Don Foster and the Funeral Elegy, 2002

Jerry Downs wrote

Dave Kathman has been closely associated with Don Foster and his Elegye theory for some time, and Dave gets a few citations, none too flattering, in Vickers's book. Dave continues to defend Foster and his methods, but I have missed the posts where Dave expresses his late opinion as to the authorship of Elegye. Perhaps he will repeat himself, just to muddy the air.

David Kathman replies:

I believe I've already posted, briefly, to the effect that I agree with Brian Vickers and Don Foster that John Ford is a more likely author for the Elegy than Shakespeare, based on the evidence I've seen.

Dave has more than once proclaimed that he participates in hlas merely for the fun of it, which means (presumably), that he needn't stand by his words. Yet that luxury must not apply to the Shaksper group, which is extensively cited by Vickers.

David Kathman replies:

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Both HLAS and SHAKSPER are archived, HLAS on Google and SHAKSPER on Hardy Cook's web site. I do participate in this newsgroup mainly for my own entertainment, but also to correct factual errors and misapprehensions.

Dave has a website dedicated to the authorship controversy, where the innocent questioner may still find a number of quotes pertaining to the validity of Foster's Shakespeare attribution. Are the quotes still valid? Is there any responsibility to update a website, lest the unsuspecting be taught in error?

David Kathman replies:

Yes, various people have asked whether Terry and I are going to change what's on the web site about the Elegy. I've been intending to do so for quite a while, but haven't gotten around to it, because it's so low on my list of priorities. Believe it or not, Jerry, I have many other things going on in my life which take precedence over updating that web site. I had been thinking that I would add a short essay to that section of the site explaining the more recent developments and giving my own opinions, but I just flat-out haven't gotten around to it. But you've made your point, and when I have a few minutes I'll write to Terry and ask him to put up a statement to the effect that evidence has emerged strongly suggesting that John Ford is the author of the Elegy, and saying that I will post more of my thoughts when time allows.

Dave says:

Don Foster is very much aware of all the factors to consider in attribution studies . . .

David Kathman replies:

Don said that in his initial statement on SHAKSPER earlier this year, before he had read either the Vickers book or the Montserrat article, but after he had renewed his own intensive investigation of Ford's possible authorship of the Elegy. I believe that he now has a pretty good idea of where he went wrong, the main places being:

1. he assumed that the initials W.S. were in fact those of the author, and thus didn't investigate Ford and other non-W.S. candidates fully enough; and
2. his database in 1996 did not contain a large or extensive enough sample of Ford's works for comparison, and thus the broad tests of vocabulary overlap which he sometimes uses to point him in the right direction did not work as effectively as they should have.

[Dave says:]

Foster has been scrupulously fair in dealing with objections to his thesis . . .

announced that 'the Norton team' had invited Donald Foster to edit "A Funerall Elegye", 'a poem . . . that raises important issues about the attribution of works to Shakespeare' (. . . xi). Whatever those questions were, Greenblatt failed to address them, assuring readers that Foster's introduction would present 'some of the arguments for and against this attribution' (p. 76). Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, Foster reported none of the many arguments already made against the attribution, simply giving another glowing account . . . (421-2)

David Kathman replies:

Um, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. I've already noted above my current opinion on the Elegy.

Dave spends a lot of time and effort repeating the opinions of others, as he does with Foster. Nothing wrong with that, we all have heroes. But his spirited defense of Foster implies that Dave thought matters out himself. If so, some of us would like to know if he has changed his mind about Elegye, and if he did so only because Foster recanted.

David Kathman replies:

Don Foster is not my "hero". I have defended him in the past, and will continue to do so in the future, because many of the criticisms leveled at him have ranged from mistaken to ludicrous. Some of the people criticizing the idea that Shakespeare wrote the Elegy made valid points (i.e. Mac Jackson), but none of them systematically responded to the many arguments that Foster had made. Many of them made arguments for alternate candidates that were patently silly, such as Vickers' earlier argument for Simon Wastell, and many distorted Foster's actual arguments almost beyond recognition. Much of the argument relating to the Elegy, especially in those early days of 1996, was of appallingly low quality, and I tried to elevate it whenever I could. I dislike bad arguments, no matter what their subject.

Brian Vickers, in his book Counterfeiting Shakespeare, does mount a systematic response to Foster's arguments on the Elegy. I think Vickers is excessively hard on Don Foster personally, and that he's quite wrong about certain things (sometimes demonstrably wrong), but I also think he does a very impressive job of arguing that John Ford, rather than Shakespeare, is the most likely author of the Elegy. I reached this conclusion on my own, not "only because Foster recanted". Actually, I was the second person to whom Don Foster confided (after his wife) about his changed opinion, and I played devil's advocate, asking him what had caused the change, what about this, what about that. Based on what he told me, it sounded like there was certainly something to the Ford attribution, but I wanted to see the evidence for myself before coming to any firm conclusions. Unlike some people, I don't reflexively come to conclusions based on what I want to believe; I prefer to base my conclusions on evidence and arguments.

Even after reading Vickers' book, I'm not willing to make any categorical statements; I would just say that I'm now inclined to believe that Ford wrote the Elegy based on the evidence I've seen, just as I said in the past that I was inclined to believe that Shakespeare wrote it based on the evidence I had seen. And contrary to what you might think, I am not upset or discouraged by this development; on the contrary, I'm actually excited by the questions which are now being raised. If John Ford did write the Elegy, why was it signed "W.S." on both the title page and the dedication? Were these initials meant to be taken by the poem's readers to represent "William Shakespeare"? (Probably yes, I think, as Rick Abrams has very interestingly argued.) Did Shakespeare have anything to do with the publication of the poem, even if he didn't write it? (Possibly, I think.) There's a lot more to be uncovered here, and I think a lot of it is pretty interesting.

I should think Dave would be happy to explain his latest postion. Here's an earlier one:

Don Foster knows more about the genre of Jacobean funeral elegies than probably any person alive, and he knows very well what he's talking about with regard to the Funeral Elegy's genre.

David Kathman replies:

I think that's an overstatement. He wrote one long funeral poem and four shorter ones over a period of 32 years.

yet he was for some reason left out of Foster's database. Was Foster ingenuous, disingenuous, or what? Vickers raises the issue repeatedly. Why wasn't Ford investigated?

David Kathman replies:

If you had read Foster's book, you would be able to answer this question yourself. I think you must have that ability, but that you're just playing dumb. Foster examined every poem written by someone with the initials "W.S.", and examined in detail every funeral elegy written in England between 1610 and 1613. Both of these restrictions, it is now apparent, were too restrictive; John Ford did not have the initials "W.S.", and he wrote no funeral verses between 1610 and 1613, his only efforts in that genre having been written in 1606, 1616, 1625, and 1638. Foster's restrictions were understandable when he was working in the 1980s, when there were no electronic text databases; indeed, just doing the work he did with these restrictions led him to say at the time that he would never undertake such labor again. Now, of course, there are many searchable databases which make short work of searching for specific words or collocations, and which make it much easier to test specific claims.

Dave gives advice:

As I said before, your skepticism is welcome and necessary. I hope everybody with an interest in this issue will follow Peter's example and take a good hard look at the evidence and arguments.

David Kathman replies:

I've answered these questions above.

Are you still in the habit of agreeing with Foster?

David Kathman replies:

I don't know that I was ever in the "habit" of agreeing with Foster. I think he's a very smart guy, and we agree on lots of things, but I haven't hesitated to tell him when I think he's wrong. And I'm on quite friendly terms with some of Foster's most vocal critics.

Is Elegye by Ford?

David Kathman replies:

I've answered this above.

Nobody likes to eat crow, especially if it's served up by Richard Kennedy. But many of this group have hitched their wagon' tongues to Foster's falling star. Name-calling just won't do at this stage of the game. Praise of Foster's admittedly inept method won't work either.

David Kathman replies:

Foster's method wasn't "admittedly inept"; while he made some mistakes, his methods were mostly good ones (as even Vickers admits) and he was generally on the right track. He just focused his inquiries too narrowly, leading him to miss the one poet whose works matched the Elegy more closely than Shakespeare.

Speak up, Dave. Was Foster wrong?

David Kathman replies:

I hope I've given my opinion in sufficient detail above.

David Kathman