03-05-2009, 12:29 PM
Paul Rigby Wrote:Jack White Wrote:I can fathom no reason for an author of such acclaimed works to disavow them. Jack
Re-visit the sonnets, Jack, and you'll soon see why: the author was very obviously an aristocratic homosexual. Two very good reasons for anonymity in late Elizabethan England. The best biographical fit between oeuvre and author that I've come across is to be found in the case of Oxford.
I suspect that under the complex of reasons for the Elizabethan state and its successors perpetuating the deception lies the question of religion. Oxford, the man who single-handedly funded the English Renaissance, was far from a conventional Protestant Puritan.
Worse, perhaps, he was not above satirising the chief of Elizabethan England's brutal secret police. (The latter was Oxford's father-in-law.)
Paul
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/9862...his-plays-
Quote:BARD ACTOR: ‘SHAKESPEARE MAY NOT HAVE WRITTEN ALL HIS PLAYS'
DOUBTS: Shakespearean devotee Branagh
Sunday, May 3,2009
By Sandro Monetti
SHAKESPEAREAN actor Kenneth Branagh has questioned the true identity of the author of the plays to which the star has devoted his career.
He admits he is beginning to be swayed by the theory that the true author was not William Shakespeare but the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
Branagh said: “There is room for reasonable doubt. De Vere is the latest and the hottest candidate.
“There is a convincing argument that only a nobleman like him could write of exotic settings and that William Shakespeare was a simple country boy.”
Branagh, who has been Oscar nominated three times for his work on Shakespearian films, added: “I’m fascinated by all the speculation.
“If someone could find conclusive proof that Shakespeare wasn’t the author of the plays then it would cause a seismic shock – not least to the economy of Stratford-upon-Avon.”
He was speaking at the US premiere of his BAFTA-winning Swedish detective series, Wallander.