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The Cleveland Plain Dealer does not
grant permission to reprint articles in their entirety on web
sites, so the following is the author's response (indented
boldface) to specific points raised in the review by Marianne
Evett on Monday, December 18, 2000:
The reviewer singles out the comparative
analysis of Literary Paper Trails as the "new evidence"
claimed in my title, and reports that according to my book,
"only Shakespeare fails the test."
The comparative analysis of
evidence supporting the literary biographies for Shakespeare
and two dozen of his contemporaries is one of five major new
arguments; all are summarized on the home page. None of the
other new arguments was noticed by this reviewer.
The reviewer suggests that the "sheer
volume of detail and scholarly superstructure may convince some
readers" but that the book is "slow going."
This reviewer has grudgingly
acknowledged the scholarship supporting my arguments. I would
agree that some of the book, especially chapters 4-7 and
parts of chapter 11, can be "slow going," but that
is the fairly predictable result of an analysis that attempts
to be comprehensive. My decision to examine all the principal
documentation for, and allusions to, Shakespeare necessarily
requires in-depth analyses of historical records, prose, and
verse, and a consideration of what previous biographers and
historians have concluded from that evidence. The reviewer
admitted that my handling of the material was "clear,"
but criticized my examination in minute detail of "works
no longer very accessible to the general reader." This
reviewer seems to be again (inadvertently) complimenting my
research, although I hasten to point out that nearly all of
the sources listed in my bibliography were accessed at The
Cleveland Public Library.
The reviewer claims that many of my
arguments are seriously flawed. She acknowledges that there are
indeed "gaps in the historical records," but asserts
that "the explanations for those gaps are at least as
plausible on the positive side as those Price offers on the
negative."
My book challenges the
traditional explanations for the "gaps in the historical
records." It is up to the reader to decide whether the
unorthodox narrative that I re-construct for Shakespeare is
more plausible.
The reviewer objects to my criteria of
rejecting hearsay and posthumous evidence in my analysis, because
it results in "a very narrow and subjective interpretation
of contemporary references." The reviewer particularly
objects to the disqualification of Shakespeare's Stratford
monument and inscription, and the testimony in the First Folio as
evidence of Shakespeare's career as a writer.
This reviewer implies that I
summarily dismiss the testimony in the First Folio. My
analysis of this testimony comprises all of chapter 10 and
part of chapter 11. The reviewer implies that I likewise
summarily dismiss the matter of Shakespeare's tomb and
inscription, a subject with which chapter 9 is exclusively
concerned.
The disqualification, on the
basis of dates, of documentation and testimony as evidence of
a literary career is applied rigorously to all the writers in
the comparative analysis. Shakespeare is the only individual
for whom historians must rely on posthumous evidence (in the
First Folio) to make their case for a career as a writer.
Every other writer meets the criteria quite easily. Similarly,
biographers rely on ambiguous or impersonal evidence to make
their case for the authorship attribution to Shakespeare, and
again, Shakespeare is the only writer for whom this stretch
is necessary.
The reviewer is apparently
content to give equal weight to hearsay. I rather agree
instead with Prof. Stanley Wells, who wrote: "Oral
tradition is notoriously unreliable, but cannot be definitely
disproved, while Schoenbaum may be right to dismiss it.. . .
What is surely clear is that it belongs to a different
category of evidence from that which can be documentarily
supported" ("Shakespeare's Lives: 1991-1994"
in Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor
of S. Schoenbaum, p. 19).
In addition, as I point out in
various places in the book, praise of Shakespeare as a great
writer is not necessarily identification of the man from
Stratford as that writer. If I postulate that "Shakespeare"
was recognized as a pen name by Elizabethan critics, then a
reference by a critic to "Shakespeare's fine filed
phrase" is good evidence that the critic thought that
Shakespeare, whoever he was, wrote good poetry. But the
allusion can refer to Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, or
to the name on a title page that was recognized as
representing some other author.
One cannot draw personal
conclusions from impersonal evidence without corroborating
documentation. It is interesting that I was impressed with
this distinction when studying the biographical records of
other writers. In most cases, historians have been careful to
conclude only as much as the evidence permits. It is in the
Shakespearean biography that I see historians breaking their
own rules in order to support the traditional attribution.
At the risk of becoming tedious,
I would quote an eminent historian and biographer, Mark
Eccles, who contributed an article to The
Huntington Library Quarterly entitled
"A Biographical Dictionary of Elizabethan Authors"
in 1942, when he was engaged in a research project to
supersede the Dictionary of National
Biography. He considered a new
Dictionary "desirable in three respects: thoroughness in
searching for evidence, accuracy in presenting evidence, and
determination to go to first-hand sources wherever possible
instead of repeating information at secondhand" (282).
He added that a biography "must also go back to the
original evidence for every statement it makes, instead of
resting content with information taken from secondary sources"
(284). My own research plan for Shakespeare's
Unorthodox Biography attempted to
follow these guidelines. Eccles advised any biographer to
test every single link in the chain of evidence, and even
cautioned the researcher to "be sure that the person
mentioned [in print] is the author and not someone else
bearing the name" (301). It is discouraging to find a
reviewer criticizing me for respecting such standards.
This reviewer criticized me for not being
" the dispassionate researcher" I claim to be. She
faults me for arguing that the author was "an aristocrat,
well-read, well-traveled, conversant with the law and other
languages," whereas I describe Shakespeare of Stratford as
"an uneducated, greedy entrepreneur and moneylender, ready
to take the chance when some nobleman asks him to be the front
man for getting his plays on the stage."
I do argue that Shakespeare was
numerate and had an incomplete grammar school education from
which he emerged as an uncultured but street-smart
opportunist. His activities as an entrepreneur and
moneylender are documented with hard evidence, and his greedy
attitude is likewise supported by both documentary evidence
and allusions. In countering the traditional portrayal of
Shakespeare as "sweet," "gentle," and
self-effacing, I show precisely how orthodox biographers have
manipulated the evidence to manufacture their artificial
construct. I consider such manipulation of evidence
indicative of orthodoxy's bias, not mine.
She further takes exception to my argument
that "noblemen, because of their rank, were permitted
neither to publish poetry nor to dabble in the theater."
This reviewer faults me for "faulty logic and lack of
knowledge of the broader social and theatrical milieu of the time
[which] undermine her argument," and asserts that "nobles
were not prohibited from printing, for example, or from being
known as playwrights. A list of them is available."
The reviewer mis-stated my
position. I did not argue that aristocrats were "prohibited"
from printing. Of course they were free to print from a legal
standpoint. My argument is that they chose not to publish
certain genres because of a socially imposed "stigma of
print." Aristocrats did not wish to be perceived as
interested in commercial profit, which was the province of
the commercial class. This stigma of print applied to
frivolous or commercial writing, specifically poetry and
plays for the public stage. The stigma of print did not
affect publication of pious or didactic works, learned
translations, or the like. Aristocrats avoided being
perceived as writing for public consumption by circulating
their "toys" or "trifles" in manuscript
to their circle of friends or associates, rather than
publishing. These distinctions and supporting evidence are
covered in chapter 12.
It's unfortunate that this
reviewer did not specify which "list" of published
aristocrats she has in mind, but I would guess that any of
those whom she might name were either victims of
surreptitious (i.e., unauthorized) publication, or were
authors of "closet dramas," not intended to be
performed, and more properly categorized as learned
translations or political treatises, genres that were
considered more respectable.
The reviewer faults me for using "a
double standard for evidence. It's OK if it does not favor
Shakespeare, suspect if it does."
Any serious analysis requires a
testing of evidence to determine what can be safely concluded.
I do not reject any evidence, favorable or otherwise, left
behind by Shakespeare. On the contrary, I accept all of it,
including some evidence ignored or edited by traditional
biographers. My book describes how I tested the evidence and
what I concluded from it. In that process, I reject many of
traditional conclusions, and provide reasons for that
rejection as well as for my alternatives. That's not applying
a double standard. That's applying a consistent standard and
arriving at a different conclusion.
The reviewer argues that "Shakespeare's
plays do not show more classical learning than could be got from
an Elizabethan grammar school education. The view of court life
in the plays is not that of an insider. As for travel, any decent
writer can acquire enough information secondhand to make a
setting sound authentic (and Shakespeare gets some details about
Europe quite wrong)."
These objections are unsupported
assertions, and are standard issue in traditional biographies.
I challenge each of those assertions with sustained evidence
and argument.
The reviewer concludes by claiming that
"there is not space here to go into disproving all the
points on which Price founds her case, but Shakespeare, in
Fact by Irvin Leigh Matus (Continuum, 1994) and the Web site
run by David Kathman and Terry Clark http://www.clark.net/pub/tross/ws/will.html.
refute each of them."
These closing remarks refer the
reader to two sources, which tell me that the reviewer is not
herself well-read on the subject of Shakespeare's biography.
Matus's book is largely a refutation of the case as argued by
Oxfordians, and those sections in his book are, for the most
part, irrelevant to my case. However, Matus does raise many
good questions about anti-Stratfordian arguments; some I
agree with, some not. (I take issue with him in chapter 5.)
His book, which was published six years ago, did not
anticipate the new arguments I present in mine, so it cannot
be useful in refuting the new case that I've made.
The Shakespeare Authorship web
site contains much useful information and provides excellent
links to other sites, but as of the date of this review,
Mssrs. Kathman and Ross had not yet posted any specific
criticisms of my book. So it is unreasonable for the reviewer
to suggest that everything in my book is refuted by them.
Please forward any replies or
comments to : author@Shakespeare-authorship.com.
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