[lbo-talk] Shakespeare's 457th birthday

C. G. Estabrook galliher at uiuc.edu
Thu Apr 12 21:38:49 PDT 2007


Actually, they aren't all later -- orthodox scholars date several as 1604 or earlier (and some aren't printed until the First Folio, well after William Shaksper of Stratford is dead).

The important point is is that dating of the plays is largely conjectural. Since there are no autographs, at best we have a date of first printing. Scholars who believe the Stratford man (1564-1616) wrote them fit them into his biography (it's difficult) as well as they can, and then draw conclusions from the resulting chronology. (E.g., the Ur-Hamlet cannot have been his, because he was too young; I think Oxford -- 14 years older -- did write it, as he wrote later versions -- the first and second quartos -- through his life. It was his most personal and autobiographical play; that's why Hamlet's age seems to waver throughout.)

In Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World (2004) he notes, without drawing the obvious conclusion, that several plays seem to refer to events a decade or more before their assigned dates of composition...

andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> The Earl of Oxford died in 1604. Who wrote Hamlet,
> MacBeth, Lear, Othello, Anthony & Cleopatra, Winter's
> Tale, Measure for Measure, All's Well, 12th Night, and
> The Tempest, all of which are later?
>
> --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>> Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford
>> born April 12, 1550, Castle Hedingham, Essex, Eng.
>> died June 24, 1604, Newington, Middlesex
>> ...



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