The disastrous Academic Shakespeare Cartel !
Criticism of the assumption that the man from Stratford (Wm. Shaxspere) is identical with the author or Hamlet is strictly forbidden!!
There seems to be a formal (or at least implicit) agreement in a virtual cartel of Shakespearean academics and institutions, that the man from Stratford →Wm Shaxpere is identical with the author of the canon.
The cartel uses public institutions to enforce the academic pact, and the 'sovereign' intellectual neo-statehood of the universities to shield the literary alliance from a rational challenge. The cartelisation of thought is itself an attack on academic freedom, as we know from many cases in the history of ideas.
Stratford, too, has a vested interest in its own →Birthplace Trust, the shepherd of the flock of tourists and millions of pounds in spending.
Modern antitrust theories point to the harmful consequences of a lack of competition - from Canterbury, for example, the ecclesiastical heart of England since the arrival of the Christian mission which saw Augustine become the first archbishop in 597; or from the Wilton Avon, where →Mary Sidney and her sons, the Herbert Earls of Pembroke, helped shelter Christopher Marlowe and his noms-de-plume.
The intellectual stasis can lead to a slowing of progress in thought and 'science' or the reservoir of human knowledge (e.g. in literary history). It reminds many of us of the paradigm of →market failure, brought on by the moribund and the complacent.
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