Good Questions for Any Advocate
Questions to take to a talk, a panel or a book, for any candidate, including Shakspere of Stratford
You may hear a talk, watch a panel or read a book that makes the case for one author. This page offers questions to take with you. They are the questions this site asks of every candidate, Shakspere of Stratford included, and each comes with a note on what a good answer would look like. None of them is a trap. A strong case should be glad to be asked.
The standard behind them is set out on What Would Settle It. This page is the third of a set: The Self-Check is for testing a conviction you already hold, Reading Without a Reference Point is for judging a written case you cannot check yourself, and this one is for the questions you can put to the person making the case.
The first question
“Which document from the candidate’s lifetime comes closest to connecting them with the writing, and where can it be seen?”
A good answer names a document and an archive or a printed edition. An answer that begins with the plays, a sonnet or a dedication is offering a reading of the works, which may be interesting but is circumstantial evidence. Either answer tells you what kind of case you are hearing.
Questions about the evidence
“Is that fact recorded in a document from the period, or does it come from later tradition or a modern account?”
Every fact a case uses should be traceable to a primary source. A good answer gives the source; “it is well known” is not one.
“How many other people of the time would that fact also fit?”
A classical education, years at court or travel in Italy fits hundreds of literate Elizabethans. A good answer gives a rough figure and how it was reached. A fact shared by hundreds narrows the field very little.
“Do some of these facts follow from one another?”
Noble birth brought a classical education, French, time at court and often travel abroad. Counted separately they look like five matches, though they come from a single cause. A good answer says which facts are independent and why.
“Who else might fit all of this?”
Ruling out the other named candidates does not show that no one else fits. A good answer explains why the facts, taken together, would be unlikely to fit anyone else in the period.
Questions about the method
“Has the method been tried on someone nobody proposes as the author?”
Parallels between the works and a candidate’s life or letters can be found for almost anyone, if one searches long enough. The test is to fix the rules first, then apply them to a few well-documented contemporaries chosen by someone else. A good answer describes such a test, or welcomes one.
“Were the rules fixed before the result was known?”
This applies to ciphers, name-counting and statistical scores alike. A rule chosen after looking at the answer will usually find it.
“Supporters of other candidates find their own author’s life in the same plays. How would we tell whose life is really there?”
Readings of the plays as autobiography have been offered for nearly every candidate, and each camp finds its own author. A reading can point to one person only if it would not fit the others equally well, and only if it was found by rules set before the search began.
The question that works with anyone
“What evidence, if it turned up, would make you less confident?”
Anyone who has thought hard about a case can answer this, and the answer tells you a good deal. If you only get one question, this is a good one to ask.
When a question falls flat
Questions like these sometimes puzzle the speaker or writer making the case for a candidate. An advocate builds a case as a barrister does, gathering everything consistent with the candidate and presenting it as a body of fit, so that each new match adds to the case. A good barrister also avoids any question whose answer could hurt the client, and in court that does no harm, because the other side’s counsel asks the hostile questions. At an authorship talk there is usually no one in that seat.
The scientist’s habit runs the other way: a test is worth making only when the answer is not known in advance, and a piece of evidence counts only if it could have come out the other way and if it separates one candidate from the rest. Asked of someone working as a barrister, “what would count against your candidate?” can sound like a request to argue the other side. The three questions below work from inside the advocate’s case and still carry the test with them.
“If you opened a play you had not yet studied, what would you expect to find there?”
This asks for a prediction before the looking starts. A case that can say in advance what it will find, and then finds it, has passed a real test.
“Which of your findings would supporters of another candidate have most trouble matching?”
This invites the speaker to name the evidence that separates their candidate from the others, which is the evidence that counts. A finding that every camp can match for its own author tells us nothing about which author it was.
“If you had to keep one piece of evidence and drop the rest, which would it be?”
Ranking the evidence shows whether anything in the case stands on its own. A case built from many small matches may have nothing that would survive alone.
Nothing here is peculiar to the authorship question. Any group that shares a conclusion, about the past, a matter of science or a question of public affairs, can come to argue as a barrister does, gathering what fits with no one in the opposing seat. The same questions work there. The question that travels furthest is a version of the earlier one about other candidates’ supporters: how would we judge this if it came from the other side?
Starting points for each candidate
Each candidate page ends with Open Questions: the gaps in the record where new evidence would most change the assessment. These are the questions to start with.
| Candidate | A question to start with | More |
|---|---|---|
| Shakspere of Stratford | Which document from his lifetime records him as a writer, as distinct from an actor, shareholder or man of business? | Open Questions |
| Edward de Vere | He died in 1604. What document shows how the plays first recorded after that date reached the stage and print? | Open Questions |
| Christopher Marlowe | The coroner’s inquest records his death at Deptford on 30 May 1593. What document shows him alive afterwards? | Open Questions |
| William Stanley | George Fenner’s letters of 1599 report him “busied only in penning comedies for the common players.” Does any of that writing survive, and what links it to the canon? | Open Questions |
| Mary Sidney Herbert | Her own writing survives and is well documented. Which document connects her with the plays themselves? | Open Questions |
| John Florio | The Italian material in the plays fits Florio. What shows it reached the plays through him, rather than through the other routes then available? | Open Questions |
| Francis Bacon | Which entries in the Promus appear in the plays and in no other source then available? | Open Questions |
| Henry Neville | Does any document connect him with the Earl of Southampton before 1601? | Open Questions |
| Thomas North | The plays draw on North’s documented work. What shows that North wrote the plays, rather than that the playwright read North? | Open Questions |
| Emilia Bassano Lanier | Is there any record connecting her with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men or its members? And how does the case read the First Folio’s prefatory verses, which speak of the author as dead in 1623, when she lived until 1645? | Open Questions |
| Earl of Rutland | Which document from his lifetime connects him with the works? | Open Questions |
How to ask
One question at a time, asked out of curiosity, and then let the answer stand. A follow-up is fine; a debate from the floor seldom helps anyone. Questions here are about the argument and the evidence, never about the person making the case. If the answer is good, say so.