# Did Shaksper write the Sonnets? \[edited title\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 19, 2010, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-shaksper-write-the-sonnets-edited-title/536631 "2010-04-19T15:39:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 23
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2010, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-shaksper-write-the-sonnets-edited-title/536631/23 "2010-04-20T11:02:03Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Ben Jonson (“what Author would conceale his name?”): > > Who takes thy volume to his vertuous hand, > Must be intended still to understand: > Who bluntly doth but looke upon the same, > May aske, what Author would conceale his name? > Who reads may roave, and call the passage darke, > Yet may as blind men sometimes hit the marke. > Who reads, who roaves, who hopes to understand, > May take thy volume to his vertuous hand. > Who cannot reade, but onely doth desire to understand, > Hee may at length admire. That is simply irrelevant. That is a prefatory poem by Jonson (or at least ‘B. I.’) to _Cinthias Revenge_ by ‘I. S.’, who is usually thought to be John Stephens. There is no reason at all to think that Jonson’s comments have anything whatsoever to do with Shakespeare. > [@septimus](#): > > Just to be clear: you’re agreeing that the Sonnets seems “bizarre” compared with what is known about Shaksper? Even those who are certain Shaksper wrote the Sonnets should agree there’s some puzzles, but most avoid admitting it. How many sonnets by other Elizabethan poets have you read? Because, far from them merely agreeing that there are ‘some puzzles’ in Shakespeare’s sonnets, all literary scholars revel in the fact that those sonnets - and most of those of his contemporaries as well - are crammed with them. Sonnets were _supposed_ to be cryptic, obscure, playful, ambiguous, surprising and, yes, bizarre. Which means that this is not exactly the strongest grounds on which to question Shakespeare’s authorship. [QUOTE=Marley23] I’ve never seen that happen. Is this an actual example? Because I’ve never heard anyone say Shakespeare must’ve had legal training. [/QUOTE] Er, actually hundreds of writers, most of them lawyers, have argued that Shakespeare must have had some legal experience. [Daniel Kornstein’s _Kill all the lawyers?_ has a good - and suitably sceptical - discussion of that whole Shakespeare-as-scrivener tradition](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gh8iA6IeNNkC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=shakespeare+scrivener&source=bl&ots=KjH4VVGu7_&sig=pWh3QKQHjVDAuVBYU8uZ3MNL3xs&hl=en&ei=RXjNS4ebNtPD_gbp54meAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=shakespeare%20scrivener&f=false). [QUOTE=SecondJudith] I blame the Romantics for all this nonsense about poetic narrators necessarily being a reflection of the poet’s life and experience. [/QUOTE] A point which is the central theme of James Shapiro’s brand-new _Contested Will_. Although it is specifically Edmond Malone whom he blames. And, while Shapiro is superb on why the case against Shakespeare-as-Shakespeare is very obviously complete bollocks, he is fully aware that this is as much a challenge to many of the conventional biographers as well. [So much so that the Shakespeare Oxford Society has given him a positive review](http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/shapiros-contested-will/)!! --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-shaksper-write-the-sonnets-edited-title/536631)._