Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Who was Shakespeare?
Position‹2 of 5›: The Post-Stratfordian position
Argument‹7 of 10›: The two Shakespeares

Shakespeare the playwright and Shakespeare the man are vastly different.

The argument

The case rests on a mismatch between two bodies of evidence that ought to describe the same man. The first is the documentary record. We know that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon had several run-ins with the law for offences such as illegal poaching and tax evasion. He hoarded grain during a famine, while others around him were starving. And on his death he saw fit to leave his wife his "second-best bed". Individually these might be explained away; together they describe a man who was acquisitive, careless of the law, and unsentimental about the person closest to him — and the grain-hoarding in particular is not a technical offence but a decision made at someone else's expense during a period when the cost of that decision was plainly visible. The second body of evidence is the work. The Shakespeare present in the literary works displays a deeply empathetic streak. He appears to hold a profound appreciation for and understanding of both the best and the worst aspects of human nature, and he finds beauty in human relationships. The plays do not merely describe feeling; they require an author capable of inhabiting positions very far from his own, including those of people with nothing to gain. The argument is that these two portraits cannot be held together. It is not that a writer must be a good man, but that this particular gap — between the man who withheld grain from the starving and the writer who understood so exactly what that costs — is too wide to be a matter of temperament or of private inconsistency. If the two cannot be reconciled, the only likely conclusion is that they were not the same person, and that the name on the plays belonged to someone other than their author.

Context

Shakespeare the playwright and Shakespeare have almost nothing in common. One is a petty criminal, mean spirited and a persistent tax evader, the other was an innovate literary genius capable of immense amounts of human empathy.

Premises

[P1]The William Shakespeare documented in Stratford records was a grain-hoarder and tax-evader who left his wife only his "second-best bed." [P2] The Shakespeare of the literary works is deeply empathetic, finding beauty in human relationships and understanding human nature at its best and worst. [P3] These two figures are impossible to reconcile as the same person. [C] Therefore, because the Stratford man and the author cannot be the same, the post-Stratfordian position is correct.

Counter-arguments

Many literary and artistic geniuses displayed traits in their personal lives that run counter to their creative works. Caravaggio was convicted of murder following a brawl. Wagner was a ferocious anti-Semite. It is possible to produce profound art without being a good person. Therefore, the disconnect between Shakespeare’s creative work and his character is not sufficient evidence for asserting Stratford’s Shakespeare was not the author of the literary works.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] This does not mean they are not the same person.