Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox

Please make sandbox edits to this page: Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft

Rationale for writing
'''This working doc by smatprt is an experiment to see what a combination of Tom's suggestions and my own might look like, in terms of structure, and does not include the anticipated rewrites, just a lot of the proposed deletions. Noting the claifications from ScienceApologist and 4meter4, recommended forks, are included.

'''It cuts out the candidate specific material (mostly Oxfordian stuff) and cuts down on every section. I've tried to use wikipedia summary style for the longer sections like the history and the "other candidates"; I've left the candidates at the end instead of trying to work them into the history, as it interrupted the flow when I tried it. The candidates have all been cut down as well - again trying to use summary style, which worked best when I left them out of the history and in their own section. I look forward to comments.Smatprt (talk) 16:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)'''

Lead
Short and sweet. Refs coming. Discuss, but please for not too long. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:52, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Here is a starting point for the lead. The first graph already has consensus (except I got rid of one of the three uses of "public" in the first 3 lines. the next two have been trimmed considerably, with most, if not all, of the offending statements (from both sides) removed. These were, of course, the attacks on each others methods that were heavy on opinion, but light on any actual facts.Smatprt (talk) 00:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Re: your lead - it really does not summarize the article. I think we were on the right track before and had graph 1 finally complete. Nishidani's version and mine are not that far apart, which is a pleasant surprise. Also - we have a lead image that everyone actually liked, so all I would ask is that we not move backward on the few things we have agreed on. What do you say? Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, we really don't have an article yet, and what we're building is going to be radically different in content and structure than the old one, so it's impossible to say if it summarises what we're going to end up with.
 * As far as content of the lead goes, none of the three are really that far apart. There are four main points to be made, that I can see:
 * 1. definition
 * 2. origin and main candidates that have been put forth
 * 3. scholarly opinion
 * 4. description of present-day status
 * What yours and Nisidani's versions do is greatly expand on 2 and 3, which I think could be more economically handled in the text (mainly because the introductions to the main treatments are nothing more than restatements).
 * But right now I'm not really concerned about what's up on the page, so feel free to tinker with it or replace it, nor do I want to hash out a "final" version. Instead I want to hear your thoughts about the structure of the entire article. The last article sprawled like an medieval manor: rooms added on every which way on the whim of each generation's owner, and we need to learn from the mistakes made there. I really think a big problem was trying to add everything including the kitchen sink, and I think using the old article for anything more than a mine for phrases and references is going backward.
 * For example, I believe we need to think about what all the authorship theories have in common and spell that out in the section after the lead. Believe it or not, I think it can be done in three paragraphs or less. We also need to discuss whether the history and the candidates should be merged, which seems logical to me, or whether we should try to maintain them separately, which I think would be harder to do and make for a lot of needless repetition. Nor do I think, as I have said, that whatever we include as rationales for the various authorship candidates needs to be refuted point-by-point, but I also think we need to avoid long and overly-complicated arguments. Food for thought.
 * I've just got quite busy, so it'll be later this evening before I can get back to this. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:41, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

So here you go:

"The Shakespeare authorship question is the controversy about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually composed by another writer or group of writers.[1] The public debate dates back to the mid-19th century. It has attracted wide attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great by the majority of academic Shakespeare scholars.[a][2] Those who question the attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret.[3] Of the numerous proposed candidates,[4] major nominees include Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who currently attracts the most widespread support,[5] statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories. Supporters of the four main theories are called Oxfordians, Baconians, Marlovians, or Derbyites, respectively.[6]

Most authorship doubters believe that Shakespeare of Stratford did not have the background necessary to create the body of work attributed to him, and that the personal characteristics inferred from Shakespeare's poems and plays don't fit his known biography[3]. Many doubters assert that if the actor and businessman baptised as "Shakspere" of Stratford was involved at all, it was more likely as front man or play-broker.[4] Anti-Stratfordians believe Shakespeare of Stratford lacked the extensive education necessary to write the collected works, and question how he could have gained the life experience and adopted the aristocratic attitude they claim is evident in them.[5] Alternate authorship researchers focus on the relationship between the content of the plays and poems and a candidate’s known education, life experiences, and recorded history.[6]

Most mainstream Shakespeare academics, also referred to as "Stratfordians", pay little attention to the topic and dismiss anti-Stratfordian theories.[7] Consequently, they have been slow to acknowledge the popular interest in the subject, noting that the authorship of Shakespeare of Stratford is supported by two main categories of evidence: testimony by his fellow actors and fellow playwright Ben Jonson in the First Folio, and the inscription on Shakespeare's grave monument in Stratford.[8] Title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records are also cited to support the mainstream view.[9] Despite this, interest in the authorship debate continues to grow, particularly among independent scholars, theatre professionals and a small minority of academics.[10]" Smatprt (talk) 00:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think this is too long and involved, and I think we need to start with a blank slate instead of trying to reuse what we've been arguing over the past three months. Did you read what I put up on the page? I think one more sentence about the obscurity of Shakespeare's biography being the origin of all the various theories might be in order.
 * Certainly we're going to need more than you and me here. I think we need some kind of outline to determine what all we're going to cover. We can't get into extensive detail with any of the arguments, and we need to source to secondary or tertiary sources. Check out the 11th ed. EB article here (do a page search using "Shakespeare-Bacon Theory") and review Dave Kathman's article in Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Also there's a great book, The Poacher from Stratford that is a model of scholarship when it comes to describing the various theories in a neutral manner with no rebuttals. And of course you should read Jim Shapiro's new book, which should be in book stores any day now. This article is going to have to be descriptive and not argumentative if we're to stay out of the weeds this time.
 * We also need to determine the citation styles before we get too far along. I favor the simple, author, title, year, page number, which is sufficient information for anyone to find the reference, but I've noticed that a lot of writers I read add the place of publication, closer to the MLA, Chicago, or New Hart's style. There are no hard and fast rules on the format, even though some people act as if it's Holy Writ, (and including standard book numbers is just plain unnecessary, IMO), but we should be consistent from the very beginning.
 * BTW, I've been a bit busy the past few days (but not as busy as you, apparently), and I haven't had the time (or inclination, truth be told) to tell you that I thought your edits at the Biographical fallacy article were very good. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks Tom. Really. As to graph one, we all worked so long and hard to build it that I would really hate to start over on that one. But I'll keep an open mind. I've just cut down the other two a bit more (and seeing Nishidani's version below, it pretty much covers the same material - but - and don't make fun of me for this, I tried to keep mine a little more plain english, keeping in mind that we are writing this for a population with an average 8th grade education! :) Smatprt (talk) 16:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * If we are not careful, we're in for another weary rerun. I suggest one rethink it freshly, and that we detach ourselves from heated squabbling over words, to simply get at a précis of the essential points, that will be elaborated in the main text. I imagine a brief lead, followed immediately by an historical section on the rise of the theory. What I had in mind for a new lead more or less, after 25 minutes, came out as follows. I am not suggesting this as a text to work on, but merely as a casual exemplar of the laconic synthesis of the main points the lead would require.

The Shakespeare authorship question refers to theories that cast doubt on the traditional ascription of the works of Shakespeare to William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. Public challenges to the traditional view were first voiced in the mid-19th. century. Sceptics hold that “William Shakespeare” was a pseudonym behind which lay the hand of one, or several writers, perhaps working in concert. Of the numerous candidates proposed, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby have gained prominence. Bacon prevailed in the 19th century, and Oxford most recently.

Doubters highlight the obscurity surrounding Shakespeare’s biography, and a perceived discrepancy between the provincial figure and the metropolitan playwright. The known record, they argue, tells us nothing that could bridge the perceived disparity between a man of relatively humble origins and the genius of the London stage, whose works display a comprehensive knowledge of classical literature, Renaissance books, law, astronomy, languages and the refined culture of courtly society. They assert that one can infer from the works a profile of the real mind and identity behind them.

Mainstream Shakespearean scholars are mostly dismissive of these anti-Stratfordian theories, when they do not ignore them. They adduce evidence that his fellow writers and playwrights never expressed doubts, that both the Folio and the Stratford monument bear witness to a correlation between the theatrical author and the provincial Shakespeare, that scarcity of biographical data was normal for his milieu, and that deducing a writer's identity from his works constitutes a biographical fallacy.

Despite specialist scepticism, interest in the authorship debate continues unabated, particularly among independent scholars, theatre professionals and a small minority of academics.

Smatprt’s version 393. Mine 286. Reduction of 25%Nishidani (talk) 10:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Some nice work here, Nishidani. Last sentence is not right - it's despite the academic view, right? Anyhow, I've incorporated much of Nishidani's into mine and pasted it below. See what you think.Smatprt (talk) 16:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No, not in my view. I elided it because it would mean using 'academic' twice in the same line, an important stylistic objection. I'd like a list, by the way, of the number of academic specialists in Shakespeare, with university positions, who argue for an alternative candidate, reminding you that those who don't subscribe to it, and teach and do research on Shakespeare run into many thousands.Nishidani (talk) 19:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Mine runs 166. Your prose style is also much more baroque, which might not be best for an encyclopedia.
 * I also don't think we should get into all the reasons in the lead, since they will be summarised in the main text. Right now I'm more interested in agreeing to some type of skeleton on which to hang the flesh of the article. Trying to work out exact wording as we go along will surely bog us down. How about beginning a new section to hash out an outline over the next couple of days? It doesn't have to be set in stone, but a rough guide would surely keep us from wrecking so close to shore.
 * Also are there any thoughts on the citation method as I mentioned above? Tom Reedy (talk) 16:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * What is your citation for the claim that mainstream Shakespeareans that "deducing a writer's identity from his works constitutes a biographical fallacy"? This is important to pin down, in view of the fact that there is a veritable industry of biographies by orthodox scholars which purport to explore the literary works in light of the author's biography. This would seem to be a contradiction to which the article must allude. Therefore we should avoid attributing to "mainstream Shakespeareans" as a whole arguments which only some of them may have made.--BenJonson (talk) 15:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I must apologize for not giving an answer now. I wrote for two hours a large essay on this, unfortunately drafting here, and, clicking the wrong back back, wiped it out. It mentions Sisson's The Mythical Sorrows of Shakespeare, (1934), and Alan H.Nelson, ‘Calling All (Shakespeare) Biographers! Or, a Plea for Documentary Discipline,’ in Takashi Kozuka, J. R. Mulryne (eds.), Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006Ch.4 pp.55-66, and several other sources.
 * But that is not the point. I can if I like take to pieces much of the paras now provided, and challenge them, on any number of grounds (I think 'public doubts' is wrong, I think the list of 4 candidates should be ordered along the lines of the emergence of theories, meaning Bacon comes first, then Derby, then Marlowe, and finally de Vere. Never said a word, since this is horsetrading, not nitpicking.
 * If you think we should not use commonsense, based on wide reading, but justify every word with a precise textual source in RS, then by all means let's return to the embattled status quo ante. As Tom remarks below, of course many orthodox Shakespeareans have used the works to imagine the life otherwise undocumented. Methodologically, all scholars worth their salt know that this is, and cannot be, barring new documentary discoveries, essays in fiction, hypothesis, just-so stories. That is why so much orthodox work on his life is full of 'woulds', 'may have been', 'perhaps's', 'possibilities', and 'one can imagine', rhetorical reminders to the reader that technical, what is being said of the author by reference to the plays and poems is nothing but speculation. The conspiracy school, on the other hand, says that the lack of direct documentation for their theories can be circumvented by reading the works as ciphers, or rewritings of real events in the 'real author's life'. Methodologically, nothing can be proven by such methods, unless the millenial event takes place, and one finds the missing 'smoking gun'. It is one thing to speculate about possible links between elements in the plays and the real, historically attested author, it is quite another thing to say, in terms of method, that the author recognized by contemporaries, tradition and scholarship, was no such thing, and the real identity is enciphered. That is commonsense, it is known to every mainstream scholar, and so obvious it is not often remarked.
 * I could of course use this same query to ask that every time 'authorship doubters' occurs, that we have an RS source directly mentioning what follows, since in many place we are dealing not with 'authorship doubters' but only one, even eccentric, authorship doubter, and the collective term blurs the individual responsibility for a theory or argument. Nishidani (talk) 19:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * As I wrote above, I think it is too early in the lead to do more than generalise the various arguments, and I think this should be farther down. I have several such references, but right now I hope we can agree on some type of outline to guide us. And yes, orthodox scholars are guilty of the same thing, and in fact Malone was the first to do so, which fact opened the door to a shoddy technique that led inevitably to questioning Shakespeare's authorship. The fact remains that it is a fallacy, especially for literary works written for pre-Romantic audiences. Wordsworth himself withheld his "Prelude" from publication for years because he said it was "a thing unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself." Tom Reedy (talk) 16:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * 'and their supporters are respectively called Oxfordians, Baconians, Marlovians, or Derbyites.'
 * I don't approve of this sentence personally, since it is pernickety wadding in a lead, and each genre name can be mentioned in the relevant sections dealing with each other, as the various hypotheses are surveyed in the history section to follow immediately below.User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] (talk) 15:27, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * God yes. We need to wring out this kind of watery exposition. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I would agree to that as well. I cut that line from this version:

"The Shakespeare authorship question is the controversy about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually composed by another writer or group of writers.[1] The public debate dates back to the mid-19th century. It has attracted wide attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars.[a][2] Skeptics believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret.[3] Of the numerous proposed candidates,[4] major nominees include Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who currently attracts the most widespread support,[5] statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories.[6]

Doubters highlight the obscurity surrounding Shakespeare’s biography, and perceive a discrepancy between the provincial figure and the metropolitan playwright.[3] Many doubters assert that if the man baptised as "Shakspere" of Stratford was involved at all, it was more likely as front man or play-broker.[4] Skeptics believe he lacked the extensive education necessary to write the collected works, which display a comprehensive knowledge of classical literature, law, astronomy, foreign languages and the refined culture of courtly society.[5] These researchers focus on the relationship between the content of the plays and poems and a candidate’s known education, life experiences, and recorded history.[6]

Most mainstream Shakespeare academics pay little attention to the topic and dismiss anti-Stratfordian theories,[7] noting that both the Folio and the Stratford monument bear witness to a correlation between the theatrical author and the provincial Shakespeare, that scarcity of biographical data was normal for his milieu, and that deducing a writer's identity from his works constitutes a biographical fallacy. Despite this, interest in the authorship debate continues, particularly among independent scholars, theatre professionals and a small minority of academics.[10]" Smatprt(talk) 00:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Above has been recast using much of Nishidani's version. Result is another cut of about 80 words overall. Kept lead paragraph since we already hashed that one out (it's the only graph in the whole article with consensus, so I really didn't want to go through that again). I think my earlier version, mentioning titles pages, etc. was stronger for the traditional case but Nishidan't didn't have that. Will be interested in Tom's input on that. :)  Smatprt (talk) 16:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll get back to it later this evening. We're still a bit constipated, but at least we're sitting on the pot. I hope it doesn't remain a four-holer. Hand me the funny papers, please. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:45, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Article outline from Archive for use in summary Lead
Here is the outline we were using to summarize the lead way back when. It might be a good place to start as we discuss the lead and the article structure itself. I've adjusted the list to reflect the current article format. While I agree that the present article needs lots of clean-up, I don't really agree that it wanders all over the place and lacks structure. I do think the overview is necessary before jumping right into the history. Both the overview and the history, however, can be cut down and made more compact.

Overview of article sections to summarize in the lead:

As I mentioned, in developing the lead, we should refer to the table of contents to make sure we cover the main sections: The more I look at the subject headings and the lead, the more I think we need to do a better job summarizing the article:


 * 0 Lead


 * 1 Overview, 1.1 Authorship doubters 1.2 Mainstream view 1.3 Criticism of mainstream view


 * 2 History of authorship doubts, 2.1 Early doubts, 2.2 The rise of bardolatry in the 17th and 18th centuries, 2.3 Debate in the 19th Century, 2.4 20th Century Candidates


 * 3 Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England 3.1 "Shake-Speare" as a pseudonym 3.2 "Shakspere" vs. "Shakespeare"


 * 4 Debate points used by anti-Stratfordians:


 * 4.1 Doubts about Shakespeare of Stratford, 4.1.1 Literary paper trails, 4.1.2 Shakespeare's education, 4.1.3 Shakespeare's life experience, 4.1.4 Shakespeare's literacy, 4.1.5 Shakespeare's will, 4.1.6 Shakespeare's funerary monument


 * 4.2 Comments by contemporaries
 * 4.3 Publications, 4.3.1 The First Folio, 4.3.2 Geographical knowledge in the plays, 4.3.3 The poems as evidence


 * 4.4 Date of playwright's death, 4.4.1 Shake-speare's Sonnets, 4.4.2 1604-1616 period


 * 5 Candidates and their champions, 5.1 Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford 5.2 Sir Francis Bacon 5.3 Christopher Marlowe 5.4 William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby 5.5 Group theory 5.6 Other candidates

It seems to me that the lead version I just posted (the combination of Nishidani's and mine) pretty well addresses the main subjects discussed in the article. And it has come down from 545 words (present) to 305 words. 240 words gone is pretty darn good in terms of cutting and the length is now appropriate to the size and topics covered in the article. Even when we cut it down, I imagine it will still be a good sized article (just not so large as it is now!) I just want to add that I'm not sure our dictate was to restructure the article from top to bottom, but rather to clean up the back and forth style, and address NPOV issues throughout. :) Smatprt (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My thinking is we can lose or cursorily mention 1.3, 2.1, 2.4, collapse 2.2 and 2.3, collapse the entirety of 4.1 into a couple/three maybe four graphs, with the exception of 4.1.5, 4.1.6, which sections lose entirely, completely lose 4.3 and 4.4 except for 4.4.1 (but radically different from the old version), and treat all of 5 in sec. 2. I'm thinking we need to follow the lead with what all sub-theories have in common, mainly Shakespeare as incapable, others are for various reasons (really only two), and a conspiracy theory. After that the orthodox take on all that, and then treat the history and fold the individual candidates into the narrative as they come up historically with no rebuttals, which should be superfluous anyway after the orthodox take.
 * I'm sick to death of this today; I'll post some ideas tomorrow. And yes, my understanding is to restructure the article radically, because the frame is an inherent part of the POV, probably the most important part. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Tom,
 * I am trying to keep an open mind here, so let me ask you to clarify what you are thinking in regard to 2.4.


 * Also, 4.1.5 and 4.1.6 are basic anti-Strat stuff, common to all theories. I can't see deleting them, though 4.1.6 can certainly be made more compact.


 * I think the same applies to elements of 4.3 and 4.4 as well. I agree that everything can be made more compact, but I don't support the complete deletion of so many sections.


 * I think to cut out the single candidate arguments, mostly Oxfordian stuff, makes sense and will support you in that request. I know we will have some disagreements about exactly what applies, but you will find me open to your suggestions.

I am willing to compromise on many things to come up with a workable solution. And I will say that Nishidani's suggested lead, I think, shows a balanced approach that I, for one, found helpful. I hope I showed that by incorporating much of it into my current version. So get back to me on my questions and lets continue. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 15:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I am trying to keep an open mind here, so let me ask you to clarify what you are thinking in regard to 2.4.
 * Why, soitenly.
 * My thinking is that the history should introduce and give the reasons for all the candidates as the history progresses. The times in which they were nominated are important to the reasons they were nominated. Just an example: can you think of any reason why anybody would nominate a candidate today using the same reasons Delia Bacon had (i.e. a parallel philosophy underlying the plays augmenting Bacon’s published one)? Or that anybody would take a cipher such as Durning-Lawrence’s seriously ("honorificabilitudinitatibus" as an anagram of Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi: "These plays, the offspring of F. Bacon, are preserved for the world.")? Of course not. The candidates are temporally specific and suit the contemporary idea of the author of the times in which they were nominated. Looney postulated his author “profile” at a time when psychological motivations were catching the fancy of the public, and has largely persisted for the same “scientific” reason.
 * Also, 4.1.5 and 4.1.6 are basic anti-Strat stuff, common to all theories. I can't see deleting them, though 4.1.6 can certainly be made more compact.
 * You’re right, those two sections—the will and the monument—are generic anti-Strat talking points, and as such could be handled adequately in the section following the lead that I proposed. We need to keep in mind, though, that we’re to keep to the Wikipedia summary style. The amount of detail in them now seems unreasonable and unrealistic to me.
 * I think the same applies to elements of 4.3 and 4.4 as well. I agree that everything can be made more compact, but I don't support the complete deletion of so many sections.
 * 4.3.1 (the Droeshout portrait) is very minor and is really no argument at all; it’s just another incongruous (to anti-Strats) “detail” that tells them something is amiss, but it doesn’t really advance the argument at all. And the bit about Droeshout’s age is obscure and makes no point at all.


 * 4.3.2 (“Geographical knowledge in the plays”) is much too much, as well as being ill-written. How many examples do you need to assert that Shakespeare had an intimate knowledge of Italy and that academics say that knowledge was flawed? Remember that we’re describing the case, not trying to make it. And why is that under "Publications" anyway?


 * 4.3.3 (Poems as evidence) is an unholy blob of amorphous protoplasm. Its place should be in the section describing the generic anti-Strat arguments, IMO. But remember, these are all suggestions only; I'm not insisting they be instituted this very moment.


 * And I disagree that 4.4 is "basic anti-Strat stuff", unless you can tell me what other author besides Oxford needs Shiklespurter to be dead by 1604.


 * Now that we’re away from the day-to-day heat of trying to make sure our edits aren’t stifled and trying to stop the other guy from dishonestly trying to overwhelm the page with his twisted POV, let’s try to take a fresh look at things while we have this period to reflect. For example, I just now noticed that section 4.2, “Comments by contemporaries”, is mostly not that at all, but just an extension of the first part of 2.1, “Early doubts” and 3, “Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England”. I never noticed that while being under the stress of trying to edit the article while under the gun. A section entitled “Comments by contemporaries” certainly should at least mention that there are more than 50 contemporary literary comments about Shakespeare (usually in the context of other writers, not as a singularity). The fact that this one doesn’t is testimony to its ill-wrought construction.


 * I want to reiterate my suggestion that we begin with a blank slate rather than try to put makeup on an ugly offspring. I’m working on some edits and a rough outline that I hope to post for comment tomorrow or so, but I’d like to get everyone’s opinion before we go too far trying to tinker with a page that doesn’t work for anyone. Instead of remodeling, let’s abandon the structure and rebuild on a new lot, using what we’ve learned the past few months. I realize that’s a lot of work, but I don’t think this is going to take more than four weeks or so.


 * All these are just suggestions on how to proceed. If we don’t agree on this, I doubt we’ll agree on much else as we write the page, because we'll all be tugging in different directions, and I don’t think that will serve anyone's purpose well. Comments? Tom Reedy (talk) 20:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Clarification In my statement above, "If we don’t agree on this, I doubt we’ll agree on much else as we write the page . . .", I don't mean it to say that if you don't agree with my suggestions, just that if we don't agree on the best way to proceed. I just now realised how that could be construed to mean that I was insisting on doing it all my way. Apologies. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Assuming that "4.1.6 Shakespeare's funerary monument" is referring to the idea that the original bust differed significantly from the present one, this is not an argument used by any Marlovian author that I am aware of, and a good thing too! Peter Farey

212.183.140.52 (talk) 10:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Peter, it would help if you went through the page and gave us a list of passages where 'authorhip doubters' is the subject, but the following assertion is not shared by Marlovians. My position is that all synthesis, in what is a very varied field, risks blurring what are often distinct positions. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 11:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I certainly share your concern about the risk of blurring, since (although it did originate with an acceptance of the "not Shakespeare" argument of the Baconians) the Marlovian theory has gradually moved well away from the fundamental argument of most other anti-Stratfordian theories.


 * For example, the very first sentences of "Authorship Doubters" claims as a "fundamental principle" something which few if any of today's leading Marlovians would accept. We may note that certain things we believe happened to Marlowe occur again and again in the plays, and that most of the cruxes in the Sonnets are explained by the Marlovian theory, but these are by no means "fundamental". The main reasons for our belief these days are (1) that the most logical reason for the presence of the various people who were at Deptford on 30 May 1593 was to fake Marlowe's death, and (2) Shakespeare simply took over where Marlowe left off in such a seamless way that Shakespearean scholars have gone on and on about it for years.


 * I should mention something about the chronology. We have only very recently come across an on-line copy of William Gleason Zeigler's book, and find that the Marlovian argument in his prologue was a far more "serious" essay supporting the theory than any of us had realised before. I think we can safely say, therefore, that the theory was seriously proposed as early as 1895 - after Bacon but (if what you say here is correct) before Derby.


 * It will come as no surprise to you that we wouldn't associate ourselves with "Anti-Stratfordians have argued that the authorship question is a manifestation of early modern censorship, which caused many authors to hide their identities in one way or another", nor with any suggestion that "the stigma of print" is of any relevance whatsoever. I fell about at "At least two of the proposed candidates for authorship, the Earls of Oxford and Derby were known to be playwrights, even though no extant work survives under their own name." In fact that whole section is dodgy from our point of view.


 * I need to check up on this, but I don't think that the section on "Shake-speare as a pseudonym" has ever been part of the Marlovian case, and it certainly does nothing for me.


 * "Shakspere" vs. "Shakespeare" plays no part in the Marlovian argument.


 * Shakespeare's attendance at Stratford Grammar school is not something which we have any reason to doubt at all, and most of us would say that it would have even been a necessary part of the deception.


 * The section on "Shakespeare's life experience" appears to give rather more emphasis than I am comfortable with to the idea that the author was a member of the aristocracy rather than someone (whether one of them or not) who just had the opportunity to observe them close up and personal.


 * As I said above, the whole section on Shakespeare's funerary monument must go. I found the idea of huge interest when I first read about it in Charlton Ogburn's tome, but can't understand why it isn't now universally understood that the finding of Dugdale's "missing link" sketch completely demolished the validity of Hollar et al's three-legged aberration. Now it's just embarrassing.


 * As for the date of Shakespeare's death, the section is of course pure Oxford. I know of no Marlovian who would date the death of the "real author" before 1612, although this is probably the area of least agreement between us all! As for the rest of that section, most of us accept Foster's claim that "Mr W.H." must have been the author of the Sonnets, but that the "ever-living" could just as easily mean that he was only thought to be rather than really dead.


 * The less said about the Marlowe section - which I have just seen for the first time - the better!
 * Peter Farey. 86.29.85.121 (talk) 14:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

New version posted on 3/18/10
I just posted a cut down version with many of your suggestions. I wanted to see what it might actually look like. It takes the article down around 60K which is one of the lengths discussed WP:LENGTH. As I mention at the beginning of the overview "t cuts out the candidate specific material (mostly Oxfordian stuff) and cuts down on every section. I've tried to use wikipedia summary style for the longer sections like the history and the "other candidates"; I've left the candidates at the end instead of trying to work them into the history, as it interrupted the flow when I tried it. The candidates have all been cut down as well - again trying to use summary style, which worked best when I left them out of the history and in their own section. I look forward to comments." Smatprt (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Note: The present version is approx 94K of prose. This version is at 47K, or right about half the size of the current version.I'm not saying that I fully endorse the version I just posted, by the way. I wanted to see what this combination of Tom's and my proposals would look like and how long it would be. While much rewriting would still be done, some stuff added back in, other stuff cut, I think this is probably the ballpark that we might be in. Smatprt (talk) 18:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that exposition should follow historical lines. To veer from the chronology of proposed candidates only leads to squabbles over why one candidate is higher up the list than any other. The only sure way to desubjective this is to follow the candidates as chronology records them as being discovered: Bacon, Derby, Marlowe, De Vere.


 * Secondly, many sections are written in 'sandwich style', I borrowed the term from Italian television analysis where the government imposes on the main news channel a format that gives the government views first, the opposition's views next, and then the government's replies to the opposition's views. This is know to be a technique there of 'wrapping round' the alternative view in such a way that its significance is sandwiched, like a blip, between the opening and closing interviews.
 * Proper WP:NPOV exposition should simply have the anti-Stratfordian view expounded, followed by the viewpoint of mainstream scholarship, with no come-back. If you retain the comeback it only means, for NPOV, that the mainstream is entitled to a comeback on the comeback and it never ends. This is a major structural problem that needs immediate remedy, and I hope the de Vereans can, autonomously, re-edit these sections to give the proper two-way division, and not the POV sandwich format.Nishidani (talk) 19:53, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with you completely that that exposition should follow historical lines, but my thought is that refutations probably won't be necessary for most of the material.


 * Say you describe the Bacon theory, beginning with Delia Bacon through Ignatius L. Donnelly and Durning-Lawrence (4 graphs max), then take up the introduction of Stanley, the introduction of Oxford, the establishment of the Shakespeare Fellowship, the groupist theory, the introduction of Marlowe, the rise of Oxford, Neville, then the present day state of the topic—mock trial, Frontline, Rubbo, rise of Internet groups, NYTimes poll and Doubters' petition—which last two items would give a pretty good summation of its reception and status—then perhaps a short list of the more interesting of the rest of the candidates.


 * BOOM! End of article, and no rebuttals necessary, because (A) we've covered the case for Shakespeare early up, right after the generic anti-Strat arguments, and (B) each new candidate and the sheer number of them effectively neutralises the others. We would be rid of the tiresome verbal tennis match by giving a neutral description of each candidacy, and be rid of the detailed descriptions of strained, esoteric Procrustean arguments by presenting the main arguments prima facie. We need to model the article after Schoenbaum instead of Matus. Of course we will have the links for those who want to get down in the trenches of the arguments, but that is not our purpose here that I see. And I do't want to appear confrontive, but I'm might as well get this out right now: I'm not entertaining the idea of including any long-winded recitations of any pretended "veiled allusions" that depend on anachronistic interpretations or obscure biographical details.


 * I just got paged on an airplane crash. Gotta go. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I crashed, from boredom at the lengths to which this appears to be going once more. But to illustrate why the 'sandwich effect' has to be eliminated, because it games the text in a gross violation of WP:NPOV, note that it is structured just after the lead where we have
 * (a)Authorship doubters
 * (b)Mainstream view
 * (c)Doubts concerning the Mainstream View


 * That is intolerable. In (c) there is D Price going on about lawsuits and seedy Stratford Shakespeare's money making, as a comeback on that 'Stratford guy', One could throw in easily Peter Quennell to counter this: 'All the Elizabethans were interested in money, and accustomed repeatedly to go to law,' in a 'Doubts concerning doubts about the mainstream view', i.e. another para, whih in turn would lead to a fifth 'rebuttal' from the doubters, in an unending spiral. Conciseness, as you say, and simplicity of exposition is what is required. (Shakespeare.the Poet and His Background, 1963 p.12) Nishidani (talk) 10:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Introducing the main claimants
Hello, while the sandbox article is not Shakespeare, it seems better to me than the public article. So thank you, contributors! My thoughts on the sandbox article (or you could just read Nishidani's 19:53, 18 March 2010 (UTC) comment):
 * Introduction -- I presume that the original doubt on William of Stratford was his economic class. If I am correct, I believe that a description of the original impetus to the idea should be mentioned accurately and concisely very early in the article. This is not written well, but something like: As scholars became aware of the immense contributions of Shakespeare to the English vocabulary and poetry as well as his intimate knowledge of history, law, the court, Italy, and the Classics, they began to wonder how a man from a working-class background could have excelled in so many areas. I suppose that this description might be controversial to one who claims that a typical grammar school student would have gained this same knowledge base, but is that a mainstream position?
 * The final four -- Chronologically, shouldn't Bacon be first? My limited understanding is that amid the Shakespeare rediscovery/craze, doubt started with William of Stratford, and a frantic search turned up Bacon.
 * Was not cryptogrammetry (if that is a word) a major part of the early case for Bacon? Shouldn't that be mentioned a bit more prominently, if true?
 * Now I wonder if the purpose of the final four section is to give the best current case for the candidate or a brief summary of the candidacy. In other words, If snobbery against William of Stratford or a crypto-craze is is what elevated an early candidate, should that be mentioned along with whatever today's best arguments are for the candidate?

I have an impression that scholarship, like wikipedia articles, starts out crappy and gets better. I don't think it is bad to mention that dodgy beginnings have lead to a more plausible present state. Thank you for reading this far, Fotoguzzi (talk) 20:32, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I have responded to a number of your suggestions, as well as Nishidani's.


 * The presumption that original doubt was limited to reasons of economic class is more opinion than fact. Many say that it's the disparity between the known biography and the "genius" that was the author. It's a subtle difference because his economic class certainly is part of that equation. But the question for many doubters isn't that "because of his class he could not have written the plays", but rather - "from what his biography tells about his life and activities, there is no evidence that he had the background and ability to write the plays". And frankly, snobs exist on either side of the debate.


 * I think the final four should remain in the current order due to prominence. The candidates are listed in order of their level of acceptance and notablity as defined by Wiki Policy. To list "Stanley", for example 2nd, or Bacon 1st, is to ignore current scholarship and would give them undue weight. The undue weight argument works both ways.
 * No, I can't work that way, because prominence is a very shifty thing, Bacon was pèrominent, de Vere now is, Marlowe may be coming back. Secondly, since most editing is being done by de Vereans on what is a page devoted to all theories, prioritizing by prominence = showcasing ourman first. It's self-evidently partial, and the only way round the crux is to proceed by a logical chronological order.Nishidani (talk) 07:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree, "cryptogrammetry" (or whatever the word is) should be mentioned. Probably up in the history section? or the Bacon section? What do you think? But again "snobbery" is an opinion not a fact. It's a fact that crytograms were used in some theories (and still are, though to a much lessor degree).Smatprt (talk) 23:58, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * All authorship theories have their origin in the obscurity of Shakespeare's life. We simply don't know much about his personal life, and we probably never will. Every argument against his authorship emerges from that biographical lacuna.
 * My preference would be to give a summary of each major candidacy as we narrate the history of the movement. Important points would be who first made the nomination, when, the reasons why (the major arguments), the later development of the argument, the public reaction and any notable adherents.
 * And hopefully we can skip the divine revelation epoch before we get down to work. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think anything serious of what I proposed got into the lead: all nuance is lost.
 * I still insist that, especially given the fact that the three major authorship doubter editors are alligned with de Verean studies, that great caution must be exercised in not using wikipedia articles to single his priority and prominence out. One edits to the record, not to one's own preferences. The only way to remove subjectivity in this regard is to give the bare elements, in chronological order, in both the lead and the main text. Nishidani (talk) 09:04, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Benjonson's creation of a stub to give the lead a link to 'biographical criticism' and conjure up the impression that de Verean studies practice that technique instead of subverting one of its principles (i.e. the documentary record of Shakespeare is deconstructed to show he was not the author, it is not used to show the biographical continuity between Shakespeare and his works) looks distintly iffy. An attempt is being made, in short, to elide a fundamental divide between mainstream and de Verean methods, by insinuating that the latter subscribe to an orthodox form of scholarship. They don't: they subscribe to a theory which says the biographical data for an historical author tell us nothing of who that author is, indeed, tell us that author is not an author, and therefore the biographical data must lead us to the real author, not mentioned in the historical records of biography. This is pure strategical légerdemain. That article needs a huge amount of work on it, which I certainly won't get involved in, to justify the manoeuver, which looks, once more, like a tactical use of wiki pages. I note that, too, Benjonson doesn't edit this page, but works other pages to provide Smatprt with useful of misleading links. Bad practice.Nishidani (talk) 09:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, is that entry some kind of a joke? Whatever the school of "biographical criticism" is (and I must confess I don't recall the topic in any of the classes I attended, although that might serve only to reveal the paucity of my education), it isn't gleaning clues from a work of literature and then guessing the identity of the author, nor is it making an assumption about the identity of the author and then combing through the work for confirmation. (Although while I was reading the Wiki article I thought I recognised the style, and clicking on the history I learned I was correct. Is that an example of "biographical criticism"?) And in my reading of anti-Strat literature I haven't seen any consistent adherence to any kind of methodology; it's all ad hoc that I can see.
 * I am disappointed that I'm not getting any discussion about the points I've brought up. And reading through the article diffs to determine exactly which of my suggestions may or may not have been incorporated in the latest rewrite is an unsatisfactory way of engaging in dialogue, to my mind. I made an edit deleting one subsection and rewriting another as an example of how radically I think it needs weeding, but really I want to go in a different direction other than reworking a failed article.
 * Smatprt, no disrespect intended, but it seems to me that the origin of the some of the differences we have is that you're not all that educated on the subject. Yes, you've got the Oxfordian talking points down cold, but you lack a good overall knowledge of the Shakespeare authorship question. Do you have access to Schoenbaum's Lives? You can buy a copy for a couple of bucks on AbeBooks.com if you don't already have a copy. If I might make a suggestion, that would be a good place to begin and you should read it, especially the sections about the rise of bardolatry and the authorship doubters. He leaves his opinion out of it until the very last few pages (although he injects a dry comment every now and then). Try to read it with an open mind to learn the information rather than to find points you don't agree with. I'm not trying to convert you, but to show how neutral language can be used to describe a controversial subject and to learn some things you might not know about this topic. It is also a major reference for this article and you should have it to hand.
 * In the past couple of weeks I've noticed that whenever I spend much time reading and responding to this and other Wikipedia discussions, my back and neck muscles tighten up, so evidently I'm referring the stress of all the accusations and arguments to the usual bodily locations (other things are going on in my life also, as usual, but the Wikipedia sessions seem to set off the physical response, although it hasn't always been so). So I'm going to try to disengage and work off-line for a day or so. I'll be back with some rewrites for all to critique. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Tom, apologies for not responding directly to your comments. Let me get to that now:


 * So 2.4 remains as part of the history, yes? I agree, but I don't agree that the "reason" each candidate was nominated is so cut and dry as you make out. I think that if you want to create a sub-articled called the "Psychology of the Shakespeare authorship question, then your research on the matter would fit nicely. But it, in itself, is a theory and not fact. The history section of this article should just stick to the facts and not veer off into opinion and conjecture about authorship doubters themselves. If so, it would beg for the addition of a section on the motivations of Stratfordians, don't you think?
 * You mistake my meaning. By "reasons" I mean the argument about why the candidate was nominate: i.e. Marlowe was a playwright and there are many exact parallel phrases in his work and Shakespeare's; Oxford's life and "ever" (E.Ver) are found in the works and he went to Italy; Bacon's aphorisms are found restated in the works and many anagrams can be found of his name, etc. I thought I made that clear by following it with "(the major arguments)". Tom Reedy (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think we agree on 4.1.5 and 4.1.6.


 * I agree with you on 4.3.1, 4.3.2 and 4.3.3 - and those sections are now gone.


 * I agree with you about 4.2 (Comments by Contemporaries) - and that section is now gone.


 * So we are down to 4.4 - and here is where I am going to ask you to step back and listen to reason. Forget about Oxford, forget about your and my personal beliefs. If you were a "man on the street" and you asked me to name one main reason why Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays, and I told you there was evidence that whoever the author was was dead by 1609, yet Shakespeare of Stratford lived till 1616, wouldn't that raise an eyebrow? That is what I mean by it's an anti-Strat argument. Who makes the argument has nothing to do with it. Can you at least see my point of view? I hope you at least try, that's all I'm asking. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 00:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That's the exact same thing as telling that man on the street that there was evidence Oxford wrote the plays. No other candidate uses the argument, therefore it's an Oxfordian argument and should be in that section. I thought we hashed all that out at the other talk page. No one is saying you can't use the argument; just that it be in its proper place. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Final statement on one other issue, that I made above, but seems to have been missed by some. The order of the claimants, both in the lead and the final section, has been by order of current acceptance (which the article is supposed to reflect). By all current RS, Oxford is the leading candidate. To try and diminish that fact, or remove it from the lead, would be to give undue weight to the minor or fallen candidates of the past. The article, like all of Wikipedia, is a constant and never ending work in progress. To answer the main objection, if another candidate comes into greater prominence, then the lead and candidate section will be updated - just like every article on wikipedia. It's an ongoing process and a constantly evolving encyclopedia - not a static one-time publication. That's its beauty. Smatprt (talk) 00:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Not at all, This is not an article on current fads. It is an overview of a subject that has a 160 year history. That in the last 20 years more noise has been made about Oxford, is irrelevant. In other decades it was Bacon. Shortly it may be Marlowe again. This is not a problem of undue weight given to minor candidates: the problem here is that the article is being edited by proponents of just one of the four theories who work to give prominence to their candidate. To avoid a conflict of interest, and ensure neutrality, one must use an objective criterion for marshalling the candidates, and the only objectiove criterion I could think of was chronology. Unless you can justify putting your own favourite candidate at the head of each section by adducing objective criteria, then it will remain support for his preeminence based on personal preferences, and will be reverted, by me, consistently for that reason.Nishidani (talk) 08:51, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd appreciate your thoughts on my other, more major points. I'd like for all of us to at least have a provisional agreement on the direction we're to take before we lay down the specific longitude and latitude of the destination. Once we discuss that, I don't think it will take very long to get the product in shape——and I'm thinking weeks, not months.

Oh, and there's no consensus on any of the article yet. We're still drawing in sand, so you don't have to justify any reversions or edits by invoking that phrase. But there's really no sense in insisting on including details when we don't have the skeleton agreed to yet, which is why I want to discuss the direction each of us envisions for the article. Otherwise we're all just editing randomly again and arguing over each point the same way we were doing. Can you not see the point I'm trying to make? Tom Reedy (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Tom, I know I am a newcomer to this forum (and therefore probably suggesting the reversal of some decisions already made, for which I apologize), but from what I have seen so far I can see only one way in which anything approaching agreement is likely to be reached on this whole subject.


 * This would be for there to be one master "Shakespeare Authorship" article consisting mainly of the Stratfordian position and the reasons why virtually all Shakespearean scholars accept it, together with a factual history of anti-Stratfordianism. This would give who the candidates were and just what the major arguments presented were at each point (without rebuttal). It should be possible at this stage to agree upon some criteria for deciding which candidates are 'notable' enough to get such a detailed mention.


 * Well, it appears to me that you've described what we've been charged to do here, more or less. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:03, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Those which do get such a mention would thereby acquire the right to have ONE spin-off entry of their own based upon some sort of agreed template and within an agreed maximum limit as to size. This would concentrate mainly upon their current case, indicating which bits of the Stratfordian argument they reject and why (and what they do accept), what the main arguments for and against their own candidate in particular now are, what sort of support they have, and what other resources there are for those wanting to find out more.
 * Peter Farey. 86.29.85.121 (talk) 15:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Here are some guidelines from our masters that I culled from the merging procedure discussion (my emphasis):
 * My point is do not worry about which articles will be merged yet. Work on the sandbox and then see where content forking may be required. Merging is a stand-in idea for getting the various sticks-in-the-mud unstuck (and that applies to all sides who are engaging far too much in arguing with each other and not nearly enough with actually editing). ... presumably the main article will have a section on all these ideas. These should be summary style sections. It may end up that these sections become unwieldy and too large and will require content forking to their own articles, but until that becomes abundantly clear we need to keep everything on the same page, as it were. There are parts of all those articles that need desperate culling, but there's also good information. I think it's great to start with them, but multiple sandboxes is just going to get us nowhere. ... One thing to try is to make things simple and short rather than long and drawn out. Wikipedia:Summary style is the name of the game. Trying to keep this article as simple and short as possible is best. If edit warring breaks out over a sandbox then we're truly in a pickle and I cannot help any further. Let's cross our fingers. ScienceApologist (talk) 05:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that we're to develop an article that sufficiently describes the topic, including the candidates and the arguments for them. If any section of the article becomes unwieldy without being jammed with unnecessary trivia to artificially enhance its notability, then that section may or may not become its own entry. Somebody please correct me if my interpretation is wrong.
 * I think it's important to also point out the warning about edit warring, which tells me that communication between the editors is key to the process and that we need to adhere strictly to Wikipedia guidelines, which are readily available for consultation. Three days out from ScienceApologist's last comment and we're perilously close to replicating the same dreary impasse that brought us here. If this experiment fails, we should all be topic banned and it be left up to disinterested editors to produce a 500-word article. As you know, authorship was banned long ago from Hardy Cook's listserv discussion because of the recalcitrant behaviour of its partisans. I'd hate to see Wikipedia go the same way, but I know where the blame would lie if became necessary. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:03, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Tom, you asked for the direction each of us envisioned for the article. What I tried to describe was based on what I have seen so far and what I explained about Marlovian beliefs as a result of Nishidani's request. This is that the moment you start discussing the beliefs held by all anti-Stratfordian groups, you hit a content fork, since there is really only the one thing upon which we are all agreed - that Shakespeare didn't do it. I just thought it might be worth acknowledging that sooner rather than later.
 * Peter Farey 86.29.85.121 (talk) 12:31, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Do you foresee any problems handling that in the description, Peter? Right this moment, without any kind of rewrite on the table, I don't think we can decide whether a separate article is justified. Some theories say Shakespeare was merely a front man; others that he was a minor collaborator. But all theories disqualify him as the author on one ground or another. Your theory disqualifies him on question begging: i.e. Marlowe wrote them. That it isn't necessary to denigrate his character and education the way other theories do doesn't mean that you don't disqualify him. The other major characteristic that all candidates share is the conspiracy theory, although the various details of how that worked are glossed over. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Provided that we refrain from claiming anything as being what all anti-Stratfordian groups believe - other than that Shakespeare didn't do it, and that the identity of the true author was deliberately concealed - then at least one potential problem would be removed. As to the question of whether I see any problem with our attempting within each summary section to agree an adequate representation of that group's current arguments against Shakespeare as well as for and against their particular candidate (and in sufficient detail to satisfy the needs of the interested enquirer) then yes, I'm afraid I do. But if this is the hurdle we have try to clear first, then so be it.
 * Peter Farey 86.29.85.121 (talk) 15:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Peter is right about this and it works both ways. Both sides of the debate need to refrain from using the "all" word or implying that all strats or all anti-strats believe the same thing.Smatprt (talk) 15:48, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

refs on Biographical criticism
Smatprt has just provided the exact words for the 'biographical criticism' page, reading'Biographical criticism is the Critical Practice of analyzing a work of literature in light of an author's biography in order to elucidate a more accurate, and detailed understanding of its meaning.' Which means that the lead has to be delinked, because de Vereans do not practice biographical criticism in this sense. De Vereans and co do not analyse 'a work of literature' (Shakespeare's works) in the light of an author's biography'. They deny that the author's biography, in the mainstream view, represents the real author's biography, which can be only deduced from within the works themselves, and then retroactively found by analogies from other biographies. So aside from requiring a 'citation', which doesn't exist, the link itself is a misprision and deceptive, since it refers to a different, mainstream method completely different from the one the conspiracy theorists use.Nishidani (talk) 19:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Exactly. There's no purpose in reverting every bad ref or statement at this very moment though (such as the ridiculous first line of that paragraph that, in concert with this, attempts to reverse the validity of the two positions), because hardly anything in the article is going to stay the same anyway. Tom Reedy (talk) 23:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "'Biographical criticism is the Critical Practice of analyzing a work of literature in light of an author's biography in order to elucidate a more accurate, and detailed understanding of its meaning" - which is exactly what Oxfordians do.Smatprt (talk) 15:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Regardless of whether they do so or not, this article is not about critical approaches to Shakespeare. It is about the Shakespeare authorship question. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Look, Smatprt, are we going to have to go through this all over again? First you put in a ref you obviously haven't read with a bogus page number. Now you provide on-line instructor notes in place of the bogus ref. What you need to do is provide an RS that supports the statement "Authorship researchers focus on the relationship between the content of the plays and poems, and a candidate’s known education, life experiences, and recorded history. This approach is known as biographical criticism." In actual real life, "authorship researchers" don't use biographical criticism. They look for evidence in the works to fit to their candidate. That's not biographical criticism.


 * And what are you talking about, " Calling the term OR is not helping." I did not call the term OR. Click through the edit history and see what I appended that remark to before you pop off. I said the statement at the Biographical criticism stub, "In the opening decades of the 21st century it appears to be undergoing a significant renaissance in Walt Whitman studies," appears to be OR because it is not supported in the source cited. Both you and BenJonson have a lot to learn about citing sources. I suggest you study WP:CITE for a start. I'm not going to go through all the bullshit arguments we've rehearsed for the past three months again. I've been asking you to respond to my comments for three days now, and the best you can do it address a few minor tweaks instead of my major points. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:16, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I have responded to your points, answering your list of items point by point. If there are additional points you want addressed, please list them here concisely. As to your other accusations, they are unfounded. You again resort to misrepresentation about your own edits and those of others.Smatprt (talk) 15:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to get into a dreary "I wrote this-you wrote that" argument. I suppose I'll just have to make my points by editing. As to your claim that my "accusations" are unfounded, I'd appreciate if you would quote the passage from page 51 of Guerin's A handbook of critical approaches to literature that supports the sentence you appended it to. I will apologize forthwith if you can produce anything in the discussions of Huckleberry Finn and "Young Goodman Brown" on that page that supports the sentence. And it is you, not I, who is misrepresenting my edit. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Please see this query at the WP:RSN. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

One question I have on the idea of biographical criticism is whether it can be used to uncover writers of anonymous (or misattributed) works. Perhaps it is used in an iterative fashion for known authors, as in: an item is noticed in an author's works; something is learned about the author that explains the item; more subtle examples of the item are found in the author's work. Or, the other way: Something is learned about the author and corresponding items are found in the works. (This version seems to end here.) Fotoguzzi (talk) 06:55, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it can't, and your musings on its uses are correct. Biographical criticism is not how Oxfordians come to their conclusions and this isn't an article about literary criticism anyway, so the passage won't be in the final version. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Confused process
I am having a hard time following the process. I think smatprk has drafted an entire article, Tom Reedy and Nishidani have written alternative leads and have suggested fixes for smatprk's draft. (I'm sorry to hear about Nishidani's lost data--frustrating!)

As to the lead, I don't know that I see Tom Reedy's version. I do like Nishidani's, although in a few spots I would make it a bit less formal. The concept of skeptic skeptics is a bit confusing to me.

To the rest of the article (if others continue to use smatprk's draft as a model), might I suggest some possible steps?
 * agree on an outline
 * then either:
 * put notes in the outline so there is a sense of where lie the disagreements
 * or
 * put inline notes in the sandbox article.

wikimedia does not seem to easily allow color hell yes it does! , so maybe a non-wiki symbol like dollar-sign could keep the essay compact. $$<- is terrible. Are you serious? Dollar signs are so US-centric Fotoguzzi (talk) 04:53, 22 March 2010 (UTC) >$$ Or something. Maybe i just need to print it out and put color marks to match others' suggestions. $$$$ I was able to follow the vote discussion pages, but this page seems unecessarily hard to follow. Or, ignore the above, and could someone briefly summarize where the debate stands?

And why must the article draft be in a sandbox talk section? That seems unnecessarily complicated. Couldn't the draft be the sandbox article and sandbox discussion be the place that people talk about the sandboxed article draft? Fotoguzzi (talk) 05:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This was my suggested lead, which you can find by clicking on the "History" tab of the article page.
 * The Shakespeare authorship question is the non-academic controversy about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were composed by him or by another writer or group of writers. The theory, which springs from the obscurity of Shakespeare's biography, dates back to the mid-19th century, and since then numerous other figures from his time have been nominated as the true author, including Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and Christopher Marlowe. Most academic Shakespeare scholars pay no attention to the theories, and the great majority of those who have investigated deny their validity, concluding that the theorists fail to use standard research methodologies and lack the type of supportive evidence used by literary scholars, substituting inferences from the works instead. Nevertheless, an indeterminate but highly visible assortment of skeptics, including some prominent public figures, work assiduously to promote one or another of the various authorship candidates through publications, organizations, online discussion groups and conferences devoted to the various theories and candidates.
 * The article draft was imported from the present Wikipedia article and has modified and cut. We haven't really discussed any agreement or disagreements yet. I agree that we need to draft some kind of outline; I'll try to post a suggested outline later today for discussion. My problem is that I've gotten real busy in real life, and haven't been able to keep any of my self-imposed deadlines on working on this and other projects. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Lead: The public debate dates back...
"The public debate dates back to the mid-19th century. It has attracted wide attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars."`

I think the above is not necessary in the lead, but if it must be there, would the following express the necessary points?

"The authorship debate began in the mid-19th century and has attracted wide public attention although it is dismissed by a majority of academic Shakespeare[an?] scholars." Fotoguzzi (talk) 06:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Outline for discussion
Here's my idea of how the article should be structured. As it is now, it meanders all over the place and the material in many cases has nothing to do with the section headings.

I. Lead, which should contain these points:
 * 1. Definition
 * 2. Origin and main candidates that have been put forth
 * 3. Scholarly opinion
 * 4. Description of present-day status

II. Extended treatment of topic (overview)
 * 1. What disqualifies Shakespeare, with the most common arguments discussed
 * a. Scholarly view of these
 * 2. Conspiracies
 * a. Scholarly view of these
 * 3. Methodology of anti-Stratfordian theories
 * a. Scholarly view of these

III. History of anti-Stratfordianism
 * 1. Rise of Bardolatry—2 grafs
 * 2. Pre-cursors to open doubt—2 grafs
 * 3. 19th century
 * a. Hart, Bacon and rise of Baconism
 * b. Rise of cryptograms and decline of Baconism
 * 4. 20th century**
 * a. William Stanley
 * b. Earl of Oxford
 * c. Christopher Marlowe
 * 5. Group theories and other candidates

IV. State of the movement today
 * 1. Rise of Internet groups
 * 2. Academic attention

Every topic, especially each candidate, should be as comprehensive as possible without becoming tediously long and complex, which is what the old article was. Once we get everything written, then we can determine what, if any, topics need their own articles. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:53, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I've been disabled by the aftereffects of boozing and wildweather wandering, and apologize for not keeping my hand in. If the prognosis is correct, I should be provisorily back on my mental feet in a few days, though my local undertaking friend is more optimistic. In the meantime.
 * I think this is the plot to follow, for the other proposed version is stuck in the rut of historically-contentious to-and-fro editing, and is all over the place, and virtually unreadable. In fact, it has never been edited from top to bottom in a consistent fashion. Tom's sketch is coherent, and consistent with the strictly academic RS overviews of the topic, which is what wikipedia technically requires of editors. Without being personal, the other version, and its versions, is predominantly the handiwork of a group of editors who espouse just one of the 57 odd candidates, and in numerous ways, subtextual and formatwise, privileges the de Verean hypothesis. Since much generalization masks sectarian opinions not shared across the board by the doubters, the fundamental issue here is to arrive at a clean summary text in an overview which all doubters could subscribe to. If Tom can proceed with a draft along these lines, I'll be happy to assist in finessing it.
 * Under 20th century, yet Marlowe was proposed in 1895, by Wilbur Gleason Ziegler, and i think William Derby some years earlier. Still the literature supporting these proposals only really took off in the 20th century. Just a niggle.Nishidani (talk) 17:35, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Rearranging the deck chairs
Smatprt, most of the changes you have been making amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And I apologise for stating that you had not responded to my main concern, the fact that the article needs restructuring before we get into the fine details. I combed through the talk page and found your comments:

"While I agree that the present article needs lots of clean-up, I don't really agree that it wanders all over the place and lacks structure."

"I just want to add that I'm not sure our dictate was to restructure the article from top to bottom, but rather to clean up the back and forth style, and address NPOV issues throughout."

So your response was pretty much "no." I believe that if all this article needed was a bit of POV tweaking and dusting off, I don't think we would be here. With all the edits you've made, it still wanders and still has the back-and-forth "he-said-she-said" style that I don't think can be addressed unless we restructure it. And yes, it has structure; a meandering structure.

I tried to give you some kind of idea of the level of detail we need with this edit, but you put back most of what I cut, as far as I can tell. (One point: when editing one section I'd appreciate if you would not edit any other section at the same time, because it makes it difficult to tell exactly what has been changed.)

I'm going to find the time this week to do a substantial partial rewrite along the lines I think needs to be done and post it to show you exactly what I mean. In the meantime, if you have any observations on the outline I posted above you might let us know. If we can come to some agreement on the structure I don't think it will take very long to rewrite, but as it reads now is unacceptable, and not for objections that can be fixed with minor adjustments. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Tom, here is an outline that follows the current draft. Pleasenotice the substantial changes to the sections, the section order and the great amount of material that has been deleted from the current article:

0 Lead - a summary of the article, as per wp:LEAD

1 Overview


 * 1.1 Minority view


 * 1.2 Mainstream view

2 Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England


 * 2.1 "Shake-Speare" as a pseudonym


 * 2.2 Shakespeare as front-man or play broker

3 History of authorship doubts

4 Debate points used by anti-Stratfordians


 * 4.1 Doubts about Shakespeare of Stratford


 * 4.1.1 Literary paper trails


 * 4.1.2 Shakespeare's education


 * 4.1.3 Shakespeare's life experience


 * 4.1.4 Shakespeare of Stratford's will


 * 4.1.5 Shakespeare of Stratford's funerary monument


 * 4.1.6 Date of playwright's death


 * 4.1.7 "Shakspere" vs. "Shakespeare"

5 Candidates and their champions


 * 5.1 Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford


 * 5.2 Sir Francis Bacon


 * 5.3 Christopher Marlowe


 * 5.4 William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby


 * 5.5 Group theory


 * 5.6 Other candidates

6 Notes

7 References


 * Obviously, our views on what should be in the lead are quite different. The lead is required to summarize the entire article. My present version does that, whereas your outline does not. It also keeps intact the 1st graph that had actually gained consensus from all parties. Another difference is the section on "Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England". I feel this is quite important and provides context for the entire issue. After that I have the history, followed by the major debate points, and then the candidate summaries. This outline makes sense, is easy to follow, and is the direction I think we should be heading. I look forward to your comments. Smatprt (talk) 21:18, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I've printed off both outlines, and I'll compare them and get back to you later today or tomorrow. I really don't think we're all that far apart in some areas. I don't think the section on "Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England" is important to the article unless you can find an RS that is relevant to the Shakespeare authorship theory, and anything that is relevant I think can be collapsed into another section. And I think the main text needs a radical change in style. But I'll get back to you later, as I said. This has been a hectic week for me.
 * One question I would ask: since you've been the only one editing for a week or so, is the article in its present state the way you conceive it should be? Because I'd like to get a snapshot of your idea of an acceptable article before I get in there and start operating. Maybe I should take a turn and produce my ideal article and then we could look at how and where they differ. It might avoid a lot of argument later down the road if we both can get a clearer idea of what the other editor thinks without constantly jockeying for position. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:36, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Tom - yes, I think the current draft represents the article as I would conceive it. And yes, while I have been the only one editing it, please note that I have continued to take suggestions and incorporate them into the article. Responding to Farley's input, I have adjusted most of the text to reflect "most" or "many" doubters, so as not to imply that "all" skeptics believe the same thing. Responding to Nishidani's concerns, I have cut and/or rearranged certain sections to avoid "sandwiching" - most notably, his complaint about the mainstream view being sandwiched between two doubters sections. Now it's simply the minority view followed by the mainstream view, with no "criticism of the mainstream view" section. I have also attempted to clean up the multiple back and forths and many of the NPOV issues. Certain sections still need the mainstream rebuttal, but I wanted to let you create those, much as I (and others) have contributed the alternative material.


 * I do believe the section on "Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England" is important to the article as it provides a bit of historical context for the issue, and the examples cited have been quoted by numerous anti-Strats (and some Strats) in relation to the authorship question. In terms of compacting the information into other sections, I do not think that is appropriate and want to avoid turning the article into one long diatribe. Multiple sections and sub-sections help to avoid tiring out the reader, provide a bit of variety in the formatting of the article, and allow the table of contents to do its job. Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 17:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Believe it or not, we've only been at this for 11 days now, although it seems like longer. I've been busy on other things and suffering from fatigue from all the drama at the old SAQ article and the resulting wiki litigation.

I don't know what you mean "compacting the information into other sections." I don't see how the "Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England" is relevant to any of the reasons given for any of the candidates to hide their authorship. As far as Oxford, he was either being paid £1000 per annum by the queen to write the plays, or he was constrained by the stigma of print, or he was afraid of the consequences for writing such subversive plays. Bacon's reasons are similar, and Marlowe had to lay low because he was supposed to be dead. Only the first paragraph in the section addresses any of those reasons; Hayward is not an example of someone being used as a front; Greene's "Batillus" comment is dated 1591 but Shakespeare didn't appear in print until 1593; Jonson's "Poet-ape" is almost universally considered to be Marston (read up on the War of the theatres); "play brokers" did not exist in Elizabethan/Jacobean times--the list goes on, but the main point is that all these amorphous arguments being bandied about are only latter-day constructions with no clear relevance to Shakespeare being a pseudonym or front man, nor are they "context," since according to every theory I know about, the Shakespeare authorship question is a singularity, both in its execution and its total lack of historical evidence.

Comparing the two outlines, it appears to me that all of section 4 and whatever is relevant in section 2 could be put into section II.i and II.ii in the outline I posted (and of course there would be individual subsections, so I don't think our differences are as great as you might think). I've begun writing II, and I'll post it when I get enough to show you what I mean. And as the article stands, there's nothing about the various conspiracy theories, which are a part of every alternative authorship theory that I know of. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:08, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the context the section provides is that it shows historical examples of secret authorship and front-men, and that Elizabethans were aware of and commented on the subject. Green's Batillus comment is an example of that. And the Hayward bit is an example that the authorities were aware of the possiblity as well (as the Queen "argued that Hayward was pretending to be the author in order to shield 'some more mischievous' person". As to Poet-Ape, even Scott McCrae in "The case for Shakespeare: the end of the authorship question" says (pg 21) that "many scholars think that Johnson's "Poet Ape" is Shakespeare - so there is your reliable source for that. And in terms of play brokers, Diana Price is a RS for what doubters believe and she states that there were indeed play brokers. Jonson refers to "brokage" in Poet-Ape as well, commenting how the Poet-Ape went from "brokage" to outright thievery, so its a valid interpretation, regardless of what you or I may think about it.
 * I'm also not too keen on a separate section on conspiracies, unless you are talking about providing context about the fact that Elizabethan England was chock full of plots and conspiracies and are prepared to give examples. I mean, there are whole books devoted to the plots, intrigues and conspiracies of the age, emanating from the highest rungs of society. The problem is that nowadays, the term is used in a pejorative way instead of the more neutral connotation. As noted here on wikipedia, "The term is therefore often used dismissively in an attempt to characterize a belief as outlandishly false and held by a person judged to be a crank or a group confined to the lunatic fringe. Such characterization is often the subject of dispute due to its possible unfairness and inaccuracy." As such it would be very hard to use the term and maintain NPOV.Smatprt (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * You can establish that pseudonyms were used without including wrong and misleading information. If you want to keep the Poet-Ape poem there will have to be an explanatory section about the war of the theatres and why most scholars think it applies to Marston and not Shakespeare. Yes, several 19th and early 20th century critics though it applied to Shakespeare, as McCrea says, but McCrea also says the poem is thought to apply to Thomas Heywood, but he is mistaken; what he meant to write was Thomas Dekker, who was also involved in the war of the theatre (also called the poet's war).
 * As to "brokage," what do you think Jonson meant by "From brokage is become so bold a thief" when he uses the word following "Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit"? How do you become a thief through "brokage?" What he means by "brokage" and what Price takes it to mean are two completely different concepts. Just because Price made up an occupation does not mean that it existed. There are no references whatsoever about "play brokers" in that age. Playwrights sold directly to playing companies.
 * What I mean about including conspiracies is that a conspiracy to keep the secret of the True Author is an integral part of each of the various authorship scenarios, and therefore have to be dealt with in the article, inflammatory language or no. After all, it is part of the anti-Stratfordian theory. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:41, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, "frippery" meant "cast off clothes" so his "works" were the cast-offs of other writers. "From" brokage of cast off plays (where he began) to becoming a downright theif, is what I believe the interpretation is. Price is allowed her beliefs, of course, and they are quotable as to what some anti-Strats believe. And I have no problem at all with a rebuttal to this, and have already said that was better coming from you. So yes, rebut with Dekker and the war of the threatres. But it's not up to us to say what McCrae "meant" to write (unless of course he has corrected himself somewhere else). I don't see where he limits the belief to 19th and early 20th critics. He said "many scholars think" - not scholars "used to" think or many scholars "thought". He uses the present tense. Smatprt (talk) 15:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't have the reference to hand, but in the rag (clothing) trade "brokage" meant the scraps that were left over from sewing clothes, as "broken pieces." See the use of the term to describe Mosby in Arden of Feversham: "Ard. A botcher, and no better at the first/ Who, by base brokage getting some small stock/Crept into service of a nobleman:/And by his servile flattery and fawning,/Is now become the steward of his house,/And bravely jets it in his silken gown." A botcher was someone who mends things, especially a tailor or a cobbler. Moseby was a tailor who used pieces left over from patching and sewing clothes to make other clothes to sell for clear profit. Jonson is saying the same: Poet-Ape took pieces of old plays and cobbled them together to make new plays, and from there he went to outright plagiarism, not that he acted as a broker for other playwrights.
 * Marston and Dekker on one side and Jonson on the other traded barbs and insults during the War of the Theatres. Shakespeare also was drawn into it by Jonson's satirization of his social pretensions in Every Man out of His Humour, and his attack on the Chamberlains’s Men in The Poetaster. Shakespeare responded by satirizing Jonson as Jaques in AYLI, Malvolio in 12th Night, and Ajax (“a jakes”) in Troilus and Cressida.


 * Sounds an awful lot like biographical criticism! :) Smatprt (talk) 14:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Jonson "beray[ed] his credit" by writing the “Apologetical Dialogue” that he added to Poetaster after Dekker's Satiro-mastix. or The untrussing of the Humorous Poet was played at the Globe. Jonson's amended play was performed once before it was suppressed, and he was prosecuted for its scurrilous language. Richard Martin got him out of trouble.
 * I have to say that for people who make claims for all the conspiracies and topical allusions of the period, anti-Stratfordians seem to be strangely ignorant of this history, and it is no more so evident than in their insistence that Jonson was referring to Shakespeare in such poems as "Poet-ape" and "To Playwright", but I have no compunction in exposing that ignorance if you insist.
 * As to McCrae, we are not bound to accept references that are obvious mistakes. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:47, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Believe it or not, the source was Greenwood, but he performed his usual sleight-of-hand and spun it to suit his preconceived goal (I'm almost positive that's where Price learned it).
 * Anyway, here are his primary sources:
 * A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, Compiled by Randle Cotgrave, London, 1611
 * Fripé: m. ée: f. as Frippé.  Vestments fripez. Old clothes new trimd, and exposed unto sale; Brokers ware; friperie.
 * Friperie: f. A friperie-, Brokers shop, street of Brokers, or of Fripiers.
 * Fripier: m. A Fripier, or Broker; a mender, or trimmer up of old garments, and a seller of them so mended.
 * Fripiére: f. A woman that sells, or trimmes up, old garments.
 * Johnson’s Dictionary: Brocage. n. s. [from broke.] The applicable sense is 3: The trade of dealing in old things’ the trade of a broker.
 * An illuminating example is given from the definition of Broker. n.s. [from To broke]: Brokers, who, having no stock of their own, set up and trade with that of other men; buying here, and selling there, and commonly abusing both sides, to make out a little paultry gain. Temple. (Sir William Temple)
 * So you see that although there were brokers in the modern sense (buying and selling for a fee) back in Jonson's day, that wasn't the sense in which he used the term in this poem. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the post, but it just confirms the definition I already provided. So unless you are saying that Jonson was referring to clothing, I don't see how the information you provided proves "that wasn't the sense in which he used the term". On the contrary, it seems like that is exactly the sense in which he was using the terms "frippery" and "brokage." But what we are really arguing about is interpretation, which is pretty pointless. The anti-Strat interpretation is a known fact and is sourced. All that is needed is an explanation of the mainstream view. Smatprt (talk) 14:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

So your interpretation of what Price is saying is that the Poet-ape is not a play broker (i.e. someone who furnishes plays to playing companies on behalf of the playwrights for a fee)? I fear that we're talking at cross purposes here, or I misunderstand your idea of Price's claim. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Off subject, but...

 * Off subject but it made me laugh, the sliver swan leaning her breast against you -

''The silver swan, who living had no note,

''When death approach'd, unlock'd her silent throat; ''

''Leaning her breast against the reedy shore, ''

''Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more. ''

''Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes; ''

''More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise. 

(circa 1612, by Orlando Gibbons)


 * Maybe Nishi will believe me now that in Elizabethan England, the swan was, indeed, thought to be "silent" or "mute" during its life. Smatprt (talk) 00:02, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've replied on my page, but note here, as there, that you persist in citing one Elizabethan in order to write 'in Elizabethan England . .it was thought', Elizabethans thought. Do I need to remind you that if Berlusconi says something, this does not translate as 'in Italy it is thought' or 'Italians believe'.Nishidani (talk) 10:54, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That makes sense, of course. I suppose its the same as the fact that I knew of the legend and you did not, in spite of you knowing many many many many things that I do not know. Allow me to refactor here and just say that "some" Elizabethans were aware of the ancient belief. No big deal, as the words you quote are not even in the article, rather that the De Vere Society mentions it. Smatprt (talk) 14:47, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh Christ. Sometimes I think you8 provoke me by feigning not to understand, so that I will provide more detailed notes for you and save you the trouble of doing a simple piece of research yourself. You did not know the 'legend'. You spoke of an ancient 'myth', which it is not. I corrected that to 'legend'. There is no evidence adduced so far that an ancient legend of the 'mute' swan existed, though I will happily stand corrected if you manage eventually to cite a source that such a legend existed. By 'mute swan' here is to be understood a legend that says, as in Orlando Gibbons' madrigal, a song of that species which withholds from singing except when it is dying. The swan that does sing, dying nor not, is the 'whooper swan', (Höckerschwan in German). Neither Aesop, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Horace, nor Ovid, nor Aelian, nor Pliny speak of the 'mute swan' or any other swan restraining itself from its song until its death throes. They say there is a swan that sings while dying (i.e. the last song of many sung during its life of the whooper swan). If someone says, 'Nishidani sat up and sang before croaking it' it would be WP:OR to infer thereby that Nishidani never sang before that 'swansong'. This inference is precisely the one you made from, and imposed on, classical sources.
 * All you did was cite an English poem from 1612 where clearly this 'topos' of a swan that never sings until it dies crops up. You cited A.M.Kinghorn's The Swan in Legend and Literature. I read it, and then followed his sources. Like his reference to an ancient legend of the 'mute swan' (all wrong) he cites Pierre Belon's L'histoire de la nature des oyseaux, (1555) as referring to the 'mute Swan'. I checked it (Bk.3 p.,151) and there is no such thing, only a paraphrase of Aristotle saying some swans are said to sing when they die. Of course, but we are looking for a book earlier than Orlando Gibbons' which refers to swans which do not sing until they die, a distinct concept. Sir Thomasd Browne will tell you ancient or, for him, more modern authorities, are divided as to whether swans sang also before death, or sing and yet survive. A learned note (Vulgar Errors, Bk.3. p.358) by Simon Wilkin (1852) will tell you something of the laryngeal distinctions between the singing (w)hooper swan, and the mute swan, the latter not singing even when it dies. So, thanks for the Gibbons poem, which does not solve a mystery, let alone clarify Gibbons' poem, but simply spurs the curious to search for the sources for Gibbons' conceit, as yet unknown to this and other related pages. Whatever, none of this has anything to do with Ben Jonson, who cannot be referring to de Vere in 'Swan of Avon' because earlier he says, the 'Swan of Avon' had small Latine and lesse Greeke', wherreas de Vere had a classical education.
 * The new tone of courtesy is fine. The old tone-deaf manner of not understanding what your interlocutor is actually saying, less so.Nishidani (talk) 16:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, Ollie, how you do go on. Sorry, not going to engage, in spite of your misrepresentations. Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Unless you can show why I misrepresent, something for which you have an avocation, cut the nonsense. Affirmations that one is in bad faith and engaged in mendacious misrepresentations when one works hard to clarify things obtuse minds repeatedly fail to understand even when they are spelled out at length, are signs either of congenital stupidity or malignity, unless they are supported by evidence. So, supply me with evidence, or apologize. 'How you do go on' is a womanish phrase in English television lowerclass comedies of the 60s spoken by old ladies who cannot understand anything. Nishidani (talk) 16:37, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've made several edits. I still cannot understand how the discredited idea that Terence was a 'frontman' or 'took credit for' plays written by Roman nobles crept back in. I thought we had clarified that both Ascham and ancient authors say no such thing. They say 2 of his six plays were or may have been written by patrician friends of his. That means he wasn't a 'comedian' or 'actor' for anyone from Cicero to Ascham's time, with fluency in Latin. He was a writer of comedies, everywhere recognized as such, even by Ascham, about whom gossip existed, as Terence himself openly mentions while making fun of it, the malicious gossipers of his time voiced suspicions that his Roman friends had a hand in polishing one or two of his plays. Nishidani (talk) 14:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Refs
I'm writing off line and I'd appreciate it if we could agree on a format for reference citations. As I have previously posted, I'm in favor of a simple style that includes the author, title, date, and page number, such as this: Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (2010), 43. All subsequent refs would be thus: Shapiro, 51. In the case of multiple works by the same author, the date would be included in subsequent refs, viz, Schoenbaum (1991), 243.

With articles in journals or magazines, they would be similar, but with the volume number in parenthesis followed by the date, page range of article, then cite page: Bethel, Tom. "The Case for Oxford" in The Atlantic Monthly (268) Oct 1991, 45-61: 56.

Also in the case of multiple refs, should we stack them all under one number, or string them out? i.e. This, or this? ? In the case of a ref containing the quote itself (which I am not against and which would probably save us all a lot of discussion), I would say it should be by itself, viz, “As all that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakespeare is—that he was born at Stratford upon Avon—married and had children there—went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays—returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried. . . .” Steevens, George. Supplement to the Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (1780), 654. Quoted in Shapiro, 37.

But in the case of short refs, I would say if there are more than two all of them should be included under one number. The only problem I can see with that is the untidy look of the references at the bottom of the page. What say you? Tom Reedy (talk) 22:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * On this, I am happy to go with whatever you prefer. :) Smatprt (talk) 16:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, let's see if we can expand and build upon this agreement. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:44, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

RS for this article
From above:
 * I've made several edits. I still cannot understand how the discredited idea that Terence was a 'frontman' or 'took credit for' plays written by Roman nobles crept back in. I thought we had clarified that both Ascham and ancient authors say no such thing. They say 2 of his six plays were or may have been written by patrician friends of his. That means he wasn't a 'comedian' or 'actor' for anyone from Cicero to Ascham's time, with fluency in Latin. He was a writer of comedies, everywhere recognized as such, even by Ascham, about whom gossip existed, as Terence himself openly mentions while making fun of it, the malicious gossipers of his time voiced suspicions that his Roman friends had a hand in polishing one or two of his plays. Nishidani (talk) 14:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is what Anderson actually writes on p. xxxi:
 * "Terence": In a pamphlet published in 1611, the poet John Davies described "Shake-spear" [sic] as "Our English Terence." Terence is known today to have been both an actor and a playwright.
 * However, this is not what many in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries believed. According to the essayists Cicero, Quintilian, and Montaigne, as well as a leading literary textbook of the Elizabethan Age, the actor Terence was actually a front man for one or more Roman aristocratic playwrights. Although most scholars today dismiss the possibility, many of Davies's learned contemporary readers would have recognized the allusion: Shakspere was an actor who pretended to be an author. The author Shakespeare was someone else altogether.
 * As you can see, Anderson is repeating one of those Oxfordian myths that get told, refuted, and then retold and refuted again ad infinitum. Anderson's book, modeled on Ogburn's, is particularly fallacious; I found 10 flat wrong or misleading statements in the first 4 pages of his introduction before I stopped counting. Which brings us to a problem that needs to be answered: What publications are going to be considered reliable for this article? If we accept Anderson and Price as RS, even with in-text attribution, the article will be nothing but "Price says . . ." or "Anderson says . . ." followed by a correction. My understanding is that sources promoting a fringe theory are considered primary sources and not reliable except in the absence of other secondary, independent, reliable sources, and then only inasmuch as they state the beliefs of the fringe theory. I think there are plenty of reliable sources that state the main tenets of all the anti-Stratfordian theories without the use of the primary sources. Any way, form or fashion, we need to get this hashed out, and I think we need guidance from Science Apologist or some other neutral outside referee to avoid a tedious opinion request. I have notified him on his talk page to drop in. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see whether there really is an "other side" to this argument, as it were. To summarize, the argument is that Anderson is promoting an idea which is WP:FRINGE. Does anyone disagree with that statement? If no, then we move on assuming that Anderson is a fringe source. If yes, then we can have a discussion. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, actually I'd like to determine if other such sources are classified as that, since they all are promoting their various anti-Stratfordian theories. Looney, Price, Ogburn, etc. Most everything they've asserted has been rebutted by one mainstream scholar or another (not that we're going to rehearse every argument). This is a tricky question, because some fringe journals, such as The Elizabethan Review, have some well-researched and scholarly papers mixed in with the dross. The great majority of the material, though, is similar to Ogburn, Anderson, et al. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:FRINGE can be of use. Also WP:PSTS. Try to steer clear of primary sources, if possible. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:04, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm on vacation this week so have little time to respond here. Briefly, however, I would raise the following questions/points:


 * I have to question if Anderson, Ogburn, Price, etc are indeed "primary sources". It seems to me that in this debate, "primary sources" are the plays, title pages, dedications, statements of contemporaries, engravings, etc.. The above mentioned researchers quote these sources. They are not self-published or "independent", having been published by major third-party publishers.


 * If, however, they are deemed to be "primary sources", then it is my understanding they can be used, as long as that use is not one of "interpretation" of their views, but rather to quote precisely what their views are. Smatprt (talk) 17:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I am a bit out of my element here, but it would seem to me that the plays themselves are simply primary sources for the content of the plays. They are not primary sources about the identity or life of the author nor the subject of this article. In this case, because the ideas associated with this subject are so identified with particular individuals, I would say that the works written by these authors are primary sources. Third-party sources would be sources that evaluated the ideas without necessarily endorsing the idea. We only care about who publishes the documents to avoid self-published work, not to establish independence from the believers in the particular idea. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:03, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll make a last comment here until next week when I return to real life! It's not just the plays (which are quoted at length by various authorship proponents), but title pages, comments by contemporaries, dedications, etc. which are quoted in regards to the identity of the author and the subject of this article. So I am not sure about your opinion about this. I acknowledge that you have said this is not your element, so maybe we need to consult the appropriate noticeboard? I also wonder if since Looney was the creator of the Oxfordian theory, if his work is the "primary" and the others (Anderson, Ogburn, Sobran) are then "secondary". It's all a bit confusing, but in any case, as I mentioned above, even if they are "primary" (or maybe a mix of primary and secondary), I believe it is still within the policy guidelines that these sources are perfectly allowable as long as they are simply defining what they believe, and are not being interpreted in any way. Is that not correct? Smatprt (talk) 18:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Getting outside input is ALWAYS advisable. You can get as much help as you want from the noticeboards. In this case, I believe that primary sources should only be used for sourcing the opinions of individuals who created the primary sources. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that for this particular topic the guidelines are confusing, and sometimes I think there should be a separate source article for this one subject. I'm not trying to manipulate the guidelines by selectively quoting bits and pieces, but here's what I've gathered from studying the relevant policy and guideline articles.

The policy guidelines state that "The best sources to use when describing fringe theories, and in determining their notability and prominence, are independent reliable sources. In particular, the relative space that an article devotes to different aspects of a fringe theory should follow from consideration primarily of the independent sources. Points that are not discussed in independent sources should not be given any space in articles. Independent sources are also necessary to determine the relationship of a fringe theory to mainstream scholarly discourse."

That tells me several things:


 * The source should be independent, i.e. not promote the theory.
 * Any part of the theory that has no response in an independent source should not be included in the article.

Also WP:OR states that "Even with well-sourced material, if you use it out of context or to advance a position that is not directly and explicitly supported by the source used, you as an editor are engaging in original research", so if a reliable source is not specifically about the topic, then using it to support one or the other side constitutes WP:OR (except for uncontroversial ideas). In other words, our sources should be secondary sources whenever possible. Example: Shakespeare's signature = Primary source → anti-Strat book arguing that Shakespeare's signature shows near-illiteracy = secondary source about Shakespeare's handwriting, but a primary source for Shakespeare authorship question (OR + conclusion = new idea) → mainstream scholar responds to anti-Strat argument = secondary source for Shakespeare authorship question → newspaper or encyclopedia article or book about authorship history (Schoenbaum's Lives, for example) = tertiary source for Shakespeare authorship question.

Now if no one has responded to the anti-Strat argument, then it is not included in the article. A good example is the numerology article in Brief Chronicles.

Anti-Stratfordian books, articles and Web sites can be used as questionable sources, since the article is about the theory they promote, but the article cannot be based primarily on them. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem with this thinking is apparent if you apply it across the board. Take the article on William Shakespeare: to label anything that contains OR as a primary source would eliminate every book from Bate to Schoenbaum because they all use conjecture, opinion and sheer guesswork (all OR) throughout much of their publications. Similarly, when discussing the authorship question, you have just eliminated everyone from McCrae to Shapiro using the (OR + conclusion = new idea) formula. Smatprt (talk) 11:48, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No, as I thought I made clear, the works responding to the various authorship sources are secondary sources. Responding to a novel idea cannot even by the wildest interpretation be classified as a primary source. (Unless we're misapplying the terms in the case of this particular topic, which is what I want to determine and why I began this thread.)

No Tom, I meant that when someone responds to the authorship sources with their own novel theory (or a series of unsupported assumptions), then, under your definition, is not that primary source OR? When they respond with facts, or verifiable scholarly consensus, that of course is secondary - I totally agree. Do you see any difference?
 * I'm not saying my conclusions are the authoritative interpretations of the policies. I'd appreciate your thoughts about what the policies are so we can work this out, but please include links to the appropriate WP guidelines and policies. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:35, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Please review WP:RS,Smatprt. Wiki articles are based on reliable sources published by ranking scholars in their respective fields optimally under peer-review, from either university or quality presses. Of course these sources exemplify 'original research'. All quality research is 'original', and quotable because it fits the criteria in WP:RS.
 * The material being harvested for the various fringe theories in the SAQ pages comes mostly from website articles written by self-promoting conspiracy theorists, amateur researchers, polemicists without any background in historical or philological studies of the Elizabethan period, in mostly popular presses, without peer review.

Nishidani - You should correct this - "most" of the material comes from "reliable, third-party, published sources" [] - not website articles or self-published material. You also leave out "Mainstream news sources, especially those at the high-quality end of the market" []. Smatprt (talk) 12:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * So we have two sources. Sources on the conspiracy theories from the academic mainstream (Shapiro, Schoenbaum etc.,) which fit WP:RS, and sources from the fringe literature which are RS for the content of fringe theories, though they are not RS for anything on Shakespeare, the Elizabethan period, Elizabethan people, or its history or society, esp. since the overwhelming bulk of this material is written by people with no formal qualification and often even less understanding of the standard scholarly methods and background required to research these questions. Hence Tom's distinction, which you fail to understand. There are two types of literature to be used in writing the page, and different rules must apply to they way they are harvested, depending on whether the source is WP:RS in the classic sense (Shapiro, Schoenbaum), or merely an exhibit of WP:Fringe (Ogburn, Looney etc)Nishidani (talk) 12:42, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Nishidani, I think we are in agreement on some of this. We can quote academics as you describe (classic RS), and non-academic writers on Fringe material "which are RS for the content of fringe theories" as you say. That is precisely the point I was making in my first post on this. But we should also take note of this at wp:RS: "Reliable non-academic sources may also be used in articles about scholarly issues, particularly material from high-quality mainstream publications." This would, I suppose, include major publishing houses as described here[] and mainstream press outlets as described here[]. Also, as you know, there are some academics like Wright and Leahy who are indeed experts/Shakespearean scholars, and are announced skeptics. Regardless, as recognized scholars, they are as citable as any other scholar in your first category of "classic RS". Smatprt (talk) 12:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Tom, please note this - "Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge."[]. And the authors you cite have been reliable published - not self published. In regards to policy: "Do not base articles entirely on primary sources" - The various SAQ articles are not based anywhere near "entirely" on the authors you cite. They include many references to news organizations, as well as secondary and tertiary sources as you well know. And, needless to say, all the criticism and mainstream rebuttals in these articles are primarily from academic sources. Smatprt (talk) 12:35, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Also "Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources where available, such as in history, medicine, and science, but material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications . Other reliable sources include university-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, magazines, journals, and mainstream newspapers. Electronic media may also be used, subject to the same criteria. " from []. Note that these are NOT listed under "questionable sources". Smatprt (talk) 12:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you are forgetting that most of your policy quotations were written to deal with everyday, mainstream topics, and as such arfe not completely irrelevant, but not as relevant as you might wish. You haven't addressed this: "The best sources to use when describing fringe theories, and in determining their notability and prominence, are independent reliable sources. In particular, the relative space that an article devotes to different aspects of a fringe theory should follow from consideration primarily of the independent sources. Points that are not discussed in independent sources should not be given any space in articles. Independent sources are also necessary to determine the relationship of a fringe theory to mainstream scholarly discourse. (my emphasis throughout)"
 * In short, it doesn't matter if the Oxford University Press published Looney, Price, Ogburn, and Anderson. None of them are independent sources, because they all were written to promote a fringe theory. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:25, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Word Choices & Labels
Calling the man from Stratford "Shakespeare from Stratford" is misleading at best; it's a case of "poisoning the well" or begging the question, at worst. In his book, Players, Bertram Fields referred to this man as the "Stratford man." That's a good choice, because it's neutral and it doesn't confuse the issue by simultaneously calling him Shakespeare and asking whether he is Shakespeare. I would like to suggest that we adopt that convention here for the sake of clarity and uniformity. Thoughts? SJA 20:20, 10 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjabeyta (talk • contribs)
 * For the world of scholarship, by virtual unanimity, Shakespeare is the man born in Stratford, who worked and wrote in London, and returned to die in Stratford. That there is a fringe that dissents is all well and good. But to argue therefore that we place the language these sectarian coteries devise to frame their fringe position, based on a unique set of deductions about Shakspere/Shakespeare, on an equal footing with the terms accepted by the established consensus of Elizabethan historical scholarship would violate wiki protocols by collapsing the distinction between scholarly RS and fringe literature. What we are describing is a fringe position, not a position within serious scholarship. By the same token, we would be obliged to infer that there are several de Veres or a dozen Robert Burtons, or Walter Raleghs since they themselves over their careers wrote their names with a notable variety of spellings. This nonsense has to be described, but to give it equal status with the only theory that has documentary backing is patently absurd. A bit like insisting one gloss Israel everywhere with the 'Zionist entity' because a fringe political group prefers that jargon,Nishidani (talk) 20:58, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Neutral terms such as "The Stratford man" and "the man from Stratford" are not on a par with "the Zionist entity". You concede as much when you describe the majority view as being that "Shakespeare is the man born in Stratford..." As for your additional and unnecessary specification of this man as someone who "wrote in London", please remember that one of the reasons for existence of the authorship question is the lack of direct, concrete evidence that the man from Stratford ever wrote anything at all. By contrast, there is ample documentary evidence that he was an actor, owned real estate, etc. Also, I don't know of evidence whatsoever that Bertrand Fields is part of any "coterie" other than perhaps the California Bar. If you've read his book "Players", you know that he doesn't take a strong position other than to voice serious concern regarding the accuracy of attributing the works of Shakespeare to the Stratford man and to propose an admittedly speculative alternative theory. SJA 03:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC).


 * Please bear in mind that my suggestion would also improve the clarity of this article, since the very question being explored is the authorship attribution of the works of Shakespeare to the man from Stratford. It is confusing to phrase this question as "the authorship attribution of the works of Shakespeare to Shakespeare." This is not a point about spelling, as you seem to think. Nor it it intended to frame the issue in way that would give undue weight to anti-Stratfordian views. On the contrary, it is a neutral term, one that even Stratfordians — the so-called majority — use. You've even used it yourself, as I showed above.SJA 03:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC).


 * I say "so-called" because despite your insistence that in the "world of scholarship" it is virtually unanimous that the Stratford man is Shakespeare, you don't appear to have provided a citation to this effect (unless you provided the Niederkorn citation). So if you have evidence, please cite it. Smatprt makes the same point below, under "Claiming Scholarly Consensus". Perhaps you can address this issue there.Sjabeyta (talk


 * On a related note, an Education Life survey from March 2007 apparently showed that 61% of 265 respondents (all American professors of Shakespeare (which doesn't necessarily make them qualified to have an opinion)) "considered the authorship question a theory without convincing evidence." Is 61% "virtual unanimity"? I don't think so. Less than a third thought the question was a distraction and waste of time, but this is probably in large part a result of the fact that what these professors want is for students to be interested in the writing itself, not the authorship. As the article puts it: "Expressing a view that resounded in the responses, one professor wrote, 'I would be thrilled if people would get half as excited about the plays as they did about wondering who wrote them.'" .Sjabeyta (talk


 * By the way, if it is a documented fact that de Vere spelled his name in several different ways, then please include that fact in the section of this article that deals with spelling during the Elizabethan era along with a citation. The same applies to Robert Burton and Walter Ralegh.Sjabeyta (talk


 * Sjabeyta The text you are editing is a mess. You are not helping by eliding information dropped in there provisorily to wake up those of us who in the meantime are trying to devise an alternative text. This is a junkyard that will be thrown out when something better comes along. My own edit on Chandler was to show how one formulation ran in the face of a judgement made by a scholar who published his opinion in a SAD outlet. I didn't alter the text, on the basis of what Chandler wrote, but merely provided a footnote to make the revising editors aware of a weakness in the judgement at a key point. If you keep chopping about here and there, altering, deleting or refashioning, you will make the ongoing revision and emendation of this text very difficult to handle, since it is already unwieldly. By all means add notes, material whatever, which sets out in relief its many defects: little of the text as it stands is going to survive the revisions being programmed. Its whole structure is problematical, and it cannot be redeemed by trimming. Nishidani (talk) 21:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Point well taken; perhaps it would have been better to put the information in a note rather than a footnote.Sjabeyta (talk


 * "As for your additional and unnecessary specification of this man as someone who 'wrote in London', please remember that one of the reasons for existence of the authorship question is the lack of direct, concrete evidence that the man from Stratford ever wrote anything at all."


 * The existence of the authorship question has nothing to do with the 'lack of concrete evidence'. It exists despite the abundant documentary evidence that undermines its every assertion. I'm busy writing an alternative proposal, and have no time to debate matters that, conceptually, are dead and buried. Thgis article is about theories proposed by people who have no interest in actually responding to what a century of close scholarship has written on their fantasies. Shakespeare of Stratford = Shakespeare the London actor = Shakespeare the author is proven. Mr Looney and co do not know more about this than George Buc, William Camden, Richard Stonley, Humphrey Dyson, John Harrington, Thomas Heywood, Franmcis Beaumont, Drummond of Hawthorn, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Gabriel Harvey, Robert Greene, Francis Meres, John Weever, Edward Alleyn, Heminge, Condell, Digges, John Webster, Marston, and dozens of others. We are in the year 2010. Please take time out from reading the cult fringe literature and actually follow mainstream scholarship. All the fringe theory fantasies have been exhaustively answered. No fringe theorist has deigned to reply in a way that convinces anyone but acolytes of the cultic perspective. What they do do is try to drag people into their mindscape, or peculiar ouroboric set of assumptions, from which there is no exit, because the method does not admit of the only exit-ramp from this spellbinding ideology, i.e. a strict adherence of reasoning to what the documentary record says, not what the whole sorry story of amateurish misprisions about the documentary record, piling Ossa on Pelion, until the neophyte is overwhelmed by the sheer weight and momentum of nonsense, would have the gullible think. It is exceeedingly tiresome to have to read rubbish written by people who will never reply to the comprehensive, point by point, demonstrations of the fallacies of their reasoning, but simply shift the goalposts and invent more items in their hallucinated interpretations of Elizabethan society to 'challenge' the mainstream. That you need me to direct you to a commonplace fact about Elizabethan spellings of names (de Vere, Rale(i)gh, Burton, (on a par with Shagspe, Shakespeare, Shake-speare) simply flags the fact you are not aware of what any google check would tell you immediately. I am here to write a page in conformity with what modern scholarship knows, not to tutor those too lazy to read for themselves.Nishidani (talk)


 * What I said was, "if it is a documented fact that de Vere spelled his name in several different ways, then please include that fact in the section of this article that deals with spelling during the Elizabethan era along with a citation. The same applies to Robert Burton and Walter Ralegh." I thought this information would be helpful to the article. Spelling is one of the subjects that almost always comes up when discussing the authorship question, and providing reliable information on the topic will assist readers. Despite your belief that you represent the "world of scholarship" — which you apparently think includes "what any google check [will] tell you immediately" — citations are still necessary. Referring to the views expressed on this page as "rubbish," "fringe theory fantasies," a "peculiar ouroboric set of assumptions," and a "spellbinding ideology," is not only unhelpful, but also looks an awful lot like bias. And so does the fact that you find it "exceedingly tiresome" to read the views that this article is supposed to present, especially when you have taken it upon yourself to help present them. SJA 04:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC).

Claiming Scholarly Consensus
Tom, when you claim "scholarly consensus" on this and other pages, would you please follow this policy: "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing. Without a reliable source that claims a consensus exists, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources . Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. The reliable source needs to claim there is a consensus, rather than the Wikipedia editor . " It's pretty darn clear: []. Thanks, Smatprt (talk) 11:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Please point out where I have used such a term in the article. I've got no problem with it, and I expect the same from you, for example with such statements as "Most doubters highlight the obscurity surrounding Shakespeare of Stratford's biography. . ." You need a source explicitly stating that. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Also, please follow this " It is important to use in-text attribution for any claim that an unnamed majority holds a particular view —such as "most researchers regard this idea as nonsense"—or for criticism that is particularly harsh. Say who has argued that the majority holds that view, and who has engaged in the harsh criticism, but be careful not to use in-text attribution carelessly to imply that only the named sources would agree. Juggling those competing needs boils down to a careful use of words and the adoption of a disinterested tone." from here []. This too is pretty clear. Will you have a problem with this? I ask because you have resisted this in the past. Smatprt (talk) 13:12, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with it, and I believe my only objection has been to when you demand individual attribution for what is accepted by all, i.e. the great majority of academics believe Shakespeare wrote the works with his name on them, etc.
 * But what you haven't addressed is my point that a lot of anti-Stratfordian statements are flat-out untrue, and whether they are attributed in-text or not is beside the point. As I said above, if we don't figure out how we're going to handle this, the article will be nothing but, "Price says . . ." and "Stevens says . . ." followed by a tedious number of, "Price is being deliberately deceptive with this statement, McCrea says . . ." and "Matus points out that this is yet another example of anti-Stratfordian error . . ." and etc. Including statements that you know are wrong, however well attributed, is being devious. But if you insist upon including them, I have no choice but to respond. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Which Shapiro to cite?
Shapiro's Contested Will is published in two editions: in the US by Simon & Schuster, and in the UK by Faber and Faber. The British edition, in addition using higher quality paper and binding, is ~30 pages longer that the US edition while using the exact same text. The UK edition says "First published in 2010 by Faber and Faber Limited," while the US edition says "First Simon and Schuster hardcover edition published April 2010". Is there a Wikipedia policy on which edition is preferred? We should agree on which to use to avoid refs with confusing page numbers. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:51, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I have the UK edition, and I presume you would have the US edition. I presume the US edition has priority? I'll have to cite from the f&f ed. but I'm sure the page numbers can be checked rapidly against the US ed.Nishidani (talk) 16:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I've got both. I would think the UK edition would have priority, since the article is about an Englishman, or men. The F&F is fine with me. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I wrote an edit, which does not appear, but is there
Can'0t work out why the page format makes it, and some sections disappear. If there's a technie who can fix it?Nishidani (talk)
 * Fixed it. It was a reference that was not closed correctly.Smatprt (talk) 16:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources 101
Most of the contention about the content of this article boils down to sources and the use of them. Here are some guidelines we all need to be aware of that seem to have been lost in the debate of whether a publishing house or a journal is RS. (I will leave it to the reader to find which WP articles contain the quotations; we obviously need the exercise around here).

First, and I think most important, is that "sources should be from reliable published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the material as presented", i.e. the ref should be in the same context.

For example, this article is titled “Was the bard a woman?” and is about Mary Sidney Herbert being nominated as the True Author of the Shakespeare canon. In graph 5 this appears: “Even her dates dovetail with Shakespeare's—which is more than one can say of some of the other candidates. Edward de Vere, widely regarded as the leading contender, died 12 years before Shakespeare, requiring a revisionist chronology of the plays.”

Smatprt wanted to use it as a reference for this statement (larded throughout with anti-Strat links, of course) in the article Chronology of Shakespeare's plays: “In addition, many anti-Stratfordian researchers (so called because they argue that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author of the Shakespearean canon, have challenged the conventional dating. In particular, the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship relies on a revisionist chronology that is earlier than traditionally accepted (dissenting view: Chronology of Shakespeare's plays – Oxfordian).” (If there were a prize for wedging the most fringe links into the smallest amount of text, Smatprt would certainly win it.)

Is this allowable? Not according to Wikipedia guidelines. Why?

1. The source is not directly related to the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays.

2. The sentence does not directly support the material as presented, in fact, it has the relationship backward: the source says the Oxfordian theory requires a revisionist dating; the sentence it supports says the Oxfordian case relies on the revisionist dating.

But even if (2) were corrected so the sentence accurately reflected the source, it still wouldn’t be a usable, because the source "cannot be a passing mention" in a book or article about something else, the source "must connect the topics in a serious and prominent way."

Smatprt provides four sources for the statement. The next two, from Dave Kathman’s website, here and here, can be dispensed with quickly, because the first one has nothing at all to do with the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays, as anyone who reads it can tell, and the second one has only this to say about the Oxfordian “revisionist” chronology: “At this point, Oxfordians usually object that this method presupposes the order in which the plays were written in order to work, and thus assumes something that (according to Oxfordians) is far from settled. This would be a valid objection if it were true, but it isn't.”, hardly direct support for the statement.

The fourth is a bit more problematic, but is still missing a critical element to be used as a source for the article. A page on Irv Matus’s website reproduces part of his 1999 article published in Harper’s magazine and contains this:


 * The most difficult problem for Oxfordians is the dating of the plays, fully one third of which are given as 1605 or later in the Shakespearean chronology, whereas the Earl of Oxford died in June 1604. The Oxfordian response is the assertion that the scholars have fashioned their chronology to suit the lifetime of the man they assume to be the author and that there is no documentary evidence that proves any were written after 1604. But, of course, it is necessary for the Oxfordians to fashion their chronology to suit the lifetime of the man they would make the author, and there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the thirteen plays in question were written before 1605.
 * […]
 * The Oxfordians also ignore the fact that the Shakespearean chronology is based not only on the dates of publication or on mention of plays in books or documents but on Shakespeare's development as an artist. Where among the pre-1605 plays the Oxfordians would put these later plays, in which are found the highest achievement of the playwright's art, is a problem they have yet to approach. Put plainly, they have no chronology.

This supports the statement that Oxfordians (as opposed to anti-Stratforidans, as the sentence begins) must change the accepted chronology of Shakespeare’s plays in order to keep their man in the running, but does it “connect the topics (The chronology of Shakespeare’s plays and a “revisionist” anti-Stratfordian chronology) in a serious and prominent way"? My interpretation is that it does not. Rather than connecting them in a serious and prominent way, it dismisses the Oxfordian chronology completely, going so far as to say, “they have no chronology.”

So this article (and Matus’s chapter on chronology of the plays in his book Shakespeare, In Fact) would be an excellent source for the Oxfordian chronology article (if it is to remain as a separate article after the SAQ rewrite), but as a source for the Chronology of Shakespeare's plays article it is unsuitable. One topic is not connected seriously and prominently with the other, so its presence in the article is merely promotion for a fringe topic (but pointing that out is not the purpose of this little essay). Tom Reedy (talk) 22:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I removed Matus once more on independent grounds. He is not RS for an issue like the chronology of Shakespeare's plays, having no academic background, and specifically no formal qualification as a scholar in these matters. That page must be sourced to the best scholarship on what is a technical issue in Elizabethan studies, for which a massive abundance of books, by ranking scholars, with university imprints, exists.Nishidani (talk) 08:54, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Matus is not RS for that article because his material does not concern the chronology of Shakespeare's plays; it concerns the Oxfordian chronology and rebuts it. And I beg to differ on your opinion of Irv Matus. He is a highly respected scholar (although not by anti-Stratfordians, who respect no one), although he is independent and not an academic. Google his name and see how many other scholars acknowledge his expertise and assistance. He is a fixture at the Folger Library.
 * I agree there is a massive amount of scholarly sources for that article. Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells are not even mentioned on that page, and using Newsweek or websites is ludicrous. Roughly speaking, academic subjects demand academic sources, and we should insist on this no matter what the topic. Also they should be up to date. Tannenbaum (1933) and Malone are only used to admit the possibility that The Tempest is an early play, a contention that is universally dismissed.
 * If I had time I'd fix it. It could even be done by copying text from the individual play articles and pasting it into this one. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "academic subjects demand academic sources,".
 * I'm not by any means denying the trenchancy of Matus's work. I am simply stating a principle, that where a page can be copiously sourced to sources, with a major university imprint, written by specialist scholars, the WP:RS guidelines should be strictly adhered to. I know of, and have a very high appreciation of many scholars with no formal qualifications in fields where they have otherwise made major contributions (I once wrote a lengthy list of them, upwards of 16, for example, (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joseph Needham etc.,) and still sticklers for the rules insisted on the very criterion I now endorse here. He can certainly be used for the Oxfordian chronology page. Relax these rules and you get the chaos on wiki we are supposed to be on guard against.Nishidani (talk) 13:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As to Tannenbaum and Malone. I guess someone will have to inform these editors that you do not selectively quote from anyone in the distant past in order to buttress a position that is no longer tenable, or no longer mentioned, in contemporary scholarship. People used to be taught this in graduate seminars. Scholarship moves on, and older positions belong to articles on the history of a theory, not to the state-of-the-art positions which should be treated here.Nishidani (talk) 13:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Marlowe edit
Peter: Apologies for the V&A publishing error.

This sentence: "Marlovians make few of the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments—as given in the main article—to support their theory, although they do assume many of the same conclusions about William Shakespeare's inability to write the works and that he played some role in protecting the true author's identity," you changed to: "Marlovians use very few of the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments—as given in the main article above—to support their theory, believing many of them to be misguided, misleading or unnecessary."

I know that Hoffman writes, "Let me emphasize here that it was not by first denying Shakespeare that my theory came into being. (xvii)" but the chronology of his theory is irrelevant, because he accepts many of the same arguments about Shakespeare that other anti-Stratfordian sects make.

"The personality if the author of the plays and poems known as Shakespeare's is inescapably linked to the creations themselves. The bond is so tight, the weld so joined and perfect, that it is nonsense to believe one can, at the same time, admire merely what has been written and ignore the author." (ix-x)

"Disbelief that William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed to him was inevitable. . . . The meager record of Shakespeare's literary life; the lack of any personal reputation among his literary contemporaries; the bankrupt evidence of any formally acquired education which (considering the time in which he wrote) he must have had to write as he did; his emergence with incredible suddenness as a writer in his thirtieth year—oddly late for a poet of the Elizabethan era to have first flowered; the prosaic events of his unrecorded literary life, which are all we definitely know about him . . ." (xi)

Any of this sound familiar? They could have been written by a Baconian or an Oxfordian. Whether Hoffman came to these beliefs before or after he began researching Marlowe makes no difference; he obviously accepts them. Pinksen makes many of the exact same arguments in detail, so your statement "Marlovians use very few of the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments . . ." is incorrect. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:00, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Tom,


 * Thanks for your input to the Marlovian section. As you will see, I was quite happy with most of your suggested changes and simply corrected a few errors or misunderstandings.


 * That last paragraph does need some thinking about, however, since Marlovians simply cannot let it be thought that they support most of the Oxfordian arguments and (if it stays) we really must be given the chance to make this crystal clear. We also clearly need to make a distinction (as Shapiro has recently singularly failed to do) between details of the history of any particular theory and just what it is that is currently being argued by its adherents. Calvin Hoffman provides an amusing read, but is of little relevance to what we present as our main arguments these days. And whilst you may be able to find single Marlovian authors saying things which diverge from what we might call "mainstream Marlovianism", I am trying to reflect a consensus which is gradually becoming apparent and therefore (I would suggest) of the greatest use to those who want to inform them about what "Marlovians" think.


 * May I simply let you see what I think would be the reactions of most of today's more influential Marlovians to what are a large majority of the arguments presented as those of "most anti-Stratfordians"?


 * "They believe he lacked the extensive education necessary to write the collected works, which display a comprehensive knowledge of classical literature, law and foreign languages"
 * [Since we have no idea how he spent the "lost years" we neither can nor do "believe" any such thing.]


 * "...and question how he could have gained the life experience and adopted the aristocratic attitude that is evident in them."
 * [We certainly wouldn't accept the existence of such an "aristocratic attitude"!]


 * "Many authorship researchers focus on the relationship between the content of the plays and poems, and a candidate’s known education, life experiences, and recorded history."
 * [But we don't. We focus on the faked death and the overwhelming similarity of their styles, and treat the evidence of the Sonnets very differently to that of the other works, i.e. completely differently to the way Oxfordians treat the latter.]


 * "A fundamental principle of many of those who question Shakespeare’s authorship is that most authors reveal themselves in their work, and that the life experience and personality of an author can generally be discerned from his or her writings."
 * [Of course it isn't a "fundamental belief" of ours, even if we accept that an author's experience must have a considerable effect on their work. We certainly don't accept that it will be in the literal way that Oxfordians mean.]


 * "With this principle in mind, authorship doubters find parallels in the fictional characters or events in the Shakespearean works and in the life experiences of their preferred candidate. They also find a disparity between the biography of Shakespeare of Stratford and the content of Shakespeare's works, raising doubts about whether the author and the Stratford businessman are the same person."
 * [Again, the only works we believe can be read in this way are the Sonnets.]


 * "Anti-Stratfordians have argued that aristocratic writers used pseudonyms to write for the public because of what they assert was a prevailing "stigma of print"."
 * [Why on earth would we argue this? In our opinion, being assumed dead is a rather better reason.]


 * "Anderson and other anti-Stratfordians say that the name "Shakespeare" would have made a symbolically apt pseudonym because it alludes to the patron goddess of art, literature and statecraft, Pallas Athena, who sprang from the forehead of Zeus shaking a spear."
 * [This may have been an argument of ours in the past, but I thought that this had been refuted long ago?]


 * "They also claim that the hyphen in the name "Shake-speare", which appeared in 15 of the 32 editions of Shakespeare's plays published before the First Folio, indicated the use of a pseudonym."
 * [I would have said that we don't claim this, but I have just received something from one of my fellow-Marlovians appearing to show that it's not dead yet. We're working on them!]


 * "Anderson also notes that "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit" could imply Shakespeare of Stratford was being given credit for the work of other writers."
 * [We say this has nothing to do with Shakespeare, but even if it did we do not argue that this is what it says!]


 * "On Poet-Ape", written between 1595-1612, and often regarded as concerning Shakespeare".
 * [This is an idea which most current Marlovians have now rejected, it being clearly directed at either Marston or Dekker.]


 * "In 1850, Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the underlying question in the air about Shakespeare saying, "The Egyptian [i.e. mysterious] verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to mind; that he was a jovial actor and manager. I can not marry this fact to his verse."
 * [As I pointed out to John Shahan, the rest of that document makes clear his assumption that Shakespeare wrote it nevertheless. That he supported Delia Bacon in her research is not relevant to that claim.]


 * "Regarding Shakespeare's possible attendance at the Stratford grammar school, skeptics note that as the records of the school's pupils have not survived, Shakespeare of Stratford's attendance cannot be proven; that no one who ever taught or attended The King's School ever claimed to have been his teacher or classmate; and that the school or schools Shakespeare of Stratford might have attended are a matter of speculation as there are no existing admission records for him at any grammar school, university or college."
 * [We see no reason to think he didn't go to Stratford grammar, and plenty of reasons to think that he did.]


 * "Most anti-Stratfordians believe that a provincial glovemaker's son who resided in Stratford until early adulthood would be unlikely to have written plays that deal so personally with the activities, travel and lives of the nobility. The view is summarised by Charles Chaplin: "In the work of greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. . . . Whoever wrote them (the plays) had an aristocratic attitude"."
 * [Marlowe was a provincial cobbler's son. Nobility?]


 * "Authorship doubters stress that the plays show a detailed understanding of politics, the law and foreign languages that would have been near impossible to attain without an aristocratic or university upbringing."
 * [There is nothing special about Shakespeare's works in this respect when compared with contemporaries having no more apparently relevant backgrounds.]


 * "Skeptics note that while the author's depiction of nobility was highly personal and multi-faceted, his treatment of commoners was quite different. Tom Bethell, in Atlantic Monthly, commented "The author displays little sympathy for the class of upwardly mobile strivers of which Shakspere (of Stratford) was a preeminent member. Shakespeare celebrates the faithful servant, but regards commoners as either humorous when seen individually or alarming in mobs"."
 * [If we are going to count Marlowe as a non-Stratfordian candidate, then this sort of argument has to be unacceptable.]


 * "Anti-stratfordians note that Shakespeare of Stratford's will is long and explicit, bequeathing the possessions of a successful middle class businessman but making no mention of personal papers or books (which were expensive items at the time) of any kind, nor any mention of poems or of the 18 plays that remained unpublished at the time of his death, nor any reference to the valuable shares in the Globe Theatre that the Stratford man reportedly owned."
 * [See Strat argument.]


 * "Anti-Stratfordians find it unusual that the Stratford man did not wish his family to profit from his unpublished work or was unconcerned about leaving them to posterity, and find it improbable that he would have submitted all the manuscripts to the King's Men, the playing company of which he was a shareholder, prior to his death."
 * [Unusual? Play scripts belonged to the company not the author (even a shareholder) whether published or not.]


 * "But anti-Stratfordians assert that the monument was clearly altered after its installation, as the earliest printed image of the monument in Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, published in 1656, merely portrays a man holding a grain sack."
 * [This is utter rubbish, and we assert no such thing!]


 * "Some authorship doubters believe that the actual playwright was dead by 1609, the year Shake-speare's Sonnets, appeared with "our ever-living Poet" on the dedication page, words typically used to eulogize someone who has died, yet has become immortal."
 * [This is an Oxfordian argument, not an anti-Stratfordian one.]


 * "Fosters claim, and the Bate translation, however, do not represent the more traditional mainstream belief, espoused by noted Shakespearean scholar Sydney Lee, that "In Elizabethan English there was no irregularity in the use of 'begetter' in its primary sense of 'getter' or 'procurer'"."
 * [Unlike Stratfordians or most other non-Strats we have no reason for disagreeing with Foster.]


 * "Many anti-Stratfordians conventionally refer to the man from Stratford as "Shakspere" (the name recorded at his baptism) or "Shaksper" to distinguish him from the author "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" (the spellings that appear most often on the publications). Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a noted Oxfordian, has stated that most references to the man from Stratford in legal documents usually spell the first syllable of his name with only four letters, "Shak-" or sometimes "Shag-" or "Shax-", whereas the dramatist's name is more consistently printed as "Shake"."
 * [I don't see what this has to do with the authorship.]


 * The problem we have, Tom, is that whilst it is convenient for both Stratfordians and Oxfordians to pretend that there is such a thing as an "anti-Stratfordian case", there really is no such thing. We and the other non-Strats share a belief that Shakespeare didn't do it, but that's about as far as it goes. So what am I to do? Fight for the removal of every one of the claims listed above? Or insist on each one including not only what the beliefs of Shakespearean scholars are, but also whatever Marlovians believe? Or is it better for it to be covered by a short paragraph within the Marlovian bit? Peter Farey.82.11.98.197 (talk) 14:47, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks indeed Peter, that is highly illuminating. I think you have put your finger on a very crucial issue in the style of this article, that it is overwhelmingly written by Oxfordians for the Oxfordian case, which however is disguised, illegitimately as a generic anti-Stratfordian case, something which, as is clear from your lucid exposition, cannot be said to exist in the terms in which it is cast. We shall have to think, with appropriate references (do you have any) the use of the word 'anti-Stratfordian'.Nishidani (talk) 15:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the understanding. The main difficulty I have is that I don't think that the approach favoured by the Wikipedian powers-that-be is the most helpful for any of us. Given a blank sheet of paper I would have a main article concentrating upon the Stratfordian argument, and why the proponents of most alternative candidates (not "most anti-Strats"!) reject them. Each alternative candidate could then have a very brief mention in the main article (mainly historical) and one spin-off article discussing the case for it along the lines of the Marlovian one. In other words, if you want to get there, I don't think you should be starting from here! Peter Farey. 82.11.98.197 (talk) 16:13, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you mean this argument, Peter? Tom Reedy (talk) 19:59, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes of course. Together with some of the best bits from the other sources I mention in the "Marlovian theory" lead, but put into a more acceptable format for Wikipedia. Peter Farey. 82.11.98.197 (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. The problem is there is no Stratfordian argument, except as it, exceptionally, arises in those few who respond to the theorists of an aternative candidate. The way you reframe the argument, it is as if there were, in the beginning, (a) no traditional ascription of the works to Shakespeare, then (b) someone came along and advanced the idea Shakespeare of Stratford was the author so that (c) this was then adopted as the conventional wisdom until (d) others came up with an alternative set of proposals, which (e) since no one subscribes to (b) as a water-tight case, are to be ranked on a par with (b) as mere theories with equal evidentiary and logical bases. For example the Prometheus Bound ascribed to Aeschylus has no independent didascalic evidence to justify the attribution, which arose some two centuries after the play was written. Then, that attribution became 'traditional', until Westphal questioned it back in 1857. It may be, for all we know, by his son Euphorion. But this kind of problem, fairly frequent in classical literature (cf. the Culex ascribed to Vergil or dialogues like the Minos and Epinomis attributed to Plato. However, Shakespeare, as I said, is a different kettle of fish, since ascription to him dates to the time he was alive and working, or, when dead, was made by his intimate theatrical colleagues.Nishidani (talk) 16:46, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't really see why such an impression of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning would be unavoidable. For example, it could start with a statement about what everyone accepted as true to start with and why they did; continue with the arrival of anti-Stratfordian ideas and factual details of how each theory developed; followed by the case for Shakespeare of Stratford which has been rather more consciously formulated as a result of these attacks. This part would have anti-Stratfordian objections to that case "folded in" to the text in the way I have tried to use in the "Marlovian theory" entry. If you prefer to try to find some way of presenting a unified "anti-Stratfordian" argument to start with, however, by all means go ahead, and I do wish you the best of luck! Peter Farey. 82.11.98.197 (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Peter I think I grasp what you're proposing, and I think the angle I'm working might be closer than you expect to that, but I think since the article is about the Shakespeare authorship question that the case against Shakespeare should be laid out first. Essentially the way I'm structuring it is the case against Shakespeare, followed by the case against the case against Shakespeare (i.e why Shakespeare is accepted as the author), followed by a history of the controversy and then followed by candidate sections, with their individual cases explained. I should have a rough draft ready for comments in a couple of weeks (something always seems to interfere with getting it done). Tom Reedy (talk) 20:24, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

alternate drafts
I have set up two pages to use to compare the alternate article drafts being proposed.

Here are the two versions:


 * Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft


 * Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft2


 * In the first version, I had already gone through the old article and cut away over half the material. So what is important from my viewpoint is looking at what further deletions are being proposed and asking for an explanation as to why the material is being suggested for removal.15:20, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * My understanding of the purpose of the rewrite is to try to attain neutrality and conciseness—not brevity—based on independent reliable sources to replace the old article and all the related NPOV-offending articles, as per this decision and ScienceApologist's direction. Once that is accomplished, then a decision will be made on creating any new articles, based on the length of the new SAQ article.
 * IMO merely deleting and rewording material will not accomplish the mandated goal, as I have been saying, and all sides would be better served by a completely neutral POV. Admittedly trying to achieve the standard of NPOV I aspire to for this article is extremely difficult and time-consuming because of the many connotations embedded in the structure of grammar and in the words of the language. I don't see it being a quick or easy task, and perfection is of course out of reach, but I believe the edit I posted is a good start and a good example of how to approach it, and I'd like to learn the views of all the involved editors. I'll add my refs later today. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:57, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It could be cut back, Tom. The 150 years (doubts)/240 years (public debate) distinction does not strike me as important, since the exiguous material from the 18th material doesn't really amount to a doubt, and the Wilmot myth discounts it, as research has shown. I would simplify the lead by speaking of public debate only, emerging with Delia Bacon etc., in the 1848-50s, and leaving a few lines in the main historical section to the trivia about Wilmot and co.
 * I think the idea of rewriting it afresh is sensible, given that the earlier version is basically unmanageable, as editing over the past months has shown. I'll try to come up with some other suggestions as you proceed.Nishidani (talk) 16:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not the 18th century doubts I include, it's the rise of bardolatry. Given that the consensus of RSs from Halliday to Shapiro agree that the SAQ derives from bardolatry, I think it's important to summarise that in the article as I outlined above and so wanted to reflect that in the lead. Perhaps it needs rewording, but I think it's important to the origin of the SAQ and should be in the lead.
 * I would really like to have the opinion of the editors on the neutrality of the language. IMO that's the most difficult task of rewriting this article, as evidenced by the fact that we're all here trying to hammer out a new version. I've said it before that trying to rework the existing article is nothing but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; the very structure of the article is embedded with POV problems. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:44, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * One immediate move in the sandox two article would be to reshuffle the totally disconnected, aleatory structure of the sandbox 1 version along the lines suggested in your original proposal. The Sandbox 1 version is, as structured, incoherent and POV. If I recall correctly, one gets (a) lead (2) exposition of both perspectives (3) the history of the subject (4) the various candidates? If the stuff in sandbox 1 could be reorganized along those lines, it would make drafting the alternative version easier.Nishidani (talk) 16:37, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Get to work! I find it easier to work without refs when arranging the text. Not only do they obscure the main text, but they also tend to limit the introduction of new exposition that comes to mind as I write (not all of which makes the final cut, of course, but if it's a valid addition there will be plenty of cites in reliable sources). Tom Reedy (talk) 16:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Uh, for the umpteenth time 'alternate' does not mean 'alternative' in English.
 * I'll get cracking tomorrow. I've already adjusted the order of the text. Everything down to the 'The remaining material needs to be sorted' marker fits the structure you proposed, Tom. As to the stuff under that, I gather the problem is this, that the material is basically de Verean stuff, and cannot be attributed to a generic 'anti-Stratfordian position' judging from what Peter Farey said in his extensive note. So all of that stuff about 'Shakpe/Shakspere/Shagbag etc., has to be sifted closely to see who maintains what elements of it, which school underwrites what piece of 'theory'. That is going to be a very complicated job, and if Peter Farey is looking in, I think it would be appreciated if he could put a marker ('not Marlovian') throughout this latter part of the draft to distinguish his Marlovian viewpoint from the de Verean perspective that apparently dominates. Nishidani (talk) 19:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Nishidani, I reverted the edits you made to the lead in Draft B for the purposes of the RfC request. I'm more concerned about NPOV than content at the moment, and I don't think a sentence such as "They also argue that documentary evidence, as opposed to contorted chains of conjecture and inference, is wholly lacking to support any other author" clears the NPOV bar. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:46, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Which SAQ intro is NPOV?
An administrative-mandated rewrite of the Shakespeare authorship question is in progress. Two versions of the lead have been written, in two differing styles. We need input on which version is better and why.
 * Version A
 * Version B

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:38, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I keep seeing the section beginning 'Despite the lack of mainstream support, the subject has gained a small but highly visible assortment of supporters,' as attached to the lead, though it belongs to the section below it?
 * Why the elision of the links to the lead names, de Vere, Bacon and Marlowe?Nishidani (talk) 16:02, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer Review
As mentioned, I am trying to get input on Draft #1 [] from uninvolved editors through various notice boards and reviews. Smatprt (talk) 21:53, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Mary Sidney
A wealth of recent work about Mary Sidney suggests that she should be in the list of major candidates. Women were discriminated against in Elizabethan times, hopefully that has changed. I've added the edit to the sandbox I; please add it to sandbox II if that version wins.Jdkag (talk) 11:10, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Lack of Documents--A major reason
I see that I've jumped into a very contentious Wiki entry. In all its various forms, the current entry lacks NPOV in that almost every contention of Anti-Stratfordians is immediately belittled.

Also, the main source guiding the intro is that by the Stratfordian Gibson, who seems to set up straw arguments. Shouldn't the lack of documentation--no written manuscripts, no letters, no record of meeting socially with literary figures--be mentioned in the intro as a major reason for suspecting that Shakespeare the writer was just a name (that is, just "book and fame")? In other words, the lack of literary paper trail voiced by Price should be mentioned prominently in the first paragraph.

In general, the tone of the entry should follow the respectful EB tone, given that serious scholars do question the authorship, even if it is not "the majority."Jdkag (talk) 08:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your helpful comments. At this point, it would be helpful if you provided specific sentences that you find disrespectful or NPOV, so they can be discussed and/or recast. Or any other specifics you care to mention. I'll see what I can do with you comment about the lack of documentation issue. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 20:51, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that this controversial entry could benefit by following the example of other controversial subjects covered in Wiki. For example, look at respective entries related to Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinian entry is allowed to present Palestinians as they see themselves, without each sentence being immediately followed or preceded by the Israeli view, and vice-versa. Similarly, the Shakespeare entry has only one phrase referring to the authorship question in the entire intro. Similarly, the authorship question entry should be allowed to present the case, without every sentence starting and ending with the opposing view of the "majority."Jdkag (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Editing premise
Here you edit out material on Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, with the edit summary 'This is all referenced to a Bacon site that promotes Bacon as the author. It should be incorporated into the Bacon section or the Bacon article.' This means you have set a general premise for governing this version of the article. That no point or section can be referenced exclusively to a partisan site, and this holds for de Vere as well of course. You cannot, by analogy, retain sections that are only referenced to Oxfordian sites.Nishidani (talk) 07:56, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not at all. I merely meant that the "section" did not belong as a separate "candidate" - because, if you follow the reference, all the cited material was actually promoting Bacon. I have no problem at all with partisan sites used to describe what partisans believe. Not sure how you drew your conclusion, as I clearly said "It should be incorporated into the Bacon section or the Bacon article". I never said the ref could not be used. Hope that clarifies for you. Smatprt (talk) 17:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

James Shapiro interview
There was an interesting interview with James Shapiro on CBC radio's Q (radio show) today, May 25th. You can listen to it here --Slp1 (talk) 02:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)