hUMILITY pRESS
P.O. Box 1595  West Tisbury  Mass. 02575

How does one review a book that is not a book? Or for
that matter, a mythic videography of the Floating World
of William Shakespeare? With plenty of money from the
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust the BBC has stuffed what
is left of Elizabethan England into another of its long list
of historic novels. The television series, In Search of
Shakespeare, is filled with happy faces of actors,
historians, archivists, and unsuspecting townsfolk.
Trapped in this electronic proscenium, these images ring
the elvish face of producer-author Michael Wood as he
wanders through the theme park of Stratford-on-Avon in
search of the person he wants us to believe was
"Shakespeare".

He has resurrected most, if not all of the traditional
folklore that supports this myth-in-process-of-becoming a
religion. His sainted poet-playwright has become a
recusant Catholic. Any secrecy over the identity of the
greatest playwright ever is now understandable, and is
safe with Wood. Broader socio-political ramifications are
moot. But then the secrecy about authorship has always
been political rather than literary.

But today, in the real world there is a growing list of
actors (Gielgud, York, Jacobi, Rylance, Howard,
Welles), writers (Twain, Dickens, Whitman, James,),
lawyers (Justices Stevens, Powell, Blackmun), and
psychiatrists (Freud), plus three generations of scholars
who have compiled a coherent scenario demonstrating
who wrote what, when, and why – and why an alternate
author has been allowed to get all the credit.

To cap this off, a recent book, Shakespeare’s Unorthodox
Biography¹, after a diligent search, fails to find any 
proof that the plays and sonnets were written by a man
baptized, married, and buried under the name of William
Shakspere. Its author, Diana Price chooses not to put
forward any of the several names that over the years have
looked like possible authors. None of her facts have been
disproved to date; none of the conclusions satisfactorily
challenged.

The Stratford defense has been that “Shakespeare wrote
Shakespeare”. Dissenters are met with towering ridicule;
debates are based on their demand for proof. They have
busied themselves scraping every bit of "evidence" off
the shoes of History. Persisting in the belief that there is
no authorship problem, they follow the example of some
political leaders by labeling their opposition as both
disloyal and evil. But the challenge to the Stratford
hegemony is now rampant. These orthodox forces have
begun to circle their wagons. It may be that an open,
honest debate is going to happen at last.

But Wood's utter failure to deal with these and other
broader cultural aspects is not due to ignorance or
incompetence. It is part of a desperate design to preserve
the social and financial investment in England’s royal
integrity and its Theme-Park-on-the-Avon. And it seems
to be working. If only Hamlet’s dance with Yorick’s
forensics can prevail before the Bard's corpus is re-buried
for another four hundred years.

Whoever wrote the plays needed an alias by the time the
long poem Venus and Adonis went to press. He chose the
one we will use here, complete with its handy hyphen,
the insignia of a pen name. When we are further into this
wonderland you may learn why it has sometimes been
called "Elizabeth's Hyphen".

So that is why a "review" is not the right instrument for
conducting this post-mortem. What is needed is a
"dissection". Our first tool will be "circular reasoning".
These are statements made to create a biographical
existence for William Shaksper (sic) of Stratford-on-
Avon using information drawn from the works of
William Shake-speare. The writer's assumption is that
they are one and the same person.

In fact, his barrage of examples in no way verifies this or
constitutes any proof of such a relationship. For example,
on page 17 Wood, in establishing his poet's country
roots, tells us that "Shakespeare's plays are full of
images of flowers, trees, and animals". On page 34, et
seq.: "…, as Shakespeare later wrote in Timon of
Athens…." and  "…. recalling the old Friar in Romeo
and Juliet…." and  “…. would have a foot in both
worlds....” and “.... as a writer he too …." and  "…. as
is borne out by…. references…. in William's
plays…." This and over 155 similar assertions, while
possibly true of the real Bard, do not indict the lad from
Stratford-on-Avon. An archive of these circularities can
be found below.

The second major lesion in scholarship (as well as
credibility of Wood, his backers, and the BBC) are
revelations that we will list as mustabeens. This midden
of evasions is about language. Every statement in the
book that is in any way qualified, including outright
admissions to lack of facts, has been listed below. Other
mustabeens not related to authorship are included. They
show the author's obvious intention of creating a relaxed,
iffy matrix to lull the reader into accepting his loose
regard for facts. Some come in pairs, or even sets: the
first a positive statement, followed by a qualification.
Often the first statements are qualifications, followed by
vacuities such as: "so we can now say with confidence".

Page 157 has a good sequence leading off with 
"Suggesting he was now in Southampton's service….
and receiving money…. might be paid no more than
L10…. relationship might raise very much more….
purchase of a property…. unlikely, perhaps.... but still
a hint…. it is possible that Shakespeare  had known
John Hemmings…. had most likely stayed with the
Burbages…." on and on for 355 pages! It may not be
fair to blame Wood or his backers; nearly all of the major
works written over the past three hundred years that were 
"searching for" Shakespeare are laced with mustabeens.
At least 160 of them are listed in the Archive below...

There are many interesting reasons for this dense
mythology, but first, one more surgical incision is in
order. How is it possible to write and produce a TV series
about Shake-speare without mentioning names like
Edward de Vere (the 17^th Earl of Oxford) or his daughter
Susan Vere, Countess of Montgomery? Known to be 
England’s leading poet and playwright, his daughter was
married to one of two earls who published the First Folio.
The term "Oxford" in this book is conveniently limited to
a certain educational institution. The only answer is that
Wood's dedication to divine disinformation cleverly
blocks any reference to other possibilities.

This remarkable book carries markers showing an
attempt to counteract the scholarship supporting the fact
that: 1) there is a serious question about the identity of a
person who first wrote under the name of William Shake-
speare; and 2) that the primary candidate for this honor is
Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford. Wood
scrupulously avoids mentioning him, or any of the many
events in which Oxford’s life intersects the BBC's myth.

From the following it is abundantly clear that the process
of writing this book involved two kinds of research. First:
four hundred years of factoids excised from what was
from the outset a battered web of hearsay and
imagination. Wood's first two groups of literary lesions,
circularities and mustabeens, attempt to perpetuate this
venerable doxology. His other research challenge was to
develop antibodies to the growing case for the Earl. The
most tempting to block was Ovid. Oxfordian scholars
know that his uncle was the Elizabethan translator of
amon g many other works, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Of
the many classical works that are woven into the Shake-
speare Canon, this work is most prevalent. Wood tells us
that anyone with a copy of Ovid could have done it, even
a country boy educated (possibly) in Warwickshire.

Ox-blocs seems like a good name to use for this slippery
erudition. One wonders whether Wood really knows
better but has been paid not to admit it? My guess is that
he (or the Birthplace Trust) kept a pack of scholars
whose sole job was to anticipate any authorship virus in
advance, and to render it harmless.

Wood or his advisors found there is a strong link between
the play Measure for Measure with its "Marianna and the
moated grange" and the Earl's father-in-law's moated
estate. No problem; find a moat of our own (page 20, in
Warwickshire).

Try page 48; a classic! For the scholar/uncle who
translated the works of Ovid, Wood arranges the
following scenario involving Shakspere’s mother. He
first supposes  that she read to him from the classics,
quite magically as no one in his family was known to be
literate. Then he fishes out a line about Ovid's
Metamorphoses from Titus Andronicus: "My mother
gave it me...." staking out young William's claim to
literacy. Wood even has the temerity to characterize his
"poet" by calling it "one of those throwaway remarks
that he (Shakespeare) seems to put in for ­no apparent
reason." - ergo; no need for Oxford. This nonsense
qualifies as a "throwaway" all by itself. Our Archive is
bursting with 44 of them.

There is yet another bright category of acute literary
miscegenation: the trysts made between circularities and
the mustabeens. Their progeny: fantasies. An example is
Wood's description of Shakespere's father recorded "….
as agricola, a farmer…. risen in social stature….
become a town councilor, justice of the peace,
constable, and ale taster…. part of the town's ruling
elite…. a member of Elizabeth's new civic order (but)
never learned to write…. but he must have had basic
reading skills…. to fill his civic roles…. keep his
account books." He finds this all "…. significant for
his son's story, for he and his colleagues were
compelled to engage in national politics and history….
to control, to encourage conformity and to identify
dissent…. through the dangerous times of the
Catholic Queen Mary and her Protestant successor,
Elizabeth." Young William could have never let his
noble father down!

With respect to William's schooling, Wood provides
enough for a doctoral thesis: all pure fancy.  He has him
starting school in 1571 and leaving in 1580 - but there is
no record of his ever attending school. Page 30 conflates
his William with a William Smith's five sons who were
all educated, one at a university. Then he invents the
grammar school and "Big" school years to build a
defense against the "myth" that Shakespeare was an
"uneducated provincial". To do this Wood teaches
words like "may seem", "near certain", indisputable",
"does not prove", and "circumstantial" to enshrine
"the end product" of a Tudor education. He was ".... a
poet who could and did sit down and read a book or
play in Latin…. although like most people then and
now, he preferred a translation for speed."

Steadily, more and more of this substance gets worked
into the fertile soil of Warwickshire, enough to let us
know that hell or high water, Wood's assignment was to
counter the number one alternative to his candidate. We
know that the young Baron Bolbec (Oxford) at the age of
four was farmed out to the most brilliant scholar in
England. Twelve years old when his father died, he went
on to earn his first degree (Cambridge) at fourteen, and
another from Oxford at sixteen. He then attended the Inns
of Court (Law School). But never mind, Wood assures us
in the caption for his woodcut of an Elizabethan school;
"…. birching was the rule in Tudor schools, but
learning by rote stuck with you."

One does not need to be a Shakespearian savant to
decipher most of these constructions; anyone can pick
out the mustabeens and circularities. It makes a good
classroom exercise for teachers who might one day be
able to learn to live (and teach) with the facts. And, it
could challenge and/or empower the smarter students
struggling under teachers with re-learning disabilities.

The BBC television series, having already polluted our
own public airways, deserves separate treatment. While it
follows the book closely, what is wrong in the book is
equally wrong on the screen. Wood is shown flitting
about wearing white gloves, chatting with archivists over
rare manuscripts that have absolutely nothing to do with
proving that Shakspere wrote Shake-speare. It is riddled
with every orthodox misprision from John Aubrey to
Harold Bloom. As propaganda, the film rivals anything
by Hitler's friend, Leni Riefenstahl.

In weaving this awesome tapestry Wood runs the risk of
joining Jane Austen and Dickens in the BBC Pantheon.
His treatment is so oleaginous that with luck, his
American audience will treat it as fiction. Good thing,
too; this is the way Stratford's educators want us to see it.
Their customary answer to intelligent questions is: "No
one will really ever know; relax and enjoy.” Some
Oxfordians fear that this mischief will set their jihad back
a decade or so. Others are sure that in the long run,
Wood's soggy collection of all of the orthodox jiggery-
pokery in one place, will send his Shakspere to the re-
cycle bin.

Wood's setting the writing of several of the plays in the
years after Oxford's death (1604) can be disconcerting.
This battery of Ox-blocs, is also archived in our back-up
material. No proof exists for any of his convenient flights
of imagination.

Many Stratfordians, clinging to their leaky tautology, fall
back onto two arguments: 1) It is all explained by the fact
that he was a genius; and 2) Why does it have to be a
nobleman; why not a common man? Well, they're
absolutely right: Shake-speare was a genius; the other
guy was not. When our founding fathers and mothers
came from the Old World, many brought their version of
the Bible, and some their copies of Shakespeare. We
know this because our Constitution, laws, and court
decisions are sown with quotations from both. When it
came time for common men to govern themselves, they
turned to an un-common nobleman who had an eye for
(if nothing else) cause and effect. It doesn't get any more
democratic than that.

This brings up the question of who benefits from this
new transfusion for the Stratford myth. While the BBC
gets exposure and a few pounds here and there for
production, it will soon find that it has been sadly had.
On the other hand the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, for
whom this was a desperate investment, can presumably
continue to control the immense wealth created by its
theme-park-on-the-Avon. Thus there is a significant body
of educators, writers, and publishers whose commitment
to the myth is an economic, if not a clinically psycho-
logical necessity. Then we have, of course, the politicians
who are unwilling to tinker with four hundred years of
History. And finally the descendants of brave Britons
who replaced a beloved "Roman" Virgin with a splendid
Queen who understood and accepted her role as a hard-
working substitute.

Enter Oxford, her noble ward and sometime lover. His
literary anonymity was drawn from a family image,
Minerva the Spear Shaker. It help to protect her options
as well as the succession of King James. These are facts
independent of authorship. But if it was known who aired 
the Court's dirty linen into three dozen plays, Her Royal
Highness would need the deniability provided by that
hyphen. Starring as parts of Helena, Isabella, Sylvia,
Cressida, Cleopatra, and yes, Gertrude, HRH's love of
both the theater and her young poet became the lens
through which the world would come to know her.

While the pre-historic loss of her virginity may seem to
some as both unfair and improper, the woman who
emerges from the full monte of the plays and her
relationships with Oxford and Dudley and Hatton and ----
is truly more remarkable. Here in the New World we
might be able to help the Brits mourn this loss by the
re-naming of two states "Betsy" and "West Betsy".
Wood’s charade, since it is not built on scholarship, does
not require (or deserve) a scholarly point-by-point
refutation. The work required toextract the circularities,
mustabeens, and Ox-blocs from what is in effect a drive-
through brain-laundry leaves a strange residue. What can
such an interlocking tissue of tangled facts be but a new
kind of virus: one against which we will need a new kind
of cure. The BBC may some day have the courage to
give equal time and money to air the whole story. But for
now we would just be happy to learn why a public
institution, charged with at least an approximation of the
truth, believes its great nation needs, or at least prefers, to
live a lie?

Co  Joseph L Eldredge  2003