Shakespeare and Dr Rowse
Sir: By being so irrationally offen- sive to all who hold different views from himself, Dr Rowse's article does no credit either to his cause or to his own reputation as a scholar and historian. Many of them are equally qualified scholars and historians in Dr Rowse's own field.
'A proper historian,' says Dr Rowse, 'detests theories and hypo- theses and reconstructions; he respects facts.' He does indeed. But, unfopertunately for the cause of truth, Dr Rowse begins by begging an essential question in stating as proven the hypothesis that William Shakespeare the author and one William Shagsper (or Shakspur, or Shakspere) of Stratford were one and the same person. He would appear to be so deeply mesmerised by this hypothesis that he cannot or will not take a long, cold look at the so-called facts supporting it. Moreover, he dismissed the ever- increasing weight of evidence that is rapidly tipping the scales on the other side.
It should be clearly stated once and for all that every so-called biography of William Shakespeare is to all intents and purposes a work of fiction. The facts, as opposed to the theories and sup- positions concerning William Shagsper of Stratford upon Avon could be written on a postcard— all the facts, gleaned from four hundred years of the most pains- taking and intensive research. They concern such things as his baptism, his marriage, his purchase of property and other assets, legal proceedings by or against him, and his will—the only part of which that connects him in any way with the theatre is considered by some experts to be a later interpolation. Not one of these known facts connects him in any way with the authorship of the plays, or indeed with any kind of authorship. There is no record anywhere that the man himself ever made any such claim, or that any other person ever made it on his behalf. He died, as he had lived, a nonentity. The only con- temporary reference to his death is a laconic—and curiously belated— entry in the diary of his son-in- law, a Stratford doctor: 'My father-in-law died last Thursday.'
At that time, twenty of the thirty- seven plays had not been printed. They were valuable assets. There is no mention of them in the Strat- ford man's very detailed will, bear- ing three of his six known sig- natures, whose obvious illiteracy baffled Stratfordian scholars have been at great pains to try to explain away.
It should also be clearly stated once and for all that the entire Stratford claim has grown from two vague references in the First Folio of 1623 (seven years after his death) which would seem from their context to have a deliberately ambiguous intention, and to con- ceal what they hinted at revealing —a game the Elizabethans and Jacobeans loved to play.
in short, if the plays had come down to us anonymously instead of, as more and more people now believe, pseudonymously, would either the nature of the works them- selves or the facts of their publica- tion, or what is in fact known of this man from Stratford, point in- controvertibly to his authorship? The answer, from anybody with an open mind, must be a definite 'no'. To say that the man was a genius simply will not do. Even a genius must learn a foreign language before he can read books written in it, as this author evidently had. Nor are geniuses born with a detailed know- ledge of the processes of law, or the techniques of music, or fal- conry, or soldiering—or even, for that matter, the rules of court pro- cedure. Such things must be learned to become so much the stuff of metaphor as they are in the plays —and learning was not as easily come by in an Elizabethan tavern as the Stratfordians would glibly have us believe.
Dr Rowse admits that 'people very often miss what is right under their nose'. That he himself. whose research into and contribution to our knowledge of the life and mores of Elizabethan England is immense, should miss what has been closer under tis nose than almost any other scholar's, is further proof that specialists can be quite astoundingly blind to what they do not wish to see. Many other Stratfordians be- sides himself have missed the 'simple fact' as he calls it, that 'the dedication [to the Sonnets] was Thomas Thorp's, the publishers— yet it is clearly signed by him, T.T. —and not Shakespeare's at all'.
It may surprise Dr Rowse to learn that many of his 'crackpots' had noticed this. Indeed, the in- dependent researchers of Oxford- ians have established beyond what an intelligent judge weighing evid- ence would call reasonable doubt, that Mr W. H. was William Hall,
a publisher's tout from Hackney, who is well known to have been a 'begetter' of other manuscripts for Thomas Thorp (not always by over-scrupulous means). They have also established that Hall was mar- ried at Hackney at the time of the Sonnets' publication, with their 'well-wishing' dedication, and that the contents of King's Place, Hack- ney. were disposed of by Oxford's widow about the time when the sonnets could have been procured thence by Hall.
Incidentally, Oxfordians seem to be the only 'crackpots' who have attached any 'significance' to another 'simple fact' about the dedication to the sonnets: that its punctuation is uniquely odd, and that its plethora of curiously placed full stops might contain an import- ant clue to the real identity of 'our Everliving poet' whose pseu- donym was William Shake-Speare. But it would be as fruitless to ask any Stratfordian—and Dr Rowse in particular—even to consider this possibility as it would be to ask him to contrast the facts of Ox- ford's life with those of the Strat- ford man and draw the only logical conclusion. More and more of the 'idiot public' however, for whom Dr Rowse expresses such contempt, are doing just that, and it cannot be very long now before Shake- speare lovers will finally realise that they have for far too long been worshipping at the wrong shrine.
lames Walker Pilgrims's Way, Wistwell, Nr. Ash- ford, Kent
Sir: Thorp's authorship of the Dedication is stated as a fact by Lee in his Life of Shakespeare (1898) and Walter Raleigh in his Shakespeare (1907). Dr Rowse, on the other hand, and Lord David Cecil, if we are to believe the for- mer, 'never noticed it'. Were they too busy talking to read? Or were these two authors beneath their notice?
A. N. G. Richards 14 Pembroke Square, London w8 Sir: My namesake (unrelated and unknown to me) comments on the inability of Dr Rowse to dis- tinguish between himself and Shakespeare. I am more concerned with his inability to distinguish between himself and history. Any sensible literary scholar will pay due respect to the consensus of historians on a matter within their professional competence. But in this case, where is the consensus? If Dr Rowse, instead of dividing English scholars into good and bad guys, can produce five or six Tudor historians prepared to testify that he is demonstrably right—his claim is no less—on the identity of the young man of the Sonnets, it will be time to worry. Till then, agnosticism remains a tenable position. J. C. Maxwell Balliol College, Oxford
Previous page
