Among the plethora of books, articles and events that have been conceived to turn such anniversaries into reputations, careers and profits, on this occasion we have “Follow the money: the story of slavery and Shakespeare’s First Folio” [link], published in the Guardian newspaper. The author is Emma Smith. The purpose is to get out the word that Smith's Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book has been published by Oxford University Press.
Ms. Smith introduces herself and her book by explaining that “[t]wo stories, usually seen as disconnected,... have their meeting point in one specific object: the valuable book known as Shakespeare’s First Folio, published 400 years ago in 1623.” The two stories are histories of the slave trade and the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769.
While her point is incorrect, the presumably post-Colonialist target audience of her book (which I have not read) requires it be asserted. It is an advertisement, a display of scholarly plumage.
The slave trade, as she herself points out, meets equally “in Wedgwood porcelain, in Chippendale furniture”. What she doesn't point out is that the trade also meets with sugar and the tea and coffee one may put it in, the candy that brings a smile to a child's face, cotton balls, the leisure time required to invent the flush toilet and to discover electricity so that western man could create mechanical slaves and no longer feel the same need for those of flesh-and-blood, etc. It meets in the even more expensive rare book, the Gutenberg Bible, and the acceptance in its pages of the slaves held by Hebrews as they themselves were held in turn under the Egyptians. Leisure to create calligraphic copies of the Koran was made possible in part by Christian slaves held by the Ottomans. Fellow Africans were held as slaves, far back into the mists of time, by Ethiopia and other of the more dominant empires of the continent. Some native America tribes held slaves. China, Japan and India all held slaves for millennia and China is still considered to actively engage in slavery. All of those slaves, it bears saying, allowed the freemen and women of those nations to develop and trade in luxury goods. Literature and books included.
In the history of none of these slave states does the story of their slave trade and story of their cultural development “have their meeting point in one specific object”. In none of them do any of their cultural objects — much less their commercial products — exist in a rarefied dimension free from the taint of their slaveries.
On the rarest of occasions, however, such precise meeting-points between slave trade and a particular cultural product do exist. Twenty years after the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769, perhaps the single most important such meeting-point in history occurred. I refer to the meeting-point when the Clapham Evangelical Sect member elected to the English Parliament, William Wilberforce, made his great 1789 speech, in the body, calling for the abolition of slavery.
Or perhaps it is better to credit the humbler effort of the Evangelicals' poet laureate, William Cowper, who agreed, the year before Wilberforce's speech, to put aside his more literary efforts in order to write a series of popular ballads in favor of abolition.
“THE negro's complaint.”
Forced from home and all its pleasures,
Afric's coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger's treasures,
O'er the raging billows borne.
It is true that no Cowper centennials have ever been celebrated. No industry has sprung up to celebrate his life or work. There's little to be gained by demeaning him or his work. Still less by crediting either.
That Wilberforce and Clapham are all but unknown, even among 21st century post-Colonial progressives, is an eloquent fact. While there had been historical efforts among the Taborite Hussites to end the practice of slavery among their neighbors they had no effect. Ancient Athens only gave up most of its slaves as a condition of having been conquered and time took care of the rest. The Apostle Paul accepted slavery as a fact of Roman and Asia Minor life as early Christians drew heavily upon slaves, in those areas, for their membership. Still Paul struggled to convince the faithful that differences in social stature should be left at the doors to their conclaves.
In all of history, only the Clapham Sect had the middle class wealth and standing, concomitant education, and empathy, sufficient to be able to persist for decades to see slavery and the slave trade made illegal in their country. It was they, as well, who inspired the American Abolitionist movement. Their direct inspiration brought about the U. S. Civil War and the end of chattel slavery in most of the western world..
How many Clapham Evangelicals, or their allies, ever managed to purchase a copy of the First Folio I cannot say. But many of them read and greatly appreciated the works of Shakespeare. The middle class wealth and standing, concomitant education and empathy that gave them the resources to abolish slavery, it bears saying, were all possible in large part due to the wealth and leisure Great Britain underwrote by the slave trade. Actually, underwrote by millennia of slavery resulting in wealth sufficient to buy numberless generations of rare books written in every nation and language throughout the world.
So then, let's have middle class wealth and standing, concomitant education and empathy for all. And let us have rare books in which to read about the journey. The job, after all, is by no means done.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
Edward de Vere Birthday Backgrounder: April 12 (2023). April 7, 2023. "Edward De Vere was born April 12th, in the year 1550, at Hedingham Castle, in Essex, to John De Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife Margery De Vere (née Golding)."
Edward de Vere in the Lives of his Daughters. February 27, 2023. "At least they take some comfort from their belief that De Vere had no demonstrable relationship with his daughter, the Countess of Montgomery, Susan de Vere."
- Shakespeare’s Character Names: Shylock, Ophelia, etc. July 13, 2021. “The name Ophelia was, by all indications, quite rare in the 16th century.”
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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