On the Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays

When the subject of "who wrote Shakespeare's plays" comes up, this video is a fair representation of what you're told about the controversy.

The controversy is waved off as merely down to intellectual snobbery - an uneducated man couldn't be the greatest writer of all-time. And just in case you don't find that retort satisfying, well remember that the people who are quick to dismiss any conspiracy theories will also tell you it also doesn't really matter. Well why'd you bring it up at all?

But it isn't intellectual snobbery to think that a man living in the late 1500's, with little or no education, and who owned no books, could have "a profound knowledge of English, Latin, Greek and Italian as well as a deep and wide knowledge of history, mythology and multiple subjects like jurisprudence, military matters, foreign geography, seamanship amongst much else."

In fact, the official story sounds pretty ridiculous, when you really look at it.

Check out "On The Impossibility Of Shakespeare Having Written The Plays" by The Hidden Life is Best.

Mitchell, Webb, Donald Kaufman?

Thanks to the powers of Netflix, I've recently been going through the British sketch comedy show "That Mitchell and Webb Look". It's actually pretty funny and I'm surprised I'm only now learning about it since it started in 2006 and I've known about David Mitchell ever since he was a panelist on the fantastic quiz show "QI".

I might post a few clips on this blog in future (because, frankly, who's gonna stop me) but I had to at least post this one. If "Synecdoche, New York" were a comedy sketch it would be this. And anything with that description is worth watching.

That Mitchell and Webb Look - The Chiropractor