William Shakespeare e la "Shakespeare Controversy"

noto che le recensioni della Mantel vanno per la maggiore ormai XD

"Shakespeare non ha fatto altro che copiare"

Ti dirò che nella biografia di Shakespeare che stavo leggendo (non l'ho finita ma è ottima, se non vado troppo avanti è solo perché non mi trovo bene a seguirla sul kobo) di tanto in tanto trovavo qualcosa che poteva riversarsi nella sua opera, ma deve esserci veramente molto snobismo perché da quel poco che ho capito quello che ha ispirato Shakespeare era semplicemente l'aver letto parecchio.

E' un film di rara pallosità ma ho voluto vederlo per capire tutta la fuss.

Christopher Marlowe credited as one of Shakespeare's co-writers

Dramatists to appear jointly on title pages of Henry VI, Parts One, Two and Three in the New Oxford Shakespeare after analysis by team of 23 academics

The long-held suggestion that Christopher Marlowe was William Shakespeare is now widely dismissed, along with other authorship theories. But Marlowe is enjoying the next best thing – taking centre stage alongside his great Elizabethan rival with a credit as co-writer of the three Henry VI plays.

The two dramatists will appear jointly on each of the three title pages of the plays within the New Oxford Shakespeare, a landmark project to be published by Oxford University Press this month.

Using old-fashioned scholarship and 21st-century computerised tools to analyse texts, the edition’s international scholars have contended that Shakespeare’s collaboration with other playwrights was far more extensive than has been realised until now.

Henry VI, Parts One, Two and Three are among as many as 17 plays that they now believe contain writing by other people, sometimes several hands. It more than doubles the figure in the previous Oxford Shakespeare, published 30 years ago.

Marlowe’s hand in parts of the Henry VI plays has been suspected since the 18th century but this marks the first prominent billing in an edition of Shakespeare’s collected works.

[...]Taylor told the Guardian: “The orthodox view was that Shakespeare didn’t collaborate at all. When the Oxford Shakespeare in 1986 proposed that eight plays of Shakespeare contained writing by other writers, some people were outraged. What has happened since 1986 is that the accumulation of new scholarship, techniques and resources has made it clear that, in 1986, we underestimated the amount of Shakespeare’s work that’s collaborative.”

He said: “In 1986, eight of 39 plays were identified on their title pages as collaborative, a little more than 20%. In 2016, 17 of 44 plays are identified, a little more than 38%, close to two-fifths.”

Some are said to be collaborations, with Shakespeare apparently working side-by-side with other writers, as with Marlowe on Henry VI. Others are adaptations, where additions were made to works before their printed publication, as with Thomas Middleton, who is now credited for the first time on the title page of All’s Well That Ends Well.

Taylor said these editions of the Henry VI plays are the first to identify Marlowe as the co-author. “We have been able to verify Marlowe’s presence in those three plays strongly and clearly enough,” he added.

[...]Among texts that have never before been in a complete works of the Bard is Arden of Faversham, which was anonymously published in 1592. Now it is jointly credited to anonymous and Shakespeare.

Taylor said: “People for centuries have argued about whether Shakespeare is in some way connected to that play. We’re identifying it as an early collaborative play of Shakespeare’s. We’re identifying him in several of the middle scenes. There is very strong, compelling evidence. We have provided a lot of new evidence.”

They are yet to identify the other author, but have ruled out previously suggested candidates such as Marlowe and Thomas Kyd.

[...]Expanding the Shakespeare canon, the new study marks the first time that a complete works has included additions to Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, identifying Shakespeare as the author of the painter’s scene.

[...[One piece of evidence identified five “Shakespeare-plus words”: gentle, answer, beseech, spoke, tonight. Taylor explained: “What we mean by Shakespeare-plus is that we’ve looked at the frequency of certain words which might seem commonplace like ‘tonight’ in all the plays of that early period, say up to 1600. Anybody could use any of these words. They’re not words that Shakespeare invented. But we can say Shakespeare used ‘tonight’ much more often than other playwrights in those 20 years.

“Shakespeare-minus words … are much less likely to appear in a Shakespeare play. So, this is a statistical argument … not simply statistics about individual words, but combinations of individual words. With Marlowe, for example, combinations of words such as ‘glory droopeth’ appear to be unique to him in that period.

“Recent studies by specialists already agree that Shakespeare did not write the passage where Joan of Arc pleads for help from demonic spirits and then is captured by the English [Part One, 5.3, 5.4]. We have added new evidence from ‘unique n-grams’: that is, phrases that occur in the passage being tested. Marlowe’s works contain many more such parallels than any other playwright,” Taylor added.

Other words and phrases identified as commonly occurring in Marlowe works include “familiar spirit, cull out, regions under earth, oh hold me, to your wonted, see, forsake me, droopeth to, curse, miscreant, ugly, change, shape thou, change my shape, suddenly surprise, your dainty, fell and enchantress”.

Taylor acknowledges that doubts may be cast on their conclusions: “You can’t say anything about Shakespeare without somebody disagreeing with you … But our knowledge of the past increases by debate of this kind.”

Io di solito prendo Shakespeare come Omero, con lo spirito del chissene chi era, era comunque bravo e se erano tanti erano bravi tutti. Ma a volte mi parte lo spirito di Voyager e vorrei veramente saperne di più.

Vedo che alla stampa italiana è importato molto poco della questione di Shakespeare e Marlowe, com'è possibile?