Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/Archive 28

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Overview neutrality concerns, continued.

Nishi - please cite the policy that allows you to delete sourced items that don't have the correct reference formatting. Also, you are aware that fringe sources can be cited as to what "they" say or believe, right? Your deletions for these two reasons are not up to any policy I can find. Thanks. Tom, happy to remove redundancies from the article, as long as its a two-way street. Thus todays edit of a completely redundant sentence. Smatprt (talk) 09:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC) Tom - also - since a respected editor of this page (Peter) also echoes my complaints about this graph, I don't think you can classify this as POV "bullshit". Please take this conversation seriously. Smatprt (talk) 09:14, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Nishi - please cite the policy that allows you to delete sourced items that don't have the correct reference formatting

You appear to be blithely unaware of what you are tampering with. Edits that fuck up an FA's achieved consistency of format, one of the criteria for achieving FA recognition, are liable to be construed as either newbie ignorance or, if from experienced editors, a defiant insouciance of the arduously established quality of the text. In the present case, where you were banned for obnoxiously disruptive behaviour on this topic, I assume your repeated carelessness is an index of your hostility to the page, its productive editors and to wikipedia itself. I may be wrong, but since you request a policy guideline:

(1)(a) Consistent citations; (b)citations within any given article should follow a consistent style.

You are aware that fringe sources can be cited as to what "they" say or believe, right?

(2)A Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable than it is. Claims must be based upon independent reliable sources. . . .Efforts of fringe-theory inventors to shill on behalf of their theories, such as the offering of self-published material as references, are unacceptable: Wikipedia is not an advertising venue.

This article got to FA status because, unlike the dead-in-the-water blog it superceded and which you edited as though you owned it, a collegial decision was made to rigorously apply a high-bar for reliable sourcing, i.e. scholarly works of the first water. Nishidani (talk) 11:31, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

From that same page: "It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style." This is one big reason why the Oxfordian theory article will never be an FA or even G article. It does its best to read like a polemic. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Smatprt, in your desperate eagerness to score points and show us all up as the hypocrites we are, you really just don't get it. The material I excised was not only redundant, it was in the wrong section. I have no idea where you got the notion that ideas in the lead cannot be repeated in the main body. In fact, "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points—including any prominent controversies." In addition, biographical criticism is not a "technique" used to attribute authorship.

You need to stop your disruptive behavior. Evidently you have some idea that you can escape sanctions by continuing your campaign if you space out the incidents. If I were you I would not rely on that strategy; since you've been back from your latest topic ban, every one of your edits, both on the talk page and in mainspace, has followed your well-known POV agenda. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:51, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

"Unreliable" sources can be cited as evidence for what is believed by their authors. My personal website could be used for statements of my opinions - but only if my opinions are notable, which, surprisingly, they usually are not. That is not justification for using fringe sources to present arguments or rebuttals of mainstream sources. There's nothing in any policy or guideline I'm aware of that allows that. Perhaps you can prove me wrong. WP:fringe states: "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). Note, that it is clear that ideally we should not use fringe sources at all. For this topic, well covered by scholarship, it should not be necessary. Paul B (talk) 13:12, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

To clarify: re "you are aware that fringe sources can be cited as to what they say or believe, right?" No such assertion can be found in WP:FRINGE. The relevant guideline is WP:SELFSOURCE. This says nothing about "fringe" sources, only "unreliable" ones. That may seem a petty or pedantic distinction, but it's actually important. The guideline concerns attribution of opinions or statements, not the exposition of arguments or theories. Paul B (talk) 14:01, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

• Tom - Please show me where I changed the lead, as you accuse me of. Otherwise, please withdraw your statement. Your whole diatribe quoting the lead was in error. I deleted a statement from the Overview section, which is repeated further in the article. Just as you deleted a statement from the overview which I added because it was repeated later in the article. This is the kind of double standard I am talking about. And since this was not deleted from the lead, please do the right thing here and delete the duplicated statement from the overview.Smatprt (talk) 16:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Your reading comprehension is deficient. Please show me where I said you changed the lead.

Your edit summary stated, "Deleting redundant information from section below…" This is the material you excised: "These criteria are the same as those used to credit works to other authors and are accepted as the standard methodology for authorship attribution." Since you explicitly stated that the redundant information you were deleting was from section below, I assumed you were referring to the information in the lead that made the second instance redundant: "… the convergence of documentary evidence used to support Shakespeare's authorship—title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records—is the same used for all other authorial attributions of his era."

I am unaware of any such information being repeated in the article. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

• Tom - please review my edits to mainspace. I have also worked on formatting of character lists, and vandal reversions. Please stop making these incorrect accusations. Smatprt (talk) 16:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
• Nishi - please explain what was deceptive about my edit summary. As I've just explained to Tom, I did not edit the lead, but instead removed a redundant statement from the Overview section, just as he did.

Expansion is not redundancy. I like that last word: if you slur it, it sounds like dunce. Nishidani (talk) 16:23, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Nishi - Repeating the same line in two separate sections is redundancy. Expansion? That's just ridiculous. Talk about grasping at straws.

• Paul - here you go:

• "Likewise, views of adherents should not be excluded from an article on creation science solely on the basis that their work lacks peer review, other considerations for notability should be considered as well." Thus the views of Ogburn, Anderson, price, etc., should not be excluded.
• "The prominence of fringe views needs to be put in perspective relative to the views of the entire encompassing field; limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only among the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative. As you three editors have limited the perspective to a restricted subset of specialists, the article is biased and unrepresentative. Smatprt (talk) 16:35, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The views of adherents are not excluded. They are discussed at length. Ideally they should be explained by the best reliable sources, as the policy very clearly states. Indeed, only a few sentences above the line you quote is the sentence "Of course, for any viewpoint described in an article, only reliable sources should be used; Wikipedia's verifiability policy is not suspended simply because the topic is a fringe theory." Strangely, you seem to have missed that line. We would be within the 'letter of the law' to exclude all sourcing to Ogburn et al even in the Oxfordian theory article. The sentence about the views of adherents [to fringe theories]" does not mean that their publications should be quoted, and their arguments presented as if they are equivalent to WP:RS. That, essentially, is what you are doing.
What you intend to argue by presenting the second quotation is, frankly, unintelligible to me. That passage about the "entire encompassing field" and a "restrictive subset of specialists" refers to the attempts by fringe theorists to disallow comments by experts in science and other areas who are not strictly specialists in Obscure Topic X. As usual with the fringe theory guidelines, it's written with science in mind, so it may seem slightly unclear when applied to literary history. It's about attempts to exclude commentary on fringe theories by mainstream writers who are not specialists in some sub-branch related to an obscure topic ("he's a geologist, but he's not an expert on rock formations in Ohio, so he's not RS for criticising the theory that Ohio's rocks were actually carved into shape by ancient Chinese craftsmen"). You appear to be trying to invert its purpose. The field of mainstream Shakespeare studies is very very large, so there is no insistance on restricting ourselves to "a subset of specialists". And may I remind you that one of your former tactics was to try to exclude Shakespeare scholars precisely on the grounds that they were not experts in the "authorship question". That's exactly the tactic that the sentence in referring to; it harmonises fringe policy with RS policy. Of course, if you don't think that's what the sentence means, you can discuss it on the guideline talk page. Paul B (talk) 18:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I now realise why you quoted the line about "limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists". You really are trying to invert its meaning. You mean that we are excluding "specialists" such as Ogburn, Anderson, Sobran and so on. I feel rather foolish that I didn't "get" what you were saying, but I guess that's because it is so wholly contrary to the the basic policies of Wikipedia that I couldn't quite imagine that anyone could interpret the line in such a, well, perverse way. Obviously, as far as Wikipedia is concerned these people are not "experts" or "specialists" at all. Even if you spend your whole life studying something it does not make you an expert unless you convince accredited scholars and publishers that are one. That's a common claim of fringe theory defenders: "Joe Schmo has spent thirty years studying rock formations in Ohio. He is an unrivalled expert!"; "Arthur Snodgrass has spent his entire life collecting evidence of poltergeist activity in abandoned Welsh coal mines". etc etc. It doesn't matter how long they've been doing it, or how many books they've written. It only matters what the current range of views within scholarship is. Paul B (talk) 18:29, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

• Everyone - While it is easy for me to disregard your continuous personal attacks, please note that I am living up to ARBCOM requirements: I have cited policy with each of my edits. I have not engaged in warring or reverting. I have used the talk page to discuss issues, and have used dispute resolution to try and resolve conflicts. Unfortunately, even when a majority of independent editors agree that a section is biased, you continue to ignore their input.Smatprt (talk) 16:35, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The overview is not the lead, that's true. So you are right that that was a slip, but the overview is still a summary, so you'd expect some overlap. Your addition was badly sourced, misleading and badly formatted. The passage you deleted was none of those things. Who are these "independent editors"? The only recent occasion I know of in which you have requested such views was at the Neutral POV board. The discussion achieved no consensus that I could discern. Paul B (talk) 16:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

While we all are aware that you're trying to stay within ARBCOM strictures, you are simply trying to push your POV within those boundaries and overthrow the intent of those sanctions via other means. This continued unnecessary talk page abuse is part of it, as well as your frivolous noticeboard action in the face of extensive discussion that made the editorial consensus clear. When all was said and done, 13,000 words and 85MG later, what was accomplished? The order of the sentence was reversed. And now here we are again, discussing an obviously unsuitable edit, with you bringing in misunderstood and half-digested policy interpretations that you claim actually contradict the plain intent of Wikipedia policy.

Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are inherently stacked against fringe theories, with good reason. You need to accept that or find some other venue to promulgate your beliefs. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Tom, first - the order of the sentence was reversed because YOU deemed that was all that was required (and btw the other major change was the elimination of "violence" from your list, as you were finally convinced that "it wouldn't fly" - as one of the editors there said. You completely ignored the independent editors who said it all should go, and you still have yet to connect the ruination of his estates with his rashness. Im not saying its not connected, but you still blame his character 100% instead of simply acknowledging that the ward system and Burghley also played a part in his financial downfall. The fact that you can't even bring yourself to admit that remains an issue that I will bring up again. "Editorial consensus clear"? Please show me (and Paul) this clear consensus. Neither of us sees it.Smatprt (talk) 08:45, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The editorial consensus on the page that I linked to was clear. You began the NPOV noticeboard discussion because you didn't like it. You're not even making sense any more. I'm done with this conversation. If you want to continue it, start another dispute resolution.Tom Reedy (talk) 12:35, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Tom - here is the redundancy: Last line of overview:

• "These criteria are the same as those used to credit works to other authors and are accepted as the standard methodology for authorship attribution"

First line, graph 3, Case for Authorship:

• "Literary 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 and stylistic studies"

So now that I have identified them for you, will you please remove the redundant line from the overview?Smatprt (talk) 08:45, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Check the edit summary. I removed your edit because it was in the wrong place. All of those edits you listed are relevant to the section they're in. If you think that's a "double standard", open a dispute resolution. I'm tired of your time-wasting tactics. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:35, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

And no - i have no strategy here. I am not spacing my edits for any other reason than, well.. I have a life. Wikpedia is not the be all end all of my existence. I am not retired, like most you gents. When I'm not working 60-70 hours a week at the theatre, I volunteer here as I do for other organizations. As a volunteer, like most volunteers, I give my time where my interests lie. I edit the Shakespeare pages for vandalism because I care about them. Same with the authorship pages. Same as you all, I imagine. Off to see Book of Morman in the West End now.

Funny story - went to the British Library yesterday. Went to the info desk to ask where the rare docs were, such as Shakespeare's folio. The fellow there said "Oh you know he didn't write them - it was Marlowe!" So, Peter, you have a friend and supporter there. (The other information officer chimed in and said "No, no... they were written by a group!") good times :-) Smatprt (talk) 09:54, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Look up irony. It has peculiar strength in English society, and unless you cultivate an ear for it, and the nod-nod-wink-wink banter of chiming quips among co-workers, your reports of conversations at the library desk might lead readers here to conjure up a different scenario.

Since you are horrified by what you see as redundancy, here's some work cut out for you for the page you have spent several years on.

Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship

• A.(a)Central to the Oxfordian theory is the fact that while Oxford was praised by his contemporaries as both poet and playwright, none of his plays survive under his name
• (b) He became an important courtier poet, and was praised as a playwright, although none of his plays survive
• B(a) Oxford was noted for his literary and theatrical patronage, garnering dedications from a wide range of authors
• (b) Oxford was noted for his literary and theatrical patronage, and between 1564 and 1599 some 33 works included dedications to him by authors including Arthur Golding, John Lyly, Robert Greene and Anthony Munday
• (c) His lifelong patronage of writers, musicians and actors prompted May to term Oxford "a nobleman with extraordinary intellectual interests and commitments", whose biography exhibits a "lifelong devotion to learning.

Compare Charles Dickens

• During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged
• Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age
• Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time

or this day's Featured Article Birmingham campaign

• bring attention to the unequal treatment that black Americans endured in Birmingham, Alabama.
• Although desegregation occurred slowly in Birmingham, the campaign was a major factor in the national push towards the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• The Birmingham campaign, . . . convinced President Kennedy to address the severe inequalities between black and white citizens in the South
• the campaign "led to an awakening to the evils of segregation and a need for reforms in the region."
• The Birmingham campaign inspired the Civil Rights Movement in other parts of the South,

to cite one theme of several repeatedly reevoked in similar language on that page. I have a dozen of other pages where stylistic variation on a main theme is evidenced. Nishidani (talk) 15:14, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

"The material I excised was not only redundant, it was in the wrong section." - your words Tom, not mine. Wrong secton? Peter found it helpful in the section it was in. Smatprt (talk) 23:46, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

You're absolutely correct, Smaprt. I was explaining to you the main reason for my edit. If you review your statement that I was replying to, you can see that you thought I made the edit strictly because of the redundancy, probably because you didn't read all of the edit summary. I've noticed you have a tendency to read poorly and then go off half-cocked ranting about what you thought was written, as you did when you accused me of accusing you of changing the lead, one of many such errors due entirely to your poor comprehension and eagerness to score points.

And you need to learn that you don't speak for other editors. You display your irritating habit when other editors are participating in a discussion and you think you can interpret their comment in a favorable light, the way you did at the NPOV noticeboard. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:36, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

tiresome personal attack noted. Smatprt (talk) 16:21, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I would like to delete the words "as well as modern stylometric studies" from the Overview section, since by its positioning it certainly implies that stylometrics is a technique which anti-Stratfordians don't make use of. To verify that this is incorrect one only has to look at my own Stylometrics and Parallelisms" or at the chapter in Daryl Pinksen's Marlowe's Ghost, updating and developing Mendenhall's findings. But if the evidence of one's own eyes is insufficient to verify that this is the case, and a "reliable" intermediary is deemed essential for it to be verifiable, just wait a couple of weeks and you'll have that too. Peter Farey (talk) 15:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I'm sure there will be some additions and changes to the page as soon as the new book is released. I long ago bought my copy pre-pub, and as soon as it gets here we'll have another WP:RS to mine. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Pinksen's book is self-published, and he fails RS on a number of other grounds. When you have the reliable intermediary source, by all means bring it to the page's attention. Gibson's The Shakespeare Claimants,, which is RS, has several pages on Mendenhall's method, (pp.140-147) precisely with regard to Marlowe's claim. I'm not sure whether that counts as 'stylometry' as now employed (its rise to semi-scientific pretensions dating from the the 60s, as computer technology developed), as opposed to an adventitious statistical pattern for features that are not normally considered distinctive. Harold Love commented on Mendenhall's results, and, countering John Michell's acclamation, simply noted that it could distinguish Bacon from Shakespeare, but not Marlowe from Shakespeare. The last result, for him indicates that Mendenhall's method won't work with Marlowe and Shakespeare, since it fails to distinguish differences that other, more modern methods of stylometry do manage to sieve out (witness Ward Elliot and Valenza's work, or Thomas Merriam's argument on 'o'/'a' distributions in Marlowe and Shakespeare, mentioned by Love on p. 159). Fairly, however, he describes Mendenhall's work as 'ancestral to the modern numerial investigation of attribution'(Love:2002 p.133). What you need is, rather than a great mathematician like Mikhail B. Malyutov, some specialist in the Elizabethan era who notes what you argue as a feature of the Marlovian-Shakespeare hypothesis. Not infrequently, important distinctions in the non-RS lit are ignored, unfortunately, and this may be a case. The problem is, accept non-RS as sources anywhere here, and the page will crash into chaos, as a tsunami of self-contradictory positions in, say, the de Verean tradition, will sweep in, much, predictably, to someone's glee. Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

That one needs to cite a reliable source even for a deletion is a new one on me! My remark about sources was to provide this group with evidence of Marlovians having used stylometry, not the readers, and (although true) the rest was in any case said somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But my request for the deletion of "as well as modern stylometric studies" remains. Peter Farey (talk) 05:54, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Ward E.Y. Elliott is the Burnet C. Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions at Claremont McKenna College. Robert J. Valenza is the Dengler-Dykema Professor of Mathematics and the Humanities at Claremont McKenna College. Are you seriously classifying them as Elizabethan specialists? Or is this just another double standard? The refs are RS, the formatting is (I think) correct. I have jumped thru your hoops. Let's move on. Smatprt (talk) 16:21, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Learn to format. Better still, stop monkeying with a subject you know nothing about, since from day one you show no familiarity with scholarly literature, (undertandable: the 70 hours you spend on the stage a week is more or less what some wikipedians spend in libraries, reading the relevant scholarly literature) as opposed to nincompoop pamphleteers and starry-eyed aristo-worshippers with a yen for cloud-cuckooland flights of an overheated imagination.

Elliott and Valenza are cited in the specialist Shakespearean literature, by Brian Vickers ('I decided to consult (them) as authors of several important statistical studies of the Shakespeare authorship problem' 'Counterfeiting' Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship and John Ford's Funerall, Cambridge University Press, 2002 p.xx, pp.443-445); Brian Boyd, (ed.) Words That Count: Essays on Early Modern Authorship in Honor of MacDonald P. Jackson,‎ University of Delaware Press, 2004 pp.117-139; Brean Hammond,'After Arden,' in 'David Carnegie, Gary Taylor, (eds.)The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play, Cambridge University Press ‎2012, pp.60-79, p.69; etc.etc.etc. Do your homework, son. Yeah, may you 'move on,' and away, keeping this piddling blogchat and off-the-top-off-the-head comeback snippets on some personal homepage.Nishidani (talk) 16:54, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits to Evidence section

Smatprt has been asked to stop introducing material in a format that is not the one employed by the page.

• he has been notified of the relevant policy.
• he continues to make edits with a format that mars the aesthetic coherence of the reference template uniformly adopted by all other editors. Not only this, his own formatting varies, according to what he is copying and pasting from the net.
• he has been notified of the RS criteria observed by all other editors
• he consistently makes edits that ignore those criteria, most recently by introducing
• (a) 1. M.B. Malyutov. Authorship attribution of texts: a review Kluwer Academic Publishers (2005).

This is self-published. The author is a mathematician, with no competence in the subject and if he is to be cited must be cited through the specialist literature.

• (b)Thomas V. N. Merriam and Robert A. J. Matthews, Neural Computation in Stylometry II: An Application to the Works of Shakespeare and Marlowe in Oxford Journals, Lit Linguist Computing Volume 9, Issue 1, Pp. 1-6 (1994)

This is not the article, but the abstract, and its relevance to the SAQ remains obscure. As it stands, the ref is false, since the abstract does not indicate that anti-Strafordians used stylometry

• (c)MERRIAM , T. V. N.. [Marlowe’s Hand in Edward III] in Oxford Journals, Literary and Linguistic Computing, Volume 8, Issue 2, Pp. 59-72 (1993)

This is not an article, but an abstract, and its relevance to the SAQ remains obscure. As it stands, the ref is false, since the abstract does not indicate that anti-Strafordians used stylometry. Merriam holds that Marlowe and Shakespeare were distinct authors.

• Chandler, David."Historicizing Difference: Anti-Stratfordians and the Academy" in Elizabethan Review (1991).

This defunct journal POV-tilted for the heterodox position in the SAQ is not RS.

ROSENBERG, SAUL. About an Author, Much Ado i.n , European Edition, (2010)

Wrongly formatted, and meaninglessly so. No notification of the source WSJ, no date (April 10):It's a review of Shapiro written by a writer and editor, which says 'Mr. Shapiro discusses the dangers of inferring a writer's life from his compositions, tracing the origins of biographical criticism (so common in the author controversy) to the 18th-century scholar Edmund Malone. But most of Mr. Shapiro's attention goes to two skeptics and the theories they launched into a receptive world.' i.e. exactly what Shapiro's book, which we use, says. (pp.36-44ff-.etc)

In short, you are are being, despite frequent notifications to comply with both policy and the FA page requirements, disruptive. This is not a sandpit for playing funny games in one's idle hours. If you eventually do have something useful to contribute, put it on the talk page where it can be analysed and vetted. Take a leaf out of Peter Farey's book: exemplary manners, a collaborative approach, and, rather than attack the article, a readiness to raise important issues from his particular angle of expertise for the deliberations of all editors.Nishidani (talk) 19:02, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's pointless, and it's noteworthy that it all began when Smatprt was released from the phantom zone after serving his second one-year term. Apparently there's no rehabilitation in the other dimension.

Nowhere does Shapiro use the term "biographical criticism", and Chandler refers to "biographical criticism as he [Looney] practiced it ...", which is the same qualification this article uses in the phrase, "Anti-Stratfordians rely on what they designate as circumstantial evidence ..." In the first case, Looney's idea reverses the function of biographical criticism by claiming the biography can be read in the works and then used to identify the author; in the second anti-Stratfordians base their circumstantial cases on false assumptions and speculations, as Love makes clear in his discussion. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:37, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I have access to the full text of Marlowe's Hand in Edward III, which I have now read. The authors take it for granted that Marlowe and Shakespeare are different authors. There is no discussion whatever of the "authorship question" except in the sense of the question of who wrote Edward III. I also have read (though rather crudely and quickly) the full text of Neural Computation in Stylometry II: An Application to the Works of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Again, the authors take it for granted that Marlowe and Shakespeare are different people. Indeed that is the whole point of the article - it's to test their technique by applying it to authors who are broadly similar in style but distinct, in order to judge its effectiveness. I must add that inserting these sources without apparently even knowing what they say is an appalling misuse of editing privileges. It amounts to falsifying references. Paul B (talk) 19:58, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Here are the relevant conclusions of the articles:

Neural Computation in Stylometry II: An Application to the Works of Shakespeare and Marlowe

Choosing randomly, we consider As You Like It, Cymbeline, King Lear, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Tamburlaine, Part II, The Tempest, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus And Cressida as our ‘unattributed’ works, with all other standard canonical works as our training and validation data....
Applying these committees to the specific questions of works of uncertain origin, we obtain Fig. 4. The committee’s predictions for each work form a β-distribution between 0 (Shakespeare) and 1 (Marlowe). Clearly the committee is correct in each case, with all works being attributed—in consensus—to Shakespeare, with the exception of the Marlovian Tamburlaine. Furthermore, the most contentious decision is that of Titus Andronicus; as discussed above [the authors note that Shakespeare's contribution to its authorship is disputed], this is in perfect agreement with previous studies. The exact values of the means and proportions of the committee’s votes are given in Table 1.

Marlowe's Hand in Edward III,

Although contemporary critical thought favours Shakespearian

authorship of the anonymous play Edward III, a stylometric investigation of two adjacent scenes indicates that they are anomalous in regard to stable patterns in the First Folio. They are anomalous in a way which parallels the way in which the two Tamburlaine plays are anomalous to the Shakespeare Folio. An examination of the textual content reveals that Marlovian authorship of the two scenes is not beyond the bounds of literary credibility.
[the authors argue that two scenes in Act III are Marlovian in style]
If Marlowe composed Act III, i and ii of Edward III, there is a real possibility that he and Shakespeare were more professionally connected than scholars have allowed This opens up a field of enquiry and speculation which might shed further light on both playwrights in the context of their time.

I can supply other passages if required. Paul B (talk) 20:12, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

• Nishidani - I honestly attempted to format the way you wanted - following Tom's referencing from the article on Looney. BTW - You left this out of your quotes of the referencing guideline: The most important thing is to provide some information about where you found your material, even if you do not know how to format the citation. (The information that you provide may enable others to format the citation accurately and consistently, following the article's prevailing citation format.) Your reversion of material based on improper formatting, which you can see I attempted, is not based in policy, but in obfuscation. Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
• so it's ok for Tom to use David Chandler's article as a source on the article on J. Thomas Looney, but not here? Chandler is not RS - is that what you are saying? Really?Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I said nothing whathever about David Chander's article. No one has. This is a WP:OTHERCRAP argument. Whether it is RS or not is, I suppose, arguable. And "Tom" did not introduce that article. An Oxfordian editor did. Tom merely added extra content from it because its conclusions were being misrepresented. In other words, he actually read it. You added references you hadn't read, asserting that they claimed things they did not. Paul B (talk) 17:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I just checked the edit history. YOU added the Chandler article in this 2010 edit. Perhaps you have a poor memory. Or perhaps you know exactly what you are doing. Paul B (talk) 17:22, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I just now saw this, and I gotta say, this is the biggest belly laugh I've had in months. The only thing that topped it was Smatprt's (non)response to it below! Tom Reedy (talk) 20:36, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Paul - Sorry - I thought the issue was that Anti-Stratfordians do not use stylometry, which is what the article implies. You know full well they do, so why not slightly change the article to indicate that?Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I have already commented on that below. My view is that we cannot say they use stylometry unless the techniques that they call "stylometry" pass the test of legitimacy. I don't mean by that that they have to be proven "correct". I mean that they have to be assessed by the usual methods as having a legitimate methodology. Anyone can say they use stylometry, just as they can say they use "science", or anythig else. Take the example of anti-Strat "cryptography"; I don't think that we can legitimately say that anti-Strats use "cryptography" just because they say they can find secret ciphers, and that applies to stylometry to. These words imply scholarly legitimacy - that a form of science is being used. If only Marlovians can say they use it with any legitimacy then it should be mentioned in the Marlowe section. Paul B (talk) 18:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani/Tom - your objections to the WSJ are another example of your attempts to own this page. Nothing more. According to the WSJ, biographical criticism is "common" in the authorship controversy. There is your reference. You just don't like it.Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC) Nishidani - now I spend 70 hours on stage? Do you just make this stuff up? Please explain how you could ever determine this? I rarely get on stage these days. I'm the Executive Director of a multi-million dollar regional theatre. As you well know. Smatprt (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

'As you well know.' I didn't, and in any case don't care. I don't follow editors to track down details of their private lives.(b) on stage = 'at the theatre' ('When I'm not working 60-70 hours a week at the theatre'.)' If you find this a very serious distortion of momentous import for this page, worthy of extensive discussion for what it reveals about my prejudices in your regard, so be it. I didn't object to the WSJ, but to the brief review in that journal by a non-specialist journalist of Shapiro's book, a dodge used in order to get a link to biographical criticism. According to Saul Rosenberg, who retained this impression perusing Shapiro, it is common in the SAQ. Rosenberg can't distinguish 'biographical criticism' from 'conjectural biography'. With apologies to Dr Johnson for employing the 'former/latter' device, the point is that the former correlates the work and the life, (a) the latter denies that an author and the work ascribed to her can be correlated; (b) it then assumes that the real hidden author coded his life via topical allusions in the works, and then (c) uses the works to establish the counterfactual or hypothetical 'real' author's identity, reconstructing the undocumented life from the works.

You won't understand this of course. You've been told thousands of times, and refuse to listen. I don't know why though I ponder the fact that this has gone on for 7al years, whether because, like a good deal of Gerede, the function of talk is to fill a mental vacuum, or socialize, or play Eric Berne's games, or kill time. Time kills us, and if we kill time, as I am constrained to do here, we injure eternity, as Thoreau realized. At my age, I prefer not to be complicit. So enjoy your life (elsewhere). Apparently you've got one. Please take a hint: you editing here has been, from the start, unproductive, pointless and has only tended to distract, provoke and annoy editors by needless niggling, as often as not based on your nescience of the topic. The page is based on academic scholarship, which you never cite: not newspapers or private websites. Editors read what they offer as includible evidence, they don't scour the net, glance at an abstract, jump at the wrong conclusion, and then edit in material which they patently have not even troubled to read, as you did yesterday with three pieces. Do something out of consideration for the page. Go away. Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Stylometrics

I'm now totally lost in this morrass (welcome back to Smatprt-world!), so I'm starting a new section. I think there is is a fundamental problem here. Peter Farey is, of course, right that anti-Stratfordians "use" stylometrics. Indeed the claim that there are stylistic similarities between the Candidate and the Canon dates back to W.H. Smith himself, who identifies parallel passages and phrases in Bacon and Shakespeare. Looney does it too for Oxford, and Benezet tried to systematise the Oxfordian variant. Early Marlovians also do it, of course, again dating back to Marlovian beginnings with Zeigler. Many of these methods are described by RS such as Gibson, McCrea and Wadsworth. So in a sense we can find reliable sources that say they do these things, though whether the speciific word "stylometics" is appropriate is arguable.
Of course, these were clearly all rather "amateurish" efforts, but the same may also be said for mainstream Shakespeare attribution studies at this period. As the techniques become more sophisticated and scientific there are clearer models for distinguishing various 'hands'. These are published in relevant "RS" journals. I would suggest that if Marlovian or other stylometric accounts have been published in relevant scholarly journals we can say that this or that alternative-author-theory uses stylometrics. But the mere fact that anti-Strat writers say they use these technique is no more relevant than the fact that they say they have discovered 'proof' in the form of ciphers, documents containing 'smoking gun' evidence, psychic messages, psychology (Freud), hidden iconography (eg in the Droeshout portrait) etc etc. That would not allow us to say "Anti-Stratfordians use innumerable documents, the sciences of psychology, epigraphy, cryptography, parapsychology and iconography, along with the the legal and forensic methods of analysing circumstantial evidence, documentary evidence and physical evidence..." We can't say that because there is no legitimate claim to be made that these methods are endorsed as legitimate by scholars. Any fringe theorist of anything can say "we use geology, chemistry, physics...." whatever. Unless the use of those sciences is legitimated by publication it is not appropriate to say they are used at all. Anyway, that's my tuppeny bit. And let's remember that we should be fair to the various theories. We so-called "strats" could easily over-emphasise the craziest aspects of anti-Strat thinking - and there's a lot to choose from. Paul B (talk) 19:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Stylometrics is based on counting similar stylistic characteristics and comparing their frequencies among different authors. Stylometry is not parallel passages comparisons. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:39, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Gee, thanks for that. I was pointing out that there has been an evolution of methods over time, which become what we now call "stylometrics". Do you have any comments on the specific point being argued here? Paul B (talk) 19:43, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

My specific point is that the term as it is used isn't broad enough to include most anti-Stratfordian methods that I am aware of. I do think that Mendenhall's method probably qualifies, though. (I'd be interested in seeing the test redone using original-spelling texts, because the difference in number of three- and four-letter words appears very slight to me.)

And IIRC, this is my week for snark, unless I got the latest orders from the Trust mixed up. I'm fairly certain next week is yours. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:58, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Just for everyone's peace of mind—although (as I said) there is no need for a source if one is only deleting something—Nicholl, Charles (2013). "The Case for Marlowe". In Edmondson, Paul and Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare Beyond Doubt. Cambridge University Press. p. 33. ISBN:9781107603288. "...current Marlovians, such as Daryl Pinksen and Peter Farey, have continued to elaborate on Mendenhall's stylometry." Peter Farey (talk) 09:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you missed Tom's note yesterday, Peter. Tom is apparently just waiting for the book, which he has read in a pre-publication version, to be released on the 18th of this month, before making adjustments in response to your point. Nishidani (talk) 10:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes I did see Tom's note, but—as I keep on pointing out—since we don't have to provide a source for a deletion in the article itself, I am at a loss to understand why the publication date (which is, I think, not until 26 April over here) is of any relevance at all! Peter Farey (talk) 12:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The deletion you propose of 'modern stylometric studies'. I think you (a) ignore the force of 'modern' (check the link: modern stylometrics refers to computerized research over the last decades. (b) Mendenhall's method was developed in the 1880s. (c) there is absolutely no doubt that Shakespearean attribution studies make such stylometrics a centre-piece of their work, as opposed to Baconian and de Vereans, therefore the statement is true but (d) Marlovians, you argue, also use stylometrics therefore 'By contrast' (with Anti-Stratfordians) is what you find problematical, since Marlovians don't fit the contrast. If so, then we have a note apparatus, as one solution, citing the forthcoming book or, if his work is noted in RS, Mikhail B. Malyutov (I doubt it, though. He screws up the most elementary sources and secondary literature. Take his unbelievably obtuse description of Roscius, with whom the Camden marginalia by Richard Hunt identifies Shakespeare of Stratford, as 'a famous Roman who profited from special laws allowing him to sell or hawk seats in the theatre'p.672. Where in the hell did he conjure that crap out of? Malyutov's source doesn't even state what he concocts here. Cicero glosses the name's metaphorical use as 'Itaque hoc iamdiu est consecutus, ut, in quo quisque artificio excelleret, is in suo genere Roscius diceretur' De Oratore, Lib.1.xxviii.130 ='Accordingly he has long ago brought it about that, in whatsoever craft a man excelled, the same was called a Roscius in his own line' Loeb Cicero 111 pp.90-91. The source identifies William Shakespeare as perhaps an actor, or playwright, who excelled in his craft and was an ornament to the town sometime after 1620).

Whatever, deletion is not the answer ('Besides, all verifiable stylometric tests conclusively rule out every alternative candidate who has been proposed as the true author of Shakespeare'. Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (eds.)William Shakespeare. Complete works,Modern Library, 2007 p.1)Nishidani (talk) 13:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

It looks as though I was wrong about the UK release date, and that ours is the same as the US. So I should be getting my own pre-ordered official copy sooner than I thought. Peter Farey (talk) 12:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Peter, you'll get your copy and wish to use it before I can get mine. So here's the chapter that most interests you templated, to save you the trouble or time next week. All you need do is add the pages for the chapter. Cheers

• Nicholl, Charles (2013). "The case for Marlowe". In Edmondson, Paul; Wells, Stanley (eds.). Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 29–38. ISBN 978-1-107-60328-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)Nishidani (talk) 17:30, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I've done that, and changed the link to 'google.co.uk' as it's a British publication. No time for more today, but I'll give some thought to your comments above. One point though. Although based on Mendenhall's technique, the work of ours that Nicholl refers to is quite recent, and makes extensive use of statistical and technological methods which were simply not available to him. Peter Farey (talk) 05:58, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Shakespeare's learning

Nishidani, I have reverted your addition about Richard Farmer. Here's why. First of all, Farmer is not "quite early in the history of Shakespeare criticism". What about Dryden, Rowe, Pope, et al.? A century and a half of Shakespearean criticism predates Farmer. In fact, Dr. Johnson's edition of Shakespeare, with its famous Preface and notes on the plays, predates Farmer's book by two years.

Secondly, you say Farmer "scorn[ed] Shakespeare's repute for learning". Repute among whom? The earlier critics noted that Shakespeare's strength was in his "holding up a mirror" to nature, which Johnson still maintained in Farmer's day. In fact, Johnson's thoughts along those lines are the subject of the very next sentence. Shakespeare, certainly at that time, had no particular reputation for learning. Not at all.

Finally, the whole gist of the paragraph before your addition is that "there is no record that any contemporary of Shakespeare referred to him as a learned writer or scholar." Again, what repute for learning? He had small Latin and less Greek, and simply warbled his native wood-notes wild. Now, in later years, some Shakespeareans suggested that he read voraciously; maybe that is what you are thinking of. But that was well after Farmer. As I take it (I haven't read Farmer's book), what Farmer is arguing is that whatever learning Shakespeare did possess came not from original Latin and Greek sources but from translations. But that is beside the point of this paragraph. In fact, asserting in this place that Shakespeare had a "repute for learning" is, excuse the expression, a non sequitur. (Feel free to drop a note on my talk page if you want to argue that it's not a true non sequitur. <wink>) I have also made some modification of your addition a bit further down, in line with what I've said here. --Alan W (talk) 06:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Don't mind one way or another, Alan. In fact I never check diffs of the work you do here, because early experience shows they are almost invariably right.

You may have, indeed, a point on its location, and even its appositeness to the page. I think, however that your judgement:’ Shakespeare, certainly at that time, had no particular reputation for learning. Not at all,’ unhistorical and wrong-headed. Before I address that, however, a point of gratitude for noting something in my usage of English.

What your scruple points up is my own background bias with regard to what constitutes 'criticism', which I used, idiosyncratically, to refer to 'textual criticism,' and, for that period, the induction into English letters of the methods of classical philological source criticism so superbly illustrated at that time by the examples of Richard Bentley, Thomas Tyrwhitt and, in their wake, Richard Porson. One of my old bedside favourites, C.O.Brink's English Classical Scholarship, James Clark & Co, 1985 p.94 writes of Tyrwhitt (floruit 1775) that he 'was unique at the time in applying the critical methods developed in classical works to the criticism and editing of English literature' (on the example of Bentley's rather maniacal endeavour to 'fix' Milton (1732). This is the specific milieu informing Richard Farmer 's approach.

Brian Vickers' multi-volume compilation of early Shakespeare criticism puts Farmer late in the series, but, the names you mention, John Dryden (1668), Nicholas Rowe (1705) and Alexander Pope do not predate Farmer by 'a century and a half': the last two wrote roughly a half-century before him. All three are not 'critical' in the sense I used the term (not just generic aesthetic judgements informed by judicious taste, as so much of the earlier stuff consisted in). Farmer's context was that of the works of Lewis Theobald (1733), William Warburton (1747), John Upton (1747); Zacharey Grey (1747,1754), Peter Whalley (1748); William Dodd (1752), George Steevens, Isaac Reed and Samuel Johnson. They all predate the landmark editorial work of Edmond Malone.

‘Repute among whom?’ That is precisely what Farmer’s essay deals with. Though the earliest criticism reflected Elizabethan sources in attributing the comprehensiveness of Shakespeare’s knowledge to his untutored praeternatural genius, Charles Gildon started the hare in the 1720s that in fact Shakespeare was learned. There is some trace of this in Pope, who otherwise mocked Gildon in the Dunciad. Let me illustrate with a few examples from Farmer’s survey of scholars who over the past 50 years had underwritten the idea Shakespeare had considerable learning:-

• (1725) ‘Mr Pope supposed ‘little ground for the common opinion of his want of learning ..and endeavoured to persuade himself that Shakspeare’s acquaintance with the ancients might be actually proved by the same medium as Jonson’s’ p.15
• (1720) Charles Gildon: ‘one of the first and most vehement assertors of the learning of Shakespeare was the editor of his poems, the well-known Mr Gildon p.14
• ( 1733) Lewis Theobald was ‘very unwilling to allow him so poor a scholar, as many have laboured to represent him' p.15
• (1747) William Warburton ‘hath exposed the weakness of some arguments from suspected imitations,’
• John Upton wonders ‘with what kind of reasoning any one could be so far imposed upon, as to imagine that Shakspeare had no learning:’p.15
• (1747 , 1754 ) Zacharey Grey ‘declares, that Shakspeare’s knowledge in the Greek and Latin tongues cannot reasonably be called into question.’ p.16
• (1748) Peter Whalley,An Enquiry Into the Learning of Shakespeare. ‘was willing to draw Shakespeare from the field of nature to classick ground,’p.17
• (1752) William Dodd ‘supposes it proved, that he was not such a novice in learning and antiquity as some people would pretend.’
• (1765) Of Johnson ‘the question was not fully discussed by Mr.Johnson himself: what he sees intuitively, others must arrive at by a series of proofs.’p.11

Johnson in short, understood that this half-century trend of over-estimation of Shakespeare’s learning (allied as it was to the cult of his divinity) was wrong but hadn’t demonstrated it. The pagination above come from the reprint of the 2nd edition Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare T. and H. Rodd, 1821.

This was a controversy of major importance (Brian Vickers (ed.) William Shakespeare, Vol. 5, Routledge 1995 p.40).Johnson’s own comment was that ‘Dr.Farmer, you have done that which never was done before; that is, you have completely finished a controversy beyond all further doubt.’ (S.Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives, Clarendon Press, 2nd edition 1991 p.103, who adds the gloss ‘it would no longer be claimed that Shakespeare was a learned man in the sense of being accomplished in Latin and Greek’.)

I was by the way mirroring Miola’s language. Cf. also

• 'Richard Farmer (1767), that scornful Cambridge don who highhandedly confounds proponents of Shakespeare's learning by demonstrating his general reliance on translations and intermediaries.'Robert S. Miola (ed.) Comedy of Errors, Routledge ‎2001 p.5

I introduced this because the divinisation of Shakespeare, followed by Farmer's dismissive proof that much of what was being cited as proof of his learning came not from any superior school or university learning but from contemporary translations, created the paradox of the omnicomprehensive mind who was unschooled that was to unsettle the sceptic school that arose some 80 years later. I think that historically important. It was an early piece of debunking of an emerging myth, preceding Malone whom Shapiro fingers for his decisive role in laying the groundwork for the trouble that ensued. It was only 'one and a half centuries later' that the confusion was cleared up 'with the full panoply of scholarship . .when Farmer's ninety small pages would be answered by T. W. Baldwin's fifteen hundred large ones' (Schoenbaum 1991 p.104).

Well, that wiped out this morning's tomato planting! I hope the weather holds for tomorrow.p.s. my intemperance yesterday arose from a dislike of seeing anyone lazily twitting Tom Reedy. Tom, when labouring alone in the barren fields of this article in its earlier form, noted I was getting interested, and out of his own pocket sent me several expensive books I could not access, one of them Schoenbaum's. It's not only myself who owes him a debt: wikipedia does. His scruple, precision and dedication are an ornament to this place, and having a twit come back to blather, presumably to entertain the onlooking gallery of those heterodox people who endlessly blog on with fatuous quibbles, gets up my nose, which, mindful of an idiom in Theocritus, flares at times in defensive pride for arduous work accomplished, thanks to the lead he provided, by many here with collegial empathy, judicious insight and no small drop of erudition, (including Peter Farey in the list of companionable and productive editors) which is, however, not the case with the provocateur who has returned to mess about lately here. Nishidani (talk) 12:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, Nishidani, thanks for your kind comment on the reliability of my editing, and also for your synopsis of a controversy in textual criticism I was frankly unaware of. Obviously my familiarity is with more mainstream literary criticism. You have taught me a good deal about an eighteenth-century academic controversy over Shakespeare's learning, clearly here "learning" with all its Neoclassical, academic connotations, in an age and milieu where the Classical languages ruled. I see how Farmer was considered to have quite taken the wind out of the sails of his opponents when he demonstrated that Shakespeare's so-called learning consisted of reading the sacred Greek and Latin texts in—painful even to think of it—English translations. Shocking! Still probably a bit too specialized for inclusion here, though I now do not doubt its importance in its way, and I stand corrected, now seeing that there was a relatively early period when Shakespeare was believed by some to have a rather extensive knowledge of Latin and even Greek literature.

I agree with all you have said about Tom's impressive work, and the rest of what you say. (Oh, as for the "century and a half", I meant only 150 years of Shakespeare criticism altogether; I certainly know that Dryden came only about a century earlier than Farmer.) Sorry about the tomatoes. But your time was not wasted; all very interesting stuff, reminding me of one reason I got involved in Wikipedia to begin with. Cheers, Alan W (talk) 06:09, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Bardolatry

Despite adulatory tributes attached to his works, Shakespeare was not considered the world's greatest writer in the century and a half following his death.[126]

In mentioning bardolatry, the article gives the impression (if not read closely) that this phenomenon is post-Garrick, and very much early 19th century. Well, it was, of course, in the sense of the rise in the emerging public and national imagination of Shakespeare, as education made inroads on the broader populace. But in terms of national reading elites, a kind of bardolatry probably existed from the post-Dryden period onwards. You get a hint of it in Voltaire's crack, reporting an impression he had on his study tour in the 1720s:'Shakespeare, leur premier poète tragique , n'a guère en Angleterre d'autre épithète que celle de divin.' in Essai sur la poésie épique, (1733) in Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes, Tome 10ième, La Société littéraire-typographique, 1785 pp.331-416 p.350. I was reminded of this by Irondome's sum-up remark on the class clash in Elizabethan times over at the NPOV noticeboard. The cultural elite in short, divinized Shakespeare within a century of his death, and of course, Ben Jonson's poem lies behind that. They didn't think of 'world literature' of course: globalized comparison wasn't yet a feature, since global imperialism was still nascent, compared to national self-adulation, and at that time, the great measure of quality was classical Greece and Rome, not what others were doing in Europe or elsewhere. Bardolatry in short, but we use the term of public cult, as per sources. Something in any case to keep an eye out for in future reading on this topic, if anyone feels that we might do well to slightly tweak the prose here, which we can't now because that's what the sources say.Nishidani (talk) 15:21, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

An intriguing topic, for sure. But hard to sort it all out. For decades, these "elite" critics praised Shakespeare but (frequently the same critics) also blamed him, as I'm sure you know well, for lack of taste, failure to observe the Classical unities, and so on. As Arthur Eastman, whose Short History of Shakespearean Criticism I happen to have at hand, reminds us, "Praise and blame are poles between which all people and poets live, but not often are they so widely apart as they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for Shakespeare." Not easy to fix upon the precise point when admiration metamorphosed into bardolatry. Looks to me like you're the man to do it, though, Nishidani. Judging from your recent remarks, I'd say you could be preparing the definitive book on the subject. Which would be great! We could justifiably cite it here, and problem solved.

Oh, and I'd also be interested to hear what Paul has to say. Some of his Wiki-contributions suggest that he has pondered this matter more than most of us. --Alan W (talk) 06:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

No book of scholarship is 'definitive' of course (though I was told one I wrote was so, in the first months of its successful appearance, and my flattered self-opinion only received a corrective when a great scholar told me some years later that it would be definitive for 20 years! On this subject, seriously, I defer to the other two, in fact Tom and Paul, independently or together, really should write a book on the subject. Paul particularly has done more work than most established Shakespearean scholars on the recondite byways of the heterodox movement's history, a relatively untilled field in academia, untilled because it looks like a barren heath to the ideo-agricultural eye, but which, like the unsown deserts of the Middle East yields a fascinating harvest of queer cultic objects if one has a feel for archeology, or what Nietzsche would have called ideengeschichtliche Genealogie.

I note now that Shapiro cites Voltaire, writing:

Yet referring to Shakespeare as divine had become so habitual that by 1728 a sharp-eared foreigner like Voltaire couldn't help but notice that Shakespeare “is rarely called anything but 'divine' in England”— to which Arthur Murphy proudly retorted,”With us islanders, Shakespeare is a kind of established religion in poetry’. Contested Will, p.31 (Faber & Faber edition)

Tom follows Shapiro's identification of Garick as the innovator in a 'national' cult of adulation, but there was certainly a clubbish culture of elitist bardolatry attested over a half-century beforehand in the coffee-house/Kaffeeklatsch world of the English commentariat.

This whole phenomenon after all, is a cult, and lends itself to the sociology of religion. We have plenty of scholarship on the Cargo cults of New Guinea, American evangelical populism, peyote rituals, etc., and almost nothing on the huge machine of liturgical cliché spinning and its ever-mushrooming spawn of tweaking devotees. It's a disgrace of academic negligance really, and Shapiro was right to point a finger of mild accusation.

I exclude Marlowe from this, because that thesis is, in my view, rational if improbable, not-class-based as are the others, and grounded on an attested record of magnificent poetry in the pretender's prehumous past. Nishidani (talk) 09:44, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

How true (even after the re-edit)! Although that hardly makes it any less of a 'cult' among some of its adherents than is any other authorship belief, including Stratfordism. After all, isn't an established church as much of a cult as any other religious belief? Incidentally, I used the word "some" in the previous sentence with some relief, since several of today's more influential Marlovians think (as I do) that our theory is by no means "the truth", but a fascinating hypothesis with sufficient supporting evidence to make it well worth spending one's time pursuing. We would need far more direct documentary evidence in corroboration, before feeling able to claim that we "know" the answer. Peter Farey (talk) 10:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Peter. I have noted that difference in Marlovians from the outset. 'I exclude Marlowe from this,' i.e., this analysis of the majoritarian 'cultic' side of anti-Stratfordianism. Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear. I do tend to rattle normal syntax with my bespoke fustian of metaphor-bolstered arguery. Churches, religions and faiths and the like are of course all, in origin, 'cultic'. Man wasn't wired to be rational in the Popperian sense. We all (well, nearly all) reserve some key dimension of our lives to fideistic impulses, though. Our values are grounded in traditions that simply normalized what were, illo tempore cultic challenges to some mainstream, established cultural pattern. But that would lead us out of Shakespeare, except that, as usual, he anticipated the thought (Hamlet, Act 2, Sc.2, ll.248-9), which reminds me apropos the SAQ generally, that the same Act speaks of a 'declension into madness': the only difference being that there is 'no method in't', which pretty much, for me, sums up the non-Marlovian brands of anti-Stratfordism.Nishidani (talk) 12:23, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

"I do tend to rattle normal syntax with my bespoke fustian of metaphor-bolstered arguery"? Couldn't have put it better myself! Peter Farey (talk) 14:47, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Really? I think most literate people could. FWIW I would like to suggest that this page's followers consider eschewing obfuscation (and snarkiness) a little more often. Just sayin'. DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 15:04, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

(ec) Well, here's some more!

I should, in mild reproval, now that I've trenched the garden for the tomatoes, disown your idea that 'Stratfordism' itself is a cult and prey (or prays) to the same devices. You only have to read Malone, the way his mind is constantly self-correcting as further evidence comes forth, to realize that his ingrained habit is not to go beyond what the evidence would allow, even if at one point the texts for him became, as they are for anti-Stratfordians generally, 'evidence'. His arch-enemy Steevens rebuffed this latter temptations with a brusque dismissal that you will recognize:

All that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspeare, 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.- I must confess my readiness to combat every unfounded supposition respecting the particular occurrences of his life' Supplement to the edition of Shakespeare's plays published in 1778, 2 vols, Vol 1, C. Bathurst, 1780 p.654

Though any field of thought, or scholarship, tends to fall victim to the acolytic mimesis, where the rehearsal of the 'obvious' is a performative art required to prove one's mastery of the basics, academic scholarship is far too bitchy, and competitive, to sustain the kind of dogmatic lockstep coterie adulation one finds at the heart of fringe theorizing. One commits whole pages of a beloved author to memory not in adulation of the author, but from absorption in the aesthetic genius of his mode of expression. If we found out the author is someone else, or, in some incident or another a prick, a heel, a monster of cruelty, that doesn't change the text bequeathed, or our love of it. It may refocus, marginally, certain readings. But ultimately, we love the writings, not the author behind them. I probably couldn't stand more than five minutes with any of the men (or women) who wrote most of the enchanting passages of the bible. True believers, in religion as in the SAQ church, are obsessed with the person behind the text. On this at least one is tempted to quote Derrida:'il n'y a pas de hors-texte,' and in practice, that is what scholarship, empirical, self-corrective and ever provisory, is about.

I really must shut up. Sunday always has this dreadful residue of a Christian past, with its domenical preaching, arise with a tedious vengeance.Nishidani (talk) 15:21, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

DoctorJoeE: Regarding such phrases as "bespoke fustian of metaphor-bolstered arguery", if Nishidani had attempted to insert this into the SAQ article itself, I think you would have a good case for crying "obfuscation!" (Or for having him committed to a psychiatric institution; for all I know, he might reside in one now.) Here, I think you are entirely missing the pixieish spirit of his exuberant wordplay. For my part, I am frequently edified and always entertained by his verbal gymnastics. Now, I'll confess that sometimes I haven't really a clue as to what he's saying. But then, I never got through Finnegans Wake, either. --Alan W (talk) 22:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I looked into that once, when it was raised on one of these pages, and found that Oxfordians interpreted "Loonacied! Marterdyed!" (JJ, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber 1975 p. 492) as one such allusion. Checking the net, I see Gary Goldstein has an essay on this in The Elizabethan Review, (Spring) 1997, esp. p.31.Can't access it though. In my own copy of FW I've glossed: 'Martardyed':' Alden Brooks 1943. Joyce met him in Paris?'. Meaning I guess that FW was published in 1939, four years before Alden Brooks published "The Dyer's Hand." Brooks' years in Paris overlap with Joyce's sojourns, so one wonders whether he picked it up from first hand acquaintance with Brooks. There must be more. He certainly sniped at Baconians in Ulysses, before Looney got into his stride. Cf.'Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats. Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest.' JJ.Ulysses, Bodley Head ed.1960 p.250.). Cheers, Alan (and I have no embarrassment about admitting my familiarity with psychiatric clinics. I've spent a good time in many, fortunately not as a patient.)Nishidani (talk) 09:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Change in lede section

See diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shakespeare_authorship_question&diff=prev&oldid=551895278

With the publication of an entire book authored by academics with the specific purpose of rebutting SAQ advocates, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy, I think this change in the wording reflects the current reality. Tom Reedy (talk) 02:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Shakespeare the Arab

I've long been thinking about adding this into the article, but before I do it, I'd like to bring it up here. There is a very large and popular tradition in the Arab World that Shakespeare was an Arab named Shaykh Zubayr. This theory was originally meant to be a joke, but has since been taken seriously by much of the Arab World. The theory was famously reasserted by Qaddafi, for example. A number of scholars, both Arab and non-Arab, have commented on the matter. The trend reveals the way in which Arabs have made Shakespeare "one of their own."

I think this theory needs to be added, its popularity mentioned, and its original, humorous intent highlighted. If we ignore it despite its huge popularity in that part of the world, we risk being a bit western-centric, in my opinion. Thoughts?

Scholarly sources for this material:

Wole Soyinka, “Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist,” in Catherine M. S. Alexander and Stanley W. Wells, Shakespeare and Race (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Margaret Litvin, Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011).

M. M. Badawi, "The Arabs and Shakespeare," in Modern Arabic Literature and the West (London: Ithaca Press, 1985), 191-220

Safa Khulusi, al-Ma'rifa, 1962. (In this year, this periodical published a series of articles in which this Iraqi scholar put forth the theory.)

etc.

Wrad (talk) 17:54, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Years ago, it was included here. I think it was removed by Smatprt as part of his campaign to restrict the article to the "serious" (sic) candidates. It is included in History of the Shakespeare authorship question and List of Shakespeare authorship candidates (last entry). It is also discussed in the article on the main proponent of the theory Safa Khulusi. Though I created the Khulusi article, I got into a bit of bother over it because of User:Simon Salousy, a relative of the author who objected to the less than reverential tone in which his distinguished kin's views were presented. It's also mentioned in the article on Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (the guy who originated the idea as a joke) and in the Chandos portrait article. I'm not dogmatically opposed to a brief mention, but the problem is that once one of the many other alternative candidates gets listed, it's difficult to argue that others shouldn't be. Paul B (talk) 18:34, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

It could arguably go in, but, as per Paul's last worry, (which I share) only if the RS used cited it, and several minor candidates to instance the extremities (Thomas More for example, who died yonks before Shakespeare started writing, and Daniel Defoe who wrote the works long after the First Folio published them. If such a text exists, then, certainly, we could mull a sentence from it along these lines. I'm a little worried that, given the general anti-Arab bias of wiki articles on anything to do with Islamic civilization, that mentioning him alone would look like playing into the hands of the usual mockery media.Nishidani (talk) 18:51, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there anything like this in any other non-western culture? Perhaps then we could have a section for non-Western (European/American) theories, and that might limit the potential "dam-breakage" when it comes to other candidates. It is a fact that this theory is hugely popular in the Arab world. They don't talk about Marlowe, Bacon, or Oxford with anywhere near the frequency of the "he was an Arab" theory. Also, I think we could sidestep the potential anti-Arab stuff by emphasizing that Arab scholars see it as a joke, and that it originated as a joke, though at times, among non-scholars, it got out of hand (sound familiar? :P ). Wrad (talk) 20:54, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

We could even make it a section for non-English theories. Aren't there arguments that he was German? Wrad (talk) 20:56, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yes. And Russian. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:42, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

The view that he was German originated in the half-reasonable argument that he represented an innately English sensibility, one that re-emerged in Early Modern English culture after being repressed by the Normans. The spirit of the English revived once they rejected the prissy Latinate culture of the Frencified Normans. Shakespeare represented the essentially Germanic soul of the Anglo-Saxons bursting back in its Gothic prolixity. As expressed in quasi-Hegelian form, this was quite common in the late 19th century. Shakespeare was essentially "germanic", representing the spirit of the Germanic peoples against the Latins. The Brits never quite "got" Shakespeare; his true genius was only fully understood by German scholars such as the Schlegels of the Romantic era. It was not claimed that he was actually born in Germany.
This view was widely articulated in WWI, especially during German celebratations of the tricentenary of Shakespeare's death in 1916. It was later revived by the Nazis. British Anti-Nazi propaganda ridiculed the brick-brained Germans for claiming that Shakespeare was their compatriot, but I've never seen any evidence that they claimed he was actually born there (in the 1941 film "Pimpernel" Smith the dim-witted Nazi believes the plays were originally written in German). There are other "ethnic" claims. The argument that Michelangelo Florio wrote the works was intimately linked to Italian nationalism, and the Derbyite theory came to be linked to French nationalism in Lefranc's version, despite the fact that Derby wasn't French. In both cases it is a product of the idea that Shakespeare's "universality" derives from an intimate understanding of the one nation that truly articulates the high culture of humanity as a whole (which is obviously Germany/Italy/France...). The Russians seem to have taken a shine to the Earl of Rutland. I know of no native Russian candidates, sadly. 23:11, 4 May 2013 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Barlow (talk • contribs)

Well, there's certainly a tie-in there for the Arab theory. I think these nationalistic theories would make a good addition to the article. There is plenty of scholarship out there about "global Shakespeares." Wrad (talk) 23:22, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes there is, but very little of it is linked to SAQ theories. We have citations for the German and Italian nationalist versions. Paul B (talk) 23:28, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

We have cites, but not much in the article body text, I assume because we don't want to bring everything in. But with all of this I think we have enough to form a coherent section, and it certainly is something that is there in the scholarship. Wrad (talk) 23:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Hey, don't forget us Irish, Paul! He was William Nugent as our list shows. Wrad, why not make a section with a provisory draft of how you imagine the proposed paragraph? With a concrete proposal, we can all tweak away and see what the result is.Nishidani (talk) 10:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

The section's title could be something along the line of "Nationalistic Shakespeares". And isn't there some theory about Shakespeare being a Frenchman "Jacques Pierre"? Or is that another joke? (It gets harder and harder to tell which proposals are serious.) Tom Reedy (talk) 20:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I put the Jacques Pierre (per Freud using an Italian correspondent) on the List of candidates talk page. That gives us (a) foreign Shakespeares: Irish, Arab, French, Italian and Spanish (Cervantes and Shakespeare being for Fuentes the same) and (b) foreign nationalisms hijacking Shakespeare (examples in France, Russia, perhaps in Arabic-speaking countries as per Wrad, and esp. Germany with its Shakespearomanie, first formulated as a cult in 1827) which Paul succinctly summed up. Shakespeare racially was German: German translations were superior to the original, meaning Shakespeare really came into his own voice when rendered into German etc.Nishidani (talk) 21:15, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I think it's a pretty interesting facet of the SAQ, but we'll have to be careful not to stray into WP:OR. Probably we'll have to be content with just listing them. I'll keep my eye out for commentary concerning foreign Shakespeare's. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:24, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

OR is the big problem. I'd forgotten Nugent, but that theory is certainly tinged with Irish nationalism (its inventor claims that Shakespeare uses uniquely Irish idioms), but there is very little written about it. The nationalist/ethnicist aspects of the Arab theory and the Florio theory can be cited. The German-nationalst appropriation of Shakespeare is widely written about, but it's not strictly an SAQ theory at all, since there is no German alternative author, at least none that I know of. Shakespeare is still Shakespeare. Paul B (talk) 13:53, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Rutland+Bleibtreu

Haven'ìt we got that wrongly attributed. Both Shapiro 2010 and the Variorum source I cited above ascribe it to Peter Alvor (Burkhard Herrmann) who ‘founded the Rutland-Shakespeare theory (1906,1907) describing Bleitreu as his disciple p.45; Shapiro F&F ed.pp.344-5(Hermann (writing under the name Peter Alvor) first proposed in 1906 that Rutland wrote the comedies). Thunderstorms. Must switch off Nishidani (talk) 16:18, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I wrote the sentence on Rutland. I deliberately used the ambiguous phrase "advanced the theory". This was for concision. As I understand it Alvor suggested that he wrote the comedies. I think Southampton wrote the other works. Bleibtreu generously gave Rutland the lot. He became the best known proponent of the Rutlandite position. Hide under the table. Paul B (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I've checked my trusty Churchill again. He says Alvor has Rutland writing the comedies and the poems. However, he also claims that Wilbur Zeigler was the first to suggest Rutland's involvement, though marginal, as one of Marlowe's enablers. I can't find any sign of that in the novel, which makes Churchill seem less trusty than rusty. Paul B (talk) 16:49, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Paul. I'd read that too, but was troubled by the 'founded the Rutland-Shakespeare theory' statement. Even the best sources occasionally differ in assumptions as reflected in their use of descriptive language, so discretionary judgement (here, who actually proposed Rutland as the complete hand behind the S-canon) will, as you say, favour Bleitreu. Nishidani (talk) 18:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Working "Non-English Candidates" section

In the 1950s and 60s, the idea developed in the Arab world that Shakespeare was an Arab scholar named Shaykh Zubayr, or Shaykh Bir. The theory was initially put forward by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq as a joke, though later Iraqi scholar Safa Khulusi took up the theory with more seriousness. In 1955, he argued the point in Ahl al-Naft, a periodical out of Baghdad, and in 1962 he published a several articles in al-Ma'rifa on the subject, stating that Shakespeare, because of his knowledge of the Arab world, must have either been an Arab himself or have spent considerable time in the region. These theories are popular in the region, though not taken seriously by Arab scholars, who consider the idea a product of nationalist feeling.

This seems to me to be undue weight. There is no rationale for singling out this theory that I can see. Paul B (talk) 16:53, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not singling it out. I'm only writing about what I know about. (Thus this is a "Working" section. "Work" is in progress.) Feel free to add other theories we have talked about. Wrad (talk) 17:02, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Of course you are singling it out. I can only comment on what you have actually written, not a hypothetical expansion of it. Writing an entire paragraph on one rather obscure theory is undue weight (I mean obsure in the sense that there is little literature on it. It's not clear to me what the claim that it is "popular" actually means in practice. Well known? Widely believed? Much discussed?). A paragraph on 'international' candidates seems potentially useful if it serves a purpose, but if we do want to make a useful point, rather than just add candidates, we have to source that point itself (i.e. the significance of the way the SAQ "candidate list" expanded along with Shakespeare's global repute). Paul B (talk) 22:30, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

My goodness. Be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day. We're all volunteers here. If you see something that needs fixing, fix it. If you see something that needs adding, add it. Is this what you all normally do when someone lays down a first draft? It's a wonder anyone volunteers around here anymore. I wrote this so that it could be edited, by you and others. I don't know everything about everything, so I'm only writing about what I know about. Wrad (talk) 23:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

How am I supposed to discuss a proposal while also being "patient"? Is there some problem with my responses and comments? I said it was undue weight for a fairly obscure theory and then added that I can only comment on what you actually wrote. There is, IMO, just too much information in the proposed text about a little-known theory. The main reason this is a problem, IMO, is that, though we may find it interesting, the Khulusi theory has no particular claim to priority. After the "big four" we list here, the next candidate in line is certainly Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland. Roger currently gets barely a sentence, but he has his own entry in several reference works, and has recently been revived in Russia. Indeed we have a reliable source who says that "millions" of Russians believe it [1]. Then we have Mary Sidney, whose supporters have been quite vocal for her inclusion in the past. Personally, I think do not think we should have a separate section on this topic because it would be a hostage to fortune. I think we should have a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, pointing out that the candidate list has expanded and that this has often been linked to attempts to appropriate Shakespeare to one or another non-English ethnicity. Paul B (talk) 12:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Wrad's proposal will be whittled as the rest of the bits are worked out. For the Italian bit for example, I imagine something like this:

Extra-national Shakespeares

The quest for an alternative author for Shakespeare's works is not limited to English candidates. Claimants have been detected in other countries, and he has even figured as a 'contested heirloom'. His Englishness was disputed in the wake of the Romantic 'Shakespeare mania' (Shakespearomanie) that swept Germany, and led to assertions of his Nordic character, and to claims that he was essentially German.As early as 1897, George Newcomen had suggested Shakespeare was an Irishman, a certain Patrick O'Toole of Ennis. Thomas Fingal Healy, writing for The American Mercury in 1940, picked up the idea and found numerous references in the text of Hamlet to clothes which, he thought, showed that the Dane in fact was a legendary Irish tailor. The distinguished Meath historian Elizabeth Hickey writing under the pen name of Basil Iske claimed, in 1978, that she had identified the Irish Shakespeare as William Nugent.Sigmund Freud, before adopting the Edward de Vere identification, toyed with the notion that Shakespeare may not have been English, a doubt strengthened in 1908 after he believed he had detected Latin features in the Chandos portrait. On the basis of a suggestion by a Professor Gentilli of Nervi, Freud came to suspect that Shakespeare was of French descent, and his name a corruption of 'Jacques Pierre'. The case for an Italian, either Michelangelo Florio or his son John Florio, as author of Shakespeare’s works has been made by Franz Maximilian Saalbach (1954), Santi Paladino (1955) and, more recently, Lamberto Tassinari (2008). Paladino in particular argued that Florio’s father, Michelangelo Florio wrote the works in Italian, and his son rendered them into English. The idea that Shakespeare was an Arab, Shaykh Zubayr, or Shaykh Bir, orginally began as a joke by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq. Between 1955 and 1962 the Iraqi scholar Safa Khulusi developed it as a fully fledged theory, arguing that Shakespeare was either an Arab, or had sojourned at length in an Islamic region. Though not taken seriously by Arab scholars, it has enjoyed a certain vogue, tinged with nationalism, in the popular imagination.

• Rüdiger Ahrens, The Critical Reception of : Shakespeare’s Tragedies in Twentieth Century Germany,’ in Ronald Dotterer (ed.) Shakespeare: Text, Subtext, and Context, Associated University Presses, 1989 pp.97-106 (Susquehanna University Studies, Vol 13) 9780941664929
• M. M. Badawi, Modern Arabic Literature and the West Ithaca Press, 1985 ISBN 978-0-863-72044-4 sEREIES = Oxford Oriental Institute monographs, Volume = 6; pp. 191-220
• Jonathan Bate The Genius of Shakespeare, Picador (origyear 1997) 2008 p.94.
• Richard Burt, 'Sshockspeare: (Nazi) Shakespeare goes Heil-lywood’ in Barbara Hodgdon, W. B. Worthen (eds.) A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, John Wiley & Sons, 2008 ISBN 978-1-405-15023-1 pp.437-455
• Hardy M. Cook ‘A selected reading list,’ in Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells (eds.) Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy 2013 pp.241-248, p.247
• Oscar J Campbell, Edward G. Quinn (eds.) A Shakespeare Encyclopaedia Methuen 1966 p.234Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
• Ernest Jones, The life and work of Sigmund Freud, Basic Books, vol.1 ‎1961
• Joep Leerssen, 'Making Shakespeare National' in Dirk Delabastita, Jozef de Vos, Paul Fransen(eds.) Shakespeare and European Politics,Associated University Presse, 2008 pp.36-55 (ISBN 978-0-874-13004-1
• Gerwin Strobl, The Germanic Isle: Nazi Perceptions of Britain, Cambridge University Press, 2000
  • Note (1). We'll have to wait for a secondary source that filters (more than does Wadsworth) Thomas Fingal Healy, 'Shakespeare was an Irishman,' in The American Mercury September 1940 pp. 24-32. We are told that there is only one Irishman in the plays (Captain MacMorris, Henry V, Act 3, Sc. 2) but that Hamlet is based not only on the tailor Wadsworth mentions but Amhaidhe, the prince who killed Niall of the Nine Hostages, High King of Eire (p.29). A real giveaway is that when Hamlet swears, he does so using an Irish apostle's apostrophe (Act V ACT 1:(‘Yes, by St Patrick).’
  • Note (2)Since Wadsworth provides us with George Newcomen's 1897 suggestion Shakespeare was an Irishman, a certain Patrick O'Toole of Ennis, Paul, I guess we can pop him into the Candidates' list immediately?Nishidani (talk) 12:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, was he related to Plenty O'Toole? Apparently, the proof that Hamlet was written by an Irishman is the line "Now might I do it, Pat." Paul B (talk) 12:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

While we're on this here, looks like we missed another. Wadsworth p.132 also mentions Mr Finch Barnard's theory (1914,1918) that one of his ancestors, or a 'collateral', was Shakespeare, which other sources say consisted in arguing that he was one of the Barnards of Akenham or Abington (Joseph Quincy Adams (ed.) A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare vol.25 Modern Language Association of America 1944 (‘The Authenticity of the 1609 Text’ Appendix 2 pp.42-52) p.45. I don't know how we can put this,'a certain Barnard of either Akenham or Abington'. Fiorst proposed by Finch Barnard in 1914? (Aldous Huxley mentions his theory in an anonymous ('Autolycus') review in the Athenaeum 1920, as well). Any suggestions how to frame the entry for no.83?Nishidani (talk) 14:04, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

p.s. the Variorum in Google comes up as Richard 11, but it deals with the Sonnets. Dunno why. Nishidani (talk) 14:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• • Note (3) Wadsworth calls these 'extra-national theories' p.132. I suggest, if we do eventually adopt a para for this material, that the heading therefore be Extranational Shakespeares.Nishidani (talk) 14:21, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

That book on the Sonnets has been popping up on Google as Richard II for years. I've no idea why. According to Churchill, the Barnard in question is none other than Sir John Barnard, Shakespeare's granddaughter's husband (p.97). How this happened I don't know, short of getting a copy of Barnard's book Science and the Soul. Maybe she got hold of the works and published them in her granddad's name. Or maybe there was some deal between the Barnards and the Shakespeares that their bloodlines and poetry would both eternally be joined. Paul B (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Apparently it was a deal between John Barnard and Shakespeare:

The case, in brief, is that Shakespeare was the actor-manager who produced the plays on the stage, but that the actual author was John Barnard, the country gentleman who was eventually to marry the actor's granddaughter. Evidence for the theory is a little meagre, except in so far as it implies the negative side of Baconianism, in respect of Sir John's greater breeding. Shakespeare, like some other actors of the time, had become officially a gentleman, or rather his father had become so and he had inherited the honour in 1601; but Barnard had been born a gentleman--a distinction of greater significance then than in modern times.
Mr. Finch Barnard devotes many of his pages to a consideration of the names of the characters in Shakespeare's plays. He finds that several Barnards, or similar names, figure therein. There is, for instance, the trusty soldier Bernardo in Hamlet, who--significantly enough--speaks the very first line in the most famous play that has ever been written. Bernardo's fellow-sentinel is called Francisco, who speaks the second line of the play, and Mr. Finch Barnard points out that the father of the author, John Barnard, was named Francis. In Science and the Soul Mr. Barnard brings in St. Francis of Assisi, whose relevance to the plays of Shakespeare is not so immediately apparent.

Such is Churchill's summary. Paul B (talk) 14:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

In fact he was already listed, but the name was spelled Bernard in the list, so we are still at 82! I've moved him to Barnard. Paul B (talk) 14:45, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Thanks for the correction. Our Sir John Bernard, in short. Well, we have to trust Churchill (as opposed to Winston, that unreliable narrator)'s account though one of the Barnards of Akenham or Abington' in the Variorum diction gives one pause. Sir John was of Abington, so if he could also be a collateral relative, from Akenham, in any of these family accounts, then we'd have to consider whether a slight confusion has taken place. Nishidani (talk) 15:00, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Wrad, Paul et al. I've done my version of a full draft of what we know on this theme. Feel free to trim or rework it according to your individuals lights. Then we can chuck it or use it, after all stable oldhands in her vet it and disapprove or approve. The only thing I left out, which I've had on my mind for years, is George Steiner's pages on Shakespearomanie in Germany (After Babel OUP 1976 pp.380-382). He mentions German ideas, in the wake of this fantasy, that argued Shakespeare was of 'flemish-teutonic' ancestry, which doesn't challenge the Stratford man of course. But he then goes on to cite examples of a nationalistic appropriation in which 'the German spirit/mind and Shakespeare's soul were expressed through a common medium, in which Shakespeare had actually had become the German language' (my trans of Gundolf cited 382). In his own inimitable paraphrase: 'The notion is, at one level, absurd, at another of the greates philosophic-linguistic interest. 'Shakespeare' was somehow hidden inside the accidental husk of English'. To go beyong this is of course WP:OR but what Steiner's overview is saying is that, while not denying the identity of Shakespeare, his spiritual identity assumed the plenitude of its teutonic nature only via the linguistic reappropriation of translation into German. It's a far more sophisticated, deftly devious, theft of Shakespeare's identity than we get in the dumclucks we've been listing here. Unfortunately, until some Shakespearean makes that point, we probably couldn't work this in. Nishidani (talk) 15:18, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I've added all this and more to the History of the SAQ article. I moved the Khulusi theory to the top of the section, as it exemplifies both the ethnicism/nationalism associated with "foreign" Shakespeares and the ambiguity of their status as "alternative author" models at all. Paul B (talk) 18:43, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani, looks good to me. Wrad (talk) 22:12, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems his true nationality has now been discovered: [2], and, of course: [3]. Paul B (talk) 19:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

That's a relief. Sure beats reading de Vere Society Newsletters for entertainment value. All we need wait for now is someone serious from the subcontinent to write about the possibility for any Indian of Kālidāsa's stature to get reincarnated in proper Buddhist fashion half a world away, and a millenium later, and desume that the English conquest of India was inspired by Shakespeare aka Christopher Marlowe, via the coded directions in Tmburlaine, i.e.'Then will we march to all those Indian mines.'Nishidani (talk) 20:53, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Unless there is an objection, I am going to add Nishidani's text to the article tomorrow. Wrad (talk) 19:49, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I've added all of it and a great deal more to the History article. But I still think it is too long for this one, for reasons already given. We don't want to bloat it by incrementally adding candidates. It can open the floodgates. Paul B (talk) 20:00, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, then this article will be guilty of being western- (or, even more narrowly, Anglo-)centric and will not reflect a worldwide view on the subject, in my opinion. Nobody in the Arab world knows who Oxford or Bacon are except a few scholars, but even high school kids know the Shaykh Zubayr theory. Your calling it a "little-known" theory above only reveals your own, inherent, Anglo bias.Wrad (talk) 22:01, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Is this a joke? Inglok (talk) 22:44, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

"Rhetoric of accumulation"? Citation needed

I'm familiar with Werstine's term, having argued the Hand D attribution for lo these many years now. I can see that it's almost the same as what anti-Stratfordians use with the "evidence" for whatever candidate they're championing at the time, but I'm not sure that it's used for strictly anti-Stratfordian arguments. I've got Werstine's essay around here somewhere, and I don't recall that he mentioned anti-Stratfordians except to say that the 1923 Sir Thomas More study was a response to their claims (with which I don't agree). In any case, we need a reference that specifically says they use the "rhetoric of accumulation" instead of one that merely explains what it is. Otherwise we're committing OR. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:34, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree. This implies that it has been used specifically to describe anti-Stratfordian practice, but the citations don't support that, and I certainly don't know of any that do. Peter Farey (talk) 05:53, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

No, no WP:OR is involved. The source I cited reads:-

Anti-Stratfordians offer a laundry list of details about the life of their favored candidate(s), contend that these details “prove” the life of Oxford, or Bacon, or Marlowe, or Rutland, or Queen Elizabeth better fits the attitudes present in Shakespeare’s works, and consider the case closed. This is hardly a rigorous process; it is, instead, an argument based on a "rhetoric of accumulation," to use Paul Werstine’s term, which proves nothing besides the ability of the proponent of a particular argument to amass a list of individually unconvincing coincidences.’ Such an argument does not follow any accepted method of historical argument.’Terence Schoone-Jongen p.6.

What Werstine's paper (Paul Werstine, ‘Shakespeare, More or Less: A.W. Pollard and Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Editing,’ in Florilegium, vol.16 1999 pp.125-145 ) held was that Pollard's 1923 group, as they argued for Shakespeare's hand in More, succumbed to the very temptation of usuing cumulative evidence which they had otherwise, in earlier polemics, identified as a defect of anti-Stratfordians. Nishidani (talk) 10:00, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah! We're good, then. It's been so long since I read the paper I'd forgotten the details. I'll dig through all my junk and re-read it today. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:12, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll be damned: that link goes right to the essay. We live in a Golden Age. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

That's not a bad essay, really, and raises many interesting issues. Distinctions of method (to dilate on that would be WP:OR, even if obvious), but, more importantly, it is richly suggestive of a buried literature of rebuttal of Baconism, full of acute insights into the defects of approach, which we've all but forgotten today. We really do need doctoral students, esp. after Shapiro's book, to now recover the kind of intricate critiques (by Greg 1903 etc) which the academy once used against anti-Stratfordism in its heigh-day. Nishidani (talk) 14:30, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Almost 11 years ago I wrote an informal essay meant to rebut Werstine's paper. I haven't had time to re-read it but here it is for the curious. Be kind.

Part 1. Werstine introduction

Part 2. Werstine on Pollard

Part 3. Werstine on Thompson and Greg

Part 4. More Werstine on Greg

Part 5. Werstine on Wilson

Part 6. Werstine on Wilson--correction Tom Reedy (talk) 19:27, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I stand corrected. The link actually took me to page 117, and didn't notice that page 6 was cited too. Since various different pages of Schoone-Jongen are cited in the article, I've changed it to take us to page 1 of the Introduction. Peter Farey (talk) 06:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about that, Peter, and thanks for the correction.

Tom! Werstine’s paper is an exercise in the sociology of criticism, very much in the manner of Hayden White’s now classic Metahistory. I don’t think he was being ‘dishonest’. He was looking for analogies and tropes to ‘frame’ a rhetorical reading of an historical tradition. Of course, the problem is, if you adopt that technique, you cannot escape the same procedure, when others read what you are doing. So one could write an analysis of Werstine’s paper showing the tension in it between ‘formal textual critical methods’ which are part of the traditional apparatus of Shakespearean scholarship he was trained in, and the critical vogue of deconstruction he adopted as the wave of French criticism swept through the 70s-80s world of academic literary criticism.

The former implies that positions can be evaluated according to evidence, and leans on a premise of empirical verification: the latter assumes either that any position reflects either a manipulation of rhetorical devices to ground any argument, or that all knowledge is contextualized within an ‘episteme’ or a given period’s grid of covert practices and assumptions, or both. Werstine’s method, as you implicitly show, is caught on the horns of these two distinct vectors, traditional and postmodernist criticism. The points he makes against the 1923 authors are essentially made by assuming that anyone (the sceptical empiricists) who disagreed with them was correct, and anything they argued for simply rhetorically analogous to, a mirroring reflection of, a slipshod methodology they otherwise disowned as part of the cranky tom-and-jerry rigged machinery of Baconian anti-Stratfordism. Collapsing oppositions into an identity, showing the workings of similitude where the surface is asserting difference, is itself a rhetorical method, and Werstine therefore can be read as being hoist by his own petard. Still, I found his paper enlightening because provocative, and your rebuttal very stimulating as well. You should have written it up more carefully: it shows, as one would expect from writing in an internet format designed to cope with the flood of anti-Stratfordian nonsense, a certain rhetorical intemperance, and has the inadvertent errancies of hasty composition. From memory, having flipped through the links in succession, (a) Death of evidence =dearth of evidence (though the variation in the slip is itself apposite really!)(b) ‘of . .disabused’ : A ‘Churchillian' anachronism (c) Hand-D spelled self as "self ‘ should read: ‘Hand D spelt self as ‘sealfe’, etc. This is as much as my reflections on the issue came up with while otherwise paying bills at the local post office and buying medicines at a pharmacy allowed. Well done, Tom. Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I re-read Werstine last night in preparation to re-read my essay. I got a lot more out of it than I did the first few times I read it a decade ago, but I have to say his paper seemed to be the opposite of the "rhetoric of accumulation" in that all his individual points seem valid yet his conclusion doesn't (probably my bias). Anyway I was never too strong on criticism, and that was the main reason I chose to go to a cow (or in this case) oil college instead of UT, where they stressed criticism over content and old-line scholarship, as all big universities do. (Even today my wife berates me for never being ambitious, as I sometimes berate myself.) And yeah, it's obvious I was writing for the internets! Tom Reedy (talk) 13:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Philology, textual criticism, and historical studies (Shapiro) beat 'criticism' any day. It's the microhistorical side of Werstine I particularly enjoyed. I feel sorry for anyone who got a degree in literary criticism in the 70s-90s. Some of the avantgarde theory is very good, but to me, 95% of the criticism flowing from graduates raised in it is interchangeable, stylistically a homogenized mishmash of tropical clichés, and if you read an anthology of it, it's hard to remember who said what, and the what is the same: everybody but the critic writing the piece is caught up in the nets of subjectivist or rhetorical aporiae. My prejudice though. I was taught by men who got a horn over a textual emendation in the 16-19th century that made sense of 2000 years of scribal copying of defectively transmitted verses, and the impact was contagious. So, reading-wise, you were probably fortunate not to go to the UT (in English studies: the Classics Department with men like William Arrowsmith (though he wasn't much of a philologist), Peter Green, D.Carne Ross and the like were another kettle of fish)Nishidani (talk) 13:56, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

BTW I've started overhauling The Passionate Pilgrim page if anybody wants to jump in; it shouldn't take too long. It was unbelievably inaccurate. I shiver to think how inaccurate the rest of the Shakespeare articles are. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:25, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I have a bit of free time this week (for a change) -- anything in particular you'd like assistance with on Passionate Pilgrim? I don't want to step on your toes. DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 14:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

See the talk page. Just grab a gut and growl, as my old pappy used to say. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Wow, long time since I've seen a Maverick reference! I'll hang back for the moment and jump in if it seems warranted, since you seem to have a good handle on it. DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 17:32, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

No problem, Doc. You might want to take a look at all the other Shakespeare poem pages if you're looking for a short project. None of them appear as if they're in all that hot a shape. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:33, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Will do -- pun intended. DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 19:38, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Tom, Nishidani: re Werstine.... Thanks for posting the links, both of you. All very interesting stuff. I found Werstine on Pollard, Reedy on Werstine, and Nishidani on Reedy all stimulating reading. Nish, as for Tom's typos, they just highlight by contrast the beauty of the Wikipedian way. Had Tom's criticism of Werstine been posted here, you may be sure someone would have cleaned up the mistakes long ago. I know I would have, as I have yours—and my own, too, if I ever notice them. It helps to be obsessive-compulsive; at least it helped me earn a living for decades. Now I just work out my neurosis here as a hobby. :-) --Alan W (talk) 04:27, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Tom said:'be kind'. In my neighbourhood as a child, the rule was to go for the jugular under that sort of provocation! So I noted some slips, but tried my best to do so in an unreadable pastiche of the modern criticism I was complaining about, to show my own 'hypocrisy'. The games people play! Thank god there's someone around here to watch and whack when the p's and q's go astray. Nothing wrong with having a neurosis. What did Arthur Koestler say about people who use their brains? Something about their being 'porous membranes stretched between media of different properties' (as we are between RS and wiki articles) in whom neurosis was a functional prerequisite. However, you are evidently not neurotic. You're just pertinaciously punctilious. Cheers, Alan.Nishidani (talk) 12:22, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the sympathetic review, mate. I had time to re-read it last night and whilst I see some things I would change, it holds up as a mini-critique—not bad for a newsgroup. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Dammit, that fil(u)m got me in real trouble at highschool. . .But that's a story for another day. An' now gen'lemen, a musical rap or interlude from the appositively named Kate Tempest. Don't be put off by the marvellous accent if it at first grates on the transatlantic ear. Or, if it does, just move the bar to about the halfway point in the interview. 'My Shakespeare'. I was particularly taken by 'He's in every mix-up that spirals far out of control and never seems to end even when its beginnings are forgot..He's in every misheard word that ever led to tempers fraying,' which brought back many memories of this article before serious editors managed to wrest it from its slough of despond.Nishidani (talk) 15:18, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. And here I took your "criticism", Nish, of Tom's essay/newsgroup posting, seriously. Maybe that was my first mistake. Thanks for the kind words about my self-styled "neurosis", whether it is so literally or not. And thanks for the clip of the Kate Tempest interview. I listened to every word, and no regrets at all. I had never heard of her; now that I have, I am feeling more hopeful that what is best in our common cultural heritage might just be handed down through the generations and survive, at least as long as there is anything left of the human race. Cheers back at ya, Nish, and you too, Tom. --Alan W (talk) 05:14, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I was deadly serious, but being pompous is a prophylactic device I use to curb myself when dropping a critical remark, esp. of people I esteem. You're dead right: all she has to do is cultivate a sense of rhythm and lilt, when to hit high gear and speed, when to pause or canter, and how to vary tone and accent, and she's there. I'd love to hear her reciting Molly Bloom's monologue at that pace (which was perfect for 'Icarus' (except for the failure to pause at that sigh) though. It would be perfect for the stream of consciousness. Best.Nishidani (talk) 07:12, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Milestones book links

Anybody know how to link the two books mentioned in article milestones to the WP:Wikipedia in books page? Tom Reedy (talk) 01:40, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't look like there is any trick involved. Just go to the page and type in what is necessary, as you would edit any Wikipedia article. Of course you are free to do as you see fit, Tom; if I were the one considering it, I don't think I would bother unless I also took the trouble to revamp and update the entire page. It has deteriorated into a pile of trivia. Few of the entries for the past few years actually "discuss the Wikipedia concept" at all. --Alan W (talk) 02:33, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Well I fixed the second article link, but I don't know what the correct template for the book links is. I've been away and it was mainly just fiddling around trying to get back into editing. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:41, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Tom, maybe I didn't understand what you are trying to do. I have figured out how to fix the links, which are still not correct (same template, but the parameters need tweaking). I guess I can do that now, although they will link to a page that doesn't yet have anything about either of those books. You have to edit Wikipedia in books and add the details yourself. Maybe you know that already, but it's not clear from what you wrote above. I would do it myself, but of course you can do that best.

I'll fix the talk-page links now. I guess I can make stub entries on the Wikipedia in books page too, leaving the expansion to you. Stay tuned. --Alan W (talk) 03:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Done. Click the "Details" links and you'll see the stub entries I added. That "Wikipedia in books" page is still a mess overall, as far as I'm concerned. But maybe these two additions will provide some class. :-) --Alan W (talk) 03:31, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

SAQ "entering the mainstream"

There is a discussion taking place at [[4]] in the SAQ section regarding the inclusion of the following reliable source quote.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22206151

But what has stirred Prof Wells, who has edited the Oxford Shakespeare for 35 years, is his worry that this question about Shakespeare's authentic authorship seems to be entering the mainstream. "What's annoying is that it's spreading," he says.

The article makes clear that he is referring to courses at Brunel and Concordia.

I think it should be included to show that there is some academic support for question the Stratfordian authorship. This may have wider implications on Wikipedia if those who question the Stratfordian authorship have hitherto been regarded as 'fringe'. Three editors have all opposed its inclusion. I think it should most definitely be included to give adequate representation to a minority viewpoint. Sceptic1954 (talk) 09:08, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't have time to go into this right at this moment, but the real issue is inappropriate placement--the article is a biography, not an SAQ-related article--so "adequate representation to a minority viewpoint" is irrelevant. In the context of that article, the representation is more than adequate. And yes, the relevant views of "those who question the Stratfordian authorship" are regarded as fringe. Please do some homework and read the archived talk pages of this and other SAQ-related articles. Especially acquaint yourself with the arbitration decision via the links I put on your talk page. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:21, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Please read this. Nobody has or is trying to censor any information (always the first outcry of a fringe believer). The point is that it does not belong in the biographical article for Edward de Vere. You don't seem to be able to understand that every article is not a dumping ground for every scrap of peripherally-related information about the page's topic. Please acquaint yourself with WP:FRINGE, especially the section WP:ONEWAY, and WP:WEIGHT. Your wished-for quotation is not even a quotation from Wells; it's a summary by a journalist, and as such has no weight whatsoever on the scholarly acceptance of the SAQ. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:51, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Tom, you wrote "The first outcry of a fringe believer" Are you making assumptions about my beliefs? I do believe passionately in fairness and balance, other than that I have not expressed a view one way or other on the Shakespearean authorship.

I also would like to refer you to the section above. Ideally this is how it's done on articles under discretionary sanctions. Tom Reedy (talk) 20:25, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Seriously I don't think I can be bothered with endless guidelines, what I have suggested is in line with the broad principles of Wikipedia and I am not going into this issue any further at present. Your sources don't reflect the main quote fully and I've endeavoured to do that. It's not a direct quote but it's a fair summary and I would expect Wells to have objected if he felt it wasn't. I've made my point and will be telling the wider world what I think on this, if anyone cares to listen.. I can only say that I think that Stratfordian Wikipedia editors seem terrified of a report of the views of a leading Stratfordian and are trying to censor them. People can look at the edit that was reverted and make up their own minds. If those higher up don't want to intervene then they allow Wikipedia to go into disrepute on this issue. Sceptic1954 (talk) 21:58, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

If you can't "be bothered with endless guidelines", how do you know what the broad principles of Wikipedia are? Tom Reedy (talk) 04:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I knew the fifth pillar by instinct but now I have read it and am likely to quote it in future when people go on with 'endless guidelines'. Sceptic1954 (talk) 12:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

My experience of wikipedia editing is that those who act against the broad principles justify it by referring to guidelines in a nitpicking way.

The BBC article is titled "Shakespeare scholars try to see off the Bard's doubters". That title is accurate because an acknowledged Shakespeare scholar has written an entire book dedicated to showing that those who doubt that Shakespeare was the author are misguided. From that, your contribution is to inject a counterpoint to suggest that there is academic doubt about the authorship. Of course there is some doubt that can be described as "academic"—there is always someone in academia who doubts—however, an article is a summary of current knowledge in the field, and it is entirely misleading to suggest that there is any significant academic doubt about Shakespeare's authorship. Rather than picking choice phrases from entertainment articles, editors should read the book and determine how to use its information in a balanced manner. Johnuniq (talk) 02:29, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course there is significant academic doubt as there are two universities offering courses which encourage people to question the authorship.

Again, the main point is that it is an interjection in a biography article, not an SAQ-related article, and it is not even specific to Oxford. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

It is the best I could find in the context. The other two quotes are equally interjections. I think just about any reasonable person who think that the quote I added means that the three quotes together reflect the text 'nearly all' better than if you just keep the first two, which simply express 'all'. You've 'won' here but I now have an excellent illustration of wiki bias I can refer to.Sceptic1954 (talk) 05:00, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

There are lots of university courses which are intended to get students to raise doubt—that is a fundamental part of intellectual discovery. However, to use Wikipedia to assert that there is academic doubt would require a reliable source stating that (not a BBC commentary with a throw-away line). Please keep off-topic remarks for another website. Johnuniq (talk) 05:20, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

>Sorry I think you are just nit-picking to try and obscure Stanley Wells admission that the SAQ has entered the mainstream. Read the whole article and the ebook to which it relates and the quoted words are a fair reflection. He and Edmondson admitted he wanted to 'ruffle a few feathers' Judging by your reaction, and those of Paul Barlow and Tom Reedy, he has succeeded rather well in ruffling the feathers of Stratfordians. Bravo Stanley! Further responses here will encourage me to think I've made the point well.Sceptic1954 (talk) 06:17, 26 June 2013 (UTC)<

This remark is just silly. The last thing Wells wants to do is "ruffle" the feathers of "Stratfordians". What an astounding claim. The whole point of his book is to squash anti-Strats, which of course it will inevitably fail to do. Firstly, the concept of 'entering the mainstream' was first used by Shapiro, after the publication of his 2010 book Contested Will (his exact words in an article were about the then-upcoming film Anonymous: "Emmerich's film is one more sign that conspiracy theories about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays have gone mainstream"). What he means is that they have become well-known within a wider culture. Wells is merely repeating this (if he ever said it, since as written the words are not his). Personally, I don't think there's anything new about this. Anti-Strat ideas were probably at their height from c1890-c1930. They have waxed and waned since then. The internet is the main reason for their renewed visibility, as Shapiro himself noted. None of this has anything to do with increasing academic acceptance, though I do think there is increasing academic interest in these theories as aspects of the history of interpreting and re-imagining Shakespeare. Paul B (talk) 17:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Paul, re my 'astounding claim' have you ever heard the expression 'own goal'? E and W may not have wanted to create difficulties for those on their own side but I suggest they have. They have given their opponents 'the oxygen of publicity'Sceptic1954 (talk) 07:21, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

There are two things here (or two strategies). Pouring over a review of Wells and co's book, one teases out 'enters the mainstream' and, eureka, this is taken to mean that the authority of Stanley Wells can be used to unhinge the 'not mainstream =fringe' principle that has guided this page's RS criteria. Wells however did not evidently mean 'enters the (academic) mainstream', but 'entertains the mainstream' of the 'conversation of the world', articles on Shakespeare in the press, TV programmes, people's awareness. There is no evidence that Shakespeare has entered the academic mainstream any more than the widespread belief in UFO abduction, or creationism has entered the academic mainstream, other than as an object of academic research on delusions. The second element is a confession of historic failure. What Leahy's strategy appears to be is to renounce the claimant theories, (since the academic rebuttal of these is exhaustive) and, seizing on authorship ascription studies which demonstrate multiple authorship of a number of plays (excluding the strongest plays and poems in the canon), try to revive the early 'group authorship theory' on the strength of this new trend. It's like a sacrifice move in chess, and but it won't get to checkmate. The group authorship theory can't stand with authorship ascription theories, or be grafted onto them, because the techniques of the latter individuate distinctive styles, one of which is that of an historical Shakespeare, different in style, mode and design from Middleton, Fletcher and co. All I have understood from this is that Leahy has buried all the troops mowed down in his front-line assault, and after the defeat, is now engaged in diplomatic negotiations to get the survivors enlisted in the victor's camp, by saying they weren't so much enemy as much as capable logistics warriors who can do the same job for the mainstream army. Not really, if accepted, they will just act as a fifth column, and in any case, they weren't good at logistics either. (They are hopelessly unqualified to do serious attribution work, which does not conclude that 'Shakespeare' was many people, but that Shakespeare collaborated with several people, a totally different discourse.Nishidani (talk) 06:20, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Gosh, I've even made my point so well that you are trying to edit out my contributions on the talk page - talk about trying silence someone's point of view. I've restored it above between >and< I hope there is no edit warring policy on talk pages otherwise I'll be for the chop!Sceptic1954 (talk) 06:28, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell there is 'fringe' 'minority' and 'majority'. Wells refers to two university courses in the ebook, it's part of what is meant by 'entering the mainstream'. I'm certainly not arguing that the SAQ should be treated as more than a small minority view on Wikipedia. What baffles me is that a main text in an article says 'nearly all academics' the only sources quoted say 'all' and a source that justifies the 'nearly' is excluded. I've no dispute about 'nearly all academics'. I don't think the detail of Leahy's strategy is especially relevant here, I'm not one of his students and don't follow what goes on on his courses.Sceptic1954 (talk) 06:42, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Leahy's course is presented as a quasi-postmodernist examination of the Shakespeare "myth" as it has been "constructed" over history. Anti-Stratfordianism is presented in terms of "deconstructing" a myth and creating counter-myths. At least that's what he claims he's doing. I don't think there is much doubt that Leahy does adhere to a form of anti-Stratism, one that seems rather similar to the primal version expounded by J.C. Hart. His version seems to be an idiosyncratic (I would say garbled) development of 80s-90s post-Marxist critiques of Shakespeare such as those of Jonathan Dollimore, which want to see his identity and reputation as a political "construct". Leahy is completely marginalised within Shakespeare studies. There have always been people with idiosyncratic ideas in academia. Every so often individual academics have espoused one or other aspect of anti-Strat ideas. Célestin Demblon, Gerald Henry Rendall and Abel Lefranc were all working academics in fields related to literature, though only Lefranc was a specialist on the period. The point is that this is not evidence that anti-Statism is somehow becoming increasingly "respectable" in academia. There is no evidence that its advocates are making progress in that sense, though, of course, they continue to claim that they are, as they have done since about 1880, when the Baconians were predicting the imminent Fall of the House of Statford. Paul B (talk) 16:03, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Using the dating of Hamlet as an example, at the present time "majority" refers to those Shakespeare academics who think that Hamlet was written c. 1599-1601; "minority" to those who think that it was written earlier, before 1589, and revised later; and "fringe" to those who think Shakespeare didn't write it at all.

Regarding your bafflement, I added a source at your request yesterday which states, "There is, it should be noted, no academic Shakespearian of any standing who goes along with the Oxfordian theory", which should be sufficient to qualify "nearly all academics" in that context. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:36, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

In his last lecture to our graduating class in classical Greek about a half century ago, our distinguished professor thought with infinite kindness of taking the edge off 4 severe years of dry philology by giving us a lecture on the topos of halitosis and farting from Aristophanes through the Greek Anthology, rounding it off with analogies to such modern treatments as you find in Blazing Saddles. It was meant to 'break the class up' on a joyously comic note, and it did. We congraulated him. It was, I said, an augury that his career would be crowned by an appointment to the high office of proctor at the university.Not for that has flatulence entered mainstream discourse in classical studies. Whatever happened to your edit has nothing to do with a conspiracy, but with the carelessness of age, for which my apologies. Nishidani (talk) 09:20, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

No problem, it did occur to me that the deletion might be accidental. If you want to re-edit to remove all reference to deletion and restoration feel free. Sceptic1954 (talk) 09:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

There have been several reports at WP:VPT where people have said that they are sure they just added a comment, but the diff shows some other change, such as an earlier comment being deleted. Wikipedia operates from multiple servers, and the occasional glitch may be due to a temporary communication problem between servers. That particularly applies to edits in the same section that occur within a few minutes of each other. Johnuniq (talk) 09:38, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Sceptic1954: (Way) above, you wrote: "Seriously I don't think I can be bothered with endless guidelines" and "My experience of wikipedia editing is that those who act against the broad principles justify it by referring to guidelines in a nitpicking way."

Seriously? One of my experiences in Wikipedia editing is that many who act against the broad principles, ignoring or misinterpreting what other editors are saying, claim to be above "nitpicking" rules and guidelines. Your attitude will get you nowhere here. --Alan W (talk) 04:33, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't consider that I have either knowingly ignored or misinterpreted what any other editor may have said. In discussion I may have missed something that was said clearly, although I'm not even aware of that. So many words are being generated - although this has never been a monologue - that it would be easy to miss something. Sceptic1954 (talk) 05:08, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I leave it to others who know the SAQ topic far better than I do to agree or disagree whether you have knowingly ignored or misinterpreted what they have said. My main point is that your striding onto a talk page of a Wikipedia article that has been evolving for years with countless painstaking edits and attempting to support a point by declaring that you "can't be bothered with endless guidelines" and then implying that those who are citing those guidelines are using them to "act against Wikipedia's broad principles"—well, to me that does not bode well for a future of your working on this page with others in what is supposed to be a cooperative environment. --Alan W (talk) 05:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't bode well indeed and probably I won't continue to work here. Even Paul Barlow admits that there is a phenomenon called wiki-lawyering. Do you know the Biblical verses 'to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel' or 'the letter kills and the spirit gives life'? I've plenty of experience of people quoting detailed guidelines as a cover for pushing POV and Tom Reedy is constantly flouting one of the main pillars 'civility' and I don't quite understand why this is allowed. This is not at all a co-operative environment but I don't consider that this is my fault. There was clearly been a great deal of disorder in the past but there has since been a coup and martial law is imposed - understandable but the new rulers need to loosen up a bit. Unfortunately in some areas they swat down anything which has the remotest association with SAQ. This entire debate discussion about a reference in the 17th Earl of Oxford article would have been avoided if Reedy or Barlow had used the reference which appears in the main Shakespeare article and which I am now going to put into the E of O article. I do fear for my future here for doing that, it seems that it may be a capital crime to do anything which Tom might disagree with. Sceptic1954 (talk) 06:43, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh dammit. The snitch has dobbed us in! The game's up, Tom & co. Evidence is accumulating. Sceptic's molehill threatens to out-Everest Everest, and he had duly, close on the heels of his earlier declaration that he has 'not expressed a view one way or other on the Shakespearean authorship,' informed the proper authority to denounce the mischief-making clique here. With bated halitosis, I keenly await future developments, and that doesn't mean I sit at a console checking the derivative market.Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Latest edits

Thanks to editor Inglok for leading us from the slough of journalese into the sunny fields of encyclopedic diction, and thanks to Peter Farey for the much-needed update to the Authorship in the mainstream media section. I think that that is the appropriate placement for the material that Sceptic1954 believes is being censored from Wikipedia. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:24, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Tom, for the kind words and the chuckle. Yes, journalese irritates me. But not everyone sees encyclopedic diction, or correct punctuation, as an improvement over journalese. Can you suggest what can be said in defence of that particular improvement? It seems it's a matter of taste and some don't like it. Inglok (talk) 14:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

You're very welcome, Tom. As you no doubt gathered, that was indeed a significant part of my intention. Peter Farey (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course the SAQ article is the best place for Edmondson and Wells to be discussed in the body of an article. However wherever there is a statement that 'almost all academics' reject alternative candidates (which might be more accurate as many reject and hardly any support) then this must be substantiated. And if there is no single reliable source to say 'almost all' then the best thing is to synthesise a source which says 'all' with one which shows that some do not reject. And I can see no logical explanation for excluding this reference so can only assume that it is something of an embarrassment. Sceptic1954 (talk) 17:53, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Assume whatever you want. I know you can't be bothered to take the time to learn how things work around here, but you should at least read the contributions of the other editors in this discussion. If you had you would know that I furnished such a reference yesterday. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I do always read what other editors have written in response to me. I am unaware of such a reference. However in my experience editors who quote detailed guidelines endlessly are usually forgetting the main principles. Sceptic1954 (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I see you're not finished wasting everyone's time. [5] There is a reason for the request above, "Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting," but of course we know you're too busy to be bothered because all these policies and guidelines are only there to get around the main principles of Wikipedia. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:41, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Tom, Why do you have to be so rude? That quote about no academic of any standing is out of date – it’s from 2000 and the courses in question were set up in 2007 and 2013 respectively and the Wells reference is 2 months old.

I have no experience of this phenomenon: that those who "quote detailed guidelines endlessly are usually forgetting the main principles". There are always cases of "wikilawyering", but that's quite a different phenomenon - the attempt to use technicalities to bypass the intent of the guidelines. You know that there are many quotations from mainstream academics saying that anti-Stratism has no support or next-to-no support. The exact phrasing may differ slightly, but they are all saying essentially the same thing. You are the one who is "lawyering" by trying to disallow a quotation in support of the statement that very few academics give credence to such theories because is says that no academics do. That sure suggests to me a 'forgetting the main principles'. What we should do is represent the views of experts in the field. None of them say that Anti-Strat ideas are becoming increasingly intellectually respectable. At most they mention the fact that a couple of extremely obscure courses exist, ones that are run by very minor academics (who no-one would otherwise have heard of). They might also, in passing, say that these course give an unwarranted, if marginal, impression of respectability. You know that this is view of the overwhelming majority of experts in the field. It is your wish to push these passing remarks to centre stage that violates the spirit of the guidelines. Paul B (talk) 18:32, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

And if there is no single reliable source to say 'almost all' then the best thing is to synthesise a source which says 'all' with one which shows that some do not reject

Quack quack, niggle niggle, wink wink (wank wank).

(a)Virtually no professional student of literature takes any of this seriously, and it's not because of some conspiracy among hidebound academics determined to maintain a unified front.' Jack Lynch,Becoming Shakespeare, Bloomsbury 2009 p.5

(b) ‘Virtually none of these English ‘academics’ have published significant (or insignificant) work on Shakespeare beyond the authorship question.' Stuart Hampton Reeves, ‘The ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’,’ in Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells (eds.) Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy, Cambridge University Press 2013 pp.201-214 p.205

As Reeves' paper shows, of the 415 academic signatories of the DRD, 81 are listed under English, of whom only two have worked on Shakespeare: Michael Egan is still a Stratfordian, so that leaves William Leahy. In a cast of thousands, that amounts to the picayune side of nugatory, which we translate as virtually or almost all, to save the discourtesy of writing, 'close to zilch', 'next to nada', 'etc. One feels like one's punching zeds as one punches this out on the keybored.Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Nishidani(a) would be an improvement as 'vrtually' equates to 'almost' in the main text.

Paul. "It's an attempt to use technicalities to bypass the intent of the guidelines." It's exactly what I meant. I'm not trying to disallow any quotation, I'm simple trying to add one to give a balanced picture, to substantiate the 'almost'. You are the ones who are breaching the spirit (and I'm sure the letter) of guidelines by not providing a source for 'almost' And I'm pretty sure you'd find somewhere in guidelines that if something is taught at a university somewhere it's no longer 100% fringe. I can't imagine you're allowed to pick and choose on that just because don't approve of Leahy. And what you and I "know" here is called OR unless substantiated by reliable sources. Sceptic1954 (talk) 19:09, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

My point is that that's what you are doing, not Tom. The intent of the guidelines is that the consensus view should be properly represented. Yes, alternate views should also be represented with due weight. That was not what you were doing. You were trying to use a quotation to misrepresent the consensus view. "I'm pretty sure you'd find somewhere in guidelines that if something is taught at a university somewhere it's no longer 100% fringe". I'm pretty surte yo'l, find that nowhere in the guidelines. Alien abduction has been taught in universities. BTW, I used to teach SAQ theories myself. Indeed I gave a lecture on Oxfordian theory 18 months ago. Teaching a subject is not the same as affirming its value as scholarship. I've no idea what you are trying to say about Leahy, but his views are simply marginal as evidenced by the consensus of scholarship in the area. Paul B (talk) 20:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

All this about a footnote. Nishidani has offered an alternative (a) which is reasonable. I'm not wedded to using Wells/Edmondson if an alternative can be found. "Teching a subject is not the same as affirming its value as scholarship." If that's the terminology you want to use then the courses at Brunel and Concordia affirm the value of SAQ theories as scholarship.Sceptic1954 (talk) 20:22, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Really? i'm not sure that's true, and in any case, as I say, very very marginal courses out of the untold thousands that exist on Shakespeare do not change academic consensus. You can find some colleges teaching courses on ghosts, telekensis, alien abduction, the literal truth of Genesis and many other subjects that are still properly identified as fringe. Paul B (talk) 20:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

End of thread as far as I'm concerned.Sceptic1954 (talk) 20:47, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this is replying to, [yes Sceptic1954 (talk) 04:30, 27 June 2013 (UTC)] but if it's to me, the fact is that the Leahy course presents itself as "post-modern". The Concordia centre is somewhat different. It hosts conferences and seminars. In other words its a "research centre". I don't think there is any actual taught course at all, though I may be wrong about that. US academia is a curious world (at least from my point of view), as it is so fragmented, commercially oriented and reliant on private funding. As a result there are study centres (and courses) on all sorts of odd things. In some ways that's a good thing. It means that research is not hidebound. But it also means that we have to look at the overall picture to assess the academic standing of a topic. Paul B (talk) 21:15, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Sceptic. You've misread everything. I didn't offer an alternative. You asked for source support for 'almost all', and I provided it by citing two authoritative texts which use 'virtually no(ne).' The terms are synonymous, but you replied as though there were a difference. Hence my ironic or dopey-jokey quip below, asking you to tell us all the difference between 'almost all' and 'virtually no(ne)'. You dodged the request, and, look, while RT can be interesting at times, it tends to bore anglophones, and some of them are driven to distracting themselves on the net. You're patently distracted, but do it elsewhere. You are not paying attention, and it we are wasting out time here.Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

If you will write such obscure stuff don't be surprised if it's not understood. 'Almost all' and 'Virtually none' are both equally serviceable nad it'stoo late at night here to expound.Sceptic1954 (talk) 20:44, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Awaiting your Phd dissertation à la dada-Derrida on 'the difference of sameness: why 'almost all' must defer in deafferance to 'virtually none' on wikipedia,' I would suggest in the meantime you learn Japanese and read Mori Ōgai's delightful essay, 'The Great Discovery'. Jeez, I hope when the ad splurge ends, there's a decent movie on the boobtube. This netwoiking's getting tedious. Nishidani (talk) 19:23, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm having difficulties enough with Russian. (sent from Moscow)Sceptic1954 (talk) 19:43, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

So, that's it, then. Nyet-working.Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

(From 17th Earl Oxford Talk page) All the discussion could have been avoided if we used the statement which appears in the main Shakespeare article >Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution,[180]< with its reference http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/education/edlife/22shakespeare-survey.html?_r=1 which is surely definitive. Tom and Paul surely both know of this. It achieves precisely what I was trying to achieve better than with the three source note that I was proposing. (I hadn't realised that the percentages for 'yes' and 'possibly' were so high) I will post this on the SAQ talk page and will be happy to confine the discussion there from now on.
I had no particular interest in quoting Wells and Edmonson, it was just for want of anything better. This wording could be used throughout wikipedia where the question arises and I can't see how anyone would quarrel with it. It's much better than Shapiro claiming to speak for all scholars.Sceptic1954 (talk) 05:13, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

The New York Times survey has no academic value for reasons that have been gone over repeatedly in the past. See here and here for a detailed analysis. Also, you were not just tweaking the wording on the de Vere page, you were adding a sentence to imply that consensus was changing. Paul B (talk) 11:44, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

One of these is not like the other:

1. "the attribution [to Oxford] has been rejected by nearly all academic Shakespeareans"

2. "Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution"

The ability to make distinctions in the meaning and usage of words is an indispensable requirement for editors. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:05, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

That is precisely why I edited the passage in question. It might help if I point out that I have never before, so far as I can remember, edited any topic connected with Shakespeare or the authorship. My wikipedia history for the most part consists of coming across established articles and offering a small improvement or correction. Where you have an article which says 'nearly all scholars' and the notes say 'no competent scholar' or 'no scholar of any standing' it's not quite clear because this implies that some scholars are either incompetent or have no standing and of this class of scholars some may entertain Oxfordian ideas of authorship. I'm quoting from memory. If I was reading this new to the topic I'd be a bit puzzled by the difference so that I thought if I added that there were some scholars, even if a few, who might entertain the Oxfordian theory, this might make it less puzzling. There would still be no one quote which exactly reflected the text but a synthesis would reflect it better. It's rather amusing that as an innocent just trying to be helpful I triggered a full-scale security alert with a rule book of regulations hurled at me and treated as though I am an Oxfordian infiltrator. The text is still unclear but it's not worth trading warm Muscovite evenings to go on about it further. Just look at my editing record if you think I am a committed anti-Stratfordian. Excuse me if I haven't replied to any points but I've had enough (for now) Sceptic1954 (talk) 20:19, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Having asked a couple of administrators for guidance with no response I have now come across 'request comment' which I'd expect to use. I know I'm in a minority of one, but it strikes me that all those who might have views contrary to those of the currently active editors here have been excluded or driven away. I think other wikipedians without a deep commitment to this subject would find me perfectly reasonable. Sorry I didn't know about 'request comment' before, it might have saved some hassle. Sceptic1954 (talk) 07:37, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

They were not "driven away". They were topic-banned by the community as a whole because of their behaviour. Though Tom, myself and others gave evidence to the arbitrators when this was addressed, none of use were involved in the decision making, which was left to independent administrators. It was the behaviour of the editors that got them banned, not their opinions. In some cases that's because they were driving away other editors. Paul B (talk) 16:03, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

If I don't edit these pages in the future take it that I have been driven away by Tom. Life is really too short.Sceptic1954 (talk) 05:27, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm now removing this page from my watchlist so will not reply to any further comments. I'm appalled by what I have witnessed here.In the wider scheme of things I don't think it matters too much, intelligent people soon become aware of biases in Wikipedia, and I am not going to let this take me away from all the beautiful things in life, beautiful weather and live performances. Sceptic1954 (talk) 10:16, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure this decision, of momentous import, will be picked up by the New York Times and make major news this evening. appalled'? Over a failure to get your way on a miniscule tweak from 'almost all' to 'virtually no' or 'mainstream' (note that 'enters the mainstream' contradicts both 'virtually no(ne)' and 'almost all') on a webpage? As a philologist, I'd be curious to learn what verb describes your feelings when you read of the Shoah, or an earthquake in China, or the breakdown of a financial scam leaving a million people homeless. On second thought, forget it. Have a nice day. Sorry, Хорошего дня, as Californians sometimes say. Nishidani (talk) 13:44, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree it is a fairly small tweak, but it has taken several others to keep this debate going so it must have great import for you. On that basis I keep going and I think excluded Oxfordians may make something of this.Sceptic1954 (talk) 07:43, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

You are, permit me, utterly confused. Let me recap. You wish to tweak in 'enter the mainstream', but at the same time admit that 'virtually no' academic takes this stuff seriously (See your response to my quotations from Lynch and Reeves above). 'Mainstream' does not change the 'fringe' status. If referring to the public's taste, it means the great unwashed' are familiar with the topic from films like Anonymous. If referring to academia, then 'mainstream' means the academic mainstream now writes about the fringe theory, as a bizarre rumour factory which, since the public is easily gulled, must be addressed as a topic, like alien abduction, or conspiracy theories generally. What you are doing is consistently failing to discriminate on this, and the effect is to try and push the Oxfordian POV by asserting that qua theory, their nonsense is treated as a serious theory by a significant minority of specialized academics. It ain't, and the one or two who do entertain it now, like Leahy, are more interested in post Feyerabend or Derridan issues of epistemic or Pyrrhic doubt in a discursive field, than in any specific alternative 'theory'. Their point is, everything is subjective and up for interpretative grabs, and the same applies to an historic issue like this. Elizabethan scholars more interested in period history than epistemological thumb-twiddling and academic agony columns on heuristic navel-gazing regard this as a blip, or blight, on the screen, a game for wafflers, not as a valid theory.Nishidani (talk) 09:44, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I have made lots of small edits of Wikipdeia. A week agao I edited the lead on the Ben Jonson article so that it now includes the rather important qualification shown here in red which wasn't there previously. 'he is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I.' Nothing remotely anti-Stratfordian about that and I am sure you will agree that I did a service to the average 600 people a day who visit that page. I am, I hope, a public-spirited wiki editor who makes minor edits to things I read, in interests of accuracy and clarity: I made one to the Marlowe page this morning to make it read better, nobody has reverted it. When I come to a text which says that 'nearly all academics reject this' and the accompanying notes say that 'no competent scholar accepts this' or 'no scholar of any standing' accepts this, it seems there is a slight discrepancy between main text and quote and I try to improve it, that is all. If it was available online the source which you say that you sent me that Leahy was one of 431 would do just as well. or better. Well yes I got annoyed by Tom's attitude, it seems like bullying and perhaps I'd be a better person if I just walked away, but I persisted. Now when I am ready to walk away I realise I inadvertently stirred up a hornets' nest and I think I may doing a service to the wider community if I respond to comments so that they can study the flight patterns.

It may help if I state that I have attended to SAQ conferences at Shakespeare's Globe, at the later of these, I think 2009 or 10, I was one of two who identified myself as Stratfordian. I would have been very happy to sign a declaration of 'balance of probabilities' in favour of Will, but even that must be enough for me on this page to be burned at the stake, or 'Disappeared at Deptford'. I can tell you that I learn a lot from talking to people of different authorship persuasions. Being in Russia I decided a couple of days ago to google on the Russian connection in 'Love's Labours Lost' and guess what, the perfectly credible reference I turned up linking this to Ivan the Terrible's suit for Mary Hastings was Oxfordian. If you think that Oxfordians are idiots why not at least follow Lenin and regard them as being in addition useful? Sorry forgot to sign it Sceptic1954 (talk) 10:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

No need to argue this. Peter Farey is a total sceptic, and his presence on this and other pages, as a colleague, doesn't make the dovecotes flutter. To the contrary, he is an indispensable presence, one of the many peers of the page. An 'Oxfordian' is someone who would lead to the extinction of gallnuts in the ink-exhaustive pursuit of an argument over a word like -lamb, detected by ultraviolet analysis of what is claimed to be an authentic scrap of a recipe from the de Vere family archives, in order to convert the world to the thesis that it refers to Wil/liam (ergo) Shakespeare, and thus proves the identification of the two. The whole pathology was long ago exposed in the cautionary tale written by Umberto Eco, Il Pendolo di Foucault, on the perils of hermeneutic obsessiveness.Nishidani (talk) 13:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Well this seems reasonably conciliatory. Now please can you accept that I was in all good faith just trying to help make a note correspond better to the text, just one of a few minor edits I have made on these pages, and wasn't setting out to embarrass anybody, and I was treated like I was some Oxfordian infiltrator. Of course I am taken aback. Some people would just slink off, for better or worse I'll argue the point. The note still doesn't quite agree with the text, but I don't dispute the text which is more important than the note. Your 'Leahy is the only one out of 431' might fit the text better if it is available. Very few people will look at the note so it's not that worth bothering about. And yes I think the way many Stratfordians talk about non-Stratfordians is awful (but not as awful as an outbreak of Black Death would be) although I have to admit that Oxfordians tend to try my patience flying in the face of chronological evidence. Okay, I'm off to the Bolshoi Sceptic1954 (talk) 14:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay. I'be wasted time just to check and see if your grievance is justified. It, in my view, isn't. Whatever your intentions, the evidence of your edits shows that both sources and the article evidence were manipulated in such a way as to promote the Oxfordian theory. Why?

You removed Blakemore with the bewildering edit summary removed reference as title not given. If G Blakemore Evans is meant he died in 2006 so it would be misleading to give the date 2011. You confused Bill Blakemore, the Abc journalist reviewing 'Anonymous' with G. Blakemore Evans, deduced that, if you hunch was correct, the ref was wrong since Evans died 5 years earlier. Good editors when they spot things like this, drop a note on the talk page and ask for clarification. They don't guess, and then remove reliably sourced material on the strength of a hunch.

You then followed this up with an addition introduced by the edit summary: having showed the date on one reference as likely to be false, when you had shown nothing of the sort. Your edit made the line run:

'popular interest in the Oxfordian theory persists.(Niederkorn 2000) and the question has now entered academia.(BBC 2013).

What did that signal? The incremental move of a fringe theory from mere mass popularity, to open academic mainstream acceptance. To achieve this effect you removed the following statement, recorded in 2011, from Professor William Hunt, an historian of the Puritan period, the accuracy of whose summation was underwritten by James Shapiro:

'"No, absolutely no competent student of the period, historical or literary, has ever taken this theory seriously. First of all, the founding premise is false -- there is nothing especially mysterious about William Shakespeare, who is as well documented as one could expect of a man of his time. None of his contemporaries or associates expressed any doubt about the authorship of his poems and plays. Nothing about De Vere (Oxford) suggests he had any great talent, and there is no reason to suppose he would have suppressed any talents he possessed."

Worse still. In the BBC Wells article, Leahy is the only person cited as an academic teaching SAQ theory, but he is also cited as disbelieving the de Vere theory. Notwithstanding that, you went ahead to cite the article on the Edward de Vere page. You were, in sum, manipulating that article, constructing an incrementalist impression of a fringe theory becoming mainstream, eliding a contemporary source which denied it was mainstream, and highlighting a source which explicitly said, and which you ignored, that the academic theorist involved Leahy, 'rejects the claims of Oxford'. This amounts to the suppression of evidence against Oxford, and the selective highlighting of material that helps the Oxfordian case. It clearly had no place on the page. I advise you to drop the matter as an unfortunate lapse in concentration that engendered correctives you dislike, but which wikipedia demands. Nishidani (talk) 18:51, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

With respect,you seem paranoid.

I searched quite hard to locate the quote on the page. I didn't see the hyperlink on Blakemore. Maybe it's the screen on my second hand laptop or the light here. Yes I made a wrong assumption. The editing here is far more rigorous than most articles which is very good. I didn't realise that at the time. Big deal, the mistake was soon put right.

Fine this followed from my mistake. I note that you are claiming some sort of objective accuracy for Hunt and Shapiro. I find them altogether too dogmatic. 'I do not know of any competent student who takes this seriously' would be more to my liking. Obviously if I got the date wrong then I was a bit too hasty. Big deal, people make mistakes. Get over it.

Actually the BBC piece is confusing 'Dr Leahy rejects the claims of Oxford, Bacon and Marlowe, but he does not accept the idea of a single author.' 'but' should be replaced by 'and'. I had heard that Leahy believed in a group theory and assumed that Oxford would be part of this. From Wikipedia "Be Bold" 'The early advocate of trial and error followed by observation to gain knowledge, Francis Bacon, [shock horror, is this guy actiully a Baconian? ed.] said "For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity."[1] Instead of getting upset, read WP:Assume good faith and WP:Civility, and be bold again, but after a deletion of a bold edit, you might want to be bold in an edit on the talk pages so as not to start an edit war.' I have no objection to correctives, but you jumped to some wrong conclusions about my motivation. And the fairly small discrepancy between text and note on the 17th Earl of Oxford page, which I tried in all good faith to correct remains.Sceptic1954 (talk) 19:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

note added later. I have just been back to that page. The hyperlink is royal blue on a skyblue background. I'm not familiar with putting text into notes in that way. It's not that common on wiki. Hence I missed it. I searched for the name Blakemore amongst the references and didn't find it.Sceptic1954 (talk) 19:28, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

No it is not confusing there. 'but' forms the same function as initial 'though'. It should be followed by 'generally' of course, or reformulated.

Several of the characteristics of Oxfordian intruders here, their fingerprints, are that (b) they ignore exhaustive examinations of their errors by moving on to (c) raise further issues (d) never know when to stop a pointless exercise in self-vindication and (e) endeavour to make our they have been victims of either a misunderstanding or preemptive hostility, often, among several editors whose experience makes them work with amicable efficiency on resolving textual issues, pick out Tom Reedy as the problem. Several editors disagreed with you, and you singled Tom out. It's not quite an FBI profile fit, but . . quack, quack.. .Nishidani (talk) 19:59, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

still confused, but no matter. I singled Tom out for outright rudeness. but will give you the prize for paranoia. Goodnight. Sceptic1954 (talk) 20:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

• Note: I've removed Sceptic's partial replies from inside Nishidani's longer post above. Sceptic, that manner of editing on talkpages makes it impossible to tell who is saying what, so please don't do it. I'm sorry if you now find your own responses uprooted; you may want to edit them to clarify what exactly you were replying to in each instance. Also, please consider the contradiction between complaining of rudeness from others, while you yourself twice accuse Nishidani of paranoia. That's a personal attack. Bishonen | talk 20:29, 29 June 2013 (UTC).

• Paranoid might be a correct diagnosis. It does help in hermeneutics and textual criticism (without the Freudian implications).:=) No harm done.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

In all fairness to Sceptic1954, the Blakemore ref was added after he had made his edit and it was reverted the third time. When I clicked on the link it went nowhere, so I knew it probably had been copied from another article without the accompanying reference, so I found it and added it to the page. Nishidani must have missed my edit when researching the history. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for creating work for Bishonen, I was trying to be clear. I don't regard 'paranoid' as a personal attack given that I was being ascribed motives which are not valid and was responding to this. Sceptic1954 (talk) 03:39, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Bishonen I just followed the link to 'personal attack' 'Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence.' My remark was based on what Nishdani had written about me being an Oxfordian. And Nishidani seemed to agree with me. However I'm not likely to hang around much - looking back through some of the disputes these pages are an absolute madhouse. Sceptic1954 (talk) 04:34, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, life's too short to hang around here. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:12, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Sceptic1954: We have had some discussions here and on our own talk pages: SAQ_talk_page and SAQ_talk_page. I stopped responding when I got the impression you weren't listening to me at all. One Wikipedia guideline is "assume good faith". Which I did at first. But now, talk about assertions based on "evidence", I am no longer willing to assume good faith because I see enough to convince me that you are not behaving in good faith.

When others justify their edits by Wikipedia rules and guidelines, you "can't be bothered" with Wiki rules and guidelines. But when it suits your purposes, then you are the one flinging "Wikipedia 'Be Bold'", "WP:Assume good faith" and "WP:Civility" at others. When Tom disputes an edit of yours, you are "appalled" by his outrageous behavior. When you make a mistake that messes up a carefully edited page and someone else objects, oh, then it's "What's the big deal? Why are you making such a fuss?"

And then there is your accusation that we all slavishly follow Tom here, as if we were part of a cabal, or he somehow rules this page. Now there's an ascription of "motives which are not valid". I'd say that you are the one who is "paranoid". By your own standards, that's not a personal attack. In practically everything you write here, with its accusations and self-justifications, I see little in your behavior but delusions of grandeur and delusions of persecution. In other words, paranoia. Classic case, per Freud et al. Is there a hidden Oxfordian agenda? I don't know. On the other hand, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. (Or, come to think of it, lady, since I don't know if you are male or female.)

I agree that "these pages are an absolute madhouse", at least this one (I haven't been involved with the Oxford page). But it wasn't like that over here for a long time. Odd, the Bedlam atmosphere seems to have resumed just around the time you showed up. Must be a coincidence. --Alan W (talk) 06:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

What I have experienced here seems very far removed from the ideals of Wikipedia. If a bedlam atmosphere has returned at the time I appeared I’d say that this is a site where any hint of dissent from a dominant view is not accepted.

Given the history of this page I assume that Bishonen is charged with keeping an eye on things. I think my characterization about Nishidani was justified given his analysis of my motives. I have written much more strongly about Tom, now as far as I can see Bishonen should either censure me for a personal attack, or if he thinks my comments were justified he should be censuring Tom. Surely he should be doing something to maintain a better atmosphere here.

I am afraid that as a purely neutral observer the description of events I find at http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/wikipedias-shakespeare-problem seems to be borne out by my experience here. One view dominates here, the most active proponents of a differing view have been banned.

I can only think that by quoting a report that the doyen of Stratfordians is concerned that alternative authorships theories are ‘entering the mainstream’ I have somehow threatened the assumption on which many pages here are based, namely that the SAQ is fringe. Ha, ha, very money, I didn’t mean to do that at all, it’s quite comical but I’ve acquired an education in how Wikipedia works.

Maybe the powers that be on Wikipedia turn a blind eye to what happens here as a price to pay for academic respectability. I’d liken that to the USA turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by its strategic allies. There may be a price to pay in terms of wikipedia’s reputation, its’ ability to attract new editors and retain existing, and its ability to attract funding.

Alan I am indeed male and what takes place here probably illustrates why such a small proportion of wiki editors are women. I don’t think I’m paranoid at all on this matter, it you go into a room and everyone starts shouting at you it is not paranoid to recognize that you must have upset them. I had indeed tried to leave the room quietly by saying I was unwatching the talk page but people ran after me into the hallway by continuing the talk on other talk pages. Sceptic1954 (talk) 20:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

BTW I don't think you necessarily all follow Tom because you are under his sway, but rather that because for the most part those who don't agree from him have been excluded from these pages. Sceptic1954 (talk)

Don't assume, it makes an ass out of u and me. Admins are volunteer editors like everybody else; nobody charges them with anything. I look in on this page occasionally. You couldn't pay me enough to actually "keep an eye" on it. If you've made personal attacks on Tom and would like to be blocked for them, you'll have to give me some "diffs" and I'll see. Bishonen | talk 21:42, 30 June 2013 (UTC).

Sceptic1954, many of your allegations about "what happens here" have been made over and over, ad nauseam, for years. I have read much of the background, and for my own part I am satisfied that Tom and some others have convincingly defended behavior that has been alleged to be "unfair".

Regarding your impression that "for the most part those who don't agree [with Tom] have been excluded from these pages", that has not been my experience. To take one recent example, I saw that he had removed someone else's edit, but I agreed with the other editor that information he wanted to include should be incorporated in some way, and I added it back. Tom made no objection at all.

"What takes place here probably illustrates why such a small proportion of wiki editors are women". Again, I disagree. I have not seen anything done to discourage editing of this page by female Wikipedians. In fact I recall a time a couple of years ago, as we were preparing the article for review as a Featured Article, a woman editor joined in and made quite a few edits. Her work here was warmly encouraged, by Tom as much as anyone else. --Alan W (talk) 22:25, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Bishonen. Given that at least two people of one particular persuasion have been banned from the topic (or Wikipedia altogether) I think it would be good if an admin did keep a firm eye on the talk page - I know Ed Johnston has the 17th E of O page on his watchlist. What we have had his is an effective takeover by one side in a contentious area. Maybe there aren't the resources though. I'm rather sure that the phenomenon I'm witnessing here is repeated time and again across wikipedia. I'm glad on the insight into how wikipedia works.

Well I'm completely new to this page and subject area and I am making 'allegations which others have made over and over ad nauseam for years'. If I was running a business and lots of customers complained about a certain issue I'd look into, thinking it could be damaging the business. I've made a couple of edits which Tom has not reverted but anything which implies even tolerance for Oxfordianism seems forbidden. When I googled wikipedia and bullying an article 'nine reasons why women don't edit wikipedia' appeared, unfortunately I can't open it. Sceptic1954 (talk) 05:03, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

What you call "one side" is ion fact the overwhelming consensus of scholars and specialists. It's the same kind of "one side" that has "taken over" the evolution article, and the global warming article, and the alien abductions article, and the moon landings artlcle.... That's as it should be when "one side" is the side of mainstream scholarly opinion and the other in fringe theory, one that flourishes these days mainly on the internet. In all these cases too the "other side" has repeatedly complained about how hard-done-by they are, and about how they have been outrageously marginalised by a clique that want to suppress debate. The fact remains that when this matter was looked at by independent editors with no obvious biases to anything other than Wikipedia policy and common sense they banned several Oxfordian editors, not any others. Paul B (talk) 09:39, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

This may explain why when I made a very minor edit which suggested that Stanley Wells was concerned that SAQ was becoming mainstream I received what felt I received an extremely hostile response: the wording of that quote threatens the assumption here that the SAQ is fringe. I know that many astrologers were banned from editing about astrology page, and now there is a call for more editors for 'Project Astrology', I think that practicing astrologers can bring some insight into the history and it's noteable that astrology is no longer described categorically (and IMO quite unnecessarily) as a 'pseudoscience'. The decision there must have been revisited and it was clear that taking such a strong line was weakening wikipedia. I personally find the debate between Strats and anti-Strats stimulating and one that increases my appreciation of Shakespeare myself, but I'm mot desperate to have a definitive answer. I think this topic area would benefit at least from having an agnostic present to soften ever so slightly the hardline stance. I've no dispute about Wikipedia treating academic consensus as the mainstream, it's just that I think there is no reason to treat minority views with contempt and proponents of minority views would if possible be present to ensure they are fairly, though not disproportionately represented. I can see there's a problem that proponents of such views may try to take over the article and so get banned altogether. Being an agnostic I've no intention of trying to take over these articles, I don't want to be spending too much of my time on wiki-editing. There's just one wiki article where I'm responsible for most of the current version and that took me the best part of a fortnight, I have too many projects of my own to want to do more than a few minor adjusts to articles. A little bit of softening here and there in this area might result in fewer complaints of bias. Sceptic1954 (talk) 10:21, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

How on earth can we end this humongous thread that glosses Horace, Arse Poetica's line about molehills and mountains? Ah, I've taken a leaf out of Percy Allen book and channelled E de Vere for advice to Sceptic. This is the result, I gathered he was still trying to reply to Sonnet 34:-

The actors are many in my court’s wide stage;

And though I lead the cast, and share out roles,

Like wilful players that wander from the page

My friends mouth speeches truant to my goals.

Life’s theatre is unscripted, unlike your’s;

Impromptu parts burst in, and actors let

Their shallow tempers improvise rude wars

To upstage scenes in breach of etiquette.

The art of life’s rough game may cause offence

From draft to action, and if I am to blame,

Let sin repented heal fouled innocence.

In poison there is physic, in salves much pain.

Your doubled loss denies all sweet relief.

Yet a cross well-born redeems the offender’s grief.Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me if I don't try to make sense out of this, this is not a page for being oblique - please state your meaning plainly. The best way to end the thread is not to contribute to it and not to raise new points. I'll reply to what is said here if it needs reply, at present I don't feel desperate to say anything new. Sceptic1954 (talk) 10:58, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

The best way to end the thread is not to contribute to it and not to raise new points.' Indeed. Now please join me off-line in singing John Ireland's ex ore innocentium with a slight adjustment for a dirgeful tone, to bury the thread.Nishidani (talk) 11:11, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

What we have accomplished

According to the blog of one of the authors of a study of the most controversial topics in 10 language versions of Wikipedia, this page does not even make the top 100. This is amazing to anyone who knows the history of this page. Over the years been it has consistently been on Wikipedia's WP:List of controversial issues almost since its inception. This is truly an accomplishment.

Since I'm patting us all on the back, that probably means that it's time to do a rewrite. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:40, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

No, this would never figure. It's not politically sexy. The real stress zones are on less recondite topics. That's not to underplay the huge exorbitant amount of stress and useless labour required to wrest this article out of a coterie's hands so that it could be written. And, unlike most of the controversial articles, which are doomed to languish in unending edit warring, this one finally found its feet and got to FA status. I think eventually the wiki board should end the rot by saying all articles where edit-warring is intense, must come under a rule that requires each side to produce at least a GA-level quality version within three months, and then call a vote from the wider community. In that sense, the way this article developed, with its two versions option, might prove to be a good precedent for conflict resolution. I see a related article in this morning's Haaretz, which might interest you (but don't go there editing wise!) I.e.Israel and the Middle East on the battlefield of Wikipedia. Those areas are no country for old men, or sane middle aged people, or the young who want to 'get a life'!Nishidani (talk) 10:20, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it needs a rewrite, Tom. After Inglok's edits and Alan's response, I, for one, just experimented over a few paras listing examples of my personal Sprachgefühl. That reflects reflex hearing and speaking habits inculcated half a century ago. Language has changed, Americans, or idioms developed in American popular cultural zones now widely inflect world usage. This is a global encyclopedia, despite the subject being high English culture and the agreed on style 'English' in orthography and terminology. There's room, as Alan says, for flexibility, for we must balance the interests of conservative, polished grammar against trends in global English comprehension and usage.Whatever comes up, it is more in the way of stimulus to our collegial awareness of how we differ in ways so subtle most will not remark on the 'issue' or problem'. When Charles Landon in his A Text-Critical Study of the Epistle of Jude, Sheffield Academic Press 1996 p.50 writes:'‎The classicist A.E. Housman in his famous essay is rather scathing about editors who change a few words in the text to 'see what happens',' neither Peter, Paul, and my own Maryish self would think twice, or stop to think. But Alan and yourself do, and this spurs us to consciously scrutinize sources to clarify the differences, and we are all enriched by the discovery, whatever choice we make as to the appropriate voice for this entry, among many. As the old borderlines blur under global homogenization of idiom, it's useful to have a bevy of editors with different ears, so that the unconscious drift of our respective modes of speech is baited, hauled out, and subject to analysis. Nishidani (talk) 09:22, 29 June 2013 (UTC)