[In the following essay, Challinor surveys ten arguments against the man from Stratford being the Shakespeare who wrote the plays and poems.]

. . . Since this book does not aim to supplant the efforts of others in attacking the Shakespeare of orthodoxy, the anti-Stratfordian arguments may .. . be dealt with reasonably briefly. Below they are condensed into ten key points. These are essentially a personal choice. They are meant to be illustrative areas for starting investigation for oneself rather than a comprehensive statement. Thus each is presented only in very concise form, to give its flavour.

1 It is clear that the Shakespear, Shaxpere, Shakespeare, Shaxberd (or whatever of the several other variant spellings you wish) of Stratford and his immediate family lacked both learning and opportunities to learn

We know that William may well have gone to the local grammar school. It is not certain that he did. Despite the confident assertion of so many books on this point, there is no clear evidence. Let us assume that this was so: there was certainly no more than that to his formal education. Interestingly, noting some alleged Catholic leanings of the father, John Shakspear, one Stratfordian commentator, J Dover Wilson, denies that William went to the local school at all; he must, Wilson claims, have acquired education privately as a singing boy in the house of a Catholic nobleman.

As for the immediate family, John Shakespear, although at one time an alderman, signed his name by means of a mark. One of William's daughters, Judith, later wife of Thomas Quiney, could not write; the other, Susanna, could sign her name, but could not read well enough to recognise the handwriting of her husband, Dr Hall. Some Stratfordians even think William was removed from the grammar school early, to help support the family, when his father's financial position deteriorated. That would add to the burden of overcoming a built-in educational handicap. Now, it is sometimes suggested that any such objections are but a form of snobbery, based on the idea that only a wealthy, very well-educated person could ever possibly even aspire to write such plays. It is not so. There are many anti-Stratfordians who would gladly hail the route to success of one from the working classes or lower middle class, giving extra applause in recognition of obstacles overcome, provided the route is (even faintly) visible or credible.

2 To redress the balance by extensive intellectual effort, the Stratford man would have needed books

Yes, there were books in sixteenth-century Stratford. Yet for our key man, there is no evidence of their possession, of interest in them, or of access to a library. This does not prevent orthodox literature of our century, recognising that the great writer possessed much more knowledge than Ben Jonson had admitted in the 1623 First Folio, offering comments such as Kenneth Muir's to the effect that even if we read all books still available that were published before 1616, we could still be sure that we had not encountered all of those known to Shakespeare.

Many anti-Stratfordians would agree. The author must have read voraciously. The whole point is that the evidence for this comes from the Shakespearean works: the background needed for them together with the love of reading expressed, for instance, in The Tempest. It is only by assuming that William of Stratford was their author that we can make such statements of him. His own sure factual biography, as relevant testimony, is so conspicuously counterproductive. (It may be noted, in passing, that one of the many wild legends, an anonymous document of 1728, suggested that he had neither the time nor the need to do reading, but 'kept' a historian to do his background research for him! Here we see very well how history can be distorted. How would a man of his background acquire or afford one?)

3 The works of Shakespeare exhibit particular knowledge of a wide range of subjects and scenes

The subjects concerned include law, music, war, sports, the sea, plants, the Bible. Books and articles have been written on these links, often specialising in just one of them. This is especially true of the legal knowledge: in that respect, after making due allowances for the interests of the age, there is such a residuum of technicalities in Shakespeare's legal references, delivered with such precision.

Here, while saying so much less than the various specialist works do, it can at least be recognised that there are limits to what one person, however talented, can deliver. Shakespeare the author seems to many of the doubters happiest in the milieu of the court: he knows hunting phraseology. He appears to be much travelled.

Robert Giroux is a modern American critic who, like the vast majority, accepts the Stratford tradition. He has nevertheless felt obliged to point out that early dramas, such as The Comedy of Errors and Titus Andronicus, were soon followed by Italianate plays which show familiarity with the lifestyle of wealthy aristocrats. Those who do not believe that Stratford's William Shakespeare was the great author argue that he would have had to undergo a stupendous educational and cultural transition in an incredibly short time. And, somehow, he would have had to have bridged the chasm while engaged in earning his living. That writing, so wise, so glorious, must have been superimposed on acting, learning parts, acquiring education, fraternising with the nobility, listening to gossip from all ranks as one important source of ideas. Moreover, we should remember that several plays, including one of mature courtly wit, had been completed before this man was thirty.

Then we might ask, for instance, how many languages did he know, and how well did he know them? Consider the following remarks on seven Shakespeare plays, reflecting comments from orthodox writers on some of their sources:

Timon of Athens. Source: a work on the same subject by Lucian. Shakespeare may have known it in Latin, French or Italian, but no English version existed for him.

Othello. Source: a novella by the Italian, Cinthio. There was no English translation; our dramatist may have read it in Italian, French or Spanish. The situation is similar with regard to Measure for Measure.

Comedy of Errors. Source: Plautus. Only available in Latin when Shakespeare wrote.

Cymbeline. One source was Boccaccio's Decameron. There was no English translation, so we must presume Shakespeare read it in French or Italian.

Two Gentlemen of Verona. A Spanish romance, not to be published in English translation until 1598, was one source.

(Did he, for this and other sources, see the manuscript of a translation before publication? Surely not.) Likewise, Italian sources were used for Much Ado about Nothing.

Perhaps there are other legitimate presumptions concerning access to sources for the origins of these plays? Here are two, but I would not advise any honest Stratfordian to clutch tightly at either. Could he have obtained his data orally, having been told about the sources by someone who had read them; or was an English translation for some of them available at the time, only to be subsequently lost? One scrupulously orthodox writer, Kenneth Muir, tells us that Shakespeare, in fact, had fluent knowledge of Latin, some knowledge of French, Italian and perhaps a smattering of Spanish. Well!

Most Stratfordians, alas, have their eyes fixed only on one man. Unable to acquire a gaze transplant, they cope with these remarkable pointers by a curious circularity. They insist that their man wrote the plays, the plays need knowledge of foreign tongues, therefore their man must have had such knowledge—though how, neither they nor we know. Apart from the not unreasonable supposition of at least some years at the grammar school, he must have been, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, 'self-schooled'. In such circumstances, what is described above would certainly need genius, but other ingredients too. Is there not a fundamental contradiction in all this? It would demand much time, both in the sense of the number of years required to gain the knowledge and daily pressures of time due to his normal work as theatre factotum. Would not such opportunity be denied to a busy actor earning his living?

If we assume him to be the great dramatist, we must also assume that beyond his interests, or capabilities (springing, presumably, from what has been termed the genius of a supremely articulated commonsense), lies the question of what he experienced. Despite sustained searching of archives, we have no record of him ever leaving Britain. It begs the question to say that his description of foreign scenes is not always exact; that is artistic licence. Some detail certainly seems first-hand. Can genius provide such experience of places one has never visited? Consider, as one instance here, the Italian view suggested in Sonnet 33:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen [my emphasis]
Flatter the mountain top with sovereign eye.

Or as another, the so authentic Venetian name of the character 'Gobbo'. The sea imagery, too, may speak compellingly of things its writer had witnessed. But examples could easily be multiplied.

Scrupulously honest as well as strictly orthodox, Ivor Brown wonders how his man was finding time, by the early seventeenth century, to study and perform parts; to turn out two or three plays a year; to compose sonnets and poems; to have an eye on property in Stratford; to follow leading managerial and commercial interests with the Lord Chamberlain's men. Brown thinks it was not impossible that, in his early days, William of Stratford was in turn glover, butcher, schoolmaster, and serving in a lawyer's office. He travelled round England as an actor. He doubtless somehow found room, in his crowded days, to be omnivorous of the human scene in swapping yarns, taking in the ideas or experiences of others to be polished for future use. It is also conceded by Ivor Brown that the Shakespeare he visualises, to write as he did, had himself spent time at sea; while he could have improved upon his botany (we are told) by going no further than Piccadilly. His life must have been filled with the bustle of continuous activity, argues Brown, yet accepting that the great writer left (as the introduction to the 1623 Folio testifies) 'not a blot in his papers'. This really will not do. Brown's willingness to admit the facts concerning the knowledge and experience of the great author only underscores the insuperable problems for his 'Shakespeare'.

4 The sonnets speak of some deeply moving personal experiences which do not accord with what we know of the Stratford man

These are the best primary evidence of the fault line in orthodoxy. Their message, surely biographical, is of a friendship with a youth of noble birth. This had been put under great strain by affection having reached levels of intolerable intimacy. There was an extremely painful rift, a departure by the poet, a shared lover. This despite the fact that the original love between the two young men had surely been homosexual or, at the very least, potentially so. Subsequent to his quitting the company of the friend, the poet gives us a mixture of enduring ardour and bitter recrimination from one who had

. . . passed a hell of time;
. . . suffered in your crime.

Sonnet 120

Perhaps most importantly, there is a need to conceal the poet's 'branded' name and some of his knowledge of the past, lest the noble youth be disgraced. Now, the Stratfordians would have us believe that the young Shakespeare could publish some early plays so modestly that he omitted his name from the title page. They would also have us believe, because the evidence is there for Shakespeare the writer, that the aspiring young actor from Stratford was simultaneously bold enough to implore the noble youth to marry and beget children 'for love of me' (Sonnet 10). He was also sufficiently self-confident to dedicate, at the very outset of his career, two major poems to the Earl of Southampton (who may well have been that mysterious noble youth). These dedications are in language so warm that it suggests great friendship, even physical intimacy. Is this another part of the biography of our Stratford man? When did he become an outcast (Sonnet 29) or disgraced (Sonnets 33, 34)? Despite the intense spotlight thrown on him by archivists over the last hundred years, there are no records found to support the idea that it is he whose 'life has in these lines some interest'. Then again, to presume that it is nevertheless so, we must cram still more activity into his early adult years.

5 The alleged authorship achievements of the Stratford man are ignored in contemporary records until the publication of the First Folio, seven years after his death

By this is meant that the work of Shakespeare is certainly mentioned, the name Shakespeare appears on title-pages, but he is not unequivocally identified with the man from Stratford until 1623. As an example, a contemporary scholar named William Camden praises Shakespeare the author in his work Remains . . . (1605), but omits William of Stratford from his list of worthies of that town, published a few years later. Nor, in his Annals for 1616, does he mention the Stratford man's death as one of the significant events of that year. Anti-Stratfordians, rightly or wrongly, pounce on things like this. Are we, they might ask, trying to gather figs from thistles? Any imprint Shakespeare's fellows in Warwickshire may have made upon his imagination escapes us, says arguably the best Stratfordian biographer of all, Sir Edmund Chambers. He might equally well have said the same of the impression his Shakespeare left on the imagination of the latter's Warwickshire contemporaries.

6 As an alleged author, he is seen as rather a figure of fun in some literature prior to 1623

Comment has already been made upon passages by Ben Jonson, quite different from his eulogy in the First Folio, ones in which Shakespeare (of Stratford) is a figure of good-humoured fun, as a 'poet-ape', and as 'Sogliardo'. We know he had the (not at all unreasonable) wish to better himself and be a major propertyowner at Stratford. He is surely one of the ambitious actors referred to rather scathingly in a late sixteenth-century poem (author unknown) entitled The Return from Parnassus:

With mouthing words that better wits have framed
They purchase land and now esquires are named.

7 Prolonged and assiduous efforts to add to our biographical knowledge of the Stratford actor reveal nothing of a man of letters

Sometimes it is remarked how much more is now known about him than was the case in 1900. But what is this 'more' worth? Perhaps the best British example in comparatively recent times comes from the Public Record Office in a beautifully presented digest of all the relevant public records about Stratford's Shakespeare. Apart from contributor Jane Cox's startling conclusion therein that not all of the six 'known' Shakespeare signatures are by the same person, it is essentially prosaic: the concern is with property deals, street refuse, the sale of corn, fines, pressing for the repayment of debts, tax bills. This despite the fact that it examines all known references to him in these records, including some recently discovered documents. It is frankly what might be expected if detailed biographical records of Elizabethan times were extant on a powerful computer—and if we had chosen to search them in order to come up with a random example of a man of humble origins who became reasonably prosperous through having a good head for business.

But someone may still object: 'We know as much about him as we do about most of his contemporaries.' Even if we do, it is only after an exponential degree of effort. Sadly, it must be repeated, the extra details have no literary merit. The gulf between the Shakespearean splendour and this threadbare life is immense. There are not even letters to friends or others associated with the stage. We know embarrassingly little that is of value, and what we do know is often embarrassing.

One is reminded of Hugh Trevor-Roper's comment that much less searching would enable much more worthwhile biographies to be written about any of Shakespeare's dramatic contemporaries. It may be noted that twentieth-century archivist C W Wallace, checking out millions of documents in unremitting labour, has been reported (by George Greenwood) as being driven to the extreme of concluding that Stratford's poet perhaps had a contemporary neighbour of the same name, to whom the disappointing references must, presumably, relate. Or, to go back to earlier times yet essentially in the same vein, we can consider the remark of the Stratford teacher-clergyman Joseph Greene. He commented, in 1747, that William Shakespeare's austere last will and testament was 'absolutely void of the least particle of that spirit which animated our great poet'. It only reveals him as a relatively wealthy small-town gentleman.

8 Orthodox history would have us believe that Shakespeare of Stratford rose from modest beginnings, reached incredible heights of wisdom and culture in middle life, but reverted to the earlier pattern in his closing years

These three periods of Shakespeare of Stratford's life are well recognised, but they do not cohere. To para-phrase a remark once made, it is like a grub rapidly becoming a beautiful butterfly—even of a variety denied by its origins or opportunities—then turning back into the grub! One of the most innovative of the doubters (who we shall encounter as the first to state the theory that the seventeenth Earl of Oxford was the real Shakespeare) sums up the problem very well:

It is impossible to believe that the same man could have accomplished two such stupendous and mutually nullifying feats. . . . The perfect unity of the two extremes [of his life] justifies the conclusion that the middle period is an illusion.

To this idea that the middle period of life, holding all of his great achievement, is but a dream with regard to William Shakespeare of Stratford, one can add that there were controversial literary acts which must have affected Shakespeare the writer, during the lifetime of that Stratford man. An example of such was a combination of some of Shakespeare's poems with those of others in a work attributed to him in 1599, The Passionate Pilgrim. Another was the appearance of his name (presumably for 'enhancement value') on inferior plays; on stylistic grounds, everyone agrees that these were not his. In 1609, there was the publication of the apparently pirated edition of Troilus and Cressida. Then there were his sonnets, also first published (without the author's permission?) in 1609, with such embarrassing revelations. Writing about them in 1899, novelist Samuel Butler surmised that the great man's gorge must have risen at the sight of the skull of his dead folly being dug up. Well, certainly one could not be impervious. Somebody must have been shocked to the core. Yet historical records can only suggest that to all these events the Stratford man exhibited sublime insouciance. The question to be asked, since the reason was surely not lethargy, is whether it could have been superhuman detachment .. . or were they simply just not his concern?

9 He appears to emerge instantly as a great writer

Assuming Shakespeare the writer to be the man from Stratford, there are no apparent exploratory beginnings: no juvenilia, unless we were perhaps to count Titus Andronicus as such, marking the first sketches of his genius. Take Love's Labour's Lost, already mentioned here indirectly as an early work, yet one speaking volumes concerning the author's great assurance. It is essentially a play of its time; in fact, it may now seem a complete oddity to some of us. Yet consider its courtly emphasis, mature wit, the brilliant euphuisms. These do more than stamp its date: they speak of the sophistication of its creator. In it, once again, it seems we are receiving the fruit of some European experiences; could it really just be based on travellers' tales? For a member of the nobility, having journeyed appropriately, to have written it early in his literary career would be a very considerable feat. That a young grammar-school boy (even a genius) just making his way, never having left England, ignorant in the ways of the court, should nevertheless produce it—this defies comprehension.

Slightly earlier still, in 1593, the name Shake-speare had appeared as an author for the very first time, in association with a long, relatively mature, classical poem: Venus and Adonis. In dedicating it to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the writer described it as 'the first heir of my invention'. This is most curious, because some plays, later to be (quite correctly) attributed to Shakespeare, clearly precede this poem. The expression quoted does not seem to be fully satisfied either by saying that this was the first item actually published or by arguing that poetry has a higher status than drama. How then do we reconcile the expression 'first heir of my invention' with the clearly earlier existence of plays? There is a point to be made here which doubters by and large have missed. Since the poem represents the first use of the name 'Shakespeare' as author, could it have been that name, as a pen-name, which was the 'invention', with the classic poem the very first instance of its use? It would be subsequently added to those earlier plays.

10 Shakespeare the writer expected literary immortality for the works, but clearly feared he would not receive the credit himself; a pen-name would explain this paradox

There are various references which support this statement. As just a brief example:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

(Sonnet 55)

but

.. . I, once gone, to all the world must die;
The earth can yield me but a common grave.

(Sonnet 81)

My name be buried where my body is
And live no more . . .

(Sonnet 72)

A majority of the commentators, orthodox or otherwise, believe that the youth to whom these sonnets were addressed, who would lie 'entombed in men's eyes' because of them, was the Earl of Southampton. Archie Webster, an early advocate of Marlowe as Shakespeare, certainly agreed. He pointed out that Shakespeare said to the youth concerned:

I may not evermore acknowledge thee . . .
Nor thou with public kindness honour me.

(Sonnet 36)

—a further indication of the 'disgrace' already mentioned. Yet the poet did acknowledge Southampton, dedicating his two long classical poems to that earl. Webster suggested that the situation could only make sense if the poet was not making the acknowledgement under his all-revealing true name. The name 'Shakespeare' (which obviously would be immortalised along with Southampton) must thus be a 'mask' enabling him to do so safely.

It may be reiterated that all that we know of the actor from Stratford suggests his complete indifference to the fate and lasting appeal of Shakespeare's works. He took no personal steps to ensure their publication. True, in his day, it was somewhat unusual for a dramatist to publish collected works. But he, if the author, risked over half of his being for ever lost. Yet this, we are asked to believe, is the same man who speaks with such transparent sincerity of his conviction that his work is timeless. It was this attitude in Stratford's Shakespeare, together with what we know of his biography, that led Alexander Pope to conclude that he was, at heart, a worldling. But, of course, it may simply have been that the perpetuation of the work of Shakespeare, the writer, was someone else's business!

Commentary

These ten points are but a framework, with necessarily selective comment, by way of illustration: a foundation with some scaffolding of argument (for individuals to build upon or seek to demolish) rather than finished stone. In constructing such, I have used the language of the 'heretics': my sympathy with them doubtless shines through. This is because I am convinced that there is a case to be answered. Yet those Stratfordians who are resentful of all probing or questioning might run quickly through the list, insisting that each item is of no consequence. Slightly misquoting the Bard they would argue that 'among a number all are reckoned none'. A metaphor might be that of a jar of assorted produce, which has been mentally emptied, the content being dismissed as all worthless—but this being done in many cases without ever looking at it properly, and in some instances even without actually turning the lid of the jar.

Let us suppose that these and other arguments, fully developed, do give rise to queries, have obvious potency, or are even thought conclusive. Such belief would not mean that Stratford's most famous figure was a knave, a fool or a mere cipher, as some doubters have portrayed him. On the contrary, he may well have been a crucial figure in a well-planned enterprise, its vital official representative. The fortunate coincidence of his name and his availability as a 'mask' would be an essential feature for its feasibility and secrecy. He must have been capable enough to learn lines as an actor. Wearing the 'mask' as the nominal Shakespeare would be, on occasion, a test of that acting ability. He would need to refer occasionally to the plays as ones he had written; perhaps sometimes to give the appearance of a shrewd person of deeper thoughts than he was prepared to express in conversation.

But for him to have actually done enough to encompass that incomparable span of words and wisdom? No: for his 'disbelievers', the odds are impossibly long. In April 1981, the British Broadcasting Corporation's children's television programme, Blue Peter, celebrating Shakespeare's official birthday, included a remark to the effect that William would have laughed to think that one day he would be hailed as the greatest writer the world has ever known. We may be pardoned for the audacity of wondering if (even if just ever so possibly if) the comment has an infinitely deeper, much more ironic, significance than could possibly have been intended.

The doubt about the validity of the majority viewpoint on Shakespearean authorship springs not from any one of the ten points, nor other specific queries which could be provided to extend such a listing. It lies in the mutually supportive nature of a whole range of diverse and disturbing facts. We may say that some of the queries are exaggerated; that in other cases the Stratford man could have got access to the necessary information (although this sometimes itself requires exaggeration to make it plausible); that others are just coincidence. The problem is that, as the 'coincidences' mount, the odds against them being just coincidence mounts rapidly. A passage in an altogether different context, from a bygone specialist in the detective story genre, happens to express this perfectly. His investigator is allowed but one dogmatism. It concerns:

the matter of accumulative probabilities . . . two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become at once, by their mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important considerations. . . . [Other apparent trivialities] reinforcing . . . bring the matter to the rank of a practical certainty.

Some will be quick to dismiss examples from fiction, despite the fact that they may illustrate truths. Those distrustful of it may look to modern management techniques for a parallel. There exists, at present, no absolutely final proof as to who was the author Shakespeare: if such proof were accessible, there could never be an authorship problem. Very well, but the worlds of industry and education abound with processes or achievements which are not susceptible to precise quantification. Thus management tries to find suitable 'performance indicators'. These are proxies or surrogates for measurement; they are signposts rather than indisputable facts. As such they must be used in clusters: one or two alone could be misleading. A strong consensus, however, is regarded as most powerful evidence. We might therefore transfer the concept by assuming that Shakespeare's works had come down to us anonymously, then asking a question: Would the accumulation of grouped indicators, on balance, point to the Stratford man as responsible for that unique literary performance?

Those more prepared to tolerate fiction might find a useful analogy by noting another BBC television programme's message on the growth of attractive legends. This, in 1987, marking the centenary of Sherlock Holmes, drew attention to the myths (the curved pipe, the deerstalker hat) that grew up only after the stories were written. One opinion expressed was that, for maximum impact, when faced with fact and legend, one should publish the legend! We need to realise that the accounts, or legends, of an upwardly mobile Stratford boy, soaring to the heights, rest on relatively few known foundations. This remains true even for those who are convinced that the foundations are probably sound. The latter then have to explain how his genius not only brought him education and culture beyond his reach, but also apparent first-hand knowledge of events beyond his experience. Then, at the end, there is that apparent voluntary return to mundane obscurity.

For some of us, a simple metaphor might be to imagine a small sum of capital being invested, remarkably wisely, in the late sixteenth century; then to find that it is now, because of appreciation and accumulated interest (including, dare one say, much 'vested interest') worth millions. But, if fact is really wanted, might not our eyes turn, at least briefly, away from what may be glittering fables, to examine the honesty by which the original capital was acquired? Around whatever is true about Stratford's Shakespeare, there has been woven a vast, complex web of speculation and gossip. Some of it is contradictory; much of it chosen to appeal to the popular imagination. The lay person's usual view of a tolerably secure biography, linked to the writings, becomes first dishevelled, then nearly shattered if, gradually, those layers of myth and guesswork are exposed.

So it was that Charles Dickens trembled every day lest something turned up; that Henry James went further, rejecting in this context his elder brother's 'will to believe', wondering in a 1903 letter, if 'the divine William' might be 'the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a patient world'. Walt Whitman thought the frequent aristocratic tone or setting of these dramas pointed to their likely author being one of the earls, some 'born descendant and knower' of the characters from the medieval aristocracy so plenteous in the plays. In providing a lively introduction to a book by Hilda Amphlett on the authorship controversy, the then judge, Christmas Humphreys, summed up admirably:

Insert the edge of the chisel of doubt in the plaster of this legend and it is frightening to watch the wishful thought assumptions tumble to the ground . . . even if fifty per cent [of queries posed] are rejected as far-fetched or in any way unproved there remains an abundance. . . . The proof mounts rapidly, with geometric progression, as the number grows.

Of course, there are very many people who do not agree with all this. Since they include the Shakespearean specialist experts, their views must be most carefully considered. However, it should always be recalled that those experts have a reputation and track record to defend. It is for honest enquirers, trying to view argument and counter-argument objectively, to decide whether we can safely dismiss virtually all the arguments presented by doubters. It will not do to say, in effect, 'There's no real mystery, it's just that we don't happen to know much about him.' The above surely shows the incongruities between what we do know of William of Stratford and the Shakespeare glory. The disbelievers in the conventional 'Will' certainly sometimes overstate their case. Moreover, the rival sects also sometimes argue quite fiercely against each other! Neither of those undoubted facts invalidates the general thrust or strength of the anti-Stratfordian cause. . . .