“You’re just a snob” if you think Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. Criminy, how many times have I heard or read that stupid line. It’s the first and favorite thing a Shakespearean will tell you if you dare bring up the authorship issue. And I repeat: it’s a stupid line. And a rude one. “You’re just a snob” is an
ad hominem argument;
ad hominem means “to the man.” That is, it personally attacks the person bringing up the inquiry — IT DOES NOT ADDRESS THE ISSUE. It is a rude statement that is designed to make the person discussing authorship feel like a low-class, immoral elitist, but it has NOTHING to do with the very real issues surrounding the authorship. Here’s an equivalent argument: She says, “Santa Fe has an average of 300 sunny days a year.” He says, “You're just a slut.”
Ad hominem.Shakespeareans use that line regularly because it is an easy way to skirt the problems (and make you feel crummy and themselves feel superior). I particularly take offense at being told this for two reasons.
1. In my book, Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?
, my argument is NOT that Shakespeare didn’t have any record of an education or a presence at court and therefore wasn’t qualified to write these works. My argument is that there is no clear documentation that he was a writer, along the lines of Diana Price’s book, Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography
. So don’t yell at me for claiming WS couldn’t have written them without the education and background, because I don’t claim that. Of course he might have had an education “that would put many college graduates to shame today” and he might have had friends in the literati and he might have hung around at court and he might have studied rhetoric and poetry and French and Italian and alchemy, etc. etc. etc. It’s certainly possible that he might have done all these things.
2. Why on earth would *I* claim someone couldn't do something that they don’t have “appropriate credentials” for? H*ll, my first computer book was turned down by ten publishers because I don’t have a degree in computers. I had to self-publish my first two computer books which have now sold more than two million copies and are in many different languages. I had the same problem with the Sweet Swan of Avon — I don’t have the “appropriate background” in Shakespeare studies and had to essentially self-publish it. So far be it from ME to claim William Shakespeare didn't have the appropriate background.
The funny thing is that the author of the Shakespearean works is a
huge snob. The lower classes are consistently belittled; the upper classes naturally speak better and are more refined and somehow very well educated even if they’ve grown up in a shepherd’s hut or in a cave. (I’m working on an essay about that and will eventually post it here.)
The brilliant writer
Elliot Baker sent me a copy of a published letter of
Delia Bacon’s in which she told someone sputtering about Shakespeare, “You do not know what is in those Plays if you think that booby wrote them.” I have to agree with her.
This burns me up, too.
ReplyDeleteThe Shakespeare Birthplace Trust says, "The phenomenon of disbelief in Shakespeare's authorship is a psychological aberration of considerable interest. Endorsement of it in favour of aristocratic candidates may be ascribed to snobbery - reluctance to believe that works of genius could emanate from a man of relatively humble origin."
I know lots of anti-Stratfordians, and none of them engages in that sort of snobbery. Heck, I'm from America, whose greatest literary genius, Mark Twain, had no birthright or education to speak of. And we all celebrate his genius. If there's one thing we ain't, it's snobs.
Ya know, Chaucer, like Shakespeare, left no holographic manuscripts. The earliest C. manuscripts were written years after his death, and we have only the copyist's word for it that C. wrote the originals. There are numerous documents recording details of Chaucer's life, but not one indicates that he was a writer or was ever paid for writing anything. So why isn't there an authorship question for Chaucer?
Because what we know of his life matches up exactly with his literary output. The people and places he wrote about can readily be found among the known facts of his life. The writings of S., on the other hand, bear no discernible relation to the facts of Shak's life. Snobbery has nothing to do with it.
Well, nothing, except insofar as the attitude typified by Stanley Wells--that no one but him is smart enough to have an opinion the subject--represents snobbery of the highest order.
And, speaking of Samuel Clemens, as Mr. Carter has in a previous post on this blog, we know that Twain didn't think Shakespeare wrote all those plays and sonnets(see "Is Shakespeare Dead?" by Mark Twain) and he evidently wasn't sure Bacon could have been the writer either -- so the wondering as to authorship is an exercise where those of us who are curious about it find ourselves in good company.
ReplyDelete