# Any Shakespeare deniers on this board?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197>\
**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:** 1\
**Showing post:** 106

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-shakespeare-deniers-on-this-board/701197/106 "2014-10-15T23:20:41Z")

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**septimus** , there’s a recurring pattern in your style of argument across these threads. We get a series of half-remembered claims based on asserted factual details. Then when these are queried, we get ‘‘I’ve read far too much and kept too few bookmarks to track this down.’’ or, now, the demand that we read Anderson. The result is that it’s the Stratfordians – like **Fuzzy\_wuzzy** , **APB** and others – who either have the knowledge or can do the legwork to recognise or figure out what the hell the claim is even referring to.  
The deeper snag is that in not nailing down the details yourself, your missing that the same details being half-remembered are usually fudged or lacking context in the Oxfordian websites you probably originally got them from. The result is an intrinsically foggy argument.

A few examples from this thread.

[quote=“septimus, post:30, topic:701197”]

[li] A minor government official prepared “who’s who” and yearbooks for Stratford. Mentions of the playwright: ZERO[/li][/QUOTE]

When challenged, this was later clarified to:

> [@](#):
>
> William Camden praises the London author Shakespeare in one book, but overlooks him in both his “1616 Annals [of Stratford]” and in “Stratford Worthies of 1605”.

This superficially sounds like a promising cite, though it’s odd to have one of the most famous British antiquarians and someone who was one of the senior heralds in the College of Arms dismissed as ‘‘a minor government official’’. Now when one Googles Camden + Stratford + Worthies, one certainly gets lots of hits with some variation of ‘‘Stratford Worthies’’, but they’re overwhelmingly to Oxfordian websites. And the snag is that this is a spurious citation: there is no such book or pamphlet of that title.  
With no help from such websites, we have to realise from elsewhere that what you and they are trying to refer to is Camden’s _Britannia_. This book went through multiple editions in Latin, including one in 1605; that website also gives the 1607 English translation. As the title suggests, this is actually a whole mass of antiquarian material covering the whole of Britain. This includes a short passage on Stratford – see this page:

> [@](#):
>
> [The river Avon] which within a while runneth hard by Stratford, a proper little mercate towne, beholden for all the beauty that it hath to two men there bred and brought up, namely, John of Stratford Archbishop of Canterburie, who built the church, and Sir Hugh Clopton Maior of London, who over Avon made a stone bridge supported with foureteene arches, not without exceeding great expenses. This Hugh was a yonger brother out of that ancient family which from Clopton, a Manour adjoining, borrowed this surname, since the time that Walter de Cocksfeld called Knight Mareschall setled and planted both himselfe and his successours at Clopton.

Aside from the following (long) sentence about Sir Hugh’s descendants (who probably didn’t live in Stratford), that’s it. There isn’t even a chapter or section heading that would explain ‘‘Stratford Worthies’’. That title was entirely the result of Oxfordian Chinese whispers.  
Of course, one might argue that the underlying point stands: Camden doesn’t see fit to mention Shakespeare here. Except that the archbishop died several centuries earlier and Sir Hugh about a century before. These are notable men from the town’s past history. The one thing Camden clearly wasn’t doing was writing the suggested ‘‘who’s who’’ of the Stratford of 1605.

Then:

[QUOTE]  
[li] Shakespeare had a literate son-in-law with many letters preserved who commented on the talents for poetry of other Stratfordians. Mentions of his father-in-law’s poetry: ZERO[/li][/QUOTE]

Since John Hall’s ‘‘letters’’ keep being invoked in these threads, we might as well put them to rest here.

AFAIK, there are no known surviving letters by Hall. (There is at least one letter to him, from 1632 – so a similar survival rate as for his father-in-law.) There are certainly no published collection of them, which makes your frustration in previous theads at not being pointed to an online version of them all somewhat misplaced.  
One of the best known Oxfordian websites puts the claim slightly differently:

> [@](#):
>
> William Shakspere’s son-in-law John Hall kept an extensive journal, in which he wrote of the “excellent Poet” and Warwickshire native Michael Drayton, but he failed to mention his father-in-law’s association with the theatre, drama, or literature.

So it’s an ‘‘extensive journal’’ now rather than ‘‘letters’’. This is slightly better, but still misleading. What actually survive are a set of medical cases notes on particular patients kept by Hall. These were edited and published after his death as a book called _Select Observations on English Bodies of Eminent Persons in Desperate Diseases_ in 1657. The recentish excellent edition of this is Joan Lane, _John Hall and his Patients_ (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 1996). The text consists of 182 sections, each detailing the cure administered to a specific patient. As an example of the style, here’s the whole (unusually short) entry on Drayton:

> [@](#):
>
> OBSERV. XXII.  
> MR. _Drayton_, an excellent Poet, labouring of a Tertian, was cured by the following : Rx _the Emetick Infusion_ 3[?]i. _Syrup of Violets a spoonful: mix them._ This given, wrought very well both upwards and downwards.

The whole book is like this and this is what has made it a fascinating source for medical historians seeking evidence of what a doctor like Hall would actually administer. Each patient is given a cursory identification, though he was scrupulous with titles, but that’s it on the non-medical details. Susanna is thus just ‘‘Mrs. Hall of Stratford, my Wife’’, before he dives into her cholic and wind. There is a fascination to the entries because many of the individuals are people specifically known to have known Shakespeare in Stratford, but in terms of biographical detail about them it’s all indigestion, toothache, dropsy and worms.  
The frustration with Hall’s case notes is not that he fails to mention Shakespeare’s fame and merits, it’s that he doesn’t mention his father-in-law at all. Regardless of whether he was the playwright or not. There are several possible reasons. One is that few of the treatments can be dated to before 1616; the notetaking may not have been a regular habit at the time of the playwright’s death. More likely, he omitted the case because the patient had died: these are overwhelmingly notes taken with an eye to eventual publication of successful treatments. He passed over almost all his failures in silence.  
In summary, there are no gossipy John Hall letters or a journal in which he mysteriously never discusses the playwright’s fame. They’re another mirage.

Finally,

> [@septimus](#):
>
> - a playwright known to be an astronomy buff failed to mention the supernova of 1604

True to form, the last time this came up, it was someone else (myself, as it happens) who had to go away and figure out what the hell astronomical references in the plays supposedly had to do with Oxford. At least on that occasion you were gracious enough to concede that:

> [@Did Shaksper write the Sonnets? \[edited title\]](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-shaksper-write-the-sonnets-edited-title/536631/77):
>
> Thanks for this, **bonzer**. I wanted to give Oxfordians at least some benefit of the doubt on their long string of coincidences, but as I see many that are not even “half-truths”, I lose interest in pursuing the others. Can I have the Mod retitle the thread: “Shaksper probably _did_ write the Sonnets (though gullible/skeptical septimus still isn’t _100% sure_)”? :smack:

Four years on, the old discredited claim thus swirls out of the fog again, while its “half-truths” weaknesses have been forgotten.

Incidentally, you can’t hide behind Anderson in these instances. Judging from the Google Books previews - I know - he doesn’t cite Camden in this context, doesn’t mention John Hall at all and merely repeats Altschuler’s arguments on the astronomy.

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