Stuff You Should Know - Did Shakespeare really write all that stuff?

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

The question of Shakespeare's authorship has been around since at least the mid-1800s. Is there anything to it? We'll dig in to this dense topic to find out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's on the line. Jerry's here too and we're about to get jiggy with it about Shakespeare. Can I caveat this out of the gate? I guess.

So the more we dug into this, you know, I was an English major, we talked very briefly when I was in college about Shakespeare's authorship. Right. And I thought, hey, this would be a fun little semi-easy episode. And the more we dug into it, the more this onion unfolded. It's quite an onion. This blooming onion unfolded layer by crispy delicious layer. For all of our Australian listeners, that's what we think you guys eat every night. Every night. To the point where I was almost like, you know, is this a two-parter? I mean, you could probably do a 10-part episode on this. Oh, yeah. It's so dense. So I just want to caveat this for people that know a lot about Shakespeare authorship and saying this is a pretty broad

overview of the high points of his authorship being questioned because it is dense, baby. It's the kind of thing that like extremely intelligent people take on as their like lifelong hobby. It's like that. We're like, we'll just bust it out in a few days. It'll be fine. Yeah. You know, like how some people are like, they research World War II submarine warfare and know everything about it's along the same lines, but it's even bigger. There's so many people involved and each side is like, you're so naive to the other. And yes, it's true. Like we could turn this into a 10-part series, but I think we've got a handle on it enough to present it. I feel an okay about it. And then the other thing that sticks out for me, Chuck, is this is one of

the few things I've ever come across like this that I am like truly agnostic about. I do not have an opinion one way or the other. I don't know if I do either, actually. Like it's not like I don't care. That's not what I'm saying. Like I genuinely can see both sides. And the other thing about it is the more you dig into it, the more you realize, oh, neither side actually has really good evidence to support their claim. It's all just, they have to get so granular that it really quickly goes into the world of conspiracy theories pretty quickly. Yeah. I saw this video of a guy, this wonderful gentleman who knows a lot about it that said like, and here's the golden bullet, which proves once and for all. And he made his case and I was

like, oh, no, no, no, that didn't really prove it once and for all in my opinion. Yeah, for sure. Because both sides do things like they get into biographical readings where they're trying to find clues within the text or parallels to his life or that kind of thing. And once that starts, it's like, okay, you guys are, you've just completely left the world of objectivity. Yeah. So what we're talking about, if you haven't guessed by now, is this idea that has been around since at least the mid-1800s, maybe before, about the question of whether or not William Shakespeare was the sole author of all of his works. And this is Shakespeare from Stratford on the Avon, like that gentleman that we know became an actor and writer, whether or

not he was the sole author, whether or not he was a front for some other authors for some of the works. Some people say he didn't write any of them. Some people said it was various women who weren't allowed to write things at the time. I saw 66 candidates over the years have been put forward. I saw 80. Oh, really? So there you have it. Somewhere between 66 and 80 something. I know we haven't been accused of writing any of Shakespeare's work. I don't think so. I didn't come across that in my research. But it's an interesting literary, I don't even know if I want to call it a mystery, because some people just say like, no, I mean, of course he wrote it. And these outsized personalities, the most famous of the famous, are conspiracies are drawn to them.

Elvis is still alive. Marilyn Monroe was murdered. That happens when you are one of the biggest icons in your field quite often. So some people say that's all that it is. But in addition to that, there's a lack of biographical documentation that he actually did write those plays. And I think that that's also what allows for people to say, well, do we really know? Right. Or that he didn't write them. It was a time in the 1500s and 1600s where there just wasn't a ton of great preserved information. And we'll kind of talk about a lot of that. So we do know that William Shakespeare did live. He was from, like you said, Stratford on Avon. It was at the time about a two to three day journey from London, about a hundred something

miles, I think. And he definitely did live. He definitely did exist. That's not a question, because we do have documentary evidence that this person lived from 1564 to 1616, about 52 years. And depending on when you place his birthday, maybe 52 years on the nose. So we know he existed. Again, what's at issue, what's being questioned is whether that man, William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon, who went on to become an actor, who went on to become a producer, who worked in the Globe Theater, whether he was the author of the plays we consider written by Shakespeare. That's what's at question. Yeah. So like you said, he was a real dude. He came from a family that was, I mean, I kind of read it as a little bit middle class. They

certainly were not like upper class nobility types. His father was a, was a Glover. He wore, or he, well, I guess he wore gloves too, but he made gloves. Allow me to demonstrate. It'd be pretty weird if he didn't. That guy won't even wear his own gloves. But he produced these very, very fine gloves for well to do people. But he did achieve some, I guess, worked his way up the social chain a little bit because eventually he would serve as what's sort of like a mayor in Stratford. And again, while not nobility, like they were fairly well regarded as people. Right. So we don't know for certain, but there's a pretty good, there's a much better chance than not that because of his father's position in town, because they had some money,

like you said, they're middle class. He almost certainly would have been educated at the grammar school at Stratford. So what most people think is that William Shakespeare was educated until about the age of 13. And he would have learned things like Latin. He would have learned history. He would have learned some classic literature. He definitely would have been exposed to stuff that whoever wrote Shakespeare's plays would go on to expound on. So he definitely was, I can't say that. That's the thing. You really have to be careful what you say about this. I know. I was about to say, so he definitely was educated. We don't know that he was. This is all just a

supposition, but it's a pretty good bet. It's a good supposition that he actually was educated. Yeah. And all this, the reason that's important is all of this kind of comes back later as some people say proof that he may not have written this stuff. Cause like how could, and one of the main arguments used many times is how could a kid who came from here have known about these military exploits and the Elizabethan court and all these different languages and all this highfalutin stuff that he wrote about. So it's important to, you know, talk about his education. And it seems like he was likely educated pretty well until 13, which, you know, I'm not even sure if that's early or late as far as the time period goes. Do you know if that was

like kind of generally it for kids? It was in the middle because he could have just as easily not been educated at all, but he also didn't go on to Cambridge or Oxford to extend his studies. So he was in there in the middle. They think he was probably educated, not highly educated, but also not, you know, uneducated. That's the key. And that if there was evidence he had not gone to school, I think that the anti-Shakespeare people would have a real like mark in their favor, but he has just enough education that you can make the case like, no, like this guy, this guy learned about this stuff already and he could have known about it. And, you know, when you add imagination and natural talent, you come up with Shakespeare conceivably.

Yeah. He got married to Anne Hathaway. You know, go ahead and insert Anne Hathaway joke there. You know, she's a real actor, right? Sure. Yeah. Devil Wears Prada and Princess Diaries. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I think Anne Hathaway is great. She was in Inception. No. No, was she? Interstellar. Yes. She did a stellar job in Interstellar. Come on. They got married when he was quite a bit younger. She was 26. He was 18. She was pregnant, which is probably a little unusual for the time. They had a daughter named Susanna and then had twins, a boy and a girl twin, and the boy named Hamnet, not Hamlet, but Hamnet. Yeah, which apparently they've never turned up another use of that name in at the time.

Proof. He was 11 years old when he died, and that kind of comes into play later on as well. And then there's about a, you know, from 1585 to about 1592, there's about a seven-year gap where we don't know a lot about what was going on with Shakespeare, and then he pops up, which a lot can happen in seven years. Yeah. Again, not trying to sway people one way or the other, but you can certainly learn a lot in seven years if you have some big life experiences. But he pops up in London in 1592 again as far as the record goes. And, you know, keep in mind, a lot of this record before he was known in his lifetime as an author was, you know, just kind of not flimsy, but just not a lot of stuff, like various little lawsuits and

mortgages and sort of banking records and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, like, that's about as much documentation as you would be able to come up with on most people. And you could make a case that there's more documentation on Shakespeare than most other people who weren't nobility of his era. Oh, sure. That's because there's been so much scholarship and study and research into his life that they've turned up, you know, as much as they can. But what they've turned up only amounts to about 500 different pieces of documentation of one form or another. Right. So one of those pieces of documentation in early on in London is a pamphlet written by, generally believed to be written by this guy named Robert Green. There were some other

people that could have possibly written it, but it's called Green's Grotesworth of Witt. And there's a line where he references Shakespeare in it in a contemporaneous fashion. Is that right? It doesn't matter. Where he kind of takes a shot at him. He says, he talks about Shakespeare, says there's an upstart crow in his own conceit, the only shake scene in a country, which kind of translates into, he kind of thinks he's the only Shakespeare. Right. Like he thinks he's all that. And it should be noted also, as far as the thievery, that in Aesop's fables crows would steal the feathers of others. So the people in the, I don't want to say anti-Shakespeare, but the people say that he

might not have written these things, says this is a big clue in saying that he might have stolen some of these things. That's why he's referred to as a crow by this other guy. Yeah. But in that quote, he says, the upstart crow is beautified with our feathers. And he's a playwright. So the pro Shakespeare people, you call them the pro Stratford group, they suggest that what Green is talking about is he's poking fun at a common actor who is deigning to even attempt to write plays, which, you know, among playwrights is far more important than acting. Anybody can act, but it really takes something to write a play, at least that's what they thought at the time, and that he's taking a shot at him for that. Yeah. And we should point out that being an actor back then

and being a part of the theater was not like it is today. It wasn't some revered position. It was sort of, you know, body plays and common people were into this kind of thing. So it wasn't, when he says he was just an actor, that's a pretty big diss. Right. So the last thing that we have, I guess the last documentation, although there's other stuff that's been turned up, they did archaeological expeditions on his house. I think his house has been under ownership of a public trust since like the 19th century, and they've carried out archaeological examinations of it, and they found that he went back and forth between London and Stratford. So they know stuff about him like that, but as far as like documentation goes,

the last piece of documentation we have comes in 1616, which is his will that he wrote, and then a few months later he died. And the last, I guess the last, last piece of documentation is his tombstone, which in and of itself is curious because his tombstone contains a curse on it, but not his name. Yeah. Is that the one with the quote? Yeah. It's a curse. He's saying like, don't dig me up or you're going to be cursed. Yeah. It's his good friend for Jesus' sake, forbear, to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man who spares these stones and cursed be he who moves my bones. Some people point to that as poor writing and saying, well, Shakespeare was a great writer, wouldn't have written this kind of shabby curse. Right. And

other people say like, who said Shakespeare even wrote that necessarily? This is a good instructive example of like kind of the back and forth between these people. Totally. Right? This is terrible writing. Who said Shakespeare wrote it? And then the anti-Shakespeare crew says, well, of course he wrote it because who else would just not think to put his name on his own tombstone? Right. And the other ones just put their head in their hands and just start crying. And it just goes downhill from there. But that's a really good example of like the people will jump on any single thing that they possibly can and often interpret it one way or the other. So one thing, one single thing provides evidence for both sides. It's that kind

of fact. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Another thing that people point to is the fact that of, you know, we don't have a lot of like letters and papers and things like that because his family line ended in 1670. I think he had a granddaughter, Elizabeth Barnard, that died without bearing children. Right. So most of his stuff basically lost as far as family possessions and things like that. People do point to the will at times and say, well, in his will, you know, he leaves certain things, but like there's never any mention of any manuscripts. And again, this is all like, it's a little weird maybe, but none of this is proof. And, you know, through the personal records that we do have and those 500 references,

like none of them really reference him like manuscripts and him writing things. Right. That's what's most compelling to me is that when you put together the documentation about his life that we know, it's clear. He's involved in the theater. He's an actor. We get that. That comes through loud and clear. What doesn't come through, that isn't documented at all, is him as a writer. And that thing about the will, the fact that if you look at the wills and bequeathments of other writers of the time, you can find evidence that they were writers. They like leave books to other people that they leave unfinished manuscripts that stay in the family for generations. And it is very curious. His will is very curious.

But the fact that his personal stuff was just lost to history because his granddaughter was the end of the family line, that actually holds up because other great authors of say the same major of any age, a lot of the reason that their personal effects and papers are still around is because their family home was passed down from generation to generation to generation. And there was a long enough period of time for the importance of that writer to become clear. And so other people came in and said, can we have your great, great, great grandfather's personal effects? We want to put them in this museum. There's enough time. There wasn't enough time. There's only 70 years between the death of Shakespeare and the end of his family line.

And he didn't become widely popular until the, I think, middle of the 18th century. So he was kind of a victim of that. Both of those, to me, provide really good evidence for why there isn't documentation of his writing. Yeah, absolutely. And the will, and by the way, we, the Atlantic has a great, great, pretty deep dive article as they do on this, which provided a lot of the supplementary information that we got. By Elizabeth Winkler from 2019. Great read. One of the things that Winkler points out, and other people have pointed out on the will as well, is like Shakespeare wrote a lot about music. And I think there were 300 musical terms in all of his plays, mention of 26 musical instruments. And like in his will, he didn't,

he didn't even have a lute to pass down to anybody. And like you said, didn't have books even, like a library that he wanted to give. And, you know, again, this is not proof necessarily of anything, but it's, all of this stuff has added up over the years to enough for people to arise, to like get suspicious about it, I think. Exactly. You want to take a break, a breather, I guess you could call it. Yeah, let's take a breather. Let's take five. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody you everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or

wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikathar. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk

to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I heart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that Ed, who helped us put this together, mentions that I wanted to get your take on it. I didn't really think it had a whole lot to do with it one way or the other was all of the various misspellings of Shakespeare's name over the years. He would sign it in different ways. He would abbreviate it in different ways. There are documents with, I mean, it looks like 15 different ways of spelling Shakespeare, everything from shacks with an X pier to spears

and something you would jab somebody with. It's misspelled all over the place. And I just kind of took that as people misspelled things a lot back then. There weren't necessarily records that you could go look at very easily. So you might just take a guess at how to spell a name, and then it was on the record. And so I didn't really think that factored in much. Did you? I didn't. And the impression I have is that all the different spellings are easily explained away from just the era, like you just said, and that the people who clump onto that are actually looking into them just to find hidden meaning and codes. So I think the different spelling for the names is about as big a boondoggle as you're going to find in the Shakespeare authorship argument,

I think. All right. So we'll cast that aside. Well, hold on. Before we do, I want to point out my favorite abbreviation. Which one? I think I... Well, let me look. I bet you I know which one, but go ahead. Okay. Put it back in the deck. Yeah, it's back in the deck. Okay. It is Wilmshackpea. Yeah. Is that the one? It stands out pretty blatantly. S-H-A-K-P. I love it. Shackpe. Hello, Wilmshackpe. It's not a really good hotel check-in name, but it's still worth mentioning, I think. That's pretty good. So like we mentioned, sort of what's at the root of a lot of these theories is what Ed, I think rightly calls elitism, which is how could this guy, even, you know, educated up to 13, how could he have known

about all this stuff? How could he have known about military exploits? And, you know, if you read Shakespeare's plays, which if you're an English major, you have to read a lot of them, there's a lot going on in these plays about a lot of different stuff. He didn't write about just kind of one kind of thing. So it implies like a really deep breadth of knowledge about a lot of things. And not just different things as it relates to England, different things as it relates to entirely different lands. Oh, yeah. Like think about where a lot of his stuff takes places in Italy. Yeah. And as far as anyone knows, Shakespeare didn't go to Italy. Although, remember, there's that lost year, eight year period, they call them the lost years. It's

entirely possible he went to Italy during that time. It's also just as possible that he didn't go to Italy during that time. We just don't know. But that is something that really stands out. And yes, there is a tremendous amount of elitism and classicism among some of the anti-Shakespeare group. But I think that that is, I think that dismisses a lot of their points out of hand. And they do have some really good points. They're not just cranks and crackpots. Like they have some pretty good evidence. You can make a case as at least as good evidence that as the pro Shakespeare people, but the upshot of it is really kind of a compliment. They're saying, these plays are so good that Shakespeare is arguably the greatest writer

who ever lived. He has such a crazy imagination. He's so funny. He has such an extensive vocabulary, such an amazing grasp of the human condition. Could it really all have been written by this man from at the time, the country who was educated up to 13, who came from the middle class, who may or may not have ever traveled out of England? How is that even possible? Are people born that gifted? That's ultimately, if you want to go beyond the classicism and the elitism, that's really what their argument boils down to. Yeah, I agree. And if you don't know a lot of Shakespeare, I've never really read a lot yourself and you think like you're sort of in that camp, like, I mean, is this kind of overrated like this guy? No, these plays are brilliant. And

there's a reason why they still make contemporary movies based on Shakespeare's plays or inspired by Shakespeare's plays. It's because they were all genuinely brilliant. It was great, great stuff. And what you need is a really good teacher to kind of walk you through it because it's tough to read. And we had some good ones at University of Georgia. I had one, I can't remember his name. God, I can picture him in my head. He was so great. Todd Gack. No, it was Wilm. Wilm Shackpee. Oh, I wish I could remember his name. I bet you someone will write in in the mid-90s who the great Shakespeare... Did he play a harpsichord? No. Oh, well, no. I had a classics professor who played a harpsichord. Yeah. You had to take Shakespeare one and two.

Those were the only required English classes as an English major. So that kind of shows the importance. But what he did was he sat us down and we read the plays out loud in class. And after every short bit, he would say, well, here's what's going on. And here's what he's saying. Nice. Man, you were very lucky. Yeah. And once you hear that, you're like, oh, these are very contemporary stories. And that's why they still carry such weight today is because they were brilliant stories, but stories that were very relatable even now. It's not highfalutin stuff. It was written at a time where it seems that way. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because we don't really speak in renaissance English anymore. So it

seems it might as well be Greek to us. But yeah, it was intended for common audiences. Like the average person would laugh or cry at those plays. And I think also it really kind of supports your point that 400 years later, those plays can still make people today laugh and cry. Like they still hold up, I guess is what you're saying. And have you ever heard of Sister Wendy? No. She is a nun. I don't believe she's still with us. And I think in the 90s, she made the series of videos where she just went around to museums around the world and explained paintings to you in a way that I would love to find a Sister Wendy of Shakespeare. I'm sure there's somebody out there, but you could do a lot worse of killing several hours watching Sister Wendy

explain paintings because she had like a natural gift at just not only understanding what she was looking at, but explaining it really understandably. I love that. And I think in Sister Wendy's case, and my professor, Shackby, it comes from a place of, they have such great admiration, and they want us, they really want people to understand this stuff, who might ordinarily go like, well, I don't get it. I don't get paintings like this, or I don't get plays like this. I hate art. So should we get in, speaking of art, great segue. Should we get into this mess of the bust of Shakespeare? Yeah. I mean, it's another, it's very much like his tombstone, where people are like, it means this, no, it means that, you know? Yeah. So there's a bust,

an effigy of Shakespeare inside the church there in Stratford. And there's been a lot of controversy over this thing because part of it is not necessarily like, was he the author, although it does play into that, but sort of like, what did he look like? And how do we know that's what he looked like? Like, we've all seen the picture, and there's like this one painting and this one bust, and that's kind of where everything comes from. And some people say, this was done after he was dead. Like, we really don't know that that's what he looked like. I think just a couple of years ago, this professor and expert made a pretty good case that beyond most reasonable doubt, that it was actually done, I think she said it was highly likely. Professor Orlin said it's

highly likely that it was done while he was alive, and that he commissioned it because she thinks she knows who did the bust, and that that person lived near him, and was a regular at the Globe, and kind of put all these clues together. But other people, some people say it was his dad, and not him because of this whole sack of grain argument. Yeah. So there was an etching that was made of the bust within some period of time after the bust was erected, but before it was altered. So the bust has definitely been altered. And it looks like one way you can interpret this thing at the bottom, this puffy thing that's at the hands of the bust, the effigy, as a sack of grain. I don't know if it were a sack of grain

why anyone would ever present it in that position. Right. It doesn't make any sense. It's a little weird looking. Right. So what the anti-Shakespeare, anti-Stratford people are saying is like, yeah, it's his dad. It's not him. Or if it is Shakespeare, he was known for his grain carrying skills, not his riding skills. And the pro-Stratford people are like, don't be ridiculous. This is obviously a pillow. And at some point, somebody did revise the bust. So it is unequivocally a pillow. Like there's just no way to mistake it. And it's not so much a pillow as it is like a hand rest for him to write on because he's got a piece of paper on it and a coil in his other hand. But the anti-Shakespeare people jump on that and say like, see,

it was altered to fit this, to cover up this conspiracy later on. Yeah, exactly. And that quill has been stolen and replaced, I think, so many times over the years that now, I don't know if it currently has the quill or if it has the quill and it's now behind glass. Oh, that could, that's a good way to get around it, sure. I'm not really sure, but, you know, that became, you know, obviously something you could just snatch out of his hand and you've got Shakespeare's quill on your on your tour. Speaking of being snatched, apparently that curse on his tombstone didn't work because they did a scan of it on the 400th anniversary of his death and found that at least his skull was missing, if not all of his remains. Oh, really?

Yeah, and then interesting, so somebody out there has Shakespeare's skull in their personal collection. It's probably Rosencrancer Guildenstern. I like that reference. That's a great Shakespeare joke. That's good. There's some people out there that were like, nailed it. Good. Another thing, as far as evidence goes, is the first folio, which is, I think it was the first collection that they put in print of all of Shakespeare's plays, including 18 that had never been in print before. And there was a, I guess, was it a forward written by a guy named Ben Johnson, who was a rival of Shakespeare's. He was kind of known as a jealous, sort of argumentative guy, but he calls Shakespeare the swan of Avon and is sort of very laudatory in this forward.

But I think you found stuff later on where he was kind of like, I had my fingers crossed the whole time. Kind of, yeah. So the pro-Stratford people who believe Shakespeare is Shakespeare say, look, man, this guy was known as a rival, a friendly rival, but a real rival, really critical, like had a biting criticism and sense of humor and also was not one to just be like, to just bow to nobility or privilege or wealth or status. So if this guy is saying that Shakespeare, the swan of Avon, which places this man at Stratford on Avon, because Ben Johnson is calling him, that proves that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. The anti-Shakespeare camp says, like you said, Ben Johnson had his fingers crossed the whole time. And that really what he was doing was providing

cover for this larger, essentially conspiracy of people who actually wore Shakespeare. He was lending his renown to it. Neither one really makes sense. I mean, unless Ben Johnson had like a complete change of heart, it just doesn't quite add up. But then also the idea that he would provide that cover for a group of noble people seems unlikely as well, too. Yeah, I agree. One of the first public doubters in the 1800s was a woman named Delia Bacon, no relation to Francis Bacon. Although you may think so because one person that Delia Bacon put forward as one of the authors was Francis Bacon. Delia Bacon was an American, was a writer, had a sort of a long life before she got into kind of hating Shakespeare.

Yeah, hating him. Like really didn't like Shakespeare and really wanted to prove that he was not the author. And her idea was that it was Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and I think maybe some other people, too, who were these very well-regarded people of philosophy and politics and science, who would not have been allowed to put forth these plays and what these plays, what they really were, were not even meant for entertainment or for the stage. They were meant to be sort of biting criticisms of all kinds of various things that these gentlemen could not put their name on. Yeah, so either they couldn't put their name on it because they would be executed as basically

treasonous to the crown because they were putting forth the idea of social reform and women's rights and all sorts of stuff, taking potshots at the nobility. Or there's another theory called the stigma of print that was introduced in I think the 1870s and that was that they just out of noble nobility, no bless, I guess, they wouldn't deign to have their stuff published. It would erode their social reputation, even accepting the idea that they would be beheaded for treason. So there are a couple of reasons that somebody like Francis Bacon would have to cover up his identity if he were actually Shakespeare. And that same stigma of print and political cover argument gets extended to other people beyond Bacon too.

Yeah, and that, you know, it makes a little bit of sense. As far as Delia Bacon, she was able to talk Ralph Waldo Emerson into basically kind of buying her story. And he arranged for her sponsorship basically to go to England to kind of research this. Apparently in England, she she was kind of on record saying that she didn't research history books or records and things like that. She believed that the the proof was sort of in the plays themselves. Yeah. And in the text basically, like with these clues, apparently she used to go to Shakespeare's tomb a lot and kind of just, you know, hang out there and like try to convince the, I guess the tombkeeper or whoever, you know, takes care of the cemetery. The crypt keeper. Yeah, the crypt keeper, I didn't want to

say it, to be let in and like almost got in at one point, apparently. But I think she got sick and couldn't. But she thought that the, you know, the deep secret was within that tomb. Yeah, she kind of kicked off the nuttier camp of the questioning of Shakespeare. In addition to kicking off the whole thing, she put like kind of a nutty sheen to it. Like the idea that you could get your answers just from reading the plays, the clues were in there. The thing is, is Francis Bacon was known to to amuse himself by including, you know, hidden codes and messages in his writings. So if it was Francis Bacon, that's not that much of a stretch. And supposedly Mark Twain and some

friends did actually turn up. If you read the first folio, there is, I guess, some series of lines that spell out Francisco Bacono. It's pretty good. I mean, here's the thing though, Francis Bacon wrote a lot about a lot of stuff, but not a lot of fiction and prose. Or didn't he? Right. No evidence that he ever wrote any kind of plays, did he? Right. Then there was this other thing that kind of came along. So Delea Bacon is widely regarded as the person who kicked off the, it was Shakespeare, Shakespeare idea. But supposedly, there was a person who came before her, James Wilmut, who in 1781 sat down to write a biography of

Shakespeare and did all the research in London and Stratford on Avon and was astonished by the lack of documentation that Shakespeare had written those plays and started to suspect it and that he kicked it off. The thing is, the anti-Shakespeare side has been accused of making those documents up, of forging those documents to support Delea Bacon's Francis Bacon theory. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So they weren't discovered until 1931, which is pretty convenient. And it's entirely possible that they were just forged. All right. Should we take another break here?

Yeah, let's. All right. We'll take another break. We'll talk a little bit more about whether Shakespeare wrote that stuff. Who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So one more thing about Delia Bacon before we wrap it up, like you said, she was a good writer. And her exhaustive examination of the texts of Shakespeare's plays resulted in a 620 page book, the philosophy of the plays of Shakespeare unfolded. And she's often credited with basically prefiguring, if not kicking off the idea of literary criticism, of close readings of stuff to find other meanings. And she was doing it to expose noble people as Shakespeare, but she was really good at it.

And people said, well, hey, maybe we should do this for other stuff too. Yeah. And like ironically, because she kind of, I mean, you know, various tawdry accounts say she was driven to madness. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it did seem like it pretty much consumed her in the latter stages of her life and that her family was kind of embarrassed and stuff like that. Right. So Francis Bacon was not the only person put forth. And there's probably as far as like believers go, somebody who at least rivals, if not eclipses him. And that would be the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward DeVere, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's a whole, there's a whole camp and a whole other, and you know, we can't get into this too, too much in detail, but there's a whole movement that says, out of the 80 people, like we really think it was the 17th Earl of Oxford. Yeah. It's called the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship. And there is, you know, some stuff to it. He was a poet, which Ed points out, that's so much for the stigma of print. And that also you can compare his poetry and like some specific works of poetry to some of Shakespeare's poetry and see some real comparisons. But as far as I can tell, the questions or the similarities end there,

if I'm not mistaken, like, and that to me, it was the 6th Earl of Derby who has a little more to offer. Oh, really? I didn't see much about Derby. There was one other thing. So Derby has his own group, the Derbyites. Right. Of course they do, man. This is what I mean. It's an onion. It's a blooming onion. So there was one other thing about DeVere that is pretty suspicious. There were two narrative poems that Shakespeare dedicated to a man who was raised in the same household as DeVere. And from what anybody could tell, there's no reason Shakespeare would know this person

and why would Shakespeare dedicate two poems to this noble man he didn't know. But DeVere certainly knew him. He was basically raised alongside him like a brother. So that along with the biographical reading, the close reading, looking for parallels between DeVere's life and Shakespeare's plays are what kind of back up the Oxfordian theories. Interesting. Because Christopher Marlowe was another one who was a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare's and they collaborated and they influenced one another. And the details around Marlowe's death are hinky enough to where some people thought, or at least the conspiracy is, is that he faked his death because he was going to be executed by the crown

and continue to write and then use his friend Billy Shakespeare as a front to continue to get those plays out. I'm not really sure about this because I don't know. It's just a little farfetched, if you ask me. Well, yeah. If you're supposing that Marlowe faked his death in order to continue writing, you've now got a conspiracy theory wrapped in a conspiracy theory. Yeah, maybe that's what bothers me. But it's interesting because Marlowe was a pretty interesting dude in himself. Supposedly he may have been a secret agent for the crown. He was an atheist. He was his own playwright. People loved him as a playwright at the time, but he was no Shakespeare. Literally, he's probably the flimsiest person you could attribute Shakespeare's writings to

because Marlowe was gloomy and super atheist. His plays just didn't have that same kind of humanism and funniness that Shakespeare's plays had. Also, why wouldn't Marlowe just write these plays under his own name? He had no reason to write these plays under different names. Yeah, agreed. There have been people that put forth the idea that there were several different women that might have been the real authors because women were not allowed to write plays at the time. 80% of the plays written during this time were anonymous and no author was listed. A lot of people said, hey, a lot of these were written by women and they just couldn't put their name on it. Many of Shakespeare's plays and ideas are very progressive.

I don't know about flimsy, but it demeans Shakespeare a bit to say that it had to be a woman because they were so progressive about women taking a stand when, in fact, Shakespeare seemingly very much thought that way himself. Right. How could a man write women like this? Come on. Yeah. There's a woman named Mary Sidman Herbert who has a whole foundation that's trying to prove that she wrote. Kind of the worst of the internet happened about seven years ago when you get these memes that are just full of false stuff and then everyone starts spreading them around. There was a meme in 2015 when all over social media that just had the picture of this black woman and said, this is Amelia Bassano. She really wrote Shakespeare's stuff. She was not allowed to

be a published author because she was a black woman at a time where she was suppressed and all this stuff. None of this stuff was true. First of all, she was maybe Moroccan. She was definitely not of African descent. Oh, I thought she was Venetian. I saw that she was Moroccan and had some Italian in her, so that makes a little sense. She was definitely not of African descent. She was a published author, so the whole notion that she wasn't allowed to publish things wasn't right. She was kind of a well-known poet, I think, at the time. This kind of thing gets passed along the internet and then half the people that see it just say, oh, well, look at that. Shakespeare was all written by this lady back then. Problem solved. Yeah, problem solved,

and that's just not how it works. One of the other things I saw that, and I think the people who are like Shakespeare was a woman, are like, well, okay, if we're starting to question Shakespeare's authorship, we can't ignore this whole group of people who had every reason to hide their identity as authors of these plays because they were women and they were allowed to do this kind of stuff. So there was a critic who in 1593 wrote of a, who praised a gentle woman who was writing some amazing plays and sonnets, and this was the year after Shakespeare pops back up after his lost years and when he was starting to write, but that the critic said he didn't want to reveal who it was because he didn't want to basically get her in trouble. So that's what some other

people kind of look at and say, see, Shakespeare was a woman. Well, I think this theory makes a lot more sense on a lot of the others just by the sheer fact that women would not have been allowed to. So maybe Shakespeare was progressive and decided to be a front for these great works. But it reveals a point about being an anti-Shakespeare, anti, I guess, Stratford person is, you have to, part of it is you have to explain why somebody would want to fake authorship, would want to hide behind Shakespeare's name. Yeah, what do you call that? A motive. Yeah, you got means, motive, and opportunity. You put those three together, you got your Shakespeare. Well, that's what I mean about the, maybe women wrote them. I mean, there was definite motive

there. Right, exactly. So there was one other thing that happened. I mean, a lot of stuff happened over the course of this hundred, almost 200 years now of questioning Shakespeare's authorship. Back in 1987, a Oxfordian, Charlton Ogburn got the, at least three sitting Supreme Court justices, John Paul Stevens, William Brennan, and Harry Blackman to hold a mock trial to determine if Shakespeare actually was the author of Shakespeare's plays. And they did on C-SPAN, they had, they held like a trial and heard the evidence and Shakespeare had his own attorney arguing for him. And it was pretty interesting, but it went two to one, I think, in favor of Shakespeare from Stratford as the author. But they did like real research and stuff?

It wasn't just like a stunt? No, so the Supreme Court justices were kind of taking a tongue in cheek, but I got the impression that Charlton Ogburn was like, yes, this is finally going to prove it definitively one way or another, and it didn't even fall in his favor. Interesting. Yeah, it is interesting what people did in the 80s on C-SPAN. I got a few more little things here from that Atlantic article that point to his authorship as being genuine. One is that he had a narrative poem called Venus and Adonis. There was a very popular poem at the time that was put in print, and it was printed by a gentleman named Richard Field, who apparently went to school with him at Stratford. So that's a pretty good little hint.

He was written about at the time, so it's not like he was never known until his death, and then all of a sudden became super popular. He died a rich man and was written about by literary critics at the time and entertainment and play critics. So there were contemporaneous criticisms of his writing while he was still living, which is a pretty big clue that he probably wrote this stuff, although not proof. No, because they went and saw a play by Shakespeare. That doesn't mean that they met Shakespeare and talked to Shakespeare about the authorship of the play. And leaned over his shoulder while he wrote it. Right. Proof. The other last thing that I saw in that Atlantic article, or actually, this was the golden bullet from that video.

Oh, was it? Okay, good. Shakespeare was apparently concerned that his dad's reputation and family's reputation suffered later in life because of financial problems that his dad had. He really wanted to restore their name and get a coat of arms made, which you could be a true gentleman if you had a coat of arms. And apparently it's a really long process. They don't just hand them out to anybody. You got to have a certain level of achievement to get a coat of arms. So he went through this big long process and had... He went all Barry Lyndon on there. Oh, man, what a movie. He had a couple of different men in the Herald's office who defended Shakespeare's right to have a coat of arms because other people were saying, who is this guy even?

Like, he came from not much and he shouldn't have a coat of arms. And one of the guys who defended him was a man named William Camden, who this guy in the video referred to as one of the most learned men in all of England. Oh, wow. He was actually Ben Johnson's schoolmaster and apparently just knew everything on happening on the literary scene inside and out. And in one of his books, he was called The Remains of a Greater History. He talks about all the great writers of the time and he lists William Shakespeare of Avon in that book. So he said that's the golden bullet. Again, if it's just a front, it's still no real proof of authorship. No, it's not. I mean, like this guy could just be playing along. Lending is his...

Or didn't know, you know. ... considerable weight. Yeah, that's another one too. Like, that's the thing. Like, the anti-Stratfordians have caused the pro-Stratfordians to actually defend their position. And in doing so, it's kind of revealed that both of them are kind of on shaky ground. It's almost just a matter of belief. Do you want to believe that one man was that brilliant and that talented and gifted? Or can you just not believe that? It just doesn't make any sense to you. So it was a cabal of noble people who were trying to advance political reform and hiding behind William Shakespeare and paying him off with maybe family crests and money and fame to let them use his name as the playwright.

Yeah, they also say like where he was from, there was some regional slang that was very specific to where he was from that was used. There was entaming of the shrew. He mentions these Latin phrases that are in specifically from a Latin book that apparently was known to have been used at his school, at his grammar school in Stratford. So again, there's all these little hints and clues. All of it kind of gave me a headache. And I was like, can we just like love these plays? Right, exactly. That's exactly right. That's the ultimate point. Let's just love the plays. People get serious about this though. Yeah, they definitely do. I mean, it's pretty interesting and it's kind of fun to watch from the outside too.

You got anything else? No, we could go on all day, but we'd never get anywhere. There's like 10 things I'm leaving on the table, so we just got to keep moving on, right? All right, let's keep on keeping on, Chuck. If you want to know more about Shakespeare and authorship, there is a giant gaping rabbit hole you can jump down on the internet and say Sayonara to all of your other pursuits. And since I said Sayonara, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this just came in over the wire. I thought it was kind of funny from our friend Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan about eating squid. He says, love the show, fellas. Reason not to be so touchy though about eating squid. They are child murdering sea vermin.

He said, the reason squid die after they mate is a survival adaptation, because if not, they would eat the eggs and newly hatched squid from themselves and other squid in the spawning areas. Squidly diddly is an infanticidal maniac and should be cooked and eaten, albeit sustainably, of course. So that's the argument, is that these squids deserve to be eaten because they would be eating themselves if not for this adaptation. So he also says, tell Josh not to eat uncooked squid. That is not great. All right. And in regards from Stephen in Kagoshima, Japan, a squid haven and a squid ink pasta destination. Stephen, that was a really great eye-opening email. I may have seen the light. I'm not sure yet. I'll have to get back to you. Okay. Okay.

Thank you for responding to that, Stephen. Sure. If you want to be like Stephen and get in touch with us and send us a potentially eye-opening email, you can do that. Send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.