SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
August 2003
Volume 10, Number 8
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> The Uses of "Hate"
-> The Moving Picture (plus Exclusives to this edition)
-> The Gospel for Laughs
-> Begging the Authorship Question
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted
FEATURES
{{ Material dropped from features or changed solely for
reasons of space appears in double curly brackets.
Emphasis is indicated by the presence of asterisks around
the emphasized words.}}
The Uses of "Hate"
(page 1)
A reader who says he usually likes my columns took
strong exception to the one I wrote criticizing the U.S.
Supreme Court for striking down the Texas sodomy law
("The Court Can Do No Wrong," www.sobran.com/columns/
2003/030701.shtml). He charged me with "bigotry" and
added that I sounded like "a bitter homophobe."
Since I hadn't written about homosexuality as such,
or even about the merits of the Texas law, I wondered how
he got that impression. It's possible to disapprove of
sodomy *and* the Texas law *and* the Court's ruling, and
I do. But no matter how clearly you try to write, you
can't stop people from reading their own notions into
your words.
Needless to say, it's very common these days to
respond to an argument by addressing not the point the
writer is making, but his supposed feelings about the
subject. {{ Was it always so, or has the world taken a
turn for the worse lately? I can't say, but few would say
we live in an age distinguished by logical thinking. }}
If you reject a political claim made in the name of any
category of people, you can expect to be accused of
hating all the people in that category.
This kind of thinking has gotten especially silly in
the area of "gay rights" and "homophobia," terms too
blurry to mean much. {{ It's not that I want to plead not
guilty to the charges; I merely want to point out how
unrealistic the charges are on their face. }}
Lots of people disapprove of sodomy and find it
disgusting. These attitudes are ancient and are implicit
in all our slang and jokes about the subject. But how
many people who hold them really hate homosexuals without
distinction? Very few, really. The ones who do have often
had unpleasant personal experiences that explain their
{{ hostility; yet I have a friend who, though he was
molested as a boy and completely shares my views on the
matter, harbors no special animosity toward homosexuals
in general. }}
Despite all the rhetoric of bigotry that assails us
these days, it just isn't that easy to hate
indiscriminately. In fact such hatred seems unnatural --
or, if you prefer, idiosyncratic.
But some people find a strange moral satisfaction in
positing a ubiquitous "hate," usually against
"minorities" of one sort or another. And of course this
"hate" requires the state to take various actions to
protect the alleged victims, to make reparations, to
reeducate the bigoted public, and finally to "eradicate"
the proscribed attitudes. This stipulated "hate" seems to
fill a vacuum in the moral universe, much as the rarefied
ether was once believed to fill the emptiness of outer
space.
So "hate" endows the state with a vast mandate for
correction. Citizens must be treated as potential, even
presumptive, bigots. "Discrimination" must be anticipated
and forbidden. Ambitious laws and programs must be passed
and implemented. Old freedoms -- of association,
property, commercial exchange -- become suspect and must
be abridged.
And the scope of the state must be expanded to
include even the inspection of our motives. It isn't
enough to ban overt "discrimination," since we may be
"discriminating" furtively; and because we may be lying
about our real motives, the state must also enforce
outward compliance with "civil rights" laws {{ (by
imposing racial quotas and the like). }} Meanwhile, more
and more things are said to be "discriminatory,"
including marriage.
All this must be most encouraging to the sort of
people who think of the state as an instrument for the
complete overhauling of society and human relations. What
better starting point for such a project than a
presumption of guilt against -- well, everyone?
THE MOVING PICTURE
(page 2)
Heaven help me, I felt a pang of pity for Saddam
Hussein when I heard that his two sons, Uday and Qusay,
had been killed in a shootout with American forces.
Assuming he's still alive, he's hardly entitled to pity;
by all accounts he and his sons have pitilessly inflicted
far worse horrors on countless others, and I doubt that
he's reflecting that he has brought this on himself. My
feelings have nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of
the war. I suppose it's just the sort of reaction I would
have if I saw Saddam being tortured -- an involuntary
flinch, even if I thought he deserved it. And even if the
war was justified, Uday and Qusay had little to do with
it. Their deaths are nothing to celebrate.
* * *
Private Jessica Lynch of Elizabeth, West Virginia,
is finally home from the hospital. It's not her fault
that the press created the instant legend of her heroism
with false initial reports; she didn't know for some
weeks that she had become world-famous. Her injuries were
sustained when her vehicle, driven by another woman in
her company, crashed during an ambush; reports that she'd
been wounded in combat turned out to be false, and she
was well treated by her Iraqi captors. Meanwhile,
production of a major motion picture had begun (no
telling whether the project is still alive). But the
initial story of Modern Woman in Combat has dwindled into
a woman driver incident.
* * *
President Bush's post-9/11 popularity is waning
fast. Doubts about his charges against Iraq -- seeking
African uranium and all that -- are eroding his approval
ratings, and it's all too clear that Iraq was never
remotely a serious threat to the United States.
Irrational fears evaporate with the sheer passage of
time, and Bush can't fan them back to life. Looking back,
it all seems faintly silly. The heroic aura is already
gone.
* * *
The Democrats are trying hard to capitalize on
Bush's vulnerability, but they aren't getting far. Though
scads of them are running for president, no leader or
settled message has emerged. Their essential problem is
that liberalism is a dying ideology with an expanding
base: the demographics, especially immigration, favor
them, but they have nothing inspiring to offer. Their
appeal to various minorities is narrow, spiteful, and
venal.
* * *
I drifted into a bookstore the other day and found a
recording of KING LEAR, starring the wondrous Paul
Scofield (now over 80, but still in great voice). Also on
audiotape was LIVING HISTORY, by Hillary Clinton. I was
briefly tempted to buy it. It said it was "recorded by
the author," and I was dying to know who wrote it.
* * *
A year before its scheduled release, Mel Gibson's
latest film is already getting rotten reviews. It's anti-
Semitic. How do we know? Well, THE PASSION is a vivid
dramatization of the Crucifixion, in which all the
dialogue is in Latin and Aramaic (no subtitles). The NEW
YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, THE NEW REPUBLIC, and the Anti-
Defamation League, among others, have hurled the early
brickbats; the charges center on Gibson's conservative
Catholicism and even on his father, an outspoken
sedevacantist who holds that the papacy is vacant and
who, for good measure, doubts the standard Holocaust
story. But Christians who have seen advance screenings
have found the movie extremely powerful.
* * *
The American press is now referring to Iraqis
fighting against the U.S. occupation as "rebels."
Exclusive to the electronic version:
Shameful to relate, I passed up several respectable-
sounding films to catch TERMINATOR 3: THE RISE OF THE
MACHINES. There's not much point in commenting on Arnold
Schwarzennegger's acting; by now his thespian career
doesn't depend heavily on the approval of Cahiers du
Cinema, and even his sternest critic will allow that he
is at least, well, consistent. Claire Danes, who plays
the chief nonrobotic female, is a capable actress, if it
matters in a crunchfest like this, but her rather grim
visage, I can't help thinking, might be ideal for a
prequel to FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE -- to be titled YOUNG
ROSA KLEBB. I did learn from one of the reviews that the
producers' original first choice for the role of the
Terminator, many moons ago, was O.J. Simpson; but he was
finally nixed because his image was "too nice" for a
ruthless killer.
The Gospels for Laughs
(pages 3-4)
I don't read Greek, so I can't judge the scholarly
merits of a new translation of the New Testament, if it
has any. But my interest in THE MESSAGE, by Eugene H.
Peterson (NavPress Publishing Group), isn't scholarly. I
can only say that among all the English translations of
Scripture I know, it's easily the most lively and
invigorating. And the funniest.
In his preface to the J.B. Phillips translation of
the Epistles, C.S. Lewis notes that New Testament Greek
was a "utilitarian, commercial, and administrative"
rather than a literary language, more useful for trade
than for art. Beautiful translations like the King James
Version, archaic even in its own time, may therefore
mislead us, and homelier ones may be more faithful to the
tone and purpose of the original. (Lewis added elsewhere,
"St. Paul, despite some passages of striking beauty,
seems to me to write badly.")
In his introduction to his own translation, Eugene
Peterson seems to echo Lewis. He contrasts the "formal"
Greek of serious literature -- philosophy, poetry, and
official decrees -- with "the common, informal idiom of
everyday speech, street language ... the language used
throughout the New Testament." This idiom is far from
being "elevated -- stately and ceremonial ... not a
refined language that appeals to our aspirations after
the best but a rough and earthy language that reveals
God's presence and action where we least expect it." As
Lewis says, this earthiness corresponds to the
Incarnation itself: God's appearance not in majesty, but
in common humility.
Maybe Peterson, a retired pastor and theology
professor, overdoes it. He isn't after dignity of
diction, or even strict accuracy. He has merely tried to
be vivid -- to make the New Testament sound like
contemporary speech. He makes it racy and sometimes
funny. Imagine Jesus Christ using words like "shampoo,"
"cute," "bashed," "boomeranging," "shortcuts,"
"dictionary," "luxury inn," "opinion polls," "run for
it," and "rip you off." Or telling lost souls, "You
missed the boat.... You're out of here." Or admonishing
the Sadducees, "You're way off base." Or commanding the
Tempter, "Beat it, Satan!"
The point is not to make Jesus sound hip, but to
imagine the force of his original words in the ears of
their hearers. Of course we don't have them in his
Aramaic, only in a rough Greek equivalent, so in a sense
a faithful translation is impossible. Peterson isn't shy
about using verbal anachronisms when they may capture the
sense.
Here is his rendering of Matthew's Beatitudes:
"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope....
You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for
God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever
eat.... You're blessed when your commitment to God
provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even
deeper into God's kingdom. Not only that -- count
yourselves blessed every time people put you down or
throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me.
What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort
and they are uncomfortable."
Obviously this isn't meant to be a definitive
rendition; it's meant to catch the sense of Christ's
words in concrete situations, to make the reader feel
both the speaker and his audience. At times it fails to
do this and is even slightly stilted, as if Peterson
can't quite shake the habits of older, more formal
translations. Still, his version constantly startles. And
if it does no more than that, waking us up from the
liturgical drone of custom, it's well worth the price in
more august qualities.
Peterson's Christ goes on: "Here's another way to
put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-
colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept.
We're going public with this, as public as a city on a
hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm
going to hide you under a bucket, do you?" Now no
English-speaker would use a phrase like "God-colors," but
the rest of the passage has a redeeming energy. It
actually sounds like someone talking. "You don't think
..., do you?"
The Lord's Prayer becomes this: "Our Father in
heaven, reveal who you are. Set the world right; do
what's best -- as above, so below. Keep us alive with
three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and
forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the
Devil. You're in charge! You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes." Nobody would
call this an improvement on the familiar version, but it
makes us reflect on what the words mean.
When praying, Jesus warns, "Don't make a performance
out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made
you won't be applauding." As for hypocrites,
"'playactors' I call them": "They get applause, true, but
that's all they get.... All these people making a regular
show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you
think God sits in a box seat?... It might turn you into a
small-time celebrity, but it won't make you a saint."
Again, hardly the grave eloquence we're used to. If
Peterson's were the only translation, it would leave a
lot to be desired. But of course he's presupposing that
we know other versions, and he's purposely playing off
our knowledge of them in order to make them fresh again.
It's like an almost playful paraphrase. In fact it often
makes me laugh gratefully, as when Jesus speaks of John
the Baptist: "What did you expect when you went out to
see him in the wild? A weekend camper?... A sheik in silk
pajamas?" Quite a card, that Jesus! We're used to seeing
him as Lord, but here he's also the life of the party.
But, come to think of it, why shouldn't wit and
conviviality be among the attributes of the Incarnation?
Where is it suggested that the Redeemer, in his earthy
demeanor, was slightly stuffy?
But sometimes the effect is surprisingly poignant,
as when Christ feeds what we've always called "the
multitude": "I hurt for these people. For three days now
they've been with me, and now they have nothing to eat. I
can't send them away without a meal -- they'd probably
collapse on the road."
What Peterson conveys especially well is Christ's
frustration at his disciples' inability to comprehend
what he has tried to make plain to them: that he must
suffer and die in order to fulfill his mission. "You
still don't get it, do you?" The reader feels their shock
when they realize he really is going to be crucified,
that his forewarnings were not figurative, but quite
literal. The abruptness of modern colloquial speech
brings this home, where more dignified translations
muffle the impact.
Peterson colloquializes the Epistles to good effect
as well, almost making you forget you've read them
before. Here is Paul describing the results of sin to the
Romans: "Since they didn't bother to acknowledge God, God
quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all
hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping,
vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with
their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look
at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-
bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They
keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch
their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy,
cruel, coldblooded. And it's not as if they don't know
better. They know perfectly well they're spitting in
God's face. And they don't care -- worse, they hand out
prizes to those who do the worst things best!"
Here is Paul to the Corinthians: "But let me tell
you something wonderful, a mystery I'll probably never
fully understand. We're not all going to die -- but we
are all going to be changed. You hear a blast to end all
blasts from a trumpet, and in the time that you look up
and blink your eyes -- it's over." You may be relieved
that Handel didn't try to set this to music, but it's not
for euphony that Peterson is recommended.
Peterson has also translated the Old Testament, and
THE MESSAGE includes his renderings of the Psalms and
Proverbs. Again we turn to him more for refreshment than
for beauty, as in Psalm 23:
God, my shepherd!
I don't need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.
Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I'm not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd's crook
makes me feel secure.
You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with your blessing.
Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I'm back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.
Peterson justifies this tone by arguing that the
Psalms are not the prayers of "*nice* people," "polished
and polite." "Prayer is elemental, not advanced,
language.... The Psalms in Hebrew are earthy and rough.
They are not genteel. They are not the prayers of nice
people, couched in cultured language."
{{ Evidently not. Psalm 137, which begins with the
famous poignant lament for Jerusalem beside the waters of
Babylon, ends with a blood-curdling curse:
And you, Babylonians -- ravagers!
A reward to whoever gets back at you
for all you've done to us.
Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies
and smashes their heads on the rocks!
Peterson doesn't comment on this disturbing passage,
but Lewis does: "If the Jews cursed more bitterly than
the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because
they took right and wrong more seriously." }}
All in all, a book of delight and wonder. Majestic
it certainly isn't. But if you want to be surprised by
Scripture, Peterson is your man.
Begging the Authorship Question
(pages 5-6)
{{ The ending of this piece had to be abridged for
reasons of space. The original ending is restored in this
edition and is so marked. --- RNN }}
When was HAMLET written? Around 1600, say the
Shakespeare scholars. And thereby hangs a tale.
The play first appeared in print, in a mangled
version, in 1603. A far better edition appeared the
following year. Since the Bard is supposed to have begun
his theatrical career around 1590, 1600 sounds like a
good guess for a mature masterpiece like HAMLET.
Ah, but we find a jocular reference to Hamlet and
his "tragical speeches" as early as 1589! There are
further references to the play in 1594 and 1596. How do
the scholars explain *that?*
There must have been an earlier Hamlet play by
someone else, they answer. We *know* Shakespeare couldn't
have written his play -- many would say his greatest --
that early. We aren't even sure he was in London by 1589.
The scholars have even given this earlier play a
name: the UR-HAMLET. Sounds rather prehistoric. The
Elizabethan theater's Missing Link, as it were. No trace
of it has ever been found, but the scholars are
absolutely certain of its existence. They have to be.
They regard it not as a mere hunch, inference, or
hypothesis, but as an established fact. In a way, their
whole conception of "Shakespeare" depends on it -- on a
play that has never turned up.
Nor will it. The UR-HAMLET is actually a figment of
circular reasoning, a symptom of everything that's wrong
with Shakespeare scholarship. We don't actually know when
any of the Bard's plays were written. We can only guess.
But if we begin by assuming that the Bard was
William Shakspere of Stratford, born in 1564, died in
1616, we will be led to infer that he wrote the plays
roughly between 1590 and 1610. This is what the scholars
have done, spreading the plays out more or less evenly
over that 20-year span, with HAMLET about in the middle.
The plays themselves don't tell us when they were
written. All we can safely assume is that they were
written before they were printed. But how long before? A
month? Five years? Ten? Even thirty? Thirty years may
sound like a stretch -- changes in the English language
itself set certain limits -- yet even the most
conservative scholars agree that many of the plays in the
Folio must have been written decades before 1623. When we
date them depends largely on what we believe about their
author.
But if William of Stratford *wasn't* the Bard?
Unthinkable. The purely hypothetical UR-HAMLET preserves
both his authorship and the dating system the scholars
have derived from it.
The scholars' "Shakespeare" is actually a construct,
fusing a bare handful of facts about the Stratford man
with mountains of surmise about the works he supposedly
wrote. The trouble is that this construct can't absorb
inconvenient data. If a fact contradicts the construct,
that fact must go. Ad hoc explanations like the UR-HAMLET
are typical of Shakespeare scholarship.
Take another case. In a poem published in 1591
(though probably written earlier), Edmund Spenser praises
a playwright he calls "our pleasant Willie," who has
lately been absent from the theater. His description of
Willie's comedies caused generations of readers to
believe he must be referring to the Bard. Later praise of
"Shakespeare," in fact, echoes Spenser's words about
Willie, "whom Nature's self had made To mock herself and
truth to imitate," and "from whose pen Large streams of
honey and sweet nectar flow." (Spenser also contrasts
Willie with "base-born men," implying that he's a
gentleman of some rank.)
But again, the scholars deny what seems the obvious
meaning. According to their construct, "Shakespeare"
could not have taken leave of the theater by 1591,
because his career had barely begun. So, like the first
reference to Hamlet, this reference to a Willie must be
to someone else, though nobody has figured out who. (An
*ur*-Willie, perhaps?)
The mysterious 1591 "Phaeton" sonnet sounds so
Shakespearean that some scholars have assigned it to the
Bard. But they have been overruled -- not because of the
poem's style, but, once more, because the date is too
early for the "Shakespeare" of scholarly construction.
Only two of the Bard's works can be dated with
precision: the narrative poems VENUS AND ADONIS (1593)
and THE RAPE OF LUCRECE (1594). These were the first two
works published under the name "William Shakespeare," and
we can date them because of their dedications to the
young Earl of Southampton.
They were immediately hailed as poems of mature
genius. Nobody thought the poet was a mere rookie in his
trade. Yet the scholars have dismissed these poems as
"early" and "experimental" works. Why? Because the
standard dating system dictates it. The truth is that
they suggest that this dating system, constructed around
the supposed writing career of William of Stratford, is
wildly wrong. I'd say that they display an eloquence, a
poetic authority, and rhetorical skills fully worthy of
the man who had already written HAMLET.
That would be Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. But
the scholars rule him out as the Bard. Why? Because
Oxford died in 1604, and about ten of the plays were
written after that year. How do we know? Well, because
that's when the scholars' Bard -- William of Stratford --
is supposed to have written them! (Actually, Oxford was
14 years older than William, and could well have written
HAMLET by 1589; as I believe he in fact did.)
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS was published in 1609. These
are full of the poet's self-revelations: he is an aging
man, down on his luck, "in disgrace," and "lame" --
Oxford to a tee. It doesn't sound like William of
Stratford at all. How do the scholars handle the awkward
fact that the Sonnets can't be squared with what we know
of William? Most of them deny that the Sonnets are
autobiographical -- they are "fictions," or mere
"literary exercises."
Circular reasoning, explaining away the anomaly,
ignoring the obvious: all these are standard operating
procedure in Shakespeare scholarship. When it comes to
Oxford, the scholars really show their mettle. Even the
most striking facts pointing to Oxford's authorship are
belittled as insignificant coincidences.
For example, the first 17 Sonnets try to persuade a
young man to marry and beget an heir. It's widely
believed that this youth was Southampton, to whom VENUS
and LUCRECE were dedicated. At the time, Southampton was
under pressure from the great Lord Burghley, Oxford's
father-in-law, to marry, of all the girls in England,
Oxford's daughter Elizabeth. Mere coincidence?
Then there were the Herbert brothers, William and
Philip. William nearly married Oxford's daughter Bridget;
Philip did marry Oxford's youngest daughter Susan. The
1623 Folio of the Shakespeare plays, though it identified
William of Stratford as the Bard, was dedicated to the
Herberts, the "incomparable pair of brethren," who by
then had become the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. So
all three of the earls to whom the Bard's works were
dedicated -- Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery --
could easily have become Oxford's sons-in-law.
But such coincidences leave the scholars
unimpressed. Such facts don't penetrate the closed circle
of the Shakespeare construct. Nothing does. The experts
have their story, and they're sticking to it.
The coincidences keep mounting. One of Oxford's
uncles was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who pioneered
English blank verse and the "Shakespearean" sonnet form.
Surrey even appears (unhistorically) in a play now widely
ascribed to the Bard, SIR THOMAS MORE. Another of
Oxford's uncles, Arthur Golding, did a famous translation
of Ovid, often used by the Bard. Lord Burghley himself is
evidently the model for Polonius. But none of these
"coincidences" registers with the scholars or affects
their image of the Bard.
{{ Ending in the print edition }
The many echoes of Oxford's life and personal
letters in HAMLET and the Italian plays likewise fail to
impress the scholars. Oxford's letters from Europe
mention two Italians, Baptisto Nigrone and Pasquino
Spinola, whose names are fused as Baptista Minola (in THE
TAMING OF THE SHREW). If you think the scholars find
*this* interesting, guess again.
What it comes to is this. We have two early sources
of testimony about the Bard, the Folio prefaces (by men
claiming to be his friends and colleagues) and the
Sonnets (by the Bard himself). The scholars have chosen
to believe the Folio testimony about the Bard's identity,
no matter where it leads. And if what the Bard tells us
about himself in the Sonnets contradicts the Folio, it
doesn't register. His self-portrait is dismissed as
"fiction."
So the scholars have constructed their own happy
Bard -- a Horatio Alger from the provinces, who comes to
the big city, makes good, retires to his home town again,
dies wealthy, and is properly memorialized in the Folio.
They reject the obscurely discrepant witness of the
Sonnets, with all their dark talk of aging, shame,
disgrace, failure, and approaching death -- and of a
"name" that must "be buried where my body is."
They have given the Folio, and the Folio-based
"Shakespeare of Stratford," absolute primacy. By making
the Bard a "common man," the biographers have only made
him more remote. Oxford, with all his frailties, sounds
much more like the poet of the Sonnets.
So, apart from romantic but inconclusive speculation
about the identity of the poet's mistress (the famous
"Dark Lady"), the Sonnets -- the Bard's own words about
himself -- have been more or less ignored in his
biographies! But the downgrading of the Sonnets began
with the Folio itself.
In the court of Shakespeare scholarship, the Bard's
own testimony about himself is ruled inadmissible.
{{ Original ending }}
The many echoes of Oxford's life and personal
letters in HAMLET and the Italian plays likewise fail to
impress the scholars. Oxford's letters from Europe
mention two Italians, Baptisto Nigrone and Pasquino
Spinola, whose names are fused as Baptista Minola (in THE
TAMING OF THE SHREW). If you think the scholars find
*this* interesting, guess again.
The scholars aren't just wrong about the Bard's
identity. They've also built a correction-proof fortress
of assumptions, which has caused them to misconceive the
kind of poet he was. Their Bard was in it for the money,
a modestly educated, self-made provincial making good in
the big city -- a success story along Horatio Alger
lines, never mind what the Sonnets say about shame and
disgrace and failure.
The Sonnets raise a basic problem of biographical
method. In them the Bard indirectly tells a good deal
about himself, though it isn't in the form of hard
information. They seem to conflict with the seemingly
firmer facts of the Folio and the documents of William's
life. Just what is their status?
Put simply, how do we square the Sonnets with the
Folio? If these two sources tell us discrepant things
about the Bard, which should we trust?
The Folio gives little real information, not even
dates of birth and death; only the Bard's identity,
really. And such facts as it purports to give were
written for public consumption under the auspices of two
powerful brothers (who, being close to Oxford, might have
shared, or at least honored, his desire to conceal his
identity).
The Sonnets are private poems, addressed to an
intimate friend (along with a few addressed to a
mistress). The poet speaks about himself in the first
person, confessionally and often unflatteringly. These
poems don't at all have the flavor or structure of
"fictions." They allude to facts about the poet which he
assumes his friend already knows.
To rephrase our basic question: Should the Bard's
biography begin with what others say about him publicly,
or with what he says about himself privately? The Folio,
on its face, is easy to understand; the Sonnets are
tricky, precisely because they are so elliptical. So the
scholars, rather naturally, have chosen to make the Folio
their biographical bedrock, arranging all the data
they've unearthed about the Stratford man (and the author
they presume he is) around the Folio's primary assertion.
This has forced the scholars to "demote" the
Sonnets, and often to deny that they have any factual or
biographical value. This is reasonable, and in fact
necessary, if we are sure we can trust the Folio
witnesses. But if those witnesses are deceiving us,
however benignly, then the Sonnets, for all their
difficulties, must become the foundation of any biography
of the Bard.
The mainstream scholars have simply never
entertained the latter alternative. They have given the
Folio, and the Folio-based "Shakespeare of Stratford,"
absolute primacy. By making the Bard a "common man," the
biographers have only made him more remote. Oxford, with
all his frailties, sounds much more like the poet of the
Sonnets.
So, apart from romantic but inconclusive speculation
about the identity of the poet's mistress (the famous
"Dark Lady"), the Sonnets -- the Bard's own words about
himself -- have been more or less ignored in his
biographies! But the downgrading of the Sonnets began
with the Folio itself. There must have been a reason.
NUGGETS
NOT YOUR FATHER'S MARINE CORPS: Perhaps the most
interesting headline to come out of the Iraq war: "Marine
Had Baby on Ship in War Zone." (page 8)
OVERLOOKED: No novelist has inspired so many excellent
movies as Charles Dickens, and if you missed the recent
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY I heartily recommend grabbing the
video. Especially delicious are Jim Broadbent and Juliet
Stevenson as the comic nasties, Mr. and Mrs. Squeers.
(page 9)
NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT DEPT.: A friend asks, If
President Bush really believes Saddam Hussein had all
those WMDs, why doesn't he make finding them his top
priority? Why isn't he ordering an all-out, door-to-door,
sealed-borders search for them? Why isn't he sending more
troops for the purpose? If those weapons really exist,
finding them would not only help vindicate the war, but
prevent them from "falling into the hands of terrorists."
(page 10)
HOW'S THAT AGAIN? Columnist George Will writes, "A
prescription-drug entitlement is not inherently
unconservative, unless the welfare state itself is -- and
it isn't." When Will started dropping such remarks years
ago, I hoped I was hearing him wrong -- but I wasn't.
(page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
GOOD OLD DAYS: It can't be! It is! It's now 35 years
since 1968, when the Detroit Tigers, my home team, had a
thrilling season, winning the American League pennant by
habitually coming from behind to win in the late innings.
Denny McLain won 31 games himself, the only pitcher since
Dizzy Dean to win 30. In the World Series the Tigers did
it again, coming from behind, 3 games to 1, to beat the
great Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals in seven
games. What a team! But that was then. This year the
Tigers are well on the way to losing more games than any
team in Major League history.
MEMORIES: The ugly breakup of Andrew (son of Mario)
Cuomo's marriage to Kerry (daughter of Bobby) Kennedy
Cuomo reminds me of a run-in I had with Mario, then
governor of New York, back in 1984. I'd quipped in my
column that Mario "looks and talks like one of the guys
who gets gunned down at the end of THE GODFATHER." That
one got me denounced as a bigot by Mario, Mayor Ed Koch,
and Congressman Mario Biaggi. Epilogue: Biaggi's own mob
ties later helped land him in prison.
THANKS, I'LL SIT THIS ONE OUT: Congressional Republicans
have introduced something called a "Head Start
reauthorization bill." Democrats charge that it would
effectively gut the Great Society preschool program for
low-income kids. Republicans insist it would strengthen
the program. As usual, the two parties are bickering
about the best way to save socialism. Inspiring, isn't
it?
REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)
* The Three Stooges (July 3, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030703.shtml
* The Kennedy Sex Scandals (July 8, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030708.shtml
* The Dust Settles (July 10, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030710.shtml
* Power and Trust (July 15, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030715.shtml
* Dueling Teleocrats (July 17, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030717.shtml
* The Boys on the Train (July 22, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030722.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ENDS]