Notes Toward a Critique of Diana Price's Book
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
fascinating book. I've even read it all the way through twice,
writing notes on its pages as I did so, and I've reread many pages of
it since. In my own book on the authorship controversy, I mentioned
it a number of times, devotiong 16 pages to its bizarre method of
evaluating evidence in an appendix to the first edition of my book.
Needless to say, I also argued in many threads here and elsewhere on
the Internet about it. Not being a Crowley, I did find a few of its
arguments reasonable though far from persuasive. But I found the bulk
of them foolish at best, and more often than not incredibly flawed.
Since I'm the sort who enjoys dismantling wacks' theories and believes
it advances the cause of truth to do so, I spent a fair amount of time
getting together a critique of it. But, as happens with too many of
my projects, I got side-tracked, and never got anything of consequence
concerning it done other than the appendix. I've a yearning to give
it another try, though, thanks to the wack who recently claimed that
there was no paper trial for Shakespeare, one of Price's central
delusions. Ergo, I'm beginning this thread as a sort of notebook for
reactions against or indefense of Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography.
I plan to dump all my thoughts about the book into it, a little at a
time, two or three times a week. I hope others will join me.
1. Price becomes an Anti-Stratfordian.
In her introduction, Price "was surprised to find nothing in
Schoenbaum;s William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life "to prove
that Shakespeare had written any plays. Prior to that she claims, as
so many wacks do, that she had always taken it for granted that Will
wrote the plays attributed to him--until she investigated the matter.
This may be the truth, but I've heard that her father was an
Oxfordian. What establishes Price on her very first page as a
probable propagandist, however, is that she claims not to have found
anything in Schoenbaum's book that PROVED rather than established
beyond reasonable doubt that Shakespeare was a playwright. The latter
is all that historical data can ever do, but Price wants her readers
thinking something is wrong with the case for Shakespeare if it can't
be proven that he was a playwright.
In the paragraph she writes immediately after the one in which she
tells about Shoenbaum's book, Price begins lying. "Fact after fact
stopped me in my tracks," she says. "No biography could account for
Shakespeare's education. His own children grew up functionally
illiterate. Shakespeare retired to an illiterate household at the
height of his presumed literary powers. He worte nothing during the
last several years of his life. He left behind dozens of biographical
records, but unlike those surviving for other writers of the day, not
one of them suggests literary activity."
Okay, when I accuse Price of "lying," I may be exaggerating. She is
doing two things: (1) asserting something as a truth that is not a
truth or (2) asserting something out of historical context as a truth
with no simple explanation that has a simple explanation when
considered in its historical context. Call either of these some form
of not-lying if you must, but to me they are lying. When she tells us
"no biography could account for Shakespeare's education," she doesn't
tell us that she is merely telling us that no records exist for his
formal education--NOR for anyone who went to his hometown grammar
school, nor for many others. As a propagandist, she doesn't want the
reader to know the historical context of her statement because she
wants him to fall for what is an implicit lie: that Shakespeare had no
formal education. She is wrong, to boot: I'm sure most, or all, of
the Shakespeare biographies she read DID account for his education by
informing the reader that there was a free grammar school a few
hundred feet from his house where his father, a prosperous businessman
would probably have sent him. The bottom line here is that we don't
know for sure whether Shakespeare was formally educated or not because
of lack of data. Hence, it is a lie to say or suggest either that he
did or did not; one can only say that it is likely that he did (since
his funerary monument said he could write, and he had a documented
acting careeer which strong suggests he could read scripts.
I suspect Price was not "stopped in her tracks" when she found out all
the attendance records of the grammar school Shakespeare probably
attended during his time and for many years before and after that have
disappeared. Time devours records. So, another probable lie.
Very close to a definite lie is her assertion that "his children grew
up functionally illiterate." We have two signatures from one of them,
Susanna, who married a physician and was considered unusually wise (at
least according to her tombstone). One record suggests to some that
she was shown her husband's hadnwriting but failed to recognize it as
his, which Price considers evidence of illiteracy. But it is not.
Furthermore, the likelihood is that she did no more than glance at the
handwriting, if she looked at it, at all. (She was shown a book said
to be her husband's because the man showing it to her recognized its
handwriting as her husband's; she denied the book was by him; that
says nothing about her literacy.) One can certainly reasonably claim
that it's possible Susanna was functionally illiterate, but we lack
sufficient data to assert, as Price does, that she definitely was. To
do that is to lie.
DItto Price's assertion that Shakespeare's household was illiterate.
His father signed with a mark but so did many literate men of the
time, the mark being like a set of initials for them. We know he kept
his town's financial records for several years, which suggests but
does not prove literacy. I think we have no real evidence one way or
the other about his wife's literacy. We do know, however, that Thomas
Greene was a member of Shakespeare's household for a year or more, and
he, a lawyer, was definitely literate. Shakespeare's brother Gilbert
was able to write his name and may have lived with Shakespeare' family
and his parents. So, again, to say Shakespeare's household was
illiterate when its highly possible but not dertain it was not is, for
me, propagandistically lying.
Although Price asserts that Shakespeare "wrote nothing during the last
several years of his life," we have little idea what he did during
those years. We can't even be sure he did retire to Stratford,
although it's fairly certain that he retired from the stage. Most
scholars believe he wrote Henry VIII in 1612, four years or less
before he died. He may have contributed to other plays and/or revised
earlier plays. He may also have left behind unfinished plays. So,
another lie or near-lie, this assertion that Shakespeare wrote nothing
during his latter years--because no one can say with any confidence
that it is true or not. But even if true, so what? Sheridan, a major
English playwright, ended his playriting career at the age of 29.
Rimbaud gave up poetry in his early twenties. Rossini retired from
music (except for a few short pieces) long before he died.
Price's biggest lie in this passage, the one that is to be the lead
lie of her book, is the last one in it, where she claims Shakespeare
left behind not a single record "that suggests literary activity." He
left behind books with his name on their title pages as their author,
but that fails to suggest literary activity to Price. There are a
good many other records from Shakespeare's lifetime that suggest to
the sane that he was a writer, but I'll hold off bringing them up
until we get to the heart of Price's book, which is a brilliantly
clever attempt to discount as evidence of a literary career all
evidence for it that Shakespeare has, validate all evidence that can
be said to indicate a literary career missing from the records of
Shakespeare's life as the only evidence that genuinely counts as
evidence for a literary life.
****
My contributions to this thread will be first-draft level, scattered,
uneven, often badly expressed, sometimes wrong, etc. This is to be a
notebook Responses of others welcome although I may not have time to
reply to them.
--Bob G.
Gary
I don't know, Bob. You may be biting off more than you can
chew. From what I recall of the book, Diana Price
conclusively demonstrates that if we exclude the evidence we
have that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, then we have no
evidence that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. And I, for
one, wouldn't want to argue with her.
- Gary
art
Gary <g...@nomorespam.com> wrote:
>
> I don't know, Bob. You may be biting off more than you
> can *CHEW*. I, for one, wouldn't want to argue with her.
I don't blame you a bit, Gary.
--------------------------------------------------------
. Julius Caesar > Act I, scene II
BRUTUS: Till then, my noble friend, *CHEW* upon this:
. Brutus had rather be a villager
. Than to repute himself a son of Rome
. Under these hard conditions as this time
. Is like to lay upon us.
--------------------------------------------------------
. Measure For Measure > Act II, scene IV
ANGELO: Heaven hath my empty words;
. Whilst *MY INVENTION* , hearing not my tongue,
. Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
. As if I did but only *CHEW* his name;
--------------------------------------------------------
. As You Like It > Act IV, scene III
OLIVER: When last the young Orlando parted from you
. He left a PROMISE to return again
. Within an hour, and pacing through the forest,
. *CHEWing* the food of sweet and bitter fancy,
. Lo, what befell!
--------------------------------------------------------
. King Henry V > Act II, scene II
KING HENRY V: If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
. Shall not be WINK'd at, how shall we stretch our eye
. When capital crimes, *CHEW'd* , swallow'd and digested,
. Appear before us? We'll yet enlarge that man,
. Though Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, in their dear care
. And tender preservation of our person,
. Would have him punished.
--------------------------------------------------------
. King Henry IV, part I > Act II, scene II
FALSTAFF: An 'twere not as good a deed as drink,
. to turn *TRUE man* and to leave these rogues,
. I am the VERiEst varlet that EVER *CHEWed*
. with a tooth. Eight yards of uneven ground is
. threescore and ten miles afoot with me; and the
. stony-hearted villains know it well enough: a plague
. upon it when thieves cannot be *TRUE* one to another!
--------------------------------------------------------
. King Henry V > Act IV, scene II
GRANDPRE: Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?
. Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
. Ill-favouredly become the morning field:
. Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
. And our air SHAKES them passing scornfully:
. Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd host
. And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps:
. The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,
. With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades
. Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips,
. The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes
. And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit
. Lies foul with *CHEW'd* grass, still and motionless;
. And their executors, the knavish crows,
. Fly o'er them, all impatient for their hour.
. Description cannot suit itself in words
. To demonstrate the life of such a battle
. In life so lifeless as it shows itself.
--------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Gary
A bit of creative snipping there, Art? Tsk, tsk.
- Gary
art
>
>>>> "Fact after fact stopped me in my tracks," [Price] says.
>>>> "No biography could account for Shakespeare's education.
>>>> His own children grew up functionally illiterate.
>>>> Shakespeare retired to an illiterate household at the height
>>>> of his presumed literary powers. He worte nothing during the
>>>> last several years of his life. He left behind dozens of
>>>> writers of the day, one of them suggests literary activity."
>>>> several years of his life," we have little idea what he did during
>>>> those years. We can't even be sure he did retire to Stratford,
>>>> although it's fairly certain that he retired from the stage.
>
>>>> lie of her book, is the last one in it, where she claims Shakespeare
>>>> left behind not a single record "that suggests literary activity." He
>>>> left behind books with his name on their title pages as their author,
>>>> but that fails to suggest literary activity to Price.
>
>
>>> I don't know, Bob. You may be biting off more than you
>>> can *CHEW*. I, for one, wouldn't want to argue with her.
> art wrote:
>
>> I don't blame you a bit, Gary.
>
> A bit of creative snipping there, Art? Tsk, tsk.
"Time devours records."
Art Neuendorffer
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Aw, Gary, I just started! I need encouragement not truth!
--Bob
art
>> I don't know, Bob.
>> You may be biting off more than you can chew.
"bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net" <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> Aw, Gary, I just started! I need encouragement not truth!
"What' chew talkin' 'bout, Willis?"
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
introduction. How did the country boy Shakespeare, "learn to write
plays from an aristocratic perspective?" she wonders. This, too, is a
form of lie. It is not a given that the plays were written "from an
aristocratic perspective." As we shall see further on in her
paragraph, her actual question is, "Where did Shakespeare learn about
subjects that it would seem aristocrats of the time would be familiar
with but not country bumpkins like he?"--as she would have phrased it
had she been a scholar rather than a propagandist.
To buttress her implied argument, that Shakespeare's cultural
background makes it unlikely he wrote any plays or poems, she would
then, if a scholar, have mentioned some of these subjects AND given
facts supporting her contention that Elizabethan aristocrats would be
much more familiar with them than bumpkins. She doen't here (nor in
the rest of her book as I recall). All she does to support her
baloney is quite Whitman, who thought the plays written "for the
divertisment only of the elite of the castle, and from its point of
view," but Whitman was no historian, and his subjective view is just
his subjective (effusively democratic, philosophically
unsophisticated) view, with no particular weight.
Price DOES go on about the knowledge of falconry the plays of
Shakespeare reveal, quoting a line from Romeo and Juliet, indicating
that the plays' author knew that falconers rleased their birds, then
got them to return to them, which doesn't strike me as very arcane
knowledge. But he also knew a specialized name for a male peregrine.
Wow. "It is unlikely," Price writes, "that the dramatist thumbed
though manuals on falconry just to create metaphors" (such as the one
in what Price quotes from Romeo and Juliet). She thinks--no, STATES--
that those lines and others making use of what she considers to be
aristocratic knowledge, "came from someone to whom the terminology was
second nature, pulled out of the mental stockpile accumulated from the
writer's own experience."
The least a scholar making such an assertion would do is cite
reputable authorities in where creative writers' facts come from to
support her opinion presented as a fact. But you have to be rather
extremely ignorant of how novelists and playwrights work to believe
they don't don't have random clusters of specialized words in their
memory banks. Indeed, writers like words, unsurprisingly enough, and
tend to accumulate many more, from many more varied worlds, than non-
writers--the best to a greater degree than the inferiors.
FLAG: I've just made an assertion as unsupported as Price's. I will
do that often--because I am treating this thread as a basket of
thoughts. In my final critique I will provide some support, I hope,
for all my assertions. In this case allude to Stephen Crane, non-
soldier writing about the war between the states as though he had
fought in it, and all kinds of other writers, such as Sinclair Lewis,
whose "Arrowsmith" is apparently full of information only doctors
would likely know because he had a doctor helping him with it (and who
is to say Shakespeare didn't have all kinds of help, if he'd needed
it?) I will also discuss one modus operandi of the creative
narrative writer--the expert use of small knowledge to suggest full
knowledge of a subject.
Note well, to return to Price's statement that certain specilaized
knowledge in the plays "came from someone to whom the terminology was
second nature, pulled out of the mental stockpile accumulated from the
writer's own experience" the propagandistic way she presents opinions
as fact. No one can possibly know where any given detail in a
writer's output came from. In the case of falconry, scholars--real
scholars--have found that commoners of Shakespeare's time participated
in it. (An assertion that I have backed with citations and quotations
when arguing this here at HLAS, as the archives will show anyone with
enough time to kill to do a search on them. I will provide all needed
support in my final draft.)
That's it for the second meaningful installment in this thread.
Interesting that no anti-Stratfordian has jumped in to contest my
findings.
--Bob G.
Richard Kennedy
Bob Grumman has the idea that a careful look at the evidence in
Diana’s Price’s book, ‘Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Bigraphy, will shine a
bright light on the worth of her book, but more especially on the
woman’s character, intelligence, and judgment of the sparse facts that
usually make up a biography of those far off times.
To begin with, he is fairly easy on the lady, tossing Ms. Price and
her scholarship aside with a glance at her innate wackiness, something
flawed about her brains.
foolish at best
incredibly flawed
wacks’ theories
Prices’s central delusions
as so many wacks do...
But then Grumman gets onto his best theme. He wants to call Price a
liar, he very badly wants to do that. He knows that calling someone a
liar is faintly faulted somehow, maybe even unlawful, certainly a sort
of slimy thing to do, when the poor object of the offense is merely
working scholarship towards a theory, take it or leave it. However,
Bob has studied history. He knows that if you push a slogan often
enough, get it onto the market, you’re going to find some buyers.
First off, Bob wants us to know that if you call someone a liar, it’s
a matter of research. Grumman has found something different than what
Price has found, and therefore she’s a liar. This is his theme. You’ll
not remember much else about his difference with the lady, or about
the historical facts of the case, but his hope is that you’ll remember
lines such as these.
Price begins lying...
an implicit lie
Hence it is a lie to suggest...
So, another probable lie.
Very close to a definite lie...
To do that is a lie.
propagandistically lying...
So, another lie or near-lie...
Price’s biggest lie in this...
the lead lie of her book...
This, too, is a form of lie.
Bob Grumman is a long-time opponent of everything anti-Stratfordian
and a long time HLAS groupie, once a man worth a discussion and
exchange of theories, but no more, as you see.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Ah, here you are either a liar or an imbecile, Richard--if not both.
Or can you show me one instance of my calling her a liar for
disagreeing with me? She is a liar for the reasons given: that she
says things she cannot know are true, such as when she states that
Shakespeare's daughters were illiterate. I have never stated that
either was literate, only that Susanna probably was, Judith probably
not. Not being a propagandistic (most of the time), my final
statement on the matter is that we lack sufficient evidence to
determine the literacy of either. Price states flatly that they were
illiterate. If that's not lying, what is it?
> This is his theme. You’ll
> not remember much else about his difference with the lady, or about
> the historical facts of the case, but his hope is that you’ll remember
> lines such as these.
>
> Price begins lying...
> an implicit lie
> Hence it is a lie to suggest...
> So, another probable lie.
> Very close to a definite lie...
> To do that is a lie.
> propagandistically lying...
> So, another lie or near-lie...
> Price’s biggest lie in this...
> the lead lie of her book...
> This, too, is a form of lie.
>
> Bob Grumman is a long-time opponent of everything anti-Stratfordian
> and a long time HLAS groupie, once a man worth a discussion and
> exchange of theories, but no more, as you see.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Well, one thing, Richard: Price isn't as much of an imbecile as you
are. But thanks for pointing out in such good detail all the spots in
which I claimed Price lied, or came close to it, and showed that I was
wrong to do so.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
have the necessary background to have written the plays attributed to
him, Price finds it "hard to believe that he developed those resources
(the resources of language the halfwitted bardolator, Harold Bloom,
claims Shakespeare had to a greater degree than any other writer) on
the strength of an incomplete grammar school education." She is not
lying here, merely expressing in incredibly dubious opinion. We don't
know how complete or incomplete his grammar school education was, if
he had one, but that formal education has much to do with a person's
language resources is rather absurd. I'd love to know what kind of
epistemology would lead to that conclusion. Something, perhaps, like
this: the subject sits passively in Good School taking in language
from a teacher and books provided by a teacher? Few would accept my
epistemology, but surely it is superior to that: it is that the
subject is born with a superior brain, over-all, and a superior
linguiceptual awareness (i.e. language center in the brain). His
superior brain compels him to learn as much as he can; his superior
linguiceptual awareness makes language particularly enjoyable for him
to learn about and use, so he tends to specialize in it by reading a
lot (after finding some way to learn to read--and write) and
discussing things with others, and writing, etc.
Many "uneducated" writers seem to have done this: Dickens, Shaw,
Mencken, Hardy, Twain, to name just a few.
At this point in her nonsense, Price comes to her Great Discovery:
"Far from following the fragmentary literary trails in (Shakespeare's)
personal life," she says, "the orthodox biography fails to find ANY
(italics) personal literary fragments. The documents that literary
biographies are based on--academic records, letters, manuscripts,
diaries, and remnants of the person library--simply do not exist for
Shakespeare." Her first statement would be a lie if not for the fact
that she defines "personal literary fragments," as we shall see, as
"literary evidence of a person's being a writer that Shakespeare did
not have."
Shakespeare, according to Price, was no writer, but "a sharp
businessman who would certainly have been willing to turn a profit by
brokering plays or taking credit for their authorship." But there is
no tenable evidence that he brokered any plays or ever took credit for
the authorship of plays he did not write. There IS evidence that he
was a businessman, but much less than there is that he was an actor
and a playwright.
***
I'm contributing to this thread more frequently than I thought I
would. But I expect soon that will change.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
"propagandanalogy." That's an analogy used by a propagandist to try
to persuade the gullible that some X should be accepted because it is
the same as or very similar to some Y that has always been acceptable
when in fact that Y is significantly or intiretly different from the
X. The propagandist, of course, is silent about any differences
between the two. Price comes close to using one on the third page of
her introduction when she says some courtier may have used "William
Shakespeare" as a pen-name. This may seem far-fetched, she tells us,
but tries to get the reader to accept it with the information that pen-
names haven't been that uncommon: Eric Blair and Marian Evans, for
instance, used them. Most authorship wacks mention Samual Clemens,
too. So, an analogy equating some ourtier's use of a pen-name to that
of several known authors doing the same. What's wrong? What's wrong
is that this hypothetical courtier of Price's did not use a pen-name,
he used a front man. That is, this courtier used the name of a man
alive at the time.
Price to a degree escapes lying via propagandanalogy by also bringing
in people like Dalton Trumbo who, during the McCarthy years, got
around the Hollywood blacklist of leftwing writers by writing under an
assumed name. She doesn't say so, but in some cases such writers used
fronts, like her hypothetical courtier. When I was relatively new to
the authorship question, I didn't know that--or knew it but never
remembered it when arguing for Shakespeare. For a year or two I
argued that no one in literary history had used a front the way anti-
Stratfordians said their True Auther, usually Oxford, did. Peter
Farey corrected me. If I were the propagandist that Price is, I would
not have included this paragraph here.
Price tries weakly to provide a motivation for her True Author's
wanting to conceal his identity. It's that an aristocrat would sully
his family name unsalvagably if he had a profession of any kind, like
writing for the public stage, as the True Author, for some unspecified
reason, needed to do. Hence, the front. I will return to this
subject later, when it comes up again in Price's book. Here, I will
just say that I can't understand any noble's giving a damn about being
known to write for the public stage--or having a book of poems
published--although it was okay for a noble to be known as the author
of plays for the court, or privately-circulated poems.
Nonetheless, Price hypothesizes that a courtier was the True Author
(but in the whole of her book never is able to name him). She further
advances the theory "that the man from Stratford exploited the
SIMILARITY (my caps) between his name and the published pen name."
This is a standard dodge of the authorship wacks, this lie that
William Shakespeare of Stratford was not known as "William
Shakespeare." Many documents indicate that he was. True, other
documents have his name spelled differently, and his signatures have
it spelled differently, but minimal research of the times shows that
almost everyone's name had more than one spelling, and many had a half
dozen or more. There are cases in which one man spelled his own name
two different ways on a single document, in fact.
Clearly, Price is trying to insinuate that her True Author was using a
pen-name, not a front. Even if that were true, it helps her only
slightly since there is as little precedent for a person's using a pen-
name that is accidentally the name of a contemporary as there is for
his using a front man.
With that, I'm through with Price's introduction.
I not, by the way, that no one has said anything against anything I've
argued although Richard Kennedy has deplored my bad manners.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> Entry No. 4. Today I have a coinage to
> introduce the world to: "propagandanalogy."
> That's an analogy used by a propagandist to
> try to persuade the gullible that some X
> should be accepted because it is the same as
> or very similar to some Y that has always been
> acceptable when in fact that Y is
> significantly or intiretly different from the
> X. The propagandist, of course, is silent
> about any differences between the two. Price
> comes close to using one on the third page of
> her introduction when she says some courtier
> may have used "William Shakespeare" as a pen-
> name. This may seem far-fetched, she tells
> us, but tries to get the reader to accept it
> with the information that pen-names haven't
> been that uncommon: Eric Blair and Marian
> Evans, for instance, used them. Most
> authorship wacks mention Samual Clemens, too.
> So, an analogy equating some ourtier's use of
> a pen-name to that of several known authors
> doing the same. What's wrong? What's wrong
> is that this hypothetical courtier of Price's
> did not use a pen-name, he used a front man.
> That is, this courtier used the name of a man
> alive at the time.
<snip ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ>
> Clearly, Price is trying to insinuate that her
> True Author was using a pen-name, not a front.
> Even if that were true, it helps her only
> slightly since there is as little precedent
> for a person's using a pen-name that is
> accidentally the name of a contemporary as
> there is for his using a front man.
>
> With that, I'm through with Price's
> introduction.
>
> I not, by the way, that no one has said
> anything against anything I've argued although
> Richard Kennedy has deplored my bad manners.
>
> --Bob G.
Bob, you are, as proven many times hitherto, a lying moron.
Sincerely yours, Paul Crowley
Metrician
This erudite and skilfully argued rebuttal from Crowley has certainly
convinced me.
Peter G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
>
It was its originality that captivated me.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
book. Whee.
In Chapter One Price starts out with the standard malarky about the
absence of links from Shakespeare of Stratford to the literary works
attributed to him. She tells us that "readers (of biographies of him)
are often surprised to discover that there are no manuscripts or
surving letters in his hand," a characteristic bit of pure propaganda
since it is only ignorant readers who are surprised--since almost no
manuscripts of ANY plays or letters of Shakespeare's time survive.
Worse, it's quite possible that a manuscript of part of a play in
Shakespeare's hand DOES survive. I'm referring to the manscript of
"Sir Thomas More," which many scholars believe Shakespeare contributed
to. Hence, it is again a half-lie to claim that no manuscripts of any
manuscript in Shakespeare's hand (and some handwriting experts believe
it is in the hand of the man from Stratford). Again, the point is
that we do not know for sure whether any such manuscripts exist;
hence, it is philosophically irresponsible to state as a fact that
none do.
Price's practice of cherry-picking from orthodox scholars when she
thinks it will help her case begins here with a quotation from Gerald
Eades Bentley which simply points out that the absence of "letters to
or from or about Shakespeare . . . except for a few referring to
business transactions' and of "diaries or accounts of his friends," it
is unsurprising that his biographers have made up fanciful details
about him to fill out their portrait. But many orthodox scholars of
Shakespeare have referred to this "problem." None of them, I think,
would agree with Price's absurd opinion (or near-lie) that "no
reliable records exist" to support the fact that (1) Shakespeare
attended his local grammar school (the records show that it existed
and that his father was--at least at one time--an important,
prosperous, ambitious citizen of the town who tried to get and finally
succeeded in getting a coat of arms, so very likely to have sent his
sons to school); (2) Shakespeare had a personal relation ship with the
Earl of Southampton (his dedication to "Venus and Adonis" indicates he
almost surely did); (3) was a drinking buddy of Benn Jonson's
(Jonson's testimony strong indicates this was so, and we know
Shakespeare acted in at least two of Jonson's plays, which
Shakespeare's company put on, and common sense strong suggests it was
almost certain, even if Shakespeare was only an actor, that the two
knew each other--as anecdotal evidence, which IS evidence, says was
the case); (4) made money from writing plays (as we will find out from
Price later, we have no record of payment to him for writing plays,
but we do know he was a shareholder in his company of actors and
became wealthy; other evidence conclusively indicates the was a
palywright, so how could he not have been paid directly or indirectly
for writing plays?)
Price can rightly say, most of the time, that no explicit record
connects Shakespeare to schooling, the friendship of other writers,
and the like, but she rarely does that; instead, she
propagandistically (lyingly) states that NO records do this although
many implicitly do.
She tells us that Shakespeare left behind records of business
activities, his family life--even his having been an actor (which is
something many anti-Stratfordians resist doing since it makes it much
harder to believe he could not have written plays). But, pushing her
main theme, she reitierates that his "contemporaneous records reveal
noting of his alleged literary activity." Not the "nothing." Note,
yet again, the idea that names on title-pages are not records. "As we
shall see," she contintues, "he has been credited with literary
activity solely on the basis of posthumous evidence." Not so, but
even if so, so what?
Price is here actually admitting that even her propagandistic skills
aren't sufficient to overturn the posthumous evidence for Shakespeare,
so she lays the groundwork for ignoring it as irrelevant, with an
innuendo about how rare if ever it is that a person is known as a
writer because of posthumous evidence only. I'm not well-versed in
the lives of pre-1600 writers, but I suspect that this is the case
with a fair number of them. I AM well-versed in the life of William
Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, and therefore know that it is not
true of him.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
That was my point. But it's like having a
class of inattentive, dim-witted students.
By the time you have explained the point,
and then re-explained it, the whole thing
has become worthless. All meaning and
sense are lost, and you feel an idiot for
wasting your time and that of your students.
You'd all have been better off indulging
in the consumption of legal or illegal
substances.
I was "quoting" Bob's OWN WORDS
back at him, from a posting he made less
than three hours earlier -- making HIS
erudite and skilfully argued rebuttal of
Richard Kennedy's post on 'The
Monument', to which he wrote:
>>> Richard, you are, as proven many times
>>> hitherto, a lying moron.
>>>
>>> Sincerely yours, Bob Grumman
I was employing a rhetorical device
called 'satire'. You'll find a definition
of it in most dictionaries:
SATIRE, n.
1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the
like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice,
folly, etc.
Of course, there is no point in trying
to explain such a concept to those too
dim to ever grasp its purpose.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price next has a passage with the title, "Shakespeare Who?" She
starts it off with a propagandanlogy between a researcher who has only
some scripts and reviews to reconstruct the life of someone named
William Shakespeare and a modern Shakespeare biographer. Both need
videotapes to be able to confirm who Shakespeare was, according to
Price. The problem is that we have a great deal more than "some
scripts and reviews" to help us. We even have a picture of our
Shakespeare!
But Price is pushing the lie that "No one has yet found any personal
records left by (Shakespeare) or by anybody else during his lifetime
that would link him to the occupation of writing." She tells us about
Shakespeare's contemporaries like John Weever and Francis Meres who
praised him in print but claims "The reviews do not prove that Weever
or Meres personally recognized the man from Stratford as the author."
Again, the use of the word "prove," so I can't deny she's right. But
I can say that the evidence in the case of Meres strongly suggests
that he indeed personally recognized the man from Stratford as an
author. The evidence is without question strong enough to make
Price's claim that no one has found personal records for Shakespeare
as an author an egregious near-lie (and I need a word for what it
is). We can't know that no one has found such personal evidence.
Therefore, she can't properly claim that no one has. Much of the
evidence may well be personal. Some, I feel, is beyond question
personal. More of that when Price becomes more detailed.
Price goes on with boilerplate about scholars' acceptance of all
mentions of a writer named William Shakespeare as reference to the
Stratford man even though they have, in her view, no hard evidence to
back them up . . . from his lifetime. But, Diana, you don't need hard
evidence from his lifetime if you have the personal testimony from
people who knew him, and other documentary evidence from after he
died. If Ben Jonson says his friend Will Shakespeare wrote plays, it
doesn't matter whether he says it while Will is alive or after he's
dead; it's still strong evidence that his friend Will wrote plays,
especially as no evidence against it exists.
Price also says that Shakespeare biographers "produce no evidence to
show that (Shakespeare) was capable of writing literature," which is
another flat out lie, although I'm sure she meant to say, "no evidence
FROM HIS LIFETIME." From after his lifetime there is the monument,
which I will be continually bringing up, which says that what wrote
leaves living art behind, and that he had the art of Virgil, which
seems fairly good evidence he was capable of writing literature. From
his lifetime, too, there is "Sir Thomas More," which may be partly his
work, and which therefore makes it improper for her to claim flatly
that no evidence that ce could write literature esixts from his
lifetime.
Price finishes this small section of her book with crap about how the
clever skeptic who studies the matter will find "a startling number
conflicts between the known life of the man from Stratford and the
literary evidence for William Shakespeare. As we shall see, Price,
like just about all anti-Stratfordians, finds loaning money and owning
houses in conflict with being a poet.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
don't want appearing here to be a daily chore.
Entry 7.
Price spends a page or so telling us why pinning
down the identity of an author is valuable. Her two reasons:
(1) it can add to one's enjoyment and, I assume, understanding
of a literary work if one can add a referential layer out of the
author's life to it; and (2) it allows one to add the pleasure
of being with the author or outside his works as well as in them.
She goes on to say that the importance of doing what she thinks
she is--i.e., overturning the orthodox position on who wrote the
works of Shakespeare--it will change curricula, critical studies, etc.
So let's give her (3), getting history right is important and can
have significant consequences (which I am fanatically in favor of).
The most important, for me, would be for the study of creativity,
which Price doesn't mention, nor would I expect her to, because
that may be her area of greatest ignorance. Basically, she and
all authorship wacks are arguing about the creative process--that it's
something one is somehow disciplined into attaining the ability
to carry out instead of something an innately gifted person
automatically learns to carry out.
Epistemology is another subject accurate biographies of artists
is important to. Again, no mention of it by Price. But it's near-
central
to the authorship question, too. The wacks don't understand the
possibility of self-learning, or learning through osmosis. Again,
they
believe learning can only occur via authority figures (which, yes,
makes
them to a degree sympathetic, whether they know it or not, to
totalitarianism. Big brother knows best.)
Relatedly, there's sociology, the wacks being staunchly for conformity
(except, as in their case, when a non-conformity is in the service of
a defense of a higher conformity). Stratfordians, for the most part,
can
accept a person like Shakespeare, who comes out of nowhere, relatively
unindoctrinated, a product of nature rather than of Society, a person
who
failed to go up the chain of command, follow the rules every
conformist
knows must be followed if one if to get anywhere in life.
Of course, knowing who some character in a play was modeled on
can muddy its universality, too--even cheapen it--one might see the
twerp, Oxford, pontificating as Hamlet rather than the universal
seeker of truth Hamlet would be better taken as. Unhelpful
resonances as well as, or instead of, helpful ones may be added.
But if a significant historical background is available, I'm all for
revealing it, and I definitely greatly enjoy reading about writers
whose works I've enjoyed.
Price only mentions making sure the right person gets credit for
a given oeuvre in passing, but that seems to me as important
a reason for determining who an author is as anything. A writer
wants to know that posterity will give him proper credit, even if
he isn't there to appreciate it.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Next up for Price is propaganda about critics of authorship wacks who,
according to Price, "Typoically . . . make no distinction between"
those
wacks who do solid research like George Greenwood and super-wacks,
like the cryptographers who find all kinds of messages in the plays in
the most crazily illegitimate ways. She is eager not to start us off
with
evidence and arguments for her position but to show us that not all
those denying Shakespeare are super-wacks. True enough, both that
some, if few, anti-Stratfordians do sound if idiotically misused
research,
and are often perfectly logical, however absurd in their choice of
premises,
and that those writing against them often pay too little attention to
these
better wacks. In fact, when I first got into the authorship game, I
wrote
several times deploring the fact that scholars tended too often to
refuse
to dignify the theories of the wacks with replies and/or to simply
call
them lunatics.
Not that the anti-Stratfordians haven't responded to their critics
every bit as poorly. Just about none yet have responded pertinently
in any detail to the solid pro-Stratfordian books that have been
published,
beginning with Milward. W. Martin. Ogburn, the king of the
Ozfordians,
gave the latter just one mention in his long long book, for instance,
and
it was feeble.
Price goes on with the usual roll call of benighted non-scholars like
Whitman and Charlie Chapman who either expressed doubts about
Shakespeare's authorship like the former, or couldn't believe it.
Price
claims that doubts about the authorship of Shakespeare's work
began "almost as soon as it appeared." I will return to this idiotic
claim when we reach Price's twelfth chapter where, she says, she'll
support it. (It will be with large amounts of wishlexia, which is
what
I call the misreading of a text to get it to mean what one wants it
to
rather than what it clearly does mean.)
Price concludes this section of her book with a summary of the
various wacks advancing various candidates for the title of
True Author, none yet fully successful in her view. She won't be
advancing a candidate, though: it is enough to show that merely
that Will Shakespeare could not have been The True Author. Right.
Over a hundred and fifty years of fanatical attempts to find a
different True Author, none of whom has been found suffciently
plausible for Price to accept as that True Author, coupled with forty
books from his lifetime stating on their title-pages that he was
their
author, and a good deal of other evidence of that, but no matter--
it won't be a waste of time to investigate yet again whether or not
he deserves to be considered an author.
Nothing will stop a True Wack.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
In her next section, Price continues trying to
convince the reader that the authorship question
is valid, mentioning more names of non-scholars
she claims are or were anti-Stratfordians, though
some of them, like Whitman, seem to have been
skeptical about Shakespeare's credentials rather
than certain he lacked them. The fact that the
controversy is interesting enough for television
to have done programs on it seems, for Price,
to indicate its value. But television has John
Edwards, too, and all kinds of other nonsense.
One point of hers seems valid: that the academics
has ignored the question, leaving it up to
non-academics to argue on one side or the
other of it. Even now, I think, no True Scholar
has written a book against the anti-Stratfordians,
although Jonathan Bate is said to be doing one,
and James Shapiro. Few, if any writers considered
bona fide scholars by the Establishment have
weighed in against Shakespeare, either, though
recently some who are accepted scholars in
subjects other than literature, or Elizabethan
literature, have done so.
However, who is for Shakespeare, who against,
and who has written about the controversy is
irrelevant. What counts is whether it is saner
to investigate who wrote the works of Shakespeare
than to investigate whether Queen Elizabeth was
from Mars or not, and it is not. Nonetheless,
Price will start her investigation in the next
chapter, sincerely believing she will contribute
to the Truth on the matter. Rather than merely
contributing a case history of deranged propagandism.
Note to the little girls out there dismayed at the way
I insult St. Diana, I will defend myself in one small
way by reminding the reader that I consider this
thread a bunch of notes that will be revised.
I intentionally insult my opponent every time
I get a chance. My main reason for that is
to try out insults. My final draft will have
many fewer--but they will be my best!
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price heads her second chapter with the following:
"We know more about the life of Shakespearre, both in terms of facts
and of rational conclusions that they suggest, than of any other
Elizabethan dramatist. . . . Documents relating to Shakespeare's
activities, inlcuding letters to him and material relating to his
family, are extant in quantity in the Shakespeare Centre records
office at Stratford upon Avon. Few could reasonably remain skeptical
if they examined these."
--Gareth Evans and Barbara Lloyd Evans
Companion to Shakespeare
I can't really fault Price for beginning her attempt to overturn the
Stratfordian case by quoting a passage about that case from her
opponents. But a more responsible, a more honest, truth-seeker would
find a much better passage to quote. And, as we shall see, she uses
her passage as a straw horse, blasting at it as though it represented
the best of Stratfordian reasoning, using it entirely to suggest
Stratfordians are failing to say much and are even incompetent.
When I first read the passage, I scribbled, "selectively pores through
scholarly records for (1) data she can wrench out of context to
support her cause and (2) as in this case, find minute errors to
highlight." I actually thought she'd caught the Evanses in such an
error when she criticized them for assuring their readers that among
the documents Shakespearean scholars had to work with were "many
'extant' letters to him.
Here the minute error uncovered is about the letters the Evnases
mention. Price is wrong in her claim that they said such letters were
extant IN QUANTITY--they only said that documents including such
letters were, which is true. Price is right that only one letter to
or from him exists (it's to him), but there are records that mention
the existence of at least one other letter (and what it was about), so
scholars do have letters to work with.
Continuing to push her main theme that we actually don't have much
documentation for Shakespeare, she quotes two more authorities, one
saying Shakespeare' life "is unusually well documented for a
commoner's of his period," the other that data concerning his life is
"scanty. Here, she wants to seem even-handed. Hence the first
quotation, She can't immediately claim there's hardly any documentary
evidence for Shakespeare, as she'd like to, and comes close to doing
in the remainder of her book, so she brings in the second quote to get
halfway there by demonstrating that shcolars disagree on how much
evidence we have.
The two quotations do not contradict each other, or the gist of what
the Evanses say, however. We have lots of documentary evidence for
Shakespeare considering how long ago he lived, but that evidence is
also scantly compared to what we'd have if he'd been born in 1764
rather than 1565.
Finally, of course, the amount of evidence is unimportant. What
counts is its strength.
For the rest of this section of Price's chapter, she blabs on about
how much conjecture biographies of Shakespeare include. She thinks
any biography of the man could be reduced to a few pages if it were
based solely on the facts we have about him. So what? Biographers
are not required to stick to the explicit facts, nor to facts directly
about their subject. It is valid to make intelligent inference from
his work, and discuss his times and where he lived, relating them to
his life. Moreover, most biographies candidly admit to speculation.
They can't be definitive about Shakespeare's life, so only try to do
the best they can with what they have. And what they have is more
than enough to establish beyon reasonable doubt the the man from
Stratford wrote the works attributed to him.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
9 December 2009
It's time now for Price to introduce her first witness for the
prosecution, and it's none other than Mark Twain. Twain
stole the idea from Greenwood that "any experienced
practitioner can tell a pro from a layman by the use,
or misuse, of technical terms," as Price puts it. She
then mentions the many critics who have observed that
Shakespeare used legal terminology the way a lawyer
of his time would have. She neglects to mention
that many others have found him to have used legal
terminology the way non-lawyers of his time did, and
no more knowledgeably than most of the playwrights
of his time did.
Price turns much more propagandistically absurd next,
when she brings up Twain's having been "struck by another
inexplicable phenomenon: Shakespeare's neighbors in Stratford-
upon-Avon were oblivious to the supposedly famous poet in
their midst." According to Price, "not one of (Shakespeare's)
neighbors, relatives, or even second-generation
descendants every suggested that he or she recognized
Shakespeare as a writer."
I am still looking for a word to call this kind of lie or semi-lie,
this stating as factual something for which there is
insufficient data to state was or was not a fact. She has no
way of knowing Shakespeare's neighbors were oblivious of
his (supposed) fame as a poet. We have almost no letters
nor diaries or the like from any commoners of the time, nor
have we recordings of their conversations. How can she
know what they said about him? And why would they
erect a monument to him as a poet only seven years after
his death if none of them ever thought he was that when
he was alive? If she were philosophical responsible, she
would have said simply that of the very few records
concerning Stratford townspeople, none refer to
Shakespeare as a poet.
Even if none really did. it would not be inexplicable. Plays
were considered by many to be immoral. Actors were
hardly better than pimps in many people's minds. No reason
Shakespeare might not have kept what he did in London
from most of his fellow townspeople--or that they would not
have spoken of it much had they known of it. Not
that I believe they didn't often mention what he was.
Price tells us that no "legends" of his career surfaced
until around 1661 when John Ward wrote in few words about
him in his diary. Another . . . "slie?" The truth is that we
have no records of his career that predate that time. This
does not mean that such records had not surfaced, then
been lost. It also does not mean that oral "legends" about
his career weren't in circulation. Some certainly were, for
one visitor to Stratford in 1631 or so reports a conversation
he'd had about Shakespeare with the deacon (I believe) of
the church where Shakespeare's monument is. In the
conversation, the deacon relayed an anecdote or two
about the poet.
Price is now ready to tell us the facts about the man she
misnames "Shakspere." Needless to say, she leaves out
all the facts that identify him as a playwright or poet, such
as his name on various title-pages. They are part of the
historical record nonetheless.
--Bob
ignoto
> 9 December 2009
>
> It's time now for Price to introduce her first witness for the
> prosecution, and it's none other than Mark Twain. Twain
> stole the idea from Greenwood that "any experienced
> practitioner can tell a pro from a layman by the use,
> or misuse, of technical terms," as Price puts it.
You should check out Twain's book 'Pudd'nhead Wilson':
"With Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain showed that a nonlawyer could indeed
write knowledgeably and accurately about legal technicalities. In
Richard Weisberg's words, Twain writes, "exhaustively... about law and
legal proceedings." To get at reality, we need to look not at what Twain
says in his essay on Shakespeare - no matter how beguilingly - but at
what he actually does when writing about law." Kill all the lawyers?:
Shakespeare's legal appeal By Daniel Kornstein at 231
Ign.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
> > 9 December 2009
>
> > It's time now for Price to introduce her first witness for the
> > prosecution, and it's none other than Mark Twain. Twain
> > stole the idea from Greenwood that "any experienced
> > practitioner can tell a pro from a layman by the use,
> > or misuse, of technical terms," as Price puts it.
>
> You should check out Twain's book 'Pudd'nhead Wilson':
>
> "With Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain showed that a nonlawyer could indeed
> write knowledgeably and accurately about legal technicalities. In
> Richard Weisberg's words, Twain writes, "exhaustively... about law and
> legal proceedings." To get at reality, we need to look not at what Twain
> says in his essay on Shakespeare - no matter how beguilingly - but at
> what he actually does when writing about law." Kill all the lawyers?:
> Shakespeare's legal appeal By Daniel Kornstein at 231
>
> Ign.
Much thanks for this datum in particular, Ignoto, but mucher thanks
for being the first (other than me) to contribute something of
interest to this thread. Pudd/nhead Wilson was one of my favorite
Twain books. Didn't remember that he got lawyering right in any depth
but it's nice to see that some authorities are able to say he did.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
We are now to what Price calls "A Concise Documentary Life" of
Shakespeare. It begins with two quick paragraphs about Shakespeare's
father, John. She says John "was avoiding crditors by 1592," which I
believe is something considered probable by scholars but not certain.
Next comes the standard anti-Stratfordian lie about John and his
wife's being illiterate, something that may be true but has never been
proven. She supports her assertion with the fact that John had been
raised in an area without schools, as though a person needs a school
to become literate, and as though no child went far from his home to
gain schooling; and with the fact that John signed with a mark, but
many literates did that. She does mention all the public offices that
he held, none requiring literacy, but neglects to tell us that he keep
the books for the town for one period, something which suggests
literacy (but doesn't require it). To support her assertion that
holding a public office doesn't require literacy, she resorts to what
I guess I'll call a "slie": "In the year that John was elected
alderman (1565), only seven our of nineteen aldermen and burgesses
could write their names," something she claims to have gotten from a
scholar, whom she cites. Of course, what she should have written were
she honest is that only seven of the men wrote their names--since some
may well have been able to have done so but chose not to.
Once into her list of known facts about Shakespeare, Price makes
Shakespeare out to be the victim of a shotgun marriage to a woman he
got pregnant a day after he tried to marry another woman. However, it
is near-certain that the clerk who penned the marriage records made a
mistake in the bride's name the first time--as several scholars have--
not "decided," as Price puts it, but "concluded on the basis of solid
evidence (other errors the clerk made, for instance) and comon sense
reasoning.
Price makes sure to tell us that except for two records concerning a
mundane legal action, the record of Shakespeare from 1585-1591,
Shakespeare's "professionally formative years," is "completely
blank." Ditto for Ben Jonson and most other playwrights of the
time.
When Price tells us about 1592, she destroys her case, I can't
understand why. She tells us of "The Groatsworth of Wit," that
mentions an "'upstart' actor called 'Shakes-scene.'" By including
this in her "documentary life" of Shakespeare, she admits he was an
actor. If she is consistent, she must then admit that he was an
author, because the evidence that the actor, Shakespeare, was an
author is as good as the evidence that the Stratford man was an actor.
The shiftiest authorship wacks deny Shakespeare was an actor,
realizing what admitting he was does to their case. More on
Shakespeare's acting in due course.
In her 1592 entry, too, she mentions a loan made by "Willilmus
Shackspere" to John Clayton. She does not indicate how she knows this
William Shakespeare was the Stratford man. There's no more reason for
her that the name should connect the two. She will later use this
loan against him, though, which explains its inclusion.
She leaves out the mention in the Herald's records from around 1600 of
"Shakespeare ye Player." Which she would probably defend by saying
what we have is a copy someone made of the record much later, not the
record itself.
Most of the other entries on Price's list are reasonably accurate.
She does misrepresent the will of a man asking his executors to
recover forty shillings from Shakespeare's wife and misclaims that the
Parnassus plays lampooned Shakespeare. She also claims that
Shakespeare sold malt when all we know is that his household sold
malt.
Again, she mentions none of the literary paper trail left by someone
named William Shakespeare, nor the poems referring to Shakespeare, the
actor, as a poet. For her, the historical record of the man is
aliterary.
Of course, she fails to mention, or say why she ignores, the
posthumous records that certify the many literary records of
Shakespeare as relating to the Stratford man. I mean the ones
acknowledging him to have been an actor, and connecting the actor to
the playwright.
ignoto
> !0 December 2009
>
> We are now to what Price calls "A Concise Documentary Life" of
> Shakespeare. It begins with two quick paragraphs about Shakespeare's
> father, John. She says John "was avoiding crditors by 1592," which I
> believe is something considered probable by scholars but not certain.
> Next comes the standard anti-Stratfordian lie about John and his
> wife's being illiterate, something that may be true but has never been
> proven. She supports her assertion with the fact that John had been
> raised in an area without schools,
How does this matter to her? Anti-stratfordians often claim WS was
illiterate despite the fact that there was a school in his town which he
was entitled to attend free of charge.
> as though a person needs a school
> to become literate, and as though no child went far from his home to
> gain schooling; and with the fact that John signed with a mark, but
> many literates did that. She does mention all the public offices that
> he held, none requiring literacy, but neglects to tell us that he keep
> the books for the town for one period, something which suggests
> literacy (but doesn't require it). To support her assertion that
> holding a public office doesn't require literacy, she resorts to what
> I guess I'll call a "slie": "In the year that John was elected
> alderman (1565), only seven our of nineteen aldermen and burgesses
> could write their names," something she claims to have gotten from a
> scholar, whom she cites. Of course, what she should have written were
> she honest is that only seven of the men wrote their names--since some
> may well have been able to have done so but chose not to.
Nothing more than a guess IOW.
>
> Once into her list of known facts about Shakespeare, Price makes
> Shakespeare out to be the victim of a shotgun marriage to a woman he
> got pregnant a day after he tried to marry another woman. However, it
> is near-certain that the clerk who penned the marriage records made a
> mistake in the bride's name the first time--as several scholars have--
> not "decided," as Price puts it, but "concluded on the basis of solid
> evidence (other errors the clerk made, for instance) and comon sense
> reasoning.
>
> Price makes sure to tell us that except for two records concerning a
> mundane legal action, the record of Shakespeare from 1585-1591,
The case of the Shakespeares v Lambert (1589) is actually quite
interesting (it eventually ends up in chancery).
See (eg) Shakespeare Survey, Issue 3 By Kenneth Muir (ed) at 93
Ign.
Paul Crowley
> bobgr...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
>> !0 December 2009
>>
>> We are now to what Price calls "A Concise Documentary
>> Life" of Shakespeare. It begins with two quick
>> paragraphs about Shakespeare's father, John. She says
>> John "was avoiding crditors by 1592," which I believe is
>> something considered probable by scholars but not
>> certain. Next comes the standard anti-Stratfordian lie
>> about John and his wife's being illiterate, something
>> that may be true but has never been proven. She supports
>> her assertion with the fact that John had been raised in
>> an area without schools,
>
> How does this matter to her?
It would have been extremely unlikely
for a yeoman child to become literate,
but especially so in the absence of
any available school.
> Anti-stratfordians often claim WS was illiterate despite
> the fact that there was a school in his town which he
> was entitled to attend free of charge.
The school was free to every child of the
town, and would have been primarily for
children of literate parents. As is the
pattern, and has been the pattern throughout
recorded history, illiterate parents would
not usually have sent their children to
school.
>> as though a person needs a school to become literate,
Sure -- in Stratfordia you can acquire
literacy by osmosis.
>> and
>> as though no child went far from his home to gain
>> schooling;
Anything is possible in Stratfordia --
no matter how unlikely.
>> and with the fact that John signed with a
>> mark, but many literates did that.
Wrong. Literates sometimes made marks,
as modern people use initials. But,
as today, when they were expected to
sign (as on legal documents, or on
marriage registers) they signed their
names in full.
>> She does mention all
>> the public offices that he held, none requiring literacy,
>> but neglects to tell us that he keep the books for the
>> town for one period,
A lie. The office he held for one year
required him to supervise the keeping of
the books -- which presumably meant that
(if he was diligent) he asked the clerk
to read out some of his work from time
to time.
>> something which suggests literacy
>> (but doesn't require it).
Keeping books would require literacy.
Supervising that work did not.
>> To support her assertion that
>> holding a public office doesn't require literacy, she
>> resorts to what I guess I'll call a "slie": "In the year
>> that John was elected alderman (1565), only seven our of
>> nineteen aldermen and burgesses could write their
>> names," something she claims to have gotten from a
>> scholar, whom she cites. Of course, what she should have
>> written were she honest is that only seven of the men
>> wrote their names--since some may well have been able to
>> have done so but chose not to.
>
> Nothing more than a guess IOW.
It's pretty obvious how the town worked,
who was literate and who wasn't. The
belief that it was the kind of place to
produce an author -- let alone a great one
-- requires no more than simple plain
insanity.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> for a yeoman child to become literate,
> but especially so in the absence of
> any available school.
Assertion but one that agrees with the point I was making. Since it
is possible John became literate, however "unlikely," Price can't
hoestly state as a fact that he did not do so.
> > Anti-stratfordians often claim WS was illiterate despite
> > the fact that there was a school in his town which he
> > was entitled to attend free of charge.
>
> The school was free to every child of the
> town, and would have been primarily for
> children of literate parents. As is the
> pattern, and has been the pattern throughout
> recorded history, illiterate parents would
> not usually have sent their children to
> school.
As had to have been the case at a time when few were literate but more
and more were becoming literate, illiterate parents with money and
social ambitions would have most likely sent their boys to a very
accessible grammar school. Aside from that, it is not a fact that
Shakespeare's parents were illiteratre, only a likelihood.
> >> as though a person needs a school to become literate,
>
> Sure -- in Stratfordia you can acquire
> literacy by osmosis.
You deny that some people have taught themselves to read? You deny
that adults ever teach children to read outside any school?
> >> and
> >> as though no child went far from his home to gain
> >> schooling;
>
> Anything is possible in Stratfordia --
> no matter how unlikely.
A genius like Shakespeare is unlikely; a genius like Shakespeare who
could not teach himself anything is more unlikely.
> >> and with the fact that John signed with a
> >> mark, but many literates did that.
>
> Wrong. Literates sometimes made marks,
> as modern people use initials. But,
> as today, when they were expected to
> sign (as on legal documents, or on
> marriage registers) they signed their
> names in full.
Not so.
> >> She does mention all
> >> the public offices that he held, none requiring literacy,
> >> but neglects to tell us that he keep the books for the
> >> town for one period,
>
> A lie. The office he held for one year
> required him to supervise the keeping of
> the books -- which presumably meant that
> (if he was diligent) he asked the clerk
> to read out some of his work from time
> to time.
You may be right. I'll check on it. You shouldn't accuse me of lies
when I'm wrong, Paul. This is a rough draft of what I hope will be a
full-scale refutation of Price's propaganda. When I put a draft of
that refutation forward as my final draft, and their are errors in it,
you will have much better reason to consider them lies. The fact that
I do not lie, will still make it hard for the sane to accept them as
lies.
> >> something which suggests literacy
> >> (but doesn't require it).
>
> Keeping books would require literacy.
> Supervising that work did not.
I believe records indicate he continued supervising the books when he
no longer held the position that required him to. That, and being
given the position that required him to supervise the books, SUGGESTS
literacy. If he were even moderately intelligent, exposure to the
books would give him at least some small amount of literacy.
> >> To support her assertion that
> >> holding a public office doesn't require literacy, she
> >> resorts to what I guess I'll call a "slie": "In the year
> >> that John was elected alderman (1565), only seven our of
> >> nineteen aldermen and burgesses could write their
> >> names," something she claims to have gotten from a
> >> scholar, whom she cites. Of course, what she should have
> >> written were she honest is that only seven of the men
> >> wrote their names--since some may well have been able to
> >> have done so but chose not to.
>
> > Nothing more than a guess IOW.
>
> It's pretty obvious how the town worked,
> who was literate and who wasn't. The
> belief that it was the kind of place to
> produce an author -- let alone a great one
> -- requires no more than simple plain
> insanity.
>
> Paul.
Shakespeare's next door neighbor may well have been an author--a book
by someone with his name (unfortunately for my argument a very common
one) had a book published by Field right after Field published V&A.
But the idea that one must be raised in some particular location to be
able to become an author is insane. We know absolutely that Stratford
produce some literate people, and literacy is the only thing required,
aside from the right sort of brain, which is genetically determined,
to make an author.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
assertions are not arguments. But they do alert one to where one's
case may need bolstering or correction.
--Bob
Paul Crowley
> Since it is possible John became literate, however
> "unlikely," Price can't hoestly state as a fact that
> he did not do so.
There comes a point (for ordinary human
beings, if not rigidniks) where a possibility
is so remote that we can state 'it is not so'.
It is unlikely that John Shaksber was born
on Mars, and came to Stratford only when he
was 512 (Martian) years old. Most of us
would say that was not possible. Likewise,
most of us (who are sane) would say that it
was not possible for him to be literate --
given all the information we have about him
to the contrary.
>> The school was free to every child of the
>> town, and would have been primarily for
>> children of literate parents. As is the
>> pattern, and has been the pattern throughout
>> recorded history, illiterate parents would
>> not usually have sent their children to
>> school.
>
> As had to have been the case at a time when few were
> literate but more and more were becoming literate,
There was no unusual increase in literacy
around the 1570s.
> illiterate parents with money
John Shaksper seems to have run into
money problems around 1570.
[..]
>>>> as though a person needs a school to become literate,
>>
>> Sure -- in Stratfordia you can acquire
>> literacy by osmosis.
>
> You deny that some people have taught themselves to
> read?
I don't think children can teach themselves
to read. (The poet must have acquired a
high degree of literacy at an early age.)
[..]
> A genius like Shakespeare is unlikely; a genius like
> Shakespeare who could not teach himself anything is
> more unlikely.
Sure -- everything is explained with magic
words. The Stratman could have been an
expert ice skater, or sculptor, or painter,
or organist. No need for any education of
any kind.
[..]
>> It's pretty obvious how the town worked,
>> who was literate and who wasn't. The
>> belief that it was the kind of place to
>> produce an author -- let alone a great one
>> -- requires no more than simple plain
>> insanity.
>
> Shakespeare's next door neighbor may well have been
> an author--a book by someone with his name
> (unfortunately for my argument a very common one)
> had a book published by Field right after Field
> published V&A. But the idea that one must be raised
> in some particular location to be able to become an
> author is insane. We know absolutely that Stratford
> produce some literate people, and literacy is the
> only thing required,
A lot more is required. Only a small
proportion of literate people are capable
of writing an intelligible book. None, or
almost none, were brought up by illiterate
parents; and very few of them come from
predominantly illiterate social groups.
> aside from the right sort of brain, which is
> genetically determined, to make an author.
Your 'genetical deteminism' is hopelessly
bad science. I agree with you that it
forms a basic part of Stratfordianism,
but it is one that Strats do their best
to avoid thinking about. IF it had any
truth, then authors (and great authors
-- and great artists in other fields)
would commonly emerge from the sticks.
But they don't.
Only Strats, in their next-to-insane
Stratfordian mode, ever (implicitly)
maintain that they do.
Name another author with illiterate parents.
Name another author with illiterate children.
Name another author with a yeomanry origin.
Name another artist with illiterate parents.
Name another artist with illiterate children.
Name another artist with a yeomanry origin.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price next inserts an essay she'd gotten into a "scholarly" Oxfordian
publiscation on the many men named some variant of "William
Shakespeare" when the Stratford William Shakespeare was alive. Her
reasonging in this section seems more goofy than propagandistic. Her
premise is that scholars arbitrarily attach the man from Stratford to
anyone of the time with the same name (or variant of the same name)
when it suits their purposes. As those she doesn't detach him from
anyone of the time with the same name (or a variant of the same name)
when it suits hers.
She is right that much of the time biographers attach their man to
someone of the same or similar name as though he WERE that man instead
of as though he was probably that man. But they generally do so with
much more evidence for it than Price attributes to them here. And
some accept some men as WS, and not others that others accept. In
other words, Shakespeare scholars as a whole, are reasonably
untainted.
Price's only example of scholars making WS a man he wasn't has to do
with a record from 1613 of a payment to a "Mr. SHakspeare" for the
earl of Rutlan'ds equestrian logo for a tournament. Using standard
propagndistic innuendo, she says that WS "is supposed to have come out
of retirement to write the slogan or motto. Richard Burbage, the
actor and artist, is supposed to have painted the design. WS was in
London at the time of the tournament, buying and mortgaging the
Balckfriars gatehouse, she for some reason tells us. I wonder if she
really intended this to show he would have been too busy to compose
the text for the impresa. Seems good corraborating evidence to me.
The impresa read, "Paid To Mr. Shakspeare in gold, about my Lord's
impresa, (44 shillings); to Richard Burbage for painting and making
it, in gold (44 shillings).
To her credit, Price doesn't claim WS was not involved with the
impresa, only that there's no more reason to claim he was than there
is to claim he was not involved in some loan (the 1592 Clayton loan)
she wants him to have been involved in (and, I'm pretty sure, others
scholars do, as well), because it allows her to state that WS's "first
explicit recorded activity in London is money-lending." She gives
those favoring WS as impresa author the connection to Burbage (as she
hardly could fail to do) but tells us at length of Mrs. C. C. Stopes's
having found a John Shakespeare who was the royal bit-maker and
recorded as having made decorations for tournaments. She neglects to
inform her readers that E. K. Chambers found that John Shakespeare
doesn't start appearing in the records until 1617. Nor does she
inform her readers that playwrights often were involved in such jobs,
Jonson having written an epigram to some noble complaining that he had
not yet been paid for "a gulling imprese for you at tilt."
Rob Ziegler, who supplied me with 90% of my ammunition against Price
when this was debated at HLAS, argues forcefully also that John
Shakespeare is never recorded as partners with Burbage, and that it
made perfect sense for the job of making it to be divided between
someone designing it and writing a text for it, and someone
artistically putting it together--a poet like Shakespeare and an
painter like Burbage. It seems very close to beyond reason certain
that WS was the "Mr. Shakspeare" referred to in the impresa record.
Obviously, Price can't accept that because it would mean that he had a
literary trail, however slight and mundane this literary achievement
may seem to us today (although it would have probably been taken as an
honor to be asked to design and provide a text for such a thing back
then, and 44 shillings wasn't chicknfeed--though I'm not sure what it
would translate into nowadays. Anyone know?)
Price finishes this section, and the chapter it's in, by reminding us
that "The problem of identification is further complicated by the fact
that many contemporaneous refernces to 'Shakespeare' refer only to the
written works, not to the man who wrote them.": But that can't be
true, can it? If I ask someone if he's read Stout, I mean the works
of the writer Rex Stout, so am referring to both certain works and the
person who wrote them. But her point is surely that she won't accept
the name when it's attached to a literary work because it COULD be
referring to some man other than WS of Stratford, a different WS or
someone of a different name who was using the name. But we know from
his monument that WS of Stratford was a writer, as no other WS or non-
WS using his name was, according to the evidence, so we have to accept
references to works by any WS as his.
--Bob
sasheargold
> ignoto wrote:
>
> - Show quoted text -
Are you saying that Stratford was atypical of provincial towns and
villages in the Elizabethan era? Are you saying that because Michael
Drayton was born in Hartshill, they must have all been literate
there?
SB
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
> > Since it is possible John became literate, however
> > "unlikely," Price can't hoestly state as a fact that
> > he did not do so.
>
> There comes a point (for ordinary human
> beings, if not rigidniks) where a possibility
> is so remote that we can state 'it is not so'.
I agree. But this isn't one of them. I know of people
who learned to read as adults. I know of people
who (basically) taught themselves how to read and
write as very young children. Are you saying no
one without two miles of where John Shakespeare
was raised could read or write? If not, why couldn't
one of them have taken a liking to the boy and
taught him to read and write? We have no records
at all of how the first member of a family to learn to
read and write did so, but any reasonably epistemology
can explain it: a natural curiosity, a slightly uncommon
interest and innate aptitude for verbal communication,
exposure to books as amazing devices with wonderful
information in them (which would provide mative to
learn how to use their magic) and someone who
knew how to read and write (and whom could be
assumed to come with the books). That person might
teach a child to read and write or only read to him
from the book, which would be enough to get him
started--which I know to be the case because that's
how I learned to read. Later schooling no doubt helped
a bit, but I don't believe was necessary.
> It is unlikely that John Shaksber was born
> on Mars, and came to Stratford only when he
> was 512 (Martian) years old. Most of us
> would say that was not possible. Likewise,
> most of us (who are sane) would say that it
> was not possible for him to be literate --
> given all the information we have about him
> to the contrary.
I really doubt that most people would agree that
it was impossible for John to have been literate.
> >> The school was free to every child of the
> >> town, and would have been primarily for
> >> children of literate parents. As is the
> >> pattern, and has been the pattern throughout
> >> recorded history, illiterate parents would
> >> not usually have sent their children to
> >> school.
>
> > As had to have been the case at a time when few were
> > literate but more and more were becoming literate,
>
> There was no unusual increase in literacy
> around the 1570s.
There was an increase. I believe you were shown to be in error
on how much of one. It's clear that illiteracy was common at one
time, and not common later. Something happened. But
it's irrelevant: we know Shakespeare was literate because of
the hard evidence that he was, which includes a monute that
refers to "all that he hat writ.".
> > illiterate parents with money
>
> John Shaksper seems to have run into
> money problems around 1570.
> [..]
>
> >>>> as though a person needs a school to become literate,
>
> >> Sure -- in Stratfordia you can acquire
> >> literacy by osmosis.
>
> > You deny that some people have taught themselves to
> > read?
>
> I don't think children can teach themselves
> to read. (The poet must have acquired a
> high degree of literacy at an early age.)
Why? Some writers were illiterate till their teens or later.
I can only think of one offhand--Eric Hoffer, best-selling author
and intersting thinker, who was blind until he was a teen-ager
(I believe--I'm going by memory). Then there's the Russian
author David Webb has told you about.
> [..]
>
> > A genius like Shakespeare is unlikely; a genius like
> > Shakespeare who could not teach himself anything is
> > more unlikely.
>
> Sure -- everything is explained with magic
> words. The Stratman could have been an
> expert ice skater, or sculptor, or painter,
> or organist. No need for any education of
> any kind.
No more need of FORMAL eduction that Edison or
Faraday had, yes.
> >> It's pretty obvious how the town worked,
> >> who was literate and who wasn't. The
> >> belief that it was the kind of place to
> >> produce an author -- let alone a great one
> >> -- requires no more than simple plain
> >> insanity.
>
> > Shakespeare's next door neighbor may well have been
> > an author--a book by someone with his name
> > (unfortunately for my argument a very common one)
> > had a book published by Field right after Field
> > published V&A. But the idea that one must be raised
> > in some particular location to be able to become an
> > author is insane. We know absolutely that Stratford
> > produceD some literate people, and literacy is the
> > only thing required,
>
> A lot more is required. Only a small
> proportion of literate people are capable
> of writing an intelligible book. None, or
> almost none, were brought up by illiterate
> parents; and very few of them come from
> predominantly illiterate social groups.
It's a large subject. I will merely assert that literacy
is all that is required to write a book. To write a
good book requires a superior mind, and that
comes from having superior genes.
> > aside from the right sort of brain, which is
> > genetically determined, to make an author.
Ah, I see I already told you the second requirement.
> Your 'genetical deteminism' is hopelessly
> bad science. I agree with you that it
> forms a basic part of Stratfordianism,
> but it is one that Strats do their best
> to avoid thinking about. IF it had any
> truth, then authors (and great authors
> -- and great artists in other fields)
> would commonly emerge from the sticks.
> But they don't.
You keep saying that but it makes no sense.
Great artists do emerge from the sticks or
the equivalent. Mark Twain? Lincoln, who is
considered a great writer. And where did
Newton come from? Not an artist but a genius
out of nowhere.
> Only Strats, in their next-to-insane
> Stratfordian mode, ever (implicitly)
> maintain that they do.
>
> Name another author with illiterate parents.
Name another author who had an illiterate front.
> Name another author with illiterate children.
Why? Shakespeare had at least one literate child.
> Name another author with a yeomanry origin.
SHakespeare's father was not a yeoman. I doubt very
much that at his time there were not yeoman who
became authors, but I'm not up on such things, nor
am I interested enough to research the subject.
> Name another artist with illiterate parents.
Name a non-writer who have a monument erected seven or
less years after his death that states he was a great writer.
> Name another artist with illiterate children.
Name a writer of a famous oevre credited to someone else
without anyones ever finding after 400 years any explicit or
strong implicit evidence that things were not as they seemed.
> Name another artist with a yeomanry origin.
Name an illiterate man whose name got on title-pages
as those books' author in Shakespeare's time. Or in any time.
All you are arguing from here is the probability that Shakespeare's
father and mother were illiterate, but one does not need literate
parents to become literate.
I probably won't argue too often at this length as this thread
continues since my main concern is refuting Price's book.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Now we're to a chapter on the theatrical evidence scholars have found
relate to WS of Stratford. Price begins propagandistically, needless
to say, telling us of a few famous actors of Shakespeare's time we
know a little about as actors. Then she finds a scholar (of sorts)
who suggest Shakes was a busy actor. Therefore, according to Price,
WS "ought to have a few theatrical clippings." She will show he had
very few.
Of course, she neglects to tell us that we can't expect to have many
records of
Shakespeare's acting career because early in his acting career there
are very few
records for any actor, and later in his acting career he acted for his
own troupe exclusively (or almost exclusively--we don't know of his
acting then for any other group), and we have very few records of his
acting troupe, perhaps partly because their theatre burned down,
taking with it, presumably, many or all of the records.
She neglects, too, to tell us how many actors there were in his time,
and how much we know about each of them. I suspect we don't even have
the names of half of them. She tries to make the very few we know
relatively a lot about represent all the actors of the time.
She begins with Greenes Groatsworth of Wit, realizing that she must
persuade her readers that it doesn't, in 1592, state that Shakespeare
by then was an actor and "upstart" playwright. She adds Chettle's
apology for what material in the Groatsworth considered scurrilous by
some that he as editor allowed to be printed. She claims that
traditional "biographers magically transform Shake-scene (WS, as the
Groatsworth refers to him) from being the *subject* of the open letter
(in The Groatsworth, which is what we're mainly concerned with) into
one of its three *addressess, and therefore into one of 'those
gentlemen' who spends his with 'making plays.'" Of course, the
biographers don't use magic but common sense to show that only
Shakespeare could have been one of the two playwrights adressed by
Chettle, the other being Marlowe. I explain it all in two essays, one
on Greenes Groatsworth, the other on Chettle's apology, that were long
on the Internet but gut deleted by Geocities, when it decided to shut
down part of its operation. The same essays are in an appendix of the
first edition of my book on the authorship controversy, Shakespeare
and the Rigidniks. One of these days, I'll post them on the Internet
somewhere.
Price goes on to (naturally) accept some scholars' thesis that Chettle
was the True Author of the Groatsworth. Not that it matters whether
it was Chettle or Greene who referred to Shakespeare as a playwright.
Price claims to believe that those reluctant to accept Chettle as the
author of the Groatsworth do so because they like Chettle and don't
want to think of him as duplicitous. She doesn't give the arguments
based on evidence that can be made against the revisionists' thesis.
I believe that Greene wrote the Groatsworth, but don't feel a
definitive case has been made for that, or for Chettle's authorship.
Paul Crowley
>> It's pretty obvious how the town worked,
>> who was literate and who wasn't. The
>> belief that it was the kind of place to
>> produce an author -- let alone a great one
>> -- requires no more than simple plain
>> insanity.
>
> Are you saying that Stratford was atypical of
> provincial towns and villages in the Elizabethan
> era? Are you saying that because Michael Drayton
> was born in Hartshill, they must have all been
> literate there?
Little is known of Drayton's background, but
early in his life he somehow became attached
to a gentry family, the Gooderes. He says in a
dedication to Sir Henry Goodere that he was
beholden to 'the happy and generous family
of the Gooderes' for 'the most part of my
education'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Goodere
If we had a few words like that from the
Stratman, we would not be having this
discussion. If the Stratman had moved in
with (say) the Lucys (and become educated
with them) the town of Stratford would have
become as irrelevant to him as Hartshill
seems to have become to Drayton.
Education (beyond the minimal basics) just
did not happen in small market towns like
Stratford or Hartshill. In the country, it
took place (insofar as it did) in the country
houses of the gentry. They had libraries
and paid for tutors for their children. In
later centuries, they tended more to send
them away to boarding schools.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
You claim no one from Stratford could become a writer of note. Above
you show how one could have.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Today just URLS for three of my Shakespeare Authorship-Related
essays. All three were appendixes in the first edition of Shakespeare
and the Rigidniks. I updated one. The other two, the ones on Greene
and Chettle, are old and may need updating. The one on Greene needs
iltalics added, the other two more work. I prepared them offline,
which was stupid, for when I put them online, I lost all their
formatting. I had to put them online because Yahoos deleted the
versions of them I previously had online when it ended its Geocities
operation.
http://poeticks.com/essay-on-greenes-groatsworth-of-wit/
http://poeticks.com/chettle%E2%80%99s-testimony-regarding-shakespeare/
http://poeticks.com/personal-literary-evidence-for-shakespeare/
Paul Crowley
> You claim no one from Stratford could become a
> writer of note.
I have never said that.
> Above you show how one could have.
If they were born there, and left while
still an infant, their education might
not be too drastically affected. But if
they stayed in the town until adulthood,
and did not leave until their early or
mid-twenties (following the pattern of
the Stratman) they could never be more
than country clods.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
> > You claim no one from Stratford could become a
> > writer of note.
>
> I have never said that.
>
> > Above you show how one could have.
>
> If they were born there, and left while
> still an infant, their education might
> not be too drastically affected. But if
> they stayed in the town until adulthood,
> and did not leave until their early or
> mid-twenties (following the pattern of
> the Stratman)
He very likely left in his late teens, or was back and forth between
Stratford and other places including London. His father did business
in London, so there's no reason Shakespeare may not have been there at
times while a child and older.
> they could never be more than country clods.
You don't believe in the possibility of self-reliance?
>
> Paul.
Let me ask you this, Paul. If an infant of superior innate
intelligence (and surely you believe that at least some intelligence
is inborn) were born in Stratford to the sister of an English don who
had retired to Stratford and lived with the sister's family, do you
believe the don could single-handedly have educated the child?
I know, no English don would ever retire to Stratford, but people are
strange, so he may have quite liked his sister, and loved fishing,
which he thought was very good in Stratford, and really really wanted
to get away from the hustle and bustle of London.
I'm quite fascinated with your understanding of epistemology. It's so
different from mine, although common among the kind of scientists you
despise--sociologists and pyschologists. For you, apparently, innate
curiosity doesn't exist, and simple exposure to the world won't teach
a person anything important about it without the guidance of one or
more superior adults.
This discussion is taking me from all I should be doing in this
thread, which is critiquing Price. But if you want to talk about it,
start a thread on it. I'd be very intereseted, most, in seeing just
how you think a person learns to read and write, and what then he must
learn to become a superior writer. If you describe your view of how
literacy and advanced literacy are acquired, I'll describe mine.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
http://poeticks.com/personal-literary-evidence-for-shakespeare
I show in detail how a scholar would deal with the authorship evidence
compared with the way Price deals with it. I challenge any anti-
Stratfordian to refute my contention that my way of handling the
"personal" evidence is not at least ten times more scholarly than
hers.
I've reached page 31 of her book, by the way. That puts me about a
tenth of the way through it. On page 31 Price makes a big deal about
Shakespeare's having been recorded as one of three payees of some
money received by his acting company, The Lord Chamberlain's Men in
1595. She empasizes not that it shows him to be os some importance to
this company but that it is the ONLY record of a transaction
concerning his company that he was involved in. Kempe and Burbage
were also recorded as recxeiving the 1595 payment and, according to
Price, they "both show up elsewhere as payees." I charge that Price
is propagandistically implying that Kempe and Burbage "show up
elsewhere as payees," more than once or twice. I suspect Kempe did
not, and Burbage very poosible did not. If not, I believe Price would
have told us how many times they did show up and where. Such
withholding of information a scholar would provide even if it didn't
help his side of an argument is characteristic of Price.
This payment was made when the Lord Chamberlain's Company was just
getting organized, so I suspect it was before its business manager was
decided on, so early business matters were left to its leading
shareholders, its two principal actors and its playwright. In any
case, because of all the corroborating evidence, I'm sure it indicates
quite strongly that Shakespeare was one of his company's most
important members, which ad to be because of his acting and/or writing
since we have no evidence of his doing anything else for the company,
and evidence beyond reasonable doubt that he acted for the company.
Also that he wrote for it, but since that's what we are out to show
beyond reasonable doubt, I can't use it here.
Price could not leave out the record of payment that Shakespeare's
name is on; it's too well-known. So she lawyers it, trying to make it
inconsequential with no interest in determining the truth of the
matter, only in preventing a piece of evidence from helping to
convince her of being wrong about who wrote Shakespeare. I believe,
by the way, that she sincerely believes Shakespeare did not. It
doesn't seem likely that she could be pushing her views just to make a
little money lecturing to wacks and ignoramuses, and get some kind of
reputation among the same crew. I think very few are pretending to be
anti-Sttratfordians because they see doing that will help them in some
way.
Next up, an absence in the records that Price believes important. I
hope to attend to it tomorrow, but I also hope to get going on some
other, more important projects of mine, so may be in and out of this
thread rather erratically for a while.
--Bob
Paul Crowley
>>> Above you show how one could have.
>> If they were born there, and left while
>> still an infant, their education might
>> not be too drastically affected. But if
>> they stayed in the town until adulthood,
>> and did not leave until their early or
>> mid-twenties (following the pattern of
>> the Stratman)
>
> He very likely left in his late teens,
He married at 18 and was soon the father
of twins, so we have a pretty good idea
where he was in his late teens
> or was back and forth between Stratford and
> other places including London.
Why should he have moved around?
> His father did business in London,
The father went broke when the Stratman
was about 10.
> so there's no reason Shakespeare may not have
> been there at times while a child and older.
Sure -- there's no reason that he might
not have gone to China on the Silk Road.
Or -- when you're a Strat -- there no
reason not to fantasize. But try to keep
in mind the issue of _probability_.
[..]
> Let me ask you this, Paul. If an infant of
> superior innate intelligence (and surely you
> believe that at least some intelligence is
> inborn) were born in Stratford to the sister
> of an English don who had retired to Stratford
> and lived with the sister's family, do you
> believe the don could single-handedly have
> educated the child?
The child would highly probably have
mixed with the locals and got all the
wrong ideas. Maybe if the 'don' (not
an entity that existed at the time) could
keep the child isolated from his peers,
he could have instilled some learning.
[..]
> For you, apparently, innate curiosity doesn't
> exist, and simple exposure to the world won't
> teach a person anything important about it
> without the guidance of one or more superior
> adults.
"It takes a whole village to raise a
child". The infant was not going to
grow up speaking an Inuit dialect and
understanding the bush craft of an
Australian aborigine -- any more than
he would become an expert poet and
acquire an enormous familiarity with
classical literature.
> I'd be very intereseted, most, in seeing just
> how you think a person learns to read and
> write, and what then he must learn to become a
> superior writer. If you describe your view of
> how literacy and advanced literacy are
> acquired, I'll describe mine.
The 'village', in which the poet grew up,
was enormously educated, and much
of it had a passionate interest in poetry,
history, politics, the classics and all the
arts -- largely because they realised that
they would need that knowledge in their
adult lives (in conversing with educated
aristocratic French, Italians, Spaniards,
etc., and with highly educated monarchs)
and because they expected to be running
the country.
Without that level of motivation, and
the degree of effort and skill it inspired,
they would have been about as
knowledgeable and as capable as the
typical university graduate -- then and
now -- i.e. as useless as tits on a tomcat.
Paul.
lackpurity
> bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
> >>> Above you show how one could have.
> >> If they were born there, and left while
> >> still an infant, their education might
> >> not be too drastically affected. �But if
> >> they stayed in the town until adulthood,
> >> and did not leave until their early or
> >> mid-twenties (following the pattern of
> >> the Stratman)
>
> > He very likely left in his late teens,
>
> He married at 18 and was soon the father
> of twins, so we have a pretty good idea
> where he was in his late teens
>
> > or was back and forth between Stratford and
> > other places including London.
>
> Why should he have moved around?
MM:
You haven't got a clue? The Wilton Cult.
> > His father did business in London,
>
> The father went broke when the Stratman
> was about 10.
MM:
The Wilton Cult.
> > so there's no reason Shakespeare may not have
> > been there at times while a child and older.
>
> Sure -- there's no reason that he might
> not have gone to China on the Silk Road.
> Or -- when you're a Strat -- there no
> reason not to fantasize. �But try to keep
> in mind the issue of _probability_.
>
> [..]
You fantasize that he would stay in Stratford. You are the pot
calling the kettle black. Probability? Okay, yes, it seems highly
likely that a child prodigy, such as Shakespeare, would gravitate to
the superiors, the Wilton Cult, Marlowe, and Greville.
> > Let me ask you this, Paul. �If an infant of
> > superior innate intelligence (and surely you
> > believe that at least some intelligence is
> > inborn) were born in Stratford to the sister
> > of an English don who had retired to Stratford
> > and lived with the sister's family, do you
> > believe the don could single-handedly have
> > educated the child?
>
> The child would highly probably have
> mixed with the locals and got all the
> wrong ideas. �Maybe if the 'don' (not
> an entity that existed at the time) could
> keep the child isolated from his peers,
> he could have instilled some learning.
>
> [..]
MM:
Or, he could have become a member of the Wilton Cult, the greatest
meditators and poets of England.
> > For you, apparently, innate curiosity doesn't
> > exist, and simple exposure to the world won't
> > teach a person anything important about it
> > without the guidance of one or more superior
> > adults.
>
> "It takes a whole village to raise a
> child". �
MM:
The whole Wilton Cult. Okay.
The infant was not going to
> grow up speaking an Inuit dialect and
> understanding the bush craft of an
> Australian aborigine -- any more than
> he would become an expert poet and
> acquire an enormous familiarity with
> classical literature.
MM:
Now, Crowley, try to connect the dots of the poets, Sir Philip Sidney,
Mary Sidney, Fulke Greville, Marlowe, etc., with William Shakespeare.
> > I'd be very intereseted, most, in seeing just
> > how you think a person learns to read and
> > write, and what then he must learn to become a
> > superior writer. �If you describe your view of
> > how literacy and advanced literacy are
> > acquired, I'll describe mine.
>
> The 'village', in which the poet grew up,
> was enormously educated, and much
> of it had a passionate interest in poetry,
> history, politics, the classics and all the
> arts -- largely because they realised that
> they would need that knowledge in their
> adult lives (in conversing with educated
> aristocratic French, Italians, Spaniards,
> etc., and with highly educated monarchs)
> and because they expected to be running
> the country.
MM:
Try focusing on the Wilton Cult. That is where the center of
spirituality was.
> Without that level of motivation, and
> the degree of effort and skill it inspired,
> they would have been about as
> knowledgeable and as capable as the
> typical university graduate -- then and
> now -- i.e. as useless as tits on a tomcat.
>
> Paul.
MM:
Of course, Wilton was where Shakespeare became qualified spiritually
and poetically.
Michael Martin
elizabeth
but.net> wrote:
> On Nov 30, 12:17 am, Richard Kennedy <kenned...@charter.net> wrote:
[...]
>
> Ah, here you are either a liar or an imbecile, Richard--if not both.
Technically speaking, one can not be both an imbecile and
a liar because an imbecile would be considered non compos
mentis under law. Incapable of distinguishing between truth
and lies.
Just wanted to make that point.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
I like to make small points like that, too. However, you are wrong
here. Perhaps an imbecile cannot be considered in a court be capable
of lying (techinically) but in the real world, where truth counts, an
imbecile can know truth--animals can, in fact--and they can lie.
Chimps lie, according to scientific reports I've read. And imbeciles
can certainly lie, even if we define an imbecile the way psychologists
do; they can know that they ate a piece of candy they weren't supposed
to and deny they did. Of course, most of us define an imbecile as
simply an incredibly stupid person.
Just wanted to refute your point.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
it. She bases it on this passage from Samuel Schoenbaum's William
Shakespeare: A Documentary Life: "Shakespeare moved into New Place
before the year was our or, at the latest, early in the new year. We
know because, in a survey of corn and malt made on 4 February 1598, he
is list as a resident." Since the survey of corn and malt shows
Shakespeare, as well as most of the other home-owners of Stratford, to
have more corn and/or malt than the law of the time against hoarding
allowed.
She then gives details about how busy acting companies were, and how
hard it would be for Shakespeare to commute between his Stratford home
and London.
Actually, this section of Price's book seems confusing to me. Perhaps
it's me, perhaps I'm too tired to follow it as well as I should (I AM
tired right now). I'll come back to it. My main point is and will be
that she assumes Shakespeare actually spent little time with his
London acting troupe--because, (1) she assumes he had to be physically
present in Stratford for every business transaction noted in the
records, which need not be the case (for one thing, his wife, father,
brother or family lawyer could have taken care of his malt and corn
business in his name), and (2) that a few times he may have taken a
Stratford holiday from his company indicate he took many such
holidays.
--Bob
elizabeth
but.net> wrote:
> On Dec 15, 5:24 am, elizabeth <messageform...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On 30 Nov, 10:57, "bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net" <bobgrum...@nut-n-
>
> > but.net> wrote:
> > > On Nov 30, 12:17 am, Richard Kennedy <kenned...@charter.net> wrote:
> > [...]
>
> > > Ah, here you are either a liar or an imbecile, Richard--if not both.
>
> > Technically speaking, one can not be both an imbecile and
> > a liar because an imbecile would be considered non compos
> > mentis under law. Incapable of distinguishing between truth
> > and lies.
>
> > Just wanted to make that point.
>
> I like to make small points like that, too.
>
Technically, imbeciles can speak but their reasoning
capacities are very limited. Adult imbeciles can have
an IQ as low as that of a two year old. My point
is that if Richard were an imbecile, he could not be
found guilty in a court of law.
> However, you are wrong
> here.
The only results I could find on the question of imbeciles
and lying was in a JSTOR article from 1892 in which a
French scientist found that imbeciles cannot lie.
I think that article is a little too rusty to be conclusive.
I think an imbecile whose IQ bordered on moron could
probably lie.
> Perhaps an imbecile cannot be considered in a court be capable
> of lying (techinically) but in the real world, where truth counts, an
> imbecile can know truth--animals can, in fact--and they can lie.
Well, we're no longer producing idiots, imbeciles and morons
at the rate we did before childbirth bcame immeasurably safer
than it was in the 19th century and earlier. Then forceps were
routinely used and head injuries were irreversible.
On the other hand, the IQ of the US is slipping no doubt
due to the insults in the corporate food supply. Studies
have shown that breast-feeding is crucial to IQ because
the brain will not form rich dendrites on cows milk or
especially soy which is the worst possible food for infants.
They just can't handle it. Now we're going to log another
patch of the Amazon Forest the size of Utah to raise
soy to make American infants stupid.
It really is easy to attribute American stupidity to the
loss of Francis Bacon's science. Strats have never read
a word of Bacon's philosophy of science, so they have
no idea what their destruction of Bacon has cost the
planet. The CERN would not be trying to blow a door
into othe next dimension (I'm not kidding, that's what
they announced) if Bacon's imprecation not to "go
into God's realm of creation" meaning do not fuck with
the sub molecular realm of reality, were taken seriously.
The CERN imbeciles -- in this case the term fits -- are
so drunk on hubris, they're willing to take the chance.
And then there's Nostrodamus' creepy prediction that
Geneva is going to be blown sky high -- a great fire
will roar out of a deep hole . . .
But I digress.
> Chimps lie, according to scientific reports I've read.
That's a survival strategy, I don't think you can relate
chimp IQ, to the IQs of imbeciles. On their own, imbeciles
can't survive, they require lifetime care.
I'm using the terms "moron," "imbecile" and 'idiot" in the
historical sense, those terms are no longer used in medicine
or law. Now it's "degree of retardation," which works
since "moron," "imbecile" and "idiot" have lost their original
meanings.
> And imbeciles
> can certainly lie, even if we define an imbecile the way psychologists
> do; they can know that they ate a piece of candy they weren't supposed
> to and deny they did. Of course, most of us define an imbecile as
> simply an incredibly stupid person.
>
> Just wanted to refute your point.
The imbecile IQ range is equivalent to two to
seven years of age.
Six or seven year olds could be capable of inventing
lies (lies are inventions. so that capacity has to be
present) but I don't think imbeciles with the IQs of two
years olds are capable of inventing lies. So the
question is moot.
>
> --Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Elizabeth. But I do believe there is research out there of chimps
given keyboards who lie, and it's
hard for me to believe even the stupidest human being won't lie to
escape punishment.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
In her book, Price is very thoroughly and meticulously trying to make
everything concerned with WS ambiguous. She also is trying to
disconnect him as much as possible from London. Hence the section I
discussed (very incompletely) yesterday, and her next section, which
I'm going to discuss even more incompletely today. This latter is
about where he lived in London. I have trouble caring. That
Shakespeare almost certainly lived in or near the theatre district
where other evidence suggest he worked as an actor is mildly helpful
circumstantial evidence that he was the playwright the sane view him
as, but there is much better, direct evidence of that.
Price brings everything up, though, whether out of duty or the confuse
her opponents with the quantity of her attacks on Shakespeare I can't
say.
Important to her argument (which I don't entirely follow) are
extremely minor possible conflicts between the tax records
biographrers have used to trace WS in London and where they believe he
lived. I feel they're easy to explain, if actually there, by
bureaucratic error. I'll return to this. I bother writing about it
today merely to make sure not to accidently skip it.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price tries her skill at sowing confusion on the Manningham record and
a few other records of Shakespeare as an actor. The Manningham record
is the diary entry in which John Manningham relates an anecdote about
Shakespeare beating Richard Burbage to an assignation. Manningham
referred to WS as "Shakespeare," then, as a footnote, wrote the
reminder that Shakespeare's first name was William, that having an
importance for the punchline of the anecdote (Shakespeare being
William the Conqueror and there "before" Richard.)to Burbage.
Quick, what was Liberace's first name? Houdini's should be easier.
(Note: I put down the first names of all my nieces and nephews and
their children in my address book because I forget them all the time,
even those among them I see fairly often.) I ask. because Price wants
us to believe that WS was not well-known to Manningham, who was a
theatre-enthusiast. If not, why an anecdote about him?
Incredibly, Price tries to bolster her argument that Manningham was
not familiar with Shakespeare by citing a diary entry of his six weeks
after the entry with the anecdote in which Manningham describes a
performance of Twelfth Night--WITHOUT MENTIONING SHAKESPEARE.
According to our Sharp Mind, " . . . either he did not know that
'Shakespeare' wrote Twelfth Night, or he was unaware that the
'Shakespeare' in his anecdote was also the playwright." I think even
an Oxfordian ought to be able to see the weakness of this reasoning.
Price tries to clinch her case by mentioning other diary entries of
Manningham's in which he mention Jonson, Spenser and Marston---"all
specifically as poets." These wacks eem to feel that anyone writing
anything at all about Shakespeare should refer to him as "William
Shakespeare, the actor and play-maker born in Stratford-upon-Avon."
But one could argue that his not calling him a poet is an indication
that he and his being a poet were too well-known to indicate with more
than his last name. Liberace, the Pianist?" "Houdini, the magician?"
Just to muddy the waters a little more, Price tells us that the
Manningham diary entry was "examined" (Price's term) by the notorious
forger, John Payne Collier. But she drops this after a line or two,
no doubt because scholars have shown the record to be clearly
legitimate. Note, incidentally, that Price doesn't say Collier
discovered the Manningham diary, only that he "examined" it. This
suggests to me that he did not discover it, so almost certainly did
not forge any part of it, but that Price wants to, as I said, muddy
the waters. (Note: if anyone knows the full story of Collier's
involvement with the diary, I'd appreciate learning about it; if not,
I'll try to find out more, myself. There's a book on Collier that's
pretty detailed--and defneds him against the charge of forgery; I've
read it and was not convinced he was not the forger he was shown to be
in his lifetime, but found the book seemingly accurate on his
involvement on what he did as a Shakespeare scholar.)
Price dutifully lists the other instances of Shakespere the actor's
showing up in the records with no comment until she gets to the First
Folio's putting him at the head of those who acted in the
Shakespearean plays. She says the First Folio cast list is "the
*only* evidence that can be used to support the claim by one scholar
that (WS) frequently perform in his own plays" Laughably, she then
reminds us that the record is POSTHUMOUS. Aha! Since we have no
contemporaneous evidence that he performed in any of his plays (by
which she means EXPLICIT evidence), biographers have to rely on
anecdotal evidence. However weak anecdotal evidence may be, it is
still evidence (and there's not even anecdotal evidence that
Shakespeare did not write the wors ascribed to him).
There's also all the circumstantial evidence that he was an actor.
Unlike that if he were an actor he would not have frequently acted in
his own plays, since they were his troupe's most frequently performed
plays. A good many people MUST have acted in those plays, but we have
very little record of any given actor's having been in any of them.
Price claims Shakespeare was one of the least-referred to actors of
the time, but that ignores the many actors with have no record of, and
(I'm pretty sure) is based on the records of other companies than
Shakespeare's, with fuller records of who acted in what than
Shakespeare's company left us.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price devotes all of her fourth chapter to Greenes Groatsworth of
Wit. One line from it, "Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart
Crow, beautified with out feathers, that with his *Tiger's heart
wrapped in a Player's hide*, supposes he is as well able to bombast
out a blank verse as the best of you,: and being an absolute *Johannes
fac totum", is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country,"
is enough to close the authorship question all by itself, if its words
are allowed to mean what they say, so, of course, she must somehow
knock it out of the picture. I was going to skip this chapter on the
grounds that my essay on the Groatsworth takes care of it, as it does,
but I want to focus on a few of Price's more egregious aruments, in
case I didn't bother with them in my essay, or didn't pund them as
hard as I could have.
When Price can't find a scholar to agree with her that some passage in
some way indicating that Shakespeare was an author, she finds some
scholar to call it amnbiguous. There are always dimwittedly
relativistic scholars to be found in any large area of literary
studies. Here she uses D. Allen Carroll, the editor of the standard
edition of the Groatsworth. He's not dimwittedly relativistic, by any
means, but he's super-academic is refusing to accept conclusions
without near-incontestable evidence for them, and--like most
academics--he likes the idea of new light to shed on the subject, such
as the idea that Greene didn't compose Greenes Groatsworth of Wit.
Price quotes this from him (about the "tigers heart" line): "Something
ambiguous hoavers at the cenbter of its expression just at the point
wherewe might hope, in this first certain allusion to Shakespeare in
London, for a clue to his early practice as a dramatist . . . It was
the sapling (according) to W. W. Greg in 1942, from which 'sprang a
whole jungle of critical and biographical error.''
I doubt that any of the errors Greg was referring to had to do with
who wrote the play the line quotes (except for one change of
wording--"woman's" to "player's"). but Price quickly tells us that the
passage doesn't tell us anything about the authorship of that line.
Now, Diana isn't lying: the passage doesn't. But the First Folio
does, for it includes 3 Henry VI, where the line is, and attributes it
to William Shakespeare. There is no evidence contradicting this
attribution.
"Furthermore," our propagandist informs us, "the play (3 Henry VI) was
first published in 1595 in a corrupt and anonymous version, so, in
1592 (when the Groatsworth was published), general readers would have
had no reason to associate the 'tiger's heart' line with anyone named
Shakespeare." So what? Greene would have, as would the addressees of
the letter his line is in. Moreover, he soon identifies whose line it
belongs to: Shake-scene, an obvious pun on Shakespeare.
Now she is to her main bit of obfuscation, the idea that most
biographers have failed to consider the "tiger's heart" line in
context with the Groatsworth as a whole. But they needn't. The
letter the line appears in is clearly separate from everything else in
the Groatsworth. And the line itself is clearly separate--as aside
about a particular fellow Greene didn't like and seems to have been
extremely jealous of--from everything else in the fairly short letter
it is a part of.
Muriel C. Bradbrook is the schlar Price cherry-picks from to begin
with, Bradbrook commenting that the Groatsworth is thematically
unified, something few could argue with. But Price wants narrative
unity, and has now way of getting it. Nonetheless, she tries, by
telling us that the Roberto in the main narrative in The Groatsworth
is Greene, as Greene says himself, and that "the gentleman-player"
robert has dealings with "shares several characteristics with "Shake-
scene." Both are actors who pad their parts (Price here assuming as
fact something about Shake-scene she hasn't even tried yet to show was
true, and most definitely is not), both are braggarts, both hire needy
playwrights (pseudo-fact number two; the Shake-scene line has nothing
whatever to do with hiring actors). Price, naturally, finds a few
scholars she claims accept the gentleman player in the main narrative
of The Groatsworth as a caricature of Shakespeare.
A main problem with it, aside from the fact that all they share is the
acting profession, is that Greene denounces Shake-scene, but is
befriended by the gentle-man actor. The latter is an important figure
in the theatre world, Shake-scene an upstart. The latter once wrote
plays but now doesn't while Shake-scene is only beginning to write
plays.
To support her argument Price, she tells us, will now connect the
'tiger's heart' line to other lines in the letter. When this is
done, Shake-scene "turns out to an untrustworthy actor who is also a
money-lender and. like the 'gentleman-player,' a paymaster of
playwrights.
At this point she introduces one of her strangest, uh, findings, the
idea that satirists like Jonson alternate between the singular and the
plural "to blur satiric material." She has to say this to allow
sentences about actors in general to refer to a specific actor.
Interestingly, Price never quotes a sane paraphrase of the "tiger's
heart" line by me or anyone else. For mine, see my essay.
She goes on to cherry-pick theparagraph the t-h line is in for
"evidence" that it describes WS as a money-lender. Because Greene
(or, and I'll just say this once, the writer pretending to be Greene
or, in effect, being Greene) refers to actors in general, whom he is
carrying on against in the paragraph, as "anticks," she goes to
Brabbrook for a definition of "anticks" as the lowest kind of actor,
with a capacity for betrayal, aomng other traits. I'm not sure the
point of this. We already know Greene doesn't like actors.
She uses the characterization of Shake-scene as a Crow, to bring in
Horace's crow, which was a plagiarist. The Crow in Greene is
obviously not a plagiarist but an actor dependent on feathers provided
by others (Greene having spoken of the puppets and anticks in his
diatribe as speaking "from our mouths" and "garnisht in our colors,"
not as stealing words from him and the playwrights his letter
addresses and claiming them as their own. He simply repeats the
comparison when speaking of the Crow--who is beautified in our
feathers. She finds other instances of crows in the literature of the
time that she uses to try to make out Greene's Crow as shifty and
double-dealing. I'm not sure why. The t-h line indicates that Greene
thought him a betrayer and untrustworthy.
Much better for confusing a gullible reader away from the clear
meaning of a word is her connecting "supposes" to "pretending,"
following a wack (Jonathan Dixon) I quote in my essay, where I show
that the word seldom used to mean "pretend," and extremely unlikely to
have been used that way in Greene. I asked then for a example of any
Elizabethan writer using it that way, and a few wacks brought up a
translation of an Italian play with "Supposes" or the like in its
title that I'll have to spend some time finding out about. As I
recall, the word "suppose" may have been intended to mean "pretend,"
but needn't have, and was semi-forced by the title of the Italian
play. It was a farce, I believe, with pretended identities, yes, but
also many confused supposititions.
Price does a wishlexic take on the passage, first going close to a lie
by telling us Greene said he'd been deserted by actors ("by one in
particular"--supposedly Shake-scene, but the text doesn't say that,
only paints him as being a betrayer like the other actors.
She says Shake-scene "fancies himself able to extemporize lines in
blank verse that are as good as any of yours." Sorry, no, Diana.
Greene would not rise out of his deathbed to denounce some minor actor
for extemporizes lines and expect his friends to beware of him. What
kind of threat would such an actor be. The threat was that he was
writing PLAYS in competition with them, so they'd eventually desert
kreal playwrights.
Price has Shake-scen acting a plagiarist, too. There is a small
chance that this is true but Greene's main problem with Shake-scene is
that he's a literary rival.
Then Price lies, using her plurals and singulars are the same to make
Greene inveighing against Shake-scen only instead of the actors in
general he began the paragraph inveighing against. This allows him to
make the charge of usurer more able to stick. She wants us to think
Greene characterized all actors and Shak-scen inparticular as usurers,
but he didn't, he only slandered them as having the cruelty of
usurers.
More ridiculous misinterpretation by Price (which terms Chettle the
passage's author as though that were a fact) is followed by a
ludicrous attempt to make Shake-scen the Ant in the Grasshopper/Ant
fable the follows Greene's letter in The Groatswroth. But the fable
is clearly free-standing with nothing in common with the rest of the
book but its theme. Nor is there anything in it or eslewhere in the
book, like an introduction, to link it to any other part of the book.
Price faults biographers for leaving the references to usury in the
pivotal passage out, but has no cause to. They had nothing to do with
Shake-scene, who is mention in one line, then dropped.
Price's last three pages have to do with a text written after the
Groatsworth that Price considers related to it. I'm not up to
discussing it todoy. Perhaps tomorrow.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price makes much of the silly idea that using the singular and the
plural interchangeably *in a work* is a trick satirists use to keep
the identity of the specific subject of their satire overt. This
allows her to claim that what Greeene (or Chettle) said about actors
in general only or principally applied to Shakespeare.
She continues relying on this sham in the rest of her chapter on the
Groatsworth ehen she quotes gobs of Vertues Common-wealth, by Henry
Crosse (or someone using that name). Crosse incontestably plagiarizes
Greenes Groatsworth--BUT directs his malice against actors in general,
as does Greene, never against any specific actor. Price assumes he is
targeting our boy WIllie, naturally. True, he repeats Greene's
"bombast(ing) out a blank verse," but I don't believe Greene was the
only one who used that phrase, and Crosse applies it to actors in
general. And at that time, uses the singular: "He that can but
bombast out a blank verse, and make both the ends jump together in a
rhyme, is forthwith a poet laureate, challinging the garland of bays,
and in one slavering discousre or other, hand out the badge of his
folly." This, however, is not singling out a particular actor, but
referring to those several actors from the actors in general whom
Crosse in his preceding sentence had called "Anticks, and Puppets,"
that are capable of writing poetry. In other words, Crosse doesn't
say, as Greene did, that one of them is a bombaster, he speaks of "he
that can." The "he" is a general "he."
Hence, in his very next sentence, Crosses writes, Oh how weak and
shallow much of their poetry is, for having no sooner laid the subject
and ground of their matter, and in the Exordium moved attention, but
over a verse or two run upon rocks and shelves, carrying their readers
into a maze, now up, then down, one verse shorter than another by a
foot, like an unskillful Pilot, never comes night the inded harbot,"
etc. Price takes this to be directed at Shakespeare, showing he
commanded "no respect whatsoever, was hardly the subject of any
professional eny . . . an incompetent hack and broker." Ah, but a
WRITER, Diana. If you want Crosse to be speaking of Shakespeare here,
you must acknowledge
that he is thinking of him as a writer, something the whole point of
your book is to deny.
Crosse goes on to say that these (plural) writers are "either like
Chirrillus, writing verse not worth the reading, or Battillus,
arrogating to themselves, the well deserving labors of other ingenious
spirits." Price latches vigorously onto "Battillus," for the rest of
the book considering Shakespeare that--a plagiarist. I wonder who the
other Battilluses Crosse was referring to. At least some of the
historical Battillus's material was his own, by the way.
+Amusingly, Price reveals that Greene referred to Battillus's plagiary
of Virgil in one of his pamphlets. What that has to do with anything,
who knows.
Whoopee: Price finds a scholar stupid enough to say that Crosse's
pamphlet contained "hits at Shakespeare"--Alexander B. Grosart. She
can always find some support from some academic.
Price wants WS unlikable, and barely able to write, so uses one
cantankerous man's bad opinion in one sentence of a rival as the basis
of a smear campaign calculated to make it seem to readers with no
critical sense whatever that everyone thought Shakespeare an
untalented, unscrupulous creep. But, hey, thanks to the amazing
conspirators hiding . . . The Truth, all these people only let us know
about it in the most circuituitous ways imaginable. (In fact, I
wouldn't be surprised if they murdered Greene for being so obvious
about who he was writing about!)
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price heads her next chapter with a quotation from something by
William W. E. slights that claims any resemblance between a living
person and a person in one of Jonson's plays was probably
intentional. Why this quotation? Because Price is going to continue
semi-psychotically interpreting anything any writer of Shakesspeare's
time wrote that was negative about some person as being about
Shakespeare, as she did with Crosse.
She begins her chapter in another precinct of of Wackdom, thought, the
precinct where the hyphen sometimes used by his contemporaires between
the two words making up his last name indicates that the name is a
pseudonym. In her discussion of the hyphen Price again shows herself
to be a propagandist. But she also shows herself to be an imbecile
more directly than she generally does. Shes pitches four possible
explanations for the use of the hyphen: (1) it was used randomly,
punctuation, spelling, etc., still being arbitrary back then; (She
propaganduates the fact that WS "never once chose to hphenate his own
name." I guess she hopes her readers will forget that we only have
five or six of his
signatures and/or wants them unconsciously to think of his name on
records as having been put there by him rather than by lawyers of
publishers or others.) In any case, the radon hyphen may have been
repeated from one edition of a book to another along with a title-page
reused to save mony and time. She presents a reasonable argument
aginst this happening frequently, by citing instances where a title-
page was not copied, or not copied in whole, from one edition to the
next. She seems to assume that that means none were.
(2.) "the compositors deliberately inserted the hyphen to prevent the
long tails present in the K and S italic type fonts from bumping into
each other and breaking." But, she tells us, roman type fonts didn't
have long tails and were used with most editions of the plays, and the
compositors had other means of taking care of the problem.
(3) the name "inexplicably attracted hyphen-mongers," or (4) "'Shake-
speare' was
regarded as a made-up name."
So, two weak and trivial attempts by the orthodox to explain the
hyphens described only, I'm sure, to make those scholars look bad
(straw men), and two moronic explanations. (3) is moronic because
there's nothing inexplicable about using a hyphen in a word consisting
of two common words to separate those two words. (4) is moronic
because there is no evidence that a hyphen was taken to indicate a
made-up name. The fact that many made-up names used one is irrelevant
as such names always consisted of two words. See my Of Manywhere-at-
Once for other arguments against that hypothesis, including names not
psuedonyms from the time that used a hyphen.
One also wonder, as one does over and over when reading the authorship
wacks, why the use of a front the wacks believe in was concealed and
revealed at the same time by the same people. "We'll give him a false
name so people won't know who he is but make the false name so
obviously false that they will known it's a false name."
"But, but, Sir Genius-Hoaxster, won't that tend to defeat our
intent?"
"How? We want no one and everybody to know of our hoax."
One further note: that WS and his troupe liked "Shake-speare" because
it gave the name a bit of extra flair in a business where flair
counted.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price next subjects a poem by John Davies of Hereford to her
wishlexia, bending it to make her readers believe Davies was not
referring to WS as a dramatist. Ordinarily, she could just dismiss
the poem as not explicitly personal inasmuch as Davies nowhere calls
himself a friend of WS, but the poem is clearly about a person and his
associates Davies knew pretty well, so she has to deconstruct it in
some way.
I wrote an extended essay about Shakespeare and Davies, focusing on
Price's interpretation of this poem. She, by the way, neglects in her
book (as far as I've been able to find) two other high relevant poems
about Shakespeare that Davies. I assume even she realize her
wishlexia wouldn't work with them, or saw that they contradicted her
reading of the one Davies poem she discusses. My essay, by the way,
is stored at the Shakespeare Fellowship site, which I want to commend
for keeping it there, although no one is ever referred to it. Here's
the essay:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Three Shakespeare-Related Poems By John Davies
We have three poems called epigrams, by John Davies of Hereford, that
people debating who wrote the works of Shakespeare cannot avoid
discussing. The most important of them is the following, which was
published in 1610:
To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare
Some say (good Will), which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a King;
And been a King among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit:
And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap;
So, to increase their stock which they do keep.
Needless to say, the views of Gulielmus-Affirmers and Rejectors about
the meaning of this poem are decidedly incompatible. What is perhaps
their worst clash begins even before the body of the poem. It concerns
just what Davies meant by "Terence."
Oxfordian Charlton Ogburn has trouble with this because Terence wrote
comedies, and Shakespeare was a great tragedian. Well, the
probability, as Irvin Matus theorizes, is that Davies was merely
complimenting Shakespeare for his gift for verbal clarity and
elegance, Terence having been most esteemed by the
Elizabethans for such a gift. According to Matus, Terence "was in the
curriculum of Westminster School, one of the great schools of the day,
'for the better learning (of) the pure Roman style.'" Almost every
contemporary writer commenting on Shakespeare's style praised its
mellifluousness or the like. And most of what Shakespeare wrote was
clear, particularly when contrasted to the style it replaced, Lyly's
euphuism, which was very ornate and affected-seeming.
Carrying on for Ogburn, Diana Price suggests that Davies described
Shakespeare as a Terence because Terence was a front man for
aristocrats, as none other than famed literary historian Michel de
Montaigne (1533-1592) held. He thought that only aristocrats could
have been refined enough to write elegantly. Terence was an African
slave. (However, as John W. Kennedy said about this at HLAS when a
Gulielmus-Rejector repeated Montaigne's opinion, "In Roman times,
being a slave had virtually no bearing on literacy. Teachers were
slaves.") The English scholar, Roger Ascham (1515-1568) is also
brought up in support of the Terence-as-Front view, for his posthumous
The Scholemaster (1570) asserts without evidence that Terence's name
was on some works he did not write.
Price argues her case further by pointing out the hyphen Davies used
in Shakespeare's name, which "Anti-Stratfordians theorize . . .
signifies a pseudonym, and in this instance the sobriquet, 'our
English Terence,'
reinforces this theory." That's because Terence in his time was
"accused of taking credit for the plays of aristocratic authors Scipio
and Laelius." Fascinating lapse of logic this: "Shake-speare" equals
"Terence," according to Davies; "Terence" equals his front-man,
Shaksper and "Shake-speare" equals Oxford, according to Price. Which
leads to Shaksper equals Oxford.
There are many reasons to believe Davies considered Terence a genuine
author, not anyone's front, in his title. Where in the poem does
Davies suggest that Terence was, as Terence may have been, indebted to
Scipio and Laelius, or that Shakespeare was any kind of front? Since
we see no references to any of these
stories about Terence, the only reasonable conclusion is that Davies
was speaking of Shakespeare as "our Terence" because Shakespeare was
one of the great writers of English comedies just as Terence was one
of the great writers of Latin comedies.
Terry Ross has more to say in response to Price's take on Terence. He
states that except for a few explicit reference to Laelius or Scipio,
Terence, in Shakespeare's time, was always referred to as a genuine
author. "His name was not proverbial for a 'front.'" Ross draws
attention to the front matter to the 1609 quarto of Troilus and
Cressida which describes that play as deserving of serious discussion
"as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus." Clearly, whoever wrote
this was calling Terence a superior writer of comedy, like Plautus, as
well as using the Roman to compliment Shakespeare as a writer.
Another allusion to Terence occurs in a poem of 1614 that brings up
Shakespeare by Thomas Freeman:
....Who loves chaste life, there's Lucrece for a teacher;
Who list read lust, there's Venus and Adonis,
True model of a most lascivious lecher.
Besides, in plays thy wit winds like Meander,
Whence needy new composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Meander....
Freeman is clearly saying "new composers" borrow more from Shakespeare
than Terence did from Plautus or Meander. In other words, Terence, for
Freeman, is indeed a borrower, but still a playwright, and Shakespeare
not a borrower, but one borrowed from.
There's also Meres, who lists "the best poets for comedy ... among the
Latines" as "Plautus, Terence, Naevius, Sext. Turpilius, Licinus
Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanus"; Shakespeare is listed as one of "the
best for Comedy among us." Meres as clearly as Freeman speaks of
Terence as a genuine (superior) playwright. Ross, drawing on Don
Cameron Allen's Francis Meres's Treatise "Poetrie": A Critical
Edition, adds that "Textor, an important Meres source for his list of
the best Latin poets, does not even mention the
Scipio/Laelius rumors in his capsule bio of the playwright, although
Textor does mention Terence's having been a slave and his having been
born in Africa.
In his First Folio eulogy to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson compares him to
"tart Aristophanes, / Neat Terence, witty Plautus ...." all of whom he
plainly considered playwrights of note.
Add to these George Puttenham (1529-1590), who said, "There were also
Poets that wrote onely for the stage, I means playes and interludes,
to recreate the people with matters of disporte, and to that intent
did set forth in shewes & pageants, accompanied with speach the
common behauiours and maner of life of priuate persons, and such as
were the meaner sort of men, and they were called Comicall Poets, of
whom among the Greekes Menander and Aristophanes
were most excellent, with the Latines Terence and Plautus."
All this is not enough to satisfy the Guliemus-Rejectors. They claim
that any educated person of Shakespeare's time who read the Davies
poem would be aware of Ascham's or Montaigne's opinion of Terence, and
would have as likely thought of him as a front as they would have
thought him a genuine (important) playwright. Ross points out,
however, that even in the few cases when some Elizabethan writer
discusses the Scipio/Laelius rumors, they do not consider him
essentially as a front. "Sidney in his Apology said, 'Laelius, called
the Romane Socrates [was] himselfe a Poet; so as part of
Heautontimoroumenon in Terence,
was supposed to bee made by him' -- note the qualifying 'was supposed'
and the limited scope of Laelius's possible contribution to Terence's
work. Sidney's other references to Terence speak of him as the author
of the works attributed to him."
Ascham does say that "some Comedies" with Terence's name on them were
written "by worthy Scipio, and wise Laelius, and namely Heauton: and
Adelphi." But he leaves four of Terence's comedies to him. Elsewhere
in Ascham's The Scholemaster, Terence shows up as a genuine writer of
the works credited
to him, never as a front of some sort. As for Montaigne, he explicitly
states that he thought Scipio and Laelius wrote the comedies of
Terence in one of his essays, but whenever he elsewhere refers to
those comedies, he treats them as by Terence. That is, he writes of
Terence not as a front but as an author.
The long and the short of it is that there is little reason to suspect
from the title alone that Davies is not complimenting Shakespeare as a
fine dramatist. There is strong support for this in the body of the
poem. Davies, with no hint whatever of irony, says there that
Shakespeare was an actor who could have been a
companion of the king had he not been an actor. He also says
Shakespeare has a "reigning wit" and sows honesty. Nowhere does he say
anything against his poem's subject. It would therefore be
ridiculously against sane poetic decorum for his title to disparage
him.
But, argue some Gulielmus-Rejectors, what about the two poems in
Davies's book after his poem to Shakespeare that are, respectively, to
"No-body" and to "Some-body." Shouldn't they make one suspicious? Not
me. Evidently, Davies wanted to flatter two friends who were shy, so
what? Actually, the sequence of
poems the poem and the ones to "No-body" and "Some-body" are part of
supports the proposition that Davies was complimenting Shakespeare.
Here on the titles of the poems in it, in order:
155. To my worthily-disposed friend, Mr. Sam. Daniell.
156. To my well-accomplishÆd friend Mr. Ben Johnson.
157. To my much esteemed Mr. Inego Jones, our English Zeuxis and
Vitruvius.
158. To my worthy kinde friend Mr. Isacke Simonds.
159. To our English Terence Mr. Will: Shake-speare.
160. To his most constant, though most unknowne friend; No-body.
161. To my neere-deere wel-knowne friend; Some-body.
162. To my much-regarded and approved good friend Thomas Marbery, Esq.
163. To my right deere friend approved for such, John Panton Esquire
[followed by others to his dear pupil, his beloved friend, etc.]
According to Pat Dooley, Diana Price's husband, we're supposed to
notice how different from the others Davies's poem to Shakespeare is.
"When Davies is personally acquainted with someone it is very obvious.
It would appear that he does not have such a relationship with
Shakespeare. We then have the odd choice
of playwright. Terence was believed to be a front for aristocratic
playwrights and other Elizabethan writers said as much."
Right. So let's go through the list again, this time with their titles
as Dooley would take them to be (and shortened):
155. To my friend Daniell, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
156. To my friend Johnson, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
157. To my friend Jones, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
158. To my friend Simonds, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
159. To my non-friend, Shake-speare, derision and scorn.
160. To my friend No-body, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
161. To my friend Some-body, compliments (with, perhaps, some
teasing).
162. To my friend Marbery, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
163. To my friend Panton, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).
Hmmmm.
I've already given the gist of my interpretation of the poem, itself,
but will now present my detailed reading. I find no concealed
meanings in it. Davies, for me, Davies considers Shakespeare a
superior dramatist, as Terence was. He reports that Shakespeare had
played some “Kingly parts in sport.” To “play a part” is, of
course, what actors do. He did this “in sport,” as Davies writes his
poem “in sport,” which surely indicates that he played the “Kingly
parts” as an artist—that is, his playing the parts in sport emphasizes
his actions as those of an actor. Strongly supporting this is another
of Davies’s epigrams. It is to the actor Robert Armin who acted in
Shakespeare’s company, and is believed to have played the fools in
Shakespeare’s plays after 1599. In it Davies says of Armin that he “in
sport . . . wisely play(s) the fool.” Elsewhere in that poem Davies
makes it unambiguous that he considers Armin an actor.
According to Davies, some persons said that if "good Will" had not
been an actor, he could have been a companion to a King. This seems a
simple compliment like telling a lawyer that if he hadn't gone into
law, he might have become a baseball star. As "a companion for a
King," he would have been a king himself for
lower types. That stands by iteself, but I suspect Davies is here
suggesting that "the meaner sort," or persons Davies looks down on, do
not now think much of Will but would, being status-conscious boobs, if
he were a king's companion.
Some make fun of the notion, railing at it, but Shakespeare is above
trivial insults. In the words of the clumsy couplet with which Davies
ends his poem, he describes Will as sowing honesty, which then also
meant "honour." This, those who railed reaped, to increase their own
stock of honour/honesty. To me it
looks like "which they do keep" is in the poem to finish off the line
and provide a rhyme for "reap." I'd read the final line to mean,
simply, "thus they increase the stock of honesty they have on hand."
Gulielmus-Rejectors don't consider the poem so straight-forward.
Ogburn accepts that Davies was testifying that Shakespeare, the
writer, acted (an important admission most Gulielmus-Rejectors would
be uncomfortable with). He goes further, though, and finds evidence
that Davies also testified that Shakespeare was a nobleman. How? Why,
only a noble could be "a companion for a king," the word, "companion"
deriving from the Latin word, "comes," which (approximately) means
"count." What can one say against such strained reasoning?
Diana Price paraphrases this poem as follows:
"To our own Battillus (by which she means a front although copious
research has shown that the Romans considered the actual Battillus
simply a poor poet who stole from other poets, not a front), Master
Will: Shake-speare
"Scuttlebutt has it, my good man Will (which I, just for fun, put in
verse), that had you not behaved arrogantly, as though you were the
king of the troupe, you would still be a member of the King's Men, and
a king among those lowly actors and shareholders. Some of the King's
Men criticize you, as they believe you crossed them. But you don't get
abusive. You keep your condescending sense of humor. And you have
inspired the King's Men to value honesty, because now they take more
care to hold on to their "Stock" of playbooks ("which they do keep").
They do not want them sold out from under them by someone dishonest
like you. So now they will guard their assets ("increase their
stock"), and it will be more
difficult for you to get your hands on them, since you are no longer a
partner in the operation.
I'll leave it up to the reader to decide who has a better grip on the
poem, Price or I.
Price, incidentally, also finds a few Shakespearean scholars unable to
follow the poem to support her characterization of it as "cryptic."
But it is quite straight-forward for such a poem from such a time. I
won't say I've got it exactly, but I do think I've gotten it as close
as one can get any such poem from that far back. I am certain I've
shown that the poem is not cryptic (although anyone can force mystery
into it, or any poem, if sufficiently driven to by a need to ambiguate
it--and find some Shakespearean scholar to agree with one).
Regardless of how she interprets the poem, Price is sure it presents
no "contemporaneous personal literary evidence" (a term she refuses
explicitly to define) for him. I do not concur. It is true that Davies
does not explicitly say anywhere in the poem that he personally knew
Shakespeare. In support of this, she notes that he used the editiorial
"our" in referring to him. On top of that, he starts his poem not by
telling us his opinion of Shakespeare but what "some" said about him.
Yet, John Chamberlain write in a letter of Spenser, "our principal
poet," as having died without indicating that he had personally known
him, and his testimony satisfies Price as personal evidence that
Spenser was a writer. The reasoning seems to be that if one testifies
that an alleged writer is a person in some way other than as a writer,
it makes the testimony personal. Chamberlain does mention a few
details about a person named Spenser beside the fact that he died, but
I claim Davies tells us at least as much that is personal about
Shakespeare--as well as suggests he knew him personally.
Before I turn to what Davies said in his "English Terence" poem to
indicate that, I feel it would be useful to examine two poems by
Davies that were published before it that most Shakespearean scholars,
if not most Gulielmus-Rejectors, agree are about William Shakespeare
the author. The first is from his Microcosmos (1603):
Players, I love yee, and your Qualitie,
As ye are Men, that pass time not abus’d:
And some I love for painting, poesie W.S. R.B.
And say fell fortune cannot be excus’d,
That hath for better uses you refused:
Wit, Courage, good shape, good partes and all goode,
As long as all these goods are no worse us’d,
And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloode
Yet generous yee are in minde and moode.
This has two marginal notes besides the one with the initials:
“Simonides saith, that painting is a dumb Poesy, & Poesy a speaking
painting” and “Roscius was said for his excellency in his quality, to
be only worthy to come on the stage, and for his honesty to be more
worthy then to come thereon (‘then’ being almost certainly a form of
‘than’).”
These lines seem clearly to speak of the “Players” Richard Burbage
(R.B.) and William Shakespeare (W.S), as—respectively—a painter and a
poet, Thomas Middleton having written that Burbage was “excellent both
player and painter” and Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece,
among other documents, confirming
that someone with the initials, W.S., was a poet. Note that Davies
speaks of personal traits of R.B. and W.S.: they are "generous . . .
in mind and mood." How would he know that if he weren't personally
acquainted with these men? Okay, someone could have told him, but is
it really likely that he would have written the two poems quoted so
far, and a third, about an actor he seems to know a lot about, and
describes as a poet, like himself, without ever making his personal
acquaintance? Even granting that he did not know Burbage or
Shakespeare, surely he bestows as much personhood on them by
describing them each as
actors who were gifted in a second art, and possessing the personal
trait of generosity, as Chamberlain bestows on Spenser when he
described his place and time of death, his vocation as a poet and he
came "lately out of Ireland."
Davies's other poem to Shakespeare--or to W.S.--is the following, from
his The Civil Warres of Death and Fortune (1605):
Some followed her by acting all mens parts Stage Players
These on a Stage she rais’d (in scorne) to fall:
And made them Mirrors, by their acting Arts,
Wherin men saw their faults, though ne’r so small:
Yet soome she guerdond not, to their desarts; W.S. R.B.
But, othersome, were but ill-actioned all:
Who while they acted ill, ill staid behinde,
(By custome of their maners) in their minde.
Again, the poet indicates a knowledge of W.S. and R.B. as men by
referring to how the two acted off the stage; that is, he claims that
when they acted the roles of evil characters ("acted ill"), their
minds remained uncontaminated "By custome of their maners," or due to
the propriety of their real-life manners. He is also aware that the
two have not be rewarded to the extent he thinks they should have
been, which indicate that, at the very least, he thinks of them as
real persons who can be slighted, just as he thinks of them as real
persons who have a vocation as stage players.
Davies's later-published poem combines with these in granting
Shakespeare personhood (and indicating that her probably knew him
personally). Here it is, again:
To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare
Some say (good Will), which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a King;
And been a King among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit:
And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap;
So, to increase their stock which they do keep.
Yes, Davies addresses Shakespeare as "our," not "my," "English
Terence." The reason for that should be obvious to anyone: to claim
another is a great writer in the eyes of everyone is a somewhat larger
compliment that to claim he is a great writer in one's own eyes,
alone, and Davies wanted to compliment Shakespeare. And why should he
intrude himself into this single great compliment by saying, "My
Friend, The English Terence, Mr. Will: Shake-speare?" I've already
discussed the reference to Terence and why that is certainly a
compliment. Moreover, the poem's centering a group on nine poems, all
the others of
which are to friends of Davies's, strongly suggests that this one was
to a friend of his, too.
We aren't finished with the title of the poem, though, for--look: it
makes "Shake-speare" a gentleman! Do pseudonyms get coats of arms, or
do actual persons?
It is also true that Davies starts the main text of his poem with a
reference to what certain others say about Shakespeare. But this is
not "impersonal," just a report as to what the person, Shakespeare, is
having said about him. Moreover, Davies indicates they say about him,
which makes it his own view, too. That is, he is directly reporting
that he believes that if Shakespeare had not been an actor (with a
mention of some of the kinds of roles he played), he'd be a big man in
some court. Poetic hyperbole, but not hugely, since commoners could
and did sometimes rise to positions of political power in those times.
So both "some" and
Davies are testifying that Shakespeare was an actor who might have
been "more," two data that seem to establish him as a genuine person
the way Chamberlain established Spenser as one.
Stronger evidence is in those three lines, too: Davies use of the
intimate second person singular--"thou. This is not something he did
in the other poems in this set, but does twice more in this poem.
Surely, it is relevant that he also addressed Shakespeare as "good
Will," using a nickname--in other words, addressing him as a familiar
acquaintance who was a good person. Later, Davies reveals his
knowledge that Shakespeare does not rail, and has honesty, or honor,
which he sows. He could be speaking here only of his writing, but
taken in context with everything else we know he said about
Shakespeare, that seems less possible than that he was speaking of him
as a person.
(An interesting side-point is that Shakespeare is presented as alive
through Davies's use of the present tense in describing him in this
poem. As if the fact that this "Shake-speare" was an actor, and not a
companion of kings or the equivalent, weren't enough to distinguish
him from Oxford, this suggests
Shakespeare was alive in 1610 or 1611, when the poem was published.
That's six or seven years after Oxford died. The poem, of course, was
written before 1610, but had to have been written after 1603, when
Shakespeare began acting "King's roles"--as a member of the King's
Men.)
I can't claim that the three epigrams by Davies that I've discussed
are certain personal evidence for Shakespeare, but they surely seem as
strong personal evidence for him as Chamberlain's for Spenser, or the
law books John Marston's father left him in his will tha Price counts
as evidence that he was an author. The
evidence of Meres, and of Heywood when he wrote of personal knowledge
that Shakespeare, long after Oxford was dead, was upset that his name
was falsely attached to some of Heywood's poems, which I consider
equally personal (and contemporaneous), are corroboration. Assuming we
ignore posthumous evidence, the way Price does. It is not likely that
Diana Price will ever agree to that, however.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That takes care of Price, Davies and Shakespeare. My essay, I hope,
too, serves as a good example of responsible scholarship, particularly
compared with that of Price in her Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
John Davies of Hereford's testimony against my essay's refutation of
her claims. I'm sure if asked why this is so, she would hide in
etiquette: I'm just too nasty to argue with.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
I'm to to page 67 of Price's book, more than a fifth of the way
through it. Over 17,000 words. Looks like I'll have enough words for
a book when I'm done, if I ever finish. I have to admit that I'm
wearing down. A shame to devote so much time and energy on a book as
bad as Price's but I hope what I end with will be a handbook on the
recognition of sophistry.
Odd that no Prician has tried to overturn my refutation--except for
Paul Crawley, who didn't make much of an effort. (But I think he
presented an argument.) I didn't expect Price herself to defend
herself: she's no doubt waiting for Jonathan Bate or someone with the
proper credentials to attack her book. I do expect someone to come to
her book's defense, and, believe me, I'm really scairt.
On page 67 Price takes up her effort to make deconstruct Jonson with
vigor for the first time. Like many anti-Stratfordians, she takes him
for Shakespeare's lead witness. Most wacks, in fact, take him for the
ONLY witness for Shakespeare, supplying the others thought to be with
their texts. Well, the others except for people like Davies whom
Price thinks she can convince people were saying the opposite of what
their words mean on the page.
She starts with the cast lists for two of the plays in Jonson's Works
(1616) that include WS--in one his name is hyphenated! What's more,
the S of "Speare" is captialized! Ambiguity, folks! The hyphen
"could signify the pseudonymous playwright OR the actor-agent who took
credit for (the latter's plays). She by now no longer considers the
possibility that it could signify the name of someone whose names was
William Shakespeare.
She tries to support her contention that the hyphen is a Major Clue
with blather about he meticulous about his own name Jonson, formerly
Johnson, was, and how meticulous he was about the spelling of every
word in his books. For Price, the hyphen could not have been
accitdental. It had to have a Secret Meaning. I suspect, though,
that Jonson oversaw the spelling of the words in his plays much more
than the spelling in minor portions of his book like the cast lists.
I also believe that probably the original cast list of the play
Shakespeare's name is spelled normally had it spelled that way, and
the printers of Jonson's books repeated that spelling whereas the
spelling on the original cast list had it
with a hyphen, so they copied that on the other cast list. The fact
that hyphens did not denote a fake name, and the fact that the
overwhelming evidence is there was no "True Shake-Speare" and that WS
was not an actor-agent taking credit for tham man's works make Price's
contention here, like just about all her other ones, silly
sophistry.
Price, incidentally, makes a big deal of the hyphenated spelling in
the cast list as the only time the name was spelled that way by
Jonson. Why? He had plenty of opportunity elsewhere to hint at the
truth, including in the First Folio, where others used the hyphenated
version. To me, it would seem that either he himself was not
reponsible for the spelling, or only temporariloy thought that was the
best spelling.
Jim KQKnave
>
> 22 December 2009
>
> I'm to to page 67 of Price's book, more than a fifth of the way
> through it. Over 17,000 words. Looks like I'll have enough words for
> a book when I'm done, if I ever finish. I have to admit that I'm
> wearing down. A shame to devote so much time and energy on a book as
> bad as Price's but I hope what I end with will be a handbook on the
> recognition of sophistry.
Unfortunately I don't think anyone cares about her
bs other than Oxfordians and other anti-strat types.
I think it would be just as wearying to take on one
of Vickers' books, but it might have more effect
since a number of legitimate scholars have fallen
for his nonsense.
The Droeshout portrait isn't unusual at all!
http://shakesandbacon.yolasite.com
Agent Jim
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Well, I also need the exercise--and Price is easier than Vickers--if
only because Vickers cites a lot of Elizabethan stuff I'm not up to
reading.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Next . . .
Phooey, this entry skips some 30 pages. I'll leave it in but put it
where it belongs in the copy I now have of this thread at my
Poeticks.com blog.
Price has the gall to tell us that "Shakespere's profession profile is
remarkably similar to that of Philip Henslowe, landlord and impresario
of the Rose theatre, whose voluminous papers left Bentley with no
doubt about his range of activities."
But we have Henslowe's diary. It shows he bought and old plays, paid
actors, loaned money to playwrights, etc. No records indicate he
wrote plays himself, or acted. Many records indicate that Shakespeare
wrote plays and acted. There are no records indicating Shakespeare
bought and sold plays, or paid actors. He made some laons, though, so
probably loaned money to other actors, at times. Since he was a
theatre man, like Henslowe, he no doubt did some things that Henslowe
also did, like collect payments from nobles paying a special
performance of a play.
At least Price does call this section of her book "conjectural."
Among the other things she conjectures is Shakespeare has "no time for
deadbeats, and he leaves playwright Robert Greene to die in poverty."
We have only one side of the story in Greene's case, and no evidence
that he loaned Greene money, only that he in some way betrayed Greene,
most probably by not buy a play from him. We have no particular
reason to believe he knew Greene was dying and did nothing for him.
We do have two or three records that indicate WS for some strange
reason believed in having his loans repaid, and went to court to get
what was owed him. Again, we haven/t sufficient data to show how
quickly he did this, and what kind of people he took to court. I
myself have made very few loans, but could be called a callous slum
lord because I once finally kicked a family out of a house I rented to
them for going six months without paying me anything, and for
subletting the chicken shed in the back yard--but not for almost
burning the place down when their two kids lit a corner of the house
on fire while the mother slept off an overdoes of some drug or other,
and not for over-using the septic system and getting the house
condemned. I also took a nurse's aide to court for repayment of a
loan--I'd paid her in advance two or three months pay for the care of
my mother because she was having money troubles, whereupon she quit
and wouldn't pay me what I'd advanced her. Yes, I'm a cruel fellow.
So was Shakespeare.
Price makes a lot out of Shakespeare's loaning people money, something
I expect many men with money did at that time. She also makes a big
deal out of his having gotten wealthy, as few actors do. But his
friends Henslowe and Condell did. And his company throve. So he was
also a prudent investor, too, unlike most artists, so what? It's also
near certain that Southampton gave him a fair amount of money.
The imbecile tells us that "In the absence of any evidence to show
that (Shakespeare) was paid as a writer, one can only speculate on
what money he may have made from selling plays . . ." "Only?" Of
course, the preface to The Rape of Lucrece" that Shakespeare wrote is
strong evidence of his having been paid as a writer. Aside from that,
in the absence of just about all evidence that any playwright of the
time got paid for writing plays, all the evidence that WS wrote plays
for the most successful acting company of the time, makes it possible
for wacks only not to accept that he made reasonably good money just
for his writing. His known position as partner in his lucrative
company establishes where he got most of his money, though. Money he
earned before that no doubt came from Southampton, as anecdotal
evidence tells us and his Lucrece preface pretty much confirms.
Although, we lack a lot of possibly highly pertinent data, such as how
his father was doing at the time. John Shakespeare was once a very
successful businessman. How can we be sure he wasn't one again,
perhaps with the help and money of his son?
Continuing her obtuseness, which I have trouble believing in, Price
wonders why Shakespeare, as money-hungry as she takes him to have
been, asted time trying to make money as a playwright. She ignored
the possibility of INDIRECT earnings. A few pounds for a play from
the Lord Chamberlain's Men might not be much, but many pounds from his
cut in the proceeds his company gets because of that play may.
According to Price, WS "did not have to write a single word to make
any of" the money he made from his Globe and Blackfriars theatre
shares and other financial dealings. She doesn't mention his being a
share-holder in his acting company whichI think all scholars agree he
got much of his money from, and which allowed him to make the other
investments he made.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Just about the only weapon in the anti-Stratfordian
arsenal is something I call the looneation. A
looneation is the absence of some particular recorded
biographical datum that would support the claim
that WS was a writer. For instance, the absence
of any record that WS attended a school. Or the
absence of a letter from a known writer to Shakespeare
about Shakespeare's writing. Or the absence of a
list from the times of books WS owned.
Some looneations might have minor weight if there
were no explicit evidence to show that WS was indeed
an author, but no rational person could conclude from
one or many of them that he was not a writer because
absence of evidence is not proof of evidence of absence.
Most looneations are ridiculous, however, such as the
absence of the name of any play he wrote on his
funereal monument or, on that monument, a reference
to his having been a servant of the king. Or an invitation
to dinner to WS from a local bishop. I'm not making
these looneations up: some truly do consider them
strong evidence if not proof that WS was no writer, or
certainly not an Important One.
John Looney took the looneation from the Baconians and
perfected it. He listed all the attributes the writer of the Oeuvre
MUST HAVE HAD (no one of them, by some strange coincidence
there is any record that WS had, although he could still have
had them--an interest in the law, for instance). Just about all
these attributes were entirely subjective.
Then he (supposedly) investigated the biography of WS to see
if he had any of them. It is unquestionable that he already knew
he did not. Or, I should say, that in almost all cases, too little
was known about Shakespeare to show he had any of them.
Bingo: looneations disproving WS was a writer. None
may have been conclsuive, but so many altogether?!
Come to think of it, one might call the preceding looneations,
"negative looneations," for looneations intended to prove some A
is not equal to some B. Looney went on to use his list as
positive looneations to show that his C, the Earl of Oxford, WAS
equal to his B, the Author of Shakespeare's Oeuvre. He did this
with a subjective analysis of the known facts about Oxford that
indicated he had all the required attributes.
Price many years later took another step, one ingenious enough
to get a new name: Priceations. A priceation is a negative looneation
pertaining, as in the case of Looney's looneations, to WS only, in
which Any Writer is hallucinated to be identifiable as such by ONLY
those pieces of evidence having something, however distant, to do
with writing that are missing from the records concerning WS. Quite
a lot of further irrationality is required to prevent certain evidence
from counting for Shakespeare, and to allow other evidence to count
for other writers, Price having to show that no other writers of the
time
are 100% priceation-tarnished the way WS is.
Note: I'm aware that this entry may be my worst contribution to this
thread so far. I can't seem to say what I want to. Anyway, I'm only
setting up my take on Price's next section. In it, she starts her
incredibly wishlexical misrepresentation of Jonson begainning with
Sogliardo, a character in Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour
which she states is a caricature of WS.
What I was really leading up to saying is that, like Looney, Price
makes
up a list of WS's attributes--all demeaning ones not associated with
Great Writers. Then she distorts the hostorical record to find
evidence
that they indeed apply to him, Jonson being a chief witness for her.
She goes through the records looking for ANY negative description of
someone connected to the theatre, and tags it a reference to
Shakespeare.
What is most comic about this is that she needs no name, only the
negative description, to know for sure that Shakespeare of Stratford
is
being referred to, but even his name isn't enough in the records that
indicate he was a writer to convince her he was--she needs explicit
evidence that the testimony involved knew WS. I think, now that
I think on it, that she never needs any evidence that anyone she
tells us mocked WS personally knew him, but I'm not sure of that.
That's it for now. I may skip a day or two. Am getting woozy, and
tomorrow IS Christmas.
--Bob
Willedever
but.net> wrote:
> .
> Just about the only weapon in the anti-Stratfordian
> .
Bob Grumman, the ignorant, brain-damaged Strat anus-licker, has made
up a word, the same way babies babble to themselves.
Have you been checked for Alzheimers recently, Bob?
> .
> ... For instance, the absence
> of any record that WS attended a school.
> .
That's true, Bob. There isn't any record of him attending any school.
Are you just plain shit head ignorant, Bob?
> .
> Or the
> absence of a letter from a known writer to Shakespeare
> about Shakespeare's writing.
> .
That's true, Bob. There aren't any such letters.
Are you just plain shit head ignorant, Bob?
> .
> Or the absence of a
> list from the times of books WS owned.
> .
That's true, Bob. There aren't any such books known.
Are you just plain shit head ignorant, Bob?
>.
> absence of evidence is not proof of evidence of absence.
>.
That's wrong, you stupid shit head. (For any who might be concerned,
it doesn't bother Bob to be called a shit head, since he's already
stated in posts to this group that he is a shit head.)
The correct saying is: "absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence."
You stupid shit head. Can't you get anything right, Bob?
> .
> Come to think of it, one might call the preceding looneations,
> "negative looneations," for looneations intended to prove some A
> is not equal to some B.
> .
Have you been checked recently for Alzheimers, Bob?
> .
> . He did this
> with a subjective analysis of the known facts about Oxford that
> indicated he had all the required attributes.
> .
No, that was objective analysis, you stupid shit head.
"Known facts" are OBJECTIVE things. You stupid shit head.
Can't you get anything right, Bob?
> .
> Price many years later took another step, one ingenious enough
> to get a new name: Priceations. A priceation is a negative looneation
> .
Have you been checked recently for Alzheimers, Bob?
> .
> Note: I'm aware that this entry may be my worst contribution to this
> thread so far. I can't seem to say what I want to. ...
> .
Are you feeling, perhaps, a kind of progressive mental deterioration,
Bob?
> .
> wishlexical
> .
Have you been checked recently for Alzheimers, Bob?
> .
> That's it for now. I may skip a day or two. Am getting woozy,
> ...
See a doctor, Bob. Do it. I'm giving you good advice.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> > arsenal is something I call the looneation. ...
> > .
>
> Bob Grumman, the ignorant, brain-damaged Strat anus-licker, has made
> up a word, the same way babies babble to themselves.
>
> Have you been checked for Alzheimers recently, Bob?
>
Don't have to, Will. I know as well as you the definition of
that disease: inability to recognize the genius of the great
Willedever.
.
> > ... For instance, the absence
> > of any record that WS attended a school.
> > .
>
> That's true, Bob. There isn't any record of him attending any school.
>
> Are you just plain shit head ignorant, Bob?
It's a looneation because morons like you and Price take
its absence as a stgrong indication if not proof that he
could not have been a writer.
> > .
> > Or the
> > absence of a letter from a known writer to Shakespeare
> > about Shakespeare's writing.
> > .
>
> That's true, Bob. There aren't any such letters.
>
> Are you just plain shit head ignorant, Bob?
>
.
> > Or the absence of a
> > list from the times of books WS owned.
> > .
>
> That's true, Bob. There aren't any such books known.
>
> Are you just plain shit head ignorant, Bob?
>
> >.
> > absence of evidence is not proof of evidence of absence.
> >.
>
> That's wrong, you stupid shit head. (For any who might be concerned,
> it doesn't bother Bob to be called a shit head, since he's already
> stated in posts to this group that he is a shit head.)
>
> The correct saying is: "absence of evidence is not evidence of
> absence."
Good work, Will. As I said toward the end of my post,
I was tired or something. Lots of bad writing, even not
so good thinking, in this particular entry. Also, what I write
here is first-draft stuff. I'm sure anyone with a
functioning brain would have known what I meant,
but it doesn't matter, since I expect to fix it all later.
>
> You stupid shit head. Can't you get anything right, Bob?
>
> > .
> > Come to think of it, one might call the preceding looneations,
> > "negative looneations," for looneations intended to prove some A
> > is not equal to some B.
> > .
>
> Have you been checked recently for Alzheimers, Bob?
>
> > .
> > . He did this
> > with a subjective analysis of the known facts about Oxford that
> > indicated he had all the required attributes.
> > .
>
> No, that was objective analysis, you stupid shit head.
Only for wacks, wack.
> "Known facts" are OBJECTIVE things. You stupid shit head.
I said "subjective analysis."
> Can't you get anything right, Bob?
>
> > .
> > Price many years later took another step, one ingenious enough
> > to get a new name: Priceations. A priceation is a negative looneation
> > .
>
> Have you been checked recently for Alzheimers, Bob?
>
> > .
> > Note: I'm aware that this entry may be my worst contribution to this
> > thread so far. I can't seem to say what I want to. ...
> > .
>
> Are you feeling, perhaps, a kind of progressive mental deterioration,
> Bob?
>
> > .
> > wishlexical
> > .
>
> Have you been checked recently for Alzheimers, Bob?
>
You know, Will, this is a wonderful insult. Do you mind if
I use it against Peter Farey? I promise to give you credit
for its invention.
.
> > That's it for now. I may skip a day or two. Am getting woozy,
> > ...
>
> See a doctor, Bob. Do it. I'm giving you good advice.
Oh, Lackpurity, where art thou in mine hour of need?
Use thy thunder-potent diction 'gainst this brute
e'er he withers e'en the smallest atom of mine
least argument too shamED of its shit-headed
irrationality not to self-delete.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Whew, no one has ever demolished so many of my
arguments at once as Willedever just did. But I'll
try to keep going, anyway. Posterity may find this
record of my bad thinking useful.
We're to Price and Jonson's Sogliardo. She starts by
telling us the history of the Shakespeare family's
coat of arms, more or less accurately--but has to
sneak in another insult of Will quickly, a quite
clever one--but, of course, if your only scholarly
goal if finding ways to makes someone look bad,
it's not that hard to do. She tells us John
Shakespeare became a Mr. long before he got
the coat of arms due to his having become high
bailiff of Stratford. But the Stratford register lists
him at his death as only a Mr. No chance that
the one in charge of the register was sloppy
or simply always though of his friend John as
"Mr." or considered that was the proper way
to address him even though he was now entitled to
be referred to as a "gent." Price specualtes, and
is kind enough to admit she's speculating, that
Will never told his father about the grant of the
coat of arms so that he could pas himself off as
the one who had earned them.
My impression is that many "gents" were referred
to in the recors as Mr.'s, only.
Price goes on: she finds a scholar to aver that
WS exaggerated some of his father's accomplishments
in order to win the grant. My goodness. Why she
forgot to tell us such a thing had never been done
before and so bolster the persuasiveness of her
description, who can tell. Perhaps she did find that
someone before WS did this, so scrupulously did not
lie about it.
Next we get to Price's one valid bit of evidence: the fact
that Shakespeare's coat of arms reads "not without right,"
and Sogliardo's reads, "no without mustard." Nice but
Price tells us herself that the words "not without right"
(in Latin) only appeared on the first two applications
for a coat of arms the Shakespeares made, and not on
the final, winning one. Nor is it only the coat of arms
carved on WS's monument. Price and many real
scholars believe the "not without right" was an
annotation indicating rejection of the request. This
makes sense since it was actually "no, without right"
and appeared on only the two rejected applications.
More likely is that Shakespeare did want the motto
but that it was rejected. It makes no difference to
Price's argument. As I understand it, she assumes
that Jonson knew what was written on WS's two
rejected applications and was making fun of him
because of them. How would he have been privy
to this, who knows. It does suggest he was a close
friend or associate of WS's.
I didn't realize the motto was not part of the coat of
arms, so thought it possible Jonson was taking a
friendly poke at Shakespeare--albeit in a play put
on by a troupe Shakespeare was prominent in.
But Nashe had used the phrase several years
earlier in Pierce Pennilesse to (I believe) mock
the newly rich who were trying for coats of arms
they didn't merit.
Price continues. Jonson is obviously using Sogliardo
to satirize someone, or some class of persons. But
there is no link to a particular object of his satire. It
seems, to an objective observer, a satire of a kind
of boor common at the time (a kind frequently
satirized by others).
Price wastes a good deal of time showing that the
application exaggerated or even lied about John
and the Shakespeare family. I've already responded to
that. A complaint was issued against this grant and
others but the Shakespeares weather it.
Hey, the parody did not hint that Sogliardo/WS was
a playwright, says Price. Of course not, wack--and that's
evidence that it had nothing to do with WS.
In the Sogliardo passage, Sogliardo's coat of arms is
described in detail, and hs NOTHING in common with
WS's. Oh, but it is insulting so must have to do with
so insult-worthy a boor as WS. Sogliardo boasts of
having performed as a horse in a morris dance. Does
this have anything to do with WS--only in that it
suggests Sogliardo was a sort of actor--to Price. He is
also satirized as a psuedo-scholar, whereas WS
was never referred to as any kind of scholar, pseudo or
real, by his contemporanies--or afterward, except by
bardolators.
Price does get one other attribute of Sogliardo that may
connect with WS--the fact that he was without learning
and knowledge, if you want to believe Jonson thought
that of Shakespeare--and that brings up the point that
Jonson, when explicitly referring to Shakespeare in print,
is admiring. In conversation, when drunk, however, he did
let out that he thought WS lacked art. The irony there, is that
he must then have been referring to a writer. It was also
characteristic of Jonson, who have a very sane objective
MIXED view of everyone, and was also susceptible to
professional envy.
Along the way, Price tries to deconstruct the herald's
office record that shows WS as "Shakespeare ye player.
I'll return to this later (I hope--although I took care of it in
my book--where, by the way, is your book, Willedever?).
Her reasoning is poor.
Price, nearing the end of her nonsense about Sogliardo,
compares Sogliardo to Greene's gentleman player--who,
remember, was NOT WS. They're similar.
This is a standard mo for Price: decide through bad but
not quite horrendous reasoning that some poltroon
represents her traget, here that the gentleman-player
represents WS, then she need not go to horrendous
reasoning to show that some other poltroon represents
him if she can use merely dubious reasoning to show
the poltoorn no. 2 represents or is much like poltroon
no. 1. That being the case, no. 2 reperesents her target.
Sogliardo is also similar to WS in owning a house in the
country and lodging at an inn when in London, quite
a remarkable coincidence, I must say. Sogliardo's brother
hoards grain, like the dastardly Shakespeare--and just
about every home-owner in his town. Why doesn't Sogliardo?
Price ends with a false dichotomy" "Some commentators
see Sogliardo and others as stock characters with no
particular targets in minc. Some anti-Stratfordians view
the Sogliardo-Sordido-Fungoso( right, Diana, Jonson used
three characters in his play to satirize WS. He was as
obsessed with him as you are!) as three faces of Shakspere."
The sane see Sogliardo and the others as stock characters
with several particular targets in mind as well as a class of
targets.
I'm now more than a quarter of the way through Price's monstrous
thunk of propaganda. I'm very tired.
--Bob
lackpurity
MM:
I'm here, rooting for Strats like you. Don't worry about him. You
are much closer to the truth, obviously.
'Dever came to pigeonhole Bob,
He's 'bout as slick as a corn cob,
Again, Anti-Strats lose.
Just like blowing a fuse.
Anti-Strat slobs can whine or sob.
Line 2 refers to the Dever Man. LOL
Michael Martin
lackpurity
MM:
Thanks for the long thought provoking article. Seems you're the
workhorse for Stratfordianism these days.
Price doesn't understand what Jonson's intent was. Jonson's enconium
was the true feeling, which Jonson had for William Shakespeare of
Stratford. Shakespeare was his Master, and Jonson really practically
worshipped him.
Jonson, being an artist, knew how to focus attention on someone. The
way to the Master is not always the same. For example, one tributary
of the Mississippi River might be wide and peaceful. Another
tributary might be narrow with dangerous rapids. The end in view is
the same. Jonson was working (doing seva) for his Master. He merely
presented other tributaries, for those who found themselves in those
tributaries. He knew that Will was not thin-skinned. He knew that
Will knew his ultimate objective.
The sad thing is that many Anti-Strats, including Price, IMO, had no
clue what Ben Jonson was up to. Many in this group have had no clue,
in fact. Jonson was trying to draw people to Will, though Sogliardo,
Sordido, or Fungoso.
Jonson might have been thinking, that if they came to Will, some of
his spirituality would rub off on them, possibly. They might be able
to correct the distorted viewpoint of him. This has happened many
times throughout history. Even thieves, prostitutes, killers, etc.,
have decided to repent and reform themselves due to the elevating
company of the Master.
Michael Martin
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Next, Price is going to subject the Parnassus plays to
her wishlexia, those plays being one more bit of evidentiary
near-proof that Shakespeare was an actor/writer. First,
though, she has to further set the stage. So she gives us
lessan about satire, her thrust being that satirists disguise
their targets when they are specific individuals; otherwise
they can get into trouble. Especially, during Shakespeare's
times, if their targets were nobles. Satirizing commoners
was not nearly as risky. "It is therefore striking," she
concludes, "to discover that so many contemporary
allusions to Shakespeare are impersonal or obscure."
She, of course, means (as I have to keep repeating)
that so many such allusions are not explicitly
personal or obscure--once subjected to her distortions
and obfuscating refusal to take anything to mean
what it says.
There, not much of an entry, but I'm still keeping up--in spite
of feeling Very Weary.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
A character named Gullio shows up in the second part of the Parnassus
trilogy.
A stock character displaying many of the traits Price wants us to
believe WS had, he is difficult for her because he is clearly not
intended to depict the known author of the plays. For one thing, he
asks a poet for some verses to pretend are his that are "written in
two or three divers veins--Chaucers', Gower's, and Mr.
Shakespeare's." She gets around such problems by assuming--like all
wacks do--that there are two Shakespeares in or referred to in the
play, the writer and the actor. Even though there is nothing whatever
in the play to tell us this is so. The audience, I imagine, would
have consisted of university students, all of whom would have been
clever enough to know . . . The Truth; but polite enough never to let
it out.
Price shows that Gullio has traits in ocmmon with Sogliardo, taking it
for granted, now, that Sogliardo represents WS. He is also like the
gentleman player of Greene (who, again, has nothing to do with WS).
Like Shakespeare probably did, he lived in Shoreditch. Unlike Price's
Shakespeare, however, he didn't pretend to be a playwright. Why not?
Isn't that the most amusingly satirizable aspect of Price's
Shakespeare. He isn't an actor, either.
He seems to be made fun of, in fact, as an early bardolator.
Price quotes a boast of Gullio's that he is "very lately registered in
the rolls of fame, in an Epigram made by . . . Weever." Weever has an
apigram about a Gullio who was hanged, but the Parnassus Gullio says,
"I merit (Weever's) praise." That would seem to most people, I think,
to show just how laughably
ignorant Gullio was, but not Price. She claims Gullio is taking
credit for another
work of Weever's that praised Shakespeare--as Shakespeare. But why?
Gullio never pretends that he is Shakespeare. For the joke to work,
he'd have to say something to the effect that the Weever sonnet was
not to the man named in it, but to him.
But it is also absurd for him to acknowledge Shakespeare as the chief
poet of the times, and a different person from him, then claim a
sonnet to Shakespeare was to him.
Price finds other bits connecting Gullio to WS for wacks but no one
sane, including another character's referring to him as a base churl
"clothed in a satin suit." Since no of the time, apparently, wrote
anything not connected to Shakespeare, this has to be a reference to
Greene's crow, "beautified by our feathers." More likely, it is a
standard put-down of a man who is base in spite of his fancy clothes--
just as it seems.
I can't believe anyone not psitchotic could believe Price's analysis
of Gullio.
--Bob
Paul Crowley
> We're to Price and Jonson's Sogliardo. She starts by
> telling us the history of the Shakespeare family's
> coat of arms, more or less accurately--but has to
> sneak in another insult of Will quickly, a quite
> clever one--but, of course, if your only scholarly
> goal if finding ways to makes someone look bad,
> it's not that hard to do. She tells us John
> Shakespeare became a Mr. long before he got
> the coat of arms due to his having become high
> bailiff of Stratford. But the Stratford register lists
> him at his death as only a Mr. No chance that
> the one in charge of the register was sloppy
Social status was SO important an issue
that it is close to insane (or alternatively
massively ignorant) to suggest that the
person in charge of such a record could be
THAT 'sloppy'. A family of a deceased
'gent' who was recorded merely as a 'Mr'
would regard it as the deepest insult, and
would complain to the local vicar, and then
to the bishop, and would refuse to attend
that church, and so on and on.
> or simply always though of his friend John as
> "Mr." or considered that was the proper way
> to address him even though he was now entitled to
> be referred to as a "gent."
Your understanding of Early Modern
English society would disgrace a child.
> My impression is that many "gents" were referred
> to in the recors as Mr.'s, only.
If this were true (and not close to insane)
you could find examples. The huge brigade
of Strats _would_ have found examples.
[..]
> As I understand it, she assumes
> that Jonson knew what was written on WS's two
> rejected applications and was making fun of him
> because of them. How would he have been privy
> to this, who knows.
Jonson was close to William Camdem
(he tells us so explicitly) and some
think Camden was his natural father.
Camden had been appointed Clarenceaux
King at Arms (after one day's 'training'
as a Herald) for purpose of granting
the Stratman's coat-of-arms. So we
have a very good idea as to how Jonson
got the inside information.
> It does suggest he was a close friend or
> associate of WS's.
It suggests that he knew about his foibles.
But he could have learned them second-
hand. Most people who satirised George
Bush or Tony Blair did not know them
personally.
> But Nashe had used the phrase several years
> earlier in Pierce Pennilesse to (I believe) mock
> the newly rich who were trying for coats of arms
> they didn't merit.
Quote the relevant passage.
[..]
> Hey, the parody did not hint that Sogliardo/WS was
> a playwright, says Price. Of course not, wack--and that's
> evidence that it had nothing to do with WS.
The illiterate Stratman was no playwright.
[..]
> Sogliardo is also similar to WS in owning a house in the
> country and lodging at an inn when in London, quite
> a remarkable coincidence, I must say. Sogliardo's brother
> hoards grain, like the dastardly Shakespeare--and just
> about every home-owner in his town.
Nonsense. Hoarding grain in time of famine
was a crime.
> Why doesn't Sogliardo?
We can't expect Jonson to be exact in every
detail. But maybe the Stratman blamed his
brother.
[..]
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
your comments for their comic effect in the book I hope to make of my
part of this thread, but haven't time here to yet again rebut you. I
will repeat, however, that
you still consistently forget that there are many different kinds of
people. Oh, and John Shakespeare died only three or four years after
becoming a gent. No reason the vicar may have been so used to calling
him Mr. Shakespeare as to without thinking do so on the ledger. Which
few if any would check. That's another thing you forget, that people
make mistakes all the time. But I'm sure you're right about the
importance of calling people by their correct titles always. The
record of people decapitated for calling a gent a mere mister, or the
reverse, proves that. Something like sixteen thousand in May of 1604
alone, isn't it?
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Here I am again. Blah. I'm tempted to just point out one just one
propagandism of Price per entry. Today's would be her tactic of coming
to some questionable conclusion, then finding a Shakespeare scholar
who has a foolish counter to her conclusion. Yow, she's a scholar,
she shows both sides. In ther next section she wants to clear up the
"mystery" of a character in the Parnassus plays' who refers to
Shakespeare as a poet, not a playwright, just Jonson and Marlowe have
been censured as playwrights (according to Price--I don't have a copy
of the Parnassus plays). She carries out her foolish scholar trick
after revealing that nearly all the allusions to Shakespeare were to
him as a poet, not as a playwright. By 1601 Hamlet and most of the
history plays had been written, she continues. That's three years
later. She doesn't mention that Shakespeare's name wasn't on the
title-pages of any of his plays until . . . 1598. Instead, she brings
in Samuel Schoenbaums lame explanation for the Parnassus character's
mentioning the plays of Shakesepare due to "word of Julius Caesar and
Henry V (not yet having) found its way to cloistered Cambridge. Or,
being plays, perhaps they did not count." Not an important mystery
for Sam to clear up but though his explanation is weak, it's
sufficient.
However, he should have pointed out that it may just have been that
the authors of the scene wnated to make fun of his poetry during this
brief moment, not his plays. And/or for THEM the plays didn't count,
however much they may have counted with others. Price assumes the
"savvy" Cambridge crowd would have known of Shakespeare as the author
of plays. She tells us the Parnassus plays wuote from some of them.
So what? They could easily have known the plays but not who wrote
them, the case (as so many critics of wackdom have repeated) with most
modern movies whose actors are well-known and maybe their directors
but not often their screenwriters.
Price's point is that the Parnassus writers wanted to distinguish the
author WS from the bumpkin actor. Actually, that doesn't make sense--
as an explanation. I admit myself confused. Price thinks it
suspicious that WS got spoofed only as a poet but I don't know why.
Jonson apparently was spoofed only as a playwright. Wacks always know
what should have been the case had WS be the True Author. Anything
different indicates the Grand Conspiracy.
Next Price brings back Gullio, who quotes mangled versions of
Shakesepeare while Ingenioso says, "We shall have nothing but pure
Shakespeare," making fun of Gullio, not Shakespeare. But a line or
two later, Ingenioso says, "Mark, Romeo and Juliet: o monstrous
theft. I think he will run through a whole book of Samuel Daniel's."
No simple mistake by Ingenioso for Price. Possible evidence that he
is trying to guess the identity of the dramatist! "Whatever the
answer, the Parnassus authors are pointing to confusion over the
authorship of Romeo and Juliet, while making fun of a conceited
plagiarist."
Another possible reading is that Ingenioso knew who wrote R&J, but
jumped to Samuel Daniel as an example of someone poet who'd written a
very long book--Gullio will soon be laboriously quoting the whole of!
Bottom line: in a comedy, characters make fun of a literary fool, and
refer to Shakespeare as both poet and playwright (the latter by giving
him one line Gullio mangles from R&J to him). It has nothing to do
with Shakespeare except support the thesis that he was a well-known
writer.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> Oh, and John Shakespeare died only three or four
> years after becoming a gent. No reason the vicar
> may have been so used to calling him Mr. Shakespeare
> as to without thinking do so on the ledger.
The elevation to 'gent' would have been a
big thing in the town -- in the normal course
of events. There is no way the vicar could
forget it when making the record of his
death.
But Diana Price is probably right that the
Stratman kept it as quiet as he could.
However the motive would have been
more embarrassment than a selfish pride.
His father would have been fully aware
how unqualified the son (and the rest
of the family) were for that honour.
He'd have known that his son was (like
himself) illiterate -- a huge impediment
to being a 'gent'.
> Which few if any would check.
Every literate person in the town was liable
(and many were likely) to read this record.
It was where all births, deaths and marriages
were recorded. How could it be missed?
> That's another thing you
> forget, that people make mistakes all the time.
And people correct mistakes when they are
pointed out -- especially ones involving a
mis-statement of the person's social status.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
> > Oh, and John Shakespeare died only three or four
> > years after becoming a gent. No reason the vicar
> > may have been so used to calling him Mr. Shakespeare
> > as to without thinking do so on the ledger.
>
> The elevation to 'gent' would have been a
> big thing in the town -- in the normal course
> of events. There is no way the vicar could
> forget it when making the record of his
> death.
Your knowledge of human beings is so limited that you
think everyone in a certain situation will act the same.
Not so.
> But Diana Price is probably right that the
> Stratman kept it as quiet as he could.
> However the motive would have been
> more embarrassment than a selfish pride.
> His father would have been fully aware
> how unqualified the son (and the rest
> of the family) were for that honour.
> He'd have known that his son was (like
> himself) illiterate -- a huge impediment
> to being a 'gent'.
Ah, your knowledge of exactly how anybody would
act in any circumstance is truly amazing. But, believe it
or not, just because you consider your pronouncements
valid does not make them valid, Paul. The actual truth
is that we lack sufficient data to have any good idea
why the vicar wrote "Mr." instead of "gent." My guess is
as good as yours. Another guess is that the vicar
assumed that the genius son was the gent. A simple
mistake is the best guess. Rigidniks like you never make
mistakes, but normal people do. I once waited, as a
pedestrian, for a traffic light to change from red to green,
then started to cross, jumping back as a truck started
to speed right at me. I realized that I should have crossed
when the light was red. A life or death matter, Paul, but
my brain temporarily short-circuited. The other day I went
to my bank because the bank's wedsite seemed to me to be
posting credits as debits in my account, and debits as credits.
The guy I talked to said it was probably a computer error. I
later realized that I was reading my statement from bottom to top
instead of from top down--I now think because I read so many
internet discussions from bottom to top.
> > Which few if any would check.
>
> Every literate person in the town was liable
> (and many were likely) to read this record.
> It was where all births, deaths and marriages
> were recorded. How could it be missed?
You're right. No one would be aware of the birth
of any child, or a marriage or a death unless they
checked the church records. This is a sarcasm, Paul.
The town was small. All births, marriages, and deaths
would be immediately known to all who were interested
in them. Anyone not knowing if, say, John Smith, was still
alive would ask someone, not check the church records.
Hardly anyone would ever read them.
> > That's another thing you
> > forget, that people make mistakes all the time.
>
> And people correct mistakes when they are
> pointed out -- especially ones involving a
> mis-statement of the person's social status.
>
> Paul.
Not always. Some don't give a damn, believe it or not.
All people do not act the same way.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price quotes a scene in the Parnassus trilogy in whic actors
protraying Burbage and Kempe lecture the student audience on how to
become successful playwrights:
BURBAGE; A little teaching will mend these faults, and it may be
besides they will be able to pen a part.
KEMPE: Few of the university pen plays well, they smell too much of
that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphoses, and talk too much
Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them
all down--ay, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent
fellow, he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow
Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.
BURBAGE: It's a shrewd fellow indeed.
A sane person will take this passage to be powerful evidence that
Shakespeare, the playwright, was a fellow actor of Burbage's and
Kempe's. Kempe calls him "our fellow, and clearly distinguishes him
from the university playwrights. Price, of course, has to discredit
it. It's another bullet that just about kills anti-Stratfordianism by
itself if accepted. So she does her best to twist it to mean the two
actors are talking about Price's Shake-scene, the mere actor/broker/
money-lender. When Kempe says Shakespeare put down the university
playwrights and Jonson (whom the actors Price thinks extremely
ignorant, know to not be a university playwright), they are ignorantly
expressing the same worthless admiration for him as Gullio's.
Although they are fellows of Shakespeare, and have acted in his plays,
they don't know anything about him as a playwright.
The wack contention is that they are really speaking of someone other
than Shakespeare the author. How else explain Kempe's speaking of the
university playwrights as smelling overmuch of Ovid, when Shakespeare,
we all know, smelled more of Ovid than anyone else. Let me explain:
yes, the Parnassus authors are making fun of Burbage and Kempe as
ignorant actors who think, for instance, that Metamorphes was a poet.
I believe they may well be satirizing Burbage and Kempe for thinking
Shakespeare a superior writer because not so mythology-drenched as the
university playwrights. A natural rather than a trained playwright.
On the other hand, they may agree that Shakespeare did indeed make
Jonson and all the university playwrights look bad. And was not one
himself. The cleanest way to take what Kempe says is to consider it
praise for a self-taught unacademic writer whose works were NOT
bloated with arcane and STRAINED references to Roman literature and
mythology. That's not to say they weren't inspired by Ovid and deal
with ROman mythology, but that they did these things more effectively
than the University playwrights' works did.
(Apology for more of my clumsy expression, but--remember--this is
first draft stuff.)
I believe critics have long shown that Shakespeare used less quoting
of Latin, etc., than most playwrights of the day, particularly the
earlier ones who came from Cambridge. He used Ovid more in his poetry
than plays, and Kempe is concerned only with his plays. Those also
used a lot of Ovid, but it was not as annoyingly noticeable was it was
in the work of other playwrights.
Another problem with Price's take is that according to her Kempe and
Burbage consider Shakespeare merely a conceited actor. Yet here they
bring him up in a discussion of playwrights. The context surely makes
him a playwright who makes the university playwrights---and Jonon,
too--look bad in comparison. "Few of the university pen plays well"--
but Shakespeare, a mere actor adding one or two lines to others' plays
puts them all down? Ridiculous. The two actors are clearly proud of
their fellow, who is a playwright superior to the academic
playwrights. They are ignorant and possibly wrong in their judgement,
but not ignorantly considering him a writer when he is not.
About my last assertion--interesting how obviously & emphatically
satirical about so many things Elizabethan writers were, yet when they
satirize "Shakesppugh's" pretensions, they are so incredibly oblique.
Kempe is so dumb he thinks Metamorphoses is a writer. Every educated
person knows that's not so. Kempe is also so dumb that he doesn't
realize a man he works with as an actor whose name is on title-pages
of plays they've performed together is not a writer. Or does he. I
admit to not having assimilated Price's argument well. She seems also
to be saying that Kempe and Burbage are stealthily telling their
audience that Shakespeare, the writer, was NOT Kempe's fellow (whom
Burbage, in calling shrewd, was referring to as a businessman and/or
"a malignant, malicious fellow . . . given to railing") but Sogliardo/
Gullio/ the Crow as Wacks perceive him/ the gentleman actor--and,
actually, practically every butt of derision in the literature of the
time.
She ends this section with a reference to marginal notes in a
discussion of students of the universities which seems to list
Shakespeare and Watson as such children. The notes are next to a
passage praising Daniel's poetry. Why can't they simply be poets
reminding the note-maker of Daniel? The digression is not off-topic
for Price because she thinks the note-maker was obliquely doing the
same thing as the Parnassus authors--subtly revealing . . . The Truth.
All this super-subtlety--with never one writer going too far and
actually saying outright that Shakespeare was a university graduate or
anything else that would
clearly conflict with the established "myth."
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Persevering in her quest to connect every varlet she comes across in
Elizabethan literature to the rude groom of Greene, and therefore, for
her, to Shakespeare, Price performs her silliest stretch re: the
Parnassus plays by finding yet another attack on "mimic apes" to apply
to WS, whom it is "merry fortune's wont from rags to take . . . and
him a gallant make." Indeed, WS may well have been one of
the targets of this. However, it has nothing whatever to do with his
having been a playwright or not.
Note, Price claims the passage charges the "mimic apes" with
plagiarism, but it does not, it merely repeats the standard gripe
about their "mouthing words that better withs have framed."
To finish off the Parnassus plays, our propagandist extraoridnary
returns to Gullio. He had hired Ingenioso to write wome romantic
verse for him he could use in his wooing of a lady at court named
Lesbia. Our amazing scholar (think of all the crap she had to have
read, although maybe she just used a list made by previous wacks of
the references that applied to Shakespeare because negative) jumps
from Gullio to Marston's satire, The Scourge of Villainy, published in
1598. A character in the Marston plays, like Gullio, woos a lady
named Lesbia with material from other men's works. The clincher that
Gullio (Shakespeare) is meant by Marston? that a chief source of the
Marston character's stolen material is "pure Juliet and Romeo." But
why not? It was a very popular play.
It seems odd that anyone could connect Shakespeare to the Marston
character--but, hey, "Contemporary portrayals of Shakspere or
Shakespeare--whether the pretentious paymaster and entrepeteur, or the
respect poet--are ambiguous." An even more devastating example of
coded scorn for "Shakspere," Jonson's "On Poet-Ape," is the target of
Price's wishlexia next. It's the governing example of the next
chapter, Chapter Seven.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Having presented numerous pages of blather asserting
various writers had satirized Shakespeare (none of them,
interestingly considering Price's view of the importance
of personal testimony and near-worthlessness of testimony
that is not explicitly personal, indicating they knew WS
personally--much less actually naming him), Price begins
her Chapter Seven with this assertion:
"Writers satirized Shakspere in print, not as a budding
playwright and not as 'gentle Shakespeare,' but as a
braggart, opportunist, paymaster, or pretentious
gentleman by purchase. Sever allusions pointed to a
paymast or broker who traded in plays and costumes,
including secondhand clothes or frippery. Some allusions
further suggested shady dealing or callous conduct."
In short, she now considers her "findings" about
Shakespeare, though backed by no direct evidence,
to be facts. From these, she will deduce further facts.
Starting with Jonson.
He, she shows, often derided actors (Diana, you should
know that almost all playwrights have a love/hate
relationship with actors--and also that Jonson himself
was once an actor). Jonson made fun at least once
of actors who acquire coats of arms, so must have
had WS in mind as one of them. If so, so what?
Anyway, Price quotes Jonson's "Poet-Ape," an epigram all anti-
Stratfordians assume is a satire on Shakespeare--as do a few benighted
actual scholars in the field, the kind who are as eager to add "facts"
to their knowledge of Shakespeare as wacks are, and--like them--think
that every writer of the time had to be thinking of WS when he wrote.
Here's Jonson's poem:
. On Poet-Ape
. Poor POET-APE, that would be thought our chief,
. Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,
. From brokerage is become so bold a thief,
. As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.
. At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
. Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown
. To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
. He takes up all, makes each man's with his own.
. And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
. The sluggish gaping auditor devours;
. He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times
. May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
. Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece
. From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece.
I'll deal with Price's idiotic take on this tomorrow. Too tired to do
so now.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Perhaps the looniest thing about Price's interpretation of Jonson's
"On Poet-Ape" is that it requires her to accept Jonson's victim--WS,
according to her--as a professional writer! Yet a good portion, maybe
even half, of her book contains a mechanism for showing that WS could
not possibly have been a professional writer.
On Poet-Ape
. Poor POET-APE, that would be thought our chief,
. Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,
. From brokerage is become so bold a thief,
. As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.
. At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
. Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown
. To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
. He takes up all, makes each man's with his own.
. And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
. The sluggish gaping auditor devours;
. He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times
. May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
. Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece
. From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece.
A plagiarist has to be a writer, and this poet-ape of Jonson's wants
others to take him as the "chief" of England's poet/playwrights since
Jonson says he thinks himself "our chief," so--since Jonson was a poet/
playwright--it follows that the poet-ape thinks himself the top poet/
playwright in England. He has works, Jonson tells us, and makes each
man's (writings) with his own"--that is, he combines others'
writing with *his* writings. He is clearly, for Jonson, a
professional writer.
But is he Shakespeare? I don't know who the responsible scholars have
identified him with, aside from those who identify him with WS.
Against the latter interpretation are all of Jonson's explicit praise
of WS, however mixed with caveats. Price takes care of this argument
(later) by assuming that when Jonson wrote favorably of a Shakespeare
he was referring to the author; when criticizing a Shakespeare, he was
referring to the country bumpking (and felt no need to give any hint
that he had switched from one to the other).
It's easy to believe Jonson sometimes was annoyed by Shakespeare's
flaws, and jealous of his popularity, but he referred to him as his
Beloved, and I find it hard to imagine him ever writing a poem about
his beloved friend as full of total malice as this one it. Note: I am
far from believing it impossible that he did; people are strange and
can change.
Also against the identification of the ape as WS is the absence of any
explicit or even good circumstantial) evidence that WS was ever a
broker, or had anything to do with the "reversion" of old plays.
Finally, Jonson gives no hint at all (like including some clue like
"Shake-scene") as to who his victim was. The most sensible guess
would be no one, that Jonson was satirizing a number of writers' who
stole stuff from other writers, summarizing them in one figure.
Oops, I went too fast. According to Price, Jonson DID leave a clue as
to who his ape was--he wrote the epigram in the form of a
Shakespearean sonnet! And we have only two other sonnets in that form
by him. So he must have been satirizing . . . Oxford, the author of
Shakespeare's sonnets, right?
Price, amazingly, quotes the Jonsonian editor, William Gifford, on the
attribution of the ape to WS: "Who can doubt it? I am persuaded, that
Groom Idiot in the next epigram is also Shakespeare; and, indeed,
generally, that he is typified by the words "fool and knave," so
exquisitely descriptive of him, wherever they occur in Jonson." Price
thinks "Gifford;s sarcasm may have been misplaced." I summarizes my
position nicely, though.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Next up for Price is a series of "conjectural narratives" concerning
WS as Price sees him. Price wants to give us a true biography of the
man, one based on quite a bit of evidence, in fact, so she's doing
nothing more than orthodox biographers do. Well, except that they
base their narratives on document referring to him by name whereas she
ignores such documents, basing her narrative on various the premise
that anything from the time not naming him but having to do with a
person connected to the theatre who is a knave and a fool must refer
to him.
Orthodox biographers neglect her evidence because (she finds an
orthodox scholar to say), they "are bedevilled by the need always to
show Shakespeare in the best possible light." Some manage to identify
WS in the satirical portraits tentatively or piecemeal, but "no
biographer (Price now writing) can confront the composite of
documentary evidence AND satirical allusions without discrediting
their gentle Shakspere. Not so, of course. Some academics, wanting
to make a splash but not capable of doing so by tackling any subject
of value, have done just that. The fact is that most scholars ignore
most or all of the satirical portraits because they are possible onlly
slightly about him, and could very well have nothing to do with him.
Price also contends the the problem for biographers of producing a
solid ffull impression of WS is (seemingly) insurmountable. That is
bullshit. Their problem is simply that they can't say for sure as
much about him as they'd like to. But the documentary evidence is
more than enough to give us a reasonably plausible, unified portrait
of him. They aren't inhibited from doing so or liars as she
insinuates.
In any event, she begins revealing (conjecturally, and I thank her for
the word) her narrative. She just combines all the "Shaksperes" she's
found in the knave and fool records and adds a few sneers and extra
vices and comes up with a bumpkin much like but worse than Greene's
gentleman player. In her first narrative, she takes him to his middle
twenties. "At this point Shakspere has done nothing more literary
than cobble together morality stories, improvise street theatre, and
put scholars on his payroll." Well, he would not "cobble together
morality stories" if not paid for them, so that by itself makes him
the professional writer Price will take well over a hundred pages to
demonstrat he was not.
Among the made-up crap she uses to bring WS down is a reference to
his
warwickshire accent and lack of cultural sophistication." A clever
fellow at making money but not capable of accruing cultural
sophistication. Or of overcoming an accent that made things difficult
for him if he had to.
He never learns his parts right, so ad libs horribly. He's a
liability onstage but as a money man is depended on by the others in
his company, so his fellows find ways to use him without having
onstage much. But what direct evidence is there that he was a poor
actor, for instance?
Right.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Next on Price's deconstruction schedule is "SHAKSPEARE
THE SHAREHOLDER." Not much to say about it. She just
makes up the worst possible reason for finding his name on
a record identifying him as a shareholder--all "conjectuurally,"
needless to say. Ergo, when the Lord Chamberlain's Men
are organized in 1594, Price's Shakspere buys a share--and
lends others becoming partners the money to do so--at exorbitant
rates. He gets prestige out of thus becoming a servant to a
nobleman, Price tells us.
When there is an early payment to Burbage, Kempe and
Shakespeare as representatives of the Lord Chamberlain's
Men, "SHakspere is named in his capacity as financier." He's
another Henslowe.
Price actually comes up with some evidence for his soon
becoming an outright pirate of plays: an annotation by Sir
George Buck, the Master of Revels in 1595 that states that
"some fellow" made off with an old court play and had it
published as "Locrine . . . Newly set forth, overseen, and
corrected By W.S." The "fellow" would have been WS--but
why wouldn't Buck have said so--since he would have known
of the WS involved in the setting forth, etc., of the play? And
Buck also later speaks of being acquainted with Shakespeare.
Again, WS is shown to be a writer, if only revising another
writer's work.
I would have to see Exactly what Buck said, and find out
more about the situation to understand what may have
happened. Price's version is confusing. In a footnote, what
she says makes me think Buck said, "some fellow hath
published it," before 1595, so that the play published that
year was not the one pirated, although maybe the one pirated
later revised. To add to the problem, one scholar thinks the
Buck inscription forged though others consider it genuine.
In any case, Price goes on to assume (conjecturally) that all
the plays published with the intials W.S. on them were plays
Shakespeare was falsely taking credit for.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
It's hard to respond to Price's conjhectures about WS except
to say that they are plausible if you make the ridiculous
assumption that all recorded slurs of the time involving
anyone remotely like him refer accurately to him. In her
next sub-section, she presents further conjectures about
his role as company financier, citing the evidence that
Shakespeare knew Francis Langley, who built the Swan
Theatre, and various shady theatre district characters
(getting involved in legal disputes with them), and
was probably fairly prominently involved in the problems the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, and all actors, were having in the
late nineties because of theatre closures. Price blithely
assumes WS bailed out his company with loans at exorbitant
interest rates.
Continuing, Price repeats her lie that WS's "professional profile
(italicized) is remarkably similar to that of Philip Henslowe. She
claims he knowingly let Greene die in poverty inspite of having
had the means to help him out. The evidence? Greene didn't
like him. But Greene did not berate Shakespeare for betraying
him, he berated ALL actors for that, Shakespeare being just one
example. Who is to say what happened, or how aware WS
could have been about Greene's state?
WS and his money takes up one of Price's longer sub-sections.
Along the way she mentions that Ward around 1660 said WS
"supplied" his company with two plays a year. Got that? Ward
would obviously have said he wrote two plays a year for his
company if he had. That he otherwise wrote of Shakespeare
without any indication he didn't consider him a famous writer
is irrelevant. This is the way wacks work.
Price, of course, continues to quote scholars she thinks can
help her such as Bate who fatuously said that it was "the
economic urge that drove Shakespeare to write." Price suggests,
however, that someone wanting to become rich would not write
plays, which didn't go for much money, "when the sidelines were
more lucrative." Conventional scholars, according to Price, assume
WS made money via play-writing "but they have no records to prove
it." There's that "prove it," again. True, no records to PROVE it,
but an extreme amount of evidence to indicate it. Just
circumstantial evidence, not explicitly person evidence, but
more than enough for the sane. Moreover, as she
never considers, he did not write plays in order to make money
through their sale, but in order to give his company the means
to make a good deal of money he would get part of as a
share-holder in the company.
Price never seems to have considered that WS may have gotten
patronage although there is explicit anecdotal evidence that he
did, and his two dedications to his narrative poems strongly
imply that he tried for a grant from Southampton and got it.
Unless the "warrant (he had) of (Southampton's) honourable
disposition" was a pat on the back (of a man needing and
essentially begging for a handout), literally, nothing more.
We're still several pages from the end of Price's conjectural
libels of Shakespeare, but that's it for today's entry.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price now takes on the records indicting that Shakespeare was an
important member of his acting troupe. first is a legal document of
1599 referring to "Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum" as those who were
occupying the theatre WS's troupe had recently rebuilt the Theatre
into, in Southwark. This seems clear evidence that Shakespeare was an
important or the most important member of the troupe. Price, though,
finds other theatrical records that similarly give one name and an "et
aliorum" or the equivalent, and the one name was not that of a
troupe's most important member, it was more likely to be of its most
financially important member. what an unaswerable deconstruction of
another myth about Shakespeare's importance. His name led the rest
only because he supplied the money for the building of the Globe.
Except that there's no evidence he supplied any more than his sharer's
share of the money for the Globe (or even that), or that anyone did.
Richard Burbage, who could be said to have owned the Theatre, would
have been more likely to have been mentioned if who was most important
financially was the one named. Only if we assume a priori that WS was
a mere money-man does it make sense to believe that was why he was the
only one named on the document under discussion. If we consider all
the evidence available to us, we have to assume that WS was named as
an important actor and playwright--and probably the leader (at least
to the public) of his troupe. Maybe for having put a few bucks into
the operation, as well, who knows.
A problem with Price's comparison of the Globe document with other
documents, by the way, is that the Globe document is about a newly
erected building with men occupying it, possibly illegally. (I need
to find out details about this. Any help would be appreciated.) So
it seems plausbile that the name chosen to represent the group would
be the name of its most prominent member, not its money-man, if
known. Price's other documents usually have to do with theatre
business, so would likely have a money-man or manager.
More dubious is Price's similar attempt to explain away WS's name's on
the two court records concerning the coronation of James I. Hmmm, I
assumed Price was leading up to an attempt to demolish the two
documents WS's name is on that seem highly unlikely to have had it
first in one and second in the other because of his financial
importance to the company. But she NEVER mentions these two court
documents!
The first records the issuance of a patent to the Lord Chamberlain's
Men, making them the King's Men. WS's name is seond on this list.
First? Lawrence Fletcher. But Fletcher was NOT the troupe's money-
man but an acting coming to London from Scotland along with James,
whose favorite actor he was. Clearly, he had been added to WS's
company because he was a fine actor but also for political reasons.
Ditto his name's being number one. It would have been amusing to see
how Price tried to deal with this, but she wisely said nothing. (At
least not here. Maybe later in the book she will. But here is where
a responsible scholar would have discussed it.)
The court document with WS's name first is a list of actors (and
states itself to be that) being given red cloth for the King's entry
into London. It had nothing to do with who was the troupe's money-
man. Either you have to assume Shakespeare was named first because he
was the company's leading actor or because he was its most important
actor--because supplying the company with its best plays.)
After spending a relatively great amount of time on the Globe
document, and none on the two King's Men document, Price slips out of
"conjecture" to again inform us that WS was "a paymaster of
playwrights, a moneylender, and a source of financing." With that,
we're though with a most tedious chapter. From here on out, Price is
going to try to persuade us that WS could not have been a professional
writer.
--Bob
lackpurity
MM:
Marlowe got financial support from the Wilton Cult. This continued
with Shakespeare. When Oxfordians recognize this, it will be a sign
of progress.
Michael Martin
lackpurity
MM:
Shakespeare was the darling of the Wilton Cult, and this extended to
Queen Liza. He could have been the most prominent money man, as he
succeeded the former money man, Christopher Marlowe.
Michael Martin
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
>
> - Show quoted text -
Please show evidence for statements like this, MM.
Otherwise, you're just another Elizabeth.
Having said that, I realize that Price always supports her
contentions somewhere with evidence. Or tries to. Her
evidence is always very weak, even after she misrepresents
it, but she always has something one could call evidence.
In other words, she doesn't really argue by assertion,
the way you are here.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
bool, here (again) is my essay on her mechanism for showing that WS
was not a professional writer. You may also read it at
http://poeticks.com/personal-literary-evidence-for-shakespeare
The Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime Identifying Him as
an Author
Anti-Stratfordians are notorious for wanting to know “why no one ever
called Shakespeare a writer until he’d been dead for seven years.” The
latest to do so in a book (at the time of this writing) is Diana
Price, who presents a subtle version of the question in her
Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography. She phrases the question thus: why
have we no contemporaneous personal literary evidence (CPLE) that
Shakespeare was a writer? She then surveys the literary evidence
concerning him and 24 other writers of the time, dividing it into
“personal” (by no unambiguous definition she has been willing
explicitly to state) and “impersonal.” Result: she has found some of
the former for each of her 25 subjects but Shakespeare. She seems not
to have convinced any real scholars of the usefulness of her
discovery, but has gotten her fellow rejectors pretty excited, so I
thought I ought to present a sane overview of the evidence for
Shakespeare from his lifetime. I divide it among the following nine
groupings.
(A) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime That Is Beyond
Reasonable Doubt Personal
(B) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime That Is Almost
Certainly Personal
(C) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime That Is Probably
Personal
(D) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime Slightly More Likely
Than Not To Be Personal
(E) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime Equally Likely to Be
Personal or Not Personal
(F) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime Slightly More Likely
Than Not Not To Be Personal
(G) Literary Evidence That Is Probably Not Personal
(H) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime That Is Almost
Certainly Not Personal
(I) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime That Is Beyond
Reasonable Doubt Not Personal
Any fair-minded anti-Stratfordian, and there are a few, will have to
admit that such a division is more revealing, if less
propagandistically effective, than the simple black&white personal/
impersonal one that Price uses. Not all the evidence is so easily
classified of as she pretends.
I also differ from Price in that I use “personal” to mean “testimony
by someone who can be shown beyond reasonable doubt to have personally
known the person he is testifying about.” Price misuses the term to
mean only “testimony by someone who states as he gives it that he
personally knows the person he is testifying about.” (I should add
that she is not fastidious about sticking to this definition when it
suits her agenda not to.) All that concerns her is explicitly personal
vidence, a category of just about no value except to propagandists. I
also specify that I am concerned with evidence from the lifetime of
the alleged writer concerned only instead of fudging things so I can
use evidence from after his death when convenient, as she does.
(A) Literary Evidence from Shakespeare’s Lifetime That Is Beyond
Reasonable Doubt Personal
I found no evidence for Shakespeare that I feel belongs in this
category, for it is for only the most unarguably certain evidence a
writer could leave behind, such as signed, holographic manuscripts, or
letters in the hand of an alleged writer concerning his writing, with
no evidence extant against their identification as his.. I would admit
a some of the evidence Diana Price has found for other playwrights of
Shakespeare’s time.
There is no such evidence for a substantial minority of the 24 writers
in Price’s study, and only scraps for almost all the rest, just about
none having left behind more than one complete manuscript copy of a
play, for instance, and only a few leaving behind so much as one
complete manuscript copy of a play.
(B) Literary Evidence That Is Almost Certainly Personal from
Shakespeare’s Lifetime
(1) the dedication to Venus and Adonis, 1593
TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND
BARON OF TICHFIELD. RIGHT HONORABLE, I KNOW not how I shall offend in
dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world
will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a
burden only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly
praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have
honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my
invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-
father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me
still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your
honour to your heart’s content; which I wish may always answer your
own wish and the world’s hopeful expectation.
Your honour’s in all duty,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
(a) Here we have a dedication in which William Shakespeare personally
states that he wrote the poem, Venus and Adonis. One can argue that he
didn’t really write it, but one can use that argument against any
record someone claims is personal literary evidence for some author.
Aside from that, a false or mistaken personal record is still a
personal record.
(b) This dedication is also the testimony of its publisher, Richard
Field, that William Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis. Since it is
near certain that Field personally know William Shakespeare, because
(to repeat): (i) their fathers knew each other, Shakespeare’s father
having appraised Richard’s father’s inventory sometime around 1590;
(ii) Richard and William were from the same small town of some 1500 to
2000 inhabitants, and close enough in age that they would have gone to
the same one-classroom school together; (iii) both had literary
interests, even if we assume William was only an actor; and (iv)
William had a character in Cymbeline, needing a false name, use the
pseudonym Richard du Champ, French for “Richard Field.”
(c) Several other writers left records stating that William
Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis, and no good evidence that he did
not write both it and its dedication.
(2) dedication to The Rape of Lucrece
TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY, Earl of Southampton, and
Baron of Tichfield. The love I dedicate to your lordship is without
end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous
moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the
worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I
have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I
have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show
greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I
wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.
Your lordship’s in all duty,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
This dedication, published in 1594, is personal literary evidence from
his lifetime not only for the same three reasons Shakespeare’s
dedication to Venus and Adonis is, but for a subtle third reason: it
includes implicitly but near-certainly the personal testimony for
Shakespeare of a third witness. It states the Shakespeare had a
“warrant” from Southampton, which most reasonable people take to have
been patronage, won by Venus and Adonis. That Southampton
liked that poem is close to unarguable because Shakespeare had said in
his first dedication that he would not compose a second poem if
Southampton did not like the first, and here we have a second poem
from him.
Whatever the “warrant” was, though, Shakespeare got it, and it had to
be delivered to him. One would think Southampton himself personally
gave it to him, but even if not—as anti-Stratfordians argue—someone
had to give Shakespeare—as a writer—the warrant in person. In other
words, either Southampton recognized Shakespeare in person as a writer
or his go-between did.
(3) Francis Meres’s Testimony
Meres (1598): “As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in
Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and
honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece,
his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, etc.”
How would Meres know about the sonnets among Shakespeare’s private
friends without being a private friend himself—or by knowing a private
friend who was thus a go-between personally recognizing Shakespeare as
a poet the way the deliverer of the warrant in (b) was?
(4) Sir George Buc’s Testimony (which I found out about from Alan
Nelson)
The Folger Shakespeare Library copy of George a Greene contains an
annotation in the hand of George Buc (1560-1622), who was Master of
the Revels from 1610 to 1622:
Written by ............ a minister, who ac[ted] the pin{n}ers part in
it himself. Teste W. Shakespea[re] Ergo, George Buc knew Shakespeare
personally, which makes the following Stationers Register entry of
Nov. 26, 1607 almost-certainly personal literary evidence from Shake-
speare’s lifetime that he was a writer: “26 Novembris. Nathanial
Butter John Busby. Entred for their Copie under thandes of Sir George
Buck knight and Thwardens A booke called. Master William Shakespeare
his historye of Kinge Lear, as yt was played before the Kinges
maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas Last,
by his maiesties servantes playinge vsually at the Globe on the
Banksyde vjd.”
(5) Thomas Heywood’s Testimony
The following, by Thomas Heywood is from “Epistle to the printer after
An Apology for Actors” (1612): “Here likewise, I must necessarily
insert a manifest injury done me in that worke, by taking the two
Epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris, and printing them in a
lesse volume, vnder the name of another, which may put the world in
opinion I might steale them from him; and hee to doe himselfe right,
hath since published them in his owne name: but as I must acknowledge
my lines not worthy his patronage, vnder whom he hath publisht them,
so the Author I know much offended with M. *Jaggard* that (altogether
vnknowne to him) presumed to make so bold with his name.”
The work Heywood is referring to is Jaggard’s 1612 edition of The
Passionate Pilgrim, a collection of poems, the title page of which
said it was by William Shakespeare, but which contained poems known or
thought to be by others, including the two poems by Heywood that
Heywood gives the titles of, which were in Heywood’s Troia Britannica
(1609).
Because the anti-Stratfordians have had trouble reading it (Diana
Price, for instance, claims on pages 130 and 131 of her book that the
passage’s “wording is dense, filled with troublesome pronouns” and
therefore can’t count as evidence for Shakespeare), let me repeat it,
accompanied by my paraphrase (in caps).
Here likewise, I must necessarily insert a manifest injury done me in
I FEEL I MUST TELL YOU HOW I WAS HARMED IN
that work, by taking the two Epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to
THAT VOLUME BY THE INCLUSION IN IT OF TWO OF MY POEMS (WHICH I NAME)
Paris, and printing them in a less volume, under the name of another,
AND PRINTING THEM IN A LESS SIGNIFICANT VOLUME ATTRIBUTED TO SOMEONE
ELSE
which may put the world in opinion I might steal them from him; and he
AN ACT WHICH MAY MAKE IT LOOK TO EVERYONE LIKE I STOLE THE POEMS FROM
THAT OTHER PERSON AND HE
to do himself right, hath since published them in his own name: but as
TO INDICATE THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER HAS SINCE PRINTED THEM AS HIS, BUT
SINCE
I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage, under whom he
I AM COMPELLED TO ADMIT THAT MY POEMS ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE GIVEN
SOME SORT OF REWARD, BACKED, OR THE LIKE, BY THAT OTHER PERSON, WHOSE
NAME JAGGARD
(Note: “patronage” to modern ears, is a bit dense as a figure of
speech, and the “he” that refers to Jaggard is sloppily used, but not
so sloppily as to prevent any reasonable person from figuring out its
referent, or for any other reading of the passage to work)
hath published them, so the Author I know much offended with M.
HAS PUBLISHED THEM UNDER. THE WRITER WHOSE NAME WAS SO USED HAS, I
KNOW, BECOME VERY ANNOYED AS A RESULT WITH MR.
Jaggard (that altogether un known to him) presumed to make so bold
JAGGARD (WHO WITHOUT THE WRITER’S KNOWLEDGE) AUDACIOUSLY MADE FREE
with his name. These, and the like dishonesties I know you to be clear
WITH THE NAME OF THAT WRITER. I’M SURE YOU COULD NOT BE GUILTY OF SUCH
KINDS OF UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR
of; and I could wish but to be the happy Author of so worthy a work as
AND IT WOULD PLEASE ME IF ONLY I WERE THE FORTUNATE WRITER OF A WORK
GOOD ENOUGH TO
I could willingly commit to your care and workmanship.
TURN OVER TO YOU (THE PRINTER THIS TEXT IS ADDRESSED TO).
This passage is as clear as anything written back then (and no anti-
Stratfordian at HLAS has shown where my paraphrase gets it wrong). To
say it is too ambiguous to count as a personal reference to
Shakespeare is ridiculous, if not insane. Heywood in effect names him,
for only Shakespeare’s name is on The *Passionate Pilgrim*; he calls
him an author, and reveals personal information about him. That he
knew him personally is corroborated by a later poem Heywood wrote in
which he said that Shakespeare was not haughty, and known to all as
just “Will.” Even if you decide Heywood did not personally know Will,
he had to have gotten his information about him from someone who did
know him personally and that he was upset with Jaggard’s misuse of his
name.
(C) Literary Evidence That Is Probably Personal from Shakespeare’s
Lifetime
(1) Greene’s Testimony
The author of Greenes Groatsworth of Witte (1592), whether Robert
Greene, as I believe, or Henry Chettle, as others do, states that
William Shakespeare, the actor, was a playwright (since he is said to
conceitedly believe that one of his lines makes him as good a composer
of blank verse as Christopher Marlowe and two other playwriting
associates of Greene’s). (See my essay on the Groatsworth for
details.) That Greene (or whoever it was who was calling himself
Greene) not only knows of this actor and that he was writing plays (or
parts of plays), but pronounces him conceited, and a jack-of-all
trades with some certainty strongly suggests that Greene personally
knew him—as does Greene’s centrality in the London writing trade, just
about everyone in which he seemed to know. But Shakespeare is only
identified by his acting vocation, authorship of a line from Henry VI,
Part 3 (said to be his in the First Folio and not attributed to anyone
else anywhere else), and the nonce term, “Shake-scene,” to refer to
Shakespeare, not explicitly. Hence, I put it in this category rather
than into B.
(2) Henry Chettle’s Testimony
I contend that in his preface to Kind-Harts Dreame (1592), Henry
Chettle identifies Shakespeare as a playwright he has met in person
and found to be a swell guy. He doesn’t give this playwright’s name,
but in speaking of him, he is clearly speaking of the Crow of Greenes
Groatsworth of Wit (i.e., Shakespeare), for he is apologizing for
offensive statements in the Groatsworth that could only have been
directed at the Crow, the only one insulted therein who was an actor,
or—for that matter—had both an art and a vocation.
(3) John Davies’s Testimony
In 1603, John Davies of Hereford writes of his love of actors,
including a W.S. (coupled with an R.B.) whom Davies also loved for
poetry and who, except for anti-Stratfordians, is almost certainly
Shakespeare. Two years later he also refers positively to actors,
particularly “R.B.
and W.S.,” in a poem. I mention this to indicate the probability that
he actually knew W.S. and R.B. personally, because of his fondness for
actors in general, and them in particular.
In 1610, a more explicit poem by Davies about Shakespeare was
published:
To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare
Some say (good Will). which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a King;
And been a King among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit:
And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap;
So, to increase their stock which they do keep.
To start with, Davies describes Shakespeare as a dramatist, as Terence
was. In the body of the poem, he speaks of Shakespeare’s reigning wit,
and reveals his knowledge of comments about Shakespeare. This, for me,
is suggestion enough that Davies knew Shakespeare, but the fact that
the poem is one in a sequence of poems Davies wrote about various of
his friends, all of them complimentary, though one or two are
teasingly mocking, as well, makes it probably, for me, that Davies
personally knew Shakespeare.
(4) the impresa
A 1613 record (“Item, 31 Martii 1613 to Mr. Shakespeare in gold about
my Lord’s impresa xlivs. To Richard Burbage for painting and making
it, in gold xlivs.”) is further evidence that a William Shakespeare
was an actor, albeit only weakly circumstantial since the “Shakspeare”
here not only is not identified as an actor but may have been some
other Shakespeare, such as John Shakespeare, the royal bitmaker
Charlotte Stopes turned up in her researches. But Burbage and
Shakespeare were associated together too many times for it to be
likely that here Burbage was for the first and apparently only time
associated with some other Shakespeare than Will, and that the other
Shakespeare was constructing some kind of clever/arty picture/motto
combination of just the kind that Shakespeare the writer imaged so
often in his plays and that Burbage would have had the talent to
paint.
Rob Zigler agrees. In an Internet newsgroup post to someone arguing
the contrary, he says, “To put it bluntly, the idea that the payee was
not William Shakespeare is ridiculous. The fee was exactly split
between Richard Burbage and Mr. Shakespeare, so we’re looking for
people who are likely to have been partners. I’m sure that you’ve
noticed that William Shakespeare appears in a number of documents as a
partner with Richard Burbage. I’m also fairly sure that you’ve also
noticed that John Shakespeare, the royal bitmaker doesn’t show up
anywhere else partnered with Richard Burbage. It’s been quite a while
since I’ve read what Stopes had to say, but my recollection is that
John Shakespeare makes pretty frequent appearances in the accounts of
the King and assorted nobles and I see that E.K. Chambers says that he
doesn’t start appearing in those accounts until 1617 Here’s yet
another reason why Stopes idea doesn’t make any sense. Impresa shields
were small and made out of pasteboard, so why would the construction
process call for a man who made bits and spurs? What could he have
done that would have been worth the relatively grand sum of 44
shillings?
“Actually, we know perfectly well what Mr. Shakespeare was being paid
for. The task of creating an impresa shield can be logically divided
into two parts; the design and the construction. The Rutland account
tells us that Richard Burbage made and painted the shield, so the
construction of the shield is entirely accounted for. That leaves only
the design. Needless to say, designing a tournament impresa is
something we know that poets sometimes did. (Jonson wrote an epigram
complaining of not having yet been paid for ‘a gulling imprese for you
at tilt’.)
“If we knew nothing at all about Mr. Shakespeare outside of this
document, we’d assume that he was probably some sort of poet. . . .
Therefore, the Rutland document should count as part of a personal
literary paper trail connecting Will Shakespeare to the profession of
acting.” And, weakly, to the profession of writing, we can add.
(5) The Testimony of the Title-Pages
Throughout Shakespeare’s lifetime title-pages of published plays
attributed those plays to him. They are obviously literary evidence
that he wrote them. I consider them probably personal because it
doesn’t seem possible to me that none of the many publishers who
published his plays and testified that he wrote them by placing his
name on their title-pages knew him personally. Diana Price, in fact,
is sure that nearly all of them did—except as a play-broker, rather
than as a playwright. Nonetheless, if they knew him personally, their
testimony on the title-pages of the books they published must be
considered personal literary evidence. This must hold, also, for the
title-pages of published plays they put his name or initials on that
scholars are close to unanimous in considering not to have been
Shakespeare’s work: if a
publisher personally knew Shakespeare, and publically stated that he
was the author of a particular book, then his testimony is personal
literary evidence that that was the case (however easily counter
evidence might outweigh it). Interestingly, since no known published
play of the times had the name of a non-writer on its title-page, even
Shakespeare’s name on the thtile-page of a play he did not write is
strong evidence that he was a writer.
(D) Literary Evidence Slightly More Likely Than Not To Be Personal
from Shakespeare’s Lifetime
(1) The Testimony of John Weever
Here is John Weever’s sonnet on Shakespeare, which appeared in his
Epigrammes (1599):
Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue
I swore Apollo got them, and none other,
Their rosy-tainted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother.
Rose-cheekt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her:
Romea-Richard; more, whose names I know not,
Their sugred tongues, and power attractive beauty
Say they are Saints, although that Sts they show not
For thousands vows to them subjective dutie:
They burn in love thy childre Shakespear het the
Go, wo thy Muse more Nymphish brood beget them.
According to E.A.J. Honigmann, “Weever made (this poem) a
‘Shakespearian’ sonnet; of around 160 epigrams in his collection, most
of them between four and twenty lines in length, one, and only one, is
fourteen lines long and rhymes abab, cdcd, efef, gg. This can only
mean one thing - that Weaver had seen some of Shakespeare’s sonnets,
and wished to signal to others in the know that he had enjoyed this
privilege.” That would make him one of the friends Shakespeare
circulated his sonnets among. Pure speculation, yes, but possibly
correct.
(2) The Testimony of Antony Scoloker
In his preface to “Diaphantus; or, the Passions of Love” (1604),
Antony Scoloker writes: “(an epistle to the reader) should be like the
Never-too-well read Arcadia, where the Prose and verce (Matters and
Words) are like his Mistresses eyes, one still excelling another and
without Corivall: or to come home to the vulgars Element, like
Friendly Shakespeare’s Tragedies, where the Commedian rides, when the
Tragedian stands on tip-toe: Faith it should please all, like Prince
Hamlet.”
If Scoloker was referring to Shakespeare’s personality, his use of the
adjective “friendly” to describe him would indicate that he personally
knew him (or that someone else who personally knew him had told
Skoloker he was friendly); but since Scoloker here could be referring
to Shakespeare’s “friendly” style as a writer, I don’t feel I can
assume that he knew Shakespeare the man. (There are two conflicting
questions for me: why insert an adjective about a man’s disposition in
a paragraph otherwise entirely about writing; and why use the
adjective in front of Shakespeare’s name rather than in front of
“tragedies” if it is supposed to describe the latter?)
(3) The Testimony of John Webster
In 1612 - John Webster writes “To his beloved friend Maister Thomas
Heyood” for “Apology for Actors.”
( Let me pause here to ask why Price counts Webster’s verse as CPLE
for both Heywood and himself. On its face it suppports the claim that
Webster knew Heywood and thought Heywood was the author of "Apology
for Actors." But how does it persuade us that Webster was himself an
author? If Shakespeare’s dedications to V&A and RoL don’t count,
Webster’s name at the bottom of a printed verse is no evidence of his
authorship. There is no indication that Webster’s rough draft
manuscript for the verse survives, nor does Heywood’s bio show any
reciprocal record of esteem for Webster. This is not the only case
where a commendatory verse gets counted twice in the CPLE data. I have
to say it sounds like stuffing the ballot box.)
Now, to continue:
John Webster, 1612 (“To the reader” prefacing The White Devil):
Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance; for mine own part I have
ever truly cheris’d my good opinion of other men’s worthy labors:
especially of that full and height’ned style of Master Chapman; the
labor’d and understanding works of Master Jonson; the no less worthy
composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master
Fletcher; and lastly, without wrong last to be named, the right happy
and copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Dekker, and M. Heywood;
wishing that what I write may be read by their light; protesting that,
in the strength of mine own judgment, I know them so worthy that,
though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs I dare,
without flattery, fix that of Martial: non norunt, haec monumenta mori
[“these monuments know not how to die”].
On the surface, Webster’s praise is impersonal--the kind that is
appropriate when “there was no personal relationship,” as Price’s
husband put it in an HLAS discussion. Webster praises everyone’s
“worthy labors”; the “style” of Chapman; the “works” of Jonson; the
“composures” of Beaumont and Fletcher; the “industry” of the last
three. I mention it here, however, because of its reference to
Webster’s “beloved friend” Heywood, without a single adjective to
indicate he was a friend of Webster’s. In other words, Price’s policy
of counting only testimony that is explicitly personal as personal
evidence is improper. So, by including Shakespeare in the company of a
certain friend of his, Webster may, ever so slightly, be indicating
that
Shakespeare, too, was his friend.
(4) The Testimony of Leonard Digges
In 1613 Leonard Digges compared the sonnets of Lope de Vega to those
of “our Will Shakespeare,” which is a pretty friendly way to refer to
Shakespeare—and Digges was not only a close neighbor of Shakespeare’s
in both Aldermarston and in London, his father-in-law was remembered
by Shakespeare in his will, and served as one of the two overseers of
that will. But Digges could have meant “England’s” by “our.” I’m also
not sure that “Will” wasn’t the name everyone knew Shakespeare by, not
just his friends. Given a choice between calling this piece of
evidence personal or impersonal, I’d call it personal. Fortunately,
with a sane way of arranging such items in a continuum, I don’t have
to do that here.
(E) Literary Evidence Equally Likely to Be Personal or Not Personal
from Shakespeare’s Lifetime
This category would include just about all the literary evidence from
Shakespeare’s lifetime that is not explicitly personal nor consigned
to the preceding categories. I don’t believe there is any known piece
of evidence for Shakespeare that can confidently be described as
certainly or even probably impersonal. Edward Alleyn, for instance,
referred to Shakespeare as a poet; was the reference personal? I, for
one, would suspect it probably was since it seems unlikely two such
important figures in the London theatre world of the time would not
have met, but we lack sufficient data to say one way or the other. The
same seems true for all the other evidence for Shakespeare. So this
category is the last on my nine that I will concern myself with here.
And I won’t bother to list the pieces of evidence that would go into
it, for I have covered most of them in the main body of my book,
Shakespeare and the Rigidniks.
lackpurity
> Please show evidence for statements like this, MM.
> Otherwise, you're just another Elizabeth.
MM:
Haven't you read that message from Marlowe, written in Latin,
practically thanking Countess Mary Sidney for what she had
contributed? Why do I need to supply evidence, when it should be
understood by reasonable thinking individuals?
> Having said that, I realize that Price always supports her
> contentions somewhere with evidence. �Or tries to. �Her
> evidence is always very weak, even after she misrepresents
> it, but she always has something one could call evidence.
> In other words, she doesn't really argue by assertion,
> the way you are here.
>
> --Bob
MM:
Well, now you're all over the map. You can't have your cake, eat it,
too, then suggest that I supply evidence. You're really funny, now
Bob. You mention "conjectural libesl," and not much later claim that
she offers evidence. Get your act to gether. I can't debate someone
who straddles the fence, as you're doing now.
Michael Martin
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price's book essentially ends on page 313. I am now to page 111. A
little over a third of the way through. So far she's done little but
give the standard anti-Stratfordian pitch. But, I will allow this:
she has steered clear of many of the loonier arguments of anti-
Stratfordians. That may seem the case primarily because she advances
no counter-author, and the silliest insanities of the wacks comes from
their preposterous attempts to show how their man had to have been the
author. Nonetheless, she does seem more scholarly than just about any
of the other wacks I've run into. But her main ploy to destroy WS may
be the least scholarly attempt to do that ever.
She sets it up with banal remarks about the difference between general
documentary evidence such as birth records that tell us about a
person's quotidian life, but not about his profession, and documentary
evidence that indicates the latter, like a medical degree for a
doctor. It is this latter that is of crucial importance to her case
against WS, so you would think she would define it carefully, from the
start. She only describes it in her opening section. Documentary
records of a man's profession are, according to Price,
*personal* in character, because they can be directly linked to the
man, and *professional* in character, because they shed light on his
vocation.
What she means by "direct linkage" is questionable. Going by her
preliminary description, one would see that, for her, a name on a
title page would not directly link to a man because not personal.
Indeed, she soon tells us that that IS the case--because a reference
to WS the writer is not necessarily a reference to WS
the bumpkin. Granted. However, it still directly links to him. She
is merely arguing that the direct link may be invalid. So may a
college diploma since I could get one calling myself Fred Frick and
give it to Fred Frick.
She does have a point, though. If someone known to know WS says he's
a writer, it's slightly better, slightly firmer, evidence he is than
someone else who doesn't know him saying he is. Price doesn't like
this kind of fine distinction. For her, it's personal direct evidence
versus non-evidence. Or as close to it as she can suggest.
Price never brings up the fact that an impersonal reference to WS the
writer has to be accepted as valid IF THE NAME CANNOT BE ATTACHED TO
ANYONE ELSE. She has to because she has no one else to attach it to.
Moreover, the impersonal reference must be accepted if other evidence
indicates the person referred to was indeed a writer. Shakespeare's
monument, as I repeatedly point out, not to bore people but because
wacks can't seem to keep it in mind, says he was a writer. No one
else of the time can be found who used the name William Shakespeare
and wrote. Ergo, any mention of WS as a writer has to be accepted.
Unless one can produce evidence that he could not have been a writer.
No one has.
Perhaps Price will later. We'll see. For now she ends her short
preface to this chapter by telling us it "examines the Shakespearean
literary records to determine which ones, if any, also qualify as
Shakspere's personal records and can therefore be admitted into his
biography."
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Pages 112 and 113 are the key pages in Price's book, for they lay out
her
idea of what's in a "personal literary paper trail." She begins with
the statement that "Literary allusions can be personal (reflecting
personal acquaintance with the author), impersonal (showing
familiarity only with the author's written work or reputation), or
ambiguous." One big problem is that her impersonal allusions are NOT
NECESSARILY IMPERSONAL. What they are, are NOT EXPLICITLY PERSONAL.
Price never admits this in her book. It is quite possible that in her
psitchotic zeal to discredit WS, she doesn't realize it.
For example, for Price I would be personally testifying that Joe Blow
was a writer if I wrote, "My friend Joe Blow is a writer." If,
however, I wrote, "Joe Blow is a writer," she would claim I was
impersonally testifying that he was a writer. True. But that does
not make what I say impersonal evidence since it could be that I am a
very close friend of Joe Blow's.
Price never lets the reader know that such subtle distinctions need to
be made.
The only evidence that can be considered genuinely impersonal would be
the testimony of persons other evidence show did not or could not have
known the authors they were speaking of. For example, my saying, "I
never met Joe Blow, who was the author of Wigget for the Defense."
I don't know what Price means by "ambiguous" evidence, but I don't
think it matters for I don't believe she ever uses the term again.
Price spends more than half a page quoting a passage by Nashe about
Sidney that seems to show personal knowledge of Sidney, but can't be,
because Nashe never met Sidney (according to Price0. She says that
"since Nashe's commenbts show familiarity only with Sidney's writings
and reputation, they do not qualify as personal evidence." She
doesn't tell us that they could still be personal evidence. It's the
old authorship wack game of claiming that any reference to WS as a
writer that doesn't say were he was born or give his home address is
worthless as evidence that he was an author.
Price finishes her section with a list of the documents whe would
accept as contributing to a personal literary paper trial:
1. Records of matriculation or degee, presence during an academic
term, or reference to or from a teacher.
2. Extant books from a personal library, including those with
annotations and marginalia; references to books read, borrowed,
bought, given, or bequeathed; records of payments for books.
(Note, incidentally, how detailed that is; she could have written
"records of having read a book;' instead, she draws it out so when we
find that there are no records of WS's having read a book, even
putting in "buying a book" in two different ways, we'll think not of
his just not having had a book, but of not having a library, or
annotating, or writing marginalia, or borrowing, buying--she left out
stealing, being given or bequethed one. Surely it's not too much to
ask that we have one record of just one of those things happening.
This is characteristic of Price's propagandism. Oh, and we do have a
book that could well have belonged to WS. More on that later.)
3. Autography manuscripts, drafts, presentation copies, and so on
4. Surviving letters, inscriptions, notes and so on, related to the
occupation of writing
5. Records of payments for writing, or commissions to write.
6. References in letters, notebooks, lawsuits, and so on, recognizing
the profession of writer
7. Prefatory poems to or from other wirters, testifying to personal
acquaintance, and miscellaneous records associating a writer with
other writers as friends or colleagues
8. Letters, personal references, or dedications that show a direct and
personal link between author and patron
9. Personal tribute, eulogies, or memorials at death testifying to the
literary profession.
Basically, it's a list of records that wacks think do not exist for
WS.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
9 January 2010
Note: Price ends with a list of ten kinds of douments indicating
authorship that WS doesn't have (in her view). She adds either
"record of correspondence, especially concerning literary matters" or
"handwritten einscriptions, receipts, letters, etc. touching on
literary matters" to the one I quoted yesterday. One presumably
replaces "4. Surviving letters, inscriptions, notes and so on, related
to the occupation of writing," but who knows which. Obviously, she's
cheating, but--hey--ten kinds of documents WS doesn't have make a much
bigger propagandistic splash than a mere nine.
Price is now going to copare the amount of documentary evidence for
various writers--24 of them--with the amount of such evidence for WS
as a writer. She starts, needless to say, with the most well-
documented writer of the time, Ben Jonson. There seems no kind of--
"Pricean Evidence," let's call it--that Jonson lacks. Even at least
one manuscript--but of a masque, not a play, and it's a presentation
copy.
Shakespeare didn't write material for individual nobles, so could not
be expected to have left us such a manuscript. I mention this,
because it highlights an important bit of propagandistic mischief of
Price's--her leaving out all reasons there might be Pricean evidence
for Jonson or any other writer and not WS.
One central one is that Shakespeare apparently only needed to solicit
patronage once and got it. Hence, there is personal evidence of
patronage for him, although Price disqualifies it for not being
explicit enough. Shakespeare may have gotten enough from Southampton
not to need to solicit money from other possible patrons. What seems
almost certain is that he soon did not need patronage thanks mainly to
his play-writing, which brought him a good deal of money as a share-
holder in his company. Jonson never was a share-holder, and seems not
to have been as lucky in getting patronage as it seems WS was. Hence
the much greater lickelihood of personal evidence that he had a
patron. Hence, also his need to write material for individual nobles,
including presentation copies that would be preserved, as foul papers
for plays were not--for any playwright of the time that I know of.
Another thing about Jonson's madrigal--he was making money from them
after WS died, for they came into vogue late in WS's career, so even
if WS had had a yen to compose madrigals, he wouldn't have had time to
compose the number Jonson did, and interact with nobles to the degree
Jonson did.
There are many other reasons for not being surprised that there was so
much more Pricean Evidence" for Jonson than for WS. I hope to bring
them up here and there as we go along.
The college boys the evidence as writers Price is going to compare to
that for WS, have more such evidence than WS, as one would expect,
since colleges have records. And they all had trouble making a living
as writers, so wrote potential patrons a lot, and wrote prefaces for
each other. Many were playwrights but just about all of them for book-
writers much more than Shakespeare was. He seems to have made his
killing with two books of poetry, then never made much effort if any
to get material published. For him, getting it performed was what
counted. Not so for a writer like Greene, say--once he wrote and sold
a play, he got extra income from it only if he sold it to a
publisher. WS got more money from a play the more his company
performed it--as a shareholder. He didn't
need extra money from a sale of it to book publishers--and probably
would not have wanted it in print for easier pirating by rival
companies and perhaps saturating the market.
Price devotes eleven pages to her opening section about the literary
paper trails of writers other than WS, a long section for her.
Basically, she cherry picks the best bits of Pricean Evidence for each
writer on her list (and makes big reproductions of some of the
documents involved). No doubt she thinks this will impress her
readers. The section ends with the old baloney about how folloish
biographers tell us that there's more documentary evidence of
Shakespeare's life than for almost any other writer of the time--which
"implies "that Shakspere is well-documented *as a writer.*" It does,
and accurately--because documentary evidence counts even if it isn't
explicitly personal (and even if it's from after
WS's death, which we shall soon see, renders it close to worthless for
Price--because even she can't find away to show WS didn't have it).
Price also claims Shakespeare biographers imply WS "left behind more
personal literary paper trails than any of his contemporaries except
Jonson," but I don't see that. They aren't concerned with whether
paper trails are personal or not. Only Price is--and, now, after her,
many other wacks.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
A Classic Case of Wishlexia
A comic highlight of Price's next section, an attempt to show that
Shakespeare couldn't write (although she has already in effect stated
that he could, since she claims he was a plagiarist who made plays out
of texts stolen from other writers, something it would be hard for a
man who couldn't write his name to do), is her wishlexical reading of
a record clearly indicating that Shakespeare could write, some notes
on him by Aubrey.
What follows is a slightly revised portion of my book in which I show
how wrong Price is that one of her most ardent followers, Ken Kaplan,
admitted I was right on the matter, she wrong:
The position of Price on this is that Aubrey, when writing that
Shakespeare was, "The more to be admired q[uia] he was not a company
keeper lived in Shoreditch, wouldn't be debauched, & if invited to
writ: he was in paine," was testifying that Shakespeare, if asked to
write, got out of doing so by pretending "he was in pain." But:
(a) Aubrey does not say, "if invited to write," he says, "if invited
to writ"--with a colon after "write" instead of a comma; to strongly
suggest what is writ is to follow the colon rather than a statement
about the condition of a man invited to write. (I've been chided by
Shakespeare-rejecters for claiming here that spelling counts after
working so hard to show that with Shakespeare's name it does not; but
spelling back then, of course, did count when used to distinguish one
common word from another, particularly one tense of a verb from
another, as here.)
Most scholars when quoting the passage silently add a comma after
"to," to clarify the obvious meaning. Price protests this, but it's
near-certain that line breaks acted as commas for Aubrey, who
originally wrote:
The more to be admired q[uia] he was not a company keeper
lived in Shoreditch, wouldn't be debauched, & if invited to
writ: he was in paine."
(Price does not quote the passage as I have, nor mention what its line-
breaks might be doing.
As evidence that Aubrey didn't know what he was writing, in case we
are forced to take what he was saying rationally, Charlton Ogburn,
whose wishlexia Price is repeating, throws in the idea that no one
would ask another man if he wanted to be debauched. But Aubrey refers
to going out for a night on the town as being "debauched," common
sense suggests, because he was contemptuous of carousing, or wanted to
appear so. As for Shakespeare's being invited by letter, which
Shakespeare-rejecters think unlikely, why not? Why not a note saying,
"We're going to the Blue Cow tonight, wanna come?" Maybe they
sent a note rather than trust their messenger to remember all the
details. And Shakespeare scribbled on it that he couldn't because he
was indisposed, which Aubrey calls being "in paine" in what I would
guess is the vernacular of his time. Very simple and straightforward.
(b) What makes more sense: a man's writing that he was in pain when
asked to go out on the town, or being in pain if asked to write?
(c) Whereas people are often normally invited to party (be debauched,
according to
someone snooty), they are not ordinarily invited to write.
(d) If Aubrey was speaking of Shakespeare's being invited to write,
why would he not say "Once Shakespeare was invited to write, whereupon
he said his hand hurt," or the like, but speak of the multiple times
Shakespeare was asked to write? Wouldn't that suggest that many
people thought he could write. Why?
(e) Aubrey describes Shakespeare as not a company keeper, further
stating that he "wouldn't be debauched"; it would have been ridiculous
for him to then say, out of nowhere, that if Shakespeare were invited
to write, (he said) he was in pain." What does that have to do with
not being a company keeper and not being interested in bar-hopping?
On the other hand, that he would make excuses if asked to bar-hop
flows logically from what precedes it in the sentence.
(f) Why would Aubrey write about Shakespeare of Stratford for a page
or two, or
whatever, as though he were the famous poet and playwright we gullible
Shakespeare-affirmers believe him to have been, only to suddenly, in
half-of-a-sentence, tell us he was illiterate? And at once drop the
subject?! He wrote about a famous fart of Oxford's, when he was
genuflecting before the Queen, why not about this amazing illiteracy
in a man famed for creating plays and poems? Furthermore, why, for so
very long, did no one wonder about Shakespeare's literacy after
reading Aubrey?
Anyone who wants to buy this particular oxtraction can be my guest; I
will consider him an idiot, however.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Aside from her fumble with Aubrey in this section, titled "Handwriting
and
Correspondence, Price limits herself to straight propagandism. She
starts the section by telling us "one can inspect dozens of specimens,
most of them relating to literary activity, by Chapman and sixteen
other men of letters. But all we have from WS are six signatures,
which compare "unfavorably" with his contemporaries' signatures. But
in what area does WS not compare unfavorably with his contemporaries
according to denigrators like Price?
His signatures seem pretty sophistocated to stupid me. And it's more
than several other writers of the times left. Moreover, again, there
is good reason he would not have left as much writing behind as many
others.
Price tries to deny him even his signatures, citing the "scholarship"
of the moron, Jane Cox, who is on record as claiming one could tell at
a glance that the signatures were by different writers. So she
conjectures that some of the signatures were made by scribes. You got
that, Diana? Your witness thinks Shakespeare's scrawled near-
illiterate signatures were made by men whose profession is was to
write.
Amusingly, Price brings up the matter of his not finishing his
signatures. No chance he could be limited by space, for her--or that
he could have had the impatience of most doctors signing
prescriptions. No, he must have been too stup, she insinuates, to
finish his name, no doubt fogetting how to spell in halfway through,
or perhaps never having learned more than part of it. Consider that.
A man bothers to try to learn how to write his name, but can only half-
master the trick. Yet he is mistaken for a writer. And somehow
cobbles together texts stolen from others to make plays. The picture
makes no sense.
Nonetheless, according to Price, "The poor quality of (Shakespeare's)
penmanship is as suspicious as is the paucity of extant handwriting
for a man who supposedly lived by the pen." Suspicious that we don't
had more specimens of handwriting from a man who died almost four
hundred years ago? In a time when manuscripts were not kept, and
almost none have survived? When letters by commoners survived only
through weird turns of chance, the way Quiney's did (about which more
later)?
Because letters often play some role in WS's plays, we know he knew
about them, Price informs us. From that it does not follow that he
was much of a letter-writer; some literary people are not. Though,
again, he could easily have written hundreds of letters to people who
used them in their fires after reading them. We can't know.
Price makes sure we understand that mere signatures cannot be used to
indicated a person was a writer; she has to make sure that if it turns
out WS's signatures are indisputably his, they can't be used as
personal evidence of authorship. Oddly, though, as we shall see,
evidence of formal education and having had a book in one's possession
at one time ARE, for Price, such evidence.
Obviously signatures don't indicate a career in writing, but they DO
indicate a high
probability of full literacy, which indicate the possibility of such a
career--which, in turn, helps firm stronger evidence of that, as in
this case.
--Bob
art
>
> My contributions to this thread will be first-draft level, scattered,
> uneven, often badly expressed, sometimes wrong, etc.
Unlike your final book which will be scattered, uneven,
often badly expressed, and almost always wrong.
Art Neuendorffer
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Yet, in spite of all that, without a single detail of it refuted
by an anti-Stratfordian. Indeed, with hardly even one detail
of it pointed to as wrong.
Oh, and Art, since you are not critiquing Price, your new title
is inappropriate, even though you HAVE contributed to the thread.
So I'm changing it back to its proper title. (Note: I have never
screwed around with the title of the moronic threads you've
begun, none of them a hundredth as serious as this one.)
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Price's next section is short, and it is so lyingly propagandistic
I've decided to quote it in totum as an example of how people like
Price operate.
"Where are Shakspere's books? The dramatist's reading list had to
have amounted to many hundreds, if not thousands of books. Why have
none of them ever been located? If he owned any, why didn't he
mention them in his detailed will? Did he borrow every single one he
ever read? There was no such thing as an Elizabethan public library,
so some biographers speculate that Shakspere borrowed regularly from
printer Richard Field, a Stratford man who relocated in London. There
is no evidence to support that theory, nor does Field's inventory of
books begin to account for Shakespeare's reading list.
"While historians have to guess how the dramatist got hold of his
books, they don't have to guess about some other writers' access to
books. They know that Jonson borrowed books, and many volumes from
his personal library have survived to the present day. So have over
150 volumes once owned by Harvey. Both men had less money than
Shakspere, yet they bought books. Spenser gave books as gifts.
Marlowe, Greene, Nashe, and other "university wits" had access to
academic collections. Fletcher and Martston were left books by their
fathers. Shakspere's bookless trail stand in striking contracts to
the trails of many of his lesser contemporaries."
Okay, let's go through this triple again: "Where are Shakspere's
books? OVER THE COURSE OF TIME THEY HAVE DISINTEGRATED, BEEN BURNED,
BEEN
LOST--AS HAVE ALMOST ALL THE BOOKS OF THE TIME NOT OWNED BY
NOBLES. WE ALSO KNOW THAT HIS DAUGHTER OWNED BOOKS, AND
THAT THEY WERE STOLEN. THAT WOULD EASILY ACCOUNT FOR THE
LOSS OF WHATEVER LIBRARY WS HAD. WE ALSO KNOW THAT THERE
WERE NO SCHOLARS EAGER TO PURCHASE FAMOUS WRITERS' LIBRARIES AFTER
THEIR DEATHS. THE QUESTION PRICE ASKS IS THEREFORE MORONIC. The
dramatist's reading list had to have amounted to many hundreds, if not
thousands of books. NOT SO. AUTHORSHIP WACKS DON'T SEEM TO
UNDERSTAND THAT ONE CAN KNOW A LOT ABOUT VARIOUS WRITING *WITHOUT EVER
HAVING READ THEM!* NO DOUBT, HOWEVER, WS DID READ MANY BOOKS. Why
have none of them ever been located? ONE MAY HAVE BEEN. PRICE, OF
COURSE, DOES NOT MENTION THAT HERE. SOME LEGAL BOOK WITH
"SHAKESPEARE' INSCRIBED ON IT SOMEWHERE. If he owned any, why didn't
he mention them in his detailed will? WE DON'T HAVE HIS COMPLETE
WILL. AN ADDENDUM IS MISSING THAT MAY HAVE MENTIONED BOOKS. BUT THERE
ARE MANY VERY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATIONS IF NOT. E.G., HE HAD ALREDY
GIVEN THEM TO THOSE HE THOUGHT MOST DESERVED THEM; OR HE CONCENTRATED
IN HIS WILL ON THINGS THAT WERE MORE IMPORTANT TO THE REST OF HIS
FAMILY THAN BOOKS. Did he borrow every single one he ever read? HE
COULD HAVE; HE COULD EASILY HAVE SPENT HOURS IN SOME STRATFORD
ARISTOCRAT'S LIBRARY, THEN LATER IN A LONDON ARISTOCRAT'S. I WOULD
THINK HIS COMPANY WOULD HAVE HAD BOOKS, OR SOMEONE IN IT DID. There
was no such thing as an Elizabethan
public library, so some biographers speculate that Shakspere borrowed
regularly from printer Richard Field, a Stratford man who relocated in
London. There is no evidence to support that theory, nor does Field's
inventory of books begin to account for Shakespeare's reading list.
ACTUALLY, THERE IS GOOD EVIDENCE HE DID, FOR--AS PRICE NEGLECTS TO
MENTION, FIELD WAS JUST A YEAR OR TWO OLDER THAN SHAKESPEARE AND THE
FATHERS OF THE TWO WERE ACQUAINTED, SO IT'S ALMOST DEAD CERTAIN THEY
KNEW EACH OTHER. IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE THEIR SHARED INTERESTED IN BOOKS
WOULDN'T HAVE MADE THEM FRIENDS. WS MAKES A PUN ON FIELD'S NAME IN
ONE OF HIS PLAYS THAT DOESN'T DEFINITELY REFER TO HIM BUT WELL MIGHT.
PRICE DOESN'T MENTION HERE, EITHER, THAT FIELD PUBLISHED WS'S TWO
NARRATIVE POEMS, SO CONTACT IN LONDON BETWEEN THEM IS DIFFICULT NOT TO
ACCEPT AS A FACT. I WOULD ADD THAT IT IS CERTAIN THAT FIELD'S LIBRARY
DID NOT CONSIST ONLY OF THE BOOKS HE PUBLISHED.
"While historians have to guess how the dramatist got hold of his
books, they don't have to guess about some other writers' access to
books. They know that Jonson borrowed books, and many volumes from
his personal library have survived to the present day. HERE OUR
PROPAGANDIST CALLS IN JONSON ONCE AGAIN. SURE, A FEW WRITERS OF THE
TIME'S ACCESS TO BOOKS IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED. AS PRICE HERSELF
EVENTUALLY SHOWS, WE HAVE NO DIRECT EVIDENCE THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE
WRITERS OF THE TIME EVER REFERRED TO A BOOK. So have over 150 volumes
once owned by Harvey. Both men had less money that Shakspere, yet
they bought books. ABSENCE OF RECORDS THE WS BOUGHT BOOKS DOES NOT
MEAN HE BOUGHT NO BOOKS. Spenser gave books as gifts. Marlowe,
Greene, Nashe, and other "university wits" had access to academic
collections.
HOW DO WE KNOW THEY EVER CONSULTED THEM, OR THAT SHAKESPEARE DID NOT,
ACCOMPANYING ONE OF HIS UNIVERSITY
FRIENDS? Fletcher and Martston were left books by their fathers.
Shakspere's bookless trail stands in striking contrast to the trails
of many of his lesser contemporaries." PRICE HAS AN INTERESTING IDEA
OF "MANY." THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT THE BOOK-PLENTIFUL TRAILS
OF SUCH AS JONSON, HARVEY AND SPENSER STAND IN STRIKING CONTRAST TO
THE TRAILS OF ALMOST ALL THEIR LITERARY CONTEMPORARIES, NOT
SHAKESPEARE'S.
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
about title-page attributions. They almost never accept them as
evidence of any value. In her book, Price says, "they are not evern
reliable evidence of authorship." That's because they can be
mistaken, or intentionally false, as is the case, according to Price,
with the title-page attributions of The London Prodigal and The
Yorkshire Tragedy to Shakespeare. Actually, while it is unlikely he
wrote those plays, we don't know for sure that he didn't. It is, in
fact, absurd to claim he could not have had any hand at all in the
authorship of either.
Of course, title-page attributions are highly reliable evidence of
authorship. What they aren't are 100% reliable evidence of it. They
are especially reliable when they refer to a person known to have
existed and around when the texts in question would have been written--
as in the case of WS, but NOT of Mark Twain. The become even stronger
evidence if it can be established that they refer to a person other
evidence explicitly states is a writer, as the Stratford monument
states Shakespeare was. If, finally, there is no explicit or any
other evidence against their validity, as is the acse, again, with
WS's, one has to accept them as valid beyond reasonable doubt.
Additional note: given that we have, to my knowledge, not title-pages
from Shakespeare's time naming as the author of a text someone who was
not a writer, and since it's rare for a non-celebrity who is also a
non-writer to get title-page credit for a book of creative writing,
Shakespeare's name on the title-pages of books scholars don't believe
he wrote is itself fairly good evidence that he was a writer.
Still, Price can't allow us to give much, if any credence, to what
title-pages say. They are not necessarily personal evidence, so--
Price implies--what good are they?
Here, incidentally, she gets very cute about whether they are personal
or not: She first says title-page attributions don't "COUNT" as
personal literary evidence, she doesn't say that are NOT personal.
Then she manages properly to say they are not NECESSARILY personal,
something she rarely does in her book. This suggests to me she knew
full well that some title-page attributions might be personal
evidence, but tried to keep the reader from realizing it as much as
possible without giving someone like me too easy an opportunity to
demonstrate her dishonesty.
Shakespeare's name on the narrative poems--on dedication- rather than
title-pages--is almost certainly personal evidence, I would add, since
the poems were published by Richard Field who almost certain
personally knew Shakespeare. Price never lets the reader know things
like this, though.
--Bob
lackpurity
MM:
Of course, they are strong, important evidence. Moreover, the fact
that nobody challenged those title pages until all the Strat witnesses
were dead and gone speaks volumes.
Michael Martin
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Next on Proce's anti-Stratfordian chestnut list is the "fact" that
Shakesapeare, an astute businessman, would never allow his plays to be
pirated to the extent they were. On the basis of the two or three
times he went to court to get money owed to him, Price claims he was
"clearly a man wou would not find any loss of income acceptable"--not
a man who didn't like to be cheated, or who had a lawyer looking after
his interests vigorously. Wacks like Price, by the way, never explain
why the True Author, almost always a nobleman with considerable power,
did nothing about the piracies--even though it would have been easy to
send thugs behind to scenes to the pirates, who were always known.
Plays by others seems to have been pirated, too--but not to the extent
WS's seem to have been. This seems an important point to the wacks,
but not to me, since the obvious explanation is that WS's plays were
more popular than any other plays. Being more popular they would not
only have been pirated more, but pirated editions of them would have
been kept by their buyers longer than pirated editions of less popular
plays--in other words, other playwrights' plays may have been pirated
as often as WS's but without as many of the pirated editions surviving
as the pirated editions of his plays.
The fact of the matter, as I understand it (and it's complicated but
HLAS has numerous relevant posts that explain it reasonably well),
are--and this is certain--WS did not own his plays, his company did.
Moreover, they had no true copyright on them, so there was nothing
they could do against pirates except get them registered before the
pirates did, or simply keep them from possible pirates as long as they
could.
Other obvious possibilities: that it was just oo much trouble for WS
or his company to get intangled in a dispute about the plays. It's
quite possible that all the piracies occurred either when WS was just
starting out and too inexperienced to do anything about them or after
he had become affluent enough not to care that much. If the latter,
the wacks will complain that he went to the courts to recover very
small amounts owed to him, but I'm not convinced that it was he who
went to court rather than his lawyer. Moreover, going to court to
recover money owed you as a gain-merchant, which he was, whether in
absentia or in any more genuine sense, is more necessary to keep
buyers from taking advantage of you, than stopping piracies after
they've happened.
Note: many of WS's plays were not pirated, which suggests his company
generally was able to protect them.
And/or that they did get entangled and got some or all of the piracies
taken care of, but the records vanished. We know (okay, we don't know
but have good evidence to believe) that WS complained to Chettle about
The Groatsworth but only because Chettle made it public. Somebody
complained behind the scenes. WS, according to Heywood, grumbled
about what Jaggard did with The Passionate Pilgrim behind the scenes,
our knowledge again due only to Heywood's happening to tell us about
it in a preface like Chattle's in a book that survived.
Another factor is that most of the piracies occurred during plague
years and/or times when WS's company was breaking up. If they were
piracies. It's quite possible that the company voluntarily had
certain outdated scripts published--obsolete drafts and the like.
In this section Price also deals with Heywood's protest regarding The
Passionate Pilgrim, which she is unable to misread, so basically
dismisses what he said as unambiguous. "The wording is dense, filled
with troublesome pronouns," said Price. Then she found an obtuse
scholar to quote, W. W. Greg, who found Heywood's text to be "a
strangely worded and punctuated sentence." You'd think he were less
familiar with Elizabethan writing than I, which doesn't seem
possible. In any case, I had little trouble reading it, as I showed
earlier in this thread.
Another "problem" Price brings up is WS's allowing corruption of
published play texts. It's the same story: what could he have done
once the bad quartoes were printed; he didn't own the rights to them;
etc. Price wants to know why he would allow corrupt versions of any
of his writings since he says in a few of his sonnets that those
sonnets were valuable and would last forever. Many explanations, of
course. One is that he only thought his best sonnets would survive,
and knew many friends had good copies of them that they'd pass on to
posterity. Another (wacks will have big trouble with this) is that he
was changeable, sometimes thinking of posterity, sometimes not.
There's also the possibility that he didn't think of his plays as
nearly as important as his poems. (And his sonnets were
not uncorrupted when published.) Or he trusted Heminges and Condell
to get his plays published uncorrupted, and was not a perfectionist,
the way Jonson was.
Meanwhile, why is the same problem not greater for Price's
hypothesized unknowable True Author? A rich noble and he doesn't have
perfect multiple manuscripts of all his works distributed among his
most loyal comrades to pass on, with his name on them to posterity,
the ones pulling off the world's only perfect major conspiracy hoax?
Price uses the standard wack explanation for the True Author's
passivity" he didn't want to seem to care about publication, which was
beneath his dignity as a Noble. See above: how he might have made
sure of multiple manscripts' survival. Also how he could have used
the power he called on to hide his authorship to beat up a few pirates
without their knowing who had them beaten up.
There, another installment. But I'm not yet halfway through. I dunno
how long I can last. I'm definitely wearing out.
--Bob
lackpurity
but.net> wrote:
> 14 January 2010
>
> Next on Proce's anti-Stratfordian chestnut list is the "fact" that
> Shakesapeare, an astute businessman, would never allow his plays to be
> pirated to the extent they were. �On the basis of the two or three
> times he went to court to get money owed to him, Price claims he was
> "clearly a man wou would not find any loss of income acceptable"--not
> a man who didn't like to be cheated, or who had a lawyer looking after
> his interests vigorously. �Wacks like Price, by the way, never explain
> why the True Author, almost always a nobleman with considerable power,
> did nothing about the piracies--even though it would have been easy to
> send thugs behind to scenes to the pirates, who were always known.
MM:
I think Price might be rushing to judgment. Shakespeare would have
known when to respond to "piracy," or when to brush it off. How could
anyone else make his decisions for him?
> Plays by others seems to have been pirated, too--but not to the extent
> WS's seem to have been. �This seems an important point to the wacks,
> but not to me, since the obvious explanation is that WS's plays were
> more popular than any other plays. �Being more popular they would not
> only have been pirated more, but pirated editions of them would have
> been kept by their buyers longer than pirated editions of less popular
> plays--in other words, other playwrights' plays may have been pirated
> as often as WS's but without as many of the pirated editions surviving
> as the pirated editions of his plays.
MM:
I agree with your reason, the popularity. It's pretty obvious.
> The fact of the matter, as I understand it (and it's complicated but
> HLAS has numerous relevant posts that explain it reasonably well),
> are--and this is certain--WS did not own his plays, his company did.
MM:
Has this been proven? Again, Will Shakespeare would have known best
how to handle the ownership.
> Moreover, they had no true copyright on them, so there was nothing
> they could do against pirates except get them registered before the
> pirates did, or simply keep them from possible pirates as long as they
> could.
>
> Other obvious possibilities: that it was just oo much trouble for WS
> or his company to get intangled in a dispute about the plays. �It's
> quite possible that all the piracies occurred either when WS was just
> starting out and too inexperienced to do anything about them or after
> he had become affluent enough not to care that much. �
MM:
Sometimes piracy works like a blessing in disguise. That's why I
mentioned Shakespeare would have known best under the circumstances.
For example, some in my Master's group wrote books on mysticism.
Others plagiarized them, even word for word, if you can believe that.
The response was not to press charges, because it was helping to
spread the truth. Shakespeare could have had similar good reasons.
If the latter,
> the wacks will complain that he went to the courts to recover very
> small amounts owed to him, but I'm not convinced that it was he who
> went to court rather than his lawyer. �
MM:
I'd say the money wasn't probably the MAIN REASON.
Moreover, going to court to
> recover money owed you as a gain-merchant, which he was, whether in
> absentia or in any more genuine sense, is more necessary to keep
> buyers from taking advantage of you, than stopping piracies after
> they've happened.
>
> Note: many of WS's plays were not pirated, which suggests his company
> generally was able to protect them.
MM:
Or, possibly he protected them?
> And/or that they did get entangled and got some or all of the piracies
> taken care of, but the records vanished. �We know (okay, we don't know
> but have good evidence to believe) that WS complained to Chettle about
> The Groatsworth but only because Chettle made it public. �
MM:
Shakespeare might have told Chettle and/or Greene that slandering
one's Master is a heinous sin, and it would only increase Greene's
sinful debt. It was already too much for Greene, so Shakespeare might
have been warning Greene not to bring a catastrophe on himself.
Chettle might have realized the wise counsel which Shakespeare gave
him, and that could have been the reason for which Chettle apologized
and presumably repented. Slandering a Master is always a serious sin,
but in public, as you mentioned, makes it even more serious.
Somebody
> complained behind the scenes. �WS, according to Heywood, grumbled
> about what Jaggard did with The Passionate Pilgrim behind the scenes,
> our knowledge again due only to Heywood's happening to tell us about
> it in a preface like Chattle's in a book that survived.
MM:
It could be a similar sin. We shouldn't be tampering with the
writings of Saints, unless we want to increase our karmic debt.
> Another factor is that most of the piracies occurred during plague
> years and/or times when WS's company was breaking up. �If they were
> piracies. �It's quite possible that the company voluntarily had
> certain outdated scripts published--obsolete drafts and the like.
>
> In this section Price also deals with Heywood's protest regarding The
> Passionate Pilgrim, which she is unable to misread, so basically
> dismisses what he said as unambiguous. �"The wording is dense, filled
> with troublesome pronouns," said Price. �Then she found an obtuse
> scholar to quote, W. W. Greg, who found Heywood's text to be "a
> strangely worded and punctuated sentence." �You'd think he were less
> familiar with Elizabethan writing than I, which doesn't seem
> possible. �In any case, I had little trouble reading it, as I showed
> earlier in this thread.
>
> Another "problem" Price brings up is WS's allowing corruption of
> published play texts. It's the same story: what could he have done
> once the bad quartoes were printed; he didn't own the rights to them;
> etc. �
MM:
Are you sure about all of them? Are you sure what the contract or
rights entailed?
Price wants to know why he would allow corrupt versions of any
> of his writings since he says in a few of his sonnets that those
> sonnets were valuable and would last forever. �Many explanations, of
> course. �One is that he only thought his best sonnets would survive,
> and knew many friends had good copies of them that they'd pass on to
> posterity. �
MM:
They were given to William Herbert. He was one of the incomparables.
I do think he thought his would survive.
Another (wacks will have big trouble with this) is that he
> was changeable, sometimes thinking of posterity, sometimes not.
MM:
He wanted his writings to survive. He wanted his successors to carry
on their work, also, so it was a compromise, and it explains why the
FF came out 7 years after his death. He didn't want his successors to
be in his shadow too much. He wanted them to stand on their own feet,
so to say.
> There's also the possibility that he didn't think of his plays as
> nearly as important as his poems. �
MM:
Great = Great
(And his sonnets were
> not uncorrupted when published.) �Or he trusted Heminges and Condell
> to get his plays published uncorrupted, and was not a perfectionist,
> the way Jonson was.
MM:
He knew what had to be done, and he planned ahead with much
forethought, IMO.
> Meanwhile, why is the same problem not greater for Price's
> hypothesized unknowable True Author? �A rich noble and he doesn't have
> perfect multiple manuscripts of all his works distributed among his
> most loyal comrades to pass on, with his name on them to posterity,
> the ones pulling off the world's only perfect major conspiracy hoax?
MM:
Well, how many Anti-Strats would like to reply to Bob G.'s question?
Hmmmmm? Are they going to give you the same treatment, which they
gave Peter Farey? Hmmmm?
> Price uses the standard wack explanation for the True Author's
> passivity" he didn't want to seem to care about publication, which was
> beneath his dignity as a Noble. �See above: how he might have made
> sure of multiple manscripts' survival. �Also how he could have used
> the power he called on to hide his authorship to beat up a few pirates
> without their knowing who had them beaten up.
MM:
LOL Sure. Sure. Beneath dignity? Is a massive coverup beneath his
dignity? Hmmmm? Somehow dignity and acting like a clown don't seem
to be congruent, IMHO. LOL
> There, another installment. �But I'm not yet halfway through. �I dunno
> how long I can last. �I'm definitely wearing out.
>
> --Bob
MM:
Keep up the good work.
Michael Martin
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
In her next section Price agains emphasizes the "big" difference
between personal and impersonal evidence. The imbecile even quotes an
example of an impersonal literary allusion--a genuine one, probably
the only one she could find. In it George Wyther praises Danieal and
others, the says, "I hitherto have only heard your fames/ And know you
yet but by your words and names." She is clearly trying to divide
literary allusions into the personal and the impersonal. As I
repeated over and over, there are three kinds of alluse, so far as
acquaintance with the write alluded to goes: explicitly personal, not-
explicitly personal and explicitly impersonal. A scholarly would have
tagged her allusions the way I
have, not as Price does.
She goes on to quote from a not-explicitly personl allusion to
Shakesepare and says it does not qualify as personal. This is a lie
because she can't know whether it qualifies as personal or not. She
contrasts it with a quote from Davies from an epigram to his
"accomplished friend Mr. Ben Jonson."
Next she tells up that Meres's comments on WS do not qualify as
personal evidence--without giving more than a hint of the evidence
that they should.. After Meres, according to Price, all explicit
references to Shakespeare were to his works, not him, or were
ambiguous. Right, Diana, anything not easy (in your mind) to render
not Pricean evidence is ambiguous. But we have already seen how this
works: allusions IN THE SAME WORK can be considered ambiguously to
refer to either bad Sh or good Sh. Regardardless of the absence of any
clues whether that two men are being referred to. Or Price justs
finds ways to use the odd (to us) grammar and writing style of the
times to claim some simple, clear passage of help to hier opponents is
incoherent.
Price keeps beating the truism that desriptions of a writer's work
don't mean the person making them personally knew the author. They
don't mean he did, either. She brings back her favorite cherry among
real scholars of Shakespeare, Honigmann, to again emphasize that WS
wasn't really a gentle fellow (because gentle fellow are NEVER ANGRY
OR NASTY).
Trying every way possible to continue to make her point, Price tries
to refute the idea that an allusion to "Friendly Shakespeare's
Tragedies," claiming that the man wasn't being referred to but his
"user-friendly" plays. Why, then, wasn't the allusion to
"Shakespeare's friendly tragedies," then? True, those tragedies have
always struck me as extremely friendly, but . . . Well, Price has a
point, but it is miniscule.
After mentioning again a Davies epigram alreadys diescussed, the one
that "as we saw," . . . . "is cryptic, satirical, and most
importantly, impersonal." No, Diana, not "impersonal," just not
EXPLICITLY personal. (I showed it to be very likely personal.)
You got to hand one thing to Diana: she does goes after just about all
the allusions to Shakespeare. Most wacks do not. Her next target is
William Barsted, Who, in his poem about Venus and Adonis, pauses to
write, "But stay my Muse in thine own confines keep,/ And wage not
war with so dear lov'd a neighbor,/ But having sung thy day song, rest
and sleep/ preserve thy small fame and his greater favor;/ His song
was worthy merit (*Shakspeare* he)/ sung the fair blossom, thou the
withered tree/ *Laurel* is due to him, his art and wit/ hath purchased
it, *Cyprus* thy brow will fit."
Price claims, as she must, that the dear neighbor is WS's V&A, not WS--
that's what Barksted says he must not compete with. I can't say she's
entirely wrong, but it seems to me much more, but one of those
terribly tricky pronouns seems to refute her pretty convincingly. I
mean the "his" in the phrase, "his greater glory," which ends the
clause "so dear lov'd a neighbor" is in. Grammar tells us Barksted is
saying the neighbor the favor belongs to is WS, a he, not his poem, an
it. Priice goes on to tell us there's nothing in the verse to
indicate WS was Barsted's neighbor. But I would say the verse claims
him as a literary neighbor, one also in the same neighborhood of
mysthology Barksted is in. Barksted's referring to WS as "dear lov'd"
but that might be only because he's heard he
was that. I lean toward taking it as personal, though.
Ah, "but in the end, there is no contemporary reference to Shakespeare
remotely
comparable to Marston's dedication to 'his frank and heartfel friend,
Benjamin Jonson, the weightiest and most finely discering of poets."
No matter what the evidence for WS as an author, it can never be
enough.
--Bob G.
lackpurity
MM:
Incredible. A mother will bathe the baby despite his crying, wailing,
and protesting. It doesn't mean that she doesn't love the baby.
Shakespeare wrote with that attitude. He was trying to correct us.
Readers will form their own opinion, whether he was user-friendly, or
not. I can't see how this would relate to the authorship issue,
frankly.
MM:
I agree, that it must have referred to William Shakespeare and not to
V and A. Seems that Barsted knew about MUSES, and he must have known
about Marlowe and Shakespeare, that they were teaching us how to make
the most of the MUSES. V & A was just one work. I don't know the
date of his comment, but the entire canon had the same theme, go to a
Master of Muses.
> Ah, "but in the end, there is no contemporary reference to Shakespeare
> remotely
> comparable to Marston's dedication to 'his frank and heartfel friend,
> Benjamin Jonson, the weightiest and most finely discering of poets."
> No matter what the evidence for WS as an author, it can never be
> enough.
>
> --Bob G.
MM:
Maybe Shakespeare had asked others not to overindulge in praising
him? He might have told them to reserve such praises until after his
death. That would allow for Ben Jonson to write his enconium.
Michael Martin