Transcript for the Piece Audio version of RN Documentary: Will the Real Will Shakespeare Please Stand Up?

SCRIPT

VOICE: Radio Netherlands presents Vox Humana.

MUSIC: “La Coranto” – Musicians of the Globe

ANNOUNCER: It’s time once again for the world’s favorite literary historical reality debate show, “Will the Real Will Shakespeare Please Stand Up?” – moderated, as always, by humanity’s humblest humorist: Mr. Mark Twain.

APPLAUSE

TWAIN: Thank you for that warm welcome. But before I introduce our guests, I’ve got a little bone to pick. An apocryphal story’s been circumnavigating the past century or so, attributed to yours truly, that the plays of one William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon were not written by him. The story goes, they were, in fact, written by another man from Stratford who, coincidentally, happened to be named William Shakespeare. (LAUGHTER) Now I’ve made some supercilious remarks in my time, but let me assure you, there has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn’t be two; certainly not at the same time. It takes ages at bring forth a Shakespeare, and more ages to match him. This one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and hasn’t been matched since. After all, he was voted Man of the Millenniun – so a number of you must agree.

What I actually said was, “SO FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS OR CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.” Now I know that still upsets the Shakesperiods and the Stratfordolators, or Stratfordians, as you call them now. And it doesn’t mean I’ve hopped on the bandwagon of the Baconians, Oxfordians, Marlovians, Elizabethsonians – or any other “ians” out there. Who did write the Plays, then? I wish I knew. And that’s why we’re here. It’s time to introduce our two guests…

On my left for the Marlovians, Mr. Rodney Bolt, a writer who was born in South Africa, educated in England, moved to Ireland and now resides in Amsterdam – so it should come as no surprise he’s written a few travel books. But his latest is called “History Play: The Life and Afterlives of Christopher Marlowe.” (The renowned theatre director Sir Peter Hall listed it as one of his favorite books of 2004.) Mr. Bolt, how in tarnation does a reasonable fellow like yourself get interested in the notion a dead man wrote Shakespreare’s plays?

BOLT – FW: “Well, there were two…
LW: …good story begins to loom.” DUR: 1’30”

TWAIN: Intriguing, Mr. Bolt. And on my right, representing the Stratfordians, Mr. Stephen Greenblatt, University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, editor of the Norton Shakespeare and progenitor of something called the New Historicism. His new book is “Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.” (Listed by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of 2004) Professor Greenblatt, you’ve taken an even more daring approach – that Shakespeare is… well… Shakespeare!

GREENBLATT – FW: “Well, I do and I don’t…
LW: …there is a puzzle here.” DUR: 1’31”

TWAIN: Indeed. A puzzle with a great many missing pieces, I might add – like trying to reconstruct a brontosaurus with nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris. I once set down a list of every positively known fact of Shakespeare’s life; a lean and meager invoice it was – filling less than a page. Yet between your two books I find 800 pages of “maybes” and “perhapses,” “probabilities” and “liklihoods,” “we are permitted to thinks” and “we are warranted in believings” and “might’ve beens,” “could’ve beens,” “must’ve beens,” and even, “without a shadow of a doubt” and behold! – A biography!
An Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat foundation of inconsequential facts. …Professor Greenblatt, you begin your book with the words, “Let us imagine…” which begs the question with regard to methodology, To speculate or not to speculate?

GREENBLATT – FW: “I gave myself a lot…
LW: …principles of the book.” DUR: 1’33”

TWAIN: Mr. Bolt, I’ll simplify and rephrase the question. Biography or fiction?

BOLT – FW: “Well, the book was commissioned…
LW: …is just one of direction.” DUR: 1’20”

TWAIN: Well, let’s take a new direction, gentlemen, and feel free to plunder at will. Mr. Bolt, in your story, Kit Marlowe escapes a rather complicated political plot in England, not long after Will Shakespeare, according to Professor Greenblatt, has escaped a pretty dire domestic situation in Stratford. So I put it to you both: Are we dealing with playwrights here, or escape artists?

BOLT – FW: “If you take a conventional… [
LW: …leads to his escape.” TOTAL DUR: 2’20”
GREENBLATT – FW: I think the image… [
LW: …plenty to escape from.”

TWAIN: And this from the man purported to have written the greatest love stories and sonnets of all time? We might as well believe the fanciful fiction of the film “Shakespeare in Love” where his marriage is mentioned merely as a plot twist – not that his wife Anne Hathaway would’ve recognized the ungrateful thug whose last will and testament left her no more than that “second best bed.” Care to comment, Professor Greenblatt?

GREENBLATT – FW: “Well, the first thing…
LW: …not written to your wife.” DUR: 2’24”

TWAIN: Well, that was certainly the case for the unmarried Marlowe. What light can you shed on his love life, Mr. Bolt?

BOLT – FW: “Love or lust?…
LW: …feeds into all of them.” DUR: 1’15”

MUSIC: “O Mistress Mine” – Musicians of the Globe DUR: 48”
Track 22: From Start to 0.48

APPLAUSE

TWAIN: The Musicians of the Globe, ladies and gentleman, performing one of the greatest hits of the time – which Shakespeare, or Marlowe, or whoever, neatly inserted into “Twelfth Night,”- which may or may not have been based on the Duke of Mantua – if Mr. Bolt’s version of events is to be believed. Or wherein Shakespeare of Stratford mocks his own aspirations of achieving the status of a gentleman in the character of the foolish Malvolio, as Professor Greenblatt suggests. So many theories, conjectures, or “may-be-so’s.” But the question remains, how did a young whippersnapper with no university education, make the leap from obscure actor to great writer?

GREENBLATT – FW: “Even here we don’t know…
LW: …writing for the stage.” DUR: 1’35”

TWAIN: Mr. Bolt, you might have a slightly prejudicial view on the subject of education, having read English, as you did, at Marlowe’s Alma Mater – Corpus Christi College, Cambridge – albeit a few centuries later.

BOLT – FW: “The plays certainly show…
LW: …by Marlowe and by Shakespeare.” DUR: 2’20”

TWAIN: Well, that’s all very interesting. We find a vague file of chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust and we know by our reasoning powers that Hercules has been along that trail. Oh, these biographers. One fact we do know. Marlowe and Shakespeare were both in London at the same time - Working in the same small circle of playhouses, playwrights and players. Surely there must’ve been – huh! Now they’ve got me doing it… What was Shakespeare to Marlowe, or Marlowe to Shakespeare? Mr. Bolt?

BOLT – FW: “If nothing else it’s clear…
LW: …if not the two men themselves.” DUR: 50”

TWAIN: Would you care to add to the ambiguity, Professor Greenblatt?

GREENBLATT – FW: “I think the relationship…
LW: …maligned malignant angel.” DUR: 2’55”

TWAIN: Holy Huckleberry! We better wrap this up before you have them lounging in bed in the altogether writing Broadway musicals under the name Steven Sodomite! (LAUGHTER) But let me share a final thought…
SO FAR AS ANYONE KNOWS OR CAN PROVE, SHAKESPEARE OF STRATFORD WROTE ONLY ONE POEM DURING HIS LIFE. This one is authentic; a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that his work of art be engraved on his tomb. There it abides to this day. This is it:
Good friend of Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
If he had been less temperately solicitous about his bones, and more solicitous about his work, it would have been better for his name. The bones are not important. They will moulder away, and turn to dust; but the Works will endure until the last sun goes down… or my name isn’t Mark Twain.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC IN

ANNOUNCER: Today’s guests on “Will the Real Will Shakespeare Please Stand Up?” were Professor Stephen Greenblatt, author of “Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare,” published by W.W. Norton; and Mr. Rodney Bolt, author of “History Play: The Life and Afterlives of Christopher Marlowe,” published by Harper Collins. The program was written and produced by David Swatling with technical assistance from Robert Giesselbach and John Nieuwenhuis… Vox Humana is a Radio Netherlands Presentation.

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