Rob McConnell Interviews: Katherine Chiljan - Shakespeare Suppressed

KATHERINE CHILJAN is an independent scholar who has studied the Shakespeare authorship question for nearly 30 years. She has debated the topic with English professors at the Smithsonian Institution and at the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco. She has written several articles for the newsletter of the Shakespeare-Oxford Society, was its editor, and is a former Society trustee.

Chiljan has given talks on the Shakespeare Authorship Question in numerous public libraries, clubs, universities, and bookstores throughout California. She has appeared on “Authors and Critics,” and KQED’s radio show “Forum” with Michael Krasny. Chiljan is a frequent guest on internet radio shows.

A graduate of U.C.L.A. (B.A. History), Chiljan has been an Oxfordian since early 1985, when Charlton Ogburn appeared in a TV debate with a Shakespeare professor on “Firing Line.” Chiljan has published two anthologies: Dedication Letters to the Earl of Oxford, and Letters and Poems of Edward, Earl of Oxford (1998). In April 2012, Chiljan received an award for distinguished scholarship at Concordia University, Portland OR, f

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In answer to the interviewer's questions:

- there are no extant manuscripts, no extant letters, whether they be from or addressed to the Stratford man; there are muted references to Shakespeare by contemporaries.

Here you have one of the most prolific figures in literary history and not one single word has survived. Not one. We have just 6 signatures in a shaky hand that are purported to be his. Now, compare this to other writers and poets of the day - we have surviving manuscripts, letters, we have a wealth of contemporaneous commentary referring to Beaumont and Spencer and Johnson and Greene etc. We know who knew whom from surviving correspondence and we have a great deal of information pertaining to their life and works, all of which deriving from historical documentation. But with Stratford Shakespeare there's nothing. Nada. It's very anomalous. Because here's the thing: prolific literary figures tend to leave a footprint. They crop up all over the surviving historical record. You don't need to be a history major to know that. The notion that not one letter survived and, considering the collaborative world of the theatre, not one surviving correspondence mentioning Shakespeare survived, given the enormous figure he was even back then, is asinine. We also must remember the Elizabethan age with which we're confronted a time when pseudonyms were used more readily than they are today, people of high rank and birth invariably writing under different names.

- when Shakespeare died no obituaries were written, at least none that have survived; there was no recorded London funeral; his death wasn't commented on by his contemporaries in surviving letters. His passing, as per the surviving record, went by without so much as a whisper. Compare this to other writers of the day, like Beaumont and Spencer, who were eulogised by their contemporaries, given state funerals, buried at Westminster abbey with much fanfare and with a copious outpouring of grief in various correspondences. We know this because of surviving documentation. Again, Stratford Shakespeare, there's a whole lot of nothing.

- absence of facts. The interviewer was right to bring up facts. He's absolutely right, there is a total absence of facts apropos the authorship of Stratford Shakespeare. The only things we have are the first folio, published posthumously in 1623, which infers he was the author, but doesn't express it explicitly; his monument in Stratford, which again was erected posthumously, around the time of the first folio, and we have posthumous tradition. That's it. There's no other evidence that attributes Shakespeare's works to the Stratford man. It's barren - and that at the time of the Elizabethan age which has left us copious documentation from all levels of society, including surviving penmanship from all of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and lots of it.

It's analogous to the story of Jesus, the host is quite right, because in both cases, Stratford Shakespeare and Jesus, belief in doctrine and not corroborating facts determine THEIR truth. And, as we know, belief is not a reliable pathway to truth - the scientific method dismantled that one not long after Shakespeare's time.

- why does it matter? History matters. Of course it does. You have the greatest canon of literary works in modern western history and not only don't we know who wrote them, it's been attributed to entirely the wrong person. It's scandalous and it needs addressing, urgently. Will it cure world hunger, no. Reverse climate change, no. Help to disband poisonous ideologies that engender ISIS and other terror networks, no. But if we confine ourselves to only those noble pursuits, as the interviewer seems to suggest, it doesn't leave much room for anything else. You know, like life. In the annals of literary history this is currently, as far as I can tell, the most important issue of today. Plus it's fun, and you know, you need some of that in life.

There are many more compelling reasons why there is an authorship question. And there are NO compelling reasons why the Stratford man should continue to be recognised as the true author as tradition would have it.

And yes, it is a conspiracy. That's the way of the world. Follow the money, as 'All the president's men' had it, or cui bono, as Cicero eloquently put it. The term conspiracy theory dates back to the 60's and is invariably used as an ad hominem attack to shut down and suppress debate. The person using it invariably offers nothing in return, often, there's little justification for using it. It's one big argument by false analogy - a classic logical fallacy. It conflates disparate topics under one large crackpot umbrella - you believe there's a Shakespeare authorship question, well, that must mean you think the world is flat, not only that, clearly you must be a holocaust denier. It's an amazingly dumb and lazy argument, which is deliciously ironic in so many ways, but it's also anti-intellectual, insidiously so, and displays not only a weak understanding of logic and evidence, but the likelihood that those who air it are defending a weak case. At least, their version of the case is weak.