And the Author Is...

Somewhere there is a man who believes that Shakespeare’s plays are hidden allegorical parodies of Judeo-Christian history and religion.  There are books, essays and documentaries dedicated to this theory.  In New York City a theatre company devotedly produces burlesques of Shakespeare’s plays expounding this philosophy.  It is absurdly appealing to the sense of reason, logic, common sense and intellect.  As off the wall as this theory is, it is good to have this point of view out there in the universe, in so far as it gives artists another pool from which to draw.  It ceases to be of any value once it becomes ‘the answer.’

The problem arises when this interpretation transforms into the conclusion that this is the one true hidden purpose of these plays, and therefore, the man known as Shakespeare could not have written them for any one of uncountable arguments that arise from the text.  It must have been a Jewish Venetian woman who was sleeping with the theatre’s owner.  Why not make the case that due to the treatment of women and foreigners in the plays the author must have been a self-loathing albino Congolese woman?  People postulate that 100 monkeys locked in a room with 100 typewriters for 100 years will produce HAMLET.  That is what happened, and the canon of plays attributed to William Shakespeare were actually randomly composed over hundreds of years by a bunch of chimps with an inexhaustible supply of ink and parchment.  All of the references to the animal kingdom make that painfully obvious.

This machine needs to stop.  These theories and battles between Stratfordians and Anti-Stratfordians are all fine in themselves.  It is an interesting puzzle (for those who think Shakespeare’s identity is a mystery to be solved).  But it becomes dangerous when someone puts on blinders and begins using their choice of Shakespeare as an excuse for expounding dogma to the exclusion of all else.  The way plays effect us is the realm of Theatre.  Our effect on plays is the realm of academia.  Academia belongs in books; Theatre belongs on stage.

While these questions about authorship make interesting scholarship, they make terrible theatre.  Dogmatic theatre is church.  People do not go to church to be entertained, and if theatre is boring, it is worthless.

Who wrote these plays, and their original intent, is no longer of any practical importance.  The author can no longer celebrate the benefits of recognition, and any secret messages imbedded in these scripts were delivered long ago. The important messages are the ones we send to each other, Now; not messages sent to someone else, Then. That is the true genius of these stories: they exist on plane independent of who put the ink on paper.  Wherever we are, whoever we are, they speak to us.

What the plays reveal to us about ourselves will change as we do.  The 20 year-old Mr. Smith will read a different KING LEAR than that same Mr. Smith will read at 70.  The author did not change, the audience did.  While Shakespeare wrote the plays, we often forget that we are his audience, and the audience is the most important puzzle piece in theatre.  The audience, not the author, is the variable in the equation.

Anyway, the true identity of Shakespeare has already been discovered: Jack the Ripper.  The parallels are stunningly obvious.  Until this point in history nobody had a fix on either of these men.  Both men showed signs of intelligence far exceeding the bounds of their station.  Both men revealed something about the human soul previously untouched.  They were both geniuses of their art, and today they are both fodder for armchair detectives.  In both cases it does not matter who these people were: the ripper’s victims will still be dead, and the plays have already been written. 

What the plays of William Shakespeare reveal is not up to the identity of the author, but the identity of the audience.