Musings/Träumereien/Devaneios

Is there a Shakespearean lover who does not know that there is precious little actual information about Shakespeare and as a result there are all these theories speculating about who he really was? I’ve read a few of them, and I’ve always considered these to be crap that show us more about the enthusiast of the theory than they do about Shakespeare. I have read many books about Shakespeare, but none have provoked a more mixed and reaction in me than Greenblatts’. There are some great weaknesses. Read on.

As I was reading this what came into my mind was that celebrated statement, I think by AL Rowse that he was prepared to stake his reputation on the claim that all the Dark Lady from the sonnets 127-154 was in fact Emilia Lanier. Never mind that it’s never been clear that Lanier was a dark lady, let alone the Dark Lady – or indeed, whether or not there was a real Dark Lady at all in real life. By Jove, what if Shakespeare actually made the whole thing up? What if Greenblatt wanted to give Rowse a run for his money when it comes to reinventing Shakespeare’s life? I’m quite astonished that it found a publisher at all let alone that someone paid close to a million dollars to have it published. I’m not talking about being littered with spelling mistakes or grammatical errors; the worst is the utter lack of scholarly accuracy (e.g., Shakespeare hating Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s Anti-Jewishness, the meeting in Lancashire between Edmund Campion and the teenage Shakespeare, Falstaff as being a tribute both to Robert Greene and to Shakespeare's own father, the attempt at simplifying and normalizing the complex sexuality of Shakespeare, etc.).

If you're into Shakespeare, read on.