Kier Cutler demonstrates being an Anti-Stratfordian Crackpot with a poor sense of logic. The Center for Disease Control warns that this may be contagious. Don't let it happen to you.

By Kier Cutler, PhD (English)

I am a “crackpot.” More accurately, I have a “psychological aberration.” I am also “ignorant,” “a snob” and “a publicity hound.”

I “have a poor sense of logic,” “refuse to accept evidence,” and am “certifiably mad.” I am “pursuing a poisonous, insidious agenda.”

Who calls me (and people like me) by those terms?

The Shakespeare Birth Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
Why?
Because we give credence to the central premise behind the new film Anonymous:that Shakespeare was a fraud. Read more at the Montreal Gazette.

What was it that Coyote said?

From the moment he posted himself up here, almost a month ago,  Coyote has been a minor hit.  For a long time I thought that he would be a one-hit wonder.

Exactly the opposite has happened. Who would have thought that, almost a month after his initial appearance, Coyote is steadily rising through the ranks of the most visited posts of the site, having racked up more than forty sixty hits in the last three days?

What does this mean? Is there some reverbbing going on? Has Coyote hallowed out our language? You tell me. I don’t have a clue. But, FYI, just to prove to you that I was not following the tracks of a Heffalump, here’s the list (with a few duplicates removed) of Coyote’s visitors for the last three days:

Hayward, California, Huntington Beach, California, Peoria, Arizona, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Manila, Philippines, West Haven, Connecticut, Saint Louis, Missouri, North Richland Hills, Texas, Calgary, Alberta,  San Francisco, California, Akron, Ohio, Humble, Texas, Savannah, Georgia, Allen, Texas, Tainan, T’ai-wan, Taiwan, Columbia, Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, Lafayette, Indiana, Loudon, Tennessee, United States, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Fremont, California, Fremont, California, Ottawa, Ontario,  Canada, Scappoose, Oregon, Scappoose, Oregon, Baltimore, Maryland, Fountain Hills, Arizona, United States Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Houston, Texas, Houston, Texas, Annandale,  Minnesota Jasper, Indiana, Wilson, North Carolina.

At first glance it occurred to me that maybe these are all coyote regions. But some time before reaching Cambridgeshire that theory was dashed on the rocks of cruel reality. There are no Coyotes, that I know of, in Baltimore.

Then again, I will say that the distribution of these locations suggests a very definite regional pattern favoring the states where the Tricksters still run wild and provoke all sorts of all-too-human difficulties, pitting the spirit of the wild against the sturdy values of our American farmers and their need to protect livestock. Somehow we need both.

Signing off from right near North Avenue.

Shakespeare Excised by Birthplace Trust. Some suspect the hand of Anonymous, who may have been reading this blog. Information pertaining to that possibility shall be held in the strictest confidence.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust says “enough is enough.”

The Trust has taken international relations and the history of literature into its own hands to protest that Warwickshire is no longer Shakespeare County, papering over the word “Shakespeare’s” in the phrase “Shakespeare’s County.”

The sign now reads “Welcome to Warwickshire County.”

We have pondered long and hard the meaning of this symbolic protest. We cannot tell.

Was it better to in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of that damned anonymous, or take spraypaint to the bear chained to the ragged staff?

Perhaps ’twas  merely another way of paraphrasing Harold Bloom’s immortal words that Shakespeare is at “once no one and everyone, nothing and everything, nowhere and everywhere, proton and moron.”

Well, that last part might be made up.

Sorry. It was just too way too much temptation, I mean once we get past the nothing part we’re really in lalaland and ought to be allowed to write anything we please, wouldn’t you agree?

Metaphysics always comes in handy when you need him to get you out of a jam or two, like you just happen to be missing the most famous author in history and can’t find him, for the life of you, even with the most au courant modern ways of thinking like those found at dispositio.

As Feste would remark at this point, gentlemen, take away the fool.

Does Emmerich have a mole in the Birthplace Trust? As some Facebook wag recently remarked, “you can’t ask for this kind of publicity.”

And as this website’s own guest blogger Heward Wilkinson also remarked in another Facebook context,  our answer to such questions might depend on “whether the people who dreamt it up have a sense of irony!! It might, after all, be a very adroit way of advertising Stratford, on the tacit assumption, which we have already discussed, that a good publicity war means gains all round….”

Ah, Stanley Wells is really grinning now.

But then came Charlton Ogburn’s Mysterious William Shakespeare (1984)…

and naturally we began Puzzling Shakespeare (1988).

It seemed that Reinventing Shakespeare (1989) was now advisable.

The result was Shakespeare, IN FACT (1994), bolstered in due time with The Real Shakespeare (1995) and, eventually, Shakespeare: The Evidence (1999).

(1994)

(1995)

(1999)

We could have rested from our labors, but somehow, it was not enough. We decided to live dangerously, and tried a spin in our Miata:  Will in the World (2004). It would explain to us how Shakespeare became Shakespeare.

(2004)

But a year later (not to mention six years later) we were still In Search of Shakespeare (2005).

We tried to go cold turkey with Contested Will (2010)….

(2010)

…and it was then that we caught the first glimpse of a shadow over our shoulder – a tsunami called Anonymous.

Joe, great video, but you forgot to mention Shakespeare’s real name.

Mailman, or University Professor? You decide.

I have a confession to make. William Ray is my favorite mail carrier. On the days when the usual mailman is off, and William substitutes for him, we have the greatest seminars.

I know, I know.

Mr. Ray’s mail carrying style has been criticized, on some distant internet islands far from the beaten track of the civilized world, as being too abstruse and learned for the average reader.

Some Stratfordian internetistas have even voiced a suspicion that Mr. Ray is actually not a mailman, but is in fact instead a College Professor, wearing the mask of a mailman for fear of retribution from Columbia.

He doesn’t really live in Willits, California, a place that nobody’s ever heard of before. He must be from the Upper West Side, or Brooklyn at least.

In this  they may well be correct.

Consider, for example, the following excerpt from a manuscript in my possession. Bear in mind that this purports to be the work of a mailman:

Monographs on why people believe what they do ordinarily come out of the sociology or psychology departments, not from a Columbia University English department lecturer.  Right at the start, Shapiro abandons the commitment of his professional field, i.e., to contribute unbiased knowledge of Shakespeare through solitary study and reflection, tested by peer review.  He has embarked on writing biographical criticism on biographical critics, the analysis of whose inner motivations for which he was not credentialed.  The personalities involved in Oxfordian scholarship have found cause to challenge on factual grounds who wrote Shakespeare, which threatens his guild, his world-view, and his personal reputation.

Does that sound like your mailman?  We thought not. Or, what about this?

[Shapiro's]  assertion about Shakespeare’s all-achieving imagination, an expansion of which idea would  make biographical study since the Enlightenment irrelevant, follows a familiar pattern in historical Shakespeare criticism.  The initial Bard  idolatry was the Divine Shakespeare, next to God in his omniscient insight, since no one knew anything of him.  Then it was Shakespeare the Genius, the demi-god standing all alone, sui generis, the Colossus.  T.S. Eliot, one of the Western tradition’s most astute critics, intoned, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them; there is no third.”  He said of the Sonnets: “This autobiography is written by a foreign man in a foreign tongue, which can never be translated.”  He was honest enough to say we knew nothing of his life.

Now, come on! These earnest and hardworking sleuths want to know, when was the last time your mailman used the words “enlightenment,” “omniscient,” “T.S. Eliot,” and “Dante,” all in one paragraph?

It sounds very logical, doesn’t it? But I’m here to tell you, it ain’t so.

Take if from me.

William Ray is a mailman.

No mere University scholar that I know of reads even half as many books as he does.  And what University professor have you ever heard conclude a baker’s shop discussion of whether or not Magellan actually claimed to have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon (apparently he did not)  with the plebeian remark:

I maintain support for the old lady who posited to William James that the earth was supported in space by a large turtle, and when he asked what supported the turtle, she answered, “Sorry Mr. James, it’s turtles all the way down.”

How Ray delivers the mail at the same time as he does enough research to sound like someone who should be from Columbia University  seems to consist of a technology so advanced as to appear to us pure magic.

But, trust me, William Ray is a mailman.  Who but a mailman would write this:–

Another dreamer will follow
The living imprint of your feet
You yourself have no right
To name the trees you planted

Yes, William Ray is a  mailman after all. He’s just not my mailman. Not my regular mailman, anyway.

Peter (left) and Michael (right), trying to figure out what to say next.

The following manuscript was sent to me from a fraudulent email account somewhere in Bermuda. I have no idea what it means,  who wrote, or whether it is worth the pixels used to print it. But I liked the pic, so I thought I’d reproduce it anyway. If anyone has any idea what any of this means, please comment and explain it. Likewise, if any bounty becomes available on the author, please inform me asap so that I can collect it to pay off some bills. -Ed

Skep. How do you do.

Princ. Fine, and you?  My name is Peter.

Skep. Pleased to meet you Pete, I’m Mike.

Princ. Principle.

Skep. What?

Princ. Principle is my last name.

Skep. O great [extending his hand to shake], mine’s Skeptical. How did you ever get a last name like that?

Princ. Beats me, mom and pop had a sense of humor, I guess.

Skep. Are you sure it was really them?  I mean, I study this sort of problem for a living. I’m a recognized expert.  Tell me all about it and I’ll tell you what it means.

Princ. You mean, like, a pseudonym?

Skep. Well, hey, the thought did occur.

Princ. Like that thing Justice Stevens was talking about?

Skep. Don’t mention him. I’m Skeptical.

Princ. You already said that.

Skep. No, I mean I’m skeptical of Justice Stevens.

Princ. Why didn’t you say that?

Skep. I just did.

Princ. Why are you skeptical about him?

Skep. Well, I believe in monuments in churches and names on title pages, you know.

Princ. You do?

Skep. Sure.  You betcha’. A monument in a church, the name on a title page, those are  the real deal.  We don’t really need to know any more than that, do we? Not to mention Return from Parnassus. Plus, no one mentioned pseudonyms until 1857.

Princ. Are you sure?

Skep. Of course I’m sure! My name’s Skeptical, isn’t it?

Prin. I suppose it is. So, if I were to question you further, I couldn’t borrow it?

Skep. Borrow what?

Prin. Your name.

Skep. Of course not. There’s no authorship question. I’m Skeptical. You’re Peter…what did you say your last name was?

Prin. Principle. Spelled “p-l-e,” not “p-a-l.”

Skep. P-r-i-n-c-i-p-l-e?

Prin. Right. Why are you so certain that no one mentioned pseudonyms until 1857?

Skep. Delia Bacon was mad, Pete. You can’t possibly expect me to….

Prin. No, seriously, tell me why you are so certain.

Skep. I read a book on it. I’m a busy man. I can’t read everything on everything. That’s why I rely on experts to help me decide what to be skeptical about.

Prin. What’s your take on Occupy Wall Street?

Skep. O, that’s political. I don’t get involved in politics. I’m an intellectual.

Prin. Come on, just give us a hint, will ya?

Skep. I’m skeptical, as you might imagine.

Princ. Do you have a reason?

Skep. Not really.  But, we can’t really believe everything can we?   Why do you ask so many questions, anyway?

Princ. I’m studying skepticism.

Skep. Good idea! Keep it up!  I may have a job for you one of these days editing copy.  [cell phone rings].  Oops, excuse me. It’s Roswell calling. Skeptical here, — yes? Ok. Listen, Pete, they’ve got a situation down there.  I’ll have to get back to you on this name thing some other time.

Princ. Sure thing, Mike. Look forward to it. Say ‘Hi’ to all the folks in Roswell for me.

Coyote Wild makes the hallowing air echo to the reverberate hills.

Think about it.

Coyote is the smartest of all animals.

He is a trickster.

Do you really think “Shakespeare” could fool him for ten seconds with that big grin and the bristle showing he hadn’t shaved in five days?  I mean, o.k., sometimes I don’t shave for five days, but my face is not going on one of the more famous books in literary history to convey for all of posterity the figure of a man Jonson’s about to call “the soul of the age.”

I think Coyote would figure him out. What do you think?

The Ivory Tower.

From time to time, probably on a predictable cycle like Cicada hatches, we educators go through a paroxysm of doubt over whether we’re doing our job very well and if not, why not.  Naturally being one of these same unfortunates I haven’t a clue as to the answer. But it has occurred to me if we aren’t doing very well — well, in that case,  I think I may have just put my finger on one possible reason. Its probably the least probable reason, but I’d like it to be counted anyway.

It’s this:  Since when does a supposedly respected academician get away with saying, in a public conversation about an intellectual topic of general interest, to another person in the discussion:  ”we are done now” as a way to get out of a jam created by the irrationality of his own position?

Isn’t that what “I see your point” or “I’d never thought of it that way” are for?

This is sort of thing Presidents have to do at press conferences.  

But when have you ever heard a self-respecting academician, supposedly dedicated to a life of the mind, with all of the uncertainties that implies for anyone who takes the idea seriously,  say something like that? Maybe I live a sheltered existence, coming from the Pacific Northwest coast and all, but something seems just a little off to me here.

I’m especially bothered that this outburst apparently  occurred in the midst of a discussion in which Shapiro  was trying to categorically deny the value of circumstantial evidence,  in a manner that can hardly, based on my understanding of what was said,  have convinced very many people of the intellectual soundness of his own position.

On that score, at least, Mark Anderson is so much more persuasive that it is hard to see why he  is not the one teaching at Columbia. He certainly understands the canons of legitimate discussion better than Shapiro does and is willing to defend his own position against all comers and in any context except, perhaps, the toxic environment created by Shapiro’s own ideological obsession with seeing anyone who doesn’t agree with him as some form of sub-human.

The good Professor from Columbia’s  entire posture seems to be based on telling us as many times as needed that something he doesn’t really believe himself absolutely must be true –and that if you doubt it, you must be some kind of under-qualified mental moron or monster.

How does he know, you ask?

Simple. Its so true he doesn’t have to debate it.

I could be wrong myself, but I can’t help but let my  imagination run away with the idea that this line of reasoning could actually have something to do with how wrong our educational system can be. Education begins with honesty of some kind. That seems elusive when these are our role models.