Is he or is he not? That is the question
Written: Sep 02 '05 (Updated Sep 02 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: well-written and well-researched, very readable
Cons: a bibliography would have been helpful
The Bottom Line: Everyone should read this to see what the stratfordians and the anti-strats have been arguing about all these years, then decide for yourself who and what to believe.
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| jc_hall's Full Review: |
I picked up my copy of PLAYERS--The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare by Bertram Fields at the annual Bard-on-the-Beach Festival held in Vancouver. Every summer, plays attributed to William Shakespeare are performed by a talented theatre company under tents set up in Vanier Park, where the backdrop is the scenic oceanview of the Pacific Northwest.
I have been a regular attender, and just because I’ve moved to Toronto was no reason to miss out this year. So there I was, browsing through the little store during the intermission of ‘As You Like It’, when I happened upon this book. As I’ve always tried to read all there is about the authorship controversy surrounding the body of work generally ascribed to William Shakespeare (he of Stratford-upon-Avon), I snapped up this newest addition to the authorship debate.
It is generally accepted that the great body of work that includes 36 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 long narrative poems is the work of one William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, an actor who trod the stage in London during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and who retired back to Stratford an enormously wealthy man.
However, many great minds of this century (e.g. Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Benjamin Disraeli), and indeed, of centuries past, have rejected this Stratford man as the true author of the Shakespeare canon. They have argued that the grade school education (itself controversial, as there is no evidence he actually attended the local grammar school) of the Stratford man could not have produced the worldly and knowledgeable author who was as familiar with French and Italian as he was with the Latin and Greek classics. Indeed, whoever wrote the plays and poetry attributed to Shakespeare demonstrated an extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that included military and naval manoeuvres, sports and pastimes of the aristocracy, legal parlance and terminology, as well as intimate details of both the Elizabethan court as well as the courts of France and Italy.
Bertram Fields, an American lawyer, has written a well-researched and extraordinarily readable account of the authorship debate. In PLAYERS, he begins (in Part I) with an overview of Elizabethan England, giving just enough history to put things into context, such as the extremely close ties of politics and religion at the time, and the court of Queen Elizabeth I where foreign policy was a matter of high intrigue.
In Part II, he devotes considerable space to the analysis of the life of William Shaksper (sic) from Stratford-upon-Avon (what little of it that is actually known/recorded) and the analysis of the life of the author that can be inferred from his body of work. Fields is at pains to point out that we can only come to the truth by not assuming that the one is in fact the other, which is what most Shakespeare authorities tend to do. For instance, because of the detailed knowledge of Italian customs and culture inherent in the writings, these authorities claim that the Stratford man ‘must have’ travelled to and lived in Italy, when there is absolutely no proof that he ever left England.
In Part III, Fields considers the other candidates, from the aristocratic Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Derby, William Stanley, and the Earl of Rutland, Roger Manners, to playwright Christopher Marlowe and lawyer/philosopher Francis Bacon. Even Queen Elizabeth I herself is considered (and then duly dismissed) in a couple of pages.
In Part IV, the summing up consists of Fields drawing his conclusion based on the evidence he has laid out so clearly in previous chapters. He dismisses out of hand the claim that the Stratford man wrote the Shakespeare canon on his own, but allows that he may have contributed here and there as a veteran actor with a good theatrical sense of the taste of the groundlings (audience). Fields is of the firm opinion that the huge body of work could not have been the work of just one man, that it was, in the main, a collaboration between two men.
Scholars before Fields have brought up the collaboration theory, though I believe other playwrights (Kit Marlowe, Ben Jonson) of the time were named, rather than the Stratford man, and more than likely, in the early years of the real author’s death, some of his work had undoubtedly been rewritten to a greater or lesser extent. So the collaboration theory is nothing new. Nor is the conspiracy theory whereby the real identity of the author is kept a secret over centuries for one reason or another.
Fields brings up the possibility that Kit Marlowe did not die when it was claimed that he was murdered, though I believe that theory (of Marlowe living on and writing in exile) has fallen out of favour in recent times. Fields also gives Francis Bacon (who was for a long time a ‘hot’ candidate for Shakespeare) a run for his money, though in the end, he settles pretty much on the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
If all that is known of the learned, well-travelled, aristocratic earl (who was also a ward and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth) is true, and he is described as a proud and hot-tempered man, then I find it hard to believe that he would allow the Stratford man a say at all in any of his plays. A collaboration with his son-in-law, William Stanley, is not entirely out of the question, especially if considered post-humously, i.e. Stanley revising Oxford’s work and perhaps completing some of the plays left unfinished upon Oxford’s death.
Personally, I think that if the Stratford man had any say in the plays at all, it would have been in the stage directions and very little else. Extant documents showed him unable to write (he signed documents with a very shaky hand) and could not even spell his own name consistently. He was doubtless paid (and paid handsomely) to be the real Shakespeare’s front, Oxford using the name (his family coat-of-arms was a lion shaking/brandishing a spear) to his advantage, for a nobleman was not expected to write for public entertainment, and considering many of his plays were political, the queen herself would not have been any too pleased.
Also, the sonnets were dedicated to a ‘lovely youth’ as well as a ‘Dark Lady’. Homosexuality was not well-tolerated in Elizabethan times and the hint of scandal would have been incentive enough for a nobleman’s family to do whatever was necessary after the author’s death to separate the author from his work.
All in all, Fields has written a very detailed and well-argued account of the authorship debate. He agrees that there are many possible theories and we may never know who the true author is (unless more evidence surfaces), but from the evidence we do have, I believe that the anti-Stratfordians have a real and significant advantage over those who claim that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon was the real Bard.
Fields’ dissection of some of the sonnets (widely believed to be biographical and as such, a huge clue to the real author) was an eye-opener for me. Also, I was particularly intrigued by Fields’ insights into certain of the plays, e.g. The Merchant of Venice. I found myself considering the characters and reading the lines much more carefully. That alone is worth the price of this diligently-researched and beautifully-presented book.
A very rewarding and entertaining read. Highly recommended to anyone with an open mind.
Recommended:
Yes
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jc_hall
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Member: JC Hall
Location: Toronto, Canada
Reviews written: 199
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About Me:
Going back to Vancouver for Christmas! Happy Holidays, everyone!!
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