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Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:38 pm
by neufer
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/26/secret-society-revealed-scientists-crack-mysterious-18th-century-code/ wrote:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Researchers Crack Secret Society's 18th Century Code,
Target World's Most Mysterious Book
FoxNews.com: October 26, 2011

<<They're going to need a bigger secret decoder ring.

A team of researchers that made headlines for decoding a secret society's 18th century manuscript is working to reveal the secret behind an even more mysterious book -- one that the world has yet to decode.

Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript has remained one of history’s biggest mysteries: Its aging parchment is coated in alien characters and has for decades mystified scientists. And Kevin Knight, a computer scientist with USC's Viterbi School of Engineering who recently helped crack the Copiale Cipher, believes the same techniques could be used to tackle literature’s great mystery manuscript. “We have decipherment algorithms, but we also have tools that just look for patterns,” Knight told FoxNews.com in an interview. “Those pattern-finders helped us find similar sets of letters in Copiale, and they have already started helping us find patterns in the Voynich manuscript.”

The Copiale Cipher -- a mysterious cryptogram bound in gold and green brocade paper -- is a 250-year-old coded document. By decrypting it, Knight and his colleagues uncovered the inner workings of an 18th-century secret society. The codebreaking team began without knowing the language of the encrypted document. They had a hunch about the Roman and Greek characters distributed throughout the manuscript, however, so they isolated these from the abstract symbols and attacked it as the true code.

After trying 80 languages, the team realized the characters were actually meant to throw them off, deliberately planted to misread readers. With the aid of statistics and algorithms such as expected word frequency, the first meaningful phrases began to emerge: “Ceremonies of Initiation,” followed by “Secret Section.”

Knight is now targeting other coded messages, including ciphers the Zodiac Killer sent to the police in the 60s and 70s, the C.I.A.’s “Kryptos” sculpture, as well as the infamous Voynich manuscript. According to Knight, the process has profound implications for unlocking history's mysteries. "Secret societies have had a role in revolutions ... and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered," Knight said. "This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies."

Currently owned by Yale, the Voynich manuscript was discovered in the Villa Mondragone near Rome in 1912 by antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich while sifting through a chest of books offered for sale by the Society of Jesus. Voynich dedicated the remainder of his life to unveiling the mystery of the book's origin and deciphering its meanings. He died 18 years later, without having wrestled any its secrets from the book.

"Is it a code, a cipher of some kind?" asked Greg Hodgins, a physicist with the University of Arizona. "People are doing statistical analysis of letter use and word use -- the tools that have been used for code breaking. But they still haven't figured it out," Hodgins said.

Knight and his team of Swedish and American researchers are wary of the monumental task ahead. "When you get a new code and look at it, the possibilities are nearly infinite," Knight said. “Not knowing the system is the biggest challenge -- not knowing who wrote it, why they wrote it, and what language they spoke.”

Whatever it is, Knight hopes his findings can shed new light on history: "Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered,” Knight said. "This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies.”

But the secrets of the Voynich manuscript may yet remain a mystery. Despite their recent successes, Knight admits that the team has “raised more questions than we’ve answered.”>>

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 5:24 pm
by Ann
bystander wrote:Personally, I think it's "Much Ado About Nothing".
  • What's in a name? that which we call a rose
    By any other name would smell as sweet;
Good point, bystander.

Hopefully I don't need that many more posts. I'm going to address Shakespeare's learning again, and possible reasons for him being burned out, and why he left London, and why he returned to Stratford.

What am I trying to prove? Only, really, that Roland Emmerich was too cocksure when he insisted that William Shakespeare the man couldn't have written the works of the bard who is known by the same name.

Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 5:43 pm
by owlice
Ann, I'm sorry to have to point this out to you, but you are not going to be able to prove anything. You do a lot of speculating, and sure, if that's fun for you (and it appears to be), have at it! But please disabuse yourself of the notion that you're going to prove anything here. You're not. The authorship question -- which, I assure you, Art knows much more about (whether he's on the right side or not :mrgreen:) than you can possibly know by perusing some websites in a week or two's time -- has been around for quite some time now. Regardless of how authoritatively you post from other's writings, scholarly and otherwise, the only person you're likely to convince here is yourself. (And there is nothing wrong with that, at all; just don't want you thinking that you're going to prove who authored the works under discussion.)

There is plenty wrong with the video Art posted, but it's an advertisement, and attempts to do what advertisements do: convince people to purchase a product, in this case, a movie.

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:04 pm
by Ann
I quite agree, owlice. I know I can't prove that William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet or that Roland Emmerich is wrong. How could I prove such a thing?

I'm just saying that I want to see - for myself, like you said - if there are reasonable explanations for the arguments that Roland Emmerich put forth. Even if there are reasonable explanations, that doesn't prove that these explanations are "true" or that Roland Emmerich's points are "wrong". "Reasonable" doesn't equal "true". It may seem reasonable that we should be able to fly if we cover our arms with birds' feathers, but even though it seems reasonable, it sadly isn't true. And no argument that I can come up with, no matter how "reasonable", will make it "true" beyond any reasonable doubt that "Shakespeare was Shakespeare".

I wrote my previous post precisely so that people wouldn't think that I'm trying to offer positive proof that William Shakespeare actually wrote (or "created") the literary works that have been credited to him. I realize, of course, that it is not possible to prove such a thing, at least not for me. The evidence that may have existed has turned to dust during the almost four hundred years that have passed since Shakespeare died, and we have little hope of finding any new facts that will clinch the case, which have escaped the ravages of the second law of thermodynamics. I certainly have no chance of finding that kind of proof.

So once again, please: I'm not trying to prove anything whatosever about Shakespeare, because there is no way I can prove anything about him. I'm speculating, like you said, owlice, and cobbling together an argument. That's all.

Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:14 pm
by neufer
Those who wish to vote on this issue can go to the official _Anonymous_ website:

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/anonymous/blog/

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:20 pm
by owlice
More advertising for the movie, hmmm, Art?

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:42 pm
by orin stepanek
Hmmmmm! Sounds like this post should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be,_or_not_to_be Shakespeare :!: :wink: :mrgreen:

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:53 pm
by neufer
owlice wrote:
More advertising for the movie, hmmm, Art?
I'm just trying to be a good sport and drum up votes for the illiterate Stratford boob.

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 10:02 pm
by neufer
Image
orin stepanek wrote:
Hmmmmm! Sounds like this post should be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be,_or_not_to_be Shakespeare :!: :wink: :mrgreen:
Hans Christian Andersen's 1857 novel:

At være eller ikke være (To Be or Not To Be).

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 10:33 pm
by Beyond
To be, or not to be, tis not the question. Verily the question be - Did it come from him who was, or him who wasn't. Some thinketh twas, some thinketh twasn't. That be my 2 1/2 cents worth. I wouldest splurged for a wooden nickel's worth, but times be'est tough thou knowest.

Why did Shakespeare leave London and return to Stratford?

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 3:14 am
by Ann
I'll try to finish this quickly, before I wear everybody's patience down. I won't say more about Shakespeare's knowledge, since it would mostly be a repetition and expounding on what I've said before.

But the quesiton of why Shakespeare stopped writing (or "creating") literature is interesting. I've argued earlier that Shakespeare wasn't the kind of person who wrote in order to put words on paper, in order to preserve them for posterity. He wrote for a live audience. When he left London and returned to Stratford he didn't have a live audience who would appreciate his works.

So why did he leave London?

I have previously argued that Shakespeare needed people around him who would support him in various ways. I think that he may have lost many of his important London supporters. Art previously showed us that Shakespeare mocked his own patron, the Third Earl of Southampton, by calling him Thomas Snout. Perhaps the Earl of Southampton lost interest in Shakespeare. Perhaps Shakespeare alienated or otherwise lost more of his supporters and assistants.

I have also argued that his creativity was running dry, and that he may have been "artistically exhausted".

Also, in 1613, the year that seems to mark the end of Shakespeare's literary creativity, the theater that is associated with him, the Globe, burnt down. The theater was rebuilt, but Shakespeare may not have had the energy to "start all over again".

So why did he return to Stratford?

I think it may have had to do with money. Shakespeare, who was poor in his youth but died rich, may always have been interested in money. He may have married his wife Anne Hathaway partly for her money (well, he had made her pregnant too, of course). I think he may have written (or "created") his plays at least partly for money, so that they could be performed to audiences who would pay a fee to see them.

I think he may have decided, in 1613, that it was more profitable for him to return to Stratford and use his standing and his money there, by playing by the rules of Stratford, than it was to stay in London and wait for the Globe to be rebuilt, and wait for his own inspiration to return, and look for new supporters if the ones he had before had deserted him.

I think Shakespeare was giving up on his theatrical career because he couldn't do it well enough any more, and he was looking for another career and another venue. That's why he returned to Stratford, where he was established thanks to his wife, but where he couldn't be accepted by writing poems or plays. Not in Stratford! That's why the bust of Shakespeare in the Stratford church originally showed Shakespeare holding a sack of grain, because that was the person he had been when he lived according to the rules of Stratford.

Ann

Did Edward de Vere write the works of Shakespeare?

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 4:01 am
by Ann
The hypothesis which I believe is promoted by Art, and possibly by Roland Emmerich, is that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is the true author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. The chief argument for this "Oxfordian" theory is, as far as I can understand, that Edward de Vere had had a very thorough and extensive and comprehensive education, so that he would be very knowledgeable about law, astronomy, medicine and other things that are described in the Shakespearean plays. Edward de Vere had travelled widely, so that he would have a very good first-hand knowledge of Italy, for example. I believe he had served in the army or the navy, so that he would know a lot about the military. And since he belonged to the aristocracy, he would have an intimate knowledge of the ways of the aristocracy not only in England, but possibly in France and Italy, too.

I agree that the knowledge and education of Edward de Vere fits the plays attributed to Shakespeare very well. I agree, too, that it is a mystery that William Shakespeare, if he wrote the works attributed to him, gave up literary creation completely after he returned to Stratford, to the point that he didn't even write a sonnet or a poem again. That is a particular point about Shakespeare that I find hard to swallow.

But I think that it is even harder to accept Edward de Vere as the true author of the Shakespeare works. To me, what impresses me most is that Elizabethan London seems to have accepted Shakespeare as the true author of the works of Shakespeare. If the contemporaries of Shakespeare, his fellow Londoners, didn't know who wrote the works we call Shakespearean, who would?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_ ... authorship wrote:
Mainstream critics further claim that if William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays and poems, the number of people needed to suppress this information would have made their attempts highly unlikely to succeed.
The same wikipedia source also wrote:
Some Stratfordian academics also argue the Oxford theory is based on simple snobbishness: that anti-Stratfordians reject the idea that the son of a mere tradesman could write the plays and poems of Shakespeare.
An equally simple argument is made by Columbia University professor James S. Shapiro, author of the book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?: namely, the tautology in any theory that "there must have been a conspiracy to suppress the truth of de Vere’s authorship" just because "the very absence of surviving evidence proves the case." He cites, by contrast, "testimony of contemporary writers, court records and much else" supporting Shakespeare's authorship.
In short, just because there is absolutely no contemporary evidence that Edward de Vere wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare, this fact does not in itself prove, or even suggests, that Edward de Vere did in fact write them.

After all, few people would argue that the Earth is shaped like a eight-cornered cube just because there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Just because there is no proof the the Earth is cube-shaped doesn't prove that there is a conspiracy to hide the fact that it is.

Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:25 am
by rstevenson
I hesitate to jump into a debate about Shaky, but being a geometer of note in a past life (high school, that is) I must comment on the idea of a "four-cornered cube". Perhaps in another dimension? Most cubes in our dimensional arena have eight corners. :)

Rob

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:41 am
by Ann
rstevenson wrote:I hesitate to jump into a debate about Shaky, but being a geometer of note in a past life (high school, that is) I must comment on the idea of a "four-cornered cube". Perhaps in another dimension? Most cubes in our dimensional arena have eight corners. :)

Rob
OOOOOPS!!!! :oops: :oops: :oops:

(I guess this shows my religious upbringing, where I came across the expression "the four corners of the earth".)

Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:02 am
by neufer
owlice wrote:
Ann, I'm sorry to have to point this out to you, but you are not going to be able to prove anything. You do a lot of speculating, and sure, if that's fun for you (and it appears to be), have at it! But please disabuse yourself of the notion that you're going to prove anything here. You're not.
Well...that's not exactly true. Ann and geckzilla and you have definitely proved something to me.

My little foray here into the authorship issue wasn't to promote the movie. Rather, now that the movie is finally coming out, it was to test the waters to see if there might be any interest in that authorship book that I have been promising everyone that I was going to write for almost 15 years now. Apparently there isn't. If I can't even get past chapter 1: demonstrating that the illiterate Stratford boob couldn't possibly have written the works then there is certainly little point in writing the rest of the chapters and going to the considerable effort of trying to get something published.

So thanks to everyone for providing me with an explanation for family & friends and for preventing me from wasting my time and money.

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:10 am
by rstevenson
A word of wisdom from the past, about the writing of books, might be in order:
I can’t understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. (Fred Allen)
Rob

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:16 am
by owlice
neufer wrote:Rather, now that the movie is finally coming out, it was to test the waters to see if there might be any interest in that authorship book that I have been promising everyone that I was going to write for almost 15 years now. Apparently there isn't. If I can't even get past chapter 1: demonstrating that the illiterate Stratford boob couldn't possibly have written the works then there is certainly little point in writing the rest of the chapters and going to the considerable effort of trying to get something published.
Art, I think you should write the book. Truly.

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 4:23 pm
by Ann
I, too, think you should write your book, Art. You could make a good argument about Shakespeare not being knowledgeable enough to write the works credited to him. You would need to take care to bolster your argument by quoting passages from the plays where the author is talking about things that the son of a glovemaker with perhaps five or six years of schooling in all probability just couldn't know. Even though I quoted a "snobbishness" counterargument to refute the argument that Shakespeare didn't have the education it takes to write what he did, I nevertheless agree that the question about Shakespeare's education is a really interesting one.

It is also really interesting, and hard to explain, that Shakespeare gave up creating literary works altogether after he had moved back to Smallville - eh, I mean, to Stratford. That is a good argument against the man from Stratford being the writer of the immortal works. The fact that Shakespeare's handwriting was pretty bad, and that no written documents of any sort apart from six signatures remain in Shakespeare's own hand can be used to argue against Shakespeare, too.

But you need to address the question of why Edward de Vere allowed Shakespeare to steal his works, if de Vere really wrote them and Shakespeare claimed them for himself. Why would Edward de Vere allow it?

If you can't offer a reasonable answer to that question, I don't think you have a case.

Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 5:06 pm
by Beyond
ha-ha, just a hint of Super shakespeare, eh?

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 5:50 pm
by neufer
Ann wrote:
I, too, think you should write your book, Art. You could make a good argument about Shakespeare not being knowledgeable enough to write the works credited to him. You would need to take care to bolster your argument by quoting passages from the plays where the author is talking about things that the son of a glovemaker with perhaps five or six years of schooling in all probability just couldn't know. Even though I quoted a "snobbishness" counterargument to refute the argument that Shakespeare didn't have the education it takes to write what he did, I nevertheless agree that the question about Shakespeare's education is a really interesting one.

It is also really interesting, and hard to explain, that Shakespeare gave up creating literary works altogether after he had moved back to Smallville - eh, I mean, to Stratford. That is a good argument against the man from Stratford being the writer of the immortal works. The fact that Shakespeare's handwriting was pretty bad, and that no written documents of any sort apart from six signatures remain in Shakespeare's own hand can be used to argue against Shakespeare, too.
Thank you, Ann, for pointing out where you think that there might be some reasonable doubt.
Ann wrote:
But you need to address the question of why Edward de Vere allowed Shakespeare to steal his works, if de Vere really wrote them and Shakespeare claimed them for himself. Why would Edward de Vere allow it?

If you can't offer a reasonable answer to that question, I don't think you have a case.
As far as I am concerned Edward de Vere made a Faustian bargain so that his major works would be published and promoted but only if they were edited and written under a pseudonym. (Sort of like me writing under "Neufer.")

This was, in fact, actually more or less standard operating procedure at the time.

(Note: Oxford wrote all of Mar-L.O. but just most of Shakespeare, IMO.)

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 7:35 pm
by Beyond
Art wrote:(Sort of like me writing under Neufer".)
But that's only part of the truth. We all know that it's really Yogi that writes under Art, and that boo boo is the Real brains of the outfit, that pulls Yogi's strings. Boo boo has Yogi present himself as being addicted to pic-a-nic baskets to divert attention away from boo boo, and even has Art present Yogi as a kind of alter-ego, as even Art has the alter-ego of neufer. So everyone is so busy running around in the Art-neufer-Yogi-pic-a-nic basket circle, that boo boo is seldom noticed at all. That's one smart little bear!! And then there's that park ranger....

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:00 pm
by Ann
Art wrote:
As far as I am concerned Edward de Vere made a Faustian bargain so that his major works would be published and promoted but only if they were edited and written under a pseudonym. (Sort of like me writing under "Neufer.")
I don't agree at all, Art.
Image[c]Victoria Benedictsson.[/c][/i]
Image
Ernst Ahlgren.
Writing under a pseudonym is one thing. Using the name of another person, a living person, your contemporary, someone who is even a public person who will be recognized well beyond his own circle of acquaintance, is something else entirely.

The Swedish 19th century writer Victoria Benedictsson wrote most of her books under the pseudonym Ernst Ahlgren, a male name. But there was no public person by the name of Ernst Ahlgren, who might have had Victoria Benedictsson's books attributed to him. Victoria Benedictsson was Ernst Ahlgren.




Image
Edward de Vere.
Image
William Shakesoeare.
By contrast, Edward de Vere was not William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, as an actor, was a living, public figure, and if Edward de Vere used Shakespeare's name as a synonym for himself, then instead of getting himself a nice anonymous pen name he attributed his own amazing top world class masterpieces to an upstart illiterate boob.

Why would he do that?



Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:50 pm
by neufer
Ann wrote:
Shakespeare, as an actor, was a living, public figure, and if Edward de Vere used Shakespeare's name as a synonym for himself, then instead of getting himself a nice anonymous pen name he attributed his own amazing top world class masterpieces to an upstart illiterate boob.

Why would he do that?
No one would be stupid enough to trust much less to pay off an illiterate Stratford boob. William Shaksper the actor, in fact, only existed on paper. Thomas Greene of Middle Temple was the only real person who lived in New Place at the time and, as Town Clerk of Stratford from 1603 to 1617, Greene had the means, motive and opportunity to doctor the Town Records (including Will's will, of course) to make it appear that there was a real illiterate Stratford boob. (Presumably, it was hoped that smart people in the future would recognize that an illiterate Stratford boob couldn't possibly have written the works; thereby softening Oxford's Faustian bargain.)
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/friends.html wrote:
<<[Thomas Greene] was living in New Place in 1609 and possibly for some time before, and in his diary he refers affectionately to "my cosen Shakespeare" numerous times around 1614. Three of his children were born in Stratford, and he named two of them "William" and "Anne," most likely after Shakespeare and his wife. Who was Thomas Greene? He was the son of Thomas Greene Sr., mercer, of Warwick, who in his will of 1590 left eighty pounds and a gray mare to Thomas Jr. In 1595 Thomas entered the Middle Temple (one of the four Inns of Court, the equivalent of law schools); his sureties (kind of like sponsors) were John Marston Junior and Senior, the future playwright and his father. In 1601 he accompanied Richard Quiney to London on Stratford business, where they tried unsuccessfully to see the Attorney General, Sir Edward Coke. (Coke was preoccupied because the Essex rebellion had just happened.) Greene was a close friend of Michael Drayton, the poet, and in 1603 he wrote a sonnet to Drayton which appeared in The Barons' Wars; in the same year he wrote a poem in honor of King James called A Poets Vision and a Princes Glorie. Drayton, in turn, later wrote an elegy for Sir Henry Rainsford, Greene's good friend and fellow Middle Templar who he often mentions affectionately in the same diary where he mentions Shakespeare. Some of Greene's papers managed to survive at Stratford, and they include Latin verses and some English jottings about the nature of love.

Greene's literary endeavors (at least those that were published) seem to have been confined to the period 1602-1603, when he was in London finishing up his formal studies at the Middle Temple. He was called to the Bar of the Middle Temple in October 1602, and in August of the following year he was appointed Steward (later called Town Clerk) of Stratford. He held this position for the next 14 years, during which time he negotiated a new town charter (in 1610), bought a lease of tithes (in 1609, as Shakespeare had done in 1605), and was heavily involved in the enclosure controversy of 1614-19, during which he wrote his famous diary in which he mentions Shakespeare. In 1617 he resigned his post and sold his house for 240 pounds and his tithes for 400 pounds, though he complained that he should have gotten more because of his long service to the town. He became a Reader at the Middle Temple in 1621, Master of the Bench in 1623, and Treasurer in 1629. He died in Bristol in 1640.>>

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:00 am
by Ann
Hmmm. Your argument, if I get it correctly, is that Eward de Vere wrote the plays and sonnets that we call Shakespearean. He invented a pen name, William Shakespeare, for himself. He was sufficiently wary of being recognized as a playwright that he didn't allow his own theater company to perform the plays he had written, but instead he gave them to Lord Chamberlain's Men, who performed them to appreciative crowds. Lord Chamberlain's Men also made good profits from performing de Vere's plays. Edward de Vere himself, who was sometimes in debt, never claimed any of this profit for himself, since he couldn't do that without giving away his authorship of the plays.

Meanwhile, William Shaxper of Stratford was never anything but an illiterate boob. He was not an actor, or if he was, he was never associated with Lord Chamberlain's Men (which later changed its name to The King's Men), the group which regularly and successfully performed de Vere's plays.

Aftr de Vere had died, new plays that he had written began emerging, and again they were performed by The King's Men. As before, they were attributed to William Shakespeare.

After William Shaxper the illiterate boob had died, Thomas Greene of Stratford began doctoring various documents to show that William Shaxper the illiterate boob was in fact the masterful playwright, William Shakespeare of London. Perhaps a few portraits of unknown people were chosen to serve as portraits of the incomparable Bard. A sufficient number of people bought the authorship argument for the myth of William Shakespeare of Stratford to get started. Once the idea had taken off, it kept being repeated, and it has been widely although not universally accepted for four hundred years. When LIFE Magazine ranked the 100 most important people of the previous millennium, William Shakespeare was ranked as number eleven. http://www.tostepharmd.net/hissoc/top100people.html wrote:
William Shakespeare's masterful use of the English language has captivated audiences for 400 years. He penned 38 plays and 154 sonnets that explored the complexities of the human soul with unprecedented emotional range. His subject matter, from romantic comedies to moving tragedies, was equally diverse. But what all his work demonstrates is a facility for wordplay unrivaled by any writer before or since. Shakespeare's ubiquity on world stages, on film, in textbooks and in our everyday vernacular is a testament to his achievement.
I seem to remember that TIME magazine put Shakespeare in second place, as the second most important person of the previous millennium. But I can't access that article on the net, since I'm not a subscriber.

So Edward de Vere's decision to remain hidden forever under a pen name certainly succeeded.

Okay, you have an argument, Art.

Ann

Re: 10 reasons

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:18 am
by Beyond
But what about the things that came out after Edward de Vere died?? Who wrote, or kept quiet about those???
The more you two discuss this, the more my thought about the writer of Shakespeare being an alien, seems to fit in better.