The Shakespeare Enigma

Simply asking, 'Who was Shakespeare?', this book comes up with surprising conclusions. It offers a trail that leads to a very different person from the Stratford actor. It contains insights into the plays and poems, and into the English Renaissance that followed the final break with Rome.

First published in 1990, the aim of this book is to reveal the William Shakespeare whose life has been obscured by centuries of literary mythology. It unravels a series of strands in order to understand the man and the major influences which shaped his life and writing. The first part advances the thesis that his relationship with his father directly influenced the character of Falstaff — helping to not only explain key events in his father’s life but also critical events in his own biography. This thesis not only illuminates the Falstaff plays but also a number of other works such as Hamlet. The second part focuses on Shakespeare’s own life, and includes much original research particularly on the tradition that he was a poacher of deer, discussing the influence this incident had on his later life and writings. In addition, a sociological approach has been used which illuminates a number of key areas, including questioning the view his background was narrow and provincial — which has often been used to dispute his authorship of plays of such cosmopolitan appeal.

'A man who is right twenty-four hours before everyone else, is taken for a lunatic for twenty-four hours.' (Antoine de Rivarol, 1753-1801) Well, I am looked at as a fool or a seditious maverick. At 20 I was starting to be an economist or economic historian, but the world of the media seduced me for a long time, all the while keeping my interest in psychology and handwriting analysis, and the latter became the guide thread of this book in the Shakespeare authorship debate. As a theatregoing teenager and University student, I watched performances of Shakespeare's plays staged in Budapest, and read them several times in the original or Hungarian translation. I also listened to lectures on psychology at the Free University, and realized how up-to-date psychological knowledge is concentrated in these centuries-old plays. At the same time, my studies in graphology brought me to Shakespeare's six signatures, and discovered an incomprehensible gap between the personality encoded in this handwriting and the traits needed to create such plays. My further analysis of the signatures confirmed that William Shakspere of Stratford could in no way have been the author of Shakespeare's works; the 'Swan of Avon' or the 'Bard of Stratford' was actually illiterate. This has been confirmed by the contents of his will and all other information available about him. My uncertainty was dispelled by the fact that famous scholars, writers and artists had already judged this part of the authorship the same way: Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and many others. But I did not have time and inclination to wander further in the jungle of speculations about the concealed real author. In the meantime the situation has changed. Archives became available through the internet, and I have got enough free time as I retired. The digitisation of old manuscripts boosted many historical and philological research on authorship, but literary scholars still know very little about the significance of handwriting analysis and they are walking around blindfolded to the obvious fact that longhand is a physical evidence of the manuscripts' origin. This awakened the sleeping rebel in me - who completed this book. Not an easy read, but an exciting intellectual adventure for those infected with the virus of independent thinking.

Excerpt from Shakespeare's Enigma and Cipher In view of the appearance of the word Cypher in this play and of its surroundings (suggestive of the enigma); in view of the unwarranted introduction of Hercules among the Worthies (where he was needed for the enigma); in view of his various peculiarities '(all proper for the enigma); in view of Costard's strange arithmetic (which fits the enigma); and in view of the King's strange miscounting (which the enigma can save from being pointless); we have reason for saying that this enigma of ours is not a present invention, but a present discovery; that it is Shakespeare's own which is to say, that Shakespeare com posed the interlude with some secret design, and that themould in which he cast the Nine Worthies was the word Cipher. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This is a new release of the original 1944 edition.