Farey on The Monument

[Paul Crowley]

Peter Farey's recent article on the monument at
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.ie/ raises some
interesting points -- not that he sees them himself.

The first is why did Robert Harley (who was, in effect,
the first 'Prime Minister' of Britain) take the title of
'Earl of Oxford'? It was the 'second creation' of the title,
in 1711 with the 'first creation' dying out only eight years
earlier in 1703 with the death of the 20th Earl.

Robert Harley's connection to the ancient family of
the De Veres was remote in the extreme, and he
took the title of 'Earl of Mortimer' as well, in case his
claim to the Earldom of Oxford was subsequently
challenged.

" . . .Robert Harley (1661 � 1724) 1st Earl of Oxford and
Earl Mortimer, . . born in Bow Street, London in 1661, the
eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, a prominent landowner in
Herefordshire and son of Sir Robert Harley and his third
wife, the celebrated letter-writer Brilliana, Lady Harley. . . "

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Earl_Mortimer)

" . . . Sir Robert's first wife was Anne . . . His third wife
was Brilliana . . . . .daughter of Edward, Vicount
Conway, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of
Todington, county Gloucester, and sister to Mary, wife
of the celebrated General Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere, of
Tilbury (by which alliance the Harley's became
connected with the Vere's, Earls of Oxford, Earls of
Clare, and other ancient families). . . . "

(http://www.dianneelizabeth.com/Surname/Harley/earl_of_oxford.html)

But Robert Harley was immensely literary, as was
his son, Edward, the 2nd Earl.
"Harley's importance to literature cannot be overstated"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Earl_Mortimer

If anyone between 1680 and 1740 knew what was
going on, in matters literary and political and especially
on any overlap, it would have included the Harleys.

We know that some people were fully aware of the
cover-up, since in 1709 Nicholas Rowe published his
account of what he had been told about the Shake-
speare's acting:

" . . . and tho' I have inquir'd, I could never meet with
any further Account of him this way, than that the top
of his Performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet."

Rowe did not grasp that his leg was being pulled.
The members of the Scriblerus club must have been
rolling around on the floor, helpless with laughter, at
the idiocy of the middle-class 'intellectuals" -- much
as their predecessors had been around 100 years
earlier when they saw that the common people were
taking the name of "Will Shake-speare" as genuine --
even when it contained the hyphen!


Farey's article is on the likelihood of changes being
made to the Shakespeare monument in Stratford-
upon-Avon church:

"Unfortunately, there is no record whatsoever of such work
being undertaken, and in any case, would it not be reasonable
to ask the simple question of why they would have found it
necessary to make all of these very expensive changes?"

This question is reasonable, given Stratfordian (or
quasi-Stratfordian) assumptions. But, given an
Oxfordian scenario, it is far from so.

The expense would be as nothing to someone with
the resources available to a person like Harley, and
Oxfordians believe (or should believe) that people
like Harley were involved from the beginning of the
cover-up and for the next few generations.

Why would they have found such changes 'necessary'?
(Farey's word here, but better replaced with 'desirable').
As a quasi-Strat, Farey fails to grasp the essential
purposes of the monument. It had a principal one: --
to provide something fairly nominal for the supposed
Great Bard. No one wanted to see a campaign for the
illiterate stooge to be re-buried in Westminster Abbey,
so some kind of 'monument' was necessary in
Stratford.

Its second purpose was to avoid trouble (or too many
awkward questions) from locals, who had known the
family -- and who would have been aware of some facts
for sure -- that neither the father nor the son could have
written a sentence. For them, the monument was
(almost certainly) supposedly for the father John
Shacksber, and paid for by his 'London friends' to
whom he had supposedly rendered good services way
back in the 1550s or 1560s. The image of the severe
wool-master (who would have had little idea how to
hold a pen) was meant for them. But, over time, it
came to seem less and less appropriate for those who
arrived looking for a memorial to the poet, and by then
all the locals who had known the family had died off,
So it became possible, and it was desirable, to change
the monument to portray the asinine pen-wielding
"pork butcher", who used a cushion as a writing desk.

But how, according to Farey, did Dugdale get this
engraving (produced by Wenceslaus Hollar) of the
monument so wrong? Farey's answer here is (to
paraphrase) 'sheer carelessness'. That answer might
have some plausibility if Dugdale could be shown to
be similarly careless in the rest of his work or in his
other works. But not so. He was famously careful
and usually accurate. Secondly, the etching of the
monument is quite distinctive. It was not something
that is likely to have been produced by accident.
Possibly there was a funerary monument to some
other wool-merchant, which somehow got confused
with that for Shaksper, but that would seem highly
improbable.

The 1737 sketch by George Vertue of Edward Harley,
2nd Earl of Oxford, standing in front of the monument
is also quite peculiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vertue_monument_sketch001.jpg

The Earl is shown standing on a grave (probably
meant to be that of Shagsber's wife, Anne). with his
back to the viewer and to Shackspere's own grave.
His left foot is raised so that only the toe touches
the ground and his left arm is extended in a
quizzical manner -- as though he is saying "What
the fu . . . . is all this about?"

Clearly no admiration or respect is intended.
Although,neither are any negative attitudes made
transparent. But then the public of the day would
not have found their expression acceptable.


Paul.

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

On Sep 5, 1:16 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> Peter Farey's recent article on the monument athttp://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.ie/raises some

> interesting points -- not that he sees them himself.
>
> The first is why did Robert Harley (who was, in effect,
> the first 'Prime Minister' of Britain) take the title of
> 'Earl of Oxford'? It was the 'second creation' of the title,
> in 1711 with the 'first creation' dying out only eight
> years earlier in 1703 with the death of the 20th Earl.
>
> Robert Harley's connection to the ancient family of
> the De Veres was remote in the extreme, and he
> took the title of 'Earl of Mortimer' as well,
> in case his claim to the Earldom of Oxford
> was subsequently challenged.
>

> " . . .Robert Harley (1661 – 1724) 1st Earl of Oxford and

> Earl Mortimer, . . born in Bow Street, London in 1661, the
> eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, a prominent landowner in
> Herefordshire and son of Sir Robert Harley and his third
> wife, the celebrated letter-writer Brilliana, Lady Harley. . . "
>

> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Ea...)
>
> " ... Sir Robert's first wife was Anne ... His third wife

> was Brilliana . . . . .daughter of Edward, Vicount
> Conway, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of
> Todington, county Gloucester, and sister to Mary, wife
> of the celebrated General Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere,
> of Tilbury (by which alliance the Harley's became
> connected with the Vere's, Earls of Oxford, Earls
> of Clare, and other ancient families). . . . "
>
> (http://www.dianneelizabeth.com/Surname/Harley/earl_of_oxford.html)
>
> But Robert Harley was immensely literary, as was
> his son, Edward, the 2nd Earl.

> "Harley's importance to literature cannot be overstated
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Ea...

>
> If anyone between 1680 and 1740 knew what was going on,
> in matters literary and political and especially
> on any overlap, it would have included the Harleys.

.....................................................

> The 1737 sketch by George Vertue of Edward Harley,
> 2nd Earl of Oxford, standing in front of the monument
> is also quite peculiar.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vertue_monument_sketch001.jpg
>
> The Earl is shown standing on a grave (probably
> meant to be that of Shagsber's wife, Anne).

The Earl is shown standing on a grave

(probably meant to be that of Harley's own wife).
--------------------------------------------
<<On August 6, 1623 Shakespeare's widow died at New Place at the age
of 67. According to the clerk interviewed by Mr. Dowdall, Anne "did
Earnestly Desire to be Layd in the same Graue" with her husband.

But in view of the warning verses on the grave, the sexton did not
dare to open the grave,
and *Anne was buried in the churchyard* .

- Mark Eccles and C.C. Stopes,
_Shakespeare's Family_ (1901)>>
--------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliana,_Lady_Harley

<<Brilliana, Lady Harley (1598 – 29 October 1643), née Brilliana
Conway, was a celebrated English letter-writer. Brilliana (so named
from Brill near Rotterdam in the Netherlands, of which her father was
governor at the time of her ladyship's birth) was daughter of Edward,

Vicount Conway, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of Todington,
county Gloucester, and sister to Mary, wife of the celebrated General
Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere, of Tilbury (by which alliance the Harley's
became connected with the Vere's, Earls of Oxford, Earls of Clare, and
other ancient families).

She married (as his fourth wife), Sir Robert Harley in 1623, who
served as her father's aide in the Parliament of England, while her
father was Secretary of State of England. Some of Lady Harley's 375
letters to her husband and her son Sir Edward Harley survive and show
her to be an educated literary woman, at home in several languages.
She was able to keep her husband informed of local political affairs
when he was absent from home at Brampton Bryan in northwest
Herefordshire, attending Parliament or for other reasons, and
organised the collection on information locally for the Parliamentary
Committee on Scandalous Ministers. She was deeply religious, and her
letters frequently repeat religious sentiments and encouraged her
family in their chosen Puritan practices. The letters also contain
passages relating to personal details of their family life.

Brilliana's Puritanism had its origins in her own family background.
She had spent her earliest years in the Netherlands and the Earl of
Clarendon influenced Brilliana's cousin, Anne Vere, whose father, Sir
Horace, succeeded his brother, Sir Francis, as governor of the Brill,
in the Netherlands. In 1637 Anne married Sir Thomas Fairfax, the
Commander-in-Chief of the parliamentarian army from 1645-1650.

During the English Civil War, in the absence of her husband and sons,
Lady Harley defended her home, Brampton Bryan Castle during a seven
week siege by Royalist troops until the troops withdrew because they
were needed at Gloucester. She then compelled her tenants to level the
Royalist siege earthworks. She also dispatched 40 troops to raid a
local Royalist camp at Knighton.>>
--------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

[marco]

>But Robert Harley was immensely literary, as was
>his son, Edward, the 2nd Earl.
>"Harley's importance to literature cannot be overstated"

this is all just theory, since there were no authors in 1600,
only "theoretical" authors

>We know that some people were fully aware of the
>cover-up, since in 1709 Nicholas Rowe published his
>account of what he had been told about the Shake-
>speare's acting:

let me get this straight, by some people,
100 years after the fact, Nicholas was told this.
So, he was "selling" something,
and what would make an interesting story?
Not necessarily the facts.

Middle class people are idiots, Sir Paul?
I wish I had time to read more of this idiocy.

marc

[tom....@gmail.com]

Now there's a rarity in authorship discussions: Crowley and Art--one bat-shit crazy following another.

TR

[David L. Webb]

In article <3b88e8a2-752c-4abe...@googlegroups.com>,

tom....@gmail.com wrote:

> Now there's a rarity in authorship discussions: Crowley and Art--one bat-shit
> crazy following another.

Art is but mad in Craft.

> TR

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 5, 1:16 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:

> Peter Farey's recent article on the monument athttp://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.ie/raises some

> interesting points -- not that he sees them himself.
>
> The first is why did Robert Harley (who was, in effect,
> the first 'Prime Minister' of Britain) take the title of
> 'Earl of Oxford'? It was the 'second creation' of the title,
> in 1711 with the 'first creation' dying out only eight years
> earlier in 1703 with the death of the 20th Earl.
>
> Robert Harley's connection to the ancient family of
> the De Veres was remote in the extreme, and he
> took the title of 'Earl of Mortimer' as well, in case his
> claim to the Earldom of Oxford was subsequently
> challenged.
>

> " . . .Robert Harley (1661 – 1724) 1st Earl of Oxford and

> Earl Mortimer, . . born in Bow Street, London in 1661, the
> eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, a prominent landowner in
> Herefordshire and son of Sir Robert Harley and his third
> wife, the celebrated letter-writer Brilliana, Lady Harley. . . "
>

> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Ea...)

>
> " . . . Sir Robert's first wife was Anne . . . His third wife
> was Brilliana . . . . .daughter of Edward, Vicount
> Conway, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of
> Todington, county Gloucester, and sister to Mary, wife
> of the celebrated General Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere, of
> Tilbury (by which alliance the Harley's became
> connected with the Vere's, Earls of Oxford, Earls of
> Clare, and other ancient families). . . . "
>
> (http://www.dianneelizabeth.com/Surname/Harley/earl_of_oxford.html)
>
> But Robert Harley was immensely literary, as was
> his son, Edward, the 2nd Earl.

> "Harley's importance to literature cannot be overstated"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Ea...

No, he actually was not.

From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):

"Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which is afoot
has attempted to upset the authenticity of the bust and monument as we
know them, on the slender basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in
Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, and the irresponsible
imitations of it; and secondly, of certain repairs made in 1748; and
the error has been so widely repeated and seized upon, both by the
unwary and by the Shakespeare-haters that I must ask to be allowed a
moment or two in which to remove the misconception.

In 1656 Sir William Dugdale published his great Warwickshire, which
was declared to be his masterpiece (up to that time) and to stand at
the head of all our county histories; and Dr. Whitaker reminded his
readers that Dugdale's "scrupulous accuracy ranked as legal
evidence."

Personally, on many points on which I have consulted Dugdale, both
text and illustrations -- I have found him inaccurate on simple
matters of fact. Not only does he assert that Combe's monument, close
by, is of alabaster whereas it is of sandstone, but, among other
things, he transcribes inaccurately as to spelling the inscriptions on
Shakespeare's monument and gravestone, and on the gravestones of the
Shakespeare family in the chancel of the church.

Dr. William Thomas edited the second edition of the Warwickshire in
1730, and complained that he found to his "great surprise (when his
own work was finished) that the account which Sir William Dugdale had
given [of certain parishes] was very imperfect" -- that a register was
confused, another wholly omitted, others reversed, also epitaphs and
coats-of-arms in churches passed over; but he excuses Dugdale by
saying that they were done by persons he hired "who took them down as
they pleased themselves to spare their own pains." That is to say,
Dugdale was at the mercy of his assistants. And in 1730 a vitriolic
book of 250 pages was published by Charles Hornby violently attacking
Dugdale's very numerous mistakes in his Baronage of England (1675-6, 3
volumes).

Could it well have been otherwise? The amazingly industrious Dugdale
was the busiest of writers and compilers, and great works --
monumental works -- stiff with facts, figures, lists, and so forth,
came from him in quick succession. In 1656, with the help of Sir Symon
Archer, appeared his Antiquities of Warwickshire with 812 folio pages.
In 1655 -- a year before -- had appeared the first volume of his
tremendous Monasticon Anglicanum with 1,150 folio pages -- the book
which was accepted as "circumstantial evidence in the Courts." Only
two years later was published his great History of St. Paul's
Cathedral [with its ludicrous discrepancies, as to its measurements,
between himself and his illustrator Hollar] [note 1] -- all these
works with many plates -- and in 1662 another important work, History
of Imbanking and Drainage, followed four years afterwards by Origines
Juridiciales, and another great folio. Rarely, if ever, has such a
series of works -- packed with records and details, facts, dates,
names, armorial shields, inscriptions, and the like -- the result of
wide and deep research and amazing industry -- fallen from one pen, or
one editorship, in the course of ten years. The Monasticon is full of
engraved plates, most of them of cathedrals and churches, many
grotesquely false, as for example, those in which Exeter and York
Cathedrals are shown with semicircular-headed windows and doors
instead of Gothic, proportions incorrect, and kindred
misrepresentations in others. Are we to take these plates as evidence
that the Cathedrals have been endowed with a different order of
architecture since the plates were published?

The fact is that Dugdale, who concentrated his attention mainly on
armorial bearings and monuments and cared little for portrait-busts
and architecture, was victimized both by his helpers and his artists,
at the head of whom was Hollar, with his assistants Gaywood, Daniel
King (whom Hollar himself called "an ignorant silly knave"), Dudley,
Carter, and several more. Hollar, whom Dugdale invited to England on a
second visit in 1652, has been undeservedly vaunted, as much as
Dugdale, for his invariable fidelity and accuracy. Infallibility was
claimed for him. Walpole said "he had no rival in point of truth to
nature and art," and Gilpin alluded to "his great truth" and "exact
reproduction." But truthful as he was in still-life subjects and
certain topographical plates, Hollar was as fallible as his employer,
and as hard-worked. [note 2] As diligent as Dugdale, he was the
busiest of artists. He is credited with 2,400 plates (many large and
elaborate), or forty-eight plates a year -- about one a week, for
fifty years; he was so busy that he cared not much more for
troublesome accuracy than others of his time and class -- who cared
next to nothing. In 1644 the Mercurius Civicus (the first English
illustrated paper) gave a portrait in four successive weekly numbers
of Prince Maurice, Prince Rupert, the Marquess of Newcastle, and Sir
Thomas Fairfax -- and it was the same portrait each time, and nothing
changed but the name; so that "near enough" was the motto of the time.
[note 3] For the plates to this Monasticon and other works, the
artists would make rough sketches and written notes, or use another
man's, and, returned to London -- on such occasions as they left it --
work all up together at home as best they could -- from memory
sometimes, as there is ample evidence -- confusing parts, and even
monuments and Orders of architecture. They could not be expected to be
more accurate than Dugdale himself.

Now Hollar was the chief engraver of the Warwickshire; and as the
Shakespeare monument we know does not agree with the plate in Dugdale,
it has been innocently assumed and asserted as fact by persons
unfamiliar with the ways of the earlier engravers, that the Stratford
monument as we know it, and as it is here before us, is another, a
different, monument and not the original -- inasmuch as the
proportions, as well as the details, are wholly different, and the
bust presents no similarity whatsoever. This belief pathetically
recalls the peasant's faith in the printed word because it is "in the
papers."

Very well. Let me produce some further evidence. Most of us know the
statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, of 1633, looking towards
Whitehall, with its splendid contemporary base (wrongly attributed to
Grintling Gibbons -- it was carved by Joshua Marshall). The king holds
his baton in his right hand, and the horse, his head turned aside,
holds up his right fore-leg. Now, in Hollar's engraving of it the
pedestal is unrecognizable; the King still holds his baton in his
right hand, but the horse, with his head straight forward, holds up
his left fore-leg instead of the right. Therefore, according to modern
reasoning this whole monument must be new; the pedestal as well -- for
this, without decoration, is only half the height, though in plan it
is fairly correct. It is clearly meant for the pedestal. As it
happens, however, certain contemporaries of Hollar show the monument
correctly. But Dugdale was a Warwickshire man, and had great pride in
Shakespeare (as his book shows), so that, it is suggested, he would
take pains to have the monument and effigy correctly drawn -- more
especially, we are told, as all the monuments in Stratford Church
except Shakespeare's are rendered with accuracy. As a matter of fact,
only two others in the church were engraved, both of them faultily --
one of them grotesquely so.

The first of these is the Clopton monument. You see the attitudes of
the small figures on the frieze representing Clopton's children, and
below the figure of the knight beside his wife, his head resting on
his helmet, the crest of which is away from us, and the opening
towards us. In the Dugdale plate the helmet is reversed, although it
is carved out of one piece of alabaster with the figure; and the
gauntlet beside the knight's leg, into which the scabbard disappears,
is omitted altogether. There are other striking differences. It is
clear that the sketches taken in Stratford were insufficient to
provide for a correct plate to be engraved later on in London,
supposing that accuracy was sincerely desired.

Far more reckless are the errors to be found in the Carew monument.
Here the lady lies on the outside, the husband inside. We note the
angels standing upon the projecting cornices at the sides; the
horizontal shape of all the three panels bearing inscriptions and of
the frieze at the bottom -- powder-barrels to the left; and to the
right, cannon pointing to the right --in allusion to Carew being
Master of Ordnance.

But in Dugdale's plate the proportion is utterly different. Elongated
pinnacles (exactly such as we see in the monument of Alexander Nowell
in Dugdale's St. Paul's Cathedral, also engraved under the direction
of Hollar) take the place of the figures; the arms at the top are much
reduced in size; the artist has left himself room for only two panels
and so omits the third. He reverses the positions of the figures. He
puts the knight outside, his body directed the other way; and in the
frieze, while he retains the powder-barrels in their proper position,
he points the cannon the other way round -- to the left; and every
other single detail, when examined carefully, is seen to differ from
the original. It all shows lack of memory as to objects although a
vague idea of facts is untidily retained.

We find equal inaccuracy in the equally "impeccable" Vertue whose
artistic honesty Walpole so warmly extols to the disadvantage of the
Dutchman, Houbraken -- Vertue's collaborator in Birch's Heads of
Illustrious Persons (1747), and as an engraver vastly his superior.
Yet the enemies of the Shakespeare monument have not presumed to claim
these Clopton and Carew monuments also as modern substitutions. They
slur the facts over, and fix only upon the Dugdale engraving, which
most probably was from the graver of Gaywood, already named as one of
the ill-paid hacks employed by the publishers to engrave on brass or
copper plates from sketches supplied to them.

Let us take the page in Dugdale of 1656 which shows the Clopton
monument above, and Shakespeare's below, as first published to the
world. We see at once the lamentable proportions of the monument as
here misrepresented, while the style inclines to Baroque -- a style
some twenty or thirty years later than Shakespeare's death, but
already sprung into existence when the Warwickshire was published. It
therefore gives itself the lie. We see the poor design of the shield
and mantling, the ridiculous boys cut off their mounds and perched
insecurely on the edge of the cornice, little architectural in
sentiment -- the one holding aloft a spade, the other an hour-glass,
as shown, totally unsculptural in effect. The arch is of a different
form, perhaps to allow the wide space necessary for the unauthentic,
stuck-out elbows of the figure. The portrait is no portrait at all: it
shows us a sickly, decrepit old gentleman, with a falling moustache,
much more than fifty-two years old. Had Shakespeare really been such
in his last illness would the London sculptor have so rendered him? Do
sculptors, in their monuments, represent the great departed in their
dying state, pressing pillows to their stomachs? Yet both hands are
here upon a cushion which, for no reason, except perhaps abdominal
pains, is hugged against what dancing-masters euphemistically term the
"lower chest," and the whole is supported not by brackets but by three
small feet, standing upon the ground. Other hack engravers followed
this wretched performance, of course for other publishers, each one
copying the last, instead of contradicting it by taking the trouble,
and incurring the expense, of the journey to Stratford to sketch for
themselves; wherefore their imitations, in spite of the differences of
their own, made for the purpose of avoiding charges of plagiarism
(believing their "original" to be correct), have actually been
accepted as confirmatory evidence by those unskilled in the ways of
hack engravers and adventurer-publishers of Dugdale's day."

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monspiel.html

[...]

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

> nature and art," and Gilpin ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

As to that Monument, the historical record gives no support to the
alteration theory.

Most of the Oxenfordians who make this allegation contend that the
alteration of the monument took place in 1748-49.

It is known that in 1748-49 the statue was cleaned and repaired. In
September of 1749, Joseph Greene, then headmaster of the Stratford
Grammar School wrote as follows:

"In repairing the whole (which was done by contribution of ye
Neighborhood early in ye current year) Care was taken, as nearly as
cou'd be, not to add or to diminish what ye work consisted of, &
apper'd to be when first erected; and really, except for changing ye
Substance of ye Architraves from white Alabaster to white Marble,
nothing has been done but supplying with ye original materials
whatsoever was by Accident broken off;reviving the old Colouring, and
renewing the Gilding that was lost."

I have also never seen any of the Oxenfordians account for the many
Seventeenth-century references to the inscriptions on the Stratford
Monument.

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html

It is incumbent upon those who claim that the Monument was changed and/
or that it honored John Shakespeare to explain why a monument honoring
an illiterate grain merchant would refer to all that he wrote. Then
there is the fact that there are poems written at the time which refer
to the poet and to his monument in Stratford, all of which corroborate
the fact that the Stratford Monument was seen from the beginning as
honoring the poet Shakespeare.

Dom

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 18:23:27 -0700 (PDT), Dominic Hughes
<mah...@aol.com> wrote:

Below I try to follow main arguments concerning reckless's errors vs.
scholarly industry, snipping some and adding what I think is a
pertinent bit by Dave Kauffman.

>On Sep 5, 1:16�pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
>> Peter Farey's recent article on the monument athttp://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.ie/raises some
>> interesting points -- not that he sees them himself.

(snip long and interesting anecdotal account)

>> But how, according to Farey, did Dugdale get this
>> engraving (produced by Wenceslaus Hollar) of the
>> monument so wrong? Farey's answer here is (to
>> paraphrase) 'sheer carelessness'. That answer might
>> have some plausibility if Dugdale could be shown to
>> be similarly careless in the rest of his work or in his
>> other works. But not so. He was famously careful
>> and usually accurate.
>
>No, he actually was not.
>
>From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
>First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):
>
>"Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which is afoot
>has attempted to upset the authenticity of the bust and monument as we
>know them, on the slender basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in
>Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, and the irresponsible
>imitations of it; and secondly, of certain repairs made in 1748; and
>the error has been so widely repeated and seized upon, both by the
>unwary and by the Shakespeare-haters that I must ask to be allowed a
>moment or two in which to remove the misconception.
>
>In 1656 Sir William Dugdale published his great Warwickshire, which
>was declared to be his masterpiece (up to that time) and to stand at
>the head of all our county histories; and Dr. Whitaker reminded his
>readers that Dugdale's "scrupulous accuracy ranked as legal
>evidence."

(I think this is where the quote from Spielmann's study ends and DH
resumes.)

>Personally, on many points on which I have consulted Dugdale, both
>text and illustrations -- I have found him inaccurate on simple
>matters of fact. Not only does he assert that Combe's monument, close
>by, is of alabaster whereas it is of sandstone, but, among other
>things, he transcribes inaccurately as to spelling the inscriptions on
>Shakespeare's monument and gravestone, and on the gravestones of the
>Shakespeare family in the chancel of the church.
>

(snip of evidence against Dugdale, also Hollar)

>Now Hollar was the chief engraver of the Warwickshire; and as the
>Shakespeare monument we know does not agree with the plate in Dugdale,
>it has been innocently assumed and asserted as fact by persons
>unfamiliar with the ways of the earlier engravers, that the Stratford
>monument as we know it, and as it is here before us, is another, a
>different, monument and not the original -- inasmuch as the
>proportions, as well as the details, are wholly different, and the
>bust presents no similarity whatsoever. This belief pathetically
>recalls the peasant's faith in the printed word because it is "in the
>papers."
>

I got a lot out of the analyses by PC, DH, and DK. I wasn't that
aware of continuing discussion of the monument versions.

In an assertive authorship attribution comment , Dave Kauffman from
his site at http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html, has to add
the following note about John Weever's evidence, which seems
conclusive, although much earlier than the most recent arguments in
the TLS by star Shakespeare scholars.

(quote)
In 1631, a year before his death, John Weever published the massive
Ancient Funerall Monuments, which recorded many inscriptions from
monuments around England, particularly in Canterbury, Rochester,
London, and Norwich. Shakespeare's monument does not appear in the
published book, but two of Weever's notebooks, containing his drafts
for most of the book as well as many unpublished notes, survive as
Society of Antiquaries MSS. 127 and 128. In one of these notebooks,
under the heading "Stratford upon Avon," Weever recorded the poems
from Shakespeare's monument and his gravestone, as follows:

Iudcio Pilum, Genio Socratem, Arte Maronem
Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.
Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast
Read if your canst whome envious death hath plac'd
Within this monument Shakespeare with whome
Quick Nature dy'd whose name doth deck his Tombe
far more then cost, sith all yt hee hath writt
Leaves living Art but page to serve his witt.
ob Ano doi 1616 AEtat. 53. 24 die April

Good frend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed heare
Blest bee ye man that spares these stones
And curst bee hee that moves my bones.
In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon Avon", Weever wrote
"Willm Shakespeare the famous poet", and opposite the last two lines
of the epitaph he wrote "vpo[n] the grave stone". Although Weever,
like Dugdale (see below), was not 100% accurate in the details of his
transcription, it is obvious that the inscriptions on both the
monument and the gravestone were substantially the same in 1631 as
they are today. Furthermore, Weever apparently knew Shakespeare
personally -- his 1598 Epigrammes includes the first full poem in
honor of Shakespeare ever printed, a sonnet entitled "Ad Gulielmum
Shakespear" in which he praises Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Romeo
and Juliet. This entry in his private notebook shows that he knew that
the poet he had praised in print more than 30 years earlier was the
same person buried in Stratford upon Avon.
(unquote)

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:

> Below I try to follow main arguments concerning reckless's errors
> vs. scholarly industry, snipping some and adding what I think

> is a pertinent bit by Dave Kauffman [sic].
............................................

> In an assertive authorship attribution comment ,

> Dave Kauffman [sic] from his site at
> http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html,

<<George S. Kaufman (November 16, 1889 – June 2, 1961) wrote several
musicals for the Marx Brothers.>>

Art Neuendorffer

[Paul Crowley]

On 06/09/2012 02:23, Dominic Hughes wrote:

>> But how, according to Farey, did Dugdale get this
>> engraving (produced by Wenceslaus Hollar) of the
>> monument so wrong? Farey's answer here is (to
>> paraphrase) 'sheer carelessness'. That answer might
>> have some plausibility if Dugdale could be shown to
>> be similarly careless in the rest of his work or in his
>> other works. But not so. He was famously careful
>> and usually accurate.
>
> No, he actually was not.
>
> From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
> First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):
>
> "Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which
> is afoot has attempted to upset the authenticity of the
> bust and monument as we know them, on the slender
> basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in Dugdale's Antiquities
> of Warwickshire

This issue has been debated at great length and
with much passion, over the decades (even the
centuries). The most recent instance is in the
comments on Peter Farey's posts. See them on

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=8216294754213290332

Spielmann took a 'far-out' position, which has long
been discredited.

Why so much passion? Well, there is the reputation
of Dugdale, which was very high, and remains so.
Great scholars are rare, and he was one of the very
best. But his work, involving the Shakespeare
monument, touched a delicate nerve. He made
the man look ridiculous, and that was hard to
tolerate.

Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 06/09/2012 02:38, Dominic Hughes wrote:

> As to that Monument, the historical record gives no
> support to the alteration theory.

The 'historical record' about most alterations in
most churches is often poor and rarely complete.

> Most of the Oxenfordians who make this allegation
> contend that the alteration of the monument took place
> in 1748-49.

A dubious claim (about 'most Oxenfordians').
If they comment on the matter, they do so only
because records survive from that time. But
any one suggesting that the most important
alterations took place then are necessarily
wrong, since we know, not least from George
Virtue's 1737 sketch, that they were completed
earlier.
[.. ]

> I have also never seen any of the Oxenfordians account
> for the many Seventeenth-century references to the
> inscriptions on the Stratford Monument.

You are referring, no doubt, to Dave Kathman's
worthless website, and his pathetic collection of
records. If you want a comment from me on any
of them, you'll have to specify which.

> http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html
>
> It is incumbent upon those who claim that the

> Monument was changed and/or that it honored John

> Shakespeare to explain why a monument honoring an
> illiterate grain merchant would refer to all that he wrote.

First read the text. Try to remember that all this is
in small print, high up in a dark church.

Then consider the purposes of the monument -- as
I have tried to explain them to you.

IVDICIO PYLIUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM,
TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET

STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST?
READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST
WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.

> Then there is the fact that there are poems written at the
> time which refer to the poet and to his monument in
> Stratford, all of which corroborate the fact that the
> Stratford Monument was seen from the beginning as
> honoring the poet Shakespeare.

Who has ever claimed otherwise? Do you think
that anti-Strats argue that someone else was being
put forward to the general public as the author?

Strats are so dense, that it is no wonder that they
cannot get the basics of any anti-Strat case.


Paul.

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 6, 5:34 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 06/09/2012 02:23, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >> But how, according to Farey, did Dugdale get this
> >> engraving (produced by Wenceslaus Hollar) of the
> >> monument so wrong? Farey's answer here is (to
> >> paraphrase) 'sheer carelessness'. That answer might
> >> have some plausibility if Dugdale could be shown to
> >> be similarly careless in the rest of his work or in his
> >> other works. But not so. He was famously careful
> >> and usually accurate.
>
> > No, he actually was not.
>
> > From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
> > First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):
>
> > "Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which
> > is afoot has attempted to upset the authenticity of the
> > bust and monument as we know them, on the slender
> > basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in Dugdale's Antiquities
> > of Warwickshire
>
> This issue has been debated at great length and
> with much passion, over the decades (even the
> centuries).  The most recent instance is in the
> comments on Peter Farey's posts.  See them on
>

> http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82...

>
> Spielmann took a 'far-out' position, which has long
> been discredited.

By whom. Since you assert that Spielmann's opinion as to Dugdale
(supported by evidence you are -- as usual -- unable to even address)
has been "discredited ' why not provide a citation to an actual
instance where someone has done so?

> Why so much passion?  Well, there is the reputation
> of Dugdale, which was very high, and remains so.
> Great scholars are rare, and he was one of the very
> best.  But his work, involving the Shakespeare
> monument,  touched a delicate nerve.  He made
> the man look ridiculous, and that was hard to
> tolerate.

There is no passion involved in this discussion -- only evidence
opposed to your absurd speculations. You can 't even get Dugdale
right. Far from making Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous "
your "great scholar " ("one of the best") believed that the author
Shakespeare was the man from Stratford, deserving of the honor of
having his monument included in a book honoring other worthies. At
least that is what the evidence shows.

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 6, 5:34 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 06/09/2012 02:38, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
> > As to that Monument, the historical record gives no
> > support to the alteration theory.
>
> The 'historical record' about most alterations in
> most churches is often poor and rarely complete.

That might generally be so, but in this particular instance we do
have documentation which reports what alteration was done and also
asserts that the monument was not altered in such a way as to change
it from how it originally looked.

>
> > Most of the Oxenfordians who make this allegation
> > contend that the alteration of the monument took place
> > in 1748-49.
>
> A dubious claim (about 'most Oxenfordians').

It is not dubiouls at all.

> If they comment on the matter, they do so only
> because records survive from that time.  But

Do you think this comment makes any sense?
What you are saying is that Oxenfordians who make the claim that the
conspiratorial alteration of the Stratford Monument took place in
1748-49 make that allegation only because there is a record from that
time. They musty be as stupid as you.

> any one suggesting that the most important
> alterations took place then are necessarily
> wrong, since we know, not least from George
> Virtue's 1737 sketch, that they were completed
> earlier.

What, according to you, are the "most important alterations" and how
does Vertue's sketch prove when such alleged alterations were made?

> [.. ]
You just couldn't deal with this?

> > I have also never seen any of the Oxenfordians account
> > for the many Seventeenth-century references to the
> > inscriptions on the Stratford Monument.
>
> You are referring, no doubt, to Dave Kathman's
> worthless website, and his pathetic collection of
> records.  If you want a comment from me on any
> of them, you'll have to specify which.

An excellent dodge. You are simply incapable of dealing with evidence
and so you sputter out some ad hominem garbage and label historical
documents "pathetic" (whatever that is supposed to mean with relation
to documentary evidence). You really should be embarrassed at the
fact that the historical record reduces you to such a state of mental
incompetence that you can only resort to your unsupported claims of
"fake! forgery! joke! conspiracy! Mickey Mouse!", but the sad fact is
that such irrationality does not embarrass you in the slightest. As
to the contemporary documents that reference the Stratford Monument,
I'll leave that up to you -- pick any one of the records and have at
it.

> >http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html
>
> > It is incumbent upon those who claim that the
> > Monument was changed and/or that it honored John
> > Shakespeare to explain why a monument honoring an
> > illiterate grain merchant would refer to all that he wrote.
>
> First read the text.  Try to remember that all this is
> in small print, high up in a dark church.

I have read it and, as the historical record indicates, so did any
number of people in the 17th century.

> Then consider the purposes of the monument -- as
> I have tried to explain them to you.

What explanation is that -- are you referring to your silly
speculation that your conspirators placed the monument there to trick
any tourists who wandered out to the countryside looking for the home
of the author Shakespeare, where any of the residents of Stratford,
encountering these big-city tourists, would have thought them crazy
for believing poor illiterate Will could be the author, they
themselves being unable to read or understand the inscriptions on the
Monument...you mean that explanation?

Sorry, but I see no reason for considering such nonsense.

By the way, the locals were not as dumb as you contend. As the
Reverend John Ward, the Rector of Shakespeare's Stratford church
related, Shakespeare's reputation in Stratford is still so great that
he must "peruse" the plays so that "I may not be ignorant in that
matter."

> IVDICIO PYLIUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM,
> TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET
>
> STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST?
> READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST
> WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
> QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
> FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
> LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.
>
> > Then there is the fact that there are poems written at the
> > time which refer to the poet and to his monument in
> > Stratford, all of which corroborate the fact that the
> > Stratford Monument was seen from the beginning as
> > honoring the poet Shakespeare.
>
> Who has ever claimed otherwise?  Do you think
> that anti-Strats argue that someone else was being
> put forward to the general public as the author?

Not my point at all. Some argue that the monument was originally
erected to honor John Shakespeare or some other local grain merchant,
and was altered at some later date, most likely 1748-49. I have had
actual discussions with Oxenfordians who have argued this. All of the
relevant evidence tends to show that, from its erection, the
Stratford Monument was intended to honor the author and was seen as
doing just that.

> Strats are so dense, that it is no wonder that they
> cannot get the basics of any anti-Strat case.

The Oxycontingent, including you, is so dense that they are unable to
deal with this evidence in any rational manner. They are all over the
map without a compass.

Dom

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Thu, 06 Sep 2012 04:42:33 -0800, book...@yahoo.com wrote:

Emendation: correcting name of Dave Kauffman to Dave Kathman.

>In an assertive authorship attribution comment , Dave Kathman from

[Paul Crowley]

On 07/09/2012 14:16, Dominic Hughes wrote:

>>>> 'sheer carelessness'. That answer might
>>>> have some plausibility if Dugdale could be shown to
>>>> be similarly careless in the rest of his work or in his
>>>> other works. But not so. He was famously careful
>>>> and usually accurate.
>>
>>> No, he actually was not.
>>
>>> From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
>>> First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):
>>
>>> "Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which
>>> is afoot has attempted to upset the authenticity of the
>>> bust and monument as we know them, on the slender
>>> basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in Dugdale's Antiquities
>>> of Warwickshire
>>
>> This issue has been debated at great length and
>> with much passion, over the decades (even the
>> centuries). The most recent instance is in the
>> comments on Peter Farey's posts. See them on
>>

>> http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82....

>>
>> Spielmann took a 'far-out' position, which has long
>> been discredited.
>
> By whom.

By nearly everyone who has contributed to the debate --
and that has included pretty nearly every significant
writer on Shakespeare -- or, at least, on his supposed
existence in Stratford-upon-Avon. Kathman does not
give his readers the slightest indication of all that on his
worthless website (which seems to be your only source
of information).

You can locate numerous debates on this matter by
using a search engine on the internet. A well-known
one is called 'Google'. Your carer will almost certainly
know how to use it.

One page that he will find is from the TLS of a year ago,
to which Peter Beal, Brian Vickers, Tarnya Cooper,
Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate and others
contribute. You may have heard of some of these
names.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article706972.ece

> Since you assert that Spielmann's opinion as to
> Dugdale (supported by evidence you are -- as usual -- unable to
> even address) has been "discredited ' why not provide a citation to
> an actual instance where someone has done so?

I pointed you to a website where the matter has (yet
again) been extensively debated:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82....

>> Why so much passion? Well, there is the reputation
>> of Dugdale, which was very high, and remains so.
>> Great scholars are rare, and he was one of the very
>> best. But his work, involving the Shakespeare
>> monument, touched a delicate nerve. He made
>> the man look ridiculous, and that was hard to
>> tolerate.
>
> There is no passion involved in this discussion -- only
> evidence opposed to your absurd speculations.

Brian Vickers, Peter Beal, Jonathan Bate and nearly
everyone else would disagree. But who are they
when compared to you?

> You can 't even get Dugdale right. Far from making
> Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
> " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
> the man from Stratford

Where does he state this?

> deserving of the honor of having his monument included in a
> book honoring other worthies.

Dugdale was not preparing a book that honoured selected
'worthies'. He was cataloguing and recording monuments
as they existed -- whether or not he might have approved
or disapproved of such people and their monuments. He
was a scholar, not a propagandist. i accept that you will
find that distinction hard to grasp.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 07/09/2012 15:14, Dominic Hughes wrote:

> That might generally be so, but in this particular instance we
> do have documentation which reports what alteration was
> done and also asserts that the monument was not altered in
> such a way as to change it from how it originally looked.

Sure -- and you take that assertion as the Gospel Truth,
since the parson who made it had been in Stratford since
the monument was first erected. You constantly raise
foolishness to unimaginable levels. Further, this parson
was raising funds to "restore it", so he was hardly going
to claim that it would not be restored to some original
state.

>> any one suggesting that the most important
>> alterations took place then are necessarily
>> wrong, since we know, not least from George
>> Virtue's 1737 sketch, that they were completed
>> earlier.
>
> What, according to you, are the "most important
> alterations" and how does Vertue's sketch prove when such
> alleged alterations were made?

The major differences from Dugdale's drawing
are in Virtue's sketch. It's no longer a severe-
looking businessman wool-dealer with a sack
of wool, but a foppish pretend-poet writing (with
a quill pen) on a cushion.

>> [.. ]
> You just couldn't deal with this?
>
>>> I have also never seen any of the Oxenfordians account
>>> for the many Seventeenth-century references to the
>>> inscriptions on the Stratford Monument.
>>
>> You are referring, no doubt, to Dave Kathman's
>> worthless website, and his pathetic collection of
>> records. If you want a comment from me on any
>> of them, you'll have to specify which.
>
> An excellent dodge.

It's not a dodge at all. I am not going to write
on Kathman's extensive collection of garbage.

> You are simply incapable of dealing with evidence and so
> you sputter out some ad hominem garbage and label
> historical documents "pathetic" (whatever that is supposed to
> mean with relation to documentary evidence).

Each item is pathetic and none of it makes any
contribution to the 'historical record'. I note that
you are so ashamed of it, that you refrain from
pointing out the virtues of any of these supposed
'records'.

To waste words and deal with Kathman's first item:

> One of the First Folios in the Folger Shakespeare
> Library (no. 26 according to the Folger numbering)
> contains three handwritten poems on the last end page
> of the volume, written in a secretary hand dating from
> approximately the 1620s.

So we are to take Kathman's assurance that
these poems date from the 1620s? He "knows"
this just because he wants to believe it ! And
you regard this as 'a record' ?

What a fool you are!
[..]

> By the way, the locals were not as dumb as you contend.
> As the Reverend John Ward, the Rector of Shakespeare's
> Stratford church related, Shakespeare's reputation in
> Stratford is still so great that he must "peruse" the plays so
> that "I may not be ignorant in that matter."

Indeed a record gleefully seized upon by Ogburn,
who pointed out the Rev John Ward made this
resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford, and
that his total silence on the matter subsequently
-- after he had taken up his position told its own
story,

>> IVDICIO PYLIUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM,
>> TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET
>>
>> STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST?
>> READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST
>> WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
>> QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
>> FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
>> LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.
>>
>>> Then there is the fact that there are poems written at the
>>> time which refer to the poet and to his monument in
>>> Stratford, all of which corroborate the fact that the
>>> Stratford Monument was seen from the beginning as
>>> honoring the poet Shakespeare.
>>
>> Who has ever claimed otherwise? Do you think
>> that anti-Strats argue that someone else was being
>> put forward to the general public as the author?
>
> Not my point at all.

It helps if you use words to actually say what
you mean if you are trying to make a point.

> Some argue that the monument was originally erected to
> honor John Shakespeare or some other local grain merchant,

Since the great bulk of the locals were illiterate,
they'd not have left much of a record of their
opinions. But even if they were literate, they'd
also likely not bother. The postcards on sale
in the local shops today are not usually bought
and posted by locals --- but by tourists.
(I hope that analogy is not too difficult for you.)

> and was altered at some later date, most likely 1748-49. I
> have had actual discussions with Oxenfordians who have
> argued this. All of the relevant evidence tends to show that,
> from its erection, the Stratford Monument was intended to
> honor the author and was seen as doing just that.

WHAT relevant evidence? The Dugdale drawing?
Oops -- suddenly that ceases to be relevant or is
somehow not evidence. Much better to take the
word of a parson of 140 years later that nothing
would be changed by the restoration that he was
in the process of organising -- and regard that as
an assurance that the bust (and the monument
as whole) had been unchanged in the previous
140 years.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 08/09/2012 01:16, book...@yahoo.com wrote:

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html, has to add

>> the following note about John Weever's evidence, which seems
>> conclusive,

Conclusive about WHAT?

[..]

>> honor of Shakespeare ever printed, a sonnet entitled "Ad Gulielmum
>> Shakespear" in which he praises Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Romeo
>> and Juliet. This entry in his private notebook shows that he knew that

(note misuse of 'knew' for 'believed')

>> the poet he had praised in print more than 30 years earlier was the
>> same person buried in Stratford upon Avon.
>> (unquote)

So IF we accept this 'record' as trustworthy (i,e, not
misdated, nor forged by the likes of Collier) in the
year 1631 (or maybe earlier) some people in London
actually believed that the author of the canonical
works had lived (and was buried) in Stratford-upon-
Avon.

Wow! The cover-up was working. Stop the presses.


Paul.

[Dominic Hughes]

And yet you are still unable to identify anyone by name who has
"discredited" the argument put forward by Spielmann. If there are so
many who have discredited Spielmann's opinion as to the accuracy of
Dugdale's work, including "pretty nearly every significant writer on
Shakespeare," as you have asserted, it should be quite easy for you to
identify just one such individual...and yet you are incapable of doing
so.

> Kathman does not
> give his readers the slightest indication of all that

Of "all that" what? When are you going to cite some of the more than
numerous individuals who have discredited Spielmann?

> on his
> worthless website (which seems to be your only source
> of information).

It is not my only source of information [I've even read a good bit of
the Oxenfordian tripe], but it is a good online source which may be
cited to rebut your worthless pronouncements. Why should Mr. Kathman
cite to something which you can't even demonstrate actually exists.

> You can locate numerous debates on this matter by
> using a search engine on the internet.  A well-known
> one is called 'Google'.  Your carer will almost certainly
> know how to use it.

That's your answer? You stated, rather definitively, that Spielmann
had been discredited by many people over the years, as if you knew
that to be a fact and were familiar with the names of such people.
Now, as it turns out, you have to move the goalposts to claim that
there is a "debate" about the accuracy of Dugdale's work, not that his
opinion has been definitively "discredited". And you buttress this
claim with a single reference to a site you found by way of
google...pathetic.

As for the "debate" that you have cited [which doesn't even address
the specific claims made by Spielmann], your position in that debate
hinges on the argument, such as it is, made by Richartd
Kennedy...which has been discredited here at HLAS.

> One page that he will find is from the TLS of a year ago,
> to which Peter Beal, Brian Vickers, Tarnya Cooper,
> Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate and others
> contribute.  You may have heard of some of these
> names.

Of course, but then a "debate" is not the same thing as "discrediting"
something, and this particular debate does nothing to discredit
Spielmann's specific claims as to the inaccuracies found in Dugdale.

> http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article706972.ece
>
> > Since you assert that Spielmann's opinion as to
> > Dugdale (supported by evidence you are -- as usual -- unable to
> > even address) has been "discredited ' why not provide a citation to
> > an actual instance where someone has done so?
>
> I pointed you to a website where the matter has (yet
> again) been extensively debated:
>
> http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82....

The fact that there is a debate does not mean that Spielmann has been
discredited. I understand that you will find that distinction hard to
grasp. By the way, this link does not appear to be working.

> >> Why so much passion?  Well, there is the reputation
> >> of Dugdale, which was very high, and remains so.
> >> Great scholars are rare, and he was one of the very
> >> best.  But his work, involving the Shakespeare
> >> monument,  touched a delicate nerve.  He made
> >> the man look ridiculous, and that was hard to
> >> tolerate.
>
> > There is no passion involved in this discussion -- only
> > evidence opposed to your absurd speculations.
>
> Brian Vickers, Peter Beal, Jonathan Bate and nearly
> everyone else would disagree.  But who are they
> when compared to you?

How would those gentleman even know anything about my discussion with
you and whether or not there was any passion involved on my side of
the debate, or whether or not I have cited evidence in opposition to
your fanciful notions? The fact is that all you are capable of doing
is making blanket assertions in the face of evidence which contradicts
your speculations. When called on those assertions, you are quite
incapable of providing support for your claims.

> > You can 't even get Dugdale right.  Far from making
> > Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
> > " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
> > the man from Stratford
>
> Where does he state this?

Implicitly, when he transcribed both the Latin and English verses from
Shakespeare's tomb.

> > deserving of the honor of having his monument included in a
> > book honoring other worthies.
>
> Dugdale was not preparing a book that honoured selected
> 'worthies'.  He was cataloguing and recording monuments
> as they existed -- whether or not he might have approved
> or disapproved of such people and their monuments.

Right...Dugdale was cataloguing and recording the monuments of all of
the undistinguished and insignificant people in Warwickshire's
history. There are times I wonder that even you don't recognize the
stupidity of your arguments.

> He
> was a scholar, not a propagandist.  i accept that you will
> find that distinction hard to grasp.

I understand it quite well. I am well aware of the fact that you are
not a scholar...you're not even a good propagandist for the
Oxenfordian PR campaign.

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 8, 3:24 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/2012 15:14, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
> > That might generally be so,  but in this particular instance we
> > do have documentation which reports what alteration was
> > done and also asserts that the monument was not altered in
> > such a way as to change it from how it originally looked.
>
> Sure -- and you take that assertion as the Gospel Truth,
> since the parson who made it had been in Stratford since
> the monument was first erected.

No, I take it as one piece of evidence to be considered in the
totality of the circumstances which are relevant to the question. I
fully understand that such a concept is unknown to you, as you believe
that your speculations as to unevidenced conspiracies are to be
considered as Gospel Truth in the service of your lord.

As I stated before [and you snipped the context here] is that many
Oxenfordians argue that the Monument was altered in1748-49. The
evidence I have cited, and for which you actually have no rebuttal,
tends to show that the Oxenfordian claim is incorrect.

> You constantly raise
> foolishness to unimaginable levels.

Yes, I do that when I repost the foolishness contained in your posts.
It is quite sad that you appear to believe that a reliance on evidence
in opposition to speculation amounts to foolishness.

>Further, this parson
> was raising funds to "restore it", so he was hardly going
> to claim that it would not be restored to some original
> state.

Please provide the evidence which supports your claim that the parson
was raising funds to restore the monument when he made the comment I
have cited.

> >> any one suggesting that the most important
> >> alterations took place then are necessarily
> >> wrong, since we know, not least from George
> >> Virtue's 1737 sketch, that they were completed
> >> earlier.
>
> > What,  according to you,  are the "most important
> > alterations" and how does Vertue's sketch prove when such
> > alleged alterations were made?
>
> The major differences from Dugdale's drawing
> are in Virtue's sketch.  It's no longer a severe-
> looking businessman wool-dealer with a sack
> of wool, but a foppish pretend-poet writing (with
> a quill pen) on a cushion.

Is it your contention that Virtue was in on the conspiracy? When did
the English and Latin verses first appear on the Monument? By the
way, I find your notion that the way someone looks is indicative of
their profession to be similar to phrenology, but I am picturing you
now as Bozo the Clown.

> >> [.. ]
> > You just couldn't deal with this?

And still can't...

> >>> I have also never seen any of the Oxenfordians account
> >>> for the many Seventeenth-century references to the
> >>> inscriptions on the Stratford Monument.
>
> >> You are referring, no doubt, to Dave Kathman's
> >> worthless website, and his pathetic collection of
> >> records.  If you want a comment from me on any
> >> of them, you'll have to specify which.
>
> > An excellent dodge.
>
> It's not a dodge at all.  I am not going to write
> on Kathman's extensive collection of garbage.
>
> > You are simply incapable of dealing with evidence and so
> > you sputter out some ad hominem garbage and label
> > historical documents "pathetic" (whatever that is supposed to
> > mean with relation to documentary evidence).
>
> Each item is pathetic and none of it makes any
> contribution to the 'historical record'.  I note that
> you are so ashamed of it, that you refrain from
> pointing out the virtues of any of these supposed
> 'records'.

Why are you so inarticulate that you are unable to explain what you
mean when you call pieces of documentary evidence "pathetic"? You
merely repeat the charge as if that gives it some force. I also find
your apparent belief that you are clairvoyant [evidenced by your claim
that I am "ashamed" of the records] to be further proof of your
inability to reasonably propound any rational defense of your claims.
As a matter of fact, I believe that the records are quite sufficient
in and of themselves, indeividually, but more so collectively, to
build a prima facie case that the inscriptions were on the monumnet
from the very beginning.

> To waste words and deal with Kathman's first item:
>
> > One of the First Folios in the Folger Shakespeare
> > Library (no. 26 according to the Folger numbering)
> > contains three handwritten poems on the last end page
> > of the volume, written in a secretary hand dating from
> > approximately the 1620s.
>
> So we are to take Kathman's assurance that
> these poems date from the 1620s?  He "knows"
> this just because he wants to believe it !  And
> you regard this as 'a record' ?

The sad thing is that you don't regard it as a record. In the face of
documentary evidence which runs contrary to your propaganda, the best
you can muster in response is, "Maybe the dating is wrong." Do you
have anything better than that or is that really the best you can do?
If that's it, then the word "pathetic" should rightly apply to your
efforts.

In addition, it is a fundamental error in methodology to consider only
one piece of evidence in isolation, ignoring the corroborative effect
of the other relevant evidence [the other 17th century records
referencing the inscriptions]

> What a fool you are!

Coming from someone who doesn't understand simple and basic concepts
-- such as what constitutes evidence and the proper way to examine and
consider it --, that is a compliment. You are pathetic.

> [..]

Allow me to put this back in:

> First read the text. Try to remember that all this is
> in small print, high up in a dark church.

I have read it and, as the historical record indicates, so did any
number of people in the 17th century.

> Then consider the purposes of the monument -- as
> I have tried to explain them to you.

What explanation is that -- are you referring to your silly
speculation that your conspirators placed the monument there to trick
any tourists who wandered out to the countryside looking for the home
of the author Shakespeare, where any of the residents of Stratford,
encountering these big-city tourists, would have thought them crazy
for believing poor illiterate Will could be the author, they
themselves being unable to read or understand the inscriptions on the
Monument...you mean that explanation?

Sorry, but I see no reason for considering such nonsense.

Should I take it that your decision to snip this excerpt indicates
that you are ashamed of the irrational silliness of your explanation?

> > By the way,  the locals were not as dumb as you contend.
> > As the Reverend John Ward,  the Rector of Shakespeare's
> > Stratford church related,  Shakespeare's reputation in
> > Stratford is still so great that he must "peruse" the plays so
> > that "I may not be ignorant in that matter."
>
> Indeed a record gleefully seized upon by Ogburn,
> who pointed out the Rev John Ward made this
> resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford, and
> that his total silence on the matter subsequently
> -- after he had taken up his position told its own
> story,

Ah yes, and since Ogburn said it, it must be accepted as the Gospel
Truth. You constantly demonstrate your foolishness at unimaginable
levels.

You also demonstarte an inability to read with comprehension and a
penchant for just making things up. I have my copy of the second
edition of 'The Mysterious William Shakespeare; The Myth and the
Reality' before me on my desk. I have reviewed the five references
Ogburn made to the Reverend Doctor John Ward [pp. 18-19, 36, 192fn.,
402 and 690] and nowhere in any of those passages does Ogburn state
that Ward "made this resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford." Did you
invent this alleged fact or did you hallucinate it. Ask your carer to
up your dosage.

>
> >> IVDICIO PYLIUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM,
> >> TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET
>
> >> STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST?
> >> READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST
> >> WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
> >> QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
> >> FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
> >> LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.
>
> >>> Then there is the fact that there are poems written at the
> >>> time which refer to the poet and to his monument in
> >>> Stratford, all of which corroborate the fact that the
> >>> Stratford Monument was seen from the beginning as
> >>> honoring the poet Shakespeare.
>
> >> Who has ever claimed otherwise?  Do you think
> >> that anti-Strats argue that someone else was being
> >> put forward to the general public as the author?
>
> > Not my point at all.
>
> It helps if you use words to actually say what
> you mean if you are trying to make a point.

It would help if you could read with something approaching an ability
to comprehend plain English. Speaking of which, have you found the
passage yet in which Ogburn states that Ward "made this resolution
BEFORE he got to Stratford."

> > Some argue that the monument was originally erected to
> > honor John Shakespeare or some other local grain merchant,
>
> Since the great bulk of the locals were illiterate,
> they'd not have left much of a record of their
> opinions. But even if they were literate, they'd
> also likely not bother.  The postcards on sale
> in the local shops today are not usually bought
> and posted by locals --- but by tourists.
> (I hope that analogy is not too difficult for you.)

It is your silly theory that the Monument was erected to fool the
tourists. What is the probability that not one of your imagined
tourists never found out about the origins of the Monument?

> > and was altered at some later date, most likely 1748-49. I
> > have had actual discussions with Oxenfordians who have
> > argued this.  All of the relevant evidence tends to show that,
> > from its erection,  the Stratford Monument was intended to
> > honor the author and was seen as doing just that.
>
> WHAT relevant evidence?  The Dugdale drawing?
> Oops -- suddenly that ceases to be relevant or is
> somehow not evidence.

What evidence?...why, all of the documentary evidence which you claim,
without actually being able to support your claim, is "pathetic" and
which you then ignore. Unlike you, I would never claim that the
Dugdale drawing is not relevant or is not evidence [of course, it is
evidence that cuts both ways since it also includes the inscriptions].
Unlike you, I include it in the totality of the relevant evidence
which must be considered in the debate. It is quite ironic that you
would complain about how someone else treats documentary evidence,
considering the way that you summarily dismiss such evidence in
furtherance or your speculative story.

>Much better to take the
> word of a parson of 140 years later that nothing
> would be changed by the restoration that he was
> in the process of organising

Evidence, please.

> -- and regard that as
> an assurance that the bust (and the monument
> as whole) had been unchanged in the previous
> 140 years.

If I had done any such thing your criticism might be justified. That
is not what I have done. In fact, my argument as to the parson's
comments had only to do with the claim that the Monument had been
altered at that time, and had nothing to do with the previous 140
years -- so your argument here is misguided as usual and is just more
of your typical insipid bluster.

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 8, 3:24 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/2012 15:14, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>

[...]

>
> >>> I have also never seen any of the Oxenfordians account
> >>> for the many Seventeenth-century references to the
> >>> inscriptions on the Stratford Monument.
>
> >> You are referring, no doubt, to Dave Kathman's
> >> worthless website, and his pathetic collection of
> >> records.  If you want a comment from me on any
> >> of them, you'll have to specify which.
>
> > An excellent dodge.
>
> It's not a dodge at all.  I am not going to write
> on Kathman's extensive collection of garbage.
>
> > You are simply incapable of dealing with evidence and so
> > you sputter out some ad hominem garbage and label
> > historical documents "pathetic" (whatever that is supposed to
> > mean with relation to documentary evidence).
>
> Each item is pathetic and none of it makes any
> contribution to the 'historical record'.  I note that
> you are so ashamed of it, that you refrain from
> pointing out the virtues of any of these supposed
> 'records'.

[...]

By the way, here is the link to Mr. Kathman's article regarding 17th
century references to the monument. I'm sure Mr. Crowley will be able
to produce an effectively reasoned and articulate argument as to why
this documentary evidence, individually and taken as a whole, should
be considered "pathetic" and why it does not make "any contribution to
the 'historical record'."

Of course, that will never happen [due to impossibility, or maybe that
should read imbecility].

Anyway, here is the link:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html

Dom

[Algernon H. Nuttsakk]

Dr. Crowley, your search for the truth is a
never-ending inspiration. Never let the flag
drop, drop or dangle!

Fact: The filthy Shaksdork, dowsing for poop with
a few slats from his outhouse. Does anyone really
believe that that disgusting little businessman,
that dust-encrusted, groat-grabbing shilling-shark
wrote our sublime "Hamlet", or did he spend his time
farting into the Elizabethan wind, cataloguing each
aroma with his illiterate scrawl? You be the judge.
As for me, I believe that only a mightly earl, the
leader of an intrepid armada against the vile Spaniards,
as the Earl of Oxford certainly did, could have penned
the resplendent tropes of "Twelfth Night". History
receded in darkness under the likes of Stalin, but only
temporarily, and the dictatorship of university
professors is only a momentary pause in the history
of Shakespearean scholarship. The truth will out, and
the truth is: OXFORD OXFORD RAH RAH RAH!

AHN

[David L. Webb]

In article
<4f18a234-efc6-434c...@l9g2000vbj.googlegroups.com>,
Arthur Neuendorffer <acne...@gmail.com> (aka Noonedafter) wrote:

[...]
> . e w i {T}
> . (T) i e {S}
> . (T)<P> o {E}
> . (T)<I> n {T}
> . (H)<E> w [O]
> . r l d [S]
> . h a l l
> . *R I S E*.

Just what do you think (usual disclaimer) "So test" means, Art? This
is cretinous nonsense. One need scarcely add that "TTTH" is cretinous
nonsense as well.

[...]
> ____________ <= 31 =>
>
> (H) e e r e S h a k e s p e a r e l y e s w{H}o m e n o n e b u
> (T) D e a t h c o u l d S h a k e a n d h e{E}r e s h a l l l y
> (T) i l l_j u d g e m e n t_a l l_a-w a k e{W}h e n t h e l a s
> (T) t r u m p e t_d o t h_u n c l o s e_h i{S}e y e s t h e w i
> (T) t i e s t p o e t i n t h e w o r l d s h a l l r i s e

"HTTTT" is also cretinous nonsense, Art.

> ____________ <= 34 =>
>
> S T A Y P A S_[S] E N G*E*R W H Y G O __[E]S T T H O...
> E A D_ I F T H-[O] V C A N*S*T W H O M *E* __ [N]V I O V...
> P L A {S} T_W I_[T] H*I*N T H*I*S M O N__ *V*M*_ [E]N T S...
> I T {H W H} O M-[E] Q*V*I C K N*A*T V R__ *E D*I*__ [D]E W...
> T H D {E} C K_Y-[S] T*O*M B E F A*R*M O *R E*T*H* [E]N...
> L Y T {H} E_H A-[T] H*W*R I T T L_E*A*V__ *E*S L I V I...
> G E T O S *E R V E* H I S W I T T

What do you think (usual disclaimer) "ENEDE" means, Art? This is
also cretinous nonsense.

> . [H]enry
> . (E)arl of
> . [W]riothesley
> . (S)outhampton
> .................................................
> ______ *SONNET 20*
> http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/xxcomm.htm
>
> [W] omans face with natures owne hande painted,
> [H] aste thou, the Master Mistris of my passion,
>
> A man in *HEW* all *HEWS* in his controwling,
> ------------------------------------------------
> . G {O} ODF -R
> . E {N} DFO -R
> . I_{E} SVS _S
> . A -K- EFO -R
> . B [E] ARE-[T]
> . O [D] IGG-[T]
> . H [E] DVS [T]
> . E [N] CLO [A]
> . S [E] DHE [A]
> . R-E

"EDENE" is cretinous nonsense, Art. So is "TTTAA" -- unless you're
into T&A films, in which case you should probably refrain from telling
St. Carolyn: you don't want to TEST her sainthood to that extent.

> Art Neuendorffer

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

----------------------------------------------------------------

Dominic Hughes <mah...@aol.com> wrote:

> By the way, here is the link to Mr. Kathman's article regarding 17th
> century references to the monument. I'm sure Mr. Crowley will be able
> to produce an effectively reasoned and articulate argument as to why
> this documentary evidence, individually and taken as a whole, should
> be considered "pathetic" and why it does not make "any contribution
> to the 'historical record'."

> Of course, that will never happen
> [due to impossibility, or maybe that should read imbecility].

> Anyway, here is the link:http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html

---------------------------------------------------------
17th-century References to Shakespeare's Stratford Monument
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/monrefs.html
by David Kathman
.

<<One of the First Folios in the Folger Shakespeare Library

contains three handwritten poems on the last end page of
the volume, written in a secretary hand dating from

approximately the 1620s. The first of these is the poem
from Shakespeare's monument in the Stratford church
.
. An Epitaph @ Mr William Shakspeare
.
. Stay passenger why go'st thou by so fast
. read if thou Canst, whom enuious death hath plact
. within this monument: Shakespeare: with whom
. quick nature dy'd; whose name doth deck this toombe
. far more then cost; sith all that hee hath writt
. leaues liueing art but Page vnto his witt.
.
The second is not recorded elsewhere, and goes as follows:
.
. Another vpon the same
.
. Heere Shakespeare lyes whome none but Death could Shake
. and heere shall ly till judgement all awake;
. when the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes
. the wittiest poet in the world shall rise.
. [Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988):60]
.
The third poem is the one on Shakespeare's tombstone,
also in the Stratford church
.
. an Epitaph (upon his Toombe stone incised)
.
. Good ffriend for Iesus sake forbeare
. To digg the dust inclosed heere
. blest bee the man that pau'd these stones
. but Cur'sd bee hee that mooues these bones.
.
Apparently, somebody went to Stratford and transcribed the poems off
the monument and the tombstone, then transcribed them into a copy of
the First Folio along with another epitaph. This writer seems not only
to have believed that the man buried in Stratford was the author of
the First Folio, but that he was "the wittiest poet in the world.">>
---------------------------------------------------------
. Heere Shakespeare lyes whome none but Death could *SHAKE*
. and heere shall ly till judgement all awake;
. when the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes
. the wi{T}tie{S}t po{E}t in {T}he w[O]rld [S]hall *RISE*.
....................................................
__ <= 4 =>
.

. e w i {T}

. (T) i (E){S}
. (T)<P>(O){E}

. (T)<I> n {T}
. (H)<E> w [O]
. r l d [S]
. h a l l
. *R I S E*.

..............................................
[SO TEST} -4 (Prob. skip <5 ~ 1 in 2580)
--------------------------------------------

____________ <= 31 =>

(H) e e r e S h a k e s p e a r e l y e s w{H}o m e n o n e b u
(T) D e a t h c o u l d S h a k e a n d h e{E}r e s h a l l l y
(T) i l l_j u d g e m e n t_a l l_a-w a k e{W}h e n t h e l a s
(T) t r u m p e t_d o t h_u n c l o s e_h i{S}e y e s t h e w i
(T) t i e s t p o e t i n t h e w o r l d s h a l l r i s e

------------------------------------------------------------

____________ <= 34 =>

S T A Y P A S_[S] E N G*E*R W H Y G O __[E]S T T H O...
E A D_ I F T H-[O] V C A N*S*T W H O M *E* __ [N]V I O V...
P L A {S} T_W I_[T] H*I*N T H*I*S M O N__ *V*M*_ [E]N T S...
I T {H W H} O M-[E] Q*V*I C K N*A*T V R__ *E D*I*__ [D]E W...
T H D {E} C K_Y-[S] T*O*M B E F A*R*M O *R E*T*H* [E]N...
L Y T {H} E_H A-[T] H*W*R I T T L_E*A*V__ *E*S L I V I...
G E T O S *E R V E* H I S W I T T

--------------------------------------------------------------

. [H]enry
. (E)arl of
. [W]riothesley
. (S)outhampton
.................................................
______ *SONNET 20*
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/xxcomm.htm

[W] omans face with natures owne hande painted,
[H] aste thou, the Master Mistris of my passion,

A man in *HEW* all *HEWS* in his controwling,
------------------------------------------------

___ <= 6 =>
.
. G {O} O D F -R
. E {N} D F O -R
. I_{E} S V S _S
. A -K- E F O -R
. B [E] A R E-(T)
. O [D] I G G-(T)
. H [E] D V S (T)
. E [N] C L O (A)
. S [E] D H E (A)
. R-E
.
*E(duard de) DENE* (Edward of the Danes)
........................................................
http://tinyurl.com/374wsl

<<The Flemish writer *Eduard de DENE* published a comical poem in 1539
about a nobleman who hatches a plan to send his servant back and forth
on absurd errands on April 1st, supposedly to help prepare for a
wedding feast. The servant recognizes that what's being done to him is
an April 1st joke. The poem is titled "Refereyn vp [VER]z[E]n[DE]kens
dach / Twelck den eersten April te zyne plach." This is late medieval
Dutch meaning (roughly) "Refrain on errand-day / which is the first of
April." In the closing line of each stanza, the servant says, "I am
afraid... that you are trying to make me run a fool's errand.">>
--------------------------------------------------------------
*E(duard de) DENE* friend: Marcus *Gheeraerts* the Elder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Gheeraerts_the_Elder

<<Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (c.1520–c.1590) was a Flemish
printmaker and painter associated with the English court
of the mid-16th Century and mainly remembered as the
illustrator of the *1567* edition of Aesop's Fables.
He etched the title page and 107 fable illustrations
and had his friend, *EDEWAERD DE DENE* ,
write the book's fables in Flemish verse.

Born in Bruges, Gheeraerts fled to England in 1568 with his
son, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1562–1635), due to the
[Duke of Alva's] religious persecutions. There he married
his 2nd wife, *SUSsanah* de Critz, a close relative of
Queen Elizabeth's serjeant-painter, John de Critz.
Gheeraerts had his son enrolled in the painters guild
and one of his daughters, Sarah, married Isaac Oliver.>>
........................................................
Marcus Gheeraerts: Allegory of Iconoclasm (1566-1568)
http://holiday.snrk.de/
Henry Holiday, Joseph Swain: The Vanishing (1876)
........................................................
Less is known about Gheeraerts' color portraits or paintings
as he never signed his work, & what does exist is identifiable
only a certain stylistic "fuzziness" & an attempt to imitate
*JAN Van Eyck.* . Karel van Mander wrote in 1604 that
Gheeraerts was a good landscape painter, who "often had the
habit of including *a squatting, urinating woman on a bridge* .
A similar detail is seen in one of his fable illustrations.>>
----------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 8, 3:24 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/2012 14:16, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>

[,,,]

> > You can 't even get Dugdale right.  Far from making
> > Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
> > " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
> > the man from Stratford
>
> Where does he state this?

[...]

If George Greenwood is to be believed, Dugdale states it explicitly in
his own handwriting in his private papers:

For the fact is, that the original drawing for the engraving of
Shakespeare's bust, as it appears in The Antiquities of Warwickshire,
was made by Sir William Dugdale himself, and is still in existence.
For this valuable information I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr.
William F. S. Dugdale, of Merevale Hall, Atherstone, Warwickshire, the
present representative of the celebrated antiquary, who, among the
papers and manuscripts in his possession, discovered a manuscript book
of Sir William Dugdale's—which he kindly allowed me to inspect—
containing a number of his original notes and drawings prepared for
the work in question. Here he lighted upon the original drawing made
for the engraving as it appears in that work, and that this drawing
was made by Sir William himself cannot admit of a doubt, being in his
private manuscript book, and surrounded, as it is, by notes in his own
handwriting. Moreover, although he did not profess to be an artist,
Sir William could, at any rate, sketch well heraldically, as can be
proved by many drawings in the possession of Mr. W. F. S. Dugdale. It
was from this drawing that the artist, whether Hollar or some other,
prepared the engraving, which is an exact copy of the sketch except
that it corrects it where it is somewhat out of drawing. Over it is
written, in Sir William's own handwriting, "In the [10] north wall of
the Quire is this monument for William Shakespeare the famous poet,"
and, in another place, the inscription is written out in full,
together with the inscriptions on the tombs of John and Susanna Hall.
Above these is written the date, namely July, 1634, showing that it
was in this year that these notes were made."

http://www.sourcetext.com/greenwood/sbde/01.htm

Dom

[Paul Crowley]

On 10/09/2012 17:42, Dominic Hughes wrote:

>>>>> From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
>>>>> First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):
>>
>>>>> "Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which
>>>>> is afoot has attempted to upset the authenticity of the
>>>>> bust and monument as we know them, on the slender
>>>>> basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in Dugdale's Antiquities
>>>>> of Warwickshire
>>
>>>> This issue has been debated at great length and
>>>> with much passion, over the decades (even the
>>>> centuries). The most recent instance is in the
>>>> comments on Peter Farey's posts. See them on
>>
>>>> http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82....
>>
>>>> Spielmann took a 'far-out' position, which has long
>>>> been discredited.
>>
>>> By whom.
>>
>> By nearly everyone who has contributed to the debate --
>> and that has included pretty nearly every significant
>> writer on Shakespeare -- or, at least, on his supposed
>> existence in Stratford-upon-Avon.
>
> And yet you are still unable to identify anyone by name who has
> "discredited" the argument put forward by Spielmann.

I have pointed you to a long debate on the Marlite
website, which is still in progress.
[..]

>> One page that he will find is from the TLS of a year ago,
>> to which Peter Beal, Brian Vickers, Tarnya Cooper,
>> Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate and others
>> contribute. You may have heard of some of these
>> names.
>
> Of course, but then a "debate" is not the same thing as
> "discrediting" something, and this particular debate does nothing
> to discredit Spielmann's specific claims as to the inaccuracies
> found in Dugdale.

A massive account of the kind produced by Dugdale
will inevitably have errors. But there is nothing of
the scale of his supposed mis-rendering of the
drawing of Shakespeare. This was a famous image
in a famous (and fairly local) place of a famous
person; If it was wrong, Dugdale could not have got
it THAT wrong by accident. It's like drawing the
Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
his wheelchair. It is not to be 'explained' by referring
to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.

>> I pointed you to a website where the matter has (yet
>> again) been extensively debated:
>>

>> http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82.....

>
> The fact that there is a debate does not mean that Spielmann
> has been discredited.

The fact that arguments such as I have just
stated have been spelt out time and again, and
never dealt with, nor replied to, by Spielmann
nor his supporters DOES MEAN that he has
been discredited.

> By the way, this link does not appear to be working.

I gave it to you earlier in the thread

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=8216294754213290332

>>>> Why so much passion? Well, there is the reputation
>>>> of Dugdale, which was very high, and remains so.
>>>> Great scholars are rare, and he was one of the very
>>>> best. But his work, involving the Shakespeare
>>>> monument, touched a delicate nerve. He made
>>>> the man look ridiculous, and that was hard to
>>>> tolerate.
>>
>>> There is no passion involved in this discussion -- only
>>> evidence opposed to your absurd speculations.
>>
>> Brian Vickers, Peter Beal, Jonathan Bate and nearly
>> everyone else would disagree. But who are they
>> when compared to you?
>
> How would those gentleman even know anything about my
> discussion with you

I was NOT referring to YOU -- but to the general
debate on this issue which has gone on for (as
I said) decades, if not centuries.

> and whether or not there was any passion
> involved on my side of the debate,

Lawyers are passionate only about one thing --
their fees (and they do their best to conceal that).
They have no concept of truth, nor of any other
moral value -- and would not know what passion
is, nor understand why anyone ever gets
passionate about anything (other than large
wads of cash, of course).

> or whether or not I have cited
> evidence in opposition to your fanciful notions? The fact is that
> all you are capable of doing is making blanket assertions in the
> face of evidence which contradicts your speculations. When
> called on those assertions, you are quite incapable of providing
> support for your claims.

What a fool!

>>> You can 't even get Dugdale right. Far from making
>>> Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
>>> " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
>>> the man from Stratford
>>
>> Where does he state this?
>
> Implicitly, when he transcribed both the Latin and English verses
> from Shakespeare's tomb.

You have learnt two things from Kathman --
A) whenever ANYONE refers to the Stratman, they
are referring to the Poet; and
B) whenever ANYONE refers to the Poet, they are
referring to the Stratman.

With these two assumptions, you cannot fail but
to 'prove' the Stratfordian case.

>> Dugdale was not preparing a book that honoured selected
>> 'worthies'. He was cataloguing and recording monuments
>> as they existed -- whether or not he might have approved
>> or disapproved of such people and their monuments.
>
> Right...Dugdale was cataloguing and recording the monuments
> of all of the undistinguished and insignificant people in
> Warwickshire's history.

Undistinguished and insignificant people did not
leave memorials. I'm sure he recorded those of
many he personally disliked and would have
preferred to ignore.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 10/09/2012 18:33, Dominic Hughes wrote:

>> The major differences from Dugdale's drawing
>> are in Virtue's sketch. It's no longer a severe-
>> looking businessman wool-dealer with a sack
>> of wool, but a foppish pretend-poet writing (with
>> a quill pen) on a cushion.
>
> Is it your contention that Virtue was in on the conspiracy?

I wasn't there, and have not talked to the man.
But some people of the day knew, and Robert
Harley was IMHO almost certainly one of them.
His son, the 2nd Earl of Oxford, went to Stratford
with Virtue and that drawing suggests strongly
to me that both were in on the secret.

> When did the English and Latin verses first appear on the
> Monument?

When it was erected, in the early 1620s.
Why do you ask?

> By the way, I find your notion that the way
> someone looks is indicative of their profession to be similar to
> phrenology, but I am picturing you now as Bozo the Clown.

Phrenology was commonly accepted, as was the
idea that looks are a guide to occupations. The
latter is often IMHO quite true. I appreciate that
you disagree, and that as you walk around the
courts of law, you find the lawyers indistinguishable
from the drug dealers and the bank robbers. But
that's a problem in many countries. However, the
Bard himself often based character on appearance
and vice-versa.
[..]

>>> By the way, the locals were not as dumb as you contend.
>>> As the Reverend John Ward, the Rector of Shakespeare's
>>> Stratford church related, Shakespeare's reputation in
>>> Stratford is still so great that he must "peruse" the plays so
>>> that "I may not be ignorant in that matter."
>>
>> Indeed a record gleefully seized upon by Ogburn,
>> who pointed out the Rev John Ward made this
>> resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford, and
>> that his total silence on the matter subsequently
>> -- after he had taken up his position told its own
>> story,

> You also demonstarte an inability to read with comprehension
> and a penchant for just making things up. I have my copy of the
> second edition of 'The Mysterious William Shakespeare; The
> Myth and the Reality' before me on my desk. I have reviewed
> the five references Ogburn made to the Reverend Doctor John
> Ward [pp. 18-19, 36, 192fn., 402 and 690] and nowhere in any of
> those passages does Ogburn state that Ward "made this
> resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford." Did you invent this
> alleged fact or did you hallucinate it. Ask your carer to up your
> dosage.

I was working from memory -- but, on checking, I see
that it was adequately reliable. Ogburn may not have
used the word "before" but that was what he implied.
Do you really think that the Reverend made this note
(to himself) AFTER he got to Stratford and AFTER he
had met his new parishioners?

What a fool you are!

>>> Some argue that the monument was originally erected to
>>> honor John Shakespeare or some other local grain merchant,
>>
>> Since the great bulk of the locals were illiterate,
>> they'd not have left much of a record of their
>> opinions. But even if they were literate, they'd
>> also likely not bother. The postcards on sale
>> in the local shops today are not usually bought
>> and posted by locals --- but by tourists.
>> (I hope that analogy is not too difficult for you.)
>
> It is your silly theory that the Monument was erected to fool the
> tourists. What is the probability that not one of your imagined
> tourists never found out about the origins of the Monument?

You will have to word that question with more
care. I do not know what you are trying to ask.
What 'origins'? No one knows who paid for it.
Someone must have. No one knows who
designed it. Someone must have. No one knows
who drafted the inscription . . . and so on.

You'd have thought that those who did all these
things would have been proud to have done so,
and made sure that there was a good record -- in
the detailed records of the town council, for example,
or on a few tablets left on walls here or there, or
somewhere. Or in a book commemorating the poet
and his achievements. But not a whisper.

You'd have thought that celebratory performances
of the plays would be arranged, maybe annually,
or even every decade. But no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no -- God Forbid!

Nary a word -- not from anyone ever -- or not until
Garrick in 1769, when it was all in the distant past
and the locals had no clue what it was all about.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 11/09/2012 04:37, Dominic Hughes wrote:

> [,,,]
>>> You can 't even get Dugdale right. Far from making
>>> Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
>>> " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
>>> the man from Stratford
>>
>> Where does he state this?
> [...]
>
> If George Greenwood is to be believed, Dugdale states it
> explicitly in his own handwriting in his private papers:

God help us.

> private manuscript book, and surrounded, as it is, by notes in
> his own handwriting.

This document is, I understand, extant and regularly
quoted.

> Moreover, although he did not profess to
> be an artist, Sir William could, at any rate, sketch well
> heraldically, as can be proved by many drawings in the
> possession of Mr. W. F. S. Dugdale. It was from this drawing
> that the artist, whether Hollar or some other, prepared the
> engraving, which is an exact copy of the sketch except that
> it corrects it where it is somewhat out of drawing. Over it is
> written, in Sir William's own handwriting, "In the [10] north
> wall of the Quire is this monument for William Shakespeare
> the famous poet,"

If I (or anyone) was to make a record of monuments
in Stratford church, we would use much the same
language. That would NOT mean that we believed
in the literal accuracy of anything we copied down

> http://www.sourcetext.com/greenwood/sbde/01.htm

A site created by the exceptionally dim, for the
exceptionally dim.


Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

Because a few Shakespeare scholars ignorant of the authorship debate, and not all that bright, make stupid comments in favor of the absurd sketch of Shakespeare with his elbows sticking out (find me one monument in all of England showing a man looking like that) indicating they know just about nothing about this one detail in the authorship debate, and one even quotes Price out of context without indicating why she opposed the idea that the monument was originally erected for John Shakespeare, and Welles points out (long after I did here at HLAS) the absurdity of believing the Shakespeare family would go along with the eradication of all memory of John Shakespeare to replace his name with William's, does not allow you to state that they discredited Spielmann, whom they never mention.

> A massive account of the kind produced by Dugdale
>
> will inevitably have errors. But there is nothing of
>
> the scale of his supposed mis-rendering of the
>
> drawing of Shakespeare. This was a famous image
>
> in a famous (and fairly local) place of a famous
>
> person; If it was wrong, Dugdale could not have got
>
> it THAT wrong by accident. It's like drawing the
>
> Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
>
> his wheelchair. It is not to be 'explained' by referring
>
> to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.

No, it is not--but Spielmann did hugely more than that, and if you wanted seriously to contest the point, you would go through what Spielmann said, and Dom very considerately proved you, and state why each of his points was wrong. I believe none was.

(1) No statue whatever could have looked like the one he drew.
(2) No statue by the head of a family is likely to have been vandalized the way you say this one was; if any was, cite it.
(3) There is bounteous evidence that Dugdale's engravings were EXTREMELY inaccurate, at times--at least as completely as this one is said to be.
(4) Dugdale recorded the inscriptions still on the monument, and they are appropriate ONLY for a monument to a poet, not to a grain merchant (and, by
the way, no one has ever reproduced a picture of a funerary monument to a grain
merchant that looks like the one Dugdale sketched).
(5) There is no documentary evidence that the monument was significantly changed for what it originally was.

> >> Brian Vickers, Peter Beal, Jonathan Bate

Vickers got help against Foster from the imbecile, Richard Kennedy, so is supporting his insanity concerning the monument, or else is senile. I forget what Beal said, but Bate opposed the Kennedy theory, and Vickers.

>
> >> and nearly everyone else would disagree. But who are they
>
> >> when compared to you?

It was a very few, most Shakespeare scholars keeping safely out of the authorship debate, as usual. Probably fearing getting on the wrong side of the Eminent Vickers. But also because they realize they are poor debaters, and ignorant of the subject. Those who aren't narrow-mindedly too involved in their own specialized micro-constituents of Shakespeare Studies to be bothered.

> >
>
> > How would those gentleman even know anything about my
>
> > discussion with you
>
>
>
> I was NOT referring to YOU -- but to the general
>
> debate on this issue which has gone on for (as
>
> I said) decades, if not centuries.
>
>
>
> > and whether or not there was any passion
>
> > involved on my side of the debate,
>
>
>
> Lawyers are passionate only about one thing --
>
> their fees (and they do their best to conceal that).
>
> They have no concept of truth, nor of any other
>
> moral value -- and would not know what passion
>
> is, nor understand why anyone ever gets
>
> passionate about anything (other than large
>
> wads of cash, of course).
>
>
>
> > or whether or not I have cited
>
> > evidence in opposition to your fanciful notions? The fact is that
>
> > all you are capable of doing is making blanket assertions in the
>
> > face of evidence which contradicts your speculations. When
>
> > called on those assertions, you are quite incapable of providing
>
> > support for your claims.
>
>
>
> What a fool!
>

I must then be painful to be so totally demolished by a fool. Why, by the way,
do you suddenly allow any credibility to scholars whose opinion on just about every other matter concerning Shakespeare you dismiss as "utter rubbish," or the like?

>
> >>> You can 't even get Dugdale right. Far from making
>
> >>> Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
>
> >>> " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
>
> >>> the man from Stratford
>
> >>
>
> >> Where does he state this?
>
> >
>
> > Implicitly, when he transcribed both the Latin and English verses
>
> > from Shakespeare's tomb.
>
>
>
> You have learnt two things from Kathman --
>
> A) whenever ANYONE refers to the Stratman, they
>
> are referring to the Poet; and

> B) whenever ANYONE refers to the Poet, they are
>
> referring to the Stratman.
>

You're SO insane, Paul. Here's a quote from the infamous Kathman/Ross site for you:

Next to the infamous engraving in Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, Dugdale transcribed both the Latin and English verses from Shakespeare's tomb, along with the verse from the gravestone. Except for minor spelling differences (entirely typical of Dugdale), these verses are the same as those seen today. The Latin reads:

Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet
which may be translated thus:

In judgment a Nestor, in wit a Socrates, in art a Virgil;
the earth buries [him], the people mourn [him], Olympus possesses [him]

On the page facing the engraving of the monument, Dugdale writes the following in his account of Stratford:

One thing more, in reference to this antient town is observable, that it
gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will. Shakespeare,
whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the Church.
[Shakspere Allusion-Book, II, 62]

Dugdale, like Lt. Hammond before him, explicitly says that the monument is for "our late famous Poet Will. Shakespeare."

1656. Dugdale absolutely testifies that the monument was for Will Shakespeare of Stratford who was the poet Will Shakespeare. You can say he was mistake or lying--ar that someone forged the document recording his supposed words,but you cannot say he was referring to anyone but the Stratford man when he wrote of Shakespeare.

Moreover, it would be completely insane for him to sketch the likeness of a grain-merchant and quote inscriptions accompanying it which he said referred to Shakespeare the poet whoever the poet really was. I believe, furthermore, that he refers to the engraving based on his sketch as being of Shakespeare of Stratford, and includes his dates of birth and death, but I'm not sure. Which makes me think a "Shakespeare Authorship Debate, A to Z," would be a worthwhile and possibly commercially viable product. In it would be an entry on Dugdale, which would have everything concerning him and Shakespeare that could be found, including what he said in the text accompanying the first engraving of the monument. If the morons running organizations like the Shakespeare Fellowship were serious, they'd gather funds to pay for the compilation and publication of such a volume.

>
> With these two assumptions, you cannot fail but
>
> to 'prove' the Stratfordian case.

With your assumption, that no reference to Shakespeare that so much as hints at the possibility that he was a poet, can refer to the Stratford man (unless it gives his address, date of birth and an indication that the one referring to Shakespeare had known him intimately for ten or more years--in which case it is a lie or a forgery), you CAN oddly--and WILL--fail to disprove, or even demonstrate as implausible, the Stratford case.

With snips of matter not worth bothering with.

--Bob

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, 16 September 2012 01:01:13 UTC+10, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 10/09/2012 17:42, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>

[...]>

> >> Brian Vickers, Peter Beal, Jonathan Bate and nearly
>
> >> everyone else would disagree. But who are they
>
> >> when compared to you?

Who are they? Aren't they part of that huge tribe of brainless academics who imagine the execrable Shag-sheep to be the noble author of <Hamlet>? Now suddenly they're authorities, invoked with scornful hauteur for any who might suppose otherwise?

Peter G.

[Paul Crowley]

On 15/09/2012 19:25, Bob Grumman wrote:

[..]
> . . . . the absurdity of believing the Shakespeare family would go along

> with the eradication of all memory of John Shakespeare to replace his
> name with William's,

A ridiculous claim. The Shacksber family knew well what
was going on, and were very well rewarded for it. John
would never have had a monument if William had not
agreed to be stooge. It was a kind of 'joint memorial'

>> it THAT wrong by accident. It's like drawing the
>> Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
>> his wheelchair. It is not to be 'explained' by referring
>> to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.
>
> No, it is not--but Spielmann did hugely more than that,

I have almost no interest in Spielmann.

> (1) No statue whatever could have looked like the one he drew.

Why not?

> (2) No statue by the head of a family is likely to have been vandalized
> the way you say this one was; if any was, cite it.

There was no 'vandalisation'. The fairly drastic
alterations (from the grain-dealer to the pork-butcher)
were made (I reckon) around 1700 -- long after all
in Shagsper family were dead -- at least all who
might have known anything.

> (3) There is bounteous evidence that Dugdale's engravings were
> EXTREMELY inaccurate, at times--at least as completely as this one
> is said to be.

Quote one.

> (4) Dugdale recorded the inscriptions still on the monument, and they
> are appropriate ONLY for a monument to a poet, not to a grain
> merchant

We are NOT talking about competing above-board
stories (whether or not the monument fits a poet or a
grain-merchant) -- as you absurdly seem to think.

We are discussing whether or not
(A) the monument, and all the information we have about
it fits the Stratfordian story, AND
(B) whether or not the monument, and all the information
we have about it fits into an Oxfordian argument, involving
a cover-up.

> (and, by the way, no one has ever reproduced a picture of a funerary
> monument to a grain merchant that looks like the one Dugdale
> sketched).

Agreed. But Stratfordian locals in the early 17th century
were unlikely to be aware of that. Of course, we don't
know what they were told, No doubt it involved a story
that John Shaxber's London friends had got a lot wrong
with their monument. The sculptor and engraver seem
to have mixed him up with someone else, and the
monument really needed to be changed. A collection
would be made in due course to pay for the alterations.
I'm sure, Mr X, that you agree. How much can I put you
down for?

> Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
> Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet
> which may be translated thus:

> In judgment a Nestor, in wit a Socrates, in art a Virgil;

The judgement of piles (those you get on your arse,
or maybe piles of dung, or both) the wit of Socrates,
the footballer, and the art of a marrow.

OK, I'm joking about the footballer. But 'Socrates' is a
common name, and they could have had someone else
in mind, but I'm probably missing some obvious allusion.

> On the page facing the engraving of the monument, Dugdale writes the
> following in his account of Stratford:
>
> One thing more, in reference to this antient town is observable,
> that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will.
> Shakespeare, whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the
> Church. [Shakspere Allusion-Book, II, 62]

What else was he going to say? Under ANY scenario?

> 1656. Dugdale absolutely testifies that the monument was for Will
> Shakespeare of Stratford who was the poet Will Shakespeare.

No, he does not. He records what he sees, or feels he
ought to see. I'd do the same IF I was describing that
church and its monuments -- especially if this was under
the rule of Cromwell.


Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 8:00:56 AM UTC-4, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 15/09/2012 19:25, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>
> [..]
>
> > . . . . the absurdity of believing the Shakespeare family would go along
>
> > with the eradication of all memory of John Shakespeare to replace his
>
> > name with William's,
>
>
>
> A ridiculous claim.

Ridiculous? That a family might feel it unseemly
to remove a grandfather's name from an ornate
funerary monument in a church and put up inscriptions
to make a sculpture of him seem his son's? Susannah
and her pious Puritan husband would just see it as
good business and not care about those in the community
who would surely look askance at it. I suppose it's
not impossible that this did not happen, but to call
the suggestion that it did "ridiculous" is insane.
How often did any English family of the time do such
a thing, Paul?

And to what end? How could it not make people wonder
about the fellow proposed as the great poet, Shakespeare,
if his father's memory was treated so badly, and no
one could find a better way to honor a great poet--with
his own monument, for instance?

The Shacksber family knew well what
>
> was going on, and were very well rewarded for it. John
>
> would never have had a monument if William had not
>
> agreed to be stooge. It was a kind of 'joint memorial'
>

So you assert with no evidence whatever. Why, if that was
the case, wasn't it literally a joint memorial? Why wasn't
a place left for the son on it? Why wasn't John's wife
included?

>
> >> it THAT wrong by accident. It's like drawing the
>
> >> Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
>
> >> his wheelchair. It is not to be 'explained' by referring
>
> >> to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.
>
> >
>
> > No, it is not--but Spielmann did hugely more than that,
>
>
>
> I have almost no interest in Spielmann.

You have NO interest in evidence.

>
>
>
> > (1) No statue whatever could have looked like the one he drew.
>
>
>
> Why not?

Arms sticking out , hands pressing a pillow to his abdomen?
Give us a link to a picture of a monument showing a man
in such a pose.

> > (2) No statue by the head of a family is likely to have been vandalized
>
> > the way you say this one was; if any was, cite it.
>
>
>
> There was no 'vandalisation'. The fairly drastic
>
> alterations (from the grain-dealer to the pork-butcher)
>
> were made (I reckon) around 1700 -- long after all
>
> in Shagsper family were dead -- at least all who
>
> might have known anything.

So you say with no evidence. Or explanation for the supposed
changes. Although I guess it would make sense to knock the arms
of the statue off, and smash the absurd pillow, then replace
them if they really looked liked Dugdale's engravings showed
them. But why stop there? Why not make an entirely new sculpture,
making him look like later idealized depictions do?

>
> > (3) There is bounteous evidence that Dugdale's engravings were
>
> > EXTREMELY inaccurate, at times--at least as completely as this one
>
> > is said to be.
>

You wanted me to cite one.

the statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, of 1633, looking towards
Whitehall, with its splendid contemporary base (wrongly attributed to
Grintling Gibbons -- it was carved by Joshua Marshall). The king holds
his baton in his right hand, and the horse, his head turned aside,
holds up his right fore-leg. Now, in Hollar's engraving of it the
pedestal is unrecognizable; the King still holds his baton in his
right hand, but the horse, with his head straight forward, holds up
his left fore-leg instead of the right. Therefore, according to modern
reasoning this whole monument must be new; the pedestal as well -- for
this, without decoration, is only half the height, though in plan it
is fairly correct. It is clearly meant for the pedestal. As it
happens, however, certain contemporaries of Hollar show the monument
correctly. But Dugdale was a Warwickshire man, and had great pride in
Shakespeare (as his book shows), so that, it is suggested, he would
take pains to have the monument and effigy correctly drawn -- more
especially, we are told, as all the monuments in Stratford Church
except Shakespeare's are rendered with accuracy. As a matter of fact,
only two others in the church were engraved, both of them faultily --
one of them grotesquely so.

The first of these is the Clopton monument. You see the attitudes of
the small figures on the frieze representing Clopton's children, and
below the figure of the knight beside his wife, his head resting on
his helmet, the crest of which is away from us, and the opening
towards us. In the Dugdale plate the helmet is reversed, although it
is carved out of one piece of alabaster with the figure; and the
gauntlet beside the knight's leg, into which the scabbard disappears,
is omitted altogether. There are other striking differences. It is
clear that the sketches taken in Stratford were insufficient to
provide for a correct plate to be engraved later on in London,
supposing that accuracy was sincerely desired.

Far more reckless are the errors to be found in the Carew monument.
Here the lady lies on the outside, the husband inside. We note the
angels standing upon the projecting cornices at the sides; the
horizontal shape of all the three panels bearing inscriptions and of
the frieze at the bottom -- powder-barrels to the left; and to the
right, cannon pointing to the right --in allusion to Carew being
Master of Ordnance.

But in Dugdale's plate the proportion is utterly different. Elongated
pinnacles (exactly such as we see in the monument of Alexander Nowell
in Dugdale's St. Paul's Cathedral, also engraved under the direction
of Hollar) take the place of the figures; the arms at the top are much
reduced in size; the artist has left himself room for only two panels
and so omits the third. He reverses the positions of the figures. He
puts the knight outside, his body directed the other way; and in the
frieze, while he retains the powder-barrels in their proper position,
he points the cannon the other way round -- to the left; and every
other single detail, when examined carefully, is seen to differ from
the original. It all shows lack of memory as to objects although a
vague idea of facts is untidily retained.





>

Here's all that Spielmann said, earlier quoted by Dom:

From M. H. Spielmann, "Shakespeare's Portraiture," in Studies in the
First Folio (Oxford University Press, 1924):

"Within recent years the misdirected critical spirit which is afoot
has attempted to upset the authenticity of the bust and monument as we

know them, on the slender basis, firstly, of the absurd plate in
Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, and the irresponsible
imitations of it; and secondly, of certain repairs made in 1748; and
the error has been so widely repeated and seized upon, both by the
unwary and by the Shakespeare-haters that I must ask to be allowed a
moment or two in which to remove the misconception.

In 1656 Sir William Dugdale published his great Warwickshire, which
was declared to be his masterpiece (up to that time) and to stand at
the head of all our county histories; and Dr. Whitaker reminded his
readers that Dugdale's "scrupulous accuracy ranked as legal
evidence."

Personally, on many points on which I have consulted Dugdale, both
text and illustrations -- I have found him inaccurate on simple
matters of fact. Not only does he assert that Combe's monument, close
by, is of alabaster whereas it is of sandstone, but, among other
things, he transcribes inaccurately as to spelling the inscriptions on
Shakespeare's monument and gravestone, and on the gravestones of the
Shakespeare family in the chancel of the church.

nature and art," and Gilpin alluded to "his great truth" and "exact
reproduction." But truthful as he was in still-life subjects and
certain topographical plates, Hollar was as fallible as his employer,
and as hard-worked. [note 2] As diligent as Dugdale, he was the
busiest of artists. He is credited with 2,400 plates (many large and
elaborate), or forty-eight plates a year -- about one a week, for
fifty years; he was so busy that he cared not much more for
troublesome accuracy than others of his time and class -- who cared
next to nothing. In 1644 the Mercurius Civicus (the first English
illustrated paper) gave a portrait in four successive weekly numbers
of Prince Maurice, Prince Rupert, the Marquess of Newcastle, and Sir
Thomas Fairfax -- and it was the same portrait each time, and nothing
changed but the name; so that "near enough" was the motto of the time.
[note 3] For the plates to this Monasticon and other works, the
artists would make rough sketches and written notes, or use another
man's, and, returned to London -- on such occasions as they left it --
work all up together at home as best they could -- from memory
sometimes, as there is ample evidence -- confusing parts, and even
monuments and Orders of architecture. They could not be expected to be
more accurate than Dugdale himself.

Now Hollar was the chief engraver of the Warwickshire; and as the
Shakespeare monument we know does not agree with the plate in Dugdale,
it has been innocently assumed and asserted as fact by persons
unfamiliar with the ways of the earlier engravers, that the Stratford
monument as we know it, and as it is here before us, is another, a
different, monument and not the original -- inasmuch as the
proportions, as well as the details, are wholly different, and the
bust presents no similarity whatsoever. This belief pathetically
recalls the peasant's faith in the printed word because it is "in the
papers."

Very well. Let me produce some further evidence. Most of us know the
statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, of 1633, looking towards
Whitehall, with its splendid contemporary base (wrongly attributed to
Grintling Gibbons -- it was carved by Joshua Marshall). The king holds
his baton in his right hand, and the horse, his head turned aside,
holds up his right fore-leg. Now, in Hollar's engraving of it the
pedestal is unrecognizable; the King still holds his baton in his
right hand, but the horse, with his head straight forward, holds up
his left fore-leg instead of the right. Therefore, according to modern
reasoning this whole monument must be new; the pedestal as well -- for
this, without decoration, is only half the height, though in plan it
is fairly correct. It is clearly meant for the pedestal. As it
happens, however, certain contemporaries of Hollar show the monument
correctly. But Dugdale was a Warwickshire man, and had great pride in
Shakespeare (as his book shows), so that, it is suggested, he would
take pains to have the monument and effigy correctly drawn -- more
especially, we are told, as all the monuments in Stratford Church
except Shakespeare's are rendered with accuracy. As a matter of fact,
only two others in the church were engraved, both of them faultily --
one of them grotesquely so.

The first of these is the Clopton monument. You see the attitudes of
the small figures on the frieze representing Clopton's children, and
below the figure of the knight beside his wife, his head resting on
his helmet, the crest of which is away from us, and the opening
towards us. In the Dugdale plate the helmet is reversed, although it
is carved out of one piece of alabaster with the figure; and the
gauntlet beside the knight's leg, into which the scabbard disappears,
is omitted altogether. There are other striking differences. It is
clear that the sketches taken in Stratford were insufficient to
provide for a correct plate to be engraved later on in London,
supposing that accuracy was sincerely desired.

> > (4) Dugdale recorded the inscriptions still on the monument, and they
>
> > are appropriate ONLY for a monument to a poet, not to a grain
>
> > merchant
>
>
>
> We are NOT talking about competing above-board
>
> stories (whether or not the monument fits a poet or a
>
> grain-merchant) -- as you absurdly seem to think.
>

I "absurdly" think that a monument which fits a poet rather
than a grain merchant was erected for a poet.

>
> We are discussing whether or not
>
> (A) the monument, and all the information we have about
>
> it fits the Stratfordian story, AND
>
> (B) whether or not the monument, and all the information
>
> we have about it fits into an Oxfordian argument, involving
>
> a cover-up.
>




>
> > (and, by the way, no one has ever reproduced a picture of a funerary
>
> > monument to a grain merchant that looks like the one Dugdale
>
> > sketched).
>
>
>
> Agreed. But Stratfordian locals in the early 17th century
>
> were unlikely to be aware of that. Of course, we don't
>
> know what they were told, No doubt it involved a story
>
> that John Shaxber's London friends had got a lot wrong
>
> with their monument. The sculptor and engraver seem
>
> to have mixed him up with someone else, and the
>
> monument really needed to be changed. A collection
>
> would be made in due course to pay for the alterations.
>
> I'm sure, Mr X, that you agree. How much can I put you
>
> down for?
>

You've outdone yourself here, Paul. You're saying the
original bust was ridiculous depiction of a grain merchant
because the sculptors didn't know what they were doing
and the townsmen had no idea what a depiction of a grain
merchant should look like? In other words, the people behind
the first bust, and the Shakespeare family--this would have
included a living Will, right?--would have taken no pains
to get the thing reasonably right? And no pone would wonder at
John's getting a bust since he was a worthless peasant?

The way cranks always win is that they make such a tangle of
insanities that those who would refute them lack time to untangle
them sufficiently properly to analyze them.

Have you ever taken part in an extensive debate with someone
you considered a crank--i.e., not someone believing Shakespeare
wrote Shakespeare because that is the accepted belief in the
matter, and cranks oppose accepted beliefs; I mean a creationist
or someone believing in faked moon landings, etc. You seem
oblivious of how classically you epitomize the generic crank.

> Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
>
> > Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet
>
> > which may be translated thus:
>
>
>
> > In judgment a Nestor, in wit a Socrates, in art a Virgil;
>
>
>
> The judgement of piles (those you get on your arse,
>
> or maybe piles of dung, or both) the wit of Socrates,
>
> the footballer, and the art of a marrow.
>
> OK, I'm joking about the footballer. But 'Socrates' is a
>
> common name, and they could have had someone else
>
> in mind, but I'm probably missing some obvious allusion.
>

Someone else?! In the context of the rest of the texts?

>
> > On the page facing the engraving of the monument, Dugdale writes the
>
> > following in his account of Stratford:
>
> >
>
> > One thing more, in reference to this antient town is observable,
>
> > that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will.
>
> > Shakespeare, whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the
>
> > Church. [Shakspere Allusion-Book, II, 62]
>
>
>
> What else was he going to say? Under ANY scenario?
>

Nothing? But we're arguing about evidence and the fact that he said
what he did is evidence that the monument memorialized Will Shakespeare
as a poet.

>
> > 1656. Dugdale absolutely testifies that the monument was for Will
>
> > Shakespeare of Stratford who was the poet Will Shakespeare.
>
>
>
> No, he does not. He records what he sees, or feels he
>
> ought to see. I'd do the same IF I was describing that
>
> church and its monuments -- especially if this was under
>
> the rule of Cromwell.
>

What is says he sees is evidence, Paul. You can make
up reasons for his being mistaken or lying, but you can't
make what he says not evidence. And you have no evidence
that he was lying.

Here's another witness:

In 1631, a year before his death, John Weever published the massive Ancient Funerall Monuments, which recorded many inscriptions from monuments around England, particularly in Canterbury, Rochester, London, and Norwich. Shakespeare's monument does not appear in the published book, but two of Weever's notebooks, containing his drafts for most of the book as well as many unpublished notes, survive as Society of Antiquaries MSS. 127 and 128. In one of these notebooks, under the heading "Stratford upon Avon," Weever recorded the poems from Shakespeare's monument and his gravestone, as follows:

Iudcio Pilum, Genio Socratem, Arte Maronem
Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.
Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast
Read if your canst whome envious death hath plac'd
Within this monument Shakespeare with whome
Quick Nature dy'd whose name doth deck his Tombe
far more then cost, sith all yt hee hath writt
Leaves living Art but page to serve his witt.
ob Ano doi 1616 AEtat. 53. 24 die April

Good frend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed heare
Blest bee ye man that spares these stones
And curst bee hee that moves my bones.

In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon Avon", Weever wrote "Willm Shakespeare the famous poet", and opposite the last two lines of the epitaph he wrote "vpo[n] the grave stone". Although Weever, like Dugdale (see below), was not 100% accurate in the details of his transcription, it is obvious that the inscriptions on both the monument and the gravestone were substantially the same in 1631 as they are today. Furthermore, Weever apparently knew Shakespeare personally -- his 1598 Epigrammes includes the first full poem in honor of Shakespeare ever printed, a sonnet entitled "Ad Gulielmum Shakespear" in which he praises Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Romeo and Juliet. This entry in his private notebook shows that he knew that the poet he had praised in print more than 30 years earlier was the same person buried in Stratford upon Avon.

Note, Paul, that he gives the date of the person depicted by the bust as Will Shakespeare's date of birth. There's no way you can say he was not testifying that the monument at that time honored Will Shakespeare of Stratford as a poet, no way. You can only say that evidence doesn't count because it may be mistaken or intentionally false. But we can say the same thing about Oxford--we can say that he was an imbecile but that lies were published about him making him seem a bright fellow because it wouldn't do for the truth about this important aristocrat to be known.

--Bob

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 15, 11:01 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 10/09/2012 18:33, Dominic Hughes wrote:

[...]

> >>> By the way,  the locals were not as dumb as you contend.
> >>> As the Reverend John Ward,  the Rector of Shakespeare's
> >>> Stratford church related,  Shakespeare's reputation in
> >>> Stratford is still so great that he must "peruse" the plays so
> >>> that "I may not be ignorant in that matter."
>
> >> Indeed a record gleefully seized upon by Ogburn,
> >> who pointed out the Rev John Ward made this
> >> resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford, and
> >> that his total silence on the matter subsequently
> >> -- after he had taken up his position told its own
> >> story,

> > You also demonstarte an inability to read with comprehension
> > and a penchant for just making things up.  I have my copy of the
> > second edition of 'The Mysterious William Shakespeare; The
> > Myth and the Reality' before me on my desk.  I have reviewed
> > the five references Ogburn made to the Reverend Doctor John
> > Ward [pp. 18-19, 36, 192fn., 402 and 690] and nowhere in any of
> > those passages does Ogburn state that Ward "made this
> > resolution BEFORE he got to Stratford."  Did you invent this
> > alleged fact or did you hallucinate it.  Ask your carer to up your
> > dosage.
>
> I was working from memory -- but, on checking, I see
> that it was adequately reliable.

No, it wasn't remotely reliable. What you actually did was to engage
in your usual practice of pulling assertions out of your arse.

> Ogburn may not have
> used the word "before" but that was what he implied.
> Do you really think that the Reverend made this note
> (to himself) AFTER he got to Stratford and AFTER he
> had met his new parishioners?

Yes. Please provide the quotation from Ogburn that "implied" that
Reverend Ward made his note before he arrived in Startford.

> What a fool you are!

You are a liar who simply makes up your own "facts" to suit your
preconcieved notions. It is quite amusing that you are caught out in
one of your lies and then attempt to brazen it out. You are an
incompetent boor.

> >>> Some argue that the monument was originally erected to
> >>> honor John Shakespeare or some other local grain merchant,
>
> >> Since the great bulk of the locals were illiterate,
> >> they'd not have left much of a record of their
> >> opinions. But even if they were literate, they'd
> >> also likely not bother.  The postcards on sale
> >> in the local shops today are not usually bought
> >> and posted by locals --- but by tourists.
> >> (I hope that analogy is not too difficult for you.)
>
> > It is your silly theory that the Monument was erected to fool the
> > tourists.  What is the probability that not one of your imagined
> > tourists never found out about the origins of the Monument?
>
> You will have to word that question with more
> care.  I do not know what you are trying to ask.
> What 'origins'?  No one knows who paid for it.
> Someone must have.  No one knows who
> designed it.  Someone must have.  No one knows
> who drafted the inscription . . . and so on.

Are you unable to read? The sentence which begins this particular
portion of the argument reads as follows: "Some argue that the

monument was originally erected to honor John Shakespeare or some

other local grain merchant..." Is the word "originally" not close
enough to "origins" to alert you as to the meaning of the question
being asked?

This is remarkably similar to the incompetence you exhibited elsewhere
in responding to my post, and which content you snipped:

[End of reinsertion of excerpt snipped by Crowley]

I note that you have dodged answering the question posed to you about
your assertion that the parson was raising funds to restore the
monument when he made the comment about what restorations had been
made. I am confident that this can be taken as just one more
unfounded assertion pulled from your fundament.

[snip of what Crowley would have thought...if he could think]

Here is some more of what you snipped:

> >> You are referring, no doubt, to Dave Kathman's
> >> worthless website, and his pathetic collection of
> >> records. If you want a comment from me on any
> >> of them, you'll have to specify which.
> > An excellent dodge.
> It's not a dodge at all. I am not going to write
> on Kathman's extensive collection of garbage.
> > You are simply incapable of dealing with evidence and so
> > you sputter out some ad hominem garbage and label
> > historical documents "pathetic" (whatever that is supposed to
> > mean with relation to documentary evidence).
> Each item is pathetic and none of it makes any
> contribution to the 'historical record'. I note that
> you are so ashamed of it, that you refrain from
> pointing out the virtues of any of these supposed
> 'records'.
Why are you so inarticulate that you are unable to explain what you
mean when you call pieces of documentary evidence "pathetic"? You
merely repeat the charge as if that gives it some force. I also find
your apparent belief that you are clairvoyant [evidenced by your claim
that I am "ashamed" of the records] to be further proof of your
inability to reasonably propound any rational defense of your claims.
As a matter of fact, I believe that the records are quite sufficient

in and of themselves, individually, but more so collectively, to build
a prima facie case that the inscriptions were on the monument from the

very beginning.

> To waste words and deal with Kathman's first item:
> > One of the First Folios in the Folger Shakespeare
> > Library (no. 26 according to the Folger numbering)
> > contains three handwritten poems on the last end page
> > of the volume, written in a secretary hand dating from
> > approximately the 1620s.
> So we are to take Kathman's assurance that
> these poems date from the 1620s? He "knows"
> this just because he wants to believe it ! And
> you regard this as 'a record' ?
The sad thing is that you don't regard it as a record. In the face of
documentary evidence which runs contrary to your propaganda, the best
you can muster in response is, "Maybe the dating is wrong." Do you
have anything better than that or is that really the best you can do?
If that's it, then the word "pathetic" should rightly apply to your
efforts.
In addition, it is a fundamental error in methodology to consider only
one piece of evidence in isolation, ignoring the corroborative effect
of the other relevant evidence [the other 17th century records
referencing the inscriptions]

> What a fool you are!

Coming from someone who doesn't understand simple and basic concepts
-- such as what constitutes evidence and the proper way to examine and
consider it --, that is a compliment. You are pathetic.

> [..]
Allow me to put this back in:
> First read the text. Try to remember that all this is
> in small print, high up in a dark church.
I have read it and, as the historical record indicates, so did any
number of people in the 17th century.

> Then consider the purposes of the monument -- as
> I have tried to explain them to you.

What explanation is that -- are you referring to your silly
speculation that your conspirators placed the monument there to trick
any tourists who wandered out to the countryside looking for the home
of the author Shakespeare, where any of the residents of Stratford,
encountering these big-city tourists, would have thought them crazy
for believing poor illiterate Will could be the author, they
themselves being unable to read or understand the inscriptions on the
Monument...you mean that explanation?

Sorry, but I see no reason for considering such nonsense.

Should I take it that your decision to snip this excerpt indicates
that you are ashamed of the irrational silliness of your explanation?

No answer?

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 15, 11:01 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:

None of which debate does anything to discredit Spielmann or to
substantiate your unsupported claim that he took a "far-out position
that has long been discredited." Just one more unfounded assumption
pulled from your fundament.

As a matter of fact, the debate on the Marlite website has produced
even more evidence [in the more recent posts to it] that reinforce the
position that your great scholar Dugdale ["one of the best"] got it
wrong as to the Shakespeare monument, that Spielmann was correct in
his criticism of the treatment of the Stratford Monument, and that the
Oxenfordians have it wrong.

And yet you are still unable to identify anyone by name who has

"discredited" the argument put forward by Spielmann. If there are so
many who have discredited Spielmann's opinion as to the accuracy of
Dugdale's work, including "pretty nearly every significant writer on
Shakespeare," as you have asserted, it should be quite easy for you to
identify just one such individual...and yet you are incapable of doing

so. Why is that?

You stated, rather definitively, that Spielmann had been discredited
by many people over the years, as if you knew that to be a fact and
were familiar with the names of such people. Now, as it turns out, you
have to move the goalposts to claim that there is a "debate" about the
accuracy of Dugdale's work, not that his opinion has been definitively
"discredited".

> [..]
>
> >> One page that he will find is from the TLS of a year ago,
> >> to which Peter Beal, Brian Vickers, Tarnya Cooper,
> >> Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate and others
> >> contribute.  You may have heard of some of these
> >> names.
>
> > Of course, but then a "debate" is not the same thing as
> > "discrediting" something, and this particular debate does nothing
> > to discredit Spielmann's specific claims as to the inaccuracies
> > found in Dugdale.
>
> A massive account of the kind produced by Dugdale
> will inevitably have errors.  But there is nothing of
> the scale of his supposed mis-rendering of the
> drawing of Shakespeare.  This was a famous image
> in a famous (and fairly local) place of a famous
> person;  If it was wrong, Dugdale could not have got
> it THAT wrong by accident.

So Dugdale was a member of the conspiracy. And the clue he left was
to make a lousy drawing of the Stratford Monument. Brilliant.

> It's like drawing the
> Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
> his wheelchair.  It is not to be 'explained' by referring
> to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.

The mistakes referred to by Spielmann in other drawings are not
trivial. Dugdale got the Startford Monument wrong.

> >> I pointed you to a website where the matter has (yet
> >> again) been extensively debated:
>
> >>http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6942147318185235475&postID=82.....
>
> > The fact that there is a debate does not mean that Spielmann
> > has been discredited.
>
> The fact that arguments such as I have just
> stated have been spelt out time and again, and
> never dealt with, nor replied to, by Spielmann
> nor his supporters DOES MEAN that he has
> been discredited.

I see where your problem lies. You think that a debate you found on
google that has some vague references to Dugdale, among other issues,
results in the dsiscrediting of Speilmann's specific arguments about
Dugdale's accuracy. In other words, you're a nutter.

And yet you are still unable to identify anyone by name who has

"discredited" the argument put forward by Spielmann. If there are so
many who have discredited Spielmann's opinion as to the accuracy of
Dugdale's work, including "pretty nearly every significant writer on
Shakespeare," as you have asserted, it should be quite easy for you to
identify just one such individual...and yet you are incapable of doing

so. Why is that? What are the names of all the significant writers on
Shakespeare who have discredited Spielmann? Did you just pull another
assumption out of your ass?

[sic]

> >>>> Why so much passion?  Well, there is the reputation
> >>>> of Dugdale, which was very high, and remains so.
> >>>> Great scholars are rare, and he was one of the very
> >>>> best.  But his work, involving the Shakespeare
> >>>> monument,  touched a delicate nerve.  He made
> >>>> the man look ridiculous, and that was hard to
> >>>> tolerate.
>
> >>> There is no passion involved in this discussion -- only
> >>> evidence opposed to your absurd speculations.
>
> >> Brian Vickers, Peter Beal, Jonathan Bate and nearly
> >> everyone else would disagree.  But who are they
> >> when compared to you?
>
> > How would those gentleman even know anything about my
> > discussion with you
>
> I was NOT referring to YOU -- but to the general
> debate on this issue which has gone on for (as
> I said) decades, if not centuries.

I was referring to our debate. On the one side, I've posted an
excerpt from Speilmann's work which offers specific evidence which
challenges the assertion that Dugdale was meticulously accurate. On
the other side of our debate, you have made statements to the effect
that numerous significant writers have discredited Spielmann on this
issue. Of course, you haven't identified a single writer who has done
as you've asserted.

> > and whether or not there was any passion
> > involved on my side of the debate,
>
> Lawyers are passionate only about one thing --
> their fees (and they do their best to conceal that).
> They have no concept of truth, nor of any other
> moral value -- and would not know what passion
> is, nor understand why anyone ever gets
> passionate about anything (other than large
> wads of cash, of course).

What a broad brush you paint with...and you paint a picture like that
scribbled by an infant..

> > or whether or not I have cited
> > evidence in opposition to your fanciful notions?  The fact is that
> > all you are capable of doing is making blanket assertions in the
> > face of evidence which contradicts your speculations. When
> > called on those assertions, you are quite incapable of providing
> > support for your claims.
>
> What a fool!

You prove my point.

> >>> You can 't even get Dugdale right.  Far from making
> >>> Shakespeare of Stratford look "ridiculous " your "great scholar
> >>> " ("one of the best") believed that the author Shakespeare was
> >>> the man from Stratford
>
> >> Where does he state this?
>
> > Implicitly, when he transcribed both the Latin and English verses
> > from Shakespeare's tomb.
>
> You have learnt two things from Kathman --
> A) whenever ANYONE refers to the Stratman, they
> are referring to the Poet; and
> B) whenever ANYONE refers to the Poet, they are
> referring to the Stratman.

You really are an idiot. My approach is to look at the evidence. I
do not consider every individual reference to William Shakespeare of
Stratford to be a reference to the Poet. I examine the evidence to
determine whether or not it is a reference to the poet. Likewise with
references to the author Shakespeare -- I examine the evidence to see
whther or not it is tied to William Shakespeare of Stratford. Much of
the documentary evidence does identify William Shakespeare of
Stratford as the poet, playwright and actor. This is the evidence
that you are unable to rebut with any kind of cogent case.

You haven't learned anything from anyone. Your method is to start
with the assumption that Oxenford is the Poet. Therefore, according
to you, any record that connects William Shakespeare of Stratford to
the theatre [whether as playwright, poet, actor, or shareholder] MUST
of necessity be interpreted as soemthing other than what it explicitly
states or MUST be the product of some insipid conspiracy, even when
there is absolutely zero evidence to support your conclusions. For
you to question anyone's else's method of analysis is a joke, just
like you are a joke.

> With these two assumptions, you cannot fail but
> to 'prove' the Stratfordian case.

With just one assumption, you set out to prove your case that Oxenford
was the Poet, and you never fail to do so...if only to yourself.

The Stratfordian case is not built on assumptions. It is built on the
direct, documentary evidence which you are never able to rebut.

> >> Dugdale was not preparing a book that honoured selected
> >> 'worthies'.  He was cataloguing and recording monuments
> >> as they existed -- whether or not he might have approved
> >> or disapproved of such people and their monuments.
>
> > Right...Dugdale was cataloguing and recording the monuments
> > of all of the undistinguished and insignificant people in
> > Warwickshire's history.
>
> Undistinguished and insignificant people did not
> leave memorials. I'm sure he recorded those of
> many he personally disliked and would have
> preferred to ignore.

I note your admission that Shakespeare was considered distinguished
and significant. He was also recognized as the poet by Dugdale, your
great scholar ["one of the best"].

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 15, 11:01 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:

Bull. Your great scholar Dugdale, "one of the best" according to you,
published a work in 1566 that recognized William Shakespeare of
Stratford as "the famous poet," and your weasel words here do nothing
to rebut that point.

You'd probably do better trying to argue that he was in on the
continuing conspiracy, but that claim is as ridiculous as the one you
make here. Would the incredibly accurate and honest scholar Dugdale
intentionally misled his readers? Of course not.

> >http://www.sourcetext.com/greenwood/sbde/01.htm
>
> A site created by the exceptionally dim, for the
> exceptionally dim.

I agree, but that does nothing to take away from the fact that your
great scholar Dugdale ["one of the best"] produced documentary evidene
which recognized William Shakespeare of Stratford as "the famous poet"
in 1566.

Dom

[Paul Crowley]

On 17/09/2012 01:30, Bob Grumman wrote:

>>> . . . . the absurdity of believing the Shakespeare family would go along
>>> with the eradication of all memory of John Shakespeare to replace his
>>> name with William's,
>>
>> A ridiculous claim.
>
> Ridiculous?

In the context. Pay attention.

> That a family might feel it unseemly
> to remove a grandfather's name from an ornate
> funerary monument in a church and put up inscriptions
> to make a sculpture of him seem his son's?

Under the Strat theory there were some
differences between the achievements
of the father and of the son. Can you
remember what they were?

[..]

>> The Shacksber family knew well what
>> was going on, and were very well rewarded for it. John
>> would never have had a monument if William had not
>> agreed to be stooge. It was a kind of 'joint memorial'
>
> So you assert with no evidence whatever.

I have endlessly quoted evidence,

> Why, if that was the case, wasn't it literally a joint memorial?

Yeah, yeah, Why didn't the sculptor write in large
letters -- "THIS IS ALL PART OF A COVER-UP?
WE DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THE
POET WAS WRITING POEMS TO THE QUEEN
'COS YOU'D LIKELY MISREAD THEM -- LIKE
THOSE 'PRINCE TUDOR' THEORISTS WILL IN
THE 20TH CENTURY.

>>>> it THAT wrong by accident. It's like drawing the
>>>> Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
>>>> his wheelchair. It is not to be 'explained' by referring
>>>> to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.
>>
>>> No, it is not--but Spielmann did hugely more than that,
>>
>> I have almost no interest in Spielmann.
>
> You have NO interest in evidence.

Evidence exists only in the context of some
proposition. What proposition is Spielmann
arguing for?

>>> (1) No statue whatever could have looked like the one he drew.
>>
>> Why not?
>
> Arms sticking out , hands pressing a pillow to his abdomen?

Nothing difficult in any of that.

> Give us a link to a picture of a monument showing a man
> in such a pose.

Any classical statute. Michaelangelo's David.
No pillow, but Michaelangelo wasn't aiming
for one.

>> There was no 'vandalisation'. The fairly drastic
>> alterations (from the grain-dealer to the pork-butcher)
>> were made (I reckon) around 1700 -- long after all
>> in Shagsper family were dead -- at least all who
>> might have known anything.
>
> So you say with no evidence. Or explanation for the supposed
> changes.

I have given you an explanation.

> Although I guess it would make sense to knock the arms
> of the statue off, and smash the absurd pillow, then replace
> them if they really looked liked Dugdale's engravings showed
> them. But why stop there? Why not make an entirely new sculpture,
> making him look like later idealized depictions do?

No one wanted an "idealized depiction".

>>> (3) There is bounteous evidence that Dugdale's engravings were
>>> EXTREMELY inaccurate, at times--at least as completely as this one
>>> is said to be.
>>
> You wanted me to cite one.
>
> the statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, of 1633, looking towards
> Whitehall, with its splendid contemporary base (wrongly attributed to
> Grintling Gibbons -- it was carved by Joshua Marshall). The king holds
> his baton in his right hand, and the horse, his head turned aside,
> holds up his right fore-leg. Now, in Hollar's engraving of it the
> pedestal is unrecognizable; the King still holds his baton in his
> right hand, but the horse, with his head straight forward, holds up
> his left fore-leg instead of the right.

Sorry, I fell asleep at this point.

But, on waking up, I see that Hollar's engraving and
images of the stature are readily available on line:

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_521/12792284563v5vX2.jpg

http://londonhistorians.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/450_charlesi_statue_trafalgar_square.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wenceslas_Hollar_-_Equestrian_statue_of_Charles_I_%28State_6%29.jpg

However . . . while there are obvious differences, Hollar
was clearly not trying to be pedantically accurate. He
produced an engraving the certainly captures the spirit
of the statue. It seems that Spielmann is a classic anal-
retentive, almost up to David-Webb standard. He has
no artistic feeling, and thinks all representations in
other forms of art, should be exact copies. After all,
what other point could they have?

Spielmann acknowledges that " . . near enough . . "
was the motto of those times. And there is nothing
wrong with that. But no one would claim that the
'grain-dealer; was 'near enough' to the "pork-
butcher". And THAT is the point. It is the ONLY
point.

> he points the cannon the other way round -- to the left; and every
> other single detail, when examined carefully, is seen to differ from
> the original. It all shows lack of memory as to objects although a
> vague idea of facts is untidily retained.

Gosh . . . is that the time?

> Here's all that Spielmann said, earlier quoted by Dom:

I keep dozing off.

> Very well. Let me produce some further evidence. Most of us know the
> statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, of 1633, looking towards
> Whitehall, with its splendid contemporary base (wrongly attributed to
> Grintling Gibbons -- it was carved by Joshua Marshall). The king holds
> his baton in his right hand, and the horse, his head turned aside,
> holds up his right fore-leg. Now, in Hollar's engraving of it the
> pedestal is unrecognizable;

Been here before, Was that a dream?
Or is this one? Deja vue.

> The first of these is the Clopton monument. You see the attitudes of
> the small figures on the frieze representing Clopton's children, and
> below the figure of the knight beside his wife, his head resting on
> his helmet, the crest of which is away from us, and the opening
> towards us.

Definitely deja vue

>> We are discussing whether or not
>> (A) the monument, and all the information we have about
>> it fits the Stratfordian story, AND
>> (B) whether or not the monument, and all the information
>> we have about it fits into an Oxfordian argument, involving
>> a cover-up.

>> Agreed. But Stratfordian locals in the early 17th century
>> were unlikely to be aware of that. Of course, we don't
>> know what they were told, No doubt it involved a story
>> that John Shaxber's London friends had got a lot wrong
>> with their monument. The sculptor and engraver seem
>> to have mixed him up with someone else, and the
>> monument really needed to be changed. A collection
>> would be made in due course to pay for the alterations.
>> I'm sure, Mr X, that you agree. How much can I put you
>> down for?
>
> You've outdone yourself here, Paul. You're saying the
> original bust was ridiculous depiction of a grain merchant
> because the sculptors didn't know what they were doing

NO. I'm saying that those who put it up knew
exactly what they were doing. But they had to
'sell' it to the few locals who remembered John
Shagsber.

> and the townsmen had no idea what a depiction of a grain
> merchant should look like?

They had SOME idea what a memorial to a grain
merchant should look like. Not a clear one -- but
good enough.

> In other words, the people behind
> the first bust, and the Shakespeare family--this would have
> included a living Will, right?--would have taken no pains
> to get the thing reasonably right? And no pone would wonder at
> John's getting a bust since he was a worthless peasant?

He spent his wife's money on all manner of
strange ventures. Stratford locals would not
have known much about what he did outside
the town, or in London (assuming he went
there).

> The way cranks always win is that they make such a tangle of
> insanities that those who would refute them lack time to untangle
> them sufficiently properly to analyze them.

Cover-ups can get complicated. But it is easy
to point out serious faults, if they are not
practicable. The Marlite 'faked-death' ones,
for example, don't sustain two minutes
examination. Nor does the semi-crazy theory
that the son of illiterate yeomanry, father of
illiterate daughters, etc., etc. from Stratford-
upon-Avon could possibly have been the
Great Bard.

> Have you ever taken part in an extensive debate
> with someone you considered a crank--i.e., not
> someone believing Shakespeare wrote
> Shakespeare because that is the accepted belief
> in the matter, and cranks oppose accepted beliefs;
> I mean a creationist or someone believing in faked
> moon landings, etc. You seem oblivious of how
> classically you epitomize the generic crank.

Not really. I have talked to Strats, and to
Mormons and to Marlites. But it is very easy
to reduce them to silence or to simple (if
foolish) re-assertions of the doctrines of
their faith.

>>> On the page facing the engraving of the monument, Dugdale writes the
>>> following in his account of Stratford:
>>
>>> One thing more, in reference to this antient town is observable,
>>> that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will.
>>> Shakespeare, whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the
>>> Church. [Shakspere Allusion-Book, II, 62]
>>
>> What else was he going to say? Under ANY scenario?
>
> Nothing? But we're arguing about evidence

We are arguing about propositions and their
supporting or undermining evidence. My
questions stands.

> and the fact that he said what he did is evidence
> that the monument memorialized Will
> Shakespeare as a poet.

If someone says something that he would
say in almost any circumstances, then it is
NOT evidence. Many people plead 'not guilty'
to offences with which they are charged.
Is that 'evidence'? Many people admit to
things under torture. Is that 'evidence'?

> In one of these notebooks, under the heading
> "Stratford upon Avon," Weever recorded the poems
> from Shakespeare's monument and his
> gravestone, as follows:

Did Weever actually go to Stratford?
Or was this copied from someone else?

> In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon
> Avon", Weever wrote "Willm Shakespeare the
> famous poet",

Sounds too much like one of Collier's forgeries.
When you make a private note to yourself
about (say) E.E. Cummins (or any of your
other heroes) do you write beside it " . . the
famous poet . .".

> Furthermore, Weever apparently knew
> Shakespeare personally -- his 1598 Epigrammes
> includes the first full poem in honor of
> Shakespeare ever printed, a sonnet entitled "Ad
> Gulielmum Shakespear" in which he praises
> Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Romeo and
> Juliet. This entry in his private notebook shows
> that he knew that the poet he had praised in print
> more than 30 years earlier was the same person
> buried in Stratford upon Avon.

Sure -- and similar comments that you make
about the work of E.E, Cummins (or any of
your other heroes) tell us that you knew the
man personally . . . especially when you make
a private note to yourself: "Cummins . . the
famous poet . . .". You could need that note
later because you might get confused with
other people you know with the same
surname who are also poets.

> Note, Paul, that he gives the date of the person
> depicted by the bust as Will Shakespeare's date of
> birth. There's no way you can say he was not
> testifying that the monument at that time honored
> Will Shakespeare of Stratford as a poet

There was a monument in Stratford-upon-
Avon church from around 1622, supposedly
honouring the stooge as the Great Bard.
No one denies it. I'm suspicious of this
''record' though. It's too obvious, too soon,
too detailed, too complete, too contrived,
and too slick.

But it could be genuine. So what?


Paul.

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, 18 September 2012 06:07:19 UTC+10, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 17/09/2012 01:30, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>

[desunt nonnulla]

> > In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon
>
> > Avon", Weever wrote "Willm Shakespeare the
>
> > famous poet",
>
>
>
> Sounds too much like one of Collier's forgeries.
>
> When you make a private note to yourself
>
> about (say) E.E. Cummins (or any of your
>
> other heroes) do you write beside it " . . the
>
> famous poet . .".
>
>

Look, everyone, it's really very simple. If a contemporary reference to Shakespeare doesn't include his address and occupation, it's of no evidentiary value; if it does, it's clearly a forgery, because no contemporary reference would include such information.

I hope that's clear now.

Peter G.

[marco]

>There was a monument in Stratford-upon-
>Avon church from around 1622, supposedly
>honouring the stooge as the Great Bard.
>No one denies it. I'm suspicious of this
>''record' though. It's too obvious, too soon,
>too detailed, too complete, too contrived,
>and too slick.

>But it could be genuine. So what?

>Paul.

that's very funny

Sir Paul is suspicious of a Shakespeare "record"

too much, too slick,
have to laugh,
please give us more
this must be a full time job for Paul

I don't know where he finds the time,
but Dominic Hughes makes some excellent points

marc

[Dominic Hughes]

> Peter G.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Right. In the universe that Paul Crowley inhabits [and nowhere else
that I know of], any evidence that supports the proposition that
William Shakspeare of Stratford was the author/actor/shareholder
identified as William Shakespeare, is actually evidence that a
conspiracy, the existence of which is not supported by any direct
evidence, was at work and was successful.

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 5, 1:16 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> Peter Farey's recent article on the monument athttp://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.ie/raises some
> interesting points -- not that he sees them himself.
>
> The first is why did Robert Harley (who was, in effect,
> the first 'Prime Minister' of Britain) take the title of
> 'Earl of Oxford'? It was the 'second creation' of the title,
> in 1711 with the 'first creation' dying out only eight years
> earlier in 1703 with the death of the 20th Earl.
>
> Robert Harley's connection to the ancient family of
> the De Veres was remote in the extreme, and he
> took the title of 'Earl of Mortimer' as well, in case his
> claim to the Earldom of Oxford was subsequently
> challenged.
>
> " . . .Robert Harley (1661 1724) 1st Earl of Oxford and
> Earl Mortimer, . . born in Bow Street, London in 1661, the
> eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, a prominent landowner in
> Herefordshire and son of Sir Robert Harley and his third
> wife, the celebrated letter-writer Brilliana, Lady Harley. . . "
>
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Ea...)
>
> " . . . Sir Robert's first wife was Anne . . . His third wife
> was Brilliana . . . . .daughter of Edward, Vicount
> Conway, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of
> Todington, county Gloucester, and sister to Mary, wife
> of the celebrated General Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere, of
> Tilbury (by which alliance the Harley's became
> connected with the Vere's, Earls of Oxford, Earls of
> Clare, and other ancient families). . . . "
>
> (http://www.dianneelizabeth.com/Surname/Harley/earl_of_oxford.html)
>
> But Robert Harley was immensely literary, as was
> his son, Edward, the 2nd Earl.
> "Harley's importance to literature cannot be overstated"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Ea...
>
> If anyone between 1680 and 1740 knew what was
> going on, in matters literary and political and especially
> on any overlap, it would have included the Harleys.
>
> We know that some people were fully aware of the
> cover-up, since in 1709 Nicholas Rowe published his
> account of what he had been told about the Shake-
> speare's acting:
>
> " . . . and tho' I have inquir'd, I could never meet with
> any further Account of him this way, than that the top
> of his Performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet."
>
> Rowe did not grasp that his leg was being pulled.
> The members of the Scriblerus club must have been
> rolling around on the floor, helpless with laughter, at
> the idiocy of the middle-class 'intellectuals" -- much
> as their predecessors had been around 100 years
> earlier when they saw that the common people were
> taking the name of "Will Shake-speare" as genuine --
> even when it contained the hyphen!
>
> Farey's article is on the likelihood of changes being
> made to the Shakespeare monument in Stratford-
> upon-Avon church:
>
> "Unfortunately, there is no record whatsoever of such work
> being undertaken, and in any case, would it not be reasonable
> to ask the simple question of why they would have found it
> necessary to make all of these very expensive changes?"
>
> This question is reasonable, given Stratfordian (or
> quasi-Stratfordian) assumptions. But, given an
> Oxfordian scenario, it is far from so.
>
> The expense would be as nothing to someone with
> the resources available to a person like Harley, and
> Oxfordians believe (or should believe) that people
> like Harley were involved from the beginning of the
> cover-up and for the next few generations.
>
> Why would they have found such changes 'necessary'?
> (Farey's word here, but better replaced with 'desirable').
> As a quasi-Strat, Farey fails to grasp the essential
> purposes of the monument. It had a principal one: --
> to provide something fairly nominal for the supposed
> Great Bard. No one wanted to see a campaign for the
> illiterate stooge to be re-buried in Westminster Abbey,
> so some kind of 'monument' was necessary in
> Stratford.
>
> Its second purpose was to avoid trouble (or too many
> awkward questions) from locals, who had known the
> family -- and who would have been aware of some facts
> for sure -- that neither the father nor the son could have
> written a sentence. For them, the monument was
> (almost certainly) supposedly for the father John
> Shacksber, and paid for by his 'London friends' to
> whom he had supposedly rendered good services way
> back in the 1550s or 1560s. The image of the severe
> wool-master (who would have had little idea how to
> hold a pen) was meant for them. But, over time, it
> came to seem less and less appropriate for those who
> arrived looking for a memorial to the poet, and by then
> all the locals who had known the family had died off,
> So it became possible, and it was desirable, to change
> the monument to portray the asinine pen-wielding
> "pork butcher", who used a cushion as a writing desk.
>
> But how, according to Farey, did Dugdale get this
> engraving (produced by Wenceslaus Hollar) of the
> monument so wrong? Farey's answer here is (to
> paraphrase) 'sheer carelessness'. That answer might

> have some plausibility if Dugdale could be shown to
> be similarly careless in the rest of his work or in his
> other works. But not so. He was famously careful

> and usually accurate. Secondly, the etching of the
> monument is quite distinctive. It was not something
> that is likely to have been produced by accident.
> Possibly there was a funerary monument to some
> other wool-merchant, which somehow got confused
> with that for Shaksper, but that would seem highly
> improbable.
>
> The 1737 sketch by George Vertue of Edward Harley,
> 2nd Earl of Oxford, standing in front of the monument
> is also quite peculiar.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vertue_monument_sketch001.jpg
>
> The Earl is shown standing on a grave (probably
> meant to be that of Shagsber's wife, Anne). with his
> back to the viewer and to Shackspere's own grave.
> His left foot is raised so that only the toe touches
> the ground and his left arm is extended in a
> quizzical manner -- as though he is saying "What
> the fu . . . . is all this about?"
>
> Clearly no admiration or respect is intended.
> Although,neither are any negative attitudes made
> transparent. But then the public of the day would
> not have found their expression acceptable.
>
> Paul.

To any and all who are interested in the issue as to the Stratford
Monument, I would echo Mr. Crowley's suggestion to read the comments
that have been made in response to Peter Farey's article.

http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2012/09/was-monument-altered-by-peter-farey.html

The most recent comments reinforce the proposition that, for whatever
reason, Dugdale's drawing was not at all accurate in this instance.
There is even some newly discovered evidence regarding the history of
the Monument:

From a comment by Mr. Farey:

It is a letter from a great-nephew of Joseph Greene, who was of course
the main instigator of the changes in 1748, which are often presented
as the most likely occasion for the significant changes to have been
made from the original monument to the one we see today.

Anyone who is interested in finding out the truth about the monument's
history really needs to read it. It's at
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=617PAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA731&lpg=&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

----------------------------------------------------

Dom

[Bob Grumman]

> >>> . . . . the absurdity of believing the Shakespeare family would go along
>
> >>> with the eradication of all memory of John Shakespeare to replace his
>
> >>> name with William's,
>
> >>
>
> >> A ridiculous claim.
>
> >
>
> > Ridiculous?
>
>
>
> In the context. Pay attention.
>
>
>
> > That a family might feel it unseemly
>
> > to remove a grandfather's name from an ornate
>
> > funerary monument in a church and put up inscriptions
>
> > to make a sculpture of him seem his son's?
>
>
>
> Under the Strat theory there were some
>
> differences between the achievements
>
> of the father and of the son. Can you
>
> remember what they were?
>

Yes, Paul. Your point? That the son merited the monument more
than the father? So, the hell with the father, he wouldn't even
be allowed to share the monument with his son. And, despite
the son's being thought better than the father, who had merited
a monument, no new monument could be made for the son.

>
> [..]
>
> >> The Shacksber family knew well what

I should remind you that "Shacksber" is a rare form of "Shakespeare," which is the name on legal documents concerning property owned by the Stratford family so
a much better name to refer to them by.

> >> was going on, and were very well rewarded for it. John
>
> >> would never have had a monument if William had not
>
> >> agreed to be stooge. It was a kind of 'joint memorial'
>
> >
>
> > So you assert with no evidence whatever.
>
>
>
> I have endlessly quoted evidence,

I mean direct documentary evidence, not speculation.

>
>
> > Why, if that was the case, wasn't it literally a joint memorial?
>
>
>
> Yeah, yeah, Why didn't the sculptor write in large
>
> letters -- "THIS IS ALL PART OF A COVER-UP?
>
> WE DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THE
>
> POET WAS WRITING POEMS TO THE QUEEN
>
> 'COS YOU'D LIKELY MISREAD THEM -- LIKE
>
> THOSE 'PRINCE TUDOR' THEORISTS WILL IN
>
> THE 20TH CENTURY.
>

Good jump. You're suggesting they took John
off the monument and put Will there as a clue
to who the True Author was? And their fear
of actually saying his name over twenty
years after his death? And, in spite of
their absolute genius in preventing real
evidence of their hoax from getting out, were
unable to find any intelligent way of letting
posterity know about Eddie? Like leaving an
account and manuscripts with some family long
loyally involved in the conspiracy to reveal
in fifty years?

> >>>> it THAT wrong by accident. It's like drawing the
>
> >>>> Lincoln memorial and showing an image of FDR in
>
> >>>> his wheelchair. It is not to be 'explained' by referring
>
> >>>> to a few trivial mistakes made in other drawings.
>
> >>
>
> >>> No, it is not--but Spielmann did hugely more than that,
>
> >>
>
> >> I have almost no interest in Spielmann.
>
> >
>
> > You have NO interest in evidence.
>
>
>
> Evidence exists only in the context of some
>
> proposition. What proposition is Spielmann
>
> arguing for?

That the monument is today pretty much as it was
when Dugdale made his rough mistake-filled sketch of it.

>
>
> >>> (1) No statue whatever could have looked like the one he drew.
>
> >>
>
> >> Why not?
>
> >
>
> > Arms sticking out , hands pressing a pillow to his abdomen?
>
>
>
> Nothing difficult in any of that.
>



>
> > Give us a link to a picture of a monument showing a man
>
> > in such a pose.
>
>
>
> Any classical statute. Michaelangelo's David.
>
> No pillow, but Michaelangelo wasn't aiming
>
> for one.
>

Dang, you're right. The Pieta is just like it, too.

>
> >> There was no 'vandalisation'. The fairly drastic
>
> >> alterations (from the grain-dealer to the pork-butcher)
>
> >> were made (I reckon) around 1700 -- long after all
>
> >> in Shagsper family were dead -- at least all who
>
> >> might have known anything.
>
> >
>
> > So you say with no evidence. Or explanation for the supposed
>
> > changes.
>
>
>
> I have given you an explanation.
>
>
>
> > Although I guess it would make sense to knock the arms
>
> > of the statue off, and smash the absurd pillow, then replace
>
> > them if they really looked liked Dugdale's engravings showed
>
> > them. But why stop there? Why not make an entirely new sculpture,
>
> > making him look like later idealized depictions do?
>
>
>
> No one wanted an "idealized depiction".
>

Why any change then?

> >>> (3) There is bounteous evidence that Dugdale's engravings were
>
> >>> EXTREMELY inaccurate, at times--at least as completely as this one
>
> >>> is said to be.
>
> >>
>
> > You wanted me to cite one.
>
> >
>
> > the statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, of 1633, looking towards
>
> > Whitehall, with its splendid contemporary base (wrongly attributed to
>
> > Grintling Gibbons -- it was carved by Joshua Marshall). The king holds
>
> > his baton in his right hand, and the horse, his head turned aside,
>
> > holds up his right fore-leg. Now, in Hollar's engraving of it the
>
> > pedestal is unrecognizable; the King still holds his baton in his
>
> > right hand, but the horse, with his head straight forward, holds up
>
> > his left fore-leg instead of the right.
>
>
>
> Sorry, I fell asleep at this point.
>

Sleep is a good method of denial.

>
> But, on waking up, I see that Hollar's engraving and
>
> images of the stature are readily available on line:
>
>
>
> http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_521/12792284563v5vX2.jpg
>
>
>
> http://londonhistorians.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/450_charlesi_statue_trafalgar_square.jpg
>
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wenceslas_Hollar_-_Equestrian_statue_of_Charles_I_%28State_6%29.jpg
>
>
>
> However . . . while there are obvious differences, Hollar
>
> was clearly not trying to be pedantically accurate. He
>
> produced an engraving the certainly captures the spirit
>
> of the statue. It seems that Spielmann is a classic anal-
>
> retentive, almost up to David-Webb standard. He has
>
> no artistic feeling, and thinks all representations in
>
> other forms of art, should be exact copies. After all,
>
> what other point could they have?
>

Aha. Then we can say that Dugdale sketched the monument
intentionally inaccurately, the bring out the beauty of
the figures elbows.

> > original bust was a ridiculous depiction of a grain merchant

>
> > because the sculptors didn't know what they were doing
>
>
>
> NO. I'm saying that those who put it up knew
>
> exactly what they were doing. But they had to
>
> 'sell' it to the few locals who remembered John
>
> Shagsber.
>
>

Gee, so many clever fellows who knew "exactly what they
were doing," and how perfectly to prevent any evidence
of it from ever showing up.

> > and the townsmen had no idea what a depiction of a grain
>
> > merchant should look like?
>
>
>
> They had SOME idea what a memorial to a grain
>
> merchant should look like. Not a clear one -- but
>
> good enough.
>
>
>
> > In other words, the people behind
>
> > the first bust, and the Shakespeare family--this would have
>
> > included a living Will, right?--would have taken no pains
>

> > to get the thing reasonably right? And no one would wonder at

"Strats" are not cranks by definition, Paul. A crank
is against established opinion.

and to
>
> Mormons and to Marlites. But it is very easy
>
> to reduce them to silence or to simple (if
>
> foolish) re-assertions of the doctrines of
>
> their faith.

Real cranks react just like you, Paul--because a crank is
someone using reason to prove his point, not faith. Mormans
are not cranks, just delusionals. Most Marlites defend
their delusional system just as you defend yours. They
do not bring in some faith-based argument.

>
>
> >>> On the page facing the engraving of the monument, Dugdale writes the
>
> >>> following in his account of Stratford:
>
> >>
>
> >>> One thing more, in reference to this antient town is observable,
>
> >>> that it gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will.
>
> >>> Shakespeare, whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the
>
> >>> Church. [Shakspere Allusion-Book, II, 62]
>
> >>
>
> >> What else was he going to say? Under ANY scenario?
>
> >
>
> > Nothing? But we're arguing about evidence
>
>
>
> We are arguing about propositions and their
>
> supporting or undermining evidence. My
>
> questions stands.
>

YOU are merely dismissing hard evidence. But Weever
saw and reported on the same inscription before Dugdale.
The inscription is still there, which is proof that it
was put there at some time. There are other references
to the inscription. Dugdale quoted inscriptions from
other monuments accurately which is evidence that he
got this one right, too.

There is no "undermining" direct documentary evidence
that he got it wrong.

> > and the fact that he said what he did is evidence
>
> > that the monument memorialized Will
>
> > Shakespeare as a poet.
>
>
>
> If someone says something that he would
>
> say in almost any circumstances,

Why would he say it, if the monument said,
"Here lieth Tom Taylor?" You're nuts, Paul.

> then it is
>
> NOT evidence. Many people plead 'not guilty'
>
> to offences with which they are charged.
>
> Is that 'evidence'? Many people admit to
>
> things under torture. Is that 'evidence'?
>

A person saying he did not commit a crime is
presenting testimonial evidence, Paul. One
weighs it agains the other evidence. Similarly
with evidence gained by torture. That it was gained
by torture is evidence that it may not be valid.
However, if to tortured man says he buried the man
he killed at such-and-such a place, and the man's
body is found there, then the evidence obtained by
torture is valid.

>
> > In one of these notebooks, under the heading
>
> > "Stratford upon Avon," Weever recorded the poems
>
> > from Shakespeare's monument and his
>
> > gravestone, as follows:
>
>
>
> Did Weever actually go to Stratford?
>
> Or was this copied from someone else?
>
>

Excellent questions. Another good one is,
did he leave out "not?" Why don't you try
to reduce the value of what he said as
evidence by finding the circumstances. I
don't remember. One problem for you is
that we have the date of his writing, so
if he quote someone else, that person had
seen the inscription or talked to someone who
had. Somewhere there was someone who had seen
it and either remembered it or written it
down. Or someone who made it all up, as
Weever could have. And Dugdale saw it there
in the dim light only because he'd been told
it was there. Great theory. Some failing to
find it there, figured it had rotted away
and got a replacement made! Can I share credit
with you when I convince Brian Vickers to
get my monograph into some peer-reviewed journal?

>
> > In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon
>
> > Avon", Weever wrote "Willm Shakespeare the
>
> > famous poet",
>
>
>
> Sounds too much like one of Collier's forgeries.

What documentary evidence for Shakespeare doesn't
sound like a forgery to you?

> When you make a private note to yourself
>
> about (say) E.E. Cummins (or any of your
>
> other heroes) do you write beside it " . . the
>
> famous poet . .".
>

If the note was for a book he intended to write.
it may merely have been a reminder to himself of
the importance of saying more about Shakespeare
than his have been born in Stratford. Do up his
fame.

>
> > Furthermore, Weever apparently knew
>
> > Shakespeare personally -- his 1598 Epigrammes
>
> > includes the first full poem in honor of
>
> > Shakespeare ever printed, a sonnet entitled "Ad
>
> > Gulielmum Shakespear" in which he praises
>
> > Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Romeo and
>
> > Juliet. This entry in his private notebook shows
>
> > that he knew that the poet he had praised in print
>
> > more than 30 years earlier was the same person
>
> > buried in Stratford upon Avon.
>
>
>
> Sure -- and similar comments that you make
>
> about the work of E.E, Cummins

CUMMINGS

(or any of
>
> your other heroes) tell us that you knew the
>
> man personally . . . especially when you make
>
> a private note to yourself: "Cummins . . the
>
> famous poet . . .". You could need that note
>
> later because you might get confused with
>
> other people you know with the same
>
> surname who are also poets.

Right, Paul--there's only one reason someone
might write it that way. The reason that fits
you delusional system. But I've written notes
about Cummings and some of them say things like,
"Cummings, the typographical poet," not because
I thought I'd forget that otherwise, but to
indicate the emphasis should be on that at that
point.

>
>
>
> > Note, Paul, that he gives the date of the person
>
> > depicted by the bust as Will Shakespeare's date of
>
> > birth. There's no way you can say he was not
>
> > testifying that the monument at that time honored
>
> > Will Shakespeare of Stratford as a poet
>
>
>
> There was a monument in Stratford-upon-
>
> Avon church from around 1622, supposedly
>
> honouring the stooge as the Great Bard.
>
> No one denies it. I'm suspicious of this
>
> ''record' though. It's too obvious, too soon,
>
> too detailed, too complete, too contrived,
>
> and too slick.
>

I love it. Mostly you say we have too little evidence
and it's insuffciently detailed. When we have something
better, it's too much, too detailed, etc. But it's
just two items, in a notebook.

>
> But it could be genuine. So what?
>

Good point. It's just evidence--of a kind you don't have for Oxford.

--Bob

[Bob Grumman]

Heck, now I see you beat me to the point I just made, Peter.
That will warn Paul to close he's eyes when comes near my
version.

--Bob

[Bob Grumman]

Ah, wonderful! Who but Paul would bring us
such a hilarious reason for giving his father's
monument to Will Shakespeare, the stooge, as
the desire of Those in the Know to keep him from
getting a monument in Westminster Abbey! Little did
they know that probably more people would visit
the Stratford monument than all the ones in
Westminster Abbey put together.

Too bad they didn't make one for Marlowe in Canterbury,
so he wouldn't get a ridiculous window in the Abbey.

I also love the idea, despite its age, that the Truth
was still being protected more than a century after
The True Author's death. By MANY superior people, none
of whom let slip the truth.

That Paul thinks he is right is only mildly insane; that
he finds nothing wrong with his theories is nearly
maximally insane.

--Bob

[Paul Crowley]

On 19/09/2012 13:52, Bob Grumman wrote:

>>> That a family might feel it unseemly
>>> to remove a grandfather's name from an ornate
>>> funerary monument in a church and put up inscriptions
>>> to make a sculpture of him seem his son's?
>>
>> Under the Strat theory there were some
>> differences between the achievements
>> of the father and of the son. Can you
>> remember what they were?
>>
> Yes, Paul. Your point? That the son merited the
> monument more than the father?

The father did not merit a monument at
all. There were thousands like him in the
nation; there had been thousands like him
before, and would be thousands after.

> So, the hell with the father, he wouldn't even be
> allowed to share the monument with his son.

Why should he? Does the father of (say)
E.E. Cummings deserve a monument?
Is there one to the father of Milton, to
that of Newton or of Ben Johnson, or
William Wordsworth . . . etc., etc.?

> And, despite the son's being thought better than
> the father, who had merited a monument, no new
> monument could be made for the son.

The ENTIRE point of the monument being
supposedly erected for the father, was that
some story could be told to the locals about
him, whereas no remotely plausible story
could be spun about the son.

The father had been active in business in
the 1550s and 1560s. (Thereafter he had
been broke and in Stratford.) A monument
erected in (say) 1620 would supposedly pay
homage to his work of 50+ years earlier.
Only a few older people (those of 70+ years)
would recall any aspect of his activities then,
Younger people might have gathered that he
had been prosperous (i.e. spending his wife's
inheritance) at that time. it would not be
long before they were all dead as well.

>>>> The Shacksber family knew well what
>
> I should remind you that "Shacksber" is a rare
> form of "Shakespeare," which is the name on legal
> documents concerning property owned by the
> Stratford family so a much better name to refer to
> them by.

I should remind you that "Shakespeare" was --
in the West Midlands -- a rare form of
"Shagsber/ Shaxber/ Schackspe"

>> No one wanted an "idealized depiction".
>
> Why any change then?

Are you claiming that there is some
"idealized depiction" of Shacksber some-
where in Stratford, made before ~1770 ?

>>> in the matter, and cranks oppose accepted beliefs;
>>
>>> I mean a creationist or someone believing in faked
>>
>>> moon landings, etc. You seem oblivious of how
>>
>>> classically you epitomize the generic crank.
>>
>> Not really. I have talked to Strats,
>
> "Strats" are not cranks by definition, Paul. A
> crank is against established opinion.

You misled me by referring to creationists --
who are hardly 'against established opinion'.
For the US, at least, they ARE 'established
opinion'.

>> and to
>> Mormons and to Marlites. But it is very easy
>> to reduce them to silence or to simple (if
>> foolish) re-assertions of the doctrines of
>> their faith.
>
> Real cranks react just like you, Paul--because a crank is
> someone using reason to prove his point, not faith.
> Mormans are not cranks, just delusionals. Most Marlites
> defend their delusional system just as you defend yours.

On the contrary, their 'defence' is about as articulate
as that of PT theorists. They retreat into silence
within seconds.

> They do not bring in some faith-based argument.

I don't recall seeing anything else
Maybe you do. Please quote it.

>>> In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon
>>> Avon", Weever wrote "Willm Shakespeare the
>>> famous poet",
>>
>> Sounds too much like one of Collier's forgeries.
>
> What documentary evidence for Shakespeare doesn't
> sound like a forgery to you?
>
>> When you make a private note to yourself
>> about (say) E.E. Cummins (or any of your
>> other heroes) do you write beside it " . . the
>> famous poet . .".
>
> If the note was for a book he intended to write.

You tell us that it was a comment in the margin
That does not sound like a note for publication.

> it may merely have been a reminder to himself of
> the importance of saying more about Shakespeare
> than his have been born in Stratford. Do up his
> fame.

Weever would not have needed such a
reminder -- any more than you'd need one
for E.E. Cummings, or W.Wordsworth.

> Right, Paul--there's only one reason someone
> might write it that way. The reason that fits
> you delusional system. But I've written notes
> about Cummings and some of them say things like,
> "Cummings, the typographical poet," not because
> I thought I'd forget that otherwise, but to
> indicate the emphasis should be on that at that
> point.

Making a note about 'the typographical poet,'
is a long, long way from making a note about
'the famous poet'.

> I love it. Mostly you say we have too little evidence
> and it's insuffciently detailed. When we have something
> better, it's too much, too detailed, etc. But it's
> just two items, in a notebook.

But off-key. Was Weever being sarcastic at
this point?

I don't know what was going on -- but as with
all things Stratfordian -- nothing is what it
seems at first glance. As soon as you take
a second look, you see questions arising.

>> But it could be genuine. So what?
>
> Good point. It's just evidence--of a kind you don't have for
> Oxford.

A stupid point. You are like a Creationist,
wanting a clear statement from God -- in the
Bible -- that the world is more than 6000
years old. The evidence for Oxford is over-
whelming, but it's not going to come in the
form of explicit statements made at the
time that 'Oxford wrote the canon'.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 18/09/2012 15:06, Dominic Hughes wrote:

> Right. In the universe that Paul Crowley inhabits [and nowhere
> else that I know of], any evidence that supports the proposition
> that William Shakspeare of Stratford was the
> author/actor/shareholder identified as William Shakespeare, is
> actually evidence that a conspiracy, the existence of which is not
> supported by any direct evidence, was at work and was
> successful.

What are you on about?

Cover-ups (especially government initiated and
sponsored ones)have been an ever-present aspect
of history. In numerous cases we are not sure
whether or not they took place. Did Roosevelt
(or Churchill, or both) know that the Japs were
planning to attack Pearl Harbour? When did they
find out about (say) Katyn or the Holocaust?
And so on and on . . .

In trying to come to a conclusion on such matters
(which can often be turning points in history) we
have to look at what the parties, who might or
might not have known, actually did, and what they
did not do, and at what they actually said, and
what they did not say, at the time or subsequently,.

In the case of the Stratman, not one of his
relatives, friends, neighbours or acquaintances
said anything about the man, either during his
life, or on his death, or after his death, that we
would expect to hear about a great author, or
even an ordinary author.

There is a monument in Stratford church, put
up by some unknown people at some indefinite
time. But its wording is studiously vague.

The poet himself never said anything about
himself . . . apart from a few vague hints

"My name be buried where my body is, "

"Why write I still all one, euer the same,
And keepe inuention in a noted weed,
That euery word doth almost fel my name, "

"Your name from hence immortall life shall haue,
Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, "

The poet never remarked on any other poet
of the day (except in a recondite manner about
an unnamed 'rival poet'. No one wrote
commendatory verses about him during his
life. And so on and on . . . . .


The Stratfordian story is not one that makes
any sense.

Paul.

[jaelsheargold]

What do you know about West Midlands dialect, you poncy southern git?
Sod all, that's what. If you did know anything you'd know who wrote
the plays. Shak/Shake would have been pronounced 'Sheck', so go and
pick the bones out of that one.

BTW, I'm meeting David Crystal in a few days - I might feel obliged
to tell him about your crackpot theories.


SB.

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, 23 September 2012 06:17:21 UTC+10, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 18/09/2012 15:06, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
>
>
> > Right. In the universe that Paul Crowley inhabits [and nowhere
>
> > else that I know of], any evidence that supports the proposition
>
> > that William Shakspeare of Stratford was the
>
> > author/actor/shareholder identified as William Shakespeare, is
>
> > actually evidence that a conspiracy, the existence of which is not
>
> > supported by any direct evidence, was at work and was
>
> > successful.
>
>
>
> What are you on about?
>

[...]

>
> In the case of the Stratman, not one of his
>
> relatives, friends, neighbours or acquaintances
>
> said anything about the man, either during his
>
> life, or on his death, or after his death, that we
>
> would expect to hear about a great author, or
>
> even an ordinary author.
>

Well, moron, I think you've just demonstrated Dominic's point. Shakespeare's friend Ben Johnson has quite a lot to say about the great author, but none of it counts because [insert paranoid delusion here]

Peter G.

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, 23 September 2012 06:17:21 UTC+10, Paul Crowley wrote:

> On 18/09/2012 15:06, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
>
>
> > Right. In the universe that Paul Crowley inhabits [and nowhere
>
> > else that I know of], any evidence that supports the proposition
>
> > that William Shakspeare of Stratford was the
>
> > author/actor/shareholder identified as William Shakespeare, is
>
> > actually evidence that a conspiracy, the existence of which is not
>
> > supported by any direct evidence, was at work and was
>
> > successful.
>
>

[...]

>
> In trying to come to a conclusion on such matters
>
> (which can often be turning points in history) we
>
> have to look at what the parties, who might or
>
> might not have known, actually did, and what they
>
> did not do, and at what they actually said, and
>
> what they did not say, at the time or subsequently,.
>
>
>
> In the case of the Stratman, not one of his
>
> relatives, friends, neighbours or acquaintances
>
> said anything about the man, either during his
>
> life, or on his death, or after his death, that we
>
> would expect to hear about a great author, or
>
> even an ordinary author.
>

Well, imbecile, you've just demonstrated Dominic's point: his friend Ben Jonson (to take just one example) had quite a bit to say about him as an author, but of course none of it counts because [insert paranoid delusion here].

Peter G.

[John W Kennedy]

On 2012-09-22 22:10:10 +0000, jaelsheargold said:
> What do you know about West Midlands dialect, you poncy southern git?
> Sod all, that's what. If you did know anything you'd know who wrote
> the plays. Shak/Shake would have been pronounced 'Sheck', so go and
> pick the bones out of that one.
>
> BTW, I'm meeting David Crystal in a few days - I might feel obliged
> to tell him about your crackpot theories.

No need. Crowley didn't invent it, and there's no one in
English-language studies that isn't woefully aware of the nutcase
theories that Crowley's parroting.

--
John W Kennedy
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich
have always objected to being governed at all."
-- G. K. Chesterton. "The Man Who Was Thursday"

[Bob Grumman]

On Saturday, September 22, 2012 4:17:20 PM UTC-4, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 19/09/2012 13:52, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>
> >>> That a family might feel it unseemly
>
> >>> to remove a grandfather's name from an ornate
>
> >>> funerary monument in a church and put up inscriptions
>
> >>> to make a sculpture of him seem his son's?
>
> >>
>
> >> Under the Strat theory there were some
>
> >> differences between the achievements
>
> >> of the father and of the son. Can you
>
> >> remember what they were?
>
> >>
>
> > Yes, Paul. Your point? That the son merited the
>
> > monument more than the father?
>
>
>
> The father did not merit a monument at
>
> all. There were thousands like him in the
>
> nation; there had been thousands like him
>
> before, and would be thousands after.
>
>
>
> > So, the hell with the father, he wouldn't even be
>
> > allowed to share the monument with his son.
>

I thought you were arguing that the monument
was originally for Shakespeare's father.

> Why should he? Does the father of (say)
>
> E.E. Cummings deserve a monument?
>
> Is there one to the father of Milton, to
>
> that of Newton or of Ben Johnson, or
>
> William Wordsworth . . . etc., etc.?
>

Possibly any of them would deserve a monument in
their local church.

> > And, despite the son's being thought better than
>
> > the father, who had merited a monument, no new
>
> > monument could be made for the son.
>
>
>
> The ENTIRE point of the monument being
>
> supposedly erected for the father, was that
>
> some story could be told to the locals about
>
> him, whereas no remotely plausible story
>
> could be spun about the son.

So it WAS for his father?

>
> The father had been active in business in
>
> the 1550s and 1560s. (Thereafter he had
>
> been broke and in Stratford.) A monument
>
> erected in (say) 1620 would supposedly pay
>
> homage to his work of 50+ years earlier.
>
> Only a few older people (those of 70+ years)
>
> would recall any aspect of his activities then,
>
> Younger people might have gathered that he
>
> had been prosperous (i.e. spending his wife's
>
> inheritance) at that time. it would not be
>
> long before they were all dead as well.
>

What are you saying? That the monument was cleverly made
to seem to be to John in Stratford, but to the poet to
outsiders? So words saying it was to a poet that
no one in illiterate Stratford could read or would
think to have read to him were put on a monument containing
a but of a man with his elbows sticking out as he held
a cushion flat against his stomach whom the locals
would be told was of John and others would be told was a poet,
with someone always around to keep the locals from
speaking with the outsiders. It does make sense, doesn't it.

>
> >>>> The Shacksber family knew well what
>
> >
>
> > I should remind you that "Shacksber" is a rare
>
> > form of "Shakespeare," which is the name on legal
>
> > documents concerning property owned by the
>
> > Stratford family so a much better name to refer to
>
> > them by.
>
>
>
> I should remind you that "Shakespeare" was --
>
> in the West Midlands -- a rare form of
>
> "Shagsber/ Shaxber/ Schackspe"
>

Wrong. Nonetheless, Shakespeare was hardly ever called any
of those names, and frequently called "Shakespeare" or
something very close to that like "Shakspear."

>
> >> No one wanted an "idealized depiction".
>
> >
>
> > Why any change then?
>
>
>
> Are you claiming that there is some
>
> "idealized depiction" of Shacksber some-
>
> where in Stratford, made before ~1770 ?
>

No, you are claiming an improved image of
what Dugdale supposed drew was made sometime
in the 1700s.

>
>
>
> >>> in the matter, and cranks oppose accepted beliefs;
>
> >>
>
> >>> I mean a creationist or someone believing in faked
>
> >>
>
> >>> moon landings, etc. You seem oblivious of how
>
> >>
>
> >>> classically you epitomize the generic crank.
>
> >>
>
> >> Not really. I have talked to Strats,
>
> >
>
> > "Strats" are not cranks by definition, Paul. A
>
> > crank is against established opinion.
>
>
>
> You misled me by referring to creationists --
>
> who are hardly 'against established opinion'.

The established opinions of academics.

> For the US, at least, they ARE 'established
>
> opinion'.

I doubt that is true.

>
>
> >> and to
>
> >> Mormons and to Marlites. But it is very easy
>
> >> to reduce them to silence or to simple (if
>
> >> foolish) re-assertions of the doctrines of
>
> >> their faith.
>
> >
>
> > Real cranks react just like you, Paul--because a crank is
>
> > someone using reason to prove his point, not faith.
>
> > Mormans are not cranks, just delusionals. Most Marlites
>
> > defend their delusional system just as you defend yours.
>
>
>
> On the contrary, their 'defence' is about as articulate
>
> as that of PT theorists. They retreat into silence
>
> within seconds.

That's ridiculous. Some have written books, which you
never have.

>
>
> > They do not bring in some faith-based argument.
>
>
>
> I don't recall seeing anything else
>
> Maybe you do. Please quote it.

Faith in something the contradicts accepted
laws of science, not belief in opinions
you refuse to accept. To believe somebody
else's corpse was pawned off as Marlowe's while
he escaped to the continent to continue writing
the plays of Shakespeare is absurd but does
not require faith in magic to believe.

>
>
>
>
> >>> In the margin opposite the heading "Stratford upon
>
> >>> Avon", Weever wrote "Willm Shakespeare the
>
> >>> famous poet",
>
> >>
>
> >> Sounds too much like one of Collier's forgeries.
>
> >
>
> > What documentary evidence for Shakespeare doesn't
>
> > sound like a forgery to you?
>
> >
>
> >> When you make a private note to yourself
>
> >> about (say) E.E. Cummins (or any of your
>
> >> other heroes) do you write beside it " . . the
>
> >> famous poet . .".
>
> >
>
> > If the note was for a book he intended to write.
>
>
>
> You tell us that it was a comment in the margin
>
> That does not sound like a note for publication.
>

It could be a note in a draft he intended to write
a fuller version of, whether for publication or not.

>
> > it may merely have been a reminder to himself of
>
> > the importance of saying more about Shakespeare
>

> > than his having been born in Stratford. Do up his

>
> > fame.
>
>
>
> Weever would not have needed such a
>
> reminder -- any more than you'd need one
>
> for E.E. Cummings, or W.Wordsworth.

Untrue. I've written essays and forgotten
to include important points. To guard against
that, I make notes to myself (and lose them).

>
>
> > Right, Paul--there's only one reason someone
>
> > might write it that way. The reason that fits
>
> > you delusional system. But I've written notes
>
> > about Cummings and some of them say things like,
>
> > "Cummings, the typographical poet," not because
>
> > I thought I'd forget that otherwise, but to
>
> > indicate the emphasis should be on that at that
>
> > point.
>
>
>
> Making a note about 'the typographical poet,'
>
> is a long, long way from making a note about
>
> 'the famous poet'.

So you say.

>
> > I love it. Mostly you say we have too little evidence
>
> > and it's insuffciently detailed. When we have something
>
> > better, it's too much, too detailed, etc. But it's
>
> > just two items, in a notebook.
>
>
>
> But off-key. Was Weever being sarcastic at
>
> this point?
>

I don't know what he was being, but he certainly was
not being sarcastic. He admired Shakespeare, and there's
no reason whatever for him not to have taken the monument
as honoring the poet.

>
> I don't know what was going on -- but as with
>
> all things Stratfordian -- nothing is what it
>
> seems at first glance. As soon as you take
>
> a second look, you see questions arising.
>

As soon as you see that it contradicts your insane theory,
you search for "questions."

> >> But it could be genuine. So what?
>
> >
>
> > Good point. It's just evidence--of a kind you don't have for
>
> > Oxford.
>
>
>
> A stupid point. You are like a Creationist,
>
> wanting a clear statement from God -- in the
>
> Bible -- that the world is more than 6000
>
> years old. The evidence for Oxford is over-
>
> whelming, but it's not going to come in the
>
> form of explicit statements made at the
>
> time that 'Oxford wrote the canon'.
>

Your nimbleness at making analogies always amazes me, Paul. But if you really cannot perceive the difference between Stratfordianism and Creationism, you are . . . well, Paul Crowley.

[Paul Crowley]

On 23/09/2012 02:31, John W Kennedy wrote:

> On 2012-09-22 22:10:10 +0000, jaelsheargold said:

>> What do you know about West Midlands dialect, you
>> poncy southern git? Sod all, that's what. If you did
>> know anything you'd know who wrote the plays.
>> Shak/Shake would have been pronounced 'Sheck',

And how do you know that? Oh, I see, you
invented it.

What poet writing in English -- in any form,
ballad or whatever -- and from the Midlands
or any other regions --- has ever rhymed one
of 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack, attack,
hack, pack, quack'; with one of 'make, lake,
take,break, sake, fake, rake, bake, steak,
quake, wake' ?

>> BTW, I'm meeting David Crystal in a few days - I
>> might feel obliged to tell him about your crackpot
>> theories.

Please don't. I would not trust you to be
able to give a remotely reliable account
of the state of the weather or the time on
the clock.

Crystal does at times sink into your kind of
mental sloppiness -- in that rather than say
that Word X was pronounced in one way or
the other, he'll invent a middle, and say (or
suggest) that there was something between
(say) the modern 'prove' and 'love' and that
then both words were pronounced so.

I've seen him quote examples, where he takes
changed pronunciations, not realising that
there have been changes, and claim that there
was some (now unknown) middle. He does
this AFAIR with 'neck' which -- in fact -- used
to rhyme with 'back, rack, crack, sack" .

> No need. Crowley didn't invent it, and there's no one
> in English-language studies that isn't woefully aware
> of the nutcase theories that Crowley's parroting.

Kennedy is sticking to his policy of 100% abuse,
0% fact. It's all he can manage.

So how did a farming community (made up of
tens of thousands of substantially isolated
small farms) manage to regularly change its
language,within periods 300 years or less?

No idea --- but it's what his professors told him,
so it must be true.

How come that nothing like this has been
seen anywhere in any recorded history?

No idea --- but it's what his professors told him,
so it must be true. The fact that it was recorded
must have changed what was possible

How come that every language that has been
recorded (in some way or another) has barely
changed over the centuries since its first
record?

No idea --- but it's what his professors told him,
so it must be true. The fact that it was recorded
must have changed what was possible

And so on an on. No answers, of course,
Just endless stupid abuse.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 23/09/2012 23:00, Bob Grumman wrote:

> What are you saying? That the monument was cleverly made
> to seem to be to John in Stratford, but to the poet to
> outsiders?

Nothing especially 'clever' about it. It merely said
(as we all can see) that it was addressed to
'Shakespeare'.

> So words saying it was to a poet

There are no word on it that suggests the
deceased was a poet. Admittedly, the text
was 'over the top' for a wool-dealer. But
monumental inscriptions were (and are)
often 'over the top'.

> that no one in illiterate Stratford could read or would think to
> have read to him were put on a monument containing a but
> of a man with his elbows sticking out as he held a cushion
> flat against his stomach whom the locals would be told was
> of John and others would be told was a poet

Literary tourists would _imagine_ that it was for
the poet. No need for anyone to tell them
anything.

> with someone always around to keep the locals from
> speaking with the outsiders.

There would be no harm in them speaking to locals.

Tourist: "Where is the grave of the famous poet?"
Local: "I'm sorry sir, I know no poet." (in a local
Warwickshire accent)
Tourist: "Oh dear, yet another ignorant local yokel".

> It does make sense, doesn't it.

Why do you think actors were prevented from
coming to the town?

>>> They do not bring in some faith-based argument.
>>
>> I don't recall seeing anything else
>> Maybe you do. Please quote it.
>
> Faith in something the contradicts accepted
> laws of science, not belief in opinions
> you refuse to accept.

Your distinction (between 'contradicting the
laws of science" and other sets of irrational
belief) is over-fine.

> To believe somebody else's corpse was pawned
> off as Marlowe's while he escaped to the continent
> to continue writing the plays of Shakespeare is
> absurd but does not require faith in magic to
> believe.

It defies common-sense. They cannot quote
any remotely parallel case in history. And
that have this 'plan' or 'scheme' being
promoted by the government or by high-
powered ministers of state.

You might as well say that PT theories or
Stratfordian are not those of Faith. After
all, what 'law of science' is broken by
having the heir to the throne being produced
by a union between his father and his
grandmother? Or by having an illiterate
write the greatest works of literature?

>> Weever would not have needed such a
>> reminder -- any more than you'd need one
>> for E.E. Cummings, or W.Wordsworth.
>
> Untrue. I've written essays and forgotten
> to include important points. To guard against
> that, I make notes to myself (and lose them).

Ridiculous. IF the text anywhere had said
(or even roughly indicated) 'Draft for publication'
then you might have a possible case. But
there is nothing remotely of that nature.

>>> Good point. It's just evidence--of a kind you don't have for
>>
>>> Oxford.
>>
>> A stupid point. You are like a Creationist,
>> wanting a clear statement from God -- in the
>> Bible -- that the world is more than 6000
>> years old. The evidence for Oxford is over-
>> whelming, but it's not going to come in the
>> form of explicit statements made at the
>> time that 'Oxford wrote the canon'.
>
> Your nimbleness at making analogies always
> amazes me, Paul. But if you really cannot
> perceive the difference between Stratfordianism
> and Creationism, you are . . . well, Paul Crowley.

There is no essential difference. For Strats
as for Creationists, nothing must ever change.
The 'word of God' as first set down,is
irrefragable,.

If your professor told you something which
his professor told him, which his professor
had told him . . . . and so on back to
Moses . . . then it is necessarily true.


Paul.

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Monday, 24 September 2012 19:55:22 UTC+10, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 23/09/2012 23:00, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>
> > What are you saying? That the monument was cleverly made
>
> > to seem to be to John in Stratford, but to the poet to
>
> > outsiders?
>
>
>
> Nothing especially 'clever' about it. It merely said
>
> (as we all can see) that it was addressed to
>
> 'Shakespeare'.
>
>
>
> > So words saying it was to a poet
>
>
>
> There are no word on it that suggests the
>
> deceased was a poet.

Hey, imbecile, ever heard of Virgil? He was quite well known as a poet.

Peter G.

[David L. Webb]

In article <de0e4ae2-6c1e-4cb2...@googlegroups.com>,

Indeed, *even Art* has heard of Virgil! He's the guy (Art assures
us) who wrote long before Herodotus.

> Peter G.

[Paul Crowley]

On 24/09/2012 11:10, metri...@gmail.com wrote:

>> There are no word on it that suggests the
>> deceased was a poet.
>
> Hey, imbecile, ever heard of Virgil? He was quite well known
> as a poet.

There were three main categories of people who
would see this monument:

A) The local yokels

Their understanding was that if was for the
father, John Shagsber. They would not have
known Latin. Most of them would have been
unable to read English, None of them would
have realised that "Arte Maronem" referred to
Virgil.

B) The occasional literary tourist (maybe 3 or
4 a year)

These could be expected to know Latin and
a few of them might have been proud of an
ability to work out that "Arte Maronem"
referred to Virgil.

C) Those who really knew what was going on

They would have delighted in the 'in joke'
that "Arte Maronem" was to be translated
as "the art of a a marrow".

A lot of thought and ingenuity went into this
monument. Its conception and design was
almost as masterly as the 'portrait' in the First
Folio and the whole "Will Shake-speare" name
and its cover-up. Each group of readers and
spectators -- of the Folio, of the Monument,
and of the canon as a whole -- took away what
their level of comprehension allowed them to
take. Everyone was happy.


Paul.

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 22, 4:17 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 18/09/2012 15:06, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
> > Right.  In the universe that Paul Crowley inhabits [and nowhere
> > else that I know of], any evidence that supports the proposition
> > that William Shakspeare of Stratford was the
> > author/actor/shareholder identified as William Shakespeare, is
> > actually evidence that a conspiracy, the existence of which is not
> > supported by any direct evidence, was at work and was
> > successful.
>
> What are you on about?

Your rank stupidity.

> Cover-ups (especially government initiated and
> sponsored ones)have been an ever-present aspect
> of history.  In numerous cases we are not sure
> whether or not they took place.  Did Roosevelt
> (or Churchill, or both) know that the Japs were
> planning to attack Pearl Harbour?  When did they
> find out about (say) Katyn or the Holocaust?
> And so on and on . . .

Exactly...and that all involves speculation and none of it can be
stated to br unequivocal fact, which is what you do with your idiotic
statements that there was a conspiracy involved regarding
Shakespeare. While you appear to recognize that other conspiracy
theories are based on conjecture and not on evidence, you are blind to
the fact that your story of the purported Shakespeare conspiracy
likewise is based on [im]pure speculation without a shred of actual
evidence.

> In trying to come to a conclusion on such matters
> (which can often be turning points in history) we
> have to look at what the parties, who might or
> might not have known, actually did, and what they
> did not do, and at what they actually said, and
> what they did not say, at the time or subsequently,.

Which, again, is all speculation.

> In the case of the Stratman, not one of his
> relatives, friends, neighbours or acquaintances
> said anything about the man, either during his
> life, or on his death, or after his death, that we
> would expect to hear about a great author, or
> even an ordinary author.

This is nonsense.

> There is a monument in Stratford church, put
> up by some unknown people at some indefinite
> time. But its wording is studiously vague.

Wrong. It isn't vague at all, and it was erected prior to 1623.

> The poet himself never said anything about
> himself   . . .  apart from a few vague hints

So?

[...]

> The poet never remarked on any other poet
> of the day (except in a recondite manner about
> an unnamed 'rival poet'.

So?

>No one wrote
> commendatory verses about him during his
> life.  And so on and on . . . . .

Bullshit.

> The Stratfordian story is not one that makes
> any sense.

It doesn't make any sense to people, like you, who have no sense, but
for people who do have sense the Stratfordian story makes sense.

Dom

[David L. Webb]

In article <k3q6aq$ega$1...@speranza.aioe.org>,

I must say that Mr. Crowley has really been a source of unprecedented
merriment recently! Indeed, with Elizabeth Weird gone and Art merely
reposting the same idiocies over and over, Mr. Crowley has afforded much
needed comedy at a time when the usual stalwarts have pretty much dried
up!

> Paul.

[marc hanson]

Paul can't really believe all that he writes,
can he? Please tell me he has a book he's selling.
That might make sense.

What did Einstein say?
If it doesn't make sense, it's probably not true,
or something similar.

marc

[John W Kennedy]

On 2012-09-24 20:12:23 +0000, marc hanson said:
> Paul can't really believe all that he writes,
> can he? Please tell me he has a book he's selling.
> That might make sense.

He's been at this for yonks, and hasn't made any such suggestion yet.
Me, I think he's simply lost his mind to what Lewis called the "Inner
Ring" phenomenon.

--
John W Kennedy
"...when you're trying to build a house of cards, the last thing you
should do is blow hard and wave your hands like a madman."
-- Rupert Goodwins

[BCD]

On 9/24/2012 3:32 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
> On 2012-09-24 20:12:23 +0000, marc hanson said:
>> Paul can't really believe all that he writes,
>> can he? Please tell me he has a book he's selling.
>> That might make sense.
>
> He's been at this for yonks, and hasn't made any such suggestion yet.
> Me, I think he's simply lost his mind to what Lewis called the "Inner
> Ring" phenomenon.
>

***Is it the "Inner Ring" phenomenon, or is it an inversion of that?
He's not so much on a (perceived) inside keeping others out (he'd be
delighted if others would join him in his opinions), as he considers
himself still in the free-minded outside of what he considers the
closed-minded and unquestioning ethos of inner rings. It's a sort of
anti-Mandarinism.

Best Wishes,

--BCD

[John W Kennedy]

Ah, but "People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free,
from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil
superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be
the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring
which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An
invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting
under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie.
Poor man -- it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even
scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the
sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of
tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we -- we four or five
all huddled beside this stove -- are the people who know."

--
John W Kennedy
"Those in the seat of power oft forget their failings and seek only the
obeisance of others! Thus is bad government born! Hold in your heart
that you and the people are one, human beings all, and good government
shall arise of its own accord! Such is the path of virtue!"
-- Kazuo Koike. "Lone Wolf and Cub: Thirteen Strings" (tr. Dana Lewis)

[BCD]

***Yes, indeed--that's it!

Best Wishes,

--BCD

[Bob Grumman]

I copied your post to my Crowley File, Paul--more data to use
in my analysis of your strange insanity.

> If your professor told you something which
>
> his professor told him, which his professor
>
> had told him . . . . and so on back to
>
> Moses . . . then it is necessarily true.

Please show me evidence of my doing this about
any subject whatever, except (in your opinion)
Shakespeare authorship studies.

--Bob

[tom c]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 6:16:47 PM UTC+1, Paul Crowley wrote:
> Peter Farey's recent article on the monument at
>

> http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.ie/ raises some

>
> interesting points -- not that he sees them himself.
>
>
>
> The first is why did Robert Harley (who was, in effect,
>
> the first 'Prime Minister' of Britain) take the title of
>
> 'Earl of Oxford'? It was the 'second creation' of the title,
>
> in 1711 with the 'first creation' dying out only eight years
>
> earlier in 1703 with the death of the 20th Earl.
>
>
>
> Robert Harley's connection to the ancient family of
>
> the De Veres was remote in the extreme, and he
>
> took the title of 'Earl of Mortimer' as well, in case his
>
> claim to the Earldom of Oxford was subsequently
>
> challenged.
>
>
>

> " . . .Robert Harley (1661 � 1724) 1st Earl of Oxford and

>
> Earl Mortimer, . . born in Bow Street, London in 1661, the
>
> eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, a prominent landowner in
>
> Herefordshire and son of Sir Robert Harley and his third
>
> wife, the celebrated letter-writer Brilliana, Lady Harley. . . "
>
>
>

> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Earl_Mortimer)

>
>
>
> " . . . Sir Robert's first wife was Anne . . . His third wife
>
> was Brilliana . . . . .daughter of Edward, Vicount
>
> Conway, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of
>
> Todington, county Gloucester, and sister to Mary, wife
>
> of the celebrated General Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere, of
>
> Tilbury (by which alliance the Harley's became
>
> connected with the Vere's, Earls of Oxford, Earls of
>
> Clare, and other ancient families). . . . "
>
>
>
> (http://www.dianneelizabeth.com/Surname/Harley/earl_of_oxford.html)
>
>
>
> But Robert Harley was immensely literary, as was
>
> his son, Edward, the 2nd Earl.
>
> "Harley's importance to literature cannot be overstated"
>

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harley,_1st_Earl_of_Oxford_and_Earl_Mortimer

Interesting comments on the monument.

Notice the graves are numbered with Hathwey's as number 2. Notice the earl stands with two feet on Anne's grave.

The toe pointing downward can be seen in another image, this one is Bacon and John Dee passing a lamp across a rectangular hole. The hand is made obvious because it begins with H (see Hathwey).

It's all Pythagorean stuff: ANNE (according to the alphabet-place values makes the sum of 32. (Remember the two Annes at the wedding) H for Hathwey is vlue 8 and also based on 2. So is W for William: V was 20th so VV is 40: a number based on 2, and 10 (actually D times K).

The TOE? the number from this word is 38. It comes up at the *foot* of the Sonnets dedication page as T. T. The top of the same page: Line 1: first 2 letters TO, last 2 letters OF read FOOT in reverse.

The Sonnets title cover has 4 animals with feet showing: the two dogs are both lame: dog on the left: foot missin, dog on right: double-foot.

Two feet in the title Shake-peares Son-nets. Thus the hyphen to amplify.

Notice by the way: the two boys are set at the extreme corners, (L L) just like Dugdale's version, but the bard is shown with pen and cushion.

[book...@yahoo.com]

PC deserves a medal for not observing, with great wit and ironic
understatement, that the topic, "Farey on The Monument" puns on "Farey
on the Throne", which visual image one would then imagine with his
prurient scatological risibility. But PC's restraint only enhances
expectation of what he now might say.
>
>Best Wishes,
>
>--BCD

[Paul Crowley]

On 24/09/2012 20:24, Dominic Hughes wrote:

>> Cover-ups (especially government initiated and
>> sponsored ones)have been an ever-present aspect
>> of history. In numerous cases we are not sure
>> whether or not they took place. Did Roosevelt
>> (or Churchill, or both) know that the Japs were
>> planning to attack Pearl Harbour? When did they
>> find out about (say) Katyn or the Holocaust?
>> And so on and on . . .
>
> Exactly...and that all involves speculation and none of it
> can be stated to br unequivocal fact

So, under your theory of history, all that should
ever be discussed are "unequivocal facts" -- as
presumably agreed by a committee of established
experts? So, for you, since all established
experts at the time agreed that Copernicus and
Galileo were talking heretical nonsense and
should be silenced, the sun and the stars still
revolve around the earth every day?

> which is what you do with your idiotic statements that
> there was a conspiracy involved regarding
> Shakespeare.

Such an idea invariably starts as a theory, and --
if it works -- becomes generally accepted.

> While you appear to recognize that other conspiracy
> theories are based on conjecture and not on evidence,
> you are blind to the fact that your story of the purported
> Shakespeare conspiracy likewise is based on [im]pure
> speculation without a shred of actual evidence.

The Stratfordian theory might (just about) have
remained plausible while (a) he was thought to
have been a 'gentleman in the country' and
(b) had good supporting documentation. But
that came to an end when the 'documentation'
turned out to have been forged, and his father,
mother, wife and daughters were seen to be
illiterate.

>> In trying to come to a conclusion on such matters
>> (which can often be turning points in history) we
>> have to look at what the parties, who might or
>> might not have known, actually did, and what they
>> did not do, and at what they actually said, and
>> what they did not say, at the time or subsequently,.
>
> Which, again, is all speculation.

Where is the 'speculation' in that? It is what
is done in every investigation of human conduct
(for example) by the police into a crime, and it
usually produces results.

>> In the case of the Stratman, not one of his
>> relatives, friends, neighbours or acquaintances
>> said anything about the man, either during his
>> life, or on his death, or after his death, that we
>> would expect to hear about a great author, or
>> even an ordinary author.
>
> This is nonsense.

What one of the relatives, friends, neighbours
or acquaintances of the Stratman said anything
about the man -- as a literary person?

>> There is a monument in Stratford church, put
>> up by some unknown people at some indefinite
>> time. But its wording is studiously vague.
>
> Wrong. It isn't vague at all, and it was erected prior to 1623.
>
>> The poet himself never said anything about
>> himself . . . apart from a few vague hints
>
> So?

Name another author (about as prolific) who
was as silent -- in Early Modern times or
later.

> [...]
>> The poet never remarked on any other poet
>> of the day (except in a recondite manner about
>> an unnamed 'rival poet'.
>
> So?

Name another poet (about as prolific) who
was as silent on others of his day -- in Early
Modern times or later.

>> No one wrote
>> commendatory verses about him during his
>> life. And so on and on . . . . .
>
> Bullshit.

Who wrote about the Stratford man, on his
death or during his life?


Paul,.

[Paul Crowley]

On 25/09/2012 19:08, Bob Grumman wrote:

>> If your professor told you something which
>> his professor told him, which his professor
>> had told him . . . . and so on back to
>> Moses . . . then it is necessarily true.
>
> Please show me evidence of my doing this
> about any subject whatever, except (in your
> opinion) Shakespeare authorship studies.

We were talking about your Stratfordianism
and how it resembles Creationism. You
simply can't change your established and
inherited beliefs. It's now the same with
your acceptance of the idiotic farmers-can-
change-their-language-within-300-years
notion. (Although I accept that you have
not yet thought about that. But you are
clearly incapable of thought; so I have
zero expectation of any change of mind.
For you, the professors have spoken, and
that's what you must necessarily believe.)

For you, the earth does not move and the
sun and stars revolve around it every day.
The continents are fixed, and God
remains above the clouds in his heaven.
Although, if the professors start to say
that it's OK to think otherwise, you will
happily accept their word.


Paul.

[jaelsheargold]

On Sep 23, 2:31 am, John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> On 2012-09-22 22:10:10 +0000, jaelsheargold said:
>
> > What do you know about West Midlands dialect, you poncy southern git?
> > Sod all, that's what. If you did know anything  you'd know who wrote
> > the plays. Shak/Shake would have been pronounced 'Sheck', so go and
> > pick the bones out of that one.
>
> > BTW, I'm  meeting David Crystal in a few days - I might feel obliged
> > to tell him about your crackpot theories.
>
> No need. Crowley didn't invent it, and there's no one in
> English-language studies that isn't woefully aware of the nutcase
> theories that Crowley's parroting.

I was joking, John - I wouldn't sully his ears with Crowley's
lamentable outpourings.

It is true that I am going to see him at a literary festival where
several other historians and such will be speaking on various subjects
that Crowley - by odd coincidence - has spouted
about here of late.


SB.

[jaelsheargold]

On Sep 24, 10:55 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 23/09/2012 02:31, John W Kennedy wrote:
>
> > On 2012-09-22 22:10:10 +0000, jaelsheargold said:
> >> What do you know about West Midlands dialect, you
> >> poncy southern git? Sod all, that's what. If you did
> >> know anything  you'd know who wrote the plays.
> >> Shak/Shake would have been pronounced 'Sheck',
>
> And how do you know that?

I don't 'know' it - I wasn't there any more than you were.

> Oh, I see, you invented it.

No, I don't invent evidence, as you do - but whether you accept my
conclusions is your affair. I'll explain it in layperson's terms
because I can't get on with the IPA - any more than you can, I expect.
(They say that water always finds its own level, which is probably why
I talk to you).

I came across an essay a couple of years ago by Johannes Hoops the
philologist where he says (if I follow him correctly) that the
'shack(s)' pronunciation in 'Shakspere' had morphed into 'sheck(s)'
during the second half of the 16th century, reflected in spellings
such as 'Shexpere, Shexspere, Shexsper'. He goes on to say (again if I
understand rightly) that the Midland pronunciation of 'shake(s)'
during the 1500s also approximated to 'sheck(s)'. That is very
interesting because any local will know that in parts of the West
Midlands, colloquially and to this day, especially among the older
sort, words like 'make', 'take', and 'shake' are pronounced 'meck',
'teck,' and 'sheck' respectively. You can hear it in old archival
recordings which were made of Warwickshire people who were born in the
mid to late years of the 19th century.

All this would tie in nicely with the play on words of 'cat' and
'Kate' in The Taming of the Shrew. In the West Midlands in the 16th
century, both would have sounded something like 'ket', there being no
or negligible differentiation in the short and long 'a' pronunciation.

>
> What poet writing in English -- in any form,
> ballad or whatever -- and from the Midlands
> or any other regions --- has ever rhymed one
> of 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack, attack,
> hack, pack, quack'; with one of 'make, lake,
> take,break, sake, fake, rake, bake, steak,
> quake, wake'  ?

You are assuming that all these words were pronounced then as they are
today.

>
>  >> BTW, I'm  meeting David Crystal in a few days - I
>
> >> might feel obliged to tell him about your crackpot
> >> theories.
>
> Please don't.

Don't worry - I won't. I wouldn't embarrass myself, still less you.

> I would not trust you to be able to give a remotely reliable account
> of the state of the weather or the time on
> the clock.

I wouldn't trust myself either. I don't know what you're on about half
the time, so how could I give a fair representation of that?

>
> Crystal does at times sink into your kind of
> mental sloppiness

Yeah, I ain't got over 'Ruthven' yet.

> -- in that rather than say that Word X was pronounced in one way or
> the other, he'll invent a middle, and say (or
> suggest) that there was something between
> (say) the modern 'prove' and 'love' and that
> then both words were pronounced so.

Seems reasonable to me - that many words would go through a transition
of pronunciation, be it ever so slight. Did you not say that 'key' was
once pronounced 'kay'?
Interesting as the latter is a colloquial pronunciation in the West
Midlands - where you'll also find words and proper names with their
last syllable ending in '-ey' being spoken to rhyme with day.

>
> I've seen him quote examples, where he takes
> changed pronunciations, not realising that
> there have been changes, and claim that there
> was some (now unknown) middle.  He does
> this AFAIR with 'neck' which -- in fact -- used
> to rhyme with 'back, rack, crack, sack" .

Now you've lost me. Are YOU saying that 'neck' was once pronounced
'nack' and rhymed with 'back' as we would say the latter today? Seems
to me Crystal is saying the pronunciation of 'back' approximated to
'beck' and that would fit in with 'shack' having the sound value of
'sheck'.

BTW, wouldn't poshoes today pronounce 'back' as 'beck' as in "Wash my
beck, my good man, whilst I'm here in the barth"?



SB.

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 26, 5:16 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 24/09/2012 20:24, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
> >> Cover-ups (especially government initiated and
> >> sponsored ones)have been an ever-present aspect
> >> of history.  In numerous cases we are not sure
> >> whether or not they took place.  Did Roosevelt
> >> (or Churchill, or both) know that the Japs were
> >> planning to attack Pearl Harbour?  When did they
> >> find out about (say) Katyn or the Holocaust?
> >> And so on and on . . .
>
> > Exactly...and that all involves speculation and none of it

> > can be stated to be unequivocal fact

>
> So, under your theory of history, all that should
> ever be discussed are "unequivocal facts"

Nice strawman. Speculation is perfectly fine as far as it goes. The
problem comes when speculation is treated as unequivocal fact, which
is what you do. You turn your speculations into statements of fact.

> -- as
> presumably agreed by a committee of established
> experts?  So, for you, since all established
> experts at the time agreed that Copernicus and
> Galileo were talking heretical nonsense and
> should be silenced, the sun and the stars still
> revolve around the earth every day?

Another strawman, and, in fact, since Copernicus and Galileo
eventually grounded their theories in observable evidence, they would
be more like Stratfordians and you would be the one questioning them.
Your speculations are not backed up by evidence; therefore, they
remain nothing more than speculation and are not established fact.

I don't care a fig for what any "committee of established experts"
might say...I care about, and examine, the actual evidence.

As an example, any number of Stratfordian "experts" have contended
that "Shakespeare was hoarding grain in a time of famine." I have
thoroughly examined all of the evidence I can find on the subject and
such statements are hogwash. It is interesting speculation but it is
not proven by the available evidence.

Finally, I wouldn't ever want to silence you, as you are a source of
constant amusement. You seem completely unable to see that what you
are doing is treating your speculations as if they were facts.

> > which is what you do with your idiotic statements that
> > there was a conspiracy involved regarding
> > Shakespeare.
>
> Such an idea invariably starts as a theory, and --
> if it works -- becomes generally accepted.

Your theory will never be generally accepted. Ideas that start as
speculative theories and become generally accepted do so because
evidence is eventually produced which supports the theory. You have
no such evidence, and, in fact, the evidence that does exist [direct,
physical evidence] rebuts your theory and establishes the Stratfordian
case. Of course, you simply deny that such evidence has any
evidentiary weight whatsoever with your speculation turned-to-fact
that there was a conspiracy, even though there is absolutely no
evidence of any such conspiracy.

> > While you appear to recognize that other conspiracy
> > theories are based on conjecture and not on evidence,
> > you are blind to the fact that your story of the purported
> > Shakespeare conspiracy likewise is based on [im]pure
> > speculation without a shred of actual evidence.
>
> The Stratfordian theory might (just about) have
> remained plausible while (a) he was thought to
> have been a 'gentleman in the country' and
> (b) had good supporting documentation.

This is speculation that you treat as fact. I stated that there was
no evidence to support your claim that there was a conspiracy, and, in
response, you offer your speculations as to how the conspiracy could
have worked as if that supplies the evidence I said did not exist.
This is really very simple; the fact that you appear unable to
understand what you are doing is quite alarming really.

>But
> that came to an end when the 'documentation'
> turned out to have been forged, and his father,
> mother, wife and daughters were seen to be
> illiterate.

More speculatrion stated as fact. The documentation was not forged
[it is well-known what documents were forged, and those forgeries have
absolutely nothing to do with the documentation, the evidence, which
establishes the Stratfordian attribution.

Prove that Shakespeare's father, mother, wife and daughters could not
read. For once in your HLAS existence, forego speculation and offer
up some actual evidence to support your claims. Prove that you even
know what qualifies as evidence.

While you're at it, prove that Shakespeare's brothers couldn't read
and/or write.

> >> In trying to come to a conclusion on such matters
> >> (which can often be turning points in history) we
> >> have to look at what the parties, who might or
> >> might not have known, actually did, and what they
> >> did not do, and at what they actually said, and
> >> what they did not say, at the time or subsequently,.
>
> > Which, again, is all speculation.
>
> Where is the 'speculation' in that?  It is what
> is done in every investigation of human conduct
> (for example) by the police into a crime, and it
> usually produces results.

It usually produces evidence. Your speculation does not do any such
thing. The police start with multiple theories in mind and whittle
them down by an examination of evidence which may eliminate one
suspect or tie another to the crime. They certainly shouldn't engage
in your method which is to summarily dismiss any evidence which
contradicts their theory of the case. The method you employ is
completely dissimilar to that employed by the police, or any other
inquirers into fact. You start with the assumption that de Vere was
the author; they start with an open mind. You ignore, dismiss, or
deny the evidence; they follow it wherever it leads. That you don't
recognize the difference in what you do and what the police actually
do is remarkable.

I also find it incredibly ironic that you would say that "we have to

look at what the parties, who might or might not have known, actually
did, and what they

did not do, and at what they actually said." This is something that
you do not do. For instance, the will of Augustine Phillips, executed
5 May 1605, proved 16 May 1605, bequeaths, "to my Fellowe William
Shakespeare a thirty shillings peece in gould, To my Fellowe Henry
Condell one other thirty shillinge peece in gould . . . To my Fellowe
Lawrence Fletcher twenty shillings in gould, To my Fellowe Robert
Armyne twenty shillings in gould . . . ." All of the people who
Phillips calls his "fellows" were actors in the King's Men. Augustine
Phillips's bequest of 30 shillings to his "Fellowe" Shakespeare was
written 11 months after the Earl of Oxford's death. This is something
that Phillips did [leaving money to Shakespeare] and said [Shakespeare
was one of his fellow actors in the King's Men], and yet you will
summarily dismiss it as a forgery committed by your conspiracy. You
would rather speculate as to what someone would or should have said or
done, according to your subjective way of looking at it [and then
treating that speculation as evidence], rather than actually looking
at what was said and done.

> >> In the case of the Stratman, not one of his
> >> relatives, friends, neighbours or acquaintances
> >> said anything about the man, either during his
> >> life, or on his death, or after his death, that we
> >> would expect to hear about a great author, or
> >> even an ordinary author.
>
> > This is nonsense.
>
> What one of the relatives, friends, neighbours
> or acquaintances of the Stratman said anything
> about the man -- as a literary person?

You've never heard of Leonard Digges? Or John Davies? Phillips?
Heminge? Condell? Jonson? Heywood? Webster? Beaumont? Basse? Sir
Richard Baker? The Stratford Monument? The First Folio?

> >> There is a monument in Stratford church, put
> >> up by some unknown people at some indefinite
> >> time. But its wording is studiously vague.
>
> > Wrong. It isn't vague at all, and it was erected prior to 1623.

I see that you left a comment at the Marlowe website discussion of the
Monument, as follows:

"For an image even more monstrous, but far more conspicuous, let me
point to the 'portrait' of the poet in every copy of the Folio. Where
is the laughter about that? As those who mounted the cover-up knew
well, pretentious literary types will believe almost anything they are
told -- even a story as ludicrous as the Stratfordian

The small figure high up in that fairly dark church was going to be
seen by many fewer people; And Dugdale may well have exaggerated its
'agricultural' character. As I see it, some form of monument to the
poet was necessary in Stratford -- for those few 'tourists' who might
come to look. However, Stratford locals in the 1620s would have known
well that the Stratman was far from literary; so for them, the
monument had to be to his father, for some supposed services he had
performed for his London friends back in the 1550s and 1560s. That was
50+ years before it was erected, and few living would remember much
about his activities then. (The ill-fitting Latin verse would be
explained away -- if anyone asked -- as arising from some confusion of
the London scupltor.) Within a few decades, they would all be dead,
and the monument could be altered at will -- to be more fitting for
the supposed poet. The family knew what was going on and was well
rewarded for its silence. Similarly, the local vicar would have been
chosen for his lack of interest and for his complaisance. The
directions came from the top, in that intensely hierarchical society."
- - -

Mr. Farey's response:

"I notice that Paul ignores all of the points already made which show
his solution to be wrong, and I really can't be bothered to go over
them yet again."
- - -

Of course, that is your method: posit a thoery as actual fact, ignore
or summarily dismiss any and all documentary evidence that prove your
theory wrong, and then claim that nobody has ever even atempted to
counter your theory.

> >> The poet himself never said anything about
> >> himself   . . .  apart from a few vague hints
>
> > So?
>
> Name another author (about as prolific) who
> was as silent -- in Early Modern times or
> later.

What did Marlowe say about himself?

> > [...]
> >> The poet never remarked on any other poet
> >> of the day (except in a recondite manner about
> >> an unnamed 'rival poet'.
>
> > So?
>
> Name another poet (about as prolific) who
> was as silent on others of his day -- in Early
> Modern times or later.

What did Marlowe say about other poets?

> >> No one wrote
> >> commendatory verses about him during his
> >> life.  And so on and on . . . . .
>
> > Bullshit.
>
> Who wrote about the Stratford man, on his
> death or during his life?

See the list above for some of the names. I'm not going to bother to
set them out again since you won't bother to actually look at what
they said as evidence.

Dom

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 26, 5:16 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:

We are talking about your Oxy-moronism and how it resembles

Creationism. You simply can't change your established and

idiosyncratic beliefs, and you are farcically unable to deal with the
physical evidence that rebuts your creation myth. This is currently
exhibited in your silly theory about the Stratford Monument being
erected for those tourists going out looking for some author somewhere
out in the country, how none of the locals would be wise to the
deception, and how a conspiracy would manage all of this without
leaving any trace at all. (Although I accept that you have not yet
thought about that at all or you would realize how inane such
speculation is, much less how insane it is to actually treat such
speculation as if it were fact. But you are clearly incapable of
logical thought; so I have zero expectation of any change of mind. For
you, you have spoken, and that's what you must necessarily believe.)
Your narcissistic certainty in the factual inerrancy of your theory,
even though it runs contrary to all of the direct evidence, is not to
be questioned, and, in fact [according to you] it has never even been
challenged. The great and powerful Oz has spoken.

For you, the earth is only 6,000 years old and was created by the God
of Abraham just as the Bible says it happened. Noah saved the animals
on his ark, and your Lord remains ensconced in the clouds in his
literary heaven, hidden by his conspiracy until the prophets Looney
and Ogburn spoke and drew away the curtain that hid your Lord.
Although, if you start to say that it's OK to think otherwise, you
will happily accept your word.

Dom

[Bob Grumman]

On Wednesday, September 26, 2012 5:16:25 AM UTC-4, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 25/09/2012 19:08, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>
> >> If your professor told you something which
>
> >> his professor told him, which his professor
>
> >> had told him . . . . and so on back to
>
> >> Moses . . . then it is necessarily true.
>
> >
>
> > Please show me evidence of my doing this
>
> > about any subject whatever, except (in your
>
> > opinion) Shakespeare authorship studies.
>
>
>
> We were talking about your Stratfordianism
>
> and how it resembles Creationism. You
>
> simply can't change your established and
>
> inherited beliefs.

So it is not true that, for me, "If (my)
professor told (me) something which

his professor told him, which his professor
had told him . . . . and so on back to

Moses . . . then it is necessarily true"--
except when it comes to Shakespeare. Then
I suffer a complete change of character and
"simply can't change (my) established and
inherited beliefs." That really makes sense
to you?

> It's now the same with
> your acceptance of the idiotic farmers-can-
> change-their-language-within-300-years
> notion. (Although I accept that you have
> not yet thought about that. But you are
> clearly incapable of thought; so I have
> zero expectation of any change of mind.
>
> For you, the professors have spoken, and
> that's what you must necessarily believe.)


>
>
> For you, the earth does not move and the
>
> sun and stars revolve around it every day.
>
> The continents are fixed, and God
>
> remains above the clouds in his heaven.
>
> Although, if the professors start to say
>
> that it's OK to think otherwise, you will
>
> happily accept their word.
>
>

So you can't believe that I decided on the basis of
the evidence that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare on my
very own, you must believe that I merely absorbed
received opinion and have clung to it ever since.
Those who differ from you on any question like this
must be without the capacity to reason.

But I think you're more probably right than John Kennedy
that there are races whose language use is based at least
in part on their genes. How can that be? Indeed, you
do agree that some people can shrug off the influence of
"their professors" as Copernicus and Galileo and the
great Paul Crowley did. How do they do this?

Tell me, how can you tell that what I believe about
the authorship question is due to brain washing, not
my just happening to come to the same conclusions as
the professors?

Especially considering that my understanding of the
authorship question became far more thorough, and
my arguments far more intelligent than any of the
professors' understanding and argument even now.

I have to admit that, against the arguments you
come up with, about all I can do is sputter.

--Bob

[John W Kennedy]

Moreover, he's relying on the comicbook version of history. What
actually happened was that Copernicus had been openly available for
about a century. Galileo had been told that Copernicanism was OK as an
hypothesis, but he mustn't say it was absolutely, positively
established fact. (And before Kepler, Newton, and Halley fixed the gaps
in the argument, it wasn't.) He did it anyway, in a book that
personally insulted the Pope, assuming that, because he was the Pope's
old friend, he could get away with it. Only after Galileo's trial did
Copernicus' original book become subject to censorship for the first
time; just as with Galileo, it was only nine sentences that claimed (or
seemed to claim) that heoliocentrism was the only possible theory that
were censored. Even that limited prohibition was taken away the next
time the Index was revised.

In short, Galileo was essentially found guilty of being a dick, and the
verdict was more or less justified.

--
John W Kennedy
If Bill Gates believes in "intelligent design", why can't he apply it
to Windows?

[Paul Crowley]

On 26/09/2012 13:06, jaelsheargold wrote:

> I came across an essay a couple of years ago by
> Johannes Hoops the philologist where he says (if I follow
> him correctly) that the 'shack(s)' pronunciation in
> 'Shakspere' had morphed into 'sheck(s)' during the second
> half of the 16th century, reflected in spellings such as
> 'Shexpere, Shexspere, Shexsper'. He goes on to say
> (again if I understand rightly) that the Midland
> pronunciation of 'shake(s)' during the 1500s also
> approximated to 'sheck(s)'. That is very interesting
> because any local will know that in parts of the West
> Midlands, colloquially and to this day, especially among
> the older sort, words like 'make', 'take', and 'shake' are
> pronounced 'meck', 'teck,' and 'sheck' respectively. You
> can hear it in old archival recordings which were made of
> Warwickshire people who were born in the mid to late
> years of the 19th century.

There are all manner of weird pronunciations.
But I am sure that you won't find any established
ones that consistently fail to discriminate
between:

A) 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack,
attack, hack, pack, quack';

and:

B) 'make, lake, take,break, sake, fake, rake,
bake, steak, quake, wake

> All this would tie in nicely with the play on words of
> 'cat' and 'Kate' in The Taming of the Shrew.

There is NO play on the 'similarity'. The
word 'cat' appears twice in the play, with
no explicit or adjacent reference to 'Kate'
or any allusion to her name.

> In the West Midlands in the 16th century, both
> would have sounded something like 'ket', there being
> no or negligible differentiation in the short and long
> 'a' pronunciation.

Sheer nonsense.

>> What poet writing in English -- in any form,
>> ballad or whatever -- and from the Midlands
>> or any other regions --- has ever rhymed one
>> of 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack, attack,
>> hack, pack, quack'; with one of 'make, lake,
>> take,break, sake, fake, rake, bake, steak,
>> quake, wake' ?
>
> You are assuming that all these words were
> pronounced then as they are today.

For some strange reason, you regularly misread
my words on this topic. Let me high-light the
relevant ones:

What poet writing IN ENGLISH -- in ANY form,

ballad or whatever -- and from the Midlands

or any other regions --- has EVER rhymed one

of 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack, attack,
hack, pack, quack'; with one of 'make, lake,
take,break, sake, fake, rake, bake, steak,
quake, wake' ?

>> Crystal does at times sink into your kind of
>> mental sloppiness
>
> Yeah, I ain't got over 'Ruthven' yet.
>
>> -- in that rather than say that Word X was pronounced in one way or
>> the other, he'll invent a middle, and say (or
>> suggest) that there was something between
>> (say) the modern 'prove' and 'love' and that
>> then both words were pronounced so.
>
> Seems reasonable to me - that many words would
> go through a transition of pronunciation, be it ever so
> slight.

The 'transition' was a switch from one pronunciation
to another. The word is pronounced either as
'ee-ther' OR as "eye-ther". It's not pronounced as
something in-between. You have to make a choice.
That's the way the language works. Explain THAT
to David Crystal. Ask him to quote some 'in-between'
example he has heard.

> Did you not say that 'key' was once pronounced
'kay'?

Indeed. And at some time, a switch was made.
It was a SWITCH and not a glide.

> Interesting as the latter is a
> colloquial pronunciation in the West Midlands -
> where you'll also find words and proper names with
> their last syllable ending in '-ey' being spoken to
> rhyme with day.

Most words in Shakespeare's time ending in
'-y' were then pronounced with an '-eye' sound
(as against the modern Southern 'ee' one).
The old pronunciation is still retained in most
Midlands dialects. All these words ended in
an 'eye' sound.

accompany, actiuity, aduersity, advisedly, agonie,
agony, agreeably, alchemy, amitie, angrily,
antiquity, Araby, armorie, armory, artillery, audacity,
auncestry, aunciently, bastardy, battery, beautifie,
bitterly, blasphemously, boystrously, brauery,
Britanie, Britany, busily . . . .

This makes a lot of difference when reading
poetry, such as Sonnet 1:

>From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heire might beare his memory:

'Memory' is supposed to rhyme with 'die' --
according to the way the poet wrote the
sonnet. You could explain THAT to David
Crystal. He thinks they spoke a kind of
Mummerset that did not rhyme.

>> I've seen him quote examples, where he takes
>> changed pronunciations, not realising that
>> there have been changes, and claim that there
>> was some (now unknown) middle. He does
>> this AFAIR with 'neck' which -- in fact -- used
>> to rhyme with 'back, rack, crack, sack" .
>
> Now you've lost me. Are YOU saying that 'neck' was once
> pronounced 'nack' and rhymed with 'back' as we would say
> the latter today?

Yes -- see quotes below: We know how words
were pronounced by the way in which poets
used them.

> Seems to me Crystal is saying the pronunciation of 'back'
> approximated to 'beck' and that would fit in with 'shack'
> having the sound value of 'sheck'.

Crystal may well be saying something like that
-- and it's pure crap. That must be why you
agree with it.

> BTW, wouldn't poshoes today pronounce 'back' as 'beck' as
> in "Wash my beck, my good man, whilst I'm here in the
> barth"?

They would still (somehow) distinguish between
'-ack' words and '-ake' words: That's how the
language works. Native speakers cannot afford
to mix up the two syllables, or too much confusion
results. People who don't pronounce their words
so that others (of their class) can understand them,
get told off, and instructed to speak 'properly' --
whatever the 'properly' might consist of in that
particular social grouping.

Explain that to David Crystal.


Wash my back,
take care you make
foam in the rack . .
and mind my ache
avoid the tack . . .
don't take a break
you lazy hack
for goodness sake
or you'll get the sack,


Venus & Adonis

The boare (quoth she) whereat a suddain pale,
Like lawne being spred vpon the blushing rose, [590]
Vsurpes her cheeke, she trembles at his tale,
And on his neck her yoaking armes she throwes.
She sincketh downe, still hanging by his necke,
He on her belly fall's, she on her backe.


Spenser FQ

Rhyming "ababbcbcc"
Lines 1, 3
Lines 2, 4, 5, 7
Lines 6, 8,9

1 Soone as she saw him on the ground to grouell,
2 She lightly to him leapt, and in his necke
3 Her proud foote setting, at his head did leuell,
4 Weening at once her wrath on him to wreake,
5 And his contempt, that did her iudg'ment breake.
6 As when a Beare hath seiz'd her cruell clawes
7 Vppon the carkasse of some beast too weake,
8 Proudly stands ouer, and a while doth pause,
9 To heare the piteous beast pleading her plaintiffe cause.


1 The messenger approching to him spake,
2 But his wast wordes returnd to him in vaine:
3 So sound he slept, that nought mought him awake.
4 Then rudely he him thrust, and pusht with paine,
5 Whereat he gan to stretch: but he againe
6 Shooke him so hard, that forced him to speake.
7 As one then in a dreame, whose dryer braine
8 Is tost with troubled sights and fancies weake,
9 He mumbled soft, but would not all his silence breake.


Then groning deepe, Nor damned Ghost, (quoth he,)
Nor guilefull sprite, to thee these wordes doth speake,
But once a man Fradubio, now a tree,
Wretched man, wretched tree; whose nature weake,
A cruell witch her cursed will to wreake,
Hath thus transformd, and plast in open plaines,
Where Boreas doth blow full bitter bleake,
And scorching Sunne does dry my secret vaines:
For though a tree I seeme, yet cold and heat me paines.


Soone as the Faerie heard his Ladie speake,
Out of his swowning dreame he gan awake,
And quickning faith, that earst was woxen weake,
The creeping deadly cold away did shake:
Tho mou'd with wrath, and shame, and Ladies sake,
Of all attonce he cast auengd to bee,
And with so'exceeding furie at him strake,
That forced him to stoupe vpon his knee;
Had he not stouped so, he should haue clouen bee.


Well did the Squire perceiue him selfe too weake,
To aunswere his defiaunce in the field,
And rather chose his challenge off to breake,
Then to approue his right with speare and shield.

[Paul Crowley]

On 26/09/2012 15:39, Dominic Hughes wrote:

>>>> Cover-ups (especially government initiated and
>>>> sponsored ones)have been an ever-present aspect
>>>> of history. In numerous cases we are not sure
>>>> whether or not they took place. Did Roosevelt
>>>> (or Churchill, or both) know that the Japs were
>>>> planning to attack Pearl Harbour? When did they
>>>> find out about (say) Katyn or the Holocaust?
>>>> And so on and on . . .
>>
>>> Exactly...and that all involves speculation and none of it
>>> can be stated to be unequivocal fact
>>
>> So, under your theory of history, all that should
>> ever be discussed are "unequivocal facts"
>
> Nice strawman. Speculation is perfectly fine as far
> as it goes. The problem comes when speculation is
> treated as unequivocal fact, which is what you do.
> You turn your speculations into statements of fact.

This is not what you said above. Whenever you
are shown to be wrong, you pretend to be saying
something else.

And this version is especially nonsensical. Since
none of us were there, and it was a cover-up, how
can anyone be sure as to what actually did happen?
The only issue is whether or not the story anyone
claims to be able to derive makes reasonable
sense. I am certain that I get much of it wrong.
But, at least, I am not claiming that the Canon was
written by an illiterate with a funny name, nor that
a government minister sponsored a scheme
involving a faked death.

>> -- as
>> presumably agreed by a committee of established
>> experts? So, for you, since all established
>> experts at the time agreed that Copernicus and
>> Galileo were talking heretical nonsense and
>> should be silenced, the sun and the stars still
>> revolve around the earth every day?
>
> Another strawman, and, in fact, since Copernicus
> and Galileo eventually grounded their theories in
> observable evidence

There is massive evidence for Oxford -- and
against the Stratman. I have asked you a
thousand questions you have to duck, such
as those below:

> As an example, any number of Stratfordian "experts"
> have contended that "Shakespeare was hoarding
> grain in a time of famine." I have thoroughly
> examined all of the evidence I can find on the subject
> and such statements are hogwash. It is interesting
> speculation but it is not proven by the available
> evidence.

Sure -- why not ignore the forest, and look at
one single tree? This guy was supposed to
be England's greatest writer of all time. All
you can think about is whether or not he used
more grain than he should have, for beer.
That's exactly the right question for some
nobody who had more money than he was
used to handling. It's a long long way from
anything literary.

>> The Stratfordian theory might (just about) have
>> remained plausible while (a) he was thought to
>> have been a 'gentleman in the country' and
>> (b) had good supporting documentation.
>
> This is speculation that you treat as fact.

Ridiculous. It would be very easy to ask any
historian what documentation could reasonably
have been expected from a great and famous
author, whose house remained untouched and
in his family for 50 years after his death --
and then compare the expectation with the
lamentable fact that NOTHING -- yes, that's
right -- NOTHING was left there to be found.

It would be very easy to ask any historian what
they would expect to see in the few documents
that could be found concerning the man -- e.g.
his will, a note about a conversation with him
from a highly-literary lawyer, what his daughter
had to say about him on her tombstone (we
are obliged to scape the barrel) and on that of
her husband. What do we get -- NOTHING
that indicates he was literate -- let alone
literary.

> I stated that there was no evidence to support
> your claim that there was a conspiracy,

The nonsensical claim that he was England's
greatest writer -- given that everything else
about him indicates illiteracy, including his
'signatures', his name,

and, in
> response, you offer your speculations as to how
> the conspiracy could have worked

I was setting out the context. The first question
in proposing ANY historical scenario is whether
or not it is reasonable. The Stratfordian story
is ludicrously absurd, and the evidence that
Strats need to back up such a crazy invention
has to be massive. Up to about 1860, it was
generally assumed that it existed -- or could be
found with a minimal effort. Now we know that
there is none.

>> But
>> that came to an end when the 'documentation'
>> turned out to have been forged, and his father,
>> mother, wife and daughters were seen to be
>> illiterate.
>
> More speculatrion stated as fact. The
> documentation was not forged

Nonsense. Most of what was thought to
be reliable documentation around 1840 was
shown to be forged -- mainly by Collier.

> [it is well-known what documents were forged,

On the contrary, Collier NEVER said what
he had forged and what he hadn't.

> and those forgeries have absolutely nothing to do
> with the documentation, the evidence, which
> establishes the Stratfordian attribution.

Absurd. That fact that items (formerly trusted)
are forged is STILL emerging. Up to recently
people used to trust the supposed performance
at sea of some of the plays -- quoted for dating
(and therefore attribution).

> Prove that Shakespeare's father, mother, wife and
> daughters could not read.

The only proof you'd accept would be their
resurrection, and then a witnessed statement
from each. But failing that (as normal humans
must) no sensible person would contest that
most obvious of facts.

>> Where is the 'speculation' in that? It is what
>> is done in every investigation of human conduct
>> (for example) by the police into a crime, and it
>> usually produces results.
>
> It usually produces evidence. Your speculation
> does not do any such thing. The police start with
> multiple theories in mind and whittle them down
> by an examination of evidence which may
> eliminate one suspect or tie another to the crime.

In cases like this, they have first to establish
what crimes, if any, were committed. (E,g,
Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, Oliver North
and Iran-Contra, Dominiqe Strauss-Kahn)

> I also find it incredibly ironic that you would say
> that "we have to look at what the parties, who
> might or might not have known, actually did, and
> what they did not do, and at what they actually
> said." This is something that you do not do. For
> instance, the will of Augustine Phillips, executed
> 5 May 1605, proved 16 May 1605, bequeaths, "to
> my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings
> peece in gould, To my Fellowe Henry Condell one
> other thirty shillinge peece in gould . . .

Ridiculous. IF there had been a government-
sponsored cover-up, then the wills of the
chief participants would have been one of
the first documents to be 'edited' -- and in
exactly the manner in which we see -- some
trivial pointless, meaningless gesture.

This 'transaction' is about as useless a
piece of evidence for your side as you
could get. The fact that you have nothing
better should tell you just how good a
case you have,

>> What one of the relatives, friends, neighbours
>> or acquaintances of the Stratman said anything
>> about the man -- as a literary person?
>
> You've never heard of Leonard Digges?

How would Leonard Digges have known
the Stratman?

> Or John Davies?

Sure -- everyone who admired the poet, must
have known him personally and known that he
was the Stratman.

>>>> The poet himself never said anything about
>>>> himself . . . apart from a few vague hints
>>
>>> So?
>>
>> Name another author (about as prolific) who
>> was as silent -- in Early Modern times or
>> later.
>
> What did Marlowe say about himself?

Marlowe was, of course, conveniently dead
when his name was used to publish some
of Oxford's early works. It seems that no
one had heard Marlowe mentioned as a poet
while he was alive.

>>> [...]
>>>> The poet never remarked on any other poet
>>>> of the day (except in a recondite manner about
>>>> an unnamed 'rival poet'.
>>
>>> So?
>>
>> Name another poet (about as prolific) who
>> was as silent on others of his day -- in Early
>> Modern times or later.
>
> What did Marlowe say about other poets?

Marlowe was, of course, conveniently dead
when his name was used to publish some
of Oxford's early works. It seems that no
one had heard Marlowe mentioned as a poet
while he was alive.

>>>> No one wrote
>>>> commendatory verses about him during his
>>>> life. And so on and on . . . . .
>>
>>> Bullshit.
>>
>> Who wrote about the Stratford man, on his
>> death or during his life?
>
> See the list above for some of the names.

If you assume that your case is proved (and
that the Stratman WAS the poet) then you
will see many references to the poet being
references to the Stratman.

Can you see what is wrong with the logic
there?


Paul.

[Dominic Hughes]

On Sep 27, 6:02 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
>   On 26/09/2012 15:39, Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >>>> Cover-ups (especially government initiated and
> >>>> sponsored ones)have been an ever-present aspect
> >>>> of history.  In numerous cases we are not sure
> >>>> whether or not they took place.  Did Roosevelt
> >>>> (or Churchill, or both) know that the Japs were
> >>>> planning to attack Pearl Harbour?  When did they
> >>>> find out about (say) Katyn or the Holocaust?
> >>>> And so on and on . . .
>
> >>> Exactly...and that all involves speculation and none of it
> >>> can be stated to be unequivocal fact
>
> >> So, under your theory of history, all that should
> >> ever be discussed are "unequivocal facts"
>
> > Nice strawman.  Speculation is perfectly fine as far
> > as it goes.  The problem comes when speculation is
> > treated as unequivocal fact, which is what you do.
> > You turn your speculations into statements of fact.
>
> This is not what you said above.

It is exactly what I said above, and, as a matter of fact, it is
exactly what I have said to you previously here at HLAS on occasions
too numerous to count. Your speculations are not facts, and yet you
treat them as if they were. The sad fact is that you don't even
realize that is what you are doing [as will be evidenced below].

> Whenever you
> are shown to be wrong,

When and where have you shown anything I've said in this thread to be
wrong?

> you pretend to be saying
> something else.

This is some fine projection on your part.

> And this version is especially nonsensical.  Since
> none of us were there, and it was a cover-up, how
> can anyone be sure as to what actually did happen?

There you go again, turning your speculation that there was a cover-up
into an unequivocal factual statement that there actually was a cover-
up.

If you assume that your case is proved (and that your Lord WAS the
poet and his authorship was hidden by a conspiratorial cover-up) then
you will see many references to William Shakespeare being references
to de Vere, and you will see the absolute lack of any evidence of a
cover-up as evidence that there was, in fact, a cover-up.

The sad fact is that you are unable to perceive what is wrong with
your logic here?

> The only issue is whether or not the story anyone
> claims to be able to derive makes reasonable
> sense.

You are quite irrational...that is not the only issue at all. In
order to prove a speculative theory you need to provide evidence.
Speculative theories are not proved absent evidence. The other
problem with your so-called logic here is that you are applying a
completely subjective standard to what should be an objective
question. The fact that your theories make sense to you proves
nothing, especially in light of the fact that your theories have no
supporting evidence and don't make any sense to anyone else. You have
just summed up the problems with your idiotic method here...if your
speculations make "reasonable sense" to you then the issue is settled,
as far as you are concerned, and your speculations can be treated as
verified facts.

The sad fact is that you are unable to perceive what is wrong with
your logic here?

> I am certain that I get much of it wrong.
> But, at least, I am not claiming that the Canon was
> written by an illiterate with a funny name, nor that
> a government minister sponsored a scheme
> involving a faked death.

Who here is claiming that the Canon was written by an illiterate with
a funny name? You are once more making the assumption that you
speculations [this time as to the supposed illiteracy of Shakespeare]
should be taken as established fact. The sad fact is that you are
unable to perceive what is wrong with your logic here?

> >> -- as
> >> presumably agreed by a committee of established
> >> experts?  So, for you, since all established
> >> experts at the time agreed that Copernicus and
> >> Galileo were talking heretical nonsense and
> >> should be silenced, the sun and the stars still
> >> revolve around the earth every day?
>
> > Another strawman, and, in fact, since Copernicus
> > and Galileo eventually grounded their theories in
> > observable evidence

You cut the context here: Another strawman, and, in fact, since

Copernicus and Galileo eventually grounded their theories in

observable evidence, they would be more like Stratfordians and you
would be the one questioning them. Your speculations are not backed up
by evidence; therefore, they remain nothing more than speculation and
are not established fact.

> There is massive evidence for Oxford -- and
> against the Stratman.

If there is "massive evidence for Oxford," why don't you go ahead and
list the five most relevant pieces of evidence right here:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Likewise, out of all of the massive evidence against the Stratman, why
don't you list the five most relevant pieces of evidence against
Shakespeare of Stratford here:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

> I have asked you a
> thousand questions you have to duck, such
> as those below:

What is supposed to follow your colon [what typically follows your
colon are the speculations you pull out of your arse]?

??? What questions would those be. Surely if there are thousands of
questions I have been forced to duck you ought to be able to provide
some links to those in the archives without any trouble at all.

> > As an example, any number of Stratfordian "experts"
> > have contended that "Shakespeare was hoarding
> > grain in a time of famine."  I have thoroughly
> > examined all of the evidence I can find on the subject
> > and such statements are hogwash.  It is interesting
> > speculation but it is not proven by the available
> > evidence.
>
> Sure -- why not ignore the forest, and look at
> one single tree?

This is really ironic coming from you. You are unable to look at the
evidence at all, whether individually, piece by piece, or
cumulatively.

> This guy was supposed to
> be England's greatest writer of all time.  All
> you can think about is whether or not he used
> more grain than he should have, for beer.

Don't be stupid. Over the years here I have shown myself to be
concerned with far more than this issue.

> That's exactly the right question for some
> nobody who had more money than he was
> used to handling.  It's a long long way from
> anything literary.

Who said it had anything to do with anything literary? It was merely
offered as an example of the fact that I examine the evidence and
don't mindlessly accept the conclusions of any "committee of
established experts." You, on the other hand, are a committee of one,
who treats his speculations as if they were the conclusions of experts
and accepted as verified fact. The sad fact is that you are unable to
perceive what is wrong with your logic here? You seem completely

unable to see that what you are doing is treating your speculations as
if they were facts.

> >> The Stratfordian theory might (just about) have
> >> remained plausible while (a) he was thought to
> >> have been a 'gentleman in the country' and
> >> (b) had good supporting documentation.
>
> > This is speculation that you treat as fact.
>
> Ridiculous.

Yes, your speculations are ridiculous, as are the methods that you
use.

> It would be very easy to ask any
> historian what documentation could reasonably
> have been expected from a great and famous
> author,

So now we've gone from the necessity of rejecting the conclusions of a
"committee of established experts" to the reliability of asking one
historian what he would expect to find. Brilliant. The fact is that
there is no one standard as to what we could reasonably expect to find
from any author of the period.

For instance, look at Diana Price's book, *Shakespeare's Unorthodox
Biography* and you will see that there is no evidence of education for
Michael Drayton, George Chapman, Anthony Mundy, Thomas Heywood, Thomas
Dekker, John Fletcher, John Webster, and William Shakespeare.

According to Price's book, the other writers of the time who are
deficient in evidence of having "owned, written in, borrowed or given"
books are Philip Massinger, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Michael
Drayton, Anthony Munday, Thomas Middleton, John Lyly, Thomas Heywood,
Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe,
Francis Beaumont, Thomas Kyd, John Webster and William Shakespeare.

Of course that ignores the fact that we have a book with Shakespeare's
signature in it (Archaionomia).

>whose house remained untouched and
> in his family for 50 years after his death --

You don't even know the facts even though they have been pointed out
to you previously. In 1637 it was recorded that Baldwin Brookes
robbed Shakespeare's home New Place of "diverse books...desks,bonds,
bills, and other goods of great value."

"...Susanna and her son-in-law charged in Chancery that Baldwin Brooks
(afterwards to become the bailiff of Stratford) had suborned an
undersheriff and some bailiffs -'men of mean estate' - to break open
the doors and study of New Place, and rashly seize 'divers books' and
'other goods of great value'. Brooks had been frustrated in his
efforts to collect a judgement against the Hall estate."

- Samuel Schoenbaum, CDL

The court transcriptions are are re-printed in "William Shakespeare
and his
daughter Susanna" by Frank Marcham and "The Shakespeare Documents" by
B.Roland Lewis.

Suit for recovery of debt brought by Baldwin Brookes, mercer of
Stratford upon
Avon against Susanna Hall, nee Shakespeare, owner of New Place,
Stratford upon
Avon and her son-in-law Thomas Nashe, Gent., against the estate of
Susanna's
husband John Hall who died 2 years earlier: "...that hee was seised of
Two Messuages and of certayne Land meadowe & pasture contayninge by
estimacion ffoure yard Land wth thappurtennces lyeinge wthin the
parishes of Stratford vppon Avon old Stratford Bishopton and welcombe
in the Countye of Warwicke and of one Messuage lyeings and beinge in
Blackefriers London in the right of the Defendant Susan as given to
her the said Susan by the last Will and testament of Willm.
Shackspeare gent her late father...men of meane estate or worth
violently and forceablie to breake open the house in Stratford
aforesaid where theis Defendantes dwell and inhabite And that the said
Bayliffes Did then and there break open the Doores and studdy of the
said howse and Rashlye seise vppon and take Divers bookes boxes Deskes
moneyes bonds bills and other goods of greate value as well weh were
of the said John Halls as of the proper goods of this Defendant Thomas
Nashe the perticulers or value whereof theis Defendants saie they are
not able to expresse...".

> and then compare the expectation with the
> lamentable fact that NOTHING -- yes, that's
> right --  NOTHING was left there to be found.

There is more than ample evidence to establish that Shakespeare of
Stratford wrote the works and was an actor and shareholder in the
acting company that performed the plays and the theatres where they
were performed.

> It would be very easy to ask any historian what
> they would expect to see in the few documents
> that could be found concerning the man -- e.g.
> his will, a note about a conversation with him
> from a highly-literary lawyer, what his daughter
> had to say about him on her tombstone (we
> are obliged to scape the barrel) and on that of
> her husband.  What do we get -- NOTHING
> that indicates he was literate -- let alone
> literary.

Your double standard is amusing, but your ignorant avoidance of the
evidence for Shakespeare of Stratford is not.

> > I stated that there was no evidence to support
> > your claim that there was a conspiracy,
>
> The nonsensical claim that he was England's
> greatest writer -- given that everything else
> about him indicates illiteracy, including his
> 'signatures', his name,

According to your speculations, but not according to the actual
evidence.

> and, in
>
> > response, you offer your speculations as to how
> > the conspiracy could have worked
>
> I was setting out the context. The first question
> in proposing ANY historical scenario is whether
> or not it is reasonable.

Your scenario is not reasonable. A jury applies a reasonable man
standard to questions such as this...you have failed to convince
anyone of the reasonableness of your theories, much less a jury of
twelve. You have only convinced your self.

Your theory will never be generally accepted. Ideas that start as
speculative theories and become generally accepted do so because
evidence is eventually produced which supports the theory. You have
no such evidence, and, in fact, the evidence that does exist [direct,
physical evidence] rebuts your theory and establishes the Stratfordian
case. Of course, you simply deny that such evidence has any
evidentiary weight whatsoever with your speculation turned-to-fact
that there was a conspiracy, even though there is absolutely no
evidence of any such conspiracy.

> The Stratfordian story
> is ludicrously absurd, and the evidence that
> Strats need to back up such a crazy invention
> has to be massive. Up to about 1860, it was
> generally assumed that it existed -- or could be
> found with a minimal effort.  Now we know that
> there is none.

Bullshit.

Following is just some of the evidence that establishes the
Stratfordian attribution:

The following contemporaneous documents specifically identify William
Shakespeare of Stratford as the author of the works named therein, by
the use of the honorific [“Master”, “Mr.” or “M.”] or the status
signifier [“Gentleman” or “Gent.”] that William Shakespeare of
Stratford was entitled to use by the fact that his father had been
granted a coat of arms. There was no other William Shakespeare,
especially not one associated with the King’s Men and the Globe
Theatre, who was entitled to be addressed in these terms, and, so,
when these terms are used in a document, there can be no question that
they are explicitly identifying Shakespeare of Stratford by name.These
documents qualify as direct evidence, during the Stratford Man’s
lifetime, that he was the author of the works cited within the
respective documents – no inference is required to be drawn from these
documents to link them specifically to WS of Stratford. It is a
documented fact that Shakespeare's father was granted a coat of arms,
and that, following the grant of the coat of arms, William Shakespeare
was subsequently entitled to be addressed as "Master" Shakespeare and
accorded the status of Gentleman. That the author of the works was so
designated during his lifetime is documented:

(1.) 1599 The Returne from Parnassus, Part I: "Mr. Shakspeare" [more
than once, references Venus & Adonis, Romeo and Juliet]
(2.) 1600 Stationer's Register entry for Henry the Fourth, Part Two
and Much Ado About Nothing: "master Shakespere"
(3.) 1607 Stationer's Register entry for King Lear: "Master William
Shakespeare"
(4.) 1608 Q1 of King Lear: "M. William Shak-speare" (title page) "M
William Shak-speare" (head title)
(5.) 1610 The Scourge of Folly by John Davies of Hereford: "Mr. Will:
Shake-speare"
(6.) 1612 "Epistle" to The White Devil by John Webster: "M. Shake-
speare"
(7.) 1614 Runne and a Great Cast by Thomas Freeman: "Master W.
Shakespeare" [references Venus & Adonis, Lucrece]
(8.) 1615: ed. 5 of John Stow's Annales, by Edmund Howes): "M. Willi.
Shakespeare gentleman" [in a list of contemporary poets]
(9.) 1616 (Q6 Lucrece): "Mr. William Shakespeare" (title page).

Here are some more following his death, all of which specify the
Stratford Man by the use of the status conferred by the grant of the
coat of arms:
(10.) 1619 Title page, Q3 (Pavier quarto) of Henry VI Parts 2 & 3):
"William Shakespeare, Gent.";
(11.) 1619 Title page, Q2 of King Lear: "M. William Shake-speare";
(12.) 1619 Head title of Q2 of King Lear: "M. William Shake-speare";
(13.) 1622 Catalogus Universalis pro Nundinis Francofurtensibus;
Frankfort book fair list of books to be published in England between
April and October 1622): "M. William Shakespeare";
(14.) 1623 Stationer's Register entry for First Folio: "Mr. William
Shakspeer".

Here are some of the other documents from the historic record that tie
WS of Stratford directly to the Globe theatre.
(1.) 1601 (Deed transfering the Globe and other Southwark properties
from Nicholas Brend to Sir Matthew Brown and John Collett as security
for a 2500-pound debt; October 7): "Richard Burbadge and William
Shackspeare gent."
(2.) 1601 (Updated deed for the above transaction; October 10):
"Richard Burbage and William Shakspeare gentlemen"
(3.) 1608 (Deed transferring the Globe and other properties from John
Collett to John Bodley; November 11): "Richard Burbadge & William
Shakespeare gent"

Kindly explain to me why you think this evidence should be ignored or
summarily dismissed, and, while you're at it, display some o0f the
evidence for de Vere that is comparable.

> >> But
> >> that came to an end when the 'documentation'
> >> turned out to have been forged, and his father,
> >> mother, wife and daughters were seen to be
> >> illiterate.
>
> > More speculatrion stated as fact.  The
> > documentation was not forged
>
> Nonsense.  Most of what was thought to
> be reliable documentation around 1840 was
> shown to be forged -- mainly by Collier.

More bullshit. None of the documentation I have listed above has been
shown to be forged, by Collier or anyone else.

Please list the records that you contend were "thought to be reliable
documentation around 1840" but were then shown to be forged. Or are
you just pulling assertions out of your arse again?

> > [it is well-known what documents were forged,
>
> On the contrary, Collier NEVER said what
> he had forged and what he hadn't.

That doesn't refute my point. All of the records have been minutely
examined and there is no current dispute as to what documents were
forged and which are genuine.

> > and those forgeries have absolutely nothing to do
> > with the documentation, the evidence, which
> > establishes the Stratfordian attribution.
>
> Absurd. That fact that items (formerly trusted)
> are forged is STILL emerging.  Up to recently
> people used to trust the supposed performance
> at sea of some of the plays -- quoted for dating
> (and therefore attribution).

Please supply a link to any study showing that performances at sea
were quoted for the purpose of dating the plays [thus supplying
evidence for attribution], and then provide a link to any study
showing that any such documents have been shown to be forgeries.

> > Prove that Shakespeare's father, mother, wife and
> > daughters could not read.
>
> The only proof you'd accept would be their
> resurrection, and then a witnessed statement
> from each.

No, actually, I'd accept a sensible and reasoned argument tending to
establish the claim. You are unable to provide any such thing.

>But failing that (as normal humans
> must) no sensible person would contest that
> most obvious of facts.

How would you know -- you are not sensible?

This was taken from the 'shaxper' site and is a pretty good summary:

“Given the necessarily fragmentary nature of the evidence we have, a
lot of what anybody says about literacy in Elizabethan England is
based on intelligent guesswork. John Shakespeare, William's father,
made his mark rather than signing his name on legal documents. This
provides no positive evidence of his literacy, and it allows us to
assume that he probably couldn't sign his name, which in turn allows
us to assume that he probably couldn't read or write. However, none of
this *proves* anything; literate men, such as John's neighbor Adrian
Quiney, sometimes signed with a mark, and contemporary documents make
it clear that it was not uncommon for people to be able to read but
not write. On balance, I'd say that John Shakespeare *probably*
couldn't write, and I'd say less confidently that he probably couldn't
read, but there have certainly been scholars who have believed that he
was literate to some degree, and it is not unreasonable to think so.

Susanna Shakespeare-Hall could sign her name, which allows us to
assume she was literate. The only potential evidence against this
conclusion is the posthumous story about her supposedly not
recognizing her husband's handwriting, which is a little puzzling in
any case. On balance, I'd say that it is most likely that Susanna
could read and write, but that it is *possible* that she was only able
to sign her name. (By the way, "witty" in the 17th century meant
"intelligent" rather than "able to toss off clever remarks at dinner
parties.") Susanna's sister Judith signed with a mark; this provides
no positive evidence that she was literate, and given the very low
priority given to women's education, the most natural assumption is
that she was illiterate.

So, Shakespeare's father was probably illiterate but possibly not; his
one daughter was probably literate but possibly not; his other
daughter was very probably illiterate. His only son, Hamnet, died at
the age of 11, and we have no way of assessing his literacy, though
the default assumption is that he would have attended the Stratford
grammar school. A flat statement that all of William Shakespeare's
blood relatives were illiterate through three generations seems to me
not to be a very fair statement of the situation, and at best an
oversimplification. And in any case, as Terence Hawkes pointed out,
we're talking about the late 16th century here, not the late 20th. The
upwardly mobile middle class, of which Shakespeare was a member, was
much better educated than their parents' generation, but even so,
education was seen as something for boys; educating girls was seen as
a waste of precious resources.

Shakespeare was, believe it or not, a product of his times, and
however tempting it may be to infer his personal opinions from what he
has the characters in his plays say, there is nothing surprising about
what we know of his family's literacy.”
- - - - -

I note that you have snipped my request that you prove that
Shakespeare's brothers were illiterate.

> >> Where is the 'speculation' in that?  It is what
> >> is done in every investigation of human conduct
> >> (for example) by the police into a crime, and it
> >> usually produces results.
>
> > It usually produces evidence.  Your speculation
> > does not do any such thing.  The police start with
> > multiple theories in mind and whittle them down
> > by an examination of evidence which may
> > eliminate one suspect or tie another to the crime.
>
> In cases like this, they have first to establish
> what crimes, if any, were committed. (E,g,
> Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, Oliver North
> and Iran-Contra, Dominiqe Strauss-Kahn)

Right...they establish what crimes were committed by following the
evidence, not by speculation. If only you would do the same.

Why do you snip what is said without acknowledging that you have done
so? Here is what I said in full:

It usually produces evidence. Your speculation does not do any such
thing. The police start with multiple theories in mind and whittle
them down by an examination of evidence which may eliminate one

suspect or tie another to the crime. They certainly shouldn't engage
in your method which is to summarily dismiss any evidence which
contradicts their theory of the case. The method you employ is
completely dissimilar to that employed by the police, or any other
inquirers into fact. You start with the assumption that de Vere was
the author; they start with an open mind. You ignore, dismiss, or
deny the evidence; they follow it wherever it leads. That you don't
recognize the difference in what you do and what the police actually
do is remarkable.

> > I also find it incredibly ironic that you would say
> > that "we have to look at what the parties, who
> > might or might not have known, actually did, and
> > what they did not do, and at what they actually
> > said."  This is something that you do not do.  For
> > instance, the will of Augustine Phillips, executed
> > 5 May 1605, proved 16 May 1605, bequeaths, "to
> > my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings
> > peece in gould, To my Fellowe Henry Condell one
> > other thirty shillinge peece in gould . . .
>
> Ridiculous.  IF there had been a government-
> sponsored cover-up, then the wills of the
> chief participants would have been one of
> the first documents to be 'edited' -- and in
> exactly the manner in which we see --  some
> trivial pointless, meaningless gesture.

This may be the stupidest things you have ever said [and that's saying
something]. There is no indication whatsoever that Phillip's will was
edited at all. And the notion that conspirators would try to cover up
hidden authorship by faking bequests in Last Wills, which would be
seen by maybe two clerks and then forgotten for hundreds of years, is
ludicrous. Your theory about Phillip's Will is not sensible.
By the way, you snipped what I said again without indicating that you
were doing so:

All of the people who Phillips calls his "fellows" were actors in the
King's Men. Augustine Phillips's bequest of 30 shillings to his
"Fellowe" Shakespeare was written 11 months after the Earl of Oxford's
death. This is something that Phillips did [leaving money to
Shakespeare] and said [Shakespeare was one of his fellow actors in the
King's Men], and yet you will summarily dismiss it as a forgery
committed by your conspiracy. You would rather speculate as to what
someone would or should have said or done, according to your
subjective way of looking at it [and then treating that speculation as
evidence], rather than actually looking at what was said and done.

You did exactly as I predicted you would.

> This 'transaction' is about as useless a
> piece of evidence for your side as you
> could get.  The fact that you have nothing
> better should tell you just how good a
> case you have,

Who said I have nothing better, you nincompoop. I've listed numerous
other documents above. Real, physical evidence from the historical
record. What do you have that is even remotely comparable?

The fact that you have absolutely nothing at all that even qualifies
as comparable evidence should show you that you have no case, but you
are blind. If you had one eye you'd be a cyclops.

> >> What one of the relatives, friends, neighbours
> >> or acquaintances of the Stratman said anything
> >> about the man -- as a literary person?
>
> > You've never heard of Leonard Digges?
>
> How would Leonard Digges have known
> the Stratman?

Digges widowed mother married Thomas Russell, Shakespeare's friend and
one of the overseers of his will.

> > Or John Davies?
>
> Sure -- everyone who admired the poet, must
> have known him personally and known that he
> was the Stratman.

The evidence shows that Davies most likely did. There are three poems
by Davies which reference William Shakespeare.

A.

To our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shake-speare.

Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,
Had'st thou not plaid some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King;
And, beene a King among the meaner sort.
Some others raile; but, raile as they thinke fit,
Thou hast no railing, but a raigning Wit:
And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape;
So, to increase their Stocke which they do keepe.

B.

Players, I love yee, and your Qualitie,
As ye are Men, that pass time not abus’d:
And some I love for painting, poesie W.S. R.B.
And say fell fortune cannot be excus’d,
That hath for better uses you refused:
Wit, Courage, good shape, good partes and all goode,
As long as all these goods are no worse us’d,
And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloode
Yet generous yee are in minde and moode.

C.

Some followed her by acting all mens parts Stage Players
These on a Stage she rais’d (in scorne) to fall:
And made them Mirrors, by their acting Arts,
Wherin men saw their faults, though ne’r so small:
Yet soome she guerdond not, to their desarts; W.S. R.B.
But, othersome, were but ill-actioned all:
Who while they acted ill, ill staid behinde,
(By custome of their maners) in their minde.

The initials in these poems are printed in marginal notes to the
poems, along with other marginal notes supplied by the poet. So we
have Davies calling the poet "Mr." William Shakespeare [indicating his
status as a gentleman], referring to him as "good Will", identifying
him as an actor in company with Burbage, and making quite personal
comments as to his qualities. Of course, this will mean nothing to
you since you are not sensible.

What about Phillips? Heminge? Condell? Jonson? Heywood? Webster?

Beaumont? Basse? Sir Richard Baker? The Stratford Monument? The
First Folio?

> >>>> The poet himself never said anything about
> >>>> himself   . . .  apart from a few vague hints
>
> >>> So?
>
> >> Name another author (about as prolific) who
> >> was as silent -- in Early Modern times or
> >> later.
>
> > What did Marlowe say about himself?
>
> Marlowe was, of course, conveniently dead
> when his name was used to publish some
> of Oxford's early works.

You make me laugh. You simply can't help yourself. Your speculations
are stated as fact, and no evidence is ever offered to support your
nonsensical claims.

> It seems that no
> one had heard Marlowe mentioned as a poet
> while he was alive.

Exactly. Unlike William Shakespeare of Stratford.

> >>> [...]
> >>>> The poet never remarked on any other poet
> >>>> of the day (except in a recondite manner about
> >>>> an unnamed 'rival poet'.
>
> >>> So?
>
> >> Name another poet (about as prolific) who
> >> was as silent on others of his day -- in Early
> >> Modern times or later.
>
> > What did Marlowe say about other poets?
>
> Marlowe was, of course, conveniently dead
> when his name was used to publish some
> of Oxford's early works.  It seems that no
> one had heard Marlowe mentioned as a poet
> while he was alive.

Idiotic speculation parading as fact.

> >>>> No one wrote
> >>>> commendatory verses about him during his
> >>>> life.  And so on and on . . . . .
>
> >>> Bullshit.
>
> >> Who wrote about the Stratford man, on his
> >> death or during his life?
>
> > See the list above for some of the names.
>
> If you assume that your case is proved

I don't but you quite obviously do.

> (and
> that the Stratman WAS the poet) then you
> will see many references to the poet being
> references to the Stratman.

You are indulging in projection.

> Can you see what is wrong with the logic
> there?

Yes...I plainly see the errors in logic in such an approach and that
is why I don't employ any such methods. The question is why you can't
see what is logically wrong in your method.

If you assume that your case is proved (and that your Lord WAS the
poet and his authorship was hidden by a conspiratorial cover-up) then
you will see many references to William Shakespeare being references
to de Vere, and you will see the absolute lack of any evidence of a
cover-up as evidence that there was, in fact, a cover-up.

The sad fact is that you are unable to perceive what is wrong with
your logic here?

Dom


Here is some more of what you snipped:

[Paul Crowley]

On 27/09/2012 10:58, Paul Crowley wrote:

>> Now you've lost me. Are YOU saying that 'neck' was once
>> pronounced 'nack' and rhymed with 'back' as we would say
>> the latter today?
>
> Yes -- see quotes below: We know how words
> were pronounced by the way in which poets
> used them.

But, on looking again, I see I was too hasty.

Certainly in V&A Shakespeare rhymes 'neck; with
'back'. and there is no doubt that 'back' was a
common '-ack' word, rhyming with 'sack, lack
tack, hack, jack, lack, pack, rack.

But a few years later Spenser, rhymes 'necke'
with 'wreake' (or 'wreak' as in 'wreak havoc') as
well as 'breake' and 'weake'. Also he rhymes
'wreake with 'weake, 'bleake' and 'speake'

So Spenser was pronouncing 'neck' with an 'eek'
sound.

Likewise 'break' rhymed with 'weak', 'wreak',
'speak', 'bleak'. Shakespeare rhymes 'breaks'
with 'speaks' in Lucrece.

Btw, this is something David Crystal needs to
know. His 'explanation' for the modern spelling
of 'break' is completely wrong -- something along
the lines of not clashing with 'brake' AFAIR --
according to him Caxton wanted to make a
different word (pronounced the same) LOOK
different in print.

Another btw -- we have an exception to the
usual vowel shift.. A pronunciation has gone
DOWN, and not up.


Paul.

[Peter F.]

Dominic Hughes wrote:
>
> By the way, this link does not appear to be working.

The best address for what this thread is allegedly about is at
<http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/was-monument-altered-by-peter-farey.html>

And there is no truth in this apparent suggestion that I was
responsible for the alterations either!

Peter F.
<pet...@rey.prestel.co.uk>
<http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/index.htm>

[Dominic Hughes]

> than once, references Venus & Adonis, Romeo and Juliet] will

> (2.) 1600 Stationer's Register entry for Henry the Fourth, Part Two

> and Much Ado About Nothing: "master Shakespere" he

> (3.) 1607 Stationer's Register entry for King Lear: "Master William

> Shakespeare" fall back

> (4.) 1608 Q1 of King Lear: "M. William Shak-speare" (title page) "M

> William Shak-speare" (head title) on

> (5.) 1610 The Scourge of Folly by John Davies of Hereford: "Mr. Will:

> Shake-speare" his

> (6.) 1612 "Epistle" to The White Devil by John Webster: "M. Shake-

> speare" usual

> (7.) 1614 Runne and a Great Cast by Thomas Freeman: "Master W.

> Shakespeare" [references Venus & Adonis, Lucrece] excuse

> (8.) 1615: ed. 5 of John Stow's Annales, by Edmund Howes): "M. Willi.

> Shakespeare gentleman" [in a list of contemporary poets] the

> (9.) 1616 (Q6 Lucrece): "Mr. William Shakespeare" (title page).
>
> Here are some more following his death, all of which specify the
> Stratford Man by the use of the status conferred by the grant of the
> coat of arms:
> (10.) 1619 Title page, Q3 (Pavier quarto) of Henry VI Parts 2 & 3):

> "William Shakespeare, Gent."; post didn't make it to his

> (11.) 1619 Title page, Q2 of King Lear: "M. William Shake-speare";
> (12.) 1619 Head title of Q2 of King Lear: "M. William Shake-speare";
> (13.) 1622 Catalogus Universalis pro Nundinis Francofurtensibus;
> Frankfort book fair list of books to be published in England between

> April and October 1622): "M. William Shakespeare"; server

No response from Crowley, and yet he makes accusations that others
dodge his questions.

Dom

[jaelsheargold]

On Sep 27, 10:02 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 26/09/2012 13:06, jaelsheargold wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > I came across an essay a couple of years ago by
> > Johannes Hoops the philologist where he says (if I follow
> > him correctly) that the 'shack(s)' pronunciation in
> > 'Shakspere' had morphed into 'sheck(s)' during the second
> > half of the 16th century, reflected in spellings such as
> > 'Shexpere, Shexspere, Shexsper'. He goes on to say
> > (again if I understand rightly) that the Midland
> > pronunciation of 'shake(s)' during the 1500s also
> > approximated to 'sheck(s)'. That is very interesting
> > because any local will know that in parts of the West
> > Midlands, colloquially and to this day, especially among
> > the older sort, words like 'make', 'take', and 'shake' are
> > pronounced 'meck', 'teck,' and 'sheck' respectively. You
> > can hear it in old archival recordings which were made of
> > Warwickshire people who were born in the mid to late
> > years of the 19th century.
>
> There are all manner of weird pronunciations.

Only when it suits you.

> But I am sure that you won't find any established
> ones that consistently fail to discriminate
> between:
>
> A) 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack,
> attack, hack, pack, quack';
>
> and:
>
> B)  'make, lake, take,break, sake, fake, rake,
> bake, steak, quake, wake

Strings of words that rhyme in a modern context right out of a Janet
and John primer. What exactly are you trying to prove? How people
SPOKE in the 16th century? And is this your sole methodology - looking
at the end words of lines in selected poetry texts?

Silly old fool.

>
> > All this would tie in nicely with the play on words of
> > 'cat' and 'Kate' in The Taming of the Shrew.
>
> There is NO play on the 'similarity'.  The
> word 'cat' appears twice in the play, with
> no explicit or adjacent reference to 'Kate'
> or any allusion to her name.

Yes, there is:

'For I am he am born to tame you Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kat to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.'

Depends on what version you have, but the above is the only one that
makes sense i.e. from a wild cat to a domesticated one.

>
> > In the West Midlands in the 16th century, both
> > would have sounded something like 'ket', there being
> > no or negligible differentiation in the short and long
> > 'a' pronunciation.
>
> Sheer nonsense.

For which read you don't know what you're talking about. Why do you
think the clerk in Worcester that day in 1582 wrote 'Whateley'? Is it
because the Stratford lot said something like 'Het(th)-way' and in a
dozy moment he thought they said 'Wet-lay'? Understandable for a local
man or one long familiar with the accent.

But by St. Loy, it draws deeper than that. I'm interested in the
literary fingerprints that the boy Will left in the cannon -
deliberately, I expect - I mean the virtually unknown ones like the
one in a history play and the one in T&C, for example. Far more
decisive and intriguing than the so-called parallels your lot witter
on about, and which are about as parallel as two lines running in
different directions.

>
> >> What poet writing in English -- in any form,
> >> ballad or whatever -- and from the Midlands
> >> or any other regions --- has ever rhymed one
> >> of 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack, attack,
> >> hack, pack, quack'; with one of 'make, lake,
> >> take,break, sake, fake, rake, bake, steak,
> >> quake, wake'  ?
>
> > You are assuming that all these words were
> > pronounced then as they are today.
>
> For some strange reason, you regularly misread
> my words on this topic. Let me high-light the
> relevant ones:
>
> What poet writing IN ENGLISH -- in ANY form,
> ballad or whatever -- and from the Midlands
> or any other regions --- has EVER rhymed one
> of 'back, rack, crack, sack, lack, tack, attack,
> hack, pack, quack'; with one of 'make, lake,
> take,break, sake, fake, rake, bake, steak,
> quake, wake'  ?

You mean like Alexander Pope?:

'Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common Track?'

>
> >>Crystal does at times sink into your kind of
> >> mental sloppiness
>
> > Yeah, I ain't got over 'Ruthven' yet.
>
> >> -- in that rather than say that Word X was pronounced in one way or
> >> the other, he'll invent a middle, and say (or
> >> suggest) that there was something between
> >> (say) the modern 'prove' and 'love' and that
> >> then both words were pronounced so.
>
> > Seems reasonable to me - that many words would
> > go through a transition of pronunciation, be it ever so
> > slight.
>
> The 'transition' was a switch from one pronunciation
> to another.  The word is pronounced either as
> 'ee-ther' OR as "eye-ther".  It's not pronounced as
> something in-between.

There will be regional variations.

> You have to make a choice.

No you don't. Your pronunciation will be influenced by your early
environment and you might decide to change it later on. Many people
use both the 'ee-ther' and 'eye-ther' variations - quite
unconsciously, I'm sure.

> That's the way the language works. Explain THAT to David Crystal.  Ask him to quote some 'in-between'
> example he has heard.
>
> > Did you not say that 'key' was once pronounced
>
> 'kay'?
>
> Indeed.  And at some time, a switch was made.
> It was a SWITCH and not a glide.

SWITCH? So one day everybody just started saying 'key' instead of
'kay' - just like the aristocracy suddenly began speaking English in
1375? You really are a right berk, aren't you?

>
> > Interesting as the latter is a
> > colloquial pronunciation in the West Midlands -
> > where you'll also find words and proper names with
> > their last syllable ending in '-ey' being spoken to
> > rhyme with day.
>
> Most words in Shakespeare's time ending in
> '-y' were then pronounced with an '-eye' sound
> (as against the modern Southern 'ee'  one).
> The old pronunciation is still retained in most
> Midlands dialects.

True to a certain extent, but give a monkey a typewriter and it's
bound to get something right once in a way. But things occurring in
Midlands dialect don't really help your geezer, do they? And don't
give me no shite about Bilton.

> All these words ended in an 'eye' sound.
>
> accompany, actiuity, aduersity, advisedly, agonie,
> agony, agreeably, alchemy, amitie, angrily,
> antiquity, Araby, armorie, armory, artillery, audacity,
> auncestry, aunciently, bastardy, battery, beautifie,
> bitterly, blasphemously, boystrously, brauery,
> Britanie, Britany, busily . . . .
>
> This makes a lot of difference when reading
> poetry, such as Sonnet 1:
>
> >From fairest creatures we desire increase,
>
> That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die,
> But as the riper should by time decease,
> His tender heire might beare his memory:
>
> 'Memory' is supposed to rhyme with 'die' --
> according to the way the poet wrote the
> sonnet.  You could explain THAT to DavidCrystal.

Tell him yourself you lazy get.

> He thinks they spoke a kind of Mummerset that did not rhyme.

I don't think it - stands to reason that they had regional accents as
they do now. Thus it also stands to reason that words would have
different pronunciations around the country which is the direct
opposite of what you are saying i.e. that words had a universal
pronunciation. So you criticise Crystal for saying everyone spoke
'Mummerset' and yet in the next breath imply that everybody did, in
fact, speak in a uniform way.

You do get yourself in some tangles, don't you?

>
> >> I've seen him quote examples, where he takes
> >> changed pronunciations, not realising that
> >> there have been changes, and claim that there
> >> was some (now unknown) middle.  He does
> >> this AFAIR with 'neck' which -- in fact -- used
> >> to rhyme with 'back, rack, crack, sack" .
>
> > Now you've lost me. Are YOU saying that 'neck' was once
> > pronounced 'nack' and rhymed with 'back' as we would say
> > the latter today?
>
> Yes -- see quotes below: We know how words
> were pronounced by the way in which poets
> used them.

Lot more to it than that, sunshine.


>
> > Seems to meCrystalis saying the pronunciation of 'back'

> > approximated to 'beck' and that would fit in with 'shack'
> > having the sound value of 'sheck'.
>
> Crystal may well be saying something like that
> -- and it's pure crap.  That must be why you
> agree with it.

This from somebody who got "converted" (your word) by Charlton
Ogburn??!! You described it thus in 1999:

'It was an quite physical sensation.' (sic)

Probably someone dropping six volumes of "This Star of England" on
your head, mate. I'd have sued for complete loss of mental faculties.

>
> > BTW, wouldn't poshoes today pronounce 'back' as 'beck' as
> > in "Wash my beck, my good man, whilst I'm here in the
> > barth"?
>
> They would still (somehow) distinguish between
> '-ack' words and '-ake' words:  That's how the
> language works.

Oh, just '-ack' and '-ake', was it? Who decided that? But something
like 'to wind your watch while the wind blows' and countless other
examples escaped notice?

> Native speakers cannot afford to mix up the two syllables, or too much confusion
> results.

Just those two again? Not 'you'd look rough wearing a ruff down there
in Slough' - and such?

> People who don't pronounce their words so that others (of their class) can understand them,
> get told off, and instructed to speak 'properly' --
> whatever the 'properly' might consist of in that
> particular social grouping.

Gobbledygook.


SB.


>
> Explain that to DavidCrystal.

> Then to approue his right with speare and shield.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[John W Kennedy]

Actually, as I explained at length some time ago, both "die" and
"memory" ended with /əɪ/.

[jaelsheargold]

Crowley doesn't do the IPA - can you give him some examples of words
in a modern context with that sound value?


SB.

>
> --
> John W Kennedy
> "Those in the seat of power oft forget their failings and seek only the
> obeisance of others!  Thus is bad government born!  Hold in your heart
> that you and the people are one, human beings all, and good government
> shall arise of its own accord!  Such is the path of virtue!"

>   -- Kazuo Koike.  "Lone Wolf and Cub:  Thirteen Strings" (tr. Dana Lewis)- Hide quoted text -

[jaelsheargold]

> > Then to approue his right with speare and shield.- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

Another day, another old load of cobblers.

No wonder you've done a runner from yet another thread.


SB.

[John W Kennedy]

No. At least, not in any dialect, US or UK, that I'm acquainted with.
But, honestly, to discuss linguistics without knowing the IPA is like
discussing higher mathematics without knowing grade-school arithmetic.

--
John W Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract,
Man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams. "Bors to Elayne: On the King's Coins"

[Paul Crowley]

On 05/11/2012 03:52, John W Kennedy wrote:

>> On Sep 27, 10:02 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
>>> All these words ended in an 'eye' sound.
>>>
>>> accompany, actiuity, aduersity, advisedly, agonie,
>>> agony, agreeably, alchemy, amitie, angrily,
>>> antiquity, Araby, armorie, armory, artillery, audacity,
>>> auncestry, aunciently, bastardy, battery, beautifie,
>>> bitterly, blasphemously, boystrously, brauery,
>>> Britanie, Britany, busily . . . .
>>>
>>> This makes a lot of difference when reading
>>> poetry, such as Sonnet 1:
>>>
>>>> From fairest creatures we desire increase,
>>>
>>> That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die,
>>> But as the riper should by time decease,
>>> His tender heire might beare his memory:
>>>
>>> 'Memory' is supposed to rhyme with 'die' --
>>> according to the way the poet wrote the

>>> sonnet. [..]

This routine 'mis-pronunciation' (as Shake-speare
would see it) by modern actors effectively destroys
the metre of numerous lines in the canon. Yet
I've never seen it either mentioned or indicated by
any of the so-called 'experts'.

Pronounce "agon-EE" as against 'agon-EYE'
or 'adversit-EE' as against 'adversit-EYE'. It's
almost impossible to put emphasis on the last
syllable using the modern pronunciation. So
we get 'feminine' endings pretending to 'rhyme'
with masculine ones. It's horrible, and horribly
standard on the modern stage.

> Actually, as I explained at length some time ago, both

> "die" and "memory" ended with with /əɪ/.

How do KNOW? How would you know?

In any case, the statement is almost nonsensical.
There was no ONE pronunciation. The words would
have been pronounced differently in every town and
county, and by different classes within those towns,
as they are today. All we can say, with reasonable
confidence, is that the poet intended that such
words would rhyme, and that _in_his_social_group_
words like 'die' and 'eye' were emphasised in a way
as to suggest that their pronunciation was similar
that of the modern educated classes in England.

To use IPA to imply that there was just one
pronunciation, or to claim that you KNOW how
one class spoke, is to be both ignorant and
pompous. Is your name 'David Webb'?


Paul.

[jaelsheargold]

>   -- Charles Williams.  "Bors to Elayne:  On the King's Coins"- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

Crowley doesn't do the IPA and I'm not a linguist any more than he is.
However, I do have the misfortune to share a landmass with him, so I
can broadly tune in to what he is saying. Crowley knows this and I
think that is why he is assiduously avoiding me at present. He thinks
he can bullshit Americans better than he can his countrymen, though he
does try to do so sometimes.


SB.

[jaelsheargold]

So you have largely conceded what I said in an earlier post, Crowley.
Very good, but you are lying about people speaking differently from
"different classes".

> All we can say, with reasonable confidence, is that the poet intended that such
> words would rhyme, and that _in_his_social_group_
> words like 'die' and 'eye' were emphasised in a way
> as to suggest that their pronunciation was similar
> that of the modern educated classes in England.

Here Crowley is lying again. Not all of the 'modern educated classes'
speak with what he would call the traditional BBC accent - far from
it, and there's good evidence that they didn't in Elizabethan times.

>
> To use IPA to imply that there was just one
> pronunciation, or to claim that you KNOW how
> one class spoke, is to be both ignorant and
> pompous.

But you don't, ergo you are the ignorant and pompous one - of course,
we already knew that.


SB.

> Is your name 'David Webb'?

> Paul.- Hide quoted text -

[David L. Webb]

In article <50982adb$0$1240$607e...@cv.net>,
John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:

[...]

> >>>> 'Memory' is supposed to rhyme with 'die' --
> >>>> according to the way the poet wrote the
> >>>> sonnet.  You could explain THAT to DavidCrystal.

> >> Actually, as I explained at length some time ago, both "die" and

> >> "memory" ended with /??/.

> > Crowley doesn't do the IPA - can you give him some examples of words
> > in a modern context with that sound value?

> No. At least, not in any dialect, US or UK, that I'm acquainted with.
> But, honestly, to discuss linguistics without knowing the IPA is like
> discussing higher mathematics without knowing grade-school arithmetic.

Indeed it is. But unfamiliarity with rudimentary mathematics did not
stop Elizabeth from posting all sorts of risible nonsense about special
relativity; likewise, unfamiliarity with the IPA -- or with *any*
foreign language, for that matter -- will not stop Crowley from
pontificating from ignorance.