Shakespeare, In Fact

Shakespeare, In Fact

IRVIN LEIGH MATUS

With a New Introduction by

THOMAS MANN

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

To Sam and Marilyn Schoenbaum

With affection and gratitude

Copyright

Copyright © 1994 by Irvin Leigh Matus

Copyright © 2012 by Paul Matus

Introduction to the Dover Edition Copyright © 2012 by Thomas Mann

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2012, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1994 by The Continuum Publishing Company, New York. Thomas Mann has provided a new Introduction to this Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Matus, Irvin Leigh.

Shakespeare, in fact / Irvin Leigh Matus ; with a new introduction by Thomas Mann. — Dover ed.

       p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN-13: 978-0-486-49027-4

        ISBN-10: 0-486-49027-0

      1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship. 2. Dramatists, English—Early modern, 1500–1700—Biography. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship—Oxford theory. 4. English drama—Authorship. I. Title.

PR2939.M36 2012

822.3’3—dc23

[B]

2012020697

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

49027001

www.doverpublications.com

Contents

Introduction to the Dover Edition

Author’s Preface

1. In the Court of Public Opinion

Is It Important? • Allusion and Illusion • This Book and Its Sources

2. Shakespeare of Stratford, His Record and Remains

Shakespeare—or Shakspere? • Hyphenated Shakespeare • Literacy and the Shakespeares • The Stratford Grammar School • Shakespeare: The Heel, and His Achilles’ Heel • Shakespeare’s Autograph • The Survival of Manuscripts

3. On the Paper Trail of the Player and the Playwright

The Records of the Player • The Lord Chamberlain’s Man • The King’s Man • Early Notices of the Playwright • The Missing Manuscripts • Author’s Rights and True Originall Copies • Believe as You List • Afterwords: Shakespeare ye Player by Garter • A Bend between Two Cotizes

4. The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays

The Worshipful Company of Stationers • The Acting Companies and Publication • Give Them No Quarto • The Publication History of the Chamberlain’s Men’s Plays • From Sir George Buck to the First Folio • Pembroke and the 1619 Quartos • Heminges and Condell versus the Noble Brethren • The Publication History of the King’s Men

5. Questions about the Writing of the Plays

Shakespeare, the Sole Begetter? • The Unkindest Cuts • Worth the Audience of Kings • Afterwords: Hence Broker-Lackey

6. The Dating of Shakespeare’s Plays

The Problem of Cairncross • A Tale of Two—or Three—Lears • The Winter’s Tale and Tales of The Tempest • Henry VIII and the Problem of John Fletcher • Questions for a Chronology

7. Shakespeare’s Reputation in the Seventeenth Century

The Reputation of the Theater in Shakespeare’s Day • The Reputation of Shakespeare in His Own Day • Shakespeare in the Restoration • Shakespeare Reformed • In Praise of Shakespeare

8. The Bard before Bardolatry

The Editions of Rowe and Pope • Theobald versus Pope—and Vice Versa • Johnson, Garrick, and Stratford I: c 1745 • Johnson, Garrick, and Stratford II: 1756 • Johnson, Garrick, and Stratford III: c 1765 • The Scholars’ Shakespeare versus the Actors’ Shakespeare • Afterwords: A Painting of the Shakespeare Monument before Its Restoration?

9. The Claim for the Earl of Oxford

Of Pen Names and the Cob of Avon • Oxford as a Patron of Players • The Lord Great Chamberlain’s Men? • The Case of the Missing 9th Earl • The Other Lord Chamberlain • The Counterfeit Presentment • The Courtier • The Soldier • The Scholar • The Glass of Fashion • A Resident Dramatist in Queen Elizabeth’s Court? • The Thousand-Pound Annuity • In Regard to the Case for Oxford

10. Closing Arguments

Stratford in Shakespeare’s Day • Shakespeare’s Rarified Knowledge • Shakespeare’s Classical Knowledge • Getting the Elizabethan Age Right • The Theater and Audiences of Shakespeare’s Time • Getting Shakespeare Right • That New Old-Time Orthodoxy

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Introduction to the Dover Edition

The author of this book, the late Irvin Matus (1941-2011) was a truly unusual character. He is already something of a legend in the field of Shakespeare scholarship. He had no formal education beyond a high school diploma, but he wrote two of the best books ever on the Bard and his era. At the time he finished the first one, Shakespeare: The Living Record, twenty years ago, he was living on a heating grate behind the Library of Congress. In some ways he was like Thoreau, in his disregard for money and his determination to march to the beat of his own drum. That doesn’t quite capture him, however. I think he could also be described as a real-life character out of a Dickens novel—that is, if a Cockney accent could be replaced by a strong Brooklyn equivalent.

Upon first meeting him, you would not have suspected how brilliant, or how quirky, he was. You would, however, have been immediately impressed by his cheerfulness, affability, and talkativeness. Irv loved a conversation about ideas, or a good chin wag, as he put it. That was partly due to his natural extroversion, but also to the fact that he couldn’t afford most other amusements. In his last year he was living on income of well under $4,000, almost all from Social Security; he had a low-rent apartment by then. He would seldom call friends on the telephone, to avoid running up his own phone bill; but when he did want to talk, to me anyway, he’d leave voicemail messages on my work number, time-stamped at 2:00 a.m., to call him back the next day. Actually, it would usually be two voicemails, as Irv could not say anything within a two-minute time limit. Any friend who did call him in the evening would not be able to hang up for at least an hour. There would always be one more thing that Irv thought of to talk about. But then you usually didn’t want to hang up once he got going.

He always wore a sport coat (he had a few) and kept himself immaculately groomed; but, again, you would not have known that, in his seventh decade, he was still wearing one coat that he’d had since high school—he kept it very carefully mended that whole time.

I got to know Irv at the Library of Congress, where I’m a reference librarian in the Main Reading Room. With the Folger Shakespeare Library being right across the street, those two blocks on Capitol Hill formed much of Irv’s universe for many years. He actually boycotted the Folger, however, for a whole decade—he thought that, after the appearance of his second book on the Bard (this one), the library administration there simply owed him free photocopying privileges, which he didn’t get. He would not deign to set foot in the place again until, eventually, the culpable Director retired and a new one was appointed. (I believe he also lost a dishwashing job once because he thought he’d wiped enough crockery that the restaurant owed him two meals.) He didn’t get free photocopying under the new Director, either; but the offender of his dignity had left, and that was apparently sufficient. Slights to his pride bothered him more than costs to his wallet, and they sometimes led him to cut himself off from others in ways that, in my judgment (not his), hurt only him. That was some of his quirkiness, lurking below the surface. He was also greatly disappointed that the MacArthur Foundation did not deign to discover him and supply him with a genius grant—although in that respect he was probably more similar to his academic brethren than he would’ve liked to admit. Irv prided himself on not being an academic—and that he never went to college, except to teach. (He was a guest lecturer a number of times at different institutions.)

His major quirk was that he abhorred any job that required regular hours; the few that he had did not last long. He did telemarketing for the Kennedy Center for a few months; he also had a job, briefly, hawking food in the stands of the Washington Nationals’ stadium during their baseball games. He lost that, though, because his boss didn’t like it that, because of his immense knowledge of baseball history, he spent so much time talking to the fans in his section of the bleachers. He went through periods of house-sitting for friends or acquaintances, although some found, to their dismay, that he would re-arrange their apartments, and that it was much harder to get him out than to invite him in. For a few months while he was finishing Shakespeare: The Living Record he was indeed living on the street (but he had a study desk, during the day, at the Library of Congress). Although there was a Washington Post article about him at that time, an account which he generally liked, he did not at all like being known as a homeless person reduced to such dire straits. I was told never to mention that in introducing him to people. (I hope he’ll forgive me for presenting him more in the round here than he would allow while he lived. I really do want people to know how extraordinary he was.) He eventually wound up in what I think was a subsidized public housing complex, and then a retirement community far enough out in the suburbs of DC that his Social Security would pay for it; but he would never talk about his sources of income. Although he could take pride in what he wrote and did, he could not be proud of what he earned, and so a kind of wall would come up if any conversation drifted in that direction. I know he got some help from a cousin, a former member of Congress; they had been close friends since childhood, and Irv was helping him to write his memoirs. Or that, at least, was the pretext for the financial aid. His apartments were rather nice; he did have a second-hand TV and a DVD player, a small filing cabinet, and a lot of books (including an old Encyclopedia Britannica), and the usual tables, chairs, and bed. He also had an old computer, without Internet access, that conked out on him frequently during hot weather. I don’t know how he acquired any of this. I do know, though, that in his last two years he was monitoring his lifestyle to the level of pennies—it made a real difference to him when the cost of a postage stamp went up; and when the fare for the Metro system increased by about a dollar, it drastically reduced the number of times he could come into DC every month.

Apart from his literary pursuits he was addicted to watching Jeopardy on TV, and took great satisfaction in calculating how much money he would have won, in beating the various contestants to answers, had he been on the show himself. In his last year, however, he swore off the program entirely—the categories of questions, he said, were tending more and more toward pop culture references that he loathed, as their presence implied an endorsement of such things as an important part of general knowledge. (I can readily imagine the vehemence of Irv’s diatribe if he had lived to see a machine win that game. It would’ve been for him yet another indication of the Decline of Civilization.) His favorite movie was The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish, upon which he would discourse at length at the slightest opportunity. He had watched every BBC adaptation of Dickens and could do a great impression of the actor who portrayed Uriah Heep. He had somehow acquired a boxed DVD set of every Avengers TV program with Diana Rigg, on whom he had a great crush. (What is a general characteristic of every sentient male human being, however, cannot here be attributed to individual quirkiness; Irv, however, seems to have watched every program in the set multiple times, and maybe that was quirky.)

Another pastime that Irv could afford was watching birds and animals out his back window. It faced a kind of wooded area on the other side of chain link fence. Irv was always delighted, at our dinners, when he could report having seen deer, foxes, and chipmunks in addition to a few loyal squirrels that he fed with peanuts or rolled-up bread balls. Once when I was there, as he was standing at that window, a squirrel ran up the far side of the fence and down the near side, and then just sat there, eagerly looking up at Irv, who immediately found a peanut to toss. I think, in the event, he was even happier than the squirrel. (He told me this particular squirrel had done a good job training him.) After Irv’s death, when another friend and I went into his apartment to retrieve his computer and some other files, I noticed an empty chair set up right in front of that window, looking out.

Baseball was another of his passions. I’m not much of a fan myself, but whenever he got going on the comparative merits of Stan Musial vs. Ted Williams, or the peculiarities of the second game of the one time a pitcher threw back-to-back no hitters, or the worthlessness of home-run records in the age of steroids, or the significance of his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, I would always try to draw him out, just because his enthusiasm was so infectious. He would explain that his own takes on such matters were much better than SABREmetricians could provide—SABRE being an organization of baseball statisticians. In fact, Irv took as much satisfaction, in our dinner conversations, in skewering SABRE’s inaccuracies as he did in bursting the balloons of the Oxfordians. In his view, the SABRE people, the Oxfordians, and academics in general were all of a piece in reducing the grand meanings of important things to a level of unimportant trivia that had no purchase on human souls. To my knowledge, Irv never published anything on baseball, although in his last two years he was working on a baseball project. He came into the Library of Congress, as often as he could afford the commute, to use the historical newspaper databases that were freely available there: he was doing fact-checking for a book on the Brooklyn Dodgers—and what they meant to a kid from Brooklyn, which was Irv’s usual self-designation.

That reminds me of another appearance of his quirks: he often discussed a project he had in mind, to write a biography/history of Shakespeare against the canvas of the whole Elizabethan age. I dearly wish he would have pursued this, as he could have produced a book like no other. But he refused to write a word of it unless some publisher paid him a hefty advance. His lack of academic credentials, and a resume that indicated no periods of steady work, really hurt him here. He insisted that he’d already proved what I can do just from the fact of his two previous books; but apparently acquisition editors wanted more conventional guarantees of stability and performance. I repeatedly advised him to "just write two chapters—even one to send with his proposal; but he wouldn’t listen. The wall would come up again, and there was no arguing with him. The irony, though, was that he eagerly wrote a half-dozen chapters of his Dodgers book, with no advance from anyone, just because he enjoyed working on it. But because of all his previous work on Shakespeare, a kind of wounded pride" factor rose up there. It was like his convictions that he’d washed enough dishes already, or earned another plate of turkey or free photocopying privileges—the accrued work he’d already done, in his mind, merited greater payment from someone for what he wanted to do next. Some form of concrete recognition that would make his life easier, without his having to get a regular job, was his due. This quirk did not attach to his baseball interests—but only (I think) because he hadn’t published in that area, and so hadn’t yet established any claim to recognition.

I think Irv was happiest when, for a couple years, he had a document delivery job—some outfit in Bethesda (a DC suburb) would get requests from law firms, primarily, for copies of articles that their lawyers needed, the request would be sent to Irv, who would then find and photocopy all of them at the Library of Congress. The pay was very low, but it was pretty steady; and not only could Irv set his own hours, he was actually earning an income from doing library research. He loved that. This was also more intellectually challenging work than it might sound, in that many of the requests he had to fill were based on very garbled or incomplete citations to begin with, and required some real sleuthing. When that job dried up—the company went out of business—I remember I brought to Irv’s attention a couple positions that were open, for working in one or another local bookstore. He wouldn’t consider them—they required a schedule of regular hours. The quirk wall would go up, and there was no way around it or through it.

Irv took immense pleasure in being part of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen—this was (and is) a group of guys I would get together at the Cosmos Club in Washington. As a reference librarian in the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress, I meet a lot of interesting people; and when I first got into the Cosmos myself, and finally had a place where I could get people together, I decided to round up the most interesting characters I knew so that they could get to know each other. Irv, of course, had to be in that group right from the start (although we didn’t settle on the League name until some years later). We’d meet for a big Sunday brunch twice a year (paid for by royalty checks from a book of my own—I figure royalties are meant to be blown on friends), and Irv was always the happiest one at the buffet. And it wasn’t just for all the free food he could eat—he could then regard himself, essentially, a member of a group of intellectuals (not without quirks of their own) whom he viewed as his rightful peers. Amid these scholars, forensic scientists, journalists, film buffs, and professional writers—all of whom liked to talk—Irv found the kind of intellectual fellowship that he could never get from the academic world he always held off at arm’s length. This was even better than getting free photocopying. And membership didn’t require any academic degrees, or involve regular hours of work or people telling him what he had to do or when to have it done. He was there because he had been sought out and given his due for what he had already done. Once, at a Cosmos Thanksgiving dinner for several of the guys—a meal that was not a buffet—Irv charmed the waitress into bringing him a second plate of turkey (something that isn’t done in those august environs). He didn’t want the afternoon to end.

Because of those Cosmos brunches and Thanksgivings and some other meals, Irv (without saying it in so many words) would repay me by having me over to dinner at his apartment every few months. He was a great cook for ziti and chili, and would always explain in detail how much money he’d saved, in preparing the evening’s repast, from clipping newspaper coupons or buying only ingredients that he’d found on sale. He never paid full price for anything. For him, food bought at a discount just tasted better, as it had the extra intellectual savor of a triumph over the system. When I brought wine to go with the ziti, or beer for the chili, I would make a point of explaining that I, too, had bought only drinks that were on sale. Anything else would not have matched the cuisine of what he called proudly called, in best Brooklynese, Chez Oiv—with the ch pronounced as in cheap (a term of pride) and Chez rhyming with Pez.

I wish now I’d had a tape recorder for those conversations at his table—with a bottle of wine between us, and Irv going on ex tempore about Shakespeare, there’d be a whole ’nother book beyond the one in hand. He loved the plays, and could quote long passages from memory. They were not academic exercises for him—they were avenues of insight into how people might best (or worst) lead their own lives. Part of Irv’s quarrel with the academic world (a subject on which I heard much at these dinners) turned on its refusal to do battle with the Oxfordians—those addle-brained conspiracy theorists who maintain that the Earl of Oxford, rather than the man from Stratford, actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays. The present volume is the best sustained examination and refutation of their claims that has ever been done (although it is more than just that, as you will see). Irv diligently read the very sources they cite and routinely found glaring omissions and distortions in the ways they slanted and cherry-picked their evidence; even more significant, no matter what the issue, Irv could interweave a much more comprehensive tapestry of original sources for understanding Shakespeare in his own time than either the Oxfordians or the Shakespeareans themselves could present. He had an immense knowledge of the primary sources of the Elizabethan age, and all of it was at his immediate beck and call.

Our dinner conversations were not confined to Shakespeare, however. I must emphasize that Irv’s grasp of the plays and their Elizabethan context was not a monomaniacal focus, or a compartmentalization of intellect divorced from the rest of the world. Another of his persistent themes, if that’s the word, might be labeled The Decline of Civilization, or of Today’s Education—which was tied in to his general quarrel with academics. In this context he frequently referred not just to Shakespeare but to the classic plays of ancient Greece. (One of his very favorite books was Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way.) He often quoted the passage from Aeschylus that Bobby Kennedy recited from memory on first hearing of Martin Luther King’s assassination: In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. In Irv’s computer, after his death, I found any number of little essays he had written, apparently just for himself, as a way of clarifying his own thinking. I suspect this was part of his being such a good conversationalist; he knew what Bacon meant in saying Writing [maketh] an exact man. Here’s just one passage:

A student on an internship in the Folger Shakespeare Library told me about a scintillating class in Othello conducted by a well-known professor at a Washington, D.C., university. What invigorated him specifically was that the professor shot down everything we said. To share this remarkable experience with me, he lent me his notebook crammed with the professor’s ammunition. When I returned it to him, I asked what they decided the play is about. He looked at me as though I was speaking in a strange tongue and said We didn’t get to that.

It is little wonder, in an age when philosophy is pointless and Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry is just a cause for prose argumentation; when the implicit questions of the value and meaning of the human life, no less of one’s own, is reduced to academic exercises; that many turn to words of the Gospels to fill this void. … Love, merely? [Religion] is much more. It offers a structure for living, a moral scaffolding, a way of contemplating the meaning of life.

So do the Humanities. Or once did. There is, after all, little in religious writings that is not in the great works of literature. But in the latter there is not certitude, the promise of heavenly reward. It is brought down to earth, to the plight of the individual being struggling within the change and mutability of life, of the power of the human spirit and the human soul.

My experience of hundreds of college students indicates it is precisely this that is missing in their education. And is what they want. I quote a line from Martha Nussbaum’s book on Greek drama and philosophy that always gets a remarkable reaction: There are certain risks we cannot close off without a loss of human value, suspended as we are between beast and god, with a kind of beauty available to neither.

It is this last clause—a kind of beauty available to neither—that almost infallibly gets a reaction: a smile, a request to repeat it, or to repeat it slowly that it may be written down. And there is a beauty in this younger generation, amidst all the fear and danger of this time and the uncertainties of the future. What is missing is found in the words of Edith Hamilton:

When the world is storm-driven, and the bad that happens and the worse that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.

I’ve mentioned his non-literary pursuits above; but reading and writing were most important to him. He once gave me a copy of a speech he delivered at George Mason University, on being an independent scholar. In it he quotes not just Shakespeare but Thomas Hardy, Irving Howe, Samuel Johnson, the Comte de Mirabeau, Ben Jonson, Alvin Toffler, Johan Huizinga, Jacques Barzun, Jonathan Yardley, playwright-director Roy Kendall, James Fallows, U.C. Prof. Duncan Robertson, economist Hazel Henderson, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Shakespeare scholar Robert Ornstein, and Jacob Bronowski. Irv, just through his own reading, had given himself a liberal education. He brought much more than a knowledge of Shakespeare alone to his understanding of Shakespeare.

Much of his first-hand knowledge of the Elizabethan sources came from an extended trip he made to England, retracing the routes of Shakespeare’s traveling theatrical company, which he wrote up in his first book on the Bard, Shakespeare: The Living Record (1991). How, you might ask, did he pay for such a trip? Shortly before, when his mother died, he and his brother sold her house in New York, and Irv immediately used his proceeds to go to England. The result was a research odyssey of 2,300 miles through 47 cities, tracing the touring stops of Shakespeare’s acting company. Although Irv was once again dirt poor soon after he got back, the book, on its appearance, was highly praised as theatrical history from the ground up. Richard Dutton of the University of Lancaster said of it, It’s a very thorough, archival, back-to-the-grass-roots, trust-nothing, find-the-first-sources scholarship. … He’s done an amazing job of collecting that sort of information.

Irv used much of that same research for the present volume; it is based on primary sources at the British Library, the Guildhall Library, the Public Records Office, the York Central Library, and numerous other historical societies in England, as well as much additional material at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Library of Congress. Reviewer Andrew Gurr of the University of Reading wrote that "Shakespeare, In Fact is a landmark in the pursuit of the man who wrote Shakespeare. It is masterly in its control of the few undisputed and the many disputed facts. It is rare and valuable for the way it offers sane and dispassionate review of the evidence and the arguments in this much-trampled and disputed territory." John W. Mahon, the editor of The Shakespeare Newsletter, made a particularly apt comment: Mr. Matus has written the definitive study of the controversy without benefit of advanced degrees or academic affiliation. His thorough grasp of the many matters involved in the authorship controversy makes him a living example of his argument with regard to the man from Stratford—one can achieve mastery, whether in drama or in scholarship about drama, without extensive formal training or educational preparation.

All of this was because Irv fell in love with the plays while he was in high school. In later years he became particularly incensed at how widespread the Oxfordian heresy was becoming, especially among high school students—and their teachers! It truly concerned him that they reduced the experience of the plays to a kind of Easter egg treasure hunt for spurious biographical tidbits proving connections to Oxford, and that ferreting out such clues constituted an understanding of what Irv regarded as the greatest works of literature in the world. This was being taught as their hidden meaning. Although The Bronx is next door to Brooklyn and distinct from it, the Bronx cheer that Irv gave to such nonsense could hold its own with the best, and loudest, examples anywhere. (Hearing it was enough to make you choke on your ziti.)

In spite of his background, Irv was invited to teach at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies and at Shepherd College (now Shepherd University), and he was a Visiting Scholar at Iona College (home of the Shakespeare Newsletter). He also lectured at the Library of Congress, George Mason University, and at the California Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable. He had articles on the authorship debate published in The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Magazine, TLS (Times Literary Supplement), and elsewhere. He served as one of a select half-dozen panelists at an all-day debate of Shakespearians vs. Oxfordians held at the Smithsonian Institution. I know some academics who would kill to have Irv’s résumé; but Irv never wrote from publish or perish considerations. For one thing, he was always so close to the perishing end of things that he’d simply learned to live with it; for another, he would write only what he wanted to write. And he sincerely wanted to defend Shakespeare from those who would minimize—or try to steal—his accomplishments. In addition to writing his books and journal articles he maintained a website (managed by his brother in New York) at www.willyshakes.com, which (as of this writing) is still up; it contains more of his puncturings of the Oxfordian contentions, with numerous demonstrations that their own footnotes not only do not support, but frequently contradict, their own claims.

Websites, however, are ephemeral; books are not. So, on Irv’s behalf, I am most grateful to Chris Kuppig, the President of Dover Publications, and John Grafton, Senior Editor, as well as to Paul Dickson, their representative in Washington, for bringing Irv’s book back into print. He made very little money from it while he was alive—nowhere near enough to live on. And after his death we found seven boxes of remaindered copies in his closet that he hadn’t been able to sell on his own. (They were donated to the Folger Library’s gift store, where they now raise money for that library.) But I know he would readily appreciate the fact that books and ideas have lives of their own, whatever may be the circumstances of their authors. And the benefit to lovers of Shakespeare who read Irv’s book, wherever and whenever they live, is a boon that that can truly be described as unique, substantial, and enduring. The real riches of Irv’s life are not what he experienced while he lived, but what he has left to us.

THOMAS MANN

Washington, DC

September, 2011

Author’s Preface

Although I was living in Washington, D. C. in September 1987, I was only vaguely aware of the trial there of the case of the Earl of Oxford v. William Shakespeare regarding their respective claims to the authorship of the most famous and popular plays in world literature. To put it frankly, I was not very much interested. Besides, I was busy at the time with the research and writing of a book about the surviving buildings and monuments of England that hold stories of Shakespeare, his drama and his theater, and had little time to spare for anything, no less something I considered of no real importance.

However, when I read James Lardner’s excellent article about the trial in the April 11, 1988, New Yorker, my interest in the authorship was awakened. And so it was that, when I received an invitation to speak on the subject from Carol Sue Lipman, the president of the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable in Los Angeles, I gladly accepted. My talk was scheduled for September 30, 1989, but I went there several weeks in advance and in that time spent many hours in the company of members of the Roundtable. I wish to report those who hold to this cause aright.

I did not find them to be, as I have heard them called, kooks or loonies (except insofar as Oxford’s supporters adhere to a cause founded by a J. Thomas Looney). In my time amidst the Roundtablers, and in my contacts with the many Oxfordians I have come to know since, I have found those who dispute the authorship to be intelligent and thoughtful people, many of whom are interested in aspects of the English Renaissance and its theater beyond the confines of the authorship question, reflected in the range of topics presented by invited speakers before its membership. What is more, despite our differences on a certain subject, my contacts with the anti-Stratfordians have been, with few exceptions, cordial and congenial, and, from time to time, can even resemble real friendship (such is the case with Joe Sobran, whom I owe thanks for many a kindness).

Not that even my friendly opponents can resist getting in an occasional dig—such as the one who just barely exempted me from the worst by calling me almost an academic. Indeed, my years of research at the Folger Shakespeare Library may raise questions about how much of the influence of the academics I know is felt in this book, and it is therefore important for you, the reader, to know precisely who contributed to it—and how.

I must first say that I come honestly by the opinion that will be heard throughout this book, which is that Shakespeare is but one of the great dramatists in the age of English Renaissance theater. If there are among his plays a number that the others do not approach, there are also a number that they have surpassed. I have taken advantage of those rare opportunities to see the plays of his contemporaries and I will confess that my most memorable evening of theater was at an Off-Broadway production of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. I must agree with my dear friend, Roy Kendall, that if this play had Shakespeare’s name on it, it would be one of the most performed of classical dramas. But it does not, and so it is not—and that is unfortunate.

I have not approached the authorship question with the intention of confirming Shakespearean scholarship nor refuting Oxfordian scholarship merely. It is, instead, informed by the questions raised by the Oxfordians and the opportunity they afford to view Shakespeare from a different perspective. Orthodox scholarship (as the Oxfordians term it) has long inclined toward viewing Shakespeare as the central fact of Renaissance theater—which the Oxfordians would remedy by viewing Shakespeare in the person of Oxford as the central figure of the age. How did Shakespeare, in fact, stand in relation to his contemporaries, both as a man and a man of the theater? This is the central question in the authorship controversy.

Let it be plainly stated that nowhere in this book is there an unsolicited contribution from, or the exploration of any line of inquiry that was initiated by an academic. To the contrary, it was such as the challenge of a certain prominent Oxfordian regarding the dating of a Folger manuscript in which Shakespeare ye Player by Garter appears beneath a sketch of the Shakespeare arms that spurred my personal study of the item that appears in the Afterwords to chapter 3. Similarly, it was a question about why Shakespeare was not one of the authors of the King James Bible I was asked by Kim Marshall Alston (whose connection with the Folger is solely as an employee in its gift shop) that allowed me to discover facts about this great work that are fascinating in themselves as well as pertinent to certain authorship issues. I have, however, taken full advantage of my contact with academic scholars and I cannot be too grateful to the many who listened patiently and offered invaluable guidance as I made my way through the muddle of conflicting opinion regarding Shakespeare, the theater and the age. Thank you, one and all.

But on occasion I specifically solicited the knowledge of others and I here wish to express specific thanks for the special attention of these scholars. I am most expecially indebted to Steven W. May for sharing his singular expertise about Oxford’s poetry. Similarly, David Cressy has few rivals in the study of literacy and education in Shakespeare’s time and I am most grateful for the special information he provided to me. Thanks are owed to David Thomas of the Public Record Office in Kew, London, for his personal help in regard to the 1595 Chamber account. William J. Tighe deserves my thanks for sending portions of his dissertation on the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners regarding Brian Annesley, and was so thoughtful as to send along pertinent personal notes as well. I am doubly grateful to Geoff Chester of the National Air and Space Museum, who not only supplied the exact information on the eclipses mentioned in King Lear, but enlivened my day with a recital of Geoff Chaucer. My thanks too to K. R. Andrews for his important advice that aided my research on the question of Oxford’s ownership of the ship Edward Bonaventure. I have the rather odd problem of thanking the archival scholar who so thoroughly gave of his knowledge of Elizabethan legal documents in Latin in the case of the Ostler-Heminges suit, but preferred to remain anonymous.

There are the debts of long standing I happily pay here; foremost, my thanks to Richard Dutton for allowing me to make frequent withdrawals from his fund of knowledge about Ben Jonson and the Office of the Revels, which came in letters that were no less informative than enjoyable. Similarly, Robert Bearman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust was unfailingly prompt and forthcoming in answering my every inquiry and he has my gratitude. Particular thanks are due those at the Folger who so often gave their help so generously—most of all, Jean Miller, J. Franklin Mowery, Elizabeth Niemyer and, as always, Laetitia Yeandle. I am no less indebted to the staff of the Folger Reading Room for so many personal attentions, and especially Betsy Walsh, who runs the Reading Room so gently that it is only relatively recently that I discovered it is she who runs it. I also thank Bruce Martin for his assistance in providing research facilities to me at the Library of Congress. It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge Shane Poteet’s timely and capable help in upgrading illustrations.

I wish to give special thanks to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where I revised this typescript, and to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation for the fellowship that made it possible. I cannot adequately express my appreciation to the staff and to my fellow fellows for their inspiration and, of course, their good fellowship. No small contribution was made to the success of my stay by the staff of the Sweet Briar College Library, who completely met my rather specialized needs.

At last, it must be said that the way of an independent scholar (such as myself) is not an easy one and I am especially grateful to those whose encouragement and friendship have been invaluable. I therefore share this book with the Kleins—Rich, Julie and Bobby—who, from before the beginning, have always been at the ready with a kind word and a kinder deed. So, too, do I share this with Dan Burney and Martin Green, gentlemen and scholars both, for so much kindness and good fellowship throughout my years in Washington; as well as with newer, timely arrivals, Dan Borinsky and Phil Bufithis (with added thanks, Phil, for the college try). At last, words are inadequate to express the pleasure of knowing Vicki Barker; thus, to Ruth Barker go my thanks for both her daughter and her own kindness toward me. To two most accommodating friends, Rod Lawrence and Jim McConkey (who may have got it just right when he said that Shakespeare’s plays would be a miracle no matter who wrote them), my thanks equally for your good cheer and your hospitality. For their contributions to this book and its author I thank Dave Kelly and Tom Mann, and certainly Jozef Topolski, whose help may be imitated but never duplicated. It is both fitting and a pleasure to remember here the warmth and caring of Sheila MacRae, a worthy descendant of the famed Sarah Siddons, the granddaughter of John Ward, whose acting company’s performance of Othello in Stratford in 1746 was instrumental in the dispute over the Stratford church monument discussed in these pages. And I cannot forget Ben Thompson—as though anybody could.

Finally, there is the 12-year-old Oberon, whom I met at the Folger in the summer of 1988. I must confess I have forgotten his name, but it is as Oberon he deserves to be remembered, for