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 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 Will Shakspere?
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.)
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 theatre arts, 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 theatre.
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" (37).
Stanley had an interest in theatre and was patron to his own
company of actors. One might detect a kind of immature Shakespearean
style in his poems from the 1580s, naturally signed W.S. But that's about
it. He may have a connection to The Tempest though.
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 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 the Italian
settings and 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.