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Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 3931
Posted: 20 November 2024 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply
Interesting YouTube video about words that Shakespeare is credited (rightly or wrongly) with having invented, or at least was the first to put into writing. 
An impressive list regardless.


(The creator makes a brief stop at the authorship question at the end, but nothing of note there. See it for the original topic).
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133555
Posted: 20 November 2024 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply
He fudges a lot at the end, playing the familiar hand of treating the author as if he is the same man as the glover’s son from Stratford. As if a reference to one is automatically a reference to the other. But in fact, while many contemporaries refer to Shakespeare as an author, none connect him to the Stratford man until years after that man’s death.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133555
Posted: 20 November 2024 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Incidentally, he also cheats by using the word “conspiracy” in reference to the Authorship Question. Conspiracy is not needed. Just Elizabethan business as usual.
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Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 3931
Posted: 20 November 2024 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply
I had a feeling the use of the C-word wouldn't go unnoticed ;). And really, there's no hint of conspiracy-thinking in Price's book, which asks legitimate questions. 

Unfortunately, lunatics like THIS GUY makes it easy for some to dismiss eveything that questions the authorship as conspiracy theories.
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Mark Haslett
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Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
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Posted: 20 November 2024 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply
This one tweaked me. It's good, but then just falls totally apart when it comes to the history.

He makes these claims for ignoring any doubt that Stratford Will is the sole author:
1. He would have had to face down these reasons for doubt in his own lifetime.
2. No "firm shape" of doubting the Stratford attribution existed until mid 1800s.
3. The "main argument" for doubting the Stratford attribution is "classist".
4. William of Stratford went to Stratford Grammar School.
5. Shakespeare was "massively famous" in his own day because "He performed multiple times for King and Queen".
6. Contemporary writers mention him and appear to have accepted that Stratford William wrote the works.
7. There is a "consistency in style" that this guy doesn't think would be possible if it was "written by different people".

Every single one of these claims is false. William of Stratford may have written the plays, but none of these claims could be used to prove it. None of these claims are true. Here are reasons:

1. We know that many plays attributed to Shakespeare at the time were not written by Shakespeare. So we know whatever consequences there were for having your name on plays you didn't write, Shakespeare faced them. Apparently, there were no consequences. Probably because only a small portion of his work was provably attributed to "Shakespeare" during his lifetime. The vast majority of Shakespeare's plays were not published until after he died or were published anonymously.

2. "Firm" doubts, in published statements that Shakespeare's works (specifically "Venus & Adonis" and "Lucrece") were written by an unknown author hiding behind the name "Shakespeare" began at least by 1597. That's when Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum came out. Doubts continued to appear with regularity through the 1600's in works by Peacham, Weever, Basse, Davies of Hereford, and even German poet Andreas Gryphius works from 1630's to 1650's -- all of these allusions and doubts were published in the immediate times of William Shakespeare.

3. The "main argument" for doubt is that no record exists to unambiguously connect the works to the man from Stratford on Avon. That is not "classist." His social rank is not an issue. The issue is that no one ever recorded a single personal or public account of Shakespeare as a writer from Stratford on Avon. At all. In his entire life. The first time the single word "Stratford" is connected to the works in any context is a single line in a collection of the works published 8 years after the man died -- and at that time "Stratford" was a theater district in London. Nothing left by the man's will, his family's diaries, his friends, his business associates or anyone anywhere indicates the world thought Shakespeare was from Stratford on Avon during his lifetime. No record of anyone looking for the writer in Stratford occurs until the 1630's. That's almost 20 years after the man died. Reason to question his authorship? Reasonable minds say "yes."

4.There is no basis to claim Stratford Will attended Grammar school. His father was a self-described "Yeoman" who sold thousands of pounds of illegal wool and owned a large farm outside of the town. Records show he had only a small, 30 foot storefront property in town. It was a time of plague. He did not keep his family and wool and animals in a plague-ridden 30' storefront property. The family clearly lived on the farm and could not have sent the eldest son to study Latin for no reason when he should be learning his father's trade (a trade which records prove Stratford Will did learn and make money at).

5. Shakespeare was not famous. Maybe the name was, but the man from Stratford was demonstrably not. When he died, no one in London said a word. Though other poets were immediately mourned across the nation, nothing of the kind happened for Shakespeare. Hundreds of actors performed multiple times for the King and Queen. Were they all "massively famous"? There is no evidence whatsoever that the man we call Shakespeare was famous. No one records meeting him or seeing the famous actor or writer, Shakespeare. People who did know him never mention that he was a writer or actor and certainly never say he was famous.

6. No contemporary writer said Shakespeare was from Stratford. There is not a single contemporary writer, actor, stage hand, tax collector or otherwise human being who anywhere in his entire life mentioned that Stratford Will wrote a poem, play, book, short story or shopping list. This is a completely made up idea. All direct references to "Shakespeare" during the man's life are in reference to the man's writing. The only place we find personal commentary about the man who did the writing are in the allusions that indicate the writer is someone hiding or masking behind a pen-name -- as in Joseph Hall or Thomas Edwards.

7. This is the craziest of his claims. It has long been held by the entire body of Shakespeare scholarship that several of the plays were written in collaboration. This guy is now alone, being the only one to claim that the works are "too consistent" to be by more than one hand. In fact, many of the plays contain wide shifts in style and even continuity, such that it seems most likely that different authors were at work and not even necessarily on the same page over whether certain characters were "priests" or "bishops" or whatever.

Could Stratford Will have written the plays?

Of course he COULD have.

But what proof is there that he DID?

The real question to answer is HOW did he write the plays and poems attributed to him without leaving any direct and unambiguous evidence that he DID?

One single piece of unambiguous, primary source evidence that William Shakspere of Stratford on Avon was ever paid to write anything would end this "controversy".

In over 400 years of exhaustive searching, nothing of the kind has been found.

Edited by Mark Haslett on 20 November 2024 at 8:55pm
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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133555
Posted: 21 November 2024 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply
That is not "classist." His social rank is not an issue.

••

I've seen the argument made that De Vere could not have been the Author precisely because of his high rank. I kind of reverse classism.

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Steven Brake
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 663
Posted: 21 November 2024 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply
JB wrote: I've seen the argument made that De Vere could not have been the Author precisely because of his high rank. I kind of reverse classism.

SB replied: I agree that it's daft to say that De Vere couldn't have been an author because of his high rank, but, at the same time, it's difficult to see how a man as educated as he would have been due to his rank could have written plays that violate the classical rules of unity of time, place and action, and make repeated mistakes over geography, history and - well, social rank, misunderstanding titles, the correct names of noble houses, etc.
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Steven Brake
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Joined: 01 January 2016
Posts: 663
Posted: 21 November 2024 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply
Mark Haslett wrote: That's when Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum came out.

SB replied: It's pretty much universally agreed that the target of Hall's Virgidemiarum was John Marston. 

Mark Haslett wrote: The "main argument" for doubt is that no record exists to unambiguously connect the works to the man from Stratford on Avon. 

SB replied: In 1603, William Shakespeare was named alongside John Heminges and Henry Condell in the royal patent confirming the creation of The King's Men.

In 1616, William Shakespeare (or Shakespere, or Shakespear - as is conventional for the time, the surname is spelt in a variety of ways) dies in Stratford-Upon-Avon, naming Heminges and Condell in his will.

In 1623, the First Folio is published. In it, Heminges and Condell named Shakespeare as the author of the plays contained within. Shakespeare is also described as being the "Sweet Swan of Avon" by Jonson in his commendatory poem.

Mark Haslett wrote: There is no basis to claim Stratford Will attended Grammar school.

SB replied: The King Edward VI Grammar School was about a quarter of a mile from Shakespeare's childhood home, and, as a boy, he would have been allowed to attend it for free.

No, there's no proof that he did, and biographers who categorically state it as a fact that he did are mistaken to do so. But it's not an unreasonable assumption.

Mark Haslett wrote: No contemporary writer said Shakespeare was from Stratford. 

SB replied: Why should they have done so? Did any contemporary refer to "Christopher Marlowe of Canterbury", or "Ben Jonson of London"?

Mark Haslett wrote: It has long been held by the entire body of Shakespeare scholarship that several of the plays were written in collaboration. 

SB replied: The more devout Stratfordians tend to resist the idea of collaboration, but yes, it is the more commonly held position that Shakespeare's plays - all plays written during the Elizabethan and Jacobean period - were written in collaboration. 

Which pretty much knackers the idea of a true, hidden author of the works that have been incorrectly ascribed to William Shakespeare. 
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