The
Aristocratic Shakespeare
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page was posted on 6-4-05. It will be updated as further data becomes
available
A
Sampling of the opinions:
As
Ogburn and other anti-Stratfordians argue persuasively, Shakespeare
may have inhabited court circules. He did not merely experience them
at a distance. It is not snobbery on Ogburn's part to advocag what any
reasonable person must recognize as the playwright's easy and immediate
familiarity with court life -- the manners, customs, and habits of mind
of the aristocracy. Shakespeare was of a circle from which the Stratford
man seems not to have come.
(Crinkley 521)
Conceived
out the fullest head and pulse of European fuedalism, personifying in
unparallel'd ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless
and gigantic caste, its own particular air and arrogance (no mere imitation),
one of the wolfish earls so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some
born knower and descendent, would seem to be the true author of these
amazing works.
(Walt
Whitman, 1984)
In
the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnngs will reveal themselves
somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare.
Whoever wrote [Shakespeare] had an aristocratic attitude.
(Charles
Chaplin, source unidentified)
Works
Cited
Crinkley,
Richmond. "New Perspectives on the Authorship Question," Shakespeare
Quarterly 36:515-522).
Whitman,
Walt. "What Lurks Behind Shakspere's Historical Plays?" in
PeterRawlings, ed.. Americans On Shakespeare, 1776-1914,
pp. 357-359. Brookfield, Vt: Ashgate, 1999.
