One class-based argument against Shakespeare’s authorship of his plays is sometimes presented (and, interestingly, is often from those who are not from upper-class backgrounds themselves). It offers that Shakespeare wrote like a patrician, elevating the importance of court life, and that he ignored or demeaned the proletariat. Certainly he often wrote about royal rulers, but that seems no stranger than Hollywood making movies and miniseries about legendary heroes, famous politicians, or movie stars – it sells tickets because of the name recognition and public interest in the topic. Shakespeare did write about political intrigue at court in ways that made the characters three-dimensional, but it is odd to deduce from this the necessity of first-hand observation in an actual royal court, especially since so many of the plays about royals were set in the past, when Elizabethan palace customs mattered less. It seems like what was most needed to write about the rulers and the intrigues in the halls of power would simply be historical research, imagination, and an understanding of human nature.
Julius Caesar and Coriolanus do seem to indicate a profound distaste for ‘mob rule,’ and his history plays frequently have rebels mounting attacks on lawful rulers and causing chaos, and eventually being punished. However, this general slant hardly makes Shakespeare’s provenance from a middle class background disqualify him as a writer who might express such themes. Elizabethan England was not a democracy, and letting the people decide on a course of action would have seemed like anathema – but particularly to the theater’s underwriters, who were either royalty or nobility. In fact, universal human equality would actually have been an alien idea to everyone, no matter what their class. Their whole belief system during the Renaissance rested on an overarching concept of hierarchy, the Great Chain of Being -- with God at the top and the various races and animals arranged at specific, assigned levels on a kind of permanent staircase below.
But at the same time, it is not even universally true of his plays that rebellion was naughty: in Hamlet, though Leontes foolishly tries to overthrow Claudius, when Fortinbras marches on Elsinore at the end of the play, he is returning a troubled castle to peace and stability. Moreover, this comes after the protagonist has murdered a king -- something that in the world of this particular play comes across as a noble act. In Macbeth, the rebels are technically the good guys, recruited by the stalwart Macduff into overthrowing the bloodthirsty eponymous tyrant. When they march on the usurper on the throne (Macbeth) they do so to end his murder spree, so clearly this rebellion is positive.
Personal rebellion and disobedience are also seen in positive lights in other plays of Shakespeare’s. Imogen and Hermia disobey their stern fathers’ matrimonial commands in Cymbeline and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and we are on their side. Juliet does the same; the play certainly does not rebuke her willfulness, but instead, ends with the bereaved Capulets and Montagues both learning lessons about parenting. In Measure for Measure, it is the sanctimonious and regimental deputy overseeing the city with an iron fist who is the villain -- the libertines and lawbreakers are shown as very likeable, with understandable flaws. Antony and Cleopatra are the objects of gossip throughout the ancient world over their licentious affair, but at the end of the tragedy, the play sides with them, the independent-minded risk-takers, not with the upright bore Octavius who wages war against them. Moreover, the comedies Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Tempest all devote considerable stage time to mischief and pranks perpetrated by characters who encapsulate the idea of high-spirited anarchy.
Then we should consider Henry IV, Parts I and II. Though these plays are ostensibly about an English king, he barely appears in it. The riotous, hedonistic, unrepentant anti-hero Falstaff actually seems like the centre of both plays. Prince Hal is the character who changes most over the course of the two plays -- he is the protagonist, strictly speaking, and ultimately he has to disavow the values of the rascal knight Falstaff after his coronation. The play itself does not disavow them, however. When Hal rejects Falstaff, it is Hal who disappears from the stage; Falstaff stays on so we can feel his pain. Moreover, in Henry V, we learn that Falstaff has died of a broken heart because of Hal’s rejection; Shakespeare’s humane ethic has a lot of warmth toward Falstaff, over three plays.
The strongest argument against the theory that Shakespeare must have been a nobleman is Act 2, Scene IV in Henry IV, Part 1. This very long scene takes place at The Boar's-Head Tavern in Eastcheap and shows the deep friendship that Prince Hal and Falstaff have with each other – it also, through their constant playful banter and competition, proves how well-matched they are, though one of them will inherit the kingdom and the other is already disgraced. The teasing and back-and-forth culminates in a role-playing game in which Falstaff turns an ordinary tavern chair into a throne, a dagger into a scepter, a pillow into a crown, and himself into the king, Henry IV.
Disrespectful? Disloyal? It certainly could have been perceived that way by the gossips and spies from the court. Falstaff apes a monarch, rather like the Lord of Misrule tradition in the Feast of Fools though Queen Elizabeth had banned such festivities. Falstaff presumes, during his play-acting, to put words in the king’s mouth – and to benefit himself. He treats the ceremonial trappings of royalty as a joke, all while playing around with a prince who is next in line for the throne. Falstaff is a commoner, and this mockery is being done in public, before a crowd of both men and women, at a disreputable, low-class tavern. Does Shakespeare show the prince being offended by it, though? No, instead Hal is tickled, and he does exactly the same thing himself – he switches roles with Falstaff and likewise dishonors the king, his own father, by mocking the monarch’s serious commands. When the king’s officers arrive and disrupt the proceedings, the harshness of their interruption is a subtle reminder of the dangers this irreverent display might actually bring in an autocratic state. Yet we are not on their side.
It seems impossible to imagine a nobleman writing this scene. Aristocrats in the Renaissance may have received better education than middle-class Englishmen, but they also were educated to think a certain way: it is much more likely that an aristocrat would have been shocked by that scene, viewed it as undignified and scandalous. That’s not all, though. The play as a whole, both parts of Henry IV in fact, place much greater value on the Eastcheap gang’s irreverent and mischievous scenes than on the formal, serious dialogues at court. The scenes which come alive and seem the most naturalistic -- the most closely observed, if anything in Shakespeare should legitimately be said to feel observed -- are not the courtly pontifications, but the scenes surrounding Falstaff and his milieu. The Oxfordians would have us believe that their Shakespeare was a nobleman who kept himself hidden away on a remote estate, writing in secret – while the actor Shakespeare frequented taverns and apparently had an active London social life. Yet the plays themselves do not sound like they were written by someone in a garret or in an approved, important, careful position at court – they sound precisely like they’re written by someone who enjoyed goofing around with other actors and hanging out at taverns. They sound as if they are written by someone who did not view the pedigreed as the only legitimate subjects of drama, but by someone who admired the full variety of human types and frailties.
