Great Debate - Steinburg vs Bate; Also Barber SAQ Course

Here's a message I should have posted in February of this year:

As you know there was a short time back the Great Debate on the SAQ between Jonathan Bate and Alexander Waugh. It turned out not to be that great but it was at least great that they had it. Unfortunately, the format wasn’t conducive for a great debate. And it was frustrating that the emcee didn’t seem to be clear on what the event was supposed to be about. I also felt that as bad as Prof. Bate was, I thought that Alexander Waugh could have been much better prepared. It should have been a pushover for him and he seemed to have blanked out on most of the great information on the https://doubtaboutwill.org/  site. Still despite all this it at least showed that Stratfordian theory, at least as presented by Prof. Bate, doesn’t have much going for it and the non-Stratfordian ideas can easily match them.

To make this more obvious we have a detailed review and rebuttal of Prof. Bate’s arguments by Oxfordian author Steven Steinburg, who wrote the fine book I come to bury Shakspere. Here are the points that Steinburg addresses in his rebuttal which I’m taking from Lucinda Foulke’s introduction:

“For example, Steinburg challenges Bate’s assertions, among others, that the bequests to fellow actors in Shakspere’s will were not interlineations (or “interleavings” as Bate incorrectly calls them); that the monument in the Stratford church originally showed Shakspere with a pen and paper; that Shakspere acted in half a dozen plays of Ben Jonson; that Shakspere’s handwriting is found in the manuscript of a play on the life of Sir Thomas More; that the dedications to Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are “letters” from Shakspere; that Shakespeare’s works show a lack of knowledge of how aristocratic households operated; that Shakespeare had to be from a rural area; that Shakespeare started saying “Britain” instead of “England” in his plays to please King James; that we know Shakespeare collaborated with John Fletcher because Shakespeare said “you” and Fletcher said “ye”; that we know which scenes from Titus Andronicus were written by Shakespeare and which by George Peele because Shakespeare said “brothers” and Peele said “brethren”; that the term “linguistic fingerprints” has any intelligible meaning; that mentions of the counties of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire in the plays show that they were written by the Stratford man; that Shakspere had a Welsh schoolmaster at the Stratford Grammar School who is depicted in Merry Wives of Windsor; and that the Sonnets are mere technical exercises. Steinburg’s critique applies scathing scrutiny to each of Bate’s claims.”

https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/steinburg-exposes-fallacies-jonathan-bates-debate-performance/

And here is the direct link to Steinburg’s article:

https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/post-truth-world-sir-jonathan-bate/

One repeated observation by Steinburg is how terribly bad is Prof. Bate’s understanding of the Shakespeare Authorship question.

Now, the other news is that YOU CAN NOW BECOME MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE THAT A PROFESSIONAL SHAKESPEARE SCHOLAR (at least on the important topic of the authorship question, since they don’t study it and THERE IS NOW A COURSE ANYONE CAN TAKE!!!

Online Shakespeare Authorship Course Available Starting February 19

Read about it here and sign up. If you’ve ever wished you that you could have talked about this topic with some confidence here’s your opportunity:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/shakespeare

You can even study it for free if you prefer, (though you may miss out then on personal discussions among the paying students).