England

As the Speare Shakes…

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Wikipedia

We all know William Shakespeare, right, perhaps the biggest ball within the entire round of the Western Canon…

Now, I’m far from being a Shakespeare aficionado, and even farther away from being one who has read and/or watched all the great Bard has, apparently, plumed for us, but I’m no Shakespearean slouch either.

And as much as I enjoy and appreciate that little of his which I have read and/or watched, I enjoy almost equally the intrigue that surrounds him. Is he really the one history has assigned to being the greatest English voice of all time, or is he just a front for another who for some reason or another has preferred to stay anonymous?

My opinion on the topic sways with the wind and is mostly dependent upon which documentary and/or article about it I’ve recently watched and/or read.

Now, I knew that there has long been intrigue surrounding his sexual orientation, but I didn’t know, or I don’t remember that I knew, that there was intrigue surrounding his religious practices, the whole Protestant/Catholic thing that was/is all the rage, literally.

That is, I didn’t know that I knew, until now…

In the tucked-away document, which heavily cites an obscure 17th century Italian religious tract called The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, the writer pledges to die a good Catholic death. If the writer was indeed John Shakespeare, who remained a devout Protestant until his death in 1601, it would have indicated a major shift in his beliefs and suggested a clandestine life during an era when secret allegiance to the Catholic Church in Elizabethan England could have been dangerous. For this reason, many experts have suspected the document to be forged.

But in the new study, Steggle used internet archives to track down early editions of The Last Will and Testament of the Soul in Italian and six other languages and concluded the document could have only been written after John Shakespeare’s death. That left Steggle with just one other “J. Shakespeare”: Joan.

A Remarkable Discovery of a Document Shatters One of Shakespeare’s Biggest Mysteries, Popular Mechanics, March 26, 2024

If you don’t have a Popular Mechanics subscription, which I’m guessing you don’t, you can read the article with an Apple News subscription, which is where I found it.

And if you don’t have either, the article, referencing a recent study in the Shakespeare Quarterly (which of course you need a subscription to view the study beyond the extract), goes on to surmise that since new information now appears to prove that his sister Joan was a closeted Catholic, perhaps ol’ Willy himself was as well, which may be why we know so little about his personal life, particularly that part of it spent in his hometown, homevillage?, Strafford-on-the-Avon. He feared, perhaps, of being outted for being a papist, which of course was a big and bloody no no back in his day.

I know, I know, all this historical intrigue and speculation is high level nerd alert stuff that, considering all the strife inflicting our pretty yet petulant planet right now, is very inconsequential.

But so is my mind, which is why I enjoy it all so much. Enquiring minds want to know, you know (if you’re familiar with that quote/slogan, then it not only dates you/me, it also tells us so much about your/my intellectual taste, or lack there of).

Anyway, I guess if I had to guess who I think the real Shakespeare is if it truly isn’t Shakespeare himself, then I guess my guess would have to be Sir Francis Bacon, mostly because that was who Mark Twain guessed it to be, and I guess we all know that Mr. Twain was a lot smarter than I pretend to be…

Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to the other side.  Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case.  That is to say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn’t.

Is Shakespeare Dead? From my Autobiography – Mark Twain

Yeah…

Summing Up Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE

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BOOK | FICTION | LITERATURE
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
by W. Somerset Maugham
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★

W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham

I suppose the easiest, and quickest, way to sum up Maugham’s OF HUMAN BONDAGE would be to write something along the lines of “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” which is certainly the case for the story’s protagonist, Phillip Carey.

If, however, that was all I wrote, then not only would I be overly brief in this review (which probably is not a bad thing), I would also be overly unoriginal since we all know the above quote belongs to the great Henry David Thoreau.

Unfortunately, because I do not have Thoreau’s genius for writing simply (which requires skill and patience that most writers, to include me, do not possess), I will have to deploy many more words than just Thoreau’s for my own summing up of Maugham’s masterpiece.

But what Thoreau wrote so poetically is undeniably what the essence of Maugham’s story is about:

 

Carey, born with a clubbed foot and who grows up to be shy and insecure because of it, lives a life yearning to be someone he can never be, to love someone whom he can never love, and to be somewhere other than where he happens to be.

His yearnings, we find, go mostly unfulfilled.

What I enjoy most about the story is Maugham’s descriptive ability. His writing magically places me deep within the England and the Germany and the France of the early twentieth century. I can hear the cart wheels rolling along the cobble-stoned streets. I can see the crowded, smoke-filled cafe. I can taste the absinthe and feel the immediate allure and rush as it blissfully numbs away the bite of reality.

What I enjoy least about the story is Carey’s excessively drawn-out infatuation with Mildred Rogers, the cruel and insensitive simpleton who fancies herself to be of a station in life much higher than the one she is unable to escape, no matter how hard she tries. While she does not have the capacity to improve her lot in life through earnest devices and effort, she does have enough smarts about her to understand early on in her relationship with Carey that she has a power over him from which he is also unable to escape no matter how hard he tries. She uses and abuses Carey with her power so often and for so long that I found myself becoming impatient and bored with, not only Carey’s unbelievable weakness, but with the story as a whole. However, by that point, I was already deeply hooked, addicted to the tale and desperate to know whether Carey would find a way to ween himself from his deadly addiction to Rogers, or if he would die unfulfilled and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes writes in his poem “The Voiceless,” with his music still in him.

While I find the tortuous, one-sided love affair between Carey and Rogers to be a bit too much, through it I am reminded that any unhealthy dependency, be it our dependency on love, on money, on drugs, or on whatever, often takes us down a long and troubling path that, if we stay on it, will eventually lead us to the point of our destruction. And it usually is not until we nearly reach that point that we are finally able to realize just how destructive our dependency, our yearning, really is. Only then, if we are lucky or blessed or both (for unfortunately, many are unable to stop before reaching the point of their destruction and continue helplessly, fatally on), can we find the strength to separate ourselves from that which is destroying us and begin on a path to recovery.

But I guess that’s how life goes, and how it has always gone throughout the desperate ages — if we do not somehow find a way to come to peace with our satiated yearnings, our unrequited desires, they will most likely be the sad and desperate songs we sing until we finally, and at last, are placed within our cold and lonely graves.

~~~~

Rating System:
★ = Unreadable
★ ★ = Poor Read
★ ★ ★ = Average Read
★ ★ ★ ★ = Outstanding Read
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ = Exceptional Read

Summing Up Maugham’s OF HUMAN BONDAGE

by

BOOK | FICTION | LITERATURE
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
by W. Somerset Maugham
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★

W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham

I suppose the easiest, and quickest, way to sum up Maugham’s OF HUMAN BONDAGE would be to write something along the lines of “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” which is certainly the case for the story’s protagonist, Phillip Carey.

If, however, that was all I wrote, then not only would I be overly brief in this review (which probably is not a bad thing), I would also be overly unoriginal since we all know the above quote belongs to the great Henry David Thoreau.

Unfortunately, because I do not have Thoreau’s genius for writing simply (which requires skill and patience that most writers, to include me, do not possess), I will have to deploy many more words than just Thoreau’s for my own summing up of Maugham’s masterpiece.

But what Thoreau wrote so poetically is undeniably what the essence of Maugham’s story is about:

 

Carey, born with a clubbed foot and who grows up to be shy and insecure because of it, lives a life yearning to be someone he can never be, to love someone whom he can never love, and to be somewhere other than where he happens to be.

His yearnings, we find, go mostly unfulfilled.

What I enjoy most about the story is Maugham’s descriptive ability. His writing magically places me deep within the England and the Germany and the France of the early twentieth century. I can hear the cart wheels rolling along the cobble-stoned streets. I can see the crowded, smoke-filled cafe. I can taste the absinthe and feel the immediate allure and rush as it blissfully numbs away the bite of reality.

What I enjoy least about the story is Carey’s excessively drawn-out infatuation with Mildred Rogers, the cruel and insensitive simpleton who fancies herself to be of a station in life much higher than the one she is unable to escape, no matter how hard she tries. While she does not have the capacity to improve her lot in life through earnest devices and effort, she does have enough smarts about her to understand early on in her relationship with Carey that she has a power over him from which he is also unable to escape no matter how hard he tries. She uses and abuses Carey with her power so often and for so long that I found myself becoming impatient and bored with, not only Carey’s unbelievable weakness, but with the story as a whole. However, by that point, I was already deeply hooked, addicted to the tale and desperate to know whether Carey would find a way to ween himself from his deadly addiction to Rogers, or if he would die unfulfilled and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes writes in his poem “The Voiceless,” with his music still in him.

While I find the tortuous, one-sided love affair between Carey and Rogers to be a bit too much, through it I am reminded that any unhealthy dependency, be it our dependency on love, on money, on drugs, or on whatever, often takes us down a long and troubling path that, if we stay on it, will eventually lead us to the point of our destruction. And it usually is not until we nearly reach that point that we are finally able to realize just how destructive our dependency, our yearning, really is. Only then, if we are lucky or blessed or both (for unfortunately, many are unable to stop before reaching the point of their destruction and continue helplessly, fatally on), can we find the strength to separate ourselves from that which is destroying us and begin on a path to recovery.

But I guess that’s how life goes, and how it has always gone throughout the desperate ages — if we do not somehow find a way to come to peace with our satiated yearnings, our unrequited desires, they will most likely be the sad and desperate songs we sing until we finally, and at last, are placed within our cold and lonely graves.

~~~~

Rating System:
★ = Unreadable
★ ★ = Poor Read
★ ★ ★ = Average Read
★ ★ ★ ★ = Outstanding Read
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ = Exceptional Read

Tragic Irony

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Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the remains of Richard III — the English king remembered mostly — courtesy of the chronicler of kings, Shakespeare, of course — for his unrequited request for a means of transportation to help him escape his impending doom — were found buried beneath a parking lot?

From The Telegraph:

The skeletal remains believed to be those of the King, who died in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 but had been missing ever since, were uncovered last September in the remains of the Grey Friars Church, in Leicester, over which had been built a social services car park.