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Topic: Famous Folk talk Shakespeare Authorship (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Trevor Smith
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | 1  

"Yeah, I've been following this thread since its inception
and I can't for the life of me figure out what the exact
quotes are"

**

Steven Brake's posts seem designed to win arguments through
sheer reader fatigue, I must say.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | 2  

Try This………
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | 3  

SB replied: How do you prove a negative? If you think Shakespeare is a
pseudonym, the onus is on you to prove it.

**
A single piece of unambiguous, primary source e evidence that Stratford
Will was a paid writer would “prove a negative” in this case.

Just like Diana Price did for every other author of the period.

Out of all the authors of his day, only Shakespeare - the most famous of
them all— has no unambiguous primary source evidence that he was
actually a writer.

His professional contemporaries published their belief that “Shakespeare”
was a pen name.

Stratford Will owned no evidence of owning books. He had no evidence of
education. He had no training in music, law, falconry, Greek, French, Italian,
he had no way to visit Titian’s studio and see the paintings referenced in the
2 poems, or the comedia Del art that is throughout the plays, he had no
relationship with Southampton, he had no relationship with the
Archbishop, he was never called a writer by his family or friends or by
William Camden, he would leave London during theater season to
conduct trivial business in Warwickshire, etc. etc.

The number of inventions needed to excuse Will Stratford’s actual life and
contort it into the life of a famous writer is in the dozens. Dozens of
necessary invented, speculative, often nearly impossible hypotheses of
“maybe he did this or that…”

The “onus” of proof is on those who want to assert certainty, but don’t want
to accept the facts as we find them, not those who do.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | 4  

Mark Haslett wrote: A single piece of unambiguous, primary source e evidence that Stratford Will was a paid writer would “prove a negative” in this case. Just like Diana Price did for every other author of the period.

SB replied: William Shakespeare (or Shakspere, or Shakespear, or umpteen variants of the name, which, conventionally for the times, was spelt in a variety of different ways) was a member of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, later The King's Men, who performed the plays collected in the First Folio and was positively identified as the author of them by Heminges and Condell, who'd also been part of The Lord Chamberlain's Men and The King's Men, and named in the will of William Shakespeare (or Shakespere, Shakespear, etc - see above regarding the variable spelling, typical for the day).

Ben Jonson, who'd known Shakespeare since the late 1590s, also commended him in verse. In later years, and in private conversation, with William Drummond, he more harshly criticised Shakespeare, but never once claimed that he wasn't an author, or that the name was a pseudonym that had been mixed up with another fellow, and in his posthumously published Timber again made criticisms of Shakespeare's literary failings, but again made no suggestion that the name was a pseudonym. 

George Buc, Master Of The Revels, positively identified Shakespeare as the author of King Lear in 1607.

Mark Haslett wrote: His professional contemporaries published their belief that “Shakespeare” was a pen name.

SB replied: Please provide a quote from a contemporary of Shakespeare directly and unequivocally stating that it was a pen name.

Mark Haslett wrote: Stratford Will owned no evidence of owning books. He had no evidence of education. He had no training in music, law, falconry, Greek, French, Italian...etc. etc. [note by SB - quote truncated - please see Mark's post above for the full list]

SB replied: By common consent, Shakespeare's plays do not demonstrate that they are the work of a highly-educated, well-travelled man. This was the criticism made by his contemporaries, like the author(s) of The Parnassus Plays, and repeatedly made by Ben Jonson. It was also the criticism of many critics in The Augustan Period (early eighteenth century) who much preferred Jonson.

Apart from The Tempest, Shakespeare's plays never follow the classical principle of unity of time, place and action. 

They make repeated errors such as:

Giving Bohemia a coastline;
Making Delphi an island, rather than a city;
Having King John use cannons decades before their invention;
Showing A
ncient Rome having chiming clocks;
Having Ancient Egyptians play billiards;
Make Richard of Gloucester quote Machiavelli years before he was born;
Make Ulysses quote Aristotle thousands of years before he was born;
Having characters sail from landlocked Milan to landlocked Verona;
Conflating Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March and one-time heir to the throne with Edmund Mortimer, who rebelled against Henry IV

etc etc.

There's lots we don't know about Will, and Stratfordians have indulged themselves far too much over the years, decades and centuries. But there's lots we do know too, about him, other writers, and the times in which they worked - and none of it supports the notion of unhappy coincidence or conscious conspiracy in which the true author, using the pseudonym "Shakespeare", found their work unfairly attributed to another fellow with the same name.
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | 5  

SB replied: By common consent, Shakespeare's plays do not demonstrate
that they are the work of a highly-educated, well-travelled man.

**

The willful tearing down of your own ability to perceive truth in order to
cling to a belief which no facts support— you will proclaim that the well
established library of studies on the vast knowledge of the greatest
playwright of all time is actually nothing special because, if it was special,
that would mean the man had to have special learning …and we know
Stratford Will had none.

I truly pity you.
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | 6  

SB: George Buc, Master Of The Revels, positively identified
Shakespeare as the author of King Lear in 1607

**
Another outright lie.

If your case is so good, why do you continue to resort to falsehoods?

Hall was categorically and provably not referring to Marston and Buc
categorically and provably did not identify William Shakesper, the
glover’s son whom you are trying to say is the author, as the author.

This is all the Stratford case has, I realize, but why do you personally
engage in this deception? You know better and many of us watched
you and Michael Penn hash out this very point on this message board.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | 7  

@Mark: Ben Jonson's own words:

From "To the memory of my Beloved the Author, Mr William Shakespeare": And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek.

From his conversation with William Drummond: [Note from SB - this is among a series of other aspersions cast by Jonson at other writers]

That Shakespeare wanted art. 

[NOTE from SB - this is in reference to The Winter's Tale] Shakespeare in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where there is no sea near by some hundred miles.

From De Shakespeare Nostrat, in Timber: "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. “Sufflaminandus erat,” as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him: “Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.” He replied: “Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

Do you pity Jonson too? :)


Edited by Steven Brake on 22 June 2024 at 8:31pm
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | 8  

SB: [Shakespeares theater business friends have their names on letters in the folio]… That is as straight a line of evidence as can
reasonably be expected, and can only be denied by the most ridiculous
and illogical of arguments.

MH: How does any part of that evidence prove that “Shakespeare” was
not the pen name of an author who “shifted the blame onto another’s
name” as Joseph Hall said?

SB replied: How do you prove a negative?

Mark Haslett wrote: A single piece of unambiguous, primary source e
evidence that Stratford Will was a paid writer would “prove a negative”
in this case. Just like Diana Price did for every other author of the
period.

SB replied: William Shakespeare (or Shakspere, or Shakespear, or
umpteen variants of the name, which, conventionally for the times, was
spelt in a variety of different ways) was a member of The Lord
Chamberlain's Men, later The King's Men, who performed the plays
collected in the First Folio and was positively identified as the author of
them by Heminges and Condell, who'd also been part of The Lord
Chamberlain's Men and The King's Men, and named in the will of
William Shakespeare (or Shakespere, Shakespear, etc - see above
regarding the variable spelling, typical for the day).

**

Ladies and gentleman, the Stratfordian reasoning on display… a
perfect circle.

Edited by Mark Haslett on 22 June 2024 at 8:34pm
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | 9  

Mark Haslett wrote: Another outright lie:

SB replied: The stationer's register records on 26 November 1607 that Sir George Buck attested that King Lear was the work of William Shakespeare, and that the play had been performed at court.

Mark Haslett wrote: Hall was categorically and provably not referring to Marston

SB replied: You haven't provided anything that categorically proves this.

Mark Haslett wrote: William Shakesper, the glover’s son 

SB replied: What does John Shakespeare's trade have to do with William Shakespeare's writing?

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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | 10  

SB: Do you pity Jonson too? :)

**

You demonstrate a contempt for Jonson’s own declaration that he
always writes in double meaning to reach his intended audience of
learned readers who know his references and work out his true
meaning.

You want none of that when it comes to reading his work.

I profoundly admire Jonson. Your attitude toward his work makes me
respect you less.
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | 11  

Mark Haslett wrote: You demonstrate a contempt for Jonson’s own declaration that he always writes in double meaning to reach his intended audience of learned readers who know his references and work out his true meaning.

SB replied: There are no "double meanings" in the statements I've provided. Why would there be? All three were made after Shakespeare was dead, and even longer after Oxford's death (assuming that you're positing him as the true author). The conversation with Drummond was made in private, and Timber was published posthumously. 


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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 22 June 2024 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | 12  

SB replied: What does John Shakespeare's trade have to do with
William Shakespeare's writing?

***

17 pages of this thread to get here.

Sigh.

Whatever value you have to add to this discussion was added long
ago.

Goodbye again, Steven.
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