Hugh Trevor-Roper on the Authorship Question
Signatories to the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt may recall that near the end it quotes the late Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, as saying that he found Shakespeare's elusiveness:
“exasperating and almost incredible … After all, he lived in the full daylight of the English Renaissance in the well documented reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I and … since his death has been subjected to the greatest battery of organised research that has ever been directed upon a single person. And yet the greatest of all Englishmen, after this tremendous inquisition, still remains so close to a mystery that even his identity can still be doubted.”
From “What’s in a Name?” Réalités, November 1962.
But although he said Shakespeare’s identity “can still be doubted,” it has not been clear that Trevor-Roper himself doubted the author’s identity, until now. Thanks to Alexander Waugh, we have learned that the Trevor-Roper files on Shakespeare in the archives at Christchurch College, Oxford, contain a letter he wrote to Charlton Ogburn, Jr., dated 21 February, 1981, stating his view. Here are excerpts:
“My view is that the available evidence that the plays and poems were the work of William Shakespeare of Stratford is weak and unconvincing … not a shred of solid evidence connects the man with the works during his lifetime; the association of such works with such a man is, on the face of it, implausible; and the posthumous association of them, in the First Folio and in the Stratford Tomb, is inconclusive since there are legitimate questions concerning the motivation and production of the Folio and the original form of the Tomb. There are many suspicions legitimately adhering to all the later statements associating the man with the works, including the statements of Ben Jonson. Altogether, I consider the evidence of association to be slender, weak and implausible. There is not a single testimony which could not easily be re-interpreted if solid evidence were to turn up that the works were written by another man… In these circumstances of legitimate doubt, I believe that the proper course is to return to square one and examine the problem ab initio, without any preconceptions… I am heretical in that I allow that there is a real problem of authorship… I would not be surprised if evidence were to be discovered which destroyed the orthodox case.”
We totally agree, and could hardly have said it better.