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
  Sunday, 14 August 2016
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Note. This began on the Shakespeare and Italy topic but I’m moving it here so readers can go right to it and not go through the Italy posts.

In response to a very long post I’m breaking it up into several smaller posts for easier reading and in case additional responses keep growing on some of the questions.

Reply Part 1

I never wrote that it was illogical not to agree with me, so please do not imply that I did to try to bolster your argument. My statement was that the evidence for supporting the authorship of William Shakespeare of Stratford is abundant and wide-ranging for the era in which he lived, much more abundant than the comparable evidence for most other contemporary playwrights. The documentary evidence falls into several different categories, all mutually reinforcing, and shows that a real person named William Shakespeare wrote the poems and plays attributed to him.
--What preceeded your “it follows” was your evidence that Stratford’s W.S. was an actor that performed in the Shakespeare plays and was also a sharer in that company. I and thousands of others do not see that your authorship conclusion “follows” from your two pieces of evidence. The lack of a logical deduction was so great that I could only end up deducing an alternative explanation. But I see you have more evidence and argument.

Your first, and quite large paragraph, contains numerous smaller assertions that I think are best addressed by responding to each as they come up. So I’m going to break up the paragraph as I respond. As before, your comments are in bold.

Here is the logical analysis:
1. The name "William Shakespeare" appears on the plays and poems.

--Importantly, this is technically not true. Of the approximate 48 quartos (depending on what all is counted) and V&A and Lucrece, there are about 12 of them by “William Shakespeare”. It looks like three others listed as by “W. Shakespeare” and I have no problem with that. But where our opinion differs, is with the approximate 17-19 of these that have the last name with the hyphen as Shake-speare, and with the approximate 17 that were published with no author’s name, even long after the Shakespeare name had become famous and a selling point. More complete statistics than mine can be found on page 23 of Shahan and Waugh’s Shakespeare Beyond Doubt?

First and foremost, you are operating under the claim, without any documentary evidence, that the name "William Shakespeare" was a pseudonym, and that there is nothing to tie the name to William Shakespeare of Stratford.
--Not remotely true. I can’t recall ever reading of non-Stratfordians that think that there is NO evidence connecting the works to the Stratford man. Generally, the argument is that the evidence is weak, very suspicious, contradictory, greatly lacking in confirmatory evidence, and possibly approaching the nearly impossible.

This claim is baseless and without any documentary evidence to back up the claim it is a conspiracy theory at best.
--We are as likely to cite the same documentary evidence against your theory as you use to assert it. Plus, a mass of circumstantial evidence we think outweighs your theory’s circumstantial evidence.

"William Shakespeare" has none of the characteristics of a pseudonym;
--maybe not, but we think that “Shake-speare” does have such a characteristic that can’t be logically dismissed.

it was the real name of a person closely connected with the production of the plays,
--Here you’re presuming what in fact we’re debating.

and there is no indication in the historical record that anybody ever suspected it of being a pseudonym
--in your opinion. We don’t agree.

or said that anybody other than William Shakespeare was the author.
--Are you even going to try to have a rational exchange? Or is it your intent to just waste everyone’s time here? What you should be attempting to say here is that “or said that anybody other than [the actor/sharer from Stratford] was the author”. To which we say that such thought seems to have been hinted at by some (Vicars, Ben Jonson, Hall and Marston, for example). If there was an intent to hide “the true author” then you shouldn’t expect to find an open explicit declaration that the Stratford man was not, or that someone else was.

The claim that the occasional hyphenation of "Shake-speare" indicated a pseudonym is completely groundless and unsupported by any evidence. There were not two separate names, "Shakspere" and "Shakespeare"; rather, they were the same name, with "Shakespeare" being by far the most common spelling, especially in London, both in non-literary references to the man from Stratford and in literary references to Shakespeare as a poet and playwright.
--These are just your assertions that are worthless in a debate. Interested readers can go to the doubtaboutwill.org site for some of the counterarguments. Readers should also know that scholars used to routinely spell the name as “Shakspere” in their journals. This is mentioned in Chapter 1 of Shakspeare Beyond Doubt? By Shahan and Waugh. In this chapter A.J. Pointon Ph.D. writes “The most effective deception—the change to his name—took hold around 1916, the tercentenary of Shakspere’s death. It was then that orthodox scholars, individuals and organizations involved in what had become the lucrative “Shakespeare business” began airbrushing the name “Shakspere” out of existence. In all new publications it would be replaced by Shakespeare, while every Shakspere family tree published became the “Shakespeare family tree. By this technique, people would eventually believe the Shaksperes of Stratford were really called Shakespeare and doubts about it would be met with astonishment and incomprehension.”

The historical evidence ties William Shakespeare of Stratford to the plays bearing his name. Many plays, poems and sonnets were attributed to Shakespeare during his lifetime.
--For any young or still-bewildered readers, the question is whether the authorial attribution to “Shakespeare” absolutely was meant for the actor/shareholder from Stratford, who never spelt his name exactly like that.

Additionally, Francis Meres attributed twelve plays to Shakespeare, including four which were never published in quarto: [Two] Gentlemen of Verona, [Comedy of] Errors, Love labors wonne, and King John. He also identified some of the plays that were published anonymously before 1598 -- Titus, Romeo and Juliet, and Henry IV -- as being written by Shakespeare.
--Yes, to whomever the author Shake-speare/Shakespeare was.

To be continued…
Well, you have been busy. I think your attacking me as an "internet troll" really only backfires on your argument. No one has seriously engaged with you in this debate, except me which I regret, because your argument lacks merit and amounts to a conspiracy theory. For that assessment you have labeled me an "internet troll." Fine with me.

I don't ever recall equating you to a "holocaust denier," but I would equate you with a climate science denier. For those in this world who deny that humans have had and continue to have an effect on climate change are brushing aside overwhelming consensus within the scientific community.

Same is true with the so-called authorship debate, which doesn't actually exist among the vast majority of early modern British literary scholars or historians because the evidence that exists to identify William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author of the writings by William Shakespeare is abundant and incontrovertible proof.

Have fun continuing to debate with yourself and the few climate science deniers, I mean anti-Shakespearians/Stratfordians, in the world. Maybe you should change your name from "Unfoldyourself" to "Debatewithyourself." Just a suggestion.
7 years ago
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#4420
Well, you have been busy. I think your attacking me as an "internet troll" really only backfires on your argument. No one has seriously engaged with you in this debate, except me which I regret, because your argument lacks merit and amounts to a conspiracy theory. For that assessment you have labeled me an "internet troll." Fine with me.

--Personally, I think you have a real challenge with being honest. I’ve answered your arguments on the merits. You can disagree with them but just to say they lack merit doesn’t mean that they do. I explained why you deserved a label of ‘internet troll’. It’s because you repeatedly characterize your arguments with various troll-like attacks. So, for example, if you want to be less troll-like then instead of just repeatedly saying ‘conspiracy theory’, you should explain how the non-Stratfordian theory qualifies, in your mind, as a conspiracy. If all you mean is that to you it’s a conspiracy theory because ‘it’s crazy ridiculous’ or whatever, then you’re just relabeling your assertion. You would still need to rationally explain, and successfully defend, how ‘it’s crazy ridiculous’. I’ll help you out further. Some Stratfordians have used ‘conspiracy theory’ to mean, as was the example, ‘crazy ridiculous’. But others have been a little more detailed and said it’s a conspiracy theory because it requires (they say) a belief that nearly Everyone in London (at least) to keep quiet about who the real Shakespeare was. This is because nearly Everyone would know, obviously, the truth of the deception. And if that was what you were arguing then we’d also ask you what rationale you have for asserting that ‘nearly Everyone in London’ would know about the deception? Then we could debate somewhat that question on the merits.

I don't ever recall equating you to a "holocaust denier," but I would equate you with a climate science denier. For those in this world who deny that humans have had and continue to have an effect on climate change are brushing aside overwhelming consensus within the scientific community.

--I wasn’t implying that I was accusing you of calling me/us “holocaust deniers”. I included that for the benefit of other doubters who might read the post. For authorship doubters like me that are closely involved with the Shakespeare Authorship Question, and have been on a weekly (or nearly daily) basis for many years, we are all aware of how some leading Stratfordians have exercised their own trolling muscles by calling us ‘”holocaust deniers” without any evidence whatsoever. We take strong offense to such outlandish abuse and think anyone that throws that kind of sordid label around at people should be ashamed of themselves. It’s plainly indecent.

--As for the charge of being a ‘climate science denier’—Since I have long followed science developments (among other topics) I’ve long known about ‘Climate change’ (what long ago used to be called ‘global warming’) and have been following the news on it closely (that is, weekly) for close to a decade now. So I’ve also long known that it’s been getting more serious by the year. In fact, some years ago I had the quixotic and foolish hope that if I could get people to just objectively look at the facts around the Shakespeare Authorship Question, then they could move away from having their opinions shaped by special interests or by the ideological tribes they belonged to. Then, I imagined that this idea of fairly and carefully examining evidence about a controversy might catch on with increasing numbers of people (just because it made sense), and that then this objectivity would begin to be held in higher esteem and more and more would become asserted as a standard for clarifying the evidence and arguments around the controversy of Climate Change. And if enough of the populace was encouraged to hold to this standard of everyone sincerely examining the evidence together in order to sift the bad and poor evidence from the good and useful evidence, then it would be easier for our country to agree on the needed policies and practices to help us avoid the worst effects that is projected from the increasing amounts of hothouse gases. But, alas, it appears that there aren’t any Stratfordians willing to question the ideas put out by their tribal affiliation. Objectively examining any evidence about their beliefs cannot be tolerated! It’s Stratfordianism to the end! Just as it may be denial of Climate Change (for a great many) to the end.

Same is true with the so-called authorship debate, which doesn't actually exist among the vast majority of early modern British literary scholars or historians because the evidence that exists to identify William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author of the writings by William Shakespeare is abundant and incontrovertible proof.

--You know, I have zero hope that you would ever question your convictions about this. Similarly, I’m pretty discouraged about most countries and the majority of species and peoples (especially their descendants) being able to escape much of the destruction of Climate Change, which it seems to me is increasing nearly every year. What I have done for decades is to be careful to always be willing to question what I believe (for the sake of what I call The Brutal Truth), and work to develop educated opinions on controversies that interest me, or else not to take a position with any strong attachment and to maintain an open mind to the evidence and views of others. I’ve read a great deal from both sides on the Shakespeare Authorship question and have developed over many years educated opinions on various aspects of it. But I’m not attached to my current viewpoints and would change them as soon as enough good evidence moved me to another position. There is still a great deal that is unknown to us. So those of us with an interest in this topic continue (on a weekly basis) to read about it, research it, and to question the evidence that we encounter.

Have fun continuing to debate with yourself and the few climate science deniers, I mean anti-Shakespearians/Stratfordians, in the world. Maybe you should change your name from "Unfoldyourself" to "Debatewithyourself." Just a suggestion.

--I actually don’t think that any of us serious followers of the non-Stratfordian theories really care about debating it. We’re trying to encourage scholars and lay readers to see it as a serious and worthwhile question so it can be discussed openly and objectively, to try and resolve as much of the unknown that we can, letting the chips fall where they may. But if debating the question will encourage more people to think about it themselves, then some of us will be willing to sacrifice our time for it.

--Anyway, Happy New Year to you and all other readers!
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