WSJ: U.S. Supreme Court tackles Shakespeare question

Today's Wall Street Journal has a great feature story on U.S. Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens and where he and his colleagues fall on the Shakespeare authorship question.

The chart (right) has the details on each justice's stance. With only two justices casting a ballot for Will of Stratford -- and two casting their lots with Edward de Vere -- the nominal vote (with some noteworthy abstentions) is, astonishingly, a tie!

Justice John Paul Stevens and the late justice Harry Blackmun had both previously gone on the record with their conviction that Edward de Vere was "Shakespeare."

But it's news to this blogger that Justice Antonin Scalia -- leader of the court's conservative wing, as Stevens is leader of the liberal wing -- is also an Oxfordian. Scalia's wife, he said, berates him for his conviction that de Vere wrote "Shakespeare."

"She thinks we Oxfordians are motivated by the fact that we can't believe that a commoner could have done something like this, you know, it's an aristocratic tendency," Scalia told the Journal. But, he adds, "It is probably more likely that the pro-Shakespearean people are affected by a democratic bias than the Oxfordians are affected by an aristocratic bias."

[This post edited to add links to four six seven blogs that discuss the WSJ article: One and a-two and a-three and a-four (HuffPo); five (Volokh) and a-six and a-seven.]

More from the article:

All signs pointed to de Vere. Justice Stevens mentions that Lord Burghley, guardian of the young de Vere, is generally accepted as the model for the courtier Polonius in "Hamlet." "Burghley was the No. 1 adviser to the queen," says the justice. "De Vere married [Burghley's] daughter, which fits in with Hamlet marrying Polonius's daughter, Ophelia."

Shakespeare dedicated two narrative poems to the earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, "who also was a ward of Lord Burghley and grew up in the same household," Justice Stevens says. "The coincidence...is really quite remarkable."

...

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in 2006, cast the court's deciding vote many times. On Shakespeare, she says, "I'm not going to jump into this and be decisive."

According to Justice Stevens, "Sandra is persuaded that it definitely was not Shakespeare" and "it's more likely de Vere than any other candidate." Pressed, Justice O'Connor says, "It might well have been someone other than our Stratford man."

Doublets and Double-takes: Spring Break with the Bard

Through April 19, Tampa, Florida's Gorilla Theatre Company presents troupe founder Audrey Hampton's new drama Elizabeth and Edward --a new play arguing that de Vere was "Shakespeare".

From the Tampa Bay Tribune review, it looks like a hodgepodge of dramatic flashback and rhetorical argumentation.

Ten actors, the review says, "take on several roles and time periods to support the Oxfordian line of thought. Ghosts of actors past open the play at the 500th [sic] Shakespeare Jubilee, 1569-2069, where the question of authorship segues into a series of qualifying vignettes." (No doubt a typo here referencing David Garrick's 1769 Stratford Shakespeare Jubilee.)

Here's the pity:

As the review says, "If de Vere wrote 'Hamlet,' 'Macbeth' and the like, he would have been under pressure to hide his identity. And that would have been even more likely were he Elizabeth's bastard child, as the scholars suggest." [My emphasis]

Some orthodox scholars are indeed taking more and more seriously the Oxfordian argument that Edward de Vere played a key role -- arguably was the author -- behind the "Shakespeare" byline. But I have yet to see a single scholarly paper or book arguing that de Vere had Tudor blood, let alone was Queen Elizabeth's bastard son.

The waters are muddy enough with Stratfordian mumbo-jumbo. It's too bad that Oxfordians, too, have to add to the confusion.

The Taming of the Streep

This video excerpt, from a 1981 performance of The Taming of the Shrew starring Meryl Streep and Raul Julia (r.i.p.) was posted online early last month and has been busting guts of Shakespeare fans ever since. (H/T reader G.Q.) Two superlative actors at the top of their game hitting all the right marks.

It's tough to imagine a better Kate-Petruchio pair or a more inspired, sexy, vivacious performance. And I don't think it's just the Streep fan in me* that makes me say Shakespeare comedic performances don't get much better than this.




* Don't get me wrong: I think both Meryl Streep and Raul Julia are/were amazingly talented actors. But, true confessions time, only Susanna Hoffs (The Bangles) could claim equal footing with Ms. Streep as a fanboy crush for this blogger as a high school-aged bloke.

Overbury Overdrive, pt. 5: The Empire Strikes Back

The genteel slapping sounds of kid-leather-glove-against-cheek have been on the rise in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement of late.

Last week, this blog noted the arguments put forward by Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones that, in short, the eyes have it: The new "Cobbe portrait," featuring the face of Sir Thomas Overbury, is actually a portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury and not, pace Stanley Wells and his colleagues at the Stratford Birthplace Trust, a portrait of Will Shakespeare.

"Sir,--" Stanley Wells begins his rebuttal in this week's TLS. (Isn't it curious how the newspaper as a medium is dying, reaching out to every reader it can, while one of the world's most legendary upholders of newspaperly traditions hasn't quite gotten around to addressing the ladyfolk yet?)

" Katherine Duncan-Jones," Wells writes, "attempts to revive David Piper’s ill-founded suggestion of 1964 and 1982 that the Cobbe portrait portrays not William Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Overbury (March 20). Piper claimed that an “early inventory” of the Ellenborough collection, sold in 1947....."

The snows of largely irrelevant facts and dates continue to fly as Wells urges his readers to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

"[P]erceived resemblance unsupported by documentary evidence is a naive (though natural) basis for identification," Wells writes. "Different people can look alike."

So, let's see... there's an engraving of Sir Thomas Overbury that says it's an engraving of Sir Thomas Overbury. And there's a miniature that says its sitter is Sir Thomas Overbury. Both of these pieces of documentary evidence have the same face as the Cobbe portrait of "Shakespeare." (Not going to rehash the previous posting that makes this straightforward case.)

But, to quote an old sage, your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.

Er... well, except when it comes to noticing some interesting similarities between the Cobbe portrait and the Droeshout engraving in the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio.

Wells continues:

"Duncan-Jones waves away our suggestion that the Cobbe portrait was the basis for Droeshout’s 1623 engraving, where the sitter is only slightly less richly dressed. Certainly Droeshout appears to have simplified the image, updated the collar, and given Shakespeare less hair, possibly reflecting his later appearance. He was keen enough to catch the cast in Shakespeare’s left eye, not present in the Overbury portrait. But engravers commonly simplified and updated... Compositionally, the 1623 engraving and the Cobbe portrait match perfectly.

And there you have it. The Droeshout and the Cobbe match one another perfectly. So says the good professor, anyway.

Remember, the Cobbe portrait hasn't even been shown to the public yet. The Cobbe's official unveiling, at an exhibition in Stratford-upon-Avon, is still 25 days away.

Shall we compare the mounting bluster to a summer's breeze? It's certainly getting drafty in here.

The Skeptical Enquirer

This week the literary blog "The Muffin Post" published a careful and skeptical review of "Shakespeare" By Another Name. "In sum," the reviewer Bruce Lacey writes, "Trust no one. It appears there are good reasons to take the de Vere hypothesis seriously, and also good reasons to be skeptical of it."

Fair enough. Can't argue with a thoughtful, skeptical point of view. Just so long as that same skepticism is applied to the other side too.

Overbury Overdrive, pt. 4: What she said

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
     --Trinculo, The Tempest

I'm pleased to report that much of what I wanted to say about the "Cobbe Portrait of Shakespeare" has now been stated by the widely respected (orthodox) Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones in this week's edition of the Times Literary Supplement.

It's not the first time I've nodded in agreement with her -- while, of course, still begging to differ on the slight question of who wrote the plays and poems we're all fawning over. ("Shakespeare" By Another Name's endnotes reference Duncan-Jones's work more than a few times.)

The upshot of her piece: The Stratford Birthplace Trust's April 23 unveiling of the "new Shakespeare portrait" is now, already, an embarrassment. The "Cobbe Portrait of Shakespeare" is actually the Cobbe Portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury. The question that remains is Will the Cobbe's supporters admit defeat gracefully?

I actually hope not. Because I'm not yet convinced that Stanley Wells and his Birthplace Trust cohorts are wrong when they argue that one of these Overbury portraits may have been the original for the famous 1623 Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare in the First Folio. (They, of course, still operate under the assumption that the Cobbe portrait is the new face of the Bard.)

Seems I've got a dog in both fights.

Here, by the way, are the money quotes from Duncan-Jones's article:

"The “Cobbe” portrait is a splendid painting, whose sparkling colours have benefited from recent restoration. The italic inscription at the top of the picture, “Principum Amicitias!” – “the leagues of princes!” – appears too large in scale, as well as highly unusual in its deployment of an exclamation mark, and was perhaps added later. The “Shakespeare” claim does not rely crucially on the authenticity of this motto from Horace’s Odes, II.i, though the authors of the brochure remark that “it can be no coincidence that Horace’s words were addressed to a playwright”. It might have been helpful to examine the picture’s reverse for further inscriptions or telling marks, but at the preview the back was veiled with a brown paper screen. But the man portrayed, with his elaborate lace collar and gold embroidered doublet, appears far too grand and courtier-like to be [the Stratford] Shakespeare.

...

"Last week Dr Tarnya Cooper, the sixteenth-century curator at the National Portrait Gallery, declared herself “very sceptical” about Wells’s claim, and remarked that “if anything . . . both works [the Folger and Cobbe portraits] are more likely to represent the courtier Sir Thomas Overbury”. A suggestion made long ago by David Piper that yet another version of the portrait, the “Ellenborough”, is of Overbury, is waved away as “mistaken” by the authors of the brochure. Yet the views of experts such as Cooper and Piper cannot be dismissed so easily.

....

"[Overbury] was an arrogant and stubborn young man. According to Aubrey, it was “a great question who was the proudest”, Sir Walter Ralegh or Sir Thomas Overbury – but opinion favoured Overbury. As a King’s minion’s minion, Overbury’s status was more fragile than he knew. Unrelenting in his opposition to Carr’s proposed marriage to Frances, née Howard (who, at the time the match was proposed, was still married to the third Earl of Essex), he refused various diplomatic postings offered to him as escape routes. On September 21, 1613, hours after telling Sir Henry Wotton how well his courtly career was going, Overbury was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. He had succeeded in offending both the Queen (at whom he and Carr are said to have laughed mockingly through a window) and the King. Four months later he was dead. Whether this was the result of repeated attempts to poison him, or, as Considine suggests, the ministrations of court physicians, we shall never know. But the upshot was that Sir Thomas Overbury immediately became a celebrity, his colourful story nourishing both court gossip and penny-dreadfuls. Many of his former friends and allies, including Southampton, would have wanted to possess visual mementoes of their friend. He was also mourned by members of his large family, and especially by his devoted father, Sir Nicholas. Perhaps it was he who commissioned the portrait later given to the Bodleian. It may have been painted by the younger Gheeraerts, possibly on the basis of an Isaac Oliver miniature, as hinted by the blue background. With its solid provenance – first with the Overbury family, then with the library – the “Bodleian” Overbury appears to be the “prime” version of which the “Cobbe” portrait and the rest are fine, but smaller, copies. The lack of later copies is readily explained. National events occurred in the mid-century that were even more sensational than Overbury’s murder."

[Thanks to reader R.W. for the tip.]

Overbury Overdrive, pt. 3: The (modern day) back-story

Here is a fascinating interview Channel 4 (UK) did with the family owner of the Cobbe portrait of "Shakespeare," the art restorer Alec Cobbe. An affable chap. After the 35 minute mark, the interviewer asks a few questions about the possible Thomas Overbury identification. And Cobbe says, essentially, that facial features can't be used to identify a sitter in a portrait.

But rewind the tape by about ten minutes, and there's Cobbe arguing for his portrait being a "Shakespeare" portrait by appealing to the similarities between his painting and the Droeshaut engraving of Shakespeare.

So there you have it. It can when you want it to, but it can't when you don't.