I don’t like deleting anyone from my online friends lists. I sometimes hold onto friendships that have shuffled along, zombie-like, for years. To get ejected from my social media lists, you generally must pick fights, engage in personal insults, or use my page to spread lies. Recently, I had someone attempt all three, and it involved one of literature’s most tedious questions:
Did Shakespeare write the works of Shakespeare?
Anti-Stratfordianism is a pseudoscience, akin to antivax or Flat Earth conspiracies. Adherents “prove” their propositions, not through evidence, but by “poking holes,” finding supposed inconsistencies in the documented narrative, and “just asking questions.” As my overuse of scare quotes indicates, anti-Stratfordian arguments rely on obfuscations and innuendo, not evidence. Yet my now-ex-friend insisted I must “engage” every specious argument, or surrender the debate.
That, immediately, should’ve been a clue. Flooding the market with unsourced innuendo or anecdotes, then claiming victory on every point somebody can’t immediately rebut, is the tactic of ufologists and Bigfoot hunters, not serious social scientists. Bullshit artists, like Steven Crowder with his “change my mind” schtick, love barraging the unprepared with binders full of photocopied talking points, demanding on-the-spot answers.
My ex-friend began by demanding why we should consider Shakespeare the author of Shakespeare, when we have little documentary evidence of his life. As though the absence of documents, in a time when creating and storing documents was expensive, proves anything. In fairness, professional doubt manufacturers use this same technique on Homer, Socrates, Pythagoras, or Jesus Christ. Rhetoricians call this the “argument from ignorance.”
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| Jon Finch (left) and Francesca Annis in Roman Polanski's Macbeth |
Sometimes we must focus on gaps in our knowledge. Law enforcement and counterterrorist experts do this frequently. But formal argument considers this fallacious in most contexts, because absence of knowledge usually proves little, except that nobody can document everything. Shakespeare, a poor boy from the provinces, didn’t merit physical documentation until relatively late in life.
Well, the anti-Stratfordian argues, what about Shakespeare’s lack of education? Most playwrights of the English Renaissance attended Oxford or Cambridge; how could Shakespeare write great literature without academic credentials?
Yes, most late-Elizabethan playwrights attended universities. We remember Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, George Peele, and Thomas Nashe as the “University Wits.” Greene wrote a notorious pamphlet condemning Shakespeare as an uneducated bumpkin. However, Greene’s one surviving play isn’t worth reading. Of the University Wits, only Marlowe bears reading now—and he nearly flunked his education, until the Queen personally intervened.
Insisting that Shakespeare couldn’t write well without a university education is classist. As a former university composition teacher, I can attest that some people write well without higher education, others write poorly with higher education, and some write well despite higher ed. (When I mentioned social class, my ex-friend said I’d engaged in “ad hominem attack.” Not so, sir. If there’s a fallacy there, it’s hasty generalization.)
The anti-Stratfordian shifts tactics: how could Shakespeare write about foreign lands so authoritatively? We have no evidence he ever left England. (Again with the “argument from ignorance.”)
Except Shakespeare didn’t write authoritatively about foreign lands. In Hamlet, he misnames Denmark’s royal palace, and gives nearly every Danish character Greek or Latin names. He sets several plays in Italy, including Verona, Venice, and Padua. Each feature explicitly English scenes, including women speaking in public (verboten in Renaissance Italy), court cases argued on English common law, and common English courtship rituals. Shakespeare’s “foreign lands” are exotic names draped over English scenes.
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| Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet |
Next, the anti-Stratfordian demands I explain how Shakespeare,a poor country boy, could write about aristocracy? How could a provincial merchant’s son understand noble households and aristocratic families?
First, Shakespeare’s playing company had aristocratic sponsorship. As first the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and later the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s company were members of the royal household, and therefore aristocratic insiders. Even without that, though, the poor have always understood how rich people think, as rich people don’t understand the poor, because they have to. Then as now, social class matters.
Finally, my ex-friend deployed the low blow: why was I getting emotional? “You don’t sound,” he wrote, “like a dispassionate academic here.” I realized that he’d gone for the troll argument, saying provocative things until I lost my composure, then crowing over my anger. His statement was a prettied-up version of “U mad bro?” So I blocked him.
I don’t brook bad-faith argument or underhanded tactics. I won’t engage future anti-Stratfordian arguments, and if anyone tries them on me ever again, I’ll show them this narrative, then mute them forever. It’s better than they deserve.
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