Talk:Is Shakespeare Dead?

Date of first publication?
Mark Twain article says 1907; this article says 1909. Which is correct and can we have a citation? Softlavender (talk) 02:36, 16 March 2009 (UTC) Done - check here: [] - Scan up to the copyright page. Smatprt (talk) 05:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Weight issues
I think the section "Reputation" gives too much weight to Lystra's opinion that Twain was not a sincere anti-Stratfordian. (I also think she has markedly misinterpreted Twain's irony in his statement, but that's neither here nor there.) There is no doubt Twain disbelieved Shakespeare's authorship (see Shapiro 2010). I think her long block quote needs to be summarised and Shapiro quoted as a balance. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:15, 28 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yea, I know. I agree really. I came across the passage while looking up something totally different. I think her argument is rather confused. In fact parts of the paragraph do not even make sense to me. She even seems to retract what she's saying in a buried endnote in which she says it 'seems' he really was a Baconian. I added it because I thought it was interesting as an alternative POV. Given my sieve-like mind, I thought it best to add it while I remembered it. I kind of "parked" it here with the idea that I'd look up some other contrasting views and maybe edit it later. Paul B (talk) 21:11, 30 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Instead of using what Shapiro says about Twain, why not just read what Twain writes:

"In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other one—the Brontosaurian. The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s Works; the Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn’t really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly sure that Shakespeare didn’t, and strongly suspects that Bacon did.  We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out ahead of the Shakespearites.  Both parties handle the same materials, but the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites." Jdkag (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Book Binding and NY Times comment
The following comments, in the intro to the article, give undue weight to trivial issues. The NY Times corrected the "controversy" two days after raising the issue:

The original publication spans only 150 pages, and the formatting leaves roughly half of each page blank. The spine is thread bound. It was published in April 1909 by Harper & Brothers, twelve months before Mark Twain's death.

The book attracted controversy for incorporating a chapter from The Shakespeare Problem Restated by George Greenwood without permission or proper credit, an oversight Twain blamed on the accidental omission of a footnote by the printer. Jdkag (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)