Much ado about very little

In the wake of Charlton Heston's death, the Weekly Standard republished a letter written by the actor to that publication some years ago championing the Stratfordian cause. Among other things, Heston criticizes the view that "the queen and Oxford's family would have been 'scandalized' ... to know he'd written works of genius."

He asks,

Why? Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, published at least one book and wrote music and songs for court masques; her successor, James I, sponsored the first production of Macbeth mounted indoors, at court.

This is mixing categories. Yes, some nobles published the occasional book -- a sober religious tract or a sententious political essay, written not for money or personal glory but for the betterment of society. And it was perfectly acceptable for nobles to pen plays and masques for the private amusement of the court. But any form of remunerative work was considered an affront to a nobleman's dignity. To write plays for the unwashed public -- to openly consort with common players, who were legally in the same class as pickpockets, prostitutes, and vagabonds -- and worst of all, to publish vulgar, crowd-pleasing plays for money ... this would have been unthinkable for any self-respecting member of the upper class. Even so noted a poet as Sir Philip Sidney published nothing in his lifetime; his works were printed posthumously, by special arrangement of his adoring sister.

In any case, the Oxfordian claim is not that the queen and Oxford's family didn't know about his pastime; they surely did. But they did not want this secret to become general knowledge -- embarrassingly public knowledge. That was the "scandal" they feared.

Linked to Heston's letter is an article by Paul Cantor, a professor of English dead-set against the Oxfordian heresy. Cantor's 1997 piece, a hostile review of Joseph Sobran's Alias Shakespeare, sternly informs us that an education wasn't necessary for a natural genius like the Stratford man:

But does having a college degree really make it any more likely that someone could write Hamlet? There is something embarrassingly bourgeois about this way of thinking, as if some 12-step program were available that leads to literary achievement of the highest order. Some of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights, like Christopher Marlowe, did have university degrees, but the fact is that many of the greatest authors in history never set foot in college. Geniuses are geniuses precisely because they do not play by the ordinary rules.

Well, this is silly. The argument is not that only college graduates can be geniuses; rather, Oxfordians point to the many indications that these particular plays and poems were written by a highly educated man. Among other things, the author

-- seems to have been fluent in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Greek. (Several of the plays' sources were available only in those languages; Shakespeare coined many English words from foreign tongues; significant parts of Henry V are written in French.)

-- was widely versed in Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, and the intellectual controversies of his day, as well as the customs and climes of foreign lands, notably Italy. (Some of this information could have been picked up in grammar school, in church, or on the street, but the breadth of Shakespeare's learning argues for an extensive education and considerable foreign travel.)

-- was intimately familiar with the law. (Legal expressions and concepts turn up constantly in the plays and, most noticeably, in the sonnets, even in seemingly inappropriate contexts.)

So whoever wrote the Shakespearean corpus was multilingual in contemporary and ancient languages; was widely read and well-traveled; and had studied law. "Does having a college degree really make it any more likely that someone could write Hamlet?" Indeed it does, precisely by providing knowledge in all these areas -- as a university education of the time, augmented by a tour of the Continent, would have done.

Incidentally, having branded Sobran "embarrassingly bourgeois," Cantor goes on to suggest that his way of thinking places him in company of "contemporary radicals" with "a Marxist view of literature." Bourgeois or radical Marxist - which is it? Apparently anything goes when the argument consists only of empty name-calling.

Cantor acknowledges that Shakespeare the author was in sympathy to the aristocracy, or at least to aristocratic virtues. But he cannot believe the Bard was an aristocrat himself. Addressing the Oxfordian claim that the earl of Oxford was very much like a character in a Shakespeare play, Cantor seems to agree, but he sees a purely negative significance in this fact.

How could anyone [like de Vere] who led such a dissolute life find the time and discipline to write the plays we know as Shakespeare's? Sobran confuses living an aristocratic existence with being able to portray it. He writes of Oxford: "His life sounds more like the subject of a Shakespeare play." But could King Lear have written King Lear or Macbeth Macbeth? If literary history teaches us anything, it is that authors are usually the opposite of the heroes they create. Homer was no Achilles.

"Authors are usually the opposite of the heroes they create." Really?

Ernest Hemingway wrote about hard-living men who fought in combat, hunted big game, and loved a good bullfight.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about expatriate American intellectuals searching for meaning while idling on the Continent.

Mark Twain wrote about imaginative, energetic boys growing up in rural Missouri.

Ayn Rand wrote about fiercely individualistic, chain-smoking capitalists who defied the moral conventions of their day.

Is there no similarity between these authors and characters they created?

Moreover, if some of Shakespeare's characters do indeed resemble de Vere, as even Cantor appears to concede, then how did the lowly commoner from Stratford get away with writing such plays? Depicting a living nobleman on stage was the sort of thing that got people thrown in the Clink -- the Clink being an actual jail of the period. Ben Jonson was jailed twice for sedition on account of topical references in his plays, and other playwrights suffered similar fates; Thomas Kyd seems to have been driven to his grave by government persecution. Yet the long arm of the law never touched the Stratford man, even when "his" plays were making unmistakable (and derogatory) references to leading figures of the realm. It is widely acknowledged that Polonius in Hamlet is based on the Queen's counselor (and de Vere's father-in-law) William Cecil. What commoner would dare mock a man who could easily toss him in prison and throw away the key?

Or consider Richard III. The title character is very likely a caricature of Cecil's powerful and much-feared son, Robert -- right down to Robert's humped back. Clare Asquith, though a resolute Stratfordian herself, provides a persuasive rundown of parallels between Robert Cecil and King Richard in her book Shadowplay:

Richard III, a play about the hunchbacked fifteenth-century king notorious for murdering two princes in the tower, dates from the early 1590s and is a startling portrait, not merely of the general style of the 'Regnum Cecilianium' but of the unpopular public persona of Robert Cecil in particular.... Cecil is recorded as saying, 'God knows I labour like a pack horse'; the 'pack' one of his joking references to his own deformity. The only play in which Shakespeare uses the word 'packhorse' is when the hunchback Richard describes the services he did for his brother, the king, in the role the Cecils so often adopted -- that of the selfless public servant: 'I was a pack-horse in his great affairs,/A weeder-out of his proud adversaries' (I.3.121).... Richard's spectacular success in seducing the widow of one of his victims over her husband's corpse recalls another Cecil characteristic -- his unlikely prowess as a womaniser.... Both Richard and Robert were called 'Toad'; 'Here lies the Toad' was scrawled on the door of his house. Robert was an 'Elf' to Queen Elizabeth; Richard is called 'elvish-marked' (I.3.227) in the play. [pp. 79-80]

We have, then, a playwright and poet who aligns himself with the aristocracy; who shows all the signs of learning and foreign travel to be expected of an aristocrat; who has the temerity to attack the most powerful men in England, and the ability to get away with it; and whose plays repeatedly feature characters and incidents strongly reminiscent of the life of Edward de Vere -- known in his day as a leading poet, though one who (like other nobleman) did not publish under his own name.

More than ten years since the publication of Cantor's hit piece, the Oxfordian case is stronger than ever.

Comments

[Art]

"Does having a college degree really make it any more likely that someone could write Hamlet?" - MP
--------------------------------------------

Okay, this is nutty, but... I remember watching a television program about a famous female Georgia writer. (wish I could remember who she was) She said all of her books came to her in dreams. In her dreams an old black lady would come out of an old house and say to her, "Now you better listen closely to what I'm fixing to tell you!" I'm a big proponent of the transmitter/reciever component to the human brain, and I think it's not unlikely that whoever wrote Shakespeare might of had some input from the other side. I see to recall other authors and artists recieving help and information, all having a spiritual component, from the "other side." For what it's worth!

[Tony M]

Probably your best post on the Authorship Question.

Among the biggest pieces of circumstantial evidence pointing AWAY from the Stratford man, are Shakespeare’s apparently local and experiential knowledge of Italy and the apparent impunity with which he addresses and occasionally denigrates the most powerful members of the Court.

Even if one were to accept some remarkable origin for his writing, the thought that a commoner could have written thinly disguised portraits of the Cecil’s is unthinkable.

[william]

movie trivia? who was the first white actor motion picture star to kiss a black woman in a major motion picture?

also what was the title of the movie?

[Ross W]

Well, Michael, you've certainly convinced me.
QED.

[Ross W]

William - Wasn't that Star Trek when Kirk kissed Uhura?

[Ross W]

William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, was known as the “welsh earl”. He is supposed to be the W.H. or ‘fair youth’ of the sonnets, but it’s a bit unlikely. He does look like quite like the image of Shakespeare we have.

The clincher is the anagram: William Shakespeare = “I am Spike, the Welsh Earl”.
Obviously, Spike was his nickname.

Beat that one, Hope ;-)

[Dominic Hughes]

In your opinion, was Ben Jonson a.) misinformed, b.) lying, or c.) a part of the conspiracy to hide Oxford's authorship of the works (am I missing any other alternatives)?

[Ross W]

Sorry, "I am Spike, a Welsh Earl" !!

[Michael H]

I like "Spike" way better than "The Bard"!

Seriously though, reading Cantor's piece makes it crystal clear that a higher education is not particular helpful in preventing someone from presenting exceptionally weak arguments in their essays.

[Michael Prescott]

>In your opinion, was Ben Jonson a.) misinformed, b.) lying, or c.) a part of the conspiracy to hide Oxford's authorship of the works (am I missing any other alternatives)?

I think it was "C."

Diana Price has a good discussion of Jonson's contribution to the First Folio, and the multiple levels of meaning in his words, in her book Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography.

There was nothing immoral about Jonson's role; he was acting in accordance with the wishes of the late author and his family. Or so I see it, anyway.

[Dominic Hughes]

Interesting -- I wasn't thinking about Jonson's First Folio comments, but rather his allusion to Shakespeare in his Discoveries (written between 1630 and 1637 and published posthumously)where Jonson speaks of the players as saying of Shakespeare that “he never blotted out a line,” (corroborating the First Folio material) and writes of them as commending “their friend” on his abilities as a writer. In addition, Jonson writes about his own affection for "the man" while criticizing some of Shakespeare's writing faults. Jonson, therefore, identifies the player, the Stratfordian man, with the playwright. Why, at this late date, with all the major players long since dead, and in a work that he didn't publish, would Jonson have felt the need to continue the subterfuge?

[Michael Prescott]

Dominic,

I would refer you to Diana Price's book (linked above) for a discussion of Jonson's commonplace book. The short answer is that Ben was referring to the Stratford man in most of those comments, and recalling him (none too fondly) as an ignorant blowhard who ineptly recited snatches of Shakespearean dialogue, often losing the sense of the words. Jonson's poem "On Poet-Ape" may refer to the same subject, and this portrait of the Stratford man squares rather nicely with Greene's (or Chettle's) portrait of the "upstart crow."

Price's conclusion was that the Stratford man was a play-broker - someone who bought and sold playscripts, making a hefty profit, and often taking credit for others' work. Naturally this did not endear him to the writers he exploited, but it did make him an ideal front man for an aristocrat who wished to remain anonymous.

I admit this doesn't sound convincing when stated so baldly, but the thesis, with all of its supporting evidence, is too complicated to go into in just a paragraph or two.

I certainly agree that Jonson's notes require an explanation. Price's analysis persuades me, but your mileage may vary.

The other possiibility, which I don't dismiss, is that the Stratford man really did write the plays - but in that case he must have been taken in by a privileged household and given an education and a tour of the Continent, and provided with political protection throughout his career. Clare Asquith makes this case in her book Shadowplay, and Eric Sams and E.A.J. Honigmann have made similar arguments. But there is no evidence supporting this scenario, other than a reference to a "William Shakeshafte" employed in a wealthy household in Warwickshire. Maybe Shakeshafte was Shakespeare in a variant spelling or using a (rather flimsy) alias. Asquith suggests that Shakespeare went to college under an alias for political reasons - thus acquiring a university degree without leaving any record of it.

These claims can't be ruled out, but I think they are at least as speculative as Oxfordian theories, and they don't explain the parallels between the plays' content and Oxford's life.

[Ryan]

@ William
About your movie trivia, it must be Charlton Heston, right?

[Marcel Cairo]

Early AM in Buenos Aires and here I am on my first full day reading the musings of my American bloggers...

Anyway, I tried to use my spiritual connections to see if I could get an answer to this question, and I received the cryptic message, "go with Prescott." Spirits love mysteries and are good about keeping cultural secrets in tact.

Furthermore, I was also told this, "There was more than one, but one was 'Him' more than non."

I'm putting my money on de Vere. All of it.
Everyone has their sources, and I have mine.

[Hope Rivers]

Marcel I get stuff through like that too, I sometimes get riddles. I'll never forget this one I got 4 yrs ago in prayer, I asked a question and I heard this,

A valley, a mountain, a river, a lark, beyond the rainbow .. .... ....!

Now I left out a few words cos I know what it means today, well I know whats its pointing too but just so people can see, spirit sometimes are not straight too the point, sometimes they prod you too seek.

The other thing you can get stuff through that seems obvious only to find later it wasn't meant to be taken literally but pointed to something else, anyway never a dull moment :-)

[Hope Rivers]

Marcel another thing I've discovered is sometimes the sources are to be trusted!

[Hope Rivers]

sorry I meant NOT to be trusted.

[Marcel Cairo]

You are right, Hope, but one can trust oneself, at least most of the time.

Speaking on that topic, here's my take on Truth...

Truth is relative, but as far as relatives go, Truth is not so bad.

I will say this, that based on my sources, I am 100% sure that William Shakespeare was not the sole playwright of the plays and sonnets that bear his name.

[Ann Zakelj]

Touché, Michael. Excellent rebuttal.

[Dominic Hughes]

Thanks for the info about Price's theory. I'm not sure how to square her interpretation with Jonson saying that Shakespeare should have blotted lines "in his writing". And I still don't understand why Jonson, who must have been a part of the conspiracy if Price is right (sorry) wouldn't feel free to divulge the name of the true author after 1630, in his private jottings (which Jonson couldn't have known would be published) written long after the death of all interested parties. Guess I'll keep burrowing into the evidence. Thanks again.

[Tony M]

Dominic

The word “conspiracy” is loaded with connotations. It’s pejorative and suggests people sitting around and deciding on a deliberate course of action, in this case an intention to deceive.

But most “conspiracies” of this type aren’t like that. Let me give an example, albeit a silly one: Ring Lardner was playing cards with several reporters on a train bringing the Yankees to another city. Suddenly a door opened up and woman ran through the car, chased by a naked Babe Ruth. A pause, then Lardner said, “It’s a good thing we didn’t see that.”

There was no explicit conspiracy to suppress Ruth’s womanizing. It was simply accepted as the way things were done at the time.

You ask why Johnson would not reveal what he knew decades later. An equally valid question is: why would he? Shakespeare, the poet and playwright, was not “SHAKESPEARE” the demi-god yet. He was a writer from a previous generation that Johnson probably thought inferior to himself. Also, he would have felt no need to reveal the “secret”. The public wasn’t hungry for celebrity news like it is now, nor would there be any particular reason to provoke the aristocracy, which was still very powerful would likely have contained many loyal to Oxford. (Those “incomparable brethren” among them.)

Finally, the “secret” was probably not particularly secret – at least not around the court or in literary circles. It is impossible to imagine that Burghley did not know who was satirizing him as Polonius, even using his personal letters to his son as material. Or that Cecil (the son) was unaware of who using him as the model for Richard. As Joseph Sorbon suggests, it was probably and open secret that no one who knew felt the need to write down (and could not have gotten it into print even if they wished).

Johnson had no particular reason to break confidence and many not to. He may have been speaking about both the Stratford man and Oxford with wink here or there. Once you get past the idea of explicit conspiracy theories (which, sadly, some Oxfordians fail to do) it is fairly easy to see how a widely known “secret” passed from living memory.

[Dominic Hughes]

Tony:

It seems to me there are significant difference between your Ring Lardner example and the situation with Ben Jonson. Lardner didn't report something he witnessed. On the other hand, if the Oxfordians are correct, Jonson participated in a conscious subterfuge (the First Folio) to portray the Stratfordian as the author of the works.

In addition, Lardner chose not to reveal an incident to the newspaper-reading public. Jonson's audience in the Discoveries was Jonson himself...these were his private notes that he couldn't know would ever even be published (and were not published during his lifetime). There would be no public to consider and no provovcation of any nobles. Why would he carry on the ruse in those private notes?

Finally, if Oxford's authorship of the works was an "open secret" at the time, it is puzzling that there is no documentary evidence of that fact somewhere. The only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. And if it was an "open secret" it would seem that there weren't any real impediments to Jonson writing it in Discoveries instead of continuing to portray the actors' friend as the writer of the plays.

[Michael Prescott]

>if the Oxfordians are correct, Jonson participated in a conscious subterfuge

Yes ... as did the White House press corps when they depicted John Kennedy's marriage as idyllic, even while knowing that he was keeping dozens of mistresses.

An earlier White House press corps depicted Franklin Roosevelt as hale and hearty, when in reality he was crippled by polio.

>Why would he carry on the ruse in those private notes?

In a police state, people develop the habit of caution when committing anything to paper, whether it's private or not - because nothing is ever fully private. Thomas Kyd was imprisoned and tortured after "atheistic" writings were discovered in a search of his lodgings. Needless to say, the authorities did not need a search warrant or probable cause ...

[Dominic Hughes]

Interesting points. Still the reporters were writing (or deciding not to write) for a wide audience. Jonson was writing for himself, not an audience that required him to continue to maintain the cover story...certainly he wasn't trying to fool himself in maintaining the subterfuge about Shakespeare being the writer.

And, in the police state that you describe, would he feel comfortable making such disparaging remarks about the writer of the plays even if he was continuing (for whatever reason) to hide the true author behind the front man. This gets more and more puzzling -- it seems the Oxfordian case would be better served by an argument that Jonson had been hoodwinked as well. Thanks for your comments -- I am muddling my way through the evidence and it certainly helps to test it against possible interpretations.

[Tony M]

> It seems to me there are significant difference between your Ring Lardner example and the situation with Ben Jonson. Lardner didn't report something he witnessed.

The example is exaggerated for effect. I could have easily gone to the JFK and FDR examples Michael used but I wanted to make it clear that most so-called consipiricies are not explicit: they emerge from underlying assumptions shared by a group. Rather than being rare or elaborate, they are commonplace.

>On the other hand, if the Oxfordians are correct, Jonson participated in a conscious subterfuge (the First Folio) to portray the Stratfordian as the author of the works.

Well, why wouldn't he? The Earls who backed the Folio (including Oxford's own son-in-law and a man who was nearly his son-in-law) were powerful nobles whose patronage Jonson had every reason to seek. Jonson was also a man of his time and would not have had the democratic impulse to 'blow the whistle' we'd expect today.

Finally, the Folio is far more ambitious than many let on. The phrases "thy Stratford monument" and "Sweet Swan of Avon" are referred to so frequently that many assume they are used in close proximity and explicitly link to the Stratford man. In fact, they appear in separate parts of the folio. (Oxford had an estate on the Avon, by the way).

Many of Jonson's statements about Shakespeare are patently, obviously false - if they are about the poet and playwright. Notably "less Latin and little Greek" and the suggestion that he never blotted out a line. The plays themselves sufficiently rebuke those absurdities.

The point is that you seem to be claiming that it is hard to imagine Jonson engaging in the deceit. Actually, it is quite easy. It's harder to imagine that he would or could resist it.

If you have not read Price's book (which does NOT make a case for Oxford) I urge you to do so. She makes it extremely difficult to maintain the Stratford man's case.

[Dominic Hughes]

>The example is exaggerated for effect. I could have easily gone to the JFK and FDR examples Michael used but I wanted to make it clear that most so-called consipiricies are not explicit: they emerge from underlying assumptions shared by a group. Rather than being rare or elaborate, they are commonplace.
I’d have to disagree with you there. Most conspiracies are the result of people consciously acting in concert to bring about a shared goal (such as the criminal conspiracies that are involved in fraud, bank robberies, assassinations, etc.). The cost involved in the publication of the First Folio indicates that someone put a lot of thought into it, and whoever was behind the hoax spent a good deal of time, effort, and silver in carrying out the deflection (if that’s what it was..
>>On the other hand, if the Oxfordians are correct, Jonson participated in a conscious subterfuge (the First Folio) to portray the Stratfordian as the author of the works.
>Well, why wouldn't he? The Earls who backed the Folio (including Oxford's own son-in-law and a man who was nearly his son-in-law) were powerful nobles whose patronage Jonson had every reason to seek. Jonson was also a man of his time and would not have had the democratic impulse to 'blow the whistle' we'd expect today.
I think you’re missing my point. Under the Oxfordian scenario, Jonson consciously took part in an effort to mislead the general public into thinking that the works were written by William Shakespeare of Stratford. He knew the “open secret” – this doesn’t seem to square at all with what he was writing to himself later after the participants in this hoax were long since dead. I fail to see what motivation he would have for keeping the secret from himself in his private writings. He wouldn’t be “blowing the whistle” in a private notebook that was not intended to be read by anyone but Jonson himself.
>The point is that you seem to be claiming that it is hard to imagine Jonson engaging in the deceit. Actually, it is quite easy. It's harder to imagine that he would or could resist it.
That is not what I’m claiming at all. I could see Jonson possibly engaging in the deceit that was foisted on the public in the First Folio. What I can’t see as logical is why he would still be carrying on the deception years later in a private notebook that was meant for his eyes only. Who was he trying to fool in that passage -- himself?
>If you have not read Price's book (which does NOT make a case for Oxford) I urge you to do so. She makes it extremely difficult to maintain the Stratford man's case.
I intend to read Ms. Price’s book. However, if her interpretation of the passage in Discoveries (that it is not describing Shakespeare as the writer of the plays) is any indication of her overall reasoning, I’m not sure I’ll be all that convinced – but I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve read it. I’m currently reading Anderson’s book, and I’ll probably read Ogburn next, so it may be a bit before I get to Price.

[Roger Knights]

Another feature of Shakespeare's work that would require an education is his sonnets. Sonnets must follow complicated rules of form. It requires extensive drill-work in school in copying out the sonnets of others and composing practice-sonnets before an author can become proficient enough to produce them as readily as Shakespeare did.

[Mark Alexander (the other Mark)]

Some of you may be interested in a PowerPoint I created and presented at the De Vere Studies Conference many years ago, called "Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections."

http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/25connections/25ConnectionsV5_files/frame.htm

In short, I use primarily Stratfordian sources to demonstrate that many things they point out about the "author" Shakespeare directly connects to "Oxford" and hardly at all to William of Stratford.

Enjoy!

[Mark Alexander (the other Mark)]

Oops! The link was too long. Thank god for tinyurl.com

Try this one:

http://tinyurl.com/4klobg