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Simon's avatar

"We can safely put away any notions of some that Shakespeare secretly advocated Catholicism!"

This line is mostly familiar to me from Clare Asquith in 'Shadowplay' and how she constructed it is most interesting. Her central claim is that every time "Shakespeare" uses "high" or "fair" (or close synonyms thereof) he means Catholic and the inverse ("low" and "dark") means Protestant. Small problem: "low" and "dark" were commonly applied to anything an author wanted to look bad. It's nonsense. What Asquith really wanted was to find a way to give Stratford Will the university education he so obviously needed - so if he was a secret Catholic then, she argues apparently seriously, he was smuggled into Catholic-sympathising Oxford under an alias! That's how he learnt it all! Don't worry about the specific references to Cambridge.... or that the whole thing is a fantasy house of straw.

Is Clare Asquith just some random eccentric? No. Her mother is Viscountess Sidmouth. Her husband is Raymond Asquith, great-grandson of H.H. Asquith UK PM 1908-16. Quigley and Docherty/MacGregor have plenty to say about Asquith the PM. There are few men with more blood on their hands. Raymond Asquith was British Ambassador to the USSR in the 1980s - a "safe pair of hands" in situ for momentous events.

Clare Asquith isn't the only female Stratfordian writer with some interesting connections. Charlotte Stopes 'The Bacon/Shakespeare Question' is probably the worst slice of Strafordianism it's been my displeasure to read. It's like being locked in a room with Stanley Wells, Jonathan Bate and James Shapiro. The section where she tries to paint C16th Stratford as Florence-upon-Avon and Mary Arden as some sort of cross between Catherine De Medici and Jane Austen is unintentionally hilarious. Well, Stopes' daughter was no other than Mary Stopes, the insane eugenicist and Britain's answer to Margaret Sanger! Charlotte Stopes wrote as "C.C. Stopes" and CC=33.

I'm not going to rehash the evidence that Stratford Will was Catholic or Protestant. It's a classic fake binary. Authors like Asquith and Stopes will never admit (except perhaps very obliquely in code like "freethinker") that these are not the only two options - Gnostic, Luciferian, Pagan, Middle Eastern, even outright Satanism, these are all off the table in the way they're trying to shape the debate.

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The Hidden Life Is Best's avatar

Thank you Contarini! Dare I send it to Pearce? 😬

OK I will! Thanks again!

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