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I think I mentioned a book I was reading in the books thread ('Shakespeare by Another Name'), but it's actually mostly convinced me, and I think it's potentially the most fascinating case of mistaken identity in history. At least it fascinates me, but I'm OK if I'm the only one.
I first became familiar with this theory during a Shakespeare class I took as a senior in high school. My teacher introduced it, dismissed it, and then I never gave it a second thought. At least until recently when one of my profs from the UK mentioned this book to me in an email exchange and commented that he was nearly persuaded.
There are two parts to the case:
One of the things that got my attention and convinced me to at least hear it out is the roster of intellectuals who have publicly stated their view that the historical William Shakespeare simply couldn't have been equipped with the span of courtly, legal and foreign culture knowledge that the author had. That list ranges from Mark Twain, to Freud, to Walt Whitman to people like Justices Breyer and O'Connor in the current day.
On this point - that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of most of these plays - I'm about 90% convinced. There are simply too many gaps in his biography. There are no letters, diaries or any detailed information outside of some legal documents involving business ventures that verify the literary genius we believe him to be. There is no record of him traveling anywhere outside the roads that connected Stratford with London or of him having any formal education - yet he writes with detailed awareness of foreign courts, composes an entire scene of Henry V in courtly and bawdy French and locates more plays in Italy and France than he does in England.
On the second point - that Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford - was the author of most of them, I'm about 60% convinced.
The parallels and biographical facts from the life of De Vere provide both plausible educational background and life experience that could have fed into many of Shakespeare's works - for example, that De Vere lived in Venice for a stretch in the 1570s and accumulated debts which very plausibly would have been owed to Jewish merchants - Will Shakespeare, meanwhile, never left the narrow circuit between Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and London.
Another item - the exactness of Shakespeare's understanding of legal procedure and protocol and often the finer points of legal thinking has often been thought to be incongruous with the playwright whose wife, daughters and parents were all borderline illiterate. De Vere's earliest tutor of several years, Sir Thomas Smith, was one of the most noted law teachers of the century, and De Vere was later a graduate of Gray's Inn.
In one of the most interesting data points, Shakepspeare's historical plays go out of their way to laud De Vere's recent forebears - in Henry VI, De Vere's great-grandfather the 13th Earl of Oxford is referred to, sometimes a little gratuitously, at different points as "brave Oxford," "valiant Oxford," and "sweet Oxford."
De Vere's motives for hiding his identity are pretty straightforward - 1. he was painfully candid about his views on members of the Elizabethan world and his plays were loaded with allusions which would have been very easily recognized were he known to be the author and 2. being a playwright generally wasn't thought to be fitting work for a member of the high nobility. Consequently, he put a number of his works in circulation in the literary communities he worked in without having his name attached to them - leaving them open for plagiarism and as Henry James put it "the most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."
Anyway - to make a long story long, I think this is a movie waiting to happen. At the very least, it's a damn interesting read. The life of Edward De Vere is pretty riveting even if he wasn't the real Shakespeare.
I first became familiar with this theory during a Shakespeare class I took as a senior in high school. My teacher introduced it, dismissed it, and then I never gave it a second thought. At least until recently when one of my profs from the UK mentioned this book to me in an email exchange and commented that he was nearly persuaded.
There are two parts to the case:
- The William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon could not have written the bullk of the plays attributed to him
- The most likely candidate for the actual author is the very literary Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere
One of the things that got my attention and convinced me to at least hear it out is the roster of intellectuals who have publicly stated their view that the historical William Shakespeare simply couldn't have been equipped with the span of courtly, legal and foreign culture knowledge that the author had. That list ranges from Mark Twain, to Freud, to Walt Whitman to people like Justices Breyer and O'Connor in the current day.
On this point - that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of most of these plays - I'm about 90% convinced. There are simply too many gaps in his biography. There are no letters, diaries or any detailed information outside of some legal documents involving business ventures that verify the literary genius we believe him to be. There is no record of him traveling anywhere outside the roads that connected Stratford with London or of him having any formal education - yet he writes with detailed awareness of foreign courts, composes an entire scene of Henry V in courtly and bawdy French and locates more plays in Italy and France than he does in England.
On the second point - that Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford - was the author of most of them, I'm about 60% convinced.
The parallels and biographical facts from the life of De Vere provide both plausible educational background and life experience that could have fed into many of Shakespeare's works - for example, that De Vere lived in Venice for a stretch in the 1570s and accumulated debts which very plausibly would have been owed to Jewish merchants - Will Shakespeare, meanwhile, never left the narrow circuit between Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and London.
Another item - the exactness of Shakespeare's understanding of legal procedure and protocol and often the finer points of legal thinking has often been thought to be incongruous with the playwright whose wife, daughters and parents were all borderline illiterate. De Vere's earliest tutor of several years, Sir Thomas Smith, was one of the most noted law teachers of the century, and De Vere was later a graduate of Gray's Inn.
In one of the most interesting data points, Shakepspeare's historical plays go out of their way to laud De Vere's recent forebears - in Henry VI, De Vere's great-grandfather the 13th Earl of Oxford is referred to, sometimes a little gratuitously, at different points as "brave Oxford," "valiant Oxford," and "sweet Oxford."
De Vere's motives for hiding his identity are pretty straightforward - 1. he was painfully candid about his views on members of the Elizabethan world and his plays were loaded with allusions which would have been very easily recognized were he known to be the author and 2. being a playwright generally wasn't thought to be fitting work for a member of the high nobility. Consequently, he put a number of his works in circulation in the literary communities he worked in without having his name attached to them - leaving them open for plagiarism and as Henry James put it "the most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."
Anyway - to make a long story long, I think this is a movie waiting to happen. At the very least, it's a damn interesting read. The life of Edward De Vere is pretty riveting even if he wasn't the real Shakespeare.
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