Who wrote William Shakespeare?
David Blackburn 11:16am
Humanity has an appetite for conspiracy, and James Shapiro offers a soupcon by examining the attribution of Shakespeare’s plays. The ‘anti-Stratfordian’ case assumes that a journeyman actor from the suburbs of what is now Birmingham could not have penned such plays. They have a point: it is a platitude to say it, but Shakespeare’s is an astonishing, unsurpassed canon. But that should not ventilate questions of attribution. Shakespeare is an enigma precisely because of his genius.
In a fascinating article in last Sunday’s Observer, Robert McCrum interviewed Shakespearean luminaries, Mark Rylance, Simon Russell Beale, Deborah Warner, Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn for their views. Only Rylance doubts Shakespeare’s authorship, convinced that the plays were produced by a coterie of writers with Francis Bacon at its heart. It is an interesting and plausible analysis, but one that contrasts with the growing individuality that was a feature of that literary era. Marlowe and Jonson emerged from the collective anonymity of the medieval world’s drama troupes and mystery plays. Though those forms persisted into the 17th Century, it seems unlikely that the era’s foremost dramatist was the invention of the dying breed of jobbing actors.
Certainty is, of course, impossible. But for me, Trevor Nunn, courtesy of Ben Jonson, comes close to settling the issue:
‘Who is Ben Jonson?" challenges Nunn. "He is Shakespeare's great rival and a real talent. Garrulous, argumentative, jealous, proud, and deeply committed to exposing hypocrisy and corruption. Not a man to kowtow to nobility or privilege. What does he do? It's Jonson who coins "the Swan of Avon" (ie the declaration that the author of the First Folio is from Stratford), and it's Jonson who declares that he is "for all time" and then claims him as "MY Shakespeare"."Why on earth," Nunn continues, "would Jonson, who owes nothing to anyone, and who had competed with Shakespeare throughout his professional life, take part in a cover-up to help the Earl of Oxford from admitting that he had anything to do with the theatre?" This, says Nunn, is "game, set and match to Shakespeare”.’
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Sir Graphus
March 16th, 2010 1:05pm Report this commentAnd well done, fantastic, brilliant, to Nunn, Judi Dench and particularly Oliver Chris for "Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Rose of Kingston Theatre (might still be running).
Speaking as one so bored by Shakespeare at school that I pursued a career in engineering, this ranked among the best evenings I've had in a theatre.
They used to say it was all Marlowe.
noddy
March 17th, 2010 7:51am Report this comment"The suburbs of Birmingham"?
You must have a strange map !
Sir Graphus
March 17th, 2010 9:41am Report this commentApologies; in my haste to twist the subject around to what I wanted to say, I appear to have given Trevor Nunn the credit for Peter Halls production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”
John Thomas
March 17th, 2010 4:43pm Report this commentNoddy is right about the geography (must have a curious understanding of Birminghamn to see Stratford as its suburb) - but this is just prejudice (Southerner?) against Birmingham (obviously no one who comes from Brum can be a playright, let alone a great one. (No I don't come from Brum; but I have written plays ...)
David Blackburn
March 17th, 2010 5:18pm Report this commentJohn Thomas and Noddy,
I was characterising an argument. Don't shoot the messenger!
Heward Wilkinson
March 27th, 2010 9:56pm Report this commentDavid
If Ben Jonson's testimony is so conclusive, then why, in the great First Folio poem to Shakespeare does he:
1. Allude in his opening lines to Ignoto's poem in the introductory poems (1589) to Spenser's Faerie Queene:
Jonson:
'To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame;
While I confesse thy writings to be such,
As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage.'
Ignoto:
'Thus then to shew my iudgement to be such
As can discern of colours blacke, and white,
As alls to free my minde from enuies tuch,
That neuer giues to any man his right,
I here pronounce this workmanship is such,
As that no pen can set it forth too much.'
2. Compare the praise of Hemmings and Condell to that of a whore praising a matron?
'These are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore,
Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?'
3. Identify Shakespeare's peers as those of the previous generation, not Jonson's own:
'For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou dist our Lily out-shine,
Or sporting Kid or Marlowes mighty line.'
4. make that famous remark about 'small Latine, and lesse Greeke' ONLY in the subjunctive - and countermands it later by the most definite emphasis on Shakespeare's art and learning:
'Looke how the fathers face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines
In his well toned, and true-filed lines :
In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.'
5. surround the reference to the Swan of Avon with allusions to Ovid's story of Phaeton and Cygnus:
http://www.metrum.org/mapping/swan.htm
I could go on at great length on this theme - but this will do for a start!
http://hewardwilkinson.co.uk
ned blunt
March 30th, 2010 3:24pm Report this commentBen Jonson's testimony may not be all that it seems.
Jonson detested bad scholarship, rating himself the most exemplary poet in his observance of classical learning, even providing footnotes to his plays so that his less-knowledgable readers would not miss his erudition. A quick glance at the cast list for Volpone shows how, in particular, Jonson names characters after animals to illustrate their character. So when Jonson chooses to call someone a "swan", indeed singles out that creature to epitomise them, one might expect him to be only too aware of its classical significations.
In the Elizabethan era, the swan had two prime classical associations. Firstly, it was a bird that spent its life in (mute) silence, singing only once, at its death - hence "swan-song".
Secondly, again originating in Greek myth, and immensely popular in Renaissance art and literature comes the story of Leda and the Swan, in which the god Zeus takes the form of a swan and seduces or rapes, Leda, the wife of the King of Sparta, who then gives birth to an egg from which emerges the most beautiful woman who ever lived - Helen of Troy.
So, in the first instance, the swan is characterised by its silence throughout its life, and in the second the swan is a disguise assumed by a god via which he brings forth his most beautiful creation (one might even enjoy the pun on "egg" in "oeuvre" via the French "oeuf").
Given Jonson's classical fastidiousness, we might at the very least say that there is room for irony in his reference to the Stratford man as a swan.
Additionally, Ben Jonson hardly "owed nothing to anyone". His principle patron, apart from King James, was William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and brother of Philip, the "incomparable paire of brethren" to whom the First Folio was dedicated, and Jonson wrote verses and dedications celebrating both the Earl and other members of his family.
Given Shapiro's belief that there has been no new recent evidence for the Oxfordian position, it will be interesting to see what he makes of The De Vere Code by Globe actor, Jonathan Bond. It presents new evidence from the dedication to the sonnets, demolishes the Stratfordian case for the sonnets using Stratfordian scholarship, and it’s completely sane(!). Those who say that there isn’t any direct evidence that connects Oxford to the works of Shakespeare should definitely read this book. http://deverecode.com
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