Who wrote ”Hamlet,” ”Romeo and Juliet” and ”Julius Caesar”? Easy, you say. William Shakespeare, of course. But who was William Shakespeare, really? Ay, there`s the rub, as Hamlet would put it.
Was he the man born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, who went on to become the world`s greatest dramatist and poet? Or was William Shakespeare really a pseudonym for another Renaissance author, who borrowed (and slightly altered) the name of an illiterate actor named William Shakspere?
A young English earl by the name of Charles Vere favors the pen name proposition-and he`s almost certain the real author was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and one of Vere`s ancestors. Vere, who arrived in Chicago recently for a series of speaking engagements, acknowledges that he is a man on a mission.
”I feel that people need to know about this,” says Vere, a
conservatively dressed 26-year-old bachelor who also answers to the title Earl of Burford. ”If you get Shakespeare wrong, you get the whole Elizabethan Age wrong.”
For the last two centuries, partisans have debated the Shakespeare authorship controversy with a passion equaling the fervor of Kennedy assassination buffs sinking their teeth into the Single Bullet theory. Stratfordians argue that the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon (known as the Stratford Man) was, indeed, the author of the Shakespeare canon.
Anti-Stratfordians, whose ranks have included Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Sigmund Freud and Orson Welles, contend that the Stratford Man didn`t have the necessary background to scale the literary heights and couldn`t possibly be the author of the works.
The real author, anti-Stratfordians argue, was obviously a cultured aristocrat who-because writing for the commercial theater was considered a vulgar pursuit in Elizabethan times-arranged with William Shakspere to publish his comedies, histories and tragedies under the humble actor`s name.
The roots of the debate stretch back to the late 1700s, when a would-be Shakespeare biographer, Rev. James Wilmot, was unable to find any books belonging to the playwright or any other material proof of his existence. Later, in the mid-19th Century, two more doubters, Delia Bacon and William H. Smith, each published books contending that Francis Bacon (no relation to Delia) probably wrote the works. Since then, more than 4,000 volumes have been written on the controversy, and at least 60 names have been put forth as candidates for Shakespearean authorship laurels.
Besides Bacon, longtime favorites include Christopher Marlowe; William Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby; and De Vere, whose star has been sharply ascendant in the anti-Stratfordian camp throughout the last decade and whose followers call themselves Oxfordians.
”The controversy isn`t going to go away, just the way the John F. Kennedy assassination controversy isn`t going to go away,” says David Bevington, a University of Chicago English professor and the editor of a new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare recently published by
HarperCollins.
Like virtually all serious Shakespeare academics, Bevington gives scant credence to anti-Stratfordian arguments, but he isn`t surprised that the debate refuses to die. ”It`s a lot of fun,” he says. ”The field is open, and anyone with hard evidence is going to be heard.”
Sowing seeds
Vere (the family dropped the ”de” at some point) makes no claims to being a Shakespeare scholar; his degree from Oxford University is in modern languages.
”I`m a layman, and I see myself as a catalyst,” Vere explains.
”Scholars try to make it out that the Shakespeare authorship question is a very abstruse subject, one that I`m not qualified to speak about. I`m saying it`s not something arcane; I`m making a common-sense case.”
Vere, who founded the British De Vere Society during his undergraduate days at Oxford, didn`t develop a taste for Shakespeare until his late teens. He credits his late grandfather with igniting his interest in their mutual ancestor.
”Growing up, I always found (the plays) rather sterile, because teachers never really related Shakespeare to the history of his times,” Vere explains. ”Since my conviction of Edward de Vere`s authorship has taken root, I have reread the plays and find them wonderful now.”
After graduating from Oxford in 1989, Vere pursued a career with a London academic publishing house but found the work unsatisfying and quit. Last year, after spending 10 months in an unsuccessful job hunt, he decided to embark on his current career as a ”professional Oxfordian” and hit the lecture circuit late in 1991.
”I hope to make some money at it, but this is also a labor of love,”
says Vere, who divides his time between the family home in the English countryside and Oldsmar, Fla., where he has established his American headquarters in the home of the De Vere Society administrator who books his lectures.
”Actually, I haven`t been paid much yet,” says Vere, who notes that the fact that he has a title doesn`t mean he is wealthy. ”I get a very minimal salary, not even $10,000 a year, from the society, plus honorariums.”
Vere`s father, Murray, Duke of St. Albans and a member of the British Parliament`s House of Lords, apparently does not share his son`s passion for promoting the family ancestor.
”I believe that my father thinks I am quite mad,” Vere muses cheerfully. ”He is quite apathetic about the whole thing. But I think this might take up the next five years of my life.”
Literary match
Vere is also planning to write a book on De Vere, who first captured the attention of anti-Stratfordians in the early 1920s after an English schoolmaster with the unfortunate name of J. Thomas Looney published the results of his search for the ”real” Shakespeare.
After studying Shakespeare`s works and drawing up a character profile from descriptive material in the writings, Looney searched Elizabethan poetry for a match in literary style and content. He found it in the poems of Edward de Vere (1550-1604), a poet, playwright, politician and close chum of Queen Elizabeth.
Eventually, the Shakespeare Oxford Society was formed in the United States to advance the De Vere cause; today, according to Vere, the New York-based group has about 500 members.
While many of Shakespeare`s plays were published after De Vere`s death, Vere and other Oxfordians argue that the plays could have been written earlier.
”I think one of the most telling points is that De Vere was praised so fulsomely as a writer in his lifetime,” says Vere. Also, Vere points out, the De Vere crest shows a lion that shakes a spear.
”I think that De Vere probably started publishing his plays under the Shakespeare name in the mid-1590s,” says Vere. ”He would have known Shakspere from his theater connections, and it would have been important to pick someone who couldn`t read or write, so there would be no records left (of the ghost-writing arrangement), and there is no record that Shakespeare attended school.”
`Snobbish belief`
The Shakespearean academic community has heard all the anti-Stratfordian arguments before, and doesn`t buy any of them.
”There is a vociferous and committed alternative position, but I don`t know of a single major Shakespearean scholar who has any doubts about the authorship of the Shakespeare canon,” says Werner Gundersheimer, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
The authorship controversy ”has more to do with psychological compulsion than with any legal proof,” asserts Michael Dobson, a visiting professor of English at Northwestern University and an academic consultant to the Royal Shakespeare Company. ”One of the things that drives the Oxfordian claim in particular is a snobbish belief that only aristocrats can possibly be geniuses. There is excellent documentary evidence of Shakespeare`s background. We know his father was in local government and had the right to send his children to the local grammar school.
”The trouble is with most of these theories about Bacon or Oxford or whoever being Shakespeare is that they require one to believe that almost everyone involved in the Renaissance was part of a literary cover-up,” says Dobson, whose own book on Shakespeare, ”The Making of the National Poet,”
will be published this year by Oxford University Press.
Dobson, who was born in England and received a doctorate from Oxford University, adds that ”in general, the belief that Shakespeare didn`t write the plays has been much more widespread in America than it has been in Europe. Part of that may be because America is a great place for conspiracy theories.”
Counters Vere: ”A lot of academics call us snobs and cranks and monomaniacs because they don`t want to lose face. They`ve built their reputations on (the Stratford Man), and they have too much to lose by debating the issue. So they attack us.”
”If I could prove that Shakespeare`s works were written by the 17th Earl of Oxford or anybody else, my salary would probably double,” replies Bevington of the U. of C. ”Obviously, I`m an `Establishment person,` so my motives are suspect by the anti-Stratfordians, but to me some of the (anti-Stratfordian) theories seem fairly desperate. The idea that only a
university person could have been elegant enough to write, for example, is a 19th Century notion. So is the idea that Shakespeare didn`t write the plays.
”The strongest argument against the Oxfordian theory is that the Earl of Oxford died in 1604-Shakespeare didn`t die until 1616-and by virtually everbody`s reckoning that leaves out a large number of major plays. Why would someone write plays and put them away so that they didn`t turn up until years after his death?
”Another thing that makes one suspicious is the conspiracy angle. It would mean that all of Shakespeare`s colleagues consented by silence to the plot.
”Actually, it wouldn`t surprise me if some other supposed author of the Shakespeare canon comes along before too long, but I guess we`re running out of plausible candidates.”
Undaunted
Vere remains undaunted.
”The controversy could be resolved for good if one of the Shakespeare manuscripts was found in De Vere`s hand,” he says. Barring that, ”I think there will be a transitional stage where the Stratfordian theory no longer holds sway (in academia) and people debate the issues, but eventually it will evolve to people accepting the Oxfordian theory.”
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Charles Vere will address the English Speaking Union Tuesday at the Casino Club; call 312-642-1020. Vere also will speak at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St.; call 312-943-9090, extension 310.
