[x]

I don't know who wrote the book, and I don't deny that a ghost writer would most likely have been involved. I just point out that a lot of the "sea metaphors" or "nautical imagery" was pretty standard stuff that one didn't have to be a merchant seaman or even a very good writer to come up with. It's a bum argument, so far as I can tell.

To get back to Shakespeare and Lanier, though: not all of Shakespeare's rich imagery comes from the field of music, does it? He drew from many fields, didn't he? And in some of those fields it would be hard for a woman to acquire first-hand knowledge in the 16th or 17th century.

I'm not saying a woman absolutely couldn't have written the plays, but it's at least as likely that "William Shakespeare" could have come to know something of music, farming, war, navigation and other fields as it is that Lanier could have. Also, the bawdy puns in the plays are, all things considered, less likely to come from a woman than from a man.

[dsc]

“And in some of those fields it would be hard for a woman to acquire first-hand knowledge in the 16th or 17th century.”

I would assert that no woman ever born could have written the “band of brothers” speech under any circumstances.