Paul Cantor on the Shakespeare Authorship Question

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2019

⏱️ 80 minutes

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Summary

Since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, certain writers, scholars, and amateur sleuths have questioned whether William Shakespeare, the actor and son of a glovemaker from Stratford, really could have written Shakespeare's plays. Possible alternatives posited by Shakespeare skeptics have included the philosopher Francis Bacon and the courtier Edward de Vere (The Earl of Oxford). A recent article in "The Atlantic" suggested a poet Emilia Bassano as another possible candidate. In this Conversation, Paul Cantor explains the history of this controversy, reviews the evidence, and explains why the author of Shakespeare’s plays was none other than Shakespeare from Stratford, himself! Cantor argues that behind this search for an alternate author lies a disbelief that such an individual could possess an astonishing ability to imagine and portray the full variety of human types, whether aristocratic or common, male or female. And yet, this ability to transcend oneself and imagine other people, times, and possibilities is a true mark of literary genius. As Cantor puts it, “There’s no way to explain [Shakespeare’s genius]. It’s just one of the great miracles.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Welcome to Conversations. I'm Bill Crystal and I'm joined today by my friend Paul
0:19.0	Cantor, professor of English at University of Virginia, a frequent converse
0:23.5	on conversations about Shakespeare, about what you've written books,
0:27.8	important books, and popular culture about which you've written
0:30.6	important books.
0:31.6	Paul is also, I should say, the editor or curator, depending on which term you want, of the
0:36.9	invaluable website on Shakespeare in Politics.
0:39.5	You can find it by just go go to
0:43.9	go to the great thinkers.org, the great thinkers.org, and you'll see various great
0:48.9	thinkers, one of whom is Shakespeare.
0:51.0	Maybe the greatest, do you think?
0:53.4	No.
0:54.4	No, okay, we're sticking on the philosophy.
0:56.0	We're sticking with Plato.
0:57.2	We're sticking with Plato.
0:58.2	He's the best playwright on the list.
1:00.0	I'll guarantee that.
1:01.1	That's, that, I'm sure, that seems like a good bet right anyway
1:04.4	thank you for joining me today and the genesis of this conversation was an
1:09.0	article in the Atlantic but few months ago that we emailed about claiming that maybe Shakespeare was a woman
1:14.8	and I was a little just a status that this was kind of what I took to be some old
1:20.9	kind of Shakespeare's not Shakespeare trope that was turned out to have a life today and you actually knew a lot about it and have done further research so
	...

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