It's the biggest literary controversy since the debate over the authorship
of Shakespeare. This time though it's 'Who was Brownie?', not 'Who was the
Bard?'
Brownie was a 1970s Republican News columnist who admitted to being in the
IRA. Until recently, it was widely accepted copyright belonged solely to one
Gerard Adams.
Enter Richard McAuley, who insists he was Brownie even though he didn't have
a wife and young son at the time like Brownie and, perchance, Gerry did.
We've seen it all before. There are those who would lay their life on
Christopher Marlowe being Shakespeare. He faked his own death in a pub brawl
at 29, switched identities with his supposed killer, and lived on to write
the plays, they say.
A conspiracy exists among establishment scholars to suppress evidence from
the public, they argue. It's all got very dirty and these people don't have
anything to decommission! There are currently two possible Brownies. But
there are several would-be Shakespeares including Edward de Vere, the 17th
Earl of Oxford.
Maybe Martin McGuinness will now lay a claim to Brownie too. The
Shakespeare debate has divided literary circles. There are Stratfordians,
Marlovians, and Oxfordians. Republicans, with their history of splits, will
take very well to this.
Over the years, prominent figures in politics, the arts and other fields,
have divided into two camps on the Shakespeare question. The 'Roll of
Sceptics' include Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Henry James
and Orson Welles.
Benjamin Disraeli, James Joyce, and Charles de Gaulle were among the
believers. Isn't it time our leading lights spoke out on the Brownie
authorship? Where do Seamus Heaney, Liam Neeson, John Hume, Brian Friel, and
Eamonn Holmes stand?
Let's hope the affable and modest Richard McAuley, who normally seems to
prefer being a background boy, is ready for the moment.
I'm sure Gerry has prepared him. Perhaps, he repeated the words of Malvolio
in Twelfth Night: "In my stars I am above thee (Richard), but be not
afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some
have greatness thrust upon 'em."
