Was Shakespeare REALLY Shakespeare? Exploring the Shakespeare Authorship Question

foreign do I have to do it okay fine I'll do it but it's going to be a long video okay here goes did Shakespeare really write the plays that are commonly attributed to his name [Music] it may seem like a silly question but it's so prominent that it has its own title the Shakespeare authorship question essentially some people believe that the name William Shakespeare is just a pen name or some kind of mask for the real author of The plays and poetry that we have traditionally attributed to the man from Stratford upon Yvonne Mark Twain Helen Keller Sigmund Freud and others have all posed doubts about who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays probably the most prominent figure currently living who openly questions Shakespeare's authorship is Sir Mark rylance a Tony award-winning actor and former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London for about 10 years rylance is an actor of the highest caliber an individual who pursues excellent artistic Merit and always takes a well-studied approach so why would he and all those other great thinkers believe that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare they typically call themselves anti-stratfordians in other words these individuals do not dispute that a man named William Shakespeare lived and died in the English town of stratford-upon-avon in the 16th and early 17th centuries it's just that the anti-stratordians believe that the man named William Shakespeare from Stratford was not the same William Shakespeare who is listed as the author of 38 or more plays written and performed in London between 1590 and 1615. so to make this easier going forward we're going to bifurcate the two Shakespeare's as we examine the claims of the anti-stratfordians the historical record is clear that there was a man named William Shakespeare who lived in Stratford he may have lived there his entire life or maybe for only parts of his life but we're going to call that man Stratford Shakespeare there was also a playwright an actor in London who appears on the scene in the late 1580s we'll call him London Shakespeare so why do the anti-stratordians believe that London Shakespeare not Stratford Shakespeare wrote the greatest plays in the English language well let's just examine their claim at face value are we even sure that Shakespeare whether from Stratford or London wrote all the plays in poetry commonly attributed to him well it's widely accepted amongst Shakespeare Scholars and historians that of the play is commonly attributed to a William Shakespeare at least eight are known to contain contributions from other playwrights contemporate with him and Shakespeare likely collaborated on plays commonly attributed to other playwrights Thomas Middleton John Fletcher and George Wilkins are just a few of those accepted to have been collaborators alongside Shakespeare so right off the bat we have to accept that the anti-stradordians exposed some of the flaws in those early attempts to mythologize Shakespeare and his genius for example the first biography of Shakespeare entitled works of Mr William Shakespeare from 1709 the author Nicholas Rao established several dubious historical narratives about Shakespeare's life that had persisted for decades like the claim that Shakespeare was exiled from Stratford in his youth because he had been stealing deer from the land of a local Lord which has no evidence in support but in the end Shakespeare's collaborations don't really do much to support or refute either side of the argument about the overall authorship of his plays Shakespeare whether one person or two was a collaborator that's an accepted position on both sides of the issue now but as James Shapiro points out in his book contested will the early history of studying Shakespeare was fraught with individuals forging evidence film narratives with conjecture and speculation as well as working from the assumption that people have always experienced the world in the same way we ourselves do and making the case that writers have always written from the perspective of their own experiences which leads to the larger assumption that Shakespeare's internal emotional life was Modern the assumption that Shakespeare would have written like playwrights of any era Beyond his own that he would have lived his life or made decisions like people who lived after his time including ourselves and the labeling of his Artistry as genius by modern standards are all errors that have been made by prominent Shakespeare Scholars and anti-stratfordians alike being a historian means adhering to the evidence and only the evidence creating a historical narrative out of the things you can prove through facts and evidence and this plays into the case of the anti-stratfordians because well there just isn't a lot of documentation that explicitly connects the London playwright to the man from Stratford upon Yvonne for example one of the points made by many anti-stratordians stems from questions regarding how Stratford Shakespeare could write about people places and situations that would have been incredibly unfamiliar for someone from a small rural English town with a very limited education in 1848 the American Samuel Schmucker laid the foundations for this tenet of the anti-straffordian theory asking is it not strange that one visual so ill-prepared by previous education and other indispensable requisites should be made the sole author of so many Works in all of which it is pretended that such extraordinary Merit and rare Excellence exist and although smucker was not an anti-stratfordian his question drives home the larger issue that many anti-stratordians tend to make in respect to Stratford Shakespeare How Could An uneducated or an undereducated boy from a rural Township write about great courts of Europe the incredible cultures of Faraway lands and find inspiration in the many stories of kings queens and heroes Stratford Shakespeare just doesn't seem to have the kind of background that we would associate with greatness or genius in the genius of Shakespeare Jonathan bate attacks this argument head on first he explains that a contemporary of Shakespeare Thomas Kidd was similarly educated at a local grammar school and like Shakespeare did not attend college yet kids most famous play the Spanish tragedy which was one of if not the most popular play in Elizabethan London was set in the Spanish court and involved characters and situations for which kid would have had little to no personal knowledge and no one is questioning kids authorship of his play but bait also goes on to explore what a grammar school education like the one Stratford Shakespeare received would have entailed though no information survives on the curriculum at the Stratford Grammar School Stratford Shakespeare attended in his youth there are extant descriptions of subjects and textbooks used in the schooling of young boys from similar communities in towns like that of Stratford in almost all cases the pedagogy of English grammar schools was taken from the humanists and focused on studying the literature of The Classical period much of it untranslated from Latin and Greek thus Shakespeare and kid alike would have studied the Roman playwrights Terence plautus and Seneca not to mention Latin and Greek poetry and colloquies or short dialogues that share similar dramatic features with plays and while it might strike us as odd that young boys would have received such a significant education in literature especially Greek and Latin literature that was a significant component of the Educational Systems in Tudor England the educators of Shakespeare's day felt that reading the words of ancient and revered authors was as good as learning directly from them and knowing that helps us visualize a young Stratford Shakespeare reading of its Metamorphoses or Virgil's a need and having his imagination vaulted off to far away lands and time periods and Shakespeare clearly had an imagination it was fueled by classical literature as well as the stories and situations circulating around England during his lifetime maybe that's where Shakespeare's genius truly lies his imagination I knew this would take a while okay in the interest of brevity let's lightning round a couple other claims made by the anti-strifordians like the fact that Shakespeare didn't spell his name the same way even when signing the same document in multiple places surely that has to mean we're dealing with someone who is using a pseudonym or is unfamiliar with the proper spelling of the name well first we have to acknowledge that we currently live in a world of standardized spellings established by educational institutions across the Nations where English is the primary language of instruction in the 16th and 17th centuries standardized spellings were still centuries away in Shakespeare's day individuals often use multiple spellings across the same writing and there are many reasons why a writer might opt for a difference in spelling also it wasn't uncommon for copious to recreate a signature in a document that they were copying in other words the contexts matter and some of the contexts will unfortunately remain unknowable making the signature issue a bit of a conundrum paleographic analysis of Shakespeare's handwriting shows just as many consistencies as it does variations but let me be clear a lack of solid proof does not a conspiracy make just because a conclusion about Shakespeare's signature is hard to draw doesn't mean that the anti-stratfordians are right nor does it bolster the work of those Scholars who Champion single authorship it just means that we can't rely on his spellings or his handwriting as the only source of evidence to make a solid claim on either side of the debate about Shakespeare's authorship okay next claim of the anti-stratfordians Shakespeare's name is rarely attached to the publishing of his plays during his lifetime so they probably weren't written by him well that wasn't at all unusual once a publisher was given the right to publish a play it belonged to the publisher not the playwright and type Inc and Page space were all valuable Commodities to Publishers so why list the playwright's name this may also account for why some plays were not published until the first folio and in case you still think that's a bit dubious what if I told you that if it weren't for a reference made by Thomas Haywood in his 1612 essay entitled an apology for actors we wouldn't even know that Thomas Kidd wrote the Spanish tragedy nearly 30 years earlier finally one of the larger points that anti-stratordians tend to make is that the records of Stratford Shakespeare show that he made his money as a dealer of malt grains not as a playwright and it's true that we have records of Stratford Shakespeare keeping malt in his home for purposes of trade and commerce but as James Shapiro points out malt grains were Stratford's primary industry and many people in town stored and sold malted grains out of their homes as Shapiro puts it if Shakespeare was a grain Merchant as some now began to call him what man or woman from the middling classes in Stratford wasn't so who do the anti-stratfordians think London Shakespeare really was if he wasn't the same as the man from Stratford the two leading candidates have been Christopher Marlowe a London playwright and agent of the Elizabethan government and Edward de Vere the 17th Earl of Oxford those who hold to the belief that Marlo wrote Shakespeare commonly referred to as marlovians while those who believe it was Edward de ver are called oxfordians the anti-stratordians make many arguments in their efforts to separate London Shakespeare from Stratford Shakespeare prove that Stratford Shakespeare did not write the greatest plays in the English language we don't have time to go over them all unfortunately but in the case of marlovians and oxfordians their arguments require explanations in the face of strong historical evidence countering their authorship of Shakespeare's plays both of those individuals died before many of Shakespeare's plays were written Marlowe was killed in 1593 and Edward devere died in 1604 but marlovians believe Marlo wasn't killed just covertly whisked away to another country and oxfordians tend to argue that devere finished all the plays before he died they just weren't released until years after his death but what do you do with accounts that explain the 1613 production of Henry VIII as a new play or that the Winter's Tale was licensed by the courtier George buck in 1610. in the case of either candidate the same argumentative finger that the anti-stratfordians used to point at the lack of evidence supporting Stratford Shakespeare can also be turned on themselves there's a significant lack of evidence for either individual in the authorship question and where there is evidence to support Shakespeare's singular authorship namely the fact that both men died before Stratford Shakespeare the anti-stratordians try to explain away such facts with conjecture and speculation for me the problem at the heart of those arguments made by anti-stratfordians is one I'm deeply familiar with you see my area of specialization In Theater history centers on the Middle Ages in that field there are many inaccurate histories about medieval drama that have come from well-meaning Scholars and historians who don't stop to question how much their modern understandings of drama might be influencing the way they understand medieval drama in other words we cannot assume that the plays or poems of the past were written recorded and collected in the same ways or for the same reasons that they are today and when we apply that principle to the authorship controversy we see that a lot of people are looking at the past and expecting Shakespeare whoever he was to operate like the playwrights of centuries after his death for example the idea that people write from autobiographical perspectives inserting their personal views and experiences into their Works he's largely a feature of authorship beginning only in the 19th century we cannot assume that Shakespeare operated with the same understanding of how a playwright should craft his or her place so I'd like to add two final pieces of evidence that I believe put to rest much of the arguments brought up by the anti-stratfordians first is Shakespeare's 1596 application for a coat of arms for his father John ostensibly raising him to the status of gentlemen that application is evidence the Stratford Shakespeare was definitely in London during the rising Fame of London Shakespeare's career and to further bolster the connection between the two shakespearees Jonathan bait points out that a member of the College of Heralds wrote in 1602 about his displeasure that his colleagues were granting such honors to persons of unsavory professions including Shakespeare the player if there were a conspiracy afoot to hide the real identity of London Shakespeare why would he feel the need to apply for a coat of arms for Stratford Shakespeare's father secondly we have more than a few references to Shakespeare from his contemporaries James Shapiro points out that the well-regarded 16th century historian William Camden specifically names William Shakespeare as one of the greatest writers of his day or that the archivist and book buyer William Drummond attributed several Works in his library to William Shakespeare including his surviving copy of Romeo and Juliet not to mention all of those well connected to or working within the theater world of London at the time making specific reference to William Shakespeare as a playwright including Edward Allen Robert Burton Humphrey Dyson and Ben Johnson and that's only scratching at the surface of contemporaneous attributions and a Testaments of William Shakespeare as a poet playwright and actor if Shakespeare were really two different people or if London Shakespeare were merely acting as a front for some other person who really wrote the plays these accounts demonstrate how numerous people from a variety of backgrounds had to be in on the conspiracy which is just significantly more unlikely than Shakespeare being one man one playwright ultimately I believe that a little bit of skepticism is always healthy when undertaking historical investigation it's good to question the veracity of historical narratives and the evidence upon which they're built but as historians we have to measure the evidence we have as a matter of balance the weight of the evidence in support of a singular Shakespeare authorship is more significant and more withstanding of scrutiny than anything the anti-stratordians have yet presented and while I couldn't cover everything in support of Shakespeare being Shakespeare I see you anti-stratfordians about to leave a comment about the Effigy Of Shakespeare above his grave in the Holy Trinity Church and I encounter with the research of Scholars like Lena Cohen Orlin who has shown that the Effigy was authentic and commissioned by Shakespeare and made by someone who knew him but anyway let me know what you think was Shakespeare really Shakespeare post your argument in the comments yes even if you are an anti-stratfordian thanks for coming to another class with me the Theater history professor remember history is a stage so be sure to find your light [Music] thank you [Music] foreign

Channel: The Theatre History Professor

Views: 5,836

Keywords: shakespeare, shakespeare authorship question, shakespeare authorship controversy, william shakespeare

Id: 6uYjXKAJfdM

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022