SB replied: There isn't. There's lot of conjecture, mostly unfounded, and arguments, usually contradictory.

Andrew Bitner wrote: An awful lot has to be assumed or hand-waved away to make Shakespeare (the man) into Shakespeare the playwright.

SB replied: Not really. There's the fact that many plays were published in his lifetime under Shakespeare's name, were performed by the theatrical companies that he was a member of, and with many being collected in a Folio by two men who'd known him for years as members of said theatrical companies.

There's the testimony of Ben Jonson, both flattering, if slightly backhanded, in his commendatory poem in the First Folio, and more disparaging, in later private remarks.

There's the lack of requirement to hide any supposed true identity, and also the knotty problem of the series of collaborators with whom Shakespeare (or "the author", if you'd prefer) would have worked with over the years, and who don't seem to have harboured any suspicions that the man they were working with wasn't an author. 

There's lots more, of course. 

There's three topics that I look forward to in the JB forum: behind-the-scenes comic book stuff; religious discussions (because unlike most places on the internet, it's usually well-behaved here); and the Shakespeare authorship question.

An Oxfordian would assert that this should be "under the Shakespeare name." And even a Stratfordian could assent to the change in the sense of the man whose names were quite variously spelled eventually was finalized into a brand not until as late as the 20th century.

(* I'm not saying the case for Oxford is a crazy theory, but that there are certain crazy theories).

SB replied: Not so. Stratfordians have often over-indulged their imagination, and there's a strong case that they've given much ammunition to Alternative Authorship theorists, but there's lots of scholarship too.

Mark Haslett wrote: Any Stratfordian has to answer for Joseph Hall who, in his satires of 1595, declares the author of Venus & Adonis is a “cuttlefish” hidden is his own “inky vomiture” who “shifts his fame onto another’s name.”

SB replied: Easily done. Hall didn't believe that Venus & Adonis had been written by William Shakespeare. This isn't proof. It's supposition.

Mark Haslett wrote: Then they need to explain why Thomas Edwards did the same thing in his “Narcissus,” (1595) saying the author of Venus & Adonis is a “masked” author who could not receive his laurels and, furthermore, wears purple-robes which only people of the rank of Earl or higher could wear at the time.

SB replied: "Narcissus" is elliptical, generally felt to allude to Shakespeare in stanza eight, but generally felt to be referring to a different poet in stanza nine. As above, it's pretty tentative stuff. 

Mark Haslett wrote: Then they need to explain why Ben Jonson’s assistant Richard Brome wrote lines in his 1638 play “Antipodes” describing Shakespeare as ‘that English Earle, that lov’d a Play and a Player so well’.

SB replied: He didn't. He wrote:

Mark Haslett wrote: How many such references are too many? Again, why would there even be one?

SB replied: True. A Marlovian, Baconian, etc, would claim the same.

Michael Penn wrote: And even a Stratfordian could assent to the change in the sense of the man whose names were quite variously spelled eventually was finalized into a brand not until as late as the 20th century.

SB replied: The notion of "Shakespeare" as a pseudonym that got mixed up with Will "Shaxper" (or "Shakspere", or "Shaxberd", or any one of the umpteen variants) is a massive red herring, and, as I've posted above, ignores the relationship Will of Stratford (let's call him that) had with Heminges and Condell, and the measures they took to commemorate the memory of the man they'd known.