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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | 1
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SB: And there isn't a mountain of evidence against Will of Stratford. There's lots of speculation, contradictory arguments, unprovable theories, but no evidence.
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...Except the fact that a professional author of the time declared the name was a pen name.
You are correct to say it isn't "proof".
You are wrong to say it is not evidence.
And you are wrong to say that it is not accompanied by mountains of other evidence.
The circumstances of Shaksper's education are evidence. The fact he owned no books is evidence. The fact no one ever referred to him as a poet in his lifetime is evidence.
And THAT is a lot of evidence, but not even the beginning of the total.
Yes, we can invent excuses and speculate why these things might be true even if Shaksper is the true author, but THOSE inventions are NOT evidence. They are just "speculation, contradictory arguments, unprovable theories" -- to use your terms against you.
Your claim that there is "no evidence" against Will of Stratford is flatly (and obviously) wrong.
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Steven Brake
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | 2
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Mark Haslett wrote: ...Except the fact that a professional author of the time declared the name was a pen name.
You are correct to say it isn't "proof".
You are wrong to say it is not evidence.
SB replied: It's evidence that Hall doubted Shakespeare's authorship of Venus & Adonis. That's as far as you can take it.
Mark Haslett wrote: And you are wrong to say that it is not accompanied by mountains of other evidence.
SB replied: There's lots of supposition, certainly. But evidence? Not so much.
Mark Haslett wrote: The circumstances of Shaksper's education are evidence. The fact he owned no books is evidence. The fact no one ever referred to him as a poet in his lifetime is evidence.
SB replied: As earlier posted, Will would have had the opportunity to attend The King's New School. I agree that there is no absolute proof that he did so, and also that it's wrong to categorically state that he did. But he could.
The argument that the plays could only have been the work of a highly-educated mind is one made by Alternative Authorship theorists.
Contemporaries of Shakespeare, like the author(s) of The Parnassus Plays and Ben Jonson, mocked his lack of learning.
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | 3
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SB replied: What's cryptic about Johnson's lines, whether in the commendatory poem..?
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The number of Stratfordians who found Jonson's poem cryptic is basically ALL of them --until the Authorship Question became a cause to fight against. Then, suddenly "honest Ben Jonson" the master of numbers and secrets became "HONEST Ben Jonson" whose every word must be taken for its surface meaning alone, no matter how clearly he declares that is never the way he should be read.
But to be clear, the poem begins with puzzling lines declaring that he will not praise Shakespeare's NAME.
He says that if he did, it would be offensive and confusing to people who might think he was praising the wrong person.
I suppose that if I praised you by starting, "I will not praise your name because that might confuse people about whom I'm trying to praise" you would find that "straightforward"?
Of course not.
And, in light of the fact that Jonson had many battles with poets to defend the honor of those he allied with, but never lifted a finger to correct Hall's remarks on Shakespeare's name -- Jonson's meaning is resolved if one sees him as passively agreeing with the published statements that the name "Shakespeare" is actually a pen name.
THAT actually makes sense. On its own, his poem's introduction is weird and begging to be interpreted.
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | 4
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SB: SB replied: It's evidence that Hall doubted Shakespeare's authorship of Venus & Adonis. That's as far as you can take it.
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This is an ignorant statement.
What, pray tell, does the word "evidence" mean, Steven?
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Steven Brake
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | 5
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Mark Haslett wrote: What, pray tell, does the word "evidence" mean, Steven?
SB replied: One definition could be "a body of facts or information indicating whether a belief is true".
Did Hall ever express further doubts about Shakespeare's authorship? If not, why not?
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Steven Brake
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | 6
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Mark Haslett wrote: The number of Stratfordians who found Jonson's poem cryptic is basically ALL of them.
SB replied: ? Did they? As far as I know, his verse has always been taken at face value and never seen as "cryptic" at all.
Mark Haslett wrote: On its own, his poem's introduction is weird and begging to be interpreted.
SB replied: In his commendatory verse, Jonson praises - extolls, actually - Shakespeare's writing while teasing his lack of learning.
Years later, in private conversation with William Drummond, he more harshly criticises Shakespeare's work.
Published posthumously, his Timber criticises Shakespeare for being too fluent, too careless, but ends by stating that "There was ever more in him to be praised, than to be pardoned".
There's nothing at all to suggest that Jonson doubted Shakespeare was the author.
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | 7
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SB: There's nothing at all to suggest that Jonson doubted Shakespeare was the author.
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Argument from... thin air, I guess?
Stratfordian Leah Marcus' 1990 book "Puzzling Shakespeare" goes into great detail about the hundreds of years of scholars puzzling over Jonson's writing in the folio.
It sounds like you will find it enlightening.
There is no longer any disappointment when you sidestep the obvious point I make in order to argue some sock puppet idea and repeat your talking point. But in this case, I have to point it out. Jonson's poem in the folio is obviously cryptic. Light brought to bear by Hall (and others) publishing statements the Shakespeare is a pen name makes Jonson's cryptic style clear-- he wishes not to praise the name "Shakespeare" but the true author, addressed as "My Shakespeare".
It is a problem in the poem which has not gone unnoticed by Stratfordians, present company excluded.
Edited by Mark Haslett on 19 June 2024 at 8:12pm
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Steven Brake
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | 8
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@Mark Haslett: Apparently Dr Marcus had no time for Alternative Authorship theories, and states in her book that "The research by which the advocates . . . have defended their candidate for Bard is a devastating unconscious parody of traditional historical methodology".
Sounds like it could well be worth a read. :) |
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Steven Brake
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | 9
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Mark Haslett wrote: he [Jonson] wishes not to praise the name "Shakespeare" but the true author, addressed as "My Shakespeare".
SB replied: And who's the - in Jonson's opinion - Shakespeare who wanted art, as he's recorded as saying in conversation with William Drummond, and who wrote too quickly, and made ridiculous mistakes - in Jonson's view - as he wrote in Timber?
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | 10
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Oh, it is.
The role of Ben Jonson in this history is clearly important.
Have you read POETASTER? Are you familiar with Jonson's character there named "OVID" who is a lawyer that writes lines from Romeo and Juliet?
Are you familiar with "ON POET APE"?
The idea that someone can declare to know Jonson's mind on the subject of Shakespeare based on a surface reading of his ode and Drummond and Timber is destroyed by Marcus and by Jonson scholars like William Slights and his "Ben Jonson and the Art of Secrecy".
A closer reading of Timber reveals the statements about Shakespeare are filled with complex references and do indeed hint that Shakespeare (on this side idolatry) is a pen name.
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Steven Brake
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | 11
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@Mark: Everything we know about Jonson shows him to have been a truculent, pugnacious, argumentative and quarrelsome man.
If there had been something clandestine about Shakespeare's authorship, Jonson would have been best placed to know about it, but given his character, he would also have been the last person to have hidden his reservations, concealed his doubts, or revealed them wrapped in irony and ambiguity.
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 19 June 2024 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | 12
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SB: …given his character, he would also have been the last person to have
hidden his reservations, concealed his doubts, or revealed them wrapped in
irony and ambiguity
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Please provide a source
What scholar of “honest” Ben Jonson, the master of secrecy and multiple
meanings would ever endorse this claim?
His character is precisely what makes him the MOST likely to have
concealed such a secret. This is basically what “On Poet Ape” states about
his attitude toward the sluggish, gaping auditors.
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