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The Apocryphal William Shakespeare eBook Sabrina Feldman

Download As PDF : The Apocryphal William Shakespeare eBook Sabrina Feldman

The author of this intriguing new work sets out to solve three mysteries connected to William Shakespeare and his times. The first is why London writer Robert Greene attacked the Stratford actor from his deathbed as an incompetent and plagiaristic playwright. Greene’s dislike of William Shakespeare was so strong that he wrote a letter to three of his fellow dramatists urging them not to share their future plays with the untrustworthy actors because an actor dubbed “Shake-scene” (widely identified by scholars as William Shakespeare) had been stealing lines from superior writers’ plays to decorate his own bombastic works. A second mystery is why more than a dozen mediocre plays were attributed to William Shakespeare during his lifetime or soon afterwards, though these works are now excluded from the Shakespeare canon. Finally, this book asks which man was the mysterious “poet in purple robes,” a hidden court poet greatly admired by members of the Elizabethan literati.

The Apocryphal William Shakespeare introduces new evidence to the Shakespeare authorship debate by focusing on the dozen or so “apocryphal” plays and “bad quartos” printed under Shakespeare’s name or otherwise attributed to him. Sabrina Feldman suggests that the Stratford actor may have written these lesser works while serving as a “front man” for a hidden poet who wrote the canon. She introduces the case for Thomas Sackville, Baron of Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset (1536-1608), as the mysterious poet who wished to remain behind the scenes. The author’s passion for her subject shows in her meticulous research, which includes passages from the works and short biographies of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. She encourages readers to form their own opinions on the evidence before providing her dramatic conclusion.

Sabrina Feldman manages the Planetary Science Instruments Office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Born and raised in Riverside, Calif., she attended graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, receiving a Ph.D. in physics in 1996. This is her first book.

The Apocryphal William Shakespeare eBook Sabrina Feldman

This book is a good read. The author's question of "Who wrote the apocrypha?" is one well worth exploring. I am convinced that Sackville may have written some of the early plays that later became masterpieces like "Hamlet" or "Lear." He may have written some of the plays that sound Shakespearean but are not included in the canon. However, I am not convinced that Sackville had the playful wit and adventurous spirit to have written the comedies and the sonnets. I am open to persuasion, however, and eager to read the full set of three volumes that Feldman has planned for explicating the "third way" of looking at the authorship questions.

Product details File Size 1842 KB Print Length 378 pages Publication Date November 16, 2011 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B00I67Q31O

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The Apocryphal William Shakespeare eBook Sabrina Feldman Reviews

The Apocryphal William Shakespeare is a fascinating book which addresses in detail questions concerning the authorship of the Shakespeare Apocrypha (as opposed to the works in the Shakespeare "Canon"). The Apocrypha are around 10 plays which were originally attributed to William Shakespeare, but which are not now considered by mainstream scholars to have been written by him. Not much thought has been given to the Apocrypha by scholars, and there is no generally accepted theory as to who wrote them.

Feldman shows that these plays share a distinctive authorial voice an author who pilfered freely and frequently from other playwrights (especially Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene), who wrote in a often very funny but clumsy manner, employing clunky blank verse, bungled Latin phrases, slapstick, jingoism, jokes about food, and other distinctive features. These plays are generally not great works of art, but often are lively and funny, and some of them were very popular in their time.

She shows that the author of the Apocrypha is a very good fit for William Shakespeare of Stratford (which isn't totally a surprise, as these plays were all attributed to him, many during his lifetime). Assuming that the Stratford man wrote the plays explains why Robert Greene (in his "Groatsworth of Wit") famously described him as "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers", which makes no sense when applied to the author of the Shakespeare Canon. Furthermore, in a fascinating series of chapters, Feldman shows that there are an extremely interesting group of characters occurring in plays of the late 1590's to early 1600's which seem to be lampooning William Shakespeare (one of the characters is explicitly described as being from Stratford Upon Avon), which seem to show that William Shakespeare's fellow playwrights viewed him as something of a buffoon. A lot of the quotes from these plays are very funny, I laughed out loud many times reading these sections.

The book also addresses the question as to who wrote the Canon (Feldman believes that there was a coverup of sorts in which Ben Jonson was central, and that the works in the Canon are by the nobleman Thomas Sackville), although much of this discussion has been deferred to a second book.

The book is organized as a series of short chapters, most of which address a single work or topic. There is an extensive set of notes to the chapters which detail the voluminous research Feldman undertook in writing this book. To my mind she is very fair in addressing counter-arguments to her points. One drawback is that the book has no index, hopefully this can be rectified in a future edition (that said, the fact that the book is organized in short chapters makes it generally fairly easy to track down a topic that one is interested in).

All in all this is an extremely interesting work, with many new ideas, I think it would be fascinating not only for Shakespeare conspiracy buffs, but for anyone interested in Shakespeare or Shakespeare's time.
This is an interesting and well-written book that may be read and enjoyed by anyone interested in the personages and the period - whatever their position is on the SAQ. It provides much good information that will be new to many or even most readers and raises important questions. I'm happy to have read the two books and recommend them highly.
Super interesting and wonderfully clear.
Dear Oxfordians
HA! HA! Your arguments are not unique.
Best wishes,
An Independent Researcher

Per Dr. Feldman p. 262 "It has become fashionable in Shakespeare studies to consider William Shakespeare's will as no more than a legal document which cannot be perused for clues to his personality and outlook on life. `A will is a legal instrument for devising property, and not a literary autobiography,' admonished Sir E. K. Chambers in his *[William Shakespeare A] Study of Facts and Problems* [1930, Vol. II, p. 178; statement cited by Cutting]. However, when the authorship skeptic Bonner Cutting studied will-making in early England, perusing more than 2000 contemporaneous wills (in abstract form when the full wills were not available), she found the opposite was true. `When other wills are examined, the mindset and personalities of the testators are readily discernable despite the standardized language. People say what was on their minds in an authentic voice.'" For interest's sake, Ms. Cutting's article may be referenced at "Shakespeare's Will... Considered Too Curiously," *Brief Chronicles*, Vol. I, 2009, pp. 169-91. See also Cutting's "Alas, poor Anne Shakespeare's "second-best bed" in historical perspective," *The Oxfordian*, 2011. For full disclosure, Dr. Feldman has neglected to disclose Cutting's statement that "unfortunately many of the wills are available only in abstracts..."

I also note, per Cutting (p. 183) there is "nothing" in Shakespeare's will which "indicates that the testator led a cultured life or even possessed a cultivated intellect." Based on Cutting, Dr. Feldman further notes "Is it possible for a will to have a `Shakespearean' voice? A sterling example is Thomas Sackville's 1607 will, a remarkable handwritten document reported to run to a hundered and sixty-five closely spaced pages. Its extreme length shows that this was a man who took great pleasure in writing, and whose mind displayed undiminished vigor to the last."

I propose one such example of "Shakespearean voice" per Thomas Sackville's 1607 will (*Collins's Peerage of England Genealogical, Biographical, and Historical*, augmented and continued by Egerton Brydges, London, 1812, Vol. II, p. 143)
"[T]hat synce the livinge speeche of my tounge, when I am gone from hence, must then cease and speake no more; that yet the livinge speeche of my penne, which never dieth, may herein thus for ever trulie testifie and declare the same."

Compare with Sonnet 81
And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead,
You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen)
Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

Based on the above, I suggest Dr. Feldman's proposal for Thomas Sackville (Lord Buckhurst) as the author of the Shakespearean works is valid. As such, I suggest the Oxfordians snip the following "evidence" from their list of circumstantial evidence as it no longer uniquely applies to Oxford

Per Bartholomew Clerke's 1571 Latin translation of Castiglione's book of court etiquette *Il Cortegiano*, both the Earl of Oxford and Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst contributed commendatory Latin epistles. In 1571, Clerke accompanied Lord Buckhurst to Paris and upon his return to England, he resided with Sackville for some time. He had, it seems, also been Oxford's tutor. [*Dictionary of National Biography*, 1887, Vol. 11, p. 45, per Strype, *Life of Parker*, p. 384].

Per *The Arte of English Poesie* (1589)
(p. 75) "[W]ho have written excellently well as it would appeare if their doings could be found out and made publicke with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford, Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, ..."

(p. 77) "That for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst, ... Th'Earle of Oxford... for Comedy and Enterlude."

Per *Phoenix Neste* (1593) Poem "Another Rare Dreame" The unknown author is described by the publisher as a "M. of Arts in both Universities"
Oxford M.A. 1564 Cambridge; M.A. 1566 Oxford (both honorary)
Sackville M.A. 1571 Cambridge; M.A. 1591/2 Oxford (both honorary)

Per Francis Meres *Palladis Tamia* (1598)
(p. 283) Tragicke Poets "so these are our best for Tragedie, the Lorde Buckhurst, ... Shakespeare, ..."

(p. 283 verso) Poets for Comedy "so the best for Comedy amongst us bee, Edward Earle of Oxforde, ... Shakespeare, ..."

Per Henry Peacham *The Compleat Gentleman* (2d imprint, enlarged, 1634), p. 95 "Of Poetry"
"[W]ho honoured Poesie with their pennes and practice (...) were Edward Earle of Oxford, the Lord Buckhurst, ..." It should be noted the list omits Shakespeare.

A further note of "unique" evidence for Sackville, per *Romeo and Juliet* (1594-5) Shakespeare changed the character's name from his main source (Arthur Brooke's poem) Romeus Montagew to Romeo Mountague. Sackville's daughter, Jane, married Anthony-Maria Browne in 1591. He became the Second Viscount Montague on the death of his grandfather in 1592. Per Geoffrey Bullough *Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare* (1957), Vol. I, p. 276 "Romeo and Juliet" "It is worth mentioning that Viscount Montague was high in court favour in 1591, when the Queen visited him at Cowdray Park in August and was sumptuously entertained for a week. A Romeo play would have been very suitable for that occasion."

Another interesting piece of evidence Per Charles Henry Cooper, et al *Athenae Cantabrigienses*, Cambridge, 1861, p. 486 Thomas Sackville "was master of the swans, which office we find him exercising in 1593." Per *The Losely Manuscripts*, ed. Alfred John Kempe, London, 1836, pp. 305-7, a letter dated 28 July 1593 from T. Buckehurst concerning a grant for upping swans (i.e. the marking of swans via the notching of their beaks) is so noted. For further interest, Lord Buchurste's own swan mark consists of two mirrored keys (illustrative plate pre-p. 305). [archive.org/stream/loseleymanuscri02kempgoog#page/n340/mode/2up]

Some further evidence

(1) The first appearance of Shakespeare is per the registration at Stationer's Hall of *Venus and Adonis* 18 April 1593 which printed volume includes a dedication signed by William Shakespeare claiming this to be "the first heyre of my invention".

(2) Per the First Folio (1623) Ben Jonson in his dedicatory epistle begins and ends his description of Shakespeare as "Soule of the Age!" and "Sweet Swan of Avon!".

(3) Per Henry Peacham *The Compleat Gentleman* (2d imprint, enlarged, 1634), p. 79 "Of Poetry" "[T]he Psalmes of David (which S. Hillary so aptly compareth to a bunch of keyes, in regard of the severall doores, whereby they give the soule entrance...) ..."

(4) Per Alastair Fowler *Triumphal Forms Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry*, 1970, p. 191 "[T]he entire set of regular [Shakespeare's] sonnets [i.e. those containing 14 lines] corresponds numerically [i.e. 150] to the entire set of psalms."

Based on the above, I propose in the spirit of Oxfordian "unique think" that Sackville as Master of the Swans was indeed Master of the Swan of Avon, William Shakespeare of Stratford... i.e. the two keys mirrored each other's soul unlocking the same door.

Kudos to Dr. Feldman for using Oxfordian "unique" research techniques to validate her case for Sackville.

However, unfortunately, Dr. Feldman will not win her argument that Sackville wrote the Shakespearean canon (i.e. the scholars' acceptance of Will's "good stuff") while William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the apocrypha (the scholars' knowledge that "our Will" could never have written such inferior works) based on the fact that scholars are forced to accept *Titus Andronicus* as being written by Shakespeare because of its inclusion by Meres in his *Palladis Tamia* (1598) despite Sidney Lee's assertion that the play "is far too repulsive in plot and treatment, and too ostentatious in classical allusions to connect it with Shakespeare's acknowledged work." [*Dictionary of National Biography*, ed. Sidney Lee, 1897, Vol. 51, p. 360]

Despite this flaw, I am greatly looking forward to Dr. Feldman's next book *Thomas Sackville and the Shakespearean Glass Slipper* which will provide further unique evidence of Sackville's authorship of the works of Shakespeare and which will presumably lead to further dismissals of the Oxfordians' "unique" circumstantial evidence. Until then, her article "The Swallow and The Crow The Case for Sackville as Shakespeare" in *The Oxfordian* XII (2010), pp. 119-37 offers a further look at such evidence. Much success to Dr. Feldman!
This book is a good read. The author's question of "Who wrote the apocrypha?" is one well worth exploring. I am convinced that Sackville may have written some of the early plays that later became masterpieces like "Hamlet" or "Lear." He may have written some of the plays that sound Shakespearean but are not included in the canon. However, I am not convinced that Sackville had the playful wit and adventurous spirit to have written the comedies and the sonnets. I am open to persuasion, however, and eager to read the full set of three volumes that Feldman has planned for explicating the "third way" of looking at the authorship questions.