# A Discussion About Whether Shakespeare is Shakespeare without Dismissiveness **URL:** \ **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:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/61 "2013-08-28T11:02:36Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I posted (#38 in that thread) an account of King James’ actions the day Oxford died, mentioned that it had to be considered an interesting mystery despite the lack of any proven connection to the authorship; the _only_ response that post got was to repeat the obvious – that I hadn’t proven any connection to the authorship. But there is no mystery about the arrests on 24 June 1604. Not with a bit of understanding of what was going on at court and in Parliament. By the summer of 1604 James’s advisers were split into two rival factions - a pro-Scots, pro-Union, anti-Cecil group and a pro-Cecil, anti-Scots, anti-Union group. The complication was that James was determined to retain both the Scots and Cecil. The arrests of Southampton and some of his pro-Cecil cronies were a cackhanded attempt by the Scots in the king’s Bedchamber to undermine some of Cecil’s leading supporters without directly attacking Cecil himself. All this is actually quite well-documented. It is discussed in some detail in Neil Cuddy, ‘The Conflicting Loyalties of a “vulgar counselor”: The Third Earl of Southampton, 1597-1624’, pp. 126-30, in John Morrill, Paul Slack and Daniel Woolf (eds.), _Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G.E. Aylmer_ (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993). There is therefore indeed no connection at all with Oxford’s death or with the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/62 "2013-08-28T12:03:06Z")
> [@APB](#): > > But there is no mystery about the arrests on 24 June 1604… > There is therefore indeed no connection at all with Oxford’s death or with the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Oxford was closely associated with both Cecil and Southampton, yet you confidently assert that the date was coincidence? Did your source give an explanation for the precise choice of date? Note that Southampton’s papers were seized that day … and Oxford inexplicably died intestate. (Perhaps his were seized as well.) I’m afraid the categorical and _ex cathedra_ pronouncement “indeed no connection at all with Oxford’s death” is precisely the sort of thing that infuriates some of us. As a related example, I’d ask those of you who have Ian Wilson’s _Shakespeare: The Evidence_(\*) at hand to turn to page 19 and read. This is almost the only mention of Oxford in that book, despite that whatever he was he was a patron of the arts and closely connected to Southampton, etc. Two of the six sentences Wilson devotes to Oxford concern solely an alleged fart. Is that responsible “non-dismissive” rebuttal? (\* - I realize Wilson’s biography is probably held in low regard. Give me some credit: I purchased that book many years before Shapiro’s etc. _at the specific suggestion of a Shakespearean actor who thought it the best book to debunk anti-Stratfordian views._) **Enterprise** asks “septimus, do you mind if I ask what the point of this is?” I intend to post, probably later today, a meta-answer to this meta-question. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/63 "2013-08-28T13:28:58Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Oxford was closely associated with both Cecil and Southampton, yet you confidently assert that the date was coincidence? Did your source give an explanation for the precise choice of date? Note that Southampton’s papers were seized that day … and Oxford inexplicably died intestate. (Perhaps his were seized as well.) > > I’m afraid the categorical and _ex cathedra_ pronouncement “indeed no connection at all with Oxford’s death” is precisely the sort of thing that infuriates some of us. That the Scots would attack some of Cecil’s supporters had been cleared with the king over a week before and they had even then told Cecil of their plans to reassure him that he was not to take it personally. They had no reason at all to wait for Oxford’s death, which was irrelevant to the game they were playing. Why suppose a link with Oxford, when Southampton had very well-connected enemies openly gunning for him and whom Southampton was, in turn, trying to attack? It’s not even as if they were just fighting each other for the hell of it. Both sides had serious political agendas, on the one side about the constitutional future of England and Scotland and on the other about a radical overhaul of the royal finances. Given the stakes for which they were playing, Oxford’s death doesn’t seem to have been even a distraction. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/64 "2013-08-28T14:45:31Z")
What knowledge Shakespeare had of the court is very easily explained: He was the captain of the King’s Company, and often performed by royal command in front of the King and his court. In other words, commoner or not, he was there. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/65 "2013-08-28T14:51:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What knowledge Shakespeare had of the court is very easily explained: He was the captain of the King’s Company, and often performed by royal command in front of the King and his court. In other words, commoner or not, he was there. That didn’t happen until 1603. But they were the [Lord Chamberlain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chamberlain)’s Men starting in 1594 and that would lend itself to the same kind of explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/66 "2013-08-28T17:16:08Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > That didn’t happen until 1603. But they were the [Lord Chamberlain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chamberlain)’s Men starting in 1594 and that would lend itself to the same kind of explanation. While that’s true, I think that the much better counter-claim is still that there isn’t really all that much in Shakespeare that would require knowledge about the workings of a court, is there? The small ensembles and limited stage craft of the Elizabethan playhouse could never have fully caught the immensity of an actual royal court, of course, but even given that–what expert knowledge about courts is there in Shakespeare that required any actual time at a court? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/67 "2013-08-28T17:38:13Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > While that’s true, I think that the much better counter-claim is still that there isn’t really all that much in Shakespeare that would require knowledge about the workings of a court, is there? The small ensembles and limited stage craft of the Elizabethan playhouse could never have fully caught the immensity of an actual royal court, of course, but even given that–what expert knowledge about courts is there in Shakespeare that required any actual time at a court? I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/68 "2013-08-28T17:53:07Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > While that’s true, I think that the much better counter-claim is still that there isn’t really all that much in Shakespeare that would require knowledge about the workings of a court, is there? The small ensembles and limited stage craft of the Elizabethan playhouse could never have fully caught the immensity of an actual royal court, of course, but even given that–what expert knowledge about courts is there in Shakespeare that required any actual time at a court? I defer that to the essay [Were Shakespeare’s Plays Written by an Aristocrat?](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/aristocrat.html) ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/69 "2013-08-28T17:59:49Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > 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. Do you have more info on this? I googled and with 15 seconds’ effort didn’t find anything. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/70 "2013-08-28T18:10:32Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > 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. Admittedly, the evidence level expected of a Stratfordian versus someone else is less, because the Stratfordian’s is the default position. Shakespeare was an actor in the Kings’ Men, his name is on the plays, the picture of him in the Folio matches the bust at Stratford pretty well, etc. There’s no need to ‘solve’ the Dark Lady mystery for a Stratfordian, only to show it’s not unreasonable Shakespeare would have had someone. > [@](#): > > 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. Your second premise is unfair. Shakespeare wasn’t in an ivory tower weeping at the beauty of his own words. It was a business, he was getting shit done and getting words on the page. He wasn’t home much, and besides, the two girls _were girls_. They weren’t going to be in theater no matter what. > [@](#): > > I’m not a handwriting expert, but some say Susanna’s signature is like that of an illiterate. Who? > [@](#): > > There’s a deposition on record where she was unable to identify her own husband’s handwriting. Yes, her husband’s Latin writing. > [@](#): > > Literate or not, neither daughter nor their husbands nor children left any recorded comment about their father’s alleged literary efforts. Well, if they couldn’t write, that’s not a surprise, is it? > [@](#): > > Nor produced any book or manuscript by the famous poet, despite the huge demand for such soon after his death. We also don’t have any books from Fletcher, Jonson, Marlowe, Webster… I’d like a cite for the claim there was a huge demand for manuscripts and books by Shakespeare after his death. Jonson’s conceit that he could sell a book of his own [del]oevure[/del] [del]hors doeuvre[/del] canon was the first of its kind; Shakespeare’s was the second. It was out 7 years after. > [@](#): > > [Here’s one short summary, though it misses many important points.](http://hardthinking.com/2012/01/27/shakespeare-authorship-short-version/) I’ll read later. > [@](#): > > As to the suggestion that some Sonnets reflected homosexual love for Southampton, some say such confession by a commoner would be extremely unlikely. YMMV. The sonnets were never intended to be published. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/71 "2013-08-28T18:11:02Z")
> [@bup](#): > > I defer that to the essay [Were Shakespeare’s Plays Written by an Aristocrat?](http://shakespeareauthorship.com/aristocrat.html) Yes, I know that essay, but aside from its analysis of the Capulet’s household, it does not really analyze the court scenes. I’d venture off hand that there is nothing in the histories, _Lear_ or _Macbeth_ at least that shows any insider knowledge. But of course, the next question would be, why should they, given that the audience would usually not know the difference… ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/72 "2013-08-28T18:23:17Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > While that’s true, I think that the much better counter-claim is still that there isn’t really all that much in Shakespeare that would require knowledge about the workings of a court, is there? The small ensembles and limited stage craft of the Elizabethan playhouse could never have fully caught the immensity of an actual royal court, of course, but even given that–what expert knowledge about courts is there in Shakespeare that required any actual time at a court? This is true. Like most of the “The plays can’t have been written by Shakespeare because how would Shakespeare know about X” arguments, this one breaks down when you look at what his contemporaries were doing. _Lots_ of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays were set at court. Most of them aren’t by Shakespeare. I can’t think of anything in the plays that would suggest Shakespeare’s knowledge of court life was any more sophisticated or realistic than Marlowe’s, or Webster’s, or Chapman’s, or Middleton’s, or Beaumont and Fletcher’s, or that of a dozen other people working in the theater at the time. It’s unlikely that they were _all_ fronts for noblemen. Undoubtedly, some of them really _had_ attended events at court – Shakespeare would certainly have done so since his company performed there – but you don’t really have to know much about court protocol to write a play set in a court, you just have to know something about the stage conventions for representing a court. One reason why there are so few Oxfordian academics is that if you’ve read enough early modern drama, you realize Shakespeare wasn’t doing anything that other playwrights, the vast majority of whom also had middle-class origins, weren’t doing _too_. He was exceptionally _good_ at what he did, and there were a few genres that he particularly specialized in and a few that he mostly avoided, but his plays are not radically different in kind from the plays that other people were writing at around the same time, and they don’t reflect any special expertise that would have been inaccessible to someone of a relatively ordinary background. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/73 "2013-08-28T18:31:43Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > 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. > [@bup](#): > > Do you have more info on this? I googled and with 15 seconds’ effort didn’t find anything. [This is from an Amazon.com review of a different book, but I’m going to guess it refers to the same thing:](http://www.amazon.com/The-Shakespeare-Guide-Italy-Retracing/product-reviews/0062074261) the reviewer talks about 16th-century canals connecting Verona and Milan, something Shakespeare alludes to in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Apparently some people say Shakespeare screwed up by making that a boat journey, but it was actually a trip you could make by boat at the time. The idea that Shakespeare could only have known that by traveling to Italy doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I don’t think that would be little known, and anyway, couldn’t he have heard it from someone else who had made the trip? There is almost never only one way to know something. And [according to this guy](http://oxfraud.com/100-verona1), there are still errors in the scene because a couple of the characters talk about losing the tide, and while that is a problem if you’re traveling on the Thames, it’s not a problem if you’re on a waterway connected to the Mediterranean. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/74 "2013-08-28T18:45:15Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Oxford was closely associated with both Cecil and Southampton, yet you confidently assert that the date was coincidence? Did your source give an explanation for the precise choice of date? Note that Southampton’s papers were seized that day … and Oxford inexplicably died intestate. (Perhaps his were seized as well.) Oxford gave his last lands away while in his final days; not only did he die intestate, he died with no estate. It’s not clear to me that Oxford was closely associated with Southampton. I know de Vere’s daughter and Southampton were put together as a proposed marriage, but Southampton (16 at the time) declined. I don’t know of any other association. Here, without being dismissive, I’ll say that I think Oxfordians throw a lot of unwarranted adverbs in - like ‘closely,’ which I’m guessing came from an Oxfordian source. Or ‘inexplicably’ to describe Oxford’s dying intestate. Those words tell us how we should feel about evidence, and I think Oxfordian arguments suffer for them. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/75 "2013-08-28T18:48:48Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > [This is from an Amazon.com review of a different book, but I’m going to guess it refers to the same thing:](http://www.amazon.com/The-Shakespeare-Guide-Italy-Retracing/product-reviews/0062074261) the reviewer talks about 16th-century canals connecting Verona and Milan, something Shakespeare alludes to in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Apparently some people say Shakespeare screwed up by making that a boat journey, but it was actually a trip you could make by boat at the time. Ah. Interesting. I’ve actually searched Shakespeare’s plays for the word ‘canal’ and gotten no hits. Just saying it’s a boat journey (and getting lucky) makes sense. Nobody has a problem with Ben Jonson knowing about San Marco Plaza in Venice (in _Volpone_). ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/76 "2013-08-29T00:27:34Z")
I still haven’t seen a refutation of my theory that fake Shakespeare was real Shakespeare’s coauthor. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/77 "2013-08-29T02:03:32Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > [This is from an Amazon.com review of a different book, but I’m going to guess it refers to the same thing:](http://www.amazon.com/The-Shakespeare-Guide-Italy-Retracing/product-reviews/0062074261) the reviewer talks about 16th-century canals connecting Verona and Milan, something Shakespeare alludes to in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Apparently some people say Shakespeare screwed up by making that a boat journey, but it was actually a trip you could make by boat at the time. . . . That’s the one Sobran mentioned. I’m glad you found it, because I think I do not want to read Sobran’s book again. I’m gonna read the book **Exapno Mapcase** recommended, and that’s my due diligence. I do find it vaguely amusing that both Shakespeare’s knowledge of Italy, and his ignorance of Italy, are used as support, both for and against his authorship! It’s an interesting nuance I’d never seen before. Sobran’s argument was that the plays showed too much knowledge of Italy. Good point, though, about the tides. (My very first story, written away back in '79, had Mediterranean tides. Well, how was I to know? I live in Southern California, where, like, man, the tides are a way of life, f’sure!) ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319/78 "2013-08-29T11:59:50Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I do find it vaguely amusing that both Shakespeare’s knowledge of Italy, and his ignorance of Italy, are used as support, both for and against his authorship! It’s an interesting nuance I’d never seen before. I’ve never thought about that. That is interesting, although I can’t think of instances of Shakespeare’s ignorance of Italy being used to argue against his authorship. I do think the ignorance of Venice argues against Oxford in particular, who lived there for two years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-discussion-about-whether-shakespeare-is-shakespeare-without-dismissiveness/667319.md?page=3)