A Simple Question No Oxfordian Will Answer
Bob Grumman
wouldn't be answered. So far they have not though four or five Oxfordians have
give reason for not answering them. They reduce to the following: "Which would
you rather have for Oxford, record of books or a statement by Aubrey that Oxford
wrote plays published under another's name?" Here's an improvement, "Which would
you rather have for Oxford, all the evidence you currently have that he was an
author, or a statement by Aubrey that he wrote plays published under another's
name?" Or Oxford's name on the title-page of ONE published copy of HAMLET. As
a Gulielmus-Affirmer, I would sincerely much rather that Oxfordians had what
they do have than the anecdotal evidence of Aubrey.
My obvious intention was to show the triviality even to Oxfordians if they were
honest to themselves of Pricean Authorship Evidence, which includes possession
of books but excludes title-page attributions, and scorns anecdaotal evidence
(unless it can be distorted to mean the opposite of what it says).
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> The other day I asked some questions at the Shakespeare Fellowship I knew
> wouldn't be answered.
You might have a better chance if you
expressed yourself with some clarity.
Of course, there's no chance of that when
your 'ideas' are so hopelessly confused.
Your questions are absurdly hypothetical,
and far-fetched. They're like those 5-year-
old kids ask: "Which would win in a fight:
a tiger or a shark?"
How do you begin to answer?
And -- in your case -- why should you
bother?
Paul.
Bob Grumman
Seems pretty easy to me, Paul. I'd pick either the tiger or the shark. Or I
would not answer, saying that I had no answer.
My question was easier. But too much for any Oxfordian.
--Bob G.
LynnE
Not so, not so, Grumble Bunny. You asked: "At the baseball game, would you
rather have a hot dog or an icecream cone?"
I would rather have both.
MousE
>
> --Bob G.
>
Bob Grumman
That bothered Fellowshippers, so here, to the best of my cut&pasting ability,
are their alleged answers:
We know how important as evidence of authorship books are for Diana Price, and
how unimportant anecdotal evidence provided by the likes of an Aubrey. But what
if we had no evidence whatever that Oxford ever had possession of a book,
but--making up for that--we had a passage in Aubrey that stated "The Great Lord
Chamberlain Oxford oft got so drunk that he wrote plaies for the public stage
that were later published under anothers name--and nothing in Aubrey about
Shakespeare of Stratford. My question for Oxfordians: which would you prefer:
things as they now are or things as they would be if the what-if were true?
I'm asking, of course, if direct anecdotal evidence of authorship is preferable
to the circumstantial evidence of authorship that possession of books is for
Price. To say yes is to indicate how silly Price's hierarchy of authorship
evidence is. So what Oxfordian will?
--Bob G.
"ANSWER" 1:
But Bob, as far as I can see, Aubrey likely said nothing about WS of Stratford
writing plays. This is what Terry said:
The remark about Shakespeare does NOT mean that if anybody asked Shakespeare to
write he begged off claiming that was in pain, but that if he was invited to
participate in debauchery would turn the offer down, writing that he was in
pain. The punctuation after "writ" is a colon or semicolon; colons were often
(and semicolons sometimes) used to introduce a direct or indirect quotation, and
that is what we see here: "he was in pain" is an indirect quotation of the
excuse that Shakespeare would write if he were invited to a debauch -- that he
would avoid such occasions and send his excuses makes him all the more
admirable, according to William Beeston.
If Aubrey said about Oxford what he said about WS, it wouldn't get us anywhere.
At best it's ambiguous.
Whatever Aubrey said wouldn't be proof of anything, as it was second hand. If
there was much first hand anecdotal evidence about either Oxford or Shakespeare,
it would be helpful, but possession of books is important too. You've invented a
totally arbitrary test and we're supposed to prioritize.
LYNNE K.
(Note: Aubrey, of course, more than once stated that Shakespeare was a
playwright and actor and poet.)
"ANSWER" 2:
You neglected to order-of-magnitude that, Bob. Maybe you wouldn't mind dropping
in a decimal point for quantification to make a response possible. There's a
good chap.
WILLEDEVER
(Note: this is a comic reference to my use of "order of magnitude" in another
post. Will then said only scientists can use that term.)
"ANSWER" 3:
Aubrey is not an option because his work has been shown to be not reliable. It
would be like comparing an article in the Guardian against one in the National
Enquirer.
Yes, the notion that Oxfordians would take gossip over hard evidence if the
gossip were somehow favorable to Oxford's case could only be *proved* by
producing such evidence, which doesn't exist. So one can speculate to one's
heart's content about what Oxfordians would do if confronted with non-existent
gossip, just as one can speculate--if one has time--about anything, no matter
how far out it is.
Meanwhile what Oxfordians would "rather have" is hard evidence, not gossip. As
Trevor-Roper said, get the "evidence," since "all the arguments from probability
point to Oxford." And he didn't have the opportunity to read Price's work.
FESTE
"ANSWER" 4:
Me: This is not an old question. It's new and it absolutely pulverizes Price's
program.
Response: Your question cannot do that, Bob.
Me: I'm asking you to decide which you'd rather have for Oxford: books, or
Aubrey.
Response: No such choice exists.
Me: You evade the question because you know the obvious answer is Aubrey.
Response: There's nothing to evade, Bob. The 'choice' doesn't exist. Oxford
owned, read, dedicated books. Aubrey's anecdote about him, many years after the
fact, is well, questionable. Ditto Aubrey's anecdotes about everybody after the
fact.
Me: Which means that in spite of Price's careful work, everyone knows that an
explicit indication fifty years after the event that Oxford wrote Hamlet would
be a hundred times more valuable than evidence that Oxford was in possession of
books.
Response: Explicit would be great. Nothing in Aubrey is 'explicit.'
Me: It'd change me from a 99.9% Shakespeare-Affirmer to a 67%
Shakespeare-Affirmer.
Response: Cannot relate to this statement, but whatever works for you.
Me: Other questions strike me that you'll evade.
Response: This is a hostile, and unfounded statement.
Me: Which would you rather have: Oxford's name on one title-page of Hamlet or
all the Pricean evidence you now have for him (records of formal education,
books, prefaces to and from, etc.?
Response: Again, Oxford's name on a title page doesn't exist, and will never
exist, unless you consider William Shake-speare to be a pen-name (we do around
here), and that it is his pen-name. Therefore Oxford's 'name' is on many title
pages.
Me: Or which between one mention in an elegy seven years after he died that he
wrote Hamlet and all the Pricean evidence you now have for him? Or a mention as
author of Hamlet by Meres versus what Pricean evidence you have for him.
Response: Evidence for Oxford's authorship doesn't depend on Price.
Me: Any of the non-Pricean evidence would make a 67% Oxfordian out of me.
Response: Again, whatever pleases you.
Me: Feel free to ask me similar questions about Shakespeare.
Response: Your questions to us don't inspire me to ask you similar questions.
Me: I'll answer them. For instance, would I give up the title-page evidence for
books? Ha. For record of formal education and books? Small chance. In fact, I'd
not give it up for anything on Price's list except manuscript evidence.
Response: It's abundantly clear to me that you will not give anything up, Bob.
However, there is no record of books or formal education in WS of Stratford's
records. You are setting up a straw man here. You know it, and so does everyone
reading this.
KC LIGON
"ANSWER" 5:
Me: Questions like these cut to core common sense, which refutes the importance
Price attaches to her filter.
Response:
Questions like these cut to core desperation. You can spin "which would you
rather have" fantasies from here to the Isle of Man, Bob, but you'll still never
hide the fact that you are evading the core point of Price's work, which has
been brought up for your response many times on this and other threads, to whit:
categorize it how you will, why is there this undeniable numerical disparity
between the abundant contemporary literary paper trails
left by the full pantheon of Elizabethan/Jacobean writers and that left by WS of
Stratford? You have never addressed this question in a meaningful way. Price's
work is having a significant impact on Shakespeare studies, Bob. You don't have
to like that fact, but you might at least address it. Just what is it that all
the peer-review endorsements of Price's methodology have missed that the great
Bob Grumman alone has perceived?
Instead you harass us with stuff like the above, setting yourself up in advance
to reject all answers that do not conform to your pretzeled and bizarre
construction. This is getting tedious. You create the impression that you are
not capable of carrying on a meaningful conversation.
FESTE
"ANSWER" 6:
A Question about the Real World for Bob
Bob--
Your preposterous "whatiffin" has been answered with erudite clarity by a number
of respondents. Here's a question for you: you've been given free reign on these
boards to write as you please and have received many responses worthy of how you
have chosen to use your freedom. What is your opinion of the complete ban on
authorship discussion on forums such as Hardy Cook's Shaksper listserve? Do you
defend this reign of censorship or condemn it?
ROGER STRITMATTER
"ANSWER" 7:
Which is better by your lights, a Big Lie or a lot of little ones. It is simply
not true that your Pavlovian questions have not been answered. Keep on with your
denials and the good Doctor will come out of his grave and make an etching of
you with two left (or was it right?) arms. I did not answer the first Aubrey
question because I had promised myself not to get drawn in to your absurd full
card monte. Aubrey is not an option because his work has been shown to be not
reliable. It would be like comparing an article in the
Guardian against one in the National Enquirer. You are in danger of being
identified with the company you keep. If you really think that 1) you will
(using this insolvent approach) change any minds on the Site; or 2) corrupt
anyone else who is listening in; or 3)advance the cause of serious Elizabethan
scholarship, get some help. Sorry, Joe
JOE ELDREDGE
"ANSWER" 8:
(That Bob Grumman posted my question on HLAS and said no Oxfordian at the
Fellowship had answered it) should make it abundantly clear to all observers
that Mr. Grumman's mode of "debate" is biased to the point of being inherently
dishonest. He is having a discussion in a kind of vacuum confessional booth, in
which he is both supplicant and priest. Go and sin no more, Bob. Or at least go
sin some place else. This is not a conversation.
Before you go, you might at least have the intellectual guts to post on HLAS the
actual responses given to your bogus challenge. You seem like an nice enough
sort of fellow. "Are you honest? Are you fair?" (Hamlet)
FESTE (another gutsy user of a pseudonym)
"ANSWER" 9 (posted after my post to HLAS):
I would go with Oxford-style books over Aubrey style anecdote any day of the
week. Especially since shaksper/shakespeare situation is not parallel to the
oxford/shakespeare. Obviously.
--------------------
MARK ALEXANDER
MY RESPONSE:
I'm not sure I understand you, Mark. You seem to me to be evading my question.
Let me put it to you this way: which would you rather have, (a) the evidence you
now have that Oxford had possession of books, or (b) an Aubrey anecdote that
stated Oxford had written plays published under another man's name? Answer (a)
or (b).
Second question: which would you rather have, (a) the evidence you now have that
Oxford had possession of books, or (b) his name on the title-page of a single
published copy from his lifetime of Hamlet? Answer (a) or (b). Can't do it, can
you.
Back to ME: I should have asked the two questions above to begin with--as
multiple choice questions. Only two answers for either are possible, (a) or
(b). To say one can't answer is a response, not an answer. Perhaps, it's an
appropriate response. I'm convinced, though, that such an answer merely
demonstrates that Oxfordians, deep down, would much rather have real evidence
for their man that Pricean evidence.
--Bob G.
LynnE
I knew that, Bob. I thought you were referring to the "in pain" remark which
we had been discussing earlier.
This was my second response:
I've read the stuff in Brief lives, and I would say that if the account had
been comtemporaneous it would carry more weight. I have answered your
question, Bob, and I'll answer it again. It is not the books or the
anecdotes, but a combination of both, together with other factors, which
would sway me one way or the other. It is not an either or situation.
If Aubrey were contemporaneous, and he had said that about EO, and there
were also books, and some kind of literary paper trail, I would be happy to
accept what he said.
If Aubrey were contemporaneous, and he had said something similar about WS,
and there were also books, and some kind of literary paper trail, I would be
happy to accept what he said.
What you're asking is very black and white. There is no answer to it.
Lynne
www.shakespearefellowship.org
P.S. Anyone who would like to see the whole thread should go to the public
boards on the SF Forum. Click on Authorship debate and then on "A What-If
Question No Oxfordian Will Dare Answer." Please feel free to jump into the
debate.
Bob Grumman
>
>Not so, not so, Grumble Bunny. You asked: "At the baseball game, would you
>rather have a hot dog or an icecream cone?"
>
>I would rather have both.
>MousE
Weird, LynnE, you've made me instantly ravenously hungry for a hot dog. But
your answer is specious. The given is that you have to choose. True, I didn't
state that, nor put my questions in the (a) or (b) form, as I should have.
Also, my question should not depend on mood or stomach state, etc. However,
I'll take your implied answer that you'd as soon have Aubrey's testimony for
Oxford as evidence of books in Oxford's life.
Actually, I should have asked: "If you had a choice between any form of Pricean
evidence you believe you have for Oxford as a writer and his name on the
title-page of a single copy of HAMLET published during his lifetime, would you
(a) consider it better to have the title-page evidence than the other evidence
or (b) consider it not better to have the title-page evidence than the other
evidence.
Now a challenge for you: find a similar choice between kinds of authorship
evidence for Shakespeare for me to make. I'll bet you can't come up with one
that I can't answer without hesitation.
--Bob G.
LynnE
> >> My question was easier. But too much for any Oxfordian.
> >
> >Not so, not so, Grumble Bunny. You asked: "At the baseball game, would
you
> >rather have a hot dog or an icecream cone?"
> >
> >I would rather have both.
> >MousE
>
> Weird, LynnE, you've made me instantly ravenously hungry for a hot dog.
Me too. With sour kraut.
But
> your answer is specious. The given is that you have to choose.
It may be your given, Grumble, but it isn't mine. I've had to make several
choices in my life, but in this case I don't have to.
>True, I didn't
> state that, nor put my questions in the (a) or (b) form, as I should have.
> Also, my question should not depend on mood or stomach state, etc.
However,
> I'll take your implied answer that you'd as soon have Aubrey's testimony
for
> Oxford as evidence of books in Oxford's life.
That isn't my answer. Now you're posing the questions AND answering them?
Perhaps, like our friend Terry, you also perform with a dancing bear.
>
> Actually, I should have asked: "If you had a choice between any form of
Pricean
> evidence you believe you have for Oxford as a writer and his name on the
> title-page of a single copy of HAMLET published during his lifetime, would
you
> (a) consider it better to have the title-page evidence than the other
evidence
> or (b) consider it not better to have the title-page evidence than the
other
> evidence.
>
> Now a challenge for you: find a similar choice between kinds of authorship
> evidence for Shakespeare for me to make. I'll bet you can't come up with
one
> that I can't answer without hesitation.
Bob, with the best will in the world, you can't answer any question without
hesitation.
Love,
The Mouse xxx
>
> --Bob G.
>
Tom Reedy
news:0UXJc.43311$RD4.2...@news20.bellglobal.com...
I thought you said you had a simple question.
> >
> >
> > I'm asking, of course, if direct anecdotal evidence of authorship is
> preferable
> > to the circumstantial evidence of authorship that possession of books is
> for
> > Price. To say yes is to indicate how silly Price's hierarchy of
authorship
> > evidence is. So what Oxfordian will?
What you're really asking is would you rather use fairy dust or a magic
potion.
If there were as much first hand evidence for Oxford as there is about
Shakespeare, we might have a dilimma. fortunately, all the first-hand
evidence is in Shakespeare's column. In order to manufacture evidence for
Oxford, someone has to invent a bogus "writer filter" the way Price did.
> > it would be helpful, but possession of books is important too. You've
> invented a
> > totally arbitrary test and we're supposed to prioritize.
Right. Bob's so-called "test" is about as valid as Price's bogus categories.
> >
> > LYNNE K.
> >
> > (Note: Aubrey, of course, more than once stated that Shakespeare was a
> > playwright and actor and poet.)
>
> I knew that, Bob. I thought you were referring to the "in pain" remark
which
> we had been discussing earlier.
>
> This was my second response:
>
> I've read the stuff in Brief lives, and I would say that if the account
had
> been comtemporaneous it would carry more weight. I have answered your
> question, Bob, and I'll answer it again. It is not the books or the
> anecdotes, but a combination of both, together with other factors, which
> would sway me one way or the other. It is not an either or situation.
So in other words, if there were any evidence that William Shakespeare owned
books, you would accept him as the True Holy and Most High Author?
>
> If Aubrey were contemporaneous, and he had said that about EO, and there
> were also books, and some kind of literary paper trail, I would be happy
to
> accept what he said.
You'd be happy to get any evidence at all for Oxford as the author of the
Shakespeare canon, since there is none whatsoever.
>
> If Aubrey were contemporaneous, and he had said something similar about
WS,
> and there were also books, and some kind of literary paper trail, I would
be
> happy to accept what he said.
>
> What you're asking is very black and white. There is no answer to it.
>
> Lynne
> www.shakespearefellowship.org
>
Now here comes the toothpaste ad.
> P.S. Anyone who would like to see the whole thread should go to the public
> boards on the SF Forum. Click on Authorship debate and then on "A What-If
> Question No Oxfordian Will Dare Answer." Please feel free to jump into the
> debate.
Cleans better! Tastes fresher!
TR
>
>
>
>
Bob Grumman
>What you're really asking is would you rather use fairy dust or a magic
>potion.
Not really. I'm asking whether an Oxfordian would prefer evidence of possession
of books to direct anecdotal evidence in support of Oxford. Are hypothetical
questions illegal or something? This one, unhypotheticalized, would be: what's
better authorship evidence: an alleged writer's owning books or the years-later
testimony of someone who didn't know him that he wrote books.
--Bob G.
Terry Ross
[snip]
>
> I'm asking, of course, if direct anecdotal evidence of authorship is
> preferable to the circumstantial evidence of authorship that possession
> of books is for Price. To say yes is to indicate how silly Price's
> hierarchy of authorship evidence is. So what Oxfordian will?
Bob, you still don't understand Price's filter. According to the
mechanism she designed, the existence of a document that by her filter's
standards provides evidence of possession of a book is IN AND OF ITSELF
proof that a person was a professional writer. Price does not have a
"hierarchy of authorship evidence." Her filter has nothing to tell us
about the authorship of any particular work. It is designed solely to
distinguish professional writers from everybody else. Anybody who gets at
least one check mark on her table is thereby proven to have been a
professional writer. Nothing that her filter rejects is allowed to have
any bearing whatsoever on whether a person should be considered a
professional writer. To call her project "silly" is an unrewarding
observation if you do know understand in what ways it is "silly."
You should also attend to the differences between "evidence" and "what
Price's filter allows." One of the many, many, many failings of her
project is that it pretends to allow only a document that all by itself
"proves" (by her filter's bizarre standards) that a person was a
professional writer. Of course she cheats in this area as in every other
one -- for instance, Henslowe's reference to "maxton" counts all by itself
as proof that John Marston was a professional writer, even though there is
no first name for "maxton" and no play is named. A genuine literary
historian might well conclude that "maxton" may well be Marston, but the
conclusion will require inferences based on not merely one document taken
in isolation but on a survey of the wider historical record. Price's
filter is designed to ignore most of the historical record (indeed, it
seemed to have been deliberately designed to exclude every kind of
document that she remembered existed for Shakespeare), but as silly as it
is, if she applied her technique fairly and honestly, it would declare
that Shakespeare was a professional writer, or it would reject as
"turtles" such writers as Marlowe and Kyd.
On another forum you have mentioned the "death notice" of Spenser. The
reason this counts is that John Chamberlain heard that a particular person
named Spenser had died identified him with the poet Spenser. Similarly,
John Davies identifies William Shakespeare the great English writer of
comedies, a veritable "English Terence," with William Shakespeare an actor
for the King's men. For Davies, the man he called "Good Will" was one and
the same, just as for Chamberlain, the poet Spenser and the man Spenser
who had just died were the same person.
Any person who is interested in the overwhelming evidence that Shakespeare
was indeed the author of the works that are generally attributed to him
should peruse Tom Reedy and Dave Kathman's essay, "How We Know That
Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts" at
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com/howdowe.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross Visit the SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP home page
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
LynnE
"Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.60.0407170952240.13206@mail...
And then read Stritmatter and Kositsky's critique of it on the Fellowship
public boards.
:)Lynne
www.shakespearefellowship.org
Bob Grumman
that books are valid evidence that SOMEONE ALLEGED TO BE A WRITER is indeed a
writer. She is not saying that books make a person a writer but that books plus
allegation of authorship do. Or so it seems to me. Of course, her book bin is
as hokey as can be. I am sure that if we got firmer evidence that the law book
with a signature on it that may be Shakespeare's belonged to him, Price would
suddenly revamp her mechanism as a nine-bin filter.
--Bob G.
biancas842001
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>
>> I'm asking, of course, if direct anecdotal evidence of authorship
is
>> preferable to the circumstantial evidence of authorship that
possession
>> of books is for Price. To say yes is to indicate how silly Price's
>> hierarchy of authorship evidence is. So what Oxfordian will?
>
> Bob, you still don't understand Price's filter. According to the
> mechanism she designed, the existence of a document that by her filter's
> standards provides evidence of possession of a book is IN AND OF ITSELF
> proof that a person was a professional writer. Price does not have a
> "hierarchy of authorship evidence." Her filter has nothing to tell us
> about the authorship of any particular work. It is designed solely to
> distinguish professional writers from everybody else. Anybody who gets at
> least one check mark on her table is thereby proven to have been a
> professional writer. Nothing that her filter rejects is allowed to have
> any bearing whatsoever on whether a person should be considered a
> professional writer. To call her project "silly" is an unrewarding
> observation if you do know understand in what ways it is "silly."
So, you are saying, that Diana Price's method is a method only. She
does not have a theory. Her "filter," as you call it, is a method for
distinguishing one group of persons from another group of persons.
She does not go on to imply anything in particular about either group
of persons, except that she labels one group "professional writers,"
and the other group "not professional writers." And she declines to
admit any evidence that cannot be analyzed using her own method.
>
> You should also attend to the differences between "evidence" and "what
> Price's filter allows." One of the many, many, many failings of her
> project is that it pretends to allow only a document that all by itself
> "proves" (by her filter's bizarre standards) that a person was a
> professional writer. Of course she cheats in this area as in every other
> one -- for instance, Henslowe's reference to "maxton" counts all by itself
> as proof that John Marston was a professional writer, even though there is
> no first name for "maxton" and no play is named. A genuine literary
> historian might well conclude that "maxton" may well be Marston, but the
> conclusion will require inferences based on not merely one document taken
> in isolation but on a survey of the wider historical record. Price's
> filter is designed to ignore most of the historical record (indeed, it
> seemed to have been deliberately designed to exclude every kind of
> document that she remembered existed for Shakespeare), but as silly as it
> is, if she applied her technique fairly and honestly, it would declare
> that Shakespeare was a professional writer, or it would reject as
> "turtles" such writers as Marlowe and Kyd.
You seem to be impugning both the details of the method and the
honesty with which Diana Price employs it, as well as the very idea of
employing a method at all.
>
> On another forum you have mentioned the "death notice" of Spenser. The
> reason this counts is that John Chamberlain heard that a particular person
> named Spenser had died identified him with the poet Spenser. Similarly,
> John Davies identifies William Shakespeare the great English writer of
> comedies, a veritable "English Terence," with William Shakespeare an actor
> for the King's men. For Davies, the man he called "Good Will" was one and
> the same, just as for Chamberlain, the poet Spenser and the man Spenser
> who had just died were the same person.
You provide, here, what I presume (not having read Diana Price's book)
a good account of why "the 'death notice' of Spenser" counts as
evidence in the method under study. Price treats Davies (it seems)
differently than the way she treats Spenser.
>
> Any person who is interested in the overwhelming evidence that Shakespeare
> was indeed the author of the works that are generally attributed to him
> should peruse Tom Reedy and Dave Kathman's essay, "How We Know That
> Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts" at
> http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com/howdowe.html
Do you refute Diana Price's claims there?
----
Bianca S.
Tom Veal
> "Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
> > Any person who is interested in the overwhelming evidence that Shakespeare
> > was indeed the author of the works that are generally attributed to him
> > should peruse Tom Reedy and Dave Kathman's essay, "How We Know That
> > Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts" at
> > http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com/howdowe.html
>
> Do you refute Diana Price's claims there?
>
At the risk of self-advertisement, you can read what I regard as a
rather thorough debunking at http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm
One point that you may want to notice particularly is that, although
Miss Price asserts that "Shakespere" has no proper literary paper
trail, she explicitly says that he was an author (just not the author
of the works attributed to Shakespeare). That internal contradiction
alone is enough to destroy her whole edifice.
Bob Grumman
>rather thorough debunking at http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm
>
>One point that you may want to notice particularly is that, although
>Miss Price asserts that "Shakespere" has no proper literary paper
>trail, she explicitly says that he was an author (just not the author
>of the works attributed to Shakespeare). That internal contradiction
>alone is enough to destroy her whole edifice.
I followed your work, for a while, Tom. Not sure whether I've read all of it,
but will give it another read sometime. It's brought to my attention every once
in a while at the Fellowship as an example of the work of someone who preceded
me in abjectly failing to damage more than a few "technicalities" of Price's
case. Terry's efforts have also been cited as colossally inept.
I'm afraid I do think both you and Terry are wrong in one way about Price,
though. It's this 'alleged author" thing. She is dealing not with people in
general, but only with "alleged authors." I don't think she's formally defined
this term, but she said in passing once that it would be someone who had had a
formal published biography done of him that stated he was a writer.
She does call Shakespeare an author frequently but she either means
Lord-X-as-Will or "alleged author." Or so I'm fairly certain.
So: your destruction of her case was only 94% effective. Sorry.
--Bob
Terry Ross
> Terry, I agree with all you say except about Price's book bin. She is
> saying that books are valid evidence that SOMEONE ALLEGED TO BE A WRITER
> is indeed a writer.
No she is not. She is saying that those whose profession was
"professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
records left behind." (300)
Note that the FIRST profession she mentions as one whose practitioners can
be distinguished from writers is "doctors." Although she never
constructed a filter for doctors, she does discuss the "types of personal
records left behind" by doctors that would count as "characteristics
peculiar to the species" of doctor:
"The documentary evidence left by a writer is different from that left by
a doctor, for example, because some personal records are peculiar to the
respective professions." (111)
For Price, the records "peculiar to the [medical] profession" include
"payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions, records of
medical training, ... or medical journals or casebooks" (111).
A Pricean medical filter would NOT select the actual doctors from the set
of alleged doctors; it would distinguish doctors from the members of EVERY
OTHER profession. That, at least, is what Price is arguing. Her filter
for professional writers is supposed to work exactly the same way. It
deals only with those kinds of records that are "peculiar to" the species
or profession of writing.
So poorly constructed is her filter for writers that it would declare that
a great many (if not all) of those who satisfied the "doctor" filter were
also writers by profession. ANY "records of medical training" would count
for the writer's "education" category. ANY "medical journals or
casebooks" would count for the writer's "books" category. Price filter is
set up so that it considers ALL educational records and book records
"peculiar to the profession" of writing. If we consider some of the
records accepted in other categories, it becomes clear that (to be
conservative) MOST of her categories are not "peculiar to writers."
Price does NOT say that alleged writers may be distinguished from
non-writers as one would distinguish alleged birds from non-birds. She
believes that her filter's categories -- every one of them -- consist of
the types of records that are peculiar to writers (presumably in the same
sense that feathers are peculiar to birds).
Such terms as "peculiar to the profession" and "peculiar to the species"
are not mine; they are Price's. They are central to her argument, such as
it is.
> She is not saying that books make a person a writer but that books plus
> allegation of authorship do.
You are rewriting her book in order to make it less absurd. It would be
better to deal with what she actually said, not with what a marginally
more reasonable person would have said in some other book that some other
person may some day write.
> Or so it seems to me. Of course, her book bin is as hokey as can be.
> I am sure that if we got firmer evidence that the law book with a
> signature on it that may be Shakespeare's belonged to him, Price would
> suddenly revamp her mechanism as a nine-bin filter.
Revamping the filter is not the solution. One fundamental problem is that
her project is corrupt at its core: her approach is not historical but
polemical. Another basic problem is that she does not understand that
writing was not then a profession as law and medicine were. Whatever
filter she sets up would not be able to identify all and only the
PROFESSIONAL writers. How, for example, would such a filter deal with
someone like King James, who was certainly a published writer, but who was
not a writer BY PROFESSION? The Earl of Oxford was a published poet and
would get a number of check marks in Price's system, but he was not a
PROFESSIONAL writer.
Even among those for whom writing was part of the means to a good living,
we should not expect to find that most of them received enough money
directly from their writing to be comfortable. It is likely that most of
Shakespeare's "professional" money came from his being a sharer, rather
than directly from his writing this play or playing that role. Spenser was
the most famous writer of the time, but he did not make his living being
paid by the line. Writing might help one acquire a job that would allow
one to keep body and soul together and therefore be able to write in one's
off-hours (this is what successful patronage seems to have amounted to in
some cases) -- yet for Price's filter, everybody for whom there is any
record of being in contact with a book (such as John Marston's father) is
thereby declared to have been a professional writer.
Ken Kaplan
You have encapsulated nicely the exasperation and basic response Bob
has gotten from most of us on this, particularly on this nonsensical
question.
>
> Paul.
Ken Kaplan
fatal, literalist oriented flaw in reasoning. Price set up a system
that used accepted criteria by literary biographers to support the
claim, 'He(She) was a writer by profession. Without some form of
*explicit* contemporary testimony that the person was a writer,
ancillary supports such as education are meaningless. Your position
consistently avoids common sense for some bizarre technical argument.
Your equation is:
Writers almost always have association with or own books (sources,
inspiration, you know)
Most literate Elizabethans owned/had association with books
Therefore all literate Elizabethans must be writers.
Ludicrous.
The correct equation is this:
Most literate Elizabethans owned or had association with books.
As a special subgroup of literate Elizabethans, almost all writers
displayed relationship to books, (again, source material, inspiration,
cultural learning, access to literary forms, etc.)
ABSENCE of such evidence of association with books cast doubt in
whatever measure of ratio you wish to ascribe of importance to the
claim, "he(she) was a writer by profession").
I think it is both explicit and implicit in Price's analysis that
without any direct link to an explicit contemporary personal reference
to the career of writing (manuscript, record of payment, letter from a
friend, direct recognition of literary prowess by a patron,
commendatory verse, etc.), other "supporting evidence" is meaningless.
A writer who demonstrates reliance on a huge number of sources, but
leaves virtually no trace *evidentiarily*of how he gained access to
the material gives pause for suspicion. It is one factor. Because
evidence is spotty from the period, it is weighed in with other
factors. A letter like the Harvey-Spenser exchanges would make the
point moot. When nearly all factors show up empty, then it gains in
importance. But it is not the main thing.
This is so abundantly obvious that your red herring, technical to the
nth deggree argument, which always reflects your worst side, is beyond
ridiculous.
I am really ashamed of you for trying to promote this line of
reasoning and have been since you began it. You are better than than
this.
Ken Kaplan
Terry Ross <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.60.0407170952240.13206@mail>...
Ken Kaplan
quantitative analysis, indicating there was more evidence for each
writer than she put down. In section 8, Price cites" Jonson reported
in in Conversations that he had "many quarrels with Marston...wrote
his Poetaster on him the beginning of them were that Marston
represented him in the stage"."
Sounds pretty explicit.
We've already discussed Davies in which Price points out the context
of where Davies placed Shakespeare (to which my knowledge you never
have addressed), and the fact that you ADMITTED with EXAMPLES the fact
that there was currency in the period that demonstrated many people
thought Terence was not the writer of the material under his name. I
find it truly strange you should find evidence SUPPORTING the oposite
opinion while trying to discredit it.
Besides, there were many other middle class or common writers who came
from humble beginnings. Jonson was one. Why would Shakespeare among
them only be singled out as Terence?
Ken Kaplan
Terry Ross <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.60.0407170952240.13206@mail>...
Ken Kaplan
expanded it. Once again you display the famous Statfordian propensity
for technical literalism. ("Technicalus absolutus absurtum- a malady
also affilicting religious fundamentalists). Price's position that
Shaksper was "Batillus" who patched some works together is hardly the
same as evidence he was the writer of the Shakespeare canon.
BUt if that makes him a "writer by profession" in your book, go for
it. I personally think there may be compelling evidence the man could
not write. (See Detobel-the Signatures), along with the scrawls he
wrote. "Never blotted a line"? Why are his signaturs so full of
"blots, smudges- barely legible?
I understand the times Oxfordians have avoided common sense. But
people in glass houses should not throw stones.
Ken Kaplan
Tom...@ix.netcom.com (Tom Veal) wrote in message news:<c87247a2.04071...@posting.google.com>...
Janice B. Miller
> I recently dealt with this on the Fellowship site. You are making a
> fatal, literalist oriented flaw in reasoning. Price set up a system
> that used accepted criteria by literary biographers to support the
> claim, 'He(She) was a writer by profession.
I remember having said this. I now wonder whether I had been wrong.
Reading more biographies since participating in the discussion of Diana
Price's book on hlas, I came to wonder whether "accepted criteria by
literary biographers," in her book, was meant to describe criteria for
choosing evidence to include or to trust. I don't remember that either she
or her husband or Terry had said, in detail, which of these was correct, and
it's also possible they did and I misread or misremembered.
I probably assumed that she was interested in what evidence biographers used
to support an _argument_ that their "candidate" was "Shakespeare." Was she,
instead, interested in principles of inclusion/exclusion for biographies
themselves, whether or not the biographies made explicit arguments?
I still haven't read the book and haven't read enough biographies of
Shakespeare or his contemporaries to make it the next book I read. I also
know my approach is different than that of most here. When I read
Foucault's "The Archaeology of Knowledge," right after having finished my
ALM thesis, I thought it made perfect sense, as the right way to go about
studying the "mentality" of some period in intellectual history (or "chunk
of discourse"). I can't help reading the descriptions of Price's work,
here, as describing what I think are the same methods.)
From that point of view, obviously, however, I find it really difficult to
see the point of most of the criticisms that are being made. I know Terry
and others have said that Price doesn't even follow consistent rules in
objectively applying her method, but that doesn't ever seem to be the
general point they want to make. Terry's big point that the criteria
exclude Shakespeare as if by design is interesting, not damning, if the
method itself is sound.
--
Janice Miller
jbmi...@TheWorld.com
Neil Brennen
"Ken Kaplan" <kenka...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:75f2d918.0407...@posting.google.com...
I personally think there may be compelling evidence the man could
> not write.
"Personally think?" "May?" Hey, that must be real "compelling" evidence if
it causes you to hedge your bets to such a degree.
(See Detobel-the Signatures), along with the scrawls he
> wrote. "Never blotted a line"? Why are his signaturs so full of
> "blots, smudges- barely legible?
Three are from his will, when he was probably in decline. And as a writer
with a sloppy signature (Lynne will show you the volume I signed for her) I
resent your making authorship claims based on such handwriting "analysis".
> I understand the times Oxfordians have avoided common sense.
That would be most of the time.
By me,
Neil Brennen
Neil Brennen
A nonsensical question for a nonsensical subject. "Which imaginary proof of
Oxford's authorship of the Shakespeare canon would you prefer?" I personally
lean slightly towards the Aubrey one, as I think it better suits a claim of
"oral tradition" of a conspiracy. Aren't there such "oral traditions" quoted
in the biography of Shakespeare, such as the deer-poaching episode?
By me,
Neil Brennen
Bob Grumman
>
>> Terry, I agree with all you say except about Price's book bin. She is
>> saying that books are valid evidence that SOMEONE ALLEGED TO BE A WRITER
>> is indeed a writer.
>
>No she is not. She is saying that those whose profession was
>"professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
>professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
>by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
>distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
>records left behind." (300)
>
she does not mean it. But most of what she otherwise says indicates that her
filter is for alleged writers. You've caught her in one of her many instances
of sloppy choice of words, as have we all. But you're mischaracterizing her
over-all method, which is for alleged writers.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
Terry, although he isn't aware of that, either.
--Bob G.
Note: The rest of this is Ken's "defense" of Price.
In article <75f2d918.04071...@posting.google.com>, Ken Kaplan says...
Bob Grumman
>Besides, there were many other middle class or common writers who came
>from humble beginnings. Jonson was one. Why would Shakespeare among
>them only be singled out as Terence?
>
>Ken Kaplan
Because he was Irish? Come on, Ken. Davies thought Terence was a great writer
of elegant comedies, as did many of his time (and ours). Davies admired his
friend Shakespeare's comedies. So he called Shakespeare "our Terence." Why is
that so hard for you to grasp?
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
like asking, "What if someone offered you a choice of trip with all expenses
paid to London or to Tokyo, which would you take? What if someone offered an
Oxfordian a choice of finds (which I've changed to better make my point), notice
at death as a writer, which I don't believe Oxford has and which is important to
Price, or a title-page attribution on a copy of Hamlet published during his
lifetime? What's nonsensical (except that we know no copy of Hamlet will ever
show up with Oxford's name anywhere on it)? It's just a dramatic way of asking,
which is better evidence, notice at death as a writer or title-page attribution?
--Bob G.
Tom Reedy
> I guess I'm out of it, because I can't see why my question is nonsensical.
It's
> like asking, "What if someone offered you a choice of trip with all
expenses
> paid to London or to Tokyo, which would you take?
More like, "What if someone offered you a choice of trip with all expenses
paid to Atlantis or Shagri-La, which would you take?"
What if someone offered an
> Oxfordian a choice of finds (which I've changed to better make my point),
notice
> at death as a writer, which I don't believe Oxford has and which is
important to
> Price, or a title-page attribution on a copy of Hamlet published during
his
> lifetime? What's nonsensical (except that we know no copy of Hamlet will
ever
> show up with Oxford's name anywhere on it)? It's just a dramatic way of
asking,
> which is better evidence, notice at death as a writer or title-page
attribution?
If you can't see why it's a nonsensical question, there's nothing we can
ever say to make you see it.
TR
>
> --Bob G.
>
Tom Reedy
> fatal, literalist oriented flaw in reasoning.
And God knows anti-Startfordians aren't literalist. They can't afford to be.
In this case, the meaningless "other supporting evidence" includes
government records, title pages, testimony of personal friends and other
writers and a close association with the dramatic company that owned the
works in question.
>
> A writer who demonstrates reliance on a huge number of sources, but
> leaves virtually no trace *evidentiarily*of how he gained access to
> the material gives pause for suspicion. It is one factor. Because
> evidence is spotty from the period, it is weighed in with other
> factors. A letter like the Harvey-Spenser exchanges would make the
> point moot. When nearly all factors show up empty, then it gains in
> importance. But it is not the main thing.
>
> This is so abundantly obvious that your red herring, technical to the
> nth deggree argument, which always reflects your worst side, is beyond
> ridiculous.
>
> I am really ashamed of you for trying to promote this line of
> reasoning and have been since you began it. You are better than than
> this.
This is a new one: argument by shaming. Oh well. I guess it's as effective
as all their other arguments.
TR
Bob Grumman
>ever say to make you see it.
>
>TR
Okay, I may see what you mean, except that you're only half right. Yes, maybe
hypothesizing that Oxford's name on the title-page of HAMLET or an anecdote
about him writing plays published under another man's name is Shangra La, but it
is being compared to one thing real, books in his possession, or to something
that certainly could turn up, notice at death as a writer. But, the question is
for people who believe Oxford was Shakespeare, so non-nonsensical from their
point of view, although they contend it is not.
--Bob G.
Terry Ross
>> On Sat, 17 Jul 2004, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>
>>> Terry, I agree with all you say except about Price's book bin. She is
>>> saying that books are valid evidence that SOMEONE ALLEGED TO BE A WRITER
>>> is indeed a writer.
>>
>> No she is not. She is saying that those whose profession was
>> "professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
>> professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
>> by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
>> distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
>> records left behind." (300)
>>
> Right, she does say that and you've caught her in a contradiction.
No, I have correctly described her argument; an argument that you do not
seem to understand. I think some people who reject my description of her
actual argument do so on the grounds that "nobody would say anything so
silly," but I would have thought that you, with your long exposure to a
great variety of antistratfordian sillinesses, would know better.
> I am sure she does not mean it.
Bob, the issue is not what you may be sure of but rather the argument
Price makes in her book.
> But most of what she otherwise says indicates that her filter is for
> alleged writers. You've caught her in one of her many instances of
> sloppy choice of words, as have we all.
You are not paying enough attention to what she says, or to the fair and
accurate quotations I have presented of her own words. It is NOT the case
that she offers two different systems or that I am pouncing on an
inadvertent slip of the pen.
Her general argument -- in fact, the most original part of her book -- is
the argument that professions are characterized by classes of
documentation that are "peculiar" to that profession, that the existence
of any document in such a "peculiar" class is enough to mark a person as
having been a member of that profession, that in the absence of such
documents "peculiar" to a particular profession, nobody should be
considered a member of that profession, even if that person lived hundreds
of years ago, and even if most of the records from that time have
vanished.
Her argument about Shakespeare and other writers is merely a particular
expression of this general argument. Can you not see this? Why,
otherwise, would she bring in comparisons not merely to other professions,
but to the specific types of documents that she claims are "peculiar" to
those professions? (As a side issue, it would be quite easy to imagine
the case of a physician c.1600 whose membership in his profession would be
rejected by Price's hypothetical medical filter, but would be accepted by
a genuine historian. If you cannot imagine the case, I can provide it for
you).
> But you're mischaracterizing her over-all method, which is for alleged
> writers.
You do not appear to have understood her "over-all method" or her
particular application of that method to writers. Since you snipped much
of my discussion of the matter, I will repost it here. If you wish to
advance another interpretation of Price's method, then you should base
that interpretation on what Price actually says.
========================================
> Terry, I agree with all you say except about Price's book bin. She is
> saying that books are valid evidence that SOMEONE ALLEGED TO BE A WRITER
> is indeed a writer.
No she is not. She is saying that those whose profession was
"professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
records left behind." (300)
Note that the FIRST profession she mentions as one whose practitioners can
============================
John W. Kennedy
> Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from
> turtles by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
> distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of
> personal records left behind." (300)
You know, I still find it hilarious that she made such an ill-considered
choice of simile.
--
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
biancas842001
> her project is corrupt at its core: her approach is not historical but
> polemical. Another basic problem is that she does not understand that
> writing was not then a profession as law and medicine were. Whatever
> filter she sets up would not be able to identify all and only the
> PROFESSIONAL writers. How, for example, would such a filter deal with
> someone like King James, who was certainly a published writer, but who was
> not a writer BY PROFESSION? The Earl of Oxford was a published poet and
> would get a number of check marks in Price's system, but he was not a
> PROFESSIONAL writer.
If Diana Price agreed with you, she would likely correct the problems
you note. That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why
your criticisms are correct. Does repeating your same criticisms over
and over solve this problem? You aren't even persuading anyone --
that I can see -- to consider your criticisms to be correct.
>
> Even among those for whom writing was part of the means to a good living,
> we should not expect to find that most of them received enough money
> directly from their writing to be comfortable. It is likely that most of
> Shakespeare's "professional" money came from his being a sharer, rather
> than directly from his writing this play or playing that role. Spenser was
> the most famous writer of the time, but he did not make his living being
> paid by the line. Writing might help one acquire a job that would allow
> one to keep body and soul together and therefore be able to write in one's
> off-hours (this is what successful patronage seems to have amounted to in
> some cases) -- yet for Price's filter, everybody for whom there is any
> record of being in contact with a book (such as John Marston's father) is
> thereby declared to have been a professional writer.
Furthermore, you are yourself missing the biggest difference between
professional writers and professionals of the other sorts you name.
Those sorts of professionals are licensed; writers are not, and
regardless of the relative ease with which writers, of various sorts,
have been able to make their living, now as opposed to in the past,
this has always been the case. There has not ever been any category
of writer, without exception, the professional work of whose field
required any particular professional licensing. The fact that it is
almost always a governmental agency that does the licensing, or that
imposes the statute requiring the licensing, makes licensed
professions an entirely different beast, in terms of evidence. The
comparison falls down, here, and from what you yourself say, the point
ends up going to Diana Price's side, not to yours.
----
Bianca S.
Terry Ross
> Terry Ross wrote:
>> Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles by
>> characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be distinguished
>> from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal records left
>> behind." (300)
>
> You know, I still find it hilarious that she made such an ill-considered
> choice of simile.
The voice of the turtle was not heard in her land.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross Visit the SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP home page
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
John W. Kennedy
> I personally think there may be compelling evidence....
"I cannot say what he says, Oyarsa, in your language."
-- C. S. Lewis, "Out of the Silent Planet"
--
John W. Kennedy
Bob Grumman
>Price makes in her book.
>> But most of what she otherwise says indicates that her filter is for
>> alleged writers. You've caught her in one of her many instances of
>> sloppy choice of words, as have we all.
>
>You are not paying enough attention to what she says, or to the fair and
>accurate quotations I have presented of her own words. It is NOT the case
>that she offers two different systems or that I am pouncing on an
>inadvertent slip of the pen.
I've read and understood what (in a few places) she says she is doing, but I
also believe that what she DOES in her book is important, and what she does has
to do with alleged writers only. She's also said outside her book that her
method was only for alleged writers--that is, only someone whom someone has done
a biography of as a writer is eligible to be processed by it.
I think her propagandistic drive is to emphasize the genuinely literary evidence
and not say much about books and formal education in the hope that the latter
will slide through with the former at its level and she can have two extra bins
of non-Shakespearean "evidence."
I'm not up to defending Price at this time--wouldn't be even if Ken K. weren't
agitating to have me thrown out of the Fellowship for insufficiently respecting
Price. I will accept your description of Price on books if she makes no attempt
to clarify her position in later editions of her book. I've been told it's now
in its fifth printing but don't know whether to believe that or not. I suppose
you're right that I can't believe she'd really hold the view you attribute to
her (which is different from inadvertantly stating such a view).
--Bob G.
Terry Ross
>> Revamping the filter is not the solution. One fundamental problem is that
>> her project is corrupt at its core: her approach is not historical but
>> polemical. Another basic problem is that she does not understand that
>> writing was not then a profession as law and medicine were. Whatever
>> filter she sets up would not be able to identify all and only the
>> PROFESSIONAL writers. How, for example, would such a filter deal with
>> someone like King James, who was certainly a published writer, but who was
>> not a writer BY PROFESSION? The Earl of Oxford was a published poet and
>> would get a number of check marks in Price's system, but he was not a
>> PROFESSIONAL writer.
>
> If Diana Price agreed with you, she would likely correct the problems
> you note.
Correcting the problems would require rejecting all her work and
publishing a retraction. She could hardly be expected to do that even if
she agreed with me.
> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
> criticisms are correct.
Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided was in
error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held beliefs.
Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the implications of one's own
beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so strongly.
> Does repeating your same criticisms over and over solve this problem?
What problem? I don't expect to persuade Price; that does not mean my
criticisms of her are not valid. I am not surprised that Penn Leary still
believes in his Baconian ciphers (despite my criticisms) or that John
Rollett still clings to his Oxfordian ciphers (despite not only my
criticisms of his claims but despite the fact that he is no longer an
Oxfordian), or that Roger Stritmatter is not entirely convinced that all
my remarks on his dissertation are telling.
Of course I have not merely "repeat[ed the] same criticisms over and over;
I have at times restated, rephrased, extended, simplified, refocused --
one of these days, I believe, Bob will see the light; I have no such hopes
for Price, although she has, I believe, accepted one or two of my
criticisms.
> You aren't even persuading anyone -- that I can see -- to consider your
> criticisms to be correct.
You haven't looked very far; a number of people have agreed with my
criticisms; I will try to find ways to persuade some of the others, and
they may attempt to persuade me to modify my views. Isn't that the way it
is supposed to work?
>
>>
>> Even among those for whom writing was part of the means to a good living,
>> we should not expect to find that most of them received enough money
>> directly from their writing to be comfortable. It is likely that most of
>> Shakespeare's "professional" money came from his being a sharer, rather
>> than directly from his writing this play or playing that role. Spenser was
>> the most famous writer of the time, but he did not make his living being
>> paid by the line. Writing might help one acquire a job that would allow
>> one to keep body and soul together and therefore be able to write in one's
>> off-hours (this is what successful patronage seems to have amounted to in
>> some cases) -- yet for Price's filter, everybody for whom there is any
>> record of being in contact with a book (such as John Marston's father) is
>> thereby declared to have been a professional writer.
>
> Furthermore, you are yourself missing the biggest difference between
> professional writers and professionals of the other sorts you name.
> Those sorts of professionals are licensed; writers are not, and
> regardless of the relative ease with which writers, of various sorts,
> have been able to make their living, now as opposed to in the past, this
> has always been the case.
You are merely elaborating one of the differences incorporated in my
observation that "writing was not then a profession as law and medicine
were."
> There has not ever been any category of writer, without exception, the
> professional work of whose field required any particular professional
> licensing.
I think you might find that reporters for Pravda required certain kinds of
"licensing." There are writers guilds and unions for certain categories
of writers. You may write a screenplay on spec, but if you expect it to
be produced by Warner Bros., you will probably have to join the
Screenwriters' Guild.
> The fact that it is almost always a governmental agency that
> does the licensing, or that imposes the statute requiring the licensing,
> makes licensed professions an entirely different beast, in terms of
> evidence. The comparison falls down, here, and from what you yourself
> say, the point ends up going to Diana Price's side, not to yours.
You could hardly be more wrong. The comparison of writers to members of
other professions is at the heart of Price's argument. As far as Price is
concerned, writing in Shakespeare's day was no less a profession than law
or medicine is today. Is she wrong about this? Of course. Does this
error weaken still further her argument and therefore her book? Of
course. If you were familiar enough with Price's book you would know
this.
John W. Kennedy
> If Diana Price agreed with you, she would likely correct the problems
> you note.
Only if she were capable of presenting rational thought on the subject,
the which she demonstrably is not.
> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why
> your criticisms are correct. Does repeating your same criticisms over
> and over solve this problem?
Does saying "Two plus two is not five" over and over again make it
somehow /less/ true?
> Furthermore, you are yourself missing the biggest difference between
> professional writers and professionals of the other sorts you name.
> Those sorts of professionals are licensed; writers are not, and
> regardless of the relative ease with which writers, of various sorts,
> have been able to make their living, now as opposed to in the past,
> this has always been the case. There has not ever been any category
> of writer, without exception, the professional work of whose field
> required any particular professional licensing. The fact that it is
> almost always a governmental agency that does the licensing, or that
> imposes the statute requiring the licensing, makes licensed
> professions an entirely different beast, in terms of evidence.
An amusing piece of handwaving, to be sure, but worthless as an
argument, especially considering that WE ARE DISCUSSING THE ELIZABETHAN AGE!
By the way, the last I looked, it wasn't necessary in most places to
have a license to be a professional actor or a professional athlete --
or a professional criminal, for that matter.
--
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"
Paul Crowley
It IS nonsensical. It's a re-write of history, that
could not have happened. Or, if someone were
to say that it might have happened, they'd
have to set out all manner of 'what-ifs' -- most
of which would probably be ridiculous. It's like
saying: "Suppose James Joyce had been
awarded a great honour by the Irish nation in
1940 . . . ". That would be to change the entire
nature of the country at that time -- in some
quite incomprehensible manner. It would be like
saying "Suppose the USA had gone communist
in 1955 . . ". All that a person reveals in putting
forward such hypotheses is their ignorance of
history . . . as you do with your hypothesis that
Oxford's name could have been on *Hamlet*.
Paul.
Tom Reedy
news:456bd92f.04071...@posting.google.com...
If she's not Janice, she's her twin sister separated at birth.
TR
Neil Brennen
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:7SCKc.6600$mL5....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
I remain unconvinced of this. Janice Miller is at times very hard to read
(exchanges between her and Phil Innes are like watching an Esperanto film
without English subtitles), but I doubt she'd write anything as stupid as
Biancabot's comment above that Ross shouldn't criticize Price's book if
Price isn't heeding the criticism.
By me,
Neil Brennen
Tom Veal
the "Sir Thomas More" manuscript and the "stigma of print". She
doesn't address my central criticisms of her method of argumentation
in general and of her analysis of "literary paper trails" in
particular. (She also posted brief responses to my brief Amazon.com
reviews, but those covered only a small fraction of the matters raised
in the much longer version that appears on my Web site.)
You grossly understate the literary career with which she credits the
Stratford Man. Moreover, as I show in my review, by her own criteria
he is entitled to possible, probable or certain credit for "paper
trails" in a majority of her categories.
kenka...@yahoo.com (Ken Kaplan) wrote in message news:<75f2d918.0407...@posting.google.com>...
David L. Webb
Terry Ross <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, John W. Kennedy wrote:
>
> > Terry Ross wrote:
> >> Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles by
> >> characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be distinguished
> >> from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal records left
> >> behind." (300)
> > You know, I still find it hilarious that she made such an ill-considered
> > choice of simile.
I do too.
> The voice of the turtle was not heard in her land.
Her book invites the voice of the chortle -- but even so it is one of
the saner anti-Stratfordian books that I have seen.
Bob Grumman
>> for people who believe Oxford was Shakespeare, so non-nonsensical from their
>> point of view, although they contend it is not.
>It IS nonsensical. It's a re-write of history, that
>could not have happened. Or, if someone were
>to say that it might have happened, they'd
>have to set out all manner of 'what-ifs' -- most
>of which would probably be ridiculous. It's like
>saying: "Suppose James Joyce had been
>awarded a great honour by the Irish nation in
>1940 . . . ". That would be to change the entire
>nature of the country at that time -- in some
>quite incomprehensible manner. It would be like
>saying "Suppose the USA had gone communist
>in 1955 . . ". All that a person reveals in putting
>forward such hypotheses is their ignorance of
>history . . . as you do with your hypothesis that
>Oxford's name could have been on *Hamlet*.
>
>Paul.
Baloney. He could have had a private edition of ten copies printed. Or some
printer could have forgotten that the nation would fall if the secret were
known, and put the name on a dozens of copies until someone found out, executed
him, and destroyed all the copies with the title-page-attribution--except one,
which he missed.
But, okay, I'll junk title-page attribution and go back to Aubrey. Aubrey could
CERTAINLY have found out about the "open secret" and written a note about being
told that Oxford wrote over thirty plays the were published under another man's
name. Would you as an Oxfordian not prefer that to notice at death as a writer?
Or substitute anything like it--what if a letter of Meres's turned up in which
he spoke of Oxford's HAMLET? Why would that not be conceviable, even from your
point of view? For Price, it would be impersonal evidence and worthless. Or
what if Jonson, strong-minded as he was, wrote in him Timbers that he never met
Oxford but greatly admired his HAMLET and his TWELFTH NIGHT. Or that he
believed Oxford stole the idea for the latter from him. What if he used
Oxford's name in place of Shakespeare's in Timber?
Surely, you get my drift. Surely, you see that any rational Oxfordian would be
grateful for non-Pricean evidence for Oxford.
--Bob G.
Bob G.
>
>If she's not Janice, she's her twin sister separated at birth.
>
>TR
>
--BG
Lorenzo4344
>From: "Tom Reedy" reed...@earthlink.net
>Date: 7/18/2004
>> Bianca S.
>
>If she's not Janice, she's her twin sister separated at birth.
>
>TR
I agree.
Lorenzo
"Mark the music."
biancas842001
Says you.
She could hardly be expected to do that even if
> she agreed with me.
Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with
you about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her behavior
in the slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
>
>> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
>> criticisms are correct.
>
> Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided was in
> error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held beliefs.
> Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the implications of one's own
> beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so strongly.
Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you conclude
to be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront
the truth.
>
>> Does repeating your same criticisms over and over solve this
problem?
>
> What problem? I don't expect to persuade Price; that does not mean my
> criticisms of her are not valid. I am not surprised that Penn Leary still
> believes in his Baconian ciphers (despite my criticisms) or that John
> Rollett still clings to his Oxfordian ciphers (despite not only my
> criticisms of his claims but despite the fact that he is no longer an
> Oxfordian), or that Roger Stritmatter is not entirely convinced that all
> my remarks on his dissertation are telling.
If you're talking past Price and those others, you're right, it is not
surprising that you will not persuade them. I'd like to know, before
paying much attention to your criticism, whether or not you're simply
talking past them.
>
> Of course I have not merely "repeat[ed the] same criticisms over and over;
> I have at times restated, rephrased, extended, simplified, refocused --
> one of these days, I believe, Bob will see the light; I have no such hopes
> for Price, although she has, I believe, accepted one or two of my
> criticisms.
Are you criticizing Diana Price or criticizing Bob Grumman? I don't
know either of them, so I can't say whether or not you are correct
about which of the two would be easier to convince.
>
>> You aren't even persuading anyone -- that I can see -- to consider
your
>> criticisms to be correct.
>
> You haven't looked very far; a number of people have agreed with my
> criticisms; I will try to find ways to persuade some of the others, and
> they may attempt to persuade me to modify my views. Isn't that the way it
> is supposed to work?
Perhaps. Whom do you consider yourself to have persuaded, and what
have they done as a result?
If you say so.
>
>> There has not ever been any category of writer, without exception,
the
>> professional work of whose field required any particular
professional
>> licensing.
>
> I think you might find that reporters for Pravda required certain kinds of
> "licensing." There are writers guilds and unions for certain categories
> of writers. You may write a screenplay on spec, but if you expect it to
> be produced by Warner Bros., you will probably have to join the
> Screenwriters' Guild.
Why would you think telling me what Pravda required would be relevant
to my argument?
>
>> The fact that it is almost always a governmental agency that
>> does the licensing, or that imposes the statute requiring the
licensing,
>> makes licensed professions an entirely different beast, in terms of
>> evidence. The comparison falls down, here, and from what you
yourself
>> say, the point ends up going to Diana Price's side, not to yours.
>
> You could hardly be more wrong. The comparison of writers to members of
> other professions is at the heart of Price's argument. As far as Price is
> concerned, writing in Shakespeare's day was no less a profession than law
> or medicine is today. Is she wrong about this? Of course. Does this
> error weaken still further her argument and therefore her book? Of
> course. If you were familiar enough with Price's book you would know
> this.
You've really cut the ground out from under me, here.
----
Bianca S.
Bob Grumman
>> > Bianca S.
>>
>> If she's not Janice, she's her twin sister separated at birth.
>>
>> TR
>
>I remain unconvinced of this. Janice Miller is at times very hard to read
>(exchanges between her and Phil Innes are like watching an Esperanto film
>without English subtitles), but I doubt she'd write anything as stupid as
>Biancabot's comment above that Ross shouldn't criticize Price's book if
>Price isn't heeding the criticism.
>
>By me,
>Neil Brennen
You must have missed some of the arguments about Price she had with me. She
doesn't like people being picked on, especially women. And she doesn't like
arrogance. That's why I had to drop her for Elizabeth.
--Bob G.
Tom Reedy
> > You could hardly be more wrong. The comparison of writers to members of
> > other professions is at the heart of Price's argument. As far as Price
is
> > concerned, writing in Shakespeare's day was no less a profession than
law
> > or medicine is today. Is she wrong about this? Of course. Does this
> > error weaken still further her argument and therefore her book? Of
> > course. If you were familiar enough with Price's book you would know
> > this.
>
> You've really cut the ground out from under me, here.
Well yes, he has. Not quite fair, is it, that you haven't read the book
under discussion?
Actually reading the book might be of some help to you if you're trying to
understand the point of Terry's criticism. It's widely available in both
public and university libraries.
TR
>
> ----
> Bianca S.
Neil Brennen
Price's methodology is so flawed that she would need to publish a
retraction. For instance, her filter's rejection of memorial tributes more
than a year old is absurd.
> She could hardly be expected to do that even if
> > she agreed with me.
>
> Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with
> you about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her behavior
> in the slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
> intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
It's clear to only the biancabot that this is so. Of course, once she
actually reads the book, she may change her mind.
> >> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
> >> criticisms are correct.
> >
> > Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided was in
> > error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held
beliefs.
> > Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the implications of one's
own
> > beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so strongly.
>
> Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you conclude
> to be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront
> the truth.
Will you retract this when you discover you are wrong about Terry Ross?
> >> Does repeating your same criticisms over and over solve this
> problem?
> >
> > What problem? I don't expect to persuade Price; that does not mean my
> > criticisms of her are not valid. I am not surprised that Penn Leary
still
> > believes in his Baconian ciphers (despite my criticisms) or that John
> > Rollett still clings to his Oxfordian ciphers (despite not only my
> > criticisms of his claims but despite the fact that he is no longer an
> > Oxfordian), or that Roger Stritmatter is not entirely convinced that all
> > my remarks on his dissertation are telling.
>
> If you're talking past Price and those others, you're right, it is not
> surprising that you will not persuade them. I'd like to know, before
> paying much attention to your criticism, whether or not you're simply
> talking past them.
What nonsense! Did you learn this from the back cover of a Bloom book,
biancabot? Where do you get your idea that we must know the spirit in which
criticism is offered before we can assess its correctness?
(Snip Terry attempting to enlighten the Biancabot.)
By me,
Neil Brennen
Neil Brennen
I just read through the Biancabot's response to Terry Ross. What complete
nonsense! She's using the old Phil Innes dodge ("This discussion isn't in
the proper spirit") as a weapon to attack Terry personally. I'd expect this
from someone who bases her arguments on reading the table of contents or
back cover of a book. Her 'debate' with John Kennedy over Dante was
hysterical!
Paul Crowley
> >> But, the question is
> >> for people who believe Oxford was Shakespeare, so non-nonsensical from their
> >> point of view, although they contend it is not.
>
> >It IS nonsensical. It's a re-write of history, that
> >could not have happened. Or, if someone were
> >to say that it might have happened, they'd
> >have to set out all manner of 'what-ifs' -- most
> >of which would probably be ridiculous. It's like
> >saying: "Suppose James Joyce had been
> >awarded a great honour by the Irish nation in
> >1940 . . . ". That would be to change the entire
> >nature of the country at that time -- in some
> >quite incomprehensible manner. It would be like
> >saying "Suppose the USA had gone communist
> >in 1955 . . ". All that a person reveals in putting
> >forward such hypotheses is their ignorance of
> >history . . . as you do with your hypothesis that
> >Oxford's name could have been on *Hamlet*.
>
> Baloney. He could have had a private edition of ten copies printed. Or some
> printer could have forgotten that the nation would fall if the secret were
> known, and put the name on a dozens of copies until someone found out, executed
> him, and destroyed all the copies with the title-page-attribution--except one,
> which he missed.
What's the point of your hypothetical question
if all these kinds of possibilities are available?
> But, okay, I'll junk title-page attribution and go back to Aubrey. Aubrey could
> CERTAINLY have found out about the "open secret"
I doubt if the secret was 'open' in any real sense.
> and written a note about being
> told that Oxford wrote over thirty plays the were published under another man's
> name.
Anything in Aubrey is next to worthless.
Do a web search on him or see:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Societies/Aubrey.html
> Would you as an Oxfordian not prefer that to notice at death as a writer?
Certainly not. You seem to have no concept
of the nature of evidence. A notice at death
is likely to be accurate -- usually it will be read
by hundreds or thousands of contemporaries
who know the truth -- or what is likely to be
the truth.
> Or substitute anything like it--what if a letter of Meres's turned up in which
> he spoke of Oxford's HAMLET? Why would that not be conceviable, even from your
> point of view? For Price, it would be impersonal evidence and worthless. Or
> what if Jonson, strong-minded as he was, wrote in him Timbers that he never met
> Oxford but greatly admired his HAMLET and his TWELFTH NIGHT. Or that he
> believed Oxford stole the idea for the latter from him. What if he used
> Oxford's name in place of Shakespeare's in Timber?
>
> Surely, you get my drift. Surely, you see that any rational Oxfordian would be
> grateful for non-Pricean evidence for Oxford.
Any evidence is better than no evidence,
but some is scarcely worth bothering
about. That's why Price ruled it out for
the purposes of her comparison -- she
needed to draw line somewhere. But I am
not particularly interested in following the
gyrations of this particular bee in your
bonnet.
Paul.
Bob Grumman
>nonsense! She's using the old Phil Innes dodge ("This discussion isn't in
>the proper spirit") as a weapon to attack Terry personally. I'd expect this
>from someone who bases her arguments on reading the table of contents or
>back cover of a book. Her 'debate' with John Kennedy over Dante was
>hysterical!
>
Ken has been using that ploy against me at the Fellowship, but Mark Alexander
was the master of it. I wonder who orginated it.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
at the Fellowship, too, so I have to retract my assertion that no Oxfordian
would answer it.
>What's the point of your hypothetical question
>if all these kinds of possibilities are available?
It's a way of asking which kind of evidence is superior. Priceans say records
of possession of books are better evidence of authorship than contemporaneous
title-page attributions. I say no one in his right mind could believe this. So
I ask a hypothetical of Priceans: which would you rather have for Oxford,
records of possession of books, or ONE contemporaneous title-page attribution?
The question makes the situation clear. The hypothetical is NOT
nonsensical--except to someone with no imagination. It doesn't matter if what
is hypothesized is unlikely or even impossible. That's because the hypothetical
question is designed to determine beliefs.
Example: what if you were give a choice between (a) being prevented for the rest
of your life from gaining any money whatever more than you required to feed and
house yourself or (b) being given a hundred billion pounds, tax-free. Which
would you prefer, (a) or (b), given that if you picked (a), you'd be guaranteed
lasting fame as a cultural figure, but that if you picked (b), you'd be
completely unkown within two decades of your death.
Sure, no one would ever really be given such choices, but as hypothetical
choices, what's so nonsensical about them? They get to the heart of what a
person (like me and possibly you) really wants. It could be discussed in
general terms, but the above sensualizes it, in a manner of speaking.
>>But, okay, I'll junk title-page attribution and go back to Aubrey. Aubrey could
>> CERTAINLY have found out about the "open secret"
>
>I doubt if the secret was 'open' in any real sense.
>
>> and written a note about being
>>told that Oxford wrote over thirty plays the were published under another man's
>> name.
>
>Anything in Aubrey is next to worthless.
>Do a web search on him or see:
>http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Societies/Aubrey.html
I doubt that, Paul. What he said about Shakespeare had to come from somewhere,
so at the very least, it indicates what somebody thought about him.
>> Would you as an Oxfordian not prefer that to notice at death as a writer?
>
>Certainly not. You seem to have no concept
>of the nature of evidence. A notice at death
>is likely to be accurate -- usually it will be read
>by hundreds or thousands of contemporaries
>who know the truth -- or what is likely to be
>the truth.
Price accepts notices at death as a writer only one person reads (e.g., a
mention in a letter). But the choice is between a general impersonal indication
that Oxford was a writer and someone like Aubrey testifying specifically that he
used a front.
>>Or substitute anything like it--what if a letter of Meres's turned up in which
>>he spoke of Oxford's HAMLET? Why would that not be conceviable, even from your
>> point of view? For Price, it would be impersonal evidence and worthless. Or
>>what if Jonson, strong-minded as he was, wrote in him Timbers that he never met
>> Oxford but greatly admired his HAMLET and his TWELFTH NIGHT. Or that he
>> believed Oxford stole the idea for the latter from him. What if he used
>> Oxford's name in place of Shakespeare's in Timber?
>>
>>Surely, you get my drift. Surely, you see that any rational Oxfordian would be
>> grateful for non-Pricean evidence for Oxford.
>
>Any evidence is better than no evidence,
>but some is scarcely worth bothering
>about. That's why Price ruled it out for
>the purposes of her comparison -- she
>needed to draw line somewhere. But I am
>not particularly interested in following the
>gyrations of this particular bee in your
>bonnet.
Sure, possession of books is worth bothering about; notice within a year of
death as a writer who had died by someone who didn't personally know him is more
worth bothering with than notice within seven years of the same by someone who
personally knew the man involved; record of formal education is more worth
bothering with than forty different title-page-attributions; a letter by an
alleged writer asking about a post as a teacher is worth bothering with, but not
a monument proclaiming an alleged writer as a Virgil seven years after his
death. Etc.
--Bob G.
Terry Ross
On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, biancas842001 wrote:
> On 7/18/04 "Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, biancas842001 wrote:
>>
>>>> Revamping the filter is not the solution. One fundamental problem is
>>>> that her project is corrupt at its core: her approach is not
>>>> historical but polemical. Another basic problem is that she does not
>>>> understand that writing was not then a profession as law and medicine
>>>> were. Whatever filter she sets up would not be able to identify all
>>>> and only the PROFESSIONAL writers. How, for example, would such a
>>>> filter deal with someone like King James, who was certainly a
>>>> published writer, but who was not a writer BY PROFESSION? The Earl
>>>> of Oxford was a published poet and would get a number of check marks
>>>> in Price's system, but he was not a PROFESSIONAL writer.
>>>
>>> If Diana Price agreed with you, she would likely correct the problems
>>> you note.
>>
>> Correcting the problems would require rejecting all her work and
>> publishing a retraction.
>
> Says you.
Did you think someone else had said it?
>
>> She could hardly be expected to do that even if she agreed with me.
>
> Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with you
> about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her behavior in the
> slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
> intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
Are you acquainted enough with her book to form a judgment about its
intellectual honesty?
>
>>
>>> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
>>> criticisms are correct.
>>
>> Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided was in
>> error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held
>> beliefs. Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the implications
>> of one's own beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so
>> strongly.
>
> Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you conclude to
> be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront the
> truth.
Have you never known anyone who found it difficult to give up a
long-standing belief that he or she eventually came to believe was
unsound?
>
>>
>>> Does repeating your same criticisms over and over solve this problem?
>>
>> What problem? I don't expect to persuade Price; that does not mean my
>> criticisms of her are not valid. I am not surprised that Penn Leary
>> still believes in his Baconian ciphers (despite my criticisms) or that
>> John Rollett still clings to his Oxfordian ciphers (despite not only my
>> criticisms of his claims but despite the fact that he is no longer an
>> Oxfordian), or that Roger Stritmatter is not entirely convinced that
>> all my remarks on his dissertation are telling.
>
> If you're talking past Price and those others, you're right, it is not
> surprising that you will not persuade them. I'd like to know, before
> paying much attention to your criticism, whether or not you're simply
> talking past them.
If paying much attention to such criticism is an overambitious project,
would you be better off simply reading past it?
>
>>
>> Of course I have not merely "repeat[ed the] same criticisms over and
>> over; I have at times restated, rephrased, extended, simplified,
>> refocused -- one of these days, I believe, Bob will see the light; I
>> have no such hopes for Price, although she has, I believe, accepted one
>> or two of my criticisms.
>
> Are you criticizing Diana Price or criticizing Bob Grumman?
Are you unable to determine that for yourself?
> I don't know either of them, so I can't say whether or not you are
> correct about which of the two would be easier to convince.
Do you always know which of the people you do know would be easier to
convince on various topics?
>
>>
>>> You aren't even persuading anyone -- that I can see -- to consider
>>> your criticisms to be correct.
>>
>> You haven't looked very far; a number of people have agreed with my
>> criticisms; I will try to find ways to persuade some of the others, and
>> they may attempt to persuade me to modify my views. Isn't that the way
>> it is supposed to work?
>
> Perhaps. Whom do you consider yourself to have persuaded, and what
> have they done as a result?
Have you searched carefully and yet failed to find that people have indeed
been persuaded by me from time to time?
>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Even among those for whom writing was part of the means to a good
>>>> living, we should not expect to find that most of them received
>>>> enough money directly from their writing to be comfortable. It is
>>>> likely that most of Shakespeare's "professional" money came from his
>>>> being a sharer, rather than directly from his writing this play or
>>>> playing that role. Spenser was the most famous writer of the time,
>>>> but he did not make his living being paid by the line. Writing might
>>>> help one acquire a job that would allow one to keep body and soul
>>>> together and therefore be able to write in one's off-hours (this is
>>>> what successful patronage seems to have amounted to in some cases) --
>>>> yet for Price's filter, everybody for whom there is any record of
>>>> being in contact with a book (such as John Marston's father) is
>>>> thereby declared to have been a professional writer.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, you are yourself missing the biggest difference between
>>> professional writers and professionals of the other sorts you name.
>>> Those sorts of professionals are licensed; writers are not, and
>>> regardless of the relative ease with which writers, of various sorts,
>>> have been able to make their living, now as opposed to in the past,
>>> this has always been the case.
>>
>> You are merely elaborating one of the differences incorporated in my
>> observation that "writing was not then a profession as law and medicine
>> were."
>
> If you say so.
Would you prefer that somebody else had said so first?
>
>>
>>> There has not ever been any category of writer, without exception, the
>>> professional work of whose field required any particular professional
>>> licensing.
>>
>> I think you might find that reporters for Pravda required certain kinds
>> of "licensing." There are writers guilds and unions for certain
>> categories of writers. You may write a screenplay on spec, but if you
>> expect it to be produced by Warner Bros., you will probably have to
>> join the Screenwriters' Guild.
>
> Why would you think telling me what Pravda required would be relevant
> to my argument?
When you said "There has not ever been any category of writer, without
exception, the professional work of whose field required any particular
professional licensing" were you unaware that there had been (and continue
to be) such publications as Pravda? Have you ever responded to anybody's
claim about what was true "without exception" by offering exceptions to
what seemed an overbroad generalization?
>
>>
>>> The fact that it is almost always a governmental agency that does the
>>> licensing, or that imposes the statute requiring the licensing, makes
>>> licensed professions an entirely different beast, in terms of
>>> evidence. The comparison falls down, here, and from what you yourself
>>> say, the point ends up going to Diana Price's side, not to yours.
>>
>> You could hardly be more wrong. The comparison of writers to members
>> of other professions is at the heart of Price's argument. As far as
>> Price is concerned, writing in Shakespeare's day was no less a
>> profession than law or medicine is today. Is she wrong about this?
>> Of course. Does this error weaken still further her argument and
>> therefore her book? Of course. If you were familiar enough with
>> Price's book you would know this.
>
> You've really cut the ground out from under me, here.
Were you ever on such ground?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross Visit the SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP home page?
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross
>> Bob, the issue is not what you may be sure of but rather the argument
>> Price makes in her book.
>
>>> But most of what she otherwise says indicates that her filter is for
>>> alleged writers. You've caught her in one of her many instances of
>>> sloppy choice of words, as have we all.
>>
>> You are not paying enough attention to what she says, or to the fair
>> and accurate quotations I have presented of her own words. It is NOT
>> the case that she offers two different systems or that I am pouncing on
>> an inadvertent slip of the pen.
>
> I've read and understood what (in a few places) she says she is doing,
> but I also believe that what she DOES in her book is important, and what
> she does has to do with alleged writers only.
Is your copy of the book missing the pages where she outlines her general
argument? Note in the following discussion (which you have once again
deleted rather than answering) that my description of her argument is
based on her own words; note also that I provide page numbers so that you
can confirm that I am not taking those words out of context:
======================================================
No, I have correctly described her argument; an argument that you do not
seem to understand. I think some people who reject my description of her
actual argument do so on the grounds that "nobody would say anything so
silly," but I would have thought that you, with your long exposure to a
great variety of antistratfordian sillinesses, would know better.
> I am sure she does not mean it.
Bob, the issue is not what you may be sure of but rather the argument
Price makes in her book.
> But most of what she otherwise says indicates that her filter is for
> alleged writers. You've caught her in one of her many instances of
> sloppy choice of words, as have we all.
You are not paying enough attention to what she says, or to the fair and
accurate quotations I have presented of her own words. It is NOT the case
that she offers two different systems or that I am pouncing on an
inadvertent slip of the pen.
Her general argument -- in fact, the most original part of her book -- is
the argument that professions are characterized by classes of
documentation that are "peculiar" to that profession, that the existence
of any document in such a "peculiar" class is enough to mark a person as
having been a member of that profession, that in the absence of such
documents "peculiar" to a particular profession, nobody should be
considered a member of that profession, even if that person lived hundreds
of years ago, and even if most of the records from that time have
vanished.
Her argument about Shakespeare and other writers is merely a particular
expression of this general argument. Can you not see this? Why,
otherwise, would she bring in comparisons not merely to other professions,
but to the specific types of documents that she claims are "peculiar" to
those professions? (As a side issue, it would be quite easy to imagine
the case of a physician c.1600 whose membership in his profession would be
rejected by Price's hypothetical medical filter, but would be accepted by
a genuine historian. If you cannot imagine the case, I can provide it for
you).
> But you're mischaracterizing her over-all method, which is for alleged
> writers.
You do not appear to have understood her "over-all method" or her
particular application of that method to writers. Since you snipped much
of my discussion of the matter, I will repost it here. If you wish to
advance another interpretation of Price's method, then you should base
that interpretation on what Price actually says.
> Terry, I agree with all you say except about Price's book bin. She is
> saying that books are valid evidence that SOMEONE ALLEGED TO BE A WRITER
> is indeed a writer.
No she is not. She is saying that those whose profession was
"professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
records left behind." (300)
Note that the FIRST profession she mentions as one whose practitioners can
be distinguished from writers is "doctors." Although she never
constructed a filter for doctors, she does discuss the "types of personal
records left behind" by doctors that would count as "characteristics
peculiar to the species" of doctor:
"The documentary evidence left by a writer is different from that left by
a doctor, for example, because some personal records are peculiar to the
respective professions." (111)
For Price, the records "peculiar to the [medical] profession" include
"payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions, records of
medical training, ... or medical journals or casebooks" (111).
A Pricean medical filter would NOT select the actual doctors from the set
of alleged doctors; it would distinguish doctors from the members of EVERY
OTHER profession. That, at least, is what Price is arguing. Her filter
for professional writers is supposed to work exactly the same way. It
deals only with those kinds of records that are "peculiar to" the species
or profession of writing.
So poorly constructed is her filter for writers that it would declare that
a great many (if not all) of those who satisfied the "doctor" filter were
also writers by profession. ANY "records of medical training" would count
for the writer's "education" category. ANY "medical journals or
casebooks" would count for the writer's "books" category. Price filter is
set up so that it considers ALL educational records and book records
"peculiar to the profession" of writing. If we consider some of the
records accepted in other categories, it becomes clear that (to be
conservative) MOST of her categories are not "peculiar to writers."
Price does NOT say that alleged writers may be distinguished from
non-writers as one would distinguish alleged birds from non-birds. She
believes that her filter's categories -- every one of them -- consist of
the types of records that are peculiar to writers (presumably in the same
sense that feathers are peculiar to birds).
Such terms as "peculiar to the profession" and "peculiar to the species"
are not mine; they are Price's. They are central to her argument, such as
it is.
> She is not saying that books make a person a writer but that books plus
> allegation of authorship do.
You are rewriting her book in order to make it less absurd. It would be
better to deal with what she actually said, not with what a marginally
more reasonable person would have said in some other book that some other
person may some day write.
> Or so it seems to me. Of course, her book bin is as hokey as can be. I
> am sure that if we got firmer evidence that the law book with a
> signature on it that may be Shakespeare's belonged to him, Price would
> suddenly revamp her mechanism as a nine-bin filter.
Revamping the filter is not the solution. One fundamental problem is that
her project is corrupt at its core: her approach is not historical but
polemical. Another basic problem is that she does not understand that
writing was not then a profession as law and medicine were. Whatever
filter she sets up would not be able to identify all and only the
PROFESSIONAL writers. How, for example, would such a filter deal with
someone like King James, who was certainly a published writer, but who was
not a writer BY PROFESSION? The Earl of Oxford was a published poet and
would get a number of check marks in Price's system, but he was not a
PROFESSIONAL writer.
Even among those for whom writing was part of the means to a good living,
we should not expect to find that most of them received enough money
directly from their writing to be comfortable. It is likely that most of
Shakespeare's "professional" money came from his being a sharer, rather
than directly from his writing this play or playing that role. Spenser was
the most famous writer of the time, but he did not make his living being
paid by the line. Writing might help one acquire a job that would allow
one to keep body and soul together and therefore be able to write in one's
off-hours (this is what successful patronage seems to have amounted to in
some cases) -- yet for Price's filter, everybody for whom there is any
record of being in contact with a book (such as John Marston's father) is
thereby declared to have been a professional writer.
============================
> She's also said outside her book that her method was only for alleged
> writers--that is, only someone whom someone has done a biography of as a
> writer is eligible to be processed by it.
That's just a dodge; she says no such thing in her book, and to my
knowledge she said no such thing outside of her book until her filter's
fundamental flaws were shown to her. If she wishes to reject her entire
book and method, and if she wishes to shift to some other argument (e.g.,
the kind of thing Pat Dooley was trying out on this newsgroup), then she
is free to do so. Until that time, we should act as if the book she wrote
is the book she meant to write. Has she yet declared that she no longer
believes that "evidence of an education" is something "peculiar" to
writers?
Let us do Price the courtesy of taking her arguments seriously --
unfortunately for those who wish she had done a better or a different job,
taking her arguments seriously results in exposing fundamental problems in
her entire approach. It would be patronizing to suggest that she didn't
write what she wrote or that she didn't mean what she said. Has she ever
rejected her own general argument about how every professions produces
documents that are peculiar to that profession? If so, please tell me
where and when.
>
> I think her propagandistic drive is to emphasize the genuinely literary
> evidence and not say much about books and formal education in the hope
> that the latter will slide through with the former at its level and she
> can have two extra bins of non-Shakespearean "evidence."
Her antistratfordian project would appear to be an attempt to rule out all
the evidence that she remembers exists for Shakespeare. She probably
thought the notion of classes of documents "peculiar to a profession"
would do the trick, but this wouldn't even work for her hypothetical
medical filter.
Imagine a physician c. 1600; let's call him William Shakeleech. We don't
have all the records of William Shakeleech that may ever have existed.
We do not have payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions,
records of medical training, or medical journals or casebooks for William
Shakeleech; we DO however have quite a few other things. We have a
monument to him in his local church, including a sculpture that depicts
him as a physician, and that contains an inscription describing him as
having the skill of Galen. We have dozens of medical tracts that are
attributed to William Shakeleech. His name appears in several lists of
the outstanding physicians of the day. When Ben Jonson told Drummond
about the notable physicians of the day, he had much to say about
Shakeleech's practice of medicine -- not all of it favorable, but he said
that he loved the man and honored his memory this side idolatry. When
Shakeleech's tracts were gathered together by some of his old friends and
colleagues, Jonson wrote a commendatory poem -- well, you can fill in the
rest for yourself, but this is already more than enough for our purposes.
Here is the question: if you were writing a medical history of the time
and wished to list the physicians of the era, would you include
Shakeleech? Of course you would; so would any genuine medical historian.
In fact, if anybody else's list of the physicians of the day lacked
Shakeleech's name, we would justly regard the list as incomplete. If
anybody said, "According to my standards, Shakeleech should not be
listed," then we would respond, "your standards are inadequate," and we
would reject them.
Of course the practice of medicine was much more "professional" than that
of writing in 1600, and we might be more surprised at the kinds of things
we don't have for Shakeleech than we have a right to be at the kinds of
things we don't have for Shakespeare. The point is that we would have
more than enough evidence, by any reasonable standards, to list Shakeleech
among the physicians of the time.
>
> I'm not up to defending Price at this time--wouldn't be even if Ken K.
> weren't agitating to have me thrown out of the Fellowship for
> insufficiently respecting Price.
I believe your presence there does have its defenders, and I don't think
Ken really wants you to be "church-outed by the prelates."
> I will accept your description of Price on books if she makes no attempt
> to clarify her position in later editions of her book.
The problem is not clarity -- her positions are clear in the book, both as
regards the general argument about professions and the more specific
argument about "professional writers." Those positions are not
sustainable, but that is not because they are not clearly expressed but
rather because the thinking behind them is faulty.
> I've been told it's now in its fifth printing but don't know whether to
> believe that or not. I suppose you're right that I can't believe she'd
> really hold the view you attribute to her (which is different from
> inadvertently stating such a view).
Read her book. It's chock full of things that it would be difficult to
believe any reasonably intelligent person would advance. She didn't think
through the implications of her arguments before she published her book,
but that really isn't my fault or yours, is it? You had no trouble
labeling Michell's work "ridiculous" (and justifying that label); why do
you shy from facing Price's actual arguments?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross Visit the SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP home page
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
biancas842001
wrote:
>
> "biancas842001" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:456bd92f.04071...@posting.google.com...
>> On 7/18/04 "Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, biancas842001 wrote:
>>>> If Diana Price agreed with you, she would likely correct the
>> problems
>>>> you note.
>>>
>>> Correcting the problems would require rejecting all her work and
>>> publishing a retraction.
>>
>> Says you.
>
> Price's methodology is so flawed that she would need to publish a
> retraction. For instance, her filter's rejection of memorial tributes more
> than a year old is absurd.
Okay, says you and Terry Ross. :-)
Why, then, don't you critique the methodology, instead of confusing
method with assumption and everything else, and then attacking
innocent Usenet posters who are misled by your misreadings?
>
>> She could hardly be expected to do that even if
>>> she agreed with me.
>>
>> Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with
>> you about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her
behavior
>> in the slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
>> intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
>
> It's clear to only the biancabot that this is so. Of course, once she
> actually reads the book, she may change her mind.
I don't understand what difference my having read the book would make
to my beliefs about what Diana Price would or wouldn't do, if
demonstrated publicly to have been wrong.
>
>>>> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
>>>> criticisms are correct.
>>>
>>> Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided
was in
>>> error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held
> beliefs.
>>> Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the implications of
one's
> own
>>> beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so strongly.
>>
>> Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you
conclude
>> to be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront
>> the truth.
>
> Will you retract this when you discover you are wrong about Terry Ross?
It's a hypothetical.
What do Terry Ross's emotions towards me or towards Diana Price have
to do with his criticism's correctness?
>
> (Snip Terry attempting to enlighten the Biancabot.)
For a little while I thought BIANCA-BOT was an anagram for BACON-BIT,
but I see it's actually BACON-BAIT. I like BACON-BAIT better.
----
Bianca S.
biancas842001
> Is the response interrogative more tiresome than efective?
Is this a quote from "My Fair Lady"?
Did you?
>
>>
>>> She could hardly be expected to do that even if she agreed with
me.
>>
>> Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with
you
>> about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her behavior
in the
>> slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
>> intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
>
> Are you acquainted enough with her book to form a judgment about its
> intellectual honesty?
It's a matter of logic, not acquaintance.
>
>>
>>>
>>>> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
>>>> criticisms are correct.
>>>
>>> Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided
was in
>>> error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held
>>> beliefs. Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the
implications
>>> of one's own beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so
>>> strongly.
>>
>> Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you
conclude to
>> be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront
the
>> truth.
>
> Have you never known anyone who found it difficult to give up a
> long-standing belief that he or she eventually came to believe was
> unsound?
Have you?
>
>>
>>>
>>>> Does repeating your same criticisms over and over solve this
problem?
>>>
>>> What problem? I don't expect to persuade Price; that does not
mean my
>>> criticisms of her are not valid. I am not surprised that Penn
Leary
>>> still believes in his Baconian ciphers (despite my criticisms) or
that
>>> John Rollett still clings to his Oxfordian ciphers (despite not
only my
>>> criticisms of his claims but despite the fact that he is no longer
an
>>> Oxfordian), or that Roger Stritmatter is not entirely convinced
that
>>> all my remarks on his dissertation are telling.
>>
>> If you're talking past Price and those others, you're right, it is
not
>> surprising that you will not persuade them. I'd like to know,
before
>> paying much attention to your criticism, whether or not you're
simply
>> talking past them.
>
> If paying much attention to such criticism is an overambitious project,
> would you be better off simply reading past it?
I think it's already been said that PARRY engines are against the
rules, and I presume that goes for ELIZA, too.
>
>>
>>>
>>> Of course I have not merely "repeat[ed the] same criticisms over
and
>>> over; I have at times restated, rephrased, extended, simplified,
>>> refocused -- one of these days, I believe, Bob will see the light;
I
>>> have no such hopes for Price, although she has, I believe,
accepted one
>>> or two of my criticisms.
>>
>> Are you criticizing Diana Price or criticizing Bob Grumman?
>
> Are you unable to determine that for yourself?
You say you are criticizing Diana Price, but your actual hope seems to
be that Bob Grumman changes his mind. That suggests that you are
actually criticizing Bob Grumman.
>
>> I don't know either of them, so I can't say whether or not you are
>> correct about which of the two would be easier to convince.
>
> Do you always know which of the people you do know would be easier to
> convince on various topics?
No. Do you?
>
>>
>>>
>>>> You aren't even persuading anyone -- that I can see -- to
consider
>>>> your criticisms to be correct.
>>>
>>> You haven't looked very far; a number of people have agreed with
my
>>> criticisms; I will try to find ways to persuade some of the
others, and
>>> they may attempt to persuade me to modify my views. Isn't that
the way
>>> it is supposed to work?
>>
>> Perhaps. Whom do you consider yourself to have persuaded, and what
>> have they done as a result?
>
> Have you searched carefully and yet failed to find that people have indeed
> been persuaded by me from time to time?
No.
Huh?
>
>>
>>>
>>>> There has not ever been any category of writer, without
exception, the
>>>> professional work of whose field required any particular
professional
>>>> licensing.
>>>
>>> I think you might find that reporters for Pravda required certain
kinds
>>> of "licensing." There are writers guilds and unions for certain
>>> categories of writers. You may write a screenplay on spec, but if
you
>>> expect it to be produced by Warner Bros., you will probably have
to
>>> join the Screenwriters' Guild.
>>
>> Why would you think telling me what Pravda required would be
relevant
>> to my argument?
>
> When you said "There has not ever been any category of writer, without
> exception, the professional work of whose field required any particular
> professional licensing" were you unaware that there had been (and continue
> to be) such publications as Pravda? Have you ever responded to anybody's
> claim about what was true "without exception" by offering exceptions to
> what seemed an overbroad generalization?
Relevant counterexamples, yes. You're not inspiring confidence in
your ability to locate and present relevant counterexamples. Unless
your point is that all the participants here are ex-Pravda reporters
and that they think I'm a moron because I don't work the way they do.
In which case you're not inspiring confidence in your intellectual
honesty (and a few other things), either.
>
>>
>>>
>>>> The fact that it is almost always a governmental agency that does
the
>>>> licensing, or that imposes the statute requiring the licensing,
makes
>>>> licensed professions an entirely different beast, in terms of
>>>> evidence. The comparison falls down, here, and from what you
yourself
>>>> say, the point ends up going to Diana Price's side, not to yours.
>>>
>>> You could hardly be more wrong. The comparison of writers to
members
>>> of other professions is at the heart of Price's argument. As far
as
>>> Price is concerned, writing in Shakespeare's day was no less a
>>> profession than law or medicine is today. Is she wrong about
this?
>>> Of course. Does this error weaken still further her argument and
>>> therefore her book? Of course. If you were familiar enough with
>>> Price's book you would know this.
>>
>> You've really cut the ground out from under me, here.
>
> Were you ever on such ground?
Huh?
----
Bianca S.
biancas842001
> the argument that professions are characterized by classes of
> documentation that are "peculiar" to that profession, that the existence
> of any document in such a "peculiar" class is enough to mark a person as
> having been a member of that profession, that in the absence of such
> documents "peculiar" to a particular profession, nobody should be
> considered a member of that profession, even if that person lived hundreds
> of years ago, and even if most of the records from that time have
> vanished.
Let's generalize your argument and see if it remains valid:
Ornithology:
"Species of birds are characterized by attributes that are
'peculiar' to each species, and the existence of a marking in such a
'peculiar' class is enough to mark a bird as being a specimen of that
species, etc."
Religion:
"Religions are characterized by classes of documentation that are
'peculiar' to each religion, and the existence of a document in such a
'peculiar' class is sufficient to mark an individual as having been a
member of that religion, etc."
Thus, Shakespeare's baptismal record would, one presumes, be
sufficient to mark him as having been born into a family that
practiced the established religion of England at the time that he was
born, similarly with the registry of his marriage, etc. The document
said to be his father's confession of faith, on the other hand, is
sufficient to mark his family as having been Catholic and thus not of
the established faith. Here we have a problem. But this is religion
and not profession, and my assumptions may well be wrong. I would
start, probably, by wondering whether the existence of an established
church makes the baptismal registry "iffy" as evidence of faith, and
by wondering about the actual nature of John Shakespeare's confession.
These seem to be among the most "iffy" pieces of evidence: that is, I
would not start by wondering, for example, whether there might be lots
of baptismal notices for non-existent people. But my assumptions may
be wrong here, as well. (Generally, I tend to assume that a reader
will know that my assumptions may be wrong, so I don't keep saying so.
In this case, I'm unfamiliar enough with the field in question that
I'm calling this out explicitly.)
As for the birds, I think Stephen Jay Gould had disagreed with that
sort of argument, on Darwinian grounds. But it's close enough for
birders, as I understand. It's certainly consistent with the kinds of
advice that birders have given me, when I've asked them for help in
identifying the birds around my house.
I don't see anything wrong, on these grounds, with what you say that
Diana Price does.
----
Bianca S.
biancas842001
> "Which
> would you rather have for Oxford, record of books or a statement by Aubrey
> that Oxford wrote plays published under another's name?" Here's an
> improvement, "Which would you rather have for Oxford, all the evidence you
> currently have that he was an author, or a statement by Aubrey that he wrote
> plays published under another's name?"
Who is Aubrey? and what, in your opinion, would any statement by him
accomplish?
Or Oxford's name on the title-page of
> ONE published copy of HAMLET.
As I understand it, at least some Oxfordians believe that "William
Shakespeare" _was_ "Oxford's name." His pen name, but still his name,
sufficient to identify him. What you are describing, though, is a
printed copy of "Hamlet" with the name, "Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of
Oxford," on the title page, right?
As a Gulielmus-Affirmer, I would sincerely much
> rather that Oxfordians had what they do have than the anecdotal evidence of
> Aubrey.
Is this because of the nature of the evidence or because of the nature
of Aubrey?
----
Bianca S.
Bob Grumman
the fact that the evidence a person is a writer is different from the evidence a
person is a doctor, etc. I snip your other arguments because they are
irrelevant to my point which is that I think Price misdescribed her method. I
am saying her method involves alleged writers only, not the population in
general. Where, for instance, does she apply her method to doctors or lawyers?
In her book, she is only concerned with persons said to have been writers.
Yesterday I e.mailed the following to her: " . . . the reason I'm writing is
that I am defending one aspect of your authorship-evidence-sifting mechanism
against Terry Ross. I'm saying that in spite of one or two general descriptions
of the mechanism in your book, you are not trying to distinguish writers from
doctors, lawyers, etc., but alleged writers who were genuine writers from
alleged writers who were not genuine writers.
"I believe you or Pat stated at HLAS that you began with a sample of persons
each of whom at least one biography claimed was a writer, and then analyzed the
evidence for each to see if he really was a writer. So you were not using
possession of books, the particular category of evidence Terry is questioning,
as evidence that any person was a writer but only as evidence that a person
alleged to be a writer was indeed a writer.
"Do I have you right? If so, have you clarified your position anywhere?
Needless to say, I'm against your possession of books category however defined,
but it is certainly vastly more valid if used to distinguish alleged/genuine
writers from alleged/ersatz writers than it would be used to distinguish writers
from non-writers."
I'm not avoiding being critical about her massively irrational book just because
I think it may be slightly less irrational than you do, Terry. It may be that
taking her method for what she says in her book it is, is too easy for me to
want to do. One argument and we win. But then neo-Priceans will re-define her
filter and we'll have to do what we should be doing in the first place (and you
and I and others have done and are doing): show how defective her sifter is for
distinguishing alleged writers who were genuine writers from alleged writers who
were not genuine writers.
Also, as a writer who has more than once misdescribed what he was trying to do
in a piece, I tend to believe Price could have made the same error. She has
grandiose ideas for her filter and misses the times it fails to do what she
wants it to. She needs to fix her definition of whom her sifting device
processes. Or dump the two of her bins that have nothing specifically to do
with writing.
I rather doubt she'll do, either. She may well not even answer my e.mail.
We'll see.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
>
>I don't see why it's nonsensical either, I think Tom is just being
>facetious about the possibility of finding a title page of a Shakespearean
>play with Oxendorde's name on it.
>
>It seems to me that you are just trying to get the Oxenfordians to admit
>that they really would like a title page attribution, instead of denying
>that they have any importance whatsoever.
>
>See my demolition of Monsarrat's RES paper!
>http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/monsarr1.html
>
>The Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
>http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
>
>Agent Jim
Whew, thanks for the support, Agent J. I was beginning to go into my "the
whole-world-is-insane-but-me" zone, and I do tend to feel that's a sign that
something's wrong with me.
--Bob G.
biancas842001
> At the risk of self-advertisement, you can read what I regard as a
> rather thorough debunking at http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm
>
> One point that you may want to notice particularly is that, although
> Miss Price asserts that "Shakespere" has no proper literary paper
> trail, she explicitly says that he was an author (just not the author
> of the works attributed to Shakespeare). That internal contradiction
> alone is enough to destroy her whole edifice.
I looked at Tom Veal's site and read a little of it. This is what I
gather from your general comments about what Terry Ross seems to be
calling Diana Price's "filter":
"Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" are apparently taken by
some as evidence that William Shakespeare, the man named as author of
these two books, was the legal name of the author of these poems. In
particular, the dedications of the two books are taken to show that
the writer, whoever he was, had a "personal relationship" with the
purported patron of the work. However, Diana Price contends that this
inference is circular -- that it depends on the assumption that the
William Shakespeare named is the William Shakespeare we have come to
think is named. If we had had independent reason to believe that the
William Shakespeare named had really been who we have always thought
he was, we could indeed accept the existence of such a "personal
relationship." Without this assumption, she contends, the purported
"personal relationship" must be considered unsupported speculation, at
best.
"Thus," Tom Veal continues, "the dedications to _Venus and Adonis_ and
_The Rape of Lucrece_ fail as evidence of a 'personal relationship
with a patron'." Also, for the same reasons, we must exclude from
consideration anything that mentions Shakespeare without linking him
to some "identifier" that can reliably tell us about his profession.
Additionally, Price apparently "creates blanks" in the historical
record. In other words, a reasonable person would see a full record,
with all expected documents, and so forth, present and accounted for
-- if she did not exclude certain documents, for no good reason at
all. Many would disagree with her, as to the propriety or need for
excluding these types of records.
One thing I don't understand about Tom Veal's review is the following:
What does he mean about "the nature of [Shakespeare's] literary work"?
His own argument seems to be circular here. The only
characterization that I see, of this "nature," is that the literary
work in question consists of "Shakespearean plays." Thus he says, in
effect, "It is in the nature of Shakespearean plays that we would not
expect to find manuscripts in the author's hand, and most of the
manuscripts in Shakespeare's case are Shakespearean plays." Isn't he
begging the question?
I really don't see anything there that would require a retraction.
----
Bianca S.
Bob Grumman
>> would you rather have for Oxford, record of books or a statement by Aubrey
>> that Oxford wrote plays published under another's name?" Here's an
>> improvement, "Which would you rather have for Oxford, all the evidence you
>> currently have that he was an author, or a statement by Aubrey that he wrote
>> plays published under another's name?"
>
>Who is Aubrey? and what, in your opinion, would any statement by him
>accomplish?
John Aubrey collected information fifty some odd years after Shakespeare died
about various people, including Shakespeare. Some of it was published after his
death as BRIEF LIVES. His information is mainly or all anecdotal, and in some
cases almost surely wrong. A statement by him would serve as posthumous
testimony for whatever it was he said.
> Or Oxford's name on the title-page of
>> ONE published copy of HAMLET.
>
>As I understand it, at least some Oxfordians believe that "William
>Shakespeare" _was_ "Oxford's name." His pen name, but still his name,
>sufficient to identify him. What you are describing, though, is a
>printed copy of "Hamlet" with the name, "Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of
>Oxford," on the title page, right?
Yes. That was his name. "William Shakespeare" would have been his pen-name,
not his name.
> As a Gulielmus-Affirmer, I would sincerely much
>> rather that Oxfordians had what they do have than the anecdotal evidence of
>> Aubrey.
>
>Is this because of the nature of the evidence or because of the nature
>of Aubrey?
Both. In other words, I'm glad the Oxfordians don't have anecdotal evidence,
even anecdotal evidence as questionable as Aubrey's.
--Bob G.
Neil Brennen
> Tom...@ix.netcom.com (Tom Veal) wrote:
> > At the risk of self-advertisement, you can read what I regard as a
> > rather thorough debunking at http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm
> >
> > One point that you may want to notice particularly is that, although
> > Miss Price asserts that "Shakespere" has no proper literary paper
> > trail, she explicitly says that he was an author (just not the author
> > of the works attributed to Shakespeare). That internal contradiction
> > alone is enough to destroy her whole edifice.
>
> I looked at Tom Veal's site and read a little of it.
Snip the Biancabitc-, err, biancabot reading "a little" and feeling well
enough to discuss the whole.
> I really don't see anything there that would require a retraction.
Perhaps you should read the whole thing?
Neil Brennen
"biancas842001" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:456bd92f.04071...@posting.google.com...
> On 7/19/04, "Neil Brennen" <chessne...@mindspringnospam.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > "biancas842001" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:456bd92f.04071...@posting.google.com...
> >> On 7/18/04 "Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, biancas842001 wrote:
> >>>> If Diana Price agreed with you, she would likely correct the
> >> problems
> >>>> you note.
> >>>
> >>> Correcting the problems would require rejecting all her work and
> >>> publishing a retraction.
> >>
> >> Says you.
> >
> > Price's methodology is so flawed that she would need to publish a
> > retraction. For instance, her filter's rejection of memorial tributes
more
> > than a year old is absurd.
>
> Okay, says you and Terry Ross. :-)
I'm not aware that Terry is making this point.
> Why, then, don't you critique the methodology,
Why don't you try to read what I wrote? Or is English only your fifth
language?
instead of confusing
> method with assumption and everything else, and then attacking
> innocent Usenet posters who are misled by your misreadings?
Who, aside from the biancabot troll, is confused here?
> >> She could hardly be expected to do that even if
> >>> she agreed with me.
> >>
> >> Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with
> >> you about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her
> behavior
> >> in the slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
> >> intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
> >
> > It's clear to only the biancabot that this is so. Of course, once she
> > actually reads the book, she may change her mind.
>
> I don't understand what difference my having read the book would make
> to my beliefs about what Diana Price would or wouldn't do, if
> demonstrated publicly to have been wrong.
Why didn't you answer with an inane question?
> >>>> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
> >>>> criticisms are correct.
> >>>
> >>> Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided
> was in
> >>> error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held
> > beliefs.
> >>> Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the implications of
> one's
> > own
> >>> beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so strongly.
> >>
> >> Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you
> conclude
> >> to be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront
> >> the truth.
> >
> > Will you retract this when you discover you are wrong about Terry Ross?
>
> It's a hypothetical.
Wouldn't the word be, "hysterical", biancabot? Doesn't that better describe
you?
Neil Brennen
Probably Ogburn. Sorry Ken has been using it at the Fellowship, but after
all, when in Rome....
Neil Brennen
Ross approaches the Net. He serves! It's a deep lob!
> > Is the response interrogative more tiresome than efective?
>
> Is this a quote from "My Fair Lady"?
A wild response from the Biancabot. Ross scrambles to hit it.
Weak volley by Biancabot, on the order of "I know you are, but what am I?"
> >>> She could hardly be expected to do that even if she agreed with
> me.
> >>
> >> Makes perfect sense. Clearly you believe that she could agree with
> you
> >> about all her beliefs' being wrong, without changing her behavior
> in the
> >> slightest. So you must necessarily be stating that she is
> >> intellectually dishonest, rather than that she is only mistaken.
> >
> > Are you acquainted enough with her book to form a judgment about its
> > intellectual honesty?
>
> It's a matter of logic, not acquaintance.
A fault for the Biancabot. She failed to answer a question with a question.
15 - love for Ross.
> >>>> That she does not, suggests that she is unable to see why your
> >>>> criticisms are correct.
> >>>
> >>> Have you ever held strongly to an opinion that you later decided
> was in
> >>> error? It is not an easy thing to let go of one's strongly held
> >>> beliefs. Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the
> implications
> >>> of one's own beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them so
> >>> strongly.
> >>
> >> Very charitable of you. Anyone whom you think is wrong, you
> conclude to
> >> be in the pitiable state of being to weak to be able to confront
> the
> >> truth.
> >
> > Have you never known anyone who found it difficult to give up a
> > long-standing belief that he or she eventually came to believe was
> > unsound?
>
> Have you?
Another weak reply by Biancabot. She's in poor form here; I doubt she'd pass
the Tennis Turing Test.
The Biancabot tries to be fancy, and misses the ball. 30 - love for Ross.
> >>> Of course I have not merely "repeat[ed the] same criticisms over
> and
> >>> over; I have at times restated, rephrased, extended, simplified,
> >>> refocused -- one of these days, I believe, Bob will see the light;
> I
> >>> have no such hopes for Price, although she has, I believe,
> accepted one
> >>> or two of my criticisms.
> >>
> >> Are you criticizing Diana Price or criticizing Bob Grumman?
> >
> > Are you unable to determine that for yourself?
>
> You say you are criticizing Diana Price, but your actual hope seems to
> be that Bob Grumman changes his mind. That suggests that you are
> actually criticizing Bob Grumman.
Again failing to answer a question with a question. 40 - love for Ross.
> >> I don't know either of them, so I can't say whether or not you are
> >> correct about which of the two would be easier to convince.
> >
> > Do you always know which of the people you do know would be easier to
> > convince on various topics?
>
> No. Do you?
A close call for Biancabot there. She manage to save the point, but just
barely. This is some of the worst HLAS tennis we've seen since the last
Steese - Grumman match.
> >>>> You aren't even persuading anyone -- that I can see -- to
> consider
> >>>> your criticisms to be correct.
> >>>
> >>> You haven't looked very far; a number of people have agreed with
> my
> >>> criticisms; I will try to find ways to persuade some of the
> others, and
> >>> they may attempt to persuade me to modify my views. Isn't that
> the way
> >>> it is supposed to work?
> >>
> >> Perhaps. Whom do you consider yourself to have persuaded, and what
> >> have they done as a result?
> >
> > Have you searched carefully and yet failed to find that people have
indeed
> > been persuaded by me from time to time?
>
> No.
Game, set, and match for Ross. After a word from our sponsor, we will bring
you live coverage of Venus and Serena Williams debating the Porter scene in
Macbeth....
biancas842001
> "biancas842001" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:456bd92f.0407...@posting.google.com...
> > Tom...@ix.netcom.com (Tom Veal) wrote:
> > > At the risk of self-advertisement, you can read what I regard as a
> > > rather thorough debunking at http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm
[snip]
> Perhaps you should read the whole thing?
Perhaps I shall. Watch this space.
----
Bianca S.
Neil Brennen
Point to me, of course, for your failure to answer in a question?
Terry Ross
> I know what Price said, Terry. You are RIGHT. She says her method is
> based on the fact that the evidence a person is a writer is different
> from the evidence a person is a doctor, etc.
No, you still don't get it. The ONLY kind of evidence that Price thinks
may be used to assign a person to a profession is the survival of
documents belonging to "types of personal records" that are peculiar to
that profession. She considers EVERY ONE of her filter's categories to
be as "peculiar to the profession of writing" as a "handwritten
prescription" would be to the profession of medicine. In the absence of
documents that satisfy her filter, no person may be assigned to a
profession. Should one of those documents happen to exist, that person
would ipso facto be considered a member of that profession.
> I snip your other arguments because they are irrelevant to my point
> which is that I think Price misdescribed her method.
She describes it reasonably well -- she did not understand its flaws, but
the problem is not with her description but with her ideas.
> I am saying her method involves alleged writers only, not the population
> in general.
No, you are saying that so ill-conceived is her project that she only
tests it on a few people known to have been writers (she didn't even try
to select "professional writers"). This is indeed a problem with her
project, but it is a different one from the problem of her filter's
design. If she HAD properly tested her filter, she might have seen some
of its problems before they were pointed out to her on hlas, and then she
might have either refined or rejected the filter.
There are no "alleged writers" anywhere on her tables. If she had
intended to test it on "alleged writers" then she could have developed a
list of Elizabethans known or thought to have been writers, as well as a
few who had never been called writers, and then she could have seen how
well it fared. She did not do that; she shows no signs in her book of
having considered doing that.
Of course we can only imagine what "success" would have looked like if her
filter had been more skillfully designed and more thoroughly tested. Is
there any "alleged" writer whose status as a writer has moved from
"possible" to "certain"? Is there any person who had not previously been
considered a writer whom we now admit to that profession? Of course not
--she is not truly interested in distinguishing writers from non-writers,
or in adding a new method that will have a more general application in
literary history; she is merely out to remove Shakespeare (yet if she
applied her filter more fairly and reasonably, even it would pick out
Shakespeare as a writer, while it would reject Marlowe and Kyd).
Let me give a comparable example to the imaginary testing of "alleged
writers." If we wanted to test a method for settling some issue concerning
"alleged playwrights," we could begin by extracting names from something
such as David Kathman's Biographical Index of English Drama before 1660
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com/bd/
Here are three consecutive entries from Dave's index:
"Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester (908?-984). Playwright?. [Annals, 219
(1989)]
"Ainsworth, William (Aynsworth) (c.1607-71). Playwright(?). [JCS iii, 2;
RLDE 2/10: 15 (1990)]
"Alabaster, William (1568-1640). Latin playwright. [ES iii, 207; Guiney,
Recusant Poets, 335 (1939); Story and Gardner, William Alabaster, xi-xliii
(1959); Binns, 'Alabaster's Birth' (1980); Eccles, Authors, 4 (1982); RLDE
2/4: 7 (1987); DLB 132: 3 (1993); Sutton, William Alabaster (1997)]"
We have here three "alleged" playwrights; the evidence that Alabaster was
a playwright is stronger than the evidence that Aethelwold or Ainsworth
was, but there is at least some reason to list them. A new search of the
historical record might provide good reason either to remove the quotation
marks after the word "playwright" or to remove the names from the index.
Would a Pricean filter help for such a task? My guess is that even if
William Ainsworth's father had left him some law books, we would not
consider the case that he was indeed a playwright had been proven.
> Where, for instance, does she apply her method to doctors or lawyers? In
> her book, she is only concerned with persons said to have been writers.
Bob, have you read her book? Price is saying that those whose profession
was "professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
records left behind." (300)
Do you find a page 300 in your copy of the book?
Price accepts that Shakespeare was an actor. Although she does not
discuss an "actor's filter," her assignment of Shakespeare to the acting
profession must surely be based on documents she considers both "personal"
and "peculiar to" the acting profession.
She DOES sketch a doctor's filter, which she offers as "an example."
What is it an "example of" if not that a "doctors filter" is a specific
instance of her overarching argument about professions generally, and the
types of documents they produce that are peculiar to specific professions?
Price says, "The documentary evidence left by a writer is different from
that left by a doctor, for example, because some personal records are
peculiar to the respective professions." (111)
Do you find a page 111 in your copy of her book?
For Price, the records "peculiar to the [medical] profession" include
"payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions, records of
medical training, ... or medical journals or casebooks" (111).
I don't know how to make this clearer. Price believes, and states in her
book, that people who are members of a given profession leave behind them
specific types of personal records that are peculiar to that profession.
She explicitly sketches a filter for doctors; she details a filter for
writers; her admission of Shakespeare to a profession she will assign him
to must be based on an implicit "actor's filter."
I can't for the life of me fathom why you can't deal with Price's actual
argument. It is not self-evidently silly to believe that there are indeed
specific kinds of records that may link a person to a particular
profession -- that is not where Price goes wrong; and if she were less
absolute, and less determined to advance an antistratfordian view, and
less bumbling in her consideration of documents and her construction of
filters, then she might actually have made a minor but not uninteresting
point.
Here is another thought experiment for you. Let us allege that everybody
who lived c. 1600 was a doctor and also that everybody who lived c. 1600
was a writer. Let us use the medical filter Price sketches to screen for
doctors: "payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions,
records of medical training, ... or medical journals or casebooks."
There would undoubtedly be some false positives (someone who bought
supplies on a doctor's behalf) and false negatives (people like our old
friend Dr. Shakeleech), but the filter would certainly work better than
Price's actual "writers" filter, which would include among its proven
"professional writers" every person with any surviving educational record
including "records of medical training," every person with a book record,
including anybody who had owned or been given "medical journals or
casebooks."
Price, of course, does not wish to consider the possibility of either
"false positives" or of "false negatives." She pretends that her filter
is absolute, and that its one and only "true negative" is William
Shakespeare.
She may, it seems to me, hint at other possible filters, but it is
surprising that she does not attempt to construct one for professional
money-lenders or "play-brokers"; that she does not attempt to relate the
documents that she DOES accept as "personal" for William Shakespeare to
the "types of documents" that would be "peculiar" to the professions that
she would assign him to. Does this failure represent a tacit
acknowledgement that her larger argument is flawed? Is this one more
instance where she just hasn't thought her project through? It's
impossible to say.
Terry Ross
>> Her general argument -- in fact, the most original part of her book -- is
>> the argument that professions are characterized by classes of
>> documentation that are "peculiar" to that profession, that the existence
>> of any document in such a "peculiar" class is enough to mark a person as
>> having been a member of that profession, that in the absence of such
>> documents "peculiar" to a particular profession, nobody should be
>> considered a member of that profession, even if that person lived hundreds
>> of years ago, and even if most of the records from that time have
>> vanished.
>
> Let's generalize your argument and see if it remains valid:
>
> Ornithology:
> "Species of birds are characterized by attributes that are
> 'peculiar' to each species, and the existence of a marking in such a
> 'peculiar' class is enough to mark a bird as being a specimen of that
> species, etc."
I thought you were going to generalize my view of Price's argument; you
did not entirely succeed. This might be a fairer shot at it:
Ornithology:
All bird species are characterized by classes of markings that are
"peculiar" to a species; the presence of any such marking is enough to
mark a bird as having been a member of that species; in the absence of
such markings "peculiar" to a particular species, no bird should be
considered a member of that species, even if the conditions that allow one
to check for such markings are not present, and even if many birds that
members of that species do not always display such markings.
That is how a pseudo-Pricean approach to birding might work. Any
experienced birder will see some of the problems with this hypothetical
bird "filter" based on markings. Birders often work in conditions where
such markings are not visible, and they have to rely on other factors to
identify birds in the field. Knowing everything there is to know about
the plumage of Black Rails will not do you much good if you are trying to
count them at midnight (nothing will do you much good if you are trying to
count them during the day). Some birds may be quickly identified at very
great distances by attitude or behavior, even if they never come close
enough for an examination of their "markings." Other birds can be
extremely difficult to identify on the basis of markings even if they are
very close (e.g., female Selasphorus hummingbirds) Some individual birds
will remain unidentifiable as to species although there is no question
that they are birds. Birds molt: they replace their feathers, and their
markings change. Females and young often have very different "markings"
from mature male birds.
A birder with a pseudo-Pricean approach will reject a great many birds
that an experienced birder would be able to identify. A pseudo-Pricean
would almost never be able to make a field identification of a rail, a
Fish Crow, a raptor flying past a hawk watch, a bluebird siting in the
shade. A pseudo-Pricean approach would have no room for such categories
as "Scaup species" (e.g,. a bird that is certainly either a Greater Scaup
or a Lesser Scaup) -- as far as a pseudo-Pricean birder was concerned, a
bird that could not be classified as to species on the basis of its
markings would belong to no species whatsoever. Genuine field
ornithologists and experienced birders are actually more likely to
identify a bird on the basis of something other than "markings" than they
are to do so relying exclusively on markings, but for the pseudo-Pricean
ONLY markings "peculiar to a species" may be used.
[snip of Bianca's interesting comparison to religion]
>
> As for the birds, I think Stephen Jay Gould had disagreed with that
> sort of argument, on Darwinian grounds. But it's close enough for
> birders, as I understand. It's certainly consistent with the kinds of
> advice that birders have given me, when I've asked them for help in
> identifying the birds around my house.
We birders use (but do not exclusively rely upon) "field marks" or other
distinctive "attributes" that will, we hope, allow us to identify an
individual bird as a member of a species. Sometimes we have to settle for
a genus-level classification, but sometimes we can place an individual
bird within not just a species but within a subspecies. Subspecies
identification is important both for the fun of it and also because
today's "subspecies" may become tomorrow's "species." We rely on the
scholarly community of ornithologists to tell us what counts as a species.
For a number of years the state bird of Maryland, the Baltimore Oriole
(Icterus galbula), was lumped with the Bullock's Oriole into one species,
the "Northern Oriole"; now the the two varieties have been split into two
species again, but while the lumpers ruled, birders in the field continued
to distinguish a Baltimore from a Bullock's. Right now all Canada Geese
are treated as members of a single species, but we have reason to expect
that at some point "Canada Geese" will be divided into a number of
different species. Red Crossbills may well be split into several
different species (perhaps as many as 9) that will be indistinguishable by
their "markings."
Of course the birds will continue to do what they do regardless of what we
call them.
>
> I don't see anything wrong, on these grounds, with what you say that
> Diana Price does.
A pseudo-Pricean would not have much of a birdlist, but even that
understates the problem. Ornithologists DO have grounds for separating
birds into various species; distinctions that would be definitive if done
on the basis of DNA analysis are thought to correlate very well with the
distinctions that are made by experienced birders in the field (who rely
on much more than just the "markings" that are typical of a species).
On the other hand, what we have been calling Price's "filter" does not do
a good job distinguishing writers from nonwriters. Each of her categories
is supposed to be "peculiar" to the "species" or "profession" (she uses
both terms) of writer. Any person who has a check mark in any category is
considered to be a professional writer. Price counts "evidence of books
owned, written in, borrowed, or given." Thus Marston gets credit because
his father left him some law books. Do you think "evidence of books
owned, written in, borrowed, or given" is something "peculiar to writers"?
If so, then one must conclude that John Marston's father was a
professional writer, because he was the one who gave the law books to his
son. We must conclude that every person for whom there is "evidence of
books owned, written in, borrowed, or given" is ipso facto proven to have
been a professional writer.
This, of course, will not work. The great majority of people for whom
there is such "book evidence" were not professional writers. To return to
birds -- while Mallards have webbed feet, so do a great many birds that
are not Mallards; so do a great many creatures that are not even birds.
Of course even this comparison is not apt enough, because while we could
expect to find webbed feet on any healthy Mallard (if we were close enough
to see), we do NOT have "book evidence" for every person that Price DOES
consider a writer. Price's "book evidence" is thus neither sufficient nor
necessary for distinguishing writers from nonwriters, but her filter is
designed to treat it as sufficient all by itself. A similar analysis
could be done for most of Price's other categories.
Ken Kaplan
> >Besides, there were many other middle class or common writers who came
> >from humble beginnings. Jonson was one. Why would Shakespeare among
> >them only be singled out as Terence?
> >
> >Ken Kaplan
>
> Because he was Irish? Come on, Ken. Davies thought Terence was a great writer
> of elegant comedies, as did many of his time (and ours). Davies admired his
> friend Shakespeare's comedies. So he called Shakespeare "our Terence." Why is
> that so hard for you to grasp?
--Bob G.
What evidence rather than speculation do you have that "Davies thought
Terence was a great writer of elegant comedies". Is there some letter
or verse by him that states that? Exactly what evidence do you have
that makes Davies a "friend" of Shakespeare? Is he like the phantom
"friends" Meres described who got sonnets? Furthermore what in the
epistle links the two? Just asking as I haven't looked at Davies in a
while.
Ken
Paul Crowley
> >Any evidence is better than no evidence,
> >but some is scarcely worth bothering
> >about. That's why Price ruled it out for
> >the purposes of her comparison -- she
> >needed to draw line somewhere. But I am
> >not particularly interested in following the
> >gyrations of this particular bee in your
> >bonnet.
>
> Sure, possession of books is worth bothering about;
Why not? If you don't own books, then
you're highly unlikely to be much of a
writer -- certainly not of the kind we'd
expect Shakespeare to have been.
> notice within a year of
> death as a writer who had died by someone who didn't personally know him is more
> worth bothering with than notice within seven years of the same by someone who
> personally knew the man involved;
Probably. The notice will be read by
MANY others who did know him.
But whoever, at that time. wrote about
a man recently dead, who had not
known him personally?
A seven-year-later notice MIGHT be
worthwhile depending on what it says.
If it's full of strange ambiguities, then
it may not be worth much.
> record of formal education is more worth
> bothering with
It counts.
> than forty different title-page-attributions;
No one doubts the attributions to a "Will
Shake-speare" -- but not to an illiterate
Stratman with a roughly similar name.
> a letter by an alleged writer asking about a post as a
> teacher is worth bothering with,
Anything that shows a real life is of interest.
> but not a monument proclaiming an alleged writer as a
> Virgil seven years after his death.
Something like that could well be fraudulent
or deliberately mistleading.
> Etc.
Price's method is one way of focussing minds
-- but far from the only one. In many ways,
she misses the point. You don't counter an
irrational semi-religious belief with logical
evidence-based arguments. Although I
suppose you are obliged to make the effort.
Paul.
Bob Grumman
>> based on the fact that the evidence a person is a writer is different
>> from the evidence a person is a doctor, etc.
>
Her definition of "alleged writer" is anyone who has been described in a
biography as a writer. If you don't like that use of "alleged writer," change
it to "person described in biography as writer."
No, but I have an ESP connection to Bianca.
>Price is saying that those whose profession
>was "professional writer" may be distinguished from those of other
>professions. Price says, "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles
>by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
>distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
>records left behind." (300)
Does she then say that her sorting mechanism will do that?
>Do you find a page 300 in your copy of the book?
No, Terry--I'm sure you're making it up.
>Price accepts that Shakespeare was an actor. Although she does not
>discuss an "actor's filter," her assignment of Shakespeare to the acting
>profession must surely be based on documents she considers both "personal"
>and "peculiar to" the acting profession.
>
>She DOES sketch a doctor's filter, which she offers as "an example."
Right, but that has a descriptive function, only. She doesn't run any doctor
through it.
>What is it an "example of" if not that a "doctors filter" is a specific
>instance of her overarching argument about professions generally, and the
>types of documents they produce that are peculiar to specific professions?
>Price says, "The documentary evidence left by a writer is different from
>that left by a doctor, for example, because some personal records are
>peculiar to the respective professions." (111)
I am just saying that her description is invalid.
>Do you find a page 111 in your copy of her book?
>
>For Price, the records "peculiar to the [medical] profession" include
>"payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions, records of
>medical training, ... or medical journals or casebooks" (111).
>
>I don't know how to make this clearer. Price believes, and states in her
>book, that people who are members of a given profession leave behind them
>specific types of personal records that are peculiar to that profession.
>She explicitly sketches a filter for doctors; she details a filter for
>writers; her admission of Shakespeare to a profession she will assign him
>to must be based on an implicit "actor's filter."
All this indicates to me is that she misdescribes her filter.
>I can't for the life of me fathom why you can't deal with Price's actual
>argument. It is not self-evidently silly to believe that there are indeed
>specific kinds of records that may link a person to a particular
>profession -- that is not where Price goes wrong; and if she were less
>absolute, and less determined to advance an antistratfordian view, and
>less bumbling in her consideration of documents and her construction of
>filters, then she might actually have made a minor but not uninteresting
>point.
I have dealt with her point: I have said that she misdescribed her actual
filter. I have also said that a filter like the one described in her book would
be ridiculous.
>Here is another thought experiment for you. Let us allege that everybody
>who lived c. 1600 was a doctor and also that everybody who lived c. 1600
>was a writer. Let us use the medical filter Price sketches to screen for
>doctors: "payments for medical supplies, handwritten prescriptions,
>records of medical training, ... or medical journals or casebooks."
>There would undoubtedly be some false positives (someone who bought
>supplies on a doctor's behalf) and false negatives (people like our old
>friend Dr. Shakeleech), but the filter would certainly work better than
>Price's actual "writers" filter, which would include among its proven
>"professional writers" every person with any surviving educational record
>including "records of medical training," every person with a book record,
>including anybody who had owned or been given "medical journals or
>casebooks."
Terry, I agree that a filter that worked the way Price describes hers as working
would be ridiculous. I also agree that the filter she actually uses in her
book, which is clearly applied ONLY to the 24 writers she lists and Shagwonk, is
also ridiculous, though less so.
>Price, of course, does not wish to consider the possibility of either
>"false positives" or of "false negatives." She pretends that her filter
>is absolute, and that its one and only "true negative" is William
>Shakespeare.
>
>She may, it seems to me, hint at other possible filters, but it is
>surprising that she does not attempt to construct one for professional
>money-lenders or "play-brokers"; that she does not attempt to relate the
>documents that she DOES accept as "personal" for William Shakespeare to
>the "types of documents" that would be "peculiar" to the professions that
>she would assign him to. Does this failure represent a tacit
>acknowledgement that her larger argument is flawed? Is this one more
>instance where she just hasn't thought her project through? It's
>impossible to say.
One more try to get you to see what I'm saying. Let's hypothesize that I've
written a book about a machine I'd like to see built. I describe it as a box
that will transform any liquid you put into it to solid gold. I then describe
it in detail, but only as it would operate when water was poured into it. You
find something in my detailed description that indicates that root beer cannot
possibly be transformed into gold if poured into my box. Which have you done:
refuted my box, or shown that my description of it was invalid?
I, of course, would say that my box was only for water, and that I'd lost my
head in bringing liquids of all kinds into it. Price perhaps won't say the
equivalent of that about her filter, I don't know. I will update you on my
e.mail to her in my next post.
--Bob G.
biancas842001
> "biancas842001" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:456bd92f.04072...@posting.google.com...
> > "Neil Brennen" <chessne...@mindspringnospam.com> wrote:
> > > "biancas842001" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > > news:456bd92f.0407...@posting.google.com...
> > > > Tom...@ix.netcom.com (Tom Veal) wrote:
> > > > > At the risk of self-advertisement, you can read what I regard as a
> > > > > rather thorough debunking at http://stromata.tripod.com/id115.htm
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > Perhaps you should read the whole thing?
> >
> > Perhaps I shall. Watch this space.
>
> Point to me, of course, for your failure to answer in a question?
Here goes:
Tom Veal does not like Diana Price. He thinks she is
old-fashioned. He also thinks she is dangerously modern. In other
words, he thinks that Diana Price is so old-fashioned that she is
unable to realize how really revolutionary her methodology could be.
Diana Price, according to Veal, displays all the worst
tendencies of literary criticism in modern times (without the
political interest possessed by most academics). She is hostile to
her subject matter, and she reads with a "hypercritical" eye. Like
those modern academics and semi-popular critics, she knows almost
nothing, except how to read in meanings that aren't really there. Nor
does she choose for herself an especially difficult task. Her sole
interest is in showing that William Shakespeare did not write "his"
plays, but that the "real author" was some mysterious, high-ranking
aristocrat who for some equally mysterious reason chose not to be
named. She does not condescend to say anything positive, regarding
who the author may just possibly have been. Tom Veal views Diana
Price's work as yet another example of what he refers to as an
"anti-Stratfordian" pathology (similar to the anti-American Islamicism
Veal also tracks at his website), and perhaps not surprisingly, what
he finds is symptomatology. His review, in fact, bears some
resemblance to those "debunking" pamphlets that promise the reader
intellectual protection from propagandists.
Tom Veal's criticisms against Diana Price's "meta-biography"
of Shakespeare are several. Briefly and in order, they are: Diana
Price depicts "Shakspere" (her word for William Shakespeare of
Stratford-on-Avon, as opposed to "Shakespeare," meaning whoever it was
wrote the plays) as venal. Diana Price cannot read a negative
description of anyone in about the right time and place without
assuming that the description is meant to apply to Shakspere. Using
these flawed techniques, Diana Price accuses Shakspere of having
stolen (physically) manuscripts, and hired writers at below-market
wages, and fraudulently passed others' work off as his own. Diana
Price invents, out of whole cloth and with no evidentiary support
whatever, an unbelievably elaborate narrative (one for which the need
is not apparent) of front men, pseudonyms, and "play-brokers," which
_might_ explain certain "coincidences" such as the name "Shakespeare"
and certain allusions in writings of the time. Diana Price is
immersed in a fantasy in which authors must be dashing and glamorous,
and so both plays up the faults of her subject and also falsely
concludes that those faults must make a man incapable of writing great
works. Veal's attacks on her methodology, both historical and
literary-critical, are equally harsh.
I may return to Tom Veal's criticism of her historical
arguments at some later time.
Veal describes Diana Price's literary-critical method as
"deconstruction." By this he seems to mean, primarily, that her real
intention is to prove a text or a passage "untrustworthy" as
straightforward prose (that it "deconstructs itself," as the phrase
goes), thus giving herself permission to read in otherwise
impermissible meanings. Veal contends that Price, like those who
actually call themselves deconstructionists, finds such proofs to be
all too easy. In addition: "she tosses about what one might call
‘atmospheric arguments', chains of facts that sound portentous but
lead nowhere." I am uncertain what Tom Veal might mean by this
(itself portentous) phrase, but it seems to me that all it means is
that Tom Veal disagrees with what he's reading. He illustrates this
by a lengthy analysis of Price's reading of a John Davies poem that
she thinks is a reference to Shakspere. The bottom line, in any
event, is that Diana Price sees "hidden meanings" in too many places
for Tom Veal's taste. She posits much too much interest, on
Elizabethan writers' parts, in writing in ways that some could read
but most could not.
Diana Price has claimed that her idea of the "literary paper
trail," with accompanying grid of evidence types, is her "strongest"
argument. Tom Veal disagrees with this, as well. Veal takes Price's
grid columns and critiques them one by one, noting her missteps in
comparison with the arguments made by scholars. It is probably not
surprising that, having rejected Diana Price's historical methods,
Veal goes on to reject the categories she drew up using those methods.
This "literary paper trail" argument has already been discussed to
death, and nothing much remains to be said here.
Veal describes Diana Price as a promising beginner, or perhaps
an amateur, who unfortunately has swallowed, whole, all the
assumptions of the group of pseudo-scholars whom she first came in
contact with. He would like to see more of her original literary
analysis, perhaps, if only she would get rid of her stultifying
deconstructionist assumptions. He might like to see an improved
version of the "paper trail filter," once Price (or some other student
of Shakespeare) has abandoned anti-Stratfordianism for respectable
literary history. Veal seems reluctant to praise overmuch a book
that's in a genre he believes to be the sole domain of crankdom
(unless he really believes that the "rage" he imputes to her derives
from her individual psychology, rather than her subject matter).
Diana Price's work (according to him) is far from sufficient to redeem
the whole.
I've been asked to read Tom Veal's review in order to see
whether it modifies my opinion, so far, (based mostly on Usenet
discussions) of Diana Price's work. I honestly can't yet say that it
does. I don't know whether this meta-review will seem detailed enough
to have fulfilled my "assignment," but it's about as far as I feel
interested in going with it.
----
Bianca S.
Bob Grumman
defending one aspect of your authorship-evidence-sifting mechanism against Terry
Ross. I'm saying that in spite of one or two general descriptions of the
mechanism in your book, you are not trying to distinguish writers from doctors,
lawyers, etc., but alleged writers who were genuine writers from
alleged writers who were not genuine writers.
I believe you or Pat stated at HLAS that you began with a sample of persons each
of whom at least one biography claimed was a writer, and then analyzed the
evidence for each to see if he really was a writer. So you were not using
possession of books, the particular category of evidence Terry is questioning,
as evidence that any person was a writer but only as evidence that a person
alleged to be a writer was indeed a writer.
Do I have you right? If so, have you clarified your position anywhere?
Needless to say, I'm against your possession of books category however defined,
but it is certainly vastly more valid if used to distinguish alleged/genuine
writers from alleged/ersatz writers than it would be used to distinguish writers
from non-writers.
She politely responded with a copy of a post she made to HLAS:
In various messages, Terry Ross has criticized my analysis
of literary paper trails as a "filter" that is biased, that I have
adopted a double standard, and that my methodology is
flawed . For example, Mr. Ross challenge my "filter's
assumption that every person who left 'evidence of books
owned, written in, borrowed, or given' was a writer."
Mr. Ross also wrote:
<<Price's filter is NOT designed to determine whether a person wrote
"creative literature." There are no points awarded for having written poems
or plays rather than medical case books or treatises on astronomy. So far as
Price's filter concerned, all writers are writers simpliciter, and everybody
who ever owned (or even touched) a book was a writer. Price's filter would
award John Hall as many or even more points than many writers on her list.
Hall was educated (filter criterion 1). He had books (9). He made comments
about writers, including Drayton (6). He left a manuscript (5). Even if we
only awarded him four points, Price's filter would rank him with Marlowe,
Beaumont, Fletcher, and Kyd, and above Webster and Shakespeare. Hall
wouldn't count for leaving a manuscript because the manuscript, although
beautifully written, is medical, not literary. Price's filter does not ask
whether the manuscript is literary: "5. Extant original manuscript"
(Price, page 302). The analysis applied to writers, so it is a reasonable
presumption that the manuscript should relate to the writer's literary
activities. I believe.>>
The analysis in question comprises Chapter 8 ("Literary Paper
Trails") in my book, along with a chart and corresponding endnotes.
Mr. Ross's conception of the "filter" and its purpose, as he describes it,
tells me that he, and probably others on hlas, have not quite understood the
purpose of my analysis, nor the method I used. Since my analysis of
literary paper trails constitutes a major argument in my book, I thought it
might be helpful if I tried to explain just how I went about it, and why.
A "filter" is intended to screen out or separate units from some larger set.
Mr. Ross faults my analysis based on a mistaken assumption that I am
filtering out -- from a larger population base -- those individuals whose
profession was writing by applying the criteria enumerated in my book.
My analysis is not a "filter" of people. It is a "filter" of biographical
evidence, although it is more accurate to refer to the analysis as a "testing"
of evidence. The purpose of the "testing" process is to distinguish (1)
literary vs. non-literary evidence, and (2) personal from impersonal
evidence.
I did not start with a group of people from various professions. I started
with 24 Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Like Shakespeare, these writers
have biographies. Some take up only a few pages, but they are all
categorized as literary biographies because they are (presumably) about the
lives of writers.
Literary biographers rely particularly on manuscripts, journals, personal
papers, letters, and other sorts of "personal" documentation. According to
Gerald Eades Bentley, "letters," "diaries," and "accounts of friends" are
the sort of "personal material . which provides the foundation of most
biographies," although he notes that such personal literary evidence is
missing for Shakespeare (Handbook, 4-5). Notice that Bentley has identified
"personal" evidence.
Still, orthodox biographers and their defenders claim that Shakespeare's
biography is sufficiently documented to be reliable. H.N. Gibson claims that
"most of the professional dramatists of the time are in exactly the same
position as . . . Shakespeare. There are no records to connect them with
authorship, not even a letter to show that they had anything to do with
books and writing" (261). James G. McManaway defends Shakespeare's literary
credentials, in part by arguing that fewer biographical records, including
manuscripts and letters, have survived for most other writers of the day,
such as Marlowe, Peele, Dekker, and Daniel.
These two orthodox critics are claiming that the evidence remaining for
Shakespeare is comparable to that left by other writers, and that all these
other writers are no better documented than he is. So on that basis, we
should not be suspicious that there are no books, letters, personal papers,
payments to write, manuscripts, etc. for Shakespeare. Note that Gibson
refers specifically to literary evidence -- letters, books, and records to
connect the man with authorship, and McManaway mentioned manuscripts,
letters, and a few other types of records (including some that are
non-literary, such as dates of birth). But Bentley, Gibson, and McManaway
have all made reference to what I have broadly termed "personal literary
paper trails."
My analysis was to test the validity of the claims made by McManaway and
Gibson, et al, by examining the evidence underpinning Elizabethan literary
biographies. Is the evidence for Shakespeare of a different order or quality
than the evidence for other Elizabethan/Jacobean writers? Or is it
comparable? If none of Shakespeare's contemporaries are any better
documented as writers, then one major anti-Stratfordian argument would be
rendered very weak, if not invalidated. That's why I decided to compare the
type and quality of evidence for Shakespeare with that for other writers of
his day.
In order to arrive at an answer, I read through dozens of biographers. The
evidence supporting those literary biographies can be divided into two
categories: evidence that relates to literary activity, growth,
achievement, etc., and evidence that doesn't. I was concerned in my analysis
with the first category only.
I flagged any literary document and personal testimony that was cited, as
well as statements that appeared to be supported by documentation. Often I
had to dig further to determine if there was documentation or if the
statement was unsupported. At the end of this process, I had a data base of
evidence, all of which had some bearing on the literary activity,
achievements, and interests of the subject.
The next step was to test the evidence to determine if it was personal or
impersonal. I describe a bit about this process in the book. This
distinction between personal and impersonal evidence has been made in
earlier messages, but perhaps it bears some repeating. If you pick up the
Sunday newspaper, you will read book reviews -- mostly written by critics
who do not know the author and would not recognize him/her if he/she walked
into the room unannounced. That sort of literary criticism is impersonal,
and implies no first-hand knowledge of the author. The critic need have
access only to the book. The critic need not know if the attribution is to a
real name or a pen name. That's why it's impersonal evidence. The same
applies to someone who merely expresses the common opinion, without
demonstrating any first-hand knowledge of the individual. Other evidence is
ambiguous, i.e., not sufficiently explicit to justify a conclusion.
In contrast, personal evidence shows direct knowledge of, or personal
interaction with the author in question. Literary biographies are based on
such personal records. Each of the writers on my list has a literary
biography that is based on, presumably, personal evidence. And working
through biography after biography, one cannot help but notice the difference
between personal and impersonal evidence, and how biographers differentiate
between the two.
However, for all I knew at the outset, I was going to find nothing but
impersonal allusions or inconclusive evidence for everyone. So my analysis
was a systematic process of asking questions concerning evidence or
allusions: Is it contemporaneous? Personal? Literary, i.e., related to
literary activity, achievement, and interests? If the answer to all three
questions was "yes," the evidence went into the "In" Box.
Chapter 8 describes some of the evidence and the testing process. The chart
and endnotes reflect the results of my analysis. I found the types of
records that Bentley and McManaway referred to (letters, accounts of
friends, manuscripts), and more, such as records that writers were paid to
write. And it became clear that the type of evidence supporting
Shakespeare's biography was of a different sort. Unlike the other 24,
Shakespeare's biography is supported by non-literary evidence, impersonal or
ambiguous allusions, and posthumous testimony.
The decision to test the biography for contemporaneous documentation is not
an arbitrary one. Books about the art of writing biography concentrate on
the different types of evidence that biographers must work with, with the
presumption that nearly all of it is contemporaneous, left behind by the
author or others during the author's lifetime. Each of the other 24 literary
biographies cite explicit evidence left during the writer's lifetime. None
were reliant only on posthumous evidence, even the most poorly documented of
the 24 (Kyd, Marlowe, Webster, and Beaumont & Fletcher). The first piece of
personal and literary testimony for Shakespeare was published seven years
after he died, so in that sense, Shakespeare's biography is unique.
The sorting of the evidence into categories was the final step. The broad
definition for category 8 was the catch-all category, the only one I
constructed somewhat arbitrarily, and my intention was to ensure that any
piece of evidence that passed the contemporaneous/ personal / literary tests
would be reflected in the analysis, even if it didn't fit into any of the
other categories. Otherwise, the categories pretty much defined themselves.
I collapsed them into ten categories for convenience, but I could have
presented the chart with five categories, or two, or twenty. The result
would be the same: explicit and contemporaneous personal literary evidence
for everybody except Shakespeare.
The chart graphically demonstrates why Gibson and McManaway are wrong to
argue that there is nothing unusual about the lack of personal literary
evidence for Shakespeare. It is not only unusual, it is a unique deficiency.
Diana Price
I then sent a second e.mail to her:
***
Thanks for your reply, Diana. . . .
It would appear to me that the pertinent part of your explanation with regard to
Terry's criticisms is the following:
"A 'filter' is intended to screen out or separate units from some larger set.
**Mr. Ross faults my analysis based on a mistaken assumption that I am filtering
out -- from a larger population base -- those individuals whose profession was
writing by applying the criteria enumerated in my book.**
"**My analysis is not a 'filter' of people.** It is a 'filter' of biographical
evidence, although it is more accurate to refer to the analysis as a "testing"
of evidence. The purpose of the "testing" process is to distinguish (1) literary
vs. non-literary evidence, and (2) personal from impersonal evidence.
"**I did not start with a group of people from various professions. I started
with 24 Elizabethan and Jacobean writers.** Like Shakespeare, these writers have
biographies. Some take up only a few pages, but they are all categorized as
literary biographies because they are (presumably) about the lives of writers."
Underlined portions seem to me to make your point against Terry's charge. Two
questions: (1) Would you accept the characterization of your method that I made
in my post to you as reasonably accurate? (2) Do you feel that the descriptions
given in your book of your method of analysis that Terry uses against you are
misleading or confusing enough for a revision to be in order? I do.
***
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
>
>Why not? If you don't own books, then
>you're highly unlikely to be much of a
>writer -- certainly not of the kind we'd
>expect Shakespeare to have been.
It's really "record of possession of books." Not much of a writer, according to
this criteria, are John Lyly, Thomas Heywood, Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker,
Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Kyd, John Webster,
Philip Massinger, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Michael Drayton, Anthony Mundy
and Thomas Middleton. I know, most of these alleged writers didn't exist. but
surely one or two did.
>> notice within a year of
>>death as a writer who had died by someone who didn't personally know him is more
>>worth bothering with than notice within seven years of the same by someone who
>> personally knew the man involved;
>
>Probably. The notice will be read by
>MANY others who did know him.
Right, while the notice written three years later won't be read by anyone who
knew him. Crowleyan reasoning.
>But whoever, at that time, wrote about
>a man recently dead, who had not
>known him personally?
Lots of people wrote about Marlowe after his death who didn't know him.
Chamberlain wrote about Spenser after he died in a manner which doesn't reveal
whether he knew him personally or not.
>A seven-year-later notice MIGHT be
>worthwhile depending on what it says.
>If it's full of strange ambiguities, then
>it may not be worth much.
>
>> record of formal education is more worth
>> bothering with
>
>It counts.
>
>> than forty different title-page-attributions;
>
>No one doubts the attributions to a "Will
>Shake-speare" -- but not to an illiterate
>Stratman with a roughly similar name.
Not even if he is on court records with the same name, and there is no evidence
of anyone else using that name.
>> a letter by an alleged writer asking about a post as a
>> teacher is worth bothering with,
>
>Anything that shows a real life is of interest.
Sure, but the point is whether it indicates the person involed was a writer.
>> but not a monument proclaiming an alleged writer as a
>> Virgil seven years after his death.
>
>Something like that could well be fraudulent
>or deliberately mistleading.
What could not be fraudulent or deliberately misleading? Why can't I say Meres
lied when he said Oxford was a playwright? Wouldn't it seem likely that the
second most powerful noble in the land might have writers pretend he was
literate? Etc.
>> Etc.
>
>Price's method is one way of focussing minds
>-- but far from the only one. In many ways,
>she misses the point. You don't counter an
>irrational semi-religious belief with logical
>evidence-based arguments. Although I
>suppose you are obliged to make the effort.
>
>
>Paul.
Paul, to say that a belief based on published plays that say their author has
the same name as an actor in the company that performed them may be mistaken but
only a completely insane person could call such a belief "irrational" and
"semi-religious."
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
Fellowship. Not here because it just rehashes stuff we've gone over before
here.
Buffalo
Too much logic there. You don't counter an irrational semi-religious belief
with logical evidence-based arguments.
Buffalo
Tom Veal
that led the "meta-reviewer" to make the statements excerpted below.
For the record, I don't think that Miss Price's methodology is or
could be "revolutionary" (in either a positive or a negative sense),
did not intend to express any desire to "see more of her original
literary analysis" and don't think that her "paper trail filter" (not
my expression) is worth trying to improve.
I will confess that I found Miss Price's undeviating hostility toward
Shakespeare of Stratford irritating, particularly as it was so far
beside the point. The Stratford Man could have been a cad and
nevertheless written great literature.
bianca...@yahoo.com (biancas842001) wrote in message news:<456bd92f.0407...@posting.google.com>...
> He thinks she is
> old-fashioned. He also thinks she is dangerously modern. In other
> words, he thinks that Diana Price is so old-fashioned that she is
> unable to realize how really revolutionary her methodology could be.
>
> Veal describes Diana Price as a promising beginner, or perhaps
LynnE
"The best for comedy amongst us be Edward, Earl of Oxford..."
LynnE, who is so glad she was away and missed most of the thread.
>
> --Bob G.
>
Tom Reedy
news:YElLc.20181$Vw3.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
<snip>
> >
> > Both. In other words, I'm glad the Oxfordians don't have anecdotal
> evidence,
> > even anecdotal evidence as questionable as Aubrey's.
>
> "The best for comedy amongst us be Edward, Earl of Oxford..."
Don't stop there, Lynne!
"The best Poets for Comedy among the Greeks are these, Menander,
Aristophanes, Eupolis Atheniensis, Alexis Terius, Nocostratus, Amipsias
Atheniensis, Anaxandrides Rhodius, Aristonymus, Archippus Atheniensis and
Callias Atheniensis; and among the Latins, Plautus, Terence, Naeuius, Sext.
Turpilius, Licinius Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanus: so the best for comedy
amongst us bee, Edward Earle of Oxenforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Maister
Rowley once a rare Scholar of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, Maister
Edwardes one of her Majesty's Chapel, eloquent and witty John Lilly, Lodge,
Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Munday
our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle."
And don't forget from the same source (Meres):
"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among
the Latins: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both
kinds for the stage; for Comedy witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors,
his Loves labors lost, his Loves labors won, his Midsummers night dream, and
his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry
the 4. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet."
>
> LynnE, who is so glad she was away and missed most of the thread.
TR, who says, don't worry, you didn't miss much at all.
LynnE
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:NumLc.10093$Qu5....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
At least I quoted my bit from memory. Let me know when you've memorized the
rest. :)
>
>
Paul Crowley
> >> Sure, possession of books is worth bothering about;
> >
> >Why not? If you don't own books, then
> >you're highly unlikely to be much of a
> >writer -- certainly not of the kind we'd
> >expect Shakespeare to have been.
>
> It's really "record of possession of books." Not much of a writer, according to
> this criteria, are John Lyly, Thomas Heywood, Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker,
> Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Kyd, John Webster,
> Philip Massinger, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Michael Drayton, Anthony Mundy
> and Thomas Middleton. I know, most of these alleged writers didn't exist. but
> surely one or two did.
How many of these left detailed wills -- in
which we'd expect to find some mention of
their books?
> >> notice within a year of
> >>death as a writer who had died by someone who didn't personally know him is more
> >>worth bothering with than notice within seven years of the same by someone who
> >> personally knew the man involved;
> >
> >Probably. The notice will be read by
> >MANY others who did know him.
>
> Right, while the notice written three years later won't be read by anyone who
> knew him. Crowleyan reasoning.
That's not what I said -- as you can see below.
> >But whoever, at that time, wrote about
> >a man recently dead, who had not
> >known him personally?
>
> Lots of people wrote about Marlowe after his death who didn't know him.
True - and he is a special and interesting
case.
> Chamberlain wrote about Spenser after he died in a manner which doesn't reveal
> whether he knew him personally or not.
OK -- there will be exceptions. Spenser
spent very little time in London.
> >A seven-year-later notice MIGHT be
> >worthwhile depending on what it says.
> >If it's full of strange ambiguities, then
> >it may not be worth much.
> >No one doubts the attributions to a "Will
> >Shake-speare" -- but not to an illiterate
> >Stratman with a roughly similar name.
>
> Not even if he is on court records with the same name, and there is no evidence
> of anyone else using that name.
There was undoubtedly a cover-up --
based on the similarity of the names.
> >> a letter by an alleged writer asking about a post as a
> >> teacher is worth bothering with,
> >
> >Anything that shows a real life is of interest.
>
> Sure, but the point is whether it indicates the person involed was a writer.
There are two points . . intermingled:
(a) Is there a real person with a real life?
(b) Was that real person a writer?
There are a lot of shadowy Elizabethan
'authors' who provide little or no indication
of real lives -- we must suspect that many
of those names are pseudonyms.
> >> but not a monument proclaiming an alleged writer as a
> >> Virgil seven years after his death.
> >
> >Something like that could well be fraudulent
> >or deliberately mistleading.
>
> What could not be fraudulent or deliberately misleading?
There are many things that are very
unlikely to be fraudulent or deliberately
misleading. Dr John Cooke's account of
his dealings with the Stratman's daughter
could hardly have been part of any plot
first contrived by the government under
Elizabeth. IF he had reported a
conversation about her great playwright
father, then we'd not be having this
discussion. There should be hundreds or
thousands of reports of that nature. It's
their complete absence that you should
find worrying.
It's always a question of evidence and
probability. The claims to authorship by
most modern writers are not open to
claims of fraudulence . . . Samuel Clemens,
Tolstoy . . etc. There ARE reports of
thousands of Dr-John-Cooke-type
conversations.
> Why can't I say Meres
> lied when he said Oxford was a playwright? Wouldn't it seem likely that the
> second most powerful noble in the land might have writers pretend he was
> literate? Etc.
It's possible -- but not likely, since Oxford
was a well-known public figure, and
Meres published while Oxford and his
contemporaries were alive.
> >Price's method is one way of focussing minds
> >-- but far from the only one. In many ways,
> >she misses the point. You don't counter an
> >irrational semi-religious belief with logical
> >evidence-based arguments. Although I
> >suppose you are obliged to make the effort.
>
> Paul, to say that a belief based on published plays that say their author has
> the same name as an actor in the company that performed them may be mistaken but
> only a completely insane person could call such a belief "irrational" and
> "semi-religious."
The Romans (and their predecessors and
contemporaries) would have said much the
same about anyone who doubted the
existence of a 'Thunder-God'. Such a belief
belongs to its time. It is reasonable among
'primitive' people -- but when held on to in
the face of every element of common sense,
and in denial of vast amounts of evidence
to the contrary, it becomes irrational and
semi-religious.
I am inclined to say much the same about
the belief in the 'fair youth' of the sonnets.
It's a wholly irrational belief -- but most of
those who hold it, do so only vaguely and
have not examined it. When people like,
say, Lynne, hold on to it in the face of
persistent questioning, we have to suspect
that they do so for reasons that are far from
the rational. Stupidity and adherence to the
values of the herd go a long way in making
such a belief acceptable -- but that's the
power of an organised religion.
Paul.
Terry Ross
Bob on Price:
[snip]
>
> She politely responded with a copy of a post she made to HLAS:
>
[snip]
She politely refuses to extend the argument. I take it Price has nothing
new to say, no substantial changes to make to her book, no new edition
planned in which she jettisons her general argument regarding professions
and documents, no rewrite in which she deletes the argument that her
writer's filter is a special case of her general theory. If that is the
case, then we are honor bound to deal with the book that she wrote.
Did you notice that Price did not quote her book's description of her
filter? Why is it that when discussions of Price's filter turn up here,
it is I and not Price (or Dooley or even you) who deals with what Price
actually says in her book?
Since Price is recycling, let me quote from one of my own replies (this
one to Pat Dooley):
>
> Your idea that Diana's analysis of literary paper trails is some sort of
> filter designed to exclude Shakespeare is mistaken, as we have
> repeatedly demonstrated.
Your disagreement is not with me but with the author of the book that
appeared under Price's name. In her book, Price says in introducing the
results of her filter, "just as birds can be distinguished from turtles by
characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be distinguished
from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal records left
behind" (301). (It may be significant that in our discussions about how
Price's filter works I am the one who quotes her book.)
The purpose of the filter is to distinguish writers from nonwriters. Price
explains how "types of personal records" are supposed to be evaluated:
"Biographers construct their narratives around documentary evidence. Some
types of documentation are of a general character, such as christening,
marriage, or tax records. Such records tell us that someone was born or
paid taxes, but they do not necessarily tell us about the person's
profession. Other types of evidence, however, are specific to a vocation
or make incidental reference to an occupation.
"Shakespeare's biography is presumably about a writer. The documentary
evidence left by a writer is different from that left by a doctor, for
example, because some personal records are peculiar to the respective
professions." (111)
Price's filter, thus, is supposed to accept only "personal records [that]
are peculiar to the ... profession" of writing. Of course, as we all
know, the filter accepts great heaps of records that are not at all
"peculiar" to writers, and it excludes records that are much more
indicative of whether someone is a writer than most of those that the
filter accepts. On this basis alone, the filter should be rejected, even
if Price did not cheat in its application -- but these matters have been
discussed at length elsewhere.
All I am trying to so in this thread is to take What Price herself
considers a "personal record" for William Shakespeare of Stratford and to
show (with the help of Crosse) that it does indeed refer to him as a
writer.
> It is discouraging that you continue to misrepresent the analysis and
> testing of *evidence* as a filter of people.
It is (and I think it is discouraging that you do not understand even this
much) BOTH a filter of documents AND a filter of people. It filters
documents, supposedly accepting only those that distinguish writers from
nonwriters (birds & turtles -- remember?), or only those that are
"peculiar" to writers. It then declares that everybody who has any
document that is accepted is ipso facto a writer by profession. The flip
side (and Price's "argument" against Shakespeare) is that anybody for whom
no records are accepted by the filter was not a writer.
Can you not even understand this much?
>
> It simply tests the extant evidence for Shakespeare and his
> contemporaries. It tests for contemporaneous, personal, and literary
> evidence. It does not test people.
Of course it does (honestly, the things I have to explain to some
people!). "Just as birds can be distinguished from turtles, so can
writers by characteristics peculiar to the species, so writers can be
distinguished from doctors, actors, or financiers by the types of personal
records left behind." Those are not my words, but Price's. She uses them
to introduce her "Chart of Literary Paper Trails" on page 301. The filter
accepts "personal records" that are presumably "peculiar" to writers (and
not to doctors or turtles), and anybody for whom any such record is
accepted gets a "Yes" on Price's chart and is, ipso facto, declared to
have been a writer by profession. The filter thus is BOTH a filter of
documents AND a filter of people.
>
> Did she exclude any such incontrovertible evidence for Shakespeare?
Like Ken Kaplan, you are having trouble keeping your focus. Price herself
considers *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* to be part of the personal
documentary trail for William Shakespeare of Stratford. It appears that
you disagree with her on this point, but that is neither here nor there.
For our narrow purposes here, the only remaining question concerning this
record is whether it refers to Shakespeare as a writer. If it does, then
it should be accepted by Price's filter, and Shakespeare should get a
"Yes" on Price's chart, and Shakespeare should be declared a writer even
by the bizarre standards of the filter.
>
> So far we have had Hand D, the Buc inscription, the Archaionomia
> signature, and the Digges fly-leaf inscription. None of these stand up
> to serious scrutiny as evidence of Shakespeare's presumed career as a
> writer.
By the standards Price uses for the records of other authors, ALL of those
should be accepted by her filter (and they are not the only ones) -- but
that is not the point of this thread.
>
> Now you are attempting to manufacture such a record from satirical
> allusions in GGW and Crosse. Go for it. That will lead you straight to
> Robertoe's actor, a perfect foil for the character Diana describes. What
> is interesting here is how mightily you must strive to try to create a
> literary paper trail for Shakespere. It should not be that hard.
All I am doing is playing Price's game by her own rules; the difference is
that I am playing it fairly. I am not cheating. I am not making up new
ad-hoc rules that are specifically designed to exclude or to include
Shakespeare. There is a very simple point here, although it is one that
neither you nor Ken Kaplan seems able to grasp. IF we play Price's game
fairly, then even by the odd standards of her own filter, Shakespeare
should be declared a writer.
>
> <snip>
>
>> There is a great deal of documentary evidence that Price's filter
>> ignores by design -- but her filter should not become your standard.
>> The point of this thread, again, is to show that IF WE CHOOSE TO PLAY
>> PRICE'S GAME then Price's filter has to give Shakespeare at least one
>> point, and therefore it must declare that Shakespeare was a writer.
>
> Can you draw boxes and lines? Try this:
I note that, unable to support your point by reference to Price's book,
you are now trying to develop an alternative means to reject Shakespeare.
Perhaps you will write that up some day, and then Price can post to this
newsgroup her interpretations of what you should have said. For now, let
us try to keep the focus on *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit*, which Price
considers a contemporary personal record for William Shakespeare of
Stratford, and which attacks him not only as an actor but also as a
writer.
I'm snipping the Nashe bit that followed because Dooley is wandering away
from the point, but perhaps it is a point he still doesn't understand, so
let me try it one last time:
Does Price consider *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* contemporary for William
Shakespeare of Stratford? She accepts the 1592 date, so the answer is
"Yes."
Does Price consider *Greenes' Groatsworth of Wit* a personal record for
William Shakespeare of Stratford? She does; it is included in her
"concise documentary life" of Shakespeare; it is a part of "the historical
trail left by William Shakspere [sic] during his life." (19).
The only thing to settle is whether Shakespeare is referred to as a writer
in this "document of his life" in this bit of his "historical trail,' in
this "record." Here is the part that most directly refers to Shakespeare:
there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his
Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to
bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute
Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a
countrey.
Price correctly identifies the "upstart Crow" with William Shakespeare of
Stratford, but she does not understand that he is being referred to as a
writer, mistaking "bombast[ing] out a blanke verse" as something done not
by a writer but by an actor. She tells us to look to Crosse. Dooley
himself told us that the phrase was
> Ambiguous. Taken in it's entirety, and with the paraphrase in "Vertue's
> Commonwealth", the only safe conclusion is that Shake-scene is an actor.
When we turn to Crosse, we find that he takes Greene's attack on
Shakespeare as an actor-playwright and borrows from it in different
places. He uses part of the attack for his own railing against the poets
of the day (none of whom, except Crosse himself, seem worthy to the
author). He uses Greene's attacks on actors as part of his own railing
against all actors. Thus Crosse confirms that Greene's attack on
Shakespeare should be understood as an attack on someone who was a writer
AND an actor.
Since Price accepts *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* it as a contemporary
personal reference (as Dooley would know if her read her book), and since
*Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* characterizes the man Shakespeare as a
writer (and Crosse confirms that a contemporary reader would have
understood "bombasting out a blank verse" to be the act of a writer),
therefore Price's filter should accept this as a contemporary, personal,
literary reference (by Price's own standards), and therefore Price's
filter should declare Shakespeare to have been a writer.
Of course, what Price's filter does or does not declare is at bottom a
very trivial matter. Price has devised a little game whose obvious
purpose is to reject all evidence for Shakespeare, but if Price were to
play her game by her own rules, she would have to accept that Shakespeare
was, by her game's and her filter's standards, a writer.
Tom Reedy
news:wQqLc.5118$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
> "Bob Grumman" <Bob_m...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:cdk4n...@drn.newsguy.com...
>
> > >> Sure, possession of books is worth bothering about;
> > >
> > >Why not? If you don't own books, then
> > >you're highly unlikely to be much of a
> > >writer -- certainly not of the kind we'd
> > >expect Shakespeare to have been.
> >
> > It's really "record of possession of books." Not much of a writer,
according to
> > this criteria, are John Lyly, Thomas Heywood, Robert Greene, Thomas
Dekker,
> > Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Kyd, John
Webster,
> > Philip Massinger, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Michael Drayton, Anthony
Mundy
> > and Thomas Middleton. I know, most of these alleged writers didn't
exist. but
> > surely one or two did.
>
> How many of these left detailed wills -- in
> which we'd expect to find some mention of
> their books?
Since this question is actually answerable, is it rhetorical are do you
actually intend to get off your ass and find out? Or are you going to give
us a "what must have been" scenario?
TR
LynnE
"Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.60.0407210551460.7593@mail...
Of course it is ambiguous, Terry. You've left out the word supposes, which
at the time could certainly carry the meaning of "pretends." Even Professor
Carroll, who wrote an entire book on Groatsworth, agreed that "supposes"
puts a different complexion on things. The line could easily mean "who
pretends he can write as well as the rest of you..." or "who pretends he is
a writer like the rest of you." I am not saying that the line definitely
means either. I am merely suggesting that here we have two of several
possible interpretations. Therefore the line is ambiguous.
We could argue this line to Christmas and back to July (and probably already
have on one listserv or another) and still could not say with certainty what
it means. Much of the rest of the passage is ambiguous too. If you say that
the line above definitely refers to Shakespeare, which you have above, you
must deal with "the only Shake-scene in a country..." which presumably, to
follow your line of thought, refers to writing. We already know there were
other writers from the lines which precede this one. Could this mean there
was more than one Shakespeare? It is almost impossible to argue what the
author meant here.
Someone said this the other day: "It is not an easy thing to let go of one's
strongly held beliefs. Indeed, it is often difficult to understand the
implications of one's own beliefs or the causes that impel us to hold them
so strongly." Unlike Bianca, I know that someone meant himself too, Terry.
Strongly held beliefs do not often admit of ambiguity because ambiguity
plays hell with them.
Best wishes,
Lynne
Bob Grumman
does, or replies to it the way she and her husband have so far replied to such
kinds of questions, I'll have to waste time in my analysis of her book (assuming
I ever get that done) pointing out the same things you've pointed out about her
description of her method, Terry.
But I will still claim that, however she describes it, her method--as used in
her book--is for persons each of whom some biographer has said was a writer, and
analyze it as such. Her filter is not flawed because it does not do what she
says in some places it does but because what it does do is ridiculous.
--Bob G.
David L. Webb
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote:
I suspect that you already know the answer, Tom, and that your
question was purely rhetorical. Has Mr. Crowley *ever* given us
anything other than his hilarious, absolutist, "what must have been"
pontifications? I am particularly partial to the ones about the
categorical impossibility of "decent" Soviet and Latin American
literature, but Mr. Crowley's certainty about the genuineness of the
"Ray Mignot" sonnet is also one of his greatest hits (or rather, misses).
Bob Grumman
>> Both. In other words, I'm glad the Oxfordians don't have anecdotal
>evidence,
>> even anecdotal evidence as questionable as Aubrey's.
>
>"The best for comedy amongst us be Edward, Earl of Oxford..."
>
>LynnE, who is so glad she was away and missed most of the thread.
>
>>
>> --Bob G.
Anecdotal evidence for Oxford as the author of . . . The Oeuvre.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
>> this criteria, are John Lyly, Thomas Heywood, Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker,
>>Thomas Watson, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Kyd, John Webster,
>> Philip Massinger, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Michael Drayton, Anthony Mundy
>>and Thomas Middleton. I know, most of these alleged writers didn't exist. but
>> surely one or two did.
>
>How many of these left detailed wills -- in
>which we'd
you'd
>expect to find some mention of
>their books?
The point is that they left no records of possession of books. As for wills,
that's been covered at HLAS. Francis Bacon did not mention books in his will,
nor did many other known writers who left wills. Furthermore, Shakespeare's
will is missing the inventory which might have listed books if he hadn't already
given them away.
No, what can't be doubted is that Shakespeare's manuscripts and 600-page
autobiography were destroyed by Oxford's men hoping that posterity would take
Oxford rather than Shakespeare as the author of the Shakespearean works. The
complete absence of evidence indicating this proves it was the case.
>> >> a letter by an alleged writer asking about a post as a
>> >> teacher is worth bothering with,
>> >
>> >Anything that shows a real life is of interest.
>>
>> Sure, but the point is whether it indicates the person involed was a writer.
>
>There are two points . . intermingled:
>(a) Is there a real person with a real life?
>(b) Was that real person a writer?
>
>There are a lot of shadowy Elizabethan
>'authors' who provide little or no indication
>of real lives -- we must suspect that many
>of those names are pseudonyms.
Why? There are thousands of Elizabethans who provide little or no indication of
real lives.
>> >> but not a monument proclaiming an alleged writer as a
>> >> Virgil seven years after his death.
>> >
>> >Something like that could well be fraudulent
>> >or deliberately misleading.
>>
>> What could not be fraudulent or deliberately misleading?
>
>There are many things that are very
>unlikely to be fraudulent or deliberately
>misleading. Dr John Cooke's account of
>his dealings with the Stratman's daughter
>could hardly have been part of any plot
>first contrived by the government under
>Elizabeth.
Baloney. Who says the government, trying to get posterity to think
Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, faked the document--if we assume anyone
in his right mind could think it would make anyone think Shakespeare was not
Shakespeare.
>IF he had reported a
>conversation about her great playwright
>father, then we'd not be having this
>discussion. There should be hundreds or
>thousands of reports of that nature. It's
>their complete absence that you should
>find worrying.
Do we have any reports at all from Jonson's children? Or Spenser's?
>It's always a question of evidence and
>probability. The claims to authorship by
>most modern writers are not open to
>claims of fraudulence . . . Samuel Clemens,
>Tolstoy . . etc. There ARE reports of
>thousands of Dr-John-Cooke-type
>conversations.
>
>> Why can't I say Meres
>> lied when he said Oxford was a playwright? Wouldn't it seem likely that the
>> second most powerful noble in the land might have writers pretend he was
>> literate? Etc.
>
>It's possible -- but not likely, since Oxford
>was a well-known public figure, and
>Meres published while Oxford and his
>contemporaries were alive.
Also while Shakespeare was alive and acting on the stage.
>> >Price's method is one way of focussing minds
>> >-- but far from the only one. In many ways,
>> >she misses the point. You don't counter an
>> >irrational semi-religious belief with logical
>> >evidence-based arguments. Although I
>> >suppose you are obliged to make the effort.
>>
>> Paul, to say that a belief based on published plays that say their author has
>>the same name as an actor in the company that performed them may be mistaken but
>> only a completely insane person could call such a belief "irrational" and
>> "semi-religious."
>
>The Romans (and their predecessors and
>contemporaries) would have said much the
>same about anyone who doubted the
>existence of a 'Thunder-God'. Such a belief
>belongs to its time. It is reasonable among
>'primitive' people -- but when held on to in
>the face of every element of common sense,
>and in denial of vast amounts of evidence
>to the contrary, it becomes irrational and
>semi-religious.
Did the Romans have empirical evidence of a Thunder-God?
>I am inclined to say much the same about
>the belief in the 'fair youth' of the sonnets.
>It's a wholly irrational belief -- but most of
>those who hold it, do so only vaguely and
>have not examined it. When people like,
>say, Lynne, hold on to it in the face of
>persistent questioning, we have to suspect
>that they do so for reasons that are far from
>the rational. Stupidity and adherence to the
>values of the herd go a long way in making
>such a belief acceptable -- but that's the
>power of an organised religion.
>
>Paul.
Paul, as I've said too many times before, it all comes down to your belief that
you're right because you say you are. So be it.
--Bob G.
LynnE
ambiguous--as Pat Dooley says and Terry might or might not be saying--his
post is ambiguous :) --then we can't say for sure that WS of Stratford is a
writer, and Price can't check him off as one.
Have no idea why I got involved in this. I'll be good now.
"LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:rmvLc.20358$Gf7.8...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Bob Grumman
>at the time could certainly carry the meaning of "pretends."
But which no Gulielmus-Rejector has found to do that in any text of the time.
> Even Professor
>Carroll, who wrote an entire book on Groatsworth, agreed that "supposes"
>puts a different complexion on things. The line could easily mean "who
>pretends he can write as well as the rest of you..." or "who pretends he is
>a writer like the rest of you." I am not saying that the line definitely
>means either. I am merely suggesting that here we have two of several
>possible interpretations. Therefore the line is ambiguous.
"In my bathroom there is a cow" could mean that a cow exists who is known as "In
my bathroom there," so the sentence is ambiguous. Almost any statement can be
ambiguated by someone who has to keep its most obvious meaning from being
accepted.
--Bob G.
LynnE
> >Of course it is ambiguous, Terry. You've left out the word supposes,
which
> >at the time could certainly carry the meaning of "pretends."
>
> But which no Gulielmus-Rejector has found to do that in any text of the
time.
First, I reject the title of Gulielmouse-Rejector.
Second, you might like to look at the prologue of _(The) Supposes_,
Ariosto's play "Englished" by Gascoigne. In it you will find the following:
But understand, this our Suppose is nothing else but a *mystaking or
imagination of one thing for an other.* For you shall see the master
supposed for the servant, the servant for the master: the freeman for a
slave, and the bondslave for a freeman: the stranger for a well knowen
friend, and the familiar for a stranger. But what? I suppose that even
already you suppose me very fonde, that have so simply disclosed unto you
the subtilties of these our Supposes: where otherwise in deede I suppose you
shoulde have hearde almoste the laste of our Supposes, before you coulde
have supposed anye of them arighte. Let this then suffise.
L.
Terry Ross
> Oh, and just wanted to add to my post the fact that if the passage *is*
> ambiguous--as Pat Dooley says and Terry might or might not be
> saying--his post is ambiguous :) --then we can't say for sure that WS of
> Stratford is a writer, and Price can't check him off as one.
Price can't check Shakespeare off as a writer, because the whole point of
her book is to deny that Shakespeare should be considered a writer. IF,
however (a very large "if") Price wished to hold on to her silly filter
but also wanted to apply it fairly, then by the filter's own ridiculous
standards, she would have to accept Shakespeare as a writer. Of course
real literary historians do not play by Price's rules, so it does not
really matter how she fixes the game, but IF she wished to play her silly
game without any additional cheating, then she would count Shakespeare as
a writer.
The *Groatsworth* passage is not ambiguous as to the claim that the actor
Shakespeare has turned playwright. It is not entirely clear to me whether
Shakespeare is being charged with plagiarism (but that would only confirm
that he was a writer).
Price accepts that Shakespeare is personally alluded to in the passage as
the "upstart crow"; she considers it part of Shakespeare's personal paper
trail, but she does misinterpret the passage. She helpfully suggests that
we look to Crosse's *Vertues Commonweath*, but when we do, we find that
Crosse understands bombasting out a blank verse to be something a writer
does.
Greene does not think Shakespeare is a very good writer, but that's not
the issue. If I may quote from an earlier discussion with Pat Dooley:
> Ambiguous. Taken in it's entirety, and with the paraphrase in "Vertue's
> Commonwealth", the only safe conclusion is that Shake-scene is an actor.
> Of course, some orthodox scholars also conclude that Shake-scene was a
> usurer, a reading confimed by Crosse.
The Puritan Crosse detested the poetry of his age, as he detested the use
of tobacco and wigs and make-up. He never, by the way, suggests either
that "Shake-scene" or that William Shakespeare of Stratford was by
profession a usurer.
Crosse despised any poetry that did not, by his lights, advance virtue:
"So that Poetry is no other thing, but a lively presentation of things
ingeniously disposed, whereby Virtue is painted out with such fresh
colors, that the mind is inflamed with her excellent properties."
(Grosart's edition, p.102; I have modified the spelling). What of those
whose poetry does something other than inflaming the mind with Virtue's
excellent properties?
"Now whosoever shall dissent from this true use, is no Poet, but a vain
babbler: for what are all these scurrilous tales, & bawdy verses? Do
these move to Virtue with honest delight? Nay do they not rather stir up
bawdy and beastliness? For are they not full of Paganism and ribald
speeches, to stir up the mind to shady idleness? Is this Poetry? Verily
they are as unworthy the name of Poets, as Chirrillus, who had nothing to
grace his verses by but only the name of Allex." (102).
Note that what makes a poet no better than a Chirrillus for Crosse is not
lack of invention or of technical skill but want of moral improvement in
his verse. Practically all of the poetry from his time that anybody today
reads would have been excoriated by Crosse as "unworthy" because it was
not solely designed to move readers to virtue, and the poets whose works
so delight us were no better for Crosse than Chirillus.
Crosse never names Shakespeare, so it is surprising that Price and Dooley
seem to take his comments as direct personal references to William
Shakespeare of Stratford: if they truly believe this, then they must
believe that Shakespeare was personally identified by Crosse as a writer.
Crosse does not quote the phrases from *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* that
identify Shakespeare as a target: "Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde"
and "the onely Shake-scene in a countrey," so we cannot say that Crosse
meant to single out Shakespeare. Nevertheless, his use of "bombast out a
blank verse" clearly indicates that he took Greene's phrase to refer to
the behavior of a poet rather than of an actor. Crosse does borrow from
the attack on Shakespeare in *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* when he says
this:
"He that can but bombast out a blank verse, and make both the ends jump
together in a rhyme, is forthwith a poet laureate, challenging the garland
of bays, and in one slavering discourse or other, hang out the badge of
his folly. O how weak and shallow much of their poetry is, for having no
sooner laid the subject and ground of the matter, and in the Exordium
moved attention, but over a verse or two run upon the rocks and shelves,
carrying their readers into a maze, now up, then down, one verse shorter
than the other by a foot, like an unskillful Pilot, never comes nigh the
intended harbor: in so much that oftentimes they stick so fast in mud,
they lose their wits ere they can get out, either like Chirrillus, writing
verse not worth the reading, or Batillus, arrogating to themselves the
well deserving labors of other ingenious spirits. Far from the decorum of
Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, &c. or our honorable modern Poets, who are no
whit to be touched by this, but reverently esteemed, and liberally
rewarded." (109)
Crosse is NOT speaking here of actors but of writers. Neither Dooley nor
Price has mentioned that he marginal note to this passage reads, "Many
Poets shallow wits" -- it does NOT read "Many actors shallow wits." Crosse
borrows from *Greene's Groatsworth for his own purposes. He does not
mention Shakespeare, but if we are to take his reference to "He that can
but bombast out a blank verse" as a personal reference to Shakespeare,
then he is indeed calling Shakespeare a writer, and this passage should be
accepted by Price's filter. The bad writers Crosse condemns are not
"improvisers" of a line or two in a play written by another (which, I
believe, is Price's unsupportable and odd reading of the passage), but are
composers of "slavering discourse[s]." When Crosse says "how weak and
shallow much of their poetry is," he is not talking about actors
improvising lines in a play but about writers. These writers seem quite
prolific -- they begin by "lay[ing] the subject and ground of the matter,
and in the Exordium mov[ing] attention." These are writers, not actors
improvising a line here or there. Having written so much, and so
unskillfully (by Crosse's standards, which are not, I hope, our own) that
they have gotten stuck, they may THEN become "either like Chirrillus,
writing verse not worth the reading, or Batillus, arrogating to themselves
the well deserving labors of other ingenious spirits."
Now, as we have seen, to be called a Batillus of a Chirrillus was to be
called a writer -- a bad writer, to be sure, but a writer nonetheless --
and for Crosse, a bad poet is not one who is unskilled but rather one who
applies those skills contrary to the best interests of virtue.
"For if a view be had of these editions, the court of Venus, the Palace of
Pleasure, Guy of Warwicke, Libbius and Arthur, Beavis of Hampton, the wise
men of Gotham, Scoggin's Jests, Fortunatus, and those new delights that
have succeeded these, and are now extant, too tedious to reckon up: what
may we think? but that the floodgates of all impiety are drawn up, to
bring a universal deluge over all holy and godly conversation." (102).
In sum: if Price and Dooley believe that Crosse meant to identify William
Shakespeare of Stratford when he wrote of the man "that can but bombast
out a blank verse" then they must believe that Crosse knew Shakespeare was
a writer.
Crosse also hated the theater, of course, and he levels the usual
accusations against the spectators and participants. Actors are phonies
and climbers, and some of them are "usurers and extortioners," but their
largest fault seems to be that they succeed by pleasing the many:
"In like manner Hippomachus hearing one of his scholars praised for his
fiddling, bade him cease playing, for he was sure there was some great
error in the fingering, that he was so applauded of the ignorant: what
true glory then can they justly merit, that are praised by the witless and
brain-sick multitude? And as these copper-lace gentlemen grow rich,
purchase lands by adulterous Players, & not few of them usurers and
extortioners, which they exhaust out of the purses of their haunters, so
are they puffed up in such pride and self-love, as they envy their equals,
and scorn their inferiors."
For Crosse, the audience is even worse than the actors themselves. He
says of "the common spectators and Play-gadders" that
"the common haunters are for the most part, the lewdest persons in the
land, apt for pilfery, perjury, forgery, or any roguery, the very scum
rascality, and baggage of the people, thieves, cut-purses, shifters,
cousiners; briefly, an unclean generation, and spawn of vipers: must here
not be a good rule, where is such a brood of hell-bred creatures? For a
Play is like a sink in a Town, whereunto all the filth doth run: or a boil
in the body, that draweth all the ill humors unto it."
What should be done? Crosse would destroy most of what we cherish most
from his time:
"And therefore it were to be wished, that all love-books, Sonnets, and
vile pamphlets, were burned, and no more suffered to be printed, nor
filthy plays rehearsed, which are the bellows to blow the coals of lust,
soften the mind, and make it flexible to evil inclinations: unless first
seen and allowed by some of approved and discreet judgment." (121-22).
He borrows again from *Greene's Groatsworth of Wit* in the next passage:
"To conclude, it were further to be wished, that those admired Wits of
this age, Tragedians, and Comedians, that garnish Theaters with their
inventions, would spend their wits in more profitable studies, and leave
off to maintain those Antics, and Puppets, that speak out of their mouths:
for it is pity such noble gifts, should be so basely employed, as to
prostitute their ingenious labors to such buckram gentlemen. And much
better were it indeed if they had nor wit, nor learning at all, then to
spend it in such vanity, to the dishonor of God, and corrupting the
Common-wealth: but he that dependeth upon such weak stays, shall be sure
of shame and beggary in the end: for it hath seldom been seen, that any of
that profession have prospered, or come to an assured estate."
Clearly he is using the story of Robert Greene as a cautionary tale, but
he does not share Greene's concern that actors are becoming playwrights.
Crosse has his own version of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant,
but where Greene identifies himself with the grasshopper, Crosse is
resolutely pro-ant. His hatred of the theater goes far beyond Greene's
resentment of actors (and of an actor who writes plays) -- and even beyond
Greene's pious wish that his quondam acquaintances make better use of
their wits. For Crosse, it would be better that Greene and his fellows
had "nor wit, nor learning at all" rather than that should have corrupted
the commonwealth by writing such filth.
> Have no idea why I got involved in this. I'll be good now.
Hey, don't change on my account.
Paul Crowley
> >There are two points . . intermingled:
> >(a) Is there a real person with a real life?
> >(b) Was that real person a writer?
> >
> >There are a lot of shadowy Elizabethan
> >'authors' who provide little or no indication
> >of real lives -- we must suspect that many
> >of those names are pseudonyms.
>
> Why? There are thousands of Elizabethans who provide little
> or no indication of real lives.
Writers then usually put the names up in
lights -- they had to if they were to sell
copy; and they talked (and wrote) to and
about each other. When there are some
who no one ever seems to have met, nor
written to, nor received letters from . . etc.,
etc., we are entitled to get suspicious.
For example, there was, supposedly, a
particular reclusive one with the initials
W.S.
> >> >> but not a monument proclaiming an alleged writer as a
> >> >> Virgil seven years after his death.
> >> >
> >> >Something like that could well be fraudulent
> >> >or deliberately misleading.
> >>
> >> What could not be fraudulent or deliberately misleading?
> >
> >There are many things that are very
> >unlikely to be fraudulent or deliberately
> >misleading. Dr John Cooke's account of
> >his dealings with the Stratman's daughter
> >could hardly have been part of any plot
> >first contrived by the government under
> >Elizabeth.
>
> Baloney. Who says the government, trying to get posterity to think
> Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, faked the document--if we assume anyone
> in his right mind could think it would make anyone think Shakespeare was not
> Shakespeare.
The government was not omnipotent nor
omni-present -- and certainly not during
a small affair taking place at this time --
called the "Civil War". Have you heard
about it?
> >IF he had reported a
> >conversation about her great playwright
> >father, then we'd not be having this
> >discussion. There should be hundreds or
> >thousands of reports of that nature. It's
> >their complete absence that you should
> >find worrying.
>
> Do we have any reports at all from Jonson's children? Or Spenser's?
I'm sure that there are some -- if anyone
looked hard enough. But Spenser and
Raleigh met several times during their lives
-- and even if Spenser had not written a
word, Raleigh would have known him.
But there are detailed accounts of how
they met and talked, and there is much
that they exchanged -- in print.
We should have masses of like material
for, say, the relationship between Raleigh
and Shake-speare. We do, in fact -- but
the poet used his regular name. There is,
of course, NOTHING linking any courtier
with the Stratman.
> >It's possible -- but not likely, since Oxford
> >was a well-known public figure, and
> >Meres published while Oxford and his
> >contemporaries were alive.
>
> Also while Shakespeare was alive and acting on the stage.
The Stratman was probably illiterate.
That makes it hard to pretend to act.
> >The Romans (and their predecessors and
> >contemporaries) would have said much the
> >same about anyone who doubted the
> >existence of a 'Thunder-God'. Such a belief
> >belongs to its time. It is reasonable among
> >'primitive' people -- but when held on to in
> >the face of every element of common sense,
> >and in denial of vast amounts of evidence
> >to the contrary, it becomes irrational and
> >semi-religious.
>
> Did the Romans have empirical evidence of a Thunder-God?
Masses of it -- the noises, the flashes, the
damaged trees, houses and monuments,
the 'bolts' they found lying on the ground,
the distinctive characteristics of goat
entrails when the god was not happy.
And so on and on . . . .
They had vastly more than any
Stratfordian has ever dreamt of.
Paul.