Shakespearean Nines

[Redbeck]

English poet, playwright, and actor, William Shakespeare, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. Frequently referred to as England's national poet, as well as the 'Bard of Avon', just plain Will to his contemporaries, born in April 1564, died 400 years ago almost to the day on May 3rd 1616.

SHAKESPEARE

19-8-1-11-5-19-16-5-1-18-5
1+8+1+2+5+1+7+5+1+9+5 = 45
4+5 = 9

Nines played an important role in Shakespeare's work. In his Ninth Sonnet for instance there is little of the customary romantic notions but a powerful, bitter and dark critique, a trait more often acccorded to his fellow dramatist Christopher Marlowe, who we shall look at a little later in the thread perhaps.

SONNET 9

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consumest thyself in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused, the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murderous shame commits.

PLAYS
Shakespeare never physically published any of his plays. They are only in printed form today due to the foresight of two of his fellow actors, John Hemminges and Henry Condell, who were intelligent enough to record and publish 36 (an interesting resolution to number 9) of them posthumously under an anthology title the The First Folio, which is the single source of all Shakespeare books ever published. There were other plays which appear to have been lost, the definite losses are titled Cardenio, and Love’s Labour’s Won, yet it is thought there are many more.

According to chronological sequence, there are two schools of thought as to Will's ninth play,they swing between The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet. Both powerful works in their own right despite the diversity of the subject matter.

Linguistic contribution:

Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary as responsible for the introduction of almost 3,000 words into the English language. Estimations of his vocabulary range from 18,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words; at least double the number of words employed by an average conversationalist.

In such a celebratory year for Master Shakespeare, I will if I may, consider this a rolling blog, to which anybody out there is welcome to contribute.

[Lannix]

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[Redbeck]

Good aftermoon Lannix and thank you for the contribution.

I whholeheartedly agree with youu that there are many theories as to the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford happens to be one of them, as does Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe, already mentioned, is another. It is also said that William was given some of his snappiest titles by the Earl of Southampton. However, while Edward de Vere appeared to be an uber-cool fellow, judging from the looks of his portrait below, with huge potential stage presence to boot, there are valid reasons to discount the claim formulated in the 1920s.

Fundamentally, on closer examination it is simply not chronologically possible for Edward de Vere to have written a good proportion of Shakespeare's plays, as he died in 1604 and Will's theatrical productivity goes on for another decade at least, as follows:

Othello (1604)
All's Well That Ends Well (1605)
King Lear (1605–1606)
Timon of Athens (1605–1606)
Macbeth (1606)
Antony and Cleopatra (1606)
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607–1608)
Coriolanus (1608)
The Winter's Tale (1609–1611)
Cymbeline (1610)
The Tempest (1610–1611)
Cardenio (1612–1613)
Henry VIII (1612–1613)
The Two Noble Kinsmen (1614)

In terms of the Shakespeare name, another theory exists, for In the King James Bible the 46th word of Psalm 46 is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end of the same Psalm is ‘spear’. A number of learned souls believe that this was a hidden birthday message to the Bard, as the King James Bible was published in 1611 – the year of Shakespeare’s 46th birthday.

[Redbeck]

Well returning to the power of 9s contained in Shakespeare's overall body of work. His most famous and therefore instantly recognised sonnet is Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Which happens to be Sonnet 18, i.e. 2 x 9 or in its lowest resolution 1 + 8 = 9.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.