Shakespeare and the Scientists

I’m rarely the smartest guy in the room. In fact, I’m only the smartest guy in the room when I’m the only person in the room. But Thursday night I knew for a fact I was the dumbest guy in the room.

Note to ego: Never have dinner with scientists.

Thursday night I was Pop Mannion’s guest at a meeting of his Torch Club. Torch is a national organization that brings civic leaders and civic-minded local high achievers together now and then for dinner and discussion and a general sharing of ideas and convivial spirits. The make-up of a given chapter varies from town to town. Pop’s chapter, meeting in the home of General Electric, is made up mainly of scientists and engineers with some mere doctors and lawyers dragging the median IQ in the room down to around 240. Among the members at our table, was a pleasant and mild-mannered materials scientist and electrical engineer who’d taught at MIT, shuttling back and forth between Cambridge and Schenectady where he worked in GE’s Research Lab, who, incidentally, was also a cellist. Even if he’d been temperamentally inclined to try to impress me, a lowly English major, with his smarts, he wouldn’t have done it because he was busy going on about how impressed he was by the smarts of a fellow musician, a violinist with whom he played in a quartet sometimes back in Cambridge, Mildred Dresselhaus, who, incidentally, is also an electrical engineer, physicist, professor at MIT, and winner of, among other honors, the United States National Medal of Science and the IEEE Founders Medal for her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

I think that’s what the awards were for.

As you can imagine, I lost the gist pretty quick.

For most of my life I’ve struggled to keep up with the reading. I routinely read articles in the popular science magazines, gobble up books like The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll and Chad Orzell’s  How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, and check in with the best science bloggers (Btw, if you’re on Twitter you really owe it to yourself to subscribe to my list That’s SCIENCE!), and while I’m reading the articles or the books or watching shows like Nova or listening to scientists talk in real life, I feel smart. I feel like I’m not just following but understanding the subject. I feel like I’m learning stuff! Lots of stuff! Important stuff! The big, grand unified stuff that answers all the questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything! Then, as soon as I finish the article, close the book, turn off the TV, or shut down the computer, it all goes right out of my head. If it was ever in there to begin with---and I feel dumber than when I started.

Anywho.

I had a good time, sitting there nodding along sagaciously, feeling alternately like a genius and a fool, and the dinner was good, and I’m real glad I went. So is Pop, who wanted me along not just for the company but because he thought the night’s presentation was right up my alley.

These Torch meetings feature an after-dinner speaker, usually a member of the club, giving a talk on a subject usually outside the speaker’s professional bailiwick. Thursday night, Walter Grattidge, a retired physicist (sample publication: “Thermoelectric electric effects in silver haldides,” and, no, I don’t think I’ve read that one.), spoke to us about Who Wrote Shakespeare?

Gratttidge, born, raised, and educated in England, had only recently learned that that was a question. Growing up he’d taken it for granted that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare and had never had any reason to doubt it or even wonder about it. As a visual aid, he showed off a handpainted ceramic bust of Shakespeare that had sat on his family mantelpiece when he was a kid. He’d always thought of it as an important and valuable family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation, and when he left home he felt, as the eldest son, entitled to appropriate it, and it has accompanied him on his travels for the last sixty years. At one point, though, he learned that the bust was a souvenir from Stratford-on-Avon sold by the crateload to tourists circa 1900-1910 and when he had it appraised he was told it was worth a whopping 100 bucks. Still, it’s priceless to him, not just for sentimental reasons but because of his longstanding admiration of Shakespeare and his plays. So it came as a bit of shock to him when one day, on a visit to the local library, a helpful librarian, thinking that as an Englishman, fan of Shakespeare, and physicist he might be interested in a book by a fellow physicist, suggested he check out 'Shakespeare' by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare and Grattidge learned that there were people who refuse to accept that William Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed him.

As Pop Mannion thought: Right up my alley!

Not only that but as Grattidge wrapped up and moved onto his Q & A with the audience, I realized that I was a whole lot better versed in the subject than he or any other member who asked a question did. Here I was in a roomful of scientists and for once I was the one who knew stuff!

Well, of course was.

This isn’t like a reversed situation in which for some lunatic reason I was giving a talk on the thermoelectric effects in silver haldides to a roomful of English professors and Grattidge happened to be in the audience. I’m not an expert, by any means. But Gittridge is new to the debate and he was recounting the beginnings of his own investigations while I’ve been following it for decades. I’ve been a committed Stratfordian---that is, charter member of the reality-based community when it comes to the authorship of the plays---since I was in middle-school when I learned that some people thought the plays were written by Sir Francis Bacon. When I first heard that, I scoffed and scoffed as only a precocious twelve year old can scoff at the grown-ups. The idea that Macbeth was written by a dull and dreary "natural philosopher" who was more comfortable writing in Latin than in English and not by an actor and poet was and is scoffable.

For the record, I enjoyed Grattidge’s presentation, which was filled with lots of juicy Elizabethan court gossip, even though I felt the urge to set him straight on a few things. His research, which has included one of my favorite books on Shakespeare, Contested Will by James Shapiro, has turned him into a skeptic. He isn’t ready to argue that any of the most popular alternative Shakespeares---Bacon, de Vere, or Christopher Marlowe---is the real author but he’s thinking that the real Shakespeare probably had a lot of help and the plays are works of collaboration not products of a single genius. Pop Mannion kept prompting me to ask questions just to help keep the discussion lively, but the only questions that occurred to me were ones that would have taken apart Gittridge’s main points and given me the opportunity to show off all the stuff I had in my head. It was his night and any way I have a classroom in which I can strut my stuff if I’m ever in the mood to be a pompous bore on the matter. On top of that, I never want to be one of those people. You know, the ones who take over a question and answer session to make speeches and ride their favorite hobby-horses. So I sat there, nodding sagaciously, answering the questions from other members of the audience in my head, feeling smug and superior and virtuous, confident that a good time was being had by all, thanks in no small part to my knowing how to keep my mouth shut, until…

Old Sneep made his presence known.

If you know the story of Lentil by Robert McCloskey, famous for Make Way for Ducklings, you know Old Sneep. The plot of Lentil revolves around the return of Colonel Carter to the small town where he grew up. Carter is a war hero, politician, successful businessman, and philanthropist who has given the town its library and hospital, so his homecoming is a big deal to the grateful townsfolk and they set out to make it a big celebration that will start with Carter being greeted at the train station by a big brass band. Sneep is an old schoolmate of Carter, who was never much impressed by him because he’s made a point in life of never being much impressed by anyone or anything. He decides Carter and by extension the whole town need “takin’ down a peg or two” and when Carter’s train pulls in and the band gets ready to play, Sneep appears on the station roof, loudly sucking lemons. This causes the all the members of the band’s mouths to pucker so they can’t play their instruments and so the day seems ruined until a boy named Lentil steps in with his harmonica.

Great book.

One of my all-time faves.

But the point here is that the world is full of Sneeps, people who make a mission in life of raining on parades and taking others down a peg or two. And sure enough, there he was, Torch’s own Old Sneep, a political scientist who took advantage of the Q & A to break out the lemon and start sucking loudly.

“What does it matter who wrote the plays?” he demanded to know in a sour voice. We’ve got the plays and the plays are what’s important. It doesn’t make them better or worse if they were written by Shakespeare or by somebody else. The whole debate, he declared, is a big waste of everybody’s time, which, of course, amounted to telling Grattidge his presentation was a waste of everybody’s time.

My mouth didn’t pucker but my cheeks blazed and I was all set to jump in not just in defense of Grattidge but in defense of the idea that the debate is worth having.  Although I think the question is settled and all the arguments that somebody else wrote the plays are scoffable, the scoffing itslelf can lead into interesting discussions of the plays, the times, and the nature of art and genius.

Fortunately, the members of the club know this guy for the Sneep he is and they’ve learned to deal with him with a mix of amusement and casual but tactful dismissal.  Grattidge was affable and gracious in acknowledging Sneep may have a point and a dozen other hands went up, their owners ready with questions that eased the discussion onto other topics and I was saved from making a pompous bore of myself.

But I really would like to answer the guy.  The questions are interesting and important.  And I plan to make a stab at answering, because as you may know, not only do I have a classroom where I can make a pompous bore of myself, I have this blog.  So there’s the subject of my next post.

Warning to my scientist readers:  I know stuff, so watch my smoke!

Image courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust via Windows on Warwickshire.

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Comments

[Tim Susman]

On top of that, I never want to be one of those people. You know, the ones who take over a question and answer session to make speeches and ride their favorite hobby-horses.

Having sat on many panels at many conventions, I am quite familiar with "those people." My friends and I call them "the people who think they should be on the panel." Congratulations on your restraint.

And thanks in general for the good read! I was not familiar with the story of Old Sneep--is that where the phrase "suck a lemons" comes from? I seem to associate that with being bitter about someone else's success, so it would sort of fit.

[Chris Clarke]

I've yet to see a Shakespeare denier argument that didn't boil down to classism. As someone who writes despite being almost completely untutored myself, I find the arguments say more about the arguer than about Will.

[stephen benson]

theatre, like music, is often far more collaborative than people realize. especially with new works. since it takes an ensemble for a piece to be realized the parts that get hammered out and bent into shape during that process are often quite different than the original idea that first made the page.

i'm certain that Shakespeare wrote the plays, and the poetry attributed to him. i'm also certain that there were a lot of ideas, and maybe even a character riff here and there that made it to the final product as a result of the collaborative process.

which for me doesn't change a thing.

another side trip is that I have always been surprised how many towering intellects I've met that are also musicians. granted most of them use music as a means to another end. Einstein said that playing the violin occupied enough space in his brain that it allowed other parts of his thoughts the chance to run free.

[bruced]

Just for the record, there's only one d in silver halide.
:-)

[Ken Muldrew]

Since the record is being corrected, you have a double electric in the title of Grattidge's book.

Until just now, I was inclined to dismiss the argument as worthless myself; not to suck lemons, but just because arguing over someone's name doesn't seem likely to profit anyone. The plays and sonnets were all written by the same guy and we may as well call him Shakespeare as anything else.

That someone might argue the point that these works must have been created by a gentleman of high birth and noble breeding at least makes sense, no matter how odious I find the argument. Likewise with the argument that the plays were written in a collaborative process. I don't really understand why anyone would be trying to make such arguments in the first place, though. Is it just that people think that someone who wrote so well should have been a bigger celebrity in his own time?

I look forward to even more enlightenment with your next post.

[jp]

Prof Shapiro's first name is James, not William. And yes, great book!

[Fran in NYC]

In his last chapter, Prof. Shapiro writes about the research being done with computer-assisted linguistics. It hasn't had time to filter down to general notice but this research seems to show that, in the very late plays, Shakespeare was working with other writers. It also shows that none of the 'pretenders' has anything to do with the plays or poems.

[Ken Houghton]

It's been common knowledge for decades that many of the later plays were collaborations. (I wrote an entry on John Fletcher for an encyclopedia, and finding data confirmging collaborations was much simpler than anyone who be led to believe--there's a good deal of research on exactly that from the 1930s and 1940s, let alone recent years.)

Remember, by 1608 and certainly 1610, Shakespeare is a known name and commodity, and has to keep producing while also, well, producing. Going through the multiple iterations that resulted in Hamlet can either (a) not be done, because of other duties or (b) be done with a collaborator (apprentice?)

But I don't know of anyone who has suggested (with any non-classisist evidence, as noted above) that the large majority of the plays are not the work of William Shakespeare. (Nor does anyone dispute that several of them--Hamlet most especially--have antecedents among plays from other lands and in some cases English writers of the previous generation. That the Shakespeare version thrives while Kyd's Hamlet barely survives is For Good Reason--audiences prefer the former.)