FIFTEEN
Illogical Doubts About the Bard
Solveig Nordstrand rang me and said she had painted my portrait from memory. She asked if I would like to see it. How could I refuse? As I stepped into her studio in Clarges Street she came towards me smiling, and her eyes were very blue. I complimented her silk blouse and necklace.
‘You should see me when I paint – I am in jeans and an old shirt.’
‘Do you wear a beret?’ I asked.
At that moment I stumbled over a canvas leaning against a post, and she laughed and took my hand and led me behind her easel, and she held out her other hand. ‘That is my vision of you, Mr Wilson,’ she said.
‘What a strong and bold painting,’ I said. ‘But I fear it flatters me. I seldom feel so glowing as I look on your canvas.’
‘You always seem very glowing and robust, to me. You seem the sort who was a rugby man at school.’
‘I was, in fact. But I am quite amazed you could remember my face so well – having seen me only so briefly.’
‘I am an artist, Mr Wilson – and you interest me.’
Her English was tinged with a Swedish accent, and when she looked up at me and said “you interest me”, she reminded me a little of the meltingly feminine Ingrid Bergman looking up at Bogy in Casablanca.
‘The painting is for you,’ she said.
‘What a wonderful gift!’ I said. ‘But perhaps you should keep it for me – until I think how to display it.’
We went to lunch at a nearby restaurant and there, over the rim of her red wine glass, she asked about Holmes’s progress on her case. ‘Has he found the man and woman who destroyed my painting?’
‘He has learnt who they are.’
‘I wonder why they set it afire?’ she said, and she laughed. ‘I did not think it was so bad.’
‘Oh, it had nothing to do with your painting, my dear lady – of that I am convinced. You were a random victim.’
‘But the crime must have had a purpose, Mr . . . may I call you James?’
‘Of course.’
‘Those people must have had a motive, James. No?’
‘That is the puzzle in all this,’ I replied. ‘The man who burnt your painting is an international criminal, never known to have involved himself in a crime that did not net him millions of pounds. Yet suddenly he seems to be involved in little more than vandalism. Holmes believes that in recent weeks this individual has exploded an electric guitar during a street busker’s performance, destroyed a lute during a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, injured two music critics during a violin recital by Capinelli, and destroyed (probably inadvertently) an environmental artist – or, to use the right term, killed him . . .’
‘Killed who? Not Ian Fiero!’
‘You knew him?’
‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped.
‘I’m sorry.’
The colour faded out of her face. ‘I knew Ian, yes. I knew he had died, of course. They said only he was hit by a bus. I did not know he was murdered!’
‘The murder may not have been intentional. A small explosion in the portfolio he was carrying caused him to fall off the kerb. The portfolio contained – this is Holmes’s theory – drawings of his scheme to alter the Big Ben clock tower.’
She put her finger to her lips and gazed at me, perplexed. ‘Then this criminal seems to have a grudge against art – is it not so? He attacks instruments, art critics, an architect, a painting . . .’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and also attacks a letter by a great poet – which would fit your theory. Holmes believes he recently stole a letter by Shakespeare, perhaps simply in order to destroy it – though this is not clear.’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘William Shakespeare!’
‘Yes.’
‘To destroy a letter by Shakespeare . . . I do not understand.’
‘That is one of Holmes’s working theories.’
‘He seems a very clever man, this Holmes.’
‘He hypothesizes that there may be a fanatic on the loose who believes, with all the heat and fervour of a religious conviction, that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s works. Holmes suspects that this person may have arranged to have the letter stolen before it could be authenticated, since if the letter were thought to be authentic it would strengthen the case that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was really the author of the plays we all admire. As you may know, no genuine letters from the hand of William Shakespeare have been discovered in four hundred years. So if this letter should prove authentic, it would be quite a find.’
‘I have heard of this theory that Shakespeare wasn’t written by Shakespeare. It sounds quite absurd to me, James.’
‘It always has seemed a rather silly argument to me, too,’ I said. ‘I never really understood the argument, until Holmes explained it to me.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Holmes says that everyone agrees that there was a man called William Shakespeare who lived in Stratford-upon-Avon. Everyone also agrees that this man went to London, became part owner of the Globe Theatre, and put on plays advertised as having been written by William Shakespeare. Contemporary documents prove all this. What Shakespeare doubters dispute is that this William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really wrote the plays.’
‘But who else would have?’
‘The Shakespeare doubters argue that maybe William Shakespeare, the theatre owner, bought or stole the plays from somebody else. Or maybe Shakespeare was given the plays by the real author, a person who – for some obscure reason or other – wished to remain anonymous.’
Solveig laughed. ‘But everyone at the time thought Shakespeare wrote the plays, no?’
‘Yes. Many documents show this. But the doubters argue that the people of the time didn’t know the truth, either.’
She laughed again, almost merrily. ‘So they argue that Shakespeare was fooling everybody? That seems a very silly thing to think. How could they think it?’
‘Holmes described the illogical arguments of the Shakespeare doubters very succinctly. First, because we know very little about Shakespeare’s life, they conclude that his life could not have been rich enough to fill the plays with all those wonderful scenes concerning law, royalty, seamanship, soldiering, botany, hunting, far cities, historical perspectives, and so on. But of course, the fact that we know so little about his life might, with equal logic, mean exactly the reverse – that his life was filled with rich experience. Who can say he did not take the grand tour of Europe, know every king on the continent, spend hours with barristers and seaman every month of his life, and so on? Second, because there is no documentary evidence that Shakespeare ever attended school, the Shakespeare doubters conclude he didn’t attend school, and they go on to argue that this means he could not have been literate enough to write the plays – ignoring the fact that Homer, Chaucer, Robert Burns and Mark Twain were not known to have had much schooling either. Third, because in his last will and testament Shakespeare mentions no library of books, they conclude that he did not read all the books which obviously the author of the plays must have read. Fourth, because Shakespeare wrote no letters claiming that he wrote the plays, they conclude he didn’t write the plays – ignoring the fact that nobody else in the world ever wrote a letter claiming to have written the plays, either. It is quite incredible, the arguments of these doubters. Shakespeare never wrote a letter saying he wrote the plays, therefore they conclude he didn’t write them. Francis Bacon never wrote a letter saying he wrote the plays, therefore they conclude he did write them.’
After lunch we walked along the bustling street towards her studio.
‘You are one of the few men who walk as fast as I do. I so hate walking at a snail’s pace.’
‘You know,’ I said, ‘I often think it is human nature to love mysteries. For instance, it is plain that Shakespeare wrote his own plays, but since those plays are so magical, people find it fun to make a mystery of them, to concoct fantastical circumstantial arguments to prove that someone else might have written them.’
‘Won’t you come up to my studio?’ She opened the door.
‘Thank you, yes . . . in fact, there is not a shred of documentary evidence that the plays were written by Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, William Stanley, Christopher Marlowe, John Fletcher, Sir Francis Drake, or any of the other candidates who have been offered up as the real author of the plays.’
‘No evidence?’
‘There is nothing at all. No documentary evidence. Not a shred, not a line. The so-called “proofs” that these others wrote the plays are pure fantasies, concocted by posterity. But there is one document from that time that indisputably and unambiguously names the author of the plays. It states that William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote them.’
‘Slip off your jacket, James. It is warm. And what is that document?’
‘The First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. It was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. It was published by Shakespeare’s actor friends. Shakespeare’s name is listed as author, and the plays are printed there – and two people who wrote prefaces to the book allude to the fact that the author was Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.’
‘How interesting,’ she said, looking up at me and tilting her head a little.
‘In short, my dear Solveig, if we eliminate all fantasies and stick only to demonstrable facts – facts in the form of contemporaneous documents that unequivocally name someone as the author of the plays – then the score is this: William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, one; everybody else, nothing.’
‘Come to my room, James,’ she said, taking my hand. ‘I want to show you something.’