{"id":1967716,"date":"2023-07-09T05:19:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T09:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/tempest-in-a-teacup\/"},"modified":"2023-07-09T05:24:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T09:24:48","slug":"tempest-in-a-teacup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/tempest-in-a-teacup\/","title":{"rendered":"Much Ado About Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftempest-in-a-teacup%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1967716&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>About a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/breaking-trust-in-fake-news-mainstream-media-at-all-time-low\/\" title=\"BREAKING: Trust in Fake News Mainstream Media at ALL-TIME LOW\">decade ago<\/a>, the <em>Independence Day<\/em> and <em>Godzilla<\/em> filmmaker Roland Emmerich directed a film, <em>Anonymous<\/em>, that probed the Shakespeare authorship question.<\/h2>\n<p>Despite cameos from noted Stratford skeptics Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi, the picture was a ludicrous farrago.<\/p>\n<p>A decent Rhys Ifans performance as Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford\u2014often put forward as the &#8220;real&#8221; author of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, but forced to seek anonymity behind the mask of an actor-for-hire from Stratford-upon-Avon for respectability\u2019s sake\u2014was buried under a typical barrage of Emmerichian bombast.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Independence Day<\/em> and <em>The Day After Tomorrow<\/em>, the director laid waste to the world, but in <em>Anonymous<\/em>, he destroyed the Oxfordian argument through sheer ineptitude of approach.<\/p>\n<h3>The Enduring Debate<\/h3>\n<p>The film was, of course, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/35-years-later-robocop-is-as-fresh-raw-and-relevant-as-ever\/\" title=\"35 Years Later \u201cRobocop\u201d Is as Fresh, Raw and Relevant as Ever\">commercial failure<\/a>, and it failed to put an end to a debate that has been raging, in some form, since the middle of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/breaking-trumps-lawyers-offer-former-presidents-answer-to-impeachment-article-on-incitement-of-insurrection\/\" title=\"BREAKING: Trump\u2019s Lawyers Offer Former President\u2019s Answer To Impeachment Article On Incitement Of Insurrection\">19th century<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you consult that oracle of knowledge, Wikipedia, you will find a total of 87 people who have been put forward, at one time or another, as being the &#8220;real&#8221; author of Shakespeare\u2019s plays.<\/p>\n<p>This includes everyone from the just about comprehensible (Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon) to the frankly ludicrous.<\/p>\n<p>It was once suggested that the playwright was, in fact, an Arab scholar named Shaykh Zubayr\u2014Anglicized to &#8220;Shakespeare&#8221;\u2014who had been shipwrecked while on a trading vessel and had somehow made his way to Stratford, written the complete works of William Shakespeare, and even endeared himself to Elizabeth I in the process.<\/p>\n<p>It says all that needs to be said for this theory that it was a favorite of Colonel Qaddafi\u2019s, who publicly endorsed it in 1989.<\/p>\n<h2>Shakespeare Was a Woman<\/h2>\n<p>The journalist and critic Elizabeth Winkler, then, enters into a tempest of her own with <em>Shakespeare Was a Woman<\/em>, which seeks to further an argument that she first proposed in the <em>Atlantic<\/em> in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>That feature suggested\u2014albeit without much in the way of concrete evidence\u2014that &#8220;Shakespeare&#8221; might have been a <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/twitter-suspends-more-writers-for-noting-that-transgender-olympic-weightlifter-laurel-hubbard-is-biologically-male\/\" title=\"Twitter Suspends More Writers For Noting That Transgender Olympic Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard Is Biologically Male\">nom de plume<\/a><\/em> for the English female poet Emilia Bassano, who was not, in her reading, the so-called Dark Lady to whom he addressed many of his sonnets.<\/p>\n<p>In an entertaining early set-piece, Winkler details the outrage her piece caused; she was accused of &#8220;conspiracism,&#8221; denigrated as neurotic, even deranged, and her refusal to accept the &#8220;Stratfordian&#8221; belief that William Shakespeare, son of a Stratford glover, was the author of the 38 plays and hundreds of poems that bear his name saw her compared to Holocaust deniers.<\/p>\n<p>Yet this book is clearly the result of the interest that her feature stirred up; published by the &#8220;subversive spirits&#8221; at Simon &#038; Schuster, it has been launched to an avalanche of hype and expectation, complete with endorsements by the bestselling likes of Stacy Schiff and Karen Joy Fowler.<\/p>\n<p>Is it possible that Winkler succeeds where countless others have failed and successfully challenges centuries of scholarship?<\/p>\n<h3>The Quest for Truth<\/h3>\n<p>It is undeniably true that little is known of Shakespeare\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>The stories that are commonly recognized (the &#8220;second-best bed&#8221; bequeathed to his wife; the various records of his property purchases in Stratford) say nothing about his work as a playwright, and in the absence of hard evidence, it is easy for the inquisitive\u2014or the opportunistic\u2014to attempt to fill this apparent vacuum with their own theories.<\/p>\n<p>Winkler places herself at the center of her narrative, writing breathlessly, &#8220;Should I write it? Did I dare? The taboo was alluring.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then a professor urges her to undertake the quest, and, no doubt aided by a substantial advance check, Winkler travels to England to remonstrate with the Stratfordians and to unearth the truth which hundreds of scholars, critics, and attention-seekers have failed to delve to the bottom of.<\/p>\n<p><em>Shakespeare Was a Woman<\/em> may not work especially well as a piece of investigative scholarship\u2014it is not a spoiler to reveal that not only does Winkler not come to any definitive conclusions about the authorship question, but her previous extolment of Bassano as &#8220;William Shakespeare&#8221; is briefly recapped and then ignored.<\/p>\n<p>But, perhaps unintentionally, it\u2019s enormously entertaining as a comedy of manners about academic scholarship.<\/p>\n<p>The eminent likes of James Shapiro and Stanley Wells, fully paid-up Stratfordians who have spent their lives arguing with the likes of Winkler, are portrayed as characters straight out of a Philip Roth campus novel, refusing to engage with their interlocutor\u2019s questioning and losing their tempers at her\u2014in her own estimation, at least\u2014salient arguments.<\/p>\n<p>And they\u2019ve bitten back, too; Sir Jonathan Bate, who is criticized here for his Stratfordianism, has already reviewed the book in the <em>Daily Telegraph<\/em> and described its author as &#8220;entertaining \u2026 [but] sometimes cruel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Winkler approvingly cites Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn, as, in his words, &#8220;an out-and-out anti-Stratfordian&#8221; and proponent of the Oxfordian theory.<\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that Waugh\u2014like his illustrious forbear, and indeed his father Auberon\u2014is generally regarded by his countrymen as a provocateur with a neat sideline in flamboyant mischief-making, even though his Oxfordian beliefs appear to be both sincere and deeply held.<\/p>\n<p>Yet his presence (over a lunch at his manor house of &#8220;venison, courgettes, omelet, sausages and salad&#8221;) is a boisterously entertaining one, and hints at another, more darkly comic book than the one Winkler has produced.<\/p>\n<h3>The Bardolaters and Beyond<\/h3>\n<p>There is undeniably something depressing about the &#8220;Bardolaters,&#8221; as the late critic Harold Bloom so fatuously styled himself.<\/p>\n<p>Shakespeare may have been the greatest playwright who ever lived, but his work is not and should not be above criticism; one thinks of Ben Jonson\u2019s famous quip, &#8220;I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that in his writing, whatever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, \u2018Would he had blotted a thousand.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yet <em>Shakespeare Was a Woman<\/em> does not concern itself with any serious attempt at questioning bardolatry, but instead sees Winkler place herself at the heart of a modish\u2014if oddly pointless\u2014argument.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, surely, Shakespeare remains a writer who can illuminate the human condition with pathos, wit, and poetry.<\/p>\n<p>Seeking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/tempest-in-a-teacup\/\" title=\"Much Ado About Nothing\">unearth spurious biographical details<\/a> might be a legitimate journalistic task, but it also runs the risk of seeming like after-the-fact gossip.<\/p>\n<p>Finishing Winkler\u2019s book, I was reminded of Touchstone in <em>As You Like It<\/em>, and his recollection of an old saying: &#8220;A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those who seek to delve into this intriguing but ultimately unfruitful topic might be wise themselves to bear that injunction in mind.<\/p>\n<p><em>Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature<\/em><br \/>\nby Elizabeth Winkler<br \/>\nSimon &#038; Schuster, 399 pp., $29.99<\/p>\n<p><em>Alexander Larman is a journalist, historian, and author, most recently, of<\/em> The Windsors at War: The King, His Brother, and a Family Divided (<em>St. Martin\u2019s Press<\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten years ago, Roland Emmerich, known for Independence Day and Godzilla, directed Anonymous, a film exploring the Shakespeare authorship debate. Despite appearances by skeptics Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi, the movie was a ridiculous mess. Rhys Ifans delivered a decent performance as Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a popular candidate for the true author of Shakespeare&#8217;s works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2191,"featured_media":1967717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1967716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1967717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}