In this special episode of Chronicles, I'm joined by the author of five books on Shakespeare, Dr Nima Parvini, to discuss all things Shakespeare, including whether or not he was really a writer, and if he really did write all the plays.
00:00:00.000Hello and welcome to this very special episode of Chronicles where we're going to be talking
00:00:19.240all about the Bard himself, William Shakespeare. I'm joined by the artist formerly known as
00:00:25.120Roland Ratt. Dr. Nima Parvini, thank you for joining me. Hi there, you all right? Yeah, really well, really well.
00:00:32.120I've never been introduced as that before. Well, thank you. I'll take that. So Shakespeare, you're obviously an authority.
00:00:41.120You've written five books, is it, on Shakespeare? Five books on Shakespeare and there's probably going to be a sixth coming out later this year.
00:00:49.120Yeah, and I've just completed a course on Shakespeare, so it's relatively fresh in mind. It's been the first time I'd worked on Shakespeare since 2018 or something.
00:01:00.120So, yeah, it's all there. Right, it's all fresh. Yeah, and I will just say as well that even though I say it to you, I have actually myself started Nima's Foundations of Shakespeare.
00:01:12.120And it is thoroughly engaging. You tell it in a really compelling way. And this isn't the Lotus Eaters like tapping me on the shoulder.
00:01:19.120This is just me as Lucas saying it's a wonderful course and I'd highly recommend it.
00:01:24.120So, one of the things that I wanted to start with was let's just rip off the bandaid and get the irritating little normie question out the way.
00:01:35.120Did he write the plays? Did he write all the plays? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there was a couple at the start of his career that he collaborated on and a couple at the end of his career that he collaborated on.
00:01:48.120But all the ones in the middle, all the famous ones that you'll have heard of. Yeah, he did. He wrote them all.
00:01:54.120Exactly. And one of the things that you say is that it's because there are certain, you know, things that happen and references that happen in certain plays that it would have been impossible for him to know if he'd have died sooner.
00:02:09.120Or they're so based upon the times in which he lived in that it has to have been. Yeah, there are certain contemporary allusions that he makes, for example, to the gunpowder plot in 1605.
00:02:21.120You know, the Guy Fawkes one and various others that basically makes it impossible for it to be some of the people, you know, people say it's the Earl of Oxford, people say it's Marlow, people say it's Bacon and all this sort of nonsense.
00:02:36.120The real question you have to ask is, why do people say that?
00:02:42.120And I think the reason people say it is because it's Shakespeare, because he's like the one writer that everybody's heard of.
00:02:48.120And so the standards of evidence are above and beyond what is expected for the time.
00:02:56.120Paper was scarce in those days. It was a valuable resource. They reused it.
00:03:01.120And so the documentary evidence is, I mean, it's not scant.
00:03:07.120I mean, there's quite a lot of evidence, but it's, you know, not as full as somebody living, let's say, 100 or 200 years later, because they did reuse paper.
00:03:17.120But because it's Shakespeare, there's all sorts of conspiracy theories around whether he's really, really him.
00:03:25.120There is not a Christopher Marlowe conspiracy that Christopher Marlowe didn't really write his own plays or a Ben Johnson one or a John Dunn one or a Francis Bacon one or a Philip Sidney one.
00:03:41.120Why? Because nobody, because nobody cares.
00:03:45.120Whereas, you know, if you make it about Shakespeare, well, it's a it's a big story.
00:03:51.120So I actually once upon a time interviewed the head of the Oxford Association who pushed this idea that Shakespeare wasn't really Shakespeare.
00:04:01.120And frankly, a lot of the arguments are based on snobbery that, you know, he wasn't university educated.
00:04:09.120How could this guy from a rural town, Stratford, how could he write these plays?
00:04:15.120One of the arguments he put forward is, well, how has he got knowledge of Milan in the Tempest when he's never been there?
00:04:22.120Well, I mean, guess what? He could read books.
00:04:26.120And the fact is, is that Shakespeare got loads of stuff, gets loads of stuff wrong all the time.
00:04:32.120Historical details, geographic details, because he's working from sources a lot of the time.
00:04:39.120One of the things I stress is having a knowledge of those sources can then, if you know where he's working from, you can see what he changes.
00:04:52.120You can see what he's taking. You can see what's new and novel, where his innovations are.
00:04:58.120And he did make many, probably the greatest innovations in English literary history.
00:05:05.120But it's still worth knowing what exactly he was doing.
00:05:11.120So, yeah, I mean, there's just nothing to it, really.
00:05:15.120We actually have quite, we've got his will.
00:05:18.120He was a joint stockholder in the company.
00:05:25.120He was, unusually for the time, a star playwright, who had a guaranteed, so the model, how it used to work before Shakespeare's company, was much like Hollywood, where you'd get writers trying to kind of pitch for their script around different playing troops.
00:05:50.120So someone like Christopher Marlowe, he didn't have a set company.
00:05:53.120He went from company to company saying, I've written this good play.
00:05:57.120Do you want to put it on in exchange for some sort of fee?
00:05:59.120Shakespeare was different because he was attached to a company that he was a part owner in.
00:06:05.120So in a way, he had a guaranteed, like he had like a house company.
00:06:11.120So he knew when he wrote Hamlet, for example, when he wrote Macbeth, that, oh, it was going to be done by these actors.
00:06:18.120It was going to be put on in these places.
00:06:20.120One of the other great innovations of Shakespeare's company is that they built their own theatre, The Globe.
00:06:27.120I was about to say it's still there today.
00:06:29.120That was built in 1997, but a bit down a long time ago after it was shut down by Puritans back in the 1640s.
00:06:39.120But yeah, so they actually revolutionized the business model in Elizabethan London.
00:06:48.120They actually changed the way that people went to the theatre.
00:06:54.120So it was a combination of having their own company and then they put on their shows at The Globe and a few other places.
00:07:03.120And they also did private performances.
00:07:06.120Anybody could hire the company and some of the performances or some of the scripts that we have are from private house performances.
00:07:16.120You know, if you imagine if you're a noble who had a big estate somewhere, you had the space, you could hire Shakespeare's company and he put on, he put something on.
00:07:28.120All of this is to say, though, he was pretty famous.
00:07:31.120It wasn't like Shakespeare was some unknown in his own time and place.
00:09:53.120Another thing which we were talking about earlier on is that, I mean, and this is a little bit more contentious, but, you know, my first book was on the history plays.
00:10:03.120And there's a very noticeable, let's just say like local bias in certain characters.
00:10:11.120One of the people that Shakespeare gives quite a kind treatment to in the Henry VI plays is Warwick, the kingmaker, Richard Neville.
00:12:51.120So Shakespeare always had to be super careful in staying on the right side of the authorities.
00:12:57.120And we can talk more about that as regards to history plays in a second, because there's more to it.
00:13:06.120So the Tudors wanted to tell this story that when Henry VII defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and then married Elizabeth of York,
00:13:23.120he providentially healed the nation by uniting the houses of Lancaster and York, and that basically he was sent by God.
00:13:58.120Then as the Tudors go on, of course, Henry VIII, particularly strong on divine right, especially after the split with the Catholic Church.
00:14:09.120And so there was a sense in which the Tudors had an official state ideology.
00:14:17.120And Shakespeare, much like today, if your writer was kind of trying to keep on the right side of the British government,
00:14:24.120maybe they throw a bit of diversity nonsense in there or whatever.
00:14:28.120In the same way, he had to tick a few boxes when he was telling that history.
00:14:33.120But there is another way of looking at it, which is many, many critics have made this argument, including me in my first book.
00:14:42.120Maybe I've changed my mind a bit since, but then I did write it 12 years ago now.
00:14:47.120But one of the arguments people make is like, well, Shakespeare wanted to uphold the notion of divine right as opposed to a Machiavellian realpolitik view of history.
00:15:33.120So in much the same way, everybody was kind of into Machiavelli.
00:15:38.120So there's an argument to say, well, hold on a second, if Shakespeare really wanted to make this case, why did he pick this unhappy period of British history where we got, let's face it, tons of really bad kings?
00:17:03.120And he's completely convinced in divine right.
00:17:05.120And what happens in that play is that he banishes Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, who then turns up with a massive army and says, about that banishment, about you taking away my dad's lands.
00:17:21.120Because while Bolingbroke's away, Richard II strips John of Gaunt's lands.
00:18:28.120And in the speech, he says, listen, if you so much as raise a sword against me, for every man you've got there, a thousand angels will come to my core.
00:18:39.120The trouble is, everybody knows that's bollocks.
00:19:21.120Which is not, you know, to be expected.
00:19:23.120But it's an interesting thing because in the play, Richard II, Richard then is a really tragic character because he's had to abdicate the throne.
00:19:35.120Now, Bolingbroke, the usurper, is on the throne.
00:19:40.120And Shakespeare gives him these scenes where he's just saying like, okay, I don't have my crown anymore.
00:20:07.120He's got a common, so he's just better in all ways than Richard II.
00:20:11.120So by meritocracy, by Machiavellian right, it's pretty obvious that Henry is just the better king.
00:20:19.120Now, because Shakespeare is a really clever writer, it's not obvious where he stands on this issue because he gives you enough to make both arguments.
00:20:30.120If you want to take this view that it's Tudor propaganda, it's all there.
00:20:34.120But if you want to take this view that actually Shakespeare is subtly poking holes at this, it's all there too.
00:20:42.120And when we were talking about Elizabeth II, there's a direct relevance because during Elizabeth II's reign, she didn't have any children.
00:22:21.120One thing I've never been aware, kind of never quite figured out is how Shakespeare and his company didn't get into trouble for being hired.