Thanks

I just realized this moment that Sony pictures visited way back in April.

Sorry that I did not respond in a more timely fashion.

By now, of course Anonymous is out, and making the rounds headed into the Oscar season. Its a magnificent film and Mr. Emmerich, Mr. Orloff, and all those associated with it deserve our greatest thanks for having the audacity to make it. Let’s hope it not only does well at the box office, but stirs the reading public to further inquiry.

Thanks!

I noticed that you’ve written on the topic of Shakespeare and I wanted to let you know that Sony Pictures has just launched a new trailer for the upcoming film, Anonymous.

Experts have debated, books have been written, and scholars have devoted their lives to protecting or debunking theories surrounding the authorship of the most renowned works in English literature. Anonymous poses one possible answer to the age old question: Who really wrote the works of William Shakespeare?

Here is the link to the trailer. Would you be interested in posting? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBmnkk0QW3Q&feature=channel_video_title

Join us on the Facebook page for the latest updates on Anonymous: http://www.facebook.com/Anonymous

Anonymous opens in theaters September 30.

Thanks and have a great day!

*The Sony Pictures Digital Marketing Team

You make a good point abut the shades of religious non-conformism. I was not stating the results of any informed research on my own part, but only the results of a significant body of revisionist scholarship which has tried to reconcile the biographical problems of the orthodox account of authorship by postulating the author’s recusancy. I accept your correction that “possible closet Catholic” would be a more justified summary. As you indicate, there’s quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that members of the family were Catholic, and Will apparently invested in the Blackfriars gatehouse, which was reportedly a hiding place for recusants. I don’t really have any horse in this race, but as you acknowledge the circumstantial evidence for the family’s Catholicism is pretty strong, even though you are correct to emphasize that there is no direct evidence for Will’s recusancy. To me the most interesting aspect of this question is how prominent the discussion has become within Stratfordian circles as a kind of surrogate authorship question. http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xCatholic.html

Best Wishes and thanks for contributing your informed perspective to the site.

Roger

BTW, I really feel I must take exception to the following sentence in one of your previous posts: “In my own view a substantial preponderance of the evidence does support the contention that your putative owner was a recusant, which would make his ownership of a Geneva bible something of an anomaly.”

To date I have personally seen no evidence that Will Shaxpere was a recusant. In the case of his father and daughter I could probably accept that label – but even then with some qualifications (see below) – however, in the case of Will himself the term would appear to be inappropriately applied. If you had said that Will was possibly a “closet Catholic” (my terminology) I might accept such a label, even though we have no evidence of his being that either. However, in this latter case, our current lack of any evidence of his true Roman Catholic religious affiliations would be a direct consequence of Will having been a “closet Catholic” – which would have involved his going through all the outward motions of being a conformant Anglican (such as attending church services at least once a month and partaking of Anglican communion when he did so) while all the time privately (even secretly) practicing his Roman Catholic faith with family, friends and neighbors, any one of which might possibly have more correctly deserved the label of recusant.

Somewhere between overt “Papist recusancy” (note: there were lots of other ideological reasons for openly rejecting the mandated orthodoxy of the Anglican Church so not ALL recusants were Papists, although they probably accounted for much of the recusancy that was reported to the authorities, and “Popish recusancy” was considered by far the most dangerous form of such overt religious rebellion because it also implied potential treason, treachery or traitorship on the part of the recusant since the main reason that King Philip II of Spain had launched the Armada attack in 1588 was to restore the country back to the orthodoxy of Roman Catholicism) and “closet Catholicism” (as I just defined it above) lies “Church Papistry” …

Up until the nearly successful attempted regicide of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, regularly attending church (but skipping communion) was probably frowned upon by the more pious Anglicans, yet it would have still been conduct sufficient to keep one off of the “potential recusancy” lists compiled by the churchwardens in the 1590s based on observed attendance (or more accurately, observed lack of attendance) at church. After the recent shock of the attempted blowing up of both Parliament and the King, the screws were very much tightened across the realm WRT spotting potential traitors whose only aim was to overthrow the Protestant rule of the Stuart monarchy. So after the failed plot of 1605 the churchwardens were now required to report on their monthly compiled lists not only the regular non-attendees at church for that past month, but also the regular non-recipients of communion amongst those that did attend.

In the early 1590s, Will’s father fell foul of the churchwarden’s scrutiny by his regular non-attendance at church, marking him out as a “suspected recusant”; while in 1606 Will’s daughter Susanna fell foul of the churchwarden’s increased scrutiny by her regular non-participation in communion, marking her out as a “suspected Church Papist”. Managing to have your name appear on the churchwardens’ monthly compiled lists (based on either of these criteria) did NOT mean that you were automatically considered guilty of either offence; it only meant that you were worthy of further investigation should someone in authority be so motivated. In fact, there could be quite valid excuses for both regular non-attendance at church (e.g., prolonged illness) and regular non-receipt of communion (presumably not being in a suitable state of grace each time one attended church).

In addition to both of these independently written records of reported instances of non-attendance at church (for John) and non-participation in communion (for Susanna), in the latter’s case we do have further information. She subsequently failed to turn up in the vicar’s court despite receiving a summons to do so by the apparitor. However, the word “dismissa” was later added to her entry in the act book which would seem to indicate that when she did finally appear before her judges her case was duly dismissed by them. The obvious assumption to make from this is that she had subsequently been witnessed willingly receiving the Eucharist in Anglican communion, something a Papist recusant would never do. Of course, that is merely an assumption. She may just have equally bribed the judges to grant her clemency! There is, unfortunately, no similar surviving record of what was subsequently determined in John’s case – see next post. Consequently, for us four centuries later to label either John as being a “recusant” or Susanna as being a “Church Papist” might be stretching the terminology somewhat; but at least there may be some justification for doing so in both their particular cases.

However, in the case of our beloved Willy, as far as I know there is no such evidence of Will’s name having ever appeared on a list of regular non-attendees at church (in the same manner that we have for his father John in 1592) nor on a list of church attendees that regularly did not receive communion (in the same manner that we have for his daughter Susanna in 1606). So IMO to label Will as being a “recusant” is even more of a misuse of appropriate terminology than it is in either his father’s or his daughter’s case.

Best regards,

an Upstart Crow

Thanks so much for the lucid exposition of what’s wrong with the argument that “Oxford cannot possibly have written the Shake-speare canon because he died in 1604, a number of years before the last plays were penned.”

It truly is a pity that so many otherwise intelligent persons fall for this “totally fallacious” argument!

Best Wishes,

R.