Is This the Bard We See Before Us? Or Someone Else?

Second, art is never just about art. Drama in particular has always been controversial. At no time in English history were the consequences of violating public protocols more serious -- or the political forces inhibiting the theater more vigorous -- than during Shakespeare's age. Yet because political power was so fully concentrated in the hands of the monarch, the stage was essential as a forum for political dissent.

So it's not hard to imagine a highly placed author, a participant at the uppermost levels of court intrigue, writing plays such as "Hamlet" or "All's Well That Ends Well" for the public stage. Like Feste in "Twelfth Night," he was an "allowed fool," tolerated by a monarch who loved the theater and indulged her subjects' creativity, but tolerated no open threat to her governance. This author aired the power elites' dirty linen through literary indirection, used stage symbolism to conduct his own fiercely partisan feuds (producing such comically inept or decadent characters as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" or Polonius in "Hamlet") and, through characters such as Cordelia, delivered unflattering truth to power.

Do we have a political problem on our hands? Of course. Not coincidentally, we also have an author equal to his literary creation.

There's abundant proof that the author of "Hamlet" saw the stage as a forum for public comment on contemporary matters and took audacious liberties. It's generally agreed that Polonius, the bumbling adviser to the Danish throne, is a thinly veiled lampoon of William Cecil, Elizabeth's most trusted confidant and adviser for 40 years.

This parody is puzzling. The author's compatriots were jailed or worse for far less grievous crimes than exposing the most powerful man in England to public scorn. How could "Shakespeare" commit such literary transgression without penalty? And what possible motive could inspire such literary animus against a man generally regarded as one of the most honorable statesmen in English history?

Since 1920, when Englishman John Thomas Looney wrote "Shakespeare Identified," a clear solution to this enigma has been staring orthodox Shakespeareans in the face: Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, a man known for his disregard of class protocols and his passionate devotion to the theater, was Cecil's ward and later his unhappy son-in-law. He was a man with the means, the opportunity and, above all, the motive to write "Hamlet." Frustrated in his political ambitions at court, he spent a lifetime selling off his vast inherited estates to pay his creditors and pursue his literary ambitions. Like the misanthropic Jaques in "As You Like It," he literally sold his own lands to see the lands of other men.

The most "Italianate" Englishman of his generation, he toured the Tuscan cities that are featured so prominently in Shakespearean plays, and built a house for himself in Venice only blocks from the Jewish ghetto. His life, in myriad ways, illumines the Shakespearean oeuvre and becomes the touchstone for grasping the meaning of many obscure passages in the plays.

But consider the consequences of placing De Vere's name on the title page of "Hamlet." The lampoon of the author's father-in-law would have been embarrassingly obvious to every Joan and Jack. Cecil's son, the unpopular principle secretary for King James when "Hamlet" was first published in 1603-04, would have seen his father humiliated in print and onstage. Like Laertes, he could not have refrained from desperate action to defend his family honor.

So it's not hard to understand why those involved in creating the Shakespearean myth at the highest levels may have engaged in what Justice Stevens called an "imaginative conspiracy." Change the author's name, and the political problem disappears. And suddenly it becomes clear who's there. What better time to talk about it than now?

rstritmatter@coppin.edu

Roger Stritmatter, vice chairman of the Shakespeare Fellowship, teaches English at Coppin State University in Baltimore.