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October 1991
Reply by Matus
by Irvin Matus
Tom Bethell's case for Oxford demonstrates once again that in the thousands of
works on Shakespeare and his plays, something can be found to support any
notion. It also demonstrates that, as usual, Oxfordians must often resort to
outdated scholarship to find support for their notions. Apparently, modern
scholarship is as discouraging to them as the contemporaneous records of
Shakespeare and his theater are treacherous.
These problems are on display in Bethell's assertion that there is "abundant
evidence" to support the earlier dating of many plays. The dating of plays
after 1604, he writes, is merely a matter of "giving breathing space to
Stratfordian chronology," and he states that "perhaps as many as a dozen plays
were written before the Stratford man reached his thirty-first birthday," in
1595. Well, as Bethell himself notes, the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres,
published three years later, gives a list of plays by Shakespeare, and the
total is still only a dozen. According to Oxfordians, Hamlet, King Lear, Henry
V, and The Winter's Tale, at the very least, had been written by this time, and
yet they do not appear on Meres's list. Where are they? Even if we give the
Oxfordians the benefit of the doubt and add these four plays to the ones on
Francis Meres's list, and then combine them all with every other Shakespeare
play that scholars acknowledge to have been written before 1598, that still
means that more than half of the thirty-eight plays attributed to Shakespeare
would have to have been written (or "revised") between that year and Oxford's
death six years later, in 1604. By then only twenty-three plays that are
certainly Shakespeare's had appeared in published editions or been mentioned in
printed sources. It doesn't seem like the Oxfordian chronology allows much
breathing room at all.
It also lacks a logical trajectory. Only two of the works on Meres's list of
early plays--Richard II and Henry IV--are unquestionably works that have the
earmarks of Shakespeare's mature command of drama and dramatic poetry. We know
of references to nine plays written by Shakespeare during the period that ends
in 1604 other than those mentioned by Meres, and again, only one or two are of
high dramatic stature. By the time of Oxford's death, then, none but a handful
of Shakespeare's most accomplished works had been either mentioned in print or
published--quite a suggestive point in itself. But the main point is this: The
traditional Shakespearean chronology, which has the author living until 1616,
and places much of Shakespeare's best work after 1604, takes his artistic
development over time into account. The Oxfordian chronology, in contrast,
really offers nothing more than a confused redating of a scattering of plays.
Bethell claims that the King's Men were attaching Shakespeare's name to plays
that he didn't write (for example, The London Prodigal and A Yorkshire Tragedy)
in order to sell them to printers--something he is sure that the real
playwright would not have allowed if he was still alive. This assertion is a
reiteration of that unshakable Oxfordian fallacy that the rights of authors
were recognized in Elizabethan-Stuart England. In fact authors had no rights.
And especially not in the eyes of the Stationers, a guild concerned only with
the rights of its printers and publishers. And there is every reason to believe
that some publishers took advantage of this, which is nearly certainly the case
with A Yorkshire Tragedy, registered to Thomas Pavier. He was also involved in
the publication of the falsely dated, falsely attributed Shakespeare volumes
printed in 1619, which possibly played a part in the King's Men's attempt to
have the Lord Chamberlain forbid publication of any of their plays. There is
absolutely nothing to support Bethell's accusation that the acting company was
involved in the printing of the books he mentions. Why should they have been?
At the time, they had at least a dozen unpublished plays that WERE by
Shakespeare.
Another of the supposed mysteries mentioned by Bethell is the absence of an
author's name in the early quartos, as though this were a condition peculiar to
Shakespeare. Rather, it was so common that it was a major factor in the
attribution of Mucedorus, Fair Em, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton to
Shakespeare. A substantial number of plays were published anonymously, and when
catalogues of plays began to appear, in 1656, the compilers tried to find
authors for orphaned plays. In fact, occasionally they would find an author for
a play even if it already had one. For instance, although Thomas Heywood's name
appears on the title page of The Iron Age (1632), one compiler awarded this
play to Thomas Dekker. Needless to say, their methods weren't very exacting in
attributing anonymous plays. Thus The Revenger's Tragedy was probably assigned
to Cyril Tourneur on grounds no better than that he had written The Atheist's
Tragedy--but the former is now generally accepted as being by Thomas
Middleton.
What is especially frustrating to Oxfordians, whose fundamental tenet is that a
country bumpkin could not have written the plays in which they perceive a man
of vast learning, is that they cannot find even one of Shakespeare's
contemporaries who agrees with them. Bethell blames Jonson for "spread[ing] the
idea that Shakespeare was nature's child"--but no one seems to have disputed
this. When someone did reply to Jonson's frequent reproaches of Shakespeare for
"want of Learning, and Ignorance of the Ancients," the reply was most
enlightening. The "ever-memorable John Hales is said to have told Jonson that
"if Mr. Shakespear had not read the Ancients, he had likewise not stolen
anything from 'em (a fault the other [Jonson] made no Conscience of), and that
if he would produce any one Topic finely treated by any of them, he would
undertake to show something upon the same Subject at least as well written by
Shakespear."
Hales's remarks reflect what Shakespeare was most often praised for in his own
age: his mastery of the language. This is heard even in Bethell's quote from
the poet William Barksted: "His song was worthy merit." Of course, Bethell
cites this as evidence that Shakespeare was in the past tense when the poem was
written, in 1607. What, then, of the 1611 epigram "To our English Terence, Mr.
Will. Shake-speare," in which the author, John Davies of Hereford, addressed
the dramatist in the present tense?
But the epigram holds more of interest. Why should Davies have likened
Shakespeare to Terence? He probably intended to suggest nothing more than that
his contemporary's sense of language and style was akin to that of the Roman
dramatist from the second century B.C. The two men have taken on other
similarities since. Because Oxfordians are certain that a tradesman's son from
a nasty provincial town could not have written the plays of a Shakespeare, it
is worth noting that Terence was brought to Rome as a slave from Carthage, a
very unfashionable city in its age. What is even more striking is that in
Terence's lifetime, because of his lowly origins, it was rumored that his plays
were actually written by noblemen. It appears that Shakespeare's contemporaries
were more democratic-minded than Terence's. Or some of mine.
Bethell does nothing to rebut Justice Stevens's criticism that "the Oxfordian
case suffers from not having a single, coherent theory." In fact, Bethell
offers still another Oxfordian variant on the role of "William Shakspere, of
Stratford," in the Oxford drama. First there is the familiar version; the
"front man" paid off to "ensure his return to that dreary community," where he
would be kept "out of sight so that his glaring disqualifications for the role
of the dramatist would not queer the game," in the words of Charlton Ogburn.
And now the variant: "Shakspere" endowed with a share in the Chamberlain's Men
and left to put his glaring disqualifications on constant display as a
"factotum and manager." While we anxiously await whatever story Oxfordians
eventually settle on, let's consider that both current versions concede that
Shakespeare was at some time a part of the London theater scene. Isn't it odd
that in an age when even monarchs and (if we are to believe Oxfordians) their
councillors were fair game for satire, there is not a hint that anyone sent up
the fellow who hung around the playhouses as not being the same man who wrote
those plays?
Of course, Oxfordians are in total agreement that the praise of the earl for
comedy by George or Richard Puttenham, echoed by Meres, is an indication of his
virtuosity. But there is no reason whatsoever to believe that Puttenham or
Meres was referring to anything but the comedies written under Oxford's own
name. It is interesting what company Oxford keeps in The Arte of English
Poesie. He is paired with Richard Edwards in his facility for "Comedy and
Enterlude," just as "the Lord of Buckhurst [Thomas Sackville] and Master Edward
Ferrers...deserve the highest price" for tragedy. Not only are these men not
known to have written anything after 1580, but also they wrote in the highly
formal style that signified refined taste. There is no reason to doubt that
Oxford was right at home among them--and none would have been at home on the
popular stages. Furthermore, if the Oxfordian chronology is right, and his
popular plays were revised versions of court plays, then many of his histories
and tragedies had been written by 1589. But all we hear about from Puttenham is
Oxford's facility for comedy, and that is all we hear about in Palladis Tamia,
nine years later.
Most of all, the case of the Oxfordians relies on what they perceive to be
stunning parallels between Oxford's life and Shakespeare's plays. Sometimes
this calls to mind nothing so much as Fluellen, the Welsh captain in Henry V,
who finds striking parallels between King Harry and "Alexander the Pig" ("is
not 'pig' great"), especially:
"There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river at
Monmouth....'tis all one; 'tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there
is salmons in both."
For instance, Oxford had been to Italy, and Bethell finds scholarly support for
Shakespeare's familiarity with its topography. But somehow we find nothing of
its people in the plays set in Italy; Shakespeare's characters are always of
contemporary England. But Oxford's character was definitely influenced by his
Italian travels. Therefore, whereas Bethell discerns "Shakespeare's frequent
disgust with court life," it is curious to find the Duke of York in Richard II
complaining of the court's taste for the
"Report of fashions in proud Italy,
Whose manners still our tardy apish nation
Limps after in base imitation."
Historically, Richard's court aped the fashions of France. It was Elizabeth's
court where Italy was in fashion, and no one, perhaps, was more in this fashion
than the Earl of Oxford. Gabriel Harvey, a supposed admirer of the earl's,
wrote a poem that, according to Virginia F. Stern, in her biography of Harvey
(1979), "depicts with ridicule the attire and mannerisms of an Italianate
Englishman and was probably conceived as a veiled caricature of the Earl of
Oxford." In fact, John Lyly recognized Oxford's image in it and called it to
his patron's attention, purportedly in the hope of damaging Harvey's standing
with the earl.
Which brings us to another issue that looms large in Oxfordian arguments:
Shakespeare's allegedly privileged knowledge of court life. As a player in an
acting company, Shakespeare was in the service, first, of the Lord Chamberlains
of the Household (who, as their title implies, were actively involved in court
life) and, second, of the King himself. Shakespeare would have been at court
frequently, not only as an actor but also as one of a company whose members,
under James I, were Grooms of the Chamber, attendant at state functions. It
would appear that Shakespeare had ample opportunity to pick up both firsthand
and secondhand knowledge of the court. After all, some of the most extensive
and intimate information we have of the doings in the court of England during
Shakespeare's lifetime is in the letters of John Chamberlain, a commoner with
an uncommonly wide circle of friends.
Finally, Oxfordians would have us believe that the earl's last years are
shrouded in impenetrable obscurity because he was indulging in his guilty
passion. Those years turn out to be not so impenetrable that there isn't good
reason to believe that literature was by no means "his main interest in life."
What was his obsession from June of 1594, when the Chamberlain's Men was
formed, to March 15, 1595, when we first hear of Shakespeare's association with
the company? On March 20, 1595, Oxford wrote to Lord Burghley, "This last year
past, I have been a suitor to Her Majesty that I might farm her 'tins.'" One
year later tin still seems the subject that excites his Muse. And in June of
1599, when the Globe was just finished, or nearly so, Oxford was still harping
on tin. Curiously, in the enormous Shakespeare lexicon the word "tin" never
once appears.
As it does not seem that there is much that partisans of Shakespeare and Oxford
can agree on, it is pleasant to close on a note of accord with Tom Bethell when
he calls attention to Sonnet 76 and its declaration
"That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed."
We don't need an Oxfordian decoder (as Sonnet 76 does) to find a secret message
that reveals the author's name. Just turn to Sonnet 135, which begins,
"Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy WILL,
And WILL to boot, and WILL in over-plus."
and ends with a sentiment a Shakespearean can regard fondly:
"Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one WILL."
Copyright ©1991 by Irvin Matus. All rights
reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; October, 1991; "Reply by Matus"; Volume 268, No.
4;
pages 79-82
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