Wikipedia:Peer review/Shakespeare authorship question/archive2

Shakespeare authorship question
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because it has been almost totally rewritten from a neutral POV using scholarly reliable sources only. In the past it has been a very contentious page and a POV battleground, and I want to try to take it to FA status, which I think would help stabilise it to keep its neutral POV.
 * Previous peer review

Thanks, Tom Reedy (talk) 04:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC) :Note: Because of its length, this peer review is not transcluded. It is still open and located at Peer review/Shakespeare authorship question/archive2.


 * I'll simply list anything which might be commented at at FAC or by MOS sticklers.
 * Lead looks good and seems to comply with rules; however, the many footnotes might raise objections. On the other hand, this being a controversial subject, it is probably a good idea to present much of the case at the start.
 * I am not sure about having book titles as external links in the article text. I always thought this was prohibited, but my look at WP:MOSLINK proved inconclusive.
 * Picture size should as a rule be at free scale. There is the possibility of the upright parameter, which reduces the free size automatically without a fixed value. Lead image is at 200px now, while the default was changed to 220px a while ago. Some of the smaller ones could perhaps use the upright instead of the very small pixel values?
 * Very short paragraphs, especially one- or two-sentence paragraphs like the first in Unearthing proofs are discouraged. Quite a number might perhaps be combined, as in "Television, magazines, and the Internet", or the first two in Oxford (just examples).
 * Shakespeare on trial, part 1: That the SAQ "has often been tested by recourse to the framework of trial by jury", shouldn't that rather say "mock trial", so it's clearer that these were unofficial show or fun events? The participation of real judges does not make them in any way official, or does it?
 * Bacon: a)"The great number of legal allusions used by Shakespeare demonstrate his expertise in the law,"; wouldn't it be better to write "The great number of legal allusions used by Shakespeare demonstrate, Baconians say, his expertise in the law," or did S. really use expertise? b)The impression is first that Delia Bacon introduced Bacon, but then it says that Smith wrote a book in 1856 which did that; a bit confusing.
 * Oxford section: a)Regarding the never/ever/every code, does "This veiled signature in the works of Marlowe, George Gascoigne, Sir John Harrington, Edmund Spenser" mean that Oxford wrote the works of these people as well? Or is it that he sometimes used their name, and they were still writing things themselves? b)"The publisher's dedication to Shakespeare's Sonnets", is that perhaps in S. Sonnets?
 * Marlove: I think it would be good to explain briefly that Thomas Walsingham is some cousin of Francis Walsingham, lest people think the spymaster is meant (as I thought).
 * Terry Ross ref should have some sort of publisher and a retrieval date if web-based.
 * I think the article is especilly engaging in the earlier-middle parts and easy to understand for the non-specialist reader, although it gets a bit harder in the later part, especially in Bacon; but that's presumably because of the weird theories. Buchraeumer (talk) 22:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I saw the question about the book title/external links on a different talk page. My inclination is to turn these into references. As many of them point to easily accessible source material via Google Books, I would be loathe to remove them. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 00:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Comments from Nikkimaria

 * Lead is appropriately broad in scope, but reads as long-winded because of the consistently long sentence length. Consider splitting a few sentences to increase accessibility
 * Don't use contractions
 * "Anti-Stratfordians often portray the town as an illiterate cultural backwater...and from the earliest days have often depicted him as greedy, stupid, and illiterate" - can the repetition of "illiterate" be avoided?
 * "save for two signatures by Susanna that appear to be "drawn" and not written" - could you briefly clarify this distinction?
 * "Of those 15 play editions, 13 are on the title pages of just three plays" - potentially confusing wording
 * "The mainstream view, to which nearly all academic Shakespeareans subscribe, is that the author referred to as "Shakespeare" was the same William Shakespeare who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, travelled to London and became an actor and sharer (part-owner) of the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men) acting company that owned the Globe Theatre, the Blackfriars Theatre, and exclusive rights to produce Shakespeare's plays from 1594 to 1642,[58] and who was allowed the use of the honorific "gentleman" after 1596 when his father, John Shakespeare, was granted a coat of arms, and who died in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616." ; "In contrast to the methods used by anti-Stratfordians, Shakespeare scholars employ the same methodology to attribute works to the poet and playwright William Shakespeare as they use for other writers of the period: the historical record[59] and stylistic studies, and maintain that the methods used by many anti-Stratfordians to identify alternative candidates—such as reading the work as autobiography, finding coded messages and cryptograms embedded in the works, and concocting conspiracy theories to explain the lack of evidence for any writer but Shakespeare—are unreliable, unscholarly, and explain why more than 70 candidates[60] have been nominated as the "true" author" - examples of very long sentences
 * You note that you intend to use the term "Stratfordian" for those who believe Shakespeare to have been the true author of the plays, yet that term appears only twice in the text, and is vastly outweighed by "Shakespearean" or synonyms. Could you clarify your position on this point?
 * You repeat a couple of points a few times, including the coat-of-arms and "This Star of England"
 * I echo the above commenter's point about one-sentence paragraphs
 * Why are quotations italicized in "Personal testimonies"?
 * "Prominent English actor, playwright, and author Thomas Heywood." - not a complete sentence
 * "proved 16 May 1605" - is "proved" a legal term in this context? Could you explain or link it?
 * Philips or Phillips?
 * "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon’s will, executed 25 March 1616, bequeaths "to my ffellowes John Hemynge Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell xxvj s viij d A peece to buy them Ringes."...Shakespeare's will also includes monetary bequests to buy mourning rings for his fellow actors and theatrical entrepreneurs Heminges, Burbage and Condell" - why is this "also"? Aren't they the same thing?
 * "The Latin curriculum began with William Lily’s Latin grammar Rudimenta Grammatices, which was by law the sole Latin grammar to be used in grammar schools" - repetitive
 * "based on a quantitative comparison of Shakespeare’s stylistic habits (known as stylometrics) using computer programs to compare them to the works" - grammar
 * "The emergence of the Shakespeare authorship question had to wait until he was regarded as the English national poet in a class by himself" - tone seems a bit off here
 * "touching up" - meaning editing?
 * Be consistent in MoS details, for example in the use of U. S. vs U.S.
 * Link terms on first appearance only, and don't link very common terms like United States. However, less common terms should be linked where possible
 * "Stewart monarchies" - the generally accepted spelling is "Stuart"
 * "De Vere was recognised as a playwright, one of the "best for comedy amongst us", by Francis Meres, as well as an important courtier poet" - meaning is unclear. Do you mean he was recognized as a playwright by Meres and an important courtier poet, or do you mean that Meres recognized him as a playwright and important courtier poet?
 * "but was promoted to that of a single author in 1895" - what does the "that" refer to?
 * Be consistent in referring to the Earl of Derby as either Stanley or Derby, as mixing the two is somewhat confusing
 * "The evidence instead supports a career..." - source?
 * "He praises Shakespeare as a person, writing "I lov'd the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any. Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie, brave notions, and gentle expressions . . . . hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned."" - source?
 * "Anti-Stratfordians often try to cast suspicion on the bequests, which were interlined, saying that they were added later as part of the conspiracy, but the will was proved in the Prerogative Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury in London on 22 June 1616, and the original will was copied into the court register with the interlineations intact." - source?
 * "Shakespeare's are the most-studied secular works in history" - source?
 * "Baconian cryptogram-hunting flourished well into the 20th century, and in 1905 Walt Whitman biographer Dr. Isaac Hull Platt discovered that the Latin word honorificabilitudinitatibus, found in Love's Labour's Lost, is an anagram of Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi ("These plays, the offspring of F. Bacon, are preserved for the world.")." - source?
 * Missing bibliographic details for Matus 1991, Montegue 1963, MCrea 2005 (might be a spelling problem), Johnson 1969, Potts 2002
 * Footnote 72: date?
 * Dawson 1966, Dobson 2001, Vickers 2006 and Elliott 2004 should be cited using both authors
 * Brooks 1943, Kathman and Ross, Kathman (2), Lefranc 1919a, Looney 1920, May 1980, Symposium 2004, Wells 2006 are in Bibliography but not Footnotes
 * Need a consistent method to distinguish between sources with same author and date
 * Pendleton: formatting
 * Non-print-based weblinks need publisher and retrieval date
 * Compare formatting of two Dobson references
 * Why are page titles bolded in External links
 * Change subheading from "Mainstream" to "Shakespearean" or "Stratfordian"
 * What are the sources for the images used in the lead collage? Those will likely be required at FAC (even if the images in question appear later in the article, the lead collage description page should still specify them)
 * File:Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg needs more information on the source (and check spelling)
 * Check licensing for File:Shakespeare-1747-1656.jpg - the monument is a 3D work and is subject to slightly different licensing rules. I'm not sure whether the plaque would also be considered 3D, so check on that also
 * File:Shakespear_ye_Player_coatofarms.gif - author name doesn't match that given in the source
 * File:Christopher_Marlowe.jpg - source link is dead
 * File:6thEarlOfDerby.jpg - tagged as lacking author information. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Issues are mostly fixed, except for those that remain unstruck. Note also that stability is a FAC criterion, and that you therefore should not nominate it unless/until the edit warring stops. Good luck! Nikkimaria (talk) 15:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Comments from NinaGreen
The Wikipedia policy of neutrality is not maintained in the SAQ article.

David Kathman has a degree in linguistics, works as a stock analyst, and has openly proselytized for more than a decade on the authorship controversy (see http://shakespeareauthorship.com/kathman.html). Kathman is anything but neutral on the SAQ. Yet on the sole authority of an outdated 2003 statement by Kathman, the SAQ article inaccurately labels the SAQ as a 'fringe theory'. Evidence that the SAQ is a minority view rather than a fringe theory is found in a 2007 New York Times survey. 17% of Shakespeare professors surveyed by the New York Times thought that there was either "good reason," or "possibly good reason," for doubt about the authorship of the Shakespeare canon, and 72% of professors said they address the authorship question in their classes. This constitutes evidence directly from academics teaching Shakespeare at universities that the SAQ is a minority view, not a fringe theory. See the survey at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/education/shakespeare.html?_r=1. Moreover a graduate program in Shakespeare authorship studies is offered at Brunel University in England, and a program in Shakespeare authorship studies is offered at Concordia University in the United States. Two recent books by respected academics devoted to the authorship controversy, James Shapiro's Contested Will and Scott McCrae's The Case for Shakespeare, constitute further evidence that the SAQ is a minority view, not a fringe theory. Leading Shakespeare actors, including Mark Rylance and Sir Derek Jacobi, are openly sceptical of Shakespeare of Stratford's authorship of the plays (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/8196501/Sir-Derek-Jacobi-Bard-to-the-bone.html). A feature film on the authorship controversy, directed by Roland Emmerich, will be released next year. In anticipation of the film's release, Dr. Hardy Cook asked on his well known Shaksper list for suggestions for strategies which academics could use to deal with questions raised about the authorship of Shakespeare's works when the film is released, indicating clearly that the authorship controversy is much more than a 'fringe theory'. There are peer-reviewed journals on the authorship controversy, such as Brief Chronicles (see http://www.briefchronicles.com/ojs/index.php/bc/index.php), whose editorial boards are comprised of individuals with Ph.D.s who teach at universities in the United States and Great Britain. In its present state the SAQ article does not meet Wikipedia standards of neutrality, and does not reflect the current status of the authorship controversy, but rather reflects a point of view which is at best outdated and at worst biased, based solely on David Kathman's 2003 statement. For Tom Reedy's association with David Kathman in proselytizing on the authorship controversy, see http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html.NinaGreen (talk) 05:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Most of the points you mention are included in the article. However, I wonder: what do you consider the dividing line between a minority view and a fringe theory? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * That's the $64,000 question. In order to maintain the Wikipedia policy of neutrality, there has to be a clear dividing line between fringe theories and minority views. As a Wikipedia editor, Tom Reedy cannot simply pitch the SAQ into the 'fringe theory' category on the sole basis of a 2003 statement by David Kathman, with whom Tom is closely associated, and who neither teaches Shakespeare at a university nor is a member of the academic community involved in terms of having a degree in the specialist field. Tom Reedy needs to spell out for other Wikipedia editors where he sees the dividing line in Wikipedia policy between fringe theories and minority views, and why he feels the SAQ falls into the fringe theory category in the face of the evidence outlined above (and more which could be cited along the same lines).NinaGreen (talk) 14:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Every statement in that article open to challenge is referenced by a source that complies with WP:RS and the format complies with the guideline WP:FRINGE. I don't think this is the appropriate venue to discuss Nina's assertion, and I have referred her several times to WP:FRINGE/N, but for some reason she refuses to seek clarification there. I will say that the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt itself accepts that all such theories are fringe, in that its ultimate line reads, "...we hereby declare that the identity of William Shakespeare should, henceforth, be regarded in academia as a legitimate issue for research and publication, and an appropriate topic for instruction and discussion in classrooms." By that statement alone it is obvious that the organisation itself accepts that the SAQ is not now considered to be a legitimate academic topic. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The SAQ article lacks balance and is heavily weighted to the Stratfordian side. The language used, such as that non-Stratfordians "claim" and "assert" rather than "state" displays a strong Stratfordian bias and lack of neutrality. As Nina Green has demonstrated above, there is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that non-Stratfordians do not subscribe to a fringe theory, but are simply members of an acceptable minority group.Mizelmouse (talk) 12:48, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * One of the main problems with the article is that it's out of date. For example, the lede contains this clause 'Although the idea has attracted much public interest'. The source cited is a 1958 book by Wadsworth.  The topic of public interest in the SAQ is thoroughly covered by Shapiro in Contested Will (2010). Why cite a source which is half a century old?NinaGreen (talk) 15:21, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Another serious problem with the article is that it contains internal contradictions. The lede contains this statement:


 * all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory with no hard evidence, and for the most part disregard it except to rebut or disparage the claims.


 * In the body of the article the statement in the lead is clearly contradicted:


 * A week later [in 2007] the New York Times published a survey of 265 American Shakespeare professors on the Shakespeare authorship question in the "Education" section. To the question whether there is good reason to question Shakespeare's authorship, 6% answered "yes", and 11% "possibly". When asked their opinion of the topic, 61% chose "A theory without convincing evidence" and 32% "A waste of time and classroom distraction".


 * If 17% of professors teaching Shakespeare at American universities consider that there is either 'good' or 'possible' reason to question the Shakespeare authorship, then the statement in the lede is deliberately misleading. Moreover the SAQ article fails to mention the survey's significant finding that 72% of those same professors stated that they covered the authorship controversy in their classes, which contradicts the statement in the lede that Shakespeare professors 'for the most part disregard' the SAQ.NinaGreen (talk) 15:30, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Nina this is not the appropriate venue to make you argument that the SAQ is not a fringe theory or to demonstrate your WP:OR. That place is WP:FRINGE/N. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Tom, the burden of proof is on you. You've chosen this venue to try to have the SAQ article given FA status. The article contains the statement that the SAQ is a 'fringe theory' according to Wikipedia policy. You haven't established that. Moreover there are many other serious bias issues in the SAQ article, a number of which I've identified already on this page.NinaGreen (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The SAQ article also suffers from selectively biased quotation of sources. For example, the article contains this statement:


 * Mainstream Shakespeare scholars maintain that biographical interpretations of literature are unreliable for attributing authorship


 * The supporting footnote quotes Shapiro:


 * Shapiro 2010, pp. 304–13 (268–77)


 * This is not an accurate reflection of the content of the referenced pages. Yes, Shapiro does make that argument. But he also points out that a number of 'prominent academics' (Shapiro's words) including Greenblatt and Rene Weis, have made biographical interpretations of Shakespeare's plays in order to establish that they were written by Shakespeare of Stratford, a fact which Shapiro laments. The statement in the SAQ article is thus deliberately misleading in terms of accurately stating the content of the cited pages.


 * Moreover on pp. 40-47 Shapiro credits no less a personage than Edmund Malone (certainly a 'mainstream Shakespeare scholar' if there ever was one) with being the first to open the 'Pandora's box' of biographical interpretation of the plays. On p. 43, Shapiro mentions Kenneth Gross's Shylock is Shakespeare as a modern example of biographical interpretation by 'a leading scholar' published by 'a major university press'. On pp. 52-58 Shapiro catalogues a host of great names who interpreted Shakespeare's works autobiographically, including the Schelgels, Heinrich Heine, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Emerson and George Chalmers. Concerning the modern period, Shapiro writes of the perennial attempts to identify the Dark Lady and the Fair Youth of Shakespeare's Sonnets ('hardly a year goes by without some fresh name trotted out'). The alleged dichotomy in the SAQ article between 'mainstream Shakespeare scholars' and authorship sceptics in terms of the 'biographical interpretation of literature' is thus enormously inaccurate and misleading.NinaGreen (talk) 15:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Another example of selectively biased quotation of sources is found in the Standards of Evidence section of the article:


 * At the core of the argument is the nature of acceptable evidence used to attribute works to their authors.[22] Anti-Stratfordians rely on what they designate as circumstantial evidence: similarities between the characters and events portrayed in the works and the biography of their preferred candidates; literary parallels between the works and the known literary works of their candidate, and hidden codes and cryptographic allusions in Shakespeare's own works or texts written by contemporaries.[23] By contrast, academic Shakespeareans and literary historians rely on the documentary evidence in the form of title page attributions, government records such as the Stationers' Register and the Accounts of the Revels Office, and contemporary testimony from poets, historians, and those players and playwrights who worked with him, as well as modern stylometric studies, all of which converge to confirm William Shakespeare's authorship.[24] These criteria are the same as those used to credit works to other authors, and are accepted as the standard methodology for authorship attribution.


 * As noted above, Shapiro cites Greenblatt and Weis as examples of 'prominent academics' who have used circumstantial evidence to establish authorship. The entire Standards of Evidence section is misleading in pretending that there is a cut and dried difference in the approach to what constitutes acceptable evidence.NinaGreen (talk) 16:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Further bias in the SAQ article is found in the Stylometric Studies section, which reads:


 * Beginning in 1987, Ward Elliott, who was sympathetic to Oxford as the author, and Robert J. Valenza supervised a continuing study of Shakespeare’s works based on a quantitative comparison of Shakespeare’s stylistic habits (known as stylometrics) using computer programs to compare them to the works of 37 authors who had been claimed to be the true author at one time or another. The study, known as the Claremont Shakespeare Clinic, was last held in the spring of 2010.[87] The tests determined that Shakespeare’s work shows consistent, countable, profile-fitting patterns, suggesting that he was a single individual, not a committee, and that he used more hyphens, feminine endings, and open lines and fewer relative clauses than most of the writers with whom he was compared. The result determined that none of the other tested claimants’ work could have been written by Shakespeare, nor could Shakespeare have been written by them, eliminating all of the claimants—including Oxford, Bacon, and Marlowe—as the true authors of the Shakespeare works.[88]

No mention is made in the SAQ article of the fact that the flaws in Elliott and Valenza's methodology have been explicated in several articles by Richard Whalen and John Shahan.NinaGreen (talk) 16:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The SAQ article is outdated and misleading in terms of its discussion of Elliott and Valenza, as outlined above. It is also outdated and misleading in its discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court moot trial:


 * Shakespeare on trial, part 2


 * Ogburn, Jr., considered that academics were best challenged by recourse to law, and the Oxfordians had their day in court when three justices of the Supreme Court of the United States convened a one-day moot court to hear the case 25 September 1987. The trial was structured so that literary experts would not be represented, but the burden of proof was put upon the Oxfordians. The justices determined that the case was based on a conspiracy theory, and that the reasons given for this conspiracy were both incoherent and unpersuasive.


 * Shapiro's account of the moot court hearing on pp. 205-6 of Contested Will does not support the statement of the judges' reasoning given in the SAQ article above. Moreover the views of the U.S. Supreme Court justices have moved on, a fact which is deliberately omitted from the SAQ article (see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123998633934729551.html).NinaGreen (talk) 16:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

My experience is that it is a waste of time to deal with your assertions on a case-by-case basis, so I will simply wait until the article becomes an FA candidate and respond to your objections there. Meanwhile I suggest you consult the actual references given in the article instead of substituting your own page numbers. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:02, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Tom, check the SAQ article. I've taken the page numbers from it.NinaGreen (talk) 17:05, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Another example of deliberate bias in the SAQ article is found in this statement:


 * No documentary evidence connecting Oxford to the authorship of the works has been found,[199] so codes and ciphers have been found in the works to support the theory, such as the anagram "E. Vere" embedded in the works more than 1,700 times in the words "ever", "every", and "never". These same veiled signatures have been found by Oxfordians in the works of Marlowe, George Gascoigne, Sir John Harrington, Edmund Spenser, and others, identifying them all as pseudonyms used by Oxford.[200]

Shapiro is cited as a source (Shapiro 2010, pp. 221–2 (194–6)). However Shapiro names only a single example:


 * It wasn't long before George Frisbee found this coded signature -- clear evidence of Oxford's authorship -- in the poetry of Christopher Marlowe, George Gascoigne, Sir John Harrington, Edmund Spenser, George Puttenham, and even King James.

The bias and lack of neutrality in the SAQ article is obvious. Where Shapiro cites only a single obscure individual (who IS George Frisbee, anyway?), the SAQ article tars every Oxfordian with the same brush.

The SAQ article is seriously flawed. Not only is it out of date on a number of major issues, but it is also written throughout from a biased point of view which is far from Wikipedia's standards of neutrality, as the foregoing examples demonstrate (and many more can be cited).NinaGreen (talk) 17:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Another clear indication of bias and lack of neutrality in the SAQ article is the failure to mention prominent sceptics. Shapiro writes, on p. 4:


 * Over time, and for all sorts of reasons, leading artists and intellectuals from all walks of life joined the ranks of the skeptics. I can think of little else that unites Henry James and Malcolm X, Sigmund Freud and Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller and Orson Welles, or Mark Twain and Sir Derek Jacobi.


 * None of these individuals is mentioned in the SAQ article, whose sole objective seems to be to present a biased view of the authorship controversy as a 'fringe theory' which no intelligent person would consider.NinaGreen (talk) 17:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

This isn't really the best place for you to raise these types of issues. Possible avenues: WP:FRINGE/N, WP:RFC, WP:NPOV/N...take your pick, or discuss at article talk. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:44, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Wait a minute. Tom Reedy's claim is that the article is written throughout from a neutral point of view, and of course Wikipedia's policy demands neutrality. I've documented on this page numerous instances of clear bias in the article. In addition I've demonstrated that the article is seriously outdated on significant issues.  It needs a complete overhaul in both respects. It's certainly not a candidate for FA status at this point.  Moreover Wikipedia policy is as follows:


 * Academic consensus
 * The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, 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. Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors.


 * There are statements throughout the article, including the statement in the lede, regarding academic consensus which are unsupported.


 * Are we trying to follow Wikipedia policy here, or subvert it?NinaGreen (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

At the moment, we are trying to improve the article. SAQ is not a current candidate for Featured Article status - WP:PR is to improve the article, not promote it. In any event, you've made your views clear here, but you would be better off pursuing one of the forms of dispute resolution I mentioned above. Continuing to post here is unlikely to be helpful. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:28, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Nina's presence here could not be more helpful.If you believe otherwise,Nikkimaria it is,charitably, due to the fact that you have not read,nor possibly even viewed

the source materials cited in the article.
 * Take the above references to the "book" which preceded the publication of Delia Bacon by one year.It is actually a circa thirty-two page pamphlet by William Henry Smith.Moreover Delia Bacon who never claimed that Francis Bacon was more than a subsidiary contributor to the Shakespeare canon was quite recently re-edited and is readilly available.But is not cited.
 * You have swallowed hook,line and sinker Reedy's frequent undocumented (and radical) pieces of historical revisionism.Notably a statement(cited by you above)equating alleged " anti-Stratfordian" autobiographical studies with alleged Baconian cryptograms.In fact autobiographical interpretation was the standard ("mainstream" as used here is wastebasket terminology) from the publication of Dowden's "Life of Shakespeare in the 1870's to Peter Ackroyd ,and Nichol's much praised "The Lodger". In fact Ackroyd and Nichol argue that the plays could only have been written by a man "redolent of the brothel"and therefore William of Stratford is the only possible author.
 * As for Reedy's even more tendentious claim that there are 70 anti-Stratfordian theories all deriving from autobiographical theories,he cites only a ten page magazine article written earlier in the present year.I have taken the liberty of writing to the author in question but it is too early to anticipate a reply.but Unless he can reproduce an earlier citation these (and all similar) references should be deleted
 * The standard Bibliotheca Anti-Stratfordiana compiled in in the late 1940's is available on microfilm at Columbia University(and where I spent three years checking it out in the 1960"s. A published authorship bibliography also appeared in the late 70's under university auspices.It is astonishing that neither of these two most primary working sources has ever been cited here.
 * Moreover,Harold Shapiro does not seem to have taken the trouble to have walked some two thousand feet from his office to consult it(at least to any effect) and the reliability of his work per se suffers accordingly

As this article is cluttered with similar sins of omission and commission,the simplest solution would require  a minimum addition and deletion of perhaps fifty small items involving at least a dozen titles and footnotes and perhaps thirty-five alterations or deletions.The alternative,for example, would to expand the article to even more confusing length by explaining how the anti-biographical prejudice crept in as the result of growing Marxist and radical feminist elements in certain English departments which have a great deal with what happened in Maoist China in the 50's and what happened at Columbia and Berkeley,California, in the late 60's but which have nothing whatsoever to do with what did, or did not, happen in Elizabethan London.Charles Darnay (talk) 22:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand my point - I'm suggesting that concerns of the nature both you and she are raising are better suited to a request for comment, a post to a suitable noticeboard, or even a well-reasoned discussion on the article's talk page. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification. I'm not interested in dispute resolution.  I'm trying to improve the article, which you've stated is what this page is for.  I've made some very specific suggestions for improving certain sections of the article which are biased, inaccurate, or outdated. What happens next? How do my suggestions become implemented?NinaGreen (talk) 20:24, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, as the editor who opened this peer review (Tom) does not seem to agree with your suggestions, I suggest you create an RfC on the article talk page or post to a noticeboard to gain broader consensus about whether such changes should be implemented and, if so, how this should be done. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:13, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I've posted this analysis on the SAQ Talk page, and I'm also posting it here because it's highly relevant to the POV and lack of neutrality issues.


 * Presenting The Majority View In Accordance With Wikipedia Policy


 * Tom Reedy has called the authorship controversy a 'crank theory' and Nishidani has called it 'this ideological mania'. With that kind of bias on the part of two prominent editors of the SAQ article, it's small wonder that the lede paragraph strays from Wikipedia policy, and frames the issue in biased terms. The lede paragraph reads:


 * The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works traditionally attributed to him, and that the historical Shakespeare was merely a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for reasons such as social rank, state security or gender could not safely take public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief with no hard evidence, and for the most part disregard it except to rebut or disparage the claims.


 * Wikipedia policy states that the majority view must be presented as the majority view, and that the minority view must be presented in a fair and balanced manner. It goes without saying that the majority view must be defined as the view held by the Shakespeare establishment. It also goes without saying that the view of the Shakespeare establishment presented in the lede paragraph must be the current view held by the Shakespeare establishment (historical versions of it belong in the historical section of the SAQ article), so any sources cited in support in the lede paragraph must be less than a decade old.


 * Where is the presentation of the majority view in the lede paragraph? It's not there. The view of the Shakespeare establishment is that the true author of the Shakespeare canon is William Shakespeare of Stratford. That's it, pure and simple. And that is what should appear in the lede paragraph according to Wikipedia policy. Instead, the majority view is presented in terms of what the majority allegedly thinks of the minority view. Instead of presenting the majority view in terms of who the Shakespeare establishment thinks wrote the plays, the majority view is presented in terms of what Tom Reedy, David Kathman, Nishidani, Paul Barlow et al claim the Shakespeare establishment thinks of the minority view. But so far, Tom et al have not been able to substantiate their biased claim. They have threatened to produce countless numbers of statements from members of the Shakespeare establishment which support the way they have framed the issue in the lede paragraph, but they have been unable to cite members of the Shakespeare establishment as sources. Thus, the lede paragraph needs to be entirely rewritten so that it contains, in accordance with Wikipedia policy, a clear statement of the majority view, which is that the Shakespeare establishment thinks William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays. Their unsubstantiated claim concerning what the Shakespeare establishment allegedly thinks of the minority view needs to be entirely eliminated from the lede paragraph.NinaGreen (talk) 16:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

NinaGreen (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I've placed this comment on the Talk page for the SAQ article, and I'm placing it here as well so that peer reviewers will be aware of the restrictions which, contrary to Wikipedia policy, have been placed on any editing of the SAQ article to improve it. I've made many attempts to improve the article on a number of fronts including lack of neutrality, presence of synthesis and original research, excessive length, excessive use of footnotes which almost equal the length the article etc. etc., and in every case I've either been prevented from editing at all by Tom's demand that consensus be reached on the Talk page before any editing by me can be done (an impossibility), or Tom or one of his close associates has instantly reverted my edits before anyone can even look at them or consider them, even though I've placed the edits up for discussion on the Talk page. This is all completely contrary to Wikipedia policy, and no article should be even considered for Peer Review when this sort of strong-arming of any opposition is going on. Here's what I wrote to Tom on the subject on the Talk page:


 * Tom, I can't recall a single topic which has been brought up on this Talk page to any purpose. The reason for that is that you control the article, contrary to Wikipedia policy, and you will not allow a syllable of it to be altered without your express consent, which you never grant. Nor will you allow a single edit by anyone other than yourself to stand without instantly reverting it. You have admitted that you are biased, and have even gone so far as to claim that your bias brings a useful perspective to the article. No editor of this page who is among your close group of associates has ever objected in the slightest to any of this, and no administrator has intervened in any way to prevent it from continuing. That's an objective view of the status quo with respect to the SAQ article. It is far from Wikipedia's intent and Wikipedia's policies.

NinaGreen (talk) 20:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Comments from Ironhand41
This article is not written from a neutral point of view and therefore is not ready for peer review. First, it is biased rhetoric. For example, the authors of the article go to some length to make those who don't accept the traditional attribution look odd and quirky by using negative adjectives to describe them. Second, the article casts the dispute as between academics and non academics. But there are a few academics who agree with the doubters and their number is growing. Additionally, there is a significant list of non academic intellectuals who have looked into the controversy and decided that the academics have it all wrong. The "us-versus-them" framework of the article as presently written creates a false dichotomy. Good arguments don't rely on appeals to authority and the claim that scholars and academics are neutral is an insult to anyone who has attended a university. Third, there are those of us who don't have a large stake in the authorship controversy, but whose interest and participation has increased precisely because of the underhanded ways a few academics and traditionalists have attempted to skew the argument in their favor. It would seem that waving a hand and declaring there is no doubt about who wrote the Canon doesn’t work well anymore. This probably explains Plan B; the effort to dress the skeptics’ arguments in a Stratfordian pinafore and claim with a straight face that it represents a neutral point of view.

This statement regarding anti-Strratfordian research is very misleading: "Anti-Stratfordians rely on what they designate as circumstantial evidence: similarities between the characters and events portrayed in the works and the biography of their preferred candidates; literary parallels between the works and the known literary works of their candidate, and hidden codes and cryptographic allusions in Shakespeare's own works or texts written by contemporaries." In point of fact, authorship research explores the issues of early dating ("Dating Shakespeare's Plays" - ed. Kevin Gilvary - 2010), Italian topicalities ("The Shakespeare Guide to Italy" - Richard Paul Roe - 2010), political allegory, Shakespeare and the Law, and untranslated Greek sources, a much wider scope of research than proposed by the existing article. A review of on-line articles published in the peer-reviewed authorship journals, "The Oxfordian" and "Brief Chronicles" will attest to these points. The omission of any mention of the work of Mark Anderson ("Shakespeare by Another Name" - 2005), William Farina ("De Vere as Shakespeare" - 2006), or Diana Price ("Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography" - 2001) suggests the selected references are clearly prejudicial against the authorship challenge. Earl Showerman

Comments from Paul Barlow
I'm afraid this is what happens whever any attempt is made to improve this article using WP systems for peer review. New editors appear out of nowhere who write long, rambling, barely relevant screeds of consipracy theory that bury useful debate. Is there any way this content can be restricted to secture sensible debate about article improvement according to policy? We will, otherwise, never get anywhere - again. Paul B (talk) 18:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Paul, excuse me. Where on this page is there a 'long, rambling, barely relevant screeds of consipracy theory'? I haven't seen one. What I have seen is a number of very specific comments concerning factual inaccuracies and lack of neutrality in the article. Why don't you do some editing on the SAQ article to deal with those problems rather than ramble on here about non-existent 'screeds of conspiracy theory'?NinaGreen (talk) 19:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm mainly thinking of our Dickensian friend and his weird brothel-obsession. I really think he should get it out of his system. Paul B (talk) 20:19, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Comments from Xover
Working on review but won't be able to finish today. --Xover (talk) 22:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Late to the party as usual. My apologies. I've been trying to keep up with the article talk page in order to understand the current major concerns, but given the state of the discussion there (not to mention the sheer volume!) I've since come to realize that this was a mistake. Here then follows my review based primarily on the article content itself, with only a marginal glance at the issues under contention at talk.


 * My main and immediate concern is that the article has a weight issue. Not a WP:WEIGHT issue; but a overweight issue! The article, when printed out, is 39 pages; of which 14 pages are the references (i.e. 15 pages of article content). Even William Shakespeare itself is only 27 pages (17/10 split of content vs. references). I think perhaps the content:cite ratio is appropriate for the article (since it is almost by definition a controversial subject), but the overall length concerns me; and given the extensive quotes in the references there may actually be a significant paucity of references if one were to (as I have not) study them in depth. I raise some points below that bear upon this issue.
 * The note in the beginning of the first main body section (Overview) regarding the terms Stratfordian and anti-Stratfordian is inappropriate. Either the terms are accepted terms of art bearing on the article's subject—and thus should be discussed in the article text, not commented on in meta-content—or they are mere attempts to create a false dichotomy between two apparently equal points of view. As far as I know there is the mainstream academic and popular consensus, and then there is the various adherents of the fringe theory that is this article's subject, meaning a specific appellation for either group is here unnecessary and misleading. Reading on it appears the term “Stratfordian” is barely used and can easily be reformulated away; and the uses of “anti-Stratfordian” become much less relevant and can fairly easily (if with slightly more cumbersome results) be replaced by plain prose (rather than an invented and loaded term).
 * The current section 2 (Arguments against Shakespeare's authorship) and section 3 (Evidence for Shakespeare's authorship) take on exactly the kind of point—counterpoint form that WP:FRINGE discourages. The mere heading itself suggest that “In this section we attempt to argue that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare”; and it would be better to recast the heading (and implicitly the focus of the section) as “Here are the main points brought forth by the SAQ supporters”. As for section 4  3…
 * …I (very reluctantly) believe section 4  3 should be removed from this article entirely. I think it's great work, and I really hope it can be a separate article in its own right, but I think it is not appropriate as a section (much less such a huge section) of this article. The reason is that this article's subject is the Shakespeare Authorship Question—its forms, believers, history, standing, &c.—while the entirety of section  4  3 is about mainstream scholarship and evidence, and hence ipso facto does not belong here. The only obvious exception is that a specific piece of evidence may appropriately be mentioned along with the Authorship view of or response to that piece of evidence. Given the great work done by  and  (I can't applaud your efforts here enough!) I don't think the section is needed either: the prose explaining the Authorship point of view does an admirable job of laying out their beliefs &c. without lending them undue credence.
 * Removing section 4  3 reduces the size of the article by 8 pages, to 31, and removing the quotes from the references reduces it by a further 2 pages, to 29. Incidentally, page count is obviously not an precise measure—e.g., removing 16 sources that are not actually cited in the article (listed below) once section 4 is deleted reduced the total size by a further page, down to a total of 28; or about the same size as William Shakespeare—but it's a rough indicator. (As a further measure of its unreliability, removing the Google Books links—which are rendered in full as URLs when printed, reduced the total page count by another page).
 * The 16 sources that are not actually cited in the article after removing section 4 are: Chambers 1930, Claremont McKenna College 2010, Dawson 1953, Elliott 2004, Hammond 2004, Kathman (2), Kathman (3), Martin 1965, Montague 1963, Murphy 1964, Nelson 1998, Nelson 1999, Price 1997, Rosenbaum 2005, Simonton 2004, and Taylor 2002. I failed to check whether any of them are unused before removing section 4, so this may be worth checking before a FAC.
 * The article contains several instances where Wikipedia literally says “Someone found an encoded message in Shakespeare's plays.” or that something or other “raised a suspicion that Shakespeare wasn't the author of the plays”. These mostly scrape by with the context making clear that nobody actually found a coded message, they merely thought they'd found a coded message. I'm guessing this is because they stem from articles on the relevant fringe theory, or were written while consulting fringe sources. These sentences should be reviewed and recast to make clear that, e.g., the discoveries were alleged not actual and that a suspicion was not raised in general but that it was the grounds for a specific person's suspicions.
 * The structure of the article is nice, and the prose is succinct without becoming dry. Some of the section headings wax a bit poetic, but, I think, not excessively so. I'm happy with the use of images to illustrate the article, even if a few too many of them are pictures of text to satisfy my sense of æstethics, but I've not got around to doing a proper image review (copyright, sources, etc.). There were a very few instances of awkward prose or some minor stray characters and such, but nothing worth calling out here (someone needs to do a read-through and fix these though, certainly before any FAC).

Overall this is a monumental piece of work, and I am very awed and grateful for the job you've done here; certainly a potential Featured Article, and a year ago I would barely have believed that possible. Kudos! --Xover (talk) 23:50, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

EDIT: Edited to correct incorrect specification of section number; the title used were right (Evidence for Shakespeare's authorship), but an incorrect number slipped in. I've left the incorrect number in the text above just struck out and followed by the corrected number, like thus: 4  3  --Xover (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Xover has suggested above that the very lengthy History of the Authorship section (Section 4) in the SAQ article should be deleted in its entirety:


 * I (very reluctantly) believe section 4 should be removed from this article entirely. I think it's great work, and I really hope it can be a separate article in its own right, but I think it is not appropriate as a section (much less such a huge section) of this article.

Xover may not be aware of it, but there already IS another separate Wikipedia article entitled History of the Shakespeare Authorship Question. It seems clear that the very lengthy Section 4 (History of the Authorship) should be deleted from the SAQ article and the content merged into the separate Wikipedia article entitled History of the Shakespeare Authorship.205.172.16.103 (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm including my comments to Nikkimaria here because the entire section containing my comments was collapsed earlier, and any comment I add is automatically collapsed as well, so no editor on this page can see it, which constitutes censorship.


 * Housekeeping vs Censorship


 * Nikkimaria, please advise as to how to put it in my own comment section, if that's the problem (although how I have my own section I don't know since you've twice collapsed all my comments so that no-one can read them.NinaGreen (talk) 02:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There is a section on the page titled "Comments from NinaGreen", is there not? The bottom of that section is the correct place to add additional comments from you. However, instead of cross-posting comments from the talk page, I would suggest that you merely provide a one-sentence summary and a link to the relevant talk section. Furthermore, I should point out that re-iterations of your previous comments will likely be collapsed to save space on what is already a huge page. Might I suggest that you would be better off taking your concerns to one of the noticeboards I pointed you to earlier? The PR process is not really set up to handle concerns of the type you are bringing up, particularly when the person who nominated the article for review does not seem to agree with your points. If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to post here again. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 05:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Nikkimaria, there is such a section, but you have collapsed all my comments, including the one I made today, and you collapsed the one I made today before anyone had even had a chance to see it. When an article is put up for peer review, comments concerning the lack of neutrality of the article are highly relevant, and comments concerning the fact that the submitter of the article for peer review has admitted bias concerning the subject of the article and that he refuses to permit anyone else to edit the article are also highly relevant, and should be seen by all peer editors. To collapse and hide them constitutes censorship. Please uncollapse all my comments. Thanks.NinaGreen (talk) 05:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

==Censorship Again==

I see that my comments concerning the SAQ article have once more been collapsed before any editor on this page could see them, contrary to Wikipedia policy.NinaGreen (talk) 05:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Peer reviews are for comments on improving the article itself, not for discussing the actions of other editors. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 06:17, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Having said that, Ruhrisch, perhaps you can explain how all my comments on the lack of neutrality in the article and other issues with the article have been collapsed so that editors of this page don't see them?NinaGreen (talk) 19:39, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Having said that I note that English units (like miles) will need to also show conversions into metric units per the MOS. The convert template does this nicely. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 14:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)