6. Plausibility

127 6. Plausibility It has been demonstrated that the particular biographical narrative through which we choose to view the subject of our study will powerfully influence our reading and interpretation of the evidence. Extending this idea further with respect to the Shakespeare authorship question, I have shown that the historical evidence yields significantly different interpretations when viewed through different authorship paradigms. How, then, are we to choose between two or more paradigms that are mutually exclusive? The obvious answer – that there is usually far more evidence for one than the other – is complicated when we take into account the existence of confirmation bias, the unconscious filtering out of evidence which conflicts with our pre-existing beliefs. The second most obvious answer, plausibility, is also more complex than it might at first appear. It is important to understand that the evidence for all authorship candidates – including Shakspere of Stratford – is circumstantial.The fact remains that there is no primary source evidence linking William Shakspere of Stratford to the poems and plays attributed to him. There is strong primary evidence that he was a business man and theatre share-holder, scant and dubious primary evidence for his acting, but no documents at all from his lifetime that support his being a writer. The argument that ‘his’ name on the pre-1616 quartos constitutes primary evidence is circular, relying as it Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 128 does upon the assumption that the name William Shakespeare (or Shake-speare) refers to Shakspere of Stratford, and is not a pseudonym. Similarly, pre-1616 references in other texts to the writer William Shakespeare (or Shake-speare) cannot be assumed to refer to Shakspere; every single one is demonstrably an impersonal reference, requiring an awareness only of the author’s works and writing style, not personal knowledge of the man. As Price concludes, ‘the authorship attribution in the Folio constitutes the first historical evidence identifying Shakspere in personal terms as the dramatist. The evidence is posthumous, and for no other writer of Shakespeare’s time period are we asked to trust such ambiguous and belated information, uncorroborated by any solid documentation left during the author’s life, as evidence of authorship.’ (Price, 2001: 194) I have confined this thesis largely to addressing the mythography created by Marlowe and Shakespeare biographers, and exploring what happens when primary texts are read through the Marlovian authorship paradigm. The main weaknesses of the orthodox paradigm are not part of my brief, and have in any case been thoroughly explored in Price’s Unorthodox Biography (2001). However, there is a substantial body of evidence that argues against Shakspere’s being the author of the works attributed to him that continues to go unacknowledged by orthodox academics.104 Each piece of evidence on its own is not particularly significant, but taken together, the evidence creates reasonable doubt of Shakspere’s authorship – at least for those whose reticular activating system allows them to consider an alternative paradigm. That most of the evidence consists in anomalies and missing data should not be discounted. David Schum, an academic and lawyer who has worked for the CIA and specialises in the analysis of evidence, began a presentation to the British Academy conference ‘Enquiry, Evidence, and Facts’ with an extract from Conan Doyle’s Silver Blaze to demonstrate 104 Owing to the impossibility of cross-paradigm communication, I am aware that orthodox scholars will disagree with this statement. Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 129 that the absence of something we would expect to be there qualifies in itself as an important piece of evidence that any explanatory narrative must account for (Schum, 2007). ‘ “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night time!” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.’ (Doyle, 2001: 413) Is it plausible that a man as passionately involved in the English Language as this author, whose works garnered the praise of literary men throughout twenty years of output, would leave behind absolutely no letters to anyone?105 That an author who filled his plays with educated woman, would leave his daughters functionally illiterate? That his genius would pass unnoticed at a grammar school which awarded university scholarships to talented pupils? Is it plausible that a writer whose vocabulary exceeded 29,000 words, and whose source books, as identified by scholars, number nearly 300, would leave no evidence of a single book owned, borrowed, or written in? That unlike every literate person of the period he would not have developed a consistent signature? That despite being one of the most famous authors of his generation whilst alive as well as afterwards, he would leave no trace of a life amongst other writers in London or elsewhere, not a scrap of unambiguous personal testimony? Is it plausible that a man who had no university education would use, in a metaphor, terms that are specific to Cambridge undergraduates, or show detailed knowledge of people who worked there or plays performed there (Cockburn, 1998: 223-34)?106 That he would exhibit first-hand knowledge of Italian towns and cities that most scholars agree he never visited (Prior, 105 Given that letters to or from his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Michael Drayton, George Chapman, William Drummon, John Marston, John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Kyd and Philip Massinger are extant. 106 See ‘Shake-Speare a Cambridge University Man’ in COCKBURN, N. B. (1998) The Bacon Shakespeare Question : The Baconian Theory Made Sane, Limpsfield Chart, N.B. Cockburn. Also BOAS, F. S. & SHAKESPEARE, W. A. M. (1923) Shakespeare & the Universities, and Other Studies in Elizabethan Drama, pp. vii. 272. Basil Blackwell: Oxford. Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 130 2008, Cockburn, 1998: 705-12)?107 That despite being extremely litigious in all documented areas of his life he would attempt no legal redress when his work was plagiarised and pirated? Is it plausible that a follower of Ovid, who celebrated and pursued immortality through verse, and whose sonnets express a repeated yearning for literary immortality, could be the same man that scholars agree showed absolutely no interest in the publication of his work?108 That after more than two hundred years of extensive research, with more than seventy documents relating to his life retrieved, the biography of Shakespeare alone (amongst two dozen writers of the period) would be bereft of those items we would expect to find if the biographical subject were a writer? These are only a fraction of the inconsistencies that have led to the birth and continued rise of Shakespeare scepticism. Each one on its own may be (and in many cases has been) explained away by orthodox scholars; but taken together, non- Stratfordians believe they constitute a substantive case against the incumbent candidate’s authorship. Stephen Greenblatt, aware of the sharp contrast between the biographical and literary Shakespeare, refers to him as ‘a master of double consciousness’. Since human beings (with the possible exception of those suffering from multiple personality disorder) generally possess only a single consciousness, a far simpler explanation for this phenomenon is that we are actually looking at two different men, but this is the rationale that falls beyond the academic pale. For Shakespeare 107 Italian places of which Shakespeare demonstrates first-hand knowledge include Mantua, Padua, Milan, Verona, Venice, Bergamo and Bassano. Roger Prior’s fascinating evidence for Shakespeare’s first-hand knowledge of Bassano is defeated by his effort to shoe-horn this evidence into the orthodox narrative. A necessarily short sojourn abroad for the traditional author/actor/share-holder, and the freshness of the Italian references, leads to his suggestion that The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Othello were all written in the first half of 1594. 108 Erne’s 2003 book made a powerful case for the author’s yearning for literary immortality, but the evidence of this (from Shakespeare’s own texts) is so at odds with the documentary evidence relating to the orthodox incumbent, Shakspere, that the idea is still widely rejected. ERNE, L. (2003) Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, Cambridge, UK ; New York, Cambridge University Press. Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 131 sceptics, the sheer quantity of ‘special pleading’ required to swallow the orthodox narrative makes it deeply implausible. At first sight the Marlovian case, with its necessity for a faked death, looks no more plausible than the orthodox one. Certainly there is nothing but circumstantial evidence to support it. However, although the idea of a faked death seems initially to be absurd, it is not impossible, and there are a number of conditions that favour it. One is the lack of agreement between scholars as to whether Marlowe’s inquest document covers a planned assassination, or is a truthful account of an accidental stabbing. It is a fact that Lord Burghley, at loggerheads with Whitgift and losing ground to him in terms of Privy Council influence (Sheils, 2004), failed to prevent the execution of puritan John Penry at the Archbishop’s behest, the day before Marlowe met with Poley, Frizer and Skeres at Deptford (Cross, 2004).

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