Tolkien hated Shakespeare. Pity, as they’re two of my favourite authors.  Humphrey Carpenter says that Tolkien felt that Shakespeare – whom he disliked from schooldays – missed a big opportunity in Macbeth when a wood did not walk from Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill properly – and Tolkien bet himself, with bitter disappointment and disgust, that he would better this one day.

There are many studies of Tolkien’s characters in relation to Shakespearean counterparts, especially since the movies of the book came out – Theoden with Lear, Aragorn (who has also been seen as a Lear, being king incognito for a while, like Henry V) and Frodo with Hamlet etc.  It is said that the two authors shared language and themes too.

Much is made of the parallels between the fight between Eowyn and the Nazgul King, and Macbeth with Macduff – both killed unexpectedly, Eowyn turns out to be a woman, Macduff to have been born by C-section (incidentally I recently learned that Uma Thurman was offered the part of Eowyn in the movie of the book;  I think I prefer Miranda Otto here, anyway).

What always struck me was the rhyme that accompanied Aragorn: “All that is gold does not glitter…” etc.  This is very similar to Shakespeare’s “All that glitters is not gold…” in The Merchant of Venice.  However, Tolkien was much more of a Chaucer man/fan.  Chaucer famously used the similar “…But al thyng which shineth as the gold, Nis nat gold, as that I have heard it told…” in The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales.  Chaucer also used the idea in an earlier work, The House of Fame: “…it is not all gold, That glareth…”

Chaucer was no stranger to the alchemy of the time – when base metals could be transformed to gold.  William Shuchirch was Canon of King’s Chapel at Windsor, teaching how to counterfeit gold in 1374. Chaucer repaired the same Chapel as Clerk of the Works in 1390, so he would have known his writings.

Humphrey Carpenter, who was under the tutelage of Tolkien, said that Tolkien believed that “English literature died when Chaucer went,” so English literature should be based on medieval texts.  So Tolkien would certainly have known of The House of Fame.

Yet the saying can be traced a lot further back.  

The French philosopher Alain de Lille – whom Chaucer himself may have heard of – said in his 12th century Book of Parables, “Non teneas aurum tatum quod quod splendat ut aurum (Do not hold everything gold that shines like gold).”

Aesop is supposed to have used the same turn of phrase in several of the stories from about 600 BCE – look at “The Woman and the Hen” and “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs” and “The Miser”.  

Around the year 1300, Frere Cordellier said, “Que tout n’est pas or con voit luire (Everything is not gold that one sees shining)”; after Chaucer in 1430, John Lydgate said, “All is not gold that outward sheweth bright”;  in 1589 Edmund Spencer said, “Gold all is not that goldeth seem.” Barnaby Googe said a similar thing in 1563. In 1687 John Dryden used it in The Hide and the Panther.

So Tolkien was not beholden to Shakespeare here – not even Chaucer.  Interestingly at the time of writing this article, BBCs wonderful I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue cited a “North Korean” adage – “A beautiful flower does not always smell good…”

At school Tolkien showed himself to be a Baconian.  He took part in a debate (becoming Secretary of the Debating Society) involving the motion, “That the works attributed to William Shakespeare were written by Francis Bacon.”  The school Chronicle says, “J. R. R. TOLKIEN [who spoke…on the Affirmative], poured a sudden flood of unqualified abuse upon Shakespeare, upon his filthy birthplace, his squalid surroundings, and his sordid character.”

Stratford was my first teaching post, and I’ve looked at its history and it really wasn’t that bad.  When Tolkien believed Shakespeare had a ‘sordid character’, I’d like to know on what this was based, as many scholars say you can determine very little of Shakespeare’s life from his writing.

Tolkien was no doubt caught up in the anti-Stratfordian debate which raged after the Bardolatry of the 1800s.  The main organisations and contenders of the ‘true’ authorship of Shakespeare’s works question are: Baconians (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, lawyer, scholar essayist) Marlovians (Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1593, playwright), Derbyites (William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, 1561-1642) and Oxfordians (Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford).  I love the movie Anonymous, which supports the Oxfordian view (and stars Mark Rylance, a noted de Verean actor who also worked in The BFG).

De Vere was identified by the English teacher John Thomas Looney (great name); he said that an author wishing to conceal his identity would not use the ciphers Baconian scholars tried to find.  De Vere, according to Looney, ridiculed poorly-educated characters and expressed a distinct political vision, and events and characters in the plays reflected the life of the Earl of Oxford. (Looney died just a stone’s throw from where this is being written, dear reader.)

In 1994 I saw a documentary called The Battle of the Wills, in which the wonderful ’Boke’ – T. D. Bokenham – noted that spelling errors, etc., which are in the scroll held by Shakespeare’s statue at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, and using the book Cryptomenityces et Cryptographiae, shows the name of Francis Bacon.  Lovely but not completely convincing.  Speculative, I think. Baconians and Oxfordians say that it was common practice for nobles and the like to hide behind aliases and pseudonyms.  

Like the inestimable Bill Bryson and Ben Elton, I think I’m a bit of a Stratfordian, believing and having confidence in the man from Stratford – possibly working with others at times too.   I do not see why works of great art have to be borne of prestigiousness. My father was an electrical snagger for many years – yet thanks to him and Mom, I managed to get to the school voted best in the UK and the finest university on the planet, where Tolkien himself taught.  I don’t think our origins diminish our orisons.

  The Chronicle says that Tolkien  “…declared that to believe that so great a genius arose in such circumstances commits vis to the belief that a fair-haired European infant could have a woolly-haired prognathous Papuan parent. After adducing a mass of further detail in support of the Hon. Opener, he gave a sketch of Bacon’s life and the manner in which it fitted into the production of the plays, and concluded with another string of epithets.”

It grieves me to think that Tolkien was quite wrong here.  Then again, he was still at school. But that’s no excuse for snobbishness.

The Merchant of Venice is very good for me – outlining a lot of prejudice that still exists.  And towards the end? A woman, dressed in the garb of a man, defeats the terrifying agent of disorder and injustice.  Portia or Eowyn? By the way, I realise that in Shakespeare’s day it would have been a man dressed as a woman pretending to be a man.  That’s showbiz.

With thanks to the King Edward’s Foundation Archive, Birmingham.