An incredible find was revealed to the public in the university town of Baltimore, today.
After a long period of campaigning, a group of Stratfordian historians and archaeologists were finally given permission to excavate a disused car park lot on the Coppin State University site. Initially dismissed as frivolous, bitterly opposed by anti-Shakespeareans, their quest to discover a buried hoard of Strawmen, thought to have remained hidden since the middle of the nineteenth century, has now paid off handsomely.
"This hoard is definitely an Army of Strawmen" a spokesman for the Stratfordians said this morning. "The discovery is a major new addition to the celebrations of Shakespeare's fourth centenary. We have been convinced of the army's existence since the late 1840's but there has never been anything on this scale of find before. Evolutionists, anti-birthers and anti-truthers have put in even more effort than we have on the trail of the hoard, so it may be disappointing for them to lose out like this but it's especially karmic for us Shakespeare fans to discover it in this special year."
Stratfordians were neither the largest nor the best funded team searching for the hoard and the discovery has left some of their competitors a little miffed, especially as the Strats have an exclusive licence to the site for another six months. Another spokesman said "Although evolutionists have far higher numbers of specialists dealing with Strawmen, we have had to put up with them longer as the anti-Stratfordians got going before Darwin published. And no one can disagree that we Shakespeareans have had the greatest variety of Strawmen ranged against us. It's not as if the opponents of other internet brigades want to rewrite history and the whole of scholarship in their attempts to support their feeble theories, some of which are not even entirely evidence-free like the rubbish we have to contend with. Creationists, for example, have a single theory with at least some effort at coherence made on the part of their creator. So what we lack in numbers of participants, we gain in range and versatility."
Even the circumstances of the discovery are remarkable. The dig found the first Strawman in the very first trench. "There was a a large arrow bearing the legend 'Garbage Here' at one end of the car park. We exchanged a grin and simply started there. I think we saw the first Strawman after a couple of minutes shovelling dirt. After a few more, we realised this was, indeed, the army everyone engaged in internet argument has been looking for"
There are thought to be 800 upright figures in The Straw Army, arranged in a circle. Each has had the head hollowed out and the mouth stitched shut. They are thought to have been created thousands of years ago when a pre-Columbian princeling got fed up with people trying to argue that his native plane trees were actually sycamores whose seeds were borne on winds from distant countries across the Big Water. Others (mainly evolutionists) believe the argument was about where babies come from.
The Strawmen were collected by a gang of assorted contrarians then buried in Baltimore at date that is still perplexing everyone. "Just more of their daft shit" said a well-known Strat from Texas who wished to remain anonymous.
Seems like this find has legs.