Contested Will

Contested Will by James Shapiro

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This is a fascinating and educational book that puts together a lot of threads and ties in a lot of information about the Bard that I had never heard before. The subject of the book is to explain why we are beset with the interminable “Authorship Question” (“AQ”) which seemingly blew up out of nowhere, improbably elevated one person or another on the flimsiest grounds, and refuses to go away because it is a spear carrier for other debates.

Shakespeare, aka “The Man from Avon,” has been a victim of his own success. He was recognized and lauded as a genius not long after his death. By the eighteenth century, Shakespeare was being described as a literary god, so elevated that it seemed impossible that a mere mortal could have been the author of Shakespearian prose. Interest in Shakespeare's life, led to an examination of the prosaic side of the Man from Avon, and it was discovered that Shakespeare led a quotidian business life as a malt dealer and money lender. (In point of fact, Shapiro suggests that given the norms of the time, these activities were more likely to have been the domain of Mrs. Shakespeare.) These discoveries led the cognoscenti to question whether a person so interested in the mercantile world - Sniff, sniff - could have been an artist.

Mixed into this porridge was the turn taken by eighteenth-century Shakespearian scholar, Edmond Malone, who discerned that Sonnet 93 contained autobiographical information about Shakespeare's relationship with his wife. Malone set in motion a hunt for Shakespeare in the text, which has not abated.

Shapiro thinks this approach is the worst. Throughout the book, he cogently argues that the idea that author's can only write what they know - a position that became canonical in the 19th-century with authors like Mark Twain - is specious since writers can read and, more importantly, use their imagination. Shapiro observes about the contemporary reaction of one Shakespear scholar to Malone's thesis:

“As noted earlier, Malone's annotations appeared in an edition of Shakespeare's Works edited by George Steevens. Steevens, an established scholar, had warmly welcomed the younger Malone into the world of Shakespeare editing three years earlier, even as Dr. Johnson had welcomed him; but when he read Malone's note to Sonnet 93, Steevens insisted on adding a rejoinder. He knew and feared where this kind of speculation could lead. It was a very slippery slope, with conjecture piled upon conjecture. He too had consulted Oldys's notes and saw through Malone's ploy, insisting that whether “the wife of our author was beautiful or otherwise was a circumstance beyond the investigation of Oldys.” Steevens added that whether “our poet was jealous of this lady is likewise an unwarrantable conjecture.”

Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (pp. 42-43). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I've had this same experience in reading various biographies that purport to tell us what a historical figure was thinking at some point in time. Likewise, I really liked Stephen Greenblatt's “Will in the World,” but I discovered that I had to be careful in keeping track of the qualifications about speculation and “maybe” that supported the cantilevered conclusions he reached.

Things took a particular turn in the nineteenth century when Higher Criticism was leading to questions about the historicity of the Bible, generally, and Moses, particularly. One scholar wrote a parody of Higher Criticism by applying it to Shakespeare (just like one can find Lincoln Mythicists on the internet.) It was only a matter of time before this parody was being done in a more serious fashion. It was just part of the spirit of the age.

Frances Bacon was the leading contender for approximately seventy years. Enthusiasts believed that Bacon had left codes in the plays that announced that he was the author. In 1920, Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford took the pole position. A substantial reason for this change was Sigmund Freud's enthusiasm for de Vere because an Oxfordian authorship fit Freud's theories about the death of fathers playing a role in psychological formation. De Vere's father may have died at the right time to influence the writing of Hamlet, which Freud made a centerpiece of his theories. Freud was evangelical in his enthusiasm and attempted to bring others to the Oxfordian camp.

The Authorship Question is not always the question.

Oxfordians seem to have two goals: (a) undermining the Man from Avon and (b) undermining every other contender. Based on this undermining, it is assumed that Oxford will float to the top.

Shapiro's concluding chapters put the stake through the heart of the AQ, in my opinion. Frankly, I had not known how well-known Shakespeare was. Based on my reading, I had concluded that Shakespeare's personal life was a mystery. Not so. Shapiro quotes multiple sources - offhand entries and diaries and other sources - that show that Shakespeare was out and about, hanging out at the book stalls, meeting people in public. Shakespeare was successful and famous as an actor and playwright. People came up to him in public and asked him questions, such as which playwright had written this or that play. They wrote down his answers. There was no question in their mind that this man was the author of the plays they loved. Likewise, Shakespeare was compensated handsomely for his work as an owner of the King's Men. His level of compensation speaks to more than being an actor.

Shapiro also points out that the plays themselves speak to an insider's knowledge of the demands of the theater. Thus, some plays identify by name the actors who were to play the roles being written specifically for that actor. Shakespeare - the author - changed the kinds of plays he wrote when an actor retired. Likewise, when the King's Men began to play inside a playhouse at the end of Shakespeare's career, rather than outside at the Globe, the tenor of the plays changed to take advantage of the gloom and intimacy of such a setting. (I will also add, though it is not found in the book, that linguistic analysis shows that the words Shakespeare used when he played the Ghost in MacBeth show up more frequently in the next play, which is what we would expect - we actually experience it when we write and draw up the language we used most recently.)

This book is a fascinating intellectual history. It offers some solid historical reasons for why we have an authorship question about Shakespeare, but not Poe or Hemingway.