Much ado about ranting

The blog "Shakespeare" By Another Name recently pointed me to an amusing online free-for-all in which a columnist for the London Times, Oliver Kamm, mixes it up with various anti-Stratfordians (i.e., people who doubt that the works of Shakespeare were written by the man from Stratford).

This issue is not as interesting to me as it once was. I'm still in the Oxfordian camp - I think the author was most likely Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who used Will Shakespeare as a beard - but my world would not come crumbling down if definitive proof to the contrary were obtained. (For some of my thoughts on why Oxford is a good candidate to be the "true" author, click on the "categories" link at the bottom of this post.)

What I found most interesting about the long, heated online debate was how angry Kamm allows himself to become. In fact, he seems to be aboil with rage and indignation almost from the start. He repeatedly characterizes his opponents as cranks and worse, yet seems honestly perplexed that anyone could accuse him of using ad hominems. He also insists that his opponents have no proper academic credentials, though he himself is described in his Times bio as "having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund" who has an interest in "economic policy, foreign affairs and European literature." It seems odd that his main complaint about his opponents is that they are "amateurs," when he himself is clearly an amateur in Elizabethan studies, as well. Perhaps it is a case of psychological projection.

That's not to say Kamm makes no good points. He strikes a few "palpable hits," I think, though many of his arguments are question-begging and appeals to authority (the very errors he accuses his opponents of committing). He is obviously very intelligent, a fact that makes his vituperative style of expression that much more baffling. You would think that as a bright, sophisticated writer, he would see how he's coming across, but he seems oblivious. His increasingly agitated commentary is perhaps an object lesson in the ego run amok. It underlines a point I've been reflecting on lately - that of all human skills or virtues, self-possession may be the most important. Imagine a world in which everyone could remain self-possessed under even the most trying conditions. War, violence, and cruelty might not vanish altogether (there are self-possessed sociopaths), but would certainly be rarer than they are now.

After reading the debate, I found myself flipping through the book that inspired the Shakespeare blog - Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare" By Another Name, a biography of Edward de Vere written from the perspective that de Vere wrote the works of Shakespeare. Innumerable parallels between de Vere's life and elements of the Shakespearean corpus are explored. Some of these parallels are more convincing than others, but the cumulative effect is immensely persuasive, at least to me.

Here's a small but telling example from page 169 of Anderson's book. De Vere (Oxford) betrayed two friends who were plotting against the Queen; these friends were arrested and imprisoned. Understandably furious with Oxford, they launched a series of attacks on him, alleging a variety of vices and evils. One of the pair, Charles Arundell, testified:

First, I will detect him of the most impudent and senseless lies that ever passed the mouth of any man.... His third lie which hath some affinity with the other two is of certain excellent orations he made.... The second vice, wherewith I mean to touch him though in the first I have included perjury in something [sic] is that he is a most notorious drunkard and very seldom sober ... thirdly I will prove him a buggerer of a boy ... fifthly to show that the world never brought forth such a villainous monster, and for a parting blow to give him his full payment, I will prove against him his most horrible and detestable blasphemy in denial of the divinity of Christ our Savior and terming the Trinity a fable ... that Joseph was a wittold [cuckold] and the Blessed Virgin a whore.

To conclude, he is a beast in all respects and in him no virtue to be found and no vice wanting.

Note the confused syntax and the eccentric numbering, in which the third precedes the second. (It is the third lie, but apparently an example of the first vice.) Compare the above with the speech that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of the inept constable Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing:

Marry, sir, [the accused] have committed false report. Moreover, they have spoken untruths, secondarily they are slanders, sixth and lastly they have belied a lady, thirdly they have verified unjust things, and to conclude, they are lying knaves.

The similarities are obvious, right down to the words "to conclude." It would seem likely that Dogberry is a cruel burlesque of Arundell. If so, whoever wrote the play must have been familiar with Arundell's testimony and must have had reason to lampoon it. Oxford, of course, would meet both criteria.

To publicly lampoon a man whom one has betrayed and handed over to the jailers of the Tower is not the most admirable course of action, to be sure. But no one ever said de Vere was a likable or well-adjusted fellow. Indeed, some of the accusations made against him are probably accurate, though others seem like boilerplate Elizabethan slander. It is quite plausible, for instance, that de Vere was "very seldom sober." But some high-functioning alcoholics can be astonishingly productive; their overconsumption of alcohol can bring on periods of remarkable creativity; they are even capable of works of genius, as I discussed here. Such people are also capable of extraordinary malice -- the kind of malice that might prompt a man to ridicule a desperate enemy whose downfall he has brought about.

The only credible alternative to the Oxfordian theory, it seems to me, is that someone else wrote the plays but was guided by Oxford. This is not impossible, since Oxford was known to serve as a mentor and patron of young writers.

Clare Asquith's book Shadowplay (though it does not include Oxford in the mix) makes an argument along these lines, suggesting that Will Shakespeare of Stratford came under the aegis of Catholic noblemen and served as their mouthpiece. Trouble is, I see little in the Stratford man's background that would supply him with the erudition to write great poetry; and some of the plays, like Love's Labour's Lost, seem to have been written before young Will had even arrived in London. (But the dating of all the plays is endless debated, so this point cannot be conclusive.)

Kamm and others like to point out that Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were of middle-class origins, yet wrote great plays, and this is true; but both Jonson and Marlowe were recognized early for their talent and given special treatment. Marlowe went to Corpus Christi College; Jonson went to the acclaimed Westminster School and later received an honorary degree from Oxford University. By contrast, the Stratford man appears to have had no education beyond a few years in the Stratford grammar school. Still, we cannot rule out the possibility that Will showed early promise and was shipped off to the household of wealthy relatives who supplied him with tutors and books. This is the theory advanced by E. A. J. Honigmann (discussed somewhat sympathetically by Eric Sams here), and it might be profitably combined with Asquith's musings.

In these matters (as in most matters) it's best not to be too dogmatic. Otherwise we may find ourselves, like Dogberry, declaring that those who disagree with us are, firstly, amateurs and cranks; thirdly, mere dilettantes; secondarily, lacking in all academic respectability; sixth and last, dishonest villains; fifthly, unfit for public debate; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.  

------------

Postscript. For those who can't be bothered to read the whole comments thread on the Times site, here are some excerpts from Oliver Kamm's posts.

He characterizes those who disagree with him as: "delusional," "conspiracy nutters," and "unscholarly cranks" who make "bogus and ahistorical assertions" and whose arguments are "buffoonery," "absurd," "snobbish, hapless idiocy," a "mound of dross," "pure snobbery and conspiracy theory, and ... an offence against historical scholarship."

"Your entire method of reasoning is ignorant of history and of literary criticism."

"The entire Oxfordian edifice is built on ignorance, snobbery and nothing else."

"[Anti-Stratfordian] arguments bear as much relation to literary scholarship as do creationism to science and Holocaust denial to history. It's a sociological and pathological phenomenon rather than a literary one."

"Mr Malim [an anti-Stratfordian] himself is a retired solicitor, with all the competence that that implies for the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature." (Kamm's own background is that of a hedge fund manager.)

"I said you were unscholarly cranks. And yes, of course the Supreme Court Justices you mention [who agree with the anti-Stratfordian position] come into that category. Their expertise in the law is extensive and entirely irrelevant to the field of literature."

"I do not treat my opponents with contempt. I treat them in this case and on this subject with derision."

"Mr Wilkinson, let's get one thing straight. At no time have I engaged in abuse. I've called you a crank and I've described your contributions as fatuous. I've further described the comments on this thread from your comrades as hapless idiocy. If you consider this to be abuse, then you're not cut out for public debate. I invariably address correspondents with courtesy but also directness, and I'm not going to flatter you by pretending that your opinions are worthy of respect or have any value whatever." ("Courtesy"?!) 

"I have carefully explained that I do not engage in abuse, but my restraint doesn't mean that I'm going to have a dialogue with you. Your theories are are no more interesting than they are educated, and while you have every right to be heard, you have no right whatever to be listened to."

"I never engage in personal abuse, but nor do I engage in flattery of cranks, whether creationists, 9/11 truthers, Holocaust deniers or Oxfordians, all of whom use similar methods of reasoning."

"That puts [the anti-Stratfordian position] outside the bounds of legitimate debate: it's at best irrationalism and unabashed amateurism ... More generally, it's pathological and in some cases (e.g. Delia Bacon, who first propounded Francis Bacon as author) literally insane."

"You're yet another who complains about name-calling while failing to identify a single example. I've referred to you (collectively) as cranks and I've commented on the fatuous, pitiful, amateurish and fraudulent contributions that you have made uninvited on this site. What on earth is wrong with that? How does that qualify as name-calling?" (How, indeed?)

"Either you're incompetent or you're a fantasist."

"I decline to treat you with a respect that you haven't earned. Yet again, you complain about abuse yet fail to identify any instance of it. The terms crank, conspiracy theorist, amateur and snob are plainly all descriptive." (Nope, no abuse there. I'm sure Kamm wouldn't take it as an insult if someone used such "descriptive" terms against him. Would he?)  

"What possible value is the opinion of a Supreme Court judge on Elizabethan literature? He may be intelligent and professionally accomplished, but his opinion on Shakespeare is intrinsically worth nothing." (But the opinion of a hedge fund manager is of great value.) 

"I didn't seek your opinions and have no interest in them."

"I can only suppose you thought you'd be treated at worst as a legitimate contributor to honest debate, and at least you now know better."

"Once you intruded into this space, I didn't ignore you but told you the brutal truth: you're a crank, an ignoramus and an amateur. How that can be termed 'vilification' is beyond me: it's a frank and objective assessment of your views and behaviour." (Why, it's not vilification at all. It's just frank talk - and "objective," no less!) 

Although Kamm does make a few substantive points, his overall tone is so hostile that the term "crank" or "nutter" would seem to apply more aptly to him than to most of his correspondents.

I don't know to what extent Oliver Kamm may be typical of hedge fund managers in general, but if the qualities he displays in these comments - overbearing self-righteousness, disdain for any contrary viewpoint, and an unwillingness to even consider the possibility that he is mistaken - are found in equal measure in his colleagues, then the derivatives crisis, which nearly brought down the financial systems of the world, becomes a good deal easier to understand.

Comments

[Tony M]

For me one of the most persuasive arguments in favor of Oxford is one that Oxfordians themselves have not wanted to make or comment upon. It is Joseph Sobron's analysis of the Sonnets in Alias Shakespeare.

The publication of the sonnets is interesting in and of itself. It seems clear that they were published without permission and dedicated to the deceased poet. ("Shakespeare's Sonnets" not "Sonnets by Shakespeare" and "Our Ever-Living Poet". Some have claimed they can find no instance of 'ever living' used to describe a 'still living' person - which would be significant considering Oxford was dead by 1606 when it was published, while WIll was alive another 10 years.)

Oxfordians are all agreement with that. They also agree that the idea that the sonnets seem to comment on the poet's private life and feelings. Soborn however suggests that the majority of the poems where written by the older Oxford, first to persuade the young man to accept an arranged marriage to his daughter, and then as love poems to the young man, filled with longing and concern about shaming him if their association became known.

Once viewed through this prism, the sonnets make sense. The narrative they indirectly tell is clear. They obtain specificity and emotional weight. But many Oxfordians seem to have trouble coming to grips with the idea that their man was bi-sexual, or at least in love with a young nobleman who was the very image of the youthful glory that Oxford squandered.

It's funny - Oxfordians have no trouble admitting that he was probably a drunk, that he betrayed co-conspirators, was horrible to his wife and was otherwise disreputable. Yet they don't want to imagine he fell in love with the most prominent young nobleman of his day.

[Bruce Siegel]

> and to conclude, they are lying knaves.

Michael, after reading this ridiculous post, I simply have to speak up.

First and foremost, the second thing I want you to know is that this is the last comment I will ever make here. And I'll have a lot more to say about that.

[Roger Knights]

"Wisdom is what we learn after we know it all."

[Ben]

Beautifully written.

And I agree with your point about the importance of self-possession. Some of the James Bond films involve a battle of self-possession between 007 and the arch-villain. When the villain starts to lose his cool, you know he's going to lose the battle (hence the expression "lost it").

[dmduncan]

It sounds to me like he considers himself an expert.

[Paul]

What a pointless comment lol@bruce

[Thorsten]

------------Bruce Siegel wrote:--------
Michael, after reading this ridiculous post,[...]
---------------------------

???
Have I missed anything or has this strange complaint any reason which someone is able to explain ?

[Michael Prescott]

"Have I missed anything ..."

Bruce was joking. He was mimicking the Dogberry quote in the main post.

"It sounds to me like he considers himself an expert."

Good point. I think an infatuation with the idea of oneself as an expert does contribute to a lot of ego-based invective. It's as if one is saying, "How dare anyone question me?" This attitude makes all disagreements personal, and may help explain the vehemence of some debates.

I also find that people who react this way are often strangely enamored of the views of other experts. Maybe they have an undue respect for authority, or maybe they fancy themselves members of an exclusive club to which the hoi polloi need not apply.

Incidentally, it's amusing that people like Kamm accuse anti-Stratfordians of snobbery when their own position depends largely on the idea that only prestigious academics are worthy to comment on Shakespeare. If you haven't got the proper credentials, dear boy, you're simply not worth listening to. Nope, no snobbery there!

(That's not to say academic credentials don't matter, but sometimes non-academics can come up with new arguments and even new evidence. Schliemann was an amateur archaeologist, and he found Troy.)

[Tony M]

"Incidentally, it's amusing that people like Kamm accuse anti-Stratfordians of snobbery when their own position depends largely on the idea that only prestigious academics are worthy to comment on Shakespeare. If you haven't got the proper credentials, dear boy, you're simply not worth listening to. Nope, no snobbery there!"

Well, yes and no. It's certainly ironic that those who would have us believe that Willy Shakes was nature's child are so suspicious of 'amateur' academics. But they are talking about a different type of snobbery, more class and heredity based.

Few academics come from the privileged classes - it is probably dominated by lower middle class. (To an upper class kid, academic salaries look frighteningly paltry. That's why they get MBAs) They were bright kids, got recognized for it and settled into a life that looked fairly leisurely to their eyes. They probably have a chip on their shoulder about genuinely privileged kids, who they are forced to teach. Obviously, I'm generalizing to make a point, but I think they are jealously possessive of their academic accreditation. Their snobbery is very different from the class based snobbery they accuse the Anti-Strats of.

Of course, the ultimate irony is that in defending academic accreditations, they need to believe Will Shakes magically needed no more education other than a few ales in the Mermaid Tavern and ignore the fact that Oxford received the best education available anywhere in Europe. He was, quite simply, an academic superstar.

[Bruce Siegel]

"Bruce was joking. He was mimicking the Dogberry quote in the main post."

Thanks for rescuing me, Michael. Did you ever write something that seemed brilliantly funny at the time, and when you read it the next day . . . .

[dmduncan]

It was funny. Do you look like Groucho Marx too, Bruce?

[dmduncan]

When Joe Klein wrote Primary Colors anonymously, there was a computer program used that analyzed writing style and came to the conclusion that Joe Klein was the probable author, if I remember correctly.

Has anyone tried that with the works of Shakespeare using the written works of the potential other candidates?

[Michael Prescott]

"Has anyone tried that with the works of Shakespeare ...?"

Yes, that kind of thing has been tried. If I recall correctly, Christopher Marlowe's writing scored the closest match, giving some ammo to those who believe that Marlowe's death was faked and that he wrote the works of Shakespeare while living abroad.

I don't think there is enough poetry from the mature Oxford to make a valid comparison. Nearly all the poetry Oxford published under his own name was written when he was quite young. It is of uneven quality, showing promise, but hardly equal to the best works of Shakespeare. Then again, Shakespeare's early works (like The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, and Two Gentlemen of Verona) are not the equal of his best works, either.

Some years ago a Dartmouth professor, Louis Benezet, put together a mashup of lines from Shakespeare and Oxford, arguing that no one could tell the difference. It can be read here:

http://snipurl.com/s8xv6

[Michael Prescott]

As a follow-up to my last comment, here's an excerpt from "The Man Who Was Shakespeare," by Charlton Ogburn (a pamphlet-sized compression of his much larger work, "The Mysterious William Shakespeare"):

"Nina Green in her 'Edward de Vere Newsletter' has used the criteria of distinctive words to link Oxford's early poems and his letters with Shakespeare's works. More than that, William Plummer Fowler, setting forth 'consistent correspondences' in 'thought and phraseology,' has composed a large volume on 'Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters' (1986)." [pp. 60,61]

Of course such stylistic tests are always open to challenge. I have not read either Green or Fowler, so I have no opinion on their work.

[dmduncan]

I just did a quick check of computer analysis and Shakespeare, and it said none of the three, Bacon, Marlowe, or De Vere were anywhere close to Shakespeare.

In that series of tests Walter Raleigh was apparently closer than the above three.

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/elval.html

[Michael Prescott]

Interesting. But as the report notes, many of de Vere's verses may have been song lyrics, which would make a direct comparison with poetry problematic. Note that even Shakespeare doesn't match Shakespeare when poems are compared with songs, as the authors observe: "Neither Shakespeare's plays nor his songs match his poems under modal testing."

De Vere wrote only 25 poems and songs that can be definitely attributed to him. They are all presented here:

http://snipurl.com/s8yp1

(I linked to a page in Google's cache because the actual page would not load.)

The people who conducted the computer tests say that the 8 of Oxford's exercises in verse may have been song lyrics. If we exclude those, there are only 17 poems left, a rather small sample.

Moreover, the page linked above identifies 12 (not 8) of the 25 selections as songs. This would leave only 13 poems.

The testers also seem to have disregarded a common theme of Oxfordian argument, which is that Oxford/Shakespeare revised his works throughout his life. Thus it is incorrect for them to say that, according to the Oxfordian chronology, certain plays and poems (in their present form) were written very early. The Oxfordian thesis is that these plays and poems may have been written early, but they were heavily revised later, as Oxford/Shakespeare honed his skills.

[Michael Prescott]

One more follow-up. In John Michell's book "Who Wrote Shakespeare?", there's a discussion of stylometric methodology. Michell notes that a physicist named Thomas Mendenhall developed a method "of 'fingerprinting' any author by frequency of word lengths." Mendenhall and his assistants counted over a million word-lengths in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and concluded that Marlowe's work matched perfectly.

Of course his conclusions have been disputed, and apparently no one has bothered to reproduce his results with a computer.

Michell adds, "There is now a flourishing school of Shakespearian 'stylometrists'. Eric Sams has a deprecatory chapter on them in *The Real Shakespeare*. They analyse Shakespeare's plays by sentence-length, numbers of words and syllables, incidences of common words or rare words [etc.] ... The result, says Sams, is chaotic. Every stylometrist has a different approach and rejects everyone else's method. Every discovery that has ever been proclaimed by one stylometrist has been disputed by another, equally qualified." [p. 230]

This is in line with my impression that stylometry is similar to graphology (handwriting analysis) - i.e., it is far from an exact science.

[Paul]

@Bruce - Doh! LMAO. What's a Dogberry?

[Bruce Siegel]

"Do you look like Groucho Marx too, Bruce?"

LOL, dm. Now that you mention it, it does sound like a Groucho line. And yes, to be distressingly candid, I do look like him.

"What's a Dogberry?'

Paul—I was playing off of Michael's paragraph:

"In these matters (as in most matters) it's best not to be too dogmatic. Otherwise we may find ourselves, like Dogberry, declaring that those who disagree with us are, firstly, amateurs and cranks; thirdly, mere dilettantes; secondarily, lacking in all academic respectability; sixth and last, dishonest villains; fifthly, unfit for public debate; and to conclude, they are lying knaves."

This little episode has been a lesson for me in how little confidence I have in my humor, especially when I write. I'm only willing to think I'm funny if someone else says I am.

[Michael Prescott]

"This little episode has been a lesson for me in how little confidence I have in my humor"

I thought your comment was funny. Some of the people who didn't get it may not have read my whole post. (If they had, presumably they would know who Dogberry is.)

[Bruce Siegel]

All of which reminds me of a saying that seems particularly relevant to the main subject you write about here: Dying is easy. Comedy—that's hard!

[dmduncan]

Obviously the only way to settle this is through remote viewing. Does anyone have a hotline to Ingo Swann?

[Paul]

@Bruce - I didn't get the joke due to a) not ready the post fully and b) ignorance. :)

[Paul]

*reading
although you probably inferred the above, despite my ignorance I am a pedant.

[Thorsten]

@Bruce:
Never mind. Happens all the time that I find sth very funny and forget that other people don't have the background
information to understand it. And when I
tell it....well...