Does the first collection of William Shakespeare’s plays provide evidence that he didn’t write them?

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he lodestar of bibliographic evidence for the authorship of William Shakespeare’s literary works is the first collected edition of his plays, published in 1623. The 900-page book is commonly known as the First Folio. It was an expensive project. Scholars estimate that it cost approximately £250 to produce some 750 copies of the book, an astronomical sum in an age in which a schoolmaster might expect to earn £20 a year.

Scholars also estimate that it took the printer more than a year and a half to complete the project. Indeed, the high printing costs and lengthy production cycle contradict the traditional view that the First Folio was a profit-driven scheme organized by a syndicate of wealthy London merchants.

Rather than a commercial endeavor, the First Folio was brought out under the aegis of its two dedicatees, the “Incomparable Paire of Brethren”: William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke, and his brother Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery (later 4th earl of Pembroke). The Herberts were among the wealthiest families in Jacobean England.

The Folio’s title page is followed by eleven pages of trib­utes to the author, including a dedication letter, a title page with an engraving, a letter to the reader, a table of contents, accolades from fellow playwright Ben Jonson and other contemporaries, a list of actors and a catalogue of the plays. In his Folio elegy, Jonson calls Shakespeare “Sweet Swan of Avon!”; a few pages after that comes Leonard Digges’s tribute mentioning Shake­speare’s “Stratford Moniment.” This, in total, is orthodoxy’s main proof that William Shakspere, who was baptized in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564 and died there in 1616, was the same person as the great author, William Shakespeare.

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However, the phrasing by Jonson seems deliberately ambiguous, as Avon was the name of four rivers but also the old name for Hampton Court, where theatrical performances were given for Queen Elizabeth, King James, and their courts. It was called “Avon” as a shortening of the Celtic Roman name of “Avondunum,” meaning a fortified place (dunum) by a river (avon), which over time was corrupted by common usage and became known as Hampton.

Moreover, those who went to Stratford-on-Avon to see the Shakespeare monument did not see a monument to a writer but rather one to a wool dealer. We know this from Sir William Dugdale’s sketch circa 1634, which shows an effigy of a man holding a woolsack, not today’s effigy, which holds a pen and paper on a cushion. The effigy’s face was fully bearded with a drooping mustache in Dugdale’s sketch, whereas today’s effigy sports a goatee and upturned mustache. Neither face resembles the portrait in the First Folio. Despite the level of care that went into the First Folio, what is compelling is the utter absence of information that would be essential for a publishing event of this magnitude: a biography of the author, composition dates of the plays, and an illustration of the author that offers a lifelike rendering of the subject.

Martin Droeshout’s portrait engraving of Shakespeare is a true enigma. In 1623, William Shakspere had been dead for seven years — what was Droeshout’s image based on? Droeshout was 15 when Shakespeare died and 22 when he did the engraving. The image has no light source, as everything is evenly lit; this and its unusually large size help draw the viewer’s attention to the two lines shown at the neck. The dark line is not anatomical, and along with the wooden face and strange, uneven hair, the overall impression is that the sitter is wearing a mask, i.e., that “William Shakespeare” is someone’s cover name.

The doublet in the engraving displays numerous peculiarities. The sitter’s right shoulder-wing is smaller than the left shoulder-wing; they should be roughly the same size, or at least balanced pictorially. The right front panel of the doublet is clearly smaller than the left front panel. Most significantly, the embroidery on the right shoulder-wing does not match that on the left.

The sitter’s garment appears to show a left front and a left back — a true sartorial anomaly. The right half of the front of the doublet is not the mirror image of the left half even when perspective is taken into account. The embroidery on the right sleeve indicates that it is the back of the left sleeve, where it would be correctly placed. Clearly, this is not a normal garment.

In addition to these anomalies, it’s noteworthy what Droeshout’s engraving doesn’t contain: the author’s coats of arms granted in 1596 by the Garter King of Arms, or any indicia of writing, such as a book, pen, or paper.

Equally discordant is that the Folio contains only the plays. Shakespeare’s long poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, originally published during the 1590s, were popu­lar during his lifetime. Yet neither was included or even mentioned in any of the prefatory materials. Nor was reference made to Shake-speare’s Sonnets, published in 1609.

The ded­ication letter and a letter to the reader bear the names of actors John Heminges and Henry Condell but, since the 18th century, schol­ars have accepted Ben Jonson’s authorship of both. The dedication letter contains language and images from the classical writers Pliny and Horace, yet Heminges and Condell were neither scholars nor writers. In fact, Condell became a grocer after his stage career. Jonson, however, was well versed in the classics and known as “English Horace” by his contemporaries.

Many phrases in the actors’ letter to the reader echo phrases that Jon­son wrote before and after publication of the Folio, as noted long ago by Edmund Malone.

departed from that right (Heminges and Condell, 1623)

departed with my right (Jonson, Cataline, 1611)

departed with his right (Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, 1614)

My right I have departed with (Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass, 1616)

Judge your six-pen’orth, your shillings worth, your five shillings worth at a time, or higher (Heminges and Condell, 1623)

judge his six pen’worth, his twelve-pen’worth, so to his eigh­teen-pence, two
shillings, half a crown (Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, 1614)

arraign Plays daily (Heminges and Condell, 1623)

arraign plays daily (Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, 1614)

There you are number’d. We had rather you were weigh’d. (Heminges and Condell, 1623)

Suffrages in Parliament are numbered, not weigh’d (Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries, 1641)

how odd soever your brains be, or your wisdoms, make your license the same (Heminges and Condell, 1623)

how odd soever men’s brains, or wisdoms are, their power is always even, and the same (Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries, 1641)

to him that can but spell (Heminges and Condell, 1623)

if thou canst but spell (Jonson, The New Inn, or the Light Heart, 1628)

Besides the Jonsonian echoes, the letters did not reflect well on Heminges and Condell. The dedication letter opens with the actors saying they “are fall’n upon the ill fortune” of the “enterprise” (i.e., the Folio), calling Shakespeare’s plays “trifles” three times, thereby giving the impression that they were two fools unable to discern great literature. Moreover, in their letter to the reader, the actors urge him to buy the book, as if they were desperate to recoup their investment. This contradicts the dedication letter, in which the actors say they published the Folio “without ambition” of “self-profit.” The obvious falsehood that Heminges and Condell wrote these two letters taints the entire preface, calling into question everything it contains.

Jonson’s Folio elegy also seems to chastise the actors’ dedication letter. Shakespeare is “Above th’ill fortune of them,” writes Jonson, in a direct reference to the actors’ “ill fortune” of the Folio enterprise. Jon­son says that “Ignorance,” “blind affection,” and “crafty malice” are not the way to praise Shakespeare, apparently referring to the two actors.

In their dedication letter, Heminges and Condell ask the Folio’s dedicatees—the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery—to be forgiven for the faults contained in the book. This implies that Heminges and Condell edited the plays, but no evidence has ever been offered to support the claim. In addition, the two actors maintain in their dedication letter that Shakespeare received “so much favor” from the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery while alive, and that he was their “servant.” Yet there is no historical evidence for either statement.

Visual evidence also calls into question the identity of the presumed author of Shakespeare’s works, such as the appearance of calgreyhounds on two different pages in the prefatory materials. Calgreyhounds were heraldic symbols that were used only by the earls of Oxford. The emblem also appears on the title page of The Tempest and at the prologue page of 2 Henry IV.

There are other contradictions inherent in the Folio production. For example, in the title to his elegy, Ben Jonson addresses Shakespeare as “my beloved.” Yet if William Shakspere of Stratford was truly the great author, why didn’t Jonson pen a tribute to him in 1616 when William Shakspere died? Jonson had the perfect opportunity to do so in his own collected works in 1616, but instead he allowed seven years to pass.

Add to these lacunae other internal contradictions: The Folio’s title page credits Edward Blount as its printer — this, too, is incor­rect, for the book was printed by William Jaggard and his son, Isaac. Blount was the Folio’s publisher.

The First Folio project took 20 months to complete, starting in February 1622 and ending in November 1623. It was an authorized collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, based on underlying copies of the highest authority and prepared over many years with patient care involving numerous interlocutors. The overall design was ambitious, the decision to begin printing calculated, and the final assembling of plays prolonged.

Of the estimated 750 printed copies of the First Folio, 233 are known to survive, 82 of which are held by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. As we celebrate the quadricentennial of Shakespeare’s First Folio, let us recognize that the book provides extensive bibliographic evidence that the man from Stratford, William Shakspere, may not have been its author.