Fictional Shakespeares and Portraits of Genius 9781641892452

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RECREATIONAL SHAKESPEARE

Further Information and Publications https://www.arc-humanities.org/catalogue/?series=recreational-shakespeare

FICTIONAL SHAKESPEARES AND PORTRAITS OF GENIUS

by

ANNALISA CASTALDO

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter One. “By the art of known and feeling sorrows”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Empathic Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The Tortured Shakespeare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Shakespeare the Detective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Chapter Two. “I know not seems”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Aloof Shakespeares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Cruel Shakespeares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Shakespeare the Madman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Shakespeare as God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Chapter Three. “We are spirits of another sort”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Early Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Time-Travel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Fairy Gift. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Chapter Four. “I am not what I am” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Positive or Neutral Portraits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Christopher Marlowe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Francis Bacon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Edward de Vere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Anonymous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Afterword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 The Shakespeare Code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

All is True. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Biblio­graphy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the unwavering support of Michael P. Jensen, who has been an enthusiastic proponent of this project since it was a conversation in a coffee house. I would like to thank the librarians at Widener University, who never blinked at my interlibrary loan requests for children’s books, romance novels, or comic books. A huge thank you to Pam Detrixhe for her help with editing and Erika Gaffney for her saintly patience. A special thank you and unending debt of gratitude to Abby Jingo Lang who lovingly bullied me into believing I had the right to hand off other responsibilities (and who took on many of those responsibilities herself) in the months leading up to the final deadline.

INTRODUCTION

The First Folio opens with a portrait of Shakespeare, somewhat aristocratically dressed, staring at the reader with a slightly sideways glance. Across from this portrait is a poem, “To the Reader” which is worth quoting in full: This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut Wherein the Graver had a strife With Nature, to out-doo the life: O could he but have drawne his wit As well in brasse, as he hath hit His face, the print would then surpasse All that was ever writ in brasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

This poem accomplishes several things. It off-handedly assures the reader that the likeness is very like and at the same time declares that what matters is not the portrait, but the words—readers are directed to look on the “book,” not the picture, if they wish to understand who Shakespeare really was. If the engraver could have “drawne his wit” as well as his “face” then the print would be a true representation (beyond what any other print has managed) of Shakespeare; since that is impossible, the reader should look to Shakespeare’s words to find the truth of “his wit.” While the movement of the poem may seem to be away from the person and character of Shakespeare the man, and towards the words of Shakespeare the writer, the poem’s very existence, and the full-page portrait of the man, undermines the apparent message. We are, in fact, directed to look at both the portrait and the book. The slippage between portrait and words appears more strongly when the poem claims that if the engraver could draw wit, the portrait would “surpasse / all that was ever writ in brasse” (emphasis added), conflating writing and engraving, words and pictures, work and author. The suggestion, therefore, is that the wit is contained in both the plays Shakespeare authored and in his physical body. This conflation of Shakespeare with his works continues in the dedication, where Heminge and Condell state, “But it is not our province, who only gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is you that reade him” (emphasis added). While the first sentence draws a distinction between the works and the man, the second sentence collapses it, offering the audience not just the works, but Shakespeare himself to read. Admittedly, this type of dedicatory material is not unique. Ben Jonson’s collected works also open with a portrait of the man and there are several poems that applaud Jonson as writer and man. But whereas Shakespeare’s portrait is presented as a life drawing (the dedication poem assures us it is very life-like), Jonson’s is clearly meant to evoke classic poets—he is crowned with a laurel wreath and contained within a frame that is itself mounted on a pedestal. One of the accompanying poems claims

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Introduction

For Lyrick sweetness in Ode, or Sonnet To Ben the best of Wits might vail their Bonnet. His Genius justly in an Entheat Rage, Oft lasht the dull-sworn Factors for the Stage;…

The man is here described, but there is not the same sort of overlap between man and work evident in the material about Shakespeare. Jonson is described as having wit and skill, and using them for specific purposes (lashing the dull) rather than actually being wit; instead of collapsing the distance between work and man, the introductory materials widen it. Jonson is perhaps more humanized in that he is very much grounded in his time, whereas Shakespeare is described as living beyond his age, but again a comparison with another folio makes the difference clear. The collected works of Beaumont and Fletcher also have a portrait as a frontispiece, but in this case the picture makes no attempt to be of the living man—instead Fletcher is presented as a bust with toga-like draping over the shoulders and a wreath. Here the author (despite the title page, only Fletcher is pictured) is presented as a type rather than an actual person. Shakespeare, as early as the First Folio, is presented as occupying an unusual middle ground, neither idealized as an artist nor completely fleshed out as a person. Readers are told to ignore the picture and find the man in his works, but by conflating man and work, Shakespeare the man thus becomes available for future generations to imagine as a flesh and blood person. This in turn allows readers to see their version of Shakespeare as capturing some essential truth about the man that explains the power and longevity of the works. A mere seven years after his death, Shakespeare has already become merged with his writing, so that one reflects and embodies the other. To be sure, Shakespeare is not the only literary figure to have an afterlife as a fictional character. Dickens, especially, shows up in his own person in multiple venues, and female writers (Austen, Dickinson, Woolf) are often the subjects of fictionalized bio­graphies. Nonetheless, Shakespeare is materially different, both in the range and number of times his person appears and in the flexibility of his meaning. Whereas other writers are fictionalized in approximately the same way each time, the facts of Shakespeare’s actual life are obscure enough that he can be used to explore many different topics and embody many different metaphors. He can represent men pulled away from family duties by the longing for adventure, or the poor fit between creative brilliance and small-town life. He can embody the American dream of upward mobility, before there was an America, or the glories of England’s past. He can be a saint or a sinner, or both. Consider again Shakespeare’s portrait. As Erin Blake notes, “Portraiture is supposedly about verisimilitude, but a successful portrait is less about replicating someone or something in another medium than about meeting expectations. Portraits depict what we want to see.”1 The portrait from the First Folio is not the only portrait of Shakespeare, although it is the most iconic. Since 1640, artists and scholars have been modifying Shakespeare’s portrait to ensure he continues to reflect the sensibilities of the current age. Sometimes this is merely a matter of updating details—Marshall’s 1640 portrait 1  Blake, “Shakespeare, Portraiture, Painting and Prints,” 409. The full citation is in the Biblio­graphy at the end; I follow this practice throughout.



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gives Shakespeare a laurel branch to hold, for example, while the Chandos portrait provides more relaxed, informal clothes. Others literally redraw Shakespeare to fit different norms. The 1770 portrait included in Charles Jennen’s edition of King Lear, for example, presents a very different man than the one pictured in the First Folio. Here Shakespeare acquires his iconic gold earring, as well as more hair. He wears an elaborate lace ruff and his face is more angular; in total, he looks much more like an aristocrat. Then, in 2002, the “discovery” of the Sanders Portrait gave the world a young, sexy Shakespeare, with a widow’s peak just beginning to hint at later baldness and a devilish Mona Lisatype smile. Despite controversy over the attribution of the portrait, the Sanders portrait has been embraced because it gives the modern world a modern Shakespeare. In each case, the physical representation of Shakespeare shifts just enough to make the man recognizably “like us” without being overt enough of a change to suggest there is no reality behind the portrait. As Blake notes, “Objectively, buck teeth and a heavy unibrow would not change the beauty of the words that Shakespeare left behind, but the contrast between that face and the words opens up an uncomfortable gap.”2 This urge to close an apparent or assumed gap between artist and art is especially powerful in the case of Shakespeare, who has, since the eighteenth century, been widely (almost universally) considered a vital cultural touchstone. Portraits are limited, both by being single and static images, and by having to maintain some connection to historical reality. Someone presenting a portrait of Shakespeare with pointed elf ears, or wearing modern dress could not pretend the portrait represented anything like the historically accurate appearance of the man William Shakespeare. Fictionalized characterizations, on the other hand, whether visual or textual, have much greater license; they need only present their audience with something that seems to get at the essence of the man, playing with the details as they wish. Play they do. Shakespeare has appeared in ads, TV shows, movies, art, and literature from Sir Walter Scott to Salman Rushdie. In addition to many, many nonfiction bio­graphies, there are fictionalized bio­graphies, not only of Shakespeare, but about and from the point of view of Shakespeare’s wife, his daughters, and his dog. Why do so many people want to adapt not the works of Shakespeare but the person, to reimagine his life and personality? This is hardly the first work to note that Shakespeare the character has had a rich and varied afterlife. Other authors who have tackled the fictional Shakespeare have focused on categorizing these appearances (Maurice O’Sullivan’s Shakespeare’s Other Lives, 1997) or the ways in which Shakespeare works as a mirror for different historical periods (Paul Franssen’s Shakespeare’s Literary Lives, 2016). These works are invaluable, particularly Franssen’s study of fictional bio­graphies, which powerfully demonstrate how the presentation of myths about Shakespeare’s life (such as the claim that he poached deer or played the Ghost of King Hamlet) tell us more about the particular adaptor and time period than about Shakespeare himself. Even so, I wish to consider a different reason Shakespeare manifests so often: He has become a kind of synecdoche of and test case for creative genius. While bio­graphies strive to understand the historical Shakespeare and what influenced him, fictional versions of Shakespeare allow writers and readers 2  Blake, “Shakespeare, Portraiture, Painting and Prints,” 423.

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Introduction

to reflect on how genius comes about, what motivates or drives someone to create art that endures, and most importantly, what genius actually is. As Douglas Lanier notes, “Shakespeare is popular culture’s favourite symbol for the principle of literary authorship, and his appearance brings into play related issues, among them the origins and nature of genius.”3 The definition of genius has changed over the millennia. At first, in ancient Rome, the word was used to designate a guiding spirit or deity of a specific person, family (gens), or place. Genius meant protection and inspiration as well as a sense of personal connection between a single person or family and a being of the supernatural world. Yet right from the start there was also a sense of creativity; genius is linked to the Latin verb genui, which means to bring into being or create. It is also related to the Greek word for birth. Thus genius, from its origins, was linked to creativity and the metaphorical birthing of new ideas. Because the “genius,” the protective deity, of powerful or extraordinary men was considered to be motivating or at the very least intimately connected with their accomplishments, the word quickly came to have a secondary meaning of exceptional talent and inspiration. The dual history of the word echoes today as different societies or segments of society struggle to pin down where genius comes from—is it an inherent quality unique to the individual who displays it, or is it wholly or in part due to outside factors? Is it genetic or environmental? What role, if any, do family life, education, exposure, and life experiences play in the shaping of a genius? In addition to the question of what creates or causes genius, the definition of what exactly genius is has always been and continues to remain fluid and contradictory. In Volume Two of Encyclopédie (1757), Jean-Francois de Saint-Lambert claims Genius is the expansiveness of the intellect, the force of imagination and the activity of the soul. The way in which one receives his ideas is dependent on the way in which one remembers them. Man is thrown into the universe with more or less vivid feelings which belong to all mankind. Most people only experience strong feelings when the impression of those objects has an immediate effect on their needs or their tastes. Everything that is foreign to their passion, all that is without a connection to their way of living or is not apparent to them, or is only seen for a moment without being felt and to be forgotten forever. The man of genius is he whose soul is more expansive and struck by the feelings of all others; interested by all that is in nature never to receive an idea unless it evokes a feeling; everything excites him and on which nothing is lost. 4

Here genius is described as simply more of what is innate to all people—the man of genius is “more expansive” in both feeling and remembering experiences; “everything” touches him, unlike ordinary men who forget in “a moment” anything that is “foreign to their passion.” Yet by the end of the entry, genius is no longer a human trait, but is instead described more like the original definition of a supernatural force: “Within the Arts as in the sciences or in business, genius seems to alter the nature of things, its char3  Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, 114.

4  Ascribed to Jean-François de Saint-Lambert (ascribed), “Genius” in The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, translated by Glaus. Originally published as “Génie,” Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 37 vols. (Paris, 1751–80), 7:582–84.



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acter expands over all it touches, it bursts over the past and the present and lights the future.”5 Here genius seems to act independently of its human vessel, interacting with the world directly and possessing its own character. In his description of genius in literature, Saint-Lambert mentions Shakespeare along with Racine, Homer, and Virgil. Shakespeare’s genius shines like “lightening throughout a long night.”6 This interesting metaphor is followed by “Racine is always beautiful,” suggesting, perhaps, that Shakespeare has mere flashes of genius compared to the French Racine who is continuous in the level of his creation. During this time, Shakespeare was admired almost grudgingly, especially by the French, who faulted his work for neglecting the unities, but could not help but admire some of his verse. Saint-Lambert, unlike many later authors, is not interested in Shakespeare as a human being. Instead, he describes Shakespeare’s genius as a natural phenomenon: lightening, which can be destructive, but can also show ordinary people glimpses of the world that they (trapped in “a long night”) cannot see on their own. The idea Saint-Lambert puts forth, that “rules and laws of taste will only be obstacles to genius,” shows up in other views of genius. Kant, for example (in Kritik der Urteilskraft / The Critique of Judgment, §46–§49, e.g., §46), defined genius as that which is so fully original it need not be taught. However, not all views of genius are so positive. In the twentieth century, psycho­logy has suggested that genius is linked to various mental illnesses, ranging from depression to schizophrenia, and earlier philosophers, such as Schopenhauer, believed the very traits that made someone a genius made that person unable to live comfortably in the mundane world. Some strains of the Romantic view of genius suggested a similar inability to function successfully in day-to-day life and this view of genius, especially creative genius, has become increasingly popular in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Rock stars like Kurt Cobain, painters like Edvard Munch (who claimed his art only existed because of his mental illnesses), and writers like Sylvia Plath, among many other examples, have fed a popular belief that great genius grows out of mental instability. Perhaps this idea is so strong because there is something comforting in the belief that genius means giving up the ordinary but rewarding joys of normal life. Even though Shakespeare has been recognized as a genius (whatever that means) for centuries, we will never know exactly how he was viewed during his lifetime. What scraps of information we have do not seem to suggest universal awe. Greene famously describes him as a plagiarist, decking himself out in others’ words. His retirement to Stratford rather than staying in London and in the world of the theatre may indicate that he saw himself as a craftsman, working to order for pay, rather than an artist, and perhaps others agreed. However, as James Shapiro points out in Contested Will, there is a great deal of evidence that from at least the midpoint of his career, Shakespeare was praised as one of the best writers of the times. Aside from written praise by various writers, there is the simple fact that the most well-respected and highly praised act5  Saint-Lambert (ascribed), “Genius.”  6  Saint-Lambert (ascribed), “Genius.” 

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ing company—The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who, when James ascended to the throne, became The King’s Men—trusted Shakespeare to be their house playwright. Moreover, Shakespeare’s name generally appeared on the title page of his published plays after about 1598, indicating that part of what booksellers thought would attract a buyer was his name. Whatever may have been true during his life, shortly upon his death, his works were recognized as worthy of special treatment; his was only the second set of plays to be published in expensive folio form, and they were the first to have a folio devoted entirely to drama. After his death, Jonson, Milton, and others paid poetic tribute to his works, and Charles I is said to have read Shakespeare while awaiting his execution. His reputation only increased after the Restoration, and Bardolotry was full blown by the time David Garrick staged the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769. Shakespeare’s genius—or Shakespeare as genius—thus has a long history. When Shakespeare became recognized as the national poet of England, he also became the example of poetic excellence for much of the world. Due to the historical accidents of the British Empire and the United States’ rise as a twentieth century superpower, English is an important language for a great deal of the world. Regardless of what the native language might be, British texts are taught and studied the world over, not just by academic specialists but by generations of school children. In addition, the continuing presence of the plays on stage (and in movies, books, and occasionally television shows) adds to the universal awareness of Shakespeare, not just the works, but the man. He has come to function as a shorthand for genius and therefore a way to explore what a particular age or culture means by the term “genius.” Indeed, “by recognizing that Shakespeare’s significance springs from a continuing contest of values and interests, we better understand how we in the present actively perpetuate and intervene in the cultural afterlife of Shakespeare.”7 In this book I have sorted the variety of ways the idea of genius is defined, explored, and explained into three major schools of thought. I argue that these approaches inform four distinct ways Shakespeare is portrayed as a fictional character. These are not necessarily scholarly approaches, because my interest is in how Shakespeare functions culturally as an explanation for or example of genius, rather than any scientific study of the socio­logical or bio­logical origins of genius. Similarly, I have not tried to firmly nail down the slippery idea of genius itself; part of what makes Shakespeare such an excellent test case is that almost no one questions his credentials. This makes it possible to work backwards—given that Shakespeare is unquestionably “a genius” there is automatic justification for pointing to some aspect of his work or life to explain what genius is. In Chapter One I explore the idea presented by Saint-Lambert in the Encyclopedia— genius is the expression of greater awareness of and engagement with the world at large. Shakespeare becomes the exemplar of that mind which is excited by everything and which forgets nothing. Although this is not the language used until the twentieth century, this is a view of genius that is, at heart, utterly open to difference, embracing and accepting all manner of humanity. When Saint-Lambert defines genius as finding nothing foreign, we might think of Shakespeare’s sympathetic, three-dimensional por7  Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, 21.



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traits of Shylock, Othello, and Cleopatra. Works which present a fictional Shakespeare interested in and empathetic towards all the people he meets appeal to this idea of a genius as one who deeply understands and thus is sympathetic to all kinds of people and experiences. These versions of Shakespeare are universally positive. In Chapter Two I consider an interpretation that is almost opposite to Saint-Lambert’s. Here, genius is some sort of intrinsic aspect of an individual mind, but a mind that is so different from the norm that it creates a barrier to successful interaction with the real world. This is allied to the view of genius as connected to or a manifestation of mental illness or, in modern terms, a non-neurotypical brain. These portraits of Shakespeare stress his separation from the rest of the world; instead of being more fully engaged than the average person, Shakespeare is shown as distanced or removed from everyday concerns. Sometimes this is presented as a positive thing—Shakespeare has access to a purer understanding than everyone else because he is not distracted by mundane concerns. Yet more often those who create the removed Shakespeare stress what genius costs—failed relationships, loneliness, alienation. Within these portraits there is a definite range—sometimes Shakespeare is aloof but surrounded by admiring, even loving, friends. Other times he is entirely isolated, unable to engage with normal life. At the most extreme end Shakespeare is a madman, the plays more real to him than the actual world, his works created out of a kind of artistic schizophrenia or delusion. Chapter Three returns in some ways to the original Roman definition and views of genius as bestowed on Shakespeare by some external force—divine, supernatural, or magical. In these portraits, genius often rides Shakespeare the man, using and controlling him to create poetry and characters that, for some reason, need to exist in the world. This is a favourite approach of late twentieth-century writers, who use Shakespeare to explore everything from mythopoeic ideas of humanity to the Jungian collective unconscious. Further, with the rise of fantasy and science fiction as important genres, Shakespeare works as a symbol for what is special about humanity itself. For example, while Shakespeare never showed up as a fictional character in any of the various Star Trek series, the repeated conceit that watching or acting in his plays, specifically, is a way to understand humanity illuminates the same belief. “The Defector” a third season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, opens with Data performing part of 4.1 from Henry V. Picard has suggested Data will learn how to be human by playing Henry V. The writers of the episode chose Shakespeare in part because viewers will have some familiarity with the works, if not the individual play, but more because those viewers have already learned that Shakespeare’s works are the most perfect representation of humanity available, so perfect they can teach humanity to an android. From the belief in Shakespeare’s perfect understanding of humanity it is a short step to imagine that Shakespeare was gifted with his genius by some outside force, in order to serve as a guide, model, or inspiration for the rest of humanity, throughout the ages. The portraits of Chapter Four, in some ways, are the antithesis of the first three. For as long as there has been an authorship controversy, there have been fictionalized portraits of “the actor Will Shaxspere,” the beard or stand-in for the real genius. Although I find the authorship debate largely pointless, this debate and the fictional portraits it spawns demonstrate the importance of a match between one’s understanding of genius

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and the life of the person gifted with that genius. Shakespeare the middle-class businessman with a grammar school education is so unappealing as a vessel for genius that some people simply cannot accept it. Since the genius of the plays is unquestionable, all that is left to question is the man who supposedly authored them. In this last chapter I look at a range of portraits that present both the actor from Stratford as cover story and the “real” genius hiding behind the name Shakespeare, noting how these works repeat certain tropes and characteristics over and over, for both the fake and the real author of the plays. Indeed, in many ways, this chapter most clearly indicates what genius means to the post-Romantic Western world and how intrinsic concepts such as originality and passion have become to our understanding of genius. In the end, these portraits reinforce the beliefs laid out in Chapter One, by insisting that only personal experience can account for the level of genius people find in Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare’s range of work enables different portraits of the artist and his genius. Those who create a Shakespeare whose genius is based in his intense connection to everyday events or personal emotional experiences tend to focus on earlier plays, and especially Romeo and Juliet. Since love is a universal experience—and since Shakespeare’s sonnets suggest a tortured, adulterous affair—the comedies and Romeo and Juliet can be treated as outgrowths of his personal romances. Plays such as Macbeth, King Lear, or Antony and Cleopatra, while recognized as master works, do not serve this purpose. In addition, creators of these portraits concentrate on Shakespeare’s early years as a way to show how genius arises out of mere talent and events or relationships as he begins to write. In contrast, those writers who want to see Shakespeare as aloof, cut off, or insane focus mainly on the later plays, especially King Lear and sometimes Hamlet; the tortured protagonists of those plays represent Shakespeare’s own tortured mind. Unsurprisingly, the texts that present Shakespeare’s genius as having a divine or supernatural origin tend to focus on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, and The Tempest. Meanwhile, those who support the authorship controversy engage with a sort of “greatest hits” of Shakespeare’s plays, usually reading the plays as containing coded messages about the real identity of the author; a code that only works if many of the less popular plays are ignored. In each case, creators of fictional Shakespeares ignore large chunks of the canon and often revise chrono­logy, sometimes drastically. They also, almost universally, ignore the source material that Shakespeare relied on, preferring to locate the source for the plays in Shakespeare’s life or purely in his mind. This reflects the post-Romantic obsession with originality, something that the early modern period did not value in nearly the same way. Since sources are rarely introduced to students or casual readers today, it is easy to present the plays as arising solely from Shakespeare’s own experiences or imaginings. It also explains why different versions of genius focus on different plays— each writer uses the plays that best match the portrait of genius they wish to create and ignores all other works. This book focuses on popular culture artifacts—mass-market novels, Hollywood movies, comic books, and television. While it might seem that a work interested in unpacking the concept of genius might look to high culture and academia for answers, part of what makes Shakespeare such a perfect figure for this exploration is the way



Introduction

9

his work and his character straddle worlds. The plays continue to show up in everything from TV commercials to game show questions and when Shakespeare himself appears, it is almost never as a stuffy academic aware of his own greatness. Fictional Shakespeares can be absent-minded and dreamy, overly emotional, cut off, or practical and compassionate, but they are rarely great “artistes” keenly aware of their own brilliance (and when they are, it is almost always in service of the belief that someone else wrote the plays). Genius, in this case, is best understood as a popular conception, one that informs and is used by everyone in a particular culture, rather than the purview of philosophers and psycho­logists. I want to stress that not all fictional portraits of Shakespeare are automatically an exploration of genius. Because he is so well known, so instantly recognizable, Shakespeare is a convenient mythic figure who can be used for a variety of purposes, not all about artistic genius. The various retellings of young Will the deer poacher, for example, are almost never interested in Shakespeare the genius, instead presenting him as a Robin Hood figure, morally and politically on the side of the poor worker rather than the wealthy landowner.8 Stories told from the perspective of Anne, such as Robert Nye’s Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works and Rosemary Anne Sisson’s Will in Love, or one of the children, such as Peter Hassinger’s Shakespeare’s Daughter and Grace Tiffany’s My Father Had a Daughter assume his genius but focus instead on his absences from Stratford to order to explore what others suffer when a husband or father cares more for his work than his family. For example, although Will in Love covers Shakespeare’s life from the day he meets Anne Hathaway until 1607 (the death of his brother Edmund), it is not until fifty pages from the end that anyone names one of his plays, and then it is a passing reference to the popularity of “Oldcastle,” which leads directly to his mother complaining that making fun of a famous man might get William in trouble. There is no sense of what Shakespeare’s inner life is like and it is not his genius but his absences that divide him from his family—he could as easily be a soldier, always off fighting, or a merchant, gone overseas for months or years at a time, as a playwright living in London. The most recent entry in this category, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague suggests (at the very end) that Shakespeare’s creation of Hamlet is motivated by the loss of his son. Apart from that connection, Shakespeare is not only mostly absent from the novel, he is never named; instead, he is described as John’s son, Agnes’ (O’Farrell’s name for Anne) husband, the twins’ father. The story may build to the writing and performance of Hamlet, but like other books in this category, it is really about the people Shakespeare left behind—the wife and children who had to live (and die) without him. Sometimes, Shakespeare’s appearance is so brief that exploration is impossible— Shakespeare is presented as a recognizable representative of creative genius, but he is symbolic and static: a statement rather than a discussion. Sir Walter Scott’s injection of Shakespeare into Kenilworth (appearing as an adult and an already respected writer when the historical Shakespeare would have been, at most, twelve) is the most extreme example of this. Shakespeare is greeted by Leicester as “wild Will!,” whose Venus and Adonis has so charmed Philip Sydney and others that “we will have thee hanged as the 8  Franssen, “The Adventures of William Hood.”

10

Introduction

veriest wizard in Europe!”9 The narrator then comments, “The Player bowed, and the Earl nodded and passed on—so that age would have told the tale—in ours, perhaps we might say the immortal had done homage to the mortal.”10 This ahistorical view of Shakespeare—the narrator pulling out of the story to reflect on the irony that the relative importance of these two men would shortly and for the rest of history be entirely reversed—certainly presents Shakespeare as not just a genius but The Genius. That is all that is offered—there is no exploration, discussion, or explanation of that genius. Shakespeare appears in the novel because Scott cannot resist bringing him in, but he is not the focus and thus his portrait is flattened so much that he has no character at all— he does not even speak. Similarly, many examples that feature Shakespeare for a brief period often assume but do not explore his genius. As Paul Franssen notes in Shakespeare’s Literary Lives, before 1800 Shakespeare appeared almost exclusively as a ghost and “a regal ghost, whose authority is not to be doubted.”11 His appearance as a ghost immediately underscores his authority as a genius “poet of Nature” (which was never in doubt anyway) and delivers warnings to, mourning for, or approval about the state of the theatre’s divine legitimacy. In none of these early, ghostly portraits is there any focus on how Shakespeare became a genius or how his genius functions. It exists as a simple fact, a fact which can therefore provide blessing or condemnation of a current theatrical, political, or personal agenda. Finally, some portraits offer a Shakespeare who is actually not a genius. Some writers resurrect Shakespeare specifically to go against the grain, to dethrone him. However, in many cases the clear desire of the writer to present a Shakespeare who is not a genius often gets derailed by the power of the cultural belief that he is the very embodiment of genius. An excellent example is Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Immortal Bard.” A physicist tells an English professor that he has developed time travel and can bring people from the past to the present. After bringing forward scientists such as Archimedes and Newton, and having to send them home when they could not adjust, the physicist brings forward Shakespeare because “I needed someone with a universal mind, someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries away from his own time.”12 The joke is when confronted with the reverence and the extent of the analysis his works receive, Shakespeare is dumbfounded and insists that the artist is just a craftsman: “He wrote his plays as quickly as he could. He said he had to on account of the deadlines. He wrote Hamlet in less than six months. The plot was an old one. He just polished it up.”13 The physics professor delivers the punch line to the joke after Shakespeare enrolls in the English professor’s course, “Why, you poor simpleton. You flunked him!”14 Underneath the joke is the fact that Shakespeare, it turns out, is the only one 9  Scott, Kenilworth, 168.

10  Scott, Kenilworth, 168.

11  Franssen, Shakespeare’s Literary Lives, 12. 12  Asimov, “The Immortal Bard.” 13  Asimov, “The Immortal Bard.” 14  Asimov, “The Immortal Bard.”



Introduction

11

who is smart enough to know that Shakespeare’s plays are not great works of art, but instead rush jobs intended to entertain the masses. He is the only person the physicist has brought forward who seems able to adjust to living in a completely different century. Rather than any inability to live in the modern world, he asked to be sent home because of the humiliation of being failed for his opinions of his own work. This is a very different response than that of Archimedes and Newton, the other two geniuses brought into the present, who did not have the “universal mind” necessary to adapt to a radically different world. A second example of sparks of genius creeping into a work that resolutely sets out to prove Shakespeare was not at all a genius is George Bernard Shaw’s short play “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.” Shaw was famously critical of Shakespeare, whom he considered a personal and professional rival. Shaw imagines a Shakespeare whose main focus is on seducing women (he arrives at Whitehall for a tryst with Mary Fitton and ends up trying to seduce the disguised Elizabeth I), and who continually writes down other people’s words to use in plays. The guard at Whitehall accidentally offers him “Frailty thy name is woman” and “a snapper up of trifles,” to which Shakespeare responds “Immortal phrase! This man is greater than I.”15 When Elizabeth says, “Season your admiration for a while,” Shakespeare starts to write it down but misremembers it as “Suspend your admiration for a space,” which Elizabeth calls “A very vile jingle of esses” and corrects him.16 Thus far Shakespeare seems next-door to a plagiarist and rude to boot. Shakespeare defends the title of poet to the still disguised Elizabeth, cleverly using Christianity to bolster his claim. “I tell you there is no word yet coined and no melody yet sung that is extravagant and majestical enough for the glory that lovely words can reveal. It is heresy to deny it: have you not been taught that in the beginning was the Word?”17 When Elizabeth reveals herself, Shakespeare is not the least bit unnerved to find out he has been flirting with the Queen of England. He tells her that she is no true Tudor and that she holds her throne not because of her wit or wisdom, but because “Nature hath made you the most wondrous piece of beauty the age hath seen,” a backhanded compliment that nonetheless cools Elizabeth’s wrath.18 Further, when Elizabeth accuses him of being cruel to Mary he responds, “I am not cruel, madam: but you know the fable of Jupiter and Semele. I could not help my lightenings scorching her.”19 Perhaps Shaw means Shakespeare to seem ridiculously conceited with this comparison, but since we have just seen him win over the Virgin Queen with his words, the claim actually rings true, more so when Shakespeare then turns to the question of establishing a national theatre (the real point of Shaw’s play). Elizabeth says that such a theatre will not be possible for more than three hundred years and adds, “Now it may be that by then your works will be dust 15  Shaw, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 94.

16  Shaw, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 96. 17  Shaw, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 97. 18  Shaw, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 99.

19  Shaw, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 100.

12

Introduction

also,” and Shakespeare responds “They will stand, madam: fear not for that.”20 Despite Shaw’s attempts to parody Shakespeare, he ends up being as forward-thinking (wishing for a theatre supported by the government so it could support experimental works) and as brilliant at word play as any portrait that sets out to seriously explore Shakespeare’s genius. Thus, some aspect of genius often shows up in most fictional Shakespeares, regardless of the author’s desire, but I am not therefore claiming that each and every fictional portrait of Shakespeare represents a creator’s attempt to explore or explain how that genius came to be, and what the effects of being such a genius are. Nonetheless, many of the short stories, novels, comics, and movies that present Shakespeare in the flesh do explicitly exist in order to explore this question—if we take as given that Shakespeare is a genius, what can we learn about genius itself by bringing him to life?

20  Shaw, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 102.

Chapter One

“BY THE ART OF KNOWN AND FEELING SORROWS” By far the most common portrayal of Shakespeare’s genius is that of a man who notices and absorbs everything around him, spinning all the momentary stuff of life into timeless works of art. Part of this is based in the plays themselves—the richness and specificity of the language suggests that Shakespeare must have had a great deal of information about a large range of subjects at his fingertips. Hamlet’s remark about the skull the Gravedigger throws up is just one example of this “Why might not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? … his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries” (Hamlet 5.1.90–93, 95–96).1 This view of genius is enormously attractive, since it is a genius that the average person can aspire to. It is a view that takes traits common to everyone, and insists that simply amplifying those traits is enough to create genius. Especially since the late twentieth century, there has been a strong belief that training oneself to pay attention to and be interested in everything will inevitably lead to increased brain power, which will then inevitably lead to creative or innovative thoughts and works. Advice about how to “become a genius” litters the Internet; one article states, “a genius is someone who is capable of achieving things the average person can’t because a genius sees the world in ways the average person can’t process” and offers three tips to “become a genius in just 30 minutes a day.”2 The idea is to “interact with something new every day” to see the world in ways that are substantially different from the average person. Another article offers: “get curious about life” “be open to opportunities” and “find your passion” as important elements to becoming a genius.3 Some academic works echo this popular belief, with Darold Treffert talking about how to tap into “the little Rain Man” within us all.4 Berit Brogaard and Kristian Marlow never mention Shakespeare in their book The Superhuman Mind, but they describe the way some people, from birth or injury, “acquired the ability to manipulate information in new, ingenious ways…and they have much to teach us about how we can unlock our own hidden talents and abilities.”5 While some people may have to suffer a brain injury to acquire the skills of Sherlock Holmes or a Rain Man, Brogaard and Marlow believe anyone can learn from their experiences and develop the abilities to notice, remember, and connect information in especially concentrated or new ways. It just takes practice. 1  This and all future references to Shakespeare’s plays are from The Norton Shakespeare.

2  Kownacki, “3 Ways to Become a Genius in Just 30 Minutes a Day.” 3  Mercury blog, “9 Genius Tips How to Be a Genius”. 4  Treffert, Islands of Genius.

5  Brogaard and Marlow, The Superhuman Mind, 2.

14

Chapter One

This is genius domesticated, the idea that genius is not a special rare trait, or more exactly, it is rare only because so few are willing to put in the work, much along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell’s (since disproven but still widely popular) claim that 10,000 hours of practice are not only necessary but also sufficient for mastery of a particular skill or field. Here I deliberately cite popular articles and books rather than scientific studies because what is important here is the general perception of genius, a perception that provides the cultural background in novels and movies. Popular understanding of genius is key for all four chapters, but it is especially vital here, in part because it is the most common view and in part because it is the way that Shakespeare’s genius is most often and most positively presented. Shakespeare, the story goes, came by this level of attention to detail naturally, but that is the only difference between him and us, and that is why, the story goes, his plays continue to live on. He takes things we all experience—lost love, feelings of jealousy, interactions with different people from different classes—and marries those universal experiences to beautiful and specific language in order to create stories, through this combination of the universal and the particular, that speak to everyone. In addition to domesticating genius, this approach also democratizes it. Beyond simply admitting that genius can appear in any social class or economic level, this version of genius demands connection to the world at large. In order to notice and fully understand sailors and servants just as well as kings and lords, Shakespeare must meet with them, rub elbows and trade insults, or at the very least, observe others doing so. Shakespeare himself presents a version of this when he has Prince Hal abandon the court for Boarshead Tavern in part as a deliberate way to win the love of the men he will later lead to war in France. “Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers; and can call them all by their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis. They take it already upon their salvation, that though I be but the prince of Wales, yet I am king of courtesy; and tell me…when I am king of England, I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap.” (Henry IV:1 2.4.6–13).

Hal goes on to describe how he has learned to speak the language of the drawers: “They call drinking deep ‘dyeing scarlet’ and when you breathe in your watering they cry ‘Hem!’ and bid you ‘Play it off!’” (2.4.13–15). To see genius as arising from immersion in all the world has to offer is to reject the advantages of birth and education in favour of passion and openness, a very appealing approach for the modern Western world and part of what supports the belief that Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare himself are at heart democratic or populist. This portrait of creative genius also allows for the muse to be literalized into the world around us—no longer a spirit of invention that visits (or not) certain special individuals, the muse instead becomes the rich variety of everyday life, which most of us are too busy or distracted to notice. It is no accident that so many of these portraits have famous lines from the plays put into the mouths of people Shakespeare interacts with (and why Shakespeare is often described as writing down what people say), so that his work becomes almost a tapestry of his daily experiences. Almost all works starring a fictionalized Shakespeare feature lines woven throughout the text; these lines are there for the double enjoyment of the reader or viewer—first the pleasure of recognizing them



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

15

and second the pleasure of seeing famous lines embedded in the fabric of the fictional world. Who speaks those lines is key. In the works that represent genius endowed by a supernatural force, it is often that force itself that speaks the lines, or the narrator presents them to readers in a disembodied way. In works where the plays are presumed written by someone else, that someone else is almost always the only one who speaks the famous lines (unless, again, they become part of the narrative frame), as a way of linking more closely the words with the “real” author. When Shakespeare is presumed to create his works by pulling from the world at large, the words show up in the mouths of preachers and tavern maids and aristocrats alike, popularizing the fact that Shakespeare borrowed most of his plots and even some of his language from other authors. Instead of reshaping the Brooke poem Romeus and Juliet, for example, the Shakespeare of Shakespeare in Love reshapes his own love life and sentences overheard from a street preacher into the famous lines we all recognize. The ways in which Shakespeare is understood to experience and transmute the stuff of everyday life into poetic genius takes two related but distinct tracks. The first is through the idea of empathy—here the notion of “sweet Will” is married to noticing and valuing everyone and everything and this version of Shakespeare becomes a perfect twentieth century liberal. This is the Shakespeare who can write a sympathetic Shylock or Othello, and create realistic women characters when women were not allowed to act. The second suggests that it is not enough to be open to everyday reality; there must be a physical or emotional challenge, an experience that moves Shakespeare from merely a talented wordsmith to the genius we know. In most cases this experience is falling in love, but other things—a brush with death or religious turmoil—can motivate the shift as well. It is important to note that when a fictional Shakespeare is a secondary character, it is almost always this attention to detail that first demonstrates his genius (a genius that is often assumed by the author and readers). In fact, the genius and the empathic engagement with the world is treated as a given and then used as a character note, one which allows Shakespeare to function in a supportive role to the main character. Because his genius is based on understanding human nature with remarkable depth (an idea to which scholars including Harold Bloom ascribe), Shakespeare makes an excellent friend, guide, even a sort of early modern therapist. All these Shakespeares are successful, are recognized as “great masters” not only because they write beautiful lines, but also because those lines are based on an unusually keen understanding of human nature. As just one example, in the romance novel The Romance of the Rose, by Julie Beard, Shakespeare is a secondary character, a friend of the heroine, Rosalind. She shows him some of her writing and when he praises it, she tries “to digest this enormous compliment. A great master is telling her she could write.”6 When she then reveals her romantic troubles, he counsels her: It is only in your poetry that you will know freedom. Do not expect perfection from the mortals with whom you share the stage of your life. Look only for signs of that exquisite divinity which is conjured up by the curious alchemy of words on the page…. A tale can

6  Beard, Romance of the Rose, 76.

16

Chapter One

be old, even mundane, but when your words fill it up with life, it can be transformed. The characters are transmuted to gold.7

This Shakespeare, near the end of his career (he has already written Macbeth), understands what his friend needs to be happy. He gets the difference between wanting possessions (in Rosalind’s case, her father’s estate, which has been willed to someone else) and wanting—and finding—true happiness. Thus when Rosalind admits to herself that she has feelings for her rival, Drake, Shakespeare immediately notices that “something is very different,” at which Rosalind thinks “Shakespeare was far too insightful, and he knew her far too well, to remain ignorant for long.”8 Shakespeare does not have to prove he is a genius here; he simply is, but that genius shows itself in his acute awareness of people and their motivations.

The Empathic Shakespeare

As noted, in the first kind of portraits, Shakespeare’s genius is often directly linked to not only his perceptive nature, but his empathy. In The Romance of the Rose Shakespeare can counsel Rosalind because he understands human nature so well—he can know what Rosalind needs better than she can. The empathic Shakespeare, however busy he is, always finds time to be kind and help a friend or stranger in need. When Shakespeare shows up in children’s books, this is always the version that appears. For example, in Rosie Backstage a young girl meets up with Shakespeare (who, the reader learns, shows up every time one of his plays is performed) and rather than focusing on whether or not the play is well done, he takes time to engage with Rosie and explain aspects of the theatre to her. To that end, he takes her time travelling to see the first performance of As You Like It and at the end Rosie decides she wants to be an actress (which may have been Shakespeare’s plan all along). In Gary Blackwood’s trilogy about an orphan, Widge, who starts out a thief and then becomes an apprentice player, Shakespeare at first appears rarely. When he does he is “so pensive and self-absorbed” that he does not notice two barely hidden apprentices.”9 However, when he breaks his arm and asks Widge to act as scribe he is kind and thoughtful, paying Widge for his work (not at all a requirement for an apprentice) and taking Widge’s suggestions seriously. In the third book, when Widge falls for Judith Shakespeare (visiting her father in London) he tells her he too is a writer of plays. When he gets up the courage to ask Shakespeare where he gets his ideas, “Mr. Shakespeare’s expression changed from merely knowing to truly understanding. ‘Ah, I see. And now that you’ve told her, she insists on reading it.’”10 On finding out Widge has nothing at all written, Shakespeare gives Widge the unfinished Timon of Athens. While this is an inside joke about the merits (or lack thereof) of that particular play, it is an action that does not seem out of character—handing over a play that is two-fifths done, 7  Beard, Romance of the Rose, 80.

8  Beard, Romance of the Rose, 234.

9  Blackwood, Shakespeare’s Spy, 151.

10  Blackwood, Shakespeare’s Spy, 123



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

17

to help an apprentice woo his own daughter is perfectly in line with the empathetic Shakespeare, who remembers all too well what it is like to fall in love. Perhaps the most charming version of this Shakespeare can be found in the children’s book Will’s Quill, or How a Goose Saved Shakespeare by Don Freeman. It tells the story of Willoughby Waddle, a country duck who travels to London because he wants to be useful. Upon arriving he is chased, scared, and soaked in dishwater. Then “a bearded young gentleman” stops to help, brushing the goose off and feeding him berries. “Never had Willoughby been treated with such kindness.”11 The young man is Shakespeare, and when Willoughby follows him home he discovers that Shakespeare cannot finish his play because none of his quills work. Willoughby offers Shakespeare one of his own, superior, feathers. Shakespeare invites the goose in to stay and writes through the night, finishing his play, which he attributes, at least in part, to Willoughby. While stopping to take care of a lost goose does not translate directly into one of Shakespeare’s plays, it is clear from the story that only he has the ability to notice a country goose and the kindness to want to help him. This blend of attention and kindness towards or understanding of all is a hallmark of this version of Shakespeare—he is able to “sing from the heart”12 because he understands what others go through and cares enough to try to make things better. It is not a very big step from this kindly version of Shakespeare to the Shakespeare who can write a Jewish or African character who is more than a stereotype or a caricature, who can show the true face of love or represent the human condition, the Shakespeare who is “of all time” and the “inventor of the human.”13 An excellent example of this genius of empathy comes in Susan Cooper’s young adult novel King of Shadows. Nat Field, who is part of the American Company of Boys and rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the rebuilt Globe, wakes up from a fever to find himself in 1599, taking the place of (and mistaken for) a boy actor on loan from St. Paul’s for a special performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the very end of the novel, Nat and the reader finds out that the time travel was because “Will Shakespeare had to be saved”14 (emphasis original). That is, saved from a boy actor who had bubonic plague and might have infected Shakespeare (and incidentally the rest of the Chamberlain’s Men). While this reveal would seem to situate Cooper’s version of Shakespeare squarely in the “mystical outside forces” camp, Shakespeare himself is not presented as directly touched by or aware of any time travelling protectors. Instead, Cooper’s focus is on creating a Shakespeare who can heal the soul of a troubled boy. As a child of the twentieth century (and an actor who is rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Nat naturally responds with awe to meeting Shakespeare. “Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. It was as if he’d said, ‘Say hello to God.’”15 By the end of 11  Freeman, Will’s Quill, unpag.

12  Freeman, Will’s Quill, unpag.

13  Bloom, Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human. 14  Cooper, King of Shadows, 184.

15  Cooper, King of Shadows, 47.

18

Chapter One

that first meeting, Nat wants to stay with Shakespeare because of the man he is rather than because of his modern reputation. “It wasn’t because he was William Shakespeare. I just knew I liked being with him, more than with anyone I knew.”16 This instinctive connection bears fruit a day later when Shakespeare and Nat are rehearsing Oberon and Puck’s first scene. Shakespeare makes clear he knows that one of the other apprentices is jealous of Nat and asks “canst forgive us thy troubles, for the play’s sake?”17 Nat, who has been trying to cope with the suicide of his father after his mother’s death from cancer, breaks down at this “sudden warmth and sympathy, the fact that somebody understood.”18 Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, responds with unquestioning support at first, and then with a guess that Nat misses his parents. How did he know, to go to it so fast and direct, through four hundred years? He thought he was coping with lonely Nathan Field of 1599, but his instinct took him ahead through centuries, to a truth he couldn’t possibly have sensed. Like an arrow he went to my haunting, which I had tried so long and hard to hide from everyone, and most of all from myself. With a small innocent question, he made me dig myself out of a grave.19

This moment epitomizes Shakespeare’s empathic genius. While completely unaware that he is dealing with a boy out of time, Shakespeare instantly realizes the cause of Nat’s grief. In addition, he knows how to help Nat move forward. Shakespeare writes out a copy of Sonnet 116 as a reminder to Nat that love is “an ever-fixed mark” and his father did not stop loving him just because he could not bear to live without his wife. During the command performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Elizabeth I in secret attendance, there is another example of Shakespeare’s genius in reading people, this one more directly connected to his own time and culture. Worried about the company’s connection to Essex, Shakespeare costumes Act 5 Hippolyta as a Gloria lookalike, which causes the crowd to cheer their queen, thus proving the loyalty of the Chamberlain’s Men and pleasing Elizabeth. This moment demonstrates that Shakespeare knows the distant queen (and the theatre’s audience) as well as the boy apprentice; in other words, his understanding and empathy are universal. The morning after the play, Nat wakes up to find himself back in the twentieth century, inconsolable because he has lost Shakespeare. However, his present-day director (who may or may not be Richard Burbage) tells Nat that he will always have Shakespeare because he has the plays, a conflation that echoes the First Folio poem I discussed in the introduction. He further tells Nat that Shakespeare wrote the part of Ariel for the strange boy he met for a week in 1599, thus providing Nat a direct link to Shakespeare across the centuries. To close out this particular section, I want to address a text which approaches empathy from a very different direction: the 2015 movie Bill. Unlike most fictional portrayals of Shakespeare, this is a comic version—“Bill” is presented at first as a dreamy loser who tries and fails at music and dance before turning to playwriting. When Bill first 16  Cooper, King of Shadows, 50.

17  Cooper, King of Shadows, 73. 18  Cooper, King of Shadows, 73. 19  Cooper, King of Shadows, 74.



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

19

meets Marlowe, the latter describes his works as, “drama, tragedies, tales of betrayal and revenge. Frailties of the human condition.” Bill in turn announces that he writes, “Bum jokes. People hit by sticks. Comedy.” The first version of his play is terrible and it is only through a long night of rewrites with help from Marlowe that it is made playable. Thus far, the movie seems to be deliberately undercutting the myth of Shakespeare, to the point of presenting him as no genius at all. However, as Marlowe and Bill say goodbye, Marlowe tells him he has talent and then says “I can teach you this [pointing to his head]. Only you can find this [pointing to his heart].” Despite the fact that Bill has shown no direct evidence of this talent, the audience (knowing who Bill must become) easily accepts Marlowe’s claim. In the next few scenes, Marlowe is murdered and the play they wrote together destroyed. Phillip II of Spain (who is in England to assassinate Elizabeth and who plans to use a play to get close enough to her to do so) locks Shakespeare in a cell and orders him to rewrite the play or Anne will be killed. Marlowe’s ghost shows up and, in one of the only serious scenes in the movie, tells Bill he can write the play again and write it better. “No story? No story in the days we’ve shared, in the hand fate has dealt you these days past? Tales of betrayal, plotting kings, the death of a friend? Such twists and turns as would shame any fiction.” Just before the ghost disappears he touches his heart, and then Shakespeare looks at a pocket portrait of Anne and starts writing. Despite the comic nature of the film (Marlowe’s death is played for laughs), in the end it cannot resist the myth of Shakespeare’s genius and specifically the idea that his genius arises from the combination of raw talent and the experiences of life. His experiences of love, friendship, danger, and loss turn “Bill” into “Shakespeare,” a man able to conjure up lines that freeze everyone (including the would-be assassins) in their tracks, unmask a plot, and impress the Queen. As the movie ends, the audience sees Shakespeare backstage getting his ear pierced and when he turns towards the camera we see that he now resembles his portrait in hair style, earring, and clothing. His final line is “Well? Is the world ready for William Shakespeare?”

The Tortured Shakespeare

If Bill were not a comedy that presents torture and death as light-hearted amusement, it would belong in this section. It creates an excellent bridge from a Shakespeare who merely observes and sympathizes with the pain of others to the Shakespeare who suffers himself. The purely empathic Shakespeare is there to understand and soothe the pain others feel, whether it is an orphan boy, a friend in love, or a country goose. Other versions of Shakespeare fuse the suffering and the empathy, so that Shakespeare’s genius emerges from his own struggles, pain, and loss. Often these stories take up the task of telling Shakespeare’s life, or rather, a portion of his life—his early days in the theatre. A very literal version of this is the 6-part television series William Shakespeare: His Life and Times starring Tim Curry as Shakespeare. Each of the episodes links a play to a moment of tragedy or suffering, although not always in a way that is directly autobio­ graphical. For example, in the first episode, Marlowe tells Shakespeare that he needs to add something of himself to the play—what does he fear most? Shakespeare muses that

20

Chapter One

losing his son would be the worst thing he can imagine, and Marlowe tries to insist that Shakespeare add a scene to Henry VI:3 where a father discovers he has killed his son in the civil war. However, the loss Shakespeare suffers in this episode is not the loss of his son (that comes in episode 4), but rather the death of Marlowe. Shakespeare refuses to add the idea when Marlowe suggests it, but after Marlowe’s death we see the actors rehearsing that exact scene. In other episodes, shots of a rehearsal or staging of a play are intercut with or mirror moments of his life. In episode 3 the Earl of Southampton (who is presented as implicitly bisexual) wipes his mouth with a handkerchief Shakespeare gave to Mary Heminge, echoing Othello, which is still some years in the future. In episode 4, the quarrel between Titania and Oberon is made to resemble a fight between William and Anne. The series first presents the idea that Shakespeare is simply a genius from birth—he is originally given an “acting” job of imitating a crowing cock for Doctor Faustus, but he immediately starts criticizing Marlowe’s plays and in ways the actors agree with—but quickly settles into drawing a strong connection between Shakespeare’s suffering and his genius. Implicitly in every episode and explicitly in many, there is a connection made between a loss or trauma Shakespeare suffers and a play or a specific scene. The implication is that Shakespeare’s plays are great because he puts his own direct experience into them. Marlowe may suggest thinking of fear and loss as a spur to better writing, but Shakespeare is the one who actually figures out how to embed his actual feelings into his works. This version of Shakespeare is perhaps best known to modern audiences through the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love. It was a critical and commercial success and won seven Academy Awards. While much of the film’s success is based in Tom Stoppard’s script and the appealing leads, it is also true that more than any other work, Shakespeare in Love presents the story of Shakespeare’s genius as developing out of his experiences. When audiences first meet Shakespeare, played by Joseph Fiennes, he is already a somewhat successful dramatist (having had work performed at court), but he is suffering from writer’s block. He had the gift of words, he tells the apothecary/therapist, “for sixpence a line I could cause a riot.” He then goes on to describe how “the proud tower of my genius is collapsed” (among other sexual euphemisms), a fact that both he and the alchemist attribute to his lack of a muse. Shakespeare does find his muse, in Viola de Lesseps, the lady who pretends to be Thomas Kent the actor because of her love of the theatre. It is not just the fact of Viola or his infatuation for her that revives Shakespeare’s gift, but the experiences he has with and because of her. As their story plays out, Shakespeare reshapes the play he has been unable to finish to reflect his experiences and his deepening understanding of the world. The play he is writing starts out as a comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter and even after some helpful advice from Marlowe, the plot Shakespeare first creates is hardly the one familiar to audiences. Trying to tempt “Thomas Kent” to play Romeo, Shakespeare gives Viola’s nurse a plot summary to pass on to “him,” which Viola then reads out with apparent delight: Romeo Montague, a young man of Verona, a comedy of quarreling families reconciled in the discovery of Romeo to be the very same Capulet cousin stolen from the cradle and fostered by the manhood by the same Montague mother who was robbed of her own child by the Pirate King!



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

21

The deliberate silliness (and ahistoricity) of this version exists only to be rewritten into the play everyone knows, and that rewriting exactly mirrors the events of the romance between Will and Viola. It is not just his writer’s block that is fixed by love; in addition, instead of building a plot out of silly contrivances, he uses the events of his own life, a change which makes Shakespeare into a genius instead of just a skilled writer. His empathy for his characters arises from his own love, jealousy, and loss. Because Will is putting his own experiences directly into the lines, his play can become something more than entertainment. Queen Elizabeth tells Viola that “playwrights cannot teach us about love. They make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust. They cannot make it true.” Viola protests and a bet is made: “Can a play show us the very truth and nature of love?” The bet is won at the first performance of Romeo and Juliet in part because it is also the final moments of the love affair between Will and Viola. She has that morning been married against her will and will be forced to leave for the New World with her husband that evening. When she runs off to the theatre to see the play that she helped create come to life, she is told that the voice of the boy actor playing Juliet has broken, and Viola steps in to play Juliet and say her farewells to Will in full view of the theatre audience, using the language they created together. Here the version of genius as heightened response to the world finds its full expression. Shakespeare takes his own tragedy—the loss of his love—and reshapes it into an expression of lost love that is universal, so that everyone, from Queen Elizabeth to the converted street preacher, is awed. In fact, shots of the audience as the lovers enact their final scene, show them rapt and tearful, in part because it is Will and Viola who are saying their final goodbyes, not just Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare scholars know that this is not at all how Romeo and Juliet was created. The characters and story were already fully formed in the poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke. In reality, Shakespeare is responsible for creating the language of the play, for condensing the action intensely (in the poem, for example, Romeus wanders Verona for over a month before finding Juliet’s balcony), and for a few key changes to the plot (the main one being that in the poem Romeus dies slowly enough for Juliet to wake so that the lovers can have a final reunion, a reunion which Shakespeare denies them). That is neither satisfying nor appropriate when explaining genius as a refraction of real life. To modern audiences, raised on the twin beliefs that creative genius must be original and that artists mine their own lives and experiences for their art, the idea that Shakespeare borrowed a plot and characters almost wholesale makes no sense. It is something that is mentioned in every edition of every play, and brought up in classrooms around the world, but it is not a fact that sticks with people, because it contradicts fundamental beliefs they hold about genius. In the movie, Viola is not a muse in the traditional sense—she does not inspire him from afar. Instead, Shakespeare’s genius is inspired by the events of his own life and a little bit of hers. The film ends with him writing the opening of Twelfth Night as Viola survives a shipwreck and reaches America on her own, asking “What country, friend, is this?” The overlapping images of Shakespeare writing the words Viola speaks creates the suggestion that Shakespeare will continue to be inspired by Viola despite being on different continents. For most of the play, however, there is nothing mystical about their

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Chapter One

connection or how it helps Shakespeare create art. Instead, Shakespeare is simply so deeply moved by his experiences of love and loss that his writing takes a dramatic leap forward into the realm of genius. Furthermore, it is not only his experiences with Viola that shapes Shakespeare’s experiences and thus his genius. Midway through the film, Shakespeare gives Marlowe’s name to avoid being discovered as Viola’s lover and when he hears that Marlowe is killed he believes at first that Viola’s fiancé, Lord Wessex, killed him and thus Shakespeare bears the guilt for Marlowe’s death. In a moment that deliberately recalls Banquo’s haunting of Macbeth, Shakespeare shows up to confront Lord Wessex without words (which terrifies Wessex because he still believes that Shakespeare is Marlowe and thus is a ghost) and while the writing of that play is outside the scope of the movie, it is clearly implied that Shakespeare will remember both the feelings of guilt and the supernatural terror when it comes time to write the play. Yet to a large extent it is his love for and loss of Viola that changes Shakespeare from a rather callow writer obsessed with his own fame (in one of the first scenes he is backstage at court complaining to no one, “Will Shakespeare has a new play. Let’s go and cough at it.”) into a recognizable genius, one whom the Queen can confidently declare has shown the true face of love. In 2017, TNT attempted the same sort of bio­graphical exploration with a religious twist in the series Will. Cancelled after its first (ten episode) season, the show presents the young Shakespeare as he leaves Stratford for London, over the protests of Anne, through the writing and performance of Richard III (although the events have been compressed into less than a year rather than the three plus years from when Shakespeare’s plays seem to have first been performed). The show mixes modern and Elizabethan aesthetics—an audience member at The Theatre is as likely to be sporting a dyed Mohawk and leather vest as a ruff or doublet—and attempts a gritty realism, with a great deal of mud and blood, but also very twenty-first century morals. This clash may be the reason the show never found an audience, or it might be the focus on the religious conflicts of late sixteenth-century England. Unlike Shakespeare in Love or any of the other works mentioned in this chapter, Will places the religious persecution of Catholics in England front and centre. Shakespeare is Catholic and not only Catholic, but connected to Robert Southwell, a priest and poet who historically was arrested, tortured, and hanged for his religious activity. Will creates a fictional family connection between Southwell and Shakespeare, making them cousins. As he leaves Stratford, Will’s mother presses a rosary on him saying, “Better to die righteous than burn,” and his father gives him a letter for Southwell. Throughout the ten episodes Shakespeare is pushed hard by Southwell to help him fight for Catholic rights. Southwell wants Will to help him write an entreaty to Queen Elizabeth, begging her to protect her loyal Catholic subjects. Will at first agrees but eventually refuses. He tells Southwell, “I want to touch people’s souls in another way” and when Southwell asks how he can do that with plays, responds, “I don’t know. That is my struggle” (ep 3). Southwell later says, “My cousin is a very confused young man, torn between two worlds” (ep 7). It is not entirely clear if he means only the world of God and the world of the theatre; he may also mean Catholic and Protestant beliefs. For the audience, naturally, there is no struggle—we know that Shakespeare will and must choose the theatre. Ultimately that choice is justified and the power of theatre



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

23

is celebrated in a historically inaccurate but psycho­logically rewarding performance of Richard III. Throughout the series, Richard Topcliffe is the main villain, a man equally happy to torture suspected Catholics and rape boys dressed as girls (not an episode goes by without one or more g­ raphic and very bloody scenes of Topcliffe personally torturing a suspected Catholic). Shakespeare hatches the idea of mocking Topcliffe in a play, thus creating a level of embarrassment that would get his authority to seize and interrogate Catholics withdrawn. Realizing that such a play will never be allowed past the censors, Shakespeare further comes up with the idea of making the play about Richard III and in the final episode of the show, Topcliffe is confronted and humiliated by the portrait of Richard that clearly mirrors him. In fact, the actors playing the ghosts of Richard’s victims all point at and speak directly to Topcliffe as he sits on stage. At the end of the show his patron spurns him and Shakespeare and the players celebrate not only the success of the play but the defeat of Topcliffe. The implication is that Shakespeare now realizes how to write the kind of plays he has dreamed of, plays that “touch people’s souls” and effect real change in the world. Going forward he will be the Shakespeare of history. The series ends with Southwell leaving England by boat and the conclusion the audience must draw is that the drama Shakespeare creates is a more effective agent for social change than all the various plots Southwell tries. In an attempt to have it all ways, Will presents a rather confused explanation for Shakespeare’s genius. Like most other works in this chapter, Shakespeare regularly overhears and writes down bits of dialogue we know will show up in his plays. He needs the help of Alice Burbage (his love interest in the show) to figure out that “breaks” is the way to end “What light through yonder window…,” but he is also capable of generating sonnets on the spot or handily winning a poetry duel with Robert Greene. He is recognized as a genius immediately (the word is liberally thrown around in the first episode) and Marlowe actually turns another playwright over to Topcliffe when Shakespeare is suspected of being a Catholic, to protect the genius he somehow immediately sees in Will. At the same time the drafts of plays he offers (Two Gentlemen of Verona and Henry VI) are regularly ridiculed as horrible and he must be told to study other plays to figure out dramatic structure and to borrow ideas from other writers. He is thus both already a genius and yet not, in that his genius is not reliably accessible to him. While those around him may recognize his genius, Shakespeare cannot, in this series, write works of genius without help from others. Not until the spur of difficult moral choices and personal danger create a deep level of empathy and understanding, even of his enemies, do his plays (specifically, Richard III) move audiences and create change in the world.20 This last point is made all the more powerfully by the series’ contrast of Shakespeare and Marlowe. While Shakespeare suffers real dangers and conflicts, and throughout all of it stays focused on his writing, Marlowe spends most of the ten episodes suffering from writer’s block, which he attempts to dissolve through manufactured experiences: first, an orgy where he tells the young men tending to him, “Inspire me” and when 20  In a parallel development, after Richard Burbage survives being locked in a plague house, he transforms from a diva who cares only about sex and admiration to an actor capable of making Richard III a fully fleshed out character.

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Chapter One

that fails, through flirtations with black magic. The two men are repeatedly compared and contrasted: Shakespeare is torn between two loves; Marlowe abandons his dying lover; Shakespeare struggles with real consequences of choosing an outlaw faith and the uncertainty of what God wants; Marlowe pretends to sell his soul to the devil and has himself buried up to the chin overnight in order to experience “death.” In fact, when both writers attend a secret gathering of intellectuals and both agree to drink a potion that will supposedly allow them to contact the devil, Shakespeare does have a vision of his uncle who was hanged for being a Catholic, while Marlowe sees nothing. The scene does not suggest that Shakespeare is literally visited by his dead relative; however, what is made clear is that he is moved by the suffering of those around him and troubled by his own choices, while Marlowe is removed and narcissistic. Marlowe cannot create art because he has no empathy, has, in fact, turned away from real suffering (his dying lover, the Catholics he turns in) in order to play at emotions. In the last few episodes, Marlowe seeks out Southwell for spiritual guidance, but it is not clear if this is a legitimate desire or a cover for his spying. Either way, Marlowe ends by telling Southwell he believes in nothing. Ultimately, Marlowe does write Doctor Faustus but since the audience never sees any part of the play staged (and since knowledge of Marlowe’s plays is much more limited than knowledge of Shakespeare’s) there is nothing in the show that suggests this play is both a commercial and a literary triumph. Will reshapes the usual story of Marlowe (the story that makes him so attractive to those who believe someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays) and instead presents a Marlowe who cannot write great art because he cannot fully engage with life. He thus serves as a foil for Shakespeare’s genius, which may have existed before his experiences in London, but only reaches its potential because of those experiences and Shakespeare’s embrace of and struggle with the conflicts of life.

Shakespeare the Detective

Given the way Shakespeare’s genius is often presented as the ability to notice and understand the smallest details of life as well as understand the depth of human nature, it is perhaps unsurprising that a number of fictional Shakespeares function as detectives. Like the quintessential detective, Sherlock Holmes, this version of Shakespeare notices everything, has an extraordinarily wide knowledge base, and can put seeming disparate facts together to form a recognizable pattern. Unlike Holmes, Shakespeare detectives rarely exhibit detachment or mental illness (an exception will be discussed in Chapter Two), because Shakespeare has the empathy that Holmes does not. It makes a great deal of sense—if Shakespeare’s genius is noticing the smallest elements of life (which then gives rise to the detailed images of the plays), then he would make an excellent detective. If his genius is further expressed in his ability to empathize with all manner and kind of humanity (and animals), then he will also be able to understand why crimes are committed, or recognize patterns of behaviour in groups (maids, for example) that most people ignore. One example comes in the collection Shakespearean Detectives. Most of the short stories involve crimes tangentially related to the plays and solved by characters from those plays. However, in “Conspiracy Theory,” Shakespeare (and oth-



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

25

ers) unravels the case of Walter Calverley, the real crime that became the basis for The Yorkshire Tragedy. Early on, Shakespeare is described thus: The girls like Shakespeare. He talks to them, and listens to them too, which is unusual even amongst the more polite clientele of the Mermaid. He sometimes writes the things they say down in his commonplace book too so some people take him for a government spy. But none of the girls believe this. Nor do they believe that he puts their words into his plays, although this happens to be true.21

Unlike the other characters in the story (Ben Jonson and a Yorkshireman telling the two playwrights the details of the murder case), Shakespeare notices the serving women in the bar, talks to them, and cares about their language and thoughts. He also knows that a woman of the upper class would have whalebone stays rather than stiffened fabric, which allows him to deduce that the husband (who would also have known what his wife was wearing) was not the one who tried to kill the wife by stabbing her in the stomach (a move foiled by the upper class garment). After Shakespeare and Jonson use some of the tavern’s help to restage the scene, Shakespeare “slips a coin to Moll, and another to Marian,” and neatly solves the crime.22 In the concluding para­graphs, both the Yorkshireman and Jonson suggest he write the truth into a play, but Shakespeare refuses, shrewdly noting that no one would produce a play that suggested the government had several children murdered and their father framed for the crime in order to get rid of a powerful Catholic lord. Throughout the short story, Shakespeare is set apart from the other characters in his attention to detail, his awareness of the humanity of all the people around him (from barmaid to Catholic lord), and his ability to put these things together to understand what no one else does. Another example of Shakespeare as detective comes in the young adult novel Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare by Bailey MacDonald. The narrator of this novel is Viola, a girl, who, like Juliet, is only days away from turning fourteen. She is travelling with her uncle and a troupe of players, and both because girls cannot perform on stage and because her parents are on the run for helping a Catholic priest, she is in disguise as a boy, called Tom. The troupe arrives at Stratford where, in short order, Viola meets Will, an old man is murdered, and Viola’s uncle is accused because his walking stick is used as the murder weapon. Will is determined to find the killer. He does so using a combination of acting tricks and deduction. His first observation is that Tom is, in fact, a girl, something only he realizes. This is an early sign that Will notices and understands those around him to an uncanny degree. Despite the title, young Will is never portrayed as wicked, only eager for excitement and, perhaps, too clever for his own good sometimes. When he unravels the mystery and discovers that the murderer is actually a friend, he is inconsolable, especially after the young man commits suicide in remorse. “’My friend is dead’ he said bitterly… Oh, Viola, everything I’ve done has brought woe to those I liked best!’”23 To pull him out 21  Rath, “A Yorkshire Tragedy,” 382.

22  Rath, “A Yorkshire Tragedy,” 389. 23  MacDonald, Wicked Will, 193.

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Chapter One

of his misery, the acting troupe adds a character to the play they perform before they leave and ask Will to play the part, which he does with panache. When the troupe makes ready to leave, Viola tells him to go to London: Find Mr. Burbage there. Tell him you acted with us! Until then, learn to sing, and dance, and play the lute, and how to wield a sword! Make yourself ready to be a real player…. You can tread upon a stage, and act, and write plays of your own, and bring out of your fancy men and women who will live for their hour and move an audience to tears or to laughter.”24

With Shakespeare’s intelligence, acute observational skills, and innate good-heartedness established, it is easy to imagine this boy growing up to be the Shakespeare the world knows, and perhaps solving more mysteries. A romantic version of Shakespeare the detective is featured in The Quality of Mercy, which has him meeting Rebecca Lopez, a converso, or secret Jew and falling in love with her. At the same time, he is trying to find the murderer of his friend and mentor, Henry Whitman. He does not believe the killing was a crime of opportunity and thus will not let the crime go, despite a visit from Henry’s “ghost.” At first he is terrified, but quickly realizes it is not really a supernatural apparition and the physical effects are drug induced. “Nay, I wasn’t overpowered by sack last night, but something in the sack overpowered me—nightshade, or perhaps foxglove or Indian arcacia.”25 Shakespeare also realizes that the young man watching him from the pit is actually a disguised woman, the same woman he saw briefly in the graveyard when the actors buried their friend (Rebecca, attending the funeral of her fiancé). In addition, he can spot a barely perceptible repair in a sword and realize that only one sword maker in London can make a repair so fine, and this leads to an identification of the weapon’s owner. His observational skills and open, accepting nature make it possible for him to love Rebecca despite discovering that she is Jewish. The murder of Whitman (among others) is solved, if not legally then to the satisfaction of both Shakespeare and the reader, and Rebecca is able to figure out a way to rescue her father, Roderigo Lopez (the real-life physician of Queen Elizabeth who was executed in 1594), from death. In the end, the lovers are pulled apart; Rebecca goes abroad with the Jewish man her father insists she marry and dies giving birth. In a final letter to Shakespeare, Miguel, Rebecca’s husband, reports that she asked he write not about her but for her, a story for her father “a man wronged because he was a Jew.”26 After mourning for hours, Shakespeare does just that: Write a story. Pay homage to her father. Write a story about a Jew. Write. Anything but this pain, this unrelenting pain. Write anything. Just write. Dry-eyed, he picked up his quill and scratched, In sooth, I know not why I am so sad…. 27

24  MacDonald, Wicked Will, 200.

25  Kellerman, The Quality of Mercy, 116.

26  Kellerman, The Quality of Mercy, 576. 27  Kellerman, The Quality of Mercy, 577.



“By the art of known and feeling sorrows”

27

Now, this romantic ending does not grapple with the fact that what Shakespeare writes is a comedy, and that Shylock, defeated in court and forced both to convert and give up all his money, does not appear in the final, happy act of The Merchant of Venice. The modern understanding of the play focuses on Shakespeare’s ability to empathize with all people and Kellerman explains this empathy through his love for and loss of a Jewish woman, so a novel that pins his genius to his love for a Jewish woman is not going to dwell on the fact that the play actually ends with Shylock’s fortune being divided between the state and the daughter who abandoned him, stole from him, and denied his faith. Early in the novel there is not a great deal of Shakespeare as playwright; there is one scene where poor Will is trapped by competing complaints against Richard III—the Master of the Revels finds Richard too human and thus an insult to the Tudor line that replaced him, while Burbage is insulted that his opening speech is so short: “Add at least another twenty lines.”28 Later on the success of Venus and Adonis is mentioned in passing, as is The Rape of Lucrece, but because the theatres are closed due to plague, Shakespeare is free to focus on the twin adventures of love and detective work. However, midway through the novel, Shakespeare is captured and imprisoned for almost eight weeks. Shakespeare survives the imprisonment by writing plays in his mind. “On the vellum of his mind, Shakespeare penned incantations of love, the comic words of the buffoon, grievous orations that wailed out injustices manacled to helpless souls.”29 The mental exercise keeps him sane and in fact his captor breaks first—releasing him because he is superstitiously awed by Shakespeare’s ability to survive being restrained and isolated for so long. This captivity and the loss of Rebecca are the experiences that create his ability to create both beautiful poetry and believable characters. They create, in short, his genius. Simon Hawke takes this idea of Shakespeare as detective and explores it in a much fuller fashion. The “Shakespeare and Smythe” mystery series is four books long, starting when Smythington “Tuck” Smythe meets Shakespeare on the road to London—both are young men determined to become actors (or, in the case of Shakespeare, actor and playwright). In the Afterword to the first novel, A Mystery of Errors, Hawke explains (and defends) his choice to put a fictional version of Shakespeare into a murder mystery. Noting, “It is precisely the sort of thing he did himself,”30 Hawke goes on to rail against “monotonous professors” who bore students into hating Shakespeare: Shakespeare himself would have been aghast to learn that his words were putting young captive audiences to sleep. He wanted, more than anything, to make them laugh, or weep, or rage … to make them feel, for that was why Elizabethan audiences went to the theater.31

Of course, we don’t actually know what Shakespeare wanted at all, let alone wanted more than anything, but we often feel that we do because we want Shakespeare to be understandable, approachable, and relatable. Hawke presents a Shakespeare who is a 28  Kellerman, The Quality of Mercy, 121.

29  Kellerman, The Quality of Mercy, 284. 30  Hawke, A Mystery of Errors, 234. 31  Hawke, A Mystery of Errors, 236.

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Chapter One

bit of a coward, a heavy drinker (but one who can hold his liquor), and a person somewhat embittered by his forced marriage with Anne Hathaway. Although cynical about love, he is good-natured and friendly to all. In fact, Tuck (who is the actual protagonist of the novels) meets Shakespeare when the latter offers to share his room at an inn since the inn is full and both of them are short of money. Looking over the stranger who has made this offer Tuck notes “eyes that bespoke intelligence, alertness, and a touch of sadness … somehow there was an unsettled ancientness about him.”32 At first, Shakespeare is presented as markedly different than the average man—something Tuck cannot help but notice immediately and this seems to suggest that his genius is based in something innate (perhaps otherworldly). However, this is the only time Hawke offers this kind of description. Barely a page later, Shakespeare is slurring his words from drink and complaining about university writers using too much Greek and Latin in their writing. After the almost requisite reference to the way Shakespeare’s genius must mark him out physically, Hawke deliberately dismantles that image, and replaces it with one that instead suggests genius in utero—the young Shakespeare of the lost years is not yet the man who will write Hamlet or even Two Gentleman of Verona, but who has the capacity and attention to develop into such a man. Hawke’s version of Shakespeare is not an old soul or a stereotypical Romantic genius. Instead, he is acutely aware of human nature and pays attention to everything because of innate and restless curiosity. If there is any touch of bardolatry, it comes in the way this Shakespeare understands perfectly what playwrights need to provide in order to make drama both entertaining and valuable. He tells Tuck that references to Greek classics and Holinshed are useless because “all the learning in the world will bring [the playwright] no true insight into the soul of man.”33 In the same speech, Hawke has Shakespeare note that while a university education can add to a writer’s vocabulary so can “a sojourn among Bristol whores and seamen.”34 These moments when Shakespeare the ahistorical genius comes close to the surface are more than balanced by the fact that Shakespeare regularly delights in dirty jokes and drinking. Moreover, he understands the practicalities of the theatre. When the two have been accepted into the Queen’s Men company, Shakespeare figures out how to rewrite a terrible play in parts so that the actors can learn the new lines in time for the scheduled performances. This is not genius but craft, however much genius might be hovering quietly in the background. In the first novel of the series, A Mystery of Errors, Shakespeare himself does not solve the mystery; in fact, he is a target for murder (albeit by mistake as the playwright the murderers are looking for is Marlowe), but in later installments his understanding of human nature and attention to detail make him the main detective. In the second book, The Slaying of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s familiarity with alcohol allows him to recognize that a half-drunk flask of wine has been tampered with. In Much Ado About Murder, he recognizes that a supposedly wealthy man would keep more than three servants, and 32  Hawke, A Mystery of Errors, 24.

33  Hawke, A Mystery of Errors, 26. 34  Hawke, A Mystery of Errors, 26.



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29

further understands the behaviour of the working class, so he is able to reconstruct the night of the murder with absolute accuracy. “All three of the servants were now staring at Shakespeare, speechless with disbelief, as if he were some sort of sorcerer, divining precisely what had happened that night.”35 In these and other cases, Shakespeare understands human nature—the behaviour of servants, apprentices, merchants and lords alike—as well as he understands the players in his own company, and while a physical coward, he is fearless in seeking the truth. Indeed, at one point, Tuck tells Shakespeare, “You are as curious as a cat, Will,” and Shakespeare admits to the truth of it.36 In the fourth novel, The Merchant of Vengeance, Hawke goes one step further in presenting a Shakespeare whose curiosity about all manner of humanity will lead directly to his genius as a playwright. The novel opens with Tuck and Shakespeare discussing the state of the theatre and the work of Marlowe. Shakespeare claims, “I have said before, and I believe it still, that the time for jigs and pratfalls on the stage is past…. The groundlings have seen such things before and they are tired of them.”37 Marlowe, he concedes, is popular because of his “grand excesses” but he argues that too will pale “once they are done with bread and circuses … my friend, they shall want meat. Something with more sustenance and substance. And I shall do my utmost to provide it for them.”38 Hawke does not do a great deal of character development in the series—most of the main characters, historical or completely fictional, are almost exactly the same in the fourth book as they were in the first. In contrast, Hawke does develop Shakespeare’s character. The young man on the road to London grows, after joining a theatre company and becoming involved in a number of murders and intrigues, into a man who is clear on what he has to offer and what the world needs from him. Shakespeare is sure (although he has not, to this point, finished a single play of his own) that his drama will be better than any yet seen, better even than Marlowe’s work, because he will create characters that are fully human. Shakespeare looks down on Marlowe’s creations. “Tamburlaine is cruelty made manifest in man, but how is man made manifest in Tamburlaine?”39 Then Shakespeare turns to Barabas, describing him as merely a character the Christian English audience can hate on sight. But that is not a man, you see …. That is a masque, a Morris dancer, something all done up in bells and ribbons, nothing but a caricature … And yet, who is he? Who is this Jew? … What does he think? What does he feel? Has he a wife at home, a child? Does he love them, does he worry about them? Does he have fears of his own that keep him up at night? And if he is, indeed, as evil as Kit Marlowe paints him, then what has made him so?40

Anyone remotely familiar with The Merchant of Venice will recognize this as a portrait of Shylock, the Jew who had a beloved wife, who loses his daughter and is spit 35  Hawke, Much Ado About Murder, 184.

36  Hawke, The Slaying of the Shrew, 77.

37  Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance, 20. 38  Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance, 21. 39  Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance, 21. 40  Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance, 23.

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Chapter One

on and shunned by Christians on a daily basis. This outburst, finally, sounds like the Shakespeare we expect to meet, the creative genius able to present humanity even in his villains. This moment could be a call back to the very first moment Tuck meets Shakespeare and feels there is something “ancient” in his eyes. Instead, Shakespeare’s lofty plans are punctured when Tuck asks, “How can you write a Jew when you have never even seen a Jew?” (24). Hawke is here referring to the historical truth that Jews had been driven out of England centuries ago, but he is also giving Tuck the chance to remind Shakespeare of his own beliefs, the beliefs he has been championing since his first appearance—that knowing a group or individual through keen observation and unbiased interest is the key to creating believable fictional characters. Hawke’s Shakespeare responds, “I must admit, you have me there” and promptly suggests they go in search of some.41 This naturally leads to the murder mystery, which has nothing in common with The Merchant of Venice, but where Shakespeare’s powers of observation once again are needed to unravel the mystery. In the Afterword Hawke makes his case that Shakespeare “had to know” that he was better than Marlowe at “creating characters who seemed real, who had motivations that went beyond their simply being heroes or villains.”42 Whether or not it is true that Shakespeare’s characters are inherently more real and richly motivated than those of other early modern playwrights is debatable—an entire industry has been mobilized to make characters like Hamlet, Shylock, and Beatrice relatable and coherent, work that has not been done for any other playwright of the time (at least not to such an extent). What is absolutely true is that Hawke, along with other writers discussed in this chapter, marries this belief about Shakespeare’s characters to the personality traits of acute observation and deep curiosity about everything. Whether Shakespeare is making friends with a goose, getting involved in politics, falling in love, or solving a murder, everything he does is noted, absorbed, and then funnelled into the creation of characters (and plays in general), that speak across centuries and countries because they are so intimately tied to real life. In part this Shakespeare is so popular because, as I suggested earlier, it presents a domesticated genius—you too, the stories seem to say, can write works that last forever if you take your broken heart or your religious doubts and turn them into fiction. It also allows Shakespeare, and therefore the plays, to seem approachable, relatable. It is part of how he becomes “for all time” instead of a writer grounded in late sixteenthcentury England (which he most certainly was). In the next chapter, we will see what happens when writers imagine that Shakespeare’s suffering is caused by his genius instead of vice versa, and when that suffering leads not to empathy but disconnection and isolation.

41  Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance, 24.

42  Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance, 252.

Chapter Two

“I KNOW NOT SEEMS”

The works discussed

in Chapter One presented genius generally, and Shakespeare’s genius specifically, as a heightened version of universal human traits— attention to detail and empathy chief among them. The direct opposite view defines genius not as more of something, but as less, not a heightened awareness of the world, but a withdrawal from it, either a withdrawal from the mundane aspects of life that cloud or distract from creativity, or a general withdrawal which manifests as a disconnection from people and events. The effect this withdrawal has ranges from simple isolation to outright mental illness and is especially offered as an explanation for artistic genius in particular. William Niederland, in his article on artistic creativity, assumed that creativity “is a solitary activity. It is usually accompanied by a withdrawal from complex emotional involvements.”1 Again, in a more recent piece, he claims “a great portion of our brain’s function is normally allocated for social intercourse…. The absence or deficiency of the social algorithms in brain function frees enormous power.”2 Scholars of the early modern theatre know that it is highly unlikely that the plays of the period—including Shakespeare’s—were conceived in solitude, or that the playwrights lacked the ability to engage socially, but the idea that artistic genius at least requires and often creates isolation is a powerful one. Genius is always a fuzzy concept, but creative or artistic genius is especially hard to pin down. Whereas scientific or inventive genius can be directly, if somewhat simplistically, linked to a new understanding or reinvention of a particular field, creative genius is inextricably tied to taste—to the reception, understanding, and appreciation of the art by others. Einstein completely changed the field of physics and our understanding of the world; of his genius there can be no doubt. With music, painting, or writing, there cannot be this kind of certainty. Someone as widely recognized as Shakespeare can have his genius called into question—both Shaw and Tolstoy do so. Innovations can be problematic in creative fields—they are often judged as failures rather than advances. The regularity with which innovations in art are at first rejected leads, in turn, to the cliché of the genius ahead of their time—in its more absolute form only those who are unappreciated during their lifetimes may be granted genius status. Another variant is that someone who is a popular artist cannot be a genius because great art is only recognized by a few. Since popular art is commercial, or middle of the road, or pandering to the masses (or all three), Shakespeare’s popularity during his lifetime and his work in the commercial field of theatre (not to mention the undeniable fact that he gave up writing and retired) can make “tortured artistic genius” a difficult, but not impossible, fit.

1  Niederland, “Psychoanalytic Approaches to Artistic Creativity,” 193.

2  Pediaditakis, “The Association between Major Mental Disorders and Geniuses,” 2.

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Because artistic genius is so difficult to pin down, one method for sifting true genius from mere craftsmanship or skill is to focus on the life of the artist. This is especially true in the post-Romantic world. The Romantic poets created and popularized the idea of the artist driven or tormented by their gift. Because Romanticism rebelled against the rationality of the Enlightenment, it valourized both intense emotion and originality—both were seen as necessary to access the sublime. In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant described the sublime as the experience of delight, a “negative pleasure” that was stronger than mere pleasure, and which was activated by the encounter with something not merely beautiful, but great beyond measure. At first Nature was the main example of the sublime, but for the Romantics the goal of the artist was to create work that was as sublime as the natural world—a goal which could only be achieved by “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”3 and which must spring from artistic imagination unhampered by rules. These ideas—that great art results from the absolutely authentic and original emotions of the artist and that it creates a similarly powerful emotional response in the audience—continue to influence artists and views of art today. In addition, there was and is a belief that these tendencies can designate genius in an artist as well as in art. If a great work of art breaks rules in pursuit of the sublime, then a great artist can be recognized by a similar refusal to follow rules. If a work of genius caused powerful emotions (rather than simple, uncomplicated pleasure) in the audience, then a genius would necessarily have to experience such powerful emotions before and during the creation of art. From Byron and Percy Shelley to Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, the artist is practically expected to engage in behaviour ranging from moodiness and rule-breaking to madness and suicide. While Shakespeare does not, on the surface, seem to fulfill any of these tropes, his unquestioned genius (and his refusal to obey the rules of so-called good writing such as the unities) means that many people are willing to assume he must have been a tormented rule-breaker, overwhelmed by emotions or mental breakdowns he could only survive by channelling them into his plays. This idea of genius ranges from a positive rising above the mundane details of life, through an isolation (sought or suffered) from the rest of humanity, all the way to immorality and madness. In its positive form, this view of art and artists is best described by Keats’ negative capability, which, conveniently, uses Shakespeare as its exemplar: [I]t struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.4

Keats concludes, “Beauty … obliterates all consideration.” Here he contrasts a great poet who cares only about the beauty of the writing with the mediocre or merely good poet, who cares about making sense or getting facts right: the sublime versus the great, genius versus skill. This does not comment on the poet’s life or interactions with others, but it 3  Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, 98.

4  Keats, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters, 277.

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33

is a short step from “obliterating” all other literary considerations to ignoring human relationships, or worse. Virginia Woolf, a century later, would echo Keats when she described Shakespeare in A Room of One’s Own. After her famous story of Shakespeare’s sister and how the “heat and violence of a poet’s heart” cannot survive in a woman’s body, she imagines further, not Shakespeare’s body, but his mind: [T]he mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare’s mind, I conjectured, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. The reason perhaps why we know so little of Shakespeare — compared with Donne or Ben Jonson or Milton — is that his grudges and spites and antipathies are hidden from us. We are not held up by some “revelation” which reminds us of the writer. All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.5

Having just described so clearly that social norms and pressures would have made it impossible for a woman in the sixteenth century to “express [her] work completely” Woolf nonetheless has no difficulty imagining that Shakespeare could completely shed all “foreign matter” in writing his plays. This is not just because he is a man—she compares him with Donne, Jonson and Milton after all—but because his genius was so powerful it “consumed” any petty human concerns such as grudges, leaving him utterly free to create impersonal poetry, poetry that is not marred by individual concerns or views. This view of Shakespeare’s genius opposes the explanations offered in Chapter One—rather than being fully immersed in the world, so that he can turn the lead of daily interactions into the gold of his plays, Shakespeare must be untouched by the mundane world. As I will explore further in my final chapter, the two explanations together create the perfect fodder to support the authorship controversy. If genius is housed in and created by the powerful emotions of an individual, how can a business minded, goodnatured actor be the author? If the plays are genius because the author transformed the rich tapestry of the world into poetry, how could a middle-class countryman, with neither education nor vast experience, have had the necessary experiences? Explanations for genius cut both ways. Woolf’s idea of Shakespeare’s “unimpeded” mind burning up anything not directly connected to his writing does not appear to be true of the actual human being William Shakespeare, considering the number of legal actions he brought against various people, his desire to buy property and a coat of arms, and his retirement from writing and the theatre. While we can never know for sure how the man interacted with and reacted to the world, it is important to note how both Keats and Woolf use destructive language while they praise the effect of genius. Keats names this trait he imagines “negative capability” and describes how it “obliterates” everything other than the creation of poetry. Woolf imagines the poetry leaving nothing “unconsumed” because everything has been 5  Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 58.

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“fired out.” As much as these writers mean to praise Shakespeare’s genius, their language suggests that much must be given up to achieve it. Some of the facts of Shakespeare’s life indeed seem to support that—his long absences from his wife and children, in this version of his genius, are the penalty he pays for being dedicated to his muse, and the story the sonnets appear to tell also describes the way other relationships were burned up, leaving only the poetic version of love. Very occasionally, this separation is presented as a purely positive thing, as in Matthew Arnold’s sonnet “Shakespeare”: “Others abide our question. Thou art free. / We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still” (lines 1–2). As with Keats and Woolf, this is not really a fictional portrait of the man. Shakespeare is not fleshed out in any of these descriptions. Although all three talk in terms of the person rather than the plays, it is chiefly the words that are the focus, and how his creative production might have affected the life of the man is not really in question. When writers working with this idea of genius try to imagine a version of Shakespeare walking about London or Stratford, having friends and family, it is invariably a negative portrait that emerges. These fictional portraits of Shakespeare dwell on one of two negative aspects of genius—either he is so obsessed with his plays that he cannot connect to other people, or he has an inner emptiness that leaves room for creativity at the cost of being fully human. There is a long history of connecting creativity and mental illness, going back to Aristotle, who claimed that there is no genius without at least a touch of madness. There is ongoing debate among psycho­logists and neuro­logists about the truth of this connection: is it an actual causation, a correlation, or not a true connection at all? Here it is not important to determine factually if there is neurodiversity or clinical mental illness connected to great creativity; what matters is that this is a widespread belief. In turn, this belief influences the popular understanding of genius, especially creativity in the arts, which in turn influences portraits of geniuses. Whether treated as a specific mental illness, a general sense of disconnection, or being too full of passion and creative energy to obey rules and norms, this view of genius always foregrounds the inability to live in the normal world and enjoy the normal aspects of life—from relationships to small, everyday pleasures. Either these things are seen by the genius as unappealing or baffling, or the creativity itself sees everything as grist for the mill and forms a barrier between the world and the genius. Neil Gaiman’s Shakespeare in The Sandman (which I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter Three) expresses this experience overtly. Whatever happened to me in my life happened to me as a writer of plays. I’d fall in love, or fall in lust, and at the height of my passion, I would think ‘So this is how it feels’ and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt; but I watched my hurt and even relished it a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss.6

Gaiman’s Shakespeare has actually forgotten, in the intervening years, that just before he met Dream he told Marlowe that he would give anything to write great stories that would live after him. Even so, he recognizes that the characters he creates are more 6  Gaiman, The Wake, 180.

“I know not seems”



35

real to him than his relationships with anyone alive. His wife sleeps separately from him, his friends do not understand him, and when Dream says that he is well loved, Shakespeare responds, “because I mean no one harm; and because I keep my opinions to myself.”7 Because this version of Shakespeare has had isolation imposed on him by a supernatural force, there is no suggestion that Shakespeare has become mad (he is, in fact, exceptionally sane), but it is also true that in his second appearance in the series he is so enthralled with watching Puck (the actual Puck, although he does not realize it) that he completely misses his son’s loneliness and need, a need that leads Hamnet to the Fairy Queen. In other words, although there is no actual insanity, Shakespeare’s inability to value reality over fiction and people over action does lead to tragedy. Portraits of this version of Shakespeare lay the blame for his isolation and inability to connect squarely on his genius and suggest that the two are intertwined. If he were not isolated, lacking in empathy, or perhaps insane, Shakespeare would not have become Shakespeare.

Aloof Shakespeares

The mildest portrait of disconnected Shakespeare is one who shows up in a series of mysteries by Philip Gooden. Unlike the Simon Hawke series, Shakespeare is not the detective or a main character. Nick Revill is a young actor who is hired by the Chamberlain’s Men and then gets caught up in a series of murders that connect to or mirror Shakespeare’s plays (some more obviously than others). Shakespeare floats through the series, admired by all but so self-contained and reserved that it is possible, in the first novel, for Nick to legitimately think that a murder that mimics the death of Hamlet Senior was done by Shakespeare (or Master WS as Nick often calls him). I had earlier conceived of Master WS as a murderer and a cheat and a rogue—just as I had seen him as a bishop, a prince and a king. He was all these things and more besides, because these were things which he had made in the quick forge of his imagination. But now I began to wonder whether he might not be in reality what he had so successfully presented on stage in the persons of King Claudius or Richard III, a secret and a sly murderer.8

Shakespeare is not the murderer, but the fact that he seems a plausible candidate is based on the combination of his aloof, if vaguely friendly manner, and his ability to bring murderers and scoundrels to life. Nick suspects that Shakespeare turned to murder either because he had always hidden a dark soul or because writing about madness, disguise, and murder led him to be curious enough to want to experience these things in real life. What Nick is sure of is that someone who can write such characters, and who seems untouched by any strong emotion, is likely a man who is not strongly grounded in the world of human ethics, or perhaps the human world itself. Nick describes how Shakespeare is perfectly suited to play the Ghost: “A ghost is everywhere and nowhere on this earth. He materializes and then vanishes, without a by-your-leave. You might see 7  Gaiman, The Wake, 180.

8  Gooden, Sleep of Death, 199–200.

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Chapter Two

him but you cannot seize him.”9 Shortly after this description, Nick says that Shakespeare is “proficient in the art of murder” and all the other sins as well because “it was his job to sound humanity to its nethermost depths…. Everything human is known to him; nothing, perhaps, repels him.”10 In order to produce the works he does, Shakespeare cannot just read or think about them; he must “know” them intimately, without revulsion or judgment. In Chapter One, we saw how this idea can make Shakespeare a proto-liberal and champion of diversity, able to create full-fleshed characters like Shylock and Othello. The same reasoning can be used to argue Shakespeare’s understanding of murderers and psychopaths, and explain his ability to make Richard III and Macbeth seem human, even, at times, sympathetic. If this is what it takes to be a genius, it would be no wonder that isolation and madness are part and parcel of genius. In later books in the series, Shakespeare plays less of a role and is more affable than unnerving, but he remains aloof and disconnected for most of his appearances. At the beginning of An Honorable Murder, for example, when the actors are talking about the arrival of the Spanish Ambassador, “WS turned away, with a look of slight disapproval on his face as if we were gossiping out of turn.”11 In Death of Kings Nick gets caught up in the Essex rebellion, in part as a spy for Cecil, but also as a go-between for Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton. While Shakespeare is clearly worried that the Earl will be caught up in the Essex rebellion, his only move is to send Nick to recite two lines from his tenth sonnet, “For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any / Who for thy self art so unprovident.”12 That is as far as Shakespeare is willing to go to warn the friend whom the story makes clear is dearer to him than anyone else alive. Perhaps this is why Wriothesley sends a return message of lines from Sonnet 7—he and Shakespeare communicate through the medium of Shakespeare’s words, not directly, despite their love for each other. By itself this might suggest a practical, hard-nosed Shakespeare who uses a code to protect himself from suspicion and chooses safety over love. However, considering all the other ways Shakespeare is described in the series, it instead suggests a man who sees treason and danger coming for someone he supposedly holds dear and is not moved to stop it. The 1921 play Will Shakespeare: An Invention in Four Acts, by Clemence Dane, offers a slightly harsher evaluation of the aloof Shakespeare. In some places, Dane’s Shakespeare seems to belong in Chapter One, for instance in act 2 when his love for Mary Fritton is what allows him to create Romeo and Juliet. It is instead a minor theme. This Shakespeare’s genius is inborn, in fact, almost supernatural. To come to full fruition he needs not to experience life, but to step back from it. It begins in act 1 when Shakespeare realizes that Anne lied to him about her pregnancy in order to trap him into marriage. Despite the fact that she is now truly pregnant, Shakespeare leaves her to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, lured away by a visit from Henslowe and the players. The 9  Gooden, Sleep of Death, 134

10  Gooden, Sleep of Death, 136.

11  Gooden, An Honorable Murder, 6.

12  Gooden, Death of Kings, 137.



“I know not seems”

37

dominant theme of this first act is not his anger at Anne, but his belief that any tie, any restriction, any relationship will hamper his writing. At almost the opening of the play (and well before he understands her deception), when Anne asks what he is writing, he refuses to share it with her, saying, “A dream’s a bubble Anne … / stretch your hand / To touch it—gone!” and claims he must “guard [his] dreams from any touch till they are born.”13 Anne complains repeatedly of his “cruelty” and neglect and Shakespeare compares marriage to being sick or a prisoner, despite the fact that Anne clearly loves him and is doing everything humanly possible to make his life happy.14 When he decides to leave, Anne begs to come with him, but he says, “I have my world to learn and learn alone / I will not dangle at your apron strings.”15 At the end of the first act, as Shakespeare makes ready to leave with the players, Anne’s exchange with a boy actor, The Child, turns into a hallucinatory scene. As the stage fills with people Anne grows frightened and asks who all the people are. The Child answers, “We’re in hell. These are all the dead people. We bring ‘em to life,” and then compares Shakespeare to Orpheus.16 Orpheus famously descended into hell to rescue his dead wife Eurydice. After losing her a second time, he wandered, heartbroken and isolated, until he was killed by the Bacchae. In the same way, Shakespeare’s gift will allow him to move freely among all the “dead” who want their stories told, but only at the price of isolation. He repeatedly asks the shadows to let him pass and they respond, “Never, never, never! To the end of time we follow,” to which Shakespeare says, “how they fasten like a cloud / Of gnats upon me, not to be shaken off.”17 Shakespeare goes to London and the rest of the play concerns the plot by Queen Elizabeth to force Shakespeare to become the playwright England needs. She complains at the opening of Act Two, “What has England, what have I, to match against them when they talk to me of their Tasso, their Petrarch, their Rabelais.”18 On Henslowe’s advice, Elizabeth decides to concentrate on Shakespeare. Henslowe claims that Shakespeare writes comedies because “with his laughter he locks the door of his heart against every man.”19 This suggests that Shakespeare remains unnerved by his own genius and that the “shadows” he tried to escape in Act One will not “be shaken off.” In response, Elizabeth orders Mary to seduce him (or allow herself to be seduced). This works well enough to produce Romeo and Juliet and as is common in these fictional accounts, Mary has to step in and play Juliet in the last scene, with Shakespeare saying she can play the part because “she knows each word, she breathed them/ Into my heart long ere I wrote them down.”20 If this was the climax of the play then there would be no doubt that Dane was 13  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 2.

14  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 15. 15  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 20. 16  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 35. 17  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 37. 18  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 46. 19  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 47. 20  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 67.

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presenting genius as arising from life experiences, but the success of Romeo and Juliet’s premiere is not only off-stage, but upstaged by the arrival of Anne’s mother to announce that Hamnet is dying. Shakespeare is at first unmoved by the news, saying he will not come home and when Mrs. Hathaway tells him the boy cries for him, he responds, “A lie! A gross lie! / He never called me father.”21 It is only when Mrs. Hathaway recounts how the boy asks for him to “tell the tales you know / Of Puck and witches, and the English kings”22 that Shakespeare agrees to return home to see his dying son. Yet he delays, telling her he needs an hour, presumably to see the end of the play. In fact, he stays longer at the theatre, losing track of time. He never goes home. The theatre is more important to him than his dying child, a child he can only connect to when he finds out that the boy longs for his stories. In the third act, Shakespeare discovers that Marlowe and Mary have been carrying on an affair and he follows them to Deptford, where, in an unlikely turn of events, Marlowe attacks Shakespeare and as the former staggers back from the attack, “his arm is knocked up, striking his own forehead.”23 Shakespeare therefore is and is not responsible for Marlowe’s death. As in Act Two, if the anger at Mary’s betrayal and the guilt of his involvement in Marlowe’s death were presented as the motivation for Shakespeare’s art, this play would fit with the works in Chapter One, but Dane again goes in a different direction. Henslowe retrieves Shakespeare from the inn and brings him to Elizabeth, who knows what has occurred and does not care. She instead insists that Shakespeare must write the plays he promised her and refuses to let him leave until he has done so. When Shakespeare cries, “I am to live, not write / To love, not write of love,” she responds, “I thought so too / When I was young.”24 Further she tells him that the two of them climb the “hills” of the world because they must, and “there is no virtue in it.”25 She goes on to tell him that because he is to be England’s playwright he will never have a normal or happy life, but in fact children playing and lovers and “stray words in books” will “Stab, stab, and stab again” because they will remind him of what he does not have.26 Shakespeare accepts this: “Give me this crown and reach the scepter here! / … For I know what I am and what I do / At last.”27 With that he sits down to write. In the last moments of the play he hears Anne’s voice calling to him, asking for his love. He tells the voice to be quiet; he is “in hell, paying the price alone” and so he will never know earthly love, although he believes that he will one day know God’s love.28 He then describes the plays he will write as if he has always known them: “And after Antony some Twelfth 21  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 63.

22  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 63. 23  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 94.

24  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 118. 25  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 119. 26  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 123.

27  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 124–25. 28  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 128.



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Night trick / … How many months for Denmark? / … That done, / I’ll sink another shaft in Holinshed.”29

Cruel Shakespeares

Gooden’s Shakespeare is disconnected and aloof, and Dane’s is actively cruel only to Anne, which can be understood, if not excused, by the way she lied to trap him into marriage. The Shakespeare Bernard Cornwell presents in Fools and Mortals, however, is of a different order all together; here Shakespeare is as far from the familiar portrait of “sweet Will” as it is possible to get. The novel is actually focused on, and narrated by Richard Shakespeare, Will’s brother and an actor in the company. The novel is set in the mid-1590s, during the writing and first staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet, and mainly focuses on the twin plot devices of Richard’s desire to move from playing female parts to male ones, and inter-theatre rivalry, with the owner of the newly constructed Swan arranging to have the manuscripts of Shakespeare’s newest plays stolen for performance there. In the Historical Note, Cornwell writes, “[s]ome readers might object to a depiction of William Shakespeare as a man willing to use violence, yet within a year of the fictional events of Fools and Mortals he was bound over by the Surrey magistrates to keep the peace.”30 While this may be historical fact, Cornwell rather underplays the brutality of his Shakespeare. Will (who is almost always referred to as “my brother” by the narrator rather than by his name) is consistently cruel to Richard for no reason, apparently, other than it is in his nature. When we first meet the better-known Shakespeare, he not only refuses to help his brother up a “slippery bank” but smiles when Richard stings his hands on nettles. Richard notes that they look nothing alike: “My eyes are blue, his are secretive, shadowed, and always watching cautiously.”31 From the moment we meet Shakespeare, then, he is presented as aloof and mean-spirited, not just to his brother, but to everyone. In the course of his first scene he crudely describes another boy apprentice’s assignation with a patron, snarls about his “Verona play” being interrupted by a request from the Lord Chamberlain for a wedding play, and insults other plays the company performs. When Richard first arrives in London (recounted as a flashback), Shakespeare refuses to allow his fourteen-year-old brother to live with him and instead takes him to Sir Godfrey Cullen, who turns out to be the parish priest of Blackfriars and the leader of a “school” which houses a boys’ acting troupe. However, he is also a pedophile who brutally abuses the boys under his care. “We were made to dress as girls and walk in the streets, and if a man did not try to kiss us or feel under our skirts then we had failed the test, and failure meant another thrashing.”32 Sir Godfrey also prostitutes the boys to 29  Dane, Will Shakespeare, 129–30.

30  Cornwell, Fools and Mortals, 365. 31  Cornwell, Fools and Mortals, 15.

32  Cornwell, Fools and Mortals, 145.

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patrons and sexually abuses them himself. Shakespeare, it is clear, knows all this, before he drops his brother off at the “school” for three years. Once Richard is too old for the boys’ troupe he joins the Chamberlain’s Men, still playing female parts. He desperately wants to play male roles and his brother cruelly teases him by promising him a male part in the new play A Midsummer Night’s Dream and then casting him as Frances Flute, the bellows-maker who must reluctantly play a woman in the mechanicals’ play of Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare is also a brothel owner, and when he suspects his brother is the one responsible for the theft of the manuscripts he does not ask Richard to explain, but simply physically attacks him as soon as Richard walks in the door. Although Will is not the focus of the novel, Cornwell makes clear that despite Shakespeare’s cruelty, his genius is vital to the success of the company. He fights, verbally and physically, with others in the company, and is always excused because everyone knows that his plays are worth putting up with the man. Further, Shakespeare is so confident in his own worth that he easily stands up to both lords and Pursuivants (officers of the Queen). Cornwell suggests Shakespeare’s genius, in large part, by contrasting his plays (especially the well-known A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet) with anonymous works like Hester and Ahasuerus and Fair Em, the Miller’s Daughter rather than works by playwrights like Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, whose works were performed at the time of the novel. Further, the plot largely revolves around the attempted theft of Shakespeare’s plays by a rival company, and between that and the bits of non-Shakespearean plays Cornwell references, it appears that Shakespeare is the only man in all of London who can write plays that will please both court and commoner, and thus ensure a company’s success. Shakespeare’s genius excuses his treatment of those around him and, to some extent, his cruelty and lack of compassion seem to explain his genius—he pours all his human feelings, all his empathy into his characters, leaving none for his own brother, let alone anyone else. At the very end of the novel, when the company has not only recovered the lost scripts but also fought off the Pursuivants and performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream to great applause, Richard reports that he and his brother are reconciled. This reconciliation is unmotivated, although Richard puts it down to his brother’s affection for Richard’s love interest (and, in the final pages of the novel, wife), but this does not excuse the previous 350 pages of cruelty. Perhaps Cornwell believed his portrayal of Shakespeare was not as brutal as it comes across. Perhaps he felt that genius such as Shakespeare’s can be excused and his cruelty downplayed. Either way Cornwell assumes that the indifference Shakespeare has for the feelings of those around him (from young boy apprentices to the Queen’s secret police) stems from his complete immersion in his work. Anything that distracts him from writing—colleagues, family, or patrons—is at best an annoyance and at worst a problem that must be disposed of through immediate physical violence. Only the plays matter. It is interesting that this novel was published in 2018, a time when America (and the world in general) is seeing an increase in violence, hate crimes, and indifference to the suffering of others by those in power. Perhaps Cornwell is, unconsciously, giving us a Shakespeare for our times.



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However violent and cruel Shakespeare is in Fools and Mortals, he is not responsible for murder. That, however, is exactly how John T. Aquino portrays him. In a short story about the Gunpowder Plot, the narrator, Henry Bagnet, a retired soldier who works for Robert Cecil, is investigating who was really responsible for the plot to blow up King James and the Parliament. He discovers that it was Shakespeare, Jonson, Dekker, and Catesby, and that Shakespeare informed on the others to save himself. “You betrayed your friends to save yourself…. And for what you did, there is no excuse.”33 Jonson (who in this version is a spy) says, “I call him ‘Invisible Will.’ He is there, but he is not. He shows you only what he wants you to know.”34 Bagnet cannot bring himself to turn Shakespeare in because he admires his plays so, and it is implicit in the story that Shakespeare’s years as papist, hiding and watching, always leading a double life, is what has given him his genius. It does not explain why the other writers involved in the Gunpowder Plot are not similarly gifted, but then, none of them informed without a trace of guilt.

Shakespeare the Madman

The examples thus far focus on Shakespeare’s working life and portray him struggling with (or fighting against) the demands of normal life. Other versions present Shakespeare at the end of his life and it is in these works that madness becomes an option. A Shakespeare in the midst of his career, writing several plays a year, acting, managing all the busy elements of London life is not a Shakespeare who can be entirely disconnected from reality. A retired Shakespeare in his last days can. Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death, a 1973 play by Edward Bond, is an example of this vision of Shakespeare as a failed human, driven to despair and possibly madness by his genius. Bond, a Marxist, wrote a deliberately political play—Shakespeare’s concern with financial security and his passive acceptance of William Combe’s enclosure plan make him out to be a typical capitalist. Nonetheless, Bond cannot seem to resist giving voice to Shakespeare’s intense isolation from the rest of the world, an isolation that is tied directly to being a writer. In fact, in the introduction to the play, Bond claims that ending Bingo with Shakespeare’s suicide “rather flatters Shakespeare. If he didn’t end in the way shown in the play, then he was a reactionary blimp or some other fool.”35 For Bond, attempting to reconcile the Shakespeare who, in Lear, created “the most radical of all social critics”36 and the Shakespeare who stood on the side of enclosures is impossible; he can only imagine that the contradiction drives Shakespeare mad. Or possibly sane, since for Bond, “Art is always sane. It always insists on the truth.”37 Thus, if Shakespeare the man were forced to recognize what Shakespeare the artist always knew, suicide would be the only answer. 33  Aquino, “The Name-Catcher’s Tale,” 404. 34  Aquino, “The Name-Catcher’s Tale,” 399. 35  Bond, Plays 3, 4.

36  Bond, Plays 3, 4. 37  Bond, Plays 3, 5.

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Throughout the play, Shakespeare is the aloof, withdrawn genius we see, in milder form, in Philip Gooden’s mystery series. When the play opens, Shakespeare is sitting outside and a host of people—his daughter, Judith, the Old Man, and the Young Woman— try to engage him in conversation, but he merely nods. When he responds to the Young Woman’s request for money he only asks her, “You’d rather have money not food?” When she agrees, he goes into the house without another word. While he returns with a purse of money to give her, his aloof manner as he leaves makes her fear he is going for the authorities and she agrees to hide in the garden and prostitute herself to the Old Man, thus never receiving Shakespeare’s gift. The stage direction notes, when the Old Man tells him the Young Woman has gone off, Shakespeare doesn’t react.38 In scene 2 Judith tells him, “You don’t notice these things. You must learn that people have feelings”39 Later, Jonson tells him, “You always kept to yourself.”40 In the second to last scene, Shakespeare sits alone in the snow, trying to feel. “Snow. It doesn’t melt. My hand’s cold. (He breathes on the snow in his hand.) It doesn’t melt. I must be very cold. Serene.”41 From these snippets it would seem that Bond has created a Shakespeare who is completely disconnected from the real world, unable to relate to anyone—not his family or friends or to people suffering horribly right in front of him. This is certainly the critical point of view. Christy L. Brown, for example, states, “The contradiction between the great poet dealing with questions of life, death, and the nature of human society, and the man, William Shakespeare, as the product of newly acquisitive mercantilism … forms the central issue of the play.”42 She argues that Bond shows Shakespeare shocked into reality only by the decaying corpse of the Young Woman, who has become “feebleminded from the whipping … The play demonstrates how the propertied classes, having created her, felt threatened by her.”43 However, Shakespeare does not actually come across as quite as aloof and withdrawn as critics and perhaps Bond think he does. In the scene Brown references, Shakespeare reminisces about bear- baiting, which, according to Judith, he hated, describing “Flesh and blood. Strips of skin. Teeth scraping bone.”44 When Judith goes out to deal with practical things, he adds, “What does it cost to stay alive. I’m stupefied at the suffering I’ve seen.”45 Nonetheless he still sees the woman as beautiful. Brown’s claim that it is the Young Woman’s corpse that shocks Shakespeare ignores the speeches where he talks about his life in London. What seems more congruent with his behaviour in this and later scenes is that without the distraction of writing plays, Shakespeare is forced to confront the suffering of life. Bond, like most creators of a fictional Shakespeare, cannot give up the idea that Shakespeare’s genius must be con38  Bond, Plays 3, 17.

39  Bond, Plays 3, 32. 40  Bond, Plays 3, 45. 41  Bond, Plays 3, 57.

42  Brown, “Edward Bond’s Bingo,” 346. 43  Brown, “Edward Bond’s Bingo,” 348. 44  Bond, Plays 3, 39. 45  Bond, Plays 3, 40.



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nected to and the cause of not only his isolation but also the final clarity that keeps him from being the reactionary fool. Bond claims, “Shakespeare’s plays show this need for sanity and its political expression, justice. But how did he live? His behaviour as a property-owner made him closer to Goneril than Lear.”46 Yet Bingo seems to suggest that Shakespeare’s genius (as expressed in his plays) did not show the “need for sanity” but instead formed a buffer that kept Shakespeare above the pain of day-to-day life. Shakespeare does not take poison at the end because he realizes he was a bad landowner, but because he realized that he could connect with no one—not his wife or daughter, and not Ben Jonson. Despite the subtitle of the play, “Scenes of death and money,” Bond is as interested in Shakespeare’s emotional state as he is in his financial decisions, as much a humanist as a Marxist. The scene that shows this the most clearly is his meeting with Ben Jonson. The scene takes place at the tavern where Shakespeare and Jonson share a drink. Jonson begins the night trying to probe Shakespeare for information on his latest play (only to discover, shocked, that Shakespeare is not writing at all). As the night wears on, Jonson becomes more emotional and angry, alternately blaming and admiring Shakespeare for his withdrawn manner. First he claims Shakespeare cannot write because he has not lived. “What’s your life been like? Any real blood, any prison?”47 That attack is almost immediately turned into a more complicated blend of awe and disgust. “Life doesn’t seem to touch you, I mean soil you. You walk by on clean pavement.”48 He calls this “serene” but Shakespeare’s indifference to Jonson’s pain reads as indifference. Once again Bond’s stated purpose and the scene he produces are at odds. There is nothing in this scene of enclosures, capitalism, or money. Instead, we watch as Jonson, who clearly considers himself a friend, tries to reach Shakespeare in any way possible and fails— neither accusations nor praise nor shared memories seem to move him in the slightest. The level of indifference Shakespeare displays is clearly heightened, greater than previous encounters with Jonson (who, after all, considers him a friend) and the only reason given is that he is no longer writing. The inescapable conclusion is that when he is not using his genius to create, Shakespeare barely exists at all, because he cannot stand to face the suffering of his family and friends, or that of total strangers. In the very next scene he seems to recognize this; sitting in the snow he notes that he cannot feel the cold and then tells Judith he tried to love her with money, because he could not offer her time or emotional connection. Shakespeare goes on to say, “Every writer writes in other men’s blood…. But only a god or a devil can write in other men’s blood and not ask why they spilt it or what it cost.”49 What he does not say is whether he himself has asked the cost. Instead he seems to excuse his behaviour towards others. Perhaps Bond means to suggest Shakespeare is now confronting the cost and that is why he locks 46  Bond, Plays 3, 6.

47  Bond, Plays 3, 45. 48  Bond, Plays 3, 46. 49  Bond, Plays 3, 57.

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himself in his room, takes poison, and dies asking “was anything done?”50 It is just as possible to read this as a man confronting his own inner emptiness as his selfish behaviour towards others.

Shakespeare as God

Bond’s Shakespeare, who commits suicide, is truly a portrait of Shakespeare as a mad genius—his Shakespeare is unable to relate to his friends and family, sees a corpse as perfect, holds debates about reality with himself, and commits suicide. Perhaps because historically Shakespeare was a successful writer and businessman, and died in his bed after retirement, there are not many fictional portraits that go as far as Bond. However, there is another way to suggest that Shakespeare’s genius creates an unbridgeable gulf between him and the rest of the world, and that this gulf causes suffering as well as genius, and that is to suggest that Shakespeare is literally a kind of god. The first example of this approach is Jorge Luis Borges’ very short story “Everything and Nothing.” Borges’ story or character sketch does not mention Shakespeare’s name until the penultimate sentence. At first, Borges describes a mysterious “he” who is completely empty, internally: “There was no one in him; behind his face (even the poor paintings of the epoch show it to be unlike any other)…there was nothing but a bit of cold.”51 It is ironic—probably deliberately so—that Borges describes Shakespeare’s face as unique, like no one else’s, since the debate over whether this or that portrait truly represents Shakespeare has been ongoing for centuries. What is more important than the gentle irony about the face is that Borges imagines that the body is a shell, empty except for words. The words have passion; they are “copious, fantastic, and agitated” but the man does not.52 Borges describes the steps Shakespeare goes through. “At first he thought that everyone was like himself. But the dismay shown by a comrade to whom he mentioned the vacuity revealed his error to him.”53 Once he recognizes that he is not like other people, he tries first learning and then “one of the elemental rites of humanity”; that is, he dispassionately decides to have sex with Anne Hathaway in hopes of discovering some sort of connection. Failing that he goes to London and becomes an actor, the perfect job because “he had already trained himself in the habit of pretending he was someone, so it should not be discovered that he was no one.”54 Finally, Borges imagines him turning to writing because acting does not provide a steady stream of personas to inhabit, because once the play was over “he tasted the hateful taste of unreality.”55 When Shakespeare is not acting he is forced again to become “no one.” 50  Bond, Plays 3, 59.

51  Borges, “Everything and Nothing,” 202. 52  Borges, “Everything and Nothing,” 202. 53  Borges, “Everything and Nothing,” 202. 54  Borges, “Everything and Nothing,” 202. 55  Borges, “Everything and Nothing,” 202.



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Borges alludes to several passages from plays—Richard stating he plays many parts and Iago saying “I am not what I am”—as evidence that Shakespeare left clues about his inner emptiness in the plays, but the story is not really interested in trying to provide proof for this theory; Borges wants to describe what it would be like to have so many fully realized lives living inside oneself and the only way he can imagine room for Caesar and Juliet and Macbeth is if the actual human being named William Shakespeare is empty of an individual self. He calls it “a directed hallucination.” Since Borges ends his story with God speaking directly to Shakespeare “before or after his death,” it might seem that he is suggesting Shakespeare is divinely inspired, but that is not exactly true. Instead, God speaks out of a whirlwind, as he did to Job, but rather than focusing on the difference between Himself and man (“Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?”56), God tells Shakespeare he is himself a version of God. Both of them dream a world into existence, and both “are many and no one.”57 Perhaps this is meant to be reassuring or complimentary to Shakespeare, but it also serves to emphasize the distance between Shakespeare and the rest of humanity—he is cut off in a way no one can begin to fathom except God. Borges’ Shakespeare is not quite human; he may be god-like, but this means he relates to no one and no one understands him. The second example of this idea of Shakespeare as a god that I wish to examine comes in ­graphic novel form. In 2010, Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col published a comic series called Kill Shakespeare. The premise of the comic is that all of Shakespeare’s characters live on beyond the plays and inhabit the same world, with some of them worshipping the absent Shakespeare as a god, some hating and fearing him as a cruel wizard, and some denying his existence. This—and the fact that Shakespeare possesses a magic quill that allows him to create life—would seem to place this version of Shakespeare in the third chapter, of genius arising from external, supernatural forces. Yet the focus is not on the way Shakespeare gained his magical power. Nor is it on how or why William Shakespeare is the one who gains the power of the quill, or how gaining control of it changed him. Instead, the focus is on how the responsibilities of such power come close to destroying Shakespeare, and whether or not, having created the characters, he is responsible for their choices and actions. As the story opens, Shakespeare has disappeared from the world he created. A prophecy exists that the Shadow King (who turns out to be Hamlet) will be the one to find Shakespeare and return him to the world, and the first two ­graphic novels in the series trace Hamlet’s path to Shakespeare and his meeting with all the various types of characters. Richard III and Lady Macbeth join forces (after murdering Macbeth) to use Hamlet as a means to find Shakespeare and steal his quill (and thus his power). Othello, Falstaff, and Juliet, among others, are “prodigals” who worship Shakespeare as their creator and help Hamlet escape from Richard and fulfill his quest. While those who seek to take Shakespeare’s power are the mostly clearly evil, both sides feature prob56  Job 40:9 (King James Version).

57  Borges, “Everything and Nothing,” 203.

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lematic characters who make bad choices. For example, there is a gradual revelation that Hamlet Senior was in fact a tyrant, a paranoid man who saw his own son as a rival and thus wanted him killed. In this series, anyone who wants power of any kind—political, creative, or divine—is figured as problematic. The view of power as inherently corrupting sets up the Shakespeare that appears midway through the second volume, The Blast of War. When Hamlet first meets Richard, the latter describes the split among the characters and the conflicting views of Shakespeare. “Some say he is a god. Others say he is merely a wizard. You are meant to stop him Hamlet. You are meant to save us. Will you free us from the tyranny of William Shakespeare?”58 While Richard is lying to Hamlet about the “zealots” causing chaos (unsurprisingly he is the one who is oppressing and killing the people), he is not entirely wrong about Shakespeare causing terror, since, by creating the world, Shakespeare has also, in some way, created all the chaos, pain, and evil in that world. At the same time, however, Shakespeare has created all the love, loyalty, and beauty the characters know. It is the inability to create one without the other that undoes Shakespeare. His “prodigals” believe (as Falstaff says) that Shakespeare’s return will “renew this world’s beauty,” but while they are right that Shakespeare is their “father” in that he created the characters, his return does not create a paradise. When Hamlet does finally find Shakespeare in the second volume, he finds neither a god nor a wizard, but a drunken man who refuses to take responsibility for his creations. The first few panels featuring Shakespeare show him only in silhouette, vaguely recognizable, holding a wine bottle in each hand. His first words to Hamlet are “Cease your shuffling. Your clumsy steps offend me.”59 Hamlet asks if he will return and “help thy children be free.” The next panel finally shows Shakespeare fully—a caricature of the more familiar portrait. Shakespeare’s hair is wild and he has large bags under his eyes. His clothes are torn and patched and his face is set in a permanent sneer. In response to Hamlet’s request he says, “Help? Do I seem like a man who wishes to bend his back for another’s cause?” and then tells him “now piss off.” Shakespeare does not have the courage of his convictions. He makes clear he wishes to die, but when a magic dagger heads for him, he faces it for only a single panel (long enough to mutter “OH happy dagger”) before dodging out of its way (in one of the more amusing in-jokes of the series, Hamlet knocks the dagger aside with a copy of Dr. Faustus). When Hamlet asks for Shakespeare’s help, his response is only “Perhaps it is best to say that Shakespeare is dead … that he never existed.” Hamlet leaves him and returns to the “prodigals,” telling them Shakespeare is dead, but after a battle with Richard’s troops and the death of Falstaff, Hamlet visits Shakespeare again, finding that he has chosen to fight off the enchanted dagger and live. When Hamlet asks after the quill, Shakespeare says, “Be wary, Dane. Power brings nothing but pain.” Hamlet tells him it is his responsibility to use the quill, but Shakespeare still resists, saying, “All I have created are children who now wish me dead. How deeply they 58  McCreery and Del Col, Kill Shakespeare 1, unpag. Note: because the pages are unnumbered, footnotes will only be provided when the specific volume is not clear. 59  McCreery and Del Col, Kill Shakespeare 2, unpag.



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must hate me to forge such a cruel blade. Children only seek to murder the most monstrous of fathers.” It is only after a stern lecture by Hamlet that he agrees to help. McCreery presents a Shakespeare who is haunted by the world he has created. When he finally appears before his believers, he tells them he is ashamed. I constructed this world to be a paradise for all of you to live in. And then I gave you the greatest gift—choice. But not all choices are good ones and so I opened the door to villainy, avarice, greed, jealousy, hatred, murder. As much as I tried, I could not alter these choices. They were beyond me, as I thought all important things to be. And so my great thinkers, bold poets, foolish jester, and strong warriors were all tainted. Instead of acting as a father should, I decided to ignore and forget my promises to thee. I chose the easy route: to hide.

Shakespeare here has obvious connections to a tainted version of the Christian God—a creator who gave humans free will without quite understanding what that would lead to or the misery it would cause. Just as God turned His face from mankind, so too does Shakespeare hide from his creations until Hamlet finds him and forces him to face the truths he would prefer to ignore. Shakespeare is often presented as a genius precisely because he created characters who are “alive.” Still the question of free will and responsibility remains unclear. Shakespeare finally kills Richard, claiming he “must” act to “stem evil” as if that evil was a separate element not of his creation. As Richard dies he blames Shakespeare: “My mouth is full of poison. Just as you doomed it to be.” Is Richard right? Is his twisted, evil nature Shakespeare’s creation, something Richard could not overcome? Or is Shakespeare’s earlier claim true—that given free will, his characters made choices, some of which were evil? If genius is the ability to create works that live on outside the bounds of the work, is the creator of those works responsible in any way for these alternative versions? The series does not offer any clear answers. Over Richard’s body Shakespeare claims, “I left because I could not undo the darkness that seized the land. But in returning, I bring nothing but more bloodshed.” Hamlet challenges him to show the characters a way other than bloodshed, which in the next panel motivates Shakespeare to use the quill to project a huge image of himself as an angry god—his disembodied head fills the entire sky as he booms “Children, break thy weapons! Now is the time for empty hands! And the rest shall be silence!” While this has the satisfactory result of immediately ending the conflict and sending Richard’s troops into retreat, it also begs the question of why Shakespeare did not think of this before, on his own. Why did he need to be twice confronted by his own character before he would act? Like the Shakespeare of Bond and Borges, this Shakespeare seems to be paralyzed by his genius, unable to fully understand human emotions or needs. In the coda after the battle, Shakespeare tells Hamlet that he will be leaving to wander among his creations and gives Hamlet sonnet 71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”) to share with the believers. Romeo calls the poem blasphemous and denies that Shakespeare wrote it. “Why do you ask us to forget our creator? Shakespeare is eternal. He is beauteous and divine.” Hamlet responds that Shakespeare was not perfect and “Trying to be so drove him mad.” At the conclusion of volume two, McCreery strongly suggests that the point is that all gods are false gods and Shakespeare, as much

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as he is admired for his genius, is no more than a man. Given the power to create whole worlds, he was driven mad by the way those worlds turned out. In volume three, The Tide of Blood, Hamlet, Juliet, and Othello travel to Prospero’s island to stop his attempt to take over the world. Shakespeare, who has been travelling incognito, finds out from Feste what has happened and goes to confront Prospero. In contrast to the first two volumes, Shakespeare is now illustrated to look more like a wizard, with longer grey hair and beard, but a calmer face and neater clothing. When Shakespeare first confronts Prospero he easily overcomes him, commenting, “I used to like thee, Prospero. Thou remind’st me of me” and then adds in the next panel “Gods, I must have been such a pretentious bore.”60 He is briefly tricked by Lady Macbeth (who uses magic to appear as Miranda), but eventually Shakespeare faces Prospero alone and swears he will not use the quill to kill Prospero the way he did Richard. He offers his secrets willingly to Prospero, who uses Shakespeare’s power to open a door to the next realm of existence and finds … nothing. Instead of the series’ usual, elaborately inked panels, Shakespeare stands in the midst of an almost completely white page saying, “Welcome to the edge of what is, Prospero. Thou may not find it to thy liking.” When Prospero asks how a place can be nothing, Shakespeare explains, in essence, the creative process. If thou dost pull down this world all that shall remain is this ceaseless, hungry void. This blank page brings no peace until thou fill up its ravenous maw. It will devour thy every inspiration, chew upon thy every insight. Welcome to the forms of things unknown.

“The forms of things unknown” echoes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the blankness of the page and the idea that the blankness eats up any thought a writer might have is another explanation for why a writer might descend into madness. In volume two Shakespeare declared he was driven mad by the realization that his creations were tainted, open to evil, because he could not write characters that were perfect. “I left because I could not undo the darkness that seized the land.” Now, in volume three, we see a Shakespeare who is at ease with the blank page, even as he describes how destructive that page can be. Perhaps McCreery is suggesting that a true genius, like Shakespeare, is not frightened of the creative process that terrifies lesser minds, but that the ability to fill up the blank page with ease is its own kind of danger. When Prospero begs for advice on how to create, Shakespeare suggests, somewhat ironically, that he begin by recreating his wife and it is then that Prospero realizes he cannot create true life. “I cannot see her in my mind’s eye. Her form, yes, barely. But to remake her? Every facet? Every detail? It is impossible.” Prospero’s wife is famously “unfinished”; like so many wives and mothers in Shakespeare’s plays, she never appears on stage and is referenced only briefly, when Prospero tells Miranda, “Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and / She said thou wast my daughter” (1.2.55–6). Miranda, who can recall “four or five women,” does not recall her mother at all, and neither character ever mentions her again. It is unlikely that McCreery means to address the scholarly question of missing mothers—just before Lady Macbeth reveals herself Shakespeare asks after 60  McCreery and Del Col, Kill Shakespeare 3, unpag.



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Miranda’s mother. Prospero angrily says, “You will not mention her! She was my wife and now is nothing because of thee” to which Shakespeare responds, “She was dear to me as well.” Though neither Prospero nor Shakespeare really had any interest in the shadowy figure of Miranda’s mother, the desire to resurrect a lost love is a common trope that readers will understand, just as they will understand it is a doomed desire. As Prospero floats in the centre of the page, covering his face, tiny squares surround him, filled with pictures of his wife, a recognizably human woman, but blank where the face should be. Prospero cannot recreate the details that make someone an individual; this is in direct contrast to Shakespeare, whose characters are rich enough to have lives independent of the plays he created. Prospero realizes what he would create would not be perfect but “obscene.” He then chooses to kill himself with the quill, which leads to the destruction of the island. McCreery and Del Col here literalize writer’s block, the fear of the blank page and the realization that no work of art can ever truly mimic or match reality. Shakespeare is no longer mad or isolated, because he has come to understand the limits of his powers. The characters he has created do not reach that same understanding. At the end of volume three, Lady Macbeth and Romeo join forces and plan to kill Hamlet, still seeking to take control of the world Shakespeare has created. There is a fourth volume, The Mask of Night, but it is focused on the emotional journey of the characters. Shakespeare’s struggle with understanding and accepting the consequences of his genius ends when he defeats Prospero in The Tide of Blood, when the consequences appear to be some level of separation from the rest of the world. While he does not retreat to the drunken, bitter isolation he inhabited at the beginning of the series, Shakespeare cannot stay with Hamlet and the other Prodigals. He must exist in the world he created in disguise, and remain passive in order to have any semblance of happiness. His victory over Prospero comes from giving his creation exactly what he claims to want, and then standing back and doing nothing. In each of these works, artistic genius is presented as coming at great cost and moreover, existing because of that cost. Only by giving up human connection, a true sense of self, perhaps a soul, can Shakespeare write the works he does. To circle back to Woolf, what these texts suggest is that genius must be freed—no matter the price—from the petty everyday distractions of the real world. “All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded.”61 This sounds noble, a great mind rising above the world, but these texts suggest that what was actually “fired out” of Shakespeare was his sanity and his humanity. In any work that tries to present a fully fleshed-out portrait of genius as aloof or disconnected, Shakespeare becomes a figure to pity or dislike. Gooden’s carefully removed WS, the brutal and immoral brother in Fools and Mortals, the eerily empty shell Borges creates, and Bond’s despairing suicide all leave the reader with the unavoidable conclusion that genius is not worth the cost. Even the Shakespeare of Kill Shakespeare who ultimately redeems himself and becomes heroic in the third volume starts out as a drunken 61  Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 58.

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recluse, refusing to take responsibility for the suffering and death he has written into being. If the Shakespeares of Chapter One are reassuring because they all suggest genius is within reach for anyone who cares enough, the Shakespeares of this chapter are oddly reassuring as well, by suggesting that genius comes at the cost of any human interaction or simple happiness, and thus may not be worth having after all.

Chapter Three

“WE ARE SPIRITS OF ANOTHER SORT”

The third category of genius returns to the original root of the word: a guiding spirit, or personal or familial deity. Throughout history the deeds of exceptional individuals have been seen as proof of their special connection to a god—for example, the ability of Christian saints to withstand and rise above torture. Exceptional creativity, specifically, has often been described as coming from the Goddess Nature or a muse. Whether the muse is literally one of the nine Greek demi-goddesses or a woman glimpsed once and then idealized, as in Dante and Petrarch’s cases, the idea that great art is inspired by an outside, divine, mystical, or magical force is a common one in Western Europe. It is surprising, considering how often Shakespeare’s genius is raised to the heights of divinity (his plays have been considered a secular bible since at least the late eighteenth century) that his story is not more often connected to magical or mystical sources. However, there are some cases and in each one the goal of bringing Shakespeare to life is overtly to explore the suggestion that only contact with something otherworldly can explain the power and universality of the plays. Genius thus becomes a gift from a superhuman force rather than an inborn or cultivated ability. Early Examples

Shakespeare has been considered the “poet of Nature” at least since John Milton wrote “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, / Warbl[ing] his native wood-notes wild”1 (133–34). Many later admirers, aware both of his lack of a university education and his refusal to follow the rules of drama, claim that Shakespeare drew his inspiration directly from Nature (meaning both the wellspring of human nature and the natural world). In some sense, this belief underlies all the Chapter One examples, but especially in the eighteenth century. Shakespeare’s direct connection with Nature (here meaning not the natural world but the essential force of creation) was both praise and excuse for his apparent flaws. He did not need a university education because he drew his abilities straight from the source of life. These references are usually brief and not attached to any attempt to flesh out the character of Shakespeare; he simply is “Nature’s poet.” Furthermore, the mere fact of a supernatural or divine aspect is not enough for it to count as an explanation for Shakespeare’s genius. For example, the ghost of Shakespeare shows up fairly frequently in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, usually to exclaim over the state of modern theatre. These appearances certainly are supernatural, but Shakespeare’s appearance (if it is explained at all) is due to his genius, not the cause of it. A nineteenth century example is Shaw’s comic work, “A Dressing Room 1  Milton, “L’Allegro,” 71.

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Secret.” This story features a talking bust of Shakespeare, but not only does it talk only about the author’s failings while living, the explanation for the bust talking is simply, “It is not easy for a bust to speak. But when I hear an honest man rebuked for common sense, even the stones would speak.”2 It is really only in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that the description of Shakespeare as Nature’s poet becomes something more and the supernatural or divine becomes an explanation for his genius rather than a trope or a simple way to provide an explanation for his continued presence. Part of this turn is due to the invention of fantasy and science fiction genres and their increasing and sustained popularity, and part is the rise of science as the dominant worldview. While religion continues to be an important element in most people’s lives, there is, for many, no longer a sense of blasphemy in a story that has Shakespeare consorting with fairies or being treated as a god. Moreover, techno­logical innovation allows for the acceptance of time travel as a plot device. However poorly explained it might be, the ability to travel in time is widely accepted as a plot device. While the majority of the examples in this chapter come from the last one hundred years or so, there are earlier examples that demonstrate that if Shakespeare’s genius is beyond human conception it must therefore be beyond human explanation. In 1797, Benjamin Smith produced a print entitled The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature and the Passions. Part of the Boydell Shakespeare prints, the image shows Shakespeare as an infant, sitting upright on a blanket, with a half-naked woman representing Nature reclining behind him. She is propped up on one arm, while the other arm circles him. Around him are a variety of figures, some grotesque, some beautiful. Directly behind him is what seems to be a female figure clad all in white and almost translucent, much less distinctly drawn than the other Passions. Above her several angels or cupids circle an opening in the sky through which light pours, light which falls on the figure in white and Shakespeare almost exclusively. Despite labelling the figures as “Nature and the Passions” there is a strong Biblical overtone, with Shakespeare standing in for the baby Jesus. The figure in white can represent Mary or the Holy Spirit; either way the implication that Shakespeare’s genius is a divine gift is unmistakable. Generally, Christians would argue that all creativity is a gift from God, but the painting makes this gift a more direct and spectacular version of this general rule. The organization of the grouping makes clear that the Passions are there not to overwhelm or control Shakespeare, but to worship him; this places him firmly in the divine camp, especially since the baby stares out at the viewer with disturbingly adult and dispassionate eyes—this Shakespeare will not write his plays because he has experienced life and been transformed by it, but because since the moment he was born he has the ability to shape passions, perhaps life itself, into art that transcends art. A similar presentation of divine inspiration shows up in the earliest film to feature Shakespeare as a character: Georges Melies’ 1907 Le Reve de Shakespeare or La Mort de Jules Cesar (in English usually titled Shakespeare Writing Julius Caesar). In this film Shakespeare is attempting to write the scene of Julius Caesar’s assassination and having no success. He sits down in an armchair to think and suddenly the scene plays out before 2  Shaw, “A Dressing Room Secret,” 104.



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him. While the French title suggests that Shakespeare is dreaming, the actual film does not show him falling asleep or waking up; instead he watches the scene play out with great interest—a still from the film shows Shakespeare in the extreme right of the shot gripping the arms of the chair and leaning slightly away as if he is both fascinated and a bit frightened of the violence taking place in front of him. The implication of the staging is that Shakespeare is somehow granted a vision of the actual assassination so that he may bring the event to life. While the source of the vision is never made clear, the film does not suggest that this is merely a fertile imagination at work. A more full-fledged early example comes in John Brougham’s one act play “Shakespeare’s Dream” (1858). Like Meles, it is unclear whether this is just a dream by the young Shakespeare—his unconscious awareness of his own genius asserting itself— or if the audience is supposed to wholeheartedly accept that this is a divine visitation. It is also not entirely clear if the supernatural forces actually gift Shakespeare with his genius or simply acknowledge the destiny that is already set for him. Either way, Brougham very clearly describes Shakespeare’s gift as more than human. As the play opens, Chronos meets with Genius, whom he calls “great Earth Goddess” and “heaven born … first and rarest / Of all the spirit-gifts on earth bestowed.”3 Unexpectedly, Genius declares that she is not as powerful as Chronos claims, giving those accolades to Fame, who accompanies her on stage. She goes on to complain about how few of her “children” make any mark in the world beyond their death, but that “One lives / Today that shall outlive them all.”4 She describes him as “Great Nature’s Arch Magician, to whose spell / The varied passions of the human soul / Must quick obedience yield.”5 The language here links Shakespeare with Prospero (a favourite comparison with Victorians) and suggests he controls the supernatural rather than vice versa. Genius goes on to say, “The hand of Fate has lifted up this paragon” and brings Chronos and the other characters to see the sleeping Shakespeare.6 There they sing to him, in what sounds very much like a blessing or spell: “What time, all nature’s book to thee, / An easy page shall open be, / From first to last, where thou canst read / Nor yet to slightest effort need”7 The use of the eight syllable rhymed couples is clearly meant to echo the speech of the Witches in Macbeth and thus to suggest that this is not just a foretelling but is instead a spell of making. In fact, when Shakespeare wakes he immediately marks a difference: “within my soul / That seems as though it held a universe / Vast, shapeless, and indefinite.”8 He describes how previously he has had “Glimpses … / Of shapes majestic” and “once methought / Grave History resign[ed] to me her pen.”9 Oddly enough, after claiming “It cannot be that heaven designed / This mighty maze of 3  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 61.

4  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 62. 5  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 62. 6  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 63. 7  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 64. 8  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 64. 9  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 64.

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intermingled thought / To rest unordered and unuseful here!” he decides to go back to sleep so he can dream some more and receive further inspiration.10 While the purpose of this continued sleep is to allow a closing procession of all the principle characters of the plays, it also suggests that Shakespeare realizes he needs further connection to the divine to write the plays. At the moment, after all, his interior universe is “shapeless and indefinite” but further dreams lead to embodied characters, both in his imagination and on the stage.

Time-Travel

These early examples only hint at the idea that Shakespeare’s works come from a source outside or beyond himself and his ordinary experiences of life. Works in the later twentieth century are much more overt in their suggestion that only a supernatural force can explain Shakespeare’s genius. One such work is Jess Winfield’s My Name is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare. In alternating chapters, Winfield tells the story of two adolescent Will Shakespeares: the first the future author of the plays and the second a graduate student in 1980s America. The Bard-to-be is a reluctant teacher in Stratford, writing second-rate verse that attacks the local Protestant gentry (this Shakespeare is a secret, although not very devout, Catholic). The modern Will is half-heartedly trying to write his thesis on the more famous Shakespeare when his father decides to cut him off financially, leading him to take a job of delivering a huge psychedelic mushroom to a buyer, a choice which leads to a series of misadventures, climaxing in Will being chased by a DEA agent and then making a decision to get rid of the evidence by eating the entire mushroom. At that point the two stories literally converge, the chapter following the consumption of the mushroom is titled “Chapters Forty-one and Forty-two,” and the stories now overlap. Winfield does not make clear if the two men have merged in some way or if they are completely in the twentieth century; at one point the sixteenth century Will looks around and sees “many people … some he recognized, many he didn’t.”11 It is possible that Shakespeare sees modern people who resemble those he knows, but it is also possible that the two times have merged as well as the two men. What is clear about this experience is that it is what creates Shakespeare’s genius. “Will’s head reeled. Time melted. He was watching, all at once, his past, his present, and his future.”12 Attacked by an unnamed Puritan who has been hunting him (who is also the DEA agent), the merged Wills stumble into a parodic performance of Romeo and Juliet. “In that instant, Will knew there was another scene, a soliloquy, before Romeo entered, and he knew what it was, and he knew he knew it.”13 It seems highly unlikely that a modern day graduate student writing a thesis on Shakespeare would suddenly 10  Brougham, “Shakespeare’s Dream,” 64.

11  Winfield, My Name is Will, 261. 12  Winfield, My Name is Will, 262. 13  Winfield, My Name is Will, 263.



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have a realization that he knows Romeo and Juliet; this reads much more like the sixteenth century Will gaining “memories” from the twentieth century about works he has yet to write. Leaping on stage, Will recites Mercutio’s “conjuring” speech and then disappears backstage, thus evading his pursuer. William Shakespeare, the writer, is born at that moment, as the drug-fuelled time travel gifts him with knowledge of the plays he has not yet written. Winfield’s drug-induced time travel is very rare as an explanation for Shakespeare’s genius. The only other work that involves time travel is Erica Jong’s Serenissima, also titled Shylock’s Daughter.14 In this novel, Shakespeare is not the time traveler; instead Jessica Pruitt, a modern day film actress, travels back in time to sixteenth century Venice, where she meets Shakespeare, who is travelling with his patron, the bisexual Earl of Southampton. Jong imagines Shakespeare reluctantly engaging in threesomes with his patron and a prostitute. “Will knows that this is part of his contract with Harry, to be a player-playmate, to share a woman between the two of them to disguise Harry’s preference for the double-pricked pleasure of man on man.”15 While Shakespeare believes that “[a] poet must know such things,” it is clear from the story that this knowledge is, in fact, the wrong knowledge, using and being used rather than connecting and fully understanding another.16 Jessica’s love affair with Shakespeare not only serves as the basis for The Merchant of Venice, but also frees Shakespeare and his artistic genius from suffocating and the perverted treatment of people as objects. Despite surface differences both Winfield and Jong present interaction with twentieth century American values of individuality, freedom from pointless rules, and acceptance of difference (at least in comparison with the sixteenth century) as the key to unlocking Shakespeare’s genius. This is a rather inventive spin on the standard trope that creative genius is always ahead of its time. Comparing this approach to the time travel narrative of Cooper’s King of Shadows (Chapter One) makes clear how the different explanations for genius function. In Cooper’s novel, Nate gives nothing to Shakespeare—no hint of twentieth century values or knowledge. Instead he is comforted and healed by Shakespeare’s empathetic understanding of his suffering. In contrast, Will’s mushroom overdose and Jessica’s love give Shakespeare a sense of the future—both of the words he will write and the longevity they will have. In sum, both novels argue, it is only through direct contact with these modern values that Shakespeare could have the genius to write plays that continue to speak to audiences today.

14  Asimov’s short story “The Immortal Bard” as I discussed in the introduction, involves time travel but does not address the question of genius. Another short story, Anthony Burgess’ “The Muse” which I will discuss in chapter four, uses time travel not to explain, but rather to reject Shakespeare’s genius. 15  Jong, Shylock’s Daughter, 119.

16  Jong, Shylock’s Daughter, 121.

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Fairy Gift

All the other texts that imagine that the genius arises from an external, supernatural force imagine it taking place in the course of Shakespeare’s normal life (and often the explanations serve the secondary purpose of excusing Shakespeare for deserting his wife and children for London). By far the most popular choice for the supernatural force is magic. Taking advantage of the fact that Shakespeare wrote a play about fairies, many authors link Shakespeare’s genius to that branch of the supernatural, interweaving Shakespeare’s life with events in the fairy world that often, more or less, parallel the events of the play. In Philippa Ballentine’s novel, Chasing the Bard, she simply asserts that Shakespeare is more than mortal—he is not only descended from the Fey (Fairies), but a Bard, which is “a creature of great power—even some that the Fey did not possess.”17 Puck and Sive, a warrior fairy and sister of King Auberon, watch over Shakespeare as he grows up, protecting him from attacks by the Fey who fear his power. In this version of his life, Will goes to London when the supernatural threats against him come too close to his family, and there Sive presents herself as the Dark Lady, inspiring his sonnets. There is actually very little focus on Shakespeare’s plays themselves—Ballantine is not really interested in describing how Shakespeare’s encounter with the fairy world creates individual works (as other accounts will), but rather how his genius can only be explained by the claim that he is not entirely human. In fact, she could have made up an entirely fictional character to play the role Shakespeare plays; she chooses Shakespeare in order to have a ready-made genius to hand—a historical figure people will recognize as real, and yet easily accept as a human with fairy blood precisely because of his genius. Since Ballantine chooses to call the magic of the fairies “Art,” it makes a great deal of sense to use Shakespeare as the focal point of the story. Interestingly, although the foundation of the story is that Shakespeare is who he is from birth (he is born with a caul and “with the blood of the Fey within”18), it is also interaction with the Fey that, at times, seems to spark his gift. For example, following a visit from Sive, Will is inspired to finish A Midsummer Night’s Dream, after a bout of writer’s block. “Will knew better than to question where it had come from—all he thought about was writing fast enough before the thoughts dried.”19 Later, when Shakespeare, Puck, and Auberon break into the Tower to rescue Sive, Will is at first overwhelmed by all the voices of the dead, but then “he opened himself to them” and takes all the history into his mind. “In memory he could hear the roar of the crowd, could feel the cut of the axe. The whole Tower was full of such stories, and he now had every one inside him.”20 The implication is that Shakespeare’s history plays come not from reading Holinshed and Hall, but from a direct experience of the historical events. Ballentine is more interested in the world of the Fey than she is in the plays, and so her focus remains almost exclusively in how Shakespeare’s dual heritage and supernatural powers save both 17  Ballantine, Chasing the Bard, 19.

18  Ballantine, Chasing the Bard, 17.

19  Ballantine, Chasing the Bard, 173. 20  Ballentine, Chasing the Bard, 203.



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worlds. In fact, after the climactic battle, the final chapter of the novel skips forward in time to Shakespeare’s deathbed, where Sive is able to return to the mortal world to see Shakespeare one last time and ask him to come to her world rather than simply die: “he could be what Sive had always wished him to be—a creature of the Fey.”21 Here genius is not about writing plays that continue to inspire humanity, but the individual ability to escape death for another realm. In contrast, Sarah Hoyt’s trilogy, Ill Met By Moonlight, All Night Awake and Any Man So Daring, is completely focused on creating a supernatural, fairy-driven explanation for the origin of the plays and demonstrating how contact with the supernatural inspires an inhuman level of creativity in a mortal man. In fact, Hoyt is explicit about this in her Author Notes, where she reiterates three times that her goal is to explain what (she claims) is inexplicable—the genius that created works like Hamlet and The Tempest. Like fictional portrayals based in a domesticated genius of noticing details, events in the stories echo or duplicate scenes in the play, and characters unironically speak in well-known lines. These reflections are only for the reader. Many of the duplications occur with characters other than Shakespeare, and often when Shakespeare is not in the scene. When Shakespeare does hear or see things that the reader knows will later appear in plays, there is no recognition by the fictional Shakespeare that this is something he should remember, a beautifully structured phrase he could use in his writing. So Shakespeare’s language does not come from the world around him, but from mystical encounters that fundamentally change the way he sees the world and how he understands himself. Unexpectedly, each novel presents a different encounter that explains his genius—it is not that the second encounter builds on the first, but that it replaces the first as an explanation. In terms of plot, all three mystical encounters involve the same characters, but while the end of the opening novel suggests that this first meeting is all it takes to spark Shakespeare’s genius, the second novel begins with a struggling Shakespeare unable to write plays or poems that catch anyone’s attention. The third novel once again resets Shakespeare’s access to genius, but in an unexpected way that plays with the conspiracy theory that Shakespeare is not the true author of the plays before clearly indicating that the combination of contact with the supernatural and great loss (of his son Hamnet, who here does not actually die, but stays in Fairyland) is what, finally, makes a Shakespeare into a genius. In Hoyt’s first novel, Ill Met by Moonlight, both Shakespeare’s genius and the future unhappiness of his marriage arise from an encounter with elves. Anne (in the trilogy called Nan) is taken, along with the infant Susannah, by the elf king to be a wet nurse for his child, and Shakespeare’s quest to recover them leads him into close contact with Quicksilver, the Hamlet-like son of Titania and Oberon who is the rightful ruler of the “kingdom under the hill.” The novel opens with Shakespeare returning home from his job as a petty schoolmaster to find Nan and Susannah gone from the house, and Hoyt takes great care to stress how rational and ordinary Shakespeare is at this point. When 21  Ballentine, Chasing the Bard, 256.

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he returns to the empty house, his fears almost overwhelm him before he quite realizes Nan is gone, but then he takes himself in hand. Nonsense. Sick fancies born of tiredness. It was because of his job in Wincot, wearing him low enough that fancies preyed on his mind. His work, supervising the smallest children at their learning of letters and numerals, would be dreary and arduous enough, but the two-hour walk each way to Wincot and back made it crushing…. Little wonder, then, that Will’s mind should be filled with presages and wonders, with fears and unexplained dread. Little wonder.22

Shakespeare quickly talks himself into believing that Nan has gone to her sister-in-law, to help with the imminent birth of her child. “The world was a reasonable place, not populated by old wives’ fears, old men’s fancies, nor by the dreams of poets.”23 Hoyt dwells at length on Shakespeare’s grounding in the real world and his certainty that the real and rational world is all there is. This serves three purposes. It gives the reader, aware that they hold a fantasy novel, a pleasant sense of superior knowledge. It creates a sense of tension—how long before Shakespeare finds out that the world is much more complicated than he thinks? Most of all, it sets up the arc of how Shakespeare is transformed from this stolid, deliberately unimaginative man into the creative genius the reader knows he will become. To drive home the point of how far Shakespeare is from the genius he will be, Hoyt has him remember the pageant at Kenilworth when Queen Elizabeth visited his work in progress. While not an especially well-written moment— Hoyt has Will move in a single sentence from worry about Nan to comparing the night sky to the dress the Queen wore, and from there to reminiscing about the performances he saw there a decade ago—it does allow Shakespeare to think about the pageant of mermen riding dolphins that “remained in his mind as a promise of a magical world that had never come true. The true world meant debts and hard work and short-lived pleasure purchased by long-lasting toil.”24 Having established Shakespeare as completely, almost perversely, grounded in the mundane world, Hoyt immediately starts to unravel that grounding; at the end of the first chapter he sees Nan in the fairy palace. Readers find out, through the viewpoint of the elf Quicksilver, that mortals born on Sunday are “blessed with enchanted sight” and can see into the world of the elves.25 This is the first hint that Shakespeare has more in him than he or anyone else suspects. Once again Hoyt does not handle the transition very smoothly. Readers later find out that John Shakespeare was tricked into killing Titania and Oberon and driven mad by the deed, but the Sunday-born Will apparently never noticed a thing, nor has he, in his nineteen years, seen anything that even hints at the supernatural. When elves and a palace suddenly appear, his reaction makes clear that this is an utterly new experience. 22  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 4.

23  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 11. 24  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 13. 25  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 42.



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So, while Hoyt wishes to present pre-elven Shakespeare as a most unpromising candidate for genius, so that his magical transformation is that much more impressive, she must also present him as having a hint of genius, but just a hint, a latent talent, as it were, mainly focused in his intelligence. “Will had trouble not thinking. All his life he’d been like a curious fox.”26 Only contact with actual magic can turn “joy of knowing what hid behind every rock and peeked from behind every tree and the secret meanings to be uncovered in the prim and proper poems taught by moralizing school teachers” into something more.27 In the same way, shortly after readers find out about Shakespeare’s ability to see fairies, when Quicksilver looks at Will, he sees “a raw boy” but also that “his forehead rose noble and broad …[h]is yellow-brown eyes were the eyes of a falcon.”28 Shakespeare is thus completely ordinary, but also not, gifted, but unaware of his gift. Like the Shakespeares of Chapter One, this Shakespeare is keenly observant, but that alone is not enough. He must encounter magic in order to become a genius. In the course of the novel Shakespeare faces down a tyrant elf, falls half in love with Quicksilver, a shape-shifting elf who is both male and female, and rescues his wife and child. Although Hoyt weaves lines from later plays liberally into the text, she avoids having Shakespeare directly encounter scenes that will later show up in his work. Her version of Shakespeare is not so much transcribing the things that happen to him as changed, or perhaps infected, by them. In the final chapter, as Shakespeare and Nan make their way home and Shakespeare thinks he will spend the rest of his days treasuring the life he fought for, the narrator (who is not named, but is clearly Marlowe) describes what is actually to come: But as he walks and makes such plans, the tune he just heard, the spectacle and fury of the fairy dance and the horror and power of elven strife seep into his blood, kindle strange fires in his brain. Fantastical tragedies and mad farces hatch within him like eggs, laid by some mystical insect and waiting only the right time to let their wonderous, magical engendering come to life.29

This ending allows Hoyt to imagine a Shakespeare who is a devoted husband and father, who wants to be with his family, and who cannot be blamed for leaving them. The metaphor of a “mystical insect” laying plays like eggs in him is particularly powerful in making clear that this version of Shakespeare is controlled and used by his genius, almost against his will. Despite this clear closing statement that the encounter with Quicksilver and the other elves is the force that creates Shakespeare’s poetic genius, in the opening of the next book in the trilogy, Hoyt revises or at least complicates this origin story. Ten years have passed since the events of the first book and Shakespeare is in London, trying to find work at the theatre, out of both money and hope. The novel opens with a dream in which the Fates visit him, with obvious Macbeth references. “Hail to thee great poet … All 26  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 137.

27  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 137–38. 28  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 41.

29  Hoyt, Ill Met By Moonlight, 293.

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hail Will, whose verse generations yet unborn shall recite.”30 They reveal that there is a magical force threatening them as the embodiment of the female principle and that they need a champion. “Defend us … And you shall be the greatest poet born of a woman’s womb. Your plays will be heard, your verses repeated world without end.”31 As the first few chapters make clear, Will has been drawn to London to try to make his “fantastical tragedies and mad farces” into plays, but he is a complete failure, unable to make any connections in the theatre in the six months he has been there. When he stumbles across Henslowe and Marlowe, they ask him, as often happens in stories featuring the young Shakespeare, to produce a poem on the spot, which he successfully does (this time it is Sonnet 145). The two men are not impressed; he is ignored by Henslowe and gently mocked by Marlowe (who at least suggests that a better way to make money than the theatre is with long poems dedicated to noblemen). Whatever the experience with the elves stirred in his blood, Hoyt suggests in All Night Awake, it is not enough yet for Shakespeare to successfully enter, let alone conquer, the theatrical world. At the end of the novel, after a variety of magic experiences which involve facing down Slyvanus, the villain from the first book, and protecting Elizabeth I from an assassination attempt by an evil fairy, the epilogue returns to the three Fates, who note that the thread of events just past is “a magic thread … of truth and the power and the word.”32 The ghost of Marlowe (who died, not in a tavern brawl but fighting the dark elves) steps forward and asks that his poetic gift—the golden thread—be given to Shakespeare. “Let my words live on, even if another must write them. I bequeath my poetry and the power in it to William Shakespeare of Stratford.”33 For a moment, Hoyt toys with the authorship controversy, a fact which she acknowledges in her postscript, promising “to those who will resent my implication that Will Shakespeare inherited Marlowe’s words” that she has yet another explanation for his genius.34 The third explanation plays out in the final book of the trilogy, Any Man So Daring. The novel begins with Shakespeare struggling with the realization that what he writes comes not from his genius, but Marlowe’s. The words came to him as through originating in some unknown fountain, not within Will’s brain. And they had the cadence, the effect of Marlowe’s own plays…. Will had written the [sic] Merchant of Venice. Aye and it was like Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. And in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus there echoed the power-and-blood feel of Tamberlaine the Great…. Will Shakespeare had never written much worthy of note up to the night of Kit Marlowe’s death. And then, as though through a transference of power, a magical transfusion of the poetical vein he’d found himself able to write: to write words like Marlowe’s.35

30  Hoyt, All Night Awake, 2.

31  Hoyt, All Night Awake, 3.

32  Hoyt, All Night Awake, 346. 33  Hoyt, All Night Awake, 347. 34  Hoyt, All Night Awake, 353

35  Hoyt, Any Man So Daring, 10–12.



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There are several problems with this claim. Titus Andronicus was certainly written before Marlowe’s death. The Merchant of Venice is not at all like The Jew of Malta and was most probably written after Romeo and Juliet (the play that, unsurprisingly, is presented at the conclusion of the novel as Will’s first real work). To claim that Shakespeare wrote “nothing much worthy of note” before 1596 (this novel is set three years after Marlowe’s death) is to claim that The Taming of the Shrew and Richard III, just to pick two, are “nothing much” or that they are copies of Marlowe—a claim that might hold water for the history plays but makes no sense at all for comedies like The Taming of the Shrew or Comedy of Errors. Hoyt knows this; she admits in the afterword of each book that she is playing fast and loose with chrono­logy in order to tell a good story. What matters most is that at the end of the third book, when Shakespeare freely gives up Marlowe’s words, he finds “serene confidence” that the play he writes on his own is “the best thing he’d yet penned,”36 a judgment confirmed by Ned Alleyn’s reaction to Romeo and Juliet, who declares it both “like nothing you ever wrote before” and “the best you’ve written.”37 In the author’s note, Hoyt states, “And yet again I have attempted to give another explanation for Shakespeare’s genius.”38 This time, despite the trappings of magic and elves, the reason is closest to the versions described in Chapter One—Shakespeare is simply a man who builds stories out of his own memories and experiences. The experiences Hoyt has given him are mystical experiences that defy human understanding. Perhaps anyone with a hint of artistic ability would become a genius if they three times helped to save Fairyland, had the ruler of the elves as a lover, and lost first a wife (briefly) and then a son (permanently) to that world. Hoyt does not wish to suggest that, however. She makes that clear in the author’s note in All Night Awake: “The truth is William Shakespeare’s genius is beyond our ken and far beyond our attempts at explanation.”39 Hoyt wants to write a fantasy trilogy. Beyond that she seems to sincerely believe and desire to highlight that Shakespeare’s genius is inexplicable by normal human methods. He is at one and the same time inherently gifted with genius (it is his words and his alone that create the magic necessary to save the world) and utterly dependent on magical experiences to pull them out of him. Neil Gaiman also weaves William Shakespeare into a magical world, but his is much less coy about assigning a cause for Shakespeare’s genius—it is entirely the gift of Dream, and without this otherworldly gift, Shakespeare would have been nothing more than a failed playwright who returned home to make money through investing. The story in which Shakespeare plays a minor but important role is The Sandman, a comic series of seventy-five issues that ran from January 1989 to March 1996. The series was a commercial and critical success, winning awards and attracting a large readership, many of whom had never read any comics before. 36  Hoyt, Any Man So Daring, 325.

37  Hoyt, Any Man So Daring, 325–26. 38  Hoyt, Any Man So Daring, 327. 39  Hoyt, Any Man So Daring, 353.

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The series focuses on Dream, also called Morpheus, who is one of Seven Endless— anthropomorphic versions of forces that shape reality. In addition to Dream, there are Death, Destiny, Despair, Delirium (formerly Delight), Desire, and Destruction. The series opens with Dream having been trapped by a magician, Roderick Burgess, who was actually seeking to ensnare Death. Fearing retribution if he lets Dream go, Burgess keeps him imprisoned from 1916 to 1988, suggesting that the problems of the twentieth century are due, at least in part, to dreams (and nightmares) running unchecked for decades. Dream finally escapes and finds that seventy years of imprisonment has changed him, and these changes are explored for the rest of the series as Dream interacts with a variety of characters from comic books, literature, myth, and history. Shakespeare appears as a character in only three issues, but one of those is the final issue of the entire series, and Shakespeare is the only historical character to both appear multiple times and to interact with Dream directly. Thus, it seems clear that Gaiman is placing considerable metaphorical weight on the characterization of Shakespeare and the development of his interactions with Dream. Shakespeare first appears in Issue 13, a stand-alone issue in the middle of the multiissue story The Doll’s House. Issue 13 opens with Death and Dream in the waking world of England, 1389. They overhear a man, Hob Gadling, insist that death is optional: “The only reason people die is because everyone does it. You all just go along with it. It’s rubbish, death. It’s stupid. I don’t want nothing to do with it”40 Intrigued, Death agrees not to take Hob until he truly wishes it, and Morpheus, approaching Hob, suggests they meet at the tavern every hundred years, which creates the arc for the rest of the story. Hob experiences highs and lows, but never wishes to die, and the two meet every century until 1989, which is the present day in both the world of the comic and the world in which it was published. Although Geoffrey Chaucer is in the background of the opening scene, he does not interact with either Morpheus or Hob. Shakespeare is another matter. At their second meeting, after Morpheus has caught up on how the last hundred years have treated Hob, he overhears Shakespeare talking to Marlowe. After praising Marlowe’s writing, Shakespeare tentatively asks, “Sweet Kit. The play I gave you. Did you read … ?”41 The illustration shows Shakespeare holding his hands up in almost a prayer, his shoulders hunched, the opposite of Marlowe, who lounges casually with drink in hand. Marlowe reads out the opening lines of Henry VI:1: “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! / Comets, importing change of times and states, / Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, / And with them scourge the bad revolting stars” and then adds, “At least it scans. But ‘bad revolting stars’?” to which Shakespeare, his head in his hands, says, “It’s my first play.”42 In the next panel, which is full length and thus stands out from the rest of the twopage spread, which is made up of boxes one-third of the page length, Shakespeare stands, 40  Gaiman, Men of Good Fortune, 3.

41  Gaiman, Men of Good Fortune, 11. 42  Gaiman, Men of Good Fortune, 11.



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pages from his play fluttering to the ground around him, while he says, “God’s wounds! If only I could write like you” and then quotes from Doctor Faustus. It is just barely possible that Marlowe could have written Doctor Faustus before Shakespeare composed any plays, but it is highly unlikely that Henry VI:1 was Shakespeare’s first play (in fact, it is highly likely that Thomas Nashe wrote much of the play, including these lines). Yet it is understandable why Gaiman would pick those opening lines as an example of the poor writing Shakespeare produced on his own. When Will goes on to say, “I would give anything to have your gifts. Or more than anything to give men dreams that would live on long after I am dead,” Morpheus takes note.43 He approaches “Will Shaxberd” and says, “I heard your talk, Will. Would you write great plays? Create new dreams to spur the minds of men? Is that your will?” When Shakespeare responds that it is, Morpheus leads him away, saying, “Then let us talk.”44 Two hundred years later, in 1789, Hob tells Morpheus, “I saw King Lear yesterday. Mrs. Siddons as Goneril. The idiots have given it a happy ending.” Morpheus responds, “That will not last. The Great Stories will always return to their original form.”45 Hob is referring to Nahum Tate’s revision that held sway on the stage for over 150 years. Many readers, including Samuel Johnson, felt that the death of Cordelia was unbearable and approved Tate’s revision (which changed a great deal more than just the ending). However, Tate’s happy ending was not actually the adaptation of the original story; the truth is that Shakespeare was the one who made the change. The story of King Lear is first told in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and in that story, Leir, after being neglected by his two eldest daughters, travels to Gaul, where he is honourably received by Cordelia and her husband, Aganippus, the king of Gaul. Together they invade England and restore Leir to the throne, where he rules for three more years before dying of old age.46 Spenser recounts the same thing in The Faerie Queene: So to his crowne she him restor’d againe, In which he dyde, made ripe for death by eld, And after wild, it should to her remaine: Who peaceably the same long time did weld: And all mens harts in dew obedience held47

The Mirror of Magistrates and Holinshed also end with Lear restored to his throne, as does the more immediate source for Shakespeare’s version, the anonymous Elizabethan play The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters Gonorill, Ragan and Cordella, which was registered and probably performed in 1594. Shakespeare must have realized changing such a well-known ending would have been shocking, because he gives voice to the audience’s feelings—Kent’s response to Lear’s entrance with the strangled Cordelia in his arms is, “Is this the promised end?” (5.3.262). Shakespeare then goes 43  Gaiman, Men of Good Fortune, 12.

44  Gaiman, Men of Good Fortune, 13

45  Gaiman, Men of Good Fortune, 18.

46  Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, transl. Thorpe, 33. 47  Spenser, The Faerie Queene, book II, canto X.

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on to play with the audience’s expectations by twice having Lear claim Cordelia is alive (265: “This feather stirs; she lives!” 308: “Do you see this? Look on her, look her lips”). Shakespeare was well aware that he was doing something so utterly unexpected that it needed a reaction by the characters themselves as audience stand-ins. It is unlikely that Gaiman knew any of this when he wrote the exchange between Morpheus and Hob. It is also not impossible, since Gaiman is extraordinarily well read. Either way, the exchange highlights the cultural work that Shakespeare and ideas of Shakespeare’s genius perform in the modern world. Scholars are aware the story of Lear had a long history before Shakespeare’s version but most have never read those versions. Those who have view these earlier versions through the prism of Shakespeare’s play—they are now sources for or analogs of the story we know, rather than King Lear appearing as a revision or adaptation of the original and well-known story. While it is undeniable fact that every version of the story before Shakespeare returned Lear to the throne and either explicitly or implicitly assured Cordelia of inheriting that throne, it is also undeniable fact that for us (and probably for Tate’s audience as well), Shakespeare’s version is “the original form” of this particular “Great Story.” Moreover, the aspects that make King Lear a “great story”—epic or mythic—are not the same aspects that earlier versions offered as valuable. While the sources and Shakespeare’s play offer a common warning that protestations of love should not be believed, and decry the lack of duty children often show to parents, Shakespeare’s play offers a much more apocalyptic view of the realization that duty does not equal love. From Gloucester’s claim that “late eclipses in the sun and moon” indicate that “Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves” (1.2.104–6), to Lear’s demand that the storm “Smite flat the thick rotundity of the world” (3.2.7) to Edmund’s final claim that “The weight of this sad time we must obey” (5.3.323), the play is saturated with a sense of doom quite absent from the sources. Indeed, King Lear has recently surpassed (or at least equalled) Hamlet for the title of Shakespeare’s greatest play—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust, and the fears of nuclear destruction roused by the Cold War give the despair of King Lear a relevance it lacked in previous centuries, when it was seen as unbearably bleak. So, when Gaiman has Morpheus speak of the play as one of the Great Stories, he is presenting a truth about the play, but a truth that is contemporary and grounded in the cultural moment of the late twentieth century, not universal or timeless as Morpheus suggests. It is possible that “the Great Story” Morpheus refers to is not the local story of a king and his daughters, but the archetypal story of humanity’s willingness to believe pretty lies over blunt truth; if that is true (and the evidence is simply not clear), this is not the story Shakespeare’s sources told. Whether he intended it or not, Gaiman points to the way in which the plays, and Shakespeare, function as universal because what they, and he, represent depends a great deal on the observer. In this way, Shakespeare is a version of Morpheus himself, who in each century is recognizably himself, but also utterly different in hairstyle, clothing, and posture. In Issue 39, The Soft Places, Morpheus meets Marco Polo, who asks him if he is always so pale. The Dream Lord responds, “That depends on who’s watching.”48 Indeed, 48  Gaiman, Soft Places, 21.



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when Morpheus meets his former lover Nada, an African Queen, he appears African and when he meets a Martian, he is illustrated as a floating head with an elongated mouth and glowing red eyes, surrounded by flames. Like Morpheus, Shakespeare (and his work) regularly changes clothes and personalities, at least metaphorically. Shakespeare is barely a supporting character in this first appearance, but in his next two appearances he and individual plays take centre stage. Issue 19 is part of the Dream Country g­ raphic novel, which is made up of four separate stories: in addition to Shakespeare and his company putting on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Fairies, the stories include a cat who dreams of a world where humans are tiny playthings for huge felines, the imprisonment of the muse Calliope who is forced to provide story ideas for a writer against her will, and the immortal Element Girl and her longing for death. The stories are not overtly linked and the final story actually features Death instead of Dream, but the connecting thread is summed up by Morpheus as he watches A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted.”49 In all the stories at least one character gets their wish and either they or someone else must suffer greatly for it. In Shakespeare’s case, his son Hamnet comments to the boy actors that his father is distant. “He doesn’t seem like he’s really there any more … Anything that happens he just makes stories out of it. I’m less real to him than any of the characters in his plays.”50 Here Gaiman gestures towards the second type of genius—the isolating, even psychotic level of creativity that makes human relationships impossible. Shakespeare has the wish he expressed in Issue 13, but it has isolated him from his family. At this point, however, he does not recognize what has happened. When Hamnet tries to talk to him, Shakespeare ignores his own son in favour of watching his play come to life. This will become more of a central concern in Shakespeare’s final appearance, where he will regret his bargain and the way it separated him from his life. While the interactions with his son and his regrets in Issue 19 seem to place this version of Shakespeare squarely in the “genius as isolating” category, it is actually a minor note. Throughout the run of The Sandman Gaiman is most interested in exploring how dreams (and their cousins, fictions and desires) entwine with, shape, and are shaped by what we recognize as reality, and his Shakespeare is part of that larger question. Gaiman realized that Shakespeare wrote several plays that involve magic, one, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, somewhat early in his career and one, The Tempest, late (in popular understanding, in fact, The Tempest is seen as Shakespeare’s final play). This historical fact allows Gaiman to use Shakespeare not just as a one-off—to tell the story of an actor who dreamed so strongly of becoming a great writer that his wish came true—but as a delicate thread that ties together Morpheus’ journey as well and allows the King of Dreams to articulate how he sees himself and what he considers important. In Issue 13, readers learn that Shakespeare’s plays tell “the Great Stories” and in Issue 19 we find out more specifically what the bargain was. Shakespeare asks Morpheus if he is satisfied with the play and when Morpheus says he is, Shakespeare 49  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 19. 50  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 13.

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responds, “If you are satisfied, then our bargain is half-concluded. One other play then, celebrating dreams, at the end of my career.”51 Thus, Gaiman imagines, rather than just giving Shakespeare the gift of words, this is a bargain from which both sides gain. Morpheus requests two specific plays—plays about dreams—and in return gives Shakespeare what he wanted, which is also what Morpheus wants as he tells Titania, “Will is a willing vehicle for the great stories. Through him they will live for an age of man; and his words will echo down through time.”52 Morpheus has two goals—to make sure certain stories remain in circulation and to have two plays written specifically for him, to fulfill his specific desires—dreams even. In any story featuring Shakespeare as a character, it is necessary to overlook some things and, in this version, it is necessary to forget that many of Shakespeare’s plays are not stories which have some sort of transcendent meaning, or at least that it is the concerted effort of scholars, actors, and culture itself to create such universal meaning, rather than anything inherent in the play. Since we learn that Shakespeare met Morpheus just after writing his first play (Henry VI:1) that must mean that plays like Henry VI: 2, Love’s Labors’ Lost and Timon of Athens are part of the bargain and result from the gift Morpheus gives him. At the same time, we have to accept that stories such as King Arthur and Robin Hood are not “great stories” that need telling by Shakespeare (or we can imagine that Morpheus does not include them because he knows they will be remembered without the Shakespeare treatment, but that then leads to the problem of Troilus and Cressida, since the Trojan War is hardly in need of a satiric remake by Shakespeare in order to last for “an age of man”). The point here is that whenever a writer creates a fictional Shakespeare to explain how the plays came to be—but especially when that creation is due to otherworldly interaction—there are always aspects of the character and the plays that must be silently ignored. Gaiman is not unique in this and in many ways is less prone to flattening Shakespeare than other writers, since aside from the two plays specifically bargained for, Gaiman has only the passing reference to King Lear. There is no attempt to pretend that all plays are “Great Stories” or to explain away early works as “pre-gift.” In this relatively nuanced, thoughtful presentation, the idea that some external, supernatural force bestows Shakespeare’s genius at a specific moment requires a very narrow focus on just a few specific plays. Issue 19 opens with Shakespeare and company riding through the countryside. We quickly learn that Morpheus has not only gifted him with the ability to write great works, but has requested this specific play be performed in a specific time and location. “We are here at your command, my Lord, on Midsummer’s Eve, by the Long Man of Wilmington.”53 This is in reference to an actual figure, over seventy meters high, cut into the slope of Windover Hill. While there are different explanations for the figure, Gaiman has it serve as a gatekeeper between worlds. Once the players are prepared, Morpheus 51  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 16. 52  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 19. 53  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.



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asks “Wendel” to open the door and the figure’s two staves join together to form a door, which he then opens to allow the fairies to cross over into the human world. In addition to specifying a time and place, Morpheus has given Shakespeare the plot, perhaps even the words. “I wrote it as you told me, Lord. It is the best that I have written to this date.”54 The reason for this becomes clear when Oberon reveals that the Fey have left the human realm for good. Towards the end of the play, Morpheus tells both Oberon and Titania: You have asked me why I asked you back to this plane, to see this entertainment…. During your stay on this Earth the faerie have afforded me much diversion, and entertainment. Now you have left, for your own haunts. And I would repay you for all the amusement. And more. They shall not forget you. That was important to me; that King Auberon and Queen Titania will be remembered by mortals, until this age is gone.55

In Gaiman’s version, more than any other, Shakespeare serves as a vessel for the enacting of specific desires by supernatural beings. His entire life then becomes, in a sense, nothing more than the carrying out of those desires, leaving him disconnected from his own world. Shakespeare returns in the final issue of the entire series. In the collection The Kindly Ones, Morpheus allows himself to be killed, and the follow-up, The Wake, is composed of six issues, three of which recount Morpheus’s wake and the reactions to it, with the Endless and the main characters from other issues in attendance. At the end of these three issues the Endless meet the new King of Dreams, who is and is not Morpheus. There follow three stand-alone issues. The first is most closely tied to The Wake and is in fact called an epilogue—Hob Gadling, the immortal man who has been meeting Dream once a century, visits a Renaissance Faire. There he meets Death, but he refuses her offer to move on, and then he falls asleep and dreams of Morpheus, who confirms that he is dead. The next issue, “Exiles” features an advisor to a Chinese Emperor who meets first with Morpheus and then with Daniel, the new Lord of Dream. In this issue, the reader sees the transition between Morpheus and Daniel. The final issue, number seventy-five, however, does not involve Daniel at all and takes place several hundred years before the events that lead to Morpheus’ death. In this issue, Shakespeare is at home in Stratford, finishing The Tempest. When Judith asks him where he found the story, he says, “I found it in my head, Judith. It is a fairy tale,”56 although there is also a scene of him at the local inn when two sailors stop by with a mummified Indian, and another when he asks a minister whether Prospero must be damned for using magic and the latter responds, “at the end of the play, let him break his staff and burn his books and renounce all magics.”57 In these and other moments Gaiman references the idea that genius comes from observation, but always behind that is the larger claim—Shakespeare’s genius is due entirely to the bargain he made with 54  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.

55  Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 21. 56  Gaiman, The Tempest, 2.

57  Gaiman, The Tempest, 25.

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Morpheus, a bargain, we discover in this issue, that Shakespeare has actually forgotten. In fact, at the end, when Shakespeare talks to Morpheus, there are directly conflicting statements. Shakespeare says, “I took the inspiration for it from the wreck of the Sea-Venture in the Bermudas last year … Things I saw, things I thought. I stole a speech from one of Montaigne’s essays.”58 The reader has seen these moments, but Morpheus responds, “I wanted a play about a king who drowns his books, and breaks his staff, and leaves his kingdom.”59 It is possible to believe that the conversation Shakespeare had with the minister earlier in the issue was caused by Morpheus to motivate Will to create the “this rough magic” speech; it is also possible that Gaiman means us to understand that creativity is a looping and layered process. When we think we know the source for something, we only have a part of it. Either way, Gaiman manages to present both versions of genius—hyper-observation (coupled with an empathetic temperament) and an interior reality that is more powerful than the real world (coupled with isolation and lack of real connection). Gaiman’s Shakespeare is both of these, the apparent contradiction made possible because forces larger than humanity or divinity power Gaiman’s Shakespeare. His words come from dreaming itself. The first part of Issue 75 follows Shakespeare through his days at Stratford. Gaiman presents the “sweet Will” of mytho­logy; at one point Mistress Quiney, who runs the local tavern, recounts how Shakespeare paid her son’s debts when he was in London, and Anne treats Will with a mixture of exasperation and love—Shakespeare rightfully says she treats him “like a foolish child.60“ At another point Judith tells him she wishes he had been a smith or a miller, “because you would have been here with us, in Stratford” and then asks, “Did you not think? Did you not care?” 61 The first twenty pages echo, as noted before, the other explanations for genius—the hyper-attention to detail and the isolation from all relationships—and show the cost Shakespeare has paid for his years of writing. It is not until the twenty-first page (out of thirty-eight total) that Morpheus appears. He asks how the new play goes and Shakespeare says, “it goes” and then asks, “Why do you want the play? Why do you need me to write it? Why am I doing this?” Morpheus reminds him that they made a bargain for two plays and Shakespeare says, “Yes. The first play I wrote as a gift for … your friends … but this is … your play. For you. Why this play?” 62 Before Morpheus can answer, Anne wakes William, who has fallen asleep at his desk to tell him to go sleep in his bed. This teaser sets up the final meeting, which takes place in the last ten pages. This time Shakespeare is awake when the King of Dreams visits him—not a unique occurrence but certainly unusual. Will has just finished The Tempest. As he writes “Exeunt Omnes” Morpheus appears, sitting on the stool next to him asking if the play is done. When Shakespeare says it is, Morpheus declares their bargain finished. “Then we are 58  Gaiman, The Tempest, 35. 59  Gaiman, The Tempest, 35. 60  Gaiman, The Tempest, 34. 61  Gaiman, The Tempest, 18. 62  Gaiman, The Tempest, 22.



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quits, Will Shakespeare. It remains only for me to thank you and wish you well in your life to come.63“ To this Shakespeare objects strongly, stating that he has been in Morpheus’ service and “no master would free a prentice without so much as a glass of wine in the master’s parlor.64“ In issue nineteen, when Burbage asks to be led to their patron’s hall for the performance, Morpheus turns him down flat, but now he accedes to Shakespeare’s wish (or his “will,” as he says). In terms of the chrono­logy within the story, only thirteen years have passed since the Lord Strange’s Men performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the fairies, and nothing of note has happened to the King of Dreams. In the chrono­logy of the comics, the story the reader has been following, monumental changes have taken place between Issues 19 and 75. Morpheus has forgiven and freed a human lover he condemned to hell ten thousand years ago, killed his son Orpheus (doomed to immortality as a bodiless head) out of mercy, and then been targeted by the Furies and willingly chosen to die. The readers have witnessed his final moments, seen him mourned by the Endless and numerous dreamers, and seen another aspect of him arise to become the new King of Dreams. Given what the reader knows it makes perfect sense that Morpheus would allow Shakespeare to come not only to the Dreaming, but to the throne room itself, and talk to him more openly than he has talked to many other characters, no matter if all of these events are still hundreds of years off. The change that readers have seen in Morpheus and expect to see in this technically earlier incarnation is part of the reason Morpheus is so open with Shakespeare (and why Gaiman is using this play of “graceful endings” to end his own tale), but another aspect of it is the need to make Shakespeare finally completely aware of where his gift came from and what it cost. After Morpheus gives Shakespeare a glass of wine, Will asks, “Why did you give them to me? … The plays. The words. I did not ask for them.65“ The next panel echoes the panel from Issue 13 where Shakespeare tells Marlowe he would “give anything … or more than anything to give men dreams that would live on long after I am dead.”66 The words are the same, but interestingly in the original the two men are pictured at some distance, drawn in only a few lines and coloured in yellow against a brown background, all of which has the effect of distancing the moment, making it seem like a historical memory, an image rather than an event. It is the only panel drawn that way, so the moment when Shakespeare offers to bargain like Faustus stands out from the rest of the page and indeed the rest of the issue. In Issue 75, the moment is repeated but instead of the distance of unreality, the lighter pastel colours and faint lines make it more clearly a memory conjured up by Dream, a fact underlined by the next panel, which shows Shakespeare’s head from the back as he views the memory as if it were projected on a movie screen. Morpheus confirms that he gave Shakespeare “the power to give men dreams that would live on after you are gone.” Further he reveals the reason why he chose Shake63  Gaiman, The Tempest, 29. 64  Gaiman, The Tempest, 29. 65  Gaiman, The Tempest, 32. 66  Gaiman, The Tempest, 32.

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speare. “Because you had a gift, and the talent … Because you had a good heart. And because you wanted it … so much.”67 Interestingly, at this point, just a few pages from the end of the entire series, we find out that Shakespeare did have some talent for writing, a talent that was not in evidence at his first appearance. Dream goes on to tell him that if they had not crossed paths, “You would have written a handful of plays, in quality no better than, say The Merrye Devil of Edmonton, and then you would have come home to Stratford.”68 While The Merry Devil of Edmonton is no work of genius, it is a wellcrafted play popular enough to have been printed six times.69 The suggestion seems to be that talent is not enough; it must be brought out in some way. Gaiman seeks to have it both ways—his Shakespeare is who he is because of a meeting with the King of Dreams, but he also had talent, what Morpheus calls “a gift.” Talent alone would never be enough to create works like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and The Tempest. At the same time, Gaiman suggests that Morpheus cannot make a genius all by himself. In the final pages of both issue and series, when Shakespeare wakes up to find “the burden of words” gone, he must write the epilogue to The Tempest by himself. “You left me the epilogue to write, my pale friend. And to write it with no magic but mine own words.”70 Almost as if it were planned, the words Prospero, the magician who has given up his magic, speaks in the epilogue work perfectly for Shakespeare as well. “Now my charms are all o’erthrown. And what strength I have’s mine own, which is most faint.”71 Gaiman admits in a note that this is not quite the end: “[Shakespeare] wrote nothing more alone, after The Tempest.”72 This statement, almost the last words of the entire series, cuts both ways—suggesting that Shakespeare could not write an entire play now that his bargain with Morpheus was done, but also admitting to the historical fact—that his career does not wrap up so neatly. Perhaps, Gaiman is suggesting, decades of carrying the gift of dreams left a mark. The Sandman draws widely from history, fiction, and myth; the reader is as likely to meet up with Bast or Superman as with Mark Twain or Marco Polo. Yet out of all the characters in the universes of comics, myth, literature, and fiction, Gaiman chooses Shakespeare as the one to get closest to revealing The Dream King’s heart. “I asked you earlier if you saw yourself reflected in your tale. I do not. I may not. I am the Prince of Stories, Will; but I have no story of my own. Nor shall I ever.”73 As with Shakespeare, this is both clearly false and yet true on some deep level—we have just finished reading Morpheus’ story, just as we can read bio­graphies (more or less fictional) of William 67  Gaiman, The Tempest, 32. 68  Gaiman, The Tempest, 33.

69  The choice of this play may also be an in-joke for Shakespeare scholars as the publisher Humphrey Moseley acquired the anonymous play in 1653 and printed it with a title page attributing it to Shakespeare. 70  Gaiman The Tempest, 37.

71  Gaiman, The Tempest, 37 [line breaks omitted as this quotation is of issue seventy-five rather than the play itself]. 72  Gaiman, The Tempest, 38. 73  Gaiman, The Tempest, 36.



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Shakespeare. Yet we do not know anything about Dream (or dreams), and no matter how many versions of William Shakespeare we produce, he remains unknowable in some powerful way. So powerful, in fact, that a large number of people deny his reality. Those who claim that “the actor from Stratford” did not write the plays attributed to him, believe, as the next chapter will show, more than anyone in the importance of understanding how genius comes to be. Implicitly or explicitly, these texts suggest that Shakespeare’s genius is too extraordinary to be explained by any natural means. Sarah Hoyt, in her author’s note, says, “Genius, like all other human qualities is ultimately inexplicable.”74 She is not talking about everyone and every human quality; she is very specifically trying to explain the genius of William Shakespeare. He is not completely unique—Marlowe is another writer who is fictionally presented as motivated by magic, and there is a Doctor Who episode that has Charles Dickens coming face to face with ghosts at Christmas. These examples are relatively infrequent and the ones featuring Marlowe often feature Shakespeare as well. The urge to use otherworldly means to explain the power of the plays is, for some writers, overwhelming because Shakespeare is widely considered the height of creative genius. How does one reach such a summit? For some, magic is the only satisfactory answer.

74  Hoyt, Any Man So Daring, 327.

Chapter Four

“I AM NOT WHAT I AM”

What does the

authorship controversy have to do with fictional portraits of Shakespeare? On the surface, not a great deal. There are not a great many fictionalized stories about a Shakespeare who is a fraud or beard (although more than one might expect). There are a number of short stories or novels about discovering “the truth” behind the centuries-long cover up, but almost all of these are about the person who finally figures out or stumbles upon irrefutable evidence rather than presenting the man from Stratford himself. This makes intuitive sense; why go to the bother of creating a fictionalized version of someone who is not, in fact, outstanding in any way, someone who was merely used as a front man for the real genius? Most of the people who are interested in disproving Shakespeare’s authorship are focused on the debate—they want to make a convincing argument, not tell a compelling story. Certainly none of these authors believe “Will Shaxberd” is a genius (often quite the opposite) and so there seems to be little purpose to creating a fictional portrait of the man they believe is just the cover. From another angle, the authorship controversy is intimately connected with understanding genius. Furthermore, I would argue that the authorship controversy is specifically interested in Shakespeare’s genius, or, more exactly, in understanding the genius that created the plays most people call Shakespeare’s. The motivating factor of the authorship controversy—whether Marlowe, Bacon, Oxford, or some other candidate is put forward as the real author—is that the genius who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare simply cannot be the man born in Stratford. “Once his writing became regarded as the repository of wisdom on all manner of human affairs, it became increasingly difficult to square ‘Shakespeare’ the sublime poet with the relatively mundane facts of Shakespeare’s middle-class life.”1 Whether the objection is to his middle-class upbringing, his supposed lack of education and travel, his mundane interest in business and legal cases, or his retiring from the theatre and returning to Stratford to die in his bed, the reason that these things function as proof Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him is the core belief that such behaviours are simply incompatible with true genius. Real artistic geniuses are not motivated by money, are never practical and responsible, and are unable to happily retire and give up creating. Most of all, real geniuses are original—their art comes from within, not from borrowing plots, characters, or language from previous writers. True genius must leave a visible mark on the genius him or herself—this is a universally accepted truth and has been since at least the Romantic period, and those who do create fictional portraits of Shakespeare as a cover for the true writer are merely going one step beyond all the other creators of fictional Shakespeare. They do what all the portraits of Shakespeare discussed in this book 1  Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, 134.

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do—they explore how genius comes into being, what shapes it, and what kind of effect it has on the life of the one who carries the burden of genius. In his book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, James Shapiro makes the point that for a very long time, readers have had difficulty reconciling their appreciation of Shakespeare’s genius and the facts of his life. Edmond Malone seems to be the one who first thought of working backwards—that is, of trying to determine who Shakespeare was by treating the plays as clues. He was the first to try to order the plays chrono­ logically (rather than by genre as they had been since the First Folio) and then use that chrono­logy to make some educated guesses about Shakespeare’s life. Malone never considered that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays, but as Shapiro points out, he was the one who first suggested that Othello’s jealousy was written with “such exquisite feeling” it seemed likely “the author had himself been perplexed with doubts, though not perhaps in the extreme.”2 Malone would go on to argue that Shakespeare must have had legal training because of the understanding of law present in the plays. Not that Malone had any shadow of doubt about the identity of the plays’ author: rather, his belief that Shakespeare’s plays must be based on actual experience instead of reading or second-hand knowledge cracked open a Pandora’s Box. “[T]hat Shakespeare had to have experienced something to write about it with such accuracy and force” would eventually suggest the argument that “expertise in the self-revealing works that the scant bio­graphical evidence couldn’t support—his knowledge of falconry, for example, or of seamanship, foreign lands, or the ways that the ruling class behaved—should disqualify Shakespeare as the author of the plays.”3 As discussed in Chapter Two, with the rise of Romanticism, the idea of the wellspring of genius, especially the genius of writers, shifted dramatically, from education to emotions. By the Victorian period, it had become an accepted belief that writers drew from personal experience, that all creative writing was to some extent autobio­graphical, and that a work that feels deeply true must reflect actual experience with the topic—a powerful war story can only be written by a soldier, Italy can only really be described by someone who has spent time in Italy, and so on. Mark Twain, for example, fervently believed that Francis Bacon wrote the plays because of his conviction that great fiction had to be autobio­graphical. As Shapiro points out, if William of Stratford wrote the plays, “Twain’s most deeply held beliefs about the nature of fiction and how major writers drew on personal experience would be wrong.”4 Freud believed the Earl of Oxford was the true author for much the same reasons—as he wrestled with his own conflicted feelings about his father’s death, he came to believe that Hamlet must have been written after the author of the play passed through an Oedipal crisis brought about by his own father’s death. If, as Gabriel Harvey’s marginalia suggested, the play was written in 1599, before John Shakespeare died, then Shakespeare simply could not be the author. Better to question the author of the plays then one’s own foundational beliefs! The con2  Quoted in Shapiro, Contested Will, 42.

3  Shapiro, Contested Will, 45.

4  Shapiro, Contested Will, 112.



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nection between powerful creative writing and personal experience continues into the present day, showing up in writing classrooms across the world, where students are urged to “write what they know.” Shakespearean bio­graphers who are completely convinced that he is responsible for the plays that bear his name cannot help but mine the works for evidence about his life. The urge to see a direct correlation between the life of the artist and the art is overwhelming, whichever side of the authorship controversy one supports. In many ways, this belief loops back to the view of genius as a heightened awareness of the world—the proof that Shakespeare did not write the plays is based in the nuanced and detailed understanding of court life, or Italy, or the law, or soldiering, or whatever it is that the particular writer feels is most fully explored by one or more plays. Since Shakespeare did not live in Italy or practice law, he could not have observed it with the detailed attention that is a necessary component of genius. Kim Sturgess offers a variation on the basic idea by suggesting that, at least at first, the authorship controversy was tied to “the nineteenth-century drive to create an American national tradition that included Shakespeare.”5 Sturgess lays out how Delia Bacon’s attempt to uncover “the truth” about who wrote the plays was intimately bound up in the desire to see the plays as expressions of revolutionary ideo­logy, an ideo­logy that directly inspired the founding of the United States of America. Bacon argued that a group of men wrote the plays, men who, despite facing both censorship and the threat of maiming or death, “sought to promote ‘the freedom of the new ages that were then beginning.’”6 In other words, Bacon was less interested in uncovering the identity of the real author or authors than in claiming the plays as forerunners of American thought. Sturgess goes on to point out that while the British or other European nationalities are not excluded from the belief in the authorship controversy, Americans, especially in the nineteenth century, were particularly motivated. Whether a particular writer believes in the authorship controversy because of the plays’ revolutionary ideo­logy, hidden commentary on court intrigues, or simply aristocratic knowledge, the central tenet is that the plays are works of the highest creative genius and that therefore the writer (or writers) must fit the author’s pre-determined conception of genius. Therefore, an investigation of fictional “non-Shakespeares” is an important element in understanding how Shakespeare functions as a marker of genius. Here we find double portraits—one of the actor serving as a cover for genius and one of the true creator of the plays. The contrasting portraits work in tandem to explore genius in a different way than other fictionalized portraits because they can offer the opposite—a man whose cravings are not artistic but mundane (usually money, although sometimes sex and fame are lures as well). All three of the explanations for genius—heightened attention to the world, isolation and disconnection, and the supernatural—are offered as explanations for why someone else is clearly the writer of the plays. What this makes apparent is that there is nothing special about Shakespeare as a man; nothing in his life marks him out as inherently different, better than others. Western culture has come to accept, almost 5  Sturgess, Shakespeare and the American Nation, 170.

6  Sturgess, Shakespeare and the American Nation, 171.

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universally, that the plays are works of genius, and that makes the writer of those plays, by default, a genius. Thus, it turns out that the identity of the writer is actually immaterial—what details still remain from four hundred years ago can, conveniently enough, be shifted and shaped to fit any explanation. The leading candidate in the world of non-fiction and debate is Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, so much so that those who support the authorship controversy are generally known as “Oxfordians.” For that matter, there are a few fictional examples that present Oxford as the true writer (most notably the movie Anonymous, which I discuss in detail below). Most stories, however, focus on Christopher Marlowe as the true writer of the plays. This is unsurprising. First, Marlowe is already an acknowledged creative genius and playwright. Second, his death is just ambiguous enough to provide fodder for conspiracy theories—was he a spy whose death was faked to get him out of the country safely? Unlike the Earl of Oxford, whose undisputed death in 1604 necessitates the claim that he wrote at least ten and possibly as many as thirteen plays well before they were performed (including plays performed in a theatre—the Blackfriars—that had very different staging requirements that someone dying in 1604 could not have known about), Marlowe can live on after his faked death as long as necessary. Third, the faked death provides a perfect reason for needing a cover—Marlowe is almost always presented as distraught by the need to stop writing and thus eager to accept (or propose) the idea of passing the plays off as someone else’s. What greater evidence of genius is there than caring more about the work than the fame? Finally, Marlowe’s life satisfies the need to see genius as arising from one’s life and personality. While both Shakespeare and Marlowe come from the middle class, Marlowe attended Oxford on scholarship (early evidence of genius), revolutionized the theatre, was probably a spy, and, in popular imagination, was an atheist and gay or bisexual. Especially in the later twentieth century this persona fits perfectly into the “rock ‘n roll” version of creative genius—a rebel against staid tradition who is both artistically and personally a free spirit. As I stated earlier, there are fewer fictional portraits of Shakespeare as front man for a conspiracy than any other kind of portrait; those who fall on this side of the authorship controversy tend to focus on proving their point as factually as possible. However, a number exist and almost all have one thing in common—they portray William Shakespeare as an absolutely horrible person. In one way, this makes sense: if “the man from Stratford” is rude, uncouth, closed-minded and greedy, he is then as far away as possible from the generally accepted portrait of “sweet Will,” far away from the true author. Logic is not the driving force here at all. The authors are not merely interested in proving their point. They are killing a, or the, sacred cow of the literary world, as messily as possible. While it actually makes little sense that a rude, greedy buffoon would be the optimal choice for a beard, this is what these authors have to believe, to bolster their argument that Shakespeare cannot be the author. Non-fiction works that explore this topic all point to “facts” such as Shakespeare’s lack of a university education, his lack of a library, his focus on buying property and obtaining a coat of arms, or his engagement in lawsuits. Fictional works take these facts a step further to paint a picture of a meanspirited, small-minded, materialistic or outright greedy man who is either prudish about sex or a serial cheater (or both), a man who cares for no one but himself.



Positive or Neutral Portraits

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Because there are so few works that explore the authorship controversy from a fictional perspective, I will briefly mention two that do not present a full-length portrait of either the man from Stratford or propose an alternative candidate. Both exist in the science fiction genre and both, probably because they do not explore Shakespeare in any depth, are not as negative as other portraits. The first is Clifford Simalc’s novel The Goblin Reservation. Shakespeare is not at all a main character; in a world where time travel is common, if tightly regulated, he has been brought forward to give a lecture “How it happened I Did Not Write the Plays.” Shakespeare joins with the main characters on their adventures after escaping from the Time Travel Institute; one of the other characters is a Ghost who does not remember who he was in life. It turns out that the Ghost was, in fact, William Shakespeare, and while the living man is at first horrified to meet his dead self, the two become friends. Despite being introduced as a fraud, Shakespeare is actually quite intelligent and forthright, and the question of who wrote the plays or why they were ascribed to Shakespeare is never brought up. It seems that Simalc’s choice was based in the desire to be as absurd as possible rather than any real interest in the authorship controversy, which is what allows his Shakespeare to retain many of the qualities of the more traditional “Sweet Will.” The second example is Anthony Burgess’ short story “The Muse.” A time traveller, Paley, returns to the late sixteenth century specifically to determine whether or not Shakespeare wrote the plays. What he discovers, before he is consigned to Bedlam, is that others, like him, have visited Shakespeare with the same question and that others, like him, have brought plays with them, plays that Shakespeare would take after the time travellers have been hauled off to madhouses, recopy, and pass off as his own. Shakespeare furtively, though he was alone, crossed himself. When poets had talked of the Muse had they perhaps meant such visitants like this, now screaming feebly in the street, and the German Schleyer and that one who swore, under torture, that he was from Virginia…? Well, whoever they were, they were heartily welcome as long as they brought plays.7

Burgess uses the classic time paradox to suggest that Shakespeare both is and is not the author of the plays that bear his name. Further, key to Shakespeare’s character is the willingness to take any opportunity that presents itself, even if it shows up in the guise of insanity. While this is certainly not the empathetic genius of Chapter One, this portrait is not actually negative.

Christopher Marlowe

Far and away the most popular choice for the true author is Christopher Marlowe, and the stories that take this approach offer some variety in the way they present both Shakespeare and Marlowe. Aside from the minimal portrait in The Goblin Reservation, I have found only one work that presents a Shakespeare who is not the writer of the plays 7  Burgess, “The Muse,” 199.

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and is also a truly good human being: Graeme Johnstone’s novel The Playmakers. This novel is a fantasia of almost epic proportions, mixing historical fact with far-flung imagination, and the focus is not on Marlowe as the writer of the plays, but on the importance of chosen family—here the theatre company. Johnstone imagines a young Shakespeare, miserably married after his true love, Anne Whateley, kills herself because Will has gotten a shrewish Anne Hathaway pregnant. Feeling trapped in every way possible, William runs off with a travelling circus (seemingly imported from the nineteenth century) featuring a P.T. Barnum-like leader named Budsby, a Nubian woman (who will become the dark lady of the sonnets), and a host of other characters. In this world, Will is no writer (he can barely sign his name), but he is a talented leather worker, which is why the company invites him along, and he turns out to be a talented promoter, coming up with publicity stunts that make Marlowe’s early plays, such as Tamburlaine the Great, huge hits. When Marlowe must fake his own death and go abroad, Shakespeare agrees to stand in as the author of Marlowe’s plays as a favour to his friend and the company both, going so far as sitting alone for hours in a room pretending to write. Because Johnstone images a large group of people passionately devoted to theatre and to making sure Marlowe’s works continue to be performed, Shakespeare does not have to function as a direct contrast to the “real” writer. Moreover, because the genius of the plays Marlowe produces is assumed rather than investigated (he clearly falls into the first group, mining events and feelings from his life for his plays, but the creative process is not at all the focus); it is not as important to explain all the effects that genius has on Marlowe or does not have on Shakespeare. There is no need to set up a strong contrast because Johnstone is interested in exploring a large cast of colourful persons (hence the title, which refers to the entire company) rather than explaining the genius that singlehandedly produced plays like Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra. In all other works that present a Shakespeare who is not the author of the plays, however, the goal of tearing Shakespeare down is as important as building up Oxford or Marlowe, because the contrast is part of what makes the argument about the true nature of genius. Farrukh Dhondy’s 1993 Black Swan offers Christopher Marlowe and his lover, Lazarus (also known as Henry), an escaped black slave, as the joint writers of the plays and Shakespeare as the cover for them both. This work is a nested narrative—the main story takes place in present day London, with a mysterious old man dictating a story to a young woman. The story is the diary of Simon Foreman (and within that, at points, the narrative of Lazarus). As expected, the “story” turns out to be historical truth, although Dhondy is not really interested in proving Shakespeare could not have written the plays. Creating the character of Lazarus, a black man who suffers slavery, degradation, and false imprisonment, is more important to Dhondy than trying to prove that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays, and so Shakespeare himself plays a small role within Foreman’s narrative. When he does show up, he is unimpressive, especially when compared to Lazarus. The latter is calm when an iron chain link is removed from his tongue. When Shakespeare has a gash on his head, “he screamed like a woman who gives birth and swore and blasphemed.”8 When he is accidentally pegged as the author of 8  Dhondy, Black Swan, 126.



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Titus Andronicus (actually Marlowe, writing in secret after his faked death), Shakespeare agrees to serve as a front both for Marlowe and Lazarus, since neither can admit to being the author. While Shakespeare stumbles into his role as a cover, soon he “demands more and more of a share [of the box office] as the plays and days proceed”9 and eventually “is attended upon by men of all sorts.” He enjoys the praise and attention he receives, claiming the works are his to Foreman, who has always known the truth.10 This Shakespeare is not completely horrible, but he is greedy and cowardly, two very common traits ascribed to him by writers who believe he is not the author of the plays. In contrast to The Playmakers and Black Swan, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, a 2010 self-published novel by Ted Bacino, presents a truly irredeemable Shakespeare. As usual, Marlowe is the author of the plays—he fakes his death and goes into hiding after Kyd is arrested and tortured for blasphemy, and it becomes clear that Marlowe is next. After his “death,” Marlowe continues to write and his lover, Thomas Walsingham, comes up with the idea of giving the plays to Shakespeare to make sure they are performed. Marlow is at first outraged. “This thing with Shakespeare would never work. At the theatre he’s known as Horsy Will the Pony Man.”11 After Walsingham points out that it has to be someone who is not currently writing plays, Marlowe agrees and Shakespeare is brought in. Bacino goes to great lengths in his first description to make this version of Will as unattractive as possible: No one considered Shakespeare to be good looking, but that wasn’t what really made him unattractive. He had a wide neck, big thick hands, and an expression that made people feel he either wasn’t paying attention or didn’t understand what was being said…. For some reason, he had the air of someone who should hold horses at the theatre rather than write plays.12

Shakespeare is also, clearly, stupid. He tells Walsingham, “I write good” when asked about copying the plays over in his own handwriting, and then is so slapdash about it that they have to take the task away from him.13 He does not know what a comma is, calling it a common, and inserts them randomly into the text. Instead of Duncan’s line being “Go, get him surgeons” it becomes “Go get him, surgeons.”14 Shakespeare also pedantically insists on being called “William” and never “Will” (the author’s note claims that he chose this character note because there is no evidence he was ever referred to as Will or Bill. Bacino clearly cannot see all the wordplay on “will” in the sonnets as the author punning on his own name, so he ignores the many examples of just this behaviour). At another point Shakespeare “pout[s]” because he only gets to play small parts in “[his] own plays.”15 9  Dhondy, Black Swan, 158.

10  Dhondy, Black Swan, 191.

11  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 67. 12  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 71. 13  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 72. 14  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 79. 15  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 80.

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`In addition, Shakespeare is both crude and narrow-minded about sex. While he is represented as regularly cheating on Anne with several women (Bacino accepts as fact the claim William D’Avenant made about Shakespeare being his father), he responds to any other sexual expression with bigotry and outright horror. When Shakespeare discovers the sonnets are written to a man he is appalled, screaming at Marlowe that all of London is laughing at him. “‘And everyone in town seems to be able to tell …’ and here he took another breath and almost shuddered, ‘… that they were written to a man!’”16 Apparently, he did not realize this until confronted by fans asking the identity of his lover. Shakespeare’s ignorance and homophobia are deliberately played up to directly contradict the portrait of Marlowe, a man who was open-minded enough to be, if not actually bisexual, then emotionally in love with both men and women. For Bacino, Marlowe is the one who is a proto-liberal, a man proud of loving other men before sexual orientation was understood or accepted as innate, but also a man who is loyal to one partner (who is also his patron). In fact, Bacino suggests that the difference in characterization (especially of female characters) between plays known to be by Marlowe and those attributed to Shakespeare is the result of the love Marlowe has for Walsingham. Bacino wants to have genius both ways—he presents Marlowe as innately, almost magically having all the twenty-first century liberal values of respecting diversity and valuing people as individuals, but also being motivated to write three-dimensional characters because of one great love that is both emotionally and creatively sustaining. Shakespeare, on the other hand, cannot love anyone and is so narrow-minded he does not realize homosexuality exists. Finally, when there is a threat of discovery, Shakespeare’s only reaction is to flee. When the intelligencer Maunder begins to investigate whether or not Marlowe is really dead, Shakespeare panics. “Once Wriothesley had been arrested, Shakespeare was nowhere to be found…. There was no way he could chance meeting Constable Maunder now that his patron—and his protection—was in prison. One specific question from the Constable about any of the plays and he would be up before the Privy Council”17 Since he has not bothered to read any of the plays bearing his name, he cannot possibly fake his way through an interview. So Shakespeare sneaks back to Stratford where, after a fight with Anne, he stays until his death. The narrative swings back to Marlowe, still busily writing. Oddly, Bacino seems to think that the plays published after Shakespeare’s death must also have been written that late, and holds them up as proof that Shakespeare was not the author. His is a more haphazard understanding of the plays’ chrono­ logy than most, suggesting King Lear is one of the first things Marlowe writes after his “death,” along with Henry VIII. In short, Bacino’s Shakespeare is a pompous, stupid coward. He is also homophobic, misogynistic, and next door to illiterate. To top it all off, he is ugly, in body and mind. Compared to the handsome, dashing, liberal Marlowe, he is worse than nothing; he corrupts the plays even when all he does is copy them over into his handwriting. Marlowe 16  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 95.

17  Bacino, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, 152.



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is right to be upset that Shakespeare gets to take credit for his plays. Meanwhile, Bacino presents Marlowe’s genius as rising equally from his devoted love for Walshingham and the events of his life. Only someone who has come so close to torture and death, someone who has lost everything, Bacino suggests, can possibly write the plays attributed to Shakespeare. Bacino claims that he uses only “historical facts” to create his narrative, but clearly what is a fact to him is that genius can only exist in someone who resembles a twenty-first century progressive rebel. Ros Barber’s version of the authorship controversy also stars Marlowe, and is in fact called The Marlowe Papers. Uniquely, this is a novel written in blank verse and is a series of linked poems in different voices describing Marlowe’s love of the theatre, his need to fake his death and go into hiding, and his life as a fugitive. When Marlowe first meets the man who will cover for him, he thinks: He had a hard, unmoving quality: rough country hewn, that quietly withstands the shoulders of bulls. I’ve never met a man so much like a dry-stone wall. 18

Because Marlowe narrates this poem, there is not much of Shakespeare at all and while he is not the pompous buffoon of other works, he is, at best, stolid. “Memorable, yet bland / as a pat of butter shaken without salt,”19 and “a man discreet / as a bolted door.”20 One of the only things we do find out about the man is that he wants a share in the company for the continued use of his name and “as a shareholder / in the players’ company, he seems more like / the thing he’s meant to be.”21 Since Shakespeare never narrates a poem, there is no chance to explore his interior life and thoughts; he remains that “bolted door” standing between Marlowe and discovery, all surface and no depth. The longest incident involving Shakespeare himself (narrated not by Marlowe, but by Thomas Thorpe, Marlowe’s friend and confidant) describes a young man asking Shakespeare to auto­graph a copy of his latest work. Shakespeare declines, claiming he is not Shakespeare the writer (but really to avoid having to reveal that he can barely write). When the young man asks the tapster if it is really the Shakespeare, the tapster offers up all the contrary evidence as proof. “Imagine you’re mistaken / for the author of genius, would you not be tempted / to soak up the praise and let the error pass?”22 He further suggests the true author would shun “the gaze / of an over-zealous public” and claims “the heat of ideas inside that skull have burnt away his hairline.”23 The final piece of contrary proof is that the man has no ink on his fingers. “The man is such an expert at the craft / so practiced in the art of wielding pen, / he never blots a word.”24 18  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 48.

19  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 213. 20  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 304. 21  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 104. 22  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 102. 23  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 102. 24  Barber, The Marlowe Papers, 103.

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Barber thus turns Jonson’s famous quip into part of the cover-up, a detail that needs to be explained. Barber argues Marlowe is the author by turning Shakespeare into a virtual cipher—never allowed to speak for himself, rarely even seen. More attention is paid to his name than to his person. A final example of Shakespeare covering for Marlowe comes in D.K. Marley’s Blood and Ink. Marley focuses mostly on Marlowe—beginning with Walsingham and Sidney recruiting him as a spy when he is still in grammar school. Marlowe meets Shakespeare at Kenilworth, when they are both boys. Shakespeare is first described as “a pleasant sort with big brown puppy eyes,” 25 but when Kit accuses Will’s father and Lord Arden of plotting treason, “with the most honest eyes and plainest speech,” he lies directly to the Queen about meeting Marlowe, thus keeping his father safe.26 The two cross paths several more times as Marlowe becomes both master playwright and spy and Shakespeare first longs for and then attains the life of an actor. Despite their first meeting, Marlowe is by far the cleverer and he successfully tricks Shakespeare repeatedly (in part because the latter is overly fond of ale and cannot keep quiet when he is drunk). It is not until almost the very end of the novel that Marlowe, hunted (this time by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Baines) and betrayed, makes the plan to fake his own death and have Shakespeare pretend to author his work. Immediately after this moment, the novel skips forward from 1593 to 1616, where Marlowe confronts Shakespeare on his deathbed, demanding that he write a letter confessing the conspiracy. Shakespeare refuses, although interestingly he has already confessed as much to Ben Jonson, and further, revealed his own hand in Marlowe’s continued exile. “I knew when I agreed to the plot to save Marlowe’s life, and to be his proxy, what it would mean to my future and my fortune. I knew I had to keep Marlowe from ever coming back.” 27 Shakespeare has leaked Marlowe’s location to those who seek him, as a way to keep Marlowe from feeling safe enough to return to England. Shakespeare feels some guilt for his actions, but not enough to give in to Marlowe’s frenzied demands to return his name. Much worse, Shakespeare has alerted one of Marlowe’s enemies—a crazed monk who blames Marlowe for England’s refusal to return to Catholicism—to the meeting he is having with Marlowe. The monk enters while Marlowe is demanding Shakespeare confess and stabs him. As he dies, Marlowe says, “William, I am dead … thou lives … report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.” To which Shakespeare responds, “Marlowe, forgive me … for as you know, the rest is silence.”28 Blood and Ink is, in general, a standard authorship construction, with Marlowe having all the marks of genius and Shakespeare being good only at acting/lying. There is one interesting twist: the addition of a supernatural element is unique among the works in this chapter. From his childhood Marlowe is visited by Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, considered by Ovid to be the chief muse. “I chose you to bless. Never forget you are 25  Marley, Blood and Ink, 57.

26  Marley, Blood and Ink, 64.

27  Marley, Blood and Ink, 344. 28  Marley, Blood and Ink, 394.



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my special boy, the muse’s darling. Never forsake me, Christopher. Trust me and I will give you your heart’s desire.”29 At the end of the novel, when Marlowe travels back to England to confront Shakespeare, Calliope appears one more time to persuade him to trust her (although it is not at all clear why he should). He rejects her and she responds, “I will leave thee, Christopher Marlowe; but know this, without my help, this will all come to naught.”30 The “this” here is entirely ambiguous—does she mean his plan to force Shakespeare to reveal the cover-up? His desire for fame as England’s greatest playwright? His works ever being correctly linked to his name? What is clear is the immediate impact of her withdrawal: “he realized he could not remember the rhythm of a sonnet, the sweet lyrical meter of a poetic line, or the meaty meaning in a soliloquy. All the skill vanished with the silence of Calliope’s voice.”31 This silence, this loss, is what drives Marlowe to threaten Shakespeare; he believes that getting Shakespeare to admit who wrote the plays will bring Calliope back to him. The last para­graphs of the novel, after the death of both Marlowe and Shakespeare, have Calliope talking to Thalia, the muse of comedy, who favoured Shakespeare and made him an actor. Calliope announces that she is done with playwrights for a time and has already found a new “bright youth staring out his window with dreams of a story.” This new favourite “goes by the name of Milton … John Milton.”32 Marley thus layers the story of conspiracy and hidden genius within a tale of supernatural genius. The suggestion that all great poets are literally inspired by muses is actually a variation from the portraits of a supernaturally inspired Shakespeare in Chapter Three. Here the muses give their gifts to a variety of youths with “dreams of a story.” Even Shakespeare was favoured by a muse; although it seems that only Calliope, the chief muse, can grant the gift of transcendent genius. What all these versions have in common is their reification of Christopher Marlowe. If the facts of Shakespeare’s life are depressingly mundane and unsuitable for genius, the life of Marlowe seems almost too good to be true. With very little prompting, his life and death are tailor-made for the Romantic and modern take on genius. He is a rule breaker who is driven by his passions; he dies young and tragically; his talent is clear from his earliest works; and if the portrait often linked to his name is truly his, he was physically attractive. Marlowe fulfills every aspect of the stereotype of artistic genius that has reigned for well over one hundred years, and it is only surprising that any other candidate is ever considered.

Francis Bacon

The authorship controversy has offered over eighty candidates as the real genius behind the plays, but especially in fiction, only a handful receives significant attention. For a while Queen Elizabeth I was put forward. Neither historians nor novel writers 29  Marley, Blood and Ink, 10.

30  Marley, Blood and Ink, 381. 31  Marley, Blood and Ink, 381. 32  Marley, Blood and Ink, 398.

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ever picked up that claim seriously, although the romance novel Much Ado About Love does have Elizabeth’s secret daughter disguise herself as a man and take on the name William Shakespeare so that she can write plays. In truth, only two candidates aside from Marlowe have gained any sort of following—Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford. There are only a few fictional works that feature Francis Bacon as the real writer of the plays. This is no doubt due to the fact that he fell out of favour as a candidate in the early part of the twentieth century, when repeated attempts to use crypto­graphy to prove he left a hidden message in the plays came to nothing. The comic 1941 novel No Bed for Bacon does feature a Francis Bacon who is the basis for Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and who swears to deface Shakespeare’s name in history, but this sideways reference to the authorship controversy is a joke rather than a legitimate suggestion that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays. The two examples putting forward Bacon that I did find are, interestingly, both plays, a one act play titled The Making of an Immortal, by George Moore, and Clipt Wings, by William Leigh. Both of these works in fact date from the period when Bacon was the favoured candidate, the first published in 1927 (and, according to the foreword, written three years earlier) and the second in 1930. Despite the fact that both choose Francis Bacon as the real author and both are dramas, their approach to presenting both the true writer and their conception of genius are almost diametrically opposed. Despite the title, The Making of an Immortal is not actually concerned with what makes the plays or the man who wrote them worthy of immortality—Moore simply assumes all readers know the plays are works of genius. Clipt Wings, on the other hand, is so consumed with both describing and displaying Bacon’s genius, that characterization is largely ignored (each character has a single mode) and logic is entirely missing. The Making of an Immortal’s main focus is the worry created by a visit from Queen Elizabeth; she is coming to the theatre herself to question the Lord Chamberlain’s Men about the seditious Richard II because she believes Essex is the author. Bacon and Jonson quickly need to find someone to present to the Queen so that Bacon himself does not get in trouble (although it is not at all clear why he would, or why a different type of man would not). “Then believe me, a simple man with little wisdom in his mouth and the semblance of any small trader will be accepted more easily than a garrulous poet.”33 The two quickly settle on Shakespeare, for no reason other than the nom de plume Bacon has been using for his plays is “Shakespere.” While this version of the actor from Stratford is not actively repellant, he is, as usual, obsessed with money—already, in 1599, he is dreaming of retiring and making money from rents—and timid. When Jonson and Bacon explain their plan to him, his response is, “O, Master Jonson, I shake in my shoes and my knees tremble!”34 He is persuaded to take on the part with the promise of financial reward and Elizabeth does indeed reward him, pleased that the English countryside has produced such genius. She then tells him she enjoyed seeing Falstaff so much she wants to see him in love, a request that almost undoes the poor player. 33  Moore, The Making of an Immortal, 36.

34  Moore, The Making of an Immortal, 50.



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However, once Bacon promises to provide the play, Shakespeare is quite happy to follow his advice to “let not thy tongue cease to wag that Queen Elizabeth told thee thou were England’s poet”35 This short work does not give much back story for Bacon’s decision to remain anonymous, or the source of his genius. In fact, the play has more in common with works like Asimov’s “The Immortal Bard” in that Bacon’s genius is assumed and never explored. Clipt Wings, on the other hand, goes into extensive detail both about Bacon’s genius and his need to keep his authorship secret. In a twist on the “Prince Tudor” theory, Leigh imagines that Queen Elizabeth is not only secretly the mother of Francis Bacon, but also of Richard Cecil, whose physical deformities result from a failed abortion. The two are thus set up as rivals from the start, with Francis the heroic golden boy Elizabeth loves and Cecil a version of Richard III, going so far as to poison Elizabeth in an attempt to get her to name him heir to the throne. In the first act, set in 1576, Bacon learns of his true parentage when Cecil pretends Lady Scales has spread malicious gossip about Elizabeth. As Elizabeth beats the poor woman, Bacon tries to protect her and Elizabeth responds, “Wilt thou take sides with her against thy mother?”36 Shortly after this (very public) revelation (which, apparently, does not get repeated by a single courtier who is present for the revelation), Elizabeth and Bacon have an interview that mimics that of Henry IV and Prince Hal in Henry IV:1 and also provides the explanation for the genius that will show itself in the plays. When Elizabeth complains that Bacon does not spend enough time at court, but instead goes among the commoners, Bacon protests, “I do but study my companions, of all ranks, that I may know all states and degrees of men, and their speech for how else may I paint them to the life … I find all life deeply interesting, sweet madam. The world of princes is glorious, but it is not the whole world.”37 Bacon, in Leigh’s version, is thus absolutely the empathic, engaged genius, sensitive and aware of the power inherent in both emotions and language. As is common for this type of portrait, lines from the various plays are put into the mouths of characters, and readers may assume that Bacon remembers these and repurposes them, just as he understands the pain of an unjustly accused woman, or a tormented queen. Leicester (suggested although never confirmed as Bacon’s father) tells Elizabeth, “his knowledge of all sorts and degrees of men; his insight into the human heart with all its complexities is astonishing!”38 Cecil offers a more negative version of his genius. He tells Elizabeth that Bacon has “genius” but then warns her, “he possesses the power to move the hearts of men, to sway them to his will.”39 It is never clear why Francis Bacon could “study man,” but William Shakespeare could not. Aside from the chance to be part of the courts of England and France, the main difference seems to be that this Bacon is the son of a queen rather than the son of a glover. 35  Moore, The Making of an Immortal, 59.

36  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 29. 37  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 40. 38  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 55. 39  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 60.

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The portrait of the actor Shaxper in Clipt Wings is one of the most negative I have found. Bacon is noble, ethical, brilliant, and handsome. Shaxper, on the other hand, is “a lout” who is “boorish,” “lazy,” and “ignorant.” When the Queen offers 300 pounds for revealing the man who writes as “Shakespeare,” Bacon decides he needs someone to step forward. “We need a knave worthless enough to desire to live in idleness, reckless enough to be willing to undertake the role, and ignorant and grotesque enough to convince everybody at a glance that he is a dummy.”40 Naturally he, Marlowe, and Jonson settle on Shaxper, and persuade the latter that the difference in spelling will protect him from prosecution. They buy him off, teach him to sign his name, and feed him lines as a cover story. However, a worthless, ignorant, and greedy “lout” is not enough for Leigh. Late in the play Cecil reveals to the poisoned and dying Elizabeth, “At my instigation and under my tutelage, the drunken pig, Shaxper, has for years levied blackmail on thy pet.”41 In fact, at the very end of the play we discover that Bacon’s friends tried for two days to get the retired Shaxper to keep the secret, but “his arrogance and boundless gluttony for gain began to take on the colour of insanity.”42 Apparently, the only course open is to poison Shaxper, a course Bacon views as excusable because they were “driven” to it. The play ends with Bacon telling his friends that although his name must be hidden for now, he has left keys that will be found in time by “bards and philosophers whose discernment and integrity will repair the wrongs of today.”43

Edward de Vere

The other candidate who receives any significant fictional attention is Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. While Oxford is the favoured candidate in terms of the authorship controversy debate, he lags well behind Marlowe in fictional representation. There are several fictional works that argue for Edward de Vere as the true author, such as Norma Howe’s Blue Avenger Cracks the Code and Sarah Smith’s Chasing Shakespeares, but these works are about modern investigations into the mystery and do not feature either Shakespeare or Oxford in person. However, a number of works do offer a fictionalized account of de Vere as the author of the plays, including two bio­graphical novels, a young adult novel, and the 2011 film Anonymous. The two bio­graphical novels, interestingly, both choose to remove Shakespeare from view rather than present him as repulsive. Absent Thee From Felicity, subtitled “a bio­ graphical novel” by Rhoda Henry Messner, does not bring the actor from Stratford on stage at all, and in fact mentions him only once, less than thirty pages from the end of the book, and then only in a list of sharers in the newly built Globe. Other than that, the story focuses exclusively on Oxford, beginning with his arrival in London, age twelve, and end40  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 92.

41  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 129. 42  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 156. 43  Leigh, Clipt Wings, 154.



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ing at his deathbed. The second of the bio­graphical novels, The Lost Chronicle of Edward de Vere: Lord Great Chamberlain, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Poet and Playwright William Shakespeare (1991), by Andrew Fields, has slightly more of Shakespeare to offer, but only slightly. On the opening page, Oxford describes, “Humble-visag’d Shakespeare, who minded our costumes, tied the horses, and played the parts without words … is innocent altogether of the serpent called fame.”44 The second time Shakespeare is mentioned Oxford again calls him innocent, noting “he brought the solid virtues of the country to our enterprise and helped our theatre to survive.”45 Oxford, however, does not go on to explain how Shakespeare’s “solid virtues” helped the theatre survive, and Shakespeare himself never speaks or appears in person. Perhaps the reason Messner can so easily ignore Shakespeare is that she seems to believe (or acts as if she believes) that there is no authorship controversy at all; she writes as if Oxford is the universally accepted author of the plays, spending almost no time at all on the reason the plays cannot bear his name. In fact, Queen Elizabeth specifically asks Oxford to write plays. “We are offering you, Oxford, the chance to use your writing talents in behalf of your country.”46 When he tells her the plot of the play he is writing (Henry IV:1 she tells him, “With your poetic bent, my lord, it can be an epic, a paean of praise for England.”47 This idea and indeed Oxford’s writing in general is not a central point of the novel, which spends most of its time on Oxford’s unhappy marriage with Anne Cecil, his travels abroad, and his emotional tug of war with Queen Elizabeth. There are events that could be tied to specific works, but the reader is never shown the link; only those very familiar with the plays will recognize the incidents. For example, the historically factual killing of Thomas Bricknell by the seventeen-year-old Oxford is converted into a Hamlet-like scene: Oxford discovers Bricknell spying on him and accidentally stabs him through a wall hanging. Unlike both The Lost Chronicle and Anonymous, which also feature this event, the incident is not shown to influence Oxford’s writing of Hamlet, nor is there a specific mention of the play anywhere in the novel. It is only at the very end of the book that Messner refers to the plays being published under a pseudonym. When Oxford approaches the newly crowned King James for permission to publish his works, the king asks the advice of Robert Cecil and Oxford immediately knows his case is lost because in the plays he caricatured William Cecil, among others. “Better to go on with the name we so cleverly chose … invisible in the helmet of Pallas Athene, spearshaker and patron of the theatre.”48 Why the plays, encouraged by Elizabeth herself, required a pseudonym in the first place is not explained, only that the Queen had not approved him publishing the works under his own name, nor how the actor and sharer William Shakespeare came to be accepted as the author. In fact, Messner does not explore Oxford’s genius as a writer—it is mentioned, but only men44  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 1.

45  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 196.

46  Messner, Absent Thee from Felicity, 128. 47  Messner, Absent Thee from Felicity, 129. 48  Messner, Absent Thee from Felicity, 284.

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tioned; the writing of plays is a minor thread for most of the novel. It seems that Messner wanted to write a novel about the Earl of Oxford and believed the only way to get it published was to attach the work to the authorship controversy. The second of the bio­graphical novels, The Lost Chronicle of Edward de Vere: Lord Great Chamberlain, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Poet and Playwright William Shakespeare (1991), by Andrew Field, spends a great deal more time on Oxford as a literary genius. This novel claims to be a manuscript found in a secret drawer in 1990 and is written in first person, which has the unfortunate result of making the main character seem insufferably conceited—it is difficult to have a character describe himself as a genius, let alone the ultimate expression of literary genius. Right from the opening page de Vere describes himself as “a poet whose lines were known by heart and praised by all the world.”49 He goes on to say that when he gathered playwrights around him, “I soon found I had to lead and teach the teacher as well as supply the schoolhouse … I could not but smile at their way with words.”50 The character Field creates is also remarkably unpleasant, although this seems unintended—a side effect of Field trying to describe the effects of being a genius. For example, where Messner has Oxford kill Bricknell accidentally, Field has de Vere describe it as a “necessary murder” although the necessity is not clear at all. Yes, Bicknell is spying on him, but when confronted Bicknell offers him information in exchange for being spared. “The words were scarcely past his profane lips when the next phrase was frozen forever…. Rage moved in me like a mighty tide.”51 As if that was not enough, Field has Oxford describe the killing in detail. “I do remember that his repugnant belly was gradually painted red and several places gave little spurts as he was hanging there.”52 The scene ends with Oxford weeping not for the “knave I’d killed,” but for himself. This sort of self-pitying and self-centred behaviour is repeated numerous times. Like Messner, Field fails to provide an understandable reason for the deception. He describes why Burghley forces Oxford to write under a pseudonym. “[Elizabeth] and the burning questions of our time were never long absent from what I wrote. This … was why at Lord Burghley’s order I became simple Shakespeare. What was poetry by Shakespeare would have been instant sedition by de Vere.”53 Only slightly more than halfway through the book, Elizabeth does find out and not only is she not upset, she rewards Oxford and declares, “I need your plays and so does My [sic] factious kingdom.”54 If Oxford cares enough about his future fame to spend his last hours writing a tell-all memoir, it seems odd he was content to carry on the deception for a dozen odd years after it becomes clear there would be no negative consequences for coming forward. 49  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 1.

50  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 1.

51  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 44.

52  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 46–47. 53  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 34.

54  Field, The Lost Chronicle, 185.



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In the case of both these novels, Oxford is presented as a genius, but his genius is not really explored. In Messner he is sensitive (prone to blushing) and easily swept away by his emotions, in Field he alternates between depression and mania, but in neither case is there a distinct connection made between the characterization and the idea of genius. Because they are trying to write fictional bio­graphies, they both end up suggesting that genius arises out of Oxford’s intense engagement with life, but this is suggested only in passing, not fully explored. As Peter Morton notes in his review of these two novels, “Although there are plenty of bio­graphical and psycho­logical facts for the imagination to work with—far more than there are for Shakespeare—they just cannot be made to jell.”55 Lynne Kositsky’s young adult novel A Question of Will is another fictional portrait of Shakespeare as cover for de Vere. As with Bacino, Kositsky writes an afterword that lays out her reasons for her belief and, similarly, goes out of her way to make Shakespeare unattractive in every possible way. In this story, Perin Willoughby, a Canadian teenager doing a summer program in England, falls through time and ends up in 1595, where she is mistaken for both a boy (due to her clothes and short hair) and an aspiring actor (since she asks to see Shakespeare). After demonstrating that she can both read and dance, Burbage takes her on as a new apprentice and decides to rename her Willow. Her first glimpse of Shakespeare is when she is watching a performance of Hamlet (Kositsky notes in her afterword that “according to Oxfordian scholars, Hamlet existed long before 1595.”56). When Shakespeare appears as the Ghost, Willow notes: [T]his just had to be Shakespeare. But as he ventured out you could see he was a wimp just by looking at him, his sandy brown hair and owlish look about as scary as a peanut butter sandwich. He turned timidly and trekked across the boards like he was on a Sunday School picnic. A drunken groundling stuck a piddle pail on stage and Shakespeare stepped in it. A great roar went up as the poor guy shook his foot dry and wiped it on the back of his cloak. Swearing loudly, he launched both bucket and contents into the crowd before leaving the stage on the run.57

Just as in Bacino’s text, Kositsky wants to create a Shakespeare who is a failure in all possible ways. He is both a “wimp” and so bad-tempered he throws a bucket of urine into a crowd of paying customers. He is timid and apparently unaware of his surroundings, and such a bad actor he breaks character and runs off stage before his assigned exit (if this is Hamlet 1.1, the actors playing Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio do not seem to have had time to speak their lines before Shakespeare leaves the stage without the kingly “stalking” the text requires). In later scenes, Shakespeare is revealed as money hungry to the point of taking Willow’s purse after de Vere pays her for delivering manuscripts to Shakespeare, and both oblivious and bigoted towards his landlady. Despite lodging with Mistress Lewes for quite a while, Shakespeare never realized she was Jewish until after she and her family flee persecution. When he does, he is outraged rather than concerned. “To think I paid 55  Morton, “Novel Oxfords,” para­graph 18 (online at https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/05-2/mortoxf. htm). 56  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 141.

57  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 25.

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that woman rent. To think I laid my body down in this horrible house. Why didn’t the quarrelsome dame warn me they were Israelites? Only think of the harm I could have suffered to my reputation, sirrah.”58 He also physically abuses Willow and does not care that he is putting his new apprentice in danger, even when he realizes Willow is a girl (a fact he learns by spying on her and which he uses to blackmail her into taking messages to de Vere). At the end of the story, Willow finds out from another actor that everyone (including the Admiral’s Men) knows that de Vere is actually the writer. “But we’re really careful as far as Wannabe Will is concerned, for he’d have a horrible hissy fit if he knew we knew.”59 When Willow is wounded in a fight, she returns to the present and finds that her plea to the sixteenth century actors to make sure the world knows who really wrote the plays has been effective—de Vere is now widely accepted as the author; in fact, the student who, at the beginning of the story, was arguing that de Vere was the author is now arguing that “a little-known player in London at the time … Will Shakespeare” might have been the author.60 While a clever bookending, Kositsky seems unaware that having the conspiracy theory lover keep the conspiracy and simply switch the writer makes the conspiracy itself seem less than plausible. Kositsky, perhaps because she is writing a comic novel for teens, does not spend much time on de Vere. He is at the performance of Hamlet that Willow is part of. “There was a sudden silence as an important-looking dude walked in, and the mob parted like the Red Sea to let him pass.”61 Willow notes that, unlike the rowdy groundlings, de Vere is “intensely wrapped up in the spectacle” and de Vere does have the intelligence to recognize Willow is a girl almost from the start (and he is apparently eager to see Juliet acted by a woman).62 Other than that, de Vere stays in the background. Kositsky is more interested in dismantling any romantic notions about the Elizabethan theatre (and the period in general) than exploring genius. There is, however, one interesting moment. Willow confronts de Vere and asks him to reconsider keeping his authorship a secret because in the future perhaps “that shambling stooge Shakespeare was the bestknown, the most written-about playwright of all time, just because you’d made him a present of your plays.”63 De Vere responds that he would be content with that because “[t]hough I cannot help but write them, I certainly should not wish to be remembered in that regard.”64 The idea that de Vere the nobleman writes plays almost against his will, along with his isolation and disdain for most people, places him in the “genius as isolation” category of Chapter Two. While he is not actually mad, his drive to create works which, in some sense, he is ashamed of, as well as his general isolation from the other 58  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 93.

59  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 126.

60  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 133. 61  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 24. 62  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 27.

63  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 118. 64  Kositsky, A Question of Will, 119.



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characters, does characterize genius as a curse that limits connection and intimacy with others.

Anonymous

None of the works discussed so far have been critical or commercial successes. While some are willing to consider the authorship controversy and may have some curiosity about it, many are not willing to read a fictional work exploring that subject. Furthermore, the works themselves too often fall into the lecturing mode, focusing on proving their claim rather than building a compelling story. This is not true for the 2011 film Anonymous. A major studio (Sony) released the film in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Although neither a box office success nor a critical darling, it was nominated for a number of awards, including an Academy Award for best costumes. It stars respected actors, including Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I, and featured cameos by Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, two very well-known Shakespearean actors whose appearance lends credence to the film’s full-length exploration of Edward de Vere’s life and his drive to write plays. As such, despite its many flaws, the film is an important piece to examine in order to understand how the authorship controversy explores the idea of genius. Anonymous is an Oxfordian picture, presenting Edward de Vere as the real author of the plays. It also embraces the “Prince Tudor” theory—that Edward and Elizabeth were lovers and that Elizabeth gave birth to a son who was raised as Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (thus explaining why “Shakespeare” dedicated poems to him). The film attempts to have it both ways; over and over we see that de Vere writes plays with a particular political purpose—to influence Elizabeth, or mock either William or Robert Cecil, or rouse the mob in favour of Essex—but the film is also insistent that de Vere, a true genius, cannot help but write. As a young man he declares to his guardian, William Cecil, “my poems are my soul.” The drive to create is most clearly laid out when, after the triumph of Henry V (which is also the moment Shakespeare takes on the mantle of the plays’ author), Anne confronts her husband. Like her father and brother, she is (ahistorically) presented as a Puritan who is appalled by the very idea of theatre. “You’re … writing again. You promised! Why must you write? Why must you continue to humiliate my family?” De Vere’s response is not about power or influence: The voices, Anne. The voices. I can’t stop them; they come to me, when I sleep, when I wake, when I sup, when I walk down the hall, the sweet longings of a maid, the surging ambitions of a courtier, the foul designs of a murderer, the wretched pleas of his victims. Only when I put their words their voices on parchment … only then is my mind quieted, at peace. I would go mad if I didn’t write down the voices.

This does not explain why the plays need to be performed as well as written, but it flirts with the view of genius as an external, supernatural force that is beyond de Vere’s control. Nonetheless, Anne and the Cecils do not understand this drive and spend the film trying to suppress and destroy his “voices on parchment.” Because the plays are works of genius, however, these attempts are doomed to failure. The movie opens with Jonson risking his life to save the plays from the burning Globe (a deliberate act of sabotage

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by Cecil). At the very end, when the dying de Vere gives Jonson all his remaining manuscripts for safe keeping, Anne confronts Jonson and claims the theatre has brought only ruin and dishonour to the family. He responds that “you, your family, even I, even Queen Elizabeth herself will be remembered solely because we had the honor to live whilst your husband put ink to paper.” When Cecil demands de Vere’s memory be wiped out, Jonson replies, “I am afraid that is not possible, my lord.” The plays are presented as almost alive, with their own determination to survive. This aspect of the movie presents de Vere as a prototypical Romantic genius—an artist tortured by his sensitivity to beauty and his need to shape that beauty into words. The attempts by others (especially William Cecil) to connect his other failures—at politics or running his estates—to his obsession with writing is clearly designed to backfire on the accusers, who cannot understand that the plays are vastly more important than politics or money. Yet at the same time, the movie also presents the plays as part and parcel of de Vere’s understanding of politics and in fact his attempt to shape England’s state. In an early scene de Vere muses on the power of the theatre: “Ten thousand, all listening to the writings of one man, the ideas of one man. That’s power.” Essex scoffs at this definition of power, but the film makes entirely clear that de Vere is correct. However, in the first flashback, (which reveals that de Vere wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream while still a child), Elizabeth, charmed by the play and the young author who plays Puck, says that the Oxfords have added a poet to their line. Edward responds rather sharply, “I am as accomplished with the sword and musket as I am with verse. It is my only desire to one day be your majesty’s most trusted advisor in war and state, if you will but have it.” The film thus wants to have it all ways—de Vere writes because he cannot help it, because writing is “his soul,” but also because he understands that the theatre is a form of political power he can use to manipulate first Elizabeth and then (he hopes) the citizens of London. The film thus bundles elements of all three explanations for artistic genius into one incoherent portrait—Edward de Vere is isolated and misunderstood because of his genius, a genius that destroys his ability to run his estates or live comfortably with his wife and in-laws. He is also the Earl of Oxford, cannily aware of how the events of the mundane world can be reshaped and presented to an audience in ways that will move them to act as well as feel. Finally, his speech about “the voices” lightly suggests that he is guided by some supernatural agency that directs him almost against his will. The fact that he is the secret son of Elizabeth (as well as her lover) may well be part of this explanation as well. Although the film presents Elizabeth as easily manipulated by both the Cecils and her favourites, the overall mystique of the Virgin Queen remains. The idea that de Vere is of royal blood seems to exist in the movie mostly as explanation for the behaviour of the Cecils, but also partly, as with Clipt Wings, as evidence that only someone of royal lineage, someone genetically superior, could have the genius necessary to write plays like Henry V and Macbeth. The portrait of Edward himself is slightly less incoherent than the explanations for his genius, although as noted earlier, as a youth he does seem interested in politics and war. That desire fades and writing (and, apparently, gardening) becomes the focus of his life. The actor playing de Vere as a young man, Jamie Campbell Bower, is the same



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actor who plays Marlowe in the television show Will (discussed in Chapter One) and it seems clear that Bower was cast in both roles not only for his acting skill, but for his feminine, almost ethereal looks, which play into the modern stereotype of artists being less masculine, less rugged than “regular” men. Rhys Ifans, who plays the adult Oxford, is more overtly masculine than Bower, and skilled enough with a sword to foil an assassination attempt. However, he is continually pictured as removed from the world and perhaps slightly revolted by it: he keeps score for the tennis match between Essex and Southampton instead of playing himself, sits alone in an upper section of the theatre, carefully walks on raised planks instead of striding through the muddy London streets, and is deeply appalled that an actor would take credit for his works. His clothes cannot be completely muted, because he must contrast with the Puritan Cecils, but they are not as elaborate as those of other characters, and with his short hair and lack of jewelry, he presents a reserved appearance that sets him apart from the rest of the court characters. Oxford is often visually isolated—even when he is with other people there is empty space around him, and he is often shown at his desk, which provides a barrier between him and the world. When he is outdoors, he is often filmed in a maze, a visual metaphor for both his isolation and his complex thoughts. When he is with women he ostensibly cares for, he is often framed in the shots so as to make him seem disconnected. For example, the first time he and Elizabeth sleep together he upsets her by talking about the war in the Netherlands immediately after they finish. Thinking he has slept with her in order to gain a commission, she orders him out. Instead of leaving he recites (composes?) “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night. At first the camera focuses on Elizabeth, while the young Oxford, wearing only a sheet wrapped around his waist, is slightly out of focus in the background. As he approaches her and she is soothed by his words she drops out of view. Instead, the camera shows only her hand, stroking his face. Oxford is shot from the waist up, still speaking poetry, apparently more interested in finishing the poem than in whatever Elizabeth is doing off screen. All of this physical and emotional isolation suggests that the film wants to have it both ways: Oxford is a genius because of his isolation, and isolated because of his genius. The latter makes sense in the worldview the film presents—he is surrounded by people who despise his gift and the theatre equally. The former view, however, seems aimed more at supporting his candidacy and making Shakespeare an obviously impossible candidate for authorship of the plays. As Donovan Sherman notes, “In its zeal to deify Oxford as a transcendent genius and vilify Shakespeare as a bawdy imposter, it attempts to show a model of authorship so absolute that the human body is almost entirely removed from the process.”65 However, as Sherman argues, the film is internally incoherent in what it wants the audience to take away. Sherman emphasizes the ways in which the visual language of film demands a focus on the power of performance, thereby reintroducing the body as the locus of artistic power. This is the bind that the film finds itself in. The plays are plays and must be performed in order to demonstrate their power; performance is a collaborative mode that relies on bodies, and thus reduces the power of the solitary genius myth. 65  Donovan, “Stages of Revision,” 130.

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In fact, the film cannot help making the performances the real stars. The first play Oxford gives Jonson for public performance is Henry V and the film shows us some of the first Chorus speech and some of the St. Crispin’s Day speech. Leaving aside (as the film does) the complex and murky morality of the play and title character, what most moves the audience is not the words but the actions of the actor. When the Chorus gets to “this unworthy scaffolding,” for example, he jumps up and down a little, and the audience laughs. The laugh is a result of an improvised action, completely disconnected from the words. The audience seems rapt by the words of Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, but it is as much the delivery—the actor talks directly to the groundlings and takes their hands—as the words. Indeed, when the battle against the French arrives, it is Oxford who shouts, “Death to the French!” That cry is then taken up by the groundlings; they are as moved by de Vere as by his play. The necessity of performance becomes clearer in the collage of scenes from different plays that occurs later. In each case it is not the words (or not the words alone) that move the audience, but the acting and other performative elements. We see the audience laughing at the final scene of Twelfth Night, but they laugh at the line “’Tis wonderful” which, by itself, is not very funny; it is clearly the delivery that sparks chuckles. Next up is the assassination scene of Julius Caesar, which is presented as the climax of the play (the actors and Shakespeare all take a bow afterwards) and so the play becomes a simple morality tale of doing what is necessary to end tyranny. The thrill of seeing “the bad guys” violently stopped by the hero is a staple of all kinds of stories, and hardly requires genius to produce. The last two scenes are even more focused on special effects. The audience sees the cauldron scene from Macbeth and it is presented with heavy special effects— a real fire on stage billows and explodes each time a witch throws an ingredient in, and throughout the entire scene dried leaves flutter from onstage trees. Moreover, the camera watches all this from backstage, but slightly tilted up so that the groundlings are not visible (we only hear their gasps and applause) and thus the audience of the movie continues to watch a movie, rather than a stage performance. Unsurprisingly, the medley of scenes culminates in Hamlet. We have already seen the young Oxford stabbing a servant through a curtain when he catches that servant stealing his poems. The scene is then recreated on stage not once but twice, as the film intercuts performances of Hamlet in the public theatre and at court. In each case we see the closet scene up to the point where Polonius is stabbed. At the theatre, the dying Polonius spits blood into the face of the front row groundlings—it is this that garners a reaction, rather than the words of the scene. At court, the focus of both audience and camera is on Elizabeth, who appears dazed, and unbuttons her bodice as if overheated. This choice is odd, because it suggests that the next time we see Elizabeth she will be on her deathbed, but since Marlowe’s death comes a few scenes earlier, it must be 1593 and Elizabeth is a decade from her grave. The choice to distract the audience(s) from the play, then, seems to suggest the director Roland Emmerich was concerned that showing the closet scene by itself was not enough to keep an audience’s attention. In the case of the public theatre, the scene ends when a groundling yells “not a day too soon for Cecil” and the audience bursts into applause. Oxford looks triumphant, but in none of these scenes is there any suggestion that the words of the plays themselves move people to action. As



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Sebastien Lefait notes, de Vere focuses “more and more often on the groundlings rather than on the stage.”66 The film thus suggests that de Vere writes the plays because of his innate genius, but also in order to create political change; that he loves words for their own sake, but only goes to the theatre to see other people moved (and often, moved by parts of the drama other than his words). Eventually the film turns to the one historical example of a play being linked to mob action. After Essex returns from Ireland and bursts in on Elizabeth, Oxford believes he can restore Essex to Elizabeth’s good graces and dethrone Cecil. “I will not send her a letter. I will send her a book. And while I am with her you will come not with swords, but with her loyal subjects. The tinkers, the cobblers, the bricklayers, the mob, all of them, all of them calling for Robert Cecil to be banished from court.” He then writes, not Richard II, but Richard III, and everyone recognizes the hunchback Richard as a stand in for Robert Cecil. In fact, when Jonson informs on “Shakespeare,” his evidence that this version of the well-known story is a danger to Cecil is that “in Shakespeare’s version, he is played as a hunchback,” positioning Shakespeare (or, rather, de Vere) as the originator of Richard’s deformities. Here, the play does rouse the mob. It is only Jonson’s choice to inform and thus Cecil’s foreknowledge and preparation that lead to failure. Historically, it was Essex who paid for the performance, not Oxford; the play, as already noted, was Richard II, not Richard III; and the performance did not rouse a mob of theatregoers to march in support of Essex, or march at all. What all of this points out is the incoherence Sherman alludes to—the film wants to suggest that the plays are both transcendent works of genius and tools for political maneuverings; created out of airy nothing (“the voices”) and out of specific events of the author’s life; the works of a single man (almost all the plays are written long before they are performed), and supremely powerful because of that single vision, but also reaching full potential only when they are enacted on stage, with special effects, fine acting, and an audience primed to react in a specific way. This incoherence actually points to the way Shakespeare’s plays exist in the modern world, where they are often studied and taught as works of literature, completely apart from the theatre, and yet also regularly performed, often with the kind of special effects and contemporary references that show up in Anonymous. The final way the movie undercuts itself is in its portrayal of Shakespeare himself. Like almost all the works in this chapter, there is an attempt to make Shakespeare deeply unappealing. He is implicitly accused of murdering Marlowe and explicitly blackmails Oxford for enough money to build a theatre (the Globe) and buy himself a coat of arms (this Shakespeare never mentions his father). He is actually illiterate—able to read but not to write—and he pushes himself into the role of Oxford’s beard. In all other fictional versions of the authorship conspiracy, Shakespeare is approached (sometimes reluctantly and as a last resort), but in Anonymous Oxford chooses Ben Jonson, who complains to Shakespeare about being forced into the role and thus forced to set aside his own plays. In the next scene, when the crowd calls for the playwright of the anonymous Henry V, Shakespeare pushes backstage, spills some ink on his fingers, and comes out to 66  Lefait, “Irreverence as Fidelity?” 251.

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present himself as the author. All of this should make for an unappetizing portrait, but partly because of the acting of Rafe Spall and partly because the film has an odd Puritan undertone, Shakespeare ends up as one of the more likeable characters. Scenes of him eating, drinking, flirting, and having sex are probably meant to portray him as grossly physical, but instead make him seem like the one person in the film who truly enjoys life. When Jonson tells him he cannot play Romeo (or any character) because writers do not have the time to act, Shakespeare responds, “No, Ben, I’m an actor! Every inch of me. Right down to my toes. I want, no, I crave to act.” This exuberance and passion is in short supply in the rest of the film—Oxford broods and mopes whether he is writing or seducing the queen, and everyone else is grimly focused on gaining or maintaining power. What Anonymous and other works discussed in this chapter try to do is provide a narrative of the true genius who created the plays. In each case, and most especially in the case of Anonymous, the animating belief is that what we know about the life of William Shakespeare from Stratford is simply incompatible with the life the writer of the plays must have lived. What the film makes most clear, but which is implicit in all the works, is a fundamental flaw in this reasoning. The writer of the plays, authorship conspiracy theorists argue, must have lived a life of courtly intrigue, full of adventure and high passion, in order to be able to create the plays. This returns us to the genius explored in Chapter One, but with the added element of delving into the plays for proof that this life occurred. However, to claim that Hamlet stabs Polonius through a curtain because a young de Vere did the same thing, or that Richard III is hunchbacked because the play is an attack on Cecil, is to change the writer, whoever he was, from a genius to a steno­grapher who records events to then spit them back out in verse. In other words, if the plays are coded messages about Elizabethan politics, then they are not transcendent works at all. I end this chapter with a brief discussion of Mark Rylance’s play I Am Shakespeare. Technically this play addresses the authorship controversy, and Rylance himself is on record doubting that Shakespeare wrote the plays. Rylance is not actually interested in proving Shakespeare did not write the plays, or in proving that someone else did. Instead, he is investigating what the controversy itself tells us about our notions of authorship and genius. The play features Frank Charlton, a man obsessed with the authorship controversy, to the point of hosting a chat show on the topic. As Frank attempts to host his show, first Shakespeare (or Shakspar, as he is called) and then Bacon, Oxford, and Mary Sidney show up to argue about who wrote the plays. Unlike other fictional Shakespeares in this chapter, Shakspar is intelligent, well-spoken, and quite clear that he is the author. “You can’t fathom me, can you? Do you really think people have to be extraordinary themselves to do extraordinary things? I lived a thousand extraordinary lives in my writing …. But that’s not who I am.”67 While the other candidates are also presented positively, none are the clear winner in either character or argument. In fact, the point of the play is clear in both the title and the final scene. Shakspar gets into an argument with the brother of Sergeant Freeman, and, after being insulted and pushed, punches him. In the closing scene, after all the 67  Rylance, I Am Shakespeare, 24.



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ghosts have gone, the Sergeant arrives to arrest Shakespeare for assault and addresses the play’s audience. “I’m warning you, the terrible punishment of a no-parking tow-away zone in front of all your homes will be set aside on one condition only; you reveal to me the true identity of this troublemaker Shakespeare.”68 In the previous scene, Frank has watched the closing scene of his favourite movie, Spartacus. At the Sergeant’s threat, Barry (Frank’s next door neighbor and cohost) and then Frank stand and declare “I am Shakespeare” and, as the stage directions make clear, Rylance’s hope is that audience members will also stand and shout “I am Shakespeare!” The idea that everyone who cares about the plays—performing or seeing, writing about or teaching them—is as much Shakespeare as the person who first wrote the words stands in direct opposition to the fundamental belief of the authorship controversy. For those who believe the plays were not written by the actor from Stratford, knowing the real author matters more than anything because that will tell us how to understand the plays and also how to understand genius. Rylance’s ending offers the belief that genius, like the plays themselves, exists not as the achievement of a singular, extraordinary person, but as an ongoing, communal creation of meaning, that genius (especially artistic genius) is precisely what a culture decides it will be.

68  Rylance, I Am Shakespeare, 96.

AFTERWORD

In writing this book I have sorted fictional Shakespeares into various categories as if they were entirely distinct, but naturally that is not true. The works that suggest someone else wrote the plays make the same claim the versions in Chapter One do— that the plays grow out of lived experiences. Some of the more tormented Shakespeares in Chapter One could have snuck into Chapter Two and many of the supernaturallyinspired Shakespeares of Chapter Three end up having experiences that create or shape their genius. All systems of classification are artificial and as such I would like to close this book by exploring how the categories I propose collapse into each other in two very different works. The Shakespeare Code

For the first example, I turn to an episode of a television show that is as much a part of British history and culture as Shakespeare, and that is Doctor Who. Begun over fifty years ago, the show has become an icon and, especially since the reboot in 2005, an international powerhouse. The main character of the show, the Doctor, is a Time Lord, an alien who explores the universe, usually with one or more human companions, in a ship, the Tardis, that can travel in both time and space. Originally the show was conceived of as family-friendly entertainment that would teach children history with episodes that have the Doctor and his companions travel into humanity’s past. The popularity of the science-fiction aspect quickly overwhelmed that original idea and now, even when an episode is set in the past, it usually features aliens or monsters. Despite many trips to the past, it was not until 2007 that an episode focusing on Shakespeare was presented.1 “The Shakespeare Code” has the Doctor taking his new companion, Martha, to 1599. What is meant to be a short trip to introduce Martha to time travel turns into a fight to save the human race from the Carrionites, an alien race of witch-like creatures who use words as energy. They have been exiled from this universe for millennia, and plan to use the power of Shakespeare’s words to return and destroy the human race. The Doctor, with the help of Martha and Shakespeare, defeat the Carrionites and banish them again. Throughout the episode, a number of different explanations for and uses of Shakespeare’s genius are offered—so many, in fact, that they end up contradicting each other. Often his genius is presented as simply a fact arising from Shakespeare’s extraordinary intelligence; he notes at one point that until he met the Doctor, he was always the smartest man in the room. Shakespeare is not merely very smart. When the Doctor tries to use his “psychic paper” (a blank card that, when shown to someone, usually induces them to see whatever the Doctor wishes them to see there) Shakespeare remarks, “Interesting bit of paper. It’s blank.” Later in the episode he somewhat casually reveals that he has 1  Shakespeare makes a brief appearance in the season two (original series) episode “The Chase,” but only on the Time-Space Visualiser screen and he does not figure in the plot.

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worked out that the Doctor is an alien and Martha is from the future. He seems, in short, to be able see truths others cannot see, which suggests (especially in the context of a science-fiction show) that he has been influenced by something not quite human. While this thread is barely touched on, a variation of it is given voice by the Doctor before Shakespeare appears. “Genius, he’s a genius. The genius. The most human human that’s ever been…always he chooses the best words, new, beautiful, brilliant words.” One of the touchstones of Doctor Who is that humanity is a special gift and the reason the Doctor keeps returning to Earth is his admiration for and love of humans. Given that, designating Shakespeare as “the most human human that’s ever been” suggests, as writers such as Keats and Woolf do in Chapter Two, that Shakespeare’s humanity is so great it effectively makes him different than other humans. More than a talented creator and arranger of words, he has a level of humanity that makes him able to do what other humans cannot, such as see through the psychic paper. The question of Shakespeare’s genius is further complicated by the Carrionites themselves, who reveal that they entered this world because of him. “New words, new and glittering. From a mind like no other… His son perished. The grief of a genius. Grief without measure. Madness enough to allow us entrance.” The suggestion seems to be that Shakespeare’s genius makes his grief something inhumanly powerful. Millions of people have grieved the loss of a son throughout history, but only Shakespeare’s grief (or the expression of that grief) is great enough to create a rift in space that three of the Carrionites can pass through. Even so, a portal capable of admitting the entire species requires that the three first possess Peter Holland to make him build the Globe as a fourteen-sided building. They then must possess Shakespeare twice, making him announce that Loves Labours Won will be performed on a specific day and making him write the lines that will create the portal. If the time and the lines are specific to and created by the Carrionites, it is not clear why they need Shakespeare’s genius with words—in fact, it is not his writing them, but the actor speaking them that creates the portal. Shakespeare’s genius is and is not vital to the Carrionites’ plan. A final twist to this question of the importance of Shakespeare’s genius comes at the very end, when the portal opens, and witches start to pour through. The Doctor turns to Shakespeare to close it. “You’re William Shakespeare. Words, the right sound, the right shape, the right rhythm, words that last forever. That’s what you do, Will; you choose the perfect words.” The words that Shakespeare chooses almost fail as he grasps for a final rhyme and it is up to Martha to suggest “expelliarmus,” a final rhyme that sends the Carrionites away and closes the portal, causing the Doctor to gleefully exclaim, “Good old JK!” The episode wants to have it all ways—for Shakespeare to be a genius so transcendent he can beat back an alien invasion, but also to need the help of the Doctor (who is, after all, the star of the show) and the audience stand-in Martha; to be a man whose genius lies in his ultimate humanity, which allows him to see the Doctor and Martha for their true selves, and yet a man of his time, who considers Bedlam a useful place; to be both a creator of “new beautiful brilliant words” but also, like so many of the Shakespeares in Chapter One, someone who picks up words from other people. Unsurprisingly, this portrait of Shakespeare is incoherent—is he a genius because of his intelligence or the death of his son? Is his gift for words his alone or part of the theatre; as the



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Doctor says, “you can change people’s minds just with words in this place” (emphasis added)? The episode wants to explore all the ways Shakespeare is a genius, jamming them together without regard for consistency.

All is True

In mid–2019, when I was working on the draft of this book, Kenneth Branagh and Ben Elton came out with All Is True, a film about Shakespeare’s final years, after he returned to Stratford. More than “The Shakespeare Code,” the film functions as a perfect coda to this book, engaging with, or at least touching on all three explanations for genius, suggesting that Shakespeare’s genius is both clearly motivated by and connected to his life and also, ultimately, inexplicable. What plot there is centres on Shakespeare’s gradual realization that what he thought he knew about his son Hamnet—about both his life and death—is a story, a fiction made up by his family to protect both him and Hamnet’s memory. Shakespeare believes his son was a gifted poet, but discovers that in fact Hamnet only wrote down the poems created by his twin sister Judith; she was the one gifted with poetry but because she was a girl, she was not allowed to learn to write. Then, in one of the last scenes, Shakespeare discovers that Hamnet did not die of the plague, but instead drowned himself because Judith threatened to tell Shakespeare that she was the author of the poems. Both children were desperate for Shakespeare’s infrequent affection, and both realized that his love for them would be in direct proportion to his admiration for their literary gifts. This synopsis would seem to place the film squarely in Chapter Two; another story of Shakespeare, late in life, realizing that his gift had separated him from life and perhaps driven him mad. Certainly this is true at times—both Anne and Judith are as angry and bitter as their counterparts in Bingo. The first night home, for example, as Shakespeare starts to enter the bedroom, Anne stops him and tells him that he has been gone so long he is a guest in the house and so must sleep in the guest bedroom. While this moment— and her mention that he deserves “the best bed,” which is reserved for guests—is a set up to explain the famous bequest of the second-best bed to Anne, it is also a chilling analysis of Shakespeare’s absence from his family. Furthermore, the film’s opening suggests that the loss of the theatre is what drove him to retire. The film opens with a shot of Shakespeare’s portrait. Then, against a black screen appear the words, “London June 20th 1613. A performance of Shakespeare’s Life of Henry VIII was given at the Globe. It was advertised under its alternative title all is true.” These last three words are presented alone, in large red type, thus serving as the title of the film. A return to the white intertitles tells the audience, “During Act 1 Scene 4 of the performance, a prop cannon misfired, starting a blaze.” We see the fire, first at a distance and then filling the whole screen, with a man—Shakespeare—silhouetted against it. “The Globe theater was burnt entirely to the ground. William Shakespeare never wrote another play.” While technically true, there is no evidence that the two events are linked and it is possible that his final plays were written in 1612, a year earlier. Since his final works were co-authored with John Fletcher, it is also possible he had been planning his retirement for several years, staying on only to aid in a smooth

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transition. Nevertheless, the opening creates a powerful suggestion, emphasized by the conflict and coldness he encounters at home, that Shakespeare has come to realize the cost of genius is not just isolation but actual destruction—of his theatre, his marriage, and his son’s life. While the general tone of the film is elegiac, the humour mixed with the reverence in this portrayal of Shakespeare does not suggest that this reading of genius is the true one. Indeed, “genius as isolation and indifference” is presented as a myth that both Shakespeare and those around him must dismantle. The film ends with family reconciliation—indeed, one of the last scenes is Shakespeare sitting with Anne in the garden they created, with the rest of the family around them. If anything, the film suggests that his genius was hampered by his isolation, not enhanced by or dependent on it. The film also flirts with the idea that Shakespeare’s genius arises, at least in part, from a supernatural source—that of his lost son, Hamnet. Several times during the film Shakespeare has visions of his son. In the opening scene, as Shakespeare stands on a hill looking at Stratford, a young boy, off screen, says, “I’ll take your horse sir.” Shakespeare responds, “Bring me some ale, please.” In the next shot, Shakespeare is in fact drinking the ale, which gives a certain weight of reality to the exchange. The boy then appears next to Shakespeare and the two share the following exchange: You’re Shakespeare. The poet. You tell stories. I used to. I had a story, but it was never finished. Will you finish it for me please? I’m done with stories, lad, I wouldn’t know how to finish yours. Yes, you would.

Then Shakespeare, and the audience, realize he is alone. The boy shows up twice more, once in the garden asking if Shakespeare would like to hear the poem he wrote and then close to the end, after Shakespeare realizes that Hamnet did not die of the plague but instead drowned. After this revelation Shakespeare goes to the pond and the boy is there, telling him, “You finished it. Thank you. My story is done. I can rest.” There is no direct suggestion that the ghost of Hamnet is real, but there is a very strong suggestion that the grief Shakespeare has felt throughout the years has motivated his plays, and that he must find and confront the truth of his son’s death before his own story can be finished. The idea of genius as isolation and genius as arising from an outside force are touched upon, but the focus is really on genius as observation and empathy. Throughout the film, Shakespeare’s genius is not only unquestioned, but extolled. Southampton arrives to visit Shakespeare to ask him to return to London and writing, telling Sir Lucy, “I want none of your company. I’m here to visit the greatest man in the kingdom. After His Majesty, of course.” That last sentence is delivered with a sarcastic twist that makes clear Southampton is merely paying lip service to the position of the monarch. Southampton tells Shakespeare he is “the son of Apollo …. The god of poetry, the god of truth. The finest, the most complete and most beautiful mind, I warrant that ever existed in this world.” At the end of the film, Jonson visits to say much the same thing: “By the way, you’ve also written the greatest body of plays that ever were or will be.” These scenes



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frame an encounter at the centre of the film that seems to exist only to allow Shakespeare to speak on his own genius. A young man who can only be described as a fan visits Shakespeare while the latter is working in the garden. Despite several attempts to shoo him away with canned answers, the fan will not leave until he asks the question he (and presumably Elton, Branagh, and generations of Shakespeare fans) feel must be answered. “I just wanted to ask how you knew … There is no corner of this world you have not explored, no geo­graphy of the soul you cannot navigate. How? How do you know?” Shakespeare at first responds, “Just what I know if I know and I don’t say that I do, I … have imagined.” The visitor seems stunned and responds that “they say” he had little schooling and no travel—from what source do his imaginings spring? Shakespeare responds: Everything I’ve ever done, everything I’ve ever seen, every book I’ve ever read, every conversation I’ve ever had, including, God help me, this one. If you want to be a writer and speak to others and for others, speak first for yourself. Search within. Consider the contents of your own soul. Your humanity. And if you’re honest with yourself, then whatever you write, all is true.

This would seem to be the answer, or perhaps The Answer, but the visitor has one more question: “Then why? Why did you stop writing?” After a pause, Shakespeare’s only response is an angry “Cheerio” and a cold shoulder. It is as if Elton and Branagh can conceive of the cause and shape of genius, but cannot fathom the desire to ever let that genius rest. How, they seem to be asking, could anyone with the ability to create Hamlet, Lear, and Cleopatra ever want to stop creating? Only a few of the works in Chapter Two—Bond, Borges, and in some sense, McCreery— attempt to answer that question and the only answer they can offer is complete mental breakdown. All is True presents a Shakespeare who is estranged from his family and tangled in grief, but who is certainly not mad. The movie can ask the question—why did Shakespeare stop writing? It offers no answer. In the end, no matter how much the authors discussed in this book attempt to pluck out the heart of Shakespeare’s genius, it remains unsounded—perhaps because that is exactly what we need from him.

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