Saturday, February 10, 2018

Tantalizing Hints But No Real Evidence: Update To The Update

In the update to my sick-day post yesterday, I noted that Francis Bacon had proposed marriage to Elizabeth Hatton when she became the widow of Christopher Hatton's heir,  William Hatton.  I wrote that she had been Bacon's law client as well as a friend.  Well, the friendship was deeper and longer than that, she was his cousin to whom he had proposed before she married William Hatton in 1594 (she became his widow three years later).   So the relationship was more significant and would likely have at least put him in proximity to the estate of George North's patron,  Christopher Hatton.

If that would have put him anywhere near a copy of the in-the-news George North Discourse is anyone's guess - unless there's some evidence to support a supposition to that effect.  Apparently the only known copy of it is the manuscript which would seem to have a North family association, it having previously been in the Wexton Abbey Library with a North family bookplate on it.  You'd have to either put it or a known copy in the ownership of the Hatton family to even begin that chain of information to Bacon.

Now, if I had the same standards as that of the Shakespeare industry, I'd take that as absolute evidence, stronger than just about any in the "facts" that are regularly reached for to support the conventional case that the Stratford man who couldn't spell his own name twice in the same way (or in legible letters) and who isn't documented to have written a single word other than his name or to have owned a book in his life wrote the great plays and poems.   Someone would probably write a piece of nonsense to be made into a play or a ridiculous Hollywood movie on such lore.

But I don't go for that kind of pseudo-academic rubbish. 

Apparently, before the news about the theory that the manuscript is the source for 11 of the famous plays broke, George North was considered to be a bit of a joke by some of the few who had ever heard of him.  In  "Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric, and Fiction in Sixteenth-century England" Arthur F. Kinney says this about George North's translation of the French parody of Philibert de Vienne on Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, "Le Philosophe du Court":

The high spirits that bubble through North's often pedestrian translation supply further proof that Philibert's outrageous expose is meant to be the most extravagant of parodies  How appropriate that George North should dedicate such a sham mirror for  courtiers to Christopher Hatton who, Sir John Perrot tells us, “came thither [to court] as a private Gentleman of the Innes of Court in a Maske; and for his activity, and person  which was tall, and proportionable, taken into [the queen's] favor. 

Yet, incredibly,  North himself seemt to have taken Philibert seriously.   In his dedication to Hatton, “Captaine of the Queenes Maiesties Garde, and Gentleman of hir highnesse priuie Chamber” (sig. A3),  North commends his translation as “both floures and fruite (not to supply the scarcetie, but to encrease the plentie and pleasaunte purposes) of Courtly Philosophie” (sig A2v).  He offers his treatise as useful manual, testifying to it as another Englished Catiglione. 

I find the most interesting thing about that is that apparently Christopher Hatton succeeded in using the frequent theatrical productions that the various Inns of Court put on to gain Elizabeth's notice and favor.  Exactly the same thing that Francis Bacon did both during the reign of Elizabeth and James I, which is how we know that Bacon had extensive experience in both writing and in the production of theatrical spectacles throughout his adult life and his public career.  Sir John Perrot might have sniffed at the upstart commoner,  Christopher Hatton for getting some kind of advancement through whatever means available but, just as under Trump, that's what you get when you have a bunch of seriously corrupt, seriously egotistical quasi-absolute monarchs.  To hell with all of that.  Down with all anti-democratic governments, everywhere.

Now on to something important.

18 comments:

  1. "the Stratford man who couldn't spell his own name twice in the same way (or in legible letters)"

    Why do you continue to return to this? There was no unified system of spelling (nor is a signature's legibility the sign of literacy. I'm a notary public, want to see some of the marks in my ledger)? It is irrelevant.

    "and who isn't documented to have written a single word other than his name or to have owned a book in his life wrote the great plays and poems."

    According to whose standards? We have (to start) thousands of plays published during his lifetime that list his name as the author. He was a front? You have ZERO evidence for this. Just Greenblattesque, "Let us imagine..." I don't buy his nonsense either.

    "But I don't go for that kind of pseudo-academic rubbish."

    Horse. Shit. Diana Price is exactly that. Don't believe me, either, just write any Shakespeare scholar with a degree from an accredited university (public or private) and they'll tell you the same damn thing.

    "we know that Bacon had extensive experience in both writing and in the production of theatrical spectacles throughout his adult life and his public career."

    But that is not evidence that he worked with the company that performed the plays, and THAT is the rub. You still seem to think Elizabethan theater was like New York in the 50s, with starving actors working as waiters to pay the bills between auditions. The companies were relatively fixed. The author had to be around for rehearsals, rewrites, and work with the younger actors to make sure they could handle the roles. How often was Bacon there? How did he escape the attention of the actors? Why is there nothing written about him using a front?

    Again, ZERO evidence, but you want us to imagine Alright, Mr. Lennon. I guess it's easy if we try.

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    1. There are more than nine hundred thousand words in the "Shakespeare" corpus, it is impossible to believe that a man who could barely handle a pen to write his own name (if, indeed, all of those signatures are his) and spell his own name consistently. Spelling words is one thing, a person spelling their own name is quite another thing. I think he might have known how to draw some letters and maybe read a bit but he clearly wasn't used to using a pen. Get back to me when those whose signatures you criticize are accused of having written nine-hundred thousand of the greatest words written in the English language.

      It isn't "horse shit" that not a single book has ever been identified as having been owned by the Stratford man, that's a matter of fact. As is the fact that no one can place in in a school for a single day of his life, one of of a family of illiterates in a town where illiteracy was so common that even many of the officials of the town, presumably some of their most successful businessmen, were illiterate.

      It's not a "fact" that "thousands of plays appear with his name on them" there are some published with spellings of "William Shakespeare" many with the last name hyphenated in the fashion of an Elizabethan pseudonym as "Shake-speare" none I'm aware of that use any of the spellings that the Stratford man knew. And many of the plays and other works published under some name like "Shakespeare" which are certainly not from the author, at least one of which has been positively identified as having been by a known author. And we have contemporary attributions of some of the works of that author, published under the "Shakespeare" name which identified the author as someone else.

      Diana Price wrote one of the most responsible books on the topic, in which she looked at all of the known records of the Stratford man and two dozen known writers of his lifetime to see if any of them, as he has, has left no literary paper trail that would prove he had none (even the Stratfordian expert, Stanley Wells has admitted he didn't leave one). Her ability to point to specific records in the case of the two dozen other writers can be fact checked - and has been. The fact that out of those twenty-five known authors of that period only the most eminent of them all, "William Shakespeare" has not left a single record after what must be a centuries long search for such records is quite significant in debunking the centuries of claims of the Shakespeare industry. On the other hand, the Shakespeare Trust peddles tours of houses as his "birthplace" which was constructed centuries after Shakespeare's death on a street on which his father bought a piece of land years after Shakespeare's birth, an "Anne Hathaway's cottage" which has no known association with her or her family. The whole thing is such a sham that one of its most honest caretakers in the 19th century quit saying his conscience wouldn't let him lie anymore.

      Diana Price's book is certainly one of the most important written on the authorship question in the history of scholarship on the issue. Compared to Greenblat it is a model of academic responsibility.

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    2. There is more evidence that Bacon was not only involved in the production of theatrical spectacles than the Stratford man HE WROTE SOME OF THEM, HE WAS WORKING ON ONE ABOUT HENRY VIII AND BORROWED STATE DOCUMENTS TO WRITE IT. On the side of your candidate, we know he invested in theater companies but is listed nowhere during his lifetime as an author of one of the plays.

      The Stratfordians seem to be quite in a panic, as them peddling the "hand D" as an autograph of the Stratford man when there is no evidence of that (based on those signatures) a claim that doesn't begin to pass any rigorous test. I found the paper pointing out it has more in common with the known writing of Henry Neville to be entirely convincing.

      What there is zero evidence of is that the Stratford man ever wrote a word of literary text.

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    3. "There are more...the English language."

      Poor penmanship can accompany great intellect (see: Thomas Aquinas). And why is it hard to imagine a man who wrote (at least) 900,000 words with a quill pen might have osteoarthritis in those same fingers? Wouldn't be the first artist to suffer wear and tear.

      "It isn't "horse shit"...were illiterate."

      Price's work is "pseudo-academic rubbish." As I said, write to any accredited literary historian of the era and you'll see. There's a reason her book, two decades old, has sat outside scholarly circles begging for a seat at the table.

      Those don't prove anything. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You are not an historian, and clearly have no idea how the discipline, which has standards and processes for review, operates.

      "It's not a...spellings that the Stratford man knew."

      No, it is. We have plenty of copies of quartos that were published during his lifetime. Spelling was fluid. This is undeniable. And not just with Shakespeare. There are references to Marlowe in some writings as "Marley." Again, you're taking modern practices and applying them to Elizabethan England. Different time and place. Might as well argue Mozart wasn't a composer because he didn't leave any recordings for us to listen to.

      Shakespeare Apocrypha and unsavory publishers using the fame of a very popular writer to sell their own quartos is hardly proof the man never wrote anything. Actually, the reason people argue Shakespeare didn't write those plays is scholarship and comparative study. The same methodology leads the vast majority of scholars to conclude the man from Stratford did write the plays currently attributed to him.

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    4. "Diana Price wrote...let him lie anymore."

      Not to any scholar I've read. As I mentioned, historians have standards and means of reviewing documents. Price's homegrown method is not embraced by outside of her own narrowed audience. Which is fine for them, but there is a reason a few beers in most professors would call her work by the same moniker I've attached to it.

      And why do you keep trying to argue via Anne Hathaway's cottage? I've never mentioned that, the Edward VI School for Boys, the 'Thomas More' document, etc. It's like you have a list of things to rail against regardless of my arguments. You don't have to read what I write but if you want to respond at least be decent enough to respond to what I argue. One could reasonably infer that you don't have a response, so you're focusing on other areas. I've said as much shit about Greenblatt as I have Price. The difference is I can see they're BOTH snake-oil sales(wo)men.

      "Diana Price's book...on the issue."

      And it has been thoroughly dismantled. One critic noted that her claims that Jonson's "Poet Ape" was about Shakespeare because it was written "in the Shakespearean Sonnet form" is absurd because the term was not applied to such poems until long after Jonson had met his maker. So she takes a bit of knowledge (Jonson only wrote three such sonnet) and completely misses the HISTORICAL context (the term wasn't used during his lifetime). Virtually every damn critique of her writings mentions that. Maybe it's because, as she's not an historian, she never thought to consider facts like that? Hmmm...

      "There is more...lifetime as an author of one of the plays."

      You keep saying that, but you can't slap an asterisk of Price's design on the references to Shakespeare as writer during and after his lifetime, the thousands of published plays bearing his name, and the fact that we can directly connect him with the company that performed them.

      Show me one document, ONE, that lists Bacon as being the author of the plays of Shakespeare. One, just ONE, that proves Shakespeare was a front for a writer. Ben Jonson knew Shakespeare. Ben Jonson said he was a great writer. I'm going to believe one of Shakespeare's contemporaries over a strategic business planner from 20th-century Ohio trying to impress her daddy.

      The 'Thomas More' document again? SMH. When have I even mentioned that? You want to argue with the people who think differently? Take it up with them.

      Ay caramba, indeed.

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    5. You have clearly never read Diana Price because she rigorously follows the highest levels of academic practice far more rigorously than just about any Stratfordian does.

      Her paper on the "hand D" that Stratfordian academics have peddled to an ignorant world as a genuine example of the Stratford man's manuscript - in reaction to her study - is an unusually fine example of careful scholarship that obliterates the academic Stratfordian claims put out by The British Library(!) based on the shoddiest of academic practice. Try reading it.

      http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Oxmyths/HandD(Price).pdf

      There is not one document in the hand of the Stratford man, one claiming to quote him by someone who is certain to have known him or likely knew him from during his lifetime that attributes any of the plays or poems to him. If he were thought to be the playwright of Richard II he would have been arrested (as so many known playwrights were for their dramatic work) and probably tortured to wring information out of him in the wake of the Essex rebellion.

      There is no reason to believe he could have read the quartos or been aware of their existence. He certainly never sued anyone for illegal publication of work he had a legal right to - he apparently wasn't slow to sue people for over far less, the dozens of documents of his business records prove that, not that he was a writer.

      I didn't become a Stratford skeptic through not looking at the evidence, I became one through looking at the evidence - there being, as Stanley Wells has had to admit - that anyone during the Stratford man ever attributed the act of writing as much as a single literary work to him, not even his own Son in Law who noted his passing in his journal and who bragged about encounters with other literary men in the same journal. It is pretty clear that no one in Stratford or the surrounding area once, in his lifetime or even on the occasion of his death associated Shaksper of Stratford with some of the most famous poems and plays already famous in England. Not a single one of those memorial works that you can find even for third-string poets was written about him.

      Ben Johnson never, not during the Stratford man's lifetime, not on the occasion of his death, talked about him as an author. The theory of him being in on a cover-up of the identity of the real author or the real main author of the works along with the content of the poem and the other material almost certainly written by him in the First Folio which is hardly an unambiguous revelation and rather obviously a deceptive ruse concealing the identity of the real author, doesn't identify the Stratford man as the author. He's clearly the "Poet ape" who Jonson identified as a play stealer. I think Alexander Waugh's talk about the obviously phonied up monument which originally depicted Shaksper as a wool merchant, not a writer (the style of hair of a period after Shaksper's death depicted in the monument of today and back into the 19th century pretty much proves it wasn't contemporary with his death and the product of later deception).

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    6. You really haven't read Price's book or papers, have you.

      I'm going to risk also recommending to you that you read Ros Barber's Shakespeare The Evidence

      https://leanpub.com/shakespeare

      She goes through every piece of evidence (even some of the stuff that the Stratford industry uses that I think is hardly reliable) and presents the document, the case for the Stratfordian side and the opposition to it. I'm kind of shocked that no one has done that before. That the Shakespeare industry, the friggin' phony Birthplace Trust certainly had the resources to do it if they thought the evidence supported their claims. That they weren't the ones to do it, leaving that to a Stratford skeptic to do, fairly as the champions of the conventional Stratfordian attribution never are, reveals more than Samuel Schoenbaum's appalling writing on the question ever has.

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    7. And I'm going to leave this noting that it's the height of irony that you have continually slammed Diana Price, a woman whose research, both methods and content, are there with full documentation to be judged on their merits, over her lack of credentials when the man you claim wrote the most erudite works of English literature had credentials that couldn't begin to match Diana Price's and who never even ensured, even as he created a number of highly literate, highly intelligent and even brilliant women, allowed his own daughters to grow up illiterates.

      The typical Stratfordian presented with their guy's total lack of education (if he'd been to a university it would have been recorded) and connection with so much as a scrap of paper or book that proves that he could even read, is to accuse the person pointing that out of being a snob.

      Well, someone in the face of someone like Diana Price saying what you have about her qualifications is gross snobbery. That's the thing about someone who produces work like hers, it can be checked for accuracy and completeness on its own, without reference to appealing to the alleged authority granted by a university or other institution. It's also funny, I never remember any man saying that Mark Twain wasn't qualified to write Is Shakespeare Dead, I wonder why that might be.

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    8. “You have clearly…any Stratfordian does.”

      Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Anyone who employs that fallacy (and she does) is not doing rigorous scholarship.

      “Her paper on…Try reading it.”

      For what I think is the fifth time: I do not care about “Hand D.” It has NOTHING to do with my conclusion that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

      “There is not one document in the hand of the Stratford man”

      Irrelevant. We have nothing of Marlowe’s, either, and before you throw out nonsense, I’m bringing that up for context – this was an era that wasn’t all that interested in saving documents and records for posterity. Marlowe died at the height of his fame and powers. Yet not one scrap of paper survives with his writing. You cannot project your own interest in documentation back onto Elizabethans and then insist their apathy towards Shakespeare’s rough drafts prove he wasn’t a writer.

      “one claiming to quote him by someone who is certain to have known him or likely knew him from during his lifetime that attributes any of the plays or poems to him.”

      Sources are judged in history by their accuracy. Not by whether or not they knew the person and it could be proven. That is NOT scholarship. That is not the study of history.

      “If he were...the Essex rebellion.”

      For a play that was written and performed years before the rebellion? So now you’re an expert on Elizabethan law enforcement practices as well? Why didn’t they move heaven and earth to find out who the real author was? If English hospitality (read: torture) was so persuasive why were they content to let the writer of such seditious drama escape questioning? Ah, in this case, absence of evidence is proof of…something!

      “There is no reason…was a writer.”

      Copyright laws as you conceive of them now were non-existent then. Do you really not understand this? I’m serious. I’m not being facetious. But you keep repeating this point even after I point out that authors did not own the plays they were paid to write.

      “I didn't become…written about him.”

      Yet the same plays, celebrated and cherished the nation over, inspired NO ONE to investigate who really wrote them? It would seem if no one thought he wrote them, then those same peoples wouldn’t be so silent even in their journals, correspondence and published writings about who did? You seem to want it both ways – too little attention was paid to Shakespeare as a writer, which means everyone knew he didn’t write the plays, yet there is also no mentioning of someone else writing them or even being curious about who did, which means that someone else did write them?

      “Ben Johnson never, not during the Stratford man's lifetime, not on the occasion of his death, talked about him as an author.”

      See: ‘Timber.’ He wrote that before he died. Find me one historian who argues all posthumous writings are untrustworthy. Otherwise, the argument that “he was dead before this came out” is worthless.

      “The theory of…of later deception).”

      “Clearly?” Maybe to you and Ms. Price and her 7,000 or so YouTube fans. But to people who actually study and write about the literature of the period? I don’t think so.

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    9. "You really haven't read Price's book or papers, have you.

      I'm going to risk also recommending to you that you read Ros Barber's Shakespeare The Evidence

      https://leanpub.com/shakespeare

      She goes through...on the question ever has."

      Again, you keep bringing up the SBT as if I'm a charter member and my livelihood depends on it. I have asked reasonable questions about this whole "conspiracy" worked, and if your only response is to rehash Anne Hathaway's cottage, I will take that as a concession you have no answer.

      "And I'm going...grow up illiterates."

      Two things: Price's lack of credentials are relevant because her lack of training, experience, peer review, etc. are evidenced in the mistakes she makes: Fallacies like "absence of evidence," insisting poems that state Shakespeare was an author are incomprehensible when vast swatches of scholarship exist contrary to that, her claiming that she has special secret knowledge (with her husband - like the Wonder Twins, I guess) to know when the author is speaking through the plays.

      Maybe because he spent so much of his time in London, away from his family? This was before the Concord.

      "The typical Stratfordian...being a snob."

      Autodidacts are hardly impossible. Ben Jonson had less schooling than Shakespeare and his works are actually more intensely literate.

      Again, I mention lack of education when it is reflected in the scholarship. I've gone over Price's and could list quite a few more.

      "That's the thing...that might be."

      And there comes the sexism accusations again. I've read quite a few critiques of Price. They mention her lack of education as a "why" her work contains so many fallacies that a trained historian would avoid but I've not encountered one that states, "No diploma - who cares?" As per Twain, who in the hell takes "Is Shakespeare Dead?" seriously as a work of scholarship? He's a lot funnier than Price, but I doubt even he would classify it thusly. That's why. No need to wonder. And his work has been shredded as thoroughly as hers.

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    10. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

      It's certainly a sign of no evidence and that certainly doesn't support the claims of the Shakespeare industry.

      Name the historians who have slammed Diana Price and where I can look at their claims. As I said, you haven't been able to make any substantial criticisms of what she did as she documented her work every step of the way. When you can do that you don't need credentials because the work speaks for itself, or it does when its subjected to fact checking.

      As to the rest of it, we've been over and over these issues and you still have no answers. I don't think I'm interested in discussing this with you anymore than I have.

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    11. "It's certainly a sign of no evidence and that certainly doesn't support the claims of the Shakespeare industry."

      Again. Once more. From the beginning. If I could post a picture of a repeat sign I would - I am not part of the Shakespeare industry. I've never even been to London or Stratford Upon Avon. I argue one point: Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare because the evidence overwhelming attests to him. That's all. You want to argue about the commercial exploitation, that's nothing to do with me.

      Imagine if I constantly talked about pride parades and how obnoxious and odious they are? You'd rightly get annoyed and ask why, considering you've often spoken out against such immature displays of behavior and just because you are a gay man doesn't mean you support everything about the equal rights movement.

      "Name the historians who have slammed Diana Price and where I can look at their claims."

      Gladly. But first, answer me this. I've asked it before and think an explanation a reasonably request. If you're truly interested in the truth, and not just defending your position out of pride, explain how your two positions don't contradict each other:

      How did the same plays, celebrated and cherished the nation over, inspired NO ONE to investigate who really wrote them? It would seem if no one thought the Stratford man wrote them, then wouldn't some of those same people ask in their journals, correspondence and published writings about who did?

      You seem to want it both ways – too little attention was paid to Shakespeare as a writer, which means everyone knew he didn’t write the plays, yet there is also no mentioning of anyone else writing them or even curiosity about who did.

      There is plenty of gossip and accusations in the writings of the time. To argue that no one was curious about who was behind that Shakespeare fellow's brokering is a question you, as a conspiracy theorist, must answer for any of your claims to make sense.

      I will prepare the list while you do that.

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    12. How did the same plays, celebrated and cherished the nation over, inspired NO ONE to investigate who really wrote them? It would seem if no one thought the Stratford man wrote them, then wouldn't some of those same people ask in their journals, correspondence and published writings about who did?

      I don't know how you could claim that no one tried to figure out who wrote the plays and poems when that effort started during the earliest period of their publication, even as the Stratford man was alive and leaving the documentation of his willingness to sue people over rather trifling sums. If you are unaware of that then you literally don't know the first thing about the issue. It predates the first direct attribution of the authorship to the Stratford man which, as the arch Stratfordian, Stanley Wells has, in fact admitted when he bemoaned that the first such attribution was posthumous.

      - The earliest documentation generally attributing anything about writing to a "Shakespeare" is the 1592 mention of "Shakescene" in by Robert Green in A Groatsworth of Wit and it alludes to literary theft.

      - The next year, 1593, was the first time the name William Shakespeare appeared as an author on Venus and Adonis

      - The year after that it appeared for the second time on Lucrece.

      - In 1597 the authors Joseph Hall and poet John Marston said that the real author of the poems was a lawyer who they termed "Labeo" (a certain allusion to publishing work under a false name) and they also identified that author as Francis Bacon.

      - That the name William Shakespeare was understood to be a pseudonym or a front was widely understood during the exact years in question as the printing of it with a hyphen demonstrates.

      - That the name was also found on works that are certainly not by the author of the plays and poems some of which the authorship of is not known even today, further shows that the name William Shakespeare, during the years the Stratford man was alive and active in business in London and, apparently, never using that spelling (or pronunciation) of his own name, never having anyone attribute, specificialy to him or recording payment for authorship to him Not even in association with performances of the plays.

      If he were known to be illiterate or a semi-literate businessman with no education then there would have been no reason for him to have been associated with the pseudonym, William Shakespeare, though if he were the literary thief that the name is associated with, you'd expect to find the name associated with it.

      If, on the other hand, he was being paid to act as a front by the real author, it would be expected that a. no record of payment would have been made, b. someone would have noted that the works were being published under a name, not the authors.

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    13. - Anonymous publication of the works happened in the same period, when the Stratford man was demonstrating that he would sue people for money owed to him but there is no evidence of him ever suing for the theft of his work. That would be of a piece with the total absence of mention of the works, many of which had not yet been published in his lifetime, in his will.

      Yes, among those whose absence of mention of a connection of the Stratford man with plays and poems and manuscripts of the such or rights to their publication or performance so as to constitute the basis of the doubt that he did write them. the first and foremost has to be Wm. Shaksper of Stratford.

      You obviously have never looked at this issue. You can't list those historians who made a serious criticism of Diana Price's work in either her Unorthodox Biography based on the documentation instead of Shakespearean lore and myth, or her papers, such as the attribution of "hand D". I'd be interested to look at those criticisms by historians because if I've misjudged her work, I'd like to know that. Though I now enough about how history is done to know any such criticism of her work would go many, many times over for the work of the most eminent of conventional Stratfordian academics who have to lean on the lore and posthumous claims, there being nothing else for them to create their "Shakespeare" out of.

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  2. Oh, and, I notice I forgot to answer this claim you made earlier,

    Ben Jonson had less schooling than Shakespeare and his works are actually more intensely literate.

    That's not true at all, Jonson's education is documented as is the fact that he left one of the most extensive literary paper-trails of any of the known writers of his time, produced during his lifetime and not beginning seven years after his death. Scholars of his day noted the source of his classical education. As he did.

    There is absolutely no record of the Stratford man ever attending school a day in his life or that he could read. There is not so much of a single record that has anyone who knew him making such a claim or he having made such a claim, himself.

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  3. “The earliest documentation…to literary theft.”

    Literary theft if your interpretation of the passage. Virtually every scholar I’ve read offers that the “upstart crow” that is “well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you” is referring to the idea that an actor wrapped in a player’s hide could write as well as university-educated individuals.

    You are left with your interpretation, but it is hardly a unanimous, or even a sizeable minority, position.

    “The next year…time on Lucrece.”

    Yes. By William Shakespeare.

    “In 1597 the…as Francis Bacon.”

    Those references are hardly lucid and unambiguous. I’ve read them, with commentary, and neither is as straightforward as Richard Barnfield, who, in 1598, wrote, “And Shakespeare thou, whose honey-flowing vein…Whose ‘Venus,’ and whose ‘Lucrece.’” So if you’re counting them, you can’t dismiss Barnfield just because you don’t agree with him.

    “That the name…a hyphen demonstrates.”

    Was understood?” OK, where are you getting that? And, if the hyphen is so important, why was it applied so inconsistently? There are any number of quartos published without a hyphen, so does that mean he really DID write those?

    “That the name…of the plays.”

    Apocrypha proves nothing. There are apocryphal Gospels, too. It doesn’t the synoptic ones are somehow called into question. Also, spelling, again, notte uneeforme. There are dozens of examples in documents written by intellectuals that spell the same word, differently, on the same damn page. You keep insisting that attaching an asterisk next his name somehow means he SHOULD have been consistent. That is not scholarship.

    I am going to make a point of reminding you of this, you claim “specificialy to him or recording payment for authorship to him Not even in association with performances of the plays.”

    Two things: 1) most of the documentation we have of payments for plays come from Henslowe’s books, and he had NOTHING to do with Shakespeare’s company. To repeat my analogy, it’s like looking for payments to Frank Sinatra in Motown’s ledger. So expecting to find something with what we have is absurd. 2) The playing company was paid to PERFORM the plays. That is the only way they had value. This wasn't Broadway in the 1950s.

    "Though I now enough about how history is done to know any such criticism of her work would go many, many times over for the work of the most eminent of conventional Stratfordian academics who have to lean on the lore and posthumous claims, there being nothing else for them to create their 'Shakespeare' out of."

    Franics Beaumont, in a letter to Ben Jonson, 1608: "And from all learning keep these lines as clear/As Shakespeare's best are, which our heirs shall hear/Preachers apt to their auditors to show/How for sometimes a mortal man may go/By the dim light of Nature."

    Gabriel Harvey, in 1600, "The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis;' but his 'Lucrece,' and his 'Tragedy of Hamlet..."

    1599, John Weever, "Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue/I swore Apollo got them and none other."

    In 1605, William Camden, "What a world could I present to you out of...Ben Jonson...John Marston...William Shakespeare."

    Posthumous my ass. You're either deliberately lying or being unwillingly uneducated. Now, if your response is, "Going by Diana Price's methodology..." Stop. Just stop. Name me three Elizabethan historians who dismiss those above quotes. You can't. The scholarship we have judges the entire body of information. It doesn't pick and choose like Price, who is desperately and clearly trying to impress a daddy that didn't hold her enough. All those sources are considered valid by anyone who studied Elizabethan history. Except for Price, who admits, "I don't have the proper formal training for it."

    At least she's honest about his ignorance.

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    1. No, no. You promised me a list of criticisms of Diana Price's research and the methodologies she used by historians that you said were there. You don't get anything else until you do that.

      You can't do that because she followed a higher standard research than that used to construct the conventional "Shakespeare."

      You do seem to have a real problem with her and you don't seem to know why.

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    2. Oh, and your citation of the apocryphal gospels is a faulty analogy. The validity of the works isn't the question in the Shakespeare apocrypha, the authorship is. While I wouldn't claim that the Shaksper Diana Price constructs out of the evidence of his entire corpus of contemporaneous records and such evidence as the name appearing on many non-"Shakespeare" works, a petty businessman who acted as a play-broker or stealer is known to be accurate, it is a lot better supported than the conventional plaster Shakespeare you believe in.

      Re-reading your remarks about her, you really have a problem with women. I don't think I'm going to post any more such remarks so please don't make them.

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