The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0137  Tuesday, 23 January 2001

[1]     From:   Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, January 23, 2001
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

[2]     From:   Victor Bennison <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Sunday, 21 Jan 2001 12:58:41 EST
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

[3]     From:   William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Sunday, 21 Jan 2001 10:12:33 -0800 (PST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

[4]     From:   Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Sunday, 21 Jan 2001 19:29:37 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

[5]     From:   Marcus Dahl <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 22 Jan 2001 05:44:34 EST
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

[6]     From:   Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 22 Jan 2001 09:34:08 +0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0113 Re: Literacy


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, January 23, 2001
Subject: 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

Dear SHAKSPEReans,

When I call off a conversation, I feel only fair to let those with a
pressing need to respond. So I will allow the responses below to
"authorship" issues and those that come in response to them; then this
conversation is over.

Hardy

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Victor Bennison <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Sunday, 21 Jan 2001 12:58:41 EST
Subject: 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

Can someone tell me why it is assumed that Shakespeare did not attend
Oxford or Cambridge?  I have no clue as to what the state of enrollment
records is for that period for those schools.  I've always assumed that
they must be very complete and very well poured over, and that that is
why no one ever brings up the possibility.  Is that assumption correct?
Secondly, did students attending those schools (particularly the
wealthier students) bring along servants, private tutors, secretaries,
men's men, etc.?  Could Shakespeare have sneaked in the back door
somehow and left no record?

Victor Bennison

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Sunday, 21 Jan 2001 10:12:33 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

Dear All supporters of he with little learning,

I counted to ten, ate something and counted again. I agree, Diana, that
the documentary evidence is not there. However as seen in previous posts
it isn't there for a number of his contemporaries either. Diana seems to
be suggesting some kind of conspiracy by Orthodox authorities while
subtly (?!) defending (I presume) he who must not be named.

She once again tries to disprove several (unconnected) authorities by
citing her one authority, whose opinion I disagree with as subjective
and speculative. Who cares if he thinks Shakespeare's use of Latin was
subconscious? That is his opinion.

Impress me by naming these dozen or so other authorities. Besides
Golding, Kyd (what was his education)? and Lyly were contemporaries
known to all theatre practitioners. And yes we know the close ties of he
who shall not be named had with two of those.

Her statement that Baldwin based his curriculum on speculative
compilation is false. John Brownsword, schoolmaster recorded the
curricular instructions for the grammar school at Witton in Cheshire.
(Jonathan Bate -'the Genius of Shakespeare' p. 8-9). Also the higher
salary of the Stratford schoolmaster, to me, highlights a paying for the
best teacher approach rather than Stratford is such a backwater we have
to lure them in approach. There are no records for anybody attending
Shakespeare's Grammar school. There, I admit it.

But of course I think Diana knows all of this and chooses to ignore it.
Personally I think she is involved in agitprop. Why not listen to her
contemporaries expressing their misgivings and searching for the most
plausible explanations. After all 'homo sapiens non urinat in ventum'.
Let your expert translate that for you.

The editor may choose to edit this, as in not post it, which I would
almost welcome. But his double negative response leaves me free to vent.

Yours in the name of Will,
William Sutton

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Sunday, 21 Jan 2001 19:29:37 -0800
Subject: 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0127 Re: Literacy with Editor's Note

Diana Price's logic escapes me.  If there is no record of Shakespeare's
attending a grammar school, then surely this makes it *less* likely, not
*more*, that he attended a university, since he'd also lack the
prerequisites.

Besides which, as I understand it, we have pretty good records of most
English colleges in Shakespeare's time--we can tell how often Marlowe
was eating in, for instance--but the records from the Stratford-on-Avon
grammar school are missing.  It is therefore highly unlikely that
Shakespeare attended a university which we somehow missed, while very
much likely that he went to a school in his hometown, and that that
school had something like a normal curriculum.

Let me put it this way:  either our man went to university or he
didn't.  If he didn't, he still learned how to write and some number of
classical allusions somewhere, so it was probably in school and on his
own.  If he did, then he went to school anyway.

In any case, missing evidence is generally a license to substitute what
seems most likely--that Shakespeare went to a school where he had free
tuition--rather than inventing unlikely scenarios out of whole cloth.

Cheers,
Se     

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