Oxfordian News

There comes a point in the history of the development of any new idea when the protagonists of what is euphemistically known as the “old guard,” consciously or unconsciously, paradoxically concede defeat, in what could be their finest hour, by adopting a stance towards their critics which reveals a fundamental failing of both morality and method.

In the history of the Shakespearean question, that pivotal moment arrived in Stephen Greenblatt’s September 4 salvo against the anti-Stratfordians in response to William Niederkorn’s critical review of his recent biography, Will in the World, and endorsement of Mark Anderson’s Oxfordian biography, “Shakespeare” By Another Name.

Rather than respond to the substance of Niederkorn’s critique, Greenblatt’s letter is a wholesale assault on the pedagogical movement to open the classroom to discussions of authorship, so that students can themselves explore the plausibility and implications of alternative authorship scenarios. This, assures Professor Greenblatt, is “exactly equivalent to current arguments that ‘intelligent design’ be taught alongside evolution.”

“Exact equivalence” is a difficult proposition to establish in the humanities, but leaving aside that little touch of epistemic dogma, we wondered how the good Professor Greenblatt could possibly hope to establish a legitimate comparison between the two controversies.

And then it hit us. The first sentence of Greenblatt’s own Will in the World begins like this: “Let us imagine that Shakespeare found himself from boyhood fascinated by language” (our italics).

What if your biology textbook began, “Let us imagine young fish finding themselves fascinated by the land near shallow waters. Through the exercise of will power they eventually transform their young flippers into mature feet, beginning the ascent which led to full bipedalism and the triumph of Homo sapiens. The fossil record proves the truth of this theory. Only malcontents and followers of the late Charles Darwin continue to defy the obvious.”

One can only hope that a science founded on this kind of unexamined faith in “will power” and relentless antagonism towards alternative perspectives, would inspire rational criticism. Hopefully, a movement for reform, encouraging both model building and empirical investigation, would eventually sponsor a new paradigm, based on the common sense perception that will power does not transform flippers into feet any more than it produces, sans education, experience and sheer grit, great literary works.

Whether Professor Greenblatt understands it or not, this is exactly what has been happening, largely outside traditional academic circles, in the eighty-five years since J. T. Looney published “Shakespeare” Identified.

It is ironic but also predictable that few orthodox scholars of note have shown an inclination to keep themselves apprised of the development of the diverse scholarship which has responded to the theory since Looney’s original articulation.

Greenblatt’s analogy to advocates of intelligent design may be a convenient means to deflect the criticisms of Niederkorn and a host of other readers who find Greenblatt’s book unpersuasive. As such it is objectionable chiefly because of its astonishing absence of self awareness. Many besides Mr. Niederkorn have felt that Greenblatt’s own speculative methodologies as a biographer are indefensible � and anyone who has read Greenblatt’s book with an ounce of skepticism should recognize that he is not in any position to lead an orthodox vangaurd against the nonconforming huns and visigoths of Shakespearean studies.

More troubling, and indicative of a failing deeper than any seen in his book, is Greenblatt’s ready recourse to offensive analogies such as likening anti-Stratfordians to �Holocaust deniers.� In the middle ages, and up through the Renaissance, powerful interests (including Universities such as Harvard) used inquisition to stamp out heresy. In the modern world, it seems, more efficient devices have been invented.

Here at the Shakespeare Fellowship, we say a Kaddish for the dead.