The Shakespeare Authorship Question
posted by Daniel Solove
Today’s Washington Post contains two articles taking different sides to the question of whether Shakespeare is the true author of his works.
An article by Roger Stritmatter (vice chairman of the Shakespeare Fellowship and a professor of English at Coppin State University) rehearses the doubts as to Shakespeare’s authorship:
Mark Twain quipped that every relevant fact known about the Stratford author would fit on a postcard, and another century of literary biography hasn’t changed that. Shakespearean professionals begin by noting that there is a Shakespeare monument in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford and go on from there to imagine almost everything else. They have to. They have a monument without a man.
Outside the university, though, populist resistance to the author from Stratford has persisted for two centuries. Skeptics have been divided on their support for one candidate or another — Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth I or Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford — but we all believe that the real author was forced to conceal his identity and allow his works to be published under another man’s name.
We are not just unrepentant conspiracy theorists who lie awake at night concocting unverifiable historical scenarios and contriving pseudoscientific cryptograms while ignoring the undeniable facts of Shakespeare’s career. We’re struck by the fact that all the speculation the biographers engage in to fill the gaps in our knowledge of Shakespeare reveals a man who contradicted the literary thumbprint of his creation in every way. Their author was a huge commercial success — but “Hamlet” satirically inveighs against buyers and sellers of land. Their author never left England — but 16 of the plays are set in Italy or the Mediterranean. There is no evidence that their author owned any books — but the man who wrote Shakespeare clearly devoured all the most important books of his generation.
“Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute [Shakespeare's] giant Biography?” Twain wrote in 1909. “It would strain the unabridged Dictionary to hold them.” In 1984, Richmond Crinkley, the late director of educational programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, acknowledged that “doubts about Shakespeare arose early. They have a simple and direct plausibility.” Henry James was blunt: “I am ’sort of’ haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world.”
The list of skeptics reads like a Who’s Who of the English-speaking world: Washington Irving, James Joyce, Sigmund Freud, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Helen Keller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Malcolm X, Leslie Howard, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi, Michael York, Jeremy Irons, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and many more. And the ranks keep growing.
But modern Shakespearean studies are founded on the undeviating principle that rational authorities — i.e. “Shakespeareans” — do not discuss the authorship question. Beyond this, we seem to be deeply invested in a view of the Bard as a creator in our own image. Born to a comfortable middle-class existence, he evades the stark class realities of Elizabethan society and conquers the literary world through Will-power, re-creating the lives of kings, queens and courtiers simply by deploying his superabundant imagination.
Stritmatter believes that the true author was Edward de Vere:
Since 1920, when Englishman John Thomas Looney wrote “Shakespeare Identified,” a clear solution to this enigma has been staring orthodox Shakespeareans in the face: Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, a man known for his disregard of class protocols and his passionate devotion to the theater, was Cecil’s ward and later his unhappy son-in-law. He was a man with the means, the opportunity and, above all, the motive to write “Hamlet.” Frustrated in his political ambitions at court, he spent a lifetime selling off his vast inherited estates to pay his creditors and pursue his literary ambitions. Like the misanthropic Jaques in “As You Like It,” he literally sold his own lands to see the lands of other men.
The most “Italianate” Englishman of his generation, he toured the Tuscan cities that are featured so prominently in Shakespearean plays, and built a house for himself in Venice only blocks from the Jewish ghetto. His life, in myriad ways, illumines the Shakespearean oeuvre and becomes the touchstone for grasping the meaning of many obscure passages in the plays.
An article by Stanley Wells (chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and author of Shakespeare & Co.) argues that Shakespeare was indeed the true author:
The nonsense started around 1785. That was the year a Warwickshire clergyman fantasized that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was not the author of the works everyone had until then supposed he had written. In doing so, he laid the foundations of the so-called authorship question, which has grown into an immense monument to human folly.
Shakespeare by then had been dead for 159 years, and was acclaimed as the author of 37 plays, two long narrative poems, 154 sonnets and a handful of other poems. No one up to then had doubted that he wrote them; nor was there any reason to. There were numerous printed references in his lifetime and soon afterward to William Shakespeare as the author of the poems and plays acted and published as his. Most of the references were in books or manuscripts by writers whose names are known nowadays only to scholars, but it doesn’t make them any less believable. . . .
Then there are Shakespeare’s own published works. His full name appears on the dedications of the two long poems, in 1593 and 1594, and on their title pages. It is printed on the title pages of many of his plays from 1598 onward, on reprints of the poems (which were very popular), and on the first edition of the Sonnets, in 1609. In that book, another poem, “A Lover’s Complaint,” is also printed with a separate statement that William Shakespeare wrote it. And seven years after he died, his collected plays were printed in the great book called “Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies,” now usually referred to as the First Folio. It includes an engraved portrait of the author.
So there are many references to William Shakespeare in his lifetime and soon afterward as the man who penned the plays and poems, and there is nothing to suggest that he did not write them. People who question his authorship often say, “Ah, yes, but there’s nothing to prove that he was the William Shakespeare of Stratford,” and then go on to invent conspiracy theories that somehow Shakespeare (if they admit that he existed) was the pen name of writers who were so modest that they not only concealed the fact that they had written the greatest plays ever, but also were so generous as to allow an obscure actor to take all the credit. . . .
The most common arguments that Shakespeare of Stratford could not have written the works are that he is not known to have traveled overseas, that he was of relatively humble origins and that he came from a small provincial town where he could not have received a good enough education to have written the plays. The facts are that the works show no knowledge of countries that could not have been obtained from books or from conversation, that you don’t have to be an aristocrat to be a great writer — Jonson was the son of a bricklayer, Marlowe’s father was a cobbler — and that Stratford had a good grammar school whose pupils received a far more rigorous education in the classics than most university graduates today.
The debate about Shakespeare’s authorship has been going on for some time, and the articles don’t raise any new arguments, but they are nevertheless an interesting summary of the debate.
March 18, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Posted in: Law and Humanities
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Responses (13)
Edward Still - March 18, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Stritmatter refers to “populist resistance to the author from Stratford.” In fact, the anti-Stratfordian argument is far from “populist.” It always has strain of elistism to it — how could such genius come from someone so common, they ask.
Hyatt - March 18, 2007 at 10:43 pm
“In fact, the anti-Stratfordian argument… always has a strain of elitism to it.”
That is not a fact at all. Perhaps you are showing a bit of “reverse snobbery” here because every Oxfordian I know is aware that literary genius is not limited to aristocrats. But we also know that this particular writer known as Shakespeare reveals enough of himself in his works to rule out Shakespeare of Stratford as the author.
Michael Delahoyde - March 19, 2007 at 1:01 am
I suspect that Stritmatter meant “populist” in the sense that a wide range of doubters from all sorts of respectable walks of life have weighed in against the Stratfordian myth, incurring the wrath of an apoplectic elite: the academic fossils still sneering at the very suggestion that honest inquiry is to be tolerated.
Patrick S. O'Donnell - March 19, 2007 at 1:28 am
I don’t know enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other on the matter, but can someone please tell me how does (if indeed it does) the debate or its (possible) resolution affect my reading and enjoyment of “Shakespeare’s” works?
lawrence malito - March 19, 2007 at 11:04 am
The preponderant weight of evidence, both direct and circumstantial, points to one man, William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author of the plays. Please, you conspiracy theorists,get a life. I leave you with three words to sum up your argument: gobblydegook, claptrap, and balderdash!
lawrence malito - March 19, 2007 at 11:05 am
The preponderant weight of evidence, both direct and circumstantial, points to one man, William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author of the plays. Please, you conspiracy theorists,get a life. I leave you with three words to sum up your argument: gobblydegook, claptrap, and balderdash!
MLR - March 19, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Jamie Boyle of Duke (of IP fame mostly) wrote a novel regarding this debate called the Shakespeare Chronicles. Its an entertaining read, particularly for those of us who had him as a Prof.
Miriam Cherry - March 20, 2007 at 5:04 am
I like Dan’s use of “rehearses the doubts” in the second paragraph. Legalistic, indeed.
Matthew Cossolotto - March 20, 2007 at 10:55 am
Those who stoop to attacking Stratfordian skeptics as “snobs” or “elitists” should do a little research before casting aspersions. Also, making such ad hominem attacks utterly fails to address the substance of the argument. Even if all skeptics were in fact snobs (I’m not sure how you’d prove it), that simply is irrelevant. A little refresher course in logic is in order. Beyond the ad hominem issue, those throwing stones at the so-called snobs should be very careful. Who in their right mind would accuse Mark Twain or Walt Whitman of being snobs? Whitman was a great student of the Shakespeare works and he was one of the early skeptics. He was firmly against the Stratford theory and thought the author must have come from the ranks of the “wolfish earls” in Queen Elizabeth’s court. Was he a snob because he read the works carefully and realized their author must have been an aristocrat? Hardly.
For the record, I for one have no doubt at all that a “commoner” (like Ben Jonson) could write exceptionally well. There are many excamples of this in history. But Jonson’s educational achievements are a matter of documentary record. There is evidence of his advanced schooling. The Stratfordian theory relies on a kind of “immaculate genius” miracle in which his wide and detailed erudition requires no documentatary evidence. How and when did he acquire all of this knowledge? It’s one thing to be a gifted writer. It’s another thing to be able to read and write in Latin, French, Italian, etc. Acquiring knowledge requires study.
The “snob” advocates misrepresent what skeptics are saying. We’re not saying the Stratford man COULD not be a great writer because he is a commoner from Stratford. We’re saying the Shakespeare works themselves display a level of knowledge about the classics, knowledge of languages, the law, noble pursuits, the inner workings of the court, foreign lands, etc. that their author MUST have had a very extensive education and wide experience. There must be some kind of match between the works and the known biography. A genius from Stratford would most likely have written a very different corpus of works with characters and themes more closely connected to the experience of a writer from Stratford. For centuries scholars have labored to discover any linkages between the works and the known biography. They often resort to wild conjecture and flights of imagination to fill in the gaps. The enormous disconnect between what is known about the Stratfordian candidate’s life and the works themselves is what drives the skeptism. There is also the matter of no convincing, contemporaneous evidence that the Stratford man ever wrote anything in his life. No letter in his hand survives, no marginalia in books, no manuscripts. There’s no evidence he even owned a book. He didn’t bother to teach his two daughters how to read. The more you learn about the Stratford man’s actual life, the more skeptical you’re likely to become about his claim to authorship. This isn’t snobbery. It’s taking a hard look at the available evidence and reaching a rational conclusion based on the evidence.
Matthew Cossolotto
President
Shakespeare Oxford Society
Hyatt - April 21, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Check out
The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare
And then sign!
Roger Stritmatter - April 27, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Patrick S. O’Donnell raises the natural question of how thinking of de Vere as the bard, even hypothetically, might enhance his understanding or enjoyment of the work. This is an excellent question that is best answered by engaging in a thought experiment. Pick up any one of the several recent books about de Vere’s life in relation to the plays (Ogburn, Sobran, Anderson, they each have their strengths and weaknesses, although Anderson’s is the most current and in some respects the most persuasive); spend an afternoon with it and then pick up your favorite play. If you don’t begin to have a more intimate experience of the play — realizing that, contrary to popular academic mythology, your play, like all the rest, is organically related to the real life of a real human being, whose experience, passions, suffering, and joy are inwoven into the text (which is always, in some way, telling his story, even while it is telling other stories), write to me and I’ll buy back your copy of the book.
Mark Terrell - May 19, 2007 at 5:27 am
People always ignore the textual evidence in favour of Shakespeare. For example, he uses over 60 names of birds in his plays, often using the country names from his childhood, ie names that locals would know, but the likes of the Earl of Oxford would not. This local knowledge applies to many other areas, for example, flowers, local words and phrases.
Or that Shakespeare’s knowledge of the classics was weak, especially Greek, which ties into his education (which, incidentally there is little doubt – his father was entitled to educate for free his sons in the local grammar school)
Or that Shakespeare’s knowledge of the classics matches that of the standard school text book of the time (which didn’t match the University texts in all details) – matching the limit of Shakespeare’s full time education.
Or that the plays are written by someone who understands the practicalities of the theatre, for example, knowing how to leave enough time for backstage actors to prepare for their next entrance or other aspects of stage craft. Non-acting writers had their play changed to make them ‘fit’ the stage.
Shakespeare was mocked in his time for is LACK of knowledge and LACK of university education; his plays were considered poor by the educated playwrights.
theminde - June 17, 2007 at 10:23 am
It was Elizabeth I, Essex and Bacon.
Who wants to discuss evidence?
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