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Phase 1 Backround
Use the Internet information linked below to answer the basic questions of who? what? where? when? why? and how? Be creative
in exploring the information so that you answer these questions as fully and insightfully as you can.
1. What is the Shakespeare authorship problem?
The Shakespeare authorship problem is that many different people have different arguments of who really wrote Shakespeare's
work. Some people think that Shakespeare actually wrote all of the plays and poems, but many others believe that it is someone
else like De Vere or Marlowe
2. What literary, cultural, and political figures doubt that Shakespeare was the sole author of the work?
The majority of people who believe that Shakespeare's works are not his own credit the Earl of Oxford.
3. Make a chronological history of the doubts that surround the authorship of the Shakespearean canon.
#1
In 1989 Donald W. Foster published a book about the authorship of an Elegy for William Peter, printed in 1612 as the work
of "W. S." Foster's book reprints the poem and presents the results of a great many stylistic tests designed to
test attributions, especially to the best-known "W. S.," William Shakespeare. The conclusions are very cautious.
Shakespeare, according to Foster, could not be ruled out as the author. Indeed, he passed all Foster's tests. But that Shakespeare
actually wrote the Funerall Elegy "is more than I know," Foster says, and in summing up he will go no further in
the positive direction than to say that "[t]here is a possibility, perhaps even a strong possibility, that it was written
by Shakespeare" (Elegy 7). There the matter rested for some years. At conferences in 1995, and in publications in 1996,
however, Foster was emboldened by some new tests, and by a collaborator, Richard Abrams (Thomas Huxley to his Charles Darwin,
perhaps), to make an unequivocal claim of Shakespearean authorship. An extensive analysis of rare words shared between canonical
Shakespeare and the poem, as well as a study of common linguistic idiosyncrasies, led him to the conclusion that the Elegy
"belongs hereafter with Shakespeare's poems and plays . . . because it is formed from textual and linguistic fabric indistinguishable
from that of canonical Shakespeare" ("Funeral" 1082).
#2
Foster's methods have had success elsewhere. He correctly identified the author of Primary Colors, an anonymous novel
about Bill Clinton's first Presidential election campaign, and then worked as a forensic expert on the authorship of the Unabomber
manifesto. Foster also tells the story of how he managed to identify the authors of three anonymous referees' reports on the
Elegy book, entirely on internal evidence (Foster, Author 27-9, 38-40, 43-4).
#3
The attribution of the Elegy to Shakespeare has been highly controversial. [1] There is a transatlantic dimension to the
controversy. British scholars, generally, have been the most outspoken in dismissal of Foster and Abrams' claims, whereas
a number of North American collected works of Shakespeare, including Stephen Greenblatt's Norton one, now include a text of
the Elegy. There have been some interesting more general contributions to thinking about authorial authenticity. Abrams in
particular has responded to those who have dismissed the attribution of the Elegy to Shakespeare on the grounds that it doesn't
sound like Shakespeare by saying that since the quantitative and technical grounds for the attribution are so firm the concept
of the "Shakespearean" will simply have to change to accommodate it ("Breaching" 54). There are also arguments
about whether or not this is the way Shakespeare might have written in the elegy genre, and about a deliberate or otherwise
plainness of style in the disputed poem; and about the biographical hints in the elegy and its dedication and how they might
relate to Shakespeare.
#4
There have been a number of suggestions for possible authors other than Shakespeare culminating in a very recent article
arguing for John Ford on quantitative grounds, and listing a number of forthcoming studies supporting this attribution with
other sorts of evidence (Elliott and Valenza, "Smoking Guns"). The present study was designed and executed before
the emergence of this single, widely favoured candidate. It aims to explore the common-words evidence for Shakespeare's authorship
without considering any alternative candidate, pursuing the problem as a simple "Shakespeare or not" one, following
the work already done by Foster, and the objections raised to it by MacDonald P. Jackson ("Editions") and by Ward
E. Y. Elliott and Robert J. Valenza ("Glass Slippers").
#5
In what follows some of Foster's tests are reconstructed and re-run with a new set of data. The new runs show a much weaker
association between Shakespeare's style and that of the Elegy, and show up some damaging inconsistencies in the way Foster
conducted his tests. In a separate analysis using proximity scores the Elegy diverges from the Shakespeare pattern for some
groupings of words, where known Shakespeare poems, tested independently, follow the pattern throughout. Together these results
cast doubt on the attribution and suggest that Shakespeare is not the author of the Elegy. These conclusions stem from a different
approach from the most recent Elliott and Valenza study ("Smoking Guns"), in that the question posed concerns a
likeness or otherwise to Shakespeare's style tout court, and to all other previous contribution to the debate in the sense
that the question is pursued here on the basis of a single, broadly based quantitative model of style, using very common words.
The study offers a new line of evidence on the question of Shakespeare's authorship, which has, of course, been the main focus
of scholarly and other interest in the Elegy.
#6
The Elegy problem presents computational stylistics with some interesting possibilities. At something over four thousand
words, the poem is long enough for the kind of work with very common words which has been increasingly practised with computer
assistance. (For Foster's book, all the counting was done by hand.) Quantitative internal evidence is the main basis for the
attribution: readers' impressions of the Elegy's style have been strongly against Shakespearean authorship. The external evidence
is weak - in fact, hardly goes beyond the initials on the published book, since there is no known association between William
Peter and William Shakespeare.
#7
There are some aspects of the problem which pose difficulties, however. The Elegy is non-dramatic verse, and Shakespeare's
main output is in drama. The disputed text is itself in a sub-genre (elegy) in which he has written no well-attested work
to serve as a comparison. It can be precisely dated -- William Peter was killed, and the Elegy was published, in 1612. If
is by Shakespeare, it is a very late work, but the Shakespeare poems that survive were either published in the 1590s or seem
to have been written no later than the early 1600s.
#8
Another difficulty relates to the nature of the Shakespeare canon. Either because his works have unusually high internal
variation, or because they show few stylistic quirks, they do not in my experience form strong clusters when tested with established
multivariate methods. In general, the Shakespeare texts tend to have middling scores in the main dimensions, making a clear-cut
association or disassociation with or from a disputed text hard to achieve. Some of the common approaches of computational
stylistics are therefore ruled out. Whereas with some authorial sets high-order principal components in a Principal Components
Analysis offer clear authorial separations (Lucy Hutchinson is a case in point [Burrows and Craig]), the Shakespeare set within
the current one tends to scatter along the components. Techniques such as Discriminant Analysis tend to give unstable results
because there are not enough Shakespeare poetry texts to provide a good training set.
#9
Any method to be applied to the problem must work for non-dramatic verse, which is what the target text is; but it is
unthinkable that such a method could rest on the poems alone. To match the perceptions of those who are sure they know what
"Shakespearean" is, and indeed to match the work of Foster himself, the plays must also be included.
#10
After much experimentation with multi-variate techniques like Principal Component and Discriminant Analysis, which, as
already hinted, all tended to give mixed or indeterminate results, a suggestion from John Burrows led me to use a more straightforward
measure of proximity between Elegy counts and those of Shakespeare.
http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/08-1/craistyl.htm
4. Now do the same for the doubts surrounding the Stratfordian attribution.
1709-
The publication of the first biography of "Shakespeare" as the Stratford man by Nicholas Rowe. The Restoration-era,
modern biographical tradition takes root.
1728 -
Publication of Captain Goulding's Essay Against Too Much Reading: Shakespeare probably had to keep "one of those
chuckle-pated Historians for his particular Associate...or he might have starvd upon his History." Goulding tells us
that he had this from "one of his (Shakespeare's) intimate Acquaintance."
1769 -
David Garrick establishes the annual festival at Stratford. He apotheosizes the Stratford Shakspere as "the god of
our idolatry."
In the same year, coincidentally, The Life and Adventures of Common Sense, an anonymous allegory, parodies the tradition
then taking root at Stratford. It describes a profligate Shakespeare who stole the implements of his trade, including a "mask
of curious workmanship [which] had the power of making every sentence that came out of the mouth of the wearer, appear extemely
pleasant and entertaining." The bard also cast "his Eye upon a common place Book, in which was contained, an Infinite
Variety of Modes and Forms, to express all the different Sentiments of the human Mind, together with Rules for their Combinations
and Connections upon every Subject or Occasion that might Occur in Dramatic Writing..." The theft was known to everyone
except for the narrator, "Common Sense," and his mother "Wisdom," until the mask itself revealed the theft
to them: "but we agreed, tho' much against my Mother's inclination, to take not notice of the robbery, for we conceived
that my Father his friends would easily recover their loss, and were likewise apprehensive that we could not distress this
Man without depriving his Country of its greatest Ornament."
1785 -
Rev. James Wilmot D.D., after some years researching local records and archives in Stratford-upon-Avon (he seems to have
been the first to do so) declares his "apostasy" to the official theory of Shakespeare and attributes authorship
to Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam.
1786 -
The Story of the Learned Pig , an anonymous allegory by an "Officer of the Royal Navy." The Pig describes himself
as having variously been a greyhound, deer, bear and a human being who worked as horseholder at a playhouse where he met the
"Immortal Shakespeare." The pig reports that Shakespeare didn't "run his country for deer-stealing" and
didn't father the various plays, Hamlet, Othello, As You Like It, The Tempest , and Midsummer's Night Dream.
Instead, the Pig himself confesses to be author.
1827 -
The anonymous novel, De Vere, or the Man of Independence, by Robert Plumer Ward, proposes in fictional form that Edward
de Vere was the real mind behind the mask of Shakespeare. The hint is not picked up -- except, perhaps, by novelists such
as Hermann Melville, who may have used Ward's novel as a source for the choice of the name "Captain Edward Vere"
in his Billy Budd (1889).
1837-
A character in Benjamin Disraeli's novel, Venetia, offers the sardonic observation on contemporary bardolatry that "a
regular Shakespearean falls into ecstasies with trash which deserves a niche in the Dunciad."
1847-
In a June 13 letter to William Sandys, Charles Dickens expresses his trepidation over the Shakespeare question: "it
is a Great Comfort, to my thinking, that so little is known concerning the poet. It is a fine mystery; and I tremble every
day lest something should come out. If he had had a Boswell, society wouldn't have respected his grave, but would calmly have
had his skull in the phrenological shop-windows."
1848 -
In The Romance of Yachting by Joseph C. Hart, a former American consul at Santa Cruz, voices the strong anti-Stratfordian
opinion of the century. The book had a huge influence, originally entirely negative, on the formulation of Hermann Melville's
theory of Shakespearean authorship, as expressed in Melville's anonymous 1850 review, "Hawthorne and His Mosses"
and which ultimately appears to have culminated in his naming "Edward Vere" the captain of the Indomitable in Billy
Budd (1889).
1850 -
Herman Melville publishes "Hawthorne and His Mosses" in Literary World (7), a reflection on Hawthorne, Shakespeare,
authorship and anonymity, and ultimately the Shakespeare authorship question. Melville suggests that the names of all authors
may be mythical:
"Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be we could glorify them,
without including their ostensible authors," he writes. "...I know not what would be the right name to put on the
title-page of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than
that of Junius - simply standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding Spirit of all Beauty, which ubiquitously possess
men of genius."
1852 -
The August issue of Chambers' Edinburgh Journal contains an anonymous article, "Who Wrote Shakespeare" The author
suggests that Shakespeare "kept a poet."
1856 -
Putnam's Monthly (January) publishes "Shakespeare and His Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them" by Delia Bacon,
an American bearing no family relationship to Francis Bacon.
1857 -
Publication of Delia Bacon's magnum opus, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, in which she considers
the possibility of several authors. Nathanial Hawthorne helped Delia Bacon publish this book, to which he contributed a preface.
1866
Nathaniel Holmes publishes The Authorship of Shakespeare.
1874-75
E. O. Vaile publishes a (relatively) thoughtful and measured argument, against the Baconian theory, in Scribners (9).
He cites contemporary Elizabethan witnesses such as Sir John Davies and Richard Barnefeild, who wrote in praise of "Shakespeare,"
and urges that "more might be given, but these must suffice. What explanation can be made of these allusions? Were these
men and their fellows all so completely deceived by the cunning of a Lord Chancellor and the Prince of Philosophers? Or are
we supposed to believe that they were combined in an effort to make posterity believe a lie? What an absurdity!"
1881
Walt Whitman publishes an extensive essay on the Shakespeare question in North American Review (132), discussing among
other topics the tension between the social ideology of Shakespeare and other British literary figures like Tennyson and Sir
Walter, and the democratic principles of the American Republic.
1884-
Whitman continues to share his thoughts on Shakespeare with the American reading public, this time making the anti-Stratfordian
sentiment which was latent in his previous essay, quite explicit. His article "What Lurks Behind Shakspere's historical
plays" in The Critic (Sept. 27) includes these oft-quoted and prophetic lines:
"Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism--personifying in unparallel'd ways the medieval
aristocracy, its towering sprit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation)--only
one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselve, or some born knower and descendent, would seem to
be the true author of these amazing works."
1889-
Hermann Melville, very near death, writes Billy Budd.
1891/92 -
James Greenstreet, a British archivist, in a series of essays in The Genealogist, proposes that William Stanley, 6th Earl
of Derby and son-in-law to Edward de Vere, was author of the Shakespeare plays-- a theory later seconded in 1919 by the formidable
French literary historian Abel Lefranc.
1895 -
It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries, a novel by Wilbur Ziegler, proposes that Marlowe, Raleigh, and
the Earl of Rutland were authors of the Shakespearean canon.
1903 -
Henry James in a letter to Miss Violet Hunt says "I am 'a sort of' haunted by the conviction that the divine William
is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a patient world."
1908 -
Sir George Greenwood, scholar and Member of Parliament, exposes the major arguments and scholarship against the Stratford
man as author of the Shakespearean canon in his book, The Shakespeare Problem Restated, the first in a series of volumes that
Sir George devoted to the subject.
1910 -
Bacon Is Shakespeare by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence (New York, John McBride Co.) cites the following distinguished men
who perceived "the truth respecting the real authorship of the Plays:"
--Lord Palmerston, British statesman, 1784-1865.
--Lord Houghton, British statesman, 1809-1885 (better known as Richard Monckton Milnes).
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British critic and poet, 1772-1834
--John Bright, British statesman, 1811-1889 ("Any man that believes that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet
or Lear is a fool.")
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and poet, 1803-1882
--John Greenlief Whittier, American poet, 1807-1892 ("Whether Bacon wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am quite
sure the man Shakspere neither did nor could.")
--Dr. W. H. Furness, eminent American scholar and father of the editor of the Variorum, 1802-1891 ("I am one of the
many who have never been able to bring the life of William Shakepeare and the plays of Shakespeare within planetary space
of each other.")
--Mark Twain, American author and humorist, 1835-1910
--Prince Otto von Bismarck, 1815-1898
1919 -
Abel Lefranc, one of the greatest of French literary scholars, supports the Derbyite theory in his Sous le Masque de "William
Shakespeare": William Stanley, VI Comte de Derby.
1920 -
J. Thomas Looney, British schoolmaster and scholar, evolved the theory of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as author
in his book, "Shakespeare" Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford.
1922 -
In response to Looney's book, The Shakespeare Fellowship, an organization devoted to research on the Shakespearean authorship,
is formed. Sir George Greenwood is the first President, and officers include J. T. Looney, Colonel B. R. Ward (father of the
biographer of Edward de Vere) and Abel Lefranc.
1925 -
Henry Clay Folger purchases the 1569 Geneva Bible of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, after becoming interested in
Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified.
1926 -
Sigmund Freud adopts J. Thomas Looney's theory on the 17th Earl of Oxford. (One of Freud's teachers, Theodor Meynert,
had believed in Bacon as the true author.) Freud later confirmed this advocacy in 1935 with the revision of his Autobiographical
Study.
1928 -
B. M. Ward publishes his orthodox biography of the Earl of Oxford, which mentions Oxford's 1586 1000 pound annuity (which
Ward's archival research had discovered) for the first time.
Ward also discovers the court of wards account book mentioning Oxford's purchase of a 1569 Geneva Bible and identified
Oxford for the first time as the "little fellow" with the rapier wit in Tom Nashe's Strange News.
1929 -
Henry Clay Foler negotiates to purchase the manuscript of Shakesperian Fantasias: Adventures in the Fourth Dimension,
an Oxfordian novel (1929, The Plimpton Press, Norwood MA.) by the well-known writer Esther Singleton. The library subsequently
acquired in the manuscript.
1930 -
Canon Gerald Rendall, Gladstone professor of Greek at Liverpool's University College, publishes Shakespeare Sonnets and
Edward de Vere --another book that influenced Sigmund Freud.
Eva Turner Clark publishes a book, Shakespeare's Plays in the Order of Their Writing, which proposes that the 17th Earl
of Oxford wrote the plays and at a much earlier date than supposed.
1940 -
Charles Wisner Barrell publishes an article in Scientific American claiming that the Folger Library's Ashbourne "Shakespeare"
painting is actually the lost Cornelius Ketel portrait of the Earl of Oxford mentioned by Karl Van Mander in 1604 and George
Vertue c. 1721.
1943 -
Alden Brooks advocates Sir Edward Dyer as author in his book, Will Shakspere and the Dyer's Hand.
1948 -
Charles Wisner Barrell sues Giles Dawson for slander, after Dawson made disparaging and untrue public statements about
Barrell and about the Ashbourne. Dawson makes a public apology to Barrell, but the x-rays made for the Folger remain under
lock and key.
1952 -
Dr. A. W. Titherley, onetime dean of the faculty of science at the University of Liverpool wrote Shakespeare's Identity
in which he tried to establish the Derbyite theory through a series of scientific formulas.
1955 -
Calvin Hoffman in his book, The Murder of the Man Who Was "Shakespeare", reawakened interest in the theory that
Christopher Marlowe was author of Shakespeare's plays.
1957 -
Incorporation of the Shakespeare Oxford Society. From its inception (originally as the Shakespeare Fellowship in the 1930s)
a stream of publications in the form of books, newsletters, and journals advanced the evidence for Edward de Vere's authorship
of the Shakespeare canon. Noted writers: Charlton and Dorothy Ogburn, Charlton Ogburn, Jr., Charles Wisner Barrell, Louis
Benezet, Gelett Burgess, Ruth Loyd Miller, Dr. A. Bronson Feldman.
1962 -
Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper in Realites ( Nov. 1962) says, "One-hundredth part of the labor (expended on Shakespeare's
curriculum vitae) applied to one of his insignificant contemporaries would be sufficient to produce a substantial biography."
1964 -
Justice Wilberforce in a court case in England brought by the heirs of the deceased Evelyn May Hopkins, challenging the
validity of her gift to the Francis Bacon Society, Inc., gave an opinion in favor of Miss Hopkins' intentions, indicating
that "the evidence in favour of Shake-speare's authorship is quantitatively slight. It rests positively, in the main,
on the explicit statements in the First Folio of 1623 and on continuous tradition; negatively on the lack of any challenge
to this ascription at the time." He goes on to say that the noted English historian, Professor Trevor-Roper also considers
that the case for William Shakespeare rests on a narrow balance of evidence and that new material could upset it"
5. Consider the logic/illogic of each position and evaluate the effectiveness of each argument.
It is hard to argue the fact that William Shakespeare did not actually write the Shakespeare plays considering the fact
that his signature was on the majority of the plays written. He was also the actor in many of the plays written by him, “William
Shakespeare.” There is evidence in quotes by actors and theatre owners of the time signifying the greatness of William
Shakespeare as a writer of the plays. Although it is hard to argue the fact that he did not write the plays, it is very possible
to argue it. It has been said that William Shakespeare the actor did not gain a formal education and his parents were illiterates.
He did not attend a university or attend a school to teach him the correct grammar. His education level was believed to be
below the level of someone who could write poetry so well. Most of the evidence discovered mainly points to Edward de Vere
as the true writer of Shakespeare. He was the most educated and the play Hamlet tells the story of his life down to the last
detail. The truth behind the real author of Shakespeare will never be established because of the many and different theories
about the writings.
6. Make a list of the six contenders for the authorship question. Then add to each as much significant evidence that is
presented.
· Shakespere-
o The name William Shakespeare appears on the plays and poems as the author of them.
o William Shakespeare was an actor in the major company that performed the plays of Shakespeare.
o William Shakespeare the actor was also William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. This passage from http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html
helps explain it. “In 1602, Peter Brooke, the York Herald, accused Sir William Dethick, the Garter King-of-Arms,
of elevating base persons to the gentry. Brooke drew up a list of 23 persons whom he claimed were not entitled to bear arms.
Number four on the list was Shakespeare. Brooke included a sketch of the Shakespeare arms, captioned “Shakespear
ye Player by Garter.” Unless one is prepared to argue that John Shakespeare was an actor, or that William Shakespeare’s
brother Edmund initiated the arms application when he was 16 and was a known player by the time he was 22, “Shakespear
ye Player” can only be the Shakespeare identified in other documents as an actor, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon,
gentleman. This is the same coat-of-arms that appears on the poet’s tomb in Stratford.”
o The Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is also William Shakespeare the poet and writer. The following quote from Will
Kempe establishes that the playwright Shakespeare was a fellow actor of Kempe and Burbage, contrasts him with the University-educated
playwrights, and establishes him as a rival of Ben Jonson. “Few of the university [men] pen plays well, they smell
too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our
fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, aye and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace
giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.”
· Bacon-
o The content in the Shakespearian dramas are politically recognized viewpoints of Sir Francis Bacon (His "enemies"
are frequently caricatured in the plays.)
o The religious, philosophic, and educational messages all reflect his personal opinions
o Similarities in style and terminology exist in Bacon's writings and the Shakespearian plays.
o Sir Francis Bacon possessed the range of general and philosophical knowledge necessary to write the Shakespearian plays.
o He was a lawyer, an able barrister and a polished courtier and possessed the intimate knowledge of parliamentary law
and the etiquette of the royal court revealed in the Shakespearian plays.
o He also traveled to many countries, which in result helper him get the background he needed for many of his plays.
· Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford-
o Hamlet tells the story of Oxford’s life down to the last detail.
o The personality profile of the “Author of the Works” matches Oxford’s life.
o Oxford was referred to as a spear shaker of his time.
o Oxford’s published poetry shows a direct link to Shakespeare’s work.
o
· Marlowe-
o It has been established that Marlowe is the real man buried in Shakespeare’s tomb.
o The writings of Shakespeare were similar to the ones of Marlowe.
o He lived long enough to the time of Shakespeare’s writings.
· William Stanley, Earl of Derby-
o William Stanley went by the name "Will"
o His initials are "W.S." (an early manuscript has those initials for the author--and only the initials).
o He grew up in an acting family, that was also nobility (he was a potential heir to the throne).
o He's the only candidate to be born earlier than, and die older than, the Stratfordian (Shakspur), so he's the only for
whom the timeline fits naturally.
o He traveled abroad as part of his early studies.
· Roger Manners, the Earl of Rutland-
o Between the 1st and 2nd quarto of Hamlet, the author learned a few things about Danish names, Danish geography, and
the Danish court at Elsinore. During this period, Rutland was an English ambassador to Denmark.
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