Stanley Wells & the Anti-Stratfordians

Stanley Wells defending his empire during the May 1997 Authorship debate at the NewTheatre Royal in Bath, England

"Stanley Wells is arguably the single most powerful authority on Shakespeare in the world, literally," said Ann Cook, Vanderbilt University professor of English and the only American lifetime trustee of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.Wells, who has lectured worldwide on Shake-speare, is chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, vice-chairman of the Governors of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a member of the board of directors of the Globe Theatre. He is a frequent reviewer of Shakespearean productions for the London Times.

Currently emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham in Stratford-upon-Avon, Wells received his doctorate at the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham in 1962 and taught there until 1978, when he was appointed head of the Oxford University Press Shakespeare department and general editor of the "Oxford Shakespeare." He is married to the novelist and playwright Susan Hill. Wells' many publications on Shakespeare and his contemporaries include "Shakespeare: A Life in Drama," published in paperback by Norton in 1997, and "Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism" (Oxford University Press, 1997).

Excerpt from Wells' new book from Macmillan 2002

Shakespeare for all Time

".....Disputes about who wrote separate items pale in ferocity besides questions about whether William Shakespeare wrote anything at all.

In Shakespeare's Lives, Schoenbaum wrote on one hundred ironical pages, headed "Deviations," to attempts to prove that the works were written by over fifty candidates, ranging from Francis Bacon to Daniel Defoe...Marlowe is particularly implausible. The Earl of Oxford died in 1604.

These and similar theories are heavily publicized. Over the past fifteen years or so I have frequently been called upon in public debating places, ranging from a day long mock trial in the Middle Temple, where I was cross-examined by an eminent Q.C.(Shakespeare won the day) to a debate in the Theatre Royal, Bath, where the respective claims of Bacon, Marlowe and Oxford were aired. One began to get the feeling that it didn't really matter who wrote the works, so long as it wasn't Shakespeare. Fanaticism prevails.

Who knows what motivates the theorists? Is it snobbery, a belief that a man of relatively humble origin is less likely to have written the plays than an aristocrat? Is it the desire of ten minutes of fame? The media readily latches on to supposed news about Shakespeare. Or is it mere eccentricity, bordering on mental instability?"

All's Not Well that Stems from Stanley

By

Lawrence Gerald

Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade - Measure for Measure

"These we call Idols of the Theatre, for we account all invented systems of philosophy as so many stage-plays, representing scenic and fictitious worlds.......Nor in this do we comprehend only the universal philosophies, but all principles and axioms of Knowledge which have thrived on tradition, credulity and negligence........"-Francis Bacon

The intent of Mr. Wells' Shakespeare For All Time was to bring forth as much information as possible about the circumstances of Shakespeare's writing life and to tell the story of how he continued to exert influence after his death.

Stanley Wells, does not of course, find new evidence in Shakespeare For All Time. In fact no Shakespeare scholar has ever produced any evidence to support their theory that the Stratford man was a writer. Instead Wells speculates that Shakespeare spent as much time back home in Stratford where no source materials or a personal library have ever been discovered.

Stanley Wells, although a prolific scholar, refuses to acknowledge that an authorship issue exists. Yet authorities like himself can only point to themselves for this pestering problem. They cannot solve the authorship question with any convincing evidence because quite simply they have pegged the wrong man. Wells represents his own brand of fanaticism. It's the game of pretending to being right, trivializing debate, while not discussing the salient points of the case. This is the snobbery that Wells should be addressing.

The Shakespeare debate does not rest on whether or not a man of humble origins could be Shakespeare or if he was an aristorcrat. This is a smokescreen. The heart of the matter is exemplified by Francis Bacon's personal notebook written in his own hand called the Promus (Latin for storehouse). It resides in the British Museum and not one Shakespeare scholar has been able to adequately explain or comment why Francis Bacon entered hundreds of unique Shakespeare phrases into his Promus that eventually, years later, find their way into the published plays. Maybe Stanley Wells is considered " the single most powerful authority on Shakespeare in the world" because he's good at getting all his orthodox scholar friends (along with their publishers) to ignore the simple fact that William Shakespeare of Stratford, including his daughters, were illiterate folk ; while persuading the world to believe that the most famous illiterate man in history was capable of writing the most impressive literature in the world! Yes, this is a "powerful authority" at his best.


Wells also can't figure out that most skeptics of the William Shakespeare (Shaksper) man as author are motivated by the love of truth and want to see justice brought to the academic world and to the economic cash cow that exists in Stratford on Avon. Now here comes the real reason that lurks behind the mystery game of the Shakespeare Authorship which Mr.Wells has a vested interest. His fingers can be found in the cookie jar as chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, a deceitful institution that defrauds the public on a daily basis. It's been known for quite a while that the birth home on Henley St. in Stratford on Avon was demolished along with all the other homes that once existed 400 hundred years ago. In Rowe's Life of Shakespeare written in 1709 there is no allusion to a Birthplace at all. And why is that? Because William Shaksper, Shagspur, however he wrote it, was not associated as a famous playwright while he was alive and so there was no need to commemorate or exploit the birth home of a nobody.

Edward D. Johnson in his The Shakespeare Illusion (1951) writes :

In 1769 David Garrick arranged a Jubilee celebration when there was a demand for a Birthplace for commercial exhibition, but at that time the Greenhill Street house had disappeared, so the the two tenements in Henley Street which John Shaksper had purchased in 1575 eleven years after his son's birth were seized upon, when a great blunder was made by choosing the house to the west which by no possibility could have been the birthplace because as Sir Sidney Lee states, " there is no evidence that John Shakespeare owned or occupied the house to the west before 1575.

In 1847, during a meeting held in Stratford it was decided to purchase the birthplace and a circular was got out appealing for funds. At this meeting one speaker wished to insert the word "probable" in the description of the cottages known as the Birthplace but he was howled down, because if the public were doubtful, the money for the proposed purchase would not be forthcoming."

The present Birthplace has been rebuilt from top to bottom. The Shakespeare Trust is cognizant of this historical fact but they have no compunction in charging credulous tourists a fee for the privilege of gazing at a room where a glorified tradition of illusion is maintained. But you have to hand it to them they have been successfully fooling the public since 1769 when David Garrick came to town laughing all the way to the bank after staging 'The Greatest Invention on Earth.' The public that patronizes the Stratford-fairy-tale-syndicate have lived up to Bacon's observation that,

"Men believe what they prefer,"

and need to heed his sobering point that :

" the contemplation of things as they are without error without confusion without substitution or imposture is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of inventions."

Francis Carr points out that Mark Rylance the well known Globe Theatre art director and actor is mentioned briefly in the new book but his clear conviction that Bacon is the playwright is omitted by Wells. This standard operating procedure by Stratfordian authors comes with the turf as they prefer to ignore the viewpoints of the many fine 'anti-stratfordian' writers and thinkers. (Mark Twain, William H. Furness, Judge Nathaniel Holmes, Robert Theobald, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to name a few). This is what Mr. Wells and his Birthplace Trust are good at surviving while convenietly overlooking that which is contrary to their 'official' charade while paying homage to The Tradition ;remembering to honor David Garrick's original blunder, and keep the one trick pony going as long as making money off the lie can prevail. Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade - Measure for Measure

A Debate with a Stratfordian: Francis Carr interviews Stanley Wells

In July 1994 I put ten questions to Professor Stanley Wells, the Director of the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-on-Avon. These questions, his replies, and my response to these answers are printed here.

Carr: In your recently published book, "Shakespeare, A Dramatic Life," you say "I do believe that the author was William Shakespeare." You would not use that verb, believe, in a similar statement about Dickens or Thackeray, surely. You would say "(I know that) Dickens is the author of "Oliver Twist". Knowledge does not need belief.

Wells: The Oxford English Dictionary offers as one of its definitions of "believe" "to accept a statement as true". It does not seem to me unreasonable to use this verb in relation to a belief that has been questioned.

Carr: In Collins Dictionary the definition of belief is "a principle, proposition, idea, accepted as true, esp. without positive proof. Believe: to accept a statement or a supposition as true. I believe that God exists...to be convinced of the truth or existence (of): to believe in fairies...to assume or suppose."

Carr: In your book, you admit that "what we know about Shakespeare includes very little of what we should most like to know." What do we know about Shakespeare which constitutes in your opinion, proof that he is the author of all the plays and poems that bear his name?

Wells: My belief about what constitutes proof that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the works generally ascribed to him can be found in the third paragraph on page 10 of my book.

Carr: On page 10 of your book on Shakespeare, you acknowledge that references to him in local records do not identify him as an author. All you can put forward as proof that he did write the Shakespeare plays is his will, which makes no reference to authorship, no mention of any book.

That is the only document that you can give us. You mention the monument, and on it the names of Socrates and Virgil; but you do not tell the reader that, in the obituary poems written in praise of Bacon, he is also compared to Socrates and Virgil - and to Nestor. In these poems we learn that Bacon wrote comedies and tragedies. The only other piece of evidence you can offer is Jonson's mention of The Sweet Swan of Avon.

A swan is not a singing bird. Jonson makes no comment on the song of the swan but refers only to its flight in London, on the banks of the Thames. In Bacon's Advancement of Learning he tells us that Ariosto "feigns that at the end of the thread or web of every man's life there hangs a little medal or collar, on which his name is stamped; that Time waits upon the shears of Atropos, and as soon as the thread is cut, snatches the medals, carries them off, and throws them into the river Lethe; about the river there are a few swans, which, if they get a medal with a well-known name, at once carry it off to a temple consecrated to immortality." You will see that Jonson does not say the Swan of Avon is the poet.

Carr: We are told about the supposed birth date, the supposed birthplace, the school where he supposedly was educated, the supposed date of his marriage, the supposed order in which his plays were written, his supposed patron, his supposed likeness in the Shakespeare bust, and the supposed reason for the complete absence of his manuscripts. Is it at all surprising, in your opinion, that many people find that his authorship is also a matter of supposition?

Wells: Yes, I do find it surprising that Shakespeare's authorship of the works ascribed to him has been questioned. There are many early writers about whose life only supposition can be made but whose authorship has not been doubted. Far less is known, for example, about John Webster or John Ford.

Carr: I find this answer very weak. You would surely expect that more would be known about Mozart than Cimarosa or C.P.E. Bach. How often does one see a performance of "The Duchess of Malfi" or " 'Tis Pity She's a Whore"?

Carr: Students of literature in all countries are encouraged to study the lives of great authors, to achieve a greater understanding of their work. The one exception here is William Shakespeare, whose life, students are told, is not a matter of great importance. How do you account for this anomaly?

Wells: It is not true that students of literature are always encouraged to study the lives of authors whose works they are studying. But in any case students of Shakespeare frequently are encouraged to study what is known of his life.

Carr: I do not know of any author whose life is regarded of minor importance by teachers of literature, apart from Shakespeare. Why are biographies so popular? In your Life of Shakespeare, you would, I am sure, have been only too glad to have been able to include more details about the man of Stratford. You only gave us a few crumbs.

Carr: In the Bodleian, in the British Library and in other collections, there are 23 Elizabethan and Jacobean plays in manuscript. The manuscripts of the many Shakespeare plays are conspicuous by their absence. Is this not another justification for doubt about Shakespeare's authorship?

Wells: In fact more than 23 plays of the period survive in manuscript. But they form only a very small proportion of those that are known to have existed. We have no manuscripts of plays by John Lyly, Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Marston, or many other contemporaries of Shakespeare. Absence of manuscripts has no bearing on the question of authorship.

Carr: See my answer to your reply no.3. If we had no manuscripts of the music of Allegri, Merbecke and Dowland - all brilliant composers - we would not be amazed. You are asking us to accept passively that we have no scores written by Mozart. I consider that absence of manuscripts can have a bearing on the question of authorship. There are no Cervantes manuscripts.

Carr: In the 1623 First Folio, there are six plays in which can be found many lines and speeches that were not there in the previously printed quarto editions. All the additions are unquestionably Shakespearean in every way. Shakespeare died in 1616; Bacon died in 1626. Could Bacon have been the unnamed Editor of the First Folio?

Wells: In principle there is no reason why any literate person living in 1623 should not have been the editor of the First Folio. As Heminges and Condell signed the Dedication and the Introductory Epistle to this volume, it is not unreasonable~ to suppose that they undertook the task, especially as Shakespeare left them legacies in his will. There is nothing whatever to connect Bacon with the volume.

Carr: I see you have no suggestions, apart from Heminges and Condell, for the very important task as editor of the 1623 Folio. And you tacitly admit that Bacon could be the author. "Any literate person living in 1623" could not have carried out this operation so brilliantly, defying anyone to detect which lines were written by Shakespeare and which additions had been made by another hand. Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and "Edwin Drood" have been completed by other hands, but no-one has said that the standard set by Schubert and Dickens has been maintained.

Carr: Shakespeare's name was not included on his grave in the church at Stratford. Why? Do you know the name of any other famous Englishman who was buried anonymously?

Wells: I am not an expert on gravestones, but no, I do not know of anyone else who was buried anonymously. But the nearby monument in the church names Shakespeare without any doubt.

Wells: I agree that it seems odd that the slab names no one, but I don't see that it has any bearing on the authorship of the plays.

Carr: Here we have the only gravestone in the world of a famous person whose name has been deliberately omitted, the gravestone of the only world-famous author whose authorship has been seriously disputed. And you calmly say that you do not see that there could be any significance in this unique absence of a name on the grave. Is this not Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye?

Carr: Ten Shakespeare plays were first published anonymously. Why would the young actor from Stratford, seeking fame and fortune, publish these plays without his name upon them? Mentioning Marlowe's plays, which were also published anonymously, is no answer.

Wells: Shakespeare did not publish his plays. There is no evidence that he had anything to do with their publication. Many other plays of the period were published without an author's name. Plays were written first and foremost for performance.

Carr:See my replies to answers 3 and 5. I am glad that you admit that there is no evidence that the man of Stratford had anything to do with the publication of the Shakespeare plays. Most of the plays of the period were printed with the author's name on them not surprisingly. Whenever the author's name is omitted on the title page, one is entitled to question the authorship. Why deliberately leave the author's name unprinted? There is always a reason for anonymity.

Carr: Between 1591 and 1622, there were as many as 61 quarto editions of the Shakespeare plays. With this abundance of printed matter - an expensive operation - how do you account for the complete absence of manuscripts? Could these manuscripts still be in existence? As Bacon said in his Advancement of Learning, "Time brings forth the hidden truth."

Wells: The number of editions has nothing to do with survival of manuscripts, except that once a manuscript had been used by a printer, it would be liable to be thrown away as of no further use. The romantic attitude to manuscripts is a much more recent development. By far the largest proportion of dramatic manuscripts have failed to survive. But new ones occasionally turn up, and it is certainly possible that the manuscript of a Shakespeare play awaits discovery.

Carr: If Shakespeare had written only two or three plays, the disappearance of his manuscripts would not have been so surprising. But here we have a prolific author of plays and poems, and not a line remains.

Carr: No other author before the nineteenth century has had so many editions printed in his lifetime in this country. You talk about the romantic attitude to manuscripts. What is romantic about the preservation of an author's written work? You agree with my statement that 23 or more than 23 - plays of the period are still with us in manuscript. You today - or in 1616 - would carefully preserve a Shakespeare manuscript. That is not being romantic.

10 Carr: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. (Twelfth Night) In the opinion of non-Stratfordians, the last sentence could well be a reference to the Stratford actor. Can you name anyone who had greatness thrust upon him?

Wells: Yes: all those to whom the plays of William Shakespeare have been misascribed.

Carr: Here, it seems, according to you, Shakespeare made a statement that is not true. Can you think of any other Shakespeare quotation that is similarly incorrect? I am glad that you say that this remark of the famous author could refer to a man to whom the plays have been wrongly attributed. I agree.

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