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Cover
Story
The Mystery of William Shakespeare
By M. Awais
Aftab
Friends, Romans,
countrymen, lend me your ears! I come not to bury Caesar, but to unearth the
enigma of the very author of Julius Caesar! If you have any breath, be
prepared to lose it now! If you thought fiction can beat facts, think again!
I present to you the mystery of William Shakespeare! *drum roll*
The greatness and influence
of Shakespeare upon English language is often compared with that of Homer
upon Greek. But while we practically know nothing about the life of Homer,
the more we study about the life of Shakespeare, the man we supposedly know
as
Shakespeare, the more we begin to doubt that he really was the writer of the
magnificent plays, which are still widely read, performed and loved despite
the passage of centuries! Indeed, the question of the authorship of the
Shakespearian plays and sonnets is one of the most interesting riddles than
can be found in the history of literature. We have been taught the Bard's
plays and poems in schools where the original works proved unpalatable; we
have been spoon-fed with the abridged versions. The ill-fated end of Romeo
and Juliet or the pound of flesh demanded by Shylock are so deeply steeped in
our collective consciousness that we are barely aware of how much it
influences our thinking. This cover-story will deal with two questions you
probably never asked while enjoying these plays: Who really was Shakespeare?
And what philosophy did he transmit to us?
Shakespeare: The Man behind
the Mask
The first of these
questions has beguiled historians and scholars for centuries. The man
generally considered to be the author of the plays and sonnets is a man named
'William Shakspere' from Stratford-on-Avon. The family name was spelled in a
variety of ways, such as Shaxpere, Shakspeyr, etc but it was spelled usually
without the first "e" of the name Shakespeare. The Shakspere of
Stratford was a businessman and an actor, who is also
generally thought to be the writer of the plays that came out under the name
of Shakespeare. However, as far as evidence indicates, the notion that
Shakspere was Shakespeare, the author, did not exist during his lifetime. It
arose in 1623, seven years after the death of Shakspere, when the First Folio
edition of Shakespeare's plays was published. The editors had given some
strong hints in the preface that Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was the
author, though it was never directly written. Most people have accepted this
notion and believe Shakspere to be the great playwright William Shakespeare;
they are known as Stratfordians. But there are those who differ for a variety
of reasons. These gentlemen are known as anti-Stratfordians. Anti-Stratfordians
have proposed candidates of their own, whom they consider to be the real
William Shakespeare. In total around 50 candidates have been suggested at
various times, but out of these, three are most popular: Francis Bacon, the
philosopher; Christopher Marlowe, the famous play-writer, and Edward de Vere,
17th Earl of Oxford. These schools are referred to as Baconians, Marlovians
and Oxfordians respectively. It is a convention among anti-Stratfordians that
Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon is referred to by the spelling of Shakspere
to distinguish him from the writer of the plays, Shakespeare. This convention
will be retained in this article for its convenience despite its
controversial usage.
According to the biography
of the mainstream historians, William Shakspere was born in
Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He grew up in difficult financial conditions,
and attended the Stratford Grammar School. He then moved to London, where he
became a merchant and an actor and also began to write plays and poetry,
which became extremely famous. Despite the success, he never published any of
the plays during his life, and although many pirated, and often inaccurate,
versions were printed by some people. Around 1612, he retired from his
writing career and went back to Stratford, where he died in 1616. In 1623,
his plays were collected and published in the First Folio edition.
However, do not be misled
by the neatly cut-and-dried outlook of this biography. Most of it is based on
conjectures and guesses, because strangely enough for a man as famous as
William Shakespeare, there is hardly any documentation or evidence that we
have discovered about the life of Shakspere. As the researcher John Michell
has aptly said: "The known facts about Shakespeare's life ... can be
written down on one side of a sheet of notepaper." Shakspere didn't live
in Dark Ages; he lived in England in the era of Queen Elizabeth I, an era in
which many people knew how to read and write, and who did document the lives
of famous people like Bacon and Queen Elizabeth and even a minor poet like
John Lyly. But oddly, there is extreme paucity of information about the life
of Shakspere.
The plays of Shakespeare
possess an extensive vocabulary and knowledge of law,
philosophy, politics, history, geography, art, music, military and foreign
languages. How did a commoner like Shakspere, who didn't attend any
university, come to possess knowledge like this? In fact, there is no
evidence or record at all that Shakspere even attended school. The only
writings that we possess of Shakspere in his own hand-writing are six
signatures on legal documents, which happen to be shaky and inconsistent,
revealing that he had difficulty signing his own name! The picture that
appears in front of us is that of a barely literate merchant. How could he
have possibility written the plays of Shakespeare?
Consistent with the lack of
documentation is the fact that during the twenty-year period in which
Shakspere worked in London, there is not a single record of any person
meeting William Shakespeare in flesh. Not even the friends and family of
Shakspere ever referred to him as a writer! And then, in Shakspere's will,
which is detailed and extensive and mentions even minor items of possessions,
there is not a single mention of any plays, poems, manuscripts, or any
unpublished works that he wanted published, or any mention of transferring
the literary rights of his works. Then there is the issue of Shakspere's
class. He was a commoner, but his plays reflect a great deal of knowledge of
aristocratic ways of life and the intrigues of the royal court. Perhaps these
points in isolation are not very significant, but when taken all together,
they all seem to indicate that there is something very wrong with the notion
that Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was William Shakespeare, the author of
the plays.
Let's us now consider some
of the important candidates proposed by anti-Stratfordians as the real
William Shakespeare. The first candidate is Sir Francis Bacon, a philosopher,
politician, essayist and scientist among so many other things. Baconians
point out some remarkable similarities between some phrases from
Shakespearian plays and from Bacon's book, the Promus, which was not
available to the public until about 200 years after its writing. Bacon also
once confessed in a letter to be a 'concealed poet'. Another popular
candidate is Christopher Marlowe, the famous playwright and poet. The tricky
thing about the Marlovian theory is that according to history, Christopher
Marlowe was killed in 1593, while most of the plays of William Shakespeare
were written much later than this date. Marlovians believe that Marlowe faked
his own death to avoid an impending death penalty for heresy, but continued
to write plays and poetry under the name of William Shakespeare. However, the
candidate which has most gathering at the moment is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl
of Oxford, who seems to meet most of the requirements required for the
writing of Shakespeare's plays and, furthermore, there are some very peculiar
but striking similarities between his life and many of Shakespeare's plays.
For example, he married the daughter of his guardian and the hero of
Cymbeline also married his guardian's daughter. De Vere's ship was once
attacked by pirates who wanted to hold him for ransom but when they came to
know of his friendship with Queen Elizabeth, they released him; a very
similar event happens in Hamlet. De Vere falsely blamed his wife of adultery
but later dropped the charges and continued living with her; this theme of an
innocent wife suffering an accusation and then ultimately forgiving her
husband is a common theme in Shakespeare's plays. Edward de Vere had an
aristocratic background, was trained in all the sports of a young lord, had a
brilliant academic education, he was
close to Queen Elizabeth and familiar with court life, he was recognised as a
poet and writer, though he was never published due to the taboo associated
with the publishing of plays or poetry by noblemen and he had the experience
of travelling to many foreign countries, including the sites in Italy where
many of Shakespearian plays are set. There are underlined passages in de
Vere's Bible which correspond with quotations in Shakespeare's plays. Edward
de Vere had been granted a very gracious grant by Queen Elizabeth, but it was
mentioned no where what services de Vere was expected to perform in return.
It is very possible that Queen Elizabeth had laid the condition with the
pension that he continued writing plays but under a pseudonym, to respect the
taboo and to avoid any upheavals in her court since many of Shakespeare's
play involve intrigues of the court and may have been inspired by real-life
persons. All in all, it seems very plausible that Edward de Vere was the real
author of the plays, writing under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare: The
Philosopher
William Hazlitt wrote that
Shakespeare "was as good a philosopher as he was a poet." Though
Shakespeare never came up with a systematic philosophical work, the
philosophical themes in his plays and sonnets are hard to ignore. It is said
that Shakespeare was "between cultures"; he came after the
dogmatism of the Middle Ages and before the rationalism of Enlightenment. As
a result, the themes of philosophical uncertainty run prominently through his
plays. Shakespeare raises subtle questions about the nature of man, his place
and purpose in this universe, and often ponders over the very possibility of
certain knowledge. One of the well-documented influences on Shakespeare has
been his contemporary French philosopher Michel Montaigne, who revived the
spirit of Greek skepticism in his essays, to which Shakespeare was exposed
and which he absorbed with relish. Scholars have noted Gonzalo's description
of an ideal commonwealth in The Tempest, which is practically a direct
quotation from Montaigne's essay "On Cannibals". In his essays,
Montaigne belittles the greatness of man and considers it ridiculous that a
lowly creature like humans would consider himself to be the master of the
universe, when he cannot even understand it, let alone command it.
Shakespeare echoes these doubts about humanity's greatness when Hamlet begins
by praising man but ends with a different conclusion: 'What a piece of work
is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! … In action how like
an angel! In apprehension how like a god! … And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? Man delights not me…' As if to say: so what if man
has these qualities? The universe doesn't care. Shakespeare often concerns
himself with the question of fate, such as when Julius Caesar says, "The
fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are
underlings." And yet, fate is stronger than man's will, for "As
flies to the wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their
sport." Life remains temporary, meaningless and futile. It is but 'a
tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing' and men
are made of 'such stuff as dreams are made on'. The world is a stage and we
are all actors on it, waiting for our entrances and exits. And this
philosophy of life eventually concludes in front of us as the ultimate
choice:
'To be or not to be –
that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the
mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a
sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.'
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Challenges
to PM Gilani
By
Sarah Ziyad Syed
After enduring some of our worst
years in history, we have finally turned the corner and elected a civilian
government and with it our 25th prime minister, Yousuf Raza
Gillani. Celebrations were on a roll as we saw a ‘fantasy’ coalition
being formed when the PPP joined hands with PML-N at the center, and gained
the support of the JUI. Soon enough, however, the honeymoon ended and the
federal government came crashing down to reality; a reality that amongst
other things included lawyers protests.
Let’s take a look at some of
the challenges he faces today.
Pakistan’s judiciary has been
virtually suspended since March 2007 when Gen. Musharraf removed the Chief
Justice. People were mistaken for thinking that with the new government this
problem would be resolved. Iftikhar Chaudary was also reinstated under the
PCO by Gen. Musharraf, but it was legal as he was acting as the Martial Law
Administrator. On the other hand, as the acting President his 3rd
November PCO was illegal, making all the current judges illegal as well. The
PPP led government seems not to forgive and forget, constantly reminding Mr.
Chaudary of his hard nose ruling of their prisoners, including Mr. Zardari,
when they were held for years by Musharraf without charge. “Where were the
lawyers then?” questions Asif Zardari. It seems this struggle with the
lawyers demanding Iftikhar Chaudary be reinstated wont end any time soon.
The war on terror is yet another
concern for Pakistan. It has been seven years since US forces first invaded
Afghanistan. The tribal region has become impossible to govern since then.
The presence of the liberal and secular ANP party in North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) in Pakistan, led by Asfandyar Wali Khan is nevertheless, a
positive sign. Islamabad has already made it clear that it will look into a
new mandate of how to deal with the region, a statement that has made the
United States tense. The new government should be careful not to make the
same mistakes made by Gen. Musharraf, especially that of giving the Pashtuns
a belief that it (the government) is an American puppet. A lot will also
depend on who moves in to the White House in 2009 and whether he (or she) can
persuade Pakistanis that this is a war against terrorists and not against
Islam. Mr. Gillani must act now to ensure that fundamentalism not allowed to
spread deeper in to the federation.
Pakistan was recently ranked as
the world’s most dangerous country by an influential American news
magazine. It is part of the low tier of countries (alongside Zimbabwe, Sri
Lanka, Angola etc) in the Human Development Index and according to
Transparency International, the 3rd most corrupt country in the
world. This along with CNN showing images of constant civil unrest in cities
across the country doesn’t do much good for our image. Mr. Gillani must
address this problem by trying to improve the quality of life back home
thereby helping civil servants and ordinary citizens.
Along with the other innumerable
issues, the provision of basic amenities and infrastructure is also lacking.
Mr. Gillani clearly has a lot to do to live up to his PPP motto of ‘Roti,
Kapra aur Makan.’
This may seem like a steep task
for the prime minister to tackle but it doesn’t even cover half of the
challenges our country is facing. Literacy remains at an abysmal 23%, energy
demands are not being met and food prices are soaring. All I or anyone else
for that matter can say is Good Luck Mr. Gillani! You’ll need it.
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