Who was Shakespeare?

[Lord Balto]

Dear Lord (Balto) ... got any thoughts on the masonic aspects to Shakespeare's works?

Recently read about this idea in Robert Guffey's book Cryptoscatology:

Chapter 9 - Was Shakespeare a Freemason?: Masonic Symbolism in Macbeth page 171
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cryptos ... 1936296408
http://books.google.com
http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2012/07/ ... ology.html


Here's a link not by Guffey:
http://freemasoninformation.com/2011/04 ... freemason/

I'm still fairly early in this, but I certainly can't rule out connections with secret societies and the like, especially if our author was actually Marlowe on the run in Italy. As I pointed out, Milan was a hotbed of--something--I'm really not sure what exactly. That Leonardo would show up there is not surprising. But the fact that Guglielma of Bohemia traveled all the way from what is now the Czech Republic is strange. And the settings of the plays may be significant, mainly Verona and Venice, with part of the early Two Gentlemen of Verona set in Milan.

I'll take a look at the links shortly. Thanks for the clues.

[minime]

The Tempest.

[Lord Balto]

Another strike against de Vere, who died in 1604: I was reading parts of Henry Paine Stokes' An Attempt to Determine the Order of Shakespeare's Plays. It turns out that when the Globe Theater burned in July of 1613, Henry VIII was being performed, a "new play" according to at least one contemporary source, Sir Henry Wotton. Does anyone really think that new plays were appearing from Oxford after 9 years?

It is becoming clear to me that William Shaxpere had something important to do with the plays, whether he wrote them or not. As soon as the Globe burned and he retired around about the same time, no new plays were performed. This is serious evidence against Amelia Lanier (d. 1645), William Stanley (d. 1642), and even Francis Bacon (d. 1626). Are we to believe that Lanier went 32 years without writing another play simply because the Globe had burned? Are we to believe that Stanley went 29 years without writing another play? The evidence against Bacon is less clear, but even he would have gone 13 years without writing another play. Were Shaxpere and the Globe the only outlets through which these alternate Shakespeares could have their plays performed, so they simply stopped writing? It's also interesting that the false Shakespeare plays, non canonical plays published under "William Shakespeare," "W. Shakespeare," and "W. S." stopped appearing after 1611.

[Lord Balto]

Dear Lord (Balto) ... got any thoughts on the masonic aspects to Shakespeare's works?

Recently read about this idea in Robert Guffey's book Cryptoscatology:

Chapter 9 - Was Shakespeare a Freemason?: Masonic Symbolism in Macbeth page 171
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cryptos ... 1936296408
http://books.google.com
http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2012/07/ ... ology.html


Here's a link not by Guffey:
http://freemasoninformation.com/2011/04 ... freemason/

I just noticed that A. D. Wraight, the author of Shakespeare: New Evidence and The Story That the Sonnets Tell, wrote a book called The Legend of Hiram: Shakespeare and the Freemasons. It is not clear, however, whether this book was ever published. The author died shortly after Shakespeare, in which she mentions her forthcoming book, was published. Wraight was a Marlovian.

I also read recently that many facets of Marlowe's supposed murder paralleled the death of Hiram Abiff.

Any information about either of these would be appreciated.

Having been swayed toward the propostion that Marlowe wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, I suspect that the real question is whether Marlowe was a freemason and whether this helps explain how he would have fit into Italian society. I have also begun to wonder whether the tarot survived in Italy for 2000 years with the help of the masons. One might even wonder whether the masons were the descendants of the school of Pythagoras.

I should also point out that there were most likely Jews in Northern Italy as early as 731 BC, the year the Assyrians conquered Israel, since that was the year Pekah ben Remaliah, whom I have identified with Romulus, lost his Israelite territory, suggesting that Romulus returned to Rome that year along with at least some of the "lost tribes." Thus, the existence of an organization in Italy based on the life of someone who supposedly helped to build Solomon's temple is not as bizarre as it might sound at first hearing. Pythagoras himself was either half Jewish or half Phoenician, depending on whom you read.

I also recently noticed that upon the return to power of the Della Torre family in Milan, Matteo Visconti withdrew to Verona, the setting for Romeo and Juliet. Matteo was the son of Anastasia Pirovano, the paternal aunt of Manfreda da Pirovano, the popess of the tarot deck.

Oops! Just reading your final link:

To hold opinion with Pythagoras
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men.”
Merchant of Venice, IV, 1.

“What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.”
Twelfth Night – IV, 2

Pythagoras is a bit of a Masonic patriarch, and aprons are in abundant supply throughout the fraternity.

This is what de Santillana would call an implex: Marlowe, Masons, Italy, Pythagoras, and Tarot. We may solve this yet.

[fruhmenschen]

http://www.rvcommunity.net/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1654


One example of such lost works are the reported lost plays of
Shakespeare. Shakespeare, of course, is considered one of the
finest playwrights of all time, and lived from 1564 to 1616.
Surprisingly, given the immense popularity of his works, there are
two Shakespeare plays which are completely lost: 'Cardenio' and
'Love's labours won'.

There is considerable debate over whether these plays ever existed
(and indeed over whether some of the plays we have of his were
really authored by him). The evidence we have for them comes from
several sources. Firstly, a book from 1598 called 'Palladis Tamia,
Wits Treasury' contains a list of Shakespeare's plays, including
one called 'Love's Labours Won'. At first people assumed that
'Love's Labours Won' was simply an alternative title for another
Shakespeare play, probably 'The Taming of the Shrew' or 'Love's
Labours Lost'. During Shakespeare's time it was not uncommon to
perform plays under alternative titles (just as it was common to
use different spellings for words). However, in 1953 a
advertisement from 1603 was discovered listing a number of books
being sold by Stationer Christopher Hunt. Amongst the list was not
only 'The Taming of the Shrew' and 'Love's Labours Lost' but
'Love's Labour's Won', providing strong evidence that this was
indeed a separate play.

The evidence for Cardenio is even stronger. Records show that the
play was performed at least twice in 1613, and in 1653 a publisher
in London listed a copy of the play as 'The History of Cardenio by
Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare', reflecting the fact that the play was
probably co-authored. Cardenio was reportedly based on an episode
from the Spanish novel Don Quixote, about a romantic man who
decides to become a knight. More than a century after Shakespeare's
death, in 1727, the author and editor Lewis Theobald claimed to
have found a manuscript of Cardenio, edited and revised it, and
released it under the name 'Double Falsehood'. This play has been
recently been performed as 'William Shakespeare's Cardenio'.

The discovery of these lost works of Shakespeare after four
centuries would be a major event in the world of literature. Many
scholars now believe that manuscripts of these plays are out there
somewhere, perhaps in someone's attic or amongst the literature
collection of some manor or library, just waiting discovery.

Less likely to be found is the lost library of Alexandria. This was
claimed to be the largest and richest collection of knowledge in
the ancient world. Today knowledge is spread around thanks to
modern distribution and the Internet, so it's hard for us to
comprehend the value of this one library, and how vulnerable that
value was. We don't know how, but we know that the library was
destroyed, and vast swathes of literature from the ancient world
were lost with it. The destruction of the library has been called
'the day that history lost its memory'. Some even believe that it
contributed eventually to Europe's decline into the Dark Ages,
setting back progress by centuries.

Many mysteries surround the library. Its exact size - or even if it
was one library and not several - for example, are not known. The
city of Alexandria was founded in Northern Egypt three centuries
before Christ by Alexander the Great. The library was built by
Ptolemy II, using Aristotle's own personal library as its
centrepiece. The library is believed to have been a sort of
research centre, which collected, copied and edited manuscripts
from all over the ancient world. Ptolemy III then continued
expanding the library. It's claimed that he had men board every
ship that moored in Alexandria to search for any scrolls it
contained, which were then copied in the library. The copies were
returned to the ships whilst the originals were then kept in the
library! A faculty of up to 50 scholars worked at lived at the
library during its six hundred year existence, including such
figures as Euclid (pioneer of geometry), Archimedes (discoverer of
pi, the lever, and the screw), and Galen (one of the founding
fathers of medicine).

The exact location of the library, how it was destroyed (and indeed
if any of it exists) still remains a mystery.

Yet even ancient works can still be recovered. For example, most of
the works of Aristotle (384-322 BC), probably the most influential
thinker in Western history, are lost. Yet in 1880, fragments of one
of Aristotle's most important works 'The constitution of Athens'
were found in Eygpt, and more were found ten years later.

Whilst most of the works of the ancient world are now lost and only
know to us via tantalising mentions in recovered ancient catalogs
and reference pages, its entirely possible that more works will be
uncovered in the future, further enriching our view of the ancient
mind.

[Lord Balto]

fruhmenschen:

On the supposed author "Shakespeare," I would suggest you read the excellent Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare, by Daryl Pinksen, which presents the now virtually overwhelming evidence that "Shakespeare" was the pen name for Chris Marlowe after he escaped the clutches of the bloody Star Chamber.

On Alexandria, Luciano Canfora's The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World presents the thesis that the scrolls of the library simply ceased to be copied, as they had been when the library was in operation, and eventually turned to dust; no burning required, simply the slow oxidation of the centuries. The book is really well written, at least in English translation, and draws some fascinating parallels between the architecture of the library and that of the tomb of Ramses II. On the basis of this architecture, he suggests that the number of scrolls must have been far fewer than most people imagine.

It is my personal opinion that the ancient works that never came down to us, such as the chapters on the Trojan War in the Historical Library of Diodorus, were suppressed by the early Church because they disagreed with the received biblical narrative.

[fruhmenschen]

After reading part of this thread
I googled remote viewing shakespeare

I reference the work of Jane Roberts
Seth and consider the bard to be a speaker

http://www.ianlawton.com/se1.htm

[Lord Balto]

Dear Lord (Balto) ... got any thoughts on the masonic aspects to Shakespeare's works?

Recently read about this idea in Robert Guffey's book Cryptoscatology:

Chapter 9 - Was Shakespeare a Freemason?: Masonic Symbolism in Macbeth page 171
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cryptos ... 1936296408
http://books.google.com
http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2012/07/ ... ology.html


Here's a link not by Guffey:
http://freemasoninformation.com/2011/04 ... freemason/

Currently working my way through Richard Paul Roe's The Shakespeare Guide to Italy. Excellent excellent book. Roe went to Italy on many occasions and positively demolished the notion that "Shakespeare" made many mistakes about Italy. It's amazing what you can learn on the ground that you can't find in scholarly books. Roe was an Oxfordian, and I lean toward Marlowe at present, partially because his supposed death occurred in the cometary year of 1593 (suggesting that he understood the mythology of the battle between the sun and the comet), but whoever wrote the plays, it seems to me that there is virtually no way you can keep him out of Italy anymore. And unless they can find some evidence that Williamum Shakspere spent any time at all outside of Britain, I would say that the Stratfordian argument is dead in the water.

Getting back to secret societies, I recently learned that Giordano Bruno visited England in the spring of 1583:

Giordano Bruno visits England, promoting the Copernican idea of a sun-centered universe and his own theory of infinite inhabited worlds, an idea referred to tangentially in Hamlet. Bruno stays at the home of Sir Philip Sidney, where he writes La Cena de le Ceneri [Pinksen], until Fall of 1585 [Symonds]

Samuel Blumenfeld, author of The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection, thought that Marlowe was Sidney's page when he was young. Wheels within wheels.

[Lord Balto]

Dear Lord (Balto) ... got any thoughts on the masonic aspects to Shakespeare's works?

Recently read about this idea in Robert Guffey's book Cryptoscatology:

Chapter 9 - Was Shakespeare a Freemason?: Masonic Symbolism in Macbeth page 171
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cryptos ... 1936296408
http://books.google.com
http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2012/07/ ... ology.html


Here's a link not by Guffey:
http://freemasoninformation.com/2011/04 ... freemason/

Currently working my way through Richard Paul Roe's The Shakespeare Guide to Italy. Excellent excellent book. Roe went to Italy on many occasions and positively demolished the notion that "Shakespeare" made many mistakes about Italy. It's amazing what you can learn on the ground that you can't find in scholarly books. Roe was an Oxfordian, and I lean toward Marlowe at present, partially because his supposed death occurred in the cometary year of 1593 (suggesting that he understood the mythology of the battle between the sun and the comet), but whoever wrote the plays, it seems to me that there is virtually no way you can keep him out of Italy anymore. And unless they can find some evidence that Williamum Shakspere spent any time at all outside of Britain, I would say that the Stratfordian argument is dead in the water.

Getting back to secret societies, I recently learned that Giordano Bruno visited England in the spring of 1583:

Giordano Bruno visits England, promoting the Copernican idea of a sun-centered universe and his own theory of infinite inhabited worlds, an idea referred to tangentially in Hamlet. Bruno stays at the home of Sir Philip Sidney, where he writes La Cena de le Ceneri [Pinksen], until Fall of 1585 [Symonds]

Samuel Blumenfeld, author of The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection, thought that Marlowe was Sidney's page when he was young. Wheels within wheels.

As for the Freemasons, in my opinion the jury is still out on that, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. I did recently notice a reference to Peter Farey's notion that the Star Chamber knew that Marlowe was alive, and may even have been complicit in his escape. If this were true, it would go a long way toward explaining how he and his accomplices could have engineered his supposed death in the appropriate cometary year (1593--visible from July 29 until Sep. 19 in Asia). Note that there is at least one voice out there suggesting that Marlowe's "death" was a reenactment of that of Hiram Abiff (or Adonijah in some versions), whom I have recently tentatively identified with the biblical Adoniram who was murdered by Solomon. The implication of all of this, though still quite vague and hard to pin down, is that all of these characters had secret society connections, perhaps masonic but possibly some other variation that may or may not have been associated with the organization that managed to preserve the Pythagorean tarot in Italy for 2000 years. I have been struggling with the latter for close to three decades now. Sorry to be so vague, but these were no ordinary dabblers in secrecy. It was clearly no accident that Marlowe and his associates were engaged in espionage for Elizabeth I. As with modern geopolitical events, what the public is told (and what later scholars believe) often has little to do with what is really happening behind the scenes.

And thanks for the last reference. Some interesting quotes indeed:

"The emergence of the Masons in 1723 was a PLANNED emergence….the Centenary of the 1623 Folio. William Shakespeare was not only a Freemason, he was the FATHER and FOUNDER of the FRATERNITY, the Writer of the Rituals."

[semper occultus]

...brilliant thread Balti...many thanks...

[Lord Balto]

...brilliant thread Balti...many thanks...

Thanks.

There is an interesting subset of what I call cometary avatars, those of a scientific or technical nature: Pythagoras (563 BC), Leonardo da Vinci (1487), Giordano Bruno (1593), Nikola Tesla (1908), and--dare I say it--Elon Musk (2013). One has to wonder why Musk is being drawn to Mars. I have sometimes wondered whether this object called the Comet of Typhon or Seth by the ancients was some sort of artificial killer (solar) satellite or converted asteroid. Most comets are not known to set fire to entire cities and turn their walls into volcanic glass, or to wipe out huge swaths of Siberian forest. Could it be that we are looking at the interstellar equivalent of the unexploded bombs still being found in London? Something like Phil Dick's Valis. Or the V-ger episode of Star Trek--"Sterilize, Sterilize." "God" as a renegade interplanetary weapon from a long forgotten war with Mars?

[Lord Balto]

Sorry for the diversion. Just rolling some ideas around in my head.

Back to Shakespeare and Friends... Continuing to read portions of Diana Price's Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography. Price brings up the notion of the "Ur" plays--Ur-Hamlet, etc., that were originally postulated to explain references to plays with titles identical or similar to those of "Shakespeare" (p. 285 forward) but too early to fit the orthodox chronology. As early as 1589, Thomas Nashe makes reference to "whole Hamlets ... of tragical speechs," and a play with this name is being produced on the London stage at least as early as 1594. The latter date just barely fits the notion of a surviving Marlowe (after the Deptford incident of 1593), though the mature nature of the play suggests an impossibly rapid improvement of the playwright's abilities. The earlier date presents an even more serious problem to the Shakespeare chronologists. It suggests that someone was writing plays that reach the very pinnacle of "Shakepeare's" talents before the Stratfordian Shakspere has even arrived in London, and while Marlowe is still very much alive and writing under his own name. All of these Ur-plays are, of course, missing--like so many inconvenient modern documents--suggesting that they were either far inferior to the later Shakespeare plays and therefore not preserved, or they were the identical plays attributed to Shakespeare. Other plays with earlier Ur versions are:

The Tempest
The Taming of the Shrew
Titus Andronicus
Henry VIII, and
Pericles

I have not yet looked at the dating evidence for these plays, but it should be interesting. What does seem probable, if these are legitimate Shakespeare plays, is that someone else--not Shakspere of Stratford, not Marlowe of Canterbury--was writing plays at this time, someone whose identity remains shrouded in mystery.

[Lord Balto]

So far, I have found no specific event chronicled in the plays of "Shakespeare" that would tie the composition of any particular play to a particular year or even a particular decade. Extending the argument of my previous post, I should point out that the subjects of these plays are not contemporary with the lives of either "Shakespeare" or Christopher Marlowe, though some approach it closer than others. Once we divorce the plays of Shakespeare from the wheeler-dealer Williamum Shakspere of Warwickshire, most of the plays could just as easily have been written before 1547 as after 1593. This is because Henry VIII, the subject of one of the plays, died in the former year. As far as I can tell so far, the subjects of all of the other plays are even earlier:

Troilus and Cressida is set during the Trojan War (1195-1186),
King Lear (or Leir) ruled from 848-788 BC, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth,
Timon of Athens lived during the 5th century BC,
Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC,
Hamlet, or Amlodhi (of the famous mill), is lost in the mists of time,
Antony and Cleopatra both committed suicide in 30 BC after their defeat by Octavius,
MacBeth died in AD 1057,
King John died in 1216,
Many of the events described in Romeo and Juliet occurred in 1302,
Richard II died in 1400,
Henry IV, the subject of two plays, died in 1413,
Henry V in 1422,
Henry VI, the subject of three plays, died in 1471,
Richard III in 1485,
The events described in The Two Gentlemen of Verona occurred after March 14, 1533,

with the possible exception of The Merchant of Venice and Othello, which both contain references to "Belmont," supposedly the Villa Foscari that was built between 1558 and 1560. Sabbioneta, the location of A Midsummer Night's Dream, was founded, according to the not always accurate Wikipedia, in "the late 16th century." However, the Jewish printer Tobias ben Eliezer Foa was living in Sabbioneta at least as early as 1559. The decision to rebuild Sabbioneta as a monumental city was made by Prince Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna in 1556. Perhaps the history of this city is our best hope of pinning down the date of composition of one of the plays. This play was first published as a quarto edition in 1600 and first mentioned in 1598. One has to, at least, begin to wonder at this point who was in Italy and old enough to be writing plays shortly after 1560.

I should point out that Monsieur Louis Le Doux (Catharinus Dulcis/Catherin Le Doux?), lately suspected of being the returned Christopher Marlowe, if he was indeed Catherinus Dulcis, was born in 1540. All of the arguments suggesting that Le Doux was Marlowe can be imported and applied to the hypothesis that Le Doux wrote the plays, though, in fact, he was not the same person as Marlowe.

[Lord Balto]

Another date has come to my attention, via Noemi Magri. It seems that the Villa Foscari ("Belmont") was visited by the Marquis of Montferrat in July of 1574, a visit referred to tangentially in The Merchant of Venice. The play was first mentioned by Meres in Palladis Tamia in 1598 and published in 1600. Between the total lack of a literary paper trail from the life of William Shakspere of Stratford and the resulting sparsity of evidence of when, exactly, the plays were written, it is not surprising that no one has managed to nail down the name of the author beyond the construct created by the tourist board of Stratford.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Cannabis discovered in tobacco pipes found in William Shakespeare's garden
Forensic testing of 400-year-old pipes suggest playwright might have smoked more than just tobacco



By Bonnie Malkin

1:25AM BST 09 Aug 2015

South African scientists have discovered that 400-year-old tobacco pipes excavated from the garden of William Shakespeare contained cannabis, suggesting the playwright might have written some of his famous works while high.

Residue from early 17th century clay pipes found in the playwright’s garden, and elsewhere in Stratford-Upon-Avon, were analysed in Pretoria using a sophisticated technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, the Independent reports.

Of the 24 fragments of pipe loaned from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to University of the Witwatersrand, cannabis was found in eight samples, four of which came from Shakespeare's property.

There was also evidence of cocaine in two pipes, but neither of them hailed from the playwright's garden.

Shakespeare's sonnets suggest he was familiar with the effects of both drugs.

In Sonnet 76, he writes about “invention in a noted weed", which could be interpreted to mean that Shakespeare was willing to use “weed”, or cannabis, while he was writing.

In the same sonnet it appears that he would prefer not to be associated with “compounds strange”, which can be interpreted, at least potentially, to mean “strange drugs” (possibly cocaine).