Talk:Shakespeare authorship

Kyle Kallgren link
The link to the Oancitizen Anonymous video is dead as a result of the Blipocalypse. Thankfully, Kallgren uploaded the video to Youtube. Someone should swap the links.

This article sucks
If you're having trouble reading popular interest literary digest or serious scholarship on Oxfordian, it's probably because you, like the rest of the 20 something staff of this site, have poorly developed reading skills. Here's a start. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/to-be-or-not-to-be-shakespeare-127247606/

What the hell is pseudohistory? Is it revisionist history? Why use that clunky, pretentious term to describe serious pursuits into history. That isn't to say belief and investigation into claims Shakespeare being creatively divorced from the literature ascribed to him are professional historiography, but it certainly is history. Since interest in a historical topic, not cursory skimming of all things fringe and jumping up and down on the dogpile in order to affiliate with other Serious Person bubble-pipe smokers. I'm guessing it helps exercise your authoritarian tendencies that allow you to get off at seeming like an expert on a topic you haven't actually done any serious research into. Make up scientist gets boring? Be a make believe historian. But we already have a term, in this case, that fits, which I just described: revisionist history. You might want to punch up your pseudoWikipedia.

Crap reference
The reference used for the evidence in the Stationer's Register:
 * Montague, William Kelly (1963). The Man of Stratford—The Real Shakespeare. Vantage Press.

Is a crap reference that is not widely available to verify its quality. was the largest vanity press in the US until they went belly up following a major lawsuit on marketing practices. A better reference with more complete information is:
 * The Life of Shakespeare: Copied from the Best Sources, Without Comment, edited by Daniel Webster Wilder (1893) Little, Brown, and Company.

The full pdf of the book is available free. Bongolian (talk) 20:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Time paradox?
I am not sure if this should be included in this article and if so, in what way, but the authorship of Shakespeare's work seams to be quite commonly used as an example for a type of time paradox:

Imagine you take back all the works of Shakespeare, travel back in time to before he wrote them and then hand them over for him to release over time. Then who wrote them?

Maybe that Shakespeare was chosen for that example was because of a certain prevalance of Anti-Stratfordianism?

--88.130.60.8 (talk) 00:43, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's relevant to the article. The paradox pertains more to time travel than to Shakespeare per se. Bongolian (talk) 03:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Better lead quotation?
This one is well written, but it pretty much just says "Yeah. Whatever.  Who cares?". Not necessarily the right first note to hit. - Immigrant laborer (talk) 14:26, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree. Hitchens was just making an aside, and his real purpose was to denigrate the Hebrew scriptures and the Koran, neither of which are relevant here.  I replaced it with a well known quotation about which there is some mystery who told it first. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 20:23, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I was going to go with Mamet, dammit:

“The anti-Stratfordians hold that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays—it was another fellow of the same name, or of a different name. In this they invert the megalomaniacal equation and make themselves not the elect, but the superior of the elect. Barred from composing Shakespeare’s plays by a regrettable temporal accident, they, in the fantasy of most every editor, accept the mantle of primum mobile, consign the (falsely named) creator to oblivion, and turn to the adulation of the crowd for their deed of discovery and insight—so much more thoughtful and intellectual than the necessarily sloppy work of the writer.”

but that works too. - Immigrant laborer (talk) 20:31, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That is good, and I found a place for it as an into quote to the fringe section. Probably should come second; it is referring back to the original old joke. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 12:46, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks! - Immigrant laborer (talk) 17:06, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Why only Shakespeare?
Why not accuse other historical writers of poetry, prose and plays of being actually someone else? Anna Livia (talk) 21:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Probably because Shakespeare is the most prominent writer in English literature, giving rise to the cult of 'bardolatry' and as such has the biggest target on his back. Jack Lynch wrote a book whose title is IIRC Becoming Shakespeare that traces S's rise from one Elizabethan playright and poet among many, to the industry he became today.  Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 01:29, 5 December 2021 (UTC)