The controversy surrounding the Shakespearean authorship question has been rumbling along for many years, centuries even. Indeed, doubts as to whether William Shakespeare of Stratford really penned the great sonnets and plays attributed to him first surfaced around 1795. Since then, contrarians (or anti-Stratfordians, as they have come to be known) have been on an unrelenting quest to prove that Shakespeare’s work was written pseudonymously. Like all good conspiracy theories, the path to discover the truth has been strewn with deception, intrigue, falsifications and a handful of less-than-savoury characters. There have even been ciphers and code-breakers thrown into the mix. A number of high-profile skeptics (Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Henry James, Orson Welles and Sigmund Freud to name but a few) have given credence to the debate.
The root of the controversy lies in the fact that we actually know very little about Shakespeare. We have scant details around which we have built a skeletal biography, but there are large gaps in our knowledge, wherein lies the temptation to embellish. So, what facts do we have to play with?
We know William Shakespeare was born circa April 1564, the son of a glover from Stratford-upon-Avon in rural Oxfordshire. We know, at the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children; a daughter Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Soon after the twins birth, he left his family and went to work in London. He found success as an actor, writer and part-owner of a theatre company called
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later to become
The Kings Men, after James I succeeded Elizabeth to the throne). He would go on to spend the majority of his working life in London, until he retired to Stratford in 1613 (where he would die three years later). We know he was a businessman as well as an actor; a few surviving receipts and ledger entries indicate that he was a malt-trader and money-lender. We also know he was concerned about his social standing, because there is a record of him applying for “gentleman’s status” later in life when he had become wealthy from his various endeavours.
Aside from the above, there is very little that can be proven about Shakespeare’s life. The paucity of documental evidence has led to much speculation, as we try to fill in the blanks; these suppositions have filtered down through time until we come to believe them to be “fact”. For example, given we know Shakespeare spent so much time in London, it has been assumed that his marriage to Anne Hathaway was unhappy. This hypothesis has become so pervasive, it is now taken as a universal truth. However, whether or not the marriage was an unhappy one can never be proven.
In his book “
Contested Will – Who Wrote Shakespeare?”, James Shapiro examines how the gaps in our knowledge of Shakespeare’s life and history have given rise to many controversies and fuelled the ensuing authorship debate. Shapiro focuses on two main factions of the anti-Stratfordian brigade – the Baconians (who supported the hypothesis that Francis Bacon was the real author) and the Oxfordians (who believed that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the true bard). He not only discusses
what each group believed, but also
why each side believed what they did. He also comes to his own conclusions regarding the authorship debate. The book makes for very interesting reading.
All Shakespeare doubters, Baconians and Oxfordians alike, seem to fundamentally agree on one thing. The crux of the dissent rests on the belief that a glovers son from rural Oxfordshire could not have possibly been the real author, because he would have lacked the necessary education and life experience to produce such accomplished work. They argue that a man of limited means and education could never have gained the knowledge of politics, law, royal courts and foreign countries which are evident in the plays. It follows then, that the real author must surely have been an aristocrat, someone much higher up the social ladder than a poor boy from the country. This theory, advocated by Twain, James, Freud et al., smacks of intellectual snobbery and a fundamental lack of imagination. Indeed, Charlie Chaplin (who, it should be noted, was not known for his own intellectual prowess) declared that “… I hardly think it was the boy from Stratford - whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude”.
Mark Twain (a Baconian) was adamant in his belief that all writers compose from their own experiences; that is, they cannot write with authority about “what they know from hearsay”. He steadfastly asserted that everything written is in some way autobiographical. This belief that the writer’s life makes its way onto the page (either consciously or sub-consciously)
formed the foundations of his contrarian stance. How could a man of such limited life experience write so convincingly of love, jealously and loss? Shapiro shrewdly points out that, given the large blanks in our knowledge of Shakespeare’s early years, how can we know whether or not he received a good education? How can we arbitrarily decide whether he travelled extensively or not? In effect,
we cannot fill in the blanks with guesswork. In addition, the author also deftly defuses Twain's central argument by showing that an autobiographical approach to writing is a relatively new development, gaining prominence in the nineteenth century. Self-revelation, that is exposing the authors true feelings and thoughts through his characters, was not a method employed in Shakespeare’s time. The writer’s imagination was deployed to much greater effect then than now.
Henry James (also of the Baconian school of thought) took exception to what he regarded as Shakespeare of Stratford's unsavoury business dealings. The American author revealed his true pretentious self when he declared Shakespeare's business dealings as "extremely vulgar". He believed the true author of the plays and sonnets would have been far too high-minded to engage in anything so common as malt-trading and money-lending. This patronizing and condescending attitude was another example of intellectual snobbery and can hardly be taken as conclusive proof that Shakespeare did not write the plays.
Both sects went to extreme measures to prove their man was the rightful author of Shakespeare’s works. With a lack of any real evidence, both Baconians and Oxfordians employed strange and sometimes ridiculous tactics to try to reveal the “truth”. Proponents of the Francis Bacon theory fervently believed that the entire body of work attributed to Shakespeare were actually ciphers, that the plays and sonnets contained hidden messages which would not only confirm Bacon as the bard, but would also reveal explosive political secrets of the Elizabethan period that could not have been disclosed at the time of writing. Code-breaking machines were duly constructed in an attempt to de-cipher the hidden messages. Needless to say, no substantive messages were ever found.
Similarly, Oxfordians put great weight on the fact that anagrams of the name “Vere” were commonplace throughout the plays (as in words like “very” and “every). Coupled with the line “
Every word doth almost tell my name” from Sonnet 76, supporters of the Earl of Oxford were convinced they had backed the right man.
Shapiro, who has always believed Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, affords all these outlandish theories a large degree of respect. He dutifully discusses all hypotheses at length, while admirably steering clear of the temptation to denounce all detractors as lunatics (notwithstanding the fact that one Baconian, a certain Delia Bacon, no relation, did end up living out her days in an asylum while others died penniless and disillusioned as a result of their vain quest). Instead of engaging in hyperbolic condemnations and vehement denials, Shapiro quietly and elegantly disproves the majority of the Baconian and Oxfordian conjectures. Indeed, the author doesn’t waste time disproving the more outrageous claims (for example: that both Bacon and Oxford were Elizabeth I’s illegitimate children, and that Oxford went on to become her incestuous lover) – he allows these theories to speak for themselves. In doing so, he gracefully builds his own case in favour of Shakespeare being the true mastermind behind the works. And it must be said, his reasoning is distinctly more balanced, scholarly and believable than some of the high-profile detractors who have gone before him.
... some notable quotables from Sylvia Plath, American novelist, poet and enfant terrible of mid-twentieth century literary world (1932 - 1963).
... that the famous Chupa Chup lollipop logo was designed by the iconic surrealist painter Salvador Dalì?
In the very early hours of last Wednesday, under cover of night, one of the most audacious art heists in recent history took place in Paris. The scene of the crime was La Musée d’Art Moderne, opposite the Eiffel Tower, directly across the moonlit Seine. A lone masked robber gained access to the famed museum by cutting a padlock and smashing a window pane at the rear of the building. Once inside, the bandit, moving quickly, helped himself to five famous artworks by 20th century masters, valued at around €100 million. The thief’s modus operandi involved brazenly cutting the paintings from their frames, rolling them up and making off by the same route from whence he came.
and the rear window used to enter and exit is in close proximity to the lanes of traffic that zoom ceaselessly by along the banks of the Seine – a perfect escape route which allowed the thief to vanish into thin air! Images of the bandit going about his dastardly business were caught on numerous CCTV cameras inside the museum. Authorities, however, are puzzled as to why the museum’s sophisticated alarm systems were not triggered. The fact that the three watchmen on duty failed to notice that anything was amiss until the cold light of morning has raised suspicions that the robber may have had inside help, or at least inside knowledge. 
In fact, the opposite is true. Depressingly, art theft is a thriving business. The day after the Paris heist, another Picasso was stolen from the home of an art collector in Marseilles. The unfortunate owner was beaten by the intruder. There has been a spate of similar robberies in Marseilles during the past year. Last January, thieves made off with about 30 paintings, again including a work by Picasso, from another private collection. The previous month, an impressionist piece by Edgar Degas, on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, was stolen from a Marseilles museum.
Increasingly, the paintings are held as “hostages”, while thieves demand ransom payments for their safe return, either from the museum or from the State. In 2005, the Tate Britain paid £3.1 million to recover two paintings by Turner, which had been stolen in 1994 while on loan to a gallery in Frankfurt. (The matter had to be dealt with very carefully, as ransom payments are illegal in the UK. It transpired that the Tate eventually paid a reward as opposed to a ransom – however, the distinction between the two is hazy at best!) 
The remarkably perspicacious Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), predicting society's demise into shallow obsessions with consumerism, fame and the materialistic, inadvertently coined a new phrase which would live on in our vernacular 40 years later ... 
The controversy surrounding the Shakespearean authorship question has been rumbling along for many years, centuries even. Indeed, doubts as to whether William Shakespeare of Stratford really penned the great sonnets and plays attributed to him first surfaced around 1795. Since then, contrarians (or anti-Stratfordians, as they have come to be known) have been on an unrelenting quest to prove that Shakespeare’s work was written pseudonymously. Like all good conspiracy theories, the path to discover the truth has been strewn with deception, intrigue, falsifications and a handful of less-than-savoury characters. There have even been ciphers and code-breakers thrown into the mix. A number of high-profile skeptics (Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Henry James, Orson Welles and Sigmund Freud to name but a few) have given credence to the debate.
We know William Shakespeare was born circa April 1564, the son of a glover from Stratford-upon-Avon in rural Oxfordshire. We know, at the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children; a daughter Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Soon after the twins birth, he left his family and went to work in London. He found success as an actor, writer and part-owner of a theatre company called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later to become The Kings Men, after James I succeeded Elizabeth to the throne). He would go on to spend the majority of his working life in London, until he retired to Stratford in 1613 (where he would die three years later). We know he was a businessman as well as an actor; a few surviving receipts and ledger entries indicate that he was a malt-trader and money-lender. We also know he was concerned about his social standing, because there is a record of him applying for “gentleman’s status” later in life when he had become wealthy from his various endeavours.
formed the foundations of his contrarian stance. How could a man of such limited life experience write so convincingly of love, jealously and loss? Shapiro shrewdly points out that, given the large blanks in our knowledge of Shakespeare’s early years, how can we know whether or not he received a good education? How can we arbitrarily decide whether he travelled extensively or not? In effect, we cannot fill in the blanks with guesswork. In addition, the author also deftly defuses Twain's central argument by showing that an autobiographical approach to writing is a relatively new development, gaining prominence in the nineteenth century. Self-revelation, that is exposing the authors true feelings and thoughts through his characters, was not a method employed in Shakespeare’s time. The writer’s imagination was deployed to much greater effect then than now.
Similarly, Oxfordians put great weight on the fact that anagrams of the name “Vere” were commonplace throughout the plays (as in words like “very” and “every). Coupled with the line “Every word doth almost tell my name” from Sonnet 76, supporters of the Earl of Oxford were convinced they had backed the right man. 
Another quote from the irreverent Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967) to brighten your day ...
On 30 April this year, an extraordinary exhibition was launched in the V&A with remarkably little fanfare. The exhibition, nestled in the seldom-visited Theatre & Performance Gallery on the museum’s first floor, is called “My Generation: The Glory Days of British Rock”, and is an anthology of photographs taken behind the scenes of the music chart-show Top of The Pops from 1964 to 1973. The photographer was the then relatively unknown Harry Goodwin who, over the course of a decade, would go on to produce some of the most iconic pop images of a generation.
The renowned group of artists, writers and intellectuals, who collectively became known as "The Bloomsbury Group", have been the subject of innumerable books and biographies in recent years. This may be due to the fact that Bloomsbury (whose members included Leonard and Virginia Woolf, the painter Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive, the artists Duncan Grant and Roger Fry and the economist John Maynard Keynes) were highly influential in the fields of art, literature and economics during the first part of the 20th century. The Group (which incidentally derived its name from the fact that most members lived in close proximity to each other in the Bloomsbury Square area of London) advocated intellectual and sexual freedom. Indeed, the latter is probably the reason why Bloomsbury has held our fascination for so long – the complicated friendships, family ties and romantic entanglements prove irresistible to our curiosity, as we strive to discover what makes this group of extraordinary people tick, both individually and collectively.
Fragile little columns, alive with tiny dancing flames, candles on the birthday cake mark another passing year.
Yesterday, as the British nation went to the polls in the first General Election in five years, Google commemorated the occasion by incorporating the famous door of No. 10 Downing Street into its Doodle du jour. After a hard-fought and dramatic campaign, the country woke up this morning to a parliamentary system plunged into chaos, as it became clear that the ballot failed to return a decisive winner. As politicians and electorate alike scrambled to make sense of this unfolding drama, I was almost expecting the Google Doodle to continue with its political theme, as a reflection of the uncertain and uncharted waters in which we now found ourselves.
Irving Penn (1917 - 2009) was an influential American photographer who specialised in portraiture and fashion photography. Having worked at Harper's Bazaar and American Vogue before setting up his own studio, he was to become one of the most successful portrait photographers of all time. He died last year at the age of 92. 
The River Café is an eatery which has been on my dining wish list since arriving in the UK over three years ago. Established in 1987, it has become one of the most enduring and iconic restaurants on the London dining scene, surviving two major economic recessions, a devastating fire, and more recently, the death of one of it’s co-founders Rose Gray. It gained a prestigious Michelin Star a year after opening, which it has retained ever since.