It has all the makings of a mystery novel. It involves death, deception and detective work over four centuries.
The mystery is: Who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare?
The most obvious answer, and the one still most widely accepted, is that William Shakespeare, the actor who moved from Stratford-upon-Avon to London and strode the stage in the late Elizabethan age, wrote the plays still performed under his name.
By modern conventions, the man who wrote Hamlet, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and so many other great plays ought to have been a celebrity.
Yet we know very little of the so-called Bard of Avon, except tidbits from a few official documents (including a will that leaves his “second-best bed” to his wife) and the fact that the early printed collections of those great plays bear his name.
Over the years, scholars and sleuths have nominated other, better-known figures as the author of Shakespeare’s play, ranging from the renowned playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe (who was killed in a barroom brawl before many of the plays were written) to Sir Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
The Stratfordians – those who support Shakespeare himself (and thus the “Shakespeare industry” in Stratford) – say many of the arguments against their man are based on snobbery. Because Shakespeare was not of the Elizabethan elite, a noble or a court insider, and because he only had a grammar school education, they feel he couldn’t have written the plays. Perhaps, like many a modern writer who sprang from nowhere, he was simply a genius. (Besides, the Stratfordians say, grammar school education in those days was a lot more rigorous than now.)
The debate has become a little more intense in recent times with the emergence of a new candidate for authorship – Sir Henry Neville.
In their book, The Truth Will Out, academics Brenda James and William Rubinstein argue that Neville was everything Shakespeare was not – wealthy, well travelled, well connected and well proportioned (his friends apparently called him Falstaff).
James apparently came up with Neville’s by appplying code-breaking techniques to a Shakespeare dedication – but Rubenstein wisely advised her not to rely on that for her sole evidence. (Codes, like market research, can prove anything.)
Instead, they have compiled a series of facts about Neville’s life that fit the authorship claim – including favourable references to his forebears in the history plays and a document written by him that seems to be an outline for Henry VIII. They have even identified the reason for the change in tone in Shakespeare’s plays from 1601, which is when Neville spent time in prison.
Whatever the truth of the matter, one book will not settle the argument. For many, Shakespeare will always be Shakespeare.
Still, after all this time, does it really matter who wrote the plays? Royalties are not an issue; can’t the words just speak for themselves?
References:
Richard Woods, Focus: Is this an imposter I see before me?, Sunday Times, October 9, 2005. (Site may require registration).
Team Uncovers the Real Shakespeare, The Australian, October 6, 2005. (Link may be expired).
(Originally published at debritz.com on October 9, 2005)
