What's in a Name?

 Susan Dwyer Amussen, What's in a Name? (Manchester University Press)

No historian thinks that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays. The main reason, in Susan Dwyer Amussen's account is that several of his contemporaries thought he did and none doubted it and it took 150 years for anybody to think otherwise. In a book subtitled How historians know Shakespeare was Shakespeare one might expect a bit more than an argument that is set out in one or two pages but the rest of the text is socio-economic, theatrical and local history that is at best only very loosely required to establish that the Stratford man wrote the plays and poems attributed to him. Or most of them. Not many by now dispute that there was collaboration with other writers involved.

It is interesting material and most books on Shakespeare's life necessarily include some context and background. It's not clear that knowledge of the apprentices rioting in London, for example, help us to establish that Shakespeare rather than Oxford, Bacon or Marlowe was the author of the oeuvre that bears his name. What the accumulated detail does do, more thoroughly than might be required, is show that Shakespeare, with his grammar school education, would have been perfectly capable of producing the work he did without going to university. There were others like him who, had they possessed the requisite talent, might have become similarly memorable. What is so often left out of the debate is the possibility of innate genius.

Susan writes carefully at times, like when only noting that the twins were born to Anne, but can be reduced to banality when reporting such things about London as,

Courtship, sex and marriage were critical parts of the life of the city. 

Not being a biography, the book isn't expected to cover the life in a coherent sweep but its progress surveys its trajectory, understandably concentrating more on the theatre than personal relationships. The recent claims about Anne living in London, based on a letter addressed to 'Good Mrs Shakespaire' are treated without prejudice as being possible without proving anything for certain but she brings the possible date for that forward to as early as 1598-9 and she imagines Shakespeare travelling between London and Stratford more regularly than I do. The purchase of the Blackfriars gatehouse so close upon his retirement from the theatre suggests he intended to retain business interests in London even if he did spend more time in Stratford. While all such possibilities can be considered, it's easy to get lost under a welter of such speculation when we simply don't know and probably never will.

No such biography, though, affects the authorship question. The reasons for thinking that Shakespeare wrote a vast portion of the work that is credited to him are simply stated. It is the far-fetched cases for other candidates put forward by those who think he didn't that are much more convincing that he did. Somebody wrote it all and there isn't a credible case to be made for anybody else. It is a much more unlikely story that such ideas ever gained the credence that they have- with such eminent adherents as Mark Rylance among them- but, as is credited to H.L. Mencken, the idea that one never went broke by underestimating the public is relevant once again.

Susan Dwyer Amussen has provided a well-researched, readable and possibly useful book on Early Modern England but its contribution to the Shakespeare Authorship question, while welcome, could have been presented in an essay. I'm not even sure how much of a question is left. I bought and read the book because it seemed to promise what might be some closure on the subject. Who is the gullible one now?