Typically, only a few of the students enrolling in Clinical Assistant Professor Michael Delahoyde’s Washington State University classes on the writings of William Shakespeare are aware that their instructor is a self-described “heretic” in what is arguably one of the more persistent and often acrimonious debates in English literature.
If they prepare for class by reading from his professional Web site, they will discover that Delahoyde stands with those who believe the bard’s writings shaped the English language and even our conception of what it means to be human. They will also find their instructor jokingly questions how anyone could accept a university degree without having taken at least one class devoted to the study of Shakespeare’s works.
Ultimately, his students discover, too, that Delahoyde holds the somewhat unorthodox view shared by a distinct minority of literary scholars that the true author of the works long attributed to William of Stratford was an English nobleman known to history as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.
To Delahoyde and other “Oxfordians” who attribute the plays and sonnets to de Vere, the authorship controversy begins with what they consider the suspiciously paltry amount of evidence to be found in the historical record about the man most frequently identified as “William Shakspere” of Stratford-upon-Avon. Delahoyde questions why so few fragments of the life of such a notable writer have survived, arguing that what little there is to be found depicts “a grain merchant,” rather than a man who was the leading playwright of the age.
“The separation between life records and the works is extreme even more pronounced than Chaucer’s two hundred years earlier, where we can at least match likely poetic presentations with court records of royal gifts, literary influences with foreign travel,” he said. “What I see in the historical record of Will Shakspere is the scattered remains of the wrong life, a glimpse of merchant-class life in the Elizabethan era.”
Delahoyde and other Oxfordians contend the Stratford man lacked the social status, sophistication, education, cultural knowledge and travel experience so obviously possessed by the writer of the 37 tragedies, comedies and histories attributed to William Shakespeare.
Key points in the Oxfordian argument are based on what most scholars seemingly agree was the playwright’s obvious familiarity with the workings of the English Court, geography and culture of Italy, and concepts and specifics of English law. There is no direct evidence suggesting Shakespeare was schooled or experienced to any particular degree in any of those areas (in fact, no direct evidence of his schooling at all), and most scholars doubt he ever traveled outside England.
In contrast, historical evidence indicates de Vere was raised among the English aristocracy, was a court insider, traveled extensively in Italy and elsewhere, and was tutored in numerous subjects, including languages and law, from the time he was quite young.
“One of the primary tenets of good literature is that a writer must necessarily write what he knows, yet we persist in thinking Shakespeare must be the sole exception to that rule,” Delahoyde said. “Some say he was simply such a genius that he was able to educate himself in the taverns of London. Well, I’ve been in bars, and I think most people would agree they’re a lousy place to study law or Italian art or to learn languages.”
Delahoyde’s view of the authorship issue is unique among his peers at WSU. Of the three faculty members in the Department of English currently teaching classes related to the works of Shakespeare, he is the lone Oxfordian. But while views such as his may prompt dissention and even invite derision from faculty members at other universities, Delahoyde said his relationship with Shakespearean professors here has been remarkably lacking in acrimony.
One of those professors is Will Hamlin, who teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in Shakespeare, Spenser, Renaissance drama, and early modern literature, and has written two books and many essays on the literature of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Aware of the controversy regarding Shakespearean authorship since well before he began his academic career, Hamlin easily sums up many of the salient points of the Oxfordian case. He is quick to counter, however, with his own arguments for why he finds them unconvincing.
“The earl of Oxford died in 1604 and the vast majority of Shakespeare scholars have agreed that 11 or 12 of Shakespeare’s plays were composed after that time,” Hamlin said. “‘The Tempest’, for example, relies on a travel narrative by William Strachey that was written in 1610. Since Oxford was dead, he couldn’t have read Strachey’s account.”
Hamlin said the poet and playwright Ben Jonson knew Shakespeare personally and wrote a long poem in praise of Shakespeare, calling him the “Sweet swan of Avon,” identifying him with his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, and claiming that despite his “small Latin, and less Greek” he ranked with the greatest writers in the English language.
If the Oxfordians are right, he argues, then Jonson was either lying or deceived about his friend, neither an option Hamlin finds credible.
Still, Hamlin who also views the lack of historical documentation related to Shakespeare as rather typical of all playwrights of the era concedes the issue of Shakespearean authorship is a legitimate subject for academic inquiry, albeit a lesser one in his estimation. He understands that his Oxfordian colleague uses the issue in the classroom to advance his students’ critical thinking skills and encourage them to do research of their own; volunteering his personal assessment that Delahoyde is “an excellent teacher.”
The search for the “true” author of Shakespeare’s works is no new phenomenon. Suggestions that at least some of the collected works of the Bard of Stratford may actually have been penned by another writer date back at least as far as the 19th century. At various times, certain Shakespearean writings have been attributed to Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and even Queen Elizabeth I.
Most recently, the California-based Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, an organization formed to raise awareness of the authorship issue, issued a resolution asking scholars to accept the premise that there is “room for reasonable doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare” and acknowledge research on the topic as legitimate academic inquiry. Delahoyde was one of a small number of academics to sign the petition.
Delahoyde has taken on the issue directly by teaching a WSU Honors College class for non-English majors devoted to the known writings of de Vere. He is relatively certain the course has no counterpart among other major universities in the U.S.
At the heart of what Delahoyde describes on his Web site as his “new millennium obsession” with Shakespeare and the question of Shakespearean authorship is his obvious passion for the writings of the man generally regarded as the pre-eminent literary genius in the history of the English-speaking world.
“It’s exhilarating knowing that this work emerged out of real experience, real pain, real concerns out of someone’s real life instead of out of the blue,” Delahoyde said. “Knowing that from his own often troubled life he created art of this caliber.”
Ultimately, the conversations between Delahoyde, Hamlin, and others about the authorship question most clearly reveal their common and profound enthusiasm for the works the author left behind. It is, after all, a controversy which would have no meaning but for 37 comedies, tragedies and histories that shaped our literature and perhaps our sense of our own humanity.
