The Shakespeare Authorship Heresy | Sir Mark Rylance Meets Elizabeth Winkler

Was Shakespeare a woman? An aristocrat? A government spy? Join Mark Rylance and Elizabeth Winkler for a heretical investigation into the Shakespeare authorship controversy.
The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, vexed, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the legend is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.”
In conversation with Sir Mark Rylance, arguably the most distinguished stage actor of his generation, journalist and critic Elizabeth Winkler will set out to probe the origins of this literary taboo.
Whisking readers from London to Stratford-upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she will pull back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and myth-making, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries.
As she considers the writers and thinkers - from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices - who have grappled with the riddle of the plays’ origins, she will explore who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name. Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.
This livestream event will forever change how you think of Shakespeare… and of how we as a society decide what’s up for debate and what’s just nonsense, just heresy.
Elizabeth Winkler is a journalist and book critic whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Economist, among other publications. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her master’s in English literature from Stanford University. Her essay “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, first published in The Atlantic, was selected for The Best American Essays 2020. She lives in Washington, DC.
Mark Rylance was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London for 10 years (1995-2005). Theatre roles include: Countess Olivia in Twelfth Night; Richard III; and Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jerusalem; Valere in La Bête and Robert in Boeing-Boeing. Mark Rylance film work includes three films with Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies, The BFG, and Ready Player One. Ciro Guerra’s film Waiting for the Barbarians, Dunkirk, Trial of the Chicago 7, The Institute Benjamenta, Don’t Look Up, The Phantom of the Open and The Outfit and most recently Bones and All. His television appearances include Wolf Hall. In 2017 he was knighted for services to the Theatre.

[@annepeasley5472]

When I was an undergrad reading Shakespeare, my professor wrote his dissertation on Queen Elizabeth I writing and collaborating on the plays. This was in 1980. I kept it in the back of my mind and was delighted to hear Rylance’s and Jacobi’s discussion on the authorship question. I just bought this book for my 70th birthday. So excited. Thanks for this.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

He got a PhD by arguing that somebody besides Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Yet Winkler is calling it a huge taboo?

[@maryhook9478]

Hardly think Rylance's intellect qualifies him to speak on Shakespeare or on anything.at all! Yes he can act after a fashion. The fact that he was artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe goes to show how like so many other organizations some Aspects of the Theatre have fallen sharply. He is a suede intellectual so prevalent these days masquerading as scholars, who holds sway in the public forum. Understand he was illiterate into his early teens. It is the old joke if you can't do teach if you can't teach teach gym. When Rylance produces a work such as "Let me not to the marriage of true minds.............." then I will bow down before hm.

[@LucienLew]

I definitely think Queen Elizabeth I was involved in the writing of the plays. What’s your professor’s name? Do you know if he or she published their dissertation.

[@maryhook9478]

@@LucienLew Any silly nonsense will do in these scholastically deficit times.

[@varkony60]

@@maryhook9478 It's a very good line: "Let me not to the marriage of true minds". It's one of the key clues supporting Oxford. Have you heard of the Seven Oxen?

[@patricksullivan4329]

Wonderful conversation. One thing Ms Winkler doesn't mention is that when she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal she reviewed Jonathan Bate's book, 'How the Classics Made Shakespeare.' Her review was favorable to Bate, but more importantly it was professional. Very unlike Bate's Telegraph review of her book, which was largely a self-promotion of Jonathan Bate (a man with a clear excess of self-esteem).

[@rstritmatter]

Good point.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

So book reviews should now be quid pro quos? Maybe it's because Bate's book is a work of erudite scholarship and Winkler's is a bunch of conspiracy theories.

[@joekostka1298]

Having watched numerous videos about the Shakespeare authorship debate, videos relating primarily to evidence supporting doubt about the Stratford orthodoxy, this video is one of the most informative and supportive. Thank you!

[@taihastings3097]

I read Italian at University in London and had the privilege to study under the head of Italian at the time...a woman. Not to say Shakespeare was female, but to imagine that "'he" chose to understand and respect the female mind should go without saying! Let's not forget the most powerful person in England at the time was Elizabeth herself... Bluestockings had surely been around, under a different guise! The plays touch a nerve with so many aspects of woman hood, as much as Italian provinciality, (speaking here from some experience of both!). Why are we so surprised by such understanding of humanity, when it's coming from someone who has obviously studied it...let's call a spade a spade!

[@joekostka1298]

Particularly important when we reflect on the fact that at the time no women ever acted on stage commercially. The best they could get were street venues. Most folks reading Shakespeare today likely and erroneously envision these strong, dynamic women on stage uttering their lines when in fact they were all men.

[@QANews]

_Shakespeare was a company with many writers._

[@leonh.kalayjian6556]

Don't disagree cause I don't know enough, but how is the writing consistent for the most part? Was there a main guy that fixed up all the works?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Shakespeare's company was The Lord Chamberlain's Men, which later became The King's Men. They did, indeed, hire many different writers, but Shakespeare was the only one who owned a share of the company.

[@robinfereday6562]

You could be right

[@andrewyarosh1809]

Just a marvelous conversation. Just working my way through the audio version of the book which has such a lovely questing quality. And the only time I’ve ever spent as much time with Mark Rylance was in the stage boxes of the The Duke of York’s Theatre, being transported and filled with light during his performance of Phillip in Farinelli and the King. The two of you should talk often and explore this, as well as other Elisabethan mysteries together. Thank you for making a record of your conversation

[@dancesontheceiling]

Thank you. I watched this video three times this week, as it was so interesting. I appreciate the research you put into the book and Mark Rylance’s contributions to the conversation. I am looking forward to visiting the Folger when it reopens. Regards to all.

[@castlerock58]

Even if the bard was a woman, you would have the problem of how she was able to see the world through the eyes of men of different ages, classes and historical periods in different countries. The same problem exists if he was a nobleman. Shakespeare was, perhaps more capable of empathy than any other person in history. He could get into the minds of people by reading books and become those people and invent characters like those people. He had one of the greatest minds in human history. The key question is how did he get access to a good library? We have the example of what Abraham Lincoln was able to teach himself just from having access to books. It is possible for one of the greatest minds in human history to internalize the knowledge from books without formal education. If Shakespeare was in the theater world, could he have met and impressed a nobleman with his exceptional mind? Could he have been invited to access that nobleman's library. That could have happened without any historical record surviving. All you need is one of the top ten minds in human history and access to a good library.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

The patron of Shakespeare's theater company was the Lord Chamberlain, Baron Hunsdon. He was Queen Elizabeth I's cousin and her closest confidant. He was highly educated and had a grand house in Blackfriars, right across the street from Richard Field, a Stratford native who printed everything Shakespeare ever wrote specifically for publication, as well as many of his primary sources. Just up the road was the churchyard of St. Paul's, where a couple dozen booksellers plied their trade. Between those three, Shakespeare had access to everything he could have needed.

[@philliprose1815]

Right, including access to Hundson's mistress, Aemelia Bassano 😂.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@philliprose1815 Emelia Lanier became pregnant and was married of to Alfonso Lanier late in 1592. Baron Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, didn't charter his acting troupe until about a year and a half later. It's possible that she continued on as Hunsdon's mistress until his death in 1596, and that the marriage to Alfonso was just for appearances, but we can never know for certain.

[@joekostka1298]

Yes. We have evidence about Lincoln. Such evidence does not exist for the Stratford businessman. Diana Price has demonstrated this quite convincingly. Her work, along with the signatures of the man from Stratford do not paint much of a possibility for the man from Stratford. From an evidentiary perspective the man from Stratford is a distinct impossibility as the author.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@joekostka1298 Price did no such thing. She started by redefining what should qualify as evidence, in order to exclude all of the evidence for Shakespeare. She then nitpicked all of the evidence she didn't manage to exclude by her gerrymandering, and said it didn't qualify. This is what smoke and mirrors looks like. Or Anti-Stratfordianism.

[@daphnesthoughtdrops721]

I enjoyed the chapter about Mary Sydney. She was a member of the Earl of Oxford's family. And so was William Sranley. That makes three playwrights in one family! They helped write the plays perhaps. Elizabeth Winkler doesn't say who she thinks wrote the plays of Shakespeare.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Mary Sidney's son married De Vere's daughter after he died. She was never related to him even by marriage while he was alive.

[@jamesaiello4667]

Anti-Stratfordians are a part of the greivance industry: I have a college education: Why can't I write plays and poems like Shakespeare. This isn't fair;, so by my tortured logic neither could Shakespreare.

[@rstritmatter]

If your professor gives you a bad grade for asking the authorship question, your best recourse is not historians, but the ombuds office. Just sayin'..Been there. Done that. It helped.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Yeah, they let you import a sympathetic doctoral advisor from all the way across the country. Complaining to people who can't actually make you go away is very effective.

[@rstritmatter]

@@Jeffhowardmeade Did anyone ever explain to you that you come across as a spoiled brat plagiarist of defamatory innuendo?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@rstritmatter...says the guy who constantly whines that he's not being given a seat at the big people table.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@rstritmatterTell us, dear doctor, was your dissert advisor an Amherst prof, or not? If he wasn't the late Dr. Daniel Wright of the late Concordia U (roughly 3,000 miles away), and a fellow traveler, then who was?

[@rstritmatter]

@@Jeffhowardmeade Dear "Coriolanus" - My University Dissertation advisors were Dr. William Moebius, Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature University of Massachusetts, Dr. James Freeman, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Elizabeth Petroff, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Edwin Gentzler, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, and Professor Daniel Wright, Professor of English, Concordia University. You would know this already if you read even the first page of the dissertation. But as you evidently go in more for online harassment than reading, there's the list. Who was on your dissertation committee, chump?

[@yubantwo2086]

This conversation was extraordinarily thought provoking & inspiring indeed. Comparing the (in some cases fanatically) sacred devotion to Shakespeare with that of fanatical devotion to Christ and the stories in the bible is a most striking analogy. Religious adherence demands that the devotee set aside all logic, laws of physics, and inconsistencies by accepting the bottom line on faith and belief. The mere act of doubting and questioning is considered sacrilegious. Galileo was imprisoned for daring to put forth that the earth rotated around the sun destroying the religious infallibility belief that the earth was the center of the universe. The bile thrown at those who dare to put forth the mere questioning of Shakespeare's identity can count themselves lucky not to be facing the same fate. As a retired opera singer, I can attest to the fact that there is a huge difference between performers, authors/composers, and scholars/historians. Will knowing exactly which 400 hundred year old deceased person/persons wrote the plays and sonnets known as Shakespeare's works impact or change a performer's approach to or delivery of the material, or the audience's or reader's understanding of the text? I'm sure not. Knowing about the history, setting and customs of the time will. One thing is certain, this debate will rage on. How utterly fantastic it would be if indeed a woman was the silent author or part of a pool of authors. By now, it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that women's are as capable as men and, in some cases more so out side of the physical arena. However, it riles the devotee in the same way discussing the very plausible conjecture that Beethoven, often referred to as the Mohr in letters written about him, was of mixed African race. It upsets the accepted dominant culture's narrative on the superiority/inferiority of the races and of their heros who they have come to define/identify themselves.

[@NewMusic.FreshIdeas]

Love this. Strange that "belief" in William of Stratford is tied by some people to belief in the West itself. Regarding Harold Bloom: He ignorantly dismissed any doubt about the Stratford man.

[@tulyar57]

The title page of the 1623 first folio merely says "Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies". As far as I can see there is no declaration of authorship. Merely that these were the works that Shakespeare as theatre owner would have put on. I have read that over 3000 Elizabethan plays have been lost and that the folio was the means of his plays surviving. Could it be that he was an impressario collecting, re-writing and performing others' works? This would explain his knowledge of foreign parts and court procedures whilst retaining his talent for the common vernacular. We are obsessed with identity, copyright and genius now but this has not always been so.

[@Nullifidian]

Since we know which plays were performed by the Admiral's Men thanks to Philip Henslowe's Diary, you can cross-check the titles of these plays against extant printed copies and see how many of them have Philip Henslowe's name on the cover. But I'll save you the time and tell you: none of them do. There is no record of any impresario having his name published on the title page of a play in the early modern era. Also, had you bothered to look beyond the title page of the First Folio (or looked at other contemporary title pages in the same style, including _Shake-Speares Sonnets_ - how could Shakespeare be the impresario of a sonnet cycle?), you would have seen that three of the commendatory verses have titles naming Shakespeare as the author or writer ("To the memory of my beloued | The AVTHOR | Mr. William Shakespeare | And | what he hath left us" by Ben Jonson, "Vpon the Lines and Life of the Famous | Scenicke Poet, Master William | SHAKESPEARE" by Hugh Holland, and "TO THE MEMORIE | of the deceased Authour Maister | W. Shakespeare" by Leonard Digges), and he's explicitly identified as the author of "his plays" and as the "Friend, & Fellow" of John Heminges and Henry Condell in the Epistle Dedicatory. Also, it is not wholly true that the Folio was the means for the survival of Shakespeare's plays. It greatly increased the number of plays that _did_ survive, since 18 plays were never published before the First Folio, but the 18 others in the First Folio that had been previously printed are still extant in quarto editions where Shakespeare is clearly identified as their author using standard formulae when they do credit an author (e.g., "By William Shakespeare" on the quarto editions of _Hamlet_ ). Also, Shakespeare's name is not only on the plays but also on all of his poetry. I've referenced the sonnets above (which also contains "A Lover's Complaint"), and his name is also included in _Love's Martyr_ by Robert Chester as the author of the poem "Let the bird of loudest lay", and in his two narrative poems, _Venus and Adonis_ and _The Rape of Lucrece_ . His name is appended to the dedication, not to the title page, but that was standard for the era. For example, Edmund Spenser's _The Faerie Queene_ identifies its author in the same way. In both these dedicatory epistles, Shakespeare claims credit for his own works: he speaks of "my unpolished lines" in the dedication to _Venus and Adonis_ and "my untutored lines" in _The Rape of Lucrece_ . Now,. occasionally he did "rewrite others works". For example, his adaptation of _The Troublesome Raigne of King John_ by George Peele ( _King John_ ) is so close that he must have had the published script of the play at his elbow as he wrote. But that is still adaptation; and it's just the same as when Hollywood screenwriters adapt plays to the movie screen. David Mamet adapted Terence Rattigan's stage play _The Winslow Boy_ for the screen, but the screenplay was Mamet's, not Rattigan's. Shakespeare creatively transformed his source and arguably bettered it (though I think that Peele's play has a lot of charm too). As for Shakespeare's alleged knowledge of foreign parts, it was barely existent. There's no reason to concede this point because the people who are claiming it haven't bothered to read Shakespeare's contemporaries to see how accurately _they_ depicted the Continent. For example, both _The Duchess of Malfi_ by John Webster and _All's Well That Ends Well_ by Shakespeare have plot points in which women go on phony pilgrimages. John Webster sent the eponymous Duchess to the Santuario della Santa Casa di Loretto and even correctly described how far it was from Ancona: a distance of seven leagues (21 miles). Shakespeare sent Helen from Roussillon to the Santiago de Compostela in Spain by way of Florence. Either he didn't know that Santiago de Compostela wasn't in Italy or he just didn't care, but he wasn't careful about geography. He thought that Milan and Verona were coastal cities. He thought that the Mediterranean was a tidal sea. He thought that Padua was in Lombardy. And he wasn't any more careful about the political arrangements of the Italian city-states either. For example, in the very play in which he sends his two main characters and their servants on sea voyages from Verona to Milan - _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ - he does so because Valentine and Proteus are going to greet their "emperor", the Duke of Milan. This implies that Verona was a Milanese dependency, and it wasn't. It was a Venetian dependency. Moreover, the Duke of Milan wasn't in Milan and hadn't been for longer than Shakespeare was alive, because the title of the Duke of Milan passed to the Spanish Hapsburgs upon the death of Francesco II Sforza, the last of the Milanese dukes. So the Duke of Milan was the Spanish king, Felipe II. They should have been headed to Madrid. Plus, this means that in _The Tempest_ (another play in which Shakespeare thought Milan was a seaport), Prospero to be deposed as the Duke of Milan also _necessarily_ had to be deposed as the Spanish king! And yet he's more upset by the loss of one of his minor titles than he is about the loss of his crown and empire. Then in Shakespeare's next Veronese play, which is famously _Romeo and Juliet_ , he completely changes the political situation. Instead of being anyone's dependency, Verona is now independent - how nice for Verona - and it's a principality with a prince who is a speaking character in the play (it never was a principality). Likewise, Shakespeare had very little knowledge of court procedures whether that word "court" is construed legally or monarchically. I'll deal with the legal first. _The Merchant of Venice_ , which is upheld to show how great a legal expert Shakespeare was, is a ridiculous farrago of nonsense. First, he has the Duke of Venice (there were no dukes in Venice - Venice was a republic and its _elected_ political ruler was the Doge, but the legal system was overseen by judges from the Council of Forty. By Shakespeare's era, they'd been divided into two councils of forty, one called the Civil Quarantia and the other the Criminal Quarantia) overseeing the case. This is Shakespeare assuming that the legal system of an Italian city-state was just like his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon where his father served as both bailiff (equivalent to mayor) and chief alderman as well as a magistrate and justice of the peace. In this legal case, Portia pops up with a very ambiguous role. It appears she's supposed to be ruling on the validity of the bond, but then that leaves the Duke with nothing to do, and it also leaves both Antonio nor Shylock without any legal advocates in a literally life-and-death matter. Moreover, Portia in delivering her opinion, makes a fundamental legal error by claiming that the bond doesn't give Shylock any drop of blood. It's a basic premise in common law that one who is collecting after a default may take or break anything necessary in order to secure the property to which he is entitled. That's why bailiffs (in the modern sense) can smash down your door to repossess your property if you try to lock them out. After having delivered this astonishingly wrongheaded ruling, she then threatens Shylock with a law _nobody has ever heard of_ ! Think about it. If Shylock knew about this law, he wouldn't be so eager to press his bond, and if the Duke of Venice knew about this law, then he would definitely have made it a debating point when he was trying to convince Shylock to be merciful and accept payment for his bond. So _The Merchant of Venice_ is a play about how people who dress up as lawyers can make up and threaten people with capital crimes on the spot! Is this Shakespeare or Kafka? As for Shakespeare's knowledge of the other kind of court, that too was minimal. He never made any dramatic use of antechambers, where people waited to be admitted into the presence chamber, until his final play _Henry VIII_ , and the specific scene that makes dramatic use of them wasn't even written by Shakespeare but by his co-author, John Fletcher. Fletcher was the son of Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London and Queen Elizabeth's personal chaplain, so John knew all about court life. That's why he wrote a scene in which Archbishop Cranmer was snubbed by the Privy Council and forced to wait in an antechamber for half an hour. He knew that world and Shakespeare didn't. That's particularly made clear by a scene in _Richard III_ where Edward IV is trying to make peace among the various feuding factions and Richard, still Duke of Gloucester at this point, goes around insincerely glad-handing and making up with his enemies at court. In the process, he greets one man as three different people: Lord Rivers, Lord Woodville, and Lord Scales. Anthony Woodville was the 2nd Earl Rivers, and the earls Rivers had the subsidiary style of Lord Scales. Shakespeare screwed that up and thought that the title of the earldom, the family name, and the subsidiary style all represented different people! No aristocratic author or anyone with any familiarity with the court could have made such a crude error.

[@yubantwo2086]

The history KZbin channel 'Perspectives' has a marvelously informative segment on Shakespeare in which it is revealed that publishers used the name Shakespeare at the height of Shakespeare's acclaim because their books would sell better under that name. I do think you have an interesting hypothesis that as impresario he would have collected his plays, for one because there are no original manuscripts. Shakespeare was a first to be actor and part theater owner giving him an advantage of a space of their own to present their plays.

[@yubantwo2086]

​@@Nullifidian Minus unnecessary & unhelpful snark, I found your thesis and references to be quite enlightening and informative threading together bits and pieces of information that I've acquired over the years with new information to ponder and apply. For that, and the time and effort you invested in sharing, I thank you.

[@SlightlySusan]

You need to read Shakespeare's Book by Chris Laoutaris.

[@TimothyJonSarris]

Great debate and it seems quite obvious that those in accademia , like Stanley Wells, who have based their careers on the Shakespear authorship theory, are nervous about debating this because it would mean that they would have to rethink their entire careers, thus in way possibly discrediting themselves as scholars, when they seem to miss the point of actual scholarship, which is to search for the truth.

[@Nullifidian]

Stanley Wells is an expert in the _works_ of William Shakespeare, the critical reaction to Shakespeare's plays, the actors of Shakespeare, and the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries. What exactly would he have to rethink if it turned out to be the case that the works were written by someone else? You seem to think that academic research in Shakespeare is nothing more than sitting around and periodically saying, "William Shakespeare wrote the works" and waiting for the chorus of yeses from one's colleagues. And since when is the search for truth helped by lying, misrepresentation, and a partial presentation of the evidence, which is what Winkler has to offer?

[@TimothyJonSarris]

@@Nullifidian Exactly, so according to your reasoning he has nothing to rethink and therefore nothing to lose by entering into such a debate. Good for him.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@TimothyJonSarris What do you mean by "entering into a such a debate"? Because he already has addressed the question of authorship by co-editing a book on the authorship question, _Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy_ with Paul Edmondson. So to that extent, he _hasn't_ hung back and refused to put a case. If you expect him to do more than this, then what _exactly_ do you want and can you explain why he should bother? If you're suggesting that Wells and others should discuss this matter in academic journals, then it's up to the Shakespeare authorship denialists to first come up with papers that belong in academic journals. But in academic journals, you're not allowed to get away with their usual bag of tricks, such as a partial or misleading presentation of the evidence, misrepresentation and elision of the facts, relying on insinuation instead of evidence, making ahistorical and anachronistic assumptions about the past and then using the difference between one's assumptions and the realty to tell reality itself that _it_ is wrong, and quote-mining authorities to make it appear they're endorsing claims they never did. If they can shed these rhetorical tricks and still have enough to put into a journal article, then let them publish and welcome.

[@TimothyJonSarris]

@@Nullifidian What about the proposal by Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, who has offered to donate £40,000 to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust if it proves, in a mock trial before a panel of neutral judges, that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the works you attribute to him? Why has Wells refused to participate in such an intervention ?

[@Nullifidian]

​@@TimothyJonSarris I would point out that in _every single_ moot court proceeding where the claims of authorship deniers have been debated, advocates taking the position that Shakespeare wrote his own works have won _every_ time. Because moot courts are decided on the basis of evidence and _only_ William Shakespeare's authorship is established on the basis of the documentary evidence and contemporary testimony. In 1987 there was a moot court before three U.S. Supreme Court justices, at least one of whom was a convinced Oxfordian. They all three still ruled for Shakespeare. In Canada in 2014 they had a moot court before a panel of Canadian Supreme Court justices, and the same thing occurred. And most recently, the de Vere society organized a moot court to take place at the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court in the U. K., this past March. It was such a rout that the de Vere Society isn't releasing the footage, even though the people arguing the case for Shakespeare were a couple of individuals none of the experienced participants in the Shakespeare authorship question knew the names of, and they were facing two of the most prominent Shakespeare authorship deniers, Alexander Waugh and Ros Barber. They emptied their bag of tricks, but they still couldn't conjure up a case for any alternative author, or even provide reasonable doubt that Shakespeare had written his own works. So what would the SBT gain from relitigating the same argument that has been tried and failed in three separate moot courts in three different countries, except to artificially raise the profile of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition? After all, Alexander Waugh is the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition. He runs it like his private fiefdom. The fact that he lost in a moot court proceeding is an indication of how another one with the SAC would go-if the SAC ever let it get that far. I bet if the SBT were to take them up on their offer that they'd contrive some face-saving excuse, especially after the spanking Waugh got this year. At this rate, the Shakespeare authorship deniers are going to be running out of Anglophone countries to play host to moot courts. Perhaps they should try Zimbabwe. Given its placement in the Corruption Index, they might have a fair chance of using some of that £40,000 to bribe the judges.

[@VallaMusic]

I've been convinced Shakespeare is an amalgam of writers. Seems to me we have more than a preponderance of evidence. Now I am waiting for similar research to be done for some of the major composers whose voluminous outputs would appear they found a way to write music even in their sleep.

[@Nullifidian]

Shakespeare's body of extant plays is 40. He had a career lasting from c. 1590 to 1613 or 1614. Exactly why is less than two plays a year an extraordinary commitment to write? It's true that corpus stylometry has detected some co-authors in the Shakespeare corpus (plus there was one play identified as co-authored from the first: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ ) as well as some evidence of later revision, but the majority of Shakespeare's plays are still thought to be solo-authored, and that's unlikely to change because Shakespeare was very favorably positioned for solo authorship. He wasn't a freelancer like Thomas Dekker, so he had the luxury of being paid anyway for showing up and being an actor and whatever other duties were his as a result of being a profit-sharer in the house. And this profit-sharing made all the sharers very rich. So Shakespeare didn't have to chase around after writing opportunities and didn't have to commit to ten plays a year just to make ends meet, which necessarily required collaboration. Instead, he could take his time with plays. It's true that a naive average may be misleading, because he was more prolific earlier in his career, but even so scholars don't think he ever wrote above four plays a year, which is not unreasonable for one man. Plenty of authors have been more prolific than Shakespeare not only in his own era but also in ours (e.g., Eugene O'Neill).

[@johntaplin3126]

Just step back for a moment and imagine the London theatre scene in the late 16th century. There is a small, intimate group of people involved, they all know each other, they are practical people who have to keep the audience interested. They need a repoitore of plays that they can churn out at almost a minute's notice. Who do they turn to? Some guy like de Vere? I don't think so. They go to those they know in the coterie of writers who can come up with a hit ASAP. This is logical, it doesn't require a 'paradigm shift. Just a bit of common sense. The players were versatile, they had to be, prodious memories for their parts and, I would guess great ad-libers when required. The mere idea of some fancy pants aristocratic being on hand wherever necessary to sort out these illiterate thespians is ludicrous.

[@huckfinn257]

I came across a 2019 Bill Kristol interview on KZbin of Paul Cantor, may his memory be a blessing, who goes through many of the flimsy arguments supporting the Stratford authorship discussed in this conversation between Winkler and Rylance. Truly an eye-opening interview of how an eminent scholar as Cantor can be blinded by an emotional attachment to a cherished belief.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Which arguments of his were "flimsy"?

[@huckfinn257]

Maybe 'flimsy' isn't the right word, but 'misrepresentation'. The first part of the iinterview was about Winkler's Atlantic article and Cantor misrepresents what Winkler writes; says she makes conclusions about Shakespeare's identity that she doesn't. Says stuff like because Shakespeare didn't list any musical instruments in his will, Winkler says he couldn't have written the plays. @@Jeffhowardmeade

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@huckfinn257Fair enough. He may have been conflating her with nearly every other Anti-Stratfordian who makes those claims. At least he didn't make any inaccurate claims about Shakespeare.

[@Nullifidian]

@@huckfinn257 "Says stuff like because Shakespeare didn't list any musical instruments in his will, Winkler says he couldn't have written the plays." Which is an entirely reasonable reading of the line from Winkler's article that says, "Nor did he leave any musical instruments, though the plays use at least 300 musical terms and refer to 26 instruments", given that the statement is made in the context of an article arguing that William Shakespeare didn't write his own plays. It seems like Cantor wasn't misrepresenting her _Atlantic_ article at all.

[@rstritmatter]

Totally blinded.

[@rooruffneck]

Sonnet 81 says that these poems will live for generations to come but the author's name will disappear at death. Sonnet 76 says that none of the sonnets say his name. Sonnet 136 says, "My name is Will" in a poem that plays with as many meanings of the word "will" as possible.

[@rstritmatter]

Sonnet 76 says that "every word doth almost tell my name." The "will sonnets" are sarcastic. Read them. There's no other way to read them and be true to the tonal qualities of the words.

[@rooruffneck]

@rstritmatter Exactly. As I said, the sequence makes clear that "Will" can't be the speaker's name.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

And yet his name DIDN'T disappear at death. That's like Abraham Lincoln saying "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..." He was wrong.

[@rooruffneck]

@Jeffhowardmeade Wait, you think Edward de Vere had great fame after his death??

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@rooruffneck I think Edward De Vere was rightly forgotten after his death. He was a pederast and a profligate and a mediocre poet on a good day. His being just like the 99.999% of Elizabethans whose names we don't remember (or shouldn't) doesn't give him any claim to being Shakespeare.

[@WightMoon61]

i wonder if 400 years hence, people will debate the identity of Walt Disney, a genius producer of entertainment for a century or so . I,m sure William shakespeare was just the company name, with many directors, writers, etc etc. I,m equally sure there were many women involved in the production company. if it was dangerous for aristocracy to be known, how much more dangerous to reputation would it have been for females who depended highly on their reputations.

[@Nullifidian]

Why would "William Shakespeare" be the "company name" when there was no such thing as a celebrity author in this period? And why would the "company name" be allowed to die with the retirement of the actor William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, since there are no canonical plays after c. 1613-1614? If Shakespeare were such a popular "commodity" and one that was merely the public face of a consortium of writers, then it would stand to reason that "William Shakespeare" could have gone on writing long after the real William Shakespeare's death. And Walt Disney got to be Walt Disney because he started out as an animator and writer. Nor has there ever been any suggestion that Walt Disney claimed any role he wasn't fully entitled to. Take _Cinderella_ (1950), for example. There are three credited directors and eight credited story writers, and none of them are Walt Disney. Disney was a co-producer with Ben Sharpsteen, which is a perfectly legitimate title for the man whose production company was making the film.

[@tedwong6605]

The idea that Shakespeare has become a 'secular God', especially in Britain, and in many parts of the world, helps me to understand why there is so much inertia and resistance towards approaching the truth of the authorship. The ' English departments' still hold much of the power, by default of the populace deferring to their opinions. We must continue to speak truth to power, as Edward de Vere spent much of his life doing, and to everyone else.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

The inertia and resistance is because it's a crackpot idea based on no evidence and those seldom get far in academia.

[@ronroffel1462]

I suppose one lesson we can learn from Elizabeth's experiences while interviewing Stratfordians is that they have not won the battle if they refuse to fight. It is hardly scholarship to call doubters "conspiracy theorists", "truthers", "heretics", and worst of all "Holocaust deniers". Those ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of people who do not have sound facts to back up their arguments. They fear they will lose their tenure, book contracts, incomes from speaking engagements, tours of the lecture circuits, and above all, reputations traded in on what can conceivably be called a centuries-old fraud. As Elizabeth points out at 22:19, disengaging from debate is a tacit admission by Stratfordians that they will not do well in any debate on the issue. As I said above, you have not won a battle if you do not fight on the field: you have merely retreated. Had they any shame, I would add that they retreat in shame, but they tend to feel that by not engaging in proper academic debates, they somehow have maintained some sort of respect among their peers in other disciplines. What it looks like to me is rather academic cowardice. For Stratfordians to end with "who cares who wrote the works" is sheer hypocrisy since so many of them earn money through "biographies" of the Stratford man and continue to jump at the chance to sign the next lucrative book contract by writing yet another one. Sadly, that attitude on the part of people who should behave better is too common. If the tag I will be given by Stratfordians is "heretic", then I am proud to be called a "heretic". Their juvenile way of dismissing us is revealing and should be far beneath people who are supposedly objective and rational scholars. My take on what doubters are doing is that we are advancing Shakespearean scholarship into the 21st century by looking squarely at new evidence and reinterpreting old evidence in light of that new evidence. Stratfordians on the other hand argue in circles and are stuck within an outdated paradigm eventually doomed to fail. They want a fairy tale Shakespeare devoid of facts. One point about women in print during the Elizabethan era (51:00): the main stigma against print was from aristocrats in general, not just women. It was the principle of derogeance that shamed nobles if they earned money through occupations which were considered to be beneath their stations and writing drama or poetry were two genres which brought immense shame to them and their families. This was the main reason why the person(s) behind the name "William Shakespeare" had to conceal themselves.

[@rstritmatter]

Exactly so, Ron.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

You get your butt handed to you in every debate. Here's something that most people learn early in life, Ron: when people disengage from you, it's because you're boring.

[@joekostka1298]

@@rstritmatter Maybe Elizabeth's next book can be titled "Did Shapiro Write Shapiro? - How Denial, Insult and ad Hominem became the Parlance of Orthodox Shakespeare Scholars."

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@joekostka1298You forgot to mention evidence. Copious amounts of evidence. You know, that thing Anti-Stratfordians are entirely lacking in.

[@joekostka1298]

​@@Jeffhowardmeade Thanks for the response. Have you read Shapiro's The Year of Lear? On page 15 Shapiro writes: "In the summer of 1605 John Wright began selling copies of a newly printed play called The True Chronicle History of King Leir, which had first been staged around 1590. Not long after, William Shake-speare, who lived just a short stroll from Wright's Bookshop, picked up a copy." What do you think of Shapiro's obviously fictional claim being passed off as academic truth, that Shake-speare purchased a copy of this work?

[@rooruffneck]

2024 will find a fairly smoky gun tucked away inside April or May.

[@varkony60]

Now it's June. Fingers crossed.

[@rooruffneck]

@@varkony60 DAMN!

[@varkony60]

@@rooruffneck Any new date?

[@rooruffneck]

@@varkony60 I need to check. Hold on.

[@tedwong6605]

Ms. Winkler mentioned that she was interested in the 'feminine' writings of Shakespeare, but has not been able to find much materials on it. In Robert Prechter's book Oxford Voices, a culmination of 25 years' research into the authorship question, mentioned a number of Italian novellas which were sympathetic to women's points of view and predicaments, that Oxford had used as literary sources.

[@paulhiggins1577]

Rylance made his name and money from Shakespeare then spends his later days questioning his authorship. What a cnut

[@AlexanderMcallum-tg2sl]

What an upside down world we now live in, people in power can tell the rest of us that a woman can have a penis but yet it is taboo to even to suggest a womans hand or hands guiding the pen of the spear shaker, I plump for at the very least an editorial role for Queen Elizsbeth

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

There's nothing taboo about saying it. Go ahead and say it. When you're asked for evidence, though, that's not taboo, either.

[@EndoftheTownProductions]

John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage, three actors of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a famous acting company that included William Shakespeare, were given money by William Shakespeare of Stratford in his Last Will and Testament in 1616. Two of these actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were responsible for having 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in the First Folio in 1623. Ben Jonson's eulogy in the First Folio clearly praises Shakespeare as a great writer. He states that "thy writings to be such, /As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much." Heminges and Condell also praise Shakespeare as a writer, stating that "he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you, to praise him." These are "his works" and "his papers" that they are publishing. He is clearly presented as the writer of these works in the First Folio. The Last Will and Testament of William Shakespeare of Stratford clearly connects him with the 1623 First Folio through Heminges and Condell and it is clear that Shakespeare is presented as the author of the plays.

[@vetstadiumastroturf5756]

Will signed his Last Will with the spelling "SHAKSPERE", not Shakespeare. Not listed in his Last Will & Testament: books, manuscripts, journals, personal papers. No fellow Poets, Playwrights or Writers of any sort are mentioned in The Will, nor is close friend Ben Jonson mentioned either. It is well known that Ben Jonson wrote the poems in the First Folio, and that he signed each of them with a different name in a classic example of how writers of the time used multiple identities. Another curious omission from The Will is Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southhampton, believed to be Shakespeare's Patron and the only person to have any work dedicated to him by Shakespeare.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@vetstadiumastroturf5756Can you find any other theater poet who mentioned any of those things in their wills? Here's a place to start: Playhouse Wills 1558-1642 by Honnigman.

[@johnsmith-eh3yc]

Marlowe signed his name Marley. Oxford signed his name Oxenford. No one doubts the sane nsme except in the case of Shakespeare, whos name and that of his actor brother Edmund was usually spelled 'shakespeare' in London including at a court case where he is described as William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon. Those making something of deviations in spelling 400 years ago are either retarded or more likely somewhat sinister

[@SlightlySusan]

There is an interesting book about the publication of the First Folio called, "Shakespeare's Book." I can not see your entire post but Hemings and Condell were the organizers of the First Folio. Reading that book made me see how modern those people were and how publishing then is like publishing currently.

[@apollocobain8363]

>clearly presented as the writer< No. There is no biography of the Stratford man in the First Folio. No birth or death dates. No eulogy. The words "Stratford" and "Avon" appear on completely different pages. Jonson warns us against confusing a man and the playing card style image on the opposing page with "the AUTHOR" (emphasis his) even as he participates in the Herbert's deception. When the Will was finally found it was suppressed for three years. When it was finally shown to others they could see as all can now, that it said nothing about books, manuscripts, letters. It gave no one permission to print anything. The ring money for Heminges and Condell was seen to be added as an interlineation (written between other lines). At best it was an afterthought, at worst it was a fraud added during the suppression so that SOMETHING in the Will would fit the bogus narrative. During the lifetime of William Shakspere of Stratford collections of poems and quartos of plays were published with the name "William Shakespeare" of "Shake-speare" on them. There is not only no evidence that Shakspere was involved in the editing, printing or promotion of these materials, there is clear evidence that other people, including Thomas Heywood and Thomas Kyd were the writers of some of them. IOW the works of many established writers was being printed under the name "Shakespeare" during the lifetime of the Stratford man. See Ur Hamlet and Passionate Pilgrim.

[@T0varisch]

Two of my most favourite people in this. I have no reputation at stake. It was the treatment of Stritmatter and Waugh in particular that riled me initially so much. I then set about tearing the Sonnets title page apart, which included some important redactions to Green's initial findings. Alexander says that "naughty Mark" no less (Wells' name for him) noted the taurine nature of the Thomas T. Alexander's finding are essentially entirely valid. Alan alas has buried his astonishing discovery in bogus extra stuff. Alexander, and as a result myself, would not have found this without Alan Green. I am going to make a complete presentation of the five interlocking, highly illustrative geometries, all multiply interconnected with each other, that have been revealed on that page. The dedication has largely been solved and is devastating evidence. There is a jaw dropping number puzzle in the text itself. Green again has made spectacular findings to get us going. Just lay off his higher maths, it's not remotely feasible. I've touched Merlin in uncovering this, and for that I should be grateful. I hope that it can be of greater use but I fear not. You just don't need the cryptography. We have enough data now about de Vere. I like Planck's quote. Well done

[@kerrykirk9901]

Its a great book among many on the Shakespeare Authorship Question. Once one really engages in the question and reviews the voluminous information contained within it one can hardly but see pretty clearly that the tradesman's son of Stratford was surely not the playwright and poet "William Shake-speare". While there are (too many) alternative candidates it really seems to settle primarily on mountains of circumstantial evidence on the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere - a brilliant, troubled and disgraced courtier admired and tolerated by both Elizabeth I and later James I. The 'Stratfordians' have really nothing but the questionable attributions in the First Folio, published 7 years after the death of William of Stratford. Its astonishing how spiteful and ad hominem the Stratfordians are -- but their livelihoods and the Stratford-upon-Avon tourist fraud is at stake. Aside, I'm really surprised that Dan Brown hasn't take this story up for his next novel. Its right up his alley.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

"The 'Stratfordians' have really nothing but the questionable attributions in the First Folio." Boy have you missed a lot!

[@josephinemiller68]

Anti vaxxer? Ironic comparison.

[@rstritmatter]

I think Jonathan Bate should debate Elizabeth Winkler. That would sell a lot of tickets. Why would he refuse?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

The last time he did one of those the tickets were free and Waugh stacked the audience. If you want a shot at the title, you have to prove you can't be easily beaten by a bench warmer. So far the results are not encouraging.

[@rstritmatter]

@@Jeffhowardmeade No. He won't do it because he is a coward and a rotten scholar.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@rstritmatterI'm sure taunting him will do the job. Why don't you stand outside his apartment at Columbia and call him a chicken until he responds! The recent challenge at the Innes of Court was taken up by some guy none of the Oxfrauds had ever heard of, and he STILL won. You gotta level up before you get a crack at the Final Boss.

[@rstritmatter]

@Jeffhowardmeade because I have better things to do chump!

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@rstritmatterBetter things than leveling up your arguments? Well that's obvious!

[@warlockofwordschannel7901]

Adherents of these theories must admit that there does seem to be a classist whiff around the belief that a "tradesman's son of Stratford" could not have been solely responsible for the complete works.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

That must do no such thing. They will unironically deny that their opposition to the illiterate grain hoarder from a backwater village is based on classism.

[@philliprose1815]

Right, just move along. Nothing to see here. Stop asking questions.

[@soltron1324]

I disagree

[@Nullifidian]

@@philliprose1815 It's not the questions that are the problem; it's that the Shakespeare authorship denialists ignore the evidence-based answers. They go JAQing off all over the place but won't admit that modern scholarship addresses their objections, and often even _anticipated_ their objections, because if they admitted that then they'd have no case anymore, and denialism means more to them than the facts do.

[@rstritmatter]

Adherents of the orthodox paradigm have bigger problems than such ad hominem accusations. This is not a debate about what could have happened, but what did happen.

[@xmaseveeve5259]

What pandemic?

[@petra1113]

It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true. 🤪

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

It's not a conspiracy THEORY if it's true. If it were true, it would necessarily have needed to be a conspiracy.

[@8ballstreet]

Shakespeare was Francis Bacon and his playwright and poet buddies who were members of The Knights of the Helmet

[@soltron1324]

​@@Jeffhowardmeadeok. Do you have an opinion about what works from that era were written by him that don't bear his name? Or what his circle produced?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@soltron1324 Not sure to which "he" you are referring. In either case, there was no "circle".

[@soltron1324]

@@Jeffhowardmeade Sir Francis Bacon

[@soltron1324]

@@Jeffhowardmeade " Is it thus falls the rarest glory of the Aonian band? and do we decree to entrust seed to the Aonian fields? Break pens, tear up writings, if the dire goddesses may justly act so. Alas! what a tongue is mute! what eloquence ceases! Whither have departed the nectar and ambrosia of your genius? How is it happened to us, the disciples of the Muses, that Apollo, the leader of our choir, should die?" John Williams, Elegy 12, Manes Verulamiani (1626)

[@soltron1324]

@@Jeffhowardmeade XXIII TO THE PASSERBY VIEWING THE MONUMENT TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE LORD FRANCIS "Thinkest thou, Oh! foolish traveler that this cold marble is hiding Phoebus’ own chorister;-leader of the great band of the Muses? Thou art deceived then! Avaunt thee! Verulam shines in Olympus And lo! the boar, great Jacobo glitters in thy constellation."

[@xmaseveeve5259]

2 elephants in this room. Look more closely.

[@MrAbzu]

Winkler, I may be looked upon askance more than you after this. Here is an observation, Oxford had no need to do what his employees were already doing for him. Every theatrical group, including Oxfords, had half a dozen stock playwrights updating hundreds of plays which were in circulation, mostly for propaganda purposes. Oxford may have revised, he may have edited, he may have even assembled the first folio, it would have been beneath his station for him to have written the plays. This is suggested by Henslowe diary with the interchangeability of playwrights. This Blanding quote makes the organizational structure of writing plays look a bit compartmentalized. A knowledgeable Lord would write a story line with notable quotes for the stock playwrights. The playwrights would organize the material into acts and sceans with stage direction. This would be followed by rehearsals, critiques, and revisions. And then the performances for the audiences. Players would learn and perform a round Robin of half a dozen plays doing a different play every day. This is suggested by the available evidence and from the overlap of North in Shakespeare.. The quote... "Not once, in all that time, have I found anything to disprove the notion that Thomas North wrote source plays for all of the plays in the Shakespeare canon. Nor, however, have I found anything that definitively proves it. Despite the First Folio, there are no surviving plays with Thomas North’s name on them, or even hard evidence that North was a playwright. There are no references to his dramatic works in letters, theater registers, or revels records. There are no surviving documents that place him in Italy in 1570 or Kenilworth in 1575 …. In short, it’s entirely possible McCarthy has devoted a decade and a half of his life to a fantasy - an imaginative and plausible one, to be sure, but a pipe dream, which may prove no less true than the notion that the Earl of Oxford or Sir Francis Bacon secretly penned all of Shakespeare’s oeuvre." Any theory must account for all of the available evidence. The possibility of gradualism may work if a hundred stock playwrights wrote and rewrote the Canon over the course of 40 years. Lordly content only proves Lordly input to the writers of which there were many. I rather doubt that this is what Blanding set out to prove.

[@user-hy9nh4yk3p]

He was a straw man (Shakespeare that is) - to protect - the real author and his art - in difficult times. In modern times - his so-called existence - as the real author of said poetry and plays - is used by various groups and individuals - not to realise the truth - but for their own egotistic wishes. To do the research - into the real person - behind the masque - is to encounter a whole gamut of spectres - mostly dancing with their own choice of music. So - why not the version - discussed here - in the title? 'Shakespeare' is very pliable - to those - who are producing - their twirly tales. For those - gentle yet determined and very capable ones - who love the certainty and the ethical verity - found in truth realised and lived - the only right candidate - is Francis Bacon. The time - it will take - but the central incorruptibility of the proven and tested way of truth - is its character. Here is another day passing and we are ever closer - to the expressed version of his truth as person and work. Fare thee well.

[@maryhook9478]

Like so much chitty chattery today this silliness between Rylance and Winkler passes for real scholarship. Rylance is a sued intellectual taking a silly provocative stance in order to keep himself in the public eye. Yes he can act after a fashion. The fact that he was artistic director of The Globe just goes to show the dire state of some aspects of Theatre these days. Understand that until his early teens Rylance was illiterate. It is the old joke if you can't do, teach, if you can't teach teach gym. When Rylance produces an original work of the order of "Let me not to the marriage of true minds..........." Then and only then will I bow down before him!

[@tvfun32]

Pope said: "Lord Bacon is the greatest genius that either England or perhaps any other country ever produced." Lord Macaulay admitted that "he had the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men." Ben Jonson declared that "he stands as the mark and acme of our language. It is He that hath filled up all Numbers," all forms of versification."

[@john-ic5pz]

firmly in the camp of who cares. but EVERYTHING has to be politicized these days by folks who strut about and make a great noise on the stage that all the world is said to be.

[@5starcomment]

It's 2023, so not only a woman, but a strong, intelligent, independent black woman...

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

She wasn't Black. Her mother was English and her father's family were Venetians going back generations.

[@WalterBurton]

Milking the nonsense. Those of us over a certain age can't help but see the cycles.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

I know, right!? I haven't had to listen to this much nonsense about lost civilizations and UFOs since the 1970s.

[@WalterBurton]

@@Jeffhowardmeade : Yup. Deja vu all over again. I dunno. Sometimes I think, "Well, there are worse examples of bread and circuses," but then I see Congressional hearings, and I think, "Oh, no ... that's not what I meant; y'all have MUCH more important things to discuss."

[@soltron1324]

Oh, you two crack me up 😅

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@soltron1324Then mischief managed. We shouldn't be the only ones getting a laugh out of it.

[@jonrich62]

Surely everybody knows Shakespeare was trans.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Only when he was playing a female role.

[@maryhook9478]

The above nonsense without any deep research or evidence is what passes for intelligent discussion and debate in these scholastically starved times.

[@mttaylor129]

If the author was a collaboration done secretly, then excluding contribution by contemporary people with whom suggested collaborators would likely have interactedI is less defensible than giving consideration to the possibility. If, further, there was a secret society at play, the for the collaborators, priority criteria for including members would include confidentially, trustworthiness, shared interests, values, language, culture. I have always inferred in Shakespeare’s plays a time of political, religious, and social upheaval where speech had to be veiled. And maybe identity and gender would be veiled. Identity is very powerful, precious, and fiercely protected in our lives, often through secrecy. We tend to lash out at anyone who challenges our public identity.

[@karlgaiser9783]

Shakespeare was Shakespeare! How many competing authorship conspiracy theories do we have right now? When I studied English it were 40, do we have about 80 now? Interestingly it's quite near the number of imagined genders. Never forget the first guy who came up with an authorship theory was named Thomas Looney and he was known by his contemporaries as King of Crackpots.

[@joekostka1298]

Looney was not the first. Do your homework.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Joe is correct. Looney was only the latest in a long line of crackpots.

[@karlgaiser9783]

@@Jeffhowardmeade Yes he is right, I misremembered.

[@joekostka1298]

I often think about why so many stratfordians use words like crackpot and oxfraud, words that are only meant to insult. Wouldn't it be more respectable to address the evidence and dispense with insults?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@joekostka1298 If Anti-Strats respected the evidence, then yes. But they don't. It's been years since I've had one even reluctantly admit that evidence I've just presented even exists, let alone that it says what it obviously says. Rationalizing away or (more commonly) disregarding the mountains of evidence is what "one given to eccentric or wildly foolish notions" does. In other words, Merriam-Webster's definition of a "crackpot". If you are willing to acknowledge and reasonably evaluate evidence as it's presented, then that's clearly not you.

[@EVUK-bd2vn]

Surely(so to speak!) the most open-minded and logical conclusion - until proven otherwise - is that a male and female group or 'Shakespeare Salon' of playwrights wrote but NOT co-wrote the plays, then submitted them to the group for read-throughs, finessing, minor or not-so-minor changes and suggestions - just as movie screen-writers do. And as always noone points out that (would-be) female playwrights had one other major reason to hide behind a male pseudonym in Elizabethan England because women were not permitted to write plays and have them publicly performed under their own names or using any female name for that matter! So I'll continue to broad-mindedly believe - until proven otherwise - that the likes of Mary Sidney, Amelia Bassano, Marlowe and Edward de Vere all contributed their own individual but "willfully"(!!) very 'Shakespearean' plays to a Shakespeare Salon or collective - and a Mr. Will 'Spellcheck' Shak'spear from Stratford, real actors, closet actresses and others in the theatre business would also frequently attend the Shakespeare Salon's meet-ups. And much (very productive) fun would have been had by all. I can't wait for a now long-overdue movie sequel to "Anonymous" that reflects and both entertainingly and intelligently dramatises all of the above and much much more besides.. Paul G

[@Nullifidian]

"Surely(so to speak!) the most open-minded and logical conclusion - until proven otherwise - is that a male and female group or 'Shakespeare Salon' of playwrights wrote but NOT co-wrote the plays, then submitted them to the group for read-throughs, finessing, minor or not-so-minor changes and suggestions - just as movie screen-writers do." Let's leave aside the open-mindedness for a moment and just concentrate on the logic: how does _any_ of this logically follow either from what we know of how early modern drama was written in general or any specific evidence? What would be the specific evidence for this scenario?

[@SmallWetIsland]

Sweet Swan of Avon is an eye opening book that adds to the authorship mystery and makes the case for Shakespeare being a woman, Mary Sidney, but the authorship polarisation is really about "True believers" who seem to be everywhere, individuals who are so deeply invested in their belief system that examining them is terrifying. When true believers find the foundations of their beliefs undermined by questions or scrutiny they resort to ad hominem attacks, after all what else have they got? So from religious myths to authorial myths from young earther's to political dogma, true believers are a danger to everyone. Question God, Shakespeare or Donald Trump and chances are you will be burned at the stake.

[@Nullifidian]

And by "burned at the stake", what you mean is that you'll be questioned for the evidence underpinning your hypothesis and requested to explain why literally _all_ of the documentary evidence pertaining to authorship (title pages, dedications, individual authorial attributions in collections, Stationers' Register entries, Revels Accounts entries, etc.) says that William Shakespeare wrote the works of William Shakespeare, and why every contemporary who bothered to speak on the subject said that he was an author, including multiple people who knew him personally (like his professional colleagues John Heminges, Henry Condell, and John Lowin; his playwriting colleagues Ben Jonson and John Webster, both of whom wrote pieces performed by Shakespeare's company prior to praising him) or who knew of him (like William Camden, who, as Clarenceux King of Arms, joined the King of the College of Arms William Dethick in a defense of the grant of a coat of arms to John Shakespeare in terms that showed he was very familiar with Shakespeare's antecedents and then praised him as a writer in his _Remains_ ). You poor little martyr.

[@SmallWetIsland]

​@@Nullifidian All the apocryphal plays have Shake-Spear's name on them as well, are they by Shake-Spear? Have you read Shakespeare’s Unorthodox biography or listened to Diana Price to see why posthumous attribution is not prima facia evidence he was a writer? “The singular fact is that after 400 years, the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays remains an open question - no side has been able to close the sale. The greatest strength of the case for the man from Stratford is his incumbency, but no understanding of that case is complete without reference to Diana Price’s “Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography.” contemporary commentary. "To [this list of excellent English poets] I believe should be added that famous poet who takes his name from 'shaking' and 'spear'" - Thomas Vicars, (1628) Ben Jonson also wrote “Poet Ape”. Ben Jonson also wrote a moving poem to his dead son, Shaxper not a word not a line, nothing. His family upbringing was in Stratford There is no record of his education and much like his entire life his education is nothing but conjecture, all ifs and must have’s, he “may have been” a teacher in the country “it is assumed” he was a law clerk “we can imagine” he absorbed all the knowledge in his works by sitting in a pub and listening to travellers. There is no evidence he owned books, his children were illiterate his daughter could not recognise or read her husband’s handwriting. Shakespeare's father signed with a mark. John Hall his son-in-law, a physician who kept detailed diaries in which he named literati and celebrities whom he treated, made no mention of his supposedly brilliant and famous father-in-law. etc etc. Dr. Hall died in 1635, he left books and papers clearly specified, and there is no record of any coming from his famous father-in-law. Hall, like most people at this time, was quite clear as to whom his books and papers were to go. Books were immensely valuable and were normally carefully distributed. For Shakespeare, there is no record of any writing, no works in progress, no miscellaneous papers, no letters, no marginalia in a single book, no correspondence of any kind. Save for one letter addressed to him enquiring, not about literature, but about money. Ironic that a letter from a contemporary which Shakespeare did NOT write is used to deflect challenges of borderline illiteracy. such is the paucity of documentary evidence he was a writer. Every piece of documentation describes him as a wheeler and dealer, a broker, a grain hoarder and a Johannes fac totum. Like father like son? is it not just as reasonable to “assume” that “doubtless” he followed in his father’s footsteps? go read Elizabeth Winklers Book to discover why like all true believers you are so wedded to your dogma.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@SmallWetIsland (Part 1 of 5) "All the apocryphal plays have Shake-Spear's name on them as well, are they by Shake-Spear?" First off, the apocryphal plays _do not_ all have Shakespeare's name on them. _Fair Em_ , _Mucedorus_ , and _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ did not have Shakespeare's name on them... ever. They were merely bound together in a book in Charles II's library as _Shakespeare, Vol. 1_ . The basis for that ascription on the binding is not known, but it cannot have come from the quartos themselves because they were anonymous. A further three were attributed to "W. S." on their quartos, but were _not_ included in the First Folio: _Locrine_ , _Thomas, Lord Cromwell_ , and _The Puritan_ . An ascription to "W. S." does not necessarily entail an ascription to William Shakespeare if there were other playwrights of the time whose initials were "W. S.", and there were. So despite the fact that Philip Chetwinde published them as Shakespeare's in the second impression of the Third Folio, it doesn't seem as if he had any better basis than assuming that "W. S." = William Shakespeare. In fact, depending on how young he married, he may not even have been born by the time Shakespeare died. One of the attributions to "William Shakespeare" may be disregarded since it had no authentic basis'. It occurred in the Pavier-Jaggard "False Folio" where _Sir John Oldcastle_ was reprinted to make it seem like the printers had licensed the very popular _Henry IV_ plays. We know who wrote _Sir John Oldcastle_ , however, and its original publication in 1600 was anonymous. And while _The Birth of Merlin_ was attributed to William Rowley and William Shakespeare, its first publication was literally _forty years_ after its initial performance at the Curtain, after anyone associated with the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men in that era had died, so it's anyone's guess upon what basis that claim of co-authorship was made. So that really only leaves _The London Prodigal_ and _The Yorkshire Tragedy_ as works that were attributed unequivocally to William Shakespeare at the time, and neither of them were spelled "Shake-Speare", so that's just _another_ way in which you've shown you don't know anything about what you're talking about. And regardless of when or where the name "Shakespeare" became attached to these works, the fact that it _was_ shows that he was accepted at the time as a writer of plays. And what would you do _if_ I chose to accept them both as Shakespearean? What basis would you offer, other than the academic consensus that they are not, to refute them as Shakespeare's works? But the academic consensus is also that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works. Would you offer stylometric analysis showing they were not Shakespeare's works? That might work, except that stylometry also refutes the existence of any putative "authorship candidate" who has left extant writing, with the possible exception of Christopher Marlowe, and in that case the only Marlovian portion of the canon are _parts_ of _Henry VI_ , all of which were on the boards by 1592, a year ahead of Marlowe's death. That Marlowe's hand can be distinguished in Shakespeare means that he _wasn't_ Shakespeare. So what justification for excluding the Shakespeare apocrypha do you have to offer that won't also spear your own authorship claims? "Have you read Shakespeare’s Unorthodox biography or listened to Diana Price to see why posthumous attribution is not prima facia evidence he was a writer?" Yes, and her reasoning is complete horseshit. One can reject it with just a little thought by asking oneself if people immediately forget everything about a person after that person has died. Obviously, they do not. One can also reject it because one of the elements of her own "paper trail" is "notice at death of a writer", which by its nature is posthumous evidence. And one can also turn to the very sources she abuses for this distinction between contemporary and posthumous evidence, and see if they actually support her statements. She cites three authors: H. B. George, Paul Murray Kendall, and Robert C. Williams. Neither George nor Kendall used the word "posthumous" in the passages Price is twisting out of context, and George explicitly affirms that contemporaneous evidence is anything from a known contemporary. He doesn't draw arbitrary lines around when it was published. "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’" ( _The Historical Method_ , pp. 48-49). Therefore, the assertion that William Shakespeare died as a result of a boozy evening with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton may be subject to doubt, because it doesn't come from a contemporary witness, only an unsourced story in the Rev. John Ward's notebook, but the statement by John Heminges and Henry Condell in the dedication to the First Folio that the author whom they identify as "Shakespeare" was their "friend, & fellow", as well as Ben Jonson's statements to Wiliam Drummond of Hawthornden and in his posthumously published commonplace book _Timber_ are contemporary testimony regardless of the date of publication because all these people were provably there at the time working in association with William Shakespeare. Heminges and Condell were both in the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men during the relevant period (and Heminges was also named as one of the two trustees in Shakespeare's deal to acquire the Blackfriars gatehouse) and Shakespeare acted in at least two of Ben Jonson's plays as we know from the performance information in the 1616 Folio edition of Jonson's _Works_ . Also, a random quote from a Shakespeare-denier of the Oxfordian variety in support of Diana Price's book does nothing for its credibility in my eyes, which is doubtless why you concealed the name behind the quote in the evident hope that I was as susceptible to argument by assertion as you seem to be. "contemporary commentary. 'To [this list of excellent English poets] I believe should be added that famous poet who takes his name from 'shaking' and 'spear' - Thomas Vicars, (1628)" Yes, so William Shakespeare, who takes his name from "shaking" and "spear" was recognized as an author by Thomas Vicars. Thank you. Nor is the quote from 1628. In fact, it's not a quote at all, but an English translation of the Latin original that first appeared in the 3rd edition of his _Manuductio_ , which was printed in 1635. Winkler is a very careless scholar. "Ben Jonson also wrote 'Poet Ape'." Yes, he did... about Thomas Dekker and John Marston. "Ben Jonson also wrote a moving poem to his dead son, Shaxper not a word not a line, nothing." There is no _extant_ poem that is unequivocally about the death of his son. But that doesn't mean it didn't influence him in other ways. For example, this passage in _King John_ may have been influenced by Hamnet's death: Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then, have I reason to be fond of grief? Also, I've been reading Judi Dench's latest book _Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent_ and she and I both see _Twelfth Night_ the same way: as a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy of an author coming to grips with the loss of one of two fraternal twins. Who's to say that influence wasn't operating too? And even if Shakespeare didn't feel the death of his son as immediately as Jonson did, so what? Does that mean he couldn't have been the author of his own works? It would not be at all surprising that Jonson would be more devastated by the loss of a son he saw every day than Shakespeare would be by the loss of a son he only saw intermittently and probably didn't have a very strong emotional bond with. This is the kind of shit that you people try to pass off as 'evidence' when it's completely irrelevant to the subject of authorship because you don't have anything better. "His family upbringing was in Stratford There is no record of his education...." There is no record of Ben Jonson's education either. It is merely _assumed_ that he went to Westminster School because he was born in London, he spoke of his "master Camden" and dedicated a poem to him. and Camden was headmaster of Westminster when Jonson would have been old enough to attend. But in terms of class rolls showing that Ben Jonson attended the school, we have nothing. In fact, we have _no class rolls_ for any early modern grammar school outside of one in Leicestershire. Therefore, basing conclusions on evidence that _isn't_ there is inadmissible. "and much like his entire life his education is nothing but conjecture," On the contrary, Shakespeare's life as a playwright, poet, actor, and shareholder and householder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men and the Globe/Blackfriars Theatres (respectively) is extensively documented. "all ifs and must have’s, he 'may have been' a teacher in the country 'it is assumed' he was a law clerk" This all pertains to speculation about what happened during his so-called "lost years": the period between 1585 and 1592. It has nothing to do with the evidence he was a writer.

[@Nullifidian]

(Part 2 of 5) "'we can imagine' he absorbed all the knowledge in his works by sitting in a pub and listening to travellers." I don't know of a single scholar who doesn't acknowledge that Shakespeare was a reader. Your straw man is showing. "There is no evidence he owned books," Actually, there is. His signature is in William Lambarde's _Archainomia_ and the only reason why it's not more widely accepted as an authentic signature is merely that it it's not self-verifying like the signatures attached to legal documents that identify the signer by name, social rank, and home town. However, let's assume for the sake of argument that this copy of _Archainomia_ was lost, or the signature unknown (as indeed it was until the crumpled title page was finally straightened out when the Folger Library acquired it). Does that follow that Shakespeare _couldn't_ have owned any books? No. It just means that the evidence isn't there. But you can't base conclusions on evidence that isn't there because there's no way of being able to tell which way it would go if you had it. You have to base conclusions on extant evidence, and _all_ the extant evidence shows that William Shakespeare was an author and that he was known to his contemporaries as an author. "his children were illiterate" This is complete horseshit. You cannot even make this conclusion about Judith Quiney, who left a mark, because leaving a mark was not denigrated at the time and plenty of people did (perhaps to save time) even if they could sign their names. We know this because we have marks on documents left by Adrian Quiney, who also left a preserved letter to his son Thomas. However, his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, left _two_ extant signatures, which is presumptive evidence of literacy, she probably wrote the Latin epitaph for Anne Shakespeare (which addresses Anne in the second person from the perspective of one of her children), and her own epitaph describes her as "witty [i.e., learned] above her sex" and further says that "something of Shakespeare was in that", showing even as late as 1649, 33 years after his own death and 7 after the closure of the theatres, that William Shakespeare was still treated as a byword for cleverness. "his daughter could not recognise or read her husband’s handwriting." That's your spin on the facts. I could just as easily counter it by describing their encounter as "Susanna Hall was capable of accurately describing the contents of one of her husband's books to a prospective buyer, even though it was in Latin." And my statement is consistent with the evidence, whereas you have absolutely _no reason_ to assume that she couldn't recognize her husband's handwriting, since you don't know that the page they were consulting was even _in_ his handwriting. All we have for 'proof' is Dr. Cooke's assurance that he could recognize Dr. Hall's hand, but that's exactly what he would have said if he'd _thought_ he'd identified it and been wrong. It could well have been made by one of Dr. Hall's medical apprentices, since that was how medical education (and most professional careers) were handled at the time. The first medical school in Britain was only founded at Edinburgh University in 1728, and the more informal path to becoming a doctor lasted until the 19th century. One can see a fictional portrayal of it in _Wives and Daughters_ by Elizabeth Gaskell, a novel set c. 1830. Indeed, the British Library entry for Hall's original casebook notes that there are some entries in another hand. They propose it might be Cooke's, but they could predate Cooke and have been there when Cooke and Susanna Hall were looking it over. “Prescriptions, notes of cases, etc., are added in another hand [Dr. Cooke's?] in the latter part of the volume; and, at f. 113 b, some observations on the Hebrew letters.” Also, Dr. Hall wrote in an almost indecipherable Latin shorthand, and there's no reason to assume that he taught his wife his shorthand technique. So why wouldn't she deny it was his handwriting if she saw a page full of apparent nonsense utterly unlike his usual longhand writing? Or perhaps she did recognize his handwriting and just wanted to protect her late husband from a charge of indiscretion, knowing that this document contained details about her friends' and neighbors' intimate medical problems, perhaps knowing that Dr. Cooke intended to translate and publish the book (ultimately, Cooke translated and published about 200 out of 1,000 cases). Any number of possibilities are consistent with the evidence and assuming that it _must_ be because she was illiterate is simply unjustified. However, let's assume, _arguendo_ , that Shakespeare's daughters were provably illiterate. So what? It's another irrelevancy. Anti-Shakespearians seem to believe that because the author wrote literate women that his daughters should have been literate, but where is that written as a law? Where is the rule that playwrights should try to realize what they write in their personal lives? If that's the case, then I think we should question Christopher Marlowe's authorship of his works since there's no evidence that he ever tried to conquer all of Asia like Tamburlaine. The real argument is "I won't accept that a man who had illiterate daughters wrote the works of Shakespeare", but if that's the form of the argument then you might as well say "I won't accept that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote his works" and save time. "Shakespeare's father signed with a mark." So did Thomas Quiney's father, Adrian, but we know Adrian was literate. We also know that John Shakespeare was fully literate, otherwise he couldn't have discharged all of the civic duties for which he was appointed, And he would have been a dead loss as a moneylender if he were neither able to read a promissory note nor make one out. Among his duties, he was bailiff (equivalent to mayor), magistrate, and justice of the peace, which shows that he could read law books, and his role as chamberlain shows that he could write, because the chamberlain was the official who kept all the records for the Stratford Corporation. "John Hall his son-in-law, a physician who kept detailed diaries in which he named literati and celebrities whom he treated, made no mention of his supposedly brilliant and famous father-in-law." etc etc." The only extant volume of Dr. John Hall's notes begins in 1617. William Shakespeare died in 1616. Warned by what happened to Aesculapius, doctors ever since then have not tried to treat the dead. And anyway, you've said it yourself when you said "whom he treated". You have no evidence that Dr. John Hall _ever_ treated William Shakespeare, therefore why should Hall have mentioned Shakespeare in his case notes? "Dr. Hall died in 1635, he left books and papers clearly specified, and there is no record of any coming from his famous father-in-law." There is also no record of any books from twelve of fifteen early modern playwrights who were active between 1558 and 1642 (though the wills go up to 1686), and _none_ of them mention any papers (see _Playhouse Wills_ by E. A. J. Honigmann and Susan Brock). And the three playwrights who did mention books in their extant wills are not particularly major players in early modern theatre (William Bird, Arthur Wilson, and Samuel Rowley). In order to show that Shakespeare had no books to bequeath, you would need the inventory that was prepared when he died, and which we know was in existence when the will was proven at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. However, that inventory has been lost as have _all_ of the inventories bar three of the figures looked at by Brock and Honigmann, and the earliest surviving inventory is not before 1638 (for Thomas Sackville, an actor, not to be confused with the aristocrat and co-author of _Gorboduc_ ). Nor is Sackville's inventory even a formal inventory for proving a will. He had died a decade before, and this is just a list drawn up by someone who had purchased his books and other properties after he had died in Frankfurt. However, the fact that a mere actor and later merchant was in possession of 45 books in total at his death, fully 13 of them in folio (the most expensive format), with a further 26 in quarto and 6 in octavo, does imply how widespread book ownership was and how it would be nothing exceptional for Shakespeare to have had a similar library or even better. Probably better because of the greater availability of English-language books in London vs. Germany. Therefore, the first _proper_ inventory-the kind that goes with a will when it is proven-was that of the actor William Beeston dated 28 April 1683. 1683. Every other inventory prior to then for _anyone_ involved in the theatre in Shakespeare's era is gone. So what sense is it to make a big deal out of the fact that the inventory for William Shakespeare's will is missing? However, let's assume that the inventory turns up tomorrow and shows that William Shakespeare had no books at all at the time he died in 1616 in Stratford. Does that prove he couldn't have been a playwright? No. Because his active career was spent in London, not Stratford. So what would be more natural than that, having wound up his career by penning his last co-authored plays with the man who would succeed him as the King's Men's house playwright, John Fletcher, he would sell off or give away his library of books rather than cart them the ~100 miles back to Stratford-upon-Avon? It's not like he could have hired a U-Haul truck and packed it floor to ceiling with books then driven it to Stratford himself. "Hall, like most people at this time, was quite clear as to whom his books and papers were to go." As just demonstrated, it's more common to _not_ mention books than it is to mention books in this era. In any case, there's no reason to infer that William Shakespeare wasn't equally as clear:

[@Nullifidian]

(Part 3 of 5) "All the rest of my goods, chattel, leases, plate, jewels, and household stuff whatsoever, after my debts and legacies paid and my funerall expenses discharged, I give, devise, and bequeath to my son in law John Hall, gent., and my daughter Susanna, his wife, whom I ordain and make executors of this my last will and testament." Thus Dr. John and Susanna Hall were his residuary legatees. They got New Place. Therefore, there was only reason for mentioning his books _if_ he intended them to go to someone else. If he didn't intend for them to go to anyone else other than the Halls, then there was no reason to mention them. This is _still_ the way wills are drafted today, so you Shakespeare-deniers have to maintain your ignorance about the world around you, let alone the world of Shakespeare's era, in order to make this half-baked argument, which, examined logically, is merely another irrelevant distraction from the subject of authorship. You might as well give it up. It's one thing to pretend to be idiots in the service of a good argument, but you're pretending to be idiots in the service of a rotten argument that doesn't even come close to establishing its conclusion. "Books were immensely valuable and were normally carefully distributed." False. Books were _not_ intrinsically valuable, let alone immensely so. Only folio editions were expensive, because they used the most amount of paper, and the amount of paper was the major determiner of the price. And you could still have a copy of the First Folio, if you were prepared to buy it unbound, for 15 shillings (c. $150 in today's money, which is somewhat dear but no or only little more than I've had to pay for some textbooks and academic press editions-or for the complete boxed set of Arkangel Shakespeare audiobooks on CD that I bought off Ebay in 2022). It would cost an additional five shillings, twenty shillings in total-or £1-if it were bound in calf's skin. A quarto edition was no more expensive, inflation adjusted, than a modern trade paperback is today (e.g., Edmund Alleyn recorded his purchase of "Shaksper sonetts" for 5d. in 1609, and strangely did so without expressing any evident doubt about the author's identity). Octavo, duodecimo, and sextodecimo volumes were cheaper still. "For Shakespeare, there is no record of any writing," Yes, there is. There are 20 canonical quarto plays with his name on them, there is _Venus and Adonis_ ,. there is _The Rape of Lucrece_ , there is his name underneath "Let the bird of loudest lay" in Robert Chester's _Love's Martyr_ , and there are the aforementioned sonnets in 1609. And then there's the First Folio, compiled by his theatrical colleagues who affirmed that the Shakespeare who wrote "his plays" was their "friend, & fellow". The laudatory poems came from Ben Jonson, in two of whose works Shakespeare had acted, from Hugh Holland who contributed verses to Jonson's _Sejanus_ and therefore may have seen Shakespeare act since _Sejanus_ is one of the two plays where Shakespeare's name appears in the cast list, and from Leonard Digges (which mentions _Romeo and Juliet_ , alludes to _Julius Caesar_ , speaks of the First Folio as "thy wit-fraught book", and mentions that Shakespeare was honored with a monument in Stratford) who was the stepson of Thomas Russell of Alderminster, whom Shakespeare named as one of the two overseers of his will. Shakespeare was a near neighbor of Russell in Stratford (Alderminster being a mere four miles south) and an even nearer neighbor in London, where they lived within 150 feet of each other. Leonard Digges also wrote a longer piece of commendatory verse that was evidently intended for the Second Folio and was eventually included in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's collected poems. We can date it before, however, not only because Digges died in 1635, but also because he makes reference to the "Fortune's younger brethren", which places it c. 1630. In this longer poem, Digges identified the King's Men as his company and the Globe and Blackfriars as Shakespeare's theatres and alleged that the reason they were doing badly since Shakespeare's death is because audiences were unfavorably comparing the current offerings by inferior playwrights to Shakespeare's works. He also asserted Shakespeare's plays were more popular than Jonson's, naming several by both playwrights. In Shakespeare's case, he referred to _Julius Caesar_ again, as well as the _Henry IV_ plays (and possibly _Henry V_ as well, since there are overlapping characters in all three), _Othello_ , _Twelfth Night_ , and _Much Ado About Nothing_ . He repeated his line about "thy wit-fraught book" (another reason for thinking it was intended for the Second Folio) and also said "that he was a poet none would doubt". In short, these two commendatory verses by someone who was related by marriage to one of Shakespeare's intimate friends and neighbors combine together all of the elements that Shakespeare-deniers try to keep separate: he was a member of the King's Men, his plays were performed at the Globe and Blackfriars, he was the author of specifically the plays _Romeo and Juliet_ , _Julius Caesar_ , the _Henry IV_ plays, _Othello_ , _Twelfth Night_ , and _Much Ado About Nothing_ , the First Folio/Second Folio were collections of the works of his wit, and he was honored with a monument in Stratford. What specific documentary evidence do you have, as a Shakespeare-denier, to overturn this clear identification of who the author was? Finally, there's a last poem by a poet only identified as "I. M." It's thought to be James Mabbe, who had a letter to a man named William Baker written by Leonard Digges on the flyleaf of his copy of Lope de Vega's _Rimas_ , in which Digges praised "our Will Shakespeare" for his sonnets, asserting they ought to have made him as famous in England as Lope de Vega was for his in Spain. "no works in progress" He was retired for two or three years when he died. Why would there have been any works in progress? Do you not understand the concept of retirement? "no miscellaneous papers," What do you expect? Grocery lists from the early 17th century? You think that's particularly _likely_ to survive more than four centuries? "no letters" So what? The survival of letters in the early modern period is primarily due not to who wrote them, but to whom they were directed. Thus we have letters in Edmund Spenser's hand that he wrote in his official capacity as secretary to two different Lords of Ireland, but not a single personal letter in his own hand. The reason is that these letters he wrote as amanuensis for his bosses were official letters kept by the government. Unless it wound up in some kind of archive, whether government, scholarly, or familial (and only aristocrats were able to keep archives of family papers), letters did not survive in this era. Most families reused papers or sold used papers to the rag and bone man for recycling by the printers because, as noted above, paper was expensive and therefore it wasn't wasted. However, even if Shakespeare's letters were handed down within the family as prized possessions, that family only existed as late as 1670, when Elizabeth Barnard (née Hall, daughter to Dr. John and Susanna Hall) died. After which, any writings belonging to William Shakespeare would have been scattered, if they hadn't been already. And yet again, the argument is irrelevant because there is no relationship between not having any extant letters and not being an author. You'd have to envision every writer as Schrödinger's Author: an established writer up until the last extant letter disappeared, at which time the effect of the loss of the letter would ripple back through space-time and prevent the person from having ever been a writer in the first place. Congratulations, you may have found an argument even stupider than that about Shakespeare's books in his will. "no marginalia in a single book" I have no marginalia in any of the thousands of books I own, unless it came marked up when I bought it. I hate writing in books, so I don't do it myself. Once again, your arguments are wholly irrelevant to authorship. "no correspondence of any kind." On the contrary, there are two signed letters: one is the dedication of _Venus and Adonis_ and the other is the dedication of _The Rape of Lucrece_ , both of which have William Shakespeare's name underneath them. But even if you limit it to personal correspondence, all you can say is that there is no _extant_ correspondence. But, as I pointed out, there's no extant personal correspondence from even such a major figure as Edmund Spenser. But let's assume, again for the sake of argument, that you can prove that there was never any personal correspondence between William Shakespeare and his family back in Stratford. Again, it would _still_ be irrelevant to authorship. You're assuming that all you had to do at the time was drop a letter in a pillar box and it would be taken by the Royal Mail to Stratford-upon-Avon. This is not true. The Royal Mail was not opened up to the public until Charles I, well after Shakespeare was dead. Therefore, you had only two options when it came to sending a letter: you could either wait until you found someone who was traveling to or through the place where your letter was destined, which was very chancy, or you could entrust it to a courier, which was very expensive and therefore only used for the most important communications. Any letter Shakespeare sent to Stratford might well arrive after him, so why would he have had any regular correspondence, and why would that correspondence have survived over 400 years down to the present? It's nothing but a pack of irrelevancies.

[@traceyolsen308]

Didn't Shakspeare's father have financial difficulties when the boy was 13? so it seems odd if he didn't go to the grammar school until then, and he ought to have been reasonably literate, also the daughters, or at least the one married to the medical doctor, were they pretending to be illiterate? W Shakspeare was apparently distantly related to the 17th Earl of Oxford on his mother's side, was he working for 17EO? The more I've heard about all this, the more peculiar it seems...there are bodies of the family buried in shallow graves in the church ,but William's head is missing? (otherwise I'd be wondering if the man from Stratford even existed), Edward de Vere seems to have his name all over these Shakespeare monuments and the First Folio, but was he collaborating with several other writers..and they're all Shakespeare? Thank you for discussing this...Hopefully one day some of the original manuscripts will turn up.

[@manciano2009]

Looking for heresy? Shakespeare was Giovanni Florio (in English: John Florio). Many people in Italy believe this, and in Messina even the institutions take the fact for granted.

[@geoffgriffiths8691]

Her pronouns are us and then

[@SlightlySusan]

I don't find feminism a feature of Shakespeare's plays. Has anyone paid attention to the removal of mothers from the plays, leaving father and daughter pairs? What about Charles Beauclerk's book. "Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom?" Consider that Elizabeth was born in 1533. Her supposed lover was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, born in 1550. Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, born in 1573. Elizabeth was 17 when Oxford was born. Oxford was 23 and Elizabeth was 40 when their alleged son Southampton was born. Another story has Elizabeth becoming pregnant at 17 by Thomas Seymour, the widower of Catherine Parr, Elizabeth's stepmother. She supposedly had sex with the son she birthed at 17 and that affair produced yet another son when she was 38. That son supposedly was Shakespeare. The two stories of Elizabeth giving birth at 17 is more realistic than her possibly giving birth at 40 or even at 38. There is criticism of these stories from the Stratfordians, not only because they're repulsive but also because the dates are difficult to believe.

[@mojmirjezek8455]

Miss Winkler has done a great job in destroying any possibility that the Stratford impresario was also the author of Shakespeare's works. But she has not solved the mystery of the true author hidden in those works. It's a shame that Winkler doesn't know Michel Agnolo and John Florio, she would have solved the dilemma.

[@johntaplin3126]

Again, and again the claim by those who have not researched education at schools like Stratford make the sweeping statement of 'lliteracy '. John Shakespeare was not illiterate, read his record in the Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation. The school at Stratford sent disproportionate numbers of boys to Oxford - we are finding more all the time. John Trapp who was the schoolmaster after Shakespeare's time was from a tiny place in Worcestershire and was a renowned scholar, who would put to shame most of the 'academics' of today. The whole single authorship scenario has been shown to be outmoded, not just for WS, but by association, every other 'candidate'. Aristos like de Vere liked to dabble in the theatre, but what amazing work undisputably attributed to him survives? The whole spelling thing of names thing is such a blind alley it is incredible it keeps getting brought up. I can show innumerable examples of people spelling their own name in the same document several different ways - Marlowe's name was spell differently, too, but then he didn't write his plays either, apparently.The onus is not on people like Stanley Wells to 'prove' the 'Stratford man' wrote the plays, or to go to a kangaroo court like the one Jonathan Bate was subjected to. If the likes of Alexander Waugh have such indisputable proof of de Vere writing anything in the First Folio, spit it out. I find sad, actually quite pathetic, that a great theatrical men of our time who must know better than anyone how intimate an author is to the work and its presentation could attribute it to a man like de Vere who probably never saw the backstage of any theatre.

[@selu1363]

Yet he couldn't be bothered to teach his daughters how to read?

[@johntaplin3126]

@@selu1363 How would you know a person's reading ability from four hundred years ago? Reading and writing were/are two distinct skills. Many people are able to read today, but unable to write - so without evidence of either, to claim anything is not scholarship, but false accusation. Also, most important documents were written in Latin, so reading English was not the sole skill required back then. Guess most of us would be considered illiterate my their standards.

[@Nullifidian]

@@selu1363 Let's assume, _arguendo_ , that his daughters couldn't read, even though we have two extant signatures from Susanna Hall in a well-formed Italic hand, an epitaph to Anne Shakespeare written in Latin from the perspective of Anne Hathaway's child, an extant account of Susanna Hall accurately describing one of her late husband's books to a prospective buyer even though it was in Latin, and Susanna's own epitaph calls her "witty [i.e. learned] above her sex". Let's just set that aside. When was Shakespeare supposed to teach his daughters to read? He lived in London, they lived in Stratford. Do you imagine he could have homeschooled them over Skype?

[@apollocobain8363]

I'm imagining John Trapp teaching his students all about the life of Edward Devere. His travels in Italy, his lifelong and multigenerational connection to the theater, his Hamlet-like parental situation. And little William Shakspere sitting there, soaking it all in and hatching his plan -- "That's it! I will secretly create a body of work that mirrors Devere's life. And, and I'll throw in some Mary Sidney bits and rework Thomas Kyd's Hamlet. And, and, I'll destroy all my manuscripts and everything I write, every letter...except for 6 signatures -- none of which match the spelling of the other five!" Then the kid next to him helps out -- "Yeah. Great prank idea Billy! And you should make 3 of signatures be by law clerks and the 3 really bad ones will be yours! Ha! That'll have people debating for centuries!"

[@johntaplin3126]

@@apollocobain8363 You have a wonderful imagination. Perhaps you should write this as a novel or film script, if Anonymous was a turned into a film, surely ClapTrapp would go down a storm!

[@rexgordon328]

Answer to the headline: Don’t be ridiculous. His birth and death are duly recorded in records, he is remembered and attested to by dozens of contemporaries, he married, had three children, testified as a witness in various civil suits, bought up land and properties all over the Stratford area, wrote his own will in his own hand, submitted his father’s application for a coat of arms in his own hand, and followed a profession exclusively for men in his time. We have too few years in any given lifetime to waste more than these sixty seconds on silly stuff like this. 😉

[@hardwoodthought1213]

None of what you’ve described proves the man in questions wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. You’ve just listed biographical information of a man called William Shakespeare from Stafford. Why are there no mentions in his will of any books or manuscripts? Why were his 2 surviving daughters illiterate? Why are the 6 signatures we have from Shakespeare indicative that he himself was illiterate? Where did someone with a basic grammar school education obtain advanced knowledge of foreign countries, royal affairs, legal terminology and processes? Why were there no obituaries praising the works of the greatest poet of the age and maybe all time, when almost every other writer from the period were given them in spades? Why in the first folio is the engraving/portrait of Shakespeare so problematic? There are dozens of examples of writers in Shakespeares own time questioning the authorship, making only vague reference to the identity, using pseudonyms and anonymous publishing. Why were his most renowned comedies published in the period after his son’s death? There are far more examples. I don’t have an alternative author I’m convinced was the actual writer, but to say it’s undoubtedly that ‘shake-scene’ from Stafford-Upon-Avon is ridiculous and closed minded.

[@apollocobain8363]

There is nothing in "his own hand" except a couple shaky signatures and the words "by me". Whoever told that Stratford wrote the coat of arms application is completely wrong. Contemporaries never referred to the man from Stratford as a writer, let alone THE writer. You have been misinformed -- demand a refund.

[@Nullifidian]

@@hardwoodthought1213 Shakespeare didn't own his theatrical manuscripts. The theatrical manuscripts were held by the theatre companies for which they were written. There was no authorial copyright in this era, nor was there any economic value to manuscripts. You're assuming facts about the early modern period that are just not supported by history. As for his books, say he didn't have any in Stratford in 1616. Does that prove he never had any in London prior to 1613? Also, wills are not and have never been documents in which to record every piece of property that the testator dies possessed of. That's what an inventory is for. So at best, all we can say is that there are no books mentioned in Shakespeare's will because if they existed he didn't care to bequeath them to anyone but his residuary legatees, Dr. John and Susanna Hall, his son-in-law and eldest daughter. In 15 extant wills left by playwrights in the early modern period, only 3 contain bequests of books (c.f. _Playhouse Wills: 1558 - 1642_ by E. A. J. Honigmann and Susan Brock), so not mentioning books was standard. There is no evidence to show that his two daughters were illiterate, and his eldest daughter left two signatures in a well-formed Italic hand, was capable of describing a book to a prospective buyer even though it was in Latin, and was praised as being learned above her sex. Signatures are presumptive evidence for literacy, which is the ability to read and write. The idea that you can diagnose an inability to write from a signature is a contradiction in terms. Also, you may not be aware that Shakespeare's signatures are in a completely different script from the one we're used to. If you're trying to read them as cursive, then obviously that's not going to work because they're not in cursive. They're not even in Italic hand, which was the predecessor to cursive. They're in secretary hand, which is based on the old-fashioned black letter script, and it takes training to be able to read it. You can't just eyeball it and think you've discovered that Shakespeare was illiterate. And if you compare his signatures to the name "Shakespeare" in other secretary hands, like in John Manningham's diary, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference. There were NO OBITUARIES for other writers in Shakespeare's era because there were no newspapers! You might as well ask why there were no Tweets or Facebook posts from his contemporaries expressing their sadness at his death. What they did have at the time were elegies, poetic expressions of sorrow at death, and Shakespeare was the subject of one of the most popular elegies of the age, "On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare He Dyed Aprill 1616" by William Basse, to give its title in at least one manuscript copy. So the claim that Shakespeare's death went unnoticed is false, but even if it had gone unnoticed that would not be surprising because the most eulogized authors are the ones who people knew were dead, namely the ones who had active careers up until the day they died in the capital city of London. Shakespeare retired to Stratford, 100 miles away from London, three years before his death, so it would have taken ages for people to learn about it. Even some of the died-in-London writers were not known to have died by everyone. There's a ballad calling on writers of the era to pen eulogies for Elizabeth's death, and one of the writers called on was Robert Greene,. who had died in 1592, eleven years before Elizabeth's death. There's nothing problematic about the engraving of Shakespeare. It's a remarkably good effort considering that Martin Droeshout was almost certainly not working from life, and the errors that are in the engraving are typical of his other work. (Personally, I think he was probably basing his engraving on the Chandos portrait.) I can show you considerably worse portraits, like the one by Thomas Cockson adorning John Taylor's 1630 edition of his collected poetry. There are _no examples_ of writers of Shakespeare's era questioning his authorship. What there are are texts that anti-Shakespearians have ripped out of context, assumed for no good reason that Shakespeare was the subject of the discussion, (because to them nobody could possibly have been talking about anyone else in this era, such is the height of their inverted Bardolatry), and twisted into a pretzel until they affirm something that none of the authors would recognize as their own opinion. What the anti-Shakespearians have _never_ come up with is someone from the period saying explicitly, "I think that William Shakespeare did not write his works" or opining that they were the works of any other writer. Your last objection is just bizarre. Why the hell should it matter if his comedies were published after his son's death or not? Most of his comedies are first printed in the First Folio, so the reason why they were printed after his son's death is because nobody had ever before printed them prior to then. Of the 19 canonical plays published in quarto prior to the First Folio, only _five_ are comedies: _Love's Labour's Lost_ , _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , _The Merchant of Venice_ , _Much Ado About Nothing_ , and _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ . What are you even trying to get at? And it's not "ridiculous and closed-minded" to say that William Shakespeare wrote his own works. It's the only position for which there is _any_ documentary and testimonial evidence whatsoever.

[@rexgordon328]

@@apollocobain8363 Your comment is totally ignorant of a mountain of facts. Thanks for taking the time to reply, though, however condescendingly.

[@ferdinandthecrow]

Anti-vaxxers are right & Winkler should be proud to be associated with them. If she does as much work on THAT issue as she has on this one, she may end up agreeing...

[@goodlookinouthomie1757]

Covid vaccine skeptics are not anti-vaxxers. That in itself is a regime dogma.

[@christopherwall444]

Ok old man

[@ferdinandthecrow]

Thank GOD! My world view was formed in the Vietnam/Watergate era & every day I'm grateful for that

[@christopherwall444]

@ferdinandthecrow discussion here is about Shakespeare and authorship..but somehow your desperate passion about vaccines forced its way in...your opinion about vaccines is here noted .✔️...now..back to Shakespeare and authorship topic

[@ferdinandthecrow]

If you can't handle a wide-ranging discussion you don't have to be on here. The point is, Winkler has been compared to "anti-vaxxers" when that may not be the worst thing to be compared to. SHE brought up the analogy between that & Stratford denialism, not me.

[@LuciferFitzgeraldChrist]

Elizabeth co-wrote the plays with her son. so....sort of true.