Shakespeare, Bacon And The Great Unknown E-Book

Andrew Lang

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The theory that Francis Bacon was, in the main, the author of "Shakespeare's plays," has now been for fifty years before the learned world. Its advocates have met with less support than they had reason to expect. Their methods, their logic, and their hypotheses closely resemble those applied by many British and foreign scholars to Homer; and by critics of the very Highest School to Holy Writ. Yet the Baconian theory is universally rejected in England by the professors and historians of English literature; and generally by students who have no profession save that of Letters. The Baconians, however, do not lack the countenance and assistance of highly distinguished persons, whose names are famous where those of mere men of letters are unknown; and in circles where the title of "Professor" is not duly respected. Contents: Introduction Chapter I: The Baconian And Anti-Willian Positions Chapter Ii: The "Silence" About Shakespeare Chapter Iii: That Impossible He - The Schooling Of Shakespeare Chapter Iv: Mr. Collins On Shakespeare's Learning Chapter V: Shakespeare, Genius, And Society Chapter Vi: The Courtly Plays: "Love's Labour's Lost" Chapter Vii: Contemporary Recognition Of Will As Author Chapter Viii: "The Silence Of Philip Henslowe" Chapter Ix: The Later Life Of Shakespeare - His Monument And Portraits Chapter X: "The Traditional Shakspere" Chapter Xi: The First Folio Chapter Xii: Ben Jonson And Shakespeare Chapter Xiii: The Preoccupations Of Bacon Appendices Appendix I: "Troilus And Cressida" Appendix Ii - Chettle's Supposed Allusion To Will Shakspere This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

Leseprobe

Shakespeare, Bacon And The Great Unknown

Andrew Lang

Contents:

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

Shakespeare, Bacon And The Great Unknown

Introduction

Chapter I: The Baconian And Anti-Willian Positions

Chapter Ii: The “Silence” About Shakespeare

Chapter Iii: That Impossible He - The Schooling Of Shakespeare

Chapter Iv: Mr. Collins On Shakespeare’s Learning

Chapter V: Shakespeare, Genius, And Society

Chapter Vi: The Courtly Plays: “Love’s Labour’s Lost”

Chapter Vii: Contemporary Recognition Of Will As Author

Chapter Viii: “The Silence Of Philip Henslowe”

Chapter Ix: The Later Life Of Shakespeare - His Monument And Portraits

Chapter X: “The Traditional Shakspere”

Chapter Xi: The First Folio

Chapter Xii: Ben Jonson And Shakespeare

Chapter Xiii: The Preoccupations Of Bacon

Appendices

Appendix I: “Troilus And Cressida”

Appendix Ii - Chettle’s Supposed Allusion To Will Shakspere

Shakespeare, Bacon And The Great Unknown, A. Lang

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849607302

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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ANDREW LANG (1844-1912)

Biographical Sketch from "Portraits And Sketches" by Edmund Gosse

INVITED to note down some of my recollections of Andrew Lang, I find myself suspended between the sudden blow of his death and the slow development of memory, now extending in unbroken friendship over thirty-five years. The magnitude and multitude of Lang's performances, public and private, during that considerable length of time almost paralyse expression; it is difficult to know where to begin or where to stop. Just as his written works are so extremely numerous as to make a pathway through them a formidable task in bibliography, no one book standing out predominant, so his character, intellectual and moral, was full of so many apparent inconsistencies, so many pitfalls for rash assertion, so many queer caprices of impulse, that in a whole volume of analysis, which would be tedious, one could scarcely do justice to them all. I will venture to put down, almost at haphazard, what I remember that seems to me to have been overlooked, or inexactly stated, by those who wrote, often very sympathetically, at the moment of his death, always premising that I speak rather of a Lang of from 1877 to 1890, when I saw him very frequently, than of a Lang whom younger people met chiefly in Scotland.

When he died, all the newspapers were loud in proclaiming his "versatility." But I am not sure that he was not the very opposite of versatile. I take "versatile" to mean changeable, fickle, constantly ready to alter direction with the weather-cock. The great instance of versatility in literature is Ruskin, who adopted diametrically different views of the same subject at different times of his life, and defended them with equal ardour. To be versatile seems to be unsteady, variable. But Lang was through his long career singularly unaltered; he never changed his point of view; what he liked and admired as a youth he liked and admired as an elderly man. It is true that his interests and knowledge were vividly drawn along a surprisingly large number of channels, but while there was abundance there does not seem to me to have been versatility. If a huge body of water boils up from a crater, it may pour down a dozen paths, but these will always be the same; unless there is an earthquake, new cascades will not form nor old rivulets run dry. In some authors earthquakes do take place as in Tolstoy, for instance, and in S. T. Coleridge but nothing of this kind was ever manifest in Lang, who was extraordinarily multiform, yet in his varieties strictly consistent from Oxford to the grave. As this is not generally perceived, I will take the liberty of expanding my view of his intellectual development.