Now, this is a circular argument. We have plenty of examples of the writing of Shakesper of Avon still around: Minor little writings like Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One would only reject these as examples of Shakespeare’s writing if one had already accepted the conclusion that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays attributed to him. But one could never use a body of “known” writing as a basis of comparison, because then how do we know the authorship of the works we’re comparing to?
The argument for the mainstream view is both simple and strong. Somebody wrote a bunch of plays, and attributed them as being by “William Shakespeare”. Meanwhile, there was an actor by that name in the company which was the first to perform all of these plays, often before an audience of nobility and royalty, none of whom ever suggested that the author of the plays was any man other than that actor who was appearing in them. If anyone can present an argument to the contrary which is anywhere near that compelling, I’d like to see it. I haven’t yet.
Only in your abuse of logic and ignorance of the facts. Take a look at what they say and compare the techniques to those who say Shakespeare didn’t write the plays. You’ll see a lot of the same techniques used.
For instance, there’s the “couldn’t possibly” dodge: X couldn’t possibly do Y, therefore Z. e.g., the Germans “couldn’t possibly” kill as many people they are credited with killing; Shakespeare “couldn’t possibly” read latin.
It’s massively trivial compared to the holocost deniers, but it’s the same logic at work. If you can disprove that Shakespeare wrote his plays in this manner, then you can disprove anything. Luckly, you can’t, and they can’t, either.
There’s also willfull ignorance of the facts, like this:
Since the job of theatrical producer in those days *required * that the producer write plays for the company, that’s proof that Shakespeare was hired to write plays. So he must have written some plays, since that was part of the job he was hired to do.
What those who dispute the authorship fail to realize is that what they are proposing: that a person use the pseudonym of a living person is almost unique in literature. Every other author who used a pseudonym has been discovered either during their lifetime, or very shortly after. Yet no one seriously argued against Shakespeare’s authorship until the 19th century – when any witnesses were long dead and long after people forgot about the many daily details of the time that would show the supposition false (as I’ve said many a time, the hardest thing for people to understand about history was that people ithought differently than we do).
This is an extraordinary statement; it requires extraordinary proof. Literary analysis is useless, since you can find whatever you want. Computer text analysis is good, but in this case is supports Shakepeare. Supposition is not proof: you need a document by a contemporary that says clearly that Shakespeare <> William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. Where is that? Because until you find it, you’re building castles in the thinnest of air.
I believe the only thing that would prove authorship beyond the shadow of a doubt would be the existence of handwritten manuscripts that matched Shakespeares handwriting (which has been verified independantly I believe). Various publishers using Shakespeare as a name for attributing various manuscripts to is still a possibility, albeit extremely unlikely.
Also, the fact that some pseudonym’d authors have been discovered, doesnt mean we have discovered them all.
I realize Occams razor may apply here, but this figure is so huge and contraversial that even during his lifetime the simplest answer may have in fact involved many more factors than we currently have evidence for. Its actually very easy to permanently destroy evidence.
That’s useful evidence, but it doesn’t prove anything 100%. In Shakespeare’s time, the dramatist’s “foul papers” (the original manuscript) were copied in a different hand, by a professional scribe (a profession which was lost with the invention of the typewriter) into a “fair copy”. With his grammar school education, W.S. could have worked part-time as a scribe for his theatre, so a manuscript in Shakespeare’s hand might be of a play not by Shakespeare.
– a great quote giving independent evidence of Shakespeare’s handwriting. So, unlike the impression that you get from Shakespeare in Love, Shakespeare’s foul papers would have been written well enough that they might have been mistaken for fair copies. Like Mozart must have done, Shakespeare composed in his head, not on paper, then put down the final version as if it were the only version. Perhaps it’s this quality which makes some think that an ignorant country bumpkin could not have written “Shakespeare”.
Thats the point, I wouldnt be able to, because they may never have been outed to this very day. If a person committed a crime and was never caught during thier lifetime or during the lifetimes of all those who knew them, the chances of ever discovering them would increasingly diminish over time.