SHAKSPER 2002: Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 06/25/02 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1560  Tuesday, 25 June 2002

[1]     From:   Janet Costa <janetcosta@yahoo.com>
        Date:   Monday, 24 Jun 2002 06:57:35 -0700 (PDT)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.1548 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

[2]     From:   Richard Burt <burt@english.umass.edu>
        Date:   Monday, 24 Jun 2002 14:24:24 -0400
        Subj:   NY Times Letter

[3]     From:   Hardy M. Cook <editor@shaksper.net>
        Date:   Tuesday, June 25, 2002
        Subj:   Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

[4]     From:   Richard Kennedy <stairway@charter.net>
        Date:   Monday, 24 Jun 2002 14:05:19 -0700
        Subj:   Elegy Archives


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Janet Costa <janetcosta@yahoo.com>
Date:           Monday, 24 Jun 2002 06:57:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 13.1548 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.1548 Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

The discussion over the 'Elegy' has shown many different interesting
points, not the least of which is the admission of a scholar that he was
incorrect in his attribution of the poem to Sh. As the far reaching
effects are realised (ie, dis-inclusion in new Complete Works), I have
one question: Will the Folger be re-designing its tote bag?

Janet Costa

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Richard Burt <burt@english.umass.edu>
Date:           Monday, 24 Jun 2002 14:24:24 -0400
Subject:        NY Times Letter

[Editor’s Note: Steve Greenblatt forward to Richard Burt the text of the
letter he submitted to the New York Times. It is published below with
Prof. Greenblatt’s permission. –Hardy]


June 20, 2002

To the Editor,  NY Times:

Like most Shakespeare scholars, I am delighted to attribute to someone
else the dreary 578-line “Funeral Elegy” that Professor Donald Foster’s
computer program had mistakenly assigned to Shakespeare (“A Scholar
Recants on His ‘Shakespeare’ Discovery,” NY Times, June 20, 2002).

But your article is misleading in suggesting that this scholarly
reattribution has any bearing on the question of who wrote Shakespeare’s
plays and still more misleading in suggesting that evidence in favor of
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, “as the author of the works of
Shakespeare has been growing.”

The fact is that there is no evidence at all that de Vere – who died in
1604 – wrote Shakespeare’s plays.  But there is ample evidence that
William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays, many of
which were written and first performed after 1604:  Macbeth, for
example, alludes to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and The Tempest echoes
accounts of the Bermuda voyage of 1609.  In the great 1623 edition of
Shakespeare plays, the First Folio, Ben Jonson, comparing his personal
friend and fellow playwright Shakespeare to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides,  penned the famous tribute:  “He was not of an age but for
all time.”  Oxfordians have answers, of course, just as the adherents of
the old Ptolomaic system had answers to Copernicus.  The NY Times does
not routinely refer to those who believe that the earth revolves around
the sun as “Copernicans.”  You do, however, unaccountably refer to those
who believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays as “Stratfordians,” as if
there were two equally credible positions.

Sincerely,
Stephen Greenblatt
Harvard University

[The author is the General Editor of The Norton Shakespeare]

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Hardy M. Cook <editor@shaksper.net>
Date:           Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Subject:        Re: "A Funeral Elegy"

I came across two more article on "A Funeral Elegy."

The first appeared in Sunday’s Telegraph:

Blunder over Bard's 'lost lines'
By Charles Laurence in New York

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2002%2F06%2F23%2Fwbard23.xml

The second humorous one appears in today’s New York Times

The Bard's New Lyric
By TIM CARVELL

My fellow Shakespeareans:

As many of you have no doubt heard, our colleague, Donald Foster, last
week graciously acknowledged that he was mistaken when he attributed "A
Funeral Elegy" to William Shakespeare. In the spirit of Professor
Foster's erratum, I should like to acknowledge some — well, let's not
say errors, let's say excesses of enthusiasm — in my own scholarship.

I am now prepared to admit that William Shakespeare did not, in fact,
write the 1963 Darlene Love song "A Fine, Fine Boy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/25/opinion/25CARV.html?tntemail1

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Richard Kennedy <stairway@charter.net>
Date:           Monday, 24 Jun 2002 14:05:19 -0700
Subject:        Elegy Archives

For those who wish to know of the early discussions at Hardy Cook’s
“Shaksper” group, this link will prove out what I have to say.

http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/ebooks/fe-crit.txt

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