Meander Where You May

[nnyhav]

latest LRB reviews Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n05/helen-hackett/best-known-for-his-guzzleosity ($ub only)

The unbelievers, not the alternative ‘Shakespeares’, are the subject of Contested Will: no rival claimant makes an entry until around a hundred pages in, as Shapiro seeks to establish the conditions from which the controversy emerged. These include the widening gulf between the deification of the Bard that began in the 18th century and the mundane biographical facts. In the main, the surviving documents of William Shakespeare’s life concern financial and legal transactions: they suggest at best a shrewd businessman, at worst a grasping money-lender and grain-hoarder, hardly someone fit to be acclaimed, as he was at the Stratford Jubilee of 1769, as ‘the god of our idolatry’. The veneration persisted through the 19th century. But this was also a period when various kinds of holy writ were being questioned, and Shapiro illuminatingly assimilates the authorship controversy to radical theories about the non-existence of Homer as an individual author, and about the mythic nature of the Gospels.

(hey! was 2 yrs ago today Doug put up my philosophy of composition retread from waybackthen:
http://www.spinozablue.com/2008/03/47/ )

[whiskeypriest]

latest LRB reviews Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n05/helen-hackett/best-known-for-his-guzzleosity ($ub only)

The unbelievers, not the alternative ‘Shakespeares’, are the subject of Contested Will: no rival claimant makes an entry until around a hundred pages in, as Shapiro seeks to establish the conditions from which the controversy emerged. These include the widening gulf between the deification of the Bard that began in the 18th century and the mundane biographical facts. In the main, the surviving documents of William Shakespeare’s life concern financial and legal transactions: they suggest at best a shrewd businessman, at worst a grasping money-lender and grain-hoarder, hardly someone fit to be acclaimed, as he was at the Stratford Jubilee of 1769, as ‘the god of our idolatry’. The veneration persisted through the 19th century. But this was also a period when various kinds of holy writ were being questioned, and Shapiro illuminatingly assimilates the authorship controversy to radical theories about the non-existence of Homer as an individual author, and about the mythic nature of the Gospels.

(hey! was 2 yrs ago today Doug put up my philosophy of composition retread from waybackthen:
http://www.spinozablue.com/2008/03/47/ )

Oh, to have been able to have this as the Reading Group book on the old NYT fora.  Oh what fun we would have had!

Subscribe?  Hell no.  Bastards.  I want my web intformation FREE!

[barton]

Why don't I really care who Shakespeare was?    As for Homer, isn't that kind of old news that he was a fiction, a composite for all the old stories and such?  IIRC, even my high school English teacher, over 30 years ago, suggested that Homer wasn't an actual individual.

[whiskeypriest]

Too good not to share:

http://badcontrol.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/google-circa-1960.jpg

[knoxharrington]

Link doesn't seem to work.  Just loads a blank page, with the site URL printed on a blue rectangle in the corner.

I'll bet it's really funny!

 

[whiskeypriest]

Link doesn't seem to work.  Just loads a blank page, with the site URL printed on a blue rectangle in the corner.

I'll bet it's really funny!

 

Maybe this:

http://bit.ly/d0lad5

[madupont]

...Fraid not!

[whiskeypriest]

Damn!

[madupont]

Why don't I really care who Shakespeare was?    As for Homer, isn't that kind of old news that he was a fiction, a composite for all the old stories and such?  IIRC, even my high school English teacher, over 30 years ago, suggested that Homer wasn't an actual individual.

Oh, several reasons.   It depends how much into Marlowe you is. Onesit you acknowledge how well he would have fit into The Wire, seein' his character was not really trustworthy, you might want to "revise" the plays wit a moh moden twist. You know he's goin to end up badly anyway. You  heard about that didn't you? Ask Whiskey.

Besides, Shakespeare was a product for a different generation on the go-back machine .

Think about Hamlet, he's really twisted, a product of our times. I mean Andy Warhol was trying to emulate Ham and went too fa. It just doesn't figure somehow; you get it? I mean, I know he was shoving dames off and all but not from an aversion to dames; you got ta figure, he got some interesting action around the corner somewhere that he is keeping quiet.  Just because he doesn't want his mom to be talked about as a slut doesn't mean he hates women. No, not totally. He has dese very  mixed amotions about not having inherited his father's trip, manning an operation out of Jersey or somethin. Isle of Jersey, you know what I mean?

Romie and Juliet is right  here, now. Nothin has changed, teenagers think they in love, always end up in some shit. Never changed. You end up dead of something.

For instance, Midsummer Night's Dream is some party, trippin',  that went wrong.

The rest of it is always all about gangsters, your main man. They always  act like noboda knows they from Kings.  Corey a line us. Know what I mean?  An' then, Lear, who cornered the  concession on makes and sells jets. How about that?

The Queens are all fahked, like Hamlet's motha. What's this, with the Queen whose  hands they cut off?

Hey, somebody here bring me an-other  sub an' a diet-Pepsi !

                                                                                      [Somebody in the next booth
asks:

"What about Homer, somebody wanted to know about Homer. What you gotta say about that?"

Homer? That's way cool. Just so  you got Henry Winkler for the part. Nobody else. man. Nobody can touch him.

[nytempsperdu]

Both forms worked for me whiskey--and thanks for the laugh.  Dunno why a .jpg wouldn't but what I don't know about such matters would fill [reader choose indicator of capaciousness].  Maybe you could substitute it for the "A Serious Man" poster, if only temporarily, & viewers could enlarge it.

[barton]

I just got the blue rectangle with the URL printed on it.   That was amusing, in its own subtle way.

Perhaps if I licked the screen?

[whiskeypriest]

I just got the blue rectangle with the URL printed on it.   That was amusing, in its own subtle way.

Perhaps if I licked the screen?

That's all I get now too!

[Beppo]

Be this it?

http://fury.com/google-circa-1960.php

[Beppo]

Why don't I really care who Shakespeare was?    As for Homer, isn't that kind of old news that he was a fiction, a composite for all the old stories and such?  IIRC, even my high school English teacher, over 30 years ago, suggested that Homer wasn't an actual individual.

Oh, several reasons.   It depends how much into Marlowe you is. Onesit you acknowledge how well he would have fit into The Wire, seein' his character was not really trustworthy, you might want to "revise" the plays wit a moh moden twist. You know he's goin to end up badly anyway. You  heard about that didn't you? Ask Whiskey.

Besides, Shakespeare was a product for a different generation on the go-back machine .

Think about Hamlet, he's really twisted, a product of our times. I mean Andy Warhol was trying to emulate Ham and went too fa. It just doesn't figure somehow; you get it? I mean, I know he was shoving dames off and all but not from an aversion to dames; you got ta figure, he got some interesting action around the corner somewhere that he is keeping quiet.  Just because he doesn't want his mom to be talked about as a slut doesn't mean he hates women. No, not totally. He has dese very  mixed amotions about not having inherited his father's trip, manning an operation out of Jersey or somethin. Isle of Jersey, you know what I mean?

Romie and Juliet is right  here, now. Nothin has changed, teenagers think they in love, always end up in some shit. Never changed. You end up dead of something.

For instance, Midsummer Night's Dream is some party, trippin',  that went wrong.

The rest of it is always all about gangsters, your main man. They always  act like noboda knows they from Kings.  Corey a line us. Know what I mean?  An' then, Lear, who cornered the  concession on makes and sells jets. How about that?

The Queens are all fahked, like Hamlet's motha. What's this, with the Queen whose  hands they cut off?

Hey, somebody here bring me an-other  sub an' a diet-Pepsi !

                                                                                      [Somebody in the next booth
asks:

"What about Homer, somebody wanted to know about Homer. What you gotta say about that?"

Homer? That's way cool. Just so  you got Henry Winkler for the part. Nobody else. man. Nobody can touch him.

The influence of Marlowe on Shakespeare, according to Greenblatt, should ne'er be underestimated.

[whiskeypriest]

Be this it?

http://fury.com/google-circa-1960.php

Yes.  Click on it everyone before it goes away!