David Miller has a point, although what (and I'm sorry to be so blunt
and rude) sometimes seems to me the social pathology of looking for
someone except the man from Stratford as the primary author, sort
of, of most of the plays, in some version, is in itself a cultural
curiosity, I entirely agree with Thomas that we need to remember the
fluidity of authorship. I'd add that this is particularly true in
show biz--before he died one of my closest friends was Oscar
Hammerstein's son, and the stories he had to tell of on-the-road
revisions to the book and even the songs were what made me most aware
of this. On the other hand someone's hand held the pen that first
wrote those sonnets, say, or most of them or their first versions, or
whatever, and it seems only human to want to know a bit about the
owner of the hand, just as I was thrilled in the Columbia library to
hold a book with annotations by the hand of Cuthbert Tunstall, who
had shaken the hand of Thomas More. This may not be rational, and it
may be *intellectually* tedius, but I do care if only for sentimental
reasons who wrote *As You Like It*. However, "authorship" was an
entirely meaningless concept for way back when, whatever the pomo
fashion of a few years ago claimed it to have been. One of my
favorite comments on authorship (aside from David M's dazzling essay
that Thomas cites) comes from Richard Brathwaite, who has a brief
autobiography/memoir explaining that his parents sent him to London
to law school but that he preferred the Muses (and I assume cut
classes a lot); his ambition, he says, was to be able to walk the
streets of London and have people point to him and say "There goes
one of the wits, an author!" I'm quoting from memory, but he does say
"author" and "wit" and desires to be pointed at. Nobody questions
*his* authorship, not just because he wasn't a playwright and forced
to collaborate but because he's not a cultural icon. Anne P.
On Sep 20, 2007, at 9:31 AM, THOMAS HERRON wrote:
> I must add that DLM's criticism on the "Spenserian or not?"
> authorship of
> "Verses upon the Earl of Cork's lute" also make fascinating reading.
>
> Brian Vickers et al have been making great headway on the textual/
> linguistic
> components of the non- or co-authorship of some of Shakespeare's
> poems (cf.
> "A Lover's Complaint") and plays (cf. "Titus Andronicus"), so
> insofar as we
> are forced to acknowledge the fluidity of authorship in
> Shakespeare's hectic
> milieu, then the better off we are. The authorship question
> ("Oxford or
> Shakespeare or Greville?") may be "mal posee" (or mal poseur) as a
> result if
> the basis behind it is to ask, "what original genius wrote this
> stuff?",
> when the idea of a solidified genius operating
> unhindered/untainted/uncollaborated/unedited/un-posthumously-
> revised in the
> smutty London theatre and publishing scene of the 1580s-1610s is a
> dubious
> one.
>
> --Tom H.
>
>
> On 9/20/07 6:15 AM, "David L. Miller" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I was going to ignore this question, but there's been such a lack of
>> decent curmudgeonship thus far, amid all the eloquence and good
>> humor,
>> that I feel compelled to speak up.
>>
>> The only time I ever find the authorship question interesting is when
>> critics like Ken Gross or Jim Nohrnberg write on it. The rest of the
>> time it's just a distraction. Life is short, and there are so many
>> really fascinating critical ideas to pursue in reading
>> Shakespeare. I
>> really and truly wish this one would just go away. It's not
>> taboo, but
>> it sure is tedious!
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