humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

In article
<5085aae0-1c17-485b-be24-ab42090ab0c3@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com>,
Art Neuendorffer

(aneuendorffer114200@comicass.nut) wrote:

> >> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Christopher Marlowe was a poet and dramatist of great renown,
> >>> so naturally most of the available information highlights
> >>> his accomplishments in those areas.
> >>> Only a very small fraction of Marlowe's admirers (most of them on
> >>> the far lunatic fringe) regard him as the possible author of the
> >>> Shakespeare canon; the "tiny fraction" to which you allude
> >>> comes almost entirely from the lunatic fringe with
> >>> its crackpot conspiracy theories.
> .
> > Art Neuendorffer
> >>
> >> Well, Peter Farey is an honorary Strat.
> .
> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >
> > Right. His ideas may constitute controversial speculation,
> > but he is not on the lunatic fringe.
> .
> >> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >>>
> >>> By the same token, Francis Bacon was a philosopher and statesman
> >>> of distinction, so naturally most of the available information
> >>> highlights his accomplishments in those areas.

> > Art Neuendorffer
> >>
> >> You don't seem to have any problem
> >> with Bacon's reputation as a pederast.

> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >
> > To my knowledge, Bacon has a reputation as a homosexual,
> > not as a pedophile.

> Meet"Godrick, a verie effeminate faced youth:"
> ----------------------------------------------------
> http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Bacon_Sir_Francis.html

I find no indication here of how old Godrick was, Art; while he was
probably younger than Bacon, there is no clear indication in the text
that he was a minor, as the fifteen- or sixteen-year old Cogno was
when he joined Oxford's entourage. If true, this means that Bacon was
a homosexual, as I acknowledged that his reputation suggests; it does
not necessarily mean that he was a pedophile.

> <
But keep in mind that "pederast" is not synonymous with "pedophile"
-- the former is used more broadly to include homosexual relations,
often with a younger partner, but not necessarily with a minor.

> Bacon's fellow parliamentary member Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his
> Autobiography and Correspondence writes of Bacon: "yet would he not
> relinquish the practice of his most horrible & secret sinne of
> sodomie, keeping still one Godrick, a verie effeminate faced youth,

There is no clear indication here of Godrick's age, as noted above.

> to
> bee his catamite and bedfellow". Bacon's mother Lady Ann Bacon
> expressed clear exasperation with what she believed was her son's
> behaviour. In a letter to her other son Anthony, she complains of
> another of Francis's companions "that bloody Percy"

There is no indication here of Percy's age, only of his gender.

> who, she writes,
> he kept "yea as a coach companion and a bed companion". Bacon
> exhibited a strong penchant for young Welsh serving-men. One such
> person, Francis Edney, received the enormous sum of two hundred pounds
> in Bacon's will.>>

There is no indication here of Edney's age, Art. I don't dispute
that Bacon had the reputation of a homosexual, often with younger
companions; what is at issue in deciding whether he had a reputation
as a pedophile is whether those younger men were minors or not, and
thus far I see no clear indication that any of them was underage.

> ----------------------------------------------------
> .
> >> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Only a very small fraction of
> >>> Bacon's admirers (most of them very far out on the lunatic fringe)
> >>> regard him as the possible author of the Shakespeare canon; the
> >>> "tiny fraction" to which you allude comes almost entirely from the
> >>> aforementioned lunatic fringe with its crackpot cryptographic
> >>> "evidence."
> >
> >>> By contrast, Oxford was only a minor court poet capable at best of
> >>> workmanlike craftsmanship; his skill as a playwright cannot be
> >>> reliably assessed, as none of his works in that genre survives.
> .
> > Art Neuendorffer
> >>
> >> But it did!
> .
> >> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >>>
> >>> He
> >>> did not win renown in battle as many of his peers did, nor did he
> >>> exhibit any particular skill in diplomacy, the law, scholarship, or
> >>> other fields of human endeavor. He was not even a successful
> >>> entrepreneur, having failed to secure the tin mining concessions that
> >>> he sought. In fact, were it not for Looney's lunacy, Oxford would
> >>> have been all but forgotten -- he would be at best anthologized as a
> >>> minor Elizabethan court poet. In Oxford's case, the lunatic fringe
> >>> interested in him as possible author of the Shakespeare canon
> >>> constitutes almost the entire contemporary interest in him, apart from
> >>> that of a few professional scholars -- he is not memorable for any
> >>> other reason. Thus it is not in the least surprising that "Almost all
> >>> 62,300 for [sic] "edward de vere" sites present his [sic] as an
> >>> authorship candidate" -- in Oxford's case, almost *all* the
> >>> interest comes from the lunatic fringe.
> .
> > Art Neuendorffer
> >>
> >> So called lunatic fringe:
> >> ..........................
> >> David McCullough
> >> Sigmund Freud
> >> Derek Jacobi
> >> Robin Williams
> >> Paul H. Nitze
> >> Clifton Fadiman
> >> Justice Harry A. Blackmun
> >> Justice John Paul Stevens
> >> Justice Lewis F. Powell
> >> ..........................
> >> Art Neuendorffer
>
> nordicskiv2 wrote:
> >
> > I notice that that last name is separated off from all the others,
> > presumably because Neuendorffer is the farthest out on the lunatic
> > fringe of the entire list -- by orders of magnitude, in fact.
> > Gracefully conceded, Art!
> ----------------------------------------------
> Advocate: You think you can persuade the Court
> . that you're not responsible by reason of lunacy?
> .
> Joseph K.: I think that's what the Court wants me to believe. Yes,
> that's the conspiracy--to persuade us all that the whole world is
> crazy, formless, meaningless, absurd. That's their dirty game.
> So I've lost my case. What of it? You? you're losing too. It's all
> lost. Lost. So what? Does that sentence the entire world to lunacy?

No -- but much of the Oxfordian world already has a good start.
Incidentally, Art, none of the persons on the lunatic-fringe list
above has any particular expertise in Elizabethan literary history.
It is possible to be perfectly sane in one's area of competence but a
complete crank in another. For example, I know of an eminent scholar
of Slavic languages who is (or was) a Velikovskian. The example of
the eminent mathematician Fomenko's foray into history ("New
Chronology") has been mentioned often by John Kennedy. Then there's
the curious case of aneuendorffer114200@comicass.nut, apparently a
competent former goVERnment atmospheric scientist, who inhaled too
much ozone and began to see secret codes that would make even a child
of twelve laugh aloud.

> ----------------------------------------------
> Art Neuendorffer