Review of Hope


Hope, J., The Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays: A Sociolinguistic Study. Pp. xix+188. Cambridge, New York, Oakleigh: Cambridge University Press, 1994. £30.00.

 

Notes and Queries, ccxl, 1995

 

 

 

The title implies that Shakespeare's plays may well have been written by Anon., and con­versely. The rest of this slim, repetitive, and expensive monograph, including a seven-page summary avowedly aimed at any literary scholars who would rather rely on Dr Hope's ascriptions than their own, invokes a “new method”, based on “socio-historical linguistic evidence”. This analyses the proportions of (a) auxiliary “do”, (b) relatives (“that”, “who”, “which”, etc.), (c) “thou” or “you”, which are claimed to be identificatory, in varying degree; hence such notions as a “non-Shakespearean characteristic” (142).

     Well, it may be so. But the author himself is not always convinced. He regularly offers some caveat or reservation or “basic presumption” or “factors assumed to be constant”. Many more will occur to the reader. Usage (a) for example may derive directly from conscious variable preference of vocabulary or style, as well as involuntary compulsion or background influence. But environment no doubt plays its part, as Dr Hope claims, and his acceptance of Shake­speare as in some sense a product of “the rural south-west midlands, his lower-class status and lack of higher education” is surely conformable with contemporary testimony and common sense.

    Other facts are less secure. The thirty pages I have checked contain at least fifty arithmetical errors (mainly of rounding). The Comedy of Errors, a text unknown before 1623, is treated as very early; [1] the resulting anomalies, though honestly confessed and discussed, are ascribed to anything except erroneous dating. That simple explanation, however, could weaken many of this book's settled conclusions, for example that Shakespeare's rate of usage (a) does not change over his lifetime. Inferences from usage (b) are confessedly even more difficult and less impressive than those from (a), while usage (c) is eventually dismissed, after a ten-page discussion, as “highly speculative” and hence “with only a minor role to play in author­ship studies”. Again, Dr Hope's analyses are claimed as consistent with Gary Taylor's sug­gestion [2] that Pericles is a “memorial reconstruction” by George Wilkins of a lost unknown Shakespearian original, although they are equally conformable with other better-founded hypotheses. Similarly Dr Smith's tests [3] for Ironsideare alleged, without discussion, to “under­mine the case for Shakespeare” although Dr Hope's own method identifies that play as a very strong candidate for further investigation.

     Here I should declare an interest. Dr Hope avers that my 1985 edition of Edmund Ironside (the 1986 update has been missed or ignored), savours of Baconian monomania which has dis­couraged “serious work” on that play. It is at least true that no such work has ever been under­taken by any literary academic ever since the case was first made by the insightful and original E. B. Everitt more than forty years ago, although commentators [4] are still asserting that Ironside's Shakespearian origins have been refuted. But the comparable case for Edward III is at last becoming generally accepted by Shake­speare specialists; and Dr Hope himself hails it as “the best candidate”. The style, thought, imagery, and ideas that it shares with Ironside may one day be noticed and studied.

     Dr Hope's other main results may be sum­marized thus. Henry VIIIPericles, and The Two Noble Kinsmen are collaborative; so, though less clearly, is Timon of AthensMacbeth is not proven. Shakespeare cannot have written the whole text of A Yorkshire Tragedy,Thomas Lord Cromwell, or The Puritan, but method (a) would not rule him out as the author of Locrine, though method (b) is against that attribution. Arden of Faversham andThe Birth of Merlin are unlikely to be his; in particular scenes 4.04 and 1.01 of the former cannot be, though scenes 2.01, 3.02 and 4.01 of the latter may be.

     Alternatively, all such opinions must remain rated as unreliable until their methodology is definitively validated.


 

Notes

[1] Shakespeare was a revising author, so it is unreasonable to assume that the text of The Comedy of Errors mentioned in 1594, 1598, and 1604 was the same as that first published in 1623 (see E. Sams, ‘Shakespeare and the Oxford Imprint’, TLS, 6 March 1992, 13).

[2] As set forth by G. Taylor and MacD. Jackson at pp. 556­-60 of Taylor's Textual Companion [to the Oxford Shakespeare] 1988.

[3] In M. W. A. Smith, ‘Edmund Ironside’N&Q, ccxxxviii (1993), 202-5, rebutted in E. Sams, ‘Edmund Ironside and “Stylometry”’, N&Q, ccxxxix (1994), 469-72.

[4] e.g. J. Bate, in ‘Shakespeare the farmer's boy’, The Sunday Telegraph, 15 January 1995, and M. Seymour-Smith. in “Beyond Necessity”, Scotland on Sunday, 26 February 1995.