It’s reappropriation days in the culture wars. Following the recasting of Thomas Paine as a modern day tea-bagger, Shakespeare is up next. The Wall Street Journal shows pointy-headed academics how to conduct real literary criticism, supreme court style:
In his 34 years on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens has evolved from idiosyncratic dissenter to influential elder, able to assemble majorities on issues such as war powers and property rights. Now, the court’s senior justice could be gaining ground on a case that dates back 400 years: the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.
Justice Stevens, who dropped out of graduate study in English to join the Navy in 1941, is an Oxfordian — that is, he believes the works ascribed to William Shakespeare actually were written by the 17th earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. Several justices across the court’s ideological spectrum say he may be right.
This puts much of the court squarely outside mainstream academic opinion, which equates denial of Shakespeare’s authorship with the Flat Earth Society.
You can see where this is heading. Promising young literary scholar renounces his budding career in service of his country only to spurn literary study upon his return to the States in favor of law. Actually, it’s a fascinating biography of a distinguished American. And god knows that Republican moderates could use a reasonable figure to rebuild around. Then again an 88 year-old WWII vet isn’t exactly the face of the future that an out-in-the-woods political party needs. But this is the Republic party.
So what’s the WSJ really up to here? Read on:
“Oh my,” said Coppelia Kahn, president of the Shakespeare Association of America and professor of English at Brown University, when informed of Justice Stevens’s cause. “Nobody gives any credence to these arguments,” she says.
Nonetheless, since the 19th century, some have argued that only a nobleman could have produced writings so replete with intimate depictions of courtly life and exotic settings far beyond England. Dabbling in entertainments was considered undignified, the theory goes, so the author laundered his works through Shakespeare, a member of the Globe Theater’s acting troupe.
Nonetheless, the WSJ presses on, having dispensed with the so-called expert who’s the head of such a manifestly extremist organization. Journalism is about being fair and balanced, after all. “The bow-tied, 88-year-old Justice Stevens, who often leads the court’s liberal wing,” continues the article. Hold up one minute. While it is true that Stevens has famously sided with the majority on important decisions regarding abortion and gay marriage, his judicial record is decidedly up the middle. His Segal-Cover score is much, much closer to Clarence Thomas than to those hippies Souter and Ginsberg. Hell, he’s significantly to the right of famously up the middle Sandra Day O’Connor. Did mention that Nixon first appointed him to a federal court and Ford nominated him for the supreme court, both noted liberals. I rest my case.
Justice Stevens admits there’s a “fringe” element of anti-Shakespearians who spin elaborate but unlikely theories. “I think that’s one of the things that hurts the cause — and the fact that the guy who first came up with de Vere was named Looney,” he says.
On the other hand, “a lot of people like to think its Shakespeare because…they like to think that a commoner can be such a brilliant writer,” he says. “Even though there is no Santa Claus, it’s still a wonderful myth.”
Aha! Historical revisionism, favored tool of the liberal academic elite! And of course there’s the “wonderful myth” that originality is never to be found among the chaff of society. Everyone knows that the historical record tells us that only the wealthy and fabulous every did anything worth remembering. But isn’t it quaint to think of ol’ Will penning Hamlet and Frederick Douglass writing his own autobiography? And how did that commoner Keats manage to write some of the best poetry of the nineteenth century?
On this issue, Justice Stevens sees eye to eye with his frequent conservative antagonist, Antonin Scalia, who says that as a child he received a monograph propounding de Vere’s cause from a family friend.
“My wife, who is a much better expert in literature than I am, has berated me,” says Justice Scalia. “She thinks we Oxfordians are motivated by the fact that we can’t believe that a commoner could have done something like this, you know, it’s an aristocratic tendency.”
A plausible argument…if you’re a liberal.
Justice Scalia prefers to turn the tables.
“It is probably more likely that the pro-Shakespearean people are affected by a democratic bias than the Oxfordians are affected by an aristocratic bias,” he says.
Never mind. It’s probably more likely that you, dear reader, saw this move coming. This is vintage Scalia, the frequent conservative antagonist of the notoriously liberal Stevens. Thank goodness Stevens has seen the light on this one and sided with his more reasonable archenemy.
Unfortunately, the “great man” method of explaining history through exemplary figures whose sheer brilliance transcended the cultures that formed them invites these kind of pissing matches. We have access to the most important body of literary work in the English language with the added bonus of mysterious authorship (de Vere’s biography is every bit as colorful as Shakespeare), but let’s not get too caught up in “circumstantial evidence.” Disguise and misdirection were two of Shakespeare’s most formidable literary tools, after all.
You have often
Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d
And left me to a bootless inquisition,
Concluding ‘Stay: not yet.‘
Oh Miranda! Let us too drink to the bootless inquisition of discovering the author of Shakespeare’s works once and for all.