Загадка личности и творчества Уильяма Шекспира.
статья по английскому языку (11 класс)

                              The mystery of personality and creativity of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is a great English poet and playwright. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. At 18 he married Anne Hathaway who presented him with three children: a daughter, Suzanne, and twins, Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare’s career began between 1585 and 1592 when he moved to London. Soon he became a successful actor and playwright as well as a co-owner of a theater company called “The servants of the King”. At the age of 49 he returned to Stratford and died 3 years later.

Shakespeare is the greatest English writer and one of the best playwright in the world. Nature has awarded the great poet not only a poetic gift. He had an exceptional memory and a brilliant mind. He understood history, was interested in politics, was seriously interested in painting and music, mastered a whole layer of botany. He perfectly knew French, Italian and Spanish. In addition, he understood their dialects. How is this possible is unknown because Shakespeare never left the borders of his homeland-England.

Today this is all that we know about him, but now let us try to understand the facts and theories, come closer to the truth, to the secret of Shakespeare’s personality.

Doubts first arose at the end of the XVlll century. Since then, many hypotheses have been born that attribute the authorship of Shakespeare’s works to someone else.  Let us look at the six most long-lived versions of the one who could write for Shakespeare.

№1 Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a philosopher, writer, statesman

The daughter of a collapsed settler from the US state of Connecticut Delia Bacon (1811-1859) came to England and in 1857 published the book “The Genuine Philosophy of Shakespeare’s Play” which said that William Shakespeare was just an illiterate actor and a greedy businessman, and plays and poems under his name were composed by a group of “noble thinkers and poets” led by Bacon. However, Delia Bacon did not provide any evidence in favor of her hypothesis: she believed that evidence lay either in the tomb of Francis Bacon or in the tomb of Shakespeare. Baconians are sure that their hero wrote plays under the mask of Shakespeare not for the sake of public success, and such works as “Romeo and Julet”, ”Hamlet”, “King Lear”, “The Twelfth Night” and “The Tempest” served as a cover for some secret knowledge.

N2. Edward de Vere (1550-1604), the 17th Earl of Oxford, a court, poet, playwright, patron of the arts and sciences.

A simple English teacher, Thomas Louni (1870-1944), considered himself a descendent of the Derby counts. He did not believe that “A Venetian Merchant” could be written by an ignoble man who had never been to Italy. Louni discovered that Shakespeare’s poem “Venus and Adonis” (1593) was written in the same stanza as Edward de Vera’s poem “Women’s Variability” (1587).

De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, boasted of the antiquity of the clan and good acquaintance with Italy, was known to contemporaries not only as a poet, but also as an author of comedies. In 1920, Louny published the book “The identified Shakespeare” which found many admirers, although the death of the count- 1604- cuts a number of later plays from the Shakespearean canon.

N3.Roger Manners (1576-1612), the 5th Earl of Rutland, a courtier, patron of arts.

A Belgian socialist politician, teacher of French literature and symbolist writer Celestin Dumblen  (1859-1924) in 1908 found a document in the family archive from which it followed that in 1613 the  butler of Francis Manners , the 6th Earl of Rutland, paid a large sum to Mr. Shakespeare “ and his fellow actor Richard Burbage”, who drew an ingenious emblem on the Count’s shield so that Manners would worthily appear in a joust.

This discovery alerted Dumblen: he noticed that Francis’s elder brother, Roger Manners, the 5th Earl of Rutland, died in 1612- almost the same time that Shakespeare stopped writing plays. Also Roger Manners was on friendly terms with other aristocrats, to whom Shakespeare devoted some works. Also, Manners travelled to countries described in many plays of Shakespeare –France, Italy, Denmark. In 1913, Dumblen summarized these and other considerations in the book “Lord Rutland is Shakespeare”.

N4. William Stanley (1561-1642), the 6th Earl of Derby, a playwright, statesman.

The historian of French literature Abel Lefranc (1863-1952) decided to make William Stanley a

Candidate for “real Shakespeare”. In 1918, Lefranc published a book “Under the mask of William Shakespeare”, in which he recognized Derby as a much more suitable candidate for Shakespeare than the previous candidates, if only because the initials of the graph coincide with Shakespeare’s.

In addition, in private letters he subscribed in the same way as the lyric hero of the 135th sonnet, Will, not Wm or Willm, as Stratford Shakespeare himself did on the  preserved documents.  Also, Derby was an experienced traveler, in particular, closely acquainted with the Navarre courtyard. But despite everything, this version is not as popular as the Oxford version.

N5. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a playwright, poet.

The shoemaker’s son, Christopher Marlowe, turned out to be almost the only candidate for Shakespeare of not noble origin. He was born in the same year as Shakespeare and managed to finish Cambridge thanks to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Kelvin Hoffman (1906- 1986), an American advertising agent poet and playwright, declared the complete similarity of the styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare. However, a certain layer of explicit parallels testified to a well-known fact: young Shakespeare was inspired by the tragedies of Marlowe, having learned a lot from him.

In 1956, Hoffman obtained permission to open the Ualsingham crypt, where he hoped to find the manuscript of Marlowe-Shakespeare, but found only sand. However, since Hoffman was forbidden to touch the tombs that lay under the floor, he said that his hypothesis, although not proven, was not completely refuted.

№6 William Shakespeare is not one person, but a group of authors.

In 1923 the employee of the British administration in India, H.T.S. Forrest, published a book entitled “The Five Authors of Shakespeare’s Sonnets”, in which he spoke about a poetic tournament organized by Count Southampton. Five major authors competed for the award announced in the composition of sonnets: Samuel Daniel, Barnaby Barnes, William Warner, John Donn and William Shakespeare. Forrest believed that all five were authors  of sonnets who have  since been attributed to Shakespeare alone.

In 1931 Gilbert Slater, an economist  and historian, published the book “Seven Shakespeares”, in which he joined the names of almost all of the applicants most popular among anti-Shakespearians. According to his version, Francis Bacon, Count of Oxford, Rutland and Derby, Christopher Marlowe, as well as Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary, Countess of Pembroke participated in the composition  of the works of Shakespeare.

In 1952 the British lieutenant colonel Montague Douglas,  the author of the book “Lord Oxford and the Shakespeare Group”, proposed a theory according to which Queen Elizabeth entrusted Count Oxford with the release of patriotic pamphlets and plays. Earl executed the assignment, collecting under the name of Shakespeare a whole syndicate of authors, among which were nobles-Francis Bacon, Earl Derby- and famous playwrights as Marlowe, John Lily and Robert Green. However, the version of Lieutenant Colonel Douglas is not very convincing, if the historical chronicles of Shakespeare can still be considered suitable for the patriotic education of his subject, then why the propaganda department needed Romeo and Jullet, not to mention Hamlet and Othello, is unclear.

This man gave the world a lot and left almost nothing about himself. We can stick to any of the theories, but one thing is always the same- Shakespeare’s plays are a legacy that a person can be proud of. They gave the ground for development of such arts as music, ballet, theatre, and enriched the English language.

The creations of this brilliant author are popular in our days, translated into all major languages and put more often than works of other playwrights.

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is very difficult to define the exact person who would have been Shakespeare. I liked the version №1 connected with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford who had some identity with Shakespeare in writing poems but he died rather early. Then I came around to the thought that Roger Manners could have been William Shakespeare as he died in 1612 almost at the same time that Shakespeare stopped writing plays. Also, Manners travelled to countries described in many plays of Shakespeare- Denmark, Italy, France. Roger Manners was on friendly terms with other aristocrats to whom Shakespeare devoted some works. I think, that Roger Manners is a good candidate to be William Shakespeare.