SHAKSPER 2002: Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 06/24/02 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1548  Monday, 24 June 2002

[1]     From:   Tanya Gough <yorick@bardcentral.com>
        Date:   Friday, 21 Jun 2002 12:38:40 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

[2]     From:   Richard Kennedy <stairway@charter.net>
        Date:   Friday, 21 Jun 2002 13:20:57 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

[3]     From:   Tom Reedy <reedy1520@earthlink.net>
        Date:   Friday, 21 Jun 2002 23:55:20 -0500
        Subj:   RE: SHK 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

[4]     From:   Hardy M. Cook <editor@shaksper.net>
        Date:   Monday, June 24, 2002
        Subj:   Re: "A Funeral Elegy"


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Tanya Gough <yorick@bardcentral.com>
Date:           Friday, 21 Jun 2002 12:38:40 -0400
Subject: 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

>As I wrote five years ago in The Observer, the "unseemly
>rush to certitude in America will come to be seen as regrettable, even
>embarrassing."

Unfortunately, such events are far from uncommon.  The Stratford (Ont)
Festival this year is publishing the Sanders portrait in their programs
in the "about the author" section, giving validation to the assumption
that the attribution is correct.  I fear an embarrassing situation for
the Festival may occur, should the subject matter be disproved.

Tanya Gough
Poor Yorick
www.bardcentral.com

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Richard Kennedy <stairway@charter.net>
Date:           Friday, 21 Jun 2002 13:20:57 -0700
Subject: 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

In March of 1996 I posted to SHAKSPER that John Ford was the best choice
as the writer of the Funeral Elegy.  This was the first mention offering
Ford as the writer, and in his forthcoming book Brian Vickers credits me
with that, and for the two year's struggle at this place to promote the
attribution. Previously, Brian thought it might be by Simon Wastrel, but
he liked my arguments better. In the summer of 1996, Monsarrat was
doubtful that Shakespeare wrote the Elegy, but had not yet settled on
another author although he was in communication with Vickers.

Foster and myself exchanged several private letters in which I tried to
bring him over to Ford, but he said that the idea had been investigated
in depth, and that I was certainly wrong, and he asked what my
credentials were.  And evidently Ford had not been investigated at all,
the Shaxicon database not informed of his early verse.

Therefore, I find nothing at all graceful or scholarly in the man
regarding the Funeral Elegy.  My discovery came with no credentials, and
so it was ignored, even ridiculed.  It was not until Monsarrat and
Vickers came up with John Ford that Foster gave any attention to the
matter.

So, in these early years with Vickers behind Ford, and also Prof. Leo
Stock, who said he would "unhesitatingly" give the Funeral Elegy to
Ford, Foster was sticking to the Funeral Elegy as being by Shakespeare,
he was invested in that, as they say.  Now he recants, and Christine
Gilmore says it was a "remarkably graceful admission of an error."  No.
His error wasn't so awfully bad, many people were fooled and most of
them had credentials, but unfortunately none of them had a poetic ear.
Foster’s fault was hubris, which is often regretted, but seldom
admitted.

All of my early posts on John Ford can be retrieved from Hardy's
archives, Foster's responses, etc.

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Tom Reedy <reedy1520@earthlink.net>
Date:           Friday, 21 Jun 2002 23:55:20 -0500
Subject: 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"
Comment:        RE: SHK 13.1543 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

It is interesting that Niederkorn's article poses the recantation by
Foster as an authorship issue, which it certainly isn't.

Is Mr. Niederkorn even a professional journalist? In one paragraph he
writes, "Evidence in favor of Oxford as the author of the works of
Shakespeare has been growing since 1920 and with increasing intensity in
recent years." He doesn't attribute the statement, which I take to be
evidence of the man's unprofessional bias. Several times in the article
he uses the term, "yesterday," a term first-year journalism students
learn to never use except in a quote, and which I take as further
evidence of his slipshod journalistic techniques.

It's sad the New York Times has sunk so low that it has to use writers
of this quality. Can the Times not afford to hire professionals?

--- Tom Reedy

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Hardy M. Cook <editor@shaksper.net>
Date:           Monday, June 24, 2002
Subject:        Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

The New York Times, or at least the online NYTimes, had two brief pieces
on matter under discussion in it Editorial/Op-Ed section on Saturday,
June 22, 2002:

The first, "Poetic Justice"
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/22/opinion/22SAT4.html is informational.

In the second, “To the Editor: Who Was the Bard? Don't Ask a Computer”
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/22/opinion/L22SHAK.html
Stephen Greenblatt takes exception with the June 20th article:

"Like most Shakespeare scholars, I am delighted to attribute to someone
else the dreary 578-line "Funeral Elegy" . . . However, this
re-attribution has no bearing on the question of who wrote Shakespeare's
plays. Nor has evidence in favor of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of
Oxford, ‘as the author of the works of Shakespeare’ been growing in
recent years. There is no evidence at all that de Vere, who died in
1604, wrote them."

. . .

"It is unaccountable that you refer to those of us who believe that
Shakespeare wrote the plays as "Stratfordians," as though there are two
equally credible positions."

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