#very shades of historical + modern racism in the arts & sciences too and i don't like that!

[princessnijireiki]

I'm still stuck on this but the other thing I don't like abt Oxfordians is they say their evidence is none of Shakespeare's kids tried to claim royalties on his plays after he passed (1. did not know that was a thing at the time, 2. seems kind of antithetical to the way his plays were performed + were written to include a commoner working class audience, like... maybe his work being out in the world was satisfying enough? tf), and that there were no books written down in his will, and they say the "real Shakespeare" would have had to own over 200 books so they should be in the will to divide up between his estate

now... I am a broke individual who has also dabbled just a lil bit in academia & research papers & writing. and I promise you even digitally I do not own copies of all my research sources. I very specifically hate hauling books when I move, and that's in modern times when books are cheap. cannot tell you how many university press books & textbooks & stuff I've thrown or given away (thrown out only if they're damaged but tbh it was england in the 1600s with no, like, dehumidifiers or anti mold, anti bookworm stuff either... do you know how special a book has to be to me to keep it if it's water damaged from a flood or whatever while it's triggering my allergies? ok)

it's such a weird fucking detached-rich-person thing to use as "proof." if I won the lottery tomorrow & wrote up a will, my books wouldn't be in it. that doesn't mean I don't own books or didn't care about them, just that, like, will it matter when I'm dead? sell it, chuck it, fight over it, I don't care. once upon a time I would've said donate them to a library but most libraries can't just take any old book you drop off; they just become a middleman between the books being sold at the thrift store or pulped.

and also like... WHO is to say he didn't give his stuff away BEFORE dying? or that his kids hadn't already taken their pick rather than it NEEDING to be stipulated in writing? or that any books he had were even actually his? modern public libraries weren't a thing yet, but "borrowing or paying to lease a book from a guy you know" + "interviewing primary sources yourself if there isn't a book on what you wanna write about yet & just taking notes on scraps of paper you will DEFINITELY eventually lose" sure existed.

it's such weirdo energy that to me speaks to the person in question not knowing any worldly intelligent creative poor people who don't hoard evidence of their literacy like trophies because they also got a 9-5 and 3 kids to feed. like I live in a world where William Shakespeare is possible, and normal! and they live in a world where they've convinced themselves he couldn't possibly even exist... or at very least lack the imagination themselves to be able to fathom somebody being brilliant in the dust.

and both those mindsets are just too bad, yk? like it's genuinely disappointing to see folks would rather buy into a 17th century conspiracy theory than accept the fact that a poor person had the audacity to be talented & funny & MOVING in a way that's artistically stood the test of time, because it's impossible to them for this hick to have become a poet. it's ludicrous, but it persists either from bigotry or small mindedness, and it really is too bad that it's even given credence because that means people have been more married to their own snobbishness for 400+ years than they have been willing to engage with art or an artist who challenges their perception of the world & its limitations + its lack thereof.

#very shades of historical + modern racism in the arts & sciences too and i don't like that! #like at this point they're stupid but even if they weren't i don't care if i'm wrong bc THEY'RE coming from a gross place #so YES a shrimp DID fry this rice AND shakespeare wrote his own work & NONE of you can beat my ass! #long post // #shakespeare