"Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare": James Shapiro

I must begin by creeping to the 'Headmaster', DM, because he urged this book upon me and who am I to dare to refuse?  Once again, Sir, you demonstrate your excellent taste and discernment!  Actually, I was halfway there anyway because Shapiro's earlier book, 1599: A year in the Life of Shakespeare, I now treasure as one of my all-time favourites.  Shapiro has that rare but invaluable talent of passing on a seemingly inexhaustible breadth and depth of knowledge on Shakespeare and his times with the very lightest of touches.  At the end of it you have been well and truly educated and yet you didn't feel a thing - except warm pleasure.

The same is true of his latest book, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, although it must be admitted that, as DM warned, it gets a little hard-going in the middle.  This is not, I think, Shapiro's fault.  Given the subject matter he is absolutey required to repeat, with as much accuracy as possible, the infantile dribblings of a great many people who should have known better.  The list of fools, suckers, shysters, snobs and dimwits just seemed to get longer and longer.  Here is just a sample:

Mark Twain, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, Tom Bethell (of The American Spectator whose journalism I used to admire), Leslie Howard (the late film actor), Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance and so on and on.  None of these are 'shysters' but I leave it to readers of the book to catergorise them according to taste.

Not, I hasten to make clear, that all these people and many others actually agreed upon who had written Shakespeare's plays, oh dear me, no; like Python's The People's Front of Judea confronting The Judean People's Front, the two sides, one in favour of Francis Bacon, the other favouring the Earl of Oxford, lambast each other with cries of "Splitters!" and both reserve complete contempt for the minority groups in favour of Kit Marlowe or Edmund Spenser or Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all!

That very shrewd observer of both modern and historical life, Hilary Mantel, sums it up beautifully in her review in The Guardian:

It's a tale of snobbery and ignorance, of unhistorical assumptions, of myths about the writing life sometimes fuelled by bestselling authors who ought to know better.

In essence, this disbelief in the abilities of the country boy from Stratford rests upon the belief that no-one could write in so much detail of matters and experiences which, given Will's lower-middle-class background, he could not have experienced himself.  In other words, artistic imagination does not exist.  And this came from several world-renowned writers! 

You couldn't make it up - but they did!

 

Comments

[dearieme]

Also, my dear Duff, you may accuse them of underrating a good Grammar School education. (If that's what Will got - nobody actually knows, but it seems pretty likely.)

[missred]

Artistic imagination does not exist? pshaw. I have had dreams of places that depicted accurate geography despite the fact I had never been to or seen them. There is the first of a series of books about the mid 18th century in Scotland - very accurate in my mind. The author, at the time of writing the first book, had never been to Fair Alba.

[David Duff]

And a pretty ferocious education, too, DM, as I seem to recall from a description of the regimen at Grammar Schools in those days. Non-stop Latin mostly and - Shlock-Horror - no organised games!

You will let me know, Miss Red, when (NOT if) publication occurs!

[Whyaxye]

A few years ago I attended several performances of Rylance's play I am Shakespeare, which deals with the "authorship issue". A good play, with lots of fun experimental angles. Afterwards Mrs. W (who used to work in the theatre) chaired a meeting with Rylance and the cast to allow them to talk more about their theories.

All fascinating stuff, but I suspect minds are made up on emotional and ideological grounds rather than by careful sifting and evaluating evidence. I favour the obscure provincial grammar school theory, for what it's worth. Just because I don't like posh people.

Rylance himself was an interesting and engaging man - masses of energy. My favourite bit in the discussion was when he lost it with a sceptical member of the audience and claimed that he was not taking things seriously. This after Rylance had presented Shakespeare emerging through time-warps and rolling around pissed on stage while grumbling in a "Brummerset" rural midlands accent.

[JK]

Sorry sorry for coming late to the party, but I had to direct one of my local Evangelical preachers to this post.

"JK," asks he, "Are these plays having to do with human affairs? Do these plays shed light unto human affairs to this day?"

"Well, yes I suppose so," says I, "The good David Duff of South Somerset proclaims as much."

"Tell me JK, do you believe Mr. Duff?"

"Well..."

"Well nothing JK!" says the Preacher, "I've heard enough of your whiny quibbling over what speaks truly to the affairs of present man from times so long past. It's very apparent the works are Divinely Inspired. A 'grammar school education' as opposed to the Seminary? Bullshit!

"The Almighty dictated this stuff to Willy!"

"But but Preacher," protesteth 'Ol JK, "You've no idea how my Brit friends're gonna take the message, they've got to put more effort to studying their willy!"

"Sure," I, JK says, "Duff is very likely up to it, probably at it right now, I don't know 'bout the others."

[David Duff]

'W', I have the distinct suspicion that were the author of the plays believed widely to be either Oxford or Bacon, the 'usual suspects' (see above) would instantly insist that, no, no, you have all been gulled, it was really this country boy from Stratford turned third-rate actor 'wot dunnit'! On the whole I am not averse to contrarians, being something of one myself, but there are limits beyond which the joke withers.

JK, a prolonged study of "my willy" would availeth you nought - but if he could speak, oh, what a tale he could tell!

[Hank]

David

Who Wrote Shakespeare

Why the author, of course.

------------------------

On your reccomendation I picked up the DVD of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." It is at least as good as you said. Thanks.

[David Duff]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Hank. I feared that perhaps it might be too British to be fully appreciated by non-Brits. It is a very fin de siècle tale which reeks of nostalgia for times past and glories lost.

[JK]

David? "A prolonged study"? Availeth me?

Read closer 'ol e-pal - tweren't me who suggested further study - t'was the preacher. Surely you haven't mistaken me for a clergyman.

Priests, as is well known, have concerns about other people's willys. I just care about my own.

[David Duff]

You don't know what you're missing!

[Sabrina Feldman]

So who do you think wrote the Shakespeare Apocrypha?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zg6nBM8nlc

[David Duff]

Sabrina, greetings and welcome to D&N.

First, a minor criticism of your YouTube creation - please, please, slow it down. I could hardly finish reading any of the notes before they vanished and the next one took its place! However I have your blog site bookmarked and I intend to study it a little later.

Two immediate thoughts arose. No-one doubts that WS co-wrote some plays, that being the common practice in the theatre companies of the time. The surprising thing is that he wrote so many single-handedly. The world of publishing (and printing) at the time could best be described as a jungle! As you know better than me, once a play had been approved by the Chamberlain then anyone and everyone could have a go at printing it - after all, there was good money in it, particularly if the play had been a success and no-one outside the theatre company cared or even knew if it was an accurate transcription because there was no such thing as copyright.

I shall follow your blog with interest.