Letters to the Editors
That Rubbish
Dear Eds,
No, I didn't pick up the litter when I did my Burwell to Swaffham Prior survey back in August. There was about half a rubbish truck load of it and all I had was a clipboard and a pen. Besides, how does one pick up a well-decomposed badger (or small bear)?
...But there's more...
PS If that Mr Everitt starts up about Shakespeare again, don't believe a word of it. Those Elizabethans and Jacobeans were everlasting trying to make each other think there was a conspiracy afoot, not just to generate a bit of advertising hype to sell a few more First Folios, but also to brighten up their not-eventful-enough lives. Not like nowadays, of course....
PPS since only about half the original print run of the Shakespeare First Folio survives, I think it's quite reasonable to assume the rest was pulped. There were never enough pictures in it to jazz it up for the not-so-erudite and not enough people could read at the time anyway; so the hype failed. It would have made a good coffee table book but unfortunately coffee didn't take off properly for the best part of another century or so. I rest my case, and pass more of that mulled wine. Merry Christmas!
PPPS ...And if you think, oh yes, that's that Mark Lewinski going off on one again, just remember this, eh? That William Shakespeare, he died in 1616, right? well, they didn't bring out the Complete Works, the First Folio, till 1623. Seven years after a big celebrity dies is about as rubbish a time as possible to publicise his complete package, isn't it? I mean, take the biggest hits of a few decades back: the Beatles split up in 1969, 1970 - I know it was then because I was in Poland at the time and it really meant something there...well, you don't find much Beatles in the charts around 1975, and another one, Elvis - he wasn't exactly big in the mideighties, was he? I taught a lot of students then who didn't know what Elvis or the Beatles even sounded like. So, same deal - it's not surprising if Shakespeare wasn't a big hit in the 17th century for a while, is it... That Paul McCartney, though, he might be selling better if he'd died a bit younger, especially if it'd been before he wrote the Frog Chorus, so it's not exactly a general rule...
...pass the champagne, and Happy New Year to all you readers out there.... Mark Lewinski
The Two Bills
Dear Editors,
During the past nine months or so there have been some passing references in the Crier (principally from the Lower End Quarter of the Village) to the Shakespeare authorship question. I have resisted any response until now. It is only fair to tell the few remaining interested in the question that I have given up my support for the Earl of Oxford.
Even though there is no evidence that William Shakespeare went to school, could read Italian, French, Greek and Latin, had any legal knowledge, had any military or naval experience, ever travelled to Italy or anywhere else abroad, learned anything about the aristocratic sports, possessed any books, or had any relatives (wife, children, or grandchildren or their families) who claimed he was a writer - in spite of all this, yes in spite of all this, I have been convinced that William Shakespeare of Stratford is the one and only writer of the plays.
The person who has persuaded me is William Brown, more famously known as Just William. Just William relates how an old boy of his school, Mr Welbecker, came to give a lecture on Shakespeare. Mr Welbecker considered himself quite an expert on Shakespeare, especially as he thought Bacon had written the plays. Being an author and playwright himself Just William (the only one listening in the class) took up the cudgels and asked "How could they be? How could this man Bacon write them if Shakespeare wrote them?"
Welbecker started to explain but our William shot him down with some critical analyses - the sort coming out of our universities on the authorship question - "If this man Bacon wrote them they wouldn't have put this man Shakespeare's name on all the books."
There you have it - Just William solves the problem.
Postscript: The full answer of course is to be found in the First Folio published in 1623. Anyone who has a copy should be able to discover what really occurred especially with a copy of the amended Will at the elbow.