On May 25, 4:05 pm, Blair Leatherwood 
wrote:
> John W. Kennedy wrote:
> > On May 24, 11:42 am, Joseph DeMartino  wrote:
> >> Do you think the newsgroups and websites devoted to...
> >> Shakespeare are filled with fans pushing for "Hamlet II:
 The Wrath of
> >> Fortinbras"...?
>
> > Actually, they are largely filled with mentally ill individuals
> > claiming variously that:
> >   Shakespeare didn't write his own plays (sometimes they go further to
> > claim that their hero, whoever that is, also wrote "Don
Quixote", "The
> > Fairy Queene", and practically everything else published in any
> > language between 1550 and 1650. If their candidate is Francis Bacon,
> > they sometimes go on to include "Moby Dick" -- and
"Babylon 5", too,
> > for aught I know to the contrary. (Anyone recall the guy who was
> > claiming online about a dozen years ago that B5 was actually being
> > written by Harlan Ellison?)
> >   Shakespeare was the reincarnation of Jesus. (If you think that's
> > wacky, there's a /really/ demented fan on another group who apparently
> > believes that Andrea Corr is the reincarnation of Jesus.)
> >   /They/ are the reincarnation of Shakespeare.
> >   The "inner, mystical" meaning of Shakespeare's plays
can be attained
> > to by "meditation". (Actually /reading/ the plays is a
distraction.)
>
> > Of course, right now, there is also a lot of fuss over the Arden
> > Shakespeare deciding to include Lewis Theobald's 1727 "Double
> > Falshood; or, The Distrest Lovers", on the hypothesis that Theobald
> > based it on the since-lost "Cardenio", a play of 1613
co-authored by
> > Shakespeare and John Fletcher, the young man who took over as head
> > writer for the King's Men when Shakespeare retired. I happen to be a
> > minor expert on the subject (you can read "Double Falshood" on my
> > website at http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy>), and I am inclined
> > to think they are right. I suppose you could see that as a variation
> > on the demanding-a-sequel theme, if you like.
>
> The playShakespeare.com app I have on my iPhone includes the following
> "additions" to the canon:
>
> Double Falsehood
> Edward III
> Sir Thomas More
>
> There's no indication in the app (that I've found yet) that these are
> questionable at best.  However, it's nice to have them if for no other
> reason than to have a few more Elizabethan plays available in the
> library.  Useful for auditions, etc.
"Double Falshood" and "Sir Thomas More" aren't on their website,
either -- just the iPhone app -- and they give no hint as to where
they got the texts. I do not think, on internal evidence, that they
got "Double Falshood" from me.
But most scholars are in agreement that certain scenes of "Sir Thomas
More" and "Edward III" are by Shakespeare. It is obvious to anyone
with an ear that certain scenes in E3 are by someone much more
talented than the main playwright, and parts of "Sir Thomas More" are
actually thought to be in Shakespeare's own hand. (We do not have
enough samples of his writing to be directly sure, but a careful
analysis of typos in the printed texts have led to certain conclusions
about what his handwriting must have been like, and the "More"
passages fit.)
The question of "Double Falshood" is more complex.
1727-1728 Lewis Theobald announces that he has come into possession of
three Restoration-era mss. of an unknown play by Shakespeare, based on
an episode in "Don Quixote". He rewrites it for the then-modern
theatre, and it is produced at Drury Lane. (This is less shocking than
it seems; everyone was "improving" Shakespeare at the time.) He then
prints it, and suggests that he cannot print the original because of
"private property". At this time, a publisher named Jacob Tonson has a
legal monopoly on printing Shakespeare. Some people support him, but
some people attack him. Most notably, Alexander Pope dismisses the
whole thing as a vulgar forgery. But Pope hated Theobald, because Pope
had just issued a new edition of Shakespeare's works, and Theobald had
printed a book saying, quite correctly, that Pope's idea of correcting
typos was to ask, "What would I have written here?" instead of "What
is it reasonable to think that Shakespeare wrote here?" (Pope's
silently edition silently incorporated most of Theobald's corrections,
but Pope wouldn't admit it. Pope also admitted in private that he
thought Theobald had truly worked from a genuine old play.) Several
people say that the play sounds more like Fletcher. Theobald's printed
edition of "Double Falshood", rejects the idea, but the second,
printed the same year, rejects it more weakly. Theobald seems to have
dropped the whole matter after that, even when he was hired by Tonson
to do a new revision of the Works.
Some years later, two bits of legal paperwork turn up establishing for
the first time that Shakespeare and Fletcher had collaborated on a
play called "Cardenio" -- and here's the kicker: the hero of the
original story in "Don Quixote" that "Double Falshood"
is based on is
named "Cardenio" (he's "Julio" in DF), and
"Cardenio" the play came
out almost immediately after the first English translation of "Don
Quixote", Part I. (That is the later Part I, made up of the original
Parts 1-4.)
Well, the matter is fought over for a very long time. On the one hand,
the obvious answer is that Theobald was telling the truth as he knew
it, but was misinformed as to Shakespeare's sole authorship. On the
other hand, Pope was the most brilliant poet of the age, whereas
Theobald was a mere editor; it is only recently that he has come to be
recognized as the founder of scientific editing in modern languages.
About 20 years ago, Fletcher experts look at "Double Falshood", and
decide that /his/ fingerprints are all over it. It's harder to tell
with Shakespeare, whose style is far more protean. The balance begins
to shift in favor of Theobald.
Finally, this year, the Arden Shakespeare announces their new "Double
Falshood" volume, and the news media go wild. Most of them get major
facts wrong (I've done my best to submit comments on websites), and
come up with arguments pro and con that make no sense at all to anyone
familiar with the business. Arden's edition was no surprise, either. I
exchanged a few personal e-mails from the Arden editor back in 2007,
and I had already known it was in the works at the time.
My own guess, based on the evidence, is that Theobald slowly came to
recognize the hand of Fletcher, and, not considering the possibility
of collaboration, decided that he had been sold a bill of goods. As
far as I can see, this is the only hypothesis that does not entail any
conspiracy theories, but only normal human beings bumping along in the
manner in which they usually do. (Well, it puts Pope in a bad light,
but Pope, for all his brilliance, could be a thorough bastard at
times, and, since even if Theobald /had/ forged the whole thing, Pope
would still have had no evidence, or even his own frank opinion, to
back up his sneers, he's guilty of intellectual dishonesty in the
affair no matter how you look at it.)
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32