The scholastic community has not persuaded the independent scholars to see the error of their ways. But neither have the independent scholars persuaded the orthodox scholars to see the error of their ways. The Authorship Problem therefore remains unresolved.
This rather reminds me of the arguments that evolution by natural selection and Biblical creationism are an open question.
A ‘scientific approach’ – but then I read: the book is written as a dialogue between four characters of various skills and perspectives — a Shakespeare-Is-Shakespeare believer, a fierce skeptic, and two participants of neutral disposition who are there to shepherd the scientific process.
Ha! That’s science, old-school. Takes one back to the days of Galileo.
BTW, Alec Waugh (Yes, from the clan, the son of the son of) tried to reheat the controversy a month or so ago, and I had a take on that.
Well, that was designed to bring me out in hives.
I latched onto exactly the same passage as SunlessNick (which, frankly, has no place in a book claiming to be based on ‘scientific’ reasoning). The question is only unresolved in the same way the question of evolution is ‘unresolved’. That is, it is perfectly well resolved for anyone without a vested interest in being pig-headed about it. When the world has a large enough population of people with a huge variation in degrees of their intelligence, education, honesty, prejudices and wilfulness, all questions are doomed to remain, by that measure, unresolved.
My favourite book on the topic is James Shapiro’sContested Will, because it really does tackle why the need developed to deny Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I could write loads on the Romantic period conception of the hero, but in the end it’s pretty much old-fashioned snobbery.
Friday Hoyden: Margaret of Anjou 
Shakespeare in Australia 
Talk like a pirate day Friday Hoyden: Sayyida al Hurra 
Letters to Tiptree: what does it mean to “write like a man”? 
Hoyden About Town 
The scholastic community has not persuaded the independent scholars to see the error of their ways. But neither have the independent scholars persuaded the orthodox scholars to see the error of their ways. The Authorship Problem therefore remains unresolved.
This rather reminds me of the arguments that evolution by natural selection and Biblical creationism are an open question.
A ‘scientific approach’ – but then I read:
the book is written as a dialogue between four characters of various skills and perspectives — a Shakespeare-Is-Shakespeare believer, a fierce skeptic, and two participants of neutral disposition who are there to shepherd the scientific process.
Ha! That’s science, old-school. Takes one back to the days of Galileo.
BTW, Alec Waugh (Yes, from the clan, the son of the son of) tried to reheat the controversy a month or so ago, and I had a take on that.
Well, that was designed to bring me out in hives.
I latched onto exactly the same passage as SunlessNick (which, frankly, has no place in a book claiming to be based on ‘scientific’ reasoning). The question is only unresolved in the same way the question of evolution is ‘unresolved’. That is, it is perfectly well resolved for anyone without a vested interest in being pig-headed about it. When the world has a large enough population of people with a huge variation in degrees of their intelligence, education, honesty, prejudices and wilfulness, all questions are doomed to remain, by that measure, unresolved.
My favourite book on the topic is James Shapiro’s Contested Will, because it really does tackle why the need developed to deny Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I could write loads on the Romantic period conception of the hero, but in the end it’s pretty much old-fashioned snobbery.