This piece was published in the TLS of January 22, 1971

Professor Schoenbaum tells us, in an almost Gibbonian phrase, that the idea of his book came to him on September 1, 1964. in the church where Shakespeare lies buried, and that it was intended to be “a little book narrating the quest for knowledge of Shakespeare the Man”. Six years later, thanks to Guggenheim, it has become a monumental volume which deals faithfully not merely with the gradual accumulation of information about Shakespeare from his day to ours, but with the lives and characters of those who have found or invented facts and of those who attempted to make the dry bones live.

Professor Schoenbaum has cast his net widely. He includes amateur antiquarians, professional scholars, forgers, Baconians, Derbyitcs and the rest of the lunatic fringe, even some writers of fiction. The gallery includes some strange figures. It is easy to understand why, in the age of Chatterton, Jordan and Ireland should manufacture relics for the credulous: but why should a reputable scholar like Collier, who had made genuine discoveries, recorded some of Coleridge’s lectures, and beaten Keats at billiards, indulge in a continuous series of forgeries? About Collier, Professor Schoenbaum has unearthed some new facts, including what is virtually a confession (see his article published in the TLS on June 26, 1969). Then there is Halliwell-Phillipps, who made great additions to our knowledge but began his career as a thief of manuscripts; or Dr. C. W. Wallace, who made several important discoveries and then behaved in a paranoid and deceitful way.

A recurring theme in the book is the tendency of biographers of Shakespeare to produce self-portraits. It was as natural for Samuel Butler and Oscar Wilde to depict him as a homosexual as for Frank Harris to depict him as an unabashed sensualist. It is natural for Catholics to seize on the phrase “he died a papist”; for Bernard Shaw to confess that Shakespeare was like himself; and for Malone to suppose that Shakespeare had been a lawyer’s clerk. Perhaps Professor Schoenbaum’s nicest example is the Unitarian Liberal, Fripp, who declared that Shakespeare was “supreme among English laymen for his Reverent Liberalism”.

Some scholars have been objective enough not to depict themselves; but few have avoided unwarrantable deductions from the plays: for example, that Shakespeare was unhappily married because Orsino advises Cesario to choose a woman younger than himself. Even Sir Edmund Chambers, the austere civil servant, argued from Tinton of Athens that Shakespeare suffered from a nervous breakdown.

Professor Schoenbaum has written a book which is both learned and entertaining. His hundred pages on the Baconians and other heretics provide comic relief, but his discussion of more orthodox scholars is enlivened by intriguing unpublished material, anecdote and flashes of humour. When T. W. Baldwin prefaces his 1,523 pages on Shakespeare’s schooling with the remark, “It may be possible some centuries hence to write a nice little book on Shakespeare’s education, but such a book would be mere worthless dabble now “, Professor Schoenbaum adds: “The austerity of the last sentence commands awe, perhaps not untinged with the suspicion that the professor doth underprotest too much.” He deflates A. L. Rowse by describing his biography as “a triumph of promotion”; and after congratulating Mr. Titherley for printing the boring bits in smaller type, he adds: “a precedent worthy of emulation, although by this standard the entire work should perhaps have appeared in small print”.

It is possible to quarrel with some of Professor Schoenbaum’s omissions. If William Gibson’s play deserves a mention, there are plays by Rubenstein and Bax, Charles Willams and Clemence Dane at least as good; and there is no mention of Longworth-Chambrun’s Mon grand ami Shakespeare nor of Kingsmill’s The Return of William Shakespeare.

Perhaps one may conclude from his final paragraph that Professor Schoenbaum intends to enter the lists himself. His labours over the past six years will have taught him the facts and warned him of the dangers.

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