While most people agree that Shakespeare did, in fact, write the plays many around the world know of today, there are a few scholars and writers who believe that Shakespeare was not the true author of the plays. Why should we care if William Shakespeare wrote all those plays himself, or not? As we'll discover later in the course, Shakespeare was very concerned with the fact that his father's reputation had decayed as a result of financial problems. It’s a remarkably popular theory: famous historical figures such as Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplin and the actor Orson Welles were doubtful about Shakespeare’s authenticity, and even today renowned Shakespearian actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance believe there is “reasonable doubt about the identity of Willian Shakespeare”. Key Words: Shakespeare, Shakespeare Authorship Question, Shakespeare and academy, Literary Criticism, genius This essay is a response to the fascinating collection of articles on the Shakespeare Authorship Question that appeared in the last issue of this … You had to go to an office called the heralds' office. So in a way, I think the authorship controversy emerged out of a kind of disappointment that the hard evidence of the documents didn't quite have the colour and the glamour to go with the idea of Shakespeare as the quintessential genius. This is where the implications for people reading Shakespeare today 400 years on are most important. And on that inscription, it describes him as having the greatest intellect since Socrates in ancient Greece, and being the greatest poet since Virgil in ancient Rome. reasonable doubt about the identity of Willian Shakespeare. [1] Reid: Hi, I'm Jennifer Reid, and I am the course mentor on Shakespeare and His World.I'm here today with Jonathan [Bate] to talk about the authorship question. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Malorie Blackman: 'Othello was the first thing I read that actually featured a black character', Top 10 best Shakespearean insults – to celebrate the bard's birthday. Rylance finds a compelling logic in the Shakespeare conspiracy theories: "The nature of authorship was different then," he argues. They're the ones who put together the First Folio, and they talk about Shakespeare as a writer. For four hundred years, doubts have been recorded about whether William Shaksper from Stratford actually wrote the works attributed to him. For example, the fact that Shakespeare got into print with "Venus and Adonis", his narrative poem, the most popular poem of the age, the poem that made his name. Personally, I would say that as a dedicated reader of Shakespeare’s works, many of these claims do not seem to be supported by any reasonable evidence. Marlowe was England’s best playwright until Shakespeare came along – perhaps he didn’t die and continued writing under a different name? The Shakespeare Authorship Question has been called the greatest literary mystery of all time. So it does seem that a lot of the arguments come down to a kind of snobbery-- the idea that such a great mind could not have come from such a humble background. I think the way to begin an answer to that is to think about other conspiracy theories. So acting on behalf of his family, he managed to get a coat of arms for the family so he could call himself a gentleman. Written in an accessible style without the bitterness that characterizes some Oxfordian writings, Sobran's book presented a superficially plausible … This website offers the chance to explore different arguments for the most prominent authorship candidates. Or even people suggesting maybe Queen Elizabeth or King James wrote the works of Shakespeare. The Shakespeare authorship question has been around for a long time, and it’s not going away. There are all these documents concerning property transactions, a sort of Shakespeare the businessman. This free course from the University of London explores critical thinking, and the interpretation of texts, through the Shakespeare authorship question. Well, the answer to that is yes. I've got In front of me here a facsimile of the First Folio. It is important to discuss the question of authorship, because the facts are not undisputed. Now, there were two other men in the heralds' office who disagreed, and they defended Shakespeare's right to have a coat of arms on the grounds that his father and mother had a good pedigree in Stratford-upon-Avon. And there's a long process, getting a coat of arms. And he should have known that the great grammar school education that was available to Shakespeare in Stratford, as it was to other middle-class boys in Shakespeare's time, meant that you could become a great and sophisticated writer without going to university. But what about Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Sir John Gielgud, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Orson Welles, Walt Whitman, Ted Hughes? 400 years after his death, the Shakespeare authorship controversy continues. People like Christopher Marlowe and, indeed, a variety of aristocrats, Lord Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, have been proposed as the true author of Shakespeare. So the complaint about the coat of arms for Shakespeare the player is intimately linked to the references back to Stratford. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument about whether someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Are the people who doubt Shakespeare’s authorship crackpots? But I do also think that the other factor is to do with the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century. He worked closely with Shakespeare's fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, the leading surviving actors from his time. That's to say, for over 200 years after Shakespeare's death, nobody questioned that Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, Shakespeare the player, was Shakespeare the writer. Expand The SAQ refers to longstanding doubts about the attribution, to William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon (1564–1616), of the literary works of "Shakespeare" (often spelled with a hyphen in the original published works, such as the 1609 Sonnets). Bate: OK, well, we've seen the evidence from Stratford itself -- the bust. The question of authorship can completely change a person’s view on William Shakespeare, because it speaks to what we think is possible in life. The independent charity that cares for the world’s greatest Shakespeare heritage sites in Stratford-upon-Avon, and promotes the enjoyment and understanding of his works, life and times all over the world. Bate: OK, thanks very much, Jen. I think by the later twentieth century, the phenomenon, the controversy was dying away. Yeah, this is the one that if you're a Shakespeare scholar, and you get in a taxi anywhere in the world, the first question is, "So, was Shakespeare really Shakespeare? And among them, he said, was Shakespeare the player. And Shakespeare was very keen to restore the good name of his family. So there's a tight nexus of relationships between these people. And underneath that bust, there's also an inscription. Reid: Well, you certainly convinced me. So I'm afraid it's not going to go away. William Shakespeare, the third of eight children born, was born in 1564 from the rural town of Stratford-upon-Avon. And what's more, Jonson was very involved in the production of the First Folio. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. That was the very rationale of having acting companies. Transcript. There was a schoolmaster called Thomas Looney who accepted it wasn't Bacon, but again thought; how could this grammar schoolboy from the provinces have known so much about courts and aristocracy? There are several candidates for the category of “real” author: Sir Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator and author is one. It can never be definitively proved one way or the other - the historical evidence may well be lost for ever - but it seems to me that the authorship theory is mainly based on preconceptions of what people expect Shakespeare to be; their own personal idea of him. But then, of course, with the advent of the internet, it came back in a big way. Are there any references to him during his lifetime by other authors? I think the answer is wherever there is great fame and a kind of cult, then inevitably, heresies, alternative views, conspiracy theories tend to emerge. So we find him here, for example, saying that just as the Latin tongue, the Latin language was glorified by great writers like Virgil, and Ovid, and Horace, so the English language has been glorified by the wonderful poetry of Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, William Warner, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Chapman. Some people say that some of the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were not actually written by him. Offered by University of London. Anti-Stratfordians - the name given to those backing multiple authorship theories - believe that Shakespeare (who came from Stratford-upon-Avon) was used as a front to shield the identities of the real writers, who did not want or could not accept, for various reasons, credit for the original works. And there is ample evidence that William Shakespeare, a man from Stratford-upon-Avon, and born in this place, became an actor, became a playwright, then eventually returned to Stratford and died. There are all sorts of other local details as well. There's pretty strong evidence that Stratford, his family, his neighbours, remembered him as a great writer. For 200 years the question didn't occur to anybody. The question of Shakespeare’s authorship initiates controversy about whether or not William Shakespeare wrote the famous works by “Shakespeare”. How can we read (and be taught) Shakespeare’s plays, if we can never really understand the complete context of their composition, the time in which they were written and, yes, the prejudice and controversy that still engulfs them. Justification for this investigation arises from the recent identification of several of Shakespeare’s coauthors. The Shakespeare authorship question is a theory (which was first proposed during the Victorian era) that William Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems which were accredited to him. So Shakespeare there, in the company of other writers. So we’d like to just address the question in person and put it to bed once and for all. Bate: Well, that's a great question. And he'd been Ben Jonson's schoolmaster at Westminster School. Celebrating Shakespeare is at the heart of everything we do. Bate: Yes, indeed. But I think the most fascinating piece of external verification is the combination of these two things, a document and a book. Shakespeare’s works have long symbolised for us all aspects of the human condition - and I would argue that he writes equally as honestly, profoundly and comically about Mistress Quickly, an inn-keeper in The Merry Wives of Windsor, as he does King Henry V. The psychological precision and incision of his portrait of Richard III is more than matched by the intricacy with which he writes about Iago, the thwarted lower class ensign in Othello. It's called Wits Commonwealth. We're in week one of Shakespeare and His World, and it's bound to have come up by now. And he describes Shakespeare there, in that poem, as "the sweet swan of Avon.". Find out more. Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays? Shakespeare, known as a man from Stratford. But Meres, who seemed to know everybody in the London literary world, is quite clear that they're different people from Shakespeare. But the really interesting thing is that one of the two men in the heralds' office who defended Shakespeare the player's right to a coat of arms also spoke about Shakespeare the writer, Shakespeare the poet and dramatist. The Main Culprits in the Authorship Debate Are Christopher Marlowe . Maybe he was just a stooge, just a front man, and someone else actually wrote them. These authors did not want their real names to become public, for various resons. The evidence about Shakespeare's actual life is really rather boring. That's to say, it was with the Romantic poets, with people like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, that you got the idea that a great poet must have a rather glamorous, romantic kind of life. We’re in week one of Shakespeare and His World, and it’s bound to have come up by now. Shakespeare: The Evidence is a comprehensive survey of all the evidence relevant to determining whether William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the works attributed to him, with clear arguments from both sides of the Shakespeare Authorship Question, arranged in a simple bullet-pointed format. The Shakespeare Authorship Question is the historical and academic debate about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually composed by another writer, or a group of writers. Jonathan. And so I think it sort of became inevitable that people would think well, we need Shakespeare to have a bit of glamour, to be a lord. So if we ask ‘When did this begin’, the idea that Shakespeare, the actor from Stratford, was not the author of the plays, the answer is round about the Victorian period. I've got a fascinating book here. Shakespeare Authorship Controversy 1886 Words | 8 Pages. Throughout his life, there are a range of people who refer to Shakespeare as a writer, and indeed as a great writer. Certainly, Shakespeare came from relatively humble beginnings, and was not a member of royalty or part of the nobility - but, I argue, that is no reason to suppose that someone from his background could not write as well as he did, or accrue the wealth, position and influence in London theatrical society that he did. I'm here today with Jonathan [Bate] to talk about the authorship question. Now, you might say, if you're a conspiracy theorist, well, that's only saying that these works were performed and published with the name William Shakespeare on the page. Delia Bacon was an American. Because, marvellous thing that the internet is, the problem is that there isn't a system of independent verification where you can discover which websites are actually based on evidence, and which are based on conspiracy theory. Thank you for your support to help care for the world's greatest Shakespeare heritage and keep his story alive. And indeed, Meres goes on a few pages later to say that "The greatness of Shakespeare as a writer was the range of his work." that Shakspere wrote ‘Shakespeare’: he was a genius, arising with other writing talents just after Elizabeth’s reign began, and as Theatre began to demonstrate a new professionalism with the passing of…Continue Reading She came from a country where it was supposed to be possible to go from a log cabin to the White House. You know in the Romantic period, the most famous poet in Europe was Lord Byron. How do I get involved in the Guardian children's books site? There is lots of empirical evidence to repute these theories. Reid: Hi, I'm Jennifer Reid, and I am the course mentor on Shakespeare and His World. The Shakespeare authorship question is a theory (which was first proposed during the Victorian era) that William Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems which were accredited to him. Created in collaboration with Warwick Business School, University of Warwick as part of our Massive Open Online Course, 'Shakespeare and His World'. Many scholars simply can’t believe that William Shakespeare could have had the necessary education or life experiences to have written such complex texts–he was, after all, just the son of a … He wanted to give a sense of the greatness, the dignity, of all the new English literature being written in the 1590s, in his time. And then it was really in the early twentieth century that other theories emerged. © 2020 Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Registered Charity Number 209302, Read the latest about our response to Covid-19 We'll be talking more about Shakespeare in print and the First Folio throughout the course. She had hoped to dig up Shakespeare's bones and find some secret document. Ben Jonson; friend, rival, fellow actor, fellow playwright. But the intriguing thing about Meres is that he does mention Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, elsewhere as writers. And she started finding all sorts of hidden codes that led her to believe that Bacon was Shakespeare. I'm rather disappointed in both Delia Bacon and Thomas Looney. Believers of the alternative authorship theory often argue that William Shakespeare lacked the education, aristocratic sensibility and familiarity with the royal courts which is clearly evident in his works. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument about whether someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. The evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote those plays is overwhelming, argues teen site member Scouting for books, and remembering as much is crucial to the way that Shakespeare is read - and taught - today, Last modified on Wed 20 Sep 2017 06.03 EDT. If so, how would that affect our understanding of these works and their historical context? Is it possible the wrong person has been credited with writing the plays and poems of Shakespeare? But it is more important, I think, to keep such a debate in perspective, because if Shakespeare did write those works (and all the evidence makes that more likely than not) it reminds us that genius is not delimited by our start in life. The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship is a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to investigating the Shakespeare authorship question and disseminating the evidence that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is the true author of the poems and plays published under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare." The Shakespeare Authorship Question 10/27/2011 10:12 am ET Updated Oct 30, 2011 As the screenwriter of the upcoming Elizabethan drama Anonymous , I read Columbia Professor James Shapiro's opinion piece regarding our film in the NY Times last week with great interest. So we'd like to just address the question in person and put it to bed once and for all. Was Marilyn Monroe secretly murdered? The authorship question, he reasoned, could be addressed by a scientific approach. That was printed by Richard Field, a fellow schoolboy from the grammar school here in Stratford. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. This page shows the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition's "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare," which provides an introduction to the Shakespeare authorship controversy, or Shakespeare authorship debate. Not only his poems, which Meres suggests are like those of the Roman poet Ovid, but also his comedies and tragedies. What then happened in the Victorian period is there was a rather eccentric American lady called Delia Bacon who became convinced that Shakespeare couldn't have been Shakespeare, and that maybe someone called Francis Bacon, a famous writer, a famous politician, was Shakespeare. Do you have a point of view on a books related subject? And for tragedy, his Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet.". But from our point of view, from the point of view of the course, we feel, on the basis of the evidence we've laid out, other evidence that's available in a number of books that we'll be listing on the course site, the matter is settled. Well, some of them. And there's so much more evidence than that, that the writer was the actor, the actor was the man from Stratford. And it's not a matter that we want to discuss further, either within the films or in the forum. Continue Reading. Reid: The First Folio was published after Shakespeare's death. It was the Romantics who were the first to say, Shakespeare is the greatest genius there has ever been. Here, we treat the authorship of the works attributed to William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon as a hypothesis (rather than received truth) and review the current methods available for testing this hypothesis. What is the Shakespeare authorship question? Behind me on the wall is a facsimile of his bust in Holy Trinity Church here in Stratford, in which he's got his hand on a piece of paper. The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition runs this website to introduce the Shakespeare authorship controversy, or Shakespeare authorship question, and let people sign the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.” And equally, Looney was a schoolmaster. Nobody had any doubts. Because the acting companies were invited to perform at the court. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. It was published in 1598, so quite early in Shakespeare's career, by a man called Francis Meres, who was very keen on literature. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument over whether someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. And what's more, that man was William Camden, one of the most learned men in England. So he suggested that it was Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. I would suggest that this theory derives from a deeply embedded prejudice rooted in the English class system (most marked during the Victorian era, when the authorship question first gained widespread credence). Reid: So what is the strongest piece of evidence we have that Shakespeare the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon was the Shakespeare that wrote the plays? Pseudohistory-Wikipedia So the evidence of Meres, and, as I say, a number of other people publishing books in Shakespeare's lifetime praising his poetry, make the connection with the actor, with the man from Stratford. Was it the man from Stratford?" Created in collaboration with Warwick Business School, University of Warwick as part of our Massive Open Online Course, 'Shakespeare and His World'. And there's a list of the writers there, and William Shakespeare is bang in the middle of it. I’m here today with Jonathan to talk about the authorship question. You should see the emails I get. "For comedy, witness his Two Gentlemen of Verona, his Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, Love's Labours Won" (that's a lost play) "Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice. This was the bust put there - his monument above his grave - very soon after his death. So in a way, I think it's a kind of off-shoot of the Romantic movement. He knew the literary scene inside out. Camden defending Shakespeare the player, coat of arms, Camden saying Shakespeare the writer. Of course, Heminges and Condell, the fellow actors, are remembered in the will of Shakespeare, the man from Stratford. He wants to say that British writers are as good as those of classical antiquity. He was born in the same year as Shakespeare, but died around the same time that Shakespeare started to write his plays. Because, of course, it was with the Romantics that the great cult of Shakespeare took off. Join our site and tell us about it! Was there a second gunman assassinating John F. Kennedy? The Shakespeare authorship question is a fringe theory which claims that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. But in terms of external verification -- again, scholarship always looks for external verification. But he duly got it, and the coat of arms is reproduced here. Hi, I’m Jennifer Reid, and I am the course mentor on Shakespeare and His World. For the Romantics, that wasn't really glamorous enough. Indeed, Jonson talks in his conversations with other writers in his notebooks about Shakespeare's techniques of writing. Using doubt about Shakespeare’s authorship as our playground, we will explore the key concept of authorship attribution, while developing skills in literary analysis, interpretation, and argument. Shakespeare probably attended a grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, the town of which his father was Mayor, and where he himself probably studied Greek and Latin, so the idea that Shakespeare himself was not educated enough to be writing such impressively allusive plays seems absurd. Maybe it was the sixth Earl of Derby, or the fifth Earl of Stanley, and so the list goes on. The thing about any kind of scholarship is that you begin with the evidence. In the other hand, there would have been a quill, although, over time, the quill tended to be stolen and had to be replaced. That's the golden bullet. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, and Christopher Marlowe, an English playwright, poet and translator are two more. She ended up in a private lunatic asylum not far from Stratford, actually. But that was sort of where it began. Elvis is alive and well, and that kind of idea. Given a chance, the Shakespeare from Stratford became one of the greatest playwrights the world has ever seen. Anti-Stratfordians say Shakespeare of Stratford was a false name to shield the identity of the real author or authors. This belief stirs what is known today as the Shakespeare authorship question. But early on in the book is a wonderful poem in praise of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson. But one of the officials in the heralds' office who gave out these coats of arms said that various people from vulgar backgrounds, sort of insufficiently high-class people, were getting coats of arms. Watch: Prof Carol Rutter and Prof Stanley Wells discuss the authorship question in a video conversation. As part of our MOOC, "Shakespeare and his World", Professor Jonathan Bate joins us to discuss the question of who wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. So nobody doubts that Shakespeare the player, came from Stratford, was the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. And, of course, over the years there have been a number of theories of this sort. "Shakespeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage", both comedy and tragedy. The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. And then all sorts of other people came forward. How did Shakespeare know about the life of the court? That's a way of obviating the idea that, oh, it was all a conspiracy, and Ben Jonson and Shakespeare's family were all in on it. In this video, Professor Jonathan Bate joins Jennifer Reid to discuss the question of who wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. If there is such strong evidence, why is there this controversy, and when did it start? The scientific argument behind this claim is known as the Shakespeare authorship question.Anti-Stratfordians say Shakespeare of Stratford was a false name to shield the identity of the real author or authors. He makes it clear that his fellow writer, the author of these 36 plays is a writer from by the river Avon. Years before, while studying pulsars, Sturrock devised a new method to process information using statistics. Shakspere Wrote Shakespeare ! Listen: Guest speakers on a range of topics in our 60 Minutes with Shakespeare podcast. In 1997, Joseph Sobran's book Alias Shakespeare introduced many newcomers to the Shakespeare authorship question. Yes, these other men did write. We've seen the evidence of his fellow actors. 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