gangleri
2005-07-06 01:05:06 UTC
I looked up "Jonathan Bate" on the Internet and came across the
following:
Does it really matter to you "who wrote Shakespeare"?
Yeah, it does. Whereas, I think, a lot of the more postmodern critics,
someone like Marjorie Garber, will probably say no, it doesn't.
So how do you answer the question, Why does it matter?
Partly it's to do with honoring truth, honoring fact, which it seems to
me we have a historical duty to do. And, you know, without being
melodramatic about it, you deny the reality of Shakespeare one moment,
you can deny the reality of the Holocaust the next. I mean, that's the
melodramatic answer. A conspiracy theory about the "Shakespeare
industry," a conspiracy theory about the "Holocaust industry." It's the
responsibility of scholarship to examine evidence -- and, okay, fact is
always interpreted, the way we select fact is always value-laden, but
history did happen, facts do exist, and we forget that at our peril. So
that's a kind of moral argument.
And then I also think, at another level, it matters because the truth
about Shakespeare, which is that he was someone from the provinces,
from a sort of lower-middle-class background, with no university
education -- though a decent grammar school education -- who still
managed to achieve an extraordinary amount, that does seem to me, in
its quiet way, to be a heroic story, a story that is worth admiring.
It's like a story of an ordinary person making it into the White House.
And the problem -- less with the Marlowe theory, but with the other
ones, particularly the Earl of Oxford and the various other
aristocratic theories that have really had a lot of currency, and
really have more currency than the Marlowe theory -- is that they are
so condescending and snobbish. The suggestion that you have to be a
mighty aristocrat in order to write mighty works, I find that
politically very offensive. So, you know, without meaning to be
pompous, I have got a moral and a political argument there.
****
Well - after equating disagreement with HIS views on the Shakespeare
Authorship issue to Holocaust Denial - he didn't mean to come across
like a pompous ass.
following:
Does it really matter to you "who wrote Shakespeare"?
Yeah, it does. Whereas, I think, a lot of the more postmodern critics,
someone like Marjorie Garber, will probably say no, it doesn't.
So how do you answer the question, Why does it matter?
Partly it's to do with honoring truth, honoring fact, which it seems to
me we have a historical duty to do. And, you know, without being
melodramatic about it, you deny the reality of Shakespeare one moment,
you can deny the reality of the Holocaust the next. I mean, that's the
melodramatic answer. A conspiracy theory about the "Shakespeare
industry," a conspiracy theory about the "Holocaust industry." It's the
responsibility of scholarship to examine evidence -- and, okay, fact is
always interpreted, the way we select fact is always value-laden, but
history did happen, facts do exist, and we forget that at our peril. So
that's a kind of moral argument.
And then I also think, at another level, it matters because the truth
about Shakespeare, which is that he was someone from the provinces,
from a sort of lower-middle-class background, with no university
education -- though a decent grammar school education -- who still
managed to achieve an extraordinary amount, that does seem to me, in
its quiet way, to be a heroic story, a story that is worth admiring.
It's like a story of an ordinary person making it into the White House.
And the problem -- less with the Marlowe theory, but with the other
ones, particularly the Earl of Oxford and the various other
aristocratic theories that have really had a lot of currency, and
really have more currency than the Marlowe theory -- is that they are
so condescending and snobbish. The suggestion that you have to be a
mighty aristocrat in order to write mighty works, I find that
politically very offensive. So, you know, without meaning to be
pompous, I have got a moral and a political argument there.
****
Well - after equating disagreement with HIS views on the Shakespeare
Authorship issue to Holocaust Denial - he didn't mean to come across
like a pompous ass.