William Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare

Great Debates
61

I apologize for becoming rude. I do get exasperated, especially since it wasn’t my choice to start this thread. Let’s recapitulate.

Excepting Little Nemo who seems open-minded and informed, there seem to be four types of thread participant:
A. Dopers with sincere interest in learning about the evidence, who have read the seven-page summary and are preparing intelligent comments.
B. Dopers with sincere interest but who expect me to provide a 7-page summary.
C. Dopers who want to harass septimus.
D. Dopers who already know the answers.

I do not think I could prepare a 7-page summary as good as the link I gave. I might be able to produce a better 20-page summary. But since those insisting I provide the summary seem to refuse to read the 7-pages linked, I herewith treat all in Group B as really in Group C: You’re amusing yourself by insulting or harassing me. :slight_smile: Thanks big! But all kidding aside: Is the goal hear to annoy me? Or is to learn? With some of you, I’m unsure.

Some Dopers have professed that they read the 7-page summary but found nothing of interest there, no coincidences worthy of comment. In #51 I mentioned two items from the summary that should give pause, but which no one has commented on. I cannot treat those in Group D seriously.

This leaves only Group A. AFAICT that group is the Null Set, but I will persevere, and write on, hoping that some of you are sincere and interested.

BTW, the 7-page summary deals almost entirely with clues that Oxford was the author. There is a substantial, largely unrelated case that Stratford was NOT the author. (Indeed Mark Twain and some of the other doubters had never heard of Edward de Vere: the arguments against Stratford are quite old and solid, independent of who the real author was.)

Regarding that final sentence: Please Please Please, deal with the STRONGEST arguments Oxfordians make, not the usual tired “arguments” that show up when you Google “Help me debunk …” OK? Read the 7-page paper. Post any clues you find thought-provoking. How about the two I mention in #51?

I can’t speak for Little Nemo, but almost nobody doubts that the William Shakespeare who lived in London was the same person as the individual born in Stratford. The point Nemo was making, I think, is that references to Shakespeare the playwright are abstract, largely made by people who were not acquainted with the man from Stratford. A letter like “Honey, yesterday I watched a great play by Shakespeare” tells us nothing we didn’t already know: Shakespeare was the putative author. What would be telling would be an addition like “You remember the Shakespeares, honey. We bought pork from them when we passed through Warwickshire.” References which firmly connect the literary Shakespeare to the Stratford Shakespeare are VERY few. And please be aware:

  • There is no evidence W.S. ever went to school.
  • There is no evidence any of his relatives or neighbors in Stratford thought he was a playwright
  • It appears W.S. never owned any book, though he was rich enough to afford books.
  • There is no evidence that he left behind any manuscripts.
  • If he ever wrote a poem to please a daughter, nephew or grandchild, they kept that very secret.
  • While he was supposedly living in London and writing King Lear we know he took one of the customers of his Stratford butcher shop to court over a 2-shilling debt!
  • W.S. appears to have never written a letter. One letter has turned up addressed to W.S.; it was a request for a loan from a Stratford townsman.
    And this despite that basements and attics all over England have been scoured for any reference to this famous playwright!
  • Dr. John Hall, son-in-law of W.S., was a literate man who once wrote in a letter about a neighbor who was an “excellent poet” but never saw fit to mention his father-in-law this way!
  • Each of W.S.'s daughters was possibly or certainly illiterate! Illiteracy was high among women from that era. But would you expect illiteracy to be high among children of history’s greatest wordsmith?

Traditionalist argue that evidence like letters are lacking for other playwrights of that era. Recently I saw a webpage that refutes that claim; for a list of several playwrights of that era, a checklist showed what was known. W.S. finished in last place. (I neglected to bookmark that page, and Googling fails. :frowning: )

Oh, this gets tiresome. Click on these links for other reasons to doubt Stratford wrote the plays and sonnets:

62

I don’t get the ‘those in the know would have kept it a secret’ argument. The Elizabethan Court was full of viscous back-biting, political games and rumours. Nobles were happy to stab other Nobles in their political backs. Elizabeth herself was accused of sleeping with blackamoors by contemporaries in her Court. I see no reason as to why this mild Oxford/Shakespeare accusation couldn’t have also been aired, especially after the death of Elizabeth & Oxford when their political power had largely died with them.

63

Hi Sam! Did you read the 7-page paper? How do you estimate the odds of the “Baptista Minola of Padua” coincidence? And that’s just one of many MANY such coincidences. (And there’s also lots of evidence that doesn’t take the form of mere coincidences.)

64

I’m not sure why you’re getting so heated about this, but accusing another poster of lying is not acceptable in this forum. This is about as close to it gets. Knock it off.

[/moderating]

65

I read it, and it doesn’t contain sufficient information to evaluate any of the arguments. It was like reading a fan of the Bible Code summarize the Bible Code, completely lacking in critical evaluation of the individual claims. Baptista and Minola are Italian names and people searching for meaningful coincidence always find that.

That is not the only claim that is obviously rubbish, even without a knowledgeable critical evaluation, but you’ve already set up the perfect defense against that. Well if the people who compiled that list weren’t embarrassed to include rubbish in their list, I don’t trust their judgement on any of the other points. I mean, bullshit like this:

I’m surprised they didn’t list the lack of a long form birth certificate as evidence that there was no William Shakespear at all.

66

It’s an interesting issue. How many would have been aware of the Oxfordian authorship? What would be the motive to reveal it? Certainly not to shame him in the eyes of the Queen since she would certainly have been aware of the Oxford authorship. (Do you have a cite for the “accusations of sleeping with blackamoors”?)

I’m not sure why King James would have found the secret important but his peculiar behavior on the day of Oxford’s death hints at some weird mystery, whether that mystery has anything to do with the authorship or not.

67

Thanks for reading the paper!

You mention a coincidence that you find weak probabilistically. What was the strongest coincidence, or other clue, that you noticed in the reading?

With your “insufficient information to evaluate” are you suggesting that some of this evidence is twisted or fabricated? If so, show which clue would give you most pause IF TRUE, and I’ll try to hunt down an evidentiary cite.

68

I’m interested to hear comments on these dedications. Were the sonnets somehow stolen from Shakespeare and published without his cooperation? There was another work from 1608 or so which refers to Shakespeare as “immortal”, a word usually avoided with living people.

Speaking of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, why was the poet so concerned with his name if his name was simply that on the cover of the book?

69

I’m sorry, but it should be obvious that I have actually read the 7 page paper you’ve linked to. I’ve quoted it, or referenced specific information from it in every single post, except for one question to Little Nemo. I’ve also not googled “help me debunk…” or anything similar. People thinking the paper is terrible and unconvincing is not evidence that they haven’t read it. It’s evidence that it’s poorly written.

As to ‘deal with the strongest arguments’, make them. I’m not going to leave you to option to complain, after the fact, that I’m only focusing on weak arguments.

Here are my responses the arguement’s you vaguely referenced in post #51:

[ul] “Baptista Minola of Padua” coincidence: I’m completely unimpressed. The names is ‘close’ to an mash-up of two men Oxford did business with. (Apparently, I note again the lack of references) How many similar co-incidences are possible by going through all the associates of everyone on this list and all of Shakespeare’s characters? I suggest you google P-hacking.
[/ul]
[ul]“Never writer to ever reader”: I have no clue. The idea that it’s supposed to suggest “an E. Vere writer to an E. Vere reader” seems super weak for one of your ‘strongest arguments’
[/ul]
[ul]“Ever living poet” dedication: Cite that it only meant ‘the author is dead’ at the time. I’m not an expert at Elizabethan euphemisms. Preferably from a source not arguing for a non-Shakespeare authorship.
[/ul]
[ul]W.H vs W.S: What? Printers don’t make errors? You’ll also have to explain how W.H points towards Oxford that anyone else in England.
[/ul]

70

I can’t find the cite I was thinking of which was Ben Jonsons conversations with William Drummond published only after Jonsons death. The closest I can find is Jonson telling Drummond Elizabeth ‘had a membrane on her, which made her incapable of man, though for her delight she tried many’(don’t ask me to link as I find it impossible on this device). However, I know Jonson gossiped far more than this to Drummond so I still hope to find the blackamoor quote. There certainly were pamphlets circulating in England accusing Elizabeth of sleeping with blackamoors. Unless proven otherwise though these pamphlets did not eminate from her court so you may not feel they are relevant. However, imo they do undermine the belief that Elizabeth and her Nobles were capable of preventing such accusations and rumours from spreading. The Elizabethan Court was famous for its gossip and slander.

How many would be aware of Oxfordshire authorship? Your guess is as good as mine. However, this is one drawback of many anti-Stratfordians. They cannot agree on the little conspiracy(only a few knew) or the big conspiracy(that most of literary Elizabethan England knew).

71

From that 7 page essay:

“No writer of the Elizabethan age ever wrote or even hinted that William of Stratford was a poet or a playwright”

And:

:dubious:

https://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html#2

Well, of course once the queen died, it was no longer Elizabethian days :), but… long live King James, and his recorder begs to differ.

Another thing I noticed, Mark Alexander and Prof. Daniel Wrigh point at Francis Meres as evidence for how good the Earl of Oxford was at comedy, as if Shakespeare was not good at that, but the quote from Meres actually goes like this:

From the Meres Essay

So, he was one, and pointed for his poetry and drama than just for comedy like De Vere… and Shakespeare too.

Now the point here is that I wondered if others noticed how damaging that is for the ones that think that it was just Oxford, and I found others that do agree. Meres actually does point at Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford as different people.

72

You liked the argument about astronomy? Okay, let’s look at that one:

So, two claims here that are difficult to assess, because the paper doesn’t bother to mention which works these reference appeared in. But a little Googling indicates that this is most likely the supernova claim they’re referencing. Interesting stuff! So, what’s the text that displays this deep knowledge of Elizabethan astronomy?

That’s it. That’s the “supernova.” It’s literally a guy saying, “When that star over there was in the same place last night, we saw a ghost.”

The “discovery of Mars’ retrograde orbit” is harder to place, partially because its not clear what the authors are talking about. Mars doesn’t have a retrograde orbit. It appears that it does from Earth, because heliocentrism, but that was something people had known for thousands of years. Presumably they mean “the discovery of the explanation for Mars’ retrograde orbit,” but I can’t find anything supporting that claim. There’s a bit in in Henry VI where he describes Mars’ orbit as a mystery, and there’s a couple places where he explicitly calls the Earth the center of the solar system, including later in the same play where he supposedly knew so much about supernovas.

Reading the rest of the paper, there’s a lot of stuff that sets off my bullshit detector. The part where they touch on the Ur-Hamlet, for example, is absolute fertilizer. There’s also a lot of claims that I can’t really evaluate one way or the other, like the bit about the names of de Vere’s creditors. But seeing as I can see all these other places where the authors are being either deceitful or just plain stupid, my suspicion is that those claims are similarly flawed.

73

“Baptista Minola of Padua” is just one of many coincidences. The plot layout for Hamlet matches Oxford almost uncannily: Both Princes were young when father died and had someone else take their rightful inheritance. Both mothers remarried early. Given a Polonius=‘Pol’ Cecil equation, both Princes were betrothed to Pol’s daughter, both were rivals with Pol’s son. Both young Princes killed a man accidentally with sword. If Oxford didn’t write Hamlet, perhaps whoever did designed it around Oxford’s bio! Several other plays map closely to real events in Oxford’s life. The paper mentions the bed trick, but there’s much more.

No Stratfordian has any clue what “a never writer to an ever reader” means. Part of it, I think, is that Shakespeare of Stratford, the putative author, never wrote a play.

If both W.H. and ever-living poet are Shakespeare, the dedication becomes strange: It’s offering to Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s own promise of eternity? :confused: And why didn’t T.T. solicit Shakespeare’s input on the book? He was trying to cheat W.S. of some money? The mystery of the dedication largely dissipates if you assume the poet was dead at publication time.

Both of these dedications are rather cryptic — pointlessly cryptic if the author was simply Shakespeare, but deliberately cryptic if the poet’s true name was being suppressed. No, I don’t know who “W.H.” is. It might be Henry Wriothesley with the initials reversed as disguise! Anderson thinks it might be William Hall, a cousin of Anthony Munday who might have come across the manuscript. (A popular choice among Stratfordians, I think, is William Hervey, 3rd husband of the Dowager Countess of Southampton who died not long before publication; the widower may have found the manuscript among her effects.)


Let's review a key piece of the puzzle.  Both sides of the debate agree that *Venus and Adonis*, *The Rape of Lucrece*, and the "Fair Youth" Sonnets were *all* written in a plan to induce Henry Wriothesley to marry Elizabeth de Vere (whose wedding may have occasioned the first performance of *Midsummer Night's Dream*).  All this is non-controversial.

Now, whose idea was it to write those poems, to encourage this wedding?  It was Elizabeth's father (and grandfather) who were especially keen on the marriage.  Henry's mother knew her rich son could have his choice of almost any eligible Lady.

In the traditional "Stratfordian" view, these poems were all commissioned by Henry's mother.  She gave the honor to a poet from Stratford who, at the time *Venus and Adonis* appeared was a complete unknown!

In the Oxfordian view, all these poems were written by Elizabeth's father, who was almost desperate to make his rich friend into his son-in-law!

I hope this discussion of those poems' purpose gives insight into the authorship controversy.  "Evidence"?  It's not exactly a smoking gun, but should inform us how well the Oxfordian model fits facts.

***But this train of thought loses luster if the Wriothesley family really were Shakespeare's patron.  Were they?  Oxfordians claim there's zero evidence they were.  Can anyone refute that?***
74

Not that it matters much to this particular debate, but you recall incorrectly. There were a number of contenders in the 15th and early 16th centuries and the history was complicated, with the rulers of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland all vying for each others thrones based on a variety of overlapping claims. It was Vladislav II who more or less unified the two in 1490, only for the whole situation to get complicated again with the Ottoman victory at Mohacs in 1526. The Habsburgs technically succeeded to the two crowns( in the case of Hungary disputed by the Zapolya family in Transylvania under Ottoman overlordship ), but much of Hungary remained under Ottoman control either directly or as vassal states until 1699. Technically the Bohemian throne was elective, which was one of the triggers of the Thirty Years War when the ProtestantWinter King was elected instead of the traditional Habsburg claimant.

The future HRE Rudolf II had been appointed to throne of Hungary( in 1572 )and Bohemia( in 1575 )by his father the emperor when de Vere was traveling abroad and he did control a modest chunk of the Adriatic coastline.

75

We’ve been round this loop before, evidently to no effect whatsoever. In the last Oxfordian thread, your John Hall argument prompted the following from me as part of a longer post. (I’ve cleaned up a broken link and done one minor edit for clarity. I may as well note in passing that the Oxfordian website that I pointed to as having the marginally better version of the claim than you were making is now one of the one’s that you’re citing. Who’s the one giving the Oxfordians their best shot here?)

[QUOTE]

You made no comment on this back in 2014. Given the recurrence now, I can only assume that you either weren’t reading that thread then at all or alternatively that you are just routinely conveniently and utterly vaguely forgetting any refutations of arguments that you had once put forward.

76

I’ll need overtime pay to serve you all better than this :slight_smile: but I have time to clear up one more misconception.

There are several lists of playwrights that were published in the relevant era. Most of these lists had Oxford’s name, but not Shakespeare’s. At least one list had Shakespeare’s name but not Oxford’s.

And there is one (1) list which contains both names. Stratfordians make much of this: It “proves” the two were different men. Nope. It suggests that Francis Meres didn’t know of the hoax. This is not surprising, of course; Meres was not a theatrical critic or such; the playwright list was a tiny part of a long book with broad scope. He amalgamated his list from other sources.

See page 308 (and the bottom of 307).

77

Thanks for this, bonzer! It’s very useful. I do remember you mentioning Hall; I do NOT remember that quote. It’s possible you posted it in a follow-up, after I had become disgusted with all the insults and hostility directed against me and had abandoned the thread.

The point about Hall was just a step in a larger point which your post does nothing to refute. Can you confirm that no contemporary relative or in-law of Shakespeare ever produced a document or deposition suggesting they knew their relative was a famous poet/playwright?

78

[Snip]

Full stop here because there is no evidence there for what you claim. As for the rest, it is just an underwhelming cite that mention missed works by Meres from another author that is not Shakespeare or De Vere. That is more likely to be evidence of those author’s works as not seen as important then.

79

And it was your ‘strongest’, and it’s just not impressive. I’m sure the plot for Hamlet (what parts weren’t already there in the sources Shakespeare ‘borrowed’ the basic plot from) couldn’t match anyone else in the world.

Well, what does it mean? And how do you know it?

I’m seeing a lot of “This is weird … therefore Oxford!”.

And? Venus and Adonis was reprinted 15 times before 1640. They picked a good poet, whoever it was. Plus cite? You’d think this would be more prominent (ie mentioned at all on the first few I found) on the websites discussing the poems if everyone agreed that they were all part of a plan like that.

Even your 7 page paper only argues that "There is no record, anywhere, that any of these powerful aristocrats [Southampton, Montgomery and Pembroke], exclusively connected with the works of Shakespeare, even knew Will Shakspere. (Needless to say, none of them proposed to or married any of his daughters!). Once again insisting that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, for Shakespeare anyway.

I must admit, it was very clever of them to get a guy who should have personally known Shakespeare from Avon to do the printings on Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Were they trying to really sell the pen-name? Or is that a co-incidence that favours Shakespeare’s authorship?

80

So Oxford and Shakespeare not appearing on a list together is evidence that they’re one person.

Oxford and Shakespeare appearing on a list together is not evidence that they are two people. It’s evidence that the list writer was fooled by a hoax.

Cough Popper Cough Falsifiability Cough