QI | Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays?

[@Avidcomp]

Everyone has dressed up for this episode, so why did David Mitchel turn up in his own clothes?

[@andrewphillips8341]

LOL!

[@JaneDoe-ci3gj]

David do look stunning though😘

[@pistonar]

That's his Elizabethan period private detective costume.

[@jimskea224]

I'm disappointed he didn't bring along his little bell.

[@nour2146]

Is that a reference to black adder?

[@drumraine6910]

''when she died she claimed she was the Holy Spirit'' ..... must've been right then.

[@Zzyzzyzzs]

Jolly good, l see what you did there.

[@Yusuf1187]

Can't prove her wrong.

[@ae4164]

She could have passed on from our realm of transient and temporary existance and into the world of permanant and all-together perpetuous non-existance as does a flower which only blooms for a perennial period and then passes from this temporal realm and into the imaginary. I must be quite deep and transcendental because I said words.

[@Moamanly]

Yeah I was surprised and mildly disappointed that nobody pulled El Maestro up for that little error.

[@Kenno734]

drumraine aqq

[@JustAnotherPerson4U]

That cape that David is wearing suits him INCREDIBLY well. I'm not convinced that this isnt how he dresses at home. 😉

[@myrin265]

everyone on this panel looks so natural in their outfits, it’s like they’re dressing for the period they were meant to be born in. they look like living portraits, i love it!

[@ingeborg-anne]

Oh please, I've seen him appear in Doctor Who - I know he wrote it! #OnlyBelievableSourcesPlease

[@egogeo851]

Ingeborg Anne Rakvåg from sweden?

[@ingeborg-anne]

Norway

[@Kiwionwing]

Ingeborg Anne Rakvåg 234 likes wow. Who fans

[@TallSilentGuy]

And remember in Blackadder Back And Forth when Blackadder punched him on the nose? Could he have punched the wrong man?

[@chilliard120]

"I don't suppose he used the word clitoris" I agree with Stephen. I looked, but couldn't find it

[@DanDownunda8888]

Damn you! I read that when taking a sip of wine. Now I have to clean the bloody television! :(

[@EndoftheTownProductions]

John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage, three actors of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a famous acting company that included William Shakespeare, were given money by William Shakespeare of Stratford in his Last Will and Testament in 1616. Two of these actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were responsible for having 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in the First Folio in 1623. Ben Jonson's eulogy in the First Folio clearly praises Shakespeare as a great writer. He states that "thy writings to be such, /As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much." Heminges and Condell also praise Shakespeare as a writer, stating that "he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you, to praise him." These are "his works" and "his papers" that they are publishing. He is clearly presented as the writer of these works in the First Folio. The Last Will and Testament of William Shakespeare of Stratford clearly connects him with the 1623 First Folio through Heminges and Condell and it is clear that Shakespeare is presented as the author of the plays.

[@andrew7taylor]

David makes a good point here. It doesn't matter whether or not Shakespeare wrote those plays. The only thing that matters is that those plays are written, and what a marvelous thing they are!

[@TheDigitalNerd]

David makes plays Shakespeare in upstart crow

[@samwiseshanti]

Exactly. It's like saying George Orwell didn't really write 1984 because that wasn't his real name. The guy who wrote the plays is someone we call Shakespeare. What the actual person's name was when they were born is utterly irrelevant.

[@Yusuf1187]

I wouldn't say that George Orwell is a perfect comparison. In Orwell's case, his identity and life (in regard to politics and his experiences with various socialist groups) are quite relevant to his literary works and their message. Knowing about his life lends the message of his books more credibility and also helps us appreciate a nuanced view of the forms and degrees of socialism that can exist (since Orwell remained a socialist his entire life, but was very clear in his criticism of authoritarianism). Whereas if we didn't know Orwell's life and personal political participation, then we all may take his books to be condemnations of socialism altogether - as many right-wingers have actually done. But in Shakespeare's case, the plays don't have a significant message politically and it's hard to imagine how knowing about his life could impact our view and appreciation of the plays.

[@ujustgotpwned2008]

You're largely right, I think, but it does make a slight difference if, say, half the plays were written by one person and half were written by someone else.

[@vaultfault9360]

No. Saying it doesn't matter who wrote the plays sets a precedent in which you're suggesting people don't deserve to be recognized for their effort. If you poured your life into your art and someone looked at your masterpiece with zero recognition of you or your hand in its creation, I expect you'd be at the very least pissed off.

[@Chebab-Chebab]

01.24. The painting is in black and white. Obviously it's before colour paint.

[@tomlafferty4651]

All it takes to disprove the idea that Shakespeare was actually Francis Bacon is to actually read Bacon. The man was a bloody scientist and his only fictional work is written quite methodically. It couldn't be further away from the fluctuating tone, chopping syntax and general elevated style of the bard.

[@Nullifidian]

Well said. Bacon is also quite clear in his essays about his contempt for "toys" like masques and revels and never invokes the image of an actor without giving it a negative shading. He just didn't like theatre. The only thing to be said for his candidacy as the 'real' Shakespeare is that he actually lived long enough to write all the works.

[@afonsosousa2684]

@@Nullifidian You're totally correct, but also keep in mind some of the nuttier conspiracy theorists claim Bacon produced what would amount to about 3 lifetimes' worth of work under assumed identities somehow. The man must've bent time.

[@AnEnemy100]

Before my local library burnt down we had a full edition of a Soviet encyclopedia. Bound in red, obviously. Probably a diplomatic gift as there was a USAF memorial in the library. Out of curiosity I looked up Shakespeare and found out he was a Russian. Obviously.

[@joshuachandler1750]

Stalin did that.He also claimed that Columbus was Russian.

[@musicfan238able]

No doubt he needed his medication before writing any plays

[@sirandrelefaedelinoge]

@Cold Rain And gave it the snazzy name "meat in two bread".

[@VeracityLH]

BTW, this is where Star Trek got the idea for the Klingons to claim The Bard as their own.

[@bun6134]

@@joshuachandler1750 Source??

[@ViperRulerlm]

He may not have used the word clitoris, but he did make the first yo mama joke. Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done? Aaron: That which thou canst not undo. Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother. Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother. -Titus Andronicus

[@hakonsoreide]

I'm with David Mitchell on this one, and that's what I've been saying for years too: by definition, the author of the works of Shakespeare, whoever he was, was Shakespeare.

[@MichaelSHartman]

One might think that Samuel Clemens who came from a humble background and rose to literary success would be more inclined to believe Shakespeare was the author. I have seen a presentation describing a pre-existing play preaching the virtues of teenage chastity stating that Shakespeare adapted it, and gave it poetic form. Another that it was a message to the warring faiths that they were destroying the future generations and should live in peace together.

[@amandariviera]

A rose by any other name... Shakespeare could be a title for all I care.

[@Serai3]

It's the obsession of people who think talent is somehow inextricably tied to station in life. Kind of sad, actually.

[@koalabandit9166]

"Crawford cannot understand how a black kid from the Bronx can write the way you do. So he assumes you can't."

[@tripvic7629]

I'm sure Shakespeare would like to be remembered for who he was more than him being a title for good writer at a particular time in history. Seems u don't care much about anyone other than u

[@Nullifidian]

@@tripvic7629 Only in the sense that he probably wouldn't want some tin-eared, self-absorbed, and utterly disreputable posh boy like the Earl of Oxford to get undeserved credit for writing Shakespeare's own plays and poetry. While living, he probably considered, as most authors do, his name on the quartos of his plays, sonnets, and two narrative poems to be more than sufficient acknowledgement of his life and I'm sure that if he could have known about it he would have been touched and flattered that his two fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, went through the trouble of compiling and having the First Folio published.

[@goyatley]

"I believe it's in the second folio" That was pretty funny and very quick, yet no one reacted. Weird.

[@Serai3]

No, not weird. Jokes get lost in the shuffle of this show all the time.

[@drumraine6910]

Stephen skipped that page.

[@goyatley]

Hehehe, yeah.

[@DaliborOkoro]

Peter Ponjaert I don't get it could you explain?

[@diabl2master]

Stephen's initial gag was much funnier

[@53rdAndThird]

You haven't experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Klingon.

[@doubtingthomas6146]

53rdAndThird - taH pagh, taHbe! (Followed by raucous laughter)

[@Karen1963Yorks]

@@doubtingthomas6146Wasn't it Kirk on a diplomatic mission who took a group of Shakespearian actors on tour and much to his surprise found the Klingons loved it?

[@MyScorpion42]

@@Karen1963Yorks more likely Picard. There's only one episode of the original series concerning a Shakespearean theater troupe and I don't recall Klingons in it

[@Karen1963Yorks]

@@MyScorpion42 Kirk confronts Anton Karidian. Paramount/CBS On Star Trek's Original Series, the episode "The Conscience of the King" is a huge homage to the Bard. When Kirk arrives on a remote planet, he encounters a leader of a Shakespearean acting troupe. He suspects the actor is actually a mass murderer he encountered in his past. Kirk struggles against his desire for revenge and fears of convicting an innocent man. This entire episode is an adaptation of Hamlet with Kirk taking on the titular role, grappling with the question of guilt versus innocence. As if that wasn't obvious enough, the troupe is also performing Hamlet. www.liveabout.com/most-shakespearean-moments-on-star-trek-3125859

[@CIMAmotor]

Would that be Jacobean Klingon?

[@spencerraney4979]

I find it weird that Mark Twain would be a skeptic, being as he group up in the backwoods of Missouri and went on to become a highly successful and prolific author, as well as a prominent public speaker and celebrity. Also, for those who think Shakespeare couldn’t have written all those works, well, in one way they’re right because some of them were co-written (mostly at the end of his career though), but in general, these works were written solely by him, and there are scores of great writers who continually pumped out popular works over several years. Saying Shakespeare couldn’t written his plays is like saying that Stephen King or James Patterson (for example) couldn’t have written the many works they have created.

[@chrisclements5245]

You should read his book on Shakespeare, it’s not long. This video of half facts is misleading the point isn’t he was poor so couldn’t have done it, point is he was poor and had no education and was illiterate. Shakespeare couldn’t read or write at all. He also hadn’t been out of England his entire life. He also is definitely not a lawyer (unlike Francis bacon who was in a group who were trying to reform the English language at the time so writing plays would make sense) and yet his plays are legally sound as if written by a lawyer. Why disguise your identity? - I’m surprised Stephen didn’t know, it was illegal to write things about other people back then with punishment if you were caught being let’s say loosing your writing hand and Shakespeare sometimes wrote plays about real people. Twain used to work with a guy that was big fan of Shakespeare and so naturally he agreed he wrote it as he didn’t care and why not believe he did, but it wasn’t until he researched himself later that he concluded (one of the greatest thinkers of his time) he couldn’t have.

[@Nullifidian]

@@chrisclements5245 "Shakespeare couldn’t read or write at all." Based on what evidence? "He also hadn’t been out of England his entire life." Again, based on what evidence? And why do you think it's relevant? "He also is definitely not a lawyer...." Which is immaterial, since Shakespeare's work shows no special knowledge of the law and rather less than a writer like John Webster, who probably did train as a barrister. (Incidentally, John Webster was also more knowledgable about Italy and courtly life than Shakespeare too, and yet there's no record of him ever leaving England.) "Why disguise your identity? - I’m surprised Stephen didn’t know, it was illegal to write things about other people back then with punishment if you were caught being let’s say loosing your writing hand...." Where are you getting this crap?! "...and Shakespeare sometimes wrote plays about real people." Yeah, historical people. Along with many of his contemporaries. I just finished reading _Edward II_ by Christopher Marlowe, which may well predate Shakespeare's entire career and was entered in the Stationer's Register in 1593. Robert Greene wrote _The Scottish History of James IV_ during or before 1592, because he died in that year. Shakespeare did _not_ invent the chronicle play. So either all these prior authors were recklessly disregarding the risks of mutilation, or this fantastic and absurd idea that you'd be brutally punished for writing about real people is false. I wonder which it is.... Mark Twain thought that John Milton wrote _The Pilgrim's Progress_ . An expert in attribution of early modern literature he wasn't.

[@chrisclements5245]

@@Nullifidian actually it’s completely true, especially if it was about the king. If your caught and what your writing is proved to be untrue then yes punishments could be as harsh as cutting of your writing hand as has happened although very rare because it was near impossible to prove it especially considering those days books weren’t printed with the author, it was handwritten by the owner if at all. Historically law is unclear what the punishment is exactly because it was so rare and the court could rule any punishment available to them really. You can check the archives of possible serious punishments for crimes in those days. If you are determined his works were legal then I’m not actually that committed to that theory it’s just a possibility, the other theory is to do with knight of the round table writing it to reform the English language and if this came from them the lower classes would just ignore it so they wanted a face for everyone. I’ve read extensively about this and it’s all backed by ample evidence. Firstly if your suggesting to write about foreign countries that accurately and not have visited it, it would have been impossible - his detail in these plays were 100% accurate. William Shakespeare born in Stratford moved to London at 26 I think then returned to Stratford. When he died it took 60 years before a single person recognised him as a significant figure - ODD IS IT NOT? And your wrong his plays all have legal jargon all over it ALL OF WHICH WAS AND HAS BEEN SCRUTINISED BY TOP LAWYERS AND IS 100% FLAWLESS FOR THE LAW AT HIS TIME Only a lawyer knows how hard this is which they all stress, to be a secret lawyer would be impossible but to be one and manage two theatres? Come on. The Clerk suggestion many make is disproved as he would have been called as a witness many times which records prove he never was. His signature was analysed by several specialists, some FBI and all agree ‘this man is unfamiliar with a pen’ all his signatures are different with some just an X, his dad, mum, siblings and children are illiterate too all with no education- he even filed for marriage with the wrong name for his wife because he could not spell. He’s had no education based on not being on any school records. he’s never been abroad because there’s no record of it, or at least once is a slip but for all the journeys his plays would demand? Not for me, he lived in London with a very busy schedule acting and running two theatres so I don’t see where he’d have the time to travel and write - also making the assumption of him writing all this even more incredible. Put it this way I’m not convinced because there’s no evidence he did and why should no evidence convince me - the lack of evidence is actually evidence itself, evidence that should easily be there. I love the Shakespeare works and enjoy them I just happen to think the man from Stratford accredited to them did not write them. I happen to think no 1 man could possibly write it all because the details in all the trades he goes into is what I’d call industry details. Eg Mark Twain worked on the boats and Shakespeare’s details of the boats and the language he used Twain said only someone that’s been there and done that for a significant period could know all these details, no mere observer would know.

[@chrisclements5245]

@@Nullifidian separately for John Webster I don’t imagine his works were as detailed as Shakespeare’s, especially where in law is concerned, however Webster worked in teams for many of his history plays, incidentally ones set in Italy. But I admit I’m not an expert on Webster. For Mark Twain - it’s just his opinion, his book doesn’t say I think Mr X wrote it, it just says why he thinks Shakespeare couldn’t possibly have. Again for John Milton it was just his theory, we’re all human and can’t be correct about everything. End of the day it doesn’t matter because it’s still great masterpieces.

[@Nullifidian]

@@chrisclements5245 "actually it’s completely true, especially if it was about the king. If your caught and what your writing is proved to be untrue then yes punishments could be as harsh as cutting of your writing hand as has happened" Please demonstrate that this _ever_ happened as the result of writing a play. Did the Master of the Revels never exist in your world? The Master of the Revels was the man who was responsible for licensing all the plays in the early modern theatre. He read them all and had the powers of a censor to stop the staging of certain scenes or even whole plays that were deemed objectionable. Hence nobody's hand ever had to be cut off because before it got to that point the plays were suppressed. There are several instances of this happening, and occasional times when playwrights were thrown into prison for short periods (the longest stint in prison was Ben Jonson's for co-authoring the now lost _Isle of Dogs_ and it only lasted a few months), but _nothing worse_ . The King's Men, Shakespeare's own company, played _The Tragedie of Gowrie_ , a play about an attempt to overthrow James I, who at the time was their king and their patron, and they only got their wrists slapped for it. There was no permanent damage to the company-or to individual actors or playwrights-from this ill-judged staging. Furthermore, if there were such dire threats hanging over playwrights of the era, then the _last_ thing you would want is to give the authorities a front man they could put on the rack and who would confess all to save his own skin. It doesn't make sense even granted your absurd ideas about early modern theatre censorship. "And your wrong his plays all have legal jargon all over it ALL OF WHICH WAS AND HAS BEEN SCRUTINISED BY TOP LAWYERS AND IS 100% FLAWLESS FOR THE LAW AT HIS TIME" No, I'm not wrong because I'm basing my conclusions on the work of real scholars, not anti-Shakespearean cranks. George W. Keeton, who was an expert in the history of the Chancery Court, examined Shakespeare's legal acumen in the context of other playwrights of his era in _Shakespeare's Legal and Political Background_ and concluded that he showed no greater familiarity with the law than any other average playwright of his era, through Keeton conceded that Shakespeare was a more keen and accurate observer. You have to examine Shakespeare's works _in context of their time_ , not just note a single legal analogy or image and conclude on that basis that Shakespeare was a legal genius. "His signature was analysed by several specialists, some FBI and all agree ‘this man is unfamiliar with a pen’ all his signatures are different with some just an X, his dad, mum, siblings and children are illiterate too all with no education-" Actually, Shakespeare's secretary hand is perfectly fluid and stylistically consistent over his signatures. The only significant difference between them is that he sometimes abbreviated his name in different ways. He _never_ signed a document with an X. We have six authenticated signatures and three pages of manuscript ("Hand D") of _Sir Thomas More_ showing that Shakespeare was literate. Shakespeare's father was not illiterate otherwise he couldn't have discharged the civic duties he had to perform, which included the roles of bailiff, chief magistrate, alderman, and mayor of Stratford. His mother's literacy is neither here nor there. She may have been literate-literacy was starting to be adopted by the gentry when she was a girl-or she may not have been, but it's irrelevant. Shakespeare's siblings were _not_ illiterate because two of his younger brothers followed him into the theatre as actors, and therefore had to be able to read their cue scripts, and we have a surviving signature from another brother, Gilbert. We likewise have a surviving signature from Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, as well as an account of her knowing the contents of one of her late husband's books even though it was in Latin, her mother Anne's epitaph which is probably Susanna's creation, and Susanna's own epitaph, which praises her as "witty above her sex" and says that "something of Shakespeare was in that" (thus indicating that Shakespeare was both widely known in 1649, otherwise the epitaph writer would have had to explain at length who Shakespeare was, and accepted as a by-word for brilliance). Incidentally, Susanna Hall's daughter also signed her name, so we have four generations of literacy: Shakespeare's father, Shakespeare and his siblings, and Shakespeare's daughter and granddaughter. "he even filed for marriage with the wrong name for his wife because he could not spell." False. The note in the Episcopal register at Worcester is not in Shakespeare's handwriting, otherwise we'd have another piece of writing than the six signatures and the three-page portion of _Sir Thomas More_ . The error belongs to the scribe who wrote it down, not to William Shakespeare, and there's plenty of evidence from the same register that this scribe was particularly careless about spelling other people's names. "He’s had no education based on not being on any school records." That's because there _are no school records_ for the King's New School in Stratford for the first +150 years of its existence. They have all been lost. So if you're using that as 'evidence' that Shakespeare lacked any education, then it necessarily follows that the building must have stood empty for +150 years minus a succession of schoolmasters whom we know were being paid to teach because their names are preserved on other documents, because we don't have records for any _other_ students either. " he’s never been abroad because there’s no record of it" There's no record of a lot of people going abroad; it doesn't mean that they didn't. You didn't have to show your passport at customs and be entered into a computerized database in the early modern era. "or at least once is a slip but for all the journeys his plays would demand?" And how many journeys would his plays demand? More importantly, how many journeys would his fellow writers have had to take to set their plays in foreign lands, according to this same reasoning? "Not for me, he lived in London with a very busy schedule acting and running two theatres" Exactly where do you derive the idea that Shakespeare was "running two theatres", and which ones were they? As for "not having the time"; if it's your _job_ , then you _make_ the time. Aside from the fact that he had his nights off because the outdoor theatres could only be acted in during the daylight hours, they were also too cold to act in during the winter months. Therefore they went dark then. That's several months out of the year that Shakespeare would have had off for a man who only wrote approximately 41 plays (and about a quarter to a third were co-authored as we know now) over an approximate twenty year period. That's about two plays a year. Thomas Heywood was an actor-playwright and he claimed to have "a hand or at least a main finger in two hundred and twenty plays". Ben Jonson was an actor-playwright who if he wrote fewer plays than Shakespeare made up the difference with his court masques, poetry, and prose. Where did Heywood and Jonson find the time? John Fletcher and Thomas Middleton were also extremely prolific. Again, you _have_ to look at Shakespeare in the context of his era. "Put it this way I’m not convinced because there’s no evidence he did...." So you disregard all the evidence of his name on the quartos and folios, his name in the Master of the Revels' accounts and the Stationer's Register, and the commentary from fellow writers identifying him as a playwright. This is somehow all "no evidence". Why is that? If only his contemporaries had thought of some less ambiguous way of noting his authorship than putting his name on his plays and poems and crediting him with writing them in both their published works and private comments. How many other authors' attributions could survive this single-minded disregard of all the relevant documentary evidence? "I love the Shakespeare works and enjoy them I just happen to think the man from Stratford accredited to them did not write them." Then give a good reason why all the documentary evidence should be disregarded. "I happen to think no 1 man could possibly write it all because the details in all the trades he goes into is what I’d call industry details. Eg Mark Twain worked on the boats and Shakespeare’s details of the boats and the language he used Twain said only someone that’s been there and done that for a significant period could know all these details, no mere observer would know." Ships were pulling up on the Thames embankment mere yards from where the plays were being given-the theatres occupied the south bank of the River Thames-but somehow that constitutes an impassable boundary to any observer because Mark Twain says so, and of course Mark Twain was a world expert on early modern theatre history and 16th century sailing because he worked on a steamboat for a time. Don't make me laugh.

[@janrees4887]

It's impossible to know how many words Shakespeare really invented because often his plays are the first written evidence of a word simply because we don't have enough written evidence of words in use at the time. I know he's been credited with inventing hundreds of words but I think if he'd really invented so very many his plays would not have been as popular as they were at the time because they wouldn't have been so representative of the population or as comprehensible to the average person. That's just my opinion and we'll never know but it is Quite Interesting to speculate.

[@violetskies14]

I've often had a similar thought although I think it's plausible he was the inventor of the majority of the sayings he's credited with, it's very common for people to take phrases from media they like and use them in real life, his plays would have left people confused if he began using more than a few previously unknown words per play.

[@Nullifidian]

The estimate is also due to the fame of Shakespeare biasing the results in two ways. When the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled and word was sent out requesting everyone to go to their books and submit the earliest examples of word usages they could find, there were many more editions of the complete works of Shakespeare around in people's libraries than there were medieval and early modern manuscripts by other writers or printed editions that might have been, by that point, 300 years old or more. The other way that Shakespeare's fame biased the results is that very often they omitted an older quotation even when it was known and attributed the coining of the word to Shakespeare, because Shakespeare was the "national poet". Also, the figure of his invented words also includes times when he used existing words in new ways. For example, one characteristic thing was to take a noun and verb it, which one sees in _Hamlet_ when Horatio says: "Now, sir, young Fortinbras, Of unimproved mettle hot and full, Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there _Shark'd_ [my emphasis] up a list of lawless resolutes, For food and diet, to some enterprise That hath a stomach in't.... The verbing of the same word occurs in the Hand D section of _Sir Thomas More_ , which has been identified as being in Shakespeare's handwriting. What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught How insolence and strong hand should prevail, How order should be quelled; and by this pattern Not one of you should live an aged man, For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, With self same hand, self reasons, and self right, Would _shark_ [my emphasis] on you, and men like ravenous fishes Would feed on one another. Incidentally, another thing tying Hand D to the canon is that final quoted half-line, which appears verbatim in _Coriolanus_ : What's the matter, That in these several places of the city You cry against the noble Senate, who (Under the gods) keep you in awe, which else Would feed on one another?

[@ColeRosenberger]

They missed out on a great "oh clitoris is in his plays, it's just hard to find" joke...shame

[@slobodanreka1088]

I've been looking for this comment for two damn years. (Girlfriend is extraordinarily frustrated.)

[@larsstrohmeier2320]

tbh, i thought Sue Perkins comment "It's behind the second folio" was aimed in this direction? if not - yep, missed opportunity ^^

[@marccolten9801]

I am a bit sad I won't be in 200 years when there are heated arguments about who "Michael Bay" really was.

[@afonsosousa2684]

According to the Shakespeare conspiracy theorists, if you scribble Marc Colten and Michael Bay in the same piece of paper several times, it might turn out that you were him all along! (I wish I were kidding, but look up the lunatics' writings on the Northumberland Manuscript and this is actually what they believe, only with Bacon and Shakespeare instead)

[@Jack-Steel]

David Mitchell has now played Shakespeare!

[@greenmonkey2013]

@JONATHAN SUTCLIFFE ?

[@whatevs00]

I honestly can’t decide who looks best in their Elizabethan dress. Magnificence all around!

[@FOLIPE]

That is basically due to class prejudice, not because of real evidence. Accepting he did it is important because people who died were actual human beings and deserve recognition.

[@zztopz7090]

Have you read the skeptics? Or are you judging their thoughts on what Fry said?

[@rtg_onefourtwoeightfiveseven]

On the one hand, I agree with you on the class prejudice thing. On the other hand, I don't think Shakespeare currently cares about whether people are recognising him or not.

[@drewgehringer7813]

@@zztopz7090 The skeptics have no real evidence, all they have is "NO POOR PERSON COULD POSSIBLY WRITE THIS GOOD"

[@Nullifidian]

@@zztopz7090 I have read the skeptics. I find their stuff hilarious, but what I don't find it to have is a superabundance of evidence-or indeed any evidence at all-to demonstrate that anyone else wrote the works. What they do is import anachronistic assumptions about the way authors write, how they were appreciated, how theatre worked, how publishing worked, etc. back to the early modern era. And a lot of their arguments exhibit class prejudice because, when they aren't importing modern ideas about authorship to the early modern age, they're assuming that the class structures of the early modern era were as rigidly hierarchical as they were during the medieval era, and they take a view about the relationship between noble birth and education that is flatly backwards from the early modern reality. The English nobility were late adopters of Renaissance values and as late as 1547 it was deemed worth Parliament's time to insert a clause into a bill extending benefit of clergy (the ability to have one's case transferred from criminal court to the generally more forgiving ecclesiastical court by demonstrating one's literacy) to members of the peerage who couldn't read or write. Just 11 years before this act of Parliament, Sir Ralph Eure defended himself against a charge of writing a treasonable letter by demonstrating that he couldn't read or write more than his name. Thus the common assumption among anti-Shakespeareans that only a nobleman could possibly have the "education" to write Shakespeare's plays is actually contrary to the early modern reality, because it was more likely for a commoner to be well-educated than a member of the nobility. Not that Shakespeare's plays and poems exhibit any particularly remarkable degree of erudition either, but if I start detailing all the things that anti-Shakespeareans get wrong I'll be here all day.

[@lilymarinovic1644]

@@drewgehringer7813 which is funny because an overeducated toff likely wouldn't have made some of the absolute howlers that Billy Shakes did, like saying landlocked Bohemia had a coastline, that Ancient Egyptians had modern clocks that struck on the hour, etc etc

[@NitroIndigo]

I love the way David Mitchell says, "What a great guy!"

[@CoolCoyote]

Shakespeare was a lower to middle class so 'poor' by todays standards which they are not poor. There is only one of him, thats why he was so special, an extraordinary man of Elizabethan times. Hes talked about because there simply isn't anyone else to compare him with. Genius of the highest order

[@LilyGrace95]

Thing is, a lot of people see Shakespeare's plays as these high-class, grand and educated plays, but actually it was more like being a soap writer at the time. Of course, that isn't to say he wasn't an inventive and genius writer, but people who deny him are sort of the equivalent of someone 500-600 years from now looking back and saying the writers from Eastenders couldn't possibly be who they claimed to be because they didn't have PhDs or something...

[@markant9534]

The difference is Eastenders is crap.

[@LilyGrace95]

@@markant9534 kind of missing the point entirely there...

[@markant9534]

@@LilyGrace95 No I get what you were saying but it`s still wrong because Shakespear`s writing though being populist at the time was still clever, EAstenders is just about lazy sensationalism protraying working class people as shallow.

[@LilyGrace95]

No, you've still missed the point. The fact he's a clever writer doesn't make it higher-brow, because the content is still aimed at entertaining the masses. His plays aren't like operas where only the upper classes could pay to see them. They were quickly written and put on every night, sometimes more than one a night, and people would throw food if they didn't like what the story, and treat the back of the standing room like a brothel. My point is, it's laughable now that people put his PLAYS on a higher-brow pedestal, because they really weren't written for that.

[@mafiablokes]

Even though they were written to entertain the masses and there were an incredible number of love triangles in his plays, the thing I feel makes them stand the test of time is his almost eerily modern moralistic questions and philosophical ideas that many presented amongst all the melodrama and tragedy

[@jessicalee333]

Yoghurt might have been heard of in England by Shakespeare's time. King Francis I of France (a generation before Shakespeare) established the first western alliance with the Ottoman Empire, and became a big fan of yoghurt. Not much word on how well this spread around. It was also mentioned by Pliny the Elder (patron saint of QI) among the habits of "barbarous nations", in the 1st century. MAYBE it wasn't completely unknown in England in the 16th.

[@johnnunn8688]

They used yoghurt as a spread, back then? No wonder it took centuries to catch on.

[@leonbrooke5587]

The Shakespeare skepticism is rampant classism

[@wratched]

Which is why I find it inexplicable that Mark Twain, of all people, believed it.

[@zbr76]

Sue does look especially stunning in that Shakespearean costume... *shivers and melts*

[@ninjabluefyre3815]

Yeah, why am I so attracted to her?

[@zbr76]

MrFireCowboy Could be due to the fact that she's completely beautiful. Trust me, I've met her in person and she's GORGEOUS.

[@Jac70]

Sue Perkins is 'completely beautiful' and 'GORGEOUS' - are you on crack or just blind!

[@vigilantsycamore8750]

trooper jac, I could ask you the same question.

[@eolsunder]

yes I was just thinking that, she is good looking anyway, but she looks really good in that outfit.

[@bubbaguy4411]

I always found this funny... when we look at Victorian Era paintings we assume they wore those clothes every day year round. Now, imagine 1000 years from now when they see pictures of our prom and wedding photos and assume the same thing. Basically, they were just painted wearing their "Sunday's Best."

[@Tao_Tology]

Do we assume that?

[@joeladolph3508]

G K Chesterton summed it up perfectly: "To realize that the question does not matter is the first step in answering it correctly."

[@DulshanK]

they should dress like this on all talk shows and maybe even read news dress like this..

[@SirAdrian87]

I wish someone had said Lord Melchet

[@notmyname9261]

Sir Adrian Baaaaaaah!

[@VeracityLH]

Love it!

[@SirAdrian87]

@Nicholas Bray Baldrick had a cunning plan. He wrote the plays under the name Shakespeare then stood outside all day shaking a spear so people would know it was him.

[@soldierside365]

Agree with David’s point about who ‘Shakespeare’ is doesn’t matter except for what it means to us. Or, as Shakespeare put it, ‘a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.’ We have it, I think it’s bloody marvellous, and if it’s called a Shakespeare, then fine. It’s not like writers haven’t written under pseudonyms anyway.

[@afonsosousa2684]

Indeed, it doesn't affect their quality at all, but it's still ahistorical nonsense rooted in classism, and it's hilarious to pick it apart as the conspiracy theories become absurdly convoluted while claiming to explain a question that was crystal clear from the evidence in the first place.

[@TheHutchy01]

Mitchell and Fry should know, being of the era and indeed one of them was the Bard.

[@laurenjcoates]

David looks cute ngl

[@j0nnyism]

Its frankly insulting to believe that shakespeare wasnt capable of writing the plays because of his "common" backround. Its hardly rare for people of of his backround to be successful even in his times. Just look at thomas Cromwell or cardinal wolsey. Sons of a blacksmith and a butcher respectively

[@Karen1963Yorks]

Yet both were executed or died in prison. Many people at the time hated them for their common background.

[@smartgenes1]

It's not insulting - Shakespeare had to have translated continental languages for himself, there weren't copies of his sources available in English. Also there is his very specific knowledge of legal terminology. Only the middle and upper class were educated at all at this time, let alone translating foreign languages themselves.

[@zztopz7090]

How do you know that's why it's doubted? Have you personally read the words of the skeptics, or studied Shakespearean and world history enough to be satisfied with the conclusions? Or are you just taking Fry's word as fact? Perhaps you are the one that thinks that posh people are smart and well-read. I think Fry has the most superficial and generic understanding of history.

[@Nullifidian]

@@smartgenes1 "Only the middle and upper class were educated at all at this time, let alone translating foreign languages themselves." Middle class. Like the Shakespeare family, who were substantial burghers who lived in one of the largest houses in Stratford, owned multiple properties, and whose patriarch was a substantial man in local politics, rising to become an alderman and then bailiff, chief magistrate, and mayor of Stratford. If you're an anti-Stratfordian, then that was a spectacular own-goal.

[@Stantheman848]

Marlowe also

[@ElCID40000]

4:35 it's in there Stephen, you just have to really look for it...

[@EGarrett01]

It makes sense I mean, Beethoven, Mozart, Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, they were all noblemen. Oh wait, none of them were.

[@enheduannapax7988]

But we’re not discussing their work. Straw man argument.

[@chrisclements5245]

True. However Beethoven had a violin, Mozart had a piano, Newton had education on physics, Da Vinci had a canvas and Michelangelo had clay - nobody disputes this. Shakespeare was illiterate, never marked his name the same way twice and had no books and no education. How then could he produce masterpieces that were legally sound and read as if written by someone familiar with law and also be so accurate about places he had never been to. I’m sure if we discovered Newton had no prior knowledge of any of physics we would be questioning his legitimacy.

[@EGarrett01]

@@enheduannapax7988 We're discussing the capability of average people to do genius work. NOT a strawman argument.

[@EGarrett01]

@@chrisclements5245 Newton actually was an unremarkable student at Cambridge and did all his learning privately. Which undermines everything you said. I also don't believe you have any concrete evidence that Shakespeare was illiterate since if that were true this wouldn't be a question. Beethoven also played the piano, not the violin, for god's sake.

[@enheduannapax7988]

Nobody is arguing with you Everette. Average people can do wondrous things. Was the Earl of Oxford a snob? Yes of course he was an Elizabethan aristocrat. Are Oxfordians snobs because we believe he wrote as Shakespeare? No, we are just following evidence. Here’s one fact - the speech in Hamlet (Neither a borrower or lender be....) is widely thought to be based on Burghley’s Precepts - only made public in 1616 after Shaksper’s death. How do you suppose he was aware of it? Oxford was Burghley’s ward and son-in-law. That’s only one of hundreds of correlations between Oxford and the Shakespeare canon. Shaksper did not have the education and no reason to suppress the fact the works were his. Why would he not even attempt to publish them or capitalize on them. How would he have known the Earl of Southampton? Sorry - there is just no way he wrote as Shakespeare.

[@markswift1489]

Bill really suits his outfit! Should wear it always

[@lancer525]

The most British comment ever, Bill Bailey at 3:31 "If it was Ben Johnson, or any of those others, jolly good luck to them I say!"

[@davidkglevi]

Freud didn't know Shakespeare lost his son around the same time he wrote Hamlet?

[@Nullifidian]

Indeed. And Hamnet was also frequently spelled "Hamlet", as in Shakespeare's will where he spells the name of his friend Hamnet Sadler, to whom he bequeathed 26s. 8d. to buy a mourning ring, as "Hamlett Sadler". The Earl of Oxford, on the other hand, dumped his children on the Cecil family to raise and ran out on them. I can only assume Freud wasn't familiar with the details of Oxford's actual biography instead of the idealized fiction conjured up by J. Thomas Looney. And he could be excused on that point, since I don't think a proper scholarly biography was ever done before Alan Nelson's _Monstrous Adversary_ .

[@TanakaMatsumoto]

Especially someone as influential as the duke of oxford... if his "servant" Shakespeare was taking all the credit, he would have been pissed and death would have surely come and the matter resolved with the rightful writer getting credit.

[@metacarple]

I liked the view given, I think, by Sir John Gielgud, that if it wasn't Shakespeare who wrote the plays, it was someone else of the same name.

[@typacsk]

Bit unfair to Cate Blanchett, really. Edit: I think he looks a bit like Luke Westaway

[@youremakingprogress144]

Sue Perkins is such a delight.

[@BenignImages]

11 Marlowe fans...

[@buckleygeneration]

Yeah, this “theory” always makes me inexplicably angry.

[@Nullifidian]

I don't think it's inexplicable at all. Though Iago's words in _Othello_ are clearly ironic, they do contain the kernel of truth, which is how they're so plausible, and in this case he had a point about "he that filches from me my good name". That's what the anti-Stratfordians are doing: they're stealing from Shakespeare that which not enriches them but makes Shakespeare poor indeed by denying him the credit for writing his own works. And since at the root of their objections lies the classist belief that Shakespeare was just too solidly middle-class to write interesting literature and that good writing could only possibly come from an Elizabethan/Jacobean age courtier, that's another good reason for finding it annoying. They like pretty handwriting and correct spelling (but they'll excuse bad spelling if the writer is a nobleman) and they're deeply impressed with powerful institutions and titles. It's never just Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance with them, it's *Sir* Derek Jacobi and *Sir* Mark Rylance.

[@rozamunduszek4787]

I am very sceptical of the estimate that an average adult today knows 40,000 words. There's this test (testyourvocab.com/) that estimates your vocabulary size based on word frequency lists (thus making the test reliable enough IMO). The break down of the results of their test-takers (testyourvocab.com/blog/2013-05-08-Native-speakers-in-greater-detail#newMainchartNative) shows that native English-speaking adults' vocabulary ranges between around 15,000 to under 40,000 (90th percentile), the median (50th percentile) being around 22,000 for age 18 to around 30,000 for ages 40 and above.

[@DanDownunda8888]

I don't use all the words that I know in my vocabulary. I know lots, but don't want to sound like a complete ponce. :)

[@nin10dorox]

I think that these outfits look awesome af

[@AnnaAnna-uc2ff]

Thanks

[@bobert4him]

It's just like that whole "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory. If William Campbell wrote all of that great music. Then he would be even better and more prolific than Paul McCartney.

[@Wolfington]

It's like all conspiracy theories - people with too much time on their hands.

[@dannyoliver6251]

Even better having David Mitchell for this since Upstart Crow

[@smoothie9931]

Came to the comments and didn't even notice they were wearing outfits... they suit them all so well.

[@billberndtson]

04:35 It's there - it's just hard for a lot of people to find.

[@jordanash9263]

I love stephen's outfit here

[@letsgocamping88]

Is that the outfit he wore in blackadder?

[@harryfitzpatrick7978]

Can't be, it's lacking the comedy breasts.

[@magnuspetersen2989]

It was actually Mr. Norman Voles of Gravesend

[@Lumibear.]

“Wait a minute...” thinks David Mitchell, “...this is a great idea for an award winning sitcom!” *(rings Ben Elton)*

[@harryfitzpatrick7978]

And West End stage show!!

[@mochynddu723]

A second Shakespeare has hit the building!

[@Karen1963Yorks]

Then David Mitchel turned the fact in to 3 series of Upstart Crow.

[@tobiasrisom5571]

Yay, More videos!!!

[@emptank]

Shakespeare like Dr Sues had a habit of just making up new words whenever he couldn't think of a rhyme. He added something like a hundred words to the English language. He also spelled his name differently in every surviving copy of his signature we have.

[@Soridan]

I can relate to the signature at least. I have to make a conscious effort to make my signatures, well, look like they're mine. If I don't then they look like forgeries made by ten score different monkeys with cerebral palsy and heavy heroin withdrawal.

[@Nullifidian]

He didn't spell his name differently so much as he abbreviated it differently, using accepted scrivener's conventions for abbreviations. Wm. and Willm. are two ways he abbreviated his first name and both were accepted abbreviations of the given name-indeed, Wm. is still with us as an abbreviation for William-and he abbreviated his surname by indicating the abbreviation with a macron (straight horizontal line) over the last vowel or a slash through the down stroke of the letter p. In any case, the spelling of names was much more informal in Shakespeare's day. Walter Raleigh had a dizzying array of variant spellings of his name, and he never spelled his last name the way we do. We have one signature from Christopher Marlowe in which he spells his name "Christofer Marley"-or possibly "Marloy"-and his name is spelled in other documents as variously as Marlow, Marlo, Marloe, Marlen, Marlin, Marline, Marlye, Marlyne, Marlinge, Marlynge, Morle, Morley, and my favorite, Merlin. Though, as someone with a somewhat uncommon last name, I have to say that there are probably about ten different variant spellings I've seen of my surname, so we're not exactly in any position to judge.

[@thomasdevine867]

Alan is really rocking that hat.

[@noemiecansier8466]

I wish I could wear those Elizabethan side capes every day. Very Jaunty.

[@1000thGhost]

David plays Shakespeare in Upstart Crow right?

[@Observ45er]

OOPS: Right at the start: What "DO" (they) have in common?

[@photon-9551]

It was that shakespeare wasn't posh - the fact he struggled to maintain the spelling of his surname might cast doubt on his literary career. Then the total absence of handwritten draft manuscripts of his plays may also play apart. What we do have is that Shakespeare had the plays bound and printed with his name on a colkection. So until definitive proof cones up to the contrary - he should still be credited for at the very least preserving the plays.

[@Nullifidian]

He didn't "struggle to maintain the spelling of his surname" because _nobody_ in Shakespeare's day cared whether their surname was spelled the same way from one document to the next. If you want a range of spellings, try Christopher Marlowe, or Marley, or Marlow, or Marloe, or Morley, or... but you get the idea. But that's not evidence that he didn't write _Doctor Faustus_ , _Edward II_ , _Tamburlaine, Parts One and Two_ , _Dido, Queen of Carthage_ , _The Massacre at Paris_ , _The Jew of Malta_ , and the narrative poem _Hero and Leander_ and the lyric poem "A Passionate Shepherd to His Love". Hand D of _Sir Thomas More_ constitutes a "handwritten draft manuscript" that is confirmed by paleography to be in Shakespeare's hand, is entirely consistent with his other credited works based on stylometry, and which has running emendations that can only be authorial. And Shakespeare died seven years before the First Folio was published. It was his fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell who were the moving force behind the publication of the Folio, which is an odd step to take if they had no personal relationship with the author.

[@violetskies14]

@@Nullifidian thank you! I've always found his spellings to be one of the more ridiculous arguments against him being the author. The English language in those days was uncodified, so long as the letters together sounded about right that was good enough and it seems a rather silly argument to say he couldn't have written the plays just because like everyone of the time he didn't use consistent spellings.

[@afonsosousa2684]

@@violetskies14 To add to the refutation of the spelling idiocy peddled by the conspiracy theorists, contemporary, professionally printed sources also variously spelled his name Shakspeare, Shakespeare and Shake-speare. Funnily enough, I've seen an anti-Strat say that the Shaks- spelling in the handwritten signatures indicates a short A, which apparently meant "Shakspere" of Stratford wasn't the same man as the poet-playwright Shakespeare. It was funny to dig up some documents referring to the sweet song and the worthie merrits of... "Shakspeare".

[@franciscoalbertgarcia4638]

is that ross noble on the screen, bottom left?

[@markbrown2640]

The panelist to Allen's right is musician, humorist and actor Bill Bailey.

[@VeracityLH]

I hold the same opinions expressed here, that it doesn't matter who wrote them, just enjoy the works. The theories are interesting, but much like the date of the Princes in the Tower, we'll never know.

[@marycanary86]

stephen: *mutters under breath* "i dont remember the word 'clitoris' being in there..." i conic stephen quotes

[@Gibbles432]

Was this filmed before Upstart Crow?

[@chrisdacombe1777]

Probably - this is from Series I, Episode 17 - 'The Immortal Bard'. from 2012. Upstart Crow first aired in 2016.

[@Mechanicalrob]

Danny Dyar wrote Shakespeares plays.

[@ismraisul]

This is where Upstart Crow started

[@keithmills778]

I once heard that the plays weren’t written by Shakespeare. They were written by somebody else with the same name.

[@gemstonerose4648]

Watching this after david is now playing Shakespeare

[@kimba381]

Of course he did! Black Adder saw him!

[@gisawslonim9716]

Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays and nobody else.

[@ElectricLabel]

I would encourage you all to read Janet Suzman's brilliant book Not Hamlet.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Added to my reading list.

[@kilroy987]

"Most common word used by Shakespeare?" "Um.. bosom."

[@Trumpsterfire101]

I believe Shakespeare used around 17600 different words in all his writings and what is very cool, is he just made up about 10% of them. Words like hurry and alone did not exist at the time if I am not mistaken. Can you imagine writing your thesis and just chucking in a made up word for every ten real ones?

[@afonsosousa2684]

It's difficult to say, because he's sometimes the first printed source for some of these words, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was inventing them. Also keep in mind they had to be immediately understandable to his live audience (which for the most part didn't have the texts available), so that many were probably in circulation before he wrote them down. On the other hand, things like eyeball would've been immediately recognisable even if they were his invention, so who knows?

[@jessicajayes8326]

Shakespeare was the Lin-Manuel Miranda of his day!

[@CA-ee1et]

Saying that Shakespeare couldn't have written those plays because he went to a mere grammar school, is like a historian in this future looking at QI and saying to get on a panel show in the 21st century you had to have been to an independent school and Cambridge. (Looks at Fry) (Looks at Perkins) (Looks at Mitchell)

[@AlanHope2013]

The issue of Shakespeare having half the vocabulary the average English speaker has now ignores the fact that Shakespeare coined so many words himself, some 1700 according to this source: shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html.

[@styx85]

18 thumbs down? Why?

[@piennuivelo]

Those thumbs must belong to Messrs. Rylance, Jacobi & Co.

[@WG55]

The channel originally blocked viewers outside the EU, and people were registering their disgust. They've managed to fix it in the meantime.

[@meurtri9312]

A Brief Discourse of Rebellion (1576) by George Noth

[@thunderthumbs83]

shit, I use"Vagazille" in every second formal email in write at work... I haven't heard a response to any of those..

[@Robert399]

I think the point people make about English "dumbing down" is less about the total number of words people know and more about grammar. For example, we no longer conjugate verbs (beyond an "s" for third person singular) or distinguish between second person singular and plural (thou/thee/thy/thine isn't just posh, oldie English; it's the singular). A current example is the past perfect tense (i.e. "I had eaten already before they arrived" as opposed to "I ate already before they arrived", which is wrong). This distinction is still mostly used in the UK but largely ignored in the US.

[@matthewhall889]

Is that supposed to be the golden ratio above Stephen's right shoulder? It has '- sqrt(5)' instead of '+ sqrt(5).'

[@Ngamotu83]

All I'm saying is they found a manuscript in a packet of bacon.

[@the17thearlofoxford38]

Fascinating

[@SavageGreywolf]

I know who really wrote Shakespeare. It was Shakespeare, you see. All that Earl shit was just him messing with you.

[@zoetropo1]

Who was it said that William Shakespeare’s plays were written by an entirely different person with the same name?

[@cloughajack2102]

Mark Twain

[@arsgratia]

Wasn't there a Monty Python sketch wherein a man who claimed to have written all of Shakespeare's works was being interviewed? The moderator asks the man if he did indeed write the works. He replied, "Well, the wife helped me on the sonnets." When told Shakespeare's works were written over 400 years ago, he replied, "I was hoping you wouldn't mention that."

[@RobertSmith-xu8eg]

It was likely that Shaky had a trusted team who were expert actors and creators, but he was the editor and physical writer of their team effort. Just my Occam's mirror view.

[@alexinabox6931]

Anti-Stratfordians just get on my nerves so much

[@Dyers88]

To vajazzle or not to vajazzle, that is the question

[@ufoDanceParty]

I understand that it is not necessarily important who wrote a given work when evaluating its literary value. That said, it's a strange idea that it is not historically important to know who wrote some of the most historically influential works in the western canon. The question is important, if not for literature's sake.

[@DeniseF]

Don't judge a brain by where they're from