Polemicscat’s Weblog

Some people love a mystery.  Others love the idea of a conspiracy better.  The movie-maker Oliver Stone has made a fortune with movies like JFK that feed audiences’ appetite for stories of conspiracies.  In making such movies Stone has a little commercial conspiracy of his own at work.  The main technique of conspiracy creators is to blur the distinction between reality and pure fantasy.  Stone does this by depicting actual, historical people holding purely imaginary conversations that Stone himself has devised.

The list of ongoing conspiracy theories is long.  Some are quite popular.  One perennial favorite contends that the Air Force is covering up the “truth” about extra-terrestrial aliens and UFO’s.  Another recent conspiracy theory asserts that the moon landing was a grand hoax perpetrated by NASA.  There are other theories too preposterous for even conspiracy junkies to swallow.   Among these is the claim that the holocaust never actually occurred but was somehow staged or imagined.

There is no way to refute a conspiracy theory to the satisfaction of a conspiracy addict.  If you say, “Scholars at a  university have studied the issue thoroughly and find no conspiracy,” you will promptly be told that the scholars  have some personal motive for reaching that conclusion and are, in essence, conspirators themselves.

Conspiracy junkies also use the lack of evidence for conspiracy as proof that there is a plot to conceal information.  Many popular conspiracies theories require that thousands of people be involved in the conspiracy, but, contrary to human nature,  not one person in those thousands is willing to come forward with information that would prove the case.

One of the most persistent and interesting conspiracy theories involves the Bard–-William Shakespeare.  It goes something like this.  There was an English actor in the time of Elizabeth I named Shakespeare; he was from Stratford, and historically he is credited with writing the plays and poems.  But in actuality–so the theory goes–someone else did the writing but let Shakespeare take credit for it.  Those who promote this conspiracy theory are known as anti-Stratfordians.

Why, you may wonder, would anyone doubt the authorship of Shakespeare, the man from Stratford.  Well, for one thing, we don’t know as much about Shakespeare’s life as we would like.  In one of his essays  Mark Twain (partly in jest I think) wondered how such a great dramatist and poet could leave so little personal information about himself.

Yet, we know far more about Shakespeare than about many other prominent people living at the time.  The London fire of 1666 destroyed many records.  But official records in Stratford and Worcester document Shakespeare’s Christening, his marriage, and activities of his father.

Also, since we do know that Shakespeare was not educated in a University, the anti-Stratfordians say that anyone who could write so well, who could know human nature and other subjects so well must have been a highly educated person and, therefore, was probably a duke or an earl.  It is said that this nobleman’s motive for concealing his hand in writing the plays and poems was that it would be disreputable for one of his high rank to dabble in such things.

Each anti-Stratfordian promotes one or another of the persons said to be the true author of Shakespeare’s works: Sir Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Southhampton, the Earl of Rutland, the Earl of Devonshire, Christopher Marlowe (who by the way was not a nobleman) and others.

It is important to stress that none of the Shakespeare specialists in the universities believe that someone else wrote the plays.  The anti-Stratfordians are typically educated, professional people, but they are amateurs in literary research.  When I pointed this out to an acquaintance recently, he said something like, “Well, the Shakespeare scholars maintain that Shakespeare wrote the plays because they have a vested interest in saying so.”  Thus, they are accused of being conspirators.  The weakness of this argument is that it rests on the doubtful assumption that every person who is tempted to distort the truth for personal gain always does so.

True, Shakespeare’s formal education was limited to that of a grammar school in Stratford.  But the curriculum there included the study of Latin.  And his reading of translations and other books written in English would have given him all the information he needed. For example, evidence shows that the knowledge Shakespeare needed to write his Roman plays–like Julius Caesar– came from an English translation by Thomas North of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Romans and Greeks.

Equally important, Shakespeare’s work in the theater would have given him a practical knowledge of play writing that none of the other candidates could have had (with the exception of Marlowe who we now know was killed before some of Shakespeare’s plays were written).

Several references to Shakespeare as a writer of the plays and sonnets were published in his lifetime.  But in my opinion, the most compelling proof of Shakespeare’s authorship is contained in the collection of his plays known as the First Folio Edition published in 1623, seven years after the author’s death.

Henry Condell and John Hemminge, the persons responsible for publishing this book, were actors in the same company with Shakespeare. They worked beside him for years. Their preface to the reader explains that they wished to preserve the plays since Shakespeare took no steps to preserve them.

They also wrote a dedication in this book to William, Earl of Pembroke, and to Philip, Earl of Montgomery. Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain to King James, and Montgomery was another officer of the King.   No perceptive person could read this dedication and believe that it is part of a grand hoax perpetrated by Condell and Hemminge, with or without the complicity of these noblemen.

The First Folio Edition also includes several poems by different people in praise of Shakespeare and his work.  Most important among these is “To the Memory of my beloved, The AUTHOR  Mr. William Shakespeare And what he hath left us,” by Ben Jonson who was a member of the same acting company and was in many ways a rival of Shakespeare.

Jonson, also an author of plays, was a proud but truthful man who had some negative things to say about Shakespeare’s plays.  For example, Jonson did not approve of the way  Shakespeare ignored the rules of drama.  These “unities” or rules practiced by university-educated authors had been derived from the examples of Greek and Roman plays.

But because Jonson knew that Shakespeare had not had a university education, Jonson (and many critics after him) declared that Shakespeare’s strength lay not in formal education, but in his ability to follow nature.  In his dedicatory poem Jonson says that the classical dramatists Aristophanes, Terence, and Plautus “now not please” because “they were not of Natures family.”

Finally, the notion that noble persons did not value the literary arts won’t bear examination.  Sir Philip Sidney and Walter Raleigh openly wrote poems.   Sidney wrote an essay An Apology for Poetry in which he eloquently defended the art of poetry.  Queen Elizabeth and King James enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays.  Jonson calls Shakespeare “Sweet Swan of Avon [the river running by Stratford]” and continues, “what a sight it were/To see thee in our waters yet appeare,/And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,/That so did take Eliza, and our James.”  Jonson could not have published these words about those monarchs unless they were true.  Of course, conspiracy addicts will say that Queen Elizabeth and King James were themselves participants in the hoax.