PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
  Saturday, 01 June 2013
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The moment many of us have long been waiting for is soon upon us—the publishing of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt from a cadre of Shakespeare scholars purporting to demonstrate that the man from Stratford, and only him, could have been the primary author of the Shakespeare works.

Long ago in one of my posts here I wrote that the evidence for the Stratford actor/businessman must be hidden away in some secret vault where only establishment scholars could come and view the unassailable proof of his authorship. This was because so many highly educated Shakespeare enthusiasts that had actually examined the available evidence found it far too lacking as any kind of proof to overcome the apparent chasm of the Stratford man’s life and, as the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt says: “show extensive knowledge of law, philosophy, classical literature, ancient and modern history, mathematics, astronomy, art, music, medicine, horticulture, heraldry, military and naval terminology and tactics; etiquette and manners of the nobility; English, French and Italian court life; Italy; and aristocratic pastimes such as falconry, equestrian sports and royal tennis.”

Finally, we are told, we will be provided the evidence and arguments from some of the most authoritative Shakespearean scholars in the world that will prove why the Stratfordian model is beyond any ‘Reasonable Doubt’. There have been previous books attempting to prove the Stratford man’s authorship. The best I think is by Irvin Leigh Matus in Shakespeare, IN FACT, 1994. But I found nothing in it that precluded the alternative scenario of a hidden author using the businessman/actor from acting as a front man. And even he had pointed out how very few Shakespeare scholars had yet examined any of the authorship evidence themselves.

So it still may seem somewhat new to them if they have not yet delved into the matter thoroughly. In any case, this new book, by several scholars this time, again attempts to make modern and familiar what appears to many as supernatural, and to ensconce ourselves in the reasonableness of what Shakespeare might, in a jest, call “A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor”.

We now find that both sides of the dispute are in agreement that ‘the authorship question’ is important. Professor Shapiro lamented the lack of scholarly interest in the topic; the stylometric analysts Elliott and Valenza agreed, the leaders of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust now say it’s important, and now also many other scholars supporting them say it’s important. So, from any Shakespeare enthusiast, we shouldn’t hear “it’s [the authorship question] not important” or “it doesn’t matter who wrote them”. Now, more Shakespeare enthusiasts, are likely to become at least somewhat knowledgeable about the basic arguments on both sides of the question. Just gathering one-sided arguments to use as ‘ammunition’ is not going to show any intellectual maturity. The main problem is that perhaps no one can review close to what all has been written about so many alternative candidates. Fortunately, the response [by The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition] to the orthodox side has also just now been published so the two viewpoints can be contrasted, even though it can’t possibly contain all the detailed evidence for any alternative candidate. This book is also called “Shakespeare Beyond Doubt?” (but it ends with a question mark. It’s primary authors are John Shahan and Alexander Waugh.

We hope also that we are finally moving beyond the name calling, slanders, and insinuations that ‘doubters’ are ‘Holocaust deniers’, vampires, psychologically aberrant, mentally deficient, etc. Why would anyone have implied such a characteristic to so many high-achieving intellectuals like Henry James, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mortimer Adler, Harry Blackmun, leading Shakespearean actors such as Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, and some modern authors on this topic like Peter Usher, Ph.D, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Peter Sturrock, Ph.D, a Stanford astrophysicist, and Barry Clarke, a writer of logic puzzles for MENSA? These are not people who should be in strait-jackets and locked in dark rooms, just because, like Galileo, they “looked through the telescope”!

More recently, on the mainstream or establishment side of the debate, there is the emphasis on not questioning any approved ‘authority’ on the topic. For instance, Paul Edmondson of the SBT wrote: “There is the loaded assumption that even though one may lack the necessary knowledge and expertise, it is always acceptable to challenge or contradict a knowledgeable and expert authority. It is not. (If the focus of this volume [SBD] were about a specialized area of nuclear physics those last two sentences would not even have been necessary.) But one characteristic of the Shakespeare authorship discussion is its apparent generosity of scope in which everyone can have their say, ignore the evidence for Shakespeare, propose alternative nominees, contradict authorities and feel empowered.”

One response to this argument would be: On what basis are the mainstream Shakespeare scholars ‘authorities’ on the authorship question? There have been doubters who have spent 20 years or more on the authorship question, or more specifically, on just one aspect of this question. Have any of the mainstream scholars researched the authorship question for that length of time? In addition, why could not an expert, of Shakespeare’s time, in the law, astronomy, music, medicine, seamanship, Italy, and such, challenge a non-expert of these fields but who is a Shakespeare scholar? And what about the beliefs of those tenured professors, like one of mine, who, on the last day of class, said “If you learn ANYTHING in all of your college years, you should at least have learned to question Authority”. Or is intellectual curiosity and independence to be discouraged and suppressed?

In astrophysics Professor Peter Sturrock’s new book, AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question, he suggests an intellectual attitude with these precepts:

• All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)
• Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)
• Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)
• Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
• It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
• A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)
• The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)
• To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)
• It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
• Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)
• All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Does anyone really think that Prof. Sturrock would act as Paul Edmondson claims--that such a scholar would never listen to or consider an objection by a well-informed non-professor on some specific question within that field? And that he would be totally closed-minded to everyone outside of the approved in-group of academic astrophysics researchers? If so, why would scholars like him write books out of their specialty in the first place?

The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt has some commonality to the U.S. Declaration of Independence in the 18th century. Then the American scientist, statesman, and diplomatic leader Benjamin Franklin, who was in France seeking support for the American cause, was demonized by the then propaganda as a “traitor to his king”, the “dean of all charlatans,” who “deceived the good with his white hairs, and fools with his spectacles”. It kind of makes it seem like he was a part of some feeble-minded conspiracy than one of many individuals that disagreed with a group with great power and self-claimed ‘authority’.

So it looks now that we’re moving into arguments by evidence, which is where the question should be examined. We can imagine the two sides as something like Elizabethan jousters who will take to the field and then have their turns “shaking their lances” at their opponent’s perceived ignorance. I imagine it will be as entertaining as it will be educational for any Shakespeare enthusiast.

Next, we’ll look at some preliminary exchanges.
10 years ago
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#4122
Chapter 12 - Shakespeare and School

Before going on to chapter 12 I want to clarify a couple points in the previous post which was submitted a little hastily. In the second to last paragraph when I mentioned Sir Fulke Greville being a friend of Sir Francs Bacon, I meant the Greville who was the son of the same named Sir Fulke Greville mentioned in the first paragraph. And in the paragraph about Ben Jonson and ambiguity I meant to phrase it something like “And the most skilled person around in the use of ambiguity was Ben Jonson himself”. When you read the doubter book on Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? you’ll see why Ben Jonson can be more of a liability to Stratfordian theory than an aid to it.

Now for chapter 12 for the Stratfordian book, this chapter purports to demonstrate that William received such a fine education at the town’s grammar school that he would have been equipped to read any modern English and furthermore, like fellow Stratfordian Richard Field, be comfortable with French, Italian, Spanish, and Welsh. In fact, it’s been said that he’d be better educated than the average modern college graduate.

Well, Stratfordians make a lot of claims that don’t stand up too well when we actually look at the evidence and judgment of others who aren’t interested in such hyperbole. One such Shakespeare Scholar was James Halliwell-Phillipps [1820-1889] who spent some 30 years looking into the records of Stratford and vicinity. Regarding the town’s availability of books he wrote there were “exclusive of bibles, psalters and educational manuals, at no more than two or three dozen, if so many.” The now famous grammar school there had one room for both the petty and upper classes. It held about two dozen pupils. Does the school reflect in any way the town that built it? Helliwell-Phillipps wrote that “its fetid ditches, dung-hills, pigsties, mud walls and thatched barns must have presented [in Shakspere’s time] an extremely squalid appearance”. But might he have been biased, even though even he didn’t question William’s authorship? David Garrick [1717-1779], actor, manager, producer, who began promoting the town as the birthplace of the great playwright, described the town (more than 100 years after Shakespeare’s time) as “the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved and wretched-looking in all Britain.” Quite a change from the beautiful town of modern times.

This is not to say that the town back then couldn’t have provided a good education for a child, only that it’s not nearly as likely as for those growing up in London in houses with large libraries and with tutors and easy university access. Still, let’s pretend that none of that matters. The claim is made that the school would have had taught Lily’s Latin Grammar as well as many of the classics and that the children would develop prodigious memories of all they read. But remember that’s only a claim. In reality, the curricula was only prescribed by the school charter or was proposed by educationalists. What book or books were actually available we don’t know. They are very unlikely to have been freely available to any student at any time. They were too expensive and valuable to risk as was paper. There is a record for the town’s purchase of a chain bought for the school to secure a book to a desk, suggesting its limited access. Pupils left school at age 14. William at that age may have been under pressure to help his father more. Nicholas Rowe thought so from the heresay he gathered, as he wrote that William’s father’s circumstances “forced him to withdraw” from school.

But let’s pretend it was a great school with lots of learning of Latin Grammar and the classics. Is that satisfactory for becoming the greatest English writer in history? How did this schooling compare to that of others in more favorable circumstances? In addition to what might have been learned in the “ideal” grammar school, the students who attended a university or, better yet, also had family tutors for many years, would also have studied English history, English literature, modern languages, travel, and geography. Many of them, such as Bacon and Oxford, would have studied Astronomy, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, etc. Poetry, playwriting, and acting were very popular in some of the universities. In F.S. Boas’ Shakespere and the Universities (1923) he wrote “There was hardly a tutor whose desk did not contain a play he had written”. In The English People on the Eve of Colonisation (1954) Notestein wrote “As always there were, especially at Cambridge, young men of literary ambitions, who discussed poetry and plays, and were trying their hands at writing them.”

Was it common for pupils at age 14 to leave the Stratford grammar school with literary ambitions? Halliwell-Phillipps didn’t seem to think so. In his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (1881) he wrote: “I have the impression that the extent of the poet’s school acquirements has been greatly exaggerated.” And Shakespeare biographer Marchette Chute added: “Apart from teaching him Latin, Stratford Grammar School taught Shakespeare nothing at all”. And though Richard Field, as a printer, worked with type in different languages, does this imply that he had learned anything about them at the grammar school? Did he acquire any of the advanced legal knowledge or sophisticated literary skills by age 28 as the author Shake-Speare did?

It appears that even under the best of grammar school circumstances, that when he would have left school, young William still wouldn’t have been equipped to learn several foreign languages (Ben Jonson didn’t), become somewhat of an authority on medicine, the French court, seamanship, and law, etc. etc. And to have become so as well as being a sophisticated writer at the beginning of his career.

The presented evidence for William’s supposedly sufficient education to be Shake-Speare is insufficient. There are far too many unknowns for it to count for anything in his favor.

By the way, there are two new excellent reviews of the first Shakespeare Beyond Doubt book.

The first if by “Macduff”:

http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/still-plenty-of-room-for-doubt-macduffs-insightful-review-on-amazon-com-of-shakespeare-beyond-doubt-evidence-argument-controversy/

And the other is by Diana Price:

http://shakespeare-authorship.com/Articles/Shakespeare%20Beyond%20Doubt%20review%20website.htm

And after someone reads the doubter version Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? edited by Shahan and Waugh, there may not be any more debates. The essays in the second book strip away every single piece of evidence for the Stratfordian theory. You’ll find in it that there’s little or no value in the evidence based on Ben Jonson, John Heminges, Henry Condell, the mention of Stratford and the ‘moniment’ in the First Folio. Nor is the name of William Shakespeare going to be of help. Actually the name is shown to count against Stratfordian theory. Nor is any other documentation of William’s life useful to their cause, certainly NOT his Will.

Proponents of the Stratfordian theory seem to recognize this since there has not come hardly a word to challenge anything in the doubter book. Not a word from Ian Wilson “Shakespeare the Evidence, Scott McCrea “The Case for Shakespeare”, Bill Bryson “Shakespeare: The World as Stage”, Irvin Matus “The Case for Shakespeare”, or others. What appears more likely is an avoidance of any more talk of evidence and instead a doubling down on demagoguery.

There was one Stratfordian review at least of the doubter book. This is by Prof. Stanley Wells. He was upset that many professionals in the anti-Stratfordian ranks are still bothered at being slandered. And his refutation of the doubter book so far is that William ‘might’ have travelled in Italy—in essence conceding to the doubters that William could not have learned all about Shake-Speare’s Italy by reading books or talking to travelers. And if not Italy, then also not Law or Medicine or many similar extensively learned knowledge areas. He took the doubter book cover as a kind of mockery of the Stratfordian book. But that was not their intent. Rather because it was a response to the Stratfordian book they wanted to tie their book very closely to it since they represent the two sides to the debate. They should both be read and examined in tandem. Anyway, Prof. Well’s response for those who haven’t read it is here.

http://interestingliterature.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/guest-blog-shakespeare-beyond-doubt/
10 years ago
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#4123
Chapter 13-19 of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (without the ?)

The last seven chapters of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt were a bit of a letdown due to their lack of substance so I’ll just run through them quickly. And if it’s substance you’re looking for in this debate then there are several books mentioned near the end that provide much food for thought.

Chapter 13Shakespeare tells lies” contains no evidence to address. But the author did want to look down from her position of assumed authority and make a point of saying that people like Walt Whitman and Justice Scalia were “snobs” for questioning what most take for granted.

Chapter 14‘This palpable device’: Authorship and conspiracy in Shakespeare’s life” also offers no evidence or serious argument to address. The author merely offers her opinion that to think that any alternative to Stratfordian theory must be less logical, just because.

Chapter 15Amateurs and professionals: Regendering Bacon” also offers no evidence or serious arguments to address. The author does make an attempt to psychoanalyze Delia Bacon for whatever that’s worth. He thinks the idea of anonymous writing is silly and that anyone in Shakespeare’s time could freely say and write anything they wanted without concern of the consequences. He’s also of the opinion that the only reason there are thousands of Shakespeare enthusiasts with Ph.D.s and Master’s that question the authorship is because most of those specializing in the area don’t question the authorship. So add him to the numerous ‘specialists’ that don’t have an educated opinion on the topic and don’t think they need to since they don’t think anyone should question what orthodox academic says.

Chapter 16Fictional treatments of Shakespeare’s authorship” also offers no evidence or serious arguments to address. One thing the author does though is point out how some anti-Stratfordians in the past have belittled the man from Stratford from his ‘presumed’ lack of education and refinement. He seems to think that this is the predominant attitude of all anti-Stratfordians. Actually, this is not the case in the least, in my opinion. In the many years I’ve been reading on the topic, I’d say it’s very unusual, especially in the modern literature, to find much of any of that attitude, though there is some of it. Even in most of the authorship literature from nearly a hundred years ago I hardly ever found that attitude. Most of the writing has always dealt with the evidence itself. In fact, I’d say there is much more snobbish belittlement of other authorship candidates by the Stratfordians than there has been by the anti-Strats toward who we think of as the businessman/actor. The doubters have always been far more interested in gathering facts and evidence in their pursuit of greater clarity on the authorship question. Merely expressing some unsupported uneducated opinion has never been the approach of the serious researchers. That fictional treatments of the topic have often done this is a totally different matter since the intent then may be to try and stir up questioning and reexamination of the status quo. They are kind of a check on those fictional treatments that idealize and glorify the same man.

Chapter 17 discusses The ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’. Unlike most Stratfordians this author thinks his peers should stop slandering the opposition. He admits that there is sincere doubt about the authorship, that the skeptics are not cranks, that they are not ill-informed. Rather, he says they’re intelligent, friendly, witty, and brave. It’s just that he feels that, regardless of the evidence, that he and other Stratfordians are smarter or more rational or something of that sort. He says that the skeptics believe the true author must have had a university education and that this is central to their case. Apparently, he’s read very little of the doubter’s arguments since they put little stress on a university education. The emphasis is that nothing known about William of Stratford fits what we see in the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. There are several means the true author could have acquired his knowledge and sophisticated literary skills, but a university education isn’t central to these, though it would help in some areas like his legal knowledge, his use of Cambridge jargon, access to an environment intellectuals and that’s conducive to poetry, playwriting and players, for example. But it’s not a central argument.

The author spends much ink arguing that his side of the debate has more ‘authority’ than the other side. What he doesn’t do is try and argue that his side has more or better facts and arguments than the other side. It’s long been taken for granted that there’s an orthodox, mainstream, group of academics with a dominant belief that the man from Stratford was the author Shake-Speare. What is also the case, and has long been recognized by most thinking people, is that the majority are not always correct in what they believe. He says “Let’s be reasonable” and rise above the rhetoric, and proceeds to label doubters as ‘anti-Shakespearians’ as if the Stratfordian skeptics don’t care to read Shakespeare, when in truth, we absolutely LOVE the Shakespeare works. Like most Stratfordians I’ve read, he shows no evidence of seeking out any of the doubter books written in the last 100 years. If he would at least read a few and then write more about facts and arguments, and less about ‘authority’, then we could have a more satisfactory exchange of ideas.

We recommend Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an industry in Denial, edited by John Shahan and Alexander Waugh; The Man who was never Shakespeare, by A.J. Pointon; Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, by Diana Price; The Shakespeare Guide to Italy, by Richard Paul Roe; and The Shakespeare Authorship Question: A Crackpot’s View, by Keir Cutler, Ph.D.

Oh, and Chapter 18 discusses the movie Anonymous and lastly Chapter 19 reviewed the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s strategy to suppress investigation into and discussion about the authorship question. The author tries to convince readers that if there were any new insights or evidence on the authorship questions, then it would be the orthodox academicians that would discover it, and no one else.

Really? Was it they that discovered all the exact use of legal terms and understanding in the works? Or the medical knowledge? Or on technical sea terminology? Or how about knowledge about Italy? Here, is where the mainstream Shakespeare scholars are shown to look especially bad in the doubter Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? book. In the doubter book on the chapter ‘Keeping Shakespeare out of Italy’ it’s shown how the standard academic scholarship, amid much excellent research, has still often been too presumptuous about many facts about the Italian references than to actually go to Italy and seek out any evidence there connecting real places and people to that in the Shakespeare plays. They had merely kept repeating what an early scholar thought about these references. And since the original scholar was so very wrong then all the subsequent scholars that copied him were in error. This doubter author, Alexander Waugh, after reviewing the history of the evidence, wrote: “My intention is simply to provide an introduction to the poor standard of scholarship among “professional academics” and to encourage them, where possible, toward a less emotional and more rigorous reaction to the many outstanding questions. They need to answer, for instance, how Shakespeare came to know about the churches of Florence, Padua and Verona, about the streets of Venice, the distances between unmapped Italian sites, Venetian customs, Italian monasteries and country estates, and the navigable canals and river routs of northern Italy?”

Clearly, the world needs independent researchers in the complex world of Shakespearean understanding since the mainstream academics are either too narrow-minded in their groupthink indoctrination or unable to risk their careers going down a path that challenges unquestioned theory and where they have less chance of being published, purely on ground of prejudice. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the majority of academics in this field seem to see this issue as a threat to their commercial dominance when they should be concerned and valuing historical truth, whatever that may be, as part of the treasured heritage of human civilization.

Thus ends our tournament of authorship jousts. Some of the matches were good tests though overall it was more one-sided than I expected. Not that I’m biased. Actually, the doubter book was much better than even I was expecting. I’ve read quite a bit from both sides but not nearly everything. And there was quite a lot in the Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? version edited by Shahan and Waugh that I was unfamiliar with. It may one day be recognized as one of the most important books ever published about Shakespeare.
10 years ago
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#4124
Last review of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (the one edited by Edmondson and Wells)

I said that I would answer this earlier chapter after finishing with the others. So here’s my response to it.

Chapter 2 ‘The case for Bacon’ By Alan Stewart

The author introduces this subject by mentioning Bacon’s primary biographer, James Spedding, who was a modern scholar who published the works of Francis Bacon’s in the latter half of the 19th century. Spedding had actually met Delia Bacon in 1853. Though he didn’t think that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare works, he did believe and say that Bacon had written more than just the works that bore his name. Stewart says that the essential Baconian arguments were in place within thirty years of Spedding’s meeting with Delia Bacon. He says that these arguments were that: Bacon had written the works attributed to Shakespeare, and the evidence for it was contained in a cipher, and obliquely hinted at in some letters; there were multiple ‘parallelisms’ between the writings of Bacon and the writings of Shakespeare; and further proof could be found in two manuscripts – Bacon’s notebook and the scribbled cover of a miscellany.

Here are the points Stewart says represent the evidence for Bacon and his refutations along with my responses:

1) There was a letter to Bacon from his closest friend Tobie Mathew that included the postscript: “The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your lordship’s name, though he be known by another”. So the basic Baconian argument is basically that Mathew was still on the continent and in his letter [undated but it’s most likely date would be 1619] to Bacon was acknowledging that he had written some great work of wit but used another person’s name on it in place of his own. Since Bacon put his own name on his philosophical and legal works and his Essays, and since he had been a prominent Shakespeare authorship candidate when the letter was later being discussed, it’s assumed that he was referring to him authoring the Shakespeare works.

Stewart’s refutation is that “In truth, the meaning is quite clear. Mathew, an English Catholic convert living on the Continent, was referring to another English member of his faith (‘of my nation’) also living abroad (‘of this side of the sea’) born as a Bacon (‘of your lordship’s name’), but living under an alias. The obvious candidate is Nathaniel Bacon, an expatriate Catholic who was highly learned (‘most prodigious wit’) and who went by the name of Nathaniel Southwell.

Response. Unfortunately, Stewart is not very familiar with Baconian evidence at all. I’ll very briefly summarize just a few points from the chapter on this question in N.B. Cockburn’s (pronounced ‘Coburn’) book The Bacon Shakespeare Question, 1998. 1. If Bacon used an alias, it can only have been for literary works. And there is no reason to think that he used any other pen name than “Shakespeare”. Mathew, as Bacon’s intimate friend and literary confidant, could not have been mistaken [in whatever it was he was referring to]. 2. Mathew’s letter to Bacon was “a paean of gratitude and reverence”. Cockburn says “This was hardly the occasion to praise another man’s (Thomas Bacon) wit in the Postcript. For instance, Mathew had written a couple years earlier to Bacon “You shall never be able to live four hours out of my memory, when I shall be awake, though you should live four score years out of my sight”. And one year after that, in 1619, Matthew wrote a much greater paean of reverence for Bacon’s writing and character. (And which has been posted here previously). Mathew would not have taken the risk of putting his idol’s nose out of joint by hinting that Francis was an inferior writer to Thomas Bacon. 3. Mathew’s letter is for the purpose of thanking Bacon for a ‘great and noble token’ that is unnamed. So then mentioning Bacon’s “prodigious wit” would be fitting if this token were a great work of literature. 4. Why would Mathew be cryptic in a hint to this Thomas Bacon (and there’s no record in all of Mathew’s letters that he ever met or mentioned him) when he could have said something like “I have met Thomas Bacon and he is the most prodigious wit” etc. 5. Whether the Postscript refers to Thomas Bacon or to Francis Bacon, there was no need to mention the fact of an alias – unless it has the significance the Baconians claim.

2) Stewart next provides a refutation to the argument by some Baconians (apparently originated with Delia Bacon possibly after receiving a letter about this from Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph), that since Francis Bacon was familiar with ciphers, having written and developed them, that these would be found in the Shakespeare works. The most popular kind later proposed was his bi-literal cipher. Later in the chapter Stewart mentions how William and Elizebeth Friedman, cryptology experts, demonstrated the unlikelihood of the proposed ciphers in their book The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined, 1957.

Response. The Friedman’s book did show how unreliable were the many proposed ciphers, and there were a great many proposed. But they also did not rule them out since they were so very common back in Elizabethan times. And there are still some ciphers, not just by Baconians, but some other authorship candidate supporters, that have been proposed and are still being sought.

3) The third piece of evidence Stewart deals with is The Northumberland Manuscript. This is a cover sheet of what was a folded bundle of some 22 sheets of writings. It was once in Bacon’s ownership and possession. On it are Bacon’s name and the titles of some of his writings along with a great amount of other miscellany. The penmanship is not Bacon’s but one or more of his scribes. The most interesting parts are those relating to Shakespeare. There are named ‘Rychard the second’, ‘Rychard the third’, ‘Revealing day through every cranie peeps and’ (Rape of Lucrece), ‘honorificabilitudino’ (Love’s Labour’s Lost), the word ‘plaies’, the word ‘printed’, as well as the full name and partial parts of the name of ‘William Shakespeare’.

Stewart’s refutation is that these may indeed be references to the Shakespeare works. However, he says that the plays were all available in printed quartos by 1598. (Venus and Adonis was printed in 1593, and Rape of Lucrece in 1594). So he says there was no guarantee that the Shakespeare plays and the MS had a close relationship of time period. He says the name of Shakespeare is spelt the same as in had appeared in print in 1593 and 1594. And the long word was not new since both Dante and Erasmus used a version of it. Therefore, he says it’s most likely that the references just happen to be due to the fact that Shakespeare was relatively well known in the late 1590s.

Response. Stewart doesn’t actually present any logical argument here for his conclusion. First, he seems to imply that the three Shakespeare plays were too much separated in time from the MS entries to be connected. But the first printing of all three plays are dated to the period of 1597-1598 which is also the approximate end date of the MS. So, that the play manuscripts were NOT found in the bundle, along with the finding of the word ‘printed’ and the close proximity of the time period of the printing of the plays lends credence to the idea that the play manuscripts were removed from the bundle and then printed. Second, he seems to suggest that since the name of ‘Shakespeare’ in the MS is identical to that used on the 1593-1594 poems, that this somehow supports that they were written by a different person, named William Shakespeare, than by someone using a pseudonym. However, this spelling of ‘Shakespeare’ is different than the spelling of the Stratfordian family, which quite consistently spelled their name ‘Shakspere’. [See Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Chapter 1]. Also, the first printing of the two ‘Rychard’ plays did not have any author’s name attached to them. And in the second printings in 1598 the last name used a dash, spelling it ‘Shake-speare’. Even in this period was this thought of as a pseudonym since Thomas Vicars wrote in the third edition of his manual of rhetoric (in 1628) that “To these [poet names] I believe should be added that famous poet who takes his name from ‘Shaking’ and ‘Spear’. [See page 198 of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt?, edited by Shahan and Waugh. Third, though the long word ‘honorificabilitudino’ had variations used before that in the MS or in the play Love’s Labour’s Lost, it appears that either Bacon or Shakespeare were the first to use a version of it in Elizabethan England. This argues against Stewart’s suggestion that it was commonly used in England before then. In fact, the coincidence should be suspicious. Fourth, Stewart conveniently leaves out the observation that the name in the MS ‘William Shakespeare’ has, twice, the word ‘Your’ written before it, which would also support the hypothesis of it being used as a pseudonym. Again Stewart completely strikes out on the evidence.

4) Regarding Bacon’s notebook we call ‘The Promus’, which Stewart quotes one reviewer as saying “that there is a very considerable similarity of phrase and thought between these two great authors [Shakespeare and Bacon], he simply argues that these phrases are all ‘commonplaces’ and can be found between many authors of the period.

Response. Again, Stewart shows near total ignorance of modern evidence. Referring back to Cockburn’s book which presents the most thorough analysis, he estimates there are about 1100 good parallels of phrase and thought between the two authors. And that ONLY about 600 of these would come from The Promus. Another 500 significant parallels come from non-Promus sources of Bacon’s writings. In his book he discussed 100 of the best non-Promus parallels, then a selection of what he thought were the most significant Promus parallels. Most, or all, of this latter category have previously been posted on this site in the forum “Did Bacon write Romeo and Juliet”? His analysis ruled out the hypotheses of the best parallels being either commonplaces or of them caused by mutual borrowing of one author by the other. Neither Stewart nor any other Stratfordian has attempted a reply to his evidence and arguments.

So, in all, the Stratfordian expert on Bacon has zero evidence against him as an authorship candidate. The legal evidence by itself should disprove Stratfordian theory, especially since the primary support for it on this particular question, the book The Law of Property in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Drama (1948 and 1968) has been shown to be ‘fatally flawed’.

I realize that the idea of William of Stratford not being the true author is difficult for many to grasp. But all the evidence provided by those that have looked most closely at this evidence suggests that the true author deliberately hid his (or her) name by disguise, and that this misrepresentation took on a life of its own and has not been questioned by the academic establishment, for whatever the appearances seen and whatever the assumptions and motivations they’ve had. The argument purely of authority opinion just doesn’t cut it anymore when the abundance of evidence clearly contradicts it.
9 years ago
·
#4125
As you may recall, in the previous posts I wrote about Shakespeare’s Hidden authorship (about post # 9) based on the excellent book Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship by Patrick Cheney. In that post were many quotes from various scholars mentioning Shakespeare’s deliberate concealing of his self-identifying authorship.

So it was not too surprising to again find related ideas to this by another scholar, Colin Burrow in his excellent book Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (2013). As an example, starting on page 137 he discusses a traditional view of the plays and characters of Plautus. He says the traditional view of his characters being ‘pantomimic types’ is ‘seriously misleading’. Plautus, he says, often makes his characters ask radical self-reflective questions about themselves. He gives the example from the play Amphitryon which he says Shakespeare ‘certainly knew’. In this play there is a slave named Sosia who is faced by an identical version of himself – the disguised god Mercury. (similar to the twins in Comedy of Errors “Who’s the genius and who the natural man?”). In this case Mercury does not just physically resemble Sosia, he also seems to know everything about Sosia and can answer questions that only Sosia would know. So he provides ‘verbal proofs’ that support the physical evidence. Plautus though had upped the entertainment by including the audience in the play. He had Mercury tell them that he (the god) could be differentiated from the slave Sosia by a ‘signum’ or a personal seal, signature, or sign that he would wear in his cap. Another ‘signum’, the personal seal of Amphitryon, had been put over the lid of a box with a gift of a golden bowl to Sosia. When this seal was broken and the box opened the golden bowl was not in it. Like a magician’s trick he showed that even these public ‘signums’ and the letting the audience in on some ‘inside’ knowledge turned out to be something that they couldn’t trust.

Burrow describes this effect as what is called a ‘mirum’, a wonderful, amazing thing or miracle, “in which the gods turn upside-down the normal criteria for judging argument and evidence”. Shakespeare, he says, not only found these devices in this play, but he developed them further for his own uses, shaking up the normal rules of evidence and argument to create wonders and illusions or even crises in personal identity.

Now, if Shakespeare knew of this theatrical technique, and if he often drew on classical themes for some of his ideas, and also knowing that he made deliberate efforts to conceal his own authorship, might he also, somewhat like Plautus, involve his audience in similar illusions to provoke their own self-reflections on how much they really know to be true about their world? Or would that just be crediting him with too much genius and imagination? Well, for what it’s worth to you, Burrow also says on page 130 that “But Shakespeare could be more than ingenious.”

He has much more to say on this topic. “the classical comedians repeatedly raise questions about what people know and how they know it, and about the relationship between personal identity and belief”; “the notion that people live and act on the basis of conjecture rather than certainty was crucial to Shakespeare”; “The uneasy alternation between belief and experience, and between acts of persuasion and truth, was an absolutely central feature not just of Shakespeare’s response to Roman drama, but of Shakespeare full stop. And his interest in how people could be persuaded to believe things that contradict the physical realities before them had a profound consequence.” He was also encouraged by these plays “to think that human characters occupied a world that was partially invented through illusion—either as a result of what they themselves want to believe or as a result of what others want them to believe.”

Shakespeare even dramatizes this in Richard III (Act 3, scene 1) when the young prince discusses with Gloucester and Buckingham if it was true that Julius Caesar built the Tower (the oldest parts of which date to the 11th century).

Prince: Is it upon record? Or else reported successively from age to age, he built it?
Buck: Upon record, my gracious Lord.
Prince: But say, my Lord, it were not registered,
Me thinks the truth should live from age to age,
As ‘twere retail’d to all posterity,
Even to the general ending day.

What say you Uncle?
Glo: I say, without Characters, Fame lives long.

Which sounds like he’s saying, without verified evidence, a rumor can last a very long time. And so Burrow says that one of the thematic efforts of Shakespeare was to encourage his readers and play audiences to reflect on “What are the grounds for believing your senses, when you hear a story that conflicts with what they show you?”

This topic is discussed much further in Burrow’s book but I think it’s enough to show what has motivated so many to personally examine the traditional story of who the author Shakespeare was.

A very good short summary of key points on this topic was recently submitted to a Washington Post writer by John Shahan, Chairman of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition.

http://www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/shahan-responds-to-washington-post-attack-on-justice-stevens/

Also, remember that Shakespeare scholar and author Ros Barber is compiling an authorship evidence book and has been asking for comments from all interested parties. You can find her current version at:

https://leanpub.com/shakespeare
9 years ago
·
#4126
An exciting new development in the authorship question has taken place thanks to researcher Alexander Waugh. It has to do with another place once known as ‘Avon’. I’ve only seen a portion of the rational theorizing from the discovery. So if you want to read the whole new argument, do what I’m doing and subscribe to Shakespeare scholar Ros Barber’s downloadable authorship evidence book, which can be found at:

https://leanpub.com/shakespeare

-------------------------------------------------------------
Apart from that, I’ve had enough cause and will to toss out here what seem to me to be probably the most basic evidentiary conundrums that have sparked and maintained an interest in this authorship question. It appears that we still have to deal with continued suppression of this topic as just this year all my posts on another forum were deleted—along with the whole forum so that no one could discuss anything about Shakespeare anymore. Anyway, here now is a concise summary of said conundrums, which itself, is very much abridged from what others have written.

One of the great differences in opinion from ‘Pro’ and ‘Post’ Stratfordians concerns the genuineness of the primary evidence as it’s come down to us. Let’s look at this briefly.

First we ask - Are the claims made in the First Folio believable? For instance, above the famous Droeshout ‘portrait’ of Shakespeare we are told that the plays are being “Published according to the True Original Copies”. Then in the Epistle Dedicatorie we’re told that they (Heminges and Condel) have been “Guardians” of his “Orphanes”. And then in their “To the great Variety of Readers” we hear these theatre men and friends of the great author say that they “have scarce received from him a blot in his papers”. Yet, there is little or no doubt, beyond maybe a quibble of an interpretation, that none of this is true. It’s a fabrication. I don’t mean that in an anti-ethical sense, only that either for promotional purposes, or for political reasons, or maybe just for some kind of jest, that some kind of inventive presentation appears to have been used.

From Irvin Leigh Matus’ book Shakespeare in Fact he quotes Charlton Hinman, from 1961, who wrote “Some of the plays in the Folio apparently do reproduce Shakespeare’s own “foul papers”; but others are mere reprints of earlier quartos, and a number were set into type from combinations, part manuscript and part printed, of materials variously related to Shakespeare’s original papers…Some of the copy supplied to the Folio printers, on the other hand, must have been very different both from Shakespeare’s original text and from anything that can be thought to reflect accurately his final intentions or even his acquiescence—though notably inferior copy was commonly mended by copy of higher authority.”

Matus goes on to show that this lying was more the rule than the exception. The publisher of The Beaumont and Fletcher volume of plays likewise claimed that he was printing “even the perfect originals without the least mutilation” and we know that also was untrue. Most of you also likely already know this.

But now, secondly, let us move on to some disputed territory. The prevailing belief is that Heminges and Condell were the genuine authors of the passages attributed to them. For about 100 years now that belief has been disputed with evidence. And from what I’ve seen this contrary evidence hasn’t been addressed. Of course, I’m not familiar with all scholarship commentary on this question but I don’t see it addressed in checking Matus’ book, or Schoenbaum’s Shakespeare’s Lives, or Ian Wilson’s Shakespeare the Evidence or in the Arden Shakespeare versions I’ve checked. So if anyone can provide a source where it has been defended that would be most appreciated.

Here’s a brief summary of the evidence against Heminges and Condell’s authorship. And I’m taking these points from Katherine Chiljan’s Shakespeare Suppressed, 2011.

The counter argument to the standard one is that it was Ben Jonson who actually authored those parts in addition to those with his name or initials.

In the two Folio preface letters “there are direct parallels between three passages by Horace and Pliny”, and Heminges and Condell are unlikely to have been familiar enough with these classical authors, or to have read them at all, to quote these passages. The folio Dedication includes:

Country hands reach forth milk, cream, fruits, or what they have: and many Nations (we have heard) that had not gums & incense, obtained their requests with a leavened Cake. It was no fault to approach their Gods, by what means they could: And the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious, when they are dedicated to Temples.

Now compare to Horace’s Odes:

Hold out your hands, palms turned to the sky, when the
New moon is up, my country-bred Phidyle;
Treat well the Lares [household gods]: bring incense, this year’s
Corn….
Pure, empty hands touch altars as closely as
Those heaping dear-bought offerings. Simple gifts
Soothe angry household gods; the poor man’s
Salt that will spit in the fire and plain meal.

And next from Pliny’s Natural History:

Country people and many nations offer milk to their gods; and
They who have not incense obtain their requests with only meal
And salt; nor was it imputed to any as a fault to worship the gods in
Whatever way they could.


Now, there was an English translation of Pliny in 1601. However, one reviewer found that the author of the Epistle Dedicatorie “apparently drew upon the original text, and that with considerable skill.”

So it seems the burden of proof is on the those arguing for the standard model to show that Heminges and Condell were skilled at writing such promotional compositions, were familiar with some classical texts, and could read them in Latin.

On the other hand, that Ben Jonson had this capability is a given. Chiljan then shows, as have others before her, that the Folio letter “To the great Variety of Readers”, supposedly also by Hemines and Condell, “is a pastiche of phrases found in several of Jonson’s works that are too many for coincidence.”
Here are several from Jonson’s writings that I need to present in snippets since I don’t have the space for the whole extracts she used:
“To the reader”, “I departed with my right”, “the author”, “judge his sex-pen’worth, his twelve-pen’worth, so to his eighteen-pence, two shillings, half a crown”, “censure”, “arraign plays daily”, “are numbered”, “not weigh’d”, “how odd soever men’s brains, or wisdoms”, “canst but spell”, and there are others.

To conclude, the evidence suggests to many, that Heminges and Condell did not write the portions of the First Folio ascribed to them. It appears these too were written by Ben Jonson. This, therefore, also strongly suggests another serious fabrication in its publication. The evidence against the standard model has to stand until someone can provide stronger evidence to support it.

A third problem is with the Droeshout engraving. Among its many shortcomings I just want to mention what seems to me the most obvious. And that is the doublet that Droeshout drew. John M. Rollett, in Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? was the latest to review this evidence. And the only point I will repeat is the quote from The Gentleman’s Tailor written back in 1911. This expert tailor said the doublet “is so strangely illustrated that the right-hand side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart; and so gives a harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional, and done with express object and purpose” (emphasis added).

In essence, he testifies that the design too was a fabrication, and most likely intentional. This is especially so since Droeshout is known to have the skill to make any such portrait of a human face, and clothing, to appear much more natural. It is so obvious, even to many non-experts with open minds, that its purpose and express object seems to be to call attention to itself that it is not genuine, nor meant to be taken as such, and so not meant to be a representation of the author. One would have to do some serious dancing around a very itchy feeling of cognitive dissonance to try and convince oneself that the engraving still looks acceptably authentic.

A fourth obvious irregularity is with the Stratford monument. Setting aside all the debate about its own genuineness, the one thing that is also blatantly obvious, and corroborates the eccentricities of these other obvious red-flag, attention-getting, design is the command and question on the monument plaque:
Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast,
Read if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast
Within this monument Shakspeare.”

How any Shakespeare enthusiast could read that and then just shrug and continue on, I just don’t get. I know it can be very difficult to question some things that seem like common knowledge. And I and probably all other doubters were often in that same predicament, so we can relate. Anyway, there was one Shakespearean scholar that did examine and contemplate these peculiarities. Puzzling Shakespeare by Leah Marcus, 1988, presents her brief foray into thinking the unthinkable. Prof. Roger Stritmatter, from the Oxfordian perspective, reviews her book here:
http://shake-speares-bible.com/2013/12/22/puzzling-shakespeare-still-relevant-after-all-these-years/
And the one quote I’ll repeat from his review is Marcus’ statement that The folio “makes high claims for “The AUTHOR” while simultaneously dispersing authorial identity; so that “Mr. William Shakespeare” becomes almost an abstraction, a generic category, while remaining an unstable composite.” To paraphrase, all in all, it appears in essence to be a total fabrication.

And yet, whether it be from thinking too precisely on th’ event, her scruples restrained her from any additional uncomfortable deductions or, for that matter, any such inductions from her examination of the corpus. Still, as I like to think, today’s a new day, and this generation of Shakespearians can tarry a little and read, if they can, a little further into the question of whom envious death hath placed in some Shake-speare monument. None of us appear to have the final answer to our questions so the mystery drives us on.
9 years ago
·
#4127
Heminges and Condell cont.

After the last post I soon came across a reminder of John Florio’s apparent involvement with editing the First Folio. I had read the earlier announcement of the evidence showing this but I hadn’t realized that it extended to the Epistle Dedicatorie. One of The Guardian’s staunch Stratfordian writers reported on this last year:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/12/who-edited-shakespeare-john-florio

He reports, as post-Stratfordians have earlier, that “neither Heminges nor Condell had produced a book before, nor would they afterwards.” In addition, he said it would have been unlikely for the printers to have risked this expensive project to be in their hands. And also, per an accepted expert “it is doubtful” whether they would be capable of such “exacting work”. Then regarding the Epistle Dedicatorie itself, as well as “To the great Variety of Readers”, he writes that the expensive project again would suggest that these would be entrusted to a more experienced hand. Some supporting evidence for this is then provided along with possible reasons why his name was not appended to the works.

So then an established mainstream expert agrees with post-Stratfordians on this point—that the evidence strongly contradicts the argument that Heminges and Condell wrote what has their names subscribed to in the First Folio. And if those parts were false and deliberately misleading then so could the rest that was mentioned—the ‘portrait’, the reference to the Avon river, as well as the Stratford ‘moniment’.

The Guardian article also speculates on how Florio could have become involved in this project based on his connections to the printers, the Herberts, and Ben Jonson. But these connections can be made for other candidates also. For instance, Jonson was a friend of Francis Bacon and helped translate his works into Latin. Florio is said to have done similar work but into French and Italian. And Bacon was alive at the time of the First Folio printing so there’s the added incentive of Florio and Jonson doing their friend an additional favor.

A further interesting aspect of this is the Phaeton sonnet written to Florio by “a friend of mine, that loved better to be a poet than to be counted so.” Candidates for this friend have been offered. Here’s a review of the topic from the Oxfordian side:

http://www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/phaeton-sonnet/

and from Sabrina Feldman who supports the candidacy of Sir Thomas Sackville:

http://www.apocryphalshakespeare.com/4/post/2014/10/evidence-for-a-major-hidden-poet-post-two-phaeton.html

And then I and others think that it was written by Francis Bacon.

Several mainstream Shakespeare scholars think it could be by the author ‘Shakespeare’. But it’s mainly been ignored, likely because since it was anonymously written and Florio abided by the author’s desire to keep it anonymous, and maybe especially because it is one more piece of evidence that makes no sense from the traditional Stratfordian theory, and therefore has to be ignored by the vast majority of Shakespeare academics.

And it’s evidence and doubts like this that has made even well-respected historians like Hugh Trevor-Roper, the British intelligence officer and later English scholar and historian, best known for his tracking and solving some mysteries regarding Hitler,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Trevor-Roper

to say (from an archived letter discovered by Alexander Waugh):

My view is that the available evidence that the plays and poems were the work of William Shakespeare of Stratford is weak and unconvincing … not a shred of solid evidence connects the man with the works during his lifetime; the association of such works with such a man is, on the face of it, implausible; and the posthumous association of them, in the First Folio and in the Stratford Tomb, is inconclusive since there are legitimate questions concerning the motivation and production of the Folio and the original form of the Tomb. There are many suspicions legitimately adhering to all the later statements associating the man with the works, including the statements of Ben Jonson. Altogether, I consider the evidence of association to be slender, weak and implausible. There is not a single testimony which could not easily be re-interpreted if solid evidence were to turn up that the works were written by another man… In these circumstances of legitimate doubt, I believe that the proper course is to return to square one and examine the problem ab initio, without any preconceptions… I am heretical in that I allow that there is a real problem of authorship… I would not be surprised if evidence were to be discovered which destroyed the orthodox case.

I think he’s made the succinct point better than the rest of us have, though he seems not to have studied much, if any, of the available candidate evidence. In which case, his convictions would like have been much stronger.

Some English professors (William Poole and A.D. Nuttall of Oxford) would seem to agree, saying that “a man honestly wishing to test the strength of an argument would hardly begin by assuming its truth.”

By the way, a new mainstream article on the Authorship question recently appeared and was followed by a mostly respectable discussion/mini-debate which is still ongoing

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/campaign-prove-shakespeare-didnt-exist-293243.html
9 years ago
·
#4128
This day being the anniversary of Francis Bacon’s birth, I thought it would be a good occasion to try and show how much he has been misrepresented by those who should know better. You need to know that from his early years he excelled as a poet, and that, as he said, his natural gift was in literature, not in politics or law, and that his genius was not only phenomenal but well recognized. And that his own interests and mentality have often been seen as in complete harmony with the author Shakespeare.

Here is a quote from the poet and politician Edmund Waller (1606-1687):

“Not but that I may defend the attempt I have made upon Poetry, by the examples (not to trouble you with history) of many wise and worthy persons of our own times; as Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Bacon, Cardinal Perron (the ablest of his countrymen) and the former Pope; who they say, instead of the Triple-Crown, wore sometimes the Poet’s ivy, as an ornament, perhaps, of less weight and trouble. But, Madam, these nightingales sung only in the spring; it was the diversion of their youth;” published around 1645.

We may assume ‘his youth’ as referring to an age not beyond 25 and maybe much earlier, so by 1586 at the latest he was already considered one of England’s skilled poets. This early reputation suggests that Waller was referencing a common understanding of Bacon’s poetic skills that was still extant long after he stopped circulating his poems under his own name, and that was never published, but passed around some of his friends in manuscript.

Then we also have Edmund Howes (continuing the work of John Stow’s Annales, or General Chronicle of England, 1615):

Our modern, and present excellent Poets which worthily florith in their owne works, and all of them in my owne knowledge lived togeather in this Queenes raigne, according to their priorities as neere as I could, I have orderly set downe (viz) George Gascoigne Esquire, Thomas Churchyard Esquire, Sir Edward Dyer Knight, Edmond Spencer Esquire, Sir Philip Sidney Knight, Sir John Harrington Knight, & Sir Thomas Challoner Knight, Sir Frauncis Bacon Knight, & Sir John Davie Knight, Master John Lillie gentleman, M. Willi. Shakespeare gentleman, Samuell Daniell Esquire, Michaell Draiton Esquire, of the bath, M. Christopher Marlo gen., M. Benjamine Johnson gentleman, John Marston Esquier, etc.

Again, though this was published in 1614-1615, Bacon’s reputation as one of the country’s ‘excellent poets’ was likely based on works in manuscript and not published for the general public and likely even from many years prior to Shake-speare’s first published poetry in 1593. This is because if Bacon had been circulating his poetry since his youth or even in the early 1580s, then at least some of it would have found its way into print by someone by the 1590s. But it seems to have been either all retracted at some point or else it was not under his own name. The interesting thing is how this reputation of Bacon’s lasted so long after he seemed to have stopped writing poetry since again the reference is only to a time of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

Now, besides some modern Shakespeare scholars trying to deny Bacon as ever having a reputation of a skilled poet, they also want to portray him as a somewhat average educated person for his milieu, which was above average in education. And that he had average and limited intellectual and literature skills, though fond of writing a lot of prose, saying merely that he was “an industrious statesman and lawyer with a vast output in both Latin and English, all of which display an analytical mentality completely different from that which produced the works of Shakespeare.”

And many repeat this without question. But from an earlier, and probably better read scholar we have this:

George L. Craik, LL.D., Professor and Chair of History and of English Literature in Queen’s College, Belfast, in his thorough review of all of English Literature, and who made a special study of Bacon’s works, even writing a book on him, wrote in his English Literature, and of the History of The English Language, from The Norman Conquest, 1874, his expert scholarly judgment of Bacon’s uncommon genius and the temperament of his writing:

“…the acknowledgement that he was intellectually one of the most colossal of the sons of men has been nearly unanimous. They who have not seen his greatness under one form have discovered it in another; there is a discordance among men's ways of looking at him, or their theories respecting him; but the mighty shadow which he projects athwart the two bygone centuries lies there immovable, and still extending as time extends, . . . .He belongs not to mathematical or natural science, but to literature and to moral science in its most extensive acceptation,--to the realm of imagination, of wit, of eloquence, of aesthetics, of history, of jurisprudence, of political philosophy, of logic, of metaphysics and the investigation of the powers and operations of the human mind. . . . All his works, his essays, his philosophical writings, commonly so called, and what he has done in history, are of one and the same character; reflective and, so to speak, poetical, not simply demonstrative, or elucidatory of mere matters of fact. What, then, is his glory?—in what did his greatness consist? In this, we should say;--that an intellect at once one of the most capacious and one of the most profound ever granted to a mortal—in its powers of vision at the same time one of the most penetrating and one of the most far-reaching—was in him united and reconciled with an almost equal endowment of the imaginative faculty; and that he is, therefore, of all philosophical writers, the one in whom are found together, in the largest proportions, depth of thought and splendor of eloquence. His intellectual ambition, also,--a quality of the imagination,--was of the most towering character; . . . . His Advancement of Learning and his Novum Organum have more in them of the spirit of poetry than of science; and we should almost as soon think of fathering modern physical science upon Paradise Lost as upon them.”

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044074341611;view=1up;seq=355

This goes quite a bit beyond the average well-educated intellectual.
And many have likened Bacon’s mentality to that of Shakespeare’s, such as:

“In Bacon’s works we find a multitude of moral sayings and maxims of experience from which the most striking mottoes might be drawn for every play of Shakespeare,--aye, for every one of his principal characters . . . testifying to a remarkable harmony in their mutual comprehension of human nature.
Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Eminent German political historian and literary critic, Professor at the universities of Gottingen and Heidelberg, 1835-1853 (not continuously). Many others, like Gervinus, see that much of Bacon’s mentality was hardly any different from Shake-speare's, despite the contrast in content and in prose as opposed to verse.

Here is another scholarly opinion on Bacon’s natural gifts and exceptional genius:

“To call Bacon the founder of scientific method is to mistake the character of his mind, and to do him an injustice by resting his fame upon a false foundation. Unwearied activity, inexhaustible constructiveness—that, and not scientific patience or accuracy, was his characteristic. …and we underestimate him upon another side when we speak as if the Inductive Philosophy had been the only outcome of his ever-active brain. His project of reform in Law were almost as vast as his projects of reform in Philosophy. . . .And he was often employed by the Queen and Lord Burleigh to write papers of State. All this was done in addition to his practical work as a lawyer. And yet his multiplex labours do not seem to have used up his mental vigour; his schemes always outran human powers of performance. His ambition was not to make one great finished effort and then rest; his intellectual appetite seemed almost insatiable.”

William Minto, Professor of Logic and English at Aberdeen, author of a Manual of English Prose Literature, 1874.

And keep in mind that most of this that Professor Minto cites was accomplished in the last half of Bacon’s adult life. So what did he focus most of his genius and youthful vigor on in the first half of his adult life? Unfortunately, it seem that for many scholars and students of literature today who should admire what kind of man he was and what he has accomplished, that instead what could be said of them is that “Who deserves greatness deserves your scorn”.
9 years ago
·
#4129
There have been some entertaining posts over on the Shaksper forum recently. And they don’t apparently relate the THE authorship question, though they still deal with authors and debates. The most amusing one was when an independent researcher discovered a plausible acrostic in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here it is:

Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death:
And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death
Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes
(Act 4, scene 1)

Normally this would be considered as only a possibility but could be just by chance. But the poster, Arnie Perlstein, showed how this apparent SATAN acrostic is also in Shakespeare’s source of Brooke’s poem Romeus and Juliet, and it’s found in a similar scene and is embedded in lines with quite appropriate word-hints (in capitals). And there are two of them!

Sooner or later than it should, or else, not work at all?
And then my CRAFT descried as open as the day,
The people's tale and laughing-stock shall I remain for aye."
"ANd what know I," quoth she, "if SERPENTS odious,
ANd other beasts and worms that are of nature VENOMOUS,
That wonted are to LURK in DARK caves underground,
And commonly, as I have heard, in dead men's tombs are found,
Shall harm me, yea or nay, where I shall lie as dead

Finally, Arnie wrote that it seems Milton picked up on it and used it in his Paradise Lost:
Scipio the highth of Rome. With tract oblique
At first, as one who sought access, but feard
To interrupt, side-long he works his way.
As when a Ship by Skilful Stearsman wrought
Nigh Rivers mouth or Foreland, where the Wind

And it’s not just the word, but the thematic text seems to be the same in all three parts.
Here’s the original post on Arnies website and the broader arugument:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-secret-codeword-shakespeare.html

But two of the Shakespeare profs thought it was ridiculous to think that these acrostics were real. Serious writers would never stoop to such literary games!

So, in support of their denunciation of such ideas, lets also make it clear to everyone that Ben Jonson DID NOT use an acrostic of ‘THE ALCHEMIST’ at the beginning of his play The Alchemist! It’s obviously a pure coincidence! In fact, every published volume of this play should have that page torn out so no one even sees it and gets the wrong idea!

From Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist
ARGUMENT.
T he sickness hot, a master quit, for fear,
H is house in town, and left one servant there;
E ase him corrupted, and gave means to know

A Cheater, and his punk; who now brought low,
L eaving their narrow practice, were become
C ozeners at large; and only wanting some
H ouse to set up, with him they here contract,
E ach for a share, and all begin to act.
M uch company they draw, and much abuse,
I n casting figures, telling fortunes, news,
S elling of flies, flat bawdry with the stone,
T ill it, and they, and all in fume are gone.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4081/4081-h/4081-h.htm

For that matter, Edgar Allan Poe DID NOT use an acrostic of 'ELIZABETH' in his poem called “An Acrostic”. That suspicion also is absolutely ridiculous! And anyone who thinks so should be whipped, like Edgar, for trying to out-Jonson Jonson!

by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled simply "An Acrostic":

Elizabeth it is in vain you say
"Love not"—thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.
Zantippe's talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breath it less gently forth—and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love—was cured of all beside—
His follie—pride—and passion—for he died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrostic

And even though it’s been said that the use of acrostics “was carried to its most ridiculous and wasteful excess by Elizabethan poets”, William Shepard Walsh in his Hand-book of Literary Curiosities (1909), you must all ignore that because the Shakespeare establishment has declared, Petruchio like, that you are not to believe it. Yes, forget the fact that Sir John Davies “has a series of no less than twenty-six poems under the general heading of “Hymns to Astraea”, every one of which is an acrostic on the words Elisabetha Regina. (Walsh, pg 12).

https://archive.org/details/handybooklitera04walsgoog

Let's hope there's no more debate on THAT topic!
8 years ago
·
#4130
Shakespeare’s Birthday

With Shakespeare’s accepted birthday upon us it seems appropriate to write a post to honor the author’s memory. Fortunately, there’s some new material relevant to recent posts pointing out that it’s not clear at all that the First Folio is strong evidence for the Stratfordian authorship theory. We’ve shown that there is much willful fabrication in the First Folio such that the authorship attribution to the Stratford William cannot be taken at face value.

But there are still two important pieces of evidence which seem to strongly suggest his connection.

The first of these is Ben Jonson’s phrase “Sweet Swan of Avon” being taken as a reference to Stratford-upon-Avon. A recent counter-argument by Waugh is that this Avon actually refers to Hampton Court with its Great Hall which was used for dramatic entertainments. That argument can be read here:

http://www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/Waugh.Swan-of-Avon.pdf

Now, there has also been a counter-argument to this proposal so I don’t know how well it’s standing up to scrutiny. However, another possibility is that Jonson used ‘Avon’, as others have, in a more idealistic manner as is found in Minerva Britannia:

Thy solitarie Academe should be
Some shadie groue, vpon the THAMES faire side,
Such as we may neere princely RICHMOND see,
Or where along doth silver SEVERNE slide,
Or AVON courtes, faire FLORA in her pride

The poem suggests a river in an imaginary location where poets can get away from the city and connect with their muse, in a kind of academe of nature where philosophical musings are encouraged. The words Thames, Avon, Swanne are mentioned together along with the starry sky and Constellations and the art of poetry, just as in the same passage in the First Folio commendatory poem by Ben Johnson. And the town of Stratford may not at that time have been distinguished as –upon-Avon”. This reduces the confidence in Jonson’s ‘Avon’ as a reference to the town.

Still, though, is the later direct reference to the “Stratford moniment” where a monument to William Shakespeare is indeed found. Finally, here appears to be the hard evidence for William’s authorship. The non- and post-Stratfordians have had various challenges to this evidence too over the years. But what is new is another revised interpretation by Alexander Waugh of this monument and the accompanying inscriptions.

Waugh reexamined the Dugdale drawing of 1634. In past years I’ve read the Strat and non-Strat arguments about his drawing and the supposed changes to the monument over the years. And I know that some prominent post-Stratfordians have concluded that his drawing is likely a poor or false representation of what existed when he was there, perhaps because of poor lighting or weak drawing skills. But I’ve continued to lean to the argument that his drawing was likely much more accurate than inaccurate. For one thing, I couldn’t dismiss the detailed patterns on top of the two pylons on each side of the Shakespeare figure. If the lighting was poor or he was an unskilled draughtsman then I don’t think these would have had the careful detail he seems to have taken care to get right.

So, what Waugh discovered, was that immediately on top of each post, and below that of the leopard heads, is what can be seen or interpreted as ape or monkey heads. Now it took me one or more minutes of staring at the figures to finally see them, but once you do it is then not difficult, for the unbiased, to see the resemblance.

Waugh then ties this in with Ben Jonson’s ‘On Poet Ape’ epigram. To me it does seem plausible and unless and until I see a good refutation I will hold it as a viable interpretation that answers important questions in the authorship theory, at least from the non-Stratfordian perspective.

And incidentally, I don’t take his interpretation as any kind of insult to the Stratford William, primarily since he was long deceased. Actors were often referred to as apes since they imitated or voiced the words of the writers. Also, the monument was designed with visitors or tourists in mind. Ben Jonson, among others of the time, placed a very high value on people being well-read and learned and perceptive. They didn’t take well to those, even other writers or university graduates, who were smugly ignorant, or whom he considered as merely ‘gaping auditors’ of life. Like Hamlet he wanted people to be more judicious than the unskillful auditors of the stage. Bacon referred to such superficial and misdirected thinking as ‘Idols of the Marketplace’ or ‘Idols of the Theater’. The German philosopher Nietzsche interpreted the first of these as referring to “the way common folk are fooled by advertising, rhetoric, misleading claims, etc.” He interpreted the second as having a “reliance on Authority, experts, and swallowing the received wisdom, without questioning. The bigger the lie, the more easily it is accepted.” So whatever your opinion is, it should at least be a well-educated one.

Continuing with Waugh’s interpretation of the plaque inscriptions. He works out what seems a plausible unravelling of the allusive:

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem
Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet


Which he argues should be more correctly read as:

Earth covers, people mourn and Olympus holds
Pylius with his judgement, Socrates with his genius and Maro with his art.


And then worked out a solution to the puzzle so that it can be seen to refer “ . . . not to Shakespeare, but to three great English poets, respectively Beaumont, Chaucer and Spenser whom ‘Earth covers [in ‘Poets’ Corner’], people mourn and Olympus holds”. And from there to the additional Oxfordian documentation that Lord Oxford also ‘ . . . lieth buried at Westminster’.

Please read his whole argument at the link listed at the end.

I really don’t have a problem with much of any of this. It shows that this last piece of hard evidence is as debatable as that of the First Folio front matter, and perhaps even stronger for the post-Stratfordian side. But part of the strength depends on how well it can be tied to any particular alternative candidate for authorship. Waugh has shown it can be applied to Oxford.

I can say that for Francis Bacon the Latin inscription works at least as well, perhaps even more straightforwardly.

For ‘Pylius (Nestor) with his judgement’, and more than that since Nestor was also known for his ancient wisdom, great oratorical skills, and being a respected advisor and counselor. So was Bacon known for all these same attributes and he was also, in a post-mortem tribute, specifically referred to as ‘Nestor’s own senior’.

For ‘Socrates with his genius’ we have another tribute to Bacon which included these lines:

“None greater in genius;
Who of richer eloquence?
A judgment most piercing”

Also, in the 2015 book The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon by Tom van Malssen, he writes on pages 266-67 that Socrates “called philosophy away from heaven to establish it in the cities, to introduce it into the households, and to compel it to inquire about men’s lives and manners as well as about the good and bad things” and that “Bacon’s meaning [for his own philosophy] approximates what in almost identical terms was said about Socrates”.

Interestingly, in Joseph Hall’s Virgidemiarum (Book IV, 1597/98) he mentions “As bolder Socrates in the comedy” which is explained as “It is related of Socrates, that when present at the representation of The Clouds, a celebrated comedy of Aristophanes, in which the character of the philosopher is introduced in a ridiculous light, he [Socrates] good-naturedly stood up in order to give the spectators an opportunity of contrasting the original, with the caricature drawn by their favourite comedian.”

Then as for the reference to Virgil – ‘Maro for his art’ there is another tribute to Bacon, and as a plaintive cry:

“But, who shall write thy great story, who, pray, of thy life or thy death?
Give place, Oh Greece! Yield thee Maro, first tho thou be in Rome’s story.
Eloquence thine in supremacy; powerful of pen, great in all things,”

Which seems to say “Virgil/Maro, step aside for a greater writer than thee”.

And finally, in response to ‘Olympus holds’, another tribute to Bacon includes these lines:

“Thinkest thou, Oh! Foolish traveler that this cold marble is hiding
Phoebus’ own chorister; -- leader of the great band of the Muses?
Thou art deceived then! Avaunt thee! Verulam [Lord Bacon] shines in Olympus
And lo! The boar (part of his family’s crest), great Jacobo, glitters in thy constellation.”

[Great Jacobo = King James, but I have no idea about his ‘constellation’.]

We can all see then that the Stratford monument, for the judicious viewer, can be associated to at least two other authorship candidates, and both at least as plausibly as for Stratford’s William. It looks to me more like a monument, as a charade or spoof to invite further inquiry, to Bacon’s (or possibly Oxford’s) authorship mask than to a straightforward honoring of William.

Here now is the link to Waugh’s article:
http://www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/thy-stratford-moniment-revisited/

Another, earlier and thoughtful article on the same topic from another Oxfordian, with many excellent points, one of which is that:

Nestor, Socrates, Maro and Olympus are all remarkable for their absence from Jonson’s dedication in the First Folio.

Can be read here:

http://www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/the-latin-inscription-on-the-stratford-shakespeare-monument-unraveled-its-bearing-on-the-stratfordian-controversy/
8 years ago
·
#4131
News from the front:

There was an important announcement this week from the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC). Its Chairman, Behavioral Scientist John Shahan, naturally felt personally compelled to persist in a lengthy battle with the RSC about their continued posting on their website of egregiously false claims about authorship doubters, even to the extent of labeling them psychologically ill. It’s interesting though, that as far as I can tell, all those with actual expertise in psychology, psychiatry and mental health, and that have examined the authorship question, seem to be in the doubter camp! If there are any others that happen not to be so, then I’m sure they would enjoy discussing the question with these doubters over tea sometime. In any case, for those interested in the ongoing developments, here is the announcement at the SAC website:

https://doubtaboutwill.org/letters_to_sbt_and_rsc

Note that the effort even required the engagement of RSC President The Prince of Wales and even after that, further prodding from renowned Shakespearean actor Mark Rylance.

The SAC also announced new notables to the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt:

Eliot Slater, M.D., was one of the leading psychiatric researchers of the 20th century. He published some 150 scientific papers and co-wrote several books, including Clinical Psychiatry, long the leading textbook. From 1961 to 1972, he was Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, which he made into a leading European journal. He was also an avid Shakespeare scholar, best known in that field for his detailed statistical analysis of The Reign of King Edward III, which provided strong support for Shakespeare’s authorship. His analysis earned him a Ph.D. in English at King’s College, London, at age 77. It was later published by CUP as “The Problem of The Reign of King Edward III,” under the supervision of his daughter, Ann.

Here is Dr. Slater’s excellent 1969 essay on the Authorship question:

A Psychiatric View of Shakespeare's Sonnets

http://eliotslater.org/index.php/shakespeare/essays/92-a-psychiatric-view-of-shakespeare-s-sonnets

Also, his daughter:

Ann Pasternak Slater, Ph.D., is a literary scholar and translator and was formerly a Fellow and Tutor at St. Anne's College, Oxford. She has written and lectured on her uncle Boris Pasternak's translations into Russian of Shakespeare's plays, and she is the author of "Shakespeare the Director." While a notable doubter in her own right, she is also the daughter of psychiatrist Eliot Slater and granddaughter of economist Gilbert Slater -- two other notable authorship doubters and both outstanding in their respective fields. In that sense one might say that we are, in effect, adding three Slaters to the notables list at this time.

And then also her grandfather:

Gilbert Slater, Ph.D. (1864-1938), was a British economist and social reformer of the early 20th century. He took one of the first Ph.D.s at the London School of Economics. He served as Principal of Ruskin College from 1909 to 1915, and then as Professor of Economics at the University of Madras. He is also known for theorizing that the works of Shakespeare were written by several different authors.
8 years ago
·
#4132
More news from the authorship front:

The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship’s 2015 conference just finished in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland, by the way, is the site of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and of the first Elizabethan theater in the U.S.
https://www.osfashland.org/en/about/our-history.aspx

They (the Oregon Shakespeare Festival) announced while we were there that they are starting a project to modernize all 38 plays into contemporary English. See more here:

http://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-shakespeare-festival-to-modernize-shakespeares-entire-canon/?google_editors_picks=true

Before the conference itself began there was a community lecture at a local church titled “British Scholars Address the Shakespeare Authorship Challenge”. The attendance there of over a 100 members of the community is a testament to the growing awareness and interest in the authorship question by both the patrons of Shakespeare theater as well as theater professionals themselves.

Three of these scholars: Ros Barber, Kevin Gilvary, and Alexander Waugh also gave an excellent radio interview on the authorship question which I highly recommend for anyone with an interest in what’s happening outside as well as inside of academic Shakespeare studies. The radio interview can be heard here:

http://ijpr.org/post/true-shakespeare-believers-descend-upon-ashland#stream/0

I’ll only mention a few of the conference talks and activities which were quite varied, including a few trips to the theater to see Much Ado, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Pericles, which was especially delightful, so much so that it will be shown at the Folger Shakespeare theater sometime later. There was also, for each play, an opportunity to discuss the plays with visiting actor panels.

Some of the talks:
--Julia Cleave presented some of the latest evidence strengthening the case that the playwright had a detailed knowledge of some specific art pieces in Italy, notably that of the Bassano Fresco.
--Alexander Waugh and Roger Stritmatter announced A New Shakespeare Allusion Book. Naturally, non-Stratfordians have found too many overlooked Shakespeare allusions or ones that have been interpreted narrowly so that they conform to Stratfordian Theory. If you are at all interested in the history of the Shakespeare phenomena you owe it to yourself to get a copy of their book.
--Similarly, Prof. Michael Delahoyde, brought out a new Oxfordian edition of Anthony and Cleopatra showing how many references, nuances, language usages, etc. can be explained or interpreted from the Oxfordian or non-Stratfordian perspective.
--There were also quite good talks challenging current orthodox perspectives on the authorship of quartos for Romeo and Juliet. For instance, that there’s good evidence that Q1 was a first draft rather than a poor memorial reconstruction. One would think that mainstream scholars would be interested in examining and debating this evidence and argument.
--Then there was Kevin Gilvary who examined Who Wrote Shakespeare’s First Biography? His conclusion, as I recall, ‘it hasn’t happened yet’.
--Researcher Katherine Chiljan found more early instances of ‘Shakespeare’ as an early pen name.
--A few talks were on the play Pericles arguing quite well that the basis for it being collaboratively written is weak, and showing how it fits the template for an early, Hermetic, Historicized, Miracle Play.
--A final mention goes to the talk by Lawyer Tom Regnier who discussed some points of the legal argument in the authorship question. Specifically, the usage and validity of ‘hard’ evidence vs that of circumstantial evidence and ‘coincidences’. Citing legal authorities on courtroom evidence he showed it’s clear that ‘coincidences’ and circumstantial evidence can be just as valid for judgments as what are thought of as hard evidence. This becomes especially important when we see that the ‘hard evidence’ for Stratfordian Theory is actually far too ambiguous to be considered decisive, besides lacking in other converging lines of supporting circumstantial pieces of evidence. In essence, all we have for any of the candidates is circumstantial evidence, and so my view is that we would benefit by ways to weigh the many pieces of circumstantial evidence to provide greater clarity to the historical question.

Earlier this year there was another scholarly debate, related to the bible, and an article covered it that I found informative. Here’s the quote I like and the link to the article:

"Integrating physical material evidence and intangible literary evidence is difficult: The two sides are looking at the same object, but are focusing on different issues, and answering different questions. The methods they employ address particular concerns, but not necessarily those raised by the opposition. No data point—either from a lab or from a linguist, be it an ink test or a grammatical error—will decide the issue on its own; it must be considered in light of the entire body of evidence. If the arguments brought to bear on the issue so far do not produce consensus among scientists and scholars, then there will probably be no final word."

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/why-scientists-and-scholars-cant-get-their-facts-straight/404254/

Similarly, here are some interesting partial quotes from CNN’s chief medical correspondent (Dr. Sanjay Gupta) on his lateness in considering the scientific case for marijuana in medical treatments (more interesting now that some researches think the Stratford Shakespere lit it up on occasion:

“I apologize because I didn’t look hard enough, until now. I didn’t look far enough. I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate…”
“instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency … because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to … “
7 years ago
·
#4133
April 1
News from the front:

In a stunning surprise announcement today the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) said that it now wishes to encourage all parties alike--Scholars of any discipline, amateur investigators, and the general public, to both bring forward and also to examine together any and all evidence related to the ‘so called’ Authorship Question of the world’s great Shakespeare works.

Though in the past 100+ years there have been a few limited endeavors to examine the many challenges to the traditional authorship story, it is now admitted that these very sparse efforts have been unsatisfactory to the many thousands of Shakespeare enthusiasts as well as the Shakespeare specific community of scholars. To satisfy the increasing demand to solve this long-standing and frustrating dispute the SBT wants it known that it is strongly desired and expected for there now to be an emphasis on clearing out all the smoke of ambiguity as much as possible and to bring an end, if possible, to the mystery created 400 years ago.

Though the SBT notes that it does not expect any change in the final resolution, if there ever is one, that all the scrutinized evidence will reveal, it will nevertheless welcome any new and unexpected findings shedding further light on the whole phenomena of Shakespeare including all those seeming connections to the plays and poetry by any of the author’s contemporaries, and most especially of the many alternative ‘authorship candidates’ of a hidden or ‘masked’ Shakespeare.

This is an amazing gift to all us researchers” said one excited and subdued scholar. “There is so much to investigate in what had been a taboo topic for us all our careers that now most of us will soon be doubling and tripling our usual production of published research. They may even need to start a couple new journals to handle it all.”

Though details of how this frenzied flowering of Bard fandom may fruitfully fan out are still unclear, a new website has been suggested, perhaps “FaceBard”, to collate and share the new possibilities of this “under-discovered country”. In the meanwhile, as we all enjoy Shakespeare at 400, we can take to heart our dear doubted author’s silent plea, “Remember me”.
7 years ago
·
#4134
And now for some real news on the Authorship front, of which there is much:

The biggest news seems to me the publishing or three articles by non-Stratfordians in the Journal of Early Modern Studies.

Diana Price has extensively examined “Hand D and Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Literary Paper Trail” showing that the current push to just declare Hand D to have handwriting that is a certain match with Will Shakspere’s signatures is not justified by the accepted standards of handwriting analysis and authentication. In other words, it’s just another finding that was manufactured to try and bolster the belief in Stratfordian theory.

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/18095/16849

The second article is by Ros Barber who wrote about the claimed evidence for “Shakespeare and Warwickshire Dialect”. Barber found that the claims were either a) errors of fact, b) well-known or widely-used words; c) poetic inventions, and d) those derived through circular reasoning.

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/18084

There was also a very recent column on this in The Conversation that’s worth a read:

http://theconversation.com/the-bard-didnt-use-warwickshire-dialect-so-was-he-really-shakespeare-43822

She notes here in the comments that:
“But if you haven’t time to read the academic article, you don’t need to take my word for it. Professor David Crystal, acknowledged as the world’s foremost authority on Shakespeare’s language, emailed me after the article’s publication, and though I have no right to quote our private correspondence, his response to another person has now been posted on a public forum, so I think it is probably okay to share it here. David Crystal said:

“Regardless of her position on the SAQ, she is totally correct in her analysis. This is precisely the reasoning that I did not include any references to Warwickshire dialect in Shakespeare’s Words. Anyone who has studied historical dialectology would see straight away that the attribution of words to Warwickshire alone has no basis in reality, and I would never recommend anyone using such a flimsy argument to support the Stratfordian argument. AFAIK, none of the scholars in question have any background in historical dialectology.”

So yes, the Stratfordians must stand down on this one. There are plenty of other (stronger) arguments that can be used in defence of WS of Stratford.”
Interesting, it seems that one of the top Stratfordian apologists has a Ph.D. in linguistics but was totally oblivious to the weaknesses in this evidence.

And finally, William Leahy examined the field of Shakespeare biographies and his article is “ ‘the dreamscape of nostalgia’: Shakespearean Biography: Too Much Information (but not about Shakespeare)

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/18081/16835

Read more from the announcement from the Oxfordian website http://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/price-barber-and-leahy-counter-stratfordian-myths-in-mainstream-journal/

------------------------------------------------

The other big announcement is from the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition which is celebrating its 10th anniversary along with its seminal Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. Its signatories continues to grow apace. The announcement mentions that:

“The overall Declaration signatory count recently went above 3,300, including 1,265 with advanced degrees (551 doctorates, 714 masters degrees), and 560 current or former college or university faculty members. It is a very well-educated group, with 77% college graduates, and 50% of these also having advanced degrees.”

Several new “Notables” have signed on, including a President Emeritus of the National Press Foundation, a prominent award winning and very prolific author, the Director of the Walther-Schücking Institute for International Law, a bi-cultural poet and translator of literature, and the co-directors of a Theatre Company in Sydney, Australia.

See the full announcement and the names and detailed backgrounds of these new ‘Notables’ here (including various international celebrations of the SAC’s anniversary):

http://shakespeareauthorshipcoalition.createsend1.com/t/ViewEmail/r/A9343E8C28360AB12540EF23F30FEDED
7 years ago
·
#4135
Here are some philosophical musings on scholarly research in general. As I came across them I wondered to what extent they related to research in areas touching on Shakespeare, and of course the Authorship question. Maybe some of you wouldn’t mind pondering over the same issues.

This week there were two more fascinating articles on the crisis in science respectability. The stories have been coming out for years. It seems now though that it has come to a head and must be dealt with for the sake of the legitimacy of the scholarly enterprise. Here’s one of the recent articles:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/04/the_reproducibility_crisis_is_good_for_science.html

One quote from it is that “Lots of researchers had previously believed that trying out many types of analyses was a form of rigor; they were homing in on conditions that revealed the truth of their hypotheses. In fact, researchers were gaming analyses to gain publications, albeit often unwittingly.

Another comment was that “Some experts, like Stanford’s John Ioannidis, famous for his calculations that most published research findings are false, worry that special labels for replication or negative result relegate good work into a second-class status; journals devoted entirely to negative results popped up some time ago, but many scientists are not interested in publishing in them.”

The other article “Science is broken” was more comprehensive. It refers to this article: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regress

http://theweek.com/articles/618141/big-science-broken

Here’s one quote: “Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.”

You’ll see if you peruse them that it’s not just one scientific field, though Psychology seems to have received most of the attention. There have also been several medical journal top editors that have said similar things about their field. Richard Smith, who was editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal from 1991-2004 wrote in a blog "Most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense," says Smith, "The evidence, as opposed to the opinion, on prepublication peer review shows that its effectiveness has not been demonstrated and that it is slow, expensive, largely a lottery, poor at spotting error, biased, anti-innovatory ... prone to abuse, and unable to detect fraud,"
http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2011/11/11/richard-smith-a-woeful-tale-of-the-uselessness-of-peer-review/

Back to another quote from Science is Broken: “Then there is outright fraud. In a 2011 survey of 2,000 research psychologists, over half admitted to selectively reporting those experiments that gave the result they were after. The survey also concluded that around 10 percent of research psychologists have engaged in outright falsification of data, and more than half have engaged in "less brazen but still fraudulent behavior such as reporting that a result was statistically significant when it was not, or deciding between two different data analysis techniques after looking at the results of each and choosing the more favorable."

And here’s a nice one: "The greatest scientific pioneers were mavericks and weirdos. Most valuable scientific work is done by youngsters. Older scientists are more likely to be invested, both emotionally and from a career and prestige perspective, in the regnant paradigm, even though the spirit of science is the challenge of regnant paradigms."

Also:

Why, then, is our scientific process so structured as to reward the old and the prestigious? Government funding bodies and peer review bodies are inevitably staffed by the most hallowed (read: out of touch) practitioners in the field. The tenure process ensures that in order to further their careers, the youngest scientists in a given department must kowtow to their elders' theories or run a significant professional risk. Peer review isn't any good at keeping flawed studies out of major papers, but it can be deadly efficient at silencing heretical views.

From another article on the continued search for the nature of Dark Matter “I think it’s very, very healthy for the field that you have people thinking about all kinds of different ideas,” said Bullock. “Because it’s quite true that we don’t know what the heck that dark matter is, and you need to be open-minded about it.http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/dark-disk-theory/478488/

Someone also posted this quote from that maverick Einstein “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matter.”

A somewhat related article was also recently published in The Week, though it focused more on religious attitudes. Why is doubt difficult?
http://theweek.com/articles/615132/why-doubt-difficult

And I’ll just post one quote from it: “The natural condition of humanity, you might say, is relatively passive, dogmatic belief in whatever the political, moral, and religious authorities teach in a given time and place about right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust — and about God or the gods.”

Now, while it seems that about every other scholarly field in academia is reflecting on its research and publication processes affecting the quality of its research, and already making serious adjustments in them, I saw nothing about any such concern in the areas of Literature, even that of Shakespeare Studies which has increasingly attempted to be more “science” based and replicable. If those in the field show no interest in re-examining their research rigor, peer-review biases, or tolerance (yet alone acceptance) of possible pioneers who seem like mavericks or weirdos that might shake the boat, then why not just drop the pretense? Obviously, such an honest revaluation and self-correction of this field cannot be done while forever suppressing the authorship question, such that only unintimidated Italian journals might publish such topics.

7 years ago
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#4136
Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Official Final Curtain

Along with the usual celebrations, talk, and articles of the traditional Shakespeare of Stratford, there were several from the non-Stratfordian groups, as previously announced.

But before mentioning them, I just want to point out how not only are the scholars of both sides in agreement that Shakespeare, the Author, has purposely erased clear indications of himself for the most part from all of his works, but he also sanctioned and recommended such self-erasing. I came across this while reading Macbeth. At the end of Act 2, Scene 3 he has Malcolm say:

“But shift away. There’s warrant in that theft
Which steals itself when there’s no mercy left.”

So, we know that Marlowe certainly had such a ‘warrant’. And so did Francis Bacon as he mentioned once that his life had been threatened. Oxford too seems to have had warrant for later in his life for hiding his authorship. In any case, the Author clearly approved of this if there seemed some justification for it.

Now to the latest news stories:

Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance discuss The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZNYifQfYiE&feature=youtu.be

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of Mr. William Shakspere of Stratford, Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance reaffirm their support for the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare, which they launched in the UK in a signing ceremony in Chichester, West Sussex,

Note, they both describe when and how they became doubters in the first place as well as some of the characteristics they see in whomever was the true Author.. They also mention how the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt has been updated in response to some criticisms of it, showing their openness to revise their stance as new facts or logical arguments come in. You can read more about that here:

DoubtAboutWill.org

Then there was also a 7 minute interview on NPR;s Morning Edition:

2 Shakespearean Actors Revive Debate Over The Bard’s Identity

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/25/475551898/2-shakespearean-actors-revive-debate-over-the-bard-s-identity

which can also be listened to as a podcast on Broadway_World.com:

PODCAST: Mark Rylance, Derek Jacobi Among Signers of Declaration Doubting Shakespeare's ...

http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/PODCAST-Mark-Rylance-Derek-Jacobi-Among-Signers-of-Declaration-Doubting-Shakespeares-Authorship-20160425
7 years ago
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#4137
More News from the Authorship Front – from the 400th Anniversary

The 400th Anniversary Celebrations were another major success for the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition and its increasing prominence among the literati and specially those who are avid Shakespeareans.

From their news release mentioning the success of all their events they also updated the current count of signers of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. Here are the current counts as of May 3, 2016.:

Our objective has been to “legitimize” the authorship issue by the 400th anniversary of Shakspere’s death. While the evidence confirms we have been right all along, legitimization requires awareness and acceptance. On that score we are making steady progress, but still have a ways to go. As of May 3, 2016, 3,520 people had signed the Declaration, including 1,340 with advanced degrees (580 doctorates, 760 master’s degrees), 599 current or former college/university faculty members, and 68 notables, including sixteen added below. It would be interesting to see who would sign a Stratfordian authorship declaration, if they could write one. In that sense we can claim victory by default, just as we have won by default with our mock trial challenge.

All college graduates and faculty members are asked to indicate their field. The largest group, both among faculty and all college graduates, is those in English Literature: 108 faculty and 499 graduates, 607 in total. These are followed by those who said they were in Arts (361), Theatre Arts (305), Other Humanities (219), Math, Engineering & Computers (211), Education (204), Law (198), History (191), Oth/Unspecified (182), Natural Sciences (186), Social Sciences (181), Medicine/Health Care (175), Psychology (134), Management (120), and Library Science (41). So virtually all fields are represented, but English literature predominates. It is interesting that the field most directly involved with Shakespeare studies has by far the most doubters. Stratfordians claim that the authorship is “beyond doubt,” but many English Lit graduates clearly disagree.

In addition, there are sixteen new signatories for the “Notables list”. These are:

Joseph Adler, Producing Artistic Director at GableStage theatre, Coral Gables, FL; winner of numerous awards for theatre and film directing, including a Clio and ten Carbonell Awards for Best Director

Edward I. Brodkin, Ph.D., Lucretia L. Allyn Professor Emeritus of History, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA

Roberto Colombo, Ph.D., Professor of Cytology, University of Milan; internationally-recognized leader in the field; former Visiting Fellow, Warwick University Developmental Biology Lab

Jeffery W. Donaldson, Ph.D., Professor, Department of English, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, CA; Poet and Author of Slack Action (2013), Echo Soundings (2014), and Missing Link (2015)

Ben Donenberg, Artistic Director, Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles; Juilliard graduate; Presidentially-appointed and US Senate-confirmed Member, National Council on the Arts

Peter Eisner, Author and Journalist; former editor and reporter, Washington Post, Newsday, Associated Press; wrote the award-winning books The Freedom Line and The Italian Letter

Mr. Gosta Friberg, Swedish writer, poet and translator; co-founder of the Writers' Centre; former editor, Lyrikvännen, winner of numerous awards; co-author, Täcknamn Shakespeare

Mrs. Helena Brodin Friberg, Swedish actress of The Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm; appeared in more than forty films and television shows, 1960 - 2000; co-author, Täcknamn Shakespeare

Simon Gribben, M.B.A., Award-winning writer, producer, director, editor of television news; several Emmys as a producer of specials, news series and sports series; five films in MoMA

Richard J. Leigh, M.D., Blair-Daroff Emeritus Professor of Neurology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Bachelor’s and M.D. degrees from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

Ellen Dinerman Little, M.A., Co-President and co-founder, The Little Film Company; Executive Producer, Richard III, starring Ian McKellen (1995), and Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins (1999)

Jack Ofield, Emeritus Professor of Film, San Diego State University; veteran film/TV producer/director; Member, Directors Guild of America; Fellow, American Film Institute

Oliver Pookrum, Founder of the Pookrum Playhouse and the African-American Theater Lab, Detroit, MI

Bernd E. H. A. Schuenemann, Professor Emeritus; Dr. honoris causa mult; Director, Institute for Lawyer's Law; former Chair, Criminal Law, Philosophy and Sociology of Law, University of München

Geir Håvard Uthaug, M.A., State Scholar; Norwegian writer/poet/translator; biographer of William Blake and Henrik Wergeland; translator of Blake, Conrad, Shakespeare (Richard II), others; numerous awards

Robert Wolf, M.A., American writer and journalist; recipient of the Bronze Medal Award for radio commentary, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award, both from the Society of Professional Journalists

With so many well-educated and accomplished authorship doubters we can see that mainstream or orthodox scholars professing a belief in the Stratfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship are just greatly losing their credibility on this particular question, as well does their scholarly work if it is based or slanted to fit with the traditionally accepted story.
You can read more here: https://doubtaboutwill.org/
7 years ago
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#4138
More news from the Authorship front—

There was a quite interesting article recently by Oxfordian Bryan Wildenthal, Professor of Law in San Diego, on several recent Supreme Court members that, in a fairly brief window of time, shared an interest in the Shakespeare Authorship question. Part of it related to or due to the 1987 American University authorship debate.

One of the interesting points Wildenthal makes that I didn’t know was that Justice Brennan, because he was the senior Justice among them, had “arbitrarily imposed” a high standard for the "burden of proof" that the anti-Stratfordians needed to meet to prevail in the debate. That is, Justice Brennan, decided himself without consulting his colleagues, that the “burden of proof” would need to be “clear and convincing evidence” BOTH that the Stratford man did Not write the works AND that Oxford did. However, a standard “far more common in lawsuits” could have been used. And that is that the decision could have been based on the “preponderance of the evidence”. It appears that Justice Brennan had a bias toward the traditional view for why else would he use his position to assert an uncommonly high standard for this kind of an informal legal decision? Also, keep in mind that since that time both the evidence accumulated against the traditional view, as well as for alternative candidates, has grown substantially. Also, only the evidence for Oxford was presented as an alternative, whereas some other candidate evidence may have been additionally meaningful and influential to the Justices.

In any case, Wildenthal notes that:
“ . . . in 1986 the newly seated Scalia joined no fewer than four justices already sitting on the Court who either then, or some years later, rejected the prevailing orthodox view that the Stratfordian theory of authorship has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. Of those four—Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, and Sandra Day O’Connor—two (Blackmun and Stevens, plus possibly O’Connor) were or became Oxfordians like Scalia. This tantalizing 5-4 majority on the nation’s highest tribunal lasted only for the 1986-87 term, until Justice Powell’s retirement, and not all had yet developed their authorship views. But for one term, at least 33%, possibly 44%, of the nine sitting justices were then or future Oxfordians—and fully 56% were then or future anti-Stratfordians!”

This article, linked below, was also mentioned in the SCOTUSblog that covers news of the U.S. Supreme Court.

http://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/end-of-an-oxfordian-era-on-the-supreme-court/
7 years ago
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#4139
Shakespeare's Political acumen

Recently there was another great article on Shakespeare’s unusual keen knowledge. This one referred to his apparent expertise in Politics and comes from Shakespeare author Gary B. Goldstein. Here’s the link for it:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444060/shakespeare-politics-elizabethan-court-life

Among the quotes by experts are these:

Historians such as Lily B. Campbell are emphatic about the systematic political uses to which the history plays of Shakespeare were designed. The UCLA professor concluded her 1947 study of the history plays by stating, “Each of the Shakespeare histories serves a special purpose in elucidating a political problem of Elizabeth’s day and in bringing to bear upon this problem the accepted political philosophy of the Tudors.”

Examining Shakespeare’s political philosophy was the aim of the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. In his essay “What’s in a Name?” he wrote that the best way to discover Shakespeare’s political beliefs was to examine the underlying assumptions taken for granted by all of his characters. What he found was the philosophical outlook of an aristocrat pervaded with longing for the past and gloom about the future, precisely because Shakespeare’s arrival as an artist coincided with the end of the Renaissance.

In an interview for the PBS documentary The Shakespeare Mystery, Enoch Powell applied his own political experience when probing William Shakespeare’s working knowledge of high politics: “I had been a member of the Cabinet, and I’d been in politics for twenty years, and I had some idea of what it’s like in the kitchen. And my astonishment was to discover that these were the best works of somebody who’d been in the kitchen. They’re written by someone who has lived the life, who has been part of a life of politics and power, who knows what people feel when they are near to the center of power, near to the heat of the kitchen. It’s not something which can be transferred, it’s not something on which an author, just an author, can be briefed: “Oh, this is how it happened”; it comes straight out of experience — straight out of personal observation — straight out of personal feeling.”

The same conclusion was reached by American ambassador Paul Nitze, who thought the Shakespeare plays spoke directly to a life experienced at the center of power. “Many of [the] plays of Shakespeare, of course, deal with people of the upper echelons of the society. Deals with kings and queens and principally courtiers. It’s at that level that emotions are extremely tense and rivalries are extremely bitter, and that the important issues cut and bite deeply into the human spirit.”

As with Powell, so with Nitze — “Shakespeare understood the psychology of power as it was actually employed during the English Renaissance, because of his personal history: Shakespeare knows what it is like at the center of power. He has the insider’s knowledge of the way power can be used for good or evil and the consequences that ensue. He understands the struggles that result from the tension between ideals of morality and the needs of statecraft”.

There is no evidence whatsoever that William of Stratford had any insider’s knowledge of court politics. However, among some of the alternative authorship contenders, at least the Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon would qualify. Oxford was a great noble and he is Goldstein’s favorite. But Bacon, though not a noble, was part of the aristocracy and known as a political animal, being immersed in it his whole life. He even served as the country’s regent for a time in the absence of King James.

This is just one more area of knowledge that the Stratfordian theory of authorship can only make feeble guesses to account for in the works.

Here's an agreement from another politician of the past:
"I cannot accord it to him who, though rich, did not educate his children, and who, though he sought fame through a coat-of-arms claimed to have been earned by the valor of his great-grandfather, nowhere, not even in his last will and testament, claimed the fame of authorship,--such authorship,--and whose sole posthumous anxiety centered on his dust and bones remaining undisturbed in the chancel of Stratford church."-J. Warren Keifer, Former Speaker of the National House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., 1904
7 years ago
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#4140
I have to say I like Bacon as a possible 'real' Shakespeare. I really like Bacon's writing.. But I like the Stratfordian man even more as a candidate. Much much much more.

More importantly, for me, the question of whether to devote the lion's share of my attention to the works of (whoever wrote) Shakespeare or to the authorship question seems to me to be a slam-dunk in favor of the works. I feel as though I've barely scratched the surface of the Sonnets, although I've read and seen almost all the plays multiple times and read all the Sonnets at least twice.

I'm not dismissing the authorship question as being without interest, or -- as is perhaps inevitable with historical issues that distant and ill-documented -- without possible merit. But there is an obvious theory: that the man from Stratford who became a player in the London theater evolved into a playwright and wrote the plays attributed to him, and was indeed the subject of the accolades bestowed upon him by his contemporaries. And, regardless of the jabs one might poke at it, it still seems to me to be the authorship theory with the least tortured reasoning to support it. (Be advised that Amnesty International is investigating some of the more convoluted posts on this thread ;) )

The arguments against the Stratford man seem to me to always boil down to that he was insufficiently educated, or aristocratic, or familiar with the politically powerful, or Italian, etc. to have written these plays. For me these are insufficient arguments, the real question being not how could the man from Stratford have written these plays but how could ANYONE have written these plays and poems!

It's a question that has the virtue of being its own closure, if not answer, and allows me to focus on the works, which was the whole idea in the first place.
7 years ago
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#4141
Not sure why one would ever feel a need to choose between appreciating the works and pursuing the many issues relating to authorship Steve.

I find the authorship issues to be inseparable from my fascination with the works. A mountain of circumstantial evidence links the works to political events, prominent identities and various locations - all this seems pretty much undeniable now that I've read a few recent books such as Richard Roe's 'Shakespeare's Guide To Italy'.

Your thoughts on recent scholarship, if you've read some and whether you have any suggested reading for me?
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