On the subject of historical figures who may not have existed, there were a number of comments about William Shakespeare on the post that started all this. Let me just make the case that Shakespeare himself wrote the plays.
First, we can be pretty sure that William Shakespeare existed. We have his will and some court and legal records, and these should be sufficient to establish his existence. Granted, there have been a lot of Shakespeare forgeries over the years, but these documents are fairly prosaic and have stood up to close scrutiny.
But ultimately it comes down to this: we know that Shakespeare wrote those plays because we know that other people wrote those plays.
Hear me out.
We know from the diary of Philip Hanslowe, owner of an Elizabethan theater called “The Rose,” that playwrights of that era usually collaborated with one another. With this knowledge, scholars have gone back and analysed the plays, comparing the word usage with other known playwrights from the era.
What the statistical analysis found was that Shakespeare’s plays were co-written with identifiable playwrights: John Fletcher in Henry XIII, George Peele in Titus Adronicus and so forth. But the majority of the works consistently show the same hand.
How do we know that this hand was Shakespeare? We don’t, at least not absolutely. But none of the other popular theories can account for how so many contemporary playwrights got their hands on these works. Men like Bacon and Oxford would not have farmed out their half-finished manuscripts.
Since we know that Shakespeare was alive, and we’re pretty confident that he was a playwright, it makes the most sense to assume that he was the primary author of the plays that bear his name.
I suspect that most of you feel that this is all pretty silly, but some of western culture’s leading names have believed that Shakespeare was a fraud. For example, Mark Twain was a devoted Baconian, and Sigmund Freud was an Oxfordian.
Of course, nobody’s telling me I’ll go to Hell if I don’t believe in Shakespeare.
Bah, you and your high-fallutin theories. I had a boil on my bum, and I prayed to Shakespeare, and now it’s gone. What more proof do you need?
I find the theory that the plays were written by Marlowe, who had escaped to Italy, to be wonderfully romantic. The part that baffles me about Shakespeare is where/when did this small-town guy get the chance to read all the history, mythology, etc. that the plays are based on?
It’s romantic, yes, but silly. Marlowe died before the Tempest was written.
Or rather, before the famous shipwreck that inspired parts of the Tempest is known to have occurred (which precludes the Tempest from having been written early but not released until after Marlowe’s death.)
I think the theory Nazani is referring to claims that Marlowe didn’t actually die then. But it is pretty silly.
It probably is completely wrong. However, the accounts of Marlowe’s death seem pretty fishy, too.
Ok, I am going to give this a shot.
The question is not “Did ‘William Shakespeare’ write the plays and sonnets?”
Rather, the question is “Who was the man behind the name ‘William Shakespeare?”
Most people think that one William Shaksper, of Stratford-Uopn-Avon, 1564-1616, was our guy. Similar name, connected with the theatre, general time period – and yes, he existed – so it fits. Most people believe this because that is what they were taught, and that is what most books say. Why question it?
But some incredibly smart and perceptive authors, actors, and other brainiacs through the years have questioned the common wisdom. that Shaksper (1564-1616) was Shakespeare. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, Lesley Howare, Charlie Chaplan, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Mark Rylance (former artistic director of the new Globe Theatre) to name a few. Not exactly a list of ignorant bozos.
If you are curious read “The Mysterious William Shakespeare” by Charleton Ogburn Jr.
Uhm… pretty sure there is a list of incredibly smart and perceptive authors who have questioned anything you can think of; argumentum ad populum…
Interesting that you bring that up, since argumentum ad populum seems to be the favorite first defense of the Shakespeare believers – “Well, if it wasn’t the Stradford guy, how come everyone thinks it was?”
I was just trying to skip to the next step, which is, “Not everyone thinks he was.”