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Indeed! And as you examine the "other" side, count the number of direct references to the Stratford man being an author OF ANY KIND. See how far you can get into his biography without encountering phrases like "could have", "might have", "most probably would have", etc.

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That is the ultimate bottom line. In his surprisingly well documented life, the man from Stratford presents us with no indication of being a poet, a playwright, or a writer of any kind. No letters to or from him survive. No bills to or from him in any context as a writer. No mention of him as a writer in any journals, day books, letters, official document.

"Shakespeare" moved thru London invisibly, but the Stratford man left a big footprint -- NO PART of it in any way connected to the craft of writing.

JB: That is the ultimate bottom line. In his surprisingly well documented life, the man from Stratford presents us with no indication of being a poet, a playwright, or a writer of any kind.

JB: So Gilbert & Sullivan DIDN'T write THE MIKADO! Fascinating!

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True -- but for entirely different reasons than the Moon landing "hoax".

The Moon landing "hoax", as with most "conspiracy theories" of the 20th Century, spring from a LACK of scholarship. Oxford's candidacy springs from precisely the opposite. And, perhaps even more significantly, requires no "conspiracy" to make it happen. It requires only the society of the time, a very different world from the one we now inhabit.

The Authorship Question demands attention because there really does seem to be something there.

JB: The Moon landing "hoax", as with most "conspiracy theories" of the 20th Century, spring from a LACK of scholarship. Oxford's candidacy springs from precisely the opposite. And, perhaps even more significantly, requires no "conspiracy" to make it happen. It requires only the society of the time, a very different world from the one we now inhabit.

The Authorship Question demands attention because there really does seem to be something there.

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Your comments are extremely disingenuous. The body of scholarship surrounding the Oxford claim is "fringe" only in the sense that it is not the largest body of scholarship. There is hardly to be found a single modern ACCEPTED theory, in any field, that did not begin its existence in the "fringe".

Likewise, referring to the orthodox scholarship as representing the "vast majority" is falling back on tricks of language. We can, indeed, say that most Shakespearean scholars still hew to the orthodox lines, but "most" doesn't have the drama, does it? It doesn't carry with it an automatic implied victory.

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If nothing else, that almost requires a conspiracy. How can four generations of the most well informed people on the planet about Shakespeare fail to recognize the supposedly obvious truth that he was a fraud? If the "authorship question" is based on the accumulation of scholarship, it is most peculiar that almost all professional scholars don't seem to think that there is much of a question at all.

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Again, you stack your argument with hyperbole. Experts all too often fall into the trap of protecting the area of their expertise. The "most well informed" scholars are precisely the ones who turn out volume after volume of Shakespearean biography that are about everything BUT Shakespeare. Portraits of the theater of the time, of London of the time, of society of the time, peppered with occasional guesswork about where Shakespeare MIGHT have been, and what Shakespeare COULD have been doing. Ah, if only he -- like every other playwright of his day -- had left some kind of paper trail. Yet, no. Shakespearean "scholarship" is all too often a study of everything BUT Shakespeare.

This is why Looney, himself having no horse in the race, approached the Authorship Question from an entirely new angle, asking how we might set about finding "Shakespeare" if the works had come down to us anonymously. His investigations led him to the Earl of Oxford, and from there a veritable cascade of Shakespearean connections. MORE connections, in fact, than can be made for the man from Stratford!

JB: Your comments are extremely disingenuous.

JB: The body of scholarship surrounding the Oxford claim is "fringe" only in the sense that it is not the largest body of scholarship. There is hardly to be found a single modern ACCEPTED theory, in any field, that did not begin its existence in the "fringe".  Likewise, referring to the orthodox scholarship as representing the "vast majority" is falling back on tricks of language. We can, indeed, say that most Shakespearean scholars still hew to the orthodox lines, but "most" doesn't have the drama, does it? It doesn't carry with it an automatic implied victory.

JB: This is why Looney, himself having no horse in the race, approached the Authorship Question from an entirely new angle, asking how we might set about finding "Shakespeare" if the works had come down to us anonymously. His investigations led him to the Earl of Oxford, and from there a veritable cascade of Shakespearean connections. MORE connections, in fact, than can be made for the man from Stratford!

Michael:  How can two intelligent, reasonable people disagree that much, the difference between 80 sources and 0...!?

Somebody's fudging facts -- it has to be!