2015

Hello, Happy New Year, and welcome!

It had occurred to me to write up a review of 2014 and the various things that happened last year - from publishing my first university paper on The Faces of Shakespeare to the publication, in September, of Naming the Goddess, in which I have an essay (tweet received this morning from Michigan: 'Loved your essay in "Naming the Goddess"! Great perspective.:)', plus appearances at Stratford Literary Festival and the Tree House Bookshop, lecturing at Worcester University and being a tour guide in Stratford-upon-Avon, completing The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion and writing Shakespeare's Son ('The Life of Sir William Davenant'), and so on.  But I didn't get round to it.

Instead, I'm going to preen myself a little over this, which my wife found online a day or two ago.  Seems there's to be a rather interesting-looking course on the 'Renaissance of the Sacred Feminine', to be held at Avebury in Wiltshire (good location!) this coming August.  Details can be found here.

If you click on the link and scroll down to the bottom section - 'Avebury/Wiltshire Reading List' - you'll see that the last entry concerns my King Arthur Conspiracy book.  Alternatively, I'll save you the bother by copying what they wrote:

The King Arthur Conspiracy: How a Scottish prince became a mythical hero
By Simon Andrew Stirling
2012
First discovered during the Scotland adventure, this book is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the Arthur/Merlin/Avalon motif.  All the latest research.  It will expand your view beyond the emphasis on Glastonbury and Tintagel.

Now, seeing that made me feel really chuffed.  It also made me want to get in touch with the organisers and tell them that, actually, all the latest research is probably best found in The Grail, due out in March, but that it was very kind of them to say those things about The King Arthur Conspiracy (and might help with a few book sales), and if there was anything I could do to contribute to their intriguing course in August they had only to ask.

Didn't get round to doing that, either.  Although there's still time.

For the meantime, we're holding our breaths and crossing our fingers over the Beoley skull.  With any luck, there'll be some scientific investigation of that particular item before too long.  Maybe even a TV documentary.  I'll keep you posted.

And my Davenant book is coming on apace.  New discoveries about Shakespeare's relationship with Jane Davenant.  All good clean fun.  The manuscript's due to hit the editor's desk at the start of June.

There's another project in the wings, which I'll mention more about if things keep going smoothly.  All in all, 2015 has a very exciting feel about it.  I hope yours does, too.

TTFN!

A Lovely Review

Off to Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival in a moment - but just had to post a link to this wonderful review of Who Killed William Shakespeare? which appeared only today on the Review Group blog.

This makes today feel very good indeed.

And if you follow the link, read the review and then leave a comment BTL, you'll automatically be entered in a prize draw for a free, signed, hardback copy of Who Killed Will!

Go on - you know you want to!

Shakespeare Week

Now you didn't think I'd forget Shakespeare's birthday, did you?

Not his 450th birthday, surely?

Of course not.

It's been a busy week.  And I've found myself biting my tongue quite a lot, as the media celebrates the Other Shakespeare - the Shakespeare who is really very little more than a Trademark.

It started for me with a fantastic afternoon at the Tree House Bookshop in Kenilworth, where I gave a talk about Who Killed William Shakespeare? and signed some books for the start of their Shakespeare Festival.  If you happen to be in the Kenilworth area, I can highly recommend a visit to the Tree House Bookshop - it's a lovely, relaxing place to browse second hand books, to lounge in their sofas, drinking tea or coffee.

Wednesday was, of course, Shakespeare's birthday.  And the "We Love Coventry and Warwickshire" website was kind enough to host a wee post of mine, entitled Two Years to Find Shakespeare.  Pretty self-explanatory, I'd hope.

I then had a piece published by my beloved Review Group on their wonderful blog, this one entitled - what else? - Happy Birthday, Shakespeare.

And now I'm looking forward to the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival, and my talk/book signing there this coming Tuesday on Who Killed Shakespeare?  Advance bookings appear to be pretty good, but if you are in or near Shakespeare's hometown on the afternoon of 29 April, come along - there's tea and cake!

So, you can't really accuse me of not celebrating Shakespeare's birthday.  But, as I hope my various talks and blogs have made it clear, we might not really be celebrating Shakespeare.  Not yet.  We're pretending we are, but we're still allowing the experts to keep us in the dark about him.

But that will change soon.  And I'll have a lot more to tell you about "Shakespeare's Son", Sir William Davenant, as my work on his biography progresses.

TTFN!

Paradigms Lost

It's the cruellest month, according to T.S. Eliot.  For me, though, it's a month of teaching, talking and signing.

The big one will be Stratford Literary Festival, where I'm appearing on Tuesday 29 April.  Naturally, I've been giving some thought to what I'll talk about on that occasion.

All being well, I'll be showing a lovely, large, blown-up poster of the "Wadlow" portrait, around which I based my paper given at Goldsmiths, University of London, last month (see left: we made Page 2 of the South London Press).  That, in itself, will probably be pretty controversial - introducing a "new" portrait of Shakespeare to the town.

But there'll be more to the talk than a discussion of the portrait.  I'm currently inclined to talk about the pendulum of history, and the way that a false view of history is often maintained for political reasons.

There are two major periods I'm tempted to analyse.  I opened my book Who Killed William Shakespeare? with an examination of the second half of the 18th century and the process by which Shakespeare was quite deliberately forgotten.  Of course, Shakespeare wasn't forgotten - we've all heard of him - but who he was, that was forgotten.

I'll talk about Shakespeare's mulberry, which was chopped down by an intolerant clergyman, who then went on to demolish New Place, Shakespeare's grand home in Stratford.  I'll talk about the discovery of the Jesuit Testament of the Soul, which had been signed by Shakespeare's father, John, and hidden among the rafters of the Shakespeare Birthplace (the testament vanished from the study of the Shakespeare scholar, Edmond Malone, probably because it's existence was somewhat embarrassing).  I'll also talk about David Garrick's farcical "Shakespeare Jubilee" and its impact on our understanding of Shakespeare - more than anything, the Jubilee established Shakespeare as the national poet, the "Immortal Bard", while simultaneously cutting him off from his roots - and raise the matter of the Rev. James Wilmot, a vicar who retired to a village near Stratford and first put forward the silly theory that somebody other than Shakespeare must have written the plays.

So - between 1755 and 1785, the real Shakespeare was forgotten, and a national myth erected in his place.  But there's another period I find interesting.

One hundred years on from the time in which the real Shakespeare was determinedly forgotten, attempts were being made to establish who he really was.  The death mask, found in Germany, which Professor Richard Owen, superintendent of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, concluded was the model for the Shakespeare funerary monument in Stratford, was exhibited in the town as Shakespeare's Death Mask on the 300th anniversary of his birth.  The discovery of the death mask had prompted numerous scholars to call for Shakespeare's grave to be opened, and his skull extracted so that it could be compared with the death mask.

At the height of this furore, Rev. Charles Jones Langston published his story of How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen and Found.  Found, that is, in the private family crypt beneath the Sheldon Chapel at Beoley Church, 12 miles from Stratford.

The powers that be in Stratford currently refuse to discuss the death mask or the skull and pour scorn on the very idea that either might have anything to do with Shakespeare.

However, there is no evidence that anyone connected with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has taken the trouble to investigate the death mask (now in Darmstadt Castle) or the skull at Beoley.  To put it simply, they're not remotely interested in the death mask or the skull.  And they don't want anyone else to be interested in them either.

Rev. Charles Jones Langston published the first half of his extraordinary account of How Shakespeare's Skull Was Stolen in October 1879.  That same year, the Comedie Francaise came to London, bringing with them a play entitled Davenant.  The play was based on the long running rumour that Sir William Davenant was Will Shakespeare's natural son.

I find it odd, looking back, to see that some of the finest minds throughout Europe were so concerned with exploring possibilities - that the death mask was Shakespeare's, that the rogue skull in the crypt at Beoley was Shakespeare's, that Davenant was Shakespeare's son - and were willing and eager to put those possibilities to the test, scientifically-speaking.  I'm currently researching Sir William Davenant for a new biography (it'll be published by The History Press in 2016) and have just received a copy of a short book published in 1905; based on a dissertation he had written, John David Ellis Williams' book is entitled Sir William Davenant's Relation to Shakespeare: With an Analysis of the Chief Characters of Davenant's Plays.

At around the same time as Ellis wrote his dissertation, other experts were carefully studying and measuring the Darmstadt death mask and comparing their measurements - broadly successfully - with those of the Shakespeare effigy in his Stratford funerary monument.

There's such a huge sense of a missed opportunity.  The second half of the nineteenth century appeared to be edging close to several breakthroughs: the formal identification of the death mask, the (re-)discovery of Shakespeare's skull, the true nature of the Shakespeare-Davenant connection (as late as 1913, Arthur Acheson was confidently identifying Sir William Davenant's mother, Jane, as the "Dark Lady" of the sonnets).  All of these developments could and should have transformed the way we think about William Shakespeare.

But they didn't.  Something went wrong, and I suspect that something was the Great War.  England, desperate to preserve its sense of self, abandoned all the new research (a lot of which was German) and reverted to its comfy, cosy national myths.  In other words, the national myth of William Shakespeare - a humble, Protestant lad, beloved of that wonderful monarch, Elizabeth I - was reinstated.  All the advances of the previous decades were swept aside.  We went back to the reactionary view of Shakespeare as the national poet of a Protestant constitutional monarchy.  This was the Whig historian's notion of Shakespeare, and it was utterly unrelated to Shakespeare the man.

We've been stuck with that false idea of Shakespeare ever since.  The propagandist myth of Shakespeare, which was formulated in the late-18th century with the intent of removing any trace or taint of Catholicism in Shakespeare's background, has continued to be taught as if it was historically accurate - nay, as if it is the only known version of the Shakespeare story.  It is this Whiggish myth that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford propagates with ruthless determination.

As if those great minds of the late-19th century had never even considered the death mask, the skull, or the likelihood that Sir William Davenant was Shakespeare's son.  No; all that must be forgotten.  We were making progress, until the reactionaries took control.  And now generations of children, the world over, are subjected to an irrelevant and misleading account of Shakespeare's life.

It is time to resume the brilliant work done by so many scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century, before the devastating tragedy of the First World War sent us all running back home to Mamma.

It is time to continue their efforts, to achieve the goals that they were making for, and to reveal the reality of Shakespeare and his world.

None of that will happen if the Shakespeare "experts" have their way.  But we owe it to Shakespeare, and to Stratford, and to every child who must encounter Shakespeare at school.  If we want to understand Shakespeare's words, we must understand his life.  And for that to happen, we must explode the asinine myth created in the late-18th century, and resurrected in the 20th century, and pick up where the genuine experts left off.

Now - how do we think a talk like that will go down in Stratford?

Reviews, News, Interviews

Today, we're playing catch up.  Or archiving, if you prefer.

First, some news.  I have a couple of talks booked for the near future.

The first will take place at Goldsmiths, University of London, on 20 March and is entitled The Faces of Shakespeare: Revealing Shakespeare's Life and Death Through Portraits and Other Objects - should be an interesting one, as I expect to unveil a "new" portrait of William Shakespeare, and it's free to attend!  So, if you're in the area ...

After that, I have an appearance at Stratford Literary Festival on 29 April.  Not free to attend, that one, but for a mere £8 you get me talking about Who Killed William Shakespeare?, plus tea and cake!  It'll be just days after the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.

I've also had a couple of interviews published online lately: one with the lovely Stephanie Moore Hopkins for her Layered Pages blog, the other for Paula Lofting, tireless mastermind of the Review Group blog (Simon Stirling Discusses the Mysteries of Shakespeare).

But that's not all!  I've also been indulging in a bit of book reviewing myself.  So, for your information and/or delectation:

My review of Keane's Company by Iain Gale for the fantastic Historical Honey website can be found here.

My review of Nancy Jardine's The Beltane Choice for the Review Group can be found here.

And finally, my affectionate tribute to Richard Findlater's lovely old theatrical biography of Grimaldi, King of Clowns can be read here.

Plenty more of that sort of thing to come, folks, and I'll do my damnedest to keep you posted about it all.  Meanwhile, in other news, I'm now on Twitter - @WhoKilledWill.

Onwards and upwards ...