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Actually a more interesting question, to those who bother to look into the matter enough to have an informed opinion, is why so many otherwise intelligent persons persist in defending a belief that will one day be a laughing stock of any educated persons. You might start by dropping the defensive, wholly unwarranted ad hominem about "conspiracy theorists." Only then can your education begin. Please state an objection to some aspect of the evidence presented in the documentary.

@@rstritmatter Well, I'll state an objection: at 26:55 they create a hybrid quotation that doesn't exist in the original by skipping over 23 chapters of George Puttenham's _The Arte of English Poesie_ . This is called quote-mining and it is a blatantly dishonest tactic. Ironically, they themselves give away the game because, when they zoom in on the text in chapter 8, you can see it doesn't continue by naming any specific individuals. That is not a sign of honesty, however, but merely shows that the makers of this documentary are incompetent liars. And I'll further state a general objection: none of the so-called 'evidence' in this documentary truly logically implicates the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays and poems. It's either a falsehood (like the phony Puttenham quotation) or it doesn't matter even if it's true. In fact, even the phony Puttenham quotation wouldn't matter if it were true. Assuming there were contemporary testimony to establish that Edward de Vere had truly suppressed his own writings or published something without his own name on it, it would not follow that he *HAD* published his works under the name of William Shakespeare. If de Vere had suppressed his writings, then they would have been unpublished and thus would be irrelevant to Shakespeare's published writings. And if Edward de Vere had suffered his work to be published without his name on it, that could mean anonymity or pseudonymity. It would not necessarily mean that he was using the identity of William Shakespeare as a front. But that's how all authorship arguments go. In the absence of primary documentary evidence or clear contemporary testimony demonstrating their "alternative candidate's" authorship of the Shakespeare canon, they have to pick and glean things that sound suitably suggestive and operate purely through insinuation rather than by presenting facts - and if they have to misrepresent the very texts they're making insinuations about, it doesn't bother them. But insinuations, coincidences, and motivated literary interpretations are not an adequate substitute for facts, which is why anti-Shakespearians consistently fail to convince people who know early modern drama and history.

"No objective evidence" Did you even watch the video?? Since it's been made there has been discovered a mountain, no, mountain range of evidence. Pay attention before you post.

@@tjaruspex2116 Spoken like a true religious fanatic: no one who has encountered the Revealed Truth could possibly doubt anymore. This 'documentary' can't possibly be an exercise in clumsy propaganda because you agree with it, therefore it must be unassailable. I can't speak for Stebbo8292, but I _have_ watched this documentary in full - and have fully critiqued it elsewhere on TH-cam. However, since there is a "mountain range of evidence", then perhaps you can just pick one or two of the most compelling pieces of objective evidence, whether from this documentary or elsewhere, and convince the skeptics like Stebbo and I. To save you wasted effort, however, I will tell you in advance the kinds of arguments that _do not_ constitute objective evidence: 1) Anything that depends on an assumption about the early modern period that is not demonstrable by primary documentary evidence or contemporary testimony. Shakespeare authorship deniers tend to have very anachronistic notions about the early modern period, either treating it as no different to the bleakest depths of the so-called "Dark Ages" or as being basically equivalent to the present day with its readily accessible news, its notions of writing as autobiography, its celebrity authors, its systems of copyright, etc. Sometimes they make both assumptions at once. 2) Anything that turns on an assumption about what Shakespeare couldn't have known, read, or experienced that is not supported by primary documentary evidence or contemporary testimony of Shakespeare's ignorance of or lack of access to the subject. Also, I will reject generic claims of 'knowledge' that are not based on _specific citations_ of textual evidence from the works themselves and a demonstration that such knowledge was _truly exceptional_ in the context of the other authors of Shakespeare's day. For example, it's senseless to ask where Shakespeare could have learned the Classical imagery in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ when he had Helena exclaim, "The story shall be changed: | Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase...," since the story of Apollo and Daphne was the kind of commonplace Classical allusion that could be plucked from any hedgerow. If you're going to point to the Italian settings in Shakespeare's plays and ask how he could have known about them, then I'm going to require specific evidence that Shakespeare _had never_ been to Italy nor could have learned such details while living in England. Otherwise, you will not have logically excluded Shakespeare as an author, and even if you do exclude William Shakespeare that is not a demonstration of Edward de Vere's authorship when the field of alternative "authorship candidates" (a term I hate, since these people didn't ask to be identified as Shakespeare, but I use it for want of a better) has broken 90. 3) Any argument that relies on insinuation for its force, rather than a proper demonstration of alternative authorship. "Why didn't Shakespeare name any books in his will?" is one such argument, since Shakespeare did not _have_ to name any books in his will and his theatrical colleagues who were playwrights did not (see _Playhouse Wills: 1558 - 1642_ by E. A. J. Honigmann and Susan Brock). Pointing out that the bequest of money for mourning rings to John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage is an interlineation is another. 4) Any argument that turns on what you won't accept of William Shakespeare. I don't care if you think Shakespeare was a greedy, penny-pinching scumbag who harassed his neighbors with lawsuits for the repayment of small sums, hoarded grain in a time of famine, and didn't teach his daughters how to read. None of these things have any bearing on whether he could have written the works (and I'm also saving you time, because _none_ of these _ad hominem_ character assassinations are demonstrably true). Saying that you would expect X from the author of the plays and Shakespeare allegedly did Y merely means that your expectations are misplaced. Reality is not obliged to conform to how you think it should be. 5) Any argument that requires reading minds. I'm thinking specifically of Alexander Waugh's "Every Man and His Dog Knew..." series, but the tendency is common to Shakespeare authorship deniers. They come up with spurious interpretations of what people 'really meant to say' if they could have expressed themselves openly, they invent 'codes' for which they supply their own analysis and never bother to demonstrate that such 'codes' were known and understood in the early modern era or were capable of being generated in an early modern print shop without a conspirator on hand to set the type, they stand the explicit statements of contemporaries on their heads or assume without adequate justification - or _any_ - that they were lying, etc. 6) Any game of Six Degrees of the Earl of Oxford. I know the history of the Earl of Oxford's life as well as you do, if not better. I know Philip Herbert, the Earl of Mongomery (and later 4th Earl of Pembroke) married Susan de Vere (after the Earl of Oxford's death). I know there were marriage negotiations arranged by William Cecil between Bridget de Vere and William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, and that they broke down early over the point of when the promised annuity was to begin. And I know that both the Herberts were dedicatees of the First Folio. I also know that Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, was pushed hard to marry Elizabeth de Vere, that ultimately William Cecil used his position as Master of Wards to sock Southampton with a £5,000 fine to release him, and that Southampton was the dedicatee of _Venus and Adonis_ and _The Rape of Lucrece_ . And yet I still don't accept Edward de Vere's authorship of the canon because these points are entirely irrelevant to establishing authorship. 7) Any argument that is based on mere literary interpretation. A contemporary literary interpretation cannot ripple back through time to change the authorship of the original works. Therefore I do not care that Oxfordians see _Hamlet_ as de Vere's autobiography or, as recently argued in the _Guardian_ by Margo Anderson and Derek Jacobi, that _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ was de Vere's private psychodrama, representing him in the tripartite role of wooer (Fenton), jealous man (Ford), and lecher (Falstaff). Nor did I find the claim that Shakespeare couldn't have possibly learned specific geographical details of a region a whole 25 miles away from London any more compelling. Cherry-picking details you think hit off Edward de Vere in the works is easy because the works are so large and varied that you can do it for practically anyone, provided you know the biographical details first. You can save these kinds of games for the annual Shakespeare-Oxford Fellowship conference. 8) And it shouldn't need to be said, but since this documentary does do it, I will also point out that I won't accept arguments based on _misrepresenting_ the documentary record. If you play games like this documentary did in quote-mining George Puttenham's _The Arte of English Poesie_ by omitting a full 23 chapters of intervening text, then I'm just going to conclude that your claim is incapable of being sustained honestly. In fact, you're probably better off ignoring Shakespeare entirely and just providing me with direct primary documentary evidence of Edward de Vere's authorship of the canon, clear contemporary testimony from people who would have some reason to know that Edward de Vere wrote the works (I don't have an Oxfordian Decoder Ring so anything supposedly more ambiguous will not do), or, failing these, you can present me with rigorous stylometric analysis showing that Edward de Vere wrote the works of William Shakespeare, though you will have to overcome _and_ explain the fact that previous stylometric analysis has excluded Edward de Vere as a potential author. Good luck in your efforts!

@@tjaruspex2116 I'm willing to be patient because we all have our personal lives to lead, but it's been a week since you claimed that there is "a mountain, no, mountain range of evidence". Don't you think you could pick a few rock-solid pieces of evidence off that mountain range and present them by now?

She was certainly a force to be reckoned with, and her ideas are more relevant today than ever. I think she would be appalled at the current opera practices where the music is merely an element of the director's "grand design."

Edward De Vere was a terrible writer who used mostly one-syllable words in his mediocre poetry. He was also a horrible businessman. Shakespeare could write his name just fine.

@@Jeffhowardmeade but Shalespeare didn't write anything else AT ALL besides a will and the fully completed plays. Nothing else besides the most advanced liturature in human history, hmmmm... Elizabethan England was full of State secrets.

@@edwardd.484 I can name at least 20 contemporaries of Shakespeare's who disagree with you. Can you name one who says you're correct?

@@Jeffhowardmeade That's what happens when a state arrests and kills writers for propaganda purposes. This is very common for totalitarian states.

See: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. Authors have throughout history used pseudonyms or allonyms for a variety of reasons. Look into this question more thoroughly and you'll come away with a better understanding of the plays-- and especially the sonnets.

@@tjaruspex2116 Writers have used pseudonyms, yes, but you still can't explain why the Globe carried on so long after de Vere died, and how the other plays were written, after 1604. There are other things that connect the writer of the plays to Stratford-upon-Avon, and Shakespeare himself, As you like it is set in the Forest of Arden, which was close to Stratford-upon-Avon, and his mother's name was Mary Arden, that does suggest he at least wrote that play. I think the tendency to think him uneducated and therefore unlikely to know sufficient history is based on a failure to understand the power of oral history. I suspect his mother's family passed on many stories. (See Walter Scott). Also his ownership of Blackfriars Gatehouse suggests a significant connection to London, and in particular the Catholic community. Which I suspect might be a far better explanation of his tendency to not overdo it on the self publicising thing, than his not being the author of the plays.

There is no known date of composition for any Shakespeare play. Not even one. Any attempts to date a Shakespeare play are at best educated guesses. And because we don't have any original manuscripts, we don't know how much the written play resembles what was originally performed or if the play resembles what was originally written. There is just no way to know, and it is snobbery to insist that your speculation is anything more than speculation. All you could say is that IF William of Stratford wrote the plays, then he may have named the Forest of Arden for his mother. Or not. We don't know because Shakespeare left nothing except for his name on the plays. No manuscripts, no rough copy, no journals...and no one ever said SHAKESPEARE from STRATFORD is a WRITER...not even the guy from Stratford himself.

@@vetstadiumastroturf5756 BRAVO! Well said!

If you trust Michael Wood on the subject of Shakespeare, then you have not bothered to seriously consider the evidence presented in the documentary

Well, Shakespeare wouldn't be mentioned in the wills of John Heminges, Henry Condell, or Richard Burbage, since he predeceased them, but we do have plenty of documentary evidence that puts all four of them together. For example, there's the will of Augustine Phillips (d. 1605), which names Shakespeare, Heminges, Condell, and Burbage. There's also the list of principal actors in the First Folio, which includes all of their names. Their names are also included together in the cast lists of _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ in the 1616 folio _Works of Benjamin Jonson_ . We also have all of the royal warrants and patents that King James issued to recreate the Lord Chamberlain's Men as the King's Men, and the actors are named in these patents. William Shakespeare's name is just second after that of Lawrence Fletcher, who was King James' favorite actor and who followed James from Scotland. In addition, in 1604, all of the King's Men were given a grant of 4.5 yards of scarlet cloth so they could march in the (delayed by plague) coronation procession of King James in his livery, and the names of William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage all appear there. We have the lease of the Globe playhouse site that establishes that one moiety (one-half) was owned by Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage, and that the other moiety was owned by William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and William Kempe. Kempe would soon after leave the company, which may be when Henry Condell was brought in as a joint owner, but at some point he became a joint owner of the Globe because he was named as a co-defendant with John Heminges by John Witter in a lawsuit over the part-ownership of that theatre in 1618. We have the documents in the deal to acquire the Blackfriars gatehouse (where the purchaser was identified as "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in the County of Warwick, gentleman", so there's no ambiguity about his identity) that also named John Heminges as one of Shakespeare's two trustees. Shakespeare bequeathed the gatehouse property to Susanna Hall (his eldest daughter, wife of Dr. John Hall) in his will, and we also have a bargain and sale transferring the ownership of the property to her (through her trustees, John Green and Matthew Morryes). The text of this bargain and sale indicates that Shakespeare was trying to artificially construct an entailment, where the property went to Susanna, then to her male heirs, and failing any male heirs (and she only had one daughter, Elizabeth), then the property was to go to Elizabeth and any male heirs she might produce (she instead died childless). So there can be no question that William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage were all long-standing professional colleagues, which makes the testimony of Heminges and Condell in the First Folio that they were "without ambition either of self-profit or fame: only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend & fellow alive as was our Shakespeare by the humble offer of his plays..." compelling evidence for William Shakespeare's authorship.

You are most welcome. Happy to provide otherwise lost material. It's from a VHS tape I made when it was broadcast.

@@tjaruspex2116 Be blessed, sir. Thank you. I included this video on my blog today. Cheers.

So does everybody. Hardly the question.

@@tjaruspex2116 "To be, or not to be? Or, to be a bee 🐝 that is the sting 😎

Congratulations. I hope it makes you feel good.

@@tjaruspex2116 Right.

If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If the law is on your side, argue the law. If neither, attack your opponent.

What is there to debate? There is no contemporary documentary evidence for any other author in the Shakespeare canon barring John Fletcher, and since Shakespeare's name is listed alongside Fletcher's the latter's authorship does not preclude the former's. Nor is there any contemporary testimony establishing that any other so-called "authorship candidate" wrote Shakespeare's works instead of him. Close stylistic analysis and its computer-age descendant stylometrics has added some more names to the canon in the early and late plays, but they're all recognized playwrights in the early modern Bankside theatre community, not scribbling aristocratic amateurs like Edward de Vere. In fact, stylometry firmly excludes Edward de Vere from contributing to Shakespeare's body of work, as does close analysis of his writing style, which reveals a rustic East Anglian accent with different pronunciations (since people spelled things as they sounded to them in this era) and rhyme words than William Shakespeare. But, frankly, anyone with an ear for early modern literature can exclude Edward de Vere as having written Shakespeare. There's an Oxfordian who haunts TH-cam named Steven Hershkowitz and he challenged people to tell who wrote what in a chimeric poem made up of Edward de Vere's verse (and one poem misattributed to de Vere) and William Shakespeare's. Using no other aesthetic standard than whether it was good or bad, I was able to distinguish 100% between de Vere's verse (bad) and Shakespeare's (good), and I even correctly identified the part of the poem that drew from a misattribution to de Vere, which was too good for him but too poor to be Shakespeare's work. Rather than admit that I had successfully answered his challenge, he deleted the entire thread. But I was predicting that response and archived his chimeric poem and my post in response. So, in the absence of any documentary, testimonial, or stylometric evidence for other "authorship candidates" as the "real Shakespeare", what remains to be debated? Merely a bunch of irrelevant claims and speculations that do nothing to forward the case for authorship even if they're taken as true for the sake of argument. Any advocate for an "alternative Shakespeare" will have to rebut the following prima facie case with specific evidence to the contrary or a demonstration that the logic somehow fails to support the conclusion, at a minimum. If they can't even do that, and none has yet, then the entire subject is a non-starter. oxfraud.com/sites/PrimaFacie.html P. S., If you're interested I wrote a five-part point-by-point rebuttal of this documentary in the comments to the more widely-viewed version of this video uploaded by NorthropN156. They were left four months ago, and if you want to read them then sort by "Newest First" because otherwise one of the posts will not appear.

@@Nullifidian Why is it necessary to construct a case if there is nothing to debate? Because there is no documentary evidence. Edward de Vere as a hidden writer requires that a case be made, but Willie Shaks as Shakespeare demands that there should be literally thousands of documents that equal proof without the need to construct a case of mere evidence. Your entire line of reasoning is without merit. I believe you are referring to The Benezet Test, which was not created by any TH-camr, real or ghostly. IT was created by a guy named Benezet, and he's been dead for a while. The rules are: without cheating determine which lines belong to Shakespeare and which to De Vere. If care or skill could conquer vain desire, Or reason's reins my strong affection stay, Then should my sights to quiet breast retire, And shun such signs as secret thoughts bewray; Uncomely love, which now lurks in my breast, Should cease my grief, through wisdom's power oppressed. My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I, desperate, now approve Desire is death, which physic did except. Past cure I am, now reason is past care, And frantic mad with evermore unrest; Fain would I sing, but fury makes me fret And rage hath sworn to seek revenge of wrong; My mazed mind in malice so is set As death shall daunt my deadly dolours long; Patience perforce is such a pinching pain As die I will, or suffer wrong again. For, if I should despair, I should grow mad, And in my madness might speak ill of thee; Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. Love is a discord and a strange divorce Betwixt our sense and rest, by whose power, As mad with reason, we admit that force Which wit or labour never may empower My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, At random from the truth vainly expressed: For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. Why should my heart think that a several plot, Which my heart knows the wide world's common place? Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not, To put fair truth upon so foul a face Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart? Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint? Who filled thine eyes with tears of bitter smart? Who gave thee grief, and made thy joys to faint? Who first did print with colours pale thy face? Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest? Above the rest in court, who gave thee grace? Who made thee strive in virtue to be best? Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, The more I hear and see just cause of hate? O, though I love what others do abhor, With others tho shouldst not abhor my state. What worldly wight can hope for heavenly hire, When only sighs must make his secret moan ? A silent suit doth seld to grace aspire, My hapless hap doth roll the restless stone. Yet Phoebe fair disdained the heavens above, To joy on earth her poor Endymion's love.

For the record, tjaruspex deleted my comment where I responded to the Bénézet test, but left this one up, therefore I'm going to repost what I said in this post in the hope that he's mistakenly confident that he successfully suppressed my post and won't be looking at this one. @vetstadiumastroturf5756 "Because there is no documentary evidence...." So title pages, dedication pages, Stationers' Register entries, Revels Accounts entries, contemporary literary anthologies including William Shakespeare's works under his name, and written statements by Shakespeare's contemporaries that he was an author, including those who had known him personally and/or professionally do not constitute "documentary evidence"? This is the kind of topsy-turvy worldview that prevents Shakespeare authorship denialism from being taken seriously by Shakespeare experts. It's not because they're invested in "the man from Stratford", but because the first act of any denialist is to ignore the documentary evidence and pretend it doesn't exist. But if you had anything like this for Edward de Vere, you'd be thrusting it in my face daily and denouncing me if I pretended that it didn't exist. Shakespeare authorship denial not only runs on willfully ignoring evidence but also the rankest hypocrisy. As for your test, I'm glad to take it. To make it clear what I'm responding to, I'm going to quote each passage with my reasons for attribution to de Vere or Shakespeare. "If care or skill could conquer vain desire, "Or reason's reins my strong affection stay, "Then should my sights to quiet breast retire, "And shun such signs as secret thoughts bewray; "Uncomely love, which now lurks in my breast, "Should cease my grief, through wisdom's power oppressed." This is whiny, boring, overly alliterative, and doesn't keep the meter (the sixth line lands hard on the extra syllable-op-PRESSED-which throws off the entire meter, as contrasted with the occasional use of a "feminine" ending with an eleventh unstressed last syllable in Shakespeare), so I'm going to conclude it's by Edward de Vere. "My reason, the physician to my love, "Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, "Hath left me, and I, desperate, now approve "Desire is death, which physic did except. "Past cure I am, now reason is past care, "And frantic mad with evermore unrest; Now this is entirely different in tone. While it is a complaint, it's not merely whinging. In fact, it was very badly strategized of Louis Bénézet to place these passages next to each other, because it really shows the difference in how de Vere and Shakespeare handle the same theme. Shakespeare handles it deftly and with humor and the use of imagery. I suppose "reason's reins" is a kind of image, but how much more satisfying is it that reason is portrayed as a doctor who got angry with his patient for not following his prescriptions and therefore left the recalcitrant patient to his fate. He then goes on to play with the proverbial expression "past cure is past care". Verdict: Shakespeare. ""Fain would I sing, but fury makes me fret" "And rage hath sworn to seek revenge of wrong; "My mazed mind in malice so is set "As death shall daunt my deadly dolours long; "Patience perforce is such a pinching pain "As die I will, or suffer wrong again." Again, this is just whinging with no imagery to leaven the complaint with the exception of the sort-of pun on "sing" and "fret". The problem, though, is that frets are an instrumental feature, not a vocal one. You can contrast this with Shakespeare's use of the same "fret" pun in _The Taming of the Shrew_ , where Katherine smashes a lute over her music tutor's head. There the analogy is exact. It's less exact in _Hamlet_ , but even in that case there's an instrumental motif, since Hamlet is trying to get Guildenstern to play the recorder. Plus the extreme alliteration is typical of de Vere. He's so incompetent that he can't find a way to maintain alliteration, which seems to be his poetic hammer with which he treats every line of verse as a nail, without using the word "daunt". Death doesn't end his "deadly dolours long"; it just momentarily intimidates them. Laughable. This bad poetry screams Edward de Vere. "For, if I should despair, I should grow mad, "And in my madness might speak ill of thee; "Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, "Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be." This is Shakespeare. It's clear from the fact that he doesn't start off from an affectation of despair already, but rather treats of despair in the subjunctive mood. Also, "ill-wresting" is the kind of striking image that de Vere was simply incapable of. Instead of saying, "credulous" or "calumnious", he uses the analogy of an object being wrenched out of shape. One is reminded of the passage in Much Ado About Nothing : "Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit." "Love is a discord and a strange divorce "Betwixt our sense and rest, by whose power, "As mad with reason, we admit that force "Which wit or labour never may empower" This is the only passage so far to cause me the slightest hesitation. Not because I think Shakespeare might have written it-he is too good to make a rhyme like power/empower-but because I have the instinct that it is just too good for de Vere, even though it's inferior to Shakespeare. I suspect someone else's verse has been misattributed to de Vere. But since I suspect that, I'm going to go with de Vere (attributed) rather than Shakespeare. "My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, "At random from the truth vainly expressed: "For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, "Who art as black as hell, as dark as night." Now I have no question about this. This is the real voice of Shakespeare. Aside from the power of the language, there's again the use of real imagery to forward the poetic argument, not just wallow, and there's another person involved. Implicitly, this is true of de Vere's verse too, but he never seems to address the other party. Instead, de Vere is in love with himself in love and pities himself merely because he asserts his state is pitiable. This self-centeredness is pretty typical of the man who, when begged to economize by his father-in-law, said "Mine is made to serve me, and myself not mine." "Why should my heart think that a several plot, "Which my heart knows the wide world's common place? "Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not, "To put fair truth upon so foul a face" This is equally clearly Shakespearian, though I'm dealing with it separately because clearly it's not of a piece with the preceding passage. The fair/foul dichotomy is particularly typical. Just think of Macbeth for example: "Fair is foul, foul is fair: | Hover through the fog and filthy air." "Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart? "Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint? "Who filled thine eyes with tears of bitter smart? "Who gave thee grief, and made thy joys to faint? "Who first did print with colours pale thy face? "Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest? "Above the rest in court, who gave thee grace? "Who made thee strive in virtue to be best?" This is de Vere again. It's tedious, it's whiny, and it doesn't go anywhere. It's literally just one damn thing after another with him. The thoughts don't join up. He confuses mere repetitiveness with a poetic style. "Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, The more I hear and see just cause of hate? O, though I love what others do abhor, With others tho[u] shouldst not abhor my state." Sneaky Bénézet throwing this passage in at the end of de Vere's series of rhetorical questions. However, there is more than enough to distinguish this as Shakespeare's. For one thing, the question moves on to the second line and isn't confined to the first and involves the kind of poetic contradiction that de Vere was incapable of: "love thee more"/"more I hear and see just cause of hate". And the third and fourth lines build creatively on the image established: even though I love what everyone else abhors, don't you abhor me with them. P. S., It should be "thou" not "tho" (though) on the last line. I've altered it so it makes sense. "What worldly wight can hope for heavenly hire, "When only sighs must make his secret moan ? "A silent suit doth seld to grace aspire, "My hapless hap doth roll the restless stone. "Yet Phoebe fair disdained the heavens above, "To joy on earth her poor Endymion's love." And more tedious de Vere whinging and alliteration (five s sounds in line three alone!). I laughed out loud at "hapless hap", which is just so inelegant an expression, and the rest of the line is just bizarre if you know the mythology. Because the rolling restless stone is Fortune's stone. But Fortune deals with everybody's luck-good or ill-whereas de Vere seems to think that Fortune is a goddess created for him alone, I guess? It's very difficult to parse this passage in any way that makes sense, except to assume that de Vere was applying the artistic standard of "sod it, it'll do". And the Phoebe/Endymion reference, rather than adding to the poetic quality, just seems like over-egging the pudding, but at least it keeps him off the alliteration. To be honest, if you-and Louis Bénézet-thought that this should have been difficult for me, then it simply verifies what I've long thought about most Shakespeare authorship deniers, which is that they have tin ears to which anything written in early modern English that goes ti-TUM, ti-TUM, ti-TUM, ti-TUM, ti-TUM sounds Shakespearian. I wonder if you'll come back to tell me how I did, because I'm pretty confident I successfully identified them all. The first thing I'm going to look up as soon as I hit "Reply" is whether that questionable passage was genuinely misattributed to de Vere.

Quite telling, isn't it?

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@@tjaruspex2116 I think he meant "Cusack" lol. Thank you for uploading this, though. He captures the magic of Yeats better than anyone

Equivocation was a controversial doctrine by the 1560s if note earlier. Garnet's MS was written c. 1595. This is a bogus argument.

@@rstritmatter th-cam.com/video/T0C2X1Tj9ZI/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=EndoftheTownProductions

The most thorough one I have seen as well, and also the least thorough. It's in a one hundred way tie for last place.

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Don't worry. The only farce is the refusal to take Ben Jonson at his word that the actor-playwright he knew personally and who had been in at least two of his plays was the real writer.

Cheers, mate!

What do you know about the First Folio? Evidently, not very much, which makes your comment noise. Did you watch the video? Care to comment on the fact that de Vere's son-in-law was one of the two patrons and dedicatees of the Folio. That would be one fact relevant to the shallowness of your dogma.

​@@rstritmatter Do you have primary documentary evidence or contemporary testimony to establish that either or both of the Herbert brothers were "patrons... of the Folio"? As for being de Vere's "son-in-law", Philip Herbert didn't marry Susan de Vere until Edward de Vere was dead, so Philip Herbert never had a father-in-law.

They have put on some of the best Shakespeare I've ever seen, so I must agree.