🚀 go-pugleaf

> One more message, for Melanie Sands who bravely
> defends her beloved William Shakespeare
>
> Paris, in the play Romeo and Juliet, is introduced as
>
>   valiant Paris
>
> offering the alliteration
>
>   valiant William
>
> William Shakespeare, director of the Globe and main
> actor
>
>   a flower; in faith, a real flower
>
> In sonnet 83, addressing the Muse, Edward de Vere
> speaks of
>
>   both your poets
>
> placing the actor on the same level as the playwright,
> for both are making the play, in the sense of Greek
> poieo poiesis poietes. From "valiant Paris" read as
> valiant William we may infer that William Shakespeare
> was a congenial director and actor, easily adopting
> the plays and acting out all intentions. He also may have
> stood the ground and ensured the performances under
> the pressure mentioned in sonnet 66
>
>   And Art made tongue-tied by authority
>
> while other directors yielded to the pressure, consider
> Peter Quince in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream,
> the shape of the fruit evoked by his name suggesting
> puffed cheeks and a small brain. Quince's actor Bottom,
> in order not to freighten the ladies of the court among
> the audience, and risking that all the actors be hung,
> proposes to make his lion roar like a nightingale -
> taking all strentgth out of the play, that is. Happened
> also to de Vere's plays, but not when valiant William
> was around. Paris, the prince of Troy, was rather
> a coward, or, one may say, he understood how to keep
> out of trouble, which may be a further characterization
> of William Shakespeare - valiant by being gentle
>
>   good gentle youth
>
>   By heaven, I love thee better than myself
>
> The cooperation between the two congenial collaborators
> was far from being free of conflicts, however, the bard
> confesses his sin - whatever the reason was that obliged
> him to keep silent about his authorship in the plays -, and
> de Vere solved the conflict in the way of the mild, gentle
> and sly Ulysses in his poem Lucrece (as explained earlier).
> The final and fatal conflict of the play must be a metaphor
> on the rivalry between playwright and actor, won in the
> end by the former whose lines live on while the equally
> ingenious performing is forgotten when the actor passed
> away. Paris provokes Romeo, this one shows him,
> Paris dies, and Romeo exclaims
>
>   Noble County Paris!
>
> the Earl of Oxford elevating William Shakespeare of
> humble origin into the rank of an earl or count
>
>   I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave
>
> namely in his work - the bard honors the actor, telling
> us that valiant William, a real flower, a gentle youth,
> his equal as poet in the original sense of the Greek
> word, contributed as much to their common work as
> he did himself, so that a next edition of the plays may
> justly be called: The Complete Works of Edward de Vere
> and William Shakespeare ... While conceiving and writing
> a play, Edward de Vere may have had William on his
> mind, and thus the play wrote itself on its own, carried,
> and carried far, by the spirit of the young collaborator,
> so that also William Shakespeare is present in the
> written form of the plays, way beyond his playacting.
> And Juliet? She symbolizes the audience that also
> contributed to the plays, in the way explained earlier.
> She is first mentioned in a call
>
>   What, Juliet!
>
> offering another pun
>
>   Watch, Juliet!
>
> Watching a play is what an audience does - listen and
> watch.

The serious play Romeo and Juliet was followed
by a poetical farce, A Midsummer Night's Dream,
where Romeo turned into jealous Oberon, and Juliet
into proud Titania, king and queen of the fairies,
Titania symbolizing the general audience that prefers
popular plays of a mechanical sort Edward de Vere
apparently despised, and so he gives a parody of
that sort of playwrighting and acting: the mechanicals
Peter Quince and his actors stage a classical tragedy,
interfere unknowingly with the fairies, turn things upside
down, doing harm and well at the same time, bringing
one true couple of lovers apart, another together,
and, to the big delight of Oberon, his wife Titania falls
in love with an ass, Peter Qunice's main actor Bottom
wearing the head of an ass, of which Titania will soon
be ashamed and return to her husband Oberon, as
audience personified realizing that those popular
mechanical plays are not the real thing. Edward de
Vere gives the audience a pedagogical lesson in form
of a funny, highly poetical and phantastic play, without
any pedagogy at all.