莎士比亞——讚譽與質疑並存
在他去世150年之後，關於莎士比亞戲劇原作者的爭議接踵而至。學者和文學評論家列出了一系列名字，推斷他們爲戲劇的真正作者。其中包括克里斯托弗•馬洛、愛德華•德•維爾和弗朗西斯•培根，這些人擁有更知名的背景，更具文學水準或靈感更豐富。這一現象大部分是由於對莎士比亞的生平描述得不夠詳細，而且那一時代的資料來源很缺乏。聖三一教堂和斯特拉福德政府的官方記錄記載了威廉•莎士比亞這個人的存在，但是沒有一處資料能證實他是個演員或劇作家。
懷疑者也質疑，教育背景如此平庸的人卻能在莎士比亞的作品裏展示出那麼敏銳的洞察力和詩歌表現力，到底是如何做到的。幾個世紀以來，涌現出了一些團體，他們對莎士比亞戲劇的原作者提出了疑問。
最嚴重、最廣泛的懷疑開始於19世紀，那時人們對莎士比亞的崇拜達到了頂峯。批評者認爲，對於這個來自埃文河畔斯特拉福德的威廉•莎士比亞，唯一確鑿的地方就是，他一開始身份卑微，年紀輕輕就結了婚，後來做房地產生意很成功。莎士比亞牛津學會（成立於1957年）的成員們說，身爲牛津第17代伯爵的英國貴族愛德華•德•維爾是“威廉•莎士比亞”詩歌和戲劇的真正作者。牛津學者說德•維爾出身貴族，學識淵博，教育背景深厚，而且他的詩歌與被認爲是莎士比亞的作品在結構上很相似。他們主張，威廉•莎士比亞不具備應有的教育背景和文學修養，寫不出如此雄辯的散文，也創造不出如此豐富的人物。
About 150 years after his death, questions arose about the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays. Scholars and literary critics began to float names like Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere and Francis Bacon—men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation, or inspiration—as the true authors of the plays. Much of this stemmed from the sketchy details of Shakespeare's life and the dearth of contemporary primary sources. Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford government record the existence of a William Shakespeare, but none of these attest to him being an actor or playwright.
Skeptics also questioned how anyone of such modest education could write with the intellectual perceptiveness and poetic power that is displayed in Shakespeare's works. Over the centuries, several groups have emerged that question the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
The most serious and intense skepticism began in the 19th century when adoration for Shakespeare was at its highest. The detractors believed that the only hard evidence surrounding William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate. Members of the Shakespeare Oxford Society (founded in 1957) put forth arguments that English aristocrat Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the poems and plays of "William Shakespeare." The Oxfordians cite de Vere's extensive knowledge of aristocratic society, his education, and the structural similarities between his poetry and that found in the works attributed to Shakespeare. They contend that William Shakespeare had neither the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent prose and create such rich characters.
However, the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars contend that William Shakespeare wrote all his own plays. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy histories and came from modest backgrounds. They contend that Stratford's New Grammar School curriculum of Latin and the classics could have provided a good foundation for literary writers. Supporters of Shakespeare's authorship argue that the lack of evidence about Shakespeare's life doesn't mean his life didn't exist. They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of published poems and plays. Examples exist of authors and critics of the time acknowledging William Shakespeare as author of plays such as The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and King John. Royal records from 1601 show that William Shakespeare was recognized as a member of the King's Men theater company (formally known as the Chamberlain's Men) and a Groom of the Chamber by the court of King James I, where the company performed seven of Shakespeare's plays. There is also strong circumstantial evidence of personal relationships by contemporaries who interacted with Shakespeare as an actor and a playwright.
What seems to be true is that William Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century. Beginning with the Romantic period of the early 1800s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim and reverence for William Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered and adopted his works.
Today, his plays are highly popular and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and plots are that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and conflicts that transcend their origins in Elizabethan England.
