One thought on “Who am I?”

1. I hope Alan Nelson will not mind my cutting and pasting his response to this list, generated by Diana Price and used by you here without attribution:

   Since I don’t have the patience to go into every tired but discredited argument, every instance of special pleading, and every incorrect statement or overlooked document in her book, I will simply give my own answers to Price’s list of “paper-trail” topics:

   1. Evidence of Education: Yes. Since his father was an alderman and burgess of Stratford, Shakespeare would certainly have attended the school at Stratford which was given active support by the aldermen and burgesses of Stratford for the education of their sons…
   2. Record of correspondence, especially concerning literary matters: Yes, a letter was addressed to Shakespeare by Richard Quiney (1598). (The letter is not about literature, and therefore does not qualify for Price’s “especially” clause, but it does indicate that Mr. William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon was capable of reading a letter addressed to him and was thus literate).
   3. Evidence of having been paid to write: Yes. The fact that he dedicated a second book to the Earl of Southampton is evidence that he received a reward for having written the first; moreover, he was paid for an impresa in 1613, clearly as an author, since Burbage was a painter and would have done the artwork…
   4. Evidence of a direct relationship with a patron: Yes, the Earl of Southampton.
   5. Extant original manuscript: Yes, if Hand D in The Book of Sir Thomas More is his.
   6. Handwritten inscriptions, receipts, letters, etc., touching on literary matters. Yes. In a sense this category merely repeats “Record of correspondence” above. But a letter survives in the hand of Leonard Digges, who in 1613 compared the sonnets of Lope de Vega to those of “our Will Shakespeare” – notice the use of the familiar “Will” by a close neighbor of Shakespeare’s in both Aldermarston and in London.
   7. Commendatory verses, epistles, or epigrams contributed or received: Yes, first and foremost in the First Folio, but also in numerous contemporary manuscripts and printed books.
   8. Miscellaneous records (e.g., referred to personally as a writer): Yes, many such records in print, including Meres (1598) who reports that Shakespeare’s sonnets were circulating among his private friends (an astonishingly personalized revelation!), and Thomas Heywood’s reference (1612) to Shakespeare’s being upset over a book of poems published by Jaggard.
   9. Evidence of books owned, written in, borrowed, or given: Yes, possibly, in a book now at Stratford and in another at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (This category perhaps deserves a blank, but it does not merit a positive “No.”)
   10. Notice at death as a writer: Yes, positively and abundantly, in a poem written by William Basse; the literary allusions (including to Virgil) in the Funeral Monument; and above all in the First Folio, which is the greatest tribute to a recently-deceased writer in all of English literature.

   You will note, if you have read Price’s book with care, how hard she has worked to discount all evidence which could possibly contribute to a “Yes” response for Shakespeare in any of her categories. In fact, the selective demolition of evidence is what her entire book is about. If Price had worked with equal diligence to discredit the evidence which applies to other writers of the period, she would have succeeded in reducing all historical evidence of any kind whatsoever to utter meaninglessness. Fortunately, all one has to do is to watch for Price’s instances of special pleading, dismiss any associated arguments, and let the documentation which survives this exercise speak for itself.

   I urge you to also check the records of any other writer of the period and try to get an appreciation of how lucky we are that anything at all in any of these categories survives for any of them.

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