humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

"Tom Reedy" wrote in message
news:fab21032-dc71-40b2-8f8e-0cdb8f8f97d1@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

> On Mar 31, 4:09 am, Ignoto wrote:

>> > A poster on another board has said he thinks the upcoming decade will
>> > see more establishment Shakespearean academics join into the
>> > authorship debate and that they will eventually win it. I know last
>> > year James Shapiro announced he was writing a book on it, but I
>> > haven't heard of any others.
>>
>> > Does anybody think the same, and if so, how do you think the
>> > antiStrats will fare and why?
>>
>> Are geologists planning on debating the flat earthers? Astronomers the
>> geocentrists?
>
> None of these groups have students coming into college asking about
> their validity.

Ignoto's analogy was, of course, absurd.
A better one would be to the early 17th
century (after about 1615) when students
were coming to college, having looked
through telescopes at the Jovian satellites,
etc., to hear their professors say that such
things could not possibly exist.

>> If they did, what could they possible hope to gain?
>
> Umm, dissemination of the truth? Last I recall, college was supposed
> to have some hand in that.

Ignoto's right here. There is nothing a
Strat professor could tell his students
that would do any good. For him to
enter the debate at all would be to invite
ridiicule. Far better to continuing
churning out confused nonsense, while
pretending that the question does not
exist.

>> Rarely
>> does the rational trump the irrational (and these boards would seem the
>> living proof).
>
> That is true, but ignoring the irrational while it makes headway
> against the rational because of no response from academe is
> irrational.

The rational here has long been obvious
-- the sheer absurdity of the Stratfordian
case has brought forward all manner of
proposed 'improvements' -- some of them
quite crazy.

The difference now is that a clear
alternative has been worked out, and
deniers of Stratfordianism can now
speak with abundant confidence.


Paul.