Thomas Thorpe's dedication
Clark
cryptic dedication to the 1609 edition.
The more I look at it, the more I think it's possible that Thorpe is just
extemporizing a variation on Shakespeare's dedication to "The Rape of
Lucrece". Here's the last line of Shakespeare's dedication to RoL:
"...bound to your Lordship; To whom I wish long life still lengthned with
all happiensse."
Note that Shakespeare's "wish" is repeated in Thorpe's dedication: "To . the
. only . begetter . of . these . insuing . sonnets . Mr. W. H. all .
happiness . and . that . eternitie . promised . by . our . ever-living .
poet . wisheth . the . well-wishing . adventurer . in . setting . forth."
Thorpe repeats the "all happiness" straight from the dedication to RoL, has
transformed Shakespeare's wish for a "long life still lengthened" to an
"eternity promised" by Shakespeare, and has transformed Shakespeare's simple
"wish" to a confusing "wisheth the well-wishing" adventurer.
In searching through the sonnets, we often see Shakespeare promising
eternity to the fair youth, but he doesn't say much about "all happiness".
The closest I can find is Sonnet 6, and even here the "happiness" is a bit
ambiguous. "All happiness" may well have been a standard wish, for all I
know, but the fact that Shakespeare specifically made the exact same wish in
his own dedication to Southampton strikes me as suggestive.
If Thorpe was simply cribbing from Shakespeare's earlier dedication, it
would seem to support the theory that the sonnets were published without
Shakespeare's permission, and it would also suggest that Thorpe at least
thought that the sonnets were written for Southampton. Perhaps "Mr. W.H."
is nothing more than a diversion introduced by Thorpe to avoid the
consequences of taking it upon himself to dedicate a pirated edition to
Shakespeare's actual patron.
- Clark
Visit my Shakespeare web page at:
http://members.home.net/cjh5801/Shakespeare.htm
David Kathman
>
> Peter's discussion of sonnet 112 got me thinking about Thomas Thorpe's
> cryptic dedication to the 1609 edition.
>
> The more I look at it, the more I think it's possible that Thorpe is just
> extemporizing a variation on Shakespeare's dedication to "The Rape of
> Lucrece". Here's the last line of Shakespeare's dedication to RoL:
> "...bound to your Lordship; To whom I wish long life still lengthned with
> all happiensse."
>
> Note that Shakespeare's "wish" is repeated in Thorpe's dedication: "To . the
> . only . begetter . of . these . insuing . sonnets . Mr. W. H. all .
> happiness . and . that . eternitie . promised . by . our . ever-living .
> poet . wisheth . the . well-wishing . adventurer . in . setting . forth."
>
> Thorpe repeats the "all happiness" straight from the dedication to RoL, has
> transformed Shakespeare's wish for a "long life still lengthened" to an
> "eternity promised" by Shakespeare, and has transformed Shakespeare's simple
> "wish" to a confusing "wisheth the well-wishing" adventurer.
Actually, these were commonplace ideas in dedications of the time,
and I don't see any reason to think that Thorpe had the Lucrece
dedication in mind when he wrote his. It was extremely common,
almost mandatory, to wish the dedicatee long life and/or happiness,
and many dedication writers referred to themselves as "well wishers"
or some variant thereof. Don Foster's 1987 PMLA article on the
Sonnets dedication (which KQKnave has posted here) gives numerous
examples of all these.
> In searching through the sonnets, we often see Shakespeare promising
> eternity to the fair youth, but he doesn't say much about "all happiness".
While it may be true that Shakespeare is promising the fair youth
that he (the youth) will be immortalized through his (Shakespeare's)
poetry, the collocation "to promise eternity" had a very specific
meaning in Shakespeare's time -- it referred to heaven, and only God
could "promise eternity" to anyone. In every case I'm aware of
where the phrase "promise eternity" (to someone) was used in
Shakespeare's day, God is the subject of "promise" -- unless
"our ever-living poet" in Thorpe's dedication refers to someone
other than God, in which case this would be a single exception.
> The closest I can find is Sonnet 6, and even here the "happiness" is a bit
> ambiguous. "All happiness" may well have been a standard wish, for all I
> know, but the fact that Shakespeare specifically made the exact same wish in
> his own dedication to Southampton strikes me as suggestive.
It doesn't strike me the same way. "All happiness" was not a
particularly unusual phrase, especially for a dedication.
> If Thorpe was simply cribbing from Shakespeare's earlier dedication, it
> would seem to support the theory that the sonnets were published without
> Shakespeare's permission, and it would also suggest that Thorpe at least
> thought that the sonnets were written for Southampton. Perhaps "Mr. W.H."
> is nothing more than a diversion introduced by Thorpe to avoid the
> consequences of taking it upon himself to dedicate a pirated edition to
> Shakespeare's actual patron.
Hmmm... maybe, but all that seems like a mighty stretch. Even
if one believes that the Sonnets dedication is based on the Lucrece
dedication (which I don't see, since they both just draw from the conventions
of the time), it doesn't follow that Thorpe believed that Southampton
was the fair youth.
Dave Kathman
dj...@ix.netcom.com
Clark
Yes, but I've only seen the exact phrase "all happiness" used a couple of
times. Sidney Lee gives one example and Foster another. But as I mentioned
below, there may well be many others, for all I know.
> > In searching through the sonnets, we often see Shakespeare promising
> > eternity to the fair youth, but he doesn't say much about "all
happiness".
>
> While it may be true that Shakespeare is promising the fair youth
> that he (the youth) will be immortalized through his (Shakespeare's)
> poetry, the collocation "to promise eternity" had a very specific
> meaning in Shakespeare's time -- it referred to heaven, and only God
> could "promise eternity" to anyone. In every case I'm aware of
> where the phrase "promise eternity" (to someone) was used in
> Shakespeare's day, God is the subject of "promise" -- unless
> "our ever-living poet" in Thorpe's dedication refers to someone
> other than God, in which case this would be a single exception.
Yes, but Foster himself points out that Benson presumably took it to mean
Shakespeare when he reprinted (or re-pirated) the sonnets in 1640. If
someone of the era could interpret it this way, how strange could it have
been to Jacobean ears?
> > The closest I can find is Sonnet 6, and even here the "happiness" is a
bit
> > ambiguous. "All happiness" may well have been a standard wish, for all
I
> > know, but the fact that Shakespeare specifically made the exact same
wish in
> > his own dedication to Southampton strikes me as suggestive.
>
> It doesn't strike me the same way. "All happiness" was not a
> particularly unusual phrase, especially for a dedication.
>
> > If Thorpe was simply cribbing from Shakespeare's earlier dedication, it
> > would seem to support the theory that the sonnets were published without
> > Shakespeare's permission, and it would also suggest that Thorpe at least
> > thought that the sonnets were written for Southampton. Perhaps "Mr.
W.H."
> > is nothing more than a diversion introduced by Thorpe to avoid the
> > consequences of taking it upon himself to dedicate a pirated edition to
> > Shakespeare's actual patron.
>
> Hmmm... maybe, but all that seems like a mighty stretch. Even
> if one believes that the Sonnets dedication is based on the Lucrece
> dedication (which I don't see, since they both just draw from the
conventions
> of the time), it doesn't follow that Thorpe believed that Southampton
> was the fair youth.
I can't say I'm not swayed by Foster's article, but it all hinges on "Mr.
W.H." being a misprint for "Mr. W.Sh." If Foster is wrong about this (and
there's no way we'll ever know for sure--short of a manuscript turning up),
his interpretation is no more reliable than any that have gone before. And
even should Foster be right about "Mr. W.Sh.", Thorpe's bombast is scarcely
intelligible.
And what's the current thought on whether or not the 1609 edition was
authorized? There seems to be considerable reason to suspect that the
edition was pirated, which makes it pretty cheeky for Thorpe to be
dedicating his unauthorized edition to the author.
David Kathman
>
> "David Kathman" wrote
>
> > Clark wrote:
[snippage]
> I can't say I'm not swayed by Foster's article, but it all hinges on "Mr.
> W.H." being a misprint for "Mr. W.Sh." If Foster is wrong about this (and
> there's no way we'll ever know for sure--short of a manuscript turning up),
> his interpretation is no more reliable than any that have gone before.
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this sentence. I wouldn't say that
Foster's argument "all hinges" on the misprint; his argument is based
on examining contemporary usage, particularly in other book dedications,
in order to figure out what Thorpe's words most likely meant. The idea
that "Mr. W.H." may be a misprint for "Mr. W.SH." or "Mr. W.S." is
a consequence of the conclusions he reached, not the arbitrary assertion
you seem to imply.
> And
> even should Foster be right about "Mr. W.Sh.", Thorpe's bombast is scarcely
> intelligible.
Huh? His phrasing is rather peculiar, and the typography is
pretentious, but his meaning is pretty straightforward, as I thought
Foster showed.
> And what's the current thought on whether or not the 1609 edition was
> authorized? There seems to be considerable reason to suspect that the
> edition was pirated, which makes it pretty cheeky for Thorpe to be
> dedicating his unauthorized edition to the author.
I'm not sure what reasons you're thinking of. Have you read
Katherine Duncan-Jones' recent Arden edition of the Sonnets, and
her 1983 article "Was Shakespeares Sonnets 1609 Really Unauthorized?"
(or something like that)? I've been doing research on Thorpe
in preparation for writing his DNB article, and I don't see much
reason for thinking that the 1609 quarto was pirated. Thorpe
was a reputable publisher with lots of theater ties.
Dave Kathman
dj...@ix.netcom.com
Clark
I haven't read Katherine Duncan-Jones on the subject. I know there's been
debate on the issue, and some recent biographies are still including the
theory that the sonnets were pirated.
Ian Wilson writes: "...scholars such as A.L. Rowse have argued that whoever
Mr. W.H. was, he was the dedicatee of pirate publisher Thomas Thorpe..."
Park Honan apparently favors the theory that the edition was authorized, and
that Thorpe was a generally honest publisher, though he admits that Thorpe
lacked the authority to publish the prefatory material to "Odcombian
Banquet" in 1611. But he doesn't come right out and vindicate Thorpe, he
just seems to favor him.
As alluded to by Wilson, A.L. Rowse confirms in his biography of Shakespeare
that he didn't think that the sonnets were published with Shakespeare's
permission.
Schoenbaum wrote: "All the signs point to unauthorized publication;
unauthorized, that is, by the writer, not by Stationer's Hall. The numerous
misprints indicate that the poet who took such pains with 'Venus and Adonis'
and 'The Rape of Lucrece' had no part in supervising the printing of his
most important body of non-dramatic verse. Few close students believe that
all 154 poems of the cycle follow the sequence the author intended..."
In 1898, Sidney Lee wrote: "In the case of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' it may
safely be assumed that Shakespeare received no notice of Thorpe's intention
of publishing the work, and that it was owing to the author's ignorance of
the design that the dedication was composed and signed by the 'well-wishing
adventurer in setting forth.'"
Opinion on whether or not the 1609 edition was authorized seems to shift
back and forth. I was just wondering whether there was a current
"consensus" on the issue.
MakBane
>>
>> Peter's discussion of sonnet 112 got me thinking about Thomas Thorpe's
>> cryptic dedication to the 1609 edition.
For me, the most cryptic part is the subject of "wisheth."
>> The more I look at it, the more I think it's possible that Thorpe is just
>> extemporizing a variation on Shakespeare's dedication to "The Rape of
>> Lucrece". Here's the last line of Shakespeare's dedication to RoL:
>> "...bound to your Lordship; To whom I wish long life still lengthned with
>> all happiensse."
That's entirely reasonable.
>> Note that Shakespeare's "wish" is repeated in Thorpe's dedication: "To .
>the
>> . only . begetter . of . these . insuing . sonnets . Mr. W. H. all .
>> happiness . and . that . eternitie . promised . by . our . ever-living .
>> poet . wisheth . the . well-wishing . adventurer . in . setting . forth."
>>
>> Thorpe repeats the "all happiness" straight from the dedication to RoL, has
>> transformed Shakespeare's wish for a "long life still lengthened" to an
>> "eternity promised" by Shakespeare, and has transformed Shakespeare's
>simple
>> "wish" to a confusing "wisheth the well-wishing" adventurer.
You're right that this phrase is confusing, or, at least, curiously redundant.
NO one has intelligibly restated the logic of the grammar of this dedication to
my satisfaction. NO ONE.
>Actually, these were commonplace ideas in dedications of the time,
>and I don't see any reason to think that Thorpe had the Lucrece
>dedication in mind when he wrote his.
Not "any" reason? This is unnecessarily cautious.
> It was extremely common,
>almost mandatory, to wish the dedicatee long life and/or happiness,
But doesn't "all" happiness count as suggestive of the RoL dedication?
>and many dedication writers referred to themselves as "well wishers"
>or some variant thereof.
Then does this make the adventurer of the Sonnets dedication the dedicator, as
well as the subject of wisheth?
> Don Foster's 1987 PMLA article on the
>Sonnets dedication (which KQKnave has posted here) gives numerous
>examples of all these.
>
>> In searching through the sonnets, we often see Shakespeare promising
>> eternity to the fair youth, but he doesn't say much about "all happiness".
>
>While it may be true that Shakespeare is promising the fair youth
>that he (the youth) will be immortalized through his (Shakespeare's)
>poetry, the collocation "to promise eternity" had a very specific
>meaning in Shakespeare's time -- it referred to heaven, and only God
>could "promise eternity" to anyone. In every case I'm aware of
>where the phrase "promise eternity" (to someone) was used in
>Shakespeare's day, God is the subject of "promise" -- unless
>"our ever-living poet" in Thorpe's dedication refers to someone
>other than God, in which case this would be a single exception.
This is a huge concession from Dr. Kathman. If there is any exception to the
"rule" of who gets to be an ever-living poet, then the rule is out. If Foster
can't exclude an unprecedented usage, then his system is shot, and we can all
go back to seeing the ever-living poet as Shakespeare, instead of being cowed
into abiding the tyranny of precedence (cf. begetter).
Not incidentally, I note the difference between "a" single exception and "the"
single exception. A very informative article.
>> The closest I can find is Sonnet 6, and even here the "happiness" is a bit
>> ambiguous. "All happiness" may well have been a standard wish, for all I
>> know, but the fact that Shakespeare specifically made the exact same wish
>in
>> his own dedication to Southampton strikes me as suggestive.
>
>It doesn't strike me the same way. "All happiness" was not a
>particularly unusual phrase, especially for a dedication.
But there's no harm in thinking that Thorpe was aware of its appropriateness.
>> If Thorpe was simply cribbing from Shakespeare's earlier dedication, it
>> would seem to support the theory that the sonnets were published without
>> Shakespeare's permission, and it would also suggest that Thorpe at least
>> thought that the sonnets were written for Southampton. Perhaps "Mr. W.H."
>> is nothing more than a diversion introduced by Thorpe to avoid the
>> consequences of taking it upon himself to dedicate a pirated edition to
>> Shakespeare's actual patron.
I agree that the Sonnets were published without any real approval, but I don't
see how Thorpe's borrowing from the RoL dedication "would seem to support
[that] theory." (The dedication, lest we forget, involves a dead man.) And I
absolutely do not see how you can suggest that Thorpe believed the Sonnets were
for Southampton. Because, as you believe, he cribbed from the earlier
dedication to Southampton? There's no warrant for that.
By the way, Clark, do you buy Foster's typo/missing letter argument for Mr.
W.H.?
<snip>
Toby Petzold
MakBane
"Mr.
>> W.H." being a misprint for "Mr. W.Sh." If Foster is wrong about this (and
>> there's no way we'll ever know for sure--short of a manuscript turning up),
>> his interpretation is no more reliable than any that have gone before.
>
that
>Foster's argument "all hinges" on the misprint; his argument is based
>on examining contemporary usage, particularly in other book dedications,
>in order to figure out what Thorpe's words most likely meant. The idea
>that "Mr. W.H." may be a misprint for "Mr. W.SH." or "Mr. W.S." is
>a consequence of the conclusions he reached, not the arbitrary assertion
>you seem to imply.
Dr. Kathman, you know very well that the alleged "misprint" (the truth of which
you have apparently internalized so well that you don't even offer a qualifying
adjective) is a major part of Foster's theory. It is also one of the top four
or five most ridiculous contemporary Stratfordian beliefs. It makes Oxford's
annuity for running a propaganda department seem perfectly sane by comparison.
And it's just such a giant leap! Problem: Identifying Mr. W. H. Solution: Say
that the compositor dropped the "S" in "Sh." As though this would have advanced
the reader's understanding of whose initials these were. If the name
Shakespeare sells tickets in 1609, why isn't Thorpe making it explicit? In the
1609 Sonnets, is Shake-speare identifed anywhere therein as a gentleman or as a
William? (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
The 1609 Sonnets were surreptitiously published. They were the work of a dead
man and had been in the possession of a relative or friend of Edward de Vere,
whom Thorpe names as a begetter (in a sense which Foster's ideas cannot
contradict).
>> And
>> even should Foster be right about "Mr. W.Sh.", Thorpe's bombast is scarcely
>> intelligible.
>
>Huh? His phrasing is rather peculiar, and the typography is
>pretentious, but his meaning is pretty straightforward, as I thought
>Foster showed.
Foster's paraphrase is impermissible. NO ONE has EVER restated the Thorpe
Dedication without choosing a side (or subject) to hang it on. The Thorpe
Dedication CANNOT make sense. It CANNOT be restated without resort to condition
or a variant.
Toby Petzold
John W. Kennedy
> Yes, but Foster himself points out that Benson presumably took it to mean
> Shakespeare when he reprinted (or re-pirated) the sonnets in 1640. If
> someone of the era could interpret it this way, how strange could it have
> been to Jacobean ears?
England changed a lot in those years.
--
John W. Kennedy
(Working from my laptop)
John W. Kennedy
>
> Clark:>> I can't say I'm not swayed by Foster's article, but it all hinges on
> "Mr.
> >> W.H." being a misprint for "Mr. W.Sh." If Foster is wrong about this (and
> >> there's no way we'll ever know for sure--short of a manuscript turning up),
> >> his interpretation is no more reliable than any that have gone before.
> >
> Kathman:>I'm not quite sure how to interpret this sentence. I wouldn't say
> that
> >Foster's argument "all hinges" on the misprint; his argument is based
> >on examining contemporary usage, particularly in other book dedications,
> >in order to figure out what Thorpe's words most likely meant. The idea
> >that "Mr. W.H." may be a misprint for "Mr. W.SH." or "Mr. W.S." is
> >a consequence of the conclusions he reached, not the arbitrary assertion
> >you seem to imply.
>
> Dr. Kathman, you know very well that the alleged "misprint" (the truth of which
> you have apparently internalized so well that you don't even offer a qualifying
> adjective) is a major part of Foster's theory.
You can't even tell the difference between a premise and a conclusion,
can you?
Clark
> I agree that the Sonnets were published without any real approval, but I
don't
> see how Thorpe's borrowing from the RoL dedication "would seem to support
> [that] theory." (The dedication, lest we forget, involves a dead man.) And
I
> absolutely do not see how you can suggest that Thorpe believed the Sonnets
were
> for Southampton. Because, as you believe, he cribbed from the earlier
> dedication to Southampton? There's no warrant for that.
Sorry, I don't buy the argument that "ever-living" means "dead". If Thorpe
cribbed the dedication from RoL, it may have been done to give the
impression that Thorpe was representing the (living) author's wishes in the
dedication. But if he was merely copying from an earlier printed
dedication, it would seem that he had not consulted the author in the
matter, which suggests to me that the edition was pirated.
> By the way, Clark, do you buy Foster's typo/missing letter argument for
Mr.
> W.H.?
It's a possibility, but I don't take it as a given.
Ken Kaplan
not its _structure_. Since I just asked this question of Diana and
Pat, I'll ask it again here. How many dedications of the time had
periods after each word? How many dedications looked as forced and
cryptic as this one? Maybe there are a lot. Maybe only one or two. I
have asked many traditional and non traditional people alike and no
one seems to be able to bring to mind another dedication _in the form_
of this one.
The only suggestion I got was possibly Willobie His Avisa.
If this is unique, isn't that a classic case of missing the forest
for the trees?
Ken Kaplan
jbmi...@world.std.com (Janice Miller) wrote in message news:<jbmiller-080...@ppp0a124.std.com>...
> I agree: Dr. Kathman clearly states that Foster's assumption that "W.H."
> is a misprint for what the writer of the dedication intended to address to
> "W.SH." is actually not an assumption, but the logical result of the
> argument he sets out explicitly in his book. Toby Petzold may be right
> that Foster really started out with that conclusion, and of course if he
> did it would have colored his work, but he gives us no good reason to
> believe that Dr. Kathman has fallen victim to a similar fallacy.
>
> Perhaps we should all look up "arbitrary" in the OED.
>
> -- Janice
Tom Reedy
other authors had their own works dedicated to them by their publishers?
I've never heard of it, but for all I know it could have been common in
Elizabethan/Jacoban England.
TR
Ken Kaplan
But isn't that exactly the point that Anti Stratfordians have been
making for over 150 years. Exactly where _is_ the author in all these
processes? Why do we never see him _personally_ in *any* of these
transactions, encounters, problems?
Why is he, who supposedly had one of the longest, most stable, most
visible careers, the unseen, the anomaly? With the Sonnet publication,
you can't hide behind the "acting company" curtain. And as Robert
Detobel has written, the contention that the author had no rights is
highly suspect. Consider this, traditional attribution has Shakespeare
with his hands tied concerning the pirating of his plays. If this were
the case, how could Merchant of Venice be stayed in 1598 on orders of
the acting company's agent (Lord Chamberlain), yet all the other "bad
quartos" be allowed to be published. If pirating were so common, we
would expect wholesale evidence of its usage. Yet from 1593 to 1608, a
period of _25_ years, there were only 21 pirated quartos published in
_total_. And nearly *half* were Shakespeare's.(5 anonymous, 1 by an
aristocrat-Greville), *1* by a non arisocratic living author(Heywood),
1 by Beaumont and Fletcher, _9 or 10_ (if we count Famous Victories)
by Shakespeare. If we find out that there was a limited form of
authorial assent that gave authors the right to withold publication,
that would explain why there were not higher numbers of piracy in
general. But that would not explain the high level of piracy of
Shakespeare, a supposedly living, non aristocratic author, or the
acting company's seeming indifference to the stealing of their, and
his, commericial property.
So it is with the Sonnets. Where is he in this process? Where is he in
the publication? If unauthorized, where are his objections? Like
everything else about the Strat biography, there seems to be no one
home. Or, as Diana Price put it succinctly in her book, "Famous yet
unknown, educated yet unschooled, gentle yet belligerent, *here yet
there*.
Where is he Tom? Yes, where is he as a _person_ who is the author of
these works? And please do not give me the Southampton dedications as
personal evidence. Yes they were written by Shakespeare. The question
as always is, but WHO is Shakespeare?
In all of this I have yet to see any of you offer a credible answer.
Ken Kaplan
>
Tom Reedy
news:75f2d918.01060...@posting.google.com...
> "Tom Reedy" <txr...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:<lmhU6.4386$p%4.39...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
> > And here's what I would like to know, which I've asked before: how many
> > other authors had their own works dedicated to them by their publishers?
> > I've never heard of it, but for all I know it could have been common in
> > Elizabethan/Jacoban England.
> >
> > TR
>
I'm not trying to start another moronic thread to give a soapbox for more
moronic anti-strat drivel, I just want my question answered.
I think some of Foster's ideas are sound, most of them, in fact. But not
this one, unless there's some evidence that dedicating a poem to its author
was a standard--or at least a not uncommon--practice.
If there is strong evidence that there is authorial involvement in the
publication of the sonnets, does it make sense that he would have them
dedicated to himself?
TR
KQKnave
<txr...@earthlink.net> writes:
>I think some of Foster's ideas are sound, most of them, in fact. But not
>this one, unless there's some evidence that dedicating a poem to its author
>was a standard--or at least a not uncommon--practice.
Well, you've got to ask yourself if anything about the sonnets is common,
and whether or not it gets you anywhere to ask. How many sonnet
sequences were written urging a young man to marry? Who were they
dedicated to if not Shakespeare? Not a nobleman - Thorpe elsewhere
shows that he knows how to address a nobleman:
"TO THE HONORABLEST PATRON OF MUSES AND GOOD MINDES,
LORD WILLIAM, Earle of Pembroke [sic], Knight of the Honourable Order &c.,"
in *St. Augustine* [1610]; and... "TO THE RIGHT HO-/*norable* WILLIAM Earle of
PEMBROKE, *Lord* Chamberlaine to his Maiestie, one of his most
Honora-/ *ble Priuie Counsell, and Knight* of the most noble order of the
Garter,
&c.*," in *Epictetus* (1616) [From Foster's paper "Master W.H. R.I.P"]
So what gentleman would Thorpe address as "Mr."? The only way that
"Mr. W.H." could not be Shakespeare would be if you interpreted "only
begetter" to mean "procurer" or "inspirer" (which is contradicted by
the usage of "begetter" in epigrams and dedications of the time,
as shown by Foster), and if you do, then you are left with the same
question: Did any *publisher* ever dedicate a work to a procurer
or inspirer? Why, if procurer was meant, would a publisher put his initials
to such a dedication if it were unauthorized by Shakespeare? Even without
Thorpe's initials, why would he want anyone to know who the procurer
was? And if "inspirer" was meant, how would Thorpe be privy to that
information, and even if he were, why would he prefer to write a dedication to
the inspirer and not the author?
Fundamentally, it makes no sense to put any type of dedication or
epigraph signed with your initials if the publication is not authorized
by the writer, especially if you wanted to maintain good relations
with a writer of the repute that Shakespeare had.
>If there is strong evidence that there is authorial involvement in the
>publication of the sonnets, does it make sense that he would have them
>dedicated to himself?
>
Why would he have to have them dedicated to himself? Thorpe no
doubt took it upon himself to write the epigraph. Does it make sense
that if the author were not involved that Thorpe would write anything
at all in a pirated edition? If Thorpe had any sense of literary worth,
who better to dedicate the sonnets to than the person who gave him
the opportunity to publish them? He gets his initials on the quarto,
and a touch of immortality himself.
Jim
Tom Reedy
news:20010610233143...@nso-fx.aol.com...
This is all very interesting, and it makes some good points, but it is
irrelevant to my question.
No one yet has answered my question, which is how many other authors had
their own works dedicated to them by their publishers?
TR
MakBane
>Tom Reedy writes:
>>I think some of Foster's ideas are sound, most of them, in fact. But not
>>this one, unless there's some evidence that dedicating a poem to its author
>>was a standard--or at least a not uncommon--practice.
Maybe dedicating a book of poems to a dead (i.e., "ever-living poet") was
common.
>Well, you've got to ask yourself if anything about the sonnets is common,
>and whether or not it gets you anywhere to ask. How many sonnet
>sequences were written urging a young man to marry? Who were they
>dedicated to if not Shakespeare? Not a nobleman -
This must mean that you believe Foster's typo-fantasy. Why?
> Thorpe elsewhere
>shows that he knows how to address a nobleman:
>
>"TO THE HONORABLEST PATRON OF MUSES AND GOOD MINDES,
>LORD WILLIAM, Earle of Pembroke [sic], Knight of the Honourable Order &c.,"
>in *St. Augustine* [1610]; and... "TO THE RIGHT HO-/*norable* WILLIAM Earle
>of
>PEMBROKE, *Lord* Chamberlaine to his Maiestie, one of his most
>Honora-/ *ble Priuie Counsell, and Knight* of the most noble order of the
>Garter,
>&c.*," in *Epictetus* (1616) [From Foster's paper "Master W.H. R.I.P"]
Do either of these works approach the level of intimacy and general weirdness
of the Sonnets and their appearance? Why SHOULDN'T William Herbert be "Mr.
W.H."? There ARE reasons why Mr. W.H. is known only by his initials. Perhaps
one of those reasons involves privacy.
>So what gentleman would Thorpe address as "Mr."? The only way that
>"Mr. W.H." could not be Shakespeare would be if you interpreted "only
>begetter" to mean "procurer" or "inspirer" (which is contradicted by
>the usage of "begetter" in epigrams and dedications of the time,
>as shown by Foster)
"The ONLY way that Mr. W. H. could NOT be Shakespeare"? That's just absurd.
Foster's analyses do not change the fact that generations of scholars have
alighted upon both "procurer" and "inspirer" as feasible definitions of
"begetter" in this context. I believe even Dr. Kathman copped to an exception
to what Foster has "shown" in this regard, which means that the appeal to the
authority of precedence is out the window.
>and if you do, then you are left with the same
>question: Did any *publisher* ever dedicate a work to a procurer
>or inspirer? Why, if procurer was meant, would a publisher put his initials
>to such a dedication if it were unauthorized by Shakespeare?
"Shakespeare" was dead by 1609. The guy who procured the Sonnets (i.e., the guy
who gave them their second birth through his "begetting" or procuring them) may
have wished for some small recognition of his role, which he would have
communicated to Thorpe to be in a form recognizable to only those who would
know better. The 1609 edition of the Sonnets was, as best I can tell, not much
classier than a vanity pressing.
>Even without
>Thorpe's initials, why would he want anyone to know who the procurer
>was?
You mean "T.T." or "Mr. W.H."?
> And if "inspirer" was meant, how would Thorpe be privy to that
>information, and even if he were, why would he prefer to write a dedication
>to
>the inspirer and not the author?
The Thorpe Epigraph (possibly a better term than Dedication, I am reminded in
recent posts) does seem to try to mention both the poet and the procurer, but
it is a hopeless mess. If the purpose of the Epigraph had been to dedicate the
Sonnets to their creator, it may have told too much to have been any more
explicit than what it is.
Jim, who do you suppose was in possession of the Sonnets prior to their
publication? Dr. Kathman says that Thorpe was a reputable publisher with ties
to the theatrical community, but this is irrelevant to the non-dramatic works.
Why would a theater company have had anything to do with the Sonnets?
>Fundamentally, it makes no sense to put any type of dedication or
>epigraph signed with your initials if the publication is not authorized
>by the writer, especially if you wanted to maintain good relations
>with a writer of the repute that Shakespeare had.
Your belief in the identity of the Author affects your reasoning.
>>If there is strong evidence that there is authorial involvement in the
>>publication of the sonnets, does it make sense that he would have them
>>dedicated to himself?
There is apparently no such involvement.
>Why would he have to have them dedicated to himself? Thorpe no
>doubt took it upon himself to write the epigraph. Does it make sense
>that if the author were not involved that Thorpe would write anything
>at all in a pirated edition? If Thorpe had any sense of literary worth,
>who better to dedicate the sonnets to than the person who gave him
>the opportunity to publish them? He gets his initials on the quarto,
>and a touch of immortality himself.
So WHO are you saying gave Thorpe this opportunity?
I am curious as to why the 1609 Sonnets went nowhere. Did people think they
were just a lot of old-fashioned, outmoded crap? They didn't sell well, but
were they meant to?
Toby Petzold
John W. Kennedy
> If there is strong evidence that there is authorial involvement in the
> publication of the sonnets, does it make sense that he would have them
> dedicated to himself?
But the dedication is clearly signed by Thorpe, unless we wish to create
a second phantom in the person of "T.T.". So the question has to be,
firstly, how many dedications were written by the publisher? And then,
of those, how many were to the author?
KQKnave
Reedy" <txr...@earthlink.net> writes:
Can't answer, since I have no means to do a complete survey.
Just checking what's online, I find that most of the time the author
himself dedicated his work to somebody. For example, Spenser
dedicated 6 of his works to six different men or women (Sir
Walter Raleigh, Countesse of Pembroke, Lady Carey etc), while
his publisher William Ponsoby, dedicated Spenser's *Amoretti*
to Sir Robert Needham, Knight, and Spenser's *Complaints* to
the general readership. This last one has the same use of
"setting forth" that Thorpe used in Shakespeare's Sonnets:
"SINCE my late setting foorth of the finding that it hath found
a fauourable passage amongst you; I haue sithence endeuoured
by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment
of your delights,) to get into my handes such smale Poemes of
the same Authors;..., I meane likewise for your fauour sake to set
foorth. In the meane time praying you gentlie to accept of these,
& graciouslie to entertaine the new Poet, I take leaue."
Ponsonby likewise dedicated Percy's *Celia* to the reader. Henry
Constable's *Diana* was printed by James Roberts for Richard
Smith. In this case the printer wrote a dedication to the reader:
"The printer to the reader
Obscur'd wonders (gentlemen,) visited me in Turnus armor,
and I in regard of Aeneas honour, haue vnclouded them vnto
the worlde: you are that Vniuerse, you that Aeneas, if you
finde Pallas gyrdle, murder them, if not inviron'd vvith barbarizme,
saue them, and eternitie will prayse you. Vale."
Daniel dedicated his 1592 edition of *Delia* to the Countesse of
Pembroke. Blunt, the publisher of Marlowe's *Hero and Leander*
dedicated it to Sir Thomas Walsingham, Knight. Dekker, in his
*The Wonderful Year* has an unsigned dedication: "TO HIS VVEL-
RESPECTED GOOD friend, M. Cutbert Thuresby, VVa-
ter-Bayliffe of London." Kemp's *Nine Days Wonder* has this dedication:
"To the true ennobled Lady, and his most bountifull Mistris,
Mistris Anne Fitton, Mayde of Honour to the most sacred Royall
Queene Elizabeth." I don't know if this person was of the nobility.
Thomas Nashe, in Pierce Penniless wrote "A priuate Epistle of the
Author to the Printer. Wherein his full meaning and purpose (in publishing
this Booke) is set foorth." The dedications by Nashe and Dekker may
be jests themselves, since the works are satirical. Dekker, for example,
in his epistle to the printer, says, among other things:
"Now this is that I woulde haue you to do in this second edition: First cut
off that long-tayld Title, and lett mee not in the forefront of my Booke, make
a
tedious Mountebanks Oration to the Reader, when in the whole there is nothing
praise-worthie."
Most dedications seem to be from the author to a patron or some
nobleman. The dedications from publishers or printers seem to
be divided about equally to the reader or a nobleman. Thorpe, in his
four other signed dedications, gave one to Blunt, his publisher friend,
one to Master John Florio, and the other two to noblemen. Three
others that Foster cites as his (though not signed) were to the reader.
Thorpe, based on this brief survey, seems to be unusual in that he
wrote two of his dedications to persons who were not either
noblemen or the general reader, or in fact, connected to the book
in an obvious way, since *Lucan's First Book* was translated by
Marlowe yet dedicated to Blunt, and *Epictetus* was translated
by Healey yet dedicated to Master John Florio. Perhaps in each
case, including Shakespeare's Sonnets, a noble patron was
not found, and so those works, rather than having a dedication
from the author, were provided one by Thorpe as he saw fit.
Jim
David Kathman
Mary Fitton was not noble, but she was a courtier who had an
affair with William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. A century
ago she was considered a leading candidate for the Dark Lady
of Shakespeare's Sonnets, until somebody found a picture which
revealed that she had light hair.
The stationer Richard Field dedicated *The Arte of English Poesie* (1589)
to Lord Burghley, claiming not to know who the author was but
professing himself "a printer alwaies ready and desirous to be
at your Honourable commaundement." The previous year, Field
had published *The copie of a letter sent out of England*, a
piece of anti-Spanish propaganda ostensibly written by Richard
Leigh but actually ghostwritten by Burghley to stir up anti-Spanish
sentiment in the wake of the Armada. The original manuscript
in Burghley's hand survives, along with a couple of later
scribal transcripts with corrections and additions in Burghley's
hand.
Just in case anybody is interested.
Dave Kathman
dj...@ix.netcom.com
Pat Dooley
<snip>
> The stationer Richard Field dedicated *The Arte of English Poesie* (1589)
> to Lord Burghley, claiming not to know who the author was but
> professing himself "a printer alwaies ready and desirous to be
> at your Honourable commaundement." The previous year, Field
> had published *The copie of a letter sent out of England*, a
> piece of anti-Spanish propaganda ostensibly written by Richard
> Leigh but actually ghostwritten by Burghley to stir up anti-Spanish
> sentiment in the wake of the Armada. The original manuscript
> in Burghley's hand survives, along with a couple of later
> scribal transcripts with corrections and additions in Burghley's
> hand.
>
> Just in case anybody is interested.
>
So, here we have a documented case of a publication with an
author's name on it and documentary proof that someone else
actually wrote the piece. Presumably Burghley did not want
his authorship of the letter to be public knowledge.
We also have a printer who seems to be willing to do along
with spurious author attributions.
Question: Was a Richard Leigh a real person, or was he a
fiction as we suppose Hadrian Dorrell to have been?
Pat Dooley
KQKnave
(Pat Dooley) writes:
>So, here we have a documented case of a publication with an
>author's name on it and documentary proof that someone else
>actually wrote the piece. Presumably Burghley did not want
>his authorship of the letter to be public knowledge.
>
And even for this isolated publication we have evidence for the
true author. Imagine how much evidence we would have if
the ghost writing had gone on for 20 years.
Jim
David L. Webb
<kqk...@aol.comspamslam> wrote:
...and for some three dozen popular plays.
David Webb
Pat Dooley
David L. Webb <David....@Dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
news:120620011535593195%David....@Dartmouth.edu...
The point to be made is that title page attributions are not
always reliable, and in this particular case, Burghley's
manuscript survives to prove his authorship.
In the absence of any manuscript of Chettle's, it has taken 400
years to figure out that he was the primary author of Greene's
Groatsworth of Wit.
In another case, that of "The Art of English Poesie",
there are still questions as to who wrote it.
We still have no evidence to show that Hadrian Dorrell,
the signatory to the epistle to Willobie his Avisa, was a
real person, and it is solely on his dubious authority
that authorship is assigned to Henry Willobie.
In some cases, evidence has been discovered that
resolves authorship questions. In other cases, it has not, at
least not yet. But the absence of evidence does
not invalidate the reasons for questioning authorship.
And the alleged author of those three dozen plays, two
narrative poems, and sundry other verse left not one sign
that his vocation was writing, despite the fact that his
contemporaries left hundreds of independent pieces
of CPLE proving that they actually wrote.
Pat Dooley
KQKnave
<patd...@nospam.allowed.nls.net> writes:
>And the alleged author of those three dozen plays, two
>narrative poems, and sundry other verse left not one sign
>that his vocation was writing, despite the fact that his
>contemporaries left hundreds of independent pieces
>of CPLE proving that they actually wrote.
>
What about his name on all those title pages?
Jim
john_baker
<dj...@popd.ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>The stationer Richard Field dedicated *The Arte of English Poesie* (1589)
>to Lord Burghley, claiming not to know who the author was but
>professing himself "a printer alwaies ready and desirous to be
>at your Honourable commaundement." The previous year, Field
>had published *The copie of a letter sent out of England*, a
>piece of anti-Spanish propaganda ostensibly written by Richard
>Leigh but actually ghostwritten by Burghley to stir up anti-Spanish
>sentiment in the wake of the Armada. The original manuscript
>in Burghley's hand survives, along with a couple of later
>scribal transcripts with corrections and additions in Burghley's
>hand.
>
>Just in case anybody is interested.
>
>Dave Kathman
>dj...@ix.netcom.com
Dave,
I think it this and other similar facts that led CS and, later, AD
Wraight to suppose that Field was Burghley's publisher. It is
of interest, of course, because of V&A...do you know why
he might have divested himself of this popular property so
quickly?
john
John Baker
Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur
john_baker
just about as much as we have for Marlowe, proof he survived 1593,
proof his works continued to appear until 1654...proof TJM was
dedicated to his classmate from the KS and CC in 1633...that sort
of thing, Jim...
MakBane
>>narrative poems, and sundry other verse left not one sign
>>that his vocation was writing, despite the fact that his
>>contemporaries left hundreds of independent pieces
>>of CPLE proving that they actually wrote.
>
Say, he's got you there, Pat!
Toby Petzold
MakBane
>> The stationer Richard Field dedicated *The Arte of English Poesie* (1589)
>> to Lord Burghley, claiming not to know who the author was but
>> professing himself "a printer alwaies ready and desirous to be
>> at your Honourable commaundement." The previous year, Field
>> had published *The copie of a letter sent out of England*, a
>> piece of anti-Spanish propaganda ostensibly written by Richard
>> Leigh but actually ghostwritten by Burghley to stir up anti-Spanish
>> sentiment in the wake of the Armada. The original manuscript
>> in Burghley's hand survives, along with a couple of later
>> scribal transcripts with corrections and additions in Burghley's
>> hand.
>>
>> Just in case anybody is interested.
>>
>
Dooley:>So, here we have a documented case of a publication with an
>author's name on it and documentary proof that someone else
>actually wrote the piece. Presumably Burghley did not want
>his authorship of the letter to be public knowledge.
>
>We also have a printer who seems to be willing to do along
>with spurious author attributions.
"Just in case," eh? Your information, as ever, is fascinating, Dr. Kathman. A
story I'd never heard before. So how is it that you can learn and believe such
things and NOT appreciate the healthy suspicion that others have of the secrets
of the Elizabethan world? It seems like an unnecessary burden to think of your
Oxfordian correspondents as mentally ill or deficient when there is so much to
learn and believe about Shakespeare's time. The fact that Burghley ghostwrote a
propaganda letter and arranged for its anonymous publication should excite us.
It suggests all sorts of crazy notions, and that's the way it ought to be.
Toby Petzold
Clark
> Clark wrote:
> > I can't say I'm not swayed by Foster's article, but it all hinges on
"Mr.
> > W.H." being a misprint for "Mr. W.Sh." If Foster is wrong about this
(and
> > there's no way we'll ever know for sure--short of a manuscript turning
up),
> > his interpretation is no more reliable than any that have gone before.
>
> I'm not quite sure how to interpret this sentence. I wouldn't say that
> Foster's argument "all hinges" on the misprint; his argument is based
> on examining contemporary usage, particularly in other book dedications,
> in order to figure out what Thorpe's words most likely meant. The idea
> that "Mr. W.H." may be a misprint for "Mr. W.SH." or "Mr. W.S." is
> a consequence of the conclusions he reached, not the arbitrary assertion
> you seem to imply.
I don't mean to imply that Foster's assertion was arbitrary. But his
identification of the "ever-living Poet" as God is not universally accepted
(Katherine Duncan-Jones disagrees, for one), and it is this conclusion that
allows him to identify "Mr. W.H." as "Mr. W.Sh". But if "Mr. W.H." is not
"Mr.W.Sh.", there's no compelling reason to conclude that the "ever-living
Poet" need be anyone other than Shakespeare, so his argument seems a bit
circular.
In Thorpe's other dedications (at least the one's I've seen), he is given to
bombast and hyperbole. Foster argues that Shakespeare was not universally
honored to the point that he would be labeled as "our ever-living Poet", but
he seems to forget that the dedication is being written by the publisher.
What publisher would write "that eternity promised by our second-rate but
still pretty good poet"? Certainly not Thorpe.
One of the reasons that I think the argument about whether or not
"ever-living" usually meant "dead" is so irrelevant is because Thorpe seems
just the sort of publisher to over-praise his author to the point that it
borders on the sacrilegious. Just as Thorpe's reference to "that eternity
promised" need be nothing more than an embellishment of Shakespeare's
promise in Sonnet 18 that the fair youth's "eternal" summer shall not fade
because of the author's "eternal lines".
> > And
> > even should Foster be right about "Mr. W.Sh.", Thorpe's bombast is
scarcely
> > intelligible.
>
> Huh? His phrasing is rather peculiar, and the typography is
> pretentious, but his meaning is pretty straightforward, as I thought
> Foster showed.
Foster showed one possible interpretation, but by no means the only one.
Again, Duncan-Jones disagrees with Foster's conclusion. She apparently
thinks that the "ever-living poet" is Shakespeare, and that "Mr. W.H." is
Pembroke.
> > And what's the current thought on whether or not the 1609 edition was
> > authorized? There seems to be considerable reason to suspect that the
> > edition was pirated, which makes it pretty cheeky for Thorpe to be
> > dedicating his unauthorized edition to the author.
>
> I'm not sure what reasons you're thinking of. Have you read
> Katherine Duncan-Jones' recent Arden edition of the Sonnets, and
> her 1983 article "Was Shakespeares Sonnets 1609 Really Unauthorized?"
> (or something like that)? I've been doing research on Thorpe
> in preparation for writing his DNB article, and I don't see much
> reason for thinking that the 1609 quarto was pirated. Thorpe
> was a reputable publisher with lots of theater ties.
I picked up a copy of Duncan-Jones' Arden edition over the weekend, and have
just finished it. She gives plenty of circumstantial evidence for her
conclusion that the 1609 edition was authorized, but she doesn't really
prove her case.
For instance, in his review of the Arden edition in the Fall 1999 issue of
"Shakespeare Quarterly", MacD. P. Jackson is willing to accept Duncan-Jones'
conclusin that Thorpe may have had Shakespeare's authorization to print Q,
but he discounts the key evidence for her argument:
<quote>
A keystone in Duncan-Jones's case for Shakespeare's own involvement in
getting the Quarto into print is the alleged testimony of Thomas Heywood,
the "most powerful" of "three external witnesses". But, as in several of her
articles, she misinterprets Heywood's statement (or so I believe). She
writes: "According to Heywood, Shakespeare eventually published his sonnets
'in his owne name' . . . in order to put right the wrong done to him by the
piratical-Jaggard in 1599". Heywood makes no such claim. His point about The
Passionate Pilgrim is quite different. This miscellany, first published in
1599 or earlier, included three extracts from Love's Labor's Lost and two
Shakespeare sonnets, along with four poems reliably attributed to others and
eleven mediocre pieces of unknown authorship. The first edition is lost, but
the second (dated 1599) was published by William Jaggard, and the
attribution to "W Shakespeare" was doubtless intended to mislead. Jaggard
repeated it in a third, expanded edition of 1612, which added several pieces
lifted from Heywood's Troia Britanica, which Jaggard had published in 1609.
In his Apology for Actors (1612) Heywood protested about the "manifest
iniury" done him by Jaggard's "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
lice to doe himselfe right, hath since published them in his owne name."
Heywood adds that his poems are not up to Shakespeare's standard and avows
that Shakespeare was "much offended" with Jaggard for misusing his name.
Nothing in all this refers to the publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets in
1609. Heywood is simply expressing his concern that the public night think
that he had stolen the Paris and Helen pieces and published them as his own
in Troia Britanica and that Shakespeare, "to doe himselfe right," has now
reclaimed them by publishing them under his own name in the third edition of
The Passionate Pilgrim. Heywood's aim is to clear himself of any suspicion
of plagiarism.
</unquote (footnotes omitted)>
And while it may be true that Shakespeare needed money in 1609 due to the
closure of the theaters because of the plague, that isn't proof that
Shakespeare sold the publishing rights to Thorpe. If Thorpe had obtained
the sonnets from another source, he would have published them regardless of
whether or not Shakespeare needed money.
And while Thorpe had "theatrical ties" and apparently had authorization for
at least some of the play quartos he published, Park Honan reports that
Thorpe lacked the authority to publish his edition of the prefatory material
to "Odcombian Banquet" in 1611 (as I mentioned in another post to this
thread). So I don't think it would be fair to say that he was totally free
of piratical tendencies.
Duncan-Jones herself asks why Shakespeare would have dropped Richard Field
to have Q published by Thorpe, but she doesn't really supply a satisfactory
answer. She rightly points out that Thorpe had "theatrical associations",
but she doesn't explain why this would have been sufficient reason for
Shakespeare to have severed his association with Field. Field's editions of
V&A and RoL had been quite successful, and he had successfully published a
number of other poetic works, such as Sidney's Arcadia in 1598 and
Alexander's Aurora in 1605. And besides, Q wasn't a "theatrical work", it
was a book of poetry.
On the other hand, I can think of another reason why Shakespeare may have
dropped Field, though Duncan-Jones doesn't mention it in her edition of the
sonnets. Richard Field had signed the petition of 1596 against James
Burbage's conversion of the Blackfriars Theatre, and this may have resulted
in a falling out between the two Stratfordians. But that's just my
speculation, not proof.
At any rate, against the evidence that Q had apparently not been corrected
in proof by the author, and that the dedication was written by the publisher
rather than by the author, Duncan-Jones can only speculate that Shakespeare
may have been anxious to get out of town to avoid the plague. But if
Shakespeare had time to leave directions for Thorpe regarding the contents
of the dedication (as Duncan-Jones believes), why couldn't he have just
written the dedication himself?
As I mentioned above, I can agree that Duncan-Jones makes a good
circumstantial case. But I can't agree that she has *proven* that Thorpe
had Shakespeare's authorization. The best I could do would be to agree that
Thorpe "may" have had Shakespeare's authorization.
Bob Grumman
> story I'd never heard before. So how is it that you can learn and believe such
> things and NOT appreciate the healthy suspicion that others have of the secrets
> of the Elizabethan world? It seems like an unnecessary burden to think of your
> Oxfordian correspondents as mentally ill or deficient when there is so much to
> learn and believe about Shakespeare's time. The fact that Burghley ghostwrote a
> propaganda letter and arranged for its anonymous publication should excite us.
> It suggests all sorts of crazy notions, and that's the way it ought to be.
>
> Toby Petzold
Don't you find it interesting that we know about Burghley's
ghost-writing of one minor pamphlet despite his Incredible
Power to Conceal, but haven't a single hint of anyone's
ghostwriting any of Shakespeare's 37 or so plays, Toby?
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
Do you deny that a man's name on the title-pages of published
plays is s "sign that his vocation was writing," Toby? Do you
deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
mentally defective?
--Bob G.
John W. Kennedy
> I don't mean to imply that Foster's assertion was arbitrary. But his
> identification of the "ever-living Poet" as God is not universally accepted
> (Katherine Duncan-Jones disagrees, for one), and it is this conclusion that
> allows him to identify "Mr. W.H." as "Mr. W.Sh".
Not so. It follows even more directly from "only begetter". (I must
confess that I am inclined to go with Foster in part because I have
_never_ believed the other attempts at explaining that phrase.)
Pat J Dooley
Bob:
I have repeatedly demonstrated that a title attribution
in the absence of corroborating evidence is not proof of
authorship. In the case of Shakespeare, the utter lack of
CPLE, in complete contrast to the abundance of CPLE for
his literary contemporaries is a strong indication that his
vocation was not writing. To paraphrase Conan Doyle, the
Shakespeare dog didn't bark.
Even an epistle corroborating authorship may not be
sufficient corroborating evidence. Dave Kathman still
hasn't produced Hadrian Dorrell, the man who attributed
"Willobie his Avisa" to Willobie.
We already know Greene's name on GGW and the epistle
was probably a fraud perpetrated by Henry Chettle.
Actually, one would have to a little credulous to
take Elizabethan title page attributions at face
value.
Pat Dooley
------------------------------------------------------------
Get your FREE web-based e-mail and newsgroup access at:
http://MailAndNews.com
Create a new mailbox, or access your existing IMAP4 or
POP3 mailbox from anywhere with just a web browser.
------------------------------------------------------------
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
Quite probably it's a strong indication that the CPLE
is statistical nonsense.
> Even an epistle corroborating authorship may not be
> sufficient corroborating evidence. Dave Kathman still
> hasn't produced Hadrian Dorrell, the man who attributed
> "Willobie his Avisa" to Willobie.
>
> We already know Greene's name on GGW and the epistle
> was probably a fraud perpetrated by Henry Chettle.
Personally, I doubt that Chettle did much more than
edit Greene's words.
> Actually, one would have to a little credulous to
> take Elizabethan title page attributions at face
> value.
One would have to be very credulous to believe that
more than a small fraction of Elizabethan title page
attributions were incorrect.
Rob
KQKnave
<cjh...@home.com> writes:
>Foster showed one possible interpretation, but by no means the only one.
>Again, Duncan-Jones disagrees with Foster's conclusion. She apparently
>thinks that the "ever-living poet" is Shakespeare, and that "Mr. W.H." is
>Pembroke.
Has any other writer of dedications, epigraphs, epistles, etc. ever
omitted the proper title? If Duncan-Jones believes this, she is
ignoring one of the key pieces of evidence as to the identity of
W.H. I suggest that anyone interested check out Renascense
editions on the web to see how lords were addressed. Thorpe
himself addressed Pembroke in the following manner in two
other works:
"TO THE HONORABLEST PATRON OF MUSES AND GOOD
MINDES, LORD WILLIAM, Earle of Pembroke [sic], Knight of
the Honourable Order &c.," in *St. Augustine*; and ... "TO THE
RIGHT HO-/*norable* WILLIAM Earle of PEMBROKE, *Lord*
Chamberlaine to his Maiestie, one of his most Honora-/ *ble
Priuie Counsell, and Knight* of the most noble order of the Garter, &c.*," in
*Epictetus* (1616).
[snip]
>On the other hand, I can think of another reason why Shakespeare may have
>dropped Field, though Duncan-Jones doesn't mention it in her edition of the
>sonnets. Richard Field had signed the petition of 1596 against James
>Burbage's conversion of the Blackfriars Theatre, and this may have resulted
>in a falling out between the two Stratfordians. But that's just my
>speculation, not proof.
There could be a million reasons. Maybe Field didn't like the idea of
publishing a project that might not make much money. Thorpe likewise
published the not very profitable "A Funeral Elegy" by W.S.
Jim
Bob Grumman
missed a number of posts. So bear with me if I repeat what
others have said. I want just to return to an old point I've
made several times: how can anyone but the author of the
sonnets be their ONLY begetter? There simply was NOT a single
inspirer of the sonnets. This is my main reason for going with
Foster.
(I know you tried to answer this, Greg, but I just can't go
along with "only's" meaning "the one and only." It just isn't
there--and the simple meaning is.)
--Bob G.
John W. Kennedy
> beget = inspire? Not the way the word was used then.
It is at least a believable metaphor, though to my mind a strained one.
Clark
"Only begetter" has been and remains, of course, open to
interpretation. Duncan-Jones still takes "begetter" to mean inspirer,
despite Foster's argument (which she at least acknowledges--but don't
get me wrong, just because I'm citing Duncan-Jones doesn't mean that I
agree with everything she has to say).
But which part of "only begetter" convinces you that it refers to
Shakespeare? The "only" part, which is what appears to bother Bob?
Or the "begetter" part, which usually, but not always, means
"procreator"?
Clark
>"Clark" writes:
> >Foster showed one possible interpretation, but by no means the only one.
> >Again, Duncan-Jones disagrees with Foster's conclusion. She apparently
> >thinks that the "ever-living poet" is Shakespeare, and that "Mr. W.H." is
> >Pembroke.
>
> Has any other writer of dedications, epigraphs, epistles, etc. ever
> omitted the proper title? If Duncan-Jones believes this, she is
> ignoring one of the key pieces of evidence as to the identity of
> W.H. I suggest that anyone interested check out Renascense
> editions on the web to see how lords were addressed....
<snip>
Duncan-Jones doesn't ignore this issue, but she has a theory that she
feels explains it. In her Introduction she writes:
<quote>
....the form of Herbert's own name, 'Mr. W.H.', alluded to the period
before his father's death in January 1600/1, as the time when, not yet
either an earl, or of age, or married, the youthful Herbert had
'begotten' the ensuing sonnets, in particular 1-17.
Much has been made of the supposed impropriety of an earl's being
addressed as 'Mr.', though Chambers did not feel that 'in such a
document there would be anything very out of the way...in the
suppression of an actual or courtesy title'. If 'W.H.' denotes
William Herbert, one obvious function of the 'Mr.' would be to
indicate that the sonnets dedicated to him had their origin, or
'begetting', in the period before his inheritance of the Earldom of
Pembroke. Rather as William Alexander had stressed on the title-page
the fact that his sonnet sequence _Aurora_ (1604) contained 'the first
fancies of the _Authors youth_', the 'Mr.' may have indicated the
pre-1601 conception of _Shakespeare's Sonnets_. My conjecture is that
when Shakespeare left London for Stratford in some haste at the end of
May 1609 he left instructions with Thorpe to use this form of address
to Herbert, and to set out the dedication in pointed capitals. Though
the initials of 'T.T.' are at the bottom, and the over-rhetorical
wording is evidently Thorpe's, the dedication, like the text itself,
had Shakespeare's authority.
</unquote (footnote omitted)>
Personally, I don't think she makes a very good case, and I'm not
convinced that "Mr. W.H." is Pembroke. For one thing, Duncan-Jones
admits that some of the "fair youth" sonnets may well have been
written while Herbert was too young to have been a candidate. She
disposes of this difficulty by writing: "If some of the 'fair youth'
sonnets, or versions of them, were written as early as 1592-5, these
may indeed have been originally associated with Southampton, dedicatee
of the narrative poems in 1593 and 1594. But as completed and
published in 1609 the sequence strongly invites a reference to
Pembroke."
But I'm not satisfied with her explanation. If Shakespeare had
started his "fair youth" sequence with Southampton in mind, what made
him switch to another peer in mid-stream? And if Duncan-Jones,
Jackson, Hieatt, et al. are right, and Shakespeare continued to revise
his sonnets into the 17th century, what's to say that he wasn't just
reworking his earlier sonnet sequence inspired by the "original" fair
youth (assuming he even had a real person in mind)? It seems to me
that Duncan-Jones is needlessly complicating the issue by insisting
that "Mr. W.H." is Pembroke.
But I'm not satisfied with the theory that "Mr. W.H." means "Mr.
W.Sh." either. Why would Thorpe had dedicated the work to its own
author? And if it was an unauthorized edition (which is still a
possibility, despite Duncan-Jones' objection), dedicating it to its
author would almost seem an insult. And I'm still not convinced that
"our ever-living Poet" means anyone other than Shakespeare himself, in
which case the dedication makes no sense at all if we assume that "Mr.
W.H." was Shakespeare.
Personally, I have no idea who "Mr. W.H." was supposed to be. It may
have been a purposely abstruse reference to Southampton. It may have
been a playful reference to Pembroke. "W.H." may be the initials of
someone who can't be identified from the available evidence. Foster
may be right, and "Mr. W.H." is "Mr. W.Sh." Or "Mr. W.H." may have
been invented by Thorpe for reasons of his own.
Clark
I don't quite have the problem you do here, Bob. Thorpe also wrote
that the Sonnets were "never before imprinted", but we know that isn't
true for the ones that were published by Jaggard in "The Passionate
Pilgrime". I think Thorpe was given to bombast, and made extravagant
claims that weren't always true. "Never before imprinted" meant only
a few had been printed before. "Our ever-living Poet" meant the
somewhat-famous William Shakespeare. And "only begetter" meant the
inspirer of 126 out of the 154 sonnets published.
Or maybe not. Who knows?
Clark
> "John W. Kennedy" wrote:
>> Okay Fine wrote:
>>> beget = inspire? Not the way the word was used then.
>>
>> It is at least a believable metaphor, though to my mind a strained one.
>
> Probably that's the most that can be said for it.
The OED disagrees with you:
2. fig. and transf. The agent that originates, produces, or occasions.
1587 Golding De Mornay iii. 28 The onely one God..the Begetter of the Soules
of the other Gods.
1606 Shakes. Sonnets (Inscr.) To the onlie begetter of these insuing
sonnets.
1637 Bastwick Litany iii. 11 The word of God is both the begetter of faith,
and the increaser of it.
1884 Pall Mall G. 2 Aug. 4/2 Dr. Alfred Wright, the ostensible begetter of
these very light and graphic sketches.
Greg Reynolds
Bob Grumman wrote:
> I've been very rushed here at poets' camp, so have probably
> missed a number of posts.
It must be grueling trying to rhyme ten, eleven, and seven all day.
> So bear with me if I repeat what
> others have said. I want just to return to an old point I've
> made several times: how can anyone but the author of the
> sonnets be their ONLY begetter? There simply was NOT a single
> inspirer of the sonnets. This is my main reason for going with
> Foster.
>
> (I know you tried to answer this, Greg, but I just can't go
> along with "only's" meaning "the one and only." It just isn't
> there--and the simple meaning is.)
Answer this then, Bob:
Is Thorpe "the adventurer?"
Yes or no.
+++
to the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets
Mr WH all happiness and that eternity promised
by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing
adventurer in setting forth
+++
I think you have to say "yes."
(But I don't.)
> --Bob G.
We've been able to narrow it down to one of three typos, Bob.
Greg Reynolds
MakBane
>mak...@aol.com (MakBane) wrote:
>> Dooley:>>And the alleged author of those three dozen plays, two
>> >>narrative poems, and sundry other verse left not one sign
>> >>that his vocation was writing, despite the fact that his
>> >>contemporaries left hundreds of independent pieces
>> >>of CPLE proving that they actually wrote.
>> >
>> KQKnave:>What about his name on all those title pages?
>>
>> Say, he's got you there, Pat!
>Do you deny that a man's name on the title-pages of published
>plays is s "sign that his vocation was writing," Toby?
Say, Bob, it's good to have you back from poetry camp. Yes, in the great
majority of cases, a man's name does appear on the title pages of the plays he
writes. But, this is not always true. There are plenty of examples of
misattributions, non-attributions, and deliberately false attributions, too.
Therefore, such evidence is on a lower order of value when positively
establishing authorship. You know this is true.
> Do you
>deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
>mentally defective?
Yes. It is a much stronger demonstration of mental defectiveness to claim that
every title-page attribution in Shakespeare's time and place was accurate.
Toby Petzold
MakBane
>> "Just in case," eh? Your information, as ever, is fascinating, Dr. Kathman.
>A
>> story I'd never heard before. So how is it that you can learn and believe
>such
>> things and NOT appreciate the healthy suspicion that others have of the
>secrets
>> of the Elizabethan world? It seems like an unnecessary burden to think of
>your
>> Oxfordian correspondents as mentally ill or deficient when there is so much
>to
>> learn and believe about Shakespeare's time. The fact that Burghley
>ghostwrote a
>> propaganda letter and arranged for its anonymous publication should excite
>us.
>> It suggests all sorts of crazy notions, and that's the way it ought to be.
>>
>
>Don't you find it interesting that we know about Burghley's
>ghost-writing of one minor pamphlet despite his Incredible
>Power to Conceal, but haven't a single hint of anyone's
>ghostwriting any of Shakespeare's 37 or so plays, Toby?
Not a single hint? Bob, if hints were coughs, the world of Shakespearean
studies would sound like a TB ward.
Toby Petzold
MakBane
>"David Kathman" wrote
>
>> Clark wrote:
>> > I can't say I'm not swayed by Foster's article, but it all hinges on
>"Mr.
>> > W.H." being a misprint for "Mr. W.Sh." If Foster is wrong about this
>(and
>> > there's no way we'll ever know for sure--short of a manuscript turning
>up),
>> > his interpretation is no more reliable than any that have gone before.
>>
>> I'm not quite sure how to interpret this sentence. I wouldn't say that
>> Foster's argument "all hinges" on the misprint; his argument is based
>> on examining contemporary usage, particularly in other book dedications,
>> in order to figure out what Thorpe's words most likely meant. The idea
>> that "Mr. W.H." may be a misprint for "Mr. W.SH." or "Mr. W.S." is
>> a consequence of the conclusions he reached, not the arbitrary assertion
>> you seem to imply.
>
>I don't mean to imply that Foster's assertion was arbitrary.
Sure it is. Premises are chosen and, therefore, arbitrary. Conclusions simply
proceed from the course of logic decided on before. I would still like to know
how a typesetter can take care to "imitate lapidary inscriptions," but misspell
the initials of the procurer of the work being dedicated.
> But his
>identification of the "ever-living Poet" as God is not universally accepted
>(Katherine Duncan-Jones disagrees, for one), and it is this conclusion that
>allows him to identify "Mr. W.H." as "Mr. W.Sh".
That's right. At the very least, the use of the term poet deliberately connotes
the author in a dedication/epigraph to a book of poetry. Seeing God as the
"ever-living Poet" in THIS context is just a bunch of sophistry.
>But if "Mr. W.H." is not
>"Mr.W.Sh.", there's no compelling reason to conclude that the "ever-living
>Poet" need be anyone other than Shakespeare, so his argument seems a bit
>circular.
Roger that.
>In Thorpe's other dedications (at least the one's I've seen), he is given to
>bombast and hyperbole. Foster argues that Shakespeare was not universally
>honored to the point that he would be labeled as "our ever-living Poet", but
>he seems to forget that the dedication is being written by the publisher.
>What publisher would write "that eternity promised by our second-rate but
>still pretty good poet"? Certainly not Thorpe.
It's interesting that Foster must come to the conclusion that Shakespeare was
not so universally honored as a poet in 1609. It had, after all, been a long
time since he had published any major verse. And the association of poet and
playwright of that name must not have yet made much of an impact on the popular
understanding.
>One of the reasons that I think the argument about whether or not
>"ever-living" usually meant "dead" is so irrelevant is because Thorpe seems
>just the sort of publisher to over-praise his author to the point that it
>borders on the sacrilegious.
But "ever-living" isn't just some extravagant turn of phrase, is it? It's
applied to the Poet of the ensuing sonnets, many of which are distinguished by
the absolute confidence of their maker in their immortality.
>Just as Thorpe's reference to "that eternity
>promised" need be nothing more than an embellishment of Shakespeare's
>promise in Sonnet 18 that the fair youth's "eternal" summer shall not fade
>because of the author's "eternal lines".
I can buy that. The promise is implicit where not explicit.
>> > And
>> > even should Foster be right about "Mr. W.Sh.", Thorpe's bombast is
>scarcely
>> > intelligible.
>>
>> Huh? His phrasing is rather peculiar, and the typography is
>> pretentious, but his meaning is pretty straightforward, as I thought
>> Foster showed.
Translation: Your legitimate suspicions into the most analyzed epigraph in
literary history are easily answered by the casual characterization of Thorpe's
hand in the title page as whimsical.
>Foster showed one possible interpretation, but by no means the only one.
>Again, Duncan-Jones disagrees with Foster's conclusion. She apparently
>thinks that the "ever-living poet" is Shakespeare, and that "Mr. W.H." is
>Pembroke.
Yep. And the idea that "Mr." is a preclusive criterion against Pembroke or
Southampton or any other noble is not credible, especially if Thorpe's purpose
had been to acknowledge, yet conceal.
>> > And what's the current thought on whether or not the 1609 edition was
>> > authorized? There seems to be considerable reason to suspect that the
>> > edition was pirated, which makes it pretty cheeky for Thorpe to be
>> > dedicating his unauthorized edition to the author.
>>
>> I'm not sure what reasons you're thinking of. Have you read
>> Katherine Duncan-Jones' recent Arden edition of the Sonnets, and
>> her 1983 article "Was Shakespeares Sonnets 1609 Really Unauthorized?"
>> (or something like that)? I've been doing research on Thorpe
>> in preparation for writing his DNB article, and I don't see much
>> reason for thinking that the 1609 quarto was pirated. Thorpe
>> was a reputable publisher with lots of theater ties.
Therefore, he knew Shakespeare personally.
Is it true that Heywood explicitly states that Shakespeare was pissed at
Jaggard? Why don't Stratfordians make more hay of this?
>Nothing in all this refers to the publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets in
>1609. Heywood is simply expressing his concern that the public night think
>that he had stolen the Paris and Helen pieces and published them as his own
>in Troia Britanica and that Shakespeare, "to doe himselfe right," has now
>reclaimed them by publishing them under his own name in the third edition of
>The Passionate Pilgrim. Heywood's aim is to clear himself of any suspicion
>of plagiarism.
></unquote (footnotes omitted)>
But what is the evidence that Shakespeare actively "reclaimed" his poems and
did so by publishing them in the Passionate Pilgrim? Can these poems be said to
have been in his control?
>And while it may be true that Shakespeare needed money in 1609 due to the
>closure of the theaters because of the plague, that isn't proof that
>Shakespeare sold the publishing rights to Thorpe. If Thorpe had obtained
>the sonnets from another source, he would have published them regardless of
>whether or not Shakespeare needed money.
Just how much money could Shakspere have made on the sale of these rights,
anyway? Wasn't the safer bet to go home and get back to grain-dealing?
>And while Thorpe had "theatrical ties" and apparently had authorization for
>at least some of the play quartos he published, Park Honan reports that
>Thorpe lacked the authority to publish his edition of the prefatory material
>to "Odcombian Banquet" in 1611 (as I mentioned in another post to this
>thread). So I don't think it would be fair to say that he was totally free
>of piratical tendencies.
That's good stuff there. But are you also saying that Thorpe's theatrical ties
are irrelevant to the publication of the Sonnets?
>Duncan-Jones herself asks why Shakespeare would have dropped Richard Field
>to have Q published by Thorpe, but she doesn't really supply a satisfactory
>answer. She rightly points out that Thorpe had "theatrical associations",
>but she doesn't explain why this would have been sufficient reason for
>Shakespeare to have severed his association with Field. Field's editions of
>V&A and RoL had been quite successful, and he had successfully published a
>number of other poetic works, such as Sidney's Arcadia in 1598 and
>Alexander's Aurora in 1605. And besides, Q wasn't a "theatrical work", it
>was a book of poetry.
Sounds fair. It's almost strange that Field was left out. Weren't the two long
poems a success for him, too?
>On the other hand, I can think of another reason why Shakespeare may have
>dropped Field, though Duncan-Jones doesn't mention it in her edition of the
>sonnets. Richard Field had signed the petition of 1596 against James
>Burbage's conversion of the Blackfriars Theatre, and this may have resulted
>in a falling out between the two Stratfordians. But that's just my
>speculation, not proof.
>
>At any rate, against the evidence that Q had apparently not been corrected
>in proof by the author, and that the dedication was written by the publisher
>rather than by the author, Duncan-Jones can only speculate that Shakespeare
>may have been anxious to get out of town to avoid the plague.
After the forests retreated, we stood upright in the dawn.
>But if
>Shakespeare had time to leave directions for Thorpe regarding the contents
>of the dedication (as Duncan-Jones believes), why couldn't he have just
>written the dedication himself?
Because first drafts are often published after their time.
>As I mentioned above, I can agree that Duncan-Jones makes a good
>circumstantial case. But I can't agree that she has *proven* that Thorpe
>had Shakespeare's authorization. The best I could do would be to agree that
>Thorpe "may" have had Shakespeare's authorization.
Dr. Kathman, what sort of a print run would there have been for the 1609
Sonnets? Would it have been expected to sell very well?
Toby Petzold
Bob Grumman
> > along with "only's" meaning "the one and only." It just isn't
> > there--and the simple meaning is.)
>
> Answer this then, Bob:
> Is Thorpe "the adventurer?"
> Yes or no.
Yes. The adventure is the venture of publishing
the sonnets.
>
> +++
> to the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets
> Mr WH all happiness and that eternity promised
> by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing
> adventurer in setting forth
> +++
>
> I think you have to say "yes."
> (But I don't.)
Who did you say the adventurer was. I remember your
making him the begetter, which makes no sense in the above,
grammatically. To Joe I wish Joe happiness would be a parallel.
Or?
> We've been able to narrow it down to one of three typos, Bob.
>
> Greg Reynolds
The Foster interpretation takes the words as they are except for "H"
and assumes a missing "S" because no other interpretation
works--because of, for one thing, the "onlie," but also "begetter"
as author and "ever-living poet" as God.
--Bob G.
Clark
> The Foster interpretation takes the words as they are except for "H"
> and assumes a missing "S" because no other interpretation
> works--because of, for one thing, the "onlie," but also "begetter"
> as author and "ever-living poet" as God.
But Bob, why would Thorpe find it necessary to assure the readers that
Shakespeare was the "only" begetter, when the name on the title page does
that quite well?
The best argument that I can think of for Thorpe making a big deal about the
author being the "only begetter" would be because of the misattribution of
some of the poems in Jaggard's "The Passionate Pilgrime". Perhaps Thorpe
(and Shakespeare, if it was an authorized edition) wanted to assure the
readers that in this edition, every poem that they were reading had actually
been written by the author identified on the title page.
But if "only begetter" was added to the dedication to assure the readers of
the sole authorship by Shakespeare, surely it would have been more effective
if Thorpe had actually spelled the author's name out in the dedication,
rather than just rely on initials, which wouldn't necessarily assure the
readers of anything (and which in the event, if Foster is right, only served
to cast more confusion on the issue when the printing error was made).
The addition of "only" to the word "begetter" in the dedication gives me as
much reason to doubt that Thorpe was referring to the author as it does
otherwise.
KQKnave
(Clark) writes:
>If 'W.H.' denotes
>William Herbert, one obvious function of the 'Mr.' would be to
>indicate that the sonnets dedicated to him had their origin, or
>'begetting', in the period before his inheritance of the Earldom of
>Pembroke. Rather as William Alexander had stressed on the title-page
>the fact that his sonnet sequence _Aurora_ (1604) contained 'the first
>fancies of the _Authors youth_', the 'Mr.' may have indicated the
>pre-1601 conception of _Shakespeare's Sonnets_
Well, this seems to me to be a rather outrageous rationalization,
which serves not to make the epigraph more clear but to make
it more mysterious. It smacks of the "secret clues" that Oxfordians
are always claiming that they see. How on earth would Thorpe be
privy to such information, and why would he feel it was neccessary
to reveal in an epigraph the identity of the nobleman who
supposedly inspired the sonnets? Given the content of the poems, it
would be like announcing to the world that Shakespeare and Pembroke
had a love affair. In any case Foster has shown as clearly as it
can be shown that "begetter" in this context means "author".
Jim
Tom Reedy
Shakespeare's middle name was Hathaway, and people called him W.H. for
short!
It is so simple once you think about it!
This truly is the Shakespeare discovery of the century!
I'm available for lectures, short talks, supermarket openings, etc. Contact
my agent.
TR
"Clark" <cjh...@home.com> wrote in message
news:oU7W6.170824$p33.3...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com...
MakBane
>(Clark) writes:
>
>>If 'W.H.' denotes
>>William Herbert, one obvious function of the 'Mr.' would be to
>>indicate that the sonnets dedicated to him had their origin, or
>>'begetting', in the period before his inheritance of the Earldom of
>>Pembroke.
That's a good idea, but if the purpose of addressing or referencing the
mysterious Mr. W.H. by his initials is to simultaneously acknowledge and
conceal his identity, why must the title of "Mr." necessarily be accurate? Why
can't it also be misleading or disguised?
>Rather as William Alexander had stressed on the title-page
>>the fact that his sonnet sequence _Aurora_ (1604) contained 'the first
>>fancies of the _Authors youth_', the 'Mr.' may have indicated the
>>pre-1601 conception of _Shakespeare's Sonnets_
I daresay the Sonnets were conceived and delivered well before 1601.
>Well, this seems to me to be a rather outrageous rationalization,
>which serves not to make the epigraph more clear but to make
>it more mysterious.
Hardly. It's a reasonable hypothesis. And if Thorpe had intended to be explicit
about W.H.'s identity, why wasn't he?
>It smacks of the "secret clues" that Oxfordians
>are always claiming that they see.
Looks like we got us a reader, boys. Clark, you some sorta commie?
>How on earth would Thorpe be
>privy to such information,
Because he had theatrical ties!
>and why would he feel it was neccessary
>to reveal in an epigraph the identity of the nobleman who
>supposedly inspired the sonnets?
What was necessary, I believe, is that he acknowledge Mr. W.H. in some way that
would reveal him to those in the know, but not to those that weren't.
>Given the content of the poems, it
>would be like announcing to the world that Shakespeare and Pembroke
>had a love affair.
I think the Sonnets do their own announcing, although I have no idea who Mr.
W.H. is or whether he is the object of any or all of the Sonnets. But, Jim, how
can you preclude a noble as being Mr. W.H. just because of the title? If those
are a bunch of gay love poems, do you think that a person of Shakspere's rank
would dare reveal that? Or that Thorpe would?
>In any case Foster has shown as clearly as it
>can be shown that "begetter" in this context means "author".
That's not saying a lot.
Toby Petzold
Clark
> I've got it! I've got it!
>
> Shakespeare's middle name was Hathaway, and people called him W.H. for
> short!
>
> It is so simple once you think about it!
>
> This truly is the Shakespeare discovery of the century!
>
> I'm available for lectures, short talks, supermarket openings, etc.
Contact
> my agent.
Brilliant. Except for the fact that people weren't given middle names back
then. But perhaps he was given "Hathaway" as a middle name because his
*real* father was Richard Hathaway. Which would make Anne his half-sister,
as well as wife (which might explain the references to incest in "Pericles"
and "The Winter's Tale").
I think you've got something here.
Tom Reedy
> "Tom Reedy" wrote
>
> > I've got it! I've got it!
> >
> > Shakespeare's middle name was Hathaway, and people called him W.H. for
> > short!
> >
> > It is so simple once you think about it!
> >
> > This truly is the Shakespeare discovery of the century!
> >
> > I'm available for lectures, short talks, supermarket openings, etc.
> Contact
> > my agent.
>
> Brilliant. Except for the fact that people weren't given middle names
back
> then. But perhaps he was given "Hathaway" as a middle name because his
> *real* father was Richard Hathaway. Which would make Anne his
half-sister,
> as well as wife (which might explain the references to incest in
"Pericles"
> and "The Winter's Tale").
>
> I think you've got something here.
>
> - Clark
I'm pretty sure that some nobles had middle names. Which means that
Shakespeare being addressed as if he had a middle name was a >wink< >wink<
signal to those in the know that the sonnets were actually written by a
noble.
TR
Clark
> (Clark) writes:
> >If 'W.H.' denotes
> >William Herbert, one obvious function of the 'Mr.' would be to
> >indicate that the sonnets dedicated to him had their origin, or
> >'begetting', in the period before his inheritance of the Earldom of
> >Pembroke. Rather as William Alexander had stressed on the title-page
> >the fact that his sonnet sequence _Aurora_ (1604) contained 'the first
> >fancies of the _Authors youth_', the 'Mr.' may have indicated the
> >pre-1601 conception of _Shakespeare's Sonnets_
>
> Well, this seems to me to be a rather outrageous rationalization,
> which serves not to make the epigraph more clear but to make
> it more mysterious. It smacks of the "secret clues" that Oxfordians
> are always claiming that they see. How on earth would Thorpe be
> privy to such information, and why would he feel it was neccessary
> to reveal in an epigraph the identity of the nobleman who
> supposedly inspired the sonnets? Given the content of the poems, it
> would be like announcing to the world that Shakespeare and Pembroke
> had a love affair.
Hey, I didn't say that I believed her (Duncan-Jones, that is). But who said
that Thorpe had to be privy to the identity of Mr. W.H.? Duncan-Jones says
that it is her conjecture that Shakespeare left instructions for Thorpe to
write a dedication to Mr. W.H. before he left London in 1609. Her theory
doesn't necessarily require that Thorpe knew who Mr. W.H. was--he could
simply have been following Shakespeare's instructions.
But as I've mentioned earlier, I still think she's all wet on this one.
> ...In any case Foster has shown as clearly as it
> can be shown that "begetter" in this context means "author".
That's the problem. He's shown it as "clearly" as possible, but it still
isn't clear enough. At least not for those (such as Duncan-Jones) who
disagree with his conclusion.
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>I think the Sonnets do their own announcing, although I have no idea who Mr.
>W.H. is or whether he is the object of any or all of the Sonnets. But, Jim,
>how
>can you preclude a noble as being Mr. W.H. just because of the title? If
>those
>are a bunch of gay love poems, do you think that a person of Shakspere's rank
>would dare reveal that? Or that Thorpe would?
>
In the real world, if you don't want to reveal something, you
don't reveal it. Comprende?
In the real world, if every body else addresses a nobleman
with the correct titles (see the online editions of various
works at Renascence) and non-nobles with "Mr.", and
especially if the *same* epistler does this (see Thorpe's
other dedications), then it is assumed that when this
same epistler uses "Mr.", he means "Mr." It's really
that simple.
In the real world, if we want estimate how many
planets there are around epsilon eridani, we say
about 10, because our star is similar to epsilon
eridani and our star has about 10 planets. We
don't estimate 1, or 100.
Jim
KQKnave
<cjh...@home.com> writes:
I truly (and I'm not saying this to be a smartass) think that this is as
nuts as any Oxfordian rationalization, where secret clues are left by
those in the know to others in the know so that those not in the know
won't know. What they fail to realize is that those in the know already
know and to leave a message allows those not in the know to know,
which defeats the purpose of having a secret club to begin with.
Why on earth would Thorpe sign his initials to somebody else's
dedication? This just shifts the onus onto Shakespeare rather
than Thorpe: why would Shakespeare feel it was neccessary
to reveal in an epigraph the identity of the nobleman who
supposedly inspired the sonnets? Given the content of the poems, it
would be like announcing to the world that Shakespeare and Pembroke
had a love affair.
>
>But as I've mentioned earlier, I still think she's all wet on this one.
>
>> ...In any case Foster has shown as clearly as it
>> can be shown that "begetter" in this context means "author".
>
>That's the problem. He's shown it as "clearly" as possible, but it still
>isn't clear enough. At least not for those (such as Duncan-Jones) who
>disagree with his conclusion.
What isn't clear about it? It resolves the issue, while Duncon-Jones
Oxfordian-like theories just violate Occam's razor and leave the
same muddle we started with. I read her essay in the Arden edition,
and I didn't see Foster even mentioned or footnoted, even though
her essay was written 10 years after Foster's. I think she is just
doing what a lot of the naysayers do - she just ignores things like
Thorpe's practice in other dedications and other uses of 'begetter'
so she can spin her own fantasy.
Just in case anyone has forgotten, here are Foster's comments
on "only begetter" (which to me, by the way, reads like an
appropriate compliment):
"12. "To the only begetter" is still another phrase unlikely to have
confused readers in 1609, and it might yet go unremarked were it
not for the appositive construction involving Master W. H. As it
happens, Thorpe's contem-poraries had precise notions of what
constituted "begetting" a text. According to this popular conceit,
only the (pro)creative author may be called a "begetter", and then
only if the textual offspring was self-begotten, upon the author's own
"Fancy" or "Mind" or "Brain" or "Invention". Translators do not qualify-
nor do commentators, publishers, patrons, paramours, scribes,
inspirers of poetry or purloiners of manuscripts. With but one
unremarkable exception,^12 nowhere do I find the word
*begetter, father, parent* or *sire* used to denote anyone but the
person who wrote the work.
13. The figure of text as offspring is the single most frequent
metaphor encountered in Renaissance book dedications. Thomas
Dekker, for example, in his *News from Hell*, begins his epistle to
Sir John Hambden by noting that the "begetting of Bookes is as
common as the begetting of Children: onely heerein they differ,
that Bookes speake so soon as they come into the world." A more
familiar example is Sidney's dedication in the *Arcadia*, addressed
to his sister, the countess of Pembroke. His is one of many such
epistles in which the begetting of books forms a central motif.
Sidney writes, "For my part, in very trueth (as the cruell fathers
among the Greekes, were woont to doo to the babes they would
not foster) I could well find in my harte, to cast out in some desert
of forgetfulness this child, which I am loath to father" (A3r-v). Sidney
nevertheless hopes that, "for the father's sake, it will be pardoned,
perchance made much of, though in it selfe it haue deformities
[since] a young head...hauing many fancies begotten in it, if it had
not ben in some way deliuered, would haue growen a monster" (A3v).
14. This ubiquitous conceit had been worked out in detail long
before Thomas Thorpe availed himself of it. By 1600, each role
associated with the genesis of a printed text-author,editor,translator,
patron, and printer-had already been assigned a conventional
counterpart in the buisness of procreation and child rearing.
Patrons, for example, are hailed as godfathers (but only in distinction
from the author as begetter), as in Shakespeare's dedication of
*Venus and Adonis*, in which the author tells Southampton,
"if the first heire of my inuention proue deformed, I shall be sorie
it had so noble a god-father"; or again in Samuel Nicholson's
*Acolastus His After-Witte*, dedicated to Richard Warburton,
to whom the author writes, "Maruaile you may at the bolde
approach of these my vnblushing lines, the first borne of my
barren inuention, who, begotten in my anticke age, now steps
into the world to seeke some worthie Godfather" (A3r)."
"Footnote 12. Thomas Dekker's dedication in *Newes from Hell*,
wherein "father" may refer to Hamden as a patron who exercises
paternal care (though Dekker still figures as the begetter)."
.
Jim
Clark
(Bob Grumman) wrote
> >Do you deny that a man's name on the title-pages of published
> >plays is s "sign that his vocation was writing," Toby? Do you
> >deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
> >mentally defective?
<snip>
> Actually, one would have to a little credulous to
> take Elizabethan title page attributions at face
> value.
One may be a little credulous to take any one paticular Elizabethan title
page attribution at face value, but one would be mentally defective to
believe that *all* of the 21 (or so) title pages with Shakespeare's name on
them were misattributed (and that's not counting reprints).
Clark
> Clark wrote:
> "John W. Kennedy" wrote:
>> Okay Fine wrote:
>>> beget = inspire? Not the way the word was used then.
>>
>> It is at least a believable metaphor, though to my mind a strained one.
>
> Probably that's the most that can be said for it.
>
>> The OED disagrees with you:
>>2. fig. and transf. The agent that originates, produces, or occasions.
<snip examples>
> No, Clark, that's agreement.
I take it that you have no understanding what "agent that occasions" means?
Would it be easier to understand if it said "inspirer"?
MakBane
>(MakBane) writes:
>
>>I think the Sonnets do their own announcing, although I have no idea who Mr.
>>W.H. is or whether he is the object of any or all of the Sonnets. But, Jim,
>>how
>>can you preclude a noble as being Mr. W.H. just because of the title? If
>>those
>>are a bunch of gay love poems, do you think that a person of Shakspere's
>rank
>>would dare reveal that? Or that Thorpe would?
>In the real world, if you don't want to reveal something, you
>don't reveal it. Comprende?
In the real world, married middle-class grain merchants don't publish their
erotic (if not homoerotic) poems and dedicate them to their lovers, especially
if their society considers homosexuality a crime. Can you really not understand
the necessity of concealing identities in that sort of climate or does your
partisanship prevent you from conceding anything?
Moreover, you are too quickly dismissing the impulse that people have to be
recognized, whether covertly by a few or overtly by the many. People,
especially artists, do leave traces of themselves behind for the discernment of
those close to them. I've known graphic artists who sign their work and you'd
never know it. This isn't some defense of horseshit cryptography, but people DO
leave their "signatures" around in interesting ways.
>In the real world, if every body else addresses a nobleman
>with the correct titles (see the online editions of various
>works at Renascence) and non-nobles with "Mr.", and
>especially if the *same* epistler does this (see Thorpe's
>other dedications), then it is assumed that when this
>same epistler uses "Mr.", he means "Mr." It's really
>that simple.
So you can abide the logic of the mystery of only providing initials, but not
that of an inaccurate form of address?
>In the real world, if we want estimate how many
>planets there are around epsilon eridani, we say
>about 10, because our star is similar to epsilon
>eridani and our star has about 10 planets. We
>don't estimate 1, or 100.
Astrophysics is not comparable to the field of English Renaissance literature.
Toby Petzold
Clark
> "Clark" writes:
<snip>
> >> ...In any case Foster has shown as clearly as it
> >> can be shown that "begetter" in this context means "author".
> >
> >That's the problem. He's shown it as "clearly" as possible, but it still
> >isn't clear enough. At least not for those (such as Duncan-Jones) who
> >disagree with his conclusion.
>
> What isn't clear about it? It resolves the issue, while Duncon-Jones
> Oxfordian-like theories just violate Occam's razor and leave the
> same muddle we started with. I read her essay in the Arden edition,
> and I didn't see Foster even mentioned or footnoted, even though
> her essay was written 10 years after Foster's. I think she is just
> doing what a lot of the naysayers do - she just ignores things like
> Thorpe's practice in other dedications and other uses of 'begetter'
> so she can spin her own fantasy.
Her footnote regarding Foster is on page 52 of the paperback edition
(footnote 3). She gives his attempt to put the speculation to rest no more
credibility than she does anyone else's.
And although I agree with the balance of your argument regarding her theory,
I'd remind you that Occam's Razor doesn't always apply where human behavior
is concerned. If it did, there'd be no need for Murphy's Law (and I'd also
point your attention to: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/occam.html,
where it's demonstrated that Occam's Razor is misused in situations such as
this--your use is Aristotelian, and we both know how discredited he is these
days).
MakBane
>>
>>> (Clark) writes:
>>Hey, I didn't say that I believed her (Duncan-Jones, that is). But who said
>>that Thorpe had to be privy to the identity of Mr. W.H.? Duncan-Jones says
>>that it is her conjecture that Shakespeare left instructions for Thorpe to
>>write a dedication to Mr. W.H. before he left London in 1609. Her theory
>>doesn't necessarily require that Thorpe knew who Mr. W.H. was--he could
>>simply have been following Shakespeare's instructions.
>I truly (and I'm not saying this to be a smartass) think that this is as
>nuts as any Oxfordian rationalization, where secret clues are left by
>those in the know to others in the know so that those not in the know
>won't know. What they fail to realize is that those in the know already
>know and to leave a message allows those not in the know to know,
>which defeats the purpose of having a secret club to begin with.
Jim, you've gone plum loco. Try this experiment: watch an episode or two of The
Simpsons with a ten year-old and see what he laughs at and what you laugh at.
The stuff that you get will go right over his head, even though you're both
exposed to the same input. Why is this? Because you already know what there is
to get and the kid doesn't. It's hidden to him because he doesn't know to look
for it.
>Why on earth would Thorpe sign his initials to somebody else's
>dedication? This just shifts the onus onto Shakespeare rather
>than Thorpe: why would Shakespeare feel it was neccessary
>to reveal in an epigraph the identity of the nobleman who
>supposedly inspired the sonnets? Given the content of the poems, it
>would be like announcing to the world that Shakespeare and Pembroke
>had a love affair.
So you believe the Sonnets were written for a nobleman?
>>But as I've mentioned earlier, I still think she's all wet on this one.
>>
>>> ...In any case Foster has shown as clearly as it
>>> can be shown that "begetter" in this context means "author".
>>
>>That's the problem. He's shown it as "clearly" as possible, but it still
>>isn't clear enough. At least not for those (such as Duncan-Jones) who
>>disagree with his conclusion.
>
>What isn't clear about it? It resolves the issue, while Duncon-Jones
>Oxfordian-like theories just violate Occam's razor and leave the
>same muddle we started with.
I thought Sherlock Holmes superseded Occam.
>I read her essay in the Arden edition,
>and I didn't see Foster even mentioned or footnoted, even though
>her essay was written 10 years after Foster's. I think she is just
>doing what a lot of the naysayers do - she just ignores things like
>Thorpe's practice in other dedications and other uses of 'begetter'
>so she can spin her own fantasy.
Well, she's in good company. Most people can accept "begetter" as "procurer"
and not even be mentally ill to do so.
>Just in case anyone has forgotten, here are Foster's comments
>on "only begetter" (which to me, by the way, reads like an
>appropriate compliment):
>
>"12. "To the only begetter" is still another phrase unlikely to have
> confused readers in 1609, and it might yet go unremarked were it
>not for the appositive construction involving Master W. H.
Is this Foster's way of saying that the epigraph does not and cannot make
grammatical sense?
>As it
>happens, Thorpe's contem-poraries had precise notions of what
>constituted "begetting" a text. According to this popular conceit,
>only the (pro)creative author may be called a "begetter", and then
>only if the textual offspring was self-begotten, upon the author's own
>"Fancy" or "Mind" or "Brain" or "Invention". Translators do not qualify-
>nor do commentators, publishers, patrons, paramours, scribes,
>inspirers of poetry or purloiners of manuscripts. With but one
>unremarkable exception,^12
An exception disproves this rule that Foster's cooked up.
> nowhere do I find the word
>*begetter, father, parent* or *sire* used to denote anyone but the
>person who wrote the work.
> 13. The figure of text as offspring is the single most frequent
>metaphor encountered in Renaissance book dedications.
So let us see the Sonnets Epigraph as a parody.
>Thomas
>Dekker, for example, in his *News from Hell*, begins his epistle to
>Sir John Hambden by noting that the "begetting of Bookes is as
>common as the begetting of Children: onely heerein they differ,
>that Bookes speake so soon as they come into the world." A more
>familiar example is Sidney's dedication in the *Arcadia*, addressed
>to his sister, the countess of Pembroke. His is one of many such
>epistles in which the begetting of books forms a central motif.
>Sidney writes, "For my part, in very trueth (as the cruell fathers
>among the Greekes, were woont to doo to the babes they would
>not foster) I could well find in my harte, to cast out in some desert
>of forgetfulness this child, which I am loath to father" (A3r-v). Sidney
>nevertheless hopes that, "for the father's sake, it will be pardoned,
>perchance made much of, though in it selfe it haue deformities
>[since] a young head...hauing many fancies begotten in it, if it had
>not ben in some way deliuered, would haue growen a monster" (A3v).
> 14. This ubiquitous conceit had been worked out in detail long
>before Thomas Thorpe availed himself of it.
Foster makes it sound canonical or mandatory; a deliberate convention from
which there was never any variance.
>By 1600, each role
>associated with the genesis of a printed text-author,editor,translator,
>patron, and printer-had already been assigned a conventional
>counterpart in the buisness of procreation and child rearing.
>Patrons, for example, are hailed as godfathers (but only in distinction
>from the author as begetter), as in Shakespeare's dedication of
>*Venus and Adonis*, in which the author tells Southampton,
>"if the first heire of my inuention proue deformed, I shall be sorie
>it had so noble a god-father"; or again in Samuel Nicholson's
>*Acolastus His After-Witte*, dedicated to Richard Warburton,
>to whom the author writes, "Maruaile you may at the bolde
>approach of these my vnblushing lines, the first borne of my
>barren inuention, who, begotten in my anticke age, now steps
>into the world to seeke some worthie Godfather" (A3r)."
>
>"Footnote 12. Thomas Dekker's dedication in *Newes from Hell*,
>wherein "father" may refer to Hamden as a patron who exercises
>paternal care (though Dekker still figures as the begetter)."
I wonder if Foster found any other dedication or epigraph that cannot make
grammatical sense and includes both "begetter" and "poet."
Toby Petzold
p.s. Jim, do you believe that V&A was the very first poem Shakespeare ever
begat?
Bob Grumman
> "Pat J Dooley" wrote
> (Bob Grumman) wrote
> > >Do you deny that a man's name on the title-pages of published
> > >deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
> > >mentally defective?
> <snip>
>
> > Actually, one would have to a little credulous to
> > take Elizabethan title page attributions at face
> > value.
Note how Pat fails to answer my question. Tell me, Pat:
Is a man's name on a book's title-page A SIGN that he wrote
the book or is it not? Yes or no?
Bob Grumman
that he was a writer) as mentally defective?
>
> Yes. It is a much stronger demonstration of mental defectiveness to claim that every title-page attribution in Shakespeare's time and place was accurate.
Who claims that, Toby? Something I claim, and that Pat and Diana
completely ignore is that no book of Shakespeare's times ever
had the name of a non-writer on its title-page as the book's author.
Hence, Shakespeare's name on Locrine is evidence that he was
an author.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
> Shakespeare was the "only" begetter, when the name on the title page does that quite well?
You've answered it, Clark:
> The best argument that I can think of for Thorpe making a big deal about the
> author being the "only begetter" would be because of the misattribution of
> some of the poems in Jaggard's "The Passionate Pilgrime". Perhaps Thorpe
> (and Shakespeare, if it was an authorized edition) wanted to assure the
> readers that in this edition, every poem that they were reading had actually
> been written by the author identified on the title page.
>
> But if "only begetter" was added to the dedication to assure the readers of
> the sole authorship by Shakespeare, surely it would have been more effective
> if Thorpe had actually spelled the author's name out in the dedication,
> rather than just rely on initials, which wouldn't necessarily assure the
> readers of anything (and which in the event, if Foster is right, only served
> to cast more confusion on the issue when the printing error was made).
>
> The addition of "only" to the word "begetter" in the dedication gives me as
> much reason to doubt that Thorpe was referring to the author as it does
> otherwise.
Initials were the fashion--and, since the author's name
was already spelled out, they would suffice here. It'd be no
more than my saying that Mr. C. H. is wrong here. I would also
say that I don't feel Thorpe was energetically
asserting that the sonnets were ONLY Will's, but only saying so
parenthetically to his main purpose, which was simply to flatter
his author.
Mr. B. G.
Okay Fine
> "Okay Fine" wrote
>
> > Clark wrote:
> > "John W. Kennedy" wrote:
> >> Okay Fine wrote:
> >>> beget = inspire? Not the way the word was used then.
> >>
> >> It is at least a believable metaphor, though to my mind a strained
> one.
> >
> > Probably that's the most that can be said for it.
> >
> >> The OED disagrees with you:
> >>2. fig. and transf. The agent that originates, produces, or
> occasions.
> <snip examples>
>
> > No, Clark, that's agreement.
>
> I take it that you have no understanding what "agent that occasions"
> means?
> Would it be easier to understand if it said "inspirer"?
>
> - Clark
>
Does "agent that occasions" = 'inspirer'? It's not precisely the
definition of inspirer to say "the agent that occasions" especially when
we are reminded that it's included under the same sense as "originator",
its opposite. An author is an agent who occasions, but a muse is not an
originator, so support for your position is prima facie lacking.
However, I'd be inclined to go with you if the examples for the period
supported you. Sadly, they do not until the 19th century.
I agree, this one requires some careful reading. My original take is
confirmed, although you snipped the supporting citations. Presumably
this is typical of your methods, which is shameful, yet all too familiar
to an Anti-Strat.
OF.
Okay Fine
Bob,
Is Mark Twain's name on a book a sign that he wrote it?
OF.
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>>In the real world, if you don't want to reveal something, you
>>don't reveal it. Comprende?
>
>In the real world, married middle-class grain merchants don't publish their
>erotic (if not homoerotic) poems and dedicate them to their lovers,
>especially if their society considers homosexuality a crime. Can you really
not
>understand the necessity of concealing identities in that sort of climate or
does >your partisanship prevent you from conceding anything?
>
Your last sentence is most amusing, considering the sentence before
it. William Shakespeare was a well known playwright, poet and actor,
not a grain merchant. Again, if concealment was paramount, why
write the dedication in the first place? It makes no sense to create
a dedication to a known person if secrecy was so important. Now, if
W.H. is actually a code (say a substitution cipher, or even just
the abbreviation for personal epithet that lovers use ("my Wiggly
Humblebee") then I guess you could at least rationalize the
dedication as playful without being too revealing, but of course
then W.H. could mean anything, or anybody.
>Moreover, you are too quickly dismissing the impulse that people have to be
>recognized, whether covertly by a few or overtly by the many. People,
>especially artists, do leave traces of themselves behind for the discernment
>of those close to them. I've known graphic artists who sign their work and
you'd
>never know it. This isn't some defense of horseshit cryptography, but people
>DO leave their "signatures" around in interesting ways.
Well, in this case only if W.H. means something other than W.H.,
(pick any two letters other than W and H). Most people including
Oxfordians want to identify W.H. with a real person with the initials
W.H.
>
>>In the real world, if every body else addresses a nobleman
>>with the correct titles (see the online editions of various
>>works at Renascence) and non-nobles with "Mr.", and
>>especially if the *same* epistler does this (see Thorpe's
>>other dedications), then it is assumed that when this
>>same epistler uses "Mr.", he means "Mr." It's really
>>that simple.
>
>So you can abide the logic of the mystery of only providing initials, but not
>that of an inaccurate form of address?
What mystery? Initials were commonly used, check the editions
at Renascence on the web. In Spenser's Amoretti, the dedication
by William Ponsonby is signed W.P. Another dedication in the
same work is titled "From G.W. senior to the Author" and signed
G.W.I. Elswhere Edmund Spenser is indicated by "Ed. Sp." and
Spenser dedicates the Ruines of Time by signing his initials E.S.
In case you didn't notice, the title page says "By G. Eld for T.T."
Is this also supposed to be a mystery? Since the collection is
titled "Shakespeare's Sonnets", a dedication to "W. SH." makes
perfect sense.
>
>>In the real world, if we want estimate how many
>>planets there are around epsilon eridani, we say
>>about 10, because our star is similar to epsilon
>>eridani and our star has about 10 planets. We
>>don't estimate 1, or 100.
>
>Astrophysics is not comparable to the field of English Renaissance
>literature.
Logic is logic.
Jim
Clark
Since I'm the one who supplied the supporting citations in the first
place, your accusation regarding my "methods" is not only ludicrous,
it's dishonest. But since I would expect nothing else from an
anti-Strat, your asinine comment doesn't surprise me.
And you may note that the editors of the OED do not specify which of
the definitions they had in mind when they included the cite from
Shakespeare's sonnets. The only reason you have to think that they
didn't include "only begetter" as an example of "agent that occasions"
is your own prejudice.
Clark
But Mr. B.C. (note the typo), this argument is considerably weakened
if the 1609 edition wasn't authorized, or if it can be shown that any
part of it is not Shakespeare's.
In "Glass slippers and seven-league boots: C[omputer]-prompted doubts
about ascribing A Funeral Elegy and A Lover's Complaint to
Shakespeare", _Shakespeare Quarterly_, Summer 1997, Elliot and Valenza
have provided pretty compelling evidence that "A Lover's Complaint"
was not actually written by Shakespeare. And yet it's attributed to
Shakespeare in Thorpe's 1609 edition of the sonnets.
If Thorpe included a non-Shakespearean piece (A Lover's Complaint) in
an edition that attributed it to Shakespeare, why would he have
dedicated the volume to William Shakespeare? As I mentioned before,
it borders on the insulting. If Heywood is right, and Shakespeare was
angry about Jaggard's misattributions in the unauthorized "The
Passionate Pilgrime", imagine his fury if Thorpe had not only
misattributed "A Lover's Complaint", but had dedicated it to him as
well.
And from what I've been able to find on the net, Foster has failed to
gather even majority support for his contention that "our ever-living
Poet" is a reference to God. If he's wrong about that, "Mr. W.H."
cannot possibly be Shakespeare.
B*b
> I've been very rushed here at poets' camp, so have probably
> missed a number of posts. So bear with me if I repeat what
> others have said. I want just to return to an old point I've
> made several times: how can anyone but the author of the
> sonnets be their ONLY begetter? There simply was NOT a single
> inspirer of the sonnets. This is my main reason for going with
> Foster.
>
> (I know you tried to answer this, Greg, but I just can't go
> along with "only's" meaning "the one and only." It just isn't
> there--and the simple meaning is.)
>
> --Bob G.
A Letter From Camp
Hello Crowley, Hi Diana,
Here I am at Camp Grummana.
Camp is very educating,
And they say we'll have some fun pontificating.
I went birding with Joe Spism.
He developed Oxfordianism.
You remember Leonard Skynyyrd.
He got vertigo last night just reading Zenner.
All the versers hate the rhymers,
And we all have some altsheimers.
And the head nurse wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.
Now I don't know that he's a phony,
But my bunk mate's reading Looney.
You remember Rod McKuen
He's about to organize a barbequin'
Take me home, oh Caruana
Take me home, I hate Grummana,
Don't leave me out here in the forest, or
I might get eaten by The Boar.
Take me home, I promise I will not make spats,
Or mess the house with other Strats.
Oh please don't make me stay,
I've been here one whole day.
Dearest Janice, darling MakBane,
How's my precious lil' Okay Fine?
Let me come home if you miss me.
I would even let Pat Dooley bug and diss me.
Wait a minute, writer's block gone.
Neologists playing ping pong!
Learning how to write a filter...
HLAS, please, kindly disregard this letter!
--B*b
B*b
Neuendorffer
Assuming B*b aint Bob G. or Alan Sherman, who wrote it?
Art
---------------------------------------------
Bob Grumman
> an edition that attributed it to Shakespeare, why would he have
> dedicated the volume to William Shakespeare? As I mentioned before,
> it borders on the insulting. If Heywood is right, and Shakespeare was
> angry about Jaggard's misattributions in the unauthorized "The
> Passionate Pilgrime", imagine his fury if Thorpe had not only
> misattributed "A Lover's Complaint", but had dedicated it to him as
> well.
I didn't know about "A Lover's Complaint"--or maybe I did
but ignored it because I'm not big on computer attribution studies.
It is possible that this one poem is not Shakespeare's but
resulted from an innocent mistake. I was once given credit for a
poem not mine in a fairly fancy if small-run anthology. It happens.
> And from what I've been able to find on the net, Foster has failed to
> gather even majority support for his contention that "our ever-living
> Poet" is a reference to God.
That surprises me. It would seem to me that God would have to be
the leading candidate considering how unworkable all the candidates
for the ONLIE begetter are.
> If he's wrong about that, "Mr. W.H." cannot possibly be Shakespeare.
True. But I doubt that any scholar could sanely say that "our ever-living
Poet" could not be God.
--Bob G.
David Kathman
>
> > If Thorpe included a non-Shakespearean piece (A Lover's Complaint) in
> > an edition that attributed it to Shakespeare, why would he have
> > dedicated the volume to William Shakespeare? As I mentioned before,
> > it borders on the insulting. If Heywood is right, and Shakespeare was
> > angry about Jaggard's misattributions in the unauthorized "The
> > Passionate Pilgrime", imagine his fury if Thorpe had not only
> > misattributed "A Lover's Complaint", but had dedicated it to him as
> > well.
>
> I didn't know about "A Lover's Complaint"--or maybe I did
> but ignored it because I'm not big on computer attribution studies.
> It is possible that this one poem is not Shakespeare's but
> resulted from an innocent mistake. I was once given credit for a
> poem not mine in a fairly fancy if small-run anthology. It happens.
Bob, don't worry -- "A Lover's Complaint" is still safely part
of the Shakespeare canon, and nobody in the scholarly community
takes Elliott and Valenza's claim on this point seriously.
Basically what happened was this: they constructed their
"tests" using a core canon of Shakespeare texts which excluded
marginal texts like "A Lover's Complaint", then they found
that -- surprise, surprise! -- "A Lover's Complaint" didn't
do well in those tests! Their conclusion was virtually a
tautology, but it had little or nothing to do with whether
"A Lover's Complaint" (or "A Funeral Elegy") is actually
part of the Shakespeare canon. I may have time to write
more later, but anyone doubting "A Lover's Complaint"'s status
as part of the Shakespeare canon should read the following:
MacD. P. Jackson, "Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint: Its Date
and Authenticity", *University of Auckland Bulletin* 72, English
Series, 13 (1965); Kenneth Muir, "A Lover's Complaint: A
Reconsideration", in *Shakespeare the Professional and Related
Studies* (1973), 204-19; Elliot Slater, "Shakespeare: Word Links
Between Poems and Plays", *Notes and Queries* 220 (1975), 157-63;
and A. K. Hieatt, T. G. Bishop, and E. A. Nicholson, "Lover's
Complaint, Cymbeline, and Sonnets", *Notes and Queries* 232 (1987),
219-24. Together, these provide what I think is a compelling case
for Shakespeare's authorship of LC, and that case has been accepted
by all of Shakespeare's recent editors.
Dave Kathman
dj...@ix.netcom.com
MakBane
>(MakBane) writes:
>
>>>In the real world, if you don't want to reveal something, you
>>>don't reveal it. Comprende?
>>
>>In the real world, married middle-class grain merchants don't publish their
>>erotic (if not homoerotic) poems and dedicate them to their lovers,
>>especially if their society considers homosexuality a crime. Can you really
>not
>>understand the necessity of concealing identities in that sort of climate or
>does >your partisanship prevent you from conceding anything?
>>
>
>Your last sentence is most amusing, considering the sentence before
>it. William Shakespeare was a well known playwright, poet and actor,
>not a grain merchant.
Jim, by everyone's reckoning, Shakspere was a theater shareholder/sometime
actor AND a grain merchant/moneylender. Did you mean to deny the latter, or did
you momentarily slip into the maw of reason and forget the central absurdity of
your position? Did Burbage or Hemynge or Condell write poems and plays? Why
must you assume that Shakspere did? There's entirely too much dependence upon
relationships and proximity in "proving" what Shakspere really was.
>Again, if concealment was paramount, why
>write the dedication in the first place? It makes no sense to create
>a dedication to a known person if secrecy was so important.
Aren't dedications/epigraphs a standard feature of published works? The absence
of one might have been seen as peculiar, so the logic of having it is clear,
regardless of its intelligibility to the many.
>Now, if
>W.H. is actually a code (say a substitution cipher, or even just
>the abbreviation for personal epithet that lovers use ("my Wiggly
>Humblebee") then I guess you could at least rationalize the
>dedication as playful without being too revealing, but of course
>then W.H. could mean anything, or anybody.
And that is where we are, obviously. Those initials COULD be anybody. Foster
wants them to be a typo so that they comport with his other ideas, but that is
manifest nonsense. As I have mentioned before (and if Terry Ross is correct),
the fact that the epigraph is typeset in a manner imitative of "monumental
brasses" and "lapidary inscriptions" is a demonstration of Thorpe's care.
Foster's belief that W.H. is a typo or some compository lapse is undermined by
this.
>>Moreover, you are too quickly dismissing the impulse that people have to be
>>recognized, whether covertly by a few or overtly by the many. People,
>>especially artists, do leave traces of themselves behind for the discernment
>>of those close to them. I've known graphic artists who sign their work and
>you'd
>>never know it. This isn't some defense of horseshit cryptography, but people
>>DO leave their "signatures" around in interesting ways.
>
>Well, in this case only if W.H. means something other than W.H.,
>(pick any two letters other than W and H). Most people including
>Oxfordians want to identify W.H. with a real person with the initials
>W.H.
Sure. There's Pembrokists and Southamptonites on either side of this issue,
each with their own rationale. But Mr. W.H. certainly COULD be anyone, except
that I don't see how it could apply to Shakspere under Foster's logic.
>>
>>>In the real world, if every body else addresses a nobleman
>>>with the correct titles (see the online editions of various
>>>works at Renascence) and non-nobles with "Mr.", and
>>>especially if the *same* epistler does this (see Thorpe's
>>>other dedications), then it is assumed that when this
>>>same epistler uses "Mr.", he means "Mr." It's really
>>>that simple.
>>
>>So you can abide the logic of the mystery of only providing initials, but
>not
>>that of an inaccurate form of address?
>
>What mystery? Initials were commonly used, check the editions
>at Renascence on the web. In Spenser's Amoretti, the dedication
>by William Ponsonby is signed W.P. Another dedication in the
>same work is titled "From G.W. senior to the Author" and signed
>G.W.I. Elswhere Edmund Spenser is indicated by "Ed. Sp." and
>Spenser dedicates the Ruines of Time by signing his initials E.S.
>In case you didn't notice, the title page says "By G. Eld for T.T."
>Is this also supposed to be a mystery? Since the collection is
>titled "Shakespeare's Sonnets", a dedication to "W. SH." makes
>perfect sense.
But your examples are all obviously connected to their known analogues! Why do
you think there's a mystery here? Are we talking about William Hakespere?
>>>In the real world, if we want estimate how many
>>>planets there are around epsilon eridani, we say
>>>about 10, because our star is similar to epsilon
>>>eridani and our star has about 10 planets. We
>>>don't estimate 1, or 100.
>>
>>Astrophysics is not comparable to the field of English Renaissance
>>literature.
>
>Logic is logic.
That's right, Jim, So, why, if Shakespeare is alive, is Thomas Thorpe the one
to write the dedication/epigraph? Could it be that Shakespeare is already dead
by this time?
Toby Petzold
KQKnave
(MakBane) writes:
>>Again, if concealment was paramount, why
>>write the dedication in the first place? It makes no sense to create
>>a dedication to a known person if secrecy was so important.
>
>Aren't dedications/epigraphs a standard feature of published works? The
>absence
>of one might have been seen as peculiar, so the logic of having it is clear,
>regardless of its intelligibility to the many.
>
Look, if you are going to go off into the realm of absurdities, go
ahead, I don't have time for this nonsense. If all they needed was
a dedication, they could write something totally meaningless, not
something that actually gave away information. IF YOU WANT
TO KEEP THINGS SECRET, THEN YOU DON'T GIVE THEM
AWAY!
Jim
KQKnave
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) writes:
>> And from what I've been able to find on the net, Foster has failed to
>> gather even majority support for his contention that "our ever-living
>> Poet" is a reference to God.
>
>That surprises me. It would seem to me that God would have to be
>the leading candidate considering how unworkable all the candidates
>for the ONLIE begetter are.
>
Shouldn't surprise you. He said "on the net". The net is a haven
for nutcases and their pet theories, not a scholarly forum, no
matter how hard you and I try to make it scholarly. Most of Foster's
scholarly denigrators seem to be in England, and their objections
at times appear to be as irrational as that of Oxfordians, and
probably has something to do with them not wanting a Yank
to manhandle "their" Shakespeare.
Jim
KQKnave
>Jim, by everyone's reckoning, Shakspere was a theater shareholder/sometime
>actor AND a grain merchant/moneylender.
I'm not going to waste much time arguing with this statement,
but with Shakespeare's name on numerous title pages and the
testimony of his contemporaries as a writer, not a merchant of
any kind, your statement is grossly misleading. Shakespeare
no doubt lent money, because he had money to lend, but that
does not make his occupation a money lender. He was a
theater shareholder and *principal* actor in the King's men.
That makes him much more than a *sometime* actor.
Jim
KQKnave
>>Now, if
>>W.H. is actually a code (say a substitution cipher, or even just
>>the abbreviation for personal epithet that lovers use ("my Wiggly
>>Humblebee") then I guess you could at least rationalize the
>>dedication as playful without being too revealing, but of course
>>then W.H. could mean anything, or anybody.
>
>And that is where we are, obviously. Those initials COULD be anybody. Foster
>wants them to be a typo so that they comport with his other ideas, but that
>is
>manifest nonsense. As I have mentioned before (and if Terry Ross is correct),
>the fact that the epigraph is typeset in a manner imitative of "monumental
>brasses" and "lapidary inscriptions" is a demonstration of Thorpe's care.
>Foster's belief that W.H. is a typo or some compository lapse is undermined
>by
>this.
>
The initials can't be just anybody if you want to make sense of
the epigraph. "Master W.H." is the "onlie begetter", so that limits
who he can be. Your beliefs about what is "absolute nonsense"
are most amusing considering your other thoughts on the subject.
A typo is a simple, reasonable explanation, and if we follow
Foster's explanation of the other phrases we get a simple
explanation of the meaning of the dedication - a very straightforward
dedication from the publisher to the author, with no mysteries.
Jim
KQKnave
(Clark) writes:
>In "Glass slippers and seven-league boots: C[omputer]-prompted doubts
>about ascribing A Funeral Elegy and A Lover's Complaint to
>Shakespeare", _Shakespeare Quarterly_, Summer 1997, Elliot and Valenza
>have provided pretty compelling evidence that "A Lover's Complaint"
>was not actually written by Shakespeare. And yet it's attributed to
>Shakespeare in Thorpe's 1609 edition of the sonnets.
>
Elliot and Valenza are out to lunch. As for some of the general
problems with their "research", see my other post. As far
as "A Lover's Complaint" is concerned, here is Foster's
comment on their results in his paper in Computers and
the Humanities 32, 491-510, 1999, after quoting Elliott and
Valenza's comment that they were considering purging
Henry V, Taming of the Shrew and Comedy of Errors
from their database:
"Elliott and Valenza were surely wise not to purge The
Taming of the Shrew, Henry V and A Comedy of Errors
from their Shakespeare baseline, but these texts are
not the only remaining outliers. Closer study of the
Clinic's work, including tests mistabulated or not
reported at all, reveals that the early canonical poems
also run into trouble with the Clinic's attributional
tests. In 1992-1994, Elliott and Valenza circumvented
this problem by investigating which of the so called
"Play-Validated Tests" could be included as "Poem-
Validated Tests" without having to report rejections for
Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the Sonnets.
These poems mutually survived eight of the Clinic's
"Play-Validated Tests": Grade Level, HCW's, Feminine
Endings, Open Lines, Enclitic clingers, Proclitic clingers,
With-as-penultimate word, No x 1000/No + Not, BoB5,
and BoB7 (in 1995b, 1996a, Appendix Four, 46 of the
54 "Play-Validated Tests" are thus suppressed for the
canonical poems). Next, "A Lover's Complaint" and "A
Funeral Elegy" were tested against the eight "Play-Validated"
tests that the early canonical poems were able to pass.
This procedure resulted in four rejections for "A Lover's
Complaint" and five for "A Funeral Elegy". Elliott and Valenza
neglect to mention that these two late poems pass many
of the original 54 tests for which Venus and Adonis, The
Rape of Lucrece, and the Sonnets receive "not-Shakespeare"
rejections. In attributional work this is called "stacking the
deck". When the Clinic's full battery of tests is rigorously
applied to Venus, Lucrece and the Sonnets, these canonical
poems do no better than many "Apocrypha" and "Claimant"
texts that are rejected by the Clinic's badly gerrymandered
regime."
1995a Elliot W. Letter to the author (April 3, 1995a) Unpublished
1996a Elliot, W. and R. Valenza. "And Then There Were None:
Winnowing the Shakespeare Claimants" Computers and the
Humanities, 30.3 (1996a), 1-56.
Jim
KQKnave
>
>In "Glass slippers and seven-league boots: C[omputer]-prompted doubts
>about ascribing A Funeral Elegy and A Lover's Complaint to
>Shakespeare", _Shakespeare Quarterly_, Summer 1997, Elliot and Valenza
>have provided pretty compelling evidence that "A Lover's Complaint"
>was not actually written by Shakespeare. And yet it's attributed to
>Shakespeare in Thorpe's 1609 edition of the sonnets.
>
Have you actually read this essay, or anything by Eliot and Valenza?
Their studies are a joke.
I suggest reading "The Claremont Shakespeare Authorship
Clinic: How Severe Are the Problems" in Computers and
the Humanities vol 32 pp491-510, 1999.
I also suggest reading "A Lover's Complaint".
Here are some excerpts from Foster's paper.
Square brackets are mine:
"The Claremont Shakespeare Authorship Clinic began in 1988 with
high hopes for a major discovery. By means of quantitative
text analysis, Ward Eliot and Robert Valenza hoped to locate
the "true" author of Shakespeare's poems and plays from
among 37 anti-Stratfordian "Claimants". The true Shakespeare
never panned out. By the summer of 1990, Elliot and Valenza
mutually agreed upon a conclusion that had been taken for
granted by literary scholars before the Clinic even began: none
of the "Claimants" tested by Elliott and Valenza can be credited
with the Shakespeare canon. This came as no surprise to many
of us. But despite a major research effort extending over several
years, and despite having arrived at a perfectly orthodox
conclusion, Elliott and Valenza have received scant credit from
professional Shakespeareans.
To Elliott and Valenza, trying to satisfy the Shakespeare
establishment must seem like a catch-22. When they announced
to the popular press (in April 1990) that Shakespeare's plays
and poems may actually have been written by Queen Elizabeth
(but not by Christopher Marlowe or Edward de Vere), the
announcement was met with academic ridicule. And when the
Clinic ruled out Elizabeth and Ralegh as well, the news was
met with indifference. When Elliott declared to the press that
"We are on the verge of a tremendous find - the possibility of
confirming eight new short Shakespeare poems", that
proclamation too was ignored, and the moment passed. In
June of 1994, the Claremont Shakespeare Authorship Clinic
ended, not with a bang, but a whimper.
Elliott and Valenza last year complained that even "The
leading lights of our own literature department have described
our work as...'idiocy'". Claremont's distinguished literary
scholars include Robert Faggen and Ricardo Quinones. Faggen,
who served as an advisor to the Clinic before throwing up his
hands in despair, called the project "absurd". Quinones dismissed
the Clinic as "just madness". Clearly, literary scholars can
be an unresponsive audience, even a little skeptical, when it
comes to certain kinds of quantitative text-analysis. Bloody
but unbowed, Elliot and Valenza have said that they always
offer the same "short rejoinder" to their critics: "Though this
be madness, yet there is method in't". My purpose in this
essay is not to reiterate those methodological problems
that were addressed in my previous CHum review [CHum
30, 147-155, 1996], but to show why the Shakespeare
Authorship Clinic has been dismissed as madness by
scholars who served as its literary advisors.
Elliott (a political scientist) and Valenza (a mathematician)
allege that opposition to their work has been motivated
by a "bristly nervousness in English departments" that
Shakespeare didn't really write the works ascribed to him;
or else, in my case, by a protective impulse to shield my
own work from cross-examination. These presumptions
are self-serving. The Shakespeare Clinic's results provoke
opposition because the closer one studies the testing
procedures, the more one becomes aware of arbitrary and
chaotic handling of the gathered data - not just for one or
two of the tests but for the entire endeavor. If the Clinic
has failed, then it failed despite the good will and thoughtful
advice of many scholars besides myself, most of whom,
I believe, share my sense that the Claremont project might
have counted for something, had Elliott and Valenza not
squandered the oppurtunity.
...The first obligation, of course, was to assemble a body of
Shakespearean, Apocryphal, and "Claimant" texts,
consistently edited, from which to collect normalized data.
But after compiling their text-archive, Elliot and Valenza
declined to introduce necessary controls for spelling and
orthography. A consistently edited text of the canonical
plays and poems was supplied by Word Cruncher's
electronic edition of The Riverside Shakespeare, but the
non-Shakespearean texts in the Claremont archive were
never commonized, despite urgent reminders from the
Clinic's outside literary advisors. Selective corrections
would have been just fine. Trainable student helpers
were reportedly on hand who could have commonized
only those textual features pertinent to the Clinic's
tests - but even this was not done, or at least not with
care. The commonizing of texts was long deferred and
never completed, causing tabulations to be far off the mark
even for those tests that were central to the Clinic's
success.
Elliott and Valenza have acknowledged, ever since
the Clinic's first publication, that their data depend on
inconsistently edited copytexts. The same apology was
still being offered to CHum's readers five years later.
The Clinic's electronic texts, still unedited, are now
deposited in the Oxford Electronic Text Archive, "where
they should be freely available to anyone wishing to
use them. Of course, users are free, if they wish, to re-edit
and cut the noise level to more respectable levels. That
Elliott should recommend such clean-up procedures
for others to perform on his own unedited text-archive
is incredible.
...Eliott and Valenza were advised early on that the
occurrence or omission of single words cannot rightly
be viewed as evidence for or against Shakespearean
authorship of *any* text. By way of analogy: Shakespeare
in his known writings rarely uses the words *family*(n.) or
*real*(adj.). It may be useful to observe that Shakespeare
uses these two words less frequently than many
contemporary poets (even as is may be worthwhile to
note that Shakespeare rarely uses *whenas* or *whereas*).
But the appearance or omission of *family* or *real* or
*whenas* in an Elizabethan text tells us precisely nothing
about whether or not Shakespeare wrote it. Unlike, say,
the contraction, *can't*, which was coined long after
Shakespeare's death, or possessive *its*, which first
caught on during his lifetime, *family*, *real*, *whenas*,
and *whereas* are words that were known to Shakespeare,
and that he sometimes used. To ascribe not-Shakespeare
"rejections" to the texts in which these words appear is
misguided.
This "green light/red light" strategy for distinguishing
Shakespeare from "not-Shakespeare" has nothing to
recommend it except its simplicity. Unfortunately, Elliot
and Valenza do not supply accurate figures even for this
simple test. In their irregularly edited text-sample, some
editors prefer the spelling *when as* or *where as*, a
variant that Elliot and Valenza frequently skipped in their
tabulations. This identified problem could have been
corrected with only a few hours work, either by normalizing
the Clinic's test samples and then counting by computer,
or by doing a manual recount of the variant spellings.
Elliott and Valenza's mistabulations for the "Whenas,
Whereas Test" were perpetuated from one study to
the next, but only as a result of iron indifference.
Elliott and Valenza now say that their inaccurate
tabulations for *whenas*,*whereas* should not be viewed
as a problem: if their computer-searches caught just
one instance of whenas or whereas in a text (red light!),
that text was given a "not-Shakespeare" rejection. So if
the Clinic overlooked as many as 8 instances in a single
play (e.g., Greene's *Selimus*) it should not matter, so
long as just one instance was counted and reported. But
this line of argument begs the question about those plays
and poems in which *every* occurrence was overlooked
by the Clinic - which was often the case, resulting in
many "might-be-Shakespeare" passes for plays that
do not, in fact, pass Elliott and Valenza's own test. On
this grounds the Clinic issues false passes on even to
such familiar plays as Thomas Kyd's *Spanish Tragedy*,
(containing whenas, whereas), Ben Jonson's *New Inn*
(2 whereas) and *Tale of a Tub* (1 whereas) and John
Fletcher's *Chances* (1 whenas).
Elliott and Valenza insist that their figures are
accurate for Shakespeare; however, the published
figures for Shakespeare are no more dependable than
for the "Apocrypha" and "Claimant" cross-samples.
Elliott and Valenza write that "Shakespeare uses
whereas or whenas in only two plays, 2H6 and
Cym."; the Clinic records one instance in each, though
both plays actually contain two (2H6 1.2.58 and 4.7.34;
Cym. 5.4.138 and 5.5.435) - and there are others.
Excepting the two instances of whereas at Pericles
1.2.42 and 1.4.70 (of disputed authenticity), one finds
whenas, whereas in canonical Shakespeare not only,
as Elliott and Valenza report, in 2 Henry VI and Cymbeline,
but also 1 Henry VI 1.2.84, 2.5.76 and 5.5.64; 3 Henry VI
1.2.74, 2.1.46, and 5.6.34; Comedy of Errors 4.4.136;
Titus Andronicus 4.4.92; Merry Wives of Windsor 3.1.24;
also at Venus and Adonis 999 and Sonnets 49.3.
The appearance of whenas, whereas in canonical
Shakespeare leads the Clinic into further difficulties.
The three instances of whereas in 1 Henry VI are counted,
tabulated, and cited, but Elliott and Valenza have excluded
1 Henry VI from the canon.Titus Andronicus contains one
instance of when as (spaced thus in the Clinic's own copytext).
It, too, is assigned a "not-Shakespeare" rejection, and
banished from the canon. (Titus Andronicus is one of the canonical
plays that Elliott and Valenza "purged" from the Clinic's
Shakespeare baseline in 1994, to produce more consistent
results for the "Play-Validated Tests".) Of the two instances
of whereas in 2 Henry VI, Elliott and Valenza report one (as
noted above) and conclude that 2 Henry VI may be another
doubtful or collaborative play. But the Henry VI plays and
Titus Andronicus cannot be dislodged from the canon by just
one instance of one word that Elliott and Valenza believe to
be radically un-Shakespearean; and if Titus and the Henry VI
trilogy are indeed Shakespeare's, as most scholars believe,
then this verbal behaviour is less unusual for Shakespeare,
less valuable as a discriminator, than Elliott and Valenza have
indicated. [Foster is being too kind here, in my opinion]
As I observed a moment ago, Cymbeline contains two
instances of when as. Elliott and Valenza confess as much
in a note - but on the same page, in the corresponding
pass-rejection table [CHum, 30.3, 1-56, 1996, Appendix 3 (S)]
they list just one of those two occurrences. They then make
an exception for Cymbeline, neglecting to shade and count
even that one tabulated instance in Cymbeline as a
"not-Shakespeare" rejection. Had they counted it as they
should have instead of carelessly omitting it, even this late
romance would have received a red flag from the Whenas,
Whereas Test."
Jim
KQKnave
kqk...@aol.comspamslam (KQKnave) writes:
Correction: there should be quote marks after 'levels'
Here is the corrected version:
>The Clinic's electronic texts, still unedited, are now
>deposited in the Oxford Electronic Text Archive, "where
>they should be freely available to anyone wishing to
>use them. Of course, users are free, if they wish, to re-edit
>and cut the noise level to more respectable levels." That
>Elliott should recommend such clean-up procedures
>for others to perform on his own unedited text-archive
>is incredible.
Jim
Clark
> ....anyone doubting "A Lover's Complaint"'s status
> as part of the Shakespeare canon should read the following:
> MacD. P. Jackson, "Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint: Its Date
> and Authenticity", *University of Auckland Bulletin* 72, English
> Series, 13 (1965); Kenneth Muir, "A Lover's Complaint: A
> Reconsideration", in *Shakespeare the Professional and Related
> Studies* (1973), 204-19; Elliot Slater, "Shakespeare: Word Links
> Between Poems and Plays", *Notes and Queries* 220 (1975), 157-63;
> and A. K. Hieatt, T. G. Bishop, and E. A. Nicholson, "Lover's
> Complaint, Cymbeline, and Sonnets", *Notes and Queries* 232 (1987),
> 219-24. Together, these provide what I think is a compelling case
> for Shakespeare's authorship of LC, and that case has been accepted
> by all of Shakespeare's recent editors.
True, but some of those editors still have doubts about LC. In his
Introduction to the Pelican Shakespeare volume, _Narrative Poems_
(1999 edition), Jonathan Crewe writes:
<quote>
I have included _A Lover's Complaint_ for the same reason [that it was
attributed to Shakespeare on its title page]. Although Shakespeare's
authorship of this poem remains doubtful, it was published under his
name in the 1609 edition of the sonnets.
</unquote>
And later:
<quote>
In many cases, Shakespeare's authorship is well established, yet in
others--for example, the unassignable poems in _The Passionate
Pilgrim_, and _A Lover's Complaint_--we simply can't be sure.
</unquote>
And finally:
<quote>
_A Lover's Complaint_ is a marginal poem that still resists any desire
on our part to resolve which poems are finally and definitively
Shakespearean.
</unquote>
BTW, Crewe chose to omit _A Funeral Elegy_ from the Pelican series,
writing:
<quote>
Although many Shakespeareans initially credited Foster's claim on
behalf of _A Funeral Elegy_ (so much so that the poem was included at
once in three new major editions of Shakespeare's complete works),
that attribution has subsequently been challenged, also on the basis
of computer analysis. Because of such uncertainties, and because
appropriate tests to be used in computer attribution remain under
development, both poems [_Shall I Die_ and _A Funeral Elegy_] have
been omitted here.
</unquote>
Presumably Crewe is referring to Elliot & Valenza when he mentions the
subsequent challenge on the basis of computer analysis.
So far I've been unable to find copies of Foster's various rebuttals
to the Elliot and Valenza article regarding LC and FE (though David
Kathman has kindly given me some leads), but their rebuttal to
Foster's rebuttal is posted on Elliot's web site at:
http://govt.mckenna.edu/welliott/hardball.htm
Clark
> (Clark) writes:
> >In "Glass slippers and seven-league boots: C[omputer]-prompted doubts
> >about ascribing A Funeral Elegy and A Lover's Complaint to
> >Shakespeare", _Shakespeare Quarterly_, Summer 1997, Elliot and Valenza
> >have provided pretty compelling evidence that "A Lover's Complaint"
> >was not actually written by Shakespeare. And yet it's attributed to
> >Shakespeare in Thorpe's 1609 edition of the sonnets.
> >
>
> Have you actually read this essay, or anything by Eliot and Valenza?
> Their studies are a joke.
>
> I suggest reading "The Claremont Shakespeare Authorship
> Clinic: How Severe Are the Problems" in Computers and
> the Humanities vol 32 pp491-510, 1999.
>
> I also suggest reading "A Lover's Complaint".
>
> Here are some excerpts from Foster's paper.
<snip>
Thanks for posting the excerpt, it'll save me some library time.
Have you read Elliot's & Valenza's response to Foster's criticism?
They address each of his points. An expanded version of it is on
Elliot's web site at: http://govt.mckenna.edu/welliott/hardball.htm
Personally, I'm undecided as to which side has the better case.
Elliot & Valenza lack Foster's Shakespearean credentials, but Foster
seems to be losing his objectivity and has reportedly made at least
one embarrassing mistake in attribution (the Ramsey fiasco). Tests
that would combine Foster's "green light" tests with Elliot's &
Valenza's "red light" tests would seem to be the most promising, but
there appears to be little hope that either side can work with the
other.
Perhaps Joseph Rudman best summed it up in Vol. 31, issue 4, of
_Computers and the Humanities_ when he wrote: "Results of most
non-traditional authorship attribution studies are not universally
accepted as definitive". I think that Foster, Elliot, Valenza, and
their associates are all doing valuable work. Unfortunately, computer
attribution is still in its infancy, and it looks like the egotism of
its founders may smother it in the crib.
Bob Grumman
>
> I think there are two opinions on this question:
>
> 1) The post is evidence that Bob Grumman wrote the poem.
> 2) The post is almost certainly attributed incorrectly and thus is not
> evidence for anything; therefore there is no evidence that anyone wrote
> the poem.
>
> -- Janice
Unfortunately, Grumman has no children to whom literacy tests
could be given, so we have no conclusive way of clearly determining
whether Grumman wrote the unassigned text or not.
*aul
Tom Reedy
news:5f7d2eb3.0106...@posting.google.com...
Not only that, but we have evidence that Grumman owned property and a couple
of times lent people some money, so in all probability he was a real estate
investor and a money-lender, and everyone knows those people are just barely
capable of writing their own names, much less being able to express their
feelings about events.
When someone living in the late 20th- early 21st century heard the term
"poetry," they probably thought of the graffitti written on restroom walls,
as evidenced by the term "shithouse poet." So we cannot take Grumman's story
that he was attending a "poetry camp" at face value because of lack of
corroboration and the fact that the term was ambiguous without any
contextual clues.
Grumman's attendence at a "poetry camp" was most probably a reference to a
graffitti-cleaning training session, and so we can conclude that he was not
the author of the lines in question. Since he admitted to attending the
"poetry camp," we can conclude that he most likely made his money as a
janitor before moving on to investment and money-lending opportunites. Since
most janitors did not make enough money to invest or lend out money at
interest, he probably acted as a "janitor's broker," a position in which he
would have insider knowledge about properties, and therefore be able to make
sharp deals when buying property.
Perhaps later, as he became more well-known as an agent and his business
brought him into contact with the higher elements of society, he probably
acted as a front man for people who wanted to post messages to fringe
newsgroups. Most persons of the time did not want to be associated with
newsgroups, since they were full of disreputable and moronic characters who
could not even understand the meanings of simple English words. Grumman,
however, did not have any status to lose since he was a janitor, so he could
safely act for other who were more sensitive about their reputations. One of
them must have paid Grumman to post the poem under his own name.
TR
KQKnave
(Clark) writes:
>kqk...@aol.comspamslam (KQKnave) wrote
>
>> (Clark) writes:
>> >In "Glass slippers and seven-league boots: C[omputer]-prompted doubts
>> >about ascribing A Funeral Elegy and A Lover's Complaint to
>> >Shakespeare", _Shakespeare Quarterly_, Summer 1997, Elliot and Valenza
>> >have provided pretty compelling evidence that "A Lover's Complaint"
>> >was not actually written by Shakespeare. And yet it's attributed to
>> >Shakespeare in Thorpe's 1609 edition of the sonnets.
>> >
>>
>> Have you actually read this essay, or anything by Eliot and Valenza?
>> Their studies are a joke.
>>
>> I suggest reading "The Claremont Shakespeare Authorship
>> Clinic: How Severe Are the Problems" in Computers and
>> the Humanities vol 32 pp491-510, 1999.
>>
>> I also suggest reading "A Lover's Complaint".
>>
>> Here are some excerpts from Foster's paper.
><snip>
>
>Thanks for posting the excerpt, it'll save me some library time.
>
>Have you read Elliot's & Valenza's response to Foster's criticism?
>They address each of his points. An expanded version of it is on
>Elliot's web site at: http://govt.mckenna.edu/welliott/hardball.htm
Actually, they don't address each of his points, although they
certainly produce many words. I can't believe that anyone takes
E&V seriously, but I guess I'll have to try to explain why. They are
much like Ogburn and Price, generating lots of words and hoping
that someone takes them seriously, but with very little real
content. Their responses to Foster are filled with so much nonsense that
it would take a dozen or so long posts to point them all out. Mind you,
this is just me, and all I'm doing is comparing what E&V say Foster
said to what Foster actually said, so I don't think it would be very
difficult for anyone to see the truth if they tried.
For example, E&V have this comment to say about Foster's
comments on their enclitic/proclitic nonsense:
"In his Second Response he couched his three pages of discussion in
much the same hardball language,announcing, among other things, that
we "clearly misunderstand even what it was [we] were testing" (his
1998/99, pp. 503-06). But at the end, to our surprise, he conceded the
point as to FE and A Lover’s Complaint, the only such concession he has
given us in the entire debate, and dismissed the whole
question as "much ado about nothing" (his 1998/99, p. 505)."
Now, if you read the entire passage, you will see that E&V have taken
Foster's "much ado about nothing" out of context, and that Foster
actually conceded nothing other than a weary wish to be done with
it all. This is what he actually said (CHum 32, 491-510, 1999),
with square brackets mine:
"...Elliott and Valenza have dwelt on the Clinic's "Leaning
Microphases and Clinging Monosyllables" tests (1996a, 1997,
1998). They say that I have been stubborn in not recognizing
the importance of these two tests ("Enclitics" and "Proclitics",
1996a, Appendix Six), which "worked beautifully" for the 22
of 184 text samples in Appendix 5 for which the test was
completed (1998). But Elliott and Valenza clearly misunderstand
even what it was they were testing. The authors complain that
they should not have been faulted "for getting normal Shakespeare
stress patterns 'quite simply wrong' when these were not the
point of the microphases test" (1998) - which is a little like
saying that spelling habits are not the point of a spelling test.
According to Tarlinskaja, stress patterns are *precisely* the point
of the microphases test (1987, 1993).
Tarlinskaja's theory is that certain monosyllabic modifiers
"cling" to the substantive, and retain or lose stress, causing
a slight irregularity in the iambic rhythm. It is principally in the
act of oral reading, not in the act of composition, that
monosyllables "cling" to the word following. The "Leaning
Microphases and Clinging Monosyllables" tests depend
entirely on one's scansion of the poetic line - and Tarlinskaja
is too often mistaken in her assumptions about Elizabethan
scansion, as in the Clinic's flagship example "*sweet* heart",
which is as misguided today as it was in 1993, when the
error was first pointed out to Elliott and Valenza. English
words often received different stress than they do in modern
English (e.g., as-pect', lam'-ent-able, re-ven'-ue, sweet-heart').
"My objection to the Tarlinskaja tests as administered by
Elliott and Valenza has nothing to do with *A Funeral Elegy* but
with the analysis itself. Elliott and Valenza admit themselves
unable to perform the "Leaning Microphases and Clinging
Monosyllables Test" with a high degree of accuracy. They claim
that Marina Tarlinskaja is the only person on earth who can
perform this specialized "Russian-school versometrics", and they
have repeatedly deferred to her authority (1995b, 1996a).
[Why
anyone would want to use a subjective test that can be
administered by one person only, and that person is using
"Russian-school versometrics" rather than something English-
based, to determine Shakespearean authorship in the first
place is beyond me, but that is just typical of the "Clinic". Foster
here I think is going out of his way to take this stuff seriously, when
it's almost bakerian! Foster continues:]
In 1993, after a Claremont student who was trained to do the
work evidently dropped out of the Clinic, Elliott and Valenza
enlisted Tarlinskaja herself to analyze the text of *Venus and
Adonis* and *A Funeral Elegy* (1995b, p201). As a literary
advisor to the Clinic, I was given a copy of Tarlinskaja's
complete annotations. Here are some examples of clinging
monosyllables as identified by Tarlinskaja herself (monosyllables
that are not in bold print do not cling to the succeeding word)
Sample proclitic clingers in *Venus and Adonis*:
Look how a bird LIES TANGLED in a net...
What seest thou in the ground? HOLD UP thy
head...
MAKE USE of time, let not advantage slip...
The heat I have from thence DOTH LITTLE harm...
WHAT BARE excuses mak'st thou to be gone?
Sample proclitic clingers from *A Funeral Elegy*:
CLAIM FIT respect, that they in every limb...
SO FASTENED to his reason that it strove...
May pattern out ONE TRULY good, by him...
Warrant enough in his OWN INNOCENCE...
His younger years GAVE COMFORTABLE hope...
Sample enclitic clingers in *Venus and Adonis*:
Now WHICH WAY shall she turn? What shall
she say?...
If you will SAY SO, you shall have a kiss...
Who being LOOKED ON, ducks as quickly in...
SO GLIDES he in the night from Venus' eye...
Sample enclitic clingers in *A Funeral Elegy*:
May ONE DAY| LAY OPE malice which hath
crossed...
It PICKS OUT matter to inform the worst...
My TRUTH STOLE from my tongue into my heart
...
And those are MUCH MORE noble in the mind
Tarlinskaja (1993) identifies "proud" as an enclitic
clinger at *Venus* 14 ("proud head") and as a
proclitic clinger at *Elegy* 175 ("proud height").
The following passage, which I quote here from the
original 1593 quarto of *Venus and Adonis* and
not from Tarlinskaja's modernized text, is credited
with nine clingers, all *proclitics* (see if you can
find them!):
Round hooft, short ioynted, fetlocks shag, and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostrill wide,
High crest, short eares, straight legs, & passing strong,
Thin mane, thicke taile, broad buttock, tender hide:
Looke what a Horse should haue, he did not lack,...(Ven. 295-299)
(Answer: there are three clingers in each of the middle
three lines, none in the first or last.)
As a result of the difficulties in scanning for hidden
microphases, Elliott and Valenza administered the test
to only thirteen "Claimant" and "Apocrypha" texts.
All but one of the thirteen - Marlowe and Chapman's
"Hero and Leander" - failed, generating not-Shakespeare
rejections. Results for 162 of 184 remaining samples
are unrecorded, or at least not reported (Foster, 1996b).
Elliott and Valenza report test scores for just four
Shakespeare plays, 3 Henry VI, Titus Andronicus,
Richard II, and The Tempest. The two early plays -
3 Henry VI and Titus Andronicus - repeatedly failed both types
of Leaning Microphase test (1996a, Appendix Six).
It was in 1990 that Elliot and Valenza went on record
against Shakespeare's authorship of "A Lover's Complaint" and
*A Funeral Elegy*. In 1993 Elliott and Valenza found that
their suspicions were confirmed by Tarlinskaja's analysis.
Both of these late poems are said by Elliott and Valenza to
have failed both types of Leaning Microphase test quite
miserably. I am happy to concede the point. Hardly grounds
for a spat, these arcane mysteries seem to this reviewer
much ado about nothing.
Still, in reviewing the work that she submitted to the
Clinic in 1993, I find that Tarlinskaja is much more tentative
about this material than either Elliott and Valenza, and
far less persuaded than they by its power to distinguish
Shakespeare from not-Shakespeare, as in these marginal
remarks on the Elegy, addressed to Elliott:
"*Does* look like Sh.! (p.7, FE 174 ff.)
"No, it does not look like Sh. in style, after all" (p. 17, FE 464 ff.)
"This looks like Sh., doesn't it?" (p. 20, FE 574 ff.)
As her last comment, following her work of annotating *Venus
and Adonis* and the *Elegy*, Tarlinskaja advises Elliott,
If you decide to do the stress profile and word boundaries, I
would do lines with masculine endings separate from lines
with feminine endings. One extra syllable may affect the
whole configuration. (1993)
Contrary to their latest remarks in "The Professor Doth Protest
Too Much, Methinks", Elliott and Valenza have never supplied
separate figures for masculine and feminine lines, either for
the Elegy or for the Clinic's few Shakespearean cross-samples
(the figures for which were borrowed from Tarlinskaja's original
1987 study). But since the one extra syllable of a feminine ending
can affect the whole configuration, and since most literary scholars
will share Elliott and Valenza's inability or unwillingness to compute
this test for most of the texts in their study, it may be just
as well to give the Leaning Microphase a rest."
[In other words, since the test wasn't even computed for most
of the texts in the sample, Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean,
and since the test is nearly impossible to administer in the first
place, it's all just a pile of ----.]
E&V also have this to say about Foster's opinion of 1 H6, in their
defense of their exclusion from their Shakespeare canon:
"But 1H6 and Per 1 and 2 are widely doubted as Shakespeare’s work
and were so doubted by Foster in 1987, though he seems since to
have changed his mind about 1H6. (no 1987 reference given)"
However, they give no reference for this 1987 statement by Foster,
and Foster himself accepted 1H6 at least as early as 1989, because
he uses that play in describing the characteristics of the Funeral
Elegy in his book (see for example, p96 and p102 in "Elegy by W.S.").
Foster has this to say about it in the same paper quoted above, in
footnote 12:
"The Clinic's failure to establish continuity or congruency between
early and late Shakespeare may be the Clinic's greatest liability.
That I am to blame for this problem, by having told Elliott to
exclude canonical texts from the Clinic's Shakespeare-baseline,
is a charge that puzzles me (Elliott and Valenza 1996b, 1997, 1998).
Elliott's recollection on this point is quite mistaken. I noted that
the following passages are widely considered by scholars to
be non-Shakespearean: Mac. 3.5 and 4.1.39-43, 125-32; Per. 1-2;
portions of H8, TNK and Tim.(Foster, D.W. Letter to Ward Elliott
(Advisor's reply to query about canonical Shakespeare). June 4, 1987).
I do not think that this was bad advice for the Clinic's baseline, then
or now; but the whole point of the Shakespeare Authorship
Clinic was to develop tests that can distinguish "not-Shakespeare"
from "might-be-Shakespeare." Had I actually given the Clinic
a bum steer on canonical matters in 1987 or thereafter, I would
have thought that the misdirection would emerge in the course of
research."
Typical of what appears in an E&V paper, are the following statements,
setting up a straw man to knock down by saying in their "Glass
Slippers..." paper that Foster promised some kind of "proof" that
A Funeral Elegy was by Shakespeare. Foster is no doubt well aware
that there is no such thing as "proof" in attribution studies, but E&V
nevertheless say that Foster "...promised that a formal written proof
would soon follow." and then they headed a table of points with "The
promised written proof finally appeared in October 1996, making
the following points" and then "But to say that Foster's evidence
is sophisticated and illuminating is not to say that any of his proofs
are perfect,...". What's funny about all of this is that they quote Foster
in their footnote 15 (this is the same "Glass Slippers..." paper!):
15. According to Foster, "A Funeral Elegy belongs hereafter with
Shakespeare's poems and plays, not because there is
incontrovertible proof that the man Shakespeare wrote it (there
is not) nor even because it is an aesthetically satisfying poem
(it is not), but rather because it is formed from textual and
linguistic fabric indistinguishable from that of canonical Shakespeare...."
What proof? This kind of sloppy thinking and writing is typical
of E&V in their papers. As for their writing...well, here's a sample:
"We shall resist the temptation to describe all fifty-one of our play
tests...other than to note that both FE and LC passed some of
our toughest, most glorious, and highest-tech - though still
imperfect - tests."
"Most glorious"? And I'm not sure how any of their tests could
be considered "higher-tech" than any other.
>
>Personally, I'm undecided as to which side has the better case.
It should be easy to tell. Foster's original attribution of the Funeral
Elegy was made by using traditional methods of attribution, without
a computer, with some computer word-counts thrown in. The fact
that E&V have muddied the water with their ridiculous methods
and assertions should have no long term effect on what he has done,
but the credulous will always be swayed.
>Elliot & Valenza lack Foster's Shakespearean credentials, but Foster
>seems to be losing his objectivity
It seems to me that Foster has remained quite objective in the face
of the bullshit generated by E&V.
>and has reportedly made at least
>one embarrassing mistake in attribution (the Ramsey fiasco).
Here is what Foster himself said about it in his book, "Author
Unknown":
"The JonBenet Ramsey homicide investigation, a difficult and
painful business for everyone associated with it, produced an
early bump in my learning curve. In 1997, when moving from
tragic denouments to actual homicides, and from Stratford-upon-
Avon to Quantico, it was perhaps inevitable that I should make
a mistake, and I did. In June 1997, seven months before I
was retained by the Boulder Police Department, before any
case documents were available to me, I privately speculated
with other observers concerning the Ramsey homicide, and
actually took an uninvited and (as I would learn) unwelcome
initiative to assist John and Patsy Ramsey, by private letter.
At the time I knew virtually nothing about "true crime forums"
and "online chatrooms", but was directed by others to
despicable activity on the Internet by "jameson," an individual
whose months-long obsession with the details of the killing
of JonBenet - ascribed by jameson to a Colorado University
friend of the older Ramsey boy - was too vile in its
voyeuristic description to be a prank, too well informed to
be madness, too full of seeming relevance to be ignored.
[Foster should have hung around here and listened to baker
for awhile!]
Competent and dedicated detectives, though much maligned
in the press, were investigating the slaying of a child. As I
later learned, the police had already investigated and dismissed
jameson as a "code six wingnut," a phrase I had not heard
before but one that I would soon come to appreciate. I regret the
mistakes of intruding so quickly. That beginner's mistake impressed
upon me a sense of limit when venturing from the safe world of
academic debate into the minefield of criminal investigation.
In January 1997, when brought onboard by the Boulder police,
I took the lesson to heart, started over, and did the best I could,
for justice and for JonBenet. Though I am bound by a confidentiality
agreement not to discuss the investigation or court proceedings,
I do stand by the statements that I have made for the record
regarding that case and believe that the truth will eventually
prevail."
>Tests
>that would combine Foster's "green light" tests with Elliot's &
>Valenza's "red light" tests would seem to be the most promising,
To be honest Clark, I don't think you know what you're talking about.
>but
>there appears to be little hope that either side can work with the
>other.
Not surprising, given E&V's rather egregious dishonesty.
>
>Perhaps Joseph Rudman best summed it up in Vol. 31, issue 4, of
>_Computers and the Humanities_ when he wrote: "Results of most
>non-traditional authorship attribution studies are not universally
>accepted as definitive".
Wow, that's insight for you! I don't think they are definitive either,
but when you combine them with traditional attributional methods,
such as actually reading the text in question (I wonder how much
of Shakespeare E&V have actually read...) they are certainly
helpful. However, E&V's confused thinking (I urge anyone to read
their papers) has only served to put doubt in the minds of those
who think that all computer text analyses are created equal.
>I think that Foster, Elliot, Valenza, and
>their associates are all doing valuable work. Unfortunately, computer
>attribution is still in its infancy, and it looks like the egotism of
>its founders may smother it in the crib.
The only egotism I see is in E&V ("most glorious" indeed). Have you
sat down and read Foster's papers and book on the Elegy? He is
balanced and fair to a fault, in fact most of the objections to the
Elegy were pointed out by he himself in his book.
Jim
Bob Grumman
> >deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
> >mentally defective?
> >
>
>
> I have repeatedly demonstrated that a title attribution
> in the absence of corroborating evidence is not proof of
> authorship.
What???!!! You mean if I published HAMLET with my name on
the title-page, it would not PROVE I wrote it?!! Damn!
Bob G.
Bob Grumman
> >plays is s "sign that his vocation was writing," Toby? Do you
> >deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
> >mentally defective?
> >
>
> Bob:
>
> I have repeatedly demonstrated that a title attribution
> in the absence of corroborating evidence is not proof of
> authorship.
Pat, can you answer the questions I asked Toby? Do you
know what the difference is between evidence and proof?
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
> >plays is s "sign that his vocation was writing," Toby? Do you
> >deny that it is proper to describe one who denies that as
> >mentally defective?
> >
>
> Bob:
>
> I have repeatedly demonstrated that a title attribution
> in the absence of corroborating evidence is not proof of
> authorship.
Right, Pat--and repeatedly failed to demonstrate that
title attribution is not strong evidence of authorship.
As for corroborating evidence, just what do you think the
First Folio is, so far as the names on the quarto editions
of Shakespeare's plays? Do you deny that it is corroborating
evidence. (Yes, Pat, I know that it is not "contemporary" evidence
though, for the sane, it is personal first-person literary
testimony.) How about the corroboration of Meres for 12 of
Shakespeare's plays? How about the corroboration of others for
various Shakespeare plays? How about the corroboration of the
Stationer's register for many of the plays? How about Jonson's
corroborating personal testimony about Julius Caesar?
There's much more, of course.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
> take Elizabethan title page attributions at face
> value.
>
> Pat Dooley
Who does? On the other hand, one has to be severely
rigidnikal to refuse to give any Elizabethan title
page attribution ANY value. By the way, when are you
or Hadrian going to give me an example of a published
Elizabethan play whose title-page attributes the play
to a known non-writer? Do you not see that if, as it
appears, every such attribution was to a writer, that
Locrine's title-page is strong evidence that Shakespeare
was a writer?
--Bob G.
Okay Fine
Bob,
I was looking forward to an answer to my question. Is Mark Twain's name
on a title page evidence of his authorship?
Thanks, man. Really need your input.
OF.
Bob Grumman
only thing missing is an obviously faked monument in his
hometown. But he's not completely dead yet, so that
may come. Which leaves just the question of whom
Grumman is fronting for. All the wailing that "Grumman"
does points to the Prince of Wales; on the other hand,
the official reports of Lady Diana's death makes her also
a very strong candidate.
--*ohn *aker
Symposium1
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) writes:
>Unfortunately, Grumman has no children to whom literacy tests
>could be given, so we have no conclusive way of clearly determining
>whether Grumman wrote the unassigned text or not.
Yes, well, too bad Shakespeare didn't post his works to the Internet under a
certain domain name, which can be identified from the headers. That would, at
least, be something new!
--Ann
Greg Reynolds
Bob Grumman wrote:
Happy Fadda's Day anyway, B*b!
Greg Reynolds
Clark
> (Clark) writes:
<snip>
> >Personally, I'm undecided as to which side has the better case.
>
> It should be easy to tell. Foster's original attribution of the Funeral
> Elegy was made by using traditional methods of attribution, without
> a computer, with some computer word-counts thrown in. The fact
> that E&V have muddied the water with their ridiculous methods
> and assertions should have no long term effect on what he has done,
> but the credulous will always be swayed.
And other scholars and editors, using "traditional methods of
attribution" disagree with him, even after he reported his findings.
Nor does it please me to have you imply that I belong with the
"credulous", especially since I haven't been swayed one way or the
other, as yet.
> >Elliot & Valenza lack Foster's Shakespearean credentials, but Foster
> >seems to be losing his objectivity
>
> It seems to me that Foster has remained quite objective in the face
> of the bullshit generated by E&V.
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps Foster's use of "idiocy", "madness",
and "foul vapor" in his responses to E&V are signs of his objectivity.
But they don't strike me that way.
See below for more on the Ramsey case.
> >Tests
> >that would combine Foster's "green light" tests with Elliot's &
> >Valenza's "red light" tests would seem to be the most promising,
>
> To be honest Clark, I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Well, not as much as you think you do, obviously. But I'm merely
agreeing with what Rudman and other writers have said. To paraphrase
E&V, a test that shows "could be" Shakespeare would not seem to be as
reliable as tests that look for both "could be" indicators and "could
not be" indicators. I'm relying a bit on E&V's version of events, but
they are saying that Foster mainly tests for "could be" indicators.
If this is true, couldn't his tests lead to false positives? Someone
consciously imitating Shakespeare's style, for instance, would score
high on "could be" indicators, but may still leave enough evidence of
his own writing style to show that he wasn't Shakespeare--if you look
for it.
For example, part of my job is doing technical writing (laws, rules,
policies, bill analysis, white papers, etc.). I also write letters
and papers in the name of the Director of my Department and his
various assistants, as well as for my own signature. I use one style
when drafting legislation, another style for writing white papers, my
personal (though somewhat more formal) style when I'm writing
correspondence under my name, and I imitate the style of the Director
when I write correspondence for his signature. Someone analyzing a
letter that I wrote for the Director may find a number of indicators
that he wrote it, because I was consciously imitating his style. But
someone looking for differences would find phrases that the Director
never uses, because they are ones that are unique to me.
BTW, you haven't mentioned it, but E&V said in their article that
Brian Vickers has attributed _A Funeral Elegy_ to Ford. They said
that some of their tests find a greater likelihood for Ford to have
written FE than Shakespeare. Do you know if Foster has compared FE to
Ford's writings? If so, what did he find?
> >but
> >there appears to be little hope that either side can work with the
> >other.
>
> Not surprising, given E&V's rather egregious dishonesty.
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps E&V are lying through their teeth with
every word they say about Foster. For example, Foster says that E&V
have not taken sample size into consideration. E&V say "[w]e
scrupulously separated our 14 tests that worked on 3,000-word poem
blocks from our 51 tests that worked on 20,000-word play blocks
because any block-and-profile test like ours, or his (1989, pp.
148-153), is sensitive to block size." Either Foster is mistaken or
E&V are lying. Whichever it is should be easily verifiable.
Similarly, Foster says that E&V have not edited their texts. E&V
pointed out that this is no longer true. In a later article, Foster
makes the same charge. Either Foster is mistaken or E&V are lying and
they've never edited their texts. That should be verifiable.
E&V have said that Foster edited FE to make the sentences longer,
thereby changing the grade level ["It is quite another to reedit
aggressively ourselves, as Foster did with the Elegy, raising its
average sentence length by 44 percent, more than doubling its
percentage of enjambed lines, and then tell the world that its long
sentences and resultant high rate of enjambment are sure signs that
Shakespeare must have written it (our 1997, pp. 203-06)"].
If a comparison between the original version of FE and Foster's
version shows this to be untrue, then we can verify that E&V are
lying. If what they say is true, however, Foster may have biased his
results. If you have access to both texts, perhaps you can let us
know which is true.
And I do find it misleading when you say that E&V have excluded some
of Shakespeare's plays from the canon, as they do no such thing.
They've excluded some of Shakespeare's plays from the core texts in
their database, but only those that have been identified as possibly
being collaborations (and quibbling about Foster's attribution of 1H6
aside, that play has been identified by some commentators as not being
entirely by Shakespeare). They are not saying that Shakespeare didn't
have a hand in writing those plays, they are saying that we can't be
sure which parts are his and which parts belong to other authors.
Perhaps you'll disagree, but if you are building a database of
Shakespeare's works to use in authorship attribution studies, it would
seem to be a good idea to exclude writings that may not be uniquely
his.
There's nothing in the printing history of "Henry VIII" to indicate
that Shakespeare shared authorship with Fletcher, but nearly all
scholars and editors believe this to be true. Why compromise your
database by including a play where portions of the text may not be by
Shakespeare? Please explain to me why you think this procedure is
ridiculous or irresponsible.
> >
> >Perhaps Joseph Rudman best summed it up in Vol. 31, issue 4, of
> >_Computers and the Humanities_ when he wrote: "Results of most
> >non-traditional authorship attribution studies are not universally
> >accepted as definitive".
>
> Wow, that's insight for you! I don't think they are definitive either,
> but when you combine them with traditional attributional methods,
> such as actually reading the text in question (I wonder how much
> of Shakespeare E&V have actually read...) they are certainly
> helpful. However, E&V's confused thinking (I urge anyone to read
> their papers) has only served to put doubt in the minds of those
> who think that all computer text analyses are created equal.
Have you read Rudman's article? Or are you just dismissing it based
on my one-line quote from his premise? If you've read it, do you
disagree with his suggestions for improving computer attribution
studies (including Foster's)? If you haven't read it, why should I
believe that you know what you're talking about here? And while not
all computer text analyses may be created equal (that's insight for
you!), that doesn't mean that Foster's is unerring.
And what do you do when "traditional attributional methods" result in
different opinions regarding authorship? Using traditional methods,
Foster thinks Shakespeare wrote FE. Using traditional methods,
Vickers thinks Ford wrote it. Vickers appears to be quite familiar
with Shakespeare's text (as a search of his published articles on
Proquest would suggest). So combining Foster's computer attribution
with Vickers traditional methods tells you nothing. If there is no
subjectivity in Foster's traditional attribution work, why did he come
up with a different conclusion using traditional methods than Vickers
did?
> >I think that Foster, Elliot, Valenza, and
> >their associates are all doing valuable work. Unfortunately, computer
> >attribution is still in its infancy, and it looks like the egotism of
> >its founders may smother it in the crib.
>
> The only egotism I see is in E&V ("most glorious" indeed). Have you
> sat down and read Foster's papers and book on the Elegy? He is
> balanced and fair to a fault, in fact most of the objections to the
> Elegy were pointed out by he himself in his book.
Oh? I think there's plenty of egotism to go around. Foster may be
"balanced and fair" in his book, but some of his statements in the
CHum "debate" border on the apoplectic. And here's what Adam Liptak
wrote in "The New York Times Book Review" of Foster in his review of
"Author Unknown" (11/26/2000):
<quote>
According to The Rocky Mountain News and the Ramseys' attorneys, this
is what Foster wrote to Patsy Ramsey: "I know you are innocent - know
it absolutely and unequivocally. I will stake my professional
reputation on it, indeed my faith in humanity." The style of the
author of "Author Unknown" and the letter's unknown author match up
nicely. They share a distinctive clipped syntax, quirky staccato
jumps, a first-person swagger, a welcome absence of academic language,
a would-be player's eagerness and, most of all, a stone certainty. On
the textual evidence alone, then, it would seem that the letter to
Patsy Ramsey was written by Don Foster.
</unquote>
Liptak's "first-person swagger" and "stone certainty" suggest to me
that he thinks there is at least a hint of egotism in the remarks
attributed to Foster, as does Foster's staking "his professional
reputation" on anything--especially if his "unequivocal" certainty was
based on such a limited sample size as the note, and where whoever
wrote the note apparently took pains to disguise their authorship.
But to be fair, I don't know that the report of what Foster wrote to
the Ramseys is true. Nor do I know that any part of what E&V wrote
about Foster was true. But Foster has made some claims regarding the
work at the "Clinic" that E&V report as being untrue. Either Foster
is mistaken (or lying), or E&V are lying. I'm not in a position to
judge, though it seems that you believe yourself to be.
To me both parties seem to be troubled by overweening egos. Something
unfortunately shared by too many of us here on HLAS.
Peter Farey
>
> Pat Dooley wrote:
> >
> > Actually, one would have to a little credulous to
> > take Elizabethan title page attributions at face
> > value.
>
> rigidnikal to refuse to give any Elizabethan title
> page attribution ANY value. By the way, when are you
> or Hadrian going to give me an example of a published
> Elizabethan play whose title-page attributes the play
> to a known non-writer? Do you not see that if, as it
> appears, every such attribution was to a writer, that
> Locrine's title-page is strong evidence that Shakespeare
> was a writer?
"Newly set foorth, ouerseene and corrected, By VV.S."
sounds more like an editor than a writer to me.
Peter F.
pet...@rey.prestel.co.uk
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/index.htm
Peter Farey
>
> In the real world, if you don't want to reveal something, you
> don't reveal it. Comprende?
>
> with the correct titles (see the online editions of various
> works at Renascence) and non-nobles with "Mr.", and
> especially if the *same* epistler does this (see Thorpe's
> other dedications), then it is assumed that when this
> same epistler uses "Mr.", he means "Mr." It's really
> that simple.
>
> planets there are around epsilon eridani, we say
> about 10, because our star is similar to epsilon
> eridani and our star has about 10 planets. We
> don't estimate 1, or 100.
In the real world, things are not always what they seem.