Literary class struggle: the bard's identity crisis - includes related article on William Shakespeare

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 31, 1994 | by Stephen Goode

Since the mid-17th century, a small but vocal clique of iconoclasts has questioned the identity of Western culture's greatest writer, William Shakespeare. Despite that he is quoted more often than almost any other writer in the English language, Shakespeare left behind little evidence that he actually lived; there is scant historical record of his youth in Stratford-upon-Avon, the bucolic provincial village where he was born in 1564, or of his career as a poet and playwright in London. There seems to have been a curious lack of recognition of his gifts in his own time, and few of his contemporaries left any record of knowing him "or even having looked upon him." Moreover, he left no library or manuscripts after his death -- at least none are mentioned in his will.

No one suggests there never was a William Shakespeare, the small-businessman's son who rose to prominence as an actor and writer with the Globe Theatre company. But many suspect he lent his name, not his talent, to the 37 plays that have been translated into 85 languages and regularly performed all over the world. Over the centuries, scholars and amateur historians have probed the plays and combed though the annals of Elizabethan England in search of the man; indeed, Shake-speareans in more than 30 countries have produced more than 2,500 books about the man, his work and his world. Nevertheless, the facts are few and fancies soar at the drop of a quill: Shakespeare was the nom de plume used by Queen Elizabeth I, essayist Francis Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh, to name three interesting, if now discredited, alter egos for the Bard.

Today, academics and armchair sleuths agree there is but one serious contender to Shakespeare as the author of Hamlet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream: Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

De Vere was the proverbial jack-of-all-trades, an aristocratic dabbler in the arts and sciences. As hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England, he was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. De Vere held degrees from Oxford and Cambridge universities, was a patron of poets and playwrights including Thomas Nash and Christopher Marlowe, and was known to write poems himself as well as to compose music. He captained his own ship in the Battle of the Spanish Armada.

Oxfordians, as those who believe that de Vere wrote the plays call themselves, argue that only such a multitalented aristocrat could have penned dramas such as Richard II and Henry V -- works that deal with highborn people and court intrigues. Stratfordians, or those who support Shakespeare, counter that "transcendent genius" would overcome any limitations in the Bard's background or education -- and the Stratfordians have no doubt that their man possessed transcendent genius.

It is a lopsided debate, at least in this country. Most language and literature teachers in American colleges and universities -- along with such organizations as the American Shakespeare Society and other scholarly groups -- are solidly in the Stratfordian camp, flush with 400 years of tradition. Oxfordians are a more eclectic bunch. The Nobel Prize-winning author John Galsworthy, author of The Forsythe Saga, took up de Vere's cause in the 1920s, as did the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. These days, Oxfordians are represented by David McCullough, biographer of Harry S. Truman, and journalist Tom Bethell, among others. A small but growing Oxford Shakespeare Society, headquartered in Nashua, N.H., publishes a journal and newsletter that keeps its members apprised of the latest in Oxford scholarship (another organization by the same name is based in London).

Oxfordians received a boost a decade ago with the publication of their magnum opus: The Mysterious Shakespeare: The Myth & Reality, easily the most exhaustive and scholarly defense of Oxford's case to date. (In 1992, the book went into its fourth printing.) Written by the then-75-year-old Charleton Ogburn, a Harvard-educated gentleman scholar, the 892-page Mysterious Shakespeare converted a number of erstwhile ardent Stratfordians--including conservative columnist Joseph Sobran -- and initiated a new era in Oxford studies.

At Washington's elite Cosmos Club, for example, Supreme Court justices John Paul Stevens, Harry Blackmun and William Brennan presided over a debate between the two camps in 1988. The Stratfordians won -- but not by a lot. Similar debates sprouted up across the country and in England, and two books touting the Earl of Oxford will appear soon: Richard F. Whalen's Shakespeare: Who Was He? and Joseph Sobran's tentatively titled Outing Shakespeare. Lord Burford, a collateral descendent of de Vere, has been touring the United States and Canada defending his ancestor's cause, sponsored by the Oxford Shakespeare Society. The Stratfordians, says Sobran apropos of the tour, "are in a barrel with Niagara Falls just ahead."

Not surprisingly, the debate is hot and ad hominem. Ogburn charges that Stratfordians are hard-headed because they have careers invested in keeping alive "the myth that the Stratford man was Shakespeare" -- a faith he says they perversely maintain "with all the strength of a firmly held religion." Stratfordians such as Anne Cook, president of the International Shakespeare Association and professor of English at Vanderbilt University, accuse the Oxford crowd of "snob sensibility" for assuming that only "a person of privilege" could write great literature.