The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (68 page)

One difficulty in establishing the identity of Shakespeare is that even orthodox scholars agree that not all the plays in the canon are his own work;
Titus Andronicus
is a reheat of another play. Hence Ben Johnson slyly referring to Shakespeare as “Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief ”.

Quite plausibly, William Shakespeare the Bard was not William Shakespeare of Stratford. The vocabulary in the plays is twice that of any writer in English, comprising as many as 29,000 words. The man who died in Stratford in 1616 did not, according to his extremely detailed will, leave a single book. Would the fertile, enquiring mind that conjured the Prince of Denmark, Henry V at Agincourt, the mischievous Puck not have possessed a single cowskin-covered tome at home?

Further reading:

H. N. Gibson,
The Shakespeare Claimants
, 2005

John Michell,
Who wrote Shakespeare?
, 1996

DOCUMENT: J. THOMAS LOONEY,

“SHAKESPEAR”’ IDENTIFIED IN EDWARD DE VERE, THE SEVENTEENTH EARL OF OXFORD
,
1920 [EXTRACT]

It is hardly necessary to insist at the present day that Shakespeare has preserved for all time, in living human characters, much of what was best worth remembering and retaining in the social relationship of the Feudal order of the Middle Ages. Whatever conclusion we may have to come to about his religion, it is undeniable that, from the social and political point of view, Shakespeare is essentially a medievalist. The following sentence from Carlyle may be taken as representative of much that might be quoted from several writers bearing in the same direction: “As Dante the Italian man was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakespeare we may say embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had.”

When, therefore, we find that the great Shakespearean plays were written at a time when men were revelling in what they considered to be a newly-found liberation from Medievalism, it is evident that Shakespeare was one whose sympathies, and probably his antecedents, linked him on more closely to the old order than to the new: not the kind of man we should expect to rise from the lower middle-class population of the towns. Whether as a lord or a dependent we should expect to find him one who saw life habitually from the standpoint of Feudal relationships in which he had been born and bred: and in view of what has been said of his education it would, of course, be as lord rather than as a dependent that we should expect to meet him.

It might be, however, that he was only linked to Shakespearean Feudalism by cherished family traditions; a surviving Aristocrat, representative, maybe, of some decayed family. A close inspection of his work, however, reveals a more intimate personal connection with aristocracy than would be furnished by mere family tradition. Kings and queens, earls and countesses, knights and ladies move on and off his stage “as to the manner born”. They are no mere tinselled models representing mechanically the class to which they belong, but living men and women. It is rather his ordinary “citizens” that are the automata walking woodenly on to the stage to speak for their class. His “lower-orders” never display that virile dignity and largeness of character which poets like Burns, who know the class from within, portray in their writings. Even Scott comes much nearer to truth in this matter than does Shakespeare. It is, therefore, not merely his power of representing royalty and the nobility in vital, passionate characters, but his failure to do the same in respect to other classes that marks Shakespeare as a member of the higher aristocracy. The defects of the playwriter become in this instance more illuminating and instructive than do his qualities. Genius may undoubtedly enable a man to represent with some fidelity classes to which he does not belong; it will hardly at the same time weaken his power of representing truly his own class. In a great dramatic artist we demand universality of power within his province; but he shows that catholicity, not by representing human society in all its forms and phases, but by depicting our common human nature in the entire range of its multiple and complex forces; and he does this best when he shows us that human nature at work in the classes with which he is most intimate. The suggestion of an aristocratic author for the plays is, therefore, the simple common sense of the situation, and is no more in opposition to modern democratic tendencies, as one writer loosely hints, than the belief that William Shakespeare was indebted to aristocratic patrons and participated in the enclosure of common lands.

An aristocratic outlook upon life marks the plays of other dramatists of the time besides Shakespeare. These were known, however, in most cases to have been university men, with a pronounced contempt for the particular class to which William Shakspere of Stratford belonged. It is a curious fact, however, that a writer like Creizenach, who seems never to doubt the Stratfordian view, nevertheless recognizes that “Shakespeare” was more purely and truly aristocratic in his outlook than were the others. In a word, the plays which are recognized as having the most distinct marks of aristocracy about them, are supposed to have been produced by the playwright furthest removed from aristocracy in his origin and antecedents.

We feel entitled, therefore, to claim for Shakespeare high social rank, and even a close proximity to royalty itself.

Assuming him to have been an Englishman of the Lancastrian higher aristocracy, we turn now to these parts of his writings that may be said to deal with his own phase of life, namely, his English historical plays, to seek for distinctive traces of position and personality. Putting aside the greater part of the plays
Henry VI, Parts I
and
II,
as not being from Shakespeare’s pen, and also the first acts of
Henry VI, Part III,
for the same reason, we may say that he deals mainly with the troubled period between the upheaval in the reign of Richard II and the ending of the Wars of the Roses by the downfall of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. The outstanding feature of this work is his pronounced sympathy with the Lancastrian cause.

Even the play
of Richard II,
which shows a measure of sympathy with the king whom the Lancastrians ousted, is full of Lancastrian partialities. “Shakespeare” had no sympathy with revolutionary movements and the overturning of established governments. Usurpation of sovereignty would, therefore, be repugnant to him, and his aversion is forcibly expressed in the play; but Henry of Lancaster is represented as merely concerned with claiming his rights, desiring to uphold the authority of the crown, but driven by the injustice and perversity of Richard into an antagonism he strove to avoid. Finally, it is the erratic wilfulness of the king, coupled with Henry’s belief that the king had voluntarily abdicated, that induces Bolingbroke to accept the throne. In a word, the play of
Richard II
is a kind of dramatic apologia for the Lancastrians. Then comes the glorification of Prince Hal, “Shakespeare’s” historic hero. Henry VI is the victim of misfortunes and machinations, and is handled with great tenderness and respect. The play of
Richard III
lays bare the internal discord of the Yorkist faction, the downfall and destruction of the Yorkist arch-villain, and the triumph of Henry of Richmond, the representative of the House of Lancaster, who had received the nomination and benediction of Henry VI. We might naturally expect, therefore, to find Shakespeare a member of some family with distinct Lancastrian leanings.

Having turned our attention to the different classes we are again faced with the question of his Italianism. Not only are we impressed by the large number of plays with an Italian setting or derived from Italian sources, but we feel that these plays carry us to Italy in a way that
Hamlet
never succeeds in carrying us to Denmark, nor his French plays in carrying us to France. Even in
Hamlet
he seems almost to go out of his way to drag in a reference to Italy. Those who know Italy and are familiar with
The Merchant of Venice
tell us that there are clear indications that Shakespeare knew Venice and Milan personally. However that may be, it is impossible for those who have had, at any time, an interest in nothing more than the language and literature of Italy, to resist the feeling that there is thrown about these plays an Italian atmosphere suggestive of one who knew and felt attracted towards the country. Everything bespeaks an Italian enthusiast.

Going still more closely into detail, it has often been observed that Shakespeare’s interest in animals is seldom that of the naturalist, almost invariably that of the sportsman; and some of the supporters of the Stratfordian tradition have sought to establish a connection between this fact and the poaching of William Shakspere. When, however, we look closely into the references we are struck with his easy familiarity with all the terms relating to the chase. Take Shakespeare’s entire sportsman’s vocabulary, find out the precise significance of each unusual term, and the reader will probably get a more distinct vision of the sporting pastimes of the aristocracy of that day than he would get in any other way. Add to this all the varied vocabulary relating to hawks and falconry, observe the insistence with which similes, metaphors and illustrations drawn from the chase and hawking appear throughout his work, and it becomes impossible to resist the belief that he was a man who had at one time found his recreation and delight in these aristocratic pastimes.

His keen susceptibility to the influence of music is another characteristic that frequently meets us; and most people will agree that the whole range of English literature may be searched in vain for passages that more accurately or more fittingly describe the charm and power of music than do certain lines in the pages of Shakespeare. The entire passage on music in the final act of
The Merchant of Venice,
beginning “Look how the floor of heaven,” right on to the closing words “Let no such man be trusted,” is itself music, and is probably as grand a paeon in honour of music as can be found in any language.

Nothing could well be clearer in itself, nor more at Money variance with what is known of the man than the dramatist’s attitude towards money. It is the man who lends money gratis, and so “pulls down the rate of usuance” in Venice, that is the hero of the play just mentioned. His friend is the incorrigible spendthrift and borrower Bassanio, who has “disabled his estate by showing a more swelling port than his faint means would grant continuance,” and who at last repairs his broken fortunes by marriage. Almost every reference to money and purses is of the loosest description, and, by implication, teach an improvidence that would soon involve any man’s financial affairs in complete chaos. It is the arch-villain, Iago, who urges “put money in thy purse,” and the contemptible politician, Polonius, who gives the careful advice “neither a borrower nor a lender be”; whilst the money-grabbing Shylock, hoist with his own petard, is the villain whose circumvention seems to fill the writer with an absolute joy.

It ought not to surprise us if the author himself turned out to be one who had felt the grip of the money-lender, rather than a man like the Stratford Shakspere, who, after he had himself become prosperous, prosecuted others for the recovery of petty sums.

Of the Stratford man, Pope asserts that “Gain not glory winged his roving flight.” And Sir Sidney Lee amplifies this by saying that “his literary attainments and successes were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters”. Yet in one of his early plays (
Henry IV, Part II
) “Shakespeare” expresses himself thus:

How quickly nature falls into revolt

When gold becomes her object.

For this the foolish over-careful fathers

Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,

Their bones with industry;

For this they have engrossed and piled up

The canker’d heaps of strange achieved gold.

From its setting the passage is evidently the expression of the writer’s own thought rather than an element of the dramatization.

Finally we have, again in an early play, his great hero of tragic love, Romeo, exclaiming: