The Controversy Surrounding the Validity of Shakespearean Authorship
This research paper takes a look at the controversy surrounding the validity of
Shakespearean authorship. I must tell you that before performing this research, I had no
idea that this topic was such a debate in the world of literature. My goal in writing this
paper is to hopefully bring some insight and knowledge to those who read it.
Who was the man we call William Shakespeare? William Shakespeare was a
man who wrote more than 36 world-famous dramas portraying the range and depth of
human nature. Surprisingly, we know very little about the man who created these
dramas, a man often referred to as the greatest literary genius in history. Shakespeare did
not in his own day inspire the mysterious adoration that afterward came to surround his
works.
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April of 1564, the son of a
glover. When he was 18 years old he married Anne Hathaway and they had 3 children by
the time he was 21. There are a number of references to Shakespeare as an actor and
author by those who would have known him. However, there is not a single word of the
plays or the poems that is definitely in Shakespeare's handwriting. There are only six
remaining legal documents containing his signature, which I might ad contain different
spellings of his name.
Since the mid 19th century, a large group of disbelievers have argued that
someone other than the Stratford man created the poems and plays presented as the
works of William Shakespeare. Since 1856 there have been 17 different proposed
substitutes for Shakespeare including the Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher
Marlowe, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Rutland, Sir Walter Raleigh and even Queen
Elizabeth I herself.
Assuming that Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays, Charlton Ogburn,
author and scholar, believes that a well educated man by the name of Edward de Vere,
Earl of Oxford fits the description as the author.
The author who wrote Richard III, and Hamlet had a vocabulary in excess of
20,000 words, and also had a first hand knowledge of the customs of the Danish Court
and of French and Italian cities. He used more than 100 musical terms as well as the
names of 200 plants. There is no documentation that William Shakespeare had access to
this type of information. Shakespeare may never have left the southeast of England.
Oxford on the other hand, had traveled to Paris, Venice and other foreign countries
create a novel out of an actual event. He had thousands of notes on the subject,
He was a perfectionist in his work and would sometimes spend up to a year on a book. It was not uncommon for him to throw out 95% of his material until he settled on a theme for his book. For a writer he was usual in that he preferred to be paid only after he finished his work rathe...
despised by even those who's careers he began, and lives he had changed. In one meeting
Greenhill, Wendy, and Wignall, Paul. Shakespeare: A Life. Chicago IL: Reed Educational & Professional Publishing, 2000. Print.
Perhaps the reason that Shakespeare’s works have not been attributed to any other man would attest to the fact that scholars are not willing to accept the implications that the man celebrated to be the world’s most ingenious literary figure is not, in fact, who he was thought to be. However, the search for evidence leading to the true author will continue out of the ethical implications that credit must be given to the true author of the world’s greatest literature.
Edward de Vere was the Lord Great Chamberlain and the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. He was raised as a Royal Ward and from a very young age was educated in the sports and arts of nobility. Although disgraceful for a nobleman to waste time writing frivolous plays, Oxford as a young man wrote and staged the entertainment for the court. As an adult, he became engrossed in theatrical performances and frittered away his fortunes in support of several writers and actors (Friedman 13). During this time, De Vere also began writing several poems and plays. Much like Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the name of Mark Twain, Oxford adopted the pseudonym Shakespeare. Soon after plays appeared under the name of "Shakespeare," poems by de Vere ceased (Russell 5). Coincidently, the coat of arms of Lord Bulbeck, a third title of Edward de Vere, is a lion shaking a spear (Ogburn 10). De Vere was also known by the people as the "spear-shaker" because of excellence at the tilts and at jousting (Russell 5).
...e proper descriptions of Douglass’s experiences. These words also justify that he is brilliant and not no fool. His influential words in the narrative support the message of him being smarter than what some people may believe.
While this cultural phenomenon transformed Italy and began to spread to other parts of Europe, the insular nation of England lingered in the middle ages. The old social orders were still in place and the art was still focused primarily on religious matters, as opposed to the Renaissance's humanist art. One member of an aristocratic social order in England was Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was the son of a successful business man, and his father used his connec...
Looney, J. Thomas. "Shakespeare" Identified in Edward De Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1920. Print.
the 6th Earl of Derby, who was interested in drama, and became a patron of a
Essentially, Gray believes that no-one person is a singular author, but rather there are multiple collaborators. Gray is a couple weeks ahead of his time by elaborating the differences between many of the theorists we will discuss in class notably the differences in ideology between Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. It is important to note that Gray not only furthers the concept of multiplicity in terms of authorship, but he presents new foundations for how to approach the contested topic: “debate over authorship has often been those of ‘who is the author?’ and ‘what is the author?’ both of those questions may be more profitably answered by asking instead ‘when is the author?’ and ‘how does the authorship happen?’” (Gray, 107). Gray emphasizes the point that the initial birth of authorship is not the key point, but rather what the extenuating circumstances surrounding the author that is more important.
William Shakespeare, poet and playwright, utilized humor and irony as he developed specific language for his plays, thereby influencing literature forever. “Shakespeare became popular in the eighteenth century” (Epstein 8). He was the best all around. “Shakespeare was a classic” (8). William Shakespeare is a very known and popular man that has many works, techniques and ways. Shakespeare is the writer of many famous works of literature. His comedies include humor while his plays and poems include irony. Shakespeare sets himself apart by using his own language and word choice. Shakespeare uses certain types of allusions that people always remember, as in the phrase from Romeo and Juliet, “star-crossed lovers”.
“William Shakespeare." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 14. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 142-145. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
In modern days, writers that make poems, plays and other writings use up to about 7,500 to 10,000 unique words. Back in Shakespeare’s time, he was known for using up to about 29.000 unique words in his works. On his own he developed nearly 3000 words in the English language.
Shakespeare got much recognition in his own time, but in the 17th century, poets and authors began to consider him as the supreme dramatist and poet of all times of the English language. In fact, even today, no one can match his works or perform as well as he did. No other plays have been performed as many times as Shakespeare’s. Several critics of theatre try to focus on the language of Shakespeare and to take out excerpts from the literary text and make it their own resulting in various persons, poets, authors, psychoanalysts, psychologists and philosophers.