Wikipedia talk:Peer review/Shakespeare authorship question/archive2

The peer review submission by Tom Reedy is anything but neutral. Reviewing the footnotes he used to support his contentions, I read some of the most misinformed and bilious remarks about other scholars and other scholarship that I have ever seen. Kathman's and Nelson's in particular are little more than polemic, with Shapiro, Bate, Smith, and Wadsworth also characterized by summary judgment, unsupported by any specific factuality. The basic point of departure into polemic is their common assumption that Gulielmus Shakspere of Stratford and William Shake-Speare/Shakespeare of literary renown were one and the same person. Since this cannot be asserted without numerous contradictions collapsing the argument, it throws into question the (lack of) scholarly motives of the individuals involved. There can be no neutral discussion under these terms, and in this case Tom Reedy's neutral point of view is a travesty. The defensive posture of asserting that Elizabethan authors did not write out of their own experience and social frame, for instance, is clearly disproven by their individual biographies. The only biography to work chasm is that of the subject in discussion, Gulielmus Shakspere of Stratford. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zweigenbaum (talk • contribs) 08:25, 16 December 2010