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Mark Haslett
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Joined: 19 April 2004
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Then it is worth noting: Shakespearean scholars are not historians, lawyers, doctors or experts in other areas.

When experts in these other areas weigh in, they uniformly disagree. Lawyers find a master of law in Shakespeare. Doctors find a leader in the latest techniques and master of forensics. Historians find abundant evidence that disputes that the Stratford man could have written the works.

Repeating the opinions of Greene and Jonson, notable though they are for being of the era, cannot be some kind of trump card against the evidence in the work itself. Until there's some other explanation for all the expertise and mastery in the plays, we must either agree that Shaxper's Grammar School gave the best education to anyone in history, or the Author found extensive education elsewhere.

The work speaks for itself. But only to those willing to see. Shakespearean scholars would rather not see great education and expertise in the work (plain tho it is to other experts). Why? Not because of Greene and Jonson, but because Shaxper's biography cannot account for it.

That fascinates me.

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Mark: Then it is worth noting: Shakespearean scholars are not historians, lawyers, doctors or experts in other areas.

------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------
That someone is an expert in a field does not preclude their expertise, or great understanding, of another field, and historians will, by necessity, have to develop an understanding of other fields - politics, theology, the military, philosophy, science, etc

And the evidence of the work itself is precisely the point. Oxfordians tend to argue that only someone well-educated and broadly travelled could have written the plays, while ignoring the errors in the plays that indicate someone who didn't always understand his material. 

And Shakespearians don't argue that the King's New School gave him "the best education in history". If he went there - and we don't know if he did - he would have received some degree of grounding in the classics, as that's pretty much what education meant in those days. But, as I've repeatedly posted, Greene and Jonson scoffed at Shakespeare's lack of learning, and his presumption in writing on subjects that he didn't really understand.

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John Byrne

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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

…Shaxper's Grammar School gave the best education to anyone in history…

••

Yet, remarkably, produced no one else even close to Shakespeare's skills and breadth of knowledge.

This is where Schoenbaum invokes the "incomprehensibility of genius"--falling back on quasi-mysticism when the facts cannot be made to fit the desired result.

There is an inverse snobbery at work. Stratfordians want Shakespeare to be their own Horatio Alger story, rising from the mundane to achieve the magnificent. To have a peer of the realm be the Author robs them of this--even tho it is a much more logical scenario.

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Shakespeare's knowledge, or lack thereof, was the subject of scorn by at least two of his contemporaries. And far from showing "breadth of knowledge", many of his plays make mistakes that are difficult to reconcile with a classically educated, well-travelled writer.

Is it the case that the more devout Stratfordians speculate far too freely about a man we know so little about? Yes, emphatically. I read a biography of Shakespeare years ago which argued that because Dr John Hall (Shakespeare's son-in-law) opposed Charles I's taxation policies, that his proved that Shakespeare must have been a republican (in the English sense, of course). 

Duff Cooper's Sergeant Shakespeare argues that because Shakespeare wrote so convincingly about war, he must have been a soldier - then writes about 120 pages worth of his military career, with, if memory serves, nothing but his imagination to guide him (or lead him on).

But there are hard facts and contemporary testimony, and they can't just be dismissed as errors, or people contriving to cover up the truth about Will's non-authorship; or, if they were, why? Why go to such lengths to maintain the secret, even after, years after, the parties that allegedly would have objected to Oxford's authorship being known, were dead? 


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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 20 January 2021 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Steven: And Shakespearians don't argue that the King's New School gave him "the best education in history".

**

No, they argue that the plays contain no evidence of mastery.

But masters of the relevant fields point out the plays most certainly DO reveal mastery.

So there is a quandary --

Shakespearians say they are qualified enough to say the masters of the relevant fields are wrong.

But I'm at a loss as to why. It confounds reason that Stratford-doubting experts of law (for example) should believe Shakespearians instead of the evidence of their own expert opinons? Because Shakespearians don't want them to.

When I say "experts of law," mind you, I mean every single Supreme Court Justice who has looked into the matter-- from all political stripes.

The "scorn" that you cling to as evidence that Shakespeare was not educated is more than contradicted by heaps of praise-- found throughout the history of the works. Why did Greene and Jonson make their remarks? I know nothing of Greene -- but Jonson's involvement in the Folio puts him at cross-purposes with historical clarity. Having been one of the few who had connection to both the Author and Shaxper, his remarks seem to contain contradictions that make more sense when entertaining the possibility that he is sometimes referring to Shaxper and sometimes to the Author.

I have seen such speculation, anyway.

Nevertheless, there is no way to square even the two examples of extreme knowledge I've brought up in this thread (the painting and the obscure legal case) with any reasonable notion that "Small Latin and less Greek" actually describes the Author's education.

And there are thousands of more instances waiting to be explained away if we insist Jonson's insults are the whole truth.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 21 January 2021 at 6:23am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Mark: It's possible to write convincingly or entertainingly about a subject without having to have "mastery" of it. 

Shakespeare (or the author, or the plays, or however you'd prefer them to be referred) writes about things like love, hate, youth, aging, rivalry, friendship, life, death, etc, - the human condition. And he did so brilliantly. But the plays also reveal a flawed understanding of history and geography that are difficult to reconcile with the classically educated, well-travelled figure that Oxfordians insist the author must have been. 

While Jonson never went to university, he prided himself on his education, and mocked Shakespeare's lack of learning. Greene, who did go to university, also scorned at Shakespeare for presuming to write as well as his social betters. The Parnassus Plays, performed around 1598-1602, also scoff at unlettered writers who presume to compete with their better-educated, socially superior peers. They specifically name Shakespeare as being one of them.

The comments of Jonson, Greene and the author, or authors, of the Parnassus Plays are utterly at odds with the notion of a well-born, classically trained person as being the author, or secret author, of the plays. Instead, they seem to demonstrate bewildered jealousy that the Warwickshire boy could not only play them at their game, but beat them too. 


Edited by Steven Brake on 21 January 2021 at 11:12am
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 21 January 2021 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Steven: Mark: It's possible to write convincingly or entertainingly about a subject without having to have "mastery" of it.

**

Not what we're talking about. Experts find that Shakespeare's medicine and law are not "convincing" but at the forefront of their age. Not only do no other play writes of the age demonstrate anything like Shakespeare's mastery, the finest legal and medical minds of the age are merely at pace with Shakespeare.

Works in science and law throughout the 18th, 19h and 20th century return again and again to confirm the foresight, insight and (yes) mastery of these subjects as found woven THROUGHOUT the works. It's not just a few adroitly referenced legal cases, but a legal mind at work in building cases in sonnets, speeches, plays at a level that other legal minds recognize as beyond any reasonable ability to fake.

You have mentioned Jonson's debatable accusations. Care to go into any detail about Greene or the Parnassus play issues? Whatever they are, they can hardly erase the plays detailed and cutting-edge depictions of disease, forensics, law, etc. and somehow retroactively suck-out all the obvious evidence of education.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 21 January 2021 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Mark: What experts, and what examples of law and medicine (particularly the latter) are you referring to?

Shakespeare gaveBohemia a coastline;
thought Delphi was an island, rather than a city;
had 
King John use cannons decades before their invention;
t
houghtAncient Rome had chiming clocks;
thoughtAncient Egyptians played billiards;
hadRichard of Gloucester quote Machiavelli years before he was born;
had Ulysses quote Aristotle thousands of years before he was born;
didn'tknow the difference between Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March and one-timeheir to the throne, and Edmund Mortimer, who rebelled against Henry IV.


To most Shakespearians, even - perhaps particularly - devout ones, factual errors such as these in no way diminish his dramatic genius. But it's very hard to reconcile them with the idea of a classically educated, well travelled person. 

Greene is often presumed to be the author of The Groatsworth Of Wit, which famously jibed at Shakespeare: "for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapped in a Players hyde supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johaness factotum is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country" (I've modernised the spelling).

The Parnassus Plays were three comedies of unknown authorship (as far as I'm aware). They again draw a distinction between the university wits, and the unlettered players and playwrights who presume to regard themselves as their equals.

If you want to regard Jonson's accusations as "debatable", that's your choice, but it can't be argued that he made them. And to classically educated English critics of the Augustan Period, Jonson, whose plays strongly followed the classical theories of unity of time, place and action, was much superior to the sprawling plays of Shakespeare. 

 
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132135
Posted: 21 January 2021 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Shakespeare gaveBohemia a coastline

••

This one comes up so often I'll mention YET AGAIN what I have mentioned MANY TIMES BEFORE: When Edward De Vere traveled in Europe as a young man, Bohemia--which changed shape a lot--did, indeed, have a coastline.

++

Greene is often presumed to be the author of The Groatsworth Of Wit, which famously jibed at Shakespeare: "for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapped in a Players hyde supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johaness factotum is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country" (I've modernised the spelling).

••

Such an odd thing to say about a prominent playwright--unless, of course, Greene is not talking about "Shakespeare", but rather Shaksper, who, as a front man, was, indeed, "beautified" with the feathers of others. Or was Shakespeare the plagiarist some Stratfordians seem content to have him be?

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 21 January 2021 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

While Bohemia did have a coastline for a brief period in the 13th century, it didn't have one during the time the play was set, and, as far as I'm aware, wouldn't have had one during the time of Oxford's travels. And Delphi was never an island. And how did King John acquire his cannon, or Ancient Rome its chiming clocks?

Greene (if he was indeed the author, and he may not have been) is complaining about someone who's been an actor and then turned to writing, and having a very high opinion of his literary prowess. It's generally felt to be a reference to Shakespeare, who having been an actor - he would later act in some of Jonson's plays - then began to collaborate with Christopher Marlowe to write the Henry VI plays (to which the line about Tyger's heart alludes) and possibly also Richard III. 


Edited by Steven Brake on 21 January 2021 at 2:19pm
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Mark Haslett
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Location: United States
Posts: 6059
Posted: 21 January 2021 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Steven, I will provide a sample of the experts later-- but I don't have them memorized.

But this list of errors is almost comical:
Shakespeare gaveBohemia a coastline;
thought Delphi was an island, rather than a city;
had King John use cannons decades before their invention;
thoughtAncient Rome had chiming clocks;
thoughtAncient Egyptians played billiards;
hadRichard of Gloucester quote Machiavelli years before he was born;
had Ulysses quote Aristotle thousands of years before he was born;
didn'tknow the difference between Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March and one-timeheir to the throne, and Edmund Mortimer, who rebelled against Henry IV.

One might wonder if you think of his works as plays or text books. Having Ulysses quote Aristotle is called "poetic license". It allows the writer to tell his story better to ignore the fact that this is impossible.

By this logic, we should be saying he also "thought" fairies were real and that magic could create typhoons.

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Mark Haslett
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Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6059
Posted: 21 January 2021 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I worked on "Sleepless in Seattle" as a young production assistant living in Seattle.

We filmed Tom Hanks appearing to row his boat from Lake Union to West Seattle -- a trip that would actually take more than a day and likely endanger his life.

That doesn't mean we "thought" it was possible or couldn't see the city of Seattle that we were standing in-- it just meant we could set him on a beach for a scene that the director thought worked better on a beach.

To say Shakespeare read 40 year old obscure legal cases in ancient languages in his spare time to make up for the fact that his education didn't acquaint him with the idea that chiming clocks weren't invented thousands of years ago is Olympic quality mental gymnastics.
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