Nanna’s review of Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature > Likes and Comments

Thanks for reading the book, Nanna. It was even less well known before the internet weakened the traditionalists' powers of censorship.

Scholars don't debate the subject. The subject of Shakespeare's authorship doesn't occupy any time in academic conferences and it doesn't occupy any space in any relevant peer-reviewed academic journals. The reason it doesn't is that there is no evidence whatsoever for anyone writing the Shakespeare canon other than William Shakespeare. At most, there is debate on who authored parts of the plays along with Shakespeare, but all of these people are known members of the Bankside theatre community whom Winkler didn't even discuss like John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, George Peele, George Wilkins, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Kyd, etc. The only one of these potential collaborative authors Winkler dealt with was Christopher Marlowe, but only because there's a totally unfounded conspiracy theory that Marlowe faked his death and wrote all of Shakespeare's plays instead of him. Winkler isn't interested in academic Shakespeare studies; she only wants to focus on her dotty conspiracy theories.

In academia, facts and evidence are front and center, and speculation and conspiracy theories take a back seat. Therefore, since there is a large body of evidence that shows that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote his own works, that is sufficient for most academics. The conspiracy theories of Shakespeare authorship deniers don't get academic consideration because they're not based on facts and evidence but on motivated interpretations, anachronistic assumptions, speculative beliefs, etc.

Let's look at what we have with respect to William Shakespeare: EVERY single piece of documentary evidence we have that names an author names him as an author, and the evidence names him in the most common places that we would expect to find an author credited.

First, he's credited on the title pages and dedication pages of the works, sometimes with specific reference to his status as a armigerous (coat-of-arms-possessing) gentleman, a status that could ONLY apply to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, whose father John Shakespeare was awarded a coat of arms in 1596 for his services in various "offices of honour" in Stratford (the qualifying offices he served in were magistrate, justice of the peace, and bailiff—equivalent to mayor—of Stratford-upon-Avon). This status permitted William Shakespeare to be identified as a gentleman as his father's eldest son, and then after his father's death in 1601 as a second-generation gentleman in his own right, with the honorifics appertaining to a gentleman: M., Mr., or Master/Mister/Maister. Today we use "Mr./Mister" indiscriminately for any man, but in the early modern period it applied solely to the men who were armigerous gentlemen.

Second, he's credited as the author in the Stationers' Register, the official register of published works maintained by the Worshipful Company of Stationers. Entry of works in the Stationers' Register was how printers asserted their right and their priority to print. Often times Shakespeare is credited as the author along the suitable honorific for a gentleman. For example, the 23 August 1600 entry for Much Ado About Nothing and Henry IV, Part 2 reads:

Andrew Wise Willam Aspley

Entered for their copies under the hands of the wardens Two books. the one called: Much Ado About Nothinge. The other the Second Part of the History of King Henry the IV, with the humours of Sir John Falstaff : Written by Mr Shakespere

Third, he is identified in the Revels Accounts as the author of three plays performed at court during the 1604-1605 Christmas and Shrovetide season (which lasted from All Saint's Day on November 1st to Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday): The Comedy of Errors ("The Plaie of Errors"), Measure for Measure ("Mesur for Mesur"), and The Merchant of Venice ("The Marchant of Venis"), which King James ordered performed a second time. The first performance was on Quinquagesima (the last pre-Lenten Sunday) and it was performed a second time on Shrove Tuesday.

Fourth, he is identified as an author in contemporary literary anthologies drawn from the canonical works like Bel-Vedere, or the Garden of the Muses, Englands Helicon, Englands Parnassus, etc.

Fifth, he is identified as an author in contemporary works of literary criticism like Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres, where he given the unique honor of having 13 of his plays listed, something Meres did for no other of his contemporaries. He is also likened by Meres to both Seneca the Roman tragedian and Plautus the Roman comic playwright and to Ovid the Roman poet for his narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and his "sugared sonnets among his private friends"—the first published reference to Shakespeare's sonnets.

Sixth, all of the quartos that originally credited him as an author contained performance information that the plays had been performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men, which was Shakespeare's company. They became the King's Men when James ascended the throne and patronized the company, and Shakespeare's name appears in the royal warrants under signet and privy seal just second after Lawrence Fletcher, who was King James' favorite actor, so there is no doubt he was a member of the company. Other senior members of the company were Richard Burbage (the lead actor), John Heminges (who took over the role of business manager after the death of Augustine Phillips in 1605—Phillips' will also records a bequest to his "fellow" [i.e., fellow actor] William Shakespeare), and Henry Condell. William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon left bequests for Heminges, Condell, and Burbage in his will, and he also named Heminges as the co-trustee when he bought the Blackfriars gatehouse. Shakespeare is identified in the bargain and sale and the mortgage as "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwick, gentleman", so there can be no dispute about which Shakespeare Heminges knew, even if he weren't also mentioned in the will. As trustee, it was Heminges' job to transfer the property after Shakespeare's death to the designated heir, who was Shakespeare's elder daughter, Susanna Hall, and the bargain and sale in which he did so is on record with his signature on it. So that further connects Heminges to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Seventh, he was identified as an author by numerous contemporaries, many of whom had provable personal and/or professional connections to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. These people included his acting colleagues John Heminges, Henry Condell, and John Lowin; his playwriting colleagues Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Heywood, and Francis Beaumont; William Camden, who as Clarenceux King of Arms teamed up with William Dethick to repel a challenge to the legitimacy of arms granted by Dethick, including to Shakespeare's father (Ralph Brooke, the York Herald who lodged the complaint, sketched Shakespeare of Stratford's coat-of-arms and identified him as "Shakespeare the player [actor] by Garter"); and Leonard Digges, who since the age of seven had been the stepson of Thomas Russell, Esq., of Alderminster, who was named as one of the two overseers of William Shakespeare of Stratford's will.

John Heminges and Henry Condell explicitly identified the playwright in the dedication to the First Folio thusly: "We have but collected them and done an office to the dead to procure his orphans; guardians, without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our S H A K E S P E A R E, by humble offer of his plays to your most noble patronage." Winkler had to find some way to discredit this evidence, so she lied about the 18th century Shakespeare editor George Steevens having believed that Ben Jonson wrote the dedication as well as the other section titled "To the Great Variety of Readers", In fact, Steevens only believed that Jonson had a hand in the latter section, and only in the first part of it. In any case, Steevens was merely engaging in speculation, and speculation cannot overturn the evidentiary force of direct documentary evidence.

Nor is it clear why conspiracists think that Jonson's involvement would be probative of another author anyway, since Jonson himself affirmed that William Shakespeare was an author, not only in two poems in the First Folio and in private conversation with William Drummond (where he specifically alluded to The Winter's Tale) but also in his commonplace book, which was published after his death as Timber, or Discoveries:

DE SHAKESPEARE NOSTRAT [Of Our Shakespeare]

I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. "Sufflaminandus erat [he should have been clogged]," as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him: "Caesar, thou dost me wrong." He replied: "Caesar did never wrong but with just cause;" and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

Here Jonson gives us Shakespeare as the fellow of the players (otherwise why would they pride themselves on Shakespeare never blotting a line—what would it be to them if he were a mere freelancer?), who received his manuscripts, and as a man who had all of the qualities necessary to a great writer—"excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions"—but with the one flaw of occasionally neglecting to edit for sense. Finally, he gives us Shakespeare as the author of Julius Caesar specifically, and gives a line that, though it does not appear in the First Folio (it may be that Jonson personally offered this critique to Shakespeare and he saw the justice of it and revised the line), is so similar to the line that DOES exist in the First Folio ("Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause | Will he be satisfied") that it MUST refer to that play and no other theatrical version of the Caesar tale.

Against this, what do the Shakespeare authorship deniers have? Merely a whole lot of nothing.