Michael Prescott's Blog

Shreds from the whole piece

Recently two books came out dealing with a similar subject–a series of plays attributed to William Shakespeare that are now seen as inauthentic for one reason or another. The books are The Apocryphal William Shakespeare, by Sabrina Feldman, and North of Shakespeare, by Dennis McCarthy. Though the authors have very different styles and take very different approaches to their subject matter, they both come up with a similar solution to the problem posed by these plays. I find their thesis fascinating and highly plausible. In this rather long post I’ll try to sketch it in, making due allowance for the complexity of the subject.

To understand this controversy, it’s necessary to know something about the publication of plays attributed to William Shakespeare prior to the 1623 appearance of the First Folio. The First Folio stands as the first complete, or nearly complete, collection, but for years prior to its publication, plays attributed to Shakespeare had appeared in quarto versions. A quarto was a cheap publication, essentially a pamphlet, corresponding roughly to a magazine or supermarket paperback book today. The First Folio was aimed at a wealthy, sophisticated readership; the book was hugely expensive, far out of reach of most people. Quartos, on the other hand, were inexpensive, disposable products that the average literate person could afford.

There were three sorts of quartos attributed to William Shakespeare prior to the First Folio:

1. So-called “good quartos.” These are versions of Shakespeare’s plays that are substantially the same as the Folio versions. There are 8 good quartos.
2. So-called “bad quartos.” These are versions of Shakespeare’s plays that are noticeably inferior to the Folio versions. They are typically shorter, lacking key scenes, and featuring compressed and degraded dialogue. There are 12 bad quartos.
3. So-called “Shakespeare apocrypha.” These are plays attributed to “William Shakespeare,” or to “W. Sh.” or “W.S.,” which have no parallels in the First Folio and are not considered to be authentically Shakespearean works. Some of these plays were published in later editions of the Folio (the Second Folio, Third Folio, etc.). Even so, they are generally dismissed from the canon today because their style, themes, and overall quality make them unacceptable as products of Shakespeare’s distinctive genius. The so-called apocrypha include such obscure works as The London Prodigal, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and Locrine. There are 11 quartos in this category, more or less (the contemporary attribution of authorship to some titles is disputed).

Now, what we have here is a rather unusual situation. We have two bodies of work both attributed to the same author. One body of work–the collection of plays that constitutes the First Folio–consists of acknowledged masterpieces of English literature. The other body of work–the bad quartos and apocrypha–consists of plays that scarcely rise above the level of hackwork.

This odd situation does not pertain to other authors of the same era. We are not faced with a collection of bad quartos and apocrypha attributed to Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, or other popular playwrights. Only in Shakespeare’s case do we face the dilemma of deciding between good and bad versions of the same play, or between authentic and inauthentic contributions to the author's oeuvre.

How to account for this state of affairs? The standard response goes as follows. The bad quartos were pirated editions produced by unscrupulous actors or by thieving audience members. If it was the actors, they retained portions of the script and filled in gaps from memory. If it was an audience member, he was taking down the play in shorthand as it was performed. In either case, the printer and publisher must have known they were putting out a bootleg edition that was not authorized by the author or by whoever actually owned the playscript.

The apocryphal quartos, on the other hand, were plays written by some less successful, less popular playwright than Shakespeare. The printers and publishers of those quartos simply put Shakespeare’s name (or initials) on the title page for its commercial value. They believe that a quarto published under the name of “William Shakespeare”–or even under the initials “W.S.”–would sell better than one published under the real author’s name.

So what the conventional view amounts to is a conspiracy–or more exactly, a whole series of conspiracies–among actors who were betraying their acting companies for cash, auditors who took down the dialogue in shorthand, and unscrupulous publishers and printers who put out pirated editions of some plays and deliberately misattributed the authorship of others. And all these conspiracies continued for years, while William Shakespeare himself never objected, never fought back, never had the offending quartos removed from circulation, and while the authors whose plays had been unjustly credited to Shakespeare never voiced a peep of protest. The printers and publishers, despite their criminal practices, never suffered any penalty for these bad and apocryphal quartos. Indeed, they must have found the whole business quite profitable, while apparently Shakespeare himself, though known as a skinflint who pursued his debtors through the courts for repayment of trivial sums, was unconcerned with this substantial loss of income.

And all of these shenanigans were carried out at the expense of just one playwright, William Shakespeare, and never at the expense of any others.

Now, orthodox scholars often criticize those who are skeptical of Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays attributed to him on two grounds: first, that these anti-Stratfordian theories are nothing but conspiracy theories, which are inherently implausible; and second, that our best textual evidence is the title pages of the published works themselves, which clearly credit the works to William Shakespeare.

But note: the orthodox position is vulnerable to exactly the same two lines of attack. It too assumes a conspiracy–in fact, many separate conspiracies–whose purpose was to muddle the authorship of the works. It also assumes that the title pages of the published works are not reliable, since it rejects the prima facie evidence of the title pages of the apocryphal works.

In other words, both sides advance the idea of a conspiracy that uniquely revolved around William Shakespeare, and both sides question the accuracy of the title pages. Of course, the two sides differ in the specifics of which title pages they question and why, and what kind of conspiracy was perpetrated and by whom. But neither side can maintain its position without assuming some kind of conspiracy and some degree of inaccuracy–in fact, dishonesty–in the title pages.

Is there a way out of this conundrum? Feldman and McCarthy, arguing in separate books with different styles and emphases, say there is. At the risk of oversimplifying a complicated thesis, I’ll summarize this alternative approach below. Where possible, I’ll include quotes from contemporary (typically veiled and satirical) references to Shakespeare or from remembrances offered within the lifetime of some who knew him.

Let’s say that William Shakespeare of Stratford was talented and ambitious young man, educated only at the grammar school level, but with a natural wit, a sense of showmanship, and the ability to produce entertaining rhymes extemporaneously. (“When he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech.") Finding Stratford too confining, he left town, deserting his wife and child, and toured the countryside as a maker of morality plays and a puppeteer. (“[He] can serve to make a pretty speech, for [he] was a country author, passing at a moral, for twas [he] that penned the Moral of Man’s Wit, the Dialogue of Dives, and for seven years space was absolute interpreter to the puppets.”)

After several years, he had made something of a name for himself as a smalltime impresario. The next logical step was to move to London and get involved in the theater. He did some acting, but also worked as a play broker, acquiring plays from other writers. Some of these were old plays no longer in fashion, plays originally written by an aristocrat for court performances in those days when the public theater was still in its infancy. (“At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,/ Buy the reversion of old plays …”)

These plays were long, complex, rather weighty and intellectual affairs treating of the problems of the high and mighty. Shakespeare saw commercial potential in them but knew that his unsophisticated audience would not sit still–or more accurately, stand still, since the groundlings had to stand throughout a performance–for a long, challenging production. He set to work doctoring the dramas, cutting out some of the lengthy speeches and slower scenes, simplifying the dialogue, adding elements of broad comedy and bombast–in short, popularizing these intellectually serious productions. He may have done this himself, or he may have hired writers to make the kinds of changes he required. In any event, the finished product was a commercially viable play bearing his unique stamp.

The plays were successful, and since he took a cut of the profits, he began to grow rich. Some writers were unhappy with his success, aware that he was taking credit for work that was not originally his own, and they were particularly upset by his practice of padding out some of the plays with plagiarized passages from their own works. They found him arrogant, dishonest, knavish. (“There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers [i.e., a plagiarist], that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum [jack of all trades], is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”) They mocked him as a country bumpkin who knew little Latin and pleased the unintelligent by dumbing down the intellectually demanding plays he had obtained. (“Few of the university pen plays well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down …”)

But Shakespeare didn’t care. He had found a way to succeed in the big city, to become a major name in the burgeoning theater industry. When printers asked for permission to publish his works, he agreed–and naturally they put his name on the title page. There was no conspiracy; though the plays were originally written by someone else, they had been revised and “improved” by Shakespeare himself or by hired hands acting in his stead, and as far as he or anyone else was concerned, they were his work. And of course he never objected to the publication of these quartos; quite the opposite–he agreed to it and profited from it, just as he profited from nearly everything he did.

Eventually he retired in Stratford, a wealthy man famed for his business acumen, his bravado, and his country wit. Some years after his death, those who knew the truth of the matter and who wanted to preserve the best of the plays in their original form–the plays as untouched by Shakespeare–set about compiling the First Folio. They obtained, wherever possible, the actual manuscripts Shakespeare had purchased, and even advertised this fact on the title page of the Folio itself (“Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published according to the True Original Copies”) and in the front matter (“The Works of William Shakespeare, containing all his Comedies, Histories, and Truly set forth, according to their first Original”). Naturally, they discarded the apocryphal plays, which they knew had been written by others and had no connection to the masterpieces they were seeking to preserve. If they could not find the manuscript of a particular play in its original undoctored form but wished to preserve it anyway, they had no choice but to preserve the adulterated version, as was probably the case with Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, and others. They continued to attribute the plays to William Shakespeare in order to protect the privacy of the original aristocratic author, and perhaps for complicated political reasons. They did put in some clues to the actual authorship of the works, but they could not be too open about it.

If something like this were the case, it would rather neatly answer a number of questions. It would explain how and why the bad and apocryphal quartos came to be published, and why no one ever complained about their publication. It would explain why Shakespeare’s contemporaries ridiculed him as a hack, a plagiarist, and a yokel of limited education and talent, when quite plainly none of these things was true of the original author. It would explain how William Shakespeare became, in effect, the front man for an aristocrat who either would not or could not publish under his real name. It would validate the title pages of all the quartos–good, bad, and apocryphal–and relieve us of the need to hypothesize a complicated series of conspiracies among the printers. The only remaining conspiracy theory would involve the original author’s need to maintain his secrecy, and the desire of his friends to keep his secret after he was dead.

I am not saying that the above description accurately summarizes either Feldman’s or McCarthy’s viewpoint. Each writer has her or his particular take on the details. McCarthy, for instance, does not seem to think that there was any conspiracy involved even in the publication of the First Folio, though I am at a loss to understand his thinking here. But I’m not trying to get bogged down in details. What’s fascinating to me is the possibility of a new way of looking at William Shakespeare’s London career–an approach that gives him credit as a successful actor, play broker, stage producer, and adapter of difficult material–a man of natural wit, high ambition, and a certain ruthless willingness to use other people for his own ends. All of this is quite in keeping with the portrait of Shakespeare that emerges from those who knew him, remembered him, and satirized him.

It also leaves room for the mysterious figure behind the scenes–the genuine author of the Shakespearean canon, whose works were written to be enjoyed as court entertainments or as poetry, and which have come down to us very often in an altered, simplified, popularized form.

For those who are interested, I recommend both The Apocryphal William Shakespeare, by Sabrina Feldman, and North of Shakespeare, by Dennis McCarthy, for more information on this intriguing new hypothesis. Feldman’s approach is more cautious and scholarly; she takes far more time to amass her evidence before drawing any conclusions; and she does not insist that her conclusions are correct. McCarthy’s book is a quicker read, setting out its conclusions more starkly, and a good deal of it is devoted to his claim that the aristocratic author behind the works was actually Thomas North, the famed translator of Plutarch’s Lives. For the moment, I’m more interested in nailing down the career of the Stratford man than in considering yet another claimant to the authorship crown.

If you’re going to read just one of these two books, I would read The Apocryphal William Shakespeare. But both books are very much worthwhile. Even if you have no interest in the authorship controversy, you may well find them provocative. At the very least, you’ll learn a lot about Elizabethan theatrical and printing practices, and about the thorny questions that still bedevil admirers of the Bard.

I’ll give the last word to Ben Jonson, whose poem “On Poet Ape” is often taken to be a shot at William Shakespeare. Does his scathing critique sound applicable to the original author of Hamlet and King Lear, or to someone who appropriated and adulterated those works?

On Poet Ape

Ben Jonson, 1616

Poor Poet Ape*, that would be thought our chief,**
Whose works are e’en the frippery*** of wit,
From Brokage**** is become so bold a thief
As we, the robbed, leave rage and pity it.
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
Buy the reversion of old plays,***** now grown
To a little wealth, and credit on the scene,
He takes up all, makes each man’s wit his own,+
And told of this, he slights it.++ Tut, such crimes
The sluggish, gaping auditor devours;+++
He marks not whose ‘twas first, and aftertimes
May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
Fool! as if half-eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece.++++

*Poet Ape = poet imitator, also poet-actor (ape = actor)

**That would be thought our chief = that would be regarded as the best poet of the age

***Frippery = used apparel; recycled garments

****Brokage = play brokering

*****Buy the reversion of old plays = purchase the rights to old plays

+Makes each man’s wit his own = takes credit for others’ work

++Told of this, he slights it = doesn’t care that he’s stealing credit

+++The sluggish, gaping auditor devours = the casual playgoer doesn’t notice

++++Shreds from the whole piece = mere fragments retained in popular editions vs. the original, uncut masterworks

Three silly arguments

Regular readers know I'm of the opinion that the works of Shakespeare were actually written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. This position is, to put it mildly, controversial, and among the academic community it has not found many takers. Some of the arguments put forth by Shakespearean scholars are quite complicated and interesting; these arguments involve such things as the dating of the plays, factual errors in the plays that suggest the author was not too well-educated or worldly wise, and the testimony of the First Folio linking the plays to William Shakespeare of Stratford.

I think there are effective counter-arguments to all these positions. For instance, in my opinion, the dating of the plays, if done properly, argues very strongly in favor of dates of composition that would be too early for the Stratford man;  the so-called errors of fact, particularly pertaining to geography, turn out not to be errors at all on closer inspection (see The Shakespeare Guide to Italy by the late Richard Paul Roe); and the the testimony of the First Folio is far more ambiguous and problematic than it might appear (see Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, by Diana Price). A very long–in fact, endless–argument can ensue in fleshing out any of these points.

But there are some other arguments made by the academics that aren't complex or interesting at all. They're just silly. Threw of the most common are examined below.

1. “The idea that Oxford wrote the plays of the works of Shakespeare originated with a fellow named J. Thomas Looney. His name was Looney; therefore his ideas are obviously loony.”

Actually, this position doesn't even rise to the level of an argument, not even a fallacious argument. It's just childish name-calling. Are we supposed to think that if the Oxfordian argument had originated with someone named J. Thomas Wise or J. Thomas Brilliant, the academics would regard the argument as wise or brilliant? It should be obvious that the man's name, even if it strikes us as funny, has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of his ideas.

For what it's worth, the name Looney is actually pronounced LOH-nee, and is a name of some distinction on the Isle of Man.

2. “Those who doubt that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays and poems that bear his name are simply snobs.”

Here, at least, we do have an argument that rises to the level of a formal fallacy. The fallacy in question is the ad hominem–which means disputing the value of someone's ideas by pointing to some personal defect he allegedly possesses. In this case, the defect is snobbishness; we are supposed to believe that the anti-Stratfordian position is rooted in elitism and high-handedness. But even if this were true, it would not say anything about the facts and arguments made by anti-Stratfordians. It speaks only to their personal motives, which are irrelevant.

The clue that we're dealing with a fallacy here is that the position is buttressed with emotional language–that is to say, rhetoric. (The appeal to emotion by means of rhetoric is itself a logical fallacy.) The academics typically go on to say that those who are interested in the authorship question don't believe in egalitarianism or understand the genius of democracy. They don't realize that greatness can crop up anywhere, in any social class, in any conditions, at any time, in any place. They are out of step with modern, democratic society; they represent a backward-looking, retrogressive, rearguard action. Etc.

All of this, as you can see, is just a lot of handwaving meant to inspire an emotional response. It's a collection of populist platitudes, akin to a campaign speech. And it's all irrelevant. As far as I know, nobody who questions the authorship of Shakespeare's works has ever said that genius is confined to the upper classes. It's obvious that a very large number of artistic, musical, and literary geniuses have originated in the middle-class, at least in relatively modern times. (If you go back far enough in history, there's not much of a middle class to speak of.) No one doubts that as the middle class has become proportionately larger, and has grown progressively more affluent and educated, the number of creative geniuses produced by that class has risen.

The question, however, is whether the works of Shakespeare are the sort of literary products one would expect from a member of the middle class. This is a very different issue from the strawman position that a middle-class writer cannot possibly be a genius.

Suppose that the works of Tolstoy had been published anonymously, and we were left to figure out who authored them. We would certainly look first at the Russian aristocracy of the period, because it is obvious that the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina was intimately familiar with the lives of aristocrats, viewed social issues from the standpoint of a (reform-minded) aristocrat, and chose aristocrats as the leading characters in his major works. Conversely, if the works of Charles Dickens had been published anonymously, no one would think to look for the author among the British aristocracy, as it would be obvious that the author was intimately familiar with the conditions of the poor, that he had almost certainly suffered severe hardship himself, that he was sympathetic to the struggling underclass and the upwardly mobile middle class, and that he was unsympathetic to the very wealthy and the privileged elites.

If we look at the works attributed to Shakespeare, we find (I think) both the point of view and the constellation of interests typical of an aristocrat of his day -- and not a very forward-looking aristocrat, at that. Even by the standards of his time, Shakespeare was feudalistic in his thinking, placing immense emphasis on the importance of “blood” or pedigree, and insisting that everybody should know his place or his station in life (see Ulysses' famous speech about “degree” in Troilus and Cressida).

Shakespeare knew a great deal about the sport of hawking or falconry, which was practiced exclusively by nobles, and the music and dance in his plays were the types found at court, not in public taverns. The main characters in nearly all of his works are members of the aristocracy or royalty. His sympathy lies with courtiers and princes. His view of the common man varies between condescending amusement and dread; commoners, when viewed singly or in small groups, are a source of humor, with their malapropisms and uncultured ways, but if they gather together into a large crowd, they can threaten to become a mob and destabilize the social order. Shakespeare shows no sympathy for social uprisings such as Jack Cade's rebellion, which he mercilessly satirizes in Henry VI, Part Two, reducing the historical Cade's justifiable grievances to such idiocies as a making it a felony to drink small beer.

We also find that Shakespeare appears to have traveled extensively throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, at a time when foreign travel was largely limited to wealthy aristocrats (and some traveling merchants, but there is no indication that the man from Stratford ever engaged in foreign trade or travel). Shakespeare seems to been fluent in several languages, including Latin, Greek, Italian,  French, and possibly Spanish, which would not be unusual for a leading nobleman of Queen Elizabeth's court but would be almost unheard of for a commoner, especially one with no university training. Shakespeare was clearly educated in the law, as aristocrats routinely were (they were expected to attend the Inns of Court so they could administer their states), while there is no indication the man from Stratford ever studied law. And so forth.

In other words, the belief that the Shakespearean works were written by a nobleman is not grounded in some obstinate snobbery but in a close and sensitive reading of the works themselves. Love's Labour's Lost alone should be enough to establish that the author was a courtier. The play, which is incomprehensible to modern readers without extensive annotations, consists of topical allusions and in-jokes about the goings-on in Queen Elizabeth's court circa the early 1580s. Not only is this date too early to plausibly ascribe the play to the Stratford man (born in 1564), but how could the son of a glove-maker who grew up in a provincial town three days' ride from London in an age without newspapers or other mass media possibly know any of these private jokes about the foreign ambassadors and their quirky personalities? It should be obvious that the play was written by a gifted courtier for the amusement of Queen Elizabeth and her entourage.

If snobbishness is the root of skepticism about the authorship of Shakespeare's works, it's hard to understand how such figures as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Charles Chaplin have all entertained deep suspicions on this score. I don't think any of them is generally regarded as an anti-democratic elitist. Whitman, in particular, was distressed at the prospect that the great plays had been written by “one of the wolfish earls” of British history; as a vigorous champion of egalitarianism and democracy, he was dismayed to think that the world's greatest writer could have been his intellectual and social opposite, but his close study of the works led him to that strong suspicion.

3. Finally we have the oddest of these three silly arguments: “Those who suggest that the man from Stratford didn't write Shakespeare's works are simply jealous of Shakespeare and are trying to demean him, belittle him, and undermine his reputation.”

This again is a logical fallacy, though it may not be quite as obvious as the last one. The fallacy  is begging the question–that is, beginning  by assuming the point at issue. In this case, the open question is whether or not the author William Shakespeare is the man from Stratford. The academics who make this particular argument are saying, “We already know that the author William Shakespeare is the man from Stratford. Therefore any attempt to deprive the man from Stratford of credit for his works is an attack on the author.”

The conclusion does follow from the premise, but the problem is that the premise is question-begging. The anti-Stratfordian argument would go this way: “We believe that the author William Shakespeare is not the man from Stratford. Therefore our attempt to deprive the man from Stratford of credit for Shakespeare's works is an attempt to right a long-standing injustice by giving proper credit to the actual author.”

There's no doubt that many anti-Stratfordians do belittle and demean William Shakespeare of Stratford, and I would say this is one of the less attractive aspects of the movement. There's really no reason to put down the Stratford man, who appears to been a very successful moneylender, grain dealer, and theatrical impresario, and who was able to raise himself up to a position of some prominence in his hometown, eventually purchasing the second most expensive house in Stratford. He must have been a real go-getter, an aggressively upwardly mobile individual who pursued various avenues to wealth and eventually gained the title of a gentleman by purchasing a coat of arms for his family. I don't think he was the author of Hamlet, or any sort of author of all, but that's no reason to characterize him as a sneaking lowlife, as some anti-Stratfordians unfortunately do.

That said, from the anti-Stratfordian position, any discussion of the personality, character, or talents of the Stratford man is quite irrelevant to a discussion of the author William Shakespeare, because the author was someone entirely different.

Moreover, those who are skeptical of Shakespearean authorship often seem to hold the author William Shakespeare in higher regard than the academics do. The academics, because they have to fit Shakespeare's works into the timeline of the Stratford man's life, are led to believe that Shakespeare was an incorrigible plagiarist, borrowing turns of phrase, characters, and even whole plots and genres from authors who'd come before. The Oxfordians, by contrast, fit the works into the timeline of Oxford's life, which allows them to be dated much earlier and to be viewed as original–indeed, highly innovative–creations. The academics believe that Shakespeare was careless and sloppy when it came to details of foreign geography and customs, while the Oxfordians have gone to some lengths to show how accurate Shakespeare really was on such details. The academics say Shakespeare was writing only for money, grinding out potboilers as fast as he could with an eye to the box office returns, and trying to appeal to the unsophisticated tastes of the general public; Oxfordians, by contrast, believe the author wrote from the heart, dramatizing complex emotional and personal issues from his own life, and attempting to sway the Queen's position on a number of controversial topics, and that he was unconcerned with money or popularity.

Academics, of necessity, are inclined to say that Shakespeare, as a man, was a bit of a cipher, a nonentity, a Walter Mitty type who lived almost entirely within his own head and made so little impact on the people around him that no one recognized his genius or lamented his passing until years later. Oxfordians, on the other hand, see the author as a vibrant, larger-than-life figure who was closely involved in the major political and social upheavals of his day and lived a life of drama, color, action, and emotional intensity; moreover, they hold that his genius was certainly recognized by educated people of his day, but that few comments were made about it in print because he was writing politically sensitive material and was using a rather transparent pseudonym.

Now, which portrait of Shakespeare the artist is really more flattering to him? The conventional view sees him as a not-very-well educated hack writer who stole prolifically from inferior playwrights and poets, made up key details because he couldn't be bothered to get his facts straight, pandered to his audience for money, and made little or no impression on his colleagues or on educated readers and playgoers of his day. The Oxfordian view sees him as a highly educated and strikingly original writer who wrote from deeply felt personal experience, a world traveler who remembered and accurately reproduced even the smallest details of his wanderings, a political activist who tried to influence the great events of his day by speaking directly to his queen, and an influential genius who was heavily imitated by inferior writers but rarely acknowledged because of the cloak of secrecy that surrounded his persona.

I think the second view is the one that honors Shakespeare, while the first is the one that actually demeans and belittles him–that is, demeans and belittles the author of the Shakespearean canon by making him out to be much less than he was.

As I said at the beginning, there are other arguments made by Stratfordian academics that deserve to be taken seriously and considered in depth. By no means am I trying to suggest that all of their argumentation consists of fallacies, name-calling, or childish psychologizing.

These particular arguments, however, which show up over and over again in both popular and scholarly treatments of the controversy, really don't do credit to the academic community. They're not true arguments at all, but merely cheap debating tactics intended to cloud the issue and engender a knee-jerk emotional response. I hope to see less of them in the future. 

"Shakespeare" By Another Name

Back in 2005, I ran a post on Mark Anderson's book "Shakespeare" By Another Name, which impressed me greatly. Now the book has been released in a new, updated edition, in both print and ebook form.

The book's homepage is here. Also check out Mark's excellent blog. 

Since I'm too lazy to write anything new, I'm reposting my '05 piece below. Think of it as recycling. It's good for the environment, you know.

The only thing I would change about the post if I were writing it today is that I'm no longer so sure the case for Oxford will carry the day. I think I underestimated the enormous resistance from academe and from the general public, who are much enamored of the Stratford lad's "poor boy makes good" story. The strangely hostile response to the recent movie Anonymous (which I admit I haven't seen yet) seems to bear this out. People react as if questioning the plays' authorship is tantamount to an assault on democracy itself. The Stratford man is such an iconic figure that he is almost sacred in people's minds -- a symbol of the hidden genius of Everyman. I'm not sure any scholarly analysis can defeat such a deeply held and passionately felt conviction. 

Still, whether or not the Oxfordian thesis is ever generally accepted, I've found that it's increased my appreciation of Shakespeare's works and gives me a sense of personal connection with the author that I never had before. And that's good enough for me. 

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For a couple of years now, I've doubted the official story of William Shakespeare - the not-very-well-educated farmboy, William of Stratford (hereafter simply William), who migrated from the provinces to the big city and promptly established himself as the most eloquent writer of his age, and indeed of any age. Over the past century or more, a number of arguments have been advanced to suggest that this story, however endearing it may be, is simply not very probable. In particular, it is argued:

- that Shakespeare has a detailed personal knowledge of locations throughout the continent of Europe, but there is no evidence that William ever left England.

- that Shakespeare derived some of his material from sources that were available only in Italian, French, Spanish, or Greek, but there is no evidence that William knew how to read any of these languages.

- that Shakespeare is intimately acquainted with aristocratic pursuits, such as falconry, which were off-limits to commoners like William.

- that Shakespeare sympathizes with the aristocracy, makes in-joke references to the Elizabethan court, and seems to have personally experienced the life of a courtier, all of which is inexplicable if William wrote the plays.

- that Shakespeare had access to a considerable (and vastly expensive) library, which William probably did not.

- that Shakespeare has firsthand knowledge of traveling by sea, but there is no evidence that William ever set foot on a sailing vessel.

- that Shakespeare has firsthand knowledge of combat, but there is no evidence that William ever served in the military.

- that Shakespeare knows the ins and outs of the law and sprinkles legal terms throughout his writings, but there is no evidence that William was ever trained in the law.

- that Shakespeare views commoners, individually, as clowns and oafs, and, collectively, as dangerous mobs, a view that would come naturally to an aristocrat but not to a provincial farmboy like William.

- that Shakespeare weaves subtle political overtones into this plays and poetry that would probably have gotten William thrown in jail, as the commoner Ben Jonson was jailed for his "seditious" play The Isle of Dogs.

- that Shakespeare identifies himself in his sonnets as old, lame, and publicly disgraced, a description that does not fit William, a prosperous young man on the rise.

- that Shakespeare offers advice and, sometimes, warnings to the aristocratic recipient of the sonnets, something that a commoner like William would not have dared to do.

There are other arguments, but these give you the flavor of the case. But if William was not the "real" Shakespeare, then who was?

The favorite candidate today is Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford. I've read several books arguing the "Oxfordian" position. Online I found the complete text of "Shakespeare" Identified, by the first person to nominate de Vere for the role, J. Thomas Looney. (I pause for the inevitable chuckle at his funny name.) From there I proceeded to the more recent and more comprehensive book The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn, and Ogburn's much briefer introductory book on the subject, The Man Who Was Shakespeare. Along the way I encountered Joseph Sobran's Alias Shakespeare and several other interesting books, not to mention a wide variety of Web sites. (For a bibliography, see my online essay "Shakespeare vs. Shakespeare.")

Over time I became more and more persuaded that the "Stratfordian" case was weak and that William was probably a front man for some aristocrat reluctant to publish his works under his real name because of the considerable social stigma attached to writing for the common stage - and perhaps for other reasons. Still, I was not sure de Vere was the man.

I am now.

What changed my mind? A new biography of de Vere by Mark Anderson, titled "Shakespeare" By Another Name. Anderson, relying on a huge number of sources, fleshes out the earl of Oxford's life in more detail than I have previously seen - and draws explicit parallels between Oxford's life and times and the characters and plot lines of Shakespeare's works. The resulting portrait is so clear and compelling that I can only say that if Edward de Vere was not Shakespeare, he surely should have been.

Again and again Anderson shows how otherwise obscure passages from Shakespeare's plays can be understood as topical allusions to palace intrigues and matters of state that took place long before William of Stratford had ever appeared in London.

A single example must suffice. It involves Anderson's hypothesis that an early draft of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was the same play described by an antiquarian (who once had the manuscript in his possession) as "a pleasant conceit of Vere, earl of Oxford ... circa 1580." In 1580 William of Stratford was only 16 years old. Could Twelfth Night have been written so early - not by William, but by Edward de Vere? Here, much abbreviated, is Anderson's argument:

De Vere and [the courtier Christopher] Hatton were notorious rivals circa 1580, and Twelfth Night mocks Hatton relentlessly: Twelfth Night's self-infatuated clod Malvolio is a barely concealed caricature of [Hatton] ... Malvolio happens upon a prank letter designed to make him look like an ass in front of the entire household. The letter is signed "The Fortunate Unhappy" - an English reversal of the Latin pen name (Felix Infortunatus; "the happy unfortunate") that Hatton used ...

The Jesuit priest Edmund Campion ... had spent much of the 1570s preaching his message abroad, primarily in Prague ... He was arrested in 1581 and tortured. His treason trial was a farce ... Campion was given all of two hours to work on his courtroom defense. He was even denied use of pen, ink, or paper to compose his thoughts ...

In perhaps the most enigmatic scene in Twelfth Night (Act 4, Scene 2), Malvolio is thrown into a mock prison and denied pen, ink, and paper. The fool Feste cross-examines Malvolio with his characteristically witty doublespeak, tossing off an aside about a "hermit of Prague who never saw pen and ink."...

[Finally] Twelfth Night captures the mood of a brief moment on the international stage between 1578 and '80 ... when King Sebastian of Portugal turned up missing in action [and presumed drowned] ...

King Sebastian of Portugal had left no heir or clear line of succession, and to make matters worse, no one was even certain that Sebastian had died in 1578. On January 31, 1580, King Philip of Spain prevailed [in the struggle for control of Portugal]. The Portuguese kingdom and military were now to be under Spain's command ...

Yet, if Sebastian washed ashore someday, he could rightfully seize the crown back from Spain and cripple the Spanish menace. Rumors persisted ... that Sebastian was still alive and preparing to make his triumphant return. Many in Elizabeth's courts had also championed the cause of Antonio, a pretender to the Portuguese throne ...

The story of Twelfth Night is in part the story of two friends, Antonio and Sebastian, who are reunited when the latter washes ashore and into the action of drama. Sebastian is widely believed to have perished at sea ...

These clear parallels illuminate the action of the play and set it in a recognizable historical context. They clarify what is otherwise obscure - such as Malvolio's bizarre imprisonment.

One set of parallels is hardly conclusive, but Anderson offers similar treatments of most of Shakespeare's works, showing again and again how the political battles, social controversies, and marital discord of de Vere's own life are reflected in the plots and characters of Hamlet, As You Like It, All's Well that Ends Well, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Othello, King Lear, and the rest.

Brick by brick, over the course of 380 pages, not to mention 30 pages of appendices and 145 pages of endnotes, Anderson builds an overwhelming circumstantial case for the Oxfordian position. As he admits, there is no smoking gun, no single piece of evidence that provides absolute proof - but the sum total of the evidence he submits ought to be dispositive to any open-minded reader.

I don't expect the walls of academe to come tumbling down just because Mark Anderson has blown his trumpet. The Stratfordians, stubborn defenders of orthodoxy, will resist the inescapable conclusions prompted by this book, just as they have resisted, dismissed, and laughed off the arguments of Looney, Ogburn, and others. But I now think that theirs is a rearguard action and a losing cause. The case has been made, and eventually it will carry the day.

Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. And sooner or later, everyone will know it.

 

The de Vere code

File this under the category of "fun stuff." I don't know if it has any significance, but it's kind of neat.

As regular readers know, I think it's likely that the works of Shakespeare were written by the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. There are many reasons to suspect that "the Stratford man" lacked the education, life experience, and courtly sophistication to pen these works. Frankly, I would think that Love's Labour's Lost alone would cast almost fatal doubt on the Stratfordian thesis, since the play is obviously a satire written by a court insider for the amusement of an aristocratic audience. Just about the only Stratfordian explanation for it would be that Will, newly arrived from a provincial farming town, promptly fell in with aristocratic patrons who regaled him with gossip and news so he could write from an insider's perspective. It's not impossible, but it strikes me as most unlikely.

People who suspect that the works were written by someone other than Will have always been prone to look for coded messages in the text. The most notorious example is Delia Bacon, who tried to prove that the real author was Francis Bacon (no relation) by discovering countless hidden communications. Sadly, most of these supposed messages proved as elusive as the canals of Mars when other people looked for them. Delia's case was not strengthened when she suffered a mental breakdown later in life, allowing her critics to say (rather unfairly) that she had been crazy all along. 

Today, most people avoid the whole subject of codes and cyphers in Shakespeare, probably fearful of following in Delia's footsteps all the way to the sanitarium. But occasionally a valiant attempt is still made, and often it involves the introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets, which - because of its peculiar layout and enigmatic language - looks an awful lot like it ought to be a cryptogram of some kind. 

As you can see, the whole thing is rather odd. It consists of three triangular blocks of text, of 6, 2, and 4 lines. Periods separate words. The sentence structure is confused; it's unclear whether the "adventurer ... setting forth" is "Mr. W.H.," setting forth on some private adventure, or the reader, setting forth on the adventure of reading the book. The term "only begetter" is unusual, and may mean the person who wrote the sonnets, or who inspired them, or who obtained a copy for publication.

Since the Sonnets themselves are famously recondite, suggesting a deeper story hidden between the lines, it is only natural to think that this introductory page is similarly multi-layered. The Elizabethans were addicted to codes and word games, and often used them to convey messages that could not pass muster with the censors; Elizabethan England was, after all, a police state with a network of spies and informers, a secret tribunal (the Star Chamber), an official torturer (Topcliffe), and a paranoid monarch whose closest confidant was the nation's top spymaster (Queen Elizabeth and Lord Burghley). It was also a country facing a succession crisis and leaning perilously toward civil war. Under the circumstances it would have been astonishing if the educated public had not found ways of sending or publishing concealed messages.

But is there a message hidden here? Many attempts at finding one have been made, and most are not very convincing. One of them, however, strikes me as simple and elegant enough to possibly - just possibly - have some merit.

I read about it in the Summer 2006 edition of Shakespeare Matters, the journal of the Shakespeare Fellowship, which is online in PDF form here. The article is "Some Principles of Sonnet Dedication Solutions," by David Moffat, and it starts on page 18. After examining some unsatisfactory solutions to the supposed crypotogram, Moffat tentatively offers his own. 

He notes, as have many others, that the periods between words serve as "delimiters," telling us what counts as a full word and what doesn't. Thus, "Mr. W. H." counts as three words, or three delimited items. The hyphens, as in "ever-living," are printed to resemble periods and serve the same purpose.

Now if we count the lines, we note that they come in clusters of 6, 2, and 4. One simple system of cryptography uses the layout to provide the key to the code. In this case, the key provided by the clusters and the periods might be that we are intended to read every sixth word of the first cluster, every second word of the second cluster, and every fourth word of the third cluster.  

If we do this, Moffat observes, we obtain the following:

These all by ever poet adventurer. 

Not very impressive, you say? But wait. Three details require mentioning. 

First, the name of Edward de Vere could be represented as E. Vere, or sometimes E. Ver (Ver being the older form of the family name), and, in poetry, "Ever." The word ever is also an anagram of Vere. 

Second, de Vere was certainly an adventurer. He traveled widely throughout Europe, met with many of the outstanding intellectual and political figures of his day, excelled at jousting, served his country in wartime, and was one of the most colorful figures at Elizabeth's court. He was also a highly regarded poet in his own right.

Finally, the name Edward de Vere consists of three blocks of letters: 6, 2, and 4. This may be a coincidence, but it's an interesting one. 

With only a few changes in punctuation, then, the message - if there is one - can read:

These all by E. Ver, poet, adventurer. 

Proof of anything? Not really. Even Moffat doesn't say so. 

But it does make you think ...

Merry Christmas!

Graham Holderness clarifies his position

Some time ago, I put up a post about Professor Graham Holderness, a Shakespearean scholar who, at a seminar, made a comment that seemed to imply that the Earl of Oxford's biography is reflected in Shakespeare's plays.

Oxfordians like myself made much of this. But today I received an email from Prof. Holderness, which I gather he is circulating to all interested parties, and which he gave me permission to make public. In his statement, he disavows any belief that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare.

The statement is long, but in fairness I think I should quote all of it. (Ellipses are in the original.)

=======

The Road to Oxford

Graham Holderness

Nearly twenty years ago I launched, together with my colleague Bryan Loughrey, a series of Shakespeare Quarto texts under the title Shakespearean Originals. The texts were presented in an unusual way, and claims were made for them that seemed, at the time, quite radical. But they were essentially just the same old Quartos that everyone had known about since the 16th century ...

A couple of journalists got the idea that these texts were hitherto unknown and newly discovered: mouldy books dug up from Shakespeare’s grave perhaps, or crumbling texts located by some Professor Robert Langdon in the Vatican archives. The consequent publicity was both extensive and embarrassing. I remember feeling, as I sat down in front of my Amstrad, ready to put the record straight, a distinct sense of impending deflation. After all, here beckoned celebrity, here was the clarion-call of fame, here was Indiana Jones’s ‘fortune and glory’, just within my grasp. Did it matter that it was all based on inaccurate and unsustainable claims that we’d never even made? You just can’t buy publicity like that ...

So I proceeded to set out the banal truth, that there is nothing new under the sun. I’m not aware that it did me any good, though I certainly learned that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. So what to do when another opportunity for fame, another shot at fortune and glory, presents itself? I was informed by various internet sources that during the ‘Rowe to Shapiro’ conference at Shakespeare’s Globe, a light flashed around me, and I fell to the ground, and blurted out that the true author of Shakespeare’s plays was: Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

Headlines can’t lie: ‘Holderness: Shakespeare’s biography is that of the earl of Oxford’, blogs Roger Stritmatter. And here is Julia Cleave of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust:

From an Oxfordian point of view, most startling of all was the declaration made by Professor Graham Holderness, University of Herefordshire (sic).  In the middle of a discussion re the questionable facticity of tales of deer-poaching, calf-killing and horse-holding, he stated baldly - without further comment:

If you were to construct a biography which ticked all the boxes - if you were to read Shakespeare’s plays and infer a biography from it - it wouldn’t be Rowe’s, it would actually be the Earl of Oxford’s.

Clearly the earth moved for somebody. The comments flow thick and fast: ‘The very foundation of Stratfordian biography is on the verge of breaking apart’. The centre cannot hold. ‘The quote from Holderness is a swinging gate through which Oxfordians ought to immediately drive their full coach and horses’. 

One of the great things about conversion narratives is that your pre-conversion life gets revised until it precisely parallels your new one. St Paul was never so zealous a persecutor of Christians as he appeared, retrospectively, to be, after he had became one himself. In the same way, it wasn’t until I blindly stumbled upon the road to Oxford that I became quite so definitively ‘a major Shakespearean scholar’ of ‘considerable reputation and standing’: indeed ‘one of the foremost "orthodox" Shakespeare scholars in the world’.

Now before I was suspected of falling out of the Oxfordian closet, no-one ever called me ‘major’ or ‘foremost’, and certainly not ‘orthodox’. I sort of like it in a way. Could I have this all the time, I think to myself, if I just keep dropping suggestive pericopes into the conversation? Could I really retain this reputation as ‘one of the foremost orthodox Shakespeare scholars in the world’, if I just occasionally blurted out mysterious soundbites on the Shakespeare Authorship Question: ‘I’m an Oxford man, you know’; or ‘I’m only here for de Vere’.

Tempting as it is, I’m going to have to pass. My eyesight is a lot better now, and though in my temporary visual impairment things might have appeared brighter, much more shiny and new, the hard grey light of another common day gives light enough to read the truth by:

‘My name is Graham Holderness, and my position on the Shakespeare Authorship Question is that I am interested in reasonable doubt, but not in alternative certainty’.

I don’t think Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare’s plays and poems. I wouldn’t especially care if he did, or if the real author was proven to be a wandering Kentish tinker, or Queen Elizabeth I, or the Pope. I don’t have any strong personal investment in ‘the Stratfordian hypothesis’, but it does seem to me a reasonable one. Of course there are lacunae, and doubts and questions about ‘the man from Stratford’ (who is not in these circles permitted even to enjoy his own name). But they are nothing compared with the lacunae and doubts and questions that would apply to any other candidature. There may well be ‘reasonable doubt’ about Shakespeare. But how much reasonable doubt would one have to countenance to explain that someone else wrote those works? How much historical evidence would we have to dispel, how many conspiracy theories would we have to swallow? 

Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 biography of Shakespeare, whose tercentenary was celebrated at the Globe conference, depicts Shakespeare as a young man from a peasant farming and agricultural trading background; who received little formal education; worked in his father’s business; got into trouble with a local landowner by poaching deer from his estate; fled from Stratford, and turned up outside a theatre in London seeking work as a ‘serviture’. Rowe’s biography has been widely regarded as inaccurate and fanciful, but recent scholarship has offered to revise this view, demonstrating that Rowe’s narrative is historically sourced,  independently corroborated and not in itself improbable. 

Of course this raises issues for Stratfordians, since it depicts a life of some deprivation that seems unlikely to have flourished into that of the world’s greatest dramatist. Biographers of Shakespeare have looked for better explanations, scenarios that put the author of the plays into an environment of literacy and learning, and provide him with access to the cultural and entertainment industries, to the worlds of aristocratic patronage and court favour.

Anti-Stratfordians would rather believe Rowe, since it is their contention that the subject of his biography could not possibly have been the man who wrote the works: quod erat demonstrandum. The more authentic and credible Rowe becomes, the less likely it is that this Stratford man is the true author.

I think, with René Weis and the late Eric Sams, that Rowe should be trusted. His historical sources were sound and verifiable; his claims are corroborated by other early traditions; and most importantly, there is nothing in his account that should seem in any way improbable as a life of the author of the plays of William Shakespeare. A young man from a trading family in a provincial town, who acquired there a rich and varied education in both life and learning, who worked in his father’s business, ran wild and got into trouble, left home and entered the theatre as a menial, became an actor and then a writer. None of that seems incredible to me. To assert, as Oxfordians invariably assert, that only an aristocrat could have mastered such learning, acquired such favour and displayed such genius is surely to underestimate the lower orders, and to overestimate the upper class. Let’s list on our fingers all the great writers produced by the British hereditary aristocracy ... all right, then, just use one hand ...

Now it is true that the facts of the Shakespeare life as depicted in Rowe do not necessarily quite match up with the works. It would be very odd if they did, since the works are dramatic poems in which every word is spoken by a character on stage, and no space at all is provided for confessional material (would the same were true of modern literature). Even the Sonnets are not as clearly autobiographical as they have often been received. But for me the problem lies deeper than this. In this blogging, twittering world we have lost all sense of any relationship between the self and writing that does not invest heavily in autobiographical narcissism and the refraction of personal experience. We have no equipment for tracing the complex and subtle connectivities between the self and more impersonal forms of writing. Shakespeare might have become an actor, as in Jorge Luis Borges’ great story ‘Everyone and No-one’, because he had no sense of identity at all; and he may have written so many lives, because he never felt that he had lived even one.

And so if you tried to infer a life from Shakespeare’s works you might not, it is true, arrive at the man from Stratford. But that is not because he did not write them: but because the relationship between the life and the works is far more complex and devious than you imagine, and may consist in discrepancy and discontinuity rather than in coherence. You might think that some other life-story would fit the works better: the Earl of Oxford, or Christopher Marlowe, or the Holy Roman Emperor.  But you would be whistling in the dark, because these works will never give up the identity of their author in anything like so definitive a way.

Insofar as Shakespeare Authorship inquiry is interested in pursuing these profound questions about life and writing, the self and identity, personal expression and impersonal artistry (and I know that some authorship doubters are interested in such matters), then there is common ground for debate. Insofar as such inquiries are obsessively concerned to lobby for alternative candidates, and to discredit ‘the man from Stratford’, there really won’t be all that much to talk about.   

This, too, is neat

Longtime readers know that among my numerous other eccentricities, I think Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, is the true author of the plays and poems attributed to "William Shakespeare."

The overwhelming majority of Shakespeare scholars reject this idea, though I have not been very impressed with their arguments.

Now comes word that one of the foremost "orthodox" Shakespeare scholars in the world has made a rather interesting public statement on this question.

The blog of the Shakespeare Oxford Society reports on a recent "orthodox" gathering in which the various biographies of William Shakespeare were discussed. In the midst of much learned talk about the many bios that have followed Nicholas Rowe's pioneering 1709 effort, the editor of the peer-viewed journal Critical Survey slipped in a few intriguing words.

Quoth the SOS blog:

From an Oxfordian point of view, most startling of all was the declaration made by Professor Graham Holderness, University of Herefordshire.  In the middle of a discussion re the questionable facticity of tales of deer-poaching, calf-killing and horse-holding, he stated baldly – without further comment:

If you were to construct a biography which ticked all the boxes – if you were to read Shakespeare’s plays and infer a biography from it – it wouldn’t be Rowe’s, it would actually be the Earl of Oxford’s.

Hmm. The devil you say.

 

The statement is, of course, quite true, as any reader of Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare" By Another Name can affirm. To give one example, the parallels between Oxford's life and the storyline of All's Well That Ends Well are ridiculously obvious. Like the fictional Bertram, Oxford was pressured into marrying a lower-born woman he despised, after which he fled abroad (apparently without consummating the marriage), only to be eventually reconciled with his wife by means of a "bed trick."

 

Or consider Henry IV, Part 1, which includes an ahistorical episode in which the riotous Prince Hal and some friends, wearing disguises, engage in an act of banditry at Gad's Hill. In May of 1573, de Vere and his friends robbed two servants of Lord Burghley (de Vere's father-in-law), as a merry prank. Where did the incident take place? Gad's Hill.*

 

Multiply such "coincidences"  by a factor of 100 or more, and it's abundantly clear that Oxford's biography fits the Shakespearean canon like a cheveril glove. It's kind of an open secret, actually.

 

What's startling is to have someone as distinguished as Professor Holderness blurt it out -- and to an audience of Shakespearean academics, no less.

 

-----

 

*Oxfordians believe that The Famous Victories of Henry V (registered in 1594), which introduces the Gad's Hill incident, was itself written by de Vere as an early attempt at telling the story of Prince Hal. See this essay for details.

Polonius in Queen Elizabeth's court

Because my last post glanced at the Shakespeare authorship controversy, I thought it might be interesting to lay out the kind of argument that Oxfordians -- those who believe the works of Shakespeare were actually written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford -- rely on when making their case. Most of these arguments involve parallels between people and events in Shakespeare's plays and people and events in Oxford's life.

There are countless possible examples, presented in detail in The Mysterious William Shakespeare, by Charlton Ogburn, and "Shakespeare" By Another Name, by Mark Anderson. Here I want to focus on just one instance, the remarkably close correspondences between William Cecil (Lord Burghley), Oxford's father-in-law, and Polonius, Hamlet's prospective father-in-law.

Burghley was the closest adviser to the English queen. Polonius is the closest adviser to the Danish king and queen. Burghley was a spymaster with a network of informants; he was known to intercept private correspondence and to infiltrate private households with paid operatives. Polonius's main activity in Hamlet is spying; he intercepts Hamlet's letters to Ophelia, and repeatedly eavesdrops on Hamlet.

One of Burghley's hirelings was stabbed by Oxford in a scuffle. Polonius himself is stabbed to death by Hamlet.

Burghley, worried by reports of his son Thomas's wild living in Paris, arranged for Thomas's friends to spy on him and send back reports. Polonius, worried that his son Laertes will embarrass himself in Paris, arranges for Laertes's friend Reynaldo to spy on him and sent back reports.

Burghley was known for his tedious prolixity; so is Polonius. ("More matter, with less art," the queen tells him.) Burghley wrote sententious maxims for the benefit of his son Robert. Polonius delivers sententious maxims for the benefit of his son Laertes. (Burghley: "Neither borrow of a neighbour or of a friend, but of a stranger ..." Polonius: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be ...")

Burghley was the father of Anne Cecil, whose marriage to Oxford was brought to near ruin by Oxford's antagonism and distrust. Polonius is the father of Ophelia, whose romantic relationship with Hamlet is brought to ruin by Hamlet's antagonism and distrust. Oxford believed Anne had been unfaithful to him, and separated from her for years. Hamlet unaccountably implies that Ophelia has been unfaithful to him, impugning her as a whore, and refuses to see her again. ("Get thee to a nunnery" can be read as Elizabethan slang for "You belong in a whorehouse.")

Burghley was widely known and resented for having pushed through a law requiring the British populace to eat more fish; the intent was to stimulate the fishing trade. Hamlet, either mad or feigning madness, identifies Polonius as "a fishmonger."

Burghley liked to recall that his date of birth coincided with the Diet of Worms, a convocation at which Emperor Charles V presided. Hamlet, jesting cruelly after killing Polonius, says, "A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet."

Burghley's motto was Cor unum, via una. In the First Quarto of Hamlet, the character later known as Polonius is called Corambis. Cor unum, via una means "one heart, one way." Corambis means "having two hearts." Most likely the name was changed because "Corambis" was just too obvious, at least to those in the know.

The correspondences are sufficiently clearcut that many "orthodox" Shakespearean scholars have accepted the Burghley-Polonius connection. These include such notables as John Dover Wilson and A.L. Rowse.

The Stratford player would have had no plausible motive to burlesque Lord Burghley. Nor is it likely he would have dared. Burghley was the most powerful figure in in the realm, other than the queen herself; he was widely feared, and, at a whim, could have had any commoner tossed into jail or subjected to the tender mercies of the torturers. Other writers had been jailed and tortured for less.

Oxford, by contrast, did have a motive. His relationship with his father-in-law was contentious. The two men, opposites in all respects, despised each other. As the highest ranking member of the aristocracy, Oxford could afford to beard the lion. Burghley couldn't touch him.

Of course, many additional parallels between the events in Hamlet and the events in Oxford's life can be drawn. Oxford was captured and later released by pirates, just as Hamlet is. Oxford lost a vast sum of money funding expeditions to discover a Northwest passage; Hamlet says wryly, "I am but mad north-north-west." One of Oxford's closest friends and confidants was his cousin, Horace de Vere, also known as Horatio; Hamlet's closest friend and confidant is named Horatio. Oxford's mother remarried soon after his father's death; Hamlet resents his mother's hasty marriage to Claudius soon after his father's death. And so on. For a discussion of the numerous parallels in Hamlet, see Chapter 16 of "Shakespeare" Identified, by J. Thomas Looney, online here.

Does all of this prove that Oxford wrote Hamlet and the other plays and poems? Well, no. All the circumstantial evidence in the world cannot establish the authorship of the Shakespearean canon with absolute certainty; but as more and more of it comes to light, the explanation that the parallels are merely coincidental becomes, I think, progressively less persuasive.

At any rate, I concur with John Michell, who, in his excellent overview Who Wrote Shakespeare?, writes:

We shall be abused and laughed at for our interest, for even thinking there is any doubt about who wrote Shakespeare... All that we can say in return is that we enjoy the subject, find mystery in it and are introduced by it to the finest literature and some of the greatest, as well as the crankiest minds of our age and culture. It is a harmless, stimulating and instructive subject to dwell upon, which is more than can be said for many other types of obsession. [p. 16]

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For an in-depth discussion of the Burghley-Polonius issue, see Mark Alexander's comprehensive four-part series "Polonius as Lord Burghley," beginning here.

Various relevant source texts are helpfully provided here.

Much ado about ranting

The blog "Shakespeare" By Another Name recently pointed me to an amusing online free-for-all in which a columnist for the London Times, Oliver Kamm, mixes it up with various anti-Stratfordians (i.e., people who doubt that the works of Shakespeare were written by the man from Stratford).

This issue is not as interesting to me as it once was. I'm still in the Oxfordian camp - I think the author was most likely Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who used Will Shakespeare as a beard - but my world would not come crumbling down if definitive proof to the contrary were obtained. (For some of my thoughts on why Oxford is a good candidate to be the "true" author, click on the "categories" link at the bottom of this post.)

What I found most interesting about the long, heated online debate was how angry Kamm allows himself to become. In fact, he seems to be aboil with rage and indignation almost from the start. He repeatedly characterizes his opponents as cranks and worse, yet seems honestly perplexed that anyone could accuse him of using ad hominems. He also insists that his opponents have no proper academic credentials, though he himself is described in his Times bio as "having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund" who has an interest in "economic policy, foreign affairs and European literature." It seems odd that his main complaint about his opponents is that they are "amateurs," when he himself is clearly an amateur in Elizabethan studies, as well. Perhaps it is a case of psychological projection.

That's not to say Kamm makes no good points. He strikes a few "palpable hits," I think, though many of his arguments are question-begging and appeals to authority (the very errors he accuses his opponents of committing). He is obviously very intelligent, a fact that makes his vituperative style of expression that much more baffling. You would think that as a bright, sophisticated writer, he would see how he's coming across, but he seems oblivious. His increasingly agitated commentary is perhaps an object lesson in the ego run amok. It underlines a point I've been reflecting on lately - that of all human skills or virtues, self-possession may be the most important. Imagine a world in which everyone could remain self-possessed under even the most trying conditions. War, violence, and cruelty might not vanish altogether (there are self-possessed sociopaths), but would certainly be rarer than they are now.

After reading the debate, I found myself flipping through the book that inspired the Shakespeare blog - Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare" By Another Name, a biography of Edward de Vere written from the perspective that de Vere wrote the works of Shakespeare. Innumerable parallels between de Vere's life and elements of the Shakespearean corpus are explored. Some of these parallels are more convincing than others, but the cumulative effect is immensely persuasive, at least to me.

Here's a small but telling example from page 169 of Anderson's book. De Vere (Oxford) betrayed two friends who were plotting against the Queen; these friends were arrested and imprisoned. Understandably furious with Oxford, they launched a series of attacks on him, alleging a variety of vices and evils. One of the pair, Charles Arundell, testified:

First, I will detect him of the most impudent and senseless lies that ever passed the mouth of any man.... His third lie which hath some affinity with the other two is of certain excellent orations he made.... The second vice, wherewith I mean to touch him though in the first I have included perjury in something [sic] is that he is a most notorious drunkard and very seldom sober ... thirdly I will prove him a buggerer of a boy ... fifthly to show that the world never brought forth such a villainous monster, and for a parting blow to give him his full payment, I will prove against him his most horrible and detestable blasphemy in denial of the divinity of Christ our Savior and terming the Trinity a fable ... that Joseph was a wittold [cuckold] and the Blessed Virgin a whore.

To conclude, he is a beast in all respects and in him no virtue to be found and no vice wanting.

Note the confused syntax and the eccentric numbering, in which the third precedes the second. (It is the third lie, but apparently an example of the first vice.) Compare the above with the speech that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of the inept constable Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing:

Marry, sir, [the accused] have committed false report. Moreover, they have spoken untruths, secondarily they are slanders, sixth and lastly they have belied a lady, thirdly they have verified unjust things, and to conclude, they are lying knaves.

The similarities are obvious, right down to the words "to conclude." It would seem likely that Dogberry is a cruel burlesque of Arundell. If so, whoever wrote the play must have been familiar with Arundell's testimony and must have had reason to lampoon it. Oxford, of course, would meet both criteria.

To publicly lampoon a man whom one has betrayed and handed over to the jailers of the Tower is not the most admirable course of action, to be sure. But no one ever said de Vere was a likable or well-adjusted fellow. Indeed, some of the accusations made against him are probably accurate, though others seem like boilerplate Elizabethan slander. It is quite plausible, for instance, that de Vere was "very seldom sober." But some high-functioning alcoholics can be astonishingly productive; their overconsumption of alcohol can bring on periods of remarkable creativity; they are even capable of works of genius, as I discussed here. Such people are also capable of extraordinary malice -- the kind of malice that might prompt a man to ridicule a desperate enemy whose downfall he has brought about.

The only credible alternative to the Oxfordian theory, it seems to me, is that someone else wrote the plays but was guided by Oxford. This is not impossible, since Oxford was known to serve as a mentor and patron of young writers.

Clare Asquith's book Shadowplay (though it does not include Oxford in the mix) makes an argument along these lines, suggesting that Will Shakespeare of Stratford came under the aegis of Catholic noblemen and served as their mouthpiece. Trouble is, I see little in the Stratford man's background that would supply him with the erudition to write great poetry; and some of the plays, like Love's Labour's Lost, seem to have been written before young Will had even arrived in London. (But the dating of all the plays is endless debated, so this point cannot be conclusive.)

Kamm and others like to point out that Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were of middle-class origins, yet wrote great plays, and this is true; but both Jonson and Marlowe were recognized early for their talent and given special treatment. Marlowe went to Corpus Christi College; Jonson went to the acclaimed Westminster School and later received an honorary degree from Oxford University. By contrast, the Stratford man appears to have had no education beyond a few years in the Stratford grammar school. Still, we cannot rule out the possibility that Will showed early promise and was shipped off to the household of wealthy relatives who supplied him with tutors and books. This is the theory advanced by E. A. J. Honigmann (discussed somewhat sympathetically by Eric Sams here), and it might be profitably combined with Asquith's musings.

In these matters (as in most matters) it's best not to be too dogmatic. Otherwise we may find ourselves, like Dogberry, declaring that those who disagree with us are, firstly, amateurs and cranks; thirdly, mere dilettantes; secondarily, lacking in all academic respectability; sixth and last, dishonest villains; fifthly, unfit for public debate; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.  

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Postscript. For those who can't be bothered to read the whole comments thread on the Times site, here are some excerpts from Oliver Kamm's posts.

He characterizes those who disagree with him as: "delusional," "conspiracy nutters," and "unscholarly cranks" who make "bogus and ahistorical assertions" and whose arguments are "buffoonery," "absurd," "snobbish, hapless idiocy," a "mound of dross," "pure snobbery and conspiracy theory, and ... an offence against historical scholarship."

"Your entire method of reasoning is ignorant of history and of literary criticism."

"The entire Oxfordian edifice is built on ignorance, snobbery and nothing else."

"[Anti-Stratfordian] arguments bear as much relation to literary scholarship as do creationism to science and Holocaust denial to history. It's a sociological and pathological phenomenon rather than a literary one."

"Mr Malim [an anti-Stratfordian] himself is a retired solicitor, with all the competence that that implies for the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature." (Kamm's own background is that of a hedge fund manager.)

"I said you were unscholarly cranks. And yes, of course the Supreme Court Justices you mention [who agree with the anti-Stratfordian position] come into that category. Their expertise in the law is extensive and entirely irrelevant to the field of literature."

"I do not treat my opponents with contempt. I treat them in this case and on this subject with derision."

"Mr Wilkinson, let's get one thing straight. At no time have I engaged in abuse. I've called you a crank and I've described your contributions as fatuous. I've further described the comments on this thread from your comrades as hapless idiocy. If you consider this to be abuse, then you're not cut out for public debate. I invariably address correspondents with courtesy but also directness, and I'm not going to flatter you by pretending that your opinions are worthy of respect or have any value whatever." ("Courtesy"?!) 

"I have carefully explained that I do not engage in abuse, but my restraint doesn't mean that I'm going to have a dialogue with you. Your theories are are no more interesting than they are educated, and while you have every right to be heard, you have no right whatever to be listened to."

"I never engage in personal abuse, but nor do I engage in flattery of cranks, whether creationists, 9/11 truthers, Holocaust deniers or Oxfordians, all of whom use similar methods of reasoning."

"That puts [the anti-Stratfordian position] outside the bounds of legitimate debate: it's at best irrationalism and unabashed amateurism ... More generally, it's pathological and in some cases (e.g. Delia Bacon, who first propounded Francis Bacon as author) literally insane."

"You're yet another who complains about name-calling while failing to identify a single example. I've referred to you (collectively) as cranks and I've commented on the fatuous, pitiful, amateurish and fraudulent contributions that you have made uninvited on this site. What on earth is wrong with that? How does that qualify as name-calling?" (How, indeed?)

"Either you're incompetent or you're a fantasist."

"I decline to treat you with a respect that you haven't earned. Yet again, you complain about abuse yet fail to identify any instance of it. The terms crank, conspiracy theorist, amateur and snob are plainly all descriptive." (Nope, no abuse there. I'm sure Kamm wouldn't take it as an insult if someone used such "descriptive" terms against him. Would he?)  

"What possible value is the opinion of a Supreme Court judge on Elizabethan literature? He may be intelligent and professionally accomplished, but his opinion on Shakespeare is intrinsically worth nothing." (But the opinion of a hedge fund manager is of great value.) 

"I didn't seek your opinions and have no interest in them."

"I can only suppose you thought you'd be treated at worst as a legitimate contributor to honest debate, and at least you now know better."

"Once you intruded into this space, I didn't ignore you but told you the brutal truth: you're a crank, an ignoramus and an amateur. How that can be termed 'vilification' is beyond me: it's a frank and objective assessment of your views and behaviour." (Why, it's not vilification at all. It's just frank talk - and "objective," no less!) 

Although Kamm does make a few substantive points, his overall tone is so hostile that the term "crank" or "nutter" would seem to apply more aptly to him than to most of his correspondents.

I don't know to what extent Oliver Kamm may be typical of hedge fund managers in general, but if the qualities he displays in these comments - overbearing self-righteousness, disdain for any contrary viewpoint, and an unwillingness to even consider the possibility that he is mistaken - are found in equal measure in his colleagues, then the derivatives crisis, which nearly brought down the financial systems of the world, becomes a good deal easier to understand.

Courting Shakespeare

Just in time for the birthday of William Shakespeare of Stratford (on April 23) comes an enjoyable Wall Street Journal article on the Shakespeare authorship controversy.

The Journal article focuses on the Shakespeare debate as it affects the Supreme Court. Apparently our most powerful jurists have been squabbling over this issue for some time.

I'm in the Oxford camp, as I discussed here - though some of the arguments in Clare Asquith's Shadowplay did get me to briefly reconsider good old Will as the true author. In the end, though, I just don't think these plays and poems were written from the perspective of a commoner. They carry too strong an odor of the aristocracy, I think.

And the events of Oxford's life match up uncannily with key plot points in the Shakespearean plays. To take one small example, Oxford was captured by pirates when he was abroad, but the pirates released him, sans possessions, after learning that he was a nobleman. The very same thing happens to Hamlet (offstage). A trivial thing in itself, but when you discover that there are literally dozens of such parallels, it's hard to believe they're all purely coincidental.

The Journal reports:

"In two of the plays Shakespeare has an incident using the bed trick, in which the man is not aware of the identity of the woman he's sleeping with," Justice Stevens says, referring to "All's Well That Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure." "And there's an incident in the Old Testament where the same event allegedly occurred."

Justice Stevens says he reasoned that if de Vere had borrowed the escapade from his Bible, "he would have underlined those portions of it. So I went over once [to the Folger Library] to ask them to dig out the Bible [once owned by de Vere]."

Unfortunately, the passage involving the substitution of Leah for Rachel in Jacob's bed, Genesis 29:23, was not marked. "I really thought I might have stumbled onto something that would be a very strong coincidence," Justice Stevens says. "But it did not develop at all."

But there's a good reason why Oxford didn't need to underline that passage. He didn't get the idea of the bed trick from the Bible. He got it from his own life. Oxford was pressured into marriage with a woman he didn't love, and after the marriage he set off for the Continent (very much like Bertram in All's Well that Ends Well). While he was away, his wife gave birth to a daughter. It is possible that Oxford had never consummated the marriage, perhaps because he was hoping for an annulment; in any case, for some reason he seemed certain that the child was illegitimate. Later, however, he allowed himself to be be convinced that the child was his. His wife claimed to have cunningly played a "bed trick" on him, visiting him in the dark in the guise of an anonymous lover.

Whether or not Oxford actually believed this story, it allowed him to save face and accept the child (and reconcile with his wife).  And yes, the bed-trick motif does play a prominent role in not one but two "Shakespeare" plays - as does the theme of a jealous husband who suspects his wife of being unfaithful (Othello, A Winter's Tale) - not to mention the theme of a father's reconciliation with an abandoned daughter (Pericles, A Winter's Tale, King Lear).   

I also liked this part of the article:

"My wife, who is a much better expert in literature than I am, has berated me," says Justice Scalia. "She thinks we Oxfordians are motivated by the fact that we can't believe that a commoner could have done something like this, you know, it's an aristocratic tendency."

Justice Scalia prefers to turn the tables.

"It is probably more likely that the pro-Shakespearean people are affected by a democratic bias than the Oxfordians are affected by an aristocratic bias," he says....

[Similarly, Justice Stevens observes,] "A lot of people like to think it's Shakespeare because ... they like to think that a commoner can be such a brilliant writer. Even though there is no Santa Claus, it's still a wonderful myth."

I think that's about right. Ever since Milton versified about the Stratford man "warbling [his] native wood-notes wild," it's been popular to think of Shakespeare as a poorly educated rustic who somehow, by sheer dint of genius, elevated himself to the heights of literary accomplishment. It's a beguiling story, a celebration of the genius of democracy, but a tale I find highly unlikely. And by the way, the author of the Shakespearean works was no democrat, nor was he a fan of the common folk, whom he depicts alternately as clownish buffoons and unruly mobs.

Of course, many members of the middle class have distinguished themselves as writers, and some did so even in Shakespeare's day; but they had the benefit of a decent education and a constant exposure to books. Will Shakespeare, growing up in an illiterate household in a farming town with a one-room schoolhouse and virtually no books in English available to him other than the Bible, is not likely to have mastered the sophisticated language on display in even the earliest "Shakespearean" plays. (Imagine a barely literate new arrival from the provinces writing Love's Labours Lost, a play steeped in topical allusions, courtly in-jokes and complex wordplay.)  

There probably are a few allusions to Will Shakespeare in the plays, but they are not very complimentary and they don't help the Stratfordian cause. In The Taming of the Shrew, the drunken tinker Christopher Sly of Warwickshire is often seen as a stand-in for the Stratford man (Stratford is in Warwickshire), but what is the upshot of the Sly story? He is brought into a noble's house and dressed up like the owner, to play-act at being a great man when, in reality, he is a mere nobody. Another likely reference to Will is the character of William in As You Like It, but poor William, while goodhearted enough, is an ignorant yokel who becomes the comic butt of the sophisticated aristocrats who encounter him. Why would the author depict "himself" as a drunken phony or a bumptious stooge? Self-deprecatory humor? Or was he taking a few shots at the upstart actor whom he was obliged to use as a literary front man? 

I think the latter explanation is more plausible. And it appears I'm in good company.

Hey, maybe I should be on the Supreme Court! (I already spend a good part of the day in my robe.)

From the archives: Shakespeare the drunk?

As a break from quarrels about consciousness, religion, and other weighty topics, here's a post that originally appeared on this site on January 29, 2006. I've updated some of the links and made a few minor changes in the wording. For my other posts on the Shakespeare authorship controversy, click here.

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A fascinating article appears in the latest edition of the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, a publication of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, which seeks to prove that Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, was the actual author of the works attributed to the man from Stratford. The essay, by Robert R. Prechter, Jr., is entitled "Might Edward de Vere Have Suffered from Alcoholism?" (The essay is online here.) Since Oxfordians believe that de Vere was Shakespeare, this question is tantamount to asking if the most famous author in English literature was an alcoholic.

On its surface, the idea might seem absurd. As Prechter points out, many people assume that no high-achieving individual could possibly suffer from an addiction to drink. But, as he goes on to say, this belief "is not just false, but backward.... One of the behavioral signs in early and middle-stage alcoholism is a drive for extreme achievement.... Not only can most alcoholics function, but many of them, in some ways, perform better than the rest of us."

Citing alcoholism researcher Doug Thorburn as his main source, Prechter lists a number of famous, high achieving people who were known for an addiction to alcohol and/or drugs: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Beethoven, John Lennon, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen King, e.e. cummings, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker ... and the list goes on. At the end of this section, Prechter concludes, "One may certainly wish to argue against de Vere's having alcoholism, but his prodigious achievement in the arts is not good evidence to the contrary."

There is certainly reason to suspect that de Vere had trouble with liquor. His personal life was a mess. His first marriage devolved into a shambles; he became estranged from his wife for years after being convinced that the daughter she had borne him was illegitimate. He expended stupendous sums on travel and entertainment and prodigious feats of charity, depleting his once vast estate, and eventually had to depend on lavish government subsidies to maintain his lifestyle. His investments generally took the form of high stakes gambles that rarely paid off. And like many alcoholics, he was prone to angry fits of tempers and even violence. He once killed a man in a street brawl. On more than one occasion he alienated the Queen by disobeying her commands, and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for several months.

If he was Shakespeare, then he could be almost unconscionably cruel; some of the Bard's buffoonish characters are clearly parodies of de Vere's rivals at court, depicted in the most humiliating possible terms. Prechter asks, "Who among us would want to be lampooned as was Malvolio in front of our eyes and those of everyone in town?... How many non-alcoholics craft such detailed humiliations of others? On the other hand, some alcoholics, such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Hunter Thompson, were expert at doing so."

Indeed, the portrait of Malvolio in Twelfth Night may be one of the cruelest examples of literary revenge in history. Oxfordians believe that Malvolio was based on the courtier Christopher Hatton, a man of modest origins who had risen in Queen Elizabeth's favor. Malvolio, whose very name translates into something like "ill will," is depicted as a social-climbing oaf, an overreaching servant who imagines that he can woo his aristocratic mistress and who is utterly humiliated in the process.

If the play, or some early version of it, was performed at court for the entertainment of the Queen and her hangers-on, then Hatton would have had the excruciatingly uncomfortable experience of seeing himself ridiculed unmercifully in front of all his friends and colleagues, while de Vere presumably chortled with amusement. It is certainly possible that a non-alcoholic could come up with such punishment for an adversary, but a man "in his cups" might seem more likely to carry through on the project.

Prechter notes that Shakespeare's works often feature the tavern as their setting. One of Shakespeare's most distinctive characters is Falstaff, who is perpetually intoxicated. Prechter notes, "He even casts Prince Hal, the obvious de Vere figure in the Henry IV plays, as a smart, affable carouser who will rise heroically to the occasion when the time comes for him to reign."

Another possible indication of Shakespeare/de Vere's alcoholism is the sheer vividness and verve of his writing, the remarkably sustained explorations of intense emotional states, the almost giddy wordplay with its inexhaustible variety and inventiveness, the rash of metaphors and similes constantly spouting from his pen, sometimes in such quick succession that their meaning becomes difficult to follow even on the printed page, let alone in the theater. Much of Shakespeare's work gives the impression of having been written at white heat, in a kind of fit of creativity, a passionate state of rapture and self-absorption. At the very least, this type of writing is not inconsistent with the wildly overflowing output of the high-achieving alcoholic.

As Prechter says, "De Vere's writing is so noble, so insightful, so passionate, that he stirs us to the zenith of our emotions. But then again, that's what peak-performing alcoholics do best: they win people over and make us love them. Although their personal lives exasperate us, we excuse their behavior because we are infatuated. We love Marilyn. We love Sinatra. We love Lennon. We love Elvis. We love Shakespeare. Non-alcoholics do not generally inspire idolization, but alcoholics do, all the time."