{"id":817,"date":"2021-03-01T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T00:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/?p=817"},"modified":"2023-04-09T16:37:27","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T16:37:27","slug":"case-s02e03-slowburn-shakespeare-part-1-of-6-who-wrote-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/03\/01\/case-s02e03-slowburn-shakespeare-part-1-of-6-who-wrote-shakespeare\/","title":{"rendered":"Case S02E03 – Slowburn Shakespeare, part 1 of 6 – Who Wrote Shakespeare?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CONTENT RATING:<\/strong> universal<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Did Shakespeare really write…well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five-century-old con? Part 1 of this slowburn mini-series looks at the question “Who wrote Shakespeare?” Below you will find data, audio credits, further reading, and a transcript of the podcast.<\/p>\n

Audio credits<\/h1>\n

David Hilowitz – Angle of Light
\nAaron Dunn – Minuet – Notebook for Anna Magdalena (cropped)
\nScott Holmes – Postcards<\/p>\n

Transcript<\/h1>\n

This is a multi-part content warning \u2013 and, given its unusual length, it will not appear at the start of the next five episodes. First content warning: this is a slowburn six-part miniseries. Episode one charts the history of the “who wrote Shakespeare?” question, episode two considers the weightiness of the arguments for doubting Shakespeare, episodes three and four look at alternative candidates, episode five looks at the case for Shakespeare being Shakespeare, and episode six takes us right up to where we are with the question today. In short, this is a long-haul investigation.<\/p>\n

Second content warning: if this miniseries will teach you anything, it’s that Shakespeare retains an immortal talent for inexplicably driving people into wild rages, so some of the episodes contain swearing. The second episode contains a brief mention of suicidal thoughts. The third episode alludes in an extremely oblique way to very serious crimes indeed. It is not possible to work out what those crimes are based on what I say, and I have made this choice on purpose.<\/p>\n

Third and final content warning: whether you are a Stratfordian \u2013 and we’ll get onto what precisely that means later \u2013 or an anti-Stratfordian, prepare yourself. I am not out to make friends or allies. I try to present all the evidence as fairly as I can \u2013 the good, the bad, and the ugly \u2013 on all sides of this debate. But it is worth noting that, if judged purely on publication numbers and enthusiasm, Shakespeare is arguably the biggest authorship case in existence ever. This six-part miniseries barely scratches the surface. It is inevitable that key details have been omitted and some of the more complex events and arguments have been simplified. If I hadn’t done that, this case would easily (easily!<\/em>) be ten times longer. But the good news is, if this topic really appeals to you, there are literally \u2013 that’s the literally that does mean literally \u2013 thousands of books written on it, and huge numbers of them are readily accessible. As always, I have tried to provide good starting points at the blog.<\/p>\n

Case S02E03: Slowburn Shakespeare, part 1 of 6 \u2013 Who Wrote Shakespeare?<\/p>\n

How do you begin an episode on Shakespeare? My early memories on this subject are awful. Middle school, year six, aged about ten: Romeo & Juliet<\/em>. Every Friday, last lesson. For the first few weeks we had to read the play out. I spent one dreary week as the nurse and then after that, I was demoted to the blessed relief of silence. For the first two weeks, we watched this ancient film that the teacher paused every half minute to explain what was happening. We got dragged to a museum somewhere to look at\u2026 something. I actually don\u2019t remember any more what it was. I just remember the sales pitches I got in response to all the complaints I made (I made quite a few): Shakespeare\u2019s lofty wisdom would elevate my uncultured little mind. His rich poetic verse would nourish my young soul. His complex characters and their evolving moral narrative arcs would help me chart paths through my own haphazard, pedestrian, unremarkable life. Rustic prose! Iambic pentameter! Trochaic chants!!<\/p>\n

All I remember is actually, really, miserably hating every last second of it. From my earliest childhood, I have loved books, passionately. They were an escapism that was invaluable to me \u2013 but when high school ended, I threw away the five or six plays I\u2019d been forced to buy and read and study, and it\u2019s from that experience that I actually fully understand people who don\u2019t really get reading. I remember how I would feel staring at those infuriating, over-clever, needlessly mangled lines and think, \u201cThis is excruciating. This is meant to be humorous? This isn\u2019t even funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, so \u2013\u00a0Comedy of Errors<\/em>, right? Parents and their baby twins are ripped apart, and the rest of the play is each parent with one twin desperately trying to reunite with the other missing parent and child. Hilarious. So comedic.<\/p>\n

Romeo & Juliet:<\/em>\u00a0more tragedy involving kids, but this time they die. Really uplifting.<\/p>\n

Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream:<\/em> what was going on there?!<\/p>\n

And I just about managed to get it together and raise a modicum of interest for Macbeth, <\/em>right? Murder! Ghosts! Betrayal! A super-relatable arch-villain! Who doesn’t remember Lady Macbeth? It was going really well. Aaaand then all of that enthusiasm died again with The Tempest<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Based on all of this, had you told me that one day I would not only own multiple versions of the works of Shakespeare, but that I would have read all of them,<\/em> riveted, I would have thought you were out of your mind. And yet here we are. Probably not quite what my literature teacher, Ms. Symonds, imagined, though. For me (forgive me, Ms. Symonds, and Jonathan), Shakespeare isn\u2019t interesting for its elegant artistry or profound wisdom or deep studies of the tortured human psyche. It\u2019s interesting because \u2013 out of every play and poem, every scene, every character \u2013 it\u2019s the author, Shakespeare himself, that might just be the greatest fiction of them all.<\/p>\n

Welcome<\/h1>\n

Welcome to en clair, an archive of forensic linguistics, literary detection, and language mysteries. You can find case notes about this episode \u2013 including credits, acknowledgements, and links to further reading \u2013 at the blog. The web address is given at the end of this podcast.<\/p>\n

Sound and fury<\/h2>\n

Shakespeare has been written about, celebrated, argued over, so heatedly and for so long that it\u2019s difficult to know where to begin. And yet, it might be easier to fill volumes with what we don\u2019t<\/em> know about this mysterious individual. To quote Taylor and Egan, who we\u2019ll get back to much later on:<\/p>\n

[\u2026] much of Shakespeare\u2019s biography remains conjectural, and recent biographies (by Jonathan Bate, Stephen Greenblatt, E. A. J. Honigmann, Ren\u00e9 Weis, and others) are full of biographical speculation. Such conjectures about the life cannot provide a secure foundation for further conjectures about the work.<\/strong> (Taylor & Egan 2016: 435)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm. Not a good start. However, as a direct corollary to this, Maguire and Smith (2013) point out that<\/p>\n

\u2026we know a great deal about Shakespeare\u2019s life and movements \u2013 far more than we know about most other Elizabethan dramatists. We may not know all that we want to know, or precise details of the bits that most interest us, but it is not true to say that the records are scant. We know when Shakespeare was born (plus or minus a day). We know when he died. We know the birth dates and death dates of his three children. We know their godparents. We know about his mother\u2019s family and his father\u2019s, and we know about his father\u2019s civic activities in Stratford, his activities in wool-brogging (smuggling) and usury, and his subsequent debts. We know who Shakespeare\u2019s Stratford neighbors were. We know about his property inheritance, acquisition, and investment \u2013 houses in Henley Street and New Place, a cottage in Chapel Lane, land in Old Town, Stratford, a gatehouse in London\u2019s Blackfriars, a share in Stratford\u2019s tithes. We know about his litigation (it was a litigious culture). We know about his son\u2019s premature death and his two daughters\u2019 marriages. We lack comparable information for many of Shakespeare\u2019s Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. Part of the reason that we know so much, relatively speaking, about Shakespeare is that he maintained links with his home town, thus providing a constant in his life. Yes, there are gaps. <\/strong>[\u2026 I\u2019ll come back to these shortly.] Clearly there is much that we would like to know; but this should not blind us to how much we do know. It is what we do with what we know \u2013 how we evaluate the evidence (and negative evidence) and the inferences we draw \u2013 that is important.<\/strong> (Maguire & Smith 2013: 106-107)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So with Maguire and Smith\u2019s wise words to guide us, let\u2019s review the basic biographical facts that are documented and that most people generally do agree upon, as follows:<\/p>\n

On the 26th<\/sup> April 1564, one baby, name of William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon: baptised. That\u2019s the closest thing we have to a date of birth so we\u2019ll use it as a proxy for his age from here onwards. He was the son of John Shakespeare, a glover, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer. When he was four, in 1568, his father became Mayor of Stratford so it\u2019s possible that he attended the local grammar school for free, but there are no educational records from this time, so realistically, that is again just speculation. In 1582, just as he turned eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. She came from a nearby wealthy farming family. Six months later, when Shakespeare was nineteen, his first child Susanna was born, and by the time Shakespeare was twenty-one, fraternal twins Hamnet and Judith had arrived.<\/p>\n

But then it all goes dark.<\/p>\n

And not just for a bit.<\/p>\n

From 1585 to 1592, seven long years pass by in which there are \u2013 as far as we can tell \u2013 no records of Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

Finally, just as he turns twenty-eight, his plays emerge on the London stage.<\/p>\n

Obviously something<\/em> happened in those lost seven years. Lots of people have spent lots of time speculating about quite what that might be. Did he whisk off directly to London and begin his life as a playwright? John Aubrey suspects that he actually worked in Lancashire as a schoolmaster. I mean, did he spend seven years undergoing an extended rite to trade his soul for the fame he would be accorded after his death? I don\u2019t know. And the point is, neither does anyone else, really. There\u2019s probably a five-part Netflix docudrama on it somewhere and several books \u2013 but even if they do exist, it\u2019s all speculation. We can only guess. Perhaps he simply took that most natural of seven-year paths from schoolboy to young man with three kids to celebrated literary genius. You know, like you do (Maguire & Smith 2013: 107).<\/p>\n

But maybe there\u2019s another explanation \u2013 and I\u2019ll come back to that later on.<\/p>\n

Our next records pick up in the middle of 1593. The first copy of the poem Venus and Adonis<\/em> is sold, and it has twenty-nine-year-old William Shakespeare in the author line. Five years later, as he\u2019s approaching his mid-thirties, the play Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/em> is published with his name on the title page. There\u2019s also a hint of possibly another play: Love\u2019s Labour’s Won <\/em>is listed in library guidebook from the same year, but if it ever existed, it seems to have been lost to time. More likely, it was just an alternative name for an existing play, but again, we don\u2019t know that for sure.<\/p>\n

By 1600, as Shakespeare is just passing his mid-thirties, booksellers are now trying to peddle works by other authors under his name, because Shakespeare is starting to sell. By 1608, he\u2019s in charge of the King\u2019s Men group of actors. By 1609, his first complete set of sonnets is published \u2013 and then, just eight years later, aged fifty-two, he dies. The circumstances of Shakespeare\u2019s death are unknown, but it\u2019s not likely that his passing will have made much of a sensation. Like so many artists, the astronomical (in this case almost surreal) levels of fame arrived years after his death. In his case, however, the groundwork for this was precipitated by his contemporaries publishing The First Folio<\/em>. This was a collection of thirty-six works attributed directly to him that would, in future centuries, become almost holy amongst scholars of Shakespeare. The First Folio<\/em> comes up a lot in this miniseries, so try to remember it if you can.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s it. That\u2019s really all the major points of Shakespeare\u2019s life. Birth, marriage, kids, plays, poems, death, First Folio<\/em>. (Shakespeare scholars in the background are screaming. I know, there’s lots more, but this is a podcast series and we can’t do everything.)<\/p>\n

As I noted earlier, what we do<\/em> know about Shakespeare, really, is that \u2013 though we know more about him than pretty much most other Elizabethan playwrights of the time \u2013 we still, overall, don\u2019t actually know as much about him as we would like. But of all the things we don\u2019t<\/em> know, there is one particular question about Shakespeare that first arose in around the mid-1800s. When I finally came across it, I found it so interesting that it even managed to overcome the absolute horror of Shakespeare instilled in me from school. That question is: Did Shakespeare even write the works attributed to him (McCrea, 2005: xii)? Or, in different words: Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?<\/p>\n

Actually I\u2019m setting my sights rather low here. Some people have a significantly bigger and far more ambitious question still: did Shakespeare even exist? In all the plays and poems under his name, was Shakespeare the most fictitious character of them all? Did it just happen, coincidentally, that another man of the same name lived nearby?<\/p>\n

To be fair, both of these bardic existential conundrums still actually boil down to the same thing. After all, if Shakespeare didn\u2019t exist, all the works under his name most certainly still do, and someone<\/em> must have written them \u2013 so the question would still be: Well then, who did write them? But before we get stuck into the who, we should really start with the why<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Why did anyone start questioning Shakespeare\u2019s authorship in the first place?<\/p>\n

Heir of all eternity<\/h2>\n

Okay, so here\u2019s what happened: Shakespeare dies. He enjoys \u2013 as much as one can when one is dead \u2013 a reasonable degree of renown for about two centuries, but nothing amazing. During Shakespeare\u2019s lifetime, Marlowe was arguably more famous, and for the first few decades after his death at least, he\u2019s overshadowed by the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. These are, incidentally, another of history\u2019s authorship cases, but that\u2019s getting off the point. Back to Shakespeare being dead and not really all that famous. The decades pass by, and as far as we can tell, no one has any questions or doubts around his existence, his talents, his authorship of the works. But then in 1725, Alexander Pope publishes his Complete Works<\/em> of Shakespeare, and in it he makes some fairly pointed comments. He doesn\u2019t think that the supreme First Folio<\/em> is as faithful and accurate as people have taken it to be. He considers the earlier Quartos<\/em> to be more authentic. He feels like trifles and bombast have been added to The First Folio<\/em> by actors or plagiarized from them. He thinks Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/em>, The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em>, and Titus Andronicus<\/em> are hardly by Shakespeare at all. Maybe only a scene or a verse or a few lines. Pope\u2019s evidence is not amazing. He thinks this because another playwright called Ben Jonson said so, and because his own refined tastes direct him to agree \u2013 but he wasn\u2019t alone. Only a few years later, in the 1740s, Thomas Hanmer and John Upton publish similar questions around Shakespeare\u2019s authorship. Could this man \u2013 this nobody \u2013 really have written such works? Again, they draw on similarly unscientific underpinnings, but the point now is, these are early cracks in the otherwise perfect veneer of unquestioning attribution. As far as we know, everyone was perfectly satisfied before this \u2013 so why this sudden doubt? What is happening in the world that can exert enough pressure to direct the attention of scholars and enthusiasts to revisit these previously well-held beliefs? Well, on the one hand, Maguire & Smith (2013) put some of it down to tectonic shifts in the philosophy of science \u2013 a daring new willingness to ask politically radical questions, to reject formerly held beliefs, to follow the heart and the senses. Some of this is captured in the early Romanticism that rose like a phoenix from the raging fires of the Napoleonic Wars. So you can imagine how a climate that encouraged freer thinking, bolder questions, riskier ideas, would nourish questions around issues such as whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. But there were several more factors than just this.<\/p>\n

When we hit the late 1700s, a phenomenon known as bardolatry enters the provincial group chat. The actual name, bardolatry<\/em>, won\u2019t pop into existence until the 1900s but the act itself gets in a good long run first. In very simple terms, as the name suggests, bardolatry is idolatry of the bard \u2013 a sort of over-awed, excessive adulation. The indulgence of ever-more flattering panegyrics of the Swan of Avon.<\/p>\n

And again, inevitably, it\u2019s worth asking why <\/em>bardolatry suddenly happened. There wasn\u2019t a Twitter back then; this didn\u2019t suddenly trend on the town\u2019s topic list. And there were plenty of idolizable candidates to choose from, so why this one? And why now? Again, we can\u2019t know but we can speculate, and one suggestion is that this was driven by the British Empire having quite a notable wobble during those decades. The American War of Independence \u2013 that is, independence from the British Empire \u2013 raged from the mid-1770s to the early 1780s. And as we know, that independence was attained. The British Empire found some of its power slipping away. Similarly, tensions between the US and Britain escalated drastically with the Napoleonic Wars, and I\u2019ve already mentioned that shift in scientific philosophy that took root around this time.<\/p>\n

So what we find during times of instability and crisis and conflict \u2013 as during these wars \u2013 is that countries tend to become more insular and more nationalistic. This expresses itself is through the sudden celebration of home talent, the raising of patriotic icons, the adulation of the nation\u2019s most successful children. Invariably, given that arts are a sort of emotional barometer of a country\u2019s wellbeing at any moment, these also tend to be influenced by the political and cultural climate in all kinds of ways. This can involve the commissioning of jazzy patriotic music or the deification of leaders in gigantic sculptures \u2013 and, of course, the unpleasant depiction of enemies in works of fiction. (That still happens now, by the way. Look back over the major Hollywood movies of the past fifty years \u2013 actually, you can go back further than that, but, you know, fifty years is good \u2013 check out where the baddies supposedly come from in the world, their countries of origin; look at how they\u2019re represented, the stereotypes and what they do and how they speak; and then look at the state of the world at the time when the film was made. It\u2019s really not subtle.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, the biggest and nearest hostile force, the French Empire, had outstanding composers. Extraordinary artists. Amazing food. And it had monster heavyweight writers: Moliere, Rousseau, Voltaire. It makes some sense, then, that during these precarious decades as the British Empire lost its grip on the US and started shaping up for a titanic battle with the French Empire, Shakespeare stood out as an ideal candidate to be the poster boy for British awesomeness. It could have been another playwright, of course, or a composer, or whomever, but it just so happens to have been him. And thus, bardolatry takes off. The thing is, though, just like the disinformation of today, even if some people at the time are just bardolising ironically or patriotically, enough people still take it as fact. And, perhaps accelerated by the fear of worldwide dominance slipping away, within a few decades, Shakespeare meteorically transcends from just another also-ran dramatist into the rarified stratosphere of genre-defining grand master; a superlative towering intellect well-versed in political, scientific, legal, and royal knowledge; an untutored incandescent rustic genius; the<\/em> internationally acclaimed, consummate literary polestar.<\/p>\n

As over-the-top as all this sounds, it doesn\u2019t come close to the feverish pitch of some of the lathered praise heaped on Shakespeare’s memory by his most ardent devotees and admirers. In fact, as a brief aside, it also rather begs an interesting question about just who the chumps are. Were his lifetime contemporaries simply too ignorant and oblivious to recognize his brilliance? Or are we all a little carried away with a rather over-egged story? Has the bardolatry won? I mean, who doesn\u2019t love a local underdog turned global success, sure \u2013 but it does ultimately mean that someone, somewhere, really got it wrong.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the point here is that just as Shakespeare\u2019s name was becoming synonymous with the very pinnacle of artistic brilliance, and just as these new philosophical notions of asking bold questions have taken hold, that\u2019s also when the doubt arrived. And I don\u2019t think that these things are a coincidence. I think, in fact, that bardolatry and this scientific shift \u2013 I think they’re the catalyst. Whatever the case, there is this seismic stress between the ground reality of a very ordinary man from a very ordinary country town versus this ever-ascending image of a literary titan, and when the two become so disjointed (with the encouragement of these radical new ways of thinking), for some, the whole Shakespeare phenomenon fractures into suspicion and doubt.<\/p>\n

And along with all the fame, of course, come the hordes of people: the enthusiasts, the scholars, adherents of other playwrights, many armed with access to libraries, each determined to investigate to their own satisfaction. Inevitably, the result is torrents of contradictory evidence, all pointing in different directions. The gaffes in his plays? Well, a market town boy would make those kinds of mistakes, so it must<\/em> be the man from Stratford. But what about the adept descriptions of royalty? How could a glover’s son even begin to manage such a feat? Obviously, therefore, it cannot possibly<\/em> be the man from Stratford \u2013 and so on, and so forth.<\/p>\n

From these divisions, people soon amassed evidence to champion their own candidate, whether Shakespeare himself or someone else, and so we get to where we are today. Now, under normal circumstances, a question like this \u2013 a doubt about whether a person has written the works attributed to them \u2013 could be put to bed fairly straightforwardly. The problem is, there is no base truth for all these people to find, not even the ones who are happy that the glover\u2019s son really is the bard (the Stratfordians). There is no gameshow host who is ever going to pop into view, whip a sparkly card from an envelope, and read out the correct answer. And that leaves the door wide open for questions. And so, from the middle of the 1800s, people start to ask the unthinkable out loud. Isn\u2019t it weird that this nobody from nowhere should suddenly turn into one of the foremost literary geniuses of the modern age? Is that even possible? Can a glover\u2019s son with no extraordinary artistic lineage, no aristocratic blood, no culture, no class, no connections, turn into\u2026 Shakespeare? Couldn\u2019t someone else<\/em> with more believable credentials maybe have written all that stuff? As you’ve probably gathered, these are questions deeply entrenched in class snobbery, and yet they also spring from a culture that was itself fundamentally wrapped up in agonies about these exact issues, so their unpalatable elitist tenor is kind of unsurprising.<\/p>\n

But whatever people were saying<\/em>, all we have today are the written records. Inevitably, these tend to lag behind conversational topics, sometimes by decades, so, to the best of our current knowledge, the earliest documentary evidence for this Shakespeare authorship question is found in the mid-1800s, and it starts with, of all things\u2026 yachts.<\/p>\n

When the sea was calm<\/h2>\n

In 1848, Joseph C. Hart, a lawyer from New York, published a book called \u2013 of all things \u2013 The Romance of Yachting<\/em><\/a>. Amusingly enough, some lament that it really doesn\u2019t have much to say about yachting at all; that it is, in fact, \u201ca gossipy account of a voyage to Spain\u201d, and in it, inexplicably, he devotes a whole section to Shakespeare. And he really does have opinions. He labels the man as ignorant, argues that he filled his plays with \u201cimpurities\u201d (McCrea, 2005), and states that he likely stole the scripts from better and more accomplished playwrights.<\/p>\n

Yet notwithstanding all this mystery, <\/strong>and the absence of any positive information, learned and voluminous commentators and biographers, in great numbers, have been led to suppose and assert a thousand things in regard to Shakespeare\u2019s history, pursuits and attainments, which cannot be substantiated by a particle of proof. Among these is the authorship of the plays grouped under his name, which they assume as his for a certainty and beyond dispute. This egregious folly is beginning to react upon those who have been engaged in it\u2014especially Pope the poet, who, on the score of the supposed great learning of Shakespeare, has contributed not a little to the delusion concerning him.<\/strong> (Hart 1848: 15, emphasis original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really doesn’t like Shakespeare, does he?<\/p>\n

Anyway, four years later in 1852, an anonymous 3,000-word article entitled Who Wrote Shakespeare?<\/em><\/a> is published in the Chambers\u2019s Edinburgh Journal<\/em>. Now this is widely credited to Dr. Robert W. Jameson. I put loads of effort into fact-checking that attribution; I can\u2019t find out why it’s attributed to him. Everyone credits him because everyone credits him, but I cannot find a single primary source, so I’m just going to continue to say it’s anonymous. I’ve put the link in the blog post anyway, but I’ll quote just a tiny snippet of this anonymous thing. It says:<\/p>\n

Is it more difficult to suppose that Shakspeare was not the author of the poetry ascribed to him, than to account for the fact, that there is nothing in the recorded or traditionary life of Shakspeare which in any way connects the poet with the man?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In different words, I think what he\u2019s saying here is that since, biographically, Shakespeare\u2019s connections to the theatre are supposedly fairly tenuous, then arguing that he was <\/em>the playwright is just as sensible (or easy or difficult) as arguing that he wasn\u2019t. The quantum of evidence required to go in either direction is about the same, according to whoever this anonymous guy was.<\/p>\n

Now quite what the readership of The Romance of Yachting<\/em> or Chambers\u2019s Edinburgh Journal<\/em> were, I couldn\u2019t say, but their close proximity in time suggests that maybe this question was abroad verbally in some circles. Maybe it was an intellectual post-dinner talking point, I don’t know. But even if the well-educated upper-middle-classes were enjoying canvassing the subject whilst taking the yacht out for a spin \u2013 or whatever you do with a yacht, I\u2019m not sure \u2013 up until that point no one had committed it to paper yet. That we know of, anyway.<\/p>\n

In their 2016 work, Taylor and Bouros put the whole affair rather more bluntly:<\/p>\n

The feeling that Shakespeare is the poet of the top one per cent, of \u2018the billionaire class\u2019, also lies behind the one claim about Shakespeare that almost everyone has heard: <\/strong>[I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know how many people actually know that there’s a question about Shakespeare’s authorship. But anyway]\u00a0that he did not actually write his own works. This conspiracy theory, which originated in the nineteenth century, is grounded in the conviction that the writing attributed to Shakespeare is \u2018not relatable\u2019 to the ordinary life of a man who never went to college, was born and raised in a small town, worked for a living, came from a socially and intellectually unremarkable family, married a boring woman, and fathered boring children. Therefore the plays and poems must have been written by someone with a more appropriately elevated pedigree and more interesting relatives: the Earl of Oxford, say, or Sir Francis Bacon, or Sir Henry Neville, or Queen Elizabeth I, or Thomas Sackville (Earl of Dorset), someone, anyone, better born and better educated and better connected than the \u2018upstart crow\u2019.<\/strong> (Taylor & Bouros 2016: 11)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now as I’ve said, under normal circumstances, a question like this might easily be put back to bed, but as this miniseries will hopefully show, with Shakespeare, nothing is simple. Hence the swearing. There are large, undocumented holes in Shakespeare\u2019s history \u2013 I’ve already pointed some of them out \u2013 and for some people, those by themselves are enough. The holes leave wiggle-room to allow other explanations \u2013 some more plausible, others frankly batshit \u2013 to not only exist, but to even flourish.<\/p>\n

After all, most people enjoy a fun conspiracy theory, even if they don\u2019t subscribe to it. It\u2019s just another avenue of fiction. And pretty much everybody loves a dramatic national intrigue. I mean, who isn\u2019t fascinated by the idea that a globally treasured canon of literature might itself hide a story even greater than its most elaborate plots? Most conveniently, it\u2019s a question without an answer. There is no base truth. We cannot go back half a millennia to question the relevant parties or view CCTV footage or spy on the writer (or writers) at work. We have various statements and accounts and lots of circumstantial evidence, some of it very compelling, yes \u2013 and Occam\u2019s razor warns us to throw that all in the bin at our peril \u2013 but still, we have nothing more concrete than that, and weird things have happened around authorship before.<\/p>\n

So, just as we find with other conundrums like the Voynich manuscript and the Dorabella Cipher and so on, for people who get quite heavily invested in these sorts of eternal unanswerable debates, this is perfect. They can pick a hill to die on, argue their different theories for the rest of their lives until they do indeed expire with no risk of someone turning up one day, yoinking the actual answer out of an envelope, and spoiling their fun by proving them wrong. Some people have built whole careers on this kind of never-ending unverifiable debate. With Shakespeare, we have the perfect conditions for a gripping whodunit \u2013 whobardit?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not actually sorry.<\/p>\n

Throw together one national treasure, one unanswerable challenge, and a handful of enthused scholars, and you get\u2026 the Shakespearian authorship question.<\/p>\n

Now, I mentioned the Stratfordians and the anti-Stratfordians before, so it might be time to introduce you to them now.<\/p>\n

On one side of this question, you have perhaps the majority of Shakespearean scholars. These are the people for whom the authorship question is either uninteresting or irrelevant or already answered to their satisfaction. Either they\u2019re assured that a glover\u2019s son called William Shakespeare from Stratford-Upon-Avon existed and that most, if not all, of the works attributed to him were indeed written by him \u2013\u00a0 0r they actually don\u2019t care who wrote Shakespeare. They just love the works themselves and that\u2019s quite enough, thank you very much. And for most of those people, if there is debate, it\u2019s around the apocrypha\/one or two plays that are a little bit dicey, but otherwise the main canon is widely accepted as Shakespeare\u2019s. These people are sometimes referred to as the Stratfordians, because they support the idea of the man from Stratford. For them \u2013 the Stratfordians \u2013 there is<\/em> no question, or the question is fundamentally uninteresting. As far as I\u2019m concerned, these are perfectly reasonable positions to occupy on the authorship continuum. But there is a stronger version of this Stratfordian position which is best phrased thus: not only is there no question, but even daring to ask questions or doubt Shakespeare\u2019s authorship in the canon is problematic. Embarrassing. Ridiculous. And if you seriously pursue the question, then you\u2019re a fringe conspiracy theorist who does not deserve to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

In fact, this opposition to even asking the question has escalated, at times, to frankly eyebrow raising levels. Back in 2005, Shakespearian academic titan, Stephen Greenblatt<\/a> wrote a letter to The New York Times<\/em>. In a prior issue, another scholar had suggested teaching the authorship controversy in the national curriculum, and Greenblatt was Not Having It\u2122:<\/p>\n

The idea that William Shakespeare\u2019s authorship of his plays and poems is a matter of conjecture and the idea that the \u2018authorship controversy\u2019 be taught in the classroom are the exact equivalent of current arguments that \u2018intelligent design\u2019 be taught alongside evolution. In both cases an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on a serious assessment of hard evidence, is challenged by passionately held fantasies whose adherents demand equal time. The demand seems harmless enough until one reflects on its implications. Should claims that the Holocaust did not occur also be made part of the standard curriculum?<\/strong> (Rosenbaum 2005<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s right. In very measured and nuanced response, Greenblatt seems to have equated questioning Shakespeare\u2019s authorship with Holocaust denial. He\u2019s not alone. Others are ferociously territorial about the bard too. Another figure who will come up again in this miniseries is Brian Vickers, and he wrote that:<\/p>\n

Shakespeare is not just a national, but an international treasure and it is tragic to contemplate the damage done to culture in general by these editions being used to teach students, and being sold in bookshops to unsuspecting laymen.<\/strong> (Vickers 2020<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThese editions\u201d are The New Oxford Shakespeare. <\/em>This is a series which investigates the authorship of the various plays, and way down the line, we\u2019ll get back to those books too. The problem here is that Vickers has a really serious issue with anybody suggesting that anyone other than Shakespeare was involved in writing Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

Night’s end<\/h2>\n

Anyway, who lurks on the twilight side of this question? As you’ve probably gathered, there are the Stratfordians on one side, and on the other side we have the anti-Stratfordians. I\u2019m just going to call them the Antis from hereon because that\u2019s way too many syllables to say loads of times. The Antis are essentially the doubters. They are a constellation of scholars, celebrities, and enthusiasts who have amassed over the centuries to ponder this shadowy historical question and put forward alternative authors for the works of Shakespeare. Better-known names in this camp include Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplain, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman (Dudley, 2013: 1). A not insignificant number of books have been published on the subject that challenge Shakespeare\u2019s authorship (Dudley, 2013). I\u2019m sorry to say that I\u2019ve only read and consulted eleven books for this episode, plus a bunch of articles. Dudley\u2019s 2013 research quotes from 2,125\u00a0 \u2013 so, you know, more to be done here. In fact, the publications, as will become obvious the longer this miniseries goes on, are not only numerous, they get quite bitterly confrontational too. Shakespeare may have been dead five hundred years, but his capacity to generate drama is still very much alive. I’ll give you a super tame example (spicier ones come up later on): in 2013, Edmondson & Wells published the pro-Stratfordian Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy<\/em>. The very same year, Shahan & Waugh published Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an Industry in Denial<\/em>. No surprise, this was a direct counter arguing the Anti side of the question.<\/p>\n

But there isn’t just reputation in this; there is also money \u2013 including the Hoffman Prize. This is a competition administered by The King\u2019s School, Canterbury, and named in honour of Calvin Hoffman. Hoffman was convinced that Christopher Marlowe wrote the works of Shakespeare and so through his Calvin & Rose G Hoffman Marlowe Memorial Trust, he created a prize of one half of the capital of the entire Trust Fund. I don\u2019t really understand accounting documents well, but the Trust Fund seems to be sitting on about one million pounds, so if I\u2019m correct, the prize is half a million, or about $700,000. What do you have to do to win this actually really quite good prize? Not much. You get the money if you have,<\/p>\n

in the opinion of the King\u2019s School furnished irrefutable and incontrovertible proof and evidence required to satisfy the world of Shakespearian scholarship that all the plays and poems now commonly attributed to William Shakespeare were in fact written by Christopher Marlowe.<\/strong> (Marlowe Society 2021<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amusingly, however, the Marlowe Society do add this little encouraging comment on at the very end of their Hoffman Prize page:<\/p>\n

Can the Principal Prize Ever Be Won? <\/em><\/strong>[…] it is difficult to see how it could actually be won. Even if The King\u2019s School were satisfied that a competitor had produced the irrefutable evidence required, how should Shakespearian scholarship be convinced? If evidence is \u201cirrefutable\u201d, but highly inconvenient, it is normal practice to dismiss it with lofty scorn \u2013 not to try to refute it. It would surely take a generation or two, and possibly more than the value of the prize itself, before the sceptical world of Shakespearian scholarship \u2013 to say nothing of the interested world of Shakespearian commerce \u2013 would abandon its claims in the face of \u201cirrefutable evidence\u201d.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, there\u2019s money in the question…eh, not really. Anyway, there are multiple other websites devoted entirely to the authorship question \u2013 some outline all the Anti theories, and others champion a specific candidate author. A few examples, and as ever, you can find links to these in the casenotes: There\u2019s the Shakespearean Authorship Trust<\/a>, and this will come back up later on so I won\u2019t say more here. There\u2019s the de Vere Society<\/a> which declares itself \u201cdedicated to the proposition that the works of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere, 17th<\/sup> Earl of Oxford\u201d. And, amongst many others, there\u2019s also Doubt About Will<\/a>, which is the home of the Shakespearean Authorship Coalition, or for short…the SAC. Anyway, the SAC questions both the body of evidence supporting William Shakespeare\u2019s authorship of his attributed works, and the \u201cenormous gulf between the alleged author\u2019s life and the contents of his works\u201d. A list of prominent doubters takes center stage. Alongside ones I already noted earlier, they cite Ralph Waldo Emerson, Orson Welles, Henry James, and Mortimer J. Adler. They also created the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt<\/em>, which reads thus:<\/p>\n

We, the undersigned, hereby declare our view that there is room for reasonable doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare, and that it is an important question for anyone seeking to understand the works, the formative literary culture in which they were produced, or the nature of literary creativity and genius.<\/strong> (SAC Declaration, emphasis original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the website, at the time that I was recording this, the Declaration had 4,336 verified signatories, 725 academic signatories, and 93 \u201cnotable signatories\u201d (professors, actors and actresses, directors, and the like). When compared with all Shakespeare scholars worldwide, this is a tiny number, but then not everyone knows the site exists, and even for those who do, not everyone wants to publicly sign their name on a website, so we can’t read too much into that.<\/p>\n

The SAC has perhaps been more proactive in its campaign than some. One of those spicier instances that I mentioned: on 04th<\/sup> July 2013, they sent an open letter to Peter Kyle. Who’s this? Well, this is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,<\/em> and they invited the Trust to take part in a mock trial with a panel of neutral judges. The SAC hoped, in this trial, to resolve the authorship question, citing the argument that there is indeed \u201creasonable doubt\u201d that the Stratford glover\u2019s son was also the author William Shakespeare. A very long two months later, Mr. Kyle responded with a rejection. Undeterred, SAC penned another letter<\/a> \u2013 link at the blog again \u2013 offering the Trust \u00a340,000 if it managed to win the trial. A list of prominent signatories who had pledged to donate towards the \u00a340,000 was included in the letter. Once again, the Trust declined to participate.<\/p>\n

While debates and mock trials (typically held in libraries) on the Shakespeare authorship question sound like fairly tame affairs frequented by bookish scholarly types, the issue seems to have stirred considerable animosity between the two camps. Sir Stanley William Wells (CBE), Shakespearian scholar, professor, and honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust<\/em>, published an article in 2010 on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust<\/em> website. I\u2019ll only quote the very last paragraph, but it\u2019s really quite something. Wells says:<\/p>\n

The phenomenon of disbelief in Shakespeare’s authorship is a psychological aberration of considerable interest. Endorsement of it in favour of aristocratic candidates may be ascribed to snobbery \u2013 reluctance to believe that works of genius could emanate from a man of relatively humble origin \u2013 an attitude that would not permit Marlowe to have written his own works, let alone Shakespeare’s. Other causes include ignorance; poor sense of logic; refusal, willful or otherwise, to accept evidence; folly; the desire for publicity; and even (as in the sad case of Delia Bacon, who hoped to open Shakespeare’s grave in 1856) certifiable madness.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a sidenote, I am not remotely enamored with this reference to Delia Bacon. The best I can reconstruct of her final years is that she lived in desperate poverty, struggled with recurrent fevers, slid into a very severe depression, and, as with so many vulnerable women of that era, the solution imposed on her was an asylum, where she died shortly afterwards<\/a>. Notably, her research into Shakespeare predated this untimely death by fifteen years, and the interested listener who can stomach it should read an account of asylums from that era, such as Nellie Bly\u2019s Ten Days in a Madhouse<\/em><\/a>. Lots of the women who were in there were not mentally ill. Anyway, it\u2019s heartbreaking stuff, and I take strong issue with this really flippant allusion to Delia Bacon.<\/p>\n

Moving on, the SAC sent multiple letters of complaint about the article, which for many months went completely unanswered.\u00a0 Finally, just over a year later, in May 2011, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust<\/em> removed the article. That’s interesting, but then\u2026 it was promptly republished on the website of the Royal Shakespeare Company<\/em> (RSC). It\u2019s worth noting that the article\u2019s author, Stanley Wells, was also<\/em> Vice-Chair and subsequently Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company<\/em><\/a>, which is presumably why and how the matter evolved as it did. Unsurprisingly, the SAC were even more unimpressed, and they escalated by sending a letter to then-President of the Royal Shakespeare Company<\/em>, the Prince of Wales. In May 2015, the SAC chairman John Shahan was informed that the article would be removed, but, though it has indeed gone from its original location, you can still find a copy on the Wayback Machine<\/a>. And yes the link is indeed in the blog.<\/p>\n

As this spat highlights, it\u2019s not just the case that plenty of Stratfordians don\u2019t feel that there is a question to answer. The issue is with the more aggressive Stratfordian gatekeepers who think that even asking <\/em>the question is \u201ca psychological aberration\u201d. As a result, a primary, explicit goal of sites like the SAC is simply to legitimize the Shakespeare authorship question as a field of scholarly enquiry (Gibson, 2005; Nelson, 2004). In other words, part of the campaign is tackling the notion that even just asking the question is problematic. And as this miniseries will go on to show, this aim seems to have been at least partially, if not completely, successful. Just some early signs of that include the fact that, in 2007, Brunel University in London<\/a> and Concordia University in Portland, Oregon both launched Master\u2019s degree programmes in Authorship Studies, and Brunel\u2019s is specifically focused on Shakespeare<\/a>. Then in 2016, Oxford University Press launched The New Oxford Shakespeare<\/em>, which I mentioned a moment ago, and that was\u2026<\/p>\n

Well, let\u2019s not jump ahead of ourselves. We\u2019ll get back to that development right at the end.<\/p>\n

For now, let\u2019s do something much more immediate and important. We need to assess just how much room for reasonable doubt there is. I mean, does the SAC actually have a point? What evidence do the Antis point to? Is this truly all obstinately ignorant folly, fame-hungry straw-clutching, willfully illogical snobbery? Or is there some actual reasonable scope for asking and answering the question?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll take a look at the evidence in the next episode.<\/p>\n

End of part 1 of 6.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in more Shakespeare content, from linguists, at Lancaster, then search the internet for Future Learn, Shakespeare’s Language. This free online course is about both revealing meanings in the works and exploring the myths about Shakespeare in general, and as a bonus, you get introduced to corpus-based methods for analysing Shakespeare. What\u2019s not to love!<\/p>\n

Outro<\/h1>\n

The episode was researched and fact-checked by my research assistant, Rebecca Jagodzinski, and my intern, Debbi Tomkinson, and it was narrated and produced by me, Dr Claire Hardaker. I am also extremely grateful for all the input I\u2019ve had from the renowned Shakespeare authority, Jonathan Culpeper \u2013 creator of that online course I mentioned \u2013 who has patiently entertained this whole miniseries idea from inception to gruesome, bloody execution.<\/p>\n

However, this work wouldn’t exist in its current form without the prior efforts of many, many others. You can find acknowledgements and references for those people at the blog. Also there, you can find data, links, articles, pictures, older cases, and more besides.<\/p>\n

The address for the blog is wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair. And you can follow the podcast on Twitter at _enclair. Or if you like, you can follow me on Twitter at DrClaireH.<\/p>\n

Credits, sources, and more<\/h1>\n

Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Baconian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship [Accessed 11th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

A Review of James and Rubinstein\u2019s work can be found here: https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/sq\/article\/58\/2\/245\/5064487<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Brewer, C. (2013). Shakespeare, word-coining, and the OED. Shakespeare Survey, 65, 345-357.<\/p>\n

Christopher Marlowe. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christopher_Marlowe [Accessed 13th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Craig, H. (2011). Shakespeare\u2019s Vocabulary: Myth and Reality. Shakespeare Quarterly, 62(1), 53-74.<\/p>\n

Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Derbyite_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship [Accessed 11th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Dudley, M.Q. (2013). \u201c\u2018My Library Was Dukedom Large Enough\u2019: Academic Libraries Mediating the Shakespeare Authorship Debate\u201d, The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research<\/em>, 8(2), 1-9.<\/p>\n

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford [Accessed 13th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Elliot, W., & Valenza, R. (1991). Was the Earl of Oxford the True Shakespeare? A Computer-Aided Analysis. Notes and Queries, 38(4), 501-506.<\/p>\n

Emilia Lanier. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emilia_Lanier [Accessed 15th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Francis Bacon. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Francis_Bacon [Accessed 13th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Franssen, P. (2013). \u201cFictional treatments of Shakespeare\u2019s authorship\u201d. In: P. Edmonson and S. Wells (Eds), Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy<\/em> (pp. 189-200). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

Friberg, J. (2016).\u00a0The Seven Steps to Mercy: Cracking the Shakespeare Code\u00a0[Documentary Series]. Syndicado.<\/p>\n

Friedlander, A. (2015). Five myths about William Shakespeare. Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/five-myths-about-william-shakespeare\/2015\/09\/04\/bc986ef6-524d-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html [Accessed 9th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Henry Neville (died 1615). (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henry_Neville_(died_1615) [Accessed 15th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Holderness, G. (2013). \u201cThe unreadable Delia Bacon\u201d. In: P. Edmonson and S. Wells (Eds), Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy<\/em> (pp. 5-15). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

Holloway, C. (n.d.). Shakespeare\u2019s Stratford Monument. Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.hollowaypages.com\/Shakespearemonument.htm [Accessed 18th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sirbacon.org\/mp2.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

https:\/\/shakespearedocumented.folger.edu\/exhibition\/document\/palladis-tamia-one-earliest-printed-assessments-shakespeares-works-and-first<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Ignatius L. Donnelly\u2019s proposal can be accessed here: https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/greatcryptogramf00donnrich\/page\/n7\/mode\/2up<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Information on the Northumberland Manuscript can be found here: http:\/\/www.sirbacon.org\/NMANUSCR.HTM<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

J Thomas Looney\u2019s proposal can be accessed here: https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/bub_gb_B004AAAAIAAJ<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Kathman, D. (n.d.). Part 5 of \u201cCritically Examining Oxfordian Claims\u201d. Retrieved from: https:\/\/shakespeareauthorship.com\/ox5.html [Accessed 18th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Maranzani, B. (2020 [originally 2019]). Was Shakespeare the Real Author of His Plays? Retrieved from https:\/\/www.biography.com\/news\/shakespeare-real-author-theories [Accessed 9th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marlovian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship [Accessed 11th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Martin, Patrick & Finnis, John. The Secret Sharers: \u201cAnthony Rivers\u201d and the Appellant Controversy, 1601\u20132. Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 2, pp. 195-238<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Mary Sidney. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Sidney [Accessed 15th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

McCrea, S. (2005). The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question<\/em>. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.<\/p>\n

McCrum, R. (2010). Who really wrote Shakespeare? Retrieved from https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/culture\/2010\/mar\/14\/who-wrote-shakespeare-james-shapiro [Accessed 9th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Meares, H. (2020 [Original 2019]). Why Is William Shakespeare\u2019s Life Considered a Mystery? Retrieved from https:\/\/www.biography.com\/news\/william-shakespeare-life-mystery?li_source=LI&li_medium=bio-mid-article&li_pl=208&li_tr=bio-mid-article [Accessed 9th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Nevillean theory of Shakespeare authorship. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nevillean_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship [Accessed 11th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

One of Alfred Hart\u2019s Studies is accessible here: https:\/\/academic-oup-com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk\/res\/article\/os-X\/39\/274\/1621907<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

One of the 1819\/1820 articles on Marlowe can be found here: https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=RQcwAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA61&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oxfordian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship [Accessed 11th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Palladis Tamia can be found here: http:\/\/eebo.chadwyck.com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk\/search\/full_rec?SOURCE=config.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=99845635<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Parallels between Promus and Shakespeare\u2019s works are accessible at these two links: http:\/\/www.sirbacon.org\/mp.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Peer, M., & Jacobi, D. (2004).\u00a0The Shakespeare Conspiracy\u00a0[Film]. TMW Media.<\/p>\n

Rev. Dr. John Ward\u2019s diary is accessible here: https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/diaryrevjohnwar00sevegoog\/page\/n16\/mode\/2up<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Rubinstein, W. (2001, 08). Who was Shakespeare? History Today, 51, 28-35.<\/p>\n

Schiff, J. (2015). \u201cA genius, but mad\u201d, Yale Alumni Magazine, Nov\/Dec. Last accessed 18th September 2019. Available at: < https:\/\/yalealumnimagazine.com\/articles\/4189-delia-bacon><\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Schmitz, E., & Utzt, S. (2011).\u00a0The Shakespeare Enigma\u00a0[Film]. Atlantis Film.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare authorship question. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shakespeare_authorship_question [Accessed 8th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Epitaph can be read here: https:\/\/www.williamshakespeare.net\/william-shakespeare-epitaph.jsp<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Stewart, A. (2013). \u201cThe Case for Bacon\u201d. In: P. Edmonson and S. Wells (Eds), Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy<\/em> (pp. 16-28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

Stritmatter and Anderson\u2019s analysis of the bible is accessible here: https:\/\/shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org\/shakespeares-bible\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Syme, H. (2011). Shakespearean Mythbusting I: The Fantasy of the Unsurpassed Vocabulary. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.dispositio.net\/archives\/501#:~:text=If%20one%20only%20counts%20the,was%20indeed%20an%20impressive%20number [Accessed 9th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Taylor, G. and Bourus, T. (2016a). \u201cWhy Read Shakespeare\u2019s Complete Works?\u201d In: G. Taylor, J. Jowett, T. Bourus, G. Egan (Eds), The New Oxford Shakespeare: William Shakespeare, The Complete Works <\/em>(pp. 1-44). Oxford: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Taylor, G. and Bourus, T. (2016b). \u201cWhy Read This<\/em> Complete Works?\u201d In: G. Taylor, J. Jowett, T. Bourus, G. Egan (Eds), The New Oxford Shakespeare: William Shakespeare, The Complete Works <\/em>(pp. 45-58). Oxford: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

The Annotations contained within Oxford\u2019s Bible can be found here: https:\/\/shakespeareauthorship.com\/oxbib.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

The Art of English Poesie can be found here: http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/16420\/pg16420-images.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

The Compleat Gentleman can be found here: https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/peachamscomplea00peacgoog<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

The Dedication poem at the beginning of the sonnets can be found here: http:\/\/www.shakespeares-sonnets.com\/dedication<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

The First Folio can be accessed here: https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/the-shakespeare-first-folio-folger-copy-no-68#page\/To+the+Reader\/mode\/2up<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Wiggins, M. (n.d.). Who Wrote Shakespeare? Retrieved from https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/articles\/211LBPTmBYp2rbh4bSQlSTS\/who-wrote-shakespeare [Accessed 9th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Wilber G. Zeigler\u2019s proposal can be accessed here: http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/57810<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

William Barksted\u2019s poem is found here: https:\/\/shakespeareauthorship.com\/barksted.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

William Shakespeare. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Shakespeare [Accessed 8th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

William Shakespeare. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/source\/a644?rskey=MpP0Ls&result=2 [Accessed 19th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

William Stanley, 6th Early of Derby. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Stanley,_6th_Earl_of_Derby [Accessed 15th June 2020]<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

William Webbe\u2019s Discourse of English Poetrie is accessible here: http:\/\/eebo.chadwyck.com\/search\/full_rec?SOURCE=pgimages.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=99846918&FILE=&SEARCHSCREEN=param(SEARCHSCREEN)&VID=11915&PAGENO=2&ZOOM=FIT&VIEWPORT=&SEARCHCONFIG=param(SEARCHCONFIG)&DISPLAY=param(DISPLAY)&HIGHLIGHT_KEYWORD=param(HIGHLIGHT_KEYWORD)<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CONTENT RATING: universal Did Shakespeare really write…well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five-century-old con? Part 1 of this slowburn mini-series looks at the question “Who wrote Shakespeare?” Below you will find data, audio credits, further reading, and a transcript of the podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paoUKh-db","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":863,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/07\/01\/case-s02e07-slowburn-shakespeare-part-5-of-6-the-wings-wherewith-we-fly\/","url_meta":{"origin":817,"position":0},"title":"Case S02E07 – Slowburn Shakespeare, part 5 of 6 – The Wings Wherewith We Fly","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 July 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: universal Did Shakespeare really write, well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five century old con? Part 5 of this slowburn mini-series pitches the computational linguists against the forensic linguists in an effort to determine whether either side can work out who wrote Shakespeare. Below you\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":823,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/04\/01\/case-s02e04-slowburn-shakespeare-part-2-of-6-the-shakeslayers\/","url_meta":{"origin":817,"position":1},"title":"Case S02E04 – Slowburn Shakespeare, part 2 of 6 – The Shakeslayers","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 April 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: universal Did Shakespeare really write, well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five century old con? Part 2 explores why we doubt Shakespeare and what happens if we kill him off. Below you will find data, audio credits, further reading, and a transcript of the podcast.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1847,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/08\/01\/case-s02e08-slowburn-shakespeare-part-6-of-6-the-stars-are-fire\/","url_meta":{"origin":817,"position":2},"title":"Case S02E08 – Slowburn Shakespeare, part 6 of 6 – The Stars Are Fire","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 August 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: universal Did Shakespeare really write, well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five century old con? In the last episode of this slowburn mini-series, some big names in the field of Shakespeare attribution try their own hands at penning dramatic texts. Below you will find data,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":829,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/05\/01\/case-s02e05-slowburn-shakespeare-part-3-of-6-cut-out-cipher-monster-spy\/","url_meta":{"origin":817,"position":3},"title":"Case S02E05 – Slowburn Shakespeare, part 3 of 6 – Cut-out, Cipher, Monster, Spy","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 May 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: universal Did Shakespeare really write, well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five century old con? Part 3 of this slowburn mini-series looks at our first three possible alternatives and weighs up the evidence. Below you will find data, audio credits, further reading, and a transcript\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":832,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/06\/01\/case-s02e06-slowburn-shakespeare-part-4-of-6-rich-man-poor-man-shakespearean-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":817,"position":4},"title":"Case S02E06 – Slowburn Shakespeare, part 4 of 6 – Rich Man, Poor Man, Shakespearean Guy","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 June 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: universal Did Shakespeare really write, well, Shakespeare? Or is the Swan of Avon a five century old con? Part 4 of this slowburn mini-series looks at our last two possible contenders and weighs up the evidence. Below you will find data, audio credits, further reading, and a transcript\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":59,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2018\/11\/01\/case-notes-s01e00-welcome-waffle\/","url_meta":{"origin":817,"position":5},"title":"Case notes: S01E00 – Welcome waffle","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 November 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING:\u00a0UNIVERSAL Welcome to en clair. Rather than including extended waffly intros on every episode saying the same sorts of things over and over, I've put it all in this one podcast, one time. This prelude to the series answers questions like: How do I subscribe to the en clair\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}