Anonymous | Mark Rylance on Shakespeares plays (2011)

[walshwork]

What folks know, but always leave out of the argument, is that Shakespeare was a genius. Not using that word lightly. His father was a glove maker. True. Einstein's parents were middle class and he worked at the Patent office. How can one man have written these plays with the insight and depth and humor and pathos they contain? How do you explain his plays? Genius. It is rare but does exist. Shakespeare.

[Capt777harris]

@walshwork There's no argument about it. Even geniuses need raw data to work with. Shakspear didn't have any.

[Capt777harris]

This movie is pure shit made by a bunch of egomaniacs who believe in the delusion of genius without a database. These people, director included, are a pretty insulting collection of individuals.

[5SECNDS]

David Thewlis at 00:14 haha!

[searchjedi]

Having just waded through Anderson's Big Book of Circumstantial Fantasy and Shoddy Logic, "Shakespeare By Another Name", I'll say I'm comfortable with my knowledge of De Vere and his life. There are serious problems with the theory that Oxfordians seem to blithely ignore and dating *is* an issue. One third of the cannon must be moved from the earliest evidence/mention we have in order to accommodate the theory... statistically speaking, damned unlikely. And: How did they get to the stage?

[usodstallion]

This is gold.

[searchjedi]

utter nitwittery and tin foil hat conspiratorial clap trap. Any currently proposed candidate outside the glover's son requires a complete overhaul of the dating of the plays. Mathematically speaking... unlikely at best. From a debate standpoint, a series of arguments from silence.  Show motive, opportunity, and means... then support it with hard evidence for each... or this is simply an Xfiles episode dressed in academic gowns and ruffs.

[edboswell]

@searchjedi Alot of bluster for someone who knows little or nothing about Edward de Vere~~~ I wonder why de Vere's relatives were the dedicatees of the 1st folio? Or that deVere's father in law is parodied as Polonius according to strict Stratfordians~~~~  PS: there is no exact dating of the plays. They've dated them so late in order to fit into the time frame of someone 14 years younger than the true author. That, sir, is called circular thinking. Ur-Hamlet? no copies exist.

[ellubiti]

Mark Rylance and Shakespeare all the way! Absolutely loved his portrayal of Richard II in the Globe a few years back. Strangebrooch has uploaded videos from it. -Check it out:)

Looking forward to seeing Rhys Ifans in the part of de Vere.

[alanskillcole]

Plutarch's Lives must have impressed Shakespeare. In Antony and Cleopatra it's clear how much he lifted from his copy.

Few people travelled across continents in Shakespeare's day. So reading was crucial for local insights like this one.

George Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra,..It is based on one of the tales in Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi...changed yet again by Shakespeare when in his Measure for Measure

windowsonwarwickshireorguk

[alanskillcole]

John Florio was librarian and tutor to Shakespeare's patron, the earl of Southampton. He probably assisted Shakespeare with the language found in books like Hecatommithi which inspired Othello.

Shakespeare had read about the Battle of Agincourt in Raphael Holinshed's words before he sat down to work on Henry V.

His characters' speeches on the casualties of the battle are drawn from Holinshed's own account.

windowsonwarwickshireorguk/spo­tlightsshakespearesstudysource­s10

[alanskillcole]

Warwickshire words are scattered through his lines, like poppies in a wheat field. When, in Macbeth, Banquo is described as "blood bolter'd" (having his hair matted with blood), it is not difficult to imagine Shakespeare remembering that in Warwickshire snow is sometimes said to balter on horses' feet.

[alanskillcole]

Despite his inconveniently early death in 1604 – before Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest were written and/or staged – de Vere continues to fascinate the anti-Stratfordians

[alanskillcole]

"Why on earth," Nunn continues, "would Jonson, who owes nothing to anyone, and who had competed with Shakespeare throughout his professional life, take part in a cover-up to help the Earl of Oxford from admitting that he had anything to do with the theatre?"

"To accept that someone from the lower orders, not formally educated at Oxford or Cambridge, could be a genius is very hard for us."

wwwguardiancouk/culture/2010/m­ar/14/who-wrote-shakespeare-ja­mes-shapiro

[dombstone]

Why is it so hard to believe that Will wrote his works with a plain education? Look at Lincoln he taught himself. As for the De vere theory, I'm sure that he might have heard some banter about his life somewhere and appropriated it. Writers tend to filch gossip & news, and actors love to brag. Quit dissin Shakespeare. I'm sure he took from Marlowe too.

[LewisD84]

Mainstream scholarship notes that extravagant praise for de Vere's poetry was a convention of flattery; that he was a mediocre poet; that he was patron for an acting company from 1580 to 1602 which did NOT produce Shakespeare's plays; under the most thorough recent computer analysis, are 'light years apart';

The testimony of Meres that de Vere was 'best for comedy' is followed by a further comment naming Shakespeare, which shows Meres knew that Oxford and Shakespeare were not the same man.

[rockhammer85]

Nice one, Mark Rylance. Anything that get up the noses of pompous, stuffy, one-sided, presumptuous, bardolizing Strafordians has to be a good for our culture.

There's probably more evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness monster than there is for William Shakespeare actually having written the plays attributed to him. Just because his name is on the front hardly means anything at all. Next we'll be hearing that Alan Smithee really directed the films that bear his name.

[morphybum]

Not sure that Dostoevsky actually murdered anybody. Or that Goethe ever was visited by Mephistopheles... oh, endless tosh, Mr Rylance! (Great actor, nonetheless)

[inlandonline]

Mark Rylance has itchy arms. We should ask Tim Roth (Lie To Me) what Mark's body language means. Whatever Tim Roth says will then be taken as gospel truth about Mark Rylance, whether Mr. Roth knows Mr. Rylance at all. That's about the amount of credibility Mr. Rylance has in talking about Wm. Shakespeare.

[whiteboimonologuez]

@inlandonline yeah sure, i mean, other than the fact that he was the artistic director of The Globe for 10 years and is one of the finest Shakesperean actors of our time, Mark Rylance definitely knows little to none about Shakespeare, especially compared to you, oh mighty one.

[BenMAugust]

check out facebook/TrueShakespeare - we've got a great gallery and gift shop devoted to de Vere opening up. - Ben

[BenMAugust]

Great stuff - It's going to be a fabulous movie!

[SiLlyGoOse4321]

LOVE HIM!

[Equinox1969]

Mark Rylance certainly has a point there but (!) Shakespeare's plays are just so accessible because anybody can relate. Thus in consequence what is described in the plays is not limited to some Tudor upper class guy. The difference between an artist and a not artist can never be made out by his or her biography :-). What distinguishes them is not what happens to them but in which way they perceive it, and dare to express it. Why cannot a boy from a small town do this?!

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Because he didn't have the education and experience to do it.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris In dubio pro reo!!! Unless you can prove your allegations that is. In fact btw is what really disturbs and bothers me the question concerning the motives of those that would have De Vere be the author and what this is telling about our contemporary society and culture. Think about it....

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 The motive is simple; seek the truth. It's not a case of putting down Shakespeare the man, but a case of lifting up whoever used him as a cover for authorship.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris Well, then good luck to you! You see, I'm very interested in phenomenology and this whole matter is very intriguing if viewed as a phenomenon rather than as a hunt for whatever strange "truth", I personally prefer fact. Like in reader-response criticism this issue tells more about those people, who raise it, than of any fact. For we can never really know and who cares any way?! It be a thoroughly laughable farce, if not somehow the view is sustained that only to be continued..

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris that only excellent people - and here are meant those excelling by birth (and education) - can produce excellence. If I'd use a nice term I would label it elitist.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Every machine, specifically computational machine, needs material to work from. I don't think it elitist to state that Shakespeare didn't have the database to work from. He may have had the same feelings you and I had, but he did not have the experience to write what is attributed to him.

To write in detail about places he never visited, and circumstances he never experienced, when another candidate did, leaves some plausible questions as to authorship.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris Imagination, there's the rub, at least concerning your very nice PC metaphor, of course this is what any machine ultimately lacks, imagination!!!

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Well, imagination is a powerful thing, but it needs material to operate. To conjure "cap-a-pie" for Hamlet (jargon for a fully armed knight) from the imagination is unfounded. Therefore it would have to be research. Likewise with the detailed description of the villa said to have inspired Merchant of Venice, or the setting for "Twelfth Night" and "Midsummer..." Where did he get the research to write of those places? You're saying he made it up. I doubt it.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris The benefit of doubt should be granted if to anybody to Shakespeare because he is the initially accused in this bizarre trial. The first step before De Vere appeared anywhere in the vast landscape of conspiracy, must have been that somebody just couldn't believe that such a common person as Shakespeare might have invented/dreamed/combined this vast oeuvre and truly it is impossible to imagine somebody like him, maybe all one can concede is that whoever was much gifted ...

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 It's more a case of believing what's more likely and plausible.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris You've said a great word there "believe" and this is exactly where this whole business should rest. We shall never know, so let's not pretend we ever will. A point pro Shakespeare is e g that his contemporaries believed in him, then there are the multitudinous allusions to the theatre and the fact, that it is, from my own experience and I'm not a native speaker, very easy to learn the text by heart, which make the author out to be a practitioner-was de Vere?!

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Look, I'm not going to read a novel or mini essay that you've written. Shakespeare the actor didn't write what is claimed he did. Enough said. Open your mind and learn., because I'm not going to change it.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris And this when I've been just asking a French friend of mine to comment on the expression "cap-a-pie"... ;-) ( and have received no reply yet)

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 It's a military expression of the time to describe a fully armed knight. I have no idea what else you're referencing.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris It's of course derrived from French and considering that following the Norman conquest the ruling class probably spoke French - hence the many expressions of Latin/French origin in English - it is likely that this somehow distorted French term stems from this time, the Middle Ages, because knights in full armour belonged to the ruling classes anyway.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 No kidding. But an author NEEDED to HAVE That knowledge to begin with to even BEGIN to use it in any context.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris No kidding either the correct modern French expression would be "de pied en cap", just vice versa, as I've been told. And NO, the author did not NEED this information because this is HIS CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE, it is only us, who after 400 years need to be told, though modern French is still similar. To keep my "essay" short: The author was somebody with a very huge vocabulary -several tens of thousands or even far more different words-thus somebody with a talent for language.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Well, okay, how often do you use military jargon in your everyday speech? Unless your a military afficionado or are in the military, then the answer is probably not much. Likewise with other expressions and career specific word usage. "cap-a-pie" is just the first one that came to mind, but there are others. To use my example that was no more common than using HEAP in everyday language to describe a tank shell.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris I'm really marvelling at your knowledge of everyday language at the end of the 16th century in England. Are there any statistics I wonder, how common or uncommon was cap-a-pie anyway and if used in a play would people understand it? Are you by any way in uniform since you are aware of the word HEAP, which being an acronym is probably less common than an expression of French/Latin origin. Are you sure that it still was used at the time because of its medieval connotation?

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 No, we weren't there, we don't have statistics, just writings and legends. But if you're in a turret of an M1A1 Abrams tank calling off the rounds like HEAP, HEAT or SABOT, how many people outside tankers would be aware of the terminology? Ditto with any jargon. Codes for dispatchers, medical lingo, movie production, various sciences, etc.

It's pretty clear that Shakspeare, the actor, did not have such exposure to write the material attributed to him.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris Maybe we need to establish the literary meaning of this marvellous cap-a-p(i)e first. "Cap" or "caput" is simply "head" and "a" or "ad" is "to" and "p(i)e" or "pedes" is "foot" or "feet", and thereby says about the same as "top to toe" a few lines further in the text and a figure clad in iron from head to toe was hardly a common military device in the 16th century any more. Latin btw was a language that was also taught at schools in small towns at the time.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris And what makes you so sure that it was a military expression at all, one could be clad or covered in many things "cap-a-pie", silk or mud have it your way.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Because every goddamn historian and military text from the time says so.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris But this doesn't prove that it was exclusively used as a military expression and moreover the second time the author employs it, it's in The Winter's Tale,has no military connotation at all, because it says "I am courtier cap-a-pie". Still I'm very much enchanted by the thought that the author was mocking the use of foreign words by scholars, like we say in German: Don't use a foreign word if you can find an adequat synonym.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 It does. The line in winter's tail is in a different context from that of Hamlet. In Hamlet it's a military descriptor. In Winter it's a cliche; i.e. the 20th century equivalent of "Armed for bear", meaning the letter carrier is ready for brigands or hired assailants.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris I would challenge your view and say that it simply means "entirely" or from "top to toe" in this context -because Autolycos has been describing that even his breath is that of a courtier,he is transpiring the air of a courtier very thoroughly, entirely-, like in Hamlet btw, the military descriptor is "armed cap-a-pie" not "cap-a-pie" in itself-the same goes for the French expression btw,my French friend was puzzled because only if connected to armour it bears a military meaning.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris Forgive me I was a little bit tired this morning, but I got it only just now, it says "courtier" and not "courier", I was definitely wondering about the letter. You wouldn't know Harold Pinter and the city of Leeds by any chance, because I'm just feeling so Pinteresque at this very moment...

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris I'm beginning to doubt that it is a military expression more and more, because considering that it is sweet Horatio, a scholar by nature, using this term in the play, it rather feels like it's being employed to show off in front of the soldiers and a small hint of jealousy at Hamlet, who has recently returned from Wittenberg, while Horatio remained in Denmark. So he employs a Latin expression to show his scholarly status. The great military expert is in the play is Fortinbras btw.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Whatever. You're all over the map here. Go read some history, then get back to me.

[Capt777harris]

@Equinox1969 Part of the point is that he didn't have that expansive a vocabulary, because he did not write the plays in the first place.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris I was referring to the author of the plays, and asking if he or she couldn't have been an actor, if so the she is ruled out for quite obvious reasons, lol.

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris He must have been absorbing anything he could get hold of and here again the point that he has been associated to the theatre himself becomes very strong, the language is really from a very low social level- workers, regional dialect,etc- to the highest. Who would get in contact with such a great variety, a nobleman to whom people would be anxious to show their best manners or an actor, who works at a place of recreation for anybody? Who is more likely to observe unobserved?

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris and used these gifts in an extra-ordinary manner - Dr Karl Wollf, who had been the artistic director of the Theatre in Dresden and who fled to England to escape the Nazis, called the author of the plays "ver-rückt" (for lack of better translation "mad", but it also implies to the capacity of crossing mental borders, transforming reality). Your machine image reminded me of a book I've once read in a seminar and which I'm also suggesting to you, as it is concerned with ...

[Equinox1969]

@Capt777harris exactly the issue of artistic creation and offers a philosophical view on this miracle. It is "The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art" by Arthur C Danto. Oddly his starting point is to imagine a machine/PC that would by some strange coincidence produce an artefact that exactly resembles Rembrandt's Night watch.

[stonedhamlet]

I believe that a guy from Statford was able to acqiure such the level of education...

Otherwise what would they sell? CAPITALISM AND SHAKESPEARE INDUSRTY - that's it, but the culture of Shakespeare if different and I Love it

[TheFranklyman]

Antistratfordians rely solely upon speculation about what they think the "real" author should have been like, because they cannot produce one historical fact to bolster their refusal to accept who that author actually was - William Shakespeare. Duh

[khi590]

so curious to see that new film...The knowledge behind Shakespeare's plays is also discussed in detail in Peter Dawkins Shakespeare book series (and Shakespeare Enigma) with foreword by Mark - both had and have great workshops ...

And the stage of the film will be rebuilt in Berlin centre (instead of another castle) - Shakespeare for all for all times

[lycantrope71]

david thewlis is so sexy

[sasukevsorochimaru]

@lycantrope71 He is :)

[VelmaSabina]

Mark Rylance is amazing <3