Avoid the facts, rewrite history, just like JFK - Anonymous (2011) Discussion

[–] fylmphony 11 years ago

Actually, there is almost certainly more to the JFK story than we will ever know. Why rub out Oswald if he acted alone? I don't think Jack Ruby was all that patriotic. But I digress.

THe fundamental error in the anti-strat mindset is one of historical self centeredness. THey make arguments like "If he was such a great writer than why wasn't he writing about his experiences of being a great writer? Why wasn't he self aware of his place in the line of great poets?"-- forgetting the fact that almost no one knows how their work will be received by coming generations. Mark Twain was confident that he was the $hit. Most English departments agree with him (though I have had to read huck finn so many times I think I would rather have a root canal). But Twain's self knowledge comes in part from reading shakespeare, and reading the shift in sensibilities caused by shakespeare. Shakespeare didn't have the benefit of reading the first folio or the theories that it would engender.

The world is full of egomaniacal blowhards like twain and picasso. But there are also really gifted people who don't like to make a lot of noise about how great they are. Find an interview with Bob Dylan where he talks about his favorite Dylan songs. Pete Sampras almost never mentioned his record breaking achievements in interviews. Some people are in awe of themselves, but they are usually the poetasters.

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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

by soprismb-1 » Sun Aug 18 2013 13:29:11
IMDb member since August 2005
Post Edited: Sun Aug 18 2013 14:57:05
Let's assume for the sake of argument that all the elitist zanies out there are write and that Oxford DID write Shakespeare. Where is the motive? What reason is there to cover it up for 100 years? It's not like WS was a man who was deeply imbedded in one mindset that politically could be construed as dangerous. Whatever he says that could be construed as Protestant is then dismissed with mention of Purgatory and Catholic doctrine in Hamlet and other plays. Why? What possible reason is there to have another person write WS? That has always been the be-all-end-all final answer in this debate. If you know your history you know that there is no way anyone but WS wrote the story.

It's EXACTLY like JFK. Use the five or six facts that you have as "evidence", then completely ignore the 8 billion pieces of evidence that prove that there was NO CONSPIRACY. For the last time you *beep* idiots, CONSPIRACIES DO NOT WORK!!! There is no way 20 people thought up a scam for William Shakespeare. There is no way anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald--the exclusion of all other people--killed JFK.

It is a really great movie, but you need to watch it with a large grain of salt. That is something you don't need to do when you read Shakespeare.

I think the answer lies more in the extreme similarity between known court personae and situations, and what the public knew about court life, and those in the court who knew or could identify parallels.

There was never anything really dangerous in terms of internal politics, much less geopolitical relations of the time. It's just a kind of airing dirty laundry for the public to see; i.e. Polonius from Hamlet being based off a dim busy body who was one of DeVere's guardians.

It was just a matter of form to minimize embarrassment to the queen and her contemporaries.

A lot of conspiracy theorists attribute political coups or like power plays as the reasons for keeping things silent, but that's garbage. Imagine your parents had affairs while you were growing up, and someone wrote about it, and used that situation as the basic story, but wove it into a different plot, but used all the same familiar faces. You'd get more than uncomfortable.

That's kind of what was happening with DeVere's group. I've exchanged thoughts with some professional screenwriters, and their feeling is that DeVere led a writer's group, which included Bacon and others depending on the project, but that it was a secret by and large.

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[–] Earthmonkey16 11 years ago

A lot of conspiracy theorists attribute political coups or like power plays as the reasons for keeping things silent, but that's garbage. Imagine your parents had affairs while you were growing up, and someone wrote about it, and used that situation as the basic story, but wove it into a different plot, but used all the same familiar faces. You'd get more than uncomfortable.

Does it really matter who wrote it, if the content embarasses you??
And if you had the power would you not get the writer imprisoned?? Since neither the man Shakespeare nor DeVere or anybody were imprisoned... the question is were the plays really about courtiers??
And what about the plots of most of the plays were not original, but older stories rewritten (which was a common practice in those days)

That's kind of what was happening with DeVere's group. I've exchanged thoughts with some professional screenwriters, and their feeling is that DeVere led a writer's group, which included Bacon and others depending on the project, but that it was a secret by and large.

And all those different writers managed to have one identifiable voice.. The style of the writer Shakespeare which can be identified even within plays...

Do your professional screenwriter friends explain how that must have been done??

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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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

If you look at the entire portfolio you'll note a difference in writing styles. It isn't one voice.

I think the embarrassment was minimal, but very real. It's like discovering you had a fetish or affair while married. It's there, but inconsequential. Yet if that story gets woven into a murder plot, then the audience's imagination goes wild, and I think that was the real fear; that people would laugh or smirk at one truth, but then jump to conclusions that the entire play was based on truth, which it wasn't.

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[–] Hairy_Lime 11 years ago

If you look at the entire portfolio you'll note a difference in writing styles. It isn't one voice.

Not according to anyone who has ever made an in-depth study of Shakespeare's style. Shakespeare's actual voice was very consistent - that is why we can tease out, for example, what parts of Pericles were written by Wilkins, what pasts of [i]All Is True[/b] by Fletcher. But then Oxenfraudians never get beyond the surface of anything.

Datta, dayadhvam, damyata.

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[–] Earthmonkey16 11 years ago

If you look at the entire portfolio you'll note a difference in writing styles. It isn't one voice.

Not really, there was a development of his ability but he had a certain identifiable voice. The use of certain words, certain ryming preferences, sentence building etc is what is identifiable. Unless of course you do not believe in cooperations...

I think the embarrassment was minimal, but very real. It's like discovering you had a fetish or affair while married. It's there, but inconsequential. Yet if that story gets woven into a murder plot, then the audience's imagination goes wild, and I think that was the real fear; that people would laugh or smirk at one truth, but then jump to conclusions that the entire play was based on truth, which it wasn't.

And nobody at the time saw that happening.... nobody remarked upon that. Not the powers that were, not the public..
Only these days it seems that some people find thmeselves better in finding secrets and embarrasing facts than the spy masters of the according to the conspiracy theorists the 'backstabbing courts in the proto-Stalinistic police state of the time'
Was the state willing and able to kill and imprison those that disagree so the hidden author had to hide his identity.... than the man Shakespeare would not have been able to stay out of prison...
If the state was not able to do that... why did the writer have to hide.....

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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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

Hey, it was great talking to you.

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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

Ah, someone tried to reply to me. Regrettably you are on my ignore list for some reason. I may have placed you there intentionally, or reported one of your posts in the past.

Either way I can't see what you wrote, and, based on what I know about people on my ignore list, you deserve to be there.

Thanks anyway.

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[–] Hairy_Lime 11 years ago

More likely, you do not like disagreement, especially when you cannot factually dispute it.

Anyway, from experience, you are not the person my posts are meant for anyway. It is for anyone who might read your comment and think they had substance.

Datta, dayadhvam, damyata.

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[–] syntinen 11 years ago

Blueghost hates disagreement. S/he is a prolific ignorer, and makes that snooty little stereotyped reply whenever anyone in his/her extensive ignored list (I’m on it too, and have absolutely no recollection why) makes a post.

It’s often actually very entertaining, as s/he will weigh in on threads where s/he is only reading maybe 60% of the conversation, all the while sticking his/her fingers in his/her ears and barking 'Not listening to you! Not listening!'

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[–] syntinen 11 years ago

Blueghost is also too thick to realise that Shakespeare in Love is a spoof (e.g. in this thread, where s/he notes with outrage that in SiL Shakespeare has a therapist for his writer's block: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138097/board/thread/215333581?d=latest&t=20130905214253#latest).

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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

Ah, someone tried to reply to me. Regrettably you are on my ignore list for some reason. I may have placed you there intentionally, or reported one of your posts in the past.

Either way I can't see what you wrote, and, based on what I know about people on my ignore list, you deserve to be there.

Thanks anyway.

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[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] entertainmentemail 11 years ago

There have been and will continue to be conspiracy theories that have some truth to them. Only those involved will know for sure. Just like those who believe Queen Elizabeth I was a man, only those evolved knew and all are long dead.

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[–] syntinen 11 years ago

It may be true (I would dispute it) that 'anything is possible', but it is certainly true that many things are so vanishingly improbable that any putative possibility may safely be ignored. As in your own example:

- Elizabeth I was dressed and undressed in the presence of a whole troop of servants, courtiers and hangers-on every day of her life for 45 years.
- She shared a bed every night with one of her maids or ladies in waiting (there was a duty rota).
- She several times submitted to an official gynaecological examination by a panel of physicians to determine whether she could bear children.

The possibility that she could have been a man but none of the literally hundreds of people involved in these events ever noticed, or that they did notice but that none of them ever let on, even long after her death when the regime was wholly changed and there was no possible danger in spilling the beans, is so microscopic as not to exist in any meaningful sense.

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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

I don't think it was a big political conspiracy. I think there was an effort to cover up and dissuade the audience from making too many connections between the personalities and circumstances presented in the plays.

I think a lot of the real "out there" types draw those kind of real conspiratorial conclusions about negative ramifications concerning political power shifts. To me that's stupid. The queen had the power of life and death. Her word, mostly, was law (she had a few checks and balances against her).

I think at most she and her court were probably amused by the plays, but wary that the masses might let their imaginations wander too far.

I mean in the end it really means nothing. I think it's to understand the history of the time.

The thing I find really insulting about this movie is that it just assumes that everyone who doesn't believe Shakespeare authored the portfolio, must be an ultra right-wing conspirator with delusions of god-hood and everything else on their mind. And that's just not the case.

I think it important to remember as well that not all conspiracies are the products of overactive imagination.

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[–] alfa-16 11 years ago

Ah, someone tried to reply to me. Regrettably you are on my ignore list for some reason. I may have placed you there intentionally, or reported one of your posts in the past.

Either way I can't see what you wrote, and, based on what I know about people on my ignore list, you deserve to be there.

Thanks anyway

This is now the full and total Oxfordian presence in the #1 forum for the film of their theory.

Impressive, isn't it??

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[–] Squeeth2 11 years ago

I saw Oxford walking down Newland Avenue yesterday, he was chatting to Elvis, something about ghosting lyrics for his comeback LP.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

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[–] Blueghost 11 years ago

Ah, someone tried to reply to me. Regrettably you are on my ignore list for some reason. I may have placed you there intentionally, or reported one of your posts in the past.

Either way I can't see what you wrote, and, based on what I know about people on my ignore list, you deserve to be there.

Thanks anyway.

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[–] Korios 10 years ago

Wow, you also have that line on your profile, as a freaking signature!. Remarkable intellectual breadth, just remarkable.
That was it, you have the honour of being the second person to add in my ignore list in the 13 years I have been here.

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[–] Korios 10 years ago

Blueghost please add me to your ignore list as well. Posts like this are an insult to elementary intelligence and to humanity by and large. You do not have to project your stupidity all over the board, we deal with enough of it already elsewhere.

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[–] alfa-16 11 years ago

It's EXACTLY like JFK. Use the five or six facts

Except Oxfordians don't have any facts at all.

It's all surmise.

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[–] Squeeth2 11 years ago

Psst! The Earl of Oxford knew my father.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

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[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] stupidus 10 years ago

There are no conspiracies because there are no conspiracies. ;)

Dude/dudette, by now there are more than 80 candidates who may have written or helped in writing these works. Likely, there will surface even more candidates as years roll by.

The real question is why does this matter matter to people - such as yourself - so painfully much?

I say just enjoy the works and take theories for what they are: theories. Thus far the most popular theory is that certain Will did it, but that's really all there is: another theory - although wildly popular (and what's more, one that continues to enable for an army of scholars a rather well-respected and rather well-compensated life career, largely thanks to tax payers).

PS. You often read works of fiction as if they were the true words of god that are never to be questioned? Writers have ulterior motives for writing whatever it is that they love to write about _all_ the bloody time.

Thanks for opening my eyes.

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[–] Hairy_Lime 10 years ago

For anyone who doubts that Oxenfraudians are at their core Creationists, we have the "they are both just theories" claim. Nicely coupled with the idea that all those scholars who speak with one voice on the issue? Can't be the facts are indisputable academically! They must be getting paid.

Here are the facts: All of the available evidence supports William Shakespeare, and only William Shakespeare, as author. All of it. The evidence that supports William Shakespeare is of the same sort, and exists in roughly the same if not greater scope, as the evidence used to determine authorship of the vast majority of writings from that era.

Conversely, there is no evidence to support the idea that anyone other than Shakespeare wrote the works. None. That which Oxenfraudians call evidence is used to determine the authorship of precisely zero literary works. The only thing supporting the view of an alternate author is pure fantasy. When that changes, you can start talking about "another theory".

By the way, most of those academic jobs would continue to exist regardless of author. And your ignorance of academia is par for the Oxenfraudian course. Tell me, how does an academic more likely make a name for himself? By parroting perceived wisdom, or questioning it? If there was a case to be made for another author that had anything like a sound academic basis, some scholars would be making it.

Datta, dayadhvam, damyata.

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[–] Noodleneedlenodlnick 10 years ago

"...all of it...all of it...." One senses the despair in the man's posts...all of them...

If one looks at the "evidence" of a Will Shaksper, one comes up with a man who never put pen to paper, oh, except to write in a literary style of which he would have had no knowledge.

The reason there are no Oxfordians here is that they don't troll movie sites like Hairy Lime, Richard Nathan, Alpha, Sentinen and Earthmonkey who have a nice little trolling exercise going on.

They actually get out in public and say things which are interesting and make sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpc5A-14tmw

The debate has now gone from one or two people like Charlton Ogburn and Looney against the whole of mainstream academia to being one where the Oxfordians make very interesting arguments about a very interesting man and a very interesting period in English history, while the Stratfordians just throw out insults wit an uncomfortable, cringing smile, mainly because they just haven't bothered to read up on the debate.

And, at the same time, something even more interesting is happening. As people focus on Will Shaksper and try to find facts about him to link him with the canon, they come up with stories about him living with a wigmaker and whore master called Mountjoy and working in the leather trade with known gangsters and criminals, being cited in court proceedings as someone who threatened a man and records of him evading debts, claiming he was impecunious, while, at the same time, he was amassing money sufficient to buy a big house in Stratford, making him a fraudster.

That is the other side of the Authorship debate which people here don't want to talk about, that the emerging picture of the Stratford man is making him less and less likely to have been an author of anything.

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[–] Earthmonkey16 10 years ago

You really had a bboring boxing day didn't you, all these posts...

Oxford was an interesting man (all kinds of information that does not paint a picture of a nice man), yes. But that does not mean he wrote any of the plays attributed to Shakespeare...

And on the other hand you are complaining that William shakespeare gets to be more interesting with all those liaisons with wigmakers, gangsters, tax evasions... he starts to be a real man, not a nice man, but real..

None of the facts surfacing make Oxford a more likely author, nor do they make Shakespeare a less likely author, unless you think that a aristocrat accused of all kinds of wrongdoing makes for a good candidate and a commoner accused of all kinds of wrongdoings makes for a bad candidate...

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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[–] Noodleneedlenodlnick 10 years ago

So, try to construct a history of Shaksper which isn't a spoof.

Go on... try.

Even if Anonymous is largely based on artistic interpretation, you can't do the same with Shaksper because there is no record of the man in London doing things associated with playwriting. All the references to him point to him not being involved in playwriting, except the references to a "Shake-Speare" which isn't him.

Nobles close to monarchs used pen names, like Greysteele, that is all you have, a series of references to a Shake-Speare, and then some facts about Will from Stratford, growing up in a town, working in the leather trade, being chased by the tax collector, filing documents showing he had no money, but then appearing again in Stratford with enough money to buy a house. That is tax evasion and tax fraud.

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[–] Earthmonkey16 10 years ago

Never heard of that Greysteele, and Google does not give me a pen-name either, but you can point me into the right direction to who was hiding behind that name..

The leather trade is btw not a fact, his father was a glover not William....
The facts about Shakespeare from Stratford involve all kinds of links to the theatre and acting group that performed the Shakespeare plays.
Which makes him involved in putting those plays on stage, which gives the man from Stratford having a direct link to the plays...

And funny that you find tax evasion something to disqualitfy a person as an author, what would murder make you think?? Probably AUTHOR if that person was an aristocrat.....

Which facts link your candidate of choice to the plays/sonnets/poems??
Biographical facts not literary facts that is, literary facts are inferring links from the literary works of Shakespeare to a person..
Biographical facts are documentation or people actually saying he wrote them...

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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[–] syntinen 10 years ago

The leather trade is btw not a fact, his father was a glover not William....

Quite apart from the fact that glovemaking and 'the leather trade' were quite separate occupations in the 16th century. This reality is of course a closed book to Noodle and his mates, who have fantasised scenarios such as Will Shakespeare bringing back poached deer for the family to tan the hide illegally in their front room!

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[–] Earthmonkey16 10 years ago

Yep anti-Shakespeareans have a very loose relationship with reality.

They tend to overlook the commoner's background of the vast majority of Elizabethan playwrights.

They tend to think that no school records means that aside form the boys from Stratford they cannot deny could actually read and write young William could never have attended any school, even when actors should at least be able to read....

they tend to think that William's father was 'just a glover' while he was in ciy counciil (re-elected as the accounts keeper at that) and mayor...

They tend to think that aside from the (limited to official records) recorded facts about William Shakespeare means he did nothing else, and aside from the in abundance recorded facts about Edward Devere he was also a playwright to plays for a company rivaling his own theatre group...

They tend to think that Shakespeare wrote his own life into the adapted plays, but NOT in the original plays, into some of the sonnets, but NOT in the ones where he says his name is Will or the one about Hathaway/hateaway..

They tend to think that any Warwickshire jargon or reference to Warwickshire places and people, any difference in ryming between DeVere and Shakespeare is to be ignored.

And the rather odd chronology that DeVere wrote his juvenalia (not very good poetry) right untill he started as Shakespeare, while he also helped translate Ovid as a young boy....

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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[–] Culfy 10 years ago

So according to you Shakespeare had debts (like Mozart), had a violent nature (like Norman Mailer), was associated with Brothels (like Toulouse Lautrec). It's obvious that all of this would debar one from being a great artist.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

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[–] cableaddict 10 years ago

The OP might be the dumbest person on the IMDB, which is really saying something.

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[–] Culfy 10 years ago

Why?

Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

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[–] fritzb43 10 years ago

I always have the same answer for the conspiracy theorists, and it usually shuts them up:

"I don't care, I really do not care."

Try sometime soon. It works!

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[–] Noodleneedlenodlnick 9 years ago

A theory which I have only recently discovered is that the works were edited and published by a group of people centred around Wilton House in Wilton, Wiltshire.

The group included the Countess of Pembroke who was a writer and editor herself and, obviously, related to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. She was a friend of Ben Jonson who, himself, was a secretary to Francis Bacon. She died in about 1621, I think and the First Folio came out a couple of years later so it is suggested that "Shakespeare" is just a useful cover for the fact that the canon is a work of a group of people each putting in different and mainly unknowable contributions.

This makes it possible that the plays could have been based on events in the life of deVere and/or written by him and other like Marlowe and then edited or rewritten before publication by Jonson and Bacon.

It doesn't involve any conspiracy at all. It just makes sense that this body of works may have been worked on by so many different people that it was easier just to publish it as a body of work under one name as it may have been one collection of this family in Wilton.

If you read up on Homer, you find the same issues, that Homer was supposedly blind so he couldn't have written anything and many people think he did not exist. It's just better, for some purposes, to ascribe a body of works to one name, such as having a Nancy Drew or Franklin W. Dixon as the author of those books even though there were a number of writers, and editors involved in them. And, William Shaksper was a convenient name because he coincidentally, perhaps, had a name which was similar to the "Shake-Speare" name used on sonnets etc so he could have been roped into it. I think this is what the scene involving Touchstone, Will and Audrey is about, that Touchstone and Will are arguing about who is the "real" author of the works, the man behind the idea or the man with his name on them while Audrey is the Countess of Pembroke, or other female secretary/editor of the works.

So, maybe there are three "Shakespeares". "I'm Shakespeare...no, I'm Shakespeare".

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[–] Culfy 9 years ago

Aaaaaaaaand he's back.....and barking as ever

Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

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[–] syntinen 9 years ago

What's particularly charming is the utter lack of awareness. He has no idea that this post makes clear that any story at all will do for him and he'll clutch at it gratefully, no matter how absurd, provided it entails somebody, anybody, other than the boy from Stratford-upon-Avon having written the works. If somebody posited a theory that some late Elizabethan aristocrat kept a menagerie of an infinite number of monkeys and equipped each one with an early form of typewriter as invented by Leonardo di Vinci, and that these monkeys were the authors of the works, Noodle would at least give it a run-out.

I do enjoy the airy assertion that a theory that a group of aristocrats and all the leading authors of the age could spend years collaborating in Wiltshire on 37 plays, a sonnet cycle and other poems, and it 'wouldn't involve any conspiracy at all' to keep this fact secret from the entire world, then and thereafter.

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[–] alfa-16 9 years ago

Not to mention the fact that all of his posts are underwritten by the implication that justabout anybody could write a play and make it indistinguishable Shakespeare's work.

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[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

There is really only one piece of "evidence" that Shakespeare wrote shakespeare. And that is his name was printed on them.

But wait. I'm not done. The Oxfordian claim is just as ridiculous: the main drive behind it is de Vere needed to safeguard his reputation. The same man who took his mistresses out into public and was labeled a "night brawler? Yeah he cared a lot about his rep. Not to mention that this "poetic genius" really wasn't all that good.

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[–] Culfy 9 years ago

It's not just 'name on the plays' though. It's the fact that Frances Meres amongst others attributed the plays to Shakespeare..as well as Shakespeare's links with the Lord Chamberlain's men
PC SJW AND PROUD OF IT

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[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

However, Meres only inserts a chronology of the plays again with a name from the covers. Being the stubborn conspiracy theorist I am, I need more to be swayed on this particular topic. I still find it odd that for a man that produced such a volume of work, no one ever saw him at work with pen to paper. The beauty of being a writer is you can take your job anywhere. And we do. I have written (and rewritten) 20 word poems that have taken me at least 2 weeks from birth to satisfaction to finish, often rewriting them again just because I didn't care for the position of a single word. Writers are a finicky bunch when it comes to their work. And Dewey Cox eurekan moments abound.

Then Shakespeare's level of education is a huge hangup: if a peasant were to rise through the intellectual ranks in those times, he would do it through school or not at all. Shakespeare was out of school before puberty, and I just don't believe that his father's position as alderman was sufficient enough to gain his son access to any private library of the nobility -- those guys would rush into an inferno to save whatever books they could and they're going to allow some peasant to peruse their pages? Not buying it.

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[–] Culfy 9 years ago

However, Meres only inserts a chronology of the plays again with a name from the covers.

Except that Meres speaks about a number of plays that were not published in Quarto form at the time of his writing (indeed, his writing is used as one of the main basis of the dating) - so he's not just using 'a name from the covers'

I still find it odd that for a man that produced such a volume of work, no one ever saw him at work with pen to paper.

Really? So how did Ben Jonson know that he 'never blotted a line' if no-one saw him writing?

Shakespeare was out of school before puberty, and I just don't believe that his father's position as alderman was sufficient enough to gain his son access to any private library of the nobility

Actually, we don't know that at all. We don't have any idea of when he finished school (or even, as Oxfordians are fond of pointing out if he went to school at all). We do know that he had access to a perfectly good grammar school in Stratford where his Father's position would be sufficient to allow him to attend and be educated in the standard Latin curriculum. And unless you truly believe that no-one learns anything after school, he had plenty of opportunity to get access to books after leaving school...one of his neighbours was a printer and publisher in London after all.
PC SJW AND PROUD OF IT

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[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

Don't you find it odd that for a person whom you are certain was the author of those plays and poems, you too must reference indefinites in practically everything you write regarding him. Furthermore, your referencing jonson is rather odd considering he was criticizing shakespeare, not complimenting him.

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[–] Culfy 9 years ago

No not particularly - it was over 400 years ago.

And I'm not sure why the fact Jonson was criticising Shakespeare makes any difference.

PC SJW AND PROUD OF IT

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[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

Well how about all the writers from that same time period who are not spoke of with a majority of indefinites, like jonson, etc.? I mean it's not like anyone is refuting his existence in the realm of theater: we know he was prominent on the theater scene - what little we know in that regard is still verifiable; it's only when it comes to shakespeare the writer every sentence embarks on some variation of "probably", and yet the conclusion that the bard of Avon should definitely be regarded as the only possible candidate....it just seems odd to me. But that's me. I'm not saying I know who the writer really was. Personally I find the marlovian claim fascinating, but I take it with a grain of salt.

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[–] Culfy 9 years ago

Thomas Dekker - look up his life story sometime and see the lack of definites

Christopher Marlowe - we don't even have good copies of most of his surviving plays

Even Ben Jonson - we have no record of his early education other than what he said himself.

PC SJW AND PROUD OF IT

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[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

Pretty familiar with marlowe, but mostly in regards to the marlovian claim. I'll definitely check out the other two. Thanks for the info, and for keeping it civil.

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[–] Culfy 9 years ago

While doing your research try and answer this question - do we have any eye witnesses to the writing habits of any other playwrights apart from Shakspeare?
PC SJW AND PROUD OF IT

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[–] Hairy_Lime 9 years ago

Actually, to the extent no one adds "probably" to the lives of Marlowe or Dekker or Jonson it is solely because they are not being precise.

Datta, dayadhvam, damyata.

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[–] billyparker 9 years ago

Thomas Middleton wrote twice as many plays as did Shakespeare, and all we have to show for it is his name on the published texts of those plays. No one ever doubts that Middleton wrote Middleton. This is just a snobbish, half-educated Victorian parlor game that has hung around so long that less-than-half-educated people now think it has merit.

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[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

Lol. Ad hominem attacks make you look real smart, *beep*

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[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

The fact that you tell me he wasn't a Sunday tinkered shows you TOTALLY missed what I was saying. Why should I debate this topic who obviously has poss poor reading comprehension. Good day.

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[–] bdmonty 9 years ago

*tinkerer

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