[WikiEN-l] Reflections on the end of the spoiler wars

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net>:

> On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:20:46 -0800 (PST), Ken Arromdee
> <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
>> Probably someone who thinks that there are people who don't know the details
>> of that Shakespeare play and might be reading or seeing it for the 
>> first time
>> in the future.
>
> ...and doesn't understand that scholarly treatments of Shakespeare
> don't include spoiler warnings.

That claims relevancy isn't immediately obvious to me. Scholarly works aren't
designed for general audiences and are (almost by definition) aimed at people
already familiar with the work in question. The more serious objection to this
sort of thing seems at least to me that most Shakespeare was material 
where the
general audience would have already known the basic plot. So if anything the
author wanted the spoilers spoiled.