No. Are you asking about Shakespeare? Really? Because I thought you might be asking about that essential American poet, Walt Whitman. The poet about whom Ezra Pound said “he is America”.
A tremendously accomplished writer, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass remains one of the defining poetic works of the American voice and a substantial source for understanding the American mind (and perhaps the American soul, whatever that may be). It might be worth noting that Whitman left his formal schooling around the age of 11.
Whitman’s formal education was much less than Shakespeare’s. Yet, as I understand it, one of the arguments against Shakespeare writing his own plays is that he cannot possibly have been learned enough, educated enough to have written such things. Hmmm.
Joseph Conrad, one of the greatest novelists to have written in the English language, didn’t actually learn English until he was 21 years old. Part of the charm, and part of the goods. An outside perspective. A different kind of voice.
What do Whitman or Conrad prove? Nothing. Any argument that attempts to equate some kind of level of formal education with a more sophisticated vision or understanding of the worlds do not hold water. In the relatively short collection of human experience and knowledge, many of our wisest and brightest never went to school, never held an office.
When men came from the Emperor’s court to ask Zhuangzi to come take up a court office, Zhuangzi’s answer was about the tortoise shell on the palace wall. He reasoned that the tortoise might have been happier, better off, and more itself had it been allowed to be a tortoise in the mud. Officious people tend to be offended at Zhuangzi’s dismissal of the officers. “Go away and leave me to fish” seems to offend so many of our ideas of accomplishment, of moving ahead in the world, of contributing. Yet, we all must contribute in our own way as well. Force a great graphic artist to stuff envelopes for a living and you will miss the best of what such an individual might offer to the world.
Force a writer to work on a road crew for a time and the writer may learn much. Make them do it for too long, however, and you will lose the writer. Roses do not bloom forever, gather them while ye may.
Without more evidence, some actual historical evidence that someone else wrote the works of Shakespeare (someone who was not Shakespeare himself), the arguments that currently exist seem to remain houses of cards built on foundations of speculation. (Oh, I know there was that movie, but they do make motion picture fictions out of all sorts of things.) .
Not that the ghost isn’t open to new ideas. Please feel free to show me the evidence. Produce the documents. Show me the money. Then, we might talk, albeit the ghost confesses that the question neither interests nor troubles me so very much. I would rather consider the plays and poems themselves.
So, no. No authorship question here, or if there is one, it may be much more about who we are (individually and collectively) as much as it is about someone who wrote some beautiful work over 400 years ago. And that’s just a note from far festivals, just those kinds of thoughts that tend to be typical for the ghost.
The ghost should be back at the phantom desk this coming week if all goes well. Meantime, stay well out in the world. Be kind. Be safe. Take care of your fellow humans and they will tend to take care of you as well.