Search Results
6/28/2025, 7:46:53 PM
>>24503862
>The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of his worst plays because it was specially commissioned by Elizabeth I after seeing Falstaff in Henry IV, so he wrote it quickly,
This is claimed in the 18th century, there is no contemporary evidence whatsoever for this.
>It’s ridiculous that your evidence for Shakespeare writing Merry Wives and the Apocrypha boils down to “he sucks and they are bad plays so he probably wrote them”.
Lets break it down:
-The Canon (except for Merry Wives of Windsor and Two Noble Kinsmen) contains thousands of phrases, lines and ideas from Thomas North's published and unpublished writings.
-Shakespeare either obsessively plagiarised all this or these are North's plays as they contain North's language and ideas AND closely mirror North's life experiences (his training and practice in the law, his travel in Italy and France, his military service, his experience as a playwright for Leicester's Men and Inns of Court, his disinheritance from his family and poverty, his knowledge of ancient and contemporary languages, etc etc etc).
-The so-called Apocrypha has no North in it and it is ascribed to Shakespeare in his lifetime. There is no other obvious author for this writing so it was probably written by William and it matches his level of education and profile.
-Similarly Merry Wives of Windsor clearly has an autobiographical William in the play and is banal much like the Apocrypha and has no North in it. Therefore William likely wrote it.
Even in his eulogy for William in the First Folio, Jonson states he had little Latin and less Greek i.e. he was unlearned. The portraits of William in Jonson's plays are of a social climber and clownish wit. Furthermore we have Jonson discussing William buying and using old plays in Poet Ape and Ode to Himself
>The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of his worst plays because it was specially commissioned by Elizabeth I after seeing Falstaff in Henry IV, so he wrote it quickly,
This is claimed in the 18th century, there is no contemporary evidence whatsoever for this.
>It’s ridiculous that your evidence for Shakespeare writing Merry Wives and the Apocrypha boils down to “he sucks and they are bad plays so he probably wrote them”.
Lets break it down:
-The Canon (except for Merry Wives of Windsor and Two Noble Kinsmen) contains thousands of phrases, lines and ideas from Thomas North's published and unpublished writings.
-Shakespeare either obsessively plagiarised all this or these are North's plays as they contain North's language and ideas AND closely mirror North's life experiences (his training and practice in the law, his travel in Italy and France, his military service, his experience as a playwright for Leicester's Men and Inns of Court, his disinheritance from his family and poverty, his knowledge of ancient and contemporary languages, etc etc etc).
-The so-called Apocrypha has no North in it and it is ascribed to Shakespeare in his lifetime. There is no other obvious author for this writing so it was probably written by William and it matches his level of education and profile.
-Similarly Merry Wives of Windsor clearly has an autobiographical William in the play and is banal much like the Apocrypha and has no North in it. Therefore William likely wrote it.
Even in his eulogy for William in the First Folio, Jonson states he had little Latin and less Greek i.e. he was unlearned. The portraits of William in Jonson's plays are of a social climber and clownish wit. Furthermore we have Jonson discussing William buying and using old plays in Poet Ape and Ode to Himself
Page 1