Your Conspiracy Theory Free Pass

[Vamp]

I'm willing to believe aspects of the Shakespeare Authorship theory. Not so much any of the alternative candidates but the argument that not everything we attribute to Shakespeare was the work of one particular man called William Shakespeare. 

It's not any one piece of evidence. I don't know if that infamous image of Shakespeare from the folios was deliberately shit or just shit. I don't know how many languages Shakespeare knew. I do know that it's believable that a playwright collaborated with others who may have written whole scenes. I also know that it's believable for someone to pay others to write any old shit for them and then whack their name on it and say that they produced it. 

But any question of the authorship of any of the works for Shakespeare seems to cause controversy. I remember a very disappointing QI episode where they quickly dismissed it as being the domain of snobs who didn't believe that someone in Shakespeare's class could have written some great plays and sonnets and some very shit ones. There are some who posit that view but it's a very shallow and ignorant view of the field. That's ignoring the irony of that coming from a panel consisting of largely Oxbridge graduates who probably should be aware that it's not necessarily a question of intelligence or knowledge but opportunity. 

Here's how I like to imagine most of the plays were written:

Person A reads a story. Thinks it would make a good play. Tells Person B to write it.

Person B writes a very wordy play. Gives it to the actors and theatre.

Actors go "who wrote this, George Lucas?" 

Theatre goes "where's the blood and the knob gags?"

Person C rewrites them with blood and knob gags.

 

[Jonny Vegas]

One of my best mates growing up became very invested in a theory that the freemasons was basically a front for satanism and had sent me quite a lot of stuff whereby rituals, ceremonies, initiations and wordings of things known about both were near identical.

There was a lot that certainly seemed to be quite detailed in their similarties for it to be purely coincidental.

A lot of the idea was that those at the very top were the ones with knowledge of what it was really about and a global network of secret socieities allowed them to go about their business under the radar. 

Those at the lower levels majoritively had no idea about what was going on at the top and that also helped with hiding in plain sight.

There were a lot of links and endorsements of freemasonry from people such as Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley too.

 

Edited January 12, 2023 by Jonny Vegas

[HarmonicGenerator]

7 hours ago, Vamp said:

I'm willing to believe aspects of the Shakespeare Authorship theory. Not so much any of the alternative candidates but the argument that not everything we attribute to Shakespeare was the work of one particular man called William Shakespeare. 

It's not any one piece of evidence. I don't know if that infamous image of Shakespeare from the folios was deliberately shit or just shit. I don't know how many languages Shakespeare knew. I do know that it's believable that a playwright collaborated with others who may have written whole scenes. I also know that it's believable for someone to pay others to write any old shit for them and then whack their name on it and say that they produced it. 

But any question of the authorship of any of the works for Shakespeare seems to cause controversy. I remember a very disappointing QI episode where they quickly dismissed it as being the domain of snobs who didn't believe that someone in Shakespeare's class could have written some great plays and sonnets and some very shit ones. There are some who posit that view but it's a very shallow and ignorant view of the field. That's ignoring the irony of that coming from a panel consisting of largely Oxbridge graduates who probably should be aware that it's not necessarily a question of intelligence or knowledge but opportunity. 

Here's how I like to imagine most of the plays were written:

Person A reads a story. Thinks it would make a good play. Tells Person B to write it.

Person B writes a very wordy play. Gives it to the actors and theatre.

Actors go "who wrote this, George Lucas?" 

Theatre goes "where's the blood and the knob gags?"

Person C rewrites them with blood and knob gags.

 

James Shapiro wrote a really good book on the subject called Contested Will that you might enjoy. He explores each of the main theories and the history behind how they developed, and is open about the fact he (rightly I think) believes Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare but clearly collaborated with other playwrights of the time (it’s widely acknowledged Titus Andronicus was co-written with George Peele for example).

[BomberPat]

10 hours ago, Vamp said:

But any question of the authorship of any of the works for Shakespeare seems to cause controversy. I remember a very disappointing QI episode where they quickly dismissed it as being the domain of snobs who didn't believe that someone in Shakespeare's class could have written some great plays and sonnets and some very shit ones.

I think the more important point is the one that David Mitchell made - the only particular reason we care about Shakespeare is because he's the bloke who wrote the plays. So if it turns out that the bloke who wrote the plays wasn't William Shakespeare, what difference does it actually make? Though there's so much historical evidence for Shakespeare as the writer and director of his plays, that the idea that he was some nobody doesn't really work anyway. And as for the idea that someone from his background couldn't have achieved what he did, Christopher Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker, so you'd have to exclude him from the conversation on the same grounds.

Normally I try and be pretty black and white with conspiracy, but with this one I'm happy to meet in the middle somewhere, and say that it's less to do with someone using Shakespeare as a front or a secret identity or anything like that, and more just to do with the nature of collaboration, the borrowing of ideas, and the complete absence of copyright in Shakespeare's time. We know there was an earlier "version" of Hamlet probably written by Thomas Kyd, and that there's a precursor to the "What a piece of work is a man" soliloquy in an earlier work, though I forget what that was. Shakespeare was an actor and staged plays other than his own, so would have been familiar with the work of plenty of other playwrights, and very clearly took influence from Marlowe in particular, and probably plenty of others, known and unknown to us. 

Put simply, there was nothing odd or untoward about liberally borrowing lines or whole scenes from other plays, or of writers collaborating without being fully credited. So while I'd never go as far as "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare's plays", I'd definitely say that he didn't work alone, that he at the very least was heavily influenced by writers like Marlowe, and that he wasn't the unparalleled lone creative genius that popular history remembers him as.

But also that, again, if the bloke who wrote the plays isn't the bloke who wrote the plays, I don't really see that making any material difference - which I suppose makes this one of the conspiracy theories that's still fun, and it's basically just an intellectual exercise, and doesn't hurt anyone. No one's suggesting the Jews did it.

Edited January 12, 2023 by BomberPat

[lanky316]

Putting together a play is a collaborative effort, putting together a "new" play is naturally going to have that a little further with friends and people throwing in ideas, some good and some bad. The work of Shakespeare has noticeable archetypes which were clearly influenced by the people he had available. He had a tall gangly guy who was good at pratfalls, so most of the comedies will have a bit of physical comedy built around someone who's poked fun at for being a big dumb lug. Romeo and Juliet has a major part who just... disappears... The likely reasoning behind this is that the actor playing the role was pulling double duty and would play the role in Romeo and Juliet and then run down the road to perform a part in someone elses play, where there's a corresponding big part who mysteriously appears at the climax of the play (I can't remember off the top of my head who's it was meant to be, would guess at Marlowe but it's been years since I've had to study R&J).

The theatre community were close and like other communities I would expect a lot of the people to have known and thrown out ideas. A lot of Shakespeares "influences" are fairly clear, years ago I had a script that came with a whole other play to show what it was inspired by, which included direct quotations in the main text. While we'll now look back and talk about "the genius" of Shakespeare but that feels in a lot of ways due to the "challenge" of deciphering this weird and wonderful old language. It's penis jokes, cross dressing and occasionally a twist on old and familiar tales. I don't really know why Shakespeare is so well known compared to other people of the era with few exceptions and is risen to the status of greatest playwright of all time, although it's probably to do with "Englands Golden Age" as for the most part we have a pretty good knowledge of people from the Tudors but a bit of a black hole before and after. In the end though, a decent story is a decent story and it's interesting (to a certain degree of interest to some!) to spot the references and spot where things come from.

[Chris B]

3 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

One of my best mates growing up became very invested in a theory that the freemasons was basically a front for satanism and had sent me quite a lot of stuff whereby rituals, ceremonies, initiations and wordings of things known about both were near identical.

There was a lot that certainly seemed to be quite detailed in their similarties for it to be purely coincidental.

A lot of the idea was that those at the very top were the ones with knowledge of what it was really about and a global network of secret socieities allowed them to go about their business under the radar. 

Those at the lower levels majoritively had no idea about what was going on at the top and that also helped with hiding in plain sight.

There were a lot of links and endorsements of freemasonry from people such as Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley too.

 

I think, for the most part, the freemasons are exactly what they say they are - a bunch of middle-aged professionals cosplaying Satanism, because nobody had invented larping yet. And, at its core, I think that's still what it is.

However, unintentionally, it's also a corruption machine. Because people in it tend to be grouped in similar industries, you end up with very private networking going on. And they're all decent chaps who know each other are decent chaps, so there's an enormous amount of (at least) unconscious bias going on, where they're more likely to listen to, promote, or hire each other. And that's on the nicest side of it - even if you're roleplaying a secret society having secret meetings about how they run things, you end up actually having a secret society having secret meetings about how they run things.

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

But also that, again, if the bloke who wrote the plays isn't the bloke who wrote the plays, I don't really see that making any material difference - which I suppose makes this one of the conspiracy theories that's still fun, and it's basically just an intellectual exercise, and doesn't hurt anyone.

I remember some years back a newspaper posting an article about how there'd been some new evidence to strengthen the long-held belief that the Earl of Oxford co-wrote some of Shakespeare's plays, the most notable of which was Romeo & Juliet, and that there should be some discussion as to how to acknowledge this.

The best comment I saw in response to this was "A plaque on both their houses?"

Quote

No one's suggesting the Jews did it.

Marlowe did.

[BomberPat]

29 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I think, for the most part, the freemasons are exactly what they say they are - a bunch of middle-aged professionals cosplaying Satanism, because nobody had invented larping yet. And, at its core, I think that's still what it is.

However, unintentionally, it's also a corruption machine. Because people in it tend to be grouped in similar industries, you end up with very private networking going on. And they're all decent chaps who know each other are decent chaps, so there's an enormous amount of (at least) unconscious bias going on, where they're more likely to listen to, promote, or hire each other. And that's on the nicest side of it - even if you're roleplaying a secret society having secret meetings about how they run things, you end up actually having a secret society having secret meetings about how they run things.

It's probably the biggest example of the key distinction between conspiracy theory and reality being that conspiracy theory ascribes motive - Freemasons are all rich and powerful people, some of them in positions of significant influence, and therefore they must be the ones secretly running everything to reach their goals. Whereas the reality is that rich and powerful people will always associate with other rich and powerful people, and that's where deals are made, favours handed out, and where networking gets done. If it weren't at the Freemasons' lodge, it would be in a club in Chelsea, or a private bar, or a dinner party at someone's mansion. It's just old-fashioned corruption and self-serving behaviour, with everyone trying to get what's best for them and their mates, where the conspiracy theorists get it wrong is assuming that there's grand plan beyond that.

The Masons certainly don't help themselves given, well, everything about how they go about their business and the imagery they surround themselves with. But it's a fancy old boys' club and that's it. 

In Jon Ronson's book Them, he talks about going to Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones, and seeing lots of the most powerful men in America get drunk, dress up in robes and perform a ritual in front of a giant owl statue. He says that it's very obvious how someone already predisposed to see conspiracy will take that as evidence of everything they believe, whereas he just saw it as emotionally stunted middle aged men behaving like frat boys, because their real jobs are so high pressure, and when you're George H.W. Bush you can't exactly just pop down to the nearest bar to unwind after work.

[Carbomb]

There was a fascinating article a few years ago by some academics at UCLA, where they used AI and folkloric structures to map out how conspiracy theories (i.e. the extreme tinfoil hat ones) work, and how delicate they actually are, because they rely on all their elements connecting to each other and holding up to scrutiny.

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-and-fall-apart

Quote

 

A conspiracy theory unravels: The researchers found that with Wikileaks relationships removed as the “glue” for the false narrative, other elements of the Pizzagate myth quickly disconnected from one another.

“One of the characteristics of a conspiracy theory narrative framework is that it is easily ‘disconnected,’” said Timothy Tangherlini, one of the paper’s lead authors, a professor in the UCLA Scandinavian section whose scholarship focuses on folklore, legend and popular culture. “If you take out one of the characters or story elements of a conspiracy theory, the connections between the other elements of the story fall apart.”

Which elements stick?

In contrast, he said, the stories around actual conspiracies — because they’re true — tend to stand up even if any given element of the story is removed from the framework. Consider Bridgegate, for example, in which New Jersey officials closed several lanes of the George Washington Bridge for politically motivated reasons. Even if any number of threads were removed from the news coverage of the scandal, the story would have held together: All of the characters involved had multiple points of connection by way of their roles in New Jersey politics.

“They are all within the same domain, in this case New Jersey politics, which will continue to exist irrespective of the deletions,” Tangherlini said. “Those connections don’t require the same ‘glue’ that a conspiracy theory does.”

 

 

[Jazzy G]

When I was younger I was intrigued by the one relating to the Titanic and her sister ship, the Olympic. 

The theory is that because the Olympic has been involved in several accidents during the construction of Titanic nobody would insure her, so the White Star Line swapped their nameplates etc around so to all appearances the Olympic was now the Titanic, sailed her out into the Atlantic and sunk her so they could claim on the insurance. Meanwhile Titanic would continue on as the Olympic. All the deaths were as accident as the Carpathia wasn't in the right place when the flare went up to come and retrieve the passengers, so got there late. 

Other "évidence" is that a lot of the things listed on the cargo manifest haven't been found at the bottom of the ocean, and that parts from Olympic have been found while people were exploring the site of the sinking. 

On the other hand while the two ships look similar, they're definitely not similar enough that they could be substituted for one another. 

An alternate theory is that it sank because there was a cursed mummy on board. 

I also used to be interested in was the one where Kurt Cobain was actually murdered by Courtney Love because he was thinking of quitting music and she didn't want to lose her meal ticket. 

Edited January 12, 2023 by jazzygeofferz

[BomberPat]

3 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

An alternate theory is that it sank because there was a cursed mummy on board. 

From now on, the only conspiracy theories I'll believe are the ones blaming cursed mummies.

[Keith Houchen]

44 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I also used to be interested in was the one where Kurt Cobain was actually murdered by Courtney Love because he was thinking of quitting music and she didn't want to lose her meal ticket. 

Yeah I remember that one. It’s completely rooted in misogyny and seems to forget that she was extremely successful in her own right anyway. She’s one of the people I’ve done a 180 on over the years. She is absolutely bang on about the abuse and misogyny in entertainment. And “Awful” is one of the best songs of that era!

[SuperBacon]

Completely agree @Keith Houchenbut it did give us this Amstell gem (probably scripted but still)

 

[Keith Houchen]

4 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Completely agree @Keith Houchenbut it did give us this Amstell gem (probably scripted but still)

 

Ah Noel Fielding, one of the wrong uns it’s ok to like. But yeah, that was a killer reply. 

[organizedkaos]

16 hours ago, Vamp said:

But any question of the authorship of any of the works for Shakespeare seems to cause controversy. I remember a very disappointing QI episode where they quickly dismissed it as being the domain of snobs who didn't believe that someone in Shakespeare's class could have written some great plays and sonnets and some very shit ones. There are some who posit that view but it's a very shallow and ignorant view of the field. That's ignoring the irony of that coming from a panel consisting of largely Oxbridge graduates who probably should be aware that it's not necessarily a question of intelligence or knowledge but opportunity.

I know that's not a very exciting way of looking at it but that argument does hold some weight. Less so regarding that it's "snobs" who don't believe someone in Shakespeare's class could write such works but that it stems from the classism that basically forms the backbone of England. The simplest form being people in the upper class are inherantly better than us, they are in higher positions of power because they are the best people to do that. You know, the current government and all that.

Suggesting that Shakespeare didn't write his plays but Francis Bacon did works with that. Francis Bacon is the son of a lord, of course he'd be better at stuff than Shakespeare

(Yes I am fully aware that someone has already pointed out that Christopher Marlowe doesn't fit this explanation whatsoever)

There's also a conspiracy theory that Beatles didn't write their songs.

 

So in short, the conspiracy theory I like is that the Shakespeare conspiracy theory was spread by conservatives to encourage us to know our role and stay in our place

Edited January 12, 2023 by organizedkaos