Today’s Ohioan You Should Know is a man named Wilbur Zeigler. But, before we get to him, we’re going to have to take a quick look at a literary mystery – one you may not suspect is a real thing, but according to some it most definitively is.
Who wrote all those Shakespearean plays? (Sonnets, etc.)
If you’re like most people, you’re likely to say it was this dude named William Shakespeare. That makes sense because that’s where we get the term “Shakespearean Plays” from, right?
Wait … What?
For now, we’re going to bypass the question of “Who in their right mind would think that someone other than William wrote all those Shakespearean plays?” and look at another, similar question instead?
Why do some people actually think that Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by Shakespeare?
At present count, we’re pretty sure there are roughly 38 plays (comedies, tragedies, and histories) as well as somewhere in the ballpark of 157 sonnets … the vast majority of which are hailed as being “genius” or “extremely brilliant” so there are those out there who think that’s a lot more than any one man is capable of. Some of the people who have made this claim include the likes of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, so they’re not all crazier than Aunt Irma at Chippendales Male Review show.
There are also those who have tried to compare various Shakespearean plays, noting subtle differences in style between them, and citing this as “proof” that they were not penned by the same person.
There are others who site “the bard’s” lack of a “proper education” (whatever that means) or suggest that if Shakespeare really wrote all that stuff, there would be more documentation about everything he wrote and produced on stage.
And, of course, you also have those conspiracy theorists who like saying things like, “How do you know Shakespeare wrote all those plays? Were you there? Did you witness him writing every single one? No? You didn’t? Then clearly you don’t actually KNOW anything, do you?”
If Not Shakespeare, Then Who?
Ok. Let’s just assume for a second here that Shakespeare didn’t write all those Shakespearean works. Then … Who Did?
There are (I kid you not) two leading theories. (Because appearently a lot of people believe this.)
The first theory is that it was a group of people who wrote all the Shakespearean plays, either with or without Shakespeare’s involvement. So, maybe Shakespeare was approached by a writer who said, “Hey, I have this play about these two kids that kill themselves. One’s a real Romeo type, the other a pretty Juliet…” To which Willie Shakespeare said, “Sounds great, I’m looking for a new comedy. Wait, it’s a tragedy? Ok, I can make that work, too.”
Or, maybe Shakespeare came up with all the ideas and only got others to write the stories for him. “Hey, I’ve got this human skull and I can’t explain why I happen to have it laying around the house, so can you please quickly write me a play so I can explain this damnedable thing away? Whose skull is it? Well, his name is Yorick, and he was a cool kid, I knew him well. Don’t ask any more questions.”
The other leading theory is that all of Shakespeare’s plays were written by this guy named Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, 1st Baron Verulam. Or just Francis Bacon for short.
He was an interesting historical figure on his own, something of a talented writer, even developing his own cryptographic “code” …
In 1786, a pamphlet was produced called The Story of the Learned Pig, basen on some rather flawed research by James Wilmot that tries to lay a claim that someone other than Shakespeare wrote all those plays and sonnets, but it was relatively clear from the text that Francis Bacon was the suspect, even if he wasn’t directly named. The pamphlet caused quite a stir until enough people noticed all the flaws and tried to dismiss it – but the pamphlet was already out there.
The next pamphlet that came out, with large thanks to Delia Bacon who, surprisingly has no relation to Francis Bacon (I do wonder, however, how many degrees of separation she or Francis have to actor Kevin Bacon), called Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays?, by William Smith. While Smith and Bacon both seemed to agree on Francis Bacon writing Shakespeare, that was pretty much the end of what they could agree on. They had vastly different opinions on what exactly was going on and who all had been involved. Delia Bacon tried to claim a conspiracy involving many people, including Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser in an attempt to make the monarchy look bad.
Now the flood gates were open and any time someone was doing research on Shakespeare or Bacon and they found something in common – suddenly it became “proof” that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays.
To be fair, some of the evidence is at least a little convincing. Perhaps not enough to re-write history, but still enough to make for some interesting reading.
Enter Stage Left: Wilbur Zeigler
Wilbur Gleason Zeigler was born in Freemont, Ohio in 1857. In 1881 he graduated college with a law degree and joined a partnership with R. P. and H. S. Buckland. This lasted roughly a year before he decided that practicing the law wasn’t what he wanted to do – he wanted to become a writer.
Over the next two years, he contributed to a few historical works, most notably he helped research Ben Grosscup’s book The Heart of the Alleghanies; or, Western North Carolina, which came out in 1883. However, at that time, he decided writing wasn’t his thing either – so he went back to practicing law.
This took him to San Franscisco, which is where he was practicing when the 1906 Earthquake hit, which he ultimately went on to write about.
Anyway, back in the 1890s, Wilbur came across the Bacon Wrote Shakespeare theory and started looking into it. He didn’t believe what he was reading. For some reason, he thought that it wasn’t Francis Bacon who wrote Shakespeare – it was English playwright Christopher Marlowe.
Unlike Smith & Bacon (among others) who had written pamphlets and published research into the subject – Zeigler decided to take a slightly different approach. Instead, he penned a novel titled It Was Marlowe: a Story of the Secret of Three Centuries in which he laid out how he believed Marlowe had done it and gotten away with it.
Marlowe had not been killed in a fight in 1593, but rather he faked his own death and went into hiding, reappearing as Shakespeare, at least in playwright form.
Zeigler was aware that there were quite a few holes in his research, some inconsistencies, or other things he would need to find explanations for. (Like, for instance, how Marlowe either died or faked his death in 1593, but Shakespearean plays like the three Henry VI plays, Richard I, A Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew were all dated from before this time – but the guy was certain that if he could just find a way to explain that – the truth could finally be revealed.
Before publishing It Was Marlowe, there had been some mystery surrounding the playwright’s death. It was a massive whodunnit, since history didn’t record who his killer was, exactly. That would all change many years later due the thorough research of Leslie Hotson. While he was examining the inquest records into Marlowe’s death and finding materials that had been somehow overlooked previously. Not only was he able to definitively determine that Marlowe really did die, but he also was able to pinpoint his killer.
Today, of the multiple “Who Wrote Shakespeare” theories, the one that has been disproven the most was Wilbur Zeigler’s Christopher Marlowe (except for Aunt Irma’s theory that all the plays were written by an infinite number of monkeys locked in a room with an infinite number of typewriters.)
I think it’s fair to say at this point in time that the person who most likely wrote all those Shakespearean plays was, in fact, Willie Shakespeare. But that does not mean that alternative theories shouldn’t continue to be looked into. Hoston’s actually a great example. He was trying to study something else when he ran across the Marlovian Theory, as well as the final solution to the problem of who killed the famous playwright in the first place.
Thinking About Wilbur Zeigler Today
Wilbur Zeigler had numerous accomplishments in his life, a few as a lawyer, but a few more as a writer. His coverage of the big San Franscisco Earthquake is still used as a reference today, as are many of the photographs that accompanied his articles.
The book (co written by him) The Heart of the Alleghanies is also still spoken about, especially in historical sources.
Either of these works should have earned Zeigler his place in history, but it’s his theory that Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s folio that seems to get all the focus. Even though the Marlovian Theory turned out to be … well, less than true – it’s still interesting enough to look at. And, who knows, maybe we’ll discover something else … some day.
