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Mark Haslett
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Joined: 19 April 2004
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Posted: 15 January 2021 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I was looking at the Authorship Question and found this list of every historical record that connects the name Shakespeare with the work.

LINK

I began to wonder what a biography of Shaxper/Shakespeare as the Author might look like if it stuck strictly to the evidence. It seems like it would just have to say, "and then he wrote all these plays, leaving no notes or other debris from the labor for us to see today."

Does anyone here know if anything like this been written by a Stratford-believing historian?
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 15 January 2021 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I can't find anything, but Diana Price's anti-Stratfordian approach does take the case on, pretty much along these lines.

Here's a good interview where she talks about her approach to the subject:

DIANA PRICE INTERVIEW
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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 15 January 2021 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Every Stratfordian should read Price’s book. She makes a case for no candidate, but thoroughly demolishes “Shakespeare”.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 15 January 2021 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Some people get quite worked up about this subject but here are two things we can know: that some early works are now officially co-credited to Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, and that there are more church and other documents 'proving' a William Shakespeare existed and as many portraits said to be of the man as there are for Marlowe.

That's all I'm going to stand behind. The tombs, the elementary educated person who never left the British Isles versus the higher educated and more widely traveled one, the sexual orientation, the deaths, the bard being the beard; it's all up to each one to weigh or ignore as they see fit. I definitely do think Richard III got a bad write-up to curry favour with Elizabeth I, a Tudor, though. So mean to a handicapped king who died in battle! Tsk tsk tsk.
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Cory Vandernet
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Posted: 15 January 2021 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Diana Price is featured prominently, along with Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave, in the excellent PBS documentary LAST WILL. & TESTAMENT. Worth a look, if you're interested in the Authorship Question.
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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 16 January 2021 at 7:58am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

…there are more church and other documents 'proving' a William Shakespeare existed…

**

One of the more subtle ways Stratfordians "win" this debate is by referring to their man as "William Shakespeare"--which was not the name he went by in Stratford.

Because spelling had not been formalized at that time, and scribes therefore spelled everything as they heard it--sometimes multiple different spellings for the same word on the same page!--we know that many words have changed their pronunciation over the years, and we know that Stratford Will was called "Shaxsper", a traditional Warwickshire variant.

"William Shakespeare", the playwright, seems to have been an invention, one in which "Honest" Ben Jonson was more than a little involved.

+++++++

…many portraits said to be of the man…

••

But only one confirmed, and that produced after his death, by an artist who had not actually seen him. (Ben Jonson was involved in that, too!)

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Mike Norris
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Posted: 16 January 2021 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I gotta cut back on the comics. I read "Diana Prince".. 
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Peter Martin
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Posted: 16 January 2021 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

"William Shakespeare", the playwright, seems to have been an invention, one in which "Honest" Ben Jonson was more than a little involved.
-----------------------------------------
Once you start decrying first-hand evidence as being dishonest, doesn't the whole endeavour become impossible?
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 16 January 2021 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

This is definitely one of those subjects I could disappear down the rabbit hole and become obsessed with. I would like to stay noncommittal like Diana Price. Perhaps Anne Hathaway was far more central than we imagine...

It's odd, as someone with limited formal education I ought to be a champion of the untraveled and untutored genius author story, but I'm painfully aware of the things I have missed access to, and much that I don't and maybe can't know. I've had to work hard at catch up even partially in some areas.

I watched a program on Marlowe faking his death and living on the continent in exile, and another on two burial sites with one in a wall and one next to Hathaway being partly empty with an 'unusual' inscription, plus a few articles here and there, and I'm not sure I can afford to go very deep. Perhaps I should best stick to finding evidence of Minoan and Egyptian trade and cultural influence prior to the eruption of Mount Thera, or if King Tut was murdered!
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 3:52am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Peter Martin wrote:

Once you start decrying first-hand evidence as being dishonest, doesn't the whole endeavour become impossible?

------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------

Well, quite. 

Alternative Authorship arguments can often seem undecided whether it's just an accident that William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon became regarded as the author - "It's just because his name sounded a bit like the pseudonym that was used!" - or whether there was something more deliberate, or perhaps even sinister, afoot - "Ben Jonson only claimed William Shakespeare wrote the plays because he was part of the conspiracy too!".

To those of who you do believe in an alternate author - what position do you take? Do you see it as just an odd coincidence that's led to the wrong man being given the credit? Or do you think that there was a conscious plan to make Will Shakespeare seem to be the author?






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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 5:05am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

What “first hand evidence” connects Stratford Will directly to the author known as William Shakespeare?
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Steven Brake
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Joined: 01 January 2016
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Posted: 17 January 2021 at 6:08am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

His name, Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, which praises Shakespeare and also Oxford, thereby making it clear that they're not the same person,
Heminges and Condell, who knew Shakespeare and collected the plays that became the First Folio as a memorial to him, the commendatory poem by Jonson on the First Folio, and the "off-the-cuff" remarks Jonson later made to Drummond, in which he sneers at Shakespeare's lack of art, but never disputes his authorship.

There's more, but isn't the above sufficient? If not, why not? Are we really meant to feel that Shakespeare's contemporaries were hoodwinked by him, or were all enlisted as part of a ruse to falsely give him credit for another's work?
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