Clearing Shakespeare's Name

 Clearing Shakespeare's Name

    “Love is blind” For those who know a little bit about Shakespeare this quote may be instantly recognized as part of The Merchant of Venice, but those who know a bit more about Shakespeare will know that this now famous quote did not originate with Shakespeare's play but in The Canterbury Tales, published long before Shakespeare wrote his play. Was Shakespeare, the most famous author in the English language, a plagiarizer? Did the Bard, a fairly unschooled man, even write the plays at all? Thankfully for all admirers of Shakespeare, the evidence points in his favor.
    There is some rather convincing evidence in favor of Shakespeare being a plagiarizer. And it has misled many people. For example, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, his famous description of Cleopatra on her barge is taken almost word for word from Plutarch's life of Mark Antony. How can that help but be plagiarizing? Shakespeare also used one of John Heywood Proverbs, “All is well that ends well,” as the title to one of his plays. It would seem that the Bard was a plagiarizer.
    The most convincing evidence, however, that the Bard was a plagiarizer comes from a collection of poems compiled by W. Jaggard. All of the poems in the collection were put down under the name of W. Shakespeare; however, many of them were written by other authors. It seems that the evidence could not be more blunt and clear.
    Even though the evidence which seems to prove Shakespeare a plagiarizer is all accurate, there are some often overlooked facts which clear his name. He no more pirated those two lines for his plays than I would be pirating if I used the saying “A penny saved is a penny earned” in a book. That saying has become part of our culture; it is so well known that it is unnecessary to cite it. The Bard was just using some common sayings of his time in his plays.
    The seemingly pirated description of Cleopatra is not much different than the quotes. In Shakespeare's time such works as Plutarch's life of Mark Antony were studied much and people knew bits and pieces of them by heart. Shakespeare writing down his interpretation of the work was no more pirating it than Vincent Price acting out the well known poem “The Raven,” or the writing down of countless variations of the Bard's “To be or not to be” speech from Hamlet.
    Shakespeare may also be acquitted of charges from pirating other's poems. In fact it was W. Jaggard who falsely put them all down under the Bard's name. One of the authors who wrote some of the poems in that collection said that Shakespeare was furious about having his name put down for other's works.
    Shakespeare certainly didn't plagiarize, but there are people who question whether or not he wrote the plays at all. He was fairly unschooled and it seems very unlikely that he possessed the ability to write the plays at all. Many people think that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, more likely wrote them. Many scholars have suggested that since playwrites were scorned upon, de Vere may have written Shakespeare's names on the play allowing the Bard to take the credit for them to keep the de Vere family name. This theory, however, is entirely based on conjecture and has much evidence against it.
    Choosing Shakespeare as the fake author of the plays would have been a strange move for de Vere. Shakespeare helped in the producing of the plays and frequently would have been asked questions about them. From his inability to answer some questions, people would have soon learned that he hadn't really written them. Clearly Shakespeare would not have been de Vere's first choice as someone to attribute the plays to.
    Another problem with the conjecture is that de Vere has been historically shown to be both egotistical and publicly involved in plays and writing himself. From what we know about him from history, he would be too vain to attribute such masterpieces to someone else. He also did not seem to worry that he was publicly known to be involved in plays. He openly sponsored the Oxford's men, an acting company, and wrote poems which he signed with his own name.
    The most convincing evidence, however, that de Vere did not write Shakespeare's plays is that he died before they were all written. Supporters of de Vere maintain that he wrote all of the plays by himself, but masterpieces like the Tempest, Macbeth, and a dozen or so other shakespearian plays were all written from 1605 to 1613. De Vere, however, died earlier in 1604. Clearly he did not write these plays.
    When there are men as great and renowned as Shakespeare but with little known about them, their lives, and their times it is unavoidable that many myths and misconceptions will arise around them. Shakespeare was, however, just a man with the incredible gift and talent to make such wonderful works in the English language.

Resources

Cummings, Mike. "Authorship Question." www.cummingsstudyguides.net. 22 Oct. 2009. Web. 23 May 2010. .

Cummings, Mike. "Did Shakespeare Plagiarize?." www.cummingsstudyguides.net. 6 Sep. 2008. Web. 23 May 2010. .