Thanks to Art Scott who recommended Contested Will I have a much better grasp of the identity issues that swirl around the greatest writer in history. But, like Homer and Jesus, the biographical facts about Shakespeare are pretty sketchy. James Shapiro does a masterly job sifting through the evidence about Shakespeare. Shapiro points out time and again where earnest proponents of Shakespeare as the sole writer of the plays forged documents and invented facts to strengthen their case. Most readers will come away from Contested Will with a belief that the plays of Shakespeare were written by a group of collaborating writers and actors rather than Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford. I’ve read about 100 books over the years on Shakespeare and his works. Contested Will is one of the best. GRADE: A
Phil loves these books Will of the World was a favorite. I will pass it on.
Thanks for doing Friday, George. I’ll be back on Sunday and do the summary.
Phil will enjoy CONTESTED WILL, Patti. I’m always available to guest host FORGOTTEN BOOKS.
I’ve always thought the entire question may be a tempest in a teapot (oops) but there are a lot of people who care as much or more about who wrote the plays then the plays themselves. Yet, of course, the play’s the thing (oops again), right? Going back a ways, my Shakespeare prof in college (4 semesters worth) was a stalwart William Shakespeare wrote ’em all person, and that formed my earliest opinion on the matter. Later, I was pretty well convinced it was Bacon who wrote them, though not all of them… then I decided it didn’t matter that much to me, I’d moved on to other literature, Trollope, James, Austin, so many others.
James Shapiro, author of CONTESTED WILL, addresses the need for some people to know more about Shakespeare the man, Rick. Like you, I’m not bothered by the fact that Shakespeare and his fellow actors produced the plays. But some people are bothered by the notion that the plays were collaborative projects instead of the result of one man’s efforts.
The controversy continues and even grows for one simple reason, the truth hasn’t been told. The attribution of the plays and Sonnets to an uneducated small town businessman who had no correspondence, letters received, or even attributes at their passing. is simply preposterous. No one in their right mind (who has indeed read the works) can truly believe it.
Shakespeare is not known to have traveled outside of England, yet the plays reveal an extensive knowledge of Italy and France.
The plays reveal an intimate familiarity with court life and manners that Shakespeare, as a commoner, could not have obtained simply by conversations at the Mermaid Tavern.
Shakespeare’s point of view in the plays and poems is always that of an aristocrat. He has created commoners, but they are mostly buffoons who mangle the language. He portrays the nobility as individuals, but the lower classes as types, even stereotypes.
Imagination is the latest mantra for one simple reason. There is not the slightest biographical connection between the man from Stratford and the plays and poems. If there was one, even the slightest, it would be trumpeted to the far corners of the earth.
Yet the “evidence” that Bacon or the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays is weak, Howard. The argument that the plays were group projects looks more and more likely.
As Stephanie Hopkins Hughes put it:
“Forget about the group theory, that is, any idea that a group of writers worked together on the plays the way they do today on screenplays. That’s nonsense. No great and unique work of literature every got written that way. That’s just as idiotic as the idea that Marlowe came back from the dead or that a 16th-century woman wrote Shakespeare. Let’s be serious.”
The evidence that Oxford wrote the plays, though circumstantial, is hardly weak. In fact it is quite strong as summarized in the following article (one page)
http://politicworm.com/2010/07/06/the-smoking-canon/
Shapiro is less impressed with the evidence for Oxford writing the plays, Howard. All of the alternate author theories are problematic.
A vague memory from college Shakespeare (admittedly over 30 years ago): No one in the time of Shakespeare or for the subsequent 150 years after his death doubted that he wrote the works attributed to him. Doubting Shakespeare’s authorship became a bit of a hobby-horse in the late 1700s. To me, it’s a bit like THE DA VINCI CODE–the clues only make sense if you already know what you’re looking for.
Shapiro does a nice job of providing commentary by Shakespeare’s contemporaries like Ben Jonson, Deb. Those facts undercut a lot of the conspiracy theories.
It is not surprising Deb that the issue wasn’t raised until much later. For generations the predominant attitude of the University authorities towards Shakespeare and other professional actors and their plays was one of hostility or contempt. It was not until 1863 that scholars from Cambridge began preparing the first university-sanctioned series of his works. It wasn’t until 1883 that Oxford University allowed a Shakespeare play to be performed.
As noted by Stephanie Hopkins Hughes: “It was popular interest in Shakespeare, initiated by late 18th- and 19th-century writers, actors, composers, and impresarios that finally cracked the academic stone wall. They made him an icon, but they still didn’t know much about the man himself. There was next to nothing written about him by his contemporaries, no literary letters to or from this most peerless and, according to Ben Jonson, prolific of writers. Nobody in his home town seemed to remember anything about him; no anecdotes about him or his family had been passed down through the generations, none that connected him in any real way with a career in literature and the theater, with plays that, during his lifetime, entertained the Queen.”
The dearth of Shakespearean evidence is due in part that his plays fell into obscurity for about 50 years, Howard. Then, when the plays and their greatness were rediscovered, those letters and personal recollections were long gone.
Phil wonders how such a large body of work could have so singular a voice if it were produced by committee. Maybe it’s possible, the group worked out the plot, but one person actually wrote the plays.
Phil’s right, there seems to be a guiding intelligence to all the plays, Patti. But there are also so many incongruities the issue of others “helping out” seems a reasonable explanation.
You should really have a look at The De Vere Code, by English actor Jonathan Bond. That book is about the authorship of the sonnets, not the plays.The evidence presented in it is direct, not biographical, though Shapiro and others have always had precious little to say on the subject of why a humble out of town writer would adopt the persona of a lofty aristocrat to write love poems to an aristocrat; poems that nowhere reference the poet’s Warwickshire background, but do reference his fall from high status to disgrace and his familiarity with Queen Elizabeth.
But all this is beside the point, since Bond’s book presents new evidence amply demonstrating that De Vere himself acknowledged the authorship in a fairly straightforward way, totally in keeping with the literary word games popular at the time.
In contrast to the plays, it seems obvious that a single person wrote the Sonnets, Ned. I’ll certainly track down THE DE VERE CODE. I’m not that fond of THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS by Helen Vendler. But I did like SO LONG AS MEN CAN BREATHE: The Untold Story of Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Clinton Heylin.
George – You sound so convincing about the reasons for the dearth of Shakespearean evidence that one could almost think that you know what you are talking about rather than simply guessing.
The only way we’ll know for sure, Howard, is if we take a time machine back to Shakespeare’s time.