#yeah there's a solid chance shakespeare wasn't super up on his penmanship! but that doesn't mean he wasn't capable of eloquence??

[serialreblogger]

Spelling was not standardized in Shakespeare's England

yes this is my point. william "sex jokes" "historical RPF" shakespeare is broadly upheld as the pinnacle of english literature, and zero percent of his works conform to any standardized spelling/grammar system

"shakespeare couldn't spell his own name" is shorthand for "the snobbery of ~english literature & canon~ is both self-contradictory and arbitrary in the extreme." & to me this means that anyone can create whatever they want and be just as good as any shakespearean sonnet. bc the only real qualifier for "good writing" is that somebody cared about the story they were telling, and the only real qualifier for "good reading material" is that someone, somewhere, wants to read it

no gods no kings no earl of oxford only a bunch of plays written in a drama club's groupchat and the people who keep investing them with meaning. there is no magic formula or golden standard. the only thing that gives any art any value is the people who choose to value it

#ask linden #this is about the title of my blog #shakespeare couldn't spell his own name and NOBODY CARES! #this is my point! #nobody *should* care! it doesn't matter!! #also that last line abt earls of oxford is in reference to the ''oxfordian theory of shakespeare authorship'' as the wiki page calls it #u can check that on wikipedia if ur interested but what it boils down to is that a bunch of academics have been up in arms since ~the 1920s #over the idea that The Venerable Shakespeare could have been some rube born to commoners #obviously plays so Erudite (& so uniquely appealing to the ''commoner'' demographic) could not have been authored by some paltry lowborn! #why that boy billy probably couldn't even write! #- which like. cmon man. u have about as much evidence as chemtrails here. and also like - #yeah there's a solid chance shakespeare wasn't super up on his penmanship! but that doesn't mean he wasn't capable of eloquence?? #like in all probability a lot of shakespeare's work might not have been penned by him #& in fact it's not unlikely that at least some of it was quasi-crowdsourced as actors & collaborating playwrights weighed in #Richard Burbage probably had a lot to do with Hamlet's character work & writing!! we know this!! #we do not create in a vacuum!!! art written in a groupchat is not less valuable or artistic for having peer review built into it!! #shakespeare was just some guy. & he's also a symbol #arbitrary as that designation may be. but the old white men who chose their canon chose him as a patron saint #so i will go on insisting that if we're to know shakespeare we had better know him properly. foul mouth gallows humour bisexuality & all #shakespeare #literature #linden's originals #linden in the tags