Shahan to Shermer

[art]

---------------------------------------
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/page/6/

Shahan’s letter to Shermer, the skeptic
August 2, 2009

On July 24, 2009, John Shahan, Chairman of the Shakespeare Authorship
Coalition, sent this letter to the editor in reply to Michael
Shermer’s column, “Shakespeare, Interrupted,” in the August 2009 issue
of Scientific American: <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?
id=skeptics-take-on-the-life>

Shahan wrote:

As a skeptic myself, I usually agree with Michael Shermer, but not on
the Shakespeare authorship question. On that issue, I find Mr.
Skeptic’s position oddly credulous. Shermer objects to Justice John
Paul Stevens’ declaration in the WSJ that “the evidence that
(Shakspere of Stratford) was not the author is beyond a reasonable
doubt.” To hear Shermer tell it, one would think that Justice Stevens
is the first and only authorship doubter to serve on the Supreme
Court. On the contrary, others include Justices Scalia, O’Connor,
Blackmun and Powell, as the WSJ article noted. Only two current
Justices (Breyer and Kennedy) openly support the Stratford man.

Other prominent doubters include Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, William and Henry James, Charles Dickens, John Galsworthy,
Sigmund Freud, and Shakespearean actors Orson Welles, Sir John
Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi, Michael York, Jeremy Irons and Mark
Rylance. Over 1.500 people, including nearly 300 current and former
faculty members, many of them scientists, have signed the Declaration
of Reasonable Doubt (www.DoubtAboutWill.org/declaration). How ironic
that Shermer, the professional skeptic, rejects out of hand the
informed skepticism of five U.S. Supreme Court Justices and so many
other prominent, well-educated people.

Orthodox scholars say there’s ”no room for doubt” about the author.
They use this false claim to stigmatize and suppress the issue in
academia. It is a taboo subject. This is wrong. The authorship issue
doesn’t belong in the same category as teaching intelligent design
alongside evolution. It should be regarded as a legitimate issue.
That’s what the Declaration is about.

Shahan sent this email to Skeptic Editor Michael Shermer on July 28

(The presentation has been edited for ease of reading. Ed.)

Dear Michael,

Naturally I am very disappointed in your column, “Shakespeare,
Interrupted,” in Scientific American. I had the impression that you
were receptive to Oxford’s candidacy; evidently not. I don’t know how
I got on the wrong side of you and Frank (Sulloway, author of Born to
Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives, Ed.) I think
of myself, first and foremost, as a scientist. It’s all those English
professors who are not. I think highly of you, or I wouldn’t have
approached you in the first place. I based my strategy partly on my
reading of Born to Rebel, which analyzes how paradigm shifts take
place. In 2002, I reviewed it for The Oxfordian. I wrote and presented
a paper based on it in New York and Carmel in which I proposed the
Declaration strategy. How ironic that you, of all people, would now be
attacking me in Scientific American. If I thought you understood, I
would take it to heart; but I don’t think you do understand. Sorry
this email is so long. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t bother to address
your issues, but I’ve tried to do so in some detail.

Can a theory be discredited before being replaced?

You say that, “reasonable doubt should not cost an author his claim,
at least not if we treat history as a science instead of as a legal
debate,” and also that ”In science, a reigning theory is presumed
provisionally true and continues to hold sway unless and until a
challenging theory explains the current data as well, and also
accounts for anomalies that the prevailing one cannot.” To the extent
that this refers to Justice Stevens, he said “beyond” a reasonable
doubt and did name a challenger whose claim he sees as superior — that
of the seventeenth earl of Oxford.

Judges deal with questions of evidence, including scientific evidence,
and that is what Stevens’ opinion is based on. He says the reigning
theory should be overturned. You may disagree, but he never said that
he thinks Shakspere’s claim should fall based merely on “reasonable
doubt.” If writing the works were a crime, there wouldn’t be enough
evidence to convict Shakspere beyond a reasonable doubt; but the earl
of Oxford could probably be convicted. Stevens is qualified to make
that judgment. He has followed the controversy for twenty years since
participating in a moot court trial. He has a perfect right to speak
out.

To the extent that it refers to me, I have never said that the
reigning theory should be overturned based on reasonable doubt, and
the Declaration doesn’t say that either. Its stated purpose is to
legitimize the issue in academia by calling attention to problems with
the case for Shakspere. Is it not a legitimate part of the scientific
process to call attention to “anomalies” that don’t fit the reigning
paradigm? That’s all we have done, and all we’ve ever claimed to have
done. Your comment suggests otherwise.

If the issue is legitimized, and scholars turn their attention to it,
I have little doubt about who will emerge as the author; but of course
it depends entirely on the evidence. Speaking of evidence, I am
perfectly willing to have a neutral panel of scientists rule on
authorship-related issues within their area of expertise. That’s why I
came to you. You weren’t interested. I am still willing. It’s the
orthodox Shakespeare establishment that doesn’t want a neutral,
objective panel of scientific experts ruling on the merits.

The reason why I focused first on Shakspere isn’t because the case for
Oxford is weak; rather, it’s a huge circumstantial case that’s much
more difficult to communicate. The orthodox distract attention from
the case for Oxford by claiming there is “no room for doubt” about
Shakspere. They’re correct that this question logically comes first.
If there’s no room for doubt about him, then there’s no point wasting
time considering anyone else. That has been their position, so it’s
perfectly legitimate to challenge it. They use their ‘no room for
doubt’ claim to delegitimize and suppress the issue, making it a taboo
subject in academia. Thus the need to point out the reasons for doubt.
Pointing out anomalies in a reigning paradigm is a perfectly
legitimate part of the scientific process. There is no requirement
that every article aim to overturn a paradigm.

You say, “we should grant that Shakespeare wrote the plays unless and
until the anti-Stratfordians can make their case for a challenger who
fits more of the literary and historical data.” I respectfully
disagree. We should grant that Shakespeare wrote the plays unless and
until someone makes a compelling evidentiary case that he didn’t.
Proving that someone else did is one way to prove he didn’t, but not
the only way. It’s possible to prove a thing didn’t happen one way
without knowing how it did happen.

Your formulation is descriptive of how science normally proceeds, but
there is no “iron law of science” that says one must accept a reigning
paradigm until it is replaced. There is no reason why an existing
theory cannot be thoroughly discredited, based on evidence, without
necessarily knowing what alternative will end up taking its place.
Science does not advance only by all-or-nothing leaps from one theory
to another. The “anomalies” that you mention can accumulate until an
existing theory is rendered untenable before anything takes its place.
I doubt that either Thomas Kuhn, or your buddy Frank (Sulloway), would
agree that a theory cannot be discredited before being replaced.
The naked emperor

What you seem to be saying is this: ”How dare you point out that the
emperor isn’t wearing any clothes until you have the power to place a
new emperor on the throne!” Well, at some point the emperor’s
nakedness is just too obvious to ignore. It may not be polite to point
out that the emperor is naked, and some will prefer not to notice; but
sometimes the best way to bring about change is to call attention to
all of the anomalies that don’t fit the reigning theory at once, and
make them clear to everyone.

That’s what we’ve tried to do with the Declaration of Reasonable
Doubt, and I think we’re succeeding. The reference to “reasonable
doubt” is deliberate understatement. Justice Stevens recognized it as
such, and felt compelled to make an even stronger statement. He knows
a naked emperor when he sees one, and would say no less. You may not
agree that the emperor is naked, based on your reading of the
evidence, but there’s no rule in science against us presenting our
case that we think he is.

Scott McCrea on Shakespeare’s education

I was not impressed with Scott McCrea’s article in Skeptic. His book
was reviewed negatively by Richard Whalen in the Shakespeare Oxford
Newsletter (Vol. 41, No. 4, Fall 2005), and so I never read it. The
premise of (McCrea’s) article that Oxford, unlike Shakspere, did not
get a grammar school education is incorrect. Robin Fox, University
Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University, points out in his
forthcoming article, “Shakespeare’s Education: The Grammar School
Reconsidered” (The Oxfordian, Vol. XI, 2009), that everyone who got an
education at the time, from the king down, had the same grammar school
curriculum, and used the same texts. That includes Edward de Vere.
McCrea makes much of the fact that Shakespeare seems to have been
familiar with Lily’s grammar of 1557. Oxford was age seven in 1557,
and almost surely studied it. Fox is one of the most widely-read
anthropologists in the world. He grew up in Yorkshire during the
1930s, and attended the modern-day descendent of a grammar school. He
writes as follows:

“… the education of royalty and nobility was not simply modeled on the
Grammar School, it was for at least the foundational years the same in
all its details. Edward de Vere, after his father’s death, was the
ward of the same William Cecil who was at the heart of the group of
St. John’s men who formed the education of Prince Edward. Cox, the
[future king's] first tutor, had drawn up the Eton curriculum, which
he then followed. Can it be doubted that Oxford’s education then
followed the same pattern? He was raised in the household first of
Sir Thomas Smith … a remarkable man of learning and diplomacy, and,
among other things, Provost of Eton. Between Smith and Cecil then,
Oxford would have received no less an education than did Prince
Edward, and no less on the Grammar School model – particularly that of
Eton. This would mean that Oxford too would have been drilled in his
accidence, and from the authorized grammar of William Lily.”

To read McCrea’s article, one would think that Oxford’s education
began at age eight, when he matriculated at Cambridge. What does he
think Oxford was doing until then? There is nothing about the evidence
of Shakespeare’s familiarity with grammar school texts that can’t be
explained just as easily by Oxford’s authorship of all the plays.

Fox’s article points out that (Oxford’s grandfather, the fifteenth
earl) was instrumental in the founding of the grammar school at his
ancestral seat of Earls Colne and (Oxford) was involved with its
affairs.

You say that, “de Vere’s partisans exalt his education at both the
University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford and believe that
the plays could only have been penned by someone of such erudition.”
You give no quote. I doubt you can find a recent one. JT Looney never
said that the author must have been “university-educated.” You and
McCrea seem ignorant of the fact that Oxford did not spend much time
at Oxford or Cambridge University. Both of the degrees he received
from them were honorary. Stratfordian Alan Nelson made much of this,
trying to claim that Oxford was not really very well educated; but
this will not fly. As a nobleman, he had outstanding tutors. A dearth
of university references in the plays is hardly disqualifying. Oxford
was educated first in rural Essex, and then mainly at the home of
William Cecil and at Court. You Strats can’t have it both ways. If
you’re going to argue he didn’t spend much time at Oxford and
Cambridge, you can’t then expect them to be reflected in the works.

Gray’s Inn

Interestingly, McCrea has nothing to say about the one school where we
have reason to believe Oxford did spend time. He enrolled at Gray’s
Inn, where he studied law. Scholars have long known that Shakespeare
was steeped in the law. One reason so many anti-Stratfordians are
lawyers is they recognize the Bard as one of their own. Sir George
Greenwood, a distinguished lawyer and MP, analyzed his use of legal
terms and metaphors in great detail, convincing Mark Twain that he had
to be a lawyer. Stratfordians claim that his knowledge of law is
imperfect, and no more than he could have gotten out of books. Mark
Alexander demonstrated that this clearly is not so in his article,
“Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Law: A Journey through the History of the
Argument” (The Oxfordian, IV, 2001, 51-121). (Alexander) says that
Shakespeare never makes a mistake in his use of legal terms and
metaphors. Those who claim otherwise are always in error.
Nevertheless, Alexander concludes that, “What distinguishes
Shakespeare’s use of legal terms has nothing to do with the quantity
of terms he uses, or his mere technical accuracy in legal matters:
Shakespeare had a wide-ranging legal understanding integrated into his
consciousness, the kind of consciousness that would draw on legal
terms in non-legal contexts, where the apt legal metaphor of excellent
understanding and quality is applied (111).

” There is no evidence Shakspere had legal training, and even McCrea,
apparently, has not tried to argue that he did. Strange that he would
omit that from an article on how the educational backgrounds of
different claimants are reflected in the works. Perhaps it is dealt
with in his book?
Romans

McCrea says, “Shakespeare’s borrowing from minor Roman writers comes
exclusively from school texts and books of Latin adages and fragments
young grammarians were forced to memorize. What’s interesting is he
doesn’t stray far beyond these writers …” This is not true. He was
very widely-read in the Latin classics, and not only English
translations. The Roman history plays are based largely on the Amyott
(French) translation of Plutarch’s Lives, which was not in the grammar
school curriculum. An extant record in Lord Burghley’s papers shows
that a copy of it was purchased specifically for Oxford, at his
request (and also a Geneva Bible), when he was twenty. Nobody knows
how Shakspere could have obtained a copy, or how he could have read it
even if he did (despite McCrea’s fantastic speculations that he
learned French).
Ovid

McCrea gives short shrift to Ovid, merely noting that, “The most
prominent of the [Latin poets Shakespeare borrowed from] was Ovid,
many of whose works the author knew, and whose Metamorphoses, the
Elizabethan classroom favorite, was routinely studied alongside the
Golding translation (1567).” Shakespeare’s knowledge and use of the
Metamorphoses requires a better explanation than that.

Ovid is universally recognized as Shakespeare’s single most important
source. He did not just know “many” of the works, as McCrea puts it.
He knew all fifteen books of the Metamorphoses like the back of his
hand. He used every one of them somewhere in the plays, and every one
of the plays makes extensive use of them. Furthermore, Shakespeare
clearly knew them not only in the Golding translation, but also in the
original Latin.

Being part of the grammar school curriculum hardly accounts for the
extent of Shakespeare’s knowledge. Oxford, on the other hand, was the
nephew of Arthur Golding, and they both lived in Burghley’s household
(300 people, regarded as one of the finest colleges in all of Europe)
when the Golding translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was produced.
Some evidence suggests that Oxford was probably involved in the work
of translation. Golding dedicated one of the volumes to his 16-year-
old nephew (Oxford).
Greek

McCrea says there’s, “no evidence the author knew the (Greek)
language.” This is false. He clearly had knowledge of the Greek
classics, and used them in the plays; this despite the fact that most
had not yet been translated into English. Oxford would have learned
Greek not at Cambridge, but from his childhood tutor, Sir Thomas
Smith, an outstanding Greek scholar. See, for example, the article,
“Shakespeare’s Lesse Greek,” by Andrew Werth at Washington State
University (The Oxfordian, Vol. 5, 2002, 11-29). The allegation by Ben
Jonson in the prefatory matter to the First Folio that Shakespeare had
”small Latin and lesse Greek” is highly misleading.
Italy

McCrea has a hard time explaining how the author knew the plots of
plays written in Italian, which hadn’t yet been translated into
English. This is no problem for Oxford, who clearly knew Italian and
spent much time in Italy. McCrea never considers why the author was so
enamored of Italy in the first place, setting numerous plays there.
Several scholars of Italy have demonstrated that the knowledge of
Italy in the plays is so precise that it could only have been known to
someone who had traveled there.

If one looks at a map of all the Italian cities Oxford visited, that’s
where Shakespeare set his plays. None of the plays is set in any of
the major cities Oxford did not visit. When he returned to England, he
set a new trend toward Italian manners, dress and culture at Court,
and was known to foreign diplomats as the “Italianate Englishman.”
French

McCrea says anti-Strats, “have a point when it comes to French,”
because “The Bard writes in that language in Henry V and The Merry
Wives of Windsor and scatters Gallic words and phrases throughout the
Canon.” We know that Oxford studied French daily at Cecil House, and
his earliest extant letter, at age 13, is in perfect French.

“But,” McCrea says, “William Shakespeare didn’t need to go to
university to pick up the tongue.” Rather, “In the mid-1590s … he
lived in the same ward that was home to “Petty France” (the French
district), and could hardly have avoided them.” So in his early
thirties, along with everything else he was allegedly doing — acting
regularly, managing a theatre company, writing plays at a furious
pace, keeping tabs on business affairs and family in Stratford,
preparing to purchase New Place, we are told that he just couldn’t
help bumping into Frenchmen who lived “in the same ward” and learning
the language so well that he dropped words in “throughout the Canon,”
and was able to include convincing dialogue among members of the
French royal family in Henry V — embellishments, jokes, obscenities
and all — almost as if he had been there. Do you find this credible?
McCrea notes that Shakspere lived with the Mountjoys from 1602-4, but
Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor were written by 1599. Oops!

Shermer’s bias and lack of information

You point out that Shakspere’s father was ”middle-class” by Stratford
standards, ignoring the fact that both of his parents, and also both
of his daughters, were illiterate. That is highly relevant when
talking about the developmental years of a literary creative genius.
He grew up in an illiterate household! and never educated his
daughters! What literary genius, while portraying women as well-
educated in his plays, would neglect to teach his daughters to write,
and leave no money for education in his will?

You say that, “Some anti-Stratfordians question Shakespeare’s
existence.” I have never encountered any such person, nor have I ever
seen anything like that in writing. Can you cite an example? If any
such persons exist, they are not representative. Any theory has a
right to be judged by the best arguments of its strongest proponents.

You say that, “the number of references to him from his own time [to
Mr. Shakspere of Stratford, or to the author Shakespeare, whoever he
was, and how do you know?] could only be accounted for by a playwright
of that name (unless de Vere used Shakespeare as a nom de plume, for
which there is zero evidence).” Actually, all it would take would be
one clear reference to Shakspere as the author anytime before 1616 to
put the authorship controversy to rest. Here’s your big chance.

You seem unaware that George Puttenham, in The Art of English Poesie,
named Oxford first on a list of courtiers who wrote well, but suffered
it to be published without their own names to it. Puttenham clearly
implied that Oxford was an outstanding poet, who, due to his position
in life, published anonymously, or under pseudonyms.

Shurink

You also seem unaware that Fred Shurink of the University of Newcastle
Upon Tyne turned up clear evidence in 2006 that ”Shakespeare” was seen
as a pseudonym at the time of the First Folio. Shurink, a confirmed
Stratfordian, noticed oddities in references to Shakespeare in Thomas
Vicars’ manual of rhetoric, published in three different editions in
the 1620s. In the 1624 edition he lists four outstanding English
writers, omitting Shakespeare. In the 1628 edition, he included the
following correction: “To these I believe should be added that famous
poet who takes his name from ‘shaking’ and ‘spear,’ …” The odd format
of this reference implies that the name was seen as a made-up or pen
name.

The explanation offered is that Vicars knew the Stratford man wasn’t
the author, and didn’t want to imply acceptance of him in the first
edition of 1624, so he left him out. But by the time he published the
1628 edition, he had figured out a way to include a reference to
Shakespeare — in a way that would signal the name was a pseudonym
(Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, Vol. 44: No. 1, Spring 2008). The fact
that the name was often hyphenated on the works also strongly implies
that it was a pseudonym.

There is also the evidence of the Sonnets. The author himself says
that he does not expect his name to be remembered (#81), does not want
it to be remembered (#72), and that the Youth shouldn’t be seen to
mourn for him after he dies (#71). None of this makes any sense,
unless the author’s true identity was not yet known at the time.

Diana Price

You say that “although Shakespeare skeptics note that there are no
manuscripts, receipts, diaries or letters from [Shakspere or
Shakespeare, either one], they neglect to mention that we have none of
these for Marlowe, either.” It is simply untrue that we’ve neglected
to compare the evidence of a literary background between Shakspere and
other writers of his time, including Marlowe. That’s one of the main
things that Diana Price did in her book, Shakespeare’s Unorthodox
Biography (Greenwood Press, 2001). Apparently you haven’t read it.

It’s orthodox scholars who never bothered to systematically compare
the kinds of literary evidence extant for all of the writers of the
period. Price found that Shakspere was the only one of twenty-five
writers of the time for whom she could find none of ten different
kinds of evidence suggesting a literary career. He is an extreme
outlier in this sense.

Marlowe’s situation was very different from Shakspere’s. He died
young, unmarried, disgraced, murdered, and an accused atheist. Who
would have kept his papers? Why? Shakespeare was supposedly the “soul
of the age!” His acting company became the “King’s Men” at the Court
of King James I. He divided his time between London and Stratford — a
situation conducive to correspondence — and his home remained in his
family for generations after he died. He retired to Stratford in his
late-forties, resting on his laurels, supposedly famous.

Surely someone to whom he wrote should have kept one letter. Other
letters survived. There are records of people being interested in his
son-in-law’s medical records, and purchasing them, apparently without
ever inquiring about any papers of Shakspere’s.

Trevor-Roper

You prefer the views of a theater professor to those of a Supreme
Court Justice, but what about the views of a top Oxford historian
about what we should expect to find? As stated in the Declaration,
”Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University,
found Shakespeare’s elusiveness ‘exasperating and almost incredible …
After all, he lived in the full daylight of the English Renaissance in
the well-documented reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, and …
since his death has been subjected to the greatest battery of
organised research that has ever been directed upon a single person.
And yet the greatest of all Englishmen, after this tremendous
inquisition, still remains so close to a mystery that even his
identity can still be doubted.’” (“What’s in a Name?” Réalités,
November 1962.)

Trevor-Roper was the British intelligence officer who tracked Hitler
during WWII, and wrote the highly-acclaimed book, The Last Days of
Hitler. I have much more respect for his views than McCrea’s.

Spawned from the same germ

Now let’s look at another of McCrea’s basic premises. He claims that,
“…all versions of the true author were spawned from the same germinal
belief in the inadequacy of Shakespeare’s education,” This is false.
It’s just a cheap magician’s trick to make all of the other kinds of
evidence disappear so that he does not have to deal with them. Reading
his article, he never names, much less quotes, any Oxfordian since
Looney, who published his book in 1920. McCrea gives no indication of
having read Looney.

Looney had never heard of Oxford when he developed his profile of the
author, using deductive logic to infer his characteristics from the
works. He came up with eighteen characteristics of the author, only
one of which relates to education. One thing he did not claim about
the author’s education is that he necessarily attended a university!

McCrea ignores all of the other traits that Looney deduced from the
works, all eighteen of which fell instantly into place as soon as he
discovered Oxford for the first time.

Looney’s book is, for its time, a masterpiece of empirical methods.
Mortimer Adler, series editor of the Great Books Series, said it was
one of the best books of the 20th century. You should read it before
jumping to conclusions based on McCrea. The reasons for doubting
Shakspere go way beyond just education. McCrea ignores everything
else. He seems stuck in a time warp, pretending Oxfordians have made
no progress in almost ninety years, so he can just stereotype us, and
then attack his own stereotype.

Simonton

The current issue of the Mensa Research Journal contains an article
titled, “Shakespeare’s small Latin and less Greek: Scientific
perspectives on education, achieved eminence, and the authorship
controversy,” by Dean Keith Simonton, Distinguished Professor of
Psychology at the University of California at Davis (Vol. 40(2), 2009,
22-26). Simonton is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on
creativity and genius. He’s a member of my academic advisory board,
and wrote the article at my request. After reviewing the evidence, he
wrote the following conclusion, the first part of which supports your
position, but the second part of which poses major problems for you:

On the Stratfordian side, high levels of formal education and
exceptional scholastic success are by no means required for
extraordinary achievement as a creative writer, and especially not as
a poet. Certainly a college degree is not a requisite. Indeed, in the
arts and humanities a college degree is predictive of less success. To
be sure, some college education is generally better than none at all,
but this does not mean that someone with only a high school degree
cannot reach the highest ranks. In fact, for the creators in the Cox
(1926) sample, those with just high school were better off than those
with master’s or doctoral degrees (Simonton, 1983). Hence, the fact
that Shakspere seems not to have gone to Cambridge or Oxford tells us
very little according to these results. The only real question is
whether he obtained a sufficiently good education at the grammar
school, and the answer to this issue will probably never be known with
confidence.

On the anti-Stratfordian side, any dearth of formal training
should be compensated by considerable self education. Not only are
creative writers unusually prone to be omnivorous and voracious
readers, but the amount of that reading is positively associated with
achieved eminence. And this stipulation is the crux of the matter. The
fact is that we have no direct evidence whatsoever that the Stratford
man was a man of letters. Not one letter that he wrote, nor any book
that he owned or read, has ever been found. Not one thing about
Shakspere’s will suggests that it was written by a man who had lived
the life of a writer, much less the writer Shakespeare. His own
children were illiterate, a surprising outcome if Shakspere was
spending numerous hours reading the historical and literary works that
underlie his plays and poems. Worse, one has to wonder whether even
the best education available at the local grammar school would suffice
for the man to become as well-read as he needed to be. Shakespeare
betrays considerable competence in modern languages, including French,
and especially Italian. To become broadly read outside English and
Latin literature may not have been possible given the grammar school
training most likely offered at the Stratford of Shakspere’s youth.

Omnivorous Oxford

Right, this is the crux of the matter, not whether Shakspere may have
attended Stratford’s grammar school. Oxford was apparently an
omnivorous and voracious reader. He was a patron of writers, musicians
and artists, who held him in the highest regard. Twenty-five works
were dedicated to him, some praising his literary achievements. No
work was dedicated to Shakespeare.

How likely is it that Shakspere became a voracious reader in
childhood, before entering grammar school, with illiterate parents?
Early childhood education is very important to the development of a
literary creative genius, and Shakspere did not live in an environment
conducive to such development. But as the Declaration says, ”This is
not to say that a commoner, even in the rigid, hierarchical social
structure of Elizabethan England, could not have managed to do it
somehow; but how could it have happened without leaving a single
trace? Orthodox scholars attribute the miracle to his innate “genius,”
but even a genius must acquire knowledge … Academic experts on
characteristics of geniuses see little reason to think that Mr.
Shakspere was a genius.” Simonton is one of the “experts” referred to.

Attached is a book review [see SO Newsletter, Vol. 37, No. 3, Fall
2001, 13] of Simonton’s Origins of Genius, Darwinian Perspectives on
Creativity (Oxford University Press, 1999), focusing on implications
for authorship. The book spells out in detail the developmental
characteristics that one would expect to find in a literary creative
genius. The review first describes these characteristics, and then
examines the extent to which each applies to Oxford and Shakspere.
Oxford clearly has all of them, and he has them in spades.

Shakspere has none of them. The results of Simonton’s work on genius
couldn’t point more strongly toward Oxford, or away from Shakspere. I
expect that you will find it both interesting, and relevant. Seen in
this context, whether or not Shakspere attended grammar school seems
like a red herring. What about all the other prerequisites to the
development of genius? It’s easy to frame an issue such that only
one’s own research paradigm seems relevant. That’s typical of
academics who see only through the lens of the own discipline.

I will also send you separately a copy of the article, “Shakespeare in
Stratford and London: Ten Eyewitnesses Who Saw Nothing,” by Ramon
Jiménez (Shakespeare Oxford Society Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology,
1957-2007, 74-85). It is one very important article. If Shakespeare
were really the author, it could not have been written. These are
examples of the solid academic research that backs up everything we
say in the Declaration.

If you are still interested in sponsoring a debate, I suggest that it
be between Scott McCrea, and Oxfordian Mark Anderson, author of
“Shakespeare” by Another Name. I’m still willing to help bring that
about, and will welcome your involvement if you can put in the time to
become well-informed.

Stick to what you know

Otherwise, please stick to what you know. You make wonderful
contributions when you have done your homework; but a little knowledge
is a dangerous thing, especially when it is mostly on one side of an
issue.

Note: Prof. Simonton’s article in the current issue of the Mensa
Research Journal is available by subscription or purchase. The Mensa
Research Journal website is at:
http://www.mensafoundation.org/Sites/foundation/NavigationMenu/Publications/Journal/Currentissue/CurrentIssue.htm
----------------------------------------------------