THE TRICK OF THAT VOICE

J. Enoch Powell argues that 'William Shakespeare' was really a committee

AN INDIVIDUAL by the name of William Shakespeare (variously spelt) was baptised on 26 April 1564 in the parish church at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and there buried in April 1616. We happen to have his will, dated also in 1616. At the end of 1623 or the beginning of 1624 (1623' then ran to 31 March 1624), a sumptuous folio volume was published containing 36 plays, including some of the greatest pieces of English literature, as having been written by William Shakespeare. The prefatory matter to that Folio contained the earliest hint of any connection between the plays and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Are the two William Shakespeares the same? Indeed, do they have anything to do with one another? The world says yes, and has tended to go on saying yes. But is the world mistaken? There are some mightily curious facts which keep intruding.

In 1593 and 1594 respectively were pub- lished the poems Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece, dedicated by 'William Shakespeare' to the Earl of Southampton. After that, the name did not appear in print again until 1598. In the autumn of that year of 1598 a schoolmaster, one Francis Meres, published a pedantic work under the title Palladis Tamia or Wit's Treasury'. It is arranged on a repetitive scheme, citing in each compartment equal numbers of Greek, Latin and English authors, to illus- trate and prove England's competitiveness with the ancients.

Suddenly, however, Meres throws his own framework over, with an astonishing outburst which has to be savoured in detail. The outburst is a kind of cuckoo in the nest, quite out of harmony with the rest of the book into which it is foisted. I will quote it in the original form in full and then comment:

As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to hue in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid hues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c.

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Getleme of Verona, his Errors, his Loue labors lost, his Loue labours wonne, his Midsummers nightidreame, & his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy, his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Hemy the 4. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet.

It was manifestly fatuous for Meres to refer his readers not only to Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece, already published with the dedication by 'William Shakespeare', but also to the Sonnets which are tantalisingly described as only available to the poet's 'private friends'. Nor is that all.

The six comedies and six tragedies which Meres calls in evidence for Shakespeare being 'the most excellent in both kinds for the stage' are a remarkable list. One of the items, Love Labour's Won, is neither known under that title nor securely identifiable

with any play known under any other title. Three items in the list, Love Labour's Lost, Richard II and Richard III were published or republished in 1598 (the year of Meres' book) as 'by William Shakespeare' or 'newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespeare'. Henry IF first published in 1598, was re-issued in 1599 as 'newly cor- rected by W. Shakespeare'; The Merchant of Venice, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1598, was published in 1600 as 'written by William Shakespeare'; and Midsummer Night's Dream was first published also in 1600, with that attribution.

Two more plays in Meres' lists, though already in print, were not to be attributed to Shakespeare until much later. Romeo and Juliet, published in 1597, was attributed to Shakespeare in some copies of a quarto reprint issued in or after 1612. Titus Andronicus, published in 1594, was not attributed to Shakespeare until the Folio. That leaves three plays still not accounted for. King John, if that is 'our' King John and not The Troublesome Reign, was first pub- lished in 1622 as 'written by W. Shake- speare'; Errors (that is, presumably, the Comedy of Errors) is known to have been performed in 1594 but was first printed in the Folio; and Gentlemen of Verona (that is, Two Gentlemen of Verona) was first pub- lished in the Folio and no record is known of any performance of it.

It was thus not only in respect of the Son- nets that Meres was flaunting knowledge restricted to the poet's 'private friends'. He was also aware of the authorship of unpub- lished plays and plays published with no name of author which were to appear in the same year or immediately succeeding years as 'written etc. by William Shakespeare'.

The flow of such plays soon ended. After 1600 the only 'new' appearances, apart from the Sonnets themselves in 1609, were King Lear in 1608 and the pirated edition of Troilus and Cressida in 1609. I use the word 'pirated' boldly, because that is what the Publisher's preface says, cocking a snook at mysterious 'grand possessors', who would have prevented publication if they had had their way.

So where does all this leave us? In a situ- ation which imperiously demands explana- tion. From the beginning of the 17th centu- ry a huge and glittering treasury of plays existed unpublished in the control of per- sons called 'the grand possessors'. In the years around 1598 to 1600 the author or various 'private friends' evidently expected Imminent disclosure and were making Preparations for it, if not actually making a start. But whoever expected that would have been doomed to disappointment. Not until somewhere around 1620 did the prop- erty become 'too hot to hold', and was pub- lication of the plays not merely permitted but organised.

The problem was to account for their sudden appearance. The playwright Ben Janson wrote a preface for the Folio explaining they had been issued by fellow actors, Hemmings and Condell, from the author's original manuscripts — a lie, if ever there was one, because (so it is gener- ally agreed) the Folio used an already pub- lished text wherever one was available. And the author was — ? Why, Master William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, now several years dead — his widow too having died in 1622. In case anyone asked to see the evidence of Stratford's recognition of its illustrious son, a memorial was erected in the parish church, complete with his bust* correspondent to the portrait engraved as frontispiece for the Folio edi- tion. Someone not very well briefed pro- duced for the memorial a copy of laudatory verses in Latin, setting the playwright on a level with (of all people) Nestor, Socrates and Virgil. There existed, then, from early in the 17th century a mass of theatrical material, the source of which — indeed the owner- ship of which — it was necessary to conceal If profit were to be made by publishing it. We are moving in high circles, perhaps in the highest of all. Somebody of overwhelm- ing genius had not merely created it but Continued creating after current use was no longer being made of the material. Who was it? The secret was well kept — presum- ably because it had to be kept. That points to a group of courtiers who supplied the court with plays, and to one person among that group whose identity has been indus-

*I am unalarrned by the fact that William pugdale's illustration of the monument (in Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656) shows an altogether different bust in place: Dug- dale's illustrations were often based on Sketchy written descriptions.

triously concealed.

I refer advisedly to 'a group', as the natu- ral means of accounting for the notorious and phenomenal polymathy of the works attributed to Shakespeare. From inner knowledge of the politics of Italy and France to familiarity with professional vocabularies like those of the law and the Church, the spread of experience which even the earlier plays exhibit exceeds the scope of a single individual; and we too eas- ily underestimate the potentialities of inti- mate co-operation between the members of such a group of literati as the court includ- ed in the closing years of Elizabeth I.

One would need to be abnormally credu- lous to believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote poetry and plays but left behind — not bequeathed! — when he died a massive further opus of at least equal volume and quality which had remained unused and (except piratically) unpublished.

It was an astonishing cornucopia, this treasure which 'the grand possessors', after complicated precautions, resolved in 1623 to pour out before the public. The power and philosophy of this 'new' work — it can- not be entirely fanciful to feel — represents an advance upon that of the plays of the 1590s. If so, composition must have been proceeding for all or much of the interven- ing time. So comes the acid question — the heart of the mystery of William Shake- speare — what sort of person was it, or what sort of group could they be, who cre- ated and accumulated with no 'visible outlet work of the fecundity and quality finally produced to the light of day in 1623 and who in addition were under some strict obligation of self-concealment? If we could answer that question convincingly, we should have banished forever the masked figure called William Shakespeare of Strat- ford-upon-Avon, playwright, who was invented to solve the dilemma. The deepest of all the mysteries, the nagging question which refuses to go away, is not 'who wrote those plays?' but 'what happened to create the black hole between Hamlet (printed in quarto in 1603) and the sending of the copy for the first Folio of 1623 to the printer?'

'I've decided to have the baby at home.'