"Fabric of Deceit"

Small spirits traffic in the ruined name

And outnumber the stars above the sea;

Their poison spreads, yet those who would remain

Must grow beyond the reach of calumny.

The lesser swarm and nibble at the heel

Of any greatness that outstrips their kind;

But victory belongs to Truth alone,

Whose force outlasts the powers that have lied.

Beneath the assault the strong grow yet more sure,

The weak grow weaker in their evil net;

In the end, Truth holds, and the pure endure

To watch the fabric of deceit upset.

   What started as a game of wicked fun

   Turns round at length and is itself undone.

October 22, 2026

"At First Blush"

I post verse fresh at the earliest stage,

Acceptable seeming then — at first blush;

But later, clear flaws leap out from the page,

I rely on your pardon for the rush.

To pause and polish would halt the cascade;

Fear of judgment stills the mental burst.

So I offer half-formed lines, yet low-grade,

That show my poetic skills at their worst.

Within this stream of work, both weak and strong,

A gem appears that far exceeds my skill—

A sudden light that does not quite belong

To what I know, that justifies the spill.

   Forgive the middling drafts I toss your way;

   It's not the final product (just foreplay).

October 22, 2026

"Some Unbidden Fire"

Not Wisdom’s lamp, but some unbidden fire

Lights up the poet’s page (striking him blind)

He sings of gods, of love, of Fate’s desire,

But what is that Force that impels his Mind?

As seer sees what he's yet to explore

And prophets utter truths they never planned

So verse arrives, a stranger at the door

A gift the scribbler cannot understand.

The measured line, the metaphor, the rhyme

Are vessels filled by Something not his own

That speaks in tongues across the Gulf of Time

He catches words as if they had been thrown.

   Thus Inspiration, wilder than the Will,

   Makes poets oracles against their skill.

September 25, 2026

Sonnets As Retelling of Ovid's Fable of Narcissus

Sidney Lubow's interpretation of the Sonnets:

The poet decided to create a set of Sonnets telling the story of Ovid's fable of Narcissus, as if the poet were Narcissus, himself, talking to his own mirror.

In order to create the person in the mirror, he creates his clone--he calls it a son to be born, to love--just as Nemesis, the goddess of revenge created the clone for Narcissus to see and love. (In Sonnets 1 to 17 he creates this clone, and born in the 18th sonnet's couplet.)

In order to create the equivalent of Echo in Ovid's tale, the bard wrote the poem "A Lover's Complaint", which introduced the woman you call the dark lady, the Muse of tragedy, Melpomene. Why her? Well Echo could not speak normally, because she was punished by Jove's wife, Juno, for helping Jove in his amorous affairs with other women. ALC is therefore narrated by that 'fickle Maid', the Muse, that she fell in love with the teenage boy who did not yet start to shave. She was seduced by him and she loved him till he died. But spitefully out for revenge.

In the last stanza she goes off into the Sonnets and enters at Sonnet 21 as 'that Muse.' She disappears in Sonnet 26 through an 'embassage' and tells the poet that she is leaving (to do her spiteful work).

She woos away the son/clone/boy/man he loved in the mirror after several travel sonnets and this destroys the poet, who cannot see him any longer. this destroys the poet through many following sonnets wherein he actually wishes he were dead, a fate he already knows is his, being true to Ovid. He keeps thinking of the Muse as the cause of his rejection by the man he gave his heart to, and vice-versa, in many sonnets. Until about Sonnet 126, a strange thing happens, the Muse returns indicated by a set of parentheses, immediately followed by Sonnet 127, a 'black' dark beauty' with a false borrowed face, the Muse haunting him. In sonnet 131.11 he finally realizes what she has done, she put his face on her own neck. This is done to make him realize that self-love is not so loveable to him any longer. She has given him 'eyes to blindness' in Sonnet 152 which he realizes too late.

The last two Sonnets are unfortunately ones that say that his self-love was fatal and the very last one is a repeat that is the voice of the son/clone/man/love who was speechless throughout the Sonnets, saying " water cools not love, as a matter of fact, "loves fire heats water."

Both go off into "The Phoenix and Turtle", the funeral of the two lovebirds to which all the birds are invited, including the Crow of S.70.4, the dark lady, the treble-dated Muse of tragedy.

He wrote all the Sonnets in his teen years, through college and lots of other stuff, as "A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres", with poetry naming the Flowre, Narcissus.

An Open-Minded Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets

An open-minded reading of the Shakespeare Sonnets—without any imposition of assumed authorship—suggests:

1. Sonnets 1-16 were written by an older person trying to persuade a young man, in his/her family, to marry and have children;
2. Sonnet 17 was written by a young woman trying to persuade a young man to marry and have children. 
3. Sonnets 18-126 were written in the context of love between a young woman and a young man, both of aristocratic upbringing.

Meanwhile, Sonnets 127-154, addressed to a “dark lady”, are the "early invention of a young courtier, trying his best to seduce a somewhat available woman—not the lusty and misplaced attempts of a common, middle-aged man trying to have sex with a noble woman."

SOURCE: Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Authorship Question--Mary Sidney Wroth

Alternative Hypotheses

Taking a statistical analysis approach to the Shakespeare authorship question, a null hypothesis must be disproved by an alternative hypothesis--also known as "maintained hypothesis" or "research hypothesis"--designed to negate it. An example of such an alternative hypothesis might be . .

EXAMPLE:

• H₁: The works generally attributed to "William Shakespeare" were mainly written by Mary Sidney Herbert, with the Sonnets partially written her--and by her son William Herbert and his paramour, Mary Fitton.¹

This alternative hypothesis would need to be tested against the null hypothesis using a statistical hypothesis test. Statistically establishing that the p-value² is high enough³ likely involves documentary evidence in what's known as a "paper trail" comprising . .

"the successive drafts and revisions of (the author's) writings; his diaries, letters, and autobiographical fragments; the letters and reminiscences of members of his family and his friends; legal records such as affidavits, deeds, and wills."⁴

Other ways of establishing documentary evidence might also include paintings, statues, grave markers, etc.⁵

Though one example of such hard evidence should prove enough--if nothing contradicts it in support of the null hypothesis--more would likely be needed given the contentious nature of this authorship debate (and the chance of forged evidence emerging).

The continued lack of such evidence, despite an intense ongoing research from all sides of the debate, might best be used to direct (or redirect) research⁶--to different approaches and techniques, to different possible candidates, or to different research locations,⁷ e.g., geographic regions.⁸ Without any hard evidence the solution would need to pass another evidentiary standard, e.g., beyond doubt,⁹ beyond reason, beyond argument, etc.¹⁰

---

1. as discussed in Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Authorship Question: Mary Sidney Wroth.
2. the probability that the results would be as extreme as actually observed.
3. extremely different enough from the null hypothesis to negate it.
4. Richard D. Altick, The Scholar Adventurers (1966).
5. an alternative hypothesis would disprove the null hypothesis by attaching authorship to actual persons, whether the pen-name came from the author group or was used by publishers/printers for their own purposes or convenience.
6. hypotheses developed as to why no such evidence has emerged over the centuries; establishing as a contemporary baseline the existence of such with other writers of the period.
7. the lack of observational evidence of any authorship "candidates" actually penning these works might suggest they had been created out of view (such as behind bars in a jail or prison), or covertly (perhaps involved with espionage of some sort).
8. works might have been created outside, by agents of or expatriates from, England; or by citizens of other nations working outside its borders.
9. as in Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells (2013).
10. An hypothesis that answers all questions is considered a "certainty" by some.

Who Wrote the Sonnets?

A new book by a Tasmanian scientist argues that Shakespeare’s Sonnets were not written by the great bard, but by someone even more illustrious. Dr. Peter McIntosh of Hobart questions the traditional academic view that accepts that Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets.

“There is no doubt that there was an actor called William Shakespeare. But the orthodox belief that the actor Shakespeare wrote the immortal sonnets is just that – a belief. The only evidence we have that Shakespeare wrote the sonnets is his name on the title page. But this in itself does not prove authorship. There is no independent evidence such as a signed manuscript to prove that Shakespeare’s wrote the sonnets.”

Dr. McIntosh said there were several problems with the traditional authorship consensus, which the Shakespeare academic fraternity seems unwilling to consider. “For example, most of the sonnets are love poems addressed to a good-looking youth with a fair complexion. If Shakespeare wrote the sonnets, the obvious implication for the reader is that he was a homosexual. Would Shakespeare have risked publishing self-incriminating sonnets in his own lifetime? Another problem is the frequent reference in the sonnets to the author being old and near death. In Elizabethan times life expectancy was much lower than at present. Such a reference would mean that the author was in his late fifties or early sixties. But Shakespeare was only thirty or so, and in his prime of life when the sonnets were written. Even when aged fifty-one he wrote in his will that he was in good health. No scholars have ever explained this age discrepancy.”

Basic Assumptions When Interpreting Shakespeare's Sonnets

Basic assumptions generally underlying any interpretation of the Sonnets attributed to Shakespeare might be reconsidered . .

• Play author(s): that the author(s) of the poems is/are the same as for the plays attributed to Shakespeare; author(s) of the poems might be different than for the plays.
• Single authorship: that they were written by a single author; there might have been multiple authors, including collaborators (considered an orthodox possibility with the plays).
• Intended receivers: that the poems were intended to be received by Queen Elizabeth or Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton; anyone (or no one) might have been the target/receiver of the poems.
• Time period: that they were written in the Elizabethan era; they might have been written at any time prior to publication.
• Sexuality/gender: that they represent heterosexual (or homosexual) longings, that gender is always he or she, and that when gender is specifically stated it applies to a person; gender usage might refer to something more general like Love itself.
• Truth/allusion: that they tell the truth of someone's experience; they might be just 'poetic license', meant to be part of a larger artistic creation, fantasies in the artist's mind, or simply allusions.
• Region/language: that they were written in England, by English people, and in English originally; they might have been written outside England, by foreigners, or translated from a foreign language.

A successful interpretation might require reconsidering these basic assumptions.