Tom Reedy and David Kathman's Essay, "How We Know that Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts"

David Kathman's " Dating The Tempest " essay asserts that "The Tempest….can be dated with virtual certainty as having been written between late 1610 and mid-to-late 1611..."

Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter's Reply responds point-by-point to Kathman's essay to show how -- and why -- Kathman's orthodox argument is flawed.

8-21-05 Update
On the Tempest Controversy

Although David Kathman's essay was posted in the mid 1990's, the essay is now hopelessly dated but has not been revised. Kathman continues to perpetuate the fiction that only "the Oxfordians" have questioned the dependence of The Tempest on Strachey. What you cannot learn on Kathman's site is that his view, proclaimed with such dogmatic certainty in his essay, was challenged already in 2001 by Professor David Lindley, editor of the New Cambridge edition of The Tempest (2002), in and exchange with Kathman on the Shaksper listserve stated (this quotation is from memory but correctly represents the substance of what Lindley wrote) that "while "Strachey is a possible source, it is not a necessary one."

The link originally posted to this exchange is now dead, and a google search does not turn up the archive in another location. The Shakespeare Fellowship will be emailing a query to Hardy Cook, the Shaksper adminstrator, to determine the reason for the removable, and this page will be updated as soon as further details are available (3/31/11).

One might think that the news that not only the Oxfordians, but leading orthodox scholars such as Professor Lindley questioned his conclusions, would cause Dr. Kathman to pause, or at least, in the interest of honesty, amend his essay to supply a link to Lindley's views. We wonder why Dr. Kathman has not done this, and suggest that until he does so, his site's reputation for accuracy will suffer.

For the most current information on this dynamic topic, please visit ShakespearesTempest.com.

David Chandler, PhD in English at Oxford University, responded in an article in the Elizabethan Review. It is apparently no longer available online as of 3/11.

Is William Cecil Lord Burghley the prototype for Polonius in Hamlet? The question is critical to the Oxford case. Indeed, we beg leave to wonder how the gentleman from Stratford, however incomprehensible his genius, could have lived with both hands if he had lampooned this powerful servant to the Crown in his most famous drama.

"Antistratfordians, writes Dave Kathman, have often fixated on the knowledge of Italy supposedly displayed in Shakespeare's plays, believing that only someone who had personally visited the country (such as the Earl of Oxford) could have written so knowledgeably. They are fond of quoting 19th-century Shakespeare scholars who believed that Shakespeare must have visited Italy at some point. But few Shakespeare scholars hold that opinion today, for a number of reasons."

"Some antistratfordians (sic), impressed by the fact that Shakespeare used classical sources for many of his plays and poems, jump to the conclusion that he must have been an accomplished classical scholar."

Dave Kathman is convinced that Shakespeares' reading was subsidized by Richard Field, the London bookseller with roots in Stratford who published Venus and Adonis and Rape Lucrce: "it's very easy to imagine William Shakespeare, fresh off the turnip truck (or whatever vehicle he used to get there), looking up his childhood acquaintance Dick Field upon his arrival in London, and finding there a library full of books to be devoured. Field's connection to so many of the primary sources of Shakespeare's works is no coincidence, and it constitutes a series of parallels much more impressive than anything Oxfordians are able to muster."

Kathman disputes the claim that the plays display an aristocratic bias, and argues that "unfortunately for the Oxfordians, the idea that Shakespeare was an aristocratic writer, or that he was particularly accurate in his depiction of aristocrats, is unknown before the 19th century."

Here are a few other authoritative opinions.

Terry Ross says that Nashe "never" referred to Oxford as Pierce Peniless.

Actually, Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey referred to Oxford as "Master Apis Lapis," "Pierce Penniless," "Gentle Master William," and similar provocative nicknames.

So far, Ross has completed ignored Charles Wisner Barrell's 1944 article establishing that Nashe honored him with two other nicknames in his epistle dedicatory to Strange News (1592). We hope he gets around to answer Barrell one of these days! Mark Anderson's reply to Mr. Ross's HLAS posting, reprinted for your delectation from the spring issue of Shakespeare Matters, is available here.

Since there is no known link on this subject, no rebuttal is presently required.