The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Shakey’s Madness: Does a Mental Disorder Reveal the “Real” William Shakespeare? by Robert P Boog

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Shakey's Madness: Does a Mental Disorder Reveal the "Real" William Shakespeare? by Robert P Boog Have you always been fascinated by history - even just a little bit? If you have, odds are you'll be delighted by this gem of a book. You won't be getting the popular story of how William Shakespeare's name is on the plays, poems, and sonnets, so why doubt him? Instead, using a unique, and original approach, author Robert Boog points out the glaring errors. For example, if the man from Stratford-upon-Avon was the "real" author, when why the fainting, insomnia, despair, depression, and suicidal thoughts found in the Shakespeare canon? Boog points out that these things are symptoms of Bipolar II Affective Disorder (pronounced "Bipolar Two Affective Disorder) and Shakey's Madness explains how these symptoms can only be found in 2.6% of today's population, so this percentage may have been even smaller during the Elizabethan era. Bipolar symptoms fit only one person living during the time of Queen Elizabeth. Who? Read Shakey's Madness to discover: does a mental disorder reveal the "real" William Shakespeare?

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks it's voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here in the interview podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in be sure to go to goodreads.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss. See everything, reading and reviewing over there.

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Also go to youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, hit the bell notification button there. Drill, be part of the big family of the Chris Voss family because this family is the one that doesn't judge you unlike your other one, which I'm sure judges you harshly. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. He's a multi-book author. He's written quite a few books, and this is an interesting one. This one is called Shakey's Madness. Does a mental disorder reveal the real? William Shakespeare just came out April 1st, 2021. Wait, what year am I in? I don't know. I'm still in 2021 as far as I'm concerned. Robert P. Boog is the author,

is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about his amazing books. We'll probably hear about some of his other stuff and works he's done because he's pretty prolific in book writing. I'm still just, I barely got my first book out. He's got like a bunch of them. So we'll get into some of his works and what he's doing. He is a graduate of UCLA with a degree in English literature. He and his wife own a real estate company, Bob Boog Realty in Valencia, California. Beautiful place, Valencia. There you go. Which is located about 20 miles north of the city of nasty Los Angeles. I'm just kidding. I love Los Angeles except for the smog and the traffic. Those two things. But I was born and raised in LA. Besides hanging out with his wife and two sons, Robert enjoys petting his

dogs, taking long walks to the refrigerator. And do the dogs go on long walks to the refrigerator? Scribbling down his thoughts, Robert has written songs as well as books. Man, this guy's creative. And his latest venture, the book that we'll be talking about today. Welcome to the show. Robert, how are you? I'm great. How are you, Chris? Good, good, good. Give us your plugs on your... I should go look you up on those

interwebs in the sky. Yeah, you can do a search. Just Boog, my last name. You can go to YouTube if you want to hear songs. My webpage is robertboog.com. That's where I've got the links to the books and some videos too. Yeah, those people who don't have Neil Young on Spotify now can go to YouTube and listen to your songs because that's a whole library that disappeared off there, I guess, recently.

People will watch my videos 10 years from now and go, what is he talking about? Google it. because that's the whole library that disappeared off there, I guess, recently. People will watch my videos 10 years from now. They're going to go, what is he talking about? Google it. I'm sure, hopefully, I don't know. If the internet still works in 10 years, it'll be there. Anyway, guys, so what motivated you to want to write this book? You've written several books.

How many books have you written, by the way? I've written six or seven books. I write fast. That's why. Yeah, I think fast. I write fast kind of thing. Yeah. I had written another book called Hang Shakespeare. I saw that. Yeah. And I actually got a bad review on it. And so I was going to write this reply to this and it turned out to be like 10 pages. And then

those 10 pages turned into 30 pages. And the next thing you knew, I had 90 pages. That's, I guess, in Hang Shakespeare, I made this discovery that I thought the author of the works suffered from bipolar disorder. And then because it comes towards the end of the book in one paragraph, I thought, you know what? This guy didn't get the point. Of course, after writing Shakey's Madness, the same guy gave me the same little review. I don't think he read either book, to be honest. They usually don't. Yeah, people do that.

They usually don't. They're sitting in their mom's basement asking their mom to make them a sandwich while they're playing video games and, I don't know, drinking Mountain Dew. They're just hating on people on the internet. People do it all do it all the time they'll respond to my videos on youtube and you can tell that they're like you didn't cover this and i'm like you clearly didn't watch the past the first minute or two right covered that you just gotta get five or

six minutes in and hey honey we can't get we can't get right so that's interesting so you wrote the book you wrote this book about hanging Shakespeare. Can you show me on the doll where Shakespeare hurt you? What's his fascination with Shakespeare? Did he owe you money or something? What's going on there? I guess I'm one of those people that when something doesn't make sense, I'm like a dog with a bone.

When I was in first grade, I attended a Catholic school. In first grade, the teacher talked about, or Sister Elizabeth Ann talked about Adam and Eve. And so I raised my hand and I asked her, Sister, why did God create man twice? And she said, what are you talking about? And then I said, it's obvious. He created man on the fifth or sixth day, and then he created Adam and Eve. So he created man twice, right? And then she sent me to the Mother Superior. And so I got whacked a couple of times there. But I would make these little things that are obvious that to me, to me, that seemed like really obvious, but to some people didn't. Another example is like the,

the wizard of Oz. When I was a kid, we actually went to my grandmother's house to watch the wizard of Oz because she had a color TV. And after watching it, I told my brother, that was the dumbest movie ever. He was going,

why? And I said, my sisters were all afraid of the Wicked Witch of the West. Now, myself, I was afraid of those flying monkeys. Yeah, the monkeys. They scared the crap out of me. Had their little purple vests or whatever. Anyway, so I was thinking to myself, why would you leave a bucket of water on your kitchen floor?

Wouldn't you be afraid of those flying monkeys just snagging it? Knocking that over. So when it comes to Shakespeare, okay, so here's the thing that, okay, I've been married for over 20 years. I just realized that's probably a metaphor, huh? Isn't it the water? I don't know. A metaphor for something. Washing away evil or something? I don't know. Maybe. I well i don't know washing away evil or something

maybe i'm gonna have to go google it now you fuck me up dude i was okay so the pandemic hit and i've got time to kill i'm watching tv and there's this commercial for latuda on all the time and so i was wondering what this commercial must cost a lot of money because they keep playing it all the time. And so I looked on my iPhone and asked, what is Latuda? How much does it cost? And it costs $1,500 for a one month supply. And it treats bipolar disorder.

And then that same day I was doom scrolling on Twitter and Sir Patrick Stewart was reading a Shakespeare sonnet. And the one he picked was full of doom and gloom and death. And I joked, I said, it sounds like old Shakey could have used some Latuda. And then I put, you know, one and one together. And I said, maybe he did suffer from bipolar disorder. That's how the other thing, the thing about Shakespeare that never really made sense to me was about his wife. And that's what I mean.

But he's married. Oh, yeah. His wife's name was like Anne Hathaway. And, okay, so here's the story of Shakespeare that always got to me. All right. Shakespeare dies, and what happens? His two friends collect his collect his works

and then they get published right now i've been married for over 20 years my wife would be all over that why wouldn't his wife had that stuff she would wouldn't she be saying like where do we get all this money to buy the biggest house in town and he she never says anything so that's true to me that never made sense at all and so like i said i'm like a dog on a bone i've got to figure out what is going on here maybe what could she read and the answer is no she was illiterate his two daughters never went to school. That seems odd. You're the world's greatest writer, but your kids can't read your works. One daughter could assign her initial.

They made marks, though. His parents couldn't read. The whole thing just didn't make sense. And so I started to read more about someone else that made more sense, and that was the Earl of Oxford, the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. He's been long suspected of being the... And basically, the summation is that Shakespeare ripped him off, or what's that word in publishing that's called when people steal their works? Plagiarizing.

Plagiarizing, there you go. It's a Friday for me. In the... Two shows a day sometimes but yeah so that's the that's the i don't think he no i think that edward devere i don't think shakespeare could knew how to write i i think i honestly don't have you ever seen his signature no it looks like he's drunk like when he signs his name. Sounds like my signature. I didn't even know the guy was married. I just figured since he had a bunch of guys in his show and no women,

and they were all running around in tights and stuff, talking all highfalutin, I always figured something else was going on. And there's nothing wrong with that either. But I'm just saying, I didn't know he was straight. Yeah, that was the thing. The Earl of Oxford is this raging sex life, really. Dang, go Earl. Yeah. So he actually went to Italy and spent a year and a half there.

And when he came back, he didn't speak to his wife for five years. Or, like, he shunned her. You say that like it's a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I could get away say that like it's a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I could get away with that. Let's put it that way. It's better when you get the silent treatment from the wife because you're like, it's a piece of quiet.

Yeah. Do you want to know what's pissing me off why I'm not talking to you? No, I'm really fine. I respect your opinion. I'm in my COVID cave right now. Yeah, there you go. There you go. You can use that for a while.

I know there was some guys who claimed they had COVID so they could go spend two weeks with their mistresses during the first thing. I think there was a Craigslist ad where you could pay a crew to show up with an ambulance and a gurney and stuff, and they would haul you off and be like, yeah, he's got COVID. He'll be back in two weeks. You can't see him in the hospital because everyone's got COVID. And I think it was an ad on Craigslist. They would pay for that, yeah. That's funny.

Yeah, it's amazing how what you married guys are doing. I'm a single man. I don't have to deal with any of this. So back to Shakespeare and stuff. So I think there was the other thing that I heard about is basically Shakespeare never traveled anywhere. Is that true? Shakespeare never left England. Yeah.

They had the plague there. So they didn't want the plague coming into England. And to travel outside of England was you had to get like a special pass from the queen. And the Earl of Oxford got one. and so it was registered that he left they knew exactly when he left and when he came back william never did now i'm not hating on william but i'm just we established earlier he owes you money or something yeah the you're making money actually off and now so that's funny with the book but no i my understanding is the earl traveled and a lot of shakespeare's writings there was references he made that you really couldn't have done unless you traveled right yeah when you look at there's a documentary

film it's called uh nothing is truer than true and they take you on a boat ride through italy and if they were to put pins on a map of the places that the Earl of Oxford was known to have stayed in, those were locations of the plays and of Shakespeare. Wow. And plus, in Shakespeare, they talk about the grave citizens of Pisa, for example. Now, there were directors of Shakespeare plays who used to have the people like walking around wearing black and with somber expressions. And then like in, I don't know, 1984, some guy went to the city of Pisa and discovered that there is a graveyard

there. And so he was, it's like a pun on the grave citizens of Pisa. And plus on this boat ride, on the documentary, he talks about in Romeo and Juliet, which takes place in the city of Verona, there's a sycamore grove northeast of the city. And the trees trees are still there like 400 either 450 year old trees that are on the northeast side of the city so it's like you have all these weird little things that someone really would have had or like in the merchant of venice trylock talks about going to the rialto now the rialto is a bridge so people talk and people talk and say Shakespeare could have just read some books or seen some maps. But a bridge really isn't found on any of these old maps or things like that. It was a bridge, and it was like a marketplace, like a big bridge kind of thing.

So this is kind of interesting. And my understanding is it really makes the Shakespearean people, especially probably ones that have an economy from it you know make a living in it it upsets them a little bit doesn't it oh yeah they just don't they don't want to lose it's weird because and i get what i call the obi-wan kenobi treatment where these are not the droids you're looking for that instead you get this is not the john shakespeare you looking for, or this is not the William. Here's what I mean by that. In 1602, William Shakespeare bought 107 acres, and he purchased it for 320 pounds, which was an incredibly large amount for land back then.

He purchased it in the city of Stratford-upon-Avon. And he purchased it from these two guys, John and William Combe, who had purchased it from a guy named Rice Griffin. And Rice Griffin had purchased it from a man named William Clopton. Now, there's a lease that William Clopton, when William Clopton sold the property, there's a document that shows all of his tenants. And one of his tenants in 1570 was John Shakespeare. John Shakespeare was William's father. And so the Shakespeare scholars say, this is not the John Shakespeare you're looking for. But wait, why would William Shakespeare buy 107 acres that his father had leased? So his father had leased 14 acres plus

this 107 acres. So it's 121 acres, really, that he had leased. And so now you've got William purchasing 107 acres when he lives in London, supposedly, writing plays and performing and helping them, supposedly or allegedly. And he purchases all this property in Stratford-upon-Avon. So it just doesn't really add up. That's interesting, man. So what do we need to do? Do we need to rewrite history, which is going to screw up a lot of Shakespeare fairs? I know there's a big one here in Cedar City every year, the Shakespearean Festival, I think they call it. I don't see why they can't live with, like, two amusement park kind of things.

Like, here in Southern California, we have Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland, and they're like 12 miles apart. So you go to this one, you go to that one. Why not just be truthful and say, look, this is the guy who actually wrote it. This is the guy who perhaps promoted it. I don't know. He kind of ripped off the family and he plagiarized. He didn't really plagiarize because i think he had a deal that he would never say anything and he never really said he was the playwright or he was the

poet people just saw his name and they assume his name is on it and therefore he maybe he maybe the earl guy was like the screenwriter and then uh shakespeare was like the uh you know spielberg guy who just does the movie and puts the director. Yeah. I thought that too originally, but I don't think that. I think William was just a money guy. Yeah. He was just, he invested in the theater and things like that, but I just don't see him as being a writer or even.

I think that there was a big cover up at the time. Maybe he was paying the Earl and the Earl was just like, Hey, I don't want to be famous, man. Just give me some shillings for this thing. It was the opposite. The Earl was... Okay, so one of the things with bipolar disorder, one of the symptoms is excessive spending.

Now, the Earl of Oxford, when he was 21, inherited about $70 million in today's money. And by the time he was 31, he had spent everything. It was all gone. So he was a spender. Yeah. And so that was one of the things, like, there are certain, it would be like if you had MS or some kind of a disease that leaves definite marks on the person. So that you would say, even though they were writing, they're talking about writing with

a lame arm or something like that. They would be describing part of their illness in their own writing. So they couldn't, they can't really hide it. And that's what I'm trying to put out in this book that, and also bring more awareness to bipolar disorder, because it seems like it's increasing. It just seems this is something that it's approximately 3% of the population worldwide. And we're talking about schizophrenia or, you know, manic, they used to call it manic depression. And I believe that the Earl of Oxford had a rare form, which is first epilepsy and then bipolar disorder, which affects like 0.05% of the population. And I say this because in some of the plays, they use a drug called mummy or mummia. Now, mummy was taken from actual mummies in Egypt.

Sounds like an early form of molly or something. Yeah. And they would crush it up and apothecaries would sell it. And it was like smelling salt. So if someone fainted, they would put it under their nose and it would revive them in shakespeare's plays there are like three references to this and so you've got to be wondering this stuff was super expensive because they had to ship it all the way from egypt so how would someone like from stratford upon av, even Noah, that kind of thing. Yeah.

So this Earl blows through a ton of money. He's clearly on Amazon every day. I think we know people like that. And so do you think there was a deal or did, do you think that Shakespeare outright stole from him or what do you think? Okay. Here's what I think happened. Okay.

So the Earl of Oxford lived. Okay. So when the Earl of Oxford was 12 years old, his father died and his mother remarried quickly. So the Earl was sent to live at the house of William Cecil, who was Queen Elizabeth's right-hand man. And Cecil had this huge mansion, the world's largest library of the time. And the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, had to spend four hours a day learning Latin and French and just had all these other things that he had to do, like dancing, fencing, all these different pursuits, playing music. So he did this until he reached age 20. Then he married Cecil's daughter.

And after he married her, he took off to Italy for a year and a half. They had this child. And then when he was 31, he was out of money. A lot of money in a book. Like a whole weekend in Vegas right there. In 1588, the Spanish Armada War happened. He outfitted a ship. He went to fight the Spanish and got called back to his home to discover that his wife had passed away.

And then he blew through more money and William Cecil banished him from the house and said, I'm taking custody of your three daughters. Wow. So there was a man by the name of Henry Rossley. It's spelled weird. It's spelled like W-R-I-O-T-H-E-I-E-S-L-E-Y or something like that. So it's's odd spelling. But William Cecil, who is the grandfather of Edward's daughter, who is now 14 years old, he wants to arrange a marriage to Henry Rosley. And I'm thinking, what if Edward did not want his daughter to marry the young Henry Rosley?

So why would that be? His wife had always claimed that she had been faithful during those five years that he was in Italy. And what if she claimed that she was raped by Risely's father? In that case, his daughter would be marrying her stepbrother. So he does not want his daughter to marry Henry Reisling, but he can't get through to her because William Cecil has banned him from any communication with his daughters. What can he do? The only thing he can do, he figures, is what if I write a poem that is like a coded message? And it's called Venus venus and adonis and the way the poem ends is adonis gets killed by this wild boar and interestingly a wild

boar is found on family coat of arms of the devere family so it'd be like a coded message don't marry this girl or and i think yeah the the following um year he writes this other poem called the rape of lucrece where he explains maybe in another coded message wow these people have some serious issues yeah i noticed that medication is also good for schizophrenia, evidently, that you mentioned you saw on TV. Yeah, that's what bipolar disorder is. Yeah. One of my other personalities takes that. I think it's one of the eight. I think it's the one who always says kill, kill all the time. The judge says I can't listen to anymore. But my parole agent keeps me in line, I think. What are some other facts we need to know that you found in your books? Yeah, my original take on it, what I did is I sent it to three different psychiatrists

because I thought, what if I'm crazy about this? Am I in the realm of possibility? And this one psychiatrist who has written extensively on Shakespeare said that I was the first person in over 400 years to say that the Earl of Oxford had bipolar disorder. And that it was, even though it's been over 400 years and he could not make a valid medical diagnosis without viewing the subject in person, that my theory did have merit. That was something.

The weird thing about bipolar disorder is that there is no test. It's not like a COVID where they can take a swab of antibodies from your nostril or a blood test. It's a mood disorder. And there's actually a website that's, they're trying to raise money to, it's called like a quest for the test, to get a test for bipolar disorder because it affects people. And this is where I've become an advocate for this because I have relatives, two of them, in their twenties. And the bipolar disorder, the symptoms of it don't start to emerge until a person's in their early 20s. And that's when kids are going to college and learning about Shakespeare.

So I thought it's like a natural fit that why not talk about mental health along with Shakespeare when students are getting into it. This may be why a lot of people are unhappy with you in the Shakespeare community that has an economy off it. You're not only saying he plagiarized somebody else's works, but you're calling him crazy. See, the real guy, the William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, exhibited no symptoms of bipolar disorder. They're all with the Earl of Oxford. Yeah, and one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder

or not really a symptom is, but there's a lack of self-confidence. And if you think about it, if you are not really sure about yourself, I should say it's self-esteem issues. So they can't really trust themselves because their mood is constantly changing. And so when they're feeling up with a manic kind of mood, their self-confidence is brimming. But when they're down, then there is no self-confidence. They lack it. And they would look for someone else to cover their tracks because of their lack of self-confidence. Or, I'll put my work under this person's name. And back in those days, the political situation in Italy, it was called the Inquisition.

And that's the time period where Edward de Vere went to Italy. He was interrogated by the Italian people of the Inquisition. And so when he returned to England, I'm sure he just wanted to make sure that no one would ever find out about him. There could have been political repercussions because he was so close with the queen. That'll do it, too. That'll do it, too. So what do you hope readers take away from the book after they read it? I just want them to have some more information and make up their own minds. I'm not trying to sell anything other than this is something fun. To me, it's better than politics people have these firm positions and they this has got to be the william of stratford upon avon man they really draw a hard line in the sand

of over it but yeah there weren't the best record keepers back then anyway but yeah there's more records about his father john John Shakespeare, than William. So they were good record keepers. It's surprising. But everything about William has been just erased. And so that, again, why would his wife not know about where he's getting all this money? The house, New House, was the second most expensive house in Stratford upon Avon. When he, wouldn't you say, man, you got all these plays when you die. I want to make

sure I get some money from them. But she was not aware that weren't included in his will. There's nothing. He didn't even pass a Bible. He gave his wife his second best bed. Wow. Why? You know, and nothing was really told. When he died, there was no newspaper clipping or no headline. Shakespeare died. It wasn't until seven years after his death that the first folio was produced. And interesting, the first folio that came out that included the 37 plays of William Shakespeare, it was dedicated to two brothers, William and Philip Herbert. Now, Edward De Vere's daughter, Susan, was married to Philip Herbert. He was a multimillionaire, by the way.

And so you would think if you're going to publish a book that, I don't know, you start out with a trial run. Because back then the typesetting was such where they couldn't print it all in one day. They would have to strike it and retype and recast the type. They purchased 725 copies of the first folio were printed which is a lot of copies and this would be for someone that like if it's a syndicate trying to make money you're not going to make your money until 10 years later or something and trying to sell out that many copies because they were expensive when they came out yeah they're trying to use them as a ghostwriter they're just like hey dad throw his name on it don't sell a few copies we and make a couple shillings i think it was his because his daughter had well because he was the earl of oxford he had two secretaries

so i think he had his secretary make a copy and after he died the secretary gave the daughter his copies of the plays and that's see the story goes that the two friends, Henry Condell and John Hemming, collected the plays that had been produced and performed at the Globe Theatre. And that's how the plays of William Shakespeare came together. But there was a fire that burned the Globe Theatre down in 1613. So it seems unlikely that they would have collected the old quartos or been able to, but it makes more sense to me, at least, that the daughter had the copies given to her by a secretary. And that's why 18 of the plays that had never been performed show up in the first folio. Yeah. That's interesting, man. That's really interesting. So as we go out, this has been

wonderful to discuss with you. Give us your plugs again so people can find you on the interwebs. Okay. Just you can do a Google search of my last name, Boog Robert on YouTube. I've done a couple of Shakespeare, like a Shakespeare quiz and a Who Wrote Shakespeare?

You can find that if you're interested. My book's on Amazon and you can findote Shakespeare. You can find that if you're interested. My book's on Amazon, and you can find me there, and also robertboog.com. There you go. There you go. Check it out, guys. Shakey's Madness. Does the mental disorder reveal the real William Shakespeare?

I don't know. If you've seen some of his plays, definitely there's a lot of proof there. I don't know. I'm just half kidding, but it is a bit much. But I don't know. I you've seen someone's plays, she definitely, there's a lot of proof there. I don't know. I'm just half kidding, but it is a bit much, but I don't know. I just go watch die hard.

Hey guys, thanks for being with us, Robert. We certainly appreciate it. This has been really insightful. All right. Well, thanks for having me, Chris.

And thanks to your listeners or viewers. There you go. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com. Forge has Chris Foss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Go to YouTube.com, Forge.

That's Chris Voss. And we'll see you over there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. And we'll see you guys next time.