# A Discussion About Whether Shakespeare is Shakespeare without Dismissiveness
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 27, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319 "2013-08-27T17:26:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2013, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/41 "2013-08-27T22:07:37Z")
septimus, please list all of the literature you have read showing that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/42 "2013-08-28T00:04:53Z")
Alias Shakespeare by Joe Sobran. It’s been a while since I read it, so I’m going by memory.
He argued that William Shakespeare of Stratford didn’t have the education to write the plays. Shakespeare wouldn’t have read Plutarch, wouldn’t have travelled to Italy, wouldn’t have known courtly manners and speech, etc. The playwright showed too much knowledge of these matters.
Sobran erred, in my opinion, by pointing to the very bland prose of Shakespeare’s will. Sobran asked how the author of “To be or not to be” could have written that will. To me, this is not a telling argument. Who of us has employed our literary skills and poetic talents…in our wills?
More convincing is Sobran’s argument regarding the mysterious lover addressed in the Sonnets. He suggested how the sonnets point very directly at De Vere, while having no obvious references to Shakespeare.
Thank you, **bup** , for opening this thread. Your plea for consideration probably came from my observation, in the other thread, that all of the rebuttals I had read of Sobran’s book utilized ridicule rather than point-by-point refutation. The attitude seemed to be, “This idea is so stupid, I won’t even bother addressing it seriously.” The problem with that is that, to a reader like me, it implies bad faith. It’s like the scientific establishment’s original (tragic) response to Velikovsky.
If the theory is wrong, then it can’t hurt to take a few minutes to say why.
Personally, I don’t know. Sobran’s book stopped me cold, and made me re-think everything I thought I knew. I opened his book with a very strong prejudice against him. (I still think Sobran was a god damned son of a bitch in many ways. His homophobic politics were vile and hateful.) His book convinced me, entirely against my will, that there might be something to the De Vere theory.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/43 "2013-08-28T00:28:57Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> More convincing is Sobran’s argument regarding the mysterious lover addressed in the Sonnets. He suggested how the sonnets point very directly at De Vere, while having no obvious references to Shakespeare.
>
> Thank you, **bup** , for opening this thread. Your plea for consideration probably came from my observation, in the other thread, that all of the rebuttals I had read of Sobran’s book utilized ridicule rather than point-by-point refutation. The attitude seemed to be, “This idea is so stupid, I won’t even bother addressing it seriously.” The problem with that is that, to a reader like me, it implies bad faith. It’s like the scientific establishment’s original (tragic) response to Velikovsky.
>
> If the theory is wrong, then it can’t hurt to take a few minutes to say why.
>
> Personally, I don’t know. Sobran’s book stopped me cold, and made me re-think everything I thought I knew. I opened his book with a very strong prejudice against him. (I still think Sobran was a god damned son of a bitch in many ways. His homophobic politics were vile and hateful.) His book convinced me, entirely against my will, that there might be something to the De Vere theory.
Uh, I actually posted this at the other thread, a recent discovery of who that lady likely was, Shakespeare has a connection, De Vere not.
> **[New evidence supports claim that William Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady' may](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/new-evidence-supports-claim-that-william-shakespeare-s-dark-lady-may-have-been-a-clerkenwell-prostitute-8082166.html)**
>
> Shakespeare's lust object may have been Black Luce from Clerkenwell
> [@](#):
>
> A Shakespeare scholar claims to have found evidence supporting a suggestion made in the 1930s that she was a madam called “Lucy Negro” or “Black Luce”, who ran a notorious bawdy house in Clerkenwell.
>
> Dr Duncan Salkeld, reader in Shakespeare studies at the University of Chichester, told The Independent that he has unearthed documentary records that lead him to conclude that she is “the foremost candidate for the dubious role of the Dark Lady”.
>
> Many of the sonnets 127 to 152 are addressed to an unidentified woman – the “Dark Lady” – with whom the Bard imagines an adulterous sexual relationship. She is a temptress, in sonnet 144 – “my female evil” and “my bad angel”.
>
> Dr Salkeld has found references to both Black Luce and her associate Gilbert East – who ran another Clerkenwell brothel – in the diary of Philip Henslowe, the theatre-owner who built the Rose Theatre and whose acting company was a rival to Shakespeare’s. Henslowe, who also put on the Bard’s plays, recorded dining frequently with Gilbert East.
>
> Finding Luce and East together among Henslowe’s tenants connects this couple definitively with the world of theatre, Dr Salkeld claims, making it highly likely she would have been known to Shakespeare. Given her sexual charms, it is not unreasonable to assume she would have been the object of his desires.
>
> Furthermore, Shakespeare had strong connections with Clerkenwell. Not only did associates live there, but also, perhaps, relatives. Dr Salkeld has found other Shakespeares, including a Matthew Shakespeare, listed in Clerkenwell’s parish records. He said: "The name was not uncommon and they may have been unrelated.
>
> " But one aspect of Matthew’s story is intriguing – his marriage to Isabel Peele." Dr Salkeld concludes this suggests a link with the Bard because her dramatist brother George is believed to have collaborated on Titus Andronicus.
>
> The significance of this material has been overlooked until now, Dr Salkeld said: “To my knowledge, no one has spotted this connection before.” He added: “Whoever that person was, Shakespeare painted her with the reputation of Luce… This is new evidence.” Black Luce was described by contemporaries as "an arrant whore and a bawde’, catering for everyone from “ingraunts” (immigrants) to “welthyemen” and the aristocracy.
What I did notice is that that bit was not dealt with at all, only ignored.
So it is that I once again go for the main point, I have to agree not only with most experts, but also with the people that for a living verify if there is any value on pseudoscience and fringe ideas:
> **[Did Shakespeare Write 'Shakespeare'? Much Ado About Nothing | Skeptical Inquirer](https://skepticalinquirer.org/2011/11/did-shakespeare-write-shakespeare-much-ado-about-nothing/)**
> [@](#):
>
> _Anti-Stratfordians start with the answer they want and work backward to the evidence—the opposite of good science and scholarship. They reverse the standards of objective inquiry, replacing them with pseudoscience and pseudohistory._
> [@](#):
>
> Their evidence for Oxford as author is as questionable as their belief is impassioned. They discovered, for example, in a 1578 address to Oxford by fellow poet Gabriel Harvey, a tell-tale clue: Harvey says, “Thine eyes flash fire, thy will shakes spears…” [emphasis added]—an unmistakable reference to the Bard! Unfortunately, this is a rogue translation of the Latin, which really just says, “Thine eyes flash fire. Thy countenance shakes a spear” (Keller 2009, 162–64).
>
> One Oxfordian of the 1940s even enlisted the aid of a spiritualist. The medium used “automatic writing” to link Shakespeare, Bacon, and Oxford, who supposedly had collaborated to produce the plays (Wilson 1993, 19–20).
>
> Oxfordians believe the Earl of Oxford adopted “William Shakespeare” as a pen name. That the hyphenated version is used for about half of the quarto editions of the plays led one recent Oxfordian, Charles Ogborn Jr., to write in 2009, “When we come upon a regularly hyphenated English name compounding two words not in themselves names and also descriptive of an action, we may be sure that the name is fictitious and intended to be understood as of allegorical significance.” This is absurd and begs the question, why then was not the hyphenated spelling used for all printed versions of the plays? In fact, creative phonetic spelling was common in Shakespeare’s time, as evidenced, for example, by such different versions as Will, Willm, William, Willelmum, etc., and Shakspere, Shackspere, Shaxpere, Shagspere, Shakespear, Shake-speare, and Shakespeare; likewise, there were eleven different versions of Christopher Marlowe’s surname (Keller 2009, 156–57).
> [@](#):
>
> How did the Bard acquire the vast learning shown in his writings? Shakespeare’s inherent genius would have been supplemented by a serious education in grammar school (where he would have learned some Latin and Greek) and later residence in London, Britain’s intellectual center, where he obviously read omnivorously. Himself an actor, as well as a shareholder in an acting company and a theater, he befriended many playwrights, poets, scholars, travelers, gentlemen, and others (Keller 2009, 12, 271)—sources of knowledge indeed. (Nevertheless, Shakespeare did not always get things right: for example, he gave Bohemia a seacoast and put clocks in ancient Rome [Evans 1949].)
>
> Oxfordians wonder at the absence of any manuscripts, letters, or diaries in Shakespeare’s handwriting, but there is a general lack of such materials from Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists (Keller 2009, 4). They apparently placed little value on keeping such items, since collecting literary autographs did not become a serious endeavor until the latter part of the eighteenth century (Matus 1991, 70).
>
> To sum up, there really was a Shakespeare, and to believe that someone else wrote the plays and poems bearing his name—that there was in fact a conspiracy to perpetrate an elaborate hoax—is to gratuitously violate the principle of Occam’s razor, the dictum that the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is to be preferred.
>
> But those who have stepped through the looking glass will not be dissuaded. As Schoenbaum (1991, 451) notes, nothing “will erase suspicions fostered over a century by amateurs who have yielded to the dark power of the anti-Stratfordian obsession. One thought perhaps offers a crumb of redeeming comfort: the energy absorbed by the mania might otherwise have gone into politics.”
So, yeah, I think that theory mentioned by you is wrong.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/44 "2013-08-28T00:40:13Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Uh, I actually posted this at the other thread . . .
>
> So, yeah, I think that theory mentioned by you is wrong.
Oops, sorry, I overlooked that post.
And…thanks! You responded with facts in detail. That’s cool. (One of the things I like most about you!) Thank you for not utilizing snark, sarcasm, and ridicule. That’s all I ever asked.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/45 "2013-08-28T00:52:21Z")
Trinopus and septimus, you both posted in the [Bible Code thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=674715). The Bible Code uses thinking - starting with an answer and working backward to include as evidence anything that possibility can be twisted to point to the answer decided in advance - that is the same as in all conspiracy theories and also is found in every anti-Shakespeare argument.
This is a serious question: why is it sufficient to note the mountains of evidence against the Bible Code and then dismiss further argument in its favor with ridicule but not the exactly parallel case for, say, Oxford?
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/46 "2013-08-28T01:52:54Z")
**Exapno Mapcase** : That’s exactly the kind of dismissive response that I wanted to avoid. You don’t address the issue in any way whatsoever. You just say, “There is a mountain of evidence against this theory.” Okay: show me the mountain.
Or, rather, don’t bother, because **GIGObuster** did.
He answered the question the way it was requested it be answered. Your post, while phrased relatively politely, is just threadshitting.
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### Author:  [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/47 "2013-08-28T02:32:22Z")
I disagree. Based on your posts, it appears the reason no one addresses Sobran’s arguments is because he does not offer any for rebuttal.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/48 "2013-08-28T02:34:03Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> **Exapno Mapcase** : That’s exactly the kind of dismissive response that I wanted to avoid. You don’t address the issue in any way whatsoever. You just say, “There is a mountain of evidence against this theory.” Okay: show me the mountain.
>
> Or, rather, don’t bother, because **GIGObuster** did.
>
> He answered the question the way it was requested it be answered. Your post, while phrased relatively politely, is just threadshitting.
Uh, I think that in this case you did miss post #7, **Exapno Mapcase** did summarize the reasons why the Oxfordians are not respected and recommended an excellent book on the issue.
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### Author:  [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/49 "2013-08-28T03:01:58Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> Alias Shakespeare by Joe Sobran. It’s been a while since I read it, so I’m going by memory.
>
> He argued that William Shakespeare of Stratford didn’t have the education to write the plays. Shakespeare wouldn’t have read Plutarch, wouldn’t have travelled to Italy, wouldn’t have known courtly manners and speech, etc. The playwright showed too much knowledge of these matters.
Sobran is wrong. Anybody could have read Plutarch’s history.
[Here’s a nice essay that covers Shakespeare’s knowledge of history and Italy.](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/italy.html)
Shakespeare didn’t ever go to Italy, but he didn’t know jack about it, either. He set two entire plays in Venice, without ever using the word canal. He also created a city near Venice called “Belmont.” WTF?
You know who else set plays in Italy? Everybody. It was the place to set comedies.
Shakespeare didn’t know a whole lot about courtly manners, and it shows. [Here’s an essay about that.](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/aristocrat.html)
> [@](#):
>
> More convincing is Sobran’s argument regarding the mysterious lover addressed in the Sonnets. He suggested how the sonnets point very directly at De Vere, while having no obvious references to Shakespeare.
It’s easy to take a piece of writing, pick a person, and pick out the pieces that are “perfect matches.”
Here, we get into qualitative analysis that leaves lots of room for saying whatever you want, and it’s hard to disprove anything. I don’t know how to convince somebody about writing styles and so forth, myself, so I defer to the experts. [Here’s a specific essay about Sobran’s take on the sonnets](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/sobran.html#sonnsouth), if that helps.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/50 "2013-08-28T03:03:46Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Uh, I think that in this case you did miss post #7, **Exapno Mapcase** did summarize the reasons why the Oxfordians are not respected and recommended an excellent book on the issue.
I seem to have missed several posts… I really did set out to read the whole thread, but may have accidentally jumped a page.
Anyway, to be explicit, in the thread about the Bible Code, I offered concrete reasons why it doesn’t work. I mentioned my own independent research using equidistant letter code analysis of other texts than the Bible, where I got the same sort of results. I gave reasons.
In the Shakespeare thing, I don’t have the experience, the knowledge, or the ability to approach it on my own. I am dependent on other sources. (Just as I am in the global warming issue. You are more persuasive than your adversaries. You give actual cites!) Since I am stuck having to take the word of others, I tend to lean in the direction of those who give the more persuasive reasons.
It was my bad luck to read Joe Sobran’s book, because the man was a very persuasive writing. It was, further, my bad luck to read some bad and unpersuasive rebuttals. That’s the kind of introduction to a topic that can set one on a very wrong path!
Don’t you feel at least a little sympathy for some poor high school kid who stumbles upon Velikovsky in a library somewhere, and reads it, without having the astronomy background to see why it’s garbage? Then, if his chemistry teacher says, “Oh, that’s all garbage,” how effective is that? The kid gets the wrong impression about how science is conducted. “Oh, I guess science is done by name-calling.” It can take years for him to come around to the proper comprehension of the nature of scientific debate.
Well, in the Shakespeare affair, I am that poor dumb kid!
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### Author:  [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/51 "2013-08-28T03:05:35Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Uh, I think that in this case you did miss post #7, **Exapno Mapcase** did summarize the reasons why the Oxfordians are not respected and recommended an excellent book on the issue.
\*\*Trinopus \*\*doesn’t want a summary of why Oxfordians are not respected. He wants the arguments themselves addressed. There’s a difference.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/52 "2013-08-28T03:09:53Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> We had a recent and thorough discussion in the thread Marley cited. What point could be made from rehashing that?
>
> Let me summarize, if that’s needed:
>
> 1. There is no controversy . . .
I think that, when I first read this post, I stopped right about there. The tone seemed dismissive, and dismissive responses were explicitly what had been asked not to be offered.
I didn’t get as far as…
> [@](#):
>
> One excellent place to start is with James Shapiro’s [Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?](http://www.amazon.com/Contested-Will-Who-Wrote-Shakespeare/dp/B0048ELD4G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377627259&sr=1-1&keywords=contested+will), which demolishes the alternate claimants. Reading only conspiracist literature is like reading only truther sites; you might find yourself believing a single side of an argument but that belief must vanish when both sides are known. . . .
I will obtain and read this book.
However, take note; I did not only read conspiracist literature. I read Sobran, and then I read some rebuttalist literature. The trouble was, I had the really shitten luck to read some bad rebuttalist literature, the kind that said, “Sobran is so stupid…” I needed something that would say why he was wrong, not merely to assert that he was stupid.
I’ve had the bad luck to see Henry Morris in action. But I had already had the very strong proection of a decent grounding in evolutionary science. Imagine the poor bastard who hears Morris (Gish, et al) without that grounding.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/53 "2013-08-28T03:09:56Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> **Exapno Mapcase** : That’s exactly the kind of dismissive response that I wanted to avoid. You don’t address the issue in any way whatsoever. You just say, “There is a mountain of evidence against this theory.” Okay: show me the mountain.
>
> Or, rather, don’t bother, because **GIGObuster** did.
>
> He answered the question the way it was requested it be answered. Your post, while phrased relatively politely, is just threadshitting.
I thoroughly disagree.
First, because I already pointed you to the previous thread where evidence was given. And because I have already given a cite to a standard popular text that is pro-Shakespeare that makes this case in hundreds of researched pages. If you need more, there is the [Shakespeare Authorship](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/) web site, which does a job similar to the [talkorigins.org](http://talkorigins.org) site in debunking Creationism and includes [Joseph Sobran’s Alias Shakespeare: A Selective Critique](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/sobran.html). But you shouldn’t need me to give you an easily findable website. I’ve never understood why the debunkers have to do all the research and then try to present it in easily digestible summary form. That’s a mountain of work. It should be required in these threads that the doubters first go through all the evidence, not just one side of it. (I know that’s not realistic; sue me.)
Second, and far more important, is that I am making the case that all conspiracy theories are not only fatally flawed, but identifiable as flawed because of the type of reasoning, evidence, and questioning that they use. Refuting facts individually is important, but is similar to squashing individual ants when you see them in your kitchen. The only real remedy is to put out the ant poison and get the whole colony? swarm? mass? of ants.
Refuting a fact will never satisfy a true believer. There will always be another question asked, as if finding a single wrong data point will be the chink in the armor, the hole in the fortifications that will bring the entire edifice down. This despite there is no precedent for such an event. No conspiracy theory has ever been proven correct this way; quite the reverse. The evidence that Oswald was the lone gunman is stronger now than it was 50 years ago. The evidence that Velikovski was a crackpot (in archaeology as well as astronomy) is far stronger now than 50 years ago. The evidence that the Kensington Rune Stone was never carved by a Viking is far stronger now than 50 years ago.
I understand that people would like to be thought mistaken on a fact than to be told their their thinking itself is faulty. Conspiracy theories rely upon this. If people understood that their thinking about X is the same thinking used for the extremely silly Y, there might be more hesitation about asserting X’s truth. The Bible Code is too silly for any but the most credulous to take seriously. Birtherism, trutherism, moonhoaxing, can and should be ridiculed to death. Climate deniers and anti-vaccine monsters may require a more scientific debate, but it’s easier to see that that the thinking behind such theories is nonsensical than to absorb the details behind complicated advanced jargon. Trying to convey the latter is fine and I am in awe of those like GIGObuster who devote countless hours to it. But these are all one and the same flawed thinking. Read the threads on them and see for yourself.
What I’m saying is the equivalent of the “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” adage. Fighting ignorance can be done with facts. Fighting credulity can only be done by teaching thinking.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/54 "2013-08-28T03:17:02Z")
Simulposted. But your post is important because when I say there is no controversy, I mean it in the same way there is no controversy over Creationism. Apparently you see a difference between the Oxford conspiracy and the Creationism conspiracy. I do not, and I would say as above that the entire scholarly profession does not either. Obviously a few scientists advocate for Creationism. That does not mean the entire profession of biology and allied sciences is not solidly in favor of evolution; it means that the few Creationists should be doubly suspect. Teach the controversy is an admission that they have lost the intellectual battle.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/55 "2013-08-28T03:41:14Z")
Sorry. One last post for the evening now that I’ve remembered the title of the book I was looking for.
[Attributing Authorship: An Introduction by Harold Love](http://www.amazon.com/Attributing-Authorship-Introduction-Harold-Love/dp/0521789486/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377660513&sr=1-2) is:
> [@](#):
>
> the first comprehensive literary survey of the field to appear in forty years. It revisits a number of famous controversies, including those concerning the authorship of the Homeric poems, books from the Old and New Testaments, and the plays of Shakespeare. Written with wit and erudition, the study makes this intriguing field accessible for students and scholars.
Love lays out the procedures by which real scholars attempt to determine authorship, from the older textual examinations to the newer stylometric quantifications. He of course has a chapter on Shakespeare, but it’s too short to do much more than say, “they’re doing it all wrong.”
Much of what I have said is taken from this book. It’s hard to read the amateur conspiracists - and, yes, I’ve read reams of the stuff - and take it seriously, when those authors clearly fail to live up to the most minimal professional standards.
Oddly, the book is available in used hardcover more cheaply than in paperback. I would encourage those who have a serious interest in the wider subject to read it. It’s scholarly but accessible. And short, too.
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/56 "2013-08-28T03:46:57Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> Don’t you feel at least a little sympathy for some poor high school kid who stumbles upon Velikovsky in a library somewhere, and reads it, without having the astronomy background to see why it’s garbage? Then, if his chemistry teacher says, “Oh, that’s all garbage,” how effective is that? The kid gets the wrong impression about how science is conducted. “Oh, I guess science is done by name-calling.” It can take years for him to come around to the proper comprehension of the nature of scientific debate.
I dunno, I read a fair amount of crackpot stuff when I was kid: I read a couple of books on UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle and Van Danikan’s alien spaceships. I actually reacted favorably to the few\* who didn’t merely say that these ideas were wrong, but they didn’t deserve to be taken seriously.
Distinguishing between serious inquiry and crackpottery is a valid and useful skill: the methodological claims made in this thread are probably more helpful than the substantive ones, big picture-wise.
- eg I saw a local magic show, where some old guy ranted about there being more money in flim-flam than in serious psychic investigation, and indeed woo authors were out to make a buck, and that furthermore professional magicians should investigate dubious psychic claims rather than psychology professors. The old guy was James Randi, before he established his $1 million prize.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/57 "2013-08-28T03:59:13Z")
> [@bup](#):
>
> . . . Shakespeare didn’t ever go to Italy, but he didn’t know jack about it, either. He set two entire plays in Venice, without ever using the word canal. He also created a city near Venice called “Belmont.” WTF? . . .
One of Sobran’s more interesting points was that one of the plays alludes to a little known canal between two cities, something that no-one would have known of without actually having travelled there.
From what you say, the easiest explanation is sheer coincidence. He made up that canal out of ignorance, and it is nothing but the whimsy of the cosmos that it happened actually to exist.
The standard explanation for a lot of Shakespeare’s knowledge is that he sat in pubs and listened a lot. Sailors came in, and he’d take note of their jargon. Servants of upper-class people came in, ditto.
Sobran was wrong. Okay, I’ll buy that. I just wanted to hear someone go into a little more detail than saying, “Geeze, how stupid can a guy get?” Even Velikovsky deserves better. Even Henry Morris! (Even me!)
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/58 "2013-08-28T04:07:49Z")
> [@bup](#):
>
> I disagree. That’s not how that reads to me.
>
> What’s your citation here?
>
> [Here’s a better discussion of the eulogies than I could make.](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/eulogies.html)
> What’s your cite that John Hall was an avid letter writer who mentioned other poets?
>
> What books did Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson or John Webster leave?
>
> They were both women, and Susannah \*could \*sign her name, at least. There’s no evidence they were illiterate, it’s just likely because of the time and place. But that reasoning is circular for determining their illiteracy as a mark against Shakespeare. Besides, Shakespeare wasn’t a scholar. It’s like having expectations of Steven Spielberg’s kids.
To be fair, we actually do have some evidence that Judith Shakespeare was probably illiterate, since there’s an extant document that she signed with a mark rather than a signature. (I say “probably” because it’s a single document and there are a few other plausible reasons why someone might use a mark – e.g., injury to one’s writing hand, not wanting to embarrass illiterate people who were present – and because sixteenth-century children didn’t usually begin to learn writing until _after_ they had mastered reading, so there was some percentage of the population who could read but not write. For the same reason, the fact that Shakespeare’s older daughter, Susanna, _could_ sign her name is generally considered good evidence that she was fully literate.)
Not that his daughters’ literacy has any particular bearing on whether Shakespeare wrote the plays, as you quite correctly point out.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/59 "2013-08-28T06:05:44Z")
So a prostitute hung around the theater – no secret that, the London theater of that era was well-known for cutpurses, etc. – and with no evidence whatsoever linking her to Shakespeare, the Dark Lady puzzle is suddenly solved? Similar reasoning by an anti-Stratfordian would be laughed at.
As would presenting the syllogism:
(A) A 16th century English gentleman was likely not to bother with his daughter’s education, leaving them illiterate.
(B) The greatest wordsmith ever, a very educated lover of words and perhaps the greatest writer ever, was a 16th century English gentleman.
(C) Therefore, the greatest wordsmith ever was likely not to bother with his daughter’s education, leaving them illiterate.
I’m not a handwriting expert, but some say Susanna’s signature is like that of an illiterate. There’s a deposition on record where she was unable to identify her own husband’s handwriting. Her sister Judith has no surviving signature besides 'X." Literate or not, neither daughter nor their husbands nor children left any recorded comment about their father’s alleged literary efforts. Nor produced any book or manuscript by the famous poet, despite the huge demand for such soon after his death.
I’m no expert on this topic; indeed I’m far from certain who wrote the Sonnets. If forced to “make book” I might put Stratford at 40%, Oxford-plus-collaborator at 40%, 20% for “the field.” There is no clear “smoking gun” but there’s lots and lots of circumstantial evidence. If anyone wants to study the case, Google will give you more than I can. I’ve read many dozens of relevant webpages, both pro-Stratford, pro-Oxford and even a few pro-Marlowe. Unfortunately I’ve lost or mislaid any bookmarks I once had, but will hunt some down _if there’s sincere interest in my doing so._ (I’d be more selective than just [pointing to a huge list of Oxfordian newsletters!](http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?page_id=759))
[Here’s one short summary, though it misses many important points.](http://hardthinking.com/2012/01/27/shakespeare-authorship-short-version/)
As to the suggestion that some Sonnets reflected homosexual love for Southampton, some say such confession by a commoner would be extremely unlikely. YMMV.
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### Author:  [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2013, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/60 "2013-08-28T08:16:07Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> I’m no expert on this topic; indeed I’m far from certain who wrote the Sonnets. If forced to “make book” I might put Stratford at 40%, Oxford-plus-collaborator at 40%, 20% for “the field.” There is no clear “smoking gun” but there’s lots and lots of circumstantial evidence. If anyone wants to study the case, Google will give you more than I can.
>
> [snip]
>
> As to the suggestion that some Sonnets reflected homosexual love for Southampton, some say such confession by a commoner would be extremely unlikely. YMMV.
**septimus** , do you mind if I ask what the point of this is? As you will no doubt have noted, most of us here who, as you probably rightly say, are often dismissive of the Oxfordian claims (or indeed any claims to authorship but those of Shakespeare himself) are doing so on the basis of often extensive reading and weighing of evidence. You’ve been asked if you read James Shapiro’s truly excellent _Contested Will_–have you? Because all of the issues you raise in your last post are exhaustively discussed therein.
If what you require is a reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets, I recommend Don Patterson’s _[Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets](http://www.amazon.de/Reading-Shakespeares-Sonnets-Don-Paterson/dp/0571245021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377677228&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+shakespeare%27s+sonnets)_, which gives you as good a reading as any you are likely to get here, and better. If what you require is an explanation of those issues that you’ve been told point to de Vere, or Marlowe, or Queen Elizabeth, you’ve now repeatedly been pointed to [http://shakespeareauthorship.com/](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/).
Now you offer, and that itself seems, to me, somewhat rude, given the evidence provided by so many here that they fully understand the nature of the controversy, a short website that repeats many of the arguments _disproven in this very thread_–for example the alledged “knowledge about court ritual”. Would it not be accurate to say that you are not, in fact, interested in the evidence, but would much rather perpetuate, in the face of evidence, a precious claim to agnosticism? And if it is not accurate to say so: what do you find inconclusive about the evidence provided; I would be very interested to hear you tell.
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