The Shakespeare Authorship Question Revisited

While working as a reference librarian at the United States Patent Office, I developed an interest in the parallels between the monopolies granted to court favorites in Elizabethan times and the establishment of regulatory agencies in the United States to oversee activities in various fields. In each situation, the licensing power of the monopoly holder or of the regulatory agency can be used to impose various restrictions on commercial activities. In particular, I was interested in the development of the system of patents for inventors and of copyright for writers and publishers, as exceptions when the Elizabethan monopolies were abolished in 1623 and 1640.

In this context, it intrigued me that most of the plays ascribed to “William Shakespeare” had been registered without that name, when first published, and that there was a controversy having to do with the question of who wrote the plays.

As a reference librarian, I had spent considerable time finding materials on both (or many) sides of various controversies and I had become interested in the strategies used by writers in trying to persuade opponents. In many controversies, the authors could be divided into two groups: One side asserted that the opposition had no case: the other side argued the case on its merits.

I decided to see whether there might be any such contrast in the Shakespeare authorship controversy. A compact statement of my impression is that those who argued the case for the “Stratford Shakespeare” usually assumed a particular scenario and implied that opponents must be snobbish, ignorant, or unduly credulous.

In contrast, the writings of Thomas Looney and various other opponents of the “Stratfordian” argued from the facts and avoided name-calling.

In summary, the two main types of scenarios are:

The Stratfordian position: William Shaksper or Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon, born in 1564; went to London and probably became an actor and writer of plays; retired after deriving some wealth, probably from his acting or plays; and died in 1616. Seven years after his death, some of his supposed fellow-actors arranged for the publication of his plays, in what is called the “First Folio” which appeared in 1523, including a great many plays which had apparently never been staged for the public.

“Anti-Stratfordian” Scenarios: Other scenarios ascribe the writing of the plays to one or more of several other writers. One of these scenarios is: A favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Edward deVere, Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and sonnets; did not feel free to publish them under his own name; used the pseudonym William Shakespeare; and left them at his death, in manuscript. His family eventually arranged to have them published, but, for whatever reason, arranged to have the identity of the author disguised and had the plays associated with the William Shaksper of Stratford, who was by then dead.

Part of response to the Stratfordian is that there is no evidence that the Stratford man has any part in the writing of the plays. Even if it is assumed that he did not need an education to write the poems or plays (for instance, that he wrote them by automatic writing or by the flow of such genius as that shown by the young Mozart), there is no evidence that he did so. And this throws the burden of proof on those who, for whatever reason, insist that he must have done so.

At the time of his death, the Stratford man was not referred to, in any recorded documents or notes, as having been known as an actor or writer, even though there are many extant discussions from those times, of the careers of writers of presumably much lesser stature; Shaksper‘s will makes no mention of books or any interest in the poems or plays with which his name came to be associated. His son-in-law, who wrote a great deal about the prominent people he knew, mentioned the death of his father-in-law with no further comment. If the William Shaksper of Stratford had written the poems and the plays ascribed to him, we might expect that, considering the scholarly research that has been done on the matter, some evidence of his having been an author would have been detected.

The first thing that associated the man of Stratford with the plays is a reference to “thy Stratford monument” in the prefatory matter of the First Folio edition of the plays.

The leading figure in the production of the First Folio was Ben Jonson, who was, for some years prior to 1623, employed by the survivors of Edward deVere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford. Oxford was selected by Thomas Looney as the author of the Elizabethan period whose writings and biography best correlate with the allusions in the Shakespearian materials. Ben Jonson‘s stipend from Oxford’s heirs was increased, in 1622, from 1,000 to 2,000 pounds per year. And it is plausible to consider whether or not that had to do with his work in getting the plays prepared for publication.

The first Folio edition of the plays was published in 1623. In it Jonson describes “William Shakespeare” as the greatest of English writers of plays. A few years before, in a listing of noteworthy people he new, Jonson had not mentioned any William Shakespeare, of implied that anyone else knew any writer by that name.

The point of this note is not to make the case for any particular theory of the authorship of the Shakespearian materials, but to show that the ascription to the Shaksper of Stratford is not by any means necessary, on the evidence, and that rejection of it need not imply either credulity or snobbishness; rejection of the Stratfordian position may reflect an awareness of the Elizabethan situation and of the commonness of the custom of chopping off even very prestigious heads.

Polonius, in the Hamlet play, and Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, are shown with many characteristics that would make them seem satires on the Queen’s chief advisor, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Oxford’s father-in-law. It would not have been surprising if the Queen had been persuaded to require Oxford, to whom she paid 1,000 pounds a year from 1586 on, to swear never to let the plays be publicly associated with him as author. If such an oath had been required of Oxford, he might have regarded it as binding on his widow and her successors, so that the eventual publication of the plays might reasonably have been done only with the use of the William Shakespeare pseudonym and with the further precaution of a hint that the by-then deceased man of Stratford was the author.

There are, of course, many books on various aspects of the Shakespeare authorship controversy.