The Many Shakespeares - May 1998 British Heritage Feature

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The Many Shakespeares

Shakespeare’s plays rank among the most artistic works of literature ever created, but there is much debate about who really wrote them.

by Bruce Heydt

Somewhere in Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the greatest craftsman ever to mould the English language into works of art created his masterpieces of poetry and drama.

Beyond that simple statement, little can be said about the man known as William Shakespeare that will not arouse somebody’s indignant scorn. Charlton Ogburn, a modern researcher, noted: ‘As curiosity about the dramatist began to grow in the 18th century, so, before long, did doubts about the Stratford man’s authorship.’ Ogburn rightly adds: ‘A vigorous and acrimonious controversy over the issue is now in its second century, leaving deposits of scores of millions of printed words. There has been, so far as I know, nothing like it in history. And it has left the disputants as far apart as ever.’

This ongoing investigation, says H. N. Gibson, another Shakespearean scholar, has only confounded the initial doubts. ‘The theorists have put forward what must surely be every available rival candidate for this office–the complete list, including those of all the minor theories, numbers fifty-seven–and they have devoted a very intensive research over a long period to the task of discovering evidence to establish one or other of these rivals’ claims.’

All this effort to find a plausible alternative to the orthodox history of the Shakespearean plays stems from the apparent incompatibility between them and the most famous resident of Stratford-upon-Avon, whom theorists often refer to as ‘Shaksper’ or ‘Shakspere’ to distinguish him from the true author, who may or may not have been the same individual. The few documents that have survived from Shaksper’s day paint a picture of the Stratford man as an unrefined, possibly even unsavoury character of no apparent education or reputation as a writer. In fact, there is nothing in the surviving local records, other than six signatures in barely legible scrawl, that can be regarded as proof that Shaksper was literate.

It is a common premise of all the alternative author theories that the mundane events described in the surviving records of Shaksper’s life argue strongly against his authorship. The townspeople of Stratford are hardly likely, the theorists suppose, to have been ambivalent to the great author’s presence among them. Surely some of Stratford’s citizens would have left behind impressions of what he was really like, or copies of letters congratulating their famous neighbour on the success of his latest play. Not only are there no indications in the town records that a great dramatist lived in Stratford, there are likewise no books, manuscripts, or other relics that the writer himself might have been expected to leave behind.

Unfortunately, while this dearth of evidence causes suspicions and invites contrary explanations, it also provides little basis by which to judge the validity of these new interpretations. And so it seems that the harder investigators look for a definitive clue, the longer the list of alternative authors grows.

The first theory to explicitly suggest that the Stratford man was not the true author was formally put forward in about 1785. Based on the unexpected scarcity of existing documentation, and on references within the plays themselves that seemed to indicate that the writer was far more educated than Shaksper could have been , Reverend James Wilmot, rector of Barton-on-the-Heath, proposed that Francis Bacon, the aristocratic Elizabethan philosopher, was the true author.

Other theorists agreed with Wilmot’s doubts about Shaksper’s role, but thought that the rector had misinterpreted the evidence for the true author. The three other claimants that have received the most attention are Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford; William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby; and Christopher Marlowe, famous in his own right as an outstanding dramatist.

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