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Fw: Fw: Fw: Shakespeare plagiarist!
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----- Original Message -----
From: Jeff Edmunds
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 6:21 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Fw: Shakespeare plagiarist!
From Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
In the wake of the Lolita "scandal," the Shakespeare story continues to unfold:
(REUTERS) Advanced copies of a book revealing Shakespeare's plagiarism are creating a furor in academia. The Fraudulent Bard: How Shakespeare Stole, by Icelandic scholar Thorn Thorgald, presents irrefutable evidence that the famous playwright plagiarized often anonymous or unknown writers to fabricate some, if not all, of his equally famous plays.
Repercussions of the book's explosive revelations are being felt internationally. In the United States, public school officials have already begun removing copies of Shakespeare's works from library shelves. Says Robert Wilson, principal at Buford T. Winesap Elementary School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, "We cannot hold up as an example to children a writer who is a known plagiarist. We are systematically removing Shakespeare's plays from our schools and replacing them with other world-class writers, such as Stephen King, Anne Rice, and of course the two James', James Michener and James Clavell."
The director of the Folger Shakespeare Library called a press conference on Monday to distance her organization from the scandal. In a prepared statement read to a crowd of journalists at the Press Club in Washington, D.C., Dr. Gayle Poster said that "in response to Thorgald's book, the Library has come to concede that the claims long made by the Oxford Shakespeare Society are in fact true: Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays. The sources shown by Thorgald to have been copied by the playwright would not have been available to William Shakspere of Avon, who, as is widely known, had no library to speak of. A rural man of strong moral fiber, Shakspere would never have resorted to plagiarism. Only a debased nobleman like Oxford would have seen nothing wrong with the wholesale theft Thorgald reveals. And Oxford, one of the richest and most widely-read men of his era, would have had ready access to every one of the sources listed in Thorgald's book." Poster also announced that, effective July 1, 2004, the Folger Shakespeare Library would be changing its name to the Folger Thomas Kyd Library and Gift Shop.
In a related development, the president of the Oxford Shakespeare Society, which has long maintained that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is in fact the true author of the works attributed to Shakespeare, issued a statement Tuesday including the following retraction of its previous claims: "In light of the proof presented by Thorgald that Shakespeare's plays are the result of plagiarism, the Society hereby acknowledges that its attribution of the plays to Oxford must be mistaken. A nobleman of de Vere's character would never have stooped to plagiarism. Thorgald's book also solves the greatest mystery of Shakespearean studies: how an uneducated, practically illiterate bumpkin from Stratford managed to pen some of the English language's greatest works. Now we know. He stole them."
As yet unknown is what effect the revelations will have on academia, where the careers of thousands of scholars have been built on the lie that Shakespeare was a great writer.
Wept one Cambridge don, "What will I tell me grandkids?"