Shakespeare Bites Back – free book

Sorry, not so. Kindly review the evidence of the sub-stylistic factor of Bible references in the two writers. They could not be more difference. This leaves aside the matter of the fact that Marlowe died, even by the most conservative estimate, before most of the plays were written. It makes a nice fairy tale to keep him alive in Italy for another two decades, but that’s about it. There is a reason why the only serious academic minds who have adopted an alternative view of authorship support the Oxfordian attribution.

Page 12: “It seems surprisingly easy to persuade lawyers to take part in The Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy Theory”
Two Points
First: Lawyers are experts on evidence and many judge the evidence against William Shakspeare’s authorship as complete enough. Shapiro tells us that “Shakespearean scholars have a different view of evidence, and hold a comparatively dim view of what (Supreme Court) Justice Stevens and others think adequate.” We are not told by Shapiro in what way the expert’s view of evidence is defective. You will find no lawyers (let alone historians) in the list of contributors to “Shakespeare Without Doubt”
Secondly, as I have written before, for Oxfordians there is NO CONSPIRACY THEORY. Everyone who knew, knew: they also knew when to keep their mouths shut. Compare the treatment of the national hero Philip Sidney’s affair with Penelope Rich, a taboo subject virtually never mentioned. Conspiracy theory is a figment foisted upon Oxfordians by the ‘orthodox’ as they stuff straw arguments into our mouths.
Perhaps we could persuade a few ‘orthodox’ actually to read what members of the De vere Society ( of which I am the Secretary) actually to read what we write. Try The Earl of Oxford and the Making of “Shakespeare”: The Life of Edward de Vere in Context (McFarland 2011)

Hi Peter—

I am more certain than you by now, I am relatively close to 5 sigma sure, because I not only looked over your stylometries (which gave me good confidence, about 3 sigma) but also additional ones— the ones published to refute Marlovian ideas by Charniak et al last year.

The result of the new stylometries not only failed to refute the Marlovian idea, they confused Marlowe and Shakespeare more completely than Mendenhall, and this is after these guys tried hard to look for a stylometry specifically to distinguish these two. This is the last straw, that pushes me to five sigma.

When you have independent stylometries, each one could independently fail. Your stylometries each had a 1 in 4 chance of being a coincidence, but you had 5 of them, and some of them were published specifically to distinguish Marlowe and Shakespeare. This means that one gains 1/4^5 confidence from this, about 1/1000 chance of coincidence.

The newest stylometries confused four separate Marlowe plays as early Shakespeare, by two separate methods! These methods were much more rigorous— they involved careful statistical analysis of vocabulary and function words in baskets compared across works, and this gives another 1/1000 likelihood. So I’m sure, there’s no more evidence necessary, you guys are right, and there’s no need to be so circumspect.

In addition, if you want more certainty, each independent stylometry is additional independent evidence— so I would run your “letter stylometry” on 100 different letter-baskets, and see if you get a smooth match Marlowe-Shakespeare in all 100 cases (you certainly will, since they are the same author). Even if each coincidence is 50% likely (it much less likely than that), 1/2^100 is scientific certainty.

Stylometry of this quality is enough to say “enough, they’re the same guy” with scientific standards of certainty, especially considering the fact that you have shown that the circumstantial evidence is equally friendly to this notion as to any other.

Plus, stop being so nice to the academics. They aren’t returning the favor. You’re right and they’re stupid.