The Olde Shakespeherian Rage doth blow againe. Stray not too farre from
Occam's Barbershop- whenever necessary, he giveth a very close shave
indeed! (And mayhap a cittern, even a lute may be hanging on the wall-
keeping our wayward thread music related...)
On 9/17/2018 9:40 AM, Ron Andrico wrote:
I'm familiar with Shapiro's work. The authorship question indeed. It
is a question and not a given. Some like to say the man from Stratford
was the sole author of the tremendous output of the works of
Shakespeare. That is a theory that has yet to be proven, no matter
what your scholars of English Renaissance literature like to propose.
A thinking person considers that tremendous output and weighs it
against the physical reality of the amount of time required to produce
all that scribbling in light of the work a player like William
Shakespeare was required to do in order to survive. Then a thinking
person considers how persons of noble rank would refrain from
publishing their work (Sidney's work was published posthumously). And
a thinking person observes how authors and musicians would participate
in a salon atmosphere under the patronage of someone like Lucy Countess
of Bedford.
I have had the opportunity to delve into the subject, and the evidence
points to work produced by more than one author that retains a
consistent voice due to a collaborative effort with a common goal.
Like the collaborative effort that produced the King James Bible.
What does this have to do with lute music anyway?
__________________________________________________________________
From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu <lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu> on behalf
of T.J. Sellari <tsell...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 3:19 PM
To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject: [LUTE] Re: The awful English language
Re: Shakespeare authorship question
There are many theories that purport to cast doubt on Shakespeare's
authorship of the plays attributed to him, but scholars of English
Renaisssance literature consider them largely nonsense. I suggest
you
take a look at _Contested Will_ by James Shapiro. A review of the
book
can be found here:
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/20/contested-will-who-wro
te-shakespeare
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 7:16 PM Ron Andrico
<[2]praelu...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
Absolument, Alain. Many forget that the English court was
actually
French until the upstart Henry Tudor slaughtered his way to the
throne. Even then, French was spoken at court through much of
the 16th
century.
As for the less-than-eloquent William Shakespeare, it's just
plain
silly to think he actually wrote the canon commonly attributed
to
his
name. He was a player, a station lower than that of a
professional
musician. We can support various theories of who wrote the
works
commonly attributed to Shakespeare, but my informed belief is
that they
were written by committee, just like the King James Bible was a
few
years hence.
I think there is strong evidence that the plays arose from the
circle
surrounding Lucy Countess of Bedford, including the likes of
John
Donne, Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Danyel. There is
also
a
theory that the very literate Countess of Pembroke, Sir Philip
Sidney's
sister, may have dipped her quill in.
William Shakepeare the playwright is a successful bit of
propaganda
that paved the way for other enormous lies that the public
buys.
It's
really very easy for those in a position of power to promote an
idea
with PR and make the public believe it. Like A=415 was
historical
baroque pitch, for instance.
__________________________________________________________________
From: [3]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
<[4]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
on behalf
of Alain Veylit <[5]al...@musickshandmade.com>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2018 8:37 AM
To: howard posner; Lute net
Subject: [LUTE] Re: The awful English language
If you really want to have a blast at the awful English
language,
look
for something called "law French", a language understood only
by
English
lawyers and very much alive until at least the 18th century. It
makes
modern legaleeze sound simple, although still difficult to read
because
in very small letters. Many poor people sent to the gallows had
no idea
what was said at court...
Joke aside, given the introduction of many French words into
English
(500 words from Montaigne's translator alone) and the still
fairly
strong presence of French as a an aristocratic language for the
few and
the famous still in the 16th century, I am wondering if
Shakespearian
English did not sound quite a bit more French than one might
think.
Which could mean that to study Elizabethan English, you might
have to
study Quebecois French, supposedly much closer to 17th century
French
than Paris French... Or also study modern English pronunciation
of
Latin, which to my ears sounds quite painful - specially the
diphtongs...
For example: modern English "Sir", from the French "sieur" (as
in
monsieur) might have sounded closer to the original French
"sire"
(lord/majesty : monsieur = mon sire = my lord); the word
"court"
might
have sounded closer to the French "cour".
I vaguely remember something about the great diphtong shift in
English
phonetics - that might account for the split from the French
word
"Sire"
(same "i" as Apple's "Siri") to the modern "Sir" and "Sire".
One
diphtonguized the other not. But the French is ambiguous since
we
have
both the word "sieur" (Pronounced pretty close to "sir" and
meaning
"lord" ) and "sire" (pronounced close to "Siri" and meaning
Majesty).
Americans might want to check this video to speak proper modern
English:
[1][6]https://youtu.be/d7RTUXKv9KU and learn about diphtongs...
It's quite
scientific, you know...
On 09/16/2018 01:27 PM, howard posner wrote:
>> On Sep 16, 2018, at 12:14 PM, Matthew Daillie
<[7]dail...@club-internet.fr> wrote:
>>
>> You might be interested in this video which summarizes some
of
the
research carried out by David Crystal et al on English
pronunciation at
the time of Shakespeare (and Dowland) and the productions of
his
plays
at the Globe theatre using 'Original Pronunciation':
>> [2][8]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
> Indeed, I was interested enough to have seen it already. It
explores
the differences between modern Received Pronunciation that
London
stage
actors traditionally use, and the London stage accent of 400
years ago,
which is in many ways similar to the way English sounds in
Bristol
now. Of course, it's all a little peripheral to the question
of
whether Shakespeare might have spelled differently in a letter
to
his
wife in Stratford than he would in a play to be spoken in
London,
or
whether anyone would have cared.
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