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.   

Comments

[dmduncan]

That was funny, and he made some excellent points. Perhaps the truth, as in so many things, is just that complicated.

[Howard Schumann]

Mr. Holderness. With all due respect, you were right the first time. Major themes in the plays and sonnets are also prominent themes in Oxford's life. Coincidence, perhaps? I think not.

[Stephanie Hopkins Hughes]

It’s become clear to me over the passing years that the real problem we have with the English Departments is that they don’t care who wrote Shakespeare because what they really care about is the text and only the text. Had they cared they would not have succumbed to the inanities of the deconstruction fad of some decades ago, whereby it became dogma (for a time) that the author and his or her intentions are of no importance.

Holderness may have made an unfortunate (for him) slip of the tongue in seeming to endorse Oxford, but now he puts us straight. Nope, like all the other Holoferneses in this scholarly drama, all he cares about is the canon itself. It would make no difference to him “if it was written by a tinker.” Are we to be surprised by this? Didn’t Fred Boas remind us some time ago that it took the English Departments of Cambridge and Oxford 200 years before they would even allow Shakespeare to be performed on campus, much less taught?

I agree with Holderness that Nicholas Rowe should be trusted and also that “The more authentic and credible Rowe becomes, the less likely it is that this Stratford man is the true author.” Of course Rowe got the genuine lowdown on William. Everything in his story confirms who he was. That he was also the world’s most erudite and sophisticated playwright is what requires a death-defying leap of faith, but when one is surrounded by an entire community all taking the same leap (a sort of scholarly “Rapture”), it doesn’t seem so bizarre. Holderness goes on to reverse himself, of course. It’s always interesting to see an academic twisting in the wind of his own thought processses.

Ultimately it’s we the independent scholars who will turn the tide, as we have from the start. All the great Shakespeareans (but one) were unaffiliated independents: Malone, Halliday-Phillips, Chambers (I include the one academic, T.W. Baldwin). Once we’ve turned the corner (and the old guard has died out) the English Departments will simply adopt our discoveries as though there was never a problem, just as they have the works themselves. If they’d only read a little history and get a sense of the political climate at the time, they might find the transition somewhat easier.

Stephanie Hopkins Hughes

[Roger Stritmatter]

"It’s become clear to me over the passing years that the real problem we have with the English Departments is that they don’t care who wrote Shakespeare because what they really care about is the text and only the text. Had they cared they would not have succumbed to the inanities of the deconstruction fad of some decades ago, whereby it became dogma (for a time) that the author and his or her intentions are of no importance."

Aha! Stephanie. You can say that again. O wait, you already did....:)

[Roger Knights]

Couldn't there have been a team of scriptwriters? Has anyone argued for this?

Perhaps this is not much favored because it offends our image of the creative genius when it turns out after the fact that an editor has very substantially improved a famous author's works. Examples are Thomas Wolfe and Raymond Carver (very heavily modified by his editor Liss (I think the name is)).

[Heward Wilkinson]

I think it behoves those of us who are Oxfordians to be a bit more gracious towards Graham Holderness and the issues he raises. In that respect I honour Michael Prescott for giving Graham the space to clarify his position. In the first place, though Oxfordians believe there is strong circumstantial evidence for Oxford's authorship, as far as I know no one believes there is a genuine knock out piece of evidence or smoking gun. And Graham is accepting that there are difficulties in the orthodox attribution, in other words, that it too is circumstantial. This is an important implicit acceptance.

In the second place, it does not seem to me that Oxfordians, of all people, should be cavalier towards anyone who holds that the relationship between author and work is not at all a simple biographical/psychological one. The relationship between an author and a pseudonym is a very subtle one, as Doris Lessing testified in relation to her experience of writing the Jane Somers novels, and Oxfordians are claiming precisely that this authorship was presented under a pseudonym. Further, some of us think that this was unlikely to have been the first pseudonym that Oxford used. Indeed, the Derridean slogan that 'il n'y a d hors texte', properly understood in its true meaning that the relationship between world and text is indissoluble, is highly relevant to elucidating the complex relationship which has to be posited between Oxford and his writings.

It is a relationship which is not without analogies to that between a double agent and his/her alternate identity, the peculiarities of which are touched on in Erving Goffman's magnum opus Frame Analysis, and which some have argued also applied to Oxford.
http://hewardwilkinson.co.uk

[dmduncan]

I don't have a dog in this fight. So speaking as an outsider to the controversy I can say that what Holderness is saying makes sense to me.

For what it's worth.

[Thomas Hunter]

Some authorship proponents are indeed interested in pursuing those “profound questions about life and writing, the self and identity, personal expression and impersonal artistry.” So I welcome Prof. Holderness’ offer of “common ground for debate.” The problem is that these issues concerning Shakespeare inevitably lead to inquiries into his identity. Nothing obsessive about it. No lobbying. Just the questions which quite naturally arise from the evidence of the works themselves. The intent of these questions, as products of open, inquiring minds, may not even be to discredit the man from Stratford. But if that does happen, does the discussion grind to a halt because “there really won’t be all that much to talk about”? Or will Prof. Holderness, who in a previously, highlighted paragraph, identified himself as “interested in reasonable doubt,” be ready and willing to tred those forbidden paths of academia and follow open-minded, responsible inquiry where it may lead?

[Matthew Cossolotto]

Kudos to Michael Prescott for hosting this discussion. And kudos to Prof. Graham Holderness for engaging in a thoughtful discussion about the authorship issue and for stating clearly and unambiguously that he is interested in reasonable doubt.
In addition, I applaud Prof. Holderness for saying the following: "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."
This strikes me as the attitude of a true scholar -- somenone who has not closed his/her mind to reasonable debate and to evidence that may not necessarily fit into a neat and tidy case for one authorship candidate or another. A closed mind is a terrible thing.
But the good Professor makes a few statements that deserve to be challenged. I'll only mention one in particular. He makes the following assertion: "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."
This statement is one of two things. It is either a willful mischaracterization of the "Oxfordian" position or it belies a complete misunderstanding of what many Oxfordians have said (I hestitate to claim that all Oxfordians "invariably assert" anything because there are many variations and nuances within the Oxfordian community.)
I can't think of any Oxfordian who has made such an assertion. This, of course, is a variation on the "snobbery" argument that often comes up against so-called "anti-Stratfordians" -- I prefer the term "pro-Shakespearans." I am decidedly "pro-Shakespeare" -- I want the correct or true Shakespeare to get the credit. On this I would think all parties in the discussion should be able to agree.
Nobody that I know of has suggested that only an aristocrat "could have mastered such learning ... displayed such genius, etc." That is false and indeed silly. The issue at hand is that the works display such a vast amount of learning and experience in so many specialized fields that the author would have to be someone with a vast knowledge base -- including languages, medicine, military affairs, court intrigue, horticulture, art and music, etc. One would think that members of academia would be the first to champion the need for educational acheivement and years of study.
And yet William of Stratford does not have any documented educational achievements. None. Nada. Zilch. When did he learn how to speak/write Italian or French? When did he learn about Venice or music or medicine? The Stratfordian position seems to boil down to a kind of "immacuate genius" theory in which all of this learning is somehow magically implanted and accepted as fact without any evidence ... and contrary evidence is ignored (absence of any letters or manuscripts, lack of any documented ownership of a single book, difficulty writing his own name, raising two illiterate or at best semi-literate daughters, not a single letter to or from a contemporary literary figure, etc.)
There is a narrower point here. The Shakespeare plays and poems do seem to betray something of an aristocratic worldview ... which is why Walt Whitman believed the real Shakespeare was one of the "wolfish Earls" in Elizabeth's court. But that's a different kind of assertion than what Prof. Holderness suggests. It relies on looking at the evidence before us -- the plays and poems themselves -- and noticing what level of knowledge, learning, and experience (including travel) the author demonstrates. Stratfordians seem content to ignore this evidence or deny it's importance. Is it reasonable to expect that "Shakespeare" -- whoever he/she was -- would require years of painstaking study to acquire the vast knowledge displayed in the works -- and to perfect the poetic and theatrical skills necessary to create the greatest literature in the the English language? I think it is entirely reasonable.

[Mike Markus]

Seeing that this blog is supposed to present the "Occasional thoughts" of Michael Prescott, it's rather surprising that he doesn't really contribute anything aside from a brief introduction. Opinions, Michael?

[Michael Prescott]

"Opinions, Michael?"

I'm an Oxfordian. If you click on the "Shakespeare" tag at the bottom of the main post, you'll find my other posts on this subject.

Otherwise, I agree with Matthew Cossolotto's viewpoint (above). And like him, I applaud Prof. Holderness for taking the time to expand on his position so eloquently.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/unmasked-the-real-shakespeare/2005/10/05/1128191785837.html

"...the political content and geographical location of the plays are a perfect reflection of the known travels and adventures of Neville, a highly educated diplomat and politician from Berkshire who lived from 1562 to 1615
...
The plays also portray many of Neville's royal and other ancestors — John of Gaunt in Richard II, Warwick the King Maker in Henry VI part II and King Duncan of Scotland in Macbeth — in a particularly favourable light
...
A further piece of evidence is a document, now known to have been written by Neville while a prisoner in the Tower of London, which contains detailed notes, the contents of which ended up being used in Henry VIII
...
There are also striking similarities of style and vocabulary between Neville's private and diplomatic letters and the Shakespeare plays and poems. Word frequency analysis also reveals a statistical correlation.
...
Finally, in a document discovered in 1867, Neville practised faking William Shakespeare's signature. The document, in Neville's hand and with his name at the top, features 17 attempts at various forms of Shakespeare's signature...."

[Roger Knights]

This Neville fellow is the person I had in mind (although I had forgotten his name) and referred to last year sometime when I wrote that a scholarly investigator had turned up someone who was a better match than Oxford.

But now I'm thinking that both these people, and maybe more, were contributors of scripts to a team of script-writers and script-doctors under the Stratford man's control in London.