Jul 3, 2018
“The fraud of men was ever so / Since summer first was leafy”
— Balthasar’s song, Much Ado About Nothing
In episode six, we look at that vexing question of whether or not Will Shakespeare was a complete and utter conman. We’ll follow those who dug up rivers, cracked codes, turned to grave-robbing, or occasionally just wrote really, really long books to find the answer. We’ll hear from Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, William Wordsworth, and learn some surprising theories as to why Queen Elizabeth I was the Virgin Queen (or was she…?). It’s a journey from the 1560s to our era and back again, and somehow I manage to bring up Golden Girls, England’s greatest treasure hunt, George W. Bush and Dame Agatha Christie!
Confused? You still will be after listening, but I hope you’ll enjoy this incredibly long investigation of the madness that is the authorship question.
You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, or by email at podcastshakespeare@gmail.com. You can listen to the podcast at iTunes or download direct from Libsyn. We also have a Spotify playlist, which will be updated each week as we work through the plays.
The website for the podcast is https://podcastshakespeare.com/. On the website, you will find an evolving bibliography.
Contents
00:00 - Introduction / searching
for Shakespeare
09:33 - Delia Bacon / candidate Sir Francis Bacon
24:50 - Mark Twain / Ignatius Donnelly, codebreaker
35:05 - Dr. Owen's machine / Mrs. Gallup and Mr. Arensberg
41:45 - J. Thomas Looney / candidate Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford
1:04:40 - Other candidates / Christopher Marlowe
1:09:35 - Oxford gets another chance / "Anonymous"
1:13:41 - The "Masquerade" connection
1:18:49 - William Shakespeare
1:37:38 - The enduring appeal of theories / My theories
1:47:15 - The "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" / hail and farewell
Links mentioned:
Due to the nature of the episode, I have done a separate permanent Authorship page at https://podcastshakespeare.com/further-reading/the-authorship-question/. Some links below.
SIR FRANCIS BACON (1561 – 1626)
Supporters of Bacon
Delia Salter Bacon (1811 – 1859):
Walt Whitman,“Shakespeare Bacon’s Cipher”
Ignatius Donnelly, The Great Cryptogram (1888)
Elizabeth Ward Gallup:
Dr. Orville Ward Owen, Sir Francis Bacon’s Cipher Story (1893-95)
Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909)
Henry W. Fisher, Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field, Tales they told to a fellow correspondent, (1922) – see page 49 for Twain and Fisher’s anecdote Queen Elizabeth being a man.
Walter Conrad Arensberg:
EDWARD DE VERE, 17TH EARL OF OXFORD (1550 – 1604)
Supporters of Oxford
John Thomas Looney (1870 – 1944)
The De Vere Society of Great Britain
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship
Why I Became an Oxfordian at the “Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook”
Charlton Ogburn:
Michael Brame and Galina Propova, Shakespeare’s Fingerprints (2002), discussed in Washington University News, January 23, 2003
Percy Allen, Life Story of Edward De Vere (1932)
Trailer for Anonymous, directed by Roland Emmerich (2011)
GENERAL DOUBT
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564 – 1616)
The First Folio at the Bodleian online
Shakespeare suing for minor debts – at ShakespeareDocumented.org
The Shakespeare Authorship Page – a vital resource
David Kathman:
James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (2010)
Irvin Leigh Matus, “The Case for Shakespeare“, The Atlantic, October 1991
Samuel Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives, 1970
William F. Friedman & Elizebeth Smith Friedman:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men – chapter 6 “Shakespeare or the Poet” (1850)
Terry Ross, “The Code that Failed: Testing a Bacon-Shakespeare Cipher“ at The Shakespeare Authorship Page
Don Foster:
The moot trials of Shakespeare:
Giles Dawson and Laetitia Kennedy-Skipton, The Survival of Manuscripts, from Elizabethan Handwriting, 1500-1650: A Manual, W.W. Norton & Co, 1966 at The Shakespeare Authorship Site
Muriel St Clare Byrne, “The Social Background“, in A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, page 190, edited by Harley Granville Barker and G.B Harrison (1934)
William
Wordsworth,
Scorn not the Sonnet (c. 1807)
Robert Browning, House (1876)
Robert Bell Wheler:
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564 – 1593)
Marlovian theory of authorship
MISCELLANEOUS CANDIDATES
Wikipedia’s list of 87 (at July 2018)
Robert Frazer, Silent Shakespeare (1915) PDF
Gilbert Slater, The Seven Shakespeares (1913)
Michaelangelo Florio, aka Crollalanza
Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, in Claud Walter Skyes’ Alias William Shakespeare, Aldor, 1947
Henry Neville, a very peculiar theory – with Tom Veal’s response
OTHER LINKS QUOTED
Catullus, Poem 5
Kit Williams’ Masquerade
John Keats’ Lamia
Aeschylus’ Eumenides
Clips:
Sergei Prokofiev, “Montagues and Capulets”, from Romeo and Juliet (ballet), 1935
Franz Schubert, Im Fruhling, D.882 performed by Barbara Hendricks
Gerald Finzi, Love’s Labour’s Lost, op. 28: Dance, Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon
Gaetano Donizetti, Overture to Roberto Devereux (feat. God Save the Queen), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras
John Dowland, Galliard for the Queen and Robert Dudley
Hakan Parkman, “Take, O Take These Lips Away” (Madrigal) from 3 Shakespeare Songs, sung by Singer Pur choir
“Bonny Peggy Ramsey” (traditional) performed by Tom Kines on Songs from Shakespeare’s Plays and Popular Songs of Shakespeare’s Time
Ambroise Thomas, Hamlet (1868), 1994 recording, London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Antonio de Almeida: