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Friday, July 18, 2008
Who Was Shakespeare?
Back when I was in grad school at SUNY Buffalo I was roaming the library stacks one day and came across a whole section devoted to books seeking the true Shakespeare; most of them dated from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I knew that the question had been raised, but I didn’t realize it had attracted so much attention back in the day.
The question still lingers. These days the issue seems to have as much to do with distrust of academics, who aren’t much interested in the question, as it does with the state of the rather meager evidence. Bardiac considers the issue in four posts, with comments by some anti-Strafordians. Here’s the fourth post, with links to the earlier three.
UPDATE: Comments are closed, but are listed below the fold.
Comments
This is a bit of a ‘chestnut’, isn’t it? I tend to agree with the contributor who said positive identification wouldn’t make any difference to how ‘we’ teach Shakespeare - after all, no-one bothers hugely about the identity of Homer when discussing works attributed to ‘him’, do they? It might close a few teashops in Stratford (where I was once a frequent visitor - it’s not all that bad!) but apart from that it’s just intriguing in the same way as any ‘gap’ of knowledge seems to be to some.
More worrying, to me, was that someone writing on such an important topic used the wrong spelling of ‘their’!
"The 19th and 20th Centuries have been rife with doubters [about identifying the London businessman Shakspere as Shakespeare], among them Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson. After John Looney’s *Shakespeare Identified* was published in 1920, prominent figures like Sigmund Freud, Sir John Gielgud, Orson Welles, Leslie Howard and Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Harry Blackmun have counted themselves among the ranks of the Oxfordians [those who think Edward de Vere wrote the works that go under the name Shakespeare].”
This from one of the best resources for the argument that Edward de Vere is Shakespeare, the Shakespeare Oxford Society website: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/. The evidence - laid out there (quite succinctly in the FAQs for starters) and argued widely elsewhere – seems to me to be overwhelming that Edward de Vere is Shakespeare.
I’ve never made a systematic research project out of it, but having looked into it a good bit, my view is that the evidence seems hands-down to be overwhelmingly in the favor of de Vere. Edward de Vere is Shakespeare, seems clear to me.
Establishment ideology on a wide variety of matters in the humanities and social sciences, especially, and elsewhere, is notorious for ignoring or missing the import of highly relevant facts. The Shakespeare/de Vere argument is a current example, of a sort, and quite striking since Shakespeare is no marginal literary figure. Some facts and analyses just take awhile to make sense to people. Others are ideologically blocked on purpose. Other times people are not interested enough to give it much thought. The Shakespeare/de Vere confusion seems to be a combination of these well known phenomena.
Tony, I had you down as a friend of the working man.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit I know something about “Shakespeare authorship” trivia, having happened upon what was supposed to be a general-interest Shakespeare discussion group that was in the process of being taken over by the “partisans” of both sides, fighting for control of the public space (and thus, eventually, of the discursive space it represented), but I’ll weigh in.
The idea that amateurs (and academics, like “Ben Jonson,” who is sui generis) who are convinced that a particular person who was not the William Shakespeare born in Stratford-on-Avon in April 1564 wrote the body of work attributed to him, etc., are in it because of hostility towards academics is interesting but I think only a partial truth. In the group I mentioned, there seemed to be a large number of people on both sides of the “issue” who had done some graduate work in literature. This fact may not be relevant. Of course, all of us, to some degree, exist in a twilight world between the airy ideal of perfect knowledge and impeccable scholarship, and the muck of flawed ideas, false trails, and poor judgement in choosing sources or authorities. But that group of “Shakespeare enthusiasts” appeared, to my eyes, peculiarly devoted to the task of casting out the bad guys, whether they defined “bad guys” as academics or as people who don’t know the “right” way to conduct a discussion of literature. It was often difficult to predict which group a given person would feel inclined to demonize—just as it was difficult to predict whether a given approach or source would be stigmatized as leftist and postmodern or as conservative and authoritarian-traditionalist. But the conversational moves were pretty restricted: limited to either “I know how to do this and let me do it without interference,” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about and let me prove it to you sentence by sentence.” Maybe that’s what they were taught to do, maybe that’s how they somewhat resentfully perceived they way they’d themselves been treated, maybe there is some other explanation. (What is unquestionable is that many, if not most, felt some issue of great significance to Western civilization hung on the outcome of their research.)
Stephen Greenblatt has compared Shakespeare authorship proponents to Holocaust deniers and creationists. This seemed overly Godwinian to me, and counterproductive.
That said, there are a lot of historiographic oddities (to say the least) both in Shakespeare biography and in Shakespeare scholarship overall. I don’t think Shakespeare academics have come to terms with the history of the field. In my personal opinion, saying simply “once everyone was a totalitarian racist but now we have all been persuaded to become anticolonialists and feminists” isn’t enough.
"The evidence - laid out there (quite succinctly in the FAQs for starters) and argued widely elsewhere – seems to me to be overwhelming that Edward de Vere is Shakespeare.”
All the purported *evidence* only becomes such if you buy into the highly questionable premise of the Oxfordian movement:
1. that it is “highly unlikely” that a person of Shakespeare’s education and social standing “could have composed” the plays.
There is just no good reason to buy into this premise. But, once you buy into it, then you must immediately start conjuring conspiracies, etc. In any event, you must surely admit that some of the purported *evidence* attesting to de Vere’s authorship is laughable: such as de Vere’s being “an enthusiast for Italy,” “a follower of sport, including falconry,” etc. This is just the worst kind of grasping after straws.
Does “the working man” want someone to lie on his ostensible behalf, to show connection with a frequently establishmentarian ideologue like Shakespeare? That would be a double insult to “the working man.” Nevertheless, in many ways the writing of de Vere/Shakespeare is marvelous.
I am Shakespeare, um, err, Spartacus. That’s right, I’m Spartacus.
That said, there are a lot of historiographic oddities (to say the least) both in Shakespeare biography and in Shakespeare scholarship overall.
I’d like to see what would happen if we dropped the practice of dividing the plays into five acts. Those divisions aren’t there in the quartos and folios but were added by later editors. Of course, if we dropped those divisions, it would wreak havoc with our citation practice, but . . . .
Sooner or later I suspect biologists are going to have to dump the current classification system. Systematists have been arguing over it for years, but I fear it will have to be done. And when it’s done, what a grand mess that will be.
You bring that up, Bill, because you think that literary evolution isn’t Lamarckian? I’ve been thinking about a cladistics of generic and stylistic evolution.
Yes, yes, but who wrote John Webster’s plays? How is our knowledge that it was “John Webster” any more secure than our knowledge of Shakespeare’s authorship? But no one cares about Webster. Why?
“Nevertheless, in many ways the writing of de Vere/Shakespeare is marvelous.” Yes, in many ways!
"There is just no good reason to buy into this premise”: “that it is ‘highly unlikely’ that a person of Shakespeare’s education and social standing ‘could have composed’ the plays.”
Here’s a good reason: Apparently the parents of William Shakspere ("Shakespeare") were illiterate, along with Shakspere’s wife and two daughters, along with Shakspere himself.
Jonathan, I just mentioned it as an example of a case in another field where people are going to have to five up a venerated way of doing things.
As for literary evolution, it’s a case of cultural evolution, and I don’t think cultural evolution is Lamarckian. Have you ever read Gary Taylor’s Cultural Selection (Basic)? It’s more of a popular book than an academic, but very well done.
I’d be interested in anything you do on style and generic cladistics.
Bill, I don’t know who Shakespeare was but I’M Spartacus!
"Apparently the parents of William Shakspere ("Shakespeare") were illiterate, along with Shakspere’s wife and two daughters, along with Shakspere himself.”
This sentence contains two pieces of information that are irrelevant and one that is demonstrably false.
Granted, though, were Shakespeare illiterate, that would be good reason for doubting his authorship. It is not enough to point out--as the Oxfordians like to--that his existing signatures are messy.
Besides, why would Shakespeare care that his wife and daughters couldn’t read? Why should we suppose that he cared a great deal about this?
What’s more interesting is that a bunch of amateurs and autodidacts should turn so viciously upon the best instance of the emergence of the amateur and autodidact as author divorced from authority. (And these days the literary profession is built on a foundation of nonprofessionals.)
"viciously”
Clinical analysis is vicious? The professors who organize and attend conferences on the matter are “amateurs and autodidacts”? The professional writers and other professional workers are “amateurs”?
Edward de Vere was a notorious troublemaker, though he was also later probably funded by the crown for his writing. And his work is scarcely divorced from authority in its ideological committments.
Tony: ‘Apparently the parents of William Shakspere ("Shakespeare") were illiterate, along with Shakspere’s wife and two daughters, along with Shakspere himself.’
That ‘apparently’ says it all, doesn’t it? We don’t know so we surmise, guess, pass on those suppositions, they become the ‘apparent’and transmute into facts. My abiding question is: does it matter? Personally, I would say ‘no’ because the plays are still great whoever wrote them and that’s what matters.
Well, Sue, I guess that makes Spartacus a cultural universal. QED
"messy”
In fact, “the Oxfordians” have shown that his signatures were signed by different people, the letters all different. Apparently others were signing for this illiterate man.
Knowing the literate condition of his immediate family helps us to know the man. Of course, alone, it’s not conclusive. It is however highly suggestive, not least given the rest of the evidence.
I am beginning to see that Christini’s preference for the Oxfordian thesis must be strongly allied to his reading of the plays, which he sees as “frequently establishmentarian” and “scarcely divorced from authority in its ideological committments.” How unfortunate.
I don’t want to turn this thread into one of the already existent pro/anti Stratfordian listserves that are out there, but suffice it to say that (1) legal documents of landowning gentry were often signed by their legal representatives (the *spuriousness* of Shakespeare’s signatures has been answered many times and is easily researchable.) (2) it is highly dubious to move from a consideration of Shakespeare’s parents literacy to his own, because of the relative ease in social movement from the laboring and yeoman class upwards in the latter 16th century--due in part to educational reforms and to changing economic realities (amply treated in many well-regarded social histories of England from the period). That’s all for me. These arguments have all been made and answered before. No sense for Christini and I to go on repeating them.
But I still strongly reject what seems to be his reading of the political ideology of the plays, whoever their author happens to be.
You said “his existing signatures are messy,” but then you accede that they might not even be his.
Obviously, and this is uncontroversial, there is very little information about William Shakspere.
And there is no connection between him and the works of Shakespeare, except that he was apparently a cover for Edward de Vere.
Was Shakespeare an anarchist, a liberation socialist, a progressive revolutionary - that is, do his plays express such ideology? Uncontroversially, no. I’m saying nothing controversial in this regard, and you pretend that I am, or simply misunderstand my brief notes.
I returned to ideological issues because the apparent Shaksperians here made consistently dubious, as I see it, ideological points. Those commenters certainly didn’t refer to “Shakespeare” as “landowning gentry,” as you have, but rather referred to “Shakespeare” as a “working man” (apparently) and as an “amateur and autodidact...author divorced from authority.”
How interesting that those who reject de Vere as author here have no remotely consistent view of the author (even from post to post) but, rather, seem to be making it up on the fly, out of thin air.
Shakespeare was Spartacus.
1. that it is “highly unlikely” that a person of Shakespeare’s education and social standing “could have composed” the plays.
There is just no good reason to buy into this premise.
Especially since we know that that guy who wrote Shakespeare’s plays (whether W.S. himself or not) is a genius, right? It’s almost as highly unlikely that a contemporary of his who was well off and well educated could have written the Shakespeare canon—he was exceptional, so it’s no great leap to accept that he was even slightly more exceptional.
Sue,
There is little or no evidence that any of the immediate family was literate, which suggests that Shakspere could not have been Shakespeare, again, especially given all the other evidence. And yet we are told otherwise, as if it were fact.
And there is considerable and compelling evidence to suggest that Edward de Vere is by far the most likely author. And yet we are told otherwise.
As a historical, cultural, social, political matter and issue, and so on, it’s valuable to understand. Of course the works have been and can be appreciated immensely beyond such knowledge.
Sooner or later I suspect biologists are going to have to dump the current classification system. Systematists have been arguing over it for years, but I fear it will have to be done.
Interesting. Are they really arguing over the foundations of the discipline, or are they only hashing and re-hashing the borderline cases?
Chronologically, Bill, Spartacus must have been Shakespeare, not the other way round ... you’re losing your last, tenous grip on reality here. There’s even a movie - you know, ‘Spartacus in Love’?
Tony: ‘There is little or no evidence that any of the immediate family was literate, which suggests that Shakspere could not have been Shakespeare.’
Sorry to appear obtuse but - why?
Okay, the LAST comment on this from me:
1. on signatures: whether they are none of them his, or one of them, or two of them, makes no difference for deciding his literacy. everybody knows who knows anything about legal documentation in early modern england knows this. but i am sorry i was not precise enough in my first rejoinder.
2. christini continues to believe that the fact that none of shakespeare’s immediate family was literate is, or should be taken as good evidence of, his own illiteracy. for reasons i’ve mentioned earlier, this doesn’t plausibly follow.
generally, there is an inverse relationship between the persuasiveness of the oxfordian “arguments” against shakespeare’s authorship of the plays and one’s knowledge of actual elizabethan history. this--rather than some deep or mysterious ideological commitment--is why real scholars don’t pay any attention to the oxfordians.
finally, i took christini to be saying, in part, that shakespeare’s plays generally side with authority, and i took him also to be saying--though here i might have stretched--that their generally authoritarian tendencies could be further evidence for their aristocratic authorship. my only point was that i read many of the plays as deeply subversive of authority (and of course am not alone in this), so that christini’s admittedly brief characterization of the plays seemed to me to be way off.
There’s another movie, Sue, Shakespeare, in which the Bard is given an Italian holiday, hanging from a cross on the road to Rome. I think Donald Rumsfeld arranged for that. I believe he called it “Elizabethan Rendition.”
Bianca, I don’t know enough about biology to answer that question. My sense is that it’s somewhere in between. It’s not just marginal cases. It’s about how you construct a taxonomy. The “species” notion is a matter of considerable contention—look up “Evolving Thoughts” at ScienceBlogs. And it’s clear that there’s more “horizontal transfer” of genetic information in single-celled species than had been imagined. That means that a tree is not a good way to indicate relationships among those species.
OTOH, they’re not about to give up on evolution as random variation among genotypes and selective retention among phenotypes.
Sue,
No problem. By an illiterate immediate family, I meant to indicate an illiterate William Shakspere himself as well, as I noted earlier.
Yes, I realised that was what you meant, Tony, but I don’t quite see that being a member of an ‘illiterate family’ (how do we know this, by the way?) means that one has to be so. There are many documented accounts of men and women from illiterate or semi-literate backgrounds who became writers(John Clare springs to mind, as do the many female Romantics who were largely ignored until recently).
Bill, I think you’re onto something there - that’s why so many of Il Bardo’s plays are set in Italy!
"1. on signatures…”
The signatures are what Shaksperians typically grasp at to show that Shakspere was even marginally literate. Once that is taken away, as it has been, what is left to show his literacy? Again, the fact that this is even an issue shows how the argument for Shakspere must be manufactured out of essentially thin air.
“2. christini continues to believe”
No, I said it is suggestive, given the other evidence. Also, for that matter, it is suggestive even on its own right, though of course not conclusive. Perhaps my unclear remark to Sue confused matters.
“generally there is an inverse"…"real scholars don’t pay attention to the oxfordians”
This is dogmatism. And laughable.
“finally, i took christini to be saying”
Shakespeare’s plays are embraced - institutionalized - by the establishment and long have been. “Deeply subversive”? Some conservatives think liberalism is deeply subversive. And some liberals think other liberals are deeply subversive, but Shakespeare’s works hardly embrace anarchism, which finds all such defense systems of the status quo to be oppressive.
I am not saying that Shakspere being of an illiterate family means that he is illiterate, in any sense that may be conclusive.
I’m saying that, regardless of his family, the evidence shows that Shakspere was either illiterate or marginally literate. Far from the super literate Shakespeare.
It’s possible that a super literate person such as Shakespeare would raise illiterate daughters, and choose to marry an illiterate wife, and be born from illiterate parents, but it seems to me this would be atypical. It becomes highly suggestive when the other evidence is considered. Evidentiary fit after evidentiary fit after evidentiary fit not only shows de Vere to be Shakespeare, the dearth of such evidentiary connections shows Shakspere not to be Shakespeare.
Again, I stress, the issue of literacy is just one of many pieces of evidence that show that compared to the strength of argument for de Vere as Shakespeare, the strength of argument for Shakspere as Shakespeare is extremely slight. There’s plenty of evidence and research to look into if you like, as noted.
[To Valve administrators: I am having to double post everything to get anything to post at all, and double (identical) posts from others are showing up in my mailbox.]
Tony,
I can see that you have looked into the background of the author of the plays generally attributed to Shakespeare than I and, as I have said, the actual identity of the author doesn’t matter to me that much.
This is actually quite strange because in general I think that knowing about the background of an author can help understand their work. I would cite ‘David Copperfield’ as a good example of this (I have written about the novel and its background for ‘The Literary Encyclopaedia’, if you’re interested) because within that work Dickens explores so many secret aspects of himself.
However, I don’t see the same imperative with Shakespeare, possibly because he’s writing about the generic human condition as a tragedian in the Classical sense. I have always been taught that this was because he had been given a ‘grammar school education’ by his nouveau riche father, a Stratford glover.
I also thought that he was considered ill-educated by those we would now term ‘the critics’ especially by comparison with, say, Ben Johnson. This, I think, adds to the notion that he was ‘a diamond in the rough’ not having the lustre of the aristocrat of which many other contenders to authorship of the plays could boast.
Certainly, though, some of the plays, whoever wrote them, were considered ‘subversive’ at the time, especially ‘Richard II’ and ‘Julius Caesar’ both of which were banned for political reasons; this is documented, I’m sure.
So, we are left with an intriguing mystery and a mass of literary achievement - no complaints here!
I think people forget how small and how very gossipy the Tudor and post Tudor theatre world was. If Ben Jonson could gossip about Queen Elizabeth’s tough hymen in Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, I think that he would have in his cups with William Drummond or in his commonplace books, made sure that we knew who Shakepeare really was. Instead, Jonson talks about how he loved Shakespeare this side of idolatry, but goes on to say that Shakespeare should have blotted more of his lines (edited himself more). And that John Donne, for want of being understood, would perish.
It’s a whole lot of a stretch to have both Robert Greene and Jonson agree to perpetuate this.
Yes, the author and the works were complex and challenged some conventions, but plays and novels continue to get banned for all sorts of relatively minor reasons, very far from revolutionary issues or ideology, as evidenced by the banned books list, for one.
There is some memoir in Shakespeare’s plays from de Vere’s life, which I find interesting (especially from a novelist’s perspective).
De Vere was quite knowledgeable, with an immense vocabulary estimated to be far beyond that of a typical well educated person.
"It’s a whole lot of a stretch to have both Robert Greene and Jonson agree to perpetuate this.”
It’s far less of a stretch than reality, which is far more fantastic: institution scholarship (most though not all of it) oblivious to the quality of the authorship arguments for decades now, if not centuries. And the reality is, there are plenty of other examples of this sort of thing as well, long-time falsified histories, far longer than a few centuries. Pretty remarkable stuff, yet there it is. Examples can be found in all sorts of histories, especially as we consider the major religions with their millenia of scholar believers, etc. Such phenomena is utterly common. Shakespeare is another particular case.
“Jonson talks about how he loved Shakespeare this side of idolatry, but goes on to say that Shakespeare should have blotted more of his lines (edited himself more).”
People who idolize people will do a whole lot on their behalf, though whether or not that was an actual motivation, I don’t know. As for blotting more lines, doesn’t that sound like a whole long list of criticisms of great imaginative authors, by lesser editors, or critics, or imaginative writers, etc. Not all of it necessarily unjustified of course.
It’s a whole lot of stretch to actually look at the arguments and to actually critique them - as the “Oxfordians” have most thoroughly - and to conclude for Shakspere and not de Vere.
"I’m saying that, regardless of his family, the evidence shows that Shakspere was either illiterate or marginally literate.”
Er, you’re ignoring that, whether or not Shakespeare was also a playwright, he was most certainly an actor and a major shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s/King’s Men. This is indisputable, since we have official documents from a number of various governmental departments and entities of the time listing Shakespeare as a prominent person in that troupe, as well as fellow members of the King’s Men mentioning bequests to Shakespeare in their wills. Ben Jonson also lists Shakespeare as performing in two of Jonson’s plays.
It’s not very likely that a major actor would be illiterate - troupes would put on many plays in a season, and particularly need to quickly learn new ones for the very profitable performances at court. That’s made even less likely due to Shakespeare’s quick rise to prominence as an actor - it might theoretically be possible for an actor to slowly build up a reputation and remain illiterate, but it’s hard to see how Shakespeare could have obtained such quick renown as a young actor if he couldn’t read his lines.
Lots of the playwrights of the time were (so far as we can tell) also from illiterate families: Jonson (son of a bricklayer), Marlowe (son of a shoemaker), John Webster (son of a coach maker) and Thomas Middleton (son of a bricklayer) probably came from largely illiterate families.
As I’ve said, Tony, you know much more about this than I.
However, being intrigued, I’ve done a very quick browse on the subject and there seems to be quite a lot of evidence against de Vere - easily as much as against Shakespeare or A.N. Other, even Lord A.N. Other - so I wondered what you thought of the dating difficulties e.g. de Vere having died before 9 or 10 of ‘the plays’ appeared?
I read that James I asked, somewhat mysteriously, for 9 or 10 of ‘the plays’ to be performed when de Vere died and this would tie in but it doesn’t seem probable that de Vere would hide so many late works, nor that he would dedicate the sonnets to a younger relative, as I read he was clever but boastful, and thus wouldn’t be likely to give credit to another author either. (Jonson was very ‘gossipy’, too, as Rebecca points out so if there was doubt over authorship, he’d know and would have no reason to keep it to himself.)
The ‘memoir’ to which you refer is probably the reference I read to de Vere’s travels in Italy and the biographical connection with Polonius and de Vere’s father - I’m sure there’s more but I found all of this amazingly quickly so there are clearly doubts and I didn’t read any really substantial or convincing ‘evidence’ and I’ve no particular bias on this. But, as I said, I’m a novice which is probably self-evident and you’ll answer each of these queries in a trice.
As an afterthought, de Vere was in the pay of the crown, wasn’t he, so more likely to be ‘Establishment’?
Is anyone in the 17th century on record thinking that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s work? It would seem not… Ben Jonson and Milton thought Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I understand these theories to be later developments, responding to newer notions of who Shakespeare had to be. Ironically, Shakespeare has often considered to be a wild, relatively uneducated genius, warbling his woodnotes wild (in Milton’s phrase.) The idea that we have to find a less uncouth person to be the real author of Shakespeare’s work would have struck Milton, or Dr. Johnson in the 18th century, as rather odd.
There are other counterintuitive features of the claim that Shakespeare was not the author of Shakespeare. Surely the ascesis, the refusal of ego, in refusing to claim authorship of these works would be a superhuman feat, a kind of reverse plagiarism. The author of the sonnets, who frequently puns on the name “Will,” is quite conscious of his poetic powers. Can we imagine Dante or Goethe willingly giving some other guy credit for his work? I know there are authorship controversies about individual works, but there is not another case I know of where the entire authorship of a whole oeuvre attributed to an author during his own lifetime has been disputed 200 years later.
Tony, you’re going to have to provide a little more evidence for Shakespeare being illiterate rather than simply saying it’s obvious because his family was.
Shakespeare’s father was a rather important city official in Stratford-upon-Avon, something roughly equivalent to councilman, I think (a position that would seem to require literacy). This position also allowed him to send William to grammar school, a fact I’ve been hearing in Shakespeare biographies since high school (and I’ve seen the Stratford grammar school myself). He not only would have learned to read and write, but he would have learned some Latin and with it classical myth and history. Combined with Shax’s status as an actor and businessman, I don’t really see how it’s at all likely that he was illiterate.
The “Shakespeare question” probably appears more pressing if one thinks of Shakespeare as a singular light in early modern drama. Considering the many other excellent and renowned playwrights of the period (Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, etc.) it doesn’t seem very strange that a man like Shakespeare, existing in a thriving creative atmosphere already, would exist and write his plays. Shakespeare is of course a giant of a writer even among Elizabethan dramatists, but it’s not like he is existing in some sort of vacuum where his presence can only be explained by a conspiracy of the aristocracy.
Anyway, this discussion is distracting us from the real controversy: how the poetry of John Milton was actually composed by Charles II.
Also, despite the cliche that “we don’t have much evidence about Shakespeare’s life,” it seems to me that, relative to most people (and most dramatists) in early modern England, we have quite a bit of information about Shakespeare. Maybe “Oxfordians” just haven’t spent much time studying early modern history, but it’s not like we can expect the same amount of information on Shakespeare as we can on, say, Dickens. Given the man’s time, place, and profession we seem to know a fair deal about him.
I’ve been involved in the Adam Bede thread for some weeks, but I’ve only just now stumbled across some incendiary sites on the internet that claim that George Eliot was actually a woman called ‘Mary Anne Evans’. But there’s no way this can be true: for one thing, the perpetrators of the ‘Mary Anne’ hoax can’t even agree to spell ‘her’ name a uniform way (’Marian’ sometimes, ‘Mary Ann[e]’ others). For another no woman in the nineteenth-century could have been as learned and informed as this ‘Mary Anne’ is alleged to have been. She didn’t even go to university, yet she supposedly translated German, Greek and Latin? I don’t think so. No, the truth is it suits the received wisdom of ‘feminist literary studies’ to foist this fiction upon us. Unfashionable as it may be today, George Eliot was a real figure, an Oxford educated nobleman, who passed on much of what he learned as a writer to his illegitimate son, Thomas Stearns.
Tony, Robert Greene didn’t love Shakespeare this side of idolatry and I rather suspect you haven’t actually read Jonson’s comments.
We today see writing as a prestige career. This was not the case in Elizabethan England--theatre in particular would have been like being a jazz musician or a rock musician circa 1955. Theatre in Shakespeare’s day was vigorous because it was the bright poor boy’s way to get out of keeping shop. Greene’s background was no much different.
Also, while I sympathize more with Jonson or Marlowe for their more radical perceptions, those more radical perceptions got them into trouble. Shakespeare’s father thought the family should granted a coat of arms—S’s got the coat of arms approved. He had some investment in the system as it was, and had a much easier time not kicking so overtly than Jonson and Marlowe had in kicking. These people were writing in a theocratic police state.
Some of this comes across like saying Bob Dylan had to have been upper-class and a Columbia University graduate because of all the literary references. It’s very obvious that Lita Hornick was Bob Dylan. Her own literary style was a hoax. She had the Ph.D. from Columbia University in Dylan Thomas if I remember correctly, and travelled in radical poetry circles. Why imagine a middle class kid from Montana who can’t sing very well and who never went to college would be able to write as well as all that?
An interesting set of comments, Adam Roberts’ satire by far the most astute.
It’s interesting, striking, how nobody is quoting the arguments as laid out most extensively by “the Oxfordians” and refuting them. They are the experts on the argument for de Vere. If you have some ambition to refute de Vere as author, I suggest you attempt to refute their substantial research, and take a close look at the very skimpy bit of evidence that can be gathered to support Shakspere as author.
As it is, I’ll be on the road this entire day (with some uncertain but probable internet connection several states away) but hope to get back to the discussion at least awhile more.
Again, if anyone is serious about this question, it’s most appropriate that you take on the experts you doubt: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/. They directly address many of the points above, as have others, like Michael Hart, in his excellent chapter on Shakespeare/de Vere in The 100 (most influential people).
I have it on good authority that Adam Roberts is working on a new piece of speculative fiction which includes a scene were some little green men are slapping high sevens and congratulating one another on successfully diverting attention from the truth about Shakespeare and those witches and ghosts and other strange creatures that show up in his plays.
I’ve been through this material once before, and it answers neither Greene nor Jonson. Again, we had a major cultural shift in how poets who did popular entertainments were perceived (the Dyer’s Hand sonnet is what it was like to have to write for a living then and how it was perceived).
Cross-read Chaucer against Shakespeare and you’ll see that Chaucer and his wife really worked with the upper classes and had a much less star struck attitude about them (no man is a hero to his accountant).
S was doing what a lot of very clever, very intelligent poor boys tried to do in that day. Pace the Oxfordians, the prestige was in being a rich guy or the patronized poet (Spencer) of the rich guys, not in writing for the common stage.
Yeats put the cultural shift from a poet being a person with so much money and such and such education to being the Poet God figure as happening around 1914 or so. I suspect it was earlier.
If the sonnets weren’t just literary exercises, the Dyer’s Hand sonnet says, “Damn, I have to work for a living and theatre is making me coarse.”
When I taught Hamlet, I pointed out to my students that nobody went to see a play for the plot. The productions were more like rock theatre productions than like contemporary theatre—big, gaudy, vibrating with words, and tremendously entertaining and an inspiration to the poor clever kids like Jonson who wanted to get beyond being a bricklayer and common soldier.
It was get rich or die trying (and Greene and Marlowe plus some others did die trying).
I think the whole issue is more interesting as a sociology of knowledge question than as a genuine controversy. I wonder if someone’s done a meta-analysis of the history of alternate candidates for Shakespeare from this point of view, trying to look at the motives and interests that underlie the enterprise? The point isn’t really Oxford, because there have been many other candidates before, most notoriously Bacon.
Oxfordian arguments have a decidedly amateurish, autodidact, crankish “smell” to them that makes me want to reject them out of hand. If these people want to be dismissed by mainstream academics, they certainly have developed some good strategies to that end. A list of famous actors and Supreme Court justices who didn’t believe Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, for one! As an academic but not a specialist in this area, it is pretty obvious to me who has the better arguments. But how much of that is my own academic habitus?
(The combination of distrust of academic authority with the idea that the author of the plays and poems had to have had a university education has always struck me as odd.)
I agree with you, Jonathan. It’s fascinating from that point of view.
There is, however, the question of just how outsiders get purchase for their ideas when the academy is inherently conservative, and pretty much has to be. I found out about this particular discussion in the comments to a conversation Timothy Burke had started:
http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=617#comments
Burke had seen a TV program about an engineer who devoted a good deal of his life to arguing that Einstein was wrong and was wondering how scholars should respond to such people, if at all.
The issue, of course, is every once in awhile one of these cranks turns out to be correct.
There are, of course, academics who teach Shakespeare and who hold that Oxford wrote it (not just scientists or composition teachers who hold that). The only one I’ve seen explain much of his approach, as best I can determine, sees Edward de Vere as a typical Renaissance man and thus appropriate for teaching students about the early-modern period by way of getting them to understand how Shakespeare thinks.
It certainly sounds interesting. However, I’m not a teacher, but it seems to me “would be helpful for my teaching” doesn’t really entail “true.” And pace Tony Christini, the implications don’t seem especially leftist to me either.
Please stop telling Tony that he “know[s] more about this than [you] do.” He believes more about this than you do. There’s a difference.
The important Stratfordian points have been made. I’d add that the usual conspiracy theory evidentiary double standard is at work in Tony’s arguments. He argues from probability right until people ask if it’s likely that Jonson and others would lie on Shakespeare’s behalf, at which point he says that it’s not impossible. In his argument, there is no point at which his side has the burden of proof.
It’s seems to me that the single strongest piece of evidence in the matter is that the name on the plays is pretty much like the name of the man from Stratford, well within contemporary spelling standards. OTOH, the name on the plays is not remotely like de Vere or Bacon or Raleigh, or Spartacus, or Zorgmantus, or anything else. Given how very conservative people are on the matter of names, that counts for quite a bit. In the absence of any explicit positive evidence that the name on the plays is a pseudonym, the sum total of all this conjecture is not strong enough to outweigh that simple fact. That the conjectures go “convincingly” in various directions doesn’t auger well for any of them.
Tony, I did as you advised and looked at the Shakespeare-Oxford Society’s website. Not being a scholar of Shakespeare or the period, I assumed that there would be a collection of facts and claims that I couldn’t refute. In fact, the page is a bargain bin of easily rejected arguments. Everyone even mildly interested should follow the links Tony provided; it’s as convincing a demonstration you will find that the anti-Stratfordians are not motivated by logic, but by the thrill of a conspiracy and by anti-academic sentiment.
I don’t want to bore people, but here are a couple choice moments:
“There should be masses of contemporary documents about the life of the world’s greatest writer.”
Why? Are there masses of contemporary documents about the authors of the world’s most popular religious text? As Amateur Reader pointed out above, there are plenty of authors who have the same, or less, evidence for their identities than Shakespeare does without a resultant controversy.
“During the past two hundred years, many people have decided that the name “Shakespeare” must have been a pseudonym, and have tried to identify the true author.”
And yet Shakespeare didn’t die two, or even three hundred years ago. Why weren’t there people questioning Shakespeare’s identity back when they were in a position to know?
“There has never been an authorship controversy surrounding other great literary figures: - Swift, Pope, Milton, Joyce, Woolf, Chaucer or Dante. If sensible people can maintain that there is one about Shakespeare, then it is folly to ignore it - as orthodoxy unfortunately has to.”
First, all but two of the figures mentioned postdate Shakespeare, and so don’t run into the same problems of verification that he does. Second, it’s obvious that the reason there is a controversy is that Shakespeare is the most famous author in history. This is akin to saying, “There isn’t much controversy about other terrorist attacks, so doesn’t the controversy around September 11 mean that there’s something fishy?” No, because everyone cares about September 11 more than any other terrorist attack. (Sorry if this seems Godwinesque; I’m just trying to use another well-known set of conspiracy theories.)
Finally, the section on the chronology of the later plays--the ones after de Vere’s death--is a joke. It looks exactly like the anti-evolution arguments about the unreliability of carbon dating: all they can do is say that no one knows anything about dates. And, like anti-evolutionists, the authors of the site seem to have a very poor grasp of what evidence is, when it’s required, and when it’s sufficient to convince.
The Oxfordians aren’t thinking about what a playwright was in S’s day. He’s only appeared to be great in the last couple of centuries.
We’re all fortunate that a number of highly intelligent and excitable men came together at the one place in Elizabethan society that was open to people because of sheer talent. They made a world for themselves between the bear pits and the brothel for a very intense popular entertainment that speaks to us still.
One lord collected all the plays published. Either at his death or later in his life, these were offered them to one of the two big universities who turned the collection down saying that while there might be some gems in the mix, most of this was trivial and forgettable trash.
I’d be curious about when Oxford or Cambridge acquired First Folios. Quick search: Looks like some of their holdings came from private hands well after publication, including Garrick’s library.
I’ve read somewhere that our current image of Shakespeare comes from the late 18th Century and early 19th Century, more specifically with the rise of Romanticism and theatre revivals. Cheaper to put him on than to hire a contemporary writer.
Beowulf was written by Cotton Vitellius, either. It’s a big conspiracy, guys.
’I’ve been involved in the Adam Bede thread for some weeks, but I’ve only just now stumbled across some incendiary sites on the internet that claim that George Eliot was actually a woman called ‘Mary Anne Evans’.’
I agree, Adam, quite absurd. However, I do give some credence to the theory that the novelist was actually called Adam Bede and his first ‘novel’ was virtually a memoir of the rise of a simple English artisan, with only the country schooling of one ‘Bartle Massey’, whose own identity has produced much speculation but might be the source of Dickens’ Wackford Squeers (later headmaster of Rugby School); it is well-known, after all that Dickens referred to the author as ‘Adam Bede’. Of course, the dates don’t fit but that has nothing to do with literary theory, we are told.
Of course, lack of orthodox educational background leads most to suppose that Bede’s becoming a writer was impossible, ignoring the obvious fact that he was descended from the ‘Venerable Bede’ thus proving the evolutionary theory being proposed at the time that genetic encoding could be passed down the generations.
(BTW ‘Hetty’ was, of course, based on the early life of Harriet Beecher Stowe.)
Bill: How could you give away the plot of Adam’s novel? I’d sue if I were him. (He’s calling it ‘The Not Very Convinci Code’, I think, but it’ll fool no-one - ‘high sevens’? Everyone knows that those aliens have only ‘pricking thumbs’, it’s mentioned in that Scottish play by Will McSpartacus.)
I was thinking of that exact same Tim Burke post, Bill, and of an NPR story I heard a few weeks ago about a high-school girl with a Global Warning denialist web site. There’s a very remote possibility that Oxford wrote some work attributed to Shakespeare, but e = mc is not within the realm of possibility at all. There’s a difference in degrees of certainty, but as a sociological matter it seems there’s a similarity.
I agree with tomemos too that the Oxford authorship website seems flimsy. Sure, the Tempest could possibly have been written earlier, and not in reference to a Bermuda shipwreck that happened after Oxford was dead, but anyone who doesn’t have a stake in the authorship debate would have no reason to date it earlier.
Then there’s the crappy poetry written under Oxford’s own name, and the ignorance of the author of Shakespeare’s work of Italian geography, which Oxford should have known well. Shakespeare thought that Milan had a seaport, that you would pass through Denmark on the way from Norway to Poland, etc…
Then there’s the crappy poetry written under Oxford’s own name...
That’s a deal-breaker, no?
Still alone here in my view, am I? After an 8 hour drive from Appalachia to Michigan don’t know how far I might go into this tonight (early a.m. actually) but we’ll see. First, I’m going to say something that I suppose will sound harsh, at least to some, then I’ll give the brief background on where I’m coming from in relation to this issue, then I hope to begin commenting on the comments in order.
The first: it’s striking that nearly none of the opposing comments here rise even to the level of nit-picking, because with the partial exception of one comment, none of the comments here engage any expansive argument for de Vere, whether propounded by the Oxfordians or anyone else. In any case, of all the (sort of) nit-picking here, no nits are even picked, in my view at least. Commenters here seem to have attempted a sort of smoking-gun approach. Aha! here’s the point that disproves the expansive argument (that is ignored). The would-be smoking guns are easily shot down and the nits turn out not to be there for the picking, as we’ve seen already, or at very best are wholly inconclusive.
Again, as I’ve pointed out from the beginning, I’m not an expert on the de Vere argument. Thus, if you are serious about the question in his regard, I refer you to those experts who’ve reached the point of view I have. Go further, if you like to all other interested experts and individuals. Compare and consider views and facts. One commenter here has partially taken that step, begins somewhat to look at the broad argument. That is probably the only person I should respond to seriously.
Where I come from on this: I had no sense that there was much of any real or substantial confusion on the issue until a little over a decade ago when I read Michael Hart’s chapter on the matter in his book, The 100. His argument for de Vere seemed strong to me, and interesting. So I did some research, reading the Oxfordians and the Shaksperians, the conventional wisdom, mainstream scholars, as well as the Baconians, call them, and others. In my view, the argument for de Vere grew stronger, and the argument for Shakspere ever and incomparably weaker. My curiosity followed to its end, the evident conclusion of de Vere as author reached repeatedly the deeper I researched, I dropped the matter and went on with things. I couldn’t care less who authored the works of Shakespeare, apart from the fact that it’s interesting to me to know the reality, especially because he is such a great and prominent imaginative writer and imaginative writing has been a main focus of mine. Also, I’m interested in issues of scholarship and ideology, the academy, and the like.
Again, that was over a decade ago in the mid-90s when I was in graduate school. Occasionally since then I’ve read further on the matter, in which time as it seems to me the overwhelming argument for de Vere only strengthened. Point being, not only was my interest driven mainly out of curiosity, but my main ideological interests are quite indirectly related to the question of Shakespeare authorship. I’m far more interested in works than authors, and far more interested in authors whose works I consider to be “liberatory revolutionary,” as I call it, and whatever anyone else thinks of Shakespeare, I’ve never considered him and his works to be much inclined so.
That said, I’ve put forth my views at The Valve because I think the confusion over the author and authorship of Shakespeare, that we saw already early on in this thread, is instructive and ideologically revealing, though in a different ideological sense than I normally pursue. Far more typically, I write about works and authors who are neglected, and worse, due to their progressive/revolutionary politics. In the case of de Vere, with his essentially establishment, institutionalized works, that’s not (can’t be) the case at all. The distorting ideology against de Vere as author is of a different sort. It’s not the same kind of ideological confusion that Isaac Newton struggled with, and it’s only partly analogous, but I’ll note it here to remark on the part that is analogous:
Noam Chomsky: “In fact, if you look at the history of science seriously, in the seventeenth century there was a major challenge to the existing scientific approach. I mean, it was assumed by Galileo and Descartes and classical scientists that the world would be intelligible to us, that all we had to do was think about it and it would be intelligible.
“Newton disproved them. He showed that the world is not intelligible to us. Newton demonstrated that there are no machines, that there’s nothing mechanical in the sense in which it was assumed that the world was mechanical. He didn’t believe it — in fact he felt his work was an absurdity — but he proved it, and he spent the rest of his life trying to disprove it. And other scientists did later on. I mean, it’s often said that Newton got rid of the ghost in the machine, but it’s quite the opposite. Newton exorcised the machine. He left the ghost.
“And by the time that sank in, which was quite some time, it just changed the conception of science. Instead of trying to show that the world is intelligible to us, we recognized that it’s not intelligible to us. But we just say, ‘Well, you know, unfortunately that’s the way it works. I can’t understand it but that’s the way it works.’ And then the aim of science is reduced from trying to show that the world is intelligible to us, which it is not, to trying to show that there are theories of the world which are intelligible to us. That’s what science is: It’s the study of intelligible theories which give an explanation of some aspect of reality.” (http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060301.htm)
That’s all well and good, but I’m not stating or implying that there is some similar revolution to be had in the offing here. Rather, I mean to point out that Newton did not understand the reality he was facing and had even directly discovered. He thought it was absurd. He was wrong. The eventual recognition however of the import of his work revolutionized science - as in a different, lesser but important, degree the analogous recognition by the establishment would revolutionize Shakespeare-the-author studies. And would, I expect, have a beneficial ripple effect throughout the humanities especially, and the social sciences and more, where may be encountered many such blocks. That’s why I think it’s an issue worth raising, though quite tangential to my main interests.
If I’m to see sleep much before dawn, I have to leave off and return to details on the comments either tomorrow (make that today) or the next day or so.
Tony, your chutzpah in chiding us for failing to engage your argument is, I have to admit, pretty impressive. Let me put it to you directly: what is your argument? You refer twice to an “expansive claim” on behalf of de Vere--what is it? Why would it be de Vere? I’ve gone over this thread once more just to be sure, and the sole specific claim you’ve made is that Shakespeare was illiterate, based on some differing signatures on legal documents. Amazingly, that is actually a greater array of evidence and a more specific claim than I found at the website you referred us to, supposedly the center of Oxfordian thought online. If you buy me Michael Hart’s book I promise to read it, but until then you have to produce claims and evidence if you want to be taken seriously. Two points you seem to miss are that the burden of proof is on you, and that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
As for your not being an expert…well, neither am I, but this is who we’ve got. It doesn’t say much for those experts you gesture towards, if you’re utterly convinced by their argument but can’t give even a cursory account of it here.
One thing seems to be that S wasn’t as liberal/challenging to authority as Jonson and Marlowe. S appeared to have had better political skills than Marlowe. When Greene attacked Marlowe and Shakespeare, Marlowe went around being Marlowe and Shakepeare had “diverse of quality” (meaning not nobles but reasonably well-off) put in good words for him. Greene’s publisher apologized to Shakespeare and said he wouldn’t bother to apologize to Marlowe.
You’re also refusing to see that in Elizabethan England, being the greatest playwright going was sort of like being the greatest Apollo space flight programmer would be today. We can’t name him. About the only military programmer an average person can name off the street would be Grace Harper (and if I’ve gotten that name wrong, it’s more illustrative of the obscurity of the programmers than not).
We have Oxford’s work; the work of other nobles of the day. We have the plays of the commoners, university educated or not. They just do appear to be complete orders of magnitude different. This suggests to me that the Oxfordians are style-deaf.
To those with some sensitivity toward style, the claims for Oxford look, bluntly, stupid. When the gentility did write for the stage, it was frothy and highly stylized (John Lyly). Shakespeare wasn’t the only relatively uneducated playwright of the era.
...the greatest Apollo space flight programmer would be today.
That would be Spartacus.
Amazing Grace, yep, the Spartacus of code. Of course, programmers in general are not well known. Entrepreneurs - Jobs, Gates - are well-known, but not virtuoso programmers.
Comments interspersed below for clarity:
> Tony, your chutzpah in chiding us for failing to engage
> your argument is, I
> have to admit, pretty impressive.
But you see, I’ve made no such argument; that is, I’ve made no “expansive claim” – you even misquote me – I’ve made no “expansive argument.”
Bill, in his originating post, states:
“The question [of Shakespeare authorship] still lingers. These days the issue seems to have as much to do with distrust of academics, who aren’t much interested in the question, as it does with the state of the rather meager evidence.”
I think a main focus should properly be on “the state of the rather meager evidence” [for Shakspere] as Bill refers to it merely in passing, because it’s so obvious that there is very little evidence to support the Shaksperian argument – which might understandably arouse “distrust of academics.” By contrast there is more and higher quality evidence to support the argument for de Vere (and no one else, where, thus, the other main focus should be). The detailed body of evidence and compelling analysis for de Vere, especially as contrasted with the skimpy details and highly questionable analysis for Shakspere is the “expansive argument” I am referring to. I thought I had made that clear. I think I did. I don’t mind rephrasing it though, especially given the jumbled nature of the discussion board.
> Let me put it to you
> directly: what is
> your argument? You refer twice to an
> “expansive claim” on behalf of
> de Vere--what is it? Why would it be de Vere? I’ve
> gone over this thread
> once more just to be sure, and the sole
> specific claim you’ve made
> is that Shakespeare was illiterate, based on some differing
> signatures on
> legal documents. Amazingly, that is actually a greater
> array of evidence
> and a more specific claim than I found at the website you
> referred us to,
> supposedly the center of Oxfordian thought online. If you
> buy me Michael
> Hart’s book I promise to read it, but until then
> you have to produce
> claims and evidence if you want to be taken
> seriously.
I’ll respond to the immediate above a bit later in my comment here, but first I need to respond to this:
> Two points you
> seem to miss are that the burden of proof is on you,
Another commenter said something akin to this, that I have to prove that Shakespeare was illiterate, that the burden of proof falls on me. That is incorrect. And it’s elementary. The burden of proof falls on Shaksperians to prove Shakspere’s literacy (if we take the question as being necessary to the case). Has anyone done so? What’s the evidence? Very sketchy at best. “de Verians” have the same burden to prove de Vere’s literacy. And in fact that case has been made (uncontroversially, as far as I’m aware). His poetry exists. Shaksperians don’t have any remotely comparable evidence. By the way, a point I’ll have cause to make when I get back to the comments, if you think de Vere’s poetry is pedestrian or so-so, read early Faulkner (etc) and compare to his later much greater works.
>and
> that extraordinary
> claims require extraordinary evidence.
Now this, above, is correct in general. But in this specific case, the problem is that, again, there is far more and better evidence for de Vere than for Shakspere, or anyone else. In other words, in a rational world of evidence and analysis it’s not an extraordinary claim, but given the reams of (albeit baseless) conventional wisdom amounting to a continuous propaganda barrage, the evident appears absurd. So, one needs to cut through the mysticism and take a close look at the evidence and analysis – and what you’ll see is quite extraordinary (ironically, that is). To repeat, a lot of quality evidence for de Vere, a paucity, especially by comparison, for Shakspere. That’s the reality, which of course anyone who is interested should ascertain for themselves, by taking advantage of the available research and applying your own thought.
Which brings us back to this:
> you have to produce
> claims and evidence if you want to be taken
> seriously.
I made clear in my suggestions from the beginning, and I’ll make even more clear now, that anyone who is interested in this question is free and welcome to look into it. I haven’t written a single brief paper on the matter, but plenty of research has been compiled, a good bit is available online, with references to print sources of more work. A previous commenter was correct that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to gopher up for everybody, into a comments thread no less, the research projects and papers that have been produced on the matter. And in my case, again, it’s a tangential, though lively, interest. Best brief essay or capsule of the expansive argument that I’ve seen is, again, Hart’s chapter, for anyone looking for something brief.
Furthermore, in this comments thread, let alone elsewhere, it seems to me I’ve contributed plenty to be taken seriously in any number of ways, including on the question of Shakespeare authorship. But of course that’s for others to judge.
> As for your not being an expert…well, neither am I, but
> this is who we’ve
> got.
No, in fact, there’s plenty of access to experts, even online, and not all at one site. Far from it.
>It doesn’t say much for those experts you gesture
> towards, if you’re
> utterly convinced by their argument but can’t give even
> a cursory account
> of it here.
A goader, are you? Let’s see, William Shakspere literacy highly challenged, not much known. Edward de Vere: highly literate, a poet, renowned as the best of the court, a variety of close autobiographical details of his life in Shakespeare’s works, and apart from the closely autobiographical, great access to and familiarity with the details of life in the works, an actor. Family crest: spear-shaker…. But wait- Do you really want me to go online and delve into my books (currently states away, which I read a decade ago) to gopher up all the fine details for you and the scholars present in a neat little summary on a tangential interest of mine in a comments thread full of opponents to the argument? What kind of masochist do you take me for? I’ll acknowledge, at this point, I’m laughing.
I said I would go back to commenting on the comments that have been left, and maybe that will sketch out the argument somewhat further, even though I’ve already gone beyond my initial interest in this sort of discussion here, and was hoping for at least one individual knowledgeable of and appreciative of the de Vere argument, in which it seems to me a much more thoughtful and fruitful discussion could proceed.
Anyway, this US News and World Report article linked below must be something of the sort you seem to be asking for. I don’t quite have the “chutzpah” to cut and paste it in its entirety into The Valve here, though I don’t think it would be inappropriate. I think it would be easily more than appropriate if you or any other commenter here did so and then see if the conversation proceeded forth from there, in some fashion.
Hunting for good Will
Will the real Shakespeare please stand up?
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/shakespeare.htm
BY MICHAEL SATCHELL
LONDON–Among the crowds enjoying the summer productions of Hamlet and The Tempest at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, few are likely to question who wrote the 38 plays, two long poems, and 154 sonnets that make up the West’s greatest canon of literary genius. Conventional wisdom points to the Stratford merchant and supposed Globe actor, born to an illiterate glove maker in 1564 and baptized Gulielmus Shakspere. But there is growing circumstantial evidence that the Bard may be an Elizabethan courtier and author, the Earl of Oxford.
The authorship question has been pondered since the 1780s, when the Rev. James Wilmot spent four fruitless years trying to link the Stratford man to the works attributed to him. Today, those who believe that Shakspere was the author have no definitive proof but instead point to Hamlet’s declaration: “The play’s the thing.” Disbelievers, borrowing from The Rape of Lucrece, are eager “to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light.” Charles Francis Topham de Vere Beauclerk, the Earl of Burford and direct descendant of Edward de Vere (1550-1604), the 17th Earl of Oxford, believes his ancestor wrote the plays under the hyphenated pseudonym “William Shake-speare.” Declares his lordship, curator of the de Vere library and a leading Oxford proponent: “Academics have an enormous vested interest in Shakespeare: For them, the issue is not literary or historical, but political. Their man is a flimsy cardboard cutout.”
...
The style is the man.
I’ve zipped through these comments without proofing, and hope I’ve kept them appropriately sorted by commenter name. Also tried to put all my responses here at the arrows—>>:
“I’m saying that, regardless of his family, the evidence shows that Shakspere was either illiterate or marginally literate.”
Er, you’re ignoring that, whether or not Shakespeare was also a playwright, he was most certainly an actor and a major shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s/King’s Men. This is indisputable, since we have official documents from a number of various governmental departments and entities of the time listing Shakespeare as a prominent person in that troupe, as well as fellow members of the King’s Men mentioning bequests to Shakespeare in their wills. Ben Jonson also lists Shakespeare as performing in two of Jonson’s plays.
It’s not very likely that a major actor would be illiterate - troupes would put on many plays in a season, and particularly need to quickly learn new ones for the very profitable performances at court. That’s made even less likely due to Shakespeare’s quick rise to prominence as an actor - it might theoretically be possible for an actor to slowly build up a reputation and remain illiterate, but it’s hard to see how Shakespeare could have obtained such quick renown as a young actor if he couldn’t read his lines.
Lots of the playwrights of the time were (so far as we can tell) also from illiterate families: Jonson (son of a bricklayer), Marlowe (son of a shoemaker), John Webster (son of a coach maker) and Thomas Middleton (son of a bricklayer) probably came from largely illiterate families.
-- >>I’ve addressed the latter issue repeatedly here.
-- >>de Vere of course was not illiterate, and in acting/theater circles he would have faced pressure to assume a pseudonym/nom de plume.
By burritoboy on 07/18/08 at 10:50 PM | Permanent link to this comment
As I’ve said, Tony, you know much more about this than I.
However, being intrigued, I’ve done a very quick browse on the subject and there seems to be quite a lot of evidence against de Vere - easily as much as against Shakespeare or A.N. Other, even Lord A.N. Other - so I wondered what you thought of the dating difficulties e.g. de Vere having died before 9 or 10 of ‘the plays’ appeared?
-- >> These issues are well addressed in the scholarship; I suspect you could even Google them up. But just think: these sorts of things happen all the time. Plays come out posthumously; plenty of purported, baseless evidence is thrown around on any number of issues.
I read that James I asked, somewhat mysteriously, for 9 or 10 of ‘the plays’ to be performed when de Vere died and this would tie in but it doesn’t seem probable that de Vere would hide so many late works, nor that he would dedicate the sonnets to a younger relative, as I read he was clever but boastful, and thus wouldn’t be likely to give credit to another author either. (Jonson was very ‘gossipy’, too, as Rebecca points out so if there was doubt over authorship, he’d know and would have no reason to keep it to himself.)
-- >> This above is all the stuff of thin air. You know what Jonson would have reason to do and not do? You’ve psychoanalyzed Shakespeare conclusively?
The ‘memoir’ to which you refer is probably the reference I read to de Vere’s travels in Italy and the biographical connection with Polonius and de Vere’s father - I’m sure there’s more but I found all of this amazingly quickly so there are clearly doubts and I didn’t read any really substantial or convincing ‘evidence’ and I’ve no particular bias on this. But, as I said, I’m a novice which is probably self-evident and you’ll answer each of these queries in a trice.
-- >> Yes, there’s a good deal more in the research. It took me two seconds to google wikipedia and the plethora of information and references there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_theory
-- >>"The case for Oxford’s authorship, first presented in the 1920s, then expanded in the 1980s, is based on abundant similarities between Oxford’s biography and events in Shakespeare’s plays; parallels of language, idiom, and thought between Oxford’s letters and the Shakespearean canon; and underlined passages in Oxford’s Bible that may correspond to quotations in Shakespeare’s plays. Oxfordians point to the acclaim of Oxford’s contemporaries regarding his talent as a poet and a playwright, his reputation as a concealed poet, and his connections to London theatre and the contemporary playwrights of Shakespeare’s day. They also note his long term relationships with Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Southampton, his knowledge of Court life, his extensive education, his academic and cultural achievements and his wide-ranging travels through France and Italy.” etc
As an afterthought, de Vere was in the pay of the crown, wasn’t he, so more likely to be ‘Establishment’?
-- >>Yes, of course, but he was in and out with the establishment throughout his life, to put it mildly.
By Sue G-J on 07/18/08 at 10:51 PM | Permanent link to this comment
Is anyone in the 17th century on record thinking that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s work? It would seem not… Ben Jonson and Milton thought Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I understand these theories to be later developments, responding to newer notions of who Shakespeare had to be. Ironically, Shakespeare has often considered to be a wild, relatively uneducated genius, warbling his woodnotes wild (in Milton’s phrase.) The idea that we have to find a less uncouth person to be the real author of Shakespeare’s work would have struck Milton, or Dr. Johnson in the 18th century, as rather odd.
-- >> de Vere was a bit of a “wild man,” quite adventurous, periodically running afoul of authority, when not in bed with it.
There are other counterintuitive features of the claim that Shakespeare was not the author of Shakespeare. Surely the ascesis, the refusal of ego, in refusing to claim authorship of these works would be a superhuman feat, a kind of reverse plagiarism.
-- >> As pointed out in various research, courtesans did well to keep their writing anonymous, especially when so apt to cross the very sensitive crown, especially if they wanted to keep the apparent royal subsidy coming in as reliably as possible.
The author of the sonnets, who frequently puns on the name “Will,” is quite conscious of his poetic powers. Can we imagine Dante or Goethe willingly giving some other guy credit for his work?
-- >> Spear-shaker was in de Vere’s family crest. Regardless, the notables knew quite well who Shakespeare was. It wouldn’t “do” to say, certainly, especially at the most tense moments. It wouldn’t “do” to say, it seems, as a matter of contingent royal policy. You see, when you simply pull things out of the air, as you are, that some plausibility inherently adheres to, it’s just as easy, in de Vere’s case, to do the same to counter it, and to locate actual evidence that supports it, besides.
I know there are authorship controversies about individual works, but there is not another case I know of where the entire authorship of a whole oeuvre attributed to an author during his own lifetime has been disputed 200 years later.
-- >> Who was Homer? Was he even a single person? Was he male or female? For how many centuries or millenia were the utterances of Jesus in the Gospels attributed to him? Scholarship has learned very little of it can actually be attributed to him. In any event, it may well be that de Vere and his case are incomparable.
By Jonathan Mayhew on 07/19/08 at 12:54 AM | Permanent link to this comment
Tony, you’re going to have to provide a little more evidence for Shakespeare being illiterate rather than simply saying it’s obvious because his family was.
-- >> I’ve never said and I don’t say that “it’s obvious because his family was.” Take a look back. In any event, the burden of proof regarding literacy, especially at Shakespeare’s level, lies with the “Shaksperians”. They have not met the burden of proof, remotely. Meanwhile, that de Vere was highly literate is not controversial.
Shakespeare’s father was a rather important city official in Stratford-upon-Avon, something roughly equivalent to councilman, I think (a position that would seem to require literacy). This position also allowed him to send William to grammar school, a fact I’ve been hearing in Shakespeare biographies since high school (and I’ve seen the Stratford grammar school myself). He not only would have learned to read and write, but he would have learned some Latin and with it classical myth and history. Combined with Shax’s status as an actor and businessman, I don’t really see how it’s at all likely that he was illiterate.
-- >> Apparently that’s all presumption. Or do you have the evidence to refute this:
-- >> “Shakspere might have received a good education at pre-school then Stratford Grammar School – but we can only presume that he did attend, for there is no evidence, just repeated belief that he did as his father became “the Queen’s Officer” to the town.
-- >> “Presuming Shakspere became Shakespeare, as a boy and youth, grammar School would have fed his open and natural genius, and his prodigious memory was then the tool which his spirit, nature, mind and intellect drew upon for success in poetry and playmaking. “Imagination is so incredibly rich that you have wealth there, even if nowhere else in your life.”
-- >> “What was he taught? There are no records from the Stratford Grammar School for that period, just as Ben Jonson’s stay at Westminster School was unrecorded, dependent only on his word that he did. And he did not go on to University, either.”
http://www.shakespeareidentity.co.uk/early-years.htm
The “Shakespeare question” probably appears more pressing if one thinks of Shakespeare as a singular light in early modern drama. Considering the many other excellent and renowned playwrights of the period (Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, etc.) it doesn’t seem very strange that a man like Shakespeare, existing in a thriving creative atmosphere already, would exist and write his plays.
-- >> Sure, apparently de Vere/Shakespeare thrived in the atmosphere.
Shakespeare is of course a giant of a writer even among Elizabethan dramatists, but it’s not like he is existing in some sort of vacuum where his presence can only be explained by a conspiracy of the aristocracy.
-- >> So it couldn’t have been royal policy to keep mum on the subject or else, until no one with great credibility knew or cared to say for sure? And it’s plausible that despite all the evidence pointing to de Vere this, alone!, for what else sticks?, is a certainty, and overriding, “the smoking gun”?
Anyway, this discussion is distracting us from the real controversy: how the poetry of John Milton was actually composed by Charles II.
By Tom on 07/19/08 at 01:43 AM | Permanent link to this comment
Also, despite the cliche that “we don’t have much evidence about Shakespeare’s life,” it seems to me that, relative to most people (and most dramatists) in early modern England, we have quite a bit of information about Shakespeare.
Maybe “Oxfordians” just haven’t spent much time studying early modern history, but it’s not like we can expect the same amount of information on Shakespeare as we can on, say, Dickens. Given the man’s time, place, and profession we seem to know a fair deal about him.
-- >> There is very little certain information about Shakspere’s life. Also, Shakespeare was very comparable to “most people” and even “most dramatists”?
By Tom on 07/19/08 at 01:48 AM | Permanent link to this comment
Tony, Robert Greene didn’t love Shakespeare this side of idolatry and I rather suspect you haven’t actually read Jonson’s comments.
-- >> By my pointing out that people who idolize others are likely to do a lot for them, I was primarily pointing out that, if one wishes to pull out of the air some speculation about who might have said what to whom and why and whether or not anyone could repeat it at all or believably, then one can pull out of at least equal plausibility that the opposite may just as well be true, for all anyone knows. Ergo, proves nothing.
-- >> Jonson’s comments? Enlighten me, I’ll consider them.
We today see writing as a prestige career. This was not the case in Elizabethan England--theatre in particular would have been like being a jazz musician or a rock musician circa 1955. Theatre in Shakespeare’s day was vigorous because it was the bright poor boy’s way to get out of keeping shop. Greene’s background was no much different.
-- >> Why, I had no idea! And here I’ve spent all this time demonstrating that I think writing as career today is quite like it was then. Imagine my shock at discovering this not to be the case. (Sorry, folks, I’m needing to get my humor now when I can.)
Also, while I sympathize more with Jonson or Marlowe for their more radical perceptions, those more radical perceptions got them into trouble. Shakespeare’s father thought the family should granted a coat of arms—S’s got the coat of arms approved. He had some investment in the system as it was, and had a much easier time not kicking so overtly than Jonson and Marlowe had in kicking. These people were writing in a theocratic police state.
-- >> Sorry, you lost me there.
Some of this comes across like saying Bob Dylan had to have been upper-class and a Columbia University graduate because of all the literary references. It’s very obvious that Lita Hornick was Bob Dylan. Her own literary style was a hoax. She had the Ph.D. from Columbia University in Dylan Thomas if I remember correctly, and travelled in radical poetry circles. Why imagine a middle class kid from Montana who can’t sing very well and who never went to college would be able to write as well as all that?
-- >> Damn, I have to admit, I’ve never heard of Lita Hornick, but you know I always thought there was something fishy about Bob Dylan. He probably was Lita Hornick!
By Rebecca Ore on 07/19/08 at 05:02 AM | Permanent link to this comment
I think the whole issue is more interesting as a sociology of knowledge question than as a genuine controversy. I wonder if someone’s done a meta-analysis of the history of alternate candidates for Shakespeare from this point of view, trying to look at the motives and interests that underlie the enterprise? The point isn’t really Oxford, because there have been many other candidates before, most notoriously Bacon.
-- >> The point isn’t de Vere? Just that the overwhelming evidence points to him.
Oxfordian arguments have a decidedly amateurish, autodidact, crankish “smell” to them that makes me want to reject them out of hand. If these people want to be dismissed by mainstream academics, they certainly have developed some good strategies to that end. A list of famous actors and Supreme Court justices who didn’t believe Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, for one! As an academic but not a specialist in this area, it is pretty obvious to me who has the better arguments. But how much of that is my own academic habitus?
-- >> Nothing like dogmatism having its day.
(The combination of distrust of academic authority with the idea that the author of the plays and poems had to have had a university education has always struck me as odd.)
-- >> So that’s the connection! It all makes sense now.
By Jonathan Mayhew on 07/19/08 at 12:12 PM | Permanent link to this comment
Please stop telling Tony that he “know[s] more about this than [you] do.” He believes more about this than you do. There’s a difference.
-- >> I don’t get it. I thought faith was scholarship. The Shaksperians insist on it.
The important Stratfordian points have been made.
-- >> Yes, All Praise Faith!
I’d add that the usual conspiracy theory evidentiary double standard is at work in Tony’s arguments. He argues from probability right until people ask if it’s likely that Jonson and others would lie on Shakespeare’s behalf, at which point he says that it’s not impossible.
-- >> Yes, in the process that if anyone wants to pull theories from thin air, I can too. And then there’s the added bonus, that little extra step, of research that actually shows them not to be so thin after all.
In his argument, there is no point at which his side has the burden of proof.
-- >> False again. As I recently pointed out to you in the longer comment.
By tomemos on 07/19/08 at 01:45 PM | Permanent link to this comment
It’s seems to me that the single strongest piece of evidence in the matter is that the name on the plays is pretty much like the name of the man from Stratford, well within contemporary spelling standards. OTOH, the name on the plays is not remotely like de Vere or Bacon or Raleigh, or Spartacus, or Zorgmantus, or anything else. Given how very conservative people are on the matter of names, that counts for quite a bit. In the absence of any explicit positive evidence that the name on the plays is a pseudonym, the sum total of all this conjecture is not strong enough to outweigh that simple fact.
-- >> This particular conjecture and smoking gun goes clunking into the can when one notes the fact that “spear-shaker” was in de Vere’s family crest…
That the conjectures go “convincingly” in various directions doesn’t auger well for any of them.
-- >> Research shows, and as I’ve demonstrated, that’s false.
By Bill Benzon on 07/19/08 at 02:09 PM | Permanent link to this comment
Tony, I did as you advised and looked at the Shakespeare-Oxford Society’s website. Not being a scholar of Shakespeare or the period, I assumed that there would be a collection of facts and claims that I couldn’t refute. In fact, the page is a bargain bin of easily rejected arguments. Everyone even mildly interested should follow the links Tony provided; it’s as convincing a demonstration you will find that the anti-Stratfordians are not motivated by logic, but by the thrill of a conspiracy and by anti-academic sentiment.
-- >> Such close readings never cease to impress me.
I don’t want to bore people,
-- >> Oh, by all means
but here are a couple choice moments:
“There should be masses of contemporary documents about the life of the world’s greatest writer.”
Why? Are there masses of contemporary documents about the authors of the world’s most popular religious text? As Amateur Reader pointed out above, there are plenty of authors who have the same, or less, evidence for their identities than Shakespeare does without a resultant controversy.
-- >> What about exceptional authors at least somewhat comparable to Shakespeare of his time. Jonson or others. The problem is, in the conventional histories, the certain knowledge of Shakspere is always badly overstated.
“During the past two hundred years, many people have decided that the name “Shakespeare” must have been a pseudonym, and have tried to identify the true author.”
And yet Shakespeare didn’t die two, or even three hundred years ago. Why weren’t there people questioning Shakespeare’s identity back when they were in a position to know?
-- >> Commenters here have listed a number of possible reasons. As have I.
“There has never been an authorship controversy surrounding other great literary figures: - Swift, Pope, Milton, Joyce, Woolf, Chaucer or Dante. If sensible people can maintain that there is one about Shakespeare, then it is folly to ignore it - as orthodoxy unfortunately has to.”
First, all but two of the figures mentioned postdate Shakespeare, and so don’t run into the same problems of verification that he does.
-- >> It has plausibly been argued that it’s easier to conceal identities for shorter periods than longer periods. So a quick shrug at an explanation doesn’t exactly settle the question.
Second, it’s obvious that the reason there is a controversy is that Shakespeare is the most famous author in history.
-- >> Begging the question fallacy. Elementary.
This is akin to saying, “There isn’t much controversy about other terrorist attacks, so doesn’t the controversy around September 11 mean that there’s something fishy?” No, because everyone cares about September 11 more than any other terrorist attack. (Sorry if this seems Godwinesque; I’m just trying to use another well-known set of conspiracy theories.)
-- >> Actually, if people have their suspicions, they should look into 9-11. Now, in that case, it seems to me absolutely absurd that it was an inside job. And some experts and others have troubled themselves, properly so, to show there was no inside job – based on evidence and analysis. Now, when the cases of de Vere and Shakspere are looked into, well, the evidence is there, the analyses as well.
Finally, the section on the chronology of the later plays--the ones after de Vere’s death--is a joke. It looks exactly like the anti-evolution arguments about the unreliability of carbon dating: all they can do is say that no one knows anything about dates. And, like anti-evolutionists, the authors of the site seem to have a very poor grasp of what evidence is, when it’s required, and when it’s sufficient to convince.
-- >> Without checking into your conclusion here, how convincing, how rational, how empirical have the Shaksperians been regarding dates and their meaning? The US News and World Report suggests the Oxfordians have a firm handle on the dates….
By tomemos on 07/19/08 at 02:16 PM | Permanent link to this comment
The best web site I know of defending Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays is David Kaufman’s and Terry Ross’s:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/
"-- >>I’ve addressed the latter issue repeatedly here.
-- >>de Vere of course was not illiterate, and in acting/theater circles he would have faced pressure to assume a pseudonym/nom de plume.”
As to the first point, again, you haven’t done so. As lots of people have pointed out, not only Shakespeare but quite a few other major playwrights of the time came from largely or partially illiterate families. We actually don’t know if Shakespeare’s daughters were literate or not. His sons-in-law were a university-trained doctor (who did write some medical texts) and a clearly literate local businessman and politician. The second son-in-law’s father wrote Shakespeare the sole surviving letter to Shakespeare - of course, that letter isn’t proof that Shakespeare was literate (he could have had the letter read to him) - but
it does indicate that Shakespeare’s friends in Stratford were literate, and regularly wrote to each other (the letter is breezy and completely informal, indicating that letter-exchanging was a common activity for this circle).
In this kind of debate I often get the impression of people on the two sides playing by two separate and almost incommensurable sets of rules of evidence and argumentation.
Jonson was much more gossipy, made more impressions on people, and wrote down his own accounts of his life and got himself published in folio before he died. Shakespeare had less need of publicity—his plays were more successful than Jonson’s were.
Name two scriptwriters for any two movies other than “Brokeback Mountain.” We don’t know scriptwriters today unless we’re specialists in movies. We may know Harlan Ellison but that’s because Harlan is the Ben Jonson of our times.
Read the Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden and see if you can believe that Jonson would have hesitated a minute to have said “The actors were fooled.” This was after both de Vere’s death and Shakespeare’s. Jonson knows S is a better writer than he was and is squirming and being cutting and claiming Shakespeare should have edited more and still knows what he knows. What he knew was a man who acted in one of his plays, who mocked in him other plays, was a better writer than he was, even with the lines that could have been cut. He loved Shakespeare this side of idolatry because Ben Jonson was honest about writing. He hated having to admit it, though.
If you haven’t read Drummond’s transcript of the conversation, you’re in for a treat.
Jonathan M: Well, that’s what the Tim Burke post is about, I guess.
I’m not going to engage with Tony anymore about the facts of the case, for that very reason; but I do want to say something else about the burden of proof question. I haven’t studied history since college, and maybe someone here can set me straight, but is it not the case that, without good evidence not to do so, we tend to believe what people at the time wrote in public and private? And since everything that people said and did at the time suggests Shakespeare, isn’t this the accepted position until there is good evidence against it (rather than the simple possibility that it could have been someone else)? That’s why the burden of proof is on the anti-Stratfordians. For Tony and his allies, the evidence against Stratford is that the evidence for Stratford isn’t incontrovertible. This is obviously not the way arguments are won.
In response to my question about why Shakespeare’s contemporaries never gave any hint that he wasn’t Shakespeare, Tony said, “Commenters here have listed a number of possible reasons. As have I.” Actually, unless I missed something, no one else has taken on this point, but that’s not even the issue--what we want is not “possible reasons” but clear evidence for disbelieving those contemporaries. Searching out “possible reasons” (rather than clear evidence) to explain away what seems to be a straightforward fact is the precise opposite of Occam’s Razor.
Here are some things Shakespeare fits that Oxford doesn’t: the opinions of his contemporaries, the dates, his own references to “Will,” the references in the Folio to Stratford, and--most important--the name on the plays. We don’t need to produce evidence that he was literate, any more than we need evidence that he didn’t have a debilitating hand tremor that kept him from holding a pen. (Of course, there is circumstantial evidence that he was literate, as burritoboy pointed out--evidence at least as good as anything from the other side.) Until the anti-Stratfordians start producing something worthwhile, the ball is in their court.
Tony,
This is just to acknowledge the effort you have put in on this thread to try to answer the various challenges to the de Vere authorship which have been put forward, sometimes more than once, with such courteous patience.
To misquote a line ‘attributed’ to Voltaire (the ‘attributed’ seems fitting):
‘I may not agree with what you say but would defend to the death your right to say it!’
Thanks, it’s been interesting.
Ultimately, the story for De Vere doesn’t work as a plausible chain of events:
1. Supposedly, De Vere has to hide his authorship of the Shakespearean plays because it was too declasse for the nobility to write for the stage.
2. But, Oxford is himself a known poet under his own name (and widely known as such), and Shakespeare writes and publishes poetry as well. Why would Oxford publish his best poems under the name Shakespeare and his worse ones under his own name? Oxford clearly needed the money from Shakespeare’s poetry.
Some interesting comments again...though the smoking gunners are out and about still - not a way to gain much sense of a sound argument.
“is it not the case that, without good evidence not to do so, we tend to believe what people at the time wrote in public and private?”
Again, that’s begging the question. What did they write in public and private? How much evidence for it is there? Was it falsified as both public and private documents often are? If one were to follow it as a general rule of thumb, it would lead one badly into the woods in particular cases.
“Here are some things Shakespeare fits that Oxford doesn’t: the opinions of his contemporaries, the dates, his own references to “Will,” the references in the Folio to Stratford, and--most important--the name on the plays.”
Again, this is false, or begging the question. There is also evidence (that, again, makes a lot more sense contextually) that de Vere, the spear-shaker, was considered to be “Shakespeare” himself, and the greatest writer going, and the dates accord with his life. The smoking guns clunk to the ground one by one, and the weaker argument is further weakened bit by bit.
No substantial argument for who “Shakespeare” was was ever established, or even made, contemporaneous to his time. Even if it were, for good reason (strong new or overlooked/ignored evidence and/or analysis) it could be entirely called into question. Thus the need for subsequent careful research, evidence and reasoning. In which case, to most thoroughly and justly (that is, carefully and adequately) pursue the question, one must look at the strengths and weaknesses for the argument of each candidate. Claiming that the burden of proof for any particular candidate is greater or lesser than for another, as “tomemos” does, is fallacious and improper.
Sue, Thanks, appreciated; those are my sentiments too.
I suspect that no-one’s going to be convinced that the opinion they brought to this conversation is wrong. This isn’t that kind of discussion. We’ve got links to online resources on the issue, and some ideas have been hung out to dry. That’s enough of this. I’m declaring this discussion closed.