Alias Shakespeare [Hardcover]

Joseph Sobran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1997

Who wrote Shakespeare's plays? Today, the long-standing and impassioned debate about the so-called authorship question is perceived by Shakespearean scholars as the preserve of eccentrics and cranks. But in this contrarian work of literary detection, author Joseph Sobran boldly reopens this debate and allows the members of Shakespeare's vast contemporary public to weigh all the evidence and decide for themselves. An enormous shelf of biographical scholarship has grown up over the past 300 years around the "Swan of Avon." But what are these histories based on? Revealing that no more than a handful of fragmentary documents attest to Shakespeare's existence - and virtually none which link him to the plays themselves - Sobran delightfully debunks this elaborate egalitarian myth concocted in equal parts of speculation, wishfulness, and fantasy. More importantly, Sobran shows how many questions the myth leaves unanswered: How could a provincial actor from Stratford gain such an intimate knowledge of court life? How could he know so much of classical authors and not own a single book? How could he write compromising love sonnets to his social superior, the powerful Earl of Southampton? How could he know so much of Italy, a place he never visited? Why was there no notice of the famous writer's death in 1616? Why, in short, does Shakespeare remain such an obscure and shadowy figure? Methodically demolishing the case for "Mr. Shakspere, " Sobran shows it is highly implausible that he wrote the poems and plays we know as The Works of William Shakespeare. Other candidates exist, of course, including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon. Sobran dispenses with these claimants, then setsforth the startlingly persuasive case for Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Oxford was a widely traveled, classically educated member of the Elizabethan court. A swashbuckling spendthrift, he swung high and low in the eyes of his peers. Having spent most of his fort

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The debate over the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays has raged for more than a century, fueled by fans like the National Review's Joseph Sobran, who cannot accept that a country bumpkin like William Shakespeare could ever have written the rich plays full of high literary references, intimate knowledge of court politics, and familiarity with personalities in foreign lands. Like many before him, Sobran fingers Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Where Sobran makes a useful addition to the so-called Oxfordian debate is his sober, Holmes-like laying out of the evidence, especially as found in two useful appendices that contain the full text of the real Shakespeare's flatfooted will, contrasted with specimens of Oxford's own acknowledged poetry, which contains many locutions similar to those found in Shakespeare's plays.

From the Publisher

Who wrote Shakespeare's plays? Today, the long-standing and impassioned debate about the so-called authorship question is perceived by Shakespearean scholars as the preserve of eccentrics and cranks. But in this contrarian work of literary detection, author Joseph Sobran boldly reopens this debate and allows the members of Shakespeare's vast contemporary public to weigh all the evidence and decide for themselves.

An enormous shelf of biographical scholarship has grown up over the past 300 years around the "Swan of Avon." But what are these histories based on? Revealing that no more than a handful of fragmentary documents attest to Shakespeare's existence -- and virtually none which link him to the plays themselves -- Sobran delightfully debunks this elaborate egalitarian myth concocted in equal parts of speculation, wishfulness, and fantasy.

More importantly, Sobran shows how many questions the myth leaves unanswered: How could a provincial actor from Stratford gain such an intimate knowledge of court life? How could he know so much of classical authors and not own a single book? How could he write compromising love sonnets to his social superior, the powerful Earl of Southampton? How could he know so much of Italy, a place he never visited? Why was there no notice of the famous writer's death in 1616? Why, in short, does Shakespeare remain such an obscure and shadowy figure?

Methodically demolishing the case for "Mr. Shakspere," Sobran shows it is highly implausible that he wrote the-poems and plays we know as The Works of William Shakespeare. Other candidates exist, of course, including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon. Sobran dispenses with these claimants, then sets forth the startingly persuasive case for Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.

Oxford was a widely traveled, classically educated member of the Elizabethan court. A swashbuckling spendthrift, he swung high and low in the eyes of his peers. Having spent most of his fortune on adventures in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent -- like Hamlet he was captured by pirates in the English Channel -- he fell into disrepute for reasons that included rumors about his homosexuality. Still he topped many lists of the best Elizabethan poets at the time, even ranking above Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney. He was an avid book collector, and a love of the literary arts ran in his family. His uncle not only pioneered the sonnet form that came to be known as Shakespearean, he also translated the English edition of Ovid that indisputably guided Shakespeare's pen. More strikingly, Oxford was the ward of Lord Burghley -- the man widely acknowledged as the model for the character Polonius in Hamlet. Ultimately, Sobran shows us why a disgraced nobleman such as Oxford would have sought solace in the anonymity of writing pseudonymous plays and poetry.

This riveting solution to the Shakespeare puzzle will not please Stratford's tourist industry or many academics devoted to the status quo. Yet for those who are open-minded and curious, and have a healthy disregard for conventional wisdom, Joseph Sobran is a genial and entertaining guide through a mystery that promises to reinvent the greatest poet and dramatist of the English language.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1ST edition (May 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684826585
• ISBN-13: 978-0684826585
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one to read if you read only one about this topic, July 26, 2003

By 

Miles N. Fowler (Charlottesville, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alias Shakespeare (Hardcover)

Most people accept the tradition that the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were indeed written by him, and they assume that doubters of the Stratford man's authorship (anti-Stratfordians) must be irrational elitists. They might also assume that anti-Strats have nothing to offer those who simply wish to understand and enjoy the plays. But all of these assumptions are either debatable or wrong. In any case, though both sides of the authorship debate have been known to engage in circular arguments based on questionable evidence and to hurl childish ad hominems at one another, this is not true of Joseph Sobran who is reasonable in his arguments and civil toward his opponents. (Reviewers here who accuse Sobran of mudslinging, bashing etc. merely betray the fact that they have not read this book!) Rather than ask whether anti-Stratfordians are elitists, Sobran suggests that we ought to be asking if Shakespeare was one. For example, Shakespeare often makes cruel, unfair fun of social-climbing commoners exactly like Will Shaksper (a common variation of his name in contemporary legal documents). Arguing from evidence in the plays and poems, Sobran also demonstrates that the authorship debate can and ought to be relevant to the enjoyment and understanding of the Works.

While I am not wholly on the side of the underdog anti-Strats, I believe that Stratfordian scholars (which too often means mainstream scholars) have done such a disservice to the general public's enjoyment and understanding of Shakespeare that I must take them to task. Some are so fanatical in their defense of the Stratford man's claim to authorship that they seem to believe that if there were no tradition that he wrote the Works, they could conclusively prove from scratch that he did; but they could not for the same reason that anti-Stratfordians can never prove beyond a shadow that he didn't or that one of their alternative candidates did: The trail is old, and the case is cold. If ever there was a smoking gun it has long since turned entirely to rust. The strongest and best evidence that the man from Stratford wrote the Works is the tradition that he did, which, while not being conclusive, is simply difficult to dismiss.
But this tradition is not much. Anxious to uncover any details to fill out his biography, overzealous Stratfordians have accepted and taught many dubious legends and read a fanciful biography of the Stratford man into the plays and poems. The anti-Stratfordians see through this mess because they have no desire to add more to the Stratford man's biography than the documentary record will bear or to connect the biography to the Works where such a connection is based on pure guesswork. (Of course, they have motive to see other things that are not there, but here I speak only of how the anti-Strats are right.) For example, it was an anti-Stratfordian who realized that the famous "upstart crow" quotation has nothing whatever to do with Shakespeare, but instead clearly refers to an actor who did not write plays but was merely guilty of adlibbing. (More often, each side is equally at fault. I know of at least one instance where both sides used the exact same piece of evidence to prove their opposite conclusions. Upon further examination, it turned out that the evidence in question proved nothing whatsoever regarding authorship, yet each side had found in it proof of what it wanted to believe.) Meanwhile the Stratfordians reject the clear evidence from the plays that Shakespeare had far more learning than could have been provided by any formal education available to the Stratford man. In and of itself, this might not rule out the possibility that he was self-taught-except that the mainstream scholars HAVE ruled this out. They long ago boxed themselves into a corner by declaring that Shakespeare could not have had a vast education and any evidence that he did, no matter how compelling, cannot be admitted. (Once they assume that the Bard had little formal education, many orthodox Shakespeare scholars underestimate Shakepeare's learning and assume that a degree in literature somehow makes them Shakespeare's betters in matters such as, of all things, sixteenth-century Italian geography where it actually turns out that Shakespeare is the master.) Students are misleadingly told that they should readily understand Shakespeare because he wrote in ordinary language, aside from archaic words and grammatical constructions (as if these were not formidable enough). This is belied by the demonstrable fact that Shakespeare employed abstruse legalistic metaphors, used idiomatic Italian phrases (that he only partially translated) and demonstrated arcane knowledge of such subjects as heraldry. This and much more is explained in Sobran's book.

My only criticism of Sobran is that he gets so caught up in his persuasive case for the candidacy of the Earl of Oxford (which understandably persuades him) that he leans too far toward assuming Oxford's authorship to be a proven fact. In this, Sobran is like other participants in the authorship controversy. The authorship debate is a good example of my maxim that wherever there are only two sides to an argument both are usually wrong. Just because there is reason to doubt that Will Shaksper authored the plays and poems does not prove that he did not, and just because a case can be made that someone else might have written them does not prove that he or she did. The anti-Stratfordians are correct to point out that the biography of the traditional candidate does not fit the apparent biography of the author of the Works, and the Stratfordians are right to point out that the anti-Stratfordians cannot prove that one of their alternative candidates is the true author. Part of the argument of each side is correct, but neither side is free of error.

That being said, Sobran's contribution to the anti-Stratfordian cause is extremely readable and thought-provoking. He sums up the best evidence as it stands. If the average reader ought to read only one book by an anti-Strat, this is the one.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another, almost convincing, case for Oxford, March 10, 2004

By 

Jesse Steven Hargrave (Silver City, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Alias Shakespeare (Hardcover)

If I were a betting man, I still wouldn't bet on any of the possible answers to the "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" question. There are just too many gaps in our knowledge. But there is surely a mystery to be solved, and "Alias Shakespeare" by Joseph Sobran lays out an effective case that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, is the most likely solution to that mystery.

The book dispenses with the usual ad hominem attacks, amateur psychology, and farcical searches for hidden anagrams that have too often characterized all sides' arguments. He instead approaches this third-rail subject with refreshing objectivity and an apparently sincere search for the truth.

Marshalling a series of arguments and associated facts that point to Oxford, the book is well-organized at the macro level. It fails at times however in structuring the particulars. Threads of the argument are sometimes introduced, developed to a certain level, dropped, and then picked up again at a later point.

For example, Sobran [speaking of an introductory letter Oxford wrote to a friend's translation of "Cardanus Comfort"] writes "The whole letter, which especially foreshadows the [Shakespearean] Sonnets, is of utmost importance to the authorship question." Having raised our utmost curiosity, he abandons this argument with the parenthetical "See Appendix 3."

But his logic, when ultimately reconstructed, seems unassailable. The aforementioned Sonnets are at the core of this logic, and he convincingly lays out the parallels between their content and the well-documented course of Oxford's life. He effectively exposes the circular reasoning used by the defenders of the man he calls Mr. Shakspere - that is, the actor from Stratford-on-Avon. Those defenders deny the obvious autobiographical nature of the Sonnets, on the basis that they don't match with the flimsy autobiography we have of Mr. Shakspere. In fact, this type of circular reasoning pervades their entire defense, whether dealing with the purported dates of the plays or the importance of the early long poems.

There are, of course, legitimate counter-arguments. The problem is that arguments and counter-arguments in this matter are almost always qualitative and very difficult for the non-expert to evaluate. Sobran takes a stab at what is probably the only possible relevant quantitative approach: that of linguistic analysis. But here his use of such an approach amounts to no more than extensive word listings that he has found in common between Shakespeare and Oxford.

The problem for his case is that a more sophisticated, computer-based linguistic analysis has already cast serious doubt on the possibility of Shakespeare's works having been written by Oxford. (Elliott and Valenza, 1991.) Of course, the specific methods used in that analysis are also very difficult for the non-expert to assess. But at least such an analysis takes us closer to a scientific approach with a testable hypothesis.

Nonetheless, given an open mind, it would be hard to read "Alias Shakespeare" without agreeing with Sobran's conclusion. At a minimum, I doubt if any such reader will be laying odds on Mr. Shakspere being the true author.

29 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Approach with an open mind, November 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Alias Shakespeare (Hardcover)

I had never given the issue of Shakespeare's identity much thought until this year; I remembered the fuss about Bacon from college, but assumed that the matter was fairly well resolved. Then I read a recent feature story in Harper's magazine, that brought together 5 or 6 proponents of each side of this matter to debate it.

What struck me upon reading that issue was how few facts of merit the defenders of the traditional view had at their disposal. While the Oxfordians (about whom I knew nothing) mustered a number of facts and found inconsistencies in the traditional story, the traditionalists had far less to counter with, and resorted to name-calling and the stance that Shakespeare's identity doesn't matter, or worse, that if he weren't the traditional candidate, it would be somehow wrong to know who he actually was.

Because I felt the traditionalists' arguments had been so weak, I wanted to read more. Out of curiosity, I bought Sobran's book. It's made up of two parts, a review of the traditional case, and the argument for Oxford. Whether or not you believe Oxford was Shakespeare -- and I think there is a good case here, but not enough to be certain -- this book just skewers the traditional argument. Sobran simply presents too much evidence to ignore. At the very least, it will leave you wondering how much other received academic knowledge you grew up with could be bogus. The slack standards of Shakespeare's 'biographers' are held to a withering light here.