Leslie Howard was not an Oxfordian

Eforgan, Estel. Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010.

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Boyle, Charles. Another Hamlet: The Mystery of Leslie Howard. N.p.: Forever Press, 2011.

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Pimpernel Smith (a.k.a. Mister V). Dir. Leslie Howard. Perf. Leslie Howard. 1941. British National Films, 1941. Timeless Multimedia, 1997.

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Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.

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I started researching and writing this post because I wanted to demonstrate just how easy it is to conflate the view of a character and the views of the author creating or the actor playing that character. As the great mills of research ground on and on, I found myself confronted with conspiracies within conspiracies.

Leslie Howard was a noted actor on the stage and the screen, and he also produced and directed films. He played Romeo in George Cukor's 1936 Romeo and Juliet, Professor Henry Higgins in the 1938 film version of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, the title character in the 1934 Scarlet Pimpernel, and Professor Horatio Smith in 1941's Pimpernel Smith (for which, q.v.). He also frequently appears on lists of "famous people who do not really have the authority to speak on the subject but who nonetheless think that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare." I've become more and more skeptical of such lists, and the research I've done has borne out my suspicions.

Howard's role as Professor Horatio Smith is the one of importance to the authorship question. In the film, Professor Horatio Smith speaks lines about the Earl of Oxford writing the works of Shakespeare. In Contested Will, his great work defending Shakespeare as the author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, James Shapiro describes Pimpernel Smith, but, as he does so, he conflates the character played by Leslie Howard with Leslie Howard himself (I've inserted editorial clarifications in the quote):

By the early 1940s, the Oxfordian movement had achieved a surprising degree of visibility, most famously in the 1941 British war movie Pimpernel Smith (released in the United States as Mister V), which starred Leslie Howard, who also produced and directed the film, in the role of an archaeologist who foils the Nazis. When Shakespeare’s name comes up in conversation, Leslie Howard[’s character] casually mentions that he had “been doing a little research work . . . on the identity of Shakespeare” | which “proves conclusively that Shakespeare wasn’t really Shakespeare at all . . . He was the Earl of Oxford.” Later in the film, holding up a skull at an excavation site, Howard[’s character] recites the famous “Alas poor Yorick” speech from Hamlet, then adds, “The Earl of Oxford wrote that, you know.” (193-94)

I don't write this to show up Shapiro—who is undoubtedly the greater scholar than I. I merely wish to show how easy it is to commit the Oxfordianesque error of assuming that the author writes and the actor acts entirely out of his or her own beliefs and experience. Shakespeare scholars take heed: Be vigitant, I beseech you.

This conflation of character and actor does Howard a twofold disservice. First, there is no indication at all that he himself held the Oxfordian position. A new biography—one that is well-written and filled with admirable scholarship—has a delightful chapter on the significance of Pimpernel Smith and the British war effort but doesn't say a word about the essentially-irrelevant issue of Oxford. Second, it underestimates the intelligence and sagacity given to Professor Horatio Smith in this role. 

Watching the film in its entirety will remove any suspicion that the lines about Oxford are meant seriously. Whenever Professor Smith is with his students or on his secret spy missions, he's absolutely brilliant, resourceful, and decisive. Whenever the Nazis seem to be close to discovering the true nature of his activities in Germany, he speaks the most absolute piffle. In effect, the lines about the Earl of Oxford are spoken when Leslie Howard is playing Professor Horatio Smith playing the role of a complete ignoramus in order to fool the Nazis. The context of these lines is crucial—he's not speaking straightforwardly to his own students; he's trying—and, indeed, he's succeeding—in looking like an idiot so that his enemies will not suspect him of being a genius.

All the same, that doesn't prevent the Oxfordians from attempting to claim the brilliant actor and director Leslie Howard rather than the idiotic character-within-a-character of Professor Smith for their cause. But it isn't true. Leslie Howard was not an Oxfordian.

But that fact didn't prevent a new conspiracy from arising! This much is true: Leslie Howard was shot down on a flight from Portugal to England on 1 June 1943. Charles Boyle's Another Hamlet: The Mystery of Leslie Howard makes the completely fanciful proposal that he was shot down because of his Oxfordian beliefs. In Boyle's silly proposal, Winston Churchill knew that the plane was going to be shot down, but he allowed it to take off and be shot down because he would rather have Howard and many other civilians dead than to let Howard continue to proselytize for the Oxfordian position. The Stratfordian conspiracy strikes another blow for its cause, and another Oxfordian is lost to the ages.

This is so laughable than it could only have come from an Oxfordian. Since Howard never tried to convince anyone—ever—that Oxford wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, he cannot have died for doing so. Additionally, the British had a bit more on their minds in 1943 than debunking ludicrous conspiracy theories or perpetrating literary conspiracies of their own.

If the Nazis knew that Howard was on board (itself a questionable assumption), it's much more likely that they shot down the plane because of his effective morale-boosting anti-Nazi work than his views on literature.

Leslie Howard did remarkable work. His memory should not be profaned by those who wish to use him for their nefarious ends. Instead, he should be remembered for the remarkable work he did.

In that vein, here's a longer clip than one usually sees from Pimpernel Smith. Note that the Professor starts his twaddle about the Earl of Oxford precisely when the Gestapo agents need to be distracted. Under the crate the agent is examining is a secret compartment containing the people Professor Smith is attempting to smuggle out of the country:

As a final point to any who would wish to read Oxfordian biographical details into Howard's portrayal of Smith, I call our collective attention to a contrary biographical detail. In 1933, Howard played a role in "This Side Idolatry, by Talbot Jennings, a witty imagining of Shakespeare's life" (Eforgan 97). Would any Oxfordian play a role in such a production?

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An Update Follows.

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Howard, Leslie. Trivial Fond Records. Ed. Ronald Howard. London: William Kimber, 1982.

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Since there are those who remain unconvinced (see the comments below), I'm providing a few pages written by Leslie Howard himself.  In 1936, Howard performed the eponymous role in a production of Hamlet.  In the midst of doing so, he wrote up an interesting imagined conversation with Shakespeare. The conversation indicates no skepticism about the authorship: Howard addresses Shakespeare as a "man of the theatre" and says, "you did write for the Elizabethan theatre" (134). I shall type up the paragraph that introduces the dialogue (it appears on page 134 of the book); then I'll provide three images that contain the rest of the dialogue (click on the images to enlarge them).

I have gone to Shakespeare as one man of the theatre to another. I have tried to understand the methods of his craftmanship and the conditions under which he worked. I have been governed by a spirit of reasonable humility, but not of slavish reverence. I have had the never to consider two of us co-workers in a theatrical enterprise and have tried to forget that my partner is separated from me by over three hundred years of tim and ringing fame. In this light I have had the following conversation with him:

The skeptical may still say, "But he may have changed his mind between 1936 and 1941, when Pimpernel Smith was filmed." My reply must be that he never indicated any change in his belief that Shakespeare authored the plays attributed to him. No biography of Howard indicates any Oxfordian beliefs. In the face of such resounding silence, the only reasonable conclusion is that Howard believed that the man from Stratford wrote the plays attributed to the man from Stratford: Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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