Primrose Road

In my view, the "anti-Stratfordian" argument (i.e. William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays attributed to him; someone else wrote them) needs to be addressed in schools because (1) it's all over the Internet, and students researching Shakespeare are likely to encounter it, and (2) there are parallels between this argument (essentially a conspiracy theory) and pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical theories such as creationism, Holocaust denial, and anti-vaccination. Sites like Doubt About Will concern me as a teacher because of the ways in which they can contribute to the dulling of our students' critical reasoning skills. The parallels between anti-Stratfordianism and creationism are fascinating at times: this week's Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast, for instance, featured an interview with biologist PZ Myers, who noted that creationists arguing against evolution will accuse their opponents of ad hominem attacks, then go on to make their own ad hominem attacks. The victim of most creationist attacks is Charles Darwin, who, according to the creationists, is unequivocally worshipped by "evolutionists." The problem, Myers seems to suggest, is that straw men are being set up everywhere:scientists do criticize Darwin because he (like anyone) wasn't perfect, and "worshipping" any one scientist or theory would be anti-scientific. Here's an ad hominem attack courtesy of DoubtAboutWill.org:

"Are authorship doubters just conspiracy theorists? It is absurd to think that all of the many outstanding authorship skeptics are conspiracy theorists. Too many highly credible people have expressed serious doubts, focusing just on this one author. This ad hominem argument is a red herring used by defenders of orthodoxy to change the subject. Those who resort to it should be asked for evidence that independent experts support this charge. It is a convenient way for them to avoid having to deal with evidence that does not support them. In writing our declaration, we have focused on evidence. Those who disagree should do likewise."

Let me take this apart: 1. "Too many highly credible people have expressed serious doubts, focusing on just this one author." -- The 'doubters' aren't clear here on what they mean by "highly credible." They excitedly report, for instance, that "More stars declare their doubt of Shakespeare". What evidence do these "stars" have for their doubt? (I will return to the issue of evidence momentarily.) And yes, some university professors have signed the declaration; see the National Center for Science Education's Project Steve for an excellent counterargument to what I'll call the argument from "a handful of scholars say so." 2. "This ad hominem argument is a red herring used by defenders of orthodoxy to change the subject." -- This ad hominem argument is used by proponents of an ahistorical theory to make Shakespeare and Early Modern scholars look like stodgy old men who regularly bow to the bust of Shakespeare sitting on their mantles. Especially since the introduction of film theory and adaptation theory into our field, we are not Bardolaters: many scholars acknowledge the fact that Shakespeare is only "special" because he's the most published (though not the most prolific) Early Modern dramatist. We also acknowledge (unlike Kenneth Branagh ...) the fact that every word printed inside the BOOK we call "Hamlet" was not written by William Shakespeare. Finally, we are aware that the concept of "authorship" in the Early Modern era did not exist in the form it does today: play development was a collaborative process among author(s), actors, and theater managers; the printed versions of plays "belonged" to printers, not to authors. The argument that someone authored the entire text of someone else's plays is ahistorical and simply does not make sense in light of 16th and 17th century cultural practices. In fact, "orthodox" scholars do make authorship arguments: recently, it was discovered that Thomas Middleton likely wrote parts of Macbeth and Measure for Measure. 3. "In writing our declaration, we have focused on evidence. Those who disagree should do likewise." -- Unfortunately, unlike our counterparts in the sciences, we can't offer much more than anecdotal evidence; scholars tend to acknowledge, however, that they are piecing together arguments from a handful of documents. But we do have considerable documentary evidence that Shakespeare was indeed who we think he was, and we do have very good reasons for not using the plays themselves as biographical evidence: even supposed 'true believer' Sigmund Freud thought that good authors don't write autobiographical romans-(or dramas-)a-clef. In sum, anti-Stratfordianism isn't something that teachers and scholars should brush aside simply because we know it's ridiculous; equipping our students with the critical reasoning skills necessary to evaluate arguments like these will also help them to evaluate the conspiracy theories, fundamentalisms, and pseudohistories they're bound to encounter.

Brunel University in London is offering the first MA in Shakespeare Authorship Studies this term, and Mark Rylance and Sir Derek Jacobi, two of the (very, very good) Shakespearean actors behind the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare, are, of course, excited about the program. First, let me say that actors are (generally) awesome. I wouldn't be able to do what I do -- I wouldn't be fascinated with what I do -- if it weren't for actors. The guys and gals up on stage can force us to think, make us want to change the world or our lives, or can make us stop breathing for just one spectacularly suspended moment. Thanks to Early English Books Online, actors and armchair Shakespearians can learn from primary sources how production and printing worked back in the English Renaissance. (OK, they'd need to visit a university library with a subscription to EEBO, but it's still to some degree accessible.) Or go to any library, read a couple of scholarly monographs and essay collections, and learn about how there's not only not really a "Shakespeare vs. other guy issue" but also how, in spite the straw man that the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt relies on, academic-types are actually against treating Will Shakespeare like an untouchable god.

To sum up: In arguing that that "orthodox scholars claim that there is no room for doubt that Mr. Shakspere wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him," the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About The Identity of William Shakespeare sets up a Straw Man: in actuality, scholars do not claim that there is no room for doubt, but rather understand that "authorial identity" meant something entirely different (if it meant anything at all) in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. For an excellent critique of the anti-Stratfordian "evidence" that doesn't resort to ad hominem attacks (well, except maybe in the case of Delia Bacon, but ...), see Bill Bryson's article in London's Sunday Times. A few points brought up by other bloggers: (1) It's really not that unlikely that a glovemaker's son would write plays, because Marlowe's father was a shoemaker, and Jonson's and Middleton's fathers were bricklayers. (2) The "Declaration" claims that Shakespeare's will does not refer to his plays, and "contain[s] no clearly Shakespearean turn of phrase." So, The Playgoer asks,

"Yes, if you were a great playwright, wouldn't your checkbook be more alliterative? Your customer service accounts have better story arcs?"

(3) But leaving his wife his "second-best bed" was kind of 'Shakespearean', no? (4) If we accept Sir Derek Jacobi's idea that "an author writes [only, he implies] about his own experience, his own life and personalities," Judeopundit asks, then are we to also assume that "de Vere was a Venetian Jew, a mythical ancient British king with three daughters, and a Moorish general?" Here's to straw men, conspiracy theories, burden of proof, and invisible pink elephants in the room.

Yes, Walt Whitman seems to have believed that Francis Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare: he wrote a poem about the matter, discussed the "cipher" with Horace Traubel, and DoubtAboutWill.org quotes the following from November Boughs:

"Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism — personifying in unparall'd ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic cast, its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) — only one of the 'wolfish earls' so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendent and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works — works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded history."

I'm going to take the high road here and *not* mention that Whitman also believed in Phrenology. (I suppose I just did.) E.M.W. Tillyard made an argument similar to Whitman's (minus the "authorship" claim, of course) in 1942: Shakespeare's plays seemed to reinforce a view of an hierarchically organized world order. Except Tillyard, Whitman, and those who would claim that Shakespeare's plays reflect the point of view of a nobleman overlook CONTEXT. First, the "world order" speeches are more often than not placed in the mouths of tyrannical (or senile) kings. Second, the "degree" speech in Troilus and Cressida to which Tillyard and others refer:

How could communities, Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! (T&C 1.3)

is spoken by Ulysses, the Greek solider trying to explain to his men why they don't seem to be winning the war. This assertion of ideology is followed by a second speech, in which Ulysses explains what the actual problem is: Achilles, who should be their best solider, is lying in bed with Patroclus all day and mocking the Greek generals. Far from reinforcing "degree," Ulysses' speeches reveal how sharp a divide there can be between ideology and practice, especially when it comes to war. So, while this doesn't conclusively "prove" that Shakespeare wasn't a nobleman, it surely undercuts the argument that evidence of Shakespeare's supposed noble status is in the plays themselves.

The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare makes the following argument:

Mr. Shakspere grew up in an illiterate household in the remote agricultural town of Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no record that he traveled at all during his formative years, or that he ever left England. Both of his parents witnessed documents with a mark; but most surprisingly, neither of his daughters could write. One poorly-executed signature exists for his daughter, Susanna, but it only suggests a functional illiterate. His younger daughter, Judith, twice signed with a mark when witnessing a deed for a Stratford neighbor. Mr. Shakspere may have attended the Stratford grammar school, but records to confirm this do not exist. Records do survive for England's two universities at the time, but no record places him at either of them. Most orthodox scholars make no claim that he ever attended any university, inside or outside of England.

Again, we encounter an assumption that a concept or institution meant the same thing in the 16th and early-seventeenth century that it does now: the "university." The "Declaration" claims that because "the works show extensive knowledge of law, philosophy, classical literature, ancient and modern history, mathematics, astronomy, art, music, medicine, horticulture, heraldry, military and naval terminology and tactics," it is unlikely that they were written by a man who did not attend university. But pre-18th century, a university education typically meant that a man had specialized in law, theology, or medicine (Scott McCrea has discussed this in his The Case For Shakespeare). In fact, many Europeans at the time did not trust doctors who were university-educated! Further, the Declaration notes Shakespeare's knowledge of "etiquette and manners of the nobility; English, French and Italian court life; Italy; and aristocratic pastimes such as falconry, equestrian sports and royal tennis," implying (once again) that whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays must have been a nobleman. How interesting that the Shakespeare 'doubters' claim to be against an "orthodoxy," yet argue that only a college-educated nobleman could have written the plays and base many of their theories on a Romantic view of authorship. Next up: why Shakespeare probably wasn't reinforcing a hierarchical respect-your-nobility world order.

I was going to wait a few days before blogging about the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt, but since there's a link to a story about it on AOL Mail's welcome page, I think it's worth it to address this "Declaration" now. Stay tuned for a series of responses to the Declaration and DoubtAboutWill.org; for now, the most significant flaw with the 'Shakespeare may not have been Shakespeare' argument is, simply put, as follows: "Authorship" in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century does not mean the same thing that "authorship" meant to the Romantics and the Victorians, and it does not mean the same thing that it means today. I think it is absolutely wonderful that talented doctors, lawyers, actors, and people from all walks of life are reading Shakespeare and asking questions about Shakespeare. I do not believe that the people who have signed the "Declaration" are in any way unintelligent; I think, however, that many are armchair Shakespeareans but not armchair historians. When viewed in light of history and Elizabethan/Jacobean cultural practices, the argument that 'one individual wrote another individual's plays' falls into the Not Even Wrong category. Shakespeare adapted and adopted from Holinshed's Chronicles, Saxo Grammaticus, the Gesta Romanorum, Chaucer, Gower, Kyd, and Marlowe. The creation of a play was a collaborative process among author(s), actors, and theater managers; the printed versions of plays "belonged" to printers, not to authors. Copyright as we know it did not exist - copyright belonged to the printer, not the author. (See David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare and the Book for further discussion of how this worked.) Texts were not stable -- while I can fairly confidently hold up a copy of Three Sisters and say, "this is Three Sisters," I can only hold up two rather distinct texts of Doctor Faustus and say, "these point to a play called Doctor Faustus." (See Leah Marcus, Unediting the Renaissance, for an in-depth explanation.) The Declaration claims that "orthodox scholars claim that there is no room for doubt that Mr. Shakspere wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him." Scholars acknowledge that authorship was a collaborative process because they acknowledge that (1) the past was different, and (2) the past wasn't all Victorian/Romantic/an HBO costume drama. The only aspect of DoubtAboutWill.org that I find genuinely unsettling is the "Shakespeare Authorship Coalition"'s address to students. The "was Shakespeare Shakespeare?" question isn't hyper-relevant to most of society today, and it probably shouldn't be. But, compare the following two arguments: - Since all of the evidence we have for William Shakespeare of Stratford writing the plays attributed to William Shakespeare would be classified by present-day lawyers as "circumstantial" (cf. The Playgoer's post about the declaration), then it's perfectly reasonable to believe that deVere/Marlowe/Bacon/Queen Elizabeth secretly wrote the plays. - Since evolution's only a theory (like gravity), and since all the evidence we have for the Big Bang is technically "circumstantial" (i.e. no direct witnesses), then it's perfectly reasonable to believe that the world was created by the Judeo-Christian God only 5000 years ago. Ay, there's the rub.