In defence of the question "Who Wrote Shakespeare?"
John Michell says the following: "It is a harmless, stimulating
and instructive subject to dwell upon, which is more than can
be said for many other types of obsession." To translate
this disclaimer, quibbling over the authorship of the Stratford
works is a pastime less mad than UFOlogy, better for you than
cocaine and more morally sound than bestiality – and at least
it’s legal. Quite why Michell feels the need to defend this branch
of scholarship as "harmless" might seem unclear. It
would, on face value, seem to be a not very dangerous, and at
worst quite trivial issue with which to occupy one’s time. However,
as Michell points out, the "Authorship Question" has
provoked debate between scholars which he describes as "extraordinarily
acrimonious" and, at times, "vitriolic", the various
factions involved hurling accusations of lunacy, and even of heresy
at the opposition. Each party clings to his or her belief with
a tenacity bordering on fanaticism and we are not long into Michell’s
text before we begin to realise the peculiar passion that fuels
the fire of the Authorship debate.
The traditionalists of the piece, whom Michell terms "Stratfordians"
or "Orthodox", are determined not to relinquish the
image of "the Bard", that stiff-collared and benign
looking poet who has smiled (or smirked) upon us all from the
covers of classroom editions. William Shakespeare as we know him
is the linchpin of our literary heritage, the grand deity of English
culture with Stratford as his shrine – and as Michell somewhat
cynically points out, Will is a damn fine tourist attraction.
As well as exploring the soundness of this position, Michell outlines
and investigates a plethora of Authorship theories ranging from
the ostensibly plausible Baconian argument to the clearly insane
case for Elizabeth I. Sadly, the most convincing of the anti-Stratfordian
positions seems to be that of "the groupists", those
who believe the works of Shakespeare to be the product of a collaboration.
This is quite an unpalatable doctrine for those of us who wish
to cling to the ideal of Shakespeare as a kind of Renaissance
über-bard, a universal man who knew everything about
everything and expressed it through a semi-divine poetic. It is
hard to dispel the attractive notion that the magic of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, the bleakness of King Lear, the violent
horror of Macbeth and the confessional passion of the Sonnets
flowed forth from the same sacred pen. The image of a gaggle of
smart, punning Elizabethan gentlemen having a communal stab at
poetry under a collective pseudonym entirely undermines the glorious
humanism of the Shakespeare mythology.
By the end of the text, Michell has not attempted to answer the
question "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" He has explored the
various answers and presented a valuable critique of them and
as such has made a valuable contribution to the subject. For those
wishing to approach the Authorship question whilst avoiding the
inevitable bias of most research, this book is strongly recommended.
Michell’s text is witty, concise, elegantly written and brilliantly
constructed, equally suitable for a serious student of Shakespeare
or a reader with a general interest in unsolved mysteries. I picked
up this book with the idea that I cared very little how, or by
whom Shakespeare’s work was created, being sure (so I thought)
that it was the Works themselves that mattered. By the halfway
stage, however, I noticed a distinct reluctance in myself to read
any of the "alternative" positions as anything but conspiracist
nonsense and by the end I was feeling distinctly unsettled. In
other words I had discovered the latent Stratfordian within myself
and that the authorship of the works actually mattered very much
to me.
Questions about whether or not the identity of an author is of
any importance to the work itself open up huge areas of philosophical
debate and have troubled aestheticians for decades. Michell’s
text shows that, whether we like it or not, our perception of
an author’s identity plays a huge role in our perception and evaluation
of a work. Despite what Beardsley and Eliot tried to teach us
about the artist/poet being ultimately secondary to the work,
it seems that we require art to have a "human" identity
beyond itself. Despite extensive research, "the Artist commonly
known as Shakespeare" remains elusive, and what Michell’s
book reveals is the fascination of the mystery and the passionate
minds that keep the mystery alive. The main achievement of this
book is that its shows the question of its title undoubtedly to
be worth asking.
Reviewed by Polly Rance
