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My Shakespeare Confession
Okay, I admit it. I am a Shakespeare heretic. Well, 95 percent, anyway. I know, I know. Some of you are already shaking your head thinking I’m going to start talking cryptograms and conspiracies and such nonsense. I’m used to it. I stumbled into being a heretic almost 35 years ago and there’s always a significant contingent of head-shakers when the subject comes up. That’s okay. I’m really not interested in convincing anyone. I just find it fascinating, that’s all
I started out a math/science guy in school, looking at a career in computer programming. Shakespeare had made no dent in my consciousness. Then I sold an article to a personal computer magazine and decided to become a writer, switching my major to English. I experienced a great Shakespeare professor in an upper-division class. Authorship never came up. Not until I was a graduate student.
Authorship was far from my thoughts that day in the mid-1980s when I was browsing Tower Books in Sacramento, CA, and stumbled upon Charlton Ogburn’s The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & the Reality. It was a hefty tome of 900+ pages, and I remember thinking, Whoa, the lengths someone will go to just to get attention.
But then I noticed who had written the forward: Famed historian — and the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded — David McCullough. He talked about a lunch he had in the early 1960s with Ogburn, who apparently had been a writer of note on many topics, primarily natural science. They were talking about a book Ogburn would write and McCullough would edit on the geology of North America. He described Ogburn as “a writer of intelligence and integrity and wonderful feeling for the natural world.”
Then the topic turned to Shakespeare. McCullough admitted that he always thought people who raised doubts about the Stratford man were cranks. But Ogburn, he said, “was absolutely spellbinding.” He described more of their conversation before saying this about the book:
“…this brilliant, powerful book is a major event for everyone who cares about Shakespeare. The scholarship is surpassing— brave, original, full of surprise — and in the hands of so gifted a writer it fairly lights up the sky. Looking back on that evening years ago, I felt as if I had been witness to the beginnings of a literary landmark. Nothing comparable has ever been published. Anyone who considers the Shakespeare controversy silly or a lot of old stuff is in for a particular surprise. This is scholarly detective work at its most absorbing. More, it is close analysis by a writer with a rare sense of humanity.”
Well, even though I was a poor student managing a 7-Eleven store part-time as well as being a Teaching Assistant, I couldn’t help but fork over the funds to buy this book of which THE David McCullough could speak so highly.
The first half explored the scholarly consensus that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, which seemed such a reasonable proposition. I was taking a graduate seminar on Classical Rhetoric, one of the most illuminating experiences of my life, so I was ready to put Ogburn to the test to see if his case was rhetoric over evidence, if logical fallacies abounded, and especially if suppression of evidence was evident. (Heh, see what I did there?)
I was enough of a student of argument to know the ways a writer can suppress evidence, so I began a long process of checking original sources in the university library. I wanted to verify Ogburn’s claims about shoddy scholarship. I sat with his book, grabbed books off the shelves, checked sources, and compared arguments to find out what Ogburn had not addressed, how he was refuted, how orthodox scholars handled dissent.
What I found was scholarly fraud: how much students believe and take for granted, how much professors spread conjecture as truth, theories as fact, fabrications as dogma. (Much like the academic Left does today.) It took months to grasp how scholars, documentary evidence, arguments, and the tradition of commentary and interpretation symbiotically interacted in the arena of Shakespeare.
It made me ill.
I remember I was a little over halfway through the book, a book that read like the most elegant mystery novel I had ever read, when I came upon a detail that triggered in me the thought, “That’s one damned coincidence too many.” And I finished the book stunned with how right David McCullough was about Ogburn and his writing. [In case you’re interested, it relates to Lord Burghley’s motto, Cor unum, via una.]
But what was wrong with me? How could this notion of Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare survive with such a powerfully articulated argument that marshaled an unbelievable ton of evidence?
I approached my favorite English professor because I wanted someone I respected to examine the argument and to discuss its merits. It was his graduate seminar in Classical Rhetoric that I loved so much.
He dismissed the book without examination, a response contrary to all that was implied in his teaching. I left the book with him anyway, somewhat baffled. I approached my best friend, a fellow English major, who has gone on to teach at a Catholic university in Texas. He would not look at the argument either. I was astonished. Two brilliant, thinking minds who would not even examine the argument, who simply dismissed it out of hand.
What was it about this topic that so provoked such bizarre responses? If I had been a good graduate student, a properly impressionable graduate student, then I would have dropped Ogburn and gone along with the prevailing view.
But I knew enough that, whatever its faults, Ogburn’s argument merited a hearing and that what I saw among my peers was something anathema to true scholarship.
Look, it’s okay not to be concerned with who wrote the Shakespeare poems and plays. It’s okay to miss out on the opportunities that come with reading those works with new eyes.
If you are at all interested, and if you want to at least take a few minutes to see what I look and sound like, you may want to watch this YouTube video of a talk I gave some years ago.
Most people want to start with the premise that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and you have to provide extraordinary proof to overcome that position. Makes sense. But I approach it in a different way, a more balanced way:
Let’s suppose that writing the Shakespeare poems and plays were a crime. Let’s suppose that YOU are a member of a Grand Jury. You are to decide which of the two candidates should be indicted for the crime of writing the poems and plays. Both candidates are presumed innocent, so you must decide if there is a preponderance of evidence one way or another.
I am representing William of Stratford. I claim he is innocent of the charge and should not be indicted. Opposing counsel has already presented their case, that the preponderance of evidence falls on my client, not theirs, not their precious Edward De Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. What nonsense to claim he is the author.
I begin at that point, addressing the grand jury, you, right at the beginning.
Give it a watch. Do I make the case?
Published in History
Sure. There are solid reasons for casting doubt on William of Straford as the author Shakespeare. The lack of evidence is rather astounding when one approaches the subject with an eye for evidence and reason.
Many whackos have advanced alternative candidates, the most prevalent being Francis Bacon and Philip Marlowe. There is much to criticize about such endeavors.
The one candidate that stands profoundly apart is Edward De Vere. The case for him was first made in the 1920s.
Since that time, many great actors, including Derek Jacobi and Michael York, as well as several Supreme Court justices, have indicated their support for De Vere.
But that is not enough to convince anyone. Like so many controversies, this one requires each person to examine the arguments on both sides and come up with their own conclusions.
For me, the astounding connections and parallels between the play Hamlet and De Vere’s life are ultimately convincing. If he did not write that play, then some explanation is in order as to how the author could have written it with such insider knowledge.
In short.
Doubts about the true identity of the author “Shakespeare” have persisted for centuries. For an introduction to why these doubts exist, click here. The many political, literary, cultural, and intellectual figures who have expressed such doubts include:
“In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare… Whoever wrote [Shakespeare] had an aristocratic attitude.”
“We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of chipmunk tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know by our reasoning powers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet.”
(Letter dated 4th January 1956) “Are you interested in the opening up of Walsingham’s tomb, to look for Shakespeare’s MS? I wish they would find something, if only to irritate the Stratford people!”
“The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare Societies comes to mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse.”
“I no longer believe that… the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him. Since reading Shakespeare Identified by J. Thomas Looney, I am almost convinced that the assumed name conceals the personality of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford… The man of Stratford seems to have nothing at all to justify his claim, whereas Oxford has almost everything.”
“Where did this Shakespeare come from? Where did all that knowledge and eloquence and truth come from? … I believe Edward de Vere and not William Shakespeare [of Stratford] wrote Richard II and, in fact, all the plays attributed to the man from Stratford.”
“I am… haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world.”
“I’m falling in love with this idea that the real Shakespeare was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford . . . It is astonishing what the Edward de Vere camp has turned up in the way of research to explain all kinds of mysteries of the plays and the life of the so-called Shakespeare. Very, very interesting stuff.”
“Conceiv’d out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism, personifying in unparallel’d ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) one of the wolfish earls so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendent and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works… I am firm against Shaksper. I mean the Avon man, the actor.”
“You think about William Shakespeare, you think a man basically with a second grade education wrote some of the greatest poetry of all times? I think maybe not.”
Will Shakespeare originally of Stratford-Upon-Avon wrote Shakespeare’s works – his sonnets and his plays. He was born into a Catholic family and baptized Catholic and received the last rites from a Catholic priest. His cousin was Jesuit priest who was publicly tortured (drawn and quartered) in London. During the latter years of his professional life, he purchased Blackfriars, a large home known to harbor hunted Jesuit priests where it was also rumored private Catholic masses were celebrated.
Most of his plays deal with the struggle of being and remaining Catholic in a tyrannical Protestant Tudor regime through veiled allegories in stories set not in England but elsewhere on the European continent to avoid punishment and incarceration from Elizabeth I’s censors and torturers – Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Richard II probably being some of the most notable.
Hamlet in particular is probably the most overtly Catholic play Shakespeare wrote and throughout poses the question of how Catholics are to survive in a Protestant tyranny – whether to take up arms or stay quiet and conceal one’s true beliefs and live but ultimately face eternal damnation?
There is substantial and growing historical evidence from historical and literary scholars that supports Shakespeare’s Catholicism. Any reading (or the performance) of a play by Shakespeare without dealing with the hundreds of Catholic allusions therein displays merely a superficial understanding of the Bard’s work and who he was.
See also:
Shadowplay by Clare Asquith (and her lectures available on YouTube)
The Quest for Shakespeare by Joseph Pearce (and his lectures available on YouTube)
Through Shakespeare’s Eyes by Joseph Pearce
Secret Shakespeare by Richard Wilson
In Search of Shakespeare by Michael Wood
Will of the World by Stephen Greenblatt
Shakespeare, the Papist by Peter Milward, S.J.
The Heart of His Mystery: Shakespeare and the Catholic Faith in England under Elizabeth and James by John Waterfield
All the conspiracy theories that Will Shakespeare was some other personality ignores a vast amount of actual English, Catholic, and Protestant history and amounts to so much twaddle.
On a personal note: Just dipped in to offer my two cents on this continuing and resurfaced silly Shakespearian identity conspiracy theory because I am reluctant to comment on the audits of the 2020 election that Democrats, the MSM and even some here on Ricochet feel are unnecessary because the obstruction by election officials and county supervisors in Arizona and elsewhere, and the destruction of ballots, records and electronic voter data and votes is not all that important.
Come to think of it, Shakespeare and the history of the murderous Tudor regime of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I can teach us a great deal about how tyrannies come to be – even tyrannies in the 21st Century. Hamlet may also be warning from the past and provide some guidance about how to survive or fight back against a tyrannical regime and a regent who was able to assume the throne through nefarious means.
Me, too, but I watched the 6-minute one. Shakespeare didn’t leave behind any books such as would be usual for somebody who needed to learn a lot of stuff to write what he wrote. His will didn’t mention any, and in those days a will would have listed books. He also didn’t leave any correspondence, period, which would have been another avenue by which he could have learned some of the things he wrote about. Maybe there was more in the video, but that was my takeaway.
Thank you, Sir. May I have another?
Well, okay…
Well, dang. Dang, dang, dang, dang, dang.
No, I’m not touting that heresy.
But the good Baylor doctor’s concerns sure could force me into . . . I don’t know, something that’s not a heresy. A schism. A reformation. A gadfly on a soapbox, to mix up some metaphors.
G-rated version from little old Baptist me:
Thanks. Yes, I realize that but I was referring to those of us ordinaries who were told that this guy Will Shakespeare wrote the plays, and since we had that concept in our brains for so long and oft repeated, we could not fathom it being any different, and that any other postulation was a conspiracy theory, and/or that our beloved Bard was a poseur and a fraud (also not necessarily the case). Several comments above reflect that state of mind.
It’s a psychological phenomenon.
It reminds me of another ‘scientific’ belief embedded in our consciousness by the archeological community of academics, who told us that the pyramids of Giza were built by certain Pharaohs circa 2400 BC using rolling logs and slave labor, and that they were tombs, despite zero evidence they were such things.
Any engineer who examines these massive, precision structures will emphatically state, quite correctly, that we couldn’t build these things today with all our technological capabilities. With this understanding, the entire narrative of when civilization began comes into question, profoundly threatening the whole house-of-cards.
Yes. John Anthony West argues quite well on this topic.
I hope the thread doesn’t de-rail on this. Although I’d welcome the debate. It would be interesting however to see if the same people come forward dismissing it all as more poppycock conspiracy theories.
I have come to loathe this kind of thinking. We have a hand-me-down epistemology. Everything is hearsay, and if you aren’t skeptical and entertain other possibilities you are just a vessel for transmitting (possible) falsehoods. Take some responsibility and at least watch the video(s)!
Dickens wrote the screenplay for Animal House? Man, he was ahead of this time . . .
I thought TBA shot JR . . .
Sigh. It’s so hard to keep up with the latest generation of kids. Is he any relation to Francis Bacon or Roger Bacon?
Wright Brand Bacon . . .
Thank you
Giving a Shakespeare scholar an “Oxfordian” book is like giving a physicist a book on perpetual motion. He knows that the odds are astronomical that the book is crap.
The idea that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare arose only hundreds of years after his death. His contemporaries had no doubts on that score. There’s a funny quote from his friend and rival Ben Jonson, in which he notes that Shakespeare boasted of never crossing out a line: “Would that he had crossed out a thousand,” gibed Jonson. N.B.: That’s not how a commoner talks about an Earl in the early 17th century.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays were published as books, more often than not the inaccurate, pirated editions now called the “bad quartos”. The custom was to put the name of the acting company that owns the play on the cover, not the playwright. So people would write in the name of the playwright: on the plays attributed to Shakespeare, the name written in is “Shakespeare” 100% of the time.
When scholars started to do statistical studies of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, they found that Shakespeare sticks out like a sore thumb. Where everybody else has classical allusions, Shakespeare has plants and animals, especially birds. He was a country boy. John Milton, who was nineteen when Shakespeare died, later wrote about Shakespeare’s “native wood-notes wild“.
Shakespeare is also more risqué than his contemporaries. Apparently, because first Queen Elizabeth and then King James were big fans, he was allowed to get away with things that other playwrights weren’t.
(I’m a little short on time right now, so I’ll have to come back to this later this evening.)
Many assert that several Shakespeare plays have been proven to be written after De Vere’s death in 1604. If such proof exists, then indeed this would be a problem.
There is always way too many points to argue in the larger debate, and it is always easier to make assertions with implied ad hominems to end discussion. Such is the rule of the far Left, and it’s sad to see such tactics arise among the more thoughtful.
But if anyone is willing to focus on ONE narrow domain of the argument, one that if proven true does indeed cripple those who question authorship, then I offer a debate.
The proposition is clear and direct: “Scholars have absolutely proven that several of Shakespeare’s plays were written after 1604.”
If anyone were actually willing to defend such a proposition, then I suggest creating a separate conversation “Shakespeare Plays that Date after 1604” (marked Do Not Promote to the Main Feed, since none of this ever would be).
Make the case. I will ask some questions to clarify my understanding of the case you are making. I will take an opposing position, simply put: “There is no absolute proof that any of Shakespeare’s plays were written after 1604.”
The value of such a discussion lies, not in proving anything to anyone about who is the author, but more about how easily “authorities” can mislead us into thinking something has been proven when in fact it has not been.
Be sure to give me a heads up if you are willing to tackle such an argument.
My problem is being asked to review evidence again. When the same evidence is provided over and over and any rejection is met with “Look at it again” I am done.
yep
That is an asinine reply and not a response at all, yet you want people to take you seriously.
As they kids say, smh.
Also, I love the argument “there is little evidence” someone did something or even existed. All we have are the records from the past. We know of works that are referenced but are lost to history. How much proof do we actually have of Alexander the Great? We have histories, written by men. Some of the stories are fantastical. What we know of the past is often what people wrote down.
It is weak sauce to attack “orthodoxy” because data is slight. That accounts for many, many figures from the past.
“Thank you, Sir. May I have another.” That’s my response to ad hominems. But if you are looking for responses, take up my offer to debate the dates of the plays. Should be simple to prove one or more were written AFTER 1604.
Remember, a consensus of scholars prove nothing.
Which, of course, is your right. No one’s requiring anything of you, as far as I can tell.
Well, so much for THAT assumption. :-) (Apologies in advance to @roblong.)
You are lucky, I only got a letter from his Barrister.
Did he say “Thou art a very ragged Wart.”?
I didn’t see an ad hominem in either comment in which you used this reply. So, you lose the argument.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, final answer.
Well, you could have asked me to quote the implied ad hominems, but this really wasn’t a discussion, was it…