Also, lets not forget when Venus & Adonis and Lucrece were written and published; during the two year period when the Theatres were closed due to the plague. This suggests they were written by a middle class poet writing his ass off for a living not a poet writing for the sake of pure art.
Whats interesting also about Mere’s account is that he was knowledgeable enough to mention Shakespeare’s sugared Sonnet’s. Sonnet’s that did not see the public light of day for at least five years afterwards.
This isn’t a book club, it’s a debate board. If you think Anderson makes good arguments, present them here. Make a case that Anderson is worth our time. So far, over multiple threads, all you’ve done is post assertions that can be torn apart by anyone with a basic understanding of Elizabethan history and the nature of academic research.
At least some of his Stratford contemporaries alluded to his talents as a writer in the years immediately following his death - his epitaph compares him to Socrates and Virgil and its final couplet doesn’t make much sense if he wasn’t known as a writer. This must date from before 1632, as John Weever, who died in that year, made a copy of the text.
Or is the question not why people in Stratford didn’t comment on Shakespeare’s fame as a writer but rather why they didn’t express surprise that he was being praised as a writer in such a conspicuous manner?
This interests me, I would like to inquire, in a non- contentious way, to what extent you have developed this. How do you perceive de Vere’s participation, did he provide ideas, plot elements and background information, which Shakespeare assembled into plays? Or did Shakespeare just hang out with him and draw the material and inspiration out of de Vere, making the latter a sort of passive contributor?
Certainly, the players themselves must have participated in honing the material, suggestions, ad libs and changes surely had to be made during rehearsals. But what matters, what constitutes the persistent effect on culture is, I think, the poetry more than the actual content. As stories go, the plays were/are not all that remarkable. Was Shakespeare the amazing, witty poet, who may have borrowed ideas from others and painted them out in his unique style?
Thanks. I found a full transcript of those pages.
Meres offers extravagant praise for everyone mentioned so trying to judge how any individual was thought of is problematic. All I can say is that Shakespeare’s name is mentioned several times for comic and tragic playwriting, sonnets, lyric poetry, tragic poetry, comic writing, elegy, and for all-around excellence as a word slinger, while Oxford is mentioned once, for comic writing. (The paragraph is given in Fretful Porpentine’s post; Meres talks of poets for comedy, but we should probably interpret that as playwrights.)
Alexander, on the page I linked to, references Meres’ mention. He leaves out the dozen and far more extravagant references to Shakespeare. Admittedly this is a brief case for the defense but what possible neutral observer could doubt that Meres saw them as separate and unequal?
Oxfordians go further than merely citing Meres’ single line of praise. They argue that it proves Oxford is the same person as Shakespeare.
How is this conceivably possible? Well, if you look at that paragraph, Meres lists 16 ancients and 17 moderns. In every other place, Meres lists an exactly equivalent number. (Well, not every place. In fact, not in several places. But none of the other exceptions count.) Therefore two of the moderns must equal one, and this is a clue that Meres is saying that Oxford is Shakespeare. I swear I’m not making this up. I couldn’t possibly.
If that is what is presented as “evidence,” then is there any wonder that heaps of scorn is the mildest conceivable response?
Thank you for making this point. I feel the thread is already descending into a contentious one. I did not mean for it to do so, even if I am partly responsible for that.
Let’s keep it civil.
I have ordered this from Amazon just now, and will post after I’ve read it. In the meantime, let me recommend The Shakespeare Claimants by H.N. Gibson. It is highly engaging, and the reviewer who compares it to The Daughter of Time is spot-on, although the book has no pretext, and is a straightforward exploration of the different theories, with a conversational tone.
His older daughter’s epitaph references his (and her) reputation as a wit. Her married name was Hall:
"Witty above her sex, but that’s not all
"Faithful to G-d was good Mistress Hall.
"Something of Shakespeare was in this,
“And something of Him with whom she’s now in bliss.”
So, she was a wit, like her father.
On the charge that anti-Stratfordian arguments can be logically fallacious:
The starting point for all who plump for Oxford (or for Francis Bacon or the Earl of Derby, for that matter) is that the writing of plays was not respectable, and therefore the noble author needed a front (William Shakespeare of Stratford).
If the basic premise is that in that time period no respectable person would admit to being the writer of plays, then asserting that ‘no one in Stratford mentions that Shakespeare was a writer of plays’ is rendered useless as an argument against Shakespeare’s authorship.
If being a playwright was a disreputable thing to be, then of course relatives and neighbors and people compiling lists of notable citizens would say nothing about it.
An example of a list of claims to the effect that ‘these facts suggest that Shakespeare wasn’t the true author’ appeared in the post quoted here:
It is certainly inconsistent to argue that
Either being a playwright was a perfectly respectable thing to be circa 1600 (and so therefore Shakespeare of Stratford would have been identified as such by those around him)---------or it was a discreditable thing to be, and therefore Edward de Vere (or Bacon or whomever) needed a front, and Shakespeare’s relatives and neighbors would have kept quiet about his play-writing activities.
Trying to have it both ways is not logically acceptable.
No, the premise is that a *noble *person could not be known as a writer of plays. A commoner could. Ben Jonson and Kit Marlowe et al. were known as playwrights.
So, why couldn’t de Vere have used Jonson or Marlowe as his front?
Is your purpose to sway or to ridicule?
I don’t know why he couldn’t have; the theory is he didn’t. Maybe those guys were too busy and it would have looked suspect if they produced too much. Maybe he wanted somebody in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Maybe Shakespeare’s front rates were cheaper. You’re asking the wrong guy.
Im not sure how accurate your claim is that nobles could not be known to write Plays. Mere’s says Oxford was amongst the best for comedy. I think the assertion is that nobles would be looked down upon for making a full time living writing plays for the public theatre.
This does not deal with the two epic long poems, 152 sonnet’s and a few other pieces. All of which would be respectable enough for a nobleman to put his name to
Marlowe has long been a contender for the position.
So was William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby.
Please look at the evidence cited there. Note how similar the thinking is to the evidence compiled to argue for de Vere. Once you start digging for similarities and references to the totality of their lives and every possible coincidence you can throw in, the evidence appears to mount to great heights.
The question you need to answer is whether this means they or Oxford or any of the other 83 candidates Wiki lists is the real Shakespeare or whether that only means that similarities and negative evidence can be adduced for number of people without proving anything.
Who are you talking to?
You’re making too much of Noble versus Non-Noble. Anything disreputable for one was unlikely to be a subject for pride in the other. The values of the day weren’t that divergent.
Jonson and Marlowe (and indeed Thomas Kyd) were not men of property; they scrambled to make their livings by their pens (and a bit of spying and general intrigue in some cases). If they had been men of property, established in some English town or other, their relatives and neighbors would have been unlikely to laud their play-writing activities. Such were the times.
Shakespeare, on the other hand, was born into the landowning gentry. He owned substantial property at the time of his death, and was buried in the chancel of the local church. He was a big wheel in Stratford.
If it was perfectly decent and proper for such a person to be a playwright in those days, then, yes, we’d have expected friends and relatives to have mentioned it.
But it wasn’t decent or proper. It was no more respectable for a member of the affluent land-owning class to be a playwright than it was for an Earl or Viscount to be a playwright.
Being a playwright circa 1600 was the contemporary equivalent of being a writer of Kindle dinosaur porn: your relations and neighbors are not going to be bragging about your status as author of Terri and the Tantalizing T-Rex. They’re going to maintain a discreet silence.
Umm, the SDMB readers?
Yes and yes. (That the name “Shakespeare” is appended to the sonnets and narrative poems is one of the strongest arguments against the alternate-author position.)
Is anyone in this thread able to distinguish the difference between trying to fairly characterize an opposing viewpoint, and actually holding that viewpoint?
I’m all sad now. 
APB mentioned the epitaph above but the epitaph is just a part of Shakespeare’s funerary monument … which portrays Shakespeare holding a quill in the act of writing and was erected probably by his wife a few years after he died.
And yet he suddenly bought the most expensive house in Stratford when the “London Shakespeare” started doing well
Oh dear. I have a feeling that quote may open up a sh*tstorm.
