The Queen's Cipher Read Online Free Page A

hard evidence.”
    He thought how right she was. The Victorians had alchemised Shakespeare into a gold standard as safe and sound as the Bank of England. Disseminated widely through new technologies of reproduction and manufacture, Shakespeare had conquered our education system and achieved a mass-market. A laundry list would cost a fortune at Sotheby’s if it was known to have been written by Shakespeare but no such list had been found, only half a dozen ill-formed signatures that didn’t seem to have been written by the same hand.
    “My fellow American Bill Bryson talked about ‘a wealth of text but a poverty of context.’ What we actually know about Shakespeare could be written in a few pages. Yet that doesn’t stop our colleagues from churning out massive doorstoppers almost every month.”
    “Too true,” said Freddie, relieved to find a kindred spirit. “It’s an unstoppable bandwagon and you’ve got to climb on board if you want a career in Eng. Lit. If we told the truth we’d have to say ...”
    She interrupted him. “I’m critiquing a couple for The New York Review . One is called Warwickshire Will and the other is Shakespeare, Man and Artist or is it Artist and Man , I can’t remember. They are both hot off the press, if warmed-up leftovers can be called hot.”
    They had this in common too. “I’m doing Man and Artist for The Times Literary Supplement and I’ve half a mind to say what I really think about Dawkins’ crappy book. I’m really sick of all this cultural piety. As scholars we are trained to evaluate the evidence but where William Shakespeare is concerned it’s largely an act of faith. We are like priests standing at the high altar and ...”
    “You want to bring the temple crashing down on you like Samson.”
    “No, I want a bit of integrity. I’m tired of listening to polished and urbane academics like Professor Cleaver saying what they don’t mean and meaning what they don’t say.”
    He was beginning to sound strident. “I’m merely suggesting that we should use our intelligence and intuition. Shakespeare was a country boy trying to make a living in the theatre, not a god.”
    “So we’re misleading the younger generation by deifying him.”
    “That’s right, as a New Historicist I believe that every expressive action is embedded in a network of material practices, not all of which are clear to us.”
    He was talking about the school of literary criticism that had swept through the university world. The pressure on students and dons to enlist in the movement was immense as research grants and academic posts came to depend on adherence to this methodology.
    “I’m sorry, I don’t agree. I believe the text is what really matters.”
    “And I think context is just as important. How can you exclude social and political factors from the interpretation of literary works?” Freddie could hear his voice rising. “Didn’t you say in your lecture that many of Shakespeare’s plays were an ideological attempt to reconcile Queen Elizabeth’s power with the misogyny of a male court? Wasn’t that a New Historicist argument?”
    “No,” she snapped. “It’s a feminist argument. You weren’t listening properly.”
    They paused to assess the damage to their relationship.
    “There’s another way of looking at this,” he said in a more conciliatory tone. “Sherlock Holmes often praised the ‘scientific imagination’, the ability to go beyond the facts to see what really happened in the past. It’s a kind of inspired storytelling.”
    Dr Dilworth looked at him through half-shut eyes. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Scientists have always sought better explanations. If they hadn’t challenged the validity of the received truth we’d still believe in a flat earth and the four humours of the human body.”
    “You seem to know a bit about science,” he said.
    “My father was a mathematician and, when I was a kid, he gave me books on Pythagoras and Euclid rather than