Talk:Declaration of Reasonable Doubt

Justification?
Is there any justification for this page. It copies most of its prose from the original Shakespeare Authorship page, and is basically a list, a very poor one at that. If one were serious about making such a list, one would fill it up with a huge number of names from 1848 onwards, like Mrs Henry Pott and Greenwood, and so on. The names are basically from cinema, two writers from the 19th century, and celebrities from the past two decades, which confirms one's impression this is just another promo page, parasitizing wikispace to bigname the deVerean fringe. There is nothing new here. It is all reduplication. Nishidani (talk) 09:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the nudge. I had meant to get back to this. Still needs expanding, but it's much better already. Smatprt (talk) 02:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Lists of 20th and 21st C seem to be all Marlowe with a slice of Bacon. Softlavender (talk) 01:32, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

IMO, this article is a bit of mishmash at the moment; it's somewhere between an article and a list, and isn't doing all that well at being either. It could be significantly improved by figuring out which it is and sticking to that. It's most akin to a list, IMO, so I've assessed it as such; and I think it would be best as a list. If the editors on the page would prefer an article, I think a good exercise would be to rewrite it in such a way that there are no bullet-points anywhere in it (and that includes just turning the bullets into periods in a list disguised as prose). But overall I suspect this is a result of advocacy and recentism and would suggest the editors of the page take a good long think on whether this article is appropriate for the project at all. I don't particularly care to argue the point—so disagreeing with me on this is “free” ;D—and the original authors of the article are probably best placed to make that assessment.

PS. Feel free to hit me up for a re-assessment of the page for the project banner if you like (I usually prefer to have someone else assess articles I've worked on), but there's no particular reason you can't do that yourself; the criteria for the WP 1.0 assessments are on the project assessment page and this isn't a GA/FA-type thing where assessment has to be done by an uninvolved editor. --Xover (talk) 13:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Quotes & Signatories
The quotes from the persons named are not being sourced to the Declaration but to other sources. No quotes from any of these chaps appears on the Declaration. The website for the Declaration does feature potted bios of them with quotes, but the quotes are not the same as the quotes here.

I have no problem with the article showing a list of "that great...cloud of witnessess" (Heb 1:12) but I can find no justification for these separately sourced quotes which belong in the witnesses articles.

However, I would find it perfectly reasonable to have a list of notable signatories in the eyes of the Declaration - which the Declaration site itself very helpfully identifies for us .--Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:12, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The quotes are anachronistic - they were not made with the intention of contributing to this campaign. Suggest running a counter article pointing out the irony that these people have marked the anniversary of Shakespeare's death not their Edward de Vere who unfortunately for their case died before Shakespeare's Macbeth and Cleopatra, etc... had had a chance to. Please take up the debate with Harold Bloom, the global authority on this writer. Better yet study the plays rather than conspiracy theories. Happily the plays change not for all this nonsense. Yes, a rose by any other name... DMC (talk) 14:25, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Opinionated original research
The introduction for this article baldly ascribes a single motive to all signatories: "...these judges have dismissed the evidence for Shakespeare in favour of preference for someone more aristocratic (as the following quotes illustrate)". I am an academic signatory (under my real name: Loren Cobb), and I categorically deny that this was my motive for signing. Further, I resent the implication that all signatories were acting only out of some imagined snobbism in favor of aristocrats. With the sole exception of Charlie Chaplin, the quotes given in the next section of the article do not support the idea that aristocracy had anything to do with the signatories' doubts about the authorship attribution, as opposed to reasons based on, say, education, travel knowledge, life events, writing ability, final will and testament, obituaries, etc. To my eyes, the quoted sentence from the article is nothing more than an unsupported partisan opinion, and therefore counts in Wikipedia as a violation of WP:OR. It is an unjustified slur which has no place in the pages of Wikipedia. I have not deleted the sentence only because, as a signatory myself, I am directly involved in the matter. — Aetheling (talk) 20:03, 15 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Almost full support of this view by Aetheling. Only minor objection: I personally believe that one can trace the aristocratic origin of the author in Shakespeare´s plays and especially in his Sonnets. If somebody does not believe it, then please read all of the canon more carefully. And this is no "offence" to anybody without aristocratic background at that time and nowadays. --Zbrnajsem (talk) 11:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * 70 candidates for the authorship and only one, Will Shakespeare, cannot be ruled out. Good luck with the conspiracy theories, Ms. Cobb. Perhaps there are aliens among us, too?DMC (talk) 15:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * > To my eyes, the quoted sentence from the article is nothing more than an unsupported partisan opinion, and therefore counts in Wikipedia as a violation of WP:OR.
 * You are correct. I have removed the sentence. In the future, remember that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, regardless of any other conditions, as long as the edits follow WP policies and guidelines. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Haha, it took you a while to spot that. Indeed Shakespeare's clumsy employment of classical themes does not at all suggest an aristocratic writer, and he wasn't one; rather a commoner whose genius lay elsewhere: in the creation of natural human personalities in his drama. Computer analysis of style has proven that the Shakespeare writer is one man, and is not Oxford, Bacon or Marlowe (though any human reading should also suffice). Read the authorship page and despair on the pathetic material that has been arrayed against Will Shakespeare of Stratford.DMC (talk) 15:13, 17 July 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be better if you were not so sure as far as "your" theory is concerned, DMC. In social sciences and especially in history, scepticism is a virtue. --Zbrnajsem (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed scepticism is a virtue in matters of faith, in matters of evidence I would refer again to the stylistic analysis that refutes alternate and conspiratorial theories. Please keep up to date with current scholarship on the matter, including James S. Shapiro's work; he is a prodigious scholar and his reading is hard to dismiss. In the meantime I have added a source for the view of the judges, Scalia et al. Regards, DMC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.35.123 (talk) 13:47, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

NOTE: the biassed text complained of was added only a few weeks before the complaint. Paul B (talk) 20:05, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Galsworthy quotation
It is cited to Schoenbaum, but he got it from a 1974 revised edition of Looney's book published by Ruth Lloyd Miller. No where does he express doubt about the authorship; he only says it's a good detective story. I've searched Galsworthy's writings and have yet to find any evidence that he was a doubter. Anybody have more info on this? Tom Reedy (talk) 20:16, 27 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The earliest sources I can find are from the 30s. The Saturday Review of Literature in 1937 says "The book fell into the hands of the late John Galsworthy who read it with avidity and declared it to be "the best detective story" of the times." It's also in Churchill's 1958 book Shakespeare and his Betters, in the context of a general discussion of the similarities between anti-Strat books and detective stories: "Roderick Eagle, a Baconian, refers to this fascinating study as exciting as anything in a detective story; Slater, a Group Theorist, thought the exploration of the Shakespeare Mystery is one of the most fascinating of detective stories. Galsworthy declared Looney's Shakespeare Identified to be 'the best detective story' he had ever read." The phrase "best detective story he had ever read" is not in the first person, but 'best detective story' is in quotes. Paul B (talk) 08:23, 28 May 2015 (UTC)


 * It appears in his novel The White Monkey, in which Soames Forsyte ponders the issue without making any definite judgement. Paul B (talk) 14:26, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't find the quotation in the book. Am I looking in the wrong place? Tom Reedy (talk) 15:32, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, the "best detective story" quotation is not in White Monkey. I didn't express myself well. It's just that Soames' musings on Oxgfordianiam appear in the novel. Paul B (talk) 15:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * So really all we've got is a posthumous anecdote from an American writer about a British author. Seems that wouldn't meet the criteria for reliable evidence going by anti-Stratfordian standards for Shakespeare, but I suppose for them it's OK. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:15, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I found the ultimate source and added it. It was countered by an article by Elmer Stoll in the next issue, and Barrell tried to get a letters column debate going, but it fell flat. The article is the usual Oxfordian blabber, nothing unique about it and not worth making a copy. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:11, 24 July 2015 (UTC)