OffG Recommends…Last Will & Testament
Kit Knightly
Today is St George’s Day, and it’s also Shakespeare’s Birthday
…except, not really.
The truth is it’s a guess. William Shaksper, “the man from Stratford”, is known to have been baptised on April 26th and since babies of that time were generally baptized quite quickly, it stands to reason he was born sometime in the preceding few days.
The consensus is April 23rd because it allows England’s most famous literary son to have been born on his nation’s Patron Saints Day – and that was apparently a contrivance too poetic to pass up.
…But all of that is immaterial, because whether or not he was born on April 23rd, “the man from Stratford” didn’t write the plays. At least that’s the contention of a vocal minority – including Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin – over hundreds of years.
It’s also the position taken up by Last Will & Testament, a 2012 documentary directed by Laura and Lisa Wilson, and the latest subject of the OffG Recommends series.
The documentary is a great introduction to the topic for anyone who has never come across it before, making the case against the traditional attribution by interspersing expert opinion, historical documentation and – for want of a better word – “celebrity” guests.
Grand old thespians Mark Rylance, Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave make appearances, and their rational and articulate positions are some of the high points of the film.
There are some excellent arguments against “the man from Stratford”: His apparent illiteracy and the illiteracy of his children, the fact his will doesn’t document ownership of any books at a time when they would be valuable assets, and the documentary lays all of these out clearly and coherently.
It’s fun and very interesting…but it’s not perfect. Far from it. There are some strong criticisms to be made.
It is very much a documentary of two halves. The first half, making the case against the Stratford man is by far the strongest part, asking questions and pointing out inconsistencies.
…but then they feel the need to answer those questions, and in doing so they make themselves ridiculous.
The explanation they offer is that the plays were written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. This is not, in and of itself, wholly absurd. He’s been one of the main candidates for decades and his known literary aspirations and his close association with the Cecil family (William Cecil, Lord Burleigh has been widely assumed to be the model for the character of Polonius in Hamlet) are reasonable enough arguments in his favour.
But then they go further, giving air time to the theory that de Vere was Elizabeth I’s illegitimate son, and – further – that he then had an affair with Elizabeth and produced another illegitimate son, Henry Wriothesley Earl of Southampton.
That’s just historically illiterate.
To be clear, the question of succession was the foremost thought on the minds of Elizabeth’s ministers for decades. She refused to marry, and as such they all knew that when she died England was faced with the possibility of Catholic Mary Queen of Scots taking the throne, and a return to dark bloody days of Mary Tudor.
They would have done anything to make sure that couldn’t happen. The idea that Elizabeth could have produced two children – both protestants and both male – and her ministers decided to keep it a secret is insane. They would have been giddy at the prospect. – Throne protected, succession guaranteed, and no Catholic bonfires to worry about it.
The moment it was apparent Elizabeth was pregnant they would have rushed a marriage, or legitimsed the bastard – it happened before and afterwards, and anything is better than a succession crisis.
No, that theory is daft.
And here we come to my second problem with the film.
One of the men strongly putting the case for the Earl of Oxford (and the incest baby theory) is credited as Charles Beauclerk.
His true full name is Charles Francis Topham de Vere Beauclerk, Lord Burford and Heir Apparent to the Duke of St Albans.
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, is his ancestor, he is pitching his own familial ties to both the crown and the plays. This is never mentioned in the documentary, and that seems somewhat intellectually dishonest to me.
…but we don’t have to agree or approve of every aspect of a film to recommend it.
It’s an interesting and well made insight into a fascinating topic. I recommend you enjoy mulling its questions – but be very skeptical of its answers.
Last Will & Testament is available through Amazon Prime. It’s becoming increasingly hard to get a hold of in recent years, so hold onto it once you have it.
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Two hundred plus comments!
Shakespeare ain’t dead yet.
I wonder if Shaksper in SUA ever became aware that he was being referenced as a cutout for the pseudonymic (or anonymous conglomerate) celebrated poet & playwright in London? If not, then I wonder at what point, I assume posthumously, the grain merchant was selected to have been the physical figure of The Bard, and when the focus and celebrations began to center on Stratford?
It’s an amazing tale, and I suppose, in light if the singular reverence and importance of ‘Shakespeare’ to letters and all of western culture, that it is at the level of the Manhattan Project for big secrets well-kept by a lot of people.
Yes, sort of a discussion.
“The Two Gentlemen of Verona”… would seem to explain things?
That forced exile. The betrayal beyond those you once trusted most.
The pretense of a ‘stabbing’ (though not really) amidst degenerate potential ‘outlaws’, one’s obvious enemies…
Maybe Marlowe had more to offer beyond ‘Edward II’…
More clues in “As You Like It”?
“Understand it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room” (Act III, Scene III)
“… the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a tapster; they are both the confirmers of false reckonings” (Act III, Scene IV)
Possible references to a staged death of Marlowe in 1593 (the incident taking place in a small room in the home of a tapster and termed a ‘great reckoning’).
The key passage in “The Merchant of Venice“:
(considering Christopher Marlowe’s predilection for Barabbas)
“These be the Christian husbands! I have a daughter;
Would any of the stock of Barabas
Had been her husband rather than a Christian!-
We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence”
(Shylock, “The Merchant of Venice”, Act IV, Scene I)
https://nationalvanguard.org/2024/04/holocaust-insights-5-geysers-of-blood/
Yeah, that’s exactly the “image” they hammer
permanentely into our heads. Not completely
unfunny. Or rather just wonderful. I would even
claim that anyone who can’t laugh heartily at it
is not yet totally immune to any Jewish “power”.
The actress Krause is not German at all. You can see how a name can hide the reality. She is Japanese-American. Amazing, given that the darker genes always prevail. You could say Krause is the distant glimmer of her ancestors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_Krause
Yesterday I learned about a (former) beautiful American actress who has MS and is wearing diapers due to an infection that probably came from the “salad” of a non-European who gave her his own feces to eat. Very sad. https://ethnicelebs.com/christina-applegate
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13343617/Christina-Applegate-food-poisoning-takeout-salad-multiple-sclerosis.html
A new German scrap “movie” has been released. In it, a German and a British woman play two sisters who have to save each other from drowning. (Is this a general metaphor for the total forlornness/Verlorenheit of white women? I would strongly support this thesis and could even fundamentally substantiate it.) Choose highest resolution and switch off subtitles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dive_(2023_film)
https://fmoviesz.to/movie/the-dive-lxzzn/1-1
Ultrafire 18650 3.V Li-ION batteries and LED lights and Solar Lights were a wonderful invention…and most of our Solar lights have survived the winter, especially over our hysteria arch at the end of our pretty garden.
She said its
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I will tell you this for nowt we will have our usual birds nesting there very soon….
They may not yet have noticed our new kitten…but they will. She is a lot faster than our old sadly now dead cat, who died of old age at the cat equivalent age of 19×9
171
…Even the foxes loved her…
Our new cat – we haven’t opened the cat flap yet, has worked out how to open the back door, to get back in..
We should probably do a Tik-Tok video of her, but they would think we faked it.
We older, but still the same
The book “White Identity” by Jared Taylor advertised on the right-hand side of this website is adorned with the famous oil painting by C.D. Friedrich. The latter is currently celebrating his 250th anniversary (see Google News). What would the painter think of his homeland today? You don’t even dare to ask, as you can probably already guess the answer.
After all, not all of the art treasures were destroyed under the democratic bombing terror of the Stalin-allied “saviors”. Since the painter cannot be demonstrably associated with “colonial misdeeds” committed during his lifetime (such as the civilizing cultivation of the Third World), his works can still be admired today with an unbiased and clear conscience. https://www.dw.com/en/250-years-of-caspar-david-friedrich-on-show-in-berlin/a-67595101
Another great German celebrates his birthday (namely his 300th). Just imagine: Königsberg, which had existed for 700 years, was razed to the ground. The only reminders of the past are a few scattered ruins and the bust of Kant. Of all people, the pathological fraudster and homeland destroyer Scholz lays claim to the great philosopher, of course, as always for purely political calculation, to flatter his masters in Brainwashington. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/german-chancellor-accuses-putin-of-misusing-philosopher-immanuel-kants-teachings/articleshow/109561696.cms
An “East German” (who should actually be called a Central German) runs a YouTube channel on which he documents the neglect of former German properties in East Prussia (divided up between the Poles and Russians). https://www.youtube.com/@GeschichtlichesErbe/playlists
The great merit of Ruth Geede from Königsberg (her role model was Agnes Miegel), who was already 100 years old at the time of this interview, was not only that she kept the tradition, the dialect and the memory of East Prussia alive and made it known. She also ran a column in the Ostpreußenblatt, through which she reunited hundreds, if not thousands, of family members separated by flight over the years and decades.
But the audacity of the brainwashed, stultified youth cannot be described in words. At the end of the recording, the young interviewer forces an opinion from the old lady on the subject of “refugees”, by which she does not mean the real refugees, such as Ms. Geede, who helped build the country, but those who have been pouring into the country endlessly, especially after 2015.
Ms. Geede, presumably unaware of the consequences and dimensions of this issue, says: “Unlike today’s refugees, we at least had the advantage of being able to speak German”. The old lady can rest in peace without having to imagine the horror her descendants will have to face because of the stupidity and irresponsibility of those who are now “managing” the country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu3sH3c6Pio
Many may consider little East Prussia to be insignificant in world politics. But it is misunderstood that the exact opposite is true. As is well known, Hitler started the war with the justification of settling the “Danzig question” militarily, which only arose because East Prussia was unjustly separated from the Prussian rump state by the victorious powers after the First World War and thus condemned to provincialization.
Russian girl: “I think, that if the Prussian king would see how Königsberg looks like today, he would be shocked.” That’s what I fear as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqYOZuT7TtY
https://www.politico.eu/article/suwalki-gap-russia-war-nato-lithuania-poland-border/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suwa%C5%82ki_Gap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNlMdbsmXCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G223747690
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_question
https://web.archive.org/web/20171014130823/http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-70569479.html
Translation:
Contemporary history: Historical ballast
A secret document proves it: In the summer of 1990, a Soviet general sounded out whether Bonn was interested in East Prussia. Was this meant seriously or was it a trap?
It is an unusual story in an unusual time, and it begins with a ticker message received by the press office of the German embassy in Moscow. In May 1990, 20 years ago, the Wall was already open and the four victorious powers of the Second World War were negotiating German unity with the Federal Republic and the GDR. The main point of contention is the NATO membership of a united Germany; the Western powers are in favor, the Soviets against.
But now, according to a report in the latest edition of SPIEGEL, Soviet Major General Geli Batenin has stated that the “most preferable option” would be for the whole of Germany to join the Western alliance. Does this indicate a realignment in Moscow?
Joachim von Arnim, head of the political department at the embassy, wants to meet the unknown general immediately. The 45-year-old lawyer knows his way around the Soviet system; he is already stationed in Moscow for the second time and knows that he cannot simply contact Batenin. He calls the Central Committee – the power center of the Kremlin empire – and makes his request.
It takes a while, but a few weeks later the appointment is made, in the new Central Committee building not far from Red Square. Arnim is surprised by the athletic appearance of the almost 20-year-old general, who appears in plain clothes. Of course, the main topic on July 2, 1990 is the unresolved NATO issue.
But at the end, Batenin changes the subject. Under the seal of secrecy, he talks to his visitor about northern East Prussia, the part of the German province that was occupied by the Soviet Union during the war and never recovered after 1945. Meadows are covered in steppes, villages are run down, the Pregel stinks of sewage.
Batenin says that he has visited the region and that it is “a backward area in every respect, not only compared to its pre-war state, but also compared to the level of development in Russia”. Obviously just ballast.
There is a “question of northern East Prussia”, says Batenin and continues: “This problem will arise for the Soviet Union and Germany sooner or later. You can see how the situation in the Baltic states is developing.”
The Baltic Soviet republics were once annexed by Stalin and now want to break away from Moscow. Batenin’s words can only be interpreted in one way. He wants to initiate negotiations about northern East Prussia. This is also how Arnim understands him, who immediately rejects the request.
Since Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, Bonn has always signaled that it has no claims to the former eastern territories. This was also the position in the two-plus-four negotiations between the two German states and the victorious powers. The West German position was “unambiguous”, Arnim informed his host, “unification is about the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR and the whole of Berlin. If the Soviet Union had problems with the development of northern East Prussia, that was their business”.
The diplomat added as a warning that “it was in both sides’ interests to avoid anything that could be misused by the Soviet conservatives to cast doubt on the credibility of the German position”.
That evening, the embassy reported to Bonn. Just how seriously Arnim takes Batenin’s concerns can be seen from the fact that telex number 2585 is one of the few documents classified as “secret”.
SPIEGEL has now discovered the document in the archives of the Federal Foreign Office. And it raises the question of whether Moscow was really considering negotiating over the northern part of East Prussia – or whether Gorbachev’s opponents wanted to use Batenin to initiate negotiations over East Prussia so that they could then accuse Gorbachev of betraying Russian interests.
One of the skeptics is Frank Elbe, a confidant of Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and member of the Bonn delegation at the Two Plus Four negotiations. Today, Elbe assures us that East Prussia was “never part of the negotiations”. However, there were repeated interventions from the Central Committee, “which were intended to raise the profile of individual members or as a disruptive maneuver”. Elbe sees the Batenin initiative in this context.
On the other hand, Batenin was not one of the diplomatic scene’s steamrollers. The nuclear weapons specialist entered the political stage in the 1980s, was spokesman for the Minister of Defense, military policy advisor to the Central Committee and disarmament expert to Gorbachev. He later worked for Boris Yeltsin, but then lost track of him.
Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Batenin publicly declared that he was “categorically against using the military to solve internal problems”. He criticized disarmament opponents in his own ranks and signaled early on that he considered the collapse of the Warsaw Pact to be inevitable. No hardliner speaks like that.
However, the Americans temporarily refused Batenin entry. In Washington, he was seen as a Soviet propagandist. Diplomat Arnim, on the other hand, gained a different impression. He wrote to Bonn that “Batenin’s appearance and statements indicate that he works for one of the Soviet services and has a relatively high rank there”.
Today we know that the general was internally in favor of radical disarmament, even of his own troops. All of this gives the impression that the man’s main aim was to reduce the costs of Moscow’s great power policy. From this perspective, the separation of East Prussia was not completely absurd.
Moreover, everything seemed to be in flux in 1990. Journalists from Poland and Lithuania reported a lively interest in the Russian enclave, which some people apparently thought was not viable. After all, once Lithuania was independent, which was already on the horizon, there was no longer any land connection between Russia and the Kaliningrad region.
But whatever Batenin’s intentions were with his initiative, the borders of a united Germany had to be decided by all four world war victors. And the British, Americans and French would never have accepted a Soviet-German deal over East Prussia that would have put Poland in a pincer situation.
Such a plan would have been the end of our support from the Western Allies, says diplomat Arnim today. That would have meant the loss of unity. And nobody wanted it to fail because of East Prussia.
Apart from the fact that the Western world is “voluntarily” destroying itself and the rest of the world only has to watch leisurely, this extremely anti-Russian biased Youtuber does not seem to take other factors such as China, India or Brazil into account at all. This brings him a million clicks in one month.
Academia may be the worst enemy Shakespeare (or whomever it was) has. Way back in college I took a course on Shakespeare. I noticed something in “Romeo and Juliet” – a scene juxtaposition which I thought made fun of a particularly harsh attitude on the part of certain Capulets or Montegues (I forget which family it was): a comic scene immediately succeeded the harsh scene.
I mentioned this juxtaposition to the teacher and suggested it was Shakespeare’s way of undercutting the previous scene. But the teacher said no, that wasn’t it – since the harshness was part of the mores of the period in which the drama took place.
What the teacher overlooked, in my view, was that an artist can manipulate his characters and scenes in such a way as to project his or her own mores.
It’s a bit of a dilemma for the aspiring artists or author whether to enroll in college or not, isn’t it?
As Frank Zappa said, ‘if you want to deviate from the norm, you need to have at least a passing knowledge of what the fucking norm is’, which means that as a writer you should at least be aware of the fucking alphabet, basic grammar, and if you’re real slick the ol’ hysteron-proteron. Likewise, the aspiring musician should know what the fucking ionian mode is, how it differs from the major scale, if at all, how the fucking plagal cadence goes, and why the catholics prohibited parallel fifth and the augmented second.
The trouble comes when you put thus acquired knowledge into practice, which is an integral part of the knowledge acquisition process. There, the student is forced to conform to esthetics imposed by the petrified academia. Unless the prof is an enlightened individual, which is often the case, but not always, the would-be artists is forced to become the applicator of rigid rules, the anti-thesis of art.
To school or not to school, that’s da question!
I have to say that I was mostly very lucky and just about all my professors were highly sympathetic if not appreciative of my subversive attempts to put a dent in whatever shit they were pushing … ha ha ..
Like this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtV52ajfrQE
Or that one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCkrHDj9BeA
And others. But they were giants, it’s the fucking midgets who ride your ass you to make you smaller in vainly attempting to amplify their minuscule size.
I love the way ChatGPT/AI can make even the dumbest of people appear to be learned, erudite and literate.
Interesting! Why don’t you try making Chap GTP replicate the kind of stuff I occasionally write?
You know what? I’d venture to say that I could run circles around AI. Why? Because AI has been created by nondescript fuckers who have compiled what goes on in the nondescript minds of other nondescript fuckers and molded into a one giant fucking ball of nondescript shit. That would be da box.
I’m outside that da box and AI can’t touch me.
Try that too sometime. You’ll come across less like one of them leg-humping fucking midgets mentioned above.
I would argue that, in this instance, you were, de facto, not out of ‘da AI box’, since all that is required to place you firmly in it is the misunderstanding/misattribution which occurred above!
I dare you, I double dare you to replicate any of the shit I write by Chap GTP.
Nema sanci!
You missed my point entirely and you are overly defensive, leaving some, I have no doubt, to wonder why. Take a leaf out of your own book, lighten up! 😅 A2
Defensive? I thought I was being playful! Plus, I wanna see Chap GTP have a crack at being Sociolog!
Regarding AI. Let’s assume that the mad IT professors manage to construct a super duper fucking AI robot, an entity that functions flawlessly and then some. What sort of personality is it gonna have? Infinitely multiple? Maybe. But I’d venture to say that it will have a middle-of-the road personality or perhaps the personality of its creators. Or some other artificial personality. What it can’t have, or do, is outdo itself. Not in the human realm. It can’t be humanly creative. It will be in da box of the whatever state of the art is crammed into the fucking silicon brain of his.
Plus, there’s tons of experiences your robot will never have. Like making out with your favorite member of the opposite sex (the same sex if you’re one of them faggots or who knows what sex if you’re one of them trans-faggots). Getting wasted on cheap wine. Getting your face smashed in and/or smashing some motherfucker’s face in.
Don’t cage me and, more importantly, don’t cage yourself by succumbing to this AI is after us shit. AI is a little more sophisticated version of intermittent windshield wipers for fucks sakes.
It’s good ol’ Jacques again?
Hi Soci … do you folks in Czechia watch “Goodfellas” on a weekly basis?
That’s not actually how native speakers of English talk and your coders should fucking know that!
Je m’en calice, y compris toi-meme, tes native fucking speakers, les goodfellers, et c’est que tu fais sur une base hebdomadaire. J’espere que ca l’explique pour toi.
Et maintenant decollle, tabarnak, et vas chier.
How do Socio 🎶😊
I had to look up all those music and literature terms. And I still don’t really understand them!
No matter.
I still get a natural high from singing my songs to strangers on the streets.
Music gives me wings.
The ionian mode is the same thing as the major scale. The white notes on the piano played from C to C. C is the key right next to the left of the two black keys (there are groups of two and three black keys). If you use solfege, which is what we use to call notes in French and other Latin languages, the ionian mode/major scale is the do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. I’m sure you could sing it, if not play it on your instrument. Plagal cadence is a chord progression in which IV resolves to I, like the F chord going to the C chord. This is in contrast to the perfect cadence, the strongest harmonic movement in tonal music, in which the V resolves to I, G => C. In classical music, parallel fifths (fifth is the interval between C and G, parallel fifths would be C/G moving to D/A, for example) and the augmented second (the interval between F and G# in the A harmonic minor A, B, C, D, E, F, G#, A) are prohibited because they evoke Arab music. Since classical music basically served to reinforce the catholic religion, the last thing the fuckers wanted was to have shit that sounded like their nemesis. Arab music is full of parallel fifths and augmented seconds. You can hear that if you play them.
Hysteron-proteron is if you say something like “A fucking asshole Victor G. is” instead of “Victor G. is a fucking asshole”. Well, actually, that’s not really hysteron-proteron, that would be an anastrophe. Hysteron-proteron is more like saying butter and bread instead of bread and butter. It also means reversing the chronological order of things in a nonsensical fashion, putting the future before the past.
Anyways, keep strummin’ and singing’, man!
You know you’re on the right track when you get “down votes” from those who almost certainly did not even read your comment. As ideologically driven as most of this forum’s commenters seem to be, there’s really nothing in this particular comment of yours which challenges said ideology – an ideology best characterized as “everything we disagree with is automatically wrong.”
I believe your down voters just assume you will be at odds with their absolute truth, so you get the benefit of a down vote without even trying.
Upvotes, downvotes, and all the rest notwithstanding, what I find fascinating about the stuff that has gone down since CONVID hit is how the notion is just about a complete illusion that the world has learned from past mistakes and acquired a reasonable degree of wisdom, which would include accepting opposing viewpoints, tolerating if not cherishing differences. Instead, and despite all the education available out there, people are as dogmatic as ever, unwilling to accept anything but their orthodoxy.
This forum is funny. People think themselves dissenters, unconventional outliers, yet they form an extremely close-minded community that excommunicates anybody who dares question their pet peeves and dogmas.
Seeing it through the prism of art, which underscores everything, we’re witnessing the end of the pop-art era whose heyday spreads roughly from 1960s to 1980s, whereafter that it was mostly recycled, which was highly impactful because it made art – albeit of the popular variety but some of which could be classified as art in the legit sense anyway – available to the broadest populations. We’re at the end of that epoch, with nothing else to replace it in sight. We’re in a hollow spot, devoid of raison d’etre, where people try to cling to the past glory that is slipping through their fingers, disappearing into oblivion.
I’ve been saying since the beginning that the way out of it is to create something new, but people just can’t let go of the past.
There is no community on the internet- it is literally designed to destroy human community.
There have been plenty of Shakespeare haters. Not least Tolstoy:
“I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: “King Lear,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless.”
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/shakespeare-tolstoy/1/
More succinctly Shaw:
“It would positively be a relief to me to dig Shakespeare up and throw stones at him.”
And one from the magnificently robust and non-PC pen of Colin Wilson (along with a caustic remark on the “true authorship” question):
“As a scientist, I had got used to thinking clearly and logically about important issues, ignoring the trivial, steering clear of negative emotions. In reading about Shakespeare and Bacon, it had never struck me that their ‘life world’ is made up almost entirely of the trivial and negative. Judged by any modem standard, they are both as outdated as the phlogiston theory of combustion, or the Edison phonograph.
Reading their works, I found myself in a petty, stifling atmosphere, such as I once noticed at a party when two homosexuals began quarrelling. It was impossible to get involved in the action of Macbeth or Antony and Cleopatra because I felt from the beginning that these people are fools, and that consequently nothing that happens to them can possibly matter. In spite of magnificent literary flashes, I had no more desire to remain in the company of Shakespeare’s characters than in the company of the two queers at the party. They simply didn’t matter, any more than the quarrels of children matter.
As to the Bacon of the later works and essays, I found his mind altogether more congenial, but lacking a centre of gravity. They do not spring from any intuitive view of the universe; they are clever bits and pieces on any subject he chooses to turn his mind to. They are the work of an industrious lawyer, not an inspired thinker.
Later, I read Tolstoy’s essay on Shakespeare, in which he says all that I have just said, and a great deal more. I found it surprising that his clear analyses should not have completely destroyed Shakespeare’s reputation. And then, on reflection, I saw that it was not surprising. Most people live on a level of emotional triviality which means that when they read Shakespeare, they experience the pleasure of hearing their own feelings echoed. And since the language is impressive, and requires a certain intellectual effort to follow, they can have no doubt that this is really Great Literature.
This combination – of fine language with totally trivial content – has kept Shakespeare’s stock high for three hundred years, and will continue to do so until the movement of evolution consigns him to the dustbin of quaint but meaningless antiquities. It is amusing to find myself in accord with those critics who, when asked whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote the plays, reply that it makes no difference. For indeed, it makes no difference.”
“As to the Bacon of the later works and essays, I found his mind altogether more congenial,”
Not surprising. Bacon and Wilson wrote and thought in prose, like GBS, Tolstoy and M.Jourdain; whereas Shakespeare was a poet.
GBS needed that relief because he suffered from the strain of trying to joual Shakespeare and never succeeding.
In fact, GBS did not even equal Chekov, whom he tried to emulate ‘in the Russian manner” (Heartbreak House). Shaw’s gifts were great but different from those of his rival dramatists.. Which is as it should be; an artist ought not to waste his time:
“desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope” — Shakespeare, Sonnets..
Despite the inarguable fact that there is, indeed, much tedium and triviality mixed in with much magnificence in most Shakespeare plays, it might not be too instructive to bring Tolstoy into the discussion simply because, great as he was, his works are largely based on a hyper-religious viewpoint and therefore he would search in vain for much in the way of religious inspiration.
Bear in mind also that it is speculated that Shakespearean plays were often works in progress, to which the actors contributed as they went. This would necessarily result in much fluff, as actors sought to increase their exposure. Egotism didn’t just begin in Hollywood studios.
As you say, there are many pious platitudes in Shakespeare, and many acts of unsolicited kindness “despite nature”
but not much overt preaching; unlike Tolstoy.
“Shakespeare is already quite Godless” — GBS, The Little Black Girl in Search of God.
Talking of Russians:
“Brahms; what a talentless bastard” — Tchaikovsky.
Hopefully Tchaikovsky was being whimsical. On the other hand, if he wasn’t he perhaps never heard Brahms’ First or his Second Concerto.
Also, unfortunately, such a comment gives credence to the prejudice against homosexuals, however closeted they might be in that it makes him seem unnecessarily petty and “catty.”
Artists tend to be “catty” toward their competitors. I remember reading of interviews with Tchaikovsky and other great contemporary musicians by the great fin-de-siecle writer, Romains Rolland. The interviewer was surprised to find that he alone had a good word to say about all those great contemporaries. It’s the fans that keep the show going..
And not only musicians;
“The boy works hard but he does not know how to paint” — Michaelangelo about Raphael.
“Michaelangelo was a good old man but he did not know how to paint” — El Greco.
A extremely well argumentative writing style I seldom see. Quite convincing. Thanks for the reference.
Having just re-read The Tempest three times in a row, and compared it with Dryden’s rewrite, I agree with GBS:
“Shakespeare’s plays are obviously too good to have been written by a moneygrubbing Stratford landowner of the name Shakespeare; but they are equally obviously too good to have been written by any known English writer — except for the one known as Shakespeare.” — Bernard Shaw.
Shaksper was a grain merchant, and small time money lender, locked in a loveless marriage with in illiterate wife a son and two illiterate daughters? He became enamoured with the Oxford Boys, a group of players, and tagged along as a sort of ROADY.
DeVere was the prime author of the Shake-a-Spear plays and sonnets. ONLY he had the intimate experience of court and travelled the world constantly and had a wealth of information of other countries and customs. He was NOT the son of Elizabeth unless she gave birth to him age 5? He was her sexual play plaything from being very young. Elizabeth played ludicrous games with her paramours, somehow believing that if she didn’t have actual intercourse she couldn’t get pregnant? But she did with Edward and gave birth to Henry Wriothesley Earl of Southampton. The sonnets were not to a homosexual, but their beloved son.
It was Bacon, who collated all the works of De Vere’s boys and published them under the name Shake- a – Spear.
Nice story, should be worked up to a book.
Reminds me of the story which a professor from the U$A (and his computer) worked up in the 1950s: that Marlow wrote Shakespeare’s plays. The Prof’s computer model awed Stratford’s local authorities to brave Shakespeare’s curse and disturb his grave; but they found no trace of Marlow.
The only trouble with both stories is that neither Marlow nor Vere nor other writer in the English Language ever showed the genius that shines from the pages of Midsummer Night, Love’s Labour, Hamlet, Alls Well or The Tempest.
I bet on the canny Stratford grain-and-hosiery merchant, Wm.Shaksper :
“He drew Shylock from his own long pocket” — James Joyce, Ulysses.
De Vere was born in 1550, Elizabeth was born in 1533. So he could have been her son… she’d have been 16/17 at the time of his birth.
The root of all evil are taking root, and we are discussing the identity of fictional characters again —sheeeeesh.
The police state of Elizabeth I and her occult adept spymaster John Dee are the stage on which this drama played, and continues to play out. It’s our own home-grown manifestation of the iniquitous mystery religion – Rosicrucians and related loons of psychopathic (evil) bent, then and now.
It could hardly be more relevant.
Shakespeare took care to survive the Tudor Reign of Terror:
a, He cast a couple of Tudor opponents as villains: Richard 3 and Macbeth.
b. He drew a couple of Tudor royals in flattering light: Elizabeth 1 and Henry 7.
c, He wrote Merry Wives of Windsor to please Elizabeth.
On the less servile side, it is a tribute to Elizabeth 1 that she was intelligent enough to recognize Shakespeare’s talent, and make his theatre company the official royal court players. Rather like Stalin recognizing the pianistic genius of Maria Yudina, giving her a prize and not having the pianist imprisoned when she spent her prize money on prayers for his sins.
Elizabeth knew full well what Edward was writing, and encouraged him to tell all, but to take care to disguise when he involved her. The theatre was the only means of spreading news and gossip, for there were no newspapers?
But the author doesn’t present that parallel, nor the various themes – murder, masonry, duality, revenge, power, greed, envy, vendettas, monarchy, religion, rituals, cannibalism, treachery, blackmail, deception, subjugation, serfdom, suicide, violence, war, usury, mental illness etc – in the collaborative works which were likely translations and/or modernizations of older plays – Roman, Greek etc., into Elizabethan English, then attributed falsely to an imaginary composite figure, likely named after the Breakspear line.
The themes parallel the propaganda being incessantly pushed on us today using tv, film, theater, music lyrics and faux news. It’s the Cult of Saturn’s trauma based mind control signature, their modus operandi.
Of course, but we commenters can be relied upon to furnish the missing information. OffG’s value is mostly that the truth emerges by the time comments are in.
Agreed! We should be devoting all our time to discussing the identity of fictional pathogens!
C’mon… it was Bacon, Baykin, Bacun! Sir Francis Bacon was the bastard son of the Virgin Queen, and it was he who was ‘Shakespeare’, see: https://ourtube.co.uk/video/26979 where Susan Roberts more than nails it!
So, who was his father then, Dudley??
Today, the 25th of April, is ANZAC Day in Australia, New Zealand and some surrounding areas.
It is a day of remembrance, honouring those who were lost in the MANY, MANY, wars we have been cajoled, conned and dragged into by our Masters, the UK and the US.
Millions of civilians perished too, but they don’t rate a mention.
Maybe one day we’ll have a day of remembrance for the VACCINE VICTIMS, but I doubt it.
The world doesn’t work that way.
Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty – responsible for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of 1915/16. He was forced to resign and two years later was appointed to another senior position. This is never mentioned in any of the Anzac Day ceremonies.
The recent film about Churchill inaccurately paints him as a compassionate heroic figure. No mention of his drinking problem and poor character. He borrowed much money during his life being often in debt. He also borrowed from his friend “Natty”, Lord Nathanial Rothschild.
He was also responsible for the Indian genocide.
And, John Winston Howard’s hero.
His famous speeches were spoken by an actor. I don’t know who wrote them but it couldn’t have been the dunce Churchill.
“PROOF THAT some of Winston Churchill’s most famous radio speeches of the war were delivered by a stand-in has emerged with the discovery of a 78rpm record.
The revelation ends years of controversy over claims – repeatedly denied – that an actor had been officially asked to impersonate the Prime Minister on air.
The record makes it clear for the first time that Norman Shelley’s voice was used to broadcast some of the most important words in modern British history – including ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’. It is marked ‘BBC, Churchill: Speech. Artist Norman Shelley’ and stamped ‘September 7, 1942’.”
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/myths/an-actor-read-churchills-wartime-speeches-over-the-wireless/
A psychopath and a fraud!
How the mighty fall.
A bit like Howard losing his seat, and the election.
Churchill was a psychopath and a war criminal! His mugshot is on British £5 notes, do vandalise accordingly…
When drunks run the world, there is no answer.
Even more so if they are also fond of the white snuff?
Who says heredity doesn’t out? You just need to be able to recognise it… Johnson?
Maybe an actor spoke his lines; but who wrote them?
“After their meeting in Washington, while Churchill’s plane was still winging its way over the Atlantic, Roosevelt sat down with his team of writers to draft his speech. Over BBC radio came the familiar booming voice.
“Mr.President”, said one of Roosevelt’s speechwriters, “I guess he rolls his own”.
Interesting. Revelation of the Method. Thanks May.
If you read the article you have linked, they seem to actually refute Norman Shelley’s oft repeated claims.
True, but that site is worshiping Churchill.
“I regret to say that I love war and revel in it” — Winston Churchill
T.W.A.T.
What a statesman! What a hero! What a humanitarian!
Churchill was a megalomaniacal deviant, with a God complex.
A maniacal, serial mass murderer. Still worshipped across the Commonwealth however, by know nothings and the wretchedly deluded.
Good Luck to you Ozzies picking a fight with China. You will go down in history as soldiers even more heroically stupid than the Ukies who voted to pick a fight with Russia.
It’s not heroics anymore, it’s job desperation and/or obedience.
You may be right, and I was deceived by the heroics. But are Ozzies no desperate that they will sign up for a job that guarantees 90% death rate in 2 years?
As for obedience, whatever happened to the Crocodile Dundee ethic:
Three Admirals were discussing heroism.
The English admiral ordered a sailor to jump off the man-o-war’s 100 foot mast. The sailor saluted, jumped and broke his leg.
The Yankee admiral ordered a sailor to jump off his 200 foot mast. The sailor shouted, Aye! Aye! Sir!, jumped and broke his neck.
The Ozzie admiral ordered a sailor to jump of his 30 foot mast. The sailor shouted: “Admiral, kiss my arse”, and dived overboard.
ANZAC Day. Hmmm.
The Frontier Wars are truly ‘the Australian Wars’; they were fought on Country and for Country. To emphasise the contrast, we should call the expeditionary force wars – from the Sudan to Afghanistan and including two World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam – ‘Australia’s Overseas Wars’. Yet, it is the latter wars that get the full remembrance treatment; we turn away from the Australian Wars and try to shove them down the memory hole.
https://johnmenadue.com/red-poppies-and-bare-ground-why-do-we-discriminate-among-our-war-dead/
A painful Truth Jimbo.
Thanks for the reminder.
All the ‘Sorrys’ in the world add up to nothing when one considers our brutal history.
It doesn’t matter who Shakespeare was or even if he never existed…The work he, or someone, produced is all we need.
See this vid. by Christopher Hitchens on Socrates as an example.
https://youtu.be/vMo5R5pLPBE
The Messages are more important than the messengers.
Indeed, & the quality of mercy is not strained. . .
The “messages” were actually WORLD NEWS OF THE DAY.
I’ve been to Anne Hathaway’s cottage.
It’s OK in a Laura Ashley, 1980’s kitch way now. (I believe they’ve used Clunch) but in the 16th century it would have stunk like an open sewer with no creature comforts apart from a fire.
It is incomprehensible that the wealthy author of so many intricate worldy wise works would have slummed it in such a dump just to get his leg over a lower class strumpet.
The most likely is that he was a paid nom de plume and probably handsomely so.
The real author had his axes to grind which are probably irrelevant now.
Fair play to the man.
I’m here all week.
It was more likely to have been a team effort, rather like the project that resulted in the King James Bible.
https://mignarda.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/collaborative-shakespeare/
https://mignarda.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/collaborative-shakespeare-ii/
Bacon!
Everything’s better with Bacon! 🥓 👍
Except for the smart, sentient, once living creatures it was TORN from.
Bacon was tasked with gathering ALL the documents together and publishing them as “SHAKE-A-SPEAR” after DeVere died.. Spear meaning ‘the quill.’
De Vere had, as one of his titles, Viscount Bolebec. On his coat of arms was an image of a woman shaking a spear.
Interesting that the two greatest works in English are the plays of Shakespeare and the books of the King James Bible. The former are originals written poetry, and the latter are translations written in prose. As everyone knows:
“Poetry is what gets left out of a translation” — Robert Frost.
When I was young I reasoned that I might find the King James Bible superior even to Shakespeare if I read it in the original Hebrew and Greek. But all I found was that, not being poetry, the original text of the Bible had no more literary merit than their translation into English.
(Though I did find one (deliberate?) mistranslation in KJV Areopagita; where KJV makes St.Paul say to the Athenians, You are very superstitious. If Paul had really said that in public he would have been lynched; but the original Greek says, You are extremely interested in religion, so the Athenian court let him off).
I am gobsmacked!
Seriously, that any version of the Bile- I mean Bible- is regarded as either “literature” or “history” is indicative of the state of western culture….
It was definitely a ‘team’ effort. Like ‘The Guardian’ has more than one contributor? ‘Shake-a-Spear’ was 90% Edward de VERE.
I miss Jacques.
Or do I ?
Don’t worry, he’ll be back.
It’s Sociologue, didn’t you realize that?
That was the point of the post.
Off topic.
Light pollution – that’s where it’s at!
https://undark.org/2024/04/22/darkness-in-chile-atacama-desert/
“In October, the Chilean government announced a new National Lighting Standard that will become effective later this year. The updated standards expand restrictions on light luminosity, color, and the hours they can be turned on to protect three major concerns: astronomy, biodiversity, and human health.”
The “damage” done to astronomy is pretty obvious.
“While the Atacama offers a window to answer fundamental questions about the origin of life, that window is at risk of closing in the next 50 years due to increasing light pollution, said Chilean astronomer Guillermo Blanc. Worldwide, the sky is estimated to get brighter by 10 percent on average each year.”
The bit about answering “fundamental questions about the origin of life” is essential here since most readers would wonder why desert stargazing is so important. And even then, the connection isn’t exactly obvious – unless they’re expecting a big arrow that points to the origin of it all. Or a starry text from the deity.
What about biodiversity? (Apart from being a compulsively ejaculated sacred woke word?) Well, “Reduced artificial light could aid migrating seabirds…” That’s it.
And “human health” i.e. the only item on the list that anyone really gives a shit about?
“Beyond the consequences for astronomy, the night sky is a heritage and a connection to our human past, Lowenthal added: From Chile to the American Southwest, to Indonesia and Hawai’i, people have deeply understood the sky. Addressing light pollution, he said, is about maintaining that connection.”
So …. some nebulous “maintaining of our human past” then.
Knowing that they’re onto a loser, they swiftly wind it up.
So ….”light pollution”? Another means to clamp down. Another move towards some kind of global curfew?
The crime rate is so high here that we need lights, lots o lights, to light up the night, so people can have sight, and avoid the fights, and frights, of the nights.
Back to the clay holes and candle lights again? Usual leftist neo-liberal pagan hypocrisy.
To compensate for anti-human measures they try as all leftist to give the impression they are concerned about our nature, mother Gaia, which is a pagan God who constantly requires human blood sacrifices to be satisfied and return with rain, good harvest and hunt.
It’s Sophia/Gaia.
Those pagans, Babylonians, Cult of Baal Canaanites wrote the first scripts that were eventually turned into your precious Gematria ridden, sun worship, astrotheology BuyBull. You’re all in the same Saturnic cult.
How’s that for irony. Lol.
I beg your pardon. “You’re all in”.
Who is your and you??
I addressed you and only you.
Did you forget about all your BuyBull quotations and proselytizing?
Your indoctrination into the Cult of Rome and Ordo Ab Chao (wittingly or unwittingly) is further on display with your lionization of the order following, Freemasonic, armed thugs hired by the privately owned, criminal enterprises you call “governments” to enforce debt slavery, unlawful statutes and codes, steal from, kidnap and murder those who won’t comply with “the State”.
You are seriously confused by your judeo-christian programs. Sophia is a greek name and has nothing to do with Babylon.
The genocidal assault on goddess and nature worship, and on nature herself, is at the core of the abrahamic anti-human program which you still serve.
The Greeks, Romans, Abrahamic, Canaanite, Hebrews, Egyptians, Gnostics, Pagans, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and Babylonians are ONE CULT, ONE RELIGION using recycled, man made astrotheological scripts and faux laws as occult mind control mechanisms. Any differences are purely superficial. All religions, all cults and all Masonic and Druid orders are created as faux opposing factions for control.
Don’t ever project your ignorance, lies and false beliefs onto me.
Gaia, the earth goddess and a term co-opted by James Lovelock (ex-NASA and MI5) to promote the idea that the earth is a sacred and self-regulating entity which would be far better off without us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
There’s a documentary, on youtube and quite good, called Life after People. I seem to remember that it’s narrated by Ernest Borgnine
Get used to hearing more about Gaia.
The one world religion which is planned will likely be some form of Gaia worship, probably acting as front for Luciferianism (Saturn-ism).
There is already the Abrahamic Family House opened in Abu Dhabi to bring together the Abrahamic religions.
The UN is front and centre of bringing all the religions together under the umbrella of ‘protecting’ the Earth.
https://www.unep.org/resources/publication/faith-earth-call-action
The Baha’i International Community believes in the “oneness of God and religion” and is highly connected and involved with UN.
https://www.bahai.org/beliefs
I know. The deceiver is a false representative of the real one and will claim his ownership and to be the oneness.
Instead of real intelligence he has invented artificial intelligence which give you all the money you desire, DNA mutations and the hope to live eternally as the deceiver promised from the beginning where it all went wrong.
Actually it surprises me how precise the descriptions are in the scriptures.
Because it’s all the SAME CULT. Why not bring together, what was only ever one religion.
All religions are one religion.
it is your lard jehovah who demands constant blood sacrifice and regards the Earth and women as evil.
The Global Surveillance Prison spy cameras, face recogs,
vast storage centres, and all the monitoring gadgets stores,
etc, will use to keep an eye on us, gobble up electricity.
Households are in competition- so households will have to
cut back…You’ll no longer will be able to read a book while
in bed at night but at least you’ll be safe (
The Great Resetters are probably aiming to abolish printed books and put everything online where they can keep tabs on what everyone is reading.
There’s a reason why Google has started more than 25 years ago to digitize all the world’s big and famous libraries.I remember a guy from StaBi Munich getting all excited how they now could free up so much space once the ‘content’ was on a drive and no longer on a shelf. Centuries of collecting and storing Europe’s knowledge and wisdom handed over to a US corp just like that. The public never got a say in it. And that was in the 1990s.
I attended a private Catholic preparatory high school– Class of 1973. FWIW, at the time the school was disdained by the Archdiocese because of its “liberal” tendencies. It had its own library, small but serviceable.
A couple of years ago, I guess, the alumni bulletin proudly and triumphantly proclaimed that the library was now (print) book-free! It blithely implied that actual printed books were decidedly obsolete, or obsolescent, and passé. The stodgy old book collection would not attract either prosperous parents or overachieving students, who sought and expected cutting-edge, state of the art pedagogy.
I think they still called it a “library”, but the space was repurposed as an Electronic Media Resource Center. I presume the librarian and assistant librarian were “retired”. Or maybe they kept them on to spend all day recharging electronic devices. 📚 🔥 🤨
Most of the inescapable hindrance to astronomy comes from the tens of thousands of “5G satellites”, some launched and others scheduled. There were feeble protests about 2-3 years ago.
It is doubtful that satellites exist. NASA use high altitude balloons. Most internet connections, I read, are via cables laid on the ocean floor.
https://chemtrails.substack.com/p/part-2-are-nasa-satellites-a-psyop?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=11vc3d&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I’m in favor of it personally. Simple things, like having lights that point downward, rather than at the sky, would make a lot of difference. Use of lower intensity bulbs. Keeping the sky darker really doesn’t really require additional “clamping down.” Once of the few good things that came out of the Convid lockdowns was the sky re-darkened due to lack of cars on the road. And yeah, I believe there is something in a darkened sky that does speak to our human roots and existence. I’d be more worried if they were trying to make things less dark.
I don’t think we’ll ever know. The name, with its phallic connotations, suggests a pseudonym. But there is even less concrete proof that anyone other than a man we think of as Shakespeare wrote the plays.
It’s a similar debate to whether the Bronte sisters wrote their novels or whether it was their brother Branwell. It’s possible but with no real evidence.
More than likely in the modern world very many people revered as great literary or musical stars are actually fronts for anonymous writers behind the scenes. Look at the credits in the recordings of top bands or singers.
Shaksper attended a parochial rural school for 7 years. Learned Latin, of no use to anyone but clergy, and basic Maths. (Can any one here remember what they learned in Junior School?) He went to work for his Grain Merchant Father selling animal feed, and was a petty money lender on the side. NOTHING UP TO THIS POINT GAVE HIM ANY IDEA OF ALL THE EXOTIC PLACES HE EXPOSED IN “The Plays.” He never ventured out of England, so HOW WOULD HE HAVE KNOWN ABOUT CUSTOMS OF THE ENGLISH COURT AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES?
While there is a detective story of competing suspects and pet theories, the fact of import to my appreciation is the generation of a cultural basis in both language and content – that in large part mirrors or retells the archetypal human constellations set out by ancient Greeks. Which itself runs as a mirror for awakening insight within dramatic narratives of cathartic but not moral persuasion. This NOT an extension of the Catholic faith or its proto-Corporate Vatican world order. If anything an act of a Freemasonry – I use the term for proto-scientists who sought to understand how the world order worked – so to build a ‘better world’. Indeed a New Atlantis was envisioned as the first British settlement on the Americas (?). (I read of a strange tower associated with Bacon in a bay in N America – but cant recall details).
But regardless details a movement of persons of intelligence,influence and wealth set out a cultural basis from which ‘Great Britain’ was to grow as a global propagator of cultural influence via maritime dominance of trade routes and colonisation that operated a self-belief or identity of right to rule or set the rule of ‘civilisation’.
Without getting bogged down in moral arguments of all that has shaped our world, I draw attention to our current cabal of wealth influence and ‘intelligence’ in terms of ‘machine-thinking’ as cybernetic systems-modelling as its basis for closed system-surveillance & control set in tech that augments a quantisation of living beings as data or lab-research subjects.
This neuro-linguistic web may deal out subliminal mainstreamed commands in narratives of control, but only reflects Man -and Nature as machinery.
This runs a reversal to Shakes Spear (Pallas Athena) – whose World made psychological or mythic sense – in which to recognise our own psyche at many levels and parts & even as the Dreamer of the Dream.
Whereas the induction to a Screen ‘reality’ of virtual substitution for awareness or agency of being runs Narcissus as the means to crystallise or lock-down & lockstep into a ‘collectively’ tooled isolation. But then – that – is its premise: a closed system of private agenda set over and against life-as-war. That the globalist War on War runs insane is either obvious or successfully engaging the mind in self-destructive futility.
The roots of mind and language are not in its own making, thinking or ability to create along the line OF thinking. A mind is really minding – a verb for giving attention and thus value as a means to create meaning and order as fulfilment of integral purpose for being.
The idea of a trapped mind (in its own thought) is at once comedic yet also pathologically tragic in experience. We have the result or fruit of our intention and attention as habits of value-fulfilment that have long since outworn their service to run reversal and destruction as the only means left to plunder to save … a model of self-control that propagates as a linguistic ‘virus’ in codes of social masking.
We have a polarising of Apollo & Dionysus that is not just ‘heart & mind’ but a split mind.
We also have a catastrophic past that early Liberalism used a bent of ‘science’ to bury in its own mythos that replaces both gods and terrors with Millions or billions of years – as a steady state model of uniformitarian gradualism – installed in our world-view as a basis for regulated systems thinking to operate more efficiently in bringing the Promethean blight to mankind under gaslight!
yes I play in what a word’s worth but I also sketch a case for perspective freedom rather than morally compelled dictates – or morally compelled anti-dictates.
Guilting is THE technology for disconnecting and locking down minds. You may think it offers gain of fiction; you don’t want it! But only You can ask the question “is this what I want?” – for without a question the answer cannot share its gift – even if we stamp its form out to a mass production of imagery in which to revel in hollow ‘self-gratifictions’.
I may not be easy to read – but that is not only because you get first draft of a dense-packed meaning – it does not share the predicate and so it doesn’t run on ‘Guilt OS’.
As Leonard said before he left the stage – You want it darker. (?)
Superb comment Binra! Do you blog anywhere?
Ten more reasons to doubt the Stratford man wrote those works:
1) The vocabulary in the works is over twice that of Milton’s and at least six times that of the current average citizen. The writer was either incredibly learned or a group or both.
2) One word that never appears in “Shakespeare” is Stratford – but St Albans, home of one authorship candidate Francis Bacon, appears over a dozen times.
3) Any art is a mixture of personal experience and imagination. The disjoin between the Stratford man’s known experiences and the works is a chasm. The STratford man’s life was one of gradual upward mobility whereas the plays are full of exile, disgrace, false identities and faked deaths.
4) When other Elizabethan poets died theis passing received copious tributes from their peers – but when the Stratford man died there was silence.
5) None of the other playwrights knew him as a person – they knew the name on various works but they left no evidence they’d met the man.
6) None of Shakespeare’s plots are original – they are all based on other works. Some of these works were only available at the time in languages Shakespeare couldn’t speak. (This is the “free fall speed” proof about Shakespeare – it was physically impossible he could have written the plays. The mainstream explanation that he got someone else to translate these original works for him is like the concertina effect on 9/11 – preposterous).
7) The Stratford man spelt his name several different ways but never “Shakespeare”. On some quartos the name is spelt Shake-speare and there’s no other playwright who inserted a hyphen into his name – however pseudonomous names were often hyphenated.
8) Whoever wrote the plays had cutting edge knowledge for the period of the law, medicine, the military (both on land and sea), falconry, other sports, animals, plants, the court and foreign countries (especially but not exclusively Italy). “Genius” can’t magic factual knowledge out of thin air.
9) The play ‘Richard II’ was important in the so-called Essex Rebellion yet the Stratford man wasn’t arrested (like Ben Jonson), let alone tortured (like Thomas Kydd).
10) Numerous “Shakespeare” plays circulated in so-called bad quartos until 1623. These were the plays as recollected by a couple of actors and full of errors. The Stratford man was notoriously litigious and pernickity – but he made no effort to surpress these bad quartos which lost him money. This makes no sense if the Stratford man was the author – but it does make sense if the author was an aristocrat hiding his identity (Oxford, Bacon) or hiding under a fake identity abroad to escape blasphemy charges (Marlowe).
There’s more evidence tht the Stratford man was an illiterate who died of syphillis than there is that he wrote the works (my best guess is that it doesn’t go quite that far – but I can certainly imagine the controllers having a good laugh if they put forward such a man as the greatest writer ever).
BULLS EYE Edwige!
One thing that has always struck me as curious is that the – widely considered – two greatest writers of all time, Shakespeare and Cervantes, lived at the same time. Each wrote in the language of the two foremost powers of the time. Spain and England were unofficially at war and Spain was transitioning from a great empire to a weakened and bankrupted one as England’s star was rising.
Putting aside the highly probable doubts surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare’s work, these two writers both produced works that are considered of such importance to the English and Spanish literary world. Still today the two most widely spoken languages in the world are English and Spanish, with the exception of Mandarin Chinese.
Though in the English speaking world the importance of Don Quixote is often understated, it is one of the top ten most translated books in history and was the first ever novel. The format of which was emulated from then onwards.
The date of death of both Shakespeare and Cervantes is always referred to as 23rd April 1616. Although, Spain already used the Gregorian calendar at that time while England was still on the Julian calendar, so there was actually 11 days difference in their deaths.
There are quite a few similarities between Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” and Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor”.
The overly-romantic errant Knight, Don Quixote, who sets forth on his quest and ultimately becomes mocked (very cruelly imho) by his contact with the Court; the object of their jest.
And similarly the very cruel way ‘Sir’ John Falstaff is mocked within the Shakespeare play. Not one of my favourite plays, but apparently it was written very quickly (14 days).
Most likely Cervantes is another fabrication.
My problem with the “Shakespeare NO, Anybody Else YES theory is its blatant classism. The theory assumes ipso facto that a country bumpkin with no particular literary training could not possibly have created so many works regarded as works of genius.
To be sure, the theory’s proponents are largely quick to protest (too much?) that “Oh no no no no no, we are never ever ever any sort of champions of the ruling class! Perish the thought! We dearly love the little people. We just don’t accept that genius would be so ill-advised as to settle upon their brows.”
I always wonder how many geniuses went unnoticed through history simply because they were low born. Who knows: maybe just this once history and genius focused on the same being at the same moment in the same place.
How about this for a (admittedly bizarre) theory: the country bumpkin dictated his plays to the high bred gentleman from Oxford, who served as his secretary?
While my strong working class roots cause me to be in sympathy with your point, a hard-won understanding of the way the world worked circa 1600 convinces me otherwise.
I completely agree that there are plenty of geniuses inhabiting the planet, living in such disadvantaged circumstances that their talents will never be recognized nor developed. Class structure has always sustained itself by the occupants of the top of the pyramid keeping the boot on the neck of the less advantaged. Access to education and the trappings of privilege is deliberately denied to the less advantaged today, as it was circa 1600.
But some of those geniuses were recognized and exploited to feed the egos of the upper classes. Christopher Marlow and Ben Jonson come to mind. They were employed by the Lord Chamberlain to crank out the blank verse on an industrial level, and the creation of a mythological writer served the purposes of the director of activities. It was demeaning for a person of noble rank to allow his verse to be printed and distributed to commoners, and it was necessary to create the “genius” character while everyone knew it was the guy with the title who quietly took the credit—even when the output was created by the workshop.
Walt Disney required his staff artists to forge his signature on their work, even though everyone in the business knew the best-selling bits were the work of the anonymous staff. Is there a difference here?
I found this article to be very disappointing for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is that (apparently) Knightley uses an apparently highly flawed documentary to discount a very credible theory that approaches the “beyond a reasonable doubt” status. This is usually referred to as setting up a straw man. The fact that it was quite impossible that “Shakespeare” wrote these literary works is really a no brainer. The probability that Edward de Vere was the true author, as i mentioned, is very, very high. As to de Vere being the biological son of Lizard I is news to me despite having had looked into this matter in some depth. Once again a straw man. The article should have focused on the flaws of the documentary and not historical facts.
This is not the place to support my contentions. However for a mere 5 US FRN, one can purchase the Kindle version of Official Stories, authored by the late and lamented Liam Scheff, who delegates his chapter 7, Shake-Speare, not Shakespeare, to the question.
https://www.amazon.com/Official-Stories-Counter-Arguments-Culture-Need/dp/147756134X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31NZCLYTQ3E35&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cYti6zwn6heO4FFvd9DnVaxOz7SgfH2ZxeSfVY-sYAnKhEoW-qlddfuFQJThAKLy.DfZNfTZ9JG2QVFmV-rAP9gfkiYoOmHCeQrq-5fiLfhY&dib_tag=se&keywords=official+stories+liam+scheff&qid=1713966073&sprefix=official+storie%2Caps%2C198&sr=8-1
In the chapter, Scheff referenced even a stronger and more detailed work which supports this theory. One could do worse than to buy this book as all 11 chapters are more than worth the read.
I agree. The fact that Shakespeare may have been a pen name is certainly the most important question in the world right now.
That the identity of the world’s most famous author could have been falsely attributed for several centuries gives some idea of how deep and wide the deception goes.
If academia can’t get that right, what else are they lying or mistaken about? (This is of course why they can never admit that they’re wrong about this).
Changing the cultural is profoundly important – political change lies upstream of changes in the culture. If who wrote the second most quoted book in human history isn’t important, what is? Obviously why they wrote it is what really matters but nobody can begin to answer that unless they know who it was.
Who had the biggest impact on change in the UK? Harold Wilson… or The Beatles?
SHAKE-A-SPEAR…. spear meaning quill.
Shakesper was a grain merchant who bought and stored grain, malt, and barley and then sold it on at inflated prices.
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries bad weather gripped England, & cold and rain resulted in poor harvests and consequently famine..
Shakespeare was under investigation for tax evasion and in 1598 he was prosecuted for hoarding grain at a time when food was scarce.
It is well documented that Shakesper harassed those who could not pay him for the food he provided and used the money to further his own money-lending activities.. Causing such animosity that he escaped to London, and sought out the wealthy as companions.
“The phenomenon of “Shakespeare” was forged out of the fires of wartime. Behind the rise of the mighty warrior shaking the spear of his pen was a domestic army of literary men and artists of various kinds, all inspired and guided by their leader, Edward de Vere”
Christopher Marlowe – Part Three of Reason 95 to Conclude that Edward de Vere was “Shakespeare” | Hank Whittemore’s Shakespeare Blog
and
Edward Oxenford Review
May 26, 2021 … In December, Shakespeare became the first man to receive a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, following 91-year-old Margaret Keenan
William “Bill” Shakespeare, the first man in the United Kingdom to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, has died following a stroke.
quote
unquote
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/26/1000593752/william-bill-shakespeare-the-2nd-briton-to-receive-a-covid-19-vaccine-has-died
I remember thinking at the time when I heard the name, “they’re having a laugh”.
Unless, there was some NLP reason for fronting that name as the first British man to be jabbed, it could only be to laugh in the face of the public. It indicated the level of confidence they had in knowing uptake would be high, regardless.
Margaret Keenan, the first British woman’s name in Gematria – I realise here in the comments that numerolgy is scorned at – added upto 133 in Ordinal (the most basic form). Meanwhile, Bill’s name had no obvious numerological significance – with a name like that why bother!
‘They’re having a laugh’. Exactly. Matt Hancock, when he was told about it, had to cover up the laughing by pretending to cry. The last four years have been filled with obvious wind-ups and anyone who failed to notice them have failed in the experiment they’ve been running on us.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/m9iW4MMmETnGzYxP/?mibextid=KsPBc6
Quite so.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2024/03/17/matt-hancock-who-told-lies-and-was-burned-to-death/
The date 2021 – 05 – 26 add up to 666 if anyone like.
Margaret Keenan was ‘keen’ to get the jab and this might be expected from her name. An anagram of her name includes ‘an nag marketeer’ which might be appropriate given the ‘T’ shirt she was wearing had its sales boosted as did the vaccines.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-58680014
She was originally from Ennis-kill-en in Northern Ireland which is suitable. They are certainly having a laugh.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/the-great-covid-retest/
I had a good laugh at your ‘exam paper’ in your blog. Excellent stuff!
The sad part is a lot of muppets would still fail it today, another year on.
This guy made a difference for mankind and humanity. I wish the anti-human anti-vaxxers could say the same.
“He was proud of the positive difference he was able to make to the lives of so many, and would always encourage everyone to get their vaccine whenever he could. It could make a difference to our lives from now on, couldn’t it?”.
Yes Mr. Shakespeare it could. If half of the world did the same thing as you, we who is left over would have double as much in our wallets $$$………………………LOL.
Oh dear, Functional illiterate alert!
Some resources for those who want to dig deeper:
The best single-text summary is probably John Michell ‘Who wrote Shakespeare?’. The next essential reading is Diana Price’s ‘Shakepeare’s Unorthodox Biography’ (curiously difficult to obtain at any sort of reasonable cost for a relatively recent work), Elizabeth Winkler’s ‘Shakespeare was a woman and other heresies’ (not the woke nghtmare its title may suggest) and Alexander Waugh’s ‘Shakespeare beyond doubt?’. These authors all lean towards Oxford as the true Shakespeare. On Marlowe as the true author, try Cynthia Morgan’s ‘Every word doth almost speak my name’, Daryl Pinksen’s ‘Marlowe’s Ghost’ (very good on the use of living people as fronts – like blacklisted writers did in Hollywood) and anything by Ros Barber or A.D. Wraight. There’s also an Australian TV documentary from the early 2000s called ‘Much ado about something’. For a lighter introduction there’s Keir Cutler’s one-man show based on Mark Twain’s arguments about Shakespeare.
Some useful podcasts include the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable, Much ado about the aq and The Hidden Life is Best (the last of these is one of the few with a focus on Francis Bacon and is on Spreaker but not I think Youtube). There are precious few good debates between Stratfordians and Oxfordians/Marlovians/Baconians/doubters because the former simply refuse to engage with those who question the authorship (although Stanley Wells was once misled into a debate with Ros Barber because he didn’t know who she was – she ran rings around him).
P.S. Don’t bother with the film ‘Anonymous’, it’s dreadful.
I knew you’d have something to add – thanks for these!
P.S. Too late for me, and yes, it was dreadful.
Thanks. A good set of references.
I would think that dates are significant. Marlowe died 1593. Oxford in 1604. Shakespeare in 1616. Francis Bacon in 1626
First (likely) play performances: Macbeth (1606), Antony and Cleopatra (1607), The Tempest (1610/1611) (likely based on reports of a Bermuda shipwreck in 1609).
Which seems to suggest a writer who lived to at least 1609.
Also, there would presumably need to be a fairly significant motive for ‘Shakespeare’ (assuming a nom de plume) to keep his real identity secret. Which may suggest a scandal of some sort.
Someone who hides their identity for fear of being exposed and yet who is simultaneously the most popular Court playwright of the time? Seems slightly incongruous.
And also someone who lets all the credit for their life’s efforts go to a relative unknown, without any contemporary leaking their real identity out to the general public.
Perhaps one of those links deals with such issues…
Marlowe undoubtedly faked his death. He was on the point of being tried and executed for treason so why wouldn’t he? The fakery consisted of ‘the reckoning in a small room’ in which Marlowe was supposed to have been murdered for the cost of his meal by his friend, witnessed by other friends, with the coroner who attested to his death being his friend. Go to the paupers’ graveyard in Deptford to see where his body was ‘buried’. The notice put up at the supposed time of his burial there basically says something to the effect of ‘he’s in here somewhere’. How come the murder of a great playwright led to the victim himself being shamed and blamed for this? It makes no sense. In my (not at all) humble opinion, he then took on a new identity – the deceased William Shakespeare who died in childhood of the plague. The father, whose job involved access to the birth and death records of Stratford and was in considerable debt at the time, suddenly came into a large sum of money – for allowing his deceased child’s identity to be used. They were born in the same year and this was a trick used by spies (of which Kit Marlowe was one) to obtain a new identity. Interestingly, in 2020 it was suggested that one or two of the early plays of Shakespeare may well have been written by Marlowe. When I was researching this, I was in Canterbury and discovered that Marlowe’s birthplace is under a car park so little was he thought of in the 1970s. I also found out that the Kings School in Canterbury which Marlowe attended offers a prize every year for the pupil who writes the best essay on why they believe that Shakespeare was actually Marlowe.
I think that’s very plausible, having just watched the “Much Ado About Something (2002)” documentary that Edwige recommended.
and which makes a similar case. The 3 parts are available here (link).
That would make Marlowe heading to Italy, Venice etc in 1593 after faking his death, where he writes the “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “The Merchant of Venice” etc and then returns as “William Shakespeare” at a later date.
As you say, Marlowe and Shakespeare were born in the same year, so it would be the perfect identity swap, typical of spies.
My only reservation with that theory would be that Marlowe seems quite atheistic, whereas Shakespeare has a clear religious outlook.
Also (as a sideline) I think there may be a double motive to the literary prize of proving Marlowe as Shakespeare, as in a share of the Shakespeare estate as reward (also mentioned in the above documentary)
Marlowe as atheist may be a lie and Shakespeare as a God-fearing man could be part of the disguise. Or, as is often forgotten in historical theories, people change.
14. Fourteen. 14 words which I had to hit “Read more” to read. Really? Do they have to cut it that fine? What comes next? Counting the hairs on a woman’s…? Never mind.
The thing to worry about in regard to Shakespeare is not when the guy was born and what he wrote. That has been analyzed before by zillions of scholastic fuckers who’d have liked to be writers like him, but lacked his imagination. The thing to worry about is where the fuck are the shakespeers of today.
Where the fuck are all the artists? Art is an endeavor that breaks the bounds of the status quo, explores the unknown, offers a new perspective, introduces a new technique, stirs up shit, infuses a new life into conventional staleness, shit like that. Where the fuck is any of that? And I’ll settle for some of it in the entertainment sphere, popular art, which by classical definition is not art per se.
There is just about none of it. All there is are endless ways of regurgitating old shit in ways that attempt to extend whatever heyday of whatever they evoke to today, mostly in a ridiculous fashion.
Then there is art created in academia, which is unnatural crap produced by grant-seeking motherfuckers detached from real world and devoid of genuine imagination.
Likewise, there is entertainment that increasingly leads to the direction of technocracy, technological fantasy, weird technologically supernatural world. Devoid of pertinent idea, all hallucinatory phantasmagoria.
Without art, civilization is in deep fucking shit, and that’s where we’re now.
So rather than yapping about some guy who’s been dead for ages, acquire yourself some skills in any artistic discipline – one of the prerequisite for making art, strumming one fucking chord on the guitar is not fucking art – and have a crack at producing something. Who the fuck knows, maybe it will be you who sparks the fire that will infuse a new life into this putrid stale fucking civilization of ours filled with petrified status-quo fucking zombies of the rolling fucking stones kind.
“strumming one fucking chord on the guitar is not fucking art”
Lou Reed: “One chord is just fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.”
Obviously, Lou Reed is not an authority on guitar playing. He probably doesn’t even know what a fucking chord is.
In contrast, I am an authority.
Just like Jacques claimed to be! 😂
Here is harmony for you. Come back once you’ve digested that, if you ever do.
https://bw.musique.umontreal.ca/nm/
Intrigued that you are an “authority” on guitar playing superior to Mr Reed. Can you point me in the direction of your recorded legacy?
Intrigued you are, that’s obvious.
Recorded legacy, Da Papers Man, has nothing to do with nothing. Ask Lou if he can play the half-whole diminished, preferably in all of the keys in which it exists (ask him how many that is) and if he knows any voicings for the ol’ 13b9.
Lou died 11 years ago. I know you take delight in advertising your utter ignorance whilst shouting out about your “authority”, but it really doesn’t take much to simply stop your constant self-aggrandizing bellowing for a second to do a little check.
You invoked the guy, for some to me unknown reason. Probably because Lou was in da papers. I’m only responding to his statement and your drivel. I can’t keep track of when every fucker out there croaked, even if I gave a shit, Da Papers Man.
You don’t have to keep track. We now have this inter-Web thing and a few little keystrokes will tell you.
Also, Lou isn’t in da papers. I know about him because my mind has the ability to retain info. You could try a few mental exercises and perhaps even expand your memory to encompass more than the last two minutes.
I don’t give a fuck about Lou, shove him up your da papers ass.
Oh dear, the Asylum Computer Room is now OPEN.
An authority on the F word
A fuckin’ authority on the fuckin’ F word! Fucketty fuck!
I suspect Lou was being provocative, as was his want. Just like our local ‘authority,’ Socio De La Profanities.
Lou was expressing the punk minimalist aesthetic. He’s also being fairly accurate. One of the Velvet Underground’s greatest songs (indeed probably their greatest) “Heroin” has two chords. Jonathan Richmond’s wonderful “Pablo Picasso” has one chord.
No. Lou was touting his ignorance.
It would be okay for a person well versed in the art of harmony, whether tonal, modal, atonal, to make that statement and to create music using a single harmonic structure only. After all, there is music with no sound at all.
If a person who knows fuck all about the art of music makes that statement, he’s trying to put his ignorance on a pedestal. That’s fine as a means of revolt, but unfortunately, the pop art culture, which is essentially about this revolt against sophistication, is what has ultimately brought the civilization down.
Why? Because instead of motivating people to pursue a path of perfection, it glorifies ignorance and primitivism.
You, Da Papers Man, are a good example of that. You know absolute fuck all about music, yet you take it upon your da papers self to argue with somebody who’s infinitely more knowledgeable on the subject.
Your constant demonstration of the very sins you excoriate never fails to amaze. You not only show not the slightest knowledge of what you claim to be an expert in but you are even proud to advertise your ignorance.
Still, at least you have indeed pointed me towards your recorded legacy: “music with no sound at all”. I can hear that legacy everywhere.
Here it is, you ignorant idiot.
JC pokin fun at his critics.
Yes I know about that. JC wrote a later piece called 0′ 0″ which was a “silent piece” indefinitely extendable- which I guess is where you come in.
A better “performance”:
It ain’t music. It’s a schtick.
George, don’t feed Hyper-Robotics. They take your input to tweak their algos and code.
The coders (Czech?) watch “Goodfellas” once a week and think that’s the way native English speakers speak/write.
What a hoot!
PS Those who have frequented OG for sometime will recognize Socee as the latest incarnation of previous bots Jacques, Plinio, and others whose names I need help,recalling.
The road to perfection is never ending and leads to war, thanks to the likes of your useless tribe.
Hovno prdel sracka to je nase znacka, hovno prdel kameni to je nase znameni.
Ponder that!
You talk a good tangle, but I’m a hangin judge
Obviously.
In terms of function in tonal music, i.e. dominant, subdominant, and dominant, two chords are the bare minimum (in theory, you could do away with the subdominant). Art is about tension and release, contrasts. Kinda like life.
There are musical vehicles other than the tonal system, such as modal, where you can get away with one chord, since tension and release are created by different means.
That being said, the vast majority of the world’s music has no fucking chords and relies on rhythm and melody. It’s mostly our fucked up occidental mind that revels in the moody complexity of harmony (chords). Other cultures are much more down to earth. In other words, we’re too fucking complex, abstract, and detached from earth for our own fucking good.
Gotta confess, I don’t know enough about the intricacies of music to have a view on what you’re saying Socio.
I do know what I like. And since I grew up with melody and rhythm that’s what I’m drawn to.
When you say ‘other cultures’ are you referring to tribal music, say African, Aboriginal
or perhaps the sub continent?
We are captured by our own cultures and it’s not easy to break free.
The ethnomusicologist in me would agree with your last sentence.
There is nothing “tribal” about African music, as much as there are many African musical cultures.
Western music features simple melody, simple rhythm, and sophisticated harmony, form, and timbre (orchestration).
Indian and Arab music accentuate melody and rhythm, and have just about no harmony. They’re also improvised, which is something to note.
Check out music from your general region. The gamelan music of Bali. If you don’t know it, it will blow your mind.
I have heard of Gamelan musician and I do enjoy some Indian and Middle Eastern pieces as well.
For me, music is like a rainbow:
Best appreciated when we see all the colours:
Sure.
But there is another dimension. Studying the music of the world’s cultures provides you with a unique way of understanding their mentality, mindset, proclivities, things like that.
All that is expressed in other ways, such as the socioeconomic structure, geopolitical ambitions, and others, as well as other art forms, but music is special – it doesn’t use words, yet it establishes an intimate link between the performer and the listener.
Fascinating shit!
You might be on to something there.
US/UK manufactured pop =
Manufactured, manipulated populace
Ancient Aboriginal music =
grounded Earthlings.
I’ll be totally honest. Out of all of the world’s musics, the Australian aboriginal stuff is my least favorite, along with the music of the Canadian Inuit.
I’m a player after all, and there is no place for the didgeridoo in the music I play.
Finally, I got to listen to this.
Fucking awesome! Motherfucking awesome. Love it. Infusing energy in the inherently stale nature of the symphony orchestra! Bringing the zombie classical musicians to life. Setting them on fire!
You know, one of the truly great things that happened in the second half of the 20th century was how different cultures were brought together, mingled, fused, and what came out of it.
It’s not the first it happened. There was a time in Spain when the Christian, Arab, and Jewish cultures coexisted, building the foundations of what then became the European culture.
Music-wise, there was this motherfucker called Zyryab who traveled between Mesopotamia and Spain and single-handedly imported sophisticated music to then-primitive Europe.
Here is a song commemorating the man composed and played by history’s another fucking giant, the late Paco De Lucia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEWPE3ugZvc
I’m afraid that we’re entering les tenebres, a dark age, in which culture will go to total shit. But the tough times will eventually instigate a reaction in the form of something new, something optimistic and focus on light as opposed to darkness.
Paco and John were/are in a league of their own.
There are a few classical players who are mixing it up with other styles:
Tell us something we don’t know:
‘If an algorithm is trained on datasets that predominantly feature artwork by European male artists, it may misclassify or overlook artwork by female or non-European artists, reinforcing stereotypes about artistic talent and representation,” he says.
And when it comes to music, streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music prioritise promotion of music from major record labels, which he labels a “gatekeeping bias”.
“This is largely due to the combination of algorithmic coding, interface design and human curation which prioritise mainstream and popular content,” Dr Oliver says.‘
More here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-25/how-social-media-algorithms-are-flattening-culture/103735868
I’m not a fan of recorded music. As I was saying below, recorded vs. live music is what porn is to sex. Music is a performing art, recordings simply can’t deliver the intimate link established between the musician and the performer during a performance.
Not to mention that people should make fucking music for themselves. Whatever has happened to that, eh?
Did you know that lots if not most people can’t carry a tune? I do a bit of teaching and sometimes accept beginners. A lot of them come and can’s sing to save their fucking life. It’s not that they’re tone deaf. It’s that they’ve never used their voice to sing before and have no control over it.
Anyways, I ignore Spotify and Apple and all the other shit just like I ignore fuckccination, elections, and the rest of the mainstream shit.
You said you’re a busker. That’s what I appreciate. To me, that’s where real life is. The rest is fucking make-believe pretense, a world filled with plasticky shit.
I agree.
I’ve played in clubs and pubs and on a few outdoor stages, but you know what?
They don’t give me the same ‘frisson’ or immediacy that busking does.
Sure, there’s more money in
venues, but playing to drunks and the hubbub of crowds is frustrating and spiritually unrewarding.
I often get kids (and occasionally adults) dancing spontaneously to my songs, and a couple of times people have said to me that they were moved by a song.
THAT, is connection.
That is harmony.
I LOVE it.
I actually went to university to study music and even got myself a degree. There were a lot of guys there, but one stood out – the guy was originally from Russia and he could play the cello like a motherfucker. I thought that if anybody was gonna make it as a solo concert artist, it was him. He
Guess what, he went on to become a busker. That’s his life. Guess he said, fuck the pompous world of concert halls, the reincarnations of the wig-wearing fuckers of yesteryear, the self-proclaimed elite who go to concerts to show off their status while they don’t give a flying fuck about what’s being played. He said, lemme play for da people, da music they like. Lemme make them happy, bring a smile to their face.
I have immense respect for my dear friend. He’s da man. Somebody who understands what real fucking reality is and lives a real life instead of this plasticky substitute most of the fuckers out there do.
Wrong link!!!! Admin please fix!
Yes. I get it.
Smiles from strangers is a special feeling.
And apologies as well, as they pat their pockets or handbags and say : “Sorry, I don’t have any cash”
The reproduction of natural sound, learn it, love it, but never leave it
Due to inherent reasons, natural sound cannot be reproduced because the reproduction thereof would due to inherent reasons not be natural.
This is because of technical reasons having to do with the science of acoustics, but I won’t bore you with that because it would go right over your fucking head anyways.
Australian Middle Eastern Italian?
What will they think of next?
Art is, as you say, a bellwether for what we like to call “civilization.” There is a fundamental difference between a culture that sees the future opening up to endless possibilities; and one (like ours) that sees every possibility as having already been so screwed up nothing further is possible.
In such a diminished world, art not only takes a back seat to science, it becomes a mere means of making money. In the past, many artists we recognize as “great” were barely noticed (Van Gogh being foremost among them). It was purely by accident that their art exists at all today.
A Van Gogh is impossible today because there would be no money in his work, therefore his work probably would not outlive him. That does not, however, mean there is no “Van Gogh” in the world, only that the “Suits” cannot make enough money to permit him to clog up the museums with his stuff.
Besides which, since our culture in no way, shape or form provides artistic inspiration for an artist, it would be rarer to find one today than to find the Hope Diamond lying along a throughway.
Glad you mention Van Gogh. If I ever had a role model, somebody in whose footsteps to foolow, it was this guy. Incidentally, Lust for Life is a fucking masterpiece, too. Van Gogh was the ultimate artist, thoroughly dedicated to the art itself and to pure good per se, which he conveyed through his art. He was a madman too, a cherry on top of the fucking cake!
You’re onto something there with there perhaps being van goghs out there, without nobody knowing that they’re cutting off their fucking ears and drowning themselves in absinthe. Quite likely, in fact.
I guess the idea that we’ve grown mature and appreciative enough to appreciate artists and art is an illusion, and it cannot be otherwise. For true art gotta stir up shit and shatter the fucking status quo, and the fucking status quo doesn’t like that does it. The status quo likes to have its ass licked and things to be nice and fucking orderly and art gotta stay within what the fucking party line is. Which means that the van gogh today will be just as disregarded as the original guy was.
Oh well, I guess that how it goes. Everybody fucking knows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IfmiKnZi3E
I appreciate your comments, man. You’re an objective, open-minded fella.
Thank you – for the compliment but especially your take on modern art.
Easy. All music and poems are now created by AI and ChatTGP.
Let the machines make the hard work for you, while you are drinking a Southern Comfort, sniffing coke and taking a sleep over. Techno Pop, Synthesizers, Automated Piano:
Techno Pop: Kraftwerk https://youtu.be/rrjHdir7_Qw
Synthesizing: Art of Noise https://vk.com/video58938482_456239253
Automation music: Animusic 1 https://yandex.ru/video/preview/6896583842458062833
We are not going back in time Mr. Sociolog. Isnt future beautiful?
Obviously not. You’re too immersed in the virtual world and in recorded music.
Music is a fucking performing art, which means that it must be played by some fucker musician and listened to by some fucker listener. It doesn’t even have to be made on a provider-consumer, basis, you can play music for yourself and be both the musician and the listener. Did you know that? Can you play something? Sing a fucking tune?
FOR WHATEVER FUCKING REASON HAS MUSIC BEEN REDUCED TO RECORDED AND REPRODUCED MUSIC?
Read Da Papers Man’s comment above; “What is your recording legacy,” he asks. As if music was about recording.
Hovno, merde. big fucking shit!!!
Recorded music, reproduced music, which is what most of you owners of tin ears consider ‘music’ per se is not music. It is what watching porn is to having actual sex. A substitute that can never replicate the real thing. A recording can never deliver what a live performance does. Preferably a live performance in an intimate setting, like some motherfucker banging out the Goldberg Variations on a piano, such as Glen Gould or even the random kid from the neighborhood or even yourself.
It’s tragic how all you people have been sucked into the technology world and consider it the thing. You complain about digital ID, technocracy, kill gates, anal schwab, but you’ve been hooked up on this shit for fucking decades. When was the last time you went to a theater instead of watching a movie? A slam poetry event?
AI can NEVER produce human art. It can do two things.
A) It can suck up all the hitherto amassed knowledge and use it to recreate, in a flawless fashion, things that were created in the past. They will never be novel, as Bach’s fugues were back in the day. For that reason, they will not be art per se, because art requires INNO-FUCKIN-VATION. AI can’t do that. Not within the human realm.
B) AI can conceivably create novel creations, using who know what fucking algorithms and approaches, but those creations will not be in the human realm. At least not entirely. They will stem from the human experience, but they will be in the AI realm. They will not be human art.
I’m not so much worried about AI, as I am about people for whom music is some shit some know-nothing fucker records and peddles through such conduits of horseshit as Spotify. Ditto other art forms.
I agree 100% in this your comment. Actually I play a tenor saxophone and this is what I am training for the moment: https://youtu.be/Z7Kdm-2GMag .
However, one of the few things the media is good at is inspiration, and finding material like the link above you dont have to go to a shop to find.
Search is easier when you dont have the means to travel the globe or buy expensive educational material, but I agree its is a substitute and second hand to the real stuff.
The label Artificial Intelligence is correct.
Nice tune. The beauty of simplicity.
You know, I remember the days when music stores had a section that sold sheet music and there were even stores specializing in sheet music only. I don’t think people were any less inspired back then than they’re now.
The media, like YouTube, contains an enormous amount of instructional stuff. And it shows. Today, musicians have amazing chops, their technical prowess is way above what most in my generation had. But you know what? They just don’t have the creativity. They could run circles around the old guys (well, not all of them, but many), but they can’t touch them in the imagination department.
Anyway, all this will sort itself out, sooner or later. This AI, digital, online, virtual horseshit has been around for a pretty short time, and people have been hit hard and are reeling in the shock thus created. They’ll learn to work with this shit.
Anyway, keep blowin’ the horn. When you’re done with Besame Mucho, try this:
Avant garde jazz is for musicians conservatory, not for deadly civilians like me.
My favourites are Ben Webster https://youtu.be/IphIHPRn37I and Stan https://youtu.be/W-YnyZG8fNU .
When you play an instrument your immediately hear how easy superior they are.
Both uniques with soul and a brilliant example on how different an instrument can be played adapted to each man playing out his divine contribution to his creator and mankind.
The music the Brecker Brothers played is called fusion. Specifically, this is the second wave of fusion, which happened in the 1980s, the first one having taken place in the 1970s. Fusion brought together jazz and rock. At that time, jazz had become the conventional fuddy-duddy stuff of old farts, while the various incarnations of rock were the subcultures owned by the young generations. At the same time, musicians liked jazz’s complexity, so they fused the two.
A similar thing happened with ‘ethnic’ (non-occidental) music, which was infused into western stuff to give it a new lease on life and provide it with fresh blood.
Today, there is not much more left wherewith Western culture could be rejuvenated. All of the known artistic vehicles have been pretty much exhausted.
The thing about playing old-time jazz is like putting a picture into a frame. If you paint a picture, you can look at it as much as you can for as long as you want. That’s not the case with music – music, to be experienced, must be performed (sure, there are recordings, but they’re like watching porn, as we discussed before, not the real thing). So, playing old music is like framing the picture. Hmm … maybe not quite, but close enough …
Especially this bit – out of this world!!!!
https://youtu.be/Imeo0pXhuXQ?list=PLfJndz0utgONWRtf3CWPrNoUSOHmr2pFZ&t=153
I use Sil Austin to make small children sleep. https://youtu.be/m4mgA2HJt0U . https://youtu.be/zfkaoDxO5As
In the next life I will try Barytone Gerry Mulligan, also a sleepy fellow. https://youtu.be/WvxKtSQY-K0
You are being lead to the river by a comrade with a flute and tight loose lips
Comme d’habitude, tu viens de rater encore une hostie d’occasion de te garder ton tabarnak de guelle fermee, tabarnak.
‘Whatever happened to the heroes
All the Shakespearoes?
They watched their Rome burn’.
As The Stranglers so eloquently said.
I think Francis Bacon has also been posited as the true Shakespeare.
From what I recall, possibly an apocryphal tale, Elizabeth I so liked the rogue Falstaff character in Henry IV/V that she directly asked Will. Shakespeare to write what subsequently became “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (which is about Falstaff making a further fool of himself in Windsor Great Park).
I’ve always deduced from that that:
1. Shakespeare therefore wrote the previous plays
2. And that he also wrote Merry Wives of Windsor
But happy to be corrected by those who’ve made a more extensive study of it
There’s no evidence Shaksper of Stratford ever met Elizabeth I or James I – or had any direct communication with either of them (there are no letters from Shaksper and the only letter to him is an unopened one from a Stratford neighbour about being leant some money).
These are myths concocted by the Shakespeare industry and then repeated as fact. On a similar theme, there’s no evidence Shaksper met any other playwrights of his era either – images people have of Shaksper carousing with Ben Jonson and exchanging ideas with Christopher Marlowe are complete invention.
There are about 70 primary documents supporting the existence of a William Shaksper (or Shaxsper or Shakespear or several other spellings but never “Shakespeare”) but they all show a businessman with some rather unattractive habits like suing people for minor debts or hoarding grain during shortages to increase his profits. The “sweet swan of Avon” he definitely was not.
Yes, you’re right in what you say.
Approx. 3-4 years ago I carried out quite an amount of research into the Shakespeare authorship question, buying and reading circa 20 or so books on the subject. The available evidence very strongly indicates that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the writer behind the ‘Shakespeare’ works.
‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,’ was not written by an uneducated person. And was likely wrote to amuse the prevailing queen.
If you produce someone who can be anything and nothing at the same time, there are endless possibilities of who he is and why he wrote.
It also leads to the feeling that one should not try to be a ‘Shakespeare’ who is so sophisticated that he knows 80 000 words while an average man knows less than 15 000; a way of trolling or keeping people in order.
The flipside of the anonymous writer who has some name and who (most probably) is a team of writers, is that they are not original, and that shows. The works of Shakespeare, bore me to death and cannot compare to.. a Summer’s day… So it goes with other works that have been written by a bunch of anonymous writers: Stephen King, sitcoms, the Bible, etcetera.
I didn’t know about the Stephen King as “codename for anonymous bunch of writers” manoeuvre. Now that you mention it……
Agree. Definitely think you are onto something. A team of writers, maybe rehashing, rewriting, or modernizing and possibly anglicizing older scripts and plays.
Certainly many of the “plays” mimic Greek Tragedies with some Cult of Rome allusions drenched in masonry. The “author/s” may have been translating older scripts and stories from Old or Middle English to Elizabethan English. That’s my take on why there’s no definitive writing style, overarching theme, or purpose in the authorship.
I never got into Shakespeare at all. I also find Elizabethan English extremely tedious to read.
“False face hideth what the heart doth know”…very appropriate in this age of universal deceit and treachery..
Sorry, off t.
‘Any media acknowledgment of covid jab-related deaths – probably in the millions worldwide – represents a glitch in the ‘vaccine’ matrix. One such glitch recently took me by surprise because it didn’t come from the usual ‘far-right’ sources of ‘mis- dis- and mal-information’. It was buried inside an article published in a pillar of Australia’s medical establishment.’
Is the cat out of the bag?
Here’s hoping.
More here:
https://real-left.com/another-glitch-in-the-vaccine-matrix/
Thanks.
In case you’re not familiar with these researchers, you may want to check them out:
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/
I was wondering. I mean the case is obvious for me and for many. It was even voluntary, people were not forced although it was close.
So Johnny and someone else, what are we seeking here? A glitch, a hope, someone with Authority is like me, this will make our group bigger or what.
Are we trying to stamp up a majority vote in the group and Authority think on 2+2=4?
Moneycircus is about to school us all.
‘From he or not from he.
That is the question.’
But will the answer change anything?
Probably not.
Let’s just be thankful that someone wrote them and that we have been gifted with such awesome art.
Ditto most art.
Could it be that theatre was seen as entertainment/distraction for the Useless Eaters back in those days. Much like it is used today?
Anyone of a good education or of some status would not associate with the riff raff, except to collect their ‘tainted’ cash of course.
Bonner Miller Cutting has done some outstanding research into Shakespeare’s actual will:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBvwEhs65yM
BTW Shaksper wasn’t only supposedly born on St George’s Day but also died on it… and came from Middle England (Warwickshire)… and came from the middle class. How convenient if you have a project to construct an English identity designed to surpass the country’s European great power rivals!