"no darkness but ignorance" (Clown), "Twelfth Night", (IV, 2, 42)

DiscussionsThe Globe: Shakespeare, his Contemporaries, and Context

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"no darkness but ignorance" (Clown), "Twelfth Night", (IV, 2, 42)

1proximity1
Modifié : Juin 17, 2017, 4:47 am





“Critics have been hampered by ignorance of many things necessary to a full understanding of the plays; and even now there are wide gaps in our knowledge. In spite of the enormous industry of the past century and the proliferation of research in the present century, there are many things that need to be done before scholarship can be said to have prepared the ground for criticism.” (p. 300)

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"(Ben) Jonson's great preface* is in some ways the culmination of the Shakespearean criticism of the previous hundred years. He tends to summarize faults and beauties, as so many of his predecessors had done. His list of faults covers the usual complaints: Shakespeare seems to write without any moral purpose, his plots are loosely constructed, his endings are huddled, he has many anachronisms, his jests are often bawdy, his tragedy is more forced than his comedy, his set speeches are often fridid or bombastic, and he indulges in quibbles." (p. 288)


Kenneth Muir,”Changing Interpretations of Shakespeare,” in (Ford, Boris – Editor) The Pelican Guide to English Literature, volume 2: The Age of Shakespeare, (1955, 1969, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth)
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* See (8) below.


§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§ “never was man thus wronged...” §§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§ ...“there is no darkness but ignorance.” §§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§
________________

The real author of the works— after more than four hundred years, still attributed to his pen-name and mask, “William Shakespeare”—was someone about as far from having had “small Latin and lesse Greeke” as it is possible for one to be. “Shakespeare's” work's author was steeped in Latin and Greek. He was raised a ward of Elizabeth's royal court. He was, from childhood, in the daily company of nobles—his tutors, the members of Elizabeth's court, and their servants, and, not least, his own age-peers, some of whom were also his peers in their own nobility, who were, like him, learning Greek and Latin. We're told that William Shaksper of Stratford learned enough Latin at his supposed (but utterly undocumented) time at a Stratford grammar school to go on to eventually produce the brilliantly creative poems and plays but we aren't told how and with whom he was supposed to have practised that supposed learning.

It is ludicrous to suppose that William went around his modest dwelling speaking, practising, Latin, much less Greek. It's no less ridiculous to suppose him arrived in London, still a stranger with, at most, one or two people known to him—Richard Field, perhaps, as an example—with whom he might have spoken Latin regularly. To learn a language, even just a poor grasp of it, one has to practice it. To learn it well, to master it, to make one's second-nature, right after one's mother tongue, one has to practice it a lot. How was William Shaksper to do this?

Edward de Vere, on the other hand, the 17th Earl of Oxford, having succeeded to that title upon the death of his father, heard Latin spoken all around him every day. He also routinely heard French and Italian spoken and sudied these as well, becoming fluent in both. The circle in which he lived took a knowledge of Greek, Latin, French and Italian for granted as part of any properly-educated person's knowledge. Edward's brilliant creativity in English had its source in his intimate knowledge of classic Greek and Latin authors and their plays and poetry.

All that study and all that practice—years of it, from the age of seven or eight—produced poems and plays in an English which was of a unique kind, remarkable and memorable for its superb creative and imaginative characteristics and this was just because of the author's knowledge of Greek and Latin.


What's almost unspeakably ironic is that, today, people holding doctorate degrees in English, even as they are nearly completely ignorant of Latin or Greek, presume to teach others that Ben Jonson's


“And though thou hadst small Latin and lesse Greek
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names, but call forth thund’ring Aeschilus,
Euripedes, and Sophocles”...


means that, according to Jonson, “Shakespeare” had scant knowledge and understanding of Latin and even less understanding or knowledge of Greek. And this laughably foolish misinterpretation of theirs concerns English. They're incapable of correctly parsing even their own (albeit 16th century) language. This is despite their failure to understand clear English having been patiently pointed out and explained to them—over decades—by others with a much better grasp of English.

______________________________



(1)



Part One: “The Revelation of the Man”, Chapter 1, "The Aim and Method Explained") :

"I embarked on this task because it seemed to me that it might provide a new method of approach to Shakespeare; and I believe I have, by a happy fortune, hit on such a method, hitherto untried, which is yielding most interesting and important results.

“It enables us to get nearer to Shakespeare himself, to his mind, his tastes, his experiences, and his deeper thought than does any other single way I know of studying him. It throws light from a fresh angle upon Shakespeare's imaginative and pictorial vision, upon his ideas about his own plays and the characters in them, and it seems to me to serve as an absolute beacon in the skies with regard to the vexed question of authorship.

— (p. x, Preface)

*** *** ***

“I believe it to be profoundly true that the real revelation of the writer's personality, temperament and quality of mind is to be found in his works, whether he be dramatist or novelist, describing other people's thoughts or putting down his own directly.

"In the case of a poet, I suggest it is chiefly through his images that he, somewhat unconsciously, 'gives himself away'. He may be, and in Shakespeare's case is, almost entirely objective in his dramatic characters and their views and opinions, yet, like the man who under stress of emotion will show no sign of it in eye or face, but will reveal it in some muscular tension, the poet unwittingly lays bare his own innermost likes and dislikes, observations and interests, associations of thought, attitudes of mind and beliefs, in and through the images, the verbal pictures he draws to illuminate something quite different in the speech and thought of his characters.

"The imagery he instinctively uses is thus a revelation, largely unconscious, given at a moment of heightened feeling, of the furniture of his mind, the channels of his thought, the qualities of things, the objects and incidents he observes and remembers, and perhaps most significant of all, those which he does not observe or remember.

"My experience is that this works out more reliably in drama than in pure poetry, because in a poem the writer is more definitely and consciously seeking the images; whereas in the drama, and especially drama written red-hot as was the Elizabethan, images tumble out of the mouths of the characters in teh heat of the writer's feeling or passion, as they naturally surge up into his mind." (pp.4 & 5)

— by Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us, (1935, Cambridge University Press).






(2)



FROM an essay, "Shakespeare and humanist culture", by Quentin Skinner published as the Afterword

(p. 271)

...Students of philosophy typically operate with the assumption that the propositions contained in the texts they analyse can also be treated as statements of belief. This is not to deny that philosophical works may often be suffused with obliqueness in the form of irony, parody and other hidden literary codes. It is simply to claim that, if our aim is to identify and elucidate the specific arguments being put forward in such works, it will be best to begin by assuming that their authors meant what they said and said what they meant. This seems a virtually inescapable principle of interpretation in the case of philosophical texts and is undoubtedly one reason it has proved so difficult for historians of philosophy to endorse without reservation the idea of the death of the author.

It would be extremely unwise, however, to make any comparable assumptions about Shakespeare's texts. There is almost no evidence outside his works that would enable us to corroborate any claims we might feel inclined to make about his plays and poetry as statements of his beliefs. As David Armitage puts it, Shakespeare has long been a byword for elusiveness. By constrast with his father, who played a prominent role in his local community, Shakespeare never shouldered any civic responsibilities and was remiss in discharging even such basic duties as paying his subsidies. None of his manuscripts survive, and there is only one moment in the historical record when he speaks in his own name, the occasion when he was cited as a witness in a matrimonial dispute in 1612. While his deposition contains some nice touches of amplificato, it is largely formulaic in character and less than completely helpful in content. He appears anxious to scribble his signature and make his exit with as little fuss as possible.(1)

Another reason it would be misguided to treat Shakespeare's works as direct evidence for his beliefs is that he was living and writing in a literary culture profoundly shaped by the rhetorical arts. The Ars rhetorica was the main discipline taught in the Elizabethan grammar schools, such as the one attended by Shakespeare in the 1570s. ...

(at p. 278) ...It is important, however, not to carry too far the suggestion that Shakespeare simply stages political arguments without ever taking sides. If we nail our colours too firmly to this post-modernist mast, disjoining the texts from any authorial voice, we may incur the ironic danger of associating ourselves with a romantic and old-fashioned view of Shakespeare's art. We may be saying that he was so much a man for all seasons that it would be an insult to his genius to suggest that he harboured any serious interest in the local political issues of his day.

To steer away from this danger is not to affirm that Shakespeare was in any straightforward sense a political writer after all. Mst contributors to the present volume take it for granted that it would be little better than absurd to piece together the scattered observations in his oeuvre in such a way as to equip him with a settled body of political beliefs. It would be no less absurd, however, to fail to acknowledge that many of his plays abound in political reflections and arguments, and may even be said to display a political sensibility of a distinctive kind." ...
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(1) Charles Nicholl, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, (London, 2007) pp. 289-290.

____________________________

— from the Afterword to Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought, David Armitage, Conal Condren & Andrew Fitzmaurice, editors. (2009, Cambridge University Press)







(3)



“Owing to a lack of correspondence between the life of Shakesper of Stratford and the Works {ascribed to "William Shakespeare"}, orthodox criticism has always been inclined to disregard the personal experience of the author, to the extent that the criterion of the 'impersonality' of Shakespeare's art seemed to establish a conclusive solution: Shakespeare's art is impersonal, that is, it does not involve the author's life and social environment, nor do his works reflect his feelings or thoughts. Of all the writers of the western world, Shakespeare is the only one whose works have been denied an autobiographical basis.” (p. 151)

Noemi Magri, Such Fruits Out of Italy: The Italian Renaissance in
Shakespeare's Plays and Poems
(2014, Laugwitz Verlag, D-21244 Buchholz, Germany)






(4)



“Sincerity, i.e., that the author should himself keenly feel what he expresses. Without this condition there can be no work of art, as the essence of art consists in the contemplator of the work of art being infected with the author's feeling. If the author does not actually feel what he expresses, then the recipient cannot become infected with the feeling of the author, he does not experience any feeling, and the production can no longer be classified as a work of art.”
— Leo Tolstoy, (Sincerity: Shakespeare and the drama, (p. 269) )


“The complete absence of sincerity from all the plays is the primary indictment in Tolstoy's case against Shakespeare.”

“The demand for sincerity was Tolstoy's error. The genius of King Lear is that it was written by a man who was totally unlike his creation. The poetry of a teenager in love is sincere: that is what makes it bad. The key to dramatic art is Insincerity, i.e. that the author should only pretend keenly to feel what he expresses.” —p. 150

Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (original edition, 1997, Picador/ Macmillan Publishers, Ltd. London)





(5)


William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, by Thomas Whitfield Baldwin, (1944, Urbana, University of Illinois Press.) in two volumes

from volume II :

Chapter XLIX,
UPPER GRAMMAR SCHOOL : Shakespere's Lesse Greeke

(p. 617)

"Our only external authority for supposing that Shakespere had any Greek at all is Ben Jonson. By his statement that Shakespere had "small Latine, and lesse Greeke" he implies that Shakespere had some Greek." ...

IV. CONCLUSION

Chapter L. What of It?
(.pdf file)

(p. 664) --
... ... ...

"I believe the accumulated evidence indicates that Shakespeare did have a complete grammar school training. But I do not believe that this fact is in itself of any importance. It is of importance, however, to see how such materials and especially such methods as the boy should have acquired did finally play their part in enabling the man to realize himself. From the combined labors of the great tradition of Shakespearean scholars, we have assembled a great many instances of the ways in which Shakespeare has transmuted into something new and strange materials which he should have acquired in grammar school, and that by methods which he should there have learned. And in the light of what we have learned from the past, it is to be hoped that the future will greatly enlarge our knowledge.

"For the present work makes only a beginning. It gathers the fossil remains and shows that they conform to the pattern of a skeleton. But it may not even give a sufficiently complete idea of the skeleton itself. Much less of the flesh and blood which clothed the skeleton. Less still of the soul which once was all in all and all in every part. Yet it does throw some light on the soul itself of the man Shakespere. We of the present peer into the glass darkly in the hope and belief that the future may see somewhat more nearly face to face.

"But our facts will not yet permit sweeping generalizations about influences. Here we can at most establish tendencies. We can see the tendencies of the system as a whole. We can see Shakespere reacting with and against some of those tendencies. But most other institutions of the time were shaped in accordance with the same social view and so would reinforce the tendencies of the grammar school program. It is thus frequently, if not ususally, impossible to know how to apportion the praise or blame to each of these institutions. In this study, we have placed Shakespere against the background of grammar school teaching. In some instances, it is certain that Shakespere had his information or his point of view from grammar school. In the vast majority of cases, we know only that he was supposed to get it there. This is true even of the tangible facts and methods. Even less certain can we be of the intangibles, which are really the important things. But from the tangible fossils we can get a fair idea of the tangible skeleton, less indeed of the flesh and blood, yet even some insight of the soul itself. And whether we like it or not, we have not yet devised any other method of approach--for intuition, whatever its form and whatever its efficacy, is not a method.

"Our tangible question thus becomes, 'What did Shakespere find useful in grammar school knowledge, whether he acquired that knowledge in grammar school or out?' But before we begin to answer that question, one fallacy of the ages should be cleared away at once. It is really pathetic to see how the Pseudo-Classic apologists for lack-Latin Shakespere in the Eighteenth century assumed that Shakespere could not possibly have had any less abject regard for the so-called classical rules than they, had he only known them. Ignorance was the only tolerable excuse of which they could conceive. But such an excuse cannot possibly be accepted, for Shakespere certainly knew many of these dicta and wilfully refused to observe them save when it pleased him to do so. The freshly canonized unities of Shakespere's day will serve as well for illustration as anything else, since they came to be worshipped almost, if not quite, as the supreme deity in the dramatic heaven. As early as The Comedy of Errors Shakespere observes these unities consciously. (6) He was adapting Latin plays, and
(p. 666)
under the circumstances it was the easiest thing for him to do. But had he been ignorant of them, he could neither have recognized the rudimentary form nor have developed them into his own exceedingly complicated adaptation. As early as The Comedy of Errors Shakespere knew the unities and, as so far as I know, handled them at least as skilfully as any of his contemporaries.

"Nor had Shakespere forgotten his skill when he came to write his last complete play, The Tempest. There again, for some reason, he chose to use and to emphasize the unities in such a way as to show that he is fully conscious of what he is doing. And we approve whole-heartedly of what he has done as right. But in the intervening years between The Comedy and The Tempest he has only occasionally approached the unities. Whatever his reason for using the unitites or not using them, certainly ignorance is not the reason.

"And the unities are merely one illustration. The reader will remember other instances, covering perhaps all the fundamental neo-classical positions in so far as they had been attained in Shakespere's day. Shakespere's failure to make more use of these is not due to ignorance of the law, but to wilful disobedience. Nor was he unadmonished as to his sins. Robert Greene had in 1592 called the public attention to some of the wilful misdeeds of this scene-shaking Johannes Factotum. And the chief result was that Shakescene boasted of his unrepentance. He appealed to Nature only, not to Art at all. For this apposition, Shakespere was himself chiefly responsible; Jonson and his predecessors and followers merely accepted and emphasized it. Had Shakespere really wanted greater classical scholarship, he was not too old in 1592 at twenty-eight to have improved his technical knowledge greatly. At least, there were the translations into English which by diligent search he might have found and purchased. But we have no absolutely conclusive external proof, so far as I know, that he ever owned a book of any kind. (7) It is easy enough to find books once owned by Ben Jonson. Had Shakespere purchased books as ardently as he did certain other forms of real property, we should certainly have more trace of his activities in that way.

"But we do not need to put the case on externalities. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And scholars have been unanimous, I believe, that Shakespere used his classics more in early years, but
(p. 667) progressively less with time. While I doubt that so broad a statement is quite accurate, yet the statement may stand till some study has been made which is competent to show in what respects and directions Shakespere did evolve.

______________
author's footnote: (6) See my (i.e. Baldwin's) edition among others.
(7) The British Museum Montaigne was probably his. The Bodleian Ovid has probably the next best claim, but is exceedingly doubtful. The Folger Archaionomia has just proffered a respectable claim to attention. But "after that, the dark."





(6)


(Chapter 15, "Ben Jonson" (by David Riggs) in The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography, Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, editors; (2015, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)


"William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson (born in 1572) had a lot in common. They both were bred in the households of humble tradesmen. Both received a first-rate classical education in grammar school, married at an early age, and left their marital households for extended periods of time. Both entererd the theatrical profession as actors and reinvented themselves as playwrights. Both of them wrote plays that were, on average, considerably longer than comparable scripts written by their contemporaries. Each used the stage to improve his position in society. Shakespeare, who was eight years older and a better actor than Jonson, put his career in the theatre on a solid footing at the age of thirty. In 1594, while Jonson toiled in obscurity, Shakespeare became an actor-shareholder and attached playwright in the prestigious and profitable Lord Chamberlain's Men." ... (p. 186)





(7)


We join Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis from line 595:

(595) “Now is she in the very lists of love,
Her champion mounted for the hot encounter.
All is imaginary she doth prove;
He will not manage her:
That worse than Tantalus' is her annoy,
(600) To clip Elizium and to lack her joy.

Even so poor birds deceiv'd with painted grapes
Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw:
Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,
As those poor birds that helpless berries saw.
(605)The warm effects which she in him finds missing
She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.

But all in vain; good queen, it will not be.
She hath assay'd as much as may be prov'd:
Her pleading hath deserv'd a greater fee;
(610) She's love, she loves, and yet she is not lov'd.
“Fie, fie,” he says, “you crush me; let me go,
You have no reason to withhold me so.”

“Thou hadst been gone,” quoth she, “sweet boy, ere this,
But that thou told'st me, thou wouldst hunt the boar.

(615) Oh be advis'd, thou know'st not what it is,
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes (tusks) never sheath'd he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.”



Compare (the emphasized portion in) (7) with


(8)


Ben Jonson's To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us :

For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee, surely, with thy peers.
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence, to honour thee, I would not seek
For names;
but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth; or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!




and see


(9)


Small Latin and Lesse Greek – a Theory No Longer Fit for Purpose?

by Keith Hopkins (March 2014)

And though thou hadst small Latin and lesse Greek
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names, but call forth thund’ring Aeschilus,
Euripedes, and Sophocles to us……

What did Shakespeare know? Why is that important? This is not an epistemological, or rhetorical question, far less an enquiry into the meaning of meaning, as it were, or the what and the why of things.

Link: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/160338/sec_id/160338


2TheHumbleOne
Mar 24, 2017, 7:39 am

Can we not have a more appropriate title for this - one designed to give a vague indication of the likely content?

In the spirit of harmony, peace and love I refrain from making any detailed suggestion other than the idea that "authorship" might feature somewhere.

3proximity1
Mar 24, 2017, 10:06 am

>2 TheHumbleOne:

Speaking of candor-in-titles, Alas, O, "Humble One", the OP thread-title is not amendable.

I was not able to change it "Attention! "Authorship Question"!: Do NOT read!"

4proximity1
Modifié : Mar 28, 2017, 3:33 am



…“we are justified, I suggest, in assuming that a poet will, in the long run, naturally tend to draw the large proportion of his images from the objects he knows best, or thinks most about, or from the incidents, among myriads he has experienced, to which he is sensitive, and which therefore remain within his knowledge.

“This reflection of the personality in the images can perhaps best be made clear by comparing those of different poets. Before describing and classifying the subject-matter of all Shakespeare's images and making certain inferences from them, I will therefore instance a few points drawn from the detailed analysis I have made of a dozen or so of the writerscontemporary with him.

“If, without such a comparison, I embarked on my study of Shakespeare's figures, the reader might suspect that his subject-matter was merely the usual equipment of Elizabethan writersm and distrust my conclusions as to his personal peculiarities. My survey shows that, qutie apart from style and method of forming the images (a study in itself), each writer has a certain range of images which are characteristic of him, and that he has a marked and constant tendency to use a much larger number of one or two kinds.” (pp. 12-13)

--Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us, (1935, Cambridge University Press).



_________

And, thus, if so, why indeed should the case be very different when it comes to the themes and circumstances which the author chooses to treat? Why shouldn't these, too, in the long run, naturally tend to draw the large proportion of his images from the objects he knows best, or thinks most about, or from the incidents, among myriads he has experienced, to which he is sensitive, and which therefore remain within his knowledge”?

I have a rather difficult time imaging how and why the author as we're given in the person of Shaksper of Stratford was so motivated to present the picture of a prince of the realm reagrding his royal existence, as Hamlet is seen to do, as a prison.

But I have no such trouble if I suppose that the real author was a nobleman of high rank and did indeed have rather good and clear reasons to feel that his title and positions brought with them conditions which were, to him, prison-like in their constraining requirements of him.



Hamlet, excerpt from Act II, scene 2
__________________



Polonius. Indeed, that is out o' th' air. (Aside) How pregnant sometimes 1310
his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which
reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I
will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between
him and my daughter.- My honourable lord, I will most humbly take
my leave of you. 1315

Hamlet. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more
willingly part withal- except my life, except my life, except my
life,

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Polonius. Fare you well, my lord. 1320

Hamlet. These tedious old fools!

Polonius. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.

Rosencrantz. (to Polonius) God save you, sir!

Exit (Polonius).

Guildenstern. My honour'd lord! 1325

Rosencrantz. My most dear lord!

Hamlet. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

Rosencrantz. As the indifferent children of the earth.

Guildenstern. Happy in that we are not over-happy. 1330
On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.

Hamlet. Nor the soles of her shoe?

Rosencrantz. Neither, my lord.

Hamlet. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her
favours? 1335

Guildenstern. Faith, her privates we.

Hamlet. In the secret parts of Fortune? O! most true! she is a
strumpet. What news ?

Rosencrantz. None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

Hamlet. Then is doomsday near! But your news is not true. Let me 1340
question more in particular. What have you, my good friends,
deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison
hither?

Guildenstern. Prison, my lord?

Hamlet. Denmark's a prison. 1345

Rosencrantz. Then is the world one.

Hamlet. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o' th' worst.

Rosencrantz. We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet. Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good 1350
or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz. Why, then your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your
mind.

Hamlet. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a
king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. 1355

Guildenstern. Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of
the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Hamlet. A dream itself is but a shadow.


Rosencrantz. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that
it is but a shadow's shadow. 1360

Hamlet. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch'd
heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to th' court? for, by my
fay, I cannot reason.

Rosencrantz. (with Guildenstern) We'll wait upon you.

Hamlet. No such matter! I will not sort you with the rest of my 1365
servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most
dreadfully attended. But in the beaten way of friendship, what
make you at Elsinore?

Rosencrantz. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

Hamlet. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you; 1370
and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were
you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free
visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come! Nay, speak.

Guildenstern. What should we say, my lord?

Hamlet. Why, anything- but to th' purpose. You were sent for; and 1375
there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties
have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen
have sent for you.

Rosencrantz. To what end, my lord?

Hamlet. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights 1380
of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the
obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a
better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with
me, whether you were sent for or no.

Rosencrantz. (aside to Guildenstern) What say you? 1385

Hamlet. (aside) Nay then, I have an eye of you.- If you love me, hold
not off.

Guildenstern. My lord, we were sent for.

Hamlet. I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your
discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no 1390
feather. I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so
heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the
air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical 1395
roof fretted with golden fire- why, it appeareth no other thing
to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a
piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in
action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the 1400
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what
is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me- no, nor woman
neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.


Rosencrantz. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

Hamlet. Why did you laugh then, when I said 'Man delights not me'? 1405

Rosencrantz. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten
entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them
on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.

Hamlet. He that plays the king shall be welcome- his Majesty shall
have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and 1410
target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall
end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose
lungs are tickle o' th' sere; and the lady shall say her mind
freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. What players are
they? 1415

Rosencrantz. Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the
tragedians of the city.

Hamlet. How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in
reputation and profit, was better both ways.

Rosencrantz. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late 1420
innovation.

Hamlet. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the
city? Are they so follow'd?

Rosencrantz. No indeed are they not.

Hamlet. How comes it? Do they grow rusty? 1425

Rosencrantz. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is,
sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top
of question and are most tyrannically clapp'd for't. These are now
the fashion, and so berattle the common stages (so they call
them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills and 1430
dare scarce come thither.

Hamlet. What, are they children? Who maintains 'em? How are they
escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can
sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow
themselves to common players (as it is most like, if their means 1435
are no better), their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim
against their own succession.

Rosencrantz. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation
holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was, for a
while, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player 1440
went to cuffs in the question.

Hamlet. Is't possible?

Guildenstern. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away?

Rosencrantz. Ay, that they do, my lord- Hercules and his load too. 1445

Hamlet. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and
those that would make mows at him while my father lived give
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in
little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if
philosophy could find it out.



_________________

(ETA)



"This last point, the relation of ourselves to our fellows, would seem to me to be the centre of Shakespeare's belief and mainspring of his actions. There is one thought already referred to (p. 170), which we find recurring in his work in many forms all through his career, and, it would seem, quite simply, to be this: we exist only just in so far as we touch our fellows, and receive back from them the warmth or light we have ourselves sent out. To befriend, to support, to help, to cheer and illuminate our fellow-men is the whole object of our being, and if we fail to do this, we have failed in that object, and are as empty as husks, hollow and meaningless. Only thus can we fulfil ourselves and be in truth that which we are intended to be.”

( C. F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery, (pp. 207-208) )



While one of the keys to understanding Shakespeare, the above insight doesn't take account of other features of his understanding. “To befriend, to support, to help, to cheer and illuminate our fellow-men”, yes, such are the higher initiatives by which we keep, nurture and advance our mortal souls. But our author of Shakespeare would never have proposed to do these things indiscriminately toward any and all those we encounter. Speaking for myself, I have seen from close-up too much of the wreckage of humanity, people lost to any regard for another's welfare, to imagine wasting upon them efforts to cheer, support, illuminate or befriend them. In the first place, many such people's ideas of help, support and friendship begins and ends in their own vile and selfish designs to seek always their own profit at the expense of others. I have absolutely no inclination to cheer, support or befriend such people. They would be the first to scorn such efforts if they couldn't take and abuse them to their own misconceived “advantage.” That is because, impoverished in body, mind and spirit, these people tread life's path passing by and leaving untouched the kind of riches which are free for the taking by anyone, were they to have only enough of the spark of humanity required to see riches in things which are there for anyone with an even partly-open mind—riches, indeed, just such as Shakespeare's own life's work.

It requires an astonishing blindness for so many—virtually the whole of contemporary Stratfordian academia—to fail to see within these words of Shakespeare that the last thing he'd have been interested in devoting himself to producing would be so superficial a thing as a vanity exercise wherein he “seems to write without any moral purpose,” and where “his plots are loosely constructed”


“Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse.”
Venus and Adonis, ln. 163*



“That no man is the lord of anything,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicate his parts to others, ( ln. 115)
… … ...
“Nor feels not what he owns, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort the heat again
To the first giver.” (ln. 99-102)

Troilus and Cressida, III, 3. *


(friends who fail to help each other are as

“sweet (musical) instruments hung up in cases,
that keep their sounds to themselves.” (ln. 94-100)*
Timon of Athens, I, 2.



“Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues.


Measure for Measure, I, 1 (ln. 33-37)*


For God's sake!

These are not the words of a man devoted to passing his time in idle writing exercises with no particular points or purposes! (See (2) and (4) and the lead excerpt from the essay by Kenneth Muir, above, >1 proximity1: )

Shakespeare's acclaimed genius is only the more astounding when it is seen from a right appreciation for the person he actually was in fact rather than an empty and wholly unfit mythic character borrowed from a person paid off to silently lend his name and nothing but his name to work the real author could not have published openly under his own name.

Those citations above came from a high-ranking nobleman, the premier Earl of the kingdom, the Earl of Oxford, born into privilege and place in a centuries-old hierarchy of nobility. That context of authorial identity lends inestimable power and force to these words. But all that is hopelessly lost on those who cannot correctly identify the rightful author. And the power and force is wasted on those who wantonly refuse to recognize the rightful author's identity.

If the reader understands that Edward Oxford wrote Hamlet's lines, then the lines ring with an authority which they cannot possibly have if the reader believes them to have been the musings of a wind-tossed leaf from a bookless and illiterate cottage in Stratford where no classic texts ever entered nor were ever heard pronounced, where no plume-quill ever scratched ink upon parchment, where no candle ever burned to illuminate a printed page.

Before Susanah married Dr. John Hall, literacy never breeched the walls of the Shaksper home as far as there is any documentary evidence to attest. And, upon his father-in-law, William Shaksper's death, it seems not to have occurred to Dr. Hall to enter a note in his already copious diary of notes about people and events in the community mentioning either that his father-in-law was the poet and playwright responsible for Measure for Measure, King Lear, and Othello; responsible for Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece or the person in honor of whom the communal church's monument was erected—for excellence as a poet and playwright.


"It is just because this thought is so often repeated, reaching us through so many different voices, wrapped in so many different images, that I suggest we are for once justified in assuming it to be Shakespeare's own conviction, and in believing that we have here the philosophy by which he instinctively guided his life and actions. (Spurgeon, p. 209)


It's simply unfortunate that Caroline Spurgeon, who saw so very correctly and so very deeply into the character of the rightful author, was so sadly mistaken in the belief that this author was Shaksper of Straford on Avon, the mask, the pen-name, of the actual author whose life and whose personality her deduced personality-profile so well fits.

_________________

* all cited in C. F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery, (p. 208)

5TheHumbleOne
Mar 25, 2017, 8:47 pm

>3 proximity1:

I wouldn't go quite as far as that - or abandon hope all thee who enter here - but a gentle indicator as to content wouldn't go amiss.

6proximity1
Mar 27, 2017, 5:02 am



Further reading at:

http://durer.press.illinois.edu/baldwin/vol.1/html/573.html

http://durer.press.illinois.edu/baldwin/vol.1/html/574.html

"What a solemn farce would the pages of comment ... appear to him"... (i.e. Oxford/Shakespeare)

7proximity1
Modifié : Mar 28, 2017, 7:22 am

­ (p. 278) “Among Shakespeare’s political reflections some of the most recurrent concern the almost insupportable burden of public life. As Stephen Greenblatt remarks, the list of Shakespeare’s rulers who exhibit a strong desire to escape from the demands of leadership is a long one, including Vincento and Prospero, as well as Lear and Richard II. Those in high office are regularly shown to suffer from intense anxiety and sleeplessness.”

– "Shakespeare and humanist culture", by Quentin Skinner published as the Afterword to Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought, David Armitage, Conal Condren & Andrew Fitzmaurice, editors. (2009, Cambridge University Press)

(p. 271) “By contrast with his father, who played a prominent role in his local community, Shakespeare never shouldered any civic responsibilities and was remiss in discharging even such basic duties as paying his subsidies. None of his manuscripts survive….”
– Quentin Skinner, ibid.

(p. 279) “Some contributors go even further, seeing in several of Shakespeare’s works a willingness not merely to ruminate on political issues, but to offer words of counsel and even warning to the princes and other ‘governors’ of his age. …

… “We can go further, Cathy Shrank suggests, and add that there is at least one text in which Shakespeare proffers advice not in an oblique but in a direct and almost strident style. He does so, Shrank maintains, in the Sonnets, especially in the opening sequence of seventeen poems in which an unknown young nobleman is repeatedly urged to marry and ensure the continuation of his line. Here we seem to be listening to a clear authorial voice. The poems are filled with imperatives as the poet upbraids the young man for neglecting his duties and leading a wasteful life, and they are pervaded at the same time by a sense of imminent loss. The loss chiefly feared by the poet is the destruction of a noble house, but he also warns the youth to expect a diminution of happiness, of wisdom and even of truth.”
– Quentin Skinner, ibid.

______________________

8proximity1
Modifié : Avr 3, 2017, 4:52 am



The subjunctive form in the verb “to have”


The subjunctive form of verbs remains—“even today” and "even in English"—stubbornly attached to expressions of something conditional, doubtful, about a thing, a circumstance, an intention, that are not actual, not currently the case and which never have been and may never become the case.

Though that aspect began to be blurred centuries ago in common English practice, it's still important and, if one is to understand the import of past usages, it is especially important to understand it's correct sense. Yet, as long ago as the late seventeenth-century, people had begun to misconstrue the subjunctive use of the verb “to have” where it expresses a condition about possession. Thus began centuries of nonsense regarding Ben Jonson's meaning in his expression,

“And though thou had'st small Latine and lesse Greeke, I would not....”

So, in the following, I present some examples to illustrate the import of the subjunctive (conditional) “had” from Shakespeare's texts:



from The Rape of Lucrece :

“If Collatine, thy honour lay in me,
(line 835) From me by strong assault it is bereft:
My honey lost, and I a drone-like bee,
Have no perfection of my summer left,
But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft;
In thy weak hive a wand'ring wasp hath crept,
(line 840) And sucked the honey that thy chaste bee kept.

“Yet I am guilty of thy honour's wrack;
Yet for thy honour I did entertain him:
Coming from thee I could not put him back,
For it had been dishonour to disdain him.
(line 845) Besides, of weariness he did complain him,
And talk'd of virtue: O unlook'd-for evil,
When virtue is profan'd in such a devil!”


For it had been dishonour to disdain him.” can't reasonably mean he was indeed dishonoured by disdain rather than being treated with the due respect. It means, of course, For it should have been dishonour (for me) to (have) disdain(ed) him.

But that phrase isn't misconstrued. It's generally understood to mean a conditional aspect of a past circumstance. Why, then, aren't readers taking the correct meaning from “And though thou had'st small Latine and lesse Greeke,... ?

and, another example:


(line 1485 ) Lo here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds;
Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
And friend to friend gives unavised wounds;
And one man's lust these many lives confounds;
Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.”


9proximity1
Modifié : Avr 5, 2017, 7:12 am

I think its main argument goes far to set out and explain why it is so very difficult (for some of us) to breach the wall of incomprehension that separates my own world-view from those who live in a world of myth which has William Shaksper in the role of the author “Shakespeare.”

Because the author explains his argument better than I can match, I'll simply cite him here:



Grammatica : a historical and methodological introduction

“For over 1,200 years, textual culture in Western Europe was
governed by grammatica, the first of the liberal arts,
which was known as 'the art (or science) of interpreting the poets
and other writers and the principles for speaking correctly.' (1) But
the social effects of grammatica were different in kind and
degree from other arts and disciplines: grammatica was
foundational, a social practice that provided the exclusive access to
literacy, the understanding of Scripture, the knowledge of a literary
canon, and membership in an international Latin textual community.
The centrality of grammatica throughout la longue durée
of the late classical to early Renaissance era is itself an astonishing
fact of Western culture. Although the role of grammatica in
the medieval model of the liberal arts is widely recognized, the larger
cultural work performed by this discipline—its social, intellectual, and
ideological function—has yet to be recovered. This book is an attempt
to describe the larger function of grammatica in early medieval
literary culture.

“Rather than approaching the history of grammatica simply as a
history of theories, educational practices, or the doctrines of a discipline,
I intend to disclose the broad social effects of the discipline and to recover
the social and intellectual agenda that lies behind the often bewildering
mass of sources—from individual treatises and commentaries to entire
compiled manuscripts—that document grammatical methodology. This study,
therefore, is an attempt to define what I call grammatical culture, the kind of
literate and literary culture sustained and reproduced by grammatica,
considered not only as a discipline with a circumscribed body of knowledge
but as a model for textual culture with implications that extend far beyond
the apparent objective contents of a discipline.

“As the foundation of a series of disciplines, grammatica instituted a
model of learning, interpretation, and knowledge that defined various regional
textual communities and provided the discursive and textual competencies that
were preconditions for participation in literary cutlure throughout medieval
Europe. Grammatical discourse constituted a special field of knowledge—a
canon of traditional texts, both Christian and classical (the auctores), and
a normative written or textual Latin (latinitas), the structure and style of
which was reduced to systematic description and instruction (ars).
Grammatica, a Latinized Greek term, was also called litteratura,
the discipline of the written, and one who was grammatically educated was a
litteratus, competent in reading and interpreting Latin writings. As a
discipline sustained by the dominant social and political institutions of medieval
Europe, grammatica functioned to perpetuate and reproduce the most
fundamental conditions for textual culture, providing the discursive rules and
interpretive strategies that constructed certain texts as repositories of authority
and value. In its foundational role, grammatica also created a special
kind of literate subjectivity, an identity and social position for litterati
which was consistently gendered as masculine and socially empowered.

“Although grammatica was formalized as the first of the arts of discourse in
early medieval school curricula, the discipline articulated cutlural practices that
extended far beyond scholastic institutions and the internal unity of the arts
of discourse: by supplying the very conditions for textual culture, the culture
of the manuscript book, grammatica functioned as an irreducible
cultural prerequisite, a status never given to rhetoric or logic. In the terms
of the medieval
scholars themselves, grammatica was 'the source and foundation
of liberal letters' (4) or 'the source and foundation of all the textual arts,'
(5) not only because grammatica was the only point of entry into
literate culture but because grammatica was universally understood
to supply the discursive means for constructing language and texts as objects
of knowledge. Grammatica had
an essential consitutive function, and was not simply one discipline among many, or
even the first of many; it made possible a certain kind of literacy, reproducing the
conditions for textual culture per se. The constitutive function of
grammatical knowledge was thus presupposed throughout the whole system
of interpretation, philosophy, theology, and law. The broad social effects of
grammatica are therefore to be found outside the classroom:
grammatica provided the readerly and interpretive skills for the production
of literary and textual knowledge across the disciplines.” (pp. 1-2)


__________________________

* : The Making of Textual Culture : 'Grammatica' and Literary Theory 350-1100 by Martin Irvine; 1994, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press ; 604 pp., illustrated, with endnotes, bibliography and an index of names and authors.

Author's endnotes:

(1): See, inter alia, Sergius GL (Grammatici Latini (1857-1880)) 4, 486; Marius Victorinus, GL 6, 3-4; Maximus Victorinus, GL 6, 188; Audax, GL 7, 321; Alcuin, PL (Patrologia Latina, 1844-1855)) 101. 857; Rabanus Maurus, PL 107.395 .

(4) : Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 1.5.1. ED. W. M. Lindsay, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX (Oxford, 1911) "Some form of this definition was repeated in nearly all medieval artes grammaticae.

(5) : "se craeft is ealra boclicra craefta ordfruma and grundweal," AElfric, Grammatica, Ed. Zupitza, 289; "AElfric is adapting Isidore here."

The following, excerpt from

(p. 40-41) Grammatica and Literary Theory by Martin Irvine with David Thomson, (from The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume II : The Middle Ages, Alastair Minnis & Ian Johnson, Editors. (2005)



"A term for grammar-school Learning in Middle English is 'lettrure', derived from litteratura, the Latin term used as a synonym for the Greek-based grammatica. In Chaucer it connotes basic competence in reading Laatin and familiarity with the textbooks used in the grammar curriculum( see Canterbury Tales, VII 2296 2496,; VIII (G), 846). The seven-year-old student described in the Prioress's Tale seems typical of the late-medieval choir-school grammar student. He was in school 'to syngen and to rede' (VII, 500), i.e. to learn to sing the liturgy and acquire basic reading skills. He begins by Learning some hymns by rote from a primer and asks a fellow student to 'expounden' a hymn in his own Language(l. 526), construing the Latin and explaining its meaning. This evokes the standard procedures of elementary lectio and enarratio. Chaucer's familiarity with the methods and texts of grammatica doubtless began in his own school, which, one may suppose, was well endowed with both artes and auctores. (27)

---------------------(*)-----------------

"Knowledge of grammatica defined one's position in literate culture. From the time of Bede to the age of Dante, Chaucer and Gower, it was the precondition for having a literate culture at all. It gave readers and writers what we now call a 'literate subjectivity', a position in a network of texts and Language that defined how to read and what could be written. It provided the cultural category of the literary as such, which meant an available network of writings and a textual genealogy extending back to the early auctores. It provided the first assumptions, the main presuppositions, of any understanding of Language, writing and texts. Grammatica meant literacy, but literacy in a specific kind of Language and with a specific canon of texts.

"We are used to having multiple paths and teaching methods for literacy and multiple literary canons taught in schools and universities and embraced by different cultural groups. From the eighth to fifthteenth centuries, Europe really only had one gateway and methodology. There were, of course, variations and emphases, new philosophical traditions about Language that got folded into the tradition, local limitations of access to literary works, and other modifications to what was very much a living tradition.

"Today we also talk about 'digital literacy' or 'computer literacy', and educators around the world are redefining literature, theory and criticism in a radically decentered multimedia communications environment. People today know multiple literacies, multiple objects that we call literature, and multiple methods for criticism and analysis. Studying the foundational assumptions expressed in medieval grammatica discloses the way cultural literacy of any kind works. Roland Barthes once said that literature is what gets taught: a culture determines the literary canon through official instruction. This ongoing cultural practice represents a continuity in education since Chaucer's day. The legacy of grammatica remains inscribed in all our contemporary literacies and literatures as these are expected and assumed of educated people regardless of Language or culture*(EmA)."

(from p.30, ibid)

" Medieval Grammatica was not merely a pedagoglical programme or a body of descriptive linguistic doctrine. The artes grammaticae transmitted a philosophy of Language, indeed, a whole ideology of language with explicit links to centres of institutional authority. In general, medieval grammatical theory privileged writing over speech, universal features --as embodied in Latin, a 'fixed', written language--over individual spoken languages, and the classical literary models, the auctores, over recent writings."

--------------------
*(EmA) : emphasis added.
------------

(27) See Rickert, 'Chaucer at School'.



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

It should be obvious from the above that "literacy" means not just the ability to read but the actual inclination to read, the actual regular practice of reading and, from medieval times up until some time in the Renaissance, it meant even much more than simply both the capacity and the habit of reading. It implied a direct and thorough knowledge of a literary canon in ancient (classical) Greek and Latin as well as contemporary Italian and French for many or most educated people. Such knowledge defined what it meant to be "educated" in that time.

It should also be obvious that we no longer live in such a textual culture but that many people are adamantly opposed to the social and cultural essentials of what that once meant and are against seeing it revived or advocated. That is for a variety of reasons and motives, some of them respectable, some not so respectable--when they can even be admitted honestly.

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

We have modern conceptions about what it means to be "literate" and we apply these--erroneously--to Elizabethan England and Europe more generally at the time. But "literacy" as we typically think of it being, the capacity to demonstrate a certain minimum knowledge of a written-language, whether or not one actually routinely develops, uses and maintains such a capacity, does not correspond to an Elizabethan conception of the literate person.

Of course, many men, women and children had varying knowledge of the written language from none at all to an ability to read a bit, a moderate amount, a fairly substantial amount, much or nearly all that their daily lives brought to their attentions. In this we are concerned with the vernacular English language in written form. But none of these people were capable of speaking and understanding more than a few words or common phrases of Latin or Greek and they could not read anything at all in these languages. On the other hand, nothing about their routine lives demanded or required such knowledge of them. Socially, they were exempt from such expectations. No one among their social peers was any different --or, if one was, he, in nearly every case a male--would have probably kept such a fact about his linguistic abilities to himself. To have done otherwise should have created social frictions and set up an unnecessary invitation for alienation from social peers.

On the other "end" of the spectrum, similar, but opposite needs and requirements obtained. One needed to be literate to satisfy class status requirements in social and professional affairs. Again, actual literary competency varied in practice. But reading was essential--for men-- to making their way in literate society. Women could and did learn to read and write both English and Latin and Greek.

But in general, a literacy barrier separated the social classes and crossing that barrier from "below" was next to impossible. One needed texts and other materials to learn to speak and read Latin and Greek. One needed the time to study them and to practice them regularly. The time provided in grammar school would not have made a school boy into an accomplished master of either Latin or Greek because, outside the class ranks which actually lived a daily practice of these languages, there'd be little or no opportunity to develop and maintain a proficiency once gained. If the language wasn't practiced, it would be forgotten through disuse.

Nor could a person, once adult and out of school, simply decide to "pick up," from casual acquaintance, the use of polished Greek or Latin. Again, social barriers would be a difficult obstacle to this.

10proximity1
Avr 12, 2017, 11:43 am


Birthday anniversary notice:



Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, (Castle Hedingham, 12 April,1550-24 June, 1604 (§)) circa 1570-1575 An engraving based on a lost oil portrait. From Welbeck College abbey. (National Portrait Gallery, London)
_______________________________________________________

Born, 12 April, 1550 : Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford at Castle Hedingham, Essex, and the person rightly due credit and honor for being the author of the works we commonly refer to as those of "William Shake-speare."

"...report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied." (Hamlet V, ii. )

_____________________________________________________

On this, the 467th anniversary of Edward de Vere's birth, a story for readers of this page, with thanks to the friend whose correspondence was the story's source and its inspiration:

In the course of confidential correspondence, a friend wrote to me of feelings about what he called "missed opportunities." All of us know some of these and I replied, describing one of mine, this way--



" Missed opportunities."

I'm reading a book now, "The Making of Textual Culture," which is exactly the book I'd have designed and ordered if I could only have thought of it myself. It was first published by Cambridge Univ. Press in 1994. In 1994 I was in my third year at a bookshop in a major university town where our selection was second only to the huge, main, university bookstore--closer to the campus than our shop. It's a virtual certainty that this book was ordered and put in our shop's stock. It's likely that I picked it up and looked it over. But, at that time, all the the Greek and Latin which run through and through it should have put me off. At that time, I had not learned French. At that time, I had no idea how important all that this author has done in his research in this book should one day become for my interests. There's even a slight chance that I was the employee who chose to place this book on the shop's seasonal order of newly published books since, eventually, I had a major part in ordering the store's stock from university presses and, much before then, I regularly scoured the university presses' new-and-forthcoming-books catalogs to see what would soon be on offer. I'd order titles for myself which the store's staff might not happen to take on for stock.

All I can do is try and use the time I have now to learn whatever it is that I think I most need to understand--in order to best know who and how I am and to make myself more the person I desire to be tomorrow.

Shakespeare's work is replete with the insights he owed to his deep regrets for things he simply had not adequately understood sooner--soon enough. And, 'Robert Greene's' Greene's Groatsworth of Witte --Bought With a Million of Repentance,' (1592) is in fact Oxford writing under yet another of the pen-names he used.


(line 633) ... "With this, he laid his head on his hand, and leant his elbow on the earth, sighing out sadly,

'Heu, patior telis vulnera facta meis!' *

On the other side of the hedge sate one that heard his sorrow: who getting over, came towards him" ....

(p. 67)


We are, each for the other, hearing from the other side of the hedge.

... "for that this iron age** affoordes few that esteem vertue; ..:" (lines 648-649)

I'm lucky to have your thoughts and your thanks.
______________________________

* "Alas, I suffer the wounds made by my own darts!" (Ovid, Heroides, II,.48).

** (Author's note: iron age : Commonplace for hard times (ultimately from Hesiod and Ovid.) )

§ : the exact date of Edward de Vere's death is not available to us from documentary evidence.

11proximity1
Modifié : Mai 4, 2017, 10:05 am



from:
The American Scholar


"The Decline of the English Department"

How it happened and what could be done to reverse it
By William M. Chace
September 1, 2009

( https://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/ )

"During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened.

"First the facts: while the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation’s colleges and universities. With more than twice the majors of any other course of study, business has become the concentration of more than one in five American undergraduates. Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures):

"English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

"In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent. Despite last year’s debacle on Wall Street, the humanities have not benefited; students are still wagering that business jobs will be there when the economy recovers.

"What are the causes for this decline? There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books."



_____________

(Six years later... ( just two years ago) )



( From the American Council of Trustees and Alumni : (ACTA) is an independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America's colleges and universities)

"The Unkindest Cut : Shakespeare in Exile 2015"

( .pdf file : https://www.goacta.org/images/download/The_Unkindest_Cut.pdf )

( https://www.goacta.org/executivesummary/the_unkindest_cut_executive_summary )

The Unkindest Cut (Executive Summary)
April 2015
... (excerpt)



"Shakespeare’s poetry and plays have inspired readers and audiences for centuries, from one end of the world to the other. ...

..." One could truly say that the plays performed in London’s Globe Theatre went on to capture the entire globe.

"Except, it seems, for English majors at America’s most prestigious colleges and universities. And there’s the rub. The Bard, who is the birthright of the English speaking world, has no seat of honor.

"That is not an opinion. It is an empirical fact.

"The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has researched how Shakespeare fits into English majors’ curricula at 52 of the nation’s leading colleges and universities—the U.S. News & World Report “Top 25” Liberal Arts Colleges and the “Top 25” National Universities. We have found our Bard suffering “the unkindest cut of all.”

"At most universities, English majors were once required to study Shakespeare closely as an indispensable foundation for the understanding of English language and literature. But today—at the elite institutions we examined, public and private, large and small, east and west—he is required no more.

"The basic finding is unambiguous. Not even one out of ten of the institutions ACTA surveyed required English majors to take a single course devoted to Shakespeare. And as the schools relax requirements relating to Shakespeare and other great authors, courses that have more to do with popular culture and contemporary issues are multiplying."



_____


..." SHAKESPEARE IN EXILE

"To determine where Shakespeare stands in today’s curriculum, ACTA surveyed English departments at leading universities and liberal arts colleges. Appendix A gives a full listing of the schools studied, with summaries of their English major requirements.

"Today, a mere 4 of these 52 colleges and universities require English majors to take a course focused on Shakespeare. Those institutions are: Harvard, University of California-Berkeley, U.S. Naval Academy, and Wellesley College.4

"Top 25 National Universities: Two schools require Shakespeare
Top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges: Two require Shakespeare
Ivy League: One requires Shakespeare

"What do these figures mean? For starters, of the Ivy League universities, only one requires its English majors to take a course in Shakespeare. Only two of the top 25 national universities, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, have a Shakespeare requirement. The top 25 liberal arts colleges fare no better: only two require English majors to study Shakespeare. It is a sad irony that not even Amherst College, which administers the Folger Shakespeare Library, requires its English majors to take a course that focuses on Shakespeare.

"Thus, 48 of the 52 schools we surveyed allow English majors—which often include future English teachers—to graduate without studying in depth the language’s greatest writer."




And yet, "no longer required" does not necessarily equal "no longer followed, studied, in a college classroom." Thus, the question: If very few colleges require their students to take a course on Shakespeare's works (or one of them), how many students freely elect to take a course anyway--though not required?

I have not found a recent statistic in answer to that question.

I did find "Should Shakespeare be taught in schools?" ( at Debate.org )

As of this writing, 49% Say "Yes" and 51% Say "No"

Here is a sampling (not random) from (some? all?) of those who answered "No":





Because he is boring.

Why should i go to my english classroom and learn this? Why? I could be at the gym lifting all day. I don't want to sit in a classroom filled with imbeciles bitting their fingers at me. It's disgusting and obnoxious. "thos slap thy face" wise words from a wise man. Thanks you andrew.
Posted by: YoDwarfBoii

______

When will we use this in life?

The answer is never.. There shall be no "Thy shall thou thee" when applying for a job. So people quoting that shakespeare is imperative in our lives are either "english/literature" fanatics which most people aren't henceforth students should be learning something that will help them strive in the future instead of "teaching a fish to climb a wall." thanks m8.
Posted by: yoloswagdragon
______

It's Too Vulgar

Shakespeare's righting is too vulgar!! Romeo and Juliet is implying that suicide is the answer to termoyl and sadness. There is violence and gore in a lot of his plays. There are also sexual themes incorporated in a lot of his plays. On another note, when in the world would we use his material any where else than a high school and collage test?

______

No to Shakspeare

Seriously, I am a 15 year old student and I would honestly prefer to listen to the boring election than have to listen to the life of a 50 year old gay guy who is in love with his best friend and almost dies because of him. I seriously took no interest to it whatsoever, the book was way too difficult to understand and I was constantly reading the modern translate to understand the language.

______

No!

I don't believe that Shakespeare should be taught in schools anymore. Shakespeare is very outdated now, and pretty much dead. Plus, It's very boring material for students, and only a certain type of personality can appreciate it. Let's make school reading material just a little more interesting in the 21st Century!

_______

Shakespeare is irrelevant

I am a Mother, and Shakespeare today does not spark an interest in today's society. Our Children need to be mentally challenged with real issues facing today's youth. We need to focus on World Changers. Our Children our no longer children. They have access to the most horrific crimes, injustice, poor politics, and religious confusion. We need to leave Shakespeare to the thespians interested in his work, and take time to acknowledge the real issues that our children click on the Internet that goes unspoken causing stress, confusion, and mental excursion. Why are we teaching Shakespeare and not commuter code? Our Worlds drop out rate is at an all time high. Shakespeare did nothing to assist with my growth and I have never needed to quote Macbeth. Everyone is an individual and should be taught to challenge themselves to find literature that's gives them that spark to continue reading. In the U.S, many of our cities are going bankrupt and are poorly run. Detroit has been destroyed, pensions have been cut. Shakespeare does not touch teen pregnancy, jobs, outsourcing or extreme poverty. Move on America.

________

It has no current meaning

As a 13 year old, i dont want to be hearing about old people who have nothing to do in their lives. All the language is not understandable and has no reference to modern day happenings. He might be a great writer but we should not be forced to read it at school.

________

Needs to be translated

We do not make the students read a book in any other foreign language. Shakespeare's language is so old that it is almost the same as making them read Italian or Greek. The moment that a piece of writing needs to literally be translated to the class, it is not valuable for them to be reading.

________

Irrelevant to our world

Shakespeare was a brilliant writer. No doubt about it, but it is a completely different language to what we use now, making it harder for students to understand the plots. Instead students should be studying modern literature that has meaning but is not outdated like Shakespeare. Furthermore, students have absolutely no use for it later on in life.
Posted by: Demidauntlessjay

_______

Shakespeare's works are no longer relevant to today's day and age.

Shakespeare works are difficult for students to relate to and often require deep analysis in order to fully understand. The majority of high school students would prefer to study works that pertain to more modern times. Shakespeare is appreciated by those who find interest in his works. As a high school student, I personally find works of Shakespeare irrelevant to life today. As time has progressed, many traditions, styles, and ways have been long forgotten. Although Shakespeare should not be forgotten, his works should simply be set aside for those interested in such a thing to discover. Instead schools should be focusing on discovering modern works and talents in studies such as literature to teach their students, which students would perhaps enjoy learning and analysing.
-opinion of a grade 11 student




Those are some unforced opinions from readers/responders to the survey offering their views on the value, importance--or, rather, lack of it--of studying Shakespeare's work.

You may disagree with these people and the views they express above but perhaps you should reflect upon what their opinions may suggest:

Schools'--secondary and college and university level--educators have not done a fantastic job of inspiring in their students an interest in and a taste for the study of Shakespeare's work.

Perhaps this should not really surprise us after all. Perhaps there is a very serious failure on educators' parts to sufficiently understand or appreciate "Shakespeare" the author and his writings and perhaps this has a very important part in these educators' apparent failure to inspire their students to find Shakespeare and his works interesting.

I'm inclined to add: no wonder. We are offered as an account of the author's life a ridiculous fable about a rural lad of Stratford, born into--as far as we are able to tell--an illiterate family, this, by so-called "mainstream" academic scholars of Shakespeare . It should not surprise us that many young people turn from such an account, uninterested by its details. They are not, after all, seriously credible. Scholars honor and repeat the nonsense myth because their professional positions and the income that comes with them practically require them to honor and repeat the fable.



"A Shakespeare Scholar Takes on a 'Taboo' Subject" by Jennifer Howard : (The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 28, 2010)

"Among mainstream Shakespeare scholars, Contested Will may be disconcerting for another reason. The book, just out from Simon & Schuster, argues that the authorship question is the one subject that they have deliberately neglected. (Emphasis added)

"More than one fellow Shakespearean was disheartened to learn that I was committing my energies to it," Shapiro writes in the prologue, "as if somehow I was wasting my time and talent, or worse, at risk of going over to the dark side. I became increasingly interested in why this subject remains virtually taboo in academic circles, as well as in the consequences of this collective silence." --James Shapiro


http://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Shakespeare-Scholar-Takes-on/64811



If even prestigious colleges and universities are no longer requiring their students to take courses in Shakespeare's writings, perhaps we should welcome that --for it may lead to the end of many idiotic careers, led by people peddling rank, stupid, nonsense. If their courses fail, if students shun their classes, finding them irrelevant, perhaps in the long run this is better both for the society as a whole and for the regular popular interest in "Shakespeare's" writings since those who do develop an interest may have a better chance to escape the ravages of the idiot-Shakespeare-mythology that is operated by professional charlantans, the moral equivalent of con-artists-- teaching university courses on "Shakespeare".

Goddamn and good-riddance to them. May curious people continue to find and read "Shakespeare" on their own, through the exercise of their native curiosity. May they discover the alternative accounts for the personal history of the author of the works ascribed to "Shakespeare."

There is today no longer any morally-respectable excuse to perpetuate the "Shakespeare" Stratfordian myth. Nor should any young person feel any obligation to pay that myth respect or lip-service. It is intellectually insulting and a holdover from a time when social norms of all-powerful royal-court society in England required that court nobles keep from their own noble names the stigma of print--and any open, direct, personal association with stageplay-actors and their society, deemed socially beyond the pale in that time.

We can and we ought to today dispense with such idiotic nonsense and approach the subjects as free, independent and informed serious adults may do, not lords and ladies subservient to a 16th century ruling monarch.

____________________

ETA: Report to the English Subject Centre of The Higher Education Academy : (September 2006) "Teaching Shakespeare: A Survey of the Undergraduate Level in Higher Education" Author/Editor: Neill Thew

See .pdf : https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/shakespeare.pdf

12proximity1
Modifié : Juin 21, 2017, 10:13 am



In Act Four, scene One of his play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare makes sport of a school-boy's being quized on his Latin knowledge—



MISTRESS PAGE

I'll be with her by and by; I'll but bring my young
man here to school. Look, where his master comes;
'tis a playing-day, I see.

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS
How now, Sir Hugh! no school to-day?

SIR HUGH EVANS

No; Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

Blessing of his heart!

MISTRESS PAGE

Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in
the world at his book. I pray you, ask him some
questions in his accidence.

SIR HUGH EVANS

Come hither, William; hold up your head; come.

MISTRESS PAGE

Come on, sirrah; hold up your head; answer your
master, be not afraid.

SIR HUGH EVANS

William, how many numbers is in nouns?

WILLIAM PAGE

Two.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

Truly, I thought there had been one number more,
because they say, ''Od's nouns.'

SIR HUGH EVANS

Peace your tattlings! What is 'fair,' William?

WILLIAM PAGE

Pulcher.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

Polecats! there are fairer things than polecats, sure.

SIR HUGH EVANS

You are a very simplicity 'oman: I pray you peace.
What is 'lapis,' William?

WILLIAM PAGE

A stone.

SIR HUGH EVANS

And what is 'a stone,' William?

WILLIAM PAGE

A pebble.

SIR HUGH EVANS

No, it is 'lapis:' I pray you, remember in your prain.

WILLIAM PAGE

Lapis.

SIR HUGH EVANS

That is a good William. What is he, William, that
does lend articles?

WILLIAM PAGE

Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be thus
declined, Singulariter, nominativo, hic, haec, hoc.

SIR HUGH EVANS

Nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you, mark:
genitivo, hujus. Well, what is your accusative case?

WILLIAM PAGE

Accusativo, hinc.

SIR HUGH EVANS

I pray you, have your remembrance, child,
accusative, hung, hang, hog.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

'Hang-hog' is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.

SIR HUGH EVANS

Leave your prabbles, 'oman. What is the focative
case, William?

WILLIAM PAGE

O,--vocativo, O.

SIR HUGH EVANS

Remember, William; focative is caret.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

And that's a good root.

SIR HUGH EVANS

'Oman, forbear.

MISTRESS PAGE

Peace!

SIR HUGH EVANS

What is your genitive case plural, William?

WILLIAM PAGE

Genitive case!

SIR HUGH EVANS

Ay.

WILLIAM PAGE

Genitive,--horum, harum, horum.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

Vengeance of Jenny's case! fie on her! never name
her, child, if she be a whore.

SIR HUGH EVANS

For shame, 'oman.

MISTRESS QUICKLY

You do ill to teach the child such words: he
teaches him to hick and to hack, which they'll do
fast enough of themselves, and to call 'horum:' fie upon you!

SIR HUGH EVANS

'Oman, art thou lunatics? hast thou no
understandings for thy cases and the numbers of the
genders? Thou art as foolish Christian creatures as
I would desires.

MISTRESS PAGE

Prithee, hold thy peace.

SIR HUGH EVANS

Show me now, William, some declensions of your pronouns.

WILLIAM PAGE

Forsooth, I have forgot.

SIR HUGH EVANS

It is qui, quae, quod: if you forget your 'quies,'
your 'quaes,' and your 'quods,' you must be
preeches. Go your ways, and play; go.

MISTRESS PAGE

He is a better scholar than I thought he was.

SIR HUGH EVANS

He is a good sprag memory. Farewell, Mistress Page.

MISTRESS PAGE

Adieu, good Sir Hugh.

Exit SIR HUGH EVANS
Get you home, boy. Come, we stay too long.

Exeunt



These lines are supposed to be from an author who, as orthodox Shakespeare scholars have misconstrued Ben Jonson's famous lines about Shakespeare's knowledge, “had small Latine and lesse Greek” and yet, who was at once a rare genius and a fellow of common class origins—that is, neither, at his beginnings, a nobleman nor a gentleman.

But this does not add up and it offers us just another example of the ways in which orthordox scholars are stunningly poor students of what is, for lack of a better term, basic 'human nature.'

What they ought to understand but clearly don't is that these lines are indicative of the opposite of what their image of the rustic Shaksper holds out: anything but slight in his command of classic Latin and Greek. Only this sort of person would be inclined—as a genius—to make sporting fun of a young pupil's position as a beginner in Latin.

Had Shakespeare actually had very slight knowledge of Latin, he would not have penned this scene; he'd have lacked the easy self-confidence in the language which is the counterpoint to the position of the young boy. Since Latin and Greek were then a social marker of distinction, one of the key ways in which the social and noble elite were distinguished from everyone else—as only they had opportunities to gain the kind of mastery which was socially-prized by those who possessed it and a source of a sense of social deficiency in those who did not—a man who lacked this mastery would not feel entitled to make light of the matter. Rather, by drawing attention to it, he'd be drawing attention to one of the most important aspects in which he was socially inadequate. A man who was otherwise literary genius would not do that. And, on the other hand, a lesser mind, which might scoff at the importance of Latin (and, by association, Greek) would not have produced the plays and poems.

So, as usual, there are glaring incongruities here from by orthodox scholarship from the point of view of human nature. Once more, we cannot make sense of this combination. Either Shaksper was from common social stock—in which case, he almost certainly had little or no grasp of Latin and, still less, of Greek, and could, on that account, feel inclined to minimize their importance, or, he was rgeatly accomplished in these and not the slightest bit self-conscious about his command of them and in this case, he could, as being also a literary genius, use this as a source of comic amusement, portraying the young pupil's attempts to answer the Latin questions posed to him. But not some bizarre mix of genius and Latin-and-Greek know nothing who felt socially secure enough to joke about this deficiency.

The assumptions which orthodox scholars bring to their readings of Shakespeare present again and again pictures of human nature which turn human nature upside-down and ask us to believe what common sense—which in this case they singularly lack—would see as nonsense.



Not just by the way, not just meaningless coincidence, the nobleman-author, Edward Oxford, gives the struggling young schoolboy the name of "William." Again, this is mockery from a self-confident member of the elite. For William's is not a flattering image for Shaksper to have lent "his own" given-name.

_______________________

See also: Unpacking Merry Wives of Windsor | Posted by: SOF October 7, 1999 | by Robert Brazil for a review of the play with attention in much greater detail to Latin usage and use of allusions and puns.

14Crypto-Willobie
Modifié : Août 31, 2017, 12:49 pm

Somehow Auntie Strat thinks that if people Think for Themselves or are 'Openminded' this will lead them to see through the supposed fog of Stratfordian propaganda to find the Oxfordian Truth-with-a-capital-V. She is mistaken. The propaganda is all coming from the antis, and the actual evidence resides with Shakspere the Player from Stratford.

15proximity1
Modifié : Sep 2, 2017, 3:27 am

>14 Crypto-Willobie:

..."if people Think for Themselves or are 'Openminded' this will lead them to see through the supposed fog of Stratfordian propaganda to find the Oxfordian Truth"...

"Think for yourself" ("TFY")--as a recommendation--is certainly not music to the ears of the Stratfordian Shakespeare scholars whose program rests mainly on indoctrination of young people before they've had a chance to learn how to reason well and question what they're told by so-called authorities, yes.

It's a start. "TFY" doesn't presume a particular outcome. It promotes, instead, just what it says: "Think for yourself", meaning using one's critical reasoning abilities with meticulous care.

In the present context, TFY means that the Stratfordian view of Shakespeare won't be taken for granted, ab initio, as intellectually dishonest Stratfordians attempt to have done.

From the Princeton professors' letter :

..."The only people who need fear open-minded inquiry and robust debate are the actual bigots." ...


... "Think for yourself.

"Now, that might sound easy. But you will find—as you may have discovered already in high school—that thinking for yourself can be a challenge. It always demands self-discipline and these days can require courage.

"In today’s climate, it’s all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion on your campus or in the broader academic culture. The danger any student—or faculty member—faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink."



Stratfordian orthodoxy about the biography of William Shaksper as the author of plays, poems and sonnets is the epitome, the summum, of conformist "group-think."

16Podras.
Sep 1, 2017, 1:43 pm

It is unclear to me how waging a political-style campaign against people with opposing views helps to generate respect for anti-Shakespearean convictions. That includes assigning negative code words such as "orthodox" to opponents merely to denigrate them. Such things are easily seen to be devoid of actual content by people who think for themselves. In the context of historical questions, content consists of rational argument supported by historical evidence, in case anyone was unclear about that.

Since John Stewart Mill was cited in the Princeton link, another quote of his from On Liberty seems pertinent: "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."

If anti-Shakespeareans ever hope to be taken seriously by people who really do think for themselves, they should drop the insults and try something more rational. This simple three-step approach may be helpful:
    1. Accurately, lucidly, and fairly state an opponent's position, providing all of the pertinent evidence in support of it.

    2. Provide arguments and/or sufficient counter evidence to show that that position is untenable.

    3. State a counter position that better explains the evidence, taking into account all of the relevant evidence.
Though a highly simplified version of what objective researchers do, this may seem a formidable challenge. However, some variation of it is pretty standard amongst scholars. This link to Wikipedia's article on Historical Method may prove helpful, particularly with determining what evidence is and how to weigh the merits of varying kinds of evidence.

17proximity1
Modifié : Sep 2, 2017, 8:12 am

>16 Podras.:

Very "funny."

All of this has been done--"in spades"*!,

1. Accurately, lucidly, and fairly state an opponent's position, providing all of the pertinent evidence in support of it. (1), (2)

2. Provide arguments and/or sufficient counter evidence to show that that position is untenable.
(1), (2)

3. State a counter position that better explains the evidence, taking into account all of the relevant evidence. (1), (2)

However, within the self-cloistered world of Stratfordian academia, items 1 through 3 above have been ignored, denied, waved away by people who are devoid of respectable counter-argument. Such is the state of academic behavior among, yes, the "orthodox." That is the proper term for beliefs which, despite their potential or actual fallaciousness, are stubbornly taught as though they are beyond question, taught and believed in a cult-like fashion.

"He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."-- actually describes the academic world of Stratfordian scholars who, for decades after the work of J. Thomas Looney was published, remained willfully ignorant of it. On the other hand, the vast majority of "Oxfordians" had first to be schooled in the Stratfordian dogmas simply because there was nothing else offered in formal education--a scandalous fact which remains almost entirely true to this day.

To learn about Edward Oxford as "Shakespeare" still practically requires study outside the classroom.

I continue to meet (university-educated) parents and their children--people of middle-class or "higher" social strata, British and American-- who've never heard of the "Authorship Question," who "know" about "Shakespeare" only what they were taught in primary and secondary school and, for some, at university--all the parents are (apparently) university grads but not all such took a course on Shakespeare while there. When I tell them about the Oxfordian thesis, they clearly have never heard of it and ask all the usual questions from curious new-comers to the topic.

_____________



(from (the despicable) Wikipedia site)

"Orthodoxy is opposed to heterodoxy ("other teaching") or heresy. People who deviate from orthodoxy by professing a doctrine considered to be false are called heretics, while those who, perhaps without professing heretical beliefs, break from the perceived main body of believers are called schismatics. The term employed sometimes depends on the aspect most in view: if one is addressing corporate unity, the emphasis may be on schism; if one is addressing doctrinal coherence, the emphasis may be on heresy. A deviation lighter than heresy is commonly called error, in the sense of not being grave enough to cause total estrangement, while yet seriously affecting communion. Sometimes error is also used to cover both full heresies and minor errors.

"The concept of orthodoxy is prevalent in many forms of organized monotheism. However, orthodox belief is not usually overly emphasized in polytheistic or animist religions, in which there is often little or no concept of dogma, and varied interpretations of doctrine and theology are tolerated and sometimes even encouraged within certain contexts. Syncretism, for example, plays a much wider role in non-monotheistic (and particularly, non-scriptural) religion. The prevailing governing norm within polytheism is often orthopraxy ("right practice") rather than the "right belief" of orthodoxy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodoxy#Related_concepts



_________________

* "in spades" -- in the best or most extreme way possible; extravagantly.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/in+spades

(1) : Ogburn Jr., (1984) The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984)

(2) : PoliticWorm by Stephanie Hopkins Hughes

For any who want to see the orthodox Stratfordian case presented clearly and fairly and, then, rebutted point by point

First, read this IMPORTANT NOTE :

Politic Worm's author and editor, Stephanie Hopkins Hughes, has been at her work for thirty years. She's already read and repeatedly answered all the Stratfordians' objections and so she's no longer interested in the kind of polemics going on here-- for example, in this thread. Please don't post annoying questions or objections there at her site which she's already answered and explained.



AND THEN go visit the site at this link: http://politicworm.com and read for yourself.

The site is arranged topically and there are entries which treat commonly-asked questions:

"The Authorship problem" ;

"Why Shakespeare matters?" ;

"Why not William?" (i.e. Why not William Shaksper of Stratford?) ;

"Why the Earl of Oxford?" ;

"Why not (Francis) Bacon?" ;

"WHY OXFORD?" ;

"Who were the University Wits?"

etc.

18Podras.
Modifié : Sep 2, 2017, 11:40 am

I freely confess the sententiousness of my last post, but it was at least worth a try.

>14 Crypto-Willobie: You got it right.

19proximity1
Mai 9, 2021, 10:03 am



For continued discussion on this thread's topics, please refer to the Edward de Vere and the Shakespeare Authorship Mystery group