What's in a Name? (Wikipedia Discussion Entry)

This is not so much a matter of 'Oxfordian' imagination, or any particular group's. This is a matter of providing an encyclopedic treatment of an issue in as fair and even-handed a manner as possible, carefully presenting the facts of the case without closing off discussion in one direction or another. Then, whoever it may be who encounters this article, and considers the facts therein contained, may come to his own conclusions—or set off on new avenues of exploration as a result. The deflection of critical issues related to an author's name to 'Victorian culture' is an interesting one, same as for saying this is one group's interest over another's. (I will say that I myself have seen published books of 'Shakespeare's' works in used bookstores or in libraries attributed to 'Shakspere' making me wonder what has happened since and why.) The deflection that the discussion of an author's real name and what has been attributed to him should have gone on another page and maybe won't yet (for other reasons) fails to impress, also. 'What's in a name?' as the Bard himself might ask. In this case perhaps everything. The numerous related issues need to be put forth directly, likely as the very first section, as without such a carefully presented discussion only confusion can follow. That you yourself 'have no answer to' the question of how we went from 'Shakspere' to Shakespeare' has not much bearing on the discussion. The point is that without a logical explanation for making this jump, it leaves open the very real possibility that it was as I have outlined: pen-name made real by forcing it on to somebody who never called himself that for the purpose of closing off the discussion. (Sending me to an anti-Oxfordian 'discussion' without telling me that's what it was does not strengthen your case much.) Whether you or others don't believe hyphens connote pen-names isn't so important: enough people think they might. For me it's more interesting that 'Shake-speare' or 'Shakespeare' is a sentence made up of a verb and noun (not having investigated how they might have spelled the latter then). Much has been made of how this might related to an author's identity; a discussion which certainly needs to be alluded to here. The injection of a hyphen into a man's name is even more strange to me than changing the spelling. What could be the reason for going to all that trouble? It certainly seems to signify something, even if only to emphasis the meaning of the sentence contained in the name.[[User:Empirecontact|Artaxerxes]] ([[User talk:Empirecontact|talk]]) 21:26, 28 April 2011 (UTC)