See Inside
The anti-Stratfordian skeptics are back, and this time they have a Supreme Court justice on their side
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Shakespeare Interrupted."
Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of How We Believe.
See what we're tweeting about
huler thought upgrading ticket on #deltasucksoutloud was enraging. Then checked bag at airport. beat me up when I'm trying to give you money. Wow.
DNLee5 .@DrShepherd2013 is a Research Meteorologist, I recommend him for quiries/explanation of weather/climate issues. #NABJ #science news
beatricebiology Had my first sighting of someone wearing google glasses.
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Deadline: Aug 31 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) is launching the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge whose
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
66 Comments
Add CommentIn asserting that there is zero evidence that de Vere used Shakespeare as a nom de plume, Michael Shermer, (2009 Aug, p. 30), is dismissing, without reasoned argument, the encrypted message to the contrary in the inscription in the Shakspeare monument in The Collegiate Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at Stratford-upon-Avon (Roper DL, Proving Shakespeare. Truro, Cornwell: Orvid Books; 2008). I would welcome a further column addressing whether Ben Jonson's Cardano grille meets the criteria of William F. and Elizebeth S. Friedman for a valid cipher by making sense, and being unique and unambiguous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBruce Spittle
I love Schermer's articles and generally he is right on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut here he seems to make a common error - confusing skepticism of one theory with proof of another.
Clearly there is insufficient evidence to prove another than William wrote the plays and poems of "Shakespeare", or however he spelled his name - never twice the same.
But there does not appear to be much evidence other than historical custom to attribute them to the actor either.
So, I remain a skeptic - meaning I don't know.
For excellent introduction to the arguments in favour of and against the Stratford man see http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/debate. Prof. Stanley Wells details the orthodox case and criticizes the doubters. Actor/Director Mark Rylance responds and there follows a point-by-point rebuttal of Wells letter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso informative is Diana Price's Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography (2001) which presented a solid case for doubting that Shaksper of Stratford authored the plays and poems of Shakespeare. One of her major analysis was based on contemporary personal literary evidence (CPLE). There was none for the Stratford fellow but at least a few pieces for every other significant writer of the period. This was argued for several months on the Internet when the book was published. No one was able to shoot a hole in their analysis. This is a must read for anyone serious about evaluating the controversy.
Myself, I think Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford the most likely candidate. Orson Welles once said "I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don't agree, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away…". And there are literally dozens of coincidences. Among them: Ovid's Metamorphoses , Shakespeare's favourite source, was first translated into English by Oxford's uncle, Arthur Golding, and published while he was living in the same household; Oxford visited in 1575-76 all the places in Italy used in the plays except Rome; Oxford's son-in-law the Earl of Montgomery and his brother, the Earl of Pembroke were responsible for the publishing of the First Folio; Polonius and Ophelia are thought by many orthodox scholars as being based on Lord Burghley and his daughter Anne, respectively Oxford's Father-in-law and first wife; numerous incidents in Oxford's life are reflected in the works (e.g.the bed trick, Gad's Hill incident, being captured by pirates crossing the English Channel).
To me it all adds up at minimum to a reasonable case of doubt and a legitimate subject of academic study . Not one that should be ridiculed and ignored like Prof. Wells does in the letter linked to above. It was that kind of attitude that made me feel there was something of substance in all these arguments against the traditional attribution of the Shakespeare works to the man from Stratford.
As a skeptic myself, I usually agree with Michael Shermer, but not on the Shakespeare authorship question. On that issue, I find Mr. Skeptic's position oddly credulous. Shermer objects to Justice John Paul Stevens' declaration that "the evidence that (Shakspere of Stratford) was not the author is beyond a reasonable doubt." To hear Shermer tell it, one would think that Stevens is the first and only authorship doubter to serve on the Court. On the contrary, others include Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Blackmun, Powell. Only two current Justices (Breyer and Kennedy) openly support the Stratford man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShermer says that, "reasonable doubt should not cost an author his claim" and "In science, a reigning theory is presumed provisionally true and continues to hold sway unless and until a challenging theory explains the current data as well and also accounts for anomalies that the prevailing one cannot." He ignores the fact that Stevens said "beyond" a reasonable doubt, and that he _did_ name a challenger whose claim he sees as superior -- that of the 17th earl of Oxford..
The orthodox say that there are no anomalies, and there's no room for doubt about the author's identity. They've succeeded in stigmatizing and suppressing the authorship issue in much of academia, making it a taboo subject. This is wrong. The authorship issue doesn't belong in the same category as teaching Intelligent Design alongside evolution. The aim of the Declaration isn't to replace the current theory with another, but to call attention to the fact that the issue should be taken seriously in academia. Once that happens, we are perfectly willing to let the chips fall where they may, based on the evidence. Right now, most scholars are unwilling to consider the evidence.
Shermer's position amounts to this: "How dare you point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes unless you have the power to put a new emperor on the throne!" Well, at some point the emperor's nakedness is just too obvious to ignore. It may not be polite to point out that the emperor is naked, and some will prefer not to notice; but sometimes the best way to bring about change is to call attention to all of the anomalies that don't fit the reigning theory, and make them clear to everyone. That's what we've tried to do with the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt (www.DoubtAboutWill.org).
John Shahan
SAC Chairman
Mr. Shermer should read Skeptic Magazine. They saw fit to publish an article by Diana Price on Shakespeares Authorship and Questions of Evidence (vol. 11:3, 2005). And he should read her book, "Shakespeares Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of An Authorship Problem." She systematically shows that contemporary playrights did leave many records of their writing. Shakespeare did not. Titus (above) is correct. It's must reading. Why hasn't Shermer read it before writing such a piece?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShermer's analysis is disappointingly superficial. As Diana Price has tellingly demonstrated, none of the many contemporary documents about the Stratford man identify him as a writer of any kind. Furthermore, as Price again demonstrates, even the most obscure Elizabethan writers left behind some documentary evidence of their education or their occupation as a writer -- but not Shakespeare. Besides, the Elizabethan Age was a time when pseudonyms and anonymous writings were commonplace; it was, after all, dangerous to print anything that might offend the crown. And it was generally considered beneath a nobleman to write plays and have them published. Hence, there could have been a need for a "front man" to hide the identity of some nobleman.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more that orthodox scholars dissect Shakespeare's works, the more they realize how widely and deeply read the writer must have been. Shermer cherry-picks the evidence. Yes, Shakespeare's father may have had relative wealth and social standing in his village, but he "signed" his name with a mark, not a signature. It seems odd that the son of illiterate parents could have acquired such a sophisticated education without leaving a trace of how he did it. By the way, the fact that Shakespeare's plays depict the curriculum of the average schoolboy proves nothing because even sons of noblemen studied the same hornbooks in their early education that commoners studied.
Shermer takes the same intellectual shortcut that many Stratfordians take. After making a somewhat plausible case for the traditional theory or pointing out some weakness in an alternative one, he acts as if he has created an ironclad case and then dismisses all skeptics. The McCrea book that he cites does much the same thing. It makes a plausible, but hardly compelling case for the Stratford man and then seems so sure of its invincibility that it goes on to insult the intelligence of anyone who could believe otherwise.
It is sad that a wiilingness to engage in collegial, academic debate is so lacking in many of the supporters of the traditional theory of authorship. This should be an exciting subject of investigation in which all sides robustly argue the evidence. Those who are skeptical about received wisdom will find that there is much to be explored about the authorship issue and that there are many unanswered questions. It is of course possible that the traditional theory is true, but there are so many logical reasons to question it that seekers of truth should encourage research and respectful debate. There is much more to the subject than Shermer even hints of. I recommend that readers visit http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/
Mr. Schermer gets it wrong about Oxfordians.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJustice Stevens decision for Oxford as the true Shakespeare beyond a reasonable doubt was not the granting of some baseless wish. It was the inevitable discovery, by someone who could not be ignored, a justice of the United States Supreme Court, about where the considerable evidence for Oxford reasonably leads us. Justice Scalia has come to the same conclusion. Two Supreme Court justices. It is fine for Mr. Schermer to dissent. We welcome dissent. But we need stronger dissent than the well-worn, uninformed, erroneous, blustery reasons he gives, such as that there is zero evidence that Edward de Vere wrote under a pseudonym. Schermer needs to do his reading. He needs to read The Art of English Poesy 1589 : "some courtiers write well but suppress it&or else suffered it to be published without their own names to it, as it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned and to show himself amorous of any good art. And some noble-men have written excellently well, as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which number is first that noble gentleman Edward, Earl of Oxford." In all, the Scientific American, that revered journal which in 1940 gave us Charles Wisner Barrell's brilliant analysis of so-called Shakespeare portraits at the Folger, can do much better. Oh, yes. Barrell was an Oxfordian. His work has been updated recently by Oxfordians such as Barbara Burris, as covered by The New York Times. But anyone who would know Oxfordian research well cnough to criticize it would know that.
Michael Shermers dismissal of Shakespeare authorship doubters reflects a century-long pattern of scholarly neglect at the academy and unsupported criticism based far more on eminence than actual evidence. One glaring example of this is the question Greek dramatic sources in Shakespeare. Since most of the Greek canon, including the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, had not been translated or printed in England by Shakespeares time and Greek poetry was not included in the curriculum of the English grammar schools, scholars generally assume the author could not have been directly influenced by the Attic tragedians.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA. D. Nuttall, author of Shakespeare the Thinker succinctly summarized the prevailing opinion, That Shakespeare was cut off from Greek poetry and drama is probably a bleak truth that we should accept. A case can be made and has been made for Shakespeares having some knowledge of certain Greek plays, such as Aeschylus Agamemnon, Euripides Orestes, Alcestis, and Hecuba, by way of available Latin versions, but this, surely, is an area in which the faint occasional echoes mean less than the circumambient silence.
There exists, however, a century-old tradition of scholarship, including the works of W.W. Lloyd, A.E. Haigh and H.R.D. Anders, who recognized elements derived from Euripides Alcestis in the statue scene of The Winters Tale. Renowned Greek scholars Gilbert Murray and H.D.F. Kitto found elements of Aeschylus Oresteia in Hamlet. George Stevens, J.A.K. Thompson, J. Churton Collins and Emrys Jones have variously suggested that Titus Andronicus was indebted to Euripides Hecuba and Sophocles Ajax. Nuttall himself has argued for a profound Sophoclean influence on Timon of Athens, comparing it repeatedly to Oedipus at Colonus. Nuttal refers to his compelling analysis as only pressing an analogy and he retreats from suggesting there was a direct influence on Shakespeare by Sophocles.
Mr. Shermer should be more skeptical about defending modern scholars whose biographical assumptions limit the scope of their analyses. To assume that the Greek tragedians did not inspire the greatest dramatic works of the English Renaissance is to plead ignorance where greater scholars, who could actually read Greek and Latin, knew better.
the only thing michael shermer ISN'T skeptical about is his own power of observation which he is certain is more highly developed than any one else's on the entire planet...he is right, everyone else is wrong...that's all you need to know...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisshermer IS the editor-in-chief of skeptics magazine...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMichael Shermer's column, a response to the article in the Wall Street Journal this past April, is another example of the� hornets nest of rightous indignation that followed US Supreme Court Justice Stevens' courageous statement.� The howls of protest -- of which Shermer's opinion is one -- are clearly intended to discourage new people from looking into the facts of the case for the incumbant Stratfordian position.� Do they protest too much?� That Scientific American -- perhaps inadvertently as a result of Shermer's column --� is providing a forum for an orderly follow-up of Justice Stevens' comments is to be appreciated.�� As far as Shermer's arguments go, his circular reasoning and not-so-subtle disparagement of "doubters" has already been addressed. What has my attention, though, is the number of unsupported assumptions and�misinformation that Shermer managed to fit into a single page; to wit: On what does he base the L500 valuation of "Shakespeare's" fathers estate? John Shaksper left no will and no inventory of his property. Nor did his surviving spouse.� Nor did any other of his children who survived to adulthood with the exception of his supposedly brilliant writer son -- whose will mentions no books, no library, no manuscripts, no musical instruments, no furniture to hold books, no writing cases, no desks, no maps, no public spirited philanthropy for repairs of roads and bridges, nothing to hospitals, churches or schools.� And speaking of schools (Shermer has Marlow on his mind with two disingenuous mentions), Marlow did indeed attend Cambridge on a scholarship provided by Archbishop Parker. YES!� Scholarships were available to promising students! So why did not our brilliant young lad from Stratford recieve one?� Or better yet, GIVE ONE!!� He died a wealthy man with 5 houses and income producing land holdings. He could well have afforded to give at least SOMETHING� to the Stratford Grammar School -- from which came "the many allusions to grammar school education"� mentioned by Shermer. Funny that someone whose literary light shines so brightly on us centuries later left nothing to the school that was (if Shermer's story is true) the sole source of the education that enabled him to write the greatest literary works in the English language. Moreover, it would likely be the source of the education of future generations of his own family.� Go figure. As Diana Price states in Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, if the Stratford story were newly proposed today, no one would take it seriously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs every student of early printing knows, titlepages of 16th and 17th century books can seldom be trusted; there were many reasons for falsifying author, date, place, and edition. An article suggesting that 'x' was the real author of some work would raise no eyebrows, and interest no journalist, UNLESS it concerned our hallowed 'Shake-Speare'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact is, and has been for nearly a century, that the identity of Shake-Speare is simply not known.
But that simply won't do - we must plump for a candidate, invent for him dates of birth and death, and teach in schools a biography full of "we don't know, but may safely assume" 's .
If I have a theory that the Battle of Lepanto really occured in 1572, no-one will care. But if I say the Battle of Hastings was 1067, all hell will break loose, because I'm denying one of the few things people know, and therefore their teachers were wrong and they must be poorly educated. I might as well have said the world is round, in a society which has taught it to be flat for centuries. Everyone knows the apple that fell on Newton (except Newton), or that King John signed the Magna Carta (which he didn't) apart from hare-brained sceptics. Who want to destroy our romantic conviction that a 'country man made good' born on St George's Day was able to grasp great learning and aspire to the status normally reserved for urban nobility.
Fascinating to think why 'Stratman' would have Lavinia reading Ovid's Metamorphoses (Titus Andronicus, Act IV, Sc.I) that Edward de Vere knew so well, since it was translated by his uncle Arthur Golding. To quote S.G.Owen's "English Literature and the Classics" (Oxford, 1912, p. 185):- "In one or other of Shakespeare's plays,there are allusions to every one of the fifteen books of Metamorphes".
John Barton
I know very little about Shakespeare - but I do know a little bit about evidence and statistics. The "evidence" that people here are using is extremely tenuous - the absence of a contemporary record, or the assertion that play has a similarity to another play in a language that Shakespeare probably couldn't have read. I think Shermer is right to encourage people to be highly skeptical on this topic - it seems practically nothing is known. I imagine Supreme Court Justice Stevens requires a higher level of evidence before deciding his cases in court.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy all the discussion about the authorship of the plays? We know very little about Will Shakespeare, less than we do about, say, Geoffrey Chaucer. Those who dismiss Shakespeare as the author of the plays do not want to admit that a commoner who did not attend the university could write such great plays. The plays, of course, were popular entertainment--the equivalent of writing for the movies or TV today. Shakespeare apparently wrote, directed, and acted in plays, a profession then considered disreputable. How many aristocrats have been playwrights? How many Shakespeare scholars doubt that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ Islats
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo he is not "confusing skepticism of one theory with proof of another."
He is saying that by the standards of attribution for other authors of that time there is no reason to doubt that Shakespeare is the author of the plays.
As a sort of meta-critique (I won't bother with an actual critique since the issue is undecidable) the only reason this "controversy" still exists is that highly educated scholars can't believe that someone not as highly educated as them can create works of literature that none of them could ever dream of matching. It's a residuum of the elitist and classist mind-set that at one time completely infested British universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge. Also, since this issue is essentially undecidable it is a limitless supply of publications and the of course doesn't hurt.
Good discussion. It very much illustrates the primary difference between those who challenge Shakspere's authorship and those who defend it at all cost. The four substantive answers in this discussion have been from those whose research and reading bring them to the same conclusion as Supreme Court Justice Stevens and Scalia, that the plays and poetry were much more likely written by the Earl of Oxford than the man from Stratford. Their discussion contains the kind of evidence which has swayed Justices Stevens and Scalia. Yes, it is all circumstantial, but as circumstantial evidence accumulates, it leaves the world of random coincidence and approaches certainty. That is why Stevens declared for Oxford "beyond a reasonable doubt," not because any one bit of evidence provided the proof but because the hundreds if not thousands of bits of circumstantial evidence which have been discovered become powerful enough to warrant that conclusion. The defenders of tradition, as seen in this discussion, on the other hand eschew evidence for one reason or another and attack those with whom they disagree, as, for example, the "elistist" scholars and snobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many aristocrats have been playwrights? A good number but it's hard to tell since they used pen-names like "Shake-speare."
How many scholars doubt that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the plays? 286 have signed the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. That is only a fraction of those who actually do doubt the story handed down to us through the years. For specifics, go to www.doubtaboutwill.org
I do not want to take side. I just would like to know what makes a supreme court justice an expert on Shakespeare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany of these arguments, taken to their logical ends, would say that poor people ( how poor? ) cannot produce fine works of art. You all sure you want to go there?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the anti-Stratfordians here have missed the point. The only thing these other hypotheses have done at best is to raise interest. They have proven nothing. The failing of these hypotheses is a common one to many conspiracy theories and that is "confirmation bias" as well as a "divide-and-conquer" approach. One takes each individual piece of evidence and finds a plausible alternate explanation, not even a necessarily better one, and then assigns it a disproportionately high rating (encrypted message?!). Having done so they state that the existing theory has been refuted and a new theory, their new theory, should take its place. But when one looks at their arguments one finds that the alternate explanations don't form a consistent theory and the individual arguments are no better at explaining the data than the old arguments. This is well illustrated here where we have a number of alternate authors rather than one who, based on the evidence, is a more likely candidate than Will. The only difference is the conspiracy theorists "like" this theory better. Sorry, not good enough. So, given that the existing theory is still the best at explaining ALL the evidence, it remains the prevailing theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@undrgrndgirl confidence is often seen as arrogance by those on the other side of the argument. I have never heard Mr. Shermer claim that he is better than or uniquely capable of logic and critical thought than "any one else on the entire planet". Perhaps you had better address your own inferiority complex rather than expecting others to do it for you.
I find it funny that those that demand that everyone should have an "open mind" are those clinging to ideas that have no basis. So, to avoid having to change their minds in the face of contradictory evidence they want the rest of the world to give them a break and relax the rules of what constitutes proof. How close minded is that?!
I have always thought is was likely that "Shakespeare's" plays were mostly works that date back to greco-roman times. They would have been mothballed during the worst years of the Catholic Church's rule, and then taken back out by Elizabeth once England was less under the thumb of rome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince they would all have been translated into English at various dates, a great many would contain the various Shakespearian anachronisms.
The works were then attributed to Shakespeare to transfer any liability for the "unchristianness" of the works from the royal court...
This would explain why the plays are all of great quality - they would have all been winners of the annual playwriting contests common in the Greco-roman age. It would also explain why there are almost no christian themes - mostly greco-roman themes.
just an idea...
The Shakespeare doubters are a truly amusing breed. They keep repeating the same old chestnuts. As for Diana Price's book it is very funny. I would like to know why Ben Jonson would in the first folio attribute the plays to Shakespeare and not to the long dead Edward de Vere or whoever "really" wrote them. The reasons given are risible by the doubters. Of course the doubters should read Scott McCrea's book, but I have no doubt that the incestous efforts of the doubters will continue to ignore the most likely likely author, Shakespeare. As for the justices of the Supremer Court their opinions in this matter are irrelevant given the clear indications of their deep ignorance. I am also amazed that Edward de Vere wrote plays after his death; truly remarkable! If you try arguing that the plays were written before he died but performed later, please explain the topical allusions to events that occurred after his death. (Say Macbeth?)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease examine the following fragment of manuscript found in the binding of a book that closely matches Shakespeare's Henry IV but is in Francis Bacon's hand. http://www.sirbacon.org/links/baconwrite.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis cannot be easily explained away. I think it is important to look at the deeper evidence that exists and not just the surface assumptions. There may not be a final answer then but at least you will come to a legitimate conclusion and not what is offered here. GH
Are there royalties to payout? Egos to soothe? If it does turn out that Shakespeare was not who we thought he was, it creates nothing more than industry for biographies, scholarly study, and affects not the meat of the matter; the writing itself. Brilliant- from any man, with any education. Perhaps a generation of gloaters will get to say " I told you so." but no other serious ramification will be forthcoming. Analysis and enjoyment of the works should remain static, regardless of authorship. Let the skeptics and lawyers debate; I'll enjoy the writing with impartial agnostic clarity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've got a friend who lives a VERY humble life and as well he dropped out of school early on but he's got a brilliant mind and memory absorbing the most arcane aspects of life and recalling them with great wit he can carry a room becoming the center of attention. Just saying, some minds are wired in such a way that money or birth cannot buy or build, they just happen. So i can see the Bard being legit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA feature of Shakespeare's work that would require an education is his sonnets. Sonnets must follow complicated rules of form. It requires extensive drill-work in school in copying out the sonnets of others and composing practice-sonnets before an author can become proficient enough to produce them as readily as Shakespeare did.
Another elitist argument. Many people have done quite well for themselves throughout history without a formal education. A formal education is not the only type of education available. In fact, I would expect that prodigys don't need the hand holding and imposed structure of a formal education as what they do comes somewhat naturally, and is so much a part of their makeup that they don't need anyone to put their noses to the books for them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere are a couple of links to threads in Michael Prescott’s blog, wherein he argues the case against the Stratford man and numerous commenters weigh in:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2009/04/courting-shakespeare.html
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2005/11/okay_im_convinc.html
Scientific American Magazine was instrumental in 1940 publishing Charles Wisner Barrell's X-Ray exposures, proving that the putative "Shakespeare" portrait in the Folger Shakespeare Library was actually a falsified portrait of Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. Now two generations later, in the Skeptic has seemingly joined with the Wall Street Journal's hit-job on the plenitude of new overwhelming Oxfordian evidence being compiled outside the Academy--by cravenly ignoring its complexity and magnitude. Simply open your mind to evidence in front of your face and you will understand and change your emotionally driven belief.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Mr. Shermer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with the vast majority of what you say in the SciAm article, especially the assertion that, a reigning theory is presumed provisionally true and continues to hold sway unless and until a challenging theory explains the current data as well and also accounts for anomalies that the prevailing one cannot.
There are problems with the Shakespeare theory (to use the language of science), which are readily acknowledged by stand-out scholars like Stanley Wells. The Oxford alternative may account for some of these so-called anomalies, but it can never explain the current data, and therefore has no chance of displacing Shakespeare.
Oxfords only extant work is a collection of mediocre poems which he, apparently, had no problem with people knowing were his. On his supposed ability to write dramatic verse of the quality required, there is no proof whatsoever.
I happen to think that Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeares plays. At the moment the case is not provable, but it is the only alternative theory with a chance of being correct. In the 19th century it was a commonplace amongst the first rank of scholars to assign co-authorship of Titus Andronicus and the Henry VI trilogy plays included in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeares Plays to Marlowe, based on stylistic similarities to Marlowes plays (inexplicably, these claims vanished sometime in the 20th century).
And one cannot read any of the good biographies without being told how Shakespeare began his career emulating or imitating Marlowe. This conclusion may be the case, but it is not fact. The fact here is the close similarity of Shakespeares work to Marlowes. Speculation that Shakespeare either A: collaborated with Marlowe early in his career, B: revised Marlowes work and claimed the revised plays as his own, C: studied Marlowes style and copied it, are all theories that have been proposed to explain it. A fourth alternative, possibly a more satisfactory one, is that Marlowe actually wrote some, or all, of these plays which demonstrate his influence.
This idea is, at present, only an intriguing hypothesis, but there is a symmetry to this theory that I believe persons with your background would find elegant. Perhaps not compelling, but worthy of consideration.
Regards,
Daryl Pinksen
B.Sc,B.A,M.Ed
Mr. Shermer's critics give good advice. He would also benefit from reading some of the pioneering analyses of the authorship issue, particularly Charleton Ogburn Jr.'s seminal work "The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality" which was thoroughly reviewed in Harvard Magazine in the 1980s. I've studied the authorship issue for over 20 years, read over 100 books and articles, and am convinced that the most likely person who used the pen name of "William Shakespeare" was Edward De Vere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the scientific method Mr. Shermer should realize that we Shakespeare lovers are engaged in an inductive reasoning process, which never yields absolute certainty, but only a conclusion which can be judged sound (probable), unsound (improbable), or relatively sound (possible but unlikely). When the preponderance of evidence favors a revision of the theory, a consensus can be reached to change it. However, we are also dealing with rigid censorship by William Cecil, Lord Burghley (Queen Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer), who destroyed any evidence that would prove whether Shakspere of Stratford ever attended school or ever acted on a stage. (Shakspere never spelled his name the same as the author, but the author consistently spelled it "Shakespeare." )
Charlton Ogburn Jr. encountered a modern form of that censorship -- having a very hard time finding a publisher who was open to new scholarship. Today's academic journals are also exercising censorship against valid unorthodox views.
The scientific method was first explicated by Francis Bacon, a learned contemporary of Shakespeare. Bacon belonged to the Rosicrucians, a secret fraternal organization in which members could pursue scientific studies without interference from congtentious religious factions. So in the Elizabethan period, the pursuit of knowledge and the exposure of corruption went underground. It was a time of brutal suppression by Elizabeth's spymaster, Walsingham, and her chief advisor, Lord Burghley. The Sonnets, published in 1609, were also quickly suppressed so that only a few copies survived. But those that do tell a story that remarkably resembles the life events of Edward De Vere.
On reading through theses posts, I notice that the most common Stratfordian response is the anti-"elitist" argument -- the assertion that genius can come from a humble background and does not necessarily have to have a university education. I think some clarification is needed:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe anti-Stratfordians do not deny that genius can come from a humble background. But the works of Shakespeare show much more than inborn genius; they also show immense book learning. Even if the Stratford man did study at the local grammar school, he still would have needed access to great libraries to become as widely read as the author of the plays had to have been. But there were no public libraries in those days. Though Marlowe and Ben Jonson came from humble backgrounds, their educations are well documented. Yet the works of Marlowe and Jonson do not reveal the depth of book learning found in Shakespeare's works.
This false labeling of anti-Stratfordians as "elitist" is mere ad hominen attack. To use this tactic is merely to deprecate the motives of one's opponents rather than to argue the evidence.
The lack of "fit" between the works and the life is why so many people have had doubts about the traditional theory. The reason why many alternative candidates have been proposed is that there are so many people who seem more likely to have written the plays than the Stratford man. One way to arrive at truth is to try out many plausible theories and see which ones survive scrutiny. This is all that the anti-Stratfordians are doing.
The main thing that the Stratford theory has going for it is tradition. It has been accepted for a long time. This is, in fact, Shermer's main point in his article. But longtime acceptance doesn't make it true (e.g., theory that the world was flat). For some of us who are a little less inclined to rely on faith, the weaknesses in the traditional theory are too glaring to be ignored. Forgive us our skepticism, but skepticism often helps us to arrive at greater truths. The Stratford tradition is based on much scantier evidence than the authorships of Marlowe, Jonson, and a host of other Elizabethan writers. See Diana Price's excellent book, Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography.
Most anti-Stratfordians do not say the issue is proved. Most of them believe it is an open question. Anyone who is willing to be open-minded should visit http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/
In addition to Justice John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court Justices Scalia, O'Connor, Blackmun and Powell have expressed doubts about the traditional attribution of the Shakespeare Canon. Although these justices have represented differing political ideologies on the court, what they all have in common is skill in analyzing and weighing evidence. However, a number of stalwart defenders of the Stratfordian faith have responded to Michael Shermer's column (in which he is skeptical of Justice Stevens' position) by scoffing at Justice Stevens and the suitability of the Shakespeare Authorship debate in the legal venue. One unnamed poster went so far as to state that "as far as the justices of the Supreme Court their opinions in this matter are irrelevant given the clear indications of their deep ignorance." This individual (and others) might do well to study the deficiencies in the traditional story before they post, and a good point of departure for them would be to check out an article written by Justice Stevens himself. Originally an address given by Justice Stevens in 1991 at the Max Rosenn Lecture at Wilkes University, it was subsequently published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review [Vol.140: 1373]. In this detailed article, Justice Stevens gives a cogent overview of the facts of the case -- facts that are not in dispute -- and discusses these facts in the context of "humanistic values and their relation to rules of law." He goes on to say that "a society that is determined and destined to remain free must find time to nourish those values," and demonstrates how five canons of statutory construction relate to the Shakespeare Authorship debate. By the way, the first canon of statutory construction is: "Read the statute."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGalileo should be a reminder to those who believe that judges can contribute to science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I ruled the world... Those who summarily dismiss even the slightest possibility of Edward de Vere being the true Bard would be forced to read J. Thomas Looney, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn Jr., Joseph Sobran, Diana Price and Mark Anderson. Only then would they be allowed to voice an opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to add to Bonner Miller Cutting's defense of Justice Stevens' qualifications to address the authorship question. The WSJ article that reported on his views, and those of his fellow Justices, pointed out that he was "a graduate student in English before dropping out to join the Navy in 1941." It also says he "became especially interested in Shakespeare when he attended the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, where a replica of Globe Theater presented many of the plays." So his interest in Shakespeare goes back a long way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article also points out that his interest in the authorship question dates from 1987, when he participated in a mock trial along with Justices Brennan and Blackmun (who also subsequently became a doubter). As Cutting points out, he also presented a paper, later published as an article on the subject. So he has followed the issue for over twenty years.
If writing the works were a crime, there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict the Stratford man. Justice Stevens is qualified to make that judgment, and that's his verdict. His record on the Court shows he doesn't reach decisions lightly. His obviously well-c0nsidered views deserve a little respect.
i have been reading Golding's 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses lately and have come to agree with the hypothesis that it was probably translated in great part by
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisde vere under the very close auspices of Golding, his tutor, over a 2-3 year period.
i.e. if one wanted to identify an event that could reasonably explain the phenomenal genesis of "Shakespeare", this is it.
and to the best of my knowledge, there is nothing even remotely comparable in the known history of William of Stratford.
This anti-semitic diatribe is out of place in a serious discussion about literature and authorship. It should be scrubbed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Skeptic column by Michael Shermer (August 2009) in which he "examined
the case for de Vere" as the man who actually wrote the noble works of
"Shakespeare", and dismisses the thought, shows that he knows nothing of the
complexity and magnitude of this "most important issue in English studies",
according to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The cultural anthropology of why the academic establishment presently clings
to a legend of an uneducated all-purpose genius in place of attempting a logical inquiry and actually reading the considerable accessible facts aligning de Vere's life, talent, and his highly autobiographical, pseudonymous works, will have to be left for another time.
The point here is more basic, that Shermer's hasty conclusions, predictably
propped with half-truths, ignore the first principle of scientific analysis,
look at the data.
Given sufficient space, I could present effective counters to his claims,
such as Shakspere's putative middle-class up-bringing (actually, he left
home because his father was bankrupted and his wife pregnant); the "hundreds of examples of historical and literary consilience", (none of which are presented in evidence); or Shakspere's purported classical education (but he could barely sign his will?).
As is inevitable when we delimit what we consider acceptable history, every
assertion in defense of the traditional Stratfordian "Shakespeare" has to
fail. �Shakspere merely fronted for his employer, de Vere, who was of an aristocratic nature that could not be seen to be "subdu'd to what it works in/ like the dyer's hand."
Once the emotional resistance to obvious biographical, linguistic, and
artistic parallels between Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, and the
pseudonymous works of his creation using a nickname, Shakespeare, there will be, at long last, a new, honest paradigm in this area heretofore governed by hocus-pocus reasoning.
As a suggested format to clear up a lot of ignorance on the subject, why not have Mr. Shermer debate Roger Stritmatter on the veracity of the more than reasonable doubt about the entrenched and now self-serving Stratford authorship claim. Stritmatter wrote a revolutionary book proving that a significant percentage of specific underlined passages in Oxford's bible reappeared--in passages of "Shakespeare". Why does the truth of authorship matter? Because no one can pretend to appreciate a work of art and at the same time ignores its creator as the art's messenger.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe Shake-speare was a brand that lots of different people used to publish potentially controversial plays?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a load of irrelevant nonsense. The name Shakespeare is a black box. It is a word for the greatest works of literary art that exists in the English Language, perhaps in human history. The background we have of the purported author of these works is as perfunctory and as uninformative as they would be of any other obscure writer. The genius of the man lives in his work. His mind is laid out before us in page after page of insight into the human condition. He writes of "vaulting ambition (vault as in pole-vault) that o'er-leaps itself." That is what the imagination of such a man does, as with Einstein, Beethoven and other greats. There will be those who will try to restrict such greatness to a single race, a nation, a class, gender or a personality type, but these are small minds. Shakespeare's works are a representation of the achievements of mankind, on this planet. His truths cannot be "cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in," to anyone's tribal ambitions. I don't care who wrote Shakespeare's works. Whoever he is, he is Shakespeare, a man, presumably, who gifted the fruits of his fecund imagination to all of humanity, because when Shakespeare writes, he writes for all humanity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShakespeare is the unknown soldier of literature. This soldier's toil alone would have been enough to win the war for English Literature. Those who can appreciate the aesthetics of his art, and the masterful psychological insight of his commentary on the nature of the human condition do so, and appreciate the outcome of his genius. Those who can't, argue about the origins of that genius. Then there are those who enviously attempt to use the background of his work to showcase their own egotistical worth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOrdinary, good work comes from a strong educational background and rigorous training. The genius of men like Shakespeare, however, whoever he was, requires no such background. Once he learned to read, he was able to educate the educators. We don't know who the author was, for sure, but we are sure about what he was like.
He was a man, like Einstein, whose observations informed his reading, rather than his reading informing his observation, as for us normal folk. A child, like Mozart for example, with a genius for music can recreate, embellish, harmonize, or even orchestrate from a single melody line, or even just a theme, before they ever learn to write a single note. Other talented musicians have to spend years of training to achieve what seems natural to his genius. The Cuban grandmaster, Capablanca, was beating his father at chess at four years old, and so was Mozart, at music.
Shakespeare's genius therefore probably didn't need rigorous study, all he would have had to do was to read or even hear an account of an event in history and out would pour such insight into human psychology as astounds and informs academics to this day. I don't care who he was, or what Mozart looked like, I know them from their works.
Meanwhile, this Shakespeare “ is a god, whilst we petty men, (like Cassius, who “thinks too much,”) walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves, (unremembered) graves."
An author cannot conceal his background. The real Shakespeare reveals his royal heritage in too many ways to cite here, but best shown in the groundbreaking work of Looney, c. 1930 and greatly expanded on by Carlton Ogburn "The Mysterious William Shakespeare". If you are fortunate to acquire a copy of biography, "The 17th Earl of Oxford" by B.M.Ward you will be astounded by the similarities with Hamlet. Try it. My theory is that Hamlet is in fact a biography of a tragic life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"An author cannot conceal his background," you say. What nonsense! What does J.K. Rowling's work betray about her, I wonder. She must be a witch. What this writer reveals is his inability to understand the power of the human imagination. I just spent a week long workshop with a famous writer. At the end I noted with wry amusement that the writer never once touched on the subject of fantasy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"he following successful titles wouldn’t exist if their authors had followed such a limiting dictum as write only from your own point of view and personal experience:
Silas Marner by George Eliot (Marian Evans)
woman writing from POV of poor male weaver
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
American man writing from Japanese woman’s POV
A Great Deliverance, By Elizabeth George
American woman writing from British male detective’s POV."
(http://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-writer-can-be-anyone-or-anything/)
Most of this tiresome argument about the authorship of Shakespeare's work is premised on a serious fallacy. If this fallacy were truth, then these classics could never have been written.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Watership Down" by Richard Adams
"Tarka the Otter" by Henry Williamson
"Black Beauty" by Anna Sewell
"Gayneck the Pigeon" by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
"Bambi" by Felix Salten
"Charlotte’s Web" by E.B. White (Yes, I cried when a spider died.)
i believe jk rowling's work reveals a lot about her....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe entire series is a post-feminist re-imagining of classic English mythological themes ; Arthur, Merlin etc etc, while
Harry Potter is a masculine-ized version of Rowling herself, existing and evolving simultaneously alongside her traditional feminine avatar in the form of Hermione Granger. utilization of this device allows Rowling to explore the confusing and contradictory world which confronts all modern young women.
Yes, textual analysis can always find relevant relationships between an author and his works, but this is not what is being argued here. Here there is an attempt to actually IDENTIFY the authorship of a literary work by examining the details of the work. This is not at the same level of abstraction you are describing Mr Rhodes. Wichner is going further than the usual analysts in proposing a direct almost one on one correspondence between a character and the author. This is what I described as nonsense. In his argument he is conflating observation with actual experience. This trashes the very basis for theories on artistic imagination. Read Keat's "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or Shaw's "Anthony and Cleopatra."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr Wichner's assumptions of a class based exclusivity are actually that very human flaw which confidence tricksters have used from time immemorial to bilk the vulgar rich of their millions. "A German man who called himself Clark Rockefeller and spun fantastic stories about himself during three decades in the United States has been sentenced to 4-5 years for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter." (CBS News.) Here's a man who wasn't even American yet he convinced people for thirty years that he was a scion of a family as American as apple-pie. If he could do it, why couldn't a man of Shakespeare's genius?
for some reason, the whole authorship question has been wrongly characterized as a debate about class and elitism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit is not.
for the anti-stratfordians it's about common sense.
the orthodox story does simply not hold logical water.
for example, the Sonnets are clearly the work of a world-weary middle-aged man entering the final phase of his life.
the melancholy, bitterness and remorse are palpable and honest. whoever wrote the Sonnets was not "imagining" those feelings.
young people cannot write with any degree of accuracy or insight about being old, because they have never been old. that is a physical reality, not elitism.
under the orthodox chronology, William of Stratford would have been approximately 35 years old at the time the were first published and i cannot imagine anyone reading the Sonnets and concluding that yes, these are the writings of a 35 yr old. they just aren't.
so who wrote them ? if you read de vere's life story and then
read the Sonnets, you'll find they mesh seamlessly. that doesn't mean de vere was Shakespeare, but he sure makes a lot more sense that William of Stratford.
Both Lincoln and Franklin were low born and had less than three years of formal education between them. Look what they wrote.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are making the mistake of equating modern day mental development with that of the 16th Century. Life then was "harsh, brutal and short."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from
the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee,
close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its dewy charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will
shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that
still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a
mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul. "
These words were written by the poet John Keats.
at the age of 25 or 26, about 200 years after Shakespeare. Can you imagine a modern-day 26 year old writing about death in this fashion? Human beings do not necessarily fall into the dogmatic classifications that our generalizations place them in. We've all seen on TV the incredible philosophical musings of a 10 year old facing his imminent demise. Shelly, Keats, Marlowe all died before the age of thirty. Writers of yore were surrounded by disease death and violence at every turn. Tends to age one a bit.
Interesting discussion, but I'd like to know more about the origin of the authorship theories. My guess is that questions about Shakespeare's identity arose in the 19th or even the 18th century, when class lines were clearly drawn and it was obvious that a country bumpkin could not possibly have written these works. Once the seeds of doubt were sown it was easy for the weeds to proliferate--great fun, too--grist for conspiracy theorists, argumentative crackpots, and English professors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy point being that I think the controversy had its roots in class and academic elitism and persisted because it's a got a great hook.
And that IFuerst is the it of it. Why in a Scientific Journal is this controversy being waged? It's because the culture of elitism is very very prevalent in today's America. Elitists have always had this yearning for a special identity beyond the paradigm of vulgar money. There's blue blood and red blood, high brow and low brow, new money and old money, that's rich! (ha ha.) Black and white is no longer sufficiently rarefied, even if you throw out the red-necks and other low-brows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne commentator in Boston defines that indefinable essence as "breeding," meaning WASP. Where have we heard that before? Yes, the difference IS cultural, the most changeable aspect of human history. As I pointed out just now culture can be acquired and not just from books, as a low-brow German émigré, Clark Rockefeller, just demonstrated for the last 30 years. A country bumpkin with the genius of a Shakespeare could easily demonstrate the trappings of high-brow English aristocracy in his writing. If you want to get some insight into Shakespeare at work among the English aristocracy of the day, watch Will Smith at work in "Six Degrees of Separation, or Bernie Madoff."
Why did he chose, with few exceptions, to make his heroes members of the aristocracy? He had to, they were his patrons. It happens in art to this day, and in Hollywood. Whose fortunes do we follow with breathless interest in the media? the fortunes of the Hollywood aristocracy of course. That's the only reason that Shakespeare made his characters high-brow. As in Lear, As You Like, The Tempest , their elevated status makes their decline and demise all the more shocking and dramatic. It was the literary convention. The Seven Ages of Man, wasn’t written by a doddering old fool anymore than it was written by a mewling puking infant.
"Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWritten by Keats at the age of 22 or 23. Unlike many of his fellow Romatic poets, Keats was of "solid middle-class background," Yet his class doesn't seem to affect the sublime nature of his language any more than his age affects his insight into aging.
It's called poetic imagination. "To see the world in a grain of sand," is a faculty beyond IQ. Call it genius, no more measurable than the output of the idiot savant with an IQ of 70.
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour." (Blake)
("Can anything good come out of Nazareth," such as a man who's still shaping our world 2 millenia later?) I don't care if he was a black man from Illanois, or a carpenter from Nazareth. He was Shakespeare. That's what great writers do. Ask Blake.
beautiful lines, no argument, but written as pure poetry in the objective. the Sonnets are different because they are first-person private letters written in poetic form, with many of them essentially cautionary words from an old and broken reprobate to a young man. "forty winters" etc etc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswould the 30-something William of Stratford, ostensibly then at or near the height of his success within the London theatre scene be simultaneously sending private letters of this nature ? remotely possible i suppose, but hugely unlikely.
why not interpret them in the most obvious way with no logical gymnastics required ?
The general level of discussion has drifted from the known facts and supportable conclusions that may be derived from them. The subject being too vast for summation in a letter or an exchange, I would suggest to Scientific American to revisit the Charles Wisner Barrell article in a 1940 issue. That article proved, and was never countered, that the so-called "Shakespeare Portrait" once the over-daubing was X-Rayed revealed the Ketel portrait of Edward de Vere. Now, it can be argued that a fraud concerning this portrait does not prove that de VEre equals the legendary Shakespeare. What is does is demonstrate that fraud has entered long since into this question of authorship and should be examined and dealt with. The Folger Shakespeare Library, the English monarchy, and more than one frequently referenced scholar have participated in dishonest practice to defend the conventional attribution of these works. Thus, we face not only a true recognition of the author when the issue is faced honestly--we also stand to correct important aspects of English history. This is why the question is so ensconced in defensive bombast. I call upon Scientific American magazine to participate in this clearing of the air for the author's and the readers' sake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this("beautiful lines, no argument, but written as pure poetry in the objective. ")Hanson Rhodes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo Mr Rhodes, these were not pure poetry, Keat's poem was written by a man contemplating his own death, with about the same certainty as that of any modern HIV positive individual. The symptoms of TB or consumption were well known at the time. Also well known was the lack of a cure.
The reason I evoked Keats and his contemporaries was to prove the error of using modern time lines for aging to analyse the mind-set of 16th Century writers, when well into the 18th and 19th Centuries, people were routinely dying before the age of 35. Indeed one of the dominant themes in Shakespeare's Sonnets is not only his own aging but the aging of female beauty, and the need for reproduction.
In actuality we have no more details concerning the identity of William Shakespeare than we have of the cause of Mozart's death. I understand the fancy of modern science that it should be able to apply it's magic to age old mysteries and solve them definitively. When however we examine the tenuous tissue of evidence upon which firm conclusions are based, we find no more reason to place any faith in these conclusions than in any of the previous well presented arguments over the years.
the stratford camp would have it that "shakespeare" and his works simply appeared fully-formed via the "transcendent genius" process and consequently require little or no connection to the real-life world of their creator .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnot unlike the creationist view of world history, this is nothing more than a smoke-and-mirrors explanation which has hardened over time into an unassailable sacred cow of orthodox thought.... a house-of-cards of conjecture and supposition built upon not much more than six signatures on some very common legal documents.
the skeptics, however, believe that there had to be a very prosaic educational, monetary, theatrical,political and industrial infrastructure, within which, the creation, presentation and publication of the works was fostered and
supported, and was even possible !
and coincidentally ?, the life of de vere fits perfectly within this necessary environmental envelope.... from the supremely privileged upbringing and education, to the intimacy with Elizabeth and her court, to the travels in Italy and elsewhere, to the connections to, and patronage of the theatrical world and most importantly, the very generous and virtually lifelong financial support of the government.
i.e. this is a guy who realistically COULD have produced the "shakespeare" canon even without taking into consideration the numerous life parallels within the works themselves.
What does it matter if De Vere is in fact William Shakespeare, what would have changed? A rose by any other name is as sweet. We'd know more about him? No, because life's variables are not that many. "There's nothing new under the sun." There must be a thousand people all over Europe who could have fit the profile presented of Shakespeare's upper crust hero. No, the payoff is pure class rivalry. The greatest writer the world has ever seen, must not be a middle-class hack, because middle-class hacks do not dabble in the sublime. He must be a patrician not a plebe, because we patricians are a different kind of human being. That's what it's all about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is no coincidence that this debate which has been going on in Europe forever, should suddenly have gained traction here in the USA at the same time that the gap between the super rich and the middle-class has suddenly become almost unbridgeable. The nouveau rich have always wanted something to prove they are a different branch of the tree of man. Old money has nothing to prove.
That's what the vulgar, conspicuous consumption that characterized the new Wall Street moguls is all about. It is not an end in itself, but a means to the end of establishing to the world that we are not one of the "little people" because we have a lifestyle that "they" cannot even comprehend. That is what historically the endowments to the arts, the rise in the value of collectibles, and the devotion to the literature of luxury has always been about. That is what exotic art from the time of the Pharaohs, to the Renaissance in Italy, to the last big boom in commerce in America and worldwide to a lesser extent has been about. Apart from academic ambition, that is what this discussion is really about.
context adds nothing to meaning ? i certainly wouldn't agree with that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin fact, one of the main reasons the authorship controversy has gained so much traction in recent years is due in large part to a collective search for a proper context in which to read and understand the works.
i personally did not like shakespeare from the othodox
point-of-view at all. i found the combination of the works and the incongruous Stratford back-story totally unsatisfying.
re-reading them from an Oxfordian point-of-view, however, changes everything. they open up and start to make sense and you can actually begin to see and feel the world in which they were created. like night and day.
Well, Rhodes, you seem to be stepping on your own point, perhaps intentionally. Yes, context does add richness and meaning to a piece of literature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever I'm not sure if you're making or ignoring one important point, which is there are really three contexts in which a piece of literature is always read. Most of the discussants here seem to lack the academic elasticity to give credit to all three contexts. These are (1) the personal context of the reader, (2) the historical context of the author, and (3) the scope of the author's imagination for his setting.
Here's your point:"i personally did not like Shakespeare from the orthodox point-of-view at all. i found the combination of the works and the incongruous Stratford back-story totally unsatisfying."(Rhodes.) Note the word "personally" here.
Certainly the context of the READER is the most important for him/her but it is the least authentic, even if the most exciting. It is however inauthentic because of its evanescence. It changes from reader to reader, from date to date, indeed from mood to mood. So we cannot take what you, Rhodes, found satisfying or not, even though I assume you mean intellectually and not just emotionally so. Even the Oxonian viewpoint is inauthentic, England now "ain't what it used to be!"
The other context is the historical context of the AUTHOR This seems to be the only point of this discussion. It is almost with a touch of assumed modernist superiority that we view the genius of this ancient writer. We don't even accord him the respect of thinking he might be able to do what we ourselves are doing to him. That is, we place him in our imaginations into a straight jacket according to our assumptions as to his class, educational background, and our own perfunctory knowledge of the academics of his age. This is amusing if not ridiculous. Even basic questions are ignored here such as for example, who was Shakespeare's mother? What was the background of the Ardens, their violent place in history? What would be the psychology of a youth born to a mother who lived a life far removed from that of her relatives?
The most important context of all is totally ignored. The imagination of the writer. Members of his mother's family were executed in London for high treason.. How would this have fired the imagination of her son in sleepy Stratford. The point is such a lad could take any aristocrat within reach as his model, he didn't have to BE an aristocrat. A creative writer, can easily comprehend this; apparently, not an empirical scientist
i have no need for shakespeare to be an aristocrat. it would not matter to me one way or the other if he was or wasn't . i have no class axes to grind. history is history.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishaving said that however, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that whoever wrote the plays was indeed 100% aristocratic. it permeates the works from beginning to end.
and it is not artistry. this is simply an innate point-of-view which cannot be otherwise and makes no attempt to be anything other than what it is.
i like an up-from-nowhere story as much as anyone, but this is not it. William of Stratford is a complete fiction. what's really interesting, however, is finding out how and why the Stratford story came to replace the real one.
http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-biography-mother-and-father.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"THE MARRIAGE OF SHAKESPEARES PARENTS
The marriage between Mary Arden and John Shakespeare in 1557 must certainly raised a few eyebrows! John was of Yeoman stock and Mary was a member of the aristocratic Arden family. The major thing that the Bard's Mother and Father had in common was that both the Shakespeare's and the Ardens were staunch Catholics. This was extremely important as England, at the time, was fiercely Protestant and Catholics were viewed with real suspicion and often sheer hatred. John was clearly a very ambitious man and this is demonstrated not only by his choice of wife but also by his incredible rise in the community as a prominent citizen of Stratford. The reason that his rise to prominence was so amazing was that John Shakespeare ( father of the Bard ) was totally illiterate, he used glovers compasses as his signature. Mary ( mother of the Bard ) was no help to him in this quarter as she was also unable to read or write and used a running horse as her signature. John and Mary married at the ages of 26 and 17 respectively, a year after the death of Robert Arden. So John married a wealthy young lady giving the Shakespeare's a good start to married life and their role as parents."
You obviously then give no credence to the above account of the status of Mary Arden, Shakespeare's putative mother. The Arden's too were declared persona non grata by the English government because of treasonable remarks made by a close relative, for which he was executed. This, to me, is sufficient to explain the secerecy which lurks behind his identity. From a cultural standpoint, I've seen it often enough in my own life how a woman can marry below her class out of love and then inculcate the values, manners, and lore of her own family into her children. So even if in Shakespeare's day a man's station and status in life was determined by his father's, his outlook is always that of his mother's family especially if they have not been rejected by that family. This for me is enough to explain the cultural discord between Shakespeare's station in life and his cultural mores.
there is also evidence which suggests that William of Stratford's daughter was illiterate or barely literate. i would be interested to hear a Stratfordian rationalization of this anomaly... how a person who wrote 30-odd plays of the highest literary quality could have both an illiterate father and an illiterate daughter. somewhat unlikely to say the least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin fact, the more you read of William of Stratford, the clearer
it becomes that his "biography" was created backwards....
that someone long ago established him as the author of the works for whatever reason and then subsequent generations starting filling in the blanks with supposition and conjecture.
the bottom line is that it simply doesn't ring true.
"When two people decide to disagree they often have to first decide to agree on what it is they are disagreeing on!" (clcking)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat we agree on is the murkiness surrounding the authorship of the Shakespearian plays. Since this is after all a scientific journal, let me say that what set me off, defending what after all is only conjecture, was the rash departure by many of the contributors from the conventions of the scientific method, which begins by synthetic imagination which hardens into a testable hypothesis which can then be subjected to the rigors of the protocols of some method of inference. Then and only then can it be said that a conclusion has been reached, with the confidence depending on the method of inference being used.
I was surprised that the readership of such a distinguished journal as this seems to be willing to set aside the rules of inference and to accept a conclusion one way or another, based on nothing more than an untested, maybe even untestable, hypothesis.
Having been trained in the social sciences myself I am quite willing to accept that we will never be able to achieve the certainty of laboratory analysis, but that makes me even more aware that the only FACT that will stand here is that we will never really be certain, scientifically, even at the level of statistical probability, plus or minus say 1 percent, who or what the author of the Shakespearian was.
My last word on this is to remark that probably hundreds of times more has been written in favor of the conventional Shakespeare being the author than has been written by the skeptics. Indeed more has been written debunking the skeptics than has been written by the skeptics themselves. I don't see how anyone can come to any confident conclusion until he has followed the logic of a good portion of this literature. The parable of the sower comes to mind here.
The historical and literary argument for or against William Shakespeare is irrelevant. Frankly, it doesn't matter WHO wrote the plays and sonnets. Any more than knowing who painted a beautiful picture, wrote a song, sculpted a statue, etc., all that matters is it exists. Is Hamlet any less of a profound exposition of the human psyche? Of course not. One of my favorite statements is a Klingon general in Star Trek saying "You have never experienced Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon." Shakespeare is universal. He belongs to human (Klingon?) society and it is totally irrelevant who actually put pen to paper. His themes of love, war, bravery, jealousy, anger and history are universal, and all of this backbiting argument about who wrote what is somewhat juvenile and counterproductive. We should be celebrating his profound insight and deep understanding of the human condition, and not gnawing at each other like rats in a cage. Shakespeare should have written a play about such human madness, but he was interested in more important things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAuthorship is vitally important to the interests of a reader. Authorship is the added dimension we know and call Art. Art could be thought of as a shadow of its own creator at a point in time. To not be interested in the shadow's source demonstrates lesser interest in the piece.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Swan of Avon's body of work has raised countless questions over hundreds of years. Therein is prolific and obsessive literary structure, experience, eclectic yet journeymen level of knowledge, eros and new language.
Detailed authorship evidence is now pointing to a heretofore unlikely candidate. With evidence piling up, much of it published in the play's signatures, this suspect whispers from beyond. Clues of her existences are in English records and her signatures embedded in the plays by name, knowledge, experience, associations, family, ancestry, foreign languages and even growing up nearest the highest levels of the royal court .
But the back story may be the best yet. This suspect does demand an indictment of the common sense if not objectivity of scholars of over half a millenia who searched and defended a suspect for authorship. These suspects until hate have been white, male and Christian.
Would this enigma be fissured with a credible and extremely well documented suspect, scholars must reapply themselves to reassess the reasons for such long term blindness. Blindness may be a strong word but on this matter her signatures are littered throughout the body of work. Why then, was a dark-skinned Jewish female excluded and remains an outsider to the suspect list?
Once evidence and good minds gather to lift the rightful mind from the beyond, we'll need to listen further, very hard to her. Since we missed her deliberate embedded clues she littered for half a millenia. My new wonder is how much longer will scholars ignore these signatures.