Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University
Attempts to disprove that this Stratford grain-merchant
Shakspere wrote the works of Shakespeare are typically sneered at as
resulting either from snobbery -- that we are reluctant to think that
works of genius can have come from someone without a university education
or travel experience -- or from a post-romantic disappointment when a
poet's life is not as dramatic as his or her work. Alternate biographical
investigation is labelled "bardolatry for paranoids" (Paster 38).
But we have no manuscripts, no working notebooks, no letters, no direct
information on his private life from "the Warwickshire gentleman,"
typically spelled Shakspere or a short-a variant in the records we do have.
Give me a break! I've got my cherished photo of myself standing next to
Agnes Nixon, and no one even knows who she is! (The creator of All My
Children.) Shakespeare, in his own lifetime, was bigger than Agnes
Nixon, yet nobody proudly decided in 1615 to hang onto a short personal
letter by the great William Shakspere? (And this notion of celebrity
culture is not anachronistic: witness the demand for portraits of
Elizabeth, and the opening scene in Antony and Cleopatra.)
No one even attempted to write a biographical sketch of Stratford Will
until a century later. "The evidence does not establish that he was the
author of anything, let alone the erudite works of 'Shakespeare.'" We
have six "quavering and ill-written" signatures on legal documents. His
wife and daughter signed their names with an X. So, "the author of
King Lear was a litigious businessman" (Bethell 36)? Shakspere
left London in 1604 at the age of forty -- odd that that would make him
the only great writer in history to "retire" young and triumphant. He
shows up almost immediately in a Stratford small claims court, suing
a neighbor for a malt debt of 35 shillings, soon after the publication
of Hamlet?!
Ben Jonson sniped that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek,"
but he knows classical material and classical rhetoric and certainly
the spirit of Ovid and Virgil. It's argued that Elizabethan grammar
school could be impressive, beginning at 6:00 am, centered on Latin
language and literature, etc. (Shakespeare has assumed the place
that these formerly occupied in schooling.) The Stratford grammar
school was, in fact, a one-room schoolhouse for farmers' sons of
all ages. We have no record that William attended.
Noblemen did not use their names when writing for public theatre,
so pen names were the rule. The printing press threatened absolutist
regimes such as the Tudor. Attempts to control ideas included destruction
of unlicensed presses; pamphlets seized; theatres closed; writers
interrogated (Samuel Daniel), imprisoned (George Chapman, Ben Jonson),
mutilated (John Stubbs, Alexander Leighton, William Prynne), maybe even
assassinated (Marlowe?). The majority of plays before the Elizabethan
era are anonymous. Sidney and Surrey were published under their names
only after death.
References to the playwright frequently read "Shake-speare" with the
hyphen. As a pseudonym, this would work most appropriately. Pallas
Athena was the mythological patron of theater arts (patron goddess of
Athens), and wore a helmet that made her invisible; but she carried
a spear and, for example, invisibly influences the spear-throwing
scene between Hector and Achilles in The Iliad. So, a "spear
shaker" is an invisible writer for the theater.
FRANCIS BACON
WILLIAM STANLEY, 6th EARL OF DERBY
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
EDWARD DE VERE, 17th EARL OF OXFORD
A mid-nineteenth-century hypothesis looked to Bacon, based on a
comparison of the works and references to the law ("Shakespeare"
knows it too well to be identified with Stratford Will), the Bible,
classics, etc. But the theory became "encrusted with absurdities:
ciphers, buried manuscripts, excavations by moonlight" (Michell 37).
Bacon is an essayist, not a poet-playwright.
Stanley had an interest in theater and was patron to
his own company of actors. A 1599 spy letter refers to him "penning
comedies for the common players." But that's about it. He may have
a connection to The Tempest though. And as the Earl of Oxford's
son-in-law, he may indeed have been "penning comedies" in the last
years of the 16th century -- not writing them, but "penning" them,
that is, serving as Oxford's last secretary. Perhaps he is
responsible for some of the unShakespearean touches in some romance
plays such as The Tempest. [See Abel Lefranc, Under the
Mask of William Shakespeare. 1918. Trans. Cecil Cragg. Devon:
Merlin Books Ltd., 1988.]
Marlowe produced in a few short years work most like Shakespeare's.
But for him to have been Shakespeare, we have to insist that he was
not killed in the tavern brawl but smuggled into France and Italy where
he continued to write; and Shakspere was paid to keep quiet. This theory
has the misfortune of being the brainchild of a Broadway press agent,
but there's something to it. Everyone involved in that supposedly fatal
incident was a government agent, including Marlowe himself. It looks like
a cover-up afterwards, so maybe he did go into deep cover. A recent PBS
show did a good job of deconstructing the Stratford hoax, but when it
came to actual connections between Marlowe and the works, all I heard
was 1) the Italian settings (anyone from England at the time would
have been enamored of Italy) and 2) a "theme of exile." Pretty slim.
After full consideration of the case for de Vere being Shake-speare,
pretense that there is still any question about the issue is ludicrous.
He gets his own page from me: Edward de Vere.