Bravo!! Well said!

"The stronger evidence lies for the De Vere case than Stratford man." What is this "stronger evidence"? Are you going to present some or are you just going to tease us? And how do you know that the evidence has *NOT* been "subjected to scholarship standards for research and evidence" and found wanting?

@@Nullifidian 1. Evidence - See Diana Price’s Unorthodox Biography for a complete inventory of the lack of evidence that Stratford man was a writer. See Kevin Gilvary Many Lives of Shakespeare for the listing of bio fiction that is the Stratfordian myth making by academics. 2. de Vere - stronger case… well, he was acknowledged by peers as being a top tier play writer who couldn’t publish under his name. He has a traceable biography. 2-0 De Vere on the easy stuff 😂😂😂 Let’s see something non-posthumous that (a) identifies William Shakspere from Stratford on Avon as the author of the plays…(b) a legible signature that is consistently executed… simple challenge, right? Or, maybe not. 😢 3. Where are the academic reviews that disassemble DeVere as easily as Stratford man? You know of some? 4. That multiple candidates have a stronger demonstrable case to the canon than William Shakspere is evidence of how soft evidence is for him, not how poor the evidence is for others. Basic. Where’s the slam dunk record if Stratford man is so air tight a case? See Tom Wossman’s brief lecture on “teaching the authorship question” for a systematic take down.

@@craigtimmons6907 First off, I'd like to thank you for actually answering the question and sincerely attempting to provide evidence, which is something that many of your confrères don't bother to do. I'm also going to have to break this into two parts. (1 of 2) "1. Evidence - See Diana Price’s Unorthodox Biography for a complete inventory of the lack of evidence that Stratford man was a writer." I've already seen it. Diana Price carves ten categories out of what she believes to be the gaps in the record related to Shakespeare, and deliberately ignores and suppresses the evidence that nevertheless meets her arbitrary criteria, while uncritically accepting everything else from anyone else she can find which appears to hit off her categories. Unfortunately, her approach leads to some obvious questions. First off: who appointed Diana Price the arbiter of what counts as historical evidence? What logical relationship is there between having been an author and being able to jump through Price's arbitrarily erected hoops? Second: What about all of the evidence that fits her categories but is ignored by her entirely? What justification does she have for that? For example, Richard Quiney wrote Shakespeare a letter that is extant, which ought to count as a "record of correspondence". It's not about literature, therefore it doesn't count for her "especially" clause, but she put that clause there because she knew the extant letters of Ben Jonson, Gabriel Harvey, and Edmund Spenser aren't literary either. Jonson was begging to be let out of jail, Harvey was begging for a job, and Spenser was the secretary to two Lords of Ireland and every example of a letter in his handwriting is a consequence of his day job. Third: What about all of the evidence that Diana Price refuses to consider? Title pages/dedication pages, Stationers' Register entries, Revels Account entries, entries in contemporary literary anthologies, and testimony from all of his contemporaries who bothered to comment are not annihilated merely because she won't talk about them. Fourth: Even if all of these other objections can be dealt with, there's also the slight point that an alleged absence of evidence tells you *NOTHING* . It simply does not weigh in the balance. It has no evidentiary value of its own. "See Kevin Gilvary Many Lives of Shakespeare for the listing of bio fiction that is the Stratfordian myth making by academics." If you had a valid argument, you wouldn't have to tell me to see this or that person; you would be able to make the case on the primary documentary evidence. I don't care what Kevin Gilvary thinks of Shakespeare biographies because I don't base my conclusion that Shakespeare was an author on Shakespeare biographies. I base my conclusion on the fact that he's attested as the author on title pages/dedication pages beginning in 1593, that his name is in the Stationers' Register as the author of multiple works of the canon (including the document that created the idea of a Shakespeare canon: the First Folio), that his name appears in the Revels Accounts in association with the plays _The Comedy of Errors_ , _Measure for Measure_ , and _The Merchant of Venice_ , that his name is in contemporary anthologies as an author (e.g., _Englands Helicon_ ), and that every contemporary who bothered to say so affirmed he was an author, including multiple people with established connections to him (theatrical colleagues, playwriting colleagues, family friends, etc.). This part of the record is _abundantly_ documented, so pettifogging over biographers disagreeing about minor and irrelevant details, like what Shakespeare was up to during his so-called "lost years", is neither here nor there. Also, Gilvary has some gall to be talking about "fictional lives" as an Oxfordian when the Oxfordians have invented an entire fictional life for Edward de Vere in order to turn him from what he was, which is a profligate, egotist, and a mediocre court poet, into Shakespeare. They place him where he never was, assert meetings that never happened, and fictionalize his entire biography to find 'parallels' with Shakespeare's texts. That's why they hate Alan H. Nelson's _Monstrous Adversary_ worse than poison: it's the *ONLY* scholarly biography of Edward de Vere ever written and it punctures their fictionalized image of the earl. "2. de Vere - stronger case… well, he was acknowledged by peers as being a top tier play writer who couldn’t publish under his name." There is no reason to assume that _either_ of these things are true. Edward de Vere was never specifically identified as an author of plays nor was it ever established that he was someone who "couldn't publish under his name", and in fact he *DID* publish under his name. His very bad poem prefacing _Cardanus Comforte_ was published with his name on it. He deliberately exploited his patronage of the book to have this poem and a preface inserted, so if there was a ban on his publishing he didn't seem to be aware of it. Several other poems were published in the _Paradise of Dainty Devices_ with his initials. Also, the alleged 'quote' that Oxfordians use to 'establish' that Edward de Vere had to hide his identity is fabricated. They link together two parts of George Puttenham's _The Art of English Poesy_ that are separated by 23 full chapters. This is the quote as they present it: "I know very many notable gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and suppressed it agayne, or els sufred it to be publisht without their own names to it, of which number the first is that noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford." Sounds decisive, right? Except that everything prior to the final comma comes from chapter 8 and the mention of Edward de Vere only comes in chapter 31. The *ACTUAL* ending to this passage in chapter 8 is "...as it were a discredit for a gentleman, to seeme learned, and to show himselfe amorous of any good Art." De Vere is not mentioned. And the list at chapter 31 continues with "...Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, when he was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Walter Rawleigh, Master Edward Dyar, Maister Fulke Grevell, Gascon, Britton, Turberville and a great many other learned Gentlemen, whose names I do not omit for envie, but to avoyde tediousnesse, and who have deserved no little commendation." If the Oxfordian interpretation were true, then all of the people who followed Oxford must have also been using pseudonyms, but in fact many of them (Lord Buckhurst, a.k.a. Thomas Sackville, George Turberville, George Gascoigne, etc.) had been published for years or decades under their *OWN NAMES* . Therefore, the Oxfordian interpretation is clearly false. It's also false because even if the section from chapter 8 were taken to apply, for some reason, to Edward de Vere, it does not follow that having suffered to have the work published without his name on it means that he published it under a false name, let alone under the name "William Shakespeare", which wasn't in print *ANYWHERE* by the 1589 publication of _The Art of English Poesy_ . Also in chapter 31, Puttenham speaks of Edward de Vere in the capacity of dramatist: "That for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst, and Maister Edward Ferrys for such doings as I have sene of theirs to deserve the hyest price: Th' Earle of Oxford and Maister Edwardes of her Majesties Chappell for Comedy and Enterlude." Note the way the sentence is constructed. This sentence could mean that Edward de Vere wrote *EITHER* comedies or interludes. And since Richard Edwardes was not known for having written *ANY* interludes, and indeed was only known for one comedy, _Damon and Pithias_ , it would seem to follow that Edward de Vere is being praised not as an author of full-length comedies but as an author of mere interludes, and perhaps no more than one. We know he took part in a shipwreck device - a small skit that was themed around the idea of a shipwreck from which Edward de Vere and other courtiers emerged to present Queen Elizabeth with gifts of jewels - so it's entirely consistent with what Puttenham has written that Edward de Vere's dramatic career consisted of this and no more. We certainly cannot assume that Puttenham knew of de Vere's secret career as Shakespeare, since Shakespeare was not known as an author when his book was published. You *STILL* have to show not only that Edward de Vere chose to write and publish dramas under a false name, but that William Shakespeare was that name. You aren't entitled to grab Shakespeare's works for yourself just because otherwise we'd be forced to conclude that Edward de Vere's dramatic output was lost. The _majority_ of plays written in this era are lost. You might as well say Michael Drayton was Shakespeare on the same basis - and you'd be better off because at least they both came from Warwickshire and spelled and rhymed words in a similar way, whereas de Vere spoke - and wrote, because people spelled things how they sounded to them - with a rustic Essex accent his whole life. Not to mention that Drayton outlived Shakespeare, whereas de Vere died almost a decade before the end of Shakespeare's active career as a playwright. "He has a traceable biography." So what? It doesn't make him a more likely writer just because he has a "traceable biography". This is to be like the drunk man who loses his keys in the dark alley behind the bar, but who insists on looking for them out front under a streetlamp because the light is better there. If anything it just tells against Edward de Vere that much more that we have a complete biography of the man and not a scrap of direct documentary evidence or contemporary testimony whereby it has been established that he wrote the works of Shakespeare. "2-0 De Vere on the easy stuff" The irrelevant stuff, you mean. "Let’s see something non-posthumous that (a) identifies William Shakspere from Stratford on Avon as the author of the plays…"

(Part 2 of 2) Why "non-posthumous"? Do you think that people instantaneously forget every fact about a person on the instant of their death, even if they worked alongside that person for decades? Of course, I know why. Because you're following Diana Price, who *MISREPRESENTED* the work of real historians to establish a wholly imaginary distinction between contemporaneous and posthumous evidence. For example, take this passage from one of Price's authorities, H. B. George: "The sources whence we directly derive our information, whatever the quality of that information may be, are usually divided into those which are, and those which are not contemporary. …‘Historical evidence, like every kind of evidence [quoting Cornewall Lewis] is founded on the testimony of credible witnesses. Unless those witnesses have personal and immediate perception of the facts which they report, unless they saw and heard what they undertake to relate as having happened, their evidence is not entitled to credit. As all original witnesses must be contemporary with the events which they attest, it is a necessary condition for the credibility of a witness that he be a contemporary, though a contemporary is not necessarily a credible witness’" (from _Historical Evidence_ by H. B. George, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909). Therefore, it is not an issue of whether the printed text in which the evidence appears was printed before or after an arbitrary date, but whether the person or persons speaking knew the facts being related from firsthand experience. Therefore, the First Folio, with its statement from John Heminges and Henry Condell that “We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead... without ambition either of self-profit, or fame: only to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our SHAKESPEARE, by the humble offer of his plays....” is a piece of contemporary evidence because the basis of John Heminges and Henry Condell's knowledge is their firsthand familiarity with William Shakespeare as a theatrical colleague. That he was a theatrical colleague can be demonstrated from the same book because the list of the principal actors has his name in it along with theirs. Their names also appear together in two cast lists in the 1616 folio _Works_ by Ben Jonson: _Every Man in his Humour_ and _Sejanus his Fall_ . They were remembered in his will with Richard Burbage and all four were remembered in the will of Augustine Phillips, an actor and business manager who died in 1605. John Heminges also acted as trustee for "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwick, gentleman", as he was identified in the legal documents, in the purchase of the Blackfriars gatehouse in 1613. William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon's will bequeaths the gatehouse property to his elder daughter Susanna Hall. And lo and behold, after Shakespeare's death John Heminges and his co-trustee John Jackson are on record transferring the property to Susanna Hall. Or I could point out that in a writ for surety in the case _Addenbrooke v. Shakespeare_ filed in the Borough of Stratford, Shakespeare is identified as "lately of the court of the lord James, now King of England" when the only William Shakespeare with that distinction was the King's Men actor and Groom Extraordinary of the Chamber, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. And I haven't even come on to the fact that Shakespeare's status as an armigerous gentleman, referenced in the documents about the sale of the Blackfriars gatehouse and elsewhere, meant that he was entitled to be addressed with the honorifics of Master (abbreviated "Mr." or "M."), so every time you see Shakespeare's name with the honorific you can know that it is *ONLY* William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon who is being referred to, because he was the only William Shakespeare with a coat of arms at the time, inherited through his father, who was granted a coat of arms in 1596 for his work in various civic "offices of honor" (magistrate, justice of the peace, and bailiff). This honorific is applied in certain Stationers' Register entries (e.g., the one from August 1600 where they note the entry of _Much Ado About Nothing_ and _2 Henry IV_ ) and the title pages of the first quarto of _King Lear_ (1608), the First Folio (1623 - and also in the commendatory verses), and the first quarto of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (1634), listed as being by "those memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare, gentlemen". "(b) a legible signature that is consistently executed… simple challenge, right?" Not necessarily, since it's not a given that you can read secretary hand. If you were unaware that signatures were commonly made in this era in secretary hand, a form of blackletter script that was superseded by Italic hand, the forerunner of our modern cursive, then you really shouldn't be addressing this subject, to be blunt. It's also not apparent why having pretty handwriting is a necessary condition for being a writer. F. Scott Fitzgerald had absolutely appalling handwriting and yet nobody questions his authorship of _The Great Gatsby_ , _Tender is the Night_ , and _The Beautiful and the Damned_ . The chicken-scratch that passes for handwriting on my copy of _Shalimar the Clown_ must lead to the conclusion that Salman Rushdie never wrote a word (and this was signed years before he was brutally stabbed). If there is anything "wrong" with Shakespeare's handwriting (though personally I find it perfectly legible as someone who *CAN* read secretary hand thanks to having first learned how to read books printed in Fraktur, the German blackletter font) there are thousands of possible reasons for that, including writing _entirely too much_ . The condition was called "scriveners' palsy" and it was effectively a kind of permanent writers cramp. Neurosyphilis and the mercury used to treat it could also produce the shakes, as could years of alcoholism. Or perhaps he suffered from some sort of degenerative neurological disorder that was unrelated to these conditions, like Parkinson's. Perhaps he had rheumatoid arthritis. Basically, unless you were there to see whether any of these confounding variables applied, no one's inferences about his handwriting mean anything. I grant that if you wanted a writer with a pretty signature, you couldn't do much better than Edward de Vere. However, it's just a shame about the contents. "3. Where are the academic reviews that disassemble DeVere as easily as Stratford man? You know of some?" Elliott, WEY and Vallenza, RJ. (2004) "Oxford by the numbers: What are the odds that the Earl of Oxford could have written William Shakespeare's poetry and plays?" _Tennessee Law Review_ *72* (1): 323 - 453. That is an actual academic review that "disassembles" de Vere. What I'm not aware of are any that do the same for Shakespeare. Like creationists, the Oxfordians have founded their own pseudo-scholarly magazines (like _The Oxfordian_ ), but they bear the same relation to real academic work in Shakespeare studies as the _Creation Ex Nihlio Technical Journal_ (or whatever it's called these days) bears to _Science_ , _Nature_ , _Cell_ , and _Trends in Ecology and Evolution_ . Most of the Oxfordian arguments are entirely irrelevant to authorship even if they're granted, as indeed yours have been. When it doesn't matter either way, then obviously the arguments cannot remove Shakespeare from his place even if they're true. "4. That multiple candidates have a stronger demonstrable case to the canon than William Shakspere is evidence of how soft evidence is for him, not how poor the evidence is for others. Basic." But they don't. Whose name is it on the title pages and dedication pages? William Shakespeare's (though he shares a co-authorship credit with John Fletcher). Whose name is it in the Stationers' Register? William Shakespeare's (albeit with one entry where he shares credit, again, with John Fletcher). Whose name is in the Master of the Revels accounts as the author of _The Comedy of Errors_ , _The Merchant of Venice_ , and _Measure for Measure_ ? William Shakespeare. Whose name is in contemporary literary anthologies like _Englands Helicon_ as an author of extracts from the canonical works? William Shakespeare. Whom did every contemporary identify as the author of the works, including multiple people who had personal and/or professional connections with the man (his theatrical colleagues John Heminges, Henry Condell, and John Lowin; his playwriting colleagues Ben Jonson, John Webster, and Thomas Heywood; the family friend and stepson of one of the two named overseers of William Shakespeare of Stratford's will, Leonard Digges; etc.)? William Shakespeare. Where is a single so-called "alternative authorship candidate" who has *ANY* primary documentary evidence supporting his or her authorship or who was said by any contemporary who knew them that they were the true author of Shakespeare's works? The evidence is not "stronger" for any "alternative authorship candidate"; the evidence is completely *NONEXISTENT* . And because it's nonexistent, the alternatives simply cancel each other out. They're clearly not being fielded on the basis of any sound evidence or reasoning, but because someone has chosen their "avatar", as it were, and insist against all of the evidence to the contrary - which they must choose to *IGNORE* as their starting point, which is why this discussion never goes anywhere and nothing is ever established, since they rule out the means by which the question might be settled because it isn't in their favor - that they have somehow identified the 'true author' even if they can't provide you any sufficient evidence.

Unless...the actual identity of Shakespeare was an official secret that would get a person severely punished for revealing, e.g. if the real author was a powerful person, perhaps an Earl, whose family wanted to maintain the author's wish to remain anonymous, as the author of the Sonnets seemed to desire and in fact to predict his own defacement: from Sonnet 81 Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie. from Sonnet 77 My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me nor you

@@vetstadiumastroturf5756 Whole lot of ifs! You go ahead and believe it if it makes you happy.

Actually a more interesting question, to those who bother to look into the matter enough to have an informed opinion, is why so many otherwise intelligent persons persist in defending a belief that will one day be a laughing stock of any educated persons. You might start by dropping the defensive, wholly unwarranted ad hominem about "conspiracy theorists." Only then can your education begin. Please state an objection to some aspect of the evidence presented in the documentary.

@@rstritmatter Well, I'll state an objection: at 26:55 they create a hybrid quotation that doesn't exist in the original by skipping over 23 chapters of George Puttenham's _The Arte of English Poesie_ . This is called quote-mining and it is a blatantly dishonest tactic. Ironically, they themselves give away the game because, when they zoom in on the text in chapter 8, you can see it doesn't continue by naming any specific individuals. That is not a sign of honesty, however, but merely shows that the makers of this documentary are incompetent liars. And I'll further state a general objection: none of the so-called 'evidence' in this documentary truly logically implicates the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays and poems. It's either a falsehood (like the phony Puttenham quotation) or it doesn't matter even if it's true. In fact, even the phony Puttenham quotation wouldn't matter if it were true. Assuming there were contemporary testimony to establish that Edward de Vere had truly suppressed his own writings or published something without his own name on it, it would not follow that he *HAD* published his works under the name of William Shakespeare. If de Vere had suppressed his writings, then they would have been unpublished and thus would be irrelevant to Shakespeare's published writings. And if Edward de Vere had suffered his work to be published without his name on it, that could mean anonymity or pseudonymity. It would not necessarily mean that he was using the identity of William Shakespeare as a front. But that's how all authorship arguments go. In the absence of primary documentary evidence or clear contemporary testimony demonstrating their "alternative candidate's" authorship of the Shakespeare canon, they have to pick and glean things that sound suitably suggestive and operate purely through insinuation rather than by presenting facts - and if they have to misrepresent the very texts they're making insinuations about, it doesn't bother them. But insinuations, coincidences, and motivated literary interpretations are not an adequate substitute for facts, which is why anti-Shakespearians consistently fail to convince people who know early modern drama and history.

"No objective evidence" Did you even watch the video?? Since it's been made there has been discovered a mountain, no, mountain range of evidence. Pay attention before you post.

@@tjaruspex2116 Spoken like a true religious fanatic: no one who has encountered the Revealed Truth could possibly doubt anymore. This 'documentary' can't possibly be an exercise in clumsy propaganda because you agree with it, therefore it must be unassailable. I can't speak for Stebbo8292, but I _have_ watched this documentary in full - and have fully critiqued it elsewhere on KZbin. However, since there is a "mountain range of evidence", then perhaps you can just pick one or two of the most compelling pieces of objective evidence, whether from this documentary or elsewhere, and convince the skeptics like Stebbo and I. To save you wasted effort, however, I will tell you in advance the kinds of arguments that _do not_ constitute objective evidence: 1) Anything that depends on an assumption about the early modern period that is not demonstrable by primary documentary evidence or contemporary testimony. Shakespeare authorship deniers tend to have very anachronistic notions about the early modern period, either treating it as no different to the bleakest depths of the so-called "Dark Ages" or as being basically equivalent to the present day with its readily accessible news, its notions of writing as autobiography, its celebrity authors, its systems of copyright, etc. Sometimes they make both assumptions at once. 2) Anything that turns on an assumption about what Shakespeare couldn't have known, read, or experienced that is not supported by primary documentary evidence or contemporary testimony of Shakespeare's ignorance of or lack of access to the subject. Also, I will reject generic claims of 'knowledge' that are not based on _specific citations_ of textual evidence from the works themselves and a demonstration that such knowledge was _truly exceptional_ in the context of the other authors of Shakespeare's day. For example, it's senseless to ask where Shakespeare could have learned the Classical imagery in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ when he had Helena exclaim, "The story shall be changed: | Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase...," since the story of Apollo and Daphne was the kind of commonplace Classical allusion that could be plucked from any hedgerow. If you're going to point to the Italian settings in Shakespeare's plays and ask how he could have known about them, then I'm going to require specific evidence that Shakespeare _had never_ been to Italy nor could have learned such details while living in England. Otherwise, you will not have logically excluded Shakespeare as an author, and even if you do exclude William Shakespeare that is not a demonstration of Edward de Vere's authorship when the field of alternative "authorship candidates" (a term I hate, since these people didn't ask to be identified as Shakespeare, but I use it for want of a better) has broken 90. 3) Any argument that relies on insinuation for its force, rather than a proper demonstration of alternative authorship. "Why didn't Shakespeare name any books in his will?" is one such argument, since Shakespeare did not _have_ to name any books in his will and his theatrical colleagues who were playwrights did not (see _Playhouse Wills: 1558 - 1642_ by E. A. J. Honigmann and Susan Brock). Pointing out that the bequest of money for mourning rings to John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage is an interlineation is another. 4) Any argument that turns on what you won't accept of William Shakespeare. I don't care if you think Shakespeare was a greedy, penny-pinching scumbag who harassed his neighbors with lawsuits for the repayment of small sums, hoarded grain in a time of famine, and didn't teach his daughters how to read. None of these things have any bearing on whether he could have written the works (and I'm also saving you time, because _none_ of these _ad hominem_ character assassinations are demonstrably true). Saying that you would expect X from the author of the plays and Shakespeare allegedly did Y merely means that your expectations are misplaced. Reality is not obliged to conform to how you think it should be. 5) Any argument that requires reading minds. I'm thinking specifically of Alexander Waugh's "Every Man and His Dog Knew..." series, but the tendency is common to Shakespeare authorship deniers. They come up with spurious interpretations of what people 'really meant to say' if they could have expressed themselves openly, they invent 'codes' for which they supply their own analysis and never bother to demonstrate that such 'codes' were known and understood in the early modern era or were capable of being generated in an early modern print shop without a conspirator on hand to set the type, they stand the explicit statements of contemporaries on their heads or assume without adequate justification - or _any_ - that they were lying, etc. 6) Any game of Six Degrees of the Earl of Oxford. I know the history of the Earl of Oxford's life as well as you do, if not better. I know Philip Herbert, the Earl of Mongomery (and later 4th Earl of Pembroke) married Susan de Vere (after the Earl of Oxford's death). I know there were marriage negotiations arranged by William Cecil between Bridget de Vere and William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, and that they broke down early over the point of when the promised annuity was to begin. And I know that both the Herberts were dedicatees of the First Folio. I also know that Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, was pushed hard to marry Elizabeth de Vere, that ultimately William Cecil used his position as Master of Wards to sock Southampton with a £5,000 fine to release him, and that Southampton was the dedicatee of _Venus and Adonis_ and _The Rape of Lucrece_ . And yet I still don't accept Edward de Vere's authorship of the canon because these points are entirely irrelevant to establishing authorship. 7) Any argument that is based on mere literary interpretation. A contemporary literary interpretation cannot ripple back through time to change the authorship of the original works. Therefore I do not care that Oxfordians see _Hamlet_ as de Vere's autobiography or, as recently argued in the _Guardian_ by Margo Anderson and Derek Jacobi, that _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ was de Vere's private psychodrama, representing him in the tripartite role of wooer (Fenton), jealous man (Ford), and lecher (Falstaff). Nor did I find the claim that Shakespeare couldn't have possibly learned specific geographical details of a region a whole 25 miles away from London any more compelling. Cherry-picking details you think hit off Edward de Vere in the works is easy because the works are so large and varied that you can do it for practically anyone, provided you know the biographical details first. You can save these kinds of games for the annual Shakespeare-Oxford Fellowship conference. 8) And it shouldn't need to be said, but since this documentary does do it, I will also point out that I won't accept arguments based on _misrepresenting_ the documentary record. If you play games like this documentary did in quote-mining George Puttenham's _The Arte of English Poesie_ by omitting a full 23 chapters of intervening text, then I'm just going to conclude that your claim is incapable of being sustained honestly. In fact, you're probably better off ignoring Shakespeare entirely and just providing me with direct primary documentary evidence of Edward de Vere's authorship of the canon, clear contemporary testimony from people who would have some reason to know that Edward de Vere wrote the works (I don't have an Oxfordian Decoder Ring so anything supposedly more ambiguous will not do), or, failing these, you can present me with rigorous stylometric analysis showing that Edward de Vere wrote the works of William Shakespeare, though you will have to overcome _and_ explain the fact that previous stylometric analysis has excluded Edward de Vere as a potential author. Good luck in your efforts!

@@tjaruspex2116 I'm willing to be patient because we all have our personal lives to lead, but it's been a week since you claimed that there is "a mountain, no, mountain range of evidence". Don't you think you could pick a few rock-solid pieces of evidence off that mountain range and present them by now?

She was certainly a force to be reckoned with, and her ideas are more relevant today than ever. I think she would be appalled at the current opera practices where the music is merely an element of the director's "grand design."

Edward De Vere was a terrible writer who used mostly one-syllable words in his mediocre poetry. He was also a horrible businessman. Shakespeare could write his name just fine.

@@Jeffhowardmeade but Shalespeare didn't write anything else AT ALL besides a will and the fully completed plays. Nothing else besides the most advanced liturature in human history, hmmmm... Elizabethan England was full of State secrets.

@@edwardd.484 I can name at least 20 contemporaries of Shakespeare's who disagree with you. Can you name one who says you're correct?

@@Jeffhowardmeade That's what happens when a state arrests and kills writers for propaganda purposes. This is very common for totalitarian states.

@@edwardd.484 So your evidence is that all the evidence was destroyed? Srsly?

See: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. Authors have throughout history used pseudonyms or allonyms for a variety of reasons. Look into this question more thoroughly and you'll come away with a better understanding of the plays-- and especially the sonnets.

@@tjaruspex2116 Writers have used pseudonyms, yes, but you still can't explain why the Globe carried on so long after de Vere died, and how the other plays were written, after 1604. There are other things that connect the writer of the plays to Stratford-upon-Avon, and Shakespeare himself, As you like it is set in the Forest of Arden, which was close to Stratford-upon-Avon, and his mother's name was Mary Arden, that does suggest he at least wrote that play. I think the tendency to think him uneducated and therefore unlikely to know sufficient history is based on a failure to understand the power of oral history. I suspect his mother's family passed on many stories. (See Walter Scott). Also his ownership of Blackfriars Gatehouse suggests a significant connection to London, and in particular the Catholic community. Which I suspect might be a far better explanation of his tendency to not overdo it on the self publicising thing, than his not being the author of the plays.

There is no known date of composition for any Shakespeare play. Not even one. Any attempts to date a Shakespeare play are at best educated guesses. And because we don't have any original manuscripts, we don't know how much the written play resembles what was originally performed or if the play resembles what was originally written. There is just no way to know, and it is snobbery to insist that your speculation is anything more than speculation. All you could say is that IF William of Stratford wrote the plays, then he may have named the Forest of Arden for his mother. Or not. We don't know because Shakespeare left nothing except for his name on the plays. No manuscripts, no rough copy, no journals...and no one ever said SHAKESPEARE from STRATFORD is a WRITER...not even the guy from Stratford himself.

@@vetstadiumastroturf5756 BRAVO! Well said!

If you trust Michael Wood on the subject of Shakespeare, then you have not bothered to seriously consider the evidence presented in the documentary

Well, Shakespeare wouldn't be mentioned in the wills of John Heminges, Henry Condell, or Richard Burbage, since he predeceased them, but we do have plenty of documentary evidence that puts all four of them together. For example, there's the will of Augustine Phillips (d. 1605), which names Shakespeare, Heminges, Condell, and Burbage. There's also the list of principal actors in the First Folio, which includes all of their names. Their names are also included together in the cast lists of _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ in the 1616 folio _Works of Benjamin Jonson_ . We also have all of the royal warrants and patents that King James issued to recreate the Lord Chamberlain's Men as the King's Men, and the actors are named in these patents. William Shakespeare's name is just second after that of Lawrence Fletcher, who was King James' favorite actor and who followed James from Scotland. In addition, in 1604, all of the King's Men were given a grant of 4.5 yards of scarlet cloth so they could march in the (delayed by plague) coronation procession of King James in his livery, and the names of William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage all appear there. We have the lease of the Globe playhouse site that establishes that one moiety (one-half) was owned by Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage, and that the other moiety was owned by William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and William Kempe. Kempe would soon after leave the company, which may be when Henry Condell was brought in as a joint owner, but at some point he became a joint owner of the Globe because he was named as a co-defendant with John Heminges by John Witter in a lawsuit over the part-ownership of that theatre in 1618. We have the documents in the deal to acquire the Blackfriars gatehouse (where the purchaser was identified as "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in the County of Warwick, gentleman", so there's no ambiguity about his identity) that also named John Heminges as one of Shakespeare's two trustees. Shakespeare bequeathed the gatehouse property to Susanna Hall (his eldest daughter, wife of Dr. John Hall) in his will, and we also have a bargain and sale transferring the ownership of the property to her (through her trustees, John Green and Matthew Morryes). The text of this bargain and sale indicates that Shakespeare was trying to artificially construct an entailment, where the property went to Susanna, then to her male heirs, and failing any male heirs (and she only had one daughter, Elizabeth), then the property was to go to Elizabeth and any male heirs she might produce (she instead died childless). So there can be no question that William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage were all long-standing professional colleagues, which makes the testimony of Heminges and Condell in the First Folio that they were "without ambition either of self-profit or fame: only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend & fellow alive as was our Shakespeare by the humble offer of his plays..." compelling evidence for William Shakespeare's authorship.

You are most welcome. Happy to provide otherwise lost material. It's from a VHS tape I made when it was broadcast.

@@tjaruspex2116 Be blessed, sir. Thank you. I included this video on my blog today. Cheers.

So does everybody. Hardly the question.

@@tjaruspex2116 "To be, or not to be? Or, to be a bee 🐝 that is the sting 😎

Congratulations. I hope it makes you feel good.

@@tjaruspex2116 Right.