Once and for all, are they Shakespeare’s plays or Sir Francis Bacon’s plays? I’ve read some of the evidence the Bacon-supporters tout, but I’d like to hear the general consensus.
And as a footnote, what’s all this about Francis Bacon being the illegitimate child of Queen Elizabeth I? Is nothing sacred!?
/Kate
Since someone’s going to say it sooner or later, it may as well be me…
Which would you rather have for breakfast? Shakespeare or Bacon?
Don’t worry yourself - it’s a moot point. Shakespeare wrote the plays, by definition. He may have been born a nobleman. he may have also published a number of plays under the name “Francis Bacon”. “Shakespeare” may not have been his real name. Who cares?
Don’t say “Shakespeare wrote Hamlet”. Say: “The guy who wrote Hamlet is Shakespeare”.
I don’t have any evidence to offer, but I always found the arguments of the Bacon supporters to be pretty elitist.
“Of course, there’s no way a rural bumpkin like Shakespeare could have written the plays!”
Yeah, and there’s no way a bumpkin like Faulkner could have written his books, either.
Well…the problem with this is that no one denies that William Shakespeare was an actual actor at the Globe theatre; it’s not an invented nom de plume like George Orwell or Mark Twain. I’m wondering if the Earl of Oxford is now second-favorite to have written those plays, rather than Francis Bacon?
I have read a couple of books on the subject, and I am well convinced that the man from Stratford-on-Avon named William Shakespeare actually did write the plays attributed to him. For one thing, much of his vocabulary was known only from the area around Stratford before he wrote the plays. The argument that Bacon actually wrote the plays seems to rest mainly on a crackpot theory that Bacon secretly revealed his identity in the plays using some kind of cipher or code. This theory was conclusively debunked by the famous cryptologists William and Elizabeth Friedman. Their excelltent book on the subject is apparently out of print, but you might be able to find it at a good library. The title is The Shakespearean ciphers examined: an analysis of cryptographic systems used as evidence that some author other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays commonly attributed to him
Some people think it wasn’t Bacon but someone else, perhaps Marlowe or Edward de Vere, who wrote the plays. This is also bull, in my opinion. It wasn’t until centuries after his death that people began to speculate that Shakespere didn’t write the plays himself.
This page has a discussion of the other claimants, about 3/4 of the way down the page.
Most of the Baconians died off in the early twentieth century. The alternative authorship theory you most often hear nowadays involves Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
Having argued with Oxfordians on this board before, I don’t feel like going through the whole thing again. I’ll just direct you to the excellent Shakespeare Authorship Page instead.
Thanks for that link, FP.
The problem with the Oxfordians is that they don’t have any evidence to back their claim – it’s all speculation, false assumptions, and out-and-out lies.
Shakespeare’s name was on the plays, and there is plenty of historical evidence that William Shakespeare was working in the theater at the time the plays were written. For the name of a living person to be used by someone else as a pen name, this not being known during the lifetime of either men or their contemporaries, is historically unique*, and the Oxfordians need to bring some solid proof (letters or eyewitness testimony) if they can claim the slightest validity of this extraordinary claim. But they only wave their hands and bring up irrelevancies.
*Don’t mention the McCarthy period. It didn’t take 400 years to discover Dalton Trumbo actually wrote “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
My comment: there seems to be a dearth of information about William Shakespeare. I remember reading that there are only a handful of authenticated signatures of his, and no authenticated portraits. hOW IS THIS SO? hE MUST HAVE BEEN A FAIRLY WEALTHY MAN in his day-why don’t we have bills of sale, contracts, bptismal records of his children, etc.?
[PONDERING]How many works not written by Shakespear, but another man of the same name will fit on the head of a pin…[/PONDERING]
egkelly –
We DO have baptismal records for WS’ children and extensive records of his business dealings. In fact, we have more documentary evidence about Shakespeare’s life than about any other playwright from this period, except Ben Jonson and possibly Christopher Marlowe.
For which there is in fact substantial supporting scholarship. At least as much supporting evidence as that for the man named Shakespeare himself. Not enough to make the case conclusively, but certainly enough to make a statement like this:
make me think we’re talking about politics or religion rather than Shakespeare!
Needless to say, I’ve thrown in my hat with the Oxfordians. (I’m also voting for Nader, so by now my skin has become pretty thick. Feel free to pile on!)
There’s as much information still on record for Shakespeare and his family as for just about anyone else from that time, I believe. Remember that, for all his wealth, he was still a commoner, and his profession had low status, so you can’t expect as much documentation as there would be for a nobleman.
If you’re in doubt about his really being wealthy, check out the local parish next time you’re in Stratford. A large part of the floor area is taken up the the Shakespeare family chapel and tombs. His father wasn’t merely a “glovemaker”, either, but a wealthy merchant and bigwig in what was a pretty fair-sized transportation hub city.
So, ren, let’s see some of that supporting scholarship. Evidence that the author was, in fact, the man called William Shakespeare:
That’s the name that appears on the plays-- Occam’s razor
The man who wrote the plays also appeared in many of them, under the name William Shakespeare
When he so appeared, he was not recognized as the Earl by any of the audience members, which included nobles as well as commoners
There was a man named William Shakespeare, who, despite having no other claim to fame, still has a remarkable amount of information preserved about himself.
The only evidence I’ve ever seen presented that the author was de Vere is subtle refereces coded into the various writings. This is trumped by the unsubtle hints that it was, in fact, Shakespeare: See my first point above.
Just to forestall one possible line of argument: I saw the article in GAMES magazine, too. Much as I enjoy that magazine, it is not a scholarly publication.
Here’s a whole lot of contemporary documentation: http://fly.hiwaay.net/~paul/shakspere/evidence1.html
And a lifetime’s worth of other goodies to peruse:
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~paul/outline.html
There are other theories besides the Bacon and Oxford ones. One is that several different people wrote the plays but Shakespeare took credit for some reason.
One strong piece of evidence for this theory is that there are some 17,000 different words used in the plays. This is an incredible number. Your typical author doesn’t use even half that number.
At any rate, I understand that the evidence that de Vere (I think) wrote Love’s Labors Lost is rather strong.
Whatever else you may say about him, Shakespeare was not a typical author.
I thought you were going to ask if Shakespeare was kosher.
Chronos, The idea that I get all my information from Games magazine is funny, not to mention insulting. I do know the meaning of scholarship.
I’m honestly surprised by how emotional the rhetoric over this gets. I didn’t realize people get so passionate about it.
There have been several whole books carefully researched and written attempting to make a case for de Vere, and certainly a lot more points are raised than “subtle references” in “coded writings.”
For easy reference, let me cite a few things I found on the net. I provide links at the bottom in case you want to skip this and read the sources yourself. All bolded text is my emphasis.
First, on why there is even cause to suspect the man named Shakespere himself:
Before we proceed, let me make two points:
Just because someone with a last name spelled similar to “Shakespeare” did exist in the same time and place as the bard, does not preclude that the name was a pen name. The fact of such a person’s existence does not preclude the works having been written by someone else. My real name isn’t “ren”, are you gonna insist that I didn’t write this just 'cause other people with the name “ren” exist and have access to the SDMB?
If we are to consider any other source than the similarly-named “Shakespere”, we are obviously dealing with someone who wrote under a pen name. Evidence which deals with trying to ferret out who might use such a pen name does not amount merely to games with “coded writings” which can automatically be dismissed merely because the source is not obvious. That’s tantamount to saying that ANY pen name whose source we are unsure of must remain a mystery and just throwing up our hands and saying “well, no one admitted it, so we can’t know”.
So, as for what evidence exists suggesting de Vere’s involvement at all:
Also, there are reams and reams of studies which also show profuse and compelling similarities between the events of de Vere’s life and the contents of Shakespeare’s plays (wayyy to many to quote here. See links below). No such evidence at all can be found for the man named “Shakespere”.
As for the pen name choice itself:
Here are some links for you:
I took my quotes from here:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~cschwei/101_web/bylander.html
This is the De Vere Society’s own argument:
http://www.devere.org.uk/
Some more biographical info.
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/devere.htm
True, but even authors noted for their erudition, e.g. William F. Buckley, don’t use that many different words. Counts for them are usually around ten to twelve thousand.
I should note that the number 17,000 does not include inflected forms. Sometimes you will see a larger number (usually around 29 or 30 thousand) ascribed to the Bard, but this is counting inflected forms as separate words.