I felt about the movie the way I feel when I visit a theme park or a carnival...there’s something magical about it & I love it even though I know it’s so much cheese & glitz. I totally see how this movie was silly, a little lazy with some plot points & other details, not exactly 100% feminist, & too glossy & overly…

You know what...I really think the reason why so many commenters on this site roll their eyes at Bernie supporters—while at the same time prefacing their claims of being so incredibly put-upon by saying “I like Bernie”—is because it’s uncool to be idealistic. You have to find some justification for your cynicism, so…

Yes, but if we evaluated all ideas just by the number of people (even well-educated people) who buy into them, and not on their merit, we'd miss out on a lot of good ideas (i.e., the earth moves around the sun, evolution). Orthodoxy does not always = truth. I think there are enough gaps in the historical record to…

I don’t think clocks in Rome and lions in France represent Shakespeare’s knowledge of science, like thinking cave people lived with dinosaurs. They sound like dramatic flourishes or mistakes like movies set in the 50s using modern styles or something.

Scholars who analyze handwriting have noted that Shakespeare's surviving signatures suggest illiteracy, as do those of his parents and daughters.

You can memorize lines without knowing how to read, especially if you don't have a major part, but I think the evidence that Shakespeare-of-Stratford was an actor is flimsy—most evidence that exists of him shows him to be an investor in the theater.

How do you know where he spent his years, or where he studied, when there is no record of it? Even for that time period, there's so little evidence of Shakespeare's movements, and most references to Shakespeare by his contemporaries such as Jonson are to the work itself—there's nothing putting Shakespeare, the writer,…

You know, I would happy to listen to your arguments and have a civil discussion about the issue—and not that I’m any kind of expert, but just an interested lay-person—but you have such an attitude about it that it completely puts me off. Still, I want to respond to some of what you’re saying, because I don’t think all…

For some reason, my other comment got re-published (or...published in gray, I guess). I meant to say...Bon Jonson had a scholarship to Westminster, apparently a highly regarded school and a royal college (whatever that meant in that day). He was also trained by a renowned classicist. Marlowe went to Cambridge, for…

Ben Jonson had a scholarship to Westminster, which was an exclusive school & apparently a royal college. He was also taken under the wing of a renowned classicist. Apparently his degree from Oxford was honorary. Either way, though, he was formally educated, and there is a record of that. Marlowe attended Cambridge,…

What? I didn’t say he had to be “perfect.” I said he had to have extensive knowledge, & a sophisticated & expansive worldview. “Literary creationism”—no. That’s completely unfair. If something is elitist, it's the notion that only especially gifted people can produce exceptional or noteworthy work, when if that's the…

Arguments about how large a library would have to be to hold books on the history of the English crown, as well as ancient literature, astronomy, music, philosophy, theology, French, Italian, Greek, and so on, aside—not many people, other than the nobility, would have had access to such a library. And a person with…

Ahem. Hold the knuckle sandwich, but I am totally into the Shakespeare authorship question. There are many scholars and great minds of the theater and the literary world who are skeptical of the idea that a penny-pinching businessman, who was educated in a provincial school, who apparently never travelled, and who…