Class War Over Shakespeare's Identity

The Times (U.K.) ^ | June 01, 2005 | Jack Malvern

[nickcarraway]

THE outgoing artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and his ebullient successor have clashed over the true identity of the playwright.

Mark Rylance, who leaves the Globe at the end of this year, has always doubted that the author was William Shakespeare. He recently endorsed a theory that Shakespeare’s work was composed by a team of writers led by Francis Bacon.

Dominic Dromgoole, who will join the Globe from the Oxford Stage Company, has branded Mr Rylance’s favoured theory “baloney” and its supporters “snobs”.

“I think that all this theorising about Shakespeare is absolute baloney,” he told The Times. “There is a mass of historical evidence that shows there was a working-class playwright from Stratford writing the plays. All of this other stuff is nonsense. It says more about the people who are putting forward the theories than Shakespeare himself.”

He believes that supporters of Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, are motivated by snobbery. “People can’t accept that he was working-class. They can’t accept that his father was illiterate, and that he wasn’t posh.”

Mr Rylance, chairman of the Shakespeare Authorship Trust, last year credited Francis Bacon as the author. “I became more and more convinced that Francis Bacon was the doorway into it and had to be involved in some way,” he said. “Undoubtedly the Stratford actor (Shakespeare) is involved in the creation of the plays because he is a shareholder in the Globe but I have not seen a convincing argument that he was capable of writing the plays.”

In a foreword to The Shakespeare Enigma, a book by Peter Dawkins that proposes a team of writers led by Bacon, Mr Rylance wrote that he had difficulty reconciling the Stratford actor’s access to learning with the intellectual references in the plays.

“The amount of learning in the plays has been downplayed and the opportunities that the actor Shakespeare had to learn have been played up,” he wrote. “I do argue that there is cause for reasonable doubt that Shakespeare the actor wrote the Shakespeare plays and poems, and alternative theories should be weighed fairly without resort to slander of the individual proposing the theory — an all too common occurrence in the media.”

Mr Rylance has not limited his authorship theories to Bacon. He is listed by the Shakespeare Oxford Society as endorsing Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. “I find that the unfortunately limited evidence of the Stratfordian authorship theory seems to reveal little more than monetary motivation,” he wrote in a 1997 society newsletter.

“I find the work of the Shakespeare Oxford Society reveals a character, in Edward de Vere, motivated to use the mask of drama to reveal the true identity and nature of his time, as only someone in his position would have known, and as was the well established habit so clearly demonstrated in Hamlet.”

Sceptics of the Oxford attribution mention that De Vere’s poems are not of a high standard and that his death, in 1604, is inconvenient for a playwright who went on to write 11 plays after that date.

Professor Anne Barton, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, described De Vere’s death as “an insuperable problem”. “It is like the attempt to attribute Shakespeare’s plays to Francis Bacon. Like that one, this (theory) is a product of snobbery, that a Stratford grammar-school boy could not have written the plays, and I’m thoroughly fed up with it.”

FOR

FOR ‘All this theorising about Shakespeare is absolute baloney. People can’t accept that his father was illiterate and that he wasn’t posh’

DOMINIC DROMGOOLE

AGAINST

‘Shakespeare was involved, but I have not seen a convincing argument that he was capable of writing the plays’

MARK RYLANCE

[LibertarianInExile]

As you like it, I suppose. Frankly, I'm bard with the whole subject.

But I've always assumed it was a priest who was a much lesser known playwright, Father Benedictus--Inky Holmes, before he took up the robe--who wrote all "Shakespeare's" works. He was well known for his Church festival one-act stuff even after he joined the priesthood. Of course, the Anglican church couldn't let worldly stuff be performed under a priest's name. Sadly, few know of him today, and everyone ought to, because it's trickled down in a cliche you hear all the time (though few folks know its origin, of course)...

..."there's no plays like Holmes' for the holy days."

Freeper Freepun' PING!

[Brian Allen]

<< " ..... I have not seen a convincing argument that he was capable of writing the plays."

There are .... um ... how shall I put this so as to not offend ... um .. the plays?

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

KNAVE! Thou punner! Thou reviled! Thou lowest of the humorists, at whose wit even hyenas do not laugh, FIE on thee. And if not fie, at least cream pie...

< grin >



Historical Footnote: Fie = Zot in Shakespeare's time....

[ran15]

I also believe Bacon was the writer of the plays. Unfortunately the English literature establishment will not question Shakespeare, for the exact reasons they stated right away in this article. It is to them about equality and class struggle, so its an emotional issue.

[Khurkris]

...(in my best Spartacus voice)...I AM WILL SHAKESPEARE!

[snarks_when_bored]

Shakespeare was ill-educated and relatively unlettered. It's easy to see him as frontman for Bacon and/or Marlowe at the Globe. He probably would have made such a deal because he was fond of money (so it's said); no doubt, he would have been handsomely compensated for being the frontman. Indeed, he did retire a wealthy man (by the standards of his locale).

But if Bacon or Marlowe or anybody else wrote those plays and allowed Shakespeare to claim authorship, he played a supreme trick on himself, cheating himself out of the reputation of having been the greatest playwright of all time in any language. What a price to pay for observing the social niceties of the day!

[burzum]

The most inconsistent thing that I see is that Shakespeare also wrote poetry that is consistent with the way that he wrote his plays. I would see no reason for Bacon to write the poetry as well (considering that only the plays were profitable).

Just due to the poetry, I think its highly likely that Shakespeare wrote the plays. I believe he was an artistic genius who overcame his poor education. His plays are brilliant enough to support this assertion.

[SittinYonder]

There are .... um ... how shall I put this so as to not offend ... um .. the plays?

That's always been my response. As a fan of Marlowe, I'd buy into the theory that he wrote the plays if it wasn't Shakespeare, but if Marlowe or Bacon were capable of writing the plays, why not Shakespeare himself?

[Squantos]

DOH !

[snarks_when_bored]

I would see no reason for Bacon to write the poetry as well (considering that only the plays were profitable).

Poets and playwrights rarely write just for the money (poets, especially). And Bacon (or any other Oxford swell) wouldn't have needed the money.

Just due to the poetry, I think its highly likely that Shakespeare wrote the plays. I believe he was an artistic genius who overcame his poor education. His plays are brilliant enough to support this assertion.

If he overcame his poor education, why did he seem to have trouble even writing his own name? We've got six of his signatures and all are shaky. A man who had himself written down thousands of lines of complex verse would have had a steady hand, it seems to me. Of course, perhaps he had some sort of palsy from all of that writing!

It's fun to speculate, but frustrating, too.

[Brian Allen]

<< Shakespeare was ill-[Schooled] and relatively unlettered. >>

So were Henry Ford and Winston Churchill.

And are Bill Gates and Richard Branson.

Shall I go on?

And, please do not confuse "schooled" with Educated.

[Socratic]

...but if Marlowe or Bacon were capable of writing the plays, why not Shakespeare himself?

Of course, I have always thought that Michael Faraday was actually a composite of other men. It just does not stand to reason that the son of a blacksmith who received no formal education and started out as an apprentice to a bookbinder could become the head of Chemistry at the Royal Instutution. It really was a small team of imposters who made all his electrical and chemical discoveries and gave his famous children's Christmas lectures. Or, perhaps I'm just one of many who deny the existence of true genius because of petty jealousy pr prejudice.

[snarks_when_bored]

In Shakespeare's time, it would have been much more difficult to engage in self-education than in later times. Life was still for the most part (as Hobbes wrote) "nasty, brutish and short".

And the historical, literary and Biblical references in Shakespeare are of heroic scope. It would be inaccurate to describe the author(s) of those plays as un-schooled, it seems to me.

Churchill was not un-schooled, nor is Gates (even though he dropped out). And neither Gates nor Ford nor Branson are known for their knowledge of history or literature or the Bible or such stuff, knowledge which comes from prolonged study and meditation on the material.

Still, I take your point...

[SittinYonder]

perhaps I'm just one of many who deny the existence of true genius because of petty jealousy or prejudice.

LOL! Me too! Anytime I see someone who appears to be smarter than I am or more successful, it is apparent to me that the person is being supported by some cabal or, at the very least, that person sold their soul to the devil and will reap the rewards in hell.

Shakespeare was an illiterate hack, but I'm a great writer.

[Socratic]

Shakespeare was an illiterate hack, but I'm a great writer.

Actually, I was going to say that but my modest charms forbad me. ;o)

[nickcarraway]

There is no way that Bacon could have written the works attributed to Shakespeare, because we have too much writing by Bacon to compare it with. No one could develop a second writing style, so developed, over more than 37 plays, that was completely contradictory to their own style. Whoever wrote Shakespeare's work had a unique style and use of words that was repeated consistently. There is no way that this style was developed completely independently of a writer's earlier works. A writer can't even control some of these characteristics. I suppose someone willa argue that Bacon had a severe mental illness with mulitiple personalities. The fact is, it's more likely that Queen Elizabeth I wrote Shakespeare's work, because there is less writing by her for comparison.

For the same reasons Shakespeare's work could not be written by a group of writers. His collected body of work was obviously written by the same person.

[nickcarraway]

Statistical Tests Are Unraveling Knotty Literary Mysteries (Oz, Federalist Papers, etc.)

[Socratic]

Thanks for reposting this link. I see that I commented upon it when first posted - very interesting!

[nickcarraway]

I don't think you realize, Shakespeare was not from a family of "peasants." He was a family that had family that had strong middle class and entrepreneurial values. John Shakespeare desperately wanted to be a a gentleman with a coat of arms and he passed that desire on to his son. William Shakespeare felt he had succeeded in life because he had attained that, more than anything else. As for the education, it is only conjecture that his education was a poor as you say. He was removed from school at the age of fourteen for financial reasons, but what his education did consist of is a blank.
There is a possibility that his family were recusant Catholics, in which case, he may have had an excellent education on a more clandestine basis.