Ida Sedgwick Proper (1873–1957)

I picked this up at the Book Barn, because I recognized the name of the author as a person who lived on Monhegan Island, Maine (I own at least one other title by her), some time ago, and, also, because I love Shakespeare. It looks like a nutty premise researched by a very knowledgeable person. She was also a fairly renown artist.

A fun synopsis of this book by one Bill Lloyd is at http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2005… (más)

This review of Ida Sedgwick Proper’s Our Elusive Willy is excerpted from two posts on the SHAKSPER listserv

. . . It reminded me of one of my favorite crackpot books *Our Pleasant Willy* by Ida Sedgwick Proper. In this the author demonstrates that Edmund Spenser was really Edward Seymour Earl of Hertford. He in turn had three sons who produced the writings of Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and "bastardized William Shakespeare". We also learn of Shakespeare's "innumerable literary and musical pen-names", and "the deep love of Arbell Stuart for him". And this is just the tip of the iceberg. As Proper confesses [boasts?] in her preface, "It is difficult to make a concise statement"...

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. . .The correct title of Ida Sedgwick Proper's crackpot masterpiece is not, as I gave it, *Our Pleasant Willy* but rather *Our Elusive Willy*. The former is the phrase from Spenser's *The Tears of the Muses* which her title plays on. Miss Proper's book of more than 600 pages was published in 1953 by Irigo Editions of Manchester, Maine. The book includes great tracts of quotations, sometimes in old-spelling, from contemporary letters, legal records, popular histories, even novels. These are imbedded in an interpretive narrative, the product of the author's vigorous and, er, um, wide-ranging mind. I see there are copies on Bookfinder.com for under $10.

It's sometimes hard to follow, but the story goes something like this: Edward Seymour Earl of Hertford and his true love Lady Catherine Grey were so hated by Queen Elizabeth because of their claims to her throne that they felt it necessary to "bastardize" their third son by having him taken away to Stratford by wet-nurse Mary Shakespeare and baptized under the name William Shakespeare, although at one point he seems to have been rechristened as John Smith. John Shakespeare's first wife had been a relative of one of Lady Grey's friends. (Mary was John's second wife and they already had another son named William Shakespeare who went on to become a soldier.) "Our Willy" (as he is usually referred to)was secretly educated and grew up to be a great writer and composer, operating under a number of aliases. He was at different times known as,and produced the works of, Thomas Morley, John Dowland, Christopher Marlowe, Henry Constable, Alfonso Ferrobosco, minor poet John Southerne, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, and the clergyman John Smith who succeeded Launcelot Andrewes as lecturer at Paul's. He was tutor to Lady Arabella Stuart. He did die in 1616, but Miss Proper "feels" it was on 9 November rather than 23 April.

During this busy life "Our Willy" somehow also found the time to write the plays and poems we know as the works of William Shakespeare. Miss Proper's variation on the Shakespeare identity "question" is perhaps unique. It's not that someone else (Bacon? Oxford? Marlowe? Derby?
Pembroke? Queen Elizabeth? your Uncle Ted?) really wrote the Works of Shakespeare. William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon wrote them all right, but he himself WAS SOMEONE ELSE!

What can I say?… (más)