the Symposium and Shakespeare

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N. Kowalski
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the Symposium and Shakespeare

Post by N. Kowalski »

Hi everyone,

Very glad to have found this forum today. Long ago in high school I studied Latin and liked it, but haven't taken it up since then - just the odd word
looked up, and some English translations of poetry, and of writings of Caesar and Hadrian. As a retired architect I now just follow my nose so to speak, and recently have been studying some Shakespeare ahead of the performances this summer at the annual Shakespeare festival nearby, here in Ontario. At the same time I have been
on the trail of the 'real' Shakespeare, ie the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere - who it seems may have been a son of Elizabeth 1st - who was educated at Cambridge, and Oxford as well as at Grey's Inn, London.

In his play 'Timon of Athens' an important character is called Alcibaides. We were
wondering if at Shakespeare's time, the 16th century, in England, Plato's SYMPOSIUM
was known/ sudied - either in Greek or in Latin. Seem to be some connections in the
characterization and action. (The Shakepeare from Stratford was barely educated.)

What a marvellous story the Symposium is - I just heard of it, but hope to read it
soon myself - in English only I'm afraid. But.......

Will be grateful for any help here - especially about the Symposium being known.

PS Can I contribute anything - past experience?
Spent some time as volunteer digger at Hadrian's wall
Visited many wonderful Roman sites in UK and Europe.

Look forward to chatting with anyone who may have interests in the Romans - esp their culture and architecture.

Cheers!
NK

Helen of Troy
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Post by Helen of Troy »

Welcome on board, Mr Kowalski! I myself am a "freshman" on Textkit, but I already feel overwhelmed. People here are very enthusiastic and willing to help.

As regards the Shakespeare's issue, it (almost) always good to doubt sth. But here I don't think you have the point, at least concerning the Alcibaides argument. If he wasn't familiar with ancient world, how could he write so meny works related to Greco-Roman civilisation? I don't intend to discuss his works or something, except for one that I hold most illustrative for our story here. There is no better proof of his classical knowledge then his "Comedy of Errors", which is a slight modification of Plaut's hilarious comedy "Menaechmi, or The Twin Brothers". If he was ignorant or barely educated, how could he read the great Plaut? How could he know about him at all?

On the other hand, in western christanity (ie catholicism) the debate on Aristotel and Plato arised as early as The Middle Ages; and so, try to figure out their popularity few centuries later, during the period which bare the name of Renaissance only because of renewing the interests towards ancient traditions! Since "The Symposium" is one of the Plato's best works of his early period, its fame in the 16th century England is doubtless.

I hope I was helpful.

P.S. "This was the noblest Roman of them all." :wink:

chad
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Post by chad »

i remember reading that francis bacon could also have been shakespeare. he had the requisite vocab (shakespeare's vocab exceeds milton's by several times i think i remember reading), the inside knowledge of the court, latin and greek (since shakespeare does follow the ancient authors, often almost direct translation), &c. also the fontispiece fancy swirly pictures at the start of the first folio of shakespeare's works have been read as rebus codes for Bacon (something about birds held at bay, and rabbits, or conies or something like that).

i haven't read any more on this debate in the last few years tho (since high school)... is that de vere guy the current favourite for some reason?

cheers, chad. :)

bingley
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Post by bingley »

I can't say how well Plato's Symposium or Plautus would have been known at the time the plays were written, but Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades was known in Sir Thomas North's English translation.

Sir Thomas' translation of the life of Alcibiades can be found here:

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/pte ... ut.+Alc.+1

Apparently there are quite close correspondences between the wording in Sir Thomas' translation of Plutarch's life of Mark Antony and that of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra".

Keesa
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Post by Keesa »

chad wrote:i remember reading that francis bacon could also have been shakespeare.
Somehow, I find that very hard to believe. I read Bacon's "Essays Civil and Moral" several months ago...his literary spirit is nothing like Shakespeare's. Granted, it's not an argument that would stand for long in a court of law, but it works for me.

I wrote an essay once, called "A Rose by Another Name"...the point of the essay was to prove that we *need* Shakespeare, as Shakespeare, not as Bacon or Milton or anyone else.

Hmm...I wonder where I put that.... :D

mercutio
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william is shakespeare

Post by mercutio »

It's so easy to think Shakespeare was ignorant. But wrong. If you find out the curriculum for the grammar school Shakespeare attended - & it was called a grammar school because all they did was grammar, not maths, science, just grammar - you'll see that his Latin grammar & texts would almost be the equivalent of a modern university BA. His teachers would have been from Oxford or Cambridge.
Francis Bacon is not Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe is not Shakespeare (another theory). Edward de Vere is not Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is Shakespeare. We have more irrefutable evidence of the life of William Shakespeare than ANY OTHER English Renaissance playwright, except Ben Jonson (who loved himself so much).
Shakespeare's vocabulary comes to about 25000 words. The nearest to him is Milton (about 10000 words).
So Shakespeare could read Latin in the original. And probably French & Italian. Plus he also used Plutarch - translated into English by North from the French translation of the Latin - & Golding's Metamorphoses.
As the acknowledged supreme poet of his time, of course he would move in inner circles. Bacon was his friend, as was Giordano Bruno, John Dee & all the young aristocrats of the time. A really good discussion of the inner circles & secret societies that Shakespeare definitely had knowledge of - if not membership in - can be found in Ted Hughes' Shakespeare & the Goddess of Complete Being. It describes what he knew, how he knew it & why he knew it. Invaluable.

mercutio
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Post by mercutio »

A mass of evidence from his own time shows that a man called William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Much of it comes from public sources, such as many title pages of plays and poems published in his lifetime, and references in works by other writers such as Francis Meres, who in 1598 named Shakespeare as the author of twelve plays, and John Weever, who wrote a poem addressed to Shakespeare.

Other references come from manuscript sources, such as references in accounts of court performances, many entries in the Stationers' Register (a volume in which publishers and printers were required to register the works they intended to publish), a note about Hamlet by the writer Gabriel Harvey, and William Drummond's notes of his private conversations with Ben Jonson.

Explicit evidence that the Shakespeare who wrote the plays was the man of Stratford-upon-Avon is provided by his monument in Holy Trinity Church, which compares the man of Stratford with great figures of antiquity, by Ben Jonson's verses in the First Folio, which call him the 'sweet swan of Avon', and, also in the Folio, by verses by Leonard Digges which refer to his 'Stratford monument'. There is also much oblique evidence, such as the fact that visitors to Stratford during the seventeenth century sought to learn more about its most famous former inhabitant.

Equally there is nothing to show that anyone doubted Shakespeare's authorship until the late eighteenth century. Those who express doubts focus on the following propositions:
'The works are too learned to be the product of a man from Stratford who did not go to a university.'

This scepticism reflects ignorance of the grammar school curriculum of Shakespeare's time, which required pupils to write and speak in Latin and gave them a training in classical literature, rhetoric, and oratory entirely adequate for the composition of the works. Stratford contemporaries of Shakespeare, such as Richard Quiney, were demonstrably well versed in Latin.

'The plays show too much knowledge of foreign countries and aristocratic manners to have been written by a man of middle-class, provincial origins.'
This ignores the amount of knowledge that could be absorbed from books and conversations and under-estimates the social mobility of the period.

'Unequivocal references to the Shakespeare of Stratford in local records in his lifetime (i.e. excluding the monument) do not identify him as a writer.'
This is true (though a College of Heralds document of 1602 about his father's grant of arms refers to 'Shakespeare the player') but irrelevant. There was no reason why legal officials in Stratford should mention what he did in London.

Replacement Shakespeares have ranged, absurdly, from Queen Elizabeth I to Daniel Defoe. All suggestions rely on conspiracy theory, that is, the notion that people conspired both to conceal the true author and to shift responsibility for authorship on to someone else, usually Shakespeare the actor; at the same time, it is hypothesized that the same people managed somehow to plant tiny clues that would not be discovered until centuries had passed. It may seem improbable that anyone should wish to disclaim authorship of the greatest plays ever written and to credit a minor actor with them. It might also be thought unlikely that the true authorship could have been concealed for many years from the large number of people involved in putting on plays in public theatres. It is, however, in the nature of conspiracy theories that they can neither be proved nor disproved.

In recent years the most popular replacement Shakespeares have been Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604). Even if there were no grounds to doubt Shakespeare's authorship, there are many strong arguments against each candidate.

Francis Bacon was an industrious statesman and lawyer with a vast output in both Latin and English, all of which display an analytical mentality completely different from that which produced the works of Shakespeare.

Christopher Marlowe's death in 1593 is one of the best documented events in English literary history. Those who believe that he wrote Shakespeare's plays have to suppose that he did not really die but went into hiding for over a quarter of a century, leaving no trace of his own identity but somehow supplying to the public theatres a succession of plays which were passed off as having been written by Shakespeare.

The Earl of Oxford died in 1604; his adherents propose that he left at his death a supply of plays which unspecified persons gradually released to the theatre company until around 1613, when the supply dried up. This inherently absurd idea is incompatible with a variety of evidence showing that Shakespeare was writing plays after 1604, such as the indebtedness of The Tempest to travel writings not available until 1610. Moreover, Francis Meres, in 1598, mentions Oxford in addition to Shakespeare.

The phenomenon of disbelief in Shakespeare's authorship is a psychological aberration of considerable interest. Endorsement of it in favour of aristocratic candidates may be ascribed to snobbery - reluctance to believe that works of genius could emanate from a man of relatively humble origin - an attitude that would not permit Marlowe to have written his own works, let alone Shakespeare's. Other causes include ignorance; poor sense of logic; refusal, wilful or otherwise, to accept evidence; folly; the desire for publicity; and even (as in the sad case of Delia Bacon, who hoped to open Shakespeare's grave in 1856) certifiable madness.

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