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Session 5: WHO REALLY WROTE SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS?
Adam Blatner, M.D.
Posted February, 2014 for
Lectures for Senior University Georgetown
This question ranges from very
important to who cares, depending on your mood, vocation,
etc. Some folks really put a lot of research time into it,
and time and attention also to generating a lively debate. I
vaguely knew it was a question, but my friend John Casson
has come up with evidence that supports the candidacy of Sir
Henry Neville, and has done some pretty thorough research.
He has no particular axe to grind, academically, but yet is
an excellent scholar, living now in northeast England.
I like the question because it touches on two or three issues. One is the manifest content---who indeed was the author of the plays. A second, more indirect theme is that questions of authorship evoke a bit of the rebel in me: I have dared to doubt much of what I have been assured is so, and sometimes my doubts would be assuaged by further evidence; often my doubts would be validated, sometimes to a startling or horrifying degree. So there's a world-view problem here: What is truth? Can humans determine it?
The older I get the more I find that the unconscious mind can support with extensive rationalizations so many arguments that just happen to support deep needs, arguments ranging from the okayness of capturing, trading, and enjoying the services of slaves (common a couple of centuries ago, as hinted at by my previous lecture) to all sorts of justifications for either the status quo or a total violent rebellion. So there is a postmodernist philosophical edge to this question. Be that as it may, let's return to the simple focus. Who wrote the plays.
I know that the question sounds like what Groucho Marx asked on the You Bet Your Life show in the 1960s when people failed some of the harder questions: "Who was buried in Grant's tomb." The answer was, of course, Grant, and more specifically, General Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States of America. Not that many kids today would know any of this. You could get technical about the prepositon, "in," but let's not go there. Let's go to what seems to be obvious---it was to me: Duh! Shakespeare! But, wait, it's not so simple. What? There are many problems with the "authorship question." So this is news, and it's fun, and let's review things.
There are two parts to this: First, did Bill, "the Stratford man," write the plays? Lots of evidence that he did not---which I'll get to. But, if he did not, who might have a better claim to that role? That's the second question. There have been several candidates, more recently Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and even more recently---and not mentioned before around 2005---Sir Henry Neville. But really, of late there has been a great deal of controversy about history, re-writing it. It turns out that maybe Washington didn't chop down that Cherry tree.So this is also related to tall stories and legend and myth. Shakespeare has become such a towering figure that it's almost taboo to suggest that it was not the man William Shakespeare who actually wrote the play.
Not that such a suggestion is so new: People have been suggesting this for a couple of centuries or longer. What is new is that there's a new candidate that most of the other books on this controversy have overlooked: Henry Neville. My discovery of this candidate is related mainly to a friend of mine Dr. John Casson, who in England is a careful scholar, in addition to his being a noted drama therapist and psychodramatist, a sub-field that I share with him.
References
Anderson, Mark. (2005). Shakespeare" by another name: The life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare.
Greenblatt, Stephen. (2004). Will in the world: how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton.
McCrea, Scott. (2005). The case for Shakespeare: the end of the authorship question. Westport, CT: Praeger. (Argues for the Stratford man, against Bacon, Marlow, Derby, Oxford.)
Sobran, Joseph. (1997). Alias Shakespeare: solving the greatest literary mystery of all time. New York: The Free Press.
Artfully demolishes case for Wm of Stratford. (Neville hadn't been discovered, so the best candidate supported by the author is the Earl of Oxford.)
sss
I like the question because it touches on two or three issues. One is the manifest content---who indeed was the author of the plays. A second, more indirect theme is that questions of authorship evoke a bit of the rebel in me: I have dared to doubt much of what I have been assured is so, and sometimes my doubts would be assuaged by further evidence; often my doubts would be validated, sometimes to a startling or horrifying degree. So there's a world-view problem here: What is truth? Can humans determine it?
The older I get the more I find that the unconscious mind can support with extensive rationalizations so many arguments that just happen to support deep needs, arguments ranging from the okayness of capturing, trading, and enjoying the services of slaves (common a couple of centuries ago, as hinted at by my previous lecture) to all sorts of justifications for either the status quo or a total violent rebellion. So there is a postmodernist philosophical edge to this question. Be that as it may, let's return to the simple focus. Who wrote the plays.
I know that the question sounds like what Groucho Marx asked on the You Bet Your Life show in the 1960s when people failed some of the harder questions: "Who was buried in Grant's tomb." The answer was, of course, Grant, and more specifically, General Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States of America. Not that many kids today would know any of this. You could get technical about the prepositon, "in," but let's not go there. Let's go to what seems to be obvious---it was to me: Duh! Shakespeare! But, wait, it's not so simple. What? There are many problems with the "authorship question." So this is news, and it's fun, and let's review things.
There are two parts to this: First, did Bill, "the Stratford man," write the plays? Lots of evidence that he did not---which I'll get to. But, if he did not, who might have a better claim to that role? That's the second question. There have been several candidates, more recently Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and even more recently---and not mentioned before around 2005---Sir Henry Neville. But really, of late there has been a great deal of controversy about history, re-writing it. It turns out that maybe Washington didn't chop down that Cherry tree.So this is also related to tall stories and legend and myth. Shakespeare has become such a towering figure that it's almost taboo to suggest that it was not the man William Shakespeare who actually wrote the play.
Not that such a suggestion is so new: People have been suggesting this for a couple of centuries or longer. What is new is that there's a new candidate that most of the other books on this controversy have overlooked: Henry Neville. My discovery of this candidate is related mainly to a friend of mine Dr. John Casson, who in England is a careful scholar, in addition to his being a noted drama therapist and psychodramatist, a sub-field that I share with him.
References
Anderson, Mark. (2005). Shakespeare" by another name: The life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare.
Greenblatt, Stephen. (2004). Will in the world: how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton.
McCrea, Scott. (2005). The case for Shakespeare: the end of the authorship question. Westport, CT: Praeger. (Argues for the Stratford man, against Bacon, Marlow, Derby, Oxford.)
Sobran, Joseph. (1997). Alias Shakespeare: solving the greatest literary mystery of all time. New York: The Free Press.
Artfully demolishes case for Wm of Stratford. (Neville hadn't been discovered, so the best candidate supported by the author is the Earl of Oxford.)
sss