Shakespeare Bites Back – free book

Hey ron , Sorry for being a little off-topic. You said that field theory can be learned quickly from reading some wilsonian reviews. Can you be more specific ? I’m interested in learning these.

Yes, he must be a Nazi to even think of disagreeing. What feeble, needy, tantrum-prone emotional train wrecks we’re producing these days. Doubtless you’re one of those feminised, infinitely empathetic lefties who feels everyone’s pain and recommends mass arrests as the only conceivable remedy to the world’s problems. A ludicrous, hysterical response and proof positive this is more about cultural subversion than any search for truth.

You wonder, you wonder, as long as authority is behind you, and then, when the weight of authority starts to push the other way, you’ll say you knew it all along, you were just playing. People like you are worthless, you can’t think without someone powerful telling you what to think. Say hi to Adolph Eichmann when you die.

Sure, I promise you I’ll do that if I ever run into him. I thought he was stupid for other reasons anyway, regardless of this Shakespeare business. I tried to tell Shapiro that he was stupid to his face, I worked at Columbia briefly, but he wasn’t in his office the two days I came by to yell at him, so I gave up. I did manage to tell Stanley Fish off once (on something unrelated), and we had a nice talk outside the hall after his lecture, where he told me “You are much too optimistic regarding the intelligence of the general public” or something to that effect. I am not intimidated by authoritative numbskulls, I have been around at least two ACTUAL academic revolutions. These aren’t done by that class of conservative authoritative idiot, those are done by the borderline insane people that dress funny and talk to themselves, the kind of people I try my best to emulate. I am also not overestimating the intelligence of a public with access to an internet, something Stanley Fish will soon learn, and Harold Bloom. The internet is quite something, isn’t it?

I was however, too optimistic regarding your intelligence. So I’ll start by telling you that you’re stupid.

If Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, who wrote the Shakespeare Apocrypha?

Answer: Not Shakespeare?

I would like you to tell Harold Bloom TO HIS FACE, that he is stupid.

So, there have been NO conspiracies, ever? No group of people have ever conspired, in secret, to achieve some goal? And kept the secret for many years? And theories only exist for pathological reasons.

Disgraceful.

Sorry, but conspiracies DO actually occur. I don’t believe there’s one here, that is, regarding Shakespeare, but JFK, 9/11, Gulf of Tonkin, the Liberty, the Riechstag Fire, on and on throughout history. Conspiracies are commonplace and often successful.

If you mean the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter or its predecessors – not recently.

Do you write for SNL?

“Opposing arguments”? There are no serious arguments to oppose. The whole thing is nonsense and I wonder that any serious scholar even take the time to address the issue.

Well, I’ve just come from reading Farey’s arguments on his web page, and now that I’ve stopped laughing, I wish to thank you for recommending it. I haven’t laughed so hard in weeks!

Sorry, not so. Kindly review the evidence of the sub-stylistic factor of Bible references in the two writers. They could not be more difference. This leaves aside the matter of the fact that Marlowe died, even by the most conservative estimate, before most of the plays were written. It makes a nice fairy tale to keep him alive in Italy for another two decades, but that’s about it. There is a reason why the only serious academic minds who have adopted an alternative view of authorship support the Oxfordian attribution.

Page 12: “It seems surprisingly easy to persuade lawyers to take part in The Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy Theory”
Two Points
First: Lawyers are experts on evidence and many judge the evidence against William Shakspeare’s authorship as complete enough. Shapiro tells us that “Shakespearean scholars have a different view of evidence, and hold a comparatively dim view of what (Supreme Court) Justice Stevens and others think adequate.” We are not told by Shapiro in what way the expert’s view of evidence is defective. You will find no lawyers (let alone historians) in the list of contributors to “Shakespeare Without Doubt”
Secondly, as I have written before, for Oxfordians there is NO CONSPIRACY THEORY. Everyone who knew, knew: they also knew when to keep their mouths shut. Compare the treatment of the national hero Philip Sidney’s affair with Penelope Rich, a taboo subject virtually never mentioned. Conspiracy theory is a figment foisted upon Oxfordians by the ‘orthodox’ as they stuff straw arguments into our mouths.
Perhaps we could persuade a few ‘orthodox’ actually to read what members of the De vere Society ( of which I am the Secretary) actually to read what we write. Try The Earl of Oxford and the Making of “Shakespeare”: The Life of Edward de Vere in Context (McFarland 2011)

Hi Peter—

I am more certain than you by now, I am relatively close to 5 sigma sure, because I not only looked over your stylometries (which gave me good confidence, about 3 sigma) but also additional ones— the ones published to refute Marlovian ideas by Charniak et al last year.

The result of the new stylometries not only failed to refute the Marlovian idea, they confused Marlowe and Shakespeare more completely than Mendenhall, and this is after these guys tried hard to look for a stylometry specifically to distinguish these two. This is the last straw, that pushes me to five sigma.

When you have independent stylometries, each one could independently fail. Your stylometries each had a 1 in 4 chance of being a coincidence, but you had 5 of them, and some of them were published specifically to distinguish Marlowe and Shakespeare. This means that one gains 1/4^5 confidence from this, about 1/1000 chance of coincidence.

The newest stylometries confused four separate Marlowe plays as early Shakespeare, by two separate methods! These methods were much more rigorous— they involved careful statistical analysis of vocabulary and function words in baskets compared across works, and this gives another 1/1000 likelihood. So I’m sure, there’s no more evidence necessary, you guys are right, and there’s no need to be so circumspect.

In addition, if you want more certainty, each independent stylometry is additional independent evidence— so I would run your “letter stylometry” on 100 different letter-baskets, and see if you get a smooth match Marlowe-Shakespeare in all 100 cases (you certainly will, since they are the same author). Even if each coincidence is 50% likely (it much less likely than that), 1/2^100 is scientific certainty.

Stylometry of this quality is enough to say “enough, they’re the same guy” with scientific standards of certainty, especially considering the fact that you have shown that the circumstantial evidence is equally friendly to this notion as to any other.

Plus, stop being so nice to the academics. They aren’t returning the favor. You’re right and they’re stupid.

“Scholars such as Dr. Edmondson and Prof. Wells feel no need to take the Shakespeare authorship question seriously because when the question is “who wrote Shakespeare’s works?,” all the direct evidence points to the Stratford actor.”

Although his name was registered in some plays or appeared in the so called “First Folio”,

Shakespeare authorship must face at least two serious problems, first Shakespeare’s biography, second Marlowe’s existence.

William Shakespeare

Yes, we do have a lot of information about William Shakespeare’s life, especially legal records, but,

No manuscript letters of any kind,

No working notes,

No allusion of his name from other writers before June 1593*,

No diaries,

No mention in his will of any book or any relation with the literally world,

No trace of a writer in his biography,

His illiterate daughters,

He had information of several Marlowe’s works before being published,

His sonnets, although they seem biographic, there is nothing in Shakespeare’s biography that can be related to the person that the sonnets reflect,

He didn’t show any hint of concern about literary immortality. He desperately wanted prestige and status.

The Shakespeare revealed in his plays submerges his voice in that of his characters, gaining immortality at the price of anonymity.

He had the greatest vocabulary ever seen in English literature, but there is no sign of him attending to school past the age of fourteen.

The writer of the plays and poems appears to have intimately acquainted with matters of court, foreign intrigue, and the culture, language, and politics of continental Europe, with which Shakespeare apparently had no experience.

* The “shake-scene” appears on Robert Green’s “Groatsworth of Wit” in 1592.

In his swan song. Green complains about actors in general and one actor in particular, whom he hates.

He admonishes his fellow playwrights, Christopher Marlowe first and foremost ( whom he calls ” famous grocer of Tragedians” ) , to stop selling their plays

to this actor. This actor , says Green, only uses the plays he´s purchased to feather his own nest and increase his reputation and purse.

This actor, Edward Alleyn is well-known to Green.

Alleyn is described as a Puppet, an Atic, and an Ape. He is garnished in our ( playwrights’) colours, … beautified with our ( playwrights’) feathers”.

He is full of conceit over his ability to “shake a scene” with his bombast.

Every biography of Shakespeare leaves the reader with the impression that there is ” absolutely no doubt” that Green was referring to William Shakespeare.

In the “Shake-scene” reference. The evidence suggest otherwise. In reality, Allyen has so much more claim to the upstart crow” insult than Shakespeare that it is astonishing biographers would maintain there is no question of Green’s intent.

The question scholars should be asking themselves is not whether we think Green was referring to Alleyn as the “Shake-scene”, but whether Edward Alleyn would have thought Green was referring to him as the “Shake-scene”.

The identification of “Shake-scene” with Shakespeare has been accepted without challenge in order to fill the need for Shakespeare’s authorship to begin before Marlowe’s disappearance.

The context of Green’s statements and his relationship with Edward Alleyn are completely ignored because it is essential for Shakespeare to exist as a writer before Marlowe’s death.

( Extracted from Daryl Pinksen’s Marlowe’s Ghost )

Christopher Marlowe.

We don’t need to appeal to “Miracle of Genius”, “Double Consciousness”, “lost part of the will that must have referred to his books”, “friendly rivalry”.

The biography of Marlowe meets perfectly the sonnets.

As a spy who visited Europe, he had that preparation that Shakespeare did not.

He was the best english playwright before Shakespeare.

He had the same style that Shakespeare did. It is so difficult to find differences in style between the last Marlowe and the first Shakespeare that scholars agree that Marlowe was a part author of at least four Shakespeare’s plays.

Shakespeare quotes Marlowe or alludes to his plays repeatedly. Shakespeare echoes Marlowe and only Marlowe.

Marlowe alone demonstrated the ability to write “Shakesperian” plays. If Marlowe had remained alive after 1593 and continued to grow as a writer, his plays could have equalled the Shakespeare plays.

The death of Marlowe.

Three days before Marlowe dismiss, Richard Baines provided the Privy Council information that would lead in formal accusation of heresy, blasphemy , atheism and being a freethinker all of them punishable by death.

His was going to front torture. he could no longer use his name in a printed work.

In 1925 the coroners report of the “Deptford incident” was discovered. It describes a mundane tale of a quarrel over the bill, followed by a fight in which Walsingham’s personal servant, Ingram Fritzer, killed Marlowe in self defense.

Most scholars do not believe that this report is a faithful description of the incident.

There is an alternative that should be at least considered as a part of a thorough investigation: that the meeting was a cover-up for a staged death and escape into exile orchestrated by Burghley and Walsingham with the help of Poley, Frizer, and Skeres.

If this was the case, “William Shakespeare” was just a front man, that would have profited economically of giving his name to a blacklisted writer. This same case has appeared many times in writing history during periods of ideological prosecution.

“Seeking to know is only to often learning to doubt”

During the life of William Shakespeare, earth was the centre of the universe.

That was the official truth.

Anyone who expressed a different opinion would be condemned.

Giordano Bruno wrote “the universe is infinite and has no centre”, all the stars

we see, Bruno said , they are suns like our own, with planets around them like our sun has.
!n 1600 he was burned at the stake for his beliefs.
Bruno has never received an apology from the Catholic Church.

Christopher Marlowe was taken out of history. The Privy Council

took great effort in destroying his image.

He was a ” freethinker and an atheist ” something that in those times was punish-

able by dead.

Would they have accepted an atheist being the best play writer ever? of course not.

William Shakespeare’s authorship became an official truth.

Yes, they may rise up to several million those who have no doubts about WS authorship.

Most of them even don’t know who Marlowe was. Their opinion, in most cases, is not based in studying the information and using their own reasoning to reach a conclusion.
They are official truth believers.

Should we give much importance to those opinions?

I woud not.

 Stratfordians   have been looking for biographical
connections between William Shakespeare 
and his writings   for decades.
Now after those many years of wasted time , 
finding no  similarities between
the story that sonnets tell and the life of WS, they urge us to avoid searching
for a biographical record.

The sonnets look really biographical they are
different from the rest of his writings. Sonnets look personal, full of passion , real.

  Shake-speare’s
Sonnets appear to be written  by a person
that has been forced to exile and even to resign to his name. They are the
reflection of someone that has chosen anonymity over immortality.  This doesn’t fit with the WS of Stratford.
the man who bought a coat of arms and had a statue of himself erected in his
parish church.

But don’t take my words for granted ,

Sonnet 81

 Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live–such virtue hath my pen–
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

What do you think?

Actually, micro-stylistically and in the grand plan, Marlowe’s plays are unlike Shakespeare’s.

Marlowe everywhere contains the thought within the line. Shakespeare, commencing with “So shaken we are so wan with care” (Henry IV Act 1 Sc 1) spreads the thought over several lines.

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,And breathe short-winded accents of new broilsTo be commenced in strands afar remote.No more the thirsty entrance of this soilShall daub her lips with her own children’s blood;Nor more shall trenching war channel her fields,Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofsOf hostile paces: those opposed eyes,Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,All of one nature, of one substance bred,Did lately meet in the intestine shockAnd furious close of civil butcheryShall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,March all one way and be no more opposedAgainst acquaintance, kindred and allies:The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,No more shall cut his master.

Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess:
Having commenc’d, be a divine in show,
Yet level at the end of every art,
And live and die in Aristotle’s works.
Sweet Analytics, ’tis thou hast ravish’d me!
Bene disserere est finis logices.
Is, to dispute well, logic’s chiefest end?The sentence length in Shakespeare is JUST LONGER.In the Jew of Malta, Marlowe turned tragedy (death of the protagonist) into comedy of the sort that Shakespeare never wrote (not even in Titus Andronicus), comedy at the sordid level of reality TV in which the audience is invited to “purge pity and terror” by laughing at a character’s agonizing death.

Despite the fact that torture and death were public entertainments in Shakespeare’s time, we find no-one jeering at pain and death in Shakespeare without having to undergo the same, and the audience is never invited to cheer.

Edward II never once attains self knowledge, Richard II does.

http://spinoza1111.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/jane-shakespeare-on-shakespeare-denialism/

When Turde it calls to Turde, and in Replie,That which is not a Turde sings from but ClayeIn tones melodyus, in sweet Euphonie,The mere Turde knoweth not what Worde to say.The Cybernetick Mob this end of TymeWithin itself fynds but a rag bone shoppe:Impotent, to make life to scanne or rhymeThe Mobbe decides to give my Rep, the choppe.And so the herd of fell swyne GadarinA-creeps to the feet of its InquisitoreAnd says, it a noble lordling musta binWho wrote MY worke. But less is less, not more.I care not for your fell foule wicked Lyes:Looke on my work. And Gape with wild surmise.

  In the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, there is a
memorial window dedicated to Christopher Marlowe. There is a question mark
beside the year of Marlowe’s death. It seems funny that the authors of this
book claim this question mark to be removed.

 “In properly honouring Marlowe by installing a
commemorative window in Poets’Corner, the Dean and Chapter authorized the
presence of a question-mark to precede the year of Marlowe’s death. In doing so
they flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence. Marlowe died on 30
May 1593 as a result of being stabbed in the eye by an identified criminal,
Ingram Frizer. The coroner’s report survives. It was witnessed by a jury of sixteen
men who inspected the corpse.”

“The evidence of the
coroner’s report is unimpeachable. The question mark in Marlowe’s memorial
window should be removed”

 The discovery in 1925 of the coroner’s report not only
did not settle the matter of Marlow’s death. Instead, it produced the opposite
effect.

 Although there is no agreement of whatever could
have happened at Dame Bull’s house on Deptford that night, it is  almost impossible to find any scholar
credulous enough to believe the sequence of facts related in the report.

 There is no record in the Coroner’s Report as
to who identified the body, beside the three implicated professional liars, all
of them associated with Marlow’s patron Thomas Walsingham, and certainly no
mention of anyone else.

 Those who believe William Shakespeare’s to be
the author do not even consider the possibility of Christopher Marlowe’s not
being death that night, no matter the lack of evidence.

  The
anomalies in William Shakespeare biography and the overwhelming    amount of circumstantial evidence of Marlowe’s
authorship make the date of his death to be of crucial importance. 

  If hard evidence of Marlowe’s being alive
after the Deptford incident is discovered, then the William Shakespeare’s
authorship pillars will collapse forever.

For an enlightening
explanation of the Deptford incident I recommend watching Dr. Rosalind Barber’s
video “Rethinking Shakespeare” http://www.sussex.ac.uk/doctoralschool/internal/resources/reflections

  In the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, there is a
memorial window dedicated to Christopher Marlowe. There is a question mark
beside the year of Marlowe’s death. It seems funny that the authors of this
book claim this question mark to be removed.

 “In properly honouring Marlowe by installing a
commemorative window in Poets’Corner, the Dean and Chapter authorized the
presence of a question-mark to precede the year of Marlowe’s death. In doing so
they flew in the face of a mass of unimpugnable evidence. Marlowe died on 30
May 1593 as a result of being stabbed in the eye by an identified criminal,
Ingram Frizer. The coroner’s report survives. It was witnessed by a jury of sixteen
men who inspected the corpse.”

“The evidence of the
coroner’s report is unimpeachable. The question mark in Marlowe’s memorial
window should be removed”

 The discovery in 1925 of the coroner’s report not only
did not settle the matter of Marlow’s death. Instead, it produced the opposite
effect.

 Although there is no agreement of whatever could
have happened at Dame Bull’s house on Deptford that night, it is  almost impossible to find any scholar
credulous enough to believe the sequence of facts related in the report.

 There is no record in the Coroner’s Report as
to who identified the body, beside the three implicated professional liars, all
of them associated with Marlow’s patron Thomas Walsingham, and certainly no
mention of anyone else.

 Those who believe William Shakespeare’s to be
the author do not even consider the possibility of Christopher Marlowe’s not
being death that night, no matter the lack of evidence.

  The
anomalies in William Shakespeare biography and the overwhelming    amount of circumstantial evidence of Marlowe’s
authorship make the date of his death to be of crucial importance. 

  If hard evidence of Marlowe’s being alive
after the Deptford incident is discovered, then the William Shakespeare’s
authorship pillars will collapse forever.

For an enlightening
explanation of the Deptford incident I recommend watching Dr. Rosalind Barber’s
video “Rethinking Shakespeare” http://www.sussex.ac.uk/doctoralschool/internal/resources/reflections

i like trains

It is manifestly obvious to anyone with half a brain and an internet connection that Christopher Marlowe is the author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was Marlowe’s front, in the same way that Ian Hunter was Dalton Trumbo’s.

The case has already been persuasively made by Peter Farey, following Mendenhall, Hoffman, and a slew of lesser known 19th century and 20th century voices, followed by Pinsker, Rubbo and Barber. The arguments are based on both stylometric science and old-fasioned document sleuthing, but most importantly, on just reading the darn works. If you read all of Marlowe and all of Shakespeare, it is manifestly obvious that these are the works of one author.

Marlovian authorship resolves the mysteries surrounding the works of William Shakespeare all at once, and it must be emphasized that the most striking of these is “How could a man who ripped off Marlowe so shamelessly and so relentlessly, and continued to do so throughout his career, without a comparable stylistic innovation of his own, have been capable of any works of genius at all?” Any rip-off immitator of such a degree must be the worlds most talentless hack. But Shakespeare’s output is not that of a hack, but of a wild original.

There is also the second question: “How could Shakespeare have successfully ripped off Marlowe anyway?” Marlowe is such a distinctive writer, nobody else has successfully done it. He read Ovid, he had a comprehending pagan theology that was dismissive of Jewish and Christian thinking both, and sympathetic to the era’s black-magick-y secret-society anti-church free-thinking. These questions used to be pressing for Shakespearean scholars— they assumed that Shakespeare and Marlowe were the closest of collaborators. Some even suggested that Marlowe was Shakespeare’s pen-name before 1593.

The answer is obvious in hindsight.

Many people do not appreciate the creative genius of Marlowe/Shakespeare, because these “two” authors are usually the only ones people read and compare from that era. With Shakespeare to Marlowe as your two data points, you are immediately struck by the false impression that everyone in that era wrote with insane erudition and high artifice, with a deliberate pagan restoration motive, in a style of blank verse that is essentially mastered only by these two. It only takes a few minutes with Kyd and Lyly to see that this is completely false, that only Marlowe and Shakespeare write this way, and no-one else.

The content of the plays is immediately enriched by knowing the life story of the author, and the sonnets become transparently autobiographical. One can understand the nationalist and anti-clerical machinations of the early moderns much more clearly. The goal of producing an English national literature seems to be prominent above all else.

Since the Marlovian idea exists, the The Stratfordian position is as intellectually bankrupt as geocentrism. It is a damning shame that English departments defend it, and it suggests that the internet has dealt the humanities a drubbing as complete as the printing press dealt to the natural philosophers in Marlowe’s age, or just after.

The Marlovian anti-strats, especially Peter Farey and Ros Barber, have a much much higher standard of rigor than any of the Stratfordians, which is simply because they are right and the stratfordians are wrong. There is no stratfordian argument, because it is manifestly obvious to anyone who reads Farey that Shakespeare is not the author.

Great book. Thank you for writing it . . . Very succinct and informative. I have used it as a reference when these questions come up. Highly recommended.

oops, double post.

> Is this a recent discovery?

No, it is an error.

I was way too polite and cautious in my last posting.
Using this http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ba4ef
as evidence that Judith could write (in any sensible interpretation of that
word) is just plain ridiculous. Edmondson and Wells better watch out, cause
this is touching the level of argumentation found among the anti-strats.

Here is the part of the signature that Judith, according to Wikipedia, wrote herself: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ba4ef . I can agree that this scrawl is evidence that Judith was able to sign her name. But Edmondson and Wells’ claim is that this is evidence that Judith could write. If we by “A can write” mean that A is able to write at least one particular name or word, then the scrawl maybe could be evidence that Judith could write. But this is a very strained interpretation of “can write”. More natural interpretations of “A can write” would be “A is able to write arbitrary sentences” or “A is able to write small notes”. I am not an expert, but I cannot see how this: http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ba4ef can be evidence that Judith was able to write arbitrary sentences or small notes.
But, not being an expert, I could be wrong. Maybe this scrawl displays some particular properties that would tell a skilled graphologist that the person making the scrawl would be able to write complete sentences. I doubt that this rather counterintuitive idea is correct, but maybe Edmondson and Wells have had a graphologist make just that kind of analysis with said conclusion?
If not, this minor point makes me suspicious of the argumentative strategies in the rest of Edmondson and Wells’ book.

I’d always assumed the plays we could group under the title Shakespeare Apocrypha were labelled as by WS in order to sell the print copies – a bookseller’s come-on.  If that’s right, it suggests that there must have been a top-selling author by the name of William Shakespeare around at the time.  And actually, A Yorkshire Tragedy is not so much a bad play as in a different style altogether.  Are all the plays in your Apocrypha of a distinct but different style, or is it a pick’n’mix?
Maria Thomas.

Why do you say the scrawl is “definitely not evidence that Judith could write”?  Are you an expert on handwriting of the period? 

Have you ever noticed that many highly educated people have illegible signatures, sometimes mere scrawls such as Judith’s? 

Hmm…fascinating theory. Actually, I acquired my last name by marriage. (My own ancestors were Catholic peasant farmers in Ireland and Germany.)

Here’s the point I wanted to make. What interests me, and mystifies me, is that the traditional Shakespeare authorship theory doesn’t explain the direct title page evidence that WS wrote a series of lesser plays that scholars are certain he didn’t really write. For instance, on May 2, 1608, the London bookseller Thomas Pavier applied for permission to publish “A Yorkshire Tragedy written by Wylliam Shakespere.” Soon after, Pavier began selling copies of the play at his shop on Cornhill Street in London. The 1608 title page boasts that A Yorkshire Tragedy had been “acted by his Majesty’s Players at the Globe” and was “Written by W. Shakspeare.” The King’s Men did routinely play at the Globe, and William Shakespeare was their leading playwright. Pavier’s claim, if it were false, would have been a remarkable deception practiced on London’s reading public. Pavier could have been denounced in print by any of William’s contemporaries, but as far as is known this never happened. He reprinted A Yorkshire Tragedy under William Shakespeare’s name in 1619, three years after the actor’s death. Although the play was excluded from the 1623 First Folio and 1632 Second Folio of Shakespeare’s works, it was added to the 1664 Third Folio and 1685 Fourth Folio. Despite this direct historical evidence pointing to William Shakespeare as A Yorkshire Tragedy’s author, and the lack of evidence pointing to any other author, modern scholars reject the possibility that William wrote it. Their reasoning is two-fold: A Yorkshire Tragedy’s author was not capable of writing at the Bard’s level, and the play was excluded from the First Folio. “If the Folio did not exist,” admitted the renowned Shakespearean scholars Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, “we could not distinguish—without resorting to stylististic evidence—between the documentary testimony for King Lear (1608) and the documentary testimony for A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608): both look equally valid, and hence both are equally worthless.” Scholars’ willingness to entertain Middleton as A Yorkshire Tragedy’s author, but not William Shakespeare, is puzzling. Here is a play printed under William Shakespeare’s name, during his lifetime, and performed by his theatrical company. There is no evidence that any of his contemporaries disputed his authorship. So why are modern scholars so sure that William Shakespeare didn’t write A Yorkshire Tragedy? One can’t just say that direct title page evidence of William’s authorship is irrefutable when the play is good, but meaningless when the play is bad, without better justification. The same holds for other plays now assigned to the Shakespeare Apocrypha.

Yes but – and with the greatest respect – your people have never really forgiven the old boy for Shylock have you, so one wouldn’t really expect you to say any different. MoV still banned in sunny Tel Aviv? That’s the ticket.

If Judith’s signature is the “pigtail” signature found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Quiney
I would say it speaks more for illiteracy, at least when it comes to being able to write, than it speaks against it.

Whatever else you can say about the author of Shakespeare’s plays, he was versatile.  The late plays written for the Blackfriars indoors stage differ from the ones meant to be played at the Globe as outdoor spectacle: the Globe plays were popular pieces featuring swordfighting and SFX, far less prominent in the more intimate Blackfriars pieces. 

This is not genius; this is skill.  Whoever wrote them understood what worked best on each stage.  Neither the Earl of Oxford nor the Lord Chancellor strike me as likely people to have possessed it.  Shakespeare the actor and impresario knew what he was doing.