Re: WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES -- that someone else wrote Shakespeare.

A SHORT HISTORY OF A DELUSION

Q: Why is the authorship of Shakespeare an issue?

A: It wasn't, for over two hundred years. But it's natural to want to
know more, much more, about the idol of English literature. In the
19th century when Bardolatry reached its height, elevating Shakespeare
to a god-like status, some amateur literary sleuths - disappointed by
the mundane records of the playwright's life -- began ascribing the
works to the more glamorous Sir Francis Bacon.

Mentally-unstable American schoolteacher Delia Bacon got the ball
rolling with her groundbreaking claim that Shakespeare was actually
written by a group that included Bacon, Raleigh, and Spenser. She
initiated the anti-Stratfordian sport of insulting William Shakespeare
as a talentless, illiterate, money-grubbing lout. When her book was
poorly-received, she lost her mind and died insane in 1859 without
knowing she'd established an urban legend that would survive, in
endless variations and permutations, to the present day.

After Delia, the search for the "real Shakespeare" fanned out in all
directions, like O.J. Simpson's search for the "real killer".
Candidates included William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby; Walter
Raleigh; Sir Edward Dyer; or Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland
(sometimes with his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, and
her aunt Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, as co-authors); the Irish
rebel, William Nugent; and at least fifty others, including Queen
Elizabeth (based on a supposed resemblance between a portrait of the
Queen and the First Folio's engraving of Shakespeare). Malcolm X
argued that Shakespeare was actually King James.

Delia Bacon's view that the plays were the work of a secret society
rather than a single author has been revived by others. Dion Fortune
(penname of Violet Mary Firth) and other students of the occult have
argued that Shakespeare belonged to a secret society interested in
hermeticism, Rosicrucianism and alchemy.

Following suggestions by Arab writers that the plays, especially
Othello, demonstrate knowledge of Islamic culture, the nineteenth
century Arab scholar Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq suggested that Shakespeare
or his family were originally Arabic, and that the name is a
corruption of the Arabic "Sheik Zubair".

Since the 1980s, prompted by a couple of best-selling books, American
enthusiasts have favored one of the more far-fetched candidates,
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, a dissolute aristocrat who had
been dead ten years when new Shakespeare plays were still appearing.
More recently, Sir Henry Neville has been gaining adherents.

Q: No one seems to doubt that other authors of that time wrote their
works. Why Shakespeare?

A: Because of the apparent discrepancy between the ho-hum records of
his life and his enormous modern reputation. Also, it flatters the
non-specialist's ego to think he's outfoxed the experts. Everyone
would like to have a fuller biography to attach to the works; and who
doesn't enjoy ancient mysteries, puzzles, and conspiracy theories? So
the merry hunt for the real Shakespeare continues, just as it does for
Bigfoot and the lost continent of Atlantis. (by Sweevil, 2006)

.

Relevant Pages

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