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| Sir Edward Coke |
The 'Frauds among us have crowed about their so-called "Prima Facie Case of Shakespeare" for a goodly long time now. They have boldly challenged all comers after the fashion of the Earl of Oxford in the fictional account Chronicle of some of the principle events in the Life, Adventures, and Times of Edward Webbe.
Unlike Anthony Munday's (and, possibly, Thomas Nashe's) account, however, the PFC largely qualifies as legitimate. Also unlike Munday's completely fictional narrative, their mostly non-fiction PFC doesn't quite meet their needs. They have had to sneak in a few additional, fictional claims in order to achieve what they wish to accomplish.
As is common in such situations, they present themselves as most confident of exactly these claims. They protect their weaknesses by developing rationalizations, by presenting them as their most assured strengths. Seasoning (self?) deceit with an occasional legal term — even if they clearly have only the most limited understanding what it means — can be comforting and surprisingly effective in venues such as social media. Without these few little touches they feel worrisomely vulnerable. Being so emotionally wrought, if those rationalizations are threatened a skunk-like discourtesy is commonly the defense.
Not that they need to be overly concerned, though. What they do not have in the way of legal validity can be replaced in the virtual world by skills such as semantics and raising smoke screens. While such matters as literary scholarship and the law are skills requiring far more study than they can choose to engage in, semantics allows them to assert credentials, at a much more favorable rate, and readings in the texts of law that are in their mind uncontestable.
As to their assertion of long and successful years of legal practice, their amateurish mistakes and misapprehensions suggest otherwise. Still, one might be tempted to quote Ambrose Pierce's insightful definition of "Lawyer" in behalf of the 'Frauds:
Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law.
But the word "skilled" presents an obstacle impossible to overcome. Nevertheless, the point is made.
Asked to provide citations they reply by giving out reading assignments. Such an act would be rebuffed with vigor and a tone of long-suffering by a court.
On the one occasion the 'Frauds, in particular, fell into the common pitfall of believing their own online personas to be real, they did actually quote the names of two specific cases they advanced in behalf of their claims vis-a-vis the Rules of Evidence.
“A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth.” Patrick Murray.
Unfortunately for them, they chose cases that resoundingly argued against their own. A strangely embarrassing blunder for professionals such as themselves. (see Why Have Purported Oxfraud Lawyers Demolished Their Own Evidence?)😉
That experiment having failed so badly they returned to filling comment sections with vague and/or unsupported claims in the stultifying profusion they have learned overwhelms rational debate with insults and semantics. I present a few brief examples from comment after comment each weighing in at hundreds of words of ipse dixit semantic legerdemain.
In order to reach this erroneous position you must (intentionally...?) alter the actual language used by the court.
Why do you continue to show your ignorance as to legal matters?
The most glaring problem with your post is that you (intentionally...?) fail to acknowledge your blatant error as to the word "condition" in the Statute, and the FACT that it pertains only to the physical appearance of the document. Are you finally willing to concede your error in this regard?
The article shows a lack of understanding of the trial process.
You're as incompetent at addressing legal matters as Gilbert is.
Again, there is the possibility that this is merely the last bastion of lawyerly practice: being willing to make a hash out of the law when it serves one's client and is unlikely to result in formal sanctions.
Throwing off competence because it hinders one's case is not a thing against which all lawyers scruple. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell provide compelling immediate examples of the fact. The clients/deities of each "legal team" receive a level of worship that they feel justifies any tactic. Their client's case is not strong because of the facts. It is strong because they are unquestionable deities.
Of course, this post is going to receive exactly the same treatment with the full confidence that the tactics are impenetrable. Or will if I will allow the 'Frauds to continue such behavior without sanction.
This is fair warning from the Court of Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. The decision has been rendered upon the 'Fraudian Prima Facie Case brief (see Oxfraud “Prima Facie Case for Shakespeare” Revised to Comport with Federal Rules of Evidence). It is revised to comport with the Federal Rules of Evidence 901 and related statutes. Continued behavior as the thwarted 'Frauds have displayed in the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook group in respect of the decision will henceforth result in findings of Contempt of Court and suitable periods of Suspension from the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook group. Should a member or guest persist regardless, I will be forced to consider banning them from the group.
The Oxfrauds have their own group, bulging with 264 members, of late, to which they can appeal with an absolute certainty of approval of their every word and tactic. They are free to take up these matters on whatever terms will satisfy them there.
If they should still wish to enjoy vigorous and respectful debate on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, they are welcome to do so here during such periods as they are not under one or another sanction. Their time under sanction, I would strongly suggest, would be well spent reading in-depth in the subjects addressed by this group. They all could do with considerable improvement in that way.
A post will be pinned to the top of the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook group displaying the names, reason(s) and durations of persons suspended at any given time.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Ben Jonson and the Dedication to the Shakespeare First Folio. December 12, 2022. “Country hands reach foorth milke, creame, fruites, or what they have:...”.
Labeo and Shakespeare on the Ladies' Toilette. November 13, 2022. “What woman would be anything but offended to be described in such a way?”
The Gossip from Queen Elizabeth's Court, May 11, 1573. November 5, 2022. “My Lord of Oxford is lately grown into great credit; for the Queen's Majesty delighteth more in his personage, and his dancing, and valiantness, than any other.”
Edward de Vere and Marlowe’s Dido of Carthage. July 5, 2022. “It was an historical effort and an historical two years for Elizabethan theater.”
- How Shakespeare gave Ben Jonson the Infamous Purge. November 7, 2021. “Of course, De Vere could not openly accuse Jonson of having outed him as Shakespeare.”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
130 comments:
I have still to see a single valid objection to anything in the Prima Facie Case for Shakespeare, which is no more than the shortest possible trail that can be made between The First Folio and William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon, supported at each stage by tangible evidence.
Three years and no a single, valid objection. To any of it.
Plenty of hysterics about our right to make it, whether we can call it a prima facie case, its legal status and the qualifications of the those who originally drafted it.
But, I repeat, not a single valid objection.
What fictional parts, exactly?
Richard Malim: Oxfrauds have a reasonable prima facie case. It is for the Oxfordians to dispose of of it. It may not matter who wrote the H and C letters or the title page of the 1623 folio, it does matter if it's right. (I dealt with the argument at page 418 n.66 in my book). Trevor Roper is quoted: (His political enemy Professor E H) Carr has demolished the now discredited theory - that history derived from documents was somehow scientific. In fact it has to be just as subjective as any form of history." TR conceded that was true, that the documentary record of the past was two-dimensional, but he insisted that the historian could acquire 'stereoscopic vision' to see beyond the document to the three dimensional reality of the time and place to which it originated. I wd add that the tests which each reader applies include in that 'time and place' the full historical background are, as in circumstantial evidence evaluation, a matter for that individual reader to judge their relevance. No lawyer cd disagree with that. So in my opinion goodbye to the prima facie case
"Oxfrauds have a reasonable prima facie case. It is for the Oxfordians to dispose of of it." Good to see you acknowledge it, as does GWP ("the PFC largely qualifies as legitimate.")
It seems as if you're saying that if you can find enough coincidences that you idiosyncratically believe supports an opposite conclusion than the evidence supports, we'd have to accept the coincidences instead.
There are certainly instances where the primary source evidence is contradicted by other evidence, refuting the primary source. For instance, A Yorkshire Tragedy was published in 1608 as the work of William Shakespeare, but internal evidence demonstrates that it was most likely the work of Thomas Middleton. Notably, looking at the entirety of the evidence as you suggest, this work was omitted from the First Folio.
The problem is that the Oxfordians never produce any evidence supporting their position that arguably refutes the statements in the dedicatory epistle and other primary sources. The stylistic evidence that has convinced most scholars about the authorship of A Yorkshire Tragedy doesn't support the Oxfordian claim. Shakespeare's style is unique and significantly different than the surviving works attributed to Oxford. Nobody at the time claimed that Shakespeare was acting as an allonym. There's very little evidence that Oxford wrote any actual plays; as I've argued here and there, the evidence is entirely consistent with his having works ghost written by the very capable playwrights he hired as "secretaries." When I posted this on the Facebook site, there was no evidence offered to contest it.
It really seems much more like a cult than a serious historical study. You can argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but you can't convince anyone that angels exist.
Richard Malim 15/1/23 Idiosyncracy is a matter of your judgment. I wd defend my case and call on you to destroy it if you can even if I was the only idiosyncratic supporter. But I am not. There are dozens if not hundreds who wd agree with me, so 'idiosyncracy'is no longer, if it ever was, the correct term. You are correct ; if there are enough coincidences making up the circumstantial evidence scenario then that becomes 'better' and overturning evidence for the few pieces of prima facie evidence you adduce in my judgment , and that of the dozens or hundreds of my friends; and seriously clever people have deemed our position a worthy 'serious historical study' - so drop that piece of non-persuasive mud, please.I am quite happy that the jury may be still out, but I wd like to know if you agree.
Anent Yorkshire Tragedy: I follow Nina Green in thinking that YT is a much older play, and suppose that it might have been an example to later writers, but I wdnt lose sleep if your proof eventually convinced me I was wrong. It is hardly relevant to the main point on which I await your reply
It's been my experience in discussing Shakespeare authorship denial with Oxfordians (and others, including Baconians, Marlovians, Sackvillains, Nevillians, etc.) that no two believers are exactly alike. All of them have their own favorite claim or detail they have "discovered." Some are claiming that Oxford wrote under dozens of pseudonyms (and conveniently the works published under his own name are the worst of the lot); many but not all think he wrote works attributed to his uncle; some think he was the son of Queen Elizabeth. It goes on and on. Once you stop being guided by the evidence, and interpreting ambiguous evidence in favor of a vast, anonymous conspiracy, you can make up whatever you want.
"seriously clever people have deemed our position a worthy 'serious historical study'" It's a fringe conspiracy theory. If you're referring to the list of celebrities of the past who endorsed some version of Shakespeare authorship denial, few of whom had any relevant expertise, I'm not impressed. Tell me all about people dead for a nearly a century. I agree that Mark Twain was "seriously clever," but I have no reason to respect his opinion on early modern theatrical history, or that this is a "serious historical study." It's a bunch of hobbyists who do this mostly after retirement.
Re: YT -- we've excluded it and other apocrypha from our PFC, in response to critiques we received. Our PFC only applies to the works published in the First Folio, because logically, Heminges and Condell's statement about the works apply only to those works. We're also limited to the scope of works that Heminges and Condell considered to have been sufficiently the work of Shakespeare to include in the Folio. Scholars have determined that there were collaborative works with other playwrights at both the beginning and end of Shakespeare's career that were included in the Folio. Likely there are others where may have contributed, as he did with the script for Sir Thomas More.
GWP: The Oxfraudian way, however, is to give blatant partisanship a thin patina of scholarship."
MJ: You haven't done any scholarship at all. You were provided with statutes, legal rules of statutory interpretation, excerpts from legal treatises and a legal dictionary, and federal case law, all of which you have either shamelessly ignored or denied, or erroneously contorted to fit your blatant partisanship.
GWP: "...the PFC largely qualifies as legitimate.. their mostly non-fiction PFC doesn't quite meet their needs.
They have had to sneak in a few additional, fictional claims in order to achieve what they wish to accomplish."
MJ: Be specific. Such vague allegations as you regurgitate here would not be tolerated in any court. What "fictional claims" have been made?
The PFC has been publicized now for approximately three years. It has yet to be rebutted. It achieved exactly what it was intended to accomplish.
GWP: "As is common in such situations, they present themselves as most confident of exactly these claims. They protect their weaknesses by developing rationalizations, by presenting them as their most assured strengths."
MJ: Again, all you offer are more vague, unsupported generalities. Be specific. What claims that we have made are at all "weak", and what legal authority can you cite in support of your assertion to that effect.
GWP: "Seasoning (self?) deceit with an occasional legal term — even if they clearly have only the most limited understanding what it means — can be comforting and surprisingly effective in venues such as social media."
MJ: And, again, more generalities. What legal terms are you referring to here? This assertion is rather ironic coming from someone who didn't even know how to spell "prima facie", had to have the correct spelling pointed out to him (twice), and clearly didn't know what a Motion in Limine was. And who also denied that "condition" in the Statute simply meant "physical appearance" (do you still deny this fact?). You are so confused that you think that the PFC itself is what has been offered for authentication, rather than the Dedication to the First Folio. In so doing, you conclusively demonstrate that you don't even understand what qualifies as evidence, much less how it is authenticated.
GWP: "Without these few little touches they feel worrisomely vulnerable."
MJ: Nice strawman you've got there. I don't feel vulnerable at all.
GWP: "Being so emotionally wrought, if those rationalizations are threatened a skunk-like discourtesy is commonly the defense."
MJ: This is rather ironic, since your pathetic defense of your "legal" opinion has involved discourteous allegations of professional incompetence from the very beginning. Not to mention that you appear to be emotionally obsessed with this issue. Is that a common result when you're shown to be wrong about something?
GWP: "Not that they need to be overly concerned, though. What they do not have in the way of legal validity can be replaced in the virtual world by skills such as semantics and raising smoke screens."
MJ: That's the best examples of psychological projection I have ever witnessed. Your notion that your uneducated, ill-informed opinions have "legal validity" is indicative that you suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. "Semantics" and "smoke screens"...? That's all you've got -- like twisting the term " condition" in the Statute to cover your ghostwriting conspiracy theory, when it simply means "physical appearance".
GWP: "While such matters as literary scholarship and the law are skills requiring far more study than they can choose to engage in, semantics allows them to assert credentials, at a much more favorable rate, and readings in the texts of law that are in their mind uncontestable."
MJ: By your own admission here, your lack of any education and/or expertise in legal matters is impossible to reconcile with you treating your own opinion as if it is incontestable truth. You quite obviously don't know how to read statutes or case law, as has repeatedly been shown. (See examples of your basic ignorance set forth above).
GWP: "As to their assertion of long and successful years of legal practice, their amateurish mistakes and misapprehensions suggest otherwise."
MJ: Again, be specific. Vague generalities simply won't cut it. Point out some amateurish mistakes and misapprehensions you contend we have made.
GWP: "Still, one might be tempted to quote Ambrose Pierce's insightful definition of "Lawyer" in behalf of the 'Frauds:
Lawyer: One skilled in the circumvention of the law."
MJ: The sad fact is that you don't even possess the lawyerly skill to circumvent the law. You simply bludgeon it with a blunt object so that it no longer resembles the actual legal text.
GWP: "But the word "skilled" presents an obstacle impossible to overcome."
MJ: Are you speaking here of your own lack of legal skills, or indulging in more projection?
GWP: "Nevertheless, the point is made."
MJ: You haven't made a specific point here yet. Slippery, vague generalities don't make points in the legal realm. Specifics are required.
GWP: "Asked to provide citations they reply by giving out reading assignments. Such an act would be rebuffed with vigor and a tone of long-suffering by a court."
MJ: Speaking as someone who has actually appeared countless times in court, and has argued numerous motions, I can state in my place that you have once again exhibited your utter lack of legal knowledge. Citing cases, statutes, rules of statutory interpretation, and legal treatises is, as a matter of fact, exactly what a court expects to have presented to it. What a court would rebuff with vigor is resorting to the vague generalities such as those you indulge in here. You would be laughed out of court.
GWP: "Unfortunately for them, they chose cases that resoundingly argued against their own. A strangely embarrassing blunder for professionals such as themselves. (see Why Have Purported Oxfraud Lawyers Demolished Their Own Evidence?)"
MJ: The only blunders here are found in your insipid interpretation of the case law cited. Merely repeating that interpretation, while failing to address the valid criticisms of it, does nothing to raise your argument from the bottom of the trash can in which it resides. Your stated defense of your attempt at forging a legal opinion is that the Habteyes case supports a finding that Item 9 of the PFC would not be authenticated. Since neither of us (Philip or I) have ever made that particularly stupid argument about Item 9, you're simply bloviating. And showing that you don't even understand what qualifies as evidence for authentication purposes. You should be embarrassed about displaying your ignorance so blatantly, but your arrogance prevents you from even admitting the possibility that you might be wrong.
GWP: "That experiment having failed so badly they returned to filling comment sections with vague and/or unsupported claims in the stultifying profusion they have learned overwhelms rational debate with insults and semantics."
I take it back. This is the best example of psychological projection I have ever witnessed. "Vague and/or unsupported claims"...? See above.
GWP: "I present a few brief examples from comment after comment each weighing in at hundreds of words of ipse dixit semantic legerdemain.
MJ:. [Snip]
Cherry picking quotes, and taking them completely out of context, is frowned upon by the courts.
GWP: "Throwing off competence because it hinders one's case is not a thing against which all lawyers scruple. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell provide compelling immediate examples of the fact. The clients/deities of each "legal team" receive a level of worship that they feel justifies any tactic. Their client's case is not strong because of the facts. It is strong because they are unquestionable deities."
MJ: Right. Like someone without a shred of any legal education or experience whatsoever deciding that their own opinion is sacrosanct, and justifies them acting as judge, jury and jailer. Your trumpery, and your own incompetence in addressing legal matters, are blatantly obvious. You don't have any facts, and have shown that you don't even grasp what qualifies as evidence in this discussion.
The PFC is strong because it is built on facts, all of which are supported by primary source evidence. It is so strong, in fact, that you haven't been able to even lay a glove on it, much less rebut it. Which is why you have instead adopted the "strategery" to try to exclude the factual evidence from consideration. But you have failed. Your vain attempt to formulate a legal argument has been exposed for the nonsense that it is.
As it appears that you don't believe in the primacy of objective evidence, you have just consigned your own case for Oxford to the subjective relativity garbage heap.
But the jury isn't out at all. Just because a fringe group of people join together in promoting a conspiracy theory doesn't mean such a theory attains any credibility whatsoever. And coincidence is not necessarily circumstantial evidence, no matter how big you claim the pile is. Especially when those coincidences depends upon an unsupported, a priori assumptions that the works are autobiographical.
Richard Malim: Tell me how many you need to turn a fringe group which has existed for over 100 years needs to become 'respectable'. The 'credibility' is your opinion and whether I accept it is my business. Nearly all circumstantial evidence starts with co-incidence and a priori assumptions, but even these must have au fond a factual basis. Thus you assume that the William Shakespeare is the same person as a Warwickshire clodhopper named William Shaksper - not even a priori, because that assumption is built on layer after layer of further assumptions.
How wd you tackle Abraham Hollies remark under Jonson's portrait in the 1640 edition of Jonson's Works, "Vindex ingenii recens sepulti"? In no sense is WS a 'buried' genius needing Jonson as a recent vindicator.
Creationists and young earthers outnumber Oxfordians by far and have been around much longer. But they are equally as immune to evidence and remain a fringe group as far as their credibility.
I don't assume that the Warwickshire Mr. Shakespeare was the author. I rely upon primary source evidence that demonstrates that he was. If you disagree, rebut the prima facie case instead of summarily dismissing it. And use evidence, not your idiosyncratic reading of a line in the 1640 edition of Jonson's work. No attorney would agree that your subjective spin qualifies as evidence, and certainly not as anything that serves to rebut the prima facie case. And no attorney worth a damn would simply walk away from a PFC when confronted with one... that's an attorney who can't win his own case.
As for your translation of Holland's (not Hollies) Latin, see as follows:
As mentioned previously, the NPG image-type of Jonson had been used as a basis for the earliest known engraving of the poet’s features, which was executed by Robert Vaughan (c.1600-before 1663/4), with verses beneath by Abraham Holland (died 1626). George Humble had issued this as an individual print by or in 1627 (H&S, 11.591-2; Hind, 1952-64, 3.33, and plates 26c-d). Holland’s verses are as follows:
Johnsoni typus, ecce! qui furoris.
Antistes sacer, Enthei, Camenis
Vindex frigenij recens Sepulti,
Antiquae reparator vnus artis,
Defuncta Pater Eruditionis,
Et Scenae veteris novator audax.
Nec faelix minus, aut minus politus
Cui solus similis, Figura, vivet.
O could there be an art found that might
Produce his shape soe lively as to Write.
The Latin may be rendered as ‘Behold the image of Jonson, high priest of the inspiring muse, new champion of old wisdom and restorer of ancient arts, patron of learning, and bold renewer of the antique stage. Let this image live, no less happy or accomplished, than its great original’ (transl. Keith Cunliffe). The process of engraving means that Jonson is again seen turned to the viewer’s left, rather than to the right. The print shows him crowned with a laurel wreath, and at half-length, so that both his arms are included, the left one draped with a mantle, which seems also to extend round his waist. In his left hand, Jonson grasps a pair of gloves, a sign of status. In the second state of this print Humble’s address had been removed and replaced by ‘Are to be sould by William Peake'.
Nothing whatsoever to do with William Shakespeare ...
https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/essays/jonsons_images_essay/
I understand that my version is from the 1640 edition: I don't recognise the word frigenii: the translation as quoted wd have put me up before the school headmaster. My line readily translates "The recent champion /vindicator of buried genius"
I have made a serious error in suggesting number shd take Oxfordianism to the realms of respectability as you so politely have pointed out. It is the quality of Oxfordian support that shd command your respect, e.g. Professor Penrose who has been described as the cleverest man in England. Also apart from the SBT's board lawyer, it is astonishingly difficult to find a lawyer in England who argues in support of 'orthodoxy', a fact bemoaned by Rev. Dr. Edmundson, the SBT director of 'Education'.
Primary source evidence is not Prima facie evidence or vice versa. As a lawyer I expect you can recognise the truth of the argument evinced by Professors Carr and Trevor-Roper in the "Only co-incidence..." trail, to which I am yet to receive a reply
Richard Malim: HollAND : you are correct - thank you. FRIgenii: FR is actually the capital letter I or J - see Johnsoni, the first word
A prima facie case is merely a proof. It is based upon factual premises, supported by documentary evidence, and presents a logical conclusion derived therefrom. It establishes a rebuttable presumption that the proposition sought to be proved is true, and it results in shifting the burden of going forward with rebuttal evidence to the other party. You can attempt to rebut the PFC by proving that the factual premises cited in support of it are false, by showing that the conclusion does not logically proceed from the premises, or by producing legal evidence which refutes the prima facie case.
It's very telling that no Oxfordian chooses to even attempt to rebut the case. They either make ridiculous arguments such as those proposed by Mr. Purdy to try to exclude the evidence or they dismiss it with a wave of the hand.
The PFC model has been recommended by attribution scholars as an appropriate methodology.
"The criteria for the acceptance of an attribution as proven have traditionally been based on legal models for the evaluation of evidence ... Certain basic standards of proof are common to both. In criminal law, guilt has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt; in civil cases the balance of probability determines the findings. In attribution studies the second would be sufficient to let a received attribution stand but . . . it would require the first to overturn an accepted attribution or to establish a new one from scratch." (p. 209)
— Harold Love, Attributing Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
For the sake of the debate, even were I to accept your translation (which I don't), it still wouldn't qualify as evidence relevant to Shakespeare or to a theory that Oxford was the secret author of Shakespeare. Do you have any legal evidence which serves to rebut this prima facie case?
https://express.adobe.com/page/oeL8Iuo40YZrU/
Richard Malim: On the other trail you were effectively saying that documents are only to be judged objectively, which is why the title page of the 1623 folio has to be accepted as prima facie evidence that "William Shakespeare" wrote the Works in the folio and that is why I concede yhat you have a prima facie case. But (as I don't seem to get you to read my book even on Kindle at under $5) let me set out my note on p.418 n.66; "....I quote Adam Sisman the biographer of Professor Trevor-Roper: '[Professor E H) Carr has demolished the now discredited theory - that history derived from documents was somehow scientific. In fact it is just as subjective as any other form of history [Gum that into your brain!] Documents had to be selected, and the selection process requires a principle of selection; and then they had to be interpreted; the historian needed to consider the circumstances in which a document was written as well as its content. Moreover documents were written by individuals from a narrow class, unrepresentative of society, which they inhabited. Hugh [Trevor-Roper] conceded all this was true, that the documentary record of the past was two-dimensional, but he insisted that the historian could acquire 'stereoscopic vision' to see beyond the document to see beyond the document to the three dimensional reality of the time and place to which it originated'
Now I am not going to follow you down some rabbit hole of American Law or attempt to teach English Law of circumstantial evidence, but as a general principle Law is in favour of the application of common sense, and encourages juries to apply it. You propound that a remote from London Warwickshire provincial with no record of education, came to London at the age of (at least) 24 wrote the plays, acted on the public stage, and then retired to his home town, without leaving a single piece of cultural cross reference by way of evidence except a brief interlineated bequest in his Will .[Even Stanley Wells accepts there is nothing so before 1612]. I am not impressed, but your are of course entitled to your PFC opinion.
Stanley Wells is wrong. As the PFC quite clearly demonstrates.
But then I see no reason to argue by appeal to authority. So I see no reason that I should simply accept Professor Carr's notion "that history derived from documents ... is just as subjective as any other form of history." If you (and Professor Carr) don't believe that historical documents can convey an objective, face-value meaning, then we're speaking different languages.
And I don't have to accept your strawman argument (as to what you say I "propound") that the only evidence left behind as to Mr Shakespeare's theatre career is a "brief interlineated bequest in his Will." As the PFC quite clearly demonstrates. By the way, the PFC is not an "opinion". It is a legal model. One that no Oxfordian has even attempted to rebut in going on three years now.
Richard Malim: Now you are being naughty. All along I have said you have a PFC, which if not refuted would convince a jury enough to hold the opinion that the prosecution's case is proved. You have convinced yourself that the title page "William Shakespeare" is the author of the Works and is the same person as William Shaksper of Stratford/u/A: and you are entitled to hold that opinion as it your preference over/total rejection of the great heap of circumstantial evidence which in my opinion(and in the opinion of many greatly superior brains than mine) disproves your PFC. No appeal there to superior authority for judgment there. I merely put my reference to Carr and Trevor-Roper to show my methodology in reviewing the evidence and in comprehensibly rejecting the objective evidence and replacing it with a subjective scholastic and legal refutation. There is nothing immutably sacred about a document. It is as much a piece of evidence as any other. Your career and mine will have spent time dissecting and destroying the written version of events of witnesses. Your case is that the folio editor wrote that "William Shakespeare" is the author of the works and caused it to be so printed accordingly, au fond no different to the situation of those witnesses which you and I have cross examined by reference to their written statements. If I were your client I would be disappointed if you accepted all the written statements by witnesses for my opponent. Explain the difference, because it makes no difference if the document is four hundred or four months old
>> RM: "You have convinced yourself that the title page "William Shakespeare" is the author of the Works and is the same person as William Shaksper of Stratford/u/A..."
MJ: Have you actually read the prima facie case? Because it actually provides documentary evidence that the AUTHOR identified as Mr.William Shakespeare, Gentleman, is the same person as that Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman, of Stratford-upon-Avon. The PFC does not depend upon the title page.
>> RM: and you are entitled to hold that opinion as it your preference over/total rejection of the great heap of circumstantial evidence which in my opinion(and in the opinion of many greatly superior brains than mine) disproves your PFC.
MJ: I don't think that you have any evidence at all that even qualifies as circumstantial evidence, much less any that serves to rebut the PFC. The prima facie case acts as a burden-shifting device, requiring the party opposing it to produce rebuttal evidence and shifting the burden of proof.
Would you be so kind as to identify a couple of items of evidence which you believe qualify as circumstantial evidence which serve to rebut the PFC.
>> RM: No appeal there to superior authority for judgment there.
MJ: I apologize for any misunderstanding.
>> RM: I merely put my reference to Carr and Trevor-Roper to show my methodology in reviewing the evidence and in comprehensibly rejecting the objective evidence and replacing it with a subjective scholastic and legal refutation.
MJ: Here again, I think we're speaking a different language. I don't see any legal basis for defining subjective refutation as evidence. It's more opinion than evidence, and necessarily involves speculation, which is also not evidence. It doesn't qualify as admissible expert opinion, as it couldn't possibly meet the Daubert standard. A PFC may only be rebutted with evidence.
>> RM: There is nothing immutably sacred about a document.
MJ: I never said there was. A piece of documentary evidence, like all evidence, must be examined in light of all the surrounding facts and circumstances.
>> RM: Your case is that the folio editor wrote that "William Shakespeare" is the author of the works and caused it to be so printed accordingly...
MJ: Respectfully, that is not my case at all. Again, have you actually read the PFC?
>> RM: "...no different to the situation of those witnesses which you and I have cross examined by reference to their written statements."
MJ: Interesting that you mention this, as one of the strongest pieces of evidence in my case is the direct statement from Heminges and Condell, two eyewitnesses, that the author Shakespeare was their "friend and fellow" and a "servant" to the nobility. I have yet to see any cross-examination of that statement that is based on admissible legal evidence.
>> RM: If I were your client I would be disappointed if you accepted all the written statements by witnesses for my opponent. Explain the difference, because it makes no difference if the document is four hundred or four months old.
MJ: I don't simply accept all written statements by witnesses, but I also don't summarily dismiss them. They need to be considered individually, and cumulatively with all of the surrounding facts and circumstances. I have been quite disappointed that not a single Oxfordian over the last three years has even attempted to cross-examine the eyewitness statements of Heminges and Condell. Vainly seeking to exclude the statements from consideration doesn't count as rebuttal.
Richard Malim: MJ: I have written a 424 page book chock full of circumstantial evidence which is effectively defined as evidence requiring only the opinion of the reader to convert it into evidence as strong probatively as direct evidence, which can be fully probative evidence of rebuttal of a PFC. You may choose to be among those who reject every single piece even though you are yet to read the book, but I am entitled to crown in my opinion each one with probative value until at least each one is shown to be unreliable (such as my suggestion that WS was the target of the Parnassus plays which you many years ago showed me was incorrect - corrected at p.391 n.73 with a credit to yourself)
Hemings and Condell: Even 'orthodox' scholars suggest that Jonson wrote H and C's letters, starting with Steevens in 1778. They are evidentially valueless for WS, unlike for Oxford since they talk (like the poem attributed to Mabbe)of "he not having the fate... to be the executor of his own writings" i.e. their final editor or even collector. Oxford died in 1604 still in the saddle unlike WS who appears to have done nothing back in S/u/A -so 'their' evidence cannot be reliable in any respect whatever, especially when you add in those numerous points of circumstantial evidence set out in my book and elsewhere, which again convert themselves in my opinion into total rebuttal
"Hemings and Condell: Even 'orthodox' scholars suggest that Jonson wrote H and C's letters, starting with Steevens in 1778." Please give us a citation to the analysis. Malone says that Jonson may have written the Players' Introduction, but that the Dedication was by Heminges and Condell. Why do you pretend that the scholars think the two distinct documents were both written by Jonson? Mr. Purdy made the same assertion, and then went on to show that there's no evidence at all that Jonson wrote the dedication, and that it was mostly a commonplace dedication with sections that were frequently used in early modern texts (though never by Jonson), that dated back to Roman times.
It's interesting that your response is to vaguely wave your hand toward your book and say "the evidence is over there," rather than citing anything specific. When you say it is "requiring only the opinion of the reader to convert it into evidence," you're just stating the obvious: nobody who doesn't have a preexisting "opinion" that Oxford wrote the works would see any of those coincidences as even related to the authorship of Shakespeare's writings.
I believe that the link below (beginning at page 663) comprises Stevens' commentary on the idea that Jonson wrote the sales pitch in the First Folio prefatory material. It says nothing about Jonson having written the Dedication.
https://archive.org/details/playspoemsofwill02shak_0/page/662/mode/2up
Does Stevens comment on Jonson and the Dedication somewhere else. If so, where.? Link...?
I believe it's best in these cases to examine the document itself:
[With all the references to the two Dedicators noted by "(H&C)"]
TO THE MOST NOBLE AND INCOMPARABLE PAIRE OF BRETHREN
WILLIAM Earle of Pembroke, &c;. Lord Chamberlaine to the Kings most Excellent Majesty.
AND
PHILIP Earle of Montgomery,&c;. Gentleman of his Majesties
Bed-Chamber.
Both Knights of the most Noble Order
of the Garter, and our singular good L O R D S.
Right Honourable,
Whilst we (H&C) studie to be thankful in our particular for the many favors we (H&C) have received from your L.L. (Lordships), we (H&C) are fallen upon the ill fortune, to mingle two the most diverse things that can be: feare, and rashnesse - rashnesse in the enterprize, and feare of the successe. For, when we (H&C) valew the places your H.H. sustaine, we (H&C) cannot but know their dignity greater, then to descend to the reading of these trifles: and, while we (H&C) name them trifles, we (H&C) have depriv'd our selves (H&C) of the defence of our (H&C) Dedication. But since your L.L. have beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles some-thing, heeretofore; and have prosequuted both them, and their Authour living, with so much favour: we (H&C) hope, that (they out-living him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be exequutor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them, you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference, whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or finde them: This hath done both. For, so much were your L.L. likings of the severall parts, when they were acted, as before they were published, the Volume ask'd to be yours. We (H&C) have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes, Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our (H&C) S H A K E S P E A R E , by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we (H&C) have justly observed, no man to come neere your L.L. but with a kind of religious addresse; it hath bin the height of our (H&C) care, who are the Presenters, to make the present worthy of your H.H. by the perfection.
But, there we (H&C) must also crave our (H&C) abilities to be considerd, my Lords. We (H&C) cannot go beyond our (H&C) owne powers. Country hands reach foorth milke, creame, fruites, or what they have : and many Nations (we have heard) that had not gummes & incense, obtained their requests with a leavened Cake. It was no fault to approach their Gods, by what meanes they could: And the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious, when they are dedicated to Temples. In that name therefore, we (H&C) most humbly consecrate to your H.H. these remaines of your servant Shakespeare; that what delight is in them, may be ever your L.L. the reputation his, & the faults ours (H&C), if any be committed, by a payre (H&C) so carefull to shew their (H&C) gratitude both to the living, and the dead, as is.
Your Lordshippes most bounden,
JOHN HEMINGE.
HENRY CONDELL.
Since the Dedication quite clearly indicates that it is prepared for, and tailored to the two actors it is attributed to, Heminges and Condell, I see no valid reason to dismiss it as "evidentially valueless for WS. Even if we could state as conclusive fact that Jonson had written it. In fact, the spin that Jonson was engaged in some sort of subterfuge in writing the Dedication necessarily implies a conspiracy, an implication for which no evidence exists.
The Dedication contains a direct statement, attributed to two eyewitnesses (who would have been in the best position of anyone alive at the time to know the truth), that the author was their friend and fellow actors, and a servant to the noble dedicatees.
>> RM: "They are evidentially valueless for WS, unlike for Oxford since they talk (like the poem attributed to Mabbe)of "he not having the fate... to be the executor of his own writings" i.e. their final editor or even collector. Oxford died in 1604 still in the saddle unlike WS who appears to have done nothing back in S/u/A -so 'their' evidence cannot be reliable in any respect whatever..."
Until 1616, when Jonson first published his Folio, nobody had considered the possibility of undertaking such a massive project just for plays. Since Mr. Shakespeare died in 1616, it was not his "fate, common with some [perhaps a reference to Jonson], to be exequutor to his owne writings..."
So the evidence can very well be reliable.
How about we try it this way. I will purchase and read your book if you identify just one piece of your circumstantial evidence, which you consider to have a strong probative value, and then provide the steps in the logical, inferential process which shows that such evidence is circumstantial evidence tending to prove a fact in issue, which is relevant to proving the ultimate issue of fact...the identity of the author. Or which tends to prove a fact which rebuts the PFC.
Further on Malim's claim.
Steevens' note is from the annotated Valorium edition of the works of Shakespeare. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Plays_of_William_Shakspeare/2eFDAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
Steevens' comment appears on page 166, as a note to the Players Introduction (note: not the dedication.) Here it is: "Perhaps Old Ben was author of the Players' Preface, ad in the instance before us, has borrowed from himself. STEEVENS."
So no, Steevens cannot be cited as supporting the claim that Jonson wrote the players' dedication -- he is explicitly referring to the Introduction. In the same volume, Malone points out that the "country hands reach forth . . ." passage of the dedication was "one of the coomonplaces of dedication in Shakspeare's age. We find it in Morley's Dedication of a Book of Songs to Sir Robert Cecil, 1595." "The same thought (if I recollect right) is again employed by the players in their dedication of Fletcher's plays,Folio 1647."
Alfred W. Pollard, in his Shakespeare Folios and Quartos (1909) discounts the possibility that Jonson wrote the players' introduction:
"It has been suggested that the Address was written for them by Ben Jonson, but in view of his well-known comment on the alleged absence of blotted lines in Shakespeare's manuscript he can hardly have himself written the phrase which gave rise to it. The combination if the tradesmanlike poem with real enthusiasm suggest the hand of Blount, and of all the men connected with the Folio whose names we know Blount seems by far the most likely to have taken an active share in the editorial work, though some anonymous press-corrector in Jaggard's office may have been still more influential. That Ben Jonson had aught to do with the Folio beyond writing his two sets of verses there is no shred of evidence."
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Shakespeare_Folios_and_Quartos/LpFlAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 (p.122)
W.W. Greg discusses the question of the authorship of the two epistles and spends most of the discussion on the Players' Introduction, though he calls the "Country hands" paragraph of the dedication a "touch of antiquarian learning" that recalls "many of the annotations with which Jonson encumbered his masques."
That there are questions about the authorship of some of the language does not suggest that there is any question about who signed the epistles. None of the authorities I've listed above have questioned Heminges and Condell's signatures to the epistles, and there's no reason not to attribute the two epistles to them.
Richard Malim: PB, MJ: Minor embarrassment - I have lost the reference to the untitled essay published in 1821 By Steevens, but I can at least provide the hostile comment towards hit opinion by Schoenbaum at p.278 of Shakespeare's Lives supported by James Boaden. As I remember the reference it criticised Joan Ham for failing to give credit to Steevens for her essay "The Two Faces of Ben Jonson" (Baconiana Oct 1965 p.34). Ham sets out in parallel columns the references in he two letters which are found in similar wording in Jonson's own works - a parallel she says in every two lines. The signatures to the letters are of similar Prima Facie probative value as the reference to William Shakespeare on the title page, but Ham's essay provides the circumstantial evidence that in my opinion that trumps it. I wonder if either PB or MJ will now buy my book - but I should be surprised. Enjoy if you do
What edition of Schoenbaum's 'Shakespeare's Lives' are you using? I just checked in my 1991 edition, and there's nothing on page 278 which matches what you describe. It concerns, rather, the work done by Victorian Charles Knight.
On page 201, concerning Boaden's identification of individuals in the Sonnets, Schoenbaum writes as follows: "Boaden, moreover, damages his own presentation by maintaining, as a certainty, the unlikely hypothesis (although even today it has its partisans) that the Dedicators epistle to the Folio signed by Heminges and Condell was actually written by Jonson; he is here following Stevens at his most perverse."
A note to this passage states, "For Steven's arguments, see Shakespeare, 'Plays and Poems, Ed. Malone and Boswell, ii. 663-75.
These are the pages I linked to above. Stevens is writing about the sales pitch and he does not address the Dedication to the First Folio at all. There is no mention of Joan Ham in Schoenbaum, at least as far as my search of it can find.
Joan Ham's work does not qualify as circumstantial evidence rebutting the prima facie case, as even if it was a fact that Jonson had written the Dedication, that does nothing at all logically to affect the fact that it is endorsed by Heminges and Condell. If you disagree, please provide the logi al steps in your argument. I have already promised (above) to buy your book and read it if you will simply explain the logical, inferential process behind one piece of evidence.
Below is a link to Joan Ham's article, starting on page 34. She outright steals from Stevens (which doesn't say much for her credibility) and her purported parallels for Jonson and the FF Dedication are weak to nonexistent. She cited the "country hands' passage, which Philip has shows was "one of the commonplaces of dedication in Shakespeare's age." If Ham is your evidence, it's more like spam.
I left out the link (sausage) to Ham.
https://archive.org/details/1965-baconiana-no.-165/page/n46/mode/1up
Richard Malim: Schoenbaum 1970 edn. The endorsement by Hemings and Condell may indicate their consent and approval of Jonson's draft or be simply added by Jonson as editor: either way their printed names qualify as prima facie evidence. I am bound to say I think it perverse to say that 30 passages in the two quite short letters linked as similarities to 40 passages by Ben Jonson (some closer than others) do not really constitute reasonable circumstantial evidence. What you have to accept is that I view the corpus as such to be the equal of direct evidence. Your opinion that it is not does not trump mine : it merely draws the battle lines between us
So what do the letters tell us about the writer. Primarily that he died in the saddle (which does not appear consonant with WS's 'retirement'), without time to to be "the executor of his own writings" or to have "lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings.." And it is evidential palpable nonsense to write that the folio is "cured and perfect of their limbs".
We come back not to H and C but to Jonson as editor, a man who for you has no prima facie evidence of contact or correspondence with WS. Perhaps you might suggest an alternative candidate as editor but any such suggestion wd seem to me to be much weaker circumstantial evidence
Here's a link to a copy of the 1821 Variorum edition, that includes the full Malone analysis (beginning on page 663): https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Plays_and_Poems_of_William_Shakspear/0DMJAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Note E of the first chapter of Greg's The Shakespeare First Folio attempts to detangle the question of whose analysis this is, claiming that Boswell failed to credit Malone, and that only the short comment was attributable to Steevens.
What is the evidence that Jonson served as the editor of the First Folio? Does Gregg address this issue?
Is there something objectionable about the response I have tried to make here to Mr. Malim's last post? I have tried to publish it a few times now and it is not showing up. Are others having difficulty getting posts to publish here?
Richard Malim: I do not have Gregg but I think we have fully explored the H and C letters, on which we are not going to agree inspite of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
MJ's last two messages reached me after my bedtime.
Let us consider Jonson's attitude first to Shaksper and then to "William Shakespeare". In Jonson's Every Man Out we have the caricatures of Sogliardo and Sordido which wd be a waste of Jonson's skill if they were merely an academic exercise. If they are not of Shaksper , then whom do they represent? They must be of someone readily recognisable to the actors and a section at least of the general public, so you must be able to produce an identity comparative to that of WS. Then there is the curious matter of those references in the actual plays. First I take Merry Wives of Windsor where Q1601 omits the farcical education scene which appears in the Q1623. Wells and Taylor tell us that Q1623 comes from a version earlier than Q1. So the implication is that the scene was deliberately left out because the object of the scene was no longer around to be mocked (S in the face of derision (and worse - see Sordido the grain-hoarder - had scuttled back t0 S/u/A)) but Jonson as editor was able to reinstate it in Q1623. Likewise Winter's Tale (Clown and his father with Autolycus scenes) and Taming both contain much sensitive information. Hamlet Q1 contains a mockery of a man without a testicle like Sogliardo (my p.322 cullisen/cullion) which is not in the 'Good' memorial Quarto of 1604 with the Royal Arms above the text 'sanctifying' this version.
Then there is Jonson's Attitude to "William Shakespeare", which is consistently that of his greatest friend and admirer. When it came to gathering up the texts and editing them who wd persuade the Earls to finance the undertaking and to let Jonson edit for them the corpus, along with Montgomery's own wife Susan daughter of the author
It is not practical to unload all my 424 pages of circumstantial evidence here . Suffice it to say that until you have read them you will not be able to undermine that vast body of circumstantial evidence (which incorporates total destruction of Shaksper as author) unless as I say in my Afterword 296 "the only way to erect a refutation is to provide an alternative better candidate or candidates as the catalyst (or elements for it) for that [Shakespeare's] Revolution". You might start by answering my questions on my pp.296-7. At least you will understand why the Shakespeare Authorship Question will not disappear, and it is a waste of time for 'orthodoxy' to continue to claim occupancy let alone sole occupancy of the academic high ground
>> RM: I do not have Gregg but I think we have fully explored the H and C letters, on which we are not going to agree inspite of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
MJ: As to the FF Dedication, what "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" is that? Ham? I've used the text itself to show that the Dedication is specifically tailored for the two actors who have endorsed it. In addition, I've requested that you show how the claim that Jonson wrote the Dedication would qualify as circumstantial evidence that the friend and fellow actor of H&C is not the author of the plays. Can you explain that? Without inventing/assuming a conspiracy theory?
>> RM: Let us consider Jonson's attitude first to Shaksper and then to "William Shakespeare". In Jonson's Every Man Out we have the caricatures of Sogliardo and Sordido which wd be a waste of Jonson's skill if they were merely an academic exercise. [SNIP]
MJ: Thanks for bringing this up. Identifying Mr. Shakespeare in the characters of Sogliardo and Sordido necessarily involves subjective speculation. As a lawyer yourself, you're aware that such speculation does not qualify as evidence. But let's examine it anyway. Sogliardo's coat of arms doesn't resemble Mr. Shakespeare's coat of arms at all. Surely Jonson wasn't so incompetent as to fail to adequately target his intended subject.
And then, of course, there's the fact that this occurs in one of the plays making up the Poetomachia. The students of St. John's College were quite aware of the Poets' War, and their play, 'Return to Parnassus', comments upon it. In that play, the well-informed author(s) identify the author of the plays as that Mr. Shakespeare who is the fellow of Kemp and Burbage. They even make a joke involving Oxford -- and he isn't the author Shakespeare.
>> RM: Then there is the curious matter of those references in the actual plays. [SNIP] So the implication is that the scene was deliberately left out because the object of the scene was no longer around to be mocked (S in the face of derision (and worse - see Sordido the grain-hoarder - had scuttled back t0 S/u/A)) but Jonson as editor was able to reinstate it in Q1623. [SNIP]
MJ: More speculation ["I take..."]. Since Mr. Shakespeare wasn't himself a hoarder of grain, why do you think Sordido targets him?
>> RM: [SNIP] When it came to gathering up the texts and editing them who wd persuade the Earls to finance the undertaking and to let Jonson edit for them the corpus ...[SNIP]
MJ: What evidence is there that the brother Earls financed the undertaking? In fact, the Colophon to the First Folio explicitly states who the people were who were responsible for the "charges" incurred in publishing the Folio. Why should speculation trump the documentary evidencein this instance?
>> RM: It is not practical to unload all my 424 pages of circumstantial evidence here .
MJ: That isn't at all what I am asking you to do. All I've requested is that you take one measly piece of what you claim to be circumstantial evidence, and provide the logical steps showing it qualifies as such. Set out the inferential process by which you get from the evidence to the proof of an issue in fact. That doesn't seem to be such an onerous request.
>> RM: Suffice it to say that until you have read them you will not be able to undermine that vast body of circumstantial evidence (which incorporates total destruction of Shaksper as author)... [SNIP]
MJ: Are you unable to supply just one piece of circumstantial evidence and explain how it qualifies as such?
By the way, I have purchased the Kindle version of your book.
Richard Malim: First as bedtime calls I will answer your second missive. To match the Kindle references to the Book pages divide the Kindle refs by 1.2 to 1.7 depending how far you are into the Kindle version. Enjoy
"When it came to gathering up the texts and editing them who wd persuade the Earls to finance the undertaking and to let Jonson edit for them the corpus, along with Montgomery's own wife Susan daughter of the author."
How many completely made-up theories can you fit in a sentence?
1) There's no evidence that the earls "financed" the publication. It was published at the expense of the publishers listed in the colophon. It's not as if the book trade had to be subsidized by the nobility. Jaggard, after all, was in the process of publishing a lot of Shakespeare's works, but there's no reason to think he had to get a lord to finance those. It was a commercial decision then, and the larger and more complex Folio was also a commercial choice. The hard part really would have been lining up the rights and the share of the profits going to the existing rights-holders. Having the earls subsidize the printing of the book in advance would set up a dilemma: wouldn't they expect a share of the profits or at least to be repaid for their costs if the book did well?
Why was the Folio dedicated to William and Philip? Was it because William Cecil offered his 13-year-old granddaughter Bridget to wed 17-year-old William Herbert, a match he rejected because of the paltry dowry? Or because Philip married de Vere's youngest daughter after he died? These are far-fetched theories that assume Oxford's ownership, and require Oxfordians to make up a whole alternative reality where books are subsidized by their dedicatees.
The far more likely scenario is that the players dedicated the work to William and Philip because, as the then-Lord Chamberlain and his designated successor, they directly oversaw the King's Men (and their members, Grooms of the Chamber to King James). Simple. No need to make up a complex and improbable back story.
2) There's no evidence that Jonson was editor of the First Folio. W.W. Greg suggests the more logical choice to edit the Folio is Jaggard. This is far more sensible: Jaggard was experienced in editing playbooks, including Shakespeare's plays. He was a publisher who's credited as the printer of the work, who would have had to organize the book to be efficiently printed, a task that Jonson would have no apparent background in. Again, it's an attempt to shoehorn Jonson in as editor because it supports the pre-existing belief that Oxford wrote the works, and that his daughter Susan had something to do with getting them published.
It's not a chain of circumstantial evidence at all, but a chain of made-up theories each attempting to jump gigantic gaps in evidence for their theory. They want to discuss how Susan, countess Montgomery, came to be involved in the publication, and Jonson to be editor, because assuming both those as facts is the only way to get around the lack of anything tying Oxford, dead and buried in 1604 and largely forgotten within a few years, to the publication of the First Folio nearly twenty years later.
Richard Malim: The H & C letters: the Ham analysis overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Jonson concocted and wrote the letters: he unveiled the contention that (unlike a certain unmentioned character) he died in the saddle. Vindex Ingenii recens sepulti i.e. the man responsible as vindex of the buried genius
The coat of arms is viciously parodied in Every Man Out by a ludicrous representation, mock of Sogliardo and WS
Sogliardo and Sordido this double caricature of WS (self-imitation of Touchstone and Jaques in AYLI by Oxford himself) is evidenced as to the grain speculation - see my book 320 and 417 n.57 - Honan
The cost of printing the 1623 folio wd be quite beyond the reach of any journeyman publisher such as Jaggard; to me that is a PF fact. Who subsidised the expense will be a matter of speculation and circumstantial evidence. Authorities are agreed that the Susan Vere/Montgomery marriage was that rarity a love match. Pembroke the elder brother was a patron of culture and particularly of Jonson, and the only realistic choice of the editor of the works of his great friend Oxford, his brother's much loved father-in-law
From my book you will see the extent of Oxford 'being forgotten' You cd also wait the publication of Waugh and Stritmatter's Allusions with several hundred pages devoted to Oxford's appearances by reputation after 1604. The contrast is with Shaksper who is not so honoured after 1599 - a very convenient choice for Jonson as a cover name for the author as the number who knew him outside S/u/A must have been minute by 1623
As MJ has done me the great honour of buying my book , perhaps PB and (goodness me) ML might care to do the same
No way I'll buy your book, but I'm sure Mark will let us all know if he finds any significant evidence worth discussing.
"The cost of printing the 1623 folio wd be quite beyond the reach of any journeyman publisher such as Jaggard; to me that is a PF fact."
How much do you think it cost compared to other folio books Jaggard released? Was the cost of the Shakespeare First Folio more than that of the Jonson Folio, or the Beaumont & Fletcher Folio published by the King's Men a few years later? Were all of these books subsidized by noblemen? Who subsidized the second, third, and fourth Shakespeare folios? If you're claiming that the Shakespeare First Folio was uniquely costly, what about it made it that way -- or do you have primary evidence about the cost of this particular publication?
"MJ: Are you unable to supply just one piece of circumstantial evidence and explain how it qualifies as such?"
At this point, your utter failure to even attempt to answer this question, one that has been posed to you a number of times now in this very thread, may be construed as an admission on your part that you simply can't answer it.
I like this statement: "Who subsidised the expense will be a matter of speculation and circumstantial evidence."
Speculation does not qualify as evidence at all, and there is no circumstantial evidence to rebut the straightforward answer provided in the extant documentary evidence -- the Colophon to the Folio.
Richard Malim: Of course some speculation qualifies as circumstantial evidence depending not on the academic attributes of the speculator but on its basis. Someone had an interest in producing 750 copies of the folio to sell at about £180 or $220 in todays money. The rag based paper would have been imported from France requiring a large down payment as paper was far and away the most expensive item for production. So let us look round (as I have and show above) for the most likely people to make that investment. It won't do to say I don't know: just produce a better candidate/s. My ideas are in this item are taken a quick trawl of Wikipedia. Speculation: the family of WS back in S/u/A didn't buy one
With your Kindle copy you will read the myriad pieces of circumstantial evidence against Shaksper and for the man who was known as Shake-speare. remember however weak and feeble the piece on its own seems, added to the dozens of similar others it will constitute a part of the true scenario of the real author. Your job is not only to dispose of each of 'my' pieces of circumstantial evidence but to destroy the final picture by substituting a more probable candidate. Not, of course the academically-challenged bourgeois capitalist social climber from Stratford.
The decision not to buy my book shows a closed mind - not a good attribute for a scholar or a lawyer. My shelves groan with 'orthodox' authors but not as deeply as I do when I consult them. Even so as my book shows their unintended concessions and general common-sense ignoring idiocies afford endless ammunition and sometimes amusement - you might be denying some yourself by not buying my book !
"The decision not to buy my book shows a closed mind"
I think of it as being a canny shopper. Can't imagine you have anything that's significantly different than all the others. I have Anderson's book, Purdy's, and some by Waugh and Waugaman, as well as lots of articles from Oxfordian publications. If you had some showstopper primary evidence, you'd have mentioned it or the others would have.
It's certainly correct that in addition to primary sources, historians use secondary sources based on primary evidence. For example, scholars are virtually certain Shakespeare attended the King Edward VI grammar school in Stratford, because his writing demonstrates the level of education he'd potentially achieve with that school's curriculum, and because of its accessibility just down the street from his boyhood home. It's good that you recognize that there are instances where an historian has to reach beyond the primary sources to infer a fact. But it takes much more than your series of coincidences, often the product of wishful thinking or motivated reasoning, to refute unambiguous primary sources.
Richard Malim: PB: "but it takes more than your series of co-incidences.....,
I don't see how you can come to that conclusion without fully reading them all. How the illiterate degenerate signatures other prima facie evidence of the academic deficiencies of the person who made them or who is being passed off as the writer, I await the circumstantial evidence, not the lofty speculations to get away from that. The evidence in favour of your idea that Shaksper received a full blown Classic education reading works that did not exist in print in English or untranslated, is risible, because it is assumed that little piddling S/u/A GS could provide that instruction and relies on the fact that he resided in the next street, and his father had some equally piddling local government post. Your speculations and circumstantial evidence have at first no better than equality with mine in principle, and in my opinion considerable bunk. I take on board you have no better opinion of mine. This does not make your case a winner, it merely draws the battle-lines; when will your lot recognise that?
Incidentally can you name a Strat who used to be an Oxfordian or ceased to be a Strat doubter/. Slowly the sea nibbles the sand castle.....
Was Marlowe illiterate when he spelled his name "Christofer Morley"? Was Walter Raleigh illiterate when he variously spelled his last name as Ralegh, Rauley, and Rawleyghe?
Shakespeare's signatures reveal his knowledge of shorthand conventions employed by professional scrivener's of his day. Not exactly something that would be known to an illiterate.
Was Edward de Vere illiterate when his first surviving signature spelled Oxford as "Oxiforde"?
Do you believe that your subjective speculations would qualify as evidence in a court of law?
If Mr. Malim's speculation as to the financiers of the Folio is indicative of what he considers to be circumstantial evidence, then his book won't be worth the $4.50 I paid for it. His treatment of this issue demonstrates the typical Oxfordian tactic of ignoring/denying the extant documentary evidence (the Colophon -- notice that he simply avoids addressing this evidence), in order to push a fanciful scenario that benefits his conspiracy theory. It isn't a scholarly or lawyerly method, but it's what the Oxfordians employ.
"I don't see how you can come to that conclusion without fully reading them all. How the illiterate degenerate signatures other prima facie evidence of the academic deficiencies of the person who made them or who is being passed off as the writer, I await the circumstantial evidence, not the lofty speculations to get away from that."
Right there you've shown the problem. You assume there's a problem with Shakespeare's authorship; I see no evidence that supports that assumption. Since there's no reason not to believe that Shakespeare wrote the works unambiguously attributed to him by reliable evidence, looking at the coincidences you claim to have found is pointless.
For instance, practically all the Shakespeare authorship deniers repeat the claims (with or without citation) of Diana Price, and I'd be surprised if you don't do the same in your book (or at least that you don't repudiate them). But I've looked at Price's claims in some depth. She's wrong, and worse than that, she presents her claims deceptively, apparently to prevent readers from figuring out how thin her evidence is.
"Incidentally can you name a Strat who used to be an Oxfordian or ceased to be a Strat doubter." Sure. I can tell you that when I started looking into this question, I was completely open to the possibility that Shakespeare was a pseudonym. What finally convinced me otherwise was actually the pro-Oxfordian documentary Last Will and Testament. At one point Diana Price describes the evidence supporting Shakespeare's authorship (though as usual, as a strawman argument), and then presents what she apparently thought was a devastating counterargument. Stritmatter gave the powerful argument that Leslie Howard's character in Pimpernel Smith described the Oxfordian theory . . . apparently not realizing that the character (who was a modern version of the Scarlet Pimpernel that Howard had portrayed in that film, or perhaps a variation on the Zorro character) was using the Oxfordian theory to show that his character was a harmless fool. I believe that there are at least one former Oxfordian among out Oxfraud companions. In any case, it's not as if "nobody who ever joined our cult has ever left it" is a great argument for the truth of the cult.
Richard Malim: Talk about the pot and kettle!
However MJ is right : I did fail to deal with the colophon point, thinking he was referring to the pictorial representation above Tempest in the folio, which happens by extraordinary coincidence to be the same one used 30 years earlier by the printer of Watson's Hecatompathia dedicated to Oxford and which Watson earnestly desired Oxford to see into print.
The two folio printers' colophon do constitute PF evidence first that Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount saw to the printing; the second "At the Charges of W Jaggard(Isaac's father), Ed Blount, I Smithweeke (the owner of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and a version of Taming of the Shrew (?Taming of A Shrew) and W. Apsley (owner of Much Ado and Henry IV)" The suggestion I have read that the last two gentlemen instead of being paid out took the right to sell the whole folio at their shops. That leaves some 30 plays to be obtained: no doubt the Jaggards and Blount owned some of the remaining dozen which had already appeared in print (Jaggard had printed Othello in 1619). So in addition to the vast investment in paper they had to buy out the owners of the other printed works and obtain the foul papers of the other 17 or so manuscripts. The colophons are therefore are not wrong but they only constitute part of the story of how that huge investment was put together . Which is where common sense and reasonable suggestion as to the roles of the noble pair based on the rest of the circumstantial evidence. Incidentally none of the books I have refer to the colophons. Is there anything in print accessible anywhere?
Richard Malim: PB: Of course there is a problem : otherwise so many wise and clever people would not say so. Of course they and I have a case and it is perverse of you as a lawyer an'orthodox' supporter don't attempt to ascertain the full extent of what you have to defend. As a lawyer you placed to your self in the middle and decided that 'orthodoxy' proved the case for you. No doubt so did many of those who have since been converted to rejection of 'orthodoxy' with or without adoption of Oxford's (or anybody else's) case. 35 years ago I was aware of the Baconian claims and thought them on the basis of my then knowledge of history unlikely; Oxford was so far out as to be a figure of fun . Then I read the first 25 pages of Charlton Ogburn and rejected WS: it took a further 2 years of reading and thinking (applying my professional skills to the evidence) to realise that Oxford was the only one who could provide the answers.
Both of you and I are entitled to our opinions and in the first place, neither of us are entitled to judge that our several opinions trump the other's
Diana Cox is my authority for the signatures neither she nor Diana Price are Oxfordians as far as I know.
"Suggestions" are not evidence. They don't combine with any circumstantial evidence in this instance to prove a thing whatsoever about who paid the "charges" incurred in publishing the First Folio. Your "common sense" speculations are not a substitute for evidence.
There is zero evidence, direct or circumstantial, that the two Earls had anything at all to do with paying the FF charges. On the other hand, we have a direct statement in the Folio itself as to the group of people who were financially responsible for paying such charges.
Why do you fail to answer the questions that are posed to you?
There's a brief discussion of the colophon in Ervin Matus's Shakespeare, In Fact. Matus was responding to Ogburn, who argued that Heminges and Condell could not have financed the publication of the works themselves. That may have been correct, though as Matus points out, the term "publish" at the time would not have been read as it is today (when the role of publisher has a well-defined meaning) but merely as those making these texts public. He cites the colophon as evidence that the real financiers of the folio were the stationers guild members listed.
Was it a complex task, collecting the rights to publish the plays, including ones for which the rights had already been allocated to others? Was it a costly book to publish? Sure. But you haven't provided any evidence to suggest that it was significantly more costly than other folio volumes.
And what of the incentive? The players' participation give Jaggard access to eighteen Shakespeare plays that were at that point unpublished, including the most recently produced ones. The dedication served as the approval to publish the works that the Lord Chamberlain required -- the consent of members of the King's Men. This was the price of Jaggard getting all those unpublished plays, authority to publish the ones he already had: he had to negotiate with the other rights holders (who similarly had publication rights, but no way to exercise them without the players' approval).
As for the high cost of paper: he's a printer. The printing business was flourishing, and obtaining paper for printing was the price of doing business. The only calculation needed was to charge enough for the book to cover the costs, and expect that the book would be popular enough to sell. That it went to four editions is good evidence that it was a wise investment.
So we're right back where we were: there's no evidence that Jaggard or the other stationers had to go begging for subsidies from the nobility for subsidies to afford to publish the books they printed, any more than any other producer of a manufactured product would get a subsidy for their work. You're exaggerating the cost in order to invent a chain of events for which there's no evidence. It's the opposite of "common sense and reasonable suggestion;" it's nonsense, and the suggestion is only made because otherwise the whole Oxfordian theory has no explanation for the publication of the First Folio nineteen years after the death of Oxford.
"Of course there is a problem : otherwise so many wise and clever people would not say so." A circular argument and one that is really nonsense. Lots of groups of clever people are dead wrong about lots of things. Everyone used to think the sun and the universe revolved around the earth. Everyone used to think that every species on the planet was created as it was by God (or the Gods). Lots of people think Donald Trump is telling the truth (pick the topic and he's probably lied about it).
It is reasonable to agree that on the face of it the PFC 'orthodox' colophon points are sensible . My point is that in order to agree with the rest of the jigsaw, the whole of the surrounding evidence for the genesis of the 1623 folio has to be considered (my book makes the claim that I try to -295). In my view the colophon exposes only a part of the story. I am not suggesting hat Jaggard et al. had to tout round for funds: I think they were put up to the job of producing the Folio by politicians against the King's Spanish Marriage policy: why is The Tempest the first play (with its expose of Spanish Italian political mores) and Cymbeline the last (postulating a Britain/Rome rapprochement) in the folio (my book 268,400 n.35)?
"Wise and clever people": I don't know of clever men supporting Trump (and rather doubt their existence) and no doubt there are (but I have never met one) wise and clever priests. I have deliberately put in my book quotations from Galileo, James Joyce, Bertrand Russell, Ted Hughes etc. to show that generally accepted 'truths' do not have a good record for sense, and hope in my book to have applied their tests to the Shakespeare Authorship Question. PB can't pass judgment as he refuses to read the book (a splendid position for a lawyer to adopt: I was taught over 60 years never to despise your opponent's case -juries and magistrates don't like it) : MJ might when he has finished it (and not before!)
Your refusal to answer questions posed to you is growing really tiresome. If a judge asked you to respond to a question, would you simply ignore it. Genuine, honest debate requires answering questions posed by your opponent.
Not at all I wd carefully explain to the judge that your PFC does not take into account the common-sense Carr/Trevor-Roper incontrovertible thesis which I wd tell him/her I had already explained to my opponents, and explained how I apply it. The judge wd want to know why you wd keep drumming away and wasting the Court's time with a point you already know my answer to. That is the action of a bigtime loser.
"I am not suggesting hat Jaggard et al. had to tout round for funds . . ." So you've dropped the argument that someone "persuade[d] the Earls to finance the undertaking." And your argument "the rag based paper would have been imported from France requiring a large down payment as paper was far and away the most expensive item for production. So let us look round (as I have and show above) for the most likely people to make that investment," doesn't really pan out either . . . Jaggard's entire business, no matter what book he was publishing, demanded a steady supply of expensive French paper. Progress.
" I think they were put up to the job of producing the Folio by politicians against the King's Spanish Marriage policy: why is The Tempest the first play (with its expose of Spanish Italian political mores) and Cymbeline the last (postulating a Britain/Rome rapprochement) in the folio (my book 268,400 n.35)?"
The answer is pretty obvious: Jaggard had the rights to many of Shakespeare's plays and could obtain the rights to eighteen more, but only if he had the approval of the players, who wanted a folio like Jonson's.
Why the Tempest first? They wanted to sell books. They put the most recent outstandingly good play of Shakespeare's up front where the browsers interested in buying a copy would see it. Or do you suppose they would list them chronologically, where the first play in the book is over thirty years old?
Do you really think anyone purchasing the First Folio would read it cover to cover and think to themselves, "Gosh, what I get from reading those plays is that there shouldn't be a match with the Spanish Infanta?"
Great. You would carefully explain that your subjective "stereoscopic vision" allowed you to see behind primary source documents, because E. H. Carr and Hugh Trevor-Roper claimed that a historian could ignore the evidence "to see beyond the document to the three-dimensional reality of the time and the place in which it originated."
Of course, Carr and HT-R we're not speaking about the analysis of specific documents, but about the class and societal biases of the historians themselves. As Carr urged, "Study the historian before you begin to study the facts."
Carr "argued that all historians we're confined within the limits of the society and class from which each of them had sprung." What Carr considered to be "objectivity" was not what the term meant in the generally accepted sense of the word -- "uncommitted, dispassionate, fair -- but the exact opposite, being committed to the side that is going to win: the big battalions." It's like all your talk of winning and losing.
Of course, Carr's strange notions have absolutely nothing to do with what you claim to be "circumstantial evidence" actually qualifying as such, or if speculation is admissible as evidence in a trial -- both of which are questions I have posed to you. Both of which you have refused to answer.
If you can't answer, just say so.
Richard Malim: PB I am not 'dropping' anything. I think that Jaggard et al were the willing recipients of the Earls' instructions: equally there was no evidence that complete manuscripts were with the players who wanted a full folio copy of that very expensive production: remember Jonson 1616 works were castigated as his vanity project. The m/s plays were probably still with Oxford when he died and Susan with Pembroke as her culturally minded brother-in -law, along with Henry the 18th Earl were the keepers. Anyway Henry made Jonson a superbly expensive present with at the time (Book 270), a piece of prima facie evidence on which c/e may readily be based. As for The Tempest the Gesta Grayorum shows that it was the popular play in 1594. Read it again for the bitter attack on Spanish Italian political mores.
MJ But Carr and TR and certainly I claim that a PFC can always be correct at times or probative until a better explanation. Example the memorial of the third Earl of Southampton tells us he was killed in 1625 and he was the son of the second Earl. Both statements are prima facie evidence but the second raises questions: why was it considered necessary to emphasise the paternity. You are being perverse again.
The perversity here is all yours. As any lawyer knows, a subjective, so-called "better explanation" (better in whose eyes?), your personal spin ("I think..."), does nothing to rebut the PFC. Only evidence serves to do that.
Are you a Prince Tudor theory advocate? Do you THINK. Southampton's parentage is in question?
And you still refuse to provide an answer to questions posed to you. At this point, a reasonable judge would instruct you to answer the question.
Do you honestly believe that your subjective speculation would qualify as admissible evidence at trial? Yes or no? If so, please explain how it would qualify as such evidence?
MJ: I have spent 25 years with some success here in UK fighting the nonsensical Prince Tudor drivel-theories.
Richard Malim:
What you deem subjective speculation is in my view circumstantial evidence which has reached a probative standard sufficient to trump the direct evidence. In other words it can be put to the jury/readers. I just cannot understand why you as a lawyer of consummate experience cannot grasp that very simple idea (which is why I think you are being perverse): you are quite entitled to disagree with it and to show why, but as long as I have a juryman/reader who agrees with me (I imagine I have 000s), we are on equal terms in debate. To deny that makes you a rotten lawyer, the sort who thinks his opinion shd be regarded as indefeasible. I have wiped the floor with a few of those in my time.
I have of course answered the PFC questions to the best of my ability
>> RM:. "To deny that makes you a rotten lawyer, the sort who thinks his opinion shd be regarded as indefeasible.
You are strangling irony to death.
The Colophon to the First Folio states, quite directly, who was financially responsible for publishing it. Your opinion, unsupported by any similar evidence and contrary to the extant evidence, is that the dedicatees provided the financing for it. Because paper was expensive...
And you treat your interpretation/opinion itself as if it qualifies as circumstantial evidence. And, not only that, but that it is circumstantial evidence that should be accepted as factual truth. That is the very definition of perverse.
Richard Malim: A large sum had to be put down for the paper. The printers were Isaac Jaggard and Ed Blount. Those bearing the charges were Blount, W. Jaggard and two others according to the colophon at the end: so who financed them? I am simply exercising my right in the circumstances to cast doubt on the full accuracy of the colophon, for the reasons given and the other PFC element on the title page. The colophon is not of the greatest importance when the question of who is meant on the title page by "William Shakespeare" is really what we are debating - and the PFC case verges on the absurd
The big problem with Oxfordian theory is that it's built on special pleading like this. Everything has to be interpreted differently than the natural reading. The evidence of who financed the Folio is clear from the colophon, except . . . The signed dedicatory epistle is prima facie evidence but . . . We're expected to treat clear-blue-sky speculation as equivalent to documentary evidence, based on some metahistorical theorizing.
E.H. Carr said,"What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization." But Oxfordians and other Shakespeare authorship deniers insist that Shakespeare was unique and that we cannot infer facts about Shakespeare's life and the world he inhabited from facts we know about analogous contemporaries. So while they consider printed epistles with printed signatures as good evidence (particularly when the printed signature is "Oxenford") they invent extraordinary hurdles to avoid crediting evidence that supports Shakespeare's authorship.
"The m/s plays were probably still with Oxford when he died and Susan with Pembroke as her culturally minded brother-in -law, along with Henry the 18th Earl were the keepers."
There is no evidence that the manuscripts were ever in the possession of the Earl of Oxford. The evidence is that the plays were the possession of the Lord Chamberlains/King's men company from the creation of the earlier company in ~1594 on. Please point me to any primary source that identifies anyone else as having the plays after that date.
Your opinion isn't evidence. A secondary source -- the analysis of an historian -- must be based on primary sources. Read Carr more carefully.
>> "Those bearing the charges were Blount, W. Jaggard and two others according to the colophon at the end: so who financed them? I am simply exercising my right in the circumstances to cast doubt on the full accuracy of the colophon..."
We have now reached the "Just Asking Questions" (JAQ) stage of the debate.
>> "and the PFC case verges on the absurd
And the argument by adjective phase.
Why is it that every exercise of Mr. Malim's "stereoscopic vision" just happens to somehow serve to confirm his pre-existing conspiracy theory?What are the odds on that?
PB MJ : I am going to cut the cackle on the colophons, not because I abandon my contentions, but because I consider yours defensible, which is not the case over the H & C authorship or "William Shakespeare", to which the argument is probably not relevant anyway.
As the manuscripts were written by or on his dictation and first versions were probably all written by 1594, there is no evidence that Oxford parted with them to to the Lord Chamberlain's Men or anyone else. Indeed the reverse .In his war with Essex the last people who shd guard their sanctity would be the allies of Essex including the Cobham/Oldcastle who wanted to destroy the Falstaff parody of their hero and rewrite the canon. Foiled they had 1 Oldcastle written: 2 Oldcastle never appeared thanks to the death of Cobham and the fall of Essex.
Thus Oxford was able carefully to produce the 1598-1604 publications between the deaths of Burghley and himself. In this he was followed by Jonson, "who hung over his manuscript like a mother" (Chute: Ben Jonson of Westminster 90). Incidentally the players cd have had a nice little earner in producing the plays in individual quartos after 1604:why didn't they? Once again there is no primary source any more than there is for the contrary proposition.
Carr does not say that a secondary source must be based on the PFC of a document as a primary document. A document has to be selected and interpreted in the supervening circumstances which is where an opinion of circumstantial evidence as to its probate value as evidence comes in , to be totally or partially accepted. My opinion of the circumstantial evidence converts it in my opinion into evidence: as is your right as long as you defend against my opinion, to reject it. Mere rejection does not in my opinion put your opinion in the stronger position in evidence or logic
Again, I'd recommend you reread Carr, particularly chapter 1, The Historian and His Facts. Carr quotes Housman about historians and facts: '"accuracy is a duty, not a virtue." To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praiding and archtect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function." But you don't actually have facts.
You've fundamentally misunderstood Carr. He doesn't think historians' opinions are a substitute for facts, but he recognizes that what facts an historian emphasizes and de-emphasizes determines how history is written.
The irony, of course, is that the "facts of history" Carr describes are far more plentiful for Oxford than for William Shakespeare-- and yet you still are unable to give any primary sources to support your claims. It's not at all surprising that a man of the middling sort from the provinces who is employed in a business that isn't socially esteemed (and that within a few decades is in fact banned by the government), a man whose line of direct descendants died within a few decades, wouldn't leave many records. Compare to a high-ranking nobleman, succeeded by a male heir (and according to Oxfordians, the adoring daughters he dumped on his father-in-law the moment their mother died), whose correspondence with his long-suffering father- and brother-in-law are still extant, and which nonetheless make no mention of his ever having written anything.
Must a secondary source be based on primary sources? Of course! It's definitional. I learned this getting my degree in history. Here's just one example from the internet: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/HistSciInfo/secondary.
Really, your claim that whatever you make up can be considered evidence is a remarkable admission against interest. It's the reason that Oxfordianism is dying and for scholars, long dead.
"there is no evidence that Oxford parted with them to to the Lord Chamberlain's Men or anyone else."
We can divide the plays into three categories: the ones published before the First Folio (which clearly had been performed on stage); the ones in the First Folio only for which there is independent performance history; and the ones in the First Folio with no known history of performance.
Do you agree that any play that is identified as having been performed (mostly by the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men) must have been out of the hands of the author? We can also reasonably expect that the players had their plays approved by the Master of Revels as well. All but five canonical Shakespeare plays had either been published in quarto or had known performances recorded.
So we don't have evidence about the whereabouts of:
-- All's Well that Ends Well
-- King John
-- Coreolanus
-- Timon of Athens
-- Julius Caesar
Scholars attribute all of these as being transcribed for the First Folio from either authorial foul papers, a transcription of the foul papers, or a prompt book. So are you only claiming that Oxford wrote these five plays?
PB Richard Malim : I see you are allowed to post comments but I am not. The short answer is that the author followed or instigated the example and parted with the ownership only to the publishers of the printed plays, retaining that for manuscript only ones. Evidence for the first performance of the first versions of the plays does not exist, although I rather like the record of Murderous Michael alias Arden of Feversham 1578.
To be clear Oxford wrote all the folio plays and others
I require that my two earlier suppressed missives be published on this site
but only if and when you produce an answer to the points in them and publish that. Otherwise I shall publish this correspondence elsewhere. You have a week to respond. And don't give me the Leadbetter response ("The replies never reached us")
Who is it that you think is suppressing your posts...? Mr. Purdy...? Why would he do such a thing?
I myself have had a response which did not post here. No matter what I tried.
Richard Malim: MJ Noted; iI had trouble earlier on . Anyway here's what I wrote 2+ days ago:-
"Richard Malim: Of course neither Carr nor I consider opinions substitutes for facts. A title page with William Shakespeare is a fact. What it tells us is a matter for the historian, critic, reader, juryman: prima facie it conveys au fond that someone thought that a William Shakespeare (whoever he was, wrote the Works on the subsequent pages. If there is no objection, sustainable counterevidence etc., rhen there is sufficient proof that he did and that by default it is conceded that the illiterate money-grubbing social climbing William Shaksper and this William Shakespeare the most educated and culturally blessed person the world has produced, are the same person.
Proof to the contary then shifts to the objector, who can first point out tht the prima facie evidence does not exclude the possibility that someone propped up William Shaksper as a cover for the true author (example: the authorship dispute over Quiet Flows The Don). To that he will the circumstantial evidence that they are two people, and in my case (because I believe it is the objector's responsibility to produce a better candidate) the actual evidence of Oxford's character, talents, cultural milieu, life experiences, view of life etc (all of which distinguish him from the actual evidence of William Shaksper's), to say nothing of of he evidence of the use by Oxford of the use of "William Shakespeare" as a pseudonym, converts that circumstantial evidence to a high probability that Oxford did write the Works, and again a lot of factual evidence can be applied to the literary and historical scenarios, which boosts the Oxfordian case.
All that is my opinion on the circumstantial evidence, and anyone is entitled to a negative view of it. To contradict me it is not sufficient to quote from any book on the subject whether pro- or anti-. PB can only start to destroy my thesis if he reads my book. He will then know precisely what he has to meet: he will not find in it any "groundless suggestions": as I try to avoid them as I try to establish the logic from each base of fact.
Test me with a "groundless suggestion", and I will reply with a page no. and explain the logic basis if that is not clear> Again you are entitled to disagree and object."
The second missive I will leave for the moment
"I see you are allowed to post comments but I am not." Apparently you have a frame of mind to see conspiracies that others cannot see . . . even when none exists.
"the author followed or instigated the example and parted with the ownership only to the publishers of the printed plays, retaining that for manuscript only ones." Something you made up from circumstantial evidence, no doubt. And as usual you think your theory negates hard evidence: the notation on all the quartos naming the company that performed the works, or the documented evidence that the plays were performed.
Yet you can't name any evidence at all that positively counters the language we rely on in the PFC, that the author is named Shakespeare and that he was the friend and fellow of Heminges and Condell. Apparently there's no subset of evidence that's persuasive -- only by reading the entire book do you hope to convince a single juror that you have a preponderance of the evidence.
Richard Malim: PB second para: I forgot to put in Ben Jonson as the writer exemplar who did not part with his ownership - see Marchette Chute : BJ of Westminster (Br. Edition 1053 90). Like Oxford he did not the LCM mucking his plays about, suppressing what they did not like etc. I have dealt with/ disposed of the "H and C" letters earlier.
I am afraid you have not read my letter: I thought you said you were a Lawyer: logic on the basis of such evidence and deductions therefrom is not your strong point. Now deal with the first para of my letter?
>> "I have dealt with/ disposed of the "H and C" letters earlier."
No. You really haven't dealt with the Dedication to the Folio. Merely stating that it was written by Jonson does nothing whatsoever to rebut the factual contentions put forward in the Dedication itself. You're missing some logical steps in your argument.
>> RM: "...that by default it is conceded that the illiterate money-grubbing social climbing William Shaksper and this William Shakespeare the most educated and culturally blessed person the world has produced, are the same person."
Nice strawman you've got there.
The AUTHOR Shakespeare is referred to as Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman, in numerous contemporary documents. But only AFTER the grant of the coat of arms to his father, which entitled William to be so addressed. Not to mention that Heminges and Condell specifically state that the AUTHOR Shakespeare is their friend and fellow actors -- evidence shows that the actor in the LCM and KM was the same William Shakespeare of Stratford.
>> RM: "Proof to the contary (sic) then shifts to the objector, who can first point out tht the prima facie evidence does not exclude the possibility that someone propped up William Shaksper as a cover for the true author..."
Your "possibility" is not evidence.
>> RM: "... to say nothing of of he evidence of the use by Oxford of the use (sic) of "William Shakespeare" as a pseudonym"
You have said nothing here about any such evidence. This is supposed to be a discussion, no matter how much you would like to turn it into a book club dedicated to reading your book. Can you please list a bit of the evidence you rely on here.
Richard Malim: MJ; The "strawman" is your problem . No one can reconcile the William Shaksper, his mind life experiences and social attitudes with William Shakespeare stated by the title page to be thew author of the plays in the folio the writer of the play and his. That is why there is a Shakespeare Authorship Question.
Exactly the same argument applies to the H and C letters which takes the case no further and backs the PFC
If you can make the reconciliation, be my friend and explain why or where my book goes astray. I use my book not for promotion purposes here but because it represent a text where we can advance our arguments etc. The case for the pseudonym is to be found on pp.109, 54, and 359 n.8. There are a number of references to 'Will' or 'will' which go to substantiate this piece of evidence, most of them relating to before Shakspere appears in London
This is like pulling teeth. Your page citations are of no use to me, since, as you know, I have purchased the Kindle version. Are you unable to identify your so-called evidence for the pseudonym with enough specificity to at least search for it in your book.
>> RM: "No one can reconcile..."
Your argument from personal incredulity (countered by 400 years of scholarship) and your making a god of the gaps in our knowledge do nothing to rebut the specific language identifying the author in the FF Dedication. That's why there is no actual Shakespeare Authorship Question outside of your tiny, fringe group.
Richard Malim My apologies over the Kindle: If you multiply the references I give by 1.2 at the beginning of the book rising to 1.9 for the End notes I think you will get pretty close. I should have told you earlier.
I am asking who do you understand by the references to "William Shakespeare" in the Folio. Is it the educationally challenged etc WS or the writer of Hamlet or are they the same person?
If your answer is the last, can you therefore see from your experience of life etc. that such a person could never exist, and the doubters and disbelievers are justified in saying there is a SAQ. Or supply similar examples to your composite character.
"No one can reconcile the William Shaksper, his mind life experiences and social attitudes with William Shakespeare stated by the title page to be thew author of the plays in the folio the writer of the play and his."
On the contrary -- it's Oxford whose life experiences are inconsistent with being the author. Shakespeare's background as the son of a merchant is entirely consistent with the background of other writers of his time. Your premise of a senior earl who cranked out plays as a hobby, supposedly not writing for the King's Men company, is the illogical one.
And "no one can reconcile?" You might want to read a little beyond the echo chamber of Oxfordians you are in touch with. Very few people familiar with the evidence disagree with us, and for good reason: you can't come up with any evidence that Heminges and Condell were lying or mistaken about their identification of William Shakespeare, their "friend and fellow."
"Is it the educationally challenged etc WS or the writer of Hamlet or are they the same person?" You've just abandoned the approach of having any evidence for your assertions, apparently. Probably your best option at this point. The evidence for Shakespeare's education is his works. Our PFC doesn't make any claim about where he acquired the knowledge his works evidence, and we will never know the full story, since people learn throughout their lives, not just in school. Shakespeare's background as a working player would be far more important than anything Oxford may have learned -- how to build a scene and a narrative, stagecraft -- things that Oxford's training in fencing, dancing, jousting and penmanship wouldn't have prepared him for. Like Jonson, he profited from being an actor far more than he would have going to university.
The extant, contemporary, historical evidence shows that Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman, of Stratford was the author of the works. There is no evidence that he was "educationally challenged" -- that's simply your necessary assumption. This is a gap in our knowledge; creationists and other doubters make a god of the gaps.
My experience of life is not evidence which serves to rebut the PFC. Nor is your experience of life, or your personal incredulity that such a person could exist.
Do you believe it was necessary for a playwright of the day to attend a university?
Richard Malim: MJ: Kydd and Jonson did not attend University. The six signatures are evidence enough that Shakspere was educationally challenged: nothing else shows him undertaking anything academic at all. There is no contemporary evidence before 1623 of any connection to the works: indeed Lionel Digges in 1632 describes the idea as a "mad relations of the town of Stratford" "too tedious" to pass on.(my book 331)
PB: I am not discussing Oxford here: my book sets out my case. I have applied the principles of Carr and T-R to the prima facie evidence provided by the H and C letters to show that they need examination on a circumstantial evidence basis, which in my opinion sufficient to award them to Jonson as composer: as people H and C are irrelevant ciphers in this scenario.
I am surprised to see you as a lawyer producing the circular non-argument that the evidence of Shaksperes evidence is in the Works.(When I was at school that was called 'assuming the quaesita") To suggest that Shakspere's education was similar to that of the University wits is palpable nonsense. Of Kydd we know nothing save that he was acquainted with group. Of Jonson we know that he went to Westminster School and, because he did not have a scholarship to the school he could not go on to a University (Chute 35ff), but the sublime quality of the learning and education which is seeps out of every play in the Works is far above that displayed ("in your face" like Jonson) by the other playwrights.
There is no evidence of Shakspere doing any acting (apart from the caricature in Every Man Out - my book and the rest of the acting argument 323), let alone had any role in the specialist business of the LCM.
I must therefore twit you with belief in miracles just as 'orthodox' Dover Wilson finds himself when considering WS's qualifications to write Love's Labours Lost. I expect you know the reference.
I don't which is why I started my reading 30+ years ago as a doubter of Shakspere's authorship
>> RM: "The six signatures are evidence enough that Shakspere was educationally challenged."
This is a ridiculous statement. Since you wish to use personal life experience as evidence, my father was a highly educated man who was an MD (board certified in two specialties) and also a lawyer. His handwriting was so bad that even he couldn't decipher what he had written at times, and his signature was illegible. Not to mention that Shakespeare's signatures exhibit his familiarity with shorthand conventions employed by professional scrivener's of his time.
>> RM: "There is no contemporary evidence before 1623 of any connection to the works.
This statement is factually incorrect, as the PFC clearly demonstrates. There are a number of contemporary documents from before 1616 which identify the AUTHOR Shakespeare as Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman. Not coincidentally, all of these documents were generated after the grant of the coat of arms to John Shakespeare, an event which would have allowed William to be addressed using the honorific "Mr." and by the status of "Gentleman".
The only William Shakespeare in all of England at the time entitled to be identified as Mr./Gentleman was that particular Mr. William Shakespeare, Gentleman, of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Therefore, all of these documents qualify as historical evidence which uniquely and specifically connects William Shakespeare of Stratford with the Shakespeare works. And all of them were generated during his lifetime.
>> RM: There is no evidence of Shakspere doing any acting (apart from the caricature in Every Man Out - my book and the rest of the acting argument 323), let alone had any role in the specialist business of the LCM."
"No evidence..."? This statement is also factually incorrect.
Evidence that Shakespeare was an actor with the LCM & KM:
1. The court payment in 1595 to "William Kempe William Shakespeare & Richard Burbage servantes to the Lord Chamberlain". On 15 March 1595, the Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber paid "William Kempe William Shakespeare & Richarde Burbage servants to the Lord Chamberleyne" for their performances at court in Greenwich on 26th and 27th December 1594.
2. The 1599 listing of the Globe Theater as being occupied by "Willielmo Shakespeare et aliorum"
3. The three contemporary legal documents (two from 1601 and one from 1608) which list the primary tenants of the Globe theater as "William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, gentlemen."
4. The Return from Parnassus Part 2, in which the actor "Kemp" refers to "our fellow Shakespeare"
Around 1601, students in Cambridge put on a play called The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus, the third in a series of plays that satirized the London literary scene. In this play, two characters named "Kempe" and "Burbage" appear, representing the actors Will Kempe and Richard Burbage of the Chamberlain's Men. At one point Kempe says,
“Few of the university [men] pen plays well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, aye and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.”
This passage supports the proposition that the playwright Shakespeare was a fellow actor of Kempe and Burbage, contrasts him with the University-educated playwrights, and establishes him as a rival of Ben Jonson.
5. The license for the creation of the King's Men in 1603, in which "William Shakespeare" appears second. The Lord Chamberlain's Men were licensed as the King's Men on 19 May 1603. The document lists "Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustyne Phillippes, Iohn Heninges, Henrie Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowly" as members of the troupe. Shakespeare's prominence is indicated by the fact that he appears second on the list, behind only Lawrence Fletcher, who had acted for King James in Scotland, and who was the king's favorite actor.
6. The account of red cloth distributed to the King's Men for James's procession into London in 1604; they are prominently identified as "Players," and William Shakespeare appears first on the list. On 15 March 1604 King James, Queen Anne, and Prince Henry rode through the City of London in a royal entry postponed from the previous summer because of the plague. An account by Sir George Home, who was Master of the Great Wardrobe, lists the names of "Players" who were each given four yards of red cloth apiece for the investiture of King James in London on 15 March 1604. The actors who were named were "William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillipps, Lawrence Fletcher, John Hemminges, Richard Burbidge, William Slye, Robert Armyn, Henry Cundell, and Richard Cowley."
7. The will of Augustine Phillips, member of the King's Men, which leaves money to "my fellow William Shakespeare" as well as to seven other members of the King's Men. The will of Augustine Phillips, executed 5 May 1605, proved 16 May 1605, bequeaths, "to my Fellowe William Shakespeare a thirty shillings peece in gould, To my Fellowe Henry Condell one other thirty shillinge peece in gould . . . To my Fellowe Lawrence Fletcher twenty shillings in gould, To my Fellowe Robert Armyne twenty shillings in gould . . . ." All of the people who Phillips calls his "fellows" were actors in the King's Men. Augustine Phillips's bequest of 30 shillings to his "Fellowe" Shakespeare was written 11 months after the Earl of Oxford's death. If Oxford were Shakespeare, Phillips would have known that he was dead.
More evidence:
8. The record of Shakespeare ye Player in the Heralds Office.
In 1602, Peter Brooke, the York Herald, accused Sir William Dethick, the Garter King-of-Arms, of elevating base persons to the gentry. Brooke drew up a list of 23 persons whom he claimed were not entitled to bear arms. Number four on the list was Shakespeare. Brooke included a sketch of the Shakespeare arms, captioned "Shakespear ye Player by Garter." This is the same coat-of-arms that appears on the poet's tomb in Stratford.
9. The cast lists included in Jonson's Folio. The 1616 Folio of Ben Jonson's Works contained cast lists for his plays. The cast list for Jonson's Every Man in His Humor, which was performed in 1598, includes "Will Shakespeare, Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Will. Slye, Will. Kempe, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Tho. Pope, Chr. Beeston, and Ioh. Duke.". The cast list for Jonson's Sejanus, performed in 1603, includes "Ric. Burbadge, Aug. Philips, Will. Sly, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Shake-Speare, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, and Alex. Cooke."
10. In his will, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon left a bequest "to my ffellowes John Hemynge Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell a peece to buy them Ringes."
In his will, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon left a bequest "to my ffellowes John Hemynge Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell xxvj s viij d A peece to buy them Ringes." Heminges, Burbage, and Condell had been fellow actors in the King's Men with William Shakespeare, and Heminges and Condell later edited the First Folio, in which they attributed thirty-six plays to their "friend and fellow" William Shakespeare.
11. The First Folio poem by Ben Jonson.
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund'ring Æschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a stage : Or, when thy sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
More evidence:
12. Three poems by Davies.
A.
To our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shake-speare.
Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,
Had'st thou not plaid some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King;
And, beene a King among the meaner sort.
Some others raile; but, raile as they thinke fit,
Thou hast no railing, but a raigning Wit:
And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape;
So, to increase their Stocke which they do keepe.
B.
Players, I love yee, and your Qualitie,
As ye are Men, that pass time not abus’d:
And some I love for painting, poesie W.S. R.B.
And say fell fortune cannot be excus’d,
That hath for better uses you refused:
Wit, Courage, good shape, good partes and all goode,
As long as all these goods are no worse us’d,
And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloode
Yet generous yee are in minde and moode.
C.
Some followed her by acting all mens parts Stage Players
These on a Stage she rais’d (in scorne) to fall:
And made them Mirrors, by their acting Arts,
Wherin men saw their faults, though ne’r so small:
Yet soome she guerdond not, to their desarts; W.S. R.B.
But, othersome, were but ill-actioned all:
Who while they acted ill, ill staid behinde,
(By custome of their maners) in their minde.
The initials in these poems are printed in marginal notes to the poems, along with other marginal notes supplied by the poet.
13. On 13 March 1602, John Manningham of the Middle Temple recorded in his diary a racy anecdote about Richard Burbage and William Shakespeare:
Upon a time when Burbidge played Richard III there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come to her that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came. Then message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. Shakespeare's name William.
The anecdote does not explicitly call Shakespeare an actor, but it places him at the theater with Burbage, the leading actor of the Chamberlain's Men. Manningham was a friend of William Shakespeare's friend and "cousin" Thomas Greene, who was then finishing up his studies at the Middle Temple and would move to Stratford the following year.
[-- from How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts, by Tom Reedy and David Kathman].
14. Greene’s Groats-worth…
15. Willobie, His Avisa, with its reference to WS, the “old player”…[possible reference]
16. Sir Richard Baker, a contemporary of Shakespeare and a friend of John Donne, published Chronicle of the Kings of England in 1643. Sir Richard was an avid fan of the theater, also writing Theatrum Redivium, or the Theatre Vindicated. In the Chronicle, for Elizabeth's reign he notes statesmen, seamen, and soldiers, and literary figures who are mostly theologians with the exception of Sidney. In conclusion he says,
“After such men, it might be thought ridiculous to speak of Stage-players; but seeing excellency in the meanest things deserves remembering . . . For writers of Playes, and such as had been Players themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Jonson, have specially left their Names recommended to Posterity.” [-- this particular reference was taken from How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts, by Tom Reedy and David Kathman].
17. Heminge and Condell in the prefatory material to the FF
We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes, Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our S H A K E S P E A R E , by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage.
18. Jonson's 'Timber'
"I am surprised to see you as a lawyer producing the circular non-argument that the evidence of Shaksperes evidence is in the Works.(When I was at school that was called 'assuming the quaesita')"
Completely wrong. It's not circular in the least.
We've shown that Heminges and Condell identified "Shakespeare" as the author, and that the individual they were referring to is their "friend and fellow;" this identifies only one person they could possibly be referring to: William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon in the county of Warwick, Gentleman.
Did we make any claim about his education, where he got it or what he studied? No. If as part of our case we were to claim that, by virtue of his attendance at the King Edward VI school in Stratford, he was the author, you'd have had a point. But we didn't, so you're pointless.
"The six signatures are evidence enough that Shakspere was educationally challenged"
Not at all. It actually proves that he could write. Nobody claims he was trained in penmanship, and being a professional writer doesn't necessarily lead to better penmanship. I remember once when I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter whose storied I'd been reading for years, and noticing that her handwriting was very messy. It's a commonplace to say that doctors' handwriting is hard to read. There's no correlation at all between education and penmanship. His writing of Hand D in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More is actually quite readable (I once had the opportunity to see a leaf of the manuscript in person when it was exhibited in the Folger Library.)
"There is no contemporary evidence before 1623 of any connection to the works." Wrong again. Since we've shown that "William Shakespeare" was undoubtedly used as one of the spellings of Shakespeare's name (and indeed, the one he employed in legal contexts like the purchase of the Blackfriars Gatehouse, the name by which he was summoned to testify in Bellott v Mountjoy, and the name on the documentation of the purchase of New Place) the numerous quartos as well as the dedications of Venus & Adonis and Lucrece all are good evidence of his connection to the works.
Richard Malim
PB: OK: "Shakspere wrote the works which show that the writer was academically equipped to write the plays : therefore Shakspere was sufficiently equipped". Classic circular argument.
I am glad that you reject the Stratford education quality of the Grammar School non sense, but then I want evidence of where and how he became sufficiently educated. It damages your case if you simply say we have no such evidence.
The best analysis of the six signatures is that they were written by 3 different law clerks: one did three on the Will, another did two on the Blackfriars Gate Deeds and one did the Bellott statement. I have pointed out that in one effort the words "by me William" are written in an educated hand - and then the writer remembered he was supposed to passing the effort as that of an illiterate None of them constitutes a an adequate base to compare hand D which has never been so linked by a modern graphologist. The experts consulted by Brian Vickers say that any such claim would be laughed out a court of qualified experts
The spelling "Shakespeare" was never used by Shaksper himself and was the gloss but on to put polish on the Warwickshire surname by Clerks lawyers and academics. The printed versions all referred to the Earl of Oxford unless there was a need for the cover such as in the FF.
'"Shakspere wrote the works which show that the writer was academically equipped to write the plays : therefore Shakspere was sufficiently equipped". Classic circular argument.'
Actually, it's a syllogism.
1. Shakespeare wrote the plays. (Proven by first-person statement by Heminges and Condell, combined with primary source evidence, but not dependent on any claims of educational background.)
2. The author of the plays was by definition "academically equipped" (whatever that means) to write them.
Therefore, Shakespeare was "academically equipped" to write them.
Of course, one of the big problems with Oxfordian theory is that they put the author on a pedestal. They're the last bastion of nineteenth century Bardolotry. They can't conceive that Shakespeare was a really talented actor of the same social class and background of other players and writers of his day. They have to make him a nobleman, and exaggerate his academic qualifications (Oxford was no scholar). They have no evidence besides their imagination, but they can fill hundreds of pages and hours of conferences and videos with these imaginary connections.
What is meant by "academically equipped?" It seems to assume that Shakespeare would need to have learned information written about in the plays and poems in an educational institution (or instruction), rather than through life experience or other instruction. Please provide a specific example (e.g. a line or plot device from a specific play, not just a vague, broad claim) of something that is in one of Shakespeare's plays that the author couldn't possibly have known without having been taught it in school, as opposed to through experience.
Richard Malim: On the basis of the PFC "The author William Shakespeare" alone the statement can only be 'justified by circular reasoning. Both it and the H and C statements are valueless if the Carr investigation and the circumstantial evidence logic are applied, which you refuse to accept - which is your right, but not to your credit as a lawyer with expertise in the application of circumstantial evidence.
There are no problems with Oxford's indefeasible claim. Who puts the writer of the First Folio on a pedestal? All these writers in the Introduction: Jonson, Holland., Digges, and Mabbe agree he was the "Soul of the Age". To Cuthbert Burbage, Shaksper was just a deserving man, typical friend and fellow of H and C. I understand you want to be saddled with an impossible composite, which is plain idiotic, except to a miracle-believer.
Where you get the idea Oxford was no scholar, I cannot imagine, other than from Nelson, that Dr. Jekyll of research and Mr. Hyde of criticism. As for his scholarship the seventeen year old Orazio Cuoco (Nelson cannot even get his name right) under oath before the Inquisition tells it that Oxford as well as being a music lover,spoke Latin and Italian well; he went to Mass at the Church of the Greeks, i.e. able to follow at least the fiendishly difficult spoken Greek of the time. I do recommend that all scholars should study Dr. Noemi Magri's Such Fruits out of Italy, which sums up Nelson more completely than I can.
Oxford gained a sufficient smattering of Hebrew to make puns, and also of the application of Venetian Law (no books in England at the time I believe) in MOV. Not Shaksper's reading matter, I believe
>> RM: "...the H and C statements are valueless if ... the circumstantial evidence logic is (are) applied...
Please explain what you mean by this statement. What do you mean by "circumstantial evidence logic", and how does such logic logically serve to make the H and C statements valueless?
I'm surprised a lawyer like yourself would make the claim that there is "no evidence" that Shakespeare was an actor or had any connection to the LCM, and then simply ignore all the evidence to the contrary that I provided to you.
>> RM: "The spelling "Shakespeare" was never used by Shaksper himself and was the gloss but on to put polish on the Warwickshire surname by Clerks lawyers and academics. The printed versions all referred to the Earl of Oxford unless there was a need for the cover such as in the FF."
Do you know what special pleading is?
Richard Malim: MJ Back to basics: I agree the title page "William Shakespeare" allied to the 'H and C' letters constitute a PFcase that William Shakspere wrote the works . However in my opinion the Carr test of the documents, the circumstantial evidence as set out in the pages of my book and elsewhere allied to logic and common sense together all trump the PF case now that it is opposed.
I wonder what would you in general terms expect to find in a circumstantial evidence case that would trump a prima facie case or that a judge would put to a jury to consider. I don't see where my case is defective, but no doubt you with your legal expertise will supply the missing element that escapes. Or is it your case that circumstantial evidence never trumps the Prima facie case, and never could in the case of William Shakespeare's authorship?
My book deals with the cultural connections of WS with the LCM 323ff. My pleading is carefully built on facts, circumstantial evidence and common sense logic and has nothing to do with "special pleading".
You are entitled always to disagree but must be talking nonsense when you say that there is no case for Oxford. If I say there is that is my opinion (as well as that of many highly intelligent people), then that constitutes the validation to that extent of the Oxford case
But you don't seem to understand Carr. It's a mystery why you brought him up in the first place: his essay supports our interpretation of the evidence and is incompatible with yours. It's remarkable that you keep bringing up a theory that refutes yours. As I've suggested before you need to reread his work.
He keeps quoting Carr because he believes it gives him permission to promote his conspiracy theory in the face of contrary documentary evidence. But nothing in Carr supports his conclusion that the statements by Heminges and Condell in the First Folio are devoid of any evidentiary value. Mr. Malim's misunderstanding of Carr is as gross as his misunderstanding of what qualifies as circumstantial evidence.
Special pleading: The documentary references to Shakespeare mean Oxford when I need them to, and mean Shakspere when my conspiracy theory requires it.
Mr. Malim still can't deal with any of the pieces of evidence which document Mr. Shakespeare's acting career, other than by waving his book in the air. He isn't really interested in a good faith debate of the matter here.
Richard Malim: PB,MJ: Of course I understand Carr: Documents have to be interpreted: the historian needs to consider the circumstances in which a document was written, i.e. comes into existence, and the persona of its producer. The H and C documents are not manuscript letters: there is no evidence that they ever existed as manuscript letters signed by H and C's signatures. They are printed matter that has come into existence and inserted into the Works, and as such evidence, and now at that point we can apply the Carr tests. You are quite entitled to say they add to the prima facie case. What you are not entitled to say that is that is contrary to common sense and illogical that I applying those tests with the accompanying circumstantial evidence should come to a different conclusion. You are entitled to rubbish it but have no converts to your ideas.
I am not waving my book in the air. I deal with Shaksper's acting career and shareholding at pp.125, 139, 323-9, 417 nn.63, and with Oxford's in Ch 7 125ff - in your face
"...in your face.". How juvenile can you get.
What is right in front of your face, at the end of your nose, is all of the evidence of Mr.Shakespeare's acting career, evidence that you feel required to deny ("no evidence") in order to try to disconnect him from the acting companies which performed the Shakespeare plays and the there's in which those plays were performed. You simply can't accept that he had an intimate relationship with men like Heminges and Condell. Those are the circumstances you simply can't deal with.
It's rather ironic that you deny waving your book in the air and then proceed to do just that. Is there a reason that you can't present a single jot of the details from your book as a part of this discussion here?
Richard Malim: MJ Stupidly I assumed that having bought the book, you would be able to read it; perhaps you need a new monitor screen? Then you can have at the end of your nose in your face the miserable scraps on which you 'orthodox' try to base an acting career for Shakspere the illiterate with a Warwickshire accent. I have neither the energy nor intention to retype it all just because you are being doltish
Thanks for doubling down on your denial. And for showing that you still can't present any details in this discussion, even though I have laid out the evidence of Mr Shakespeare's acting career in great detail above. Are you unable to read all of that evidence and respond to it here? Apply your Carr goggles to it and show how all of the surrounding circumstances turn each piece of evidence into something other than what they show on their face. Or continue to show that all you can do in response is to descend to argument by mere adjective?
Let's take one piece of evidence specifically and you can demonstrate the process by which you dismiss it as a "miserable scrap". Jonson's 1616 Folio shows Mr. Shakespeare acting in two of his plays. How does that fail to qualify as evidence?
Richard Malim: MJ All the details are in my book . All your 'evidence' is tested there and found in my opinion to be trumped by the application of reasonable contentions of circumstantial negating evidence. And if you won't study it you are past help.
Of course the what Jonson caused to be written in his 1616 folio is prima facie evidence . Equally it needs to be tested, and if the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to make it clear that Jonson intended Oxford to be the "Shakespeare" there listed, then it trumps the PF case. In page after page Jonson's true relationship to Oxford is set out in my book, which is why I am in order in describing as the PF evidence in favour of Shakspere as an actor as miserable scraps, again in my opinion
Richard Malim: 4th March 2023; Four weeks pass and no reply from the lawyers.
I was waiting for you to respond to the numerous pieces of evidence in support of the proposition that Mr. Shakespeare of Stratford was an actor in the acting companies which also included Burbage, Heminges and Condell.
From above:
"Let's take one piece of evidence specifically and you can demonstrate the process by which you dismiss it as a "miserable scrap". Jonson's 1616 Folio shows Mr. Shakespeare acting in two of his plays. How does that fail to qualify as evidence?"
Any competent lawyer should have been able to formulate a response by now. What's your excuse?
Richard Malim: But I did in terms to sink your argument utterly, within 24 hours. The sheer volume of the circumstantial evidence renders your position untenable. Is that too difficult a proposition? Apparently Yes. Sad.
You are delusional. Your response to my challenge regarding your failure to rebut any of the evidence that Mr. Shakespeare was an actor was simply to say, "It's all in my book." That doesn't qualify as a refutation of any of the evidence I posted in support of the proposition that he was an actor in the same company of actors in which Burbage, Heminges and Condell were his fellow players. It's apparent that you are incapable of refuting the evidence. That's pathetic.
You didn't post any evidence of any kind here, direct or circumstantial. Even an incompetent lawyer could make a better case than you have made here
... because you haven't made any case at all. If you were in Court, and the Judge called on you to present your evidence, "It's all in my book" would not be a satisfactory response. And not providing a single, solitary piece of evidence would get you tossed out on your arse. It isn't a good faith debate if you fail and/or refuse to answer questions posed to you. Why would you expect anyone to bother with you in such circumstances?
I'd forgotten that this comment thread existed, and I didn't think you'd said anything interesting enough to bother to respond to.
I've been busy over on Gilbert's facebook page exploring his theory that Oxford wrote The Tempest in 1604 just before he died, to be performed at his daughter Susan's wedding. Turns out, Oxford didn't seem to have any relationship with his daughter. And that she wouldn't have told her father about her forthcoming betrothal, because she promised her uncle she wouldn't marry without his permission. And Robert Cecil was afraid Oxford would abduct the daughters if he was left alone with them. And Cecil said that Oxford never gave them groat, and wouldn't be a trustworthy guardian since he'd remarried and had a son and heir.
Richard Malim: PB I do not reply to your 12.58 a.m. missive as I probably would not agree with Gibert: my date for The Tempest is c.1594
My book is my Pleading AND my summary of Evidence. What sort of lawyer are you who goes into 'Court' without any knowledge of his opponents' case and REFUSING to read the pleading and the statement of evidence? A judge would think you nutty and/or ill! Are you?!
Your book is irrational twaddle. I have read your chapter on Oxford as an actor in the public stage, in which such illogical gems as the following appear: Oxford needed a pseudonym so that he could hide his presence on the stage. Hilarious, as if his physical appearance would be hidden by a pseudonym. You summarily reject all of the primary source evidence for Mr Shakespeare, while relying on subjective interpretation (non-evidence) for your claims. Your argument would be handled on a simple Motion in Limine. What type of lawyer doesn't recognize the difference between subjective opinion and documentary evidence?
Thank you for admitting that you are unable to debate any of the issues here in this discussion. Your bad faith is quite obvious. I presented evidence of Mr Shakespeare's acting career here at this site, and asked you to comment on one specific piece of that evidence. Your response was that your rebuttal of that evidence is all in your book...but that isn't true at all, as you don't address each and every one of those pieces of evidence. So not only are you operating in bad faith, you're also lying.
Richard Malim; MJ: Dear me. Please give me the page reference on which your quotation appears. Over and over again I point out that most of the literate population could not fail to know that "William Shakespeare" referred to the Earl, at least during his lifetime.
Please define for me "circumstantial evidence" (requiring only a personal view to convert it to evidence equal or superior to direct documentary evidence) and show the tests for distinguishing it from "subjective interpretation". Do omit references to my irrationality and that of the hundreds of Oxfordians (including Professor Penrose Nobel prizewinner and "the cleverest person in UK"), as these are (a) uninformative and (b)non-contributory to any debate.
As this correspondence indicates you misuse the word "summarily". I have admitted the PFC for all the documentation and disposed of it by my ice-cold logic.
Please identify which of your pieces of 'evidence' for Shaksper's acting career is not dealt with in my book. If you can find some you will realise it has been countered in advance by the reactions to other such 'evidence'.
I have no idea what a motion in limine is: I imagine it might be an interlocutory proceeding to strike out a pleading, without the least hope of success
Has something affected your ability to read and comprehend what has been written? The word "summarily" was used to describe your rejection of the evidence that Mr. Shakespeare was an actor, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the PFC. You have summarily dismissed all of the evidence which I posted here as to his acting career as being "miserable scraps", and you have posted no evidence of any kind whatsoever here to support such a claim. All you can do is to regurgitate your claim that it's all in your book. Why are you incapable of producing that evidence here?
Which "quotation" are you referring to here? Is it this: "For the purpose of public performances, he would have had to use a pseudonym..."
This is not a rational statement.
Your opinion that the "device" presented at Court in March 1579 is a subjective, speculative opinions that is unsupported by actual facts. In fact, you haven't done your research on the subject, as Martin Wiggins shows that Talbot wasn't the only one who recorded a comment as to the "device". It is referred to as a "ballet", so it isn't even a play, much less 'Murderous Michael's, much less 'Arden of Faversham'.
Your opinion that, "Practically, all the references [to Mr. Shakespeare as actor] can be shown to be to an unqualified investor rather than to an actor/producer/impresario" is subjective speculation unsupported by the evidence. As is your claim that the references are ambiguous, "perhaps deliberately" so. None of this qualifies as circumstantial evidence. If you disagree, please supply some of the evidence HERE which you claim supports the inferential conclusion that any of the references show Mr Shakespeare as nothing more than an investor in the theatre or the company. Do you not know what the word "fellow" meant at that time?
And there's much more. Your subjective interpretation of Edwards' *L'Envoy to Narcissus* , so that it supposedly means "Oxford is clearly shown as a ting in high class plays; he is very different from ordinary actors," does not qualify as circumstantial evidence. It is your own idiosyncratic and speculative opinions, but you are not an expert and it is not evidence.
You take Davies' poem, acknowledge that it's written in the present tense and is published in 1610, and then reverse engineer it to fit Oxford by claiming "there is a case for saying it was written in (late) 1604. That's a fine example of circular reasoning.
And there's even more than that. Your entire chapter on Oxford as an actor on the public stage is filled with such speculation. If you can't tell the difference between circumstantial evidence and your idiosyncratic opinions, you are not acting logically at all.
Do you sincerely believe that your interpretation of the Gesta Grayorum qualifies as circumstantial evidence? Yes or no answer, please? Can you respond HERE please, without pawning me off on your book. If not, what is the reason you are unable to do so?
Circumstantial evidence is direct evidence of a fact from. which a person may reasonably infer the existence or non- existence of another fact. It involved a logical, inferential reference to get from proof of one fact to another factual conclusion. What on earth do you mean by "a personal view" with reference to circumstantial evidence.
You don't know what a Motion in Limine" is...? Have you ever tried a case?
Here is what your book says as to the Royal Patent establishing the King's Men in Mat, 1603.
Oh wait, it doesn't say anything at all about this evidence, merely listing the names of the members of the company.
Here is what you say about the red cloth issued to the "Players" (including Will Shakespeare):
"the first-named in the list of 'Players', 'William Shakespeare' received four and a half yards (and perhaps somebody pocketed the financial equivalent). Whether William personally or Oxford in disguise are intended by these references is not clear."
Oxford in disguise... hilarious, but, no, that doesn't qualify as circumstantial evidence that Shakespeare was not a "Player", just as the documentary evidence clearly indicates. Your cognitive bias is leading you around by the nose.
And you continue: "Although [this] reference seems to be evidence that William was a player, it may have been included only because William was a leading shareholder in the Globe and named as one of the King's Men."
"MAY HAVE BEEN..." That right there is speculative language. Do you think your speculation qualifies as circumstantial evidence? It isn't even a fact, so how does it serve to establish another fact by an inferential process?
As to Shakespeare being included in Augustine Phillips ' LW&T, please read this link to view some actual scholarship which is not influenced by personal bias.
https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/augustine-phillips-last-will-and-testament-original-copy
You write as follows:
""It is notable that in the 'Parnassus' plays 1598-1602 (see page 2469 there is no reference to a Will Shakespeare theatrical, but with the distance from London and by 1599-1600 anyway, any point in a reference disappears - he had absented himself."
Are you serious...? Are you actually claiming that there are no references to Mr. Shakespeare in the last 'Parnassus' play? "He makes no appearance in the third play..."
You don't even know the facts.
Read Paula Glatzer's book, 'The Complaint of the Poet: The Parnassus Plays (1977), if you are truly interested in their contents and what they are about.
If you can't read that book, then at least look at this:
https://www.bartleby.com/216/1216.html
There is only one reference to the Earl of Oxford in the plays (alluded to by Stritmatter) and the Earl is most definitely not Mr. Shakespeare, the "fellow" of Burbage and Kemp.
Looking through your book, the only suggestion I can find that you use to support your view that Mr. Shakespeare only had a financial interest in the acting companies and theatres is that Jonson portrayed him as Sogliardo, so, therefore, he couldn't have been an actor. Am I missing anything else that you claim to be circumstantial evidence that rebuts all the documentary evidence that he was, in fact, a fellow player? If so, could you please cite it here, and please be specific.
Richard Malim: Are you now saying that there is no PFC evidence for Shaksper as an actor?
How is it irrational to conclude that Oxford wd need a pseudonym to act publicly (or to publish in print), or are the social conditions of the period a closed book to you?
I agree that the Murderous Michael/ Arden point is not as strong as the other pieces of CE, but it is both tenable and logical.
Shaksper as investor - that's his only role as Hemings' and Condell's "friend and fellow" There are only two statements which wd appear lend credence to the idea that Shaksper was an actor:
1. Phillips' will: Hemings the actor/ shareholder gets 30s.worth, Shaksper 30s and the others all actor 20s.
2. old man Cuthbert Burbage's recollection of the events of 1598 37 years later (my book 328)
Edwards -my surmise is a logical conclusion
Davies critique : you have a point but not conclusive as I see the CE
Gesta Grayorum is further CE of Oxford acting in my opinion
"Personal view" is my personal conclusion having studied the CE, and applied to it as you suggest logical and reasonable inference. I expect you to disagree but to put my opinion down to some undefined bias is hardly serious argument
The third Parnassus play talks of Shakespeare the author not Shaksper the investor, and the undergrad writers were merely being cheeky to the noble author
Sogliardo is Jonson's newly rich by some fluke character who can't act , and who wants to climb socially by acquiring a coat of arms. Brother Sordido is a loathsome exploiter of the desperate conditions of the landless poor. No wonder Shaksper (for they are he to a tee) doubled back to the safety of Stratford -u-A in 1599-1600!
Now I want a reply to my demand for the test or tests of CE which make a distinction between subjective interpretation in regard to an argument I support and your 'reasonable' inference. Of course your test is something that you agree with and something You don't. That's mine to, but applied to CE: I don't expect to strike your case out; why do you expect to strike mine out?
"Now I want a reply to my demand for the test or tests of CE which make a distinction between subjective interpretation in regard to an argument I support and your 'reasonable' inference."
Occam's razor. Your subjective interpretations by definition are far more complex than attributing the works to Shakespeare, since they inevitably assume the existence of an elaborate conspiracy and numerous players.
A lot of the "coincidental evidence" has no discernable provenance. How did the people you use as witnesses know what they supposedly did? Much Oxfordian evidence is just picked out of entirely unrelated works by people who had no documented relationship to Oxford or the King's Men company. Primary historical evidence depends on evaluating the witness's relationship to the individual or event they purportedly witnessed.
>> "Are you now saying that there is no PFC evidence for Shaksper as an actor?"
I have no earthly idea what you're talking about. I identified primary source documents in a series of posts above, containing evidence which establishes that Mr. Shakespeare was an actor.
>> How is it irrational to conclude that Oxford wd need a pseudonym to act publicly (or to publish in print), or are the social conditions of the period a closed book to you?
It's irrational due to the fact that a pseudonym would have nothing whatsoever to do with hiding his physical appearance in a public stage.
>> I agree that the Murderous Michael/ Arden point is not as strong as the other pieces of CE, but it is both tenable and logical.
No, it simply is not, as the documentary evidence, some of which you did not know, established that it was not even a play.
>> Shaksper as investor - that's his only role as Hemings' and Condell's "friend and fellow"
You haven't produced a scintilla of evidence showing that Mr Shakespeare was merely an investor. Additionally, all of the usages of "fellow" in the records refer to a fellow player, as the link I provided to you demonstrates.
>> There are only two statements which wd appear lend credence to the idea that Shaksper was an actor:
1. Phillips' will: Hemings the actor/ shareholder gets 30s.worth, Shaksper 30s and the others all actor 20s.
2. old man Cuthbert Burbage's recollection of the events of 1598 37 years later (my book 328)
This is simply wrong, as the long list of evidence provided to you above indicates. For instance, how does being listed among a group of 'Players' fail to lend credence to the proposition that Mr Shakespeare was an actor?
>> Edwards -my surmise is a logical conclusion
No, it isn't logical at all. It's a results-driven, idiosyncratic interpretation of a text which employs no la guage to identify Oxford as its subject.
>> Davies critique : you have a point but not conclusive as I see the CE
"As you see it"... Thank you for admitting that it is merely your subjective, idiosyncratic opinions.
>> Gesta Grayorum is further CE of Oxford acting in my opinion
Thank you for admitting this again.
>> "Personal view" is my personal conclusion having studied the CE, and applied to it as you suggest logical and reasonable inference. I expect you to disagree but to put my opinion down to some undefined bias is hardly serious argument
Your personal view is not evidence. It's your spin of the evidence. Do you not understand this basic principle of historical analysis? Your personal view is nothing at all like fingerprints on the window sill.
>> The third Parnassus play talks of Shakespeare the author not Shaksper the investor, and the undergrad writers were merely being cheeky to the noble author
None of the Parnassus Plays talk of Mr Shakespeare as an investor, but only as an author. And your speculation as to the motive of the author does not qualify as evidence. You do understand that, right?
>> Sogliardo is Jonson's newly rich by some fluke character who can't act , and who wants to climb socially by acquiring a coat of arms. Brother Sordido is a loathsome exploiter of the desperate conditions of the landless poor. No wonder Shaksper (for they are he to a tee) doubled back to the safety of Stratford -u-A in 1599-1600!
More speculation that is not evidence. But thanks for including this, as it fits quite well with the situation described as occurring in the Poetomachia, in which Jonson insulted Shakespeare and Shakespeare retaliated, making Jonson beray his credit (crap himself - see *Shakespeare and the Poets'War* by James Bednarz). This is described in a 'Parnassus' play, and it has nothing at all to do with Oxford. In fact, it concerns that Mr Shakespeare who is the friend and fellow player of Burbage and Kemp. I am sure you may try to spin that to support your Lord but it's right there in the text.
>> Now I want a reply to my demand for the test or tests of CE which make a distinction between subjective interpretation in regard to an argument I support and your 'reasonable' inference.
Please explain how your interpretation regarding a poem is equivalent to fingerprints or DNA. It isn't. The presence of DNA on the body allows for a reasonable inference to be made. That's because DNA is itself evidence. The poem you are interpreting is not evidence as it does not have an objective meaning and, therefore, your subjective interpretation of it is not logically derived from it. Please identify specifically exactly what you find in the text of Edwards' L'Envoy which serves to uniquely identify Oxford as its subject. As fingerprints or DNA uniquely identify a subject.
>> Of course your test is something that you agree with and something You don't.
My test is based on the definition of circumstantial evidence. It has nothing to do with what I might agree with or not agree with.
>> That's mine to, but applied to CE: I don't expect to strike your case out; why do you expect to strike mine out?
There's the problem with your notion of CE in a nutshell. You identify it through your personal, subjective view. Thanks for admitting it.
Richard Malim: PB: There was no conspiracy in Oxford's lifetime. Everyone who mattered, knew, and social and other compulsions made it unnecessary to open one's mouth. The only conspiracy surrounds the production of the FF 1623, where the exigencies of politics, family relations and honour, as well as the desire to preserve the corpus of the works combined to ensure the publication
The following people inter alios mention Oxford Arthur Golding; Underdowne; Burghley;de Heere; Coryate; The Queen; John Brooke translator;G. Harvey; Lyly. Watson; Greene; Day; Soothern;Webbe; Munday;the author of Arte; Spenser; Baxter; Chapman; Percival Golding; Buck; Peacham; Markham; Crewe C.J.; Aubrey; Nashe; Buckhurst. Those are just the namers: others are identifiable by reference - probably even more.
MJ: Shaksper: just an investor : as an illiterate quite useless for anything else except labouring jobs. The mention of Shakespeare in playlists is a use of the pseudonym - just imagine poor Shaksper having to listen to EMOOHH with the crowd baying for the speculators' blood. Until resurrected the pseudonym in 1623 he was virtually totally forgotten after he left London in 1599/1600
Edwardes: Oxford identifiable by reference. "Adon" equals Shaksper ? Dearie me!
Remember that your interpretation of Poetomachia and Parnassus III is your personal interpretation of the circumstantial evidence. It is of no greater value in the first place than any of mine on the circumstantial evidence
So your assumption that Mr Shakespeare was simply an investor rests on your assumption that he was illiterate. That's your "evidence" for his alleged status as a mere investor...?
Thanks for demonstrating that you are incapable of showing any textual evidence to link Oxford to the Edwards poem. Argument by naked assertion doesn't cut it.
The difference as to our interpretations is that I don't consider or use them as evidence of any kind. The Poetomachia and the 'Parnassus' plays are not a part of my case, and, unlike you, I don't consider my interpretations to even qualify as circumstantial evidence.
You didn't answer my questions - again.
1. Please explain how your interpretation regarding a poem is equivalent to fingerprints or DNA.
2. Please identify specifically exactly what you find in the text of Edwards' L'Envoy which serves to uniquely identify Oxford as its subject. As fingerprints or DNA uniquely identify a subject.
3. None of the Parnassus Plays talk of Mr Shakespeare as an investor, but only as an author. And your speculation as to the motive of the author does not qualify as evidence. You do understand that, right?
4. For instance, how does being listed among a group of 'Players' fail to lend credence to the proposition that Mr Shakespeare was an actor?
Do you sincerely believe that your interpretation of Edwards' L'Envoy qualifies as circumstantial evidence tending to prove that Oxford wrote Shakespeare. A "yes" or "no" answer will suffice.
So your response to a request for provenance for your claims is to give a list of people who "mention" Oxford? How many of those people said he wrote plays (rather than "comedy and enterlude?" Anyone say he wrote more than one dramatic work? How did "the author of Arte" (Puttenham) learn his secret identity? Why did he publish poems attributed to Oxford if he knew Oxford wanted to keep his name quiet?
This illustrates the problem with the whole Shakespeare authorship denial movement. When you build on a false assumption, nothing you build can be reliable.
There isn't any contemporary evidence that Shakespeare was a pseudonym or allonym. Nobody made that claim. There were claims that he re-used plots, and plotting and writing plots at that time were frequently a separate creative process than the poetry that filled them out.
Nobody ever connected either the name William Shakespeare or the man with Oxford. There's no connection between Oxford and the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men company. Indeed, the evidence is that Oxford had his own playing company, and if he wrote any works (or had them ghost-written for him by Lyly and Munday--a far more likely scenario) they would have been performed by his own players, not the LC's.
Oxford was motivated by his own ego in everything in the historical record -- he had no regard for convention as he went about killing servants, impregnating ladies of the court, travelling without leave, smashing windows at Oxford, wasting his inheritance on costly imported clothes, not giving "groat" for the upkeep of his daughters from his first marriage. What possible reason would he have for hiding his light under a bushel? If he really wrote Venus and Adonis, one of the most popular poems of the decade, why would he be bound by convention (one that scholars say didn't even exist) not to have his name attached to it? His name was attached to published poems, and there's no evidence that he took the least notice of it, or that he suffered any social harm. It would never have occurred to a man as selfish and egotistical as Oxford, who took it as a matter of conviction from his earliest days that his social position near the apex of society was the result of his own merits rather than an accident of birth, to give credit to another man for his work.
If we can draw anything from Shakespeare's writing, it's that he was able to imagine his characters each with their own unique personality and motivations. There's no evidence Oxford ever took anyone else's perspective into account. The person he most resembles alive today is Donald Trump, a pompous egotistical ninny who got everything he has on a silver platter and is convinced he earned it.
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