Hi Philip! It’s really well worth actually engaging with the real arguments people are making rather than knocking down a straw man. Also, using more respectful terms - “deniers” associates people involved in this genuine literary historical enquiry with Holocaust Deniers which ad hominem slur suggests both ignorance of the arguments and zero real argument. Marlowe is one of the candidates and from the same social class as Shakespeare. Bone up on the real arguments rather than the lazy misrepresentations. I recommend Elizabeth Winkler’s book, now out in paperback.
Hi Ros, I am engaging with the arguments people are making. Here I'm showing that class was not an issue when it comes to playwrighting. Christopher Marlowe is another matter. We won't agree on that. Elizabeth Winkler's book is full of errors, and has been demonstrably proven so. The point is that if you're saying that William Shakespeare wasn't William Shakespeare, you're beginning with an assumption, and also ignoring historical fact.
I don’t know why your reply was never flagged up for me to respond to but I understand what you’re saying. You’re unaware of the evidence pattern that is the reason for doubt (going back to 1593) and the academic work of, for example, Diana Price (2001). You are coming from a place of solid belief (that the orthodox narrative represents “historical fact”) and therefore unable to look neutrally at the idea that “Shakespeare” is a brand every bit as much as Beaumont & Fletcher, whose Folio also contained a large number of works not written by Beaumont & Fletcher (much easier for academics to accept because no one is emotionally attached to B&F).
The Shakespeare authorship question was the subject of my PhD, and Winkler’s book accurately reports the arguments of both sides, while profiling the major figures putting them forward, and a background to how Shakespeare became a secular god who must be revered and never questioned.
As someone who has spent 20 years researching and publishing in this area, I recognise your beliefs are too strong to be challenged and discussion will be fruitless on this subject between us but I do ask that at least, in acknowledgement of the many dozens of peer-reviewed articles on the subject (including mine) and four books published by Routledge (with another in the works) you at least drop the offensive slur “deniers”. I am far less in denial than you are!
Hi Ros, hope you're well! Diana Price's work - with which I am familiar - is of unsound methodology and has been proven useless - her distinction between contemporary and "posthumous" evidence being one of the oddest things that she does. There is no reason to doubt, and there never has been. Winkler's book is a series of rhetorical questions and attempts at 'gotchas'. Shakespeare isn't a "secular god", but the best of the Bankside playwrights. Shakespeare deniers isn't an offensive term - it's true. People who say that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare are denying his involvement in the plays. I know that we will never agree on all this, and I do hope that you are well and writing well too. With very best wishes, P
I say Shakespeare is a “secular god” because of Bardolotry; the fervour with which his personage is worshipped. People make pilgrimages to Stratford. No other English writer is worshipped as Shakespeare.
Personal, contemporaneous testimony is accorded a particular status by historians and valued over impersonal testimony.
In terms of the evidence one would expect to find Price made that cut-off point simply to demonstrate that Shakespeare’s evidence picture is extremely different from those of the other Bankside playwrights.
She is not wrong about that and her research was anything but “useless”. There used to be an argument that “the reason there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him is because this is true of a most of the writers of the period because plays weren’t valued and a lot was lost over 400 years”. Her book demonstrated that this isn’t true: partial literary paper trails (yes, from their lifetimes) exist for the other 24 writers of the period she looked at but not for Shakespeare. And the reason I know her work wasn’t “useless” is because this argument has now been dropped in favour of simple ad hominem attacks (like “deniers”, with the clear association with Holocaust deniers) - a logical fallacy which always indicates the user has no substantive argument and is reduced to demeaning their opponent personally. This is where we are at right now, but the ground is shifting.
I am very well, Philip, and writing at the top of my game, but at a time when the publishing industry seems to think that having half a million TikTok followers is more important than literary mastery.
Sorry, P, we are going to have to disagree there. I have drilled through every piece of evidence looking at the arguments on each side I found Price’s claims to be correct - and a lot more besides. See https://leanpub.com/shakespeare. There is no unambiguous contemporaneous personal testimony for Shakespeare and even Stanley Wells has said this and that he mourns the lack of it because “that would prove the buggers wrong”
Hi Philip! It’s really well worth actually engaging with the real arguments people are making rather than knocking down a straw man. Also, using more respectful terms - “deniers” associates people involved in this genuine literary historical enquiry with Holocaust Deniers which ad hominem slur suggests both ignorance of the arguments and zero real argument. Marlowe is one of the candidates and from the same social class as Shakespeare. Bone up on the real arguments rather than the lazy misrepresentations. I recommend Elizabeth Winkler’s book, now out in paperback.
Hi Ros, I am engaging with the arguments people are making. Here I'm showing that class was not an issue when it comes to playwrighting. Christopher Marlowe is another matter. We won't agree on that. Elizabeth Winkler's book is full of errors, and has been demonstrably proven so. The point is that if you're saying that William Shakespeare wasn't William Shakespeare, you're beginning with an assumption, and also ignoring historical fact.
I don’t know why your reply was never flagged up for me to respond to but I understand what you’re saying. You’re unaware of the evidence pattern that is the reason for doubt (going back to 1593) and the academic work of, for example, Diana Price (2001). You are coming from a place of solid belief (that the orthodox narrative represents “historical fact”) and therefore unable to look neutrally at the idea that “Shakespeare” is a brand every bit as much as Beaumont & Fletcher, whose Folio also contained a large number of works not written by Beaumont & Fletcher (much easier for academics to accept because no one is emotionally attached to B&F).
The Shakespeare authorship question was the subject of my PhD, and Winkler’s book accurately reports the arguments of both sides, while profiling the major figures putting them forward, and a background to how Shakespeare became a secular god who must be revered and never questioned.
As someone who has spent 20 years researching and publishing in this area, I recognise your beliefs are too strong to be challenged and discussion will be fruitless on this subject between us but I do ask that at least, in acknowledgement of the many dozens of peer-reviewed articles on the subject (including mine) and four books published by Routledge (with another in the works) you at least drop the offensive slur “deniers”. I am far less in denial than you are!
Hi Ros, hope you're well! Diana Price's work - with which I am familiar - is of unsound methodology and has been proven useless - her distinction between contemporary and "posthumous" evidence being one of the oddest things that she does. There is no reason to doubt, and there never has been. Winkler's book is a series of rhetorical questions and attempts at 'gotchas'. Shakespeare isn't a "secular god", but the best of the Bankside playwrights. Shakespeare deniers isn't an offensive term - it's true. People who say that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare are denying his involvement in the plays. I know that we will never agree on all this, and I do hope that you are well and writing well too. With very best wishes, P
I say Shakespeare is a “secular god” because of Bardolotry; the fervour with which his personage is worshipped. People make pilgrimages to Stratford. No other English writer is worshipped as Shakespeare.
Personal, contemporaneous testimony is accorded a particular status by historians and valued over impersonal testimony.
In terms of the evidence one would expect to find Price made that cut-off point simply to demonstrate that Shakespeare’s evidence picture is extremely different from those of the other Bankside playwrights.
She is not wrong about that and her research was anything but “useless”. There used to be an argument that “the reason there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him is because this is true of a most of the writers of the period because plays weren’t valued and a lot was lost over 400 years”. Her book demonstrated that this isn’t true: partial literary paper trails (yes, from their lifetimes) exist for the other 24 writers of the period she looked at but not for Shakespeare. And the reason I know her work wasn’t “useless” is because this argument has now been dropped in favour of simple ad hominem attacks (like “deniers”, with the clear association with Holocaust deniers) - a logical fallacy which always indicates the user has no substantive argument and is reduced to demeaning their opponent personally. This is where we are at right now, but the ground is shifting.
I am very well, Philip, and writing at the top of my game, but at a time when the publishing industry seems to think that having half a million TikTok followers is more important than literary mastery.
Hi Ros, there is plenty of contemporaneous testimony for Shakespeare. Price’s research and conclusions are unsound. Thanks, P
Sorry, P, we are going to have to disagree there. I have drilled through every piece of evidence looking at the arguments on each side I found Price’s claims to be correct - and a lot more besides. See https://leanpub.com/shakespeare. There is no unambiguous contemporaneous personal testimony for Shakespeare and even Stanley Wells has said this and that he mourns the lack of it because “that would prove the buggers wrong”