The Authorship Question

The Biographical fiction of the Stratford guy: Chapter 2 of Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies.

Re-reading the early chapters of Elizabeth Winkler’s journalistic examination of the authorship question in Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies with a pencil in hand (and not afraid to use it) is scratching every historical mystery, literary, and hidden history itch I have at once. Thanks for coming along on this ride with me, and I hope you begin to find this as interesting as I do.

Here are some of the known facts about the man from Stratford-upon-Avon named William Shakespeare which are taken from mentions in legal documents, court records, property records, church records, and very rare mentions in others’ writings:

· William was born in 1564 to John, a glove maker, and his wife Mary.

· John was a “brogger” (an unlicensed wool dealer), a landlord, an ale taster, a dealer in wood and grain, and eventually, a bailiff.

· John and Mary did not have signatures - they signed their names with a mark, indicating the likelihood that they were illiterate.

· The records from the Stratford grammar school have disappeared, so there is no record of William’s education. In the 1570s his father was prosecuted for illegal wool sales, and by 1576, when William was 13, John Shakespeare withdrew from public life entirely. “Scholars believe William likely left school to help support the family. He had five younger siblings.” p. 35

· William married Anne Hathaway at 18 when she was three months pregnant, and family friends of the bride signed a financial guarantee for the wedding.

· A daughter was born to the couple, then three years later, in 1585, twins were born. There exist no written records of William Shakespeare between 1585 and 1592.

· William Shakespeare’s next appearance in records was in London in 1592, when he loaned 7 pounds to John Clayton, whom he sued for the return of the money eight years later.

· The first record of William of Stratford that has anything to do with the theater was in 1595 when he was paid as a member of the newly formed Lord Chamberlain’s Men for performances at court the previous Christmas.

· In 1596, Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet died at age 11, with the Stratford parish register recording his burial. Other records of William Shakespeare show that he dodged taxes, was fined for hoarding grain during a shortage, pursued petty lawsuits, and was subject to a restraining order.

· By 1597 Shakespeare bought a large house in Stratford, in 1602 he bought 100 acres of land. In 1604 many records place him in Stratford: he sells malt to Philip Rogers, lends the man two shillings, then sues him to recover payment. In 1608 he had his Stratford neighbor arrested for repayment of 6 pounds, and in 1611 he leased a barn to a man named Robert Johnson.

· In 1612 William testified as a witness in a lawsuit in London where he was identified as a “gentleman” of Stratford-upon-Avon, and in 1614 he was listed as a landowner in Stratford in documents about the enclosure of nearby pastures.

· William Shakespeare died in 1616, leaving a will with two signatures on it, and was buried on April 25^th at the local church in Stratford-upon-Avon. The parish register recorded the burial as “Will Shakspere gent.”

William Shakespeare, a man from Stratford-upon-Avon, exists in the written record of English history. Father of three, son of a glovemaker, actor and eventual investor in a theater troupe. Seven years passed between the birth of his twins and his mention the loan document in London, during which Will disappeared from written record. Three years after he emerged in London he was written about in conjunction with payment for his acting gig at court.

While there is written record of payment to William Shakespeare for acting, there exists no record of payment to William Shakespeare for writing. None at all. Zero.

“Theater owner Philip Henslowe, who put on early Shakespeare plays, recorded payments to twenty-seven playwrights – but never Shakespeare. Cuthbert Burbage, another theatrical entrepreneur and shareholder in the Globe, named him merely as one of several “men players,” not as the company’s playwright.” P. 45

Any detective will say to follow the money, and while there definitely was money – William Shakespeare bought land in Stratford, and left a significant estate to his eldest daughter for any sons she might eventually have (she did not) – the man was never recorded as having received money for writing. Nor was he identified as a writer in anyone else’s records: not in press mentions, not in letters, not in court documents, nor in the diaries of friends and family.

Other writers of the time were identified as writers. Edmund Spenser, George Chapman, John Lyly, Thomas Nashe, Samuel Daniel, and Ben Jonson can all be found in extant documentation from the 1590s-1610s either writing about their works, or being talked about as writers, but not William Shakespeare.

“Shakespearean” plays had begun appearing on London stages in 1592, as diary entries from theater and bear pit owner, Philip Henslowe show. The play Harey the Vj (Henry VI) had fifteen performances and made 3 pounds, 16 shillings, and 8 pence, “making it one of the most successful plays of the year.” P. 37. Henslowe did not record the name of the author in his diary, and when he wrote about Henry V, Taming of the Shrew and Titus Andronicus, they, too, were authorless. Even three years later, when Henry VI was first published in 1595, it was anonymous.

“Nearly a century later, in 1686, an actor named Edward Ravenscroft would record a rumor he’d heard about Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus: “I have been told by some anciently conversant with the Stage, that it was not Originally his, but brought by a private Author to be Acted.” P. 37

William Shakespeare, actor since at least 1595, was not the printed author on the author page of any plays until 1598. The years right after his eleven year old son died “saw the production of some of the most cheerful Shakespearean comedies: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It.” And the years 1602-1604, when he was supposed to be writing his greatest plays – Othello, King Lear, Macbeth – William Shakespeare was busy investing in Stratford land and suing Philip Rogers in Stratford-upon-Avon.

“The name “Shakespeare” also appeared on the title pages of non-Shakespeare plays, such as The London Prodigall in 1605 (“by William Shakespeare”) and A Yorkshire Tragedy in 1608 (“written by W. Shakespeare” and “acted by his Majesties Players at the Globe”). But these plays weren’t included in the 1623 collection of Shakespeare’s plays, and no scholar believes the author of Hamlet wrote them.” P. 43

Two other elements of the man from Stratford’s biography are especially compelling by their absence. The first, which I touched on last week, can be found in the substance of the plays themselves. There is a depth of knowledge about Italy, the Italian countryside, the French court, the English court, untranslated works from French, Italian, and ancient Greek, music and musical instruments, the law, and thirteenth century Danish legend that is unfathomable for a man with an unrecorded education, illiterate parents and children, tax dodging, grain hoarding, petty lawsuits, and a restraining order to have written.

And then there’s the extremely problematic will. Two of Shakespeare’s extant seven examples of his handwriting are on that will (his only two signatures that properly match each other), in which he famously, embarrassingly left his “second-best bed” to his wife, a silver bowl to his daughter Judith, a sword to Thomas Combe, 26 shillings, 8 pence to his neighbor Hamnet Sadler “to buy him a ringe.” He also left money to three actor-shareholders in his company, a couple of wealthy landowners and business associates, while “the bulk of his estate, including the main house, his various other lands and properties, and the rest of his “goods, chattels, leases, plate, jewels, and household stuff whatsoever” went to his eldest daughter, Susanna, and her potential sons.” P. 43

Again, what isn’t there is the truly problematic part. For all the lists and specifics that were left to family, friends, and business associates, there were no maps, no musical instruments, no books of any kind, and no manuscripts.

William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, who died in 1616, left no recorded manuscripts in his will or any other documentation of the times. Yet the definitive publication of the works of William Shakespeare – the so-called “First Folio” of 1623, considered the definitive compilation of the works of Shakespeare – contained 18 plays that had never before been published, and included edits to the ones that had been published during the man from Stratford’s lifetime. Historians explain this away with statements about “foul papers,” or Shakespeare’s working drafts of plays, being the source of the unpublished plays, and yet these foul papers do not exist in any form – written or recorded – among Shakespeare’s possessions, or, indeed, those of anyone else.

So, where were the unpublished plays for seven years? Who had them? Who edited the published ones? And really, who wrote them at all?

And if “Shakespeare” was a fraud, wouldn’t someone have said so?