A visitor commented on one of these blogs today by asking about the basis of the authorship question. Does it stem from a view that William of Stratford could not have known so much about courtly manners, etc.? My quick response, with a few additions:
“There’s almost no way that anyone, of any background, could have the knowledge that Shakespeare reveals. The range and depth of it is astounding. No one can simply pluck information from the imagination, without having acquired that information in the first place; the imagination builds upon the experience, and that is the genius. As for the knowledge, to comprehend the traditional Shakespeare from Stratford it’s been necessary to “dumb down” the Shakespeare works — his French was not so good, his geography is bad, his knowledge in other areas is superficial, his Latin is lousy, etc.
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“But such is not the case. When you put Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford in there as the author, you have a chance of comprehending his knowledge — he had the opportunity, the means, and even the motive — although we have not settled totally on the latter. (For one thing, it appears that from a young age Oxford determined to lead the way in creating England’s own renaissance in all areas, from music to medicine, from poetry to drama, and so on; moreover, to lead the way in creating a new English language, literature, culture and national identity that would inspire unity and make it possible for England to survive all the threats from without and within. He set out to become “the soul of the age” and the result was an English soul that was nearly destroyed in the seventeenth century.)
“Those holding onto the myth, the legend of Shakespeare, must try mightily to trash the anti-Stratfordians as snobs, etc., but, you see, that is not the issue. The issue involves the need for courage to look at the facts as clearly as one can and to report the results as one sees them. The tactic of James Shapiro in Contested Will is to attack the messenger, while avoiding the message … to attack messengers such Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, etc. Well, the walls they are a crumbling.… “
Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog 