Talk:Shakespeare's plays

message: YAMANAPPA MADARBold text'''
  — Preceding unsigned comment added by YAMANAPPA MADAR (talk • contribs) 10:04, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Julius Caesar

message: What's with the Emperor Wang picture. GOD. I hate spammers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.47.166.42 (talk) 09:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  HUH?????? 

message: Furthermore, the notes on this page were messed up, so I took the liberty to fix them and add a few more. Your reversion of my revision eliminated some notes that were already there. If we are going to state that some scholars view certain plays as Romances and Tragicomedies or "Problem Plays" then I think we should either do a revised list, like the one I put up, or keep two lists (the first folio and the one I put up). User: Ladb2000
I strongly oppose this suggestion. Just because "some scholars" refer to some plays in a certain way, is no reason to throw away 400 years of accepted catagories, as stipulated by the original publishers of the folio!  By the way - theatres across the world typically stick with the comedy - tradgedy - history catagories. (and rarely even use the term "problem play" - because, I think, that theatre practitioners have no problems finding comedy in the comedies, for example.) Smatprt 01:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I think we should divide them up into Romances and Tragicomedies 

message: Is this section needed?  And if so, why the heavy bias with the article describing how monologues are overall not spoken by the character to the audience.  I've performed several of these in front of an audience and they are always more "natural" when the audience is addressed.  And the "asides" in Comedy of Errors are exactly that "asides to the audience" not muttered with the hope that no character will hear them.  In fact the best way to get the audience to react to these asides is through direct address.  This is based on performance experience not academic musings. My suggestion is removal of the article.  Also in the soliloquies article it states: "A monologue is an extended, uninterrupted speech or poem by a single person. The person may be speaking his or her thoughts aloud or directly addressing other persons, e.g. an audience, a character, reader, or inanimate object."  This is a much more inclusive and accurate description. Spinackle (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: would it be more helpful to make a list of notable soliloquies in the Shakespeare canon? ex: Hamlet Scene 3, Act 1, line(s) 1749-1783To be or not to be this is just one example. Or, is this idea too problematic because we would need the criteria of both 1) what is a 'notable' soliloquy in the Shakespeare canon and 2) what lines in the canon exactly would be cited? I am open to hear the reasoning for this, I think it would be convenient to include some links to these soliloquies, perhaps making this comprehensive for other users/readers to see some examples of these soliloquies.KyleCee17 (talk) 23:50, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Soliloquies Section

message: There is widespread scholarly agreement that Shakespeare did indeed write two scenes of Sir Thomas More. Niceedgarst (talk) 05:57, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Then such should be easy to cite. --Xover (talk) 08:33, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Plays of Doubtful Authorship

message: From Wikipedia:Fringe theories:
Mention in other articles
Fringe theories should be mentioned in the text of other articles only if independent reliable sources connect the topics in a serious and prominent way. However, meeting this standard indicates only that the idea may be discussed in other articles, not that it must be discussed in a specific article.  If mentioning a fringe theory in another article gives undue weight to the fringe theory, discussion of the fringe theory may be limited, or even omitted altogether.  If no independent reliable sources connect a particular fringe theory to a mainstream subject, there should not even be a link through a see also section, lest the article serve as a coatrack.
No independent reliable sources connect Shakespeare's plays to the Shakespeare authorship question in any way except to declare that the idea is a fringe theory and virtually all academic scholars accept that William Shakespeare was the author of the canon. 
It is obvious that WP:ONEWAY concerns content, so any argument that the insertion of the SAQ is a "content dispute" and not a WP:ONEWAY violation is fatuous. I hope that is clear enough. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:30, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added refs to mainstream scholars such as Bate, Schoenbaum, etc. who all discuss the authorship issue as it relates to the plays. To say that the issue has nothing to do with the plays is simply nonsense. The refs are all RS and mainstream. They connect the topic to the issue and are all independent sources. And yes, this is about content and any challenge should go to the content noticeboard. Smatprt (talk) 19:31, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You have been reverted several times on this, yet your persistence indicates that you either don't understand the policy against the addition of fringe material or you're trying to get around it. This is not a WP:RS issue, so the reliability of the refs is not the problem. In fact, the refs you supplied support the Wikipedia policies that prohibit the inclusion of the material. Please read WP:ONEWAY and WP:COATRACK. You cannot link main page material to extreme fringe material. If you revert back this is the next step. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:38, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Smat you used in your last edit refs to make a promotional blob for your fringe theory. It's discussed at SAQ, the appopriate place. There's no point in pasting this junk all over Shakespeare articles. It's a form of promotional spam, tout court. That is its function, since there's nothing there to interest readers of the plays.Nishidani (talk) 19:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

text: Without stepping into the middle of your merry little exchange here, let me just note for the record that I concur with Tom on this: there's no good reason to discuss the Authorship in this article, and certainly not to have an entire section devoted to it. In terms of the cause of the difference of opinion, I would speculate that it seems appropriate to include it from the point of view of someone whose main focus is Authorship, but that for the rest of us it is obviously inappropriate. (Note, though, that this should not be construed as any kind of accusation of POV pushing; it's merely my very subjective speculation as to the underlying cause of the disagreement.) On the other hand it would be very good to have better coverage on the topic of authorship; the short summary section on collaborations is a bit weak in my opinion. PS. In this context, Schoenbaum is the only one I would consider a reliable source. Bate, Love, and Matus' strengths lie more in interpretation of the plays—literary criticism—than literary history, biography, and small-a authorship. Anyway, it is, as Tom points out, a moot point in this case. --Xover (talk) 20:01, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Xover, are you seriously saying that the authorship issue has nothing to do with the plays??? If so, then WP:ONEWAY would apply. But the issue is indeed discussed prominently by independent reliable sources, so in terms of applying ONEWAY, I simply can't agree. In terms of it being its own seciton or not, I have no problem with wrapping the material into the section on authorship/collaboration.  Is that a reasonable compromise? Smatprt (talk) 20:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, in a word: yes. The thing is that while the plays are obviously very relevant to the Authorship theory, the reverse is not the case; the subject of the article is Shakespeare's plays, which you can, and should, discuss at length entirely without coming anywhere near the topic of capital-a Authorship. To somewhat rehash my speculation about the cause of the disagreement above, the logic chain here means that once you accept as a premise that the Authorship theory is true, then the opposite relationship becomes relevant. This is where I suspect you're taking a wrong turn, logically speaking; since you, as far as I understand, believe the Authorship theory to be correct, your reasoning includes this as a premise. But once you turn it around and look at it from the other perspective, you realize that even the most ardent Authorship enthusiasts will admit (in fact, they often complain vocally about this fact) that the current state of mainstream scholarship is that the Authorship theory is false. Once you evaluate the merits of including the debated material in this article based on that premise, the conclusion I (and apparently Tom and Nishidani too) have reached becomes more apparent.Take small-a authorship as an example: for a play where mainstream scholarship suggests possible collaboration with another playwright (1H6, say) the topic is very relevant to a treatment of that play and the plays in general, but for a play where mainstream scholarship does not generally consider it a collaboration (like The Tempest) the topic of authorship is not relevant and should be omitted from most treatments. This doesn't, of course, mean that one cannot discuss possible authorship issues regarding that play, but the place to do that would be in a venue for original research; and the discussion would be inappropriate for the relevant Wikipedia article until the general consensus of scholarship changes in its favor. In this specific case, since mainstream scholarship does not consider the capital-a Authorship of Shakespeare's plays to be in question, that theory's relevance to this article fails to obtain.Anyways, I hope you'll forgive me if I've missed the mark on your reasoning (speculating as to another's chain of reasoning is always a risky proposition, I know); but I do sincerely believe you've taken a wrong step somewhere in there, and in this rather… heated… atmosphere it would be quite hard for anyone to take a step back and reconsider the issue. --Xover (talk) 21:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: According to wp:ONEWAY, "Fringe theories should be mentioned in the text of other articles only if independent reliable sources connect the topics in a serious and prominent way." Recent books on Shakespeare and the plays by Schoenbaum, Wells, etc - all have a chapter or section on the authorship question. They discuss it seriously (if only to dismiss it) and prominently (much more than a passing mention). More so with the New York Times and other major media. So if they mention it, why shouldn't we? Smatprt (talk) 23:36, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. This is why we should (and here I believe I'm in disagreement with Tom, at least to some degree) discuss it in the main William Shakespeare article: it is a “significant controversy” (as the FA criteria, as I recall, puts it). But the Authorship theory is primarily a question about the identity of William Shakespeare; even if, say, the Oxfordian theory was proven perfectly correct tomorrow, this article, and the various treatments of the plays, would not (necessarily) change much, if at all (should not if we've written it properly). Schoenbaum, for instance, is writing a biography of Shakespeare, and includes a discussion of Authorship for much the same reason we do it on the main William Shakespeare article: it's a significant controversy, he intends to dismiss its merits, and he ties it in with a general discussion of Bardolatry. In particular, to the degree he talks much about the plays qua plays at all, he doesn't discuss the Authorship issue in that context at all (neither, really, do the major Complete Works editions, for obvious reasons).Also, please note that the standard referred in WP:FRINGE sets a minimum bar for inclusion, below which material should under no circumstances be allowed; but this is not the same as suggesting that a topic that can meet this minimum bar necessarily should be included. --Xover (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

text: One of the problems on all Shakespearean pages is, what to include. The historical depth of criticism, the sheer volume of commentary within specialist circles, for all the works, and each play, means, for me, that one must focus sharply on relevance of incisive, and original contributions to the respective historical details, and interpretations. When I see variations on the same 'blob' of material thrown in here, there, and if unchecked, everywhere, I feel the point of the exercise is not to illuminate the reader about the subject 'Shakespeare's plays' or any one of them, but rather to draw the reader into examining what is a fringe theory. In other words, these blobs serve as redirects that draw one from the theme of any specific page, to the world of Oxfordian counter-factual hypotheses. If one compromises on this, one sets a precedent for turning all pages into battlegrounds where, almost exclusively, our Smatprt will try to negotiate the invariable mention of what remains an untestable hypothesis. It can't be tested because, as all agree, no 'smoking gun' document exists, despite 160 years of intensive searching, to give a minimal credibility to the 'thesis'. We are obliged to work, optimally, harvesting the best criticism from the most severely academic sources, which abound.  Perhaps Smatprt's belief-system reflects a truth history has maliciously veiled or concealed, but there's no evidence for it, and to use wikipedia to publicize the 'movement', and possibily to recruit followers, is, I think, improper. The proper thing for him would be to provide a superlative examination, from his perspective, of the SAQ article, and offer it as a challenge to the page both Tom and I have worked on intensively for several months. So far, he hasn't undertaken to pull that 'Oxfordian' angle on the SAQ issue up to even minimally readable or acceptable wiki standards. The old article he was asked to rewrite languishes in total desuetude, orphaned. Surely that is where his talents should be devoted, rather than spreading himself thin, in dabbing and tweaking numerous articles, only to get us all dragged in to repetitive arguments. The additions here and elsewhere, more or less, playing off the same old template, do not illuminate anything.Nishidani (talk) 10:06, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation of [[WP:ONEWAY]] and why it disallows the insertion of the [[Shakespeare authorship question]] 

message: A request to preserve my sanity: Could you all please refrain from reverting the article back and forth while the RfC discussion is still ongoing? It's not productive and it's driving me batty! I don't much care which version is left while we discuss this—so long as we leave it alone—but I would suggest we leave the version that includes the passage in question so that it's easy for everyone to see what we're talking about. I'm sure all involved will be happy to grant that temporarily leaving it in place for the duration of the discussion does not confer privilege or preference for that version of the article once discussion finally winds down. --Xover (talk) 09:09, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree with that, for the reasons raised by Xover. After all, the section lived in the article for several years and it didn't cause the sky to fall. It's removal is what got me started in the first place.Smatprt (talk) 00:19, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, I made my edit before reading User:Xover's remark above. When I then read it, I did the logical thing. I went to the old page, copied the contested passage, and conserved it on the section below, from which it can be rapidly transferred back to the page if and when a consensus favours its restoration there. As I note below, what the contested edit says is exactly what is said on several other pages in related wiki articles. Aside from my perspective on the debate, generally as an editor I am vigorously opposed to the transfer and spread of the same paragraph, or paragraph section from one article to several. No encyclopedia I am familiar with enacts this replication and every article should be drafted according to the specific exigencies of the text, rather than being built up from shuffling pieces in from related articles. Links dispose of that necessity, and here Occam's razor should apply.Nishidani (talk) 09:55, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revertitis 

message: :::
:::(1)For over 150 years, Shakespeare's plays have been the subject of a controversy about whether these works, traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, were actually composed by another writer or group of writers.McMichael, George, and Edgar M. Glenn.Shakespeare and His Rivals: A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy (1962), 56. Those who question the attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret.Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare, pg 69. Of the numerous proposed candidates,James, Oscar, and Ed Campbell.The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare (1966), 115. major nominees include Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who currently attracts the most widespread support,Gibson, H. N.The Shakespeare Claimants: A Critical Survey of the Four Principal Theories Concerning the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays(2005) 48, 72, 124; Love, Harold. Attributing Authorship: An Introduction(2002), 194–209; Samuel Schoenbaum. Shakespeare's Lives, 2nd ed. (1991) 430–40. statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories of authorship.N.H. Gibson, The Shakespeare Claimants, (Barnes and Noble 1962), Routledge reprint 2005 p.10 The debate has attracted wide attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars. McCrea, Scott. The Case for Shakespeare (2005), 13; Niederkorn, William S.William S.Niederkorn, The Shakespeare Code, and Other Fanciful Ideas From the Traditional Camp,, New York Times, 30 August 2005;Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare;Did He or Didn’t He? That Is the Question,New York Times; Matus, Irvin. Doubts About Shakespeare's Authorship ─ Or About Oxfordian Scholarship?
Reasons for rejecting.
*There is no 'controversy'. The theory is an example of WP:fringe
*In the last 25 years, the increasingly sophisticated use of computerized stylistic analyses has demonstrated multiple authorship of several plays, but all of the tested 'real' authors of the conspiracy theorists have been comprehensively discounted as possible authors. From Elliot and Valenza to Brian Vickers and MacDonald Jackson, there is no room for the 'alternative authorship controversy' as stated by Smatprt. The theories are historical relics, the attempt to push a dead and buried marginal conspiracy theory as though it were a significant part of a contemporary 'controversy' constitutes an anachronism. There are no ranking Shakespeare scholars who give this any attention except as a bizarre interlude in the discipline's history. Apart from Niederkorn's promotional activities on the New York Times, there is little that can be adduced, nothing from the serious scholarship, for the proposition that this is a recognized theory or controversy. It is only in the imaginations of its supporters, 99.999% of whom have no grounding in textual history, Elizabethan scholarship, etc., and therefore the theory itself can only be completely described from vanity press imprints of dubious scholarly value (WP:RS had to be suspended on many such pages, to cover the tripe)
*This is not a minoritarian position within recognized Shakespearean studies, which Smatprt is trying to pass it off as. It is a fringe position outside of Shakespearean studies, which 'thrives' by virtue of its believers missionary activities. It is to do with 'winning a public' against the standard scholarly representations of Shakespeare, and all of its evidence for support comes from statistics, gossip and promo articles in newspapers by advocates, pitched to the public, not from citations of scholars of repute and standing within the discipline. 
*The only reason scholars from Schoenbaum to Shapiro mention it, is because of this impact on the public imagination, which the de Vereans work on. And these scholars feel at times duty bound to clarify to the broader readership the why and wherefore of this fringe narrative. Those citations cannot be mischievously used to fudge the impression that these scholars 'recognize' the theory as part of the Shakespearean curriculum.
*The patchwork blob introduced here, and, in variations on other pages, exists in the Shakespeare Authorship Question page, from which both text and sources have almost been copied and pasted. 
:::(2)The Shakespeare authorship question is the controversy about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually composed by another writer or group of writers.McMichael, George, and Edgar M. Glenn. Shakespeare and His Rivals: A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy (1962), 56. The public debate dates back to the mid-19th century. It has attracted public attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars.Kathman, 621; Niederkorn, William S. William S.Niederkorn, The Shakespeare Code, and Other Fanciful Ideas From the Traditional Camp,, New York Times, 30 August 2005. Niederkorn writes, "The traditional theory that Shakespeare was Shakespeare has the passive to active acceptance of the vast majority of English professors and scholars, but it also has had its skeptics, including major authors, independent scholars, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, academics and even prominent Shakespearean actors. Those who see a likelihood that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed to him have grown from a handful to a thriving community with its own publications, organizations, lively online discussion groups and annual conferences.";Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare; Did He or Didn’t He? That Is the Question,New York Times; Matus, Irvin. Doubts About Shakespeare's Authorship ─ Or About Oxfordian Scholarship?; McCrea, Scott. The Case for Shakespeare (2005), 13: “It was not until 1848 that the Authorship Question emerged from the obscurity of private speculation into the daylight of public debate.” Those who question the attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret.Charleton Ogburn,The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality (1984); Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare, pg 69. Of the numerous proposed candidates,James, Oscar, and Ed Campbell.The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare (1966), 115. major nominees include Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who currently attracts the most widespread support,Gibson, H. N. The Shakespeare Claimants: A Critical Survey of the Four Principal Theories Concerning the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays (2005) 48, 72, 124; Kathman, David. "The Question of Authorship" in Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Stanley Wells, ed. (2003), 620-632, 620, 625–626; Love, Harold. Attributing Authorship: An Introduction (2002), 194–209; Samuel Schoenbaum. Shakespeare's Lives, 2nd ed. (1991) 430–40. statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories. Supporters of the four main theories are called Oxfordians, Baconians, Marlovians, or Derbyites, respectively.N.H. Gibson, The Shakespeare Claimants, (Barnes and Noble 1962), Routledge reprint 2005 p.10It has attracted public attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars.Kathman, 621; Niederkorn, William S. William S.Niederkorn, The Shakespeare Code, and Other Fanciful Ideas From the Traditional Camp,, New York Times, 30 August 2005. Niederkorn writes, "The traditional theory that Shakespeare was Shakespeare has the passive to active acceptance of the vast majority of English professors and scholars, but it also has had its skeptics, including major authors, independent scholars, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, academics and even prominent Shakespearean actors. Those who see a likelihood that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed to him have grown from a handful to a thriving community with its own publications, organizations, lively online discussion groups and annual conferences.";Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare; Did He or Didn’t He? That Is the Question,New York Times; Matus, Irvin. Doubts About Shakespeare's Authorship ─ Or About Oxfordian Scholarship?; McCrea, Scott. The Case for Shakespeare (2005), 13: “It was not until 1848 that the Authorship Question emerged from the obscurity of private speculation into the daylight of public debate.”
:::Shakespeare authorship doubters
:::(3) The Shakespeare authorship question, the ongoing debate about whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually written by another writer, or group of writers, has attracted many notable authorship doubters since the subject was first introduced in the 18th century.Those who question the traditional attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret.Charleton Ogburn,The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality, New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1984 Of the more than 50 candidates that have been proposed,James, Oscar, and Ed Campbell.The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. (1966): p. 115. several claimants have achieved major followings and notable supporters. Major nominees include Edward de Vere, (17th Earl of Oxford), who has attracted the most widespread support since first being proposed in the 1920s, statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby), who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories.; Kathman, David (2003). "The Question of Authorship". InShakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Wells, Stanley (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 620, 625–626. .•   Love, Harold (2002). Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194–209. .•   Schoenbaum, Lives, 430–40.•   
*What Smatprt appears to be doing in lugging and lodging this blob around to numerous pages on Shakespeare outside of the article specifically surveying the concept, is to establish a foothold for a precedent. By securing at least on one page a consensus that this dead theory is relevant, a part of a soi-disant controversy, he can then argue that on every page dealing with Shakespeare, the (pseudo-) 'minority' viewpoint has a right to be mentioned. Since the deVereans have an alternative chronology, on every page where a Shakespearean play is featured, we shall be required to give coverage of the deVerean theory, even though it has no academic support, and has been repeatedly shown to be a fictive construct ex hypothesi, for which no historical evidence exists. The consequence will be to turn all Shakespeare articles, if the precedent is accepted, into a battlefield.
*Smatprt pushes his de Vere theory, not the general theory that any other of the 73 candidates Tom and I have listed. Give him this precedent, and you are making, unwittingly, an open invitation to Marlovians, Baconians, Mary Sidney-fans to hop in an ask that their favorite author be given a nod as well. 
*This smacks of promotion of a fringe theory, rather than a contribution to wikipedia's NPOV coverage of the world. The theory, de Vere, is covered on several major pages, all, be it noted, written very badly. The article on de Vere, on last checking, only cites de Vere's major academic biographer, Alan Nelson, on trivial points, thrice, among its many footnotes, and prefers other non-RS sources more compatible with the fringe amateur speculative literature.
*This is a point that requires some reflection. None of the pages where deVereans and co., can work unhampered, i.e., pages aficionados of conspiracy can explain their perspective, come up to the minimal standards of wiki articles. They are a total mess, poorly organized, badly sourced, devoid of consequential narrative and exposition. I have asked Smatprt repeatedly to fix those messes before he returns to his repeated forays into the main Shakespeare pages, which must strive to represent the best of both scholarship and of wiki editorial practices. Smatprt is a poor editor, whose inability to understand both Shakespearean scholarship and wikipedia practices, invaqriably leads his interlocutors to waste huge amounts of time on multiple pages, to nudge him towards some awareness of the confused state of the edits he does propose. The above blob only came about as a result of over a year of constant pleading with him to write a precise account from reliable sources. I'm quite willing to deal with any proposal, as long as he can show, in good faith, that he can produce at least one page, unhampered by editors who think his pet belief system nonsense, on de Vere, the Oxfordian theory, Oxfordian chronology or the Shakespeare Authorship Question that would pass as a fair achievement by a high school student in his final year. But he refuses to do this. He wants to play about with the big pages, where serious scholarship must be culled, and to do so in order not to illuminate the article, but to lobby for a promotional spread for the de Verean cult.
*Unless wikipedia clarifies once and for all what is going on here, apropos WP:RS, WP:Fringe, WP:Undue, and other protocols dealing with promo work by fringe lobbyists, once the alternative de Verean editions for the complete plays come out, we will have people asking for Richard F. Whalen and Ren Draya's edition of Othello (Llumina Press), for Whalen's edition of Macbeth (Fully Annotated from an Oxfordian Perspective), Stritmatter and Kositsky, presumably, on the Tempest etc., to be entered on those play pages as 'alternativ' 'minority' viewpoints whereas, to judge so far, they are simply amateurish productions that cannibalize Shakespearean scholarship for the bulk of their notes, and then wedge in the usual authorship slant.
*A final point, which I think administrators should examine. When the SAQ page got stuck, Science Apologist asks both parties, effectively Smatprt, and those who uphold orthodox scholarship, to work up an alternative version they felt adequate, to enable outside editors to compare the two, once both were completed. The template was Shakespeare authorship question, which both parties had worked on. The Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft had the usual problems, so Smatprt overnight created a second page for us to work, leaving the original draft page as his own terrain. We were given a Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft2. On the first page Smatprt made a desultory 135 edits, and most of those before the split occurred, (a mere 60 odd after we were invited to work elsewhere) and  only a few dozen of substance, over three months, and stopped tinkering with it two months ago. It is more or less a touched up version of the disputed page, retaining many of its problems. The draft 2 version has been edited consistently and continuously over 5 months by both Tom Reedy and myself (with quite marked differences between our versions, so much for suspicions of some tagteaming), with over 1029 edits, resulting in a radical rewrite, governed by a stringent reading of WP:RS, and involving some months of detailed reading and research. My impression is that Smatprt cannot work, when given the opportunity to do so, in a fre unrestricted and unchallenged environment, but only becomes hyperactive when he works a page where he has several people disagreeing with him. He proved hyperactive when editing with Tom and myself, and otiose when challenged to work on his own. I dislike working in a conflictual environment, and I think Tom does as well. By the statistics, that is the only environment where Smatprt is willing to operate. So I return to my original request. That he go and fix, untroubled, the fringe theory pages which are a mess, to show that he can produce work up to the minimal standards of quality wikipedia is seeking, before engaging with other pages, with the usual conflictual results. 
Nishidani (talk) 10:46, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for posting this latest diatribe. It's a perfect example of your constant attempts to make everything about "the editor", straying from topic (your final point), ad hominem attacks and personal bias. Smatprt (talk) 23:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The disputed passage, under discussion, which Smatprt introduced and whose relevance is contested, as per Xover above. The Shakespeare Authorship Question 

message: I have tagged the article while this remains under discussion and in mediation. This article has sections on Dramatic collaborations, Lost plays, and Plays possibly by Shakespeare, but reference to the authorship question has been deleted. As such, it is not NPOV. Smatprt (talk) 16:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality and balance issues

message: The section, composed of five full paragraphs, contains not a single citation. Should it be deleted if it cannot be evidenced?Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 20:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Textual Problem Section

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thread_title: Move discussion in progress

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: He had sex with a mocking bird rrrrrrrrawrrrrrrr!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.50.90.112 (talk) 13:22, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  His life 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Shakespeare's sonnets which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 13:16, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: We have tags for late romance, problem play, and not in first folio. I think the typical reader might be equally interested in "written in collaboration" or some such tag. Seems to be decent agreement on this and thus could get reliable sources. This category would include Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Not sure about others. Thoughts? Dhalamh (talk) 10:11, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is it worth adding a tag for plays that are considered to have been collaborations? 

message: Anyone, any group of editors who takes on the task of writing on the subject o Shakespeare needs to have a good understanding of the mode in which they are writing here i.e. the encyclopaedia. 
:What are the problems?
:Let's take it from the top:
:Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare.[written between the years blanketty-blank] The exact number of plays—as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise—is a matter of scholarly debate. Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as being among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world. The plays have been translated into every major living language. Many of his plays appeared in print as a series of quartos, but approximately half of them remained unpublished until 1623, .....
:When Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1570s or early 1580s, dramatists writing for London's new commercial playhouses .... were combining two strands of dramatic tradition into a new and distinctively Elizabethan synthesis. Previously, the most common forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, generally celebrating piety, ...... Shakespeare would likely have seen this type of play ...... The other strand of dramatic tradition was classical aesthetic theory. This theory was derived ultimately from Aristotle; in Renaissance England......  
:This entire section is material pertaining to the style and background to his writing. It is body text material. It does not provide a brief summary of the facts or body text.  '''
:You have written "When Shakespeare arrived in London..." without having told me that Shakespeare was ever in London, wrote in London, or anything else relevant.
: Archaeological excavations on the foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late twentieth century showed t 
: New section here that launches into  Archaeological excavations  with only the heading to tell us what the section is about. 
: Hey!  Were Shakespeare's plays performed in theatres in London? Or were they performed on wagons in the streets of Stratford, York and Norwich? 
:Don't presume your reader knows. 
: For Shakespeare, as he began to write, both traditions were alive; they were, moreover, filtered through the recent success of the University Wits on the London stage.
: This is really bad!
: What "both traditions" are you talking about? 
: OK. If I search for it, I discover that prior to the section on Archaeological digs, buried in the text of the Introduction, there is the vital information that there were two traditions of writing for the theatre. 
: Now I discover that, joined to the fact that these traditions are alive, they are linked by a nut and bolt (a.k. semi-colon) to something called the "University Wits" which I have no hope of understanding unless I leave this page and look it up!
: Can some serious editor who has an idea about continuity, cohesion and writing an encyclopaedia for those who are thirsting for knowledge, take this project in hand and fix it?
Amandajm (talk) 20:50, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really shamefully badly constructed article! 

message: The following edit request to use a table for Canonical plays
Canonical plays
Except where noted, the plays below are listed, for the thirty-six plays included in the First Folio of 1623, according to the order in which they appear there, with two plays that were not included (Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and The Two Noble Kinsmen) being added at the end of the list of comedies and another (Edward III) at the end of the list of histories.
Name of the play           	Genre  	Series     	Setting
The Tempest                	Comedy 	First Folio	Remote island
The Two Gentlemen of Verona	Comedy 	First Folio	Verona and Milan
The Merry Wives of Windsor 	Comedy 	First Folio	Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England
Measure for Measure        	Comedy 	First Folio	Vienna, Austria
The Comedy of Errors       	Comedy 	First Folio	Epheus, Ancient Greece
Much Ado About Nothing     	Comedy 	First Folio	Messina, Italy
Love's Labour's Lost       	Comedy 	First Folio	Basque, Spain
A Midsummer Night's Dream  	Comedy 	First Folio	Athens, Ancient Greece
Merchant of Venice         	Comedy 	First Folio	Venice, Italy
As You Like It             	Comedy 	First Folio	Duchy, France
The Taming of the Shrew    	Comedy 	First Folio	Padua, Italy
All's Well That Ends Well  	Comedy 	First Folio	France and Italy
Twelfth Night              	Comedy 	First Folio	Coast of Illyria, Adriatic Sea
The Winter's Tale          	Comedy 	First Folio	Sicily and Bohemia
Pericles, Prince of Tyre   	Comedy 	           	Antioch, Tyre, Tarsis Ephesus
The Two Noble Kinsmen      	Comedy 	           	Athens, Ancient Greece
King John                  	History	First Folio	13th century, England
Richard II                 	History	First Folio	14th century, England
Henry IV, Part 1           	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Henry IV, Part 2           	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Henry V                    	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Henry VI, Part 1           	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Henry VI, Part 2           	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Henry VI, Part 3           	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Richard III                	History	First Folio	15th century, England
Henry VIII                 	History	First Folio	16th century, England
Edward III                 	History	           	14th century, England
Troilus and Cressida       	Tragedy	First Folio	Trojan War
Coriolanus                 	Tragedy	First Folio	Rome
Titus Andronicus           	Tragedy	First Folio	Rome
Romeo and Juliet           	Tragedy	First Folio	Verona, Italy
Timon of Athens            	Tragedy	First Folio	Athens, Ancient Greece
Julius Caesar              	Tragedy	First Folio	Rome
Macbeth                    	Tragedy	First Folio	11th century , Scotland
Hamlet                     	Tragedy	First Folio	17th century, Denmark
King Lear                  	Tragedy	First Folio	Britain
Othello                    	Tragedy	First Folio	Venice, Italy
Antony and Cleopatra       	Tragedy	First Folio	Alexandria ,Egypt and Rome
Cymbeline                  	Tragedy	First Folio	Ancient Britain
 Harvici (talk) 15:34, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Please edit the 3 Efn and merge them in one, as I am trying but can't do it.Thanks. Harvici (talk) 15:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request as I am partially blocked (The unchanged part is in italics)