ACTA
UNIVERSITATIS
LODZIENSIS
FO LIA LITT ER A R IA A N G L IC A 3, 1999
M elanie Branton
BRINGING HOME THE BACON:
A REASSESSMENT OF ANTI-STRATFORDIANISM
IN THE CONTEXT OF ITS ROMANTIC ROOTS
IN TR O D U C TIO N
A n ti-S tratfo rd ianism , the belief th a t W illiam Shakespeare o f S tratford-upon-A von did n o t write the plays traditionally ascribed to him , has been
a th o rn in the flesh o f o rth o d o x literary scholarship since the first books
and articles a ttrib u tin g th e w orks to F ran cis B acon ap p eared in th e
m id-nineteenth century. A lthough never supported by anything resem bling
scientifically valid evidence, the assortm ent o f theories a ttrib u tin g the plays
to Bacon, M arlow e, the earl o f O xford o r A nne H athaw ay, am ong others,
have received m u ch m edia attention, wide public credence and an array o f
distinguished cham pions, including M a rk T w ain, O rson W elles, Sigm und
F reu d and M alcolm X. T he reaction o f Shakespearean academ ics to the
an ti-S tratfo rd ian phenom enon is, however, best exem plified by Sam uel
S ch oenbaum ’s section on the theories in his m o n u m en tal 1970 survey o f
S hakespearean biography, Shakespeare’s Lives: although he devoted one
h u n d red pages (o u t o f a to tal o f 768) to “ the heretics” , as he calls them ,
he broke his otherw ise chronological sequencing o f m aterial to q u aran tin e
them in a ch ap ter o f their own, sandw iched between “ V ictorians” and “T he
T w entieth C en tu ry ” , entitled “ D eviations” . F o r m ainstream scholarship has
rarely acknow ledged anti-S tratfordianism as part o f the fabric o f S hakes­
p earean critical discourse. W here it h asn ’t ignored the m ovem ent com pletely
as being beneath its contem pt, it has tended to analyse it in isolation from
o th er trends in literary criticism , as a specimen o f m isguided populist
th o u g h t, utterly unrelated to its own activity.
M y pu rp o se in this paper is n o t to argue th a t the an ti-S tratfo rd ian s
are right in denying the traditional attrib u tio n o f the S hakespearean canon:
they are alm ost certainly w rong, and there is little, if any, em pirical rigour
in th eir subjective analyses and m anifestos. But as no criticism - even
m arginal criticism , even criticism which all recognised experts denounce as
absolutely ridiculous - is w ritten in a vacuum , it is w orthw hile ceasing the
practice o f exam ining an ti-S tratfo rd ian discourse as an a b e rra n t practice
with no relationship to o rth o d o x literary theory. W hen B aconian and
O xfordian tracts are taken ou t o f q u aran tin e and scrutinised alongside
m ainstream critical texts contem porary to them , and particularly when
placed beside the scholarly w orks which attack them , som e interesting
com parisons com e to light. O ften the critical a p p a ratu s o f conventional
scholarship transpires to be as unsound as the “ heretics’ ” m ethods; often
one can read in the am ateur scholarship o f the anti-S tratfo rd ian s a justified
critique o f the flawed reasoning o f professional academ ia; the relationship
betw een the established orthodoxy and the crackpot fringe theories suddenly
starts to seem m ore sym biotic th an hitherto. M y central contention is th at
it is tim e to bring hom e the B aconians, the O xfordians, the M arlovians
and all their “d ev ian t” friends from their unjust banishm ent o n the fringes
o f Shakespeare scholarship, and to establish them in their rightful place as
an integral p a rt o f the in tertex tu al m esh o f nineteenth and tw entieth
century critical discourse. W hen this is done, one o f the first things which
emerges is th at early anti-Stratfordians share with their m ainstream opponents
a flawed R o m an tic reasoning.
TH E A N TI-STR ATFO R DIANS: A BRIEF H ISTO R Y A N D O U T L IN E
T h e A m erican D elia Bacon was no t the first person to express d o u b ts
ab o u t the S tratfo rd ian authorship in private writings, but she was the first
to publish an assertive challenge to the traditional a ttrib u tio n and to posit
an alternative candidate: her nam esake, F rancis Bacon. H er article in the
A m erican jo u rn al P u tnam ’s M onthly in Jan u a ry 1856 inspired m uch ridicule
bu t also initiated a wave o f B aconian publication in B ritain, the US and
G erm any which still continues to d a y .1 In 1896 the first Polish B aconian
article, U Szekspira by N ek an d a T rep k a, appeared in print in the W arsaw
publication A teneum 2. Ih e theory th at E dw ard de Vere, seventeenth earl
o f O xford, w rote the plays w as first posited in 1920 by the B ritish
schoolm aster J. T hom as Looney, and appears to have gained m ore adherents
th a n any o th er “ heretical” group o ther th an the B aconians. T he M arlovians
1 S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives (Oxford: Clarendon Press; N ew York: Oxford
University Press, 1970), p. 534; A d o lf Strzelecki, Szekspir i Bakon: wiele hałasu o nic (Kraków:
“ C zas” F . K luczyckiego i Spółki, 1898), pp. 18-19.
2 Strzelecki, op. cit., pp. 19-20.
to o k a while to establish them selves - no m ajor advocate until Calvin
H o ffm an in the 1950s - bu t they d o hold the distinction o f being the only
a n ti-S tra tfo rd ia n g roup to successfully exhum e a relevant R enaissance
figure. D elia Bacon had broken into H oly T rinity C hurch in S tratfo rd with
tools to attem p t to illegally exhum e Shakespeare, but had lost her nerve.
In 1956, how ever, H offm an persuaded council officials to allow him to
legally open the tom b o f Sir F rancis W alsingham , after expounding his
hypothesis th a t W alsingham and M arlow e were long-term lovers, and th at
secret docum ents confirm ing M arlow e’s au th o rsh ip o f the S hakespearean
corpus w ould be found in the vault. N othing was discovered.3 V arious
o th er claim ants have been put forw ard by various o th er groups. N one o f
those proposing the claim ants has been a m em ber o f a university English
d ep artm en t or had a specialised know ledge o f English literary or historical
research.
A N TI-STR A TFO R D IA N CRITICAL STR ATEG IES
A n ti-S tratfo rd ian th o u g h t tends to progress through a num ber o f stages.
T his is a very generalised overview - som e o f the „heretic” critics d o no t
follow all these stages o r in this order.
Stage One
In m o st cases, a n ti-S tratfo rd ia n s base th eir initial rejection o f the
S tratfo rd Shakespeare as the a u th o r o f the plays on the grounds th a t the
personality who emerges from the genius exhibited in the plays is incom patible
w ith the know n facts o f S hakespeare’s biography. Som etim es this argum ent
takes the form o f an equation o f artistic genius w ith suprem e m oral
p ro b ity , com bined w ith a selective in terp retatio n o f the legal docum ents
and anecdotes associated with Shakespeare, which indicates th at the S tratford
acto r was an im m oral degenerate. D urning-L aw rence, for instance, describes
Shakespeare as “ the sordid m oney-lender o f S tratfo rd ,” 4 pointing o u t th a t,
“T h ere is only a single letter extant addressed to Shakespeare, and this
asks for a loan o f £30!” 5 and th at there are “ in existence three, and three
only, co n tem p o rary letters referring in any way to him , and these are no t
ab o u t literatu re w ith which the S tratford m an had nothing w hatever to do
- b u t ab o u t m ean and sordid sm all business tra n s a c tio n s .” 6 T h ere is
3
4
5
6
Schoenbaum, op. cit., pp. 622-625.
Edwin Duming-Lawrence, Bacon Is Shakespeare (London: G ay and Hancock, 1910), p. 82.
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 52.
a curious circular logic in D urning-L aw rence’s reasoning: he argues th at
because Shakespeare was involved in usury, he m ust have lacked the m oral
pro b ity necessary to be a great artist; and then goes on to argue th a t since
Shakespeare did not write the plays, it is an injustice to ascribe the plays
to a m an o f m oral calibre so m uch lower th an th a t o f the real au th o r.
T he apocryphal stories, dating from the late seventeenth century, th at
Shakespeare was a deer-poacher in his youth and th at he died o f the effects
o f a drin k in g spree with Ben Jo n so n and M ichael D ray to n , have also been
cited by an ti-S tratfo rd ian s as evidence o f the S tratford m a n ’s depravity,
incom patible with true artistry, as has the fact th a t he applied for and
gained the g ran t o f a coat o f arm s to which he was no t technically entitled.
F o r m o st anti-S tratfordians, though, it is n o t the a c to r’s lack o f a noble
spirit which causes the biggest problem s w ith the trad itio n al a ttrib u tio n o f
th e w orks, b u t his lack o f noble blood. M cM anaw ay, surveying the
an ti-S tratfo rd ian trad itio n , notes th a t one o f the m ost recurrent objections
to the S hakespearean authorship “ is th at he could have had no o p p o rtu n ity
to h ear the conversation o f royalty and nobility and, consequently, could
n o t have w ritten the dialogue o f the plays.” 7 Jo n a th a n Bate has pointed
ou t, “ It does n o t seem to occur to them th at insight ab o u t royal courts
m ay be derived from b o oks.” 8 A n o th er reason the an ti-S tratfo rd ian s give
for the im possibility o f the S tratfordian au th o rsh ip is S hakespeare’s lack
o f schooling. They see specialised legal, m edical and philosophical know ledge
in the plays which they assume could only have been acquired by a university
educated m an o r a privately educated noble with extensive leisure and an
eclectic personal library, and a fluency and elab o ratio n o f literary style
w hich they im agine was u n attainable by a m an who never progressed
beyond secondary education. A dditionally, some posit the lack o f extant
m an u scrip t m aterial attributable to Shakespeare and the a p p a ren t differences
betw een his signature on legal docum ents to which he was a p arty as
evidence th at he was no t merely ill-educated but actually illiterate. Professional
Shakespeareans have been quick to point out th at these basic assum ptions
o f an ti-S tra tfo rd ia n th o u g h t co n stitu te an an a ch ro n istic ap p lica tio n o f
p o st-in d u strial R evolution, V ietorian values to the E lizabethan age. T he
assum ption th at a provincial glover’s son could not have gained a sophisticated
level o f literacy reflects nineteenth, n o t sixteenth, century ed u catio n al
practice. M o re im portantly, although the desire for a teetotal, cleanliving
Shakespeare who fitted in with bourgeois social norm s m ay have been
anti-R om antic (one suspects th at D uring-Law rence and some o f his colleagues
7 James G . M cM anaway, The Authorship o f Shakespeare (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1962), p. 33.
8 Jonathan Bate, “Snobbish about Shakespeare, B ook review,” in: The Sunday Telegraph,
April 9, 1995.
w ould have liked a “ S hakespeare” who covered his p ian o legs and d id n ’t
pu t books by m ale and female authors next to each o ther unless they were
m arried ), the expectation th a t the artist should be an individual o f exalted
sensibility is obviously pure R om anticism .
Stage Tw o
H aving established in their own m inds th at S hakespeare could no t have
w ritten the plays, the “ heretics” next m ove is obviously to identify who
did. Som e already have a candidate in m ind, others com b anthologies o f
R enaissance w riting for echoes o f style and biographies o f key E lizabethan
figures for them atic sim ilarities and coincidence o f events with the plots o f
the plays. T h e fo under o f the O xfordian m ovem ent, J. T hom as L ooney,
attem p ted to system atise this search by com piling a checklist o f eighteen
characteristics which he th o u g h t the true au th o r would possess. T his list
consists largely o f abstract characteristics, such as “ genius” and “ eccentricity” ,
w hich can n o t be em pirically m easured, and which are, in any case, based
o n L ooney’s subjective im pression, derived from reading the S hakespearean
w orks, o f w hat the true au th o r m ust be like. F o r instance, m erely on the
gro u n d s th a t there are m any sporting and hunting im ages in the plays,
Looney assum es th at the real “ S hakespeare” m ust have been a noted
sp o rtsm an ; how ever, this very selective appro ach ignores the w ealth of
o th er im agery in the works - m aternity is an o th er recurrent them e, but
L ooney does n o t conclude th a t “ Shakespeare” m ust have been a m other.
Stage T hree
H aving established who the “ tru e ” au th o r is, they then engage in
exegesis, often involving a fuller com parative study o f the w riter’s biography
and the plays and poem s. T here is a dual purpose in this: it is b o th an
interpretive strategy and a further attem pt to prove their theory o f authorship.
F o r exam ple, D urning-L aw rence identifies Y orick, the jester referred to
in H am let, w ith Jo h n H eyw ood, a T u d o r co u rt jester who was allegedly
a friend o f the Bacon fam ily and thus m ay have played with F rancis when
the latter was a child. O n these grounds he argues th a t H a m let’s statem ent
th a t Y orick carried him on his back proves th at H am let - “ S hakespeare”
(the tw o are ap parently indistinguishable in D urning-L aw rence’s m ind) m u st
be Bacon, for the S tratford actor could never have m et H eyw ood.w I he
O xfordians to o scour the plays for w hat they take to be biographical
references. Looney discovered th at the earl experienced m any ol the sam e
m isfo rtu n es as “ S hak esp eare’s” characters: like H am let, he had been
d istu rb ed by his m o th e r’s rem arriage less th a n a year after the d ea th oi
9 Durning-Lawrence, op. cit., s. 67-68.
his father; like O thello, he had been persuaded by a dishonest servant to
accuse an innocent wife o f adultery; and (believe it o r no t) like B ertram
in A ll s W ell That Ends Well and A ngelo in M easure fo r M easure, he was
reported to have been tricked into sleeping with his estranged wife under
cover o f darkness in the belief th at she was som eone else. T he problem s
with this a p p ro a c h are obvious. F irstly, by a rb itra rily identifying the
a u th o r with selected characters from the plays and reading them as
biography, an ti-S tratfordian w riters ignore the dram atic ch aracter o f the
works. Secondly, even if we accept th at these references in the plays truly
are allusions to Ileyw ood and O xford, these m en were so fam ous in the
sixteenth century th at facts ol their biographies were com m on know ledge,
and playw rights m ay well have alluded to them to add topical interest to
their w ork in m uch the sam e way th at dram atists and TV scriptw riters
to day som etim es m ake jokes ab o u t well know n public figures. T he device
o f th e bed-trick is fairly com m on in R enaissance w riters o th er than
Shakespeare: it is used in The Changeling, for instance, when BeatriceJo a n n a bribes D iap h an ta to stand in for her on her wedding night to
conceal the fact th at the bride is no t a virgin. In the sam e play, D ia p h a n ta
on learning th at her m istress intends to test w hether she really is a virgin
quips to the audience: She will no t search me? . . . Like the forew om an
o f a female ju ry ,” 10 and this is generally accepted to be a gratu ito u s
topical allusion to the notorious vaginal inspection o f Penelope R ich at her
divorce hearing. R esonances o f the lives o f real-life figures in E lizabethan
plays are n o t uncom m on, then, and biographical allusion does n o t have to
be auto b io g rap h ical allusion.
Stage F o u r
H aving read their candidate’s life-story into the plays and interpreted
the plays according to th at life-story, they generally conclude th a t the
biographical references are not ju st incidental, n o r even a spontaneous
overflow o f feeling on behalf o f the poet in the interests o f his own
catharsis, but a deliberate hint to the reader o f who the au th o r is. A m ore
th o ro u g h search for further hints and clues brings dividends to diligent
an ti-S tratfo rd ian readers. It is a com m onplace o f an ti-S tratfo rd ian tho u g h t
to read A ct hive Scene One o f A s You L ike It, in which T o u ch sto n e the
clow n o rd ers the rustic W illiam to ab a n d o n all claim to the w om an
A udrey, now T o u ch sto n e’s prospective bride, as a covert m essage th a t the
tru e au th o r is ordering the rustic W illiam S hakespeare to relinquish all
pretension to the authorship o f the plays.11 T h at this com plicated exegesis
10 Ih om as M iddleton, The Changeling. Jacobean Tragedies, ed. A. H. G om m e (London.
Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 283.
11 D um ing-Lawrence, op. cit., p. 45.
entails identifying their idol with a clown, and a potentially bigam ous clown
at th at, does n o t seem to bother the B aconians and O xfordians.
It is but a sh o rt step from here to seeing literal secret m essages
em bedded in the text. All O xfordians believe th at the earl “ signed” the
w orks o f “ S hakespeare” by using w ords containing the “ ver” letter com ­
bination (e.g. ever, very, discover) in key places. Indeed, on this point the
O g b u rn s indulge in a quasi-religious veneration o f their idol, indignantly
accusing those who do no t share their belief o f som ething resem bling
blasphem y:
Oxford used all the variants and com binations o f Ver . . . not only consciously but
purposefully throughout the plays, as a signature. In its different forms it threads and
branches within the body o f his work like an arterial system which centred in the p oet’s
heart. H is “good nam e” was dearer to him than his life’s blood, and the sonnets attest
that he made alm ost a fetish o f a great nam e’s immortality. Those w ho scorn to read
his signature or care nothing for his nam e’s immortality are scorning the poet him self.12
I c a n ’t read the O g burns’ book w ithout constantly being eerily rem inded
o f B arthes’s “ D eath o f the A u th o r.” W hat springs to m ind here is that:
We know now that a text is not a line o f words releasing a single “theological” meaning
(the “ message” o f the author-god) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of
writing, none o f them original, blend and clash.13
B arthes was being figurative when he talks o f “ theological” and “ g o d ” ,
b u t the O gburns w eren’t. A t this stage in an ti-S tratfo rd ian th o u g h t the
can d idate often takes on the stature o f a deity w ho, like C hrist, reveals
him self cryptically in parables so th at only the chosen m ay know him . T he
“ V er” signature pales into insignificance beside the anagram s, secret codes
and num erology o th er anti-S tratfordians have read into the plays. D urning-L aw rence’s chief co n trib u tio n to anti-S tratfordian th o u g h t is his w ork “ On
the revealing page 136 in L o ve’s L abour’s L o st.” H e calculates th a t in the
1623 folio the strange E lizabethan buzzw ord “ honororificab ilitu d in itatib u s”
appeared on page 136 as the 151st w ord, and fell on the 27th line. T hose
three num bers becom e his key num erological figures. H e points ou t th at
the long w ord has 27 letters, and th at if we assign to each o f the letters
a num erical value based on its placing in the alphabet (A = 1, B = 2 etc.)
and add the values together, the value o f the entire w ord is 287 - the sum
o f 136 and 151. H e goes on to form a L atin anagram o f the w ord: “ Hi
12 D orothy and Charlton O gbum , The Star o f England (N ew York: Coward-M cCann,
1952), pp. 175-176.
13 Roland Barthes, The Death o f the Author, trans. Stephen Heath; Twentieth Century
L iterary Theory: A Reader, ed. K. M . Newton (London M acm illan, 1988), p. 156.
ludi Baconis nati tuiti orb i,” or, “These plays F. B acon’s offspring are
preserved for the w orld.” H e then adds the num erical values o f the initial
and term inal letters o f each w ord in the anagram and finds they com e to
136, the values o f the rem aining letters to 151. H e next calculates the
num erical value o f B acon’s nam e, by the sam e system , to be 33. T u rn in g
to line 33 o f page 136, he finds the line: “ W hat is A b speld backw ard
w ith the h o rn on his head?” D urning-L aw rcnce com m ents: “T he reply
should o f course have been in Latin. T he L atin for a horn is cornu. T he
real answ er therefore is ‘Ba corn-u fo o l.'1*
Stage F ive
As m entioned before, once they get to the stage o f cryptogram s and
num erology, an ti-S tratfordians are also likely to search for secret docum ents,
which they usually expect to find hidden in graves.
A n ti-S tratfo rd ians are usually prone to conspiracy theories - suspicious
th a t d astard ly enemies suppressed their h ero ’s true identity in his/her own
lifetim e, suspicious th at the critical establishm ent is w orking to suppress
the tru th they long to reveal now.
P eter S am m artino’s claim th at the establishm ent recognises the tru th o f
th eir claim s b u t will n o t openly reveal it for fear o f losing face:
C an you imagine what would happen to the reputation o f thousands o f professors if it
were established that the true Shakespeare was not the Stratford man? It just w ouldn’t
d o to have this happen.15
is p atently p aran o id , and displays typical an ti-S tratfo rd ian ignorance o f the
fact th at from the emergence o f the New C riticism in the 1930s onw ards
literary critical strategies have m oved fu rth er and further aw ay from overtly
b io g rap h ical readings and the id en tity o f the a u th o r is irrelev an t to
in terp retatio n o f the texts. T herefore, even if a different a u th o r were
proved, the w ork and status o f conventional scholarship would no t be
substantially underm ined. H ow ever, the anti-S tratfordians are right to feel
aggrieved, in th a t the critical establishm ent has been suppressing them in
one sense, by denying them the dignity accorded to m ainstream theories
o f th e ir d ay, and considering them o u t o f context. As stated in the
intro d u ctio n , ju st as New Critics read texts in isolation from the culture
th a t produced them , so Schoenbaum and other scholars o f his generation
read the anti-S tratfordian m ovem ent in isolation and explain the phenom enon
n o t as a p ro d u ct o f nineteenth century cultural forces, but as an organic
failing in th e p ro p o n e n ts o f the th eo ry them selves. F o r th o se o f th e
14 D um ing-Lawrence, op. cit., pp. 84-104.
15 Peter Sammartino, The M an Who Was William Shakespeare (N ew York: Cornwall
Books, 1990), p. 14.
an ti-S tratfo rd ian s for w hom he has a residual respect, such as D elia B acon
o r Sigm und F reu d , psychopathology allows him to claim th a t they were
intelligent, sensitive beings who m erely lost control o f their senses. W ith
those for w hom he has no sym pathy, the fault is in their personality - they
are ju st stupid, sm all-m inded snobs.
S nobbery is invoked by Bate, too, to explain the an ti-S tratfo rd ia n
phenom enon. T hese establishm entarian accusations o f snobbery against
their o p ponents arc som ew hat surprising, however, given their ow n snobbery
to w ard s non-p ro fessional S hakespeare enthusiasts. S choenbaum equates
am ateu rs w ith “ eccentrics, the cran k s w ith th eo rie s,” 16 sneers a t th e
low -brow reading o f the “ heretics” ,17 and condescendingly explains why
one ju ro r at a B oston m edia “ tria l” o f the B aconian cause in 1892 had
the critical naivete to find in favour o f Bacon: “ M r K ruell was a wood
engraver.” 18 O ne can understand the frustration o f m ainstream Shakespearean
scholars w ho feel their life’s w ork is being eclipsed in the p o p u lar m edia
by badly researched, unsystem atic folklore. Schoenbaum bitterly rem arks in
m o re th an one place in his discussion o f the an ti-S tratfo rd ian s th a t if the
am o u n t o f m oney and press atten tio n lavished on them had been diverted
to serious scholarship, the boundaries o f real S hakespearean know ledge
w ould have been greatly expanded. But there seems to be a paradoxical
sim ilarity betw een th e snobbery o f the a n ti-S tra tfo rd ia n s, w ho ca n n o t
accept th a t a co u n try trad e sm a n ’s son w ith no university education could
have w ritten the plays and the snobbery o f academ ics like S choenbaum
and B ate w ho assum e th a t tradespeople w ith no university education have
n o right to a voice in the interp retatio n o f Shakespeare.
M oreover, the identification o f simple snobbery as the cause o f “ h eretic”
views cam ouflages their ro o ts in standard nineteenth century beliefs. A s has
already been pointed out, anti-S tratfordianism is essentially R o m an tic in
its tw o basic tenets: a) th a t the plays are expressive - th at their p rim ary
p u rp o se is to record for posterity the em otions and subjective experience
o f the a u th o r, and b) th at authors are beings o f exalted sensitivity. W hile
critics o f the an ti-S tratfo rd ian s m ay be right in levelling accusations o f
an ach ro n ism at them , w hen considering the early “ heretics” th ere is
a curiously hypocritical anachronism in expecting them to be otherw ise, for
if we look at pre-1930s critiques o f B aconianism we see th a t m ainstream
critics were them selves using argum ents which now seem to us d ated , naive
and anachronistically rooted in R om antic th o u g h t to overturn the theory
o f the heretics.
16 Schoenbaum, op. cit., p. viii.
17 Ibid., pp. 566, 598, 626.
18 Ibid., p. 573.
A d o lf Strzelecki m akes some very acute observations ab o u t the a n a ­
chronism o f B aconian thought, dryly com m enting on the ap p ro p riacy o f
the choice o f Bacon and R aleigh’s coterie as au th o rsh ip candidates in the
m id-nineteenth century: “ Było to grono, dążące do sw obody, wolności,
postępu, coś w guście dem okratów i liberałów 1848 r .” 19 and characterising
the dism issal o f S tratfordian au th o rsh ip on m oral grounds as the m isap ­
plication o f “ wszelkich reguł i zasad angielsko-am erykańskiego purytanizm u ” 20 to the R enaissance. But the picture o f Shakespearean England which
Strzelecki posits in its stead is an equally unhistorical fantasy: “ A nglia
w okresie m łodości Szekspira, to w całem tego słowa znaczeniu M erry O ld
England, pełna wesołości, h u m o ru , zadow olenia, świeżości. P u ry ta ń sk a
surow ość obyczajów nie zm roziła jeszcze ludności.” 21 In his depiction o f
S hakespeare the uniquely gifted B ohem ian, defiantly battling the en c ro a­
ching forces of drearily literal-m inded bourgeois P u ritan censorship, one
can n o t help feeling th a t Strzelecki is describing the tensions o f fin de siecle
P oland, not o f E lizabethan E ngland. H e sets the blam e for the rise o f the
an ti-S tratfo rd ian fallacy firm ly a t the feet o f R o m an tic A nglo-G erm an
b ardolatry:
K u lt szekspirowski w Anglii, a szczególnie w Niem czech,
przy b rał rozm iary olbrzym ie i przesadne. E ntuzyazm , zachw yt, przeszedł
wszelkie granice, niejednokrotnie stał się m anią, bezkrytycznem bałw o­
chw alstw em , bezsensow nem zaślepieniem ” 22 b u t p aten tly shares in this
trad itio n himself. T here is no m o re revealing phrase in the w hole book
th an the one in which he announces th a t Shakespeare saw “ okiem poety,
okiem dziecka, okiem człow ieka pierw otnego” and ascribes this ability to
see the w orld as a child to four writers: Shakespeare, G oethe, M ickiewicz
and B yron.23 H e also asks, quite sensibly, bu t again w ith an alarm ingly
p an -R o m an tic array o f exam ples, why S hakespeare’s ap p aren t interest in
com m erce and his own financial advancem ent should be taken as evidence
against his au th o rsh ip , when G oethe, Byron and Sir W alter S cott all did
qu ite well for them selves and were never know n to tu rn their noses up at
a royalty p ay m en t.24
All th e an ti-S tra tfo rd ia n argum ents cro p up in reverse: w here th e
B aconians had argued th a t S hakespeare could n o t have w ritten the plays
because he had never experienced life at court, Strzelecki argues th a t, as
there is im agery in the H enry V I plays concerning the w ork o f a butcher,
B aco n could n o t have w ritten th e plays because his fa th e r w as n o t
19
20
21
22
23
24
Strzelecki, op. cit., p. 11.
Ibid., p. 32.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 59.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 181.
r
•
,
tt)
a butcher.25 W here som e anti-S tratfordians take the story th a t Shakespeare
fled W arw ickshire for L ondon because he had been caught poaching deer
as p ro o f o f his churlish degeneracy, where m ost m ainstream scholars deny
the authenticity o f the anecdote, Strzelecki desperately wants S hakespeare
to have been a deer poacher, to confirm his theory th a t Shakespeare was
a wild, sp ontaneous, rebellious youth, unconstrained by bourgeois social
conventions and closely in touch with n a tu re .26
Strzelecki’s critical exegesis rivals th at o f the an ti-S tratfo rd ian s in its
naivete, literal-m indedness and the circularity o f its reasoning. In his
coverage o f S hakespeare’s m arriage w ith A nne H athaw ay he uses the
know n facts ab o u t the union to selectively read the plays for references,
and then uses those references to back up his claim th at the tru e au th o r
can only be the S tratford m an. R em arking, “ Nie m iałoby sensu przypisyw ać
zbyt wiele wagi do porozrzucanych w najrozm aitszych dziełach Szekspira
uw ag i refleksyj, przyznaw ać im w artość autobiograficznych w yznań,” he
then plucks references to unhappy m arriages from the plays, com m enting
on P ro sp ero ’s curse on F erdinand if he breaks M ira n d a ’s virgin kn o t before
the w edding rites: “ Czyż nie przebija się w spom nienie własnego stosunku
z A n n ą w słowach P ro sp ero ” .27
Strzelecki is, o f course, a straw target, as m uch as the an ti-S tratfo rd ian s
are, b u t this kind o f criticism is sym ptom atic o f the times. Sisson’s satirical
attac k on R o m an tic excesses in Shakespeare criticism in “T he M ythical
Sorrow s o f S hakespeare” 28 m akes clear th at the practice o f m aking sim plistic
eq u atio n s betw een S hakespeare’s life and art was still prevalent in o rth o d o x
literary analysis. C aroline S purgeon’s w ork on Shakespeare's Im agery and
W hat It Tells Us, published in 1935, fifteen years after L ooney, in which
by a com plex system o f cross-referenced index cards she attem pted to
analyse S hak esp earean use o f m e ta p h o r in a “ scientific” , em piricaily-quantifiable way, attracted som e derision even in her ow n day. T his is
largely because as well as using her analysis o f im agery as an interpretive
to o l for analysis o f the plays she also used the p attern s o f im agery to
d ra w co n clu sio n s a b o u t W illiam S h a k e sp e a re ’s p e rso n a l in tere sts and
preferences. This leads her to such prosaic yet detailed speculation as: “ By
1599, w hen he was five and thirty, Shakespeare had p robably experienced
h e a rtb u rn as the result o f acidity” 29 . . . “ H e was, one w ould judge,
__________
25 Ibid., pp. 39-40.
26 Ibid., p. 46.
27 Ibid., p. 44.
28 C. H. Sisson, The M ythical Sorrows o f Shakespeare. Studies In Shakespeare: British
A cadem y Lectures, ed. Peter Alexander (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 9-32.
29 Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Im agery and What Is Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1935), p. 119.
a co m petent rider, and loved horses, as indeed he did m o st anim als, except
spaniels and house d ogs’ and ‘O f all gam es, bowls would seem to be the
one he knew m ost intim ately and played w ith keenest zest.’ ” 30 M any o f
her m eth o d s arc open to the sam e criticism s as L ooney’s: like him , she
tries to build up a picture o f the B ard’s personality based on the im agery
o f the plays, and while her categorisation is m ore extensive th an L ooney’s,
it still relies on a great deal o f selective interpretation. Like Looney, she
m ingles pride in the scientific n ature o f her card-index system with the
a m a te u r’s defiant com placency in the fact th at her key term s are too
in tu itiv e to be em pirically defined: she triu m p h an tly refuses to define
“ im age” , even though the sceintific value o f her w ork depends upon it.31
She deserves credit for firmly laying her creed o f expressionism in her
in tro d u ctio n - “ I believe it to be profoundly true th at the real revelation
o f the w riter’s personality, tem peram ent and quality o f m ind is to be found
in his w orks.” 32 - bu t it is patently the sam e naive eq uation o f personality
and w orks so derided in the “ heretics” . W hen the New C ritics launched
their attac k on intentionalist readings o f literature, they cautioned against
“m essage h u n tin g ” it was precisely this kind o f reading they m u st have
had in m ind.
A n ti-S tratfo rd ian criticism , then, far from being a freak phenom enon,
unconnected to m ainstream criticism , is actually em bedded in the same
R o m an tic values as m uch o rth o d o x literary interpretation. It is, in essence,
expressive realism run m ad, taken to its logical - or illogical - conclusion. F o r
if one holds, as Spurgeon and m any critics o f her day did, th at texts
encapsulate the spirit and personality o f the author, and th at diligent reading
can yield “ secret m essages” ab o u t the tex t’s creator, it is but one short step
from here to seeing literal secret messages. If one holds, as Spurgeon did, that
the m an emerging from the plays is “in m any ways in character w hat one can
only describe as Christ-like; that is, gentle, kindly, honest, brave and true, with
deep understanding and quick sym pathy for all living things” 33 the tem ptation
m u st be there to search ou t a candidate whose biography squares m ore
fittingly w ith these facts, o r to see the au th o r as a literally divine figure. T he
anti-S tratfordianism o f the nineteenth and early tw entieth century, then, does
n o t seem particularly ridiculous, in the context o f contem porary m ainstream
criticism . Indeed, if m ainstream scholars o f the tim e had heeded the lessons
th a t the flaws o f anti-S tratfordianism could have taught them ab o u t the
inconsistency o f their own scholarship, the bastions o f expressive realism m ay
have fallen earlier than they did.
30
31
32
33
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
p.
p.
p.
p.
204.
6.
4.
207.
M elanie li ran ton
B A C O N A SZ E K SPIR : S P O JR Z E N IE N A PO G LĄ D Y A N T Y -ST R A T F O R D C Z Y K Ó W
W ŚW IETLE PRZEM IAN W D W U D ZIESTO W IEC ZN EJ KRYTYCE LITERACKIEJ
Poglądy anty-stratfordczyków, twierdzących, że William Szekspir nie napisał utw orów
tradycyjnie mu przypisywanych budziły protesty ortodoksyjnych literaturoznawców od samego
początku, tj. od momentu, kiedy w połowie X IX w. ukazały się pierwsze publikacje utrzymujące,
że prawdziwym autorem jest Francis Bacon. Podobne poglądy były z reguły odrzucane
i całkowicie pom ijane, przy czym wysuwane kontrargumenty często były równie wątpliwe jak
dow ody „heretyków” .
Nie zajmując stanowiska wobec prawdziwości twierdzeń anty-stratfordczyków, autorka
artykułu postuluje, by spokojnie przyjrzeć się pism om zwolenników tych teorii i przywrócić
im należne miejsce w intertekstualnej sieci powiązań krytyki literackiej X IX i X X w.