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April 17, 2005 07:46AM
To keep myself sane during the election campaign I have avoided reading any political books and have concentrated instead on the sort of curiosities and sidelines that I rarely otherwise explore. One particular controversy that has always intrigued me is the question of Shakespearian authorship. Who wrote Shakespeare? deals with this question with all the precision and critical scrutiny that one comes to expect from any other facile conspiracy theory.
The aptly named Thomas Looney puts forward the case for Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford as Shakespeare. Among the supposedly compelling points are that de Vere's family crest depicted a lion shaking a spear. This, say the Oxfordians, shows that Oxford was Shake-speare - I kid you not. Counterveiling evidence, such as the small matter of Oxford being dead while a large part of the Shakespearian canon was still unwritten, do nothing to faze Looney and his followers - Freud among them.
Francis Bacon holds second place as a candidate of the Shakespearian heretics for reasons no less preposterous. Bacon, a genuinely great mind and genius in his own right, doesn't need this silliness detracting from his reputation. We are crudely informed that the sonnets were written by a homosexual - those familiar with the mysterious Fair Youth in Shakespeare's sonnets will know what I mean - and Bacon, as presumably the only homosexual in Elizabethan England, must be the man. Similar 'proof' is put forward for Oxford - only he could be the man behind the even more mysterious Dark Lady because he - wait for it - had a mistress and she was dark haired! But the Baconian case gets sillier still...
The famous long word of Love's Labour's Lost - honorificabilitudinitatibus - you'll be shocked to learn can be made into an anagram. 'Hi ludi, tuiti sibi, Fr. Bacono nati' or 'These plays, produced by Fr. Bacono, guarded for themselves' certainly proves something, but politeness dictates that I say not what. One contributor does even better: 'But thus I told Franiiiiii Bacon'. Of course, the over-indulgence of 'i's' isn't a desperate attempt to make an anagram where none exists. We are told (wrongly as it happens) that iiiiii makes six in roman numerals and that six in French pronunciation, preceded by 'Fran', is heard as 'Francis'. Desperate, desperate stuff.
The Earl of Rutland, Christopher Marlowe (another writer from beyond the grave) and the Earl of Derby have similarly absurd defenders but you've seen enough to get the idea. Shakespeare Authorship studies are interesting in the sense that you begin to look at Elizabethan England from a different angle. Marlowe was, in all seriousness, probably working as a secret agent and was almost certainly assassinated after talking too openly under the influence of drink. Francis Bacon, the 'philosopher king' as his followers would have it, a man heavily involved in affairs of state and always at the centre of court intrigues , died from a cold he caught whilst stuffing a dead chicken with snow in a failed experiment to preserve meat. The Earl of Derby spent five fascinating years travelling Europe. He almost certainly entered the court of Navarre - which gives rise to the spurious claim that he was yet another author of Love's Labour's Lost - and travelled Spain, Italy and Russia. The Earl of Rutland received a mysterious stipend from Queen Elizabeth - which gives rise to predictable speculations - and later became the ambassador to Denmark, receiving King Christian IV in London.
All of this and more is valuable and worthwhile. History is at its best when brought to life and Shakespeare Authorship studies do this almost by accident. This accidental benefit is the only reason to begin reading anything to do with Shakespeare Authorship. By no means should one read the ramblings of these conspiracy theorists for the reason they were originally intended.
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