Shakespeare

In response to “Computer Reads Shakespeare, Dismisses Authorship Candidate” (Metro, Oct. 29):

The tiresome arguments from the Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, proponents about the authorship of Shakespeare’s works can be summarized in one word: snobbery.

By their own admission, they just can’t stand it that the “son of an illiterate glover,” an actor who didn’t attend either Oxford or Cambridge, might have had the natural genius to produce the most glorious works in the English language. Talent, instead of pedantry, is something that those ivory tower snobs just can’t comprehend.

Even in his own day, Shakespeare was attacked by one of his contemporaries, a marginally talented, easily threatened academic who called Shakespeare an “upstart crow” because he dared to write poems and plays, which must be done only by rich gentlemen from the very best families, don’t you know.

These hostile, incestuous bores can usually be found pontificating in graduate seminars where no one ever “learned” to be a genius.

They just can’t stand it.

TOM BURNS, Acton