The Truth Will Out- Brenda James
Some people would rather believe anything than what everyone else believes. Thus the Earls of Oxford, Essex and Rutland, Bacon, Marlowe and even Queen Elizabeth herself, have all been charged with writing the plays of Shakespeare. The latest contender to step up is Sir Henry Neville, courtier and diplomat, championed by Brenda James in her new book The Truth Will Out.
James opens her book by demolishing Shakespeare’s schooling, since there is no record of any beyond the age of 14.The Oxford-educated Neville, however, would have known every obscure source a scholar could desire. He had access to a well-stocked library, an intimate knowledge of the workings of state and had been to Italy.
Having spent half of her book asserting that Neville had everything that Shakespeare could not possibly have had, James goes on to sketch out the connection between the two men.She proceeds to destroy her earlier arguments by asserting that Shakespeare could and did have access (through Neville) to a vast library, intelligent discussion of politics and history, and of course Italy. But she is fixed upon the centrepiece of her book, the New Piece of Evidence. James has uncovered a notebook apparently written by Neville during a brief imprisonment in the Tower. Its account of Henry VIII’s coronation bears striking resemblances to Shakespeare’s play of the same name.
Throughout her book James’ catchphrase becomes ‘there is not a shred of evidence that…’. James is scrupulous about records, and scathing of unfounded speculation • except when it concerns her man. Indeed, her reliance on records is a part of the problem • she takes documentation at its word and assumes itto be omniscient. James insists that Shakespeare never left England, received anything more than a rudimentary education or met a Jew simply because the records say no.
In the end, the whole controversy comes across as singularly pointless. Maybe Neville was ‘Shakespeare’, even without ‘a shred of evidence to support’ it all. But then what’s in a name? Our greatest poet is also our most obscure, his only ‘real’ existence being on the title pages of his plays This invisible author is another of Shakespeare’s creations, and a most valuable one, since it frees the plays to exist in and of themselves.
26th Jan 2006