted, ‘Wow, she’s hot.’
But everyone voted for portly Barry,
Cuddly disguise for Oil Can Harry,
And now, aghast, ’neath alien skies,
So unfulfilled, and yet not wise,
Lies lovely, chirpy KKK
At the end of her working holiday.
And who’s to blame, and who’s to care,
Who’s to remember her flying hair?
The Labor diaspora weep and wail,
Their Golden Age kaput. Wassail.
Name:
Who do you see as the next Labor Premier of New South Wales, Bob? Though he is a good man by the standards of the Right, I doubt even John Robertson himself believes he will ever by Premier. Will Nathan Rees ever be given the second chance he appears entitled to, or might it be Luke Foley if he can make it into the Lower House (a second Leader from the Left would be a good thing for the party).
Or will Wedderburn ever make it past the vengeful glare of the Terrigals of the New South Wales Right into State Parliament, and be able to rally the troops from there?
I’m convinced that Aussies do not like female leaders. According to Phillip Adams, the higher you go ,the less female leaders are favoured,pretty low in Queensland and I think it was down to only 20% in Northern Territory…
I like Kristina and hope that she’ll not give up politics, she’s still young.
Helvi, we Aussies (Qlders included) would like a truly GOOD female leader. We haven’t had one yet.
I declare my bias – Kan’t Kop Keneally – and judge this verse a bewdy! Wassail.
You can’t beat competence in a leader. As someone who is FAR from a fan of Labor, KK was not too bad, but out of her depth – and won no friends when her nasty streak showed.
Ever notice that when the ALP is in trouble they stick a female in as figurehead? The electorate are starting to see through that little ruse.
I’m sure there are heads in hands over “have Julia replace Kevin… she can’t be worse”!!!
You think Hockey will make a good Treasurer and that the glove puppets on the opposition front bench will be good replacement for Labor’s excellent team? Do you? Please say yes, as Bob might say.
I think Hockey, whilst a nice enough fellow – is worthless and weak.
He was happily going along with Turnbull in supporting the insane ETS.
At least Abbott had the balls and decency to challenge for the leadership on this point of policy.
Anyhow, to think Swan has any clue beyond tying his shoelaces unassisted (doubtful) is pure comedy. I wonder what he has over someone in the ALP to explain his mystifying position in government… and beggars belief that he befits the office of treasurer. Why not fairly sensible grownups like Crean, Tanner (left the gene pool), Smith, Albanese even, Ferguson ferchrissakes… WHY SWAN?
Hmm…I largely agree with that from Simon. (Though Albanese isn’t my kind of ‘grown-up’.) How are you allowed on this blog – with such (openly) sacrilegious views! Careful, He Might Ban You. (I really just come for the poetry.)
Mine either, just trying to be generous.
The only Conservative a lefty likes is Turnbull, because he is a proven failure as Opposition Leader (with the added bonus of agreeing with Rudd all the way on practically everything – and owning a Bill Henson or three).
Simon, I stopped liking Rudd when he said that Henson’s work was disgusting, I don’t like art hating PMs or Premiers. When are you starting to burn books in Queensland
Climate change denial and asylum seeker persecution forming the basis of an entire platform and election campaign by a major party in a Western country – despicable.
Julia Gillard convinced Rudd to drop his ETS because knowledge for the AGW fraud was spreading, and it would not stand up to the merest scrutiny (compare John Hewson being challenged by Mike Willesee over how much the 1993-proposed GST birthday cake would cost… and how eventually Kevind Rudd would be asked how much the Carbon DIOXIDE laden schooner of beer would cost under his ETS – and why not ban carbonated drinks altogether if it is indeed so bad as the theory suggests?)… to drop it entirely as it would become electoral poison (even though it was the very rainbows and unicorns that got Rudd elected in the first place).
Julia Gillard convinced him to drop it because she knows it is a load of baloney, and would rwreck the economy. That’s why she promised there would be NO CARBON TAX UNDER A GOVERNMENT I LEAD. Ironically it became the biggest bullet in the gun held to her head by Bob Brown – and as she is a soviet who cares only about power, resurrected it. It’s still baloney, and still electoral poison and NSW and QLD are but a dress rehearsal for the obliteration of the ALP and The CommuGreens. Too bad, so sad.
Supporting and propagating the disinformation campaign of billionaire miners – traitorous.
But a disinformation campaign by the Unions is OK. I guess they are both even then. I know who I’d rather trust with my credit card.
Climate change is real, no one is denying it now who wasn’t always denying it. The taxation of mining companies is more relevant to Australia than the Craig Thompson affair. Invented stories and supposition do not amount to making a point, especially when lacking analysis of any kind.
Is there more to you than propoganda, Simon? Is there any depth to your underlying priorities? What do you care about really?
Prosperity of the country that my children live in – how’s that?
And please point out where I might be incorrect in any of my statements.
Simon: don’t waste your energy arguing with someone who uses the phrase “climate change denial” to defend a CO2 tax – energy will be at a premium come 1 July! (Thanks Earthian Brown – not!)
I’m talking climate change in general. The principles of risk management that come into play when there is this level of scientific consensus. How can you not harbour a single concern and call that responsible? How?
I doubt that Julia has balls, which perhaps Abbott may possess; never seen them myself.
He seems desperate to show that he is virile and masculine; perhaps the man doth protest too much?
As for Swan, Euromoney named him the Finance Minister of the year, with the entire western world to choose from.
Or perhaps you know better?
But as if he made any of the decisions about how we responded to the GFC himself. Lots of briefings by DTF, and then all of Cabinet (not to mention whatever little Kitchen Cabinet they had going on) to make joint decisions and share responsibility.
Wayne Maxwell Swan is no PJK that’s for sure.
In my working life I have reason to occasionally meet with politicians and Ministers, and I can honestly say he is the only politician I have actively considered ending a meeting with.
Thank you for the information.
(Don’t tell anyone else, but I defend the Labor government mostly because the alternative is so appalling)
I don’t understand why such an accolade exists.
Carbon dioxide is only 0.038% of the atmosphere – of this, human activity contributes only 3% (0.00114%). Of this, Australia only contributes 1.5% (0.0000171%). How is taxing Australia going to magically help “fix” the “weather”?
If Australia ceased to exist, it would make no difference under the theory.
Get your panties in a bunch over it if you wish. I’m not.
You put that little bit of dribble above global scientific consensus? That’s great. How much money do your children have to have before you consider that taxing a company that spews pathogens into waterways more than one that doesn’t isn’t entirely unreasonable?
Hollow as a tin drum.
Facts = dribble?
Carbon DIOXIDE is a pathogen?
Too much carbon is never enough? Is that sufficient a fact to counter all the others? Should you be resting on your laurels so early on in the general scheme of the thought process?
Carbon Dioxide and Carbon are two different things.
The climate alarmists call Carbon Dioxide “Carbon” because it sounds more pollutey. The world has had higher levels of CO2, and changing sea levels over billions of years. AGW is a confected crisis. How much money has Al Gore made spruiking this hoax? Millions.
Simon, I think it’s like another language to them. Just doesn’t translate
Reader1, I have long believed the “scientific consensus” on AGW to be dangerous, oppressive – and now expensive – propaganda. I’m entitled to that belief and it no more makes me a “denier” than someone not sharing my belief in God makes him or her a “denier”.
Oh, well if you believe it, it must be true.
He or she is probably not even in parliament yet, True Believer.
O’Farrell seem to be running the State well enough at present, such that his reelection in 2015 seems likely. Therefore the next Labor Premier will probably become opposition leader in about 2017, and hopefully win in 2019.
As for who, your guess is as good as mine.
Foley, Searle, Firth, Rees, or Damian Spruce for my money. Wedderburn hates Opposition. Firth will be 47 in seven years time, the age Carr was when he was first Premier.
Bob, do you really suggest that we sing to apple trees?
Charlie does that sort of thing but I did not expect you to believe in it.
As you may have noticed, I look a little different.
It may be temporary, part of my campaign to give recognition to the real Shakespeare : Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford.
For 400 years the chosen impostor – the actor who died in 1616 at Stratford – has been credited with de Vere’s work. It is time we corrected the record.
..
Zounds, Fie on you good sir, I represent Shakespeare, Oswald, Lindy Chamberlain and Occam as well as his trusted razor. And I have Bob Carr for local support on at least one of the above, guess which one.
Show me one sonnet, one poem, one line of poetry, that ‘Shakespeare’ wrote after June of 1604, the date of De Vere’s death.
As for the plays, there were so many that they could have been trotted out for the years up to the first folio in 1623 – a first folio published without the sonnets as the Earl of Southampton (De Vere’s ‘lovely boy’) was still alive and well and probably not keen on his youthful philanderings being raised again.
Coriolanus was not performed in the Stratford man’s lifetime, nor Timon of Athens, nor, after the Globe fire on its opening matinee, Henry VIII. It is known other hands worked on Pericles. Cymbeline, the three Henry VIs, and The Tragedie Of Sir Thomas More.
So it is not beyond the wit of man to imagine The Tempest, say, being written in draft by De Vere in 1602 and worked over by Fletcher or Jonson in 1612.
I’m with the Knight of the Woeful Countenance on this. I too dream the impossible dream, retrospectively.
Friends you may both be right, but first you must disprove the other candidates that have been nominated for authorship including; Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Earl of Rutland, Countess of Pembroke, Emilia Lanier, Fulke Greville, Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Neville, Earl of Derby etc etc. Then I will address your question (I won’t really, but a topic of this type will lead to more hits on this blog, and more renown for Ellis).
Bob, I might guess you have a few plays and screenplays that have not been performed in your lifetime, and wishing you a long life, may have scripts that will never find themselves beneath the hot lights of a stage or soundstage? before you shuffle from this, well you know how it goes.
I love the idea of a non-aristocrat, full of natural intelligence, and the true spirit of genius turning out the work. Although the global success of Shakespeare is based on more than his plays, and I commend Jack Lynch’s book “Becoming Shakespeare” a very interesting read.
I also have an implicit faith in the forthrighness of Ben Jonson, from the little I know of him he strikes me as a true friend and an honest man.
Thank you Bob for your support, and also allthumbs for pointing out the difficulties that are likely to be raised.
I don’t think that I need to show that all the other contenders did not write ‘Shakespeare’; in fact some of the suggested candidates are quite bizarre.
I have recently acquired “The Shakespeare Guide to Italy” by Richard Paul Roe (2011) which took the neutral view that whoever wrote the Italian Plays travelled extensively in Italy, was fully conversant with Italian texts and translated manuscripts, “written in very choice Italian” (Jason Lawrence) into English.
There is no shred of evidence that ‘Shakespeare’ ever went beyond London, Oxford and Stratford.
De Vere, however spent at least a year in Italy.
I’ll no doubt get back to you with a further report, once the conntents are digested.
Doug, I am not an educated man, but I never feel transported to Italy or ancient Rome or Scotland when reading Shakespeare. I don’t understand where the Merchant of Venice for instance is reliant on an intimate knowledge of Italy. Film certainly helped the Bard have his plays achieve a higher reality in regards to setting them in the cities and landscapes where the action took place, instead of simple stage directions such as ” a room within the castle”. I suspect for the not well traveled groundlings a coloured flag a blackened face, and calling someone Senor was enough to summon exotic shores and far away places.
Montaigne invoked the ancient world from the confines of his library, his knowledge of the ways of men, and the human heart in general is astounding and to this day contemporary, and I suspect Shakespeare had read Montaigne. Shakespeare also stole slabs from North’s translation of Plutarch.
I have read that the nautical jargon used at the opening of Shakespeare’s Tempest reflects the knowledge of a man that went to sea, and yet I have also read that the same jargon used by Melville (who did go to sea) in Moby Dick is insipid and rings false, superficial.
What Italian texts did Shakespeare or whoever, have to be conversant with to write the plays?
“..a man that went to sea..” allthumbs, you were irked at the gentle nitpicking of FI Kendall, I think, over “who” and “that”; teachers/education were cited – when it could’ve been just a case of not listening.
Relax – soon to be deleted.
Will be watching, and enjoying, Doug Quixote give a lesson on who wrote what.
No I’m not irked ME, I am mad at myself. In my own mind I write lucid, faultless prose. I have always made my mistakes in public.
I’m with you,allthumbs, Montaigne will do me…
As you say his knowledge of human heart and ways of men is astounding, there’s no one better..
Pay attention Helvi, there will be a test later!
Helvi isn’t he great, he should have been the guy between Pell and Dawkins the other night instead of Tony Jones.
Nothing clumsy about allthumbs.
Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more .. pleasing .. and more temperate.
No response pls – still under threat of deletion.
Hello Mary!
What on earth are you doing back here?
My heart is crushed.
Don’t want much, do you?
‘Shakespeare’ stole ideas and texts from all over Europe. Plagiarism was not a concern of Elizabethan times, and copyright did not exist.
But the evidence is that texts which were not available at all in any language other than Latin, and others not available other than in Italian, and some only in Spanish, and some perhaps only in Greek(!) were used, translated, and little changed, in slabs, by ‘Shakespeare’.
As for nautical knowledge, a sea journey in the 1570s – even one from Dover to say Antwerp – would be a rich source of information for a sponge like De Vere. Once again, the sometime actor and businessman who died in 1616 probably went no closer to any boat other than a Thames barge.
Further to various conversations here :
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means,
warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
Shylock says it quite well does he not, in the Merchant of Venice.
As for sources, De Vere used two main ones, translated into English in 1595 and 1596, which authorities claim dates the play to 1596 or thereabouts. It had certainly been performed
“divers times” by 1598. But neither source referred to ships – the ‘Argosies’ of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and the ‘Andrew’ (Andrea Doria of Genoa – most of his many ships were called “Andrea xxxx”).
De Vere added the ships, shipping and destinations from his own knowledge.
De Vere was born in 1550 and he was classically educated to all the best standards of the day. It just so happens that William Painter (google him) published a volume of 60 tales in 1566, a further volume of 34 in 1567 and then a revised edition of another seven – a total of 101 tales – filched and or translated from Herodotus, Boccaccio, Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Aelian, Livy, Tacitus, Quintus Curtius; from Giovanni Battista Giraldi, Matteo Bandello, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Giovanni Francesco Straparola, Queen Marguerite de Navarre and others.
All this when De Vere was 16 or 17 years old!!
Quite a boost to one’s education, no?
Some sources had not been translated – Cinthio, for example.
The apologists for Shakespeare are driven to claim : While no English translation of Cinthio was available in print during Shakespeare’s lifetime, it is possible that Shakespeare knew both the Italian original, Gabriel Chappuy’s 1584 French translation, and an English translation in manuscript. Cinthio’s tale may have been based on an actual incident occurring in Venice about 1508.”
Note : In Italian or French but not in English : “possible Shakespeare read an English translation in manuscript.”!!
Talk about clutch at straws! Anything to defend ‘Shakespeare’ – the illiterate sometime actor and businessman, who never sent or received a letter in his life, never wrote a line of poetry and dictated his will in banal language in 1616, to a law clerk.
DQ I don’t want you to jump through hoops, but where is the Italian flavour in M of V, or Othello, where is the Parmesan, the Oregano, the Frutti de Mare whereby after reading Othello you require a shot of Grappa to quieten your digestion?
Good question, but it was written by an Englishman. One who declared to his father in law Lord Burghley :
“I serve her majesty; I am that I am.”(!)
I have only now turned up :
http://hankwhittemore.wordpress.com/
I’ll be mining it for days . . . drat you allthumbs!
Please look at Sonnet no.121 :
Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I AM THAT I AM, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own.
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad and in their badness reign.
(emphasis added)
I am that I am.
Compare it with -
From the burning bush : “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM’: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” — Exodus, 3.14
One of Shakespeares’s few biblical references – and not one likely to endear him to the Church!
Iyam what Iyam, I swore that was Popeye!
Well spotted allthumbs!
“I yam what I yam, and that’s all what I yam,” (Popeye)
could it be derivative, do you think?
Gotta be DQ, don’t forget Olive Oyl (the choice Italian)!
It was Marlowe, you morons. He faked his own death over some anti-monarchist plot or other, conspiracy being the official term, and saw out his days in Italy. Don’t thank me, I’m happy to be of service.
No, no, no R1 You’re thinking of Phillip Marlowe, brother of the Suede Shoe tycoon.
Marlowe had his own style, one too well known and set to become ‘Shakespeare’ :
“Embost with silke as best beseemes my state,
To be reveng’d for these contemptuous words.
O where is dutie and allegeance now?
Fled to the Caspean or the Ocean maine?
What, shall I call thee brother? No, a foe,
Monster of Nature, shame unto thy stocke,
That dar’st presume thy Soveraigne for to mocke.
Meander come, I am abus’d Meander.”
Marlowe, “Tamburlaine pt 1″
Read that, and tell me if it is anything like ‘Shakespeare’.
Marlowe? Then read this excerpt :
Barabas : In spite of these swine-eating Christians,
(Unchosen Nation, never circumciz’d;
Such as, poore villaines, were ne’re thought upon
Till Titus and Vespasian conquer’d us)
Am I become as wealthy as I was:
They hop’d my daughter would ha bin a Nun;
But she’s at home, and I have bought a house
As great and faire as is the Governors;
And there in spite of Malta will I dwell:
Having Fernezes hand, whose heart I’le have;
I, and his sonnes too, or it shall goe hard.
I am not of the Tribe of Levy, I,
That can so soone forget an injury.
We Jewes can fawne like Spaniels when we please;
And when we grin we bite, yet are our lookes
As innocent and harmelesse as a Lambes.
I learn’d in Florence how to kisse my hand,
Heave up my shoulders when they call me dogge,
And ducke as low as any bare-foot Fryar,
Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,
Or else be gather’d for in our Synagogue;
That when the offering-Bason comes to me,
Even for charity I may spit intoo’t.
Here comes Don Lodowicke the Governor’s sonne,
One that I love for his good fathers sake.”
Christopher Marlowe, “The Jew of Malta”
Compare the anti-semitism in that passage if you will, to ‘Shakespeare’s’ moderate stance in the Merchant of Venice!!
Is it not truly despicable?
Despicable, yes.
Proof of De Vere being “Shakespeare?
Hardly.
Pay attention! Reader1 says it was Marlowe; I here produce evidence to the contrary. That is all.