Psychiatrist Richard Waugaman ’70 Is Examining Shakespeare’s Multiple Personalities

I hope everyone interested in this debate will pre-order Elizabeth Winkler’s forthcoming book on this topic, to be published by Simon & Schuster, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies.

Some of you may remember the unexpected Shakespearean humor of Kaiser Wilhelm II. When the British royals changed their last name, which was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha from Prince Albert, to Windsor to de-Germanize themselves, the Kaiser said he looked forward to reading The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The debate about Shakespeare’s authorship had a great British moment in November 1988 which adds some flavor to your most interesting piece. Excerpting from a chapter in a coming memoir:

Imagine the pomp and ceremony of three gowned and bewigged British High Court Judges (the equivalent to U.S. Supreme Court Justices) taking their seats on a raised dais in the historic Inns of Court, where in 1594 and 1602, Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night had been performed. They were there to listen for a full day of arguments from four of Britain’s top barristers and to rule in a mock trial to determine if William Shakespeare or Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the real author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare.

The arguments were stunning, filled with historical knowledge and legal cunning, the product of four of the best legal minds in England, enjoying themselves as they could only do on the odd occasion in court.

Sir Sydney Kentridge, a close friend and outstanding jurist, had invited me to sit among nearly 300 scholars, academics, and literature buffs for whom this was a very rare treat. It was indeed and happily raised more than 27,000 pounds as a benefit for the Globe Theater, in which American actor Sam Wannamaker was the moving force, and I was privileged to be a director. The Globe was scheduled to open in London in 1992. It did and has thrived ever since.

Over the midday lunch, Sir Sydney laughingly told us how lucky he was that when the four barristers had pulled straws to see which side they would be on, he had gotten Shakespeare. A life-long Shakespeare lover, he had still spent more than two full days preparing his case, but he acknowledged with his impish smile, “If I always had clients this likely to win, life would indeed be easy.”

The judges ruled in favor of the Bard and The New York Times agreed with the law Lords, headlining its story, “Bard on Trial Again, And Again He Wins.”

As a faculty member in the Humanities Department at Lesley University and chairperson of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Oxfordian of the Year Selection Committee, I truly appreciate the recognition of Dr. Waugaman’s achievements by your publication. Rick is immensely modest and has done so much to advance our understanding of who Shakespeare was and how we relate to the author and his works. Bravo to the writer Michael Blanding for crafting a piece that tells his story with facts and flair!

As a Shakespeare scholar and dramaturg, I am always dismayed by the elitist and uninformed arguments of the “Anti-Stratfordians,” all of which are basically just conspiracy theories. Yet the temptation to tackle the authorship question has proved irresistible for many nonacademics, including Supreme Court justices.

In November 1987, a mock trial to consider the Shakespeare authorship question took place at American University in Washington, D.C., with justices John Paul Stevens, Harry Blackmun, and William J. Brennan Jr. presiding. I was privileged to serve as Justice Brennan’s “clerk” — I had met him during the 1986-87 term when my husband, Mark Haddad, was one of his law clerks. Justice Brennan knew that I was working at the Folger Shakespeare Library while I finished my Ph.D. dissertation in Renaissance Studies for Yale University, so when he agreed to serve on the trial, he asked me for assistance with preparation.

I provided copies of the most influential writings on both sides of the debate and, about a week later, sat down with him to discuss the materials. I had anticipated that our conversation might take a while, but in fact, after greeting me warmly, Justice Brennan got straight to the point. “Miranda,” he said, “I never like to judge a case before hearing oral argument, but I have to say, I don’t think these Oxfordians have a leg to stand on.” 

The verdict was unanimous. All three justices ruled in favor of William Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, as the author of the plays.

Any time I see a fair piece such as this, being open to questioning and listening and exploring, it gladdens my heart.  So often I see the Shakespeare authorship debate being treated as a conspiracy or something untouchable.  I have been an Oxfordian myself (someone who considers that one the basis of the evidence available, Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford is the person who wrote under the name “William Shakespeare”).  Being on this journey of discovery has been absolutely extraordinary.  We all have some much to learn from Shakespeare and all I can say is that my understanding has been deepened by looking at the plays and poems through the lens of what was actually happening in the 16th century.

Richard Waugaman treats possibly some of the most important aspects of this debate — the psychological ones, both as they apply to ourselves and to the author, whoever he or she was!

From Rick Hoffenberg ’94’s letter: “such claims that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays smack of an ugly elitism denying the possibility that ordinary people can be geniuses." 

Well said.

As an avid fan of the Bard and a reader of all the popular literature about him (but not the academic works), I wholeheartedly agree with this opinion.

I once read that all of those who feel that Stratford Shakespeare was not the true author have in common that they are intellectual snobs. Not my words, someone else’s, but it has stayed with me.

People of intellect and education have a difficult time accepting that there could be someone of such intellect and creativity, but lacking higher education, able to accomplish so much.

In response to the question of why authorship matters:

1.) Giving credit where credit is due. Especially when it’s an accomplishment such as the works of Shakespeare, though “the players are all dead,” the one actually responsible should be lauded. If I accidentally and incorrectly give one student a final grade of A and another with a similar name the first student's D+, is the attitude going to be, “Well, it's the education that's most important,” or am I going to have a pissed-off visitor during office hours?

2.) Calling out when we’re being insulted and cheated. If the Shakespeare works were made-up entertainments tossed off for cash (as if the arts are so lucrative), they would not have lasted hundreds of years. (And for popularity, there would be a lot more characters falling on their butts. The masses can’t get enough of that.) They are the products of the emotional and psychological investments of someone who had known the extremes of elation, pain, betrayal, despair, dread, glee — all out of personal experience — and someone absolutely compelled to see, literally acted out, his issues. Nabokov, vs. Freud, asserted that if we are energy systems, the energy is not sexual, channeled into the arts sometimes, but rather aesthetic energy: We are all artists at something. This can be any enterprise or craft or activity that puts us “in the zone.” It is there we know who we are. To know who Shakespeare really was enriches infinitely our understanding of not just the plays but of the creative process itself. To insist that the works popped out of the arbitrary head of an illiterate grain-merchant, or to repeat the snotty “it doesn’t matter” desperation, foists on everyone a dismissal of the validity of anyone’s artistic endeavors and positive contributions to humanity.

It’s great to see an article on this fascinating topic in PAW — Dr. Waugaman is a highly accomplished scholar in this field. What’s discouraging though is seeing in the comments (as is so often the case) the tired tropes that so often accompany any online discussion of the authorship question. If one actually engages in open inquiry and reads the literature instead of dismissing it outright, these counterarguments immediately dissolve:

- Nobody at the time doubted Shakespeare wrote the works. Not true - numerous contemporary sources referred cryptically to the author of the plays and poems years before Shakespeare of Stratford was linked to them (however tenuously) in the First Folio (see Wildenthal, B. H. [2019].  Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts.  Zindabad Press. https://tinyurl.com/3ubzav2p )

- Oxford died in 1604 and couldn’t have written the plays. Not so, the dating of Shakespeare’s plays has always been highly conjectural, to shoehorn them into the lifespan of the Man from Stratford. An open inquiry into the sources used in plays shows they all predate 1604. (See Gilvary, K. [2010] Dating Shakespeare’s plays : a critical review of the evidence. https://www.amazon.com/Dating-Shakespeares-plays-critical-evidence/dp/1898594864 )

What’s perhaps most tired and dismaying is the “what does it matter?” argument, which we would never say about any other individual of historical and cultural consequence, and certainly shouldn’t about the most foundational figure in English literature. 

It’s long past time for the academy to acknowledge that this is a subject of genuine (and profound!) historic and scholarly interest, and treat it as such, rather than pejoratively dismissing it, which is contrary to sound scholarly practice. For more, see my own chapter, Dudley, M. Q. (2020). With Swinish Phrase Soiling Their Addition: Epistemic Injustice, Academic Freedom, and the Shakespeare Authorship Question. In Teaching and Learning Practices for Academic Freedom. Emerald Publishing Limited.

I appreciate reading a variety of intelligent and well-supported viewpoints. Unfortunately, this article omits whatever facts don’t support Waugaman’s conspiracy theory, and the resulting article is, at best, misleading.

Let’s start with the fact that Oxford died in 1604, and Shakespeare kept writing plays for another decade (some of them co-written). It’s tough to fool a co-writer. Tougher still to be a ghost co-writer.

Given that every candidate commonly put forward as the true author of Shakespeare’s works is noble/royal, such claims that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays smack of an ugly elitism denying the possibility that ordinary people can be geniuses. Such theories also cherry-pick evidence and ignore everything we know about theatre and early modern history.

I find it irresponsible to not at least offer a rebuttal by a Shakespeare expert (which I certainly am not). If PAW printed an article by a flat-earther or moon-landing-denier, or, to draw on a more recent example, an advocate of treating COVID with hydroxychloroquine, I assume that such an article would be put in context with a better-supported, fact-based rebuttal. Shakespeare deserves no less.

Reliable Shakespeare information can be found at shakespeareauthorship.com.

I’m glad Richard Waugaman is interested in the works of Shakespeare, but he has not “unmasked the real Shakespeare.” As a historian who studies 16th and 17th century England, I can safely confirm that the real Shakespeare was William Shakespeare, who was born and died in Stratford-upon-Avon. There is no contemporary suggestion that anyone other than Shakespeare and his known collaborators wrote the plays, and there is plentiful evidence linking William Shakespeare to the plays. To be practical, Oxford died in 1604, and Shakespeare continued writing until at least 1613. In the small, collaborative, jealous, and gossipy world of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, it would have been impossible to disguise the authorship of one play let alone more than 30. Instead, both his fellows and his competitors admired his work. The reason all the contemporary evidence points to Shakespeare as the author of his plays is that he was the author.

No questions were raised about Shakespeare’s authorship until more than 200 years after his death. It was only in the mid-19th century, when his (relatively) humble origins were seen as incompatible with literary greatness, that alternative theories were floated. But there is no reason to doubt that a young man educated at an excellent provincial grammar school could write the plays. Shakespeare was Shakespeare.

Editor’s note: The writer is a professor at the University of California, Merced.

If you like Shakespeare’s plays, enjoy them regardless of who actually wrote them. If you don’t like most of them, as I do not, then who cares who wrote them? I prefer his historical plays mostly and I also know most of them are not historical but propaganda for certain royal causes. It seems to me, perhaps I remember wrongly, that Voltaire did not like Shakespeare’s plays. More power to Voltaire, then!

Before considering anything debunked, in addition to Sigmund Freud, who wrote “The man of Stratford seems to have nothing at all to justify his claim, whereas Oxford has everything,” one should consider the opinions about the identity of the Shakespeare canon’s author of the following literary experts: Henry James, Walt Whitman, Samuel Clemens (who wrote under the pseudonym “Mark Twain”), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daphne de Maurier, Malcolm X, and Anne Rice.

Some of them named Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford writing under a pseudonym as the author of the canon. All of them expressed severe doubts that the author could possibly have been the man from Stratford-on-Avon.

As Robin Williams said, “You think about William Shakespeare, you think a man basically with a second-grade education wrote some of the greatest poetry of all times? I think not.”

Hurray for PAW for being open-minded to the authorship controversy.

Thank you for your response to Richard M. Waugaman ’70’s assertion that the Earl of Oxford secretly wrote all of Shakespeare’s work (not to mention translations of Ovid and Boccaccio). I find that all of the “scholars” who have selected other authors to take Shakespeare’s place eventually become hyperbolic in scope. A more recent candidate for the Shakespeare authorship is Thomas North, who in addition to his translation of Plutarch’s Lives, is supposed to have written all of Shakespeare’s work based upon North’s own life experiences, and then supposedly sold these plays to Shakespeare at the beginning of Shakespeare’s career. (See North by Shakespeare by Michael Blanding, referencing the theory of Dennis McCarthy.) The Oxfordians and others seem to discount the contemporary evidence for Shakespeare’s authorship, e.g., the journal entries by Ben Jonson, and would rather rely on coincidental correspondences that can never be proven or disproven. How do we know that the Earl of Oxford didn’t steal this Bible from Shakespeare?

In response to Professor Leonard Barkan's letter to PAW (July 7, 2022) that Princeton undermines academic excellence by writing about Dr. Richard Waugaman’s research and conclusion that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the Shakespeare works, I would note that Shakespeare of Stratford’s parents were illiterate, his wife and children were illiterate, and somehow he became the world’s greatest writer. Waugaman’s candidate (and mine) was superbly educated in fields of languages, literature, and law, traveled to Italy and the Continent at a time when the Queen’s permission was needed (along with bodyguards to fend off bandits). He lived in Italy for more than a year, where a dozen plays are set, with street names and customs accurately described. Stratfordians have tried for more than 100 years to malign Oxford, ever since he was identified as the leading or only candidate. Interviews such as this one promote intellectual clarity. Information about Oxford is available through shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org.

Because the Shakespeare authorship question engenders such acerbic reactions, I decided to examine the issue from a different point-of-view — that of French academics. In 1918, in “Sous le masque de William Shakespeare…,” Abel Lefranc, the eminent Renaissance scholar and member of the Académie française, made it quite clear that, “for anyone with an open mind,” Shakespere of Stratford could not have been the author of the plays. Lefranc’s protégé, Georges Lambin, makes the case even stronger in “Shakespeare en France et en Italie” (1962) — pointing out numerous errors in traditional Shakespeare scholarship and further enriching our understanding of the political dimensions of the plays. Richard Hillman, professor emeritus, CESR (Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance) has continued to study the massive French influence in Shakespeare’s work. Once you have traveled down this road, there is no going back “for anyone with an open mind.” Until the blinders of Stratford-on-Avon can be removed, Shakespeare’s plays cannot be fully appreciated. Sadly, academia is not above groupthink as we have seen with its ridicule of Wegener’s theory of continental drift, Chandrasekhar’s theory of black holes, and the DNA studies of Crick and Watson. Unfortunately, we see the same thing with the Shakespeare authorship question. Recent stylometric studies indicate there were a number of authors, which proves the point Lefranc made more than a century ago that the plays were written by one author for court and then possibly rewritten by others for public performance — an idea now taken up by American academics with no attribution to Lefranc. Ridicule is the last line of defense.

Thanks so much to Michael Blanding and the editor of PAW for covering my research on this surprisingly controversial topic. For those interested in reading more, my publications are on my Georgetown faculty website. And my books on Shakespeare may be obtained at Amazon.