I emailed Prof Nelson out of courtesy to inform him that I had broadcast his privately expressed views on the Northumberland Manuscript to the world on this blog (see entry below). He wrote back promptly telling me to do what I like, that he had more important things to work on and not to contact him anymore! Here we have a perfect microscosm of the orthodox authorship position. Confronted with the undeniable evidence of Bacon's authorship, the Stratfordian can only refuse to face it. The Northumberland Manucript is a forbidden uncomfortable provocative document which at a stroke solves and determines this entire supposedly indeterminable puzzle. There can be no possible alternative interpretation of it's implication. It belonged to Bacon. It has his name and Shakespeare's all over it it. It was the cover to a bundle of manuscripts which included both works by Bacon and plays of Shakespeare. And it explicity identifies Bacon as the author of these Shakespeare plays. Think about it: here were the only known existing Shakespeare manuscripts, nestled beneath the cover which attests to their origin. This is what everyone has been searching for, the Holy Grail of Shakespeare studies. And yet, here now, in 2004, is a Professor of English Literature who has devoted his careeer to defending the proposition that William Shaxper of Stratford was the author, who simply can't handle admitting that this evidence exists. This is emotional armouring of the worst kind; the rigidified reaction of denial in the face of a physical fact which flatly and completely undermines belief. If it wasn't so tragic it would be hilarious. Oxfordians: don't you laugh too loudly either. The Northumberland Manuscript is just as threatening to your doomed cause. If this document had belonged to the Earl, and had his name on it everywhere that Bacon's appears, of course it would be loudly trumpeted and triumphantly brandished as the long-sought-for "smoking gun". But as it proves the Baconian case, it is, like the rest of the evidence, simply ignored. I am beginning to understand that the so-called authorship question is not a matter of lack of evidence or communication or logic. It is an emotional and psychological phenomenon. The Stratfordian and Oxfordian positions support and maintain careers and other deep emotional investments, and thereby, like all false cults or worn-out paradigms, cannot be overcome by mere accumulation of undeniable evidence and clear thinking. Thank you Professor Nelson for your exemplary demonstration of the head-in-the-sand attitude of the orthodox. I guess you won't be posting the Northumberland Manuscript to your witness page, as you said you would. Instead your page (here) seen in the light of Northumberland stands as a simple testament to how wrong the professional expert can be, no matter how seemingly watertight the presentation might seem. It simply ignores evidence to the contrary. Admit Northumberland, and the entire orthodox position falls apart.