William Shakespeare and JS Bach are perhaps the two most important cultural figures in Western Civilization. This high pedestal that they occupy makes questions over their authorship almost blasphemous for their admirers. If Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor has come for scholarly debate in recent years, the question marks over Shakespeare’s authorship were raised four centuries earlier and cover a substantial part of his work. The Anti-Stratfordians (as those sceptical of Shakespeare’s authorship are called) prefer to attribute his works to one among the following contenders: Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Edward Dyer, the earl of Derby or especially Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford. In this backdrop, the challenge facing both the faithful and the doubters is the scarce historical record to either support or disprove their claims. If the late Baroque obscurity surrounding Bach’s primary documents lead to no definite conclusions, it is even more pronounced in the early modern era of Shakespeare’s life and career. This essay will attempt to evaluate various claims, both for and against the veracity of Shakespeare’s authorship and will arrive at the most reasonable conclusion.
Those who defend the traditional attribution invariably point to three iron-clad pieces of biographical evidence that ‘prove’ Shakespeare of Stratford was the dramatist. Firstly, Shakespeare’s last will and testimony of 1616 specified “bequests to John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage. All three were his erstwhile fellow actors and shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain’s/King’s Men acting company and in the Globe and Blackfriars theaters.” (Price) Second, at an unspecified date within seven years of Shakespeare’s death, a funerary monument was erected in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon. The effigy contains both quill and paper. Third, in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, 36 plays were published in the collection recognized retrospectively as the First Folio. The prefatory matter “identifies the actor, William Shakespeare of Stratford, as the playwright, and it refers to the Stratford monument and to the “Sweet Swan of Avon.”” (Price) Though these proofs are solid, there are circumstantial and not direct evidence of Shakespeare’s scholarship.
One of the main challenges to Shakespeare’s authorship comes from the overlap of his lifetime with that of Christopher Marlowe – a giant in English Literature in his own right. Some have claimed that what passes for some of Shakespeare’s works were actually authored by Marlowe. They claim that either through obscurity or oversight or deliberate attempt at plagiarism, Shakespeare was wrongly attributed as the author. Somewhat helping Shakespeare’s cause is the death of Marlowe in 1593, after which many of the Bard’s greatest works were performed and published. The inquest document of Marlowe’s demise offers a concrete proof, although the accuracy of the “official documentation has been doubted ever since it was discovered in 1925.” (Barber) Despite recent defences of the official verdict by Constance Brown Kuriyama and J. A. Downie, “the consensus of scholarly opinion appears to be that the verdict of the inquest into Marlowe’s death conducted by the Queen’s Coroner, William Danby, was false.” (Barber) Hence the uncertainties of circumstances, causes and the exact date of Marlowe’s death have given Shakespeare’s doubters room for speculation.
A common method for verifying authorship is by studying the printing history, extant copies and the performance history of the plays. Sir John Oldcastle has done eminent work in this regard. In his extensive research work on the subject Oldcastle has identified how some of the Bard’s plays were printed by Valentine Simmes for Thomas Pavier. Simmes is a printer of some reputation who printed several Shakespeare quartos as well as plays staged by the Admiral’s Men. As with many such quarto editions of plays,
“no author is mentioned, but we know from Philip Henslowe’s diary that ten pounds were allotted “to pay mr monday mr drayton & mr wilsson & haythway for the first pte of the lyfe of Sr Jhon Ouldcastell . . .”. By the time of the 1619 reprint, however, “William Shakespeare” appears on the title page” (Kinney, 201)
While proofs in support of Shakespeare’s authorship exist, there are equally valid proofs to the contrary. For example, at the turn of the 17th century, the proprietary status of printed drama was not of importance. This may have given Pavier the liberty to ascribe Shakespeare’s name to plays he had not written. Further weakening Shakespeare’s case is the fact that
“nearly half of the plays that appeared in print before the 1623 Folio made no claims to Shakespeare’s paternity. Only Nathaniel Butter’s 1608 quarto edition of King Lear – printed for him by Nicholas Okes – accords top-of-the-title-page billing to “M. William Shak-speare”…The only other place that Shakespeare could have seen his name set in comparably large type was blazoned across the title page of the 1609 Sonnets in capital letters. In strictly typographic terms, Shakespeare, the poet, fared better as a “man in print” during his lifetime than Shakespeare, the playwright.” (Brooks)
Even under a thorough typographic examination, more gaps have started to emerge in the authorship debate. For instance, the first quarto of a play to mention Shakespeare’s name was Loves Labors Lost (1598). In the middle of the title page, written in small type is the information ‘Newly corrected and augmented / By W. Shakespeare’. But there is no evidence that Shakespeare was editing and augmenting his own work. It wasn’t until two years later, with the publication of Henry IV Part II that a conclusive accreditation appears: ‘Written by William Shakespeare’. This is the first instance of “an unambiguously authorial attribution to Shakespeare on the title page of an early modern play.” (Brooks)
The controversy surrounding Shakespeare’s authorship is accentuated by his erratic career in print during his lifetime. During this period, the dictates of the monarch as well as the profitability of the theatre company took precedence over accuracy of authorship. It is partly for this reason that Pavier attributes Sir John Oldcastle to Shakespeare in 1619. This was a time when “an authorized version of Shakespeare’s plays was still a twinkling [pounds] sign in the eye of John Heminge and Henry Condell – merely symptomized an emergent authorship that was still in utero.” (Brooks) It was not until the beginning of the Restoration that Shakespeare’s authorship of many plays was concretized.
Though there have been persistent questions about Shakespeare’s authorship for the last four centuries, modern research methods have helped set aside decisive facts. It is accepted now that Titus Andronicus has contributions by Peele. Likewise, Timon of Athens has contributions by by Middleton. Fletcher is credited with co-authoring Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Later chapters confirm that Shakespeare wrote nothing in Edmond Ironside, but that
“he is indeed Hand D in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More, and that he wrote that addition early in the seventeenth century; the same methods credit Shakespeare for the “Countess” scenes of Edward III, but assign to an unidentified collaborator the battle scenes from III.i to IV.iii; they give “strong support to the idea that” the Folio text of King Lear “is an authorial revision”.” (Kinney, 201)
Modern research has also bolstered the claim that Shakespeare wrote only the middle of Arden of Faversham (78-99). This is not one of the popular plays, having been excluded from the 1986 and 2005 Complete Works editions issued by Oxford University Press. Likewise, there is evidence of collaboration between three authors in the creation of Henry VI. Shakespeare is credited with only a handful of scenes. Shakespeare’s unique style of writing is hard to detect outside of Act 3 in the play, which leaves Marlowe to be a major co-author. Although these inferences are fairly logical and well-evidenced, they are not yet subject to rigorous testing. Upon standing up to scrutiny of these tests, Marlowe will be added to the list of Shakespeare collaborators in some of the plays, alongside Fletcher, Middleton, and Peele. (Taylor)
Given the scarce evidences for the sceptics to work with, it is the sensible position to “recognize Shakespeare’s agency within the conditions of possibility for writers in his time.” (Taylor) The challenge with this position is that it leaves us an ambiguous legacy of Shakespeare. On the one hand is the supreme artist whose plays have won him an iconic cultural stature. Mitigating this claim is the era in which he lived, where plays were “written, performed, and published in artistic, legal, and institutional circumstances that do not quite allow the idea of authorship in any robust, historically specific sense to be applied–not least because Shakespeare (unlike, say, Jonson) seems to have had no interest in it.” (Kastan) In other words, during Shakepeare’s lifetime printed publications held much less importance than the actual performance of the plays. It is the success of the latter that accounted for the reputation and sustained livelihood of a playwright. This is how Shakespeare must have seen his own accreditation to his works. But it is upon the printed record that much scholarly analysis and inferences rest. Hence, a distinction will have to be acknowledged between Shakespeare who wrote for the stage and the one “whose two long poems appeared published by Richard Field, carefully printed and with dedications by Shakespeare.” (Kastan) Shakespeare the poet wrote for readers and seemed (except perhaps in the case of his sonnets) eager for print. On the other hand, Shakespeare the playwright
“wrote for spectators and cared nothing for publication. To the degree Shakespeare the playwright is an author (rather than a writer), it has been argued, he became so unwittingly, constructed as such by the efforts of the early modern book trade rather than through his own efforts or ambitions.” (Kastan)
Works Cited
• Barber, Rosalind. “Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593.” Critical Survey 21.2 (2009): 83+.
• Brooks, Douglas A. “Sir John Oldcastle and the Construction of Shakespeare’s Authorship.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38.2 (1998): 333+.
• Kastan, David Scott. “”To Think These Trifles Some-Thing”: Shakespearean Playbooks and the Claims of Authorship.” Shakespeare Studies 36 (2008): 37+.
• Price, Diana. “Shakespeare’s Authorship and Questions of Evidence.” Skeptic (Altadena, CA) Winter 2005: 10+.
• Taylor, Gary. “Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship.” Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 24 (2011): 198+.