Talk:Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship

COI tag (June 2021)

Editor may be one of the supposed proponents of the theory Drmies (talk) 18:17, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

It is very shocking, disturbing and appalling that the user Drmies has deleted thousands of words in a few minutes without reading the content, deleting entire paragraphs with sources and he did not engage in a conversation, asking for more infos. Why is this censorship allowed? Is this user a supposed proponent of another Shakespearian authorship theory, is the user Drmies working for an institution linked to Shakespeare's studies? For example the user Drmies deleted a paragraph with Florio's proverbs, compared with phrases from Shakespeare's plays. All those proverbs and sentences are taken from Florio's works (First Fruits, Seconds Fruits, Giardino di Ricreazione). They were published before Shakespeare's plays. Why did the user Drmies delete those sourced information? Did the user Drmies read those Florio's works?Vale.devin (talk) 18:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Vale.devin, realize that the work is never lost. It's in the edit history, and can be restored easily. The thing to do is not to edit-war but instead to discuss. Per policy, the Wikipedia:ONUS is on the editor who wants to add content to get consensus for that addition. Once someone has removed an edit you've made, it's best to start talking and stop reverting. I've left a message at your talk about new editors and contentious articles, which this is. —valereee (talk) 22:54, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

User:Valereee, it isn't just contentious--it's also in DS territory. Drmies (talk) 23:06, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I know. Very inexperienced user, may be well-intentioned? I don't understand the COI issue lol...this does not seem to be another academic? (Er, and I'm not either so probably don't understand the nuances?) —valereee (talk) 23:09, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, User:Valereee, there's a website cited in the sources and the links...ask yourself, would a Renaissance man have a personal official website? Well-intentioned, I don't know about that--it depends on how you define "good intentions". From their perspective, I'm sure they are, but from this side, they are merely propagating a BS theory to which they seem to have devoted a significant amount of time and energy. And I'll add that they are not alone: we have an IP and an account (...), we have another account, named for the subject, and we have an editor who appears out of nowhere. So, what I think we have is a fringe academic/hobbyist who is using Wikipedia to further a totally fringy theory and has a friend or two. And "academic"--that's not a clearly defined term, but there is certainly the pretense of scholarship. But anytime you find Lulu given as a reference (look for it) you are onto something. Thanks, and thanks for your patience. You are a better saint than I'll ever be. Drmies (talk) 23:37, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I'm surprised this made it to mainspace out of draft space (presuming that's how it started). The sheer number of quotes, overly long section headings, etc. give me a headache. That's before I can even bother to look at sources. Let's just stub it down, or even better delete and salt. Victoria (tk) 23:45, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

hahaha on not a clearly defined term. :D —valereee (talk) 23:55, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, may have posted in the wrong section but have made a start of sorts. It's basically a lot of work. Would be better to delete because of COI issues. Victoria (tk) 00:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Victoria, no need to apologize; I appreciate your involvement. I think I sort of started thinking I could whip this into some kind of shape, but now I am sure there's not much there--this has less potential than a poor recipe for a blancmange. When you say "would be better to", you're talking like an administrator, as in "what is the best way to tackle this problem". Maybe you should be an admin... But yes, I can't be acting like an admin on this one, since I've been "in" the article too much, and what we are going to do with this is a good question. I posted on ANI and I'm hoping some level-headed uninvolved admin with some knowledge of the DS and the subject matter will help out. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:29, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

It's a hell of a lot of work just to shovel away the dross to figure out what's what. And I need new eyeglasses so stopping for the moment. There's a ton of uncited stuff; that can all go. Then it needs some sort of MOS compliant formatting. Then the hard work begins, b/c the sources need checking. I.e I have no doubt Shakespeare was influenced by Commedia del arte (who wasn't in that period) and that section is mildly interesting but can go to another Shakespeare daughter article or something, but the sources need checking. That his plays are set in Italy - huh? Not earth shattering. Lots of others were set in England. And there's that one in Scotland and the other on the island. I like the word blancmange-very Jane Austenesque. Anyway, no not an admin, just a lowly content person, but stubbing down and salting seems the logical solution. If someone shows up to do the honors before I check in again in the next few days, great. If it's still like this, I'll chip away more dross. Victoria (tk) 00:40, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

forgot to add to the text, pinging: Drmies Victoria (tk) 00:40, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Ah...very interesting, including that none of the Lulu sources include links. I've suggested the various citation highlighter user scripts add lulu.com, which was a new one on me. Not that the scripts would have caught these without the links, but for other instances. Something new every day here on Wikipedia. —valereee (talk) 14:39, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps John Florio should be looked at too. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:33, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I've stubbed it down and don't think there's a lot here that makes sense. Strongly suggest some small sections if considered worth saving be moved elsewhere, otherwise at this point we can go over sentence by sentence, source by source, and I wouldn't be surprised that not a lot survives. It's a string of synth. Victoria (tk) 21:50, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Not yet WP:EW

Vale.devin, you wrote:

The reliable source is the article in the Guardian cited in the intro, you clearly stated you might not be impartial on this topic, being a Marlowian supporter. Why do you carry on sabotaging this page?

What does the Guardian [1] say about over a thousand of words and SAQ? I can't find anything. Is the Guardian ref even about SAQ? If not, it's of no use here. And if that is the source, why do you keep adding Willinsky? And why do you keep ignoring WP:LEAD? And why do you call me a "Marlowian supporter"? No, I am not impartial, if this article is on WP, I want it to be written the WP-way. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:28, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång In the Guardian article Saul Frampton states "In all, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) ascribes 1,224 first usages to Florio – words such as "judicious", "management" and "transcription", but also "masturbation" and "fucker". In this, he is matched only by Chaucer and Shakespeare". In his work Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED, John Florio contributed to the English language with 1,149 words. Also Frampton in the Guardian article cites many words and neologisms created by Florio and used in Shakespeare's plays. Frampton also states "We cannot tell for certain whether the words were written by John Florio or by William Shakespeare." "Further comparison of the quartos to the Folio reveals a number of words in passages added to the plays that are again uncharacteristic of Shakespeare but familiar to Florio, among them "abutting", "blabbing" and "bungle" (there are lots more). And in the Folio-only plays there are several very rare words that again are familiar to Florio: "longly", "mothy", "queasines", "roynish". And some words from the Folio can only be found in Florio and not in any other writer – "enfoldings", "swaruer" " and etc.

Please, please read the sources. Did you read Florio's First Fruits, Second Fruits and Giardino di Ricreazione? Is it not a fact that you created different pages related to Marlowe /the Marlowian authorship theory? Were you impartial when you created those pages? Vale.devin (talk) 20:42, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

So there is nothing in the Guardian article about SAQ. Then it has no use in the WP-article Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship. Yes, I have absolutely started WP-articles related to Marlowe and the Marlovian authorship theory (3, and I'm not even English), it's an interesting topic, as is SAQ in general. I have also started an article about a Turkish architect, that doesn't make me Turkish and/or an architect. Please avoid writing WP:Original research in WP-articles, that is not what this place is for. Strange as it may seem, reading Florio's works is of little use for writing this WP-article. What should be read is WP:RS about Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship. Anything else is for the most part off our topic. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:55, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Also, when you write on WP talkpages, try to follow WP:INDENT. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:55, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

The fact that Florio coined over a thousand of words for the English languages and some of those neologisms are used for the first time in Shakespeare's plays is relevant to the SAQ. As Frampton states 'We cannot tell for certain whether the words were written by John Florio or by William Shakespeare" and this is relevant to the the Florian authorship theory. If the Marlowian theory is an interesting topic for you, carry on that, but do not try to sabotage sourced information on other pages. This is not only disrespectful, but also authoritarian. Contrary to what you state, reading the actual sources is important if you decide to write/edit on a specific page. Unless you just want to sabotage a page, without knowing the topic. Actually, I find quite shocking that you state it is not important reading sources related to Florio. So you want to write about something and you don't want even to read the article that blatantly you complaint it cannot be considered a source. This said by someone who contributes to Wikipedia, it is not just odd, but rather disturbing.Vale.devin (talk) 21:17, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Then it may further shock you that I've read none of Marlowe's works either, the closest I come is watching Upstart Crow. And again, for the purpose of this WP-article, the fact that Florio coined over a thousand of words for the English language and some neologisms used for the first time in Shakespeare's plays, is only relevant if a WP:RS made the connection between that and Florio-flavoured SAQ. Wikipedians are not allowed to make that connection themselves. And again, WP:INDENT. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:28, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

How can you complaint about WP:Original research and WP:RS, when actually you don't check sources and you cannot be bothered about it. Again you try to dismiss the source provided. The fact Florio coined over a thousand of words is relevant to the Florian authorship theory. I didn't make the connection, please stop with your baseless accusations. In the article, Frampton has made the connection about Florio and Shakepeare and he clearly states in the article "Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Florio's possible involvement with the Folio is that we may never know its true extent' and this is relevant to the Florian authorship theory.Vale.devin (talk) 21:42, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

No. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Frampton states "So Shakespeare wrote "Shakespeare"." His article is not about SAQ. Also, the basics of indenting is that you add one more : than the editor you are replying to. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:54, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Vale.devin, this is verging on the ridiculous, not the sublime. Yes, Frampton says "Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Florio's possible involvement with the Folio is that we may never know its true extent"--he's writing about the editing of the First Folio, NOT of "Florio writing Shakespeare". You might have missed the whole "Books such as James Shapiro's Contested Will and Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells's Shakespeare Beyond Doubt marshal facts, allusions and funeral monuments to prove that Shakespeare did indeed write the plays and poems attributed to him." Note he says prove. This jumping from "Florio may have edited the First Folio and put some things in" to "Florio might have written Shakespeare" is unwarranted. As I told you before, you could have written a different article but you chose to jump past the fringe of the Shakesperean rug. User:Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I'm going to revert all this mess again since it's original research and it's ugly. I already pinged Tom Reedy, and I'll throw in a ping to Bishånen as well, and Nishidani, and Carlstak, and maybe they can find a way to nip this in the cuckoo-bud. Finally, GGS, you haven't read any of Marlowe's work? For shame! Come on--Hero and Leander, Edward II, Faust... Drmies (talk) 21:56, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Thankfully, I learned from Upstart Crow that Will S wrote Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, etc. But I will finish Romeo and Juliet at some point. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:01, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång, the more I read from this article the weirder it gets. This whole thing should have never been. Drmies (talk) 22:10, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

This person is clearly sabotaging the page, giving absurd conjectures and applying personal preferences while ignoring completely both the sources given in the page and at the same time breaking the rules by deleting entire paragraphs without any reason. He is clearly ignorant on this field and at the same time against the theory. (Mariannaian 00:04, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Look. We have a brilliant study of John Florio online, Carla Rossi's Italus ore, Anglus pectore] ZurichU 2018, that from a preliminary speedreading pulls this online gossip apart. That's the only acceptable source. The rest is driveling bumpkin bumfluff.Nishidani (talk) 22:12, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Mariannaian, "without any reason"--that's pretty rich for someone who just comes by and does this. Sheesh. Rude. Drmies (talk) 22:18, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Carla Rossi's book does not discuss the Florio/Shakespeare authorship, she only wrote a short biography on Florio. That book has nothing to do with Shakespeare. There's a long list of books and authors that have discussed this theory, how can you say they are all "bumpkin bumfluff"? You can find the whole list on the page, it starts with Thomas Spencer Baynes, philosopher and Shakespeare's scholar. Was he too a bumpkin bumfluff? I have the feeling that you are censoring this page with zero knowledge on John Florio and the Shakespeare authorship question. (Mariannaian 00:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Oh well done. That means that you haven't read the Italian source I cited, which even on p.2 for those who struggle to read further on in a brilliant piece of forensic scholarship states:

È il caso della biografia di due umanisti, Michelangelo e suo figlio John Florio, la cui opera è tornata recentemente in auge, in occasione dei quattrocento anni dalla scomparsa di William Shakespeare e della conseguente riesumazione della cosiddetta questione shakespeariana, quando sono state rispolverate ipotesi e teorie fantasiose, senza alcun fondamento scientifico, sulla presunta italianità del Bardo, germogliate in Italia in epoca fascista e sin da subito relegate dal mondo accademico a puro folklore.

In short, you claim to have read stuff you either can't read or pretend to have read, or, if read, don't understand. There's a word for that fraudulence in Italian, millantato credito. Look it up.Nishidani (talk) 22:36, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I've learnt from the best. "The Shakespeare authorship question began in the time of William Shakespeare" all of this, again, is OR, and nothing about any connection is properly verified." This is not a valid reason to delete an entire paragraph about the Johannes Factotum. (Mariannaian 00:20, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• Congrats. Nothing in that entire section said anything like "Florio wrote Shakespeare". That Johannes Factotum business means nothing. What this article is/was is a bunch of conjecture, a ton of "hey look this looks similar" thrown together to support an authorship theory that, as far as I can tell, no scholar, not even a fringe scholar, even supports. Drmies (talk) 23:06, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
  • One for the WP:HOAXLIST? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 23:13, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
    • The thing is, it could have been interesting, as an "influence" article, but they had to go all the way. And as others have noted, the scholarship, whatever there is here, is ancient (even 50 years is an eternity in this matter). A quick run through JSTOR provides really nothing at all: no one claims this seriously (FRINGE requires serious sources). Setting aside the hits where both names occur in an article on the period and on Italian influence on English writers, which in this period for these two men is to be expected, there's just two things. There's Falocco, Joe (2004). "Is Mark Twain Dead?: Samuel Clemens and the Question of Shakespearean Authorship". The Mark Twain Annual (2): 25–40., which offers this: "As an Italian chauvinist, my personal favorite alternative authorship theory is the one propagated during the rise of Italian nationalism in the early twentieth century, in which the plays were said to have been actually written by John Florio, an Italian immigrant to Elizabethan England", citing a book by Grillo which isn't even listed in the bibliography (shoddy...). And there's this, Elliott, Ward E. Y.; Valenza, Robert J. (1996). "And Then There Were None: Winnowing the Shakespeare Claimants". Computers and the Humanities. 30 (3): 191–245., which lists Florio as one of the claimants but doesn't even bother to discuss it, I assume because the cited reference, Campbell, Oscar James; Quinn, Edward G., eds. (1966). The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell., isn't all that interested in it.

      So, what is there? I think I just did more scholarship that's acceptable to Wikipedia than the creators of this article have. Above, Victoriaearle, who knows a thing or two about the period and about proper scholarship, suggests SALTing, and I think that's the thing to do--but obviously I can't now put on my admin hat and do the proper thing. In addition, the editors/edit warriors/disruptors should be made to not bother us again with these time sinks. Now, let's all read some Marlowe, to get a taste of what Shakespeare was really all about. Drmies (talk) 00:11, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

      • @Drmies: The book by Grillo must be the one for which he is "best remembered", [2], Shakespeare and Italy. Why the complete bibliography was not given in the article escapes me, although of course it could be some silly, unfortunate editing error. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:58, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Ha, look who else got the ping/fax/call/telex: [3]. Rrflorio, welcome to the conversation. Please see Help:Edit summary. Drmies (talk) 00:24, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
      • • Uh, as Will would have said, had his older ego not said it before him, 'We'll canvas every quiddity thereof': Nishidani (talk) 06:52, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
      • I read every word of the disputed text, and it was a painful experience. If it is a hoax, it's a very poorly done attempt, one that brings to mind a passage from Macbeth: "... full of sound and fury Signifying nothing." I will grant that this dreck is a masterpiece of the logical fallacy of "ignoratio elenchi", in that it utterly fails to address its apparent premise that Florio may have written Shakespeare's works. The whole thing is horribly written, and consists entirely of original research and attempted, but unrealized, synthesis. In short, it is a monstrosity with no place on WP. Carlstak (talk) 01:04, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
        • Well, fwiw, per sources it doesn't seem to fit the definition of hoax. But as you say, the article has problems from the WP-POV. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:39, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

      @Drmies, at List of Shakespeare authorship candidates (where I just removed Florio from the lead) there's also a passing mention at [4] p251, and "Churchill, Reginald C. (1958), Shakespeare and his betters: a history and a criticism of the attempts which have been made to prove that Shakespeare's works were written by others, M.Reinhardt", p111-112, haven't tried to check it. John Florio may need pruning too. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:59, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

As it stands, with its 'x showed, y proved, z demonstrated' language this is all WP:OR written by a true believer. technically, all that should stand here is RS that comment on the John Florio theory directly, which would virtually leaving the baby with barely a toddler's toes to stand on as one duly chucked out the barfwater. Nishidani (talk) 07:11, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

News for all Renaissance scholars

According to the text of WP:OR pushed in, and just reverted, Francis Yates's real name was Francis Yates Verfasser!!!!! (i.e.'Cite book|last=Verfasser|first=Yates, Frances A. 1899-1981- i.e.,) Jeezus. Sure, she was an authoress (Verfasserin not Verfasser which only gives her a sex change!!!), but really making that out to be her name? Nishidani (talk) 22:49, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

• Nishidani, it's hard to figure out where to start with all this. It's the shoddiest of editing, and the most tenuous of scholarshipping, in sometimes very poor English--and I'm talking about in article space. And then there's the screwing around in an FA. But the weirdest thing is that I haven't even seen that there's anyone who actually believes Florio wrote Shakespeare. There's that old book by that amateur scholar, which (according to the cited reviews) had some wacky "debatable" ideas, but even the reviewer didn't mention that certainly noteworthy theory. There's Frampton, central in the defense, but he doesn't say anything like it. It's just way out there. Drmies (talk) 23:04, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

  Oh, just wait until the adherents of Sheik Al-Zubir show up and demand their own article... Xover (talk) 06:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

  You know very well there's picture evidence of notability for that one. I wonder if there's any good sources on the case for Mistress Anne. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:49, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• People here may wish to look at this AN discussion. Bishonen | tålk 09:07, 21 June 2021 (UTC).

Placing here some chaotic material removed from the John Florio page

A similar proposed was advanced by one Erik Reger in 1927, and advocated by Lamberto Tassinari in 2014, Specifically, in the first ever written mention of Shakespeare as a playwright and poet, the famous 'upstart crow' passage in Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, Shakespeare is accused to hide behind an actor 'with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde’ (a reference also to a line in King Henry VI part 3) and Shakespeare is singled out as someone called 'absolute Johannes factotum'. Some internet sites have connected the name 'Johannes' with Florio's name in Latin, the name by which Florio was known among his contemporaries,According to a certain Saul Gerevini of Massa the term 'absolute' was an alliteration of the nickname chosen and used by Florio in his signature (precisely the word 'resolute') and the term 'factotum' was a disparaging definition of secretary, John Florio's job.

Frances Yates wrote the first biography of John Florio. She stated that the vexed question of the relationship between John Florio and Shakespeare required a fresh new consideration and declaring to start working on a new book about Florio-Shakespeare relationship. Inexplicably, she decided to abandon this project and she didn't publish the planned book.

Later, the case for an Italian, either John or his father Michelangelo Florio, was proposed by Santi Paladino in 1927. He claimed that Florio came from a Calvinist family in Sicily. Forced to flee to Protestant England, he created "Shakespeare" by translating his Sicilian mother's surname, Crollalanza, into English. Archival proof exists that Michelangelo Florio died in 1566, when Shakespeare was 2 years old. John Florio was first specifically proposed by Erik Reger, in a review of Paladino's pamphlet entitled "Der Italiener Shakespeare", contributed during 1927 to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. Paladino later argued that the two Florios worked together. He continued to publish on the subject into the 1950s; in his later writings he argued that Michelangelo Florio wrote the works in Italian, and his son John rendered them into English. One or both of the Florios have since been promoted by Franz Maximilian Saalbach (1954), journalist Martino Iuvara (2002), and Lamberto Tassinari (2008). Iuvara's work was almost exclusively based on, according to Carla Rossi, the bizarre speculations, devoid of any scientific documentation of three journalists: S. Paladino, writing in a fascist journal in 1927;C. Villa, and G.Scaramelli,

Saul Gerevini and Giulia Harding have also argued that John Florio's language appears poetically similar to that of Shakespeare. The first reference to Shakespeare as a playwright was in 1592. He was attacked in a pamphlet, written by the well-known poet and playwright Robert Greene. Gerevini highlights the fact that in this first ever written mention of Shakespeare as a playwright, by Robert Greene, Shakespeare is identified as someone called "absolute Johannes factotum", identifiable as 'Johannes' the Latin name of John, the term 'absolute' as the nickname used by Florio in his signature (precisely the word 'resolute') and the term 'factotum' as a disparaging definition of tutor, John Florio's job.

Stuart Kells has suggested that John Florio worked as collaborator of Shakespeare's plays along with Ben Jonson and as editor of the First Folio.

Saul Frampton in a Guardian's article published in 2013, highlights different citations and words never used before, taken from Florio's works and used in Shakespeare's plays. Frampton suggested that Florio was the editor of the First Folio, stating that "We cannot tell for certain whether the words were written by John Florio or by William Shakespeare."

Jeremy Lester argues a far deeper implication of John Florio in the production of Shakespeare's plays than previously thought.

Some of this stuff, if the article survives deletion, can be patched in here I guess, as long as chronology is observed in the narrative.Nishidani (talk) 11:22, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The article needs to start with who started the thing etc. Erik Reger according to List of Shakespeare authorship candidates, "A similar proposed" according to the above. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:49, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Frampton's pitch in the 2013 Guardian article (currently footnote 18 above) is very interesting - I read it at the time and have just had a look at it again. The main thrust of his argument is not about trying to posit Florio as the "real Shakespeare". the creative mind or the guy with a major share in the plays, but rather emphasizing that the First Folio had to have an editor with solid experience of preparing texts for publication from a number of earlier manuscripts and previously printed, dviergent versions (the Quartos). Heminges and Condell had never done that kind of work before, they had never been involved with seeing a book through the press and so they are unlikely to have done the work of standardizing the texts (spelling of words, adding stage directions, lists of dramatis personae and so on). The texts presented in F1 have been tidied up to some degree, and this points to someone with solid editing experience (not least because English itself wasn't really a standardized language at this time). And the printers and patrons behind the edition would likely have demanded an experienced editor for this expensive work.

I think in so far as Frampton is saying that Florio may have patched up some things, made minor changes to choices of words, cuts here and there and so on, he's not arguing that Florio was really a "hidden co-writer", rather he is taking a dig at the English tendency to view Shakespeare's texts as just as infallible and perfect as the Holy Bible. ;) 188.150.64.57 (talk) 03:36, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Iannaccone, Marianna

Noting that these about 11 refs are WP:SPS [5], as are the 2 www.shakespeareandflorio.net refs. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:30, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• Yep. Drmies (talk) 21:14, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
  • @Drmies and Gråbergs Gråa Sång: I've trimmed so much that I kinda regret starting the AfD (there's really not much useful here - could have been boldly redirected, if I had a clue what a good target would have been before starting). It does prove the TNT aspect of my AfD nomination. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:28, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Current version

"where he argued that Florio was the author of Shakespeare's works. ... She dismisses Paladino's remarks as "astonishing" noting that he confuses Michelangelo Florio, whom he assumes is Shakespeare"

This writing doesn't seem to make sense. Also, incase anyone missed it, Michelangelo Florio-Shakespeare = Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:49, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Also, don't forget Churchill, Reginald C. (1958), Shakespeare and his betters: a history and a criticism of the attempts which have been made to prove that Shakespeare's works were written by others, M.Reinhardt p111, which states that John Florio SAQ was around 1927. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:58, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I added Churchill, but more current problems: " In 1934, historian Frances Amelia Yates wrote a biography of Florio titled John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England.[5] She dismisses Paladino's remarks" According to the article, Paladino's remarks is from 1955. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:49, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Lester

@Nishidani: Going by edit summaries you are familiar with Jeremy Lester? I've never heard of him and can find no credentials for him to suggest he is a RS for much of anything. Unless Lester is himself a RS, we need a reliable secondary source (like Shapiro) to point at Lester as a relevant primary source for information on the Florian theory. Xover (talk) 19:12, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

And to be clear, I am suggesting that otherwise we should remove the whole paragraph that's cited to him. Xover (talk) 19:25, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Lester is a visiting Professor​ at l'École des Hautes Études. You don't get there unless you are on top of your subject. GRAMMA:Journal of Theory and Criticism, as I showed earlier, is eminently acceptable. He essentially is a secondary source reviewing Lamberto Tassinari's silly book. Fine, he stuffs up magnificently, as do too many young scholars on the cusp who think all theory is reducible to power struggles, but does call a spade a spade ('conspiracy theory'). I'm going here by the same criteria we used at SAQ and have almost finished an alternative page in three sections, using only reliable secondary sources to reconstruct the mess in an orderly chronological exposition of the genealogy of ideas.

Y'all can remove everything now. No objections from me though the rapid fire thinning diet has meant that instead of rewriting the piece quickly, I've had to spend the afternoon systematically going back through the history of the article to recover stuff chucked out or remodulated that, in my view, is serviceable.Nishidani (talk) 19:30, 22 June 2021 (UTC).

Hmm. Not according to https://www.ehess.fr/en/visiting_professors he's not. Unless he is the same "Jeremy Lester" that has written two monographs on political science and Russia, I can't find that he has published anything except this one article in Gramma. And I can't find anyone that has cited this article for any purpose.

I would also assert that calling the article a review of Tassinari is accurate only in the derogatory sense that Lester adds little new beyond what he repeats from Frampton and Tassinari. I would rather characterise it as a slightly arrogant and derivative argument in favour of a Florian SAQ theory. He doesn't call Tassinari's book a conspiracy theory, only the parts where Tassinari starts inventing a huge coverup and rationale for secrecy involving Bacon Jonson. His main rationale for the criticism is: In putting forward an alternative contender to the Shakespeare throne, therefore, the golden rule must surely always be: avoid a conspiracy theory like the plague. It can only work to your opponents’ advantage. In fairness, he also says the conspiracy is speculative and that he therefore does not find it "completely convincing." But even the parts related to what he himself terms a conspiracy theory are not dismissed outright, just hedged around a little.

In any case, I'll hold off with any changes until you've finished your rewrite. Xover (talk) 07:35, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

According to his paper, he is " the head of the “English with Shakespeare” project in Bologna and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Roma 3, Ca’Foscari, Venice and the École des Hautes Études Internationales - École des Hautes Études Politiques in Paris.". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:36, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

That's not École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, but a INSEEC U. subsidiary specialising in political science and journalism. Roma Tre University and Ca' Foscari University of Venice are legitimate enough, even if irrelevant if he is a visiting professor in political science, and neither Roma Tre (2017–2019) nor Ca' Foscari (2015–2018) list him as a visiting professor. "Learning English with Shakespeare", not that I've been able to find a solid reference for it, is in any case a English as a second language course and not something that indicates qualifications in history or literature. Roma Tre has such a programme, but it is managed by a programme coordinator who is a local professor (Maddalena Pennacchia).

Between a side gig as an ESL teacher and three alleged travelling professorships, I still can't find any documentation of what his actual qualifications are. Xover (talk) 13:39, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

This is hairsplitting. Fa fuck's sake. Just to extract three rock-solid paragraphs on the basis of a few RS, I've had to read over 500 pages in the last few days, and all I get here is niggling over one chap's credentials, a pushover if one just gets fixated on googling his name to make a contrarian point. (Sorry, we have always worked admirably together. But the above hypertechnical pettifogging is vexatiously annoying, not least because I see the comments flow, requiring even more talk page work, rather than getting on with the task) The page quotes a chatty Twain piece by Joe Falocco who at the time was a teacher at Catawba College, and no one has griped about that. Sure he later went on to specialize in Shakespeare but not in those days.

• Prof. Jeremy Lester già docente presso l’università di Reading e ora ‘Visiting Professor’ presso l’École des Hautes Études Internationales et Politiques a Parigi (a visiting professor is not permanent, -I had one for three weeks) as your googling up another year 2019, not 2017 misleadingly suggests), l’Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, e l’Università degli studi Roma Tre
• He now writes creative literature in Italian on themes like Caliban and the medieval period.

Look. the bullshit brigade is in the copy and paste with neurotic interleavings and expansions business. Getting the facts on these obscure byways, even from scholarly works, is like pushing crap uphill with slippy fingers. Erich Gerwien is the name on the book every nincompoop in the game cites as Friderico Georgi, but who may be a certain Franz Maximilian Saalbach; Yates is not 1968 but 1934Baynes is not 1902, but 1886- the 1902 date for the last printing was picked on simply because it's closer to the 11th edition in 1911 when Baynes was dropped. Why was he dropped? Obviously because Shakespeare scholarship had made notable advances in the preceding 25 years, and Edmund Kerchever Chambers (Vol.24, 772-785) hauled the article out of Baynes's gentlemanly discursive mode into the succinct form of strict scholarship, as suited the times. The whackie myrmidons don't grasp this, let alone note who Chambers was. For them dropping a severely outdated essay for one that puts the topic on a solid, less opinionated pedestal, must be a conspiracy to repress the Florio connection, which, yes disappears because that was Baynes' hobbyhorse. All we get in 1911, the version our family was raised on, is mention of a plausible theory that a copy of Florio's Montaigne translation (1603) may bear the lineaments of Shakespeare's signature. etc.etc.etc. Getting the facts as they originally were right, always ad fontes, is, in this torbid mess of garbled and gabbling pseud's corner muckstaking, hard, and, Lester's piece does give us an arguable RS entry into the tedious blague of one Tassinari. Nit-picking him out just leaves the article even more stranded of adequate sourcing than it is (I have 25 items in the bibliography, but 10 are just formal annotations on the primary sources mentioned by the scholarship).Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm discussing Lester as a source the way he is used in the current article. How you're using him, if you're using him, in your rewrite I've no idea so he could be perfectly fine for that purpose (specifically, the "conspiracy theory" quote he's a fine source for). I only pinged you because I thought you might be familiar with Lester specifically and I was having trouble finding anything on him.

In the current article he's rapidly failing my sniff test, because…

The article was published in the 2017 volume of Gramma and carries a 2018 copyright, so any visiting professorship should be for one of those years. I checked Roma Tre for all the years 2017–2019 (inclusive) and Ca' Foscari for 2015–2018 (ditto) and none of them lists him. Your link is to a page at UET Italia: "the leader offering a global role model made in Italy setting new frontiers in tourism and hospitality education and training." (do I really need to comment?) These capsule bios are usually provided by the subject themselves, and now none of them check out with the institutions he allegedly worked at, so I'm increasingly inclined to call bullshit on these credentials.

The one new bit of information from the tourism school is that he is allegedly a former lecturer in something at Reading. And since the Jeremy Lester who wrote two monographs on Russia has a capsule bio that identifies him as "Lecturer in Russian Politics and Contemporary Political Theory at the University of Reading", I think we can conclude it's the same guy. Which means his credentials as a source for anything related to literature and history is pretty much zilch. He might be a reliable secondary source for some limited interpretation of what Tassinari is saying, and a primary source for what he himself writes, but hardly for establishing notability of the topic or for any interpretation of actual historical fact or evidence. Xover (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I meant to apologize for my abruptness to you Xover before you posted above, but I was out drinking. Apologize because I looked at the page, which I hadn't done for three or four days, and saw that Lester now occupies far more space there than he does on my revision. He's undue at that length, obviously. What you missed is that there is an intricate linkup between Tassinari and Lester through academic speculations on Florio through third parties,- there is a lot of noise on the continent, even in Shakespearean circles, which just has no resonance (perhaps understandably so) in English criticism, and none of which is in evidence in the text we have, so I presume also among editors here. Once that is clear, his minor role can be seen as eminently due. This draft is getting far more complex that I thought at first, and I have another 70 odd pages to read so far. Sorry for the delay.Nishidani (talk) 19:27, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

hardly for establishing notability of the topic or for any interpretation of actual historical fact or evidence.

Um, writing up the genealogy of bullshit by definition means not establishing facts but documenting accurately, with scholarly criteria, the spiderwebs (like the huge ones in Victoria Australia recently), spun over the facts, the gossamer links between thread and thread in the raveled carelessness of a conspiracy theory like this.Nishidani (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

No apology necessary (except for reminding me of the existence of Australian fauna), and I figured that's what was the reason for our differing perspectives. I was barely aware of the Florio theory before this popped up, so I have very little of the specific context and am looking at it only very narrowly and based on the current article, in which Lester was the one that most tickled my malodorousness detector. Xover (talk) 20:24, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Ongoing rewrite

@Nishidani: I started to do a little cleanup pass on the assumption you were done, but it's dawning on me that you may have more coming? If that's the case then please feel free to overwrite, or revert if that's easier, all my changes. Don't waste time on trying to integrate them into your local draft: it's just minor stylistic stuff that I can easily reapply if needed after you're finished. Xover (talk) 06:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Never ask my permission for anything. Go ahead. No ownership problems here. This is a collaborative attempt to clear the decks, stop the rot, retimber and make what was shitshape shipshape I always need someone to clean up after me, technically and for clear prose. Cheers and thanks (looks like I'm halfway through. The French stuff, all topshelf academic wanking, almost needs a section by itself, and I'm still reading). Nishidani (talk) 08:34, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

The article needs to be careful with using just "Florio". In the Foreign reactions section, it seems that Francis Yates is refuting Sr-SAQ, but then the section talks about Jr. Which Florio is "Florio" in Early postwar revival section is not clear at all, as currently written. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:52, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Point taken. There a quite a few technical problems, as always with dopey theories which, precisely because they are at a glance stupid, yet swallowed hook, liner and sinker by people who should know better, never get the close attention they deserve, (unless one is Umberto Eco). Another is that the only ascertainable version of Ernesto Grillo's book Shakespeare and Italy dates to 1949. He died 3 years earlier. His official University of Glasgow bio. states that this book came out in 1925. The 1949 text mentions the Paladino theory, which the apparent 1925 version could not have, since Paladino only went public in 1927. If that Uni bio is correct, then he must have altered the text, perhaps by a marginal note, sometime between 1927 and 1946. Only a visit to Glasgow U's library could clear that up, but poisonally, I have to dinghy that, as a Glaswegian might say.

Another problem is that Wadsworth's wonderful book on the topic (thanks for the copy, Tom) doesn't draw a lucidly philological distinction between the contents of Paladino's 1929 screed, and his 1955 book. It would appear that in 1929 he proposed the father, and then modified it in 1955 to include the son John. The distinction is crucial, because unreliable sources assert that the 1929 book contains a translation of Baynes' 1902 (read 1886) excursus on Shakespeare and Florio, which deals only with the son. The replacement of Baynes' text by Chambers' article in the EB 1911 edition gave rise to the paranoid gossip which fuels, apparently, Tassinari's 2008 tract, i.e., that the establishment repressed Baynes' tired sauntering divagation on the two to bury the hypothesis. This morning I decided I'd fork out 25 euros to get the 2016 updated and revised French translation of T's book, so I can finger details about this secondary sources, so far, don't supply. It's the old problem of editing wiki: airheads can shoot off at the mouth, and cite each other to circulate fake news, but we are, properly, restricted to analyzing that, not according to our own lights, but strictly per ultra reliable sources which, however, rarely stoop to get their hands dirty foraging in the nitty gritty, but, unfortunately in turn, start just taking at face value whatever one eminent scholar who did actually investigate, concluded, and then elaborating on that 'acquired truth'. There's a discipline called the archaeology of garbage: scholarship requires a parallel one, I've always privately thought, namely 'morology' - the study of obsessive, pseudo-learned crankery. Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

IMO, it makes an amount of sense to make one The Florios and the Shakespeare authorship question article, there seems to be significant overlap. it-WP does that a little, but they also have a separate L'ipotesi Scrollalanza section. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:07, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes. That (S)Crollalanza article should never have been written. The two will have to be merged eventually, but it's premature I think. My priority is fixing this, as a precondition.Nishidani (talk) 12:26, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Paladino's 1955 book may deserve a mention, assuming WP got it right. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:44, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Btw @Nishidani, perhaps you have mined it-WP already, if not, it may have something of use:[6]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:12, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I haven't looked at that yet. My working method in these cases is to fetch up the available RS, write up notes on those, and only when the factual groundwork has been set, cast about for what Wikipedia articles might say, or provide by way of things I have missed. But I will get round to it, after I've read Tassinari's book in a few weeks.Nishidani (talk) 11:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thomas Failed verification?

Thomas 1952 p.175 item 430 reads, precisely:

430. Villa, Carlo. Parigi vale bene una messa! William Shakespeare & il poeta valtellinese Michelagnolo Florio. Milan: Editrice Storica.Nishidani (talk) 10:43, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

My goof, got confused which Thomas. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:55, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I blame the current WP:CITEVAR. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Erik Reger

It's probably Erik Reger, but my only evidence is that he wrote stuff, and years and language fits. ...What does this remind me of? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:01, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Good work. I always format that interwiki link for aesthetic reasons thus (to cite several I wish to refer to)

• Carla Rossi
• En attendant Nadeau
• Daniel Bougnoux
• Marc Goldschmit
• Erik Reger

But while they comes up fine here on a talk page, they doesn't seem to work when used in the article? Nishidani (talk) 14:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Template:Interlanguage link is my personal preference. It shows both that there is no en-WP article, and that there is a "foreign" one. IMO it's annoying when what looks like a normal wikilink takes you outside en-WP, the reader expects English. I suggested making the "foreigner-link" a little bigger, but noone agreed with me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:01, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Page ranges

@Nishidani: I've tagged two uses of the "123ff" convention since it's generally not used on enwp (like op.cit. &c.). Could you give the full page ranges intended here, please?

In addition, Elam 2007, pp. 99-110 and Bassi 2016 pp. 63-80 cite whole chapters. If possible, without sacrificing nuance and breadth, it would be nice to get these focussed down to narrower page ranges (rule of thumb: over 10 pages is cause to reassess). Don't both Elam and Bassi summarise either at the start or the end of the respective chapters? Xover (talk) 09:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

fixed.Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Still one ff left down in note g: "Rossi 2018, pp. 201ff." (currently as ref #29). Xover (talk) 15:16, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

That's the last then, until, I guess, I do some more editing and introduce fresh blunders.Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:LEAD

"The Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the English poet John Florio (1552–1625) wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. First thought up in 1927 (my emphasis)."

Was it? Paladino wrote of Sr, correct? This source [7] says Reger was a Sr-man, contradicting Churchill. Nishidani Xover anyone interested, did you manage to peek at Reger's article, does it say "Jr was Shakespeare?" If not, who said it first, and when? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:45, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

According to Wadsworth Paladino confused father and son frequently. While centering his argument on Florio pére, he assigned to the son the role of translator into English, while, in the meantime, the son filched some of his dad's works and passed them off as his own. All these distinctions can be clarified if the Nazionale library in Rome has copies of both his 1929 tract and 1955 book, something I hope to verify by reading them there, if available, in September. Nishidani (talk) 10:09, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Do we have a specific date for Reger 1927? Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung published daily so just the year is a bit vague. Xover (talk) 10:41, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Nevermind, I found the issue numbers. Xover (talk) 10:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

The date for those issues (both of them) is 17 September 1927, but unfortunately the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin's scans appear to be incomplete (6 and 4 pages respectively, and other issues are up to 24 pp). In the pages that are there I have failed to find Reger's article, but I just skimmed the larger headlines so it could still be buried in the smaller print. Also, the scans appear to be from a collected edition rather than the original issues, so it is possible the missing pages are just scanner operator error. Xover (talk) 11:04, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I may be getting ahead of things, but I wouldn't mind us landing on something like "The Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship is the idea that Sr and/or his son Jr wrote the works of WS. First suggested in 1927..." Is "Florian theory" used in WP:RS outside WP anyway? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:06, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't like the 'Florian theory' in the title: it takes what are slapdash conjectures as meriting a hifalutin monicker as if something there were 'thought out'. There's no thinking here that I can see after, what is it, in excess of 650 pages of reading up on the topic so far. I wouldn't change the rest to Sr and Jr. What's wrong with the solution I suggested in response to your comment earlier?Nishidani (talk) 15:14, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Another point. Florio sr., died 2 years after Shakespeare's birth. In Paladino's day the date of his death was not known with exactitude. So however we deal with Crollolanza, it has apart from Paladino, almost no traction because it so patently flies in the face of the obvious. Nearly all of the 'lit' deals exclusively with John.Nishidani (talk) 15:20, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm ok with "Florio theory of..." or whatever. Per other specific SAQ-articles, -ian could seem to have a slight WP:OTHER point, Nevellian, Oxfordian etc, but it's a small number of articles.

The "wait until September" solution? You may have lost me. What maybe happens then happens then. "Jr as WS" doesn't seem to enter article text until Florian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship#Resuscitation_in_the_2000s paragraph 2, Tassinari's book, all the above text is only or mostly about Sr, so he (sr) needs to be in the lead. You wrote "Paladino confused father and son frequently. While centering his argument on Florio pére, he assigned to the son" and I tried to reflect that in my WP:LEAD proposal. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:14, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

...by "solution" you may have meant edits to the article. If so, I did not get that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:35, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Or to put it another way, the current lead looks better to me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:41, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Wadsworth stated that Paladino's writings confused father and son, but he didn't clarify which writings, and that made editing this stuff difficult. I'm not asking anyone to wait till September. I just said that, a few odds and ends can only be tidied up by a visit to the National Library. In the meantime one edits according to what available RS say, even if they are highly unsatisfactory on several key issues (and only a first hand acquaintance with the core primary sources will enable one to assess how to read and not be misled by the few secondary sources we have. Nishidani (talk) 20:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

There is a principle at stake here. One cannot say more than what RS state. I have dozens of bulleted questions that have no answer in the available literature. I have serious doubts about the accuracy of much, even scholarly, reportage, having, by this morning read close to 700 pages of material on the topic. Even some rigorous RS makes serious slips. It would be nice to be able to act off one's own bat, and correct this lack of precision, or clarity, or misapprehension. But one cannot. There are by my count four Florios discussed, not two. When you have this murk, you keep what you know or suspect out of the article's rapid drafting, holding back, keeping in mind the problems that remain, until the strong bones of uncontested evidence are mended to the skeleton or fleshed out over the growing body (changing g the cadaveric shambles we have to something like a reconstituted body, even if it will be a Frankenstein. All that is required is a little patience or a little intelligent tweaking after consulting the same sources. The whole global conspiracy claim which h has strengthened over time, goes back to the insinuation Baynes was dropped in the 11th EC, and this is proof that the Stratfordian wanted to cover up the Florio connection. This is all over the literature (Goldschmit - speaking from the high chair of established French philosophy, even writes of a deliberate disbarment of John Florio from his rightful place as the creator of the English language and the finest mind of his time, because he suffers as a Jew from the machinations of a 'global ecclesiastical order' of academics intent on preserving the falsehood of Will of Stratford - pure unadulterated paranoia), but not in the academic RS. The literature gets the genealogy of that idea all wrong, vague and therefore it has to be worked out, with so far no assistance from RS. That, once ascertained, will affect the text significantly. But it can't be done as yet. Nishidani (talk) 10:14, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Article voice Italy’s most famous medium, Luigi Bellotti

So it's not Luigi Bellotti or Luigi Bellotti? Luigi Bellotti Bon could be considered a possibility, but that would require an extra medium. No mention at Medium. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:28, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Probably not notable, but if I come across stuff, we'll see.Nishidani (talk) 13:00, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

WP:NOENG

Notes e and forward has non-English text. I ask that translations are added per WP:NOENG. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:55, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll get round to it, but I still have a few hundred pages to read.Nishidani (talk) 13:02, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The Baconistas want their piece of Florio too

@Nishidani: Just on the off chance it meshes with something in your research, while looking for something completely different I ran across a reference to a Baconian (Driver) identifying the Dark Lady as Aurelia Florio, John Florio's daughter and, the salient point of the claim, Anthony Bacon's mistress. Exact ref on request if it has any use for anything (glossed in World Shakes. Bib. for 1994). Xover (talk) 16:25, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Alas, in this butchering game everyone in the cloud of unknowingness wants their pound of flesh flensed off Florio or Shakespeare and grafted onto the chosen darling of their Elizabethan fantasy. I privately like to think that the Phaeton sonnet is by Shakespeare for his friend Florio, which Yates dismissed (p.130) but Robert Giroux defended. But it doesn't matter at all, no more than any other attempt to hunt down any of the infinite spoors of allusion in the bard to some definite source matters. Great literature's resilience to criticism is its abiding power to always hold something back from the prying reductionists, a reflection of the creative temper itself which, unlike the ideologist's, thrives on the hermeneutic plenitude of uncertainties, resisting what in recent times, we faddishly call, 'closure'. The driving thrust of anti-Stratfordians is that infantile desire for some secure purchase on facts which history denies us, fueled by a certain classist oedipal resentment of the upstart father of our modernity. If one were idle, I've often thought, it would be nice to write an authorship variant on Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, provisorily entitled Craft's Ebbing: psychopathia shakespeareana, listing all of the symptoms of the malady afflicting alternative claimants. Time for a trot to the pub.Nishidani (talk) 17:21, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

There must be some sparkling conversation at that pub.;-) Carlstak (talk) 02:00, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Should we merge Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship article into this one?

@Nishidani@Xover, other interested. A WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT could be acceptable. And if merge is the way to go, is there something there that should be "saved" to here?

• Support merge as proposer, since this article evolved to include both Sr and Jr. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:37, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
• Support. This appears to cover all bases, rendering the other article pointless. I don't think there's anything to carry over from the other article. If there is, Gråbergs Gråa Sång, by all means do so or alert me. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 20:51, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
• Comment pinging Marcasella too, because I was made aware that you wrote a lot of "Crollalanza". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Well No, I don't see any point in merging the Crollalanza and Florio articles, since these theories are adjacent but by no means identical. The Florio theory is merely implausible, but the Crollolanza story has its own wacky idiosyncracies that have helped give it life as a myth ( see the section The Crollalanza story as literary myth) and have made it sport for Camilleri. Marcasella (talk) 13:15, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Usage of Carla Rossi as a source

See WP:RSN#Carla Rossi and "Receptiogate". François Robere (talk) 14:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)