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www.michaelshermer.com/2009/0...rupted/
"The anti-Stratfordian skeptics are back, and this time they have a Supreme Court justice on their side"
"The anti-Stratfordian skeptics are back, and this time they have a Supreme Court justice on their side"
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Massachusetts
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 3:34 PM*Bangs head on desk. Again.*
I could buy that the Stratfordian *may* not be the author, but nobody will make me believe it's really DeVere.
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 4:18 PMI don't care who it is, Supreme Court Justice isn't credential for deciding matters of literature, poetry or history. That title is irrelevant to the overall conversation. Two central points that every anti-stratfordian talks around...
1. There was an historical figure named William Shakespeare who was a London Player, a businessman and property owner. We know he existed, we have proof, we know he intersected all the necessary players to have written all fo the plays attributed to his name. To say otherwise would require extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Material evidence, not innuendo.
2. Absence of proof is not proof. That we haven't letters written by the man in his own hand is not proof they did not or do not exist.
I could give a damn what JP Stevens thinks about this. Give me logic, not big names that agree with you. The complexity of the allegations of conspiracy is the Achilles heel of every argument against the historical man from Avon. Find proof and I'll listen, but there isn't any. Occam's Razor. Barring extrodinary proof to the contrary, the least complicated answer is generally the correct one.
pagestotype.blogspot.com/2009/...e.html -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 4:38 PMWhat often bugs me is the blatant classist snobbery inherent in the Oxfordian camp. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 5:17 PM<<What often bugs me is the blatant classist snobbery inherent in the Oxfordian camp.>>
Which is totally period. This disbelief in the ability of an "upstart crow" to write anything decent began in Shakespeare's own time with the elitism of his contemporaries, who disparaged him because he wasn't a 'varsity nob. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 5:34 PMYour average gentleman was probably better educated than most of our modern college graduates. They also had a vocabulary something like twice as large. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 6:03 PMYes, but the nobbier gentlemen looked down on Shakespeare nonetheless. Writing was still either a gentleman (of independant mean)'s occupation, or a (university-trained) cleric's, not a way for a glover's son or a player to make a living. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 6:14 PMI hasten to add that I, and every lit professor I have ever met, think that the Oxford/Marlowe/etc. Movement is full of sound and fury, signifying nada. Shakespeare's brilliance was in his creativity with the early Modern English and his understanding of the human condition, something that doesn't require an advanced degree. Furthermore, there are so many geographical errors and anachronisms in his work, it speaks more to him *not* having travelled much in his life. Now, the closet Papist question... -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Thu, August 6, 2009 - 6:31 PMBut no one at the time tried to say he hadn't written his own work. That was Delia Bacon, much much later. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Thu, August 6, 2009 - 8:16 PMCorrect as usual, King Friday. :-D -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Thu, August 6, 2009 - 8:54 PMBut, don't you see? Oxford had the power to cover it all up.
And people were so good at keeping secrets back then.(!)
DeVere was a monumental asshat, with a menagerie of foibles of which to be ashamed, but GOD FORBID somebody think he was something as horrible as a PLAYWRIGHT. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Thu, August 6, 2009 - 9:38 PMLOL!
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 7, 2009 - 8:47 AM...and how do we explain that he didn't take credit for the sonnets, which was an accepted nobleman's pastime?
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 7, 2009 - 9:51 AMI've always liked L. Sprague de Camp's twenty-second century Churchillian Society, dedicated to proving that the works of George Bernard Shaw were actually written by Winston Churchill. (Minor plot element in 'The Continent Makers", from 1951). The more I look at the gullibility of the public, the less it seems like satire.. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 7, 2009 - 10:03 AMEinstein didn't have all that much of an education when he came up with his theory of relativity.
Charles Dickens' education wasn't particularly extraordinary either.
Some people are just brilliant and creative all on their own. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 7, 2009 - 11:07 AMAnd the world is filled with well-educated people who can't rub two thoughts together to make a spark.
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Wed, August 5, 2009 - 7:07 PMAs Shermer points out both Marlow and Jonson were born of humble beginnings but no one seems to be bent on dis-proving their authorship.
"As for Shakespeare’s humble upbringing, his father was a middle-class landowner whose estate was valued at the then respectable sum of £500 (you could purchase a modest home for £50) and whose social standing was as high as or higher than that of either Marlowe or Ben Jonson, who were themselves sons of a shoemaker and bricklayer, respectively, and somehow managed to master the belles lettres."
None of these three fit the classic mold of the "University Witts" -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 28, 2009 - 7:04 AMThe conversation on Shermer's website has now expanded to include people arguing that Marlowe didn't die in Deptford, but went on to write Shakespeare's works, and that Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke "was herself an extraordinary writer, and she used a front to disseminate her works. He was, evidently, her coach-maker’s son, John Webster".
Someone in that conversation invoked Occam's Razor, but that was dismissed, of course..a mad world, my masters ;-)
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 28, 2009 - 8:50 AMHal, I hear ya, Both Mary SIdney and Marlowe were recognized and accepted writers, whose work under their own names survives to this day... so I've just never understood why they would need to hide behind Shakespeare. Occam's razor is exactly it. Sigh. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 28, 2009 - 9:23 AMThe latest contributor to that conversation seems to think that Mary Sidney wrote John Webster's works, God save the mark:
” [N]obody has fantasised that dead aristocrats or spies were responsible for the work of Jonson, Webster or Middleton.” Well, no, not fantasy but well-founded research to that effect exists.
If he and his mates would care to read Stephanie Hopkins Hughes’s “‘No Spring till Now’, The Countess of Pembroke and the John Webster Canon’”, they would be pleasantly astounded that Mary Sidney, heretofore recognized merely as the inspiration for the Wilton writers’ circle, was herself an extraordinary writer, and she used a front to disseminate her works. He was, evidently, her coach-maker’s son, John Webster.
** More social snobbery at work in the reference to "coach-maker's son" ;-(
Somebody else dismissed Occam's Razor as follows:
It is not Occam’s razor which is at issue here, which applies well to the laws of physics, but less so to more complex questions.
** On the other hand, a lot of knowledgeable people are making intelligent comments there, and it's been improving my education.. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Fri, August 28, 2009 - 9:58 AMUnfortunately along with generating thoughtful discussion no most subjects Shermer also attracts a cadre who live to prove he is wrong no matter what subject he speaks out about.
Not only Occam's Razor - which Shermer deftly uses to shut down the anti Stratford school but the Principles of Herodotus apply here - IE conformable sources.
The anti Stratford argument relies to much on "what ifs".
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Sun, August 30, 2009 - 9:27 PMOccam wasn't a physicist, he was a philosopher and logician. While we all tend to simplify his premise as "the simplest answer is the correct one" what he technically said was that the answer which makes the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. The propensity toward finding truth increases in diametric opposition to the number of assumptions that exist in your data.
The person who said it only applied to questions of physics is an idiot. (A conclusion that requires few assumtions). It was precisely for the sake of finding the true line of reason through the fog of complexity that Fr. Occam sat down and wrote that out. -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Mon, October 5, 2009 - 12:46 PMI don't know if it's the same person who questioned Occam's applicability, but an Oxfordian just made the statement on the Shermer website that:
"He even referred to codices in Old English and Scandinavian for the plot lines of Hamlet that were exclusively in the hands of–Oxford’s father-in-law Cecil and of his brilliant tutor,Thomas Smith."
I did a quick web search and posted something from Charles Dickens about the previous play of Hamlet that preceded Shakespeare's. (Presumably Dickens is part of the vast conspiracy, of course..)
If any more knowledgeable Snob wants to weigh in on that, please do. If not, the strained reasoning of the Oxfordians is worth a giggle, at least.. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Mon, October 5, 2009 - 12:49 PM>If any more knowledgeable Snob wants to weigh in on that, please do. If not, the strained reasoning of the Oxfordians is worth a giggle, at least..<
The Oxfordians provide a classic example of fitting facts to a theory when they sould be fitting the theory to the facts. -
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Re: Shakespeare, Interrupted by Michael Shermer
Thu, October 8, 2009 - 11:23 AMJoe FTW
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