Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Skeptical Enquirer

This week the literary blog "The Muffin Post" published a careful and skeptical review of "Shakespeare" By Another Name. "In sum," the reviewer Bruce Lacey writes, "Trust no one. It appears there are good reasons to take the de Vere hypothesis seriously, and also good reasons to be skeptical of it."

Fair enough. Can't argue with a thoughtful, skeptical point of view. Just so long as that same skepticism is applied to the other side too.

1 comment:

Karim said...

No doubt one controversial feature of Anderson’s biography is that it does not so much argue that de Vere wrote Shakespeare as take that assumption as its point of departure and shape the biographical details around it.

This pretty much sums-up the book's weakest point. This was really my main issue with it. On the other hand, I guess what's great about the book is how much evidence there is that indicates that DeVere was Shakespeare. I've found a logical explanation to almost every piece of evidence, but there's so many in the first 100 pages alone that you really have to wonder.

It was also a great account of a very interesting man. Even if he wasn't Shakespeare, the author would have been interested in him.

I don't know. I guess to me, it doesn't really matter. I'm more interested in if P=NP than the Shakespeare question, but I have to admit I find it intriguing, and this was book was pretty much that.

I guess...the most major flaw in the Shakespearean Debate is that doubters say things like, "Oh, Shakspear never left England," but do we know that? So much of nothing, but his name is on the cover.