Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/Archive 22

Summary of Anti-Stratfordian Arguments
The SAC page has been rewritten over the past year to make the anti-Stratfordian position appear to be unfounded. Most of the rational arguments supporting the anti-Stratfordian position have been removed. I open this discussion section as a place for summarizing rational arguments supporting the anti-Stratfordian stance. Please do not fill this section with comments rebutting these arguments. Authors who control the SAC page may over time condone the inclusion of some arguments appearing here within the main article.

The fact that Shakespeare did not come from a background of nobility is not the key argument for anti-Stratfordians. Other writers in Shakespeare's age did rise from simple background to gain access to the nobility.

A key, rational argument for the anti-Stratfordian position is that Shakespeare left no "literary trail." In contrast to every other known personality of his age, there is no evidence that he wrote any personal letters. At least no letters have survived, nor any references to any letters. In addition, nobody left any record, such as a reference in a letter, or in a diary entry, that he actually met the man from Stratford face to face on a given date to so much as congratulate him or to comment on his work. People of the time wrote about seeing his plays, and there are some references to him acting, but no one wrote of actually talking with the author of the plays. And most incriminating is the fact that no manuscripts in his own hand have survived. Clearly, whether Stratford was the author or not, there was a conspiracy to eliminate all trace of his hand having been involved in the writing of Shakespeare's works. — Jdkag (talk • contribs) 12:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

There are records of people meeting Shakespeare, but even if there were not, the absence of such records is hardly remarkable and no conspiracy is required at all. You cannot expect editors not to dispute your claims, but it is of course appropriate to include the main anti-Stratfordian arguments. You should be trying to convince us that this is a significant argument in the literature, not that it is reasonable, or good evidence. Whether we consider the argument to be rational or not is essentially beside the point. The relevant section is Shakespeare_authorship_question. Paul B (talk) 12:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * More argument from silence? If you don't want rebuttals, then you want what you say to stand unchallenged. If it is so clear that a conspiracy was at work to "eliminate all trace of his hand having been involved", then there must have been a conspiracy for the other 90 per cent of playwrights of the era, including John Webster, et al, who are named in the article. The arguments given in the article are indeed those most often leveled against Shakespeare's authorship. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:46, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Seconded, or thirded, or whatever we're up to. If you feel that important Anti-Stratfordian arguments are missing from the article, please feel free to share them along with whatever reliable sources you plan on including in the article as references.  We'd love to improve the article.  If you want to discuss the SAQ, rather than the article, you're not going to convince anyone, especially with such specious arguments as 'no evidence has survived in 400 years, therefore no evidence ever existed.'  Besides which, there's no evidence of Shakespeare as a writer if and only if you discount the existence of the plays as evidence.Kaiguy (talk) 15:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Books by Diana Price and by Robin Williams (the citation of which has been removed injudiciously from the list of references) give many anti-Stratfordian arguments that have not been included in the article. As it is, the article reads as a Defense of the Stratfordian Position, rather than being a presentation of the Shakespeare Authorship Question. Nevertheless, if there is a record of someone meeting Shakespeare, this should be included in the article. Currently, the closest the article gets to making such a claim is the comment that "contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor," and the only source for this claim is a 1965 out-of-print article by Milward Martin.Jdkag (talk) 20:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Jdkag, perhaps you should join this discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare_authorship_question Tom Reedy (talk) 20:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Jdkag, perhaps you misunderstood. Is there a specific argument (from those books if you want) that you feel is not represented in the article that should be?  Please put it on this discussion page, and we'll happily discuss how to incorporate the information.  If, however, you just want to complain about bias without trying to help improve the article, you're just going to contribute to the stereotype (however unfair or inaccurate that stereotype is) that Anti-Stratfordians aren't interested in joining the scholarly debate, but just in screaming bias.Kaiguy (talk) 00:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


 * On the face of it, I agree that the article does read as a defence of the Stratfordian position, and I suspect its chief contributors may be comfortable with that assessment.
 * Could we please explore the citation for "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor"? A LibraryThing card for Martin's Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence is here, but I do not have access to a copy and it is a pity that no page numbers are given in the citation. Does anyone here have a copy of this work to hand? If so, may we please have some details of the particulars the statement appears to be summarizing? Moonraker2 (talk) 00:43, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? Page numbers are clearly given for every cite except for web site cites. I'd be happy to furnish the information and place it in the article, but anti-Stratforidans complain of all the negative quotations. In any case, the sentence is a summary of the evidence that follows. As far as it reading as a defence of the "Stratfordian position", reality has a Stratfordian bias. It is not anybody's fault that all the real, tangible evidence supports Shakespeare of Stratford as the author. Blame Burghley for doing such a good job. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:02, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The page number given in the citation is 131, which is the first page of chapter xv, entitled "it was Shakespeare of Stratford who was the author". Paul B (talk) 13:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The article reads as a summary of the available research by Shakespearean specialists on what the fringe literature has argued over 160 years. Its only fundamental criterion for citability was that of a strict reading of WP:RS, and that made much of the drafting particularly arduous, since the few RS surveys of the subject ignore salient material anyone who acquaints himsedlf with the fringe literature is familiar with. I'm sure quite a number of books are in the pipe on this relatively poorly examined history in the literature of minor ideas or fringe beliefs, which is a legitimate and often fascinating area to study in any discipline (the ideas that never made it into mainstream academic discourse). I am always astonished by the failure of true believers, who are intelligent enough to earn degrees as lawyers or doctors, to take out a Phd in Elizabethan literature, and write an impeccable historical account of what went wrong, according to the Baconian and deVerean schools, with mainstream interpretation. It would make a wonderful book, and if it found a quality university imprint, would substantially shift this article towards a more complete history of the subject. Nishidani (talk) 04:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm supposing you don't have it, Nishidani? I have gathered from somewhere that Was Shakespeare Shakespeare? A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence has an introduction by Louis Marder. Moonraker2 (talk) 04:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes it does. Is this important? Paul B (talk) 14:56, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * For a lawyer who was approaching the matter judicially, I just thought it was surprising for Martin to choose someone with such a committed Stratfordian view, but perhaps it isn't important.
 * I'm still puzzled by "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor..." which is cited to Martin. Would anybody who has this book mind saying here which contemporaries are being referred to? As a lawyer, Martin could hardly say such a thing without naming them somewhere. Moonraker2 (talk) 08:12, 2 February 2011 (U
 * I'll dig the book out and post it later today, but I'm puzzled why you're puzzled. The first half of the sentence is obviously a summary of the examples following, and as such needs no specific cite. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not being able to get to this yesterday. Here's the source for the statement "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor, and explicit contemporary documentary evidence attests that the actor was the Stratford citizen", which is cited to p. 135 of Martin:

The page then goes on to the will bequests and begins the First Folio's "Sweet swan of Avon" allusion, continued on the next page.

While we're on this topic, let me say that the reason for the extended quotations in the article is because of challenges to the text. While Wikipedia doesn't require that all cites be quoted nor even that the sources be readily available, we got tired of the anti-Stratfordian habit of assuming that if they don't know or have access to a source, then it doesn't exist or we were lying about it (similar to their arguments based on silence, i.e. there is no record of Shakespeare attending school so he didn't), so we larded the article up with quotations to preempt the objections. Ironically, that is now being portrayed as a strategy to denigrate the anti-Strat arguments in an overly biased fashion (again, similar to the non-falsifiable arguments they make about conspiracies, etc.). Tom Reedy (talk) 17:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Your first sentence seems to me to be a non sequitur. Noone said he was approaching the matter "judicially", whatever that means, but even if he were, that would not preclude his use of an accredited expert to endorse the book with a preface. I'm sure he does name them, though being a lawyer is irrelevant, any scholar would. However, I only have access to the google preview. Paul B (talk) 09:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * From the sub-title, "A Lawyer Reviews the Evidence" I thought he was approaching the matter judicially, which means in the way a court deals with evidence; perhaps he wasn't, I don't think it matters. Is this the google title you can read? Unluckily, it gives me "No preview available". Moonraker2 (talk) 11:06, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That means he's a lawyer who is reviewing the evidence, not that he is applying legal rules, which is what "the way a court deals with evidence" would mean, I suppose. Legal rules apply to admissibility of evidence to protect defendents, for example. They have no relevance to historical evidence. That would like ruling out a manuscript because it was discovered during an illegal search! Such technicalities of law do not apply to history because it not a matter of interpreting the wording of legislation. There seems to be a view that lawyers are somehow masters of logic, and that legal methods are superior to other ways of determining the truth. Lawyers do not have training in logic. They are trained be advocates, which often involves breathtaking defiance of logic and probability to make a case. They look at case-law, precedents, the precise wording of legislation to get round evidence etc. None of these skills have much direct relevance to history as such. Paul B (talk) 13:11, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is the link I used . Paul B (talk) 11:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * From that link, all I get is the snippet view (better than just the front cover, I agree, but not much better). --GuillaumeTell 15:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC) (just finishing reading Shapiro)
 * That's all I get too. Sorry! Paul B (talk) 16:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Jdkag, the article does state that "No letters or signed manuscripts written by Shakespeare survive" so your argument is in there. If there are other valid arguments that the article does not include, let's hear them.  It is certainly the case that based on the information provided in this article, the case against Shakespeare and pro, say, Oxford, is very weak. I am trying to maintain an open mind as to whether this is because (a) the case really is very weak, or (b) this article is biased! Poujeaux (talk) 16:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Obviously the case for Oxford, specifically, should be detailed in the Oxfordian theory article. It's entirely based on the idea that there are direct parallels between his life and the plots of the plays (of course there are also supposed secret ciphers pointing to Oxford, but so there are for other candidates too). Essentially it depends on the assumption that Will couldn't have done it. One of the issues is whether we should concentrate here on the anti-Strat arguments rather than the pro-candidate ones. But there is also the question of how many of the arguments to include. Most reliable sources do not even discuss many of them - for example the many hidden messages in poems; the coded signs in Droeshout portrait. No actual art history literature that I know even mentions the theories about the Stratford monument. They are here because literature scholars have discussed them. Paul B (talk) 19:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much to Tom for providing the longish extract from p. 135 of Martin's Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?. That supports the claim in the article "explicit contemporary documentary evidence attests that the actor was the Stratford citizen", meaning the Ralph Brooke document, which is dealt with much better and indeed reproduced elsewhere on the page, so I don't quite see why the obscure Mr Martin needs to be relied on here. It clearly doesn't support the passage I was challenging, viz. "Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as the actor..." Who added that, and isn't it now clear that something is wrong here? Moonraker2 (talk) 06:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Taylor "2002" cite
The cite to “Taylor 2002”—which is actually to a 2002 transcription on Project Gutenberg of a 1967 facsimile edition of a 1869 reprint of the 1630 folio (which, I gather, is actually the second folio; the first having been issued in 1620)—fails my “WP:NOR-test”: this is primary source material we're citing. It's attached to the sentence “John Taylor was the first poet to mention in print the deaths of Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont in his 1620 poem The Praise of Hemp-seed.” We need to find a modern WP:RS to support this, unless Matus 1994 (which is cited at the end of the para) covers that point. Note that we don't need a cite to support the mere existence of The Praise of Hemp-seed (or its authorship), but we do need one to support the claim that he “…was the first poet to mention in print the deaths of Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont…”; and it would probably also be wise to have cite for its date of publication. We also need a direct cite for the (block)quote from Jonson's elegy (all quotes must be cited directly). I'm going to remove this cite—and replace it with a cn tag—in my runthrough of the references. --Xover (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * We're citing a bunch of pre-20th-century sources (Ogburn & Ogburn, Bacon x 2, etc.) in the article in a way that's awkward. These are, as noted above, in effect primary source documents and should not generally be relied upon for most things. However I've an inkling that they are there now mostly to note the mere existence of the work (i.e. its publication), and are remnants of direct weblinks that were in the original article (i.e. before the rewrite). If that is the case they should be either removed entirely, or merely moved to the External links section; and the sentences they are attached to should be supported instead by a modern reliable source. This even goes for direct quotations, as it's preferable to have a modern scholar's peer-reviewed opinion on the correctness and relevance of the quote rather than extracting the quote and making that determination ourselves. It is allowed by WP:RS (there is some latitude there), but it would be better if we did not have to rely on it. I plan to take a sweep through the article with an eye towards addressing this as soon as I have the time. --Xover (talk) 10:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, those were originally external links in the article that were turned into refs. They don't support anything, and they don't have page numbers, but they're merely there for the convenience of the readers in case they want to read the work referred to. If they are moved to the external links section, should they be listed under an appropriate tile? "Primary sources" or some other such appellation?
 * On your comment above about Jonson: do you mean it should be cited to the FF or a modern version or what? IIRC the title blue link goes to the poem on Wikimedia. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've addressed most of the cites to pre-1900 sources by re-citing to a modern(er) work and moving the original cite down to a Primary sources section in the External links. I've mostly just stashed them there for now, because as mentioned elsewhere we need to take a good long look at the whole External links section at some point. There are still a few that need to be checked, that are post-1900, but which are still primary sources (i.e. Ogburn & Ogburn, Looney, etc.). The quote from Jonson should be cited to some reliable secondary source that gives the poem (a critical edition of the folio might do; a pure facsimile edition probably wouldn't) and makes the connection that the surrounding sentence does (i.e. that “… he identifies Shakespeare as a playwright, a poet, and an actor…”). --Xover (talk) 08:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

"Anti-Stratfordian thesis and argument"
That Tom Reedy character is finally supposed to be out of here for a few days, see arbitration workshop. Time for a little copyedit! [/me rubs hands together in evil anticipation]. First: isn't there something faintly uncomfortable about the section "Anti-Stratfordian thesis and argument"? The facts and arguments are fine; but the flow? Doesn't it trip you up? For instance, isn't "Anti-Stratfordian arguments share several characteristics" a typical topic sentence, crying out to be the first in the section? Maybe it's just me. Anyway, just for demonstration purposes, I've boldly switched the order of the paragraphs. Please take a look, then revert. :-) Bishonen | talk 22:27, 6 February 2011 (UTC).
 * I don't recall you asking my permission to edit this page. Nevertheless, since it's a minor edit I'll let it stand so you won't complain later I reverted every one of your edits. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Arrgghh, it was a trap! Tom said (amidst a stream of insults) that he was going away for a few days, and here he is, wikilawyering, WP:OWNing, personally attacking and biassing away all over the place. Of course his plan is to get me banned. Bishonen | talk 06:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC).
 * Tom has absolutely no right to give or deny permission to anyone to edit this page before conducting prior consultations with me, the other owner, as has been established by a huge volume of repeated statements at Arbcom. I'll be quite glad to make a further submission to Arbcom on this matter, preferably before I'm perma-waved off or away on this one as well. Nishidani (talk) 06:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Please direct me to the policy that says it's wrong to post an adequate volume of statements in arbitrations. Bishonen | talk 08:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC).


 * Hey guys. While I appreciate the humor—and both have and do engage in it myself—both irony and sarcasm in textual form can so easily be misinterpreted as ridicule. And particularly while there is an ongoing conflict it is not a mode of communication that is conductive to de-escalation and harmonious discourse (recall that the goal is not to win but rather to achieve consensus). If you'll forgive the presumption, I would recommend avoiding it entirely, or at the very least not let it grow out of hand. This talk page tends to grow quite long enough even if we all stick ruthlessly to the point. Now, if, on the other hand, you'd like to take a few jabs at my overly nitpicky and tedious shuffling of angelic instances on the blunted end of sowing implements my user talk page is that way --> --Xover (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's no excuse, but months of hunkering sown in my parent's basement with no outside contact while being under barrage has taken its toll. When something that is supposed to be fun (editing Wikipedia, for those of us who have forgotten) becomes a tedious, day-in-and-day-out war between two houses, one sometimes makes one's own humour that sometimes approaches the brink of violating WP:NPA. My apologies and I'll do my best to refrain, no matter how wide the target presented. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 'months of hunkering sown in my parent's basement'. Whatcha smoken, Tom? I know varieties of 'ganja' have all sorts of regional names, but it's the first time I've heard that one. I'll check The Sot-Weed Factor just to see if I've missed anything.(Apologies to Xover) Nishidani (talk) 15:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yet another personal attack--this one involving accusations of trafficking in narcotics--while admins just stand by and let you take over the place! I generally try to avoid correcting typos on a talk page, preferring instead to rely on the good sense of the readers who can readily look at their keyboards to determine the identity of the intentioned key, although the events of the past few weeks have shaken my confidence in the overall distribution of that commodity. I also try to not disturb sections unnecessarily in order to not delay the archiving bot. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Contested Will
I can't quite make out the point of this paragraph:
 * In 2010 James Shapiro surveyed the authorship question in Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, marking the first time a recognized Shakespeare scholar devoted a book to the topic. He approaches the subject from a sociological standpoint and finds its origins firmly rooted in traditional scholarship going back to Edmund Malone, and he criticises academe for ignoring the topic and effectively surrendering the field to anti-Stratfordians.

While NPOV is good, I find the para puzzling. Does "firmly rooted in traditional scholarship" assert that questioning (as in doubting) Shakespeare's authorship is good scholarship? Could the use of "sociological" be explained with a couple more words? Side issue: While Edmond Malone allows "Edmund", should we use the same spelling as in the article? Johnuniq (talk) 07:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think the last sentence makes sense. And is it really the first time that a "recognized Shakespeare scholar" has devoted a book to the topic? Paul B (talk) 07:56, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * He is the first of his stature to have done so, even though Schoenbaum, Bate, and Wells have devoted sections of their books to it, so perhaps it should be changed to "well-recognised" or something similar. As to the question about the SAQ roots, he demonstrates how unscholarly speculations based on the works led to the same being done by anti-Stratfordians, and says that might be one reason why Shakespeare scholars are reluctant to engage with them. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That last sentence was added very recently by Tom in his effort to avoid one-sentence paragraphs! Poujeaux (talk) 16:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * IIRC I just split a long sentence. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ignore everything in Edmond Malone except what's under the Biography heading. Everything else is cut&paste from various public domain encyclopedias, entirely uncited, and then futzed with by multiple editors over many years (that's not to diminish their contribution, of course, it's just that that sort of process does not lend itself to a coherent overall article). In particular the lede does not even attempt to summarize the body of the article right now. I've removed the note about the variant spelling of his first name: it's actually a lot more relevant that his sisters called him “Ned” or “Neddy” than that his name has some times appeared in print as “Edmund”. --Xover (talk) 08:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The candidate sections
Hi all,

It's great to see some polish being applied to the various individual candidate sections. But keep in mind that an ideal Main article section should be very very close to the lede of the standalone article on that canidate's theory; and since the lede should summarize the content of the article, this means we should ideally not write these as standalone sections but rather flesh out the individual articles, fix their lede, and then adapt them to this article. This is of course not practical without doing the work of bringing them all up to FA-quality first (perish the thought!), but it's worth keeping in mind when working on them: think about all the points that should be covered in a complete article on that particular theory, and then try to write the section such that it approximates what the lede for that hypothetical article would look like. --Xover (talk) 10:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "... an ideal Main article section should be very very close to the lede of the standalone article on that candidate's theory if that article were up to Wikipedia standards."
 * FTFY. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Right. As I said, writing those up to FA-quality first is not a practical option. My point is simply to keep this ideal in mind when (re)writing the relevant sections in this article; or put another way, it's a suggestion of the kind of structure and level of detail that would be appropriate. --Xover (talk) 18:03, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have pasted in early and current versions of the Oxford section and the Marlowe section for editing purposes here in order to minimise conflict with the apparatus edits. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Use of italics
Italics are used for titles of books and plays. They are not used for poems or short stories. Those poems whose titles are italicised need to be changed back to regular quotation marks. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks for info. My enthusiasm for changing quotes to italics was started by this text in the section I was editing:
 * in his 1620 poem The Praise of Hemp-seed
 * That was in italics, so I "fixed" the other mentions of poems/elegies. I have restored all italics back to quotes, including the above. I mention that in case there is some factor making the above an exception. I also searched the article and confirmed there are no other italic titles that are close to "poem" or "elegy". Johnuniq (talk) 03:34, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I suppose we need to be a bit more specific about In Praise of Hemp-seed, which is the name of a book which contains a long poem of the same name. The name of the long poem that Shakespeare and Beaumont's death are alluded to is "The Originall of Paper", published in the same book. Most writers (or all that I have read, anyway) just name the book instead of the title of the poem. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:07, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Tom, it's not exactly the case that italics "are not used for poems". Book-length poems should be italicized, as with Venus and Adonis. Quotation marks are to be used for "short poems". I bring this up not to nitpick but to remind us to check to that the poems with titles in quotes were not published as books in themselves. I suspect that most if not all of the italics-to-quotes changes by Johnuniq are fine and correct, but one or two that are not might slip by us if we don't keep this distinction in mind. As everywhere, there are no doubt borderline cases (a poem published as a short pamphlet, perhaps), but these can be brought up and discussed if necessary. (Tom, I did not see your last edit as I was formulating the above. I just noticed it. So The Praise of Hemp-seed should be italics, and if the poem quoted from in that book is named, then that should be in quotes. Are we sure that all other poems we cite or quote from are "short" and not books in themselves?) --Alan W (talk) 04:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I see you have restored the italics to The Praise of Hemp-seed, Tom, and clarified that it is a book. So this is fine. If we are sure the other quoted poems are not book-length, then all is well. --Alan W (talk) 04:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

James and Rubinstein reliable?
I question whether Brenda James and William Rubinstein's The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare (2005) is a reliable source for the statements it refs, since it is a promotional work. I don't think it meets the independent and parity definitions as set out in WP:FRINGE. In one use ("as the tradition of amateur autodidactical writing was marginalized by professional university-based knowledge") I don't know that the point needs to be made as it is contentious and not supported by any other academic source, and in the other it's not needed since multiple sources support the statement. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:23, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree, but I see that Diana Price, who has absolutely no qualifications as a scholar, is cited 6 times, and James and Rubenstein, before my edit, once (footnote 207). I wouldn't call either work 'promotional', as opposed to lousy (both are exceedingly misinformed about the state of Shakespearean scholarship), since both endeavoured to make a new argument rather than promote the old stuff, and come under a notable imprint. Unlike Price's book, this one was co-authored by an academic, Rubenstein, even if he's a rank outsider to the period. I know we have set ourselves a punitively high standard for strict sourcing because unless you do raise the bar, articles like this become unwritable and unreadable given the huge volume of trash even by known authors, on this question. But incongruencies in the application of those rules still persist in the text (Price being the main one).
 * The alternative would be to eliminate my edit together with the J&R reference in note 207, and then find substitutes for Price.
 * I'm sorry if I'm making this hard, Tom, but if we have any credibility here, it lies in ironing out things like this for reasons of consistency in policy, whatever the sweat.
 * I still think the point made is an informed one, that the rise of professionalized research dealt a death blow to much of this amateurish stuff. I've read it elsewhere and will keep my eyes peeled to find a more adequate source, if editors think it a useful addition to the text. Otherwise, I have no problem dropping it.Nishidani (talk) 16:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree we need to find an alternative to Price if she is used for anything other than describing the anti-Stratfordian assertions. She's not reliable, as the scholarly reviews of her book indicate quite clearly. When I say they are promotional, I mean they don't meet the WP:RS standard of independence, and should only be used to describe what the theories say. IOW James and Rubinstein are fine to describe their theory; they're not acceptable for describing anything outside of that, or to source general statements about the causes of the SAQ. That should be done by peer-reviewed sources. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The Oxfordian Flare
Apart from the homonymic slip, your adding of the "brief flare of" Oxfordian "enthusiasm", as reported by Shapiro, Nishidani, is close enough to Shapiro's own words that it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Though clearly unintentional, it might be interpreted as plagiarism. This could be avoided by keeping those words but using in-text attribution; or, alternatively, substituting a synonym for "flare". Unfortunately, to me, as evidently to you, "flare" seems just the right word here. And for such a briefly introduced bit of evidence, it might seem like too much to add "as reported by James Shapiro" (or something of the kind). Not sure how to handle this passage. It might be safe to leave it as is, but, well, I don't know. Any ideas? --Alan W (talk) 23:12, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I was focused exclusively on suggesting a fix for the glaring, or is that flaring, problem with the eyesore. The homonymic slip was indeed atrocious. I watch on amazed at the extraordinary acuity with which several master technicians of article craftsmanship review this and so many other points. I'm happy just to haul in, or check, sources, like blobs of unworked marble, and have you chaps finetune it into Canovan shape. I have no, and never will have, any ability to apply myself to this formal side, so whatever the experts determine is fine by me. If there's a plagiarism prob with 'flare', I suggest 'burst' or 'upsurge'. I don't think 'as reported' worth insertion, since Shapiro has been sourced for such points many times without the in-text attribution. Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Following your feedback, Nishidani, I've now substituted "upsurge", and we'll see how that looks. Thank you for including me in the group of "master technicians". I'll return the compliment, Nishidani, by voicing my own amazement at your extraordinary verbal skills, including the knack of choosing just the right words to express an idea in a given context. ("Blobs of unworked marble" is just one delightful example.) One of my ongoing pleasures in this company has been simply to read some of your comments. And this is why I refrained from making a hasty synonymic substitution before hearing from you. I'll add that, as I mentioned to Tom the other day, I used to make a living doing this sort of thing (I worked for years as a book editor). Wikipedia editing helps me too by keeping my skills from rusting away. --Alan W (talk) 19:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Candidate mugs
I moved the Marlowe portrait to the same side as the rest of them. I really think it looks classier to them all on the same side. Opinions? Tom Reedy (talk) 04:22, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * While it's nice to have them all on the same side, to me the Marlowe portrait looks better on the right because in it Marlowe is facing left. The others, facing right, do look better on the left. We don't want a person to seem to be looking outside of the article space. --Alan W (talk) 05:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, if he were isolated from the others surrounded only by type I think it would look better on the right, but it's impossible to look at his section without seeing the surrounding images. Although his body is slightly turned off the page, he's looking straight ahead enough so the effect you're talking about is not noticeable since he's only one image in a stack of images. If you look at the main image in the lede, most of their bodies are turned off the page, but I think the central portrait and Marlowe's body compensates for it, especially since their relative position draws the eye down and to the left in a straight line. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know how the page looks in your Web browser, Tom, but I can see only one or two of the images at once in mine when scrolling down the page, not the whole "stack". You may be right, but I'll be interested in how others see this. --Alan W (talk) 06:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks fine in my browser (IE8). --GuillaumeTell 18:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Are we ready for FAC yet?
Is there anything undone that would keep us from achieving FA? If not, I suggest we all take off a week to recoup our energies and submit it when we come back, say Sunday, 20 February. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. I was intending to continue my tweaking spree (I am up to "Evidence for Shakespeare's authorship from his works"). Let me know if you think I should stop. I have forgotten exactly what atm, but I did notice some stuff (probably the section with "brief flare of enthusiasm" in it, but a bit more I think) where I know what is on the editor's mind when they wrote the text, so I can work out what the text is supposed to mean, but the text needs work for two points: (1) Insert a word like "claim" or whatever to clarify that the text is not describing an established "fact" ("Elizabethan state secret"?); (2) Use plainer language for slightly more NPOV—the text should not appear to deride what it is discussing.
 * In the section "Shakespeare on trial", what is meant by "real trials"—surely "The first such litigation" is not correct (it was "The first such occasion")? What is the $5,000 damages? I was planning to think about how to reword the 'PBS Frontline broadcast "The Shakespeare Mystery"' text to remove the external link embedded in the article (such links are not prohibited, but are frowned on).
 * In conclusion, I suggest another week of tweaking and attending to any issues on the talk page, then taking a week break, then submit at the end of February. It would be useful to examine a couple of recent FAC nominations to see if anything requires attention here (e.g. the alternate text I recently added to the images). Johnuniq (talk) 07:00, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've rephrased the state secret bit to make it clear that this is Ogburn's thesis, and discovered as 'discerned', which has the same effect, of using language that does not give the reader the misleading impression that any real discovery was made. Hope this works. Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, go ahead and continue tweaking. I also plan to retweak a few of yours (that "gentleman" tweak I think made it awkward, for example), but I was waiting for a while to give my mind time to see what really needs changing and what's just my preference, and in fact I'm OK with everything just the way it is, although that's probably due more to topic fatigue than anything. Although we do need to remember that constant stirring often turns things into mush. IMO we don't need to keep going over the article again and again--FAC editors will let us know what needs to be changed, and trying to second-guess them or watering down the article to try to anticipate their objections is harmful, I think. Our only consideration should be the beat and most comprehensive article in the least amount of space. My honest opinion is that it's so close to FA now as to not make any real difference. Tom Reedy (talk) 07:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a very long article, so, given the complexity of criteria for FAC success, caution, and a σπεῦδε βραδέως approach, even at this late hour, are still advisable, particularly since you, Paul and I have worked so close to the content problems of drafting the text to see it with the necessary technical scepticism. Perhaps, we could ask those who have so generously pitched in over the past months, to just read through it once more and vote as to whether we are more or less at the FAC presentation state. I’m thinking esp. of the following.
 * Alan W
 * Nikkimaria (ref formatting and consistency)
 * Wrad suggested not going to FAC right now (Jan 29) but roping in someone like User:Awadewit or User:Qp10qp for a peer review.
 * Xover
 * Hamiltonstone
 * Johnuniq
 * Kaiguy
 * GuillaumeTell
 * Poujeaux
 * Bishonen. Nishidani (talk) 09:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree, and want to add a reply to Tom above. Yes, constant stirring often turns things into mush, but while the FA is my motivation, I think some text needs plainer and more NPOV language not as a sop to Oxfordians or FAC reviewers but because it is the right thing to do. Also, stuff like "Elizabethan state secret" is too mysterious and needs some clarifying words because it is not satisfactory to use coded language in an encyclopedic article. Yes, it is hard to keep a straight face while describing the Prince Tudor theory, but that's what the article has to do. I think there are also a couple of places where some plainer language is needed for slightly more NPOV. What I wrote above about "Shakespeare on trial" also needs attention. Johnuniq (talk) 10:29, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't read through again, but last time there were several such more or less minor issues; that fall in both directions. We some times echo the disdain of our sources in ways that are not NPOV, and other times we say things like “discovered that there were hidden ciphers” rather than “believed they had discovered” or some such. This stuff needs copy-editing for balance and NPOV; and it's generally a good idea to copy-edit for flow and quality of prose before FAC. In fact, once we deal with all the subject-specific stuff we may want to ask the League of Copy-Editors for help. They're badly backlogged and under-staffed, so it may take time, but on the other hand there is no particular urgency. FAC is insanely nitpicky (as it should be), and showing care before asking them to spend their time on reviewing our work will be appreciated (it's not their job to fix our article; they're there to make sure only the very best articles get featured on Wikipedia). --Xover (talk) 14:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll be happy to have a read-through. I'm in awe at the amount of work that you all have been doing over the last few weeks, but maybe I'll spot a few infelicities and whatnot.  BTW, I bought Contested Will (a great read, and some laugh-out-loud moments), so I now know a bit more than I used to. --GuillaumeTell 19:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Some good points made above about what is advisable to do and not do. For my part, I'll be glad to read through the whole thing at least once more. I also hope to find time to see about further tweaks to the References format, as I mentioned recently. --Alan W (talk) 19:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Shakespeare's signatures illustration
Cf. the illustration of the six known signatures of Shakespeare that we use in the article (see image on right). While it is much better than it originally was, I'm still not entirely happy with it. Even when scaled up above normal thumbnail size in the article as it is now (it's scaled up to 300px, and the default is 200 or 250px) the explanatory text is illegible, and the signatures themselves mostly just look like smudges. The various signatures also appear to be scaled differently (i.e. they are viewed at different “magnifications”), which makes them appear random. And finally, the different shapes and sizes of the signature images makes the overall impression busy and asymmetrical. The scaling also makes layout issues for the article since it is too big to fit properly inside its section.

I wonder if there is some way or ways we could alleviate some of these issues?

For one thing, I would like to see the explanatory text moved out of the image somehow. Perhaps we could use an image map where each individual signature's explanatory text is shown in a tooltip when hovering your mouse cursor over it? Or perhaps we could give each a color-coded outline and include a color legend in the caption? The former would, as a bonus, let us link each signature to the individual source image from which it is taken; and the latter would let us link to other related articles (such as Bellott v. Mountjoy).

Another possibility: perhaps we could generate pure black and white, or maybe even SVG vector, versions of the signatures? That would let us present them visually in a more harmonious manner. For instance, that should make it easier to scale them to comparable sizes and to encase each in a box/frame of the same size as the other signatures.

But perhaps all this is too ambitious for right now and for the graphics skills we have available? Perhaps we should leave well enough alone for now and then perhaps revisit it at a later date, when more pressing issues are done, and then see if we can't deal with these images in the same sort of general way that we deal with articles (i.e. polish each of them both visually, with proper categorization, and with all the relevant information placed on its description page)? --Xover (talk) 13:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've never been happy with that image. How about a gallery beneath the section with each individual signature with a tooltip as you suggest? Tom Reedy (talk) 14:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * may also be helpful. You'd have to check the feasability of tooltips - I've never seen an image on Wikipedia that has one, and I'm not sure whether they're possible with our current software. Then again, images are far from my strong suit. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * In my Grand Experiment with the images (linked above) I've replaced the six signatures with a single signature (in SVG format) that's scaled up a little for good measure. Since the article only mention the signatures in passing—rather than an article about the signatures themselves—this should be sufficient to illustrate the point. Thoughts? --Xover (talk) 21:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the point about the signatures being "scrawled" and their inconsistency is better made by showing all of them. There're only six; if there were 15 or 20 a few representative examples would do it, but I don't think it's burdensome to include all of them. I'll try to put together a gallery and try that out. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried it here but it still doesn't look good and what we have now is better. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pasting in another file for comparison with a different layout and larger signatures. I could re-do this if it looks better than what we now have along with a larger font for the cutlines. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I spent a bit of time playing with Annotated image and decided to just try it in the article here . The previous version is at this . I used File:6-known-signatures-of-shakspeare.jpg (October 2006; I think the other images are derived from this). I omitted some of the current text because it won't fit in a reasonable way. Thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately those are bad freehand copies of the signatures, which is probably the reason anti-Strats use them instead of the signature images. That gives me an idea, though. I'll put together another composite picture to use. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * See what you think, Johnny. (It took a while!). Tom Reedy (talk) 05:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That's great. Yes, it is painful to do. Possibly some alignment of the text might be slightly better, but it will do me. No wonder the image I used is clearer if it is a hand-drawn tracing! Johnuniq (talk) 05:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the current version (new version from Tom) is good.Poujeaux (talk) 13:03, 15 February 2011 (UTC)



Clarifications needed
There is some pointy text in the "Other candidates emerge" section which needs a reference:
 * academics attacked the methodology as unscholarly and the conclusions as ridiculous.

Recently, a ref after that sentence was removed. The ref was. Can anyone clarify why the ref was removed? If it does not support the statement, we need to refactor the text to something that is verifiable because such pointy text needs a ref.

In the section "Shakespeare on trial", what is meant by "real trials"—surely "The first such litigation" is not correct (it was "The first such occasion")? What is the $5,000 damages? I was planning to think about how to reword the 'PBS Frontline broadcast "The Shakespeare Mystery"' text to remove the external link embedded in the article (such links are not prohibited, but are frowned on). This is a repeat of my comment at 07:00, 13 February 2011. Johnuniq (talk) 07:56, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 'Real trials' refers (the plural is perhaps problematical) to Fabyan's case before judge Richard Tuthill in 1916, as opposed to the moot court occasions.
 * The $5,000 in damages was awarded by Tuthill to Fabyan (Wadsworth p.75)
 * 'academics attacked the methodology as unscholarly and the conclusions as ridiculous,' definitely needs a cite and I'll start checking round to see what happens. Almost all of this text was written with books at one's elbow, and that is odd indeed, to contextually specific (post WW2) to be an editor's personal construal of the history.Nishidani (talk) 08:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've put in a cit needed request for that pointy snippet re WW2. The only thing I can recall offhand similar to this ('their ignorance of fact and method is as dismaying as thir non-specialist love of Shakespeare's plays is touching' (Schoenbaum 1991 p.450) has no post WW2 context.Nishidani (talk) 11:15, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The cart was before the horse. I've furnished the needed cite and moved the statement to its proper chronological place. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Christopher Marlowe
If you want an example of how the policy to rely upon information from "reputable sources" can go wrong, the revised first paragraph of the "Christopher Marlowe" section is an excellent example. I'm sorry, but if Wikipedia's intention is to summarize the most accurate and up-to-date information about just what Marlovians currently believe, then you simply cannot rely upon the wildly inaccurate opinions of Gibson and Schoenbaum to provide it. That so much of what they say concerns arguments of Calvin Hoffman which were rejected long ago by most Marlovians inevitably gives an impression - for those of us who really know what's going on in this area - of the 1911 Britannica or of Sidney Lee's DNB. The repetition of Schoenbaum's howler that Marlowe's 'death' occurred on 20 May exemplifies this beautifully.

I tell you this only to register my dissatisfaction with what is currently there, and as a record of my intent to provide something which gives a rather more accurate idea of what most leading Marlovians currently believe and which, as far as possible, uses what we might reasonably hope to be accepted as coming from responsible sources, even if I myself must therefore be excluded. Peter Farey, 86.29.76.146 (talk) 14:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Peter, none of us are Marlowe experts, and the primary emphasis here is on what can be verified in reliable sources as defined at WP:RS. Wikipedia is not so much concerned with up-to-the-minute information as it is what the academy has responded to. Also keep in mind also that this section is a summary; more detailed information should be reserved for the Marlovian theory article, which also can use more recent sources such as Daryl's book and your essay (and I'm not sure that your essay couldn't be used here; a query to WP:RS/N would determine that). Tom Reedy (talk) 15:54, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've only been here a couple of weeks, but this so far seems typical of Anti-Stratfordian contributions to the page. "Hey guys, this article is horribly biased, it doesn't address any of the major arguments for X candidate."  If anyone is interested in actually helping with the article, why don't you outline one of those arguments, along with the reliable source, and post it here on the talk page.  This isn't a conspiracy, we do want this article to be as accurate as possible.  But I'm not going to go read five Marlovian books just to figure out what you think is missing. Kaiguy (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I think we can change the date. Part of the problem is that we have no reliable way of determining who "leading Marlovians" are. We can judge the status of scholars in established academic institutions, but how can we determine the "leading" authorities in Marlovian theory, or the level of respect or acceptance of specific arguments? That's why we have to rely mainly on what academic literature says about Marlovian theories. Paul B (talk) 18:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry Peter - I reread your comment, and I over reacted here. Let me welcome you to the page. Kaiguy (talk) 18:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Tom: no, none of us is a Marlowe expert (although I'd back myself to do pretty well on Mastermind with his life and works as my specialist subject!). On the other hand, a Marlowe expert is of course not what is really needed, but an expert in Marlovian theory, and modesty forbids my saying who I would put right up there among the front runners where that is concerned. I know very well what Wikipedia deems necessary, of course, and thought that the section as it was left by Nishidani was a pretty good reflection of what we believe, even if staying within those limits. Why dump that in favour of information from Schoenbaum and Gibson which is irrelevant to today's version of the theory? You say that this section is a 'summary', but that first paragraph contains hardly anything appearing in the Marlovian theory article. Search for "secret lover" "homosexual" "France" "Italy" or "go-between" for example, and you won't find any of them. By my essay, I take it you mean the Hoffman one?


 * Kaiguy: Apology accepted, and thanks for the welcome, although I am not entirely a newcomer here. I was in fact the main author of the Marlovian theory article, and made several comments earlier on about the SAQ article which appear by and large to have been acted upon. I'm certainly not accusing the editors of being biased (even if they are! :o)) merely pointing out how a slavish following of the "reliable source" doctrine has in this case actually resulted in a section which has over time become progressively less and less reliable and useful to its readers.


 * Paul B.: The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society was founded a couple of years ago by a small group of Marlovians each of whom had written a book or a film on the subject, or had articles published about it. Its website is a fair representation of what those people have agreed to be the main common elements of what Marlovians think, whilst allowing for a fair amount of variation amongst its members. There are several forums (closed and open) where the founding members and others who have joined us explore our different ideas and this provides an excellent opportunity for us to know just what the current state of play is. It's just a pity that Wikipedia's policy means that we are seen to be less credible on this subject than a couple of 'reliable sources' who had simply read Calvin Hoffman's book and apparently nothing else! Peter Farey, 212.183.140.12 (talk) 11:26, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi, the problem is that the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society has a grand title, but I could set up the International Whateley-Shakespeare Society, but it would still just be me and my mates speculating (I mention this because I have a pet obsession with the Anne Whateley theory, but in reality I have no Whateley-loving mates. It would be just me). In other words "what's really going on" in theory x may be no more than the speculations of a small group of individuals. I'm not trying to be disparaging, I think it would be useful to have a sense of what the current viewpoint of believing Marlovians is, but according to WP:PARITY even websites for fringe theories have to be "reliable". It's very difficult to know exactly how that would be determined. Whether having written a book or made a film contributes to that depends on the context of publication and distribution. What is or isn't credible in Marlovianism is very difficult to speak of. At least Hoffman's book has been discussed by academics. However, I agree with you that it is inappropriate to summarise his theory as if it were "Marlovianism" as such. However, his also applies to the main Marlovian theory article. If we find no reference to "secret lover", "homosexual", "France", "Italy", or "go-between" in the current article on Marlovianism, then that article is incomplete. It should give the full range of Marlovian thought, including Hoffman's ideas. It shouldn't be your personal idea of what "Marlovian theory" should be. Paul B (talk) 16:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, Paul. The title is unintentionally 'grand', but reflected the make-up of the founding group - two from the States, two from the UK, and one each from Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Spain. The 'international' was included at the suggestion of the Spaniard, in fact, who wanted to indicate that we weren't based in any one particular (especially anglophone?) country.
 * You asked how one might recognize 'leading Marlovians'. I was suggesting that it could be those who have in some way taken a 'lead' in developing or promulgating relevant research, and that a consensus of their views would probably represent the most reliable source for what Marlovian theory actually 'is'.
 * Your point about the lack of the Hoffman stuff in the main article is a good one. However, my thinking at the time I wrote the first version of what now appears there was that the title I inherited was "Marlovian theory" and not "Marlovian theories" and for this reason (as well as considerations of length, of course) I decided to concentrate upon the two things which all Marlovians would agree upon - the faking of his death and the writing of 'Shakespeare' - and those reasons which most would accept as being why they thought these things were probably true together with the orthodox response in each case. I still think that this is all that is really needed. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 14:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Peter, I think in my version I did find something in Honan's bio regarding the homosexual bit, and edited to that effect, but I'm afraid I can't recall where. As discussed some months back, anything you can find from Honan or any other RS to this effect would be most welcome. You certainly know that side of the literature better than all of us, who are struggling to keep up with the Shakespearean stuff generally. Given the high bar for inclusiveness we (Paul, Tom and myself) set ourselves, there's little other option I'm afraid. You have been a most amenable editor, and I hope you continue to keep an eye on the page in the future, to offer us improvements, not only on Marloviana.Nishidani (talk) 06:59, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Nishidani, I'll do my best, but must confess that Wikipedia is way down my list of priorities right now! For the record, I think that you have all done an excellent job in managing quite fairly to represent what most anti-Stratfordians believe, given the constraints within which you were working. It's just the (in my view) now thoroughly inadequate 'summary' of Marlovian theory with which I take issue. And in all humility I believe that I am among the most qualified to do so. 3 November version good, 4 November version bad. Sorry Tom! Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 14:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Peter, no doubt we've got at least a week to rewrite. I'll take a look at the two versions and see what was cut that can be added based on WP:RS and try to address your concerns above. Smatprt also made some suggestions at arbitration that should be addressed in the Oxford section. I'm very busy today, so it will be a couple of days before I can have a draft ready. When I do I'll post it here and ping you.


 * Thanks. If it helps at all (which I doubt!) let me comment upon what is said right now:


 * The case for Marlowe relies upon historical conjectures
 * [Semantically tendentious - most of us do actually rely upon what we believe to be logical inferences from verifiable historical facts]


 * predicated on the speculation


 * [as above]


 * that the government records of his assassination


 * [the legal (not governmental) records say nothing about his being "assassinated". His killing was found to be in self defence.]


 * on 20 May 1593


 * [As I pointed out, a direct copying of the "reliable source" Schoenbaum's howler.]


 * was a hoax,


 * [A "hoax"? OED 1.a. "An act of hoaxing; a humorous or mischievous deception, usually taking the form of a fabrication of something fictitious or erroneous, told in such a manner as to impose upon the credulity of the victim." Doesn't this trivialize a quite important issue?]


 * and that he lived on to write the Shakespeare canon from exile.


 * [No, this implies that it was all written while he was overseas, which any of us could refute with one hand tied behind our back. We all think he returned to England a couple of years after his departure, even if not permanently.]


 * The purpose of this deception was to allow Marlowe to escape arrest and almost certain execution on charges of subversive atheism, and flee the country


 * [This is a subject about which there is no agreement in Marlovian circles. Did he 'flee' or was he sent into exile?]


 * to live in France and Italy. Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe's secret lover,


 * [A.D. Wraight, one of the most influential Marlovians ever, campaigned vigorously against what she regarded a such a slur, and took a whole generation of Marlovians with her.]


 * arranged the imposture,


 * [I don't think that there is a single Marlovian who these days thinks that Walsingham was alone in arranging this. The involvement of one or more members of the Privy Council is nowadays taken as read, even if we disagree as to precisely who or how many that would have been!]


 * and also acted as the go-between to deliver the manuscripts to the actor Shakespeare.


 * [No, I could be wrong, but I can't think of a single Marlovian who, even if they once did, still believes that.]


 * Literary conjectures, historical and biographical coincidences, and cryptographical revelations are found in the works to support this scenario.


 * [This wording is semantically biased. A NPOV would say that inferences derived from historical facts, similarities in the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and hidden meanings in associated texts support this scenario.]


 * Sorry for my naivety on this, but how will I know if you 'ping' me?


 * Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for all the suggestions. You'll know when you hear a loud BONG go off beside your head. Or I'll e-mail you. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks Tom, an e-mail from you sounds good, as it would have done last November, but I would still like to know what 'pinging' is, even if 'bonging' sounds much more like my sort of thing. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 17:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Tom Reedy (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much for your opinion about the neutrality of the article and its presentation. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Tom, you of all people are more than welcome. And I meant it. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Gosh, this looks like a love-in! Might I mention that Thomas Walsingham (mentioned above as Marlowe's secret lover) is not Thomas Walsingham? --GuillaumeTell 22:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, Tom and I get on together pretty well considering his delusions. Not that I really did comment on the "neutrality" of the article, only its "managing quite fairly to represent what most anti-Stratfordians believe" which isn't quite the same thing. I said from quite early on that this article should concentrate upon the Stratfordian position, leaving the case for each of the contenders to its own entry, together with those arguments specifically targetting each one. And I think that we are gradually getting there, even if the NPOV must inevitably be most evident only in the collection as a whole. Peter Farey, 86.26.75.103 (talk) 16:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter I've found a possible source, an article titled "Fusion of Various Methods for Resolving the Shakespeare Controversy" by Mikhail Malyutov, published in Data fusion for situation monitoring, incident detection, alert and response management, Vol. 198, (2005), pp. 671-84. The author is pretty naive about the SAQ, but he quotes your website and rehearses some of your arguments, and the journal is a reliable source. The only sticking point I see is that the book is not primarily concerned with the authorship question, although the article is. We might want to take it to WP:RS/N and get an opinion. If we do so we should ask about your essay also. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well done, Tom. Mike Malyutov, eh? I remember innocently claiming (HLAS, "The Shakespeare Code?", Sept 2004) that whilst "He repeats quite a lot of the usual errors concerning the authorship debate, ... he clearly knows his stuff statistics-wise," which Terry Ross took as a personal challenge, and gave us a master-class in demonstrating how wrong the second bit was! But if it works, so be it. It would certainly be better if we could use the essay for which I was awarded (by Park Honan, who also cites another essay on my website in his book, p.403, n.34) a share in the Hoffman prize for "a distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe". There is another possibility very near to being available too - Ros Barber's PhD thesis on Marlovian theory, which has been submitted and now only awaits the viva before the final award. I'm assuming that, if passed, this would have to be acceptable? Peter Farey, 193.237.254.37 (talk) 09:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * PhD thesis and similar are not usually considered reliable in the WP:RS sense (there's some latitude, but generally not). However, if Park cites your web site (depending on how he presents it, of course) and it's been recognized by an independent entity (I'm not familiar with the Hoffman price, so I can't off the cuff evaluate its significance) then that weighs in favor of allowing it directly as a reliable source for some uses. For instance, I would guess there to be a good chance we could use it as a source for “Here is what the Marlowian theory supporters think” and similar. Iff we should end up using it, please keep in mind the Conflict of Interest guidelines: it's probably best if you do not insert cites to your own web site yourself—or write too much article text that's supported by a cite to your own web site—but rather limit yourself to making suggestions and proposals on the talk page so that another editor can make the changes. The COI guidelines allow some latitude too, but since anything related to Authorship is (sadly) tainted by controversy it's probably best to mind all of our P's and Q's here. PS. I think you have a user account here (the account: )? If that's correct it would be helpful if you could log in when editing so we can more easily keep track of who's doing and saying what, and so we can leave you messages on your user talk page. If you have trouble logging in there are venues for technical support (and there's a password reset function if you've forgot the password). --Xover (talk) 10:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. In fact I'd forgotten (as I forget so much these days) that I had a user account, and have now reactivated it; this will test whether it works. The Hoffman Prize is regarded as quite prestigious in the academic community, having had among its adjudicators Stanley Wells, Ernst Honigmann, T. W. Craik, Darryll Grantley, Jonathan Bate and Park Honan. Its winners have also, with very few exceptions, been professional academics. See <http://www.marlowe-society.org/reading/info/hoffmanwinners.html>. Park Honan is of course a biographer of both Shakespeare and Marlowe. Peter Farey (talk) 13:53, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe you're in error here. Completed PhD dissertations are specifically designated as acceptable sources. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:32, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be the first time... I may have been thinking of the Masters stuff, and I'm pretty sure I've seen fairly strong caution applied to using even PhD thesis as sources; but like with most things I suppose it depends on what we want to support based on it. For instance, even a self-published random website can be used to support some things, especially if there are no better sources available. In any case, based on the information Peter provided above, I think we may be able to use the essays on his website directly. --Xover (talk) 18:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd be against using it in this article at this time. The last thing we need is a WP:RS dispute in the middle of an FAC. With the level of detail we need for the summary, I think the sources we have are probably sufficient. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've pasted in the two versions of the Marlowe section here for everyone to work on. It shouldn't take but a day or so, and then we can do the Oxford section the same way. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Tom, Peter. The only part of my version I could not source adequately was the statement left hanging at the end:
 * "Marlovians use very few of the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments to support their theory, believing many of them to be misguided, misleading or unnecessary."
 * I had this both on Peter's authority, and my own impression on reading the literature. Neither was adequate but I left it in there in the hope some RS would be forthcoming. It is an important point, but until we obtain an academic survey, Tom's elision of it must stand, wikipediawise. Peter, Ros Barber's Phd will certainly resolve minor points on this page, and virtually guarantee that the Marlovian page can be brought up to wiki snuff rapidly, as long as it can find a, preferably university or academic publisher, as per Xover. Keep us posted on this. This kind of academic review of the theories is what all of us feel starved of.Nishidani (talk) 11:00, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Anybody and everybody are invited to pitch in here. The "current" section is the one being edited. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:28, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Peter if you're done with the Marlowe material go ahead and move it into the article for discussion and copy editing. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Tom, I see that you have beaten me to it. Thanks. Incidentally, I have now read Ros Barber's thesis, which could be quite helpful as a RS. If successful, she tells me it would be made available in electronic format, either through Sussex's own portal or possibly through The British Library. Peter Farey (talk) 12:07, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

"The Marlovian theory asserts that his death on 30 May 1593 was faked". I'm sorry, but this really isn't something which Marlovians 'assert' either, as the word implies a certainty which few of us would believe is justified by the evidence. Based upon the facts as we know them we infer that the most logical explanation for those particular people to have met at that particular place on that particular day was to fake Marlowe's death. The conclusion we have arrived at therefore is that this is most probably what happened. Peter Farey (talk) 12:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Asserts" implies certainty? I'm not completely understanding you here. "Conclusion", to me, implies certainty, while "asserts" conveys a certain amount of subjectivity in the matter. How about if we just change it to "holds"? Tom Reedy (talk) 12:42, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Marlovian theory presumably depends on Marlowe's survival, unless there's a variant according to which he'd written all the plays before his 1593 death, the manuscripts being later found in a cupboard. Putting that possibility to one side, surely Marlovians must assert this as a necessary condition for their theory. Alternatives would be ""requires", "takes the view that", "argues", "suggests", "infers"... Paul B (talk) 13:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I have created a new section Christopher Marlowe 2 (below) with some possible problems with the current text. Johnuniq (talk) 07:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Image review
I've had a spin through the images used in the article and we've got some issues there:


 * File:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg—by itself is fine, but as a derivative work it inherits the problems from the source images
 * File:Edward de Vere.JPG—lacks source information
 * File:Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban from NPG (2).jpg—is fine
 * File:Christopher Marlowe.jpg—lacked source but I've pointed at another copy that did have it
 * File:6thEarlOfDerby.jpg—is fine
 * File:Title page William Shakespeare's First Folio 1623.jpg—is fine
 * File:Edward de Vere.JPG—lacks source, cf. above
 * File:Shakespeare sigs collected.png—lacks source (when you step through all the derivations until you hit the original upload) Done. The sources were on the original single signatures.
 * File:Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg—lacks source
 * File:Poet-ape1616.JPG—lacks source
 * File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg—lacks source
 * File:King Lear Q1.jpg—lacks source
 * File:DeShakespeareNostrat.jpg—lacks source
 * File:Camden on Shakespeare.jpg—lacks source
 * File:Passionate Pilgrim title page comparison.JPG—lacks source
 * File:Shakespeare monument plaque.JPG—lacks source
 * File:Shakespeare's grammar school.JPG—lacks source
 * File:Delia-Bacon(18811-1859).jpg—lacks source
 * File:Cipher wheel.jpg—lacks source
 * File:Shakespeare Identified cover.JPG—lacks source
 * File:Contester Will dj.JPG—lacks source, copyvio
 * File:Edward-de-Vere-1575.jpg—lacks source
 * File:Minerva Britanna Peacham device.JPG—lacks source

Note that the requirements are not to give where the image was first published, or which gallery the image currently hangs in, or even what type of image it is; the requirement is to say where the uploader got it from. That means “Scanned from Schoenbaum's Records & Images” (if you scanned it yourself from a book) or “The web page at <URL>” (if you snarfed it off the web) or “Own work” (if you went to Holy Trinity and took a picture of the plaque or whatever). The book cover asserts no copyright possible by virtue of being just text and a crop of the Stratford monument; but I very much doubt the Commons guys will see it that way: the composition is an original and copyrightable work in its own right. There are exemptions to the upload policy specifically for the covers of books or music records (and company logos, etc. etc.), but we need to employ those properly rather than assert lack of originality (because it's very unlikely to fly).

Finally, the quality of several of these pictures is poor. Many of them are of very low resolution; the images of text are out of alignment; and there are various color balance and general cleanup issues. I'm not sure to what degree the reviewers at FAC pounce on the esthetics and general quality of images these days, but if they do I think we'd have trouble defending several of the current images. IOW, I think we need to put some work into finding replacements for or fixing up the current images before we expose them to FAC, quite apart from fixing the source issues above. --Xover (talk) 16:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Xover what do you propose to do about the images on this list that were uploaded 4-5 years ago? The *File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg, for example, which you say lacks a source, clearly indicates that these images are out of copyright: "This image show a simple straight-on shot of the Shakespeare monument, which is in public domain since it is a work created before 1623. It also incorporates an image published in William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) and so is in the public domain." Who scanned them I would think would be irrelevant at this point. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Trinity of Shakespeare at Trinity.jpg That was, I think, Fut.Perf.'s main thrust (below): so long as the image is clearly out of copyright, the details of who scanned it is of only academic importance. However, an alternate approach is to the right here; we can re-scan and/or recreate the cases where we can't easily complete the information. Note that this is to illustrate the idea and not necessarily an assertion that we should use this particular image (for one thing, Tom's photo is the best on `pedia, and even that is taken at an awkward angle; why in the world don't we have a better image of this?) --Xover (talk) 19:45, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I really don't want to spend time re-doing work that has been done when all that is really required is the copyright status of the image. Why an article's status would depend on the status of the images is unclear to me; the point at which the quality should be monitored is at the image dump, in this case Wikimedia Commons. Trying to control the quality and sourcing of an image at the article level is a bit like doing quality control at the consumer level rather than at the factory, and if FA reviewers think otherwise something needs to change about the process.
 * As to the monument images, I intend to take more pictures this fall when I visit the church to gather some other information about the monument. Some sort of Wiki exchange should be set up so that Wikipedians could call on other editors who live in a certain area to take pictures they need for articles. (For all I know that's already set up and I just don't know about it.) Tom Reedy (talk) 20:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The FA reviewers are reviewing the quality of all aspects of the article, including the images used in it, and not the quality of all the images at Commons (Commons has not nearly enough editors to do the level of quality control one might wish). They have certain criteria—some explicit, some a result of precedence and practice at FAC—they evaluate against. For images this is certainly whether their copyright status is correct (for which they need information on the source so they have the data to make the determination), but also whether the images are appropriate for the article (in terms of how informative they are, what quality they are, placement, etc.). I do not recommend showing up at FAC claiming they need to change their process; it's always possible that they should, but they are very unlikely to do so based simply on the assertion of a nominator (much like we are unlikely to start allowing cites to issues of Donald Duck based solely on a random assertion). A better question is whether they actually do require such meticulous sourcing for obviously out of copyright images. I've asked Fut.Perf. for clarification on their talk page, so depending on that reply we may not need to do much about that. Note that we still need to address issues of quality, informational content, aesthetics; but those are more in line with all the other little bits of polish we're applying. And you're right, there is an exchange for Wikipedians in various areas to request / provide images; it's just little known and hard to find (e.g. I couldn't locate it to link it now on a quick scan). --Xover (talk) 20:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, I slightly disagree: when it comes to source attribution for the purpose of copyright assessment, the ultimate original source is actually the more important one. Having the proximate source (where we scanned it from) also is a nice extra, but as long as the identity and authenticity of the document is not in doubt (in which case there'd be a WP:V issue), it is of secondary importance, as far as I'm aware. – The "Contested Will" cover page has been marked for deletion on Commons (tsk tsk Tom, bad Tom). If you wanted it badly, you'd have to re-upload it locally under WP:NFC, but you'd need to come up with an unusually compelling rationale for it, since normally we allow such items only in a dedicated article about the book itself. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:44, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * While I certainly agree with you in principle (out of copyright is out of copyright, the rest is just bureaucracy), I was under the strong impression that the image use policy as well as practice at FAC was that the proximate source must be provided. For instance, an image snarfed from the web is very specifically required to provide information on the web page from which it was taken (and not just a link to the image itself), with no exemption for public domain or out of copyright works. I would gladly be persuaded wrong by your better wisdom on this, but this was not my understanding of neither policy nor practice. --Xover (talk) 18:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Questions:
 * 1. Can you steer me to the guideline that spells out what the source line should contain.
 * 2. Which specific images are low resolution, and why would they be unacceptable for this article?
 * 3. Which specific text images are out of alignment? I know the Jonson Timbers image is a composite of two pages; is that the one you mean? The others are exactly how the page appears.
 * 4. Where is the book cover policy spelled out? Tom Reedy (talk) 19:05, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to the last of your questions: the relevant policy is WP:NFCC. There's also some advice at WikiProject Books/Images and on the Non-free book cover template. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:53, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Poet-ape1616.JPG
 * WP:IUP and the (non-linkable) section headed “More information on how to provide a good source”. But by default I'm inclined to assume that Fut.Perf. is better versed in this than me, so it may be that no change is needed. If you'd like to apply both belt and suspenders anyway, you probably can't go wrong by simply saying 1) where it was first published, 2) where the uploader found it, 3) who scanned/downloaded/drew/whatever the image. e.g. the Camden reference was first published by Camden in Remaines Concerning Britaine in 1605; you found it in, say, Loomis or Schoenbaum; and you scanned it and uploaded it yourself.
 * Low-res images aren't unacceptable per se, but FAC reviewers can sometimes be as picky about the quality of images as they are about the prose. Low-res images are often also of low quality, and they have very little scope for improvement (correcting levels etc.). Thus it would be preferable to find higher resolution versions of those images that are a little on the small side now.
 * For instance, the Poet-Ape picture is pretty much exactly one degree out of alignement, which makes it look crooked in the article. Several of the images of text of some kind have this problem to greater or lesser degree.
 * The policy on non-free content, in the section on unacceptable use of images, bullet 9. --Xover (talk) 19:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure I scanned most of the text images from facsimiles or got them from EEBO. I aligned the image on the right as a temporary fix, but I'll need to find the original file since I cropped it too close. The problem is that the original works are misaligned on the page and the images are faithful duplications; early modern printing wasn't of the same quality we're used to. And I scanned most of them at a sufficient resolution to see all the relevant detail (high res scanning is ridiculously close--who needs to see the threads of the page?), and in fact the image on the right is at 335kb, and is sufficiently clear at 30kb. There is no point in high resolution just for the sake of high resolution.
 * I'll read the policy links and see what I can do. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I propose that the "Contested Will" image is removed. Reasons: (a) The serious concerns raised by Fut Perf above, (b) It is low res - some of the text is barely readable even in the clicked-on version (c) it would help deal with concerns that the page is already too much based on this book.  Poujeaux (talk) 09:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The resolution is not an issue. In fact, for book covers low resolution is required. I agree we should go ahead and delete it, though, based on the other problems, which I don't want to take the time to try to overcome. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Appearances are deceptive. On analysis, the quantity of notes is what you would expect proportionately from the nature and length of the three major soures used to survey the SAQ history. This is a rough calculation of proportional use of secondary sources.
 * 61 Shapiro.
 * 38 Wadsworth
 * 21 Schoenbaum

(a)Shapiro heads the list as the latest authority (where few exist) writing at book length 354 pages (Brit ed.) and harvested here for 61 notes (25%), of which 22, however. are part of a double footnote, where a second and often a third authority is cited corroboratively (i.e. 15% or so of the text is sourced exclusively to Shapiro). (b)Wadsworth gets 38 cites, from a short book (pp.164) that surveys a huge amount of recondite marginalia which was unsuitable for the article, which is an overview.

(c) Schoenbaum surveyed the field in 65 pages and gets 21 cites.(10%)

Given the differences in major sources, this gives a fairly even picture.Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Nish, I don't think Poujeaux was intending to re-open the question of whether the article follows Shapiro too closely; merely pointing out that if one were to remove the book cover image one of the effects of that would be to lessen any such concern should there be any. The two can, and should, be treated as entirely separate questions that only marginally affect each other. --Xover (talk) 11:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, it's good to rehearse these arguments! It looks like we are agreed to remove the Shapiro image?  In the interests of balance, should we also cut the image of the Looney book?  It's not a particularly attractive or informative image. Poujeaux (talk) 15:51, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Any suggestions for alternative images? Would it be allowed to use the poster image for the film? Poujeaux (talk) 16:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that the Shapiro image can be elided (cf.WP:Recentism), but one image from the books that have had great influence on the fringe divagations should be retained. Looney fathered the most currently popular vein of speculation: he singlehandedly revived an all but moribund system of ideas, and deserves a pic if only for that. I've seen handiwork by one or two picture-trimmers here (Jaakobou) that has done wonders for otherwise poorly defined images. Is there some forum where we can ask for assistance? Nishidani (talk) 16:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * To me the main problem with the section is the wall of type unbroken by any images. That is the main reason why I added the book covers to begin with. If we can't use a book cover, I hardly see how we can use a movie poster. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There's Beerbohm's Bacon cartoon, though Max tiresomely chose to live until 1956, which means it would have to be uploaded to Eng-Wiki. Paul B (talk) 16:21, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't make any difference if it was published before 1923. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Image layout
In an effort to alleviate various issues with stacking, sandwiching, layout, and legibility, I've made and experiment by removing some images, realigning others, and moving them about a bit. Take a look and let me know what you think. I've selv-reverted all the changes, so the current article is without these changes. --Xover (talk) 16:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That deathbed image of WS's signature to his will almost seals the case agin'im! First impression is that the removal of the Shapiro image unbalances the page, as it leaves a large wall of unadorned text there. Is there any free image available for the moot court trial of 1987 or (in London 1988)? I can see many googling 'moot court+Shakespeare+image', but wouldn't have a clue about how to check on availability. Something needs to go into that section.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * TYhere are usable images from the 1916 trial . Paul B (talk) 16:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I love that "Sherlock is undone" image! I say we use that! Tom Reedy (talk) 17:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * How about adding an image of the Supreme Court? Tom Reedy (talk) 16:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Nah, (or only if you tarnish it, to fit its recent decisions!) PB's fished up two great images. I'd use them, but the comic thrust might be taken as cocking a POV snook at the theory.Nishidani (talk) 17:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I really don't think a picture of the US supreme court is appropriate. The newspaper article about the trial is nice. A better solution to the 'wall of text' problem IMHO would be to prune this section. It is 6 screenfulls, where the 'main article' is only 7. This might get us into trouble at FA. Poujeaux (talk) 13:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't really care for the image either, but we need something. As far as pruning, what would you prune from that section? We certainly should be editing for comprehensiveness, not try to read the minds of the FA reviewers. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, the two sections that seem too long (over a screenfull) are Other candidates emerge and Authorship revives in the mainstream media. In the former, the para about WW2 could go, up to and including the following "revive flagging interest in Oxford". So could the bit about PTT since this comes up later. In the latter, the first two paras about Ogburn and the courts could be reduced quite considerably. Poujeaux (talk) 10:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Strat vs. Ant-Strat
I'm not sure we came to any conclusion on the meta-note about “Stratfordian” and “Anti-Stratfordian” (perhaps we did and I just wasn't paying attention). I'm of the opinion that this is either accepted terminology in the field—in which case it should be in the article, subject to WP:V and WP:RS like everything else—or it is not, and we need to avoid the terms altogether. Since I happened to open Schoenbaum's Lives on a more or less random page and happen on him using the term “Anti-Strafordian”, I'm inclined to say it is an accepted term; but that “Stratfordian” is not. So I would propose that we 1) remove the note; 2) use “Anti-Stratfordian” in the article; 3) explain the term on first use, and cite its meaning to some suitable reliable source (I expect either Schoenbaum, Shapiro, or Matus will do nicely). Note that if the consensus is to leave well enough alone here that's fine too (we can agree to disagree), but we do need to have a well-founded consensus on how to approach this in the article in case it comes up at FAC. --Xover (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * FWIW, my opinion is that since you, Xover, have found established use for "Anti-Stratfordian", we can justify "Stratfordian" as a back-formation, as well as a convenience for the purposes of the article. We can always add something like, "Although the term is not commonly used..." if we think it really necessary. --Alan W (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Note that the word “Stratfordian” only appears three times in the article: once in the note under debate, once in the construction “Stratfordian chronologies” that could (and should, for other reasons) be rephrased, and once in the pseudo-heading for the external links (which I would argue to be an incorrect usage regardless). My point is that we simply have no need for the back-formation, even were it supportable, and since it is also problematic we may as well avoid it. --Xover (talk) 21:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A look at the various candidate pages shows that every article save the Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship (which Paul wrote) uses both terms. Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide doesn't use the terms, but the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare uses "anti-Stratfordian" (it uses "Stratfordian" to mean a citizen of Stratford, not just Shakespeare). While Shapiro only uses the terms whilst quoting, most all of the other books and articles on the subject aren't as fastidious, no matter who wrote them. I don't care one way or another, but since we're aspiring to near-dissertation quality, I lean towards taking them out or merely explaining the terms in a parenthetical remark without using them at all, as in "Those who believe someone else wrote Shakespeare (often referred to as 'anti-Stratfordians') ..." etc. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Xover, as you can see readily from any older version of our sandbox 2 draft, underlying this version, this issue was annotated in the following way.


 * "Note: In compliance with the accepted jargon used within the Shakespeare authorship question, this article uses the term 'Stratfordian' to refer to the position that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the primary author of the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him. The term 'anti-Stratfordian' is used to refer to those who believe that some other author actually wrote the works.'(: 'The call for an 'open debate' which echoes through Oxfordian websites is probably pointless: there is no common ground of terminology between 'Stratfordians' (as they are reluctantly forced to describe themselves) and anti-Stratfordians.'; : 'What particularly disturbed (Stephen Greenblatt) was Mr. Niederkorn’s characterization of the controversy as one between 'Stratfordians' . . and 'anti-Stratfordians'. Mr. Greenblatt objected to this as a tendentious rhetorical trick. Or as he put it in a letter to The Times then: 'The so-called Oxfordians, who push the de Vere theory, have answers, of course—just as the adherents of the Ptolemaic system . . . had answers to Copernicus. It is unaccountable that you refer to those of us who believe that Shakespeare wrote the plays as 'Stratfordians,' as though there are two equally credible positions'.')"


 * Mainstream scholarship is uncomfortable with the tendentiousness of this distinction, which is proper to the fringe theorists, but generally disliked by Shakespearean scholars. I think Tom elided the note as possibly prejudicial to the fringe perspective. Personally, I would prefer either for a clarifying footnote to be retained, if the distinction is kept, or, perhaps better, to expunge 'Stratfordian' and simply use 'anti-Stratfordian'. 'Stratfordians' are only such in the fringe view, and to accept the fringe label is to endorse the insinuation that there is something hypothetical about accepting what the documentary record clearly states. I'd appreciate it, again, if what we should do here were decided by a vote among those who were not the primary drafters of the article, but who are examining it closely for bias. Nishidani (talk) 10:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought about this last night and have modified my position. The reason Shapiro and others can do without using the term "anti-Stratfordian" is because they use "Oxfordian" to represent the entire range of anti-Stratfordians, which we don't (and should not) do. As far as the objections by academics to the term "Stratfordian", that is not an issue. Our goal should be to describe the field, not spare the feelings of those who for the most part won't even discuss the topic. Of course, if the use of it conveys an intrinsic bias, then we should not use it. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought we'd had a discussion on this earlier. Anyway, my suggestion to avoid the implication of bias in the terms is to make it clear that 'Stratfordian' is a term used by Anti-stratfordians, rather than a generally accepted term in academic discourse on the subject.  FWIW Kaiguy (talk) 15:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Sutherland's read everything so
Rereading the page this morning I was reminded, while eyeing this, "The mainstream view, to which nearly all academic Shakespeareans subscribe"

that Sutherland and Watts have a similar sentence which runs: "There is, it should be noted, no academic Shakespearian of any standing who goes along with the Oxfordian theory.’ John Sutherland, Cedric Thomas Watts, Henry V, war criminal?: and other Shakespeare puzzles, Oxford University Press 2000 p.7"

Perhaps that is too sharp. Perhaps it is already explicit in the long note at the top of the ref section where several authorities make the same point. But I've jotted this down here just in case someone thinks rephrasing it, as per this source, is acceptable or an improvement.Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Why not add that in place of a couple of the others? I'd say delete Schoenbaum, Paster and Pendleton, and cut down the others to their bare minimum. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * He says 'Oxfordian', not 'anti-Stratfordianism'. It may certainly be considered for the Oxfordian Theory page. As to note 3, I think we have to retain that until FA, though expressing a willingness to elide the details. I think, given circumstances, that all of the references there ought to be retained, just to ward off suspicions that the assertion these quotations back is, well, rather 'particular', and requires strong evidence from the academic world (which is what we supplied). We could of course, there, add Sutherland's citation there as well.Nishidani (talk) 18:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Go ahead and add it. I've got some work I need to finish so I gotta get off Wikipedia until Sunday. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:49, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The road to FA
Although I've been over this thing a hundred times, I still find little errors every now and then, but fewer and fewer, and I really don't think there's anything substantial left to do. I've pinged Nikkimaria for a ref formatting review before we take it to WP:FAC as soon as the arbitration is over (unless I'm permabanned from Wikipedia, but then I won't care anymore). I personally think this is the best short article about the SAQ I've ever read anywhere, and it will be a good resource for people looking for a reasonably concise explanation about the topic. Thanks to all for the hard work and input, and by all means bring up any problems you see in the article. I'm not gonna look at it for a few days so I can read it with fresh eyes next week. Cheers all! Tom Reedy (talk) 03:41, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * And here are my comments - although note that I'm only looking at reference formatting, not anything else. However, this might be helpful to you for manual of style details.


 * You will likely run into objections about the extensive use of quotes in footnotes. It's up to you what you do about that, just thought I'd warn you. If you end up keeping them, make sure they are completely accurate (does Kathman really use "antiStratfordism", or is there a space/hyphen missing?)
 * For what it's worth, Kathman uses the form "antistratfordian" (no internal cap) on his Shakespeare Authorship Page website. Someone who has Wells and Orlin handy (which includes Kathman 2003) should check this. --Alan W (talk) 02:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * You might consider making References two columns
 * "Love 2002, pp. 87, 200)" - what's the parenthesis for? Nothing. An obvious typo. Fixed.
 * "Baldwin 1944; Quennell 1969, p. 18" - Baldwin page(s)?
 * "Shapiro 2010, pp. 255 (225)" is only one page (even if two editions) - there are a few of this type of error
 * I think I've caught and fixed all these, but hard to be sure with things like this. --Alan W (talk) 03:39, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * "Saunders 1951, pp. 139–164; May 1980, p. 11." - careful about page range consistency: elsewhere you notate such a range as 139–64
 * I think I've got all these now. --Alan W (talk) 03:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * " Chambers 1930, pp. II: 218–9." - is this a multivolume work? If not, what does "II" represent? If so, the other footnotes to this source need volume indications
 * Could this be a typo for "pp. ii, 218–9"? Don't have this book handy, or I would check. --Alan W (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * "Shapiro 2010, pp. 271 (238–9).; Chambers 1930, p. 224." - nitpicking on this one, but for consistency there shouldn't be a period before the semi-colon. Also, I'm not sure about "p." vs "pp." in this case, given that it's only one page in the primary edition - that's an issue you might want to take a brief look at
 * I've changed this as suggested. ("pp." to "p.", which I think is correct here, as the "p." refers explicitly to the "271", "pp." is implicit in the parenthetical page numbers; at least that's my opinion.) I can appreciate nitpicking. I've made a living by it for many years. :^) --Alan W (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm headed offline shortly, will do more tomorrow. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Current note 103, "Claremont McKenna College 2010", seems to not be linking to its reference entry properly
 * Be consistent in the use of "quoted in" versus "quoting" (and the resulting citation order)
 * Another nitpick, but be consistent whether there is or is not a space between the colon and the quotation mark in footnotes where you quote the source
 * "Shapiro 2010, pp. 83–9 (73–9):"The shock waves of Strauss's work soon threatened that lesser deity Shakespeare, for his biography too rested precariously on the unstable foundations of posthumous reports and more than a fair share of myths." (p. 84 [74-5])." - other multi-page citations with quotes don't seem to include secondary page numbers
 * "Gross 2010, p. 40; Schmucker 1853." - Schmucker page(s)?
 * "Holmes 1867; Halliday 1957, p. 176." - Holmes page(s)? Stopping here to say that a few of the footnotes in the last column need page numbers
 * Wall Street Journal is a publication not a publisher, and should be italicized Fixed.
 * Be consistent in including or not including publisher location
 * be consistent in including or not including retrieval dates for weblinks to print-based sources
 * Be consistent in including or not including publisher for journals
 * Check for doubled periods caused by citation templates
 * Be consistent in whether retrieval dates abbreviate months or not
 * Don't switch between different citation templates, as the output is slightly different. You're using both and  - pick one (probably the former, based on numbers) and stick to it
 * Be consistent in what is wikilinked when. Are you going to link things in references on first occurrence only, or every time? What parameters will be linked?
 * Be consistent in titling - for example, The Tennessee Law Review, or just Tennessee Law Review?
 * The reason some of the books don't have page numbers is because the refs were converted from the external Google book page link that were in the article, so it merely marks the publication of the book. Should those stay or go? Tom Reedy (talk) 05:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I follow your explanation - can you clarify? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Re Cite book: Xover has fixed A–M of the refs by changing Citation to something more appropriate, and expanding retrieval dates, and more. Exceptions: Cressy, David (1975) and Crinkley, Richmond (1985) are still Citation.
 * Inconsistency: "Dictionary of World Literature – Criticism, Forms, Technique" has an en dash, while "Routledge Library Editions — Shakespeare" has an em dash. Johnuniq (talk) 07:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * At some stage soon we should go through the criteria carefully, with some of us playing the role of devil's advocate. Poujeaux (talk) 12:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Continuing the list...
 * Kroeber 1993 is in References but not in Footnotes; same with Law 1965, Lee 2010, Nelson 1999, Rosenbaum 2005, Wells 1997
 * For republished books, be consistent in whether you format as [year] or [first published year]
 * Lefranc is dates 1918-19 in References but just 1919 in Footnotes - which is correct?
 * Check alphabetization of References, there are a few out of order
 * I think I've caught and properly rearranged these now. --Alan W (talk) 19:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * " Commentary (Commentary)" - duplication unneeded
 * May 2004 missing journal title
 * Is Tennessee Law Review published by the University of Tennessee or by the Tennessee Law Review Association?
 * Supplement # for Nicoll and Vickers?
 * Publisher for Schmucker?
 * Don't repeat cited sources in External links. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Xover's TODO for References
Making my own little sub-section here to treat as a todo list without messing with Nikkimaria's comment above.
 * Chambers 1930 is a multivolume work, so we will need to add volume number to the page numbers in citations; unless we're only citing one of the volumes, in which case we can give the volume once in the References.
 * We only cite Vol. II so I've given that in the references and changed the cites to only give page numbers. I also added Nicholl 2008 (The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street) as an additional—and somewhat more convenient that Chambers 1930—cite for Beaumont's “To B:J”. --Xover (talk) 11:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Claremont McKenna College 2010 doesn't link because you checked while I was in the middle of a cleanup of the References which changed the assigned author (and thus broke the link from the cite). Will need to be fixed when going over the cites.
 * Fixed. We now cite to ''The Shakespeare Clinic 2010” as the assigned author. --Xover (talk) 11:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * “Wall Street Journal is a publication not a publisher, and should be italicized Fixed.” Hold yer horses! While The Wall Street Journal is a publication and not a publisher, the cite is to the work WSJ Online for whom the publisher is (the company) The Wall Street Journal. IOW, the formatting is correct (it's provided by the citation template), but one can quibble over the parameter usage of the template (i.e. one might argue that WSJ Online and The Wall Street Journal are one and the same publication).
 * Hmm. Point taken. This is very minor, but of course we should try to figure out which way is correct and fix this correctly if possible. --Alan W (talk) 03:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Publishing location is now included for all works where such can be determined, and where it makes any kind of sense (i.e. most modern works are published simultaneously all over the world; even including Oxford and Cambridge university presses, otherwise strongly associated with a particular location).
 * All web-linked works should now have access dates, unless I missed some.
 * All journals should now have publisher information (where it is available).
 * Johnuniq has fixed the abbreviated month names in retrieval dates.
 * Differing citation templates was due to me being in the middle of a cleanup run. All references should now use the appropriate citation template for the work in question.
 * All publishers, journals, and authors etc. are now wikilinked on first occurrence only.
 * There are still references not actually cited in the article. Will definitely need to go over that.
 * All done, and I've removed the following references that were not actually cited in the article:
 * All republished books (all uses of |origyear) now use “First published year”.
 * Lefranc 1918–19 is due to ref cleanup without fixing cites. Will fix on runthrough of cites.
 * Now citing “Lefranc 1918–19”.
 * Alphabetization will need to be checked.
 * Alan has fixed these. --Xover (talk) 20:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Commentary (Commentary)"—“Commentary” is both the name of the journal and the name of the publisher, so this use is correct (even if it looks awkward).
 * May 2004 now has journal name.
 * The Tennessee Law Review is published by the Tennessee Law Review Association.
 * The name of the journal is Tennessee Law Review (no “the”). Fixed.
 * does Kathman really use "antiStratfordism", or is there a space/hyphen missing?
 * Kathman 2003 uses “antiStratfordism”, and the rest of the quote verifies as well. --Xover (talk) 20:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "Commentary (Commentary)"—“Commentary” is both the name of the journal and the name of the publisher, so this use is correct (even if it looks awkward).
 * May 2004 now has journal name.
 * The Tennessee Law Review is published by the Tennessee Law Review Association.
 * The name of the journal is Tennessee Law Review (no “the”). Fixed.
 * does Kathman really use "antiStratfordism", or is there a space/hyphen missing?
 * Kathman 2003 uses “antiStratfordism”, and the rest of the quote verifies as well. --Xover (talk) 20:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to look at the remaining stuff here tomorrow, and if time allows start a runthrough of the citations. --Xover (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Borrowing this section to add a couple of points: Johnuniq (talk) 08:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The article currently has four red links, each in the References section: journal = Essays in Criticism, journal = Empirical Studies of the Arts, publisher = Baywood Publishing, journal = Literature Compass. Should these be unlinked?
 * The text "...performed at Derby's wedding banquet" has citation "Honigmann|1998|pp=150ff.". Ideally the "ff" should be changed to the actual page range (it's the only "ff").
 * I don't have Honigmann 1998 to hand and neither Google nor Amazon are being cooperative. I was able to verify that he starts his discussion on page 150, but I can't tell how far it extends. Anyone else have this work handy to check? --Xover (talk) 09:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The redlinks are deliberate. I went back and forth a bit on this, but ended up redlinking these as they should probably have articles and redlinks are not as such bad. Since we have so few elsewhere, we should, IMO, be able to allow ourselves a few hidden down in the middle of the references. --Xover (talk) 11:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Fine on the redlinks (just checking they were not accidental). Tom fixed the "ff" page range. Johnuniq (talk) 07:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Remaining issues for References
Here, as far as I can see, are the remaining issues brought up by Nikkimaria:


 * Extensive use of quotes. We will get flack for these at FAC, so we need to decide whether to keep them and stick to our guns, or nuke `em before FAC.
 * Page numbers for things like Baldwin 1944. We're missing page numbers for a bunch of cites (usually very old or very odd stuff), and this needs to be fixed.
 * Nikkimaria: «Be consistent in the use of "quoted in" versus "quoting" (and the resulting citation order)» Not checked, but probably needs fixing.
 * Nikkimaria: «Another nitpick, but be consistent whether there is or is not a space between the colon and the quotation mark in footnotes where you quote the source»
 * It's more than just consistency: the space should be there; if it's not, that's an error. I could find only one of these, and I fixed it. --Alan W (talk) 05:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Nikkimaria: «Check for doubled periods caused by citation templates» I'm not quite sure what's intended here. But whatever is meant we need to decide how to deal with it and do so consistently.
 * I knew what she meant. If you are still unclear, just generate the diff, and you'll see. --Alan W (talk) 05:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Vickers 2006 lacks a supplement number (|issue in the template). I've been unable to find the number since it's not in the summary version (public access) and the archives (which give bib details without a subscription) only go up to 2005. Anyone with TLS subscriber access able to look this up?
 * Tom has fixed this. --Xover (talk) 09:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Honigmann 1998 needs the proper page number or page range.
 * And before I'd even posted this Tom had added the right page range. :-) --Xover (talk) 21:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Citation needed tag in article, cf..
 * I cited this to Kathman's article in The Elizabethan Review, but since it was a pain to find the bib info I copped out and cited the copy on the Kathman/Ross web site instead. --Xover (talk) 09:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The correct publisher to use for Alter 2010 (is WSJ Online strictly the same publication as The Wall Street journal?).

I think that actually covers it for the references. --Xover (talk) 21:11, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, no. I just found something else, another unfortunate side effect of using this kind of reference template. In cases where a range of pages in a book is given, you get this, e.g.: "In Nolen, Stephanie. Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait. Free Press. pp. 103–25." We have to decide whether this should read: "Free Press, pp. 103–25." or else "Free Press. Pp. 103–25." I don't think that the full stop followed by a lowercase letter is acceptable. It certainly looks bad to me. The trouble with this kind of template is that solutions to such problems often have to be kludges, which is what I did to get those "doubled periods" to go away. There are several of these. --Alan W (talk) 05:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I just looked more closely, and, unfortunately, given the nature of the beast, I can't see a way to fix this problem. We enter "pages=103–25", e.g., in the template, and the program that interprets this renders it as "Free Press [or whatever publisher]. pp. 103–25." Of course we don't want to switch to another kind of referencing at this late stage, and so we might just have to live with this. I think it looks bad, but I don't know what we can do about it. --Alan W (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The docs at Template:Cite book have several examples where "Publisher. pp." occurs, and Template talk:Cite book has some discussions regarding the fact that people sometimes have to omit the period after an author's initial to avoid a double period. In both cases, the lowercase "pp" is not mentioned as a problem. I don't think we should worry about it—it's better to follow the standard, even if it produces a less than optimum result (and the lowercase "pp" is ok). Johnuniq (talk) 09:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. Problems with the formatting—unless particularly egregious—caused by citation templates should be fixed in the template rather than worked around in the article. One reason for this is that the templates emit metadata (data that can be interpreted by computers), so that by omitting the full-stop here we're actually feeding incorrect data to it. We should make sure our data is semantically correct and let the templates worry about the formatting. Another reason is that while the formatting may be suboptimal or downright wrong now, once this is fixed in the template it will fix the problem in all articles that use them without manual intervention from editors. If, on the other hand, we put incorrect data into the template to work around this issue, once the template is fixed the formatting will silently and automatically become wrong again at some unpredictable point in the future. This goes for both doubled full-stops and the lower-case “pp”. We also need to keep in mind that the primary concern here for FAC is consistency. It doesn't really matter what our formatting for citations is so long as it is internally consistent and consistently applied. Nikkimaria's review (as will all other FAC reviewers' be) is deliberately nitpicky—because that's the best way to identify and fix problems, and make the article as good as it can be—but ultimately these kinds of things boil down to what may be termed “reviewer preference” (for lack of a better description). And while we should bend over backwards to address all the concerns raised—because however personal, Nikkimaria's (for example) “reviewer preference” is founded on long experience and much discussion on numerous FACs and articles and represents the best available wisdom of the project on this issue—we do not in fact have to blindly make all changes suggested by the reviewers' comments. Recall that we're now down to arguing about single instances of punctuation here: the issue is material, but not critical, and no FAC will be failed on this basis alone. The FAC reviewers (wolves! wolves, I tell you!) have of necessity quite thick skin: you are allowed to disagree with them (politely and constructively, mind!) and they won't oppose a nomination over a single issue of overall minor importance. Scary and fearsome though they may be, they're still just editors like you and me (hey, that rhymed). --Xover (talk) 10:25, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that Nikkimaria is quite right to be nitpicky. And while we do not have to follow all of her suggestions (this actually was not one of them, but a problem I found myself), if some formatting looks clearly bad by typical editorial standards, I think we should try to fix it, within reasonable bounds. On the other hand, going too crazy over this, and trying to implement bizarre workarounds, would be, I agree, far more than is desirable now. I thought the observation worth making, but your points are good ones, Xover and Johnuniq, and I agree that unless a standard method of working within the template can be found, it is probably best to leave this alone right now. --Alan W (talk) 03:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I looked more closely at Template:Cite book. There is a way to fine-tune the formatting of these references within the accepted language of the template. The result is still not perfect, but I have been able to change "Publisher. pp." to "Publisher, pp." I think it is an improvement (to me, "Publisher. pp." looks very bad). Naturally, if the consensus is against keeping this change, I will be happy to revert. --Alan W (talk) 04:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Forgot to mention that I found another (minor) problem: "Tudor Aristocrats and the Mythical "Stigma of Print"". Having double quotes within double quotes also looks very bad in my opinion. I have changed this to "Tudor Aristocrats and the Mythical 'Stigma of Print'". There is at least one other instance of the doubling of double quotes that I fixed as well. --Alan W (talk) 05:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, good catch. I corrected all the titles to be identical to the original published sources—there were quite a few arbitrary differences—but didn't go after to see if this lead to any such problems as you here describe. I believe (but would have to check to be sure) that the MoS guidelines here suggest that we alter the quotation marks (ugh. I just checked, and while the preceding is correct, it makes some other rather unsavory suggestions in that section as well). In fact, We may need to check the entire article for quotation mark usage (I know I tend to type typographer's quotes by mistake, and the MoS wants straight quotes). This latter I think is probably a job for John or myself (who both have efficient semi-automated tools for making such changes on an entire article), but we'd probably best try to identify whether there are any edge cases first. --Xover (talk) 09:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * (re punctuation in cites) Ah, but you see, this is exactly the sort of thing I warned against above. You've now altered the name of the authors to “Stephanie<b style="color: red">.</b> Nolen” and “Jonathan<b style="color: red">.</b> Bate”, and the page number range is now no longer numerical: “103–25<b style="color: red">.</b>”. That is, you've fixed the current visual presentation of it, but you've made the underlying data incorrect. --Xover (talk) 09:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying you were wrong. As I said, even with the changes, the entries are far from perfect. And in the case of those entries you have pointed out, I will now, taking full responsibility for my experiment, go back in and see if I can fix those problems. "Jonathan. Bate" bothers me as much as it does you, you can be sure. Probably something can be done about that. We certainly do not want the data to be incorrect. I agree 100%. --Alan W (talk) 03:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You have me puzzled, Xover. I cannot find any "Stephanie. Nolen" or "Jonathan. Bate" in the References as viewed on the article page. Of course they might appear odd within the templates as viewed on the Editing page. But it's supposed to be like that. What I did was perfectly legitimate. The template allows for the use of a "separator" keyword with an empty value to signify to the interpreting program that punctuation for this entry will be entered manually. That is what the "separator" keyword exists for, to override the default separator punctuation. It's just another, and probably little-used, but still not incorrect, use of the template language. This does not make the underlying data incorrect at all. The "data" is "Bate" and "Jonathan". The period/full stop on the page as viewed is not conceptually part of the original data any more than it was when done the original way. No more are the literal " " part of the data, they are just part of the formatting to create Wikilinks. The template necessarily includes internal formatting devices, and I have just opted to enter some of them manually in the instances I've changed. If we must have only the most literal data in the template entries, then we shouldn't have " [[Cambridge University Press " either. After all, the square brackets are not part of the name of the publisher.


 * Having said all that, I will add that if the consensus here turns out to be that the way the References looked originally is still preferable, there is still plenty of time to revert before FAR. And I will take the trouble to do it carefully myself, if that is really what is preferred. --Alan W (talk) 04:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe that Xover is making the point that in the wikitext is a citation which includes "editor-first = Stephanie." (with the period as part of the first name of an editor). People do not see that period as data (it displays as text in the article), but if the citations were extracted by some hypothetical system for use elsewhere, the data extracted would include punctuation. Furthermore, if someone decides to "fix" the citation template, the workarounds of including punctuation in the data would persist and may cause problems with the fixed template. I am unaware of any such hypothetical system, but I am sympathetic to Xover's argument: it is not really our problem if the standard template produces some punctuation which is suboptimal; including workarounds like this makes the citations a little clumsy and fragile (future editors will wonder why some names end with a period, and someone will "fix" it by removing the period, or by adding periods to all the names). Johnuniq (talk) 06:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Despite what I've said above, I am in a sense also "on the fence", Johnuniq. This is not a perfect solution, but is there really one? I do see the point. Ideally, we would not have to have the period actually present in that field in the template. But I will also note the fixing of another thing Nikkimaria pointed to: "Check for doubled periods caused by citation templates". This also necessitated monkeying around with the raw "data" in the templates to avoid something like "Smith, John.." appearing in the References. Unfortunately, these computer programs are far from perfect, and sometimes compromises are necessary. We have already had to make some compromises. I believe it is most important to conform to generally accepted bibliographical practices. I also firmly believe that the programs used in rendering these Wikipedia pages, like all computer programs, are tools for practical use, often imperfect ones, and we shouldn't let ourselves be enslaved by them. We need to maintain some perspective. We don't want this to become a case of, "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". --Alan W (talk) 06:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You make good points, and I might now be leaning in your direction. It's certainly true that the cleanups you have performed have added up to a major improvement. Let's see if there are other thoughts. Johnuniq (talk) 07:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, Alan, no; I did not mean to imply that you'd done something “wrong” (and my apologies if I expressed myself poorly!). If this was a question with only two answers (“right” and “wrong” ways to do it) we wouldn't be debating the best way, we'd just be doing it the right way. All your points above are valid (and thus “right”), and as John says they are persuasive; and we may end up weighing those points most heavily. However, and please forgive me for going into interminable technical detail here, there are a separate set of concerns that also bear on this issue. The “article” that you see in your web browser exists—technically—in several different stages or levels. There is the WikiCode that you edit (possibly via the WYSIWYG rich-text editor) that is mostly just text, but which also has some minimal markup code that describes the text (i.e. “This is a link. This here is a heading. etc.”). A part of this WikiCode is the template system; and templates are pre-processed using a macro processor that emits WikiCode. For instance, some of the parameters in the template are emitted with  surrounding them so that it is eventually displayed as italic'' text. This WikiCode is what is stored in the Wikipedia database. When you request a page on Wikipedia this WikiCode is processed by the Mediawiki software and emitted to your web browser as HTML code (like any other web page), which your web browser interprets and displays to you with all the normal formatting, active links, etc. So… What you've done is “fool” this chain of events so that in that final step—the display to the user in the web browser—the citations look right. In other words, you've employed some technical trickery that makes the final appearance of the data correct. However, and this is the crucial part, in the transformation from WikiCode to HTML there is more happening than meets the eye (literally). In addition to producing the HTML code that your browser renders as italic titles and boldface volume numbers etc., the WikiCode processor also generates what is known as COinS metadata. This is data structured in a way that makes it possible for an automated system (i.e. a computer) to interpret it, but that is invisible for users in a normal web browser. The data is possible to extract using software such as Reference Manager, Zotero, or citeulike.org; and enables such things as JSTOR's “Most cited” lists only for Wikipedia. There is a similar thing going on with “Persondata” (for biographical articles, the name date of birth, date of death, etc. are embedded in the article as invisible metadata) and there is an extension you can turn on in Wikipedia that will display this data to you in articles that have it (the display looks vaguely like a typical infobox). The pervasive existence of such data is the only way short of Strong AI that we can achieve intelligent tools for querying, extracting, and processing data on the web. The distinction is one of “Say what it is” rather than “Say what it looks like”: if you tell a computer that “This text is italic” it's still no wiser, even if a human being can infer from context and prior experience that it's probably a journal title; if you tell it “This is a journal title, that's the author's last name, that's his first name” then it can decide dynamically how to display it as well as let you search for books authored by Chambers distinctly from a journal with Chambers in its title. Or narrow a search to only apply to hits between two specific dates. Or other such semantic features that we would expect from, say, JSTOR or arXiv, but which are not currently (yet) available on Wikipedia. Anyways, the relevance of the above to the current issue is this: by jigging the template such that the citation looks right in the browser, the metadata has become incorrect. The name is now not “Jonathan” but “Jonathan<b style="color: red">.</b>” (as far as a computer is concerned), and a computer can't distinguish between the period in that and the period in, say, “E. R. C.” (i.e. Brinkworth) or “T. W.” (i.e. Baldwin). It can guess, but computers are notoriously bad guessers (humans, on the other hand, are exceptionally good guessers). The reason I brought up whether we need to implement every suggestion made by the FAC reviewers is this: if we explain to them that the problem of initial capitals or doubled periods are caused by limitations of the citation template, they will accept that and won't hold up the FAC over such a minor issue (and they've likely also seen this kind of issue before). Thus we can have correct metadata without jeopardizing the FAC, at the cost of some—strictly speaking minor—niggles with the display of the citation in the article. Hence the issue then becomes: do we think this display issue outweighs the other concerns that are caused by the workarounds. And here is the point on which reasonable men may (and do) disagree. --Xover (talk) 09:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Xover (and no offense taken or anything like that; I think of this as a friendly debate), for pointing out the connection of Wikipedia bibliographical material to various projects to extract searchable data from these pages, and to COinS metadata, of which I was not aware. In my current employment, I work with computer technology every day, and one thing I know is how little I know. So I am always glad to learn more. I am certainly quite aware, probably more than most, of the difference between "Jonathan" and "Jonathan." to a computer program that parses such data, and have written such programs myself (not, to be sure, at the advanced level required for such projects as those you mention; I'm saying this so you're aware that I'm not entirely ignorant of such things). And therein lies a dilemma, and I'm torn between the two sides and as much "on the fence" as Johnuniq. I also have strong background in editorial work, as well as cataloguing of reference materials. And it really goes against the grain with me to see such things as "Jones, Susan M.." and "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 75–9." There is no easy solution to this problem. One problem is most likely that the programmers of the code that parses these templates are not aware of all the uses to which it is being put, or they would have found ways around these problems, and punctuation would be correct while metadata is being preserved for the search engines. But this code has probably not yet advanced to that point, so we have to take what we can get.


 * Whatever is decided—and I certainly welcome more opinions on this matter—I would remind everyone that if we do opt for clean preservation of the metadata, that means that we will have to revert to templates that display many entries as "Jones, Susan M.." as well as "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 75–9." There is no point in keeping "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich" clean while having "Jones, Susan M" along with, elsewhere, "Johnson, Charles P.". I think that consistency is important—either consistency among entries as viewed, or consistency in keeping the metadata clean. I could go on about this, as it has engaged skills I've acquired through many issues of this kind wrestled with in as many as three of my numerous careers. But this is quite enough for now. :-) --Alan W (talk) 04:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm on the side that looks the best for readers. I'm sure that somewhere along the line a program will be written that solves all these problems for machine readers and people readers simultaneously, but until then I think our primary concern should be for those who turn to Wikipedia for information about a topic rather than for indexing information. Just my 2p. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Publisher of WSJ Online
(Breaking this out into its own section.) How to deal with the publisher of Alter 2010 is an interesting question, albeit far from our most important issue. I have a couple of further thoughts on this. First, I cannot find any good examples in Wikipedia showing exactly the kind of reference we have here for an online publication. However, WP:Citing_sources does not stipulate the need for a publisher at all for a web page. If we do include the publisher, who in fact is the publisher? In a loose sense we could say it's The Wall Street Journal. But, really, that publication is published by Dow-Jones and Company, Inc. Another observation is that WSJ Online, on the page with the Alter article, identifies itself as WSJ.com. Probably, however, that article did appear in the printed Wall Street Journal for April 9, 2010 (and the page also identifies itself as The Wall Street Journal), so there is some connection. What about leaving out the publisher as publisher but identifying the publication as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ Online)? That way we will avoid having readers wonder, What the heck is WSJ? The Wall Street Journal has instant recognizability. And yet we will also be clarifying that this reference was retrieved from the Web version on the retrieval date given. --Alan W (talk) 22:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * While the guideline may not explicitly require a publisher for a web page, I can tell you from experience that FAC does require it - minimum at FAC for webpages is URL, title, publisher and retrieval date. FWIW. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:17, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feeback on this, Nikkimaria. But what I am wondering is, who the heck is the publisher? Really, as I said, it's Dow-Jones. But would it make more sense to give The Wall Street Journal? If this is required for FAs, then can you point to some precedent, so we can see what the general practice is in cases like this? --Alan W (talk) 03:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * On the current FAC page, the most relevant thing I see is "Site publisher names should be given rather than website names", but not much beyond that. I'll look around for a similar case to the one here. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'd be interested to see what you find. This might be relatively uncharted territory. Maybe we'll be breaking new ground and set a precedent ourselves. Wikipedia might be ten years old, but that doesn't mean that all the best ways of doing things have yet been thoroughly worked out. --Alan W (talk) 04:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Whoops. I added the publisher before reading this. I'll leave it there until somebody decides what's right. Personally as long as there's something there that's not wrong I'm all right with it. Dow Jones & Company is the WSJ pub, and WSJ puts their content online, so it's not wrong. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Are we sure Dow is the publisher? It is the owner, certainly, but that's not necessarily the same as the publisher. It is common for newspapers to be published by a separate legal entity of the same name as the publication (i.e. the paper The Wall Street Journal is published by a legal entity named “The Wall Street Journal”, or the journal Commentary that is published by a legal entity named “Commentary”). In this instance I suspect the legal entity named “The Wall Street Journal” publishes the printed-on-dead-trees newspaper The Wall Street Journal as well as the electronic-news-site WSJ Online. WSJ Online is definitely not the same as The Wall Street Journal (the content and editorial policies are different). My conclusion is that in this case, the work is “WSJ Online” and the publisher is The Wall Street Journal. You may, of course, disagree. :-) --Xover (talk) 09:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe you're making a distinction without a difference. No one reading the cite would be confused about this. On all the books we've cited from Google Books, should we add Google as the publisher? My guess is no. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll freely admit we're now into staggering levels of nitpickery here, but in your example Google is clearly not the publisher of the work any more than JSTOR is the publisher for any of the articles found there. The work has a set of editorial policies etc.—which are often more lax and geared towards quick updates on the online editions of well known papers—and it has a publisher which takes responsibility of the published work (and is who takes the summons when somebody sues the paper). But in this specific instance I just now discover that you're actually entirely correct: when I finally got around to checking up it turns out Dow Jones is the publisher in the sense I refer to above (I had them pegged only as an investment / financial analyst firm, but they actually started as a publisher). That leaves only whether to cite it as WSJ Online or The Wall Street Journal, which, while I prefer the former, is a bit too esoteric for even me to have strong opinions on. :-) --Xover (talk) 18:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well when we cite TLS or NYTimes with a link we don't call them anything other than Times Literary Supplement and New York Times, so I vote for Wall Street Journal. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:24, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It is staggeringly simple to wikilink the publication, either as The Wall Street Journal or as The Wall Street Journal. One can add WSJOnline for further clarity. If an occasional reader wants to know the publisher, editor, circulation, and other details, it is then just a click away. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Christopher Marlowe 2
Recent edits in the Christopher Marlowe section need consideration.

This text:
 * The Marlovian theory asserts that his death on 30 May 1593 was faked, and that this deception allowed him to become the ghost writer of the Shakespeare canon.

was changed to
 * The Marlovian theory is based on the argument that his documented death on 30 May 1593 was most probably a fake, and that this deception necessarily resulted in his becoming the ghost writer of the Shakespeare canon.

This paragraph was added:
 * However, the various reasons offered by Marlovians since 1955 for believing that this is indeed what happened have been almost entirely ignored by their opponents who have simply stated, for example, that the suggestion that Marlowe's death was faked is "no trail at all", or that the claims for "Bacon and Oxford can be taken as representative" so that it is found unnecessary to deal with the case in detail.

Re "death": As a minimum, the wording needs simplification and clarification: "was probably faked" might do. The deception did not result in ghost writing—a faked death would require that any authorship be as a ghost writer, but it would be safer and simpler to not write at all, so authorship was not a "result".


 * Of course you are right, in trying to indicate that the only way in which he would have been able to continue writing would have had to be pseudonymously, I succeeded only in producing rubbish. Thanks! How about "The Marlovian theory is based on the argument that his documented death on 30 May 1593 was probably faked, and that Shakespeare was chosen as the necessary 'front' behind whom he would be able to continue his highly successful playwriting."

Re "ignored by their opponents": This para needs reworking as it makes an unverifiable claim (that opponents have ignored various reasons), and it uses cherry-picked items to suggest that objections to Marlowe's authorship are inconsequential. To use this text, we would need a reliable source stating that scholars have made no other objections. Johnuniq (talk) 07:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree, I was going to comment on this section. The last para is not acceptable I think. What also puzzled me is the reference (twice) to 1955.  What great event took place in 1955?! OK, I see the answer is there if you search the rest of the article, but it reads rather oddly as it is now.  Poujeaux (talk) 09:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)


 * This is so frustrating. Those of us (including Tom and Nishidani) who have been scouring the records desperately trying to find salient comments by 'reliable sources' on anything other than Hoffman's book of over half a century ago know very well that this is true, but we aren't allowed to say so. The expression 'cherry-picking' implies that I have deliberately chosen these examples from among an abundant crop of other possibilities. Please tell us who you have in mind as it will make our job so much easier! I think that this is a very relevant piece of information, given the constraints under which we are working, but it's catch-22 isn't it?. We can't refer to the lack of reliably sourced comments because of the lack of reliably sourced comments.


 * An illustration. My own essay Marlowe's Sudden and Fearful End explains in excruciating detail why I claim that the most logical explanation for what happened at Deptford on 30 May 1593 was that they were there to fake Marlowe's death. It appeared in the Marlowe Society's research journal as well as being on my website, and was described by both the Society's Research Officer and its Chairman (neither of whom in fact believes that Marlowe wrote 'Shakespeare') at their AGM as 'the last word' on the event. Park Honan described it (privately) to me as 'brilliant', and cited it in his Marlowe biography. Much of it reappeared in my Hoffman and the Authorship, an essay which jointly won the prestigious Hoffman prize for 'a distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe' in 2007 and is also available on-line. Yet I know for a fact that not a single article has been produced (nor anything in a book) by a 'reliable source' attempting to refute anything I said in either article, or someone would have pointed it out to me by now. But I am not allowed to say so. As far I can see, the RS tail of Wikipedia policy, as interpreted here, is being allowed to wag the NPOV dog, which I had thought was supposed to be paramount. Peter Farey (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I fully understand your frustration, Peter. The problem is indeed technical, and in no way reflects upon the whims of random editors. Loosen RS on topics like this and you enact an open sesame season for all sorts of wild sourcing, as I think you yourself would have noticed here over the years. One just has to exercise patience, and wait for an RS (the Phd you mentioned earlier, for example) to paraphrase your central points. I would imagine that this is not as dilatory a prospect as it might appear. There are several indications that there will be an upsurge in commentary on the SAQ later this year (Emmerich). Shapiro, if I recall correctly, thinks the Marlovian hour may well return, given that the currently most popular candidate hasn't a leg to stand on, and persists as a cultural phenomenon for a variety of reasons unconnected with either evidence, reasonable inference or strong hypotheticals. The Marlovian theory has a seminal element in its favour lacking in all the other candidates, namely, the aesthetic dimension: the fluency of the dramatic mise en scène and mastery of the mighty line one would expect in a Shakespearean candidate. I concur with Honan's judgement re your paper. I still think however Elliott and Valenza's statistical work sinks the argument.


 * Yes, I do understand, and was really only using this (yet again) as an opportunity to vent my frustration that a genuinely informed discussion of what most of us these days tend to believe and why we believe it seems to be impossible. Thanks for the kind words! As for Elliott and Valenza, we must have chat about them some time, particular concerning whether they managed to eliminate any possible effect of Shakespeare's canon having, according to them, been written almost entirely after Marlowe's! Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * For the moment I suggest:-
 * "Mainstream scholarship has rarely engaged with the theory, though some authorities dismiss the idea his death was faked as 'no trail at all', or hold that it is unnecessary to refute it since the analogous claims for 'Bacon and Oxford can be taken as representative'."
 * One could object that 'Mainstream scholarship has rarely engaged with the theory' lacks an RS citation, of course. But those of us who have read widely in the area would reply that this is self-evident.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that looks fine to me, although I note your later recommendation and go along with it. I take Paul's point below about "no trail at all", which came right at the end of an Appendix called "False Trails". Nicholl's words are worth quoting. "Another theory goes something like this. Marlowe did not die at Deptford. The affray was a blind: the body that was viewed by the coroner's jury was someone else's. Marlowe was spirited out of the country, and thereafter dedicated his life to writing plays. These plays went out under the nom de plume of 'William Shakespeare'. They contain many acrostics and anagrams that prove they are Marlowe's, but people still go on thinking they are by Shakespeare. This is no kind of trail at all." It is also worth mentioning that this reappeared in his revised edition after he had read my Sudden End essay and, whilst not agreeing with my conclusion, acknowledged that I had made a "strong case" for the faked death scenario, which as presented had nothing to do with the authorship question. Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Park Honan's citation of Peter's essay is as follows "Peter Farey, looking into Middlesex records for 1589-92 finds six cases of death within the verge in which not even the Coroner of the Verge was involved." That's all he says. There is nothing in the book that suggests he endores the argument in the essay at all. What he said privately may be interpreted in many ways, butr we can't use it here anyway.


 * Well there is a little more than that, since he acknowledges my help (p.vii) and provided the URL for the Sudden End essay (p.403) related to his mention of "within the verge" and the illegality of the inquest (p.355) all of which he got from me. The point is therefore not that he endorses the theory (which he certainly doesn't, as he specifically indicates on p.355) or that we should 'use' his comment, but that clearly regards me as a reliable source of information where this is concerned. Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the last paragraph as it stands become advocacy rather than description. I prefer Nishidani's reading, but I think the "no trail at all" phrase is confusing. The phrasing is odd: "some authorities dismiss the idea his death was faked as "no trail at all",". Can an "idea" be a "trail"? The phrase "some authorities" implies that more than one writer has used this exact phrase, not just Nicholl. I don't like the last part of the sentence, which could equally be added to the Derby section. These words do not apply to Marlowe uniquely, but to all other candidates. And once more this just is one individual explaining his particular choices. Derby gets very short shrift in the book. As author of the Derbyite theory page, I feel I am a sort of Honorary Derbyite, so I am rather miffed by the fact that his glory days are glossed over by Shapiro. Also, it's misleading to imply that Strats have somehow evaded the Marlovian position. Marlowe only became a notable candidate after 1955. Gibson devotes a lot of space to Marlovian arguments in The Shakespeare Claimants in 1962. By the '80s anti-Stratfordianism is beginning to be equated with Oxfordianism, and so many recent books only address Oxfordian arguments and the generic claims that Shakespeare can be somehow excluded as author. Paul B (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Reading that last paragraph again, it's kind of a trainwreck. But, I wonder if any of it is necessary. If we just cut that final paragraph from the Marlowe summary, would the article suffer? Kaiguy (talk) 02:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * @Peter Farey: Just to clarify, my comments were focused on preparing the article for consideration as a Featured Article where strict interpretation of policies should be expected (I noticed the warm welcome you received above, and am not claiming any defect other than the policy problem). The text can always be tweaked in the future, and the place to start is probably at Marlovian theory. At the moment I think we should follow the suggestion by Kaiguy (possibly supported by Paul B's comment), and remove the last paragraph. My main reason for removal would be that this summary should simply state the case for the candidate (as the other summaries do), without commentary on failings in responses to the candidature. A secondary reason is that I hope that the text in the article will become stable very soon because a key requirement for a Featured Article is that editors have not recently been adding new text and then disagreeing over its wording (that is, I am pretty confident there is no easy way to resolve this issue while following Wikipedia's principles, so we might take another week or more to find some acceptable text—and that text would not be particularly helpful because it would essentially be a complaint rather than support for Marlowe's candidacy). Johnuniq (talk) 03:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think Johnuniq's point, following Paul and Kaiguy's notes, suggests the appropriate solution for the moment. The controversial addition is best worked out on the Marlovian page. What we have, unfortunately, will have to be sourced to Gibson's text, which is old, but as Paul reminds us, dealt with the topic quite extensively when it was first broached. The section is linked to the Marlovian page, and there the text is not encumbered by the rigorously austere criteria of a wiki article aspiring to FA level. So Peter's points can be retained there, readily studied by any reader who wishes for detail of this kind, until perhaps an RS is forthcoming which might permit us to include the point here. I hope we can prevail on your notable amenity here, Peter, to accept the logic of, if not endorse, this move as one dictated by the necessities of wiki protocols. Nishidani (talk) 12:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's OK. But which bit still has to be sourced to Gibson? Peter Farey (talk) 12:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I read Gibson on line almost a year ago, but Tom had the book. Overnight I recalled however that Tom's approach was to present the arguments for candidacy without rebuttal, or reference to what mainstream scholarship argues. A quick glance over the other candidates will confirm that this policy has been adhered to. The additional point you added, and now removed, as per talk consensus, introduces a complaint that mainstream scholars ignore or dismiss the arguments, creating a kind of dissonance with the way the other three candidates' arguments have been described. By removing it, the text falls into the neutral descriptive framework Tom argued for.
 * You do still have a point about equal weight, Peter. Marlowe has less text that Bacon and Oxford, though now more favoured than Bacon. This is because a huge volume of literature exists for the former two, and academics have spent more time on describing it, and as hermeneutic sutlers drudging in the slicky slipstream of orthodoxy's learned cohorts, we've little choice but to trade in its currency. In that sense, perhaps, since Gibson does handle the theory at some length, I was minded to think we might eke out a little more from that source, in order to secure more of an appearance of equal representation, until the Phd you mentioned, and other books in the future, become available. I've only read Gibson's chapter in part, online. Tom has a copy of that, (and everything imaginable on this argument!), and I'm sure, when he gets back, he'll review our discussion and pitch in. Nishidani (talk) 12:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

@Peter Farey: I'll leave Nishidani to answer about sourcing to Gibson (might have been about the Marlovian theory article?). I don't think anything more need happen in this article at the moment. Thanks for removing that paragraph. I think the section is better when it is short, and more details should be at the main article. At one time, Tom wanted to strip each of the candidate sections down to something very short. I don't think that will happen at this stage, but I can see the argument to support that, and I'm thinking that later (in a couple of months) it might be useful to think about pruning each candidate section to about the current length of the Marlowe section (but let's not talk further about that now). Johnuniq (talk) 07:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * @Nishidani. Thank you, and if Gibson can indeed furnish us with some excuse for including those countless Marlovian arguments presented since he wrote his book, I'll be both surprised and delighted. Sadly, however, the fact is that there has been a disappointing reluctance in the academic world to refute or even read any Marlovian argument since Hoffman's.
 * Churchill necessarily had only Hoffman to go on.
 * Gibson could also attack only Hoffman, whilst completely misunderstanding (misrepresenting?) what Mendenhall, one of Hoffman's prime witnesses, had said.
 * Schoenbaum, surprisingly ignorant of just when Marlowe is alleged to have died, also restricted himself to Hoffman's arguments.
 * Jonathan Bate wrote a disgacefully inadequate review of Wraight's The Story that the Sonnets Tell for the Telegraph, which quite clearly showed that he hadn't even read it. And in his book The Genius of Shakespeare, based upon the essay he wrote as that year's prize-winner of the Calvin Hoffman (hypocritical or what?) prize, his only complaint was that Wraight's book was "coded autobiography", which "Elizabethans did not write", completely ignoring her actual claim that they were letters-in-verse which are something quite different. That he also referred to Marlowe's "participation in Sir Thomas (sic!) Walsingham's secret service" may also give us some cause for concern.
 * Who next? (ignoring Matus, whom I confess to not having read). Stanley Wells answers the Marlovian argument that—based upon all the evidence available—Marlowe's death was almost certainly faked, and that this makes it quite possible for him to have written 'Shakespeare', with the bald statement "What is perfectly clear is that he died". That it is, as he puts it, "one of the best recorded episodes in English literary history" doesn't prompt him to wonder, as we would, just why that might have been so.
 * And what of Shapiro? According to him, Bacon and Oxford are "representative" of all anti-Stratfordian argument. What crap - equalled only by his extraordinary claim that Calvin Hoffman obtained "permission to open the grave of Elizabethan spymaster Sir Francis (sic!) Walsingham", a claim which could have been made only by someone who who hadn't the slightest clue about what the Marlovian argument actually is.
 * This is of course just for the archive. That the feet of one's 'reliable sources' might actually be earthen must be of no relevance right now! :o) Peter Farey (talk) 17:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It's pretty much a given that Anti-Stratfordians rail against academics for misrepresenting or ignoring them, but Peter, there's no point in it here. Please remember that this article is only supposed to provide a short summary of the main positions. It couldn't include the "countless Marlovian arguments presented since he [Gibson] wrote his book" even if there were another academic source that dealt with them, anymore than we can include all the countless new Oxfordian arguments that are created constantly, or the countless new "true authors" like John Florio, recently the subject of a book. We have to be selective. You have a whole article to be more expansive. BTW, Scott McCrea's 2005 book The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question does discuss Marlovian claims. I couldn't say how accurately it represents the true modern Marlovian consensus . Paul B (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Peter, if post-Hoffman Marlovian arguments are neglected on wikipedia, there are only two sources for blame. Wikipedia's rules, and the failure of Marlovians (this applies generally to anti-Stratfordians) to simply sit down and earn a Phd in (Elizabethan) history. Afraid that such a topic might be the ruin of one's career? No problem, one simply writes (and the book is needed) a Phd neutrally examining the history of Marlovian theory. Several scholars who started from Oxfordian premises did things like this, such as Steven May and Ward Elliott. I am somnewhat flustered by this steadfast reluctance to adopt, provisorily, the system's rules. In any number of disciplines I am fairly familiar with on an academic basis, dissident opinions challenging a mainstream model, while using mainstream techniques, exist. The fundamental weakness of all heterodox analysts is that they refuse to understand the groundrules of the discipline whose results they desire to contest. They wish to box, while sneering at the Marquis of Queensbury rules. They would play cricket, but think it unfair that rules exist disallowing you to throw six bouncers and over.
 * Matus has nothing to say on the matter. A conflict in reports of a murder does not mean the murder of the victim, as designated in the reports, never took place. One could as equally say that the wording of the verdict was fixed, not to cover the ostensible victim's escape, but to cover any number of problematical consequences. As to Shapiro, what he says (p.229 Brit ed.) faithfully repeats Wadsworth's contemporary reportage (p.153), save for the fact that he lapses, in speaking of Sir Thomas Walsingham's tomb as that of his brother Sir Francis, who had of course died 3 years before Marlowe, and confusing the former with the spymaster who was his brother. Even Homer nods, abetted sometimes by Titivillus (as when Schoenbaum is made to have written 20th for the 30th of May, 1593). I don't know why people are upset about this. Use misprints or lapses of memory here and there to invalidate works while ignoring the testimony to the contrary of hundreds of precisely documented pages is any man's game, if he wish to play it. But the central detail, that Hoffman got permission to open Sir Thomas's tomb, is secure. As with Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus, very impressive countertheories can be built up on any historical set of evidences, if you presume all the historical data have been tampered with. History as we are given it in the archives becomes fodder for the palimpsestic scrivener. Your best bet is to wait for the Phd. that is in the works, (Unlike Oxfordians, who seem condemned to tantalic labour under that angst which Pascal describes when he writes: Il faut une infinie patience pour attendre toujours ce qui n'arrive jamais) and I for one, and I'm sure several here, will be happy to plead for it as an RS on these issues when it is approved and published.Nishidani (talk) 11:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Paul and Nishidani. Yes, I do understand all of this, which was why I said it was "just for the archive" and added that smiley at the end. 'Railing' isn't really my style, you know, as Tom - with whom I have been quite amicably exchanging this sort of stuff for a dozen years or more - can probably confirm. Nor am I reluctant to adopt the system's rules (whilst reserving the right to express my feelings about them) as I would have hoped my actions here have demonstrated. Sorry, but at 72 I don't think I'll take up the recommended PhD route, but thanks for reminding me of Scott McRea, as I haven't read his book and really should. Peter Farey (talk) 12:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Hyphens in ISBNs
We decided to remove all hyphens from ISBNs because some FAC reviewers had found inconsistencies in appearance. I just noticed something which I am recording here for consideration. at Charles Darwin was by User:RjwilmsiBot and it inserted hyphens into each ISBN. The bot approval page is here, and one day the bot will notice this page and insert hyphens into each ISBN (checking the bot's contribs shows it is doing lots of articles). Johnuniq (talk) 04:12, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * JHFC! What kind of reviewers make a big deal out of ISBN appearances? Have they forgotten the main purpose of an encyclopedia? Tom Reedy (talk) 04:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Easy, Tom. No reviewer (well, none that I know of, at least) would make a big deal of ISBN appearance - if anything, it'll be a single bullet point on a list like the one I made on reference formatting (and I didn't even notice the hyphenation). Deal with the larger-scale issues, and if you take this article to FAC and somebody complains about ISBN hyphenation I volunteer to personally fix it. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's easy enough to get consistency by always inserting the hyphens, and putting them in the right place – even a bot can do it – and it's easier on the eye than 13 consecutive digits. What was the reviewer's issue?  Kanguole 18:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not know, and am happy either way, although my inclination is to follow whatever Xover says! On the other hand, the bot is inserting dashes at the rate of about five articles per minute, and ISBNs are generally shown with hyphens, so I could also be persuaded to insert them. I believe the only discussion here is in archive 21 where Xover said "As an example, in one of our FACs, the reviewers seized on inconsistent placement of dashes within ISBN numbers (which will always be inconsistent as ISBNs are of different lengths and conventions among publishers vary), so the only way to make them completely consistent is to remove the dashes entirely." Johnuniq (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I suggest we do not cater to the ignorance of one reviewer. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:15, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Tom, I suggest you avoid referring to as ignorance those concerns of which you are ignorant (if I can torture the grammar so far to make the point). As Nikkimaria says, it was one bullet point among several comments in a review years ago, and the thrust of it was that they need to be consistently formatted within the article. If you look at the bot approval discussion linked above (and WP:ISBN) you'll see that the underlying issue is deceptively complex (Kanguole: the bot does it by looking up dash placement on WorldCat's API; it may be computationally simple in the strict sense, but not in the sense you imply above). However, the issue for this article is quite simple: if we leave off the hyphens in ISBNs we'll be consistent, and won't have to deal with that at FAC, and if the bot should come by later and insert dashes then great, we'll have correctly placed dashes with zero manual labor. Let's not blow this issue out of proportion. --Xover (talk) 10:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to imply it was trivial. I know it involves a table lookup, because I put in the non-zero manual labour that added most of those dashes (and wish it hadn't been undone).  Anyway, my point was that removing them was not the only way to achieve consistency.  But I suppose that time and the bot will fix all.  Kanguole 15:43, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh crap. Does this mean you'd already done the job of looking up and inserting dashes in the correct places before I went over and removed them all? If that's the case then I just plain screwed up; I was so sure they were inconsistent and it didn't even occur to me that someone might have done that (it's certainly more manual labur than I would have volunteered to do). Mea maxima culpa! --Xover (talk) 16:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not to worry. I hope you won't mind if I put them back – let's pretend the bot got here already.  I'd be happy to do any that are added later (it's pretty easy, really).  Kanguole 21:50, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I just did a spot check, and, as far as I can see, the hyphens have been placed correctly, according to the rules on ISBN. Thank you, Kanguole! Xover, I wouldn't flagellate myself over this. It may have been very easy for Kanguole to restore the hyphenation. To paraphrase a popular quip, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a bot. :-) --Alan W (talk) 00:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Oxford Summary too long
<small style="color: gray">[Title of this post refactored to save the TOC. Original title moved in full below in boldface. --Xover (talk) 09:13, 21 February 2011 (UTC)]

Oxford Summary too long, omitting academically endorsed major facts, and lacking Oxfordian participation, unlike the Marlovian summary which is written by an advocate.

I note that Marlovian Peter Farey is being allowed to rewrite the Marlowe summary. Equal treatment should be given to an Oxfordian regarding academically endorsed evidence for the Shakespeare authorship candidacy. The summary as a summary should be brief, deferring details to the article itself. The Oxfordian summary presently constituted is the only one that goes into secondary detail (like the discussion about secret codes and the PT and PTT sub-theories). Hence its length and emphasis are inconsistent with the rest of the summaries. The placement of the Oxfordian discussion after the Baconian one is another possible question I have: if as the section states, since 1920 the Oxford contention has overtaken the Baconian, why then is the Oxford discussion not placed accordingly in the reading? Oxford was older, so chronology has been discounted. The basis for Oxford’s prominence in the discussion originates with his contemporary prominence, for instance William Webbe’s remark that he was the most skillful and could challenge to himself that he was the most excellent of the courtly poets. This seems confirmed by Puttenham’s clear statement that if his work were publicized under his name he would be recognized as the first among equals in the aristocratic play-makers. Akrigg took note of Oxford's relations with Queen Elizabeth and with court life. As recently as the U.S. News and World Report, Oxford's travels, academic and cultural achievements, status as a noble, and education were cited as clues to possible candidacy. The linguistic evidence seems compelling from Fowler, Stritmatter, and Waugaman researches into parallel phrasing and subject matter. The Atlantic Monthly has taken on the supposed 1604 question, that no new plays or augmentations occurred after that point, corresponding to his death in June 1604.

These appear to be sound reasons for altering the sub-section, towit, briefer, more pertinent to the purpose, and written by someone, myself, less likely to ignore the major strengths of the candidate. At present all three standards are lacking. Zweigenbaum Zweigenbaum (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have made some suggestions here. Johnuniq (talk) 03:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Peter Farey is not 'being allowed to write'. Peter, like any other editor, is collaborating, with commendable intelligence, flexibility and civility, to make improvements to the Marlovian theory section.
 * There were several considerations in the ordering of the candidates. (a) Historical priority (Bacon precedes Oxford, but Marlowe technically precedes Oxford also) and (b) quantity of material (both Oxford and Bacon have been the object of a huge amateur published output of 'theory', and both have been the object of extensive academic comment (c) contemporary profile (Oxford is showcased more than both Bacon and Marlowe. Smatprt consistently, being an Oxfordian, pressed for Oxford's priority. We have tried to calibrate these various pressures (coloured as they are by promotional interests) by choosing Bacon first, since he was the first historical candidate, and enjoyed a virtual monopoly for 6 decades (b) Oxford second, since he replaced Bacon as the primary candidate in public opinion (c) followed by Marlowe, who trumps Derby (sorry Paul) in terms of recognizability, and perhaps today in terms of the number of advocates.
 * The material re Oxford's prominence in Elizabethan times is irrelevant. We are dealing with scholarly assessments, not the rhetoric of patronage and court flattery in status-obsessed Elizabethan literary representations.
 * As for Fowler, Stritmatter, and Waugaman, as RS mention them, they can be used. Stritmatter is already present.Nishidani (talk) 12:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't worry about dumping Derby at the bottom. My heart really belongs to Anne Whateley. I read Derbyism from duty. Ross's book "The Story of Anne Whateley" is the only Anti-Strat text I ever enjoyed reading. Lefranc's "Sous le masque..." was a trial. It's easy to see why it never really made it over the channel. It's full of the worst gloire-grubbing French nationalist sentiment. Paul B (talk) 21:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If it will cheer you up, Derby will rise from the lowest ranks as soon as I do the Henry Neville candidate for Shakespeare authorship, which, despite my best efforts, will secure bottom place.Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd revert Zeigenbaum's major edit on the grounds that (a) it susbtantially alters a text for which consensus exists (b) introduces poor sources, some of which are either not RS or dubious as such. There is a good argument for shortening some of the Bacon and Oxford material, but it is best done on this work page instead of engaging in individual challenges.Nishidani (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I do not consider that I challenged anything or anyone. The changes made and since reverted are factual and supportable with acceptable sourcing. Kindly expand on how they are poor, in comparison to that which existed before the alteration. The modification brought the Oxford sub-article into size and factual specificity comparable to the other summaries. These are helpful advances.

1) To discuss the alterations specifically, although I have already addressed several of these points in the editing comments above, citing sound reasons, I will be happy to restate them as I did to Johnuniq upon inquiry.

2) The long section about Looney (paragraph 2) belongs in the history section, or in the Oxfordian Theory article. It could stay, if it were trimmed down. The Looney scholarship is no longer relied upon by the Oxfordian community, since so much other more specific material has been found. It is an important artifact.  The best place is in the History section.

3) The two mainstream refutations do not belong, as the other summaries include none and it was agreed by the present editors not to present mainstream arguments in these summaries. Thus "No documentary evidence connecting Oxford to the authorship of the works has been found" and "Although Oxford died in 1604 with 10 Shakespeare plays yet to be written according to the most widely accepted chronology" do not belong in the summary. They will be immediately contradicted by the references following the statements of the summary text, which makes them puzzling, out of place, and liable to make a reader think someone is pulling a fast one on them in the summary. In the context of the treatment of the other summaries, this could be interpreted as gratuitous bias and we wish to avoid that.

4) The longest paragraph ( paragraph 4, about Frisbee and codes) does not belong at all. Detail such as that goes in the Oxfordian Theory article. Presently it is being given far too much space, too much weight, and does not represent the main points raised by most Oxfordians. US News and Atlantic magazines summarize examples of what the major Oxfordian points are.  The references are included should the reader seek them beyond what is in the sub-article itself.

5) The long PT description does not belong in a brief summary. It too should go in the Oxfordian Theory article. Placement in the summary can be interpreted as an invitation to ignore the evidence because this aspect of the Oxford contention is considered shocking and sensational and incredible, despite a certain amount of documented evidence supporting such exploratory theories.

6) I suggest that the summary end with the last line of the new text just added. That would make it the most concise summary of the major Oxfordian points, as evidenced by the references provided following the new text.

7) The Minerva Britanna graphic need not be in the Oxfordian summary. This is another example of detailed evidence presented as the strength of the Oxfordian contention, whereas it is really a side-light, showing how the literary types of the era amused themselves and each other by communicating through puzzle means what they did not feel safe to say outright. First, it is not a "major" theme of Oxfordian research, and second, it was used by Baconians as well, so is not specific to the Oxford case. It could go into the history section included in the Bacon expanded discussion (since Baconians used it first), or in one or more of the theory articles. Regardless, it should not be where it is, giving the wrong impression of what kind of evidence is emphasized in Oxfordian studies, (or perhaps what a Stratfordian writer would wish was typical Oxfordian evidence), and--returning to the important standard of brevity observed elsewhere,--it just makes the summary longer.

8) This discussion is really about content. If there is a problem with reference formatting, which is not my concern, then you appear to have several editors that can correct the format issues.

9) In terms of RS, you have already established that the Wall Street Journal is RS. The same applies to US News and World Report and Atlantic Monthly. They are RS by every definition I can find.  If one of these magazines reported that Oxford was Looney's fraud on history and scholarship, would its report be ignored?

10) There is absolutely no prohibition on using Primary Sources. No interpretation is being given to them, they are simply being quoted. Besides, there are plenty of RS sources that quote the same material. If you want to substitute one of them, I have no objection. Again, we are discussing content here.

11) To quote ArbCom: " Where an article concerns a theory that does not have majority support in the relevant scholarly community, the article must fairly describe the division of opinion among those who have extensively studied the matter." This in no way limits RS the way you describe. "...those who have extensively studied the matter" is the key here. I note that the only abstention said "I think this would benefit from a clarification to ensure that it's only those views from the scholarly community or accepted experts - even minority ones - that are included, rather than just anyone who has a BA in English Lit." Thus even the abstainer agrees that accepted experts - even minority ones - can be sourced.  This appears to support the use of sources as seen in the section (here reverted for alleged poor sources).

12)I note the remarks by Johnuniq and also Nishidani that the Marlovian perspective was not "allowed" but was the result of collaboration by Farey and the majority editors. It is a fact that the Marlovian candidacy is not the threat to the Shakespeare establishment that the Oxfordian scholarship represents. While I do not object to Farey receiving fair treatment, it will likely soon be seen as unfair for the majority group to specifically resist one candidacy's use of and reference to scholarship and at the same time extend every courtesy to another.  The disinterested observer will inevitably conclude the majority editors are using a double-standard.  We would not wish to convey such an impression.

13)Regarding Nishidani's assertion in explanation of his revert that Oxford's prominence in the literary world of the Elizabethan era is irrelevant, then so would Shakespeare's contemporary fame be irrelevant. Harvey referred to Oxford as the author of Venus and Adonis, published under the name William Shakespeare. Eight Shakespeare plays were performed at court during the Christmas play season following Oxford's passing. Another series followed the death of his wife in 1612. No other honor for husband and wife ever occurred in the history of the English monarchy. Such contemporary renown is relevant.  We cannot by fiat squelch history unfavorable to our predisposed views.  Thus, the reference, in my edit, to Oxford's contemporary literary reputation, sufficient that James I referred to him as "The Great Oxford", is  substantially pertinent to answering this important identity question and certainly appropriate to a summary of reasons for considering the possibility of his authorship. with best wishes, Zweigenbaum (talk) 02:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Regarding Nishidani's reversion of the modified text, for ease of discussion and comparison, I have placed them side by side in the article. In response to Nishidani's doubt that there is such a grouping as "most Oxfordians", I am familiar with the individuals and the publications involved, and the very evidence most emphasized as Oxfordian in this article are least valued by those organizations and publications: the Minerva Brittana puzzle and the variations of the Prince Tudor theory. There is ample evidence exclusive of these topics leading to a convincing proof of Oxfordian identity with the Shakepeare author. In fact few Oxfordians are cognizant of the Cardano Grille code or the Latin anagram tradition that generated these studies. This is why I stated before that, as a Marlovian was respected to explain the Marlovian theory, so should an Oxfordian be respected to know and to cite sources both primary and secondary, regarding the Oxfordian subject matter. Stratfordian editors need not fear to be informed of existing or previously neglected evidence. Zweigenbaum (talk) 05:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)


 * (1) ‘The changes made and since reverted are factual and supportable with acceptable sourcing.’

This is an obiter dictum or Sir Oracle style of argumentation. It takes the form: ‘I think so, therefore it is.’

In editing, at a late stage of its drafting an article aspiring to the strictest criteria for wikipedia material, major proposals such as yours should be first presented to the community of editors engaged with the page.
 * Your sourcing is not acceptable according to the strong criteria used over the past several months. Changes are not 'factual'. Changes may contain reference to facts.

Your new sources, to an article that almost exclusively relies on the best academic works, consist of:-
 * Bill Bryson. He's an agreeable popular writer. He has no first hand knowledge of Shakespearean scholarship.
 * Michael Satchell writing in U.S. News & World Report. Satchell is a journalist who has covered, from an Oxfordian perspective, a few events. He is not an authority on the argument, nor the Elizabethan period, nor the state of Shakespearean studies. The only substantive addition to the argument he has made, as far as I know, was to mention that Keanu Reeves was a confirmed supporter of the Oxfordian theory.
 * William Webbe and George Puttenham are primary sources. In the secondary literature, their remarks are interpreted as pieces of flattery paying obeisance to the ranking system of Elizabethan court society, and not as testimonies to the known facts of the period. In any case, the article avoids using evidence from primary sources, unless it is cited from a reliable and pertinent secondary source in the scholarship on this area. Both Webbe and Puttenham are thus cited in many RS for the period.
 * Captain Bernard Mordaunt Ward's 1928 bio. of de Vere is a respectable if highly dated piece of scholarship from an Oxfordian perspective. We have numerous modern academic sources, including Alan Nelson and Steven May, who make the same point, and who are already used in the article.
 * Irwin Smith 's 1964 Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: its history and its design, is a respectable source, but the material from it is already in several sources used here, including Nelson and May. Occam's razor applies.
 * G.P.V. Akrigg's 1968 Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, is a respectable source, but for a point that is risible. All members of Elizabeth’s court knew each other. It is not an ‘Oxfordian argument’ to note the obvious, any more than it is a Baconian argument to note that Bacon knew the same people, namely Elizabeth 1 and Henry Wriothesley.
 * 'his academic and cultural achievements'.
 * According to Nelson he had no academic achievements. If you can find an academic or reliable updated Elizabethan specialist source arguing to the contrary, in explaining the Oxfordian position, by all means use that. His MAs were granted as formal gestures or compliments by the universities. His ‘cultural’ achievements consisted in, like many aristocrats of his day, keeping players and being the object of many book dedications by authors seeking his favour and the prestige of being conferred recognition by him. Both points are, again, sourced to a  newspaper (U.S.News & World Report), which is ridiculously incongruous given  the high quality of sourcing required of the article. That, like many aristocrats (Henry Neville etc.) de Vere travelled widely does not need referencing to a modern American newspaper. It is in Nelson, who is RS for this kind of detail.


 * To use the precedent of the Wall Street Journal, as grounds for citing from any number of other American newspapers is misbegotten. The Wall Street Journal was used for an interview with the Elizabethan scholar James Shapiro on precisely the subject of this article. The newspaper articles you wish to cite refer information from people who have no formal credentials in the scholarship  on this argument.
 * William Plumer Fowler's Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters, fails all tests as an RS for this article. A former fisherman, minor poet and lawyer who presided over the Boston Shakespeare Club, and was an Oxfordian, is not a reliable source on the details of de Vere’s life or Shakespeare.Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Generally, therefore, your twin attempts to edit 'en bloc'' destabilize the format, and presume to use sources that turn out to violate the strict criteria for an article of this kind. For this reason, I have placed your proposal below, where it can be discussed as an alternative proposal.


 * (3) 'The two mainstream refutations do not belong, as the other summaries include none and it was agreed by the present editors not to present mainstream arguments in these summaries.'
 * You are misrepresenting the text. The two points made:
 * (a) 'Although Oxford died in 1604 with 10 Shakespeare plays yet to be written according to the most widely accepted chronology, Oxfordians date the plays earlier and say that unfinished works were revised by other playwrights and released after his death.' (b) 'No documentary evidence connecting Oxford to the authorship of the works has been found.'
 * are not 'refutations' but statements of fact freely admitted by Oxfordians. Perhaps 'most Oxfordians' would be better for (a) since some maintain that de Vere lived on, like Marlowe, after a faked death.


 * (7) 'The Minerva Britanna graphic need not be in the Oxfordian summary.'
 * We have only your word for it that this is ‘not a major theme’ in Oxfordian theories. RS mention it in that connection, and our text rightly notes that it is adduced by both Baconians and Oxfordians. Is the problem here the fact that the Minerva Britanna graphic is shared grounds for both Baconism and Oxfordianism?


 * (8) 'If there is a problem with reference formatting, which is not my concern, then you appear to have several editors that can correct the format issues.'
 * Despite being new here, you have already mastered one stylke of reference formatting, one incidentally used by a previous and banned editor. To say ‘it is not my concern’ reads ‘I don’t care less for what you guys agree on. If you don’t like my style, adjust it yourselves. I won’t.’


 * 'In response to Nishidani's doubt that there is such a grouping as "most Oxfordians", I am familiar with the individuals and the publications involved, and the very evidence most emphasized as Oxfordian in this article are least valued by those organizations and publications.'
 * Again, neither you, Peter Farey, nor I nor anyone else can edit here proclaiming our intimate knowledge sufficiently vouchsafes for the reliability of the information given. We filter partisan opinions through RS to avoid precisely the obvous abuses to which this kind of confient self-assertion lends itself.Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)