Re: Breton, Cornish & French

Chess One wrote:
> "John Briggs" <john.briggs4@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:GNWwj.5123$g81.316@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Chess One wrote:
>>> "John Cartmell" <john@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>> news:4f750ada8ejohn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>> In article <YNKdnT3BNrwXjiPanZ2dnUVZ_rmjnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>>>   Chess One <OneChess@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>> There is no evidence whatever that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.
>>>>
>>>> In your terms: what would constitute 'evidence'. In common parlance
>>>> (and academic research) there is plenty of evidence - but you are
>>>> clearly more picky.
>>>
>>> Perhaps I should re-emphasise that I am not speculating on
>>> Shakespearean author****p - but on methodology - and somewhere at the
>>> head of these posts remarked that there is not /written/ evidence
>>> [which I dare call 'normative' for academic] in his own hand of that
>>> to inform us.
>>
>> Where did this criterion suddenly pop up from?
>
> It is suddenly nothing. The means of asking is of epistemology, which
> is to say, 'how we know things', which is a perennial means of
> inquiry.

See below.

>> And why are you suddenly applying it to Shakespeare, rather than any
>> of his contem****aries or predecessors?
>
> You are perhaps not aware that Shagsper is the most known author in
> the world, and the 'suddeness' of my inquiry is merely to illustrate
> that such a person has so little known of him that his precedents
> might be considered in a similar way.

I am beginning to understand your problem.  Listen: if Shakespeare is to
us 
"the most known author in the world", that is our problem, not his - nor
of 
his contem****aries or predecessors.


>> You know perfectly well that even if there were anything in his own
>> hand that there are kooks who would flatly deny it. And we can be
>> sure that even if there were agreement that Hand D of "The Boke of
>> Sir Thomas More" were Shakespeare's that you would not accept it.
>
> ?   I am not contesting author****p of Shakespeare, but asking how
> anyone knows aught? That, you see, is simply normal procedure for an
> anthropologist of antiquarian. Not what you know, but how you know.

What does that have to do with "an anthropologist of antiquarian"?


> Do you even understand the issue here, of 'Shakespeare', or anyone
> long before Shakespeare? I do not quite understand you challenge
> above, if it is a challenge, since essentially, I ask you directly
> what you know, and how so, rather than rhetorically.
>
>>> Therefore the 'plentiful' evidence is not any form of primary
>>> material - and is indeed a somewhat mixed bag of second sourcing,
>>> suppositions [rightly to whatever degree].
>>
>> You are defining "primary" somewhat arbitrarily - and disingenuously.
>
> I am sure that you are fraught with constraint, so that you merely
> fling aspersion, having not the time to back it up or define your
> terms. Otherwise I must conclude you cannot actually contest the
> point, and a bit of a big girl about it.

You are defining "primary" arbitrarily.

>>> So the 'how we know what we know' question is answered in the
>>> instance of Shakespeare by saying 'second sourcing of literary
>>> material from contem****aneous sources'. There are additional
>>> materials which contest the degree that Shakespeare wrote anything
>>> at all, or to what degree he did. It is not necessary to believe
>>> anything about this subject in order to note that varieties of
>>> opinion exist.
>>
>> There certainly are not any "additional materials" of any sort - and
>> these "varieties of opinion" are beneath contempt.
>
> Not beneath yours though, since you mention them. [lol]
>
> My remark mentions that there are varieties of opinion, and I think
> Brigg's response indicates, in all its elucidation, that he doesn't
> have another thought in his head resulting from his own wit, and
> cannot cope with any challenge to the God-Like [if anonymous] people
> he espouses.

Only anonymous because you aren't asking the right questions.

>>> Since these messages include a Cornish newsgroup, it is pertinent to
>>> mention that Conrishman A. L. Rowse was [perhaps?] the principal
>>> Elizabethan scholar of the immediately preceding decade at Oxford,
>>
>> Immediately preceding what?
>
> The decade previously referenced.

You had neglected to reference any decade - hence my question.

>>> and author of some half dozen Shakespearean commentaries - and a
>>> frim 'Stratfordian'. Yet even Rowse speculated that for LLL, the
>>> principal hand in that was not Shakespeare but Bacon - since he saw
>>> in it something of a refutation of Euro Roscicrucianism; a certain
>>> sterility, which was somewhat relieved by the arrival of les femmes.
>>
>> A.L. Rowse said a lot of very silly things - and he was a historian
>> rather than a literary scholar - but I find it hard to believe that
>> he would say anything quite as silly as that - except, perhaps, as
>> an academic joke, in which case it wasn't written for the likes of
>> you.
>
> Briggs finds it hard. How harder will he be if he actually reads
> Rowse? But since Briggs hasn't actually read the Author on the topic,
> be 'finds it hard' to understand him.
>
> Pfft! Which is understandable. That is to say, his ignorance of the
> author's opinion is not a mystery, as is, since he hasn't read Rowse,
> his opinion that he is not a 'literary scholar'. Presumably for Mr.
> Briggs Rowse was some other kind?

He was better at history.

>> He would, however, have been able to spell "Rosicrucianism", and
>> probably would have known that it never existed.
>
> Pardon?
>
> Will someone please do a trance medium****p thingy-ma-bob with Frances
> A. Yates, and inform her that her brilliant history is, in the
> opinion of Mr. "no" Briggs, bust.

Had you actually read it, you would have realised that one of her central 
points is that there were no Rosicrucians and no actual Rosicrucian 
Movement.
-- 
John Briggs