Almost this entire documentary is fiction. Nearly every fact related to William Shakespeare mentioned is absolutely undocumented and there is no evidence for it at all. Probably one percent of this can be proven by historical sources.
If you love Elizabethan England, this is for you. If you want to know about William Shakespeare, there is nothing here for you that is real.
Prove your assertion.
shareHow can I prove a negative?
Please tell me which documents I can use to prove William has a biography. Letters? None exist. Diary's? None exist. Of his or anyone else's. No one mentioned him during his entire lifetime, and when he died, nobody wrote an obituary, or tribute to him. The greatest writer in history, and not one tribute?
There is almost zero documentation by which you would write a biography.
Tell us whether 'tributes' to well-known professional writers on news of their death were a normal part of Jacobean literary life. Give us the names of Shakespeare's contemporaries who didreceive any such tributes on their deaths, and if you can produce a reasonable number, then yes the fact that we know of no tribute on the occasion of his death (as opposed to retrospectively) may reasonably be said to have some indicative significance.
If however you can't name any, and can produce no other evidence to suggest that such tributes were commonplace, then obviously your question 'not one tribute?' Is an irrelevance.
Okay, prove your question is meaningful and relevant, and that you know what you're talking about rather than parroting stuff you have picked up from other anti-Srats without weighing their value.
"Please tell me which documents I can use to prove William has a biography" How about the documents that Wood examines in the documentary?
* The 1604 Revels account that refers to Shaxberd as the poet responsible for Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Othello and Comedy of Errors.
*The players reference of scarlet red cloth that ties the name Shakespeare with the King's Men players Richard Burbage, John Hemings and Augustine Philips. The same company that put on the above mentioned 1604 revels
* The payment in gold to Shakespeare and Richard Burbage by the Earl of Rutland for creating a shield with verses.
* The application for a coat of arms for the Stratford Man who spells his name as "Shakespere" and identifies him as "ye player"
* Shakespeare's will mentioning Richard Burbage and John Hemings
So you have the Stratford man pronouncing his name as "Shakespeare", nothing else, who is identified as a player. This same name is identified by King James wardrobe as a player in the King's Men along with other King's Men members. King James' account office recognizes the name Shaxberd as the poet for plays put on by the king's men, obviously a variation on Shakespeare. Burbage and Shakespeare are tied together by the Rutland payment document for writing verses and creating a shield and the will ties the men again together.
Aside from that there are numerous payment records that mention both Shakespeare and Burbage intimately tying the two men together over a span of 20 years in the theater. This same Shakespeare is named by Meres as the author of 12 plays most of which were produced by the King's Men meaning they owned these plays.
Jonson identifies Shakespeare as an actor in two of his plays that he produced with the King's Men. Jonson wrote two tributes to Shakespeare one in the Folio and another in his Timbers and Discoveries both identifying him as a writer. How are these tributes any different than an obituary? They are written by a man who knew the deceased and comments on things he did, ya know an obituary.
So there's your biography based on documents that Wood examines and other ones he mentions. So were is anything is documentary made up? Where is that 99% of made up stuff that you claim are in this documentary