Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Your goal appears to be smug, with gnostic undertones. Typical conspiracy theory stuff. Not a good way to win people over. Sure it feels good.
The countersuit: Do you have a scintilla of proof that what scholars consider Shakespeare’s later plays on literary grounds were actually written years earlier? N.B.: According to experts on the early English stage, nobody wrote plays except to be performed in the immediate future; and not with no hope of performance, as Oxford is supposed to have done.
Macbeth in particular is clearly based on King James’ Daemonologie, first published in 1597 but reprinted in 1603, on James’ accession to the English throne. Sucking up to James would have been hazardous while Elizabeth was still alive; so the ailing Oxford would have had to work fast, writing a work that was never to be performed until years after his death.
Your goal appears to be smug, with gnostic undertones. Typical conspiracy theory stuff. Not a good way to win people over. Sure it feels good.
Well that’s a stupid argument.
Travel over any bridges built with the concensus of experts on bridge construction? If do, why, if you really can’t trust them?
You just push all the same buttons as anyone with a pet theory like say flat earth.
Also you ignored my comments on history.
Sad.
Don’t mean to come across that way. The ongoing failure of text to accurately reflect nuances of tone.
Thanks! It’s always nice to be pegged.
Sort of puts to lie the “sorry I don’t mean to come across that way” statement.
If you want to overturn orthodoxy, you have to have a winning argument, not snark.
Well, I ignored a lot due to your implied ad hominem (do I really have to point it out?), which are now more direct.
Your comments on history are sweeping and non-specific. You respond as if you are willing to engage in a discussion, but you clearly have no interest in that.
So why hit me with a bat for not doing something you clearly do not want to do.
What is the value to you of swinging that bat?
I thought it was a good-natured reply. Was I wrong?
I do not want to overturn orthodoxy. And you have not examined my “winning” argument, if there is any such thing. I make “an” argument in my talk, but you make clear that watching it is a waste of time. And I am inclined to agree with you.
You find no value in the premise that there is an argument worth considering, so you have no desire to review such an argument. I completely understand.
So why do you bother engaging at all on this topic?
As has been pointed out, you are calling things ad hominen that are not.
I am hitting you for sounding like every other type of “they are lying to us” type of person, whether it be UFOs, flat earthers, or what not. Thr fact that you cannot see it is, of course, how it goes.
People who say things like you cannot trust a consensus of experts are not being serious. Of course we can. On rare occasions, they are wrong. Usually, this is not a major overturn, but a modification of what is known. Atoms still exist, but it turns out they were not the fundamental particle. The lists go on.
Thr need to have special knowledge that the mainstream does not have is gnostic in nature. If you were trying to change minds, you would take a different approach. Instead, you take up an adversarial one.
I have seen your sort of evidence before. It is crap. You have nothing new to offer.
Sad.
So you don’t see this statement of yours as an implied ad hominem:
Because you are not only wrong, you are making arguments in poor way that is all too familiar. I am sharing my experience.
Actually, I did not make that statement, but agreed with it. And second, no. It is not an attack on you at all, but a statement about the scholars. Frankly, in light of how our elites are, kinda fits the zeightguist of today.
Well, at least I’m fulfilling your expectations. Enjoy!
True.
Well I’ll end with agreement on the zeight! Date night.
Except for “zeitgeist.”
Sure. Having already looked at the evidence is a good reason to not look at the evidence.
Amen to that.
That’s where we get actual orthodoxy from–Nicean orthodoxy.
And it’s better attested than Socrates is.
Where have you been lately?
That only applied before a handful of experts who work for the federal bureaucracy and were popular with the leftist media disagreed with Trump about chloroquine.
Now science means “Never question the official experts.”
Geez, man. Get with the program.
Really?
Look, I can’t vouch for his arguments. And some of the counter-arguments looked good to me.
And I really don’t have time to look at the evidence here.
But he made arguments. There was nothing gnostic or conspiratorial about them.
Well, let’s just say, having been raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I learned as a teen why people want you to trust the “authorities” and “authoritative texts.”
Of course, one of the great values of being raised a JW is the lack of Progressive political and social programming. Made a much clearer path to becoming a Classical Liberal, to a point—I think my party died with George Washington.
Oooooh!
Tell me more! Tell me more!
Tell me how Hecate showing up doesn’t mean it’s not a Christian play! Macbeth is definitely burning in hell now, right? Right?
He’s all like “Abraham, send Banquo to give me a sip of water!” And Abraham’s like “No way, dawg! Look at that chasm! And you asked for this, you big jerk.” That’s how it is, right?
I believe he sounded more like a Kuhnian type–just to reach for the way of thinking about this in which I have some competence. The experts aren’t lying. But they are settled in their paradigms, and have a hard time thinking outside them.
Thank you.
Maybe at the end. But the foundational “The problem seems” paragraph is no ad hominem. Maybe a misunderstanding of the argument.
I would like to thank all of the commenters, especially the humorous ones, for elevating this little aside-post to the point that it could receive the coveted Lileks Post of The Week® badge.
It’s the logical next step for the craziness of the Trump-Covid-lockdowns-riots-Biden-gaslines era.
May this send the signal that we have finally hit bottom and it’s all uphill from here.
Thank you!
Congrats on the post of the week!
I heard a theory that Shakespeare imbibed in an ergot brew which has properties similar to LSD. Having taken LSD and other psychedelics, that could explain his insights into human nature and the human condition. Just throwing that out there ….(lol)
Mark, you haven’t told me why you reject the Elizabeth I theory. I’m not particularly attached and am interested to hear your take.
And why was De Vere anonymous?