I had also noticed the similarity in the two "good" Williams and since the documents were signed in different towns one can't argue that it was the same public official. If they were written by the same person as you suggest then that person would have to have been Shakespeare himself from which it would follow that he also wrote the "By Me" which does show (to my eyes) some fluency with the pen along with the William that comes after it. And there is the dot inside the loop of the W on 3 of the signatures.

Anyway, you make a perfectly good argument.

All six Shakspere signatures are from legal documents that were protected by law. What happened to the rest of the documents that would establish Shakspere's facility with a pen? His wife, older daughter and her physician husband lived on in the house where Shakspere died, yet not a single note, book, letter, receipt or manuscript survived that establishes Shakspere's ability to write more than scrawled signatures. How do you account for it?

I don't accept your premise so I don't have anything to account for.

But if that's what you want to believe I expect they disappeared down the same black hole as all those documents that mention Edward de Vere wrote the plays.


Morella.

Then read this: https://groups.google.com/group/humaniti...9b7d45a74727?hl

Then this: https://groups.google.com/group/humaniti...64998666ce21?hl

Matt,

Just a thought, but the issue of the signature's really isn't a strong argument. Whether the signatures were Shaksper's or not, they don't work well for Stratfordians, but neither do they constitute a significant argument for anti-Stratfordians.

Actually, that he may have been a lousy writer could play straight into our hands.

That is one of my interests, anyway.


Morella.

Who is 'our', Morella? What 'interests' are you talking about?

I’ve read through discussion at the links provided I and see nothing that credibly counters Detobel.

Stonecastle, as far as the signatures not being that significant an argument, I tend to conflate the sigs with the no books, no letters thing but the paper trail issue has been well covered elsewhere so I thought I'd just look at the sigs. But I take your point, by themselves the sigs don't necessarily say anything definitive except for the funny feeling I get when I look at them next to Ben Jonson's or de Vere's.

On a personal note, one reason I avoid mention of the paper trail question is that I have a rare medical condition called titlepagemeansnotapseudonymophobia which causes me to lose consciousness when I read certain arguments. Fortunately, a clever local optometrist made me a special pair of glasses so I can now safely read in any forum, even the ones on Amazon.

Actually, now you mention it, De Vere's is the signature that seems rather childlike to me. Look at that 'Edward' – or is it 'Edwayd'. Maybe it's because it's been blown up so much, but it looks like it's been drawn quite laboriously. And look at the difference in size between the 'r' (or 'y') and the 'd'. Not much consistency between the two ds, either.

Of course, I wouldn't conclude from this that Oxenford was necessarily illiterate. . .

All you Stratfordians are working for the Stratford Chamber of Commerce which, from its beginning, has seen to it that documentary evidence of Shakspere's difficulty with a pen disappeared. It is incredible that a famous literary figure would die and his heirs, living on in the same house where the literary figure died, saved not a single receipt, letter, note, book or manuscript from that person's life. Incredible!

I imagine with practice, one can glean a lot about someone's personality (to say nothing of their literacy) by looking at their signature. Interesting take on de Vere's signature. Personally, I like Marlowe's the best. You can tell this was a guy who knew how to party. Of course, perhaps a tad more caution would have done him good . . .

I like de Vere's letters written in that beautiful italic hand (I hope I have the terminology right). Try that with a quill pen!

The show so far.

R+G are common names. Ever-living could mean a lot of things. Signatures were written under a variety of less-than-ideal circumstances and parts show fluency with pen and poor handwriting does not make one illiterate in any case. Okay, got it.

On to Polonius. Hamlet royal ward, de Vere royal ward, Hamlet troubled relationship with guardian's daughter, de Vere troubled relationship with guardian's daughter, Hamlet's guardian a caricature of de Vere's guardian.

I foresee a few arguments: Polonius wasn't Burghley, Hamlet wasn't autobiographical, parallel with de Vere is coincidental, parallel isn't that close.

Here's one you haven't foreseen: Polonius wasn't Hamlet's guardian, and Hamlet wasn't the ward of Polonius.

Have you read or seen the play?

Fact: Edward de Vere was not the ward of William Cecil.

Okay, let's see if I can get it right.

Burghley was the Queen's closest adviser. De Vere's father died when he was a child. De Vere married Burghley's daughter but it was a troubled relationship.

In the play Hamlet's father has died, he is involved with the daughter of Polonius (also a troubled relationship), the monarch's close adviser.

Polonius/Corambis is an obvious caricature of Burghley.

A number of questions arise. Could Shakespeare have gotten away with the caricature? Did he know enough to pull it off? Why would he do it? Are the parallels too close for the comfort of Stratfordians?

None of that is terribly striking or remarkable. I've never really understood the Oxfordian obsession with cherry-picking some parts of some of the plays and pointing out the allegedly amazing resemblances to De Vere's life. The plays surely provide enough characters and situations to make a connection to almost anyone, if you try hard enough (and ignore the far more numerous plots, storylines and characters that don't match at all). Here, a convincing account is given by David Kathman of how Hamlet is really meant to be James I – or maybe the Earl of Essex:



Alleged parallels between the plays and Oxford's life



Not all that obvious. For one thing, Polonius is, more or less, a bumbling old fool, whereas Burghley was a brilliant statesman.



If it was a caricature, he certainly seems to have done. Or can you point me to any records of outrage and horror at this gross impertinence when the play was first staged?



Why wouldn't he have known enough? He lived in London and was at court as an actor in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and later the King's Men. Burghley was obviously well-known. Do you think gossiping about powerful people is something we've only started doing recently?



Why wouldn't he? He's writing a play about a King and his advisor and thought basing a few aspects of his character on a famous monarch's adviser would add a little realism and amuse a few people. Or, of course, the alleged parallels are coincidences and Polonius is not meant to be a caricature of Burghley at all.



No.

Here's one for you: The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night feature twins, and the man from Stratford was – astoundingly – the father of twins! Not only that, Oxford wasn't!

Are the parallels too close for the comfort of Oxfordians?

He was the ward of the queen, but he did grow up from the age of twelve in William Cecil's house, correct? Elizabeth elevated him (in part?)to make marriage to Anne Cecil more suitable. She was far below Edward's station until her father became Lord Burghley. Correct?

The signatures of the literate were elaborate.

Even if R&G were common names why were those particular ones be chosen among many other common names?

Where to begin? The argument you cite by Kathman is like his essay on The Tempest, woefully lacking in substance and, above all, homework. But let's merely take up the argument (I paraphrase) that parallels like those for Oxford could be found for Essex or for "anyone" of that period. Take a name and begin. Use Essex if you like, and give us a list of the parallels. You do have more right? Whatever you come up with I will give double for Oxford,in quantity and quality.

Where indeed? But do feel free to begin whenever you want to.



In what way is what he says 'woefully lacking in substance and homework'? What, in the short piece I quoted, does he get wrong?



You have James I and Essex to work with. Go ahead and give me double for Oxford, in quantity and quality. But bear in mind as you do so that the most you'll be able to convince me of is that some aspects of Oxford's life and character may perhaps be reflected in some aspects of the character and life of Hamlet as portrayed in the play.

And then. . . so what?

Read Mark Alexander's 25 Connections on this web site for connections Oxford had to the works. All the links are established using orthodox scholarship. The first few connections all have to do with Hamlet. Here's the link:

http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/25/25%20Connections%20Intro.html

"And then. . . so what?"

Dear Tom,

I have learned the hard way that there is no point in attempting to discuss something with someone who warns you up front that their bias is impregnable. So, while others may have gained from conversation, on principle, I withdraw.

Steve

Fair enough. A little summing-up before we end our conversation, however. . .

I am not 'biased', much less 'impregnably' so. I've become very familiar with Oxfordian arguments over the years and remain unconvinced by your case. The point of my earlier post on this thread was to show how the 'alleged parallels with someone's real life' line of argument can be taken in other ways and mostly consists of nothing particularly striking at all. And at the moment I cannot imagine how a more detailed list will lead me to think, 'wow, because Oxford's life may in some ways be similar to that of the character Hamlet, Oxford must have written this'.

However, it would be a shame to deprive the others who have been following this discussion of your arguments which in 'quality and quantity' prove David Kathman's points to be 'woefully lacking in substance and homework'. And you never know, if you made the effort, you might even come up with something new to me.

Tom,

No hard feelings, but it is (for me at least) necessary to maintain the illusion of open-mindedness on both sides. I’ve become a bit allergic. I take you at your word that you are not biased, though I admit I am. I force myself, as best I can, to honestly consider new arguments. While it sounds self-serving, I refer you to my book in which I provide roughly 90 parallels to Oxford. I figure there are a least another 100, and many of them are very precise, such as being captured by pirates and left “naked” on the shore. It is the number and preciseness of the parallels that is important. No doubt one can construct a list of parallels for other individuals. I doubt that the lists would be very long or strong in terms of preciseness. But, who knows? The parallels are circumstantial evidence. Not conclusive. We don’t have absolute proof of Oxford’s authorship.

I’ll consider dealing with Kathman’s essay at more length. I deal with several of his other essays in my book. For the moment, on that particular essay, starting at the top, for example, he says, “A more immediate source [for Hamlet] was Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.” First, evidence of Kyd’s authorship is highly questionable. Second, conventional dating for the Spanish Tragedy place its authorship between 1582 and 1592.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Tragedy

Chambers dates Hamlet to 1600-1. Harold Bloom dates Hamlet to 1588-9. Oxfordians offer different dates. Obviously, however, it could as well be that the Spanish Tragedy borrowed from Hamlet. I’m not saying it did. What I am saying is that when Kathman states as a fact that Kyd was the author of the Spanish Tragedy and that Hamlet borrowed from it, that is typical of the party-line misinformation that one finds at Kathman’s website. If we're going to try to be unbiased, we need to tell the truth.

Steve

Stonecastle, I think part of the reason for the fact that we are all pretty hard to shake from our opinion is that we tend to use our intuition to make at least half of the judgement. For example, I think one's take on "ever-living poet" ultimately depends on one's personal reaction to the tone and "feel" of the sonnets. So we can discuss the points and counterpoints back and forth and, as interesting as the process is with thoughtful people, ultimately everyone is going to make their final decision based on things like tone and feel that can't be argued definitively.

An interesting tidbit about intuition: The best chess player in the world isn't a computer. It's not a human being either. It's (see chess article ) a combination of good computers and good chess players with a great process for combining intuitive human abilities and brute force computation. The winning combination defeats more powerful computers and better players.

So who's right about Shakespeare? Well, it's whoever has the best way to combine facts and arguments with intuition. I think we can talk a lot about the facts and arguments part but less about the intuition part even though this is at least half of it.

Besides, Steve, are you sure you want to leave me here to talk about how Polonius was Hamlet's guardian? Without proper supervision, I'm liable to give Oxfordians a bad name.

Matt,

I note that you spelled “judgement” with an “e” that isn’t normally there. That’s how I usually spell it. We have something in common. In my book I take up the problem of cognitive bias. There is a small related chapter on intuition. We like to think of decision-making as a conscious act. Brain science tells us it is almost entirely subconscious. It is only with unusual conscious effort that we can occasionally make a truly conscious decision. I have attempted to be conscious in the writing of my book.

Regarding the Sonnets, I think any “feeling” person would agree that there is a great deal of emotion lurking there and it is certainly legitimate to attempt to understand them (and their author) from that perspective. But I doubt that that is a key to understanding the memorial phrase in the dedication. Pistol has presented us with an example of an application of that phrase to a living person. It is, so far as I know, the only known example. Unless Kathman has updated his essay, he doesn’t mention that example. He wasn’t able to find any comparable example. The memorial nature of that phrase is reemphasized in the John Benson edition of 1640. Given the preponderance of contemporaneous examples I think it is still a strong argument to point out that, aside from one example, all known contemporaneous examples of that phrase are memorial. This means that a reader at the time would be counted on to view the dedication as if speaking about a person no longer living. The only way to get around that is with special pleading. And I think that is about as far as the argument can be taken.

No Matt, we won’t leave you alone. But it occurs to me that seeking seven simple answers or a short list of strong arguments does not really have much value, unless you plan to be sparring with newcomers. There is no shortcut to understanding these questions. But know this, everyone who has spoken or written on this subject has said something embarrassing. We are all human.

Steve

Matt,

An afterthought on the risk of embarrassing oneself. The following quote is from an article, "Shakespeare as Shakespeare", by Gwynne Evans and Harry Levin, in the Harvard Magazine of February 1975. It presumes to deconstruct Ogburn, but serves quickly and at length to deconstruct, quite embarrassingly, the credibility of Evans and Levin. We need only this example:

“It is true that the Earl [Edward de Vere] had a stepfather, Leicester;”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shakespeare/debates/harvardmag.html

Well, that does happen a lot actually. I'm always chatting with someone or other who is shocked to hear that the authorship question is a serious issue. They invariably know nothing about it except maybe for some hidden coded messages theories. So I want to be able to give both sides in a nutshell.

I have read at least some of both Kathman and Matus but sometimes I get the feeling they avoid confronting the strongest arguments hence my question to the "local" Stratfordians. And, to be fair, sometimes I just haven't read my Kathman and Matus carefully enough.