Talk:Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship

Oxfords Men

My only question is why was Oxford, being the Earl of the Oxfords men, writing plays for a competeing theartre company, Lord Chamberlain's Men. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.216.35.159 (talk) 07:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Good question. The evidence strongly points to Oxford's involvement with another company during the 1580's -- the Queen's Men -- whom his sometime Secretary John Lyly was at least on certain ocassions the paymaster. The time frame for Oxford's Men and the Queen's Men is more or less the same, so either Oxford was involved during the 1580s with two adult troops (in addition to at least one troop of boys), or Oxford's Men and the Queen's Men were really more or less the same group operating under two different names (for details see Ward's biography of Oxford, who handled this topic better than anyone else before or after him). In any case, the Queen's Men was dissolved (for all practical purposes -- ie they did not continue playing at court and their best men went elsewhere) shortly before the Lord Chamberlain's Men was reconstituted circa 1593 (I'm always a little vague on exactly when they got started).

The critical point is that the royal company was called the Lord Chamberlain's men until 1583; for the next decade, during which we have clear evidence for Oxford's involvement with it via Lyly, it was called the Queen's Men, after having been reconstituted under the supervision of Sir Francis Walsingham after Lord Chamberlain Sussex (a close elder friend of De Vere's) died. Then it was reconstituted, after the scandal of the Queen's Men's involvement in the Marprelate controversy, as the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Given that we can see Oxford more clearly in the picture of court entertainment during the 1580s than during the 90s this seems to admit of two possible explanations. One is that the orthodox view of authorship and theatre history is correct; for some reason Oxford lost interest in the theatre (previously a consuming ambition in his life), and other people assumed his role patronizing and providing entertainments. The other is that he remained involved in the Lord Chamberlains Men (there is only one record of his men performaing anywhere after 1590, so it would appear that a troop under his name was for all practical purposes defunct by about the same time that the Queen's Men folded) but from behind the scenes,his involvement being purposefully obscured. That would not make him Shakespeare, but it would remove the objection to which you allude.

--BenJonson (talk) 19:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Friederich Nietzsche

I think we need a reference for Friederich Nietzsche. I'm not saying it's wrong, but he's not on the Shakespeare-Oxford Society Honor Roll of Skeptics page, nor is there any reference to Shakespeare on the Friederich Nietzsche page on Wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rick 2.0 (talk • contribs) 17:24, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

According to his sister - who is very unreliable - he was possibly a Baconian. A Baconian website attempts to read Baconism into N's own published statements, but can't find anything definitive. [1]. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be surprising given N's belief in the ideal of the philosopher-poet (i.e. himself) and his penchant for making provocative iconoclastic claims. Oxfordian theory didn't exist in N's lifetime, so if he is to be mentioned it should be on the general authorship page, not here. Paul B 06:12, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually - in two of his books he mentons the authorship problem and in both cases suggested Bacon as the author. The mentions can be found in Will to Power and Ecce Homo. Here, he is being listed as an "anti-stratfordian" - as long as he is labled as such, I see no problem with him being listed as an official doubter.Smatprt 14:37, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you don't understand the word "definitive". Perhaps also you are unaware that The Will to Power is a conflation edited by his sister. I read Ecce Homo years ago and am perfectly well aware of its contents, which are consistent with what I said. Paul B 00:09, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I did not say "definitive", I said "mentions" and "suggested". And you obviously have not even read the article and don't even know the context in which this reference is being used. But just keep picking at sores, Paul. Like a pimply teenager, it just makes you look uglier. But I suppose that just goes with your constant nastiness.Smatprt 05:08, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It's sometimes difficult to believe these levels of obtuseness. I said definitive in the comment to which you replied. Do try to understand what you are reading before you reply. Picking at sores is what you do, since there was simply no point to your reply, which contained information I had already linked to. But you hadn't bothered to read it or to understand what was being said had you? I understand perfectly well the context. Paul B 11:01, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

So perhaps he should be removed from the last paragraph of the "Further Criticism" section. I don't know who put him there, but I'd vote for him to be removed, unless there is more information. Rick 2.0 17:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I've located a web site that quotes Nietzsche. Apparently, he was a Baconian, but this was prior to the publication of "Shakespeare Identified." I've linked to it directly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rick 2.0 (talk • contribs) 17:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Good work, Rick 2.0. There is no question that he was an anti-Stratfordian and, perhaps, by default, a Baconian. Like Whitman, who incidentally refused to endorse Bacon, he lived before the Oxfordian theory had any public profile and hence did not have the chance to weigh it in relation to the claims of the Baconians.--BenJonson (talk) 19:28, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

English way of discussing the oxfordian view

In England the oxfordian view is very controversial. When discussed, it does not lead to a discussion on content, but to a discussion as being 'ridiculous'. Even in universities a scientific approach is hardly possible. Identity and Shakespeare are so connected in England that oxfordians are mainly found outside of England. On the other hand the Oxfordians are not willing to talk to Stattfordians either. This means that there are two schools opposite each other. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.18.109.60 (talk) 17:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by the statement that "Oxfordians are not willing to talk to Stratfordians." I have walked in both worlds for fifteen years. It may be true that some Oxfordians and other anti-Stratfordians are content to think of themselves as superior to orthodox academicians and will have nothing to do with Stratfordians. But I can assure you that these are as small a minority among the Oxfordians as are those in the orthodox camp who are willing to engage in rational and civil discussion on the issue. Most Oxfordians welcome discussion and debate. They understand that they have much to learn from those who have devoted their lives to studying Shakespeare and the Renaissance, even if they may be carrying assumptions that some of us regard as doubtful. The attitude of orthodox academicians, by contrast, not only in England but around the world, usuallyconstitutes a shameful example of a narrow minded majority enforcing its will on the minority by what amounts to little more than a form of intellectual apartheid. I have been continually shocked and dismayed to see how little that has changed in the past twenty years.--BenJonson (talk) 19:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

And the point of this section is... what? (Interesting that the first accredited Authorship/Oxfordian degree program is in an English University!) Not to mention that Mark Rylance (Globe Theatre), Derek Jacobi, etc., are from that side of the pond. Smatprt (talk) 18:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Attribution

http://www.authorshipstudies.org/articles/oxford_shakespeare.cfm look at section on taming of shrew, its amost a word for word copy w/o attribution. whats that all about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.240.215.167 (talk) 04:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

it's "almost" word for word because this is a well known parallel in oxfordian studies. I've seen it (or almost the same wording) in numerous books and websites. Since it bothers anon above that it's not referenced to this one cite, I've gone ahead and added it. There can never be too many references! Smatprt (talk) 17:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

GA nomination

Congratulations! Your article has now been nominated for GA status. Felsommerfeld (talk) 14:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll be happy to review this when time permits. My first impression is that it's very long and maybe a bit POV but it should be possible to make some positive changes that will help it to GA. Otherwise, I'll have to read it through before further comment. Bodleyman (talk) 16:22, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the nomination per WP:POINT. AndyJones (talk) 17:39, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

And I've removed the second nomination due to disruptive sockpuppetry. See User talk:Barryispuzzled for the details. María (habla conmigo) 12:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Can we post a list of suggested reading?

Hey there, great article, quite detailed and thorough. My wish would be that there be a list of suggested reading for the newly (and not-so-newly) interested. There seem to be quite a few books on the Oxfordian authorship, both recent and less recent. I think it would be great to list them, as it's nice, and often more pleasant, to read a thorough biographical book written in comfortable casual prose, than it is to study facts online. I suggest the books be listed in a new section, titled one of the following for example: References (changing the current "references" title to "Footnotes" -- I've done this on almost every article I get involved with); Reading List; Further Reading; Suggested Reading; Recommended Reading; Books; Bibliography; Sample Reading [List]; Selected Reading List; or whatever you want to call it. Thanks in advance; and thanks in advance for bringing to popular light this important man's work. Softlavender (talk) 03:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

• done. Smatprt (talk) 06:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks muchly. Softlavender (talk) 00:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• By the way, I just finished Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare" by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare (2006). Fantastic, exhaustive book! Thanks for recommending it in the Further Reading section; I didn't know where to start and that was the very best place -- so very thorough and detailed and an impressive work of ten years of scholarship and research. Softlavender (talk) 05:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Prose removed from captions

A caption should describe the image, and draw attention to what makes it relevant. Don't put exposition and argumentation there. These should be valuable in the prose:

• The hyphenated name appears on The Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint and on 15 plays published prior to the First Folio, where it was hyphenated on 2 of the 4 dedicatory poems. (From Sonnets-title-pg pic in Oxfordian theory#The 1604 Problem.)
• Both the hyphenated name and the Sonnet's dedication, specifically the words "ever-living poet", have fueled controversy within the authorship debate. (From Sonnets-ded'n-pg pic in Oxfordian theory#The 1604 Problem.)

There may be others, but not in the sub-sections of my edit.
--Jerzy•t 03:17, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully disagree. I know of know rule that prevents detailed explanations in captions, especially when they are entirely relevant to the debate outlined by the article itself. Also, the above referenced edit simply deletes information from the article and failed to incorporate the deleted sentences into the article itself. If you want to change this, please discuss here first and build a consensus for the change. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 03:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

• I presume then you've never thought about how many additional words it takes to gild a lily that is worth a thousand words, nor looked at Wikipedia:Captions#Succinctness nor Wikipedia:Captions#Wording. And perhaps you'll set to work explaining why

1. the 4-line caption in the lead secn (a good caption, ruined by following it with a sentence,
2. the 15-line one in Oxfordian theory#Was Oxford a concealed writer? (4 full sentences)
3. the 7-line and 6-line ones i found and fixed in Oxfordian theory#The 1604 Problem

should all be considered such exceptional cases, outside the applicability of well-consensused guidelines.
No consensus local to a topic's talk page is needed before conforming it to guidelines; rather, you should be prepared, before reverting such a change, to present a case locally that won't be laughed at if copied to, in this case, Wikipedia talk:Captions.
As to damaging the article:

1. It's a very rare article that requires images to convey its information (think the color drawing in Diode_bridge#Basic_operation). My guess was that the captions duplicated running prose, but if the accompanying article's information content was reduced by my edit, the problem is that information that belongs as part of the prose appeared only in captions (that inevitably obscure its relationship to the non-caption text, and invite the reader to guess about when it's a good time to interrupt their train of thot & the flow of the article to wade thru a caption and then try pick up where they left off).
2. Collaborative editing is not so much about satisfying those who happen to have previously worked on a given article, as about editors doing as much to advance an article as is in their judgment suitable for them, and counting on others to do more in their own good time; if no one has the time and interest for an hour, a week, or a year, then (to varying degrees), it's just a topic WP can't perfectly cover. At the risk of encouraging the impression that where i choose to leave off my work on this page is any of your business, i'll mention, to provide an example, that i came here somehow that had to do with my attention this evening to the garbled versions of "small Latine and lesse Greeke" -- almost certainly a hit on both "lesse" and some other word -- and after improving the aspects that quickly caught my eye, it was time to get on with finishing the task that i had let myself be distracted from. Even if i were wrong about the captions needing to be moved, it would still defy Linus's Law for me to have satisfied you: you seem to think i should not have improved the article, given my sense that someone else would do a more careful and perhaps even better informed job of reintegrating the prose where it belonged. I sure looks like i was right, but my point is that you should have limited your comments to whether i was right or wrong about the captions needing attention, and not implied that my good-faith (and effective) efforts to make sure the material didn't get lost were "damage" even if i was right.
   --Jerzy•t 07:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
   

Greetings. I have taken your advice and, when restoring content on this controversial edit, left intact the non-controversial good edits. (Not to say that all your edits are not necessarily good, and certainly good-faith!). I was familiar with the caption recommendations and on reviewing them, I find that they are certainly not hard and fast rules and include such qualifiers as "may" do this and "may" do that. More to the point, I still believe that what you did was simply remove properly sourced material from the article and that, for me, is the supreme no-no. Also, you deleted the context as to WHY the image was being used. Instead why not do a bit of trimming? I did restore the material a moment ago, and then I trimmed both captions a bit. More trimming might be workable, but I believe that providing proper context certainly outweighs the more flexible guideline on length. After all - to maintain the 3 line recommendation, all one needs do is make the picture bigger!?! A silly solution to be sure, but a viable one none the less. I think it better to keep the pictures the size they are and provide a caption that provides the necessary context. the alternative would be to attach more prose to a new section that sums up the 2 captions in question. In that case, however, previous editors have reached a consensus that a separate section on the hyphen alone is probable overkill - thus the detailed caption. Smatprt (talk) 15:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Also - you must admit, in spite of your own stated POV against the topic in general, that this is a pretty complicated topic that requires a greater level of detail than most! Cheers!Smatprt (talk) 15:09, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

• I know what you are referring to, but if you are going to infer my PoV in that fashion, it is grossly irresponsible to do so without either quoting or linking to the supposed basis. You have only an unfounded fantasy about what my PoV on the topic is, and i'm inclined to think you have made a personal attack in claiming to have read my mind.
  --Jerzy•t 18:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
  

Oh come on - now you are just being silly. Oh - wait - are you saying you are an anti-Stratfordian then? Why then, welcome to the cause! :) Smatprt (talk) 21:28, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

• I think the material is notable (and free of notable PoV problems), and the level of detail appears to me to be appropriate, indeed probably necessary. The issues i have raised about detail have to do with how to structure the info.
  --Jerzy•t 18:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
  

Hi everyone. I wasn't sure where to put this, but here it is. As I look at the article, there are multiple mentions of Joseph Sobran. Since he is, as far as I can ascertain, a Holocaust denier who has written unpleasant articles about Jewish people, gays, and, I believe, African Americans, I'd be happy to see references to him and his book, Alias Shakespeare, cut from the page. I don't wish us to promote him, and had no idea he was on the Oxford page until alerted by a Stratfordian. I don't think he is any way helpful to us, as his views on other matters make him a definite liability, and I'd like to see us get rid of him here. Thanks. Mizelmouse (talk) 00:55, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think he is any way helpful to us, as his views on other matters make him a definite liability

That is phrased in such a way that it looks like a giveaway. One should not admit on wikipedia that one is editing to promote a cause or a group ( "us") viewpoint, as it conflicts with WP:NPOV.Nishidani (talk) 15:19, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Nishidani. When I wrote "us", I was referring to the Wikipedia community, which we're all a part of. I should have been more clear, but I haven't used wiki for a while. Thanks for pointing out the confusion. Mizelmouse (talk) 23:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Splitting of article

Splitting an article that has grown too big is a tough task, but it is one that should start being discussed in this case. There are something like 40 sections, yielding a ToC that for me fills almost two screen-heights. The marked-up text is something like 80 kb, which is at least a two-fold problem:

1. It violates (by a factor of nearly 3) the utterly inflexible 32kB limit for articles that are guaranteed to be editable by all users.
2. The size range generally regarded as a limit of readability as an encyclopedia article are several times smaller than 32 kB; keeping the ToC to a size where it can be used almost at a glanced, rather than requiring study to reach a suitable section is closely related to this.

There can be two basic approaches to oversize articles: reaching consensus among frequent editors as to how the article can be "cut as its joints", producing smaller articles that respect the subtopics natural boundaries, or if that shows no reasonable prospect of resolution, making a reasonable common sense division, and optimizing boundaries after the fact.
It seems the article is overdue to get the discussion underway.
--Jerzy•t 08:31, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Greetings. While I agree we should start this discussion, I would ask that you be more careful in quoting rules that are "utterly inflexible". Please note at WP:LENGTH the following:

A rule of thumb Some useful rules of thumb for splitting articles, and combining small pages: Readable prose size What to do > 100 KB Almost certainly should be divided

> 60 KB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time)

> 30 KB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)

< 30 KB Length alone does not justify division

Also note that this does not include graphics, references, redirects, etc, but is limited to the "Readable prose" only. On this, does anyone know a simple way of measuring ONLY the readable prose? Smatprt (talk) 21:31, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Select the body text in the web browser window and copy and paste it into a text editor. My text editor happens to give me some document statistics directly, but you could also just save the text to a temporary file and then look at the file size (make sure you look at actual size and not size rounded to multiples of the filesystem block size). The current article is 61.384 characters (including punctuation and citation markers etc.), which, at one byte per character, means the article is just about at the 60KB mark.

The size suggests it's a good idea to look at whether it should be split, or possibly just trimmed a bit, but I certainly wouldn't consider this alone a throbbing red sign screaming that the article must be split. I'd recommend starting with looking for stuff to trim first (remember, it's an encyclopedia; the amount of detail should be limited!) and then asess whether splitting is still necessary and possible afterwards. --Xover (talk) 15:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

• Sorry i confused you re "limit" (my word) vs. "rule" (which is inapplicable); perhaps i should have said "something like "exceed" rather than "violate". This is an absolutely inflexible technical limitation; the effect of exceeding 32K is, as i implied, that some editors cannot perform some appropriate edits on the article.
  --Jerzy•t 18:26, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
  

I think perhaps the current updated version of WP:LENGTH#Technical_issues would be pertinent here. --Xover (talk) 19:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Cheers. Smatprt (talk) 21:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Lead section

I edited again bcz of the sore-thumb intentional Dab lk in the HatNote, and found some other hopefully small issues:

1. The final dependent clause of the lead sent includes

   ... attributed to ...

   while that of the last sent of the lead 'graph has

   ... to whom authorship is generally credited ...

   but i think NPoV calls for "generally" in both places. I'd have done the edit but for the fear that the missing word was not just an oversight.

2. "While mainstream scholars reject ..." has to be way too strong:
   1. We don't throw in tautologies, so that's not a restatement of "the mainstream of Shakespeare scholarship is distinguished by the exclusion of those who don't reject ..."
   2. While it's reasonable to expect "mainstream scholars" to mean "mainstream English literature scholars" or words to that effect, i don't find it reasonable to mean "academic Shakespeare specialists".
   3. Unless that kind of restriction is explicit, i just don't find such a blanket rejection conceivably verifiable, or remotely plausible: perhaps no one can take the cognitive dissonance of hiding anti-Stratfordian views while seeking tenure as a Shakespearist, but surely there are closet anti-Stratfordians in other literary specialties.

   While i don't want to try to word it, isn't there somewhere a reliable source that says (without weasel words) something more plausible, along the lines of "mainstream literary scholars never publicly admit to doubting that ..."?

3. Following the EB ref got me to (in relevant part)

   The debate, however, remained lively in the late 20th century.

   which is neutral or contrary to

   ... popular interest in the debate continues to grow ...

   so i've added a fact tag just for the one clause. I didn't pay for EB, but it appears they now only make it frustrating not to pay, rather than actually limiting you to a teaser. Even if i'm mistaken in thinking the 4 'graphs & other readings i saw are all of it, IMO another source -- a non-confusing one -- should be a high priority.

--Jerzy•t 22:10, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Version 0.7 nomination

This article has been nominated for Version 0.7 of the offline Wikipedia release but did not meet the standards for importance. It has been put on Wikipedia:Release_Version_Nominations/Held_nominations for further review. Please see that page for details.

I've reluctantly decided to put this article on hold. I think it's a nice article in many ways, but it does seem to be heavily pro-Oxfordian. The other aspect is that it scores very poorly on all of our importance ratings. We could forgive the latter if the article were and FA, because it provides a nice twist on a really major article (Shakespeare), but on balance I think we should hold it for 0.7. Walkerma (talk) 02:40, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

You said: "but it does seem to be heavily pro-Oxfordian." Not sure what you were expecting in an article called Oxfordian theory. Plus, the word THEORY is in the title itself, stating upfront the hypothetical nature of the article. Softlavender (talk) 08:19, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The name of the man from Stratford-upon-Avon?

Since, as far as I understand it, the man from Stratford-upon-Avon's name was not — nor did he call himself — "William Shakespeare," and since his name was instead Will Shaksper (or perhaps occasionally Shaxsper/Shagsper/Shakspere), why are we calling him "William Shakespeare"? It seems that both the first and the last name are not accurate. Softlavender (talk) 09:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

________

From the authorship article:

"Shakspere" vs. "Shakespeare"

There was no standardised spelling in Elizabethan England, and throughout his lifetime Shakespeare of Stratford's name was spelled in many different ways, including "Shakespeare". Anti-Stratfordians conventionally refer to the man from Stratford as "Shakspere" (the name recorded at his baptism) or "Shaksper" to distinguish him from the author "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" (the spellings that appear on the publications), who they claim has a different identity. They point out that most references to the man from Stratford in legal documents usually spell the first syllable of his name with only four letters, "Shak-" or sometimes "Shag-" or "Shax-", whereas the dramatist's name is consistently rendered with a long "a" as in "Shake". Stratfordians reject this convention, believing it implies that the Stratford man spelled his name differently from the name appearing on the publications. Because the "Shakspere" convention is controversial, this article uses the name "Shakespeare" throughout. Smatprt (talk) 16:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

______________

I don't see any non-partisan, unbiased, viewable confirmation in those citations. The first citation is unclickable, and the second is quite partisan and also not backed up by anything. Here's another link (also partisan, but in an Anti-Stratfordian slant) that details the known verifiable signatures of the Stratford man:

Shakespeare’s signatures: Shaksper’s six authentic signatures are subscribed to the following documents:

• His deposition in a lawsuit brought by Stephen Bellott against his father-in-law Christopher Montjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker, of Silver-street, near Wood-street in the city of London, with whom Shaksper lodged about the year 1604; dated May 11, 1612. (Discovered by Dr. C. W. Wallace in the Public Record Office).
• Conveyance of a house in Blackfriars, London, purchased by Shaksper March 10, 1613. (Now in the Guildhall Library).
• Mortgage-deed of the same property; March 11, 1613. (Now in the British Museum).
• 5. 6. Shaksper’s Will & Testament, written on three sheets of paper, with his signature at the foot of each one; executed March 25, 1616. (Now in Somerset House).

The six signatures, one of them prefaced by the words “By me”, present a meagre total of fourteen words. The actual signatures are to be read thus:

• Willm Shakp
• William Shaksper
• Wm Shakspe
• William Shakspere
• Willm Shakspere
• By me William Shakspeare

That's all from this link I came across: [2] (Plus, my understanding is that the surname on the will [the last of the six] is not even in the man's hand, but in someone else's.) It would be very nice to have some unbiased, non-partisan, disinterested scholarship that explored this subject — that is, the Stratford man's actual name and signature before the alleged pseudonym came into being (so that the pseudonym's influence is avoided). I really don't know why everyon, we has to take sides when researching. I mean, facts are facts. Even the assertion that name spellings were fluid [that may have been the case when spelling someone else's name, but people spelled their own names consistently] and that "Shak" could be and was pronounced "Shake" consistently comes only from one stand-point and not the other, it seems. Whatever happened to pure research, uninfluenced by viewpoints? *sigh* Softlavender (talk) 10:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of respect, we should try to call the man by the name he used himself. Taking away what appear to be abbreviations, both of his first and last names, that gives us "William Shakspere". He used this last name twice in six (maybe just five justifiable) signatures; the other forms appearing to be a short form. I'd have to question the last signature, given what's been said about it being in a different hand. He never apparently called himself "Shakespeare", which we do now; certainly not "Shake-speare" which is the way the name originally appears when attached to the works in question.Artaxerxes (talk) 17:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

"Shakespeare" was the most common published version, preferred for typesetting reasons. Throughout history different versions of the spelling have been used. It is very common for Victorian authors to spell the name 'Shakespere'; and 'Shakspere' was also used well into the twentieth century. All are referring to both the author and the man. It is not true that "name originally appears when attached to the works in question" in a hypenated form. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. The definitive spelling now used is the one that is adopted in the First Folio, which is the same as the first published version [3]. Paul B (talk) 17:33, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

We seem to be dealing with (at least) three major name issues: 1) "Shake-speare", a hyphenated version which appears with original manuscripts, in a form that tended to connote a pen-name in that time. That it was not always used does not take away the importance of its use in this context; 2) what the man to whom the works of "Shakespeare" are regularly attributed called himself (never "Shakespeare", but always some variant). To say people spelled their names in a mix of ways in those days does not directly address the fact that he never took the name (actual spelling) we now apply to him; and, 3) "Shakespeare", the name that has been settled on as applying to the author(s) of the works in question. Naming issues as complex (and confusing) as these would seem to require a dedicated section to help clarify things, which I do not see anywhere in this article. Snatches here-and-there, perhaps, but no properly-organized, dedicated section.Artaxerxes (talk) 17:57, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what "original manuscripts" used "Shake-speare"? There are no original manuscripts apart from the signed documents. I guess you refer to the fact that some printed editions use a hyphen. The claim that a hyphen signified a pseudonym is simply false. Many real names were published with hyphens, and as I have already said, it was published without a hyphen in the First Folio and in the narrative poems, which latter are the only publications that were certainly supervised by the author himself, so that is his preferred published version of the name (even if it was only preferred for typesetting reasons). If we were to "respect" an author's handwritten spelling of a names we would call Marlowe "Marley". Anne Hathaway's tomb calls her the "wife of William Shakespeare", but his own tomb right next to it has "Shakspeare". These are just unimportant variations, unless you believe that Anne was married to the Earl of Oxford! There is plenty of evidence that the man from Stratford's name was regularly spelled both ways, but to use a specifically different spelling would be to implicitly endorse Oxfordian claims. Paul B (talk) 18:12, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction on "manuscripts". I knew this was a dangerous term to use, I just didn't know the better one to apply in the moment (just putting it in quotes might have helped). Your further comments only further support the need for a section devoted to the issues of applied names in this case. This would be a good place for you to make your above arguments, properly attributed. But, in an encyclopedic article dedicated to chasing down the facts in a case of literary history (and mystery for many), an explanation at least is needed to explain why historians, educators, publishers, researchers, etc. would go from a man's taken name of "Shakspere" to "Shakespeare" (hyphen removed)—especially when the latter term comes separately as an attribution to the greatest body of literature in the English language. To do so skips over important factual details necessary for establishing, or controverting, theories of attribution. More importantly to the unconvinced, it might appear to be a too-convenient closing of the literary history/mystery loop: what starts out as a pen-name for a hidden author, gets attributed later to a similar-sounding name on a real person, ends up finally conflated as the same thing. This might appear to arise from a biased view of the facts, there being no other logical way to go from "Shakspere" to "Shakespeare".Artaxerxes (talk) 19:09, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

If there is a "mystery" of why authors and publishers go from "Shakspere" to "Shakespeare" - and other variations, it is not a mystery of the kind that Oxfordians imagine. It's a question of why certain spellings are preferred at one time or another by particular writers in the Victorian period or the early 20th century. I'm afraid I have no answer to that question. That's about Victorian culture, not about "authorship" as such. If you want a clear account of the variations in spelling during his own lifetime read this page [4]. It also explains that there is no evidence that hyphenation is linked to pseudonyms. Indeed, if it were, why was it not adopted in most publications? As for whether there should be a discussion of spelling here, that's debatable. These arguments were first put forward by Baconians. They are not specific to Oxfordian theory. If they should go anywhere it should be on the main Shakespeare authorship question page, but since that was recently a featured article, its unlikely to make significant changes in the short term. Paul B (talk) 19:53, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

This is not so much a matter of "Oxfordian" imagination, or any particular group's. This is a matter of providing an encyclopedic treatment of an issue in as fair and even-handed a manner as possible, carefully presenting the facts of the case without closing off discussion in one direction or another. Then, whoever it may be who encounters this article, and considers the facts therein contained, may come to his own conclusions—or set off on new avenues of exploration as a result. The deflection of critical issues related to an author's name to "Victorian culture" is an interesting one, same as for saying this is one group's interest over another's. (I will say that I myself have seen published books of "Shakespeare's" works in used bookstores or in libraries attributed to "Shakspere" making me wonder what has happened since and why.) The deflection that the discussion of an author's real name and what has been attributed to him should have gone on another page and maybe won't yet (for other reasons) fails to impress, also. "What's in a name?" as the Bard himself might ask. In this case perhaps everything. The numerous related issues need to be put forth directly, likely as the very first section, as without such a carefully presented discussion only confusion can follow. That you yourself "have no answer to" the question of how we went from "Shakspere" to "Shakespeare" has not much bearing on the discussion. The point is that without a logical explanation for making this jump, it leaves open the very real possibility that it was as I have outlined: pen-name made real by forcing it on to somebody who never called himself that for the purpose of closing off the discussion. (Sending me to an anti-Oxfordian "discussion" without telling me that's what it was does not strengthen your case much.) Whether you or others don't believe hyphens connote pen-names isn't so important: enough people think they might. For me it's more interesting that "Shake-speare" or "Shakespeare" is a sentence made up of a verb and noun (not having investigated how they might have spelled the latter then). Much has been made of how this might related to an author's identity; a discussion which certainly needs to be alluded to here. The injection of a hyphen into a man's name is even more strange to me than changing the spelling. What could be the reason for going to all that trouble? It certainly seems to signify something, even if only to emphasis the meaning of the sentence contained in the name.Artaxerxes (talk) 21:26, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There is in fact a short treatment of the issue at the main SAQ page. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

If anyone could get motivated, I think it would be worth having an article on the different styles of presentation of the name. Such an article might only briefly mention the authorship issue—its focus should be on the many variations outlined by Paul above with some explanations (I'm assuming appropriate sources would be available). The variations are perplexing to the modern mind, and a brief account would be interesting. Johnuniq (talk) 01:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

"This is not so much a matter of "Oxfordian" imagination, or any particular group's". What an odd thing to say. In case you haven't noticed, this is the page for discussing the content of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship page. So of course when we discuss what should be on this page it is about that particular group's theories. I get the impression from what you say that you didn't quite understand what I was saying about Victorian culture. What I am saying is that it is very common at that time to spell the name of the author "Shakespear", "Shakspeare" or other variations. This continues into the early 20th century until "Shakespeare" is established as the definitive spelling. I don't know why, say, Coventry Patmore (or his editor) prefers to use the spelling "Shakspere" [5], but it has nothing to do with authorship debates. What I have "no explanation for" is why these variations become popular at certain points in history. It pre-dates the Victorians of course, Alexander Pope spells the name "Shakespear" in his edition, while his rival Lewis Theobald spelled it "Shakespeare" [6]. The explanation of why Shakespeare's name was spelled several different ways in his own day is a great deal easier. There were no rigid rules of spelling. It's not unique to him at all. It's typical of the period. Many authors' names appear in documents and in print in multiple spellings. All this is clearly discussed in the web page I linked to. Shapiro's book Contested Will gives an added reason why an 'e' or hyphen is more common in printed versions (the hyphen is pretty rare). It has to do with stabilising typset text. There is no mystery here. Johnuniq is right. It may be possible to have a page on this general issue if there are sources, though I strongly suspect it may be an under-researched area. The SAQ use of the variations could be a section on that page, which we could link to from here and from other articles. Paul B (talk) 09:41, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've started a page on Spelling of Shakespeare's name. Paul B (talk) 11:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Oxford's motive

Sorry, but I don't get it. Why would anyone be committed to redating Shakespeare plays to prove the point that Oxford was still alive to write them? Surely, it should be the other way round. The scholarship shows that he was dead when many of them were conceived. Why isn't that good enough? Why would he want to be concealed when he's already mentioned in the Arte of English Poetry (1589) as the "best for comedy among us"? Why do the supposed allusions to Oxford in the plays imply that he wrote them? Why should they necessarily be autobiographical? What about allusions to other contemporary figures in the plays (e.g. Marlowe and the "great reckoning in a little room") - does that mean they wrote the play it appears in? Seems to me evidence is ignored that doesn't fit while only considering the bits that do fit - selective interpretation. (Isnotwen (talk) 23:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC))

Sorry, but the "scholarship" shows no such thing. There has been no "necessary source" identified that is post-1604. Lots of assumptions, presumptions, maybes, possiblys - but no concrete proof one way or another. Why be concealed? Perhaps you might read Ogburn or Anderson, as they have laid out many reasons. Otherwise you might be accused of selective interpretation yourself.Smatprt (talk) 06:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

That can easily be said of Oxford: "Lots of assumptions, presumptions, maybes, possiblys - but no concrete proof one way or another". At least Mr Shakespeare was in a company that acted the plays. There's no proof that Oxford went anywhere near one. Surely Anderson cannot be classed as a scholarly source! It's a very poor book full of tenuous connections and I think that only someone who's prejudiced in favor of Oxford would bother completing it. So Meres refers to Oxford and Shakespeare in the same list: that's hardly concealment on Oxford's part! Here are the million dollar questions: What would it take for an Oxfordian to reject Oxford as Shakespeare? What is the test against which, if Oxford failed, an Oxfordian would say "it's not him"? Or is it just a religion? (Isnotwen (talk) 20:27, 21 December 2008 (UTC))

I'm sorry but your statements betray a lack of information about Oxford. When you say there is "no proof Oxford went anywhere near one (an acting company), you are obviously unaware that Oxford was the patron of several adult acting companies, at least one children's company, held the lease on the Blackfriar's theatre, and personally interceded with Queen Elizabeth on behalf of an acting company that like to play at the"Bores Head". The reference on this, by the way, not Anderson, but Chambers! Furthermore, as a youth growing up in Castle Edingham, he would have grown up in a residence occupied regularly by the acting company patronized by his father, as well as the numerous touring groups that entertained at a number of well documented dinners and celebrations. Your statement that there is no "concrete proof" about Oxford being Shakespeare is stating the obvious. If there were, we wouldn't have much of an "authorship question" would we? I'm afraid, given your lack of neutrality on this issue, your million dollar questions are simply thinly veiled attacks on Oxfordians in general, instead of a well-reasoned response to the argument at hand. This really isn't helpful on these pages. Smatprt (talk) 05:56, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I simply meant by "no proof that Oxford went anywhere near one" that there is no direct connection of Oxford to any Shakespeare play. It might have been more appropriate to ask for clarification first. Thank you. (Please see your Talk page) Isnotwen (talk) 17:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

---

Not to mention that Lyly and Munday worked for Oxford. Not sure if they have a direct connection to a Shakespeare play. 69.64.235.42 (talk) 08:42, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The evidence

Am I missing something here? The article states "The case for Oxford's authorship ... is based on abundant similarities between Oxford's biography and events in Shakespeare's plays". Surely, that's not evidence? It's true that some writers such as Dickens put themselves in their novels, for example, Pip in Great Expectations. But other writers just characterize people they know. From Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby Belch torments the puritanical Malvolio with unruly behavior, there's an argument that Sir Toby Belch represents Sir Thomas Posthumus Hoby who was embroiled in a similar incident involving puritans. This would not pass for evidence that Hoby wrote Twelfth Night. Regarding Measure for Measure, the "bed-trick" was a common device in plays and many people worked to save relatives from death. The article gives undue weight to this evidence by not mentioning the number of other plays that also used these tricks. The whole point of introducing Claudio's fornication was for the unpleasant Angelo to use an unjust law on him which punished it with death. The moral is forgiveness acted out by Duke Vincentio and to encourage overlooking cruel laws. The play makes no issue of changing murder to seduction. If you want this theory taken seriously then the evidence needs to be better. Can I suggest that someone runs through this article to tighten up on the arguments? I could do it but time is presently scarce. Torricelli01 (talk) 18:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Close to GA

This article is pretty well cited and close to GA. I think it ought to be put up for GA status once everything is cited and minor issues are taken care of. I would perceive promotion to GA or FA as a victory of sorts for the Shakespeare project. Wrad (talk) 19:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll note that I have serious reservations about all the authorship related articles—reservations that are unrelated as such to my opinion about the authorship question itself—that would make me very hesitant to support any of them for FA; but even in that light a cursory scan of this article suggests it's at least close to GA level. If those of you who have worked on this article feel it's ready I'd say go for it, and I'll try to chip in where I can (which probably won't be much). On a related note, if anyone would like to discuss the possibility of a drive to improve the various authorship related articles to FA level I have, as mentioned, some thoughts there that I've been meaning to bring up at an auspicious time (but, you know, Real Soon Now™ is a moving target). --Xover (talk) 19:35, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, first things first. GA before FA. Putting it up for a peer review on the way to FA would draw in a lot of views from experienced editors and give us a good idea of where to go. Shakespearean authorship question is also pretty close to GA. Wrad (talk) 19:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Permission to abbreviate the repeated citations?

Since three or four of the books cited, in the same editions, are repeated numerous times, I'd like to abbreviate their subsequent listings so that what is cited is only the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page number(s). As such:

Anderson (2005), p. 132.
Ogburn (1984), p. 52.
Sobran (1997), p. 89.

Looney is more difficult since various editions have been used for citation; if we could get them all from the 1920 edition it would work for Looney as well (was the book expanded with more info in the later editions?).

Anyway, what this would accomplish is: (A) cut down a little bit on the byte-size of the article, and (B) force readers to look at the first iteration of the citation, which will be linked to its GoogleBooks/Amazon listing or equivalent so that the reader can verify the information (if I haven't linked it yet it, I'm going to) and will have the full title, author, publisher, and date.

What say you? It's easy for me to do and I'd like to do it if it's agreeable. Softlavender (talk) 07:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Fine with me.Smatprt (talk) 18:48, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Mersea theory

Why no mention of the Mersea theory? Granted, it's on the non-credible side, but it could explain some things, including later dates and certain later information in the plays, and the lack of will, funeral, and so forth. I haven't read too much on it but as I recall what I've read bears considering, and I think it possibly bears at least a mention, as controversial as it is, especially if the Prince Tudor theory is being covered in depth. Heck, even one or two sentences could cover it, with a citation for further reading. Softlavender (talk) 13:48, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Pretty far-fetched, imho. I suppose a line within the Prince Tudor theory would be the only place it might fit, but I think it ranks up there with Bacon never dying but "ascending to a higher state". Or the moon landing being faked... Wow. (Also, have there been any serious reviews or substantiation of any part of it, or is it still a one-author theory? Smatprt (talk) 18:57, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You're right, belongs in the PT article, not here. I don't know much about it except I ran across it once on the Internet and it stuck in my head. I wasn't even aware of who originated it but I see now it is Streitz, and no one has taken him up on that. There's no cause for such a theory anyway except to maintain that Oxford wrote the King James Bible, which I understand was in fact written by a team of 47 scholars assembled by James. Softlavender (talk)

What do you mean by the "Mersea theory"? Are you referring to the theory that Mersea Island, Essex, being the closest large island to the Earl of Oxford's residence at Castle Hedingham, was the real venue described as "Propsero's Island" in The Tempest (see "The Oxford Code" at www.freewebs.com/caliban5/)? Colcestrian (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Colcestrian: I find not the words Prospero or island on that website. I'm not sure how it is relevant to this discussion. 69.64.235.42 (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Softlavender above wrote on "The Mersea Theory". I'm just asking what is meant by that? Colcestrian (talk) 21:56, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me; I haven't been to this page in a while. See Prince Tudor theory. It's a highly deprecated fringe theory that's an offshoot of the already fringe PT theory. Softlavender (talk) 06:01, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Stratfordian objection

I poste the following, but someone deleted it: "The primary objection to Oxfordian theory is that there is no direct documentary evidence connecting Oxford to the plays and poems published under the name 'William Shakespeare,' nor any contemporary objection to the attribution of the plays and poems to the Stratford actor. The coincidences cited by Oxfordians are rejected as no more convincing that the coincidences that appear to the connect the writings to Bacon, to Marlowe or to the other authorial candidates."

The line that "there is no direct documentary evidence..." comes from an earlier paragraph in the article itself. The major objection to this theory is not the 1604 date. The major objection among mainstream scholars is that they don't think the Oxfordians have presented the minimal documentary evidence that would marit taking the theory seriously. That's why mainstream scholars regard Oxfordians as cranks rather than as serious scholars with a dissenting point of view. If the 1604 date were the major sticking point, you would see an engagement with the theory, because everyone knows dating the plays is very tricky.

I think my paragraph should be put back in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.63.169.191 (talk) 04:45, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

No. (1) You haven't sourced/referenced it. (2) The Stratfordian case and objections are presented in specific detail in the article in various sections. (3) Oxfordian scholarship cannot be considered 'minimal' at this point because it comprises dozens of volumes' worth of well-documented correspondences between the Shakespeare works and Oxford's known life, biography, works, and nature. Softlavender (talk) 05:39, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Notable Anti-Stratfordians

This might be more germane to the article if it only included notables who favoured Oxford. I'm not sure that mere notability should convey admittance to the Oxford page. To me, if the section might be more appropriate in the Shakespeare_authorship article. 69.64.235.42 (talk) 11:23, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it’s appropriate on both pages, being that the standard Stratfordian counter-argument in either location is to launch ad hominem attacks on the "looney" theory that Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the plays. Listing notable anti-Stratfordians, some of who did not have the chance to be Oxfordians, simply makes the point that this theory doesn't deserve off-hand contempt. Rick 2.0 (talk) 20:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Rick on this. Smatprt (talk) 20:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Article length

While this has been discussed before, it's definielty time to split the article into separate articles, due to length concerns. As it stand now, it's well past the 60KB suggested limit as described at WP:SIZERULE. The obvious section to split out would be the "parallels with the plays" section, so I have created a new article at Oxfordian theory: Parallels with Shakespeare's plays and added a link from this article. I think this is a good thing as now we can expand the new article with a section on every play. Eva Turner Clark's book, Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare's Plays is an excellent source for much of this material, as she examines every play from a topical/Oxfordian point of view and much of her work has been expanded on by Ogburn and Anderson. Smatprt (talk) 20:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

That was undoubtedly a necessity. My concern is that in the main article as it currently stands, the plays and their parallels to Oxford's life seem rather minimal — an afterthought of very little consequence. Which does not match up with the extensive scholarship which has revealed extensive parallels between Oxford's life and every Shakespeare play (I don't think there's a single play that does not have Oxfordian parallels). I don't think the article should imply that the sonnets have the greater parallels. Therefore, is there any way to beef up the summary of play parallels as it now stands? I added one sentence, but I think a little more emphasis than that is due. Softlavender (talk) 05:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

For the record, in case this comes up again, the apparent "size" of the article is misleading. A good 1/3 of the article is the Footnotes, the External Links, the Categories, and the Navbox. Even though the article as it now stands (post-split) is apparently 85 KB, the text of the article is actually less than 60 KB. So if someone in the future thinks the article has outgrown recommended sizes in WP:SIZERULE, please take the time to copy and paste the readable prose body-text of the article (not in its markup format) into a subpage on your userpage, and see what the actual size of the article is, sans Footnotes, ELs, and markup text. Softlavender (talk) 15:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

A Majority of Mainstream Scholars

The second sentence of the article doesn't seem to me to make sense: "While a majority of mainstream scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship..." If we've defined "mainstream scholars" as those scholars who are Stratfordians, then we are saying there is a minority of Stratforidans who don't believe in Stratfordianism. Don't all Stratfordians believe in Stratfordianism by definition? I'd suggest changing the sentence to "While a majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates.... or possibly "While most scholars reject all alternative candidates...." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.47.79.148 (talk) 04:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The flaw in your reasoning is the fact that there are quite a few academics who have doubts about the Stratfordian authorship. We haven't defined "mainstream scholars" as "those scholars who are Stratfordians". We've merely stated that the standard view is often referred to as mainstream. Softlavender (talk)

1604

I changed the subheading "The 1604 problem" to "The 1604 issue", for neutrality. It's not a "problem" any more than 1616 (the date of Will Shaksper's death) is a "problem". Both men died long before the 1623 First Folio. So 1604 is simply a point of discussion/ debate /contention -- it's not a problem to Oxfordians (as it's been as adequately explained as anything else) but it's a focus of debate for Stratfordians. Another alternative word for the subheading could be "question". Softlavender (talk) 04:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

New section

I'm going to suggest that the new section on The First Folio would be better integrated into another section, such as "The 1604 issue" or "Oxfordian responses." The reason being that its main point of evidence is not the First Folio, but the 1609 publication of the Sonnets. Also, since both men were dead well before 1623, the point is not proven either by the current-day scholar or the quoted preamble to the Folio or even the Bellot-Mountjoy suit whether either man ever retired or not. Nor does it preclude an author overseeing his work during retirement, wherever that might be. I think the final sentence of the section is therefore Original Research at worst (unless a quote or citation supports it), conjecture at best. Forgive me for pointing all this up, but I feel things need to be airtight (especially in this extremely long, rambling article), and also cited. Softlavender (talk) 02:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree - the premise (retirement) just isn't proven by the quotation. Addition should be removed. Also, as far as I am aware, Mr. Cossolotto is not a recognized scholar and The Oxfordian is not an independent publication, nor a peer-reviewed journal, so its use as a ref is questionable. Smatprt (talk) 08:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Doge dodging debate

The oxfordian debate is easy to solve. Whoever wrote the famous bardly works, he was totally in picture about Venice. He had been there, period.

The City of Venice has vast amounts of state and private archives preserved intact, spanning from the first crusade to present day. They were a paper-mill centre for much of the medieval and early modern age and put a good portion of their produce to use themselves. It appears only resolve is needed to dig through such mountains of dusty old papers and find the treasure.

If Edward de Vere stayed in Venice for almost a year as claimed, there must be ample documentation about every single movement of his. The Serenissima Republic was paranoid about all visiting foreigners, the dreaded Council of Ten had many spies just to shadow aliens day and night and kept detailed dossiers on them.

Where is the San Marco Secret Service dossier on EdV? If it was found, the content would probably show that the Merchant, Othello and Romeo and Juliet are (partly) autobiographical, thus solving the Shakes-peare debate once and for all. 87.97.102.134 (talk) 21:38, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

"Whoever wrote the famous bardly works, he was totally in picture about Venice. He had been there, period." Or talked to a sailor who had been there. Or etc. Kaiguy (talk) 07:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Interest/popular interest

Niederkorn is already a poor source, but I won't object to that. It's the NYTs, several years ago, before academics started to protest at his singular misrepresentation of the facts. But of several thousand universities, if only one or two has a course, and only a handful of qualified scholars retain an interest in the possible truth of these shopworn theories, it is inappropriate to suggest that academic interest is increasing, unless you have a reputable academic source that states this. Perhaps there is one, from the usual suspects. Use it.Nishidani (talk) 10:58, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

While a large majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship, there is increased popular interest in various authorship theories.

That sentence is sourced to Niederkorn who (a) says vast majority (2) he doesn't say, as the context on our page insinuates, that there is 'increased (academic) interest' in various authorship theories. It is well-known that radio, the net, and television excite and sustain a rise in popular interest. That is documented. Academia looks at the question only because a rising number of scholars encounter young people in their classes who believe this stuff, and therefore they address it more frequently to relieve them of their delusion. That doesn't signify there ia increased academic interest in the theories. Only probably, a marginal rise, in academic concerns to maintain standards against the tide of popular opinion.Nishidani (talk) 11:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I've redrafted the lead. Notes can follow. There is absolutely no evidence de Vere was a 'concealed poet' according to his contemporaries. That is a construction placed on some comments, drawn from Baconian theory.Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Why I reverted you

Your edit summary was incorrect, and you did not deign to address the points raised on the talk page, where I explained what I was doing, nor to justify your blanket revert. What did you, therefore, was POV blanket expunging of a series of edits under the pretext you were removing POV, while simply restoring your own preferred, poorly sourced version, which is full of WP:OR.

• The use of the Shakespeare fellowship website for Niederkorn’s article, which was published in the NYTs, and for which a direct NYTs link was available, which I provided, is improper. The NYT is RS, the Shakespearefellowship.org is not. By restoring the SF website source, you look like you are using sourcing to draw readers to that site, which is unreliable.
• The NYTs gives as the publication date 2002. The Shakespearefellowship reposting gives the date as 2001, perhaps they are right, and the original newspaper source is wrong, but until you prove this, you cannot restore a text which appears to have the date wrong.
• ‘The acclaim of Oxford’s contemporaries’ is puffing. There is flattery in a few stray remarks, but ‘acclaim of Oxford’s contemporaries’ suggests a widespread Elizabethan appreciation of his genius. Which, however, is not sourced. It is WP:OR as is much of the text
• ‘concealed poet’. There is no contemporary source for the notion that Oxford had a reputation as a concealed poet, a term taken from Baconian sources and misapplied.
• Nelson says he did not have an ‘extensive education’. Where are his ‘academic achievements’? Where are his ‘cultural achievements’. There is no sourcing for this and until you provide it, it remains an egregious WP:OR violation.
• You restore the text. For an Oxfordian discussion of this see the wiki references in the entry on Francis Meres.. I checked. There is no such entry.

Don't be so coy. Tom had just removed the Meres section and you know it. I restored it and will make it part of the mediation.Smatprt (talk) 17:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• You removed a large part of text added to ‘Further objections’, which is point by point impeccably sourced to ranking work on de Vere by leading scholars. Nishidani (talk) 16:00, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I am blanket reverting you because you are a POV warrior. I restored the bibliography. Your notes above I do not agree with and will not even answer. Its not for you to say what is RS,or to accuse me of using references to draw people to a cite - which is a ridiculous (and paranoid) assertion. You call things flattery, but that is OR and your interpretation. We have contemporary statements, period. They can be used, period. Nelson is a muckraker (Tom's term) and is not a neutral biographer in any way - and you know it. Beyond these responses, I am not going to engage with you, as you have basically turned into a vandal in my eyes. I've had it. Period. I think its time to go to ArbCom. What you and Tom are doing either has to be officially sanctioned or stopped. Sorry, but it's gone too far. Smatprt (talk) 17:48, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Merger

On the 16 March a consensus was formed to merge this article to Shakespeare authorship question why has this not been done? I will blank the article and turn it into a redirect, anyone wishing to move content can do so from the article history mark nutley (talk) 21:59, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me, that is not what I call a "merger". It you want you merge the articles then by all means do so, but don't just blank one and airily leave it to others to do the real work of merging the content. Groomtech (talk) 06:13, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

It already had been in a sandbox, see target article mark (talk) 08:39, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Is this a joke? You've deleted 12,617 words and claim the content has been merged into another article, where a total of 355 words have been written on it (including the link "Main article: Oxfordian theory") backstage by two editors who's sole purpose in life seems to be to ridicule the authorship question. Even if you agree with them that authorship doubt is a fringe job akin to holocaust denial, wp:fringe theories guides us that "sufficiently notable" theories warrant a dedicated article. The number of books, high profile supporters, dissertations, papers, websites, and even a forthcoming (probably silly) movie should make the Oxfordian theory fit that bill. Afasmit (talk) 11:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I would appreciate you pointing out anything in the SAQ article that violates WP:NPOV. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:07, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

No it`s not a joke, this was set to merge over 7 months ago and nothing has been done. If the articles editors will not follow the consensus in mergeing the only option is to redirect. The people in this dispute have had enough time to get this done and also had the chance to work on the article i just moved into the target one, what exactly is your issue here? It is easy enough for people to get what they want from the edit history right mark (talk) 13:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I would like to say that this article as it is written is terribly written and organised and its references and POV violate almost every Wikipedia policy. If it is to be merged into the SAQ article, it would have to be rewritten. I think we need to step back and determine a course of action, possibly involving rewriting the stand-alone SAQ candidate articles to bring them up to Wikipedia standards, maybe through competing sandboxes much the same way we did the main SAQ article. In fact, that method might be a good way for Wikipedia to solve some of its most contentious problems regarding controversial articles. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:13, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft2 This one which i moved to the main SAQ article is really well done. And i believe it also covers aspects of this article whic hwas the point of the excercise. 15:16, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

And this article has still not been merged? Why not? mark (talk) 08:35, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Unbalanced article

The article dedicates very little printing space to the italian aspect, probably the only aspect which matters! The author publishing under "W. S." signage knew about and wrote about some extremely obscure inland waterways in Northern Italy, whose boating use and even their very existance faded during modernity.

Only in recent years did scholars realize that "shakespearean" plays are actually correct with regards to renaissance era geography and hydrology. (Venetians did major canal and river alteration jobs even before the industrial age, so the landscape changed much every century).

This proves W. S. of Stratford is not the actual author of the bard's italian-themed plays, since the commoner man has never left Blighty and thus couldn't gain info about any such obscure detail.

On the other hand, only Oxenford has the right "italics" to be a viable authorship candidate. His travels and long stay in the Venetian Republic and neighbouring allies of Venice are very well documented and scandalous enough to argue that R&J is more like a "self-censored" autobiography, rather than fiction. He actually fled Italy after being accused of killing two polish noblemen in Verona, as well as violating choirboys (!) in Venice and openly patronizing professional adult whores.

All in all, the traditional Blighty-orinted way of bardian auhorship study is so stalled, so hopeless, the article better concentrate on the promising areas and that means study of OE's italian connections. Yet, this Wikipeadia article treats that part in a cursory manner! 87.97.98.167 (talk) 21:46, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup, because it amounts to nothing, and his plays are not "actually correct with regards to renaissance era geography and hydrology." Paul B (talk) 23:29, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Antagonistic viewpoint outdated, yet over-represented in the article!

This article currently emphasizes the antagonistic aspect of authorship question: Startfordian versus Oxfordian, in an almost gladiatoric opposition. However, current research trend is towards co-operatism, sometimes labelled the "Sancho" viewpoint, as Shakes-peare is often paralleled with Cervantes.

Article should emphasize that in case Earle Oxenford wrote the plays and sonnets, he must have greatly appreciated Shaksper of Stratford-upon-Avon as an aide, if he trusted all his literary creations on that commoner!

It is quite plausible they even had co-operation, with Shaksper, no matter how much semi-illiterate, using his acting experience to provide more down-to-earth stage conversations, as well as practical feedback on adopting dramatic and comedic themes onto a large stage, which is patroned by masses of commoneers. I.e. producing a fist-fight in a grave pit minutes apart from Hamlet monologizing is not something an aristocrat would do, but at least it keeps unrefined viewers awake for such a whole long play.

The similarities among the personalities of Shaksper and Oxenford are also investigated in modern alternative research, since Oxford was a very criminal-leaning figure and the recorded stories about Shaksper of Stratford are not innocent either (recurring tax fraud attempts and illegal hunting were both gallow-bound charges in that era). Two such misfits seem to fit together very well! This is what breaks the mold right now, not the crushing of poor Shaksper underfoot! 87.97.101.198 (talk) 21:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Very long intro

Why does it need a 6-paragraph intro? Must be longer than nearly every article in the english Wikipedia. Shall we put some of it the main article text? Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Moved the "Swan of Avon" para in the intro down to the Concealed Author section - "Swan of Avon" was not mentioned in the article text, so it cannot be summarised in the introduction, which is usually what the lede section is for. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:53, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Also not sure where the last Lede para, beginning "Authorship researcher Mark Anderson believes "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit" implied Shakespeare of Stratford was being given credit for the work of other writers...." belongs, but it clearly does not belong in the Lede - it is not a summary but a specific point. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Read the article Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit. Greene accuses Shakespeare of ripping off his mates's ideas in his early work. Of course this implies that Shakespeare was the same person who was the author, since if he knew that Shakespeare was a frontman then he couldn't be a plagiarist in the way that Greene means it - unless he meant the hidden author was a plagiarist, in which case the argument negates itself. However, the reference to the Groatsworth is common in these writers, not just Anderson. Paul B (talk) 13:03, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I realise this is an important argument, but it is not elucidated in the main article text, so it clearly it is not written up in summary style in the intro. Part of the detail needs to be in the main text with a summary in the intro text surely. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:09, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that this is not really an Oxfordian argument. It's a generic Shakespeare-wasn't-Shakespeare argument. Much of the difficulty with this page is that most Anti-Strats these days are Oxfordians and they tend to merge general Anti-Strat claims with specifically Oxfordian ones. I think this page should only summarise the generic anti-Strat position. Like the Derbyite, Marlovian and Baconian pages it should concentrate on the specific arguments for Oxford and the history of Oxfordian writings. Paul B (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not convinced that any of that last para really belongs in the article if it is to be narrowly an "Oxfordian theory" debate - this particularly applies to the second point in the para about the supposed alterations to the Stratford monument. The latter is not a specifically Oxfordian argument. Any other thoughts welcome, but at the moment, I'm tempted to simply delete the whole para or at least rewrite it into main article text where it alludes to Oxfordianism. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

You are right, that bit certainly does not belong in the lead, because it's not mentioned elsewhere in the article. Please go ahead and move/rewrite it into the main article. I am not sure about deleting entirely, because groatsworth is not mentioned in the main SAQ page, see discussion on Tom Reedys talk.

This article is a mess! For example the long confused bit in italics at the top needs deleting or drastic pruning. Poujeaux (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I suspect Paul is right and the basic problem is where the article strays outside the strictly Oxfordian into general anti-Stratford-man territory. On the italicised bit, that's outside general guidelines for intro sections anyway, so I suppose it should either be written into the intro text or article text. Will have a think about the best way. I suspect someone else may deal better than I with the groatsworth part as I am uncertain how to contextualise it in Oxfordian terms. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 18:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

If you wouldn't mind, any arguments you cull as generic anti-Stratfordian arguments please copy them and paste them here in case we want them later. Thanks. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and PS: You might want to look at the Baconian theory lede for ideas on writing this one. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The disclaimer at the beginning should also be moved down and rewritten for NPOV and imprecise diction. Here's a suggested edit:

In this article the term "Shakespeare" refers to the poet and playwright, and the term "Shakespeare of Stratford" refers to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon to whom the authorship is traditionally credited. Oxfordians such as Charlton Ogburn note that only six signatures survive, all from the last four years of the Stratford native’s life, none of which are spelled "Shakespeare." Ogburn and others use the most common spelling from the signatures, "Shakspere," to disambiguate the man from the author "William Shakespeare." Tom Reedy (talk) 14:27, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

The disclaimer should also be a note, attached to the first use of the word --Errant ^(chat!) 13:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

My recent edits

I've tagged the article for NPOV, borrowed quotes about the fringeness from the main SAQ article, chopped out the last subsection which gave undue WP:Weight to Oxfordian apologists over mainstream WP:Reliable sources and have copied over the fringe categories from the main article. All of these changes should make the article reflect policy more closely than the previous version did. There is still plenty of material that needs examination to ensure that the article evaluates sources according to their academic respectability and not their happening to support certain points of view.That disclaimer could do with excision too.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:47, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Biaised contributions

Hello, I've just found out this article, so I'm not particularly pro or anti-oxfordian theory. But seriously, this article is hugely biaised by places, so I edited :

"Oxford was praised as a dramatist and court poet of considerable merit, but none of his plays survives under his name. [citation needed]" -> How could you give a reference for this statement ? Do you want an academic paper saying "we've searched all the books of the library and found nothing" ? I can't understand how you can ask for a proof of the non-existence of something, this is a pure fallacy to me.

"However, since the 1920s, Oxford has been the most popular candidate among those who like to propose authors of the works other than Shakespeare himself." -> No seriously, did a 12 years-old write this ? "among those who like to propose authors other than Shakespeare himself" -> did this person think it's a matter of who-is-right ? Like these pro-oxfordian people are just messing things up for fun ? Seriously, this sentence was totally discrediting this whole article... --89.83.73.89 (talk) 18:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree the the use of the word "like" was infelicitous, bnut the citation request was reasonable. It merely asks for a source that says he wrote plays but none are known under his name. It's not asking anyone to prove the non-existence of anything (indeed it is faintly possible that they do exist in some archive as yet unidentified). It's simply asking that the statement be cited. Paul B (talk) 18:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Concerning the "popular" bit being discussed: I went to the online reference (EB) and found "strongest" instead of "popular", so changed it to match the reference. I then started reading the rest of the article and did a little clean-up - mostly attributing opinions to the various scholars being cited. Also noted that the history section is woefully inadequate and incomplete. I moved some awkwardly placed information from other parts of the article, but it's just a start. I'm not really sure if the non-oxfordian bits should be there at all. Thoughts? - Anton321 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anton321 (talk • contribs) 08:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Missing archive

I just noticed near the head of this page a red link to an archive. Was there one, and did someone delete it? Moonraker2 (talk) 23:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

In March 2010, the article was Oxfordian theory and it was moved to its current title, along with the talk page. However, the archive was not moved. I have just moved the archive, so it will now appear in the archive box. I did not bother to move two other subpages: Talk:Oxfordian theory/GA1, Talk:Oxfordian theory/GA2. Johnuniq (talk) 23:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks, that clears up the mystery, and we can now look at the archive. I don't know how anyone would know the subpages exist, but that doesn't seem to matter. Moonraker2 (talk) 01:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Multiple authorship

Derek Jacobi, I thought, believed that it may have been a group of authors that ended up under the "Shakespeare" name. I see something to that effect in a related Wikipedia article (maybe the one making parallels in the works), but nothing really laying it out. My search online leads me to an article with the rather circularly-argumented title of "Shakespeare did not write his own plays, claims Sir Derek Jacobi" by Mark Blunden (23 Apr 2009) in the London Evening Standard—with no discussion of his group theory. Anyone have anything more on this theory of multiple authors under the same pen-name? Artaxerxes (talk) 22:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I've moved your section to the bottom of the page. New sections go at the bottom, not the top. There are several versions of multiple authorship theories. The earliest versions of SAQ theory were both multiple authorship models. See Joseph C. Hart and Delia Bacon. The History of the Shakespeare authorship question page discuses them in more detail, as does the Derbyite theory page. Of course mainstream scholars also believe that Shakespeare worked with other writers. See Shakespeare's collaborations. Paul B (talk) 10:40, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Reinstating POV tag

The article still does not reflect WP:NPOV because it largely treats Stratfordians and Oxfordian opinions as equal in the to-and-fro debate when policy clearly states that the academic mainstream shoudl be given much more weight than fringe conspiracy theories.--Peter cohen (talk) 01:34, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

proposed move

I propose the article be moved to Oxfordian fringe theory of Shakespeare authorship. This is just to be clear that it is not an established "theory" in the sense of the theory of gravity or theory of relativity, and that the majority of scholars don't even regard it as a viable hypothesis. Gregcaletta (talk) 07:53, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't editorialise in titles. However, we should have uniformity across the four main alternate theories. At the moment we have Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship, Baconian theory and Marlovian theory (and various redirect pages). This article was originally just titled "Oxfordian theory" and was changed last year by Oxfordian editor user:Smatprt with the following edit summary: "moved Oxfordian theory to Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship: several reasons - to avoid any confusion with either Oxford University, or Oxfordian Stage (which is a geological time interval) , and to properly describe what the theory is ab[out]." I fancy there may have been other reasons too, but these are valid arguments. There are several other things that may be described as "Oxfordian". The problem also applies to "Baconian theory", since that term is sometimes used to refer to inductionism or to other aspects of Bacon's thought. The title of the Derby article was created by me as an exact mirror of this one. The problem with the current title is the prominence it gives to the the Oxford-Shakespeare link. I think that's why we should try to get consensus for a common title convention for all four. Paul B (talk) 13:03, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the four articles could all be merged into Shakespeare authorship question which should probably itself be moved to Shakespeare authorship fringe theories. There is no "question" according to most scholars. Gregcaletta (talk) 05:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think they should be merged. The general rules is that separate articles can be created when there is too much material for a single main article. I think that's the case here, but the danger is that this one becomes a POV fork, which is something to be avoided. BTW, there are more than four articles. There is also Prince Tudor theory, and of course articles on various "authorship scholars" such as J. Thomas Looney Charlton Ogburn, Delia Bacon etc. Paul B (talk) 19:20, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Removal of Footnote #87 material in 'Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship'

Recommend the removal of the above referenced sentence in the Oxfordian theory section and its #87 footnote, which informs that the Strachey letter was defended in print after Stritmatter and Kositsky had established the Strachey letter's unlikelihood as a documentary basis for 'The Tempest' and a Stratfordian scholar substantially agreed. The (textually unmentioned) author of the article, Tom Reedy, is not a credentialed professional in the field, the prevailing standard for reference. It indicates that the Wikipedia page permits unqualified authors to be quoted, if they are Stratfordian in point of view. This harms the credibility of the page.Zweigenbaum (talk) 08:03, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

"Tom Reedy, is not a credentialed professional in the field, the prevailing standard for reference." False. Reliability depends on the academic review process and publisher. See WP:RS. Your argument would only be valid if Tom's article were self-published. BTW, S and K did not "establish" any such thing. Their arguments have been rebutted by more than one writer. "This harms the credibility of the page." That's a joke. Most of the footnotes are to books that were self-published or published by people with no expertise whatever. By your argument, Sobran, Anderson, Ogburn et al should all go. Paul B (talk) 10:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that entire section misrepresents not only what my paper was about, but other arguments also. In addition, it teems with OR (such as the Pepys diary material) and POV issues.

As far as "credentialed professional in the field", what does that mean, exactly? The only person I know who has ever been called a professional Oxfordian is Roger Stritmatter. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:07, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

The Pepys reference is wrong. It was the 24th Dec. [7] The context makes ir clear he is referring to a new 'production' as we would now say. I've no idea what this "Elizabethan" marketing is supposed to refer to, even leaving aside the fact that this was Jacobean, not Elizabethan England. Paul B (talk) 20:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merge from Oxfordian Theory – Parallels with Shakespeare's Plays

Said article is a big old POV fork being used to promote the Oxfordian theory. It definitely shouldn't be its own article, but is there anything that's salvageable for this article? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:31, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree - it should be merged. Paul B (talk) 16:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it should be merged. It was created to reinsert a page that had been deleted because of Inherent violation of WP:NPOV: extreme undue weight given to a fringe theory. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Merge. It's been so lazily edited that even an obvious link to a major figure was neglected. Poorly written, badly organized, repetitive, and atrociously sourced. I've done a bit of rewriting to flense the blubber, but the whale is still stranded on a forlorn shore, humongous and rather on the nose.Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Wait, it was deleted before? How was it not G4'd? Anyway, given what seems to be agreement that there should be no article, the question is what, if anything, should be merged. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this article should be merged nor deleted. To address some of the points raised above, in some detail, with a view to gaining more knowledge of the questions at hand: 1. I don't see how the article is inherently POV in favor of the Oxfordian theory - indeed, it seems to quite strongly reject it. 2. Like most people, I don't really know anything about this question, although I have heard about it since I was a child. If I want to form my own well-educated judgment about it, I will need to have access to a lot of information. This remains true even if the theory is an extreme fringe theory - in order for me to be able to defend my mind against the theory, I need to be able to understand it - and understanding it, if it is false, will not lead me to believe that it is true. 3. As far as I can see, the article has a lot of information and lots of footnotes. It doesn't seem to be "atrociously sourced" but if it is, then the correct answer to that is to improve the sourcing, not to simply delete it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The article is not really a list of parallels; it is a list of imaginative cherry-picked details that Oxfordians use to support the idea that the plays are chunks of thinly-disguised biography written by Oxford because there is no evidence whatsoever that Oxford wrote Shakespeare. Most of the "parallels" require exaggerated or flat-out wrong perspectives of Oxford's biography (a classic exercise in confirmation bias), and similar such lists have been shown to be just as valid for other alternative candidates of the nobility, including King James and the 6th Earl of Derby; the only real difference is that Oxford is the most popular candidate at the moment.

The "lot of information" consists of Oxfordian talking points, and it's a bit like having a separate article detailing all the arguments of Moon landing conspiracy theories that gives only one side, in addition to the main article. While there is an article about the Examination of Apollo Moon photographs, each individual point is convincingly and scientifically rebutted, far from the token "While mainstream scholars assert that [this or that Oxfordian claim] is invalid ..." type of NPOV "disclaimer" to try to slide under the WP:UNDUE bar that peppers the "parallels" page.

In short, the article is meant to be a promotional source page for potential Oxfordian recruits. In order to inject some semblance of balance to the article, a list should be included of all the characters and events that don't match Oxford's life as reconstructed in the Oxfordian imagination, as well as a list of the many points of congruity with William Shakespeare's life that appear in the works. While I suppose that is possible, had we but world enough and time, it hardly seems to me the proper use of an encyclopedia to furnish a sanctioned battleground for fringe theorists.

The article's sources cannot be improved, because the sources claiming the "parallels" are all questionable according to Wikipedia standards, nor are the independent or reliable. I've often thought that WP needs to make some provisions so that fringe sources could be used in articles about fringe theories, but that has not yet happened. The fact that they have been and are still used in most anti-Stratfordian articles testifies to the lack of labor and time of WP editors, not to the reliability of the sources. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:21, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a very good summary of the problem. I would also like to reiterate that if it has previously been deleted per a deletion discussion, as is the case, and is currently in a similar form to that deleted, which seems likely, anyone would be at liberty to G4 speedy-delete it, so the question is "delete or merge," not "keep or merge." –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:05, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

There's quite a lot of useful play-by-play material in the Parallels article - it would be very long if it was merged in here as-is. I do think some of the Parallels article material is rather repetitive and not always accurate or well-sourced though. I could point to a number of errors in it from a quick reading - it needs some work! Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 23:50, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Request that we waste another year running down hares sprung from the prodigiously philoprogenitive Oxfordian breeding kennels, Mr Wales?

The Oxfordians are masters in wrapping up everyone's time in an ever-expanding universe of furphies, shabby, quixotic, pseudo-scholastic 'ideas' which feed off the very scholarship that systematically dismantles their every 'talking point'. Since they regard scholarship as a systematic establishmentarian game of covering up 'the truth', nothing one says serves any other purpose than to ratchet up further controversy, since they misinterpret any rebuttal, and generate further mother-lodes of nonsense on the basis of their inability to read, or refusal to understand normal cognitive methods of evidence evaluation. I'll deal with just one issue. You state:-

'If I want to form my own well-educated judgment about it, I will need to have access to a lot of information.'

If you want information, you won't get it from this article.

The Shakespeare Authorship Question took a whole year of intense editing in order to make a neat distinction for the reader between (a) what disinformed people, true-believers and unlettered fundamentalists say or assert or fantasize and (b) what the best Elizabethan-period scholarship says, with regard to the fringe theory.

At least for myself, as one of several editors of the FA article, the operative idea in cleaning up the other mess, was to make a distinction between 'noise' and 'information' in a communicative system. The noise came from poor sources, the information came from the best RS on Elizabethan and, specifically, Shakespearean scholarship. Operationally it was difficult to edit because, as in the game theory of von Neumann:

one team (was) deliberately trying to get ther message across, and another team .. (was) resort(ing) to any strategy to jam the message.' Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, (1950) 1968 p.168.

What you call the 'information' amassed on this page is 'noise': the jerryrigged compilation of 'takes' that add up to the subliminal message 'you, reader, have been had by the academic establishment,' and here at least you can 'decide for yourself' on where 'the truth lies.' In making this elementary confusion between information and disinformation (the insider's dope) you fail to catch what is going on here.

Take 'concealed writer'. We have a whole section on it. But this is not an 'Oxfordian' position, and whoever edited that covered up the theft. It was, like 95% of the pabulum, hijacked from the earlier Baconian theory a century ago, and relies on a single line in one letter, dated 1603, a year before Oxford's death, of Francis Bacon in which he requests of Sir John Davies, who was to meet the king, to put in a good word on his behalf to his majesty: 'desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue, yours very assured, Fr. Bacon.'.

No Baconian scholar of standing has ever taken this to mean that (a) Bacon was a poet of great standing as opposed to an occasional versifer, like everyone of his day (b) or that 'concealed' here means 'suppressed'. (c) There is no evidence that De Vere, by extension, was also a 'concealed poet'. The phrase is borrowed from Baconian theory, via Charles Wisner Barrell several decades ago, a Shakespearean amateur who notoriously got everything he touched wrong and is suspected of faking evidence, and artfully confused with the common practice of 'pseudonymous/anonymous' publication, which is another kettle of fish altogether. The blob of information, given in the original, and then, in paraphrase from George Puttenham's own 'anonymous' 1589 treatise about nobles writing only for court entertainment. In Oxfordian lore, Puttenham's passage is conflated with an earlier remark he made:'I know very many notable gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably, And suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be published without their own names to it: as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned,' where Oxford is not mentioned, nor poetry, nor plays, in order to give the impression the second passage is to be interpreted in terms of the first. The one passage talks of publications by nobles who are 'learned' (treatises, like Puttenham's own), the other of court compositions (for leisurely delectation). Typically, whoever wrote what we have, was too lazy to connect even the dots in the Oxfordian thesis, and left out the key passage in Puttenham's treatise which allows them to read what is quoted as proof Oxford was a 'suppressed/concealed' poet.

How is this sourced (my 'atrocious sourcing' to which, at a glance you take exception)

We have a primary source, an Elizabethan book published before the usual dates for the beginning of Shakespeare's career as a writer. This is glossed by a paraphrase written by the recently deceased Andrew Hannas, an epidemiologist, whom we are told was also a trained classical scholar with a knowledge of Latin. (Oxford Society Website).

One pauses: if one is a trained classical scholar', adding as if it were extra information 'with a knowledge of Latin' is rather like saying in an obituary: 'Einstein was a physicist, with a knowledge of mathematics.' This is the sort of quarter-baked comment one has to deal with in reading these tertiary reports of second-hand glosses on half-baked vanity publications written by journalists and assorted odd-bods who have never troubled themselves to take a degree in the subjects they descant on.

Who was Hannas?

'It was Andy who uncovered that the founding father of Anglo-Saxon studies, Laurence Nowell (not a church official by the same name that previous scholars had mistakenly identified) was Edward de Vere’s tutor in 1563. And noting that in 1563 this same Laurence Nowell signed his name to the Beowulf manuscript, Andy went on to uncover Beowulf’s influence on Hamlet. Phenomenal!' source, the self-tutored Elizabethan expert cum Boston journalist Mark Anderson.

Fact. That Laurence Nowell, de Vere's tutor, and antiquarian Anglo-Saxon scholar, was a distinct person from Laurence Nowell the Dean of Lichfield, was discovered by Retha Warnicke (1974), and further sorted out by Thomas Hahn (1983) and Carl Berkhout (1985). (Source Raymond J. S. Grant Laurence Nowell, William Lambarde, and the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, Rodopi 1996 p.12)

The 'sourcing' you approve of, all breaks down, in at least 60 instances, to something like this. Those who know the subject can see this at a glance. Those curious about the subject will have no idea that this is all Potemkin village stuff, rigged out to give a good impression of palpably incompetent editing.

In short, on this minor point, the sourcing is either primary, or unreliable, as the casual example from an epidemiologist shows, not a reliable source for the construal of Elizabethan treatises. A whole section suppresses a mass of scholarship, which we could supply of course, to contextualize the misrepresentations flourished on the page. An innuendo is seeded, then another. Your position is: 'Hey, don't delete. Fix it' which in plain man's terms says: 'If sloppy editors create and sustain disinformative pages, committed editors should take time off their lives, reading, and wikiwork, to gently engage them, page after page, for several months so that the nonsense is appropriately contextualized according to the scholarship which the incompetent original editors refuse to read or acknowledge or harvest. You would have been more neutral had you simply asked the Oxfordians to adhere to a rigorous reading of policy, get their own act together and, when editing, prove their bona fides by doing the work asked of them, rather than messily pushing a fringe theory and then getting others, who have serious interests, to clean up after them. Nishidani (talk) 11:58, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that's quite a rant. I'm entirely unpersuaded by it. I'm sorry you seem to be angry at someone, but that's really quite a bit beside the point. We need to have a good, complete, robust set of articles on this topic. If you, despite your clear passion for the subject, don't want to take time off from your life to write it, that's totally fine with me. Just don't stop others from doing it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Mr Wales. We write articles, and to do so, work comprehensively to review what the best literature says of anything. You're unpersuaded because, obviously, you know as little about the topic as the people who wrote this page. I think it was Bertrand Russell who informed my youth that scholarship without passion was vacuous. It happens to be what drives knowledge, you can find its theoretical justification in Plato, and a modern defense of it in George Steiner. If this is all beyond you, and you prefer the version of grievance given in emails to the passionate exposition of the academic state of the art, then fine. But keep cheap cracks about 'rants', which is lazy man's language for WP:TLDR, i.e. impatience with anything but sound-bites or snippety ad-libbing, out of the conversation. As to the last line, I suggest you withhold using your influence to defend the rights of bad and banned editors from turning the joy of actually writing articles to the best quality standards your protocols urge on us, into a farce of sterile negotiation and influence-peddling.Nishidani (talk) 16:02, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with some of Nishidani's points (especially about the extent to which conspiracy theorists often raise bogus points requiring elaborate knock-downs, only to then resurface them), but I think you (Nishidani) are not being particularly fair to that article, which does go to some lengths to try to provide balanced information and different interpretations, regardless of what one thinks about them. And by the way it makes no mention of Bacon or the "Concealed Poet" line (which I also happen to agree with you and general scholarship on). The issue as always here is how to give coverage of alternate theories without depriving the casual reader of scepticism, scholarship and views about the popular theories - if they are popular enough to have for example a large published literature - as this one does - they are popular enough to cover in WP in that sceptical, informed fashion. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 15:39, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure you were as gratified as I was to learn that the names Francisco and Horatio were Italian forms of the names of Oxford's cousins, Horace and Francis. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Poor Marcellus and Bernardo left out in the (bitter) cold... if this article is kept, I should take a look at it and remove the worst of the nonsense. Laertes a rival at court, indeed, and that fabrication about the Italian cities, among other things. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:05, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, in any one section I've looked at, it would require several hours work just to fix things. Half of the sources are unreliable. The page is full of contentious points without a reference. On a rough calculation I could run up a list, if I had two days, of at least 200 things requiring attention. If you can point to me any instances of where the article 'goes to some lengths to provide balanced information and different interpretations' that would help. The fact that the article has nothing on where the 'concealed poet' meme was taken from is just an instance of how it manages to not provide the order of information Mr Wales might find interesting. It is systematic in not saying the most interesting things RS say of everything from the putative mute swan to computerized analyses of de Vere's poetic style. The guys over there have been told about this, they wobble and worry, and keep mum, hoping that the hard yakka of actually balancing the article will be done by someone, since they'd prefer to read their newsletters, and stick to POV pushing.Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

"We need to have a good, complete, robust set of articles on this topic." This quote will never die. It will be resurrected again and again in Wikipedia disputes and quoted extensively in the anti-Stratfordian press. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to see Jimbo added to the Honor Roll of Skeptics shortly, given that they've impressed Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Leslie Howard into their ranks based on comments much less supportive of anti-Stratfordism than that, because they don't play by the same rules you and I do; they're advocates, not scholars. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It's funnier than that. Mr Wales, in writing, 'Just don't stop others from doing it' (i.e., writing 'a good, complete, robust set of articles on this topic) has fingered us, the FA authors, as disruptive hindrances to wikipedia, which now has officially welcomed the the whole Oxfordian team, the permabanned or sanctioned et alii, back to write a complete . .set of articles, more than those invented so far!, and we're put on notice to get out of their way! Wow! Congratulations Roger, SM, Nina. . . Vindication at last! I was called 'angry'. Actually I delight in farces, and it will be a night of smiles in this village, as I laugh myself to sleep.Nishidani (talk) 19:52, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Nishidani, you don't do yourself any good by misrepresenting what I have said and making such outrageous and insulting claims. I did not call anyone a "disruptive hindrance", nor did I "officially welcome" anyone. Your behavior here is clearly out of order. It is precisely the sort of bullying behavior that I have traditionally seen associated with the very sort of people you claim to oppose. You will be wise to examine things in a new light.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:10, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hummm, I do wish Nishidani could avoid the temptation to put people's backs up quite so effectively! Of course there should be a "complete set of articles" on this subject as on any subject - whether it be mainstream, fringe, batshit-crazy or truth-universally-acknowledged. We have in fact created many such articles. Despite being a "Stratfordian" I have created or greatly expanded articles on Derbyite theory, on Prince Tudor theory and on many other related topics. The problem with Oxfordian Theory – Parallels with Shakespeare's Plays is that it is inherently and irretrievably biassed and it gives waaaaay to much weight to overwhelmingly weak or outright fake scholarship. It's inevitably a POV fork. At the fringe theories board there are arguments about deleting and merging articles all the time. Also, we don't typically have endless spin-offs of fringe topics going into detail about arguments for particular theories. We have articles on Atlantis and Root races, describing various theories - from the sensible to the absurd - but not Arguments for the rule of Atlantis by the Toltecs and the Aryans. The "Parallels with" article is essentially the equivalent of such an "arguments for" article (with a few token disclaimers). In fact the phase of Atlantean rule by the Toltecs and Aryans is dealt with in context in the Root race article (Root_race#The_civilization_of_Atlantis), where these important historical theories can be seen in context and without undue weight. In this case too the content is better dealt with in a context in which it can be evaluated. Paul B (talk) 21:15, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

'Hummm, I do wish Nishidani could avoid the temptation to put people's backs up quite so effectively! Of course there should be a "complete set of articles".'

Well, I'll reveal the big mystery. When I saw the 'complete ..set' phrase, I thought of the axiom of choice, where any collection of sets can theoretically generate any number of further sets, with no end to it. Nishidani (talk) 10:15, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

This. We're trying to write an encyclopedia article on the Oxfordian theory, not a book promoting the Oxfordian theory. Those "parallels" which have been picked up in secondary sources can perhaps be merged; the rest can and should be scrapped, because that's not what Wikipedia is for. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:07, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure, but this is just the usual Wikipedia problem - sadly, expert views or the collaboration of people who have spent a great deal of time studying the material and believe that it is unarguable that the Stratford Man is indeed also the Author are treated "truthily" as of "equal weight" to the views of numerous well-argued and far-less-well-argued "views", some of them decidedly over on the nutty end of things. The same thing can be observed through numerous iterations and sagas at the Apollo Moon Landings "didn't happen" Conspiracy pages - some are almost like gathering points for the absurd. They would never be allowed in a "serious" encyclopedia but in the maelstrom of WP, it's all fair, so long as it's truthily "sourced" and well "written up". This is clearly the world Jimbo envisaged. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it's just incredibly frustrating. I suppose if you care about it (and probably we all have to care a bit about what WP says on any given subject and the material in it - it looks convincing and the deal with Google makes it found!) you have to be prepared to spend some time at least inserting enough scepticism into it or material that shows people some factual contradiction to the sillier theories. But we all have our own views. I don't find every aspect of Oxfordianism to be completely barking. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 09:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem is, those who embrace with a passion the fringe view and multiply articles on wikipedia, never work them towards a minimal level of quality. They just keep plunking loads of 'stuff' in, without regard to order, without a care in the world for presentation, uniformity of citational mode. For years ungrammatical sentences, mispellings, broken links hang about, while the constant fringe editor tinkers and dabs and, above all, challenges anyone who tries to bring the article into a semblance of NPOV. Several have been here for yonks. They dither and dabble, mostly copying and pasting junk from arbitrary but strategic google searches, without ever weighing critically the value or utility of what they net in other than judging 'it serves the cause'. I wouldn't care in the least were another dozen articles ('The history of Oxfordian theory'; 'The de Verean Society'; etc.) created, as long as there was at long last a sign of editorial competence, which there never has been (Nina Green, true (and to her credit), ran through the 17th Earl of Oxford article from top to bottom, but only after we'd fixed much of the outstanding mess. But it was impossible to work with her. The only collaboration consisted in each taking a turn to review the article entirely, in brief intense bouts of editing). It's not a matter of what I or Tom or Paul or whoever privately thinks, or raising the bizarre innuendo, as Mr Wales reads things, that people like myself are trying to block work on articles. I, like several others, am endeavouring to make atrocious articles at least readable, well-sourced, and critically informed, something that was objected to in the strongest terms by fringe editors who just like ladling in goops of undigested opinions from laundresses, cardiologists, epidemiologists, journos who write about the New York Theatre or the Boston Sox or Rolling Stone, distant relatives of the Earl, people in business administration, lawyers, theatrical directors. I don't mind Mr Wales' fascination with what these oddbods might say, but I think he'd do well to recall that the politics of The New York Banner will never build what the Howard Roarks of this world can create. Nishidani (talk) 10:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, well, people who strongly hold views based on poor research, counterfactual arguments and myths are not particularly likely to be keen on intensive rational discussion and analysis of those, if they have become something they care passionately about. I've often found that it's the fear of it being revealed that one has been systematically conned and tricked that makes a large percentage of people continue to cling to extreme theories, even if they are lamentably obviously false. If you've thought one way for a long time because you took some books on trust and then later find they were all bunk, you feel annoyed with yourself and quite possibly very defensive. The same phenomenon occurs in the Moon Landings conspiracy; the fact that international space agencies are now sending back vivid images of the landing sites from lunar orbiters still does not convince some. WP is, sadly, frequently not a place where rational discussion prevails. The same can be seen in Nazi-era articles, where a determined group of neo-Nazi editors routinely attempt to sanitise, alter and rewrite perceptions of key people, themes and incidents. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:19, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Right. I strongly suspect Loss aversion (AKA sunk cost dilemma) to be one of the major motivations for Oxfordians. When you've invested years and even your entire career in some cases into something as ridiculous as Oxfordism, then your arguments become more and more bizarre because they primarily function as defense mechanisms and not the result of scholarly or logical thought. I know some very intelligent anti-Stratfordians who actually prefer to not defend their beliefs because of the cognitive dissonance necessary and the concomitant stress.

In any case, regardless of personal preferences, WP is an encyclopedia, and its content should meet certain standards, which that article does not. The community has rejected it once already; it existence is the result of an effort to get around that decision. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The consensus I'm seeing is to merge anything that can be compressed into something worthwhile and to delete the rest. On hold out, whoever it is from, does not stop the consensus.--Peter cohen (talk) 12:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

But what is usable? The article is accurate in that it reports the actual arguments, but inaccurate in that those arguments are based on distortions and flat-out fantasy (the Horatio/Francisco name "translations" is a good example). Listing the points and then debunking them creates one of those back-and-forth fringe argument articles that WP discourages, because that's not what an encyclopedia article should be. Some of the "parallel" arguments are already in this article; does it really need to be comprehensive, since most of the points are strained and bogus? But reporting only the strongest ones gives an inaccurate impression of the Oxfordian arguments and lends more credibility than it has, since Oxfordians appear to actually believe even their most ridiculous assertions. I say only those arguments that have been responded to in reliable sources should be included in this article, which also gives a biased view because academics and experts have only responded to them because they are wrong, creating a selection bias. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I am moving my reply to Roscelese from above; otherwise this section will become yet another unreadable mish-mash.

Yes, the page was deleted, but it was then merged into this article, and then recreated with a slightly different title. Here's the history, as I outlined it in the SAQ arbitration:

1. 7/16/2009 Smatprt creates an Oxfordian article (using an unreliable promotional source).

2. On 3/24/2010, article Oxfordian theory: Parallels with Shakespeare’s plays deleted as a result of afd: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oxfordian theory: Parallels with Shakespeare's plays because of "Inherent violation of WP:NPOV: extreme undue weight given to a fringe theory."

3. That day Smatprt merges the article back into the Oxfordian article "as per talk at merge discussion". Huh??? An AfD is a "merge discussion"?

4. On 6/18/2010 he moves the material to a sandbox.

5. On 9/9/2010, after being laundered through the sandbox, he then forks it into a new article, Oxfordian Theory - Parallels with Shakespeare's Plays, replaces the colon with a dash, adds two grafs of "NPOV" disclaimer and 17 external Oxfordian links.

6. He then again deletes the material from the main article and links the two. Voilà! Wikipedia hosts virtually the exact same article! So much for WP process.

I have no idea what G4 means, but in Oxfordania, nothing ever really goes away; the arguments are recycled endlessly, even after having been thoroughly discredited. The reappearance of the page is just SOP for Oxfordians. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:29, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's a list of the specific differences between the deleted article and the present one. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:02, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Anti-strat material should be excised

The material peculiar to the anti-Stratfordian arguments should be excised. The section "Notable silences" and "Ogburn on the signatures" are two such examples. Those arguments should be in the main SAQ article if they are not already (I believe they are), and the anti-Stratfordian stance should be assumed instead of taking space in this article, which should cover pro-Oxfordian arguments only, IMO. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:37, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Neither the endlessly repeated (and preposterous) "man clutching a sack" argument nor the signature argument originated with Ogburn, nor do they have anything especially to do with Oxfordianism (or is it Oxfordism?). However, I think we could have a paragraph or two outlining the history of A-S theories, including the main arguments, just as Looney does. Paul B (talk) 13:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Why? Why have an entire article about the SAQ and not take advantage of it with a sentence and a link? Being able to link to other articles is one of the unique advantages of an online encyclopedia. I suggest something like, "Shakespeare's authorship had been questioned since the mid-19th century, but Oxford wasn't put forth as a candidate until blah blah .... Looney used many of the same arguments previous theories had employed to disqualify Shakespeare as the true author." Tom Reedy (talk) 15:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone oppose an experiment an excising everything that is already fully covered on the 17th Earl of Oxford or the Shakespeare Authorship Question page. If no one does, I'll flense it of repetitions.Nishidani (talk) 14:57, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to both - we obviously need this article to be intelligable and coherent, so we have to outline arguments, but I admit I hadn't thought of my own Derbyite theory article, in which I devote no space whatever to outlining generic anti-Strat arguments. Obviously facts about EDV's life have to be included if they are relevant to arguments made on his behalf. Paul B (talk) 16:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Well while we're at it that initial "disclaimer" for "convenience", For the purposes of this article the term "Shakespeare" is used to mean the poet .... frames the argument with a POV assumption exactly like the "Shaksper" strategy, and should be deleted. Tom Reedy (talk) 16:35, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Quite.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

AfD?

I'm wondering whether, despite the views of Our Great Leader, there might be some merit in putting Oxfordian Theory – Parallels with Shakespeare's Plays up at WP:AfD rather than trying to merge it. Then the shortage of WP:RS and the numerous tenuous/tendentious uncited claims could be brought out into the open. Just a thought. Or maybe it would be a hornets' nest? --GuillaumeTell 21:20, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I would support that.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:24, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. The Oxfordian theory's essential thrust is all on the SAQ page, and that is why this page should be deleted, with the parallel stuff reincorporated back to Oxfordian Theory – Parallels with Shakespeare's Plays, which should be retained. Nearly everything Oxfordians write in terms of theory is pathetically silly, but I admit to a personal fascination with, curiosity over analogies and coincidences, and I see no harm in the many analogies they draw between the plays and Oxford, they certainly contain a lot which Mr Wales would be curious about, though he should be warned that similar lists of striking analogies exist for many other candidates. The aesthetic theory underlying this is that the greatest writer of all time (Oxford) was so drastically devoid of imagination that he could never invent a scene, but had to write something he saw, heard at court, or that happened to him. The Oxfordians fail to see the irony.Nishidani (talk) 21:31, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

It's already been AfDed. I suppose if doing it again is necessary we might as well get started.

Nishidani, are you saying the parallels page should be kept and the main Oxfordian theory article deleted? Tom Reedy (talk) 21:52, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that the last word of the post is the most important.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:12, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Tom. Oxfordian theory has been comprehensively covered on the SAQ page. There is no 'theory' left to speak of. There are a large body of ostensible analogies, and I think that worth conserving.Nishidani (talk) 06:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Structure

While we may want to a avoid a "he said, she said" appearence of argument throughout, the general rule is that criticism should be incorporated into the text, not left as a separate section or sections, so I think we should try to give the mainstream views within the sections where possible. I cut out the puttenham summary by our epidemiologist because, frankly, I couldn't make head nor tail of it, or work out how it was relevant to the issue at all. We need a representative of the standard view that he actually saying the opposite of what Oxfordians contend - that Oxford was not concealed, but already made public. Paul B (talk) 18:47, 27 September 2011 (UTC)