A Very Good Time to Celebrate
What do the following people have in common? -- Charlie Chaplain, Orson Welles, John Geilgud, Enoch Powell, Frank Harris, Sigmund Freud, Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, Mark Twain, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, Lord Palmerston, John Bright, John Galsworthy, Vladimir Nabokov, John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman and John Buchan. What is it that links such a mixed collection of people?
Do I hear a groan? Do you think they all doubt whether the Stratford Shakespeare wrote the plays? Well, you're right. They do.
The only reason for mentioning this is that recently there have been many modest meetings and celebrations throughout the world commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death on 24th June 1604 of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This is the person some people maintain is the most probable person to have written ShakespeareÕs plays. The Independent reported the event and for balance asked the views of a Stratfordian. They selected the eminent Shakespearian critic and scholar, Professor Anne Barton, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She was quite forthright - "I think it is absolute rubbish. There are all kinds of problems with this. We do have poems that are authenticated as his [De Vere's] and they are not very good."
The Professor had spoken and this ought to have been the end of the matter. And yet, Oxford's contemporaries had very different views. Therefore it would not be fair to allow the Professor to close down any discussion in such a rash way.
For a start try the following:
1) In 1578 Gabriel Harvey (also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and therefore worth listening to) addressed Oxford, in the presence of the Queen, "English poetical measures have been sung by thee long enough... how greatly thou does excel in letters. I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English verses are extant... " etc.
Yet the Professor says that Oxford is "not very good".
2) In 1589, in The Arte of English Poesie, George Puttenham wrote: "I know many noble gentlemen in the Court have written commendably, and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be published without their names to it... of which number is first that noble gentleman Edward Earl of Oxford."
Yet the Professor says that Oxford is "not very good".
3) In 1622 Henry Peacham wrote a book on Education and in the chapter on Poetry he calls the reign of Queen Elisabeth "a golden age, for such a world of refined wits and excellent spirits it produced whose like are hardly to be hoped for in any succeeding age ". He then lists those "who honoured poesie with their pen and practice ", putting "Edward Earl of Oxford" in first place.
Yet the Professor says that Oxford is "not very good". No doubt she also considers Peacham a buffoon because he fails to mention Shakespeare at all (just one year before publication of the First Folio). Mind you no-one mentioned or mourned Shakespeare's death in 1616.
Later in the interview we discover from whence the Professor is coming. She says "It's like the attempt to attribute Shakespeare's plays to Francis Bacon. Like that one, this is a product of snobbery [is this really a scholar's comment?], that a Stratford grammar school boy could not have written the plays, and I'm thoroughly fed up with it." [probably accompanied by a small stamp of the foot]. Is it true that she thinks that all those creative and eminent people listed above are just snobs? Surely this ought not to be. But it is not only the non-believers who find difficulty with the apparent blinkered viewpoint of the Eng. Lit. Oxbridge. Michael Wood, author of the four part TV series In Search of Shakespeare, has his own criticism. In a lecture at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington last year he maintained that the Bard we know is essentially a product of the "British Literary Establishment" with the "persistent feature of keeping the biographical account separate from the history of the time." He quoted Peter Brooke who insists "biography does not matter"... "history simply does not matter." Wood also quoted Germaine Greer who said "history is irrelevant in view of the Bard's universality." He was amazed at this "persistent avoidance of history or historical facts."
I am amazed that Wood (who is a Stratfordian) is amazed, because as soon as any authorship questions become too pressing the Stratfordians revert to "the play's the thing", "authorship doesn't matter", and a final thrust might be that the less we know about the writer the better we can appreciate the plays!
But there is a twist in the tail. At the same lecture Michael Wood (a mediaeval historian from Oxford University) revealed that the famous historian Simon Schama, hearing that Wood's next film project was a biography of Shakespeare, said "I would not touch that. There is no evidence you know." Wood was aware of this and decided to take what he described as a "Gothic approach". I have no idea what he means by this. But he did proceed to make up an awful lot to fill out the programmes.
One final comment. Not only did the world not notice Shakespeare's death but his alleged gravestone in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford does not even have a name. We cannot even be sure that it's him down there. Go and have a look. Stratfordians are completely unconcerned about this and just say it doesn't matter.