Was Shakespeare a fraud?
Every year or so this same issue is brought up: did Shakespeare really write all those plays and poems? 2007 is no different, except for one thing, Britain’s top Shakespearean actors have put forth a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" that seeks to breathe new life into this old debate:
Acclaimed actor Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London, unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare’s work Saturday, following the final matinee of "I am Shakespeare," a play investigating the bard’s identity, in Chichester, southern England.
The debate revolves around a couple of issues. Probably the biggest issue is the fact that the Bard was born into an illiterate family and himself did not receive a higher formal education. The second issue is that there is simply no documentation that supports Shakespeare himself writing all those plays – not to mention no original manuscript in Shakespeare’s own handwriting existing (that we know of).
I have read a lot of Shakespeare over the last few years. All the professors I’ve had who talked about this debate have pretty much dismissed it as a "conspiracy theory", and I tend to agree with them. One professor points out much of the arguments against Shakespeare lay on his lack of a higher education, whereas Christopher Marlowe, for example, would be what we consider college educated. Marlowe is often named as the author who really wrote all of those plays. But as my professor points out, such an argument has its foundation in pitting the upper class (Marlowe) against the lower class (Shakespeare).
The only theory that these professors would even think about believing in is that of the group theory – several people collaborated to write the plays. Of course, Shakespeare himself would have to be at the center of any such group.
But as the Yahoo! article points out, Shakespeare detractors are in fairly good company; Mark Twain, Orson Welles, and Charlie Chaplin are among the skeptics that believe we have the true playwright of so many works wrong. Although to me personally, attaching a few famous names to something doesn’t make it more or less credible. Just look at the number of celebrities today who attach their names to some of the whacky causes they believe in.
Honestly, unless new physical evidence comes to light, I don’t know that we will ever resolve this issue. The pro-Shakespeare camp will continue to rally around the Bard and those who are in favor of a different author, for whatever reason, will continue to raise doubts. The debate is likely to continue in such circles for the foreseeable future!
What do all of you think about the Shakespeare debate? Did someone else write those plays? Or is this just another conspiracy theory?
Read the Yahoo! article here:
Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was a plagiarist inasmuch as he stole the Merchant of Venice plot from the book by Gregorio Leti, “The Life of Pope Sixtus V” in which the pope presided over a dispute between a Christian and a Jew. The Christian claimed he won a pound of the Jew’s flesh because the Jew lost the bet. The Pope threatened to have them both executed, but communicated the sentences and fined them heavily. When Al Pacino played Shylock, you could see he was very uncomfortable in the part because it is not in the Jewish nature to want revenge. They as a people always look forward. They want profit, not revenge and there is clearly no profit in a pound of gentile flesh. But Shakespeare pandered to the antisemitic nature of his audiences and turned the plot around to make the Jew the villain. Shakespeare, in this instance, was a plagiarist. Plain and simple.
The point is moot. Who ever actually wrote those plays is dead. End of story
Hi Brennan! Thank you for your comment!
In a way, you are right – the point is pretty much moot, since whoever wrote those plays is dead.
However, if we ever get definitive proof that Shakespeare did not write all those plays, I think it would turn the literary world upside down!
For the “average Joe” it probably wouldn’t change much. But for literary academics, it’d be a much different story.
Thanks again for your comment!
Brad
Please explain to me how it would affct the literary world?
Hi Brennan!
Thanks for your comment! I’m glad to see this is an engaging topic.
If Shakespeare turned out to be a “fraud”, a lot of scholarship about the plays and the man who wrote the plays would have to start at square one. Not to mention it would mean textbooks being rewritten, school courses revised and so forth. Specific implications of such a discovery beyond that are hard to predict.
In the end though, this whole debate is a mere parlor game, a thought experiment starting with a “What if” question. Unless some major discovery is made, all we can do is speculate.
As I’ve mentioned in the post, I don’t believe in this whole conspiracy theory about Shakespeare. The fundamental argument is deeply rooted in class warfare. And frankly, I don’t spend much time thinking about this.
But now that you have me thinking about Shakespeare, I might just go back and read some of my favorite plays and sonnets!
Brad
i HOPE he’s a FRAUD so we wont have to read those stupid books in my gay English class. I HATE ENGLISH. they are so corny.
GOD, why does it have to be 4 years of English!!!!!!! aaahhhhhhh