WAS SHAKESPEARE a fake?
Each month, ex-cop and psychic Nicky Alan teams up with her spirit guides to investigate an unsolved mystery. This month she looks into who really wrote the great works of Shakespeare...
Nowadays if something, or someone, has really wound you up, you might take to social media for a moan.
Back in Tudor times venting to the world in general took more effort. You had to write a pamphlet, take it to the printers to get copies made and then deliver them round town!
In 1592 one such pamphlet made its way round London. The popular author, Robert Greene, had recently died and what seemed to be his bitter deathbed rant was printed soon afterwards by his pal Henry Chettle.
The pamphlet contained a pointed dig at an ‘upstart Crow’ actor who believed he could write as well as universityeducated playwrights like Greene... This actor, complained the pamphlet, saw himself as ‘the only Shake-scene in the country.’
It’s widely believed the attack was levelled at a young William Shakespeare.
It wouldn’t be the last time someone questioned how the son of a provincial glovemaker, who’d apparently left school at 13 due to his family’s money problems, could presume to write the way Shakespeare did.
That said, for almost two centuries after his death no one questioned that Shakespeare had written the plays and poems attributed to him.
Then, in the 19th Century suspicions began to be aired...
The works of ‘Shakespeare’ display an understanding of law, politics, history, medicine, geography, religion, the natural world, mythology, the workings of the English court and naval technology... not to mention several different languages! Then there are the complex characters, clever plots and inventive wordplay...
What if, some began to ask, Shakespeare had been a front for someone who preferred to remain anonymous – either because they didn’t want to be exposed as a ‘lowly’ playwright, or because some of the plays were politically provocative?
The author Henry James, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and even the silent film star Charlie Chaplin all expressed doubts about the authorship of Shakespeare’s work.
Some believe the famous Elizabethan philosopher, scientist and statesman Sir Francis Bacon might have been the ‘real’ author. He was well-travelled and, as Lord Chancellor and a member of the Privy Council, a royal insider. In 1909 Huckleberry Finn author, Mark Twain, held a dinner at which it was decided the coded signature ‘FRANCISCO BACONO’ could be found in a 1623 collection of Shakespeare’s plays.
Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh is another name bandied about as the true genius behind the works of ‘Shakespeare’.
Or how about Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford? Law graduate De Vere travelled to many of the places featured in Shakespeare’s plays. Like Shakespeare’s most famous hero, Hamlet, De Vere was even once kidnapped by pirates and left naked on a Denmark shore!
Queen Elizabeth I and King James I are a couple of royal names in the frame, according to some.
All these ‘suspects’ have one thing in common: They’re all highly educated members of the nobility. So is the campaign to discredit Shakespeare down to snobbery, a refusal to believe someone from the ‘lower orders’ could be capable of such genius?
Perhaps... But another name suggested by Shakespeare sceptics is fellow-Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was himself the lowly son of a shoemaker.
Marlowe apparently died in a London tavern in a brawl over a bar bill, aged just 29, in 1593.
Is the campaign down to snobbery?
Some, however, believe he faked his death and continued to write under the name of William Shakespeare from a hideout on the Continent.
Concrete facts about William Shakespeare’s life are thin on the ground. We know he was baptised on 26th April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, married Anne Hathaway, 26, when he was 18 and their daughter Susanna, was born six months later. Twins Judith and Hamnet followed a few years on. Finally, he died on 23rd April 1616.
For those hoping to prove or disprove that he penned some of the greatest literature ever written, it’s not much to go on.
Being the son of a glovemaker and not going to university doesn’t prevent someone from becoming a great writer. Plus, there was no real need for a frontman, as most plays from the period didn’t include the playwright’s name. Any of the other candidates could have put them out without a name attached.
Also, Shakespeare is known to have collaborated on many of his plays. How would an identity fraud have worked when so many other playwrights worked with him?
Still, the rumours and conspiracy theories persist.
Does Shakespeare deserve his reputation? Or has the greatest literary lie of all time really persisted for over four and a half centuries? With the help of my guides, can I settle this argument once and for all?
Theory 1
I sense both Sir Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh were truly gifted men, however I can’t feel a connection between either of them and Shakespeare’s writings. I also don’t feel the apparent discovery of Bacon’s coded name in an early copy of Shakespeare’s work is authentic.
Theory 2
Meditating on Edward De Vere, I get a strong sense of him as a very outgoing man, who regularly regaled his friends at court with stories and anecdotes. Someone who heard these stories could well have incorporated Edward’s experiences into their writing.
Theory 3
In Shakespeare’s time playwrights would regularly mix, sharing ideas and anecdotes and discussing the act of writing. Marlowe was a gifted playwright, however I feel a very volatile energy around him. I don’t sense he possessed the diligence that would have been required to write the volume of work produced by Shakespeare.
Theory 4
Acting companies were often invited to court where Elizabeth I could have shared ideas. I sense she was delighted to see these ideas turn up in plays, however I don’t see a royal hand penning the plays and poems of Shakespeare.