Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?

..."Neither core theory violates all Neither core theory violates all the few pieces of hard evidence we have about either of the historical persons Will Shakspere and Edward de Vere."...

"The genius of King Lear is that it was written by a man who was totally unlike his creation. The poetry of a teenager in love is sincere: that is what makes it bad. The key to dramatic art is Insincerity, i.e. that the author should only pretend keenly to feel what he expresses.” — (p. 150,
The Genius of Shakespeare (original edition, 1997, Picador/ Macmillan Publishers, Ltd. London); )

... "That’s it. Apart from his name on the title pages of published plays, there are only 21 documented uses of the name William Shakespeare that connect William of Stratford in any way (some extremely minor) with the world of the London theater, and, apart from the Meres book, every single one of these stems from a connection to the Lord Chamberlain’s/King’s Men. Ergo, the coverup was created by the Company at some point shortly after its formation. It was maintained by them over time by inserting mentions of him in their wills and themselves into his will. And it was finalized by them in 1623 with their publication of the First Folio."

--- Stephanie Hopkins Hughes from Authorship Timeline

"There are only 21 mentions of the name Shakespeare between its first appearance on the dedication page of Venus and Adonis in 1593 and the publication of the First Folio 30 years later. Some of these are more significant than others, but until the First Folio, not one points towards Stratford."

-- Stephanie Hopkins Hughes (ibid)

Ah ha! says one anti-Shakespearean; that is definitely a secret code that positively identifies de Vere as the author of Shakespeare's works. It couldn't possibly be anything else.

The best Poets for Comedy among the Greeks are these, Menander, Aristophanes, Eupolis Atheniensis, Alexis Terius, Nicostratus, Amipsias Atheniensis, Anaxandrides Rhodius, Aristonymus, Archippus Atheniensis, and Callias Atheniensis; and among the Latines, Plautus, Terence, Næuius, Sextus Turpilius, Licinius Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanus: so the best for Comedy amongst vs bee Edward, Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Master Rowley, once a rare scholler of learned Pembrooke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes, one of Her Maiesties Chappell, eloquent and wittie Iohn Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye, our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle.

“Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the East,
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad,
Where. Underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from the ((First Folio): >this) city's side,
So early walking did I see your son.”

— Romeo & Juliet, I, i.
(Roe, 2011) p. 8

"alone in the playwright's Romeo & Juliet--there and nowhere else, not in
any other Italian or French or English version--has it been set down that at Verona, just outside
its western walls, was a grove of sycamore trees." (Roe)
Part of that grove still stands there.

___________

LADY CAPULET
“Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn,
The gallant, young and noble gentleman,
The County* Paris, at Saint Peter's Church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.”
JULIET
“Now, by Saint Peter's Church and Peter too,
He shall not make me there a joyful bride.
I wonder at this haste; that I must wed
Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo.
I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,
I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear,
It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!”
LADY CAPULET
“Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,
And see how he will take it at your hands.”
Enter CAPULET and Nurse

... … ...
CAPULET
“How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?
'Proud,' and 'I thank you,' and 'I thank you not;'
And yet 'not proud,' mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor, proud me no prouds,
But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!
You tallow-face!”
Romeo & Juliet, III, v.
(Roe, ibid) p. 29

* ( “County” is apparently a faulty rendering of what was probably, in the original, “Conte” (Italian) for the English noble title, "Count," by the genuine author—who knew Italian well ( pronounced “cont-ay”).

Saint Peter's Church-- (San Pietro Incarnario) renovated (and reduced in scope) since the 16th century but still there as a very small church. No longer the parish church, it is _easily_ overlooked.

___________

“But mount you presently
And meet with me upon the rising of the mountain foot
That leads toward Mantua,
Whither they are fled.”

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Pt. 2, I, i.
(Roe, ibid) p. 83

(Still) Located outside Milano's old city walls' north gate--its postern by the (then) abbey wall, led along a path to a forest within walking distance (a few km.).
___________

“If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore,
We could at once put us in readiness,
And take lodging fit to entertain
Such friends as time in Padua shall beget.”

—The Taming of the Shrew,, I, i.
(Roe, ibid) p. 103

In Padua, a particular bridge presents a vista where all the scene's visualized parts mentioned are visible from the vantage point of a barge tied up along the waterway which the bridge spans. The Port, "landing", a lodging (building still extant) at the time. A nearby street leading to Saint Luke's church a short distance away. A piazza, (plaza) opposite the landing, where lodgings would have been visible from the barge. Etc.

_____________

“This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo
Desired us to make a stand.”

—The Merchant of Venice, II, vi.
(Roe, ibid) p. 139

Still extant: In Venice, in the old Jewish Ghetto, : "the only structure of its kind." (Roe.)

(“In all the works of Shakespeare, 'penthouse' is only used twice, once here, and once in
Much Ado About Nothing in its Act III Scene 3.”)

_____________

Bottom:

We will meet, and there we may rehearse
Most obscenely, and courageously. Take
Pains, be parfit: adieu.

Quince:

“At the (D)uke's (O)ak we meet.” (capitalized or not)

—A Midsummer Night's Dream I, ii.
(Roe, ibid) p. 183-185

There remains to this day a "duke's oak" (this is not a Public House ("Pub") name , it refers to an oak tree ) known by that name at Sabbioneta, forty km. southwest of Mantua. PLEASE NOTE THIS CORRECTION: (This is an error on my part, not that of Richard Roe). A plausible source of the meeting-place name, "Duke's Oak," refers not to an actual tree, but, rather, and even more tellingly, to a passageway (while the play's dialogue indicates that the meeting is at a tree referred to by that name) :

Quince :

..."and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the
town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if
we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with
company, and our devices known. In the meantime I
will draw a bill of properties, such as our play
wants. I pray you, fail me not."

(p. 182) "...as we stood in the shade of the arched Porta della Vittoria, the architectural main gate of Sabbioneta, our guide explained that this passageway was also known as 'il Quercia dei Duca.' Not understanding the word 'Quercia,' I questioned one of our group. 'Oak,' he said, 'the Duke's Oak.' ...'he repeated,'The guide said, 'the Duke's Oak.'"

Please forgive that error on my part. I wonder, is it the Stratfordian line that some "wayfaring" sailor, had visited Sabbioneta and learned of the passageway called the Duke's Oak? or heard of it and, now, back home at--or on a port of call at--London, supposedly informed Shaksper of this passageway within the grounds of Sabbioneta? Just how did the sailor come to be invited there? Or was he passing on at third, or fourth or fifth hand, stuff he'd heard on his journeys? Really? This is the best Stratfordians can do? And then, I guess, back in his London chambers, writing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shaksper, who has apparently set his play in "Athens," chooses to have Quince indicate as specific meeting-place by proper name:

Bottom:

We will meet, and there we may rehearse
Most obscenely, and courageously. Take
Pains, be parfit: adieu.

Quince:

“At the (D)uke's (O)ak we meet.”

(Notice that the play's dialogue has all those concerned by the meeting familiar with it by the name alone-- "At the duke's oak (or Duke's Oak) we meet." None of the players in the interior-play's cast ("The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby") is made to ask, "Where, again, is the Duke's Oak?" They already know the place. Notice, too, that this place, though named, is not otherwise a point which is in itself of essential importance to the play's progress. Had any other designation been used, the audience would not have batted an eye. Nor, on hearing "At the dukes' oak we meet" should anyone have had to pause and wonder about this oak. But the playwright uses what's available in his mental store. Thus, if he needs to assign his characters a meeting place, he's going to draw from that mental store which is constituted by his lived experience. The playwright could use "duke's oak" because the phrase was not entirely unknown in his memory and to have been there, he had to have created it spontaneously or taken it from his experience. I find on the internet (yes, sorry, but it's "so damn easy" isn't it?) no reference, for example, to a "Duke's Oak" public house, either current or historic. That's of course not proof that there wasn't one in the authors' time. Numerous other "Duke of..." pubs but not his Oak. Back to business.)

Seriously?

The traveller-come-to-Shaksper's-London so impressed Shaksper with the tale of this 'Duke's Oak' passageway that, suddenly, he leaps from Attic Athens to a passageway in Mantova as the place of a meeting in the player's action?

And it's just an amazing coincidence that Sabbioneta has had as a nickname since the 16th century, La Piccola Atene, "Little Athens"?

Thus we have a marvelous compounded coincidence in that in the play set in Athens, there's a meeting place which happens to also be the nickname of a passageway within Sabbioneta, called, familiarly, "Little Athens"--where none of us suppose Shaksper ever set foot?

As Roe notes, in classic Greek Athenian culture, there were no "dukes", no title which translates as such from Greek parlance. ETA : Note: There was, however, during a period of Frankish rule, from early in the 13th century (1204) down to the middle of the 16th century (1566) or later a "Duchy of Athens" in which a feudal rule was imposed in Athens and elsewhere in Attic territory. Over these approximately three and a half centuries, dozens of rulers held a title denominated "Duke." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Athens and, Latins in the Levant: A History of Frankish Greece (1204-1566) (1908) by William Miller; E.P. Dutton & Co., New York. This period should have of course been relatively "recent history" as far as Oxford was concerned and I assume he'd have been aware of these Ducal families' reign in Athens of the Medieval period. This does complicate the task of deciding about the precise import of the play's setting being called "Athens." Personally, I think that Sabbioneta as "la Piccola Atene" is what the playwright had in mind.

_____________

Here are a few observations drawn from Shakespeare's works:


Christopher Sly in the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew makes mention of Warwickshire locations including the villages "Greet", "Burton Heath", and "Wincot", all of which were close to Stratford. Joan Lambert, an aunt of Shakespeare, lived in Burton Heath, and Shakespeare's mother was born in Wincot. A Hacket family, also mentioned by Sly, lived in Wincot. Sly also mentions a Stephen Sly who was a real servant of William Combe of Welcombe, yet another town near Stratford.



The names of three of the characters in Henry V are Fluellen, Bardolf, and Court. The same names appeared on the 1592 list of recusants that included Shakespeare's father's name.



Imogene in Cymbeline disguises herself as a boy whose master, she says, is "Richard du Champ" (IV.2). That name is French for "Richard Field". Field was a fellow Stratfordian who had moved to London and become a printer and publisher. It was he that published the first works of Shakespeare's that appeared in print, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.



In The Merry Wives of Windsor, a comparison is made between the shape of a character's beard and the shape of a glover's knife (I.4). Shakespeare's father was a glover. Another glover's term, "cheveril", the kid skin used in making high quality gloves, appears in Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and Henry VIII.



In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's father personally involves himself with kitchen staff preparing for Juliet's marriage with Paris (IV.2 and IV.4), this in a household which must consist of hundreds of people including a whole hierarchy of servants, not counting the twenty additional cooks that are to be hired for the wedding. It is behavior that is much more likely to be found in a relatively modest household such as that of a Warwickshire gentleman than that of an aristocratic family such as Juliet's.



Shakespeare uses Warwickshire colloquialisms. Examples from Henry IV, Part 1 are "God save the mark" (I.3--God keep evil away, an expression of indignation), "a micher" (II.5--truant), and "dowlas" (III.3--dirty linen). Others are "unwrappered" (unfatigued or fresh--The Two Nobel Kinsmen, V.6), "ballow" (cudgel--Folio King Lear, IV.6), "batlet" (paddle for beating laundry--As You Like It, II.4), "gallow" (terrify--King Lear, III.2), "honey-stalks" (clover--Titus Andronicus, IV.4), "mobbled" (muffled--Hamlet, II.2), "pash" (smash--Troilus and Cressida, II.3), "potch" (poke or thrust--Coriolanus, I.11), and "tarre" (provoke--King John, IV.1, Troilus and Cressida, I.3, and Hamlet, II.2).

These are examples that came readily to hand and are only a subset of the greater number that I've run across but not bothered to take special note of over the years. A book could be written documenting all of the Shakespeare/Warwickshire connections in his works. None of this "proves" anything, but the occurrence of such things in his writing needs no explanation when the author is Shakespeare, the glover's son from Stratford in Warwickshire. If the author is proposed to be an aristocrat with no notable background in Warwickshire, then they require at least an attempt at justification. Unqualified denial won't do it.

" Richard Roe attempts to argue using fallacious logic, trying to make something of the fact that a source for every Italian reference can't be specifically identified."

"So why were so many plays set in Italy, written by authors who hadn't been there, not just Shakespeare, some of whom wrote more convincingly and with more detail about the place than he did? People were interested; it brought in the pence; bums on seats or wherever."

"Early modern English interest in Italy is easy to account for. Roman occupation was part of English history, and Roman ruins littered the landscape--still do. The core of the educational philosophy, grammar school and university alike, was based on the study of classical Roman authors; sometimes classical Greek authors, too. Many English attended Italian universities and presumably knew a bit about the place when they returned."

“All that that accomplished was to show that some of the detail in the plays corresponds with facts and locations in Italy. Some don't. Roe detects and discusses a couple of the latter.”

“One instance he dismisses by asserting that the Author was taking literary license. (Tsk, tsk!)”

"My favorite had to do with The Tempest. Roe decided that the real island of Vulcano off the coast of Sicily was Prospero's Island. Noting that it was well nigh impossible for Prospero and Miranda's "... rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, / Nor tackle, sail, nor mast" to have drifted around the boot of Italy from the Adriatic Sea where they had been set adrift (the Adriatic is down stream from Milan where they were originally put aboard a bark) and arrive eventually at Vulcano, Roe asserts that the Author had originally written Genoa, not Milan. Someone else changed Genoa to Milan later on. His evidence? Roe asserts as a given, here and elsewhere in his book, that the Author was infallible, so no actual evidence is necessary."

“Just how accurate was the Author's knowledge of Italy? It is true that a number of details in the plays do correspond with real Italian locations. As stated above, some don't.”

"All that that accomplished was to show that some of the detail in the plays corresponds with facts and locations in Italy. Some don't. Roe detects and discusses a couple of the latter. One instance he dismisses by asserting that the Author was taking literary license. (Tsk, tsk!) My favorite had to do with The Tempest. Roe decided that the real island of Vulcano off the coast of Sicily was Prospero's Island. Noting that it was well nigh impossible for Prospero and Miranda's "... rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, / Nor tackle, sail, nor mast" to have drifted around the boot of Italy from the Adriatic Sea where they had been set adrift (the Adriatic is down stream from Milan where they were originally put aboard a bark) and arrive eventually at Vulcano, Roe asserts that the Author had originally written Genoa, not Milan."

(in Verona)

“Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the East,
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad,
Where. Underneath the grove of Platanus orientalis
That westward rooteth from the city's side,
So early walking did I see your son.”

— Romeo & Juliet, I, i.

___________

“At the (D)uke's (O)ak we meet.” (capitalized or not)

—A Midsummer Night's Dream I, ii.
(Roe, ibid) p. 183-185

There remains to this day a "duke's oak" (this is not a Public House ("Pub") name , it refers to an oak tree ) known by that name at Sabbioneta, forty km. southwest of Mantua.
_____________

(p. 182)
"Some of the buildings in Sabbioneta were originally commodiuos quarters for the Duke's invited guests, his pleasure having been in inviting the erudite among both Italy's, and other western Europe's, nobility and intelligensia for a visit to his model city. While there, they would admire
his rich collections of paintings* and sculpture and take part in festivities, salons, and scholarly lectures that he sponsored during his lifetime. Thus, in addition to the name "Sabbioneta," Vespasiano Gonzaga's guests __and then its steadily increasing numbers of visitors--gave it a second name, La Piccola Atena--"Little Athens"--not because of its architecture but because of its immediate reputation as a hospitable gathering place for scholars and intellectuals." ...

(p. 183)
... "A Midsummer Night's Dream! The playwright had been in Sabbioneta! A world of understanding burst in my brain. Of course. It made so much sense. I reached my parked car and collapsed. I grabbed my dog-earred paperback of Dream and quickly leafed through it. Indeed, the play was set in Athens. It was so designated, not only at the beginning of Act I, but I counted more than thirty references thoughout the play to "Athens" or "Athenian" --though, tellingly, no references to Greeks, Greece, Grecians, Attica, or Atticans: only "Athens" and "Athenians." It was no accident. The playwright had wanted his Dream to take place only there, in "Athens." But it was increasingly clear that there was here--in Sabbioneta, La Piccola Atene--"Little Athens." Here in Italy."

And the Duke's Oak, Gears clicked into place."

(My note: as they somehow never do for Stratfordians.)

"Sabbioneta è il centro monumentale più ricco di tutta la provincia di Mantova, tanto da essere chiamata la ‘Piccola Atene’.

La città fu creata nella seconda metà del XVI secolo da Vespasiano Gonzaga, ambizioso principe, nato da uno dei rami cadetti della numerosa famiglia. Avendo egli ereditato alcune terre periferiche del mantovano con il modesto villaggio di Sabbioneta, decise di distruggere quest'ultimo e di edificarvi, in minuscole dimensioni, una città ideale concepita da lui personalmente.

Chiusa da una cinta di mura di pianta stellare, la città rappresenta il più completo esempio di una raffinata sede ducale cinquecentesca. Il suo nome richiama alla mente l'idea della sabbia; e forse una desolata landa sabbiosa doveva essere il luogo dove sorse poi la cittadina. Si dice anche che sia stata così chiamata da San Sabino che predicò in questi luoghi.

Al centro della piazza castello, antica Piazza d'Armi, si erge una colonna romana, con base e capitello in bronzo, opera di Andrea Cavalli nel 1584. Sul capitello poggia la statua di Pallade, pregevole scultura in marmo bianco, che fu acquistata dal duca per la sua collezione archeologica.

Sul lato destro di Piazza Castello sorge la Galleria degli Antichi, una lunga, imponente costruzione in mattoni con porticato di 26 arcate, a cui corrispondono altrettanti archi chiusi al piano superiore. Eretta nel 1583, presenta pareti affrescate da Pietro Pesenti e Giovanni e Cherubino Alberti. Questa galleria costituisce un vero trionfo dell'arte pittorica che richiama alla memoria la corte papale e quella dei re di Francia, entrambe note per il loro fasto.

Il teatro di Sabbioneta, eccellenza architettonica del manierismo italiano, fu progettato da Vincenzo Scamozzi tra il 1588 e il 1590. Voluto da Vespasiano Gonzaga, costituisce ad oggi il prototipo del teatro moderno, superbo esempio di tecnica ed eleganza architettonica ideato per lo svago e il diletto del duca e della corte sabbionetana. A pianta rettangolare, con scena fissa demolita nel secolo scorso e sostituita da un palco, fu il primo teatro coperto costruito appositamente fin dalle fondamenta. Moderni restauri hanno riportato alla luce gli affreschi di scuola veneta che ornavano le pareti. La facciata esterna presenta una raffinata architettura divisa in due ordini da una fascia a marcapiano, in cui si rincorre la scritta ‘ROMA QUANTA FUIT IPSA RUINA DOCET’ volta a celebrare la grandezza di Roma attraverso le rovine dei monumenti antichi.

La piccola Sabbioneta, nata dal sogno umanistico di Vespasiano Gonzaga, dopo quasi 500 anni, rimane un piccolo gioiello urbano di valore inestimabile, che riesce sempre ad emozionare.

http://www.crema.laprovinciacr.it/news/questione-di-stile/160180/la-sabbioneta-d...

Sonnet 76:

"Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same ,
And keep invention in a noted weed ,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?"

"Though I find multiple meanings in th(ese) phrase(s)--including a covert one--I'm interested here in only the plainly obvious meaning: his style is such that, practically everything he writes -or might one day write-would be infallibly recognised as his. So, while he could openly claim credit for the poems, he had other writings and other plans for writings which should have been too controversial to have published under his own name"

from Politic Worm, Hopkins Hughes offers her explanation for: "Why couldn’t Oxford admit to writing Venus and Adonis?"-Michael Egan

Egan: “Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are respectable poetry. Why were they not published under Oxford’s name?”

"Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name(*),
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?"

(*)
(J. Thomas Looney, writing in Shakespeare Identified in Edward De Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford )

“When to all this we find him adding the fear

'That every word doth almost tell my name,'
from Sonnet 76

“it is made as clear as anything can be that he was one who elected his own self-effacement, and that disrepute was one, if not the principal motive. We may, if we wish, question the sufficiency or reasonableness of the motive. That, however, is his business, not ours.”
(p. 174)

For me, this is a wholly mistaken interpretation of the import of the words,

“That every word doth almost tell my name,”

That was not entirely the fruit of a fear of discovery. Read the line in its context and it should be
clear that, here, Oxford is, one, stating this as a matter of fact and two, he is not fearful of or ashamed of this fact but, rather, proud of it and three, this is a direct and intended allusion to
his real name, Edward de Vere, in a cleverly rendered cryptic. E(dward)VER(e)Y (ed)WO(a)RD or “ E VER WORD ” doth almost tell my name: “Edward de Vere” and not. literally “every word” throughout his sonnets (as yet unpublished when he penned these lines.)

First, the sonnets themselves were hand written and sent, piecemeal or in batches, to their addressee(s). They constitute one side of what was surely a prolonged exchange in writing by (at least) two people (the principal two of these) who were intimately acquainted. The idea that the recipient would not have very well known his correspondent's real name or that, as Looney believes, that Oxford feared being known—
at this stage, at any rate, and by the person to whom this sonnet was addressed—is simply too far-fetched. Throughout the body of the work of the sonnets it is clear that Oxford was intensely proud of his work despite periods of dejectedness in which he belittled all human effort and existence itself as a vain affair. He repeatedly assures his correspondent that both of them shall, as a result
of the writings, be known for as long as men read and write, thus outlasting that renown which many other forms of human accomplishment can confer. They are some of his plays which were the main concern for annonymity to the general public rather than the sonnets, which, in any case were published posthumously.

----
(1) I join others, (see, esp. Stephanie Hopkins Hughes at www.politicworm.com because this insight, extended more broadly to other period writers, is her own, above all) who argue that Oxford also wrote under other pen-names as, for example, when he introduced the first published allusion to the pseudonymous “Shakespeare” in a text, “Greene's Groatsworth of Witte” (1592) which he wrote under the pen-name of “Robert Greene.”

"The printer to the gentle readers.

I Haue published heere Gentlemen for your mirth and benefite Greenes groates worth of wit. VVith sundry of his pleasant discourses, ye haue beene before delighted: But now hath death giuen a period to his pen: onely this happened into my handes which I haue published for your pleasures: Accept it fauourably because it was his last birth and not least worth: In my poore opinion. But I will cease to praise that which is aboue my conceipt, and leaue it selfe to speake for it selfe: and so abide your learned censuring.

Yours VV. VV."

“In fact, I'll admit that I hardly ever go to a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays without experiencing blind panic during the first five minutes. I sit there thinking: I'm the director of the National Theatre, and I have no idea what these people are talking about.” --Nicholas Hytner
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/william-shakespeare/10371300/Keep-it-...

Edward, Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Master Rowley, once a rare scholler of learned Pembrooke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes, one of Her Maiesties Chappell, eloquent and wittie Iohn Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye, our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle.

"And there's his inconsistency: De Vere did write and publish under his own name, including comedies for the allegedly reprehensible theater. So why are we to believe he also pretended to be Shakespeare?

"I challenge you to reply as briefly as you can."

"English lyric poet and theatre patron, who became, in the 20th century, the strongest candidate proposed (next to William Shakespeare himself) for the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Evidence exists that Oxford was known during his lifetime to have written some plays, though there are no known examples extant."

-- Written By:
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-de-Vere-17th-earl-of-Oxford

ETA

-- LXXVI--

"Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O! know sweet love I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told."

I KNOW not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.

THE love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

>152 proximity1: proximity1: "Commoners might write with an eye for the commercial value of their writing but a nobleman worthy of respect did not."

Muscogulus:
Nice try, Proxy, but you're more than a century premature. Writing for the public was not a viable "commercial" venture until the lifetime of Defoe in the 1700s. Success in Shakespeare's day was defined as consistent patronage by a noble.

from The Arte of English Poesie , George Puttenham (1589)
CHAP. VIII.

In what reputation Poesie and Poets were in old time with
Princes and otherwise generally, and ho{w} they be no{w}
become contemptible and for {w}hat causes.

... So as, it is hard to find in these dayes of
noblem|en| or gentlemen any good Mathematici|an|,
or excellent Musitian, or notable
Philosopher, or els a cunning Poet: because we find
few great Princes much delighted in the same studies. Now
also of such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very well
seene in many laudable sciences, and especially in making or
Poesie, it is so come to passe that they haue no courage to
write |&| if they haue, yet are they loath to be a knowen of
their skill. So as I know very many notable Gentlemen in the
Court that haue written commendably, and suppressed it
agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne
names to it: as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman, to
seeme learned, and to shew himselfe amorous of any good Art.
In other ages it was not so, for we read that Kinges |&|
Princes haue written great volumes and publisht them vnder
their own regall titles. As to begin with Salomon
the wisest of Kings, Iulius Caesar the greatest of Emperours,
Hermes Trismegistus the holiest of Priestes and
Prophetes, Euax king of Arabia wrote a
booke of precious stones in verse, Prince Auicenna
of Phisicke and Philosophie, Alphonsus king of
Spaine his Astronomicall Tables, Almansor a king
of Marrocco diuerse Philosophicall workes, and by
their regal example our late soueraigne Lord king
Henry the eight wrate a booke in defence of his
faith, then perswaded that it was the true and Apostolicall
doctrine, though it hath appeared otherwise since, yet his
honour and learned zeale was nothing lesse to be allowed." ...

( pp. 16 - 17)


"And in her Maiesties time that now is are sprong vp an other
crew of Courtly makers(*) Noble men and Gentlemen of her
Maiesties owne seruantes, who haue written excellently well
as it would appeare if their doings could be found out and
made publicke with the rest, of which number is first that
noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford." ...

(p. 50)

(all Emphasis added in the above-cited)

________

(*) "maker" : "poet": from Greek ( ποιέω ) poiētḗs ---> 1. A maker, inventer,

Muscogulus:
"Good examples of the patronage-seeking behavior of an Elizabethan author are the paeans to the Earl of Southampton at the beginning of both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. It is difficult to imagine the Earl of Oxford — who didn't need anyone else's funds and who, as you say wrote only for honor — abasing himself to a junior and lower-ranking noble in this way."

Muscogulus:
I suppose you'll say it was all part of the project of convincing the world that the real author of these poems was the ordinary, talentless William Shakespeare.

Muscogulus:
"OK, let's indulge you."

Muscogulus:
"So important was this Shakespeare ruse that people kept it up for years after Oxford's death, writing elegies to the name of a man you dismiss as an "illiterate knob." Even King James VI and I seems to have joined the conspiracy.

Muscogulus:
Scholars and amateurs have turned up evidence for not just Shakespeare's life but his relationships with fellow players, co-authors, and business partners in the "sharing" of the Globe Theatre.

Muscogulus:
"Shakespeare left a substantial paper trail."

Muscogulus:
"It takes considerable naïveté to sustain a belief in a conspiracy to hide the true identity of the author of Shakespeare's works. No one let the secret out in an extant letter or diary. No one talked on their deathbed. No one showed the least concern, as Shakespeare's posthumous reputation grew, that the wrong man was getting the credit. Well — no one, until a 20th-century English schoolmaster named Looney became convinced that a grammar school boy could never have achieved such literary greatness."

" a 20th-century English schoolmaster named Looney became convinced that a grammar school boy could never have achieved such literary greatness. (Maybe Looney projected his frustration with his own young charges into the past. Or he rationalized his failures by assuming that all grammar schools throughout history had achieved equally poor results.) "

"In the terms of medieval scholars themselves, grammatica was 'the source and foundation of liberal letters' (1) or 'the source and foundation of all textual arts,' (2) not only because grammatica was the only point of entry into litterate culture but because grammatica was universally understood to supply the discursive means for constructing language and texts as objects of knowledge."

(Introduction, p. 2)

_________

"The centrality of grammatica in the fourth through the eleventh centuries produced an elite literate culture that succeeded in giving the knowledge and skills of the litteratus the status of normative experience. Learning, interpretation and religious understanding were all defined in the terms of the large field of discourse that spread out from the practice of grammatica in schools, libraries, and scriptoria. It is difficult for us in an era when literacy is multiple, achieved through varied methods, and largely taken for granted to gain a sense of the grammatical culture, the social power of the litteratus, and the universality of grammatica in forming medieval literate culture. It is difficult to grasp the universality of the grammatical path to literacy, which meant, for many generations,an almost lock-step program that worked from Donatus's Ars and its clones to the works of the auctores,from the parts of speech to tropes and allegories in biblical and secular texts, from syntax to sensus and significatio, from latinity to lectio and enarratio, from the littera of a text to the gloss."

( Conclusion, p. 461)

_________________

( Underlined emphasis added)

Muscogulus:
"I mentioned King James, who hired Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists (that patronage thing we just discussed), letting them call their company The King's Men. Shakespeare's name turns up in quotidian court documents, receiving fabric for ceremonial clothes, for instance. "

Muscogulus:
"All that, just to reward him for letting Oxford use his name as a pseudonym, and for no achievements of his own?"

( from Ernesto Grillo's book, "Shakespeare
and Italy."

_____________

(Chapter title) "THE GEOGRAPHY OF ITALY IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA

"Notwithstanding the fact that his Italian scenes are depicted in colours
faithfully reproduced from the originals, the majority of commentators
tell us that Shakespeare knew nothing of conditions in northern Italy,
and that he was totally ignorant of the geography of these provinces.
Three well-known passages are quoted in support of their assertion: the
first in The Tempest, the second in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the
third in The Taming of the Shrew. Sidney Lee, our dramatist’s
biographer, never tires of reiterating this argument to prove
Shakespeare guilty of saying things which in fact he neither said nor
thought. It is erroneously repeated that Shakespeare described Verona as
a city on the sea coast, and Bergamo as a place where canvas was woven
for the making of sails, without considering that Shakespeare in his
allusions to Verona was careful to mention not the sea but the very
river--the Adige--which flows though the city; and that if he asserts
that Tranio’s father followed the trade of sail-maker in Bergamo he
cannot have been famous for that industry until recent times. Indeed,
Manzoni, in his I Promessi Sposi, describing the flight of Renzo, speaks
of the sail-making industry which flourished in that district. But
perhaps it will be better to give here some further examples to
illustrate our argument. I The Tempest, Prospero relates how he had been
taken out of the gates of Milan, put upon a ship and dispatched some
leagues to the sea. The poet's sole error here is in making the voyage
too short; but even this is explained in the line,

" 'In few, they hurried us aboard a bark.'

"The words 'in few' indicate that he has much else to say and cannot
waste time on useless descriptions. 'In few' corresponds to the Italian
'in breve', which is sufficiently significant. In those days it was
quite possible to embark at- the gates of Milan for ports on the
Adriatic Sea, and since, in the sixteenth century, there were no
railways, a journey by water was often preferable to one by road because
of its greater safety and comfort." ...

__________

"Shakespeare's accurate knowledge of the geography of Italy is all the
more noteworthy as it contrasts strikingly with his ignorance of that of
other European countries, France, for example. In his allusions to
French towns we find nothing to indicate that he knew them well. In the
three plays of which the scenes are laid in France--Love's Labour's
Lost, As You Like It and Alls Well That Ends Well--local colour and
topographical realism are entirely absent. The scene is for the most
part set in districts far removed from the direct route to Italy; but
all the cities where a traveller on his way to Italy would stop to
change horses or coaches are accurately named by our dramatist, e.g.
Calais, Amiens, Longueville, Troyes, Marseilles and Genoa. When we
consider that in the north of Italy he reveals a more profound knowledge
of Milan, Bergamo, Verona, Mantua, Padua and Venice, the very limitation
of the poet's notions of geography proves that he derived his
information from an actual journey through Italy and not from books. All
that he says about our country is marvellously accurate, and this
precision is manifest not only in the passages already cited but in all
those adduced by the critics to prove his ignorance of the geography of
Italy. A German critic asserted that he could not have known Padua and
Venice because in The Merchant of Venice he describes these two cities
as ‘neighbouring'. Since Padua is only about twenty miles from Venice
one can hardly deny the proximity of the two cities. A statement such as
Shakespeare's, besides being correct to-day, seems all the more exact
when one remembers that he wrote it towards the end of the sixteenth
century."

_____________

"I'm always open to changing my opinion if the evidence is compelling."

"But the scholarship has improved, the body of evidence has been enlarged -- and there just isn't enough there to sustain a reasoned argument for anyone besides William Shakespeare having written Shakespeare."

"As I think I've pointed out, I probably would have been an anti-Stratfordian if I'd lived in the 19th century,"...

"Then you might get somewhere with the open-minded people you say you wish to communicate with."

"Maybe show evidence that doesn't argue backwards from the conclusion.

Address objections courteously,

perhaps, explaining whether and why you don't find an objection convincing.

Apply the same evaluative standards to all evidence, whether it supports or contravenes your hypothesis.

( ETA: Chapter 7, “Emilia Bassano and Alphonso Lanier” (pp. 101-113) is jointly the work of David Lasocki with Roger Prior. Roger Prior is the sole author of the principal chapter on Emilia Bassano's place as the "dark lady", chapter 8, “Was Emilia Bassano the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets?” (pp. 114-139) )

part II :The Dark Lady

Chapter 8: "Was Emilia Bassano the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets?"


"Modern literary criticism is dedicated to removing the author from the text. The author's thoughts and intentions, it is claimed, can never be known, and are in any case quite irrelevant to our understanding of his work. A Shakespeare sonnet may seem to be addressed to the Earl of Southampton, but this may be no more than a clever fictional trope. Or, even if we admit that tej poem really was intended for the Earl of Southampton, there is not the slightest reason to 'believe' what it appears to 'say'. The feelings that the poet expresses may be wholly invented. The literary work of art has nothing to do with the world. It is 'autonomous', so that it can allow 'the free play of the imagination'. From this point of view the desire to know the identity of the young man or of the dark lady is both pointless and vulgar. It can tell us nothing about Shakespeare's art. On the contrary, it is a misconception that actually prevents proper understanding of the poems. Although applied with extreme inconsistency and often abandoned in practice, this is the 'received' critical doctrine in current Shakespearean studies." ... (p.115-116)

"The dark lady ... We shall see that they constantly refer to actual situations and recognizable attributes. If they accurately depict a living woman, then she is not a fiction, and it becomes harder for scholars to claim that the poet's feelings about her are also fictional. If her promiscuity is real, his jealousy is likely to be real as well. The author is back in the text with a vengeance, and the text itself is no longer 'autonomous' but caught in the viscosity of the real world.

Yet Emila Bassano presents an even more formidable challenge than this to critical dogma. Critics have always claimed that an interest in Shakespeare's life could not only tell us nothing about his art, it has 'bedevilled' the study of his work. Rowse's indentification proves that the reverse is the case. Again and again, Emilia's identity throws new light not only on the Sonnets but on the plays as well. It explains passages that have always been obscure, allows us to see ingenious new structures, and helps us to understand Shakespeare's choice of themes and subjects. Knowledge of Shakespeare's life, so far from being pointless, turns out to be essential for a proper understanding of his work. This is the revolution in Shakespeare studies to which Rowse's discovery leads."
(p. 116)

The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England, 1531-1665
| authors: David Lasocki with Roger Prior; Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. (1995)

... "it was Lanier's fate to be co-opted into another wayward interpretation : A. L. Rowse's reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets, by which she became, on little factual evidence, the poet's 'dark lady.' Rowse makes her into Shakespeare's lover (and figure behind the Emilias in Othello, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and The Winter's Tale). The suggestion that these to writers were lovers has been hard to shake off, even if Rowse's own hypothesis has long been disproved." ...

"Rowse told how a young woman named Emilia Lanier, consulting Forman in 1597, revealed that a few years earlier she had been "paramour to my old Lord Hunsdon that was Lord Chamberlain and was maintained in great pride".

"Becoming pregnant, she had been married as a cover-up to a musician. And, according to Rowse, Forman noted "She was very brown in youth". ...

"Emilia was, it seemed, only 27: had she gone prematurely grey? I was not surprised to find that the transcripts were riddled with error; scholars of Rowse's generation were often cavalier about this kind of thing. But when I came to the words that he had transcribed as 'brown in youth' I began to see that I was on to something.

"To my eyes, the phrase was 'braue in youth'. It was difficult to be certain; the words came at the foot of a page, and looked rather dim in the photocopy. Still, I felt pretty confident, because "brave" made better sense: it could mean 'fine', 'showily dressed', suiting Emilia's change in status from a courtesan to a married woman. It was only one word, but it was crucial, because on it depended the whole of Rowse's case that his Dark Lady was dark.

"Early next morning I phoned a friend at the Bodleian and asked to check the manuscript. What I saw convinced me I was right." ...

Here, I'll supply the information which Podras couldn't be bothered to include:

Stanley Wells, checking Forman's papers, found that the manuscript's better reading was "brave in youth," an opinion which Rowse also came to accept as correct:

"The broadcast attracted attention. Letters to newspapers referred to my criticism, and, urged on by Dame Helen Gardner, I wrote to The Times "Literary Supplement" stating my case. More importantly, Mary Edmond, an expert on archival research, demonstrated in The Listener that the word Rowse had read as "William" was actually "Millia" - Forman's version of "Emilia" - and showed indisputably that Emilia's husband's name was not William but Alphonso. This was a more important and a more skilful correction than mine; Emilia might have been brown as well as brave, whereas her husband could not have been both William and Alphonso.

"Writing to me on May 14, Rowse accepted my correction, saying: 'You see, I am more open-minded than the old blimps and prefer your reading to mine'. He still contested Mary Edmond's correction, but in July admitted both errors, while still insisting that he was right in his identification, in a series of articles in the Times."

Stanley Wells in The Daily Telegraph (London), 20, February 1999.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4716890/Arguments-over-a-woman.html

You see, when you read the Telegraph excerpt above, you discover that, quite sound in his reasoning, Rowse both accepted Wells' correction and continued to insist on his (i.e. Rowse's) having rightly identified the "dark lady" of the Sonnets because, quite simply, even with Wells' correction, the evidence in favor of Bassano is nothing short of overwhelming.

Also related in Shakespeare's Styles: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Muir by Kenneth Muir, & Philip Edwards
and in Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays selected by James Schiffer.

The above-pictured Letter to the Editor, is signed by Peter Bassano (then) of London, SW7, a descendant (relative) of Emilia Bassano and, as it happens, a professional musician who "studied trombone and singing at the Royal College of Music, where after many years as a member of London's Philharmonia Orchestra (he) was appointed a professor and became a staff conductor and Head of Brass Faculty in 1990, a post (he) held until August 2004" (from his website's Homepage) There, he has a page concerning Shakespeare, where, among many other interesting things, he notes,

"I argue that many of the female characters in Shakespeare’s plays are based upon Emilia, the obvious ones bearing her Christian name (including a male version of it) these are Aemilius in Titus Andronicus, Emilia in The Comedy of Errors, Emilia in Othello, Emilia in The Winter’s Tale and Emilia in The Two Noble Kinsmen. I suggest that Emilia’s character, her broad and detailed classical education, fierce intelligence, quick wit, scalding tongue and mercurial temperament can be detected in Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, in Rosaline in Loves Labours Lost, in Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in Beatrice in Much ado about Nothing, in Rosalind in As you Like It, in Cressida in Troilus and Cressida and as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.

"In The Shrew, the name of Katerina’s father, Baptista, is also the name of Emilia’s father. Before she became Queen Elizabeth 1, she lived at Hatfield House. Baptista visited the young Princess Elizabeth on a least two occasions to provide strings for and technical advice on playing the lute.

"What is unlikely to be a coincidence (are) the names of two characters who appear in the 1593 performance of A Taming of A Shrew,
(an alternative version of The Taming of The Shrew) at the Rose Theatre; the list of characters includes an Aemilia, an Alfonso,
the name of Emilia’s husband, they were married on 18th October 1592 at St Botolph’s Bishopsgate."

(content © Peter Bassano)

William Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus,
Dramatis Personae

Saturninus, son to the late Emperor of Rome, and afterwards declared Emperor.
Bassianus, brother to Saturninus; in love with Lavinia.
Titus Andronicus, a noble Roman, general against the Goths.
Marcus Andronicus, tribune of the people, and brother to Titus.
... ...

Others.

Aemilius, a noble Roman.

"William Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus, Dramatis Personae." Infoplease.
© 2000-2017 Sandbox Networks, Inc., publishing as Infoplease.
13 Sep. 2017 .

(full list at the hyperlink's page)

William Shakespeare: Othello,
Dramatis Personae

Duke of Venice
Brabantio, a senator.
Other Senators.
Gratiano, brother to Brabantio.
Lodovico, kinsman to Brabantio.
Othello, a noble Moor in the service of the Venetian state.
Cassio, his lieutenant.
Iago, his ancient.
Roderigo, a Venetian gentleman.
Montano, Othello's predecessor in the government of Cyprus.
Clown, servant to Othello.
Desdemona, daughter to Brabantio and wife to Othello.
Emilia, wife to Iago.
Bianca, mistress to Cassio.
Sailor, Messenger, Herald, Officers, Gentlemen, Musicians, and Attendants.

"William Shakespeare: Othello, Dramatis Personae." Infoplease.
© 2000-2017 Sandbox Networks, Inc., publishing as Infoplease.
13 Sep. 2017 .

Concerning Othello (which, as an Oxford-relevant pun, could be "Oath! Hell! O!" ("O!" "Oxford")
Wikipedia's page "Iago" informs us that,

"The character's ("Iago") source is traced to Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi (1565)." and that, "While no English translation of Cinthio was available in Shakespeare's lifetime, it is possible Shakespeare knew the Italian original, Gabriel Chappuy's 1584 French translation, or an English translation in manuscript."

(LOL! It's also just "possible" that William Shaksper was literate in none of these languages and thus wasn't the real author of the play.)

William Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice,
Dramatis Personae

The Duke of Venice.

Suitors to Portia.

The Prince of Morocco
The Prince of Arragon

Others.

Antonio, a merchant of Venice.
Bassanio, his friend, suitor likewise to Portia.

Friends to Antonio and Bassanio.

Salanio
Salarino
Gratiano
Salerio

Others.

Lorenzo, in love with Jessica.
Shylock, a rich Jew.
Tubal, a Jew, his friend.
Launcelot Gobbo, the clown, servant to Shylock.
Old Gobbo, father to Launcelot.
Leonardo, servant to Bassanio.

"William Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, Dramatis Personae." Infoplease.
© 2000-2017 Sandbox Networks, Inc., publishing as Infoplease.
13 Sep. 2017 .

(Bold emphasis added)

(1) : Parish Church of All Hallows On the Wall, the original edifice dated from the 11th C.; decayed, it was demolished in 1764 and the existing church rebuilt in 1767.

"The former structure was actually upon the wall and stood some eight or ten feet above the present level of the street."

— (p. 150, ) Reynolds, Herbert; (1922) The Churches of the City of London, (John Lane, publishers, The Bodley Head Ltd., London)

(2) : Parish Church of St. Andrew Undershaft.

(3) : Parish Church of St.Katherine Coleman.

It is sometimes hard for the uninitiated to differentiate between simple facts or opinions and The Truth. Some defining characteristics of The Truth include:

1. The Truth, unlike an opinion, is not open to reasonable debate. Any reasonable person presented with The Truth will agree with it, so by definition, any debate or resistance must be unreasonable.
2. The Truth will encounter great opposition. Therefore, opposition from many people is clear evidence that you come bearing The Truth. Do not feel discouraged when you are the sole bearer of The Truth. Eventually, reasonable people will come to agree with The Truth, and although you may have to bully many people away, The Truth will be written.
3. The Truth is appropriate everywhere. Mere facts can sometimes be irrelevant, such as the molecular structure of a lettuce leaf in a debate about Albanian politics. But The Truth is always relevant, and should be included everywhere that text can be put.
4. The Truth does not require verification through reliable sources. That sort of thing may be necessary for mere "facts", but we're talking about The Truth here, people!
5. The Truth is best communicated through repetition. The first attempts to insert The Truth into a discussion are often met with resistance. When other people oppose The Truth in such a manner, the most likely explanation is that they have not heard it repeated frequently enough.
6. The Truth will cause the blinders to fall from your eyes, whereupon you will fall to your knees and weep. Conversely, those who refuse to see The Truth are death choosers and will always devalue life.

from The Arte of English Poesie , George Puttenham (1589)

CHAP. VIII.

In what reputation Poesie and Poets were in old time with
Princes and otherwise generally, and ho{w} they be no{w}
become contemptible and for {w}hat causes.

... So as, it is hard to find in these dayes of
noblem|en| or gentlemen any good Mathematici|an|,
or excellent Musitian, or notable
Philosopher, or els a cunning Poet: because we find
few great Princes much delighted in the same studies. Now
also of such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very well
seene in many laudable sciences, and especially in making or
Poesie, it is so come to passe that they haue no courage to
write |&| if they haue, yet are they loath to be a knowen of
their skill. So as I know very many notable Gentlemen in the
Court that haue written commendably, and suppressed it
agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne
names to it: as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman, to
seeme learned, and to shew himselfe amorous of any good Art.
In other ages it was not so, for we read that Kinges |&|
Princes haue written great volumes and publisht them vnder
their own regall titles. As to begin with Salomon
the wisest of Kings, Iulius Caesar the greatest of Emperours,
Hermes Trismegistus the holiest of Priestes and
Prophetes, Euax king of Arabia wrote a
booke of precious stones in verse, Prince Auicenna
of Phisicke and Philosophie, Alphonsus king of
Spaine his Astronomicall Tables, Almansor a king
of Marrocco diuerse Philosophicall workes, and by
their regal example our late soueraigne Lord king
Henry the eight wrate a booke in defence of his
faith, then perswaded that it was the true and Apostolicall
doctrine, though it hath appeared otherwise since, yet his
honour and learned zeale was nothing lesse to be allowed." ...

( pp. 16 - 17)


"And in her Maiesties time that now is are sprong vp an other
crew of Courtly makers(*) Noble men and Gentlemen of her
Maiesties owne seruantes, who haue written excellently well
as it would appeare if their doings could be found out and
made publicke with the rest, of which number is first that
noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford." ...

(p. 50)

(all Emphasis added in the above-cited)

Failing on the argument side, you then in >161 Muscogulus:, accuse me (falsely) of "I suppose this is your idea of persuasive discourse: using coarse language while insulting the character and conduct of anyone who contradicts you. The technique speaks for itself."

It would speak for itself if it were true. But I don't, as a matter of fact, insult the character and conduct of anyone who contradicts me -- only those who are arguing in bad faith, who resort to blatant use of special pleading and who deliberately misrepresent facts, employ calumny instead of reasoned argument and refuse to mount a responsive case, instead ignoring the arguments and the questions which are put to them.

I answered your complaint of >161 Muscogulus: with this, at >163 proximity1::

"You've made it completely clear that you're not open to being persuaded, completely clear that your mind is closed on the "Authorship Question(s)". I am no longer writing and posting in this thread with any expectation of persuading you. You've foreclosed that possibility. My comments which relate to you are for other readers' potential interest.

"Pointing out your reasoning deficiencies is possibly useful and instructive to them. You have nothing to learn here given your attitude so there is no point in my addressing you as though you're interested in 'persuasive discourse.' You get the coarse language which I reserve for the likes of you. Your participation here is, intellectually, consistently insulting. You've deserve and you get insulting dismissals in return."

which you've flagged, attempting to "bury" with little red flags what you're unable to argue effectively against.

At >166 Muscogulus: you posted these claims:

But the scholarship has improved, the body of evidence has been enlarged -- and there just isn't enough there to sustain a reasoned argument for anyone besides William Shakespeare having written Shakespeare.

Maybe show evidence that doesn't argue backwards from the conclusion. Address objections courteously, perhaps, explaining whether and why you don't find an objection convincing. Apply the same evaluative standards to all evidence, whether it supports or contravenes your hypothesis.

which I answered (>168 proximity1:), challenging you to present even one respectable example of what you called, "improved scholarship" and "enlarged" "body of evidence" (ETA) that is, obviously, evidence that significantly advances the position of Shaksper of Stratford as the author. That challenge remains ignored by you.

Since your participation now seems to consist of ignoring my posts except to flag them as violations of the site's terms of service, I have carried on posting more examples with supporting references to articles to further make the already ample case in favor of Oxford, imagining that you may have simply abandoned your participation here (such as it was). But I see you're not finished using tactics and methods which aren't part of any credible reasoned presentation of evidence in your case's favor and a respectable, fair, honest rebuttal of your opponent's case and evidence.

To which you've responded with this latest implied admission that you have nothing pertinent and respectable in a responsive argument to bring to readers of this thread.



I suppose you'll now redouble your effort to summon a posse and copiously distribute TOS-violation flags. That, too, "speaks for itself," as you say.

RE : "At last I understand my manifold errors in trying to carry out a debate"

LOL! No, you really don't. I'd be embarrassed to resort to such stuff as that.

"Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford , (born April 12, 1550, Castle Hedingham, Essex, England—died June 24, 1604, Newington, Middlesex), English lyric poet and theatre patron, who became, in the 20th century, the strongest candidate proposed (next to William Shakespeare himself) for the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays."

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Article Title:
Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-de-Vere-17th-earl-of-Oxford
Access Date:
September 13, 2017

"Roger Prior is the co-author of the section of Chapter 5 on the family's coat of arms," (pp. 69-91) "the main author of Chapter 6 (on the Bassanos' religious identity)" (pp. 92-98) "and the sole author of Chapter 8 (on Emilia as the dark lady)" (pp. 114-139)

>36 kend:

> I own a few books written at the time Shakes-peare was alive, it has always seemed very odd to me that he almost never gets a mention by any of this contemporaries in the same way other living poets did.

This vague general assertion is simply not true.

… …

The old canards about Shakespeare the player not being known by his contemporaries as a poet and playwright, the ignoring of his death, and many others are well-addressed and refuted here: http://shakespeareauthorship.com/

1643
“In Shakespeare's Eulogies (http://shakespeareauthorship.com/eulogies.html), David Kathman compares Shakespeare with the most prominent playwrights and poets of the day, and concludes that William Shakespeare was actually the best-memorialized English playwright until Ben Jonson more than 20 years later. “

“The playwright who finally broke the pattern, and who finally surpassed Shakespeare in the number of eulogies he received after his death, was Ben Jonson. As Oxfordians (e.g. Ogburn, 112) are fond of pointing out, Jonson was honored within a year of his death in 1637 by a volume of elegies (Jonsonus Viribus). But this volume did not appear in a vacuum; its existence was the result of a number of converging factors which had not been present when Shakespeare died 21 years earlier. For one thing, the professional theater had been steadily growing in respectability, and by the 1630s plays were almost considered literature by some people. Although Jonson was at least as well known for his nondramatic poetry and his court masques as for his plays, he had done the unheard-of by including his plays alongside his other poetry in the Folio edition of his 1616 Works. While this move was ridiculed at the time, in retrospect it was a major step in making plays more respectable as reading material, a process which was helped tremendously by the publication of the Shakespeare First Folio in 1623 and the Second Folio in 1632. Then, too, Jonson was a relentless self-promoter and flamboyant personality who cultivated a band of proteges (the "Tribe of Ben") to carry on his poetic legacy.”

____________________________________________
____________________________________________

I reply :

Sir Richard Baker (c. 1568 – 18 February 1645), in his A Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Time of the Romans Government unto the Death of King James (1643),
(https://ia801804.us.archive.org/21/items/chronicleofkings00bake/chronicleofkings00bake.pdf) at page 402 of a work that goes on for another 347 pp. (not counting the index's pages which are un-numbered) mentions William Shakespeare only once, at the very end of a long list of “Men of note in her time” who lived during the reign of Elizabeth I. As Kathman’s views would have us expect, the order follows what is roughly a kind of view of social rank. However, Shakespeare is not mentioned among Baker’s listing of “Learned Gentlemen and Writers—who follow (first-mentioned) “Statesmen,” “Sea-men,” and “Great Commanders by land”— Learned Gnetlemen and Writers includes Roger Ascham, Sir Thomas Smith (Edward Oxford’s own prinipal tutor), Sir Henry Savill and Sir Philip Sydney followed by commoners—divines John Jewel and William Whitaker and Richard Hooker.

Baker then continues, coming at dead-last to write, "For writers of Plays and such as had been Players themselves..."

“After such men, it may be thought ridiculous to speak of Stage-players: but seeing excellency in the meanest things deserves remembering, Roscius the Comedian (Quintus Roscius (ca. 126 BC – 62 BC) was a Roman actor) is recorded in History with such commendation, it may be allowed us to do the like with some of our Nation. Richard Burbage and Edward Allen, t(w)o such Actors as no age must ever look to see the like: and to make their Comedies compleat, Richard Tarleton, who for the part called the Clown's Part never had his match, never will have. For writers of Plays and such as had been Players themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson (Sic) , have specially left their Names recommended to posterity."

(emphasis added)

(Wikisource : DNB: Baker, Richard (1568-1645) (DNB00)

... "Utterly destitute, Sir Richard had, about 1635, to take refuge in the Fleet prison. There he died on 18 Feb. 1644-5, and was buried in the church of St.Bride's, Fleet Street. Several sons and daughters survived him. Wood reports that one of his daughters, all of whom were necessarily dowerless, married 'Bury, a seedsman at the Frying Pan in Newgate Street;' and another, 'one Smith, of Paternoster Row.' Smith is credited with having burned his father-in-law's autobiography, the manuscript of which had fallen into his hands. ...

..."Baker's 'Chronicle' was long popular with country gentlemen. Addison, in the 'Spectator' (Nos. 269 and 329), represents Sir Roger de Coverley as frequently reading and quoting the 'Chronicle,' which always lay in his hall window. Fielding, in 'Joseph Andrews,' also refers to it as part of the furniture of Sir Thomas Booby's country house. But its reputation with the learned never stood very high. Thomas Blount published at Oxford in 1672 'Animadversions upon Sir Richard Baker's "Chronicle," and its continuation,' where eighty-two errors are noticed, but many of these are mere typographical mistakes. The serious errors imputed to the volume are enough, however, to prove that Baker was little of an historical scholar, and depended on very suspicious authorities...."

(emphasis added)

from Nabokov’s Shakespeare, (2014) Samuel Schuman, ( p. 8-9 )

“In many of their works, Shakespeare and Nabokov express a shared thematic vision. These themes are by no means exclusive to these two authors. But it is significant that Nabokov’s view of the place of humankind in the cosmos, our mortal, temporal and consciousness limitations, and the potential to escape those bounds is congruent with Shakespeare’s.

“Both authors begin with the motif of exile. Of course, in the case of Nabokov, this theme has a biographical root. In 1919 he left Russia, never again to see the country of his birth, and never again to live in a home he himself owned. For the rest of his life, in poverty and in wealth, in transition and in security, Nabokov, and later his wife and son, lived in rental housing, transients and exils. He spent his last years in a splendid suite at the lavish Montreux Palace Hotel overlooking Lake Geneva (or, more poetically, Lac Léman) in Switzerland. Shakespeare, of course, is an entirely different case. Unsupported speculation aside, we have no evidence that he ever strayed very far from the Stratford/London axis, a distance of about 100 miles.

“Nabokov’s protagonists are almost always strangers living in strange lands. His very first novel, Mary, written in 1925, was advertised as ‘a novel of émigré life,’ according to Boyd, ‘a portrait of exile’ (Boyd, Russian Years , 244). Its hero, Ganin, is a Russian émigré, living in Germany. The last novel published during his lifetime, almost exactly a half-century after Mary, is Look at the Harlequins! Similarly, it centers on Vadim, a Russian exile living first in Western Europe and then in America. Many of Nabokov’s greatest works focus upon exiled characters. Humbert Humbert in Lolita is a European living in America. ; Pale Fire’s Charles Kinbote wants his readers to believe he is the exiled king of mythic Zembla. Timofey Pnin is a comic yet heroic Russian professor trying to reinvent himself in the United States, while clinging to his lost language and culture.

“A surprising number of Shakespeare’s plays also feature central characters who are, at least temporarily, exiles. Perhaps most notably among the tragedies is Othello, the hero of which is, of course, a Moor in Venice, then Cyprus. King Lear spends most of his time on stage wandering, homeless, across the kingdom he once ruled. Macduff flees from Macbeth to England, to which Hamlet, too, is banished. The comedies, as well, often involve leaving home. The core of the action in A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place as the lovers have fled to the woods. In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio has to leave home to come to Padua to woo and wed Katherina. The two gentlemen of Verona leave Verona for Milan; As You Like It’s characters have fled to the forest. In an interesting twist, it is the female characters in Love’s Labours’ Lost who have left the court of France, and are encamped outside the precincts of the court of Navarre. The Tempest (as we shall see, one of Nabokov’s favorite Shakespearean sources) centers upon the theme of exile. And, importantly for Nabokov and Pale Fire, Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens leaves Athens to live and ultimately to die in a cave in the wilderness.

“The physical isolation of exile is, clearly, rich in philosophical possibilities.. Literary characters who have had to leave their homes and homelands and live permanently or temporarily alone, surrounded by strangers, can be powerful emblems of human psychological solitary confinement, and what Nabokov calls in his autobiography the prison of time, which ‘is spherical and without exits’ (Speak, Memory , 20). Physical exile is obvious but potent metaphor for spiritual and/or temporal isolation. The human being, trapped within his—or her—solitary consciousness and limited to one ’brief crack of light’ ( Speak, Memory , 18) is an important thematic corollary to physical exile in both Nabokov and Shakespeare. In a rather serious comment on one of his lightest comedies, Shakespeare observes:

Brief as lightning in the collied night
That in a spleen, unfold both heaven and earth
And ere a man hath power to say “behold”
The jaws of darkness do devour it up
So quick bright things come to confusion
—Lysander, A Midsummer Night’s Dream , (I, i. 145-149)

Indeed, one way of understanding the Shakespearean dramatic monologue is to see it arising from a character who can only speak to himself (and an eavesdropping audience) but who cannot escape the prison of selfhood sufficiently to speak of important matters with others, in dialog. Shakespearean characters from Hamlet to Timon seem victims of such psycho/spiritual exile.” …

_____________

"To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,"
_____________

"Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular: what have you,
my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
that she sends you to prison hither?

"Prison, my lord!

"Denmark's a prison.

"Then is the world one.

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

"We think not so, my lord.

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

"Both authors begin with the motif of exile. Of course, in the case of Nabokov, this theme has a biographical root. In 1919 he left Russia, never again to see the country of his birth, and never again to live in a home he himself owned. ... Shakespeare, of course, is an entirely different case. Unsupported speculation aside, we have no evidence that he ever strayed very far from the Stratford/London axis, a distance of about 100 miles."

“Four of Shakespeare’s plays—As You Like It, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest—have precisely in common a story concerned with the exile of some of its central characters into a natural setting, their sojourn in that setting, and their eventual return. All four exhibit, moreover, the themes which had become attached to thisstructural pattern in earlier pastoral writings. In addition, certain external features, mainl stylistic, which had become part of the pastoral tradition can be found in each of the four.

“The fundamental appeal of pastoral to an artist like Shakespeare is difficult to isolate, given the variety of possibilities open to writers who chose to worrk with it. The relation between subject and audience, however, provides an important clue. Pastoral was about rustic life, but it was not for rustics. The man who wrote it might pose as a shepherd, but everyone knew he was not. Arcadia, or its equivalent, was always elsewhere—often in time as well as space. Pastoral offered an alternative to the complex, hectic, urban present, but it was an imaginary alternative. For if pastoral writers sometimes appealed to a historical Golden Age, or praised the life in a known, accesible region, there was generally a shared understanding that the pastoral novel, poem, or play was to be held to fictive standards only. Our own attitude to science fiction is perhaps analogous; most of us suspect or believe that there is life on other planets, but we do not expect science fiction writers to document it. They must rear their imaginative structures, we understand, out of the here and now.

“If pastoral was an alternative, it could not help but be, in one way or another, a criticism of life. As a member of the family of myths based on ‘human resentment at the conditions and struggles of life,’ (1) it tended to branch off toward idealism on the one hand and satire on the other. But its idealism was of a special sort, based not so much on perfection and abundance as on retrenchment, renunciation and retreat. Take less, the pastoral writer seemed to suggest, and you will have more; reduce your needs to the only legitimate one, harmony with nature, and you will experience fulfillment.” (2)
…
“His (Shakespeare’s) work reveals to the fullest Renaissance pastoral’s tendency toward self-consciousness, toward a stressing of the connections between aesthetic values and the dreams of contentment and fulfillment. If the pastoral could not be true to life, it could be true to the imagination, and that in turn enhanced the meaning and value of art.” (3)

__________________________

(1) F. Kermode (1953) p. 15
(2) David Young, ‘Pastoral Poetry and Drama’ (1972) in John Russell Brown (ed.), Shakespeare: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and ‘As You Like It’ (Critical Essays Casebook Series) (1979), Macmillan Education Ltd. Publishers pp. 200-201 ; Young's article in Brown's collection was drawn from Young's The Heart's Forest: A Study of Shakespeare's Pastoral Plays, New Haven & London, (1973) pp. 11-13, 27-99
(3) ibid (2) above, p. 204

From Ulrike Küpper’s (Ph. D. Dissertation) William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream" in the History of Music Theatre, (Volume 7 Literary Studies, Edited by Heinrich F. Plett) 2011, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main

“So numerous and varied are the musical references and allusions in Shakespeare’s plays that few aspects of contemporary musical knowledge fail to find memorable expression. Shakespeare’s frequent use of musical terminology in his dramatic writing suggests that he had a more than superficial knowledge of both the art of composition and the design of musical instruments. His knowledge, both theoretical and practical, included familiarity with the idea of the music of the spheres, and an interest in the curative power of music and its effect on human emotions. His ’understanding of the lyrical and dramatic effects of actual song, dance and instrumental performance’ (1) is discernable in several of his plays. Though the main source of Shakespeare’s musical awareness cannot be identified for certain, Thomas Morley and John Dowland are two Renaissance composers whose names are often mentioned by scholars when the question of Shakespeare’s musical associations is addressed. … (p. 7)

“The ‘very tragical mirth’ (V, i. 57) of Pyramus and Thisbe, enacted by the mechanicals for the wedding festivities at Theseus’s court in Athens (‘What masque? What music?’ V, i. 40), is a play-within-a-play at the end of Shakespeare’s comedy. The mechanicals’ ‘tedious brief’ (V, i. 56) scene of Pyramus and Thisbe offers and inversion, in both matter and manner, of the framing of the lovers’ plot and and mirrors the tragic potential of the conflict between Egeus and the couple Lysander and Hermia, even though this goes unnoticed by the stage audience. The performance ends with a ‘bergomask’ (V, i. 347) an element taken from masque tradition and the only dance in the play not performed by the fairies. Though popular, the bergomask was often supposed to be a clumsy and ‘ridiculous imitation of the movements of the peasants of Bergamo.’ (2) … ( p. 10)

“As Harold Brooks has remarked, ‘For Shakespeare and in the thought of his time the harmony of music and movement in the dance signified concord.’ (3) In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as in several of his other plays, Shakespeare deployed these elements to ‘prepare or accompany the supernatural.’ (4) He knew precisely when and how to make music serve a dramatic end. Unfortunately, not a single contemporary melody from any of the original A Midsummer Night’s Dream songs has survived. (p. 11)

______________

(1) Carpenter, in Orgel and Keilen (eds.) 1999. p. 125
(2) a. Brissenden, (1981) p. 45
(3) Brooks (ed.) (2001) p. cxxiv
(4) Ross W. Duffin (2004) p. 480

Juan de Bermúdez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Juan de Bermudez)
Juan Bermúdez
Born Juan Bermúdez
(locale) unknown
Palos de la Frontera, Province of Huelva, Crown of Castile
Died 1570
(locale) unknown
Nationality Castilian
Occupation Navigator

Juan de Bermúdez (/bɜːrˈmjuːdɛz/; Spanish pronunciation: berˈmuðeθ; d. 1570) was a Spanish navigator of the 16th century. In 1505, while sailing back to Spain from a provisioning voyage to Hispaniola in the ship La Garça (or Garza), he discovered Bermuda, which was later named after him

______________________

Note: Historia general y natural de las Indias by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478-1557)

"There is a secret Italy hidden in the plays of Shakespeare. It is an ingeniously described Italy that has neither been recognized, nor even suspected--not in four hundred years--save by a curious few. (empahasis added) It is exact; it is detailed; and it is brilliant," (p. 1, "Preface")

"Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Limited Art of Interpretation" (Thursday, September 21, 2017) |
Posted by Peter Dorman at 7:26 PM

"The thing is, he seldom makes arguments in the sense I understand that term. There isn’t extended reasoning through assumptions and implications or careful sifting through evidence to see which hypotheses are supported or disconfirmed. No, he offers an articulate, finely honed expression of his worldview, and that’s it. He is obviously a man of vast talents, but he uses them the same way much less refined thinkers simply bloviate.

"But that raises the question, why is he so influential? Why does he reach so many people? What’s his secret?

"No doubt there are multiple aspects to this, but here’s one that just dawned on me. Those who respond to Coates are not looking for argumentation—they’re looking for interpretation.

"The demand for someone like Coates reflects the broad influence that what might be called interpretivism has had on American political culture. This current emerged a few decades ago from literature, cultural studies and related academic home ports. Its method was an application of the interpretive act of criticism. A critic “reads”, which is to say interprets, a work of art or some other cultural product, and readers gravitate toward critics whose interpretations provide a sense of heightened awareness or insight into the object of criticism. There’s nothing wrong with this. I read criticism all the time to deepen my engagement with music, art, film and fiction."

... ...

"The problem, of course, is that much about the election is subject to social science investigation. We have opinion polling and the factual record of specific campaign strategies and tactics. We have a variety of models that predict voting behavior—testable models. If you go through Coates’ article, you’ll find statements (especially sweeping generalizations) that are dubious in light of the evidence or even flatly refutable. This isn’t because Coates isn’t well informed or unable to examine the data, but because he is applying the method of cultural interpretation, not evaluating hypotheses."

“Much Ado About Nothing” is not, I think, among Shakespeare's most popular comedies. It lacks many of those perpetuating devices that we look for to give us a sense of timeless pleasure.”... —“Something of Great Constancy,” by Barbara Everett (1961)

“The gaiety of Much Ado About Nothing is consistently praised; its somber aspects are either ignored or disparaged. Most critics agree that Much Ado is the gayest of Shakespeare's three joyous comedies, that its theme is courtship, and that the main plot centers on the wooing and winning of Hero.

… …

“The interpretation of Much Ado in this article is, point for point, at variance with the view generally accepted. We hold that the theme of this comedy is honor, that its spirit is less joyous than reflective, and that courtship, a peripheral concern, is presented as an imminent threat to masculine honor. Once the accent on honor is established, interest in the witty lovers becomes subordinated to interest in the troubled lovers; John, the malevolent match-breaker, becomes more than a nominal villain; the main plot focuses less on the birth and growth of love than on the death and rebirth of love. Finally, seen in the light of lost faith restored and sincere atonement for 'unintentional' injury, the recantation scene (V, iii.) restores the moral equilibrium lost in the repudiation scene (IV, i.) with the result that Hero becomes more credible and Claudio more admirable. The intermittent gaiety of Much Ado is not an end in itself, it serves as a foil to the gravity. This comedy is of mingled yarn, in which the grave and the gay are sometimes contrasted, at times fused—so artfully that they sometimes temper, sometimes enrich each other.”

“Illusion and Metamorphosis,” by Paul and Miriam Mueschke (1967) (p. 130)

In Brown, John Russell (ed.) (Macmillan Education, Ltd. (1979)) : Shakespeare : Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It .

(in the forest of Arden)

Duke:

“Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old* custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference?—as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity;”
…
—As You Like It, (II, i., 1-12)
__________
*: “old custom”: rustic, as opposed to courtly, custom

" 'I was looking at the brainwave patterns of people with different forms of dementia, but I was failing miserably at finding any difference between them,' he recalls now. One night, however, he read a scientific paper that changed everything. It described which parts of the brain were being attacked by these different types of dementia: 'Some were attacking parts of the brain that had to do with controlled sleep, while other types left those sleep centres unaffected. I realised my mistake. I had been measuring the brainwave activity of my patients while they were awake, when I should have been doing so while they were asleep.' Over the next six months, Walker taught himself how to set up a sleep laboratory and, sure enough, the recordings he made in it subsequently spoke loudly of a clear difference between patients. Sleep, it seemed, could be a new early diagnostic litmus test for different subtypes of dementia." ( "The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science" | Leading neuroscientist Matthew Walker on why sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of cancer, heart attack and Alzheimer’s – and what you can do about it —Matthew Walker interviewed by Rachel Cooke, Sunday 24 September 2017, The (Sunday) Observer (London).

"The 20th century has been an age of brilliant and perceptive Shakespeare criticism....

"In my opinion, however, we are far behind the critics of the 18th and 19th centuries in one important respect. We have allowed our ever-increasing knowledge about the details of Renaissance social history in general and of the Elizabethan mores in particular to blur and confusee our perception of the values of the age. As Janet Spens has remarked: 'the inner life of the age of Elizabeth, only three centuries distant, and the experience of men of our own race, is far less intelligible to us (than the cultural life of Greece, Rome and the Middle Ages). Scholars have done much to elucidate a mass of allusions to the minutiae of daily life; we can make a picture of that life, but we do not understand how a true Elizabethan felt in the inner chambers of his heart.' With similar feelings of scholarly frustration, Hardin Craig, who has studied the intellectual background of the Renaissance as exhaustively as any man, admits that 'it does little good to learn the kind of houses the Elizabethans inhabited' if it is impossible to discover 'how people thought and felt while they were living in those houses.'

"The cultural historians themselves, in other words, are admitting that the work of historical restoration of a given age may be held back if we permit ourselves to be buried under an avalanche of historical detail so that we are never free to get sufficient perspective to perceive the essential values of the age. The wealth of our accumulated knowledge may be preventing us from understanding how an Elizabethan felt in the inner chambers of his heart.

"But is there not a more serious reason for our defective vision when we try to perceive Shakespeare's relation to his age? We live in an age in which didactic literature is not in fashion. We resent the artist who tries to make us better men. Indeed, we sometimes refuse to admit that moral evaluations can do anything but distort our aesthetic response to the work of art.

"The current tendency to avoid all 'value judgments' (in such disparate realms as art and sociology) has become so fashionable that such evasion has sometimes come to be considered an irrefutable canon of critical good taste. In my opinion, this tendency is preventing us from properly interpreting Shakespeare's plays. In his 'naive' willingness to speak in moral terms, the 18th century critic is often closer than we are to an understanding of the text, even though our 20th century critics have much greater historical awareness. Shakespeare usually rises above crude didactic effects, yet each of his plays is basically organized as a conflict between good and evil. This being true, we must employ the finest scales to detect the precise values relevant to our judgment of character and action. As Arthur Sewell has pointed out, in reading Shakespeare 'character and moral vision must be apprehended together.' "

"The remaining (304) pages of this book will have little or no meaning for the reader who fails to perceive that the greatness of the classics stems essentially from the clarity and grandeur of their moral vision, and that, in Shakespeare particularly, there is profound interpenetration of moral and aesthetic values." (pp. 165-167)

“This book sets out to do two things: firstly, to describe the total environment of an élite, material and economic, ideological and cultural, educational and moral; and secondly to demonstrate, to explain, and to chart the course of a crisis in the affairs of this élite that was to have a profound effect upon the evolution of English political institutions. … The secondary object of this book is to describe in as much detail as can be reasonably tolerated the way of life of this élite, ….

( Lawrence Stone, (Oxford, 1967) The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641, pp. 5-6)

“The socio-political breakdown of 1640-42 had three main causes. The first was a long-term decline in respect for and obedience to the Monarchy, caused partly by the personal ineptitude of kings, partly by growing financial impoverishment, partly by structural defects in the Court system, and partly by the widening gap btween the moral standards, aspirations, and way of life of the Court and those of the Country. … The second was the failure of the Established Church (the (protestant) Church of England) to comprehend within itself all but the Roman Catholics. … These two factors could not alone have caused the prolonged upheaval of the 1640s if it had not been for a third , the crisis in the affairs of the hereditary élite, the aristocracy. …

“This book is primarily concerned with the third of these seismic shifts in English life, although it is designed to throw some incidental light upon the other two.”

( Lawrence Stone, (Oxford, 1967) The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641, pp. 9-10)


"The key symbols of Tudor and Early Stuart society were the hat and the whip. The former was for ever being doffed and donned to emphasize the complex hierarchy of ranks and authorities. Everyone, every day, many times a day, by removing his hat or by putting it on, gave visible proof of his acceptance of the great principle of subordination universally at work at Court, in the street, in the great household, in the university and even within the family." ( Lawrence Stone, (Oxford, 1967) The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (p. 21)

“Middle-class Puritanism, which, in the early 17th century, had come increasingly into conflict with the aristocracy, leading finally to the civil war between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, clashed violently with Aristotelian humanism on the issue of magnificence, pomp, and ceremony. Questions of the propriety of sumptuous and gaudy apparel, of stately and expensive ceremony, of magnificent buildings and homes, and of large and well equipped retinues may appear to be unrelated to the concept of honor since they are partially a demonstration of the aesthetic taste of the period. Actually, however, the taste of the aristocratic class was shaped largely by the central Aristotelian concept of magnificence; sumptuousness and pomp were integral to the whole concept of honor. As Elyot says, 'Lette it be also considered that we be men and nat aungels, wherfore we knowe nothinge but by outwarde significations. Honour, wherto revernce pertaineth, is (as I have said) the rewarde of vertue, which honour is but the estimation of people, which estimation is nat every where perceived, but by some exterior signe, and that is either by laudable reporte, or excellencie in vesture, or other thinge semblable.'

“The values of our own middle-class society are so strongly opposed to the aristocratic values of the Renaissance in this particular respect that it is difficult for us to sympathize with the taste of the Elizabethan nobleman. Our values, or prejudices, are reflected in the word pompous. Pomp to us suggests pride and an over-emphasis on form. It seems almost incredible to us today that the word had a favorable connotation in the Renaissance.” ... C. B. Watson, (1960), Princeton, (p. 150-151)

...

“The extent to which the Elizabethan nobleman was conscious during every minute of his existence here on earth of his place in the social hierarchy and the extent to which the question of proper apparel was directly related to the aristocrat's position in the social caste becomes apparent from the following table, which appeared in 1574 in one of the homilies against gorgeous apparel:

“ Men's Apparel” (n 49)

'None shall wear in his apparel any:

“Silk of the colour of purple, cloth of gold
tissued, nor fur of sables

| but only the | King, Queen, King's |
| Mother, Children, Brethren and Sisters, Uncles and Aunts,

and except Dukes, Marquesses and Earls, who may wear the same in doublets, jerkins, linings....

(or any) “Cloth of Gold, Silver tinseled satin,
Silk of cloth mixed or embroidered with any gold or silver,

✸ Except : All degrees above Viscounts

(or any) “Woolen cloth made out of (produced ex patria) the realm....
Velvet, crimson or scarlet, Furs, black jenets, lucernes, Embroidery of
tailor's work having gold or silver or pearl therein,

✸ Except : Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons ….

(or any) “Satin, damask, silk chamlet, or teffeta, in gown, coat, hose, or uppermost garments,
Fur, whereof the kind groweth not within the Queen's dominions...

✸ Except : the degrees and persons above mentioned and men that may
dispend £100 by the year, and so valued in the subsidy book (i.e., a public tax roll)

(or any) “Hat, bonnet, girdle, scabbards of swords, daggers,, etc., shoes and pantofles (slippers) of velvet...

✸ Except the degrees and persons above named, and the aon and heir apparent of a knight...

(or any) “Spurs, swords, rapiers, daggers, skaynes, wood-knives, or hangers, buckles of girdles |

(being) gilt, silvered, or damasked |

✸ Except : Knights' and Barons' sons, and other of higher degree or place.

n 49 : (Cited in Karl Holzknecht, The Backgrounds of Shakespeare's Plays, New York, (1950), p. 44. )”

from C. B. Watson, (1960), Princeton, (p. 153)

“That a 'middle-class culture' of educated artisans, small shopkeepers, and merchants grew up in Elizabethan England cannot be doubted, but the dominant value system remained that of the landed gentleman. … the social prestige and the standards of value of the landed classes were never seriously challenged except for a brief period during the Interregnum.

“Active personal occupation in a trade or profession was generally thought to be humiliating. The man of business was inferior to the gentleman of leisure who lived off his rents. Retail trade was always degrading....

“The ranking of the professions was only slightly higher than that of tradesmen.”
(p. 24, L. Stone, 1967, Oxford)

“Along with the supremacy of land went a continued respect for medieval aristocratic ideals. One of the most characteristic features of the age was its hyper-sensitive insistence upon the overriding importance of reputation. Many of the punishments of the day, the stocks, the pillory, the apology read out in the market-place, were based upon the theory that public humiliation was a more effective penalty than a swingeing fine. The extraordinary seventeenth-century code of the duel, under which men felt impelled to risk their lives to avenge a casual word, was merely a cancerous growth from the same cells. A by-product of this cult of reputation was an insistence upon the aristocratic virtue of generosity. Though contemporaries lamented the decay of hospitality—and it undoubtedly did fall away during this period—this is less remarkable than the vigorous persistence of the ideal, and in some measure the practice, in direct opposition to Calvinist ideals of frugality and thrift. The prime test of rank was liberality, the pagan virtue of openhandedness. It involved wearing rich clothes, living in a substantial well-furnished house, keeping plenty of servants and above all maintaining a lavish table to which anyone of the right social standing was welcome. This was the quality most admired by the leading squires and nobles of England, and this that they were most anxious to impress upon posterity.

“There is little or no direct evidence of any weakening in the attachment to this doctrine before the Civil War, despite the fact that it was directly opposed to the Puritan imperative to save rather than to consume. Some early seventeenth-century Puritans like Sir Thomas Heselrige of Noseley, Leicesterhsire, were content for posterity to know that they were of 'great temperance and sobriety,' but the majority of gentry and nobility –even those of a puritan cast of mind—would have scorned so tame an epitaph.
“The motive behind this emphasis on liberality was the maintainance of status, which in turn depended more on ways of spending than on mere income. As Sir Thomas Smith* remarked in the reign of Elizabeth, 'a Gentleman, (if he will be so accounted) must go like a Gentleman.' This use of expenditure as the acid-test of rank means that status bore a closer relation to income than it does in some Western communities, like England, where education, accent, and professional occupation are all of crucial importance. It also means that in the effort to maintain status many families overreached themselves, fell heavily into debt, and eventually sold their patrimony and disappeared. …

“On the broad view this was a two-class society of those who were gentlemen and those who were not. As a contemporary put it with disarming simplicity, 'All sorts of people created from the beginning are divided into 2: noble and ignoble.' …

"Despite the blurring of the line by the devaluation of the word 'gent.', despite the relative ease with which it could be crossed, the division between the gentleman and the rest was basic to Elizabethan society. An essential prerequisite for membership of the élite was financial independence, the capacity to live idly without the necessity of undertaking manual, mechanic or even professional tasks. But other equally important qualifications were birth, education, and willingness to adopt the way of life and the system of values which prevailed among the landed classes. Moreover, the source of wealth was just as important as the amount, as many a great London merchant was mortified to discover." …

“This fundamental social division was therefore not based exclusively on wealth—indeed social divisions never are—even though achievement or retention of the higher status was impossible without it. Money was the means of acquiring and retaining status, but not the essence of it: the acid-test was the mode of life, a concept that involved many factors. Living on a private income was one, but more important was spending liberally, dressing elegantly, and entertaining lavishly. Another was having sufficient education to display a reasonable knowledge of public affairs, and be able to perform gracefully on the dance floor and on horseback, in the tennis-court and the fencing school.”

(pp. 25-28, L. Stone, 1967, Oxford)

“The titular peerage, then, was a status group defined by special privileges of its own, and the major component of a power élite. …

“If we regard the gentry élite and the titular peerage as forming a single class, we can see that it is defined in a number of different ways. In the first place, its members stood out because of their wealth. As a result of this wealth, they lived in a more opulent style than their neighbors. They mostly married among themselves. They or their sons controlled or filled the county seats in Parliament. They were bound by the same moral pressure to spend freely, to serve the State, and to treat their tenants well. Whatever may be said of the earls, therefore, the baronage at any given time only represented the majority of the greater landowners of the country. Although for some purposes the lives of this non-noble gentry élite are freely drawn upon for illustrative material, the statistical skeleton of this book is the titular peerage. This is a defensible procedure since the peerage, embracing as it does about two-thirds of the total families in this economic class—and all of those in the really high income bracket—may fairly be taken as a representative selection.”

(pp. 31-32, L. Stone, (1967), Oxford)

All's Well That Ends Well AW III.vii.6 And would not put my reputation now

All's Well That Ends Well AW IV.iii.132 commanders very poor rogues, upon my reputation and

All's Well That Ends Well AW IV.iii.174 i'th' camp, a Frenchman; what his reputation is with the

All's Well That Ends Well AW IV.iii.193 What is his reputation with the Duke?

All's Well That Ends Well AW IV.iii.242 Dumaine: you have answered to his reputation with

All's Well That Ends Well AW V.iii.176 Your reputation comes too short for my daughter;

Antony and Cleopatra AC III.xi.49 I have offended reputation,

As You Like It AYL I.ii.168 Do, young sir, your reputation shall not therefore

As You Like It AYL II.vii.153 Seeking the bubble reputation

Cymbeline Cym I.v.108 confidence than her reputation. And to bar your

Hamlet Ham II.ii.330 both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

Henry IV Part 2 2H4 II.i.129 wrong; but answer in the effect of your reputation, and

Henry V H5 IV.vii.137 he be perjured, see you now, his reputation is as arrant

King Edward III E3 III.iii.78 Or dim the reputation of my birth,

King Edward III E3 V.i.46 Is held in reputation none of ours.

Love's Labour's Lost LLL II.i.155 And wrong the reputation of your name,

Love's Labour's Lost LLL V.ii.699 mean you? You will lose your reputation.

Measure for Measure MM V.i.219 For that her reputation was disvalued

Much Ado About Nothing MA II.ii.35 reputation, who is thus like to be cozened with the semblance

Much Ado About Nothing MA IV.i.239 As best befits her wounded reputation,

Othello Oth II.iii.188 That you unlace your reputation thus

Othello Oth II.iii.255 Reputation, Reputation, Reputation! O, I have lost

Othello Oth II.iii.256 my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself,

Othello Oth II.iii.257 and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!

Othello Oth II.iii.261 than in reputation. reputation is an idle and most false

Othello Oth II.iii.263 deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you

Pericles Per IV.vi.162 Would not in reputation change. Thou art

Richard II R2 I.i.178 Is spotless reputation. That away,

Richard II R2 II.i.58 Dear for her reputation through the world,

Richard II R2 II.i.96 Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;

Richard III R3 I.iv.155 thy reputation. Come, shall we fall to work?

Romeo and Juliet RJ III.i.111 In my behalf – my reputation stained

The Comedy of Errors CE III.i.86 Herein you war against your reputation,

The Comedy of Errors CE IV.i.72 This touches me in reputation.

The Comedy of Errors CE V.i.5 Of very reverend reputation, sir,

The Merry Wives of Windsor MW I.iii.73 I will keep the haviour of reputation.

The Merry Wives of Windsor MW II.ii.238 ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage-vow,

The Merry Wives of Windsor MW II.ii.278 bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation

The Merry Wives of Windsor MW III.iii.111 senses to you, defend your reputation, or bid farewell to

The Two Gentlemen of Verona TG I.iii.6 While other men, of slender reputation,

The Two Gentlemen of Verona TG II.vii.87 My goods, my land, my reputation;

The Two Noble Kinsmen TNK III.iii.11 Having our ancient reputation with us,

The Winter's Tale WT I.ii.420 Turn then my freshest reputation to

Timon of Athens Tim III.v.19 Seeing his reputation touched to death,

Troilus and Cressida TC III.iii.187 And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Troilus and Cressida TC III.iii.227 I see my reputation is at stake.

(use the key-term search engine at the site's homepage: http://www.shakespeareswords.com/ )

From The First Booke of the Courtyer:
XIV : (The facioning of a Courtyer
A Gentleman borne)

“...a noble line of ancestors provided an incentive to emulate their renowned and pre-eminent virtues. The aristocrat had not only his own reputation to consider but also the good name of his family. (Baldessare) Castiglione, for example, insists that his ideal courtier must be born of noble stock:

'For it is a great deale less dyspraise for him that is not born a gentleman to faile in the actes of vertue, then for a gentleman. If he swarve from the steppes of his auncestours, hee stayneth the name of his familie.' (Th. Hoby, (p. 44)

(continuing, Hoby translates Castiglione) “and doeth not onely not get but loseth that is already gotten. For nobelnesse of birth is (as it were) a clere lamp that sheweth forth and bringeth into light, workes both good and badde, and enflameth and provoketh unto vertue, as wel with the feare of slaunder, as also with the hope of praise. And wheras this brightnesse of nobelnesse dothe not discover the workes of the unnoble, they have a wante of provocation and of feare of slaunder, and they recken not themselves bounde to wade anye further then their auncestours did before theym, whereas the noble of birthe counte it a shame not to arrive at the leaste at the boundes of their predecessours set foorth unto them.”

__________________

B. Castiglione's original text
(See this link: http://www.vicoacitillo.it/biblio/cortegiano.pdf )
(at p. 24-25) reads:

... (Chapter) "XIV.
"Voglio adunque che questo nostro cortegiano sia nato nobile e di generosa famiglia; perché molto men si disdice ad un ignobile mancar di far operazioni virtuose, che ad uno nobile, il qual se desvia dal camino dei sui antecessori, macula il nome della famiglia e non solamente non acquista, ma perde il già acquistato; perché la nobiltà è quasi una chiara lampa, che manifesta e fa veder l'opere bone e le male ed accende e sprona alla virtú cosí col timor d'infamia, come ancor con la speranza di laude; e non scoprendo questo splendor di nobiltà l'opere degli ignobili, essi mancano dello stimulo e del timore di quella infamia, né par loro d'esser obligati passar piú avanti di quello che fatto abbiano i sui antecessori; ed ai nobili par biasimo non giunger almeno al termine da' sui primi mostratogli."

(p. 24-25) Baldassare Castiglione - Il libro del Cortegiano)

( (Note: this following italicized part in parentheses,omitted in Watson's cited excerpt (presented in original following these translations), is included here)
"However, there has been a great deal of discussion of the philosophy of Shakespeare. The power of reflections across myriad places in his plays presents the illusion of a superior wisdom which the author would have shared. It was tempting to tell one's self that in uniting these scattered fragments of his thought one reconstitutes the body of his doctrine and that we could then find an answer , his answer, to the mysteries of life. In fact, no such code exists.; this philosophy receeds as we attempt to approach it. The contradictions multiply and the incongruities appear equal to those which are found in real life itself. The disappointment is less for those who reason that, if the author had intended to convey such a message as his philosophy, he'd have taken the occasion of his non-dramatic works, above all, his Sonnets, to present it and that he made no such effort. No, in fact, we do not find that his personal morality is distinguished and imposed through the work. The true miracle is the extraordinary flexibility with which he has succeeded in making the most striking and ingenious arguments, in support of passions or interests and expressed by the most diverse characters. Each one of them...)
(Boldface emphasis added)

..."from the kings to the clowns, has indeed a philosophy, which he makes singularly clear. Each judges life in his own way, from his own angle, whence he may utter a remark strikingly true, and profound also, in many instances. But all this is the emanation of a vigorous dramatic genius...( (the following omitted in Watson's cited excerpt is included here) "They are a scattered series of cirumstantial reflections, express opposites, the strength of which is in their subject, the penetration of which is due to the feeling which gives birth to them, like beauty to the poetry of the words with which they are clothed. But to sum them up in the hope of finding there a higher wisdom which is that of the poet himself would be a vain enterprise. These are not maxims that add up.") ...Their number is commensurate only with the diversity of human judgments, and reveals only the playwright's marvelous versatility and his consciousness of the relative nature of all things." (1) (emphasis added) (The parenthetical translation above and the part which follows below are my own.)

(1) : (Original fr.) ( (Note: the following italicized part omitted in Watson's cited excerpt (above) is included here) "Pourtant, il a été beaucoup parlé de la philosophie de Shakespeare. La force des réflexions faites en mille endroits de ses pièces a donné l’illusion d’une sagesse supérieure qu’il aurait eue en partage. Il était tentant de se dire qu’en réunissant ces fragments épars de sa pensée on reconstituerait tout un corps de doctrine, et qu’on aurait ainsi une réponse, sa réponse, aux énigmes de la vie.
“En fait ce code n’existe pas; cette philosophie s’évanouit quand on cherche à l’étreindre. Les contradictions se multiplient et l’incohérence apparaît égale à celle de la réalité elle-même. La déception est moindre pour ceux qui se disent que si le poète avait eu pareil message à délivrer, il eût saisi l’occasion offerte par ses œuvres non dramatiques, surtout par ces Sonnets, et qu’il n’y a rien tenté de pareil. Non, vraiment, sa morale personnelle n’a rien qui la distingue et l’impose. Le vrai miracle est l’extraordinaire souplesse avec laquelle il a su faire exprimer par les personnages les plus divers les arguments les plus saisissants et les plus ingénieux, à l’appui de leurs passions ou de leurs intérêts.")

"Chacun d’eux a bien sa philosophie, depuis le roi jusqu’auclown, et la formule avec un relief singulier. Chacun juge la vie à sa façon, selon l’angle d’où il la contemple, et à cette occasion émet quelque remarque qui frappe par sa vérité et souvent par sa profondeur. Mais cela reste essentiellement vigueur de génie dramatique. (C’est une série éparse de réflexions de circonstance, exprès opposées, dont la force est dans leur à propos, dont la pénétration tient au sentiment qui les fait naître, comme la beauté à la poésie des mots dont elles sont revêtues. Mais en faire la somme avec l’espoir d’y trouver une sagesse supérieure qui soit celle du poète lui- même serait une entreprise vaine. Ce ne sont point des maximes qui s’addtionnent.) Leur nombre ne sert qu’à établir la diversité des jugements humains; il ne dévoile que la versatilité du dramatiste, et le sens qu’il avait du relatif."

(2) : "D’où la fragilité des constructions contradictoires qui ont été essayées à l’aide des idées èparses dans son théâtre. Protestants, catholiques, et libres penseurs se sont efforcés, par des arguments également plausibles, de le réclamer pour eux. Il en est de ses formules comme de ces dictons populaires qui sont tous saisissants, tous vrais dans leurs limites, mais qui s’affrontent et se contredisent souvent deux par deux, l’un noir et l’autre blanc: “Tel père tel fils;” “A père avare fils prodigue.” Hamlet a ses raisons pour hésiter comme Henri V pour agir. Le premier est découragé, par “ce quelque chose de pourri qu’il soupçonne dans le royaume de Danemark;” le second déclare qu’il “y a une âme de bien dans les choses mauvaises,”et trouve dans les obstacles mêmes des motifs d’action et d’espoir. Chaque tempérament, chaque circonstance, a dans Shakespeare sa philosophie appropriée. Il n’en a pas de supérieure qui les embrasse toutes et les résume.”
___________________

(Both excerpts combined (1) & (2) from:
(Chapter VI: “Le théâtre de Shakespeare” (10. Sa Philosophie) . pp. 427-428; E. Legouis & L. Cazamian; Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, 2ème édition, Paris, 1925, Librairie Hachette)

“I would suggest that none of the plays of Shakespeare has a 'meaning,' although it would be equally false to say that a play of Shakespeare is meaningless. All great poetry gives the illusion of a view of life.” (Selected Essays, (1932) p. 115)
____________

“I can see no reason for believing that either Dante or Shakespeare did any thinking on his own.”
(Selected Essays, (1932) p. 116)
____________

“I doubt whether belief proper enters into the activity of a great poet.”
(Selected Essays, (1932) p. 118)
____________

“The end of the sixteenth century is an epoch when it is particularly difficult to associate poetry with systems of thought or reasoned views of life.” (Selected Essays, (1932) p. ibid)

“Roe helps us to recognize that if we are to pursue a better understanding of Shakespeare, we cannot probe the life of a dull and almost assuredly illiterate man (Shakspere of Stratford neither wrote nor received so much as a single letter in his lifetime, and none of his children could write either).”

“There is nothing ‘suspicious’ about this poor harvest \of personal documents, etc.\. The survival of documentary evidence from this period depended overwhelmingly on whether or not it remained in the hands of either an institution or a great landed family with the resources to provide a safe haven over a period of time."

--Shakespeare’s Money (2016)

“All such publications \referring to books about the authorship question\, including the multitude declaring William of Stratford to be the “true author,” have the same shortcoming: their arguments are only conjectural.”

Shakespeare’s name, with some variations in spelling, is on the title pages of 12 of his plays (in 27 editions by my count) published during his lifetime, not counting various editions of his poetry. Shakespeare is also named as the author on the title page of the First Folio, and two of the encomiums inside link Shakespeare, the author, with Stratford. One explicitly mentions his Stratford monument. Correspondingly, Shakespeare’s Stratford monument has inscriptions that refer to him as a thinker and writer.

Shakespeare is named for the excellence of his writing in Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury in multiple categories. Meres names Shakespeare to be the author of 12 plays (including 1 lost play), and of “Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, \and\ his sugred (sic) Sonnets”. Meres also lists de Vere once in one of the same lists that includes Shakespeare. Meres knew they were different people.

Shakespeare’s father’s coat of arms was challenged because it was being worn by William Shakespeare (as a matter of right, being John Shakespeare’s son) because he was a mere player. William Camden, one of those defending Shakespeare’s right to the arms, identified him as a writer in his Remaines of a greater work concerning Britain (1605), a supplement to his Britannia.

Shakespeare was included in a list of the members of the King’s Men when King James I took the throne and assumed patronage of the former Lord Chamberlain’s Men—the only name before his on the charter was that of an actor that James had brought with him from Scotland—and cloth for the making of livery was issued to him. A 1609 document for the Stratford law suit, Shakespeare versus Addenbrooke, identified Shakespeare as having been in the court of King James.

Of Shakespeare’s six extant signatures, three are on his Stratford will which includes bequests of money for mourning rings to members of the King’s Men, and two are connected with the purchase of the gate house at Blackfriars (close to the theater at Blackfriars, one of the King’s Men’s venues) which he acquired with the assistance of John Heminges, a member of the King’s Men. Shakespeare’s remaining signature is for a deposition in the Bellott v. Mountjoy lawsuit regarding his involvement in an incident that occurred when he lived on Silver Street in London. Another deponent in that case was George Wilkins, one of whose occupations was playwright—an interesting association.

”… the only conclusion possible was that the descriptive references uttered by the characters in Shakespeare’s Italian plays reflected, to a surprising degree, realities on the ground.” (My emphasis).

”… the only possible conclusion one can come to … is that whoever wrote the Shakespearean plays set in Italy … could only have seen Italy with his very own eyes.” (My emphasis)

“I leapt from the car to get a closer look at the broad-lobed leaves and mottled pastel trunks, to make absolutely certain that it was true; that the playwright had known, and had told the truth. Benvolio was right. And I was not a fool.”

“the female bar-tailed godwit is called a ‘scammell’ by the gunners of Blakeney. But as this bird is not a rock-breeder, it cannot be the one intended in the present passage, if we regard it as an accurate description from a naturalist’s point of view”.

Proteus: My father stays my coming. Answer not. The tide is now.
Nay, not thy tide of tears! That tide will stay me longer than
I should. Julia, fairwell!

My father stays (awaits) my coming. Answer not.
The time is now. Nay, not thy rush of tears!
That flood will stay me longer than I should.
Julia, farewell! (Roe’s italics)

Panthino: Launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped
and thou art to post after with oars. What's the
matter? why weepest thou, man? Away, ass! You'll
lose the tide, if you tarry any longer.

Panthino: Tut, man, I mean thou'lt lose the flood, and, in
losing the flood, lose thy voyage, …

Launce: Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master, and
the service, and the tied! Why, man, if the river
were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears; if the
wind were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs.

“The playwright knew that Bergamo was the principal source of sails for the Mediterranean world, and knew that Tranio’s father could, indeed, have been a sailmaker there.”

’“sea-meawe" which can be caught by “standing on the rocks or sands … where of the birds would come flocking to that place near and nearer.”’

Rejecting or discounting historical evidence by calling facts arguments.

Making discoveries that don’t match visual evidence, like the so-called sycamore grove at Verona’s Porta Palio gate.

Elaborating extensively on historical background to explain usages, like the word “argosy”, when much simpler explanations are available.

Referencing resource material like the OED when it supports arguments and ignoring it when it doesn’t, like the etymology of “argosy”.

Presenting contradictory arguments to justify one situation when a slightly different situation arises, as when some characters choose to travel by water and another one by land.

Rewriting Shakespeare to attempt, for example, to erase errors like tides at Verona.

Adding information to create the impression that more is meant than what was actually written, like claiming that wordplay on “grave” was a reference to a specific location.

Omitting information that might contradict an argument, like the fact that Bohemia with a coastline was contained in the source for a plot.

Elevating the significance of trivial details like a capital letter on a generic word without evidence that the author intended anything by it or was even personally responsible for it.

Contriving ridiculous explanations to explain away problems of one’s own making, like assigning a real-world location to an imaginary island and having to rationalize away concomitant imaginary difficulties.

“Shakespeare is … named as the author on the title page of the First Folio, and two of the encomiums inside link Shakespeare, the author, with Stratford. One explicitly mentions his Stratford monument. Correspondingly, Shakespeare’s Stratford monument has inscriptions that refer to him as a thinker and writer. ”

“Shakespeare is named for the excellence of his writing in Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury in multiple categories. Meres names Shakespeare to be the author of 12 plays (including 1 lost play), and of 'Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, and his sugred (sic) Sonnets'.”

“Meres also lists de Vere once in one of the same lists that includes Shakespeare. Meres knew they were different people.”

“Shakespeare was included in a list of the members of the King’s Men when King James I took the throne and assumed patronage of the former Lord Chamberlain’s Men—the only name before his on the charter was that of an actor that James had brought with him from Scotland—and cloth for the making of livery was issued to him. A 1609 document for the Stratford law suit, Shakespeare versus Addenbrooke, identified Shakespeare as having been in the” court of King James.

“Of Shakespeare’s six extant signatures, three are on his Stratford will which includes bequests of money for mourning rings to members of the King’s Men, and two are connected with the purchase of the gate house at Blackfriars (close to the theater at Blackfriars, one of the King’s Men’s venues) which he acquired with the assistance of John Heminges, a member of the King’s Men. Shakespeare’s remaining signature is for a deposition in the Bellott v. Mountjoy lawsuit regarding his involvement in an incident that occurred when he lived on Silver Street in London. Another deponent in that case was George Wilkins, one of whose occupations was playwright—an interesting association”

“None of the items listed above are either arguments or conjectural. They are all facts drawn from the historical record.”

This post has 2 QUERIES from me

"After the birth of the twins, save for being party to a lawsuit to recover part of his mother's estate which had been mortgaged and lost by default, Shakespeare left no historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the seven-year period between 1585 (when his twin children were born) and 1592 (when Robert Greene called him an "upstart crow") is known as Shakespeare's 'lost years' because no evidence has survived to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London."

“All such publications referring to books about the authorship question, including the multitude declaring William of Stratford to be the “true author,” have the same shortcoming: their arguments are only conjectural.”

Shakespeare’s name, with some variations in spelling, is on the title pages of 12 of his plays (in 27 editions by my count) published during his lifetime, not counting various editions of his poetry.

Of Shakespeare’s six extant signatures, three are on his Stratford will which includes bequests of money for mourning rings to members of the King’s Men.

no "independent evidence" for the supposition that the Stratford man is the really the true author and the person to which the title-page name refers. (sic)

Shakespeare is also named as the author on the title page of the First Folio, and two of the encomiums inside link Shakespeare, the author, with Stratford. One explicitly mentions his Stratford monument. Correspondingly, Shakespeare’s Stratford monument has inscriptions that refer to him as a thinker and writer.

"To repeat the quote from Roe's book:

“All such publications referring to books about the authorship question, including the multitude declaring William of Stratford to be the “true author,” have the same shortcoming: their arguments are only conjectural.”

In response, I cited a number of what most people would recognize are facts. The purpose was to show that conjecture or not, there is evidence in the historical record supporting Shakespeare's authorship even before conjecture begins. Your response seems to reject that notion. Perhaps you could provide some clarification."