Shakespeare scholar disputes decision-reversal by journal

Good to see Prof. Taylor exercising some strong initiative on this silly question. I wish he’d been as sagacious in at least one editorial decision that comes to mind, viz., the matter of the number of days Lear gives Kent to get his “banished trunk” out of Albion. Shakespeare makes the figure paramount: 10. In one of their early editions, Wells-Taylor apparently decided this number was irrelevant. John Jones in Shakespeare at Work (2000) takes them to task for this decision, and Jones was correct to howl, since the source of the significance of Shakespeare’s choice of this specific number is found in Lambarde’s Eirenarcha. It’s one thing to act as the self-proclaimed ‘unrepresentable other of the author,’ and another to re-write him: http://twitdoc.com/upload/masterquickly/tenne-daies.pdf

The invited, accepted, then rejected article is here-- https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9YH_poTOlrbRGo0RVJuVk9zTmc/edit

Professor Gary Taylor claimed the idea that post-Stratfordians “are ‘censored’ is ridiculous.” Lest trusting readers take his disavowal at face value, I will share two earlier experiences with other publications that also left me with the strong impression that I was censored because of the taboo against publishing evidence unfavorable to the Stratfordian authorship theory. In 2011, The Shakespeare Newsletter sent me a book to review. After they received my review, I was initially unable to get a reply as to when the review would be published. Finally, its co-editor, Thomas Pendleton wrote to me: "The Shakespeare Newsletter does not publish reviews of works espousing the Oxfordian (or anti-Stratfordian) hypothesis, which fairly characterizes [the book I reviewed]. Nor do we publish pieces that argue that the Oxfordian (or anti-Stratfordian) hypothesis deserves more attention or more impartial evaluation or more credence, which, I think, fairly characterizes your own comments on [the book]. In 2009, I sent a manuscript to the English professor and Shakespeare scholar Peter Rudnytsky, when he edited a journal of applied psychoanalysis (American Imago). I asked him whether my article would be suitable for his journal. He replied the same day, "I consider the 'anti-Stratfordian' argument to be comparable to a belief in UFOs, and it will take a lot to convince me that the piece is one I would be prepared to publish.” Eight days later, he rejected it, with the statement, "[I]t is out of the question that I could accept your flight of fancy for Imago...I have to tell you in all sincerity that you... are in the grip of a delusional belief.” Many impartial people would consider these stories to be evidence of the sort of ideological censorship that Professor Taylor practices but attempts to deny.

“Taylor, meanwhile, reiterated his belief that “work like Waugaman’s is fundamentally unscholarly, irrational and illogical.” Unlike this scholarly, rational response. Unlike every attempted refutation of the Oxford theory. Unlike every biography of Shakespeare ever published!