Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? continued, part 2

This continues the older thread
'Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?'
http://www.librarything.com/topic/61010

prolixity1, on the troll version of this thread, complains that Shakespeareians never present any real authorship evidence to anti-Shakespeareians. This is a foregone conclusion not because that evidence does not exist but because there is Nothing that he will accept as evidence. There is plenty of evidence that Shakspere the player from Stratford wrote (or co-wrote) the works normally attributed to him, but no matter how often or in how many ways it's repeated prolixity1 refuses to accept any of it because it's not what he wants to hear. And there is no evidence at all that Edward DuhVere wrote any of those works but p1 finds acceptable all kinds of so-called 'evidence' because he thinks it supports his foregone conclusion.

It's a waste of time engaging with him because he will never accept the plain truth but instead thrives on scoring what he thinks are points, like an evil lawyer.

>2 Crypto-Willobie: When someone had made up their mind and had decided that all other facts are wrong (or an outright lie), there is nothing anyone can do to convince them. I suspect that even if time travel becomes possible and someone goes and meet Shakespeare, our distinguished friend will still explain how that is not proof. I'd given up on even trying to follow most of the "evidence" he is presenting.

Someone, I think Irvin Matus, wrote that he once asked a denier what his reaction would be if a letter was found from de Vere to Shakespeare congratulating him on his marvelous plays. The response was that the letter would be the final proof needed that de Vere was the real author.

I've finally caught up with the burst of activity within the past 24 hours, and I have to say that I'm somewhat flabbergasted at the petty action p1 has taken. I see no point in posting on his ego-stoked thread. Let him rant on his own. I suspect that most people who wander over there will quickly tire of him. It would be nice if he stays there, but I doubt that he will exercise the same discipline. The title of this thread speaks for itself, as does his.

---

In the meantime, continuing from my post #214 in part one of this thread, I've learned that the song is generally known as The Warwickshire Lad. In my post, I wrote: "The term "thief" in the song can be taken either literally or allegorically." That was a reference to the last two stanzas of the song, the first of which brought up the deer poaching story. The last stanza speaks of Shakespeare robbing from nature: "He took all her smiles, and he took all her grief". The obvious implication is that he used Nature's stolen treasures for his works.

In some another place, p1 completely distorted what I said for his own purposes, claiming that the ambiguity of "thief" related to the authorship question. There isn't much point in going on about it. No one at all believes that, including p1.

It appears likely that Waugh and Stritmatter are going to use it in their Anti-Shakespeare Allusion Book as a pre-Delia Bacon instance of Shak-skepticism. Some discussion of their forthcoming book can be found on the Oxfraud facebook group.

>5 Podras.:

"I suspect that most people who wander over there will quickly tire of him."

If you really believed that you wouldn't be here in a counter-thread the purpose of which is to minimize (as you would hope to do) the readership of the primary continuing-thread. What's very clear from the resort to this thread is that you and other Stratfordians here aren't capable of facing and responding to pointed questions. You run from discussion which asks you to confront the idiocy of the postitions you lamely try to defend.

You made some criticism of Waugh's resort to the use of the text of The Warwickshire Lad as support for the Oxfordian case. I took that criticism into account and granted you the point: Waugh's claims for support by this poem/song are undermined by its ambiguous character. I also put that recognition in its context: the poem's contents, its import, are a trifle. They don't in any way diminish the strength of the Oxfordian case; though they do suggest that Waugh is susceptible to trying to make too much of evidence which is, at best, ambivalent in its import.

Such is fair treatment of opponent-criticism. Such is what we don't receive from you or other Stratfordians. You cower here, hoping for an end to direct point/counter-point discussion, writing,

It would be nice if he stays there, but I doubt that he will exercise the same discipline.

You don't exhibit "discipline" by resort to this thread. You exhibit instead what is a standing affront to intellectual integrity.

The title of this thread speaks for itself, as does his."

True. 'Yours' says: "Like feminists, we Stratfordians are a bunch of fragile greenhouse flowers which, if exposed to the rigors of sustained free and open debate over the positions we take, we'd wilt, shrivel, and die."

Being accused of begging the question by those who take refuge in a disingenuously tautological title, "Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?" is amusing in a pathetic way which your faux participation exemplifies.

>6 Crypto-Willobie: I saw part of that discussion. I've got a lot of reading to do to catch up with what all is going on there.

That group seemed to like the post about The Warwickshire Lad. Here is the link If you are interested in watching the Bate/Waugh debate video that featured Waugh's claim.

A general observation is that Bate came prepared to argue the truth and Waugh came prepared to win a debate, and that assessment comes before weighing the merits of their positions. Bate never stood a chance.

I've seen the same sort of thing in debates over creationism versus evolution. Your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, totally brilliant scientist doesn't stand a chance against a moronic ignoramus in front of an uninformed audience if the ignoramus can fast-talk a stream of falsehoods and jape at (as opposed to honestly argue about) well founded evidence. A false claim that takes a second or two to toss out can take far longer to refute. In a time-limited debate, the dishonest bomb thrower with lots of false claims will almost always win.

One tactic of Waugh's that really stood out is that every time he was asked to respond to something that made him uncomfortable (e.g. Oxford died in 1604), he claimed that the question violated the rules of the debate.

IMHO, Bate lost the debate but he maintained his integrity. I'm proud of him.

>6 Crypto-Willobie: I see that my prediction in the first part of >5 Podras.: has come true.

RE: >5 Podras.:, >6 Crypto-Willobie:, >8 Podras.:, >9 Podras.:

Your position captured in a photo:


( "Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?" )

" ...an uninformed audience..."

An uninformed audience is just what my posts won't leave alone. And that is precisely why you've run away to this silly little pseudo-refuge hoping to escape pointed questions which an informed audience would put to you. LOL!

My post # 148 (previous thread) (replying to Muscugulous's # 142)

"Explain to us, please, why Shaksper's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, made no mention in his published journal about his supposedly illustrious father-in-law, the great William Shakespeare. This enigma completely stumped Mrs. Stopes who couldn't account for it either. So I don't suppose you shall."

also asked of Podras at my post # 208 and at my post # 210 :

" But "Shakespeare's" Stratford (Church) monument does not and never has referred to your candidate, William Shaksper, oF Stratford Upon Avon. If it had, John Hall, M.D., Shaksper's son-in-law, would never have failed to have made MUCH of such an illustrious father-in-law. But instead, despite keeping a diary of miscellaneous notes about remarkable observations concerning those in the town he knew through his medical practice, and despite doing this for posterity, for he published this diary, nowhere did he bother to mention a single word about his supposedly great father-in-law--nothing, no accounts of anything they ever shared in word or deed.

And that is a fact you've just fled. We don't need a crystal-ball to figure out why that should be."

and of Crypto-Willobie at my post # 212 (previous thread)

All ignored by all of you.

The Oxfraud web site has added a new article comparing Shakespeare's handwriting with Oxenforde's that is interesting.

NOTE TO THE READER: The real continuing thread is here ----

This piece-of-shit thread is a knock-off of the genuine continuation from the original thread-- the original poster of which, through naive ignorance, styled the thread title: "Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?" which, of course, is to blatantly beg the question.

The issue is NOT "Did 'Shakespeare' write 'Shakespeare'?" but, rather,
"Was it the Stratfordians' William Shaksper of Stratford the real author of the work attributed to 'Shakespeare'?"

Don't be fooled.

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>11 Podras.:

Laughable (and fucking) bullshit. Oxford probably wrote many hundreds or some several thousands of letters over his lifetime. We are right to wonder what has become of this trove of manuscripts--as well as his own (or a scribe's) manuscripts of the poems, sonnets and plays. Whether they still exist somewhere is a vexing question. But I feel confident that, in the vast archives of 16th C. manuscripts in various places around the world there remain as yet undiscovered documents relating to Edward, Earl of Oxford--some in his own hand and perhaps many others, many more, written by all sorts of people who were commenting in letters, journals, diaries, about the people and events of their time.

Fortunately, unlike the Stratfordians' Shaksper, Oxford was actually a person of note, a poet of note, a scholar and a nobleman in virtually a class by himself. Others would have and did write to and about him. This includes officials, diplomatic envoys assigned to Elizabeth's court, spies, friends, enemies, wealthy merchants, and other writers--philosophers, dramatists, poets, etc. Since Oxford was not just fluent but accomplished in his command of Latin, Greek, Frrench and Italian, his correspondence can encompass the whole of both Britain and continental Europe---which, again, unlike the Stratfordian's William Shaksper, Oxford actually toured, travelling to and through what are today Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and parts of the eastern Adriatic coast. While in Paris, he was introduced to the King. He met and conversed with his noble peers in Latin and in their own languages.

"How do we know that the spellings that we have in print are Shakespeare’s own?"

Or a better question: How do we "know" that the manuscripts allegedly written by William Shaksper were just that?

In two words, we don't. Period. The article--like everything else in the bogus bullshit peddled by Stratfordians is a tissue of lies and make-believe.

________________________

The above-linked pages include a hyperlink which reads, "Our Shakespearean handwriting pages explain this in detail." But, go figure, there is only this at the link:

404 (ERROR)

O hateful error, melancholy's child,
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not?

We're sorry, you might have asked for something that isn't there. Or the Oxfordian argument you are looking for became decrepit and has been retired.

About this purported piece of writing "by Shakespeare",

"Wilcox said all the evidence suggested the writing was by the hand of Shakespeare, making it a unique manuscript. “All we have other than that are the six authentic Shakespeare signatures, so this is really amazing. It is not even a fair copy, it is something he was drafting as he was mid-composition."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/15/william-shakespeare-handwritten-pl...

You might expect that such a momentous discovery would be accompanied by at least some clear explanation of how this is supposed to be known as the handwriting of William Shakespeare or, for that matter, William Shaksper. But, no. Nothing on that little "detail." WHERE'S THE FUCKING EVIDENCE?

I.e. BULLSHIT again.

Thanks so much for nothing.

Here's ALL "we have" as far as Shakspers' extant writing goes---five pathetically-written signatures:



from a facsimile printed on page 7, Autograph of Shakespeare, by George Wise; Philadelphia, P.E. Abel, 1869.

____________________________________

On Elizabethan spelling and pronunciation:

Shakespeare: Original pronunciation (a Youtube video)

A recent examination of the original drawing that William Dugdale made which became the basis for the illustration of Shakespeare's Stratford monument in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) has revealed that Dugdale knew that Shakespeare was a poet, not a grain merchant. He says so in a handwritten note above the illustration that says "In the north wall of the Quire ? is this monument fixed for William Shakespeare the famous poet."

Oxenforde's sycophants never had a strong case in the first place about the man to whom the monument was dedicated. This evidence may prove convincing to honest skeptics.

There is a new Shakespeare MOOC starting on Coursera titled Introduction to Who Wrote Shakespeare, taught by Ros Barber, starting February 19 and lasting four weeks. Barber believes Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare, apparently based on:

The idea that one writer can never possibly have an influence on another writer, and

The belief that ghost writers are real-----literally.

Signs are that the course will take seriously the idea that just about anyone could have written the works of Shakespeare except Shakespeare.

FYI, here is David Kathman's article on the Earl of Oxford from the Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature:

Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford (1550-1604), was an Elizabethan courtier poet and playwright, best known today for the movement that claims him as the "real" author of Shakespeare's works. He became earl of Oxford at age 12 after the death of his father, the sixteenth earl. He then became a royal ward under the guardianship of William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, who provided him with a good education typical of a young Elizabethan nobleman. In 1571 Oxford married Burghley's daughter Anne, but the marriage was not a happy one due to Oxford's numerous affairs, including a notorious one with Anne Vavasour that produced an illegitimate son and got Oxford committed to the Tower. In his youth Oxford was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, but he fell out of royal favor due to his reckless behavior, and squandered most of his early promise as well as his family's fortune. In 1586 the Queen granted him an annuity of £1000 to prevent him from going broke. After his first wife died in 1588, Oxford remarried in the winter of 1591-92 to Elizabeth Trentham and spent his last years out of royal favor, petitioning for various income-producing offices, before dying in 1604.

Oxford was known in his lifetime as a poet and a patron of letters. The first of his poems to appear in print was "The Earle of Oxenforde to the Reader" in Thomas Bedingfield's 1573 translation of Cardanus Comforte, following Bedingfield's dedicatory letter to Oxford and Oxford's prose reply. The 1576 collection The Paradise of Dainty Devices includes eight poems attributed to Oxford (or "E. O.", expanded in later editions to "E. Ox."), alongside poems by several other noblemen. Another poem of his appeared in Brittons Bowre of Delights (1591), and a half-dozen more are preserved in various manuscripts; however, the three poems attributed to him in England's Parnassus (1600) are actually by Robert Greene and Thomas Campion. Altogether, sixteen poems can be confidently attributed to Oxford, along with four more of doubtful authenticity. Oxford's poems vary quite a bit in quality, with some displaying considerable lyrical skill but others marred by plodding alliteration and shaky versification. They use a variety of metrical forms, ranging from tetrameter to old-fashioned fourteeners, and often have very personal themes. Oxford's poetry was praised in print by such writers as William Webbe, George Puttenham, and Francis Meres, though this praise was undoubtedly somewhat exaggerated due to his high social position.

In addition to his poetry, Oxford displayed an interest in drama, patronizing acting companies and writing some plays of his own. In 1580 he took over the earl of Warwick's players, whose leaders, John and Lawrence Dutton, were promptly lampooned in a contemporary poem as "chameleons". This company was involved in a riot at the Theatre outside London on 10 April 1580, and successfully toured England through most of the 1580s. Meanwhile, Oxford also patronized a company of boy actors starting about 1580, as well as tumblers, musicians, and a bear-ward. Oxford's Boys apparently merged with the Blackfriars boys' company a few years later and performed at court in 1584 under the leadership of Oxford's secretary John Lyly, who had dedicated his influential prose work Euphues to Oxford in 1578. After touring intermittently in the 1590s, Oxford's Men resurfaced in London in 1600. One of their plays, The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, was printed that year, and in 1602 they merged with Worcester's Men. George Puttenham in The art of English poesy (1589) praised Oxford as a writer of comedies and interludes, and Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598) included Oxford in a list of English writers who were "the best for comedy amongst us", though much of this list was cribbed from Puttenham.

Such praise was among the factors that led J. Thomas Looney to argue in 1920 that Oxford was the "real" author of Shakespeare's works. Since then Oxford has replaced Sir Francis Bacon as the leading candidate among those who believe that William Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him, despite the mediocrity of most of Oxford's surviving poetry. These "Oxfordians" believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford did not have the education or experiences that they imagine the author must have had, and that Edward de Vere did. They are forced to claim that all the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship (including the 1623 First Folio) was the result of the same elaborate conspiracy that supposedly hid Oxford's authorship, and that the plays were written much earlier than the dates generally recognized by scholars, since Oxford died twelve years before Shakespeare. Such claims, elaborated in the most detail by Ogburn, are not taken seriously by Shakespeare scholars, since they discard the methods used by literary historians and rip the plays out of their historical context. Oxfordians also tend to rely on factual distortions and double standards, greatly exaggerating Oxford's accomplishments while making Shakespeare look as bad as possible. Despite occasional bursts of popular attention, Oxfordianism has never been more than a small fringe movement within the world of Shakespeare studies, and that is unlikely to change.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Elliott, W. E. Y., & Valenza, R. J. (2004) Oxford by the numbers: what are the odds that the earl of Oxford could have written Shakespeare's plays and poems? Tennessee Law Review 71, 323-454.
Looney, J. Thomas (1920) 'Shakespeare' identified in Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. Frederick A. Stokes, New York.
Matus, Irvin (1994) Shakespeare, IN FACT. Continuum, New York, 219-263.
May, Steven W. (1980) The poems of Edward DeVere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, and of Robert Devereux, second earl of Derby. Studies in Philology 77.
McCrea, Scott (2005) The case for Shakespeare: the end of the authorship question. Praeger, Westport, CT, 154-223.
Nelson, Alan H. (2003) Monstrous adversary: the life of Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool.
Ogburn, Charlton (1991) The mysterious William Shakespeare. 2nd edition. EPM Publications, McLean, Virginia.

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Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

his birthday anniversary is nine days from today, 12 April.

Want to celebrate "Shakespeare" 's life and work? Mark and note the birth-date of this body of work's genuine author, Edward de Vere (alias "Robert Greene", "William Shakspeare", and numerous others).

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>15 Podras.:

Yes. There's Kathman's hit-piece (of shit) summary of *important stuff to know about* Edward Oxford--a tendentious review skewed from malice toward the subject:

"but the marriage was not a happy one due to Oxford's numerous affairs,"

..."he fell out of royal favor due to his reckless behavior,"

"and squandered most of his early promise as well as his family's fortune."

"In 1586 the Queen granted him an annuity of £1000 to prevent him from going broke."

That might impress people who are otherwise fairly ignorant of life as it actually was in Oxford's time.

Why didn't Elizabeth simply leave Oxford in penury? Other nobles not only weren't similarly rescued, some, because they lacked this favor and had done things actually quite seriously offensive to noble customs, suffered what is called "attainder"--they and their heirs lost lands, titles and privileges-- and you can be sure that meant, if not abject poverty, certainly a devastatingly severe descent in class status which was sometimes but not always later reversed.

"These "Oxfordians" believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford did not have the education or experiences that they imagine the author must have had, and that Edward de Vere did."

More to the point, Oxfordians noticed that it's actually quite significant that there is zero documentary evidence to support the assumption that William Shaksper ever spent a day in school--any school, anywere, ever.

What's truly outrageous about that remark is how utterly backwars it puts things:

the "education" of William Shaksper is completely imaginary while that of Oxford is, indeed, inferred from such facts as documents which attest to his schooling.

Letters to William Cecil (Lord Burghley) from Oxford's tutor, Sir Thomas Smith; Oxford's law studies at Gray's Inn, and studies and a degree from Cambridge University's Queen's College. The fact that a youth spent in the household of his parents--nobles themselves--and, later, that of William Cecil as a ward of the Queen's court--these attest to the fact that Oxford was, from birth to adulthood, surrounded by people of the highest education England had to offer.

Where is evidence of Williiam Shaksper's education? It's entirely imagined.

Nor are Oxfordians

..." forced to claim that all the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship (including the 1623 First Folio) was the result of the same elaborate conspiracy that supposedly hid Oxford's authorship, and that the plays were written much earlier than the dates generally recognized by scholars, since Oxford died twelve years before Shakespeare,"

since, very simply such "evidence" as there is--and it is paltry: such as, for example the memorial rings mentioned in Shaksper's much-ballyhooed will, clearly added after the fact by a different hand and crammed clumsily in between the lines of the will as originally written (a laughably absurd piece of "evidence" for which citations Stratfordians should be ashamed ) --is insulting to any fair-minded intelligent person's common sense.

... "the plays were written much earlier than the dates generally recognized by scholars, since Oxford died twelve years before Shakespeare."...

More bullshit. There is simply no clear agreement--even between Stratfordians themselves, let alone all Shakespearean scholars-- about which plays were written at which times. There is, as a few Stratfordian scholars actually admit, simply no way for any of us to know when the plays were first composed. That is conjecture. And Stratfordians dishonestly insist that there's more knowledge and agreement on these questions than there is because their case is damned when one admits that, frankly, there are not only equally-good reasons but, typically much better reasons, to date the plays within Oxford's lifetime: it explains more--than forcing them into the lifetime of William Shaksper. And, notably, Oxford's Sonnets' texts make laughable hash out of the claim that William Shaksper rather than Edward Oxford wrote them.

"My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,"?!?!!

LOL!!

________________________________________

When the Brain Won’t Change Its Mind (Sam Harris, at his blog, samharris.org)
|
|____> links to Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence Authors:Jonas T. Kaplan, Sarah I. Gimbel & Sam Harris |
Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 39589 (2016)
doi:10.1038/srep39589

Does anyone hear a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor?

Just seemed an appropriate image for poor p1, our resident ranting potty-mouth.

A pan from p1 is generally regarded as an endorsement by everyone else. I wonder if he plays over here because he was kicked out of denier circles. There is no sign that he would be able to make meaningful contributions amongst even those who agree with him.

It's an interesting controversy. When I teach my students about Shakespeare, as part of my English literature survey course, I tell them about the different theories of authorship. However, I also inform them that the majority of scholars believe William Shakespeare did indeed write his own plays. Would you consider that a fair way of telling students about the issue?

>19 madpoet:

My reply to the above referenced post has been has been moved here to the original continuation of the thread. (See >12 proximity1:, above.)

>19 madpoet: It depends on how much you tell your students and what you tell them. If you simply tell them that there are these opinions, and by the way most scholars favor the glover's son from Stratford, without saying much about why, then they may be left with the idea that the various alternate authors proposed carry relatively equal weight and that it can't be known for sure who the author was. Very broadly speaking, scholars mostly base their views on an examination of the historical record which is much more substantial that most people appreciate. Alternate authorship proposers mostly base their views on reading between the lines of the canon and finding hidden clues, including ciphers that nobody else has discovered, about who the "true" author was.

Here are some resources that may be helpful if you are not already aware of them:

James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (2010) examines the history of the authorship controversy and a good overall summary of it.

The Shakespeare Authorship Page provides a wealth of information about the controversy, focused mostly on refuting claims by people who want Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, to be seen as the author. He is the current favorite among doubters, having succeeded Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe, not to mention the 80 plus others who have been proposed. The article How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts lays out the most important parts of the historical record supporting the glover's son.

Oxfraud goes into the most depth and is actively engaged in keeping up as Shakespeare deniers develop new arguments. It also provides information about the latest research (into handwriting and stylometrics for example).

Shakespeare Bites Back is a short ebook about the topic that might be suitable for your students depending on their level.

Regarding the view of some people that Shakespeare's Sonnets are autobiographical and unequivocally identify someone other than Shakespeare as the author, this quote from T. S. Eliot may be helpful:

"I admit that my own experience, as a minor poet, may have jaundiced my outlook; that I am used to having cosmic significances, which I never suspected, extracted from my work (such as it is) by enthusiastic persons at a distance; and to being informed that something which I meant seriously is vers de société; and to having my personal biography reconstructed from passages which I got out of books, or which I invented out of nothing because they sounded well; and to having my biography invariably ignored in what I did write from personal experience; so that in consequence I am inclined to believe that people are mistaken about Shakespeare just in proportion to the relative superiority of Shakespeare to myself."

>19 madpoet:

A follow-up reply here has been has been moved here to the original continuation of the thread.

Important:

Please (See >12 proximity1:, above) don't address further comments to me here in this bogus continuation of the original thread. This thread is a deliberate ploy to avoid the use of the aptly-named continuation of the original thread which does not presume from the outset in its title-wording that " 'Shakespeare' wrote 'Shakespeare' "--an unfortunate neophyte's mis-wording of the issue.

>19 madpoet: If you follow up reading the post following my response to you by going to the other thread he referenced, you might notice that civility isn't highly valued by that poster. That isn't always the case with anti-Shakespeareans. Many are courteous and thoughtful, regardless of their views.

It is important amidst all the fuss and fury to research the question and make up your own mind once you have the facts in hand. Telling your students about the authorship question is fine, as long as you provide them enough information to allow them to fairly assess the merits of each side of the question. I'm assuming that your objective is not to indoctrinate them but to foster critical thinking. That is a worthy goal.

>23 Podras.: Unfortunately, my time in the course is extremely limited, as I only have one semester to introduce ESL students to 500 years of English literature! I spend 2-3 classes on Shakespeare, so I only briefly mention the fact that there IS a controversy. Then I have to move on to the biography of 'William Shakespeare.'

>24 madpoet: Ah! I understand the problem now. Given time constraints, it seems that you can only cover the essentials. My personal view is that the authorship question is not essential and could be skipped entirely without loss. The problem with that is that Shakespeare deniers, though few in number, are a noisy bunch, so it is possible that some of your students may have heard some claims of theirs. Doing what you have been doing seems like a good approach. You might consider recommending some optional reading for those that express an interest in learning more on their own. Shakespeare Bites Back is the quickest introduction to the topic and may be enough for most.

Something you might consider pointing out while covering Shakespeare's biography is that while the historical evidence about him is much sparser than we would like, there is more than enough to firmly establish him as the author of the works bearing his name. Recent stylometric research has shown that he collaborated with others more than had previously been understood, but Shakespeare's authorship was real. The name wasn't a pseudonym, and he wasn't a front man for someone else. What the historical record lacks is information about what kind of person he was; what his religious beliefs were, how he really felt about Anne and his children, what his interests were, etc. The record holds only a few hints about that part of his life, and though his works may hold some clues, nothing like that can be extracted from them with any degree of certainty.

--- Added note: I saw in the information you provided in the other thread that you tell your students that Shakespeare never traveled to Italy. As far as we know, that is correct. The people who believe that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the real author think that is an important point because de Vere did travel to Italy in the 1570s. They claim that the Italian plays contain information that only someone who had been to Italy could have written those plays. Without troubling you with the arcane details (unless you are really interested), the argument is full of holes.

Some interesting events have recently occurred in the area of handwriting analysis as applied to the authorship question. First, the British Library, possessor of the Sir Thomas More manuscript, has now fully accepted Hand D as Shakespeare's. They didn't make a formal announcement of the fact which they had mostly accepted already. What they did to was to change the wording of their write-up of Hand D to remove any ambiguity about Shakespeare's authorship.

The other event is that someone has now done an analysis of Edward de Vere's handwriting and writing style in comparison with Shakespeare's writing that shows that the Earl of Oxenforde couldn't have written Shakespeare's works. As expected, Oxenfordeans are exhibiting the first stage of grief in full force. They aren't expected to stop trash talking the glover's son from Stratford any time soon, if ever, just as the moon landing deniers aren't expected to come back to Earth either.

This essay, Bringing Home the Bacon: A Reassessment of Anti-Stratfordianism in the Context of its Romantic Roots, has some interesting perspectives on the thinking of Shakespeare deniers. It has a few choice thoughts about real scholars, too.

Something new has popped up. The Quiney letter has just acquired company.

Anti-Shakespeareans have long claimed that Shakespeare of Stratford (by whatever spelling one uses for his name) is a different person than the author, and part of their argument from the beginning has been their assertion, without meaningful evidence, that the Stratford guy was illiterate. The lack of extant letters written by or to him is supposed to be proof, in spite of the survival of a letter written to him in 1598 from Richard Quiney. Because it was found in Stratford's town records, most scholars think that it may not have been delivered. Anti-Shakespeareans claim that is "proof" that Quiney mistakenly believed Shakespeare was literate when he wrote the letter and held it back when he learned otherwise. It's a pretty silly argument, but they are grasping at straws anyway. It must seem better than nothing to them.

Solid evidence has now been come to light in a document long held by scholars that more people in Stratford than just Richard Quiney knew of Shakespeare's literacy. Thomas Greene's notes on the progress of the Welcombe enclosures contains several mentions of Shakespeare, including these quotes:

“Letteres written, one to Mr Manneryng, another to Mr Shakespeare with almost all the company’s hands to eyther,” and

“I alsoe wrytte of myself to my Cosen Shakspeare the coppyes of all our oaths made, then alsoe a not of the Inconvenyences would g’ \grow?\ by the Inclosure.”

The phrase "with almost all the company's hands to eyther" in the first letter means that nearly all of Stratford's town council signed it. The second quote could mean that Greene wrote one letter to Shakespeare containing two subjects, or he wrote two separate letters. From the wording, it seems more likely that he wrote two letters.

The letters Greene referred to haven't been found, but the implication of his notes is that in addition to the Quiney letter, we have evidence of the existence of two and possibly three other letters written to Shakespeare of Stratford, and that Richard Quiney, Thomas Greene and most of Stratford's town council knew that Shakespeare was literate. In the context of the full historical record concerning Shakespeare, there is nothing new in this, but deniers who attempt to make their argument by explaining away individual pieces of the historical record in isolation have just lost another round.

>28 Podras.: >29 Crypto-Willobie:

Illiterate people--the vast majority of the commoner-class of the time, after all--were routinely addressed in writing--as though this is 'news'. Such people were addressed by official publications of various types, e.g. broadsheets, posted in public squares; and declarations were very commonly appointed "To Be Read in Churches"--at which attendance was mandatory.

In such circumstances, it is completely ordinary that a literate person could send a letter addressed to someone known to be an illiterate person--or to a literate associate, if known, of the one who is the ultimate addressee.

Thus, the claimed evidentiary-value of a letter (real or faked, delivered or undelivered) from one Richard Quiney to "Shakespeare" amounts to nothing at all since we have nothing but conjecture as to

the actual identity of the person to whom the letter is supposedly addressed;

and, lacking that datum, we don't even need bother about

whether this letter was authentic or a piece of post-facto bunkum, made up to support such claims as are being made of it;

whether it was ever sent or received.

--but the appeal to it does show us again the preposterously failed reasonings of Stratfordians.

The June 2019 issue of The Atlantic magazine contained an essay titled, “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, by Elizabeth Winkler that suggests that Emilia Bassano (Lanier) was the “real” author of Shakespeare’s works, mostly because “her” plays displayed such remarkable insights about women. My reaction is that while Winkler’s idea is intriguing, she didn’t follow the logic far enough. Shakespeare’s plays also demonstrate remarkable insights about men; and about commoners; and about aristocrats; and about legal matters; and about miscellaneous other things. So instead of looking for a woman author, Winkler should have sought out a common aristocratic hermaphrodite with a law degree & etc. Heaven forbid that the author should have been just a decently educated village lad who loved to read and had a mind like a sponge, absorbing all sorts of stuff, and a talent for squeezing it out again in remarkable ways.

If you are interested, Winkler’s essay can be read here. Footnotes at the end note that Winkler messed up some of her “facts”, things that have been corrected in this online version. I can point out a few other things that she got wrong, too, that haven’t yet been highlighted. As you can imagine, the essay, being published in such a prestigious magazine, has created a bit of a stir. Here is another link to a page linking to several responses, including one by Mark Rylance, a Shakespeare denier, who moans about being attacked for his beliefs while at the same time demonstrating some of the ignorance and assumptions that makes his views so disrespected. I’m sorry, but as a historian, he’s clueless.

>31 Podras.:

... "Winkler should have sought out a common aristocratic hermaphrodite with a law degree & etc. Heaven forbid that the author should have been just a decently educated village lad who loved to read and had a mind like a sponge, absorbing all sorts of stuff, and a talent for squeezing it out again in remarkable ways."

_______________________________________________________

Insight and knowledge are two very different and independent kinds of things. A person can have great insight or very little and this has little bearing on how knowledgeable he is. And vice versa.

But where knowledge is combined with insight we have the opportunity to observe the more or less fascinating features of individuals' personality, their sometimes unique mixtures of remarkable insight with highly unusual kinds and amounts of knowledge — some gained through study of texts and some through other lived experience which has no 'book-learning' behind it.

It's this which marks out the author of "Shakespeare"'s work, Edward, Earl of Oxford, as so very unusual a person—unusual for a poet, unusual for a nobleman and unusual in so many ways by temperament and inclination. The writings of "Shakespeare" bear the marks of this, showing not only their author as exceptionally insightful—which he was—but also just as unusual for the manner, the ways in which he expressed and presented his insights.

Not every insightful person is an accomplished reader and writer of classic Greek and Latin or one of the most astute reader-aficianados of Ovid and other classic Latin authors; not every person's insights are expressed through a very good knowledge of French and Italian language and literature, of the law, of the learned awareness of the flora and fauna of his time, or of the habits and manners the nobility.

This is knowledge which doesn't come by putting a book under the pillow and going to sleep or by hanging around dock-side public houses, drinking and conversing with seafaring men.

Oxford went to Cambridge and studied there but before that he was individually tutored by some of the most learned and intellectually-talented men which the noble class had to offer a young earl. Oxford also went to study at Gray's Inn law chambers; a royal ward of the state, Oxford was raised in the household of William Cecil, later, his father-in-law, Lord Burghley, whose homes held one of England's most extensive private libraries.

No merely "decently-educated" person could have taken his insights, however profound they were, and presented them in the knowledgeable ways which Oxford expressed his. For the knowledge on display in Oxford's writing (esp. as "Shakespeare") is far beyond what anyone of that time could obtain in just a "decent education". Sixteenth-century England didn't afford the range of educational opportunities which became common in the twentieth-century. The gulf was wide and deep, the differences stark, between what a university-educated and, moreover, a privately-tutored noble youth such as Oxford was able to obtain and, on the other hand, practically-speaking, "everything else," which was, by contrast, meager--to put it mildly.

Study is hard work; it requires time and effort, even of a genius. Writing well is no different in its demands. If you think it's difficult today to find the time and the freedom-giving resources to allow one to study and to write long enough to become accomplished in these activities, just try and imagine doing it in the sixteenth century when books were few and very expensive, when the time to read, to study, to learn and to practice writing and languages was the luxury of a very fortunate few who were, mainly, in the nobility or the wealthy merchant-class.

This has nothing to do with the stupidly posited "class snobbery" with which Stratfordians tax Oxfordians. Plenty of nobles had many of Oxford's material and class-based advantages. None of them produced anything like his plays and poetry. That cannot be explained away as the unfortunate result of class snobbery. The difference was in the native intellectual talents of Edward Oxford and not merely in the fact that he had the other advantages of having been born into the nobility.

“In his Essays on Goethe, (1828) Thomas Carlyle concluded, ‘In every man’s writings the character of the writer must lie recorded…his opinions, character, personality…are and must be decipherable in his writings.’ (1) ”
_______________________________

—Steve Sohmer, from his Preface: "Impersonal Shakespeare" in Reading Shakespeare's Mind, (2017) Manchester University Press.

(1) Thomas Carlyle, Essays on Goethe, (London, Cassell, 1905) p. 78

>32 proximity1: Thank you for the lecture. You should hold on to it in case a situation arises in which it is applicable. In the right situation, I'm sure that people will be very impressed by it.

Thank you also for describing the education of the fictional Oxenforde imagined by enthusiasts. The known education of the real Edward de Vere based on the historical record overlaps the fictional one very little, but a little creativity is always fun if one doesn't lose ones perspective. The only degree the real de Vere received was an honorary one awarded for being astute enough to be born in the right family. Among their other functions, the Inns of Court served as social clubs for young aristocrats, not necessarily places where such persons actually learned anything. There is no evidence that de Vere ever studied either law or at a university. In fact, if there really was a massive conspiracy \def. conspiracy (n) = an invention to explain away a complete lack of evidence\ to hide de Vere's contributions to English literature under someone else's name, it must have also assured that any sign of brilliance whatsoever in extant writings under his own name, any of them for any purpose, was also expunged. Historically speaking, de Vere was a total cipher.

(P.S. I'm going away again and probably won't be back unless I see something intelligent to respond to.)

... "The Earl of Oxford had come from the household of Sir Thomas Smith and had spent a year at Cambridge. In 1564 Cecil set out plans for his tuition in French and in horsemanship. The earl was thirteen years old. Cecil asked Smith, by then Elizabeth’s ambassador in France, to recommend a good native teacher of French: someone who was honest in religion, civil in manners, learned in a science ‘and not unpersonable.’ Cecil was willing to give him fifty or sixty crowns, about £30 a year, for his trouble. For horsemanship he thought an Italian teacher best, who would have a salary of £20." ... (p. 146)

"At Cecil House in the 1560s there were some distinguished academics. Laurence Nowell was one of them, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and engaged as the Earl of Oxford’s tutor. Nowell was a polymath: a mathematician, a cartographer, an Anglo-Saxon scholar. He studied the work of Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Like a cryptographer he tried to crack the code of Old English: his work while in Cecil’s household was ground-breaking. He owned the only surviving original manuscript of Beowolf, one of the greatest jewels of English literature.(note22)

"Laurence Nowell was not the only man of Cecil’s household staff to write on the English language. John Hart was another. Nowell was about thirty-three when he drew his beautiful map of the British Isles. Hart, at about sixty-two, was a good deal older. He was Cecil’s secretary in the Court of Wards and the author of three books on English spelling and pronunciation. These were subjects which greatly interested two of Cecil’s old friends, Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Cheke. Like Smith, Cheke and Cecil, Hart was also a talented linguist, who knew Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and German.

If Hart had Nowell to talk to about English language and literature, then Cecil could turn to William Day for conversation on Greek. Day, probably Thomas Cecil’s tutor in the first couple of years of Elizabeth’s reign, had taught Greek at King’s College, Cambridge. Like other talented men in Cecil’s household, having a powerful master helped him to secure a very good job. By 1561 Day was provost of Eton College. ... (pp. 147-148)

... “Robert Cecil (William Cecil, Lord Burghley’s youngest son) was given the best foundation possible for a public career. As a boy he studied Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian, as well as mathematics, music and cosmography. He was taught at home, as Thomas had been years before, by the best tutors from Cambridge. Burghley’s household was as ever a place of scholarship and learning. Burghley owned a fabulous library and he encouraged learned discussions over meals.” ( p. 300,)

_____________________________

--Stephen Alford, (2011) (Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I Yale University Press)

... "The idea was no longer that of the semi-independent warrior, the ‘preux chevalier’, with the associated honour code, but rather that of the courtier, acting alongside others in advising/serving royal power. The new gentleman required not principally a training in arms, but a humanistic education which would enable him to become a ‘civil’ governor. The function was now advising, persuading, first colleagues, and ultimately ruling power. It was necessary to cultivate the capacities of self-presentation, rhetoric, persuasion, winning friendships, looking formidable, accomodating, pleasing. Where the old nobles lived on their estates, surrounded by retainers, who were their subordinates, the new top people had to operate in courts or cities, where the hierarchical relations were more complex, frequently ambiguous, sometimes as yet indeterminate, because adept manoeuvring could bring you on the top in a trice (and mistakes could precipitate an abrupt fall.)

“Hence the new importance of humanist training for élites. Instead of teaching your boy to joust, get him reading Erasmus, or Castiglione, so that he knows how to speak properly, make a good impression, converse persuasively with others in a wide variety of situations. This training made sense in the new kind of social space, the new modes of sociability, in which noble or gentry children would have to make their way. The paragidm defining the new sociability is not ritualized combat, but rather conversation, talking, pleasing, being persuasive, in a context of quasi-equality. I mean by this latter term not an absence of hierarchy, because court society was full of this, but rather a context in which hierarchy has to be partly bracketed, because of the complexity, ambiguity, and indeterminacy noted above. So that one learns to talk to people at a great range of levels within certain common constraints of politeness, because this is what being pleasing and persuasive require. You can’t get anywhere either if you’re always pulling rank and ignoring those beneath you, or so tongue-tied you can’t talk to those above.

“These qualities were often packed into the term ‘courtesy’, whose etymology points to a space where they had to be displayed. The term was an old one, going back to the time of the troubadours, and passing through the flourishing Burgundin court of the fifteenth century. But its meaning changed. The older courts were places where semi-independent warriors congregated from time to time for jousts and hierarchical displays around the royal household. But when Castiglione writes his bestselling Courtier, the context is the city-court of the Duchess of Urbino, where the courtier has his permanent abode, and where his occupation is advising his ruler. Life is a continuous conversation.

“In its later meaning, ‘courtesy’ comes to be associated with another term, ‘civility’. This too invokes a dense background, which I tried to describe in Chapter 2, section 2. It was, indeed, also concerned, as we saw, with ordered government, and the repression of excessive violence.”

_____________________________

Charles Taylor, (2007) Cambridge, Mass., A Secular Age
(Chapter 5, ‘The Spectre of Idealism’, pp. 214-216)

C. B. Watson (1960) Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor

(p. 53)

...“Herschel Baker suggestes in The Dignity of Man that 'such scholars as Dilthey, Gentile and Cassirer have shown that the more we know about the late Middle Ages, the more shadowy beceomes the line between them and the Renaissance,' and that actually 'what we have called the Renaissance began in the twelfth century.' This is the central thesis of his book; it is indeed the a widely held view today. It is my hope that this present study of the concept of honor will provide evidence...that the pendulum should...come back in balance to the mean position.... Although the changes came slowly and almost imperceptibly, the cultural values of the Renaissance are radically different from those of the Middle Ages.”

(p. 55-57) (C.B. Watson, Shkspr. And the Renaiss. Concept of Honor)

“The writings of Castiglione, Guazzo, Della Casa, and Count Romei in Italy, of Guevara in Spain, of La Primaudaye and Hurault in France. And of Bryskett. Elyot, and Cleland in England provide the Renaissanec with a common core of religious and moral assumptions, and hence provide the modern scholar, if he is sufficiently curious to investigate these often dreary moral treatises, with excellent definitions of the general cultural values of the Renaissance aristocracy. The idea of gentility (courtesy) has been studied at great length by Ruth Kelso and Carroll Camden. But no one seems to have made a systematic study of Renaissance moral philosophy in general in order to attempt to define the secular values of Shakespeare's epoch.

“For one thing, medieval scholasticism is so ignored by these scholars that they do not even bother to write against it at any great length; they almost never refer to any of the Schoolmen, though they often do inveigh against the kind of moralist who knots himself in subtle and complicated logical argument. The Renaissance moralist is trying to instill a simple set of moral precepts, and is forever mindful that 'not Gnosis, but Praxis must be the fruit.' (Sir Philip Sidney, Collected Works, (ed. Albert Feuillerat, Cambridge, 1923, III, 19.)) As Hardin Craig observes, 'The Renaissance adopted the findings or principles of ancient ethics and neglected its methods.... Instead of a questioning and reasonable philosopher Aristotle becomes a lawgiver, and his ethical principles, which were once reasoned ideals, become precepts; and precepts so authenticated, called by social habit loudly for action, whether rejection or adoption. There was no room left for thought.' (The Enchanted Glass, New York, 1936, pp. 199-200) Most of the recent histories of philosophy leap quite rightly from scholasticism to such modern philosophers as Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes without reference to the thoroughly derivative and unstimulating moral philosophy of the Renaissance. But the cultural historian who ignores it does so at grave risk; he is ignoring those very books which defined the values of the Renaissance aristocrat. No one who has read widely in this literature will arrive at the conclusion that the man of the Renaissance is a self-centered individualist, or that he is living in a world not radically altered from the Middle Ages. The typical Renaissance aristocrat is a curious amalgam of two distinct cultures, Christianity and pagan humanism. He ranges himself, in his moral allegiances, all along the line between the two extremes of pure Christianity and pure humanism. It would be hard to find a better summation of the nature of Renaissance values, as defined in the writings of the moral philosophers, than this of Pierre Villey:

'A truce is signed. These writings recognize the right for moral philosophy to provide a code of behavior, but only after imposing on it their own conditions. Alongside religious ethics and just subordinate to it, a way of life can develop according to its own dictates. Revelation will continue to define the purpose of human existence and will place a fine network of 'revealed' morality over the whole of life. Reason will have to contain ittself within the interstices left free. Adopting the maxims of the philosophers of antiquity, and creating new ones which imitate them, reason will indicate the means by which the sacred Christian principles can be carried out, and will dictate the law in that portion of human activity which religion has abandoned as a neutral zone.

'In such circumstances, then, what is likely to happen? Of course, for true Christians, and for all those whose inmost being is impregnated with an obsessive preoccupation with the Beyond, with a deep sense of God's presence, and of faith in Christ, the neutral zone will remain small and reason will be strictly limited to a subordinate role. If reason nonetheless manages to make morality evolve despite the immodbility of the sacred texts, it will do so secretly and without touching the principle of authority, merely by modifying the sense of Scripture. The idea of the Eternal is too weighty and the word of God is too powerful for those who are Christian in the full sense of the word not to extend their jurisdiction over most of life's actions or forbid positive reason (that is, reason based on facts) to encroach further on their province.

'But if the enticing game of giving free rein to reason in its unshackled form happens to catch men's attention, and they turn their attention to the realities of present human existence as toward a new pole, who does not see that moral philosophy, feeling hemmed in,, will gnaw at the net, will extend it, will perhaps capture man's entire soul? In some cases, then, it will relegate religious faith to a back shop, where it will die out. In other cases, religion, alive but completely enervated, will still be a part of life but actively participate in it only feebly and from a distance. Then the two roles will have been inverted; the pivot of human morality will have changed.

'Between these two extremes, an infinite number of intermediary positions offer themselves to Renaissance thinkers. Each man will place himself in the scale, more or less distant from the polar extremes, according to his intellectual temper—depending on whether positive reason has more or less power to organize his life and whether authority and metaphysics have more or less lost their hold on his conscience.

'Between 1550 and 1600 everybody is rushing headlong to the philosophies of antiquity. They are everywhere; its's a mass-intoxication.'
(Note: This is C.B. Watson's translation)
—Pierre Villey, Les Sources et l'Evolution des Essais de Montaigne, (I, 12-13), Paris, (1908)

(P. 64-66) “For the Renaissance aristocracy, honor, good name, credit, reputation, and glory come close to the very center of their ethical values and receive expression almost wherever we look in the records of the nobility of that age. For this class, these values are so popular, so widespread, so trite, that they pass into its literature almost without definition, particularly into the drama of the age. … The court audience, for example, which saw King Lear would not necessarily have consciously related Lear's remark, 'Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,'(I, iv. 281) to Cicero's observation that there is no stronger obligation than that of gratitude, or to Seneca's, that there is no greater vice than ingratitude. But this audience could hardly have missed such a precept on ingratitude in some book of Renaissance moral philosophy. Let us look at several commonplaces:

'The most damnable vice...is ingratitude,'
—Elyot, The Book Called The Governour (11, 13)

'Everie gentle hart easily pardoneth all injuries, except unthankfulnes, which it hardly forgetteth'
—La Primaudaye, The French Academie, p. 401

'There can be no such injurie offered to a free mind and a bashfull face then to be called unthankfull.'
'Vice for vice, and evill for evill, there is none in this world so evill as the ingrateful man. And of this it commeth that the humane and tender hart doth pardon all injuries, except ingratitude, the which he never forgetteth,'
—Guevara, (E. Hellowes, The Familiar Epistles of Guevara, London, 1574, p. 71

'Noe man can bee accused or blamed of a more shameful vice then of unthankfulnes.'
—Cleland, The Institution of a Nobleman, (1607)

'For there is no obligation...so strong, as this of gratitude,'
'No vice laies a more foule aspersion upon man, then that of ingratitude.'
—Francisco Guicciardini, Aphorismes Civill and Militarie, (transl. Robt. Dallington, London, (1613) p. 200.

'Seneca was of opinion, that no vice was more contrary to humanitie...then ingratitude.'
—Bryskett, A Discourse, p. 233

'Ingratitude is the greatest faulte that may be,'
—George Gascoigne, The Complete Works,, ed. John W. Cunliffe. Cambridge, 1910, vol.2, p. 20.

“No one can say whether Shakespeare had read these maxims; we can say that they are the moral values of the Renaissance aristocracy and that Shakespeare's treatment of ingratitude shows his awareness of these values. We can also safely assume that the use of Cicero's Offices (De Officiis) as the standard textbook on ethics in the Elizabethan grammar schools (which Shakespeare probably attended) had a good deal to do with the absorption of these moral concepts so that they became the cultural values of the ruling class of Elizabethan society.”

“How do such copy-book maxims on ingratitude or other subjects relate to any consideration of the Renaissance concept of honor? Honor as a man's most precious possession, honor as the reward of virtue, honor as the ensign of virtue, honor as the testimony of the good opinion of others, and dishonor as a thing to be feared worse than death itself, are notions which are so all-pervasive in the 16th century that we hardly think of them as integral parts of a systematic philosophy. They do, however, mostly stem from Aristotelian definitions of honor in Renaissance textbooks on moral philosophy.” …

________________________________________

(p. 67-68)

“Robert Ashley is the voice of the Elizabethan nobility when he argues, 'For how can vertue stand if you take away honour?' (Of Honour, (ed. Virgil Heltzel, San Marino, (1947), p.28) This is a characteristic of Renaissance expression of the close-knit alliance of honor and virtue which goes even beyond Aristotle's precepts, standing in sharp contrast to the Thomistic statement that 'he is not truly virtuous, who does virtuous deeds for the sake of human glory.' (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, (II, II, 132) That Ashley is outdoing Aristotle is particularly evident when he makes public testimony a more reliable and trustworthy measure of a man's virtue than his own private conscience. He argues that men desire honor 'that we may behold the Testimonie which good men and wise have geven of our vertue and be delighted therwith, as having not so much confidence in our selves herein as in the judgement of others.' (Of Honour, (ed. Virgil Heltzel, San Marino, (1947), p. 59) It is this stress on social approval which made the Renaissance aristocrat so highly sensitive to the opinion of others, so quick to resent a public affront, and so ambitious to win high honors for himself. The whole code of honor is a manifestation of an ethics which emphasizes the moral importance of social approval in every aspect of a man's daily life. Della Casa's definition of pride, which inverts the Thomistic notion that contempt of glory is a sign of great ethics, is but a logical extension of this Aristotelian social ethics: 'It is most sure, that he that refuseth that which every man doth hunt for: sheweth therin, he reproveth or contemneth the common opinion of men. And so contemne the honoure and renowne., which other men gape for so much, is but to glorie and magnifie himself above others.' (Italics added by author C. B. Watson) (Della Casa, Galateo: of Manners and Behaviour in Familiar Conversation, (tranls. Robert Peterson), London, (1576) p. 38 )

“No statement could indicate more clearly the tremendous contribution the ethical philosophies of Greece and Rome made to the civilization of Europe in the 16th century. From Augustine to Petrarch, the European moral philosopher had persistently maintained the Christian view that 'the common opinion of men' was an untrustworthy foundation for moral evaluations. In this quotation, however, the opinion of the community is an integral aspect of a humanist ethics, procalaiming the view of pagan antiquity that the man who ignores the public conscience—that collective judgment of his community—is asserting a reprehensible notion of the superiority of his personal conscience.”

(p. 93) Part II: The Renaissance Concept of Honor

“Even Montaigne, who at time seems the very embodiment of the skpetical attitude toward life, highly esteems this sort of moral integration: 'The reputation and worth of a man consisteth in his heart and will: therein consists true honour: Constancie is valour, not of arms and legs, but of minde and courage.' Only an age which, generally speaking, had an unquestioned faith in the reality of good and evil—be it Christian, or pagan-humanist, or most frequently a mixture of the two—could mold its elite to such a single-minded, intense devotion to virtue and honor.”

_________________

(p. 80)

“In the words of (William) Cornwallis, 'since Time hath distild our bloods and separated us from the crowde, I holde nobility bound not to commit any action tasting of a degenerate humor.' ”

...Castiglione, for example, insists that his ideal courtier must be born of noble stock:

'For it is a great deale less dispraise for him that is not borne a gentleman to faile in the actes of vertue, then for a gentleman. If he swerve from the steps of his ancestors, hee staineth the name of his familie.' Conversely, as The Courtier's Academie points out, the plebian inherits a predisposition to lesser virtue and can only convince the world of his unusual worth and merit by the greatest effort: ' As it is knowne that the one is nobly borne, and the other is not, with every one (t)he ignoble shal be lesse esteemed, than the other noble; and it is necessary ....

________________________________________

"An heroic address to (Oxford), concerning the combined utility and dignity of military affairs and of warlike exercises.

"Harvey’s tribute to Lord Oxford’s learning and scholarship, and the statement that ‘I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English verses are extant,’ is important as showing us how far the Earl had progressed along the path of literature:

'This is my welcome; this is how I have decided to bid All Hail!
to thee and to the other Nobles.

'Thy splendid fame, great Earl, demands even more than in the case of others
the services of a poet possessing lofty eloquence. Thy merit doth not creep along the ground, nor can it be confined within the limits of a song. It is a wonder which reaches as far as the heavenly orbs.

'O great-hearted one, strong in thy mind and thy fiery will, thou wilt conquer thyself, thou wilt conquer others; thy glory will spread out in all directions beyond the Arctic Ocean; and England will put thee to the test and prove thee to be native-born Achilles. Do thou but go forward boldly and without hesitation.

'Mars will obey thee, Hermes will be thy messenger, Pallas striking her shield with her spear shaft will attend thee, thine own breast and courageous heart will instruct thee. For long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in the arts. English poetical measures have been sung by thee long enough. Let that Courtly Epistle (1) — more polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself —witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters. I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English verses are extant; thou hast drunk deep draughts not only of the Muses of France and Italy, but hast learned the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries.

'It was not for nothing that Sturmius himself was visited by thee; neither in France, Italy, nor Germany are any such cultivated and polished men.

'O thou hero worthy of renown, throw away the insignificant pen, throw away bloodless books, and writings that serve no useful purpose; now must the sword be brought into play, now is the time for thee to sharpen the spear and to handle great engines of war. On all sides men are talking of camps and of deadly weapons; war and the Furies are everywhere, and Bellona reigns supreme.

'Now may all martial influences (he continues) support thy eager mind, driving out the cares of Peace.

'Pull Hannibal up short at the gates of Britain. Defended though he be by a mighty host, let Don John of Austria come on only to be driven home again. Fate is unknown to man, nor are the counsels of the Thunderer fully determined. And what if suddenly a most powerful enemy should invade our borders? If the Turk should be arming his savage hosts against us? What though the terrible war trumpet is even now sounding its blast? Thou wilt see it all; even at this very moment thou art fiercely longing for the fray. I feel it. Our whole country knows it. In thy breast is noble blood, Courage animates thy brow, Mars lives in thy tongue, Minerva strengthen thy right hand, Bellona reigns in thy body, within thee burns the fire of Mars. Thine eyes flash fire, thy countenance shakes a spear; who would not swear that Achilles had come to life again?' (2)"

_____________________________

(pp. 157 & 158)

—B. M. Ward, (1928) The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford: From Contemporary Documents, London, John Murray, Publishers.

(1) Oxford's letter 'To the reader,' in the preface to Bartholomew Clerke's translation (1571) of Castiglione's Book of the Courtier

(2) G. Harvey, Gratulationes Valdinenses, Book IV, (1578)

>34 proximity1: There is no doubt that when he was young, people thought that de Vere showed some promise and had good tutors. As an aristocrat, he also had a decent curriculum for someone who was not expected to need to work for a living. But when de Vere had been in the Cecil household about eight months (around 13 years of age), his tutor, Lawrence Nowell, wrote to Cecil: "I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required." Yes, the statement out of context is ambiguous, and if the statement is squinted at hard enough, one might think Nowell was saying something positive. But the opposite is by far the most likely interpretation. Everything I wrote about de Vere's education in #33 above is true.

Nothing de Vere wrote in his own name demonstrates brilliance. His best poetry is competent, but much of it definitely isn't; and it is emphatically not Shakespearean, no matter how many excuses are invented by his fan club. The most that can be said of anything else of the numerous extant writings of his is that he was a very frequent, self-absorbed whiner; constantly seeking to recover portions of the gigantic estate inherited and squandered by him or seeking to bolster the meager (by aristocratic standards) pension Elizabeth had granted him to avoid the embarrassment of seeing the scion of one of the noblest families in England live on the charity of others or in the gutter. This judgement doesn't need the interpretation of others. Read de Vere's own writings and those of his contemporaries about him.

There is much relevant discussion on the Oxfraud site concerning De Vere's education, spelling habits and strong Essex accent.
One of the essay clusters is right here...
https://oxfraud.com/HND-spellbound

>35 Podras.:

Nowell's letter to Cecil (they were on generally quite good and friendly terms, so the context of the letter is to be understood as one scholar in correspondence with a friend and colleague) is quite clear in its import.

Your presentation, which goes along with other similar defamatory distortions, all of them coming from those who, like you, are flagrantly prejudiced and motivated by an open hostility to any ungrudging view of Vere's reputation, flies in the face of the obvious and plain common-sense meaning of Nowell's words.

Nowell, a scholar, a master of languages and history, wasn't one to choose his words carelessly. He wrote that his "work", that of a tutor, an educator, teaching and instructing a student-- was as he put it, "for the Earl of Oxford"; and that work was done expressly at William Cecil's request. (emphasis added) Thus, both men, Nowell and Cecil, are concerned here with the tutoring of a young earl in their care.

Nowell writes referring to what is "required" in Edward de Vere's education, one worthy of his noble station and the mutual objective of both the writer and the recipient of this letter, originally in Latin: "I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required." (emphasis added)

In this letter Nowell is informing Cecil of the progressed state of his tutoring of Oxford. Had it been otherwise, Nowell, in this letter, addressed personally to Cecil, should have had no reason to be less than candid about any problems, difficulties, of whatever origin or source in Oxford's taking instruction from Nowell. But rather than present any hint of difficulty, Nowell reports that what is "required" from him in the service of Oxford's education is not long from being satisfied--hence, "cannot be much longer required". (emphasis added)

Had he had any need to, Nowell could have and obviously would have not hesitated to inform Cecil that he was either making little and slow progress or, worse, no progress with his pupil, Oxford, and, in that case, rather than not much longer "required," he'd have described his efforts to teach Oxford as being of no further "use", "value", "purpose."

Nowell is reporting his own and Oxford's success to Cecil, not failure.

Your construction of Nowell's words is at once viciously malign and preposterously stupid, for, still ahead in the chronology of events, there is the fact that William Cecil's own surviving letters describe him as both pleased and proud of the impending marriage, just seven years later, between Oxford and Cecil's daughter, Anne. Had Cecil been informed of Edward's lack luster qualities as a student, he'd have had, as you'd put it, "even less reason" to desire the match of his daughter with this "troublesome" young man; and there'd have been numerous other worthy suitors to whom Cecil could have given his daughter in marriage had he been so displeased with Oxford . But, instead, Cecil is found to have written to a friend on the very day of Anne's and Edward's wedding of his gaining the Earl of Oxford as son-in-law. The wedding was elaborately prepared and done at huge expense and fanfare, with the queen herself in attendance. Cecil, who took such pride in these things, was clearly pleased to write of it.

Review what the cited excerpts in >34 proximity1: tell us about the great importance Cecil placed on education, on learning. His whole life testified to the fact that, for him, there was no alternative to one's seeking and obtaining the best education possible, by the highest standards of practice then known and the most able of instructors available. Throughout his life, Cecil demonstrated this as his view of his own as well as others' learning and educational achievement.

A reminder:

This thread was launched, as is typical of Stratfordians' malign designs, in what was a ruse of a "continuation" of the previously-begun thread, here: "Did Shakespeare—correction, William Shaksper— write "Shakespeare"?* (continued from post No. 215 of the original thread)" . This one was launched by Crypto-Willobie who, writing in >1 Crypto-Willobie:, above, attempts to sanitize this counterfeit and bullshit "continuation" with his disingenuous

"This continues the older thread
'Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?'

It doesn't. Rather, it hijacked that thread's authentic and pre-existing continuation. The counterfeit version was an attempt to divert readers from a thread which wasn't going as suits the Stratfordians' distortions and, in particular, the use of "Shaksper" to correct their mischaracterization of the Stratford fellow as an author--this bothered them. For the candidly-stated facts always bother them.

TJTFB.

Oh get a life. It was you who hijacked the continuation thread by giving your version a beg-the-question title. I simply returned it to its more or less neutral title.

>37 proximity1: "defamatory" "prejudiced" "hostility" "malign" "stupid"

Thank you for your thoughtful and measured response. Underlying all of that, however, I sense signs of panic. I suggest deep breathing exercises and perhaps the help of a professional. As I understand your argument, things irrelevant to education, writing skills, and/or brilliance (e.g. Cecil's pride in joining his daughter and his modestly ranking family to one of the highest aristocrats in England by birth (definitely not for accomplishments) no matter what his intellectual attainments were) are supposed to prove that someone is well educated, a great writer, and brilliant. (Pursuing the example, the idea that elevating his family's social rank could not possibly have been Cecil's real motive, could it?) I find that logic novel. Suppose we eliminate all of Oxenforde's writings in his own name that isn't brilliant--i.e. everything he ever wrote in his own name. We would still know that Oxenforde was a brilliant writer because Cecil was pleased to marry his daughter to him. I never would have thought it was that easy to identify brilliance. Oxenforde need never have lifted a quill in order to be thought to be a brilliant writer. Your other examples are equally meretricious.

Incidentally, in case it escaped your attention, it is still true that the only degree Oxenforde ever received was an honorary one awarded for being astute enough to be born in the right family, and there is no evidence that de Vere ever studied either law or at a university.

>36 Crypto-Willobie: attempted to draw your attention to this site: https://oxfraud.com/HND-spellbound. I second the motion. The site is well worth perusing. Oxenforde's own letters eliminate him from being the author of Shakespeare's works in several ways. (By the way, Oxenforde's writing suggests that he wasn't very well educated.)

>38 proximity1: I vaguely recall you saying somewhere that you were going to ignore this thread because it was illegitimate or something equally silly. Your active presence here at all shows that, protest as you may, you have conceded defeat. Thank you for your participation in this meaningful thread about the vacuousness of anti-Shakespearean arguments.

>33 Podras.: RE: ..."the only degree the real de Vere received was an honorary one"...

..."there is no evidence that de Vere ever studied either law or at a university" ...

from The Book of Matriculations and Degrees: A Catalogue of those who have been Matriculated or been admitted to any Degree in the University of Cambridge from 1544-1659 ; Compiled by John Venn, Sc. D. and J.A. Venn, M.A. ; Cambridge University Press, 1913:

(1) Bulbecke, Edw. (Sir) | Qu. | f.-c. | M. | (1558)

( (1) at page 112)

(2) " Oxford, Edw. De Vere, Earl of | A.M.* | 1564 | (On Queen's visit)

( (2) at p. 503)

Above, the information shown across, left to right:

Student's name ; College in which matriculated (enrolled) ; Enrolled as... ; Term at enrollment ; (Year) of enrollment .

_________________________

References : above (1) refers to details refer to the Matriculation record (i.e. entry, enrollment in the College)

(2) refers to details refer to the conferment of degrees

* Abbreviations :

(2) "A.M." : Master of Arts

(1) "Qu". : Queen's College

"f.-c." : "Fellow-Commoner"

"M" : (enrolled at) Michaelmas Term

In 1558, "Sir Edward Bulbecke" referred to Edward De Vere, Viscount Bulbeck, prior to his becoming seventeenth Earl of Oxford upon the death of his father, John De Vere.

________________________________

The Venns describe in the prefaces to their works on Cambridge alumni the source texts for the lists they compiled.

These were :

UNIVERSITY RECORDS:

The Matriculation Register, required by statute since 1544.

The (listings from the) Grace Books, volumes denoted "A" (Alpha), "B" (Beta), "G" (greek letter Gamma) & "D" (Delta), from the Luard Memorial Series covering the years 1454-1588.

The University's list, Ordo Senioritatis (the listings of "Order of Seniority") the earliest surviving of which dated from 1491.

(A third list) "Supplicats" : "Before a grace for a degree could be passed, the University required a testimonial from the College authorities that the candidate had kept the requisite number of terms, and was otherwise duly qualified. This, which was signed by the College prelector, took the form of a 'request' for the degree. Hence the name of 'supplicat.' ... We have consulted them throughout."

EPISCOPAL REGISTERS (for students who were ordained after theological studies and degrees.)

COLLEGE RECORDS & ACCOUNT BOOKS

Computus Books or Bursars' accounts, dating from 1423.

Pensionarii, "students who, not being on the foundation, paid a 'pension' or rent for their rooms;" ...

Admissions records of the Inns of Court (these relate to students admitted as apprentices to study law at one of four Inns of Court: Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn. Middle Temple or Inner Temple. Edward Oxford was a student at Gray's Inn.

MISCELLANEOUS PUBLIC RECORDS

Patent and Close Rolls, Papal Letters, etc.

PROBATE REGISTRIES

from 1501 to 1765.

________________________________________________

Edward De Vere, being then the 14-year-old Viscount Bulbeck and 17th Earl of Oxford, also benefited from being mentioned personally in the State papers Domestic's record of Elizabeth I's visit to Cambridge University in August of 1564 . See, at paragraph 19: "A 'rare & merveleous guest: Elizabeth I samples life in Cambridge 450 years ago'', by Jessica Crown, (5 September, 2014). The record of her royal visit to Cambridge documents the Master of Arts degree conferred on Oxford at the time of her visit. He had begun studies in 1558 at Queen's College and "migrated" to St. John's College, also the Alma Mater of his guardian and, later, his father-in-law, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Queen's chief secretary of state and, at the time, Master of Wards of the royal court, one of whom was Edward.

___________________________

also, Edward Oxford was created A.M., Oxford University at Oxford University in a ceremony by the Queen, in September of 1566:

from Register of the University of Oxford, (Vol. I) by Rev. C. W. Boase, M. A. (Exeter College, Oxford), published by the Oxford Historical Society, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1885 :

at page 264:

"(Elizabeth visited Oxford 3 Aug. to 6 Sep. 1566)

...

"The following were created Masters of Arts 6 Sep. 1566, viz.: Edward Earl of Oxford, Lord William Howard chamberlain, the Earl of Ormonde, the Earl of Warwicke, Lord Strange, Lord Stafford, Lord Sheffild, William Cecil secretary, Rogers comptroller, Sir Francis Knowles captain of the Guard, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, John Tomworth, Esq. ---Fasti 176."

from Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford 1500-1714: THEIR PARENTAGE, BIRTHPLACE, AND YEAR OF BIRTH, WITH A RECORD OF THEIR DEGREES ; Being The Matriculation Register of the University, Alphabetically arranged, Revised and Annotated by Joseph Foster, Vol. III, Early Series:

"Vere, Edward, (17th) earl of Oxford (1562), created M.A. 6 Sept., 1566; pensioner of St. John's Coll., Cambridge, created M.A. Aug., 1564; of Gray's Inn 1567 (s. John, 16th earl), called the poetical earl; great chamberlain of England, and privy councillor 1604, died 24 June, 1604, buried at Earl's Colne. See Fasti, i. 176; & Cooper, ii, 389.

from Athenae Cantabrigienses, Vol. II, 1586-1609 by Charles Henry Cooper & Thompson Cooper, (1861) Cambridge, Deighton, Bell & Co., and Macmillan & Co.; published; London, Bell & Daldy, Fleet Street. Printed by Jonathan Palmer, Cambridge, Sidney Street.

( at page 389 (excerpt): )

__________________

"EDWARD DE VERE, only son of John de Vere, sixteenth earl of Oxford, by his second wife Margaret, daughter of John Golding, esq., was born about 1545 (sic) (born 1550) and during his father's life was called lord Bulbeck. After being educated for a time in the house of Sir Thomas Smith (Queen's College, Cambridge) he was matriculated as a fellow-commoner of Queen's College in November 1558, being registered as impubes. Subsequently he migrated to St. John's College. The learned Bartholomew Clerke is supposed to have been engaged in his tuition at Cambridge.

"His father died in 1562, when he succeeded to the earldom of Oxford and his other dignities, (including the hereditary office of lord great chamberlain of England) and to very considerable estates. He was one of his father's executors, but was in ward to the queen, and Sir William Cecil the master of the wards drew up special orders for his exercises and studies." ...

"Dying 24 June 1604 he was buried at Hackney on the 6th of July.

... ...

"He is author of:
1. Comedies and Interludes. These are lost or now unknown.

...

"3. English poems in various publications and collections. His fame as a poet was great in his own day, and some of his poems are not unworthy of commendation.

"He was well versed in the learned(*) and modern tongues(**), and had skill in music. No mean judge assures us that using that science as a recreation, he had overgone most of those who made it a profession."

______________

* learned tongues: i.e. Greek and Latin
** modern tongues: i.e. French, Italian,

>42 proximity1: For the benefit of those who may be wondering what this mess of stuff is all about, I presume it is an attempt to refute the assertion that Oxford's university degrees were honorary only. It doesn't. An important clue is in this line close to the top:

(2) " Oxford, Edw. De Vere, Earl of | A.M.* | 1564 | (On Queen's visit)

That "On Queen's visit" phrase is the key. Elizabeth made a progress to Cambridge University in 1564 when Oxford was 14 with Oxford and others in tow. Among the 17 people made M.A.s in honor of the occasion were Sir William Cecil and his ward, Oxford. There is no evidence that either had studied there. In 1566, Cecil and Oxford received additional M.A.s in honor of Elizabeth's visit to Oxford University.

An M.A. was always an honorary degree. For aristocrats like Oxford, the M.A.s were created out of thin air. The degree awarded for actual study was a B.A. B.A.s could be "elevated" to M.A. after a few years without further study and the payment of a fee. There is no record of Oxford ever receiving a B.A. or residing at either university with the exception of a few months at Cambridge when he was 8. The only records of his accomplishments then were bills for broken glass.

This article contains a much fuller explanation of Oxford's "education."

>43 Podras.:

"There is no evidence that either (Edward De Vere or William Cecil) had studied there."

"An M.A. was always an honorary degree" ? For that and all the rest of your as-yet-unsupported claims here, readers require some solid, credible, respectable scholarship published by a reputable academic press, not the inane bullshit at "Oxfraud" to which you refer them.

Your post amounts to the claim that Vere's degrees (and Burghley's!) were the stuff of "courtesy" bestowed not for merit but merely out of rank's privileges. There's nothing in your reply to support that other than a link to a bullshit site.

You offer no credible sources of support for your claims; that's clearly because you have none. Readers who haven't more sense than to uncritically accept the stuff at "Oxfraud" deserve what they get from you. Such readers are in any case not part of the people whose interest I address.

This is all the time I have for you and the horse-shit you peddle here for the present topic. I have much to do and many interesting things to read.

>44 proximity1:

"You offer no credible sources of support for your claims; that's clearly because you have none."

This is rich coming from you.

>44 proximity1: Thank you for your reply. I can appreciate your being wildly upset at any historical research that contradicts views such as yours that do, in fact, have no support in the historical record; that are, instead, almost wholly invented--not necessarily by you but by people you seem to implicitly trust. As Ros Barber might say, it causes cognitive dissonance. It can also cause distressed people to lash out irrationally at others who are simply stating facts. Have you tried Prozac?

The information about Oxford's merely honorary degrees and his general lack of education has appeared in numerous places, not just the Oxfraud article that has upset you so much. I referenced it because it is one of the most comprehensive sources of information available in a compact form, and it was handy.

Since you seem to want verification of Oxford's deficiency, and because I doubt that you will simply accept any second-hand report about sources, I suggest you do your own research, beginning by stepping outside the information bubble that seems to have kept you ignorant about knowledge that is so readily available. Since the Oxfraud article contains a bibliography at the end. You might start there. Depending upon how deeply you want to delve into the issue, those sources probably have their own bibliographies that can lead you to the primary sources that all this is based on.

Or you could continue to lash out in denial.

>46 Podras.:

No. You've made assertions and and you've been asked for your credible, reputable scholarly references--those materials on which you've previously drawn to support your claims. Instead of presenting any, you've thrown out a link to a shit-stirring website the claims and arguments of which, the sources offered from which, are and have been shown to be not worth a bucket of spit.

What reputable research of scholars supports your claims? Your responsibility is to put clear citations of these in your postings, not send your doubting readers off on a search for them.

What credible and reputable scholarly texts have you read and used, well or badly, that you claim support your assertions in >33 Podras.: and >43 Podras.:? Well? A link to "Oxfraud" is no substitute for them.

That's your burden to bear here, not your readers' burden.

Typical of you, you've shirked it. Those coming here and observing your typical conduct shall draw the obvious conclusions from it. Again, asked for credible support, you had nothing but unsupported claims. Period.

Exactly as I expected.

_______________________________

When you claim, for example, that "There is no evidence that either (William Cecil or Edward De Vere) had studied there (i.e. any college at Cambridge University)" you are obliged to demonstrate the evidence which refutes the record to the contrary.

Material, for example, such as that from Victor Morgan's A History of the University of Cambridge (in four volumes) (2004) Cambridge University Press.

From the index of volume II, there are entries which relate to "Burghley, Baron (William Cecil)" including

"chancellor, pp. 24-5, 31, 64-5, 92, 404;"

"academic background, 103;"

"and St. John's (College, Cambridge)68, 92, 112, 115-16, 408-9, 434n240;"

Why should there be an entry for "chancellor" in the index under "Burghley, Baron (William Cecil)" ? Because, in February of 1560, Burghley succeeded to the post of chancellor of Cambridge University.

at page 103:

"The role of university men in general, and of Cambridge men in particular, in helping to shape the formulation of major policies of national significance is evident on Elizabeth's accession. Then, some fifteen years on from the events of 1545-6, many of the same cast of university graduates had come to play yet larger roles on the national stage. What has been called 'the Cambridge Connection' has been held responsible for promoting the more radical version of religious settlement 1558-60 (17). This connection consisted of both clergy, and laymen with strong university backgrounds, such as William Cecil.(18)"

____________________

Notes:
" (17) Hudson, 1980
" (18) Ibid, 1980, pp. 5, 63. William Cecil was an able Greek scholar. He was tutored by Cheke, his first wife was Cheke's sister and his second wife was a Greek scholar in her own right. When contemplating a new translation of the Bible, Matthew Parker expressed the hope that Cecil would translate the Epistles."

Cheke, Cecil's tutor at St. John's College, Cambridge, refers to Regius Professor of Greek, Sir John Cheke.

Or this, from p. 115 of the same work and same volume,

"Moreover, the special royal links with Trinity College, and the close family connections of the Cecils with St. John's, ensured an even closer control of the two largest colleges at Cambridge, both of which drew many of their students from the north. The corollary of this was the magnification of the importance of Oxford and Cambridge as the nodal institutions through which it was possible to attempt to control the education of both the lay and the clerical elite of the entire realm. Similarly, but on a smaller scale, the control of the Court of Wards by the Cecils combined with high levels of paternal mortality to give the government control over the education of young men of hereditary standing and potential influence. Significantly, although some wards were brought up in Burghley's own household, yet others were sent to Cambridge, the university over which the Cecils exercised most influence, and especially to their own college, St. John's. (80)"* (my note below*)

______________________

Note:
(80) Hurstfield, 1958, pp.118-19.

Hudson, 1980 : Hudson, W. S. 1980, The Cambridge Connection and the Settlement of 1559, Durham, N.C., 1980

Hurstfield, J., 1958 : The Queen's Wards: Wardship and Marriage under Elizabeth I, London, 1958.

(My note)* : As we know, Edward De Vere was "both": brought up in Cecil's own household as well as sent, that is, as well as going on to Cambridge, first to Queen's College and, later, to finish at St. John's--as the matriculation records show.

"Here, under the surveyance of the great man (i.e. William Cecil) Edward was placed under the direction of a succession of distinguished tutors. For the first couple of years his uncle Golding; then the remarkable scholar Laurence Nowell;" ...
______________

- A. L. Rowse, Eminent Elizabethans, (London, 1983, Macmillan Press, Ltd.) p. 77

ETA NOTE: "finish" used here means only "concluded," "ended" his studies there. It does not necessarily mean that Edward's tenure at either Queen's college or at St. John's was either the same length as that of the majority of the college's students or that it ended with the same result as most other successful students of that time, for, as Rowse's text goes on to state, immediately after the cited portion above, Edward De Vere's time at Cambridge University was "brief"--that is, it was shorter than what may have been typical of many or even most other students there. What it means is that he was enrolled there, he pursued studies there as an enrolled student listed in the College's official matriculation records and that, whether he actually concluded earlier than most of his student peers or not, his time and his studies accomplished there qualified him with good cause and for merit, for the degree(s) he was eventually awarded--that is, for merit and not as some favour given because of his social rank and the special privileges which otherwise came with it.

Edward entered Queen's as a "fellow-commoner" and was a pensioner at the University, meaning he resided there and paid (or had paid) a rental fee for his room(s). The story of Edward's tutoring is told, largely by those with vehemently anti-Vere axes to grind, in biographies of those who had the power and the privilege to write the historical record to suit their anti-Vere biases. And yet, despite this, it's impossible to disguise the facts, grudgingly admitted, that Edward de Vere was an exceptionally bright and gifted student--a genius. This also had its negative aspects. But, that Vere was tutored under the supervision of William Cecil by such renowned scholars as Laurence Nowell and Bartholomew Clerke and that he attended Cambridge University, studied there as befitted a student of his social station at that time did, and, eventually, was awarded degrees based on merit as a consequence of his studies--these facts are not in dispute.

>47 proximity1: Okay; lashing out in denial it is.

A twisted sort of syllogism comes to mind: Oxfraud is a #@!%& site. Oxfraud says the sky is blue. Ergo, the sky is green with purple polka-dots as I always knew anyway. If you don't want to delve into Oxfraud's sources, then don't. But also don't whine when other people won't do it for you with full knowledge that you would dis any source that contradicts your faith system, no matter how distinguished or evidence based.

Incidentally, nothing Oxenforde ever wrote in his own name showed any special brilliance or extensive education. At best, some of his poetry was decent though decidedly non-Shakespearean. Who was he trying to hide his genius from when he wrote under his own name?

Editing Update: On that last point, I just ran across a resource evaluating contemporary comments about Oxenforde's writing that was posted in another blog just this morning. It may interest you. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it man interest anyone curious enough see what it says.

>48 Podras.:

So, a flat failure from you to produce a single reputable source it is.

No surprise. You have nothing but unsupported bullshit to offer here.

For those interested, here are a few translations of words and phrases used in >49 proximity1:

From line 1:

failure to produce: A reference to something produced, the acknowledgement of which is arbitrarily refused.

reputable source: A source from the exceedingly narrow Oxfordean information bubble; the one that pushes an authorship candidate who had no qualifications for the post, either in the historical record (the only one that counts) or on invented and abysmally reasoned literary grounds as supported by a highly fictionalized biography.

From line 2:

here: This current thread as slandered in post 12. In several other posts by the same author, here is used to refer to another thread that received the Olympian (i.e. petulant) pronouncement that it is the only legitimate thread to discuss the authorship question. Several assertions have been made in individual posts that responses to some issue have been moved or can be found over there instead of here. One wonders when these recent posts will be moved, too.

unsupported: Well supported but that requires at least a show of effort to pursue and verify.

bullshit: A favorite epithet used by those with a limited vocabulary, who suffer from cognitive dissonance, and whose ability to communicate intelligently is deficient. Such users appear to be unaware that most people treat the word's use in this thread as a sign that the thing being referred to is probably of high value and worth treating seriously.

This current round of discussions about the worthlessness of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, has run its course, though at least one response whose nature is pretty predictable seems inevitable.

I have a recommendation for those who want to learn more about de Vere; a biography by Alan H. Nelson titled Monstrous Adversary published in 2003 by Liverpool University Press. It has long been out of print in hardback, but it has recently become available in paperback. The title comes from something written by Charles Arundel in 1581:

"... my Monsterus adversarye Oxford (who wold drinke my blud rather then wine as well as he loves it) ..."

Nelson tells much of de Vere's story with extensive quotes from letters written by Oxford and others, retaining the original spelling and syntax with few exceptions. It is a great opportunity to see the "brilliance" of Oxford's writing first hand. Nelson does say some nice things about Oxford's poetry.

I'm afraid that this recent discussion was in response to and has been a distraction from a post I made at >31 Podras.: about an article in The Atlantic magazine. For those interested in another take on the authorship question, I recommend reading the article and the responses to it.

An article penned by James Shapiro about correspondence he had with the recently late Justice John Paul Stephens about the authorship question has appeared in The New Yorker magazine. I was struck by one of the things Stephens wrote: "If he was the most famous and successful author of his time, ... ." That is a gigantic "If" that is contradicted by historical evidence. If by success, wealth is meant, that was primarily obtained by Shakespeare's being a profit sharer in his acting company and part owner of The Globe and Blackfriars theaters. Authors could get a decent living from writing, but they didn't get wealthy. As for "most famous," Shakespeare was respected as a writer, especially for his two long narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, but during his lifetime and for over a century after his death, he was regarded as just one of many fine writers of his time. A huge amount of the authorship nonsense is based on thinking that our 21^st century view of Shakespeare was shared in 17^th century. It wasn't.

>53 Podras.:

Among U.S. Supreme Court members, not only Justice Stevens but Justices Lewis F. Powell Jr., Harry Blackmun and Antonin Scalia* also rejected the idea that William Shaksper of Stratford upon Avon was the rightful author.

Shapiro at gets this much right: there is no good reason at all to suppose any collaboration of an authorly-writing type between the as-far-as-all-available-evidence-indicates illiterate William Shaksper and the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. None.

Stevens ought to have stuck with a simpler thesis: Oxford wrote the poetry and plays himself, without any lesser intellectual lights intervening on his genius.

Stevens' speculations have, by the way, simply nothing to do with any conspiratorial fads going on, today or in generations past.

Were these, too, members of the world of wild-eyed "conspiracy-nuts"?

Charlie Chaplin?, Samuel Clemens? (wrote under the pen-name "Mark Twain"), Daphne Du Maurier? Ralph Waldo Emerson? Sigmund Freud? Helen Keller? Henry James? Walt Whitman? Orson Welles? Malcolm X? (named, at birth, Malcolm Little, in Omaha, Nebraska, May, 1925)

_________________________

While all the of above-named (James Shapiro, excepted, of course) doubted or flatly rejected William Shaksper as the author, Justice Scalia and some of the others named above were fully convinced of Edward Oxford's role as the sole author.

___________________

Anyone who imagines that the Shakespeare authorship controversy springs from the unfounded doubts of a relatively tiny group of delusional "conspiracy-nuts," people who refuse to recognize their views as fantastical and who holds this while having never delved into the issues concerning the plain facts of social class and power-relations among nobility and between the nobility and commoners, with nobles' heavily-enforced obligations to uphold codes of conduct designed expressly to promote and perpetuate their class rank and privileges as being a key factor in matters of a playwrights' capacity to publish under his (or her) own name-- anyone of this sort is simply and sadly damnably ignorant and really ought to go off and do some elementary reading and study, the better to inform himself.

As for others, those who, despite having delved into these matters and studied them, still don't grasp and appreciate the implications of these social and class-relation facts, --anyone like that is simply and sadly the kind of damn fool who has no business peddling nonsense in these threads.

>54 proximity1:

LOL

>54 proximity1: This is one of my favorite quotes. "I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you."

There may be a valid point in some of the more lucid parts of the post. The fact that such eminent English Renaissance historians as Charlie Chaplin, Samuel Clemens, et. al. has bought into crazy conspiracy theories does carry weight. Oops! They weren't historians at all. For proof, I give you The Prince and the Pauper. Also, Sigmund Freud believed in Lamarckian Evolution. Let's all rush out and tell biologists that they've got it all wrong.

Here is a copy of an letter I recently sent to The Atlantic magazine.

---

Dear The Atlantic Editor;

I followed with interest the Shakespeare authorship discussion that started with Elizabeth Winkler’s article in your June 2019 edition, Was Shakespeare a Woman?, and which continued online with reactions by James Shapiro, et. al.; all capped off by Winkler’s response to criticism in the letters section of the July 2019 edition.

Winkler may have a point about “Shakespeare” possibly being a woman because of “his” remarkable insight about women in his works. Winkler shows she is aware of Margaret Cavendish’s 1664 letter \1\ critiquing Shakespeare’s works when she quotes Cavendish out of context: “... one would think that he had been Metamorphosed from a Man to a Woman.” However, Cavendish also remarked about the considerable insight Shakespeare had into men, too. Perhaps instead of looking for a female author for Shakespeare’s works, a hermaphrodite should be sought for. A quote that much better captures Cavendish’s theme is: “... so Well he hath Express'd in his Playes all Sorts of Persons, as one would think he had been Transformed into every one of those Persons he hath Described.” That is the context from which Winkler drew her quote.

I was pleased to see that The Atlantic corrected some of Winkler’s errors in the online version of her piece. That is a sign that you care about the quality of the information your articles contain. There are a few errors that you missed, however. Before getting into them, there is an answer to Winkler’s question, “Had anyone ever proposed that the creator of those \Shakespeare’s\ extraordinary women might be a woman?” The answer is, “Yes,” and it isn’t “a few bold outliers” who “recently” began to consider the possibility. Queen Elizabeth I was put forward as early as 1857 \2\. Several other women were proposed over the decades up to Emilia Lanier née Bassano, Winkler’s candidate, who was proposed by John Hudson in 2007. Winkler’s observation about Shakespearean scholars ignoring the possibility of a woman is a bit silly. If they seriously considered that, then by definition, they wouldn’t be Shakespearean scholars.

These are only a couple of the issues with Wrinkler’s article which, though purportedly about the title question, is an unbridled attack against Shakespeare and Shakespearean scholars. She makes claim after claim after claim in a printed version of a Gish gallop, many of which take only a few words or lines to make but from paragraphs to pages to refute or put into perspective; sometimes a lot of pages. A book-length treatise would be need to address them all thoroughly. I’ll touch on only a few.

Totally False: A far more egregious error than some of those you corrected is Winkler’s claim that Shakespeare was fined for hoarding grain. There is nothing in the historical record that supports it. There are only two documents connecting Shakespeare with grain or malt storage. The first is a 1598 inventory of grain holdings of everyone living in Stratford \3\. It was an inventory only; nothing else. Seventy-one householders were recorded as holding grain including Shakespeare. His holdings were exceeded by 16 others. Malt making was a common activity in Stratford \4\. There is no record of anyone in Stratford being prosecuted for hoarding grain during that period. None. Some Shakespeare deniers point to the inventory as proof of prosecution, but the claim is bogus. The inventory says nothing of the sort.

The other document is connected with a court case ca. 1605 in which Shakespeare sued Philip Rogers, a tavern keeper, for recovery of 35 shillings 10 pence plus damages \5\. That was enough to pay a skilled tradesman’s wages for 35 days \6\. That is one of Shakespeare’s only two lawsuits. Winkler describes them as petty. Most of Roger’s debt was accumulated through the sale to him by Shakespeare or someone in his household of a series of small quantities of malt.

The only other law suit Shakespeare brought was against John Addenbrooke ca. 1608-1609 \7\ was for 6 pounds, enough to buy 3 cows or pay the wages of a skilled tradesman for a third of a year \6\.

Famous Doubters: A frequent tactic of Shakespeare deniers that Winkler copied is to list famous people who were persuaded that Shakespeare wasn’t the real author. The list would have been more impressive if any of its members had been famous for their expertise in England’s early modern period, but none of them were. Sigmund Freud is an interesting member of the list because he also believed in Lamarckian Evolution \8\. For consistency’s sake, people who think that Freud’s beliefs about things outside of his area of expertise carries any weight should also be advocating Lamarckianism in place of Darwinism.

James Shapiro recently revealed that he had been corresponding with the late Justice John Paul Stevens \9\, one of the other people on Winkler’s list, about the authorship question. In one of his letters, Stevens writes, “If he was the most famous and successful author of his time, is it not strange that ... .” There lies much of the authorship problem. Shakespeare deniers, famous or otherwise, often project their modern beliefs onto 16th and 17th century residents. If by “successful” Stevens means wealthy, then Shakespeare was successful, but not because of his writing. Payment for a play transferred all rights, virtually nil anyway for authors in those days, to the acting company the play was sold to. Prolific playwrights might earn a decent living from writing, but they didn’t get wealthy from it. Some of Shakespeare’s income came from acting, but his principal sources of income were his share of the profits of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men / King’s Men, and from part ownership of the Globe and Blackfriars’ theaters. \10\

As for being “most famous”, that is another false belief. Shakespeare was not the most famous writer in England when he was alive. Also, the belief that Shakespeare is the best writer in the English language is not a historical fact. It is a literary assessment; one that wasn’t made until more than a century after his death \11\. Shakespeare was recognized as a good writer during his lifetime, mostly for his two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Generally speaking, plays weren’t highly regarded. They were banned from Oxford’s Bodleian Library whose original intention was to collect every book printed \12\. Francis Meres \13\, Richard Barnfield \14\, William Camden \15\ \17\, Richard Carew \16\, and Edmond Howes \18\ all recognized Shakespeare’s talent during his lifetime, but each of them named Shakespeare as just one among many fine writers of the age. Other writers recognized Shakespeare’s talent, too, but no one said he was the most famous or best or greatest or most successful or whatever; not even Ben Jonson did so in his lavish tribute to Shakespeare in the First Folio. Were any writer to be so identified in that age (none were), Edmund Spencer would most likely have received the honor.

Justice Stevens’ “If ... strange that” opening, the starting point for many false beliefs by Shakespeare deniers that aren’t in least suspicious, is followed by asking why there “was no eulogy or other public comment at the time of his death?” I suspect that Justice Stevens was thinking that “the most famous and successful author” in Shakespeare’s day should have been given the kind of recognition people like Elvis Presley or Ernest Hemingway got when they passed away. First, Shakespeare didn’t have that kind of status when he died. He was a commoner living in an out-of-the-way market town a couple of days ride away from London, the cultural center of England, in an age in which the only celebrities were aristocrats, church figures, and sometimes soldiers. Second, the belief that there were no eulogies to Shakespeare is false \19\. Though the precise composition date of William Basse’s poem, On Mr Wm Shakespeare, the earliest eulogy to Shakespeare, isn’t known, it was widely circulating in manuscript form before 1623, remarkably soon after his death compared with extant eulogies for most contemporary commoners. Much better known are the several eulogies in Shakespeare’s First Folio. The one by Leonard Diggs specifically refers to Shakespeare’s Stratford monument, mounted on a wall in the Holy Trinity Church with a plaque that identifies him as a writer on par with Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil \20\.

Shakespeare’s Will: Shakespeare deniers spend considerable time and effort tearing down Shakespeare because as long as he is in the picture, no other authorship candidate need apply. He is often attacked through his will; in particular, the absence of any mention in it of books and manuscripts, referring to the handwritten originals of his plays.

There are several possible, perfectly innocent reasons why his will doesn’t mention books, just as it doesn’t say anything about his clothes, about his dinner table, or about the plates, flatware, and flagon he ate and drank with. The most likely reason is that those items were in the inventory that accompanied his will when it was presented for probate on June 22, 1616 \21\. It was since separated from the rest of the will and is lost to us.

We don’t know if Shakespeare had musical instruments, but if he did, then they could also have been listed in the inventory. It is conceivable that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the music in his plays \22\. The absence of books and musical instruments in the surviving portion of Shakespeare’s will proves nothing.

As for play manuscripts, the reason they aren’t mentioned in the will is because wills are for disposing of one’s own property, not property belonging to others. Shakespeare didn’t own his manuscripts. Once completed, ownership of manuscripts passed into the hands of acting companies who handed them over to scribes to further shape them into condition suitable for rehearsal and performances. The ultimate fate of most early modern play manuscripts was to disappear forever. Of the thousands of plays written in the early modern period, the manuscripts of only 18 survive. \23\

Shakespeare’s Education: Shakespeare deniers frequently try to show that the glover’s son from Stratford couldn’t have been the author of the works bearing his name by questioning his literacy and education. Winkler does so partly by questioning the literacy of his father, noting that John Shakespeare signed his name with a mark. We don’t know that he was literate, but we do know that some people who were literate back then also signed with a mark. John Shakespeare served on the town council for many years in various capacities, including one year as junior chamberlain and three as chamberlain. \24\ He rose to bailiff (equivalent to mayor) for another year. It is difficult to imagine a total illiterate person successfully holding those posts. The literacy of Susanna and Judith, Shakespeare’s daughters, is also questioned. The only surviving evidence of Judith’s writing is that she once signed with a mark. In Susanna’s case, we have an actual signature that Winkler described as being painfully formed.

Here is Susanna Hall’s (nee Shakespeare) signature:

\I've yet to master the inclusion of images into LibraryThing's posts. Susanna Hall's née Shakespare signature is easily found by searching for it on the internet.\

Susanna’s handwriting isn’t very good, but that can be said of many literate people. Note, however, the evenness of the lines. An inexperienced person writing with a quill will typically make a blotchy mess. This is not the writing of someone who was unfamiliar with the use of a quill. Also the mere existence of a signature is a strong sign that Susanna was at least partly literate. Tudor petty schools like Stratford’s taught reading first before teaching students to write as a separate subject. \25\

For an example of the signature of someone who was known for a fact to be illiterate, here is Sojourner Truth’s signature:

\Sojourner Truth's signature can be easily found by searching for it on the internet.\

The business of Shakespeare’s family’s literacy is a distraction. Winkler is more on point when she says that Shakespeare “wasn’t educated past the age of 13.” However, she doesn’t reveal that the source for that claim came from the first attempt at a biography written in by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, close to a century after Shakespeare’s death, based on a collection of anecdotes, or that much of what Rowe wrote is considered to be highly questionable. \26\

Winkler also fails to point out that a Tudor grammar school education was renowned for its high quality, and that if Shakespeare’s formal education really did end at age 13, he would still have completed the great majority of the course work. David Cressy observed, “the bulk of the evidence ... points to the first two decades of Elizabeth’s reign (1558-78) as a period of unusual educational excitement and achievement. It may be no coincidence that Shakespeare and his talented literary contemporaries were of school age at this time and that part of his audience was uniquely well-educated.” \27\ In response to John Churton Collins, an Earl of Oxford authorship advocate, T. W. Baldwin writes:

I know of no evidence to justify the conviction of Collins that Shakspeare’s “knowledge of the classics both of Greece and Rome was remarkably extensive.” Remarkably extensive it may appear to us, but so far as I can find it was only that of a grammar school graduate who had an interest in the literary side of certain Latin classics.

Baldwin further states that “no miracles are required to account for such knowledge and techniques from the classics as he \Shakespeare\ exhibits. Stratford grammar school will furnish all that is required. \28\

As for all of the many topics about which Shakespeare shows knowledge of that Winkler finds so puzzling, an invention popular in Shakespeare’s day called “reading” can explain nearly all of them. Reading was not limited to school-age children.

Rewriting History: At one point, Winkler brings up someone she describes as a meticulous scholar, Diana Price, whose book, Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, has one and only one objective; to “prove” that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. Or that Shakespeare the probable front man for the real author was a different person from the Shakespeare living in Stratford. Price coyly uses different spellings for their names. In Shakespeare denier circles, the word “orthodox” is a pejorative term referring to main-stream scholars who don’t support denier views. Early on, the book lists every instance in the historical record directly referring to Shakespeare—except that her list isn’t nearly complete. Price’s book is a classic example of the use of special pleading. She has one set of rules for judging evidence relating to Shakespeare—effectively eliminating everything that supports him as a writer—and has much laxer standards for everyone else. \29\ One of Price’s most egregious rules is that evidence of Shakespeare’s authorship dated after his death is invalid. If that rule were to be applied to history in general, it would gut a vast amount of what we think we know of our past. Price uses it to eliminate Shakespeare’s First Folio and its eulogies to Shakespeare as evidence of his authorship, regardless of the fact that it was put together by John Heminge and Henry Condell, people who knew Shakespeare when he was alive, who worked with him and were part owners with him in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men / King’s Men, and who received bequests of money for mourning rings in Shakespeare’s will. This sort of intellectual dishonesty pervades denier circles. \30\ \31\

Deniers make much of the fact that the historical record doesn’t tell us a lot about Shakespeare. That can be misleading and is part of the basis for speculation about who the author “really” was. The reality is that there is ample evidence that Shakespeare, the glover’s son from Stratford, really was the author of the works bearing his name (see \32\ for How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare). Much scarcer is evidence telling us about the kind of person he was.

Shakespeare deniers like to point to things in his works that they think support their favorite authorship candidate. They ignore things that point to Shakespeare. For example, Shakespeare’s works contain a number of words from the dialect of English used in Warwickshire, the area around Stratford, and the names of people and places in the vicinity of Stratford appear, also. No other region of England has that kind of representation in the works. Recent events have only reinforced the knowledge of Shakespeare’s authorship. After many decades, the British Library recently accepted without qualification that Hand D, three manuscript pages by one of the collaborators in Sir Thomas More, a play denied authorization for performance, was written by Shakespeare. The handwriting of the Stratford’s Shakespeare’s signatures, reinforced by increasingly sophisticated computer stylometry, is a sufficient match for Hand D that doubt is no longer feasible. Shakespeare’s writing is sui generis. \33\

Those dastardly scholars: Winkler has expressed resentment over being called a denier. Here are some of the phrases she used in referring to scholars: “settled into dogmatism,” “unquestioning worship,” “arrogant dismissal,” “anti-intellectual suppression,” “rhetorical dismissal,” “uncritically held assumptions,” “pronouncements by authorities,” “vitriolic zeal.” I have a hard time feeling sympathy for Winkler’s hurt feelings given those kinds of ad hominem attacks. On the other hand, Winkler modestly describes her own endeavor: “Consistent with journalistic duty, I distinguished academic opinion and received wisdom from fact as I explored terrain on which evidence has proved open to varying interpretation.” I see no evidence that Winkler did any such thing. Everything she wrote about Shakespeare comes out of the standard playbook of Shakespeare deniers. She doesn’t appear to have spent any time at all looking at the historical evidence that Shakespearean scholars use to support their knowledge of Shakespeare’s authorship and weighing it against alternative beliefs. I agree with one thing she wrote in her July response to criticism: “Scholarly opinion isn’t fact.” Scholars agree with that sentiment, too. Instead, historical fact shapes opinion through knowledge. One needs to take an honest look at the facts, all of them including a thorough examination of England’s early modern era without distortion or irrational filters.

History denial is much like science denial, and the same tactics are used by practitioners. Professional historians have standards \34\, and deniers of all sorts follow certain patterns, too. \35\

A final note about Winkler. She wrote, “Desperate \she says\ to come up with comparable material to round out Shakespeare, scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries forged evidence—later debunked—of a writerly life.” Yes forgeries were committed. There were two sets of forgeries by two people. The first was not by a scholar. The forgeries were produced by William-Henry Ireland in the late 18th century who was perhaps desperate to satisfy the urges of his father, an avid collector. The first real Shakespearean scholar, Edmund Malone, was almost immediately skeptical and was soon found to be correct. The second set of forgeries were made by the scholar, John Payne Collier, in the mid 19th century. Though other scholars were fooled for a while, Collier was eventually exposed—by scholars. \36\ These incidents are deplorable but necessary parts of the history of Shakespearean scholarship. They have nothing to do with the authorship question, however, and should not have been brought up in a piece like Winkler’s at all. She leaves the impression that scholars deliberately welcomed fake evidence because they thought the case for Shakespeare’s authorship was weak at a time in which no one was questioning Shakespeare’s authorship. Any such implication is utterly false and totally reprehensible.

What will The Atlantic do?: Unwittingly or not, by publishing Winkler’s article the way that you did, The Atlantic took sides in the authorship question. Making the corrections you did in the online version of Winkler’s article was a relative fig leaf compared to the blatant exposure to denier thinking and tactics that your readers have been subjected to. I don’t entirely blame you because it takes some familiarity with what deniers do in order to recognize what is going on. And there are few articles being published in general interest publications providing the public with enough information about the historical Shakespeare to enable them to recognize such bunk when they see it. Another article on the authorship question published by The Atlantic focused on the historical record, the real one as opposed to the false narrative being pushed by deniers, would help to redress the harm that has been done. Real historians should be consulted about its contents. In one sense, it will be old news. But for many of your readers who think that articles in The Atlantic are automatically credible, it will be new news indeed.


\Signature Line\


Supports:

\1\ Margaret Cavendish, CCXI Sociable Letters, Letter 123, London, 1664 (see: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53064.0001.001/1:8.123?rgn=div2;view=fulltext...

\2\ List of Shakespeare authorship candidates, (trust but verify) Wikipedia article (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shakespeare_authorship_candidates)

\3\ 1598 Stratford Grain Inventory: A Survey of those within the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon, holding quantities of “corne and malt” including Shakespeare, Shakespeare Documented, 1598 (see: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/survey-those-within...

\4\ Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro, Simon & Shuster Paperbacks, 2010, p. 67

\5\ Shakespeare vs. Rogers, Declaration in the Stratford-upon-Avon court of record in a suit between William Shakespeare and Philip Rogers, concerning money owed by Rogers for the sale of malt to him by Shakespeare in 1604, Shakespeare Documented, 1605 (see: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/declaration-stratfo...

\6\ Currency Converter: 1270—2017 (See: http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result)

\7\ Shakespeare sues Addenbrooke, the writ to impanel a jury (first of seven surviving documents in the case) (see: http://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/shakespeare-sues-joh...

\8\ Review: Freud’s Debt to Darwin, New Scientist, Feb. 9, 1991 (See: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917556-600-review-freuds-debt-to-darwin...

\9\ An Unexpected Letter from John Paul Stevens: Shakespeare Critic, James Shapiro, The New Yorker Magazine, August 6, 2019 (See: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/an-unexpected-letter-from-john-pa...

\10\ Shakespeare’s Money: How much did he make and what did this mean?, Robert Bearman, Oxford University Press, 2016

\11\ The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Authorship, 1660—1769, Michael Dobson, Clarendon Paperbacks, 1992

\12\ Shakespeare in Fact, Irvin Leigh Matus, Dover Publications Inc., 2012, p. 169—170

\13\ Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury, 1598 (See: https://www.bartleby.com/359/31.html) (Shakespeare’s name appears 9 times)

\14\ Richard Barnfield, A Remembrance of some English Poets, 1598 (See: http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=32914)

\15\ William Camden, Shakespeare Documented, Remaines of a greater worke, concerning Britaine, the inhabitantes thereof, their languages, names, surnames, empreses, wise speeches, poësies, and epitaphes, 1605 (See: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/remains-concerning-... (bottom of page 8 in Camden’s Appendix)

\16\ Richard Carew, The Excellency of the English tongue, ca. 1605, a manuscript (See: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/excellencie-english... (Shakespeare’s name appears a few lines below the middle of the page close to the right margin.)

\17\ A second edition of Camden’s Remaines was published in 1614 under the title of Remaines, concerning Britaine: but especially England, and the inhabitants thereof (See: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/remaines-greater-wo... that repeated his list of notable writers including Shakespeare’s (p. 324), and it also incorporated Richard Carew’s essay \16\ in an appendix.

\18\ Edmond Howes, Shakespeare Documented, Howes emendations to John Stow’s Annals, 1615 (See: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/howes-emendations-j... (page 811, top half of column 2)

\19\ Shakespeare’s Eulogies, (See: https://shakespeareauthorship.com/eulogies.html)

\20\ Shakespeare’s funerary monument, Wikipedia Article (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_funerary_monument)

\21\ For an image of Shakespeare’s will, see: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/william-shakespeare.... Go to image 9. The paragraph below Shakespeare’s signature at the bottom right of the third page, written in Latin, was added by the probate court. At the very bottom is a notation that indicates the presence of an inventory. A transcription can be found here: https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-will-testament/. A partial English translation of the probate court’s inscription reads:

William Byrd proved before Master Doctor of Laws Commissary etc. xxiido day of June of the year 1616 one of the executors etc. Oath Jahannis Hall. Well etc. etc. etc. of the jury has the power to save the other executor Sussane Hall, etc., etc., when requested.
Inventory (shown presented produced)

\22\ Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, Tiffany Stern, Cambridge University Press, 2012 (Ch. 5: Songs and Masques)

\23\ A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan, Blackwell Publishing, 1999 (Ch. 25, “Precious Few”: English Manuscript Playbooks, William B. Long)

\24\ His Father John Shakespeare by David Fallow, The Shakespeare Circle, edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, Cambridge University Press, 2015

\25\ Education in Tudor and Stuart England, David Cressy, Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., 1975

\26\ Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear, Nicholas Rowe, 1709 (A preface to Rowe’s edition of Shakespeare’s plays published that year.)

\27\ Literacy and the Social Order: Reading & Writing in Tudor & Stuart England, David Cressy, Cambridge University Press, 1980

\28\ T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespeare’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, University of Illinois Press, 1944 (see: https://franklin.press.uillinois.edu/baldwin/)

\29\ See Deconstructing the Stratford Man (see: http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm), and
Nelson’s review & responses to Price’s objections (see: http://socrates.oxfraud.com/price.html)
The second link is part of Alan H. Nelson’s homepage: http://socrates.oxfraud.com/index-2.html

\30\ The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question, Scott McCrea, Praeger, 2005

\31\ Shakespeare in Fact, Irvin Leigh Matus, Dover Publications Inc., 2012

\32\ How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts, (see: https://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html)

\33\ The Book of Sir Thomas More: Shakespeare's only surviving literary manuscript (see: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/shakespeares-handwriting-in-the-book-of-sir-t...

\34\ Historical Method, Wikipedia Article (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method)

\35\ FLICC: 5 Techniques of Science Denial (see: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4691)

\36\ Shakespeare’s Lives, S. Schoenbaum, Barnes & Noble, 2006

The folk at Oxfraud have recently produced a one-page web site about the authorship question focusing on J. Thomas Looney, the founder of the Oxford-wrote-Shakespeare clique, this year being the 100th anniversary of the publication of Looney's book, Shakespeare Identified. The Earl of Oxford was NOT Shakespeare: Shakespeare Completely Misidentified is worth a look.