Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance discuss The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt

hello uh welcome I'm sitting here with my dear dear friend derek jacobi whom I first worked with in nineteen to 82 82 playing Arial to your Prospero arsc upstaging me even then ah that was my terrible costume I think I think it was me at your assets no anyway we're here to celebrate the declaration of reasonable doubt and to where patrons of the Declaration of reasonable doubt and indeed of the Shakespeare authorship coalition si si that created this wonderful document back in April 2007 yep and it's done very well so we wanted to congratulate the three thousand three hundred signatories and and give it a bit of news about what's happened in the last seven or eight years now the internet and social media being what it is I suspect that this will be also being viewed by people who are not aware of the Declaration of reasonable doubt are not aware of who Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi are or that there is even a question about the authorship of the Shakespeare works there may even be people watching who are very angry and upset about us having a question about the attribution of the works of William Shakespeare to the man from stratford-upon-avon whose name was usually spelled Shaq's paw or Shakespeare yes never Shakespeare never Shakespeare even in his wailing never hyphenated even in his will I think it is will of as there was it was either spelled s88 X P er E or sa a SFA JK s yes so even at the end of his extraordinary life he didn't use the name that he that appears on the frontispiece --is of quarters or folios were after a certain date when his plays appear so we Derek and I are part of a group of people for those you're not aware of this question who feel we have a reasonable doubt that the man from Stratford wrote all these works and that the name shakespeare William Shakespeare is actually a pseudonym for another writer now back in 2007 how would you find out about this there were a number of different people researching different candidates and they would always open their books with the chapter saying why they doubted the man from Stratford so you would read this over and over again many different books that then went on to argue a separate candidate and we a number of us were very impressed by a book by a and a wonderful American scholar Diana Price called Shakespeare's unorthodox biography where diana collects mostly orthodox scholarship yes about the man from stratford a lot of stuff that's not included in their biographies of the man of stratford because it's problematic and she makes a very good case for why there is a question but this is a this is a it's a wonderful book and I recommend it but it's a little bit of a read so we we thought we should have a simple declaration or John Shaham the director of the essay see thought should make a simple declaration to explain to people why we thought it was reasonable to question and doubt the attribution of the plays to the man from Stratford and that's how the Declaration of reasonable doubt came about and it was put out on the Internet Derek and I launched it here in in England and September 2007 juditha yeah I'm following your play following the play I'd written and uh and and it's been since that time it's been signed by 3,300 people which is which is absolutely wonderful including many academics that's right lawyers that's vessels many with higher degrees yes um and and um I really highly recommend it as a explanation of why we feel there is a question it doesn't propose any other candidates it just says why there is a question and we invited criticism from anyone and indeed we've had an advocacy from the Shakespeare Birthplace trust and and James Shapiro has written a book contested will in these last seven years mentioning the Declaration but none of these critics have done much more than really try to attack our character exactly we have both been called mad that we should both really been a lunatic asylum but this is the problem is that you know when you present something like this which does affect people intellectually emotionally it is we are trying to counter what we consider a myth a legend and they are very difficult to dislodge and the normal reaction that anyone who offers this alternative gets is insult by two per Asian never discussion never any interest complete I posted on the streets of a quite interesting oh yes guys yeah just the academics it's the academics of published it yes and and the people Natalie who's whose reputations and livelihoods depend on this rapid math yeah we are even been called on Shakespearean and shakes Oh anti Shakespearean how can we be on Shakespearean help me be an to fix I or they may not be quite a very good judge of character many well we we've invited the criticism by putting the declaration out has called a declaration it's not a whisper or it's a declaration of something so obviously we've put it out there and we've listened to all the criticism that that's come that serious criticism and and we're happy to announce that we've made five minor adjustments to the declaration we've adjusted two of the people whom we list as preeminent doubters yes in that there are a lot of very wonderful writers and thinkers through histories of through the four hundred year since Shakespeare wrote who have raised doubts Mark Twain Walt Whitman Freud Freud a number of different people we were in wells Chapman and two of those their doubts well maybe we slightly over exaggerated their doubts and we've removed them and replaced them with two other eminent people who is doubts are a little bit more strong so that's one adjustment we've made and then we've had to clarify three points which have received criticism and so if you go to the doubt about will calm the the site of the declaration you'll see these these clarifications but I think that's a wonderful record after eight years of fantastic when you think of it of the mass of minds and people who think about shakes been believed the man from Stratford wrote the plays you they they've only come back with these five minor criticisms and we have adjusted which is all we're asking people to do it if we are means we are asking for discussion yeah we're putting a idea forward a theory for we're not banging drums Minh not being violent about it we be I hope gracious about it and and it's fun yeah yes yeah it's it is face the best whodunit in the world I mean you're right the desert there's there's a deep emotional attachment to this author yeah there was for me and expect and a formula yeah I can't think I I mean I was taken to hear the plays from about age 12 I think and then was acting them at age 16 playing Hamlet at 16 I skipped all the other five but but it was partly because I felt the person that the author was was um naming things in me that I hadn't found language for that he was in a way creating me as Harold Bloom says yeah and so the attachment to the the author is very deep and very tense and for 28 years I believed it was the man from Stratford it was it was a great surprise to me to find out he to me too when did you first explosions I were my first time reading a book called by Charlton album the mysterious mr. Shakespeare and a very thick 900-page volume um and I have never crossed my mind that the man from Stratford didn't write them all there was that there was a problem with with his connection were you unless thirties when you came upon ah I was 82 are you in here I was in my early forties Wow yes so for about 40 years young and I don't and I played Hamlet by that time yeah 400 times and I was still a believer then hmm well when you read about Oxford the connections between the Oxford's life and Hamlet are silver mark oh absolutely absolutely I didn't write the plays whoever wrote the place must have known about his life I guess I was taught to I mean whoever it was whoever shall I say they were hmm the amount of knowledge of a genius okay but you can't a genius without knowledge um and the amounted lot and the scale of it of the scope of his knowledge I sometimes think it could one man know all that and be able to express all that quite naturally there you know he talks he talks like a lawyer the the all the legal metaphors in the play the technical terms of many different professions that he gets right that's what struck Mark Twain and they used quite naturally and they're not in inverted commas they're just flowing but they mmm Mark Twain was working boats on the Mississippi River when he wrote his book doubting the authorship of the doubting the command from Stratford Shakespeare plays and one of his one of his one of the things that struck him was that would be impossible for him to write about being a pilot on a boat on the Mississippi to have the right terminology and slang and of that job yeah you couldn't imagine it no matter what genius you were obviously Shakes the author of the place was a genius but you had to have learnt somehow all of this vital knowledge that's why of which all the experts in each of the fields says he's writing could it be more than one mind could it be an amalgam of minds that somebody was gathering it's certainly the case in modern film and television now isn't you'll have a central genius a central code of character say West Wing there's a central that I'd forget his name who is leading the whole thing and he has a lot of consultants adding and bringing things in he allows actors sometimes even to write scripts of episodes but he makes the judgment about which one is right and wrong yeah so so I think I'm that's it that's a very interesting thing but we're falling right away you see into the into the question of who did it if if mislead shax were from Stratford didn't and the Declaration is a very it is a neutral document yeah and as patrons of the Declaration we stand by the new the first important thing to do being to make a neutral declaration of why there is a question but most people don't think there is a question or even unaware as some of you may be that there even is a question now the other bit of news we wanted to give is that this this is a as you can see it's a very enlightening and enjoyable mystery and and it's not sealed and done there's new evidence coming forward all the time and in the last eight years we've been joined by the most wonderful man Alexander war and he's made a few very good discoveries which if we'd had him when we made the initial declaration we would have had in the initial declaration we don't want to add things to a declaration that people have signed without them being able to check it so we've made them as an addendum but there there are a couple of really wonderful new reasons to doubt that Alexandra's found and we've drafted and attach to the Declaration which you can find at the site and then also a very very um kind of alarming record of the combat that's taken place between the Shakespeare Birthplace trust who obviously are there to defend the man from Stratford and the s AC and Alexander's written a very good report about the correspondence and the um I am sad that I can't really call it a discussion it's more of a slagging matches yeah yeah that's gone on but it's quite an interesting record of just how intense this debate can be it came to a head didn't it with the challenge there was a challenge yes do the here the birthplace trust Jabbar sort mock trial and the I contributed financially to it people raised 40,000 pounds to have this trial whereby though the doubters would put their case and birth base trust would put their case and if they won if it was judged that they their evidence outweighed our evidence etc then they would receive 40,000 pounds and this was and this was because they had claimed that it was beyond beyond time so all we said was right if you if you've claimed that it's beyond doubt then come to a courtroom and and prove that's beyond reasonable doubt yes and if you prove that we'll give you forty thousand pounds to your charity now it's a registered charity who would think they would they would jump at that yeah it was all your legal field to turn acknowledged to do that but they turned it down they wouldn't they wouldn't take the challenge at all we've been trying and we will carry on trying to really bring the what I call the Stratfor D ins I don't mean it in a disrespect to the table to have a reasonable discussion Derek and I don't have the same image of who the author is and and many of the people around the straw players have many different ideas but I have absolute respect for Derek's perception of the Audia it's mutual and it's mutant and I find that all of us outside of orthodoxy are very happy to have discussions about this and to share evidence and question interpretations and as time goes on we become more secure in in our beliefs and as all the evidence is accumulated is happening more and more every day every week it seems hmm we feel that we are on sure a ground and I suppose that makes us more relaxed in a way to be able to discuss it to be able to talk about it with our minds lying each other off yes yes I don't I have no intention to try suppress or change another person's idea about who Shakespeare is it so it's not a personal thing but I ask the same respect from from though from from from other people I suppose and yes that this can be a much more enjoyable inquiry it's not an important matter compared to global warming no all the important things to deal with it's a historical question yes I mean I suppose I as a creative artist interested in making modern theatre and wishing in my wildest dreams that this second Elizabethan period might make plays that were as great as that year they were Shakespeare was after all created by a human being or a group of human beings can't we aim at that again to me it is important to know whether for example the sonnets are just a unemotional unperson 'el technical exercise of the imagination yeah or whether they have personal I'm feeling Emma I don't know any writer any actress who can't help but involve their own life experience experience personality views of life every writer surely come rights from you as like actors you bet yeah you can't cry Walsh or Silas cry technically you or laugh technically you if you if you're not moved or humored by what's in the play after maybe four hundred performances or not then you find something equivalent in your life in your life moves you absolutely and how to if I'm wrong about this and the Stratfor dunes are right that the sonnets are you can't read anything biographical in them they're just a technical exercise I'd like to know that because then that's obvious how you write great sonnets it doesn't convince me no it doesn't convey I need I'm not the poet's I told you it doesn't convince me about them there no and what also is is that you know we are accused I choose the word pointedly we are accused of trying to find biographical details biographical similarities between alternative people alternative writers and we are castigated for that but the moment there is the smidgen of of a relationship to Manta Stratford us they're in there in immediately yeah yeah I have no problem by the way with the fantasy and the hypothesis and the imagination of writers like Shapiro and and say Stephen Greenblatt uzi marvelous writer these are very very intelligent and imaginative creative people I would which I would hate they allow us to be I just ask the same from them yeah that's right the same respect and yes yes um the we were also doing this around this marvelous 400th anniversary and and of course it's true someone wrote these plays even if we disagree about the name of that person that the the person we all feel love for is the same person yes you know soul Shakespeare so the idea that that we are hateful or disrespectful to Shakespeare because we think it's a different name we wanted to come on record and just say we will that's not the case at all and we both are taking part in these um 400th anniversary celebrations Derek by playing Mercutio you're not on the oldest Mercutio I suspect the finest it will ever be but will it will wait well see and I'm working at the Globe and doing sonnet wargs and many different things and very happily and not with no intention of like standing up and saying you're all wrong and this is a shame or anything like that nothing of this sort curiously 400 years ago when he died nobody took any notice at all they didn't know it was not even a letter no recording his death is there nothing this is remarkable I mean you you when you think that when Burbidge died it said that the whole of London mourned now Burbidge Hemings Condell Hemmings and Condor who were clearly great friends they're actors who were mentioned in Shakespeare's will shacks Boswell I should say and Beaumont when he died straight to Westminster Abbey Frances Bowmont who is a much less known right many of you may not even be aware of his name he collaborated with the man called Fletcher and he died a month or so before shacks burn was buried immediately a month before shacks burrs death into Westminster Abbey Ben Jonson also in 1637 when he dies another great writer of the period for those of you don't know him he goes straight into the Abbey and there are something like 33 eulogies written for him yes extraordinary amount it was the practice at the Paley absolutely I thought that is that is what is so suspicious that there wasn't anything anything when when shacks murdered Oh dumb in do we do are we to believe that he was less loved in his time than he is now that he was a less remarkable person less witty less less compassionate less wise less profound and deep than the works suggest he is and that no not to be his family his neighbors and Stratford no one seems to have even known he was a writer up in a Stratford I mean extorting TUI's for his family will illiterate his children were illiterate is he we're told he went to school at the grammar school there was no document for Evans to say that none of his he was the oldest son none of his brothers went to school what was their quote you we heard that is why he wrote this morning because the family little it is a literally literally literally literally greatest writer illiterate that's the family I mean I mean miracles happen and and and there's no doubt that there's genius involved in this yes I said though you can be born with genius you can't be born with book learning and life experience and that that's where for me the question resides and also that the fact that the the plays are set not just in England whoever wrote them had an intimate knowledge of Italy France the noble noble houses of France and Italy um he must have journeyed he must have he couldn't have got all this knowledge talking to a couple of sailors in the park it surely it's no disrespect but he couldn't his knowledge of of music medicine mathematics horticulture heraldry military knowledge naval knowledge I mean just law philosophy you name it he he added at his fingertips or they did mmm we don't know he goes to sort I mean the the response to this is they learnt all this in the grammar school now to be stripped as as we are people are very strict with us about our theories there is actually is no record that he attended the grammar school the records of the years he attended are lost a lot and also he wouldn't have gone to the grammar school until the age of 7 7 to 13 and in order to get into the school he had to be able to read and write they didn't teach him to even had you told him Latin and Greek or whatever but they didn't teach him to read oh who taught him his family but a littler who taught him and they didn't teach in continental languages and this is a man for two who went to sources that were in French Italian Spanish Greek Latin not for they are translated into English and finds the sources for his place in those things so he is remarkably remarkably educated now one of the things that's aimed at us and I think it's worth addressing here is that we are snobs yes we can't believe a common man wrote these plays which is not the case at all nor is it the case of any of the authorship sceptics that I know the evidence is clear Christopher Marlowe a genius writer he's noticed in grammar school by the university educated teacher who do most of these schools I think the one in Stratford too had a university educated teacher he's noticed and he's promoted up to Oxford University isn't here where he gains the education it's clear in his play he's Cambridge Cambridgeshire right Cambridge um so he you're a Cambridge man aren't you and um so there's clear evidence that a common man can write brilliant plays as Marlowe did that's not the question at all but I've often wondered why did this tutor in the Stratford school with this young incredible genius not do the same thing for him that they didn't her mother if indeed he was there if he did he was yes I it's it's it's so unfair this this thing about being a snob I mean I even like the real sound no you mean we try numb from Gor blimey I'd certainly do yes so so what is I don't know I didn't get it I really don't get it I think the thought is because there's so much learning in the plays about aristocratic last time yes yes and and most of the characters are involved in a rest aquatic behavior there are no place about Stratford no no India or any indication of a Warwickshire dialect or work sure lifestyle nearly all the plays are concerned with kings and princes and queens and princesses and so naturally some of the candidates we look to are people who were in their world you know where of that world yes so to conclude um we got carried away with it's such an enjoyable talk about um to conclude I just wanted to clarify we've been using the name Shakespeare and shax / or shaq spear to try and separate for just reasons of discussion the author shakespeare sheikh - spear william shakespeare the author of the plays and poems and and the the man who those plays and poems are attributed to seven years after his death William SHAKSPER of Stratford upon Avon who is the I suppose preeminent candidate to be the author and we separate these two so we can discuss discuss other candidates who who we feel are also possible candidates for the authorship of the William Shakespeare plays I hope that's clear he we don't deny that a man William SHAKSPER from Stratford point even existed of course he existed and and and and I feel he he may have written the plays I think that's also we're not saying that's not impossible I'd like to talk about we'd like to talk about it he may have collaborated he may have just been paid to the very brave thing of being the the frontman I say Dalton Trumbo had to find during the McCarthy years this wonderful film that just came out recently that in times of danger said writers have often had to find someone else to be the the frontman and this was this was talked about in the Elizabethan period reported that that noblemen were doing this so he may have done that even if they did that that was a very brave thing to do so we honor and respect him as having a very important role and and providing a very very beautiful authorship story you are true or not so the two end then I would encourage you to to have a look at the Declaration of reasonable doubt it's it's I believe it's going to be a historic document if if anything and it is proved to be wrong or solved then we will adjust it so we're going to keep it it's a living document as is the mystery you can find it at doubt about will dot org and if you if you do sign it you'll be joining three thousand over three thousand people who signed it including a thousand two hundred people with advanced degrees and and many other wonderful people if you don't feel you can sign it then we'd certainly love to hear why and you can send your questions I think to the Shakespeare authorship coalition but please believe us and I hope we've made it clear that we we don't mean any negative disrespect to the man from Stratford or the author Shakespeare whether they are together or separate nor to any of those wonderful people who are believed in that and who are doing a lot of excellent work inquiring about both characters I can't put it better don't be so thanks very much for listening thank you

Channel: DoubtAboutWill

Views: 74,659

Rating: 4.7372804 out of 5

Keywords: Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylnace, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Authorship, Shakespeare Authorship Question, Declaration of Reasonable Doubt, Shakespeare Authorship Coalition

Id: 7ZNYifQfYiE

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/georgex]

Well you can't doubt their sincerity. They would have to be two of the best actors in the world to fake that.

[u/[deleted]]

These fucking morons...