Talk:Shakespeare authorship question

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Mark Twain

Is mentioned in this article and the template, but the gist of the Is Shakespeare Dead? article seems to be that he wasn´t very serious. Should we remove him, or expand this article with that possibility? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:11, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

According to "Contested Will. Who Wrote Shakespeare?" by James Shapiro, Twain was in important proponent of the idea that Shakespeare didn't do it. His standpoint was that you could not write on a subject unless you had experienced it. According to Shapiro, Twain actually sent someone to South Africa to take notes so he could write a book set there. The man died on the way, so Twain had to write Tom Sawyer instead. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:33, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:05, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Ben Elton: Only snobbish, elitist Britain could say that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays

I don´t think this is anything that can be used as a source, but it was interesting, nonetheless.

• "Upstart Crow creator Ben Elton on the myth that Shakespeare didn't exist". Radio Times. 2016-05-09. Retrieved 2017-10-04.

Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:21, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that's an entertaining read, with some interesting observations. Johnuniq (talk) 00:35, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Friedman Couple's Claim Disproved

The Friedman couple's work, William & Elizabeth, to the effect that no cyphers are present in the Shake-Spearean corpus is false, & should be removed from the article, as it is easy to disprove based on the Sonnets (where we find the correct hyphenated spelling of the Bard's name), as follows. Here below is the 9x16 grille from the 144 letters in the Sonnets Dedication as published by Thorpe. Jonathan Bond in his book proves that the Dedication was written by the Bard himself, but he did not include the 9x16 grille. I myself managed easily to find cyphers in the Grille as follows:

  T–O–T–H–E–O–N–L–I  
  E–B–E–G–E–T–T–E–R
  O–F–T–H–E–S–E–I–N
  S–U–I–N–G–S–O–N–N
  E–T–S–M–R–W–H–A–L
  L–H–A–P–P–I–N–E–S
  S–E–A–N–D–T–H–A–T
  E–T–E–R–N–I–T–I–E
  P–R–O–M–I–S–E–D–B
  Y–O–U–R–E–V–E–R–L
  I–V–I–N–G–P–O–E–T
  W–I–S–H–E–T–H–T–H
  E–W–E–L–L–W–I–S–H
  I–N–G–A–D–V–E–N–T  
  U–R–E–R–I–N–S–E–T
  T–I–N–G–F–O–R–T–H

The word "RUNE" meaning "secret message" begins in row 9, columm 2, reading on the diagonal slanting to lower right. The words "ELSE WE" are in col. 1, beginning rows 5 and 12. Moving up and down the columns, we can read an entire admonition not to reveal secrets, presumably those detailed in the Sonnets themselves. The full message then reads as follows:

      RUNE ELSE WE SIT LEG IN IR[O]N A NO WIT BET

I.e, given the political circumstances of Elizabethan England, revealing secrets might result in Tower confinement, and usually did. The word "IR[O]N" always has the letter "O" missing, occurring eight times, up, down, diagonal and angular.

Furthermore, I found the name of the Earl of Southampton double-spaced in three parts "[WR][IOTH][ESLEY]" in col.s 1 & 2.

I hope the Wikipedia editors will recognize a basic fault in the Friedman's conclusions and omit the reference. hgwb 10:19, 11 February 2018 (UTC)