28 Oct 2015

(312) Equating an "Oxford perspective " with a "Poststratfordian"

The disputable authenticity of George Chapman











The claim of Christopher Carolan's most interesting ->blog, discussing  the Shakespeare Authorship Question as representing a "post-Stratfordian perspective", is a bit unfair:






  it's not  a "post-Stratfordian" but  an
"Oxfordian perspective". 


 The blog  is - as Carolan writes - an unauthorized spin-off of ->Quake-speare Shorterly, Rambler’s ground-breaking look into the textual contexts and  literary scenes of Elizabethan and early Jacobean England, all from an Oxfordian perspectiive.

Its a valuable piece of information. In Carolans initial  blog starting with a look at Chapman’s "The Gentleman Usher "-  one can easily agree that the character  "Medice"  fits best to William,  the Stratfordman.


Medice. My lord, away with these scholastic wits,
                 Lay the invention of your speech on me,
                And the performance too; I’ll play my part
                That you shall say, Nature yields more than Art.
(1)
Alphonso. Be’t so resolv’d; unartiļ¬cial truth
                  An unfeign’d passion can decipher best.


This   is undoubtedly a  metapher that reminds us of  a deceit, of the exchange between a scholastic wit  (Marlowe?) and an outdoorsman (Shakspere?)

Unfortunately, Carolan was halfway stuck. The "post-Stratfordian perspective" would probably have opened for Carolan, if he had been thinking a little deeper  about the disputable authenticity of George Chapman ( Chapman s.  previous Blog 311)

1)strongly  reminding on   Jonson’s statements    on "Art" and "Nature" in the First Folio