The Trial of William Shakespeare E-Book

J. Ajlouny

• Herausgeber: Fresh Ink Group
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 50

Beschreibung

Few men have endured the indignity of having their very existence challenged as thoroughly as William Shakespeare, late of Stratford-upon-Avon. From scholars to amateur enthusiasts, many cannot bring themselves to believe he wrote his own body of work. Playwright J. Ajlouny presents the arguments for and against, all statements and proofs drawn from the historical record. Everybody must decide for himself, but The Trial of William Shakespeare makes the controversy both intriguing and fun.

Leseprobe

THE TRIAL OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

A dramatization of the authorship controversy in which the audience renders a verdict

Copyright © 2018, 1998by J. AjlounyAll rights reserved

Push Pull PressAn Imprint of:Fresh Ink Group, LLCBox 931Guntersville, AL 35976Email: [email protected]

Edition 1.0 1998

Edition 2.0 2018

Cover art by AnikCover by Stephen Geez

Performance: Any performance of this play must be licensed in writing by the publisher, including royalty arrangements. No alterations, deletions, or substitutions of a material nature may be made in this work without prior written permission of Fresh Ink Group, LLC. Authorship credit must appear on all programs and promotions in all media where space permits.

Publication: Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of Fresh Ink Group, LLC.

BISAC Subject Headings:PER013000 PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Broadway & Musicals PER011000 PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General DRA001000 DRAMA / American / General

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933400.

ISBN-13: 978-1-936442-75-1 SoftcoverISBN-13: 978-1-936442-80-5 HardcoverISBN-13: 978-1-936442-76-8 Ebooks

Playscript / Drama

No person in history, except perhaps Christ Himself, has had to endure the indignation of having his very existence challenged as often or as profusely as has William Shakespeare (or Shaxper) late of Stratford-upon-Avon. For over a hundred years now, scholars and cranks alike have seen t to question the man and his works, not because he didn’t write them, but because they can’t possibly bring themselves to believe that he did.

Accumulated here are the arguments for and against the proposition that The Stratfordian was indeed the author of the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare. All statements and all proofs are drawn from the historical record, which the playwright has painstakingly researched. Ultimately each person must decide for him or herself. In this age of reticence and disbelief, this is proving to be no small task.

Remarks from audience/participants/jurors:

“Absolutely fascinating!”

“I didn’t realize the depth of this mystery.”

“It’s a good case... and an intriguing courtroom drama.”

“Well written and well played.”

“The playwright’s research is impressive and his use of humor is brilliant.”

“Lots of fun!” “There’s not a chance in hell he wrote those plays.”

Foreward

BARD BEYOND BELIEFThe Persistent William Shakespeare Mystery

By Jonathon Bate

Professor of English Literature, University of Liverpool

The annoying thing about William Shakespeare is that his life was so mundane and so unpoetic. The only raw materials he required for the creation of his plays were a grammar school education and a lifetime in the theater as an actor, scriptwriter and shareholder of the King’s Men, the most successful playing company of the age. He became the most admired dramatist of his generation, but nobody expressed any surprise when in about 1612 he handed over the role of in-house scriptwriter for the King’s Men to John Fletcher and retired to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, where he died quietly four years later.

Seven years after that, his fellow actors—whom he had remembered with generosity in his will—put together the sumptuous First Folio of his collection “Comedies, Histories and Tragedies.” His friend Ben Jonson contributed a generous prefatory poem, “To the memory of my beloved, the author Mr.William Shakespeare,” in which the “Sweet Swan of Avon” was praised as a poet who outstripped the classical authors of Greece and Rome in spite of his own somewhat limited acquaintance with their works.

Over the next hundred years, Shakespeare’s reputation uctuated, the frenchi ed court taste of the reign of Charles II showing a preference for Jonson and Fletcher. But in the course of the 18th century, rst in Germany and then in England, there was a reaction against the stultifying “correctness” of French taste, with it’s demand for tragedy to be kept apart from comedy and high culture from low. The new watchwords were “naturalness” and “original genius” – qualities found above all in Shakespeare’s plays.

By the time of the Romantic movement in the 19th century, Shakespeare had become synonymous with creative genius. But Romanticism brought a new cult of the artist’s life. To be a true genius one had to live on the edge, to be struck dead like Beethoven, to be mad, bad and dangerous to know like Byron, or to wander the Orient in a drug crazed stupor like Rim-baud. So it was that a motley crue of Victorian and Edwardian eccentrics set about reinventing Shakespeare in the image of the Romantic artist.

The most enduring of these reinventions has been the attempt to dress him up as a cross between Byron and the Scarlet Pimpernel. Over the years more than a dozen Elizabethan aristocrats have been dusted off and presented to the public as the true author of the plays. Americans have been especially fascinated by the bizarre pseudo-mystery. Perhaps because the only two things the British have and Americans have not are Blue Blood and William Shakespeare, it has proved all too tempting to suppose that Shakespeare was a “nobleman in disguise.”

Yet their case remains unproved. While it may seem unlikely to some, the fact remains, William Shakespeare, the Warwickshire squire, was indeed the principal author of the poems and plays attributed to him. Though the evidence to prove this fact is admittedly wanting, there is absolutely no proof that anybody other than he was the true author. Yes, many names have been submitted, ranging from Edward deVere, the 17th Earl of Oxford to Francis Bacon, and even to King James I himself. However, not only did they nor their heirs ever claim authorship, the known fact disqualify each the true author of Shakespeare’s works was a normal family man who retired into obscurity, tended to his own affairs and enjoyed a natural death far from the maddening crowds. Now that’s poetic!

© 1997 Jonathon BateReprinted by permission