Hi! I'm new.

[Christian Johansen]

Because the other links I click on are all about hot sex; secret
codes; or conversations that start out about Shakespeare, then get too
obscure for me to understand, then veer rapidly into astronomy, I
thought I'd ask some questions I that had.

About the authorship thing...

What I know of the question comes only from two or three websites
that argue against Shakespeare's authorship; David Kathman and Terry
Ross' website; and a book (Contested Will). Also there's this guy on
YouTube who keeps asking me why he was never told things. I was hoping
he'd explain it himself instead of asking *me*, but here I am.

After reading those things I can't help but believe that the
Stratford man is the man who wrote the works. The points that are made
by the anti-strats seem to be, from my view, annihilated by context.
If I'm to believe Kathman and Ross, then none of the things I hear
about, say, letters, books, signatures, education, - none of that
matters. It's the same as we have for most playwrights. I need the
answers to that. So here's just one of my questions.

It's pretty basic stuff to you guys, I imagine, but if for a
moment you'll stoop to my level:

I hear that we have no letters written by Shakespeare. That guy
on YouTube wonders why he wasn't told this, he thinks it's
unbelievable. Kathman and Ross tell me it's irrelevant: we don't have
letters for most playwrights back then. Letters just didn't survive.

Is that true? Can anyone make a list of a lot of popular
playwrights and show how many letters we have for each? There's two
questions here, here's another: Would people who got letters from
Shakespeare have any reason to save them for posterity? I mean, would
"because he's Shakespeare" be a good reason to keep letters written by
him safe?

Also, because you guys are so academic and everything, what do
you think of all my semicolons? Should I have just used commas right
thru?

[Bob Grumman]

The anti-Stratfordian, Diana Price, wrote a book called Shakespeare's
Unorthodox Biography in which she lists how many letters we have from
25 playwrights. A handful from Jonson, a few from a few others, one
or less from half or more. As for saving letters, it would seem that
about the only letters we have from them are those from government
offices that saved latters.

>      Also, because you guys are so academic and everything, what do
> you think of all my semicolons? Should I have just used commas right
> thru?

A matter of taste. I like semi-colons, myself.

--Bob

[John W Kennedy]

On 2012-01-17 10:48:14 +0000, Christian Johansen said:
> I hear that we have no letters written by Shakespeare. That guy
> on YouTube wonders why he wasn't told this, he thinks it's
> unbelievable. Kathman and Ross tell me it's irrelevant: we don't have
> letters for most playwrights back then. Letters just didn't survive.
>
> Is that true? Can anyone make a list of a lot of popular
> playwrights and show how many letters we have for each? There's two
> questions here, here's another: Would people who got letters from
> Shakespeare have any reason to save them for posterity? I mean, would
> "because he's Shakespeare" be a good reason to keep letters written by
> him safe?

No. Hanging on to documents and other things merely because they
belonged to great artists only came into fashion about two hundred
years ago; as a general rule, you saved a letter only if you knew you
would need to read it again. Same thing for manuscripts -- the only
play manuscripts we have from that era are manuscripts of plays that
were never printed; once a play was printed, the manuscript was
worthless.

> Also, because you guys are so academic and everything, what do
> you think of all my semicolons? Should I have just used commas right
> thru?

You do seem to use them unnecessarily. The usual applications of
semicolons are:

1) To replace a period, gluing two sentences into one:

I saw him. He was running.
I saw him; he was running.

2) As a super-comma when you have a list of things that would normally
be separated by commas, but there are other commas already inside the
things, so that using commas on the outer list would be confusing.

Sally came with John, from Brown, a Senior representing Delta Tau
Delta, Elsie, from Bryn Mawr, an unpledged Freshman, and Sam, from MIT,
a graduate, and a former president of Pi Tau Zeta.

How many people came with Sally?

Sally came with John, from Brown, a Senior representing Delta Tau
Delta; Elsie, from Bryn Mawr, an unpledged Freshman; and Sam, from MIT,
a graduate, and a former president of Pi Tau Zeta.

Three, John, Elsie, and Sam.

--
John W Kennedy
"You can, if you wish, class all science-fiction together; but it is
about as perceptive as classing the works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W.
W. Jacobs together as the 'sea-story' and then criticizing _that_."
-- C. S. Lewis. "An Experiment in Criticism"

[Melanie Sands]

Soren Lorenson is, in "Charlie and Lola"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV2GMr72Lls&feature=related

Lola's imaginary friend.

So, "Christian Johansen", whose imaginary friend are you?

So I'm guesing you're not new, you're old - an old former
HLASian posting here to perk things up a bit.

They tore down New Place, how could anything survive?

Melanie

[neufer]

Melanie Sands <Melanie_Sa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Soren Lorenson is, in "Charlie and Lola"
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV2GMr72Lls&feature=related
>
> Lola's imaginary friend.
>
> So, "Christian Johansen", whose imaginary friend are you?
>
> So I'm guesing you're not new, you're old - an old former
> HLASian posting here to perk things up a bit.
>
> They tore down New Place, how could anything survive?

Oh...VERy good, Melanie.

Note the unusually unbiased response by Bob as well.
(Is Bob just talking to himself now that Shirley is gone?)

Art N.

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:48:14 -0800 (PST), Christian Johansen
<cjoh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Because the other links I click on are all about hot sex; secret
>codes; or conversations that start out about Shakespeare, then get too
>obscure for me to understand, then veer rapidly into astronomy, I
>thought I'd ask some questions I that had.
>
> About the authorship thing...
>
> What I know of the question comes only from two or three websites
>that argue against Shakespeare's authorship; David Kathman and Terry
>Ross' website; and a book (Contested Will). Also there's this guy on
>YouTube who keeps asking me why he was never told things. I was hoping
>he'd explain it himself instead of asking *me*, but here I am.

Good references.

> After reading those things I can't help but believe that the
>Stratford man is the man who wrote the works. The points that are made
>by the anti-strats seem to be, from my view, annihilated by context.
>If I'm to believe Kathman and Ross, then none of the things I hear
>about, say, letters, books, signatures, education, - none of that
>matters. It's the same as we have for most playwrights. I need the
>answers to that. So here's just one of my questions.

Like living with a great religion, you can have doubts about Stratman
and find room to personalize everything, IMO.

> It's pretty basic stuff to you guys, I imagine, but if for a
>moment you'll stoop to my level:
>
> I hear that we have no letters written by Shakespeare. That guy
>on YouTube wonders why he wasn't told this, he thinks it's
>unbelievable. Kathman and Ross tell me it's irrelevant: we don't have
>letters for most playwrights back then. Letters just didn't survive.
>
> Is that true? Can anyone make a list of a lot of popular
>playwrights and show how many letters we have for each? There's two
>questions here, here's another: Would people who got letters from
>Shakespeare have any reason to save them for posterity? I mean, would
>"because he's Shakespeare" be a good reason to keep letters written by
>him safe?

In deep water here, because supposing starts using negative logic,
like assuming not having evidence for something is proof that it
doesn't exist, which then suggests that its not existing means
something positive; like Shakespeare must have been illiterate and/or
used as a puppet in some conspiracy.

Kathman and Ross, who research this and similar issues, assure us
there are ways to account for absence of letters, such as common
letters were used as bottoms for pies in the kitchen. And without a
mail service, they were typically delivered by friends, involving a
long turn-around time. I get the impression that some letters
delivered for upper classes by courier might be coded and not saved.

Yet, because they didn't have banks, a lot of business and money was
negotiated between friends and relatives with letters, and Shakespeare
did do business this way.

The one letter to Shakespeare we know about seems to be from Quincy
asking for a loan. The anti-Stratsman proponents discount this by
saying it doesn't prove that he could read. Because only seven shaky
Shakespeare signatures exist, anti-Strats suggest this proves he was
illiterate. So it goes.

My idea is that by the 18th century Shakespeare and bardolatry was in
full swing, his memorabilia was scavenged by tourists and "pickers"
and sold in Stratfore upon Avon like religious relics. Not hard to
imagine that something like a Shakespeare letter would have received
attention, but none are mentioned by the likes of Ben Jonson, a prime
source. Find a letter by Shakespeare to Ben Jonson commenting on
something of literary interest, and you're talking about something
worth ten Stradevarius violins, I bet.

Interesting that Shakespeare uses letters frequently as obvious plot
devices in the plays. bookburn

> Also, because you guys are so academic and everything, what do
>you think of all my semicolons? Should I have just used commas right
>thru?

Semi-colons are fine for those compound sentences where you link two
or more thoughts. Academics like that sort of thing; relatives
exchanging personal letters might think semi-colons too business-like?

[Christian Johansen]

> Soren Lorenson is, in "Charlie and Lola"

> Lola's imaginary friend.
>
> So, "Christian Johansen", whose imaginary friend are you?
>
> So I'm guesing you're not new, you're old - an old former
> HLASian posting here to perk things up a bit.

I asked a question about the authorship question and now I've
become the authorship question! This place makes my head spin. You
really think I'm an imposter? I wonder what it was about my post that
made you suspicious. Was it the semicolon thing? Nevermind the
semicolon thing!

I found HLAS a couple of months ago. I've been reading it some but
I haven't posted. If I perked things up, that's great! I was just
hoping to learn a bit more about the evidence of WS' illiteracy and
education. And hey I learned some things about letters!

I don't know, I've read what's said in what I mentioned, and I
guess I was hoping to hear someone who doubts the authorship expand a
bit on the idea. From anti-stratford sources I mostly just read that
we don't have any letters, and that it's unusual, and similar short
things about the books and signatures and things. But what I mentioned
I've read and the posts in this topic explain why those things aren't
unusual. Maybe I should read that Diana Price book, is it worth
reading?

(I'm not imaginary!)

[Melanie Sands]

On 18 Jan., 12:44, Christian Johansen <cjohan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Soren Lorenson is, in "Charlie and Lola"
> > Lola's imaginary friend.
>
> > So, "Christian Johansen", whose imaginary friend are you?
>
> > So I'm guesing you're not new, you're old - an old former
> > HLASian posting here to perk things up a bit.
>
>     I asked a question about the authorship question and now I've
> become the authorship question! This place makes my head spin. You
> really think I'm an imposter? I wonder what it was about my post that
> made you suspicious. Was it the semicolon thing? Nevermind the
> semicolon thing!

Oh, she said with a tired, wheezy gasp, wheezy due to her regular
bronchitis
she gets every winter, oh oh oh she continued, we the veterans of
this
newsgroup, for veteran she now is, having started to post here eleven
years
ago, we have seen so many "newbies" who were old bees, just using a
different
name. As, she said without a trace of guilt, as did I, posting as Sir
Lancelot
Roundtable, after having been chased away by two little bitches
snapping at
my heels, and how those little bitches were soooooo nice to me when
they thought
I was a guy. She breaks off here, and titters nastily.

Well, the semi colon or the complete colon, what does it matter?

>
>     I found HLAS a couple of months ago. I've been reading it some but
> I haven't posted. If I perked things up, that's great! I was just
> hoping to learn a bit more about the evidence of WS' illiteracy and
> education. And hey I learned some things about letters!

There is no evidence of Shakespeare's illiteracy.

Oh sorry, yes, they found a vandalization behind the toilet in the
Stratford school building saying:

"Ay wontid to lern sumfink ere butt dey didn't lette me in cos my
pa didnt not go to cherch last sunnedee, signed Willie Shagsphr".

>     I don't know, I've read what's said in what I mentioned, and I
> guess I was hoping to hear someone who doubts the authorship expand a
> bit on the idea.

If they expand any more, they'll explode.

> From anti-stratford sources I mostly just read that
> we don't have any letters, and that it's unusual,

Now ask yourself, is it really truly unsuual?

>and similar short
> things about the books and signatures and things. But what I mentioned
> I've read and the posts in this topic explain why those things aren't
> unusual. Maybe I should read that Diana Price book, is it worth
> reading?

Oh go wash your mouth out with soap.

Well, maybe it's a good laugh, who knows. I try not to read crap, as a
rule.

>
>     (I'm not imaginary!)

Whatever you say, Soren Lorenson!
(I think only adults like "Charlie and Lola", actually.)

Melanie

[Peter Groves]

If you were marooned on a desert island with no other way of
distracting yourself from your impending slow death by starvation,
then yes.

Peter G.

[Paul Crowley]

On 18/01/2012 12:51, Melanie Sands wrote:

> Oh sorry, yes, they found a vandalization behind the toilet in the
> Stratford school building saying:
>
> "Ay wontid to lern sumfink ere butt dey didn't lette me in cos my
> pa didnt not go to cherch last sunnedee, signed Willie Shagsphr".

Definitely a forgery. It's far beyond the
capability of the Stratman -- at any time.


Paul.

[Melanie Sands]

Which is why Willie dictated all his plays.

Melanie

[ignoto]

On 18/01/12 10:44 PM, Christian Johansen wrote:
>> Soren Lorenson is, in "Charlie and Lola"
>
>> Lola's imaginary friend.
>>
>> So, "Christian Johansen", whose imaginary friend are you?
>>
>> So I'm guesing you're not new, you're old - an old former
>> HLASian posting here to perk things up a bit.
>
> I asked a question about the authorship question and now I've
> become the authorship question! This place makes my head spin. You
> really think I'm an imposter? I wonder what it was about my post that
> made you suspicious. Was it the semicolon thing? Nevermind the
> semicolon thing!
>
> I found HLAS a couple of months ago. I've been reading it some but
> I haven't posted. If I perked things up, that's great! I was just
> hoping to learn a bit more about the evidence of WS' illiteracy and
> education. And hey I learned some things about letters!
>
> I don't know, I've read what's said in what I mentioned, and I
> guess I was hoping to hear someone who doubts the authorship expand a
> bit on the idea.

Here are some 'expanded' anti-stratfordian arguments:

Shakespeare knew how to sign and spell his own name.
Only illiterates can't read or write.
Therefore Shakespeare was illiterate.

There was a free grammar school in Stratford Upon Avon.
There are no attendance records from Shakespeare's time.
Therefore Shakespeare didn't attend it.

Names on title pages are evidence of authorship.
Shakespeare's name appears on title pages.
Therefore Shakespeare was a front for someone (probably a wolfish earl).

Lard Oxfraud traveled in Italy.
The plays of Shakespeare mention Italy.
Therefore Lard Oxfraud probably wrote the plays.

and so on.

Ign.

[neufer]

ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote:
>
> Shakespeare knew how to sign and spell his own name.

http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/signatures.jpg

ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote:
>
> There was a free grammar school in Stratford Upon Avon.

> Therefore Shakespeare didn't attend it.

http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/signatures.jpg

ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote:
>
> Names on title pages are evidence of authorship.
> Shakespeare's name appears on title pages.
> Therefore Shakespeare was a front for someone
> (probably a wolfish earl).

-------------------------------------------------------------
<<only one of the "WOLFISH earls" so plenteous in the plays
themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to
be the TRUE author of those amazing works >> --WALT WHITMAN
--------------------------------------------------------------

ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote:
>
> Lard Oxfraud traveled in Italy.
> The plays of Shakespeare mention Italy.
> Therefore Lard Oxfraud probably wrote the plays.

http://tinyurl.com/799sraq

Art Neuendorffer

[Bob Grumman]

No. Unless, like me, you are a student of propaganda techniques.

>     (I'm not imaginary!)

When I saw your name I immediately thought of Christine Jorgenson,
famous fifty or sixty years ago in America for having a sex-change
operation.

--Bob

[Melanie Sands]

> --Bob-

Thanks for the only laugh I had this morning after my doctor told me
that in spite of my blood-pressure tablets my BP is still too high.
And me on a low-carb diet since the end of December, too!

Melanie

[Melanie Sands]

On 17 Jan., 11:48, Christian Johansen <cjohan...@gmail.com> wrote:

What guy on YouTube?

Yes, the semicolons look weird to me, but what do I know.

No, we are not all academics here. At least I'm not.

Have we scared you away?

Come back, come back, be you flesh or spirit!

We need new posters, and I don't mean those we pin with tacks to the
wall.

Melanie

[laraine]

On Jan 18, 3:30 pm, ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote:
>
> There was a free grammar school in Stratford Upon Avon.
> There are no attendance records from Shakespeare's time.
> Therefore Shakespeare didn't attend it.
>

Are you sure the Stratford grammar school was free?
The Canterbury school (Marlowe's) was not -- Marlowe
got a scholarship to it, anyway.

C.

[John W Kennedy]

"Free", in this case, actually means "with fees, but also with
automatic scholarships for all students who need it". That was how it
was in Stratford-on-Avon, and it was the norm for the great wave of
[Latin] Grammar Schools that spread throughout England at that time. We
don't have student records for King Edward's School back them, so we
don't know whether Shakespeare got a scholarship or not.

[ignoto]

Yes, it was a free school, aimed at the 'lowest common denominator'
(don't have time to check, but IIRC, this is all in Baldwin's Small
Latin and Less Greek, here: http://durer.press.illinois.edu/baldwin/)

Ign.

> C.
>

[Christian Johansen]

On Jan 18, 4:30 pm, ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote:

> Here are some 'expanded' anti-stratfordian arguments:
>
> Shakespeare knew how to sign and spell his own name.
> Only illiterates can't read or write.
> Therefore Shakespeare was illiterate.
>
> There was a free grammar school in Stratford Upon Avon.
> There are no attendance records from Shakespeare's time.
> Therefore Shakespeare didn't attend it.
>
> Names on title pages are evidence of authorship.
> Shakespeare's name appears on title pages.
> Therefore Shakespeare was a front for someone (probably a wolfish earl).
>
> Lard Oxfraud traveled in Italy.
> The plays of Shakespeare mention Italy.
> Therefore Lard Oxfraud probably wrote the plays.

Well that's just it. I've only read what I've read, and it seems
like there's nothing to it. But I hear it on the radio, see it in
newspapers and on TV, it's everywhere that Shakespeare is. Even here.
Very intelligent people would have seemingly sworn by it, that
Shakspeare didn't write the works. But I see nothing to it. It's clear
as day to me, after reading what I've read, that the guy from
Stratford did. Freud is a much greater thinker than me. What did he
see that I don't?

Wherever I see the anti-stratford argument, it comes in bullet-
point form. It's a list of too-short arguments, drowned in rhetoric.
I'll dive into the rhetoric, and surface with a sentence:

"Never having been at sea, how did he gain the knowledge the plays
reveal of navigation?"

But it's a question; I'm looking for answers! Show me the
knowledge he shows of navigation! (When I look into the case against
Shakespeare's authorship I find mostly rhetorical questions. I was
looking at 'Contested Will' today and noticed a quote from Diana
Price, who I remembered from this topic. It was another rhetorical
question, which ticked me off a little:

"what is all that culture and erudition doing in the plays ...
primarily for the general public over at the Globe?"

Hey now, back up. I'm the general public.

I'm not university educated; I'm not even grammar-school
educated (judging by my semicolons). And I'm pretty freakin' far from
noble. Yet I read Shakepeare; I go to see a bunch of his plays, just
like the general god damned public, every year at the Stratford
Festival here in Canada. I see them, I get them, and I love them. So
yeah, to answer yer question, Diana, all that culture and erudition,
Diana, it's there for me. A commoner.)

I thought there might be something behind the rhetorical
questions, the marketing. Thought I might find it here.

On Jan 19, 7:50 am, Melanie Sands <Melanie_Sa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> What guy on YouTube?

This guy here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyVjR9FNo9w

He's a flurry of rhetorical questions.

> Yes, the semicolons look weird to me, but what do I know.

That's exactly what I wanted to know! Not the rules, but whether
they worked. And they didn't.

> Have we scared you away?

Intimidated, I think, overawed by personalty, maybe, but not
scared away just yet.

> Come back, come back, be you flesh or spirit!

I hope I'm a little of both!

[Tom Reedy]

Welcome back, Richard.

TR

[Bob Grumman]

> TR- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

No way this is John's idiot cousin.

--Bob

[hj]

On Jan 20, 7:29 am, Christian Johansen <cjohan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>      Well that's just it. I've only read what I've read, and it seems
> like there's nothing to it. But I hear it on the radio, see it in
> newspapers and on TV, it's everywhere that Shakespeare is. Even here.
> Very intelligent people would have seemingly sworn by it, that
> Shakspeare didn't write the works. But I see nothing to it. It's clear
> as day to me, after reading what I've read, that the guy from
> Stratford did. Freud is a much greater thinker than me. What did he
> see that I don't?

==> Freud might have been a "much greater thinker" but he was more a
great propagandist for a theory lacking empirical evidence. IMHO he
was treated much too charitably in "Contested Will." I don't know if
this is because Shapiro actually believes in psychoanalysis or because
Freud has a whole industry of followers Shapiro didn't want to piss
off too much.

Shapiro's argument that Freud switched to Oxford because of the dates
Hamlet was written and Will Shakespeare's father died seems pretty
strong.

For a contrary look at Freud & paychoanalysis by someone who isn't
afraid to debate important psychoanalysts in public, see Frederick
Crews' "The Memory Wars."

hj

[Melanie Sands]

> --Bob- Zitierten Text ausblenden -
>
> - Zitierten Text anzeigen -

Nice to see I've planted the seed of distrust and
paranoia of pseudonymia (?!! wot wot? inventing
words again, Melanie?!) in all of your minds.

I'm getting good at HLAS games.

Poor Christian Jorgensen, sorry, Johansen. He must be good and
sick of us by now.

Oh, BTW completely OT, I was watching "DESPERATE SCOUSEWIVES"
on Brit TV for 5 minutes, and there were two blonde girls
with litres of fake tan and blackened eyebrows and kilos
of makeup, and they were talking very fast and strangely
and I was convinced they were Swedish...and I showed it to
my husband and he was convinced they were Swedish too,
or some other kind of Scandinavian...

and yet they were speaking ENGLISH from LIVERPOOL!!!

Land of the Beatles!

Living proof the goths/vikings invaded Britain and are alive and
well and living up north of the UK.

Hmm - the vikings were from Norway... oh well, wha'evuh.

Another brilliantly intellectual post from:

Melanie

[Christian Johansen]

On Jan 21, 10:56 am, Melanie Sands <Melanie_Sa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Nice to see I've planted the seed of distrust and
> paranoia of pseudonymia (?!! wot wot? inventing
> words again, Melanie?!) in all of your minds.

I think those seeds are yew trees now. They were likely there
long before I came along. I think this may be fertile soil.

> Poor Christian Jorgensen, sorry, Johansen. He must be good and
> sick of us by now.

Poor me? .......

On Jan 20, 7:47 am, Tom Reedy <tom.re...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Welcome back, Richard.

On Jan 20, 9:39 am, Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> No way this is John's idiot cousin.

Poor Richard!

(Hmmm... Somewhere in there I'm being called an idiot too, maybe.)