[lbo-talk] Shakespeare's 457th birthday

[C. G. Estabrook]

There's a great and growing number of books, articles, and webchats for 
there to be "no real debate."  One might read together Alan Nelson's 
"Monstrous Adversary" (anti-Oxfordian) and Mark Anderson's 
"'Shakespeare' By Another Name" (pro-Oxfordian).  To take an example 
almost at random, I was recently in Venice, which the author of the 
plays obviously knew well: Shaksper of Stratford was never there, but 
Oxford lived there and loved the place. (And while there learned why one 
could speak correctly of the "coast of Bohemia" -- which the 
less-well-traveled Ben Jonson didn't know.)  --CGE

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> There is no real debate over Shakespeare's authenticity. If anyone one
> wants to try a _really_ hard case for proving attribution, try to prove
> that Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels. He did, but the hard evidence for
> his doing so is much flimsier than the hard evidence for Shakespeare
> writing The Plays.