 |
| Shakspere doodles waiting for the post. |
In order to expose the fallacy of a belief, one must expose the weak spots.
This was said to a group member whose theory he had repeatedly bluntly dismissed. It sometimes happens that Dennis is simply right about something and this was one of those times... sort of. Sort of I say because his words were so utterly bereft of self-awareness.
Over on my own Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Group Dennis is openly insulting and discharges a spew of vague misinformation like so much squid ink should his theories be questioned in the least. What he almost never does is present legitimate counterevidence.
Presented with outweighing evidence that contrary to his claim that passages in Henry VIII were taken from Thomas North's dairy the passages in question were taken instead directly from Thomas Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, I received the following (and more like it).
Notice Gilbert is straight stealing from my academic book on the subject?
He had presented his argument accompanied by comparison of North's dairy and the play in parallel columns. I countered by expanding those columns, comparing Cavendish instead with the play to show the exact, direct matches to Cavendish. Having no answer, he abruptly changed the subject, declaring this method was “stealing”. Elsewhere on the same topic:
Dennis had done a Cavendish to Henry VIII comparison in a book he has written on the North diary and claimed that my having made my own substantially different Cavendish to Henry VIII columns, in a separate matter, was plagiarism. Again, abruptly changing the subject.
It is a Dennis McCarthy signature move: unable to respond with facts he replies with vague misinformation in support of the worst kind of broad accusations he can think of. It's a social media comment, after all. Who's going to be able to fact check it? Or going to want to invest the time?
Dennis has claimed that his method, having “a greater degree of certainty than DNA analyses,” has found that Shakespeare wrote the book blurb for the play Arden of Faversham. I provide as sample from my argument:
It is common knowledge, however, that playwrights sold their manuscripts to playing companies. Upon payment, the companies had total rights over the manuscript. They recopied it and often edited it. We have a modest number of surviving manuscripts (a very few in the original author's hand) and none of them exhibits subtitles of any sort.1
Here Dennis went to another of his signature misinformation moves. He posted a picture of the title page of a hand-written book:
Ooops! He forgot to mention I specified playbooks. That didn't suffice for his needs, however, so he put more convenient words in my mouth and refuted them instead with a war whoop. The example he presented was a hand-written pamphlet of an essay on Rebels and Rebellion. Neither a play nor purchased by playhouse nor printer. At least he got the fact right that a liar was afoot.
Careful to take every opportunity to mention one of his products he included yet another glaring problem with his theory.
In order to make the play fit Thomas North he had had to declare it was written in 1550. But the play is in iambic pentameter. As far as history is concerned, the first English play ever in iambic pentameter, Gorboduc, was written and performed circa 1561. I pointed out that Dennis was claiming that Thomas North — a playwright (in Dennis's world) without a single acknowledged play to his name — in fact wrote the first English play in iambic pentameter. I asked for clarification and have yet to receive any.
“Liar,” “a lie and you know it,” “he knows he is lying,” “misleading your readers,” “plagiarist,” “strait stealing,” “tremendous breach of conduct,” “inability to fairly describe... is almost pathological,” “another obvious falsehood,” “a willful disregard for the truth,” “routinely posts things he knows are false, is unambiguously contradicted, and keeps posting the same lies. It's seriously disturbing.” On one occasion when even this spew was not enough, it seems, he ended with “Q.E.D.”.
These are perfectly representative of Dennis McCarthy's "replies" to having the manifold failures of his theory, as it stands, pointed out. And this is what he makes of his replies:
He literally states that such blatant insults — and such insults alone — “prove false” the observations to which they purport to respond in comment threads! To be clear, they are not scattered among precise, demonstrable facts of any kind (DNA claims notwithstanding). They are mixed, at best, with vague sweeping generalizations to the effect that he is irrefutably right... which is clearly proven by the fact that he is... um... irrefutably right. And, thus, for any honest, sane person, the matter should be at an end.
I've said /written it before. Dennis has pursued his plan to corner the niche market of Shakespeare Authorship as a marketing problem. From his George Michael designer stubble and broad smile perched atop a muscular build, his tales of professional Frisbee career tragically cut short by injury, to his ability to talk the talk about just about anything with absolute confidence, he displays charisma that would give Elizabeth Holmes a run for her money.
Dennis is always on the lookout for contacts whose credentials he can coöpt. He has given 82-year-old June Schlueter, a Professor Emerita of Dramatic Performance, the opportunity to add entries on her Curriculum Vitae, and to participate in major new areas of interest, at an age when most people would be wistfully trying to hold onto the old. Add to this that he also mentions that she gives her name to his efforts at any moment he feels the need to present his credentials. He has managed to convince a journalist with connections at the NYT and elsewhere that his story would make an interesting book. The result being major press coverage by non-experts who haven't the slightest expertise to fact check any authorship statement he makes.
But walking the walk, on the other hand, is proving to be far more difficult than expected. (It's only Tudor history, after all!) There are all kinds of things to know and everything has come so easy to him in life that he hasn't built up any other skills than to vogue.2 Failing that... to trash talk like the old Frisbee days.
It would appear Dennis is well on his way to achieving his goal of reducing it all to a marketing formula and staying in character. Or would it?
In order to expose the fallacy of a belief, one must expose the weak spots.
1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley Purdy. “Book Advertising in Tudor and Stuart Times: Title Pages.” Virtual Grub Street, May 4, 2024. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2024/05/book-advertising-in-tudor-and-stuart.html
2Ladies
with an attitude
Fellas that were in the mood
Don't just stand
there, let's get to it
Strike a pose, there's nothing to it. (Madona)
Presumably, he cannot sing or we would not have to deal with this.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Invention in a Noted Weed: the Poetry of William Shakespeare. September 21, 2024. “The coward conquest of a wretches knife,...”
The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 108. Edward de Vere to his son, Henry. “That may expresse my love, or thy deare merit?”
- Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment