The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy: What About Sir John Oldcastle?

The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy:

What About Sir John Oldcastle?

The Elizabethan play Sir John Oldcastle was attributed to William Shakespeare starting about 1600.

However, for the previous year, 1599, we find in the records that the play was attributed to Anthony Munday and others. The diary of the dominant play production entrepreneur Philip Henslowe according to the Lost Plays Database provided that:

"In October 1599 [prior to Shakespeare attribution],the Admiral's Men purchased a part one of a play on the life of Sir John Oldcastle from Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson, and Richard Hathway...." [emphasis added]

Martin Frost writes:

"Sir John Oldcastle was originally published in 1600, attributed on the title page to "William Shakespeare" (STC 18796). In 1619, a second edition also attributed it to Shakespeare. In fact, the diary of Philip Henslowe records that it was written by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathaway and Robert Wilson." [emphasis added]

John S. Farmer of The Tudor Facsimile Texts wrote about Sir John Oldcastle:

"Two editions of this play were issued in 1600; one impression [B.M. Press-mark, C.34, I. 1] ascribed it to Shakespeare, the other [C. 34, I. 2] did not.... [emphasis added]

Henslowe's "Diary" seems incontestably to negative the ascription to Shakespeare."

The Wikipedia writes about the play Sir John Oldcastle that:

"... Sir John Oldcastle was an actual person ... hanged and burned for heresy and treason in 1417 — thus earning himself a place in the seminal text of the Protestant Reformation in Tudor England, John Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

Oldcastle was also a minor character in the early Elizabethan history play The Famous Victories of Henry V (c. 1586?), which is generally thought to have been one of Shakespeare's sources for his plays on Henry IV and Henry V." [emphasis added]

The Famous Victories of Henry V mentioned above was almost certainly written by Christopher Marlowe in his younger days, containing what are argued to be characters taken from Marlowe's early childhood life. As written by Cynthia Morgan:

"What is most interesting about The Famous Victories is that two of the characters were named John Cobler .. and Lawrence Costermonger [Marlowe's father was a shoemaker, i.e. a "cobbler", while Marlowe himself was nicknamed "The Cobbler"] .. One of John Marlowe's good friends and neighbor was Laurence APPLEgate, a Canterbury tailor. When we look at the meaning of "Costermonger", an obvious pun and not a true surname, we find a close identification for Laurence APPLEgate because the word "costermonger" was used for a street seller of APPLES." [emphasis and capitalization added]

The Christopher Marlowe William Shakespeare Authorship Controversy and the New Oxford Collaborative Co-Authorship for Henry VI Based on New Evidence

As one can see further down on this page, our most popular posting EVER is:

Legal Graphologists : A Query to You : What About the Christopher Marlowe - William Shakespeare - Controversy and The Signatures of These Two Authors? Are They By the Same Hand?

There are new developments of importance relating to this question.

As headlined in a story by Jay Bennett at Popular Mechanics,
Oxford to Co-Credit Christopher Marlowe on Multiple Shakespeare Plays.

Bennett is reporting on a story by Dalya Alberge from The Guardian titled Christopher Marlowe credited as one of Shakespeare's co-writers. 

Take a look at those links concerning the discussion of the new evidence unearthed regarding the Christopher Marlowe William Shakespeare authorship controversy.

Richard Posner Biography Takes on the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Federal Judiciary in the USA

Judge Richard Posner is the most cited jurist of our era, so that a now published Oxford University Press biography of Posner by William Domnarski is of course of great interest to the legal community -- especially as it concentrates quite a bit on the Federal judiciary of the United States, which in recent years, mostly because of the applied anti-judicial antics of political organs, has ceased to be the bright model for other nations that it used to be.

Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal whets our reading appetite through her headline that Posner says Supreme Court is 'awful,' top two justices are OK but not great".

Weiss writes that:

"Posner said “probably only a couple of the justices,” namely Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, “are qualified."

Heady stuff.

We ourselves are very critical of the judges in the Federal Judiciary, especially those who represent political, economic, social or technological "extremes" or "causes". Judges should not be extremists. Judges should be impartial.

Our major criticism is not that Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court lack "qualification". They are all certainly qualified to be judges per se.

Rather, we have difficulty accepting judges who represent fixed partisan, legal, economic or political MINDSETS -- which they exercise while judging.

We think that any judge who rises this high in the judiciary must don a cloak of impartiality and also constantly wear a cap of demonstrable decision-making wisdom (made visible to all, if possible, by the results of the decisions made), thus leaving behind the petty banalities of political partisanship and one-sided dogmatic belief in theoretical dogmas such as originalism or similar.

The job of judges in the country as a whole is to decide cases -- according to the law, not according to the law of yesterday, not according to the law that may come in the future, not according to the lowly political demands of ephemeral demagogues in Congress, but according to present law in force.

Judges can not be "figureheads" for legal dogmas or causes. A judge abandons his robe as an "advocate" when he takes a seat on the bench of a federal court. Rightly seen, he or she no longer represents any particular view or any particular cause or vested interest.

Politics, personal -- almost always -- biased preferences, theoretical legal inclinations, and similar "weaknesses" should not be part of the desired or applauded qualification spectrum. What is needed is a U.S. Constitution with a human face. Judges are the "embodiment" of the codes of law on the books.

The best judges always have a deep UNDERSTANDING of law and society, as well as a sincere appreciation of and inner consent to the essential and important role of serious jurisprudence within the body politic of the nation.

Sometimes the judges on the present U.S. Supreme Court demonstrate a lack of that comprehensive understanding, but on the whole, we think they are sincere in their work. If only they could get rid of their biased mindsets....

More often than is done, each judge should ask: WHAT IS MY JOB?
and on the U.S. Supreme Court that should extend to asking:
WHAT IS MY CONSTITUTIONAL JOB?

We think in any case that the present U.S. Supreme Court is most certainly better qualified man-to-man and lady-to-lady than the present membership of a divisive, seemingly do-nothing Congress that is not doing its job properly.

In the last analysis, however, it is the JOB of the VOTING CITIZENS to cast off their selfish voting practices, to stop voting for political candidates who only tell them what they want to hear, and to throw out of office the legislative pretenders who currently are blocking normal processes that have worked for the nation for centuries. Such people are doing far more harm to the country and its citizens than any purported evils that such Congresspersons are trying to battle or any purported good that they are allegedly trying to achieve.

People who are destroying the basic workings of the system... are destroying the system, are harming the nation in the eyes of the world, and are weakening the strength of democracy. Their perhaps supportable motivations are ... irrelevant. The ends do not justify the means. Wise men do not destroy the processes of an established judicial system for ephemeral and what often prove to be short-term political reasons.