All Posts Tagged With: "skeptics"

“Let not men say / ‘These are their reasons; they are natural;’ / For, I believe, they are portentous things / Unto the climate that they point upon.”

Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter what you study, as long as you study something, for I have often noticed that many brilliant people have arrived at the same habits of thought through the studies of entirely different disciplines. This is why I rely on my knowledge of Shakespeare to understand climate change.

Now, before you scoff too loudly, understand that I am not about to suggest that Shakespeare knew very much about global climate (when he uses the word “climate,” it is in a more limited sense) or that he was prescient enough to predict our current situation. In fact, the part of Shakespeare studies that I’m thinking of here is the so-called authorship debate. You know, where a small number of observers keep making the case that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon could not have been the author of the plays attributed to him.

Those wishing to make the case for someone other than Shakespeare being Shakespeare can trot out a number of seemingly convincing points, all of which are true, as far as they go:

1. Though Shakespeare is supposed to have gone to the Stratford grammar school, there is no record of his actually having attended there.

2. There are no surviving letters mentioning Shakespeare as a dramatist.

3. Shakespeare’s will does not make mention of any books.

From these facts, the anti-Stratfordians (whoever their preferred Shakespeare may be) go on to draw all sorts of conclusions. If Shakespeare didn’t attend school he couldn’t possibly have been able to write the plays people say he did. If Shakespeare was so famous, why doesn’t anyone mention ever having met him? How could a literary genius not have owned any books? It doesn’t add up!

At least it doesn’t add up unless you know the full slate of facts. To wit:

1. There are no records of Shakespeare attending the King’s New School in Stratford because the records from the period were lost in a fire. Shakespeare’s father was the Bailiff of the town, a position roughly equivalent to a mayor. On this evidence, it is nearly certain that Shakespeare would have attended the local grammar school.