Roger Peters Copyright © 2012/2023
JAQUES
INQUEST
QUIETUS
ACQUITTAS
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CQUITTA
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LITERARY TRIALS
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Assize Court for the Quaternary Investigation of Tertiay Travesties Against Shakespeare
The ACQUITTAS webpage currently features an introduction to the Assize Court preliminaries and proceedures, including a list of the thirty-seven individuals charged with perpetrating literary crimes against Shakespeare followed by a sample Charge Sheet detailing the case against John Benson. Further Charge Sheets will be added as the evidence is prepared.
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ACQUITTAS - THE EVIDENCE
Comments & Cases
ACQUITTAS - Prefatory
Contents
Under the auspices of The Quaternary Institute, and under the aegis of the systematic and comprehensive nature-based logic of William Shakespeare's 1609 Sonnet philosophy, ACQUITTAS investigates and prosecutes 400 years of literary crimes that editors, commentators, professors and others perpetrate on Shakespeare's 1609 Sonnets, his 1623 Folio of plays and four longer poems.
After the discovery in 1995 of the profoundly comprehensive and consistent nature-based philosophy in Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, I established the Quaternary Institute in 2000 primarily to explore and foster an advanced level of learning commensurate with the unprecedented and unmatched philosophy Shakespeare articulates in his 1609 Sonnets as the philosophy behind his four longer poems and his 1623 Folio of thirty-six plays.
The discovery of Shakespeare's philosophy in the Sonnets demonstrates his intention to provide a definitive interpretive source for all his plays in the 1623 Folio. It validates in every respect the original 1609 edition of Shake-speares Sonnets, the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare's fourteen Comedies, ten Histories and twelve Tragedies, and his four longer poems of 1593, 1594, 1601 and 1609.
Because the Sonnet philosophy explains the meaning of every aspect of all Shakespeare's works, patent errors in spelling in the 1623 Folio and 1609 Sonnets and minor differences between eighteen Folio plays and their earlier publication in quarto editions are immaterial for understanding Shakespeare's thought and expression – the 1623 Folio is the default text for the thirty-six plays.
Viewed in the light of the Sonnet philosophy, neither the long poems Venus and Adonis of 1593, The Rape of Lucrece of 1594, The Phoenix and the Turtle of 1601, A Lover's Complaint of 1609, nor the 1623 Folio require emendation, reordering, reattribution or authorship interference – and particularly not the 1609 edition of the Sonnets.
Once the Sonnet philosophy is recognised and appreciated as the base philosophy for all Shakespeare's works, then it is the natural recourse for all issues of interpretation – as Shakespeare intends. By resorting continually to the Sonnet logic we can show how the querulous conceits that constitute Shakespearean scholarship for the last 400 years arise from an undue reliance on the inappropriate and outdated Christian/Platonic (or other) paradigms.
Now in the 2020s, ACQUITTAS becomes the purpose-made vehicle for examining the history of misinterpretation over the last four centuries and then prosecuting the egregious literary crimes. The consequence should be an insight into the motives and, worse, the prejudices and prides driving the travesties.
By case studying the principal perpetrators of presumptuous misinterpretation from 1640 to the present day, we can show that for 400 years Shakespeare has been subject to inordinate corruption largely to make him the compliant dramatist/poet or deferential 'Bard' to England's biblically compliant Church and Throne – and hence State.
We will see that the enforced colonising and conversion of Shakespeare's works is no less presumptuous and imposed than the arrogant colonial/religious impositions over the same 400-year period – except the practice of converting and tailoring Shakespeare and his works to male-based cultural and political prerogatives continues unabated and all but unchallenged to the present day.
Roger Peters 2020
ACQUITTAS - Preliminary Remarks Contents
After gaining an insight over twenty-five years ago into the systematic nature-based philosophy Shakespeare embeds in his 1609 publication Shake-speares Sonnets, I spent the next ten years between 1995 and 2005 unravelling the philosophic contents of the 154 sonnets. In 2005, the 1760-page four-volume slipcase set William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy was published detailing a plethora of material entirely new to Shakespeare scholarship and discussing some of the profound nature-orientated and female default implications for human understanding and expression.
Since then, I have been consolidating and preparing further publications that summarise and elucidate the findings. For the first time in 400 years, I show in-depth across a number of volumes how Shakespeare articulates a consistent and comprehensive philosophy in the organic arrangement and logical structuring of his 154-sonnet set to present the deeply affective nature-orientated rationale behind all his plays and poems.
As I pause to assess the implications of revealing Shakespeare's deliberate organisation of the 1609 Sonnets to present his philosophy, I have to ask what prevents others over the last 400 years from readily appreciating the deeply structured philosophical insights Shakespeare embeds in his Sonnet set as the basis for his poetry and drama. What keeps them from accessing the nature-based methodology Shakespeare lays out in the 154 sonnets so they can benefit from its extraordinary explanatory power for his other works – and much else besides?
Since 1995, I have talked to hundreds of professors, aficionados and others, yet not one has an inkling of the profound philosophy plain to view in the 154-sonnet set or the role of the philosophy as the basis for the poems and plays. Significantly, only a handful of those made aware of the philosophy have felt comfortable either with the idea of a deeply systematic nature-based philosophy or with addressing the patent reasons for the considerable lacuna in their understanding.
Though many suspect there is a profound philosophy in Shakespeare's works, none has been able to penetrate the surface of his plays or poems to appreciate the rigour and groundedness of his nature-based evolution in human understanding. So, the question presents itself as to what prevents seemingly sane and intelligent minds from garnering the demonstrable evidence throughout Shakespeare's works for a consistent and comprehensive philosophy based in nature with its unprecedented explanatory power both inside and outside his oeuvre.
To illustrate the insidiousness of the problem, we can consider Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy published originally in 1946. Firstly, I am intrigued Russell's book provides a very personal take on philosophy that begins with the wide ranging issues of the early Greeks but ends in the last chapter with his own very limited brand of philosophising – 'Logical Analysis'.
A measure of Russell's extremely personalized agenda is that throughout the whole book he makes no mention of one of the most significant philosophers of his day, Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the early years of the Twentieth Century, Wittgenstein is Russell's paragon of philosophic depth, but by 1946 he cannot accept Wittgenstein's move away from mathematics-based 'logical' analysis to the recovery of the natural logic of ordinary language.
My concern deepens when I check the index and note twelve entries under the name Shakespeare. It transpires, despite the number of references to Shakespeare and even quotes from his works throughout the text, Russell has no separate chapter on 'Shakespeare' – yet he dedicates a whole chapter to the 'philosophy' of the much lesser poet George Gordon Byron. Why does Russell refer to and quote from Shakespeare so frequently in a book on philosophy yet not treat him seriously as a philosopher?
When I turn to Russell's Introduction, I am surprised there is no mention of his own 'Logical Analysis' in the first few pages. However, on the first page there are references to the 'world' and 'life', and to 'nature'. Oddly, these precepts seem closer to the later Wittgenstein than to Russell.
Then another reading reveals that the only name mentioned on the first or second page of a book devoted to dozens of famous philosophers is 'Hamlet'. How to reconcile Russell's frequent recourse to Shakespeare in a history of serious philosophy with the fact he makes no attempt to explain why he defers to a playwright and poet like Shakespeare a number of times throughout his book?
A similar syndrome of referencing Shakespeare but not acknowledging him as a philosopher occurs in Philip Stokes' more recent coffee table book Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers published in 2010. Like Russell, Stokes' book spans from the Greeks to the Moderns, though Stokes only gives summary accounts by devoting two pages to each of his 100 thinkers.
The incongruity towards Shakespeare in 100 Essential Thinkers, however, is even more pronounced than in Russell's 900-page personalised history of Western philosophy. Significantly, sixty-five years after Russell, Stokes still gives no chapter to Shakespeare even though by 2010 there is a much greater interest in Shakespeare with frequent productions of all his plays and a rebuilt Globe Theatre at Bankside – as well as in the Netherlands and Japan.
However, after his 'Table of Contents', where Shakespeare does not get an entry, Stokes places over his Introduction a well-known quote from Hamlet where Hamlet tells Horatio about 'things' that might be in his 'philosophy'. Then, even more extraordinary in a book on philosophers that does not consider Shakespeare worthy of an entry, Stokes names both 'Shakespeare' and 'Hamlet' in the first line of his Introduction.
As we read on we see Stokes does not confine himself to just a single mention of 'Hamlet' – as Russell does in his Introduction. By the third paragraph, we find Stokes giving his reasons for deferring to Shakespeare's Hamlet. He says, 'Hamlet's pronouncement nevertheless provides a useful characterisation of the aim of the philosophers in this book'.
The immense irony, from the vantage of Shakespeare's Sonnet philosophy, is that Stokes equates or aligns Hamlet's level of philosophising with that of the 100 thinkers in his book from 'Thales of Miletus' to 'W.V.O. Quine'. By identifying the '100 Thinkers' with Hamlet, Stokes unwittingly – but possibly intuitively from the recesses of his untapped natural propensities – consigns all his chosen 100 thinkers of the last 3000 years to a level decidedly below Shakespeare's overarching nature-based philosophy.
Once Shakespeare's nature-based and female-rectifying Sonnet philosophy is appreciated, it is more than evident he intentionally contextualises tragic male characters like Hamlet within the prejudices and injustices arising from the dictatorial imposition of the traditional male-based/mind-based paradigms. In Hamlet, we see Shakespeare mapping relentlessly Hamlet's pathetic failure to achieve Shakespeare's own advanced level of reconciliation through natural logic. Moreover, of all the deeply affecting struggles in Shakespeare's Histories and Tragedies, Hamlet's is the most acute – hence Russell and Stokes' reflexive, and so revealing, identification with him.
Only in the fourteen female/feminine-driven Comedies that begin the 1623 Folio does Shakespeare demonstrate how a full reconciliation of female and male prerogatives plays out. In eleven of the fourteen Folio Comedies, Shakespeare's leading females like Portia, Viola, Hermione, Helena, Silvia, Rosalind, Beatrice and the Princess of France, recover for their societies a natural equanimity lacking in cultures of male-based usurpation and patriarchal excesses. In the other three Comedies, Shakespeare explores resolutions forged by feminine/masculine gender-balanced males – Prospero, Vincentio and Petruchio.
Shakespeare creates victims such as Hamlet, and the more culpable Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Caesar, Andronicus, etc., and seven English Kings, to demonstrate the frequent – but completely avoidable – tragic consequences for their societies and kin of male-based excesses in belief and power. What Horatio fails to dream of 'in your philosophy' – and what Hamlet senses but also fails to appreciate – is the nature-based philosophy Shakespeare uses to construct their play. Shakespeare's overarching nature-based philosophy in the Tragedies elicits in his readers and playgoers a cathartic sense of all the natural possibilities in 'heaven', 'earth' and 'dreams' – as Hamlet is given to intuit.
On reflection, the substantial body of evidence I derive from Shakespeare's 1609 Sonnet set, his four longer poems and his 1623 Folio of thirty-six plays suggests his philosophy escapes detection for 400 years because he identifies and corrects the logical flaws at the most fundamental level in the philosophising of the last 4000 years. Those familiar with the multiplicity of traditional philosophies should prepare themselves for an exposé of the proscribed and largely unquestioned presumptions that underpin the whole project of Western philosophy since the invention of writing inscribes in stone biblical prejudices against nature and the female. Symptomatic is the syllogising of logical validity by the Greeks that divorces philosophy from natural soundness – a technocratic syndrome Russell egotistically perpetuates in his self-aggrandising History of Western Philosophy.
I suggest the richness, vitality and depth of the philosophy behind Shakespeare's poems and plays is a direct consequence of his willingness and ability to correct at the most fundamental level the illogical premises in traditional writings – both religious and secular. The freedom he gains allows him to maintain the full range of argumentative and expressive depth commonly touted for those works – especially the deeply affective writings of the Bible – but without the traditional compromises, contradictions and equivocations.
The apologetic syndrome of justifying the illogical premises behind biblical beliefs is so inured and pervasive I can assert without demur that the illogicality of the unsound givens afflicts all entries in both The Oxford Companion to Philosophy and The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (as representative samples). The primary indicator of the fault line through these and similar comprehensive scholarly summaries of traditional philosophy is the absence of an entry on Shakespeare's philosophy – as in Russell and Stokes.
The ACQUITTAS investigation stands or falls on the fact the profound global philosophy many suspect is in Shakespeare's works is patently invisible to all such thinkers because of their inculcated commitment, even if residual, to a paradigm irredeemably alienated from nature and the female/male dynamic. Because Shakespeare goes to the heart of the inconsistencies in traditional philosophic writings – religious and secular – this investigative tract will examine primarily the egregious fault line through the male-based premises typified by Russell and Stokes' publications.
ACQUITTAS explores and exposes the reasons for the logical gap between scholars' touted expertise concerning Shakespeare and the considerable shortfall in their understanding of his nature-based philosophy. We will examine quotations from a considerable number of Shakespearean and other scholars and writers over the last 400 years as they attempt to account for the deeper aspects of Shakespeare's works. Within the quotations highlighting each scholar's particular approach, we will identify the moment when they veer off into misinterpretation or outright prejudice to commit a literary crime.
Remember, the crime is to change Shakespeare's works to fit biblical and other paradigms or, in the worse cases, to reattribute his works to other authors or to rewrite his works – especially supposedly lost ones – and then publish the altered works in Shakespeare's name rather than solely under the presumptuous editor-cum-author's own name.
The pretext for doing so is in many cases arises from accusations the 1623 Folio is badly edited and arranged. Yet, in the twenty or so commendatory poems and eulogies from 1599 to 1642, alongside Heminge and Condell asserting they were publishing true and original texts of the plays, there is not one demur or quibble as to whether Shakespeare plays are attributed to him alone without assistance from other authors.
Shakespeare remains free because he did not impose his philosophy on other authors and then republish that author's altered work under their own name. Shakespeare took personal responsibility for his liberties by publishing them in his own name. The crime occurs when editors of the works published in Shakespeare's name move beyond offering readings for words, etc., whose meanings are genuinely in doubt, to gross changes and reattributions because they sense Shakespeare's philosophy is incompatible with their own limited or circumscribed worldviews.
Shakespeare's attitude to other authors is to correct their prejudices and elevate their understanding to the level of his consistent and comprehensive nature-based philosophy. In complete contrast, the editors and others intervene to undermine Shakespeare's revolution in understanding by dumbing down his works to the prejudicial basis of the alternate authors or to their own inculcated prejudices.
Each ACQUITTAS case study presented below examines an instance in the 400 years of outrageous literary crimes commentators, editors, poets, and others commit against Shakespeare. The default Shakespeare texts in all cases are the 1609 quarto edition of Shakespeares Sonnets (Q), the 1623 Folio edition of plays (F) and the longer poems he publishes in 1593, 1594, 1601 and 1609. In each case study, the nature-based philosophy Shakespeare articulates in his 154 sonnets is the court of accountability against which to audit the litany of literary crimes of the last 400 years.
Parameters and Procedures Contents
Promulgated 1st October 2022
Opening Remarks
ACQUITTAS initiates a quasi-judicial framework within which to examine indicative case studies from the 400-year reception history that in the main discredits and debases Shakespeare and his works.
The pretext of ACQUITTAS is to adjudicate on the egregiousness of deliberate literary crimes against Shakespeare's 1609 Sonnets & A Lover's Complaint and his 1623 Folio of thirty-six plays and acquit him of their grievous imputations.
ACQUITTAS bases it assessment of the history of literary malpractice on the grounds Shakespeare's four longer poems as published in 1593, 1594, 1601, 1609, the 154 sonnets as published in 1609 and thirty-six plays as published in 1623 are extant and stand to this day as the default texts.
Throughout ACQUITTAS proceedings, the appeal in every case will be to the consistent and comprehensive nature-based biological/logical structure Shakespeare deliberately sets in place in the 1609 Sonnets as the philosophic basis for all his plays and poems.
The systematic nature-based philosophy Shakespeare embeds in the 1609 Sonnets establishes the incontrovertible standard for judging the literary crimes perpetrated on his Sonnets and other works by generation after generation over 400 years of celebrated editors, academics and writers serially subversive within the context of a male-based culture to the integrity of the original editions.
The constitutional presumption of the ACQUITTAS proceedings is that from the vantage of the nature-based Sonnet philosophy, all Shakespeare's sonnets, plays and poems make complete sense and require no intervention to amend their meaning or redress supposed errors.
The evidence demonstrates (presented in William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy, Shakespeare's Global Philosophy, Shakespeare & Mature Love, Shakespeare's Philosophy Illustrated, Quaternary Essays, & Play Commentaries to William Shakespeare's 1623 Folio – see below) that Shakespeare prepares the Sonnets in anticipation of a world ready for a nature-based sensibility but also in anticipation of a reactionary backlash of disregard and disrespect.
While no one in 400 years has come anywhere near recognising the nature-based philosophy evident in the Sonnets before now, ACQUITTAS proceedings will show the paradigmatic blindness and ingrained prejudices of scholars, editors and others exacerbates their unwillingness to accept their profound ignorance of the nature-based philosophy Shakespeare articulates in the Sonnets.
Instead, scholars and others exhibit a righteous mania in altering, emending, reattributing, and excising parts of Shakespeare's works to make them accord with their personal or political or religious agendas.
Indicative Case Studies
The comments below on the Cases of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Samuel Johnson and Gary Taylor present synopses from three of the thirty or more evidential Cases that follow under each ACQUITTAS Charge Sheet. The three indicative Cases foreshadow the range of offending and degree of culpability from circumspect through disconcerted to supercilious.
1: The Case of Ludwig Wittgenstein
To determine a baseline for traditional attitudes to Shakespeare's works in the absence of an understanding of Shakespeare's Sonnet philosophy, ACQUITTAS recognises in the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's comments about his inability to understand Shakespeare and his works (see below) a minimum standard of conduct toward Shakespeare's works for the purposes of assessment.
While Wittgenstein was not an editor or commentator on Shakespeare, his published statements – such as his inability 'to find symmetry in all this asymmetry' – express a sentiment largely absent from the commentaries by those who claim the errors lie in Shakespeare's sensibility or criticise the professionalism of the editors or compositors of the 1609 and 1623 editions of his works.
2: The Case of Samuel Johnson
To further assist in the determination of levels of egregiousness, ACQUITTAS provides the example of the noted literary scholar and writer Samuel Johnson who publishes Shakespeare's complete works in 1765. Johnson's response to Shakespeare's works is somewhat typical of those who initially acknowledge fulsomely Shakespeare's profound and all-encompassing inspiration from nature but then proceed to disparage the 1609 and 1623 editions.
While Johnson recognises Shakespeare's ability to represent nature and human nature with uncanny fidelity, he still makes egregious alterations to the works. For the purposes of providing parameters for this judgment, however, Johnson did partially acknowledge his ignorance by accepting his changes in all probability would be counter-changed by future editors (see below).
Johnson's preparedness to accept he has no real idea what Shakespeare's philosophy entails, though, is in stark contrast to the majority of editors and others who state categorically that their alterations significantly improve the texts or even restore the texts to Shakespeare's intended meaning before the compositors and/or editors of the 1609 and 1623 editions wreaked havoc.
3: The Case of Gary Taylor
At the upper end of the scale of offending, ACQUITTAS notes that Gary Taylor, co-editor of the Oxford Complete Works (1988/1998) is on record decrying the fact (see below) that consequent modern editions of Shakespeare's works do not reverently accept his (and other academics') computer-based stylometric justifications of traditional and modern alterations and excisions that now pepper the Oxford and most other editions.
Taylor's ego-driven accusations and purpose-built post-structural theorising that seeks to justify egregious interference in the original texts is countered somewhat by the tendency over the last century for editors (like Booth and Bate, below) to return to the original 1609 and 1623 texts on the basis they sense the perennial culture of apologetic interference somehow misses the inherent content of Shakespeare's works – as Wittgenstein intuits.
Concluding Remarks
Because ACQUITTAS bases its judgment of the complete integrity and adequacy of the original 1609 and 1623 texts but more importantly on the consistent and comprehensive nature-based philosophy Shakespeare intentionally embeds in his set of 154 sonnets, the quasi-judicial procedures that follow should further demonstrate the querulousness of the last 400 years of gross misrepresentation and conversion to inadequate paradigms.
ACQUITTAS's method of prosecution in each case will be to present all accusations as to the inadequacy of Shakespeare's texts through the published claims of the perpetrators themselves in the context of rhetorical questions designed to reveal both the level of regard for Shakespeare's nature-orientated sensibility and the depths of the commentators'/editors' self-deceit and self-aggrandisement.
By reproducing the published words of the perpetrators within the context of the ACQUITTAS Charge Sheets determined by Shakespeare's nature-based philosophy from the 1609 Sonnets, the perpetrators will self-incriminate so precluding the need for counter-argument.
Shakespeare's published works from 1609 and 1623 particularly and the evidence presented in the nine Volumes published by Quaternary Imprint over the past twenty years represent the de facto standard for the incontrovertible conviction of egregious literary crimes.
ACQUITTAS - Charge Sheet: Case 1: John Benson Contents
Charge Sheet
Indicating Type and Range of Culpability
(Yes/No on the Charge Sheet)
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CASE 1: John Benson (.... - 1667)
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In each Case, immediately following the Charge Sheet and alongside the relevant Article Number, ACQUITTAS records the self-implicating evidence from the literature and other published sources.
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Article Number
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Case to Answer
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Category of Offending
- and brief description of the type of offence
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1
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Yes
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Emendations
- The act of substituting different words for the original words to completely alter the meanings of words or phrases (e.g.: thy for their). The interference is unjustifiably prejudicial against the original words or phrases, which make complete sense in the light of the Sonnet philosophy.
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2
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No
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Authorship
- The act of claiming Shakespeare is Bacon, Marlowe, Oxford, etc., which is a discriminatory prejudice against Shakespeare's working class roots and/or absence of university education and is ignorant of his all-inclusive nature-based philosophy.
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3
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Yes
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Excisions
- The act of removing whole works or parts of works from the 1609 Sonnets, four longer poems or 1623 Folio of plays while claiming they are not Shakespeare's because they are unauthorial, redundant or offensive to traditional Monarchic/Ecclesiastic cultural values.
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4
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No
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Reattribution of parts
- The act of claiming on narrow or limited stylometric criteria (like the frequency of arbitrarily chosen words) that parts of Shakespeare's plays are written by other authors. The offence is another way to sanitise his works without regard to the meaningfulness of all his words when viewed in the light of his Sonnet philosophy.
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5
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No
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Paradigm change
- The act of asserting against the predominant evidence Shakespeare is Christian or parts of his works have a primarily Christian meaning – and/or Platonic – or he belonged to a particular religious sect like Catholicism or Sufism.
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6
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No
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Disparagement of characters
- The prejudicial dismissal of characters who implement Shakespeare's philosophy, especially in the Comedies, and the lionising of characters, like Jaques and Malvolio, who Shakespeare critiques for their adherence to male-based paradigms.
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7
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No
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Nature as basic
- The willingness to recognise in general terms Shakespeare's untrammelled inspiration from nature and the nature-based sensibility evident in the plots and characters throughout his works.
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8
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Yes
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Sexual reading
- The undue characterisation of Shakespeare as promiscuous and/or homosexual by inappropriate psychological association with characters from his sonnets, plays or poems or presumptions about his lifestyle.
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9
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No
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Reorganises 1623 order of plays
- – The act of rearranging the 1623 Folio order of plays chronologically or thematically without appreciating that the grouping into 14 Comedies, 10 Histories and 12 Tragedies reduplicates the philosophic structure of the Sonnets.
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10
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Yes
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Reorganises 1609 order of sonnets
- The act of rearranging the 1609 edition without regard for philosophic significance of all 154 sonnets, the two sequences of male and female sonnets, the increase sonnets, or the weighting between beauty, truth and beauty throughout the set.
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11
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No
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Monarchic retrofitting
- The act of interfering in Shakespeare's sonnets, poems and particularly the plays in a manner that warps their meaning in support of the monarchy so not to give offence to a particular Queen or King.
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12
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Yes
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Exhibits no appreciation of Shakespeare's philosophy
- Despite the offender recognising the primacy of nature for Shakespeare's thought and expression, they have no idea of the consistent and comprehensive nature-based philosophy Shakespeare articulates in the 1609 Sonnets as the basis for all his works.
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13
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Yes
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Initiates gross interference that endures
- The consequence is that, while all prejudicial changes to Shakespeare's works are egregious, some are more so when they remain in force for many decades or even hundreds of years.
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14
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Yes
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Disparages Anne Hathaway
- The act of dismissing Anne Hathaway as a neglected and unloved mother and housewife while Shakespeare is in London having affairs with loose women and young men.
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15
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No
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Ignores advice when told personally about the philosophy
- The self-interested or self-defensive unwillingness to appreciate and accept the nature-based philosophy from the Sonnets as an antidote to the 400-year tertiary syndrome of interference and disparagement.
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CASE 1: John Benson (… 1667)
THE EVIDENCE
as garnered verbatim from the literature and other published sources
to support the numbered Articles on the Charge Sheet (above).
ACQUITTAS derives all the evidence in this case from John Benson's 1640 publication titled Poems: written by Wil. Shake-speare, Gent.
Article 1: Emendations
In several of the sonnets from 1 to 126, Benson changes pronouns from masculine to feminine to create the impression Shakespeare wrote them to a woman. He even invents titles for the regenderised sonnets such as 'Upon the receipt of a Table Book from his Mistress' for sonnet 122 and 'An entreaty for her acceptance' for sonnet 125 – both sonnets to the male or Master Mistress in the 1609 edition.
Article 3: Excisions
In 1640 John Benson publishes a book of poetry that includes most of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets and a number of other poems by both Shakespeare and fellow poets. To give his book authenticity Benson's frontispiece has an engraving by William Marshall of a reduced and reversed version of Martin Droeshout's Shakespeare portrait from the 1623 Folio.
In his mangled version of Shake-speares Sonnets, Benson first contributes a preface titled 'To the Reader', followed by commendatory poems by Leonard Digges and John Warren. To compound the travesty, Benson also inter-mixes Shakespeare's sonnets with A Lover's Complaint, The Phoenix and the Turtle and poems from The Passionate Pilgrim. Then to complete the mishmash he adds Milton's homage to Shakespeare from the second edition of the Folio in 1632, poems by Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, Robert Herrick and others, plus a few oddments.
Leonard Digges – died in 1635 before his poem was used by Benson in 1640
This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow
One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate,
Nor once from vulgar languages translate,
Nor plagiary-like from others glean,
Nor begs he from witty friend a scene
To piece his acts with. All that he doth write
Is pure his own – plot, language exquisite –
Article 7: Nature as basic
Next, nature only helped him, for look thorough
Article 10: Reorganises 1609 order of sonnets
Then, when we turn to Benson's treatment of the 1609 edition, we find he significantly reworks and rearranges the sonnet set and in the process omits sonnets 18, 19, 43, 56, 75, and 76.
Disregarding Shakespeare's logical organisation of the 154 sonnets in Q, Benson rearranges some sonnets into new groupings, which he presents as complete poems.
Article 12: Exhibits no appreciation of Shakespeare's philosophy
Article 13: Initiates gross interference that endures
For 140 years, Benson's hybrid version of the 1609 edition is the only readily available edition of the sonnets. Moreover, Benson's travesty is only the beginning of 400 years of literary crime for which the perpetrators both then and now have escaped appropriate sanction because of the continuing ignorance of Shakespeare's Sonnet philosophy.
The lengthy period for which Benson's dumbing down of Shakespeare's brilliant arrangement of Q holds sway, provides a measure of the unpreparedness of the world for Shakespeare's nature-based logic. We will see below what further, and more subtle, crimes are perpetrated when Edmund Malone resorts to the original edition of the sonnets in 1790.
Article 14: Disparages Anne Hathaway
Article 1: Emendations
Before we leave Benson, we need to ask why Shakespeare is subject to 400 years of travesties when in 1640 Benson had the opportunity to validate the original edition of 1609. After all, Benson was either alive before Shakespeare dies in 1516, or he would have had verbatim accounts from those who knew Shakespeare – like Leonard Digges.
If the set of 154 sonnets contains Shakespeare's philosophy, then why were those he knew not able to defend the integrity of the 1609 edition? Why did Shakespeare not convey his philosophy to those around him? Even though the commendatory prefaces and poems – including Leonard Digges' in Benson's edition – record Shakespeare's nature-loving disposition above all else, their tributes give no hint his set of sonnets present a profound nature-based philosophy.
To get some idea of the incomprehension Shakespeare encounters even amongst his contemporaries, we can consider the experiences of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) in the Twentieth Century. For over sixty years Duchamp creates a body of work that, like Shakespeare's, is completely coherent and consistent with the natural logic of life and art. Central to Duchamp's thinking, as with Shakespeare, is the recovery of the natural female/male order of priority. Moreover, like Shakespeare, Duchamp provides a profound critique of artistic expression at the mythic level.
Yet no artist or commentator in Duchamp's lifetime fully appreciated his achievement, even though it is simpler in form than Shakespeare's. Duchamp commented in 1967 that no one had followed his lead and only the Surrealists had made a slight move in the direction upon which he bases his works.
A measure of the capacity of contemporaries to interpose only their own preconceptions and prejudices is evident in the obsessions of one of the more prolific commentators on Duchamp in the late 1960s, Arturo Schwarz. Schwarz attempted to explain Duchamp's works by claiming Duchamp committed incest with his sister Suzanne. Once in a formal talk with Duchamp present Schwarz even expounded at length on his Freudian-driven fabrication of Duchamp's incest. Against Schwarz' obsessive stupidity, Duchamp's fleeting response was to humorously snub him with the comment he had not heard a word of Schwarz' peroration.
What chance then that Shakespeare's contemporaries would be able to appreciate his achievement other than in very general terms as witnessed by their comments in the commendatory prefaces and poems? Should we be surprised, that commentators and editors since, like Benson – and like all of Duchamp's commentators – have religiously dumbed the works down to the level of their own prejudicial dispositions. As this investigation continues the basis of the problem should become clearer.
As Duchamp intones: Since Courbet, it's been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone's error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral. If I had the chance to take an anti-retinal attitude, it unfortunately hasn't changed much; our whole century is completely retinal, except for the Surrealists who tried to go outside it somewhat. And still, they didn't go so far!29
Duchamp also humorously cold shouldered Schwarz' Freudian claim that he had had an incestuous relationship with his sister Suzanne. Duchamp's method of dealing with the ludicrousness of unbridled theory is captured in his response to a talk delivered by Schwarz.
John Russell recounts that Duchamp listened for two and a half hours with 'total composure to Mr. Schwarz's high-pressure hypothesising'. He says Duchamp 'gazed into the middle distance 'while Schwarz credited him 'with all manner of vagrant fancies and subterranean implications' such as 'was the violin a symbol of onanism rather than a valuable component in family chamber music?'
Russell, later at supper, heard Duchamp exclaim to Schwarz, 'Capital! I couldn't hear a word, but I enjoyed it very much.' However, he records that 'Teeny Duchamp and close friends were deeply shocked by Schwarz's analysis of the Large Glass, which is based on the hypothesis of Duchamp's incest with his sister Suzanne'.57
Poets are borne not made, when I would prove
This truth, the glad remembrance I must love
Of never dying Shakespeare, who alone,
Is argument enough to make that one.
First, that he was a Poet none would doubt,
That heard th'applause of what he sees set out
Imprinted; where thou hast – I will not say,
Reader, his works, for to contrive a play
To him was none – the pattern of all wit,
Art without Art unparaleld as yet.
Next, nature only helped him, for look thorough
This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow
One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate,
Nor once from vulgar languages translate,
Nor plagiary-like from others glean,
Nor begs he from witty friend a scene
To piece his acts with. All that he doth write
Is pure his own – plot, language exquisite –
But O! what praise more powerful can we give
The dead than that by him the King's men live,
His players, which should they but have shared the fate,
All else expired within short term's date,
How could the Globe have prospered, since through want
Of change the plays and poems had grown scant.
But, happy verse, thou shalt be sung and heard
When hungry quills shall be such honour barred.
Then vanish, upstart writers to each stage,
You needy poetasters of this age:\;
Where Shakespeare lived or spake, vermin, forbear;
Least with your froth you spot them, come not near.
But if you needs must write, if poverty
So pinch that otherwise you starve and die,
On God's name may the Bull or Cockpit have
Your lame blank verse, to keep you from the grave,
Or lt new Fortune's younger brethren see
What they can pick from your lean industry.
I do not wonder, when you offer at
Blackfriars, that you suffer; 'tis the fate
Of richer veins, prime judgments that have fared
The worse with this deceased man compared.
So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were
Brutus and Cassius: oh how the Audience
Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brook a line
Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline;
Sejanus too was irkesome, they priz'de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore.
And though the Fox and subtill Alchimest,
Long intermitted, could not quite be mist,
Though these have sham'd all the Ancients, and might raise
Their Authours merit with a crowne of Bayes,
Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire
Acted, have scarce defrai'd the Seacoale fire
And doore-keepers: when let Falstaffe come,
Hall, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome,
All is so pester'd: let but Beatrice
And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice
The Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes, all are full
To heare Maluoglio, that crosse-garter'd Gull.
Briefe, there is nothing in his wit-fraught Booke,
Whose sound we would not heare, on whose worth looke
Like old coynd gold, whose lines in every page
Shall passe true currant to succeeding age.
But why do I dead Shakespeare's praise recite?
Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;
For me 'tis needless, since an host of men
Will pay to clap his praise, to free my pen.
Roger Peters Copyright © 2012/2023
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