The fact that William Shakespeare of Stratford began as an actor seems entirely compatible with his writing when we look at his obsessive references to theatrical performance and illusion in several of his works: the As You Like It “All the world’s a stage” speech, the Prologue’s “wooden O” invocation in Henry V, and Macbeth’s “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player.” It makes perfect sense for Shakespeare -- an actor with years of stage experience, a feeling of solidarity with other players, and a financial commitment to theater through joint stock in his own company -- to insert plays-within-plays into Love’s Labor’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hamlet. Yet it seems less likely that a poet like the Earl of Oxford, sequestered (per the film Anonymous) on an aristocrat’s estate far removed from the London theater world, would express himself in those terms. A detached, reclusive writer seems unlikely to spend so much time on the Melancholy Dane’s relationship with the Players, or Hamlet’s master class in the craft of acting, but an actor-writer might -- and might get away with preaching to fellow actors.
Even more germane to the way acting shaped Shakespeare the writer, however, is that Shakespeare’s writing, far from being constantly flowery poesy, is down-to-earth and psychologically astute. Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona rips up her admirer’s letter to show she has no interest in him, then once alone, she falls to her knees and tearfully scoops up the pieces. Googoo-eyed Juliet calls Romeo back to her balcony, then forgets what she was going to say. The heartbroken Falstaff denies that King Henry V really meant to reject him, and waits vainly for a reprieve. Beatrice gets a cold on her cousin’s wedding day because subconsciously she wishes she were getting married, despite what she says about romance.
Such insights extend to deeper psychological through-lines and major characters as well. Macbeth makes a big splash as a warrior-captain and is promoted by a grateful monarch, but the moment he tastes that career success, this hitherto rule-playing and loyal subject is consumed by an insane ambition. Othello wants to trust that his beloved Desdemona is faithful, but being an exception as a general in a fundamentally racist society, he is easily tricked into suspecting that a white woman could not really love a black man; despite all his accomplishments and recognition, he can’t believe that the power structure, to which Desdemona is related, truly accepts him. Getting ready for retirement, King Lear falls for flattery and obsequiousness just when he is trying to set up his legacy, and like a narcissist who needs to hear constant compliments or he’ll get offended, he cannot see which of his children or aides are actually the loyal ones. All of these portraits are immensely gratifying for any actor to mine, and a strong argument could be made that these profoundly human roles still fascinate artists and audiences precisely because Shakespeare as an actor knew how to give other actors emotionally-sophisticated parts.
Shakespeare’s writing is even more precisely actor-oriented, however, in the rich variety of ways he uses pace and rhythm to express character and emotion. As actors who study the texts know, the speech patterns of Shakespeare’s characters can be profoundly psychologically revealing. Cleopatra misses Antony like a lovesick teenager would, asking her entourage a torrent of questions about what he might be doing at that moment. In Much Ado About Nothing, after her cousin’s wedding descends into chaos, an outraged Beatrice gets emotional around Benedick, interrupting and contradicting herself, blurting out her love for him before she realizes. When the treacherous Iago lays the seeds to taint Othello’s mind, he speaks in a simple and straight-forward way, so that he won’t appear too smart to Othello and arouse his suspicion. By contrast, when Iago speaks to the foolish Roderigo, he uses more complex language in order to impress and intimidate him into helping Iago carry out his scheme.
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Students acting Shakespeare are taught to ‘scan’ the meter of the lines, because diagramming the rhythm shows what the characters feel, beat by beat. Cracking the code reveals mood, energy, intended pauses, racing thoughts, tortured logic, and so much more. If a line runs shorter than the usual iambic pentameter, that’s a clue as to the character’s thought process. If it runs longer, that’s another clue. If it begins with an “O,” extending that vowel sound can be wonderfully expressive. If the line has a lot of monosyllabic words, those can be drawn out. If one character stops half way through a line and another character comes in for the second half of the line, the second actor benefits from picking up the cue (following quickly on the heels of the previous line) because it reveals the appropriate energy and therefore the character’s emotion.
Noticing whether characters speak in verse or prose, what makes them switch between those forms, where or whether they rhyme, and where they use alliteration, antithesis, or simile — these are all clues. Well-trained actors also pay close attention to the word on which the line ends, since they have discovered that Shakespeare has it there for a reason that is particular to that character at that moment in time. Shakespeare’s verse does not just get to the end of the line and allow the actor to take a breath; it ends the character’s thought there, or uses it as a jumping pad for an altered or more highly charged thought, or continues a complicated thought onto the next line in a new way. The end of the line is thus a clue to subtle inner changes within the character.
The technical nature of Shakespeare’s writing becomes ever more astonishing the more one delves into it. Though of course we cannot expect Shakespeare to have been methodically and deliberately going about his writing with a conscious effort to plant clues for the actor, there is such richness to every piece of text it shows a profound inner actor’s instinct. He even seems to have been aware, probably subconsciously, of the emotional flickers that could be mined in the split-second pause of a ‘separation’: the slight breath necessary when a word ends on one letter or sound and the next word begins with the same letter/sound. An actor cannot rush through “Say I am merry” or “’Tis Caesar that you mean” without making the words unintelligible – and if he pauses between the two similar sounds and puts an emphasis on the second word, emotional subtext (sarcasm, anger, suspicion, and so on) can be conveyed. Separations can also help with stage business. “This is thy sheath: there rust and let me die” has two separations, the ‘th’ sound and the ‘r’ sound, and this allows the actor time to, first, stab himself and second, take a pained breath in reaction.
Such sensitivity to the actor’s needs seems so absolutely informed by an insider’s knowledge of acting, it is almost incomprehensible that the authorship debate has not acknowledged this fact as the predominant one. Shakespeare wrote like an actor would write.
Finally, Shakespeare was never likely going to attain wealth just as a performer – acting was a precarious business, and besides, he was certainly not the star performer in the company, but more like a character actor. It makes sense for him to have kept writing while acting; it probably paid better. Indeed, Shakespeare had earned a pretty good fortune by the end of his life – and it was not by being a grain merchant. If, all the while that Shakespeare was raking in dough it was merely for pretending to write these sought-after plays, it is hard to believe that the supposedly rightful author would continue to pass up all that money as well as the acclaim. At the very least, one might expect the ‘real’ playwright to throw down his quill and refuse to do any more plays under that unfair arrangement.
But the Oxfordians have an even greater problem with regards to the money that Shakespeare earned: their candidate the Earl of Oxford had money troubles. Anonymous rationalizes from this fact to defend their own position: de Vere went broke, so the reason must have been because he was too busy writing the Shakespearean canon to manage his finances. But why wouldn’t he get paid for his work like Shakespeare did? And also, De Vere did put his name on numerous poems -- he was not too proud or private for that. It seems to strain credibility that when he ran into money troubles he would not also lay claim to the greatest plays in the English language if they were his and the result of many years of constant effort. These plays were widely celebrated by then, and commercial hits – it seems coming forward might have offered a solution to his financial woes.
