The reason why we aren’t doing well in the Olympics is we are a reasonably civilised people, and it’s become clear to some of us that many sports involve the inflicting of protracted pain on children for years on end and this is child abuse.
Competitive swimming is child abuse; javelin-throwing; weight-lifting; high-jumping; shot-putting; hop, step and jumping; competitive diving. Any sport that does not involve a ball or a tactical contest with other people is, in its early stages, child abuse and like smoking for children should be outlawed. It stunts their spiritual growth. Two hours a day that might be spent reading or yarning or acting in Gilbert and Sullivan is spent staring at the bottom of the pool. That, over ten years, adds up to a year of childhood lost and ends in tragedy, usually, a third place or no place at all in the Olympics and one’s life purpose over at 27.
All these races against the clock should be outlawed, like bullfighting, and all these heavings against gravity. They are not what a civililised people do.
And we are doing it, thank heaven, less and less.
Name:
And the Gold goes to Bob Ellis.
Don’t outlaw it, just cease to fund Sport. And also cease Arts funding. Both are just hobbies, and those that are interested can pay their own way.
I don’t expect anyone to pay for my lesbian puppetry from their taxes.
Yes, I agree.
Look at the Scandinavians. Some of the lowest Olympic medal tally. Yet, they are fit. The connection with obsessive sport and obesity has to be there somewhere.
Perhaps countries that display books instead of sport medals are showing the way.
Gold medals for reading instead of leaping about aimlessly ought to be encouraged at all schools
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Helvi
You’re becoming more cryptic with each day. Did you in fact mean to say V46Xdc4laUAO ?
As kids were allowed to sit in the sandpit or in the snow all day, depending on the seasons.
Mum and dad were too busy, so we learnt to swim in fast flowing river by ourselves…
They let us walk miles to the library.We carried bagfuls of books home, summertime we rested our little feet on the roadside and read the favourite book.
Mum only got angry if we had candles in bed, so we could read, torches were sort of OK…
Whilst I am totally against the general gold medal obsession and the Olympic mania (and the tentacles of this huge and corrupt Olympic organisation) I am not against competitive sport or competition in anything else. As in education and other spheres, people have got to learn – and learn early – that sometimes you are just not good enough. That is not to say that ’doing your best’ isn’t enough, it is and was all I ever asked my children. But this obsession to make people feel good by avoiding the facts of failure in this or that field is counter-productive. People who repeat and then study medicine or leave sport and try something else or go for a better use of their “alternative” talents allow for productive and fulfilled people, NOT those who gain by having exams done away with and avoiding that truth about failure. Just because you can get into a university to study ceramics or can be an ‘actor’ or a painter it doesn’t mean that the state has to support you. In fact if university was limited to the old percentages prior to the Claytons unis coming on stream we wouldn’t have the number of square pegs in round holes that we are stuck with now.
Yes.
It’s a scale, devised to individuate people according to their relative position on that scale, perhaps not the most wholesame way to individuate people. You can’t win in a vacuum. It’s what the invention of the education system in Europe was based on, just as the original hopital generale was conceived to identify and corral the poor in order to sequester disease from the middle class. It feels natural but it’s invented. Nothing wrong with that per se, I think there is a certain esprit de la joust that comes with competition, but it is the esprit that is the point of it, not the competition itself which can only ever be entirely fabricated. Philosophically speaking, very little is a question of will when you think about it. Most things are to do with the circumstances, and by that I mean the entire spectrum from the universe to your own body and mind. To sacrifice that truth to a token idol of will is, to not put too fine a point on it, fairly close to what Hitler did. We have no will over our own will. If you are in a powerless situation, you can’t help that if you are powerless to do so.
Without going into my point about romantics being neurosurgeons because they want to, I know there is a real world out there and doubt that you are in it.
M Ryutin, many kids do not learn that they are not good enough, because they learn at pre-schools that everything they do is wonderful…they scribble a bit on the paper on the run and the teachers tell them how wonderful…
We praise them even they have not done anything praise-worthy.
We follow the Americans and want feel confident and happy at all times…kids and all.
According to the documentary on SBS last night called “Reality”, the real world is actually a 2D hologram beamed out from the edge of the universe and the three dimensions is an illusion. A sentimentalist may become a neurosurgeon but not a romantic, whose needs neurosurgery could never fulfill. A romantic would tend more towards theoretical physics. Not philosophy, however, which did away with romanticism on a conceptual level after the experiment with Rousseau. Beyond Rousseau, I learnt from last night’s documentary, there is only maths.
MRyutin,
We are breeding not just mediocrity but something far worse, indolence.
Since my University began to video record lectures for the purpose of assisting students who either: sought to revisit the lecture, who were long distance, or who simply missed a lecture because their bus was late, the number of students that clog the corridor to my office, or fill my email intray with desperate cries for help, has increased at an alarming rate.
I have failed more students in the last year than all of my previous years, combined.
I am ashamed to present this typical exchange:
Did you attend the lecture?
No.
Why not?
I knew I could watch the video.
Did you watch the video?
No.
Why not?
I don’t know. I knew you would be here to help me.
There we have it MRyutin.
We are no longer teachers; we are backstops, we are fail safes.
And my disgust grows daily.
I spoke to my Head of Dept. about the horrific rate of failure.
I was told to do “what it takes” to get the students through.
The implications of “do what it takes” are numerous and negative.
Don’t get me started…
Not wanting to get you started, but….I wonder if there are assignments at all or if there are, whether three people do them jointly (I like that, “jointly”. As if!) that sort of thing or whether plagiarism is as common in the Sandstones as in the Claytons? With school exams now being questioned and entry scores for Arts/Law being so low, how does a lecturer or tutor feel about it all? How can they keep focus on the higher aims of academic work? Not the place for it I suppose, but remembering the massive lecture student numbers from years ago and the simple “Pass/Fail, good luck/bad luck” days, I hate to read about these modern results of such a deterioration.
Hi MRyutin, this is me not getting started….
No,
no more “joint” assignments; not in my courses anyway.
Plagiarism is prevalent though thankfully there are systems in place with which to combat the overt and the reckless.
A variant of attempted “plagiarism” is the tendency, among the 1st and 2nd years especially, to resort to regurgitating complex and often quite oblique passages in the hope that the seeming complexity will dissuade any further interrogation. This is a type of fallacy – shingle speech, I believe. Anyway, it always brings a smile to my face.
The type of “plagiarism” that does not however bring a smile to my face is of a more insidious kind, best exemplified on this blog by Quixote and his Oxford thesis.
Here the tendency is to read perhaps 1 or 2 books/critiques on a subject, mash several ideas together, and then attempt to pass of the result as an original thought. The reason why it presents a difficulty to us is that it demands that we read as much as possible so as to be able to spot the argument and its true source. Now that may sound like what our function is MRyutin; to read a great deal, and this is true in one respect. However, I have read 37 books on Shakespeare and I do not wish to be forced to include another from some minor scholar or doctoral dissertation in the vague hope of catching out a devious and lazy student.
This type of plagiarism is by far the worst kind I experience; difficult to locate and time consuming.
“the higher aims of academic work”?
There are but 4 seconds left in the day to devote to my research.
My solutions? I have none MRyutin – the logic of the institution has changed dramatically since my undergraduate days and leaves romantics such as myself in the gutter. Personally, I would be brutal on academic standards.
Work hard – you’re in my tutorial.
Display a atom of indifference – Fail.
It is a generational thing I’m afraid. The kids coming through now have their iphones and their ipods and ipads. The subject comes a distant fourth and we a light year 5th.
If I can leave you with one image to express this disquiet let it be this: I told last year’s first year class that if i saw a phone or an ipod I would confiscate it till end of class.
The looks they gave me were a combination of mind numbing incredulity and direct confrontation.
What more can I say M?
Like I said, don’t get me started…
What I have done is not necessarily original thought, but synthesis. I really can’t remember how many books on Shakespeare I have read over the last forty years or so; nor how many times I have read the plays and some of the Sonnets. But in the last year the authorship question has become relevant, after never worrying me before.
And the evidence for the man of Stratford is almost entirely absent. For example, there is no evidence that he ever attended any school whatsoever.
The evidence suggests to me that Edward De Vere is by far the best fit for the Bard.
Read the Sonnets – all the Sonnets – carefully. Then tell me that the author is not :
1. A nobleman
2. A homosexual
3. A man of at least 40 years of age in 1595.
That disqualifies the man of Stratford and puts De Vere right in the frame.
I have absolutely no issue with “synthesis” in the formulation of an idea.
My initial concern, one of three actually, lies is in the absence of references in your posts/ideas. (Allthumbs made a polite reference to this absence).
These references are essential; one can check the links, examine the arguments, locate your interpretation and perspective, seek out further arguments, and formulate new syntheses (of my own).
Regarding your argument about the Sonnets: I believe you make the common and fundamental error of merging author and (fictive) creation. It would be akin to me, and this example has been raised earlier, devaluing Madame Bovary because Flaubert was a man, or suggesting that the author (creator) of “Anna Karenina” must be a woman.
Do you see my point?
You seek to posit as proof of De Vere’s authorship of the Sonnets (and thus the canon) the indeterminate sexuality of its author?
I’m sorry, that simply is not proof.
Fallacy? Yes.
Supposition, speculation, possibility? Sure.
Proof? No.
It is not the Oxford claim itself that concerns me, personally I”m more of a formalist in such matters, and as such personal (authorial) identities are always subordinate to the words on the page; their order, choice, construction etc. (As a side note; you would find J.G.Cole very interesting to talk to on this matter. That hardly looks likely after our host saw fit to erase his tribute to Robert Hughes. In light of that let me offer this quick synopsis: Cole spent the better part of 2 years composing a dissertation only to trash it completely. The reason? His “outlook” on what he saw as the correct or true reading of texts changed. He moved from a formalist analysis to the all inclusive biographical/psychological/historical perspective which sought to include every possible detail in the account of a text).
No, what concerns me is the lack of (material) evidence to support De Vere’s claim. In this sense there is less direct evidence linking De Vere to the canon than there is the Stratford man.
Let me conclude with this; it is perhaps my definitive statement on the subject. We can discuss it further should you wish, or we can leave it. Your call.
I see the Oxfordians ensnared in a contradiction; between admitting its own discursive practice, requiring only ‘possibility’ or ‘speculation’ as proof, and refusing the identical practice from the Stratfordians who, it would appear, can offer more proof for their claim.
James Shapiro’s book ‘Contested Will’ provides an entertaining survey of the various ‘Somebody Else Wrote Shakespeare’ campaigns and the common patterns lying behind them.
I think your point about the Sonnets and the mistake of reading them as some sort of coded autobiography is a really important one. Interestingly, this way of reading the Sonnets can be traced back only as far as the very late 18th century and the rise of the Romantic movement. Until then, no one payed all that much attention to them. Since then, their value seems to rest more on the supposed ‘insight’ they give to Shakespeare’s character, rather than whatever literary merit they might possess.
Very enjoyable exchange. (Excuse the barracking from the sidelines, but encouragement is often lacking in this forum).
Thank you Polybius. Yes, the point I’m trying to make is a crucial one. I think any undertaking whatsoever into this question of a (Shakespearean) “life” study needs to establish a methodological base that addresses this question; and addresses it rather quickly. Again, J.G.Cole would be your man here – this question sits at the core of his interests.
You are quite right about this biographical fallacy: it gained momentum and then widespread currency early in the 19C. This fallacy is, for me, the beating heart of the Oxford claim; a claim which rests upon the verb “must”:
Must be a nobleman
Must be wealthy
Must be educated
Must be well travelled
Must be…….?
Apart from the hypothesised nature of these statements an addition problem (and for me a far more important one) with this fallacy is that it permits an unending number of Shakespeare’s (as demonstrated by my final “must be….?” ) – it seeks to remold the man/work into the prescribed shape of the reader.
This is an absolutely critical point to make and is addressed in the
postmodern (post-structuralist) readings of “authorship” in Barthes and Foucault.
For a more general overview of the topic my selections from the past ten years would probably be (in no order ) Greenblatt, Shapiro, Wells, Ackroyd, Nuttal and Nichol.
There are many more but these are damn good reads.
To Never Enough, thank you. What are your thought s on the subject?
My interest is more in how a position is established and then defended (and in many ways this is more accurately termed prosecuted) in the absence of supporting evidence.
My interest is in how belief is what most of us are good at, not arriving at a sound, substantiated position.
My interest is how we are emotional rather than rational and that the penalty for such thinking is violence.
Violence against those that do not share our belief.
Feeling is wonder, but should not be confused with thinking.
I am, of course, part of the “we” and beset by all its inadequacies.
Never Enough Ellis – I have devoted the better part of 20 years to wrestling those 3 “how” questions you mentioned.
I’m sure we could sit in beer garden and chat the afternoon away.
Quite easily
A further problem for Oxfordians is the research that has been done over the last 30 years or so into the whole question of Shakespeare’s collaboration with other writers. Also there’s a huge amount of work being done on the way that plays were conceived, formed, staged and printed.
A great deal of this research, to my mind, makes the Oxfordian hypothesis less likely rather than more so.
And let’s not forget that we’re talking about a hypothesis that is around 90 years old but is yet to be backed up by a skerrick of solid evidence. After nearly withering away entirely in the seventies and eighties, the current (mild) resurgence of this particular literary sect has a great deal more to do with savvy internet marketing techniques than anything remotely connected to scholarly endeavour.
All very interesting, but I am not writing an essay for you to mark. I do not need footnotes, nor evidence citing chapter and verse; I am commenting, anonymously, on a blog site.
You may assert that the Sonnets are fiction if you please; that is your right.
That is your opinion, and one apparently shared by many. It is not mine.
For my money, the Sonnets are a series of appeals written over several years, to a young man who is beloved and most attractive. The man in question has been almost universally acknowledged to be Henry Wriothsley, the Earl of Southampton.
The said Earl is addressed as if by a social equal, in very personal terms.
In 1595 that would have been grounds for a commoner to be strung up by the toes, if not by the neck.
Writing plays was a dangerous business at that time; writing love poems to an earl would be suicidal if one was not also an earl.
And the Sonnets have the ring of truth. Wriothsley managed to get them suppressed, and they were not published (after their suppression on first publication in 1609) until 1640.
It is not ‘universally acknowledged’ that ‘Mr W. H.’ is Henry Wriothsley. He is one of a number of contenders. The true identity of Mr W. H. – if this in fact refers to a real person rather than a literary construct – can never be known for sure.
The sonnets were certainly not ‘suppressed’ after 1609 by Wriothsley or anyone else. Thomas Thorpe published an unauthorised edition in 1609. The next (highly inaccurate) edition to be published was in 1640 by John Benson.
So – there was no suppression. Little attention was paid to the Sonnets because it was a literary form that had fallen out of favour and there simply was not any great interest in them.
I have an alternate theory as to why we are failing to win sufficient Olympic Gold medals to becalm the baying populace indignant at the $1.2 billion allocated to sports funding over the past four years, dissipated like so much swimmers’ urine in an over-chlorinated public pool – and it is simply that other competitors just happen to be better. Go figure.
So, lament not the torments visited upon those accursed, red-eyed, straw haired youngsters. Life is long. They will still have their time to parade about in amateur productions of H.M.S. Pinafore, find some way to bridge the gaping chasm of incertitude and despair that confronts them a little earlier than most when their Uncle Toby’s sponsorship is pulled from under them, develop a sufficient grasp of Nietzsche to get by at dinner parties, learn to play Stravinsky’s le Chant du Rossignol on the French horn, quote Shakespeare, discuss Swedish cinema, learn to play rugby, and eventually take their place among the civilized men and women of this country.
…no Rugby, sir…even in France only the uncivilised play that awful bone breaking game…soccer is just about acceptable.
That’s very good spleenblatt
An olympic coach of my acquaintance said an interesting thing a few weeks back prior to his leaving for London.
He said that the primary benefit of having significant experience as a competitor was that you learned that winning and losing were both part of the experience, and that athletes, if they were to be truly successful, must mature psychologically to a point of accepting the inevitability of occasionally losing as a consequence of involvement.
Nothing new in any of that, but it was his further contention, that this cycle of winning and losing was a wonderful preparation for the life that follows after competition, in the community or professional or business activities, that you generally find that former athletes have a higher level of success in life than those who have not learned the lessons related to losing and then getting on with it, trying again and so on.
One of the problems that besets young athletes is the parental pressure that is involved. From a very young age they are living the parents dream not so much theirs.
Its reported that the Australian taxpayer has spent around $700m over four years for the 2012 London Olympics.
Each Australian is paying $30.97 for the Australian team, while each German is only paying $14.69 for the German team; each Brit $19.17 for the UK team and each Frenchman $18.35.
Personally I’m with Bob on this one and would rather see the money go to funding original plays and films providing the usual ratbags don’t get all the cash. The athletes can fund themselves or do lamington drives to send them to Rio. Its all forgotten in a week or two anyway but a film and a good play lasts forever.
I’m just going to go out on a ranting limb here.
Education should be considered ONLY with economics in mind. Otherwise, ignorance will not suffice as an excuse to leaving socialism behind.
The education system sprang out of the industrial revolution and the extent to which those antiquated structural elements remain easily identifiable should be a reason for concern; concern on a far greater scale than any arguments that draw on sport as a conspiratorial method to individualise the electorate.
The conversations around productivity have been framed around workplace conditions, workchoices, and similarly the education debate has now been solidly framed by Pyne as what’s the word…damage control…ergh… damage displacement…insurance…ergh.
Those living in the real world need only point to a ‘teacher in training’ tuition session. Go and sit in one and be afraid.
A ‘teacher in training’ friend of mine recently remarked at how a class of brave new children suddenly rejoiced at the mention of ‘American crepes’- not because they were crepes, but because they were American.
Christmas is coming.
Furthermore; I will be hence force unable to reflect upon the Olympic Games as anything but the real Christmas, just a date in a quadrennial calendar that gives the global marketing monster a cyclical framework; a rejuvenating shot in the arm; billions to be relied upon as sure as say, the sun continually rising in the morning.
Most of the kids I know are not good enough. None are as successful as Clive Palmer or Michael Phelps. Babies in particular tend to lose motivation when experiencing physical discomfort – purely a question of discipline. This is life and we are all here to win it. Against each other. By being more successful. According to an indeterminate measure.
Methinks Bob Ellis has a corner on the “Subtle as a Train Smash” stuff.
The obvious dominate factor is genetic a la Phelps and Bolt. There is nothing dominate about Palmer physically or mentally in his genes. He is just an evolutionary product of the white shoe brigade and Rhinehart is the result of inheritance. Agruably Forest deserves to be somewhere on the podium as he had to overcome the BHP and Rio hurdles
Syrian Prime Minister just defected with his family to Jordan
Two canines might be more humane or even three. Fabulous . Faggot and Fabbott.
Hear, hear! At least some sense from someone about the Olympics. I can’t imagine how boring it must be for the athletically gifted to have to train two hours each day, all for some five-minute competition years in the future. What I’m concerned about is that some athletes may be bullied by their coaches because we didn’t win enough Olympic gold medals in 2012.
Bob this thread takes the cake as containing the biggest collection of nuts and fruit loops that have ever posted in one place on the internet.
Consider it a GOLD for Mr Ellis. Perhaps you can shut down the blog now?
Honestly, I thought a group of greenies like yourselves would embrace the utopian ideals of the Olympics?
You dont even need to cheer for Australia, you can cheer for the Middle Eastern countries and boo the West.
Can I propose a new topic. Who has achieved more? Michael Phelps or Robert Ellis (Receivers and Managers Appointed) of Palm Beach? Discuss.
Jingle bells,
Phelps swims well,
but can he lay an egg?
Murray Rose, picks his nose,
and eats it for desert- hey.
What do you know of utopia oh knight of the white? What is a dystopia? Is not the purpose of constructing a dystopian image ultimately utopian?
Your argument is right out of the 19th century. If anyone is looking for proof that civilisation has gone backwards, one needs only to cite the SAM sites ‘protecting’ London or perhaps watch Gore Vidal on ‘Monday Conference’ in …74? and then compare that with a 2012 QANDA, and then consider the white knight argument, that cites the fallacy of the Olympic spirit as the last shred of national security we have left.
Berlin, 1936.
London, 2012.
Discuss.
WHIGHT KNIGHT- nICE THAT bOB IS YOUR HERO hE IS A MENTAL GIANT AND PHELPS AND bOLT ARE pHYSICAL GIANTS AND YOU ARE NEITHER
Hi Never Enough,
When you say you are interested in the workings of faith or dogma are you thinking about particular forms of it? Or as a principle?
If the former, what examples intrigue you?
Hi Stan:
I am a generalist. Perhaps I have doubted the passion of my youthful arguments, or more accurately have found myself reflecting mid-argument how emotion is overwhelming fact; often the need to be right is directly related to the strength of my opposition, rather than the search for a truth.
It has always amused me how whatever position I am attracted to (political, artistic, psychological or philosophical)
delivers a steady stream of evidence for my belief. This seems hard wired and certainly explains diversity of opinion.
To the extent that it matters, I find it helpful to know very little with a passionate certainty. (I enjoy the ambiguity and accuracy of that last sentence).
Jack of all trades and master of none?
I experience and relate to the violence of others as a man who dislikes cheese, eats cheese. I wonder if you are taking the piss or if these are serious ponderings that you express.
I find, hold, believe, think, feel that empathy is not emotion. Empathy is the neurological process that helped humans remember how to use the tools that specific individuals pioneered and were probably forgotten numerous times by numerous species over numerous millenniums until one specific individual with possibly an enlarged amygdala but more likely quite an active set of motor neurons. Although, humans are not the only species that have learned to empathize and use tools not are they the only creatures to display intelligence.
Why did Nietzsche hug the horse?
Emotions are primitive, and emotional intelligence is another thing altogether.
Language is innate and reader1 reckons there is no thought Soil.
Diversity of opinion? Eg. Sometimes friends will be into music that I can’t get close to. Perhaps years later, I am in a different place and much more receptive. People are in different places at different times and so are texts.
(I also I enjoy the ambiguity and accuracy of both that last sentence and your last sentence.)
I apologize once again for my hasty posting/bad grammar.
This is very rude of me.
Soil, I’ve a redundant copy of Ed Swick’s ‘Writing Better English‘. If you’re interested, send me your address.
I really do appreciate the sentiment Canguro. At times, I feel I am becoming increasingly dyslexic and I don’t say that lightly.
Yet, I write history essays of a postgraduate standard. Go figure.
Bob Ellis says wonderful man, keep writing. I was reading back over the past month of what I have written here and well, I moved myself and along with finding time for Nietzsche, I feel strangely absolved.
To Dear Helvi, I hope your son enjoyed that poem, I’m glad that you did and I’m sorry if you thought that I was Peter, or if you were referring to W&Stone and I took it and ran.
I really do hope that I am not all-together out of my tree and one day will produce something rather substantial.
Where I am today is a far better place than a month ago. Thanks to all. I will re-emerge at some point, with enhanced grammar.
Just for the record, there is only one actor that could pull me off and it isn’t Nicholas Hope. Furthermore, to Untitled, I am faster, stronger and larger. I look forward to meeting you. We can arm wrestle and sneer. Remind me to tell you the one about my brother.
I’d say I look forward to meeting all of you but I reckon that might frighten a few people.
& Bob Ellis owes someone a bottle of whiskey.
Indeed, dear Soil, keep writing, and you will be fine. Keep the general rules of expression in mind though; logic & coherence and grammatical accuracy, and the KISS principle, and that there is an audience who will be deriving their meaning of your writing based on the clear articulation of the ideas.
And yes, an evening of arm-wrestling and quaffing is attractive… I’m in Sin City (or ‘Shinn Nee’ as my Chinese friends pronounce it), how about you?
Sodden Bloody Melbourne. I have a family I have been avoiding and Christmas was a long time ago.
This place is too fucking flat and not good for people despite how livable they tell you it is, the winter is a real bastard. Hesitant to post an email, I will let you know when I am in town.
Good to hear William.
Very good to hear.
Ellis owes spleenblatt 10 grand.
spleenblatt owes me 3 shots of gin.
Let’s hope these are paid up.
Now, tell me about your brother.
Yes the subjectivity of it all NEE.
To be human…to be human.
But this recognition is marvelous.
We become less fanatical and more cautious.
That itself is an aid on our way
The more I read about this stuff I find it more and more remarkable how the relationships of the all the protagonists were so tightly entwined, how they revolve around each other like small galaxies of personalities joining and dividing from one another. I picked up a small second hand book the other week, “The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady with an introduction by A.L. Rowse, published back in 1978. It is a book of the poetry of Emilia Lanier, the dark lady of the Sonnets, addressed in those after No.126, a third of the Menage a Trois, Shakespeare, Southampton and Lanier.
She was the daughter of one of Queen Elizabeth’s Italian musicians Bassano, well educated, well read in the classics and the bible, the best female poet of her time, a proto-feminist , a prose piece introduction to one of her poems was a “piece of rampant feminism” according to Rowse , a very, very rare thing in Elizabethan times. Mistress to Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon ,taken on as a young girls and discarded later when pregnant by the good Henry patron of Shakespeare’s Company.
Perhaps the inspiration for Rosalind, Cleopatra. At the beginning of the sonnets, she was 23 and Shakespeare 28, Southampton 19. Shakespeare (apparently) as was the fashion asked the Earl to write on Will’s behalf a letter to Lanier, newly free from the Old Hunson, a means of facilitating an introduction, she naturally attracted to the younger Earl, took him for her own and hence drove Will around the bend, and this relationship is mentioned in both sets of the Sonnets.
She was aggressive, high minded, ambitious, litigious,querulous,promiscuous, tough, resilient, capable of putting men in their place. It reads like a Dirk Gently story, and as the Readster might quote Dirk “it is all interconnected”. She took some offense at the way she was treated and portrayed by amongst others, Will, and though written in 1510 but not published till 1511 was supposed to have got her own back, (I haven’t come across that in the poems yet).
I haven’t finished reading the book or her poetry, and it sits with other abandoned books all over the house, but Shakespeare seems to be a blackhole that drew all within his gravitational field. Best of all Lanier lived to the very ripe age of 76..
Now, she sounds really interesting.
And you’re quite right, all of this toing and froing as to whether Shakespeare was himself or someone else does tend to obscure other things that were going on in an extraordinary time.
She was certainly a handful, later she went through a religious conversion as a way of absolving her past life I suppose.
“In her angry prose riposte she reproved women for speaking ill of their own sex an spreading scandal about them. All women do not deserve to be blamed, and they should leave this to “evil disposed men who- forgetting they were born of women, nourished by women, and that, if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished out of the world and a final end of them all-do like Vipers deface the wombs wherein they were bred”"
She started looking for patronage amongst the female aristocrats with some limited success.
Rowse is an interesting chap allthumbs. He’s the only one I know of, the only serious one anyway, who actually sought and succeeded (to his mind) in locating real people for the Sonnet characters.
To DQ, in response to August 8, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Speculation as to what the Sonnets are “about” are all well and good.
However the point being made here (at least by me) is that such speculation, because speculation it no doubt is, short of any material evidence, is a natural outgrowth, the natural expression, of the biographical fallacy that underpins the entire Oxford claim. Your argument is that it must have been written by a gay nobleman because no-one else (and these are your arguments) was either:
1. a social equal
2. suicidal enough to write love poems to an earl
3. and, because they have a “ring of truth”
4. and, because of publication dates
This may constitute “proof” in your mind.
It does not in mine.
And that, as you say, is our rightful prerogative.
I would never ask, and have never asked for, an essay.
Nor have I asked for you to “cite chapter and verse”.
What I have said is that I would like for you to cite sources when asked.
That’s all.
I also agree with Polybius (above) and I think it’s important to say why.
Not only do I agree with the substance of Polybius’ rebuttal – it most certainly is not “universally acclaimed” that the young earl is W.H. – but that it is equally instructive to draw attention to the way you have employed a rhetorical device to advance your argument, in this case the hyperbolic “universally acclaimed”. You know fully well that that is not the case and you use it to grant greater legitimacy to your claim. This is semantics, the pursuit of advocacy and propaganda, and not the presentation of “fact”.
DQ, this is argument, to me, is not about who Shakespeare was or was not. We could be arguing about Manet, Faulkner, Asquith or Foch for all I care. Certainly, this is an argument about evidence, proof, conjecture and fallacy. But at another, a far more interesting level, this is an argument about rhetorical situations, interpretations and Never Enough Ellis’ the “how” of making meaning.
I am primarily concerned with the construction of meaning, in this case with the “how” of your Oxford counter-myth – with its materials; text, biography, history, and with its expression, here evidenced by your semantic flourish.
These elements I find fascinating.
Well that certainly explains a few things.
Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn about argument and semantic nail-paring, and I will leave the analysis of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin to others.
But I would much prefer to do it cordially, and I thank you for your statement.
I will admit to being somewhat too dismissive of those who do not agree with my posts
re. the willingness to be dismissive, it’s not a trait that in the long run works best in your interests – far better imho to step a tad closer to the median point or at least suspend the reactive dismissal and digest the alternative viewpoints to the degree that you are capable of.
With respect, what are “my interests”?
What exactly do you think I have at stake in this discussion?
I say that it is all the same to me, whether you (plural) wish to take on board my truth, or to continue to bask in ignorance!
Instead of the post that was, I’d spent a couple of minutes toying with the notion of asking you whether you were curmudgeonly, viz. a crusty and irascible and cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas. And then dropped it. You’re right, it’s none of my (our) business. Here in blogsville, as in any community, there are those we like and others who irritate us, and that ain’t gonna change. Go for it DQ, bless you. Do answer the question though, it’ll flesh the bones a wee bit more.
I think one does not need to be particularly old to be a “grumpy old man” – many of those in the recent series were in their forties, some in their thirties!
There is some truth in the old joke that “you are as old as the woman you feel” . . .
As for me, Canguro, I have noticed that whenever biographical details have been revealed, those who are less well-disposed towards the writers have used and abused the revelations.
Our anonymity is precious, Canguro; don’t give ill-wishers any ammunition they do not already have.
Well Fedallah, straight out of the block Rowse is off to a blinding start, head down and within the first few metres is upright and looking towards the finish line, in his own thoughts he has accepted the gold medal and blumenstrauss and is already relaxing in a hot bath: “Shakespeare’s Sonnets have been regarded, quite unncecessarily, as offering an insoluble problem, In fact, their problems have now been solved, with complete consistency, dating and all, and the answers cannot be questioned.”
Forgive the Olympics metaphor, its my contribution to our national pride.
Lanier is certainly an interesting character, despite Rowse.
Olympics.
A $2 coin is gold coloured. If someone tried to pass you a yellow one, you would spot the lemon quite quickly. That our “national colours” are called “green and gold” when they are quite obviously green and yellow, seems symbolic of an ongoing inflation of importance by the sporting community.
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