The ever delightful and perennially thought-provoking Theodore Dalrymple has written on a surprising connection between Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford, Sigmund Freud and Adolf Hitler. I kid you not!
Personally I think that the Oxfordians, Baconians, Marlovians and others who think that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare are as mad as Hitler. Perhaps, however, and in fairness, I should qualify this outrageous statement. They might be as mad as Hitler but they are certainly not as nasty as the Nazis. On the contrary, their madness belongs to the nonsensically logical world of Lewis Carroll rather than the perniciously illogical world of racism and socialism that was the peculiarity of the Nazis. On second thoughts, an Oxfordian may be as mad as a hatter but he is certainly not as bad or as mad as a Hitler!
In any event, please follow the link below for Dalrymple’s excellent Shakespearian and Hitlerian perambulation.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/springtime-for-shakespeare/?singlepage=true
Dalrymple gives us another slant. (I suspect Shakespeare didn’t give much of a hoot for any sort of politics myself.) His false syllogism is lovely. “Facist” is yet another 60s hangover. If you weren’t a nihilistic, drug-tripping, practitioner of free love, you were a facist. It stuck. I’ve noticed that most yucky stuff has that sticking quality. Anyhow, ergo, conservative=facist.