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Harcourt Brace, 1942. A text book written long before this subject
got as hot as it is now. Impartial enough? The text talks about how
his fortunes improved considerably with the penning of plays and
earnings as an actor, along with ownership in the Blackfriars.
He encourages his father to purchase a coat of arms to raise
their family status, buys the second largest house in Stratford,
and adds to real estate holdings in London. "But he seems to
have been eager to live the part of a country gentleman, for
which his restored fortunes prepared him. He withdrew from
dramatic activities early in the second decade of the century..."
All of which is fine and good. A man deserves to enjoy the
fruits of his labor. but here was the paragraph that caught me....
"The incongruity between SH's hardworking existence and his
conventional life ideal on the one hand, and the poetic force
and imaginative range of his plays on the other, has
encouraged some to believe that he was not the author of the
plays. The incongruity can be resolved (please pay attention here)
ONLY BY THE HYPOTHESIS OF A GENIUS RELATIVELY UNCONCIOUS OF HIS
OWN POWERS, and certainly careless of the fate of his productions
beyond their immeadiate success or failure." So, here is a
college text which makes him out to be not only an ardent
businessman, but also some sort of literary idiot savant, who
only cared about whether or not the plays made enough at the
box office so he could pay for his father's coat of arms and
insure his future as a country gentleman. I think that's a fair
capsulization of the above. I'm not going to editorialize this.
I think it speaks for itself. Intelligent people haven't ever
seemed to be able put the plays and the man together in a
reasonable, realistic context, no matter how they try.And for me, Stratfordians have yet to do the same.
Posted by Bill Routhier on April 14, 1997 at 20:56:19
In Reply to "yet Shakespeare's motivation" posted by Bill Routhier on April 14, 1997 at 10:17:10
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