Shakespeare Beyond Doubt - 2 - Proving Shakespeare

The Proving Shakespeare Webinar of April 26, 2013.

One of the first attempts of representatives of the two sides discussing the dispute, and that’s connected to the current “Shakespeare Beyond Doubt” publications, has taken place in a webinar involving Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells and Marlovian Ros Barber who has written a novel  of Christopher Marlowe as the hidden Shakespeare. The transcript is an interesting read.

Barber became interested in the dispute after watching the film “Much Ado About Something” and since then has become another skeptic.

Here are some things said in the webinar:

RB: “…but I think that it’s actually important to look at the evidence that is argued, that is put forward on both sides…”  “So I actually welcome the absorption of this question into professional academic circles.

PE: It’s interesting, isn’t it, how many academics try to avoid this issue…

They all think the authorship discussion should be participated in by the academic community.

[Note: There’s a mention of an unusual argument:]

PE: Now in our book there is a chapter by Matt Kubus which sort of mops up, at the last count, seventy-seven of the nominees, in which he says ‘Mathematically, each time an additional candidate is suggested, the probability decreases that any given name is the true author.’

RB: I want to query that, because I want to know is that mathematically true? Do we have any mathematicians listening in to the webcast who could actually tell me whether that’s a true statement or not?

Note--My own first thought is this idea is senseless. Would it follow that if a crime was suspected in a hotel, that the greater the number of hotel guests, then the less likelihood that any crime actually was committed? That seems to be what the argument is implying. How is that logical?

There is much time in their discussion trying to get the other side to see their evidence, or to see their interpretation of the same evidence. This is especially true in regards to the idea that another person could be used as a front for another, and that what appears to be his name, and references to him or his name, aren’t strong enough evidence to many people that he actually wrote the works attributed to him. So the very idea of what constitutes evidence is debated. Is it possible for two opposing sides to agree on the validity of posthumous evidence?

This is a good beginning to this new stage of the debate and if the two sides can continue talking we may see some progress toward a broader appreciation of the amassed evidence that is yet to be satisfactorily explained.

Here’s the link to the webinar discussion:

http://rosbarber.com/proving-shakespeare-webinar-transcript/

Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (SBD) - 1 Introduction

Here begins a series of posts on the new book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (2013) from a cadre of Shakespeare scholars purporting to demonstrate that the man from Stratford, and only him, could have been the primary author of the Shakespeare works.

Long ago in one of my posts here I wrote that the evidence for the Stratford actor/businessman must be hidden away in some secret vault where only establishment scholars could come and view the unassailable proof of his authorship. This was because so many highly educated Shakespeare enthusiasts that had actually examined the available evidence found it far too lacking as any kind of proof to overcome the apparent chasm of the Stratford man’s life and, as the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt says: “Shakespeare’s works that show extensive knowledge of law, philosophy, classical literature, ancient and modern history, mathematics, astronomy, art, music, medicine, horticulture, heraldry, military and naval terminology and tactics; etiquette and manners of the nobility; English, French and Italian court life; Italy; and aristocratic pastimes such as falconry, equestrian sports and royal tennis.”

Finally, we are told, we will be provided the evidence and arguments from some of the most authoritative Shakespearean scholars in the world that will prove why the Stratfordian model is beyond any ‘Reasonable Doubt’. There have been previous books attempting to prove the Stratford man’s authorship. The best I think is by Irvin Leigh Matus in Shakespeare, IN FACT, 1994. But I found nothing in it that precluded the alternative scenario of a hidden author using the businessman/actor from acting as a front man. And even he had pointed out how very few Shakespeare scholars had yet examined any of the authorship evidence themselves.

So it still may seem somewhat new to them if they have not yet delved into the matter thoroughly. In any case, this new book, by several scholars this time, again attempts to make modern and familiar what appears to many as supernatural, and to ensconce ourselves in the reasonableness of what Shakespeare might, in a jest, call “A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor”.

We now find that both sides of the dispute are in agreement that ‘the authorship question’ is important. Professor Shapiro lamented the lack of scholarly interest in the topic; the stylometric analysts Elliott and Valenza agreed, the leaders of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust now say it’s important, and now also many other scholars supporting them say it’s important. So, from any Shakespeare enthusiast, we shouldn’t hear “it’s [the authorship question] not important” or “it doesn’t matter who wrote them”. Now, more Shakespeare enthusiasts, are likely to become at least somewhat knowledgeable about the basic arguments on both sides of the question. Just gathering one-sided arguments to use as ‘ammunition’ is not going to show any intellectual maturity. The main problem is that perhaps no one can review close to what all has been written about so many alternative candidates. Fortunately, the response [by The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition] to the orthodox side has also just now been published so the two viewpoints can be contrasted, even though it can’t possibly contain all the detailed evidence for any alternative candidate. This book is also called “Shakespeare Beyond Doubt?” (but it ends with a question mark. It’s primary authors are John Shahan and Alexander Waugh.

We hope also that we are finally moving beyond the name calling, slanders, and insinuations that ‘doubters’ are  ‘Holocaust deniers’, vampires, psychologically aberrant, mentally deficient, etc. Why would anyone have implied such a characteristic to so many high-achieving intellectuals like Henry James, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mortimer Adler, Harry Blackmun, leading Shakespearean actors such as Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, and some modern authors on this topic like Peter Usher, Ph.D, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Peter Sturrock, Ph.D, a Stanford astrophysicist, and Barry Clarke, a writer of logic puzzles for MENSA? These are not people who should be in strait-jackets and locked in dark rooms, just because, like Galileo, they “looked through the telescope”!

More recently, on the mainstream or establishment side of the debate, there is the emphasis on not questioning any approved ‘authority’ on the topic. For instance, Paul Edmondson of the SBT wrote:  “There is the loaded assumption that even though one may lack the necessary knowledge and expertise, it is always acceptable to challenge or contradict a knowledgeable and expert authority. It is not. (If the focus of this volume [SBD] were about a specialized area of nuclear physics those last two sentences would not even have been necessary.) But one characteristic of the Shakespeare authorship discussion is its apparent generosity of scope in which everyone can have their say, ignore the evidence for Shakespeare, propose alternative nominees, contradict authorities and feel empowered.”

One response to this argument would be: On what basis are the mainstream Shakespeare scholars ‘authorities’ on the authorship question? There have been doubters who have spent 20 years or more on the authorship question, or more specifically, on just one aspect of this question. Have any of the mainstream scholars researched the authorship question for that length of time? In addition, why could not an expert, of Shakespeare’s time, in the law, astronomy, music, medicine, seamanship, Italy, and such, challenge a non-expert of these fields but who is a Shakespeare scholar? And what about the beliefs of those tenured professors, like one of mine, who, on the last day of class, said “If you learn ANYTHING in all of your college years, you should at least have learned to question Authority”. Or is intellectual curiosity and independence to be discouraged and suppressed?

In astrophysics Professor Peter Sturrock’s new book, AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question, he suggests an intellectual attitude with these precepts:

·  All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)

·  Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)

·  Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)

·  Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)

·  It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)

·  A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)

·  The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)

·  To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)

·  It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)

·  Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)

·  All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Does anyone really think that Prof. Sturrock would act as Paul Edmondson claims--that such a scholar would never listen to or consider an objection by a well-informed non-professor on some specific question within that field? And that he would be totally closed-minded to everyone outside of the approved in-group of academic astrophysics researchers? If so, why would scholars like him write books out of their specialty in the first place?

The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt has some commonality to the U.S. Declaration of Independence in the 18^th century. Then the American scientist, statesman, and diplomatic leader Benjamin Franklin, who was in France seeking support for the American cause, was demonized by the then propaganda as a “traitor to his king”, the “dean of all charlatans,” who “deceived the good with his white hairs, and fools with his spectacles”. It kind of makes it seem like he was a part of some feeble-minded conspiracy than one of many individuals that disagreed with a group with great power and self-claimed ‘authority’.

So it looks now that we’re moving into arguments by evidence, which is where the question should be examined. We can imagine the two sides as something like Elizabethan jousters who will take to the field and then have their turns “shaking their lances” at their opponent’s perceived ignorance. I imagine it will be as entertaining as it will be educational for any Shakespeare enthusiast.

Next, we’ll look at some preliminary exchanges.

Shakespeare and Seamanship - Sea, Wind, Sailing terms

Shakespeare’s detailed knowledge in many fields of knowledge is one of the hallmarks that has set him apart from other playwrights. And often of greater interest is that the use of this knowledge, via the terminology of the specialty, is usually precise and unlike that of a layman, even when stretched to metaphorical use in contexts where only an expert is likely to see the parallel to his field.

For instance, in the last post in the series “Was Shakespeare a Lawyer” there was this quote from Shakespeare's Legal Language: A Dictionary (2000) by Sokal and Sokal:

The overall impression given by this Dictionary may well contradict frequently reiterated claims that Shakespeare's interest in law was at best superficial, and that Shakespeare exploited legal ideas, circumstances, and language with no regard for any factor aside from 'poetic' effect. It is our view, derived from cumulative evidence, that on the contrary Shakespeare shows a quite precise and mainly serious interest in the capacity of legal language to convey matters of social, moral, and intellectual substance.

Another area, not yet covered here, is Shakespeare’s precise knowledge and use of the terminology in seamanship. This came to my attention by a recent blog post article by Oxfordian Hank Whittemore. He quotes experts in this field who attest to Shakespeare’s “accurate knowledge of naval matters” and who say things such as that he “made exact use of the professional language of seamanship” and who believed that “the Bard’s knowledge in this area could not have come from books alone.” A reviewer wrote that “… only those who actually served at sea could acquire a profound knowledge of the practice of seamanship and the correct meaning and use of the terms proper to the working of ships”. As usual, there is no evidence whatever that the businessman/actor from Stratford was ever on a ship.

http://hankwhittemore.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/the-sea-and-seamanship-no-61-of-100-reasons-why-edward-earl-of-oxford-was-shakespeare/

He also quotes Dan Brayton from Shakespeare’s Ocean (2012) who wrote “Most current scholarship fails to note the sophistication of Shakespeare’s maritime imagination”.  

Similarly,  in this same volume, Brayton, in mentioning the work of John Gillies, says “Gillies argues that “Shakespeare is demonstrably conversant with quite a variety of geographic discourses and … cartographic genres”. (as was shown for Bacon in the previous post). This can be found at the end of the book in his Notes for chapter 7 “Prospero’s Maps”:

http://books.google.com/books?id=2R9-UC2FHT0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Bacon is also known to have visited Elizabethan scholar John Dee who was then a respected cartographer].

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h698k7r340722k73/

Samuel Johnson suggested that Shakespeare’s naval dialogue may have been the first to be exhibited on the stage. Lord Mulgrave believed “that the Poet must either have drawn his technical knowledge of seamanship from accurate personal observation, or else have had a remarkable power of applying the information gained from others [skills Bacon was known to have]. And he thinks Shakespeare must have conversed with some of the best seamen of the time, as “no books had then been published on the subject.” [Bacon was sent by Queen Elizabeth to sail with the English diplomat Sir Amias Paulet to Paris so he likely sailed with some of England’s best sailors; he was also friends with Sir Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Essex, and others with much sailing expertise].

Then there was a previous book:

Another expert, W. B. Whall  (b. 1837, d. 1925?), who was educated at Oxford before becoming a seaman in 1861 and served with shipmates who were “old men-of-war’s men who had served at sea before 1815”, and then he himself ended up a Master mariner who studied old naval terminology -- “having made a study of these archaic terms” and wrote about sea life and sailor songs. Since no one had yet written about Shakespeare’s knowledge of sailing and his use of naval language, he researched it and wrote Shakespeare’s Sea Terms Explained, 1910. Confirming what has already been said above, Whall writes “Now it is small wonder that a playwright in such times should make use of sea words, but the wonder is that without professional acquaintance he should always use these terms correctly. No modern writer is able to do this. An author who ventures in that direction invariably “gives himself away” unless he is a sailor author: this the writer of the plays never does. ….”For be it noted he essays to write as a sailor, and does so successfully.” He later says “… but the mystery is that sea expressions crop up in quite unexpected places, and that they are all phrased as by a sailor.”  He also writes regarding Shakespeare: “His sea terms are always absolutely correct.” Also, “One thing is certain, that the sea expressions scattered through the plays cannot be understood by the ordinary reader without some help of the kind given here.” And “How did the writer obtain sufficient knowledge of the sea to write like a sailor? That is a question which cannot be answered.” Notice this is the same ability that Shakespeare has with using legal terminology and with the language used in other fields.

He foresees that some will say that anyone of the time could use naval terms. So he writes “It may be advanced that, our modern, colloquial English being so full of sea phrases, there is nothing to be wondered at that the plays are full of them; but these phrases are not used in a technical, professional sense, as Shakespeare uses them,”

And then he continues on pages 21-22 with “There is the further curious fact that only one other Elizabethan writer lards his writings with technical sea terms, and that one is Bacon.” And then a little further on “Shakespeare and Bacon, however, never make a professional mistake, but write like sailors.”

Keep in mind that Whall does not make any reference to the “authorship question” nor does he show any awareness that there was such a thing.

You can find Whall’s book here:

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101066126093;seq=11;view=1up;num=3

Bacon’s writing on Winds and Sails of Ships can be read here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=i_lLAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA571&ots=WroaIjJ5K9&dq=%22francis%20bacon%22%20works%20barents%20-art&pg=PA179#v=onepage&q&f=false

And yet there still does not seem to be a single mainstream Shakespearean scholar that is willing to say publicly that all authorship evidence should be fairly examined. Perhaps this is the only field in all of academia where a beloved theory is desired for its own sake rather than a seeking of historical or scientific evidence-based truth.

Measure for Measure - Running from brakes of Ice

Running from brakes of Ice

As mentioned in the previous post, Bacon has close connections to a primary source for the play Measure for Measure. Recently I came across another one.

In Act 2, scene 1 (around line 40 depending on the edition) we find this passage by Escalus:

“Well, heaven forgive him, and forgive us all.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:

Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none,

And some condemned for a fault alone.”

There isn’t a clear interpretation on “Some run from brakes of ice”. In the 1997 Folger edition, the full note on page 215 says this:

‘Many changes have been proposed in editorial attempts to give meaning to these words. The most frequent alterations are from “ice” to “vice” and from “brakes” to “breaks”. None of the changes helps significantly. The clause stands in parallel with “some rise by sin” (line 42) and in contrast to “some condemned for a fault alone” (line 44). It may therefore be meant to suggest “some escape punishment for major crimes,” though no emendation thus far proposed captures that meaning . Editors have pointed out an interesting parallel with Claudio’s description of hell as a “thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice” (3.1.138) and have quoted The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions, (1594, 1595, 1596): “the ice whereon we lay . . . brake and ran one peece upon another . . .the ice brake under our owne feet.” Other editors have noted that brakes could be “tortures, traps, or thorny hedges,” as well as “engines of punishment,” “snaffles” or “sharp bits.”

An online edition of the play has even changed “ice” to “office”:

http://www.shakespeareswords.com/Plays.aspx?Ac=2&SC=1&IdPlay=27

Considering that in the First Folio the word is spelt “Ice” with a capital letter “I” it hardly seems reasonable that the intent was the word “office”. But some editors may be a bit desperate to move away from the word “Ice”, especially the kind that ‘brakes’ and that sometimes cause some to run away from. And what in the heck would William of Stratford be doing reading an expeditionary treatise on the arctic anyhow?  Or maybe he just overheard talk of this voyage in one of his visits to the local pub, just as where he had also became an expert in law in a few short years!

Barents’ book is also referenced in Twelfth Night, 3.2 where Fabian mentions “..an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard…”. And then a little later in the same scene does Shakespeare refer to “…more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies” which is thought to refer to a map made by Emmeric Mollineux in 1599 for the purchasers of Hakluyt’s Voyages, “showing more of the East Indies, including Japan, than had ever been mapped before.”

Well, it happens that Bacon is known to have read The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions, (1594, 1595, 1596). He refers to it in his Novum Organum, in which he mentions “in Nova Zembla” and the accompanying note says:

“This of course refers to Barentz’s expedition in search of a North-East passage. He passed the winter of 1596-7 at Nova Zembla.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=fKk8AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA240&ots=ob7vpw5bex&dq=%22francis%20bacon%22%20barentz&pg=PA240#v=onepage&q=zembla&f=false

If you look for the post earlier in this section (Othello: The Bosphorus) you’ll also see that “Shakespeare” (the author) also seems to have read The Relation of a Journey begun an. Dom. iio, in four books (1615) by George Sandys which describes his travels to the Eastern Mediterranean. Shakespeare mentions both the “Ponticke Sea” and the “Proponticke” within four lines of each other in Act 3, scene 3:

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/othello/page_166.html

or see page 326 in the First Folio Tragedies.

Here is the Bacon reference:

http://archive.org/stream/worksfrancisbaco05bacoiala#page/262/mode/2up

So, I vote for keeping the original as is: “Some run from brakes of Ice”.

Macbeth - Rhubarb - Purgative drug

Near the end of Act 5.3 in Macbeth, we have him saying:

 That should applaud again.  Pull’t off, I say,

What Rhubarb, Cyme, or what Purgative drug

Would scour these English hence:  hear’st thou of them?

We know that Bacon was fanatic about studying herbs as drugs. Was William of Stratford also?

Bacon wrote when listing purgative herbs:

“Astringents purgative, which, having by their purgative or expulsive power thrust out the humours, leave behind them astrictive virtue:

RHUBARB, especially that which is toasted against the fire: myrobalanes, tartar, tamarinds, an Indian fruit like green damascenes.”

Comedy of Errors - Turkish Tapestry

There’s a sentence in The Comedy of Errors, Act. 4.1

Antipholus of Ephesus:

Give her this key, and tell her in the Deske

That’s cover’d o’er with Turkish Tapestry

Well, this is from “Shakespeare’s England: an account of the life & manners of his age”:


At Gorhambury there is a carpet of Turkey work in perfect preservation with Elizabeth's cognizances and initials, made for and used by the Queen when making her frequent visits to Sir Francis Bacon. This Turkey work was a needlework imitation of an Eastern carpet, and was chiefly used for window seats, bed valances, and chair cushions. It was a treble cross-stitch on canvas in coloured wools, cut open to a close pile. There are constant allusions to it.

http://archive.org/stream/shakespearesengl02raleuoft/shakespearesengl02raleuoft_djvu.txt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Gorhambury_House

Measure for Measure - Sources

There is already a series of posts on Bacon’s connection to the play Measure for Measure. Now a little more.  As a reminder, this play was first known with the publication of the First Folio in 1623. One of Shakespeare’s primary sources for the play was The Right Excellent and Famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra: Divided into Commercial Discourses, by George Whetstone, published in 1578. Shakespeare also seemed to have used another Whetstone publication, The Roke of Regard (1576) when he wrote Much Ado About Nothing. This same George Whetstone, in 1579, wrote a biographical elegy in honor of Francis Bacon’s father, Sir Nicholas Bacon. In addition, Whetstone’s three brothers were at Gray’s Inn at the same time as Francis Bacon. So Bacon would almost surely be known to the Whetstone family and have easy access to George Whetstone’s published works.

http://www.shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/source.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Whetstone

Whetstone, George, 1544?-1587? A remembraunce, of the woorthie and well imployed life, of the Right Honorable Sir Nicholas Bacon Knight, Lorde Keeper of the Greate Seale of Englande, and one of the Queenes Maiesties most honorable priuie counsell, who deceased, the 20 daye of Februarie 1578. London : Imprinted ... for Myles Jennyngs [etc.], 1579.