Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff?

The question of Shakespeare's authorship has been around since at least the mid-1800s. Is there anything to it? We'll dig in to this dense topic to find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and Chuck's on the line. Jerry's here too, and we're
about to get jiggy with it. Shakespeare, Can I carve

(00:21):
out this out of the gate? I guess so. The
more we dug into this, you know, I was an
English major. We talked very briefly when I was in
college about Shakespeare's authorship, and I thought, hey, this would
be a fun, little, semi easy episode. And the more

(00:42):
we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded, This
bloom and onion unfolded, Layer by Crispy Delicious Layer. For
all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think you
guys eat every night, every night. Uh, to the point
where I was almost like, you know, is this a
two parters? I mean, you could probably do a ten

(01:04):
part episode on this. Oh yeah, it's so dense. So
I just want to caveat this for people that know
a lot about shakespeare authorship and saying this is a
pretty broad overview of the high points of his authorship
being questioned, because it is dense. Baby, It's the kind
of thing that like, um, extremely intelligent people take on

(01:26):
as their like lifelong hobby. It's like that, we're like,
we'll just bust it out in a few days, It'll
be fine. Yeah, you know, like how some people are
like they they research World War two submarine warfare and
know everything about It's along the same lines, but it's
even bigger. There's so many people involved, and each side
is like, you're so naive to the other. And yes,

(01:48):
it's true, like we could, we could turn this into
a teen part series, but I think we've got a
handle on it enough to present it. I feeling okay
about it. And then the other thing that sticks out
for me, Chuck, is this is one of the few
things I've ever I'm across like this that I am
like truly agnostic about. I do not have an opinion
one way or the other. I don't know if I

(02:08):
do either. Actually, like it's not like I don't care,
That's not what I'm saying, Like, I genuinely can see
both sides. And the other thing about it is, the
more you dig into it, the more you realize, oh,
neither side actually has really good evidence to support their claim.
It's all just they have to get so granular that
it really quickly, um, goes into the world of conspiracy

(02:30):
theories pretty quickly. Yeah. I saw this video of a guy, uh,
this wonderful gentleman who knows a lot about it, that
said like, and here's the golden bullet, which proves once
and for all, and he made his case and I
was like, no, no no, no, that didn't really prove it
once and for all in my opinion, Yeah, for sure,
because both sides do things like they get into biographical

(02:51):
readings where they're trying to find clues within the text
or you know, parallels to his life for that kind
of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay, you
guys are you've just completely left the world of objectivity. Yeah. Uh.
So what we're talking about, um, if you haven't guessed
by now, is this idea that has been around since

(03:13):
at least the mid eighteen hundreds maybe before, about the
question of whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole
author of all of his works. And this is Shakespeare
from Stratford on the Avon, like that that gentleman that
we know became an actor, uh and you know writer, Uh,

(03:33):
whether or not he was the sole author whether or
not he was a front for some other authors for
some of the works. Some people say he didn't write
any of them. Some people said it was various women
who weren't allowed to write things at the time. Uh,
there are I saw sixty six candidates over the years
have been put forward. Oh really, so there there you

(03:57):
have it. Uh, somewhere between sixty six and eight something
of I know, we haven't been accused of writing any
of Shakespeare's work. I don't think so. I didn't come
across that in my research. But it's an interesting literary
I don't even know if I want to call it
a mystery, because some people just say, like, no, I mean,
of course he wrote it, and he was these outsized personalities,

(04:21):
the most famous of the famous are conspiracies are drawn
to them. Elvis is still alive, Marilyn Monroe was murdered.
Like that happens when you are, you know, one of
the biggest icons in your field quite often. So some
people say that's just that's all that it is. In
addition to that, there's a a lack of biographical documentation

(04:46):
that he actually did write those plays. And I think
that that's also what allows for people to say, you know, well,
do we really know or that he didn't write them, Like,
there's just it was a time, you know, in the
fift dreids where there in sixteen hundreds, whether it just
wasn't a ton of great preserved information and we're going

(05:06):
to talk about a lot of that. So we do
know that William Shakespeare did live. He was from, like
you said, Stratford on Avon. It was at the time
about a two to three day journey from London, about
a hundred something miles I think, and um, he definitely
did live. He definitely did exist. That's not a question
because we do have documentary evidence that this person live

(05:29):
from uh fifteen sixty four to sixteen sixteen, about fifty
two years and depending on when you placed his birthday,
maybe fifty two years on the nose, So we know
he existed. Again, what's an issue what's being questions whether
that man William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went
on to become an actor, who went on to become
a producer, who worked with the in the Globe theater um,

(05:52):
whether he was the author of the plays we consider
written by Shakespeare. That's what's that question. Yeah, so like
he's said, he was a real dude. Uh. He came
from a family that was I mean I kind of
read it as a little bit in middle class. They
certainly were not like upper class nobility types. His father

(06:12):
was a was a glover. He wore h hell, I
guess he wore gloves too, but he made gloves. Allow
me to demonstrate, be pretty weird if he didn't. Uh, okay,
I won't even wear his own gloves, but he produces
very very fine gloves for well to do people. Um,
but he did achieve some Um, I guess it worked

(06:33):
his way up the social chain a little bit because
eventually he would serve as what's sort of like a
mayor uh in Stratford. And again, while not nobility like,
they were fairly well regarded as people. Right, So, um,
we don't know for certain, but there's a pretty good
there's a much better um chance than not that because

(06:55):
of his father's position in town, because they had some money.
Like you said, they middle class. He um almost certainly
would have been educated at the grammar school at Stratford.
So what most people think is that that William Shakespeare
was educated until about the age of thirteen, and he
would have learned things like Latin, he would have learned history. Um,

(07:16):
he would have learned some classic literature. He definitely would
have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays
would would go on to expound on. Um. So he
definitely was I I can't say that. That's the thing, Like,
you really have to be careful what you say about this.
I was about to say, so he definitely was educated.
We don't know that he was. This is all just

(07:37):
a supposition, but it's a pretty good bat. It's a
good supposition that he actually was educated. Yeah, and all this,
you know, the reason that's important is all of this
kind of comes back later, as some people say, proof
that he may not have written this stuff because like
how could it? And one of the main arguments used
many times is how could a kid who came from

(07:57):
here have known about these military military exploits and the
Elizabethan Court and all these different languages and all this
high falutin stuff that he wrote about. So, uh, it's
important to, you know, talk about his education. And it
seems like he was likely educated pretty well until thirteen,
which you know, I'm not even sure if that's earlier

(08:19):
late as far as the time period goes, do you
know if that was like kind of generally it for kids,
it was it was in the middle because he could
have just as easily not been educated at all, right
of course, but he also didn't go on to Cambridge
or Oxford to um to extend his studies, so he
was in there in the middle. They you think he

(08:39):
was probably educated, not highly educated, but also not you know, uneducated.
That's that's the key, And that if if there was
evidence he had not gone to school, I think that
the anti Shakespeare UM people would have a real like
marking their favor. But he has just enough education that
you can make the case like, no, like this guy,

(09:00):
this guy learned about this stuff already and he could
have known about it. And you know, when you had
imagination and natural talent, did you come up with Shakespeare conceivably? Yeah? Uh.
He got married to Anne Hathaway. Um, you know, go
ahead and insert Anne Hathaway joke there. You know she's
a real actor, right, sure, Yeah, Devil Wears Pradac and

(09:22):
Princess Diaries. He was in inception No, No, was she interstellar? Yes,
she did a stellar job. An interstellar Come on? Uh?
They got married, um, when he was quite a bit younger.
She was twenty six, he was eighteen. She was pregnant,

(09:43):
which is probably a little unusual for the time. They
had a daughter named Susannah, and then had twins, boy
and a girl twin. And the boy uh named him Net,
not Hamlet, but him Net Yeah, which apparently they've never
turned up another use of that name in and the
at the time proof mhm Uh. He was eleven years

(10:04):
old when he died, uh, And that kind of comes
into play later on as well. Um. And then there's
about a you know, from five to about fifty two,
there's about a seven year gap where we don't know
a lot about what was going on with Shakespeare. Uh.
And then he pops up, which a lot can happen

(10:24):
in seven years. Again not trying to sway people one
way or the other, but you can certainly learn a
lot in seven years if you have some big life experiences.
But he pops up in London, and again, as far
as the record go goes, and you know, keep in mind,
a lot of this record before he was known in

(10:44):
his lifetime as an author, was you know, just kind
of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff
like various little lawsuits and mortgages and sort of banking
records and stuff like that, right, yeah, yeah, And and
also I mean, like that's that about as much documentation
as you would be able to come up with on
most people. And you could make a case that there's

(11:06):
more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people who weren't
nobility of his era. And that's that's because there's been
so much scholarship and study and research into his life
that they've turned up, you know, as much as they can.
But what they've turned up only amounts to about five
hundred different pieces of um documentation of one form or another. Right.

(11:31):
Uh So one of those pieces of documentation, uh in
Early On in London is a pamphlet written by Um
generally believed to be written by this guy named Robert Green.
There were some other people that could have possibly written it,
but it's called Green's Groatsworth of Wit. And there's a
line where he references Shakespeare in it, uh in a

(11:53):
contemporaneous fashion that, right, doesn't matter where he kind of
takes a shot out of He says, talks about Shakespeare,
says there's an upstart crow. Uh in his own conceit
the only shake seine in a country, which kind of
translates into he kind of thinks he's the only Shakespeare right,

(12:15):
like he thinks he's all that and um, it should
be noted also as far as the thievery that in
Asop's Fables, crows would steal the feathers of others. So
the people in the um, I don't want to say
anti Shakespeare, but the people say that he might not
have written these things. Says this is a big clue,
and saying that he might have stolen some of these things.

(12:37):
That's why he's referred to as a crow by this
other guy. Yeah. But in that that um, that uh quote,
he says, the upstart crow is beautified with our feathers,
and he's a playwright. So the pro Shakespeare people, you
call them the pro Stratford group. Um, they suggest that
what what he's, what Green is talking about is he's

(12:59):
he's poking fun at a common actor who is deigning
to even attempt to write plays, which you know, among
playwrights is far more important than acting. Anybody can act,
but it really takes something to to write a play.
At least that's what they thought at the time, and
um that he's taking a shot at him for that. Yeah,
and we should point out that being an actor back

(13:20):
then and being a part of the theater was not
like it is today. It wasn't some uh revered position.
It was sort of you know, body plays and common
people were into this kind of thing, So it wasn't
when he says he was just an actor. That's a
pretty big disk, right. So the last thing that we have,
I guess, the last documentation, although there's other stuff that's

(13:43):
been turned up. They m they did archaeological expeditions on
his house. I think his house has been um under
ownership of a public trust since like the nineteenth century,
and um they've they've carried out archaeological um examination since
of it. And they found that he went back and
forth between London and Stratford. Um. They so they know

(14:06):
stuff about him like that. But as far as like
documentation goes, the last piece of documentation we have comes
in sixteen sixteen, which is his will that he wrote
and then a few months later he died and the
last I guess, the last last piece of documentation is
his tombstone, which in and of itself is curious because
his tombstone contains a curse on it but not his name. Yeah,

(14:30):
is that the one uh with the quote, Yeah, it's
a curse. He's saying like, don't dig me up or
you're gonna be cursed. Yeah, it's his good friend for
jesus sake, forbear to dig the dust and closed here.
Blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed
be he who moves my bones. Uh. Some people point
to that as poor writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was

(14:53):
a great writer, would never written this kind of shabby curse,
and other people say, like, who said Shakespeare even wrote that?
Necessarily this This is a good instructive example of like
kind of the back and forth between the people, Right,
this is terrible writing. Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And
then the anti Shakespeare crew says, well, of course he

(15:13):
wrote it, because who else would just not think to
put his name on his own tombstone? And the other
ones just put their head in their hands and just
start crying, and it just goes downhill from there. But
that's a really good example of like the the just
kind of like the people will jump on any single
thing that they possibly can and often interpret it one
way or the the other. So one thing, one single thing,

(15:36):
provides evidence for both sides. It's that kind of yeah, totally. UM.
Another thing that people point to is the fact that
of you know, we we don't have a lot of
like letters and papers and things like that because his
uh family line h ended in six seventy I think
uh he had a granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, that died without

(16:00):
bearing children, So most of his stuff basically lost as
far as family possessions and things like that. UM. People
do point to the will at times and say, well,
in his will, you know he leaves certain things, but
like there's never any mention of any manuscripts, um. And
and again this is all like it's a little weird maybe,

(16:21):
but none of this is proof um. And you know
through the personal records that we do have in those
five references, like none of them really reference him like
manuscripts and him writing things. Right. That's what's most compelling
to me is that when you put together the um
documentation about his life that we know, it's clear he's

(16:44):
involved in the theater, he's an actor. We get that.
That's that comes through loud and clear. What doesn't come
through isn't documented at all, is him as a writer.
And that that thing about the will, the fact that
if you look at the wills and um and bequeathments
of other writers of the time, um, you can find
evidence that they were writers. They like leave books to

(17:07):
other people that um there um they they leave unfinished
manuscripts that stay in the family uh for for generations,
and um it is very curious. His will is very curious.
But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost
to history because his granddaughter was the end of the
family line, that actually holds up because other um great

(17:30):
authors of say the same major of any age. A
lot of the reason that their personal effects and papers
are still still around is because their family home was
passed down from generation to generation to generation, and there
was a long enough period of time for the importance
of that writer to become clear. And so other people

(17:52):
came in and said, can we have your great great
great grandfather's personal effects, um, because we want to put
them in this museum. There's enough time. There wasn't enough time.
There's only seventy years between the death of Shakespeare and
the end of his family line, and he didn't become
widely popular until the I think middle of the eighteenth century,
so he was kind of a victim of that and that.

(18:14):
But both of those to me provide really good evidence
for why there is a documentation of his writing. You know, yeah, absolutely,
UM and the will and by the way, we uh
The Atlantic has a great, great, pretty deep dive article
as they do on this, which provided a lot of
the supplementary information that we got, um, but by Elizabeth Winkler,

(18:38):
great read UM. One of the things that Winkler points out,
and other people who point out on the will as well,
it's like Shakespeare wrote a lot about um music and
I think there were three hundred musical terms, and all
of his plays mentioned of twenty six musical instruments. And
like in his will he didn't he didn't even have
a loot to pass down to anybody um and like

(19:01):
you said, didn't have books even like a library that
he wanted to give. And you know, again, this is
not proof necessarily necessarily of anything, but it's all of
this stuff has added up over the years to enough
for people to arise to like get suspicious about it.
I think exactly, you want to take a break a breather,
I guess you could call it. Yeah, let's take a

(19:23):
let's take a breather, let's take five. Uh. One thing

(19:55):
that Ed who helped us put this together mentions that
I wanted to get your to on it. I didn't
really think it had a whole lot to do with it.
One way or the other was all of the various
misspellings of Shakespeare's name over the years. Uh. He would
sign it in different ways, he would abbreviate it in
different ways. There are documents with I mean, it looks

(20:17):
like fifteen different ways of spelling Shakespeare, everything from shacks
with an ex peer, uh, two spears and something you
would jab somebody with. Uh, It's misspelled all over the place.
And I just kind of took that as you know,
people misspelled things a lot back then. There weren't you know,
there weren't necessarily records that you could go look at

(20:37):
very easily, so you might just take a guess at
how to spell a name and then it was on
the record. And so I didn't really think that factored
in much, did you, I didn't. And the impression I
have is that all the different spellings are easily explained
away from just the era, Like you just said, and
that the people who clamp onto that are actually looking

(20:58):
into him just to find like hidden naming and codes
to So I think, like the different spellings of the
names is um, it's about a Yeah, it's about as
big a boon doggle as you're gonna find in the
in the Shakespeare authorship argument, I think. All right, so
we'll cast that aside. Well, hold on, before we do,
I want to point out my favorite abbreviation, which one
I think, Well, let me look, I bet you I

(21:19):
know which one. But go, okay, put it, put it
back in the deck. Yeah, it's back in the deck.
Okay it is WILLM shack P. Yeah, that's the one.
It stands out pretty blatantly s h A k P.
I love it. Check hello Willem. Check. It's not a
really good hotel check in name, but it's still worth mentioning.

(21:40):
I think that's pretty good. Um. So, like we mentioned
sort of what's at the root of a lot of
these theories is uh, what ed I think rightly calls elitism,
which is, how could this guy, even you know, educated
up to thirteen, how could he have known about all
this stuff? How could he have known about military exploits.

(22:02):
And you know, if you read Shakespeare's plays, which if
you're an English major you have to read a lot
of them, there there's a lot going on in these
plays about a lot of different stuff. He didn't write
about just kind of one kind of thing. So it
implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge about a
lot of things, and not just different things as it

(22:23):
relates to England, different things, as it relates to entirely
different lands, Like think about where a lot of his
stuff takes places in Italy. Um And, as far as
anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't go to Italy. Although remember there's
that lost year eight year period they call him the
Lost Years. It's entirely possible he went to Italy during
that time. It's also just as possible that he didn't

(22:44):
go to Italy during that time. We just don't know.
But that is something that really stands out. And yes,
there is a tremendous amount of elitism and classicism among
some of the um anti Shakespeare group, but I think
that that is I think that dismisses a lot of
their points out of hand, and they do have some
really good points. They're not just cranks and crackpots, like

(23:07):
they have some pretty good evidence. You can make a
case at least as good evidence that um as the
pro Shakespeare people um. But the upshot of it is
really kind of a compliment. They're saying, these plays are
so good, that Shakespeare's arguably the greatest writer who ever lived.

(23:27):
He has such a crazy imagination, he's so funny, he
has such an extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of
the human condition. Could it really all have been written
by this man from at the time the country, who
was educated up to thirteen, who came from the middle class,
who may or may not have ever traveled out of England?

(23:48):
How is that even possible? Are people born that gifted?
That's ultimately if you want to go beyond the classicism
and the elite. That's really what their argument boils down to. Yeah,
I agree. And if you if you don't know a
lot of Shakespeare, have never really read a lot yourself,
and you think like you're sort of in that camp,
like I mean, this is kind of overrated, Like this guy, No,

(24:11):
these plays are brilliant, and uh, there's a reason why
they still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or
inspired by Shakespeare's plays. Uh, it's because they were all
genuinely brilliant. It was great, great stuff. And what you
need is a really good teacher to kind of walk

(24:32):
you through it because it's it's tough to read. And
we had, um, we had some good ones at Georgia
University of George. I had one. I can't remember his name. God,
I can picture him in my head. He was so great.
Probably someone know it was WILLM. Shack shack pe Um.
I wish I could remember his name. I bet you

(24:52):
someone will write in in the uh mid nineties, who
the great players harpsichord? Oh? Well no, I had a
classics professor who played the harpsichord. Yeah, this was you know,
you had to take Shakespeare one in two. Those were
the only required English classes as a as an English major,
so that kind of shows the importance. But what he

(25:12):
did was he sattised down and we read the plays
out loud in class, and after every you know, short bit,
he would say, well, here's what's going on, and here's
what he's saying. Man, you were very lucky. Yeah. And
once you once you hear that and you're like, oh,
these are very contemporary stories and that's why they still
carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories,

(25:34):
but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not
it's not high falutin stuff. It's just it was written
at a time where it seems that way. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
because we don't really speak in you know, Renaissance English anymore,
so it seems it might as well be Greek to us. Um.
But yeah, it was intended for common audiences. Like the
average person would laugh or cry at those at those plays.

(25:57):
And I think also, like really kind of support at
your point that four hundred years later, those plays can
still make people today laugh and cry like they still
hold up. I guess what you're saying. And um, have
you ever heard of Sister Wendy. No, she is, she's
a nun. I don't believe she's still with us. And
I think in the nineties she made this series of

(26:19):
videos where she just went around the museums around the
world and explained paintings to you in a way that
I would love to find a Sister Wendy of Shakespeare.
I'm sure there's somebody out there, but you could do
a lot worse to of killing several hours watching Sister
Wendy explained paintings because she was she had like a
natural gift at just not only understanding what she was

(26:41):
looking at, but explaining it really understandably. I love that,
And I think in Sister Wendy's case and my professor
shack By, it's it. It comes from a place of um.
They have such great admiration and they want to They
really want people to understand this stuff. Who might ordinarily
go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get

(27:02):
paintings like this, or I don't get places like this art.
Uh So should we get in speaking of art? Great segue?
Uh should we get into this mess of the The
bust of Shakespeare? Yeah, I mean it's another It's very
much like his tombstone, where people are like it means this, No,
I means that, you know. Yeah. So there's a bust

(27:22):
an effigy of Shakespeare inside the church there in Stratford.
And there's been a lot of controversy over this thing
because part of it is not necessarily like was he
the author, although it does play into that, but sort
of like what what did he look like? And how
do we know that's what he looked like? Like? We've
all seen the picture. Uh, and there's like this one

(27:44):
painting and this one bust, and that's kind of where
everything comes from. And some people say this was done
after he was dead, like, we really don't know that
that's what he looked like. Um, I think just a
couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a
pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt that it

(28:05):
was actually done. I think she said it was highly likely.
Professor Orlan said it's highly likely that it was done
while he was alive, and that he commissioned it because
she thinks she knows who did the bust and that
that person lived near him and was a regular at
the globe and kind of put all these clues together.

(28:25):
But other people, some people say it was his dad,
uh and not him because of this whole sack of
grain argument. Yeah. This so there there was an etching
that was made of the bust within some period of
time after the bust was erected, but before it was altered.
So the bus has definitely been altered. And it looks

(28:46):
like one way you can interpret this. This thing at
the bottom, this puffy thing that's that that's at the
hands of the bust the effigy um as a sack
of grain. I don't know if it were a sack
of grain, why anyone would ever presented in that position.
It doesn't make any sense. And so right, so what
the the anti Shakespeare, anti Strapford people are saying is like, yeah,

(29:09):
it's his dad, It's it's not him um, or if
it is Shakespeare, he was known for his grain carrying skills,
not his writing skills. And the pro strap For people
are like, don't be ridiculous. This is obviously a pillow,
and at some point somebody did revise the bus, so
it is unequivocally a pillow, like there's just no way

(29:30):
to to mistake it. And it's not so much a
pillow as it is like a hand rest for him
to write on, because he's got a piece of paper
on it and a quill in his other hand. But
the the anti Shakespeare people jump on and say, like,
see it was altered to fit this um to cover
up this conspiracy later on, yeah, exactly, and and that
quill has been stolen and replaced I think so many

(29:52):
times over the years that now I don't know if
it currently has the quill or if it has the
quill and it's now behind glass. Oh that could that's
a good way to get around. And I'm not really sure,
but you know, that became a you know, obviously it's
something you could just snatch of his hand, and you've
got Shakespeare's quill on your on your door. Speaking of

(30:13):
Um being snatched, apparently that curse on his tombst didn't
work because they did a scan of it UM on
the four anniversary of his death and found that at
least his skull was missing, if not all of his remains.
Oh really yeah, and that interesting. So somebody out there
has Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection. It's probably Rosenkrantzer Guildenstern. Uh,

(30:37):
great Shakespeare joke. There's some people out there that were like,
nailed it. Good. Another thing, as far as evidence goes,
is UM the first folio, which is I think it
was the first collection that they put in print of
all of Shakespeare's plays, including UM eighteen that had never

(30:59):
been in print before. And there was a I guess
it was it a forward written by a guy named
Ben Johnson, who was arrival of Shakespeare's He was kind
of known as a jealous Um sort of argumentative guy,
but he calls Shakespeare the Swan of Avon and as
sort of very laudatory in this forward. But I think

(31:22):
you found stuff later on where he was kind of
like I had my fingers crossed the whole time kind of. Yeah.
So the pro Stratford people who believe Shakespeare Shakespeare say, look, man,
this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival,
but a real rival, really critical, like had biting, biting
criticism and sense of humor, and also was not one

(31:46):
to just be like um to to just bow to
no nobility, your privilege, your wealth or status. Right. So
if this guy is saying that Shakespeare the Swan of Avon,
which places this man at effort on Avon because Ben
Johnson is calling him that, that proves that Shakespeare was Shakespeare.

(32:06):
The anti Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson
had his fingers crossed the whole time, and that really
what he was doing was providing cover for this larger,
essentially conspiracy of people who actually wore Shakespeare. He was
blending his his renown to it. Um. Neither one really

(32:27):
makes sense. I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a
complete change of heart. Um, it just doesn't quite add up.
But then also the idea that he he would provide
that cover for a group of noble people, UM seems
unlikely as well too. Yeah, I agree. One of the
first public doubters UH in the eight hundreds was a

(32:50):
woman named Delia Bacon no relation to Francis Bacon, um,
although you may think so, because one person that Delia
Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. Uh.
Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a

(33:11):
sort of a long life before she got into UM,
kind of hating Shakespeare. Yeah, hating him, like really didn't
like Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was
not the author. And um, her idea was that it
was Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some
other people too, who were these very well regarded people

(33:35):
of you know, philosophy and politics and science, who would
not have been allowed to put forth these plays and
what these plays, what they really were, were not even
meant for entertainment or for the stage. They were meant
to be sort of biting criticisms of all kinds of
various things that these gentlemen could not put their name
on Yeah, so there's Yeah, either they couldn't put their

(33:58):
name on it because they would be executed, is basically
treasonous to the crown because they were, you know, putting
forth the idea of social reform and you know, women's
rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots of the nobility. Um.
Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that
was introduced and I think the eighteen seventies, and that

(34:19):
was that they just just out of um noble nobility
no bless, I guess they wouldn't deign to have their
stuff published. It would it would erode their social reputation,
even accepting the idea that they would be beheaded for treason.
So there are a couple of reasons that that somebody

(34:39):
like um Francis Bacon would have to cover up his
identity if he were actually Shakespeare. And that same stigma
of print and um political cover argument gets extended to
other people beyond Bacon too. Yeah, and that you know,
it makes a little bit of sense. Um. As far
as Delia Bacon, she was able to talk Ralph Waldo

(35:01):
Emerson into basically kind of buying her story and he
arranged for her sponsorship basically to go to England to
kind of research this. Apparently in England she she was
kind of on record saying that she didn't research history
books or records and things like that. She believed that
the the proof was sort of in the plays themselves, uh,

(35:25):
and in the in the text basically like with these clues, um. Apparently,
she used to go to Shakespeare's tom a lot and
and kind of just you know, hang out there and
like try to convince the I guess the tomb keeper
whoever you know takes care of the cemetery, the keeper, Yeah,
the crypt keeper. I didn't want to say it to
be let In and like almost got in at one

(35:46):
point apparently, but I think she got sick and couldn't.
And but she thought that the you know, the deep
secret was within that tomb. Yeah. She kind of kicked
off the nuttier um can up of the um questioning
of of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off the whole thing,
she she put like kind of a nutty sheen to it,

(36:08):
like the idea that you could get your answers just
from reading the plays, that the clues were in there.
The thing is is Francis Bacon was known to to
amuse himself by including you know, hidden codes and messages
in his writings. So if it was Francis Bacon, that's
not that much of a stretch. And supposedly Mark Twain
and some friends UM did actually turn up. If you

(36:31):
read the first folio, there is I guess some series
of lines that spell out Francisco Bacon. No, it's pretty good.
I mean, here's the thing, though, Francis Bacon wrote a
lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot
of fiction and pros or didn't he write no evidence

(36:54):
that he ever wrote any kind of plays. Did he
write that there was this other thing that kind of
came along. So Delia Bacon is widely regarded as the
person who kicked off the was Shakespeare Shakespeare idea UM,
But supposedly there was a person who came before her,
James Wilmot, who in one sat down to UM write

(37:15):
a biography of Shakespeare and did all the research in
London and Stratford on Avon, and UM was astonished by
the lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays
and started to suspect it and that he kicked it off.
The thing is, the anti Shakespeare side has been accused

(37:39):
of making those documents up, of forging those documents to
support Delia Bacon's Francis Bacon theory. Interesting. Yeah, so they
weren't discovered until one, which is pretty convenient, and it's
entirely possible that they were just forged. All right, should
we take another break here? Yeah, let's all right, we'll
take another break. We'll talk a little bit more about

(38:02):
whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff. So one more thing about

(38:34):
Delia Baking before we wrap it up. Like you said,
she was a good writer, um, and her exhaustive examination
of the texts of Shakespeare's plays resulted in a six
d and twenty page book, The Philosophy of the Plays
of Shakespeare Unfolded. And Um, she's often credited with with

(38:54):
basically pre figuring, if not kicking off, the idea of
literary criticism close readings of stuff to find other meanings.
And she was doing it to expose noble people as Shakespeare.
But but she was really good at it, and people said, well, hey,
maybe we should do this for other stuff too. Yeah,
And like ironically, because she kind of um, I mean,

(39:16):
you know, the various tawdry accounts say she was driven
to madness. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but
it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in
the latter stages of her life, and that her family
was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that. Right, So
Francis Bacon was um not the only person put forth.
And there's probably, as far as like um believers go,

(39:40):
somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him, and
that would be um, the the seventeenth Earl of Oxford,
Edward de Vere Right. Yeah, I mean there's a whole uh,
there's a whole camp and a whole other and you know,
we can't get into this too too much indeed, tale
but there's a whole movement that says out of the

(40:03):
eight people like we really think it was the seventeenth
Earl of Oxford. Yeah, there's it's called the oxford Ian
theory of Shakespearean authorship, and there is you know, um,
some stuff to it. He was a poet, um, which
points out that's so much for the stigma of print um,
and that also, uh, you can compare his poetry and

(40:26):
in like some specific works of poetry to some of
Shakespeare's poetry um, and see some real comparisons. But um,
as far as I can tell, the the questions are
the similarities, and there um, if I'm not mistaken, like
and that to me it was the sixth Earl of Derby,

(40:47):
who has a little more, um, a little more to offer. Really, um,
there was there was one other thing. So Derby has
his own group, the Derbyites man. This is what I mean.
It's an onion. It's a Bluemen onion. So there was
one other thing about Dave that is pretty suspicious. There
were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man

(41:10):
who was raised in the same household as Davie. And
from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would
know this person, and why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems.
So this this noble nobleman he didn't know, um, But
Davie certainly knew him. He was he was basically raised
alongside him like a brother. So that along with the

(41:31):
biographical reading, the close reading looking for parallels between Davie's
life and Shakespeare's plays are what kind of back up
the Oxfordian theories. Interesting because that Christopher Marlowe is another
one who was a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's and
they collaborated and they influenced one another. And this the

(41:53):
details around Marlowe's death are uh hinky enough to where
some people thought or at least the you know, the
conspiracy is that is that he faked his death because
he was gonna going to be executed by the crown
and continued to write and then used his friend Billy
Shakespeare as a front to continue to get those plays out. Um,

(42:18):
I'm not really sure about this because I don't know
that's that it's just a little far fetched. If you
asked me, well, yeah, if and if you're if you're
supposing that Marlowe faked his death in order to continue writing,
you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped in a conspiracy
theory maybe. But it's interesting because you know, marlow is

(42:39):
a pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly he may have
been a secret agent for the crown. Um, he was
an atheist, he was his own playwright. People loved him
as a playwright at the time. Um, but he was
no Shakespeare Like literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you
could attribute um shakespeare writings too, because marlow was gloomy

(43:02):
and super atheist and and um he was. His plays
just didn't have that same kind of humanism and um
funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. And also, why wouldn't Marlow
just write these plays under his own name? He had
no reason to write these plays under different names. Yeah, agreed. Uh,
there have been people that put forth the idea that

(43:25):
the there were several different women that might have been
the real authors because uh, women were not allowed to
write plays at the time. Um, eight percent of the
plays written during this time were anonymous and no author
was listed. And a lot of people said, hey, a
lot of these were written by women and they just
couldn't put their name on it. Um. Many of Shakespeare's

(43:46):
plays and ideas are very progressive. Um, it's kind of
a kind of a I don't know about flimsy, but
it kind of demeans Shakespeare a bit to say that like,
well had to be a woman because they were so
progressive about women like taking a stand, when in fact,
Shakespeare seemingly very much thought that way himself, right, Like

(44:10):
how could a man write women like this? Come on? Yeah, Um,
there's a woman named Mary Sidmund Herbert who has a
whole foundation that's trying to prove that she wrote. Um.
Kind of the worst of the Internet happened about seven
years ago when you get these memes that are just
full of false stuff and then everyone starts spreading them around.

(44:32):
Uh there was a meme when all over social media
that just had the picture of this black woman and
said this is Amelia Bassano. H she really wrote Shakespeare stuff.
She was not allowed to be a published author because
she was a black woman at a time where she
was suppressed and all this stuff. Um, none of this
stuff was true. Um, first of all, she was maybe Moroccan.

(44:56):
She was definitely not of African descent. Oh I thought
she was some Venetian. I saw that she was Moroccan
and had some Italian in her, so that, yeah, it
makes a little sense. But she was definitely not of
African descent. Um, she was a published author, So the
whole notion that she wasn't allowed to publish things wasn't right.
She was kind of a well known, uh poet I

(45:19):
think at the time. So this kind of thing gets
passed along the internet and then you know, half the
people that see it just say, oh, we'll look at
that Shakespeare was was It was all written by this
lady back then. Problems. Yeah, problem solved. And that's just
not how it works. One of the other things I
saw that um, And I think the people who are
like Shakespeare as a woman are like, well, okay, if

(45:40):
we're if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship, we can't
ignore this whole group of people who had every reason
to hide their identity as authors of these plays because
they were women and they weren't do this kind of stuff. Um.
So there was a critic who in wrote of a
um who praised a gentlewoman who was writing some amazing

(46:01):
plays and sonnets. And this was the year after Shakespeare
pops back up um, after his lost years, and when
he was starting to write um. But that the critics
said he didn't want to reveal who it was because
he didn't want to basically get her in trouble. So
that's what some other people kind of look at and say, see,
Shakespeare was a woman. Well, I mean, I think I

(46:22):
think this theory makes a lot more sense a lot
of the others, you know, just by this year fact
that women would not have been allowed to So uh,
maybe Shakespeare was progressive and decided to be a front
for these great works. But it reveals a point about
UM being a anti Shakespeare, anti I guess Stratford person

(46:44):
is you have to part of his You have to
explain why somebody would want to fake authorship, would want
to hide behind Shakespeare's name. Yeah, what do you call that?
A motive? Yeah, you got means motive, an opportunity. You
put those three together, you got your Shakespeare. Well that's

(47:05):
what I mean about the maybe women wrote them. I mean,
there was definite motive there, right exactly. So there was
one other thing that happened. I mean a lot of
stuff happened over the course of this hundred almost two
hundred years now, UM of questioning Shakespeare's authorship Back in
seven a UM OX forty and UM Charlton Augburn got

(47:26):
the UM at least three sitting Supreme Court justices John
Paul Stevens, William Brennan, and Harry Blackman to hold a
mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was the author
of Shakespeare's plays, and they did on c span they
had They held like a trial and heard the evidence,
and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him, and

(47:46):
UM it was pretty interesting, but they they it went
two to two to one, I think in favor of
of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author. But they did
like real research and stuff. It wasn't just like a
you know, yeah stunt no, So the Supreme Court justices
were kind of taking a tongue in cheek. But I

(48:06):
got the impression that Charlton Augburn was like, yes, finally
going to prove it definitively one way or another, and
it didn't even fall in his favor. Interesting, Yeah, it
is interesting what people did in the eighties on c SPAN.
I got a few more little things here from that
Atlantic article that point to his authorship is being genuine.

(48:29):
One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus
and Adonis that was a very popular poem at the
time that was put in print. Uh and it was
printed by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went
to school with him at Stratford. So that's a that's
a pretty good little hint um he was written about
at the time, So it's not like he was never

(48:51):
known until his death and then all of a sudden
became super popular, Like he died a rich man and
was written about with by literary critics UM at the time,
and and entertainment and play critics, so they were contemporaneous
UM criticisms of his writing while he was still living,
which which is a pretty you know, pretty big clue

(49:14):
that he probably wrote this stuff. That is not proof, no,
because those people could be there. They went and saw
a play by Shakespeare. They didn't mean that they met
Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the
place and leaned up his shoulder while he wrote it. Right. Proof.
The other last thing that I saw in the Atlantic
article this is the one, or actually this was in

(49:34):
a this was the Golden bullet from that video was
Shakespeare was apparently concerned that, um, his dad's reputation sort
of in the family's reputation suffered later in life because
of financial problems that his dad had, and he really
wanted to kind of restore their name and get a
coat of arms made, which is, uh, you could, you know,

(49:57):
it's like you could be a true gentleman if you
had a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really
long process. They don't just hand him out to anybody.
You've gotta like have a certain level of achievement to
get a coat of arms. So he went through this big,
long process and had he went all Barry Linden on there.
Oh man, what a movie. Um. He had a couple
of different men in the Herald's office who defended Shakespeare's

(50:20):
right to have a coat of arms because other people
were saying, who is this guy? Even like he came
from not much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms.
And one of the guys who defended him was a
man named William Camden, who this guy in the video
referred to as one of the most learned men in
all of England. Uh. He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster

(50:41):
and apparently just knew everything on happening on the literary
scene inside and out. And in one of his books
he uh it was called the Remains of a Greater History.
He talks about all the great writers of the time
and he lists William Shakespeare of Avon Uh in that book.
So he said, that's the golden bullet. Uh again, if

(51:04):
it's just a front, it's still in no real proof
of authorship. No it's not. I mean like this guy
could just be playing along lending his his Yeah, that's
another one. Too. Like that's the thing, like the anti
Stratfordians have caused the pro Stratfordians to actually defend their position,

(51:24):
and in doing so, it's kind of revealed that both
of them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost
just a matter of belief. Do you want to believe
that one man was that brilliant and and that talented
and gifted um or do you can? Can you just
not believe that? It just doesn't make any sense to you.
So it was a cabal of noble people who were

(51:45):
trying to advance political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare
and paying him off with maybe um family crests and
money and and fame to to let let them use
his name as their you know, the playwright. Yeah, also
say like where he was from. There was some regional
slang that was very specific to where he was from

(52:05):
that was used. Uh, there was in Taming of the
Shrew he mentions these Latin phrases that are in specifically
from a Latin book that apparently was known to have
been used at his school, at his grammar school in Stratford.
So again there's all these little hints and clues. All
of it kind of gave me a headache, right, And

(52:28):
I was like, can we just like love these plays? Right? Exactly?
That's exactly right. It's the ultimate point. Let's just love
the place. People get serious about this though, Yeah, they
definitely do. I mean it's pretty interesting and I mean
I get it kind of fun to watch from the
outside too. Ya Are you got anything else? No, we
could go on all day, but totally we'd never get anywhere.

(52:51):
There's like ten things I'm leaving on the table. So
we just got to keep moving on, right, all right,
Let's keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to
know more about Shakespeare and authorship, there is a giant,
gaping rabbit hole you can jump down on the internet
and uh say sionar to all of your other pursuits.
And since I said Sianara, it's time for listener mail.

(53:13):
I'm gonna call this just came in over the wire.
I thought it was kind of funny, uh, from our
friends Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan, about eating about eating squid,
says love the show fellas reason not to be so
touchy though about eating squid. They are child murdering sea vermin,

(53:34):
he said. The reason squid die after they made is
a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the
eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid
in the spawning areas. Uh, squidly did lee is an
infanticidal maniac and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably,

(53:57):
of course. Uh So that's the argument, is that these
squids deserve to be eaten because they would be eating
themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says
telled Josh not to eat uncooked squid. That's not great,
all right, and uh kind regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan,
a squid haven and a squid inc pasta destination. Stephen,

(54:21):
that was a really great eye opening email. I may
have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll have
to get back to you, Okay, okay, thank you for
responding to that, Stephen. If you want to be like
Stephen and get in touch with us and send us
a potentially eye opening email, you can do that. Send

(54:41):
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
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