Who Wrote Shakespeare?
 

Quick, before it goes. There is another gathering of the coven led by the grandson of Evelyn Waugh and some Hungarian over on The Spectator online. This one will just run and run.

The Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, they are all there. Myself, I think the plays were all written by Oscar Wilde when he was in Reading Jail.

I have no doubt in my mind that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. That is a fact.

The snarling dogfight over "who" Shakespeare "was" is a different matter entirely.

It's a bit like the visits of minority religious groups who come knocking and persuading and insisting that their version of the truth is truer than anyone else's. Sometimes I engage them on the doorstep with textual references and encourage them to explore logical extensions to their thinking. At other times I can't be arsed.

I am too busy following my conviction that the augury uttered by the weird sisters in the Scottish Play is based on folk memory, that the battle of Mons Graupius did, indeed take place - at Dunsinane - in the time of Agricola, and, moreover, that the first Tay Bridge disaster occurred as part of the subsequent withdrawal of the occupying troops.

Let me show you the relevant pages of William Stewart's metrical version of Hector Boece's Scotorum Historia ...

I'm with you. The anti-Shakespeare crew tends to have a dollop of class snobbery, and doesn't understand that a graduate of a quality "grammar school" in the late 16th century had a far more thorough schooling in the classics than today's undergraduate classics major. The alternate theories generally have to go through contortions to explain why their favorites wrote plays when they were dead or 12.

I do think, too, that he was raised in a Catholic household, although I am not persuaded he was a believer in any faith.

The book to read on Shakespeare's education is 'The Elements of Eloquence' by Mark Forsyth, which I wholeheartedly recommend. Ann and Michael, you would both love it.

I think the whole idea of Shakespeare not being Shakespeare is ridiculous, and can be filed alongside other claims such as how the moon landing was faked, or how Princess Di was assassinated by Arabs. It's pure, unfounded sensationalism.

I'd be curious, though, to see how the Shakespeare naysayers address the myriad "Will" puns throughout the Sonnets.

The problem is, the plays are too good for anyone to have written. Hence the skepticism that it could have been Shakespeare, and hence our own skepticism that it could have been someone else.

Stephen Greenblatt, author of the Shakespeare biography Will in the World, has said that while the author of Edward II might have been capable of writing Richard II, he cannot believe that the man who wrote The Jew of Malta could also have written The Merchant of Venice.

An English professor friend of mine gives her students some of Edward de Vere’s poems to let them see for themselves how vastly inferior to Shakespeare’s the earl’s writing was.

According to The Hackenthorpe Book of Lies, Chuck Berry wrote many of Shakespeare’s plays. That is my favorite among the alternative authorship theories.

Where is Mary Meriam when you need her?

In the interim, let me flog my own theory - the degree of depth, perception, and general understanding in Shakespeare's work clearly points to a Yeshiva education. That should narrow it down.

Plus, when Hamlet says "There's a divinity that shapes our ends,/Rough-hew them how we will," he is clearly alluding to circumcision.

Not for you clowns, but for someone who might find this as inspiring as I did, I post a link to my piece.