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Sir Henry Neville
I've been reading The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, by Brenda James and William Rubinstein. The book's major claim is that Sir Henry Neville wrote the works of William Shakespeare. Don't get me wrong, I've never been one for conspiracy theories. I even believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. And I've never bought into the attribution of Shakespeare's works to de Vere; the guy died too soon for the chronology to make sense.
But I found this book -- no, "convincing" is too strong a word -- but difficult to dismiss. It has the first good arguments I've read that Shakespeare, were he the real guy, would have a very different paper trail than what we find. Some of the plays appear to show detailed knowledge of the Continent that Shakespeare did not seem to have. The topics of the plays match Neville's life and experience closely, right down to the timing. Some scenes from the plays match incidents from Neville's life, down to some very particular numbers.
To be sure, there is no smoking gun. It is all circumstancial evidence. And we should remain skeptical toward speculative theses which captivate the giddy minds of scholars. But -- if this book were a blog post I would link to it.
Here is one brief summary of the argument. Here is a short piece by Rubinstein. Here is a CrookedTimber post. Here is a Times story. Here are links to critiques.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 22, 2006 at 10:02 PM in History | Permalink
Comments
I like Shakespeare's being the author of the plays precisely because so little is known about him. The temptation to dig into his life and mind for explanations about, for example, whether "The Merchant of Venice" really is anti-Semitic or is portraying the anti-Semitism of the time, necessarily must cut off a little sooner than it would if we had lots of evidence about whether the author had Jewish friends, etc.
Posted by: PG at Oct 22, 2006 10:38:04 PM
Thank you for linking to my more skeptical view of the James-Rubinstein book. I won't try to summarize here what is discussed at length on my blog but do want to call attention to a point that is particularly pertinent to your post. Virtually all that J&R say about the supposed deficiencies in William Shakespeare's "paper trail" is borrowed (with some acknowlegement) from Diana Price's very silly book, Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, which I reviewed in detail here.
Posted by: Tom Veal at Oct 23, 2006 12:00:59 AM
I haven't read The Truth Will Out, but Scott McCrea's The Case for Shakespeare has left me fairly confident that William Shakespeare—the Stratford man—wrote his own plays.
Posted by: Eric Hanneken at Oct 23, 2006 12:08:44 AM
If the author of Shakespeare's play was intimately acquainted with the continent, why didn't he know that Bohemia is landlocked?
Posted by: don Hosek at Oct 23, 2006 12:17:07 AM
Hello Dr. Cowen, former student of yours here. Isn't part of the problem with these Shakespeare nonauthorship conspiracists that they can choose from among all known peoples from that era in order to find the facts that match their assumptions? Surely that is why there are so many "plausible authors" whose life events can be to fit a variety of authorship molds. Once one assumes a conspiracy finding circumstantial evidence becomes easier, even if there is little actual evidence of conspiracy.
I just can't see such an exceedingly public deception succeeding. I think that if the nonauthorship proponents were as credulous about the evidence for Shakespeare as author as they were about their own theories, they'd agree on Stratford.
Reading/hearing Shakespeare is a hobby of mine, next on my list is the book "1599".
Posted by: Doug Byrne at Oct 23, 2006 9:41:50 AM
For all practical purposes, isn't William Shakespeare defined as "the person who wrote Hamlet et al"?
Posted by: michael vassar at Oct 23, 2006 10:00:26 AM
I'm probably just repeating Doug Byrne, but
Posted by: Douglas Knight at Oct 23, 2006 11:27:20 AM
Please - there was no authorship controversy for nearly 200 years after William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon's death. Even as Shakespeare was the no. 1 or no. 2 playwright (after Ben Jonson) in practically every educated man's eyes. This whole authorship controversy is just a fabrication of Oxford and Cambridge dons who refuse to believe that a small-town man with no college could write great plays.
Are we to believe that the entire theatre company of the King's Men and the Lord Chameberlain's men - including Ben Jonson, who wrote such a fulsome elegy after his death ("Not for his age but for all time", etc.), those who worked to record and publish his plays in the first Folio, etc.- were covering up some fantasitc consipracy?
Posted by: Vish Subramanian at Oct 23, 2006 11:27:21 AM
I'm probably just repeating Doug Byrne, but the failure of the conspiracists to agree on an author is pretty strong evidence of data mining.
Posted by: Douglas Knight at Oct 23, 2006 11:31:42 AM
To Doug Byrne: Actually, none of the "alternative Shakespeares" fits the authorship mold very snugly. To take Neville as an instance, one of the most conspicuous features of his political outlook was fervent anti-Catholicism. He sponsored and supported penal legislation against Catholics, apparently believed the mad theory that Elizabeth might name the Spanish Infanta as her successor, and, while ambassador to France, was convinced that his Scottish counterpart was a covert Papist agent. None of that religious fervor is reflected in Shakespeare's works. Effort to ascertain the Bard's personal religious opinions have to explicate nuances. It hardly seems likely that there would be any doubt if someone of Neville's convictions had written the plays. James & Rubinstein of course brush past this difficulty, declaring, without even trying to demonstrate, that the works incorporate their candidate's ideology.
To Vish Subramanian: Believe it or not, all anti-Stratfordian theorists do assert that the First Folio was a fraud aimed at foisting the "Stratford man" onto an unsuspecting world. The purported motives for this conspiracy vary widely. In Neville's case, if one believes J&R, it was to distract attention from the plays' hidden advocacy of a Neville claim to the English throne! That is one of the less fantastic suggestions.
Posted by: Tom Veal at Oct 23, 2006 12:27:25 PM
I hope they never find the smoking gun. My bet is on Shakespeare himself.
It is pretty simple. He had a great memory, met interesting and well-traveled people, and didn't suffer the handicap of knowing that he was a great writer.
He probably didn't regard writing as very important - sort of a poorly paid rewarded skill like juggling or tumbling.
Kafka never visited Amerika.
Posted by: K at Oct 23, 2006 12:54:11 PM
'If the author of Shakespeare's play was intimately acquainted with the continent, why didn't he know that Bohemia is landlocked?'
Twelfth Night is based on a play by university educated Robert Greene, 'Pandosto', in which the Bohemian seacoast appears.
Two explanations; 1. Greene is using 'Bohemia' loosely to describe the empire of which it was a part, or, 2. Didn't care a whit for geographical accuracy (as Schiller, even later, had Mary Queen of Scots look out from the Tower of London to see her Scotland).
At any rate, the reasons people are dissatified with the man from Stratford as Shakespeare are quite numerous. The author simply knew too many of the aristocracy's secrets to have been someone like Will.
How did he know about Lord Burleigh's maxims that became Polonius advice to Laertes? Or, all the goings on at Marguerite of Valois' court (down to the names of three French noblemen)that are depicted in Love's Labours Lost?
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Oct 23, 2006 2:19:22 PM
'there was no authorship controversy for nearly 200 years after William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon's death.'
Right, there was almost nothing suggesting he was THAT Shakespeare either.
No one ever mentions--in the numerous letters existing--bumping into him at the equivalent of an Elizabethan cocktail party. No eulogies of his death. Even the monument put up to him in Stratford doesn't say he was the poet/playwright.
Samuel Pepys, in his famous diary of 1660-69 records his attendance at dozens of Shakespeare plays, but barely mentions the name "Shakespeare".
It wasn't until the actor David Garrick had a celebration of Shakespeare's work in 1769 that the Stratfordian was firmly identified with the Shakespeare canon.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Oct 23, 2006 3:51:50 PM
"Some of the plays appear to show detailed knowledge of the Continent that Shakespeare did not seem to have". We know remarkably little about Shakespeare and therefore little about what he did know. I'd guess that we know even less about what he didn't know.
Posted by: dearieme at Oct 23, 2006 5:19:18 PM
On the other hand: can that be the William D Rubinstein who wrote "The Myth of Rescue" - about the fate of the European Jews in WWII? For that was one of the most interesting histories I've read in years.
Posted by: dearieme at Oct 23, 2006 5:24:09 PM
Actually, this new book suggests a possible channel through
which Shakespeare might have known some of the things he is
noticed to have probably had trouble knowing. The book reports
that Neville was a relative of Shakespeare's. So, even if
Neville was not actually writing the plays, he and Shakespeare
might have been in contact and Neville might have talked about
his various excursions to France, Vienna, North Italy, and so
forth. End of problem, thanks to this book.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Oct 23, 2006 5:57:27 PM
Barkeley, the aristocracy loved the theater, so it's always been possible that they filled him in on the goings on that appear in the plays. But, that just moves the problem down the road a bit.
Shakespeare from Stratford never makes an appearance in any of the letters the aristocrats wrote to each other. Not once.
Even at the trial of Essex, when the play Richard II is presented as evidence against the plotters--including the Earl of Southampton, to whom Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are dedicated by 'Shakespeare'--does the name Shakespeare come up.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Oct 23, 2006 6:25:30 PM
'there was no authorship controversy for nearly 200 years after William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon's death.'
"Right, there was almost nothing suggesting he was THAT Shakespeare either."
Utter nonsense. Multiple quarto editions of Shakespeare's work were printed in HIS lifetime, many of them with "William Shakespeare" as author. Many editions of the Folios were published - more so than for other recently deceased writers except for Jonson. There are several references to Shakespeare's name as a writer in his lifetime, and hundreds after his death. Many of them neglect to constantly reinforce that Shakespeare, was in fact, Shakespeare, because they did not anticipate that such a question could even arise!
And does Samuel Pepys note the names of playwrights in his half-sentence reviews of all the plays he writes about.
After the reformation, Nicholas Rowe published a biography of him - for crying out loud! He had an actor names Thomas Betterton visit Stratford and collected many of the legends of his life. Why exactly were these people making up stories 100 years after his death?
The notion that Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was not the author of his plays is laughable.
Creationism is far more respectable.
Posted by: Vish Subramanian at Oct 23, 2006 6:41:03 PM
You're getting warmer... I was actually the first President of the United States! Do you really believe that toothless oaf could have defeated the redcoats at Yorktown!!!??? He didnt even go to OXFORD!!!
Posted by: Sir Henry Neville at Oct 23, 2006 7:50:14 PM
'Utter nonsense. Multiple quarto editions of Shakespeare's work were printed in HIS lifetime, many of them with "William Shakespeare" as author.'
Hilarious. Huckleberry Finn was published as by Mark Twain. And I'll bet there were American males so named in the 19th century. But, Samuel Clemens wrote the novel. Ditto for Voltaire, George Eliot, George Orwell....
The question is WHO was Shakespeare. And to that question there is precious little evidence it was the guy from Stratford who usually spelled his name Shaxper.
Indeed, ever scrap of evidence we have tells he was a businessman, not a literary figure.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Oct 23, 2006 8:04:37 PM
I'll just reference http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html. "How do we know Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare".
Posted by: Vish Subramanian at Oct 23, 2006 8:28:15 PM
Patrick R. Sullivan,
You do not consider folios published with his name in his
lifetime not at least "scraps of evidence" that Shakespeare
wrote his plays? Generally when people take pseudonyms,
they make them up, e.g. "Mark Twain," and so forth, rather
than take the names of actual living people. Oh, I know.
The real author had never heard of him and just made the
name up, unless, of course, you want to go for the ultra-
anti-Catholic Neville who was paying him to be a cover.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Oct 23, 2006 11:48:52 PM
Barkley, again, there is precious little to connect the man from Stratford upon Avon with the plays and poems associated with the name 'Shake-speare'. Other than similarity in sound 'Shaxper' or 'Shagsper', as it was commonly spelled.
It is absolutely circular reasoning to say that the name of the author must be a reference to the Stratfordian. How do you know which came first?
Could it not be that a warrior prince with a literary bent could have adopted the martial nom de plume 'Shake-speare' (as it was often spelled) for poetry and plays, and one fine day in the 1580s or 90s the Stratford rolled into town and heard the name associated with the theatre?
We have almost no hard evidence one way or the other. Even DeVere's death in 1604 doesn't rule him out, as the accepted chronology is simply fit to the dates of the Stratfordian's birth and death, with numerous problems that even orthodox scholars admit.
For instance, most scholars accept Sonnet #107 as referencing Elizabeth's death and the peaceful transition to James I:
'The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad auguries mock their own presage,'
That was preceded by a what appears to be a clear reference to the Earl Southhampton who'd been confined to the Tower for his part in the Essex revolt. And returns to him near end:
'Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,'
Shaxper lived another 13 years, but DeVere died in 1604. The Sonnets were first published in 1609 and the introduction indicates the author was dead:
'All happiness that eternity promised by our ever-living poet'
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Oct 24, 2006 9:26:43 AM
I think that this is a great way into thinking about the question of authorship more generally. There are a whole load of "Steven Spielberg" films today and I am sure that in 400 years' time there will be a load of very adamant scholars prepared to spill blood over the claim that a single guy called Steven Spielberg wrote every one of them, casting fire and brimstone at the "Lucasians", "Kubrickians" and oddball "Keneallyites".
I've always thought that the question of "how could he possibly have known about this" was the weakest aspect of anti-Stratfordism, the answer obviously being "he had mates who knew about it and they told him, most likely in a pub". But there are a lot of oddities of the sort that Patrick talks about and decent reason to believe that there was at least some input by a number of other characters.
Posted by: dsquared at Oct 24, 2006 9:55:19 AM
I am the co-author of The Truth Will Out. I hadn't seen this blog, or known about it, until a friend sent it to me. Might I add some comments to the thread? The main reason I believe that Sir HN was the true Shakespeare is because the life of Will of Stratford cannot be meshed in with the evolutionary trajectory of his works. This is far more convincing to me than any of the other evidence that Will didn't write the works attributed to him, e.g., that he had no education past the age of thirteen, which has been said by hundreds of skeptics. Why did Shaky kill off Falstaff, his most popular character, in 1598-99 for no apparent reason? Why not milk him in six more plays? What accounts for the great break in his writing career around 1601 which has been remarked upon by virtually every biographer? There is nothing whatever in the known facts of his life to account for this. Why would the Sonnets (apparently) be dedicated to Southampton, and why
were the Sonnets "wisheth the well-wishing adventurer" published within a few days of the Royal Charter to the Adventurers of the second London Virginia Company in 1609? Posit Sir Henry Neville and you get real answers- consistently and convincingly. Let me also say that the case for the Earl of Oxford is obviously and plainly deficient; ditto Bacon (although to a lesser extent). William Shakespeare is probably the most intensely-studies human being in hsitory, yet nothing- zilch, rien- has ever been found, by any of countless researchers, to uequivocally link him to his
supposed writings in the manner of virtually all of his contemporary writers.
Posted by: William D. Rubinstein at Oct 24, 2006 11:38:55 AM
