Royal Shakespeare Company the Tempest Critiques and Reviews
A few years ago, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) posted on its website an article by Professor Stanley Wells of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) that called atheism nigh the Stratford man as the writer of the works of Shakespeare a "psychological aberration" owing to "snobbery . . . ignorance; poor sense of logic; refusal . . . to accept evidence; folly; the desire for publicity; and fifty-fifty . . . certifiable madness."
At the persistent urging of John Shahan, Chairman of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC), a group of authorship skeptics, the RSC has at last removed the offensive commodity from its website! The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship notes that Marker Rylance, the multi-accolade winning Shakespearean histrion, authorship doubter, and an honorary trustee of the SOF, besides helped to persuade the RSC to withdraw the article.
Following are excerpts from the SAC'southward update, issued on June i, 2015, in which Mr. Shahan details the efforts that brought about this triumph for the principles of gratis and open up inquiry.
Good news! In response to letters from SAC, the RSC has removed false claims about authorship doubters from its website.
Professor Stanley Wells' commodity on the "Authorship Fence" taken down!
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon (SBT) has long promoted a false negative stereotype of authorship doubters, and nowhere more than blatantly than in an commodity on its website by and so-SBT chairman Stanley Wells on "Shakespeare's Authorship," which included the post-obit statement:
"The phenomenon of disbelief in Shakespeare's authorship is a psychological abnormality of considerable involvement. Endorsement of information technology in favour of aristocratic candidates may be ascribed to snobbery – reluctance to believe that works of genius could emanate from a man of relatively humble origin – an attitude that would not permit Marlowe to have written his own works, allow alone Shakespeare's. Other causes include ignorance; poor sense of logic; refusal, wilful or otherwise, to accept evidence; folly; the desire for publicity; and even (as in the sad case of Delia Bacon, who hoped to open up Shakespeare's grave in 1856) certifiable madness."
The purpose of this and like claims by Stratfordians is, of course, to smear and intimidate doubters and thus stigmatize and suppress a legitimate issue. If the case for Mr. Shakspere were as solid as they merits, there would be no need for such tactics. Since it is not solid, it is easier for them to keep people from looking into the prove than having to confront and deal with it.
It is ironic that an English language professor who is so jealous of his sectional authority to rule on all things Shakespearean would think he could go away with usurping the authority to diagnose behavioral, character and psychiatric disorders and and then generalize from a few specious, or even not-existent, examples to an unabridged group of people, most none of whom fits his stereotype. Here he was encroaching on one of my areas of expertise, and I knew that, if challenged, he would be unable to back it up.
In Apr of 2010, I sent him the following letter:
________________________________________________________________________
Dearest Professor Wells,
I am writing on behalf of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition to challenge your merits on the SBT website … that the phenomenon of widespread doubt virtually William Shakespeare'south identity is "a psychological aberration of considerable interest," attributable to a variety of causes, including "snobbery" based on form prejudice, or "even certifiable madness (as in the sad case of Delia Bacon . . .)." If these allegations are true, it should exist possible for qualified experts in the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology and sociology to validate your claims with empirical evidence. I hereby claiming you to either obtain such expert validation, or stop making the claims. Specifically, I claiming you to either back upwards your claims on the SBT website with data worthy of the high scholarly standards you claim to represent, or remove them forthwith.
Whatever theory should be evaluated based on the all-time arguments of its strongest proponents. There will, of course, be some level of aberrant thinking and beliefs in any population; but to prove your claims, not just must you show that the prevalence of these atmospheric condition and behaviors is much greater among authorship doubters than in the general population, or in a command group, such as orthodox Shakespeare scholars, simply that they are pervasive.
The enclosed "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" names twenty prominent past doubters, including Mark Twain, William and Henry James, Tyrone Guthrie and Sir John Gielgud. On what basis practice y'all merits that their doubts were due entirely to the defects you criminate? Over 1,700 people have signed the Declaration. Of these, over 300 are current or one-time college/ university faculty members. Some of them are much improve qualified to diagnose psychological disorders than you are. On what basis practice you lot claim that they are aberrant?
You appear to characterization equally "psychologically abnormal" anyone who disagrees with your view. Yous seem to be exploiting prejudices confronting the mentally ill to discredit your opponents. The utilize of such tactics is morally reprehensible, and those who would resort to them are unworthy of being regarded as legitimate stewards of the legacy of William Shakespeare. If you continue to make such allegations, on your website or elsewhere, with no credible show to back them up, you should assume that the SAC will pursue this issue further.
Sincerely,
John M. Shahan, Chairman, SAC
_______________________________________________________________________
I received no reply. Wells never provided a shred of testify to support his claim, and 14 months after the commodity was taken down from the SBT website. Later I learned that it had been posted on the RSC website under the title "Authorship Debate." It must take been very effective there, sending a clear message to both current and aspiring RSC actors to toe the party line.
Unfortunately for Wells, information technology also made it possible to appeal to a higher authority, dissimilar at the SBT. In June of 2014, I wrote a similar letter to the Prince of Wales in his chapters as president of the RSC. His assistant forwarded it to officials at the RSC, and in January of this year I sent a follow-up letter of the alphabet to RSC chairman Nigel Hugill renewing the request and calling attending to several other falsehoods in Wells' article. Later that, it however took an assist from Mark Rylance before it was finally taken down.
The unabridged sequence, including the three messages and Wells' article, tin exist read on the SAC website at this link.
We give thanks the Prince of Wales, Nigel Hugill and Mark Rylance for their kind assistance.
— John Shahan, Chairman, SAC
Source: https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/royal-shakespeare-company-website-retracts-false-claims-about-authorship-doubters/
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