[This message has been forwarded from Marshall Grossman]
Yes. Of course you are right. And, reluctantly, because I feel lately that
a sense of humor , to which I lack access, has taken possesion of
the list, I feel ought to say that there is, in fact, no Shakespeare
authorship question. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare--he was a public figure
and misattribution would have required a "conspiracy so vast..." (Well,
Marlowe would have been so busy writing he would not have had the time to
abduct
Mulder's sister). Anyway, reading "Shakespeare" is more fun than worrying
over who he wasn't.
>> The more I read these messages, the more I am convinced that some among
>>us view Marlowe as a James Bond kind of figure, or maybe an early-modern
>>version of "The Third Man". I do not know much about all this and so I will
>>not say whether I agree or disagree but it seems to me that much weight is
>>being placed on the poetry to find evidence for his being Shakespeare and
>>all the rest.
>>> This leads me to the question: why? Why must poetry be taken as
>>>directly representative of someone's life? Are not conventions just that?
>>>Just because a poem is written in the first-person, does that "I" have to be
>>>the poet him/herself? My answers to these questions would be no. I think
>>>it a little symplistic to try to reduce everything in a poem to an
>>>allegorical representation of the life of the poet. I'm not saying that
>>>anyone here is doing this but I had wondered about it, all the same.
>>> Let's use an example. Many people take for granted that Wordsworth is
>>>the "I" in Tintern Abbey. However, the poem itself was composed on the way
>>>to Bristol after he had sat with Dorothy by the "sylvan Wye" and not written
>>>till their return to their lodgings. So, though the poem is written in the
>>>present tense, as though the "I" was viewing the scene, it could not be
>>>Wordsworth. We can say that the poem is inspired by a life-event, but in no
>>>way does it accurately portray that life-event. It is a construction. The
>>>scene, the figures in the scene and the mind of the speaker are all
>>>constructs. This is my view, at least. I hope no one minds this.
>>>
>>>Sara
>>>
>>> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
>>> But I have promises to keep,
>>> And miles to go before I sleep
>>> And miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost)
>>>
>
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