Scholars do know, they've made long lists of sourcebooks that they say Shakespeare, the author, must have read this, that and the other because of this very specific piece of knowledge or this quote ... but on the other hand, our conception of the traditional Shakespeare is this person who left school early, if he went to school at all. You know, because we don't have records to that extent, and I think people really like the idea of the untutored genius, don't they? So even though orthodox scholars actually know that he had access to all this knowledge somehow, Absolutely. still to some degree, push the idea that he wasn't educated, or that the grammar school education was enough, when in fact we have no evidence that he had books, owned books, had access to books that we can see in the plays. Yes. If I'm just going back to that poem by Warren which I talked about earlier, he called Shakespeare's poems 'those learned poems'. And he says those who don't see the learning in them, he calls the 'ignorant Davus', a sort of ignorance of people pretending they can't see the learning in it. But it's more sinister than that actually; we've had whole books written. There was a book called The Ignorance of Shakespeare, which tries very, very hard to show that he was untutored. Why do they want to show he was untutored? Is pretty obvious. Because there's no record that he was at Oxford or Cambridge, the only two universities then. There's actually no record that he was at the Stratford Grammar School, there's no record he had any education, the Stratford Shakspere. So it's important if you want to keep that story going to say that he was an extraordinary genius. But you have problems there, you know. How do you write a whole scene in French, as he does in Henry V, how do you do that without learning French? Now even if he went to the Stratford Grammar School, you didn't learn French there. How do you form words, which he did, and you're coining new English words out of Greek words, if you haven't studied Greek? You can be a genius as much as you like, it doesn't matter how much of a genius he was, nobody's disputing that Shakespeare was a genius. But you can't sum up knowledge from nowhere, that's not how genius operates. Genius uses the knowledge it's got, or the experience it's got, and turns it into something almost divine, something higher than ourselves, that's what genius does. He doesn't simply know French the moment he comes out of the womb. No. Like The Matrix, "I know Kung Fu!" When you have references though to, for example, Jonson, Drayton talking about 'a natural brain', for example, how would you take that in relation to Shakespeare? Okay. So my view on Jonson - first of all, he started off Stratfordianism. Stratfordianism exists because of him. If you look at the records before the First Folio, when you get those first eight prefatory pages, there's no evidence that anybody thought that Stratford Shakspere was a writer. Nobody knew him as a poet, his family never said he was a writer, he never said he was a writer, it's just not there, there's nothing. So you look at the First Folio. Now, my view on Jonson is he never lies. And some people have occasionally said to me, "Oh, you mean Jonson's just lying?" No, he doesn't ever lie. That's what's so wonderful and clever and brilliant about him. He does not say in those first pages this was a glover's son or whatever, a butcher's son from the Midlands. He does not exhibit Stratford Shakspere's coat of arms, which he had every reason to do on a big book like that. So he does not tell a lie, he goes out of his way, and so now it's up to the learned to look at it properly and see in what ways he's just misleading you a bit. Allowing you to go off in the wrong direction. I mean, I think the classic example of that comes in in his big poem called To My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare. Before we talk about Sweet Swan of Avon, which I was going to, let's just look at that title. To My Beloved, the Author - written in huge writing - Mr. William Shakespeare, almost a tenth the size, the writing underneath it. Now that alone tells you that 'the Author' is more important than the name. And he confirms this absolutely immediately in the first line, "To draw no envy (Shakespeare) - in brackets - on thy name". Now, how do you draw envy on somebody's name? Well it's obvious, you praise it. So he's not going to praise Shakespeare's name, he refuses, he's starting off by saying I'm not going to praise Shakespeare's name. Why? He tells you. He tells you straight out. He says because those of silliest ignorance will assume that they've heard something, a real sound, when in fact they've only heard an echo. Those of blind affection will go groveling off in the dark towards the truth and not get anywhere. And those of crafty malice will pretend to praise, really just in order to sing. He's telling you that, he's giving you sixteen lines telling you why he's not prepared to praise Shakespeare's name. And then on line seventten he says, "And now I shall begin. My Shakespeare rise." Now we're talking about the author. But I was going to mention the Sweet Swan of Avon because that's used very often. Yes, we all know that Stratford-upon-Avon is where Stratford Shakspere came from. So again, if you decide that Jonson's not lying, and I'm absolutely determined he was never lying, then what's his double meaning? What's the game he's playing? 'Avon', when you look into it, actually means Hampton Court. It sounds a very odd thing to say but we've got lots of testimony about that. John Leland, the great scholar, talked about it and it's in Weever's Monuments of 1631. And Camden, who was of course Jonson's tutor, Camden puts it in his Brittania, his true Britaania, he says that the original name of Hampton Court is 'Avon'. So what is the poem saying? "Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were to see thee in our waters yet appeare, and make those flights upon the banks of Thames that so did take Eliza and our James!" 'Eliza and our James' obviously Elizabeth and King James. 'Flights upon the banks of Thames' is obviously the Shakespeare plays. So where did Elizabeth and James watch the Shakespeare plays? On the banks of the Thames? No, is the answer, they never went to a public theatre, they never went to The Globe or anything like that. And the biggest and grandest of the theatres, right on the banks of the Thames, is still there today, is the Great Hall at Hampton Court. So again, the fun of this game, that's why to get involved in it is such fun because what we're joining in with this game that they were all playing and seeing if we can get to the bottom of it and understand it. Now here he's telling us that Shakespeare is a courtier poet. But he's doing it in such a way that if you want to go off in the wrong direction you can, but he can wash his hands of it. In fact, he did show some guilt actually about this in a book called Discoveries, published after his life, and he says, "Is it alright that people think things are the case just because it came from me?" And one can't help thinking he's talking about the Shakespeare scam. And he was accused by others of 'raping' Shakespeare's name. So I do think he was a little bit guilty in case too many people believed it. Who accused him of 'raping' Shakespeare's name? You're going to have to edit this ... it's in my Allusion book. He accuses two of them. Randolph is the other one. Because Randolph is said to have - Thomas Randolph - he's said to have edited the Second Folio, and he accuses them both together. Right. I do apologize because it's not coming straight off the top of my head, All right. but if you look up 'rape', 'name', 'Shakespeare' it comes up and it's quite an assault on both Jonson and Randolph, published in about, I think around about the '30s, 1630s.
