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Jest in Literature - Who Wrote Shakespeare ?
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Gunjan
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Mar 06, 2004 18:54 PST
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JEST in LITERATURE
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7th March 2004
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IN THIS DIGEST :
Intro
~ Gunjan
Who wrote Shakespeare's Stuff
~ An extract from Woody Allen's Without Feathers
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WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Fess Fink - reform school student, stoolie
Manny Hughes - age 4, crayon artist extraordinaire
Fran Ticke - a.k.a. The Deadline Queen
Punny names, joke-cartoons, and more at
http://www.grinningplanet.com/9001/jestforpun.htm
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====> Another quick word
I had the dragon by the tail . . . and then he slipped
away again. Any suggestions on the right way to catch
a dragon ?
~ Gunjan
[Note for Newcomers - This list runs on the brain
power of The Doc. Gunjan normally just supplies
the fingers {which means he formats the issues}. Since
The Doc has been doing a Rip Van Winkle on us
Gunjan is upto naughty business.]
Comments or Questions :
mailto:li-@workinghumor.com?Subject=QuickNote
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Thomas Leech, one of today's experts on public speaking and
business communication, teams up with William Shakespeare,
the acknowledged master of language, timing, and persuasion,
to offer powerful communication lessons.
http://snipurl.com/sayit
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====> The Real Problem with Shakespeare
Ask the average man who wrote the plays entitled
Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Othello,
and in most cases he'll snap confidently back with,
"The Immortal Bard of Stratford on Avon." Ask him
about the authorship of Shakespearean sonnets and see
if you don't get the same illogical reply. Now put these
questions to certain literary detectives who seem to
crop up every now and again over the years, and don't
be surprised if you get answers like Sir Francis Bacon,
Ben Jonson, Queen Elizabeth and possibly even the
Homestead Act.
The most recent of these theories is to be found in a book
I have just read that attempts to prove conclusively that the
real author of Shakespeare's works was Christopher Marlowe.
The book makes a very convincing case, and when I got
through reading it I was not sure if Shakespeare was Marlowe
or Marlowe was Shakespeare or what. I know this, I would
not have cashed checks for either one of them - and I like their
work.
Now, in trying to keep the above mentioned theory in
perspective, my first question is: if Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's
works, who wrote Marlowe's? The answer to this lies in the
fact that Shakespeare was married to a woman name Anne
Hathaway. This we know to be factual. However, under the
new theory, it is actually Marlowe who was married to Anne
Hathaway, a match which caused Shakespeare no end of grief,
as they would not let him in the house.
One fateful day, in a jealous rage over who held the lower
number in a bakery, Marlowe was slain - slain or whisked
away in disguise to avoid charges of heresy, a most serious
crime punishable by slaying or whisking away or both.
It was at this point that Marlowe's young wife took up the
pen and continued to write the plays and sonnets we all
know and avoid today. But allow me to clarify.
We all realize that Shakespeare (Marlowe) borrowed his
plots from the ancients (moderns) ; however, when the time
came to return the plots to the ancients he had used them up
and was forced to flee the country under the assumed name
of William Bard (hence the term "immortal bard") in an effort
to avoid debtor's prison (hence the term "debtor's prison").
Here Sir Francis Bacon enters the picture. Bacon was an
innovator of the times who was working on advanced
concepts of refrigeration. Legend has it he died attempting
to refrigerate a chicken. Apparently the chicken pushed
first. In an effort to conceal Marlowe from Shakespeare,
should they prove to be the same person, Bacon had
adopted the fictitious name Alexander Pope, who in reality
was Pope Alexander, head of the Roman Catholic Church
and currently in exile owing to the invasion of Italy by the
Bards, last of the nomadic hordes (the Bards give us the
term "immortal bard"), and years before had galloped off
to London, where Raleigh awaited death in the tower.
The mystery deepens for, as this goes on, Ben Jonson stages
a mock funeral for Marlowe, convincing a minor poet to take
his place for the burial. Ben Jonson is not to be confused with
Samuel Johnson. He was Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson
was not. Samuel Johnson was Samuel Pepys. Pepys was
actually Raleigh, who had escaped from the tower to write
Paradise Lost under the name of John Milton, a poet who
because of blindness accidentally escaped to the tower and was
hanged under the name of Jonathan Swift. This all becomes
clearer when we realize that George Eliot was a woman.
Proceeding from this then, King Lear is not a play by
Shakespeare but a satirical revue by Chaucer, originally
titled "Nobody's Parfit," which contains in it a clue to the
man who killed Marlowe, a man known around in
Elizabethan times (Elizabeth Barret Browning) as Old Vic.
Old Vic became more familiar to us later as Victor Hugo,
who wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which most
students of Literature feel is merely Coriolanus with a few
obvious changes. (Say them both fast.)
We wonder then, was not Lewis Carroll caricaturing the
whole situation when he wrote Alice in Wonderland? The
March Hare was Shakespeare, the Mad Hatter, Marlowe,
and the Dormouse, Bacon - or the Mad Hatter, Bacon,
and the March Hare, Marlowe - or Carroll, Bacon and the
Dormouse, Marlowe - or Alice was Shakespeare - or Bacon
- or Carroll was the Mad Hatter. A pity that Carroll is not
alive today to settle it. Or Bacon. Or Marlowe. Or Shakespeare.
The point is, if you're going to move, notify your post office.
Unless you don't give a hoot about posterity.
~ From Woody Allen's "Without Feathers"
For the best quotes from this book visit
http://www.workinghumor.com/quotes/feathers.shtml
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Does the idea of speaking in front on an audience
make you lose zzzzzleep?
Check out www.workinghumor.com/wake.htm
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Thanks
JD Lentz
Gunjan
gun-@workinghumor.com
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