
Milton’s notes on Shakespeare appear to have been found - pepys
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/16/when-milton-met-shakespeare-poets-notes-on-bard-appear-to-have-been-found
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bryanrasmussen
I put the cam.ac.uk post on this up a couple days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969349)

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calhoun137
This is the better link. Omg I love this guys humble style. If I ever think I
have made a big discovery in math or physics I am totally going to present it
like this: "You know how I am always coming up with bad ideas that turn out to
be wrong, well I just had another one. No big deal, silly me I can't help
myself [big sigh] This is so embarrassing, but I think gravity and quantum
physics could be related by ...

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toss1
Last paragraph, the discoverer is quoted:

>> This is evidence of how digital technology and the opening up of libraries
[could] transform our knowledge of this period.

Indeed! Just bringing many more eyes (and perhaps AIs) to the works can vastly
accelerate the growth of knowledge, and they're already doing further research
based on this discovery.

Who knows how many more centuries this knowledge might have languished
unrecognized, just sitting in the stacks? And how much more like it is still
awaiting?

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benbreen
Agreed - and if anyone is interested in this specific sort of work ("meta-
textual" analysis of things like marginalia and the material characteristics
of a piece of writing) there is a wonderful resource in Rare Book School at
the University of Virginia:
[https://rarebookschool.org](https://rarebookschool.org). They offer summer
classes and a fellowship program, and it isn't just about old books - when I
was there I met people working on digital texts, and even things like the
preservation and archiving of VHS tapes and other old analog formats.

Nick Wilding's discovery of a forged Galileo manuscript is another fun example
of this type of research:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-
bo...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-book)

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eitally
+1!

I studied under Terry Belanger there as an undergrad and it was one of the
most rewarding experiences of my time in university.

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nwj
If you had asked me 5 minutes prior to reading about this, who was the earlier
writer - Milton or Shakespeare? - I would have said Milton. I now know that
it's the opposite. Shakespeare preceded Milton.

There's something about Shakespeare's writing that feels closer to modernity
though. Milton seems sort of medieval, perhaps because of the religious themes
(and the fact that I've only read a small portion of Paradise Lost...).

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jacobolus
Multiple people have suggested this here. It seems very strange to me, since
Shakespeare is one of the most famous Englishmen of the Elizabethan era, and
Milton was politically active 50+ years later during the English Civil War.

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kragen
People in the US don't even know there was an English Civil War.

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jfengel
A surprising number of English people don't know that there was an English
Civil War. When you've got a thousand years of continuous history to pack in,
Oliver Cromwell ends up being kind of a footnote.

Maybe if it had occurred before Shakespeare, instead of after, he could have
written a cycle of plays about it, and we'd remember it as well as the Wars of
the Roses. But as it is, English schoolchildren forget it as soon as class is
over... and I suspect the rest of the UK cares even less.

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StavrosK
My understanding is that we already had the notes, we just recognized that
they're Milton's, is that correct?

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CrazyStat
Correct.

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StavrosK
So why is this so groundbreaking? At most, I'd expect it to be an interesting
anecdote.

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mirimir
Because we care about what Milton wrote a lot more than we care about what
some random book buyer wrote.

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StavrosK
Why? We obviously read the notes and we didn't especially care for them before
we found out they were Milton's, so why is that? This implies that we care
more about a famous person writing dreck than an anonymous person writing
fantastic insights.

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veridies
The article mentions one allusion Milton made to Shakespeare. It is possible
that we can learn more about what ideas Milton was referencing and responding
to in Shakespeare. It gives us more insight into him than into Shakespeare.

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, that's fair.

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canjobear
I see a lot of evidence that these annotations are similar to Milton’s style.
But the question is, are they _more_ similar to Milton’s style than to any
other random literati of the time? Has this been looked at?

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gumby
I admit I only skimmed the article but it I didn't see it say that Milton
actually physically met Shakespeare, right: this is simply a metaphorical use?

Doesn't detract from the excitement of the article, I just would love to think
how the elder might have influenced the younger.

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commandlinefan
I'd think it would have to be metaphorical, if Wikipedia is correct -
Wikipedia says Shakespeare died in 1616 and Milton was born in 1608... so if
they did meet, there was no great exchange of ideas there.

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gumby
Thanks, and _blush_ for not doing my homework myself.

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commandlinefan
Well, don’t give me too much credit. I had to look it up because I was
surprised to learn that Shakespeare and Milton were alive at the same time -
but if I had been on a gameshow, I would have guessed that Milton lived and
died hundreds of years before _Shakespeare_ was born.

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bobcostas55
...and of course they're hoarding them instead of just putting up a torrent of
high-res scans.

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roland00
It is a public library and they are already putting it out a display open to
the public (instead of keeping it in records in the back.) They are also
making available other Milton stuff they have on hand such as a 1st edition of
Paradise Lost.

Free Library of Philadelphia's Parkway Central branch 1901 Vine St.,
Philadelphia, PA 19103 Shakespeare First Folio on Display Monday, Sept. 16,
through Saturday, Oct. 19

Source: [https://www.phillyvoice.com/free-library-display-
shakespeare...](https://www.phillyvoice.com/free-library-display-shakespeare-
first-folio-rare-book-department/)

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EGreg
So Shakespeare was real after all!

That take, _Anonymous_ the movie :)

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CrazyStat
This is about Milton reading and annotating the published collection of
Shakespeare's plays, not Milton meeting Shakespeare in person. It doesn't have
any bearing on the debate over Shakespeare's identity.

The title is a little misleading.

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AdmiralAsshat
Milton would have been not yet eight years old when Shakespeare died, to boot,
so I'm not sure a physical meeting would have meant much to him.

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dev_dull
People would be talking about him/her during that time, so I think their
observation would have been very relevant had they made one about the
identity.

