Monday, November 21, 2011

Who Wrote Shakespeare?

by  in The New Yorker -November 21, 2011


While it is perfectly obvious to everyone that Ben Jonson wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, it is less known that Ben Jonson’s plays were written by a teen-age girl in Sunderland, who mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace of her existence, which is clear proof that she wrote them. The plays of Marlowe were actually written by a chambermaid named Marlene, who faked her own orgasm, and then her own death in a Deptford tavern brawl. Queen Elizabeth, who was obviously a man, conspired to have Shakespeare named as the author of his plays, because how could a man who had only a grammar-school education and spoke Latin and a little Greek possibly have written something as bad as “All’s Well That Ends Well”? It makes no sense. It was obviously an upper-class twit who wished to disguise his identity so that Vanessa Redgrave could get a job in her old age.
Many people believe that Richard III not only was a good man who would never hurt a fly but actually wrote “She Stoops to Conquer,” and that the so-called author, Oliver Goldsmith, found the play under a tree in 1773 while visiting Bosworth Field, now a multistory car park (clearly an attempt to cover up the evidence of the ruse). Oscar Wilde’s plays were written by a stable boy named Simon, though Wilde gave them both a good polish. Chaucer was written by a Frenchman on holiday, while Simone de Beauvoir wrote all of Balzac and a good deal of “Les Misérables,” despite the fact that she was not yet born when she did so. Beau Brummell wrote nearly all of Jane Austen, and two men and a cat wrote most of Charles Dickens, with the exception of “A Tale of Two Cities,” which Napoleon wrote while visiting St. Helena. Incidentally, Napoleon was not Napoleon but a man named Trevor Francis, who later turned up playing for Birmingham City.
Thomas Jefferson produced the Declaration with the aid of a ghostwriter, a woman of color named Betty Mae, who was a non-voluntary worker. “Moby-Dick” was written not by Herman Melville but by Herman Melbrooks, who wrote most of it in Yiddish on the boat over from Coney Island. “The Shorter Pepys,” a Penguin paperback, was actually written by the taller Pepys, a man named Doris Pepys, who was no relation but worked as a candle cleaner in Wapping (home of the Liar). Henry James did write all of his own works, because nobody else could be that boring, and, more significant, no one else has ever bothered to claim them.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/21/111121sh_shouts_idle#ixzz1e8FgRiKq

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