Are Stratfordians Cultists?

And yet we don't know that the great Ben Jonson had an education
PC SJW AND PROUD OF IT

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We don't know Ben Jonson went to school... In his case it is even more a problem, since the school he supposedly went to DID keep records of students and his name is not on those..

Was there a notification when the great Marlowe died? YES.

But not for his poetry, at least not until years after his death.

Greene, Watson, Beaumont, Jpnson, Spenser

Greene, not for his playwriting
Beauont, aside from Ogburn's fantasies, he was eulogised in the same poem that mentions the death of Shakespeare.
Spenser, was a poet and received some eulogies for that.
Jonson... the first playwright to be eulogised in earnest.. 21 years after Shakespeare died, and he was poet laureate...

Fletcher had to wait 14 years..
Middleton had to wait 13 years..
Webster... is still waiting..

Don't know anything about Watson except what Wiki says.

Shakespeare, I will be quoting someone else:


William Basse wrote a poem entitled "On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, he died in April 1616" (thus he was very clearly referring to the Stratford Shakespeare). Basse was suggesting that Shakespeare should have been buried in Westminster Abbey next to Chaucer, Beaumont, and Spenser (Chambers, II, 226):

Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Spenser to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fifth
Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.
If your precedency in death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,
Under this carved marble of thine own
Sleep rare tragedian Shakespeare, sleep alone,
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,
Possess as lord not tenant of thy grave,
That unto us and others it may be
Honor hereafter to be laid by thee.

We don't know exactly when this poem was written, but: a) it was certainly written after Beaumont's death in February 1616, and b) it was certainly in existence by the time of the First Folio in 1623, since Ben Jonson's eulogy alludes directly to Basse's, and responds to it. Basse's poem circulated widely in manuscript, as evidenced by the fact that over two dozen seventeenth-century manuscript copies have survived (these are listed in Wells and Taylor, 163). It was also printed five times in the seventeenth century, the first time in the 1633 edition of Donne's Poems.

John Taylor, the Water Poet, has a poem in The Praise of Hemp-seed (1620) in which he includes Shakespeare among famous dead English poets who live on through their works:

In paper, many a poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish'd with their lives.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.
Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,
Forgetfulness their works would over run
But that in paper they immortally
Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.

The monument to Shakespeare in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford was in place at least by the time of the First Folio in 1623, since Leonard Digges refers to it in his poem in that volume (see below). On the front of the monument is a two-line Latin inscription:

Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet

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

This is followed by the well-known poem in English:

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed,
With in this monument Shakspeare: with whom
Quick nature died: whose name doth deck the tomb,
Far more than cost: sith all, that he hath writ,
Leaves living art, but page, to serve his wit.
Obiit anno do. 1616
Aetatis 53 die 23 Apr.

Oxfordians are forced to dismiss this monument as a hoax engineered by conspirators. However, there are numerous 17th-century references to the monument, all of which say it is in memory of William Shakespeare, the famous poet born in Stratford.

Of course, there is Jonson's famous poem in the First Folio (1623), "To the memory of my beloved, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us." Jonson is also thought to be the most likely author of the poem "To the reader" opposite the engraving on the title page, signed "B.I." (Ben Ionson).

The First Folio prefatory material also contains poems by Hugh Holland ("Upon the lines and life of the famous scenicke poet, Master William Shakespeare"), Leonard Digges ("To the memorie of the deceased author Maister W. Shakespeare"), and I. M., most likely Digges's friend James Mabbe ("To the memorie of M. W. Shake-speare"). Digges was the stepson of Shakespeare's Stratford friend Thomas Russell, and kept close ties with Stratford to the end of his life. The only surviving letter in his hand (written in 1632, three years before his death) tells of the "mad relations of Stratford" and contains a jesting description of William Combe, brother of the Thomas Combe to whom Shakespeare bequeathed his sword in his will. (Hotson 1937, 251.)

In a copy of the First Folio now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the following poem is written in a hybrid secretary-italic hand from the 1620s:

Here Shakespeare lies whom none but Death could Shake,
And here shall lie till judgement all awake,
When the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes,
The wittiest poet in the world shall rise.

The same hand has on the same page transcribed the verses from Shakespeare's monument ("Stay passenger why go'st thou by so fast") and his grave ("Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear"), so he is obviously referring to William Shakespeare of Stratford. (Evans 1988)

Appended to Michael Drayton's Battaile of Agincourt (1627) is an elegy called "To my most dearely-loved friend Henery Reynolds Esquire, of Poets & Poesie," in which Drayton gives his opinion of various English poets, both deceased and living. Of Shakespeare he says:

Shakespeare thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,
Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain,
As strong conception, and as clear a rage,
As any one that traffick'd with the stage.

The Second Folio of Shakespeare's works (1632), in addition to the eulogies from the First Folio, contains three additional ones. The first of these, "An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare," was unsigned in the Folio, but later appeared in John Milton's 1645 Poems with the date 1630. The second eulogy, also unsigned, is entitled "Upon the Effigies of my worthy Friend, the Author Maister William Shakespeare, and his Workes." The third, signed only with the initials "I.M.S.," is a well-written 77-line poem called "On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems."

Thomas Heywood, in his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (1635), goes through a long list of his fellow playwrights and affectionately notes the nicknames they had been known by. Of Shakespeare, he writes:

Mellifluous Shake-speare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will.

Sir William D'Avenant's Madagascar, with other poems (1638), contains an ode entitled "In Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare."

Thomas Bancroft's Two Books of Epigrammes, and Epitaphs (1639) contains two short poems entitled "To Shakespeare" and "To the same."

The anonymous Wits Recreations (1640) has an epigram entitled "To Mr. William Shake-spear."

The 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Poems contains Basse's poem noted above, plus three new eulogies: Leonard Digges's "Upon Master William Shakespeare, the Deceased Author, and his Poems" (obviously written years before, since Digges himself had died in 1635); John Warren's "Of Mr. William Shakespeare"; and the anonymous "An Elegie on the death of that famous Writer and Actor, M. William Shakespeare" (which must have been written before 1637, since it speaks of Ben Jonson in the present tense). Note that three of the four eulogies in this volume must have been circulating in manuscript for a number of years before 1640.

To sum up: four years after Shakespeare's death, he was included in a printed tribute to England's greatest deceased poets; sometime in the first seven years after his death, a monument was erected to him in Stratford, and another poem, widely circulated in manuscript, suggested that he should have been buried in Westminster Abbey; seven years after his death, a massive edition of his plays was published along with four eulogies, the longest and most affectionate of them written by England's poet laureate; around the same time (and possibly earlier) another manuscript eulogy was circulating; and over the next twenty years a dozen new eulogies appeared in print, including three in the second edition of his plays and three in an edition of his poems.

To anyone familar with seventeenth-century poetry, this is a very impressive group of tributes, virtually unmatched for any other contemporary poet or playwright. But, someone might object, these eulogies were spread out over decades; why wasn't there an immediate torrent of praise for the man we now recognize as the greatest writer in the English language? Such a question, while understandable from our twentieth-century perspective, reveals an ignorance of seventeenth-century practice. In Shakespeare's day only "important" people (e.g. noblemen, or at least knights) were eulogized immediately in print, and as hard as it may be for us to believe, playwrights were simply not considered important enough for such an honor. Many of them were clearly admired by their fellow playwrights and poets, but our evidence for this generally comes from many years after their deaths, and is in virtually every case much less than what we have for Shakespeare.


I'm not crazy, I'm just not your kind of sane
He who laughs last, didn't understand the joke

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Orloff forgets the plot of his own damned movie. In his idiotic script, Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, is widely celebrated at the Globe for his script writing.

But Orloff asks, "

Was there when the greater Shax died? NO.

What is the point of lack of surviving eulogies, if Orloff admits Shakespeare from Stratford was believed to be the playwright? Or is Orloff admitting that the theory behind his screenplay was just a bunch of nonsense?

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