Shakespeare Authorship Question at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre 2016

Shakespeare Authorship Question is comically described.
In 2016, Keir Cutler performed part of his monologue "Shakespeare Crackpot" in the lecture hall at Shakespeare's Globe before theatrical royalty including Sir Mark Rylance and Sir Derek Jacobi.
"Sarcastic and cutting, "Shakespeare Crackpot" is a high-energy lecture, blended with the autobiography of a man who has spent his life in academia. Keir Cutler is as funny as he is intelligent while he passionately discusses his subject. Though Shakespeare purists may not agree with what Mr. Cutler has to say, everyone is sure to be entertained by how he says it." (Inside Ottawa, review 2016.)
Directed by TJ Dawe. Tim Pieraccini, video. Malcolm Blackmoor, sound.
www.keircutler.com

[@brendanward2991]

"A very strange thing happened: nothing." - Masterful. I could listen to Keir all day long.

[@billybobobenner]

Very good monologue on Shakespeare. I watched an earlier one of yours, on this same topic, when you were dressed as a Lawyer and were handling the Shakespeare bust. Impressive grasp of your subject and immensely entertaining too.

[@keircutler]

Thank you so much! Greatly appreciate the encouragement!

[@dawnbartle123]

I’m fascinated by the Shakespeare conversation. As a tiny little mother, in a tiny little town, I only do indeed have a grammar school education. I think I’m ok intellectually, but to write on languages, royal court, royal courts oversees, foreign countries, languages…. Me thinks not. I don’t dispute my own intelligence, just my chances to experience the above and talk of them. I love watching your videos. Maybe one day, a beautiful manuscript will appear…. But I think it will be with another’s signature. Thank you for enabling me to watch this great debate. I may lack university and degrees of education, but at least I can understand the emotion and intricacy of the genius of the bards works. Whomever that may be x

[@keircutler]

What a lovely message! Thank you. I certainly don't think degrees are the mark of intelligence. You are a very sharp person. Thanks for watching!

[@janscheffer1]

Superb performance, very witty, eloquent and so convincing! Pure entertainment. Come to Holland!

[@keircutler]

I would be honoured to perform in Holland! Thank you for your comments!!

[@MrAlexsegal]

Some scientists believe that the part of the shroud that was carbon dated included cotton that was used to mend the original linen fabric - used much later than the original fabric was created.

[@keircutler]

No matter what science found, some Christians would invent reasons why the test was faulty. There is no mention of the shroud before 1000 years ago, which is exactly what the carbon dating tells us.

[@MrAlexsegal]

Thank you for this. I hadn’t realised the scientists who questioned the carbon dating were Christians.

[@MyMacsam]

@@MrAlexsegal They were not Christians, and the person who selected the piece to be examined, against the previously agreed protocol of seven different pieces, was a Jew. Reach your own conclusions.

[@rosezingleman5007]

Ha! Great talk, but let me challenge a bit of orthodoxy presented therein: a few years ago I came across a refutation of the carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Years after the original carbon dating of the 1970s it was discovered that the samples were taken from a side which had been repaired after a fire had damaged the silver box in which it was reputed to have been stored (and melted). The edge had been sewn on, but had bits of genetic material from Europe. New samples were taken from further into the piece of fabric and analyzed both via carbon dating and also for vegetation fragments(? maybe DNA?). The main body of the shroud is woven using a weave style only found in the Middle East, the linen itself is an ancient type and it has microscopic pollen which is genetically only seen local to present day Israel. Also non-Catholic scientists examined the image and cannot account for it because it isn’t pigments or a photographic process etc. So it is possibly what the Catholic church has claimed it is-a burial cloth from the area of Jerusalem from two thousand years ago with an “atomic” image on it. There are videos about this on KZbin. But Edward de Vere *was* the author of Shakespeare’s works. No way was the Stratford man educated enough to have written them.

[@keircutler]

No matter what would be discovered about the Shroud, people would continue to believe.

[@andy-the-gardener]

i've seem rebuttals of this that say the scientists were extremely careful to avoid those mends (for obvious reasons) and the carbon 14 dating still holds and proves the cloth is only about 800 years old. further tests could easily be done from unambiguous areas, but will the museum allow this if it categorically proves the cloth does not date from the supposed lifetime of jesus (who probably never existed at all, but thats another story lol). i doubt it. in the light of this, to conclude the cloth is 'probably genuine' is not very objective of you. besides, what are you saying. it is actually the burial shroud of a god. that somehow this god beamed his image onto it. wtf! or are you saying jesus was just a man, and his image got beamed onto the cloth. that doesnt make sense though does it. so you must be saying god did it. that places you squarely in crazy town. fyi, there is a very good explanation of how the image was forged. its ridiculously simple. just paint an image onto a big pane of glass (and yes, they could make 6 foot long panes of glass in medieval times) and lay that over the cloth and leave it in the sun for a while to fade/discolour the cloth, or whatever light does. which explains why the image is a negative. it also explains why the image of the back of jesus on the other side is a different height. the forgers clearly did not bother to line it up lol. another obvious problem, is if god did manage to magically beam his image onto the cloth after he was dead, for some reason only known to god itself (do not question the utter pointlessness of this lol), why is the image not all distorted, like it would be if a cloth was wrapped around a corpse of anything, presumably even a god. i think its rather comical you dispute the carbon dating but fully accept the likelyhood of an all powerful supernatural creator of the universe beamed his image onto a bit of cloth when it was dead, but before it came alive again.

[@jonijacobs8499]

Loved it!

[@LSKing-Author]

Thank you! Brilliantly done!

[@evukelectricvehicles]

I'm also impressed by his bigger-picture mockery of the media's and so-called experts' conforming insistence on labelling and smearing even highly-informed dissenters on any issue as "conspiracy theorists".

[@pcmacintyre]

Very entertaining. Worthy of subscribing. Happy to be #1000.

[@keircutler]

Awesome!

[@saeyddibaj6118]

Brilliant!

[@keircutler]

Merci beaucoup!

[@StevenCampbell1955]

Well, NOW I am a crackpot too. Blast you Keir Cutler for making me think! My mind was made up and all content, stuffed with capon and certainty. You tell me things that leave me all confounded. Too late, I am pulling the cover over my head and taking to sucking my thumb.

[@keircutler]

Hilarious! I once made a lady cry. Having lost her Stratford God.

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

Change is always disruptive but need not hurt - and then display a clearer reality - which must be faced.

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

Thinking is great - we are made of it and with it. Thinking deep and humour - are some of the best things - we humans have - plus character and love. Thank you.

[@kenharvey8946]

I would have ended with Nietszche " Convictions are dangerous enemies to truth then lies '.

[@dirremoire]

The way I see it, both sides have evidence but neither side has proof. Is it asking too much to have the plays credited to “anonymous”?

[@evukelectricvehicles]

As long as it's made clear to the world that "anonymous" could mean a man or a woman or a collaboration between several very talented male/female playwrights. The authorship movie "Anonymous" with Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Rylance(et al) unfortunately does not even hint at the possibilty that a woman may have written or co-written some or all of the Bard's plays. Paul G

[@stevenweikert7062]

Keir Cutler sure knows how to play to the groundlings. Shakespeare the impresario would have been happy to have had him in his acting company.

[@keircutler]

Good analogy. Sir Derek, Sir Mark and people paying for an all day seminar on the Shakespeare Authorship Question parallel the uneducated "stinkards" in the pit.

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

Amend your opinion of others - interested in the issue and you may learn something clearly and not clouded by ego.

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

Even if we are wat we are - our task is to ennoble ourselves and others. Living truth -is a veritable humanising process.

[@JPT-kg8fm]

Ben Jonson thought Shakespeare existed, and was a playwright, if only you'd been around to advise him of his mistake.

[@keircutler]

People who question Shakespeare's authorship often point to Ben Jonson's statement that Shakespeare was "the soul of the age" as evidence of sarcasm. Scholars have debated the sincerity of Jonson's remarks.

[@theamazingmystico1243]

Hip. 'Tis strange my Theseus, yt these louers speake of. The. More strange then true. I neuer may beleeue These anticke fables, nor these Fairy toyes, Louers and mad men haue such seething braines, Such shaping phantasies, that apprehend more Then coole reason euer comprehends. The Lunaticke, the Louer, and the Poet, Are of imagination all compact. One sees more diuels then vaste hell can hold; That is the mad man. The Louer, all as franticke, Sees Helens beauty in a brow of Egipt. The Poets eye in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance From heauen to earth, from earth to heauen. And as imagination bodies FORTH The forms of things Vnknowne; the POETS PEN turnes them to shapes, And giues to aire NOTHING, a locall habitation, And A NAME. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some ioy, It comprehends some bringer of that ioy. Or in the night, imagining some feare, Howe easie is a bush suppos'd a Beare? Hip. But all the storie of the night told ouer, And all their minds transfigur'd so together, More witnesseth than fancies images, And growes to something of great constancie; But howsoeuer, strange, and admirable. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The words "forth" (a homonym of "fourth") and "nothing," with the words "Poets pen" in between them, refer to the number 40. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, sometimes signed letters as "double V" (VV), and two V's in a Simple cipher of the Elizabethan alphabet totals to 40 ((V = 20) + (V = 20) = 40). (See e.g., letter from James I to "40.") The seventeenth (17th) word after the word "forth" (fourth) is the word "nothing" (FORTH/FOURTH...NOTHING; 40). Therefore, the numbers 17 and 40 are encoded here. Mr. Alexander Waugh has posited that the number 1740 is a code for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The number 17 is Oxford's "earl number" and the number 40 refers to him being the "Fourth T" (Four-T, or Forty). Therefore, Oxford has hidden a "signature" of his in the text -- 1740. (By the way, the Shakespeare Monument in Westminster Abbey was erected in 1740.) Incidentally, with respect to gematria values, in the Elizabethan alphabet the letters in the word "Poets" has a Reverse cipher value of 54, which is the same as the Simple cipher value of the letters in "Rose." The letters in the words "Poets pen" has a Reverse cipher value of 96, which the same as the Kaye cipher value of the letters in "Cross." Considering these values, the values for "Rose Cross" (Rosicrucian) are encoded in the words. The letters in the word "Poets" has a Simple cipher value of 71 (numerals of 17 reversed.), the same as the Simple cipher value of the letters in "cypher" (an alternative spelling of "cipher" used in the First Folio.) The Kaye cipher value of the letters in "Poets pen" is 156, which is the same as the Kaye cipher value of the letters in the name "Edward." The Simple cipher value of the letters in the word "pen" is 33, which is the same as the Simple cipher value of the letters in "Bacon" (Francis Bacon), and the value of the letter "G" (God) in the Kaye cipher. (Just for the record, the Reverse and Kaye cipher values of "pen" are 42 and 59, respectively.)

[@Bullittbl]

I am curious, is there any evidence that William Shakspere ever claimed to have written any of these plays ?

[@keircutler]

To my knowledge there isn't.

[@Bullittbl]

I suppose Stratfordians chalks that up to modesty? Thank God he remembered to mention his second best bed.

[@dilly1863]

@@Bullittbl What happened to his 'best bed'?

[@vetstadiumastroturf5756]

He left his wife his second best bed, which is his way of saying you get nothing. The house and everything in it including the best bed did not go to his wife, they went to his daughter. His wife became a non person at the mercy of her own daughter. Nice guy. @@dilly1863

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

Hid all the manuscripts - under the second best mattress.@@dilly1863

[@jamongorgonzola2039]

Got it - Shakespeare was so obscure that his obscurity must be evidence he was not the author. But he was also so famous he couldn't be the author. The town had to practically invent him to assuage the interest of all the hordes of people who knew about him without the town's helpful invention. Everything is evidence if you've decided there's a crime, and enough time has gone by.

[@keircutler]

That's very funny what you wrote but it's not what I said. If you're interested, read Diana Price's book. The problem with the Shakespeare Authorship Question is that people make up their mind about it before they attempt to learn about it. The simple truth is we don't know who wrote the works, and the traditional story is an invented myth created to prop up a tourist site. We need to throw everything out and start from scratch. But the vested interests are too strong.

[@lorainemasterton2942]

Well good Sirrah: you didn’t read any of the many many books out there, I am an actor and theatre artist well trained and well read and when I first heard this about 12 years ago I, too thought what!? But when you look at the evidence and there is loads and loads and loads of evidence an objective intelligent person will see where it’s pointing. And when you see that there is no evidence on the side to prove that Shakespeare did write them… It provokes an obvious realisation. And the journey is a delight because it’s so apparent and the authors have taken the time, much time and much care, to pick out all these details in terms of the knowledge base, the language, financial issues, political issues of the time, it’s an extraordinary thing that it has so been proven. And there is nothing even slight to counterbalance it on the Stratford side. We live in a modern age. We have abilities to do historical research now. We need to know the answer to this question. And the beauty of the works are in no way diminished by it. They stand. Stratford could do this same walloping business by presenting all the intriguing sides and pointing out the details, hence really educating people. Reading all the various positions and details over the years has been a delight for me. We at least have to stay neutral, that’s the intelligent choice. Wait to find the proof. Don’t decide beforehand.:the basic law of education. From the Latin ‘educare’, to peel the cover back. Viva Keir for your concise and wry presentation provoking an interest in going to find out.

[@flyboy712]

The usual postulation that Shakespeare wasn’t the author, based on absolutely nothing. When a play is being produced for the first time, the author has to be present. Many, many people would have known who wrote the play. You don’t see numerous contemporaneous articles saying that Shakespeare didn’t write X,Y, etc. There is very little known about Shakespeare, and there is absolutely, 100%, no evidence either way about authorship, so all of these doubters have as much legitimacy as people who believe Shakespeare wrote the plays, and I have to fall on the latter side, for the reasons stated. He had to have been there when they did the plays for the first time. There are always questions, “what did you mean by this“? The whole doubt thing is ridiculous.

[@keircutler]

Your idea that a playwright would be present for the first production is an anachronism. There is no reason to believe playwrights were present. Theatre companies bought their plays and from that point on they were theirs. The playwright had no copyright and had no say in how the play was performed. Being a playwright in Elizabethan times was an extremely dangerous activity, playwrights were routinely arrested and in some cases tortured. Many plays only appeared under Anonymous. Paper was expensive. Actors did not have full scripts, only their cue lines and lines. Plays were rushed on to the stage. Plays ran for a very short time. There was a constant need for new productions. Please do some research if you are interested. No one identified the man from Stratford as a playwright during his lifetime. The myth is based on the First Folio which says he wrote every word of the plays. Something we know now he did not do. So what did he do? Did he write any of it?

[@flyboy712]

Alright, but it boils down to "we just don't know". There is no evidence he did NOT write the plays, and there is no evidence that anyone else did, so where does this "doubt" come from?

[@keircutler]

@@flyboy712 This is my opinion. kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpLOn6iNlNergdEsi=WpHjCKHaLzie6r8Q

[@keircutler]

@@flyboy712 Where does the doubt come from???? The works of Shakespeare are extremely sophisticated and involve vast knowledge of multiple domains. We are not talking about David Mamet here. We are talking about supreme erudition. And yet the man from Stratford left nothing to indicate he had this knowledge. He had limited education, possibly no education. No extant letters, or plays or poems. For me it makes sense he was a front for the writer or writers who given the life-threatening dangers of the time, wanted to remain anonymous.

[@flyboy712]

Hi Keir, after watching Tom Regnier's video, I have to apologize. I can now see where the doubt comes from, and why Oxford seems to be the candidate for authorship. I wish there was more hard evidence, but we can only surmise, and it seems you're probably right!

[@PASHKULI]

• Shakespeare was not born on 23.4.1564 on the one hand, as is generally assumed today, but on 19.4.1564, after which he was baptised on 26.4.1564 and died on 23.4.1616. • At his time, pure Catholicism was forbidden in England, which is why William Shakespeare officially confessed to Protestantism, which, however, was tantamount to a fraud, because in truth he was very strict and almost fanatically addicted to Catholicism and thus a strict and fundamentalist believer of this religion. • However, he knew how to hide this so well that only his wife Anne, née Hathaway, who was eight years older and married to him in 1582, knew about it. • The wife had fallen for him, which is why she remained silent in spite of many marital quarrels and in spite of his jealousy, even when she learned through dream mumbling on his part that he was treacherous and spying for the Holy Pope in Rome with regard to the Anglican Church - Church of England, State Church. • 'Hamlet' and 'Romeo and Juliet' were not written by William Shakespeare but by Christopher Marlowe, as were various other works, although the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward of Vere, also wrote various works for Shakespeare, who himself was not so good at writing in the manner attributed to him that he could have written the works attributed to him today. • From his own writing came only very trivial and insignificant things, which he also did not bring to the public, and so all the 38 known dramas, comedies, poems and histories attributed to him came from the pen of Edward of Vere and Christopher Marlowe. • Both used Shakespeare during 1589 to 1613 only as a makeshift to publish their works. • Edward de Vere was not so good, but Christopher Marlowe was a very good poet and playwright. • Both of them, however, had profound reasons to use Shakespeare as a makeshift, especially Marlowe. • Edward of Vere was, not a particularly good poet and playwright, used Shakespeare, so that he would not have to appear himself, because he feared bad criticism. • Christopher Marlowe, on the other hand, had to flee because he put his life in danger with regard to his faith. • So, in the spring of 1593, he arranged a well-considered brawl with friends in which he was allegedly stabbed to death, which allowed him to escape unrecognised. • The truth is that he fled and went to Italy, where he could live under a different name and without the danger of persecution. • It was there that he wrote most of the works he had sent to Shakespeare until 1613, who then used them under his name. • However, he was not allowed to do so under his own name, nor was he allowed to do so under his false name, because otherwise he would have been recognised, persecuted and handed over to the courts. • Christopher Marlowe himself died at the age of fifty on 28 May 1614, so that Shakespeare naturally did not receive any more works from him during the last two years of his life and nothing else became known under his name.

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

You may have written more than Marloe/Marlin - himself - hee hee. FB wrote loads - even great works - in so many fields. FB - the man for me. Much proof there be. Lets keep searching - and then we'll see.

[@ivaylo-from-earth]

@@user-hy9nh4yk3p FB???