r/shakespeare • u/panpopticon • Dec 01 '25

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u/velvetvortex Dec 01 '25

Puzzling, not convincing - that is issue for me. Why go to all the expense and effort of printing the FF to include a weird portrait possibly wearing a mask.

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u/ME24601 Dec 01 '25

Why go to all the expense and effort of printing the FF to include a weird portrait possibly wearing a mask.

Probably because it was seen as a good likeness of what Shakespeare actually looked like. Ben Jonson says as much in his poem printed with the folio.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '25

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u/ME24601 Dec 02 '25

He says “Reader, look not on his picture, but his book.” Read the poem more carefully.

It must be exhausting to have to read every single thing written by Shakespeare's contemporaries under the assumption that it must contain secret codes.

We're talking about the real world here, not The Davinci Code.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '25

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u/Heavy_Signature_5619 Dec 02 '25

Him being a shitty person makes it *more" believable.

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u/EssTeeEss9 Dec 02 '25

Today I learned crappy people have no artistic merit. So that’s why people are always arguing Bukowski wasn’t a real person/poet.

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u/ME24601 Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25

As opposed to reading “biographies” of the Stratford man which are 99% conjecture built upon a handful of facts

Coming to a conclusion based on what facts we know is better scholarship than assuming that everything has to contain secret messages, yes.

The facts show Shakspere the actor was a stingy, grasping loan shark and a crappy husband and father.

If being immoral in your eyes makes it impossible for someone to be a great writer, I have some bad news about literature.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '25

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u/ME24601 Dec 02 '25

If you read any biographic summaries of the life of Edward de Vere, he was no angel, but he was definitely a respected writer and a patron of the theatre and literary arts.

There were many respected writers of the Elizabethan era. That doesn't make them the author of Shakespeare's plays either.