You know, the Stratfordians change punctuation of 400-year-old documents in order to further their cause. This author can't be trusted. It's a book for those who want their myths propped up, not demolished. Nice going, Mr. Matus.

The review posted below by David Kathman succinctly summarizes the content of this scholarly polemic against the absurdities of the literary "Oxford Movement". I just wish to note that the 1999 paperback edition is a straight reprint of the 1994 hardbound. Therefore, while it addresses the orthodox Looney-Ogburn-Whalen school of anti-Stratfordianism, there is nothing about more recent mutations. Readers who want to keep up to date on the controversy should take a look at Professor Kathman's Shakespeare Authorship Web site, which discusses virtually all of the Oxfordian arguments and links to such interesting material as a complete edition of the Earl of Oxford's extant letters, which may prove disillusioning to those who cherish an image of the earl as a polymathic genius.

Even though it does not swat the very latest fantasies of Authorship Cultism, "Shakespeare, In Fact" is both entertaining and useful. Reading it will leave one better informed about not only the narrow question of who wrote Shakespeare but also the broader context of the Elizabethan stage and Renaissance literature.

Irvin Matus's Shakespeare, IN FACT

Reviewed by Thomas A. Pendleton

The Shakespeare Newsletter, Summer 1994

The authorship controversy -- which nowadays is tantamount to saying the Oxfordian hypothesis -- is not often seriously investigated by Shakespeare scholars. There are a number of reasons why, with sheer cowardice and fear of being found out and losing tenure relatively low on the list. Almost all Shakespeareans, I expect, are aware that claims for any rival author are based on assertions and inferences about Shakespeare's biography, his inadequate education, the absence of his manuscripts, the plays' erudition, aristocratic bias, knowledge of Italian geography, and so on; assertions and inferences that are untenable and have been shown to be untenable. Most libraries can supply the Shakespearean with some older, but very useful, treatments of the subject, notably Frank W. Wadsworth's graceful and cogent survey, The Poacher from Stratford, and Milward Martin's energetically argued Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?. And probably nearer to hand is Shakespeare's Lives, which reviews the controversy in a longish section called "Deviations." For most Shakespeareans most of the time, Schoenbaum sufficeth.

A number of other considerations militate against the Shakespearean's engaging the topic. Public debates and moot courts, favorite venues for proponents of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, are far more compatible to categorical pronouncements than to the laborious establishment of detail, context, and interpretation required to counter them, not to mention doing so with enough panache to win the approval of a non-specialist audience. Shakespeareans sometimes take the position that even to engage the Oxfordian hypothesis is to give it countenance it does not warrant. And, of course, any Shakespearean who reads a hundred pages on the authorship question inevitably realizes that nothing he can say or write will prevail with those persuaded to be persuaded otherwise.

Perhaps the mos! t daunting consideration for the scholar who intends to seriously examine this claim is the volume and nature of the research that will be demanded. To begin with, he must become completely familiar with the nearly 900 pages of Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare, the authorized version of Oxfordianism, and then proceed to test at least a wide sampling of random claims of other adherents. He will continually be faced with the prospect of dealing with gratuitous assertions as if they were serious scholarly conclusions, and the necessity of demonstrating such assertions to be incoherent in the appropriate context, or based on incomplete or selective evidence, or logically faulty, or some combination thereof. The research required will be extremely demanding, much of it in quite recondite areas where very few have boldly gone before. He probably ought also to curb his natural temptation to say snide things when refuting especially preposterous claims.

As remarkable as it sounds, Irvin Leigh Matus, in his Shakespeare, IN FACT (New York: Continuum, 1994), has managed to perform all of these tasks, even the last. (Well, he's pretty restrained, anyhow.) Matus notes with some sympathy "The great frustration of the Oxfordians... that academic Shakespeareans do not pay attention to their scholarship nor address their questions." He adds, "It is also their great fortune," which he then proceeds to demonstrate.

To the best of my knowledge, no previous Shakespeare scholar has engaged so much of what Oxfordians have presented as evidence for their positions, or has done so as thoroughly. Matus gives not just fair, but even patient, hearing; and in many instances where a less forbearing respondent might give a short answer, he explores and explains in further detail.

Among such instances is the claim that Ben Jonson's "Sweet swan of Avon" actually refers to the Earl, whose manor at Bilton was on the Avon river and presumably frequented by swans. It might be thought ! sufficient to observe that the phrase is a direct address in a poem directly addressed "To My Beloved Mr. William Shakespeare," and that the epithet's reference to Shakespeare is, quite superfluously, confirmed in the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher folio (of which, more later). Matus, however, performs the supererogatory work of tracking down the history of the Bilton estate. It eventuates that Oxford leased it out in 1574, sold it in 1581, and never regained possession. This particular sweet swan had flown off 42 years before Jonson's poem.

The orthodox claim that The Tempest relies on the Bermuda pamphlets of 1610 cannot be allowed by de Vere's proponents, whose man died in 1604. Other and earlier accounts have been proposed, notably the 1592 shipwreck, off Bermuda, of the Edward Bonaventure, a ship supposed to be connected with Oxford, perhaps even to be the vessel he commanded against the Armada. Matus gives the short answer -- consult Bullough's standard work on the sources for the parallels to William Strachey's 1610 letter on behalf of the Virginia Company -- but he also resurrects the history of the ship. He demonstrates that Oxford's only connection was to consider buying it in 1581, it fought in the Armada campaign under other command, and neither of the two supposed eye-witnesses described its wreck for the very good reason that neither was on board.

The engraving of the Stratford Monument in William Dugdale's 1656 Antiquities of Warwickshire is a favorite artifact for Oxfordians. The picture differs in a number of respects from the monument we know; notably, it lacks the quill and paper which the figure of Shakespeare now holds. Proceeding from this, it is supposed that these items were added when the monument was restored in 1748, probably to enhance its literary aura for the tourist trade; the cushion on which the figure now seems to write is accordingly assumed to originally have been a bag of grain, appropriate to Shakespeare's local reputation as a malt jobber. Pre! vious commentators have been content to cite the letter of Joseph Greene, the local schoolmaster and curate in 1748, to the effect that the restoration was committed only to preserving the original design; that a number of Dugdale's plates are similarly in error is also frequently stated. Matus cites Greene, and more importantly, he too denies Dugdale's reliability -- but not just at the level of assertion. He provides a couple of comparable examples of Dugdale's inaccuracy -- the Clopton and Carew tombs in Holy Trinity Church -- and clinches his argument with the instance of the effigy on the Beauchamp tomb in Warwick. As with the Stratford Monument, here we have existing statuary inaccurately portrayed in the Antiquities, we have the record of an intervening restoration begun in 1674, and, in greater detail, we have records of the restoration that seem to insist that no alterations were introduced. We also know who planned and supervised the restoration: none other than William Dugdale.

Shakespeare, IN FACT is continually generous in treating such claims with a respect appropriate to far more firmly based conclusions by providing abundant materials to refute them. It also strikes me as remarkable restraint, perhaps even mansuetude, that the book never mentions any of the most hirsute of Oxfordian suppositions: that the Earl of Southampton was the illegitimate son of Vere and Queen Elizabeth, for instance; or that Ben Jonson murdered Shakespeare.