Shakespeare and Me: The Man or the Myth?

The Syndicate

Having examined several key candidates, for what anti-Stratfordians would term the 'true' author of Shakespeare's plays, there has been one common issue with the credibility of each - the dates. Many theories submit candidates that are too young or that die long before the final plays were written making it impossible for them to have written all of the collected plays. In answer to this problem, theorists including Delia Bacon (see earlier chapters) and Gilbert Slater make the submission that rather than one sole, very talented, writer, the author (or should I say authors) of the plays were a collaboration of literary talents of the period. Bacon, Marlowe, Rutland, Mary and Sir Philip Sydney, Edward de Vere, Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh have all been put forward as members of this elite 'syndicate' each of whom purportedly contributed to the body of literature in the First Folio. This suggestion answers a question that many people raise when considering the Shakespeare authorship question: How could one man produce influential and successful work in such a quantity and of such quality?

Once again, there is little evidence to support this theory and one cannot help but wonder how such a talented and famous group of Elizabethan nobles and writers kept their literary associations under wraps, away from the prying public eye. Surely researchers have found letters and correspondence between the members of the group, evidencing the extent and nature of their collaboration? There is nothing to suggest these people knew one another, let alone wrote under one alias! What's more, as discussed previously, their is not evidence to tell us that members such as Bacon and Rutland, were capable of writing plays.

However, this idea has more of a basis than first meets the eye. There is widely accepted evidence that Shakespeare did not act alone in at least five of his plays, collaborating and altering the work of others. Since 1687 it has been widely known, and thus accepted, that the play 'Titus Andronicus' was written by "a private hand" other than that of Shakespeare, leaving the bard only to add some of his own touches and lending his name to it's authorship. Along with this, it has been alleged by  historians that 'The Taming of the Shrew' was merely a variation on a play written several years before entitled "The Taming of a Shrew", leaving Shakespeare only to add the induction scenes, which lead into the play, and the scenes between, the two protagonists, Katherina and Petruchio.  It has further been argued that the play 'Pericles' is not Shakespeare's as it did not feature in the first folio, which would suggest that Heminges and Condell did not believe it to be by his hand, however, the latter part of the play is allegedly his.

'Henry VIII', is accepted entirely as a collaboration between William Shakespeare and John Fletcher (pictured below), who succeeded the bard as the principle writer of Shakespeare's theatre company, the King's Men. Perhaps Shakespeare made a visit to London to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth, and assisted Fletcher while he was there? This collaboration was not pointed out until the mid-19th century where the expert on Francis Bacon, James Spedding, began to draw out several stylistic similarities between Henry VIII and the work of John Fletcher. This comparison of distinctive style was followed up much later in the 1960's where Cyrus Hoy, examined the play stylometrically against the work of Fletcher. By dividing the play between Fletcher and Shakespeare based on their different, idiosyncratic word choices. Hoy found that the play was written by two separate hands where Fletcher as one would use 'em' for Shakespeare's 'them' and 'ye' for Shakespeare's 'you'. This was supported by Speddings previous studies which were based on the variation between the common usage of eleven syllable lines in some areas of the play. This assertion of collaboration is widely accepted as the truth, though that is not to say that everybody agrees with it!

One point that should be considered is something that is common when staging any production, particularly when working with a new script. Running his own company and writing the new material for them to perform, meant that Shakespeare really had the opportunity to develop and alter his work as he went along, altering scenes, keeping what entertained the audience and worked whilst removing what did not. This also meant that there was room for contribution from his fellow performers. Many Shakespearean scholars accept that there is one collective group of collaborators which certainly influence the plays: the players in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men. From adding jokes and comical lines to expanding and exploring the dialogue of character's it is unavoidable that many alterations and developments would have been made upon the original scripts written by Shakespeare, during the course of rehearsals and performance. One play in particular that benefitted from this expansion was 'Macbeth' (or to those devotees of the theatre who fear the theatrical superstitions: 'The Scottish Play"). Originally written for shorter performances at the royal court, the play is said to have been largely developed, lengthened and padded out for public performance so particular influence would have been present by those who performed it. So, there is no doubt that Shakespeare had collaborators in one form or another which leads us to understand why some theorists believe the 'syndicate theory', in spite of the lack of evidence. The fact that Shakespeare did not write alone in small proportion of the plays does not diminish the sheer genius that embodies the whole collection, the rest of which are of his own devising and sole authorship.

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