Truth
A few years ago, I made the Oxfordians angry. If you don’t hang out in Shakespeare world, you might not know who the Oxfordians are (and, truth be told, there are different kinds of Oxfordians outside of Shakespeare world that, for our purposes are perfectly normal people). But inside Shakespeare world, Oxfordians are a specific sect under the umbrella of another kind of folks we refer to as Anti-Stratfordian. In the simplest of terms, Anti-Stratfordians are folks who believe that William Shakespeare or Shaksper or Shaxper or variant spellings there of is not the author of the plays written under that name. Oxfordians are a kind of Anti-Stratfordian that believe that Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was the actual writer of the plays, and that Shakespeare was either a pseudonym or a person who served as a kind of reverse ghost writer for Oxford.
You can read more about the controversy just about any place on the internet as well as several books, and a metric ton of those sources are unreliable, but highly entertaining. If you want a great primer on the issue, check out Contested Will by James Shapiro. The controversy was perhaps most famously championed in Roland Emmerich’s film, Anonymous, which is as bad as it is fictitious.
Back to the story: I made the Oxfordians mad because I created a t-shirt fundraiser for a shirt that was not nice to them. The t-shirt was a remake/reprint of a shirt idea I’d first had in Shakespeare graduate school where I regularly gave tours of the Blackfriars Playhouse, a recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor stage of the same name. During those tours, the number one question that came up was whether Shakespeare was Really Shakespeare. The number two question was whether Shakespeare really wrote those plays. The idea that he was neither of those things is Anti-Stratfordianism in a nutshell. Partly out of exasperation, my grad school colleagues joined me in printing a shirt that said:
If you mention the Earl of Oxford one more time, I’ll stab you in the face.
While I’ll readily admit that this is a teensy bit aggressive, we of course didn’t mean we’d actually stab anyone in the face. And, indeed, even after at least two reprintings and reissues of the shirt where no one has been stabbed — let alone in the face, I feel the need to go out of my way to say this in case you are confused about it. Because, oh boy, the Oxfordians were confused. And in case I need to say anything else: I don’t think it is appropriate to stab people generally. I advocate for non-violence in various parts of my life. I’ve grown up since my younger days, and I think I’d find something equally cheeky to express my Anti-Oxfordianism sartorially, though I would hope not to be less incisive (pardon my pun).
Anyway, a few years ago, as a fundraiser for my theatre company, we did one of the aforementioned reprints. The link to the fundraiser was shared in a large, online group that contained a number of Oxfordians. And whew:
They really went after it the comments sections, both of the post in the online group and of the fundraising site. They also got pretty active on the theatre company’s Facebook page, expressing their various forms of contempt.
They emailed me repeatedly both at the theatre company and at my work with words of chastisement.
They mailed my theatre company and my work address with more chastisement after I didn’t respond.
They also invited me to a debate on the merits of their position versus the Stratfordian position.
Most of their admonishment was couched in the parlance of nonviolence. An example might be, “How could you possibly condone violence against our group?” Some of them even leveraged the then-recent murder of George Floyd as part of their argument about why I needed to back off the violent threat against them.
They sent me a nice sticker or a mug or a tote or something. I can’t remember.
More stuff like this.
Here’s the thing: nothing about Oxfordianism is true. Not one bit. Among other factoids, Edward de Vere died twelve years before Shakespeare, but the plays kept happening. This kind of fact is immaterial to the Oxfordians, who will counter with something about how either there was a stockpile of plays that kept coming or that the moniker “Shakespeare” was put into use by someone else after de Vere’s death. Or some other workaround.
Most Oxfordians, but not all, are not actually Shakespeare scholars. Some are psychologists. Some are lawyers. And so on. Of course saying this out loud will cause the Oxfordians to suggest I have a bias against their lack of credentials or seriousness (or my perception thereof). Most of them will miss the fact that their elite, classist bias against a glover’s son from a country market town is also a bias. And they will spin up the fact that my bias against their lack of credentials shares the same DNA as any potential bias they have against the possibility of Stratfordian authorship.
They have worked every possible angle, I promise you, in the way all conspiracy theorists do. And they are great about stepping into the role of the aggrieved like conspiracy theorists are.
They also miss the point. I’m not particularly concerned with the one-off factoids or their credentials, despite me highlighting some examples here. I just know that Anti-Stratfordianism is untrue. I know this because I’ve studied the work, been trained formally in the work, read the stuff you’re supposed to read, learned who and who not to trust, and concluded the truth about the writer behind the plays of William Shakespeare. And so have a lot of other people. Fact is, the Stratford Shakespeare story is pretty straightforward and not entirely compelling in the sense that he grew up, lived his life, and wrote some good plays. The story (perhaps aside from the plays) is not particularly sexy.
But it is true. As true as me not stabbing anyone in the face or even considering it in any meaningful way.
These truths are unremarkable. And this is one problem with truth.
What does all this have to do with Advent?
The Truth is coming. Its parents will have to pay taxes and take care of the animals. Its mother will garden, perhaps, and its father will build houses. Not much remarkable. But, I’ve found, unremarkable circumstances often conspire to make wonderful things.
Meditation
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Reflect on the simplicity of truth in your life—the straightforward, perhaps mundane aspects that don't make headlines but are undeniably real. Consider how these simple truths, much like the story of a baby born in a manger, hold immense power and beauty. In this meditation, let's appreciate the unremarkable truths that often go unnoticed but are the very foundation of our existence.
I embrace the simple truths. I find joy in the unremarkable.
Examen
Think of a moment in your life when a simple, unremarkable truth became clear to you. How did it impact your perspective?
Reflect on how society often chases sensational stories or theories. How does this contrast with the quiet truths in your own life?
In this season of Advent, how can you find peace and meaning in the unremarkable yet profound truths of your daily life?
This season, let's celebrate the ordinary, the straightforward, and the real. May our reflections on truth inspire us to appreciate the less glamorous but equally significant aspects of our lives.