Shakespeare Week Debate at Brunei University

No Doubt you're all aware that we had a Shakespeare Week a week ago. At least there was one at Brunei London University
www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/Shakespeare-Week

And, not surprisingly, there was another modest debate. This time between Non-Stratfordian Prof. Ros Barber, and Stratfordian Prof. Alan H. Nelson. It's the only event I've been able to watch so far from the event and it can be a bit difficult to follow without some visual aids. But there was just enough for the audience, modest though it was, to give a vote as to who won the debate. And the interesting thing this time was that the vote for the non-Stratfordian position was about twice the size of that for the traditional belief. If this audience was somewhat representative of the London area Shakespeareans, then it would appear to be that the birthplace of the Shakespeare plays (not necessarily that of the author) now primarily supports the position of authorship doubt.

And to the argument that such an event would most likely have more Shakespeare Authorship doubters in attendance--my thoughts are as follows:

That’s certainly a possibility. It might even appear to be obvious or ‘common sense’. Remember though that it once longed seemed obvious that the Sun, planets, and stars all revolved around a stationary Earth. And as Shakespeare said, there are “Things hid & bard (you mean) from common sense”.

So what you would have then is something we would call an hypothesis: That the cause of the debate vote being significantly in favor of the non-Stratfordian position is that the majority of the event attendees were non-Stratfordians to begin with. And that the cause of that condition is the premise that significantly more non-Stratfordians than Stratfordians attend such debates.

So what we can try to do off hand is to look at any currently available evidence for either the hypothesis or its premise. And then use what logic we can to narrow what is or isn’t rational, or to what extent some hypothesis or assertion stands up to scrutiny.

There have been previous debates. What can we learn from them?  The most recent one prior to this one took place on September 21, 2017 and was between Sir Jonathan Bate and Alexander Waugh at the Emmanuel Centre, London. It had been quite well publicized it seemed to me. Nearly the whole auditorium was full. At the end of the debate there was a vote and it seemed to me, as I recall, that there was not a significant difference between those voting for or against the Stratfordian position. As I recall,  another vote was taken of those that didn’t have a position to begin with, or that had changed their position as a result of the debate. And, as I recall, it seemed to the emcee or hand counts, that a slightly larger, probably not significant, number of these individuals voted for the non-Stratfordian position.

In Oct. 2013 in Toronto, Ontario during their own Stratford Shakespeare Festival there was a playful debate in the  form of a mock trial. And again, from my recollection of seeing the video of it, it was quite well attended and my impression was that it was most likely that only a small minority had any interest in the authorship question. Not very scientific, but my experience has been that most people are not interested in the authorship question even though they enjoy attending and/or reading the Shakespeare works.

What these two cases at least seem reasonably to prove is that authorship doubters are not necessarily more likely to attend such a debate than non-doubters. Nor are they more likely to attend such a debate than those with some interest in the Shakespeare works generally but who are not especially interested in such an event.

On the other hand the most recent debate, though part of a larger Shakespeare event as in Toronto, was held at Brunei University where there is or has been a Shakespeare Authorship degree program. That may reasonably have inclined some more individuals with an interest in the authorship question to attend, perhaps due to some previous connection with the program at the school. Or possibly just because more students and faculty there would be aware that there was such a program at the school.  But then, if such attendance was due to the second factor (awareness of the program) than the first (some personal connection or involvement with the program) then another hypothesis arises—that merely a greater awareness of a serious debate about this historical question increases an interest in it along with a non-committal stance, and that this itself led to a greater attendance of non-Stratfordian or at least Shakespeareans or intellectually inclined persons now having an open mind on the authorship question.

A good hypothesis nonetheless and one that even more debates may help settle!