What is a ripperologist?

[mariab]

Shakespeare {...} I've read a bit about the authorship question (which predates Ripperology and has some amusing parallels) and laughed out loud when I read that Mark Twain, who believed Shakespeare was really Sir Francis Bacon, referred to them/him once as 'Shake and Bake'.

Apparently Henry James and John Gielgud (!!) also didn't believe that Shakespeare existed.

Clear proof that the guy didn't write the stuff -- he couldn't spell.

He he. About a week ago Roland Emmerich's Anonymous opened here in Berlin. Now there's a must miss, despite Vanessa Redgrave's participation (playing Queen Elizabeth the I). In the movie Shakespeare even murders Marlow (!), 2 years after Marlow documentedly died. Reminds me of Ripperology's Royal Conspiracy and of the completely fabricated crap about Antonio Salieri having allegedly poisoned Mozart, as pictured in the movie Amadeus. (Though Salieri was indeed Mozart's rival in the Vienna Emperor's Court, but more in a cabal fashion, nothing like shown in the play and in the movie.) Anonymous and Amadeus are lit's and musicology's respective From Hell. :-)

To Chris George:
pétard still exists in French, it means firecracker. (Can't stand those things, and unfortunately in Berlin they're going off all night on New Year's Eve, esp. cherry bombs and stuff like that. Every New Year's in Berlin there's dozens of people ending up with burned eyebrows and blown up fingers. In my neighborhood it sounds like there's a war going on all evening.)