Rime toil

The silence of the Strats and Oxfrodians proves my point. Both camps are like groupies, who can't write poetry themselves, so they worship an illiterate bumpkin (or a highborn lowlife) who didn't have the education or technical skill to write a literary masterpiece like *Lucrece* in 1594 (or any other year, for that matter).

The attempt by Crowley and other ignoramuses to belittle Shakespeare's achievement, by calling it juvenile only reveals their own incompetence. Crowley can't even write ONE single stanza of rime royal, yet he says the author wrote it before puberty. Stratfordians have a different problem: their man was an "upstart crow" when Venus & Adonis was written. And apparently they can't write "Shakespearean-style" poetry.

Others have doubted my contention that the inability to write poetry diminishes one's authority for judging poetry competently. Of course, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but not all opinions are equally valid. Out of shape arm-chair quarterbacks can toss and catch a football. Most tennis fans can hit the ball over the net a few times. Even people in wheelchairs can shoot baskets, but Stratfordians can not write even a single stanza of "rime royal" to prove that their (unlettered) hero could have written it.

I'm certain that of those who have written "acceptable" rime royal in this thread (acceptable meaning ABOUT Shakespeare, not about me, written in true iambic pentameter, riming ababbcc)...none would minimize the author's great achievement in *Rape of Lucrece* -- 265 STANZAS of rime royal on an important topic (the elimination of tyrants and establishment of republic), dedicated to a young nobleman on the rise. Most definitely superior to oranges this time of year. And much better than shallow (if entertaining) concoctions like Titus Andronicus and Comedy of Errors. Lucrece was deep, in more ways than one.

Now here's one for the grave and wiser sort:
The man who wrote *Lucrece* had been to court.
He wrote the poem on purpose, not for sport,
To give a revolution his support;
For most who read Lucrece, well understood
Between the lines the message: change was good--
Especially from tyranny, and well it should
By Jove and folks be overthrown (it would).

Th' above is NOT rime royal verse I know,
but maybe soon it will so flow,
But now it's your turn, reader, yo,
stop arguing in so-so prose
and picking one another's nose
if you know who wrote those
Lucrece and Venus and Adonis, prove it:
William, Francis, Ned or Kit--
In verses lyrical and accurate.