September 10, 2020
It is not so much my love of Shakespeare, but more my love of history, particularly the medieval history of Britain, which led to my interest in the authorship question. I wouldn’t have described myself as a Stratfordian — I was just unaware that there was any question about Shakespeare. I suppose I went along with the traditional biography because I didn’t know any differently.
Many years ago I visited Stratford-upon-Avon. I enjoyed visiting pretty historical buildings in a pretty town, but it did not inspire me to think about Shakespeare one way or the other. In September 2018, I watched Upstart Crow (series 3, episode 3), the BBC comedy about the Stratford guy by Ben Elton, one of the writers of Blackadder. Very clever writing. They take a real pop at poor Sir Mark Rylance for his authorship doubts, but it backfired in my case. The show introduces the actor “Wolf Hall” (a parody of Rylance), who is persuaded by Shakespeare’s antagonist, Robert Greene, that Shakespeare isn’t writing his own plays.
Not understanding the storyline, I decided to find out more. I stumbled across the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” and excitedly signed up. I was amazed to find out there was any doubt at all — this was the first I’d heard about it. I watched online documentaries, lectures, debates, anything I could find about the Shakespeare authorship question. Then I decided to try and become a Stratfordian by reading the Stratfordian arguments and discussing the evidence with Stratfordians. But I found little merit in the Stratfordian arguments.
By January 2020, I was convinced the man from Stratford was not the author. But though I felt drawn to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, I was not yet convinced about him either. I felt that my preference may have been driven by him being the leading alternative candidate.
In my quest to find out more I began a debate with a relatively knowledgeable Stratfordian. He assumed that I was an Oxfordian, so I tried to answer any arguments that were put forward by looking at manuscripts, orthodox research, and general information. I found that even when avoiding Oxfordian publications, the Earl of Oxford kept on cropping up. The writers, patrons, and anyone linked to Shakespeare seemed to have some connection to Edward de Vere, whilst the allusions to Shakespeare provide no clear link to the Stratford man. I have wondered how anyone could ignore the evidence, but I have realised that in order to become an Oxfordian there was no one piece of evidence that convinced me but many, many pieces of circumstantial evidence, far too numerous to put into a concise argument.
The final piece of evidence that convinced me is the manuscript of the play “Sir Thomas More.” Only that one manuscript of the play exists. Anthony Munday, usually credited as the principal author, was Oxford’s secretary. “Hand D,” one of several handwriting styles in the work, has been credited to William Shakspere of Stratford, although only six scratchy signatures of his exist. The manuscript was sold to the British Library by one of Oxford’s descendants. The work is far more interesting as a historical document, which suggests an author dictating to a secretary, then the work being censored and during the revision process possibly abandoned.
So why do so many people believe that William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the works of the author “Shakespeare”?
“History is a chorus of voices, each of them shouting out its own version of the story and very often it’s the loudest voices that get heard most clearly,” says historian and TV personality Lucy Worsley, host of the 2017 BBC program British History’s Biggest Fibs.
I would love to give a great big thank you to Alexander Waugh for his wonderful online presentations. Also much respect for the late Tom Regnier, who made me realise that it is not in having one big piece of evidence that we find the truth, but in the hundreds of dots, like pixels in a photograph, that we begin to make sense of the whole picture.
— Clare Davies
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