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Steven Brake Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 January 2016 Posts: 659
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 5:15am | IP Logged | 1
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@Mark: You are aware of Jonson's life? The duels, the spells in prison, the abrasive remarks he made about his contemporaries, including Shakespeare, his quarrels with his collaborator Inigo Jones, his ostentatious recantation of his Catholicism, etc.
In his life of Ben Jonson, Ian Donaldson describes Jonson as “He was a difficult, quarrelsome, vain, pedantically learned, hard-drinking member of the wrong faith, tainted with a criminal record".
Edited by Steven Brake on 20 June 2024 at 5:15am
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Mark Haslett Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6429
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 6:50am | IP Logged | 2
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That is no kind of answer. I asked for a source to back up your ludicrous claim.
Ben Jonson scholars inform us: the chief subject of Jonson’s work is secrecy. Multiple meanings so only an audience “in the know” could understand his full meaning were Jonson’s artistic mission.
Nothing you say can change that.
A few years immediately before working for Pembroke, Jonson dedicated a book of epigrams to him. In his dedication, he advertised his services and specified his ability with cypher. Soon, afterward, he was working for Pembroke on his bizarre pieces for Shakespeare’s folio.
That is what one might call: "a body of facts or information indicating whether a belief is true".
Edited by Mark Haslett on 20 June 2024 at 6:57am
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Mark Haslett Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6429
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 7:09am | IP Logged | 3
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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?
**
I hoped our resident lawyer would hop in here, but alas.
That is not a reasonable definition of "evidence."
Evidence is any fact relevant to an investigation.
Once you talk about any indication of "whether a belief is true" or not, you've moved past evidence gathering and into argument.
If you are investigating a murder, then testimony from a co-worker identifying the murderer is evidence. It may be true, it may be false, but it goes in the file.
As a scholar, you don't get to say "I don't believe Hall, so his claims that Shakespeare is a pen name are not evidence."
Hall's claims are evidence that contemporaries of Shakespeare believed the name was a pen name to such a degree that more than one put their belief in print so others could see it.
Furthermore, the fact that, although Hall's work was popular, no one ever contradicted Hall's claims is evidence that his claims were not controversial to his colleagues.
The implications go on and on. The evidentiary meaning of Hall's claims, the number of professionals involved in their distribution and their wide popularity are far beyond what you seem willing to grant.
But you are a Shakespeare Phd and not a historian. This does not seem to oblige you to the same depth of intellectual curiosity about such matters.
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Michael Penn Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006 Location: United States Posts: 12717
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | 4
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QUOTE:
Evidence is any fact relevant to an investigation. |
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Leaving aside the variable strictures of legal procedure in and out of any court or differing systems of law, the basic consideration of evidence by the jurist or the historian is essentially the same.
Evidence is something, including testimony, documents, and tangible objects, that tends to prove or disprove the existence of an alleged fact (e.g., Stratford Will was Shakespeare).
In a trial, the two adversarial sides will offer their allegations of fact in complaint and answer, accompanied by any evidence they have to prove or disprove their allegations. Sometimes there are no disputes about the facts, but when there are, the jury (if there is one) or the judge sits as the "fact-finder" who given a standard (e.g., beyond a reasonable doubt, preponderance of the evidence, etc.) assesses how much the evidence offered by both parties proves which sides allegations of fact are "true," which is to say logically inferred to be the most, well, evident.
A classic definition by 19th century legal scholar published in the Harvard Law Review is helpful further: “Evidence is any matter of fact which is furnished to a legal tribunal, otherwise than by reasoning or a reference to what is noticed without proof, as the basis of inference in ascertaining some other matter of fact.”
In other words, claims on the basis of fact-less reasoning (e.g., we don't know how but Stratford Will must have somehow acquired advanced if imperfect legal knowledge because the plays are replete with law) and claims based on a reference noted without factual proof (Stratford Will might have acquired rudimentary legal concepts at the King's New School assuming he attended)... are not evidence.
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Mark Haslett Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6429
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | 5
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The rigors of weighing evidence are taught to lawyers and historians.
This can account for why every historian and Supreme Court justice who looks seriously at the Shakespeare authorship question has come away convinced Stratford Will did not write the plays and poems attributed to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare PhD candidates are not trained in the same way and constantly use speculation, misrepresentation and conjecture to protect their conclusion that Stratford Will is the author from the implications of the inconvenient evidence in the investigation of the Shakespeare Authorship question.
Journalist Elizabeth Winkler’s book on the subject is very enlightening and shows what happens to punish academics who try to fight this trend. It’s called “Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies” because the dynamic in academia is so similar to religious doctrine.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133334
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | 6
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Experts often become less concerned about expanding our knowledge and more about protecting the area of their expertise.
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Michael Penn Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006 Location: United States Posts: 12717
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | 7
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I read something this morning that made me think of this authorship debate:
"Conspiracy theories have two main characteristics: they explain everything by reference to a single factor, and they can never be disproven."
To which does this definition more apply -- the case for Oxford or the case for Stratford Will?
The case for the latter essentially is every variant spelling and pronunciation of Stratford Will's last name assumes that every variant spelling and pronunciation of the author Shakespeare's name demonstrates the two are the same person. That is the single factor. Assuming it, his authorship can never be disproven.
The case for Oxford does not rely on any single factor.
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Mark Haslett Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6429
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | 8
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SB: Did Hall ever express further doubts about Shakespeare's authorship? If not, why not?
**
Hall never expressed “doubt”.
Hall expressed certainty that Shakespeare was a pen name.
In his protracted literary battle with Hall, John Marsten confirmed that he endorsed this statement.
Hall’s battle with Marsten continued without returning to the subject to modify his statements at all.
The works that contained these statements were banished by the bishop in 1599 along with other work that contained cryptic allusions to Shakespeare in ways both baffling and inconvenient to the Stratford case, including WILLOBIE HIS AVISA.
Edited by Mark Haslett on 20 June 2024 at 2:30pm
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Mark Haslett Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6429
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | 9
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Michael: The case for Oxford does not rely on any single factor.
**
And even more fundamentally, neither does the case against Stratford Will.
This observation you are making is so damning to the “scholarship” around establishing the author’s identity.
There is, in academia, no doubt Stratford Will wrote the works.
But when you try to find out why there is no doubt, the only answers boil down to an unshakable certainty and refusal to question the basis for this certainty.
Steven keeps presenting the case as an elliptical leap from some known associations among business partners in the theater and an assumption that there cannot be 2 men in the same business at the same time with the same name.
These reasons are clearly not conclusive, but the certainty is unshakable.
It’s an unfalsifiable case. So much so that even statements from Shakespeare colleagues that declare Shakespeare is a pen name are declared to not even be relevant evidence.
Where else is scholarship so afraid of the fundamental scholarly edict to question your assumptions and results?
Edited by Mark Haslett on 20 June 2024 at 2:45pm
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Steven Brake Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 January 2016 Posts: 659
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | 10
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Mark Haslett wrote: That is no kind of answer. I asked for a source to back up your ludicrous claim.
SB replied: The instances I've mentioned of Jonson's life are a matter of historical record, and Donaldson's biography very well regarded.
Mark Haslett wrote: That is not a reasonable definition of "evidence."
SB replied: It's a perfectly fair one.
Mark Haslett wrote: Hall's claims are evidence that contemporaries of Shakespeare believed the name was a pen name to such a degree that more than one put their belief in print so others could see it.
SB replied: Hall's claims can at best be taken as evidence of his doubt that Will of Stratford wrote Venus & Adonis. They wouldn't be accepted as undeniable proof by any court.
Mark Haslett wrote: Furthermore, the fact that, although Hall's work was popular, no one ever contradicted Hall's claims is evidence that his claims were not controversial to his colleagues.
SB replied: Or perhaps they just didn't believe him and didn't consider his claims worth repeating.
Mark Haslett wrote: But you are a Shakespeare Phd and not a historian. This does not seem to oblige you to the same depth of intellectual curiosity about such matters.
SB replied: Yes, having a PhD in Shakespeare (well, his plays) obviously means I'm not qualified to talk about him, or them.
Mark Haslett wrote: This can account for why every historian and Supreme Court justice who looks seriously at the Shakespeare authorship question
SB replied: I can't speak for the United States, but here in the UK, Alternative Authorship theories are pretty much classed by academics alongside doubts about the moon landing and belief in the Loch Ness Monster.
Mark Haslett wrote: Steven keeps presenting the case as an elliptical leap from some known associations among business partners in the theater and an assumption that there cannot be 2 men in the same business at the same time with the same name.
SB replied: In 1603, William Shakespeare is named alongside Heminges and Condell in the royal patent confirming the creation of The King's Men.
In 1616, William Shakespeare (or Shakespere, or Shakespear - as is conventional for the time, the surname is spelt in a variety of ways) dies in Stratford-Upon-Avon, naming Heminges and Condell in his will.
In 1623, the First Folio is published. In it, Heminges and Condell named Shakespeare as the author of the plays contained within.
What is the Oxfordian rebuttal to this? That the Heminges and Condell (and Richard Burbage, also named in the royal patent of 1603) named in the will of William Shakespeare aren't the same Heminges and Condell listed in the royal patent and the First Folio? It's another monumental coincidence?
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Michael Penn Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006 Location: United States Posts: 12717
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | 11
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>> Mark Haslett wrote: That is not a reasonable definition of "evidence."
SB replied: It's a perfectly fair one. >>
That's a conversation-killer, Steven. It would hardly be an irrelevant tangent for you, if you disagree with Mark about what defines evidence, to instead of automatically responding "yes" to his "no" actually engaged in a carefully reasoned argument about why you disagree with him. If you and Mark cannot find common ground on what evidence is, why bother arguing anything?
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Steven Brake Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 January 2016 Posts: 659
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Posted: 20 June 2024 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | 12
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Michael Penn wrote: "Conspiracy theories have two main characteristics: they explain everything by reference to a single factor, and they can never be disproven."
To which does this definition more apply -- the case for Oxford or the case for Stratford Will?
SB replied: Oxford, easily.
To believe that he was the author, we have to believe that he concealed his identity as a playwright while being acclaimed as one, worked with a series of collaborators - Marlowe, Middleton, Beaumont, Fletcher - who either never suspected the truth or chose not to reveal it, or were afraid to do so, wrote plays which betray a lack of historical and geographical understanding utterly inconsistent with the education and background a member of the nobility would typically receive and also wrote them years or even decades before they were performed and when they're usually dated, somehow anticipating how theatre was going to develop and anticipating historical events like the accession of James VI and the Gunpowder Plot, or at roughly the same they were recorded as being first performed, largely adhering to the generally, if not universally, accepted chronology, but also meaning that he kept producing work after dying in 1604, all the time refusing to take any action against this upstart provincial whose very unusual surname is the same as the pseudonym he's using despite having no need to do so and who is unfairly being praised as the author of the work that Oxford has actually written, or co-written.
Or William Shakespeare from Stratford- Upon-Avon wrote, or co-wrote, the plays bearing his name.
:)
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