THE STIGMA OF PRINT:WAS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE A WRITER?
by Albert Lanier
“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”
Some of you there reading this may be familiar with that little line. Likely as a child, perhaps in school. Christopher Columbus, of course, is credited with being the European explorer who discovered the North American continent and by extension what became the country known as America. Most Americans even if they know nothing about Columbus are at least a ware of name and claim to fame. After all, there is major holiday named after him in the US.
“The Shakespeare Authorship Question”
A number of you reading that may not be familiar with this phrase. As a student in school, whether in high school or college, you likely didn’t come across this phrase or even consider it. Essentially, the Shakespeare Scholarship Question creates a controversy of over 100 years at least over who wrote the plays, sonnets and poems attributed to a man known only as William Shakespeare.
So the first phrase appears to refer to settled history and second refers to a controversy about literary history.
This literary and historical controversy known as the Shakespeare Authorship Question lies in the scant few details we know of the alleged author of such timeless theatrical classics as Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard III and Henry V.
The Shakespeare Authorship Question also suggests that since there is very little historical and literary evidence that ties the person attributed to these works to them that there must be a real author who remained for some reason unnamed and uncredited.
Over the years, there have been what can only be termed candidates proffered as possible authors of Shakespeare’s credited works: the highly acclaimed and successful Cambridge- educated playwright Christopher Marlowe, the talented aristocrat the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere and the brilliant Sir Francis Bacon.
A number of books have been written over several decades making the case for these aforementioned men as well as other possible contenders.
What strikes me as necessary however is not to simply doubt that Shakespeare wrote the plays and sonnets credited to him nor simply offer another historical figure as the real author.
What is necessary is to ask one crucial question: Was William Shakespeare a writer?
The simple answer is: No, he wasn’t.
This can be determined basically in two ways. The first by looking at what little we know of Shakespeare personally and historically. The second by using logic, reason and common sense when looking what is said and promoted about Shakespeare.
Thus what is created is a prima facie case against the so-called man from Stratford.
I. A BOOK, A BOOK, MY KINGDOM FOR A BOOK
The 2005 book “The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare” written by English literature lecturer Brenda James and History Professor William Rubenstein notes “there is no evidence that he ever owned a book”.
So, a man credited with not only making his living for years as a writer but also of writing great works was not the owner of books let alone a single book. This by its very nature strikes one- to use a term known in symbolic logic- as an invalid premise.
Historically, what we know as public libraries didn’t exist in Elizabethan times in England. The definition of a library of the period was that it was private. A person who was either an aristocrat, wealthy or perhaps upper middle class had a library in their residence.
To be a literate person let alone a writer of literature as we know it would have required the ownership of at least a few books or volumes. A man credited as a writer shown not have owned any books makes about as much sense as hiring a person to drive a race car in the Indianapolis 500 who has never driven a care before and knows nothing about automobiles.
It is all the more farcical to believe that a man with no known library could be a writer when you consider that that writers of the works attributed to Shakespeare must have relied on other sources-translation, books.
James and Rubenstein state in their book that Shakespeare’s works “apparently cite or rephrase more than 200 classical and later writers” and that “the list of works apparently used by Shakespeare includes many books which had not been translated into English.”
The authors of the books “The Truth WIll out” also go on to state that “although shakespeare was famously credited by Ben Jonson with having ‘small latin and less greek’, the Bard was also familiar with many of the great writers of Ancient Greece.”
“Even orthodox Stratfordians admit that the author read relatively recent books in French, Italian and Spanish which has not been translated into English, among them Belleforest’s ‘Histories Tragiques’, Ser Giovanni’s ‘Il Percorone’, Jorge de Montemayor’s ‘Diana’ and Cinthio’s ‘Epithia and Heratommihi’ “ note James and Rubenstein.
Since we have no record of Shakespeare owning Belleforest, De Montemayor or Cinthio’s volumes let alone any volume whatsoever, it is unlikely that this man Shakespeare,a man born and raised in rural Stratford who from what we know went on to London to become an actor before eventually returning to his home town to settle down with family and become a merchant and businessman, could have been a writer of plays let alone plays attributed to him.
After all as James and Rubenstein argue “Where did he, a young struggling itinerant actor, acquire this knowledge?”
My conclusion is he didn’t gain this knowledge because he could not have. Having a library or books clearly owned and in his possession would clearly have indicated that William Shakespeare was a literate man and thus possibly a writer. The absence of books indicates that Shakespeare -who came from a family of illiterate parents and whose daughters ended up being illiterate- confirms no indication of literacy.
II. TO BE EDUCATED OR TO BE UNEDUCATED-THAT IS THE QUESTION
The issue of literacy brings us to the second plank in the examination and investigation as to whether William Shakespeare was a writer namely education.
Again if we look at Elizabethan England, we see a nation where most commoners and ordinary citizens were largely illiterate and not educated. Many were not students at any age and a precious few not only received primary education but advanced education.
One such individual was the playwright Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe was raised in Canterbury in Kent and went on to attend the King’s School as a young boy. His impressive intelligence and aptitude for learning earned him a scholarship to Corpus Christi college at the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, Marlowe obtained his Bachelors and Masters degree. This was stratospherically impressive for the son of a shoemaker and far different from the norm of men from Marlowe’s background.
William Shakespeare was raised in the English country town of Stratford and like Marlowe from a commoner background. Shakespeare’s father was a glover.
However, unlike Marlowe, we do not know if Shakespeare attended Stratford’s Grammar School.No records exist that put him as a student in the school.
Also unlike Marlowe, Shakespeare did not attend either of England’s great ancient universities Oxford or Cambridge. And considering the amount of legal knowledge in Shakespeare’s play there is also no record of him being a student at the Inns of Court, the training centers for lawyers that still help train and inform lawyers to this day.
So a man who may not have even gone to grammar school, the rudimentary form of education for the few who received any formal form of learning in Elizabethan England, and certainly didnt go on to University wrote plays and poems? Again, another invalid premise.
We should keep in mind as James and Rubenstein state in their work “ Among all of Startford’s 1,300 or so inhabitants, it is likely that only the Vicar and the Schoolmaster could remotely be described as educated men and almost certainly a majority of its adult inhabitants were illiterate.”
The importance of education when it comes to the works attributed to Shakespeare lies the depth and breadth of learning in many of the plays. James and Rubenstein state that “Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary of any writer who ever lived.”
An interesting claim here. The two authors write further that “his works employ nearly 18,000 different and separate words, about twice as many as (John)Milton used (although Milton was one of the most accomplished graduates of his time at Cambridge University) and perhaps five times as many as the average educated person today.’
An immense vocabulary and prodigious use of diction acquired from…What then? Becoming an autodidact perhaps and reading on his own. He could have maybe purchased or obtained books from individuals perhaps although I just outlined above, Shakespeare owned no books at the time of his death so this make this line of argument highly unlikely.
We also have no idea whether Shakespeare could even read. After all, his parents were unable to read and thus wouldnt have been able to teach him and we have no idea whether he received any formal schooling whatsoever.
Maybe he could have acquired an impressive vocabulary through a good ear and picking up the speech of various individuals he came into contact with. Perhaps. However, would this have been enough to become an18,000 word working vocabulary as a writer that even outstripped the usage of university graduates of the day and beyond? That seems neither likely nor logical to deduce.
Finally, let us consider two aspects of information and knowledge in Shakespeare’s plays-the ways and means of court life and the law.
A number of the plays deal with either life at a royal court of some sort. James and Rubenstein make this point in their book “Shakespeare of Stratford was an actor whose father was an illiterate butcher, glove-maker and wool merchant in small provincial town; yet the author of the plays and poems was obviously familiar with court life and Elizabethan high politics, and apparently addressed senior members of the aristocracy on intimate and equal terms.”
My own argument is Why would an actor-even if we are being generous and posit that he may have performed at court a couple of times as a performer-care about the ins and out of court life in an intimate, familiar way?
If one accepts the maxim that writers write what they know, How would such a man, a commoner not versed in the comings and goings court write about what he didn’t know if not first hand then even through hearsay?
It should be noted that this era like many others in the past did not feature a news industry nor publically accessible information to the varied aspects of government and politics like we do now. A person who wasn’t titled was not versed in the day to day life of English Royals and aristocrats unlike the UK today where there are actually Royal Watchers who discuss the royal family and publications report on the currently royal family endlessly.
A tabula rasa reading of Shakespeare is that he could not have written about the court life of Elizabethan England because he wasnt a part of it.
Then there is the fact that legal terms and aspects of the law pop up in the plays of Shakespeare. James and Rubenstein: “Whoever wrote Shakespeare’s works must have had a good working knowledge of the law, particularly the law of property and local administration of the legal system”.
Again, as noted previously, Shakespeare wasn’t trained in the Inns of Court since his name cannot be found in such records. Some have argued he might worked as a clerk for a solicitor in order to write about the information found in the plays. This strikes one as an exercise in induction rather than what we can deductively conclude from the facts and documents.
One last point is that according to James and Rubenstein, “Shakespeare’s plays reveal a degree of expertise in a wide variety of other topics, ranging from falconry to gardening to heraldry, for which we cannot rationally account, given what we know of the life of the Stratford man.”
CONCLUSION: A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“We cannot rationally account” This phrase by James and Rubenstein is a perfect description of the notion that William Shakespeare is the author of plays listed in the famous First Folio of his work.
My own argument can be be described as “It doesn’t compute” or “It doesn’t parse.”
It doesn’t compute that a man who owned no books at the end of his life nor he owned or read that we are aware of any of the volumes used for sources upon which part of the works of Shakespeare are based was a writer.
It doesnt parse that that a man from whom there is no record of a rather basic grammar school education or any formal education and whose ostensibly had a prodigious vocabulary and a body of knowledge in court life and the law was a writer.
In this case, these two invalid premises must lead to ultimate conclusion: William Shakespeare was not a writer and therefore could not have written the plays, poems and sonnets attributed to him.
I noted Christopher Columbus at the beginning of this piece. I should note that Columbus though accepted officially as the discoverer of America much like Shakespeare is accepted as the author of the plays also has been doubted in recent years as the explorer who found the North American contintent.
If something seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
A former newspaper and magazine journalist, Albert Lanier worked for over 22 years in those trades as a freelance writer. His work appeared in publications such as Honolulu Weekly, Pacific Business News and Hawaii Magazine. Retired since 2017, Lanier writes this blog for Medum.com and serves as a commentator and analyst on a number of talk shows and podcasts including recent interviews on the radio show The Ed Tyll Show and the film podcast Crooked Table. Lanier can be reached at Twitter (@criticinc) and Facebook.
