Jon Corelis said:
>I suppose if by publishing we mean printed, we could say that
Shakespeare
published very little during his lifetime.
And Robin Hamilton replied:
>Um ... Sorry to be a bore, but *all his poetry was printed during his
life --
Um, sorry to be a bore, too, Robin, but in fact, we have absolutely no
idea if *all* "Shakespeare's" poetry was published during his life. Even
*if* we take a leap of faith and assume that the author of the sonnets
and longer poems dedicted to Southampton are by the apparently
semi-literate actor and grain hoarder from Stratford (who offers not a
literary trace in his final will or blank biography), we simply have no
way of knowing how much manuscript has been lost. Well, that's an
obvious statement. And I suppose you meant "all his poety that we know
of."
However, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that Shakespeare was
the Stratford man. I know we've had this exchange before, and I remember
you got angry and started to call anti-Stratfordians all kinds of funny
names, but fact is, IF "Shakespeare" was a cover for someone of the
court, we could assume, as Jon has it (though I don't presume he meant
it), that most of the poetry probably stayed in manuscript form, since
open publication by nobility was considered a no-no.
Kent
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