March Books 27) Contested Will, by James Shapiro

[nwhyte]

An excellent book about the Shakespeare authorship controversy, which was a topic I once wasted quite a lot of online time on (between about 2000 and 2004). Shapiro is not really writing about the balance of evidence on either side, though he makes it clear that his sympathies are with the Stratford man rather than with Francis Bacon or the Earl of

Comments

Re: Incongruous

[anonymous]

Wise Mr Whyte

Re: Incongruous

[nwhyte]

Thompson sounds like a sane and cautious scholar by your account, carefully explaining the limitations to his own work.

It really isn't a big deal anyway. No sensible person believes that the absence of surviving manuscripts in Shakespeare's hand means he didn't write the plays. If that mattered, which it doesn't, it would equally apply to Oxford as well, so I don't know why Oxfordians keep going on about it.

With regard to the final section of your comment, I have no idea what you mean.

Re: Incongruous

[anonymous]

Sounds but looks not: 1) I've nothing to work on; 2)I've even less than nothing to work on; 3. And even that less than nothing must be qualified, etc.
Yes, Thompson "sounds" like a cautious scholar, he masters (like you) the discourse of "reasonable scholarship".
But if one is not beguiled by the "sound of reasonability" and keeps his eyes open... there is nothing else than "swearing against the truth so foul a lie", aka blahblah.

Ignoto

Re: Incongruous

[nwhyte]

Well, you know, I haven't read Thompson's essay, but I suspect you may not be a fair witness to his article. Just a little googling reveals that his strongest argument is on the 'ha' structure rather than merely the 'a', so that is already twice as string as you reported. I'll reserve judgement until the unlikely day that I actually read the Thompson article; though I warn you now that I actually have some experience in paleography myself (do you?), so I will be appropriately sympathetic.

I still have no idea what you mean about "swearing against the truth so foul a lie".

Re: Incongruous

[anonymous]

Ha-ha.

Re: Incongruous

[nwhyte]

A point I left out: of course, Stratfordians are fairly relaxed about Hand D; it doesn't much matter either way to sensible people. But those who don't believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare are forced to misrepresent Thompson's arguments in order to desperately discredit any evidence that Shakespeare ever wrote anything at all. It is a desperate effort, because they cannot remove his name from the title pages of the plays and poetry, which is rather stronger evidence than Hand D will ever be!