Rubbo on Marlowe-as-Shakespeare Theory, 2009.

[rockhammer85]

With such a fait accompli approach as that, it's no wonder Stratfordian's are victims of their own complacency!

[rockhammer85]

I really like the part in your film where you had to enlighten Jonathan Bate about Venus and Adonis actually being registered anonymously. So much for the ''scholasticism' of Strafordians! Guys like Bate have more blind spots than they realize. It annoys me how many assumptions he passes off as fact in his introduction to my RSC copy of the Complete Works. The utterly inclusive Thomas Moore draft is casually presented as an example of Shakespeare's composition method!

[MSCblogspot]

My interview with Mike Rubbo that you see here is not part of his Frontline Much Ado About Something documentary.

[scalabration]

Is this the same film that was on Frontline years ago?

[Almuric7]

Whether Shakespeare wrote the greatest literature in history is always going to be something based on agreement, so I understand Dudlow's stance here - but what you can't argue is that most people still regard the Shakespeare canon to be the best works in literature. It's in my opinion a matter of popularity amongst scholars, Homer's works are talked of similarly by Plato in The Republic.

[Capt777harris]

@Almuric7 I don't think it's based on agreement, but rather where circumstantial and evidence and hard facts point. I think Marlowe was probably a valuable contributor to the Shakespeare canon, and he was probably part of a group headed up by DeVere who wrote most of the works.

[bryngOneOn]

some of the great writers, authors mastered, perfected at least one element of story telling, maybe it was dialogue or maybe conjouring imagery, or saying without saying, subtext, or what ever, but the reason people like to pursue the proposition that shakespeare all on his todd did not create such a body of work is for the fact that he was a genius in practically every element of the story telling process and that makes other writers feel totally inept or at least inferior, writer's huge egos

[ChristineA67]

Dudlow . . .you're saying that the works of the First Folio WERE NOT by a literary genius? I actually think Blumenfeld's claim is quite a conventional one. Find me someone who could compose the Henry trilogies, Lear, Hamlet, etc. - oh, in blank verse. I'd love to meet this "commonplace" man. I take it you think Paradise Lost was written by a country bumpkin?

[Dudlow]

I'm mainly wary that the claim that the folio contains "the finest literary work in all of literary history" reduces what should be a critical approach to a glib truism. I don't think we should be afraid of saying that some of the plays aren't as good as others, or that other Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights wrote some equally astounding plays.

[Dudlow]

Mike Rubbo wants to shatter the complacency of the world. But the Marlow-Shakespeare myth rests on the complacent commonplace that the First Folio plays consist of "the finest literary work in all of literary history" that "had to be written by a supreme literary genius". Who could make such a sweeping claim? Step forward, Samuel Blumenfield.

[SebastianHGZ91]

I think you're in the minority, Dudlow. The guy who wrote the plays was a supreme literary genius.

[Dudlow]

I'm not doubting the quality of most of the works in the First Folio, but I think that Blumefeld's claim is far too sweeping: he says that the First Folio is "THE finest literary work in ALL of literary history" - which, unless he has a mastery of Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, etc, seems to be complacently dismissive of a huge mass of works in ALL literary history.

I also think that emphasis on a sole genius ignores the collaborative nature of Elizabethan/Jacobean dramatic production.

[SebastianHGZ91]

Rubbo's film is wonderful. And if you haven't been to the Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection blog, please do.

[ChristineA67]

Mr. Rubbo's film is awesome. There are excerpts on YouTube - Much Ado About Something.

I'm a huge fan of the Marlowe-Shakespeare blogspot also.