Requesting Evidence about the Oxfordian Theory

ConversesEdward De Vere and The Shakespeare Authorship Mystery

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Requesting Evidence about the Oxfordian Theory

1Kostyusha
ag. 9, 2010, 8:21 pm

Although I myself do not believe that Edward de Vere wrote the works of Shakespeare (it's Christopher Marlowe, guys!), I am interested in what your reasons are, and as I plan to do a term paper about the Authorship Question this year, I would love to see the evidence that Oxfordians have.

I am completely open to your ideas, and hope that we can have some worthwhile discussions about this controversy.

2Podras.
set. 30, 2014, 3:43 pm

This is too late for your term paper, but the following should be useful for information regarding the authorship issue:

--Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro covering the history of the authorship question.

--Shakespeare In Fact by Irvin Leigh Matus dismantles many claims of anti-Shakespeareans, especially Charlton Ogburn, and summarizes information about the Earl of Oxford.

--Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells presents essays by numerous experts on a range of issues relating to the authorship question.

--Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford by Alan H. Nelson. I haven't read this one, but I understand that it is by far the most complete book available on the eponymous Earl.

--Also see the web site: The Shakespeare Authorship Page which has considerable information about the issue.

I've also read anti-Shakespearean Diana Price's book, Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography - New evidence of an Authorship Problem. She doesn't attempt to pick the "true" author (a thankless task given that around 80 people have been proposed thus far, and the number is growing), but she does attempt to make a case for the "true" author not being Shakespeare. There is no new evidence presented, only the frequently committed logical fallacy (among others and in many forms) that assumes that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Nowhere does she directly address the mass of Shakespearean scholarship that exists or the new evidence real scholars are turning up, but attempts to dismiss it all by claiming it is too insubstantial to treat seriously, all while providing the airiest of support for her own arguments. Chapter 2 purports to list "all" of the direct contemporary references to Shakespeare, but a comparison with similar lists by others shows that she only presents a summary which glosses over some pretty important items. There is an entire chapter on education which is all rhetoric; no sign is there to suggest that she has any real knowledge of what was actually taught in Elizabethan grammar schools. (Ben Jonson, also from a humble family, had "only" had a grammar school education, too, and he became the foremost classical scholar of the age.)

Price issues the following challenge: If anyone can point to any single piece of evidence connecting the Shakespeare of the plays to the Shakespeare (which Price chooses to spell differently, creating an artificial distinction without substance) of Stratford-upon-Avon, then her entire argument falls apart. One of the poems eulogizing Shakespeare of the plays in the First Folio, by L. Digges, makes reference to "thy Stratford Moniment." There has never been but one.

\Disclaimer: Though I've done a bit of reading, I don't consider myself an expert on the subject. I'll leave any further discussion of the issue to others.\

4Crypto-Willobie
abr. 27, 2021, 9:39 pm

Hi prox -- I was going to write to you on your profile but you are currently not allowing comments. So...

At my suggestion (I'm the new Admin), and with the assent of various members, The Globe is going to return to being an actual Shakespeare group rather than a Shakespeare vs anti-Shakespeare battleground. AntiStrat posts will not be allowed, and those that are already there will be deleted after June 30. I put that deadline in the future because I realize you have put some amount of work into these, and this will give you the opportunity to move what you want to this De Vere group, or archive the material.

This is not an extraordinary action. The Facebook groups Shakespeare Forum, Shakespeare and Early Modern Friends, and Early Modernists, as well as the venerable SHAKSPER listserv have instituted the same rule in order to maintain their sanity.

Good luck.

Bill (Crypto-Willobie)

5proximity1
Editat: abr. 28, 2021, 10:23 am

As I predicted.

By the way, it is HERE, in an open-forum, rather than in my own LT-member pages' personal messages space-- where, yes, you're blocked, for cause, from use--- that your arbitrarily and selectively proposed act of censorship ought to, by right, have been placed.

What's evident from your comment above is that you sought, by preference, to simply announce this to me as a privately-issued fait-accompli.

More reason why your inclinations make you unfit to act as a fair arbiter in a discussion forum on these topics.

______________________________________

I've lodged an appeal via a message posted today to Abby.
______________________________________

(SAVED below (and achived in my own records), to prevent its deletion by the administrator.)


>4 Crypto-Willobie:

"Hi prox -- I was going to write to you on your profile but you are currently not allowing comments. So...

At my suggestion (I'm the new Admin), and with the assent of various members, The Globe is going to return to being an actual Shakespeare group rather than a Shakespeare vs anti-Shakespeare battleground. AntiStrat posts will not be allowed, and those that are already there will be deleted after June 30. I put that deadline in the future because I realize you have put some amount of work into these, and this will give you the opportunity to move what you want to this De Vere group, or archive the material.

This is not an extraordinary action. The Facebook groups Shakespeare Forum, Shakespeare and Early Modern Friends, and Early Modernists, as well as the venerable SHAKSPER listserv have instituted the same rule in order to maintain their sanity.

Good luck."




... "This is not an extraordinary action."



"not ... extraordinay"?!?

It is, as a matter of fact, unprecedented at this site.

Your opinions do violence to the plain meaning of "extraordinary". More of why I regard you as unfit for the position of "administrator". Your open record shows you to have been a reliably regular censor and, in this initiative, you're doing what you well knew in advance your clique of backers hoped and wanted from you:

censorship.

6Crypto-Willobie
abr. 28, 2021, 9:29 am

It's not censorship, it's just rededicating that group to its original intent. You can post your misguided rants on LT, for instance in this group, just not in the group meant to be about the real William Shakspere.

I have no need or desire to hide what's going on.

7proximity1
Editat: abr. 28, 2021, 9:57 am

You write in >4 Crypto-Willobie:, above:

..



... "You can post your misguided rants on LT," .

"At my suggestion (I'm the new Admin), and with the assent of various members,..."


Your "suggestion"?

If, as you claim, it's your "suggestion" and this "suggestion" is to be enacted "with the assent of various members" (these would be those who you know in advance are securely in your camp, right?), just how and when and where is this "assent of various members" to be solicited, read, considered and debated?

You say nothing of that.

>6 Crypto-Willobie:

Failing your allowance of a fair and open approach to the topics concerned at the the recognized (Shakespeare) groups routinely taken as pertinent to them, I want more and better than to be "invited" to redo all my efforts as I see eight to ten years of participation wiped out by your fiat.

I insist, rather, that all that material be placed in in some acceptable alternative in these fora's threads where it's at least safe from removal of the likes of you. That should be done and done to my own satisfaction before you remove a single post you're targeting for deletion.

________________________________



"It's not censorship,"...



So claims every censor in answer to objectors.

8Podras.
Editat: abr. 28, 2021, 12:41 pm

>4 Crypto-Willobie: This seems to be an appropriate, well thought out, and fair policy accompanied by fair warning.

>7 proximity1: "I see eight to ten years of participation wiped out by your fiat." -- Your posts have been limited to a small handful of threads, so it should be easy to find and move those inappropriate for the reformulated The Globe: Shakespeare, his Contemporaies, and Context. True, there have been a lot, but with diligence and more than two months to go before the deadline, it shouldn't be difficult.

I will be looking over my own contributions to the authorship question to see if there is anything I wish to preserve, though I don't know if I will move them here, save them in some other way, or allow them to expire after June 30.

I recommend that you don't allow denial to interfere with the rescue of all of your valuable material. There will be no one to blame but yourself for the loss of your stuff if you don't immediately begin a good faith effort to move it.