A 2.

1 ‘Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare’

The orthodox view is often summarised as ‘Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’ - that William
Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon and William Shakespeare the author are the same person.
In this video, you’ll learn about the main arguments supporting that view.

No-one can say with any exactitude when Shakespeare’s works were written. Dating them is
a bit of an academic guessing game. In a few cases, the records of theatre owner Philip
Henslowe tell us when a play was first performed. Sometimes a writer of the time will
mention a play or poem in passing. Some of the plays and poems were published, but not
necessarily close to the time they were written. Some things we would like to know were
never recorded. And after 400 years, the records that have survived are incomplete. This is
the skeleton of the facts we have.

William Shakspere was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564. He married at the age of
18 and had three children.

At some point, he is thought to have moved to London and become involved in a theatre
company. We don’t know when he moved because there is no evidence from this part of his
life.

But in 1592, there are references to lines from the plays we now know as Shakespeare’s
Henry VI Part 1 and Part 3. Also in 1592, the writer Robert Greene writes about an ‘Upstart
Crow’ that many people believe to be Shakespeare. The gap between the birth of his twins in
1585 and his apparent surfacing in London in 1592 are known as the Lost Years. This sounds
romantic, but it just means there’s no documentary evidence for what he is doing in those
seven years.

In 1593, the first work to appear under the name ‘William Shakespeare’ is published – the
long poem, Venus and Adonis.

At the end of the following year, plays are performed in front of the Royal Court by a theatre
company called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Theatrical troupes were owned by their
members, who bought shares in the theatre company, were the official owners of the scripts
and props, and shared in the profits. Most shareholders were actors in the company, but
some individuals were more involved in a business capacity.

The payment record from March 1595 is the first evidence we have that William Shakspere
was a key member of the Lord Chamberlain’s men. It seems likely that his being named as a
payee marks him as a shareholder.

We don’t know when he joined them, but this record, a payment for performances in
December 1594, is the first evidence that he is an official member of the company. Note, this
isn't evidence that he was necessarily an actor in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He may have
been, but his naming on the payment record only means he’s a sharer.

1594 was also the year when plays we now know as Shakespeare’s were published for the first
time: Titus Andronicus, and the play we now call Henry VI Part 2 were published
anonymously, which was normal practice at the time. In fact, until the previous year, the
only writer who had ever had their full name published on a play for the public stage
was George Peele. But from 1593 onwards, playwrights began to be acknowledged in print.
The name William Shakespeare didn’t appear in full on any play until 1598 when it was
published on three title pages: Richard II, Richard III and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
In 1599, William Shakspere became a leaseholder in the new Globe theatre, which was built
on Bankside.

In 1603, when James became King of England, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men became the
King’s Man, and the name ‘William Shakespeare’ appears second among company members
listed on the royal patent.

The following year, ‘William Shakespeare’ was listed as one of the ‘Players’ given scarlet cloth
to be worn for the King’s Royal Procession through London. Aside from this, the evidence
for him acting is scant: if he did act, then it was probably in minor parts that made little
impression on the audience. ‘Player’ may have been simply a blanket term for any member of
the playing company, in whatever capacity.

We know that William Shakspere of Stratford on Avon was the same person who became a
member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later called the King’s Men, because of two
important pieces of evidence which show he was closely associated with other sharers in that
company. In 1605, the will of fellow shareholder Augustine Phillips bequeaths ‘to my fellow
William Shakespeare a Thirty shillings piece in gold’. And in William Shakspere’s own will,
he remembers ‘his fellows John Heminges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, 26
shillings 8 pence a piece to buy them rings. John Heming or Heminges, Richard Burbage and
Henry Condell were all shareholders in the King’s Men.

The orthodox narrative seems absolutely logical. There is documentary proof that William
Shakspere was a shareholder in the company that, from his joining the company onwards,
exclusively performed the plays that make up what we call the Shakespeare canon. From
1598 onwards, his name is published on many of the plays that would, seven years after his
death, be published in an expensive hardback volume as ‘Mr William Shakespeare’s
Comedies Histories and Tragedies’, known as the First Folio. In the preface of that volume, a
letter to readers from John Hemming and Henry Condell - the King’s Men sharers
bequeathed money to buy rings in Shakspere’s will - points to him as the author. Also in the
preface of that volume, two poems refer to the place of his birth, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Shakspere was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on Avon, and a short
time after his death, and certainly by 1623, a monument was erected on the wall depicting a
man very similar to the man depicted in the front of the First Folio, writing with a quill.
Inscriptions beneath the half-bust say that he died in April 1616, just as Shakspere did, and
refer to ‘all that he hath writ’.

So the question is, what are we doing here?

Why is there any doubt at all about his authorship of the works attributed to him?