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Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: Shakespeare at 400

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Abstract

The year 2016 is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. His plays are read, interpreted, and performed throughout the United States and the world, and from the early seventeenth century onward, the praise bestowed on him is hyperbolic, as if he were superhuman, even divine. Biographies of Shakespeare abound and often are informative, but not about Shakespeare himself, for we know very little about his day to day activity. Biographers thus imagine and invent the life, using speculation and conjecture as substitutes for evidence and fact. We do know much about the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater and about London acting companies. We know too that for his company, Shakespeare was an actor and a sharer (an investor who shared in the profits) as well as a playwright. But none of the original scripts that Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote has survived. There are no manuscripts in Shakespeare’s hand, nor did he prepare and authenticate any of the published texts we possess. Hence we do not know for certain what the world’s greatest writer actually wrote. Shakespeare’s plays are a supreme fiction, and this more than anything explains his astonishing longevity and renown.

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Notes

  1. Unless otherwise indicated, all Shakespeare quotations are from The Complete Signet Shakespeare, ed. Sylvan Barnet.

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  1. English Department, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA, 02481-8203, USA

    William E. Cain

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Cain, W.E. Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction: Shakespeare at 400. Soc 53, 76–87 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-015-9983-2

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