» Bare Cheek: A Rose By Any Other Name
Brian Mitchell & Joseph Nixon’s thoroughly scurrilous Brighton column
Local actor Barrington Savoy on Shakespearean identity theft
As a Shakespearean actor of some repute who has played such roles as Polonius, Ajax and John of Gaunt in such venues as The Pomegranate, Chesterfield, The Colchester Mercury, and The Mansfield Palace Theatre, I have, over the years, become more and more convinced that the man we know as ‘Shakespeare’ was nothing but a fraud, a theory I intend to expound upon in my one-man show: The Imposter Of Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The notion that a humble glove-maker’s son from the Midlands could have written all the plays and sonnets attributed to Shakespeare is ludicrous. It is clear that the real writer was a person of great education and erudition, a scholar, and almost certainly an aristocrat.
Now, some people believe that the true author was the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Derby, or Francis Bacon, but my money’s on Roger Manners, fifth Earth of Rutland, who was very posh indeed. I believe that, in partnership with his wife Elizabeth Sidney, Manners wrote all 38 plays, which were then taken to London and performed as written by ‘William Shakespeare.’ The real Shakespeare, an itinerant actor, comedian and drunkard, was merely a front – a figurehead who allowed the Manners to conceal their true identity for some reason.
“I have come to the indisputable conclusion that all Harold Pinter’s plays were written by Prince Charles”
It seems logical to me that this is what actually happened – it makes much more sense than the notion that Shakespeare simply wrote the plays attributed to him. After all, as the law of Occam’s razor states, ‘the much more complicated and needlessly convoluted solution is generally the correct one.’
I have not limited my investigations to Shakespeare, however. The same theory can be applied to any writer. For example, I believe that it would have been impossible for Charles Dickens to have written any of the 20 novels attributed to him. Dickens was the son of a navy clerk from the East End, and consequently was almost certainly barely able to write his own name. All of the oeuvre of ‘Charles Dickens’ was, I am certain, written by Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, who at least had a title. I explored this theory in my 2008 one-man show, Who The Dickens Was Dickens?
Or take Harold Pinter. My researches have shown that Pinter didn’t even go to university! And he lacked even the tawdriest of titles. This leads me to the indisputable conclusion that all Pinter’s plays were written by Prince Charles in collaboration with Pinter’s wife,
Lady Antonia Fraser, as I claimed in my 2007 one-man show, A Pause For Thought.
Other theories I intend to advance in forthcoming one-man shows include: Martin Amis’s novels were written by Prince Michael of Kent.
David Bowie’s albums from The Man Who Sold The World to Scary Monsters were written and recorded by Lord Hailsham. The popular American Television show Mad Men is the brainchild of The Earl of Snowdon.
Unfortunately my theories have led me to the inescapable conclusion that, since I myself am not an aristocrat, and have no title, I could not possibly have been responsible for writing any of my one-man shows – all of which must have been composed for me, either by Prince Andrew or a consortium consisting of the Marquis of Bath, Lord Freddy Windsor, and that posh woman who won Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? I intend to reveal this in my (or I suppose I should say ‘their’) 2011 show Savoy? Cabbage!!!
The Imposter Of Stratford-Upon-Avon is at Upstairs At The Three And Eleven Pub on 2 August at 8.30pm. Tickets cost £6
