how firm thy friendship

Jay Hoster

How firm thy friendship:

Let’s Celebrate Heminges and Condell Day

on December 5 to Honor Shakespeare’s Authorship

John Heminges and Henry Condell gave us a gift that keeps on giving.

They gave us Shakespeare’s First Folio. And as much as we tend to think of Shakespeare as an icon

bordered in gold leaf, here’s what you need to know: Shakespeare inspired loyalty from his friends, the

sort of loyalty that pushed them to get the work done in compiling his collected plays. We today are the

recipients of their efforts.

TIME AND CHANGE WILL SURELY SHOW– People a hundred years from

now—and, indeed, people who will be alive far beyond a mere century into the future—will also be

recipients, although they will receive their gift in ways we cannot imagine.

HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– Heminges and Condell worked alongside

Shakespeare day after day, year after year. Colleagues and friends; Shakespeare’s mates. Shakespeare

remembered them in his will…

HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– …and Heminges and Condell faithfully held

Shakespeare in their memories as they went about the work of compiling the First Folio. The work took

longer than expected—that often happens with big, important projects—but the finished product was

ready at the end of 1623.

HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– Heminges and Condell led busy lives, but through

all those years they remained steadfastly loyal to their friend. So did they succeed in achieving their

stated goal “to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare”?

HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– Their loyalty is something that should be celebrated,

so let’s get focused and have one day every year where we honor the remarkable achievement of

Heminges and Condell. That day should be December 5 in recognition of the day in 1623 when the first

recorded purchase of the First Folio took place.

HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– Let’s show our loyalty reaching across

the span of centuries by celebrating December 5 as Heminges and Condell Day.

Copyright © 2020 by Jay Hoster

JAY’S AXIOM: SHAKESPEARE IS EITHER THE REAL DEAL—OR IT’S A SCAM

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HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– Ben Jonson pioneered the concept of an author’s

collected plays being published in folio format. His Works of Benjamin Jonson was published in 1616,

the year that Shakespeare died.

Heminges and Condell wrote, “It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the

author himself had lived to have set forth, and overseen his own writings; but since it hath been ordained

otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of

their care, and pain, to have collected and published them.”

That may indicate that Shakespeare, having heard of Jonson’s project, had begun the process of

assembling his plays for print prior to his death. Here envy carries the sense of “having ill will for.”

It was Heminges and Condell who took on the long-term project of the First Folio, and Jonson gave

his support—most prominently with the magnificent poem “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author

Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us.” He also contributed the poem opposite the

Droeshout engraving on the title page. Jonson’s involvement in the project would have been especially

meaningful as a result of his having gone through the same process with his Works.

Unlike their friend Shakespeare—a wordsmith with a word jones—Heminges and Condell never

claimed to be writers. Jonson undoubtedly helped them wend their way through the formalized

convolutions of the dedication to the two brothers, the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery,

and shared his experiences with the book trade. All of which makes sense: why wouldn’t you take

advantage of having one the most eminent writers of the day as part of your team?

What matters is that Heminges and Condell put their names on these documents, so if you say that

Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays, you are calling them—and Jonson—liars. You may

employ a bogus politesse and talk of “ambiguities” while you do your best to diminish their achievement

and impugn their integrity, but your theory does not—and cannot—exist unless they are lying.

Amidst swirling fantasies, here is what is real: Heminges had watched the first Globe being built and

his grief was overwhelming when it burned down in 1613: “Then with swollen eyes, like drunken

Flemings, / Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges.”1

If you care about the Globe and its history, how can you not be moved by that account, and if you

are moved by it, how can you not want to honor the memory of Heminges and Condell? They honored

Will in multiple ways: each of them had a son named William. Now it’s your turn to honor them.

You can’t find the graves of Heminges and Condell, because the church where they were

churchwardens burned in the Great Fire. Its replacement, one of Wren’s City churches, didn’t make it

through the twentieth century: it was badly damaged during the Blitz and has been rebuilt in Missouri as

a Churchill memorial. A monument at Aldermanbury and Love Lane honors the achievement of

Heminges and Condell, but respect is not just in marble: it is in the words we say and the words we write.

They understood that everyone would want to be a critic of the project that they had so carefully

nurtured: “It is now public, and you will stand for your privileges we know: to read and censure.”

What they couldn’t have imagined was that there would be people in future centuries

who would think themselves really, really smart to piss on the loyalty they showed to their

friend Will.


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THERE ARE TWO possibilities on the Shakespeare authorship issue and they constitute JAY’S AXIOM:

Shakespeare is either the real deal—or it’s a scam. So what do we know about scams? We know this: in hindsight they’re seen as having been too good

to be true.

Did Bernie Madoff have gaps in his investment record? No, of course not—because that’s not how

you create a scam. Madoff could produce an investment record that never had a down year. People

looked at it and were impressed—except for the one guy who saw that it was good to be true. Everyone

else was awed by Madoff’s results, including the author of book entitled Annals of Gullibility: Why We

Get Duped and How to Avoid It who made the admission, “After I wrote my book, I lost a good chunk of

my retirement savings to Mr. Madoff, so I know of what I write on the most personal level.2

Madoff’s scam didn’t succeed because it was filled with lacunae; Madoff’s scam worked because

there were no gaps in what offered the appearance of a terrific investment record.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at one of the central tenets of the anti-Stratfordian faith and

understand how it’s wrong in two very different ways: a veritable daily double of error.

Bryan Wildenthal supplies a representative example of this view. Wildenthal comments that what

“is viewed by many as the single most compelling reason to doubt the Stratfordian theory”—which, of

course, is otherwise known as the historical record—is to be found in “the strange absence of known

reactions—when Shakspere died and for years afterward—even remotely equating to what would be

expected in response to the loss of a major literary figure or what actually occurred in response to the

deaths of lesser figures.”3

Let’s review JAY’S AXIOM:

Shakespeare is either the real deal—or it’s a scam. If Shakespeare were a scam—note the subjunctive denoting condition contrary to fact—than we’d be

faced with a plethora of evidence: multitudes of elegies and memorials, mountains of eulogies and

remembrances, because that’s how scams work. They’re too good to be true.

If evidence from this period contains gaps, that fact should be treated as an indication that it

possesses the weight and heft of reality—because if you were going to fake it, you would have made it a

whole lot better than what we’re left with.

But even within the bounds of the argument he is making Wildermuth gets it wrong. He cites David

Kathman’s essay “Shakespeare’s Eulogies” on the shakespeareauthorship.com website without including

any of its content, so his readers would know nothing of William Basse’s poem “On Mr. Wm.

Shakespeare / He died in April 1616,” which stated the case for Shakespeare to be buried at Westminster

Abbey in a tomb with Spenser, Chaucer, and Francis Beaumont, and they would have no idea that

Shakespeare was included in a 1620 poem by John Taylor, the Water Poet, on famous poets whose work

lives on after their death.

A seventeenth century owner of a First Folio wrote in his copy:

Here Shakespeare lies whom none but Death could Shake,

And here shall lie till judgement all awake,

When the last trumpet doth unclose his eyes,

The wittiest [wisest] poet in the world shall rise.4


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This same writer also included lines from Shakespeare’s monument and grave in Stratford-upon-Avon so

there’s no doubt who he was referring to. So was this writer part of the conspiracy? Or was he too stupid

to see what the doubters claim to be able to see so clearly from a distance of four centuries?

In 1634 a military contingent consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, and an ensign recorded their

travels through twenty-six counties. In Stratford-upon-Avon they noted that “in the church in that town

there are some monuments.” These were for “the Earl of Totnes and his Lady, yet living”; Sir Hugh

Clopton, a Lord Mayor of London “who built that strong stone bridge of 18 fair arches”; “a neat

monument of that famous English poet, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, who was born here”; and a monument for

Shakespeare’s friend John Combe. (Here “neat” has the sense of “finely made or proportioned.”)5

So let’s do a Stratford replay, courtesy of the British military: A neat monument of that famous

English poet, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, who was born here.

The totality of the written record after Shakespeare’s death—including the glories of the First

Folio—is impressive, both in the amount of material and how much of it shows the strong sense of

loyalty that his memory evoked. Shakespeare was honored and loved by real people in the real world and

respected by those who only knew of him.

By contrast, consider the case of John Webster. Historian Peter Ackroyd comments that Webster’s

play The Duchess of Malfi is “a defining drama of the period.”6 So here’s a quick summary of our

knowledge of this major literary figure: we don’t know when or where he was born; and we don’t

know when or where he died.

Thomas Dekker, the great chronicler of London life, most likely died in 1632 (there’s a burial record

for “Thomas Dekker, householder”). His play The Shoemaker’s Holiday was performed at court and in

The Wonderful Year (1603) he recorded the memorable year when Elizabeth died and a devastating

plague struck the city that he called “Mother of my life, Nurse of my being.”

Dekker was a major literary figure and a consummate Londoner, but when he died there were

no eulogies, no memorials, no elegies, no remembrances, no collected works.

Nothing—nada—zero—zip.

HERE’S A QUIZ TO SEE if you have what it takes to be a Shakespeare authorship doubter.

We’ll first look at two Shakespeare sonnets and then the response from J. Thomas Looney, whose

book “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1920) launched the

Oxfordian view of the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays—that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford,

was the secret author of the work attributed to William Shakespeare.

Oxford signed his name “Edward Oxenford,” and in 1573 his poem “The Earl of Oxenford to the

Reader” was included in a book that proclaimed on the title page it was “published by commandment of

the Right Honorable the Earl of Oxenford”—which doesn’t appear to be a very effective way of keeping

one’s writing a deep, dark secret. Rather than debate Oxenford vs. Oxford, I’ll call him His Lordship.7

Looney was born in 1870 and grew up in a Methodist family in the north of England. As

a teenager he had planned on a career in the ministry, but his Methodism faded and he signed

on with the Church of Humanity.


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The Church of Humanity was an organization that

conferred iconic status on important historical

figures. Looney underwent a “Destination to the

Priesthood” service—the Church of Humanity’s

version of an ordination service—and a church

official ruled that he was “prepared to assume the

charge of the Newcastle Church and Apostolate.”

In spite of Looney’s efforts to spread the

message by preaching, it proved stubbornly

difficult to bring converts into the fold and the

Church of Humanity disbanded. He subsequently

became a schoolteacher.8

With “Shakespeare” Identified at the

centennial of its publication, the Oxfordian

viewpoint has solidified its place as the leading

position viewing Shakespeare as a scam, but

Oxfordians never want to talk about Looney’s

work on behalf of a newly created religion that so

revered Shakespeare it had a month in its calendar

named for him. Why not? You’d think they would

be proud of that. Here’s a homework assignment:

watch all forty-six minutes of James Warren’s

YouTube video “J. Thomas Looney: An

Unknown Fighter” and see if you can find any

reference to the Church of Humanity.9

Before we get to the quiz, which involves

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 136, a word about the Sonnets. They manifestly contain elements of autobiography

set into a matrix of poetic expression, and I understand that it can seem nearly irresistible not to make the

effort of tracking Shakespeare’s life story through the Sonnets. While I have my guesses, and I’m sure

you have yours, at this vantage point—more than four centuries after their publication—the prospect of

creating an alembic that can reliably separate actual events in Shakespeare’s life from his skillset as a

poet is, in my opinion, more in the realm of literary alchemy than literary research.

So here is my RULE ONE: If you think you have the Sonnets all figured out, you don’t. And

RULE TWO, in case you were wondering, is: Review RULE ONE.

There are points in the Sonnets, however, where Shakespeare’s life comes into focus, and Sonnets

135, 136, and 143 show him punning on his name. The compositor (typesetter) understood what was

going on and placed Will in italics, the standard treatment for proper names in a text set in roman.

Shakespeare was incapable of resisting a pun. One of my favorite Shakespearean puns is the quick-

witted Mercutio saying after being wounded by Tybalt, “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a

grave man.” (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.99-100).


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So if you look at the Wills in Sonnets 135, 136, and 143—and, importantly, the compositor’s

treatment of them—you can see Shakespeare’s puns on his name.

Looney, however, ruled that

such a practice would be “puerile”

and that “some hidden

significance” must await. He

followed his spoor through a

thicket of suppositions and located

His Lordship as the true author.

You’ll find Looney’s comment on

page 292 of the American edition

of “Shakespeare” Identified.10

Finding some hidden significance—any hidden significance—is a favorite activity for doubters.

SO HERE’S THE QUIZ: When the writer of the Sonnets writes “my name is Will,” does that mean

therefore that the writer’s name is not Will?

This is a self-graded quiz. See what you come up with, and then you’ll know if you have what it

takes to be a Shakespeare authorship doubter.

The doubter point of view has been encapsulated in a prize-winning Oxfordian video—“Each of us

is free to seek the Shakespearean author of our own imagination”—and is further elucidated by a librarian

who studied fifty personal essays chronicling the process of becoming an Oxfordian. Once these people

have dumped the historical record—“nothing about Shakespeare’s life or his portrait matched my

magical childhood memories,” one wrote—here’s what awaits them: “The essayists find a rewarding,

transcendent experience with their authentic selves and a community of similarly-minded individuals.”11

If you believe that historical research is all about you having a transcendent experience with your

authentic self as you put your imagination to work on a historical record that you find to be sadly

deficient in magic, you are eligible to receive your passport to the vast realms of Shakespeare authorship

doubterdom. Just make sure that you never proclaim Heminges and Condell to be heroes of world

culture, because in the domain of the doubters they are the liars-in-chief.

The Oxfordians, however, still can’t agree on the most basic issue of all: why His Lordship felt it

necessary to hide his authorship using Shakespeare’s name. In his YouTube video Warren comments,

“I think if you ask…different people, you get different answers, and that’s one of the problems with the

persuasiveness of our message that we haven’t come up with one unified answer.”12

A prominent Oxfordian has complained that “Stratfordians will use any perceived or pretended

weakness in non-Stratfordian theories against us, and they won’t bother to present our theories fairly.”13

I invite anyone to look at Warren’s comment (it comes at 39:10 in the video) to see if I have presented his

comments fairly. I used an ellipsis for an extraneous “you know” that’s clearly just a verbal placeholder

in what is a carefully considered response. If you think it was wrong to excise the “you know,” feel free

to put it back in. Warren’s video is not, by the way, an obscure outlier. It is prominently featured on the

organization’s website as part of the “‘Shakespeare’ Identified Centennial.”


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HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP–

“…to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare…”

—John Heminges and Henry Condell

SOME AUTHORSHIP DOUBTERS have proposed a new standard for historical documentation, that

statements regarding Shakespeare must be discarded if they were not made during the author’s lifetime or

shortly after his death. One prominent anti-Stratfordian has decreed a strict time limit: in order to be

valid, tributes must have been written no later than one year following the date of death.14

Because this statement by Heminges and Condell was made in the First Folio—seven years after

Shakespeare’s death—for the doubters it must be trashed. The fact that Heminges and Condell have held

in their hearts their friend Shakespeare for seven years and are now honoring him with the collected

edition of his plays means nothing to the doubters.

That’s cold.

Very, very cold

WE ALL KNOW that teenagers can do some wild and crazy things, and here’s the wild and crazy

thing His Lordship did when he was seventeen and living in the household of Sir William Cecil (who

later became Lord Burleigh).

His Lordship was practicing his skills at swordplay when…oops!…he killed an undercook named

Thomas Brincknell.

I know the suspense must be unbearable as you’re waiting to learn if His Lordship, possessor of one

the most venerable titles in all the land, will be brought to justice for killing a lowly undercook.

Here’s what happened: a coroner’s inquest took place, but Cecil made sure that the jury included one

of His Lordship’s servants and Raphael Holinshed—the Holinshed of the Chronicles—who was a

member of Cecil’s household. So the jury did its duty, ruling concerning His Lordship and his sparring

partner:

Each had a sword, called a foil, and together they meant to practice the science of

defense. Along came Thomas Brincknell, drunk…who ran and fell upon the point of

the Earl of Oxford’s foil (worth twelve pence), which Oxford held in his right hand

intending to play (as they call it). In the course of which, with this foil Thomas gave

himself a wound to the front of his thigh four inches deep and one inch wide, of which

he died instantly. This to the exclusion of all other explanations, was the way he

died.15

A thigh wound isn’t going to produce death instantaneously, so the verdict may have been written

that way to cover for His Lordship if he didn’t go for help immediately.

The jury’s ruling that Brincknell had committed suicide by running onto His Lordship’s

sword (worth twelve pence) accomplished the goal of exonerating His Lordship but it carried

dire consequences for Brincknell’s family.

As Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy note in their book Sleepless Souls:

Suicide in Early Modern England, suicide was viewed as “species of murder, a felony in

criminal law and a desperate sin in the eyes of the church.” All of a suicide’s possessions,


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however meagre, were forfeited to the crown or to the holder of a royal patent. “Self-murderers were

denied Christian burials; their bodies were interred profanely, with a macabre ceremony prescribed by

popular custom. The night following the inquest, officials of the parish, the churchwardens and their

helpers, carried the corpse to a crossroads and threw it naked into a pit. A wooden stake was hammered

through the body, pinioning it in the grave, and the hole was filled in.”16

Brincknell’s widow was six months pregnant when His Lordship killed her husband. When she gave

birth, the child was stillborn.

IN ADDITION TO being shipped off to Cambridge at the age of eight and working with tutors, His

Lordship had two M.A. degrees. Sounds impressive—but because the peerage held the ceremonial title of

Lord Great (or High) Chamberlain, His Lordship was included in the retinue when the queen made

progresses to Cambridge in 1564 (His Lordship was 14 at the time) and Oxford in 1566. All His Lordship

had to do to receive the degrees was to show up at the ceremony. His Lordship was granted admittance to

Gray’s Inn, which offered legal training, but never actually bought any law books, and when he needed

legal advice, he did what anyone who lacked knowledge of the complexities of the law would do: “For

counsel, I have such lawyers, and the best that I can get as are to be had in London, who have advised me

for my best course.”17

Richard Mulcaster, a leading educator of the day, observed that rich kids were often lousy students

because “bravery [ostentatious show, particularly in clothing] and liberty be great allurers.” That

describes His Lordship. So what type of families produced the best students? “The middle sort of parents,

which neither welter in too much wealth, nor wrestle with too much want, seemeth fitteth of all.”18 That

describes Shakespeare’s family.

Mulcaster’s book was printed by Thomas Vautrollier, a native French speaker whose business

specialized in books about foreign languages. After his death, his apprentice Richard Field married his

widow and went on to become one of the foremost printers in London. His printer’s device (logo) is on

these pages. Field wasn’t born into the trade—he was the son of a tanner. Tanners, by the way, applied

100% all natural products to their hides: dog shit and urine. Despite those humble origins, Field had the

benefit of receiving a first-rate education at a school located in…Stratford-upon-Avon. When

Shakespeare needed a printer for his narrative poems, take a guess who he chose.

IN 1575 HIS LORDSHIP was traveling on the continent when he learned that his wife was pregnant.

So did His Lordship cut short his trip to come back to England to be with her?

Uh, no. His Lordship hoped for a boy and wrote to Lord Burleigh from Paris that “I have the better

occasion to travel, sith whatsoever becometh of me, I leave behind me one to supply my duty and service

either to my prince or else my country.”19

So in His Lordship’s view, he could best serve crown and country by doing exactly and precisely

what he felt like doing. When his wife gave birth to a girl, His Lordship denied paternity.

The Oxfordians are fond of saying that the Shakespeare plays are chockful of His

Lordship’s life story. With that in mind, let’s look at one of the most famous speeches in

Henry V, where Henry exhorts the English army at the siege of Harfleur:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead.…


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Follow your spirit; and upon this charge

Cry, “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!” (3.1.1-2, 33-34)

In 1572—at a time when His Lordship could still find favor at court—His Lordship was part of an

entertainment presented to the queen at Warwick Castle. According to the chronicle of the event, His

Lordship “& his soldiers to the number of xx” charged a mock castle with “divers assaults.”20

Oxfordian Mark Anderson, inflating Oxford’s playacting forces by a factor of ten, comments, “If de

Vere ever enjoyed a Henry V moment in his life, this was probably it: He led his two hundred soldiers

into the breach several times over, each time charging with battering rams into the opposing castle.”21

England, however, had real enemies in the real world, so let’s take a look at His Lordship’s actions

during the Spanish Armada.

The Earl of Leicester was instructed by the Queen to offer His Lordship the post of governor of

Harwich and the command of two thousand troops.

Here’s why Harwich matters. A local historian has written a book entitled Harwich: Gateway to the

Continent but what is normally a positive attribute of this port city on the English Channel becomes a

liability at a time of war. If you’re fearing an invasion, Harwich is a place you want to protect. During the

Napoleonic Wars a fort called the Harwich Redoubt was built.

Leicester wrote to Sir Francis Walsingham, “I did, as her Majesty liked well of, deliver to my Lord

of Oxford her gracious consent of his willingness to serve her.” The importance of His Lordship’s post

was clear to Leicester, who described it as “a place of trust and great danger.” Leicester noted that “My

Lord seemed at first to like well of it.”

Then His Lordship decided that the job was unworthy of his lofty status and left. Leicester continued

his account: “Afterward he came to me and told me he thought the place of no service nor credit, and

therefore he would to the court and understand Her Majesty’s further pleasure, to which I would not be

against.”

His Lordship’s departure was fine with Leicester, who considered “that it was of good grace to

appoint that place to him, having no more experience than he hath.” Which is to say, His Lordship was

fortunate to have been offered the position that he now was summarily rejecting.

Leicester added in a postscript: “I am glad I am rid of my Lord Oxford, seeing he refuseth this and I

pray you let me not be pressed any more for him what suit so ever he make.”22

Leicester had seen this show before: three years earlier His Lordship had been given the command of

a company of horsemen that was sent to the Netherlands to fight the Spanish. So did the Oxenford

Brigade gallop into the pages of military history?

Uh, no. When it was Leicester, not His Lordship, who was given the command of the English forces

in the Low Countries, His Lordship bolted and headed back to England.23

From an Oxfordian perspective Leicester should have learned from his experience with His Lordship

and reset his priorities at the time of the Armada accordingly.

Sadly, he didn’t. Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time soothing the tender

sensibilities and inflated ego of His Lordship, Leicester placed his focus on defeating the

enemy. James McDermott, the author of England and the Spanish Armada: The Necessary

Quarrel, which was published by Yale University Press, describes His Lordship as “utterly

unemployable.”24


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But while His Lordship could claim no heroics at a time when the nation was at its greatest peril—

it’s hard to be a hero if you don’t stick around—the important thing is that he presented a splendid

appearance at the victory celebration.

It was that ceremonial position that had been granted to the peerage in the twelfth century that gave

His Lordship the opportunity to be there. A ballad chronicling the Queen’s entrance into London for a

service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral noted:

The noble Earl of Oxford, then High Chamberlain of England,

Rode right before Her Majesty his bonnet in his hand.25

We—well tailored—few.

THE FIRST FOLIO was dedicated to two brothers: the Earl of Montgomery, who was married to His

Lordship’s daughter Susan, and the Earl of Pembroke.

As a result of their splendid triumph in tricking the reading public, the two earls perpetrated (in the

Oxfordian view) the greatest injustice in the history of literature, depriving their fellow peer—and, in the

case of Montgomery, his own father-in-law—of the fame rightfully belonging to the glorious name of

Oxenford.

Bad earls!

IN HIS COMPREHENSIVE study English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama in the

Oxford History of English Literature, C. S. Lewis offered this take on His Lordship’s efforts at poetry:

“Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, shows, here and there, a faint talent, but is for the most part

undistinguished and verbose.” 26

This poem by His Lordship that was published in two important Elizabethan anthologies. It was also

included in A. H. Bullen’s An English Garner: Shorter Elizabethan Poems (1903).27 It can serve as a

valuable teaching tool for newcomers to Elizabethan literature because anyone looking for one-stop

shopping for a comprehensive collection of clichéd imagery will find it to be a terrific choice.

Try reading it aloud so you can get the full effect of His Lordship’s ear for scansion.

This is the Elizabethan verse equivalent of paint-by-numbers. If you want to see what a real poet

wrote, take a look at Thomas Watson’s use of these themes that Helen Vendler included in her notes to

Sonnet 130 in The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

And then to see the ultimate skewering of this genre, read Sonnet 130.


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DAPHNE PEARSON, the author of Edward de Vere (1550-1604): The Crisis and Consequences of

Wardship, offers this summation of His Lordship’s life: “As Lord Great Chamberlain he had, in fact,

reached the apogee of his use to the crown; he achieved this through inherited custom and crown grant,

not endeavour. Even the earl’s funeral lacked the pomp and circumstance accorded to his ancestors or to

that of his first wife, Anne Cecil.…There are no records of Oxford’s funeral or committal, but it appears,

from an entry in the parish registry that he was quietly laid to rest in the parish church at Hackney”28

MANY OXFORDIANS believe that His Lordship brought back from Italy not just a collection of fine

garments and a Venetian choirboy—but the Renaissance itself.

I invite you to turn the page where you’ll find all of the heartfelt memorials, touching

tributes, and personal reminiscences that were written upon the death of such a seminal and

beloved figure in English letters.


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HOW FIRM THY FRIENDSHIP– To understand the significance of the gift that

Heminges and Condell gave us, think, when I talk of plays, that you don’t see them, because they’re not

printing their proud type in the receiving paper. Consider a world where no one has ever seen THE

TEMPEST, either on stage or in print. This is a world where no one has ever seen MACBETH…and no one

has ever seen JULIUS CAESAR…where no one has ever seen ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA…and no one has

ever seen AS YOU LIKE IT.

In this world no one knows anything about TWELFTH NIGHT beyond a brief plot synopsis…and no

one has ever seen THE TAMING OF THE SHREW— which means that you can kiss Kiss Me, Kate

goodbye…and no one has ever seen THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, so The Boys from Syracuse is non-

existent as well.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL doesn’t ever begin. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA is lost. So is

TIMON OF ATHENS. So is MEASURE FOR MEASURE. So is THE WINTER’S TALE. CORIOLANUS? Lost.

CYMBELINE? Lost. KING JOHN? Lost. 1 HENRY VI? Lost. HENRY VIII? Lost.

Stop and consider what would have happened if Heminges and Condell had only talked about

compiling their friend’s plays and never gotten around to doing anything.

DOUBTERS FAVOR the notion that Shakespeare was a fabricated name concocted by an amazingly

successful conspiracy in its undying commitment to cheating the reading public.

The notion that Shakespeare isn’t a real name would come as news to the distinguished British writer

Nicholas Shakespeare, and it would also be news to the Royal Society of Literature, which made him a

Fellow in 1999.

Real life. Real world. Real Shakespeares.

WE ALL HAVE a choice as travelers: do we proclaim in a loud voice our frustration that the locals

don’t do things the way things are done back home? Or do we try to learn the ways of the place we’re

visiting? As armchair time travelers we have the same choice.

The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about the Identity of William Shakespeare notes: “On his

baptismal record, even on his monument, Mr. Shakspere's name was spelled with no ‘e’ after ‘k.’ The

same is true of its three appearances in his will, twice spelled ‘Shackspeare,’ and once ‘Shakspeare.’

Some think that it may have been pronounced with a short ‘a,’ like ‘Shack,’ as it was quite often spelled.”

To suggest that only some authorship doubters favor the short “a” pronunciation is not an accurate

portrayal of what actually happens within the domain of doubterdom. I’ve watched enough YouTube

videos to know that doubters routinely pronounce the surname of the Stratford man with a modern short

“a” and the name of the writer with a modern long “a.” There’s nothing haphazard about this process: it’s

done to distance Will from the works.

For doubters it makes sense to assume that the way we do things in our world is exactly the same

way they did things in their world.

In 1602 Shakespeare acquired the Chapel Lane Cottage, a property that looked out on

the garden of New Place. Here’s how Shakespeare’s name appeared in the document relating

to this transfer: Willielmi Shackespere, Willielmus Shakespere.29


14

Let’s stop here for a moment. In a legal document, where accuracy is everything, Shakespeare’s

name appears twice, once as Shackespere, and once as Shakespere. I know it must be fun for the

doubters to suppose they’re in possession of some great secret of the ages, but there is such a thing as

showing respect for the past. Here is what is real: on 28 September 1602 in Stratford-upon-Avon in the

County of Warwick a legally binding document employed two spellings to denote one person.

Not two people: one person.

EARLY BOOKS sometimes had a pictorial title page preceding the standard typographical title page.

This was a practice that continued for centuries.

I have a volume in front of me whose pictorial title page contains this information: “Knick-Knacks

by Louis Gaylord Clark, D. Appleton & Co., New-York.” Turn the page and you come to the

typographical title page, which adds a subtitle, gives the author’s name as “L. Gaylord Clark,” and

includes an epigraph, the publisher’s addresses in New York and London, and the date of publication

(1853).

Irvin Matus has pointed to a work by a seventeenth-century poet named Shakerly (or Shackerley)

Marmion. Marmion’s Cupid and Psyche was published in 1637 with his first name spelled Shakerly on

the pictorial title page and Shackerley on the typographical title page.30

If you’re a doubter who has gone to great lengths to articulate a distinction between the

pronunciation of “Shakespeare” and “Shakspere,” you now have the opportunity to make the

case that the pronunciation of the first name of a well-known poet of the day abruptly

changed when the reader turned the page from the pictorial title page of Cupid and Psyche to

the typographical title page. Don’t let the side down!


15

If that makes sense to you, have fun in your customary way. If it doesn’t, then I’ll advise you to

make better use of your talents and skills than in exploring a past that leaves you befuddled.

Philately can be a fine hobby; and stamps are real.

THERE’S NO QUESTION that Shakespeare had an in-depth knowledge of falconry. That causes the

doubters to fret because they view falconry as an aristocratic activity closed off to the glover’s son from

Stratford, but what their position actually shows is that they haven’t done their homework.

In Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor, a character described as “a country gull”—a bumpkin—brags

about having bought a hawk: “Why, you know, an [if] a man have not skill in the hawking and hunting

languages nowadays, I’ll not give a rush for him. They are more studied than the Greek or the Latin.”31

Any research about life in the period should begin with

Shakespeare’s England: An Account of the Life & Manners of

His Age, a two volume set published by Oxford University Press

in 1916.

In the essay on “Falconry” Gerald Lascelles writes, “So

great a hold had falconry taken upon the minds of country folk in

Elizabethan times that its technical terms were habitual to

ordinary conversation. To the reader or playgoer of

Shakespeare’s time the technical terms describing the training of

hawks for the sport of falconry were household words.”32

There’s another reason why a glover’s son would be so

familiar with falconry, but for that you have to do field research

and watch a falconer in action. If you do, you’ll discover that

there is one item that is essential to the falconer’s work.

So what is this item that is indispensable for a falconer? I’m

sure that the doubters are mystified at his point so let me explain,

clear and simple. You can’t do falconry

without a…glove.

C. M. Matthews notes: “Gloves, often elaborately embroidered, were worn

for the popular sport of falconry and by all the better class people for riding.”33

A noble household required an agglomeration of support personnel to

maintain the lord in his favored lifestyle. The title page of George Turbervile’s

The Book of Falconry or Hawking, For the Only Delight and Pleasure of All

Noblemen and Gentlemen (1575) shows a nobleman or gentleman holding a bird

while wearing a glove adorned with a fringe and a tassel. Not shown (of course) is

the falconer, who does the painstaking work of training and caring for the birds. A

duke could have more than one falconer in his employ: an act from 31 Hen. VIII

(1539) mentions “some of His Grace’s falconers.”34

So let me explain one thing more to the doubters: gloves aren’t

magically summoned forth from thin air.

Gloves are made by—and I know this is going to come as a big surprise—glovers.


16

Whether the work came from the Earl of Warwick’s falconers or from country gulls pursuing a

trendy activity, John Shakespeare was ready to meet their needs; and as the falconers explained their

needs for gloves, hoods, and jesses, the glover’s son was doing something that the doubters will forever

find mystifying and incomprehensible.

The glover’s son was listening. Listening while someone else talks…it’s a—insert f-bomb here—

miracle!

SUPPOSE YOU’RE a British novelist who wants to use game day in Columbus as a setting in your

novel. Would you be able to do that without leaving London?

Yes, of course.

Ask any Ohio State fan about game day, and you’ll be guided through the entire experience, from

TBDBITL entering St. John Arena for Skull Session to the team singing Carmen Ohio after the game.

You’ll learn what Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse spells in cursive and the importance of the tittle, and

you’ll receive detailed information about the architecture of Ohio Stadium and the geography of the

campus.

Over the centuries poets have gloried in the renewal of life that occurs each spring. In Columbus

spring offers a pleasant respite from winter and a harbinger in the Spring Game, but we know that the

renewal of life takes place with the start of the Ohio State football season in September, when scarlet-clad

folks wend their way on pilgrimages to the ’Shoe where coached the holy Woody, and blissful too he was

when TTUN was subdued.

See what happens? All you have to do is express an interest—and then get busy listening.

If you haven’t gone through a John D. MacDonald phase in your reading life, you’ve missed

something. People who knew MacDonald described him as “soft-spoken” and “quiet.” The architect who

designed his house commented, “Unlike a number of clients who shall remain unnamed, John was a very

quick study. I could explain the details of some arcane architectural specification—he’d understand

instantly, and I only had to tell him once.”35

Shakespeare listened to everybody—and unlike Hemingway, success didn’t change that practice. (A

biographer wrote of Hemingway, “He was a great listener before he moved to Key West and a great

talker afterwards.”)36

LOONEY AND THE Oxfordians have been accused of snobbery, but I think that’s unfair. That’s

because His Lordship would be an unlikely choice with which to indulge snobbish sentiments.

His Lordship was never granted membership in the Order of the Garter, and his vote total in the

period from the Spanish Armada to his death can be counted on one finger: in 1604 his brother-in-law

voted for him, the only vote he received in those years.37

If you were motivated by snobbery, it seems to me you’d want to find someone more

significant in the Elizabethan world.


17

WHILE I WAS NEVER GOING to be a Shakespeare authorship doubter, it would be churlish of me not

to thank the actor whose remarkable performance did so much to solidify my thinking as a Stratfordian.

I had the opportunity to see Hamlet at Stratford in 1989. The play began at 7:30, and during the

course of it I had a sense that it was running longer than a lot of plays, but when I came out of the theatre,

I was stunned to see that it was 11:15.

So enthralling was the performance of the actor playing Hamlet that I had no idea that I’d been in the

theatre for nearly four hours. The ability to hold the playgoers’ attention for that span places Hamlet as a

major theatrical achievement as much as it is a major literary achievement.

We don’t go to productions of the plays of Shakespeare so we can marvel at the specialized

knowledge the playwright possesses or revel in his impressive vocabulary. We go to productions of the

plays of Shakespeare because the plays work in the theatre; and the way to learn what works in the

theatre is to work in the theatre.

The goût de terroir of the playhouse is in Shakespeare’s plays.

So I will always be grateful to the actor who so effectively demonstrated that the authorship of

Shakespeare’s plays was grounded—not in a nobleman’s palace, not in an outcast’s oubliette, but in

the playhouse.

Thank you, Mark Rylance.

I CONSIDER MYSELF lucky because (1) my parents didn’t give a shit about Shakespeare; (2) in high

school Dickens was emphasized more than Shakespeare; and (3) in college there were no pilgrimages to

the inner sanctum of the college library to view the four Shakespeare Folios—because no one ever told

the students about them.

So why was I lucky? I was never bombarded with endless preachments on THE GLORY AND

GREATNESS OF SHAKESPEARE so I’ve been able to come to Shakespeare without a trace of contrariness.

I VIEW SHAKESPEARE as having been ideally positioned to become Shakespeare. The doubters

declaim against Stratford as Podunk-upon-Avon, but as a boy Shakespeare had the freedom to explore

the town and its people, a far richer experience than Little Lord Oxenford being surrounded by flunkies

and sycophants. In school Shakespeare was drilled in Latin grammar and rhetoric; outside of school he

had the freedom to revel in the English language. We can be grateful that Shakespeare never became an

Oxbridge snob, which allowed him to find wisdom in everyone; and his father’s difficulties left him with

a harsh choice: to leave Warwickshire and make a hazard of new fortunes. (An enterprising Columbus

writer who moved to the East Coast liked that phrasing).

Shakespeare listened to lawyers at the Inns of the Court— Sir Pomposity Longueur QC, whose

ancestor came over with the Conqueror, expounded on the fine points of the law as the actor with the

Warwickshire accent played the role of the wide eyed naïf amazed to be in the presence of such

greatness—and Shakespeare also listened to the tradesmen who built the Globe.

Tudor construction was done by carpenters and plasterers—along with some help from

the thatchers. If you were a plasterer, you didn’t learn your trade by going to St. Paul’s

Churchyard so you could buy a book entitled Tudor-Style Plastering Made Easy. Your

teacher and taskmaster was your father, just as his teacher and taskmaster had been his


18

father, and so on stretching back into the mists of your family’s memory—which means that terms of art

were in use by the practitioners of a trade long before they happened to find their way into print. Shakespeare was part of the ownership group that hired Peter Street to build the Globe. With the

necessary changes between then and now being duly noted, Shakespeare, because he listened to

everybody, knew a

from a

What Shakespeare knew, Hamlet knew—and Shakespeare got his revenge on Sir Pomposity by

placing legal expertise in the mouth of the Gravedigger.

Shakespeare experienced firsthand the timeless task of theatre management—to bring in the paying

customers—and was blessed to have business partners who were free to complain when he wrote

something that wasn’t working. (How does one explain to a mighty peer of the realm that the poetry of

which he is so proud doth verily stink unto the high heavens?)

It’s richly humorous to imagine His Lordship, headstrong and self-indulgent, having a secret life in

which he is responsible, industrious, and a team player. Just like Will but not Will.

I LOOK ON conspiracy theories the same way I view gambling excursions to Las Vegas: lots of

people seem to enjoy them but the allure remains incomprehensible to me. Explaining the intricacies of Greene’s Groat’s-worth of Wit won’t make you the life of

the party—you’ll have to trust me on that—but mention the Shakespeare authorship issue

and discussions ensue. A docent at a museum announces that she’s an Oxfordian, noting that

His Lordship, like Lear, had three daughters.


19

I mention the source material and later think that I should have replied: dogs have four legs; cats

have four legs; but dogs aren’t cats. Of course it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Nothing can shake the faith of a doubter.

IS IT POSSIBLE to comprehend Shakespeare’s achievement within the span of just seven words?

Obviously not—but a comment by John Jones will start you in the right direction.

Jones, a professor at Merton College, Oxford, has pointed to “the apparently boundless hospitality of

Shakespeare’s imagination.”38

To that I would add William Robertson Turnbull’s take on Shakespeare from Othello: A Critical

Study (1892):

Sheer inquisitiveness and meditativeness about all things whatsoever—this, then, is

our poet’s main interest in life. He is a close, curious, deeply contemplative

observer…a metaphysician and psychologist of swift sensibility…to whom nothing

belonging to the moral or spiritual world that presents itself for solution to his ever-

analysing mind is too sacred or too contemptible for experiment and artistic handling.

His eager, searching, comprehensive genius rushes breathlessly along the track of

imaginative desire and transcends the petty limits of time and place.39

Shakespeare knew “lust in action” but there was a greater lust in his life, greater than any quest of the

flesh: the overwhelming lust of his imagination. The first sort of lust may have resulted in Winchester

geese; the second type of lust yielded the finest bequest that any writer has ever offered to succeeding

generations. (Thank you, Heminges and Condell, for making that gift real for us.)

His eager, searching, comprehensive genius rushes breathlessly along the track of imaginative

desire and transcends the petty limits of time and place.

This will be lost on the doubters, whose governing principles are their own expectations. What

should be matters more than what is. In their drive to reveal the deficiencies of Will, they construct

complex systems of diminishment and debasement. Shakespeare exists to be decoded, so they persist in

their labors, yielding an argot of whingeing.

The wonder of Shakespeare is that he puts you in touch with the cosmic and has reserved a place just

for you. The doubters don’t care. They reject Will for a will-o’-the-wisp.

Their task is to constrain Brobdingnagian dimensions with strings and pegs imported from Lilliput,

so they do such things as proclaim the arcane knowledge concealed within a hyphen. That’s the hyphen

that was sometimes used in the spelling of Shakespeare’s name—and sometimes not. When it’s there, it’s

deemed to be a revelation of Shakespeare’s name as a pseudonym; when it isn’t there, it must be on

double secret probation and that’s why you can’t see it.

This, of course, misses the point of what brings us to Shakespeare. (Hint: it’s not to grant cryptic

powers to a mark of punctuation or to locate the life story of an inconsequential aristocrat.) Here is what

is true: Shakespeare’s plays hold in their vast confines worlds upon worlds, and galaxies

upon galaxies, and that’s why they continue to demand our attention.


20

If the doubters want to change the world, they need to do something more than plangent whingeing

and strident squawking about Will. They need to show compelling new evidence on two fronts: (a)

documents that reveal the actual author of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and (b) documents that reveal

who engineered the cover-up—and why.

Oh, wait. I forgot. There’s no documentary evidence because it’s a conspiracy and the conspiracy

hid all the evidence.

…to be continued…

Remember JAY’S AXIOM:

Shakespeare is either the real deal—or it’s a scam.

And don’t mess with Warwickshire…


21

1 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 2:321. 2 The skeptic was Harry Markopoulos, who recounted his experiences in his book No One Would Listen: A True

Financial Thriller (Wiley, 2010). Stephen Greenspan, “Why We Keep Falling for Financial Scams,” Wall

Street Journal, January 3, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123093987596650197. 3 Bryan H. Wildenthal, Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts (San Diego: Zindabad Press, 2019), 14n., 14.

Wildenthal incorrectly described me as a Marlovian in the hardcover edition. He corrected his (egregious) error

in the paperback edition. 4 Robert C. Evans, “’Whome None But Death Could Shake’: An Unreported Epitaph on Shakespeare,”

Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988), 60. Cited by Kathman in “Shakespeare’s Eulogies.” 5 E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 2

volumes, 2:242. “Military officer Hammond identifies Stratford-upon-Avon as birthplace of “Famous English

Poet Mr. William Shakespeare,” Shakespeare Documented,

shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/military-officer-hammond-identifies-stratford-upon-

avon-birthplace-famous. Definition of “neat” from the OED. 6 Peter Ackroyd, The History of England, Volume III: Civil War (London: Macmillan, 2014), 98. 7 The book was Cardanus’ Comfort. 8 James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 165, 167-68. 9 In addition to Contested Will, the Wikipedia article on Looney contains information about the Church of

Humanity. 10 J. Thomas Looney, “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (New York:

Frederick A. Stokes, 1920), 235. 11 “Each of us”: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/2018-video-contest; “Shakespeare’s biography”: “Nothing

about”: “Elisabeth Waugaman, How I Became an Oxfordian,” shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/elisabeth-

waugaman-how-i-became-an-oxfordian; “The essayists find”: https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/michael-

dudley-on-how-people-become-oxfordians. 12 James Warren, “J. Thomas Looney: An Unknown Fighter,” YouTube video at 39:10. . 13 Tom Regnier, “From the President: An Oxfordian Consensus,” July 10, 2017,

shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/president-oxfordian-consensus. 14 Diana Price, Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem (Westport,

Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), 301. 15 Alan H. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool:

Liverpool University Press, 2003), 47. 16 Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990), 15. 17 Nelson, Adversary, 46. 18 Richard Mulcaster, Positions Wherin Those Primitive Circvmstances Be Examined, Which Are Necessarie for

the Training vp of Children, Either for Skill in Their Booke, or Health in Their Bodie (London: Henry Barnard

and R. H. Quick, 1887), 140 19 Nelson, Adversary, 123. 20 Nelson, Adversary, 85. 21 Anderson, “Shakespeare,” 57. 22 Nelson, Adversary,317, 318. 23 Nelson, Adversary, 297. 24 James McDermott, England and the Spanish Armada: The Necessary Quarrel (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 2005), 241. 25 Nelson, Adversary, 318; Anderson, “Shakespeare,” 229. 26 C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954),

267. 27 A. H. Bullen, ed., An English Garner: Shorter Elizabethan Poems (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1903),

314-15.. 28 Daphne Pearson, Edward de Vere (1550-1604): The Crisis and Consequences of Wardship (Aldershot, Hants:

Ashgate 2005), 150. 29 Chambers, Shakespeare, 2:111. 30 Irvin Leigh Matus, Shakespeare, In Fact (New York: Continuum, 1994), 26. 31 Every Man in His Humor, folio edition, 1:37-39.


22

32 Gerald Lascelles, “Falconry,” in Shakespeare’s England: An Account of the Life & Manners of His Age, 2

vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), 2:351. The play by Jonson was Every Man in His Humor. 33 C. M. Matthews, English Surnames (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 84. 34 OED, “falconer,” n1, def. 2. 35 Marty Fugate, “A Sense of Place: How John D. MacDonald Shaped Florida Fiction”

(http://www.yourobserver.com/article/sense-place-how-john-d-macdonald-shaped-florida-fiction) 36 Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 237. 37 Nelson, Adversary, 319, 424-425. 38 Anthony Holden, William Shakespeare: An Illustrated Biography (London: Little, Brown, 2002), 11. 39 William Robertson Turnbull, Othello: A Critical Study (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1892), 32-

33.

how firm thy friendship

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