Behold the Man

The most important argument James Shapiro makes in his book Contested Will is not that the author of Shakespeare's plays and poems is William Shakespeare (the "Stratford man")--anyone who honestly examines both the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship and the evidence for all of the rival candidates (most notably the Earl of Oxford) can only conclude there is no reason to doubt that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare--but that the whole controversy over authorship has arisen because of the assumption held by so many people that a writer's work is a reflection, direct or indirect, of that writer's life.

Of course, the work is a reflection of the life, in the trivial sense that writers have only their life experiences (including what they've read or imagined) to lean on in producing the work, but the assumption goes farther than this: Events in the work recapitulate events in the life, social circumstances determine both manner and matter. Writers don't just write from their lives, they write about it, and the work can't escape its biographical influences. Once this logic is generally accepted (as Shapiro demonstrates it did under the dominance of Romanticism), it almost becomes inevitable that the "facts" of Shakespeare's life, so mundane as they generally are, become irreconcilable with the extraordinary occurrences in the plays and with the great verbal facility manifest there and in the sonnets. The poorly educated glover's son from Stratford, whose experiences apparently extended no farther than this provincial town and the London theaters, could never have written the great work attributed to him. As Shapiro puts it,

The extent to which so much that now gets written is autobiographical can easily alter the expectations we bring to all kinds of imaginative writing. We now assume that novels necessarily reveal something about a writer's life. . .At the same time, many literary biographies are supplanting the fictional works they are meant to illuminate, to the point where Ariel and The Bell Jar struggle to find a readership that books about Sylvia Plath's suicide now command. In such a climate, it's hard not to assume that literary works--of the past no less than of the present--are inescapably autobiographical.

This has been a blessing for those who deny Shakespeare's authorship, whose claims stand or fall on the core belief that literature is, and always has been, autobiographical. . . .

Thus, the authorship "controversy" is a fiction dreamed up out of a suspicion of fiction the creation of which would seem to be the writer's first task.

If anything, the distorting effects of the belief that fiction is just autobiography slightly altered are even more widespread than Shapiro suggests. Not only are biographies making claims on readers' time that would more appropriately be spent on the subjects' work, but biography has become about the only writing about literature to be reviewed in print book review sections, and, coupled with the focus in academic criticism on sociology and culture, is really the only kind of literature-centered commentary available to interested readers. New biographies are lauded or dismissed according to their capacity to explain "how he did it"--as if appreciating the process of literary creation is more important than appreciating the creation itself. Even this is just a barely disguised desire for a more elevated form of gossip, which is finally and unavoidably the stock-in-trade of all biography and almost always emerges as the contribution a biography makes to the "understanding" of its subject.

That this fascination with the life lived by the author over the purely literary implications of the work can be traced to the rise of Romanticism surely can't mean that Romanticism itself is responsible for the reduction of literature to an illustration of autobiography, recoverable through the research of the biographer. Although Shapiro convincingly maintains that the notion of reading autobiography into an author's work was alien to the literary culture of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it's hard to believe that audiences had no interest in the personal details of playwrights' or poets' lives, that the drama-filled life of, say, Christopher Marlowe attracted no attention. Curiosity about other people's lives (real people, not just the "people" depicted in literary works) must surely be a long-standing and universal human characteristic.

But while fiction and drama exploit this curiosity by depicting the lives of imagined people, it is apparently difficult to convince all readers that the integrity of narrative art depends on granting the imagination a free rein. Presumptions that the novelist or dramatist is "really" writing about some real person, including possibly himself, betrays either a distrust in the imagination, a suspicion it promises more than it can deliver, or outright disdain for it as the foundation of literary narrative. This explains the current infatuation with memoir among American readers (and the increase in writers willing to provide it) and the dogged persistence of the Shakespeare deniers. Of course, not all readers who delight in the disguises of the roman a clef or thrill to the juicy memoir are going to be led by their preferences to doubt that Shakespeare among all writers had a vigorous imagination, but the authorship controversy is of a piece with the more general impatience with the transformative role of imagination.

Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly, given his background as a New Historicist), one of the readers who seems skeptical of Shakespeare's imagination is the literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt, whose 2004 book, Will in the World, attempts to fashion a biography of Shakespeare by attending closely to echoes and suggestions in the work. Greenblatt's knowledge of Shakespeare, his times, and his plays, is immense, but he unfortunately deploys that knowledge to reinforce connections between the life and the work. Shapiro writes of Will in the World that it

gave [the autobiographical thesis] the seal of approval of the leading American Shakespearean of the day. Greenblatt admits straightaway that 'the whole impulse to explore Shakespeare's life arises from the powerful conviction that his plays and poems spring not only from other plays and poems but from things he knew firsthand, in his body and soul.' Rather that consider what historical developments gave rise to this conviction, he focuses instead on how firsthand experience can be retrieved from Shakespeare's surviving works, allowing extraordinary access into the poet's desires and anxieties.

I think Shapiro is being rather reticent in criticizing Greenblatt's project. In trying to show that the work actually does confirm Shakespeare's experiences as its source, he only winds up giving support to the assumptions that made the authorship controversy possible. Greenblatt too underestimates the reach of imagination. Why couldn't the primary thing Shakespeare "knew firsthand" be the capabilities of his own imagination? Why couldn't "body and soul" simply be the springs of that imagination? Why isn't this enough?

 

Comments

[arthur]

Dan,

Why did you suppress the input of Designer Handbags? Is this or is this not a free and open community?

Arthur

[Dan Green]

"Seeking to understand how great works of the imagination are produced"

You might do this if what you want is to "understand" the part of human nature that allows us to be imaginative. This seems to me a biological or psychological question, however, not a literary one. It will do nothing to help you appreciate the material features of a particular work of literature. I've never, ever, gained "superior entertainment and insight" from "reading the life history, and work simultaneously." I always start from the "insight" produced by the work itself. If later on I want to know something about the other things, I might do some additional reading, but that's a supplement and produces something other than "literary" knowledge.

[Steven Augustine]

Name a given text and name the corresponding author's bio and show how the bio helps us "understand how great works of the imagination are produced, and why" in a way which doesn't illuminate far, far more of the desolate terrain of the middlebrow misapprehension of the creative process than anything resembling a writer's mind.

[Nigel Beale]

No disagreement. However, if the argument is that little can be gained from knowing something of the writer's life, and contemporary circumstances, then I think you're wrong. Reading the life, history and work simultaneously makes, I'd say, for superior entertainment & insight. More so than if we simply engage with the text alone. The imaginative work remains independent, but for those who wish them, other dimensions are available. Squabbling over who may or may not have written the plays doesn't, I agree with you, produce much other than perhaps a good detective story. Seeking to understand how great works of the imagination are produced, and why, does, I'd say.

[Dan Green]

Who says Shakespeare lacked "experience" that gave him "insight into human nature"? The "anti-Stratfordians" say he laced experience of the specific kind they claim he should have had to write the plays he did. That we don't know exactly what shakespeare's experience was doesn't mean his imagination couldn't work on the experiences he did undergo.

[Nigel Beale]

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet before James l came to the throne. Events in the play reflect many of the real world concerns that Englishmen had about being ruled by a foreigner. At the play’s end, Denmark’s line of rulers is extinguished, and a foreigner (Fortinbras) takes the throne. James was married to Anna of Denmark, some feared that if he were to attempt a military takeover, he might call on the forces of his brother in law Christian IV of Denmark.

King Lear was written after James’s succession. At the start of the play Lear is firmly established as king of a united Britain. This reflected James’s wish to be ruler of a fully united kingdom. In fact he approached Parliament, without success, in 1607 in hopes of securing a closer political union.

The names of the Dukes in King Lear are taken from real life. James had recently made his sons Henry and Charles the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany respectively. In the play Albany is an honest man who realises too late the evil doings of his relatives. Once aware, he works to restore natural order. At the end, hope for the monarchy rests with him, Albany from Scotland, who is free to reunite the fractured kingdom. In this he represents what James wanted to achieve with his succession.

"Why couldn't the primary thing Shakespeare "knew firsthand" be the capabilities of his own imagination? Why couldn't "body and soul" simply be the springs of that imagination? Why isn't this enough?"

Because without experience one lacks insight into human nature, without engagement with important issues of the day, works of the imagination lack 'seriousness,' and without situational context, the reader loses out on layers of meaning and complexity.

Steve: do I detect a move toward St. Beuve?

[Frances Madeson]

Fresh and minty, baby!

[Matthew Merlino]

That would be great, if your picking a fight with me had any content behind it to which Dan could add the last word. At this point, the only proper last word would be, "You're both douche bags."

[Frances Madeson]

You know what, Matthew. Neither of us will or can concede the last line and this is costing Dan pixels, so let's agree as gentlemen and scholars to give the last line to our host. Fair enough?

Behold the Man

[Matthew Merlino]

Oh, sorry Frances, didn't realize you were English. Or should I say, "What didn't you understand about ta?" She with the ta should follow through, right?

[Frances Madeson]

What didn't you understand about ta?

[Matthew Merlino]

Frances, point out one place where I've disrupted the proceedings here. Even when I was arguing with Schumann over the Shakespeare authorship controversy, I was addressing points Dan made in his original post. Dan goes after a particularly simplistic version of biographical criticism that would turn all literature into autobiography, and I think that's a straw man argument against biographical criticism as it has actually been practiced.

And Frances, point out one non-trollish contribution you've made to this thread. It's a pretty classic troll strategy to accuse others of trolling. (O noes, but that could be turned against me!)

As far as flattering, ingratiating, and pandering go, I think anyone with an ear for tone will hear the dripping of irony. I just don't want you to think this is personal, even if you'd like to make it so. As I tell my three-year-old cousin: "Use your words, honey." When you actually have something to say, that is.

[Frances Madeson]

And you're all-too-obvious by-the-book tactics to flatter, ingratiate, pander, distract, annoy and otherwise disrupt the proceedings is noted, Mr. Merlino. Ta.

[Matthew Merlino]

Still, your reduction of all conversation to a sort of retarded W. C. Fields level of ad hominem zingers is impressive, and I mean that sincerely. Think I'll friend you on Facebook.

[Frances Madeson]

Trippingly off the tongue, that one.

[Matthew Merlino]

Aw, thanks, Frances. That means a lot from an obnoxious twat like you. Now put the candy down and let the little boys go.

[Frances Madeson]

Thank you for the compliment, Matthew; I seem to be racking them up these days. It feels good, dammit. As for your perceiving my perfectly straightforward comments as outlierly oblique, here's what I was trying to say to you and about you: There's an unwholesome smell in the air when you're nearby.

[Matthew Merlino]

No, Dan, I wrote that we know the plays were USED to prop up state power. That's a historical fact. Whether or not the plays were intended to do so is a question we can never settle.

Likewise, Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" was USED by Churchill to prop up a white supremist state, even though the poem was intended to spark violent self-defense by people of color.

And just because an idea keeps a controversy alive doesn't make that idea false. It just means that literary interpretation is messy. It is quite easy to go from life to text. The life is often a necessary, if not a sufficient, condition of the text. If Melville and Conrad hadn't gone out to sea, they wouldn't have been the writers they were. If Hemingway hadn't worked for newspapers or met Gertrude Stein, his style would never have emerged. If Chekhov hadn't been trained as a doctor, his stories would be completely different. And so on.

[Dan Green]

Matthew: You say we *know* the plays "were written to prop up state power." I don't know anything of the sort. I've read a great deal of Shakespeare scholarship, and all I get from it on this point is speculation based on general political conditions, threatrical practice, etc. Probably Shakespeare did hope to avoid censorship, but to say he was "propping up" the state attributes motives to him that we can't possibly know. Shakespeare's the best author to use to get rid of biography. There's so little of it available we ought to acknowledge it isn''t necessary for appreciating the plays.

The idea that we can "easily go from life to text" is the very notion Shapiro identifies as keeping the Shakespeare controversy alive.

[Matthew Merlino]

Frances, I have no idea what you're talking about. You'd make a great writer of metafiction or Language Poetry.

[Frances Madeson]

"(And the idea of reading Shakespeare already misses the mark -- these are plays, after all.)"

Oh dear, the acrid stench of flop sweat is in the airy ether, or so says a clearly sassy woman (tho not a B-essie one). But hark, this from the clearly sassy bard hi'self:

This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart:
Hot, hot, and moist: this hand of yours requires
A sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer,
Much castigation, exercise devout;
For here's a young and sweating devil here,
That commonly rebels. 'Tis a good hand,
A frank one.

[Matthew Merlino]

Dan, there is no easy access to a work of art. You seem to think that biography is unnecessarily messy, that the "play is the thing."

But Shakespeare is a particularly stupid example to use to try to get rid of history and biography. There are no works of art in anything like a modern sense. The plays are all the hodge-podge creations of dozens of people, with no evidence that they ever looked upon a Shakespeare manuscript. Unless we go outside the text, we risk misreading entirely. (And the idea of reading Shakespeare already misses the mark -- these are plays, after all.)

But as you said, I was merely posing other possibilities to prove Howard wrong. I agree with you that we cannot go from text to life when it comes to Shakespeare ('tho I do think we can easily go from life to text with other writers, such as Hemingway or Milton or Joyce or Dickens or Whitman). Shakespeare may have been a Freudian-Marxist for all we know. But it *is* pretty clear from his plays that they were written to avoid running into censorship, for example, whether or not his instinct was to risk censorship in the first place. We do know that they were used to prop up state power, just as we know that they were used to rally up an act of terrorism against Bessie herself.

But I am as skeptical about a purely textual approach to literature as I am about a purely biographical or historical approach. There is no royal road to a correct interpretation, given that there are only ever merely plausible interpretations to begin with.

[Frances Madeson]

Matthew,
He has to keep it that pure. It's the first drink that gets you drunk. Tell that to whoever sent you.

[Dan Green]

Matthew: I think you're indulging in the same biographical fetish that Shapiro criticizes. We have no idea if Shakespeare was trying "to rise to the level of classical greatness through the cultural capital of genre." I can't see that it makes any difference to our appreciation of the plays to know that. I realize you're playing an "even if" game, but again we have no idea if Shakespeare was "toeing the party line." There's no evidence that Beatrice was based on Anne Hathaway and no reason to assume Shakespeare "might identify with the rich and powerful." His depiction of the rich and powerful and of the low and powerless are equally convincing, and this is a result of his skill as a dramatist rather than his "attitude" toward social class.

[Matthew Merlino]

Howard, Dekker wrote mostly about kings and royalty. Even in *The Shoemaker's Holiday*, it is the king at the banquet who is responsible for the rise of a worker to the level of Mayor. That Shakespeare didn't write citizens comedies is as much a matter of Shakespeare's attempts to rise to the level of classical greatness through the cultural capital of genre as it is a matter of, perhaps, personal taste.

Marlowe did write about the aspirations of scholars (Faustus) and bandits (Tamburlaine), but note that such aspirations are tragic. Marlowe, after all, actively worked in the secret service of the government. His job would have been to spy on and have killed any upstarts looking to rise beyond their natural status.

Let's grant that Shakespeare is a staunch royalist conservative. That's up for debate, because even in the history plays, where he toes the party line, he also shows that all of the English royal lines are fictions upheld by force and not by natural or divine right or blood legitimacy. But let's grant it. Is it such a big surprise that a middle class boy, raised by a father with some level of local political power, by a father who was convinced he had noble ancestors, might identify with the rich and powerful? We know Shakespeare spent a lot to get his family a coat of arms, furthering his father's noble fantasies.

I grew up blue collar in a blue collar town. I was the only lefty in my social group. All of my peers were Reagan conservatives who thought the rich were rich by natural right and who aspired to at least mimic the rich in fashion and ideology. Some things don't change.

(And Beatrice could be Shakespeare's Anne, an older, clearly sassy woman who received a Benedick-like joke on Shakes's deathbed - the "second-best bed" being their wedding bed.)

[Dan Green]

There is no way to determine "Shakespeare's attitude" toward anything based on the plays. There are the plays themselves, which in some cases depict characters from the "lower classes" and sometimes characters in "high positions." They do what they do and say what they say. Any description of "attitude" is a construction of the reader or critic making the description.

I'm violating my prohibition against joining the authorship debate only because this practice is one, like the use of biography, that extends beyond the study of Shakespeare to the study of all authors, and is equally misbegotten in those cases as well. Unless the real-life author has told us what his/her "attitude" is, we don't know, and even then it's an attitude applicable only to real life.

[Howard Schumann]

Matthew - Well, perhaps you have done more research than I and if you think that your response is a satisfactory answer to my previous post, more power to you.

From where I sit, however, I note that while William of Stratford stood on one of the lowest social rungs, his plays reflect a man who stood who stood on one of the top rungs. Shakespeare’s attitude differs from other playwrights of his time such as Marlowe, Dekker, and Webster who wrote about the ability of the lower classes to rise to high positions through merit. In the work of Munday, Chettle, Heywood, and Dekker common people occupy the central place and their work is written from a commoner’s point of view.

As far as Much Ado About Nothing is concerned, it is interesting to note the similarities between Beatrice of Much Ado, Rosaline of Love's Labour's Lost, and Rosalind of As You Like It. All are witty, sharp-tongued women, reminiscent of the fiery Anne Vasavour, a woman of the court who was the lover of the Earl of Oxford and whose courtship offended the Queen and landed Oxford in the tower. Also the play includes one of Shakespeare’s laughable plebian characters, Dogberry, noted for his comic ineptitude. As noted in Wikipedia, Shakespeare appears to be poking mild fun at the amateur police forces of his day, in which respectable citizens spent a fixed number of nights per year fulfilling an obligation to protect the public peace, a job for which they were, by and large, unqualified.”

[Matthew Merlino]

Howard, whhich Renaissance playwrights were writing working class characters who weren't there for comic relief? Which Renaissance playwrights were not using high-born characters as their main protagonists (and antagonists)? For that matter, which tragedies by Sophocles, Euripedes, or Seneca did not focus on kings and royal families?

Your same logic would tell us that Victor Hugo could never have been the son of a Napoleonic war hero given his extreme royalism until the period of *Les Miserables*.

I also think my 15 year old high school sophomores would be surprised to learn that *Much Ado about Nothing* has no connection to practical, everyday life. Every time I teach the play, they tell me how weird it is that Shakespeare's characters act like the teenagers around them, trusting gossip over what they realy know about someone's character, dealing with "haters" like Don John, signifying and snarking at those they secretly love, etc.

[Steven Augustine]

err'tum:

"written as though no particular human experience correspondS to it"

or

"written as though no particular human experienceS correspond to it"

[Steven Augustine]

"If anything, the distorting effects of the belief that fiction is just autobiography..."

Fiction is autobiography distorted. A mind is shaped by its experiences which, in turn, shape the mind's creations. The popular fallacy is in thinking that the "code" is easily broken, or can be broken at all, least of all by the mind in question. There may be no such thing as "pure" Fiction (written as though no particular human experience correspond to it), but the autobiographical aspects, impossible to remove, are also impossible to get at.

Even a man with a Portuguese wife and three children who writes a novel about a writer writing a novel about a man with a Portuguese wife and three children isn't, necessarily, telling us anything explicit or comprehensively "true" about himself. And even if he is *trying* to, he can't.

And even when we read a writer's biography, written by a fastidious biographer, we project so much of ourselves into the reading of it that the writer's life remains as mysterious to us as it was to his biographer and the writer himself. Primarily because, I think, "feelings", not statistics (birthday, height, income, frequency of marriage and bouts with absinthism), are key to the meaning of one's life, and although they can be triggered in a reader, they can't be transferred, intact, from writer to reader. And even if they could, they could only speak about a moment or two in time.

The autobiography that all writing is is a ghost of the lived life of the particular body the writing and the ghost are chained to: things seen out of the corner of the eye; agitated rappings heard; laughter or weeping in the next room... that's the autobiographical content of Fiction, in my opinion. All communication is inexact and unstable and Fiction just raises those conditions to the category of Art.

PS Howard: I'm a Marlovian

[Howard Schumann]

Dan, my post was directly germane to the topic of this thread - whether or not a writer's work is a reflection, direct or indirect, of that writer's life. It's ok, however, if you choose not to discuss it.

[Dan Green]

I thought you might take my comment as a hint I didn't want this thread to become a forum for debate about the authorship controversy itself. I made my own opinion of it pretty clear, and as the subject of the post otherwise is not the purported case against "William of Stratford," more discussion of it here won't be productive.

[Howard Schumann]

Interesting that you should call me a “true-believer” Dan, a phrase connoting someone whose belief in an idea is so strong that it constitutes a faith, irrespective of the evidence. I think here you have a case of mistaken identity.

For example, take the outlook that is clearly evident in Shakespeare’s plays. The works of Shakespeare reflect an aristocratic perspective. Of the 37 plays, 36 are laid in royal courts and the world of the nobility. The principal characters are almost all aristocrats with the exception perhaps of Shylock and Falstaff. From all we can tell, Shakespeare fully shared the outlook of his characters, identifying fully with the courtesies, chivalries, and generosity of aristocratic life. Lower class characters in Shakespeare are almost all introduced for comic effect and given little development. Their names are indicative of their worth: Snug, Stout, Starveling, Dogberry, Simple, Mouldy, Wart, Feeble, etc. Combative cultural wits have center stage in Merchant of Venice and Love’s Labour’s Lost. The commercial class of which Shakespeare was a member seems almost unknown to the playwright.

The history plays are concerned mostly with the consolidation and maintenance of royal power and are concerned with righting the wrongs that fall on people of high blood. His comedies are far removed from the practicalities of everyday life or the realistic need to make a living. Shakespeare's vision is a deeply conservative, feudalistic and aristocratic one. When he does show sympathy for the commoners as in Henry V speech to the troops, however, Henry is also shown to be a moralist and a hypocrite. He pretends to be a commoner and mingles with the troops in a disguise and claims that those commoners who fought with the nobility would be treated as brothers.

But we know there was no chance of that ever happening in feudal England. What can scarcely be overlooked is a compassionate understanding of the burdens of kingship combined with envy of the carefree lot of the peasant, who free of the "peril" of the "envious court", "sweetly…enjoys his thin cold drink" and his "sleep under a fresh tree's shade" with "no enemy but winter and rough weather". This would come naturally to a privileged nobleman. There is no evidence whatsoever that William of Stratford ever occupied the position of a court insider or confidante.

So tell me Dan, who is the true believer?

[Frances Madeson]

Bekold the men skaking. (One of my all-time favorite things.)

[Finn Harvor]

Behold the men.

[Rahul DB]

http://shakespeareauthorshipcontroversyends.com/ Here is someone claiming to have nailed the authorship controversy once and for all. Would like to know if anyone has verified this author's claims??

[Dan Green]

Howard Schumann is pretty clearly a true-believing Oxford man. I'd suggest that "Stratfordians" not grapple with him further. You'll be skaking the idiocy off for days.

[Howard Schumann]

Arthur - There was a time when anyone who believed that the earth revolved around the sun was considered irrational. Denial, ridicule and entrenched belief systems are extremely potent defenders of the status quo.

[arthur]

Well, just to be even-handed about it, in case anyone rational is undecided...
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/

[Howard Schumann]

William S. If there is any biographical evidence that connects William of Stratford to the plays or sonnets, I have yet to see it. On the other hand, there is much evidence for Oxford even though of course it is all circumstantial as described in the following one pager.

http://politicworm.com/2010/07/06/the-smoking-canon/

[Dan Green]

I mostly avoid words like "numinous" because for me they always come with metaphysical baggage. But I think that what you mean by using that word is close to what I experience with great works of art, only through palpable formal or stylistic effects. Of course I can't finally really know what a "numinous" experience is for you.

[steve mitchelmore]

That's very interesting to know Dan. If you do experience the aesthetic in such a way, I haven't noticed it being addressed in your discussions of books; at least, not in a way that questions, wonders, pushes at its implications.

And I didn't use the word "metaphysical" because it has inappropriate connotations. I wouldn't use "concrete" either.

[Abelard]

as much as this still acknowledges a divide between in the text and outside the text....

I think dan rightly points to a disconcerting fetish concerning the historical surroundings that occur around a work of art. Claims that suggest some tremendous elucidation of any piece of art centered on its historical circumstances leave me exceedingly incredulous. Historical investigations are tautological; of course an artist is writing in a certain time and place, and some may be more explicitly responding to those circumstances. However, it is generally the rule that pieces of art which elevate themselves above the historical, contingent circumstances are the ones which come to be viewed as meriting closer study. In fact, I would even aver that"artists" who are, stricto sensu, involved with the historical as such are what are derisively called "journalists," and not worth paying much attention to in the first place.

Plato famously said that philosophy begins in wonder. Most people who professionally (and the philistine readers too) wrestle with poets and philosophers lack the potent imagination of the writers they are supposed to be usefully glossing (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have preternaturally revealing commentaries on this paradox), and because of that lack of imagination, simply and literally cannot account for that imagination. Thus, they embark on a foolish historical study, when really the deep and rewarding content is already right there in front of them, in the text.

relatedly, Brown's English department turned itself into a History department.

[Dan Green]

I myself experience the aesthetic and the "numinous" as the same thing, but as something very concrete and not metaphysical.

[steve mitchelmore]

My doubts about a purely literary/aesthetic approach is not meant to prioritise historical or cultural examinations instead (they too exclude what's important). I thought it was quite clear that the focus of my comment is the very literary/aesthetic question: how do we create or recognise works of art as great as Shakespeare's when everything seems arbitrary and/or meaningless?

One way we give value to a work nowadays is to prioritise its cultural profile (i.e. Franzen must be good/important because he is on the cover of Time), while another is to admire the intricate playfulness of a text in which there is, for good or ill, absolutely nothing at stake (my definition of Postmodernism). Both may be straw men, but there doesn't seem to be anything more fleshy than straw around.

A concern for the aesthetic is not enough, for me at least, because it represses the unique quality of the reading experience, which is almost – for want of a better word – theological. In an age that has (thank God) no faith in a transcendent force, it still exhibits a need for works of art disproportionate to their apparent value, suggesting it misses what has been lost even if it masks the interest in chatter and/or connoisseurship.

For me, the works of art that mean most have a numinous quality even if one is, again like me, terminally secular. I'm not saying literature is a form of religion or an alternative to it, I'm just saying this aspect of my experience of reading seems to be the only reason to read and to write. Discussion of writing which excludes it is both pointless and boring. Close reading of the words themselves is not pointless and boring, but the wood is just as interesting as the trees.

Perhaps the fascination with the authorship of Shakespeare's plays is an unconscious need to grant Shakespeare's wish in Borges' story: to be himself alone and not his plays. Our pathological, post-religious condition cannot allow anyone to be everything and nothing. Yes, it's an observation based on "the times we live in" but it also seems like part of eternity.

[Shelley]

A writer's work is, absolutely, a reflection of his life.

His inner life. Invisible.

[Dan Green]

I don't dimiss it as irrlevant, I regard it as inevitable and therefore of not much interest unless you are interesed primarily in the "the times" themselves. (Although I recognize some people might be interested in "the times" in addition to the text. I'm not one of them, but there's nothing wrong with having a cultural or historical interest that you satisfy through literature. The danger is that putting too much emphasis on "historical conditions" too often leads to a dismissal of the aesthetic interest of literature as "irrelevant." I think this has happened now in academic criticism.)

Partly I have in mind as audience people like yourself who disagree with me and want to debate the point. Partly I'm just expressing my opinion.

The question of where Shakespeare's form comes from is an interesting one, and to a large extent it comes from the theatrical form he inherited and that was being used in his time. What he did with that form is of more interest to me, however.

[Richard]

It seems to me, Dan, that in your reaction to the "too much" that "many people" make of the fact that writers are "products of their times", you invariably, in your actual arguments, dismiss the idea out of hand as frankly irrelevant. Yes, you always say "how could they not be", as if the obviousness of the fact makes the details not worth attending to. But I doubt you think Steve falls into the category of "many people" making too much of it. So what about what he says, or other readers who are sympathetic to his points? Who are you arguing with? Who is your audience for such remarks? Just about anyone likely to read your blog regularly is on board with the idea that "many people" read too much biography into writers' works. If we treat Shakespeare's plays as only disembodied aesthetic artifacts, we miss a lot. As Steve suggests, one question is the question of form and its context. Where does a writer's form come from? What makes it available or justifiable?

[william sutton]

Howard Schumann as usual is being quietly inflammatory. To qualify his statemnet, there is little or no evidence that he accepts. The panic he imagines Shakespeareans to be in, illusory. His candidate has extant handwritten letters, purportedly Shakespeare's! Now why is no-one except Oxfordians trumpeting that to the world?

Great article which I linked on my facebook group page.

Thanks,
William S.

[Dan Green]

Steve:

I can't deny that "unique historical conditions" partly account for Shakespeare's work. But this is a version of the argument that a writer is a "product of his times." I can't deny that, either, but it seems to me too many people make too much of the idea. Of course a writer, including Shakespeare, is a product of his times. How could he not be? He lived then, rather than then, there, rather than there. Shakespeare may have had "extraordinary good fortune" in living in interesting times, interesting both historically and in the development of theater. That Shakespeare was able to take advantage of the opportunity through the exercise of imagination--which I locate in the plays themselves rather than in Shakespeare's head--also seems extraordinary, however.