CAN A COMMONER BE A BRILLIANT WRITER? The supporters of the Earl of Oxford seem to find their strongest support in the belief that the Shakespeare plays must have been written by an aristocrat. (This wikipedia article gives a lot of the arguments.) Justice Scalia agrees with Justice Stevens in support of Oxford and says, “”It is probably more likely that the pro-Shakespearean people are affected by a democratic bias than the Oxfordians are affected by an aristocratic bias.” Justice Stevens compares the belief that a commoner can be such a brilliant writer to a belief in Santa Claus: “a lot of people like to think its Shakespeare because…they like to think that a commoner can be such a brilliant writer,” he says. “Even though there is no Santa Claus, it’s still a wonderful myth.” I think it’s remarkable that the impossibility of a commoner writing brilliant plays is enough to persuade two justices of the United States Supreme Court to believe in what would have been a conspiracy involving a number of people over a period of many years. Anton Chekhov was the son of a serf.
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I wish I knew more about education that could be available at the time. It was my impression that even though Shakespeare was a “commoner”, he came from a reasonably affluent familiar. I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to imagine him acquiring reading materials.
People generally have a hard time fathoming genius that is several standard deviations above the norm. You see it in baseball, with every single extraordinarily brilliant athlete now being accused of steroid use, because now it is impossible to imagine someone being so successful without cheating somehow.
The fact is that there are so many people in this world that by the sheer numbers, some people are going to be exceptional in such a way that most people cannot understand it.
Isaac Newton was 16 when he invented calculus, Mozart was writing symphonies before his 8th birthday. Why do we accept those achievements without questioning them?
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