5/17/19 discussion about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays

Here is the link to my May 17, 2019, Twitter thread discussion about the constantly questioned authorship of Shakespeare's plays.

This thread says pretty much everything I wanted to say. However, I will try to make one aspect a little clearer.

I argue that critics often try to push authorship of certain parts of Shakespeare's plays onto other (often shadowy and nebulous) authors because those aspects of Shakespeare's plays are so morally ambiguous.

Shakespeare has historically been recognized as the greatest writer in the English language. Because of this, it's also been necessary for people to see him as promoting normative morality. However, Shakespeare's plays don't push this normative morality. So when they don't, critics conveniently claim that those parts of Shakespeare's plays weren't "really" written by Shakespeare.

People can -- and I hoped they would -- see a similarity here with the idea of "listening to the woman."

The only women in society who get listened to are the ones who say they were violated -- because society still sees women as being capable only of being violated -- nothing else. So when women say they weren't violated in certain sexual situations, society claims that that part of their narrative was -- like those pesky parts of Shakespeare's narratives -- "written by somebody else."

In a similar sense, people say sex workers can't really be raped, because sex work is already "rape for pay." However, sex workers are often subject to rape, violence, and violation. People don't' listen to their stories, because their stories don't fit the accepted narratives of normative sexuality and morality.

A really good book that questions this conventional mindset is We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, Edited by Natalie West, with Tina Horn.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.