# Any Shakespeare deniers on this board? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 13, 2014, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197 "2014-10-13T12:47:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/161 "2014-12-03T02:37:14Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > Specifically, I’d tend to think that a Shakespeare denier is statistically more likely to hold conservative political views, and a Shakespeare-wrote-Shakespeare believer more likely to hold progressive views. Yep, the biggest denier I know is very conservative. Not sure why that’s the correlation. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/162 "2014-12-03T04:51:37Z")
Joe Sobran was immensely conservative – he used to be one of a panel of six radio pundits, delivering short political addresses for the radio, and he was the guy on the extreme right. The only other guy I know in person (as opposed to all y’all SDMB pen-pals) who is an Oxfordian is sort of an old-fashioned Bob Dole conservative. And yet I’m immensely liberal…and here I am, at least in the “Damned if I Know” column of the matter. As much as I detest Joe Sobran’s politics, his book on Shakespeare was convincing. I can’t figure a reason why the matter should have a liberal/conservative correlation. It doesn’t seem relevant. Conservatives aren’t really “royalists” or supporters of the nobility. (And de Vere wasn’t a really good role-model for them: he was too flighty, independent, headstrong, a spendthrift and wastrel, and of shaky loyalty to the Queen. He isn’t a guy I’d want as the leader of my political faction!) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/163 "2014-12-03T04:59:46Z")
That liberal/conservative correlation has been noticed before: In QI on the show about The Immortal Bard: > **[QI: Shakespeare Season Special - The Immortal Bard - British Comedy Guide](https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/qi/episodes/2012/1/)** > > A guide to The Immortal Bard, an episode of QI. > [@](#): > > The thing that Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, a loony from Newcastle and the Holy Ghost all have in common is that they did not believe that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Shakespeare himself. Professor Looney wrote a book in 1920 called Shakespeare Identified in which he claimed this. The Shakespearean sceptic movement began in the 19th century, with some people claiming that the plays may have been written by Francis Bacon. An insane American woman called Delia Bacon wrote a 625 page book claiming Shakespeare did not write the plays, but made no reference to Francis Bacon. When she died she claimed she was the Holy Ghost. As Stephen Fry and the panelists report, it is mostly a result of elitism and IMHO mostly coming from people that do not like to believe that a commoner could know about or reach levels that “should” only be reached by the upper classes. A good reply to that came from David Mitchell on the show too: “Is not like if the best novels are written now by the Duke of Westminster” Indeed, guys from the middle classes back then could learn enough to become one of the greatest. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/164 "2014-12-03T05:22:11Z")
I dont believe there is a correlation between political views and believing Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. There may have been a correlation in the past but not so much now. Generally Baconians have been from a vaguely leftist republican position, Oxfordians conservative. At least thats the view of James Shapiro. This is probably not so much the case nowadays. Marlovians I would broadly and uneasily categorise as Romantics. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/165 "2014-12-03T11:13:05Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > re biographical details, lots of writers use events from their own lives in their stories. Anderson notes that the Italian settings of the plays closely mirror de Vere’s tour of Italy. This might only be a coincidence, but, again, there seem to be a lot of them. No one is saying this is proof; it’s only suggestive to some degree. It may not be as strong a case as Thoreau’s trout in the milk, but it is more than can be easily dismissed by trivial evidence. One of the things that bothers me about this line of argumentation, beyond the more coherent point that biographical parallelism is profoundly shaky ground for the ascription of fictional writing, is that it works really about the same for Shakespeare himself. Just glancing through the first couple of pages of Peter Ackroyd’s biography–_Shakespeare_–I can find dozens of parallels between the things that are mentioned in the plays and the things Shakespeare would have known: as Ackroyd points out, Shakespeare knows his stuff about village life, the popular names of all kinds of weeds and other plants. To the north of Stratford, as Ackroyd points out, Arden Forest lay, and this comes up in the plays as well. And really, I’m just talking about the first 20 pages or so. So I see your “Oxford knew Italy!,” and raise you a “But Shakespeare knew words for weeds!” and ask you whether you would be willing to grant that Oxford could learn Warwickshire words for weeds but Shakespeare couldn’t pick up (one of the many, many) books about Italy? So, in other words: biographical ascription depends on the cherry-picking of things which the cherry-picker insists require personal knowledge of (even if that knowledge, as in Shakespearian Italy, looks very shaky), while ignoring other things or claiming that _those_ things you can learn from a book. Logically and ethically, you’re back to square one, having to find a convincing reason in the first place why we should be looking at anybody but Shakespeare when the question comes to who wrote the plays–which always boils down to this idea that some things are impossible for anybody to write about without personal knowledge of them, a standard that I doubt the Shakespeare doubters would hold anybody else to, because it’s nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/166 "2014-12-03T19:08:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > We’ve already shown that a number of the plays have dates inconsistent with one major event in de Vere’s life (it’s hard to find an event more major than death), but that doesn’t stop the argument. If not that, then what? Nothing will stop it of course. That’s the nature of conspiracy theories. Hell, if Oxford’s diary was discovered with an entry saying “Met that Will Shakespeare chap and told him how I wish I could write plays like him,” the diehards would find some way to wave it away. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/167 "2014-12-03T20:24:51Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > re biographical details, lots of writers use events from their own lives in their stories. Anderson notes that the Italian settings of the plays closely mirror de Vere’s tour of Italy. This might only be a coincidence, but, again, there seem to be a lot of them. No one is saying this is proof; it’s only suggestive to some degree. Could you be more specific? Here are my counterpoints, off the top of my head. 1. Everybody set comedies in Italy. 2. How did de Vere’s tour of Italy mirror Shakespeare’s settings? 3. Shakespeare’s plays set in Italy reveal he was pretty ignorant of it. Ben Jonson, lowly soldier turned playwright, could identify San Marco plaza in Venice. Shakespeare never included a specific detail about Venice, Verona, Padua, or Rome. The best he does is that Milan and Verona are sufficiently close to each other that Two Gentlemen of Verona is plausible. He placed a place called “Belmont” on the coast near Venice. Would de Vere have placed a fictional French sounding town near Venice? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2014, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/168 "2014-12-03T20:27:14Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > … I can’t figure a reason why the matter should have a liberal/conservative correlation. It doesn’t seem relevant. Conservatives aren’t really “royalists” or supporters of the nobility. … > [@GIGObuster](#): > > …As Stephen Fry and the panelists report, it is mostly a result of elitism and IMHO mostly coming from people that do not like to believe that a commoner could know about or reach levels that “should” only be reached by the upper classes. … I agree with GIGObuster’s post. I’d expand on that to say that there does seem to be a correlation between political conservatism and support for the hierarchical status quo. A conservative is likely to believe in the just-world hypothesis\*: that things are the way they are because this is inherently the right way for things to be (and that some force exists to support “the natural order.”) Thus a baby born poor deserves to be poor, and a baby born to wealth deserves that wealth, because of inborn traits each possesses. From this viewpoint, people born poor or even middle class (like William Shakespeare) simply have less to offer the world, and it’s unlikely that they could make any notable contribution to the world’s store of admirable productions. It follows that any such contribution (in this case the works of Shakespeare) could only have sprung from someone placed by the Natural Order at the top of the social/economic hierarchy–e.g., a Peer of the Realm. \*To some extent, belief that ‘people get what they deserve’ is probably common in the thought processes of all humans, because that belief lets us put aside the copious evidence that random events can do us harm. We experience a comforting sense of being in control when we can pretend to ourselves that instead of being at the mercy of chance, we are being cared for by some supernatural force which will ensure justice and fairness. All of us may be prey to this sort of delusion, but some seem more likely to embrace the ‘people get what they deserve’ theory; this has been studied intensively by trial lawyers and associated professions, because it has a lot to do with how juries make decisions. Here’s a citation for a paper, “Perceptions of risk and the buffering hypothesis: The role of just world beliefs and right-wing authoritarianism,” that’s on point: > **[Perceptions of risk and the buffering hypothesis: The role of just world...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=9735x68AAAAJ&citation_for_view=9735x68AAAAJ:UeHWp8X0CEIC)** > > AJ Lambert, T Burroughs, T Nguyen, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1999 - Cited by 137 ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2014, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/169 "2014-12-04T21:54:37Z")
I think the Oxford position is pretty dumb, all told. Beyond the academic nitty-gritty, there are some big, fluffy reasons why I think it’s a stupid position: 1. I don’t believe that no one would give him credit after his death. I don’t believe that no record in the form of letters from/to friends, etc., would survive. I also find it rather implausible that he would never be outed in his lifetime, either. 2. I think Oxfordians like being “fans” of Oxford as the playwright, so they try to buy a whole package of him as author. I.e., “Statford didn’t write them. Who did? Oxford wrote all of them!” Not so fast. If it’s that easy to call into question the authorship of the plays for Stratford, then it should be equally easy for Oxford. Thus, even if we grant that certain of the plays, etc., show evidence that they reflect the life of Oxford, it doesn’t follow that he wrote _all_ of the plays attributed to Stratford or _all_ of the words in any single play. He may have had one or more collaborators. For all we know, every single play was written by committee. Oxfordians think they can do a neat and clean switch from Stratford to their favorite. I don’t buy it for a second. On the topic of the conspiracy-loving mentality, I think the common factors are these: 1. Bad epistemology about what constitutes evidence of fact relevant to the past. The bad epistemology tends to overcomplicate things. For example, William Shakespeare’s name is on the title page of the folio. No one doubted his authorship for 250 years after his death.–Noooo, I don’t believe it! Obama was born in Hawaii. Here’s the birth certificate.—Noooo, I don’t believe it! 1. Picking and choosing what to disbelieve. They don’t bother to doubt something boring; it’s always something momentous. This is understandable thus far. What’s problematic is that they believe that such a conspiracy _only_ succeeded in these specific instances; they do not extrapolate the consequences of that success to reality as a whole. For example, if it were really true that the Moon Hoax was perpetrated, then our entire view of reality would have to change. _Anything_ could be a lie; _anything_ could be faked. Some conspiracy theorists _do_ seem to go off this deep end and attribute everything we experience to the control of malevolent entities (cf. David Ickes). * * * By the way, I think lumping climate change denial in with the other conspiracies is unfair and incorrect. Most people who are labeled “denialists” hold much more subtle positions, and the label amounts to a straw man, a convenient invalidation. Further, “denialists” are not denying (as the conspiracy theorists almost always do) black and white facts of history (we landed on the moon) or proposing absurdities (reptilian overlords). They are taking issue with very complex science or the recommendations based on this science. My stance on climate change is that those running the models may or may not be right, but they do not propose recommendations based on a cost-benefit analysis (or at least, through the political process, those recommendations do not reach the people). Rather, the emphasis seems to be on shaming opponents for disagreeing, i.e., using it as a political issue without real hope for change ("Those dirty conservatives opposing climate change–they’re destroying the planet!). That does no one any good. And I say this as a very left-leaning person. (One thing I did hear recently was a proposal for alternative energy that would take care of climate change and actually save money in the process. That sounded like a win-win to me, and I’m totally for something like that.) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/170 "2014-12-05T01:47:38Z")
😕 now why put that bit about climate change into this discussion? > [@Aeschines](#): > > By the way, I think lumping climate change denial in with the other conspiracies is unfair and incorrect. Most people who are labeled “denialists” hold much more subtle positions My impression has been that in reality they never seem to drop a lot of the discredited information, and I have found that their “subtle” positions don’t mean much [when they elect one kind of representative to congress.](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/17/climate-change-denial-scepticism-republicans-congress) > [@Aeschines](#): > > My stance on climate change is that those running the models may or may not be right, but they do not propose recommendations based on a cost-benefit analysis (or at least, through the political process, those recommendations do not reach the people). Anyone demanding that from the scientists that deal with models is demanding something outside their scope. [And the evidence is more in favor of them than against](http://phys.org/news/2012-10-science-global-climate-discoveries-mars.html). In any case, proper economic experts like Nordhaus (that became president-elect of the AEA) already did cost benefit analysis and the advice is just the same as when he advised the scientists that consulted experts like him. [It is better economically to deal with the issue now rather than waisting a lot more (much more) down the road](http://www.salon.com/2013/10/30/william_nordhaus_smoking_can_teach_us_about_climate_change/). > [@Aeschines](#): > > Rather, the emphasis seems to be on shaming opponents for disagreeing, i.e., using it as a political issue without real hope for change ("Those dirty conservatives opposing climate change–they’re destroying the planet!). That does no one any good. And I say this as a very left-leaning person. The problem with this view is that it does grossly ignore what is going on, while most of the people do think something must be done the powerful are twisting American politics by funding deniers into positions of government and pumping up discredited scientists. > **[Climate of Doubt | FRONTLINE](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/climate-of-doubt/transcript/?)** > > FRONTLINE explores the massive shift in public opinion on climate change. > **[Climate Skeptic Scientists Are Extremely Overrepresented in the Media](https://www.vice.com/en/article/climate-skeptic-scientists-are-insanely-overrepresented-in-the-media/)** > > Even though more than 90 percent of climate scientists agree global warming is manmade, the skeptics report being asked for comment from the media much more. > [@Aeschines](#): > > (One thing I did hear recently was a proposal for alternative energy that would take care of climate change and actually save money in the process. That sounded like a win-win to me, and I’m totally for something like that.) And many times I pointed to Richard Alley (Republican Scientist) that reported how advantageous will be for society to change and use non polluting energy sources. Most of the ones (and they are mostly conservatives) that claim to follow “subtle” positions just subtly move to other levels of denial, like disparaging the use of computer models and claiming that we should ignore the actual risk levels and wishfully think that we will get the low end of the rise in temperatures expected. As the late Schneider showed, many subtle ones are trying to impugn science tools and conclusions reached decades ago, while the most unreasonable ones continue to impugn basic physics that were understood more than 100 years ago. Anyhow, what is interesting to me here is how others have noticed the similarities of the denial of human induced climate change with the denial of Shakespeare. [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/26/351046/are-shakespeare-deniers-like-climate-science-deniers/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/26/351046/are-shakespeare-deniers-like-climate-science-deniers/) > [@](#): > > Well, it’s certainly apparent that no argument and no fact can sway the hard-core disinformers — see Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming.” > And climate scientists are even less capable of operating a conspiracy than Shakespeare scholars. After all, they’d need to enlist all the major science journals and every major science organization and every member government of the IPCC…. > > Marche himself notes: > > > [@](#): > > > > The original Oxfordian, the aptly named J. Thomas Looney, who proposed the theory in 1920, believed that Shakespeare’s true identity remained a secret because, he said, “it has been left mainly in the hands of literary men.” In his rejection of expertise, at least, Looney was far ahead of his time. This same antielitism is haunting every large intellectual question today. We hear politicians opine on their theories about climate change and evolution as a way of displaying how little they know. When Rick Perry compared climate-change skeptics like himself to Galileo in a Republican debate, I dearly wished that the next question had been “Can you explain Galileo’s theory of falling bodies?” Of all the candidates with their various rejections of the scientific establishment, how many could name the fundamental laws of thermodynamics that students learn in high school? Healthy skepticism about elites has devolved into an absence of basic literacy. > > Precisely. > > > [@](#): > > > > **The Shakespeare controversy, which emerged in the 19th century (at that time, theorists proposed that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare), was one of the origins of the willful ignorance and insidious false balance that is now rotting away our capacity to have meaningful discussions**. The wider public, which has no reason to be familiar with questions of either Renaissance chronology or climate science, assumes that if there are arguments, there must be reasons for those arguments. Along with a right-wing antielitism, an unthinking left-wing open-mindedness and relativism have also given lunatic ideas soil to grow in. Our politeness has actually led us to believe that everybody deserves a say. > > > > ``` > > **The problem is that not everybody does deserve a say. Just because an opinion exists does not mean that the opinion is worthy of respect. Some people deserve to be marginalized and excluded. T** here are many questions in this world over which rational people can have sensible confrontations: whether lower taxes stimulate or stagnate growth; whether abortion is immoral; whether the ’60s were an achievement or a disaster; whether the universe is motivated by a force for benevolence; whether the Fonz jumping on water skis over a shark was cool or lame. Whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is not one of these questions.** > > > > Unfortunately, the nonquestion of Shakespeare’s identity is now being asked on billboards all over the world. It will raise debate where none should be. It will sow confusion where there is none. Somebody here is a fraud, but it isn’t Shakespeare.** > > > > ``` > > Ditto. > > Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Oh, wait. That’s just Bjorn Lomborg…. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/171 "2014-12-05T03:09:11Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > 😕 now why put that bit about climate change into this discussion? A bit of a tangent… Another difference between climate change denial and other conspiracy thinking is that the question of whether climate change is happening and to what degree is being answered in real time. The models predict a significant, measurable rise during our own lifetimes. My guess? I’m going with Murphy’s Law: there won’t be a huge change, and we will all be arguing about it for decades to come. Obviously, about Shakespeare authorship, the Oxfordians will never be satisfied, and unless they get bored or we invent a device that allows us to look back in time, they will be making the same arguments 100 years from now… ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/172 "2014-12-05T03:47:21Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > A bit of a tangent… > > Another difference between climate change denial and other conspiracy thinking is that the question of whether climate change is happening and to what degree is being answered in real time. The models predict a significant, measurable rise during our own lifetimes. My guess? I’m going with Murphy’s Law: there won’t be a huge change, and we will all be arguing about it for decades to come. [Only that that ignores what took place in the 70’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M), **Murphy’s law fell on the deniers** , indeed the rise in temperature from then has been significant and all other forcings do not explain it, only the increase in CO2 and other global warming gases does explain it properly. > [@Aeschines](#): > > Obviously, about Shakespeare authorship, the Oxfordians will never be satisfied, and unless they get bored or we invent a device that allows us to look back in time, they will be making the same arguments 100 years from now… As pointed before, the ones making the same arguments contrary to all the evidence will indeed continue 100 years from now, but it is the human induced climate change deniers who are the ones that will be in the same level as the Oxfordians. 100 years from now they will be treaded as flat earthers too. > **[National Geographic](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/)** > > Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration. > [@](#): > > The Hiatus Will End > > It’s important to note that a pause in rising temperatures doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening, writes Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at NCAR, in an email. “Global warming hasn’t stopped, it has temporarily shifted to the subsurface ocean,” says Meehl, who first proposed that the Atlantic Ocean was storing some of the missing heat. > > Indeed, it’s just a matter of time before this heat is reflected in atmospheric temperatures, says Tung. If this 30-year cycle holds, we’re starting to climb out of the current pause, he explains. > > “The frightening part,” Tung says, is “it’s going to warm just as fast as the last three decades of the 20th century, which was the fastest warming we’ve seen.” Only now, we’ll be starting from a higher average surface temperature than before. > **[RealClimate: Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what?](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/12/recent-global-warming-trends-significant-or-paused-or-what/?wpmp_switcher=desktop)** > > RealClimate: As the World Meteorological Organisation WMO has just announced that “The year 2014 is on track to be the warmest, or one of the warmest years on record”, it is timely to have a look at recent global temperature changes. I’m going to use... > [@](#): > > As the World Meteorological Organisation WMO has just announced that “The year 2014 is on track to be the warmest, or one of the warmest years on record”, it is timely to have a look at recent global temperature changes. > > I’m going to use Kevin Cowtan’s nice interactive temperature plotting and trend calculation tool to provide some illustrations. I will be using the HadCRUT4 hybrid data, which have the most sophisticated method to fill data gaps in the Arctic with the help of satellites, but the same basic points can be illustrated with other data just as well. > [@](#): > > There is another more elegant way to show this, and it is called change point analysis (Fig. 4). This analysis was performed for Realclimate by Niamh Cahill of the School of Mathematical Sciences, University College Dublin. > TempCP3 > > Fig. 4. Global temperature (annual values, GISTEMP data 1880-2014) together with piecewise linear trend lines from an objective change point analysis. (Note that the value for 2014 will change slightly as it is based on Jan-Oct data only.) Graph by Niamh Cahill. > > It is the proper statistical technique for subdividing a time series into sections with different linear trends. Rather than hand-picking some intervals to look at, like I did above, this algorithm objectively looks for times in the data where the trend changes in a significant way. It will scan through the data and try out every combination of years to check whether you can improve the fit with the data by putting change points there. The optimal solution found for the global temperature data is 3 change points, approximately in the years 1912, 1940 and 1970. There is no way you can get the model to produce 4 change points, even if you ask it to – the solution does not converge then, says Cahill. There simply is no further significant change in global warming trend, not in 1998 nor anywhere else. > > In summary: that the warming since 1998 “is not significant” is completely irrelevant. This warming is real (in all global surface temperature data sets), and it is factually wrong to claim there has been no warming since 1998. There has been further warming despite the extreme cherry pick of 1998. > > What is relevant, in contrast, is that the warming since 1998 is not significantly less than the long-term warming. So while there has been a slowdown, this slowdown is not significant in the sense that it is not outside of what you expect from time to time due to year-to-year natural variability, which is always present in this time series. > > Given the warm temperature of 2014, we already see the meme emerge in the media that “the warming pause is over”. That is doubly wrong –\*\* there never was a significant pause to start with, and of course a single year couldn’t tell us whether there has been a change in trend.\*\* > > Just look at Figure 1 or Figure 4 – **since the 1970s we simply are in an ongoing global warming trend which is superimposed by short-term natural variability.** And that should be it about that tangent thank you very much. Getting back to Shakespeare, one has to notice that just like the climate scientists the Shakespeare scholars and historians are beginning to realize that not talking about the evidence and promoting their research leads to ignorance to fester. > **[Shakespeare scholars unite to see off claims of the 'Bard deniers'](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/mar/30/shakespeare-scholars-silence-doubters)** > > As the academic debate gets personal, new book aims to prove William Shakespeare was the author of his own plays > [@](#): > > A group of 22 of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars have come together to produce a book that details what they consider to be definitive evidence that the Bard really did write his own plays. > > Since the 1850s, 77 people have been suggested as the likely author, with Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere – the 17th Earl of Oxford – and Christopher Marlowe the most popular candidates, and Queen Elizabeth I among the most outlandish. The academics feel the anti-Shakespeare campaign has intensified lately, and that the elevation of Shakespeare authorship studies to master’s degree status has been the final straw. > > Three eminent experts on Bacon, Oxford and Marlowe are among the Shakespeareans who demonstrate in a series of essays precisely why only Shakespeare could have written his plays and poems, apart from his collaborations. Cambridge University Press will publish Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy on 18 April, days before the Shakespeare birthday celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon on 20-21 April. The publication – which they say will be scholarly, but accessible for general readers – is co-edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, noted scholars from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the academic charity. > > Edmondson told the Observer that Shakespeare academics have until now had their heads in the sand, hoping the doubts were ludicrous enough to fizzle out. However, they have been alarmed by the spread of authorship challenges in universities on both sides of the Atlantic – at Brunel in west London, and Concordia in Portland, Oregon. He told the Observer: “The University of Brunel has an MA in Shakespeare authorship studies and, as part of that, they could write a dissertation on why they think the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare, for example. It’s absolutely crazy.” > > The academic debate has descended into personal attack. Edmondson was shocked to discover a recent paper by an American academic entitled The Factual Desert of Stanley Wells, which compares the emeritus professor of Shakespeare studies at Birmingham University to the farmer describing a creature in his pasture: “Half-man and half-bear, and the other half was pig. No matter how he told the story, it didn’t add up.” Ok, I did say that that was enough of that tangent, but one has to notice here that it is funny (or sad, YMMV) that Al Gore has also been made fun in virtually the same way. > [@](#): > > David Kathman, an independent scholar, writes on Shakespeare and Warwickshire, showing how the works are “peppered” with signs that the author came from around Stratford, pointing to local dialect words such as '“batlet”, a paddle to beat laundry. > > Charles Nicholl, the Marlowe scholar, concedes that at least Marlowe, unlike other contenders, was a major poet and dramatist in his own right, but points out that he was killed in 1593 and was therefore dead when most of Shakespeare’s plays were written. He ridicules Marlovians who, ignoring a coroner’s report, suggest that his death in a brawl was an elaborate hoax to escape charges of heresy. > > Carol Chillington Rutter of Warwick University takes issue with those who argue that Shakespeare was not educated enough to have written learned works. She demonstrates the intense rigour of Elizabethan grammar schools, where children could translate Latin into English and back, could recognise the most intricate rhetorical tropes and figures (metaphor, allegory, hyperbole) and got through reading lists that would today constitute a university classics degree. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/173 "2014-12-05T04:54:56Z")
Well, time will tell with one issue, and time will not tell with the other. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/174 "2014-12-05T05:30:01Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Well, time will tell with one issue, and time will not tell with the other. The experts on both issues report that they had more than 100 years of research to come to the conclusions that they have today. You are however much better than the “skeptics” that many times do fall for both conspiracy theories. [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/11/12/dont-forget-shakespeare-denialism/](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/11/12/dont-forget-shakespeare-denialism/) ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/175 "2014-12-05T05:35:01Z")
Climate change is so far off-topic in this thread that I’m giving both \*\*Aeschines \*\* and **GIGObuster** warnings for derailing the thread – the former for raising the issue, and the latter for \*knowing that it was off-topic \* and engaging with him anyway. **twickster** , Cafe Society moderator ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/176 "2014-12-05T06:06:43Z")
> [@twickster](#): > > Climate change is so far off-topic in this thread that I’m giving both \*\*Aeschines \*\* and **GIGObuster** warnings for derailing the thread – the former for raising the issue, and the latter for \*knowing that it was off-topic \* and engaging with him anyway. > > **twickster** , Cafe Society moderator oh my bad ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/177 "2014-12-05T06:13:22Z")
Sorry about that, I should not had replied about that other issue, I do have to explain that other posters had noticed earlier that the matter at hand does remain mired in CTs and early _Exapno Mapcase_ made an excellent post about how the denial of Shakespeare as the writer fits many of the tropes from the followers of other conspiracy theories. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The anti-Stratfordian crowd desperately want the argument to be about facts, because they can trot out endless numbers of “facts” that sound impressive, even when careful researchers demonstrate that they are phony, as posters in this thread keep doing. Conspiracy theories purport to be about facts as well, even when they are “just asking questions,” which is not really a demand for answers but a way of discrediting actual facts. All analyses of CTs show instead that they are a particular form of bad thinking, in which facts are mainly irrelevant because they are simply made up. All CTs use similar logic, similar disdain for authority, similar claims of hidden knowledge, similar accusations at cover-ups, and similar violations of standard scholarship. Knowing this, an argument can be judged as a CT - I would say a false CT but that’s redundant - even by non-subject matter experts. All CTs are wrong in the same way. Standard scholarship can be right or wrong, but will be right or wrong in a distinctly different way. It’s no coincidence that belief in one CT often leads to belief in others; if you can accept this style of thinking in one thing you can accept it in any other. > > For some reason, Shakespeare denial is held up as serious scholarship by its adherents, who are touchy about having their thinking compared to birthers and truthers and climate change deniers and moon hoaxers and the thousand other CTs that use thinking identical to theirs. Dismissing Shakespeare denial out of hand is somehow more insulting than their notion that the entire profession of academic scholarship is full of shit. But it can be dismissed out of hand. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/178 "2014-12-05T09:17:51Z")
I’ve gotten hold of a copy of Mark Anderson’s book, because I figured, hey, why not give it a whirl. I’ve given the first couple pages a whirl, and now I’m fine with surrendering the field to the Oxfordians–because I think it’s just not going to be possible to convince a reader who falls for Anderson. Here are the five reasons for claiming de Vere’s authorship that Anderson prefaces the entire book with: a) contemporaries gave away the game and already admitted Shakespeare was a fraud; b) de Vere’s Bible is annotated "uniquely in sync with the many idiosyncratic biblical references in Shakespeare; c) new Shakespeare works stopped being written in 1604; d) Italy in Shakespeare is like de Vere’s tour, although “ignorant critics” claim otherwise; e) the Shakespeare canon is autobiographical, and de Vere’s life fits it perfectly (I think: the points made here are not quite clear). Let me start with the last: it’s not quite clear where Anderson draws the claim for the autobiographical nature of Shakespeare’s canon from, except by circular logic: because (he thinks) the plays fit Oxford’s life, it must be autobiographical, and then it’s clear it must be autobiographical of Oxford’s life, because it fits. Of course, as we noted multiple times, it a) doesn’t really fit, and it would be pointless to argue biographically even if it did and b) it fits Shakespeare’s life and knowledge just as well. Italy we talked about, too. Anderson obviously relies here on Richard Roe’s _Shakespeare Guide to Italy_ which purports to pinpoint the “real” locations of scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. I’ve not been able to get a copy of this book, but the review here seems to tell the story: “Roe triangulates the place exactly by analyzing what the trumpet calls in the text signified, identifying the gate through which the soldiers would have entered and where they were heading, and locating the landmarks that Widow points out as she talks to Helen” in _All’s Well That Ends Well_. Well. It seems like we needn’t waste any time on the dating thing, but it’s worth exploring Anderson’s counterargument: essentially, it boils down to saying the Penguin editions in the 1970s and some early 19th century scholars felt like there was a chance Shakespeare had stopped writing before 1604. What Anderson does there is largely a “trees instead of woods” approach, selecting things he can quibble with instead of approaching the entirety of evidence for a dating. In fact, what is most annoying here and throughout the bits I’ve read is Anderson’s way of dismissing the “Stratfordian” scholarship—evidently either without having read it, or because he wants to mislead. Just checking my editions of \*The Tempest \*(Cambridge and Arden), I find measured analyses of the Strachey letter, for example, and the contextual dating for the play. The Bible annotations follow a similar process of thinking, of course: they trace De Vere’s annotations onto Shakespearian verse; it’s faintly ridiculous, in fact. Again, this is not Anderson’s own scholarship, but someone else’s being referred, so the methods are not clear: but the “continued interest in a series of themes” which Anderson outlines himself is so thin that it beggars description. “Anointed kings” were of interest to Shakespeare and De Vere, because Shakespeare brought up the concept at least three times. In plays concerned with royalty. Finally, and to conclude this long summary, the first point: Shakespeare was already revealed as a fraud by contemporaries. This part is the most telling, because it shows that Anderson clearly isn’t cut out to make this argument. He points, for example, at this poem: To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare Some say (good Will), which I, in sport, do sing, Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport, Thou hadst been a companion for a King; And been a King among the meaner sort. Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit, Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit: And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap; So, to increase their stock which they do keep. And then suggests that “thou hadst been a companion for a king” is the give away: that them poem was “suggesting that Shake-speare was a courtier (“a companion for a king”)”. It barely bears pointing out that the poem says exactly the opposite: If you had not played the king in the theater, you would have/could have been the companion of a king. In other words, the poem is quite clear that Shakespeare wasn’t a courtier. And this, I think, is the major problem: that the Oxfordian claim rests, simply, on bad scholarship. (The Italy Travelogue book was written by a retired lawyer, incidentally.) But the distinction between good scholarship and bad scholarship really isn’t easy to sell, or indeed to explain. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/179 "2014-12-05T10:20:00Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > I’ve gotten hold of a copy of Mark Anderson’s book, because I figured, hey, why not give it a whirl. I’ve given the first couple pages a whirl, and now I’m fine with surrendering the field to the Oxfordians–because I think it’s just not going to be possible to convince a reader who falls for Anderson. > > Here are the five reasons for claiming de Vere’s authorship that Anderson prefaces the entire book with: a) contemporaries gave away the game and already admitted Shakespeare was a fraud; b) de Vere’s Bible is annotated "uniquely in sync with the many idiosyncratic biblical references in Shakespeare; c) new Shakespeare works stopped being written in 1604; d) Italy in Shakespeare is like de Vere’s tour, although “ignorant critics” claim otherwise; e) the Shakespeare canon is autobiographical, and de Vere’s life fits it perfectly (I think: the points made here are not quite clear). > > Let me start with the last: it’s not quite clear where Anderson draws the claim for the autobiographical nature of Shakespeare’s canon from, except by circular logic: because (he thinks) the plays fit Oxford’s life, it must be autobiographical, and then it’s clear it must be autobiographical of Oxford’s life, because it fits. Of course, as we noted multiple times, it a) doesn’t really fit, and it would be pointless to argue biographically even if it did and b) it fits Shakespeare’s life and knowledge just as well. > > Italy we talked about, too. Anderson obviously relies here on Richard Roe’s _Shakespeare Guide to Italy_ which purports to pinpoint the “real” locations of scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. I’ve not been able to get a copy of this book, but the review here seems to tell the story: “Roe triangulates the place exactly by analyzing what the trumpet calls in the text signified, identifying the gate through which the soldiers would have entered and where they were heading, and locating the landmarks that Widow points out as she talks to Helen” in _All’s Well That Ends Well_. Well. > > It seems like we needn’t waste any time on the dating thing, but it’s worth exploring Anderson’s counterargument: essentially, it boils down to saying the Penguin editions in the 1970s and some early 19th century scholars felt like there was a chance Shakespeare had stopped writing before 1604. What Anderson does there is largely a “trees instead of woods” approach, selecting things he can quibble with instead of approaching the entirety of evidence for a dating. In fact, what is most annoying here and throughout the bits I’ve read is Anderson’s way of dismissing the “Stratfordian” scholarship—evidently either without having read it, or because he wants to mislead. Just checking my editions of \*The Tempest \*(Cambridge and Arden), I find measured analyses of the Strachey letter, for example, and the contextual dating for the play. > > The Bible annotations follow a similar process of thinking, of course: they trace De Vere’s annotations onto Shakespearian verse; it’s faintly ridiculous, in fact. Again, this is not Anderson’s own scholarship, but someone else’s being referred, so the methods are not clear: but the “continued interest in a series of themes” which Anderson outlines himself is so thin that it beggars description. “Anointed kings” were of interest to Shakespeare and De Vere, because Shakespeare brought up the concept at least three times. In plays concerned with royalty. > Finally, and to conclude this long summary, the first point: Shakespeare was already revealed as a fraud by contemporaries. This part is the most telling, because it shows that Anderson clearly isn’t cut out to make this argument. He points, for example, at this poem: > > To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare > Some say (good Will), which I, in sport, do sing, > Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport, > Thou hadst been a companion for a King; > And been a King among the meaner sort. > Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit, > Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit: > And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap; > So, to increase their stock which they do keep. > > And then suggests that “thou hadst been a companion for a king” is the give away: that them poem was “suggesting that Shake-speare was a courtier (“a companion for a king”)”. It barely bears pointing out that the poem says exactly the opposite: If you had not played the king in the theater, you would have/could have been the companion of a king. In other words, the poem is quite clear that Shakespeare wasn’t a courtier. > > And this, I think, is the major problem: that the Oxfordian claim rests, simply, on bad scholarship. (The Italy Travelogue book was written by a retired lawyer, incidentally.) But the distinction between good scholarship and bad scholarship really isn’t easy to sell, or indeed to explain. An excellent post. Thanks for doing the dirty work(reading Anderson’s entire book) that many of us baulk at. I did have a link which refuted the claims made by Oxfordian’s that Oxford’s own bible annotations mirrored biblical passages in the Plays. I’ll try to find and post the link. With regards to Anderson’s claim of a biographical link between Oxford’s life and the Plays. Perhaps he simply got this idea from Thomas Looney? Looney was the first proponent of Oxford as Shakespeare. Anderson may simply be repeating Looney’s idea of a biographical link. Its worth pointing out that writing your “biography” into your own fictional writing was not widely done at this time. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2014, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/180 "2014-12-05T11:05:10Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](#): > > An excellent post. Thanks for doing the dirty work(reading Anderson’s entire book) that many of us baulk at. Thanks! Just to note briefly, I’ve only read the section called “Argument” and the various sections explaining that section so far. I’ll need a bit more time to read the rest, if I manage. Also, I wanted to post the link to the review of _[The Shakespeare Guide to Italy](http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.de/2012/04/review-shakespeare-guide-to-italy.html)_. This is from a Marlowe-was-Shakespeare site, but its quotes from the book are instructive, I think. And I had meant to add another thing, which is not directly related to the Anderson but which I found while looking for a postable copy of the poem. Look at this [anti-Shakespearian site.](http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/index.257.0.1.html) It suggests that “The deferential manner in which the author speaks of his subject, betrays to the reader that Will. Shake-speare was dead when the poem was written.” I’d like to point out here how the unscholarly method works. First, no reputable scholar would willingly base an argument on the “deferential manner” of a text: it’s hardly intersubjective, and in fact some elements just don’t bear this reading out at all (“in sport” it says–i.e., not entirely seriously, but not entirely mocking, either; and “good Will” seems rather familiar, too); second, if they were willing to say the poem is deferential, the jump to “and that’s why the subject’s dead” is a bit long–why is that the necessary (or even a possible) conclusion? And third, the poem is, again, clear that the poem says the exact opposite to what’s claimed: its subject _is not dead_: the lines starting from “Thou hast…” are in the present tense: You do not have a mocking, but a stately wit (a slightly clumsy paraphrase on my part, but the grammar is the important thing here). In simple terms: how are we to take the arguments of literary “scholars” who cannot even read a poem correctly? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197.md?page=10)