SHAKING THEIR SPEAR

posted by James Reel

    There’s long been controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, and now the 287-member Shakespeare Authorship Coalition has signed a "declaration of reasonable doubt," hoping it will spur responsible scholarly research into the subject.
    Well, there has already been responsible scholarly research, which has led to almost as many conclusions as there are researchers. I have no opinion on the matter, but I do think the coalition is challenging Shakespeare’s authorship with questions that betray a severe lack of imagination.
    According to this BBC report, “The group says there are no records of Shakespeare being paid for his work.” Well, there are no records of a lot of people being born during that period, but they did indeed exist, as we know from other evidence. Records from before the Industrial Revolution are notoriously incomplete and unreliable, and the biographies of many figures, notable in their day, are almost impossible to trace. One might as well question the authorship of John Dowland’s songs and lute pieces, for the scarcity of documentation of his career.
    Another of the group’s points: “His will … contains none of his famous turns of phrase and it does not mention any books, plays or poems.” His will was a legal document, not a work of literature; besides which, how many writers’ wills do mention their books, plays or poems?
    Furthermore: “The 287-strong Shakespeare Authorship Coalition says it is not possible that the bard's plays—with their emphasis on law—could have been penned by a 16th century commoner raised in an illiterate household.
    “It asks why most of his plays are set among the upper classes, and why Stratford-upon-Avon is never referred to in any of his plays.
    “‘How did he become so familiar with all things Italian so that even obscure details in these plays are accurate?’ the group adds.”
    These are exceptionally foolish questions. Can an individual not rise above his or her origins? I grew up in a trailer behind a motel in Yuma, Arizona, and nobody in my family had ever gone to college (aside from a grandfather with two years of pharmacy school). I am not still stuck in that life, and neither is anybody else with any intelligence, ambition or determination. Why didn’t Shakespeare write what he knew and set his plays in his hometown? Because, as such actors in the group as Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance should well know, the audiences in Shakespeare’s London had no interest in slice-of-life, lower-class drama. They wanted exactly what Shakespeare wrote: history plays, high tragedy with great people falling far and hard, comedies of disguise, romances. How many writers today truly limit themselves to their own experiences?
    And how did Shakespeare “become so familiar with all things Italian so that even obscure details in these plays are accurate?” As scholars have shown for decades, he borrowed heavily from other plays and printed sources. It’s called research. Sometimes it’s even called plagiarism.
    Perhaps some or all of Shakespeare’s plays were not written by Shakespeare, but the inquiry should be conducted by people with greater insight into human character than has been displayed by this coalition.