# Shakespeare vs Bacon **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 31, 2000, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099 "2000-10-31T16:39:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2000, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/41 "2000-11-01T22:40:07Z")
For what it’s worth, I can supply some anecdotal evidence to support TomH’s observation. I generally get one of two reactions when I tell new acquaintances what I study – and they are almost ALWAYS divided along national lines. Americans ask, “So who REALLY wrote Shakespeare?” Brits ask, “So why isn’t Shakespeare performed with a Birmingham accent?” I much prefer the second question, even though I can’t answer it. ---
**Author:** ![Beruang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/77aa72/32.png) [@Beruang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beruang)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/42 "2000-11-02T06:28:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by scratch1300 \* > Well…the problem with this is that no one denies that William Shakespeare was an actual actor at the Globe theatre; \*\* Sadly, I _DO_ know a person who denies there ever was a person named William Shakespeare. I am certain Cecil addressed this once, shortly after Frontline did their take on it. But it doesn’tseem to be in the archives. ---
**Author:** ![DRY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@DRY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DRY)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/43 "2000-11-02T06:38:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DRY \* > \*\*There is a reference made by another author (Marlowe, if I recall correctly), which parodied dialogue in one of Shakespeare’s early efforts. ( **King Henry VI, Part 3** ) Marlowe wrote about “Shake-scenes” and wrote derisively about “a tiger’s heart, wrapped in a player’s (actor’s) hide”, which was a twisted line from the above mentioned play. > \*\* For what it’s worth, I’m back with the correct citation. Incidentally, it was not Marlowe who derided Shakespeare (I apologize for misremembering). Again, this is quoted directly from Issac Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, in the chapter discussing Henry VI, Part 3: > [@](#): > > It is the powerful line “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!” that is noteworthy here above all, however. It has an importance quite apart from anything in the play. > > When the English playwright Robert Greene wrote a savage satire called _A Groatsworth of Wit_ in 1592, he snarlingly denounced someone he called “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes-factotum is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.” > > Shakespeare started as an actor and began to patch up the plays in which he was appearing (to the very natural annoyance of the writers thereof). When he began producing popular plays of his own, it would naturally make men like Greene envious. What! Did a mere player think he could outwrite _real_ writers? > > Greene did not name Shakespeare, but the semipun “Shake-scene” is enough to identify him, and if that is lacking there is that “tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”–one word changed of what may be the juiciest single line Shakespeare had yet written and that probably only the year before–which gives it away completely. Assuming that Asimov and his sources are not mistaken, this seems to clearly establish that _someone_ was writing plays under the name “William Shakespeare”, around 1592, and that playwright Robert Greene, at least, believed that it was the actor of that name. ---
**Author:** ![ndorward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c2a13f/32.png) [@ndorward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ndorward)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/44 "2000-11-02T07:32:44Z")
A slight hijack here–I must confess I remain puzzled at the enduring popularity of the Shakespeare-didn’t-write-Shakespeare theory, which has more of a pop-culture existence than any scholarly impetus behind it. Anyway: the hijack: I note that _Edward III_ has recently been accepted (?widely? only in some quarters?) into the canon, & was wondering if someone could enlighten me as to what has led to this–new evidence? (I’ve not read the play yet, but am aware that the play has teetered on the edge of the canon occasionally over the centuries, largely due to the presence of the “Lilies that fester” line that turns up in the sonnets too.) --N ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/45 "2000-11-02T09:42:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by APB \* > (2) The vocabulary argument is not as simple as it seems. Hypothesising the existance of a secret committee does not solve the problem. The members of the committee would have had moreorless the same overlapping vocabularies. What the large vocabulary does indicate is extraordinary linguistic inventiveness. This is not an attribute usually associated with committees. I wasn’t advocating a committee when I pointed out that the vocabulary argued against a single author of the plays. Not that there aren’t some people who’ve put forth the idea of an organized group. But the same effect could be achieved by one person borrowing with little or no change large sections of other people’s work. Or perhaps even entire plays. In an earlier post I said that there was strong evidence that _Love’s Labors Lost_ was written by someone other than Shakespeare, but I was wrong on who that person was. The evidence points most strongly to William Stanley, the sixth Earl of Darby. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/46 "2000-11-02T10:36:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TomH \* > In fact, based on the spelling used on most of the web sites advancing the argument, it would appear that the argument tends to come from North America. Actually, it’s a rather international group, including some who don’t have English as their native tongue. For example, one notable Oxfordian was Sigmund Freud. And the first person to advocate William Stanley, sixth earl of Derby (not Darby, as I said in a previous post) was a French scholar, Professor Abel Lefranc. While there is the [Shakespeare Oxford Society](http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/) in the US, there is also [The de Vere Society](http://www.devere.org.uk/) in the UK. ---
**Author:** ![TomH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/90db22/32.png) [@TomH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TomH)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/47 "2000-11-02T11:33:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Brits ask, “So why isn’t Shakespeare performed with a Birmingham accent?” Sorry, this conjoured up an immediate and rather vivid mental picture of Hamlet being played by a whining Brummie (a la Jasper Carrott or Frank Skinner) which I will now have great difficulty shifting. "Oi have of lite, but wherefore Oi knaw not, lost all moi merth ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/48 "2000-11-02T13:35:03Z")
**TomH** : > [@](#): > > I don’t think it is, actually. From a quick trawl of the Oxfordian and Baconite websites I haven’t been able to establish any particular connection between the argument in question and Oxford or Cambridge University. Having made a cursory search, I’ll concede the point. The Oxfordian sites don’t seem to say much about principal Oxfordians’ academic backgrounds. I saw that Frontline special years ago, though, and I could swear the main de Vere proponent they interviewed was an Oxford (as in the university) don. But again, I concede the point. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2000, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099/49 "2000-11-02T14:16:45Z")
**Fretful Porcupine** wrote: > [@](#): > > Brits ask, “So why isn’t Shakespeare performed with a Birmingham accent?” You just need to refer those folks to the (somewhat surprisingly) renowned [Alabama Shakespeare Festival](http://www.asf.net/ASF.html). I’m quite sure they’ll hear some Birmingham accents there… 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shakespeare-vs-bacon/39099.md?page=2)