Quotations Relevant to the Authorship Question

by Morse Johnson

SOS Newsletter, Vol. 26-B, No. 3, pp. 1-11, Summer, 1990

George Sampson:

How did (the Stratford-on-Avon man) reach the wit, the humor and the assured mastery of verse exhibited in a delightful early comedy like Love's Labour's Lost? These are some of the questions to which we (Stratfordians) desire an answer, but answer there is none.

George Sampson:

... (anti-Stratfordians are) a succession of cranks representing the extreme of ignorant credulity and morbid ingenuity.

Preface

Tradition has attributed the works of William Shakespeare or Shakespeare—as the name was consistently spelled on all the published works—to Will. Shakspere, as his name was spelled in the Burial Registry (1616), who was born in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564. A preponderant majority of Shakespearean scholars and buffs have endorsed that attribution and are identified as Stratfordians, and a minority of Shakespearean scholars and buffs have rejected it and are identified as anti-Stratfordians. This long-time and world-wide controversy has been labeled the Shakespeare authorship question.

(STRATFORDIANS quoted or referred to herein are identified by capitalizing their names; the anti-Stratfordians are not capitalized. References to the Stratford man's documented life, experiences and learning are indicated by the name, Will. Shakspere, and deductions based on what the works reveal about the life, experiences and learning of their author are indicated by the name, Shakespeare.)

The purpose of this article is to illustrate that by their own deductions, depictions and perplexities and their recognition of irrefutable facts, Stratfordians have demonstrated that Will. Shakspere could not have been the author of the works of Shakespeare.

Prior to Will. Shakspere's assumed departure from Stratford to London around 1587-88, his birth, marriage and the birth of his three children are the only extant recorded facts about him. Since there are no facts proving that Will. Shakspere attended any school, Stratfordians have been compelled to rely on hearsay not reported until the early 18th century by Nicholas Rowe:

... tho' (Will. Shakspere) was the eldest son, (his father) gave him no better education than his own employment (a butcher and/or draper). (His father) had bred him `tis true, for some time at (the Stratford) Free-School where `tis probable he acquired the little Latin he was master of: but ... the want of his assistance at home, forc'd his father to withdraw him from thence ... (Emphasis added.)

* Ed. note: The roster of that school's pupils and its curriculum during the 1570s have never been located. It is, however, possible that Will. Shakspere studied Latin during his assumed foreshortened attendance there.

Stratfordians recognize that the only extant handwritings of Will. Shakspere are six shakily written, with some blots and illegible letters and variably spelled, signatures on four documents, in none of which is the last name spelled "Shakespeare" or has any association with literary interests, and were only inscribed in the last four years of his life.

JAMES O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPS:

Removed prematurely from school, residing with illiterate relatives in a bookless neighborhood, thrown into the midst of occupations adverse to scholastic progress—it is difficult to believe that when he first left Stratford he was not all but destitute of polished accomplishments. He could not, at all events, under the circumstances in which he had then so long been placed, have had the opportunity for acquiring a refined style of composition.

Sir G. G. Greenwood reported that:

... exception has been taken to (the above) phrase, `bookless neighborhood' ... It is ... obvious that all Mr. Phillips meant was that the possession of books among the good people of (Stratford) was a very exceptional distinction indeed; and this is fully borne out by the fact that so many townsmen, aldermen and burgesses included, are shown to have been illiterate (and) the great majority of the good people of Stratford, in Shakspere's time were altogether illiterate ...

RICHARD GRAND WHITE:

It is only in London that those plays could have been written. London had but just before Shakespeare's day made its metropolitan supremacy felt as well as acknowledged throughout England. As long as two hundred years after that time the county of each Member of Parliament was betrayed by his tongue ... (Shakspere's) language would have been a dialect which must needs have been translated to be understood by modern English ears.

EDWARD GARNETT and EDMUND GOSSE:

Nothing is more remarkable in (Shakespeare's) earliest productions than their perfect polish and urbanity. The principal characters in Love's Labours Lost are princes and nobles, true to the models he might have found in contemporary society. The young patricians in The Two Gentlemen of Verona have in every respect the ideas and manners of their class. The creator of such personages must have been in better company and enjoyed a wider outlook upon society than can easily be believed attainable by an actor or a resident in a single city ... that knowledge of good society (and) easy and confident attitude towards mankind which appears in Shakespeare's plays from the first and which ... are so unlike what might have been expected from a Stratford rustic or London actor. (Emphasis added.)

JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS:

... if we are forced to think of (Will. Shakspere) as early snatched from school, working ail day in a butcher shop, growing up in a home devoid of books and of literary atmosphere ... we find it hard to understand how he suddenly blossomed out as one of England's greatest men of letters with every mark of literary culture.

J. DOVER WILSON:

It is also clear that, if the author of Merry Wives knew his middle class, the author of Love's Labour's Lost had made himself equally familiar with the life, manner and conversation of ladies and gentlemen of the land. To credit that amazing piece of virtuosity to a butcher boy who left school at 13 or even to one whose education was nothing more than what a grammar school and residence in a little provincial borough could provide is to invite one either to believe in miracles or to disbelieve in the man of Stratford.

Morse Johnson: Stratfordians recognize that from the time Will. Shakspere is assumed to have arrived in London, the first recorded mention in London of the name Shakespeare (however spelled)—then only as a poet—was in 1593, as an actor not until 1595, and as a playwright not until 1598.

SAMUEL SCHOENBAUM:

... By 1592 (Will. Shakspere) had made his mark as a playwright. Authoritative Stratfordians have claimed that during the period 1587-88 to 1595 Will. Shakspere was a prominent and busy actor which required frequent participation in rehearsals and performances during the daytime, was familiar with the administrative and artistic responsibilities for many of the operations of an acting company, and mastered the techniques and lore of dramaturgy and fraternized with other playwrights, poets, actors and...