Notes
Fundamentals
1See this Guardian article.↩
2Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon Vol III 1577-1586, ed. E.I.Fripp (Dugdale Society Vol V), pp.50-1. See O. Hood Phillips, Shakespeare and the Lawyers 2005, p.36.↩
3Minutes and Accounts, pp.129-30. See Shakespeare and the Lawyers 2005, p.36.↩
4Michael MacDonald, ‘Ophelia’s Maimèd Rites’, Shakespeare Quarterly 37.3 (1986), p.311.↩
5See Samuel Schoenbaum’s Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life 1987, p.13 for just a few of the Shakespeares in the local record. Mark Eccles’ Shakespeare In Warwickshire (1963) has more examples. Hamnet/Hamlet was both a forename and a surname; William Shakspere’s neighbour (assumed to be godparent to his son of the same name) was called Hamnet, a variant of Hamlet. The neighbour is named as ‘Hamlett’ on William Shakspere’s will.↩
6Hugh Craig & Arthur Kinney, Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship, Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp.78-99.↩
7Brian Vickers, “Thomas Kyd, Secret Sharer,” Times Literary Supplement, 18 April 2008, pp. 13-15. But see this critique of Vickers’ method.↩
8See Arden of Faversham’s Wikipedia page.↩
9See this account in John Britton, The Beauties of England and Wales (1808), p.728.↩
10See Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland Vol 3](http://bit.ly/U6xjmo) (1808), p.1027. An EEBO search confirms that ‘Shakebag’ first appeared in the 1577 edition.↩
11Manningham’s diary reveals he knew Thomas Greene. He quotes him in his diary for February 5, 1603: ‘There is best sport always when you put a woman on the case.’↩
12Stanley Wells is among those who use this piece of evidence to support the argument that Shakspere was an actor.↩
13This evidence, however has been used to argue against Shakspere being the author Shakespeare. See Sharers Papers in Part 3.↩
14e.g. Contested Will (2010), Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (2013).↩
15In both Shakespeare Bites Back and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, Wells and Edmondson urge that the Shakespeare Authorship Question be renamed ‘the Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy Theory’. ↩
16‘The phenomenon of disbelief in Shakespeare’s authorship is a psychological aberration of considerable interest.’ - Stanley Wells The chief focus of James Shapiro’s Contested Will is on the psychology of early doubters Delia Bacon, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Looney.↩
17See Literary Paper Trail. Historian and broadcaster Michael Wood, author of In Search of Shakespeare (2003), referred to a ‘man shaped hole’ in the historical evidence. (The Shakespeare Bookshop Newsletter Issue 12, 2008.)↩
18Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Wells & Edmondson, 2013) ignored the research and arguments of (for example) the first book on the subject to be published by an academic press Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography (Price, 2001), The Shakespeare Guide to Italy (Roe, 2011), and a Marlovian reading of the sonnets published in peer-reviewed Routledge Journal Rethinking History (Barber, 2010).↩
19This was first proposed by Professor Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in their 2012 e-book Shakespeare Bites Back. In their 2013 book Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge University Press), the term ‘anti-Shakespearian’ was used by most of the contributors. ↩
20‘you deny the reality of Shakespeare one moment, you can deny the reality of the Holocaust the next.’ - Jonathan Bate See also Jonathan Bate in the New Statesmen, April 2013↩
21Though doubts were certainly published earlier. See this piece from Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal No. 448, Vol 18, New Series, August 7, 1852.↩
22in the words of Michael Wood, historian and presenter of the BBC series In Search of Shakespeare. ↩
23Frequently stated. For example see Stanley Wells. The term ‘negative evidence’ is defined as ‘evidence for a theory provided by the non-occurence or absence of something’.↩
24In fact very few Stratfordians would agree with this statement, since most accept impersonal testimony, such as that listed in Chapter 5(#Direct) as equivalent to personal testimony.↩
25David Schum’s paper ‘Some Evidence Issues in Intelligence Analysis’ delivered at Enquiry, Evidence and Facts: An Interdisciplinary Conference, British Academy, 14 Dec 2007. ↩
26A chapter on co-authorship – addressing the details of individual arguments – will follow in due course. ↩
27A chapter on stylometry – addressing individual studies – will follow in due course. ↩
28Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (2013), p.50.↩
29‘Don’t start arguing against an individually named alternative; start by reminding the person putting forward the claim that their preferred nominee is in no way more valid than any of the others’ – Shakespeare Bites Back↩
30Andrew Hadfield asserts ‘early modern authors did not ever pretend to be other people’, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, p.72.↩
31Sohmer, Steve. “12 June 1599: Opening Day at Shakespeare’s Globe.” Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (1997): 1.1-46↩