Since I took over the Shakespeare pages of About.com a few months ago, I’ve been avoiding one topic in particular: the Shakespeare authorship debate.
I know how passionate you all are about this topic from the comments to my Holy Trinity blog post last month. As anyone who’s ever asked the question, “did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?” will testify, a barrage of staunchly argued theories soon follows.
So, the time has come for me to nail my colors to the post! I think Shakespeare did write Shakespeare and that our love for a good conspiracy theory has overpowered the historical evidence (or lack thereof).
Today, we feel like we know Shakespeare intimately: his image is iconic (a controversial statement in itself) and his vast oeuvre of writing is known around the globe – in fact, he’s probably the most famous figure in the history of our planet. However, comparatively little historical evidence has survived the 400 years since his death. I think this creates a feeling of confusion and people find it hard to understand why we can’t ascertain basic facts about someone so famous. I believe the various conspiracy theories spring from this confusion.
So, there we go! I’ve finally opened this “can of worms” and I await your disagreements.
Comments
May I correct some misimpressions in your blog? “The following reasons are often cited as evidence that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare (despite a distinct lack of evidence):” This is framing the question wrongly. William Shaksper of Stratford is not the same person as the author Shakespeare. The question is not whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, any more than that Mark Twain wrote the works of Twain. The lack of evidence connecting the Stratford businessman to the plays is the problem that creates doubt.
“Someone else wrote the plays because:
The will of the world’s greatest writer did not itemize any books (however, the inventory part of the will has been lost)” No, Lee, there is no evidence that Mr. Shakspere ever even OWNED a book.
“Shakespeare [you mean Shakspere] did not have the university education required to write with such knowledge of the classics (although he would have been introduced to the classics at school in Stratford-upon-Avon)” Wrong again. The Stratford school records have been destroyed. No evidence that William Shakspere attended school at Stratford or anywhere else.
“There is no record of Shakespeare ever attending Stratford-upon-Avon grammar school (however, school records were not kept back then)” Other school records were kept. We know where Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson went to school. We know that Edward De Vere had tutors and a university degree by age 14, and a law school degree by age 17.
“When Shakespeare died, [again, you mean Shakspere] none of his contemporary writers made tribute to him (although references were made during his lifetime)” The only references in the author’s lifetime were alluding to the AUTHOR Shakespeare, but no one in Stratford connected Will Shakspere to the theater or the world of literature. Read Charlton Ogburn’s The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality.
The “Authorship Debate” is a waste of time.
there is an adage that says”when searching for the correct answer the simple one is usually correct”. who wrote shakespeare? shakespeare
Did Shakespeare write this riddle?
How does a good man live in peace, if his evil minded neighbor doesn’t want him to?
Thank you.
There are some excellent books on this subject. One of the best is “The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality” by Charlton Ogburn. Check out the reviews on Amazon.Com The foreword was written by David McCullough who worked with Ogburn on several writing projects. Other books include “Alias Shakespeare” by Joseph Sobran, a dyed-in-the-wool Stratfordian until he read Ogburn’s book. And if you’re interested in reading one on the other side of the aisle try “Will in the World” by Stephen Greenblatt, professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Greenblatt has no facts, but he has one terrific imagination.
Victorian critics could not admit that a commoner
were able to write Shakespeare. There’s even documented proof that fake manuscripts signed by Francis Bacon were created. Before then, nobody ever doubted Will’s authorship, and neither should we.
Unfortunately you have been “avoiding” the most interesting topic in Shakespeare studies: the authorship debate.
I think you undermine your own study of the topic, if you really believe the amazing amount of truly exciting research by some brilliant writers is the result of a simple confusion.
College is not a necessary preparation for a writer. The evidence? Check out this very incomplete list of famouse writers who skipped college or attended it half-heartedly.
Mark Twain
Ernest Hemingway
George Bernard Shaw
Rudyard Kipling
Emile Zola
Jane Austen
George Eliot
Herman Melville
Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë
Charles Dickens
Joseph Conrad
Hermann Hesse
Ben Jonson (Shakespeare’s contemporary)
William Faulkner (attended halfheartedly; dropped out)
John Steinbeck (some college; no degree)
Emily Dickinson (brief stint in college)
Leo Tolstoy (dropped out midterm)
The college education requirement must now be laid to rest.
As for the other arguments, remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The burden of proof lies on those who claim that some mysterious dramatist decided to masquerade as William Shakespeare for over two decades (or that some other person named William Shakespeare wrote the plays). That burden has not been met.
If a country boy with no degree couldn’t possibly write the plays then we must wonder WHO was the “ghost writer” who wrote the Gettysburg Address” and the “Second Inaugural” or the works of Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway etc et al.
Surely, these bumpkins couldn’t possibly have done so.
Shakespearesleuth (Comment !) has got it in a nutshell. The earliest attributions to the author gave the name as William Shake-speare, the hyphenation being a clear indication that a pseudonym was used. I fully concur with Shakespearesleuth that Charlton Ogburn jnr’s book is essential reading for all those sick of one of the world’s longest-running con-games. Edward de Vere was unquestionably the author.
It’s not so much a debate about the lack of a college education as it is about the lack of evidence of any education. It’s hard to imagine someone as prolific as Shakespeare having left nothing in his own handwriting except six cramped and unpracticed signatures, all on legal documents. As one of the most prominent Will of Stratford backers, Samuel Schoenbaum, wrote in “Shakespeare’s Lives”: “Perhaps we should despair of ever bridging the vertiginous expanse between the sublimity of the subject and the mundane inconsequence of the documentary record. What would we not give for a single personal letter, one page of diary!”
Who is the real Father Christmas..?? Does it matter? We still have such pleasure from Christmas celebrations…..Same for Shakespeare, he continues to give us great pleasure no matter who he is or who wrote the words…….:-)
In Clare Asquith’s book “Shadowplay,” a poignant observation concerning the
Authorship controversy is made. I quote in part:
“Many have wondered whether a more educated man wrote the plays, a nobleman perhaps, rich enough to tour the Continent, who later adopted the Stratford actor’s
name as a cover. But a more obvious explanation lies in the forgotten predicament of
English Catholics, excluded from all forms of education in their own country.
One expedient for those who wanted to gain a university education while ducking the Oath of Supremacy and avoiding obligatory Protestant services and catechism classes was to attend one of the halls at Oxford still sympathetic to the old religion either by taking an alias or without registering at the university at all. Shakespeare could have done the same. Like others, too, some of them from Stratford, he could have been forced to complete his education in Italy, for by the mid-1570s dissident colleges were under increasing pressure to conform, and many Catholics left Oxford to finish their studies abroad, a number of them in the English College in Rome. Two biographical details support this possibility: for unknown reasons, his father began to lose money in the late 1570s, perhaps as a result of this expensive course of education. And Shakespeare reappears in the Stratford records in 1582, a year after the government had recalled all those studying abroad on pain of ruinous fines.”
Well, I think that Shakespeare is so great that no one can tell how long it would take such a person to dash off any of the Plays, whether it was on a break during the show or staying up late at night.
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare to me is that Somebody had to write those lines, and anyone who could is just that remarkable.
There is a park here in San Francisco that has a memorial to Shakespeare based on only his lines on flowers! It is quite moving and I read most or all of the lines each time I visit.
Michael asks who the real Father Christmas is and if it matters. Yes, Michael, it does matter.
Christians attribute the Sermon on the Mount to Jesus Christ, the son of God. Would it make any difference if it were attributed to an anonymous itinerant rabbi? We would still have all those wonderful words and ideas, but wouldn’t they lose a certain amount of power?
Believing, as a growing number of Shakespeare enthusiasts do, that the author was Edward de Vere, opens the mind to a cornucopia of ideas about the plays and sonnets and a depth of understanding that otherwise would not be possible.
Of the core 37 plays in the canon, 36 deal with the lives of nobility. Why would Will of Stratford be so interested and write with such introspection? What does he bring to this table? How was he able to get on such intimate terms, in the sonnets, with an Earl of the realm? Some, Stephen Greenblatt for one, have made up stories about such that remind one of the elementary school writing exercise, “How the Robin Got Its Red Breast.”
I believe all writing is autobiographical. One cannot write anything that doesn’t say something about his or her life if only that they learned to write. Diaries, letters, grocery lists all say something about who we are. What do the plays and sonnets say about Will of Stratford?
It never fails to amaze me how seemingly intelligent and educated persons are so casual in their opinions, and then think they are so insightful. I mean, do you also say things like: There’s no evidence for evolution? or, There’s no evidence for the theory of relativity? or, There’s no evidence for global warming? If not, then why do you say There’s no evidence against Will Shakpere’s authorship of the plays? Why say, No one questioned his authorship in his day? Why say, His genius negates any need of any education? Since all of these statements have refutations. If you’re going to have an opinion on the authorship subject then at least READ some books on it. There are many good ones here:
http://www.shakespeareanauthorshiptrust.org.uk/pages/why.htm
And also, read at a rebuttal of the Stratfordian opinion here:
http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/debate/3
The authorship question deserves a serious historical investigation and consideration of the current available evidence and arguments. It doesn’t deserve to be dismissed just because some people who haven’t studied the question seriously have already formed an opinion anyway.
Kudos to Lee Jamieson for broaching the subject. He may just be right that 2009 is the year that brings new attention to Shakespeare.
The house of cards that Shakespeare scholarship has built is rapidly collapsing. According to Lee’s website, Macbeth was “probably written between 1606 and 1607” (that is, this tragedy about a plot to murder a Scottish king was supposedly written when the King of Scotland had just come to the English throne!)
Well, according to Shakespeare scholarship, The Tempest “must” have been written after 1609 because it refers to Strachey’s account of a shipwreck of that year. It turns out that Strachey’s account was published too late to be a source for the play, which was performed in 1611. In any case, Strachey was a blatant plagiarist, and the interesting parallels between are due to both Shakespeare and Strachey drawing on earlier accounts of shipwrecks. The article showing this (Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky, Shakespeare and the voyagers revisited) was published (reluctantly, in 2007) by the mainstream Review of English Studies when none of the big guns of the Eng Lit world could refute it. The appendix “nails” Strachey in just the way teachers plagiarizing students. So much for Shakespeare scholarship.
Please note: the point of the article is that the dating long assumed for The Tempest is badly wrong, and we have been fed sloppy scholarship. But it also means that one of the main objections to the hypothesis that “Shakespeare” is a pseudonym for De Vere (who died in 1604) is put to rest.
Among the protests already appearing on this site, one of the most puzzling is “why does it matter?” Even if only a fraction of the parallels between De Vere’s life and the plays drawn by the likes of Mark Anderson and William Farina are valid, it matters hugely for the interpretation of the plays. To me it matters because it makes Shakespeare interesting again – which I believe is one of Lee’s goals.
Daniel Wright of Concordia University heads a department of Authorship Studies. He says: “We have a very substantial membership on the ShakespeareAtCU listserv for folks to discuss any and all queries related to the SAQ; it’s also a site where they can, as well, inquire into details about the forthcoming conference in Portland in April.
(information also available, of course, at
http://www.authorshipstudies.org).
Membership in the listserv can be secured by going to http://list.cu-portland.edu/mailman/listinfo/shakespeareatcu
Let me put a plug in, too, to all, for what I consider the single most interesting new site in Shakespeare Authorship Studies – The Shakespeare Adventure – at http://www.shakespeareadventure.com/. This should be DAILY READING for anyone involved in the SAQ…”
Yawn!
Shakespeare obviously did not write the plays. I can tell you without question that it was another man of the same name.
There cannot be many people outside the Stratford tourist industry that could still possibly believe that the (illiterate?) Merchant of Stratford was the author of the plays published in the folio of 1623. So much evidence points to de Vere that it doesn’t even seem a debatable issue any more.
Some of this evidence has been mentioned above: no mention of books or writing in the will; no recognition by any sources in Stratford that Shaksper of Stratford was a writer; the ‘false’ memorial in Stratford of Shaksper the writer (which replaced Shaksper the grain dealer); de Vere’s classical education and legal training; de Vere’s Bible with annotations; de Vere’s family and court connections, etc.
The Merchant of Stratford was an illiterate grain dealer and this perpetuated myth of his literary achievement needs to be corrected forthwith!
You people that commented are Crazyy!!!! Shakeshere is the greatest poet and Playwriter in the universe that lived and forever will!!!!!!!!
Dear Oxfordians,
Can you provide a list of names of contemporaries who claim that William Shakespeare did not write the plays and that de Vere did? Until credible witnesses appear or we find a death-bed confession from Shakespeare or de Vere, most scholars will not be willing to buy into the de Vere theory on the basis of the arguments now available. We know a lot about Shakespeare’s life, and he most certainly seemed to be a man of the theater. The arguments about books and dates do not come close to providing the evidence needed to challenge authorship.
An example of stretching of evidence and logic is most apparent in the claim about his books. Why didn’t Shakespeare mention books in his will? Remember that Shakespeare was not a scholar and did not require a large library to write his plays. We know what sources he used, and they were not that many. So he had no compelling need for a large library at the time of his death. He may have already given his books away. The one specific personal possession of note listed in his will is a bed. A dying man would give that away last.
And let’s not exaggerate Shakespeare’s knowledge of the world. As a translator of his plays, I am continually amazed by Shakespeare’s many gifts, but I am also amused by his ignorance of the larger world. By modern standards of scholarship and learning, the author of the plays was indeed an ignorant man, whether he came from Stratford or Oxford. So the book issue should be laid to rest. It is desperate and leads to no conclusions.
By the way, Shakespeare did not need to be born into nobility to write about it. In Shakespeare’s day, London had a population small enough (about 225,00) that there were fewer degrees of separation between nobility and commoner than there would be today with a population of 13 million. An astute observer of human nature like Shakespeare would have rubbed elbows with enough of these people to get a feel for how they operated, especially by the time he wrote his greatest plays. And don’t forget, Shakespeare’s noble characters spoke in stylized language, usually blank verse. The actual nobility stumbled along in rambling prose like the rest of us do, so he certainly did not need them to get his ear for poetry.
I’m afraid, dear Oxfordians, it is time to put up some compelling evidence or quietly withdraw the theory.
Kent: The fact that William Shakspere (as he spelled his name on at least one page of his will) did not mention any books is a secondary issue/argument. If you work backwards from the plays/poems (inductively) you find that whoever Shakespeare is alluded to or used as references over 200 different sources. Some of these sources were not even translated at the time he would have used them to write the plays. Conclusion: Shakespeare was a reader and he could read at least Latin and French. Yes, genius is a part of the formula, but the detailed knowledge and education are also evident, a fact not to be trivialized or dismissed. Many Shakespeare scholars(before the authorship issue tightened the Stratfordian intellectual ranks) were often mystified by the lack of evidence for his education: the gap between the works and what we know about the man does not jive. So, are we exaggerating “Shakespeare’s knowledge of the world”? Look at the research done on the plays and poems, then re-evaluate your view on how knowledgeable and educated the real writer is.
Kent says confidently: “We know what sources he used, and they were not that many.” I’d be interested to know what sources Kent thinks the author used for The Tempest, preferably both before and after reading Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky (2007).
It never fails to amaze me how seemingly intelligent and educated persons are so casual in their opinions, and then think they are so insightful. I mean, do you also say things like: There’s no evidence for evolution? or, There’s no evidence for the theory of relativity? or, There’s no evidence for global warming? If not, then why do you say There’s no evidence against Will Shakpere’s authorship of the plays? Why say, No one questioned his authorship in his day? Why say, His genius negates any need of any education? Since all of these statements have refutations. If you’re going to have an opinion on the authorship subject then at least READ some books on it. There are many good ones at http://www.shakespeareanauthorshiptrust.org.uk
And also, read at a rebuttal of the Stratfordian opinion at http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/debate/3
The authorship question deserves a serious historical investigation and consideration of the current available evidence and arguments. It doesn’t deserve to be dismissed just because some people who haven’t studied the question seriously have already formed an opinion anyway.
I will direct my comments only to Baker who brought up definite and specific concerns about Shakespeare’s preparation to write his plays. The other two posts have moved the discussion to the “You said….” stage, usually a signal that the discussion is ending.
We know that Shakespeare consulted sources, so that is not the issue. All but a few of his plots were drawn at least partly from old plays, novels, and history books, so obviously he read to find material for his works. He was an adapter by trade, drawing on the scholarship of others. He did not conduct extensive research himself but made use of the extensive research of others, much like any writer might do today. This said, consulting 200 sources to pen 40+ works over a 25-year career does not seem out of line. As for sources in Latin, he would have learned school-boy Latin at King’s New School.
But I see nothing in his plays that would require the private or university education of an aristocrat or a deep knowledge with the classics or courtly behavior. What he did know in detail was the theater. The way he reworked tired plays and stories to succeed on what was at that time the modern stage is an astounding achievement that indicates an extremely experienced and talented man of the theater, not a university “wit,” a term used to describe the generation of playwrights who preceded him.
Shakespeare’s lack of an advanced classical education is no secret. His knowledge of French and Latin was limited and his lack of university schooling was often remarked upon by his contemporary admirers and those that followed. Dryden, a great admirer, said “he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature.”
Beyond his ability to mine Holinshed’s Chronicles or Plutarch’s Lives for good stores, I am also impressed with how he employed details about country living and farming. There are websites that list the plants and animals he named and the rustic lore with which he was familiar. Just read Edgar’s description of Dover in Act 4 of King Lear.
Come on, sir; here’s the place:–stand still.–How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire–dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish’d to her cock; her cock a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge
That on the unnumber’d idle pebble chafes
Cannot be heard so high.–I’ll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
Samphire collecting! No education in the classics prepares one to imagine this description. I understand that his references to farming show an insider’s knowledge and refer to methods particular to the Cotswold Hills where he grew up. His knowledge of country life was an audience-pleasing (and parodied) aspect of his plays that he certainly played up. I hear the voice of a country boy.
Once again, remember that the burden of proof lies with the Oxfordians who, in my view, have inflated the role university education played in the live of Elizabethan dramatists. That little bit of inflation is the false premise that renders any conclusion based on it untrustworthy.
Only a highly educated man could have written this.
Shakespeare was not highly educated.
Therefore, he could not have written this.
Shaky stuff. The no-books-in-the-will argument is flimsy. The only-an-educated-man-could-write-this argument is thin. What’s the next argument? (Hint: All the plays were written before 1604, the year Oxford died.)
I agree. If college is necessary, then many pieces and writers must be debated. I understand that there is little evidence of education, but he did go to grammar school where he would have learned latin and about other cultures. Plus, some humans have a gift of seeing exactly how the brain works, and how to stimulate it. Shakespeare could very possibly be one of those people. He could know the reaction that would have people begging for more. So, what are we really debating? He may very well be capable of writing these plays and poems. We know he did exsist. And he got a–very limited– education, but he could know laguages. So I beleive it is Shakespeare to write his credited works.
Kent, you’re right! The fact that Stratman mentioned no books in his will is not evidence that he could not write plays and poems. And he certainly would not have left books to his wife and daughters, because they could not read. What a disappointment it must have been to have written all that great literature and not be able to share it with his family. Seems like he might have encouraged them to learn to read, though, even ventured to offer instruction. “Lookee what daddy wrote, dear.” Oh, well.
Then there’s that business of education. The fact there’s no evidence of Will having gone to university is in no way proof that he lacked the knowledge to write plays and poems. Didn’t hurt Ben Jonson or Michael Drayton or George Chapman or Anthony Munday or Thomas Dekker, etc.
Whether one believes Shakespeare was Will of Stratford or Edward Oxenforde, it’s very likely that he was largely self taught. Yet aside from having the opportunity to earn a master’s degree by age 16 and then attending one of the Inns of Court, Oxford had the very distinct advantage of having access to one of the largest, if not the largest, libraries in England, and a match for most libraries on the continent. Oxford’s father-in-law, William Cecil, was one rich s.o.b. who constantly purchased books. Oxford’s education continued through his life and included more than juust access to books, many of which he purchased himself, but to the minds of people who wrote books. He was a patron of some of them.
Of course Will could have done the same. But there’s that problem of evidence again, raising its ugly head. Damn! But, still, he could have.
Oh yes, just one more thing: the ratio of commoners to peerage. Will would have stood a better chance of rubbing elbows with barons and earls today than in Elizabethan times despite the much greater population, mainly because England is far less class conscious than in the days of the monarchy versus constitutional monarchy. In Will’s day the peerage (about 60-65 people) numbered about one in 3,500, and they were a haughty bunch who brooked few intimacies with commoners.
Jack,
These 60-65 people needed others to prepare food, build and maintain their homes, shoe their horses, churn butter, manufacture their boots and clothing, tend the grounds, settle legal matters, put on stage performances, tutor their children, and so forth. They obviously had regular, hourly contact with people outside their social class, many of whom grew up in the same neighborhoods and spoke similarly.
One interesting sociolinguistic discovery of the last 50 years (see the work of William Labov) is that the degree of linguistic variation tends to increase as one moves down the social ladder. The nobility/prestige group certainly maintains shibboleths that help it spot male upstarts and denigrate pretty, young women from the other side of the tracks, but commoners are very much aware of the language of the prestige group and will adopt aspects of it when the situation demands it (and constantly mock it). And we need to remember that Shakespeare was giving us a “stage” version of courtly behavior in the same way he gave “stage” versions of rustic dialects. We must not assume that these are dead-on renderings of how people actually spoke.
I understand that Shakespeare blundered enough in his attempts to imagine courtly speech that he made it clear he was no insider. (I enjoy the bit toward the end of Act 1, Scene 1 in “Much Ado About Nothing” where Claudio and Don Pedro poke fun at Benedict’s incompetence and impatience with courtly niceties).
I am currently reading a book–The Truth Will Out– that poses Sir Henry Neville (the second) as the real Shakespeare. Very interesting. It also addresses the other authorship theories well. Sorry Oxfordians!
Here’s a review on the Neville book by someone who seems primarily a Baconian.
http://www.sirbacon.org/truthwillout.htm
Many books on the subject seem pretty convincing at first but they really need to be compared to the research of others.
Over 30 comments. Everyone firmly fixed on their agenda as the stars in the sky.
The crux of this matter lies with Shakspere. All the conspiracy theorists have to deal with the man in the middle.
Now I believe (Occam’s Razor on the evidence we have) that the Stratford man wrote the plays, poems and sonnets.
The theorists believe someone else wrote them and used my candidate as a stooge to put them onstage and print them.
The various theorists can not answer the question how they got this man to play along with their various schemes?
And what his motive would have been?
And why he would have kept his silence?
Cui bono? Who profits?
The various candidates, by their very methodology, are all the most generous and altruistic men (and women) in the entire history of mankind. And that for the Arts and posterity!
Never has one given up so much for so little.
Imagine, Shaksper takes the profits from the plays the Lord Chamberlain’s Men stage purportedly by Shake-speare!
Was he bought a share in the Globe theatre to keep his silence?! By whom?
He would have seen profits from the sale of the 2 best-seller hit poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece!
So Shaksper benefits and gets to buy land and property in Stratford. Plus be buried alongside his wife, daughters and son-in-law in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church.
Which begs the question why would the Stratford council allow that honour to the family of a simple merchant?
Now the big 3 challengers never had enough money to accomodate their lifestyles.
Oxenforde was profligate and constantly begging for money or the rights to tin mining in Cornwall from Elizabeth Regina.
Moreover he had his own theatre group but preferred to let his own masterpieces be produced by a rival group. That he was a writer of comedies is not in doubt, Francis Meres mentions him as well as Shakespeare on the same page. (part of Oxford’s plan of course).
That he wrote poetry is also not in doubt. Nor that he wrote letters. Try reading any of them and compare them to early, middle or late Shake-speare. His pedestrian lines do not betray his supposedly brilliant degree ridden education.
Marlowe was a penniless playwright and purportedly payed for his espionage activities as well as his hit plays in the late 1580’s public theatre.
Bacon was also broke until his marriage with his child bride and her dowry, despite his rumoured inclinations to be a same-sex lover.
And all the time that this subverting of genius was happening none of the hundreds of people in the know, (and Oxford Marlowe and Bacon all had powerful enemies as well as friends) pointed the finger at the man in the middle, this sham actor and businessman from Stratford, and said, ‘You’re having an easy ride!’
And let’s not forget he worked with the foremost actors and playwrights of the time. Where is their professional pride in regards to this upstart crow?
And let’s not forget this conspiracy takes place over 25 years! Unfortunately the theorists exclude evidence later than SHakespeare’s death in 1616.
But here are the words of Sir Richard Baker, a contemporary of Shakespeare and friend of the poet John Donne.
‘For Writers of Playes, and such as had been Players themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson, have specially left their Names recommended to posterity.’
My problem with the theorists is the same as with modern conspiracists. They take and repeat inflammatory standpoints which have been proven to have no consequence (the hyphenation and spelling of names, the Hamlet comparison, the lack of books, education and social mobility, the lack of evidence proving the actor and writer to be one and the same etc.) and superimpose it on the Elizabethan and Jacobean period which they retell to fit their theory.
This goes against the methods used by scholars of history as well as biography and literature. There are a great many scholars of Marlowe and Bacon who don’t believe they also wrote Shakespeare. Why, if the historical record is so clear?
The fact is it isn’t clear.
Nuff said!
William Sutton
blog.iloveshakespeare.com
You believe in Occam’s Razor? I don’t think you do at all. First you need to take into consideration all the know facts, which you obviously haven’t done. Nor have you taken into considerations all the assumptions used to base Will Shakspere’s authorship. And that’s just what many doubtaboutwill.org is about. To gather together these facts and assumptions fairly, to assess them, and to see what all they can tell us about the authorship. What exactly in this process are you so afraid of anyway?
You say “The various theorists can not answer ….” Shakspere’s motives for letting some people think he was the author during their production or publishing, and afterward, as he kept his silence. How about money? One Baconian investigator says he found this:
“Edward Johnson writes that Wil Shaksper asked to be given a house at Stratford after he was packed off to Stratford as a safeguard when Queen Elizabeth became infuriated over Richard II because the play renounced the divine right of kings. In 1597, the Queen sought to discover the author with the intention of bringing him to the rack. In 1598 a new edition of Richard II appeared with the name “William Shake-speare” on the title page. (The pseudonym Shake-speare relates to the Greek goddess Pallas Athena, with her spear, the divine symbol of wisdom and power and the patroness of learning.) Shaksper was given 1000 pounds and New Place (which formerly belonged to Lady Anne Russell, who was Francis Bacon’s aunt) and told to lie low, which he did until after Queen Elizabeth’s death. Bacon knew Will Shaksper at the theatre and in his dilemma came to an arrangement to use his name as the author, even though Bacon had used the signature William Shakspeare before he had ever heard of the actor. Bacon wished to be certain that Shaksper was going to keep his part of the bargain, so New Place was not formally transferred to Shaksper until some years afterwards.”
Nicholas Rowe (1709) said it was The Earl of Southampton that gave his 1000 pounds in early 1597. But there is no evidence of any services given to Southampton by W.S. or any connection between the two. On the other hand, Bacon was a friend of Southampton.
Now I don’t know how valid this information is, but wouldn’t you like to see it investigated, for historical reasons? Or would you like to see it suppressed like all other contrary facts and arguments that you seem to want suppressed?
The documentary evidence we have of Will Shakspere is not complimentary. Diana Price has summed up his business dealings: In 1598 he hoarded grain during a famine; In 1598 he sued to recover L1-5s plus damages; In 1608 he sued for L6 plus damages; In 1614 he was “conniving” over the pasture enclosures at Welcombe. So he’s been shown to put his own interests ahead of his community. He was a source of loans. This just seems to many that he was less of a literary figure than a “tight-fisted businessman with a mean streak”. Not someone who would continuously write about love and ‘mercy’. And this is just one of many instances that don’t corroborate his modern public reputation. It’s not the end and be all of evidence on the matter and I know that you can argue that other writers wrote civilly but were jerks in real life. But the point is we want to examine the whole picture.
Other evidence suggests Shakspere was not much more than a minor actor. There were detailed records by the leading actor Edward Alleyn of the notable actors and play-poets of the time, and the money paid out to them for their connection in the production of various plays. There was no mention at all of Will Shakspere. On the other hand, Bacon and Alleyn knew each other and Bacon was Alleyn’s principle guest when Alleyn opened Dulwich College. Cuthbert Burbage (brother of Richard Burbage–who had been Shakspere’s fellow actor) in a petition between players of the Globe and Blackfriars and of the theatre leaseholders, cited Shakspere only as a ‘player’, which would actually be belittling if he had been an accomplished playwright.
Yes, there are Marlowe, Oxford, and Bacon scholars that don’t believe they were involved in the Shakespeare plays, but maybe they haven’t looked at the evidence for their authorship. Since the author(s) whoever he/she/they were, if they wanted to remain mostly anonymous, then they wouldn’t be leaving easily available evidence in their public lives that later biographers would easily encounter.
So the historical record is no less clear in favor of Will Shakspere than it is for the others. That’s why we should be open-minded in examining all available evidence, not trying to suppress it or any open discussion about it.
If you are so sure of your position then why don’t you want to support a major investigation of the current evidence to see what it can inform us?
Extermination camps never existed, 9-11 was carried out by the Americans themselves to provide a reason for invading Irak, Shakespeare’s work was written by somebody else, and so forth…
Lee thinks that Oxfordians and other authorship doubters are motivated by “our(?) love for a good conspiracy theory”, as opposed to the search for a better understanding of the context, dating and inspiration of the texts. The hypothesis that De Vere wrote (most of) them does not require a conspiracy theory, although some versions of it may include them. All it requires is writing under a pseudonym, which was as common in Elizabethan England as it is today’s cyberspace (I assume that “Nickodemus” is a pseudonym, for example).
Sure, Nickodemus is a pseudomym chosen because very few people would go under that name, while we seem to forget that whole families over several generations were called Shakespeare, in Stratford as elsewhere. Official records prove that Will and his family existed, so why would some aristocrat want to write under such a “pseudonym”?
Then we have a prominent witness of that time, Robert Greene, who certainly seemed to know who he was talking about when he warned his
fellow university-educated playwrights against
“the upstart crow…… beautified with our feathers…… in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you”.
Surely he knew the “shake-scene” did the writing, cos he wouldn’t have dared call Bacon
or the Earl of Oxford an upstart crow!
Isn’t that enough evidence against the conspiracy theory ? Why can’t everybody sit back and relax and enjoy the show?
For those of you who think the merchant Shakspeare of Stratford was genius enough to write the most beautiful words in the English language, think again. To become a genius, you must somehow be stimulated in ways that this merchant/actor/petty litigator was not, either through books, travel or employment. Read the following and decide for yourselves..
With apologies to David Letterman, my admittedly unfunny “Top Ten” list of reasons to doubt the traditional Shakespeare authorship theory
By Matthew Cossolotto
April 23rd is traditionally accepted as the birthday of William Shakespeare, generally regarded as the greatest poet and playwright in the English language.
As Shakespeare lovers around the world raised a glass to the great Bard, let us pause for a moment. What if we’ve been “barding” up the wrong tree all these years? What if we’ve been honoring the wrong man for writing the immortal poems and plays of Shakespeare?
Or, to paraphrase Hamlet … To believe or not to believe the orthodox authorship theory, THAT is the question.
In the spirit of trying to open minds so we can finally get the Shakespeare authorship right, I’d like to offer my personal “Top Ten” list of reasons to doubt the traditional theory that attributes the works of “Shakespeare” to the unlikely William Shakspere (as his name was typically spelled in the official records) from Stratford.
10) There is no reliable, contemporaneous evidence that William Shakspere of Stratford ever wrote anything in his life. Not even so much as a letter exists in his handwriting, let alone any manuscripts of plays and poems. Illiteracy ran in his family – his parents, wife and children all seem to have been illiterate or semi-literate at best.
9) There is no evidence that Shakspere of Stratford ever attended any school. He may have attended a few years of grammar school in Stratford, but we simply don’t know for sure. Nor is there any evidence that he could have otherwise acquired the vast educational, linguistic and cultural background necessary to write the masterpieces of English literature attributed to William Shakespeare.
7) Shakspere of Stratford took no legal action against the pirating of the “Shakespeare” plays or the apparently unauthorized publication of Shake-speare’s Sonnets in 1609, even though he was known to frequently initiate lawsuits to recover petty sums of money owed to him.
6) Shake-speare’s Sonnets, published in 1609, paint a portrait of the artist as a much older man. The scholarly consensus today holds that most of the Sonnets were written in the 1590s, when Shakspere of Stratford was in his late 20s to late 30s, a relatively youthful age even in Elizabethan times. Yet, the author of the Sonnets at times is clearly much older and anticipating his own imminent death. Inexplicably, the publisher’s dedication in the 1609 volume of Sonnets refers to “Shakespeare” as “our ever-living poet” – a term that implies the poet is already dead, but Shakspere of Stratford was still very much alive until 1616.
5) The Sonnets also suggest strongly that “Shakespeare” was a pen name and that the author’s real identity was destined to remain unknown. In Sonnet 72 “Shakespeare” asks that his “name be buried where my body is.” Sonnet 81: “Though I, once gone, to all the world must die.” If Shakspere of Stratford truly was the famous author of the Sonnets, why would he think his name would be buried with his body? The name “Shakespeare” – which appears on the title page of the Sonnets themselves — certainly wasn’t buried with the body of the poet, whoever he was.
4) Unlike many other authors of the period – even those who were far less famous or prolific – not a single manuscript or letter exists in Shakspere’s own handwriting. The Stratford Candidate is unique – nothing survives of a literary nature that connects Shakspere of Stratford (the man) during his lifetime with any of the written works that are supposed to represent his literary output.
3) Although traditional biographers of “Shakespeare” claim that he dashed off a couple of masterpieces a year to earn money, there is no evidence of a single payment to Shakspere of Stratford as an author. Nor is there any evidence of Shakspere of Stratford seeking out or establishing an ongoing literary patron – as was a common practice for writers of the day.
2) Shakspere of Stratford’s minutely detailed 1616 will makes no mention of anything even vaguely literary – no books, unpublished manuscripts, library or diaries. Not even a family bible. Why didn’t this literary giant leave behind a single book or bequeath any literary effects or posthumous literary instructions whatsoever to his widow or children? Half of “Shakespeare’s” plays were published for the first time in the First Folio in 1623. Why didn’t Shakspere make even a passing reference to these invaluable unpublished manuscripts in his 1616 will?
1) Shakspere of Stratford’s death in 1616 was a singular “non-event,” despite the fact that “Shakespeare” the author and poet was widely recognized at the time as one of England’s greatest writers. Why was no notice taken of Shakspere of Stratford’s death if he was such a literary luminary? Perhaps his contemporaries accorded him the recognition that was entirely appropriate for the obscure, small town property owner and grain-merchant he appears to have been.
The traditional “Stratfordian” theory presents us with a major disconnect between the life of the presumed author and his creative output. It’s almost as if we have a disembodied body of works with little or no relationship to the author. There is a long and distinguished history of doubting the traditional “Stratfordian ” attribution of the “Shakespeare” works. Noted doubters over the years include Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry James, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, and Sigmund Freud.
In his insightful Shaksper Not Shakespeare, William H. Edwards wrote:
“It is full time that reasonable men should re-examine the evidences on which they have believed that an illiterate butcher, from an ignorant and bookless inland village…sat himself down, and without preparation or knowledge, dashed off Hamlet — and not only Hamlet, but nearly two score of the world’s greatest plays. In the pages to follow, I assert and prove … that no man, during his lifetime, attributed these plays to William Shaksper, or suspected him of any authorship whatever. I show that he died as devoid of accomplishments as when he entered London — unknown to any man of letters or of eminence, unnoticed and unlamented. The English speaking world has been humbugged in this matter long enough.”
William Edwards’ book was published in 1900! We haven’t made very much progress in the past 106 years.
For those with an open mind who want to discover more about the greatest literary mystery of all time, there are many books and websites devoted to the Shakespeare authorship question. An excellent book by Diana Price called Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, documents the paucity of evidence linking Shakspere of Stratford to any literary output.
April 23rd is supposed to be the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. My birthday wish for Mr.Shakspere of Stratford is the following: “I wish all Shakespeare-loving scholars around the world would open their minds and begin conducting research into more likely authorship candidates so we can finally get to the bottom of this mystery, stop “barding” up the wrong tree, and at long last let poor Mr. Shakspere of Stratford rest in peace.”
# # #
Matthew Cossolotto (matthew@ovations.com)
President
Shakespeare Oxford Society
11101 Georgia Avenue, Suite 324
Silver Spring, 20902
Phone : 914-245-9721
Shakespeare Oxford Society
Kent (above) and a number of others Stratfordians counter the anti-Stratfordian argument by claiming that many great writers did not complete a college education; therefore, the man from Stratford didn’t need one either. However, many of the writers mentioned were “educated,” some less formally than others. Here are a few examples from Kent’s list: Mark Twain [older brother, Orion owned a newspaper; Twain worked for him and read extensively a number of newspapers from around the country on a regular basis], Jane Austen [father was educated at Oxford; Jane was tutored by a novel-writing neighbor], Ben Jonson [acquainted with the Greek and Roman classics, sent to a private school and tutored by William Camden]. In one way or another, we know they were “educated.” We have yet to find any evidence for the man from Stratford’s education.
No, one does not need a “college” education, but one must be educated to write as “Shakespeare” did, whether it’s self-taught, privately tutored, or a university based.
If you look inductively at the Shakespeare canon you find that he/she alludes to or uses over 200 different classical and later works; some of the sources had not been translated at the time and some had not been published (still in private libraries). Shakespeare’s knowledge base is extensive, at a time when there were no public libraries and books were expensive.
One must conclude then that Shakespeare was a reader and likely could read in languages such as Latin, Italian and French. He also had to have access to books and, curiously, unpublished manuscripts.
(Incidentally, we do today have over 200 books in the libraries of both Ben Jonson & John Donne).
Do we have any evidence that the man from Stratford could read, had a library, had access to books or any education? No. If he did attend the Stratford grammar school, he probably recieved an education similar to other grammars schools of the day that we do have records of in England. They did not promote creativity but did promote rigid rote memory 11 hours a day, 6 days a week . . . an education not conducive to creativity, even in the most brilliant of minds.
To conclude no anti-Stratfordian that I know is claiming that someone from a lower to middle class could not have written the canon. Scholars would agree, however, that, whoever Shakespeare is, he’s a genius. Genius does not account though for the knowlege-base found in the plays & poems.