The Snobbery Slander: The Most Outrageous and Ironic Attacks on Oxfordians and Other Shakespeare Authorship Doubters

Abstract

Class-based feelings have played an important role in the Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ), though not in quite the same way that traditionalists think.

The most perennial and damaging (and speciously false) criticism long made against those who embrace the "Oxfordian" theory (or other non-Stratfordian theories) of Shakespeare authorship, is that they were or are motivated mainly by "snobbery" or class bias. This essay explores various aspects and ironies of this "snobbery slander," as well as the conspiracy canard, accusations of mental illness, and the most outrageous accusation of all against authorship doubters: the Holocaust denial comparison.

The snobbery slander is grossly inaccurate and unfair as applied to virtually all Oxfordians and other doubters, past and present. There is ample evidence that class-based bias is actually more significant as a motivating factor for many people who adhere to the traditional Stratfordian authorship view.

The snobbery slander is also deeply ironic because the Shakespearean works themselves display profound aristocratic bias. There are innumerable indications in the plays and poems that the author almost certainly must have been a highly educated and privileged aristocrat.

This paper was first posted on SSRN on July 24, 2018. Much of it appears in somewhat different form in Part V (Conclusion) of the author's book "Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts" published in June 2019. The paper was revised and published on the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Website on July 15, 2019. Free excerpts of the book (including Part V) have also been separately posted on SSRN, as TJSL Research Paper No. 3007393 (originally posted July 26, 2017). Just type in the usual SSRN URL: "ssrn" forward-slash "abstract" equal-sign 3007393.