Re: Microsoft pays dear for insults through ignorance

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Quoting Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>:

> However, Will is good bluffing fodder.  He's been quoted so
> many times through the centuries that he's more or less been
> validated by default.  It's a rare person who has the nerve to
> question his writing in a non-academic setting.

Yes, I've done it myself, including on this list. However, now that I think,
it's really a logical fallacy, arguing by appeal to authority. To many people
outside Academia (and some inside), Shakespeare is generally considered the
greatest writer in the English language. The fact that relatively few people
have read - or, more exactly, enjoyed - Shakespeare only adds to his authority.

Of course, in John Dryden's day, Shakespeare was only a few decade dead, and
didn't have the same authority. Those were the days in which King Lear and Romeo
and Juliet were performed with happy endings, too.

Anyway, if I was forced to choose between the collected works of John Dryden and
William Shakespeare for something to read, old Will would win 99 times out of a
hundred.


-- 
Bruce Byfield 

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