on Shakespeare

This is an essay by Donald M. Miller, M.D., that discusses parallels between Shakespeare and Shostakovich.

Scholars on both sides of the Shakespeare Authorship Question—Stratfordians and Oxfordians—think that Shake-speares Sonnets addresses a love triangle involving the POET, Shakespeare; the FAIR YOUTH, generally agreed to be Henry Wriothesley, 3^rd Earl of Southampton; and the DARK LADY. Independent scholar Hank Whittemore proves that Queen Elizabeth is the Dark Lady. He shows that the main story of the Sonnets is the 1601 Essex Rebellion and its aftermath. The Sonnets are an autobiographical account of this real-life event. The “triangle” is a family one, where the Fair Youth is Queen Elizabeth’s son, Henry, and thus the Tudor heir to the throne as Henry IX. Edward de Vere is Henry’s father.

This is fascinating stuff.

Upon Queen Elizabeth’s death Robert Cecil installed the more malleable Stuart James VI of Scotland as King James I of England. Ever vengeful, Cecil destroyed all records of de Vere’s life and literary genius, including his private papers, personal letters, and all documents to do with his plays. Robert Cecil sought to airbrush Edward de Vere out of history, which lasted 300 years. Until 1920, when an independent scholar in England named Thomas Looney (pronounced “Low-knee’) discovered the true author, in “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward De Vere Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. (Novelist John Galsworthy called Looney’s book “the greatest detective story of all time.”)

Miller references Shoshtikovich’s Leningrad, so I thought I would add that here.

On Julius Caesar, Ideas of March, or March 15, 44BC

On this day 2,068 years ago Julius Caesar was assassinated in broad daylight in the middle of Rome.

But it wasn’t a mob or popular uprising — Caesar was killed by a group of disgruntled senators.

Here’s how it happened, moment by moment, on that fateful day in 44 BC… pic.twitter.com/LeCAy4ZNVg

— The Cultural Tutor (@culturaltutor) March 15, 2024