humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

On Mar 2, 12:27=A0am, "Peter Farey"
wrote:
> "spinoza1111" wrote:
>
> > I apologize if I am too offtopic in the two posts "Sonnets
> > to Sundry Notes of Music" and "SSAT Analogies".
>
> That's ok. You did make a valiant attempt to make the second
> on-topic by relating it to what happens here. You said:
>
> =A0 Fuchs is a spokesperson for the self-indulgent who pretend,
> =A0 in this ng as elsewhere, that there really is no such
> =A0 thing as polysemy, and insist, when in positions of power,
> =A0 on applying a single set of rules while pretending there
> =A0 are no alternative sets.
>
> Unfortunately, you got it entirely the wrong way round,
> since the only contributors 'in a position of power' here
> are of course the Stratfordians. And, as I explained with
> the several examples I offered, it is the Stratfordians
> who apply "a single set of rules while pretending there
> are no alternative sets."

With all respect, the "Stratfordians" (where no professional and full
time Shakespeare scholar, to the best of my knowledge and belief, is
anything but a "Stratfordian") do address the authorship identity
question and have long resolved it. Investigate for example the need
for constant revision of playtexts to get the Stationer's approval and
the fact that making a copy required knowledge of the author, and ask
yourself if a cover up could have occured, and to what reason in a
business always near extinction.

I'd have to say that you view is that of Fuchs. For example, he
believes it to be undecidable as to whether Seward (Lincoln's
political patron and later on his Secretary of State) expresses, in
the text, the idea that Lincoln was unqualified for national office,
or the idea that he wouldn't be electable amongst sophisticated
Easterners: but no mention is made of the text of Lincoln being a
stupid man, only a man with a rural accent.

In terms of documentary evidence as opposed to evidence which has to
be treated as a secret code, Shakespeare is the best answer to the
test question: but many Deniers feel as do parents of students who
can't do analogies that(1) there is polysemy and (2) this allows us to
select anything "reasonable" and speak of it as an exclusionary
truth.

Indeed, they make Seward's mistake as regards Lincoln, and the mistake
of a student who equivocates on "more qualified" versus "more
sophisticated": they reason from Shakespeare's Warwickshire accent to
the conclusion that he could not have had the "sensitivity" to write
the corpus, a form of grave robbing.

Guess what? Although it's not evident from the passage, Seward made
the same mistake about Lincoln, another autodidact. Seward later had
to eat Crow baked Alaska.
>
> Polysemy is at the very heart of why I think what I do,
> for Pete's sake!
>
> I find Hamlet's words quite apposite for you:
>
> =A0 =A0Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
> =A0 =A0That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house
> =A0 =A0And hurt my brother.
>
> Peter F.
>
>