"Shakespeare Loved Refugees"
by Kit
In one of the more bizarre incidents of agenda pushing that I can recall – even by recent Guardian standards – William Shakespeare has been enlisted to spread the pro-refugee, anti-Brexit message of the modern liberal media.This partial play script, claimed to be the only extant passage in Shakespeare’s handwriting, apparently has a long speech from Sir Thomas More all about how awful it is to spurn refugees and immigrants.
Leave aside that opinion is divided over who wrote this piece – it doesn’t matter, excepting that presenting a theory as a fact helps them push their rather odd agenda. Leave aside the authorship question, leave aside whichever side of the refugee issue you stand on. Ignore the differences in period, political situation and all the other myriad rational objections to such an argument. It merits no rational response.
“Shakespeare liked immigrants! So should you!”
…is just…absurd. Fortunately, for anyone hoping to maintain some faith in humanity, it was treated as such in the comments:
Thanks for reading...
You can help us keep doing what we do. Every little helps and is hugely appreciated.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
The article is based on the assumption that the so-called “Hand D” sections of the manuscript play Sir Thomas More have been proven to be in Shakespeare’s own hand. There are two problems with that assumption: 1) there is no reliable control sample of Shakespeare’s handwriting with which to make a valid comparison; and 2) there are features in the Hand D pages that are consistent with scribal transcription. Therefore, there can be no certainty that the Hand D pages are either authorial or in Shakespeare’s hand. Claims that Hand D is a dramatic composition in Shakespeare’s handwriting are instead unsupported assertions. My wife’s research paper on this subject (“Hand D and Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Literary Paper Trail”) was published earlier this month by the University of Florence’s Journal of Early Modern Studies (JEMS 5) and is accessible online.
http://www.fupress.net/…/bsfm…/article/view/18095/16849
If he were writing today, I’m pretty sure Shakespeare would have his account disabled at the Graun.