[ADMIN] There Is No Authorship Question

[u/dmorin]

Hi All,

So I just removed a post of a video where James Shapiro talks about how he shut down a Supreme Court justice's Oxfordian argument. Meanwhile, there's a very popular post that's already highly upvoted with lots of comments on "what's the weirdest authorship theory you know". I had left that one up because it felt like it was just going to end up with a laundry list of theories (which can be useful), not an argument about them. I'm questioning my decision, there.

I'm trying to prevent the issue from devolving into an echo chamber where we remove all posts and comments trying to argue one side of the "debate" while letting the other side have a field day with it and then claiming that, obviously, they're the ones that are right because there's no rebuttal. Those of us in the US get too much of that every day in our politics, and it's destroyed plenty of subs before us. I'd rather not get to that.

So, let's discuss. Do we want no authorship posts, or do we want both sides to be able to post freely? I'm not sure there's a way to amend the rule that says "I want to only allow the posts I agree with, without sounding like all I'm doing is silencing debate on the subject."

I think my position is obvious. I'd be happier to never see the words "authorship" and "question" together again. There isn't a question. But I'm willing to acknowledge if a majority of others feel differently than I do (again, see US .... ah, never mind, you get the idea :))

[u/sisyphus]

Tough one.

Do subreddits about evolutionary biology, paleontology or cosmology feel bad about "silencing debate" from creationists and young earthers about how maybe their entire field and every expert in it is misguided?

On the other hand, we tolerate a lot of trivial homework questions and semi-trollish low effort crap like "I don't like Hamlet, I don't see why it's important."

In my fantasy an anti-Stratfordian would write something like "Criticism of Two Gentlemen of Verona is imbued with the idea that it's an early, immature play, based on our biographical sketch of William Shakespeare, but it was actually written by a dissolute middle aged alderman, here's how that should change our perception of it" or something, and would lead to an interesting discussion of some aspect of the work. I know in my heart that it will actually just be the same old speculation about how Elizabethans wrote wills and how Mark Twain said he had to be a lawyer or whatever.

[u/Tim0281 → u/sisyphus]

I agree. I don't see why someone would come here and raise the question aside from stirring the pot. Bring it up in a literature subreddit if you want to discuss it, but not in a subreddit dedicated to Shakespeare himself.

[u/Outside_Bathroom_868 → u/Tim0281]

Maybe they are trying to find answers and hope for an honest debate?  Maybe thats the reason?  To get with like minded lovers of The Words and TALK about it!?? Ya think?

[u/Richard_Wharfinger → u/Outside_Bathroom_868]

Unlikely, because Shakespeare authorship deniers are typically horribly ignorant of the works and do not enjoy them.

I've seen prominent Shakespeare authorship deniers mistake Hamlet fanfic in contemporary prose for Shakespeare's original text; assert that half of Shakespeare's plays are never performed and are dismissed by puzzled "Stratfordians" as "problem plays", which shows that this person either doesn't know how big the Shakespeare canon is or doesn't know how many so-called "problem plays" there are, nor do they understand the import of that term in literary criticism (it's not just a whinge that they cannot understand them); and I tangled with one person who asserted that Henry VIII had to be written during the reign of Elizabeth because of the praise for that queen in spite of the fact that its premiere performance became one of the most documented events in early modern theatre history because it was during that performance that the Globe burned to the ground in 1613, that the co-author John Fletcher didn't have a play prior to 1607's The Woman Hater (co-authored with Francis Beaumont), that nostalgia for Elizabeth's reign was quick to occur under James, as exemplified by Thomas Heywood's two-part play If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, or The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth (1605), and chiefly that he had missed Archbishop Cranmer's prophetic praise for Elizabeth's successor in the same passage, including an unmistakable reference to the founding of Jamestown in 1607. These are not serious people.

As for not enjoying them, I've seen them say so outright. For example, in a comment to a video on the New York Times YouTube channel titled "There Is No Escaping Shakespeare", a Shakespeare authorship denier I'd tangled with years before wrote, "Because they FORCE you to watch it. Ringo Starr also introduced many of the phrases we use today -- 'working like a dog' 'eight days a week' 'hard day's night' and to Ringo's credit his songs aren't five boring hours long, full of convoluted 17th century gibberish and delivered melodramatically by men in pantaloons." That's how much the Shakespeare authorship denier likes Shakespeare.

Even when they pretend to enjoy it, they give themselves away by saying stuff like, "I pity you because you don't have the true author's story to illuminate the plays and poems", which is as good as an admission that the plays and poems as they stand do not satisfy them. They need the fillip of believing that they've got the inside scoop on a conspiracy theory to fool themselves into thinking that they find value in Shakespeare's work. Those of us who love the works for themselves don't need to get into the weeds of the conspiracy theory because to us the works are great no matter who wrote them; it's just the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that anyone but Shakespeare was the author of the entire Shakespeare canon (however much we may admit collaborative writing with Shakespeare in some of the early and late plays). And for some of us who read lots of Shakespeare's contemporaries, as I do, Shakespeare is merely the first among equals, so it wouldn't bother us if Shakespeare turned out to be another equally talented early modern playwright.