Debunking Common Myths and Misconceptions about William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is a legend in our culture. His plays are more often performed than those of any other playwright and his works have become defining hallmarks of English literature. Most students were required to read at least a few of them in high school and many of us lovers of literature have gone on to read many more of them. Shakespeare has a pop culture presence unlike that of any other writer; his image is instantly recognizable and he continues to appear in books, films, television, and even modern theatrical productions. Unfortunately, many of the things we think we “know” about William Shakespeare are wrong.

Misconception #1: Shakespeare invented hundreds of common words that we use today.

This misconception arises from the fact that the first complete published edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1933, the first dictionary to list the first known usages of many words, credited the earliest use of many common words to Shakespeare. The problem is that, for all their efforts, the authors of the Oxford English Dictionary tended to attribute the first known usages of words to texts that were already well-known and widely available, while ignoring lesser-known texts that were difficult to access. Since Shakespeare was so famous and his works were so plentiful, he tended to be erroneously credited with the first known usage of a large number of words and phrases that he did not really invent at all; in other words, the only reason why Shakespeare was credited with the invention of so many words was just because he was already famous.

Research conducted since the advent of computers and electronic databases has found that the scale of Shakespeare’s allegedly “massive” vocabulary has, in fact, been egregiously exaggerated. His usage of unique words per given area of text is actually about the same as those of other playwrights from the same time period. In fact, some playwrights, including Robert Greene and George Peele, who are virtually unknown today, actually have much broader vocabularies than Shakespeare.

The allegedly massive size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary, however, was never what made his plays great; his plays are great because of the way he uses the vocabulary he does have. The number of new words invented by an author has no correlative relationship to the quality of his or her writing. In fact, using large numbers of neologisms and obscure words can actually be detrimental to the author’s writing quality simply because, when a writer makes up too many words or uses too many words his or her audience does not understand, the audience will have no idea what he or she is trying to express. While many people, especially students, today may feel as though Shakespeare’s language is impossible to comprehend, he was actually writing in the common vernacular of his era and the reason why he poses such difficulties to modern readers is simply because his language is so archaic, not because he was using intentionally difficult words.

Misconception #2. Shakespeare was uneducated.

People often assume that, just because he did not attend Cambridge like Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare must have been uneducated. This is not an accurate assumption. William Shakespeare would have attended the grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he would have, of course, been taught the rules of grammar and how to read and write, but he also would have studied Latin, rhetoric, and classical literature.

ABOVE: Guide hall and chapel of the King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon, which William Shakespeare almost certainly attended

In addition to this education, Shakespeare is known to have also conducted research on his own for his plays. Many of his history plays set in ancient Greece and Rome, for instance, rely heavily on Thomas North’s 1579 English translation of the Parallel Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans, written in the early second century AD by the ancient Greek biographer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (c. 46–c. 120 AD). Similarly, his history plays set in England often rely heavily on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a two-volume history of the British isles written by Raphael Holinshed, Reginald Wolfe, and William Harrison, the first volume of which was published in 1577 and the second in 1587. Shakespeare may not have been one of the “University Wits,” but he was certainly no illiterate bumpkin either.

Misconception #3: Shakespeare was widely recognized within his own lifetime as the greatest poet of all time.

During his lifetime, William Shakespeare was widely regarded as a great playwright and he was highly financially successful, but he was not seen as the greatest playwright of all time. Instead, he was merely seen as one of many great playwrights of his day. Other playwrights from around the same time who were more-or-less equally well-regarded include: John Fletcher, Robert Greene, Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Lodge, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and dozens of others, most of whom are now forgotten.

Ironically, during his own lifetime, Shakespeare was less famous for his plays and more famous for his poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, which were, by far, his most popular works. In fact, Venus and Adonis sold six editions from the time of its publication until Shakespeare’s death, more editions than any of his other writings. In 1605, Richard Barnfield declared that Venus and Adonis had written Shakespeare’s name “in fames imortall Booke.” Modern reviewers have generally rated it poorly; the novelist Samuel Butler (1835–1902) complained that he had tried to read it, but could not finish it because it was too boring and C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) described an attempted reading of it as “suffocating.”

ABOVE: First page of the first quarto edition of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, which was his most popular work while he was alive

After Shakespeare died, his friends published the First Folio, the first collection to include almost all of Shakespeare’s plays. Although some of these plays had been previously published, many of them had not, and the ones that had appeared mostly in corrupt versions. In the introduction to the First Folio, Ben Jonson famously called Shakespeare “not of an age, but for all time.”

Throughout the seventeenth century, however, Shakespeare was regarded as inferior to Ben Jonson and John Fletcher, who were seen as true masters of the theater; whereas Shakespeare was seen as merely an imitator. The prevailing opinion was summed up by Thomas Rymer, who deplored Shakespeare for having inappropriately blended comedy and tragedy.

A shift began to occur in the late 1600s, however; the revered playwright John Dryden ranked Shakespeare more highly than Ben Jonson, commenting that he merely admired Jonson, but that he loved Shakespeare. Other major literary masters began to champion Shakespeare as well. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Shakespeare began to be seen as the “national poet” of England in the same way that Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) was already revered as the national poet of Italy and that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) would later become the national poets of Germany and France respectively.

ABOVE: The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (left) and the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (right) were long considered “national poets” on par with Shakespeare, but, with the rise of British nationalism in the late 1800s and early 1900s, English-speakers began to elevate Shakespeare above all other national poets as the greatest poet of all time.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, a surge in Anglo-American nationalism occurred, primarily triggered by the British Empire’s conquest of the globe and the United States’ expansion all the way westward to the coast of the Pacific. English-speakers began to elevate Shakespeare above the national poets of all other nations. No longer just the national poet of England, Shakespeare became seen much as he is today—as the greatest poet of all time. His reputation finally came to surpass those of even the classical poets Homer and Virgil, who had occupied a special, supremely exalted status above mere national poets for hundreds of years.

Ultimately, the only reason why we think of Shakespeare as “the greatest” playwright is not because of he is objectively better than all the others, but rather because all of his competitors have been forgotten and because he provided a convenient literary mascot for English-speakers to lift up as a symbol of British-American glory. Make no mistake about what I am saying; Shakespeare was undeniably a brilliant poet and an outstanding writer. He was a genius whose works rightfully deserve to be read and studied for generations hence. Nonetheless, when it comes to this notion of him being the absolute “greatest poet of all time,” it becomes clear that his reputation owes more to his nationality than to the objective quality of his writing.

Misconception #4: Shakespeare portrays courtly life with remarkable accuracy.

The Shakespeare authorship conspiracy theorists love claiming that Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate knowledge of courtly life that a commoner like Shakespeare could not have possibly had. The problem is that this is just downright wrong; Shakespeare’s portrayals of courtly life are, in fact, wildly inaccurate. John Dryden (who, unlike Shakespeare, was a member of the gentry) criticized Shakespeare for his egregiously inaccurate portrayals of the nobility, complaining that the nobles in his plays act like commoners.

Misconception #5: We know almost nothing about Shakespeare.

While it is true that we do not know everything about Shakespeare and there is a lot of important information about his life that we do not know, we actually do know quite a bit, and there are plenty of other historical figures about whom we know far less. The widespread assumption that we know almost nothing about Shakespeare is probably fueled by over a century of over-the-top exaggerations by authors like Mark Twain, who famously quipped that Shakespeare was like the brontosaurus in the Museum of Natural History because “We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster of paris.”

The main reason why people often assume that we know almost nothing about Shakespeare, however, is probably because the information we do have is not the kind of information that most people wish we had. We know where Shakespeare was born and approximately when, basic facts about his wedding and marriage, how many children he had, his children’s names, odd tidbits about his career as a playwright and actor, and when and where he died, but we know very little about what he was like as a person.

We know virtually nothing about Shakespeare’s personality. We know nothing at all about his personal political or religious beliefs. We do not know his hobbies, his odd quirks and mannerisms, or his favorites of his own works. We do not know what it would be like to sit down and have a conversation with him. Naturally, this lack of information is what leads people to make generalized overstatements about the amount of information we lack. The problem, though, is that we do not have this kind of information about nearly any historical figure who lived prior to the eighteenth century. No one really knows what it would be like to sit down and talk to Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar either, so it is hardly surprising that we lack this kind of information about Shakespeare, who was, after all, seen in his own lifetime as just another playwright.

Misconception #7: Shakespeare’s plays were secretly written by someone else.

Virtually all scholars unanimously agree that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were really written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon and there is strong evidence to believe that the historians are correct. Nonetheless, this has not stopped conspiracy theorists from claiming otherwise.

The conspiracy theorists have all kinds of excuses for why Shakespeare could not have written the plays. The most common ones are that he was uneducated and that his plays display a “remarkably accurate” portrayal of aristocratic life. As we have already seen, both of these are wrong. Shakespeare was educated (He went to grammar school.) and his plays do not display any knowledge about aristocratic life that an attentive commoner could not have known.

The proponents of the Shakespearean authorship question also claim that there are no references to Shakespeare as a playwright from within his lifetime, which is, once again, downright wrong. We have dozens of references to Shakespeare as a playwright, including ones from fellow playwrights, such as Ben Jonson, who would have known him well.

Furthermore, all of the alternative candidates are rather pitiful. The original alternative candidate, first suggested in the mid-1800s by Delia Bacon, was Francis Bacon (who, despite having the same last name, was unrelated to her). Bacon was not a poet or a playwright and the only evidence anyone ever found linking him to Shakespeare were supposed “coded messages” hidden in Shakespeare’s plays–all of which are so tenuous that they hold essentially no credibility whatsoever.

ABOVE: Portrait of Francis Bacon

For example, in 1910, Edwin Durning-Lawrence, a prominent Baconian, claimed that honorificabilitudinitatibus, a nonsense word spoken by a clown in Love’s Labors Lost, was actually an anagram for “Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi,” which is Latin for “These plays F. Bacon’s offspring are preserved for the world.” He completely ignored the fact that this word was not invented by Shakespeare and had been in use since the time of Petrus Grammaticus in the eighth century A.D. He also ignored the countless other anagrams with similar qualities that can also be made from this word, including, for instance, the mocking alternative devised by Stephen Hugh-Jones: “If I built it in, is author ID Bacon?”

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford seemed like a much stronger candidate at first, largely because, unlike Bacon, he was actually a poet (gasp!) and certain events in Shakespeare’s plays vaguely resembled incidents from de Vere’s life. After this point, however, the Oxfordian argument falls apart. de Vere wrote poetry, but it is generally poor and mediocre at its best. Furthermore, the vague biographical resemblances between de Vere and Shakespeare’s characters are easily dismissed as merely coincidental, especially given the broad range of different characters appearing in Shakespeare’s extant plays. Also, more obvious parallels can be drawn between Shakespeare’s characters and Shakespeare himself; for instance, Shakespeare’s son was named “Hamnet.”

ABOVE: Portrait of Edward de Vere

An even bigger problem with de Vere is the fact that he died in 1604, but Shakespeare continued writing plays until the mid-1610s. The plays Shakespeare wrote after de Vere’s death are not insignificant ones either; they include, for instance: King Lear (c. 1605-1606), Macbeth (c. 1606), Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606), and The Tempest (c. 1610-1612). The Oxfordians have therefore asserted that de Vere must have actually written these plays before his death, but that, for some reason, they were not performed until long after. Once again, not very convincing.

A more popular candidate these days is Christopher Marlowe, who, unlike both Bacon and de Vere, was actually a famous playwright, who was almost exactly the same age as Shakespeare and is believed to have tremendously influenced Shakespeare. The most obvious problem with Marlowe is the fact that he died in 1593, when Shakespeare’s career had barely even started. The Marlovians, therefore, have resorted to invented complex and often highly imaginative conspiracy theories claiming that Marlowe secretly faked his death and invented Shakespeare as a cover identity.

ABOVE: Portrait of Christopher Marlowe

Over the years, the authorship theorists have proposed even more bizarre and outlandish candidates, including Queen Elizabeth I (who died in 1603), Edmund Spenser (who died in 1599), Daniel Defoe (who was not even born until 1660, nearly fifty years after Shakespeare’s death), and an Arab sheik named Zubayr bin William (for whom there is absolutely no evidence that he even existed). Apparently some people are willing to believe that the plays were written by literally anyone except for the man under whose name they were actually published.