An education gap

The argument

The Post-Stratfordian case begins not with a rival candidate but with a comparison between two documented things: the contents of the works and the recorded education of the man from Stratford. The works display an unusually broad vocabulary and draw on a wide range of source material, some of it available at the time only in foreign languages. The schooling available to the Stratford man is, on this account, of a different order. The standard Elizabethan curriculum consisted largely of rote learning in Latin, with classes in arithmetic, logic and rhetoric; it did not include law, history, medicine, art, military strategy or the European languages in which some of that source material existed. A local grammar school following that curriculum would not have exposed a pupil to the themes and works on which the writing draws. Proponents then close the other route by which such learning might have been acquired. Travel is the obvious candidate – direct acquaintance with foreign courts, languages and books – but there is no evidence that Shaksper went anywhere other than between Stratford and London. The gap is therefore not merely that the curriculum falls short of the works; it is that no documented part of the man's life supplies what the curriculum omits. The claim made on this basis is deliberately modest, and proponents are explicit about its limits. The argument is not that the Stratford man could not have acquired this learning by some untraced route. It is that history and the actual record do not prove that he did, and that an attribution resting on an unevidenced assumption of self-acquired learning is weaker than it is usually presented as being. The reasoning is inferential rather than documentary: it identifies an unexplained gap in the orthodox account rather than producing positive evidence of another author.

Context

Shakespeare’s plays show an author well-versed in mythology, law, astronomy, music, foreign policy, the military, politics, foreign languages, the royal court, European geography and history. But there is no proof that Shaksper was educated past the age of 13.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is no reason to believe that Shakspere did not travel. He may have been in the army for a period and he could have been a tutor. It is not inconceivable to believe that he did, over the course of his life, come to know enough of all of these subjects to create the material present in his plays. Also, Shakespeare was most likely educated at Stratford Grammar School. He would have been exposed to a curriculum of Greek and Latin and could have featured foreign languages. The actual Latin book that may have been used in the school’s syllabus was actually mentioned in the Taming of the Shrew. Through his work with a royal acting company, Shakspere would also have likely been exposed to the workings of the aristocracy and courts, though there is no evidence for this. Also, many of the best writers of Elizabethan England did not come from noble stock. Ben Jonson was the son of a bricklayer. Edmund Spenser's father was a tailor. Christopher Marlowe was the son of a butcher. The idea that only someone with access to a noble education could produce great literary fiction is utterly ridiculous.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] His education would have touched on many Latin and Greek themes visible in his plays. [Rejecting P2] Just because he didn't learn about politics, royal court, history, law and military strategy at school doesn't mean he never learned it.