Talk:William Shakespeare

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Featured articleWilliam Shakespeare is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
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shak-stat[edit]

Or Shakespeare Statistics [1]. Nhtnilse has recently been adding external links from this site to Shakespeare-related articles in way that makes me worry about WP:REFSPAM (and WP:ELNO), [2], [3], [4] and [5]. My question is, is this something that is useful somewhere on WP? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

It´s also used in the articles The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll and A Yorkshire Tragedy. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:35, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, he spammed a dozen or so articles with that link and I reverted them all. It appears to me to be more fringe-pushing OR, which we get on a regular basis. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:38, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Then I´ll undo the two from today. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

You forgot to revert Edmund Ironside as well. I wonder why this sort of censorship was executed and what expertise there was behind it. Please look into Digital Sources in the Humanities (Oxford University Press) where you find research publications that used Rolling Delta and Rolling Classify. The results confirm Eric Sams view of Shakespeare as someone who underwent a phase of apprenticeship and started with bad plays that he did not want to see in the First Folio later. Fringe-pushing is an insult to someone who does honest research with new stylometric tools. A pity earth is still flat.Nhtnilse (talk) 09:51, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

You have an unrealistic idea of what Wikipedia is for. It is not to publish or publish new research or discoveries. It is a general-use encyclopedia that uses reliable sources based upon academic consensus. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:45, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Chandos portrait[edit]

As the portrait has never been authenticated as being a true likeness of Shakespeare why is it being used as the main illustration for the article? Far better surely to use one of the only two images of the poet which we are sure of, the First Folio engraving and the bust on his monument. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aldiboront (talkcontribs) 13:13, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

@Aldiboront: The image is clearly labelled as being unconfirmed. It was chosen for aesthetic reasons, and because it is the one most commonly associated with Shakespeare. It's also the portrait with the best claim to have been painted from life (the Cobbe may overtake it eventually, but its claim is still too recent). The Droeshout and the funerary monument look alien to most modern readers. --Xover (talk) 14:42, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 May 2018[edit]

The age at death is incorrect and should be changed from 52 to 51, based on Wikipedia's birth and death dates. 129.234.0.20 (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: The problem is that we don't know his exact date of birth, only the date of his baptism. The hidden text in the infobox reads, "His monument states that he was in his 53rd year at death, i.e. 52". This has been discussed before (see archive 22, for instance). RivertorchFIREWATER 16:44, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, not even ‘by many’ is accepted anymore[edit]

Which is hardly a big difference in any case. Considering how quickly I was reverted by a non-admin, I can only speculate on the number of fans watching who’d be quick to jump against me. Needless to say, the term ‘widely’ has always been highly effusive and in need of statistical sources, otherwise ‘by many’ adheres better to a NPOV. How many articles on here have ‘widely regarded as the greatest’ anyway? Also needless to say, I’ll be taking whatever number of dissenters with a grain of salt until more than one admin responds. Barely made one (talk) 19:51, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

@Barely made one: First, you may wish to take some time to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's policies and community norms. In particular, the foundation of decision making processes is consensus: editors discuss, civilly, until a consensus is reached. And Wikipedia doesn't report the opinions of Wikipedia editors: we report what the reliable secondary sources say. Finally, Administrators have no say in content matters; they only enforce policy, curb in disruptive behaviour, and perform various more clerical tasks that require advanced permissions.
Dismissing other editors as "fans" is not a particularly good attitude towards reaching consensus, and if you intend to apply "a grain of salt" towards what they tell you are unlikely to be able to persuade them towards your point of view.
As to your specific complaint, the phrasing in the article's lead reflects what the reliable secondary sources have to say about the matter; not what Wikipedia editors think. It was arrived on after multiple lengthy discussions, including through peer review and Featured Article review (which is the most intensive and comprehensive review process on Wikipedia), and has stood for over a decade. In other words: the existing consensus is strong, long-standing, and backed by multiple high-quality reliable sources. The burden is on you to provide strong sources and persuasive arguments if you want to persuade anyone of your position. Insulting and dismissing them is very unlikely to persuade them. --Xover (talk) 15:51, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
@Xover: Late reply, I’ve been too busy to address patronizing responses, but clearly, I wouldn’t have made my 1st edit if I could find the references that supported them. They are supposedly in books, and in searching online I only found a source that call him the greatest dramatist only, one that calls him the greatest English writer (which is different from ‘greatest of anything written in English’), but Amazon isn’t reliable and it might not have been written by him. And one of them calls him the greatest writer, but it seems written by a reviewer rather than him. I also found one with Bevington that follows my ‘by many’ wording that mainly uses ‘greatest dramatist’.
I also realized it wasn’t that important, and neither is peer or FA review (it’d be nice if you actually provided links to relevant discussions, not just the main pages), compared to the policy in MOS:LEADBIO of due WP:WEIGHT that specifies it must be listed in the MAJORITY of sources. Going by an extensive google search, there are clearly more reliable sources that support the use of ‘by many as the greatest’ plus ‘one of the greatest’ rather than ‘widely’. It’s also dubious that the majority call him ‘greatest in the English language’, I see more that call him ‘greatest in England’ and just simply ‘most important or influential’.
As for sources I’ve found that dispute the use of ‘widely’, here are 3 surveyed sources, one of them has him at 50th with Austen at 7th, Dickens at 13th and Dahl at 1st as favorite writer, another has him below Dahl and Dickens as ‘greatest storyteller’, and the third has him behind Dahl, Austen, Blyton, and Rowling as ‘most-loved writer’. Like how surveyed sources must be used to WP:SUBSTANTIATE weasel words, these could remove the validity of the stronger ones. An article also notes that he “divides opinion” and another substantiates that he isn’t popular in class.
Thing is, I’m perfectly fine having him called the greatest in some areas, if there are the right weasel words. For instance, ‘England’s greatest writer’ and ‘greatest playwright’ is fine, and I’m certain I didn’t do anything out-of-line in my 2nd edit (you could also reread WP:Implicit consensus). And I was dismissive in my last post sure, but I don’t see any insults. There’s nothing wrong with fans, some (like the few on Breaking Bad) are sensible, but others can gather in inappropriate places. Anyway, I’m still not expecting results here, and I can easily take it to a noticeboard if I really feel a need to change it. Barely made one (talk) 07:53, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
@Barely made one: The sentence is cited inline, to high-quality reliable secondary sources, and you should be able to find them in any decent library. The sources you cite—besides being mainly from fluff newspaper articles that do not bear on what specialists in the field say, and adressing contemporary popularity not qualities as literature—actually generally support the current phrasing. Why do you think Shakespeare is a required part of the national curiculum? And why do you think a contemporary poll ranks him third most popular (not best) storyteller after nearly half a milennium (throughout which he has consistently been ranked so by any relevant yardstick). Or why all these polls and journalists use big type and exclamation marks every time someone actually gets ranked higher than Shakespeare?
In any case, you'll find ANI right over here. Good luck getting your changes through! --Xover (talk) 09:12, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Whether they are cited inline or actually not doesn't add to the question of whether it's listed in the majority. And I'm rather doubtful of Greenblatt when this says he doesn't mention it much, assuming the readers already know Shakespeare's a great writer. And if we include the 'fluff' article sources that still qualify as reliable, it's clear that 'widely' isn't. Unless you found a policy stating that only scholarly ones are allowed for this sort of decision, the argument becomes weak. Such as how if a few biased essays say he is unanimously considered the greatest writer of all time, does that mean it should be included?
I also have no idea how you see my sources as supporting the wording. Dickens and Austen are both British authors who are also required in most curriculums, and they've been polled higher (the former in a 'greatest' not 'most popular' survey by the way). Their pages, especially Austen's, also have much less WP:PUFF. None of the poll articles have any 'exclamations' either and only one of them emphasizes Shakespeare (which you know, could just be the author regarding him as most notable, not necessarily greater than all the others). And uh, nice try at a trick (if it was your intention), but I'd be posting it in a NPOV noticeboard, you know, where people are specialized to care about this. Barely made one (talk) 11:05, 27 October 2018 (UTC)