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As an historian, I have a long-standing interest in “historical mysteries”, but in reviewing this book, it is necessary to say that I am not a “conspiracy theorist”, and am not gullible. In a book I wrote some years ago in which I discussed some notable historical mysteries, I examined the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, an event which has been the subject of wild speculation ever since, and concluded, based on the evidence, that the Warren Commission got it completely right: there was no conspiracy of any kind; JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, who in turn was fatally shot by Jack Ruby, acting alone.
This review appears in October’s Quadrant.
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It is necessary to make this clear when reviewing Elizabeth Winkler’s book, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, which has attracted a good deal of attention in America, where it was first published a few months ago, and is now available here. In Shakespeare Was a Woman—provocative, no?—she discusses possibly the oldest and perhaps most controversial of the well-known historical mysteries, that the works of William Shakespeare were written by someone else, and not by the man who was born in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564 and died there in 1616, and was, by 
profession, an actor in London. For about two hundred years, many well-informed and highly intelligent people have believed that the real author was someone else; there are many dozens of books published over the years which attempt to show, at the least, that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s works, or, more ambitiously, that a particular person was the real author rather than the Bard of Avon, such as, among others, Sir Francis Bacon; Edward De Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford; Sir Henry Neville, or someone else. Elizabeth Winkler also discusses the possibility that the real author was a woman, such as Mary Sidney.
Before dismissing these claims as hokum, one might consider why they are so widely believed. William Shakespeare had no education past the age of about thirteen, yet his plays contain references to around 500 other works, some in foreign languages not yet translated into English. His plays contain eyewitness descriptions of towns in Italy and elsewhere, although there is no evidence that Shakespeare ever left England. Not a single book thought to have been owned by Shakespeare has ever been traced, although he must have owned a great many. Apart from six signatures on legal documents, he left no literary manuscripts apart from what is known as “Hand D”, a portion of the play Sir Thomas More, which he apparently wrote in collaboration with four other playwrights. Shakespeare left no surviving letters, diaries or commonplace books with his thoughts or ideas, or anything else.
Many of the known facts of Shakespeare’s life simply do not fit in with the known chronology and evolution of his supposed works. For instance, all critics point to a great break in the nature of his oeuvre in 1601, when he began to write his great tragedies, starting with Hamlet in 1601 and Othello in 1602. It seems apparent that something traumatic occurred to the author at that time, perhaps relating to the Essex Rebellion of 1601, when Shakespeare’s alleged patron, the Earl of Southampton, was sent to the Tower. But nothing whatever occurred to William Shakespeare at that time which could account for the dramatic change in his outlook and writings. Speculation and unanswered questions about the meaning of the famous and mysterious Dedication page of Shake-spears Sonnets, published in April 1609, would fill a volume in itself, starting with whether its 154 sonnets were published with or without the knowledge and permission of their author, and who “Mr. W.H.”, the volume’s “onlie begetter”, might have been. The life and career of William Shakespeare are, in fact, far from straightforward and are shrouded in considerable mystery and surprisingly little direct evidence.
Elizabeth Winkler, a journalist based in Washington DC, has performed a great service in taking “anti-Stratfordianism”, as doubt about the orthodox view is known, and bringing it into mainstream public discussion via a major New York trade publisher. As a result, she has received scathing comments and reviews from the high honchos of the Bard in academic life, who overtly or covertly give proof to the claim made on the book’s front cover, that any serious discussion of this topic is “the biggest taboo in literature”.
Unfortunately but understandably, she spends more time discussing Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, today the leading candidate as the real author, but also one of the weakest of the “candidates”. Oxford was born in 1550 and died in 1604, and thus cannot have been the real author of Shakespeare’s works, which were written between about 1590 and 1613. In particular, Oxford could not have written The Tempest of 1611, which was unquestionably based in part on the so-called “Strachey Letter” of 1610, penned by the survivor of a shipwreck on the reefs of Bermuda in 1609. Most “anti-Stratfordians” have in fact been making their claims about the wrong man, although the real author is actually not too difficult to find, despite not being mentioned in speculation on this subject until about twenty years ago.
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
by Elizabeth Winkler
Simon & Schuster, 2023, 399 pages, $49.99
William Rubinstein held Chairs of History at Deakin University and at the University of Wales, and is a frequent contributor to Quadrant
Alexander Waugh – son of the great Auberon and grandson of Evelyn – seems to be all over this subject and is adamant that Edward De Vere is the man who wrote the plays.
As for the Warren Commission, the less said the better. I know of no-one with a rudimentary interest in JFK who takes its findings seriously.
Yes – the Warren Commission was a rigged hearing, even on the comments of Warren himself. Anyone who looks at the behaviour of the FBI regarding the autopsy of JFK could not take any of its findings seriously. And as for the magic bullet….
All we know is that no-one can be definitive but, I’m afraid, the attempts of the powers-that-be to clothe the conspiracy theories in caricature do not work. With videos freely available showing the security being told to stand down from the back position on the car and the ignoring of eyewitness testimony-it is the supporters of the official version who look like the oddballs.
I can assure you that the Earl of Oxford did not write Shakespeare’s plays. Alexander Waugh has written very perceptively, however, on why it wasn’t Shakespeare.
I don’t accept that an education to the age of 13 years in England in the 1500’s was only basic, in fact it would have been far more than the vast majority of Englishmen would have had, and I’ve read that it was at a grammar school, where he would have been taught Latin and Greek.
If he was above average intelligence he would have been able to pick up other languages, in the absence of all our modern day distractions.
I’ve read all of his 37 plays a number of times and a number of his sonnets, and not noticed anything that would suggest to me a man of intellectual curiousity, and flexibility, could not have written them, as I left school at 14 myself and am of average intelligence.
What comes through to me, paraphrasing H.R.H. Edward V111 when he was Prince of Wales, is his love of England as an Englishman, and his intense interest in the workaday world and the quite courage to be found in the simplest human heart
So I would never question that he did write his 37 plays, and though no doubt there were others around him who had some input I sum him up using Longfellows’ words, “The great poet who foreruns the ages anticipating all that shall be said ” and his works as “The rarest essence of all human thought”.
Really. And ?
Who is that candidate, not mentioned until about 20 years ago ? I have never studied this question, but it does sound rather interesting. Is it known from language analysis that we (essentially) seek a single hand for the works ? Thanks William.
Cheers
Yes, I was wondering whether this piece was only half finished.
Ed Blount is the real Bard but Shakespeare conveniently took the credit.
Perhaps the most interesting question regarding the literary works attributed to any author is whether they were in fact written by one person. The books of the Bible have been subjected to very intense analysis and debate on this score over many generations. Did one person write all of each of the epistles attributed to the apostle Paul? Who was the apostle Paul, anyway? Did a person called Isaiah write the book that appears under his name? Perhaps the reason why we feel the need to answer this lies in our need to schieve a level of understanding of complex literature that is consistent within itself, in the sense that the thoughts of an individual tend to cohere in ways consistent with the concept of a whole personality. When the physical origins of these works are lost in the passage of time, there is rarely a definitive answer. In asking the question ‘Who was Shakespeare’ we are looking for historical evidence, but also trying find ways of aiding our understanding of the works and their significance. Combined, the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare (the latter being relentlessly secular) have provided for the English-speaking world the core literary content which defines a shared worldview and culture. Both are precious. While the Bible is remarkable for its multiple authorship – even the great translation was the work of several men – the works of Shakespeare do give the impression of a single author, although the controversy regarding his identity remains.
A book I’d recommend as an ancillary to the Shakespeare quest is Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning: The murder of Christopher Marlowe’. Nicholl mentions in passing and dismisses absolutely the theory that Marlowe wrote the plays credited to his contemporary, but the reader might not be quite so convinced after absorbing all Nicholl has assembled on the spycraft and intrigue that surrounded Elizabeth’s court and administration.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reckoning-Murder-Christopher-Marlowe/dp/0099437473
Until recently I’d fancied Marlowe as the author, in much the same way as others speculate on the identity of Jack the Ripper or the fate of Judge Crater, and while I still believe Kit is in the running, some recent scholarship of which the author of this review is aware makes a case for another prime suspect. Expect more on this at QoL.
But back to Marlowe, who, if official accounts are to be believed, was stabbed through the eye in a drunken brawl over who would pay for dinner, meaning he could not have written the latter works without the assistance of a medium and ouija board.
Ah, but that’s what makes Nicholl’s book such a treat (apart from the author never penning an inelegant sentence). Marlowe had gone under cover at Jesuit seminary in Belgium for spymaster Walsingham, whose patronage, promotion and protection he enjoyed. His alleged killers were likewise tied by various degrees of separation to Walsingham, and the ‘death’ came when Marlowe was under pressure for his more outrageous antics and opinions.
A convenient moment to vanish perhaps.
I’ll leave it there, except to note, with apologies to Kit, that he who loveth not tobacco and the Shakespeare mystery is a fool.
There is a considerable amount of scholarship by a wide ranging group of academics that say that Shakespeare was a recusant Catholic under Elizabeth I. This theory is supported by his father’s will, which prayed for the intercession of Mary and the saints, and which is believed to have been a facsimile of one circulated by Edmund Campion; by the fact that his mother’s family, the Ardens, were recusants – to the extent the Shakespeare’s uncle was executed for hiding a priest. This theory explains his so-called ‘missing years’ – theorised to have been in the service of recusant nobility. It explains all the (very Catholic) references in his plays, at a time when any priest in the audience would have been arrested and executed.
It explains his references to: purgatory (in Hamlet);
His father dying ‘unhousel’d’ and unshriven – without confession and viaticum (communion – the last rites). It explains Juliet’s comments in confession and his very empathetic portrayal of very Catholic priests such as friar Laurence. This was in an era when such portrayals may be compared with Christopher Marlowe’s version to ascertain the popular stereotype.
The so-called ‘lack of education’ fails to take into account the fact that Shakespeare was educated by four tutors, two of whom became priests and one whose brother was executed for being a priest. Shakespeare also purchased a house in London which was used as a getaway for priests to escape to the continent by boat – the purpose of his ownership of this house is speculative but it reveals the extraordinary persecution suffered by Catholics under the Tudor regimes – probably one reason why those educated in the Protestant version of history find various things such as Shakespeare’s ‘absence’ or ‘lost years’ a mystery. It also explains the strenuous attempts to impose another author on his works.
The biggest question for ‘anti-Stratfordianism’ is why the popular conception of Shakespeare as the author stuck in the first instance, if it isn’t true. Perhaps that question has been answered by historians, I wouldn’t know.
I like to think that ‘Shakespeare’ was the name of a syndicate of writers and the man himself was the shop front, using his acting talents to sell it on the stage. Perhaps textual criticism knocks this idea out of the water, but Mills and Boon managed it 🙂
In truth I was glad to escape his (their) clutches at the end of high school. I can’t keep up with the arcane prose even when I’m reading it, though I’m sure it’s very good because everybody says so. Had we been taught about some of those 500 referenced works it may at least have held some historical interest.
The best book on the question of the authorship of Shakespeare’s works that I have read is James Shapiro’s ‘Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?’. He remarks (p.8) “I should say at this point that I happen to believe that William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed to him, a view left unshaken by the years of study I have devoted to this subject”.
Shakespeare definitely did not write those plays and sonnets. No. They were all penned by some impostor making use of the same name. Everything fits that simple thesis.
As the author of this review, my opinion is that Sir Henry Neville (1563- 1615) wrote the works of Shakespeare, and that the enormous amount of evidence which has been amassed since he was first proposed in 2005 makes this a virtual certainty.