Some Shakespearean actors have formed a group calling for new research into just who wrote the man’s plays.

The belief is that a man from Stratford could not have written in such detail about history and foreign lands. Leading this coalition are actor Derek Jacobi and former Globe Theatre artistic director Mark Rylance, although the likes of Orson Welles and Mark Twain along with some academics have also doubted the plays’ authorship.

The “real” author has been identified by various writers in the past as Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

“I subscribe to the group theory. I don’t think anybody could do it on their own,” Jacobi said. “I think the leading light was probably de Vere, as I agree that an author writes about his own experiences, his own life and personalities.”

The last quote is rubbish. Of course people can produce this kind of material on their own (I think by “group theory” he means several people wrote using the Shakespeare byline). One can always extrapolate from one’s experiences without actually writing about them.

While the maxim is always ‘write what you know’ this does not preclude knowing through reading or imagination. A strict reading of Jacobi’s rationale would imply Stephen King is on intimate terms with demonic clowns (IT) or vampires (Salems Lot). Bram Stoker wrote Dracula after exhaustive research — let’s be honest, it’s not as if he knew Vlad the Impaler — and if one was to stick to one’s experiences science fiction wouldn’t exist.

Shakespeare was also the target of some ire and praise by contemporaries; read something by Stephen Greenblatt if you don’t believe me.

The group has produced a document which

argues there are few connections between Shakespeare’s life and his alleged works, but they do show a strong familiarity with the lives of the upper classes and a confident grasp of obscure details from places like Italy.

This coalition overlooks that research points to Shakespeare having been educated in a school that provided lessons in Latin and classical literature. Many of the Shakespearean plays are retellings of stories from Ovid or contemporary books on English history.

From an Observer article on the coalition:

There are questions too about his failure to mention Stratford or anything relating to his own life, including the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet. (Although there is no explanation why he might have given his only son a name so close to that of the playwright’s most famous protagonist).

I don’t even like Shakespeare. What annoys me is pseudo-academia, of which this is a fine example.

I have no problem accepting that he may not have written some of his plays but to say he wrote none of them flies in the face of the evidence. So what if he didn’t mention his plays and poems in his will? And why would it have had to include “a Shakespearean turn of phrase”? Although his plays are filled with innuendo and sexual crudities so perhaps that’s a good thing…