Was Shakespeare a woman? | The Chris Hedges Report

The notion of a grand literary deception surrounding the works of William Shakespeare is probably one of the less offensive conspiracy theories in circulation. Within literary academia, however, it's absolute heresy. Yet many writers and thinkers, from Walt Whitman and Mark Twain to Henry James and Sigmund Freud, have long insisted that there’s more to the tale of The Bard than the conventional historical account. The world of Shakespeare Truthers opens up a litany of enticing possibilities. Who really was Shakespeare if not Shakespeare? A collection of unattributed writers? A disgraced contemporary? A woman? Elizabeth Winkler, author of Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies joins The Chris Hedges Report for an overview of the taboo world of alternative Shakespeare theories.
Elizabeth Winkler is a journalist and book critic. Her essay “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, first published in The Atlantic, was selected for The Best American Essays 2020.
Studio Production: Adam Coley, David Hebden
Post-Production: Adam Coley
Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
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[@violinhunter2]

My understanding is that William was actually a 10 year old little girl when he wrote all of her stuff. It only took her 3 years to write all of it and then she went ahead and became a four star chef and finally a relief pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, which is what she really wanted to do since age 3.

[@jaired9823]

Hilarious. Thank you for this (and that).

[@clonie9963]

😂

[@ThatMans-anAnimal]

Mary Sue hollywood trope sneaking into our historical revisionism now.

[@terryrobinson2324]

well done

[@kenjohnson6326]

Thank you. This absolutely makes it as much sense as the drivel on this episode.

[@karennielsen9248]

I sent this to my brother who replied that he took his Shakespeare classes from Greenblatt at Berkeley in the 80s and that the whole class was about asking questions about how Elizabethan society produced such writing and who the author of the plays was, etc. He thought it was strange that he should now be held up as one of the priesthood preaching the single man author theory.

[@xofpi]

Because he’s since written books arguing for that maybe?

[@Nullifidian]

The answer to that is that Shakespeare authorship deniers (hereafter SADs) are not interested in what _really_ is taught in literary studies these days. Instead, they like to straw-man the field and claim that commonplaces of literary history and criticism are the panicked responses of a collapsing paradigm. For example, I've seen SADs claim that the wide acceptance of co-authorship in early and late Shakespeare plays reflects a retreat in the face of the authorship juggernaut, when in fact Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first 18th century editor, claimed that _Pericles_ was co-authored as early as 1709. George Wilkins was identified as the probable co-author in the mid-19th century, which is also when it was established that _Henry VIII_ was a collaboration between John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Not to mention that the first quarto of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (1634) was attributed on its title page to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare and that there was a similar attribution of co-authorship by these two of _Cardenio_ in the Stationers' Register in 1653. They also think that not emphasizing biography in literary criticism is a response to there allegedly not being any biographical support for Shakespeare's authorship, when in fact it's a field-wide approach for _all_ authors that is the result of formalist modes of criticism arising over a century ago. Biographical criticism went out with ladies' finishing schools and the daguerreotype.

[@smaycock2]

🤣

[@karennielsen9248]

Yeah - he gets that. He’s surprised the guy changed his entire theory.

[@matthewkopp2391]

The one thing I can guarantee is the plays were written in collaboration with the troupe. Plays still are. You don’t know what you got until you work shop it. The idea of the single brilliant playwright is 19th century English empire convention. Actors workshop the work but also go out for a beer and a great joke gets added to the play.

[@DanEMO592]

It kinda sounds like comedians writing a sketch together.

[@KingMinosxxvi]

In collaboration as a means of inspiration yes. But poetry (all of the actual words) are so singular that they clearly come for one person. This is the most prolific voice in all of literature and is tottally distinct from any other playwrite. However the troupe is certainly a continual catalyst...which of course would mean S was not a woman.

[@xofpi]

@@KingMinosxxviyou just said the poetic aspects were clearly from a single person. Why not a woman?

[@KingMinosxxvi]

@@xofpi If he drew inspiration from being in ongoing collaboration with theatre ...that is to say acting and directing..he couldn't have been a woman because there were no women in the theatre of Shakespeare's time and place . (other people who sew comsutmes and sold beer)

[@xofpi]

@@KingMinosxxviThat’s based on an “if,” which of course doesn’t rule out other sources of inspiration (travel to Italy, life experience, reading of classical and contemporary literature in multiple languages, etc.), which of course does not rule out a woman as one possible author.

[@stevepotter145]

“You came to talk about the play,” he said. “Let me discourage you. It was written to entertain people. Like horror movies. It isn’t literature, it doesn’t mean anything. Wharfinger was no Shakespeare.” “Who was he?” she said. “Who was Shakespeare. It was a long time ago.” -- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

[@ulquiorra4cries]

The Courier's Tragedy is singly the most amusing thing I've ever read

[@Stellarcrete]

I am a veteran. I am a chemical engineer. I am a student. I am a doctor. I am a surgeon. I am a poet. You don't know me. My work isn't in your records. My children were taught to fend for themselves and be happy. They weren't taught to be like me on the outside. They were taught to be like me on the inside. You can't know me from my resume and you can't know me from my children. My wife is Chinese. I am not. I am not indifferent. I don't revere the mystery. I don't exclude the author. Hamlet was the only good one. The rest were derivative. It could be one man was so busy writing plays and suing for $200 that he ignored his daughters or maybe he taught them to be smart and their mark was more than a mere mark. It could be that he wrote one good one and then phoned in the rest and lived the life of LBJ in his garden after building the great society. It could be that he was a petty business man and he collected a bunch of plays, but then why didn't he put them in his will, because a business man would, wouldn't he? It could be he was a con-artist, but then wouldn't he be MORE certain to put them in his will and fight over them in court and flaunt witnesses that he was the author? I wrote my first poem in 6th grade after barely learning grammar. He clearly picked some stuff up as an actor that he hadn't learned from a prairie box with desks in it. If there was a superhuman peering prophet that could have done it, wouldn't he just be a man with 2 daughters and a catholic wife? Clearly the person that wrote Hamlet wasn't a showoff. Of course I want to know who wrote them. I want to know who wrote each word, but you haven't given me a solution and all your propositions have at least as many questions as the humble recluse businessman. I like the brunette, the video, the channel, the book and the question, but I don't know and so I default to yea it was just some guy.

[@geoffreynhill2833]

Hi, Chris! I don't think authors in those days were lionised in the way they've become since. Moreover, the mere fact that Shakespeare was literate would have put him well ahead of the game in Elizabethan times. His near-contemporary Aubrey noted that Will's father wasn't a butcher but a man of some civic consequence and that The Bard himself had sufficient education to be a schoolmaster. We should also bear in mind that "theatre" wasn't the spiffy thing it is today, it was the TV and Movies of that time.😉(Green Fire, UK)

[@zarni000]

You are very superficial in your reasoning

[@seanh4841]

@@zarni000 So is your comment

[@albertfinster4093]

It beats "Someone else did it, I know for sure, but I don't know who, I don't know how, I don't know why, I don't know when, but I definitely do know. So stop asking questions that make sense."@@zarni000

[@paulwooton4390]

​@@seanh4841right. What was the "superficial" part of the original post?

[@seanh4841]

@@paulwooton4390 You've just proven the point I made. No substance.

[@George_in_Howden]

To be a man, or not to be, that is the question. I think the whole world knows the answer.

[@michaels.5778]

??

[@stanleyrogouski]

If you doubt that an actor like Shakespeare could master the law, I would suggest you read a book about Francis Drake and take a look at a reconstruction of The Golden Hind. How in the world did Drake sail around the world in that? Perhaps Elizabethan "man" was simply more daring and less specialized than modern man. Or let's look at the 19th Century. Both Lincoln and Frederick Douglass mastered the English language in a way the typical Harvard grad today could only dream of, yet neither went to high school.

[@castlerock58]

Why couldn't he just research the character and read some law books and ask some lawyers if his manuscript got the law right? If not, he could make the changes suggested by the lawyer. Maybe some of his fans were lawyers and they were happy to talk to him. How do modern writers write characters without any knowledge in the character's field of expertise? Shakespeare didn't need enough law to argue a case in court. He just needed enough to make a character sound like they had mastered the law. He just needed to imagine some dispute that some characters had and find out what the law says about that situation and write it into his play.

[@Nullifidian]

@@castlerock58 Also, it's worth pointing out that Shakespeare's legalisms are no more abundant than in the works of most of his early modern colleagues. His legal expertise was overstated by 19th century lawyers and judges-cum-dilettante literary scholars who wanted to claim the National Poet for their profession and also by Baconians who wanted to argue that Francis Bacon, who was a trained lawyer, wrote the works. Neither of them bothered to contextualize the works of Shakespeare in their historical era, nor could they until beginning the late 19th century because the plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries were long out of print. But yes, there were many people he could have asked and books he could have read. Ben Jonson read Plowden's _Commentaries_ to write _The Case is Altered_ , so Shakespeare could have as well. In this respect, it's also worth noting that one of the books that might have William Shakespeare's signature in it is _Archainomia_ by William Lambarde, a study of ancient British law. The case for its authenticity is compelling, because the title page where the signature occurs was bent and folded over and nobody knew it existed until the Folger Library acquired it and straightened the page out. The previous owner, ironically, was a Baconian and he never mentioned the signature. Furthermore, the signature is over a printed design that renders it almost invisible to the eye, so if a forger were attempting to make a fake, they chose a strange place to do it, and it's odd that it was never made a selling point, since jacking up the price is the usual reason for forgeries. However, it would have been perfectly visible in Shakespeare's day because printer's ink was made with lampblack and linseed oil, but Shakespeare would have likely used iron gall ink (given the bleed-through on the page), which would have originally shown as very dark against the printed pattern. Plus, the lawyers did love a play. One of Shakespeare's plays was originally written for the Christmas Revels at Gray's Inn: _The Comedy of Errors_ . And some of the lawyers loved plays so much that they became playwrights. John Webster, John Marston, and Francis Beaumont were among some of the people who had studied at the Inns of Court but thrown over the law for literature, and Thomas Kyd was originally a "noverint", which is an early modern term for a legal scrivener (from the common legal formula _noverint universi per praesentes_ , "know all men by these presents"). And, there's also the fact that Shakespeare's own father, John, was a justice of the peace and a magistrate in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was because of his civic duties in that line that he was given a coat of arms in 1596, which made William a second-generation gentleman, and thus entitled to be styled a gentleman or "gentle" (think "gentle Shakespeare" in Ben Jonson's poem in the frontispiece of the First Folio), and addressed as Master, Mr., or M., and all three modes of address are used in the First Folio alone.

[@allanc2827]

Ironically, many people believe someone could not have written the plays without a classic education, which is the height of elitism, especially British elitism.

[@niemann3942]

That is because there is so much classical learning on display in the works that even traditional scholars have to simultaneously claim that, on the one hand, Shakespeare didn't know much Greek or Latin ... and on the other that Elizabethan grammar schools provided the equivalent of a modern graduate degree in the classics from an Ivy League university. Yes, really.

[@Nullifidian]

@@niemann3942 Please be specific about the degree of "classical learning" on display in the works and make sure that you're citing only those parts that Shakespeare actually wrote and which weren't written by his collaborators. For example, I'm fully willing to admit that the passage in _1 Henry VI_ , Act I, sc. 6 where Charles says: 'Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won; For which I will divide my crown with her, And all the priests and friars in my realm Shall in procession sing her endless praise. A statelier pyramis to her I'll rear Than Rhodope's or Memphis' ever was: In memory of her when she is dead, Her ashes, in an urn more precious Than the rich-jewel'd of Darius, Transported shall be at high festivals Before the kings and queens of France. ...does show an uncommon amount of classical learning. However, _1 Henry VI_ is one of the plays that Shakespeare barely wrote, with stylometry only crediting him with the rose-picking scene in the Temple garden in act II and the Talbot scenes of act IV. This example of excessive name-dropping was probably written by the University Wit, Thomas Nashe.

[@antinorest]

If it wasn´t Shakespeare but a group of writers, the works have a unity of style that is amazing for a collective effort. I believe this is the work of one man only

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

He had collaborators and occasionally revisers. We know this for exactly the reason you stated. You can practically hear the gears grinding in Pericles and Timon of Athens, as the play shifts from one writer to another.

[@horaceosirian8993]

You haven't begun to harm the idea that Shakespeare's works were the result of a group project, since the group could easily have consisted of a range of experts on such topics as law, ancient history, philosophy, geopolitics etc, who supplied knowledge and ideas, and edited those of others, for factual accuracy, plausibility etc, and a writer or writing team, who parsed the narrative ideas into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, dialogue, sections, acts, and plays.

[@miahsaint-georges]

Jacobin should've included this topic in their Conspiracy edition. Someone call the C.I.A.

[@daveconstable6096]

I’ reading Shakespeare’s works the past while. I have the Norton door stopper of a collection. What I’ve noticed is that a lot of the writing is good enough to be Irish.

[@horaceosirian8993]

It's not inconceivable that he author was an invisible, six foot two and a half Pookah called Harvey.

[@PhatLvis]

Textual/stylistic comparison (even by the casual reader) eliminates most, if not all, of the Concealed Author candidates - such as, for instance, Marlowe; simply put: Marlowe is no Shakespeare. Broadly, the slate of popular candidates (Oxford, Bacon, et al) can be all but eliminated circumstantially as well. Alternative Authorship theories have been more like the claims of cryptozoologists than moon-landing doubters - harder to disprove definitively, but generally just as fanciful.

[@Nullifidian]

This is especially true now that we have computer-aided stylometry, which can be used across a range of quantifiable variables (e.g., frequency of light endings, frequency of contractions, etc.), and we have advances in the digital humanities like the latest edition of Early English Books Online (EEBO) with metadata (author, date, part of speech, etc.) that makes the job of stylometric analysis both easier and more precise. These advances haven't really come down to the rank-and-file Shakespeare denier yet (hell, they're still astonished by the fact that one can root literary analysis in something other than biography), but the writing is on the wall. We also have the three manuscript pages of Hand D of _Sir Thomas More_ linked with Shakespeare's signatures by paleographic analysis (and he signed his name to documents that identify him as being of Stratford-upon-Avon and a gentleman, and even being 48 years of age in 1612 in the _Bellot v. Mountjoy_ deposition) and the passage is a stylometric match for the rest of the Shakespeare canon. So it's really game over. They can go on playing their parlor games of trying to find biographical parallels or hidden codes, but unless they're dealing with _this_ evidence then they've lost.

[@andy-the-gardener]

rubbish. there is no writing from this bloke from stratford at all to compare anything with. the only shakey thing about william shaksper are his dodgy signatures. by far the best candidate is de vere who has now pretty much unofficially been accepted as the true author. its ludicrous even giving the stratford hypothesis the time of day any more. there is literally zero evidence the bloke could even write. but theres hundreds of good reasons why it was de vere. the two candidates are not remotely comparable. but the stratford myth is worth half a billion quid a year, so the tired old fable is perpetuated

[@dogglebird4430]

A person's background and livelihood is no guarantee of his intellect or even awareness of subjects like philosophy and classics. My grandfather was an avid fan of the Bard, knew and could recite his plays and understood their context and the allusions contained within them. My grandfather was a traveller - a gipsy who never had any schooling (fully self-educated), but lived the traditional lifestyle of his family collecting and selling scrap metal.

[@xofpi]

It’s one kind of sophistication to be able to read and understand Shakespeare. Another entirely to write Shakespeare.

[@dogglebird4430]

@@xofpi Shakespeare was unique. A literary genius. No amount of education would instil that.

[@xofpi]

@@dogglebird4430 This is circular reasoning par excellence.

[@dogglebird4430]

@@xofpi You don't understand the logical fallacy of circular reasoning. Look again at the process. I made the general point that: "A person's background and livelihood is no guarantee of his intellect or even awareness of subjects like philosophy and classics." I would have thought that claim was unassailable as the reverse would be: "A person's background and livelihood absolutely determines his intellect and his awareness of subjects like philosophy and classics". You then mentioned writing Shakespeare, which is something else altogether. That is a specific - so I responded with the specific claim that Shakespeare was unique - and that no amount of education would instil the ability to write as he did. There is no circular reasoning in that process.

[@xofpi]

@@dogglebird4430 Your claim seems to be that because Shakespeare is a unique kind of genius, any arguments about the education and experience required to write the plays is irrelevant because, as you claim, no amount of education (or experience, presumably) can explain the genius. In other words, WIll Shaksper's presumed genius is sufficient explanation for the astounding depth of education and broadness of experience that only seem to account for the "genius" of the plays. Shaksper has that magic quality, unique to him (though we have zero evidence of his employing it--or any other person in the history of Elizabethan or world literature where we can trace the experience and education of an author--other than the plays and poems "attributed" to him). No point asking questions beyond that because the magic peculiar to Will Shaksper explains it all. It's pure heresy and insanity to challenge this magic power WIll Shaksper, the litigious grain-hoarding bookless paperless bumpkin, possessed.

[@miyojewoltsnasonth2159]

00:33 I studied literature at the University of Toronto. Maybe those of us in Canada are different than Americans and Brits, but we talked fairly extensively (5 or 6 one-hour lectures) in my Shakespeare course about the possibility that somebody besides William Shakespeare wrote the plays and sonnets attributed to him. That was in the mid- to late-1990s.

[@Nullifidian]

Speaking as an American, I'm glad that my experience in Shakespeare classes was different. If I had to sit through 5-6 hours of discussion of completely unfounded and unevidenced pseudo-historical drivel it would strike me as being like a biology course devoting several class sessions to the proposition that God separately created all living species 6,000 years ago.

[@castlerock58]

@@Nullifidian It might be a useful exercise if the professor showed the students why it is pseudo-historical drivel. They are bound to have heard of the conspiracy theories. Universities are no longer teaching critical thinking. The basic conspiracy theory argument is easily refuted by pointing out examples of people who had some of the greatest minds in history despite having little formal education. Abraham Lincoln had little more formal education than the Bard and he did not need some aristocrat to write his speeches. They are among the greatest speeches ever written in English or any other language. Lincoln was a genius with access to books. That is all Shakespeare needed to be.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@castlerock58 I'm not sure I agree, on the principle that the way most people at university encounter Shakespeare is through literature class, where discussing historiographic methods would just be a distraction from the focus of the class. However, if they're studying the early modern period as a historical period, then they should be able to understand why Shakespeare authorship denial is bad history, but then that would ideally something they could work out for themselves because the flaws are not exactly subtle in most of the deniers' arguments. Even as a high school student participating on a Shakespeare newsgroup I could see the flaws in the authorship claims, albeit I was unusually interested in this era of literature already-hence my participation there.

[@MsColl90]

This is interesting but! They skirt around the only real contemporary evidence of who wrote the plays. Shakespeare’s contemporaries and collaborators in the Kings Men theatre company acknowledged his authorship when they published the first folio.

[@xofpi]

Read the book.

[@mysticone1798]

Wrong. NONE of the literary luminaries of the time even knew who Shakespeare was PRIOR to his first plays being introduced at the theaters. They typically kept company with each other, but NONE of them had ever heard of Shakespeare!!! This is strong evidence in favor of alternative authorship.

[@Nullifidian]

@@mysticone1798 So his contemporaries only knew who he was after he became a well-known thanks to his successful plays, and they didn't psychically intuit his existence prior to his doing anything to bring himself to their attention. Thanks for that, Captain Obvious.

[@andy-the-gardener]

wrong. ben johnson wrote the preface, commissioned by de veres daughter and wife, and the first folio was paid for by the earls of pembroke. those actors were mentioned by johnson to sow requisite levels of confusion, but they could never have afforded to pay for its publication. only very wealthy aristocrats could have possibly done that. and we absolutely know deveres family were involved. its proof enough by itself who wrote the works, but there are hundreds of other pieces of evidence besides that.

[@miyojewoltsnasonth2159]

6:14 "And there's no trace of how he acquired this knowledge. It's sort of miraculous." It's hardly "miraculous." There are plenty of people who acquire knowledge by reading deeply and independently of university courses. *Most people would consider Einstein to be fairly knowledgeable, right? But he barely had any formal education past high school.*

[@gortnicktu3177]

Actually, that's not true. Google is your friend.

[@Nullifidian]

Yeah, I've got to pull you up on this. Einstein had an earned doctorate that he was awarded in 1906 (though his doctoral dissertation had been submitted and approved in the previous calendar year). A better illustration is Ben Jonson. He was Shakespeare's younger contemporary and widely recognized as one of the most knowledgeable Classicists of his era. But he had no university education and was pulled out of school at 16 to be apprenticed into the bricklayer's trade against his will by his stepfather.

[@horaceosirian8993]

That there are plenty of people who acquire deep and broad knowledge independently of formal education is unarguably true beyond question, and in every single instance, except perhaps one, irrelevant to the topic, because none of those people were William Shakespeare, and while their knowledge & erudition might be remarkable, it's hardly a miracle. What's miraculous isn't _that_ it happened (supposedly), rather that it happened without leaving any trace whatsoever, and a litany of confusing, suspiciously incongruous, counter-intuitive areas of evidence, which, interestingly enough, is a situation maintained by academic & professional gatekeepers who police the boundaries of education & debate viciously, and seemingly automatically & somewhat independently, suppressing genuine enquiry into the truth, and evidence thereof.

[@leighfoulkes7297]

This is this just elite Englishmen getting upset that a man from the lower classes could write better than any of them? It does make sense that guy got obsessed with plays, memorized them inside and out, learned how to write and then through obsession and then become the greatest writer of plays.

[@AdamGeest]

Questioning Shakespeare’s authorship is hardly a taboo topic in the Academy. So consistently has this issue been raised in the past that scholars have dignified it with its own peculiar and cumbersome designation, namely, antistratfordianism.

[@Nullifidian]

They don't really mean "taboo"; what they mean is that they want it taught in academia as a legitimate topic without having to go through the rigorous scholarly work to demonstrate its legitimacy. Scholars popping up from time to time to deliver a well-deserved smack-down to their specious and evidence-free arguments isn't the kind of attention they want. They might as well expect biology departments to offer courses on so-called "creation science" or "intelligent design", and creationists also make the equivalent claim about how they're shut out by an unfriendly and "atheistic" orthodoxy.

[@horaceosirian8993]

That the mere question is taboo is self-evident in the 'anti' part of antistratfordian; genuine inquiry / truth-seeking doesn't imply opposition.

[@Nullifidian]

@@horaceosirian8993 Then take it up with the Shakespeare-deniers, because they're the ones who came up with the "anti-Stratfordian" term in the first place. The first reference I can find to "anti-Stratfordian" comes from a Shakespeare-denier named Appleton Morgan writing in what is evidently his own journal, _Appleton's Journal_ , in 1880. In any case, genuine inquiry and truth-seeking are not high on the Shakespeare-deniers' agenda, in my experience.

[@noah5291]

Winkler comes off as a mainstream Bourgeois pseudo academic, this doesn't come off as revolutionary or rebellious to anyone except people who's fingernails are always nice looking and have never slept outside.

[@MsColl90]

‘Slept outside’?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

She might have done some light glamping.

[@mysticone1798]

Part of the Woke Feminista agenda, and there's Chris Hedges solidly behind it!! LOL!

[@EndoftheTownProductions]

John Heminges, Henry Condell, and Richard Burbage, three actors of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a famous acting company that included William Shakespeare, were given money by William Shakespeare of Stratford in his Last Will and Testament in 1616. Two of these actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were responsible for having 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in the First Folio in 1623. Ben Jonson's eulogy in the First Folio clearly praises Shakespeare as a great writer. He states that "thy writings to be such, /As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much." Heminges and Condell also praise Shakespeare as a writer, stating that "he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you, to praise him." These are "his works" and "his papers" that they are publishing. He is clearly presented as the writer of these works in the First Folio. The Last Will and Testament of William Shakespeare of Stratford clearly connects him with the 1623 First Folio through Heminges and Condell and it is clear that Shakespeare is presented as the author of the plays.

[@cathjj840]

Such ease and perfection reminds me of Mozart, genius in another realm and another era. Seems impossible that they exist, and yet they do

[@AbbeyofTheleme]

Well done. This interview is silly.

[@mysticone1798]

There were more than just a few doubters of Shakespeare as an author among the literary luminaries of the day, if only because NONE OF THEM KNEW WHO HE WAS, AND NONE KNEW FROM WHERE HE RECEIVED HIS EDUCATION. Shakespeare was an actor and Globe Theater owner, but he wasn't a writer. No evidence of it, but plenty of reasons to doubt his authorship, EVEN IN HIS OWN TIME!!!!

[@desperatelyseekingrealnews]

@@mysticone1798 so?

[@niemann3942]

*Two of these actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were responsible for having 36 of Shakespeare's plays published in the First Folio in 1623.* Okay, so ... How did two actors with no literary or publishing experience to speak of manage to just "have 36 of Shakespeare's plays published"? (We're also often told that they just "put together" the Folio, as if that was the easiest, most effortless thing in the world.) And not only that, how did those to actors manage to publish a Folio -- a lavish, luxury format that, according to the Folger Library, was reserved for the most important and prestigious of works (history, theology, etc)? (Heminges, by the way, was only a part-time actor, and was also a grocer, who on occasion lent some of his grocer's assistants to the theater.) Where did the money to print hundreds of copies of a luxury 900-page folio come from? Who were the money people backing the project? How did two actors manage to just walk in off the street and convince a publisher/printer to spend years working on a lavish, luxury volume of writings which, on the other hand, we are told were viewed as "trash" -- the equivalent of modern TV scripts and "pulp fiction"? These are logical questions that traditional scholars don't even bother to ask or attempt to answer (but which they deride other people for trying to answer). You are also ignoring the fact that the mentions of those actors in the will were interlineated afterthoughts. Also, that, unlike Shakespeare scholars who have to take Ben Jonson at face value -- "as if he were George Washington," as Winkler puts it -- Jonson scholars understand that Ben Jonson was the LAST person who could be taken at face value; that he was a master of walking the line of ambiguity and seeming to say one thing, while actually saying the opposite. Also, that Ben Jonson scholars have pretty well shown that all the introductory material in the Folio was written by Ben Jonson -- including "Heminges and Condell's letters." (Unless, that is, those two actors -- one a grocer -- also just happened to typically write using reams of classical allusions which just happened to parallel those found in the works of Ben Jonson.) If it is indeed the case that Jonson wrote the letter credited to others, then the First Folio is a lie and nothing in it can be trusted.

[@ivanbeatenov6587]

Chris really screwed the pooch and shit the bed on this one hard - lost loads of respect for the guy. Far and away the best explanation is that facts about Shakespeare’s life have been lost to time. Far greater than, a vast conspiracy during his lifetime to conceal the true author of his works, which don’t reveal particular depth of learning and are replete with anachronisms and historical errors.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Not to mention geographical ones. He gets nearly everything about Italy wrong. And this a guy whose theater was a block from one of the busiest seaports in the world.

[@JohnAllenRoyce]

Can't believe this clickbait garbage came from Hedges. Tons of respect lost.

[@jonathanjackson6161]

it's Elizabeth Winkler who wears blinkers not Professor Wells or other scholars who focus on the grainy data in Shakespeare's text, and shy away from murky guesses about authorship. If more is known about the education of Ben Jonson and Marlowe because they went to Oxbridge, that doesn't mean that only a formally educated could have written such plays. Clever people soak up the knowledge around them with almost mysterious facility and knowledge was vibrant in Shakespeare's world; the English language held power then that we can only gawk at today. No, like his father, Shakespeare was a master craftsman of the theatre who used the tools of his trade to express the genius of his age.

[@Nullifidian]

Just a correction: Ben Jonson didn't go to Oxbridge. In fact, in terms of formal education his situation is on a par with Shakespeare's: we _infer_ that he went to a grammar school, but we can't, strictly speaking, prove it. We think he went to the Westminster School, but it's not because his name is on any class rolls. It's just that he referred to "his master Camden" in private conversation with William Drummond of Hawthornden (and, incidentally, referred to Shakespeare as an author in the same bunch of chats) and dedicated a poem to him. William Camden was headmaster of Westminster School when Ben Jonson would have been attending. Instead, Ben Jonson became the most erudite writer of his age by self-education as an adult, which is the very thing that the authorship deniers imply that Shakespeare was unable to do. The reason that Ben Jonson is better-attested than Shakespeare is that he lived 20 years longer, didn't retire to the country but died in London, and was so thoroughly associated with the royal court. Indeed, for ten years between 1616's _The Devil is an Ass_ and 1626's _The Staple of News_ , he wrote _no_ plays for the public theatres and just wrote verses and masques for court performances. Shakespeare was also, to an extent, associated with the court as a member of the King's Men and the Groom of the Chamber, but he didn't pen works for the court; he just wrote and acted in public theatre plays that the king then brought in to have staged for holiday festivities (especially Christmastide). Plus, of course, Ben Jonson was a relentless self-promoter.

[@mysticone1798]

An author of the Shakespearean works having had no formal literary education is about as likely as a janitor who can't do math coming up with Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's just not plausible, given the level of creativity and the amazing productivity. It seems likely that many of the plays had been written long before they were introduced as Shakespeare's works in the theater.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@mysticone1798 He did have a formal literary education... in grammar school. He was thoroughly grounded in the Renaissance humanist curriculum of the day based on close study of the Latin writers as advocated by Erasmus, Melancthon, della Mirandola, and Ficino. John Bretchgirdle, the Stratford-upon-Avon vicar, was a former Oxford don and also a schoolmaster at Witton in Cheshire, and his grammar school curriculum included Erasmus, Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ , Terence, Mantuan, Tully [Cicero]. Sallust, Virgil, Horace, "and such others as shall be thought convenient". Bretchgirdle's protégé at Oxford was John Brownswerd (or Brownsword), who was the man he hired as schoolmaster and was teaching there when Shakespeare would have begun his studies. Brownswerd, in addition to being an Oxford grad, was also a Latin poet of such repute that he is praised in Francis Meres' _Palladis Tamia_ . If an early modern student got a formal education in literature, it was given to them at the grammar school level. The Oxbridge universities were essentially still vocational schools for training priests. They didn't have MFA creative writing programs and literature degrees.

[@castlerock58]

@@mysticone1798 It is as likely as an Indian clerk who was educated at the local school being one of the greatest mathematicians of all time or a boy who was born in a log cabin becoming president of the US and writing some of the greatest speeches in English or any other language with no formal literary education. Lincoln read books. That is all Shakespeare needed to have done. If you have one of the greatest minds in history who leans to read in a local grammar school all that he needed to do was get involved in theater and writing plays and having access to the books he needed. He might have a mind that is one in 500 million. People like that don't need much formal education. They teach themselves from books, thinking and observing nature and human behavior.

[@mysticone1798]

@@Nullifidian It's no wonder that theories about alternative Shakespeare authorships are so common and so believable, given the pathetically weak arguments on the other side, like yours!! Grammar school for youth is insufficient for such sophisticated writing as the Bard's. Also, writers were being educated and trained at universities like Oxford and Cambridge as far back as the 1500's, so your claim there is a false one. It's obvious to all, especially Sh. contemporaries, that the man named Shakespeare was NOT the author of the works. Many suspected it way back then, for many reasons, and many more suspect it today. There is NO real evidence that Shakespeare was the author, which in itself is the biggest clue that he wasn't!!!

[@stanleyrogouski]

It would really be funny if in 500 years there's a conspiracy theory that Frank Capra's movies were really written by Franklin Roosevelt. "That little Italian immigrant couldn't have possibly understood America so well. Only an old stock WASP could have written Meet John Doe."

[@niemann3942]

*Meet John Doe* was written by Robert Riskin, from a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell.

[@apollocobain8363]

Capra did not write his movies. For example, "It's a Wonderful Life" is the product of about 5 writers (depending on how you count them). Based on the short story and booklet "The Greatest Gift" self-published by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1943, which itself is loosely based on the 1843 Charles Dickens novella. The screenplay is by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra and Jo Swerling. "It Happened One Night" and "Lost Horizon" were written by Robert Riskin (who was married to Fay Wray). "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" by Sidney Buchman and Myles Connolly.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@apollocobain8363 So not Franklin Roosevelt. Glad that's cleared up.

[@qarljohnson4971]

Yeah I suspect that most of Shakespeare's oevre was a collective effort. There are some rather curious tales about his grave(s). One of my fave bookstore's name, "Shakespeare & Company" on the Paris Left Bank, twigged me to this possibility.

[@anastar37]

Enjoyable discussion, but not as enjoyable as just reading a play.

[@peterlangbridge4628]

His plays were actually written by his wife, Ann Hathaway, who as everyone knows, is also a famous Hollywood actress.

[@mysticone1798]

And all this time I thought it was Elena Rubenstein!!!

[@missricka6801]

I for one found this a welcome break from current political discussions. One sub theme I found of particular interest is the politics in the rarified world of upper academia of which I only had a glimpse into from the perspective of a woman friend who was in her own right a world renown researcher in the field of genetics.

[@marcyfan-tz4wj]

a welcome break indeed even if shakespeare's identity seems as unsolvable as who shot jfk with at least 317 more years involved in the cover-up. i admire chris and his guest and listened intently.

[@mitchyoung93]

Shakespeare shot JFK

[@albertfinster4093]

No he didn't. It was Bacon 9or another ham).@@mitchyoung93

[@allanc2827]

'World renowned' does not necessarily mean smart or correct.

[@marcyfan-tz4wj]

i had to look and see if i dragged out the words "world renowned" but i didn't. being world renowned about something completely unknowable 400 years later isn't much to boast about but i enjoyed what she said never-the-less.@@allanc2827

[@MenelausMO]

Surprisingly for a show devoted to politics and specifically class warfare and class consciousness this interview never touched on the idea that the anti stratfordians held it unlikely a poor middle class man of Shakespeare’s background could never have written the plays was a staple of English class snobbishness

[@castlerock58]

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin and was dirt poor but he ended up as the greatest US president and wrote some of the greatest speeches in the English language. One of the greatest mathematicians in history was a clerk in India in the 1880's. He had only been educated at the local school. I doubt Homer had an education as we understand it. Really great minds can figure a lot out for themselves. If a mind like that has access to books, they can do anything.. Being one of the ten smartest people of your century matters more than your class. Formal education may not make that much difference to a mind like that.

[@niemann3942]

That's the usual "snob" strawman -- that the claim is that "a poor middle class person couldn't have written great literature." In all my years involved in the authorship question, I have never once heard that claimed by a doubter. It is how the issue is rewritten to avoid looking at what the issue really is. The argument is that there is little to no evidence that *this one particular individual* had the experience and education necessary to write what is displayed in *that one particular body of work*.

[@Nullifidian]

@@niemann3942 And the reason for doubt about his experience and education is that "this one particular individual" was not a member of the aristocracy. The fact that they're not raising equivalent doubts about all of the Bankside playwrights is precisely because they're snobs: they only want to deal with the _best_ . They couldn't care about the second and third ranks of playwrights. Plus, most of them are so ignorant that they're barely aware Shakespeare had any contemporaries in the drama. It's impossible to get them to read anything by Shakespeare's fellow playwrights and damn hard enough to get them to even read Shakespeare himself. Most authorship deniers charge into the debate with no greater understanding of the works than that provided by their high school or undergraduate curriculum.

[@PninianPnin]

The idea that Winkler always pedals of the Shakespearian 'priesthood' would perhaps hold more water than it does if the 'authorship question' was a lively field of debate in early modern scholarship outside the immediate remit of Shakespearian studies. She loves to dig her claws into figures like Stanley Wells and James Shapiro but is conspicuously incurious and hazy when it comes to the broader consensus among literary scholars and historians of Early Modern England working outside Shakespeare studies, who are of course considerable in number. It's also very funny to hear Winkler railing against Bardolatry when the contemporary exponents of the Shakespeare authorship question are frankly the purest examples of fervid Victorian reverence alive today. If Winkler were seriously interested in working against that strain she could have written a serious, accessible study of the intellectual and literary cultures of Shakespeare's female contemporaries. But the drawback there is that you don't really get to pose as a hard hitting journalist or appear on quite as many podcasts! So instead, she brings them to a popular readership wrapped in theoretical absurdities and crushed under the plays of William Shakespeare.

[@allanc2827]

William Shakespeare didn't write the plays. Someone else named William Shakespeare wrote them.

[@wuhaninstituteofvirology]

watched the whole interview - missed the part where "shakespeare's a woman" (?) at the end it's hypothesized he may have been christopher marlowe (a man), or another guy (a man), but a woman? how/who

[@albertfinster4093]

Yes, saying that Shakespeare was the author of his plays and poems was a huge conspiracy. But why this fraud was perpetrated is never explained. Shakespeare in his own day was not a revered figure. Surely there was no real reason why a true author would be so frightened to be known as a brilliant writer. Shakespeare was more of a businessman interested in the money he earned than the works he produced. So are many artistic people. Shakespeare's folio was published by members of his acting troop, who would have known whether Shakespeare wrote his works. None of these people even hinted that anyone else wrote these works. No one who knew any of the other figures purported in any way to have known these people as the author of these works. These works were massive. They are the works of a lifetime. All of the people who are mentioned had vast accomplishments in their lives. When did they have the time to write all of these plays and poems? How was it that none of them was ever found out, given the fact that these works in progress would have lying around? Which author would have been so reluctant to be praised for creating such masterpieces? Why and how was this conspiracy carried out? This is usually never explained by the doubters. They pick the usual suspects, explain their reasons for believing in them, but do not provide one piece of evidence regarding how they produced these vast works, how they covered up their authorship, why they covered up this authorship, or why no one in Shakespeare's ever caught on to this conspiracy, which must have lasted for years. If you want to blow the lid on this fraud, I want proof. Give me the name of the real author, let me know when and how he or she wrote these works, why they covered up their own glory, and provide some real proof, not merely speculation. Their is a saying, "Extraordinary theories demand extraordinary proof." Give me that proof, and I will agree to your supposition. Without that proof I say that old Will is still the guy.

[@mysticone1798]

Google Marlovian Theory. There are plenty of reasons the author would have wanted to conceal his identity, not the least of which was his indirect criticism of the Queen of England and her government.

[@niemann3942]

*But why this fraud was perpetrated is never explained.* It's been explained repeatedly for years. It's explained in the very book this video is about. *Shakespeare in his own day was not a revered figure.* That's odd. In other comments in this very thread he is being described as "famous" and "acclaimed". He is regularly described as "the most celebrated writer of his time" and "hobnobbing with the most powerful people of his age." Until it's suddenly necessary for him not to be, that is. *Shakespeare's folio was published by members of his acting troop* Again, the regular claim which is *really* never explained: Actors weren't publishers. Theater companies didn't own printing shops. So how did a couple of actors with zero publishing and literary experience manage to just "put together" (the usual phrase) a huge, 900-page luxury volume that took years to complete, taking up hundreds of hours of time and labor in two different printing shops, which ended up costing the modern equivalent of about $275? And where did the money for all that work, and all those materials, come from? These are logical questions, but no one ever says anything beyond, "The First Folio was put together by Heminges and Condell" -- making it all seem like an easy, effortless piece of cake.

[@mysticone1798]

Typical establishment Shakespearean dolt wants PROOF of alternative authorship! Obviously, there are many obstacles to absolute proof, not the least being that THE REAL AUTHOR DIDN'T WANT TO BE KNOWN!!! DUH!!! The authorship of the works was being questioned IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME and at all times thereafter. Why??? Because the REAL writers of the time KNEW that a person such as S. the actor COULD NOT HAVE WRITTEN the works! They joked and poked fun at the idea of S. as the author, and it seems it was an endless source of amusement for them. You can say that old Will is "still" the author, but that doesn't make it the truth. The fact that S. authorship has been questioned for centuries, for many good reasons, is evidence enough that S. CANNOT BE PROVEN TO BE THE AUTHOR EITHER. You're back at square one with the rest of us for the foreseeable future.

[@mysticone1798]

@@niemann3942 The standard theory of S. authorship has no more proof to boast of than the theories of alternative authorship. The fact that, after all these years, the authorship of the S. works is STILL BEING QUESTIONED seems evidence enough that S. will NEVER BE PROVEN to be the author either.

[@Nullifidian]

@@mysticone1798 So you think that because you merely postulate a scenario of hidden authorship that therefore it must automatically be accepted? And the reason that people still question Shakespeare's authorship is not because of a lack of evidence, but because they _disregard_ the evidence that exists as their starting step. And once you do that, you can never be convinced of anything. They have to ignore all the title page attributions, all the Stationers' Register entries that record the author, the Master of the Revels' Accounts, and every single contemporary testimony from everyone who bothered to speak on the subject, many of whom knew Shakespeare personally and/or professionally or clearly knew a great deal about him and his antecedents.

[@theJDfromCA]

This theory was first espoused by Delia Bacon. "She hated William Shakespeare so passionately she lost her mind and her health trying to prove he didn’t write those plays. She dismissed him as a vulgar, illiterate deer poacher and “Lord Leicester’s stable boy.” She preferred to believe Francis Bacon authored the plays - and that she was related to Bacon (she wasn’t)." And to this day the tired old madness drolls on.

[@avlasting3507]

Interesting. It's called legitimate inquiry however.

[@TheJazzper1970]

Delia Bacon was wrong but much of your post contains inaccuracies or half truths about her. No evidence her later madness had anything to do with her passionately hating William Shakespeare or her work. As far as I know for most of her life she didn't claim to be related to Francis Bacon, though she may have claimed this later on, her mind may have been half gone by then.

[@xofpi]

I wonder why some people who have no apparent stake in the question are so hostile to the least curiosity about it. Care to explain what issue you have with this particular area of inquiry and why you have a visceral reaction to this kind of scholarship?

[@Alacrates]

I think she thought the Shakespeare works were written by a group of Elizabethans, one of which was Francis Bacon.

[@niemann3942]

Now go actually read about Delia Bacon in Winkler's book, to find out what she was really like (rather than just relying on traditionalists' character assassination depiction of her). For one thing, no, she didn't think she was related to Bacon, and disavowed that notion.

[@robbrown8483]

then there was Joe Brook a poor orphan whose dad died at age 50, known in his native country as J.S.Bach who became the greatest composer of the Baroque. How could someone of such humble lineage have written all those magnificent works? Does anyone seriously suggest they were composed by someone else? It appears that, like Will, the bard of Avon, he was a towering genius, case closed.

[@mysticone1798]

Nonsense. JS Bach was schooled by his father, had a prominent teacher, and attended formal education in music. HIs father and uncles were ALL musicians who held professional posts in music. Johann first played the violin and the harpsichord, before being introduced to the organ by one of his uncles. JS Bach has a long history of involvement with the musical world. His was not "humble lineage" by a long shot. Why lie when you don't know???

[@southpaw786]

Brilliant interview, thank you

[@brianbutler3318]

Young men with of Shakespeare’s social class received a thorough education, much of it focused on translating classical literature into both prose and verse. Unless a young woman’s father chose to educate her, she received no formal education.

[@bonniebluebell5940]

THE TRUTH of the matter. What we do know as opposed to "much ado about nothing" if there is no proof to back it up.

[@niemann3942]

So, which is it? On the one hand we're told he didn't know much Latin or Greek (just as the commenter immediately above claimed). On the other hand, we're told he got a "thorough education focused on translating classical literature into prose and verse." As I just replied immediately above, "And then Shakespeare scholars are forced to turn around and claim, on the other hand, that a rural English grammar school provided the equivalent of a modern graduate degree education in the classics." Both of those things can not be true. As I also wrote immediately above, "A few years before Shakspere is supposed to have gone there, the Stratford grammar school was listed as owning only one book -- a dictionary that was kept chained in the schoolroom." That constant claim which that is made about grammar schools of the time -- solely to shore up the Stratfordians' credentials -- is based on what some contemporary scholars' wrote of as an IDEALIZED grammar school education -- what it WOULD be. It does not mean it actually happened on the ground.

[@Nullifidian]

@@niemann3942 Well, then why don't you provide the evidence of how "it actually happened on the ground" in Stratford-upon-Avon when Shakespeare would have been attending there, and then we can discuss it. And, in fact, the inferences that historians make about Shakespeare's education are _not_ based on "idealized grammar school education", but on what the historical record has left us about what individual grammar schools taught and what curriculum was deemed necessary for students. For example, at Witton, where John Bretchgirdle taught, the curriculum was: " "the Catechism, and then the Accidence and Grammar set out by King Henry the Eight, or some other if any can be better for the purpose, to induce children more speedily to Latin speech; and then Institutum Christiani Hominis that learned Erasmus made, and then Copia of the same Erasmus, Colloquia Erasmi, Ovidius Metamorphoseos, Terence, Mantuan, Tully, Horace, Sallust, Virgil and such other as shall be thought most convenient to the purpose unto true Latin speech." Bretchgirdle later became the local vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon and had his protégé from his time teaching at Oxford, John Brownsword, appointed to the post of schoolmaster. Brownsword, for his part, was a Latin poet whose work was good enough to be noted and praised by Francis Meres in _Palladis Tamia_ . It seems unlikely that Brownsword would have been recommended for the job if he and Bretchgirdle didn't see eye-to-eye on what constituted a proper grammar school education.

[@vestibulate]

Is it possible that Shakespeare was a brilliant man who pursued knowledge on his own from a fairly modest beginning? And could he not have consulted friends, patrons and acquaintances as well for their contributions to learning? He lived in a period that saw an explosion in information and publishing and was heir to an extraordinarily rich tradition of popular art that included song and poetry. I've never seen a compelling argument disqualifying the man we know as Shakespeare from authorship of the works attributed to him.

[@walterenright8529]

Compelling arguments abound. Ask Mark Twain for just one in a long line. Individual brilliance without higher education or world travels is not good enough to convince. Absolutely no handwritten manuscripts or letters from Will of Stratford is compelling in their absence.

[@jonathan4835]

By "Is it possible" do you mean to accept that it is unlikely?

[@Nullifidian]

@@walterenright8529 We do have a handwritten manuscript. It's Hand D of _Sir Thomas More_ , identified by paleographic analysis as Shakespeare's based on comparison with his signatures and the passage is a stylometric match with the rest of Shakespeare's body of work.

[@bruceclark4754]

Much sound and fury signifying nothing, i'm afraid.Many have claimed various other people , other than the Stratford bloke are the author of Shakespeares works; Earl of Oxford, a whole society devoted to this, Christopher Marlowe, Elizabeth 2 etc etc, and the problem is that the evidence is so tenuous, even thinner than that for the afore-mentioned bloke from Stratford , that one could go on arguing the authorship til eternity with no hope of resolution. So, if youre so interested, go and find some facts. Its not that people havent tried. No doubt these academics worry about their cushy jobs, but until dispositive proof is found, taking the orthodox position is no less valid than all of the other possibilities. Until then, bemoaning this situation does indeed, to quote a bloke or blokess or a group of such, ( unless you subscibe to the alien intervention theory currently gaining ground) who may have been raised in Stratford upon Avon but almost certainly lived in England in late 16th and early 17th century, tis a tale told by an over eager jounalist/ wannabe Shakrspeare scholar, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

[@apollocobain8363]

The only writing (hand writing) we have that is associated with the Stratford Shakspere -- 6 signatures on legal documents -- disqualifies him as the author. His absence from all records of payments to play writers (eg. Henslowe's log book) and his lack of involvement with the publishing of works called "Shakespeare" also precludes him being a playwright but the SIGNATURES and the circumstances of those signatures makes it clear that Stratford was ILLITERATE. Stratford's father was illiterate and, more troublingly, his daughter was illiterate and never referred to her father as the author of anything. We can't rely on English Department professors to be experts in History, Accounting, Graphology or any of the other sciences which preclude Stratford Shakspere. An interdisciplinary approach is far more reliable and not subject to the politics of academia. No two of the signatures are alike. None spell the name "Shakespeare". None have a "e" after the "k" -- this suggests that his name was pronounced like "shack spur" or "shack spear". We also have references to someone called "Shaxberd" with the short a vowel sound. In short according to expert graphologists, legal scholars and historians, these signatures are either attempted by an illiterate man or made on his behalf. The six signatures are, in chronological order: “Willm Shakp”; “William Shaksper”; “Wm Shakspe”; “William Shakspeare”; “Willm Shakspear”; “By me, William Shakspear”. For a very thorough look at them and the laws surrounding them: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/TOX23_Hutchinson_Shaksperes_Signatures.pdf

[@YouDoTheShoot]

There is a considerable amount of evidence indicating that the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare were indeed written by him: 1. **Contemporary References:** Several of Shakespeare's contemporaries mention him as a writer. For instance, Robert Greene, a writer and Shakespeare's contemporary, refers to him in a pamphlet as an "upstart crow" who is "beautified with our feathers," implying that Shakespeare was already gaining recognition as a successful writer in his own time. Other contemporaries, such as Richard Barnfield and John Weever, praised his work in their writings. 2. **The First Folio (1623):** This is perhaps the most significant piece of evidence. The First Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death by his friends and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It contains 36 plays, 18 of which had never been printed before. The preface refers to Shakespeare as the author, and the book includes personal tributes by Ben Jonson and other contemporaries. 3. **Shakespeare's Acting Career:** Records from the period show that a William Shakespeare was a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), an acting company that performed many of the plays now attributed to him. It seems highly unlikely that the company would perform a vast number of plays from an unknown author while publicly attributing them to one of their actors. 4. **Stationers' Register:** The Stationers' Register, a record of books registered for publication in England, lists many of Shakespeare's plays and poems under his name. 5. **Legal Documents:** There are numerous legal documents from the time, including property purchases, that refer to Shakespeare as a writer. The scholarly consensus overwhelmingly supports Shakespeare's authorship. and to suggest there is no evidence to support the claim and that somehow Shakespear was randomly picked out of thin air is ridiculous. I appreciate the nuance of your effort, of which there is none. How did he do what he did ... maybe he was a savant.

[@brianbutler3318]

Thank you Mr. youdotheshoot! This comment section has been drowning in ignorance.

[@brianbutler3318]

@@sultanwhomever4911 I hope Chris Hedges reads this and responds to us in some way-I can’t believe he would leave these irrefutable arguments to whistle in the wind while his reputation suffers

[@mysticone1798]

The author was surely NOT A WOMAN, but it's equally implausible that Shakespeare was! There is NOT very much evidence at all that this actor was the author of the Shakespearean works, but PLENTY OF EVIDENCE that he wasn't. Prior to the earliest plays being introduced, THERE WAS NO MENTION OF SHAKESPEARE by his contemporaries, since none of them had heard of him, or knew in the least who he was!!! Compare this actual fact with Point 1 above by this poster, and you will have a very good idea of how Shakespeare apologists approach the issue. That is, with misinformation, omissions, and lies. Female authorship is out of the question, since there were no female authors known who might have had the talent, though there were indeed several male candidates. Find out more: Google "Marlovian Theory", "Shakespeare Authorship", etc.

[@Nullifidian]

@@mysticone1798 "Prior to the earliest plays being introduced, THERE WAS NO MENTION OF SHAKESPEARE by his contemporaries, since none of them had heard of him, or knew in the least who he was!!!" The earliest plays by Shakespeare were all anonymously published up until 1598, when the first quarto of _Love's Labour's Lost_ and the second quartos of _Richard III_ and _Richard II_ were published with his name on them. So are you saying that there were no contemporaries who mentioned Shakespeare before 1598? If so, you're wrong. The earliest identifiable reference to Shakespeare is in Robert Greene's _A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance_ , where Greene warns three of his playwriting colleagues, identified as Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, and Thomas Nashe, against continuing to write for actors, because the ungrateful actors have turned to playwriting themselves. He abuses a certain "Shake-scene" with a sly reference to his popular play that we now call _Henry VI, Part 3_ by saying "with his tiger's heart in his player's hide". He also calls him "an absolute Johannes fac totum [Jack of all trades]" and because of Shake-scene and other actor-playwrights like him advises his friends to abandon writing for the theatres and take up penning works for aristocratic masters. The theatres were closed by June 1592 due to an initial period of unrest and kept closed by plague, so the last time Greene had a chance to hear this line given was the beginning of summer at the latest. Which places the composition of the play in 1590-1591, _maybe_ early 1592 at the uttermost. Shakespeare is then identified as the author of _Venus and Adonis_ (1593) and _The Rape of Lucrece (1594), and _Venus and Adonis_ proves very popular, going into three more editions in the next three years (Q4 by 1596). _Lucrece_ is somewhat less popular, and gets a reprint in 1598. Also in 1594, his name is mentioned in the prefatory poem to Henry Willobie's _Willobie His Avisa_ in 1595 in a printed marginal note ("Sweet Shakespeare") to William Covell's _Polimanteia_ , and then in 1598 we have Shakespeare named as the author of _Venus and Adonis_ , _Lucrece_ , his "sugred sonnets among his private friends", and thirteen named plays in _Palladis Tamia_ by Francis Meres. Although this is the same year as Shakespeare's first credited plays, Meres' list includes works that were never credited to Shakespeare before (remember Shakespeare's name only appeared on three plays in '98), and some of them would remain unpublished and uncredited until the publication of the First Folio like _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ . Also, you couldn't just hit Ctrl-P to print.in this era. A book the size of Meres' had to be in the hands of the printer for at least several months or even a year or more because all the type was individually set by hand. Also in 1598 was Richard Barnfield's "Remembrance of Some English Poets" in _The Encomium of Lady Pecunia_ . And although 1598 is perhaps too early, this is also the earliest possible date that Gabriel Harvey could have written his marginal note to himself recording the popularity of _Venus and Adonis_ among "the younger sort", but saying that _Lucrece_ and _Hamlet_ "have it in them to please the wiser sort". The book he left his marginal note in, Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer, was published in 1598. It's an outside date and I just mention it for completeness.

[@mysticone1798]

@@Nullifidian I'm aware of the earliest plays NOT bearing the name of Shakespeare, but that this name was used some time later. That is exactly what I meant when I said his contemporaries had never heard of him, which they certainly HAD NOT when his name was first being used to designate authorship. The fact that NO NAME WAS INITIALLY ASSIGNED to the author is clearly A MUCH BETTER ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF ALTERNATIVE AUTHORSHIP than it is in support of standard theory!!! The REAL writers of the time often JOKED ABOUT SHAKESPEARE, and wrote many jests and veiled remarks about their doubts regarding authorship. The quote you provide in your history lesson about actors now writing their own plays is doubtless one of the jests of this sort where we can easily read between the lines. Shakespeare's contemporaries KNEW that no such actor could be writing the plays, and they wondered (as did many others) who the real author might be. It has become known to millions that Shakespeare was NOT the author, and the fact that the REAL author remains unknown relates to the rather obvious fact that HE WISHED TO REMAIN ANNONYMOUS.

[@lucypedrana7852]

This interview was brilliant. Thank you.

[@larrypetersen427]

The reason academia is such cowards , is that they ARE cowards. They do not fear being fired , so much as they fear having to bear eating lunch alone.

[@cheri238]

Thank you, Chris Hedges, for having Elizabeth Winkler, author of , " Shakespeare Was A Woman." I saw this when it first come on your program and I appreciate seeing this again. Shakespeare has always been upheld as the writer by elite colleges. I appreciate Elizabeth Winkler's courage and determination to find out more about the writings of Shakespeare. All the names mentioned were possibilities. As for myself, from what I have read about Shakespeare, I always concluded someone else had to have written it by someone scholarly or more than one. Thank you both, again. We all can agree that Shakespeare plays and sonnets will always be the top of the list of masterpieces.

[@Nullifidian]

What has Winkler done to "find out more about the writings of Shakespeare"? It's not even apparent, having read her book and _Atlantic_ article, that she has ever read any, and all she does is take the standard Shakespeare-deniers' arguments and regurgitates them uncritically. I could have written a better Shakespeare-denier book myself-though I never would because, unlike Winkler, I draw the line at lying to people.

[@waltermalcom3894]

Read the book

[@wuhaninstituteofvirology]

read it to me

[@matthewlevy4532]

I love Chris, but on this one I think he and his guest doth protest too much. She barely mentioned James Shapiro, whose book “Contested Will” lays out the evidence for the Stratford man, without any of the meanness she refers to.

[@ishyandmikkischannel8811]

Brilliant interview

[@bobhope5114]

Wow what a hard hitting piece...so relevant (sarc)

[@johntravena119]

When I read Shakespeare I think as much about the author him(her)self as the content of the work. As your guest says, the breadth of knowledge, the intricacy of the plot, in addition to the mastery of the poetic craft and originality of the language is so astonishing that you can never quite forget that Someone wrote this. It’s like when listening to Glenn Gould play Bach - his technique is so next level that you can never forget the wizard pressing the keys.

[@KingMinosxxvi]

himself

[@johntravena119]

@@KingMinosxxvi haha Most likely!

[@horaceosirian8993]

Guthrie Govan's solo in Drive Home, by Steven Wilson, hits me harder than Glenn Gould's Bach, but I'm a classical ignoramus, so don't ask me. Incidentally, Titus Groan was the 77th Earl of Groan, in the Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake. Gormenghast = GG = 77, is my point (obviously).

[@dbarker7794]

Since when is it "taboo" to question the authorship of Shakespeare??? When i was in school in the 70s it was a frequently and hotly discussed topic in the English dept. Many scholarly articles and books have been written about this debate.

[@richardwaugaman1505]

Yes, the taboo is alive and well. One Shakespeare newsletter sent me a book to review. I didn't hear from them for months after I submitted my review. Finally, they confessed they would never publish anything written by an authorship doubter.

[@gortnicktu3177]

There's a long history of careers built upon the Stratford liturgy, not to mention substantial sums of money. That should tell you all you need to know.

[@dbarker7794]

@@gortnicktu3177 Yes I am aware. But that doesn't tell me "all I need to know." Besides, my point is that there is no "taboo" over questioning Shakespeare's authorship. No taboo. You object, so show me the taboo!

[@gortnicktu3177]

@@dbarker7794 I suggest you begin by listening to the interview that brings you here. Hedges lays out that premise within the first 60 seconds, and it continues from there. But, there are other examples to be sure, including ample demonstrations in the commentary here.

[@cev12]

But the interview didn't even touch on whether Shakespeare was a woman...

[@d.thorpe2046]

I though it was an interesting conversation. Thank you.

[@spartacusjonesmusic]

I was once in a rather terrible little comedy film that revolved around this subject (I played Christopher Marlowe). It's fascinated me ever since! I look forward to reading Ms. Winkler's book.

[@leighfoulkes7297]

Everyone kept saying that it was Marlowe wrote Shakespeare but then you read Marlowe and his best work is insanely childish in comparison to that of Shakespeare's first plays!

[@spartacusjonesmusic]

@@leighfoulkes7297 Not sure I'd agree with that, but it's a long conversation and there should be coffee. ;)

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@leighfoulkes7297I would say it's the other way around. Marlowe was very grave in his writing, while Shakespeare literally invented the Yo Mama joke.

[@user96384]

ANTHONY BURGESS' FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY PUTS YOU IN THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE WORK: BRILLIANT.

[@stephenthestoryteller3139]

I need a new deep narrative. Fascinating conversation. Thx for enlightening us. I’m going to dig deeper 🧐

[@albertfinster4093]

Look into the speculation that many sonnets, especially sonnet 18, were about Hamnet, Shakespeare's son, and his early death in summer. Also the fact that Hamnet and Hamlet were very similar names.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@albertfinster4093Hamnet and Hamlet were, in fact, identical names. Hamnet Shakespeare was named for his godfather Hamnet Sadler, a local baker. Shakespeare made a bequest to Sadler in his will, though in it he refers to Hamlett Sadler. Sadler's own baptismal record and several Stratford town records also refer to him as Hamlet.

[@brianbutler3318]

Young men of Shakespearean times competed grammar school by about 12 and matriculated at Oxford or Cambridge at around 13, began Law School at the four Inns of Court around 16. By 19, they either went on a tour of Europe, or entered the clergy or attempted to attach themselves to the retinue of a powerful political family. Education up to age 12 lasted 10-12 hours per day and was motivated by the threat of the paddle, even for grammatical errors. The notion that Shakespeare, the son of a rich merchant, was poorly educated, is wildly inaccurate.

[@xofpi]

No hard evidence Shaksper attended the local grammar school, let alone Oxford or Cambridge. More to the point, what’s your evidence that “young men” generally-even young scions of the merchant class in that era-were well educated? In England’s deeply engrained caste system? I think you’re expressing a wish as if it were a fact.

[@vetstadiumastroturf5756]

Even if Will Shaksper did attend the Stratford School, it would in no way come close to accounting for the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience that Shake-speare displays. Traditional biographers go to great pains to explain how Shakespeare came by his vast knowledge, but there is no evidence to support their speculations.

[@Nullifidian]

@@xofpi And I think that you're expressing a fantasy version of Merrie Olde Englande that was conceived by the Victorians without actually examining the history of the era to see whether there was a "deeply engrained caste system" in operation in Shakespeare's day.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@vetstadiumastroturf5756 "Even if Will Shaksper did attend the Stratford School, it would in no way come close to accounting for the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience that Shake-speare displays." And that depth and breadth of knowledge would be...? Have you extensively examined the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries to be able to determine what a "depth and breadth of knowledge" would look like in the early modern era, or are you just measuring Shakespeare's knowledge against your own vast ignorance like most Shakespeare authorship deniers do? How do you account for the fact that numerous early modern figures said that Shakespeare's works were _not_ notably learned? Does that cause any doubt at all or do you think you know the early modern period better than the people who lived during it?

[@vetstadiumastroturf5756]

Why are you attacking me? You should be attacking the Stratfordians from the "POST early modern period" who catalogued all the various fields that Shakespeare demonstrates greater knowledge than mere proficiency, and none of which Shakespeare could have acquired without leaving a paper trail. These fields include but are not limited to Law, Botany, Ornithology, Seamanship, the Military, Courtly manners, Rhetoric, sport including falconry and tennis, animal husbandry, the bible... I do not at all doubt that the Stratfordians who catalogued Shakespeare's knowledge were right on in their research; if you disagree with me, then you are disagreeing with them, and you should take it up with them. Does it cause you any confusion trying to figure out who you are so supposed to agree with sometimes? I would think it's like cats and rocking chairs inside your little mind. @@Nullifidian

[@colonyofcellsiamamachine6175]

There are many books about shakespeare working with many collaborators, and plays are also routinely modified by many people including the players. It takes a village and not just 1 person to present a play.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

Thank you. The theatre is a collective art form.

[@maggieadams8600]

It's the author we value regardless of his or her name or social background; It's the writing that matters ultimately, and since it's attributed to Shakespeare, that was the author's wish be they Shakespeare or Lord or Lady must'vewrittenit. This is alternative narrative on authorship is no less conjecture, (though it speaks as though it's from on high.)

[@hohaia01]

I tend to agree with the professor, in a very real sense it doesn't really matter who created the works. The plays and poems are the stars.

[@EchoBravo370]

Good god, these questions have been swirling forever. This is not new conjecture. If naysayers can prove someone else wrote the plays, then bring it. If they can't, don't whine when others don't care about your questions.

[@hohaia01]

Questioning authorship is one thing, jumping to conclusions or guessing who might have been the author is pointless.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Questioning the authorship after one has seen the copious amounts of evidence that Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of his own works is also one thing. A stupid and pointless thing, but a thing nonetheless.

[@horaceosirian8993]

Investigating the evidence in an attempt to determine the truth isn't guesswork, Nimrod.

[@hohaia01]

@@horaceosirian8993 that's the point. There is no evidence so might as well stick with Shakespeare

[@andy-the-gardener]

@@hohaia01 bs. there is staggering evidence shake-speare was mainly de vere. its not really debatable any more unless you are enjoying part of the stratford fraud worth half a billion quid a year. i live 10 miles from the crappy little town and its common knowledge the entire story is a fiction.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@andy-the-gardener I would certainly stagger if someone finally presented some of this evidence. I've been asking for years and yet nobody has ever presented any.

[@stanleyrogouski]

I do think Shakespeare probably benefitted from a lot of improv with his actors, many of whom had probably travelled and some of whom probably dropped out of the university or studied law. The plays were works in progress during his lifetime and evolved as they were repeatedly staged.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

There isn't any evidence that his fellow actors had much education, but they definitely did travel. Three of them entertained the royal court in Denmark, for example. Living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, Shakespeare would not have lacked for information about places abroad, and yet he still managed to get nearly everything wrong about Italy.

[@jackdolphy8965]

Geeepers why cut the interview off like that. It was rolling along just fine and the interviewee seemed aok about continuing….. I’ll have to get her book.

[@JCMcGee]

Well....that was 20 min of absolutely nothing.

[@writeralbertlanier3434]

I found myself many years ago reading Shakespeare and eventually coming to the conclusion that William Shakespeare likely wasn't a writer and thus more than likely didn't write the plays and possibly poems/ sonnets attributed to him. In fact I wrote a blog piece doubting Shakespeare's authorship and the notion he was a writer a few years ago. The plays I have read clearly were written by a person who I.Knew Languages like French and Italian quite well. II. Traveled to Italy and knew cities and Italian regions well III. Highly conversant with law and legal procedures and customs IV. extremely literate and clearly conversant with many books and works likely in original languages not translated into English at the time V. Well acquainted with Court and thus the politics of the day. So a rurally raised Warwickshire man with no recorded basic education and no university education who eventually ends up becoming a tight fisted businessman who bequeaths no books or manuscripts to anyone in his will is the author of these extremely well crafted plays and sonnets? That sounds more like a plot of movie than plausible reality .

[@albertfinster4093]

So who did write these works? The plot of a movie beats a nothing burger any day.

[@writeralbertlanier3434]

@@albertfinster4093 "So who did write these works?" Thats a good question. Maybe it will be answered one of these days .

[@PKVeteran]

How about Francis Bacon for first candidate

[@Nullifidian]

I had a rather long response to this that has had to be broken into two parts. Part 1 of 2: "The plays I have read clearly were written by a person who "I.Knew Languages like French and Italian quite well." Then that wasn't William Shakespeare, because he _didn't_ know French all that well. You know the people who do know French well? The Shakespeare editors who have silently fixed his errant grammar and usage so that you don't have to pick your way through his solecisms. Unless you've actually read the original texts as they were printed in quarto and folio (I have), then you have no basis for making any conclusions about Shakespeare's grasp of the language. To give you just one example, Shakespeare evidently didn't know that the definite articles "le" took a plural. He evidently thought of it like English, where one would say "the" regardless of the succeeding word's number. Some of these errors might be excused on the basis of the fact that the s in "les" wouldn't be voiced, but that excuse fails when Shakespeare writes something like "le anges". As far as his grasp of Italian, there's actually very little Italian in the plays. We might infer some knowledge of Italian from the fact that he used Italian sources that were apparently untranslated, but there's nothing in that to indicate that Shakespeare had to be perfectly fluent. A background in Latin provided by the local grammar school would have given him an excellent basis for learning any Romance language (I studied Latin and Greek myself as a Classics major for a time, and it's helped me immensely to understand French and Italian, which is of great utility to me as an opera fan, since they're two of the major operatic languages). And a historical fact that casts a light on Shakespeare's knowledge of French (at least c. 1604) is that he was rooming with a French Hugenot family named the Mountjoys when Mme. Mountjoy roped him in to negotiate a marriage with Stephen Bellot, another French Hugenot refugee. Presumably his French, if imperfect, was nevertheless good enough to serve in negotiations between two native French speakers. "II. Traveled to Italy and knew cities and Italian regions well" And how do you know that Shakespeare _didn't_ travel to Italy? It wasn't an era of passports and checking in at customs. The only way your movements left a record is if you were a noble, a real bad boy, or both. This is yet again an instance in which you're excluding Shakespeare as the author on a basis that you can't prove applies to him. However, on the evidence of the works, he didn't know Italy all that well. For example, he thought that Padua was in Lombardy rather than Veneto. In thinking so, he was likely following the atlas of Abraham Ortelius titled _Theatrum Orbis Terrarum_ , where the name of Lombardy (in Latin, of course) covers most of northern Italy. He also believed that Milan was a seaport. He spent his whole life thinking that. It's widely agreed that Shakespeare's earliest play may be _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ , where the eponymous Veronese gentlemen go to the court of their "Emperor" in Milan (implying that Verona was a subject city-state to Milan, about which more later) by sailing on the tide. Later, in _The Tempest_ , Prospero recounts how he was ousted from the dukedom of Milan by his unnatural brother. He and Miranda were placed on board a barque and then sailed out to a rotten hulk anchored in the open sea. But strangely his tale neglects to mention the 120 km coach trip to Genoa, which is the nearest actual seaport to Milan. In no Italian-set play where we can determine what the political system is like does he get it entirely correct. For example, that Duke of Milan that Prospero supposedly was (and was also the "Emperor" the two Veronese gents were seeking in Milan)... he didn't exist. Milan was a dukedom, but the last Milanese duke died in 1535 without issue and the title passed to the Spanish Hapsburgs. So the Duke of Milan was the Spanish king, Felipe II, in Shakespeare's day, and if you wanted to see his court you had to go to Madrid, not Milan. Needless to say, Prospero would have had to have been deposed as Spain's king to lose the title of Duke of Milan, and you'd think _that_ would rankle more. Also in Shakespeare's day, Verona at this time did owe allegiance to a mightier city-state, but it was Venice, not Milan. Venice, famously a republic since the 8th century, was depicted by Shakespeare as being led by a Duke. Twice. Said Duke also apparently moonlights as a judge in what would amount to small claims court ( _The Merchant of Venice_ ). Shakespeare's vision of Italy seems to have been based on Stratford-upon-Avon where his father was magistrate, justice of the peace, and high bailiff (equivalent to mayor). But at least Shakespeare was consistent-albeit incorrect-between _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Othello_ . But with _Romeo and Juliet_ , he doesn't even _try_ to be consistent about its political situation. Verona is now an independent principality whose prince is a character in the play! (Needless to say, Verona wasn't ever a principality.) There are other things he gets wrong or strangely omits. For example, he manages to completely omit the canals in both _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Othello_ , even though he mentions the Rialto, which is the oldest bridge over the Grand Canal. Not that the characters seem aware that the Rialto is a bridge. They certainly make no mention of it. In _The Merchant of Venice_ , Jessica's elopement is planned to take place at the same time Shylock dines out. But the Venetian ghetto was locked at sundown. Jessica's evening escape and Shylock's meal were impossibilities that no one who had been Venice could have missed. There's more convincing local color about Italy in the works of Ben Jonson and John Webster, neither of whom are known to have traveled to Italy, and yet no suspicion is raised that some toff wrote their works. "III. Highly conversant with law and legal procedures and customs" This, again, doesn't describe the author. Real historians of law have taken on this subject and shown that Shakespeare's knowledge of the law is not any greater than most of his contemporaries (see _The Law of Property in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Drama_ by Paul S. Clarkson and Clyde T. Warren and _Shakespeare's Legal and Political Background_ by George W. Keeton). He's middling in terms of the frequency of his legal analogies, and at best he can only be described as somewhat of a more precise observer of the little bit of law he does know. But he still had blind spots. For example, in _Hamlet_ he invents the word "jointress" because he apparently didn't know the proper legal term "jointrix". And yet _again_ , even if the argument were granted it doesn't _exclude_ Shakespeare. Shakespeare's father was a magistrate and justice of the peace. That's one avenue Shakespeare could have learned law through. Shakespeare authorship deniers love painting Shakespeare as litigious, but they don't think he could have picked up law in the process of fighting these lawsuits. Another avenue. Moreover, there were numerous playwrights who either had legal training (e.g., John Marston, John Webster, etc.) or who worked as law clerks (e.g., Thomas Kyd). And Ben Jonson managed to write a whole play based on the law called _The Case is Altered_ . It was one of his earliest works, though not published until decades later, and we know Shakespeare acted in at least two of Ben Jonson's plays. Furthermore, Shakespeare was known to the law students at Gray's Inn, for whom he wrote _The Comedy of Errors_ for the 1594 Christmas Revels. The law students loved the theatre no less than the apprentices in less cerebral fields. So there are _numerous_ ways that Shakespeare could have become familiar with the middling amount of law he did know.

[@Nullifidian]

Part 2 of 2: "IV. extremely literate and clearly conversant with many books and works likely in original languages not translated into English at the time" Again, how does this exclude Shakespeare? It doesn't unless you assume that someone of his class could do nothing but root around in the muck, like in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ and call out to his companion, "There's some lovely filth down here!" At least the Pythons had some excuse, since they were parodying the early Middle Ages, but to continue this notion through to the 16th century is egregious anachronism. The 16th century was the era of the Protestant Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This enriched Henry greatly, but it did cause a brain drain as the educated monks fled England and took their literacy with them. Hence the invention of the grammar school that placed a classics-based Renaissance humanist education within the reach of the working classes and newly emerging middle class. At the time, the aristocracy and nobility were _late_ adopters of Renaissance values-as late as the mid-16th century it was deemed necessary to put in a clause extending benefit of clergy to nobles who couldn't read or write-and it wasn't until they saw numerous examples of men like Cardinal Wolsey reaching the pinnacle of the English hierarchy through learning that they buckled down and started taking education seriously. So in fact, a well-read man in this era was more likely to be middle class than of the aristocracy. If these facts contradict your view of Merrie Olde Englande, I'm afraid you're just going to have to discard the preconception as misleading. "V. Well acquainted with Court and thus the politics of the day." Again, how does this exclude Shakespeare? Can you _prove_ Shakespeare was ignorant of the Court and politics? If you can't, then you can't use it as a basis on which to dispute Shakespeare's authorship of the works. Furthermore, as usual, an actual examination of the works in question reveals that there's not as much learning there as you think. It's just because your only idea for what went on in the Court of England _are_ Shakespeare's histories, so you're astonished to find that Shakespeare writes like himself. But if you look at the things courtiers would have had daily experience of or would have deemed important, they're nowhere in Shakespeare's plays. In Shakespeare, conversations are a free-for-all regardless of rank. There is absolutely no hint of rank and precedence-particularly precedence, which would matter to men like Edward de Vere, who enjoyed the privilege of representing the oldest earldom in the kingdom. Anyone can come in and jabber at the king whenever they feel like it. There is no dramatic use made of antechambers where people had to wait on the king's (or, in this case, the Privy Council's) pleasure until _Henry VIII_ - which I reread just yesterday evening. What changed? Shakespeare got John Fletcher, the son of Richard Fletcher, who was a bishop and Queen Elizabeth's personal chaplain, for a collaborator. Incidentally, we can tell the difference between the parts Fletcher wrote and Shakespeare wrote on the basis that the _better-educated_ Fletcher is somewhat more regular in his grammar, which casts a light on one of your assumptions about the author Shakespeare. Another thing Shakespeare gets wrong is the organization of noble houses. Think of Lord Capulet in _Romeo and Juliet_ disputing with Peter, Potpan, and the other kitchen staff like a harried Elizabethan bourgeois. Shakespeare didn't know that the steward would communicate with the butler who would then issue directions and discipline among the kitchen staff. Eventually, Shakespeare did find out that the steward existed - witness his appearance in _Twelfth Night_ - but he was vague on what they did. Malvolio speaks to a knight and a kinsman of his lady in a way that _no_ servant would ever speak no matter how severe the provocation. And aside from roundly ticking off Sir Toby Belch, the only other thing he does is chase after Cesario/Viola with a ring to return it, which is a menial task that would have been delegated to quite a junior servant. It's more than just pride: what would happen if a household crisis arose while he was haring wildly across country to try to return that ring? But the best evidence that Shakespeare was not an aristocrat or even very well-educated about them comes in the second act of _Richard III_ , in which Richard (still Duke of Gloucester at this point) greets one man as if he were three. Anthony Woodville, the 2nd Earl Rivers, is greeted as "Lord Rivers", "Lord Woodville", and "Lord Scales" (Lord Scales is a subsidiary style for the earl of Rivers). Again, if you've been reading modern editions, editors often suppress this clanger because it's so obviously wrong. Anyone familiar with the aristocracy would know that the title often differs from the family name and that there are subsidiary styles. Edward de Vere, for example, had the surname de Vere, of course, the title of Earl of Oxford, and the subsidiary styles of Viscount Bulbeck (at least until his son and heir was born, when this title transferred to him), Lord Badlesmere, and Lord Escales. The idea that anyone who knew the aristocracy and court life could have made such a monstrous mistake in his own area of expertise beggars belief. However, even if Shakespeare did know court life and the aristocracy better than he actually did, that wouldn't be surprising either. John Shakespeare was the mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon, and when knights and others of rank and distinction passed through the town, they didn't stay at the local inn, they boarded at the house of the most important civic figure. So Shakespeare might have seen any number of visitors to Stratford who brought news of the events of court to his home. Later, when he bought New Place with its 20 rooms, he'd again put himself on the map for important visitors. Plus, Shakespeare had noble patrons. All theatre companies did; it prevented them from being arrested as vagabonds and masterless men. We know that he was patronized by the Lords Chamberlain Henry Carey and George Carey, the 1st and 2nd Barons Hunsdon. Henry Carey was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth, being son to Mary Boleyn. Then Shakespeare was really elevated by a royal patent to become the playwright of the King's Men when James I and VI ascended the throne. This new role came with the title of Groom of the Chamber, and Shakespeare was expected at court not just for performances of King's Men's plays but also to fill out crowd scenes in important meetings. They were detained for two weeks to appear at the 1604 peace negotiations between England and Spain, for example. And it's argued by some scholars, on the basis of the number of Queen's Men's plays that Shakespeare turned his hand to adapting, that he might have been a member of the Queen's Men before joining the Lord Chamberlain's Men. In any case, his career was always one that involved at least a distant familiarity with the aristocracy. So you've given five reasons why Shakespeare shouldn't be considered the author, but you can't prove that _any_ actually invalidate Shakespeare's authorship, and instead there are good reasons why Shakespeare could well have been the author even if every point is granted _arguendo_ .

[@singingway]

P.G. Wodehouse has a charcter who talks the ears off Bertie Wooster about Bacon or Marlowe.

[@Nullifidian]

He also wrote "The Reverent Wooing of Archibald", one of the Mr. Mulliner stories collected in _Mr. Mulliner Speaking_ , where he parodied the Baconian cipher-hunters mercilessly. Archibald had long since come to a definite decision that what this woman needed was a fluid ounce of weed-killer, scientifically administered. With a good deal of adroitness he contrived to head her off from her favourite topic during the meal: but after the coffee had been disposed of she threw off all restraint. Scooping him up and bearing him off into the recesses of the west wing, she wedged him into a corner of a settee and began to tell him all about the remarkable discovery which had been made by applying the Plain Cipher to Milton’s well-known Epitaph on Shakespeare. "The one beginning ‛ What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones? ’ " said the aunt. "Oh, that one?” said Archibald. "‘What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones? The labour of an Age in piled stones? Or that his hallowed Reliques should be hid under a star y-pointing Pyramid?’” said the aunt. Archibald, who was not good at riddles, said he didn’t know. “As in the Plays and Sonnets,” said the aunt, "we substitute the name equivalents of the figure totals.” "We do what?” "Substitute the name equivalents of the figure totals.” "The which?” "The figure totals.” "All right,” said Archibald. "Let it go. I daresay you know best.” The aunt inflated her lungs. "These figure totals,” she said, " are always taken out in the Plain Cipher, A equalling one to Z equals twenty-four. The names are counted in the same way. A capital letter with the figures indicates an occasional variation in the Name Count. For instance, A equals twenty-seven, B twenty-eight, until K equals ten is reached, when K, instead of ten, becomes one, and T instead of nineteen, is one, and R or Reverse, and so on, until A equals twenty-four is reached. The short or single Digit is not used here. Reading the Epitaph in the light of this Cipher, it becomes: ‘What need Verulam for Shakespeare? Francis Bacon England's King be hid under a W. Shakespeare? William Shakespeare. Fame, what needst Francis Tudor, King of England? Francis. Francis W. Shakespeare. For Francis thy William Shakespeare hath England’s King took W. Shakespeare. Then thou our W. Shakespeare Francis Tudor bereaving Francis Bacon Francis Tudor such a tomb William Shakespeare.' " The speech to which he had been listening was unusually lucid and simple for a Baconian, yet Archibald, his eye catching a battle-axe that hung on the wall, could not but stifle a wistful sigh. How simple it would have been, had he not been a Mulliner and a gentleman, to remove the weapon from its hook, spit on his hands, and haul off and dot this doddering old ruin one just above the imitation pearl necklace. Placing his twitching hands underneath him and sitting on them, he stayed where he was, until just as the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour of midnight, a merciful fit of hiccoughs on the part of his hostess enabled him to retire.

[@markandresen1]

Meanwhile, even more controversially, according to Scott Douglas de Hart's 'Shelley Unbound,' 'Frankenstein' was written by Percy, not Mary. (Yes, despite her handwriting during its drafting).

[@christophermorgan3261]

That Shakespeare was the not the author of the plays is the mother of all conspiracy theories and these two hack journalists are an embarrassment. Shakespeare was hailed by his contemporaries like Ben Johnson as the author.

[@brianbutler3318]

Anybody who is widely read in British literature or history will be appalled at this uniformed garbage discussion

[@MIKEMIKE-te2dt]

Billy Shears would laugh in your face. He's been masquerading as Paul McCartney for over fifty years!

[@elliesambrook5929]

Multiple pens. one name

[@ivanbeatenov6587]

If one were to assemble the greatest contemporary playwrights of Shakespeare- Jonson, Marlow, Webster, Chapman, Fletcher, etc. -no way on earth could their combined efforts have produced these works. They were clearly produced by a single pen.

[@MG-ye1hu]

I'm a sceptic myself and this interview sums up the crucial points of this position very well. And, as mentioned in the interview, I'm quite sure that there are also many sceptics among scholars who keep it to themselves, for obvious reasons. However, I somehow grew tired of this debate already some time ago. Unfortunately, it has more and more become a playground for conspiracy fans than of literary debate. I don't believe in the Marlowe theory, not because of the necessary conspiracy you need to suppose, but because their works (despite some obvious influences) show such different artistic features that this seems very unlikely to me. And I can appreciate the position of Marjorie Garber that you can find everything about Shakespeare in his works, and that the authorship debate is rather unfruitful and distracting. In fact, it was "Will in the world" by Stephen Greenblatt (whom I admire very much) that propelled my scepticism, exactly in its desperate attempt to find connections between life and works that rather devaluated the works than enlightened them. Unless a smoking gun surfaces which will solve the issue, I rather stay away from this debate.

[@vhawk1951kl]

Some suggest that Shakespeare was merely the name/person behind whom/which an esoteric school hid

[@Nullifidian]

Some people also think that the world's rulers are shape-shifting reptilian aliens.

[@horaceosirian8993]

The italian Black Nobility / papal family Breakspear comes to mind based on phonetics, ofc.

[@NewOrleansSeptember]

The works of Shakespeare constitute a lifetime of writing for those who know how much work goes into writing fiction. It could only be done by one man who would have had time for little else. Bacon had a life of work of his own, same with Marlowe or the rest.

[@dmag884]

Granted, a lot of them are formulaic but yes, it would still take one person a lot of time, without much time for other endeavours

[@NewOrleansSeptember]

@@dmag884 Now what I find interestingly peculiar in literature and worth questioning are the works of Tennessee Williams. If you want to consider something that seems suspiciously incongruous, look at The Glass Menagerie which is a spectacular play; it's just wonderful in every respect and then look at the rest of Williams writings. The rest of Williams plays are all very similar in character types, themes, and language, however The Glass Menagerie does not fit in with those other plays, at all; The Glass Menagerie is a complete outlier to the rest of the plays, unmistakably written by Williams; in language, themes, and characters. I have a hard time believing Williams wrote the The Glass Menagerie as it has nothing in common with the rest of his plays. Nothing.

[@avlasting3507]

What about the Earl of Oxford then?

[@NewOrleansSeptember]

@@avlasting3507 Just off the top, his date of death is listed as 1604. There are about 9 more plays by Shakespeare after that date.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

But Shakespeare did do vastly more than write the plays: he was an actor, director, and producer. Authorship had a different meaning before modern copyright laws and plagiarism conventions. The plays, or at least most of them, were probably a collective effort to one extent or another, and Shakespeare, as director, made the final cut.

[@theresabarzee1463]

Shakespeare was a businessman. Not a writer.

[@marietjieluyt7619]

Does it matter who "Homer" was?

[@Alacrates]

I'd take a biography of Homer if I could have one.

[@kurd55]

Best book I’ve read this year-2023. Thanks for this video that brought it to my attention!

[@algernonsidney8746]

How is this episode even real? Shakespeare existed and was a man that is a fact, in the same manner that Charles Darwin existed. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that Shakespeare was not the real author of his work or that he was a woman . Had Shakespeare not been the real author of his work or had he been a woman someone would have pointed that out back when he was alive and history would have know about it. Initially the theory of Shakespeare not being the real playwright of his works was an elitist conspiracy theory put out by people who could not believe that a man who left school at the age of 12 and never went to university was coincidentally one of the greatest writers of the English language. Elizabeth Winkler has decided to take it up a notch and claim that Shakespeare did wright his works but he may not have been a man. Frankly I am not sure which one is more insulting. There are plenty of brilliant female writers throughout history. Winkler could have written about any one of them instead she decided to waste everyone's time and hers by writing this bizarre essay.

[@avlasting3507]

I think you've missed the point entirely.

[@andy-the-gardener]

you clearly know nothing about the authorship question. there is a huge amount of absolute proof now that de vere wrote shakespeare. i suggest you peruse some of the presentations by alexander waugh.

[@lawrencekagan8688]

Wow, Chris Hedges and Real News Network giving in to programming conspiracy nonsense to get clicks. Miss the days of Paul Jay...

[@jeffreyohler2599]

22:52 What's that say about 'State of Mind'? Keeping in mind that Knighthood is akin to receiving a Presidential Medal in the US. It's amongst the highest honors a civilian can be bestowed with. Although the medal is just a show piece where as Knighthood actually comes with treatments & accessibilities normal folks don't get. Yet to be bestowed with Knighthood for being Knowledgeable of another Human Being? Seems kind of odd to me. Much to her point,how can this be if people don't even know for sure if it was a He or a She? Seems to me this would be base level Knowledge any 'Knighthood' candidate should know doesn't it?

[@wolfwilliams]

No explanation is necessary, or even interesting. Why do we NEED to know every detail of Shakespeare's process, writing career, etc.? The work is all.

[@kenfalloon3186]

It's not taboo to question the authorship of Shakespeare. People including famous thespians have been doing so for a long time.

[@Harrier_DuBois]

Yeah they mentioned the idea on QI, people were fine discussing it, but there is not compelling argument since it was too long ago and we have no way of finding out. The theory that it was someone else or a group is unfalsifiable.

[@noah5291]

Yes that's why this segment has an air of bourgeois decadence. Especially with Winkler using terms like dangerous to describe the act of questioning the identity of Shakespeare, or comparing having a skepticism of Shakespeare to having antivax opinions (as if that's the same level of stigmatism). It's absurd and insulting.

[@xofpi]

In English departments it isn’t done. Take it from an English major.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

What I'm having trouble with is why people say Shakespeare was poorly educated. My understanding was that he attended a Latin school, where by the 8th grade, if pupils were caught speaking English on the premises, they were thrashed. Then he was an actor, which further trained his memory. Have people lost the sense of the immense value of an education like that? I know that even today, people in France (who I grant you speak a Romance language) tell me that if they study Latin while young, they can pick up Spanish or Italian by living in Spain or Italy for the summer. These are not linguistically talented people, just regular good students. Moreover, I don't think a recluse could have written the plays, like some of the people posting appear to believe. That an actor-director did strikes me as far more plausible.

[@gortnicktu3177]

There's scant evidence it was literate, let alone the author of what are arguably the greatest works in English literature. There's no evidence he ever traveled, or was exposed to the matters of court, or Italian theater. The list goes on and on. The greater mystery is why people cling to a belief in immaculate conception or matters similar.

[@Nullifidian]

@@gortnicktu3177 Actually, there's plenty of evidence that Shakespeare was literate. We have three pages of manuscript (Hand D of _Sir Thomas More_ ) in Shakespeare's handwriting, and it's a stylometric match to the rest of the Shakespeare canon. We also have six signatures. We have every contemporary who bothered to speak on the subject saying that he was an author, many of whom knew him personally (Leonard Digges, Ben Jonson, John Heminges, Henry Condell, etc.) or clearly knew of him (Francis Meres, William Camden, Edmund Howes, etc.). We have 18 plays published in quarto, four editions of the Folio, two narrative poems, a poem in _Love's Martyr_ by Robert Chester ("Let the bird of loudest lay"), and the sonnets, and all the poems and the plays published in 1598 in quarto and after bear his name, to say nothing of the First Folio. You can only be a writer if you're literate. At the time, you could also only be an actor if you were literate, and there is extensive evidence that Shakespeare was an actor. For example, the First Folio lists his name above everyone else in the List of Principal Actors. In Ben Jonson's folio _Works_ (1616), he's in two cast lists: _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ . And you couldn't be an actor if you couldn't read a cue script. The runs for plays were one week at most, and two if it were _exceptionally_ popular. They had to keep on learning new parts all the time, sometimes multiple parts depending on how the roles were divided. They couldn't have done that without literacy. As for you other assertions, there's no evidence that he _didn't_ travel either, nor is there any solid evidence that travel was _necessary_ for Shakespeare to write his works. It's a self-defeating argument because the more you try to pretend that there are obscure facts about 16th century Europe dotted through the works, the more you undercut your own argument, since it's obviously possible to know these facts by report! If you know them, then you know them despite never having been to 16th century Europe because there are no such things as time machines. So why can't Shakespeare have learned about them in the period-appropriate equivalent to the way that you did? As for your claim that Shakespeare was not "exposed to the matters of the Court", we _know_ that is false. Shakespeare's theatrical patrons were members of the titled nobility and then it was the King himself. They performed at court, and in fact Shakespeare's first documented association with the Lord Chamberlain's Men is the Pipe Office accounts that record a payment to the LCM and William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, and Will Kempe (named individually) for performances before the queen at the prior St. Stephen's Day during the Christmas season. Furthermore, Shakespeare wasn't just there in his capacity as actor. We know the King's Men were called upon during important moments to wear their most sumptuous costumes and fill out the scene, such as during the peace negotiations between Spain and England in 1604 which led to the signing of the Treaty of London. However, Shakespeare's knowledge of court life was never complete. As an example, in the second act of _Richard III_ he has Richard (still Duke of Gloucester) greet one man, Anthony Woodville, the 2nd Earl Rivers, as if he were three. Richard greets "Lord Rivers", "Lord Woodville", and "Lord Scales" in turn (Lord Scales was one of the subsidiary styles of the Earls of Rivers). Now, does this sound like something an expert in courtly life would do? Particularly if the 'true author' were allegedly a nobleman himself like Edward de Vere? Edward de Vere's family name was de Vere, the title was Earl of Oxford, and it came with the subsidiary styles of Viscount Bulbeck (until his son and heir was born), Lord Badlesmere, and Lord Escales. No, it's an egregious howler that is so obvious that it's often suppressed by the editors. But Shakespeare committed it because he didn't know any better. There may be no evidence that Shakespeare was exposed to Italian theatre, but he almost certainly was. Not only did English troupes tour the Continent, but Italian troupes came to England. Even if he had no firsthand experience of Italian theatre, he could have learned all he wanted or needed to know about _commedia dell'arte_ from Will Kempe, who successfully toured Italy. However, it's not apparent why Shakespeare should need a grounding in Italian theatre, since his sole play based on an Italian work, _I supposti_ by Ludovico Ariosto, is the Bianca/Lucentio subplot in _The Taming of the Shrew_ , and Ariosto's play was translated into English by George Gascoigne as _Supposes_ . If there's anything in the rest of his work that appears to deal in tropes of Italian theatre, that would be because Shakespeare's grammar school grounding was in the Roman comic playwrights (e.g., he misquotes Terence's _Eunuchus_ in _Shrew_ in just the same way Terence was misquoted in William Lily's grammar book) and that is also where _commedia dell'arte_ ultimately comes from.

[@gortnicktu3177]

Sure, let's chat about some of the debates around Shakespeare's authorship. You know, it's interesting. We have some records and stuff about Shakespeare, like business transactions and whatnot. But there's a surprising lack of personal stuff, no letters, no original manuscripts nor other writings that would actually prove that he's the guy who wrote all those plays. And then there's his education. People like yourself, of the Stratford school, argue that a grammar level educaton was good enough to teach someone the sheer depth of topics his plays cover whereas other likely candidates such a de Vere possessed an elite education. There's also the whole thing about people from his time saying good stuff about him. But how reliable are these accounts in codifying the wool merchant from Stratford? For example, when Ben Jonson writes, "In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance, As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance. Sweet swan of Avon! what a fight it were To see thee in our waters yet appeare, And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames, That so did take Eliza, and our James !" Is Jonson referring to Stratford upon Avon, the Stratfordian's theater or Hampton Court upon the banks of the Thames, originally known as Avon? Or take the "shake a lance" reference, unless you acknowledge that the symbol was common to de Vere. In other words, while opinions may differ, their merit isn't similar. Oh, and there's this handwriting analysis of the "Hand D of Sir Thomas More" manuscript. It's not definitively confirmed to be in Shakespeare's hand and proffering Stylometry as confirmation, or science, really? You could as easily have said, "the actor was so well aquainted with the plays that even their style appeared in his texts." The Stratfordian's background is another hiccup. The guy wasn't exactly born into royalty, so how could he write so well about kings and queens and court life, because his troupe performed at court on occassion? That makes him an expert, maybe even explains an intimate liason with Southhampton, the topic of much conjecture, Shakespeare the commoner? And let's talk Italy for a second. His plays have a lot of Italian settings, which makes some people wonder if he ever set foot there. Maybe he had firsthand experience, or maybe not. There's no evidence to suggest he did, and yet you make it a point of debate. De Vere's knowledge of Italy, Italian culture and Italian theater was verififably expert, comparatively speaking. The list of 'could-have-been' authors is kinda long. There's Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe, and even Francis Bacon in the mix. Each of these guys had the life experience, education, intelligence and knowledge to maybe have written those plays. There's nothing to suggest the Stratfordian did. He was a part time player, part time businessman, and occassional litigant whose immediate family was illiterate. Let's review that once again. The writer of Hamlet's wife and daughters were illiterate? And then there's the simple matter of time. When would Shakespeare have had the time to write so much when he was busy acting and taking care of business? Maybe when he wasn't teaching his wife or children reading and writing. But never mind all of that. There wasn't even a full biography of the guy until well after he died, not to mention the lack of any reference to his life's work, his writings, in those three pages of detailed instructions about the distribution of his estate; and for a commoner concerned for the value of his assets no less. When I hear these tortured arguments I'm reminded of Christian liturgy, wherein the faithful are commanded to believe in immaculate conception, and as consequence of such belief their Godliness is equally attributed as 'real.' Enough of such nonsense.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

@gortnicktu3177 I'm not of any school. I accept that it's possible that Shakespeare did not write the plays (or at least all of the plays) attributed to him, or at the very least did not write them alone. Perfectly possible. I have not read this author's book, and have only heard her in this one interview, which amounts to clever at burden shifting. She presented no real evidence in _this_ interview, apart from the indisputable fact that there are serious vested interests set against reopening the issue and reexamining the evidence we have. That does not change the fact that she has the burden of proof here, not those who believe Shakespeare was the playwright of those plays, within the meaning of that term in his time. (Modern notions of authorship were not current then.) These other candidates for being "the real Shakespeare" were all more powerful than he was, and England was always a class-ridden society. Why didn't they insist on placing their names on this work? Even if the theatre was considered risque, and we know it was, you would still expect the real writer(s) to whisper about it to someone, especially after a triumph. If it were to turn out that one of them was the author or principal author, I'd find that interesting. If authorship was in some sense collective, just as theatre is a collective art, that would be even more interesting. (Personally, I doubt that it wasn't collective. But that's just an opinion, and my opinion is not evidence of its truth. Laugh out loud.)

[@l.w.paradis2108]

@gortnicktu3177 You know something else? The lionization of Shakespeare is relatively recent. No one in his day took him to be a genius. I sure hope my primary reply, above, is visible.

[@mikecorbeil]

I am two weeks late but will just say that this is a very good interview. I am somewhat disappointed because of the very abrupt end, but it nonetheless is a very good and interesting interview.

[@christianrokicki]

I think the plays were written by a man and a woman who were deeply in love with one another and had a special harmony between their souls. So they hugged a lot and when they weren’t hugging each other were writing the plays together with their legs slung over each other’s legs.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Well THAT would explain why the closest thing to a stable, loving couple in the whole of the Shakespeare canon is the Macbeths.

[@christianrokicki]

@@Jeffhowardmeade They would look into each other’s eyes, back and forth, and REALLY see each other. A heart+soul connection. When lovers are that close they meld not only physically and emotionally, but spiritually. It generates shakti! “Shakti’s pair.”

[@richardwaugaman1505]

Winkler was the top student in the English department three of her four years at Princeton. Then she did grad work in English at Stanford. For those inclined to dismiss her book, please read it first. She does in fact know "WTF" she's talking about.

[@bedardpelchat]

I had a sense that she was from such a background. She has to be passionate about this subject matter and this is investigative journalism, hence her day job at the WSJ...

[@tantzer6113]

The school she went to should not affect what I think of her words. Her words stand on their own and their evaluation should not depend on her level of education.

[@bedardpelchat]

@@tantzer6113 Indeed. I just read "How to dismantle an Empire", a scrutiny in history and economics by Tereza Corragio who pretends to be a housewife!

[@Harrier_DuBois]

She doesn't seem to present much new evidence here. You can make claims all you want but if there is no new info then it's a waste of time.

[@gaetanomontante5161]

I don't "GAF" what her book says. In her sublime intelligence and care of the subject matter, she might do a great service to humanity by teaching the CONTENTS -- yes, the contents -- OF THE WORKS OF A PERSON POPULARLY KNOWN AS "SHAKESPEARE" to a bunch of kids (and adults) who desperately need to be versed both on the beauty of expressions of the language used AND the LESSONS OF LIFE that such work imparts on all of us. If she did that, my dear richard, then you could come and tell me to go read her book. Are you too an Angel counter? If so, then please GFY. Hey, by your picture I can deduce that you are a man and of my own approximate age, so I earned the right to say to you what I just did. PS: Princeton is know for having schooled quite a number of undisputed Monsters.

[@grapeshot]

Is this like did Shakespeare really write all of his plays????

[@xofpi]

Did you watch it? Is your question one someone who watched it would ask?

[@grapeshot]

@xofpi did you fart today you better check your underwear.

[@jimmyfaulkner5746]

Yeah , Chris is losing the plot

[@LiamBaileyMusic]

Excellent show

[@rcmstereo]

The collaborative theory makes sense. I think it was one guy who signed the final drafts, but the scripts were worked out in the process- in the rehearsals and what not. Like once he gets in the theater, he is immersed. Surrounded by people who had classics memorized. So he might have been more like a stenographer and a great editor. This isn’t hard to believe, and doesn’t take away much from the Bard.

[@zarni000]

Whoever the bard was. Which was not Shaksper(that's the actual spelling of the guys name)

[@Nullifidian]

@@zarni000 In what sense is that the "actual spelling of the guys [ _sic_ ] name"? Because only two people _ever_ spelled his name that way, and one of them was referring to one of Shakespeare's works. Abraham Sturley used the "Shaksper" spelling in a letter to Richard Quiney and Edward Alleyn recorded his purchase of "Shaksper sonetts" for 5d. in 1609. Edward Alleyn was the lead actor of the Admiral's Men, the leading rivals of the King's Men, but despite his decades-long immersion in the theatre (including possibly acting in some of Shakespeare's early plays that are recorded in Henslowe's Diary) he somehow didn't have any evident problem accepting that "Shaksper" was the author.

[@zarni000]

@@Nullifidian u do understand there were many Shakespeare's not one. The guy f r om Avon was spelled shaksper in all the documents that are immediately associated with him.

[@Nullifidian]

@@zarni000 There is no "guy from Avon". Avon is a River. Stratford-upon-Avon is the market town where the playwright, poet, and actor William Shakespeare was born. His name was _not_ spelled Shaksper except in the two instances I have already quoted. And if you want to accept "Shaksper" as his name, then you accept his authorship of "Shaksper sonetts", which Edward Alleyn bought for 5d. To give you another example, I would say that the documents by which he bought the Blackfriars gatehouse for himself and personally signed are "immediately associated with him", wouldn't you? So look at the bargain and sale and the mortgage documents online at Shakespeare Documented on the Folger Library website and you will find that in these documents the name is spelled "William Shakespeare" throughout. 16 times in the text of the bargain and sale and 8 times in the text of the mortgage. Handily, he's also introduced as "William Shakespeare of Stratford Vpon Avon in the Countie of Warwick gentleman", so there's no ambiguity about which Shakespeare it is.

[@zarni000]

@@Nullifidian jeez. Seriously? Short fir Stratford on avon...smh. perhaps you'd correct Ben Johnson too for using Avon to refer to him.

[@NewOrleansSeptember]

Here you have a woman trying to make a name for herself. Anything can be argued as you can see by the various speculations in this video. Shakespeare's works show the commonality and singularity that only one writer could produce. So Shakespeare was well read beyond his actual specifically known education. Genius in a person in not something visible to others except in the case of Shakespeare in his works. There is nothing to suggest that anyone but William Shakespeare wrote his plays. Nothing, except speculative arguments for people to try to sell their own writings. The idea that centuries later you will discover something very different about a man who lived in the 17rh century is itself an absurdity.

[@NewOrleansSeptember]

@@TheKeendark I said why i thought what she was promoting was nonsense very specifically. Try taking a reading and comprehension class.

[@xofpi]

Read the book.

[@bonniebluebell5940]

Agreed. I was going to sum it up here in my own simple countrified fashion... GENIUS.

[@loninappleton]

Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi as well have spoken publicly on the subject but the best introduction to the topic (not mentioned in the program) is the film "Anonymous" done by the director Roland Emmerich. It focuses on the life of Edward Devere as both world traveler, close associate of the the Queen and tutored in many subjects and languages. Devere is portrayed as a political figure as well. The film is worth it for one scene alone where the actor who delivers the St Crispin's Day speech who, at the end of it, does the equivalent of a 'stage dive' into the arms of a grateful and cheering audience at The Globe. Well worth seeking out.

[@kaytigrant4527]

Thanks, I’ll look for this! Have you seen Last Will & Testament?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

A friend of mine and I got to see it in an otherwise empty theater. We took the opportunity to go MST3K on it.

[@kabalder]

While it is a completely valid theory to doubt how much of Shakespeare's work actually is his own - either by pointing out how the Shakespeare company may have been a more collaborative effort, or that the way the plays were recorded in the end might not actually have been what was set up in the theater.. Those are both valid questions. But they're not compatible with each other (i.e., the way the plays were printed, we know for a fact that they were in fact rewritten by affluent rich men to suit the sensibilities of people in the upper class who then came to adopt Shakespeare's mythical image). And you can't just apply today's standards (which admittedly the "priesthood does") to Shakespeare's London either, and use that to question whether or not an uneducated scot could possibly have risen to become a symbol of the perfectitude of British RP language. That is a kind of obstinacy that uses the same methods you are criticising as a foundation for that criticism. Because it's not unknown that a ton of puns and the way the language of Shakespeare was played in the theater is completely lost through an englishification that came into being even as Shakespeare was alive. And I have read many other writers who have been subjected to the exact same thing. For example, this also happened to Ibsen in England, a couple of hundred years later. There was a translation approach that created "Ibsen-plays" in London as it's own discipline, that diverges completely from what the plays actually sound in Norwegian. The selection of plays chosen in England also specifically colour how the extant plays were received -- even when Ibsen was alive to comment on it. And I mention this because Edmund Gosse, who basically wrote the book on this, did talk to Ibsen - in English - before using that as an authority to create Ibsen's myth in England. And from Ibsen's letters (which he commanded all of his friends and associates to burn before his death) you can tell that he has nothing but contempt for that image he needs to create to the public to establish himself as an international phenomenon. And Ibsen were aware of how this works, and exploited it as much as he could, by working with the myth-makers - in order to not get supplanted by equally bad translations that he would then not be part of (like what happened to the Doll's House in Germany, for example - where he didn't get a spesidaler for, and where unapproved translations, including unapproved endings - where Nora doesn't leave - was written in. Ibsen wrote an angry alternative in a correspondance, that has since been taken as canon in both Britain, USA, Germany and China, never mind Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and other countries with various cultural "family values" sensibilities). So if his letters had been burned, as he ordered, and the mythical Ibsen had been chosen more exclusively by all historians as the correct version -- you would in fact only know that Ibsen was a shrewd business-man, who came from somewhat affluent family that he estranged, and who wrote in a style that doesn't fit in any way with the mythical person that has emerged. Perhaps in 200 years, we will have that image of him. In fact, there is a joking hypothesis having been fielded by entirely serious Ibsen-scholars - that later went into a semi-historical fictional tale by a not very serious Ibsen-scholar as a joke - where people suggested in entirely serious terms that the Ibsen that we knew from his earliest writing simply wasn't the same person that wrote the later plays. And suggested on the basis of that that Ibsen was some kind of collaborative effort (which we know for a fact is not the case, outside the very solid and influential editorial efforts of his wife, whom he frequently disagreed with). This not entirely serious book basically makes it out as if Ibsen was murdered when he was in his 20s and replaced by another person. This isn't serious, obviously, but that is the only logical conclusion to draw - given that you think that the myth of Ibsen is the "real" Ibsen. Because the actual person then just doesn't fit with "reality". And if we didn't know the letters, if they had been burned like Ibsen wanted to - we would just not have been able to say whether or not another person had taken Ibsen's place, whether he was a woman, or if he never even existed. Questioning how Shakespeare's writing that we know now isn't the same format that was done in the theater, is not the problem. Neither is pointing out how little we know, and how bombastic the "research" into the historical record is. But that's not a good excuse to just say that "all interpretations are valid!". Because as pointed out, if we just didn't have marginal insight into Ibsen's letter-writing, we could successfully question whether he, and even his wife for that matter, was real. Or if we could, we couldn't even begin to suggest the role played by either in the writing - we could say, as people have done, as pointed out, if jokingly, that Ibsen really was a collaborative effort where he was used as a marketing tool after he became an international sensation thanks to valiant advertisement efforts by his unknown historical conspirators. But this is a ridiculous approach. That tells us nothing about the historical context, how to read the plays, how to understand pieces of it, or how to relate the works to events in the real world that might very likely have served as inspiration. It's just academic masturbation of exactly the kind that is being criticised.

[@bugsby4663]

This is because they cannot fathom a lower middle class lad being a genius. Only an aristocrat can write such verse. It's just snobbery.

[@targetfootball7807]

How could he afford to be a theater share holder in London and not be able to afford access to books? 😅. Skills can be learned.

[@targetfootball7807]

So he got rents from his theater company, The Queen's Men, The King's Men, several different properties, his church, and his father married into a wealthy family, etc. The dude was never poor.

[@xofpi]

@@targetfootball7807Where are mentions of books he owned? Not in his will. In his private letters?

[@targetfootball7807]

@@xofpi Maybe his wife burned them all as kindling. He probably married a real battle-axe. 😅 Plus, you don't have to own a book to read one. And inside information can be picked up simply from talking to insiders. Or, maybe like Prospero he simply discarded his stuff so many fathoms into the local sheep pond.

[@richardburt9812]

Chris, you were do not know what you are talking about. You should have had James Shapiro of Columbia University and Marjorie Garber of Harvard University on your show. This is an embarrassing episode. I teach Shakespeare at UF, btw. Got my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 1984. Stephen Greenblatt, now at Harvard, directed my dissertation. None of these famous scholars do not in any way fit the name-free, baseless, ugly, and contemptuous description you give of Shakespeareans at the beginning of your episode. She say she interviewed a lot of Shakespeare scholars. Why were they never named? Virginia Woolf wrote on Shakespeare's sister.

[@Marius_vanderLubbe]

That you were afforded a Ph.D. with your own penmanship in 1984 is an indication of how long the system has been broken. These awards are given away like black belts in the martial arts.

[@brianbutler3318]

Thank you Richard Burr for helping me extinguish this most recent anti-Shakespeare BS. Very disappointed in Chris. I love him but now I am seeing him in a different light.

[@Alacrates]

She includes interviews with Stanley Wells, Stephen Greenblatt, and Marjorie Garber in the book. She requested interviews with Jonathan Bate and James Shapiro, but they refused the requests. She does cover James Shapiro and his correspondence with Justice John Paul Stevens in the book.

[@gunnarpoe929]

Sometimes, when I’m at the gym, I think of Chris at his scammy little dungeon workout facility and I wish him good thoughts and am thankful for his presence.

[@patrickholt2270]

The idolatry begins within Shakespeare's work, in that in Romeo and Juliet he makes an idolatry of romance in the words of Romeo and Juliet to each other. That in itself is very seductive to actors and audiences, to then transpose that misplaced veneration onto Shakespeare as the author of that emotional experience for them, and as the Prophet of the false god which that play preaches. The other thing is the appropriation of Shakespeare as a class signifier by the English upper class. It is the English public schools most of all which teach Shakespeare, and teach the familiarity with archaic English and Greek and Latin with which to more readily understand Shakespeare, whose work is full of references to Classical literature and mythology. Besides that, the English theatres are mostly patronised and staffed by members of the English upper classes. Actors are prone to a pseudo-messianic collective self-regard, and to regard their profession as a calling and a sacred mission that enobles and enlightens humanity, and the veneration of Shakespeare, as both the Ur-playright and almost founder of the English theatre tradition, fits in very well as an expression and justification of that collective self-regard, which is also an expression of class conceit. In terms of Shakespeare's failure to educate his daughters, that could just be him being a bad father. Because a man can write seductive and creative love poems and romantic plays doesn't prevent him being a narcisist personally, and deficient as a father and spouse. Having too much "game" as people call it these days, and spending his adult life working with actors and actresses (if that's right) who are unusually physically attractive by self-selection and by casting, might well give rise to neglect of filial piety, or being a cad, to put it another way. People being inconsistent and contradictory, hypocrites even, is very commonplace, if not the norm.

[@biff408]

Frankly, the doubts about Shakespeare are overblown. There are numerous references to his native Warwickshire throughout his plays. This is just a nonsense.

[@niemann3942]

And yet, we're also told that "he was the most anonymous of writers" and that he "left no trace of himself in his works." We are told that we are NOT to look for autobiographical elements in the plays. So which is it? Is it okay to look for autobiographical elements or not? Because if it is, then we can go into whole areas that don't at all seem to reflect the Stratfordian's life. For example, there are also numerous references to Italy and Italian cities and regions in the plays -- more so than to Warwickshire -- so detailed that actual Italians and Italian scholars marvel at their accuracy. So might those reflect the author too?

[@biff408]

@@niemann3942 possibly, he was also an acclaimed actor so it's possible he interacted with actors from other countries and gleaned a lot of information for his plays. It is an open question as verifiable data on Shakespeare is thin on the ground. Even the correct spelling of his name is hotly debated.

[@niemann3942]

@@biff408 But even there, no, he was not an acclaimed actor. So much of what people think "we know about Shakespeare" is a mythological character untethered from actual records. Even traditional scholars say he was at most a mid-level actor, doing smaller character parts. There is little documentation of any parts he may have played. And he seems not to have been acclaimed at all. When he died no one took any notice or seemed to think he was anything special. From all his supposed writer pals ... crickets. That is the problem, which once again leads to traditionalists having to constantly flip-flop and claim polar opposite things. ("The works show signs of his life!" "The works are imaginative and don't show signs of anyone's life!" "The works aren't autobiographical!" "But we get to see autobiography in them!") In 2016, during the anniversary tributes of his death, within the same week I heard respected Shakespeare scholars claim both that "he was the most celebrated writer of his time, hobnobbing with the most powerful people of the age" ... AND ... "he died a nobody and only became famous by accident after his death." It's another case of "So which is it? Obviously both those things cannot be true at the same time." Yes, experts can disagree, but when they can't agree on whether someone was a "nobody" or the most celebrated of the age and hanging around with royalty, that indicates a problem. The problem is, Shakespeare-the-Writer was obviously respected, admired, and acclaimed. Meanwhile, Shakspere-the-Stratfordian seems not to have been. Trying to make one fit the other is like trying to force oil to mix with water.

[@biff408]

@@niemann3942 I don't agree with your assertions. There are plenty of references that can be quoted to support my view. The issue is what scholars, especially Historians call "the agreed upon facts" Shakespeare and other historical figures have conflicting data points that probably will not be settled in this life unless time travel becomes a possibility ( I doubt it ever will)

[@niemann3942]

@@biff408 Again, when scholars can't agree on something as basic as whether their subject was a nobody who only became famous by accident after his death, or was the most acclaimed writer of the time, associating with the most famous, powerful people -- that indicates a problem. Samuel Schoenbaum, the great documenter of Shakspere's life, was at least honest and said he couldn't reconcile the "vertigenous [vertigo-inducing] gap" between the records of the Stratfordian's life and the works. (So then he just went to the usual non-explanation "out" of just chalking it up to the incomprehensible mysteries of "genius.") Again, we're not trying to convince anyone of any one candidate; just asking that, given such bizarre inconsistencies, it be granted that there is room for reasonable doubt and more research into the question. But, again, some go ballistic at the very thought and refuse to allow even the slightest hint of doubt.

[@Majoofi]

This is ridiculous. What this discussion seems to be lacking is any evidence of either why Shakespeare was a front, or of who else might have written the works. The renegades get pushed to the margins because they have no evidence. Was it just click bate, or did Chris forget to ask about why Winkler thinks a woman, which woman wrote the plays? I expect much more from Chris

[@Alacrates]

She doesn't think the Shakespeare works were written by a woman. The title is Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies. It's about why the subject is taboo in academia.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@Alacrates Except that she fails to identify the correct reason it's 'taboo' by asking the wrong question. First, she needs to ask if it actually is taboo or if the whole subject has not yet proven itself worthy of the attention of academics. Winkler is like those creationists who whine that biology departments don't offer classes in "creation science" or "intelligent design". And in her original _Atlantic_ article she did indeed plump for the authorship claims of Emilia Lanier, ignorantly asserting that no woman had ever been considered before when in fact Queen Elizabeth I; Anne Hathaway; Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke; and even the scribal error "Anne Whateley" had been proposed as authors for decades. If she'd been honest with herself rather than being a convinced Shakespeare-denier already (despite her dishonest claims to be new to this subject as of her _Atlantic_ article, she was an invited panel speaker at the 2018 Shakespeare Authorship Trust session on "Gender, Shakespeare, and Authorship, while her _Atlantic_ article wouldn't be published until the following year), she would have seen the reason that alternative authorship claims founder is because they're not supported by any valid evidence.

[@Alacrates]

@@Nullifidian She made a case for why the authorship question is taboo. I know you don't agree with her argument, but she presented an argument. I agree with her on this. I don't think the authorship question is solved by any means, I don't think it's been proven that William of Stratford didn't or couldn't have written the works attributed to him. I also don't think Stratfordians have come close to dispelling the authorship question as a legitimate grounds for inquiry. I don't think it should be a taboo in academia. I don't think this issue is like intelligent design vs. evolution. It's a literary & historical question, not a scientific one.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@Alacrates Evolution is also a historical question, though at least we can see the process in ongoing action in the present day. But the overwhelming majority of the process took place in the past and can only be evaluated by the present evidence that the past process left. Now I'm going to ask something that might sound ruder than it is intended to be, but what does it matter what you think? Are you an expert in the early modern period and its dramatists? And what evidence do you have to support what you think? Because a lot of people believe things very sincerely on insufficient evidence and yet their sincere beliefs do not constitute a challenge to accepted scholarship on the subject. If the standard is going to be what laymen with no personal expertise in the subject sincerely believe, then not only would one have to open the doors to creationism, but one would also have to open it to geocentrism, the flat earth, relativity-denial, the existence of Atlantis as a real sunken continent, ESP, pyramid power, crystal healing, Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman, ghosts, extraterrestrial visitations, political leaders as shape-shifting reptilian aliens, and the idea that 1,000 years of European history was simply invented by 17th century Jesuits, to say nothing of many less savory beliefs. If you aren't an expert in the subject and you don't have any solid evidence, then is it really evidence of a 'taboo' that the ideas you share haven't achieved traction in academia? Are academics supposed to give their assent to anything that any rando off the street dreams up? This is particularly the case when the people putting forward the alternate theory haven't bothered to engage with any of the serious "orthodox" scholarship that has been published, and many of them haven't bothered to read the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries nor even the works of Shakespeare himself since they were last assigned to them in high school or college. What are _real_ scholars supposed to think of such a performance?

[@Alacrates]

@@Nullifidian I'm not saying scholars should pay attention to what I think, I'm saying I think there shouldn't be a taboo against scholars investigating the authorship question in a professional capacity. I don't think non-academics should simply accept what professors have concluded, especially not on a literary historical question (for something like engineering say, I'd be more wary of course.) I haven't come across many active authorship skeptics who aren't passionate about Shakespeare, who read & view performances of the works regularly. For myself, renaissance literature and history makes up the majority of what I read, and I don't feel that's unusual at all among the people that I talk about this with.

[@prestonhouser1973]

"Do you think Shakespeare really wrote all those plays?"-I used to get this question frequently in my Shakespeare seminars (my doctoral dissertation was on Christopher Marlowe) and my stock and glib answer was this: "It was probably some other guy with the same name." I used to get a chuckle but today, with google search, such a conclusion is not so far fetched. Obviously, given the popularity of "commonplace books" at the time, collaboration was inevitable/unavoidable. The early-modern age is remarkable for advancing the individual author at the expense of the cultural collective. True or not, Shakespeare was probably a convenient figurehead for the emerging individual authorial identity.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Today the publisher would have to advertise Titus Andronicus as By William Shakespeare with George Peele, and Timon of Athens as William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton. Plays with many hands, like the Henry VIs, would have the writing staff mentioned in an insert to the program, which would fall onto the floor the instant you opened it. If Heminges and Condell even remembered who wrote what, they probably wouldn't have bothered to mention it. At over 900 pages, the First Folio was already a lot to typeset.

[@HkFinn83]

The Shakespeare conspiracy is a weird one because it’s the only ‘top down’ one, that I know of. The idea being a working class lad from the Black Country couldn’t possibly be literate enough to write anything of worth, but an aristocrat could. Also the intro about scholars building their reputations on his identity is not true. What sort of ‘scholarship’ exactly would depend upon that, a biography perhaps? Hardly the way you’re making it out to be here.

[@Nullifidian]

Exactly. You get it. Shakespearian scholars study the _works_ , not the individual. This should be easy for people like Winkler because she was told directly by Marjorie Garber of Harvard University, but she can't get it because she's got the Shakespeare deniers' _idée fixe_ that biography is all-important. What's even more amusing is to hear her attribute this lack of interest in biography to Jacques Derrida, showing that she doesn't understand the difference between Derrida and F. R. Leavis. And yet these people want to pretend that they're on the cutting edge of scholarship.

[@bigdog44pc]

It would have been nice if you had someone on the opposing point of view giving their side of the story about Shakespeare existing rather than having just a one-sided interview

[@Nullifidian]

​@@TheKeendark To be honest, this crap isn't hard to find either. Having read half of Winkler's book (and set it aside in more or less thorough disgust), a couple of hours on the standard Shakespeare authorship denial websites would have been sufficient to write her book. She's not any more well-informed or intelligent than that.

[@kaytigrant4527]

17th Earl of Oxford, DeVeres. This was Shakespeare… members of the court couldn’t be writers. See PBS documentary “Last Will and Testament.”

[@Nullifidian]

So members of the court couldn't be writers, but he ceased to be an effective member of the court well before Shakespeare's career. By the time Shakespeare was active, de Vere's career as a courtier was blown, he was living in the last estate he hadn't sold off yet, and all that kept him from absolute penury was a stipend of £1,000 annually. And even before Shakespeare, he published a poem of his in Thomas Beddingfield's translation _Cardanus Comforte_ and was also published as "E. O." in _A Paradise of Dainty Devices_ . And, of course, being a writer didn't seem to hurt Francis Bacon's career at court.

[@libysehcsav5661]

This is very painful to listen to. I support people who go against the grain for research, but personally think these are very weak arguments. I mean, many, many people don't go to college and they can still write or know history etc. That's so week to think that Shakespeare wasn't a self made man in that respect. Also just because things were not all written down about him doesn't mean anything except that he didn't write them down nor did anyone else either. Think of all the early queens of England who have nothing even in the court documents - to say anything except maybe some bills for clothing, or their personal spending. This is the mystery, that's why it's ok to search and question, but I find this to be repugnant. I choose to believe that he did write his plays, poetry, etc.

[@jennyrokeach523]

Fascinating conversation, thank you