Sir Derek Jacobi is a giant of stage and screen. That is no reason for giving credence to the baseless conspiracy theory, which he and Margo Anderson advance in their letter, that William Shakespeare did not write the works that bear his name (The Merry Wives of Windsor offers strong evidence that Shakespeare was not its author, 13 June). The proposition that the true author was Edward de Vere, an aristocratic wastrel and minor poet, is intrinsically absurd.
Why, after all, would a concealed author not just leave their name off the title page rather than adopt an allonym, with all the risks of exposure? In the 175-year history of this bogus controversy, no one has yet offered even a plausible theory for this notion, let alone a shred of documentary evidence to associate De Vere or any other putative authorship candidate with Shakespeare’s works.
Jacobi and Anderson rely on the ahistorical notion that a literary work must be an expression of the life story of the author, and on a strained and completely imaginary interpretation of The Merry Wives of Windsor as reflecting De Vere’s autobiography. Scholars of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature almost unanimously treat such denialism with derision. So should a responsible newspaper.
Oliver Kamm
London
• I revere Sir Derek Jacobi, who starred as a superb Benedick in the first Shakespeare production I ever saw, but in claiming that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor, he is denying one of his own. Merry Wives, Much Ado and the rest were written by a man of the theatre, someone who knew his company and its resources intimately through working with them day in, day out, for 20-plus years, as attested by his friends and fellow players John Heminges and Henry Condell in the First Folio – not some hobbyist aristo dialling it in from the court. That idea is strictly for the Ninky Nonk.
Adrian Blamires
Reading, Berkshire
• I was interested to read the letter from Derek Jacobi and Margo Anderson. I fully expect that long after the Beatles have passed from living memory – perhaps around the year 2250 – similarly qualified academics will be explaining how the songs credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney were written by Prince Charles or some other suitably high-born person, on the grounds of some slight similarities in their biography to themes in the songs, and that, surely, no one of such modest origin could have wrought such beautiful music.
Rik Edwards
Chorleywood, Hertfordshire
• In The Winter’s Tale, Autolycus sings: “another ballad of a fish, that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the four-score of April”.
If 1 May is 31 April, then fourscore April is 80 April – or 19 June. This week, we had Wednesday 19 June, the fourscore April. This date comes around on average once every seven years. The probability of a given date being Wednesday 19 June is less than 1/2,500.
Why would Shakespeare be interested in this date? King James I of England was born on Wednesday 19 June 1566. Why should he chose to mention the king’s birthday in this way? That’s a big question, and I invite others to answer it. Another question is why has anyone failed to spot something so simple until now.
Peter Nockolds
London
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