Who wrote Shakespeare? The answer is of course Shakespeare.
James Shapiro details the history of the obsession over Shakespeare authorship. This usually falls into some main threads. The weirdos really think Marlowe did it. Then mystics go with Francis Bacon. And finally zealots go with Edward de Vere.
It basically comes down to the fact that generally little is known about the person of Shakespeare, and because many people have take small moments of what we do and drawn wild extrapolations of them, the question remains. In the hands of Shapiro, this is a very interesting story with a compelling narrative, so long as you agree with Shapiro (he’s right) that the case against Shakespeare being Shakespeare makes no sense. But once you find yourself having to try to prove something that is true true, it’s actually kind of hard to do. Add to this the way in which the adherents of one of the made up theories tend to demand legitimacy of their own theory, falsely giving it weight, and then using that false weight to try to add more, it’s easy to seem like you’re on the defensive.
Probably the most ridiculous examples of famous people not believing Shakespeare was Shakespeare was Freud and Mark Twain. Mark Twain’s attitude is mostly, naw, don’t buy it. Whereas Freud wholly bought into the theories of Looney, who came up with Oxford.
In general, the theories and beliefs are based in the believers pre-suppositions. They create an image in their head of who must be the kind of person who could achieve what Shakespeare did, and then work backward from there to for any evidence they can link to the idea. The book calls it circumstantial evidence, which I think is false, it’s barely conjecture, let alone circumstantial. But by using words like “orthodoxy” to describe fact (that Shakespeare was Shakespeare) and to champion classist ideas about station and education, they make themselves sound serious, when they are not. The funniest thing to me is the belief that someone who seemed possibly obsessed with money couldn’t also be an artist! I am reminded of William Faulkner’s unhinged rants to his agent about checks clearing.
