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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
(I’m by no means a scholar or expert on this subject but have casually followed for many years) DeVere, as the Earl of Oxford, was an insider of the court – had he been popularly known as the author, the connections between characters and themes in the plays and those in power would have been more exposed and likely more subject to ridicule. That is at least the explanation for anonymity in DeVere’s lifetime and after his death as I recall from Ogburn’s book and others. Mr. Alexander may well have more to add or to refine, but I saw your question pending and took a stab at a brief reply.
Thank you for this post. My father (and my brother) had been involved with the Shakespeare Oxford Society in the 80s and even had Charles Vere overnight at our home in Fort Wayne (of all places). During the brief visit, Mr. Vere went for a hike in the countryside (which we referred to as a “swamp”), lost a shoe in the muck, and claimed to have seen a beaver (more likely a muskrat). I was away with the Air Force, but received a copy of the Sonnets with an inscription by Charles. At the time I knew nothing of this subject, but somewhat inspired by my father’s enthusiasm, I read Ogburn’s book and found it fascinating despite my limited exposure to the works that make all of this so compelling.
Another part of my introduction was another video (not seen previously in comments) – the 1989 Frontline episode: https://youtu.be/wkqcLJZ9I3
It’s a bit long (56 minutes), but very well done and brings to mind the tone of many of the comments on this post.
Thanks, Franco, not only for asking nicely, but also asking a focused question with real interest. I can answer both with one detailed answer, but not tonight. I’ll get back to you in the morning, with more detail than you’d expect.
Cool! Thanks!
For the life of me, I can’t tell what point you are trying to make.
My point was merely that the witches in Macbeth are based on the “real” witches in James’s book, and on James’ idea that Satan’s power lies in his ability to deceive.
I think of that play as a Christian worldview play. But Hecate shows up an one point, and she’s not a character from a Christian view of the universe. I think she’s from Greek mythology.
If the witches in the story are drawn from a Christian demonology, that helps to show that this is still a Christian worldview book. Maybe Hecate is a demon personally, but at any rate the whole witch . . . um . . . culture is just a bit of humanity corrupted by Satan. Same old.
(But that one paragraph was just me putting Macbeth in hell in the place of the rich man in the Gospel parable.)
I’ll admit I’m not the smartest person here on Ricochet – not by a long shot. And what sounds like a decent argument to me, I’m sure often leaves others shaking their heads in despair. Having confessed that upfront, let me share a couple of books I’ve read which argue that William Shakespeare did write the works attributed to him. The arguments in them made sense to me.
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare by James Shapiro
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
*********************
And I’ll throw in a couple more that fascinated me. They don’t have as much to do with the authorship question as they do with the expections people have of the person who wrote the plays.
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly by Doug Stewart
Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obsurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck by Paul Collins (the second chapter)
No, it was a jury trial. I was asked, by you no less, to serve as a juror. I voted. Also, I told you why I voted.
You should be happy. 😁
There was no need to ask you to, “show me on the Ricochet where the bad man touched you.”
I think the whole “Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare” theme is born out of elitism. After all, it’s hard to believe a boy who was taken out of school at age 13 or 14, and who became an actor could possibly have written such sophisticated works. Yet, there were scores of people who worked with him, who acted for him, who worked at the theater, and who published his works. It would be hard to keep it a secret if a different author were toiling behind the scenes. And wouldn’t such a hidden author be envious of Shakespeare getting all the credit for his hard work?
Calling it like I see it. I am not saying he is not making arguments. I am saying his form of argument is similar, if not the same, to the sorts of arguments I hear on other subjects.
I don’t agree that it comes from elitism necessarily, and I am certainly an anti-elitism guy.
The flaw in your argument (I’m not saying you are wrong about who authored the plays) is that the plays weren’t seen at the time as anything special. They became important long after Shakespeare was dead. For the most part, sophisticated people didn’t even attend plays. It was Professional Wrestling for Elizabethans. Actors were considered one step above prostitutes, and one reason why men played female roles.
So there was little ‘credit’ to be had and it’s actually an example (perhaps) of someone of high station slumming it for fun.
There are other speculations I have heard. Some say the sonnets sound more like they were written to a man, and not a woman. And/or that they seem like they were written by a woman, not a man. DeVere could have been gay (wouldn’t be the first rich-kid creative type who was secretly gay) or it could have been Queen Elizabeth who wrote them. There’s a lot of conflicting information, but fundamental to be aware of is that authorship wasn’t a big deal in those days, that actors weren’t that interested in authorship or even ‘art’ as we know it today and that it took quite some time for these plays to rise to prominence.
Not Francis?
What convinces me of Shakespeare’s existence is that he wrote in his author’s introduction in The Original First Folio, “Had∫t I tuppence f’r ev’ry time-traveler who swange by & ask’d did’st I write my own [redacted], then wouldst I buy another theater.”
I have no sense of an appeal in elitism for me in being skeptical of the Stratford authorship. As I look at the facts known, and the things unknown, the probability of a Stratford author seems to me beyond remote. The notion of this perspective as being elitist (or in this case “born of elitism” which seems a lesser charge), repeated in some form in several comments on this post, is very often made but never to my knowledge supported with evidence. Indeed, I don’t know how we could ever prove or disprove such a thing, so it seems to stand more as just mere denigration. In the end, however, it is irrelevant to the known facts regarding the authorship.
For the many known authors who rose and achieved despite humble origins and hardship, don’t you think most Americans heartily celebrate and admire these stories? Why would this perspective be different with the Shakespeare character? Is it that the skeptics seem to be challenging a heart warming narrative?
I’ll gas on a bit more with an anecdote on the elitism thing.
I have read very few of Shakespeare’s works, and only as part of school assignments. I struggled with it. But, it remains one of those things (like Bible lessons) that you know you ought to do sometime. For much of my life I assumed that somehow or another I would wind up in prison, and I told myself that then I would have time to read my Bible and to read Shakespeare. But here I am still a free man and as ignorant as ever.
I was gifted a copy of Ogburn’s book in the late 1980s and I read it not as someone interested in Shakespeare but as someone who felt an obligation to be able to answer truthfully if asked, “did you read it?” At the outset I had no preconceptions and no stake in the venture, and no one in my circles would have cared one way or the other what I thought about the authorship question.
For over thirty years I have been monitoring, albeit casually, but have yet to see anything that impresses me as an effective refutation of “The Mysterious William Shakespeare – The Myth & the Reality”.
1/
Franco, it will take a bit of groundwork to answer your questions about why not Elizabeth I and why anonymous. Understand that I am not trying to convince you or anyone else of anything. It can’t be done. In terms of complex arguments like the authorship question, one must dig in with an open mind and evaluate evidence and arguments for themselves.
But I can give you some pieces of why De Vere (and no one else) and why anonymous. So first some groundwork.
It’s a simple question really: “Do the great writers write themselves into their works?” Not full-on autobiography, but do they reveal themselves and their state of consciousness? I have come to see that they do, across time and cultures.
Sappho of Lesbos wrote beautiful Greek poetry, and we know just enough of her life and times for one translator to say she could speak with feeling about her own world…Line by line…she constructs the biography of a voice.
And the greatest comedic playwright in Athens, Aristophanes, so obviously targeted his contemporaries that he has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared by influential contemporaries.
And the same holds true in the Roman world. The great Roman love poet, Catullus, had a style that was highly personal… In fact, a number of prominent contemporaries appear in his poetry, including Cicero, Caesar and Pompey.
Ovid, the great Roman poet of The Metamorphoses, revealed so much in his works, that information about his biography is drawn primarily from his poetry. He admits an indiscrete poem helped get him exiled by Caesar, quietly referencing one of the royal family, I suspect.
In the Eastern world, the greatest of all Chinese poets is Du Fu: In his aptly named biography, Du Fu; A Life in Poetry, the author says that Du Fu wove his poems out of the materials that surrounded him. He was not afraid to make an example of himself, even to the point of bitter self-mockery.
In Japanese literature, the noblewoman and lady in waiting Murasaki Shikibu is ranked among the best. In The Tales of Genji, widely seen as the first novel ever written, she wrote of the lifestyles of high courtiers. Murasaki’s autobiographical poetry shows that she socialized with women but had limited contact with men other than her father and brother.
In Italy, the poet Dante wrote his In Vita Nuova to Beatrice, a real person whom he met as a young man. His most celebrated classic, The Divine Comedy, not only included himself and Beatrice, but also many of his contemporaries in Florence. Even his birth year can be deduced from allusions in The Divine Comedy.
2/
The great English writer Chaucer wrote what he knew of his world. Some see in the characters of The Canterbury Tales his historical contemporaries. His work offers a critique of society during his lifetime, so much so that one writer makes the case that Chaucer’s writings were held against and led to his death.
More recently, Jane Austen wrote about her intimate acquaintance with the landed gentry of regency England, writing what she knew—brilliantly.
And Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, wrote what he knew. His most famous novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, embody his life and experience in the Midwest and his working on a Mississippi River boat as a young man.
Even the great musicians and songwriters do this. I’ve been listening again to Robert Greenberg’s course on the classical composer Brahms, and Greenberg repeatedly points to how his life is reworked into his music.
Sir Paul McCartney put a cap on it. “When I write, I’m just writing a song, but I think themes do come up. You can’t help it. Whatever’s important to you finds its way in. I saw someone writing about an artist, a painter and he says, ‘Every painting a person does is of themselves.’ Even though it’s a portrait of his wife. Himself gets in it. You really can’t help it, cos it’s you making all the marks on it.”
So it’s rather amazing that orthodox scholars insist that this doesn’t happen with Shakespeare, that there is no point in looking solely at his works to reveal the life and the man. This is one of the reasons that great writers like Walt Whitman, Henry James, and others had their doubts about Will of Stratford.
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that academic literary scholars look at the Sonnets, and rather than seeing the heart and soul of a person’s personal experience they see a man who writes academic literary exercises.
One of the things that ultimately convinced me that there was a case to be made for De Vere, was the steady accumulation of circumstantial evidence in the writings and the connections to the writer Shakespeare in the Elizabethan Age that points to De Vere. In fact, wherever we would expect to see William of Stratford, we see De Vere. This is the power of Ogburn’s scholarly work.
If you want to understand what I mean by circumstantial evidence, then watch this two-minute section of my talk on the accumulative power of circumstantial evidence:
https://youtu.be/95sGqeR_uOE?t=444
As I go through the circumstantial case, I talk about Shakespeare’s Knowledge in the realm of books, law, music, political power, Italy, and literary acquaintances where you would assume to see our Will, but instead De Vere shows up, time and again.
3/
But the crowning case comes when we examine Hamlet and what that play reveals when we set De Vere’s life side by side. Please note that I quote orthodox scholars only, all who believe Will of Stratford wrote the plays:
Combined with piles and piles of other circumstantial evidence, I personally find the case for De Vere 95% convincing. Because absolute certainty will require the mind to create blind spots, the kind that must be avoided by true scholars.
Elizabeth I shows up time and again in the plays, but not as the author.
4/
So why anonymous?
Because De Vere wrote for the Court. He put what he knew into the plays. He was the most powerful Earl in England, and he had incredible insider knowledge of the workings of power and politics and religion and so many more. He saw the fawners and flatterers and hypocrites, including his father-in-law, the most powerful man in England.
William Cecil must have thought it quite a coup to have him as a son-in-law, but that did not work out as expected.
De Vere ridiculed the powerful, including Elizabeth. And you know how the powerful hate that.
He had to be canceled, and there is evidence that points to his agreeing with that decision.
The plays HAD to be viewed by history as not applying to Tudor England and the strong personalities of the time.
And they seem to have succeeded–mostly.
There’s no time to go into those details. Others scholars have done the yeoman’s work there.
The challenge, of course, is that William Cecil, as well as his son Robert Cecil, who took on William’s role upon his death, and the power and means to destroy documents, to prevent so much from getting out.
It’s like looking at an ocean of myriad islands rising out of the water, but not being able to see how they are connected underneath. You speculate about the connections, and multiple accounts meet varying levels of credibility.
It’s hard to find a coherent story overall, especially one based on the documentary evidence.
But it is a revelation to read Hamlet with an eye to the author and realizing that the play within a play was, in fact, when played to Elizabeth’s Court, a play within a play within a play.
A wealth of revelations await those with an open mind.
Hope this helps.
Final note: If you get Shakespeare wrong, you get Elizabethan England wrong.
It’s good to remember that one of the patrons of The First Folio was married to Susan Vere, Edward’s daughter. Hmmm… I wonder who was holding the manuscripts?
Also interesting to note the politics of 1623, and how the publication could be used for political purposes.
I thought that was a Trident sub crew back in ’97. Or Owen Pitt.
Iron hand killed one under New Orleans… With a whole lot of help.
In fact, Shakespeare was a BFD in his own time. Scholars estimate that of the 150,000 books printed in London at the time, 50,000 were various editions, many of them pirated, of Shakespeare. People read the plays like novels.
But you’re right, in that Shakespeare did not become a demigod until the later part of the 18th century. Not at all coincidentally, that was when snobs began proposing aristocratic replacements for the glover’s son from Stratford. Nobody proposed the Earl of Oxford, though: even the loosely wound knew he died too soon.
”For the most part, sophisticated people didn’t even attend plays.” True, Queen Elizabeth and King James didn’t go to the theater. As the Royal accounts copiously attest, they regularly had the theater brought to them, with plays put on in halls in the Royal residences.
This granted Will the power to give monarchs advice.
I don’t understand. You mean the conclusions have some resemblance to the views of conspiracy theorists and gnostics?
What’s wrong with that? If his arguments are good, then why should some resemblance to conspiracy theories be a problem?
I’m teaching this class next semester, “Great Plays and Philosophy.”
Remind me to do a thread asking all you people for tips. Useful things I don’t know about Hamlet, Macbeth, and Merchant of Venice, and things like that.
No problem! Happy to help!
Useful?
Oh. Um, never mind…
If the argument that the Shakespeare plays are very, very Catholic is a good argument, isn’t that a good reason too? If homeboy was a closet Catholic–or even a guy who thought Catholicism wasn’t all bad–that might be a reason to keep quiet about his Catholic-friendly writings.
Perhaps.
Object away, smart people!
I do think there are some good arguments made that the author was a secret Catholic…
Here’s something I wrote many years ago regarding Polonius representing Lord Burghley, and includes a section on Corambis (Part Three), and how the authoritative Arden Edition under the editor Jenkens treats the subject. The current edition of the Arden Hamlet has completely avoided the subject.
https://sourcetext.com/polonius-as-lord-burghley/
This article was forwarded to William Cecil’s current living relative, Michael Cecil, the 8th Marquess of Exeter. He enjoyed it.
Sorry. Can’t get to it today! Swamped.