Shakespeare, in Fact

No one in Shakespeare's lifetime, or the first two hundred years after his death, expressed the slightest doubt about his authorship.Irvin Leigh Matus should be commended for his industry. It must be hard work wading through the anti-Stratfordian swamp.

The review posted below by David Kathman succinctly summarizes the content of this scholarly polemic against the absurdities of the literary "Oxford Movement". I just wish to note that the 1999 paperback edition is a straight reprint of the 1994 hardbound. Therefore, while it addresses the orthodox Looney-Ogburn-Whalen school of anti-Stratfordianism, there is nothing about more recent mutations. Readers who want to keep up to date on the controversy should take a look at Professor Kathman's Shakespeare Authorship Web site, which discusses virtually all of the Oxfordian arguments and links to such interesting material as a complete edition of the Earl of Oxford's extant letters, which may prove disillusioning to those who cherish an image of the earl as a polymathic genius.Even though it does not swat the very latest fantasies of Authorship Cultism, "Shakespeare, In Fact" is both entertaining and useful. Reading it will leave one better informed about not only the narrow question of who wrote Shakespeare but also the broader context of the Elizabethan stage and Renaissance literature.

Irvin Matus's Shakespeare, IN FACTReviewed by Thomas A. PendletonThe Shakespeare Newsletter, Summer 1994The authorship controversy -- which nowadays is tantamount to saying the Oxfordian hypothesis -- is not often seriously investigated by Shakespeare scholars. There are a number of reasons why, with sheer cowardice and fear of being found out and losing tenure relatively low on the list. Almost all Shakespeareans, I expect, are aware that claims for any rival author are based on assertions and inferences about Shakespeare's biography, his inadequate education, the absence of his manuscripts, the plays' erudition, aristocratic bias, knowledge of Italian geography, and so on; assertions and inferences that are untenable and have been shown to be untenable. Most libraries can supply the Shakespearean with some older, but very useful, treatments of the subject, notably Frank W. Wadsworth's graceful and cogent survey, The Poacher from Stratford, and Milward Martin's energetically argued Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?. And probably nearer to hand is Shakespeare's Lives, which reviews the controversy in a longish section called "Deviations." For most Shakespeareans most of the time, Schoenbaum sufficeth. A number of other considerations militate against the Shakespearean's engaging the topic. Public debates and moot courts, favorite venues for proponents of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, are far more compatible to categorical pronouncements than to the laborious establishment of detail, context, and interpretation required to counter them, not to mention doing so with enough panache to win the approval of a non-specialist audience. Shakespeareans sometimes take the position that even to engage the Oxfordian hypothesis is to give it countenance it does not warrant. And, of course, any Shakespearean who reads a hundred pages on the authorship question inevitably realizes that nothing he can say or write will prevail with those persuaded to be persuaded otherwise. Perhaps the mos! t daunting consideration for the scholar who intends to seriously examine this claim is the volume and nature of the research that will be demanded. To begin with, he must become completely familiar with the nearly 900 pages of Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare, the authorized version of Oxfordianism, and then proceed to test at least a wide sampling of random claims of other adherents. He will continually be faced with the prospect of dealing with gratuitous assertions as if they were serious scholarly conclusions, and the necessity of demonstrating such assertions to be incoherent in the appropriate context, or based on incomplete or selective evidence, or logically faulty, or some combination thereof. The research required will be extremely demanding, much of it in quite recondite areas where very few have boldly gone before. He probably ought also to curb his natural temptation to say snide things when refuting especially preposterous claims. As remark